The Basket Woman: A Book of Indian Tales for Children. Mary Hunter Austin
The women made the meat ready for cooking. Some of them took meal and made cakes for baking in the ashes. The men rested in the glow of the fires, feathering arrows and restringing their bows.
"That is well," said the Basket Woman, "to make ready for to-morrow's meat before to-day's is eaten."
"How happy they are!" said the boy.
"They will be happier when they have eaten," said she.
After supper the Indians gathered together for singing and dancing. The old men told tales one after the other, and the children thought each one was the best. Between the tales the Indians all sang together, or one sang a new song that he had made. There was one of them who did better than all. He had streaked his body with colored earth and had a band of eagle feathers in his hair. In his hand was a rattle of wild sheep's horn and small stones; he kept time with it as he leapt and sang in the light of the fire. He sang of old wars, sang of the deer that was killed, sang of the dove and the young grass that grew on the mountain; and the people were well pleased, for when the heart is in the singing it does not matter much what the song is about. The men beat their hands together to keep time to his dancing, and the earth under his feet was stamped to a fine dust.
"He is one that has found the wolf's song," said the Basket Woman.
"What is that?" asked Alan.
"It is an old tale of my people," said she. "Once there was a man who could not make any songs, so he got no praise from the tribe, and it troubled him much. Then, as he was gathering taboose by the river, a wolf went by, and the wolf said to him, 'What will you have me to give you for your taboose?' Then said the man, 'I will have you to give me a song.'
"'That will I gladly,' said the wolf. So the wolf taught him, and that night he sang the wolf's song in the presence of all the people, and it made their hearts to burn within them. Then the man fell down as if he were dead, for the pure joy of singing, and when deep sleep was upon him the wolf came in the night and stole his song away. Neither the man nor any one who had heard it remembered it any more. So we say when a man sings as no other sang before him, 'He has the wolf's song.' It is a good saying. Now we must go, for the children are all asleep by their mothers, and the day comes soon," said the Basket Woman.
"Shall we come again?" said Alan. "And will it all be as it is now?"
"My people come often to the valley of Corn Water," said she, "but it is never as it is now except in dreams. Now we must go quickly." Far up the trail they saw a grayness in the eastern sky where the day was about to come in.
"Hark," said the Basket Woman, "they will sing together the coyote song. It is so that they sing it when the coyote goes home from his hunting, and the morning is near.
"The coyote cries …
He cries at daybreak …
He cries …
The coyote cries" …
sang the Basket Woman, but all the spaces in between the words were filled with long howls, – weird, wicked noises that seemed to hunt and double in a half-human throat. It made the hair on Alan's neck stand up, and cold shivers creep along his back. He began to shake, for the wild howls drew near and louder, and he felt the bed under him tremble with his trembling.
"Mother, mother," he cried, "what is that?"
"It is only the coyotes," said she; "they always howl about this time of night. It is nothing; go to sleep again."
"But I am afraid."
"They cannot hurt you," said his mother; "it is only the little gray beasts that you see trotting about the mesa of afternoons; hear them now."
"I am afraid," said Alan.
"Then you must come in my bed," said she; and in a few minutes he was fast asleep again.
THE BASKET WOMAN
SECOND STORY
The next time Alan saw the Basket Woman he was not nearly so much afraid of her, though he did not venture to speak of their journey to Pahrump. He said to his mother, "Do you not wish the Indians could have stayed the way they were?" and his mother laughed.
"Why, no, child," she said, "I do not think that I do. I think they are much better off as they are now." Alan, however, was not to be convinced. The next time he saw the Basket Woman he was even troubled about it.
The homesteader had taken his family to the town for a day, and the first thing Alan saw when he got down from the wagon was the Basket Woman. She was sitting in a corner of the sidewalk with a group of other mahalas, with her blanket drawn over her shoulders, looking out upon the town, and her eyes were dull and strange.
A stream of people went by them in the street, and minded them no more than the dogs they stepped over, sprawling at the doors of the stores. Some of the Indian women had children with them, but they neither shouted nor ran as they had done in the camp of Corn Water; they sat quietly by their mothers, and Alan noticed how worn and poor were the clothes of all of them, and how wishful all the eyes. He could not get his mind off them because he could not get them out of his sight for very long at a time. It was a very small town, and as he went with his mother in and about the stores he would be coming face to face with the mahalas every little while, and the Basket Woman's eyes were always sad.
His mother, when she had finished her shopping, gave him a silver dime and told him that he might spend it as he wished. As soon as Alan had turned the corner on that errand there was the Basket Woman with her chin upon her knees and her blanket drawn over her shoulders. Alan stopped a moment in front of her; he would have liked to say something comforting, but found himself still afraid.
Her eyes looked on beyond him, blurred and dim; he supposed she must be thinking of the happy valley, and grew so very sorry for her that, as he could not get the courage to speak, he threw his dime into her lap and ran as fast as he could away. It seemed to him as he ran that she called to him, but he could not be sure.
That night, almost as soon as he had touched the pillow, she came and stood beside him without motion or sound, and let down the basket from her back.
"Do we go to Corn Water?" asked Alan as he stepped into it.
"To my people of old time," said the Basket Woman, "so that you need not be so much sorry."
Then they went out by the mesa trail, where the sage showed duskily under a thin rim of moon. It seemed to Alan that they went slowly, almost heavily. When they came to the parting of the ways, she let down the basket to rest. A rabbit popped, startled, out of the brush, and scurried into the dark; its white tail, like a signal, showed the way it went.
"What was that?" asked Alan.
"Only little Tavwots, whom we scared out of his nest. Lean forward," she said, "and I will tell you a tale about him." So the boy leaned his head against the Basket Woman's long black hair, and heard the story of Little Tavwots and How He Caught the Sun in a Snare.
"It was long ago," said the Basket Woman. "Tavwots was the largest of all four-footed things, and a mighty hunter. He would get up as soon as it was day and go to his hunting, but always before him was the track of a great foot on the trail; and this troubled him, for his pride was as big as his body and greater than his fame.
"'Who is this?' cried Tavwots, 'that goes with so great a stride before me to the hunting? Does he think to put me to shame?'
"'T'-sst!' said his mother, 'there is none greater than thee.'
"'Nevertheless,' said Tavwots, 'there are the footprints in the trail.' The next morning he got up earlier, but there were always the great footprints and the long stride before him.
"'Now I will set me a trap for this impudent fellow,' said Tavwots, for he was very cunning. So he made a snare of his bowstring and set it in the trail overnight, and in the morning when he went to look, behold, he had caught the sun in his snare. All that quarter of the earth was beginning to smoke with the heat of it.
"'Is it you?' cried Tavwots, 'who made the tracks in my trail?'
"'It is I,' said the sun. 'Come now and set me free before the whole