The Sacred Valley

by Max Brand

  “If you whisper, the soul of the dead man will be angry,” said Rusty. “I think he is angry now . . . ha! . . . you see that whispering is bad manners when there are the spirits of the brave near us.”

  The bull, lurching suddenly out of the water, turned toward the two with lowered head. He stamped the ground till it shook under the hoof and he rolled his big, blunt horns threateningly to one side.

  “Run . . . he will charge!” cried the girl.

  Rusty lifted his right hand in the signal of greeting.

  “Oh, brother,” he said, “forgive her for foolishness. It is very hard for a woman to be wise. Silly little things keeping blowing into their minds like bright autumn leaves on the wind. But this one is a chosen spirit. She has been to the heaven of Sweet Medicine. See! She is now alive and standing in the Sacred Valley.”

  The buffalo turned with a final sway of the head and strode away into the brush. His hoof falls died out.

  “If that was the soul of a warrior, he must have been a great chief,” said the girl. “How could you endure to stand so close? What if he had struck his horns into your body because he was angry about my foolish whispering?”

  “That would have been the will of Sweet Medicine, and there’s no use trying to avoid what the god determines.

  “I’m almost afraid of you, when you talk like that.”

  “You should not be. Do you hear, far, far away, the horns blowing and the moan of the people, praying for rain? They have been there since the sunset. My poor countrymen.”

  “Do you pity?”

  “My heart aches for them.”

  “But they drove you out to the Valley of Death.”

  “That was the malice of Running Elk and the simplicity of the braves who could believe him. But in all of that, they were working the will of Sweet Medicine. He wished to bring me back to the Sacred Valley.”

  “How did he take you from the Valley of Death to the Sacred Valley?”

  “I was ready to die, and then I saw Sweet Medicine in the form of the great owl fly out of the cliff across the valley. His spirit led me through the rock as I led you.”

  “Ah, how wonderful. My heart turns cold when you talk like this. To live as you do with a god in every day of your life must be a glorious thing.”

  “You’re trembling,” he said.

  “The wind is a little chilly,” she said.

  “Sit closer to me. Are you warmer now?”

  “Ah, yes.”

  “Are you happy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know how it is with me? Joy keeps flashing up through my heart like swift trout out of shadow into golden sunshine. Is it so with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then should we be married?”

  “Yes.”

  “There are no people here to make the ceremony,” he said.

  “Well, if you lift me in your arms and carry me over the threshold of your lodge, that would be a marriage, in the Sacred Valley.”

  “Is it true?” he asked with his head lifted. “Sweet Medicine, give me an answer. Come swiftly into the valley and give me an answer.”

  He waited through a long moment. The sky remained empty, filled only with the moonlight as with a shining mist. The girl, as he watched, had lifted her hand as though to ward off an impending stroke.

  “There is no sign,” he said slowly.

  “Look back at me,” pleaded the girl. “Is it really Sweet Medicine about whom you’re thinking? Or are you remembering the white girl?”

  “Yes. I think of her, also.”

  “She is the one you care about. I never would be the real wife. I would only be the squaw for using the flesh-scraper on the hides, and cutting wood, and carrying water. She would sit in the lodging and bead the moccasins, and comb your hair, and sit with your head in her lap, laughing at the poor slave, Blue Bird, that went drudging back and forth.”

  He said nothing. She began to weep. She doubled up her hands into fists. Her weeping did no more than give pauses to her torrent of speech.

  “I am only a worthless thing because I have red skin. She is white and golden and blue. She belongs to your own people.”

  “The Cheyennes are my own people,” he said. “Now I would like to comfort you, because you talk like an angry child. But there is a little truth in what you say. I do think, still, of Maisry Lester. But she belongs to a life to which I can never return. She is parted from me. I never shall see her again.”

  “Do you mean that?” asked Blue Bird hungrily.

  “Yes, I mean it. She would not be my wife, if I had another. White men only may marry once.”

  “If a great chief had only one wife, then he never would have many comforts in his teepee.”

  “That may be true,” he said. “But, also, if she came into the Sacred Valley, it would not be sacred to her. Sweet Medicine would be no more than a night owl. For the whites have no belief in anything. However, she never would sit and cry like a child.”

  “I’m sorry. Forgive me. And I think that if Sweet Medicine sent me to you all the way from heaven, as you say, then you should take me.”

  “I never wanted anything so much. Ah hai, the tears of a woman come and go and have no meaning. Your lips are still trembling, but now you commence to laugh. Why are you laughing at me?”

  “Because the god has poured into me such happiness that it overflows. Ai, ai, ai! I could cry out to the moon. I could sweep the stars out of the sky and weave them into a chain like flowers. The moonlight shines through me. If the god looks down now from the sky, he sees me shining like the face of his lake. Sweet Medicine, do not let evil come because I sit here laughing, while my people are mourning and begging you to send the rain. Sweet Medicine, be merciful. Red Hawk, will the god be angry with me?”

  “I don’t think so. This moment you are so delightful that the Sky People must be starting out of their sleep and find that they are dreaming of the earth dwellers. They must be looking down into the Sacred Valley and beginning to smile. Let the morning come quickly, and then Sweet Medicine will give us the answer.”

  “What answer?”

  “He will say whether he wants you to stay here with me or to go away.”

  “Ah, will he speak to you with words?”

  “He will take the food from your hand as he does from mine when he is pleased. But if he avoids you, then you must go away.”

  “Tell me another thing.”

  “Yes. Whatever you please.”

  “Tell me the best words to use in order to pray to the god.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  All night through, the chanters maintained the prayer to the god. But by turns, the groups of warriors danced in the moonlight, or chanted, or beat on the drums, or drew howling noises from the horns.

  Still, when the moon died in the east before the growing light of the sun, there was not a sign of answer from the careless god. There was not a shadow of a cloud on the horizon, and another summer day was promised, as brazen hot as the ones that had scorched the prairies before. Still, when the braves looked toward Running Elk for a permission to stop the entreaties, the long-faced old man would make no sign.

  And inside the valley, far up toward the holier end, beside the shining edge of the lake and opposite the cave of Sweet Medicine, Blue Bird stood up with a living rabbit grasped in her strong young hands. Behind her, Red Hawk whistled a long, shrill note, and now the miracle happened, drawing a cry of fear from the lips of the girl. For she saw, on the lip of the cave above her, a huge owl, greater than any eye ever had beheld before. It extended its wings. It rushed down through the air toward her. She heard the thin whispering of those furred wing feathers. She saw the great hooked talon drawn up toward the soft feathers of the belly. She saw the round shining of the eyes. So a god would take food from her hand and bless her.

  But in the last moment the owl swerved. Its talons reached out and the powerful legs behind them as though of their own volition they still would have
seized on the rabbit. But the wings slid the great bird rapidly away.

  The cry of the girl slashed through the brain of Red Hawk. She fell on her knees and let the rabbit go bounding away, its ears flattened by the speed of its running. And so, her arms thrown up, the girl cried out after the owl.

  But the bird, veering without a wing flap, swerved suddenly back toward the cave and disappeared into the mouth of it.

  Red Hawk picked up from the ground a little fluffy owl feather that had fluttered down close to Blue Bird. He put it in her hair, sadly.

  “You must go,” he said. “You see that the god is not angry if you do as he wishes at once. He has given you a token of his favor. Take it. Let that make you happy. Perhaps on some other day you may come back into the Sacred Valley and live here forever. Or is his anger with me, also? We shall see.”

  He picked up another rabbit, its four feet tied securely together, and once more he whistled. And again the mighty owl dipped off the edge of the cliff and slid through the air with faultless ease. Right down he came, struck the talons of one foot into the offered rabbit, and veered away again to disappear inside the cave.

  The girl began to beat her face with her hands and cry out: “He will not accept me! He turns his face from me! I want to die! I don’t want to live!”

  “Think how the Cheyennes will admire you and wonder at you,” said Red Hawk. “No other Indian ever has been inside the Sacred Valley and gone out alive again. You went in at the Valley of Death . . . you will come out from the Sacred Valley with the token of the god worn in your hair. Why, Blue Bird, you will become at once almost greater medicine than Running Elk.”

  “But I shall be alone,” said the girl. “I’d rather die here in the valley than live in any other place.”

  “There is the will of the god to think about,” he told her. “He sent you back from death into life. Now he is sending you back to the Cheyennes. Will you stop and argue with him?”

  Afterward, he caught trout and roasted them over the coals of a quick fire. He wrapped the fish in broad leaves, and, when the leaves were seared and rotten with the flame, he took out the fish. They were so tender that he could lift out the frame of bones. It was a delicacy.

  Blue Bird, as she ate, fell into a happy dream. There was so much to see that she could not turn her head everywhere. It was all sacred. The cliffs, the trees, the grass, all was different from the beings in the outer world. And the animals moved with more beauty, more peaceful dignity than any others she had seen.

  He took Blue Bird into the house he had built. She was overcome with wonder, and, when he tried to explain how he had done each part of the work, she merely shook her head.

  “Ah, yes . . . with your own hands, but with Sweet Medicine standing invisible beside you. Sweet Medicine lifted the stones of the dam, also. You could not have done it without him.”

  “Perhaps not,” he agreed.

  * * * * *

  It was time for her to go. The sun was up. Wheeling flights of birds rose out of the trees and flew down the valley.

  “They are pointing you the way you must take,” he said.

  She had grown composed.

  “My grandmother told me,” she said, “that men are made for hunting and battle and glory, but women are meant for pain. Ai, ai! I have breathed in such pain, when I think of leaving the valley, that my heart is swollen and great with it. Only tell me this . . . shall I see you again before I die?”

  He touched the owl feather in her hair. “This is the proof that you belong to Sweet Medicine,” he said. “Therefore I surely shall see you again.”

  He called White Horse and helped the girl onto the back of the stallion. The rustling of her white dress maddened him. White Horse danced and curveted, ready to fling her to the ground.

  She clung to the windy mane. And the voice of Red Hawk was half stopped with happy laughter as he controlled the great horse with words, for he thought that he never before had seen a picture so beautiful as the golden loveliness of the girl mounted on the silken white flashing of the stallion.

  So they went down the valley, side-by-side, White Horse growing quieter. At the mouth of the entrance ravine they halted and she slipped to the ground.

  He said: “When you go among the people, tell them to continue their chanting, because Sweet Medicine will send them water. He has told me what to do to answer their prayers. Tell the people that you have seen the god and that he has given you the feather as a token that you belong to him . . . he has accepted you. But if you speak of anything else that you saw in the Sacred Valley, you surely will die.”

  She stepped close to him until her forehead leaned against his shoulder. He listened to her breathing in a pause of the weary chanting that still sounded beyond the entrance rocks.

  “Are you a little unhappy because I have to go?” she asked.

  “I am so sad,” he said, “that my throat aches.” He lifted one hand to the sky. “Sweet Medicine,” he said, “go with her . . . bring her happiness . . . lead her again to me or me to her. Fill my mind and my hands with many things to do so that my heart shall not be empty when I remember her.”

  “Is there a token? Is there an answer?” she asked.

  He said: “The wind bends the feather in your hair toward me. It is the answer. My prayer shall be granted.”

  She looked at him for a moment with a shining face. Afterward, her head lifted, she went slowly down the narrow of the gorge.

  Red Hawk went back up the valley on the back of the stallion.

  He began to roll from the places the big rocks with which he had built the wall of the dam.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Withdrawn from the Cheyennes who danced and sang and beat the drums in front of the Sacred Valley, Galway watched the ceremonies with an unceasing interest. He was learning more and more of these people. And the more he learned, the more his heart burned with eagerness to pass through the forbidden gate of the valley.

  Through the early morning, as the sun rose, he saw the trader, Lazy Wolf, come on the back of a brown mule. The bowed head and shoulders of the man told of the misery that weighed him down. He sat the mule for a moment, staring at the chanting Indians. Then he came to Galway and dismounted.

  “No luck?” asked Galway, with a touch of sympathy.

  “I offered the Cheyennes who are guarding the entrance of the Valley of Death the value of a hundred horses. That’s as high as they can count. But that wouldn’t shake them. They keep the valley closed. I went to the mouth of it and shouted with all my might. But I never got an answer. I suppose she’s dead even by this time.”

  “I’m sorry for it,” said Galway.

  “I’ll leave the tribe,” said the trader. “God knows that life among the whites will be an empty thing for me, but I can’t stay among these people and think of murder every time I see their faces.”

  Here there was a sudden cessation of the chanting, a wild outbreaking of many voices that shouted: “Blue Bird! Blue Bird!”

  Only Running Elk, on his tireless old legs, kept jogging around and around the circle, mumbling the formula of the chant, the prayer for “Rain, rain, rain!” By his persistence all the efforts that had gone into this great praying would not be broken and wasted. But his eyes rolled wildly in his head and his dancing faltered and almost stopped.

  For Blue Bird, Galway saw, was walking calmly out of the mouth of the Sacred Valley, past the huge columns of the cliffs that guarded the ravine. She came with her head high, smiling a little, and an air of strange dignity made her seem older.

  Lazy Wolf, shouting out in a sudden frenzy, rushed toward her.

  A dozen strong hands caught and held him fast.

  “She has come through the Sacred Valley . . . purify yourself before you touch her!” they cried to him.

  Others were heaping dry sweet grass on the fire so that they could wash themselves in the smoke that rose in a cloud. And the rest, prancing back to keep at a safe distance from this girl who shou
ld have been a lifeless ghost, surrounded her with their gestures of wonder.

  She paid no attention to Lazy Wolf at first. She stood in the center of the beaten ground where the dancing had been continuing and raised a hand that silenced even the mumbling chant of Running Elk. He sank exhausted to one knee and listened, as the girl said: “I have seen the god. He has heard the prayers of the Cheyennes. He will send you water. Sing to him. Praise him. He will send you water at once.”

  The uproar deafened Galway. Every Indian was roaring like a bull. They were dancing, flinging up their arms. And Lazy Wolf at last had the girl in his embrace.

  Galway made his way to them. He could hardly hear the words of the girl, he was so obsessed in staring at her. For she was transformed. There was a calmness and a removal of interest from the ordinary world of ordinary men. In her dignity there was sadness, also. A strange little chill of superstition and fear ran quickly through the blood of Galway.

  She was saying: “If I speak of what I saw in the Sacred Valley or what appeared to me in the Valley of Death, I should die. I cannot tell you what comes to the souls of brave men and good women when they die. I cannot tell you what happiness comes to them. I can only show you the symbol of Sweet Medicine. I saw him. He drew the life from my body, and then breathed it back into my nostrils. He stopped my heart and made it beat again. He bore me into the blue of the Happy Hunting Grounds, and then he returned me to the earth to show the Cheyennes that he loves them, they are his people.”

  They came slowly about her, their hands stretched out. One by one they touched the flare of her skirt or the deerskin shirt, or the hair that flowed down her back. But not one of them dared to touch the little owl feather when she pointed to it.

  Some of the dread passed out of Galway when he saw that feather.

  He said to the trader, whose eyes were bright with tears of happiness: “Your girl knows how to tell a good yarn while she’s about it.”

  “People see what they believe in,” said Lazy Wolf. “She wouldn’t lie. She’d cut her tongue out sooner than lie. And if you suggest to one of these Cheyennes that perhaps she’s lying about what’s happened to her, you’ll have a knife in your throat before you finish talking.”