The Canyon Jack Schaefer

by Les Weil

  Now she was afraid. Young men who waited for young women in the dusk did not speak in that way, not even after many evenings of talking. They observed the customs. They spoke only as friends, of impersonal topics, things that had happened in the village or in the hunt. They let any feeling between them and the young women grow slowly, unspoken, through many weeks and perhaps many months. She turned to go to the lodge. But Little Bear clutched at her robe and held it. The revelation of the wonder that the old one had wrought even after death was strong in him and the words rushed forth. "I am not a boy to stand around waiting evening after evening and let the things in my heart go unsaid. Four seasons I have searched for you through all the tribe and the place that is my own waits for us."

  She pulled the robe from his hand and returned to the lodge. She paused in the entrance to look back. Her face, half lit from the fire within, was not angry. It was soft and womanly and a little afraid.

  Little Bear stood in the dropping darkness and was ashamed. It was late in the night when he slipped quietly to his place in the lodge of White Wolf. ...

  Customs. There are customs binding all things, always and everywhere. There are customs for eating and sleeping and the dressing of one's body, for the hunt and the war trail, for the speaking of man to man and man to woman, for the making of a marriage and the merging of two in one and the beginning of a new family. They are good. They give texture to living and meaning to life. But sometimes they do not make sense to a strange one, a different one. Who is he to think that he can decide which are good and which are foolish? Who is he to think that they should be set aside to match his wishes and to soothe his conscience?

  "My friend. Will you go to the lodge of Yellow Moon and speak for me according to custom? Will you say that I wish his sister for my wife?"

  "What presents would you have me take? Yellow Moon is a mighty warrior. His sister is close to his heart. She has had many young men wait for her in the dusk of the evening but she has not looked with favor upon them."

  "I have no presents."

  "Have you no family, have you no relatives, to gather presents together for you?"

  ---To the westward is a small village and in that village is a man called Strong Left Hand. He will strip himself of many horses and many good weapons and many fine robes in behalf of a foster son as in behalf of his own sons, for he is a fair man in all his dealings with those who have lived in his lodge as a family. He has two sons who are brave warriors. They will go on the war trail, untiring in travel, to take horses for a foster brother who has been a boy together with them and shared the same heat from the same fire in the same lodge. But Strong Left Hand is not the true father. His sons are not the true brothers. And why should a man take from others what he cannot give in return when a need comes?­--

  "It is the same. I have no presents."

  "There must be presents. I will give you what I can. I will speak to my relatives."

  "That is good. But it cannot be. You are not my father. My father is dead. I would take only from the true father."

  "But there must be presents. There must be things to serve as a sign."

  "I have a painted pony. I have a lance whose death­point is an iron-bladed knife that has known the hand of the old one, her great-grandfather, Standing All Night."

  "It would be better not to go at all than to go with one pony and one lance, even such a lance."

  "My friend. I ask it as one man asks another whose lodge he has shared."

  "Have you counted many coups?"

  "With no horse and with the bone of my right leg broken and using my lance as a staff, I have killed an old bull, the leader of a herd."

  "That is good."

  "Rolling on the ground with my knife in my hand and with the great claws tearing at me, I have killed the puma, the blood-drinking one of the mountains."

  "That is very good. But have you counted coups on the enemies of your people."

  "I have not counted coups."

  ---This is certainly a strange one, a different one, a wanderer with a purpose yet without the means of grasping that purpose. He does not seek honor as all men should seek honor. He should stay here and acquire wealth. The women of my family will make robes for him of the hides of the buffalo he kills. He should go on the war trail and take horses. There is time for all things. Why must he be in a hurry? . . . And yet ... He is a mighty hunter. There is meat in the lodge, more meat than ever before. It has been freely given. And he has a drawing quietness in him. When he smokes and passes the pipe a strong feeling of a man to a man goes with it. The woman has looked with some favor on him. All the village knows, as all the village always knows everything, that four times he has plucked at her robe and four times she has stopped for a brief time to talk to him. Perhaps for a strange one strange things can happen­--

  "My friend. I will go. I will speak for you."

  White Wolf led the painted pony. In his withered left hand he carried the lance. He tied the pony in front of the lodge of Yellow Moon. He stuck the point of the lance in the ground so that it stood upright. He entered the lodge.

  The wife of Yellow Moon stood in the lodge entrance. She called and children came running. She spoke to them and they scattered to run to other lodges and some ran out of the village to find men who were not in their lodges. She built a fire in front of the lodge and to one side and began to prepare food. The relatives of Yellow Moon and his wife gathered in the lodge. They ate and they talked and they thought and they talked again. All the rest of the day they ate and thought and talked together. At last Yellow Moon spoke and the others were silent and listened. He finished. The father of his wife rose and went out of the lodge. He untied the painted pony. He pulled the lance from the ground. He drove the pony before him to the lodge of White Wolf. He laid the lance on the ground. He turned and went away. The message was delivered. There would be no marriage.

  The father of the wife of Yellow Moon stopped and turned again. He walked through the village as a man walked to enjoy the evening air. He passed near the lodge of White Wolf. He turned toward it like a man who had just remembered that a friend lived in that lodge. He entered the lodge and stepped to the right. He was not a messenger now. He was a visitor stopping to talk to a friend and exchange news of the village.

  White Wolf sat on his couch at the rear of the lodge. Little Bear sat on his couch to the right and his head was forward and down so that his chin rested on his chest. The father-in-law of Yellow Moon did not look at Little Bear. He waited and sat at the place to the left where White Wolf pointed. And White Wolf filled a pipe and lit it and puffed upon it and passed it to him. And the visitor smoked the pipe and spoke.

  "The man called Yellow Moon, who happens to be the husband of my daughter and the brother of the one called Spotted Turtle, has said many things in his lodge today. Since the death of his father two springs ago, he has been alone responsible for his sister. Even before that he was responsible for her giving in marriage because his father gave her to him in that manner in praise according to custom when he counted his first coup. He has seen the one called Little Bear in the hunt. He bows his head in honor of such hunting. But he would not shame his sister by giving her in marriage without presents to be laid before those who are close to her by blood and by marriage for their choosing."

  And the visitor lit the pipe again and smoked. Again he spoke. "There is more. A man who has not yet counted coups on the enemies of his people is not yet really a man. He is still a boy and the years that have passed over him make no difference. That is an old saying of the tribe. It is a good saying. He who is a friend to the one called Little Bear would tell him to go forth on the war trail and count many coups and take many horses and be a man. ..."

  Is it the counting of coups on the enemies of his people even when they are not near and a danger to the tribe that makes a man? Is it the taking of horses that turns a boy into a warrior able to maintain a lodge of his own and a woman living in it? Must a man go against w
hat is in his heart to obtain the other thing dwelling there too?

  He sat cross-legged in the grasses and the moon was in his eyes. His mind wrestled with itself and beat against the bones of his forehead and he was very sad. Breezes rustled in the grasses and the Maiyun of the place whispered through them. He did not hear. They hummed louder and they made him listen. "Little brother. Your eyes have looked upon the mother of Spotted Turtle when she has gone forth to gather wood. Yet you have not really seen her. ..."

  "My friend. Why does the mother of Spotted Turtle keep her hair cut short and walk bare-legged in the open air and there are ever fresh gashes on her legs? Twice the four seasons have passed since the father of Spotted Turtle found the trail where all footprints point the same way and still she mourns."

  "She mourns because the spirit of her man has not found the trail. It wanders lost in a far country held there by the bones that lie unburied."

  "He was taken by enemies?"

  "He was not. He would have died in honor then and Heammawihio would have shown him the way. Enemies wounded him but evil spirits took him. He was with a war party that went into the land of the Crows. They went far and found many horses. They were discovered and in the fighting there were too many enemies. They fled with only the horses they rode. The enemies were between them and the way back to our own lands. They fled north and the enemies followed. They came to an evil place where the ground rises high and rough and broken into strange shapes that frighten the mind and where spirits evil beyond all others dwell. They must walk and lead the horses. He had an arrow in his thigh and could not walk well. The demons of that place marked him. They made him stumble and they seized him and dragged him over the edge of a cliff and threw him on the rocks below. The others called and he did not answer. Only the demons howled at them and the enemies were close. They fled. They slipped around the enemies and led them far away and escaped. Now his bones lie there unburied. There was not even a one to lay the body straight with the head to the east and fold the arms and cover it with a robe so that his spirit could have peace and find the right way."

  "No one has gone to get the bones?"

  "No one has gone."

  "Yellow Moon is a great warrior. Has not Yellow Moon gone?"

  "No man will go. It is beyond doing. The way lies through the land of many enemies. The bones lie where evil spirits guard them and would keep them."

  "My friend. How would one know the place?"

  He carried the lance and a pouch of pemmican and a bag, empty, made of old lodge skins. He moved on foot. A horse was heavy and had sharp hooves and its tracks could not be hidden except on hard rock or in the bed of a stream but a man could pick his way on foot and his tracks would be swallowed by the springy sod. Three days he was in the land of the Crows, moving through, and they did not know it. He kept to the low levels between the rolling ridges of the plain and when he must cross over the high levels he went slowly and slipped along often like a snake on his belly. He avoided the buffalo whenever he saw them, for hunting parties might be near them. Twice he circled to avoid small villages. On the fourth day he saw, rising ahead, rising abruptly out of the plain in strange twisting monstrous-shaped buttes, weather-carved and grotesque, the place where spirits evil beyond all others were said to dwell. And on the fourth day too a hunting party of Crows saw him.

  There were nine of them, mounted on swift ponies. They were spread out scouting for buffalo. The first of them, the nearest, saw him against the sky when he paused on top of the last and highest ridge and his eyes looked for the first time on the evil place ahead of him and he forgot caution and stood straight staring at it. This one swung his horse and rode quickly to tell the others. Little Bear heard the sound of the hooves borne to him on the wind and he bent low from the skyline and ran. Straight for the evil place he ran, where men could not follow on horses and a lone man could dodge and twist among the strange-shaped rising rocks and find many a hollow in which to hide.

  He had a long way to go, almost a mile, but the Crows were very cautious and did not hurry after him. They did not know that he was alone. They did not know that he was not a scout for some daring war party. They came slowly, ready to flee or to attack as judgment might tell them, and they watched carefully all around. When they came to where he had been, he was ahead and they could not see him. He had found and dropped into a narrow gulch that led twisting to the right and forward and he held his body low to hide his head and hurried along it. They searched over the ground. They found his tracks for in running he could not pick his way. Here and there between the grass clumps was the faint print of his moccasins. They searched and found no other tracks. They looked into the distance all around. From that high place they could see far in all directions. There was no war party. There was only the trace left by one man. They dashed forward following the faint trace of his tracks.

  They lost time again at the gulch. In their hurry they went past it, their horses taking it almost in stride.

  They stopped and searched again over the ground. One dismounted and dropped into the gulch and saw the tracks there in the bottom sand. They shouted and dashed along the edge of the twisting way. But by then Little Bear was again far ahead. He was out of the gulch and creeping through the grasses towards the evil place that was now only a quarter of a mile ahead. He heard the shouts coming to him on the wind. He crept along like a snake and lay flat in the grasses and was very still and they rushed past behind him following the gulch. They dropped out of sight where the ground rolled downward and he jumped to his feet and ran forward. He ran leaping and striving with his breath fighting in long gasps and he was filled with a sadness for the shortness of his legs.

  The rocks were ahead of him, rising in their strange and fearful formations, and behind him he heard new shouts. The Crows had swung back and now they saw him and they knew for certain that he was an enemy and that he was alone. They kicked with their heels on the sides of their ponies and leaned forward along the necks of their ponies and shouted. They raced after him and he leaped and strove with his short legs and he reached the rocks and leaped climbing and twisting upward among them and moved through the maze of their strange fearful shadows and he could leap no more and he stopped with his back against a weather­carved column of stone and held the lance ready and there was no one among the rocks with him. There was no sound of enemies climbing after him. There was only the low moaning that never ceased of the wind that blew above the plains and gnawed endlessly at the high rocks.

  He crept to a jutting point of carved stone and looked back down the way he had come. He saw them. They were on the plain near the base of the rising rocks. They circled their ponies and looked up at the strange swooping heights and they talked together. They held back. They would not leave their ponies and enter the evil place. They circled and rode away over the plain. They reached the rolling ridge where they had seen him. They went out of sight down the other side.

  A long time he watched from his high point and they did not appear. Not anywhere on the whole plain did they appear again, or anyone else or any living thing. They were gone and it was a vast and empty space before him and behind him climbed the strange and fearful formations of the place that must be very evil because even those in whose land it rose were afraid to enter it.

  The sun was slanting down the sky. He must hurry or the night and the unnamed things that lived in the dark of such a place would have him. He must be near the spot he sought because the father of Spotted Turtle and his war party had come this way and they had not gone far into the rocks. Slowly he moved, working upward, and to the left he saw the two tall columns of stone, thick at the base and tapering and pointed and slightly curved like the horns of a giant buffalo. He moved closer and beyond was the rounded mass of rock that was like the hump of the same giant buffalo. It was as he had been told. Between the horns and the rump was where the demons had seized the wounded warrior and dragged him over the edge of a cliff and thrown him on the stones below.
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br />   In the light of the late slanting sun slicing across the strange formations and their long shadows it was not a hard way to go. Past the horns the path was rough and fell away swiftly on one side and a great crevice opened and dropped down. A man could stumble easily here and in the dark he would have no chance against the demons and the slipperiness they could put under his feet.

  He crept down the swiftly falling slope to the edge of the crevice. He lay flat and peered over. It was not deep, not more than thirty feet, and the sides were jagged with many small ledges and other good foot­holds. Compared to his canyon it was as nothing. And it was not closed in like his canyon because one end opened on through the rock and connected with another and larger crevice. But the bottom was broken by many cracks running in weird zigzags and covered by small bushes and thorny scrub growth. He lay still and studied the whole area. Nowhere could he see a sign of torn clothing or the whiteness of weather-washed bone. He laid the lance and the pouch of pemmican on the cliff top and climbed down, dropping easily from ledge to ledge. Quickly he began to search over the bottom, from crack to crack and among the bushes along the base of the cliff. There was nothing. He hurried, moving through the deepening shadows over all the bottom, and the sun sank below the horizon and it was dusk out on the plain but here in this strange and evil place it was night in the one sudden swift cloaking rush of dark.

  In the first moment he was afraid. Fear started him up the cliff. Fear stopped him midway where there was a ledge wide enough for a man to sit or lie without danger of falling. Here was the safest spot. It would be hard for anything or anyone to get at him from below or from above. And the demons of the place, coming forth to drink the dark night air, might not see him as he crouched close to the cliff-wall. He sat cross-legged on stone and his back rested against stone and he sat still and fought with the fear. ...