II
HAD not So Wuhti led him at last to her abode, Northrup would never have found it. It was slow climbing for them both, the woman weighted down by close to a century of years, the man still so weak that a little exertion set him trembling throughout his wasted body.
The chosen chamber of So Wuhti was close up to the cliff-tops, a roughly gouged-out room in the rocks, to be approached only by a steep trail from below. It was constructed cunningly in a great fissure so that while from it the old woman might look out over the desert, it would be a keen eye down there to discover her.
Upon the floor lay So Wuhti's bed, a tumbled pile of cotton blankets of native weave and a rabbit-skin robe. In a smoke-blackened corner were a few charred sticks and bits of brush; here and there were sun- baked clay utensils, for the most part black and cracked. A few strings of dried meat, a heap of shelled corn, a pot of water, a prayer-stick against the wall by the bed completed the equipment of the room.
From So Wuhti's boudoir—Northrup always called it that and So Wuhti seemed greatly pleased with the name—it was no trick to come to the top of the cliffs by means of the short ladder. And here one came upon that wonder of the desert of which a thousand tongues have told since first the old Spanish conquistadores dipped into it, which countless artists have sought to catch upon their brushes.
For a hundred miles in all directions the eye passed over gray floor, sweeping up into loma and mesa, the magic desert colorings over it all, deep blues and glittering bronzes, the snow white of drifted sands, the gray-green of cactus and brush, the brick reds of rocky precipices. Through the clear, dry air the eye sped instantly over waterless distances where a man might find slow death in crossing.
Here, just at the cliff's edge, Northrup found again the half-expected, the tumbled ruins of an ancient watch-tower. His mind toyed with the pictures which his fancies suggested.
The vision arose of a gaunt, cat-quick sentinel, hawk-eyed, skin beaten into glistening copper from the sun, keeping guard here while his brothers slept in a younger century; starting up as, many miles away across the rolling floor of desert sand and scrubby growth he caught a quick glimpse of an invading enemy; cupping his hands to his mouth to send outward and downward his warning shout; kindling the ever-ready pile of greasewood fagots to send out over the land other messages of warning, voiceless, lightning-winged. And, as if the old time were not yet dead though the watch-tower of stone was crumbling, he saw a pile of dry greasewood and a black smudge of smoke against the side of the one upstanding slab of stone.
He went back, down to So Wuhti, wondering.
As, little by little, strength came back into his emaciated body, he grew impatient for the time when he might dare to take up the trail again. But a month passed and he knew that it would be as mad a thing to try to move on as to climb to the cliff-tops and leap downward.
There was water here; So Wuhti brought it laboriously from a hidden spring far back and deep down in the great fissure in the rock wall. If he turned back, he knew there was no more water within thirty miles; if he went on it was a gamble if he would find water at the end of forty miles. So he waited for his strength to come back to him.
Slowly, so slowly that perhaps she was never aware of it, So Wuhti's silence slipped from her. She came, in her loneliness, to feel a strange affection for the big-bodied Bahana with his white skin, his yellow hair and blue eyes.
She had never seen a man like him. At first she seemed a little in awe of him, a little afraid of him. In those first weeks she would sit and watch him suspiciously, her lips locked, her eyes bright with speculation.
But, as the Hopi legends have it, woman is the daughter of Yahpa, the Mockingbird, and so, since her father is so great a talker, may not long remain silent. The legends of her forefathers were scripture to So Wuhti.
So it turned out that as they sat together in the old woman's boudoir or upon the cliff-tops, the slow hours passed to the throaty monotone of So Wuhti's talk while Northrup smoked her tobacco in his pipe and listened. It took him no great time to recognize the fact that the old woman was half crazed—a brooding, solitary life and a mind filled with superstitions having worked their way with her.
In the main her conversation was an ingenious fabric of lies told with rare semblance of truth. As if she were recounting some minor happening of the day, she told of a visit she had had from Haruing Wuhti, chief deity of the Hopi polytheism. The goddess, coming up out of the sea, had come across the desert, running swifter than an antelope. So beautiful was she that she had hurt So Wuhti's eyes with her beauty. Aliksai! Listen, Bahana! She is like a soft white maiden, Haruing Wuhti, her hair yellow like the squash blossom, yellower than yours. Her eyes are like turquoises, her mouth as red as a sunset through the sandstorm. She came swiftly at So Wuhti's call. Through the night the goddess sat there, So Wuhti here, and they talked.
So Wuhti shook her head, mumbled, grew silent. The Bahana was not to hear the things of which Haruing Wuhti and So Wuhti spoke in the night.
She explained her presence alone here. She told him of it twice, once in answer to his question, once volunteering the information. Had she gone into the matter a third time Northrup had no doubt that he would then have had three instead of merely two distinct explanations to choose from.
In the first account Northrup found many traces of ancient Indian religions. So Wuhti spoke familiarly of the beginnings of the world which, while she admitted that it was Haruing Wuhti and the Sun who had done the actual work, she herself witnessed.
She called Northrup's attention to the fact that the spot in which he and she were was the top of the world. Hence it became clear that it was very distantly remote from the abiding-place of the chief goddess. Being so far away the goddess must have some one in whom she could trust to see that everything went right. Consequently So Wuhti, a very great favorite with Haruing Wuhti, was stationed here. When there was need she built signal fires at the ruined watch-tower and Haruing saw and understood the matter.
If Northrup didn't take a great deal of stock in this explanation, he had the other one: Further in the desert, so far and across such a waterless tract that the white man could only send his hungry eyes traveling into it, was a land where there were hidden cities. The gods of the underworld had built these cities. Then they had given them to a people, the people of So Wuhti.
There were seven of these cities, the Seven Cities of Chebo. (Northrup smiled as he saw a trace of the old legend told by the early Spanish explorers of the Seven Cities of Cibola.) They were very rich cities, having much silver, many turquoises and of late years much gold, which they made into rings and bracelets, the chiefs having cups and plates of gold.
In order that they might remain hidden from the greed of the white men and from the jealousy of other tribes, they set sentinels out through the desert, a hundred miles away. Such a sentinel was So Wuhti. She had but to set fire to the fagots upon the cliffs and the chiefs of the Hidden Cities of Chebo would understand.
Northrup must understand that the gods and goddesses were very close to the people of So Wuhti. Didn't Haruing Wuhti herself come here to chat with So Wuhti, to eat piki with her? It was so.
And by living here alone So Wuhti was doing a kindness at once to her people of Chebo and to her sovereign deity. The priest had told her. As long as she lived she would watch here. When she was to die she would build a big fire which would carry the word across the desert so that another might be sent to take her place. And then Haruing Wuhti would come for her and throw her cloak about her and So Wuhti would be a young mana again, living always where the Big River breaks through the crust and goes into the underworld where the gods live.
Though the old woman's rambling stories with their innumerable digressions and repetitions soon ceased to interest him, Northrup did not fill his canteen and move on when at last he felt that he was his old, strong self. Half-crazed old savage that she was, So Wuhti was none the less human. Nor was there any denying his obligation to her. Had it not been for her he would be now only what the coyotes and strong-beaked birds would have left of him. And now, strong enough to attempt the passage of the desert, he could not fail to see that So Wuhti was coming quickly to the end of her life, and he could not bear the thought of going on heartlessly, leaving her to die alone.
SHE looked at him curiously many times during those last few days together. She, too, had seen her death coming to her at last and looked at it with steady, curious eyes. She was not afraid, she did not seem sorry to go. She was certain that Haruing Wuhti was making her future existences her own concern. It was all arranged.
She had never manifested a hint of emotion of any kind since he had seen her beady eyes peering at him through the crack in the rocks and now he had been here upward of six months. He did not expect for a sign of emotion now. Too long had she had the opportunity of looking forward to the end to be greatly perturbed by it now that it was at hand.
It came with a little shock to him one day that So Wuhti was all human, after all. Out of a still silence by the ruined tower she had moved to him quickly, her crooked claw of a hand suddenly fastening about his forearm.
"You're a good man, Bahana," she said, her eyes unusually bright upon his. "Many days ago you were ready to go. You wait that So Wuhti does not die alone like the coyote. Askwali! I thank you. Haruing Wuhti will bring you many good things. I will tell her."
With all of her madness she was not without wisdom. She set her chamber in order that night; Northrup had the suspicion that in honor of the occasion she even went so far as to bathe. Then, when the first stars were coming out she made a trembling way to the cliff-tops, Northrup helping her up the short ladder.
In the faint light here Northrup saw how she had arranged her hair, and the thing came to him with something of a shock. She had done it up into two whorls, one at each ear, the imitation of the squash blossom which with the Zuni people tells the time when a maiden has ripened into the first blush of womanhood. So Wuhti was ready for the coming of Haruing Wuhti, for the time when again she would be beautiful—a young mana.
When at last the great fire, which at her command he had kindled, had burnt down, Northrup went slowly back into the stone chamber which had so long been So Wuhti's and which was never again to know her presence. As he looked at her blankets laid in order, folded by hands into which the chill had already crept, when he saw the broken jugs and crocks set in their neat row, a sudden moisture came into his eyes. So Wuhti had been good to him and she was dead. So Wuhti was gone and he was lonely!
In the coolness of the night, having only the stars to guide him, his canteen freshly filled, he pushed on, out into the desert.