VII
"I—I see," stammered Northrup when he could think of anything to say. "I—I might have known it. I never saw a goddess before, but—oh, yes, you're a goddess, all right!"
"Yes," said Yahoya simply, dimpling at him quite like a maiden of flesh and blood, altogether adorable. "I am Yahoya, chief goddess of the 'People of the Hidden Spring,' sister of Haruing Wuhti, daughter of Cotukvnangi, god of thunder, mother of Tokila, the Night, bride of Pookhonghoya, god of war."
Northrup bowed and remembered to take off his hat. From the corner of his eye he looked at the goddess Yahoya in stupefaction. Was she poking fun at him or did she believe all of that stuff?
The question need not go begging for an answer. Her whole being breathed the certainty that she was what she had said she was. The attitude of Inaa the priest and his evil-eyed son Tiyo backed up her belief. They were all so certain of the thing that Northrup, a little dazed, asked himself:
"Well, why not? Everything happens here! Why not find oneself in the presence of deity?"
And he admitted that she looked the part—all except being the mother of Tokila, the Night, or of anything else.
"It is the Festival of Silence," the goddess was explaining to him in the same quiet way. "At such time it is death to make so much as a little sound with the lips, death to a mortal. But I, being an immortal, may do as I please. You, being bidden by me, may speak. Inaa," and she laughed again, mirthfully as at a rare thought, "Inaa is afraid of the Skeleton Old Man. But most of all is he afraid of me!"
"Yes," said Northrup, gathering his wits. "Exactly."
She turned a little and led the way close to the pool of water in the white basin, along its side and to what appeared to be a huge panther-skin cast upon the ground under a drooping tree. Here she seated herself, stretching out, making herself comfortable, lying as he knew she had been lying when the sorcery of the atmosphere had shown her to him across the desert. Even the parrot was upon a swaying branch above her.
"Be seated, Bahana," she said lightly. "We shall talk. My lips are tired with the long silence."
Northrup's tired body was not averse to accepting the invitation. He sat just at the fringe of the shadow of the tree, a few steps from her, where he could see the play of her features. And already he began to forget his weariness.
"Yesterday, in the late afternoon," he said with the impulse upon him, "you were lying here, upon the panther-skin. Your hair was loose, all about your shoulders; your little moccasins had fallen off and you did not notice. You wore a flower at your throat. Your bird was in the tree there. He dropped down and perched upon your wrist."
Yahoya, without sitting up, looked at him, a little startled, hers now the time for wonderment.
"But you were not here to see, Bahana."
"I was out yonder," he answered. "’Way out on the desert."
"Then," she cried a little breathlessly, "you too are a god! Not a Bahana but a deity. You are perhaps, him I said you looked to be, Sikangwunuptu, God of the Yellow Dawn! Ishohi!"
She had twisted over, her graceful body little less pantherine in its movements than had been the body upon whose skin she now lay, and slipped to her feet, standing over him.
Wondering what thing she was going to do next, Northrup sat still watching her. She was making him a curtsey or an obeisance, he wasn't quite sure which. Anyway it was pretty and decidedly worth watching. He was already asking himself why white girls didn't have half the charm of this wild thing.
"You are Sikangwunuptu!" she was crying softly. "You, a great god of the underworld, have come up to visit at the kiva of Yahoya, Chief Goddess of the People of the Hidden Spring! You are more beautiful than a man because you are more than a man. You have the strength of ten Tiyos because you are an immortal. See. I, too, am immortal, I, the Goddess Yahoya! And yet I, even I, kneel before Sikangwunuptu, great God of the Yellow Dawn!"
And, true enough, the impetuous creature had sunk to her knees, throwing out her round, brown arms as in supplication. The parrot, perhaps bewildered at seeing his mistress act so, gave utterance to a nervous squawk, fluttered over her head, availed himself of a vicious snap at Northrup and went back to his tree to watch.
Northrup in his wanderings up and down the world had seen little of womankind, knew little of her and her ways. In all essentials he sat spellbound for an instant, hardly grasping Yahoya's intent. But in another second when her two hands had found his two and were lifting them to her lips he realized that, savage or goddess, she was getting into the way of making him blush and that he didn't like it.
"Look here," he said quickly. "My name's Sax Northrup, if you want it. And I'm hungry."
Yahoya laughed lightly. Northrup wasn't sure that he knew what inspired her laughter. She seemed to be built of mirth. She was on her feet again in a flash, dropping him another of her quaint little bows, her dark eyes dancing. Then she had cupped her two hands to her mouth and called. Her two maidens came pattering in bare feet across the stone courtyard.
"Nayangap Mana! Tocha Mana!" she cried softly to them when, hesitant and wide-eyed, they stood before their mistress, darting swift, curious glances at Northrup. "You are in the presence of the gods!"
As if this were a signal and they grasped it instantly, the two not uncomely maidens plumped down upon their knees.
"Listen!" went on Yahoya swiftly. "He whom you see before you is one come up from the underworld to have speech with Yahoya. Guard your eyes that they go not blind with looking upon him. It is Sikangwunuptu!"
Instantly four brown hands flew up to hide four very bright and inquisitive eyes. Northrup fancied, while he was not certain, that the girl called Nayangap was peeking at him through her fingers.
"He has come running across the desert," continued Yahoya. "Therefore is he hungry. He does not carry water with him as men do; therefore he thirsts. Hasten!"
Before Northrup, missing the canteen which had been with him so long, came to remember how in a fit of anger he had thrown it away down in the cañon, Nayangap and Tocha had flitted back across the moonlit space like nimble little ghosts.
"What makes you so certain," demanded Northrup abruptly, "that you are a goddess?"
Yahoya, again making herself comfortable upon her panther rug, pondered the matter a moment.
"One just knows," she explained. "The coyote knows he is not a humming-bird and the horn toad knows he is not an eagle."
"How does it happen then that you dwell with mere mortals?"
"I tarry with them but a little while," she told him thoughtfully, her eyes upon the moon now. "My home is yonder."
"In the moon, I suppose?" he bantered.
"Yes," she answered seriously.
"But," he argued, scarcely knowing why, "you were born here, among these people, of them."
"Oh, no!" she smiled brightly, shaking her head at him. "I was not born. I have lived always. I just came."
"Then," he demanded, "how in the—how did you get here?"
"It was a night like this one, many years ago," she explained. "The moon was big, like you see it now. I floated down through the night." She laughed reminiscently. "When I appeared coming out of nothingness, singing the sacred song before Inaa, the old priest, I think he was much afraid. But he knew that a goddess had come."
There could be no doubt that she believed this rigmarole. Nor did she seem to be insane. If one were taken when she was a little girl, taught from the beginning that she was an immortal, she'd grow up into such a young woman as Yahoya was. In the old days when the divine right of kings was undisputed the princesses must have been no little like the Yahoya type. But they were only mortals!
"And of course Inaa told everybody that a goddess had come to town?"
She nodded, seeing no sacrilege in Northrup's way of speaking. Seeking beyond the mystification of her "explanation" he thought that he saw light. Priesthood often enough is synonymous with trickery; no doubt, some years ago old Inaa had needed or wanted to strengthen his prestige. It had been, no doubt, a comparatively simple thing for him to procure a pretty little girl from some distant tribe, to bring her here secretly and pass her off upon his credulous people as a divinity. It was not difficult to see how he'd strengthen his own hand in the matter. It at once amused Northrup and appealed to him as strangely pathetic that the girl herself had come to believe as the others believed.
"I suppose," he said, completing in words the thought which had suggested itself to him, "that in due course of time Inaa will marry you off to Tiyo, his son?"
"That has been his wish," she responded. "And it was mine, for in holy matters Inaa is very wise, while in other things he is stupid. But when the Man of Wisdom came, I saw it was not for me to marry Tiyo, but him."
"And who is the Man of Wisdom?"
"Oh, he is the one who teaches my people wonderful things! Such things as men know out in the world of the white man. And he tells Yahoya wonderful tales of the land where he will take her one day when she marries him—of great wagons which run uphill without horses; of wires over which people speak across many miles; of big waters with houses floating upon them; of beautiful women who wear beautiful garments."
Northrup started, a suspicion that at the jump was almost a certainty upon him.
"A tall man, thin faced, with drooping eyes?" he asked. "Very heavy eyebrows, coming together over his nose? A way of twisting his hands while he listened? He has been with you about half a year?" Yahoya gazed at him in rapt admiration.
"You know everything, Yellow Beard!"
"I know Strang," he grunted. "And I think I know his ways. So he is going to marry you, is he?"
"Oh, yes," she dimpled at him. "That will be nice, won't it? He is not pretty like you, Yellow Beard, but then he is prettier than Tiyo. And he is white."
"On the outside," growled Northrup. "But do you think it is wise for an"
He had started to say "an Indian girl," and thought better of it. He must try to keep in mind that she was a goddess! So he finished—
"For one of your race to marry a white man?"
She stared at him wonderingly a moment, then broke again into laughter.
"So then Yellow Beard does not know everything after all! His eyes can not see through a piece of cotton cloth. He thought that Yahoya was black like Nayangap and Tocha. Look!"
THE amazing maiden had suddenly drawn open a little her robe at the throat, showing him the merest hint of her round breast. And Northrup sat astounded. The sun and desert air had worked their will with her flower-like face and hands and arms, making them brown and dusky. But her breast was as white as milk!
"You see," she smiled quite naturally, "goddesses are white like the women of the Bahana."
"My God!" said Northrup. And then, trying to speak sternly although his voice was a trifle uncertain, "Cover yourself, child. You oughtn't to do things like that?"
"Why?" she wanted to know. "Am I not pretty?"
"You are a madness-making little beauty, that's what you are," he said in English. "And besides you are an ingenuous little savage."
His anger against Strang had had many months in which to cool and it was no hard matter for Northrup's generous nature to make allowances. But suddenly the old anger was flaring out hotter than ever. It was no hard matter to see the situation through Strang's eyes. His big hands shut slowly into hard fists.
"Do you love this man, this strange Bahana?" he asked her.
Yahoya's smiling lips had turned into a pout. Her quick fingers were busy gathering her gown close up about her brown throat. She had expected him to be pleased with her, and he had seemed angry. With a quick glance Northrup saw what she was doing, glimpsed also a little gold chain about her throat, hidden in a moment by her cotton garment.
"Goddesses do not love mere men," she told him loftily.
Nayangap and Tocha came then bearing in their hands broad trays upon which were many dishes and enough food for ten men. Evidently they expected that the god Sikangwunuptu had a stomach in proportion to his might and dignity. They set down the trays, half afraid of him and yet thrilling a little with the thought of being so close to him. Then, at a curt nod from their mistress, they were gone.
"Tell me about Strang," Northrup commanded after a sip of water and beginning upon the piki. "Does he love you?"
"Oh, yes," Yahoya answered a little stiffly. "All men love me."
"Humph! I don't."
"You!" widening her eyes at him after a fashion peculiarly her own. "But you are not a man—you're just a god!"
"I'm no such thing," he said emphatically. "I'm a man, a white man, I hope, and my name is Sax Northrup."
"Then," she informed him demurely, "it may chance that after all I shall not marry the Man of Wisdom. For, though you growl like a bear, you are so much prettier!"
"I want to know all about Strang," said Northrup hurriedly. "He's been here over half a year. Why does he stay on so long?"
She knew perfectly well how to droop her eyelids, how to flash a sidelong glance at him, how to do whatever she pleased with her two dimples.
"It may be that he has stayed because Yahoya lingers here."
He wasn't persuaded. It might be, but it didn't sound like Strang a little bit. It was more Strang's way to get out of this with both hands filled and to a place where a man might throw his money after the sort of things which are to be found in cities of the white men.
"Also," Yahoya admitted, "it was the word of Inaa that the Bahana should not go forth to tell of the People of the Hidden Spring. He does not go out of sight of Tiyo or one of Tiyo's men."
"He is a prisoner then?"
"He is held in high respect; songs are sung for him; my people learn many things from him. But it is death for him if he tries to go away."
"Then," he asked her, "how does it happen that you count on having him show you the wonderful things of his world when you are married?"
"You ask many questions, Sax Northrup." She hesitated over the name, casting the two words into one and making quite a mess of it. "But if you must know, Yahoya and Eddie have many words in private."
"Eddie!"
"He tells me to call him that. It is nicer than Strang, and oh, so much nicer than Saxnorthrup!" She achieved the last with a little shudder and another of her sly glances at him. "If I decide to love you I shall call you Eddie!"
Northrup passed from corn-meal soup to melon, from melon back to corn-meal soup without ever realizing that his manner of eating was fascinating Yahoya. If Strang had been here all this time and had had words in private with this unsophisticated little thing, if in all that time he had not taken the trouble to enlighten her upon her possible past history, what was the answer?
The man who would leave a partner to die alone out in the desert, robbing him of his last drop of water, was not the man to be overscrupulous in his dealings with a maid. Not with a maid like Yahoya. Northrup looked at her sharply, seeking the measure of her beauty. She looked a being created all of soft curves, with tender dimples set just where they would do the most good, or the most harm, as the case might be.
"Where is Strang now? Tonight?" he asked.
"There is sickness in the tribe down by the corn meadows. Eddie has gone there to drive out the sickness and make people well."
"Whew! So he's turned doctor, has he?"
"He is the Man of Wisdom. He can do all things. He knows everything."
"He's certainly got a strangle-hold on the situation," thought Northrup.
Out of a spell of moody abstraction he was recalled to himself by the tinkle of Yahoya's laughter.
"You make faces, like this," she informed him, wrinkling her forehead into a frown and thrusting her lower jaw out at him. "It must be that you and Eddie are not good friends?"
"I don't think that we are. But look here, Yahoya, have you made up your mind that you are going to marry him?"
"Oh, yes! At the end of the Festival of Silence."
"What does Inaa say of it? And Tiyo?"
"Inaa grows very cross. And Tiyo looks at Eddie like he could eat him up. Tiyo is very sad that I don't wish to be his wife."
"You told me that before. Now the next question is, when does the Festival of Silence end?"
"With the moonset. Then I will sing the sacred song and after that my people may unlock their lips."
"And you marry Strang at dawn?"
"Yes, Saxnorthrup."
She looked at him teasingly, as if her instinct or intuition had told her that the matter displeased him and as if it were all a lark for her. But she looked a little troubled when he said shortly:
"You're going to do nothing of the sort. Not after I have a talk with your friend Eddie."