3535 R5668w E WITCHERY of RITA THE BERRYHILL CO. Phoenix, Arizona THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES The Witchery of Rita AND Waiting for Tonti BY WILL H. ROBINSON AUTHOR OF "THE MAX FROM YKSTERDAY," "THE STORY OF ARIZONA," "HER NAVAJO LOVER," "THE SOUL OF EODIN JOYCE," "THE KNOTTED CORD," ETC. PHOENIX, ARIZONA THE BERRYHILL CO. 1919 COPYRIGHTED, 1919 BY THE BEEEYHILL CO. HAMMOND PRESS W. B. CONKEY COMPANY CHICAOO PS 3533 To MRS. JOHN COBOBN SARTELLE 785270 FOREWORD IF these stories have a purpose other than the one which should take first rank in fiction that of entertaining the reader it is that they may bring back from the shadowy yester days a suggestion of a life and people long since gone from our golden Southwest. The cliff-dwellers of Montezuma's Castle might easily have been the ancesters of Tonti, and all that happened to Rita are well within the picture of old San Xavier. As for our goat Nicolas, he needs neither champion nor sponsor. His ancestors lived on terms of equality with Spanish dons and his posterity today bows the head to things human, only for purposes not in the least connected with humility. If Nicolas got royally drunk on Spanish wine he showed no greater frailty than many of his human contemporaries who knew better and doubtless acted worse. WILL H. ROBINSON. PHOENIX, ARIZ., Sept. 8, 1919. THE WITCHERY OF RITA A STORY OF SAN XAVIER MISSION IT was in the old Spanish Mission days in the Santa Cruz Valley, when the quail still called "Cuidado!" instead of "Quit!" and the do main of the king extended as far north through what is now known as Arizona as the viceroy's imagination restrained only by Apache lances could carry; a time when Papago neophytes said their prayers regularly and worked fairly faithfully, and when among the "genie decente" there was always leisure for the gracious word or a copa de vino. Outside the mission of San Xavier, then but barely completed, a brilliant winter sun bathed the beautiful facade and towers in a flood of golden light, while Indian laborers, directed by brown-coated friars, were busily clearing away the last of the building litter in preparation for the coming Christmas fiesta. Inside, high up on the scaffolding under the 8 THE WITCHERY OF RITA dome, sat young Rafael Valdez, brought from Guadalajara to do the more important of the interior decorations, and with him Rita Avila, who since babyhood had danced on the hard, brown earth of San Xavier with the lightest foot in the valley. Speaking socially but not otherwise they were as far apart as the poles, for the youth had an ancestral tree that was rooted among the dons of Castile, while the girl's father was besotted old Sanchez, ex-sergeant in the king's army, the possessor of a thirst for the fruit of the vine that was guaranteed to be absolutely unquenchable. But what difference did that make? He was gallant and she was fair, and well, that is, in part at least, what this story is about. Besides being gallant, right now Rafael was tremendously busy, being engaged, with the aid of a brush and a daub of paint, in attaching a left ear to a comfortable-looking, middle-aged saint; Rita the meanwhile gazing at him with adoration tinctured somewhat with solicitude. "To turn paint into people," she observed, "is truly a miracle, but to allow hot chili-con-carne to become cold is almost a sin. I ran all the way so it would be perfect for you." At this Rafael turned, kissed the adorable end of Rita's straight little nose, twisted a piece of tortilla from the basket beside them into a spoon, dipped it into the savory stew, trans- THE WITCHERY OF RITA 9 f erred it to his mouth, said, "Wonderful!" and went back to his ear. Rita munched happily on a piece of panocha. "They saw the witch again last night," she an nounced conversationally, "Isobel and her mother, both. She was like a ghost walking past them in the moonlight. She was bare footed in December; and they say she has an evil eye." "Trust that pair!" commented Rafael. "If there is anything to see, Senora Montoyo sees it; if there is anything to hear, she hears it; and even if there isn't anything to say, she says it." "Seguro," agreed Rita, as she always agreed with what Rafael said. "She told me, too, that if a witch looks a girl in the face, it will make her lose her lover." Again the look of adora tion came into her eyes. "I'd hate to have her look at me." Rafael had now quite completed his saint, and anybody could tell, almost at a glance, that the ear really was an ear and not a flap of the cap. This triumph being accomplished he dashed his brush down and kissed a pair of lips that were like the roses of Andalusia for loveliness. "No witch on earth could make you lose me or me you," he said with a tone of con viction as though he alone of all the world had discovered that love was ever unfailing. Rita sighed contentedly. "That's what I thought, too; only I wanted to hear you say it. 10 THE WITCHERY OF RITA Senora Montoyo also thinks it is improper for me to bring you dinners up here, all alone." "Senora Montoyo is a fat old cat," declared the artist. He looked at his sweetheart with melancholy thoughtfulness. "Think how lonely I am going to be when I go to Tucson, palomita." "It's tomorrow?" questioned Rita, suddenly winking hard. "And for a whole week?" The young man nodded with the gravity the situation demanded. "Until Christmas; but if I make a good portrait of the alcalde's wife I get fifty pesos, and then, querida, we can get married whether father sends me any money or not." Gathering tears fled before this radiant thought. "Then nothing can harm us, and if I see the witch before you come back, I'll cross myself and say an 'Ave' quick like that," and she clapped her little hands. "Making devil's horns is good, too, when it's witches," suggested the youth. "What makes witches is that they sell themselves to El De- monio, and when one makes 'horns' that re minds them of who their master is. Do you know how to do it?" Excited by the daring suggestion, Rita, with a little gasp, shut the first three fingers of her right hand, and held her plump fist with the thumb and little finger standing straight up. The youth regarded the operation critically. "That's the way, only you have to make them THE WITCHERY OF RITA 11 quickly." Then being an artist he had an in spiration. "Listen, lindita, Pablo the Papago has a little brown goat with horns that look just like El Demonio. I'll buy him for you, and you can teach him to follow you, and then you'll have devil's horns with you all the time till I come back." "Bueno!" beamed Rita. "And every time I look at him I can think of you. Can't we go and get him now?" They did, and in less than an hour were sit ting behind the delapidated adobe hut Rita called home, watching the goat, which certainly did bear a startling resemblance to the pictured Arch Fiend in the priest's house, calmly chew up a cactus plant, thorns and all. A third spectator to this interesting per formance was old Sanchez, and when the young people were considering what they should call the animal, he waved the cup of vino he held in his hand with tipsy gravity, "Name? Name? Jus' one name for a goat with a face like that. Senor Goat in the name of thy father, El De monio, I christen thee 'Nicolas Capricornus' !" and to the scandal even of Rafael, who prided himself on his broadness of view, doused the beast with the dregs of his wine cup. Drunken caprice or not, Rita began to won der the next morning if her father's rash act hadn't made Nicolas a devil's imp in very truth. The comfortable dwelling and trading station 12 THE WITCHERY OF RITA of the Montoyos, where the Seiiora slept in an open porch at the rear, was but a few yards away from the Avila hut. At daybreak the goat jumped on the adobe wall that divided the two places, walked along it to the open porch, then seeing what any reasoning goat might take to be a pleasantly rounding hillock, jumped on it to his eternal disgrace, for alas, the round ing hillock was nothing less than the ample stomach of the Seiiora Montoyo! But after breakfast came the time for Rafael to depart for Tucson. There, in front of the Avilas', was the artist on horseback, sitting his saddle like a grandee of Spain, and, with the goat at her heels, there also stood Rita at his stirrups, looking like some shy, big-eyed dryad. "I feel as though something muy triste was going to happen before you come back. I dreamed you were lost and I was looking for you, and the witch came along and carried me off on Nicolas' back and I woke up all shivering with fear!" Rafael patted the girl's hands comfortingly. "Say your prayers, querida, and keep Nicolas with you and you need not have the fright, and on the Noche Buena Christmas Eve- I'll be back with something that will make your eyes shine." As he rode away the artist bowed most cere moniously to the Sefiora Montoyo and her daughter who were watching them from their door. "Give the alcalde our greetings; you THE WITCHERY OF RITA 13 know we are such friends," called the Senora. And then to the daughter: "Anyone can see that he is just playing with that worthless little pelada. For her own good she should be sent away before the affair becomes a scandal, for of course he couldn't marry her. I shall see Padre Narciso today." "Much he'll help you," warned Isobel crossly. "He thinks because old Sanchez used to be a sarjento, Rita is as good as we. I'd like to set that witch on her!" At this the Senora Montoyo said, "Ah-ho," and then: "Why not if other means fail? We must think of the young man's father, an abogado in Guaymas. Still we must be careful. There will be a moon tonight; I shall sit up and see the witch." Isobel gasped. "But the evil eye; she will look at you !" "I have no lover to lose," replied the mother grimly. "Besides, I can say a charm." "The Papagoes may see us." "They are too afraid to look out of their huts after midnight and that's the time she comes." "Teach me the charm and I'll sit up with you," said Isobel. Don Manuel Montoyo, as an Indian trader under the sanction of the crown, was a per sonage of some importance in every place in San Xavier save in his own home; there he was 14 THE WITCHERY OF RITA but a mere man, and naturally was not con sulted when there were matters of importance afoot such as those which then occupied the Senora. That night the women made a pretense of retiring at the usual hour, but after the Senor was comfortably snoring, the Senora and Isobel, their heads well covered with black mantillas, slipped out into the moonlight and hurried down the road to the mission, in front of which, it seems, the witch was accustomed to walk, and there they waited in the enveloping shadow of the facade. An hour passed and not a living creature appeared. December nights are cold, even in the valley of the Santa Cruz, and Isobel, who had not her mother's opulent proportions, shivered with cold as well as nervousness. "L-1-let's go home," she stammered. "I d-d-don't believe she-sh-e's coming." "Go home? Me?" demanded the Senora with memories of the goat still rankling in her mind. "Go home yourself if you want to live and die without a husband!" "I'm afraid I'll die without one if if I stay," retorted Isobel with almost a wail. "I I don't want to see any witch." The words were scarcely out of her mouth when the mother grasped her by the arm and pointed to the archway leading from the campo santo. "Look!" THE WITCHERY OF RITA 15 What they saw was the figure of a woman clad in the usual black, with her mantilla twisted like a monk's cowl about her head. As she walked she held one raised hand before her, all the while mumbling softly to herself. When she came nearer they saw that her feet were bare. "Don't try to speak to her," stammered Isobel in a perfect agony of fear. "Remember the evil eye." "Chist!" said the mother, in her excitement indiscretely baring a dangerous secret, "I have practiced the art myself; I know how to deal with witches," and making the devil's horns with one hand, and rapidly repeating cryptic phrases she stepped directly in the path of the approach ing one. The witch continued to advance. The moon came out from a cloud which heretofore had obscured it, and at that moment her upheld hand pushed back her mantilla. As the face came into view, Isobel gave a muffled shriek. The witch was Rita Avila! The shock to the mother was almost as great, but indignation soon overcame all other emo tions. "You you little wretch!" she spluttered. "What are you doing here this time of night?" quite ignoring the fact that her own presence might also need an explanation. Rita did not answer her. Indeed, she did not seem to hear her at all, but turned a mild 16 THE WITCHERY OF RITA and vacant stare first on mother and then on daughter. "The evil eye! The evil eye!" cried Isobel, her knees as well as her lips trembling. "Mother she's looking at ME!" and turning pre cipitately, with her skirts held high above her knees, she ran terror-stricken to her home. The mother paused for one irresolute mo ment, but Rita now was not only looking at her, but in some occult manner, it seemed to the Senora, fairly through her. It wasn't human. Utterly defeated, Senora Montoyo turned and waddled in her daughter's wake as fast as her handicap of flesh would let her. When they were gone, Rita, gentle somnam bulist that she was, in her visions still looking for her lover, walked past the church front then, returning to her hut and bed, finished her dream curled up like a little kitten among her ragged coverings. After Senora Montoyo had reached her own pallet, she had plenty of time to think over the situation, and although it did not occur to her that Rita was walking in her sleep she was not slow in perceiving the advantages to herself in the present situation. So the girl presumed to think that she could practice the perilous art of witchcraft! Very well, let her take the con sequences. The penalty of witchcraft, both in the civic code and in the popular wind, was death; that is, if it could be proven that the practices were malignant. The Senora prided THE WITCHERY OF RITA 17 herself that she could attend to a little detail like that. At breakfast she told her husband, with many an "Oh" and shrugs of the shoulders and openings of the eyes, a marvelous tale how upon being wakened by mysterious noises in the skies at the hour of midnight she had seen Rita Avila fly from her patio on the back of the goat, and later had seen her return when the cock crew, just before dawn. The Don Manuel was of a generation when everyone believed in witchcraft more or less, nevertheless he was nobody's fool, and had lived with the Senora Montoyo long enough to have learned some of her little ways, so he unfeelingly remarked that if she continued to eat as many enchiladas for supper as she had been, the next time she'd probably be seeing Rita riding whales. However, if her own husband was unsym pathetic, other people were not. The two-year old baby of Pedro the Papago was to be used for the Christ Child in a tableau at the Mission on Christmas Eve. To Maria, the mother, who lived near by, she told the tale. "And if the Evil Eye should fall on thy beau tiful boy, he would die in the cradle on the Noche Buena. We must rid the town of her be fore she causes pestilence and other dreadful things." Good report goes limping, but evil certainly 18 THE WITCHERY OF RITA has wings. By noon every Mexican laborer and Papago neophite at San Xavier was talking of the dreadful story of how Rita Avila had become a witch; how Ana Aguilar had pains in the back because Rita had a wax image of her into which she stuck pins; how Isidro Salazar's pigs had run away to the desert because she had be witched mem with raven feathers, and how she rode through the air every night on her devil's goat to meet Rafael Valdez. All this may sound very silly in an age we at least believe to be sophisticated, but in the eighteenth century the suspicion of witchcraft carried fateful consequences. Rita's first knowledge of the dreadful accusa tion that had been brought against her came from her father, who, having seen his daughter walk in her sleep, not only believed that Rita practiced the illicit art, but took much pride in the fact. The girl listened first in bewilder ment and then in real terror to his words, know ing well enough to what it might lead. In vain she protested. Sanchez only grinned at her and said: "Oh, thou cunning one, thy grand mother, too, was a witch and you look just like her. But be sly and act discreetly. Turn all thy arts on that she-mountain of flesh next door before she gets a chance at thee. Give her boils on the back and put a wart on the nose of that brat of hers. I'd teach 'em to fool with one who is bruja!" THE WITCHERY OF RITA 19 That night the Seiiora induced Maria the Papago to sleep in her house, and at midnight with their scared, round eyes peering over the dividing adobe wall, and with fists tightly clenched in devil's horns, they saw Rita with the goat at her heels aimlessly walk up and down. As was the case the night before, the sky was full of passing clouds; and the girl being first in light and then in shade, that simple fact gave ample grounds for tales for the mor row of how Rita could make herself invisible at will. The next afternoon the Sefiora sent a mes sage to the alcalde at Tucson saying that the Papago Indians believed that there was a girl at San Xavier who was practicing witchcraft, and as there really seemed to be some evidence to support the theory, she suggested that he come down the next morning and investigate. With witnesses to testify to Rita's nocturnal performance as well as the evil consequences that had come to the village, there was needed only one thing more to utterly condemn her, and that would be to find some sort of witch paraphernalia in her home. This might be any thing from a wax image stuck with pins to oc cult herbs for a devil's brew. The possession of raven feathers, the burning of which would sum mon El Demonio himself, would be conclusive evidence. Therefore on that night the Sefiora invited 20 THE WITCHERY OF RITA no witnesses to her house. She did not want any, not even her daughter, for after the town was asleep, and old Sanchez's sterterous breath ing had joined its harmonies with the vocal exertions of Isobel and Don Manuel, the Senora took from her own chest a bunch of raven feathers, and after sticking them into her bosom climbed heavily and laboriously over the adobe wall, and with elephantine caution tiptoed to the Avila door. After satisfying herself that Rita and her father were asleep, she entered and hung the bunch of raven feathers under a poncho of Sanchez on a peg on the wall. Then in the serene and peaceful consciousness of a deed well done, she returned to her home, and soon the trio of vocal exertions in the neighbor hood became a quartette. The next morning the Senora contrived to have Don Manuel called to the hills to look for cattle. A little later, when he was well out of the way, while Rita was making tortillas at her out-of-door fire, the girl saw Don Diego Cald- eron, the alcalde from Tucson, alight at the door of the casa de Montoyo, and after a brief conference with the Senora and her daughter, the three start for her own home. To Rita the Senora always meant trouble, and when Isobel was with her it simply meant more trouble, but as the alcalde was coming too, she must not disgrace Rafael by looking shabby, Her dress might be faded, but her THE WITCHERY OF RITA 21 shoes, a gift from her sweetheart, were new, and within the house she had a filagree pin. She would adorn herself with ceremony. The impulse was Rita's salvation, for when she opened the door the wind blew the poncho from its peg, and there grinning like a death's head, were the raven feathers indubitable proofs of her witchcraft. They were not bigger than a baby's fist, it is true, but they were tied witchwise with yellow silk and as deadly to the girl as poison. Rita's wits were as nimble as her shapely feet. By some black art the Senora Montoyo had gotten the feathers where they were, and their discovery by the chief magistrate of the country could mean but one thing her con viction and possibly her death. She was trapped lost, unless she could hide the feathers before the people entered. She swung the door to and fastened it, and in the half darkness looked around for a hiding place. Already there was a knocking at the door, and she thrust the diabolical feathers into the salt box on the table. "What is it?" she called, with her hands pressing against her heart to stop its pounding. "It's I, Don Diego, the alcalde," came an answering voice, big with authority. Rita voiced the old feminine defense for gaining time. "In in a minute. I I'm dress ing." 22 THE WITCHERY OF RITA The feathers could not possibly escape dis covery in their present place. She dug them out frantically and looked hopelessly around. Isobel's voice came through the door in acid tones. "Dressing, indeed ! One would think she were the daughter of a hacendado!" "We cannot wait," insisted Don Manuel. "You must. I" But even before she could finish her sen tence, the Senora, who had pushed herself in front of the alcalde, opened the door. Rita's face blanched, and thrusting her hands behind her she backed into a darkened corner. Don Diego, as became an alcalde, gently but firmly shoved the Senora into her place behind him, but nevertheless was not the first to enter the room, for Nicolas taking small account of dons darted between his legs and danced imp ishly around the room. Back of the Montoyos stood gaping Mexican and Papago women, and still behind them stood besotted old Sanchez, who leered at the crowd with saturnine grins, assured that Rita, with the devil's help, could circumvent them all. Don Diego cleared his throat, and after a pompous speech announced he had come to search the house for evidences of witchcraft. Rita looked appealingly for someone that might show her mercy, but in every face she saw, unless it were that of Don Diego himself, the look of stupid, fanatical cruelty the cruelty THE WITCHERY OF RITA 23 that lights faggots under the feet of little chil dren. She took a step further back into the shadowy corner and with closed eyes whispered a little prayer to her own Santa Rita. This is a scoffing generation, yet who are we to be hypercritical, for if Rita believed there was a miraculous answer to her appeal she had reason enough. Even with the silent movement of her lips, in spite of the fact there was no one behind her, there was a tugging at the feathers and then, an instant later, they were mys teriously taken out of her hand. The Senora ran quickly to the poncho which Rita had again hung on the wall, and when she found nothing under it she and the other women searched the house, while Don Diego stood by trying, we may imagine, with some difficulty, to make himself believe he was engaged in a pious duty. For a full half hour the searching went on. Under the grinding stones they looked, in the salt box, in the basket of meal every where that would offer a hiding place, but the house was as free from witch's tools as the altar of a church. After they had gone, Rita sat down upon the earthen floor, put her arms around Nicolas' neck and cried softly from relief. While her ears were resting against his fuzzy jaws she found herself wondering what he was chewing on with such persistency. And when she looked, behold, the last of the raven feathers was dis appearing down his throat. 24 First Rita laughed and hugged the goat tighter than ever, then came a thought that was most disquieting. If they were witch feathers, what would be the effect upon the goat that had eaten them a goat, too, that not only looked like the devil, but had been named for him and baptized with the dregs of wine? If character in goats, as in people, may be deduced from actions, Rita that day had reason enough to believe that Nicolas was indeed pos sessed with the spirit of the Arch Fiend. In the afternoon the Senora Montoyo washed her best skirt in preparation for the Christmas fiesta and spread it out to dry. Nicolas ate four yards of lace off it, then returning home in Rita's absence accidentally tipped over an uncorked jug of sweet wine, and having been taught in an earlier period to drink from a bottle, and evidently desiring a little liquid refreshment to moisten his lingerie, sucked away at the mouth of the jug until he got as drunk as a lord, and staggering hilariously to the mission door arrived just in time to butt over the Senora Montoyo as she came ostensibly to confess her sins to the padre, but really to drop a few hints into the reverend ear concerning Rita. Paren thetically it may here be stated that after she and the goat were through with each other, the Senora's rancor against Rita had not lessened nor had she diminished her list of sins for the confessional. THE WITCHERY OF RITA 25 Altogether it had been a very bad day for the Senora Montoyo. She had failed in her attempt to convict Rita before the alcalde, she had been insulted by the girl's goat, and when she had attempted to repeat her slanderous tales to old Padre Narciso, the priest had said very plain things to her concerning the sinful- ness of a loose and malicious tongue. Worst of all, when she returned to her home old Sanchez leaned leeringly over the adobe wall and asked her if the wart his girl was going to put upon her nose had started yet, and ex plained that if her squint-eyed Isobel ever did succeed in getting a husband, her children would all be club-footed. Fairly cold with hatred and anger, the Senora went at once to see Papago Pablo and Maria. She had a good imagination, and she called to her aid all the tales of witchcraft she had ever heard, applying them, of course, to Rita. She repeated her former story, how, if the girl fastened her eyes on the little boy Josito, he would surely die when they put him in the manger on Christmas eve; how Pedro Galvez's little daughter even then lay sick with a fever Rita had given her, and, most damning accusation of all, how she had been seen talk ing with two prowling Apaches the night before, and was doubtless planning to aid them in a raid upon San Xavier. What should they, the Papagoes, do? The 26 THE WITCHERY OF RITA Senora shrugged her shoulders. That was for them to decide, only when a witch in Magdelina had plotted with a hostile tribe, the Papagoes had properly stoned her. We need not dwell upon the steps by which the Senora's suggestion followed her stories through the valley, but it went fast enough. That night Pablo met with a dozen of the most irresponsible Papagoes and Mexicans of the place, when plans were made to catch Rita at her home the next afternoon Christmas eve just at dark, and not only rid the town of her but of the goat as well, which poor Marta in sisted had been a perfectly good goat until Rita had bewitched him. However, Nicolas, in spite of his bewitch ments, seemed to have no more premonition of the threatened disaster than had his mistress, and throughout most of the next day pursued his usual jocund, impish program. Late in the afternoon, fairly courting destruction, it would seem, he wandered down to his earlier home the jacal of Pablo and Maria, but as these worthies were at that moment rounding up their fellow conspirators, he found no one to receive him but his former playfellow, the little two- year old Josito, who had been left alone, quite contented in the possession of a chicken bone which could be sucked indefinitely. Announcing his presence by butting open the door, Nicolas was received joyfully and, after THE WITCHERY OF RITA 27 consuming two candles and a string of red peppers, started away as unceremoniously as he had come. Josito, who had taken placidly enough his parents' departure, felt it was quite another matter to be deserted by a goat, and as Nicolas wouldn't stay with him he went with Nicolas, catching hold of the animal's tail and striking out manfully on a pair of sturdy legs. After pausing a moment to look tentatively down the path to the Avila's, the goat, possibly feeling the need of a spiritual uplift, headed toward the mission. Straight to the main en trance went the two, and as there was no one to stop them, in they walked, and after sniffing suspiciously at the stale odor of incense, Nicolas led the way through the little door and up the long, narrow stairway to the tower, with the baby puffing and pulling himself up behind. In the meantime the plotters had gathered in a sequestered spot in the river bottom and, just as the sun disappeared behind the western hills, with the Senora Montoyo following dis cretely in the rear, they started for the Avila casita. Although every precaution had been taken for secrecy, in some way old Sanchez had gotten wind of the affair, and had hurried home full of the pleasant news, confident that all he needed to do was to put Rita on her guard, when she would not only be able to defend her self but to turn the tables on her enemies as well. 28 THE WITCHERY OF RITA Poor Rita ! After her former deliverance she felt that her troubles were quite over, and with her dress freshly washed and the filigree pin at her throat, at the moment of her father's arrival was looking eagerly down the road toward Tucson to catch a first glimpse of Rafael. Now, as she listened to the appalling news, told with leers and grins, it was again the face of death she saw instead of the smiling counte nance of her lover. "Mira!" cried old Sanchez, pointing down the path between the creosote bushes, "there they are Pablo and Maria and the whole wormy brood! Get your goat and fly at them! Put humps on their backs ! Scratch out their eyes !" Rita was a resourceful little body as well as brave. She had been through more than one Apache raid and knew not only how to fight, but how to hide. One thing was certain her only chance for safety was to get to the mission building and tell her story to her good friend Padre Narciso. However, that was a quarter of a mile away, and among the mesquites and creosote bushes that intervened she could see her enemies spreading out fan-wise. Even as she looked, a half-grown Papago boy peered at her from behind a bunch of cactus, frantically making de_vil's horns as she looked at him, and immediately afterwards whistling shrilly. The signal was answered by THE WITCHERY OF RITA 29 excited calls from the now rapidly approach ing neophytes. Rita disappeared into the house, then darted out the back door, and keeping the hut between herself and the boy ran at top speed until she was enveloped in bushes. Now, as stealthily as any Indian she began making a long detour, shivering with fear as more than once, in the distance, she caught a glimpse of some skulking form, armed with stones or a club, making his way towards her home. Darkness all but obscured her when, panting like a spent deer, she reached the rear entrance to the mission patio. Pushing her weight against it, it swung open, but instead of finding the courtyard full of people preparing for the serv ices of Christmas eve there was not a soul in sight; even the kitchen and the open-air ovens seemed to be deserted. She hurried into the church, but even there, though candles were lighted and the crude prop erties for the Christmas tableau were in place, there were neither priests, altar boys nor sacristan. Down to the main entrance she ran, and then was stopped by a quick return of terror, for through the closed double doors came the shouts of angry, excited people, the noise of hoof beats, and then the startling report of a musket. As she listened shouted phrases detached 30 THE WITCHERY OF RITA themselves from the mingled dissonance of the mob. " 'Twas Rita Avila ! She did it all ! A witch she's a witch! Find her! Stone her!" At the girl's right was the little door which opened on the tower stairs, and now, not daring to look further for Padre Narciso, she slipped through it and ascended the long flight. Outside the tumult waxed, for more was happening than the Senora Montoyo had planned. Quite inadvertently she had told the truth to Maria when she had said that there were two Apaches about. However, instead of being there to plan for a raid, they were simply rather presumptuous beggars who purposed to turn to their own advantage the white man's season of gift making. After spending the day further down the valley they returned just in time to see a mingled gathering of Christian whites and Papagoes celebrating the birthday of their god of love by hunting down and try ing to slay a girl for walking in her sleep. Whatever may have been the thoughts of these bronzed horsemen of the mountains at the sight of the denizens of San Xavier running madly about with stones and clubs in their hands, it did not deter them from their errand. They stopped at the house of the Montoyos, and as there was no one there to forbid them helped themselves to a knife apiece and a couple of gaudy rebosas. At the Avila's place was old Sanchez, so THE WITCHERY OF RITA 31 the marauders went on to the jacal of Pablo the Papago and entered the door left open by Nicolas. The only thing that appealed to them was a sack of ground corn, which they took and hurried out. It was at this moment that Maria, becoming apprehensive for the safety of her Josito, started back to her jacal. Through the fast gathering darkness she saw the Apaches leave her door, one of them carrying a sack in her arms, and not unnaturally thought it was her baby. For a moment she halted, stunned by the sight, then screamed with all her might. The Apaches jumped to their horses and rode away. Attracted by her cries other Papagoes and Mexicans joined her as she ran to her hut. When she found that Josito was really gone she dropped limply to the ground, and gave her self up to lamentations. A minute or two later Pablo, accompanied by the Serior Montoyo, arrived. The Papago was for the moment al most as much overcome as his wife, but Don Manuel was a man of action. Calling for horse men and mounts, he with Pablo and others was soon spurring hard through the gathering dark ness after the fleeing Apaches. When Rita, after climbing the long stairs, reached the tower, by the glow of the torches from the patio she saw the baby Josito with his head pillowed on the goat's side and both asleep. She was too tired to wonder much how the 32 THE WITCHERY OF RITA child happened to be there, but longing for the comfort of human touch, tenderly took him in her arms, and the little hands that went so softly and sleepily about her neck must have touched as well her heart, for she lay down with him crying softly. And now that we have found them so safe a sanctuary, we may see how it fared with Rafael Valdez. It was a half hour after the departure of the Senor Montoyo that he arrived at Rita's door, his pocket heavy with the fifty pesos from the alcalde, his heart light with the thought that with all this wonderful wealth he could marry Rita at once. Old Sanchez met him with a face lined with cunning grins. Oh, yes, the ancient said, the Senora Montoyo had got the riff-raff of the town to try to stone Rita as though they could really hurt one who was bruja! But she was fooling them! Where was she now? Quien sabe? Flying through the air with Nicolas to some place where she would make a fine brew for those who had dared to affront her. Almost crazed by his fears, but unable to get anything further from the grinning dotard, Rafael galloped swiftly to the mission. When the knot of people who still stood before the main entrance saw him, their mouths opened like the mouth of a fish on a hook, and they began to back away into the darkness. Rafael, his lips like chalk but his eyes like coals THE WITCHERY OF RITA 33 of fire, jumped from his horse and strode toward them, torn between fears for his sweetheart and his terrible rage against them. "You would stone Rita Avila, you scum!" Then seeing the Senora Montoyo slipping backward through the people, he caught her by the wrist. "So this was your work you cat!" He shook her savagely. "Quick!" he said, "tell me what you have done with her." Padre Narciso, who had just come from the grief-stricken Maria, now within the church, laid his old, white hand between them. "My son!" It was the voice of authority as well as the voice of love. Rafael loosened his hold on the woman, but looked pleadingly at the gray-haired priest. "Do you know what they would have done with her?" The priest bowed his head. "To my shame. Oh, my people, that I have been so poor a shepherd that such a thing could have happened here!" "But where is she?" pleaded the artist. The padre's face was full of sympathy. "I only learned of the matter when this crowd reached here, and at once started Kalka, the Pima trailer, to see if he could find her. You have been to her house?" Rafael had not finished his reply when the Pima, who was carrying a torch, came to them through the uneasy crowd. "Too dark. Can't 34 THE WITCHERY OF RITA see much," said the Indian. "Think maybe Senorita's tracks in patio." Together the three went to the big courtyard where the trailer pointed to the ground. "New shoes, new heels ! Think maybe those be her! She go inside!" and he pointed through the priest's robing room. The men filed in with white, fear-lined faces, where they saw poor Maria kneeling before the empty manger. Rafael swept the room with frantic eyes. "Padre!" he said, clutching at the priest's sleeve. "In the name of God, tell me where to look!" There was another thunder of hoofs outside, and Don Manuel with Pablo the Papago and the other riders burst through the door. "More witchcraft," cried a Mexican wildly. "We caught the Apaches, but by sorcery the boy was turned into a sack of corn!" At this Rafael walked up to Don Manuel with hands that opened and shut dangerously. "If there is a witch in this town, it is your wife. She tried to have Rita Avila stoned. If the girl is not dead now it is not her fault. Make her tell us what she had done with her, or, before God, I'll choke it out of her." He had scarcely finished speaking when a frantic scream came from the Senora Montoyo, and as they all looked they saw her pointing wildly overhead. "She is flying through the air with Josito ! See, there is the goat, too !" All the people turned their eyes to where THE WITCHERY OF RITA 35 she pointed, and with whitened faces stared and crossed themselves. High in the air, almost over their heads now, they saw Rita, not flying, but walking in her sleep along the beam that led to the place in the dome where she had watched Rafael at his work. As the Senora had said, in her arms she carried the little Josito, and in front of her trotted the goat, swaggering as devil-may-care as you please. Scarcely wider than Rita's little feet was the beam, and in the church's dim shadows it was no wonder that the people thought she trod on air. Never hesitating, and with her eyes gently staring into vacancy, she walked until she reached the dome. Many started to cry out, but Padre Narciso held up his hand. "Quiet!" he said, "and down on your knees to God, who by this miracle is returning the baby in the arms of the girl you persecuted, even as the people persecuted the Christ at Jerusalem." One long minute went by and then another. Rita looked vacantly about her, and then as though unable to find the object of her search, turned and again passed over the people's heads while they stared trembling. The beam ended at the gallery, over the en trance, and from there she passed to the tower stairs and down them into the body of the church, where the villagers with fearful down cast eyes made a path for her. 36 THE WITCHERY OF RITA Here she paused for a moment irresolute, and then walked slowly, not to Rafael, who stood looking at her with his heart in his face, and not to the kindly old padre, but to the altar of the Mother of Sorrows, where she sank slowly down and rested her head against the wall as though she were very tired. For a while, with closed eyes, she seemed in dreamless sleep. When she opened them again she was looking into the face of her lover, who was bending over her. She gazed at him still in that borderland that lies between waking and sleeping. "I am sure I dreamed I heard the beats of your horse's hoofs," she said. Then waking realities came back to her, and she caught his hands. "Tell me that the other ter rible things were dreams, too, and that you only, Rafaelito, are real." A half hour later, perhaps it was, after all these things had happened, with little Josito now in the manger, and the people gathered around looking at the tableau of the Holy Night when a bell sounded. Rafael and Rita, who had wandered into the moon-lit patio, heard it and looked comprehendingly into each other's eyes. "It's midnight! Christmas eve!" said the girl, "It's the hour when all the beasts kneel down. Oh, Rafael, if Nicolas would only kneel with the others, maybe his witchcraft would leave him." The lover quickly accepted the comforting THE WITCHERY OF RITA 37 thought. "I saw him in the robing room as we came through," he said, "and if he won't kneel otherwise I'd best hold him down. My brother converted a heathen Yaqui once that way." They hurried back through the open door, and truly as the stars shine over us, the goat was there and down on his knees, and what was more, his head was bowed to the floor under the padre's case of papers. "Madre de Dios!" cried Rafael, suddenly hor rified, "he's eating a prayerbook!" He started to take it from him, but Rita, hav ing a comprehending heart, restrained him. "As you value your salvation, don't stop him, Rafael. Learned men like you and the padre can read their prayers, I can be told them, but how can poor Nicolas get them save he eats them? He got witchcraft through his stomach, why should he not in the same way secure sal vation?" WAITING FOR TONTI A STORY OF THE CLIFF- DWELLERS OF course the entire affair could be ex plained by mental suggestion. Mrs. Mc- Rae had received a book by parcel post that dipped into transmigration, metempsy chosis and all that sort of thing, and everyone in camp, including Tonti, had read it, and con sequently was ready to believe that his neigh bor's ego, if not his own, some time or other might have been up to almost anything. The first person to come in from the outside after we had saturated ourselves with our pseudo-metaphysics was Stuart Osborn, and what with unconscious suggestion and telepathy we might easily have forced the whole affair on him. I say it could be explained that way, but whether that explanation would be cor rectthat's a vastly different matter. The manifestations, to use Mrs. McRae's word, began on the very night of Stuart's ar rival. We had pitched our tents on the rim of 39 40 WAITING FOR TONTI "Montezuma's Well," and after supper were sitting, as usual, around the campfire, with the big Arizona stars over us looking so near that Bill Hewett, the Josselyn guide, said he believed he could light his cigarette on one of them if he would only stretch a little. Professor and Mrs. McRae had just returned from a three-days' trip to some newly explored cliff-dwellings on Beaver Creek, and were show ing us a woven cotton belt they had found that had been made by some aborigine not less than five hundred and possibly a thousand years ago. It was faded and worn, but of exquisite work manship. Stuart looked at it for a long time in a pre occupied sort of way, and finally said: "There ought to be a lot better one than that in the cave down by the 'Well.' ' The professor looked at him sharply. "What makes you think that?" "I don't know," he replied, knitting his eye brows as though trying to remember something. "Aren't they always apt to find things like that in kivas?" "Kivas!" repeated the professor inquisi- torially, "What do you know about kivas? Have you ever been in Arizona before?" "Why, no; guess I must have read something about them." Later he said to me: "What in the dickens is a 'kiva,' anyway. Did I make up the word?" WAITING FOR TONTI 41 Mrs. McRae overheard him, and naturally that was enough to start her mystery-loving mind to buzzing. "Tracy," she said to me when Stuart turned away, "I can see that your friend, Mr. Osborn, is a very unusual young man. Peo ple with his kind of gray eyes are very apt to be psychic." I didn't attempt to reply to this remarkable bit of optical information knowing Mrs. Mc Rae; but instead put up a smoke screen and retreated to my tent in good order. Impelled by a desire to get certain long shadows into a landscape on which I was work ing, I was up at sunrise the next morning, but early as I was Stuart was ahead of me, and as I looked over the cliff that runs up from the "Well," I saw him half way down the pre cipitous sides of the big bowl, jumping like a goat from one little foothold to another. "For heaven's sake, man!" I yelled to him, "Stop ! You can't get down that way. You'll be killed!" He only waved his hand at me, continuing his mad descent until he got to the water's edge, where he disappeared. At this, for a second or two, my hair stood straight up, for as everybody in Arizona knows, "Montezuma's Well" is only a matter of a thousand or so feet deep, with almost unequaled drowning facilities. However, wholly uninundated, Stuart soon reappeared, and after lighting a cigarette started up again. 42 WAITING FOR TONTI If it had been anyone but Stuart Osborn who was trying this stunt it might not have seemed so hare brained, but Stuart We were room mates at Harvard where he and all that per tained to the big, broad out of doors were most decidedly not on speaking terms, and in spite of his conscientious work at the gym which he took about as joyously as a cat would a shower bath he was a grind of the most incorrigible type, wasting precious hours over musty books that he might have passed profitably rooting at a football game or driving Beatrix about in her car. To my knowledge he had never ridden a horse in his life, never shot a gun nor thrown a line for a fish, and his wildest attempt at exploration had been to make an unchaperoned visit to New York, where unguided and alone he had explored the jungles of Bronx Park. By the time Stuart had neared the top of the bowl the entire camp, startled by my shouts, was waiting for him. Beatrix Josselyn, Stuart's fiancee, who was usually about as animated as a pond lily in August, was almost excited and suggested to Tonti that they throw down a rope. "Don't you be afraid, Miss Josselyn," I heard Tonti say, "he jumps with straight feet. I think, like myself, he may be part Indian." Whereupon Beatrix's anxiety was quite overcome by gasping indig nation. WAITING FOR TONTI 43 When, with a last agile spring, Stuart gained the top, Mrs. Josselyn was the first to greet him. "And you hadn't even had your coffee," she said reproachfully. "Stuart, how could you be so wildly reckless?" Her son-in-law-to-be did not seem to hear her. He was looking at Duncan McRae with a smile all over his face. "Professor, I've a hunch where that girdle is I was telling you about. Let's go down after breakfast and see if we can't find it." And they did find it. It was the most amaz ing thing. We descended by the regular trail this time Professor and Mrs. McRae, the Jos- selyns, Tonti and her aboriginal ancestor, old Ky-loo, Bill Hewlett and myself. Although none of us had indicated the way and the entrance was screened with brush, Stuart walked directly to the cave, took a candle from Tonti, and stooping over led the way in side and then on to a far corner where roof and floor met. Here he paused uncertainly while the rest of us, in a semi-circle back of him, gaped non-intelligently like the chorus of merry villagers in a comic opera. Old Ky-loo shoved a sort of wooden spade into Stuart's hand. "Want to dig?" he sug gested. It seemed as though that was what our young friend with the psychic gray eyes did want to do, though apparently unconscious of it, for 44 WAITING FOR TONTI after he had removed a peck or so of loose dirt he exposed a section of wall built up with stones set in the old mud-mortar of the cliff-dwellers. It was curious to see Ky-loo and the pro fessor, right at Stuart's elbows, watch him for all the world like a couple of Airdales when one is digging out a ground squirrel. It took only a few minutes to loosen the stones, and when they had been removed, there, in a little recess, were two burial ollas, with the usual saucer-like covers, and between them a fiber-covered roll about two and a half feet long. Immediately Ky-loo pounced upon the roll and started for the entrance of the cave while Professor McRae and I followed with the ollas. When we reached the open air and uncov ered the find, one urn proved to contain the partially incinerated skeletal remains of a man, the other of a woman, while within the roll we found two complete sets of the most wonderful aboriginal ceremonial dress, one masculine and the other feminine, I have ever seen. There was a woman's tunic, a man's kilt, head-dresses of eagle feathers, anklets and wristlets made of wild sheep toes, necklaces, moccasins and not only the one expected girdle, but two, beauti fully woven of heavy cotton cloth like the kilt and tunic, dyed in blue and brown, and with heavy fringe at the ends. "For some reason," observed Stuart mildly, WAITING FOR TONT1 45 "I had a hunch there might be something like that there." "A hoonch!" repeated McRae, whose little bright eyes were fairly crackling with excite ment, "Mon, ye're veery mild with your sub stantives." The effect the find had on old Ky-loo was almost as interesting as the discovery itself. He took the feminine toggery and gave it to Tonti, who immediately disappeared into the cave, and by the time he had adorned himself with the man's regalia Tonti reappeared, having effected a most amazing transformation. To make the situation plain I must tell you that although Tonti's mother was old Ky-loo's daughter and a full-blooded Hopi Indian, her father was an American, and while considered somewhat eccentric was a man of education and refinement. It seems he had come to Arizona as a botanist to study its flora, and had married little Sun-on-the-hill, as they called her, first because she had nursed him through smallpox when his white companions had left him to die, and secondly because she was a mighty nice little woman, and being a Hopi mustn't be con fused with a Sioux or a Navajo squaw any more than a cultivated English woman should be with a wild Albanian. Tonti had a year at Columbia after she had finished with the Government schools, and the first time I met her, in her smart white duck 46 WAITING FOR TONTI with a tennis racket under her arm, I had no idea that she wasn't a white girl. Now as she came out of the cave dressed in the garments of the ancient semi-civilized cliff-dwellers, she was an Indian from the eagle feathers on her hair to the red-soled moccasins on her feet. But she was more than Indian she was part of the forgotten, mysterious past; wild as a doe is wild, but with the same kindly gentleness that is oftener seen among the better Pueblo Indians than among white people. Ky-loo immediately struck up a weird sort of a chant and began dancing, swinging his arms in a not ungraceful fashion, like the wings of a great bird. Tonti joined him, but after dancing for per haps a minute or two, stopped before Stuart, and taking the eagle feathers off her head reached up and put them on the white man. "This is our old eagle ceremony," she said in a tone that seemed to imply, "Of course you know all about it." Then: "You should dance it, too." To my amazement my old book-worm of a room-mate at once complied, falling naturally into both the step and the queer, graceful move ments of the arms. After a minute old Ky-loo stopped and be came the orchestra, while Tonti and Stuart con tinued the performance. The aboriginal dance is apt to be a jiggly, WAITING FOR TONTI 47 angular and rather monotonous affair, but as Tonti and Stuart danced it, it would have made a hit on any vaudeville stage. Personally I thought it stunning. I guess we all did but the Josselyns. It was easy to see that Mrs. J. thought it quite uncalled for, while Beatrix was dis tinctly bored. When they finally stopped, she said with a decidedly arctic tinge to her voice: "Well, Stuart, if this is the way Arizona air is going to affect you, I think we'd better go back to Cambridge." During the days that followed, to the Jos- selyn's increasing consternation, Arizona air, or some other mysterious impulse, continued to incite Stuart to all sorts of startling things for him. He went out hunting with me, learned a lot of Indian lore of old Ky-loo, and had Bill not only teach him how to ride, but give him lessons in wrestling as well. The only fault he had with the guide's camp was that it contained too many luxuries. "Let's tie a blanket apiece and a bag of tortillas behind our saddles and trek across the country," he suggested to me one morning. "I want to get a taste of the real thing." "Stuart," I replied firmly, "Nature is all right in its place, and a solo of tortillas would doubt less be quite satisfying for old Ky-loo if he couldn't get anything better; but, speaking per sonally, I prefer my rugged penetration into the 48 WAITING FOR TONTI wilderness tempered with a mattress and straw berry jam. Bill is a dispensation of Providence and his camp isn't any too de luxe for me." Naturally this new Stuart and Beatrix didn't get along at all well together. I watched her try to entertain him one morning. She began with an annual report she had just received from a Ceramic Art League, followed with a paper she was preparing on prison reform and wound up with a poem by Tagore. Stuart listened politely with his eyes on the distant mountains. "I got a new view yesterday from the top of Cherry Creek Hill," he said when she had finished. "I'll bet the gods on Olympus never saw anything that could touch it." Beatrix was looking at a letter. "The Apollo concerts, they say, are better than ever with the new leader." "Uh-huh!" agreed Stuart. "And speaking of music, did you hear that canyon wren this morn ing? Talk about divine melody, that bird's song went straight up to Heaven's dome. Beatrix, let's take a hike down to Montezuma's Castle or some place. I'll shoot some cottontails and we can broil them on spits." Beatrix sighed. "I'll never let anyone I really care for come West again. You'll never be the same you were, Stuart. Go off and play with Tonti. She doesn't mind getting sand in her shoes or ants down her neck. Besides, she doesn't freckle." WAITING FOR TONT1 49 And, of course, being a mere man, Stuart didn't know any better than to take her at her word and go off with Tonti. One day Tonti, Stuart and I were riding together. "I believe the feel of the Southwest has really gotten into your veins," said the girl, looking at Stuart's tanned face and easy posture in his saddle in obvious admiration. "Tonti," he replied he always called her that now "the first night I was here I had a curious feeling that this whole country was my house that I had a key that could unlock every door. Now, though my objective self knows the desert a lot better, and I never want to leave it, some way that first feeling is dimmed. My key doesn't fit as well as it did." "Perhaps it fitted too well at first," she re plied, looking at him thoughtfully. "Perhaps you were remembering more than the gods permit." A wistful, eager look came suddenly to her eyes. "I envy you, though, with your key. If you unlock other doors will you let me see inside, too?" This seemed to be just a bit too mystical for Stuart, for he replied in a matter-of-fact sort of a tone, "I think you have seen inside every one I know anything about. Anyway, they didn't seem to open into anything more tangible than moonshine the stuff that dreams are made of." "Dreams about things out here? The cliffs?" 50 WAITING FOR TONTI He nodded. "A patchwork of disconnected things; and I forget." Tonti's manner was still very serious. "Listen, Stuart," she hesitated just a moment over his first name "if you dream about them again, wake yourself up and go over the inci dents in your mind before they fade, then tell me. I have a special reason for asking." It was that same afternoon that the Navajo, Hastin Nez, who afterwards played such a sin ister part in what happened, first visited our camp. He was a bold, good-looking chap, in a swaggering sort of a way, and in his dark trousers with the green velveteen shirt that the Navajo dandies affect, was decidedly pic turesque. He was working for a cattleman on the Verde, and rode in, with two others of his tribe, to fill their canteens. I had been making some sketches of Tonti in her cliff-dweller cos tume, and when Hastin came around the corner of the tent where I was working, after pausing to stare at Tonti first in surprise and then in admiration, walked up to her and greeted her like an old friend. They talked in English, and I learned that some years earlier they had been in a Govern ment school together, but while it was evident that he was much taken with pretty little Tonti, she seemed not only to dislike him and look upon him for what he was, an uncouth savage, but for some reason to fear him as well. WAITING FOR TONTI 51 She was polite enough, but I could see that her unconscious air of superiority galled him. Finally, to get rid of him, she started over to the Josselyn tent, and as she did so he said gruffly: "You think you too smart. You see; I come back and tell you some things." He made his word good. Several days later Stuart and I were returning to camp from a hike over the hills. Our path took us along the creek bottom where at places it was grown up with brush. Suddenly from behind a thicket we heard voices which we recognized as be longing to Tonti and Hastin. As we listened the man's amazing words sent hot, fighting blood to our faces. "My fathers always stole their wives from the Hopis. We pick out the girl we want and we marry her. You better come with me now. If don't come, I come back some night and make you." The girl cried out in terror, and we plunged through the bushes in their direction. As we came upon them, the Navajo had Tonti by the wrists and was pulling her toward him. Stuart was ahead of me, and I could see his fists tighten as he lunged forward to strike the brute. I caught hold of him and held him back just in time to save him, for with an incredibly swift movement Hastin had loosened his grip on the girl and had whipped out an ugly looking knife. For a second or two the white man and Indian stood there with tense muscles, glaring 52 WAITING FOR TONTI at each other; then Hastin dodged backward behind a sycamore, and by the time we caught sight of him again he was on horseback spurring his beast down the creek. Naturally Tonti was pretty well shaken, and I thought at the time rather hysterical, for as she looked up at Stuart she said : "He has been after me to drag me down from a thousand years ago." After we got back to camp and sat smoking in our tent, Stuart said: "No; I don't know just what Tonti did mean, but it was not hysteria." He looked thoughtfully at his pipe a while and then went on. "I believe, too, it is in some way connected with something I have been thinking about lately. I have a firm conviction that every man in this world has an instinctive, inevitable enemy that he meets sooner or later, and as a part of the struggle that man has had from the stone age, he has had to fight him to the finish." "You've met your enemy?" I suggested, for this new Stuart was certainly interesting, if not always understandable. "Yes; today. I know it sounds foolish to dignify a brute like that Navajo with anything so important, yet in a way I can't explain, he represents my enemy of all the ages repre sents the kind of thing that something in me seems to want to fight against." He was smok ing placidly now. "It must sound like awful rot, but I believe there is something in it if you get me." WAITING FOR TONTI 53 I didn't get the idea very well at the time, but I did from what happened later, and that is why I am writing this story. That night as we all sat around the camp- fire we were talking, as we often did, about what had become of the cliff-dwellers. There were hundreds upon hundreds of their houses built in the recesses of the cliffs in the Southwest, and although many of them are in good repair, even now, there was not a soul left living in them when the Spaniards came up in the six teenth century, and judging them by the articles left in their deserted dwellings, there were no people left in the country that could compare with them in civilized advancement. Just what had become of them was the great unsolved mystery that Professor McRae was working on. As we talked the usual theories volcanoes, earthquakes, pestilence, warfare and the like were suggested, when finally Beatrix, who was allowing the friendship between Tonti and Stuart to get decidedly on her nerves, remarked : "Well, if they feel like I do about this God-for saken country, they probably all died of ennui." "Jus' naturally yawned themselves to death," translated Bill. "Maybe it was some kind of a bug that bit 'em. How about it, Professor?" "Theer may have been a veeriety of reasons,*' began McRae with his usual caution. "This afternoon Stuart here was tellin' Miss Tonti a maist reemarkable tale, which rather follows 54 WAITING FOR TONTI my own convictions. Wheer did ye get the story, lad?" Osborn looked decidedly uncomfortable at thus being drawn into the limelight. "Just a weird sort of a dream I had after all the quail pie the other night, though I will say it would have made a corking movie. It must have been those Navajoes that suggested it. I thought a horde of such ruffians came down from the north and overran the country like the Goths did Rome. It really was tremendously vivid," he went on, warming up to his tale. "The at tacking bands used sort of notched poles with a hooked branch on the end for scaling ladders. They fought with stone hatchets and spears, as well as bows and arrows, while the cliff-dwellers rained stones on them, holding other weapons in readiness for closer combat." The professor was watching him curiously. "Hoo did the fight come oot?" He spoke softly as though fearing to break some kind of a spell. "I don't seem to remember," replied Stuart, knitting his brows as he did when puzzled. "It's all kind of hazy. I thought I was watching the fight down at Montezuma's Castle. The cliff- dwellers were making their defense from the top story where the parapeted gallery is. They were a short, stocky people like Ky-loo, but put up a wonderful fight against the savages, who were half as big again." "Didn't I tell you he was psychic?" whispered Mrs* McRae into my ear. WAITING FOR TONTI 55 I pretended not to hear her. "What I remember clearest," went on Stuart, "is a personal encounter between the chief of the cliffmen and the leader of the invaders a big, ugly brute." "The cliff man killed him?" Mrs. McRae couldn't any more let a person tell a story un assisted than she could live without eating. Stuart drew a choking breath. "No; the savage killed him threw him over the parapet. It was a sickening thing." "And then" "And then, the girl Did I tell you that the women were in it, too? The girl she seemed to be the chief's sweetheart when she saw what had happened, without a word or a cry, climbed to the top of the parapet at one end where there was no one to stop her, stood there poised for one terrible moment and jumped!" "And the savages won?" "They must have. It all got very confused after the chief was was killed. Even the death of the girl seemed to come to me afterwards. And that's all." He rubbed his eyes as one might on wakening. The silence that followed was broken by old Ky-loo, who, though he spoke English but brokenly, understood it very well. "I sabe fight ing like that," he said excitedly. "I heap know those fightings." And he poured forth a torrent of words to Tonti in his native tongue. 56 WAITING FOR TONTI "He says," translated the girl, "that that is the way the Hopis think the cliff-dwellers around here really were killed or driven out. The few who were left, we of the Eagle clan believe, were our ancestors, and the Navajoes, in part, may have descended from those who fought us. Do you wonder we think them enemies?" As we were going to our tents, Stuart and Tonti were standing near my door looking into each other's eyes as lovers look. "You saw the face of the cliff man chief?" she was asking him. "No; no, but I did see the girl. Do you know who she was?" Tonti did not reply, but rested her hand in his. "She was you." I went into my tent and could still hear them talking things, heaven knows, I had no busi ness to hear, so I started the victrola! That stopped it! Ever since Stuart and Tonti had danced the eagle dance I had it in mind to try a painting of the two dressed as ancient cliff-people, using a room in the Montezuma's Castle as a back ground. On Beatrix's account I didn't want to take the two off by themselves, so I suggested that the entire camp go down in my car, have a picnic supper and return by moonlight. I would take a canvas along and make a start on the picture. WAITING FOR TONTl 57 My suggestion met with general enthusiasm, and in a half hour we were on our way Pro fessor and Mrs. McRae, Tonti, Stuart and even Ky-loo, whom I wanted for a special purpose. Hewlett remained in camp to look after the horses. Just before we reached our destination we passed the three Navajoes, when Hastin waved his hand at us in impudent assurance and called a greeting to Tonti. "I have a feeling that some day I'll kill that fellow," said Stuart; at which mild suggestion an atavistic gleam of approval came into Tonti's usually gentle eyes, and I wondered whether it harked back to red ancestors or white. After we had climbed up the ladder into the big house in the cliff, with Ky-loo's assistance, it took less than a half hour to make a perfectly good aborigine out of Stuart, accomplished by applying a nice brown stain to his skin and thereafter adorning him with the ancient rai ment. Tonti had worn her costume from the camp, and it was wonderfully becoming. The finely woven tunic, made to expose her left arm and shoulder, reached to her knees, her moccasins were red soled and the aboriginal puttees were of fine deer skin. Her hair she had arranged with the Hopi "squash blossom" whorls, and altogether when I had the two perched on the gallery that made the fifth story of the "castle," 58 WAITING FOR TONTI they made a picture that was mighty easy to look at. "Mr. Osborn's features don't look like Tonti's people," whispered Mrs. McRae, who was watch ing me work, "but the attitude and the spirit behind his face certainly do." And although the remark irritated me in an irrational sort of a way, I knew she was exactly right. I tried to switch her from her line of talk, but without success. "You two look as though you had lived here all your lives," she went on. "My ancestral grandmother quite likely used to spin cotton up here," replied Tonti. She looked at Stuart curiously. "I wonder what your ancestors were doing then." "Some of them might have been wild men in the Hebrides, or helping St. Patrick drive the snakes out of Ireland," he said with a frank grin. This was not at all satisfactory to Mrs. Mc Rae, for she added quickly, "But your ego may not have been with your ancestors. It may have been, at that time, occupying the body of some cliff-dweller at the Well." I thought this was piling the ego business on a little too thick, even for Mrs. McRae. "You got that out of that idiotic transmigration book," I said crossly. "You'll be seeing spooks up here next." "If I do," she returned imperturbably, "I'll introduce them to you." WAITING FOR TONTI 59 By the middle of the afternoon my models became tired of holding their positions, and Tonti and Mrs. McKay wandered down to one of the lower stories where the professor was explaining how the old ruin probably was built, while Beatrix came up and talked with Stuart. I was at one end of the gallery working on some background, and as usual the couple at the other end paid about as much attention to me as though I had been a pile of rock. "You know, Stuart, we'll never marry in this wide world," Beatrix began in her usual placid tone. "I've been thinking it over, and it has just come to me that we aren't even engaged." Stuart had been looking out above the para pet at the white clouds that were drifting over head, but at this startling bit of information he turned to his vis-a-vis with blinking eyes. "Aren't we?" he said. But while there was sur prise there was no consternation in his tone. "A man I used to know 'back East,' a certain Stuart Osborn, once asked me to marry him; but that wasn't you. You are Running Elk or Tall Cactus, or some other aborigine. Just think how bored we'd be with each other if we ever did marry." "Stuart was looking over the parapet again. "Maybe," he admitted absently, and then added : "Beatrix, did you ever watch a treetop from above? Did you ever see anything more grace ful than the way it sways in the wind?" 60 WAITING FOR TONT1 Beatrix looked at him and laughed. "Did the good Lord ever make such a man before? Do you know what we were talking about?" "Yes; you said we never were engaged. Do you really mean it?" I decided I'd heard about enough of that, too, and called out, "Do you folks know that it is going to rain?" Beatrix lazily looked first at the clouds, which really were rapidly growing black and threatening, and then at her wrist watch. "We may as well eat supper and wait till it's over," she said. "We would be drenched before we'd get to the car even if we should start now." That was evident enough, for rumblings of distant thunder could be heard and occasional big drops were already falling. By the time we sat down to supper it was raining in a good, business-like downpour, and when we had fin ished, in spite of the full moon that was sup posed to be somewhere behind the clouds, it was uncomfortably dark. Stuart and I went to an opening and looked out. On our arrival we had been obliged to leave the car on the other side of Beaver Creek and walk across to the cliff on stepping stones. Through the fast-coming night we could see that the creek was steadily rising. "I hope the leddies will not be mindin' trifles like bats," suggested the professor. "It looks verra mooch to me that we'll bes stayin' here the nicht." WAITING FOR TONTI 61 It looked that way to me, too, and as we would need a fire for light if not for heat, I began searching corners for wood. However, there was nothing to be found except structural beams that it would be all but sacrilege to use, so Stuart and I decided to brave the elements. I had a raincoat, but at that my old room mate had the best of me, for as we descended the long ladders, when the rain beat back from the cliffs, a young Niagara ran down the inside of my collar while Stuart, still outwardly a cliff-dweller, was as comfortable as a surf bather in a bathing suit. When we reached the base of the great rock we found that Ky-loo had accompanied us, and after stumbling about for a while actually se cured some fairly dry wood. We were hurrying back through the swiftly gathering blackness when, as we neared the ladder, we saw the forms of three men gathered about it. As unconcernedly as though they had been a bunch of cats, Stuart hurled a chunk of wood into their midst. "Our Navajo friends," he ex plained as they disappeared in the darkness. "What deviltry do you suppose they are up to now?" "Better take up bottom-side ladder," sug gested Ky-loo. "That way cliffmen fix 'um." A cheerful thought struck me. "Do you sup pose they will steal the tires off the car?" 62 WAITING FOR TONTI "They don' want steal tires," replied Ky-loo softly. "Want steal my girl. You got gun?" Unfortunately neither of us had, but in view of the steadily increasing rain that all but swept us from our footholds, after we had pulled up the lowest ladder, I decided that nothing less at home in water and air than a flying fish would be able to negotiate the cliffs on that night. We took our soggy wood to the top gallery, where Stuart, by some sort of legerdemain, suc ceeded in making a fire, while Ky-loo and I wrung vast quantities of quite superfluous water from our clothes. "To think of spending a night in such an awful place!" moaned Mrs. Josselyn. "I know Stuart will catch his death of cold, un ungar- mented as he is. Even his paint is washed off." Her remarks were temporarily stopped by a small, dark object that careened through the air past her head. "Oo ooh!" she shrieked. "Was that a scorpion?" "Them be just bats !" explained Ky-loo sooth ingly. "Like mice with wings! They no hurt." "Mice with wings!" repeated Mrs. Josselyn wailingly. "Beatrix, if we ever reach Boston, never mention the West to me again." We had brought robes and cushions from the car, and these, spread out in the chamber back of the upper gallery, made a possible sleeping place for the women, while we men arranged WAITING FOR TONTI 63 ourselves for the night in the next story lower. I had succeeded in getting my clothes rea sonably dry before the fire, and in spite of the fact that our only mattress was the earth- covered floor, went to sleep readily enough, though what with the unyielding disposition of my bed, the noise of the bats and the beating of the rain, my rest was, to speak mildly, some what disturbed. The real apex of the storm, of which the earlier performances were but mild prelimi naries, must have struck us about midnight. I was wakened by a flash that was like an in candescent ball of fire before my eyes, followed instantly by a crash of thunder that shook the cliff. Almost immediately there was a second flash, by the light of which I saw that McRae was sitting bolt upright, and also noticed that the other two men, who had been lying near us, had disappeared. "Where's Stuart?" I shouted. McRae seemed too dazed to reply, but in the darkness that engulfed us again I could feel him get up and grope for the ladder lead ing upward to where the women were. I fol lowed him and as I pushed my way up through the opening in the floor made out three huddled forms at its edge forms which I knew to be Beatrix and her mother and Mrs. McRae. "For God's sake!" cried Beatrix, as she gripped me by the wrist, "look there!" 64 WAITING FOR TONTl I strained my eyes in the darkness. At first I could see nothing, but my ears were filled with strange noises. The thunder for the time being had died down to distant rumblings, but added to the swish of rain against the rocks outside, the gallery was filled with an unearthly chattering and murmurs, and a noise as of the shuffling of many bare feet. Gradually my eyes seemed to be able to penetrate the darkness, and in an unearthly and unnatural way the place seemed to be full of people, ghostly shapes, dressed in moccasins and kilts as Stuart had been. With muffled sounds they would pass swiftly up and down the gallery, going within a few feet of us. "It's shadows !" I heard McRae mutter. "The noise is the bats!" There was a sharp whistling sound over our head, and looking up I could swear I saw ar rows going through the air, and strike against the rocks. The Scotchman was repeating to himself between set teeth. "It's bars of rain, I tell ye! Bars of rain!" Mrs. Josselyn, who was lying prone upon the floor, moaned in abject terror. Steadily I could see the ghostly forms plainer, until in a strange way they seemed to become real, while the group around me became uncer tain and fanciful. The forms I now noticed were of little people, no taller than Tonti, but strongly muscled. The parapet, which fronted WAITING FOR TONT1 65 the gallery, was lined with men, stripped to the waist, who were hurling stones down into the darkness. Behind them, and passing them the stones, were women, also bare from the waist up. Suddenly the fighting seemed to converge at a point on the far end of the gallery. The muffled voices grew louder, and a hellish chorus seemed to come up from below and outside the parapet. I felt McRae's arm pass over mine as he rested his bony hand reassuringly on his wife's trembling shoulder. "Alice," I heard him say doggedly, as though trying desperately to hold his sanity, "it's the noise of the wind ye hear, that's all and the rain against the rocks !" But there was not one of us that did not know that he was gallantly lying. There came another vivid flash of lightning and, as the glare lit the gallery, most of the ghostly forms seemed to skurry back into the shadows. One group, though, remained, and in that brief interval of light there was burned upon my vision a scene I shall never forget. At the point where the fighting had been the thickest, pushing up his bulking form from the outside of the parapet, was Hastin Nez, shouting as though leading an attacking force and swinging a gleaming knife. Opposed to him was Stuart Osborn, who fought him with bare hands. At the instant of the flash the Navajo, apparently having pushed Stuart back, pulled 66 WAITING FOR TONTI himself over the wall onto the gallery. I thought I caught a glimpse of Tonti and Ky-loo just back of them. When the darkness fell again, immediately I could both see and hear the ghostly forms skurry back to the wall, but this time, instead of resuming fighting, all seemed to stand watch ing the conflict between their white champion and the Navajo a conflict it suddenly seemed to me that typified the eternal struggle between the force that would lift up and that w T hich would destroy. I could scarcely make out the forms of the two men now locked in deadly embrace, but it seemed that for a moment a third form joined them, only to be stricken down. Again it lightened, and as the little people skurried back I saw that Stuart's fingers had closed about the wrist of the savage hand that held the knife, and was pushing it back above his head. At the feet of the two lay old Ky-loo with a red blotch on his face. Up to this time my impulses of action seem to have been numbed with the uncanniness of it all. Now, the sight of the little Hopi chief lying wounded on the floor, even more than Stuart's peril, put the fighting spirit into my veins, and I started forward over the crouching women. I had only taken a step or two when increas ing darkness so blotted the scene before me that I could not tell friend from foe. WAITING FOR TONTI 67 While I paused uncertain I heard Hastin's voice in vindictive, brutish grunts. "I kill you before! I kill" The sentence was never finished. From the inky clouds that had caused the intense dark ness shot fork after fork of dazzling light that seemed to illuminate the scene for an eternity, and to the accompanying bellow of thunder which followed, the rocks quivered and trem bled like things alive. I saw Tonti, with her hand on the top of the parapet, watching the conflict with eyes that dilated with horror, and I thought of the other girl of the distant past that had followed her lover over the cliffs; saw Stuart snap his antagonist's hand that held the knife back against the stone front of the chambers, and the knife go clattering to the floor; I saw Stuart push the Navajo's head front and downward, then catching him from the back, under the armpits, hurl him over his shoulder and the parapet wall. Blackness came again, and in my mental vision I could see that falling body turn over and over in the darkness and crash against the stones. From the shadowy chambers back of us came wild yells of exultation. Then all was quiet. For a space of time the rain came down with great roaring. When it suddenly ceased the clouds broke, and through the rift shone the moon. I remember thinking quite idiotically 68 WAITING FOR TONTI how remarkable it was that the moon could take all that had happened so unconcernedly. Stuart and Tonti were helping old Ky-loo to his feet, for it seemed that the old chap was not seriously hurt. Then as I took him in charge the two walked to the edge of the parapet. A little later as I turned to them, their hands were clasped together on the protecting wall, and she was looking up at him with eyes that seemed to be giving him her very soul. "It was decreed that I must win," he was saying very softly. "I have waited a thousand years for you, Tonti, my very dear." Then perceiving that I, as usual, was hang ing about in the vicinity, what else could they do but call me over, and together we examined the crude scaling ladder by which the Navajo had pulled himself up, and which followed very nicely the specifications set forth in Stuart's dream. Suddenly moving forms at the base of the cliff attracted my attention. At first the shadow seemed so dense I could scarcely see them, but slowly moving away they came into a little patch of moonlight, when I saw it was two men, undoubtedly Indians, who were carrying away the body of a third. The sun rose the next morning in a cloud less sky. Beaver Creek fell as quickly as it had risen, and by ten o'clock we were able to cross to our car which, to my surprise, I found quite WAITING FOR TONTI 69 unharmed. In an hour more we were in camp. It was curious that on our return trip no one attempted to talk of what had happened. The time doubtless would come when we would be loquacious enough about it, but not only did the tragedy seem to put a seal upon our lips, but the very nature of the other things seemed to forbid idle discussion. Stuart and I spent most of the afternoon in our tent where he looked through papers and wrote letters while I smoked and thought or at least I thought I thought. Once he remarked, "I suppose retribution is compensation turned wrong side out. I did what I did only because there was no escaping it." Later he said: "When you hear it ob served that a man answers the call of his destiny, perhaps it simply is meant that he found his day's work laid out for him, and he did it." That night, just as the light had faded from the western sky, the moon rose gloriously, flood ing the tableland with wonderful light. As usual we were sitting about the campfire. Suddenly Stuart looked over to Tonti. "Well," he smiled, "I guess it's time." The girl rose and went over to old Ky-loo, who with a big bandage across his face was smoking peacefully. They talked for a minute in their native tongue, when the old man rose, led her ceremoniously over to Stuart, and put her hand in his. 70 WAITING FOR TONT1 Stuart included us all in a sweep of his quiet eyes. "I don't want to be theatrical about this, and heaven knows you don't want me to be, or to take time to go into a long explanation now. Tonti and I belong to this desert country and to her people and mine. We have work to do, and we are going to do it together." He evidently had an understanding with Bill Hewlett, for at that moment the guide brought up their two horses with a blanket roll and a canteen apiece tied to their saddles. Quickly they mounted, and with a wave of the hand and an "Hasta la vista!" rode away to the north." "But it isn't proper! It's it's downright scandalous," gasped Mrs. Josselyn, "to say noth ing of" "Oh, there are ministers in Flagstaff, if that's what you mean," said Beatrix indifferently. Then turning to me added : "Tracy, I don't envy them what they are going to do; but to feel that exaltation they had in their faces well, it must be a wonderful sensation." "But his engagement to you!" insisted the mother, still mentally gasping. "Has he gone entirely out of his senses?" "That, my dear Mrs. Josselyn," I ventured to say, "belongs to the yesterdays, which are as old as the cliffs themselves. Beatrix is going to marry me." And she did. WAITING FOR TONTI 71 Stuart and Tonti rode steadily to the north. We watched them until they disappeared among the rocks and trees. Of what was I thinking? I had suddenly re membered that certain bones of the skeleton of the woman found in the cave showed evidences of being broken as if by a fall from a great dis tance, and it was slowly dawning on me who it was that so many years ago had clothed those whitened bones with fair and softly rounded flesh. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. JUL 191954 Form L9-100m-9,'52 ( A3105 ) 444 PS 3535