by Scott O'Dell
An owl flew into a tree outside the window. He was silent for a long time and then he began to make churring sounds, the same sounds that the owls made at home. It was a good omen.
8
THREE MORNINGS LATER the woman took me to the store and bought me two dresses, one of wool and one of velveteen, and a pair of red shoes with buttons on them. She forgot to buy me a ribbon for my hair. I said nothing because I would not need a ribbon for very long. When the next full moon came I would not be there to use it. When the moon was light enough to see by, Running Bird and I would steal away and take the road to home.
Where Running Bird was, I did not know. I asked Rosita if she had heard about her. I looked for her as the woman and I walked up the street and in the store I kept watching, and on the way back. I did not find out where she was until the day after the first new moon.
Rosita and I went to the market on that morning to buy vegetables. While she was picking out a basket of chilies, going over each one carefully because the Señora would punish her if she brought back any that were scarred, I left her and walked around through the market in the hope that I might see Running Bird.
There were many Indian girls there, a dozen maybe, but I did not see Running Bird. I had given up and was on my way back to where Rosita stood when I heard a sound behind me. It was the Nez Percé, the one who was sweeping under the trees the morning the Spaniard brought me into the town.
She held up a basket of things she had and I thought that she wanted to show them to me. But as I looked at them, she said quickly in a low voice, "Do not trust Rosita. Everything you tell her she will tell the Señora. There is a baile at your house tonight. My Señora is sending me to help you get the house ready, me and another girl. Your friend lives in the second house near the market. It has an iron gate and a pole with a flag on it. My name is Nehana."
The girl said this in one breath and was gone before I could answer.
Rosita had three baskets filled with food. We each carried one and shared the other. As we left the market I looked for the house where Running Bird was. I saw the big iron gate and the flag on the pole, but the gate was closed and there was a lock on it. I did not tell Rosita that the Nez Percé girl had spoken to me.
The three baskets of food we carried back to the house were for the party the Señora had that night. The rest of the day I spent peeling chili peppers. I burned the skins over a fire and scraped them off and split each pod. Then I picked out the hundreds of little white seeds and placed the pods on a platter. Now and again the Señora came and watched me, to make me hurry, I guess.
I did not hurry, yet by late afternoon I had done six platters of chili peppers. My fingers were on fire and I could scarcely see from my eyes. Nehana, the Nez Percé girl, was there, as she said she would be, sweeping the house and the walks and cutting flowers to put in bowls. She acted as if she had never seen me and when I spoke to her she did not answer.
After I finished with the chili peppers the Señora sent me off to my room to put on the new button shoes and the velveteen dress.
People came when the sun went down. They filled the house and flowed out into the garden. In my new clothes I walked around among them, as I was told, carrying a big tray of food. When one tray was empty I went back to the kitchen for another.
Most of the men were Long Knives. They were like the men who had come to our canyon and threatened to destroy our crops and burn our hogans. The Señora had told me to smile as I passed the food around, but I hated everyone there, the soldiers and their wives, too, and I did not obey her.
I saw Nehana many times while I was in the kitchen or walking around with trays of food, but she never spoke. Once when Rosita noticed that I was looking at the girl, she cautioned me.
"That one you keep looking at," she said, "is bad. Once last year she ran away. She was caught and beaten for it, with a long leather whip. If she talks to you, do not listen. If the Señora catches you talking to her, you will be punished."
During the days I had been a slave in the house, I had learned that Rosita liked the life she was living. She came from a poor tribe and a poor family and she liked all the food she got to eat, the clothes the Señora bought for her, the soft bed, and the big room. She liked ordering me around and the penny she always got to keep when she went to the market.
If she talks to me, I wanted to say, I will talk to her, whether I am punished or not.
"You will be happy here someday," Rosita said.
Most of the people were leaving and I was in the kitchen. Nehana was bringing dishes in for me to wash. Rosita and another girl were helping the women put on their cloaks. Nehana put a tray of dishes on the table and started out of the kitchen.
She turned at the door and listened. Men on horses were riding away. Someone was playing a guitar in the garden. Women were laughing in the other part of the house.
"In ten days," Nehana said, holding up ten fingers, "at the church."
The next instant she was gone and I went on washing the dishes. There were many. Rosita and I worked until the first roosters crowed. When we went to our room I lay down on the floor as I had every night since I came. But I did not sleep until gray light showed through the window.
9
ON THE TENTH NIGHT after the baile Rosita and I went to the church. I tried to go alone, for this was the night Nehana had told me to come, but the Señora went with us.
While we were walking up the street she asked Rosita to tell me about the fiesta.
"It is called Easter," Rosita said, and told me all she had learned during the time she had been a slave—how Jesús Cristo was placed upon a wooden cross and slain and then how he rose from the dead.
"Jesús Cristo," Rosita said, "is like all our gods if you put them together. He is Falling Water and Spider Woman. But he is not cunning like Falling Water, nor is he vengeful like Spider Woman."
I nodded my head as though I understood everything she said, but I was not listening. I wondered if Nehana would come to the church, if she would see the three of us together and leave without speaking to me. I also wondered where Tall Boy was, it even now he was hidden somewhere near, waiting to take me home. I wondered so hard that I stumbled in a hole and fell down. I got dirt on my new velveteen dress and scuffed my red button shoes, which made the Señora angry.
The door of the church was covered with pine boughs and inside there were flowers everywhere. Smoke rose in the air. It smelled sweet as it swirled about me. The church was crowded with people, and though I kept glancing around while children dressed in white gowns were singing, I did not see Nehana.
When the singing and the talk were over we went out with the others. Nehana stood near the door, all but her eyes covered with a shawl. I was walking behind Rosita and the Señora. Nehana turned her back and waited for them to pass. Then she glanced at me. She was a dozen steps away and many people were around her, but I saw her hold up one finger, as she had held up ten the night of the baile. That is all she did before she disappeared, but I was sure that she meant for me to come there the following night.
On the way back to the house, the Señora asked me if I liked the fiesta. I said, "Yes," which seemed to please her. I began to plan how I would get to the church alone on the following night.
The next morning, when Rosita was not looking, I wrapped twenty tortillas in a cloth, ten for me and ten for the black dog, and hid them in my room. When it was time for me to help with the supper I told Rosita that I had a headache and went to bed.
The Señora came and gave me a spoonful of something out of a bottle, which choked me but I did not mind. As soon as she left, I jumped up and got my blanket and the bundle of tortillas. I closed the door and walked quietly along the path to the front of the house.
The gate was locked. I had forgotten that the Señora locked it each night. The adobe wall that surrounded the house was higher than my head and the top was covered with pieces of broken glass. I stood there looking at it. I heard the Señora's v
oice and the closing of a door somewhere.
In a panic I threw the tortillas over the wall, then the blanket. The blanket caught on the pieces of glass and hung there. This was fortunate for me because I was able to put the black dog on top of the wall and climb up after him. I jumped to the ground. The dog followed me and we ran. I took my blanket but I forgot the tortillas.
People were going into the church. Nehana came out of the shadows and with her was Running Bird. Nehana did not go in but went past the door and along the side of the church. We followed her, walking carefully in the dark. We came to a ditch where water was flowing ankle deep and ran along it.
We traveled for a long time in darkness. Then the moon rose and we came to a path, which we followed to the ridge of a low hill. Below us in a small valley, I saw a clump of cottonwood trees, lights winking among them, and nearby the outlines of a building. While we stood there, catching our breath, men and women on horseback passed us and rode down toward the lights.
"That is where the Penitentes meet," Nehana said. "I do not belong to them but they will not harm us. It is far from town so the Penitentes come here on their horses. There will be many horses for us to choose from. Without horses they would catch us before we went far, as they caught me once."
When we reached the cottonwood trees, Nehana told Running Bird and me to put the blankets over our heads so that only our eyes showed.
Many horses were tethered in the Cottonwood grove, some hobbled, some tied to the trees. Nehana went slowly, looking at them as we passed. Most of them were fine horses and had bridles made of silver and turquoise. A few men were standing among the trees smoking, and a crowd was gathered in front of the church, which was long and narrow like the white man's coffin.
"I have chosen three good horses," Nehana whispered as we left the grove. "But to take them now is unwise. We must wait for the right time. The three horses are pintos and they are tethered near the far side of the grove."
Running Bird and I followed her into the church and stood in the back, near the door.
"I will tell you when to leave," she whispered. "It will be when they put out the candles and everything is dark. Do not speak and keep your faces hidden. When I go, follow me quickly."
Half the people in the church were women and they held lighted candles. The men carried leather whips tipped with pieces of iron. Everyone stood quietly, facing the altar. Clouds of sweet-smelling smoke drifted back and forth. It was very hot and hard to breathe, but I kept my head covered.
At the far end of the church a drum began to beat. Someone played on a flute softly and a bent old man spoke a verse and people joined him, repeating what he said.
A tall figure suddenly appeared at the door, a man with a circle of cactus thorns around his head. He was carrying a heavy wooden cross on his back. On his face there were spots of blood.
Nehana grasped my arm. I felt her body grow stiff beside me. As I looked at the man standing in the doorway, his mouth began to move in pain and I saw a flash of white teeth.
"The Spaniard," Nehana whispered. "The slave catcher."
We stood tight against the wall, holding each other by the hand. The Spaniard looked one way and the other, peering through the candle smoke at everyone, at us. I did not breathe. At last he looked away and began to stagger toward the far end of the church, as people made way for him.
"They think he is Jesús Cristo," Nehana whispered.
He reached the far wall and two men took the cross from his back and a man held him so he would not fall. The flute started to play again. Someone gave a loud cry, like the cry of a wounded animal, and all the candles, as if there were only one, went out at the same time.
While the darkness settled down around us, there was a time of awful silence. Then women began to weep and louder than the weeping came the sound of whips whistling through the air, striking again and again.
Nehana pulled at my dress and the three of us squirmed our way through the darkness and found the door. Nehana ran toward the cottonwood trees and we followed her, the black dog at my heels. Nehana did not pause. She ran toward the three pintos tethered at the far edge of the grove.
The moon was high in the east. We got into the saddles and rode toward it, moving slowly through the mesquite until the sound of weeping and the crack of whips died away in the night.
10
NEHANA LED the way along a trail that wound downward toward a small pine forest. We had not gone far when we saw a fire burning at the edges of the trees. Nehana pulled in her horse and sat watching.
"Woodcutters use this trail," she said. "One of them must be camped there now. It is not good if he sees us. But we cannot go back. Nor can we get through the forest without using the trail."
Slowly she rode on and we followed her. "If he tries to stop us," Nehana said, "we will continue. Whatever he does, we will continue."
We followed the trail for a short way into the pine grove, until we came to the fire. A man stood up and spoke a word of greeting, which Nehana answered.
"You travel late," the man said softly.
His eyes shone in the firelight. He glanced at each of us, at the three horses and their silver bits.
"We have a long way to go," Nehana answered.
"You have good horses," the man said, still speaking softly. "They can take you far and at a good pace." He rubbed his forehead. "The horses I have seen before. One belongs to Don Roberto. The small one to Señor Gomez. The third I am not sure about, though I think it was ridden by Francisco Roa."
The man stirred the fire so that it shone brighter. He walked over to the horse Nehana was riding and looked closely at its bridle.
"So I thought," he said. "The initial R. R for Roa."
Nehana backed her horse away from the man, but he reached out and grasped hold of the bit.
"What shall I say to those who come this way?" he asked. "To Señor Gomez and Don Roberto and Francisco Roa? They will wish to know where their horses have gone."
"Say what pleases you," Nehana told him, glancing at me and making a motion with her head.
Running Bird and I picked up our reins, ready to flee.
"If you go south," the man said, "I can tell them that you have gone to the north, to the east, to the west. It is simple. All I ask in return is a bridle and a bit. They are for my poor burro who has neither."
"I cannot ride this horse without a bit," Nehana said.
She said no more, but spurred her horse, throwing the man aside into the grass. She circled the fire and we followed her down the woodcutter's trail, leaving the man behind us shouting.
Near dawn we left the pine grove for country which was open and slanted toward the rising sun. Nehana gave her horse a nudge with her bare heels. We did the same and the horses broke into a trot. Neither Running Bird nor I knew how to ride a horse, but we had learned a little from our journey with the Spaniards and during the long night just past.
Soon we came to a slow-running stream where we watered the horses. As they drank and began to crop the grass along the bank, I kept looking back at the pine grove and the hill beyond, fearful that I would seethe Spaniards.
"They have found our trail now that the sun is up," Nehana said, "They will ride faster than we did, having the daylight to go by. Yet they cannot reach this place before the sun is overhead."
She spread a blanket on the grass, as if we were at a fiesta, and laid out some corncakes for us to eat. Running Bird and I were not hungry, so Nehana ate all the cakes. Then she fell asleep. We walked up and down, listening to her breathe, listening for the sound of hoofs, watching the trail we had come along.
Nehana did not move. She lay on her back with her lips half-parted, breathing peacefully.
"Let us take our horses and go," Running Bird said.
"We would not go far," I said. "We are lost without her."
"The Spaniards will find us here," Running Bird said.
The sound of a blue jay fluttering into a tree made me jump. The stre
am sounded like men's voices speaking. Then I saw five figures on the hill beyond the pine grove. They were deer coming down to drink at the stream, but I shouted anyway. At my cry Nehana jumped to her feet. She looked in the direction I pointed.
"Deer," she said scornfully.
But she did not lie down again. She got on her horse and we followed her. The stream had a sandy bottom and we rode along between its banks.
"They will follow our tracks to the stream," Nehana said. "They will decide that we rode north, for that is the shortest way."
We rode until midmorning, never leaving the stream. The current washed away all signs of our passage. We came to a wide meadow and Nehana led us across it, and, doubling back, we climbed a high ridge. Near the crest where a few trees grew she stopped and got off her horse, motioning us to follow. We crawled through the brush and rocks until we came to the highest part of the ridge.
Below us lay the country we had traveled that morning—the stream winding northward, the clump of budding cottonwoods where we had watered the horses and Nehana had gone to sleep. Near noon, as we crouched among the trees, three horsemen rode down the hill where I had seen the deer.
The sun glinted on their silver bridles. They rode back and got down from their horses and stood around for a while under the cottonwoods. Then they jumped into their saddles and started off at a quick trot, two on one side of the stream and one on the other, not in the direction Nehana had said they would ride but down the stream, toward us.
"We go," Nehana said. "We go fast and for our lives."
We crawled back to our horses. Keeping below the crest of the ridge, we rode its length through heavy brush. We rode down into a wide canyon and headed north, back in the direction of the cottonwood grove. We rode fast. We knew that the Spaniards would find our tracks where we had left the stream and crossed the meadow and climbed the ridge.