The Sacred Valley by Max Brand

Author:Max Brand
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2013-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

All night through, the chanters maintained the prayer to the god. But by turns, the groups of warriors danced in the moonlight, or chanted, or beat on the drums, or drew howling noises from the horns.

Still, when the moon died in the east before the growing light of the sun, there was not a sign of answer from the careless god. There was not a shadow of a cloud on the horizon, and another summer day was promised, as brazen hot as the ones that had scorched the prairies before. Still, when the braves looked toward Running Elk for a permission to stop the entreaties, the long-faced old man would make no sign.

And inside the valley, far up toward the holier end, beside the shining edge of the lake and opposite the cave of Sweet Medicine, Blue Bird stood up with a living rabbit grasped in her strong young hands. Behind her, Red Hawk whistled a long, shrill note, and now the miracle happened, drawing a cry of fear from the lips of the girl. For she saw, on the lip of the cave above her, a huge owl, greater than any eye ever had beheld before. It extended its wings. It rushed down through the air toward her. She heard the thin whispering of those furred wing feathers. She saw the great hooked talon drawn up toward the soft feathers of the belly. She saw the round shining of the eyes. So a god would take food from her hand and bless her.

But in the last moment the owl swerved. Its talons reached out and the powerful legs behind them as though of their own volition they still would have seized on the rabbit. But the wings slid the great bird rapidly away.

The cry of the girl slashed through the brain of Red Hawk. She fell on her knees and let the rabbit go bounding away, its ears flattened by the speed of its running. And so, her arms thrown up, the girl cried out after the owl.

But the bird, veering without a wing flap, swerved suddenly back toward the cave and disappeared into the mouth of it.

Red Hawk picked up from the ground a little fluffy owl feather that had fluttered down close to Blue Bird. He put it in her hair, sadly.

“You must go,” he said. “You see that the god is not angry if you do as he wishes at once. He has given you a token of his favor. Take it. Let that make you happy. Perhaps on some other day you may come back into the Sacred Valley and live here forever. Or is his anger with me, also? We shall see.”

He picked up another rabbit, its four feet tied securely together, and once more he whistled. And again the mighty owl dipped off the edge of the cliff and slid through the air with faultless ease. Right down he came, struck the talons of one foot into the offered rabbit, and veered away again to disappear inside the cave.

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