The Enchanted Burro: and Other Stories as I Have Known Them from Maine to Chile and California by Charles Fletcher Lummis

Author:Charles Fletcher Lummis [Lummis, Charles Fletcher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Good Press
Published: 2022-02-23T00:00:00+00:00

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Pablo’s Deer Hunt.

Table of Contents

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IN TA-BI-RÁ

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Pablo’s Deer Hunt.

A PUEBLO FAIRY TALE TOLD OVER.

Table of Contents

The yellow cottonwoods above the Rio Grande shivered in the fresh October morning as the sun peeped over the Eagle Feather mountain into the valley of his people. Above the flat, gray pueblo of Shee-eh-huíb-bak the bluish breath of five hundred slender chimneys melted skyward in tall spirals. Upon here and there a level housetop a blanket-swathed figure stared solemnly at the great, round, blinding house of T’hoor-íd-deh, the Sun Father.

Then a burro, heavy eared and slow of pace, rattled the gravel on the high bluff, gazed mournfully on the muddy eddies, and broke out in stentorian brays. Apparently Flojo[32] felt downcast. Across these treacherous quicksands the grass was still tall in the vega—why did not Pablo take him over too? And mustering up his ears, he trotted almost briskly down the slope to the water’s edge, where a swart young Apollo was just stepping into the swift current. Tall, sinewy, lithe as Keem-eé-deh, the mountain lion that lent its tawny hide for the bow-case in his hand; his six feet of glowing bronze broken only by a modest clout of white at the supple waist, his dense black hair falling straight upon broad, bare shoulders, and his dark eyes watchful of the swirling waters, the young Pueblo strode sturdily in, paying no heed to the forlorn watcher upon the shore. In a moment he was in the channel swimming easily, one hand holding the bow-case above the red bundle upon his jet crown. Sush-sh! sush-sh! splosh! splash! splash! and Flojo heaved a great sigh as his master went spattering across the farther shoals, and at last climbed the sandy eastern bank.

Pablo unrolled the bundle from his head, wriggled, wet-skinned, into the red print shirt and snowy calzoncillos, wrapped their flapping folds about his calf with the buckskin leggings of rich maroon; belted these at either knee with a wee, gay sash from the looms of Moqui, fastened the moccasins with their silver buttons, and, with the tawny sheath of bow and arrows slung across his back, started at a swift walk. Once only he stopped, after a scramble up the gravel hills that scalloped the plateau, to look back a moment. The long ribbon of the valley, now faded from its summer green, banded the bare brown world from north to south, threaded with the errant silver of the river, whose farthest shimmer flashed back from under the purple mass of the Mountain of the Thieves. Midway lay the pueblo, dozing amid its orchards below the black cone of the Kú-mai, and Pablo shook his head sadly, as he turned again and strode across the broad, high llano.

“It is not well in the village,” he muttered, “for it is full of them that have the evil road. The Cum-pah-huít-lah-wen have told me that the half of those of Shee-eh-huíb-bak are witches; but not all can be punished. But it is in ill times for us.

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