Conners at Shungopovi.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIX, Issue 17, 23 April 1913, Page 44

Conners at Shungopovi.

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LUCIA CHAMBERLAIN.

PPY HUNGOPOVI village hangs high in air on a round rock-turret of the Second Mesa. The

clouds and the crows fly very near its flat roofs. As the cavalry crawled over the last red shale they saw it close before them, hard white, with a giddy wheel of black wings above it. Lieutenant Farrar peered at it under his hand and frowned. Then his eyes moved to the lubberly hack of the trooper riding flank, and the frown increased. Farrar didn’t like the idea of Shungopovi, hut still less he liked the fact of Trooper Conners. All around him the men were riding wiry and light, chins high and impassive faces, and the sight of Conners, bobbing up and down in his saddle like a cork on a line, serewing his long neck from side to side, rolling his eyes on every flitting change of landscape, exasperated Lieutenant Farrar. Even with growth of stubble on chins and hair unregulation long, the troop preserved its shorn military air, but from under a thatch of fire-coloured locks Conners’ face peered with pre-historic suggestion of man before laws were made. The Very colour of that hair of his —the Reddest hair in Arizona, the troop averred l —was irritating to the officer’s eye.

It was hard, thought Farrar sourly, in this business, where was most need of ?uick, handy men, to be saddled with liia “slob” —dolt at drill, clod in the Saddle, butt of the column on field service—here Trooper Conners’ eye caught ilia superior’s scowl, and Conners smiled, A slow, long-dawning smile that culled gently around the corners of his mouth, and twinkled up in his eyes, and seemed to disjoint the back-bone of resistance. “’Tention! Cover in file!” snarled Lieutenant Farrar.

The troop shut into itself like a concertina, and trotted hard for Shungopovi. From the mesa the rock rose like a chimney. All eyes were lifted to the white walls at the summit, and their crown of carrion birds. The circling wings broke, fluttering, as if they sensed

the sharp approach of men. The troopers leaned to their horses’ ears. Towards the summit the trail became steep steps. “Halt! Dismount!” was the order. Up they went, hands helping knees. On the crest of the cliff a white wall met them, with one slim, arched opening, and down an alley a man might walk through sideways, following Farrar, 19 troopers and Trooper Conners scrambled into Shungopovi. “Woosh!” went up a thousand' wings, a palpable shadow rising from the village. From all the roofs rose a dreary ululation of dogs. The men stared around a plaza empty, white, and filthy; then sullenly back at Farrar. They did not like Shungopovi. Report of a smallpox outbreak had come down from the “Three Mesas,” and headquarters had designated a detail to police the infected village, “Moqui” reservation, and to Troop K the lot had fallen. But it was far from their idea of soldiering, and it had an evil smell. For a little, that faint stench of death seemed all that was left to inhabit Shungopovi. Then a thin, brown man slid out of the tangle of walls, and regarded them, through his wild forelock, with glittering eyes. His blanket swathed him fast. Under it his feet showed fleshless and terrible. He came forward a hesitating step or two, smiled, and began to speak to Farrar with a lisping language that whispered on the indrawn breath.

“Can any one understand this lingo?’ 5, said Farrar helplessly. “ I could be by way of speakin’ to him, sir,” rose the bland drawl of Conners in the rear.

“You!” said Farrar explosively. “He can’t speak English!”

“I know it, sir,” said Conners confidentially. “ What will Ibe askin’ him, if ye please?” The troopers grinned with delight. “ Ask him where his people ’are,” said Farrar, short and incredulous.

Conners strolled forth, and thrust out his hand to the Indian. His tobaccopouch was in it. “Quatsi” (friend), ho said. Was there something threatening

in the Indian’s fixed and breathless smile? “Quatsi!” The Indian reached from hia blanket a hand whose every bone bit through the flesh; The troopers hung forward as if in vain endeavour to understand the soft, hesitating words that fell grotesquely from Conners’ Galway tongue. “ He says,” interpreted Conners, “that the crows have taken the livers of his

father and mother, and he wants tobacco.” “ Ask him where the dead are,” said Farrar. “He says he doesn’t know,” translated Conners apologetically. The officer sniffed and grunted. He had not yet recovered from the surprise of finding Conners useful. “ Conners, vou’ve been here before?”

“ No, sir, ou’y generally all about the country,” said Conners with a. vague wave of his hand at the surrounding buttes.

The officer frowned. He hated vagueness either of time or locality, yet in this desert of deceptive distances and dazzling atmosphere vagueness encompassed him. “The bodies are here, somewhere,” he determined; “and we've got to find ’em before sunset ’if we overhaul the whole town.”

The ringing spurs of the cavalry pervaded the village; and in their wake, mysteriously appearing from the web' of wall and street as if the sound of sabre and spur drew them like a warning tocsin, went the soft-footed, muffled, whispering villager's. They stuck like shadows to the troopers’ heels, stopping when the men stopped, and at a little distance, swathed in their forlorn blankets, watched breathless, alert. In times before that cavalry troop had seen bad places, but Shungopovi was the worst. Thoroughly, doggedly they set at it, ripping open silent houses, sifting out filthy alleys, matter-of-factly cursing with increasing wonder, as emptiness succeeded emptiness. But Conners, hanging on the heel of the long striding squad, shirked the ghostly doorways, and oftenest his flickering glance reverted uneasily to the silent, quick-eyed following. There was something strangely stoic about this remnant surviving in the midst of death, as if they took for granted disease, misery, even starvation—everything but the presence of the cavalry troop. “They don’t like it, Cassidy,” Conners muttered to the trooper at hie elbow.

“Who? Qh!—hell!” grunted Cassidy. “We ain’t tryin’ to please ’em!” He laid •his hand on a door-latch. “It’s like walkin’ into your grave!” whispered Conners, grinning, half serious. “You fool,” the other growled, “it’s empty!” and struck the door open. He winced baek; Conners turned pale and crossed himself.— The dull, low light from the window of

horn lay over a mass of vague undulations like windrows a scythe leaves behind it. The men looked. Out of the mass an arm, bone, and translucent flesh, lifted, twisted, torturing, and dropped back. There was a sigh, like escaping breath. The sergeant thrust 1 through the door with the growl of a dog who finds a bone. “Got ’em!” Then from within: “Lively, now, get at ’em. Conners, report headquarters.” The men came reluctantly. It was a .gruesome ■business. Farrar had his teeth set for the task before him, but peering through that dreadful doorway, he was aware it was even worse than he had expected. He wanted to put through the job as quickly and thoroughly as possible, fumigate the place, and get on, leaving the lest to the doctor and the missionary.

“Get the dead out as fast as you can, and—look out,” he warned sharply, for Conners, lifting the feet of a body, had caught sight of the face but half concealed, and Jet his end of the burden fall.

“Ass!” thought Farrar disgustedly. “Such men ought to be shot!” Outside the door had gathered"the Indian following, alert and silent, unmoved by what they saw within. But when tho soldiers began to carry shrouded bodies out into the light, the impassive faces developed animation. Excitedly gesticulating, one began to speak, his eyes darting, rapid u a snake’s l>etween Conners and the lieutenant.

“He ear's,” Conners explained apologetically, "that they have thesd places where they come all together to die, beckiwe it’s warmer. He says if wo take these away, he’ll cut off our heads.” “I guess not,” the officer muttered absently, scribbling ou a scrap of paper. “Conners!” “Sir!”

“See that this order is filled out, and the stuff up here in an hour. Dou’t wait for it. Understand?”

Conners, studying the scrap of paper, had a misgiving. He didn't like the ide*

ppo of the articles on the list had given Jiiiu. His snub nose wrinkled with donut. He looked anxiously at his superior. “Would ye mind, sir,” he tentatively suggested, “if I asked one question’” The officer's voice sounded cold and far away: “Trooper Conners, you’ve got your ibrderß.”

Conners sighed, and turned, reluctant. [The lieutenant glared after him. “Was iho man impertinent, or only simple?” Jt was a question which had perplexed the service ever since a large Irishman with the reddest hair Arizona had pver seen, had sidled up to the recruiting sergeant at the Phoenix station and 'suggested that the recruiting sergeant Step over to “Hennessey’s” with him and have a drop of something, and a chat over it. This was Conner’s way of saying he wanted to enlist. The recruiting sergeant had prophesied that the service would change that way of his, but Conner's way had come nearer to upsetting, the service. No drill could square those undulating shoulders, or brisk that deliberate step. No function, however military solemn, could quite wipe out the Sociable flicker from his pale, deep-set Cye. It was impossible to put finger on that faculty that not only evaded, but seemed unconsciously to undermine discipline. There was contagion in the man that subtly affected his associates. It was impossible not to unbend when that amiable, conniving blue eye rolled upon you; Impossible not to laugh when that ’deep, musical chuckle bubbled up out of pointer’® throat. Tor his superiors he had neither contempt nor insubordination, only obviousness of rank—a mere inability to grasp the idea of military government—and when, as in tlie case of Lieutenant Farrar, there was added keen personal admiration, the officer was apt to find the sit nation difficult. Conners pad an exasperating way of communicating official messages Aa a confidential yhisper, of adding comments aS to what he thought the officer meant, of improving on his instructions. Brought to book for this offence he was ready to explain why his performance was superior to the original order. Sometimes it was; and this was not to be borne! Yet Conners could seem to make no logical connection between his eccentricities and extra guard duty. Ho went through his punishment , with a vague, wondering .smile at the inexplieableness of an order of life that rounded on a man for communicating ideas. So now as he went, with his supple, irnmilitary swagger, along tire streets of Shiuigbpovi, and down the tortuous trail that doubled around the rock turret, his look was clouded with doubt, and his under-lip thrust forth in judicial meditation. He delivered his order to the trader in the store, huddled at the foot of the pinnacle. Then, with what money he had, he filled his pockets with sticks of peppermint candy and little bags of tobacco. He knew the two besetting weaknesses of the Hop! Indians, and it occurred to Conners that such gifts might not be inconvenient.

While lie waited, lounging on the counter, he took off his heavy campaign, hat, e,nd two Indian children, brown, shivering waifs, who had drawn near, fascinated at the sight of so much candy, precipitately retreated. “Hey, quatsi,” said Conners, coming toward them, holding out a piece of peppermint. The littler, wailing, clung to her sister, who backed hastily against the wall. Her voice, dominating the Robs of the younger, importuned the trader, who slapped his knee with Shouts of delight. “Eh?” demanded the bewildered Conners; “an’ what's got the kids?” “Well, if you want to know, it’s yer hair,” said the trader, with much enjoyment. ‘‘What the divil d'ye mane?” growled

Cqnners. “Well, you would set the Colorado afire 1” said the trader, grinning at Conner’s fiery bush. “Don’t know as I ever see anythin’ like it myself, but they”—turned his thumb in the direction of the round-eyed sisters cuddled against the wall—“ain't never seen no kind of a red-headed man in their lives. There ain’t but one thing in this country that's such a colour.” He pointed with a chuckle nt the glowing bed of coals. “They think it’s somethin' to warm yer hands at.” Conners dapped his hand to his head ns if he expected to find it hot. “Well, I’m damned!”* he brought out at last. “Did ye ever bear the like o’ that?” The idea appeared to amuse him, for he chuckled. “Well, did ye’ ever hear the like o’ thatt” he repeated, as lie closed the

trader’s door behind him. He walked a little way. Then a new idea seemed to strike him. He looked up at Shungopovi, with his slow-dawning smile. He pulled out his bandana handkerchief, and, as a man might lock up precious metals for future profit, Conners bound the handkerchief over his hair carefully till the last stubborn lock was concealed. Then, putting on his hat, he took his deliberate way upward again, toiling, peering up at the roofs above him. ‘'They don’t like it,” he muttered. He stepped through the hole in the wall that led into Shungopovi. and from the far end of the passage looked back at the narrow aperture through which flashed a glitter of turquoise sky, and shook his head. “I don’t like it meself,” he concluded. He turned; he startedBehind him, close as his own shadow and as black, stood a villager. The dark folds of his blanket almost met his inky forelock. The glitter of the eyes through the slit somehow made Conners feel the cliff edge was very near hia back. The Hopi pointed toward the archway. “Go away' through there!” The sentence fell softly from his tongue. “Eh?” Conners hesitated, perplexed—■ then a reminiscent grin lighted his face. “Oho,! I give you tobacco out there in the plaza! Friend!” He thrust out his

hand. A stick of peppermint was in it, but the Hopi stood immovable, his arms tight folded in hiis black blanket. “Det the chief who says ‘friend,’ lead his people away- through there!” be repeated.” The dual significance flashed on Conners. “He thinks I’m the boss of the gang,” he chuckled, but while he smiled ho looked into the eyes of revolt. He had but the space of his smile to consider in, •but inspiration, that flourished for him under pressure, was already budded in his fertile brain. Involuntarily he raised his hand and drew his hat. harder down over the bandana handkerchief.

“Not my people,” ho smiled slowly, significantly wagging his head —“none of mine! They came with me. They are my servants, but they’ are men of Washington. I am nearer kin to you.”

The Hopi’s eyes ran over Conner’s khaki with a half-satirical flicker; and faintly appreciatively, Conner's face reflected it. But he sidled closer. “I wear these clothes because if they knew, they would not come with »ne, and I need their strength. But do they talk your tongue? Do they’ take your hand I”

The Indian stood like a bronze, but his smile abated, and his eyes were fixed on his interlocutor.

“I come,” said Conners, leaning forward impressively, “to take away the

sickness; and that the power that sends me is greater than Washington, I give you a sign.” He sprang back and snatched off his campaign hat. His wild hair, red as a blood orange, coruscating in the noon sun, flared forth. The light, electric atmosphere of the mesa seemed to set every lock on end.

The Hopi leaned forward with a soft exclamation rising to a laugh. “H-y-i-il” His white teeth gleamed delight. His hand reached toward the fiery’ bush.

Conners stepper! back, raising his hand with a platform gesture. “Tewa!” (fire) he said sternly, “owiwuhta!” (flame).

The man hesitated, poised, incredulous, while Conner's brain rocked with the fear of failure; then timidly, still half unbelieving, the Hopi extended his hands, and spread his fingers toward Conner's hair, as toward a burning fire.

“Where’s that man Conners?” the lieutenant demanded of the sergeant “Where's that dam’ red-headed Irishman?” the sergeant shouted to a trooper.

“He's come up,” the man declared. “I saw him half-an-hour past goin’ through the plaza wid an Injun.” “An Indian!” the exasperated officer growled an order in his throat, and a curious squad of corporal and two troopers set out for the plaza.

To these men, who laboured all day’ between the cliffs and the houses of death. Shungopovi had seemed a city of the dead, but Conners had reanimated it. The white plaza was spotted with black and orange—muffled figures, light and silent, all drawing from the fringing houses toward the centre of the square, where a tight-packed ring leaned and looked up; and in their midst on the platform of the high kiva hatchway, in the broad wash of the desert sun, flamed the hair of .Conners; and it was Connens voice that Bounded, rolling hea then words under his tongue. There was a full minute before the corporal remembered hia duty.

Remonstrating, expostulating, with runes behind his teeth, they brought Conners before the lieutenant. That officer was already’ sufficiently harassed by the inexplicable disappearance of three carbines. It was a bad moment to bring any more irregularities before him. “I was on’y explainin’ to thim," Conners explained to the angry Farrar. “They don’t like us bein' here, an' X was only tollin' thim that what ye wore gain' to do wasn't anny bar-rm at all-”

“Who told you what I was going to do?” demanded Farrar.

“Ye gave me the list." said Conners, aggrieved, “an' there was on’y one guess I could make.”

“When you get orders, don't make gneisses, ’’ said the officer sternly. "Youit

get qur throats cut with this wigwag.” “We’ll a dale more likely get 'em cut widout it,” broke in Conners eagerly.

“Report to the sergeant for duty uut 1 the town is clean. Then you can go under arrest.” The officer’s’ eye looked through Conners, and his voice was far away. From that tone, Conners decided there was no appeal- But his expression of profound perturbation did not seem to revert to the sentence of arrest.

“If oyi’y I’d had a minute more—jusht ■a minute—l’d ’iv had thim,’’ lie muttered regretfully, as he followed the detail out across the sea of rock that sloped away to the south of the village. “He’s a fine boy, the liftenint, no doubt of it, but he knows less about people than I do about swaddlin’-bands.” The ledge, of the aerie ou which Shongopovi hung was split, as if some mighty’ knife had plunged and pried it into narrow clefts, whose ends ran down tn oblivion. Thither the bodies had been brought and gathered into heaps on the lip of the precipiece. And thither followed native women, leading naked children, large-headed and lean, like changelings, furtive as foxes. They seemed unagitated, merely- curious, reassured possibly by the place to which the bodies had been brought. Conners knew - that in sueh clefts as these, covered with stones, the Ilopis were wont to bury then - dead, but he knew also this was not the method of interment the lieutenant intended. “It's the divil's own service! " he sighed. “Now, why couldn't be leave me be? Jusht as I would be tollin' 'em how it would be! They was coinin' to me hand like a bird to a bush!" He looked down to where the tents of the new camp showed white. "Now, how will 1 ever get hold of thim again?" he muttered. A light touch on his hand brought his eyes back again. A child, a boy of six, bronze and naked, a red feather braided in bis hair.' pulled him gently by tho sleeve. He. was pointing at one of the. Hopi bodies, covered with a blanket. “What are you doing with father?” he asked in the native tongue. “Who was your father?” questioned Conners in the same language. ” Lolama, the very big chief.” said the child sombrely. "Oho!” said Conners, and a twinkle re-kindled in hi-s brooding eye. " 1 am sending your father to the Maho-ki.* You are the very big chief now." “tlGive me eandee," said tho child, edging closer, die used the single English word with staccato effect. Conners looked all around, spying the horizon, like a- thief who fears to be seen, then down at the child, and laughed with his deep-throated chuckle.. “Come to-night to the house where the soldiers are, the house of the throe ladders at the end of the street, and I will give you candy—red candy.” He pulled out a piece and held it aloft. Tho child clutched covetously; and Conners returned the sweet io his pocket. “No. Yonder, to-night,” he said, pointing toward Shungopovi. A woman came softly and took tho boy’s hand. Conners watched the red feather glinting away among the rocks, with a half-smile that wrinkled into a frown. “ It’s all such fakin' chances," he muttered. Out of Shungopovi, across whose roofs the western sun lay level and golden, down the trail worn in the solid granite, he watched a procession of two burros prodded on by a trooper in their rear. They crawled under a load of great tin cans that clattered and creaked, and flashed like a burning-glass when the sun caught them. And with that fiery glint came the suggestion that sent a shiver over Conners’ imaginative skin. Into the deep rock-clefts the men were lowering blanket-wrapped shapes. Sleeves stripped to shoulder, perspiration dripping off their faces, with cracking muscles and bending backs, they laboured in a desperate race with day. The “after-glow” was an aurora in the west, and the land a slate-coloured silhouette on the heavens before the work was complete. “Powers above," muttered Conners, wiping his forehead with his bare forearm: “if we’re associatin’ wid this disease much longer we won't need our throats cut to kill us.” Beneath his campaign bat he had kept his handkerchief over his hair, and hia face under it showed flushed and dubious. Slowly he unscrewed the cover ’from a great square tin can. Into the lovely, purple twilight rose ♦ Skeleton house—home of the dead in Grand Canyon.

the rank, penetrating, odour ofc kerosene. The men’s clothes were splashed with it. The drenched rock sucked it in. The astonished stars rose up to see dark figures with flaring torches, running along the edges of the cliff, leaping from rock to roek, stooping, dipping the light, and up again, and away. Spurts of fire sprang behind them, flames that peered and hesitated and leaped together with a roar, pyring heavenward. Shungopovi stood in a ring of fire. On the 'black sky, its walls and roofs sprang clear in the broad light. An odour as of hell’s kitchen sickened the air. The men gasped, paralysed. ‘“My Gawd! can’t we turn it off?” groaned a trooper at Conners’ elbow.

“ Woosh-a-roo!” murmured Conners, half apprehension, half appreciation of

the tremendous theatric effect. “ Hark to thim up there!” It was the voice of Shungopovi. They heard with pricking skins Neither the roar of street riot, nor the yelling of the Apache charge; but as if a jungle of beasts had given tongue, (batterings, snarling.?, yelpings, and the sibilant tongues of snakes.

Above the clamour' spoke the dear voice of the bugle, and the detail trotted back through the horrid glare its hands had kindled, into the howling village. There it was bayonet and butt and double quick for a few minutes, while the villagers fled before the change into the houses, up to the roofs, down into the kivas, rallying from the sheltering shadows, like creatures from a lair, hanging from the housetops, snarling at the white men, tossing their arms at the

fire. There was a fierceness of anguish in their lamentation, as if on their own bodies they felt the devouring fire.

For an hour the circle of llame shook around .Shungopovi, At intervals the lieutenant watched it through a glass. He felt annoyed that his prosaic orders should have produced such a dramatic result. The agitation of Shungopovi was meaningless to him, and it ceased as unreasonably .as it had begun. The fire subsided slowly, but long before it had sunk the voices ceased, as at u preconcerted signal. All around him the village grew still with a deep, disquieting silence, a silence of suspenee, as if Shungopovi were taking breath; as if. like a- stalking beast, it had come too near the spring to make outcry.

The lieutenant was disconcerted by the uncanny cessation of sounds. Apparently order was preserved, but he wanted to be certain. For an hour the troops patrolled •Shungopovi, and saw all streets empty, all doors fast; not so much as a blanket flutter. “These people are rabbits,” said Farrar contemptuously, remembering Conners’ fears, and told off seven men for the guard, the rest to return to camp. Conners’ jaw dropped. Forgetful of regulations, he craned from his place on the flank of the patrol.

“You’re not afther leavin’ seven men alone in this place, sir?” he stammered. “Trooper Burke, take Conners’ place.” The men grinned. Conner's face Hamed a shade redder than his hair, and lie stood fast. “I’ll stay wid you, sir," he said. This was what Farrar wanted. In spite of everything Conners seemed now and then to be able to elucidate uncertainties.

The troop clattered joyously down the corkscrew, trail that lets out of Shungopovi. The ringing of their spurred ■heels departing was a melancholy sound to Trooper Conners’ ears. He wrinkled his little snub nose dubiously. He hated taking chances after dark. He hated being solitary, and the beat assigned him was on the southern skirt of the town, farthest from the deserted adobe where Lieutenant Farrar had taken up quarters. Silence was full of alarms for Trooper Conners. Looking sharply left and right, he paced the glimmering light and shadow of the alley, whose shapes shifted and shortened as the moon climbed higher. Presently into the profound stillness dropped a sound, and Conners breathed a sigh of relief. There was something doing at last! A voice extended itself —a vast vibration above the roofs—rising. prolonging in resonant recitative, lifting, piercing, on that highest note tenuously dying back into the silence. Conners bent his head listening. “The crier,” he muttered, “he’s calling them to the kivas.” He glanced up across the retreating tier of roofs. From Where he stood the floor of Shungopovi sloped sharply upward. He could see the upper story of “headquarters,” the point of light in the window. He could see the glint of a carbine as one of the patrol crossed the plaza. Then the door of the guard-house opened, and the sergeant came out. Conners watched him step from the ladder into swallowing gloom. A moment later came the challenge at the first, sentry-pbst. Then long silence. Conners waited, expectantly first —then uneasily, while he might have heard three challenges. “I could hear him at ivry one of thim,” he thought, but the air seemed fairly to ring with its emptiness. What darkness was this, that could stifle sound? A wind seemed to stir in his hair. Halfway down his beat he halted short. He hesitated, then with an impulse too rapid for thought, without one quaver of conscience, he deserted bis post, and struck up the street leading to the plaza. His revolver was on his hip, his carbine in his arm. His eyes travelled incessantly. He listened for a whisper, a movement, a drawn breath, but not the softest, stealing sound touched his ears. Every cast shadow stood stark. The Covel's were down over the kiva, hatches, but a faint glow filtered through them. Be stopped out into the plaza, and stopped dead at what was at his feet. It was a man sprawled on his face. There was a dark stain between his shoulders, from under his breast a dark stream creeping. His hand-, were clTitOhed info the rocky pavement. Ha one .of the outflung arms Conners caught the .gleam of a chevron. He felt the hair lift .along his scalp. The sweat stood out on his body. He stooped and felt. The sergeant was dead, stabbed, and without' a sound, without even a clatter as lie fell. . And his carbine was gitue!

Conners seemed to feel the muzzle of the vanished gun in the middle of his back. He had a furious impulse to run; and on the heels of it another, wild as the first. Blindly, precipitately, he followed it.

It was less thought than instinct that took his feet not up towards headquarters, but on across the plaza, into the street that led’to the edge of Shongopovi, and the loophole in the wall of rock. Cautiously he halted in the wall angle, and peered down the black throat of the alley. In the heart of it the moon -found three streaks of steel. Three? Conners saw, with a sudden suspension of 'breath! Those three rifles that had vanished that morning! Keeping carefully on the shadowed side of the street,he retreated. Mis heart was stifling as he turned the next corner lest he find another dead man, but the second sentry was pacing down his beat, carbine cit shoulder.

Conners collected the guards. His look was as of something so portent ions that they unhesitatingly took his word for the lieutenant’s orders, without the lie that was ready on Conner’s tongue. He marched them* to the temporary guardhouse.

Inside the low, upper room, Lieutenant Farrar listened to Conners. ‘’But these •people are no fighters,” he objected. “That’s just it, sir. They don’t fight at all. When they’re blind mad they kill, an’ they’ve the honour of a Chinyman.”

“We’ll have some men up from camp and cool ’em down,” said the lieutenant carelessly.

“If ye please, sir, there are three divils squatted at the top of the trail wid our carbines, that ’nil pick off the boys befure they knew it.” Conners wiped his damp forehead.

The lieutenant frowned, and drummed the floor. It was a ticklish thing to be shut up in a town of people who could noiselessly knife sentries on their beats. But six white men with a at their backs would do, he thought, for a village of these Indians.

“Three carbines missing this morning,” he mused, “and one- to-night. Three at the trail—one in the mob.” He laughed uneasily. “If ye please, sir, wouldn't we better try an’ placa-ate thim?” said Conners anxiously.

“Yes—with a carbine-butt.” The lieutenant stepped out of the door. It stood open on his figure silhouetted on the wall opposite. He looked down the long street running south, and up the narrow alley at the bag-end of which the house sto-od. “There’s one of ’em now,” he said. A little shadow was hopping along the blank-white house-front. Conner’s eye caught the glint of a red feather. His face lighted. '’Oho, me little big chief,” he murmured. “I had forgotten “Can dee,” said the child, pressing against the ladder-foot. *”'C'andee, for the very big chief” said Conners, grinning ingratiatingly down from the roof. He took a piece oApep-permint-stick from his pocket, and held •it toward the child. ‘‘Come, pash quang” (very sweet), he coaxed. Cautiously, one foot at a time, the little chief ascended, his covetous eyes alqft, Conners, breathing heavily with excitement, reached down an impatient arm, and lifted him over the last rungs. He tucked the candy into the mouth that gaped for it, and set the child down in the room, where he hunched himself up like a rabbit, and solemnly sucked. “Conners ” And Conners turned a tentative eye on Farrar. “I think he’s better in there, sir,” lie murmured. ‘But the lieutenant seemed not to hear —perhaps to have forgotten! His eyes were ranging the level roof-lines. “Conners, do you hear anything?” There was no audible sound, yet Con-n-el’s’ sensitive ears seemed to sense a stir. It pulled him up, alert as a drawn bow. '‘See anything?” the officer muttered. Conners blinked, then suddenly his eyes narrowed and danced. He grasped Farrars arm. “Over there!” The moon had fallen far south, ami shone up the streets in broad silver, but where Conners’ long arm pointed was .in inexplicable blackiieF-s. a shadow that defied the moon, that seemed to breathe, to flicker, to move up up.on them, a great’, sinuous beast <>f darkness. They riw It. it seemed, at a distance and then, mysteriously, magically, as if by a •spring. it was clnse upon them. The streets were choked up with it. The' moon caught silvery on naked bodies. that

moved like cat?, or on their bellies, as if the earth had spewed them up, crawled, lifting terrible scarred faces out of the mass that came on with the movement of a single creature, with something deadly in its soundless approach. (Farrar took a step toward the ladder. Conners* grip was on his arm. “Now for God’s sake, don’t go down! Lave me talk to them!” Farrar shook him off. “Fall in,” rang the order. The men came jumping over the high threshold on to the roof.. Conners made one stride back into the room, whipped a bunch of matches out of his pocket, ground them between his hands with a single gesture, swept his Angel's furiously through his hair, again — and again, Then, cramming on his hat, he snatched up the little chief and was out again. As he came through the door, the lieutenant sprang to the ladder. As Farrar’s foot touched the second rung, out of that black, swaying mass in front, came a single shot. Like a thrown missile he pitched forward to the street. With a yell the men swung after him. At sight of them, the mob gave tongue. The lieutenant struggled to his knees, and lapsed back against the wall, his arm doubled under him.

“Go on,” he choked out. “Fire!” The corporal opened his lips, but Con ners great hand silenced, him.

“.Recover ar-r-nis!” said Conners. His voice knocked back from the narrow walls. Obedience was instinctive. The carbines came down slowly. The lieutenant swore, struggling to rise. Conners stepped out two paces to the front. Tie raised the little chief on his shoulder, and held the point of his drawn sabre against the child’s bady. “If a man shoots or moves,” said Conners softly to the mob, “I wiill stick this child like a goat.” There was a pause. The little chief wailed, and Conners muttered, "Whist, I’ll give you candy,” and men, aloud, “Let Lomanatiwa, the brother of Lolama, speak Io me.” The use of the names had an 'effect, made a suspense; for a moment the crowd stood fast, then let through a slit-eyed, cat-footed man in a black blanket. This thin, palpable shadow stood forth like a visible death; and Conners, dandling the child on his arm, and the sabre in his hand, walked forward to meet it. A door-stone had rolled from the threshold of a house into ■the middle of the street. Conners stepped upon it, adding more height to a figure that already seemed taller. His voice reached into the muttering mass at Lomanatiwa's back. “Why have you howled at the fire? Why have you killed my man, and taken away his gun? And now, why do you come yelling to shoot another?” The Hopi folded his long arms: “You have burned our fathers and mothers in a bad fire. You carried them out of the place of the dead. 1 said I would cut-off your heads. I will do that now.” He looked, not at Conners, but at the child upon his shoulder. '‘And I told you this morning, when I talked in the square, Lomanatiwa. I come to drive away the sickness. If you cut -off our heads, the crows will eat Shungapovi clean.” “That is a lie!” The Hopi’s long arms ‘tossed abroad. “You bring - evil magic. You put it upon our fathers ami mothers and they became pigs. The smell of their burning was as the flesh of pigs. Now they will (burn forever in the mouths of the rock, and they will pray the Katcinasb tai send no rain on our corn. There will he no food. We will die. Before we die we will cut off your heads. But give me the child, who is too little to kill.” “Great and strong brother of the chief, Lolama,” said Conners, “of the snow and the sun and the growing corn, of the horse-races and the foot-races, you know much, but of the sickness and the fire you know nothing, for that is the knowledge of gods. And Hie words 1 bring you are not mine, but they come yonder from the place of sjlcnce, up (he ladder of turquoise.” His sabre flashed eastward, and all the furtite eyes followed the flashing arc. - “Thia sickness is a great evil sent upon you by an evil spirit. If the dead lie in the streets and housqs, he will make a second magic, and the ones who escape the sickness of sores will die of a very great pain in the stomach. Too many have died to be buried with atoms in Hie rocks, therefore the word is given me that they be buried with fire that you may live. Therefore I bring lire ami water (bat Jire' sacre<l. and’the simfll nf pigs’ flesh-was the burning of the evil

magic, and the souls <»f the dead are free.”

The soldiers hung forward, breathless. The language was unintelligible, but the tone, the pantomime, the great body supple with argument, the spare body stiff with resistance, were full of signi ticance. They watched a parley of nations.

’‘Have the spirits of the upper world told the white man what they have not totld the Hopi? How do you know these, things?” Lomanatiwa’s eyes were slits.

“Oh, you of .narrow ears, 1 know many tilings the white man does not know, as I told you in the plaza, where we said ‘friend,’ ” said Conners, grinning engag--4’l know your speech, 1 know 'your chief. He came to my house in the night asking gifts, and I gave. I carry him on my shoulder in the sight of his people. I know that three men sit at the top of the trail with guns they have stolen.” (‘onners waited for a moment to watch the sensation. "If 1 know these things,” he proclaimed, “is it the white men, is it the llopis who have taught me?” "If you know,” said Lomanatiwa softly, “why do you hide the sign? Where is the sign you showed in the morning?” "Ho, the sign!” (’onners’ long figure drew up, his little eyes madly dancing. “I showed it when the sun was strong, but now the night is black, do you fear? You saw the sacred fire! You saw it in a circle around Shungopovi. The spark that kindled it?—behold, the spark!” He snatched off his hat and sent it sailing into the mob. There was a shudder back, a strangled murmur in the black press of bodies. The wild nimbus of Conners' locks flamed forth with more than colour, with veritable light. Around his face, broad like a ruddy moon, the nimbus burned pale, purplish, phosphorescent, like fresh-kindled fire. “Behold,” said Conners, “the flame of the Great Spirit!’'--and flung up a hand, luminous to the fingertips—“but beware you wait too long, lest the fire that can save shall burr you into sand!” The sabre-point, that had been describing glittering circles, like a hypnotist’s waving wand, fell with a clash the stones; even that sharp concussion knew its effect. Conners waited, motionless. Lomanatiwa glided back into his following, ami from the mass came a sharp, sibilant, whispering as of conferring snakes; Farrar, in the wall angle, groaned. He had dragged himself to his knees, down one of which a thin thread of blood trickled. His dizzy eyes were wide on the sight before him the craning backs of the soldiers, the Hash of the moon on Indian eyeballs, and in tbe midst, the focus of the two, a. luminous mass —- a fiery moon flickering in the dark throat of the street. Lomanatiwa turned again to Conners. “First give me the baby,” ho said. Conners grinned. ‘‘Does Lomanatiwa think the man with the flame is a goat?” he inquired. The flopi’s white teeth flashed. "Whit first?” he said. “First bring hither the three men at the trail.” “The man with the flame,” Lomaija tiwa suggested, “knows everything.” “It has been told me,” said Conners oracularly. “Bring them quickly.” There was a word spoken, and a long arm waved eastward where a sickly light, was crawling up the violent sky. A runner darted off down a side-street. The guard came swinging up through the paling shadows. The faint ‘moon glittering on the rifle-barrels. Conners kept his eyes upon those. “Lot the guns be put down at my feel as a sign of your friendship,” he said. The three looked to their chief, and he was motionless. “Otherwise,” said Conners, with a sig nificaiit gesture, “1 will put my knife through the body of this boy.” The child put his arm around Conner'! head and smiled. The guns lay on the ground. Conners put his foot on them. "Now semi away your people,” he said, “and let them sleep, for at sunrise they will help me fill tli<» village with the magic the Great Spirit his sent, that the sick may be fat again.” Tin* Hopi turned, and with waving arms and monotonous voice addrosed the village at his back. The soldiers stared, slack-jawed, at the gesticulating Indian, at Conners, erect, magnetic, almost -d :it uesque. the child on hi? shoulder, the sabre in his 'liynd. The iiioh began meftuig to right aotf

left down the alleys into the houses, dispersing with the shadows of night. “And the child?” said Lomanatiwa, lin-

gering. "The child remains with me until Shongopovi is dean,” said Conners. “Uncha” (all right), Lomanatiwa grinned and thrust forth his hand.

“Peeva” (tobacco), he said ingratiatingly. Conners laughed, and gave a pinch. He turned to the line of four behind him. His sword shot back in its sheath. “Take me little flag o’ truce,” he said, handing the child to a private. His great figure looked shrunken, his joints unknitted. Anxiously, apologetically, lie turned toward his superior officer' who had struggled to his knees. He saluted. “Under arrest, sir,” said Private Conners. T 1 officer grinned at him. “Conners, you. you—politician!” “Yes, sir.” said Connors meekly.