The Windy Hill Read online

  CHAPTER II

  THE SEVEN BROTHERS OF THE SUN

  Nashola did not live in fairyland, although there were seasons whenhis country was so beautiful that it might well have belonged to somesuch enchanted place. He did not know whether he loved it best whenthe thickets were all in bloom with pink crab apple and the brown,wintry hills had put on their first spring green, or when every valleywas scarlet and golden with frost-touched maple trees in the autumn.But to-day it was neither, being hot midsummer, with the wild grassthick and soft on the slope of the hill that he was climbing, and withthe heavy foliage of the oak tree on the summit rustling in a hot,fitful breeze. It was high noontide with the sunlight all about him,yet Nashola walked warily and looked back more than once at hiscomrades who had dared follow him only halfway up the hill. His was noordinary errand, for, all about him, Nashola felt dangers that hecould neither hear nor see. Before him, sitting motionless as astatue, with his back against the trunk of the oak tree and his keen,hawk-like face turned toward the hills and the sky, was Secotan, thesorcerer and medicine man, whom all of Nashola's tribe praised,revered, and dreaded.

  None but the full-grown warriors used to venture to have speech withhim, and then only as he sat in the door of his lodge, with the men ina half circle before him. They never came alone. Along all theseaboard, the Indians talked of Secotan, the man most potent in spellsand charms and prophecies, who was said to talk with strange spiritsin his lodge by night and who could call up storms out of the sea atwill. This spot at the summit of the hill, where the medicine man satso often, sometimes muttering spells, sometimes staring straightbefore him across the valley, was magic forbidden ground, where no onebut himself was known to come. Yet the young Nashola, only fifteenyears old, and far from being a warrior, had been told that he mustconsult the medicine man and had been in too much haste to seek him inhis own lodge or to wait until he could persuade a comrade to go withhim.

  Stretched along the river below them was the camp of Nashola'sbrown-skinned people, where springs gave them fresh water and wherethe eastern hills of the valley gave shelter from the winter stormsthat blew in from the sea. Beyond those green hills were rocky slopes,salt swamps, a stretch of yellow sand, and then the great Atlanticrollers, tumbling in upon the beach. The Indians of Nashola's villagewould go thither sometimes to dig for clams, to fish from the highrocks, and even, on occasions, to swim in the breakers close toshore. But they were land-abiding folk, they feared nothing in theforest, and would launch their canoes in the most headlong rapids ofthe inland rivers; yet there was dread and awe in their eyes when theylooked out upon the sea. Not one of them had ever ventured beyond theisland at the mouth of the harbor.

  They were a shifting, wandering people, moving here and there with theseasons, as the deer and moose moved their grazing grounds, but theirmost settled abiding place was this little green valley where theyspent a part of every year. Sometimes word would come drifting in,through other tribes, of strange, white-faced men who had landed ontheir shores, but who always sailed away again, since this was stillthe time when America was all the Indians' own. What they did not seetroubled them little and they went on, undisturbed, hunting andfishing and paying their vows to the spirits and demons that theythought to be masters of their little world.

  The old, wrinkled squaw who was Nashola's grandmother was the only oneof them all who seemed oppressed with care. The boy, whose parentswere dead, was her special charge and was not, as he should be, likeother Indian lads. He was slim and swift and was as skillful as hiscompanions with the bow and spear, but he had a strange love forrunning along the sea beach with the waves snatching at his bare,brown legs, and he was really happy only when he was swimming in thegreen water. The day he swam to the island and back again, paying noheed to the shouts and warnings of his friends, and declaring, when helanded, that he would have gone farther save that the tide hadturned--that day had brought his old grandmother's patience to an end.

  "It is not fitting that one of our tribe should be so familiar withthe sea," she stormed at him. "We were not born to master that wildsalt water; the gods that rule us have said over and over again thatthe woods and rivers are ours, but that we are to have no dealingswith the spirits of the sea. Since I cannot make you listen, you shalltalk to some one who will. You shall go to ask the medicine man ifwhat I say is not so."

  Nashola had come, therefore, to ask his question, but he found that itneeded a bold heart to advance, without quaking, into that silentpresence and to speak out with Secotan's black eyes seeming to starehim through and through.

  "Is it true," he began, "that men of our tribe should have no trust inthe sea? My grandmother says that I should hate it and fear it, but Ido not. Must I learn to be afraid?"

  Slowly the man nodded.

  Most Indians grow old quickly, and are withered like dried-up applesas soon as the later years come upon them. But Secotan, although hishair was gray, had still the clear-cut face with its arched nose andheavy brows of a younger man. Only his eyes, deep, piercing, and verywise, seemed to show how long he had lived and how much he hadlearned.

  "Our fathers and their fathers before them have always known that wemust distrust the sea," he said at last. "No matter how blue andsmiling it may be it can never be our friend. We may swim near theshore, we may even launch our canoes and journey, if the way be short,from one harbor to another when the sky is clear and the winds areasleep. But always we are to remember that the sea is our enemy and atreacherous enemy in the end."

  He turned away to stare at the hills again, but Nashola lingered, notyet satisfied. It was unheard-of boldness to question Secotan's words,yet the boy could not keep his hot protests to himself.

  "But is it not wrong to pretend to fear what we do not?" he objected."Do the spirits of the water actually rise up and tell you that wemust keep to the shore? I do not believe it, although my grandmothersays so until my ears ring again."

  Secotan turned his head quickly, as though to hide the ghost of asmile.

  "The voices of the wind and the breakers and of the thunder all crythe same message," he declared, "and wise men have learned that itwarns them to hug the land. You must heed your grandmother, eventhough her words are shrill and often repeated."

  He would say no more, so Nashola went away, pondering his answer ashe walked down the hill. After all, no harm had come to him fromentering the medicine man's presence unbidden, as his comrades had allsaid. He answered their questions very shortly as they came crowdingabout him, and to the persistent queries of his grandmother he wouldsay nothing at all. Yet the others noticed that his canoe lay unusedin the shelter of a rock on the sandy beach where he had left it, andthat he swam in the sea no more.

  The days passed, the hot, quiet summer passing with them. One evening,as they all sat about the camp fire, one of the older warriors saidquietly:

  "The time is near when our medicine man must go from us."

  "Why?" questioned Nashola's grandmother, while the boy turned quicklyto hear.

  "He has not sat upon the hill nor before the door of his lodge forthree days, and the venison and corn we have carried to him have lainuntouched for all that time. One of us who ventured close heard a cryfrom within and groaning. It may be that he must die."

  "But will no one help him?" cried Nashola. It was not proper that aboy should speak out in the presence of the older warriors, but hecould not keep his wonder to himself.

  "There is danger to common folk in passing too close to the medicineman's lodge," his grandmother explained quickly. "There are spiritswithin who are his friends but who might destroy us. And when he isill unto death and the beings from another world have come to bear hissoul away, then must no man go near."

  "Sometimes a medicine man has a companion to whom he teaches hiswisdom and who takes his place when he is gone," said the man by thefire. "But even that comrade flees away when death is at hand and thespirits begin to stand close about his master. Yes, such a man mustdie alone."

  A
ll through the night Nashola lay awake, thinking of what he hadheard. Secotan was, he knew, a man of powerful magic, but he could notforget that there was a look in his eyes and a kindliness in his tonethat seemed human, after all. Must he suffer and die there, withouthelp, merely because he was greater and wiser than the rest? Or, whendeath came close and the host of unearthly beings gathered about him,would he not feel it of comfort to have a living friend by his side?It was long past midnight and in the black darkness that comes beforeday, before the boy came to final resolution.

  He crawled out from under the shelter of his lodge and slippednoiselessly through the sleeping camp. Every rustle in the grass,every stirring leaf in the thicket made him jump and shiver, yet hekept steadily on. The sharp outline of Secotan's pointed lodge polesstood out against the stars, halfway up the shoulder of the hill. Thedoor showed black and open as he came near, but there was no soundfrom within. The only thing that seemed alive was a dull, glowing coalin the ashes of a fire that was not quite dead. The boy stooped downbefore the door and spoke in a shaking voice:

  "Secotan, Secotan, do you still live?"

  A hollow, gasping whisper sounded from the shadows within:

  "I am living, but death is very near."

  Nashola stood still for a moment. He could picture that gaunt figurelying helpless on the ground, with the darkness all about peopled bystrange shapes visible to the sorcerer's eyes alone, crowding spiritscome to carry him away to an unknown world. But even as a wave of icyterror swept over him, he remembered how fearful it would be to lieall alone in that haunted darkness, and he bent low and slippedthrough the door.

  "I know that all the spirits of the earth and air and water are withyou," he said as he felt his way to the deerskin bed and sat downbeside it, "but I thought, among them all, you might wish for a friendbeside you who was flesh and blood."

  A quivering hand was laid for an instant on his knee.

  "There is no man who does not feel terror when he comes to die alone,"the medicine man whispered, "and Secotan is less of a man than you."

  Through the dragging hours Nashola sat beside him, listening withstrained ears to every sound--the soft moving of a snake through thegrass before the door, the nibbling of a field mouse at the skin ofthe tent, the sharp scream of a bird in the wood captured by amarauding owl. The blackness grew thinner at last, showing the lodgepoles, the shabby skins of the bed, and finally the sick man's face,drawn and haggard with pain. As the dawn came up over the hills, heopened his eyes and spoke:

  "Bring those herbs that hang against the lodge pole and build up thefire. When the stones about it are hot, wrap them in wet blankets andlay them in the tent. The gods may have decreed that I am to live."

  Nashola worked frantically all through the day. He filled the lodgewith steam from the hot stones, he brewed bitter drafts of herbs andheld them to Secotan's lips once in every hour by the sun. After along time he saw the fever ebb, saw the man's eyes lose their strangeglittering, and heard his voice gather strength each time he spoke.For three nights and days the boy nursed him, all alone in the lodge,with men bringing food to leave at the door but with no one willing tocome inside. When at last Nashola went back to his own dwelling,Secotan was sitting, by his fire, weak and thin, but fairly on the wayto health again.

  The friendship that had grown up during that night of suffering andterror seemed to become deeper and deeper as time passed. There wasscarcely a day when Nashola did not climb the hill in the lateafternoon to sit under the rustling oak tree and talk for a long hourwith the medicine man. His companions of his own age looked askance atsuch a friendship and his grandmother begged and scolded, but withoutavail.

  Almost always, as he sat with his back against the tree, or lay fulllength in the long grass that was beginning to be dry and yellow withthe coming autumn, the boy would fix his eyes upon the hills oppositethrough which there showed a gleam of sea. Like the picture of someforbidden thing was that glint of blue, framed by the green slopes andthe sky above. He could see the whitecaps, the dancing glimmer of thesun, and the gray sea gulls that whirled and hovered and dipped beforehis longing gaze. He would lift his head to sniff the salt breeze thatswept through the cleft in the hills, and to listen for that far-offthunder that could sometimes be heard as the great waves broke on thebeach. At last, one day when he had sat so long with his friend thatdusk was falling and the stars were coming out, he broke through thesilence with a sudden question:

  "Secotan, what lies beyond that sea?"

  The medicine man shook his head without speaking.

  "My grandmother says 'Nothing,'" pursued Nashola, "but I know thatcannot be. Is it one of the things that I must not ask and that youmay not tell me because you are a sorcerer and I am only a boy?"

  Secotan was silent so long that Nashola thought he did not mean toreply at all. Even when he spoke it did not seem to be an answer.

  "Do you see those seven stars?" he said, "that are rising from the seaand that march so close together that you keep thinking they are goingto melt into one?"

  "Yes," answered the boy. "I often lie before our lodge door and watchthem go up the sky. There are bigger stars all about them, but somehowI love those the best, they are so small and bright and seem to lookdown on us with such friendly eyes."

  "It is told among the medicine men," Secotan went on slowly, "thatmany, many moons ago, long before this oak tree grew upon this hill,before its father's father had yet been planted as an acorn, ourpeople came hither across just such a sea as that. Far to the westwardit lay, and they came, a mere handful of bold spirits in their canoes,across a wide water from some land that we have utterly forgotten.Some settled down at once upon the shores of the waters they hadcrossed, but some pressed eastward, little by little, as thegenerations passed. They filled the land with their children and inthe end they came to another sea and went no farther. But the men whohad led them were of a different heart than ours; there were alwayssome who were not content to hunt and fish and move only as the deermove or as the seasons change. They wished to press on, ever on, tolet nothing stop the progress of their march. It is said that whenthey came to this sea there were seven brothers who, when their peoplewould no longer follow, launched their canoes and set off once more tothe eastward, and never came back.

  "They dwell there in the sky, we think, and they shine through thosemonths of autumn that are dearest of all the year to our people, whenthe days are warm and golden before the winter, when the woods arebare and hunting is easy, when the game is fat from the summer grazingand our yellow corn is ripe. They come back to us in the Hunter's Moonand they watch over us all through the cold winter. We call them theSeven Brothers of the Sun."

  Nashola was silent, waiting, for he knew from his friend's voice thatthere was more that he wished to say.

  "Your mother, who is dead, was not of our blood, they tell me. Yourfather took her from another tribe and they had brought her captive,from the north of us, so that she is no kin of ours. Sometimes I thinkthat there must have run in her veins the blood of those sevenbrothers and that, in you, their bold spirit lives again. There is noone of your kind who loves the sea as you do, who has no shadow of afear of it. And you are first, in all my life, who has asked me whatlay beyond."

  "I should like," said Nashola steadily, still watching the gray waterand the gleam of stars above it, "I should like to go and see."

  "Often I have wondered," the man went on, his voice growing veryearnest, "whether you would not like to come to dwell with me, tolearn the lore that makes me a medicine man and to take my place whenI must go. I, who was taught by the wisest of us all, have waited longto find some one worthy of that teaching, and able to hold the powerthat I have. You can be a greater man than I, Nashola; not only yourwhole tribe will do your bidding and hang upon your words, but the menof our race all up and down the coast will revere you and talk of youas the greatest sorcerer ever known. Will you come to my lodge, willyou learn from me, will you follow in my way?"

  N
ashola tried to speak, choked and tried again.

  "I cannot do it," he said huskily.

  "Why?"

  There was a sharp note of wonder, hurt friendship, even of terror, inthe man's voice.

  "The people of our village say you are not like other men," said theboy. "They say you can call the friendly spirits of the forest and thehostile gods of the sea, and that you have wisdom learned in anotherworld. But I, who am your friend, think it is not so. I love youdearly, but I know you are a man as I am. I know the sea is only waterand that the forest is only trees. I--I do not believe."

  He got to his feet, blind with misery, and went stumbling down thehill. The warm September darkness was thick about him, but up on thehill the starlight showed plainly the motionless figure sittingbeneath the oak tree, never turning to look after him, uttering nosound of protest or reproach.

  As September days passed into October, as the Seven Brothers rodehigher in the sky, strange tales, once again, began to come from thesouth. More white men had been seen in their ships, sailing up anddown the coast, trading with the Indians, buying the fish that theyhad caught and trying to talk to them in an unknown tongue.

  "We have heard stories before and will hear them again," said theolder warriors incredulously. "Such tales are of the sort that oldwomen tell about the fires on winter nights."

  "What does your friend the medicine man say of these rumors, Nashola?"asked one of the boys of his own age, but Nashola did not answer. Hewent no more up the hill to the big oak tree; he had held no speechfor weeks with Secotan. Yet he would suffer no one to ask him why.

  A day came when the news could no longer be disbelieved. A boy of thetribe, who had been digging for clams on the beach, came running homewith startling tidings.

  "The white men--the winged canoes--as big as our lodges----" hegasped. "Come quickly and see!"

  Old men and young, squaws and papooses, every one deserted the littlesettlement by the river and went in wild haste up the eastward hillsto look upon this strange wonder. It was a lowering day with overcastskies and water of a sullen gray and with ominously little wind. Inspeechless wonder the Indians stood gazing, for there indeed werethree white-sailed ships, moving slowly before the lazy breeze, stanchlittle fishing vessels of English build, come to see whether thisunexplored stretch of coast would yield them any cargo. As theywatched, the largest one got up more sail, veered away upon a newtack, and was followed by the others.

  "What can they be? Are they come to destroy us all?" asked a tremblingold woman, and no one could answer.

  "Hush," said another in a moment, "the medicine man is coming."

  Secotan, who so seldom left his own lodge now, and who never mixedwith the village folk, was climbing slowly up the hill after them.Nashola noticed that he had begun to look old, that his fierce hawk'sface was sunken, and that he walked very slowly, leaning upon hisstaff. The men and women drew back respectfully as he advanced andstood in a silent, waiting circle, while he shaded his eyes and gazedlong at the ships, now growing smaller in the distance.

  "Are they friends or enemies, Secotan?" one of the hunters venturedto ask, but the medicine man replied only:

  "That must be as the gods decree."

  "Then destroy them for us," cried the old squaw, Nashola'sgrandmother. "Call up a storm that will break their wings and shatterthe sides of those giant canoes. Bring wind and rain and thunder andall the spirits of the sea to overwhelm them."

  There was a breathless silence as Secotan slowly moved forward andraised his staff. Nashola, standing before the other boys, watched themedicine man's face with eyes that never wavered. Even as the sorcerermoved there came a low mutter of thunder across the gray, level floorof the sea, and a distant streak of darker water showed the comingwind.

  "There is the storm! The very winds obey him!"

  The cry went up from all the Indians, save only Nashola who stoodsilent. The medicine man turned to look at him, then hesitated anddropped his eyes.

  "Why do you wait? Raise up a hurricane, O greatest of sorcerers,"cried a man behind them.

  "No," shouted Secotan suddenly. He flung down his staff and held uphis empty hands before his face. "I will raise no storm," he cried, "Iwill call no spirits from the deep--because I cannot. The wind andthunder answer no man's bidding--storms come and go at the will of theGreat Spirit alone. There is one soul here that I love, one beingwhom, in all my life, I have had for a friend. In his eyes I willstand for truth at last, although I had almost learned to believe inmy magic myself. I can do none of those things that you think. I am aman without power, like every one of you!"

  A roar of anger went up, a dull, savage, guttural sound that died awayalmost at once into silence, a quiet more ominous than an outcry couldhave been. Terrified by that strange apparition out yonder upon thewaters, the Indians saw themselves deserted by the one person to whomthey could look for courage and counsel. Only half understanding, theyknew, at least, that Nashola had been the means of their medicineman's downfall. Frenzied hands seized them both and dragged themheadlong down toward the water. Visions of the savage tortures thathis people wreaked upon their enemies passed through the boy's mind,but he did not struggle or cry out, although Secotan's set face,beside him, turned gray under its coppery skin. Some one had foundNashola's canoe, left long unused upon the beach, and had launched itin the breakers.

  "Let him go back to the sea that he loved, this boy who has never beenone of us. Let the man perish in the storm that is coming without hiscall."

  Relentless hands flung them into the frail boat and pushed it outthrough the surf. Nashola crawled to the stern and took up the paddle;a crash of thunder broke over their heads and a wild flare oflightning lit the dark water as he dipped the blade. In a moment, rainwas falling in blinding sheets, the wind and spray were roaring intheir ears, and the ebbing tide was carrying them away, out of theharbor, past the rocky island, straight to the open, angry sea.

  After a long time, Secotan, who had lain inert where he had beenthrown into the boat, got to his knees and took up the second paddle.Only by keeping the little boat's bow to the wind could immediatedestruction be averted. But the medicine man's strokes were feeble,affording little help, and at last he laid down the blade.

  "It is of no use, Nashola," he said. "Death rides on the wind andsnatches at us from the black waters. Lay down your paddle and let usdie."

  "No," the boy answered, "even though death is not an hour away, wewill fight it until the very end."

  Darkness shut down about them so that they could scarcely see eachother as they went on in silence. Although each combing, foam-cappedrush of water seemed certain to overwhelm them, there was a strangeexhilaration, a mad thrill in rising to every giant wave and shootingdown its green side in a cloud of spray. One--two--three--each oneseemed the last, and yet there were ever more. Nashola's arms werenumb and heavy, his head reeled, but still he struggled on. He wishedat last that death would come quickly, to still the terrible achingweariness that possessed his whole being. The worst of the storm hadblown, roaring, past them, but the seas were still heavy andnothing--nothing, Nashola thought, could ever bring back the strengthto his failing arms.

  Suddenly the clouds were torn apart, showing a glimmer of stars and avague glimpse of the tossing black water all about them.

  "Look, look, Nashola," cried the medicine man, pointing upward, "theyhave come to help us, your kinsmen, the Seven Brothers of the Sun!"

  But Nashola was not looking at the sky; his eyes were fixed on aghostly shape moving close ahead of them and on the fitful gleam of aship's lantern that tossed and glimmered in the dark. Dropping hispaddle he put his hands to his mouth and lifted his voice in a longhail. The light bobbed and swung and an answering shout came throughthe darkness.

  To the weather-beaten English sailors, used to the rough adventures ofsailing new and uncharted seas, there was little excitement in pickingup two half-drowned Indians, although they had never done such a thingbefore. They warmed the two wit
h blankets, they revived them withfiery remedies, and they sat about them on the deck, trying to talk tothem by means of signs, but with small success.

  "It is no common thing to see these natives so far from shore," themate said to the captain, "for as a rule the Indians distrust the sea.We cannot find out how these came to be adrift in that canoe. Theyoung one tries to make us understand, but the old man merely covershis face and groans. I think he will not believe that we are men likehimself."

  "Bring the boy to me," the captain ordered. "Perhaps we may be able tounderstand him."

  In the quiet dawn, when calm had followed the night's storm, the shipran in toward a rocky headland to send a boat ashore. Yet when it hadbeen lowered and Secotan had dropped into it, he turned to see Nasholastanding on the deck above, making no move to follow.

  "I am not coming, Secotan," he declared steadily. "The chief of thesemen and I have talked with signs and he wishes to carry me to his homeon this strange winged vessel. He promises that he will bring me safeback again. Then I can tell you and all of our tribe what these whitemen really are. And I have always longed to know what lay beyond thisforbidden sea."

  Secotan did not protest.

  "I have called you friend, I have wished to have you for my brother,"he said, "but I must call you master now, since you have dared what Ican never dare."

  * * * * *

  Much has been said of the courage of those white men who crossed thestormy Atlantic in their little vessels to explore an unknowncontinent. But what of the brave hearts of those Indians who thoughtthe white men were spirits come out of the sea, who did not know whatships were, yet who still dared to set sail with them? For we knowthat there were such dusky voyagers, that they crossed the sea morethan once in the English fishing vessels, and that they brought backto their own people almost unbelievable tales of cities and palaces,or harbors crowded with shipping and of whole countrysides coveredwith green, tilled fields. With all these wonders, however, they couldtell their comrades that these white beings were mere men likethemselves, to be neither hated nor dreaded as spirits of anotherworld. Deep dwelling in Nashola was that born leadership that makesreal men see through the long-established doubts and terrors of theirrace, who can distinguish the false from the true, who can go forwardthrough shadowy perils to the clear light of knowledge and success.

  It was in recognition of this that old Secotan, half understanding,wholly unable to put his feeling into words, standing alone upon theheadland, raised his arms in reverent salute and cried a last good-byto his comrade:

  "Farewell and good fortune, O Brother of the Sun!"