 | The Little Coyote |  |
Austin, Mary. "The Little Coyote."
Atlantic Monthly 89 (1902): 249-254.
WITHOUT doubt a man's son is his son, whether the law has spoken or no, and that the Little Coyote was the son of Moresco was known to all Maverick and the Campoodie beyond it. In the course of time it became known to the Little Coyote. His mother was Choyita, who swept and mended for Moresco in the room behind the store, which was all his home. In those days Choyita was young, light of foot, and pretty,—very pretty for a Piute.
The Little Coyote was swart and squat, well-knit but slow-moving, reputed dull of wit, though that, people said, he did not get from Moresco. Moresco was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, and sharp, so that they said at Maverick "as sharp as Moresco," and there was an end of comparison. Land and goods gravitated to Moresco. His Bed Rock Emporium was the centre of their commercial world, running out threads of influence to the farthest corners of
Moresco dealt in merchandise and miners' supplies at a profit that made men swear as they continued to buy. Moresco grubstaked prospectors, and outfitted miners for the working of prospect holes, for a lion's share of the findings. To do him justice, if there were no findings he was not heard to complain. Moresco had always the cash in hand for the backing of new enterprises, for a consideration. In short, Moresco was the burning glass that focused at Maverick whatever of bustle and trade was left in the depleted hills.
What the people perceived chiefly was, that as the country grew poorer Moresco waxed richer, and they grumbled accordingly. But the real sore spot in Maverick was his relation to the Campoodie.
It was said, and believed, that Moresco dealt brotherly by the Piutes. He gave them plain terms, forbore to haggle, preferred them for small employments, warmed them at his fire, gave them good-morrow and good-night. The fact was, Moresco had the instincts of a patriarch. To outwit Maverick was business, to despoil the Gentile might be religion; but the hapless, feckless people who dwelt gingerly beside them were his dependents, his beneficiaries,—in a word, his children. In reality they cost him very little. He was amused, he was diverted, he expanded with paternal graciousness. For their part, the Indians revered him, and Choyita was envied of the women to have borne him a son.
Not that Moresco admitted anything of the kind, but there are no secrets in a Campoodie. Choyita left the child behind when she went to clean and mend for Moresco. What was she or her son that her lord should be mindful of them? Once, when the child was about a year old, and she sat with the Mahalas by the sun-warmed wall, watching the daily pageant of white life as it passed through the streets of Maverick, Moresco called her into the store, and gave her a pair of shoes for the child, and red calico for a frock. Thereafter Choyita walked proudly. To her mind the child was acknowledged, and so it was received in the Campoodie. Happy was she among women, though her son should be called the Coyote.
Among Piutes, Coyote as a name to be called by is a matter for laughter or killing, as the case may be. For the coyote, though evilly bespoken, is of all beasts the most gullible; the butt, the cat's-paw, the Simple Simon, of four-footed things,—the Jack Dullard of Piute folk lore. So from the time he stumbled witlessly about the Campoodie on his fat, bowed legs, Choyita's son was the Little Coyote; and the time is past when a man may win a new name for himself,—long past with the time when there were deeds worth naming. The Little Coyote he remained when he was come to his full size, which was something short of the stature of a man.
By that time, Choyita, who had lost her prettiness and grown fat, had gone to keep house for a miner down Panniment way, and Moresco had married a wife, who bore him only daughters, and spent much of her time and most of his money in San Francisco. By that time, too, the Coyote knew whose son he was. It came to him as a revelation, about the time his slow wit perceived that the other children mocked him for his tainted blood.
"Nana," he asked, when the savory smell of the cooking pots drew the children in from their long day's playing,—"Nana, whose son am I?"
"Moresco's," she answered, and there fell a long silence between them. If she had said the alpenglow had fathered him, he would not have been more amazed. It lay all about them now, the diurnal benediction of high altitudes, the transfiguration of the rifted hills, and the boy at the heart of it
"Moresco, Moresco," he repeated softly, under his breath. He did not call him "father," and he told no man, but he never forgot.
When the Little Coyote was, as nearly as he could guess, about seventeen, he killed his first big game. It was a deer, shot at the time of pinons, when all the tribe went up to the annual harvest. The Coyote made next to nothing of it, for he had the good manners of his tribe; but he put by the best cut, wrapped in fern leaves, and the next day walked the eleven miles to Maverick that he might bring it to Moresco. He stood at the door of the Bed Rock Emporium until the merchant noticed him.
"Vell, Kyode, vat you wandt?" said Moresco."
"That you should have this," said the Coyote, and then he went away.
A few days later the merchant called him into the store, and gave him a box of sardines and two tins of corn. Nobody understood the etiquette of present-giving better than Moresco.
After that, when it began to be observed there was a kindliness between the Hebrew and the Coyote, people crooked one finger to the curve of an aquiline nose and winked slyly.
Although Maverick could not deny Moresco's ultimate winnings in the financial game, it permitted itself the luxury of questioning the several moves by which he achieved them. Never, in the opinion of Maverick, had he behaved more foolishly than in the matter of Jean Rieske's sheep. Jean Rieske was a sheep-owner in a small way, shepherding his own flock in the windy passes of the hills, made his exclusive pasture by the strip of barrenness that encompassed them. Jean Rieske had been several other things in a small way, and had thoughts other than belong properly to sheep-herding. He collected bits of ledges and outcrops, and carried them to Maverick to be assayed, until at last he conceived that he had made a "strike." Forthwith he would be a miner.
Making a mine out of a prospect hole is an expensive business, but if Moresco was willing to risk the money, Jean Rieske would risk his sheep. He worked at it ten months, and at the end of that time he discovered that he had no mine and no flock. So he went a-shepherding again, and to the same flock, but as a hireling, not an owner,—at which he considered himself aggrieved, and was comforted with strong waters. At the end of other ten months Moresco discharged him, and gave his place to the Little Coyote.
Whatever Jean Rieske swore and Maverick prophesied, the Coyote proved himself born for it. He knew the hills; he scented pasture from afar; he had an instinct for short cuts like a homing pigeon; he was weather-wise as—an Indian. The flock prospered. The Little Coyote was happy: he did a man's work, and he served Moresco. Two or three times in a year he came in to replenish his stores and to make report. He stood at the door of the store, grave and still, until Moresco came out and spoke to him: "Vell, vat you wandt, Kyode?" The shepherd gave the tale of his flock in straight-spoken words and few, with long pauses. When he had quite done, Moresco would say, with his hand withdrawn from his left breast pocket, "Take a cigar, Kyode." Then he would light his own, and they smoked together, the man and his son, for a sign of good understanding, and went each his own way.
The flock increased and became notable. Moresco trusted his shepherd. It was a responsible employment, and there were men in Maverick who coveted it. Persons who felt the situation to be indefensible probed it a little, gingerly. Why should the likes of that job fall to a Piute, when there
Three, four, five years the Little Coyote worked the flock from Keynot across the summit to Rose Springs, and in all the foodful hollows that lie between. He saw little of men, and missed them not at all. If in the wickiups beyond Maverick there were young breasts and bright, desirous eyes, he took no thought of them: he thought only of Moresco and the flock, how he might prosper it. All the slow heat of his being burned in a passion of service for the man who treated him as if he were white. He ran at the head of his flock; he lay down with it by night; he carried the lambs in his bosom. He lived as simply as one of his own sheep, and looked a young god, walking clear on the skyline with the nimble flock, or coming up out of streams on summer mornings, with the sun shining on his fine gold-colored limbs. And oh, but he was a silent one, was the Little Coyote. He had no pipes to play, nor any song; but at times, as he walked in the full tide of the spring, near naked and unashamed, throwing up the tall stalk of some hillside flower and catching it, his lips moved in the minor croon of his people, the " he-na, ah-na, ha-na," that is the burden of their songs,—an old word of a forgotten tongue, never to be laid aside. It seemed as if the morning prime of earth persisted in him with that word.
By this time the flock had trebled, and the Coyote, going down to make report, so far forgot his Indian training as to admit his pride.
"Id is too much for you, Kyode," said Moresco. "I vill ged Chopo to helb you."
"Chopo is a fool," said the Coyote. "I would rather have another dog."
"Two dogs, if you like," returned Moresco.
The Coyote considered. "No," he said, "one, if I may choose him."
So Moresco's shepherd had one of the famous dogs of Del Mar, and Maverick outdid itself guessing the price Moresco paid for it. Maverick had other things to talk about before the season was over, for that was the winter of the "great snow." Snows came occasionally to Maverick, in the wake of storms fleeting over from ridge to crest. They whitened the hills, crusted the streams, and snuggled away into the roots of the pines by the bare rock gullies. They came in a swirl of wind sometimes, that packed them deep in the canons, and left the high places bare to days of twinkling cold, but afforded nothing by way of contrast to the great snow. For two days the sky lowered and brooded and the valleys filled and filled with a white murk, dry, and warmer than should be for the time of year. The moon of nights showed sickly white and cast no shadow.
The Little Coyote smelled snow in the air, and began to move the flock toward the Marionette. The Marionette was the hole in the ground that Jean Rieske hoped would turn out a mine. It was a deep, wide gouge in the face of the hill, at the head of a steep gully. The Coyote had built corrals in the gully, and used it at lambing time. The Indian's instinct proved him right. The third morning snow fell, wet and clogging. It increased with the day, and grew colder. The man and the dogs put all their skill to the proof, but the sheep huddled and stumbled. They were half a day's journey from the mine in the best of weather, and every hour the storm thickened. Crossing Cedar Flat, two miners, going hastily down from a far, solitary mine, gave the Coyote a friendly hail.
"Leave the sheep to the dogs, and get out of this!" they cried. "It's going to be a hell of a storm."
But that the cold had stiffened his face into immobility the Coyote would
He saw what his work was to be, and settled to it. He lightened the camp burro of his pack and let him go. The little beast trudged doggedly beside him, until presently they came to a wind-tilted cedar in the lee of a hill. The burro considered; he looked at the shepherd, and put his nose to the thick, sodden snow; he backed under the cedar and dropped his head. It was a hard shift, but he would see what came of it. The shepherd spoke to his dogs: they lagged and whimpered, but they heard his voice. He who had been chary of words grew voluble: he shouted, he urged, he adjured them, he wrestled with them in the white silence of the snow. The Piute had none of the white man's gift for expedients to save himself and as many of the sheep as he could. The sheep were Moresco's, and Moresco trusted him: he must bring them all in. If one halted and stumbled, the Coyote carried it until it was warmed and rested a little. They floundered in a drift, and he lifted them out upon his shoulders, the dogs whining a confession of helplessness. It grew dark, and the snow still fell, sharp, and fine, and most bitter cold. The wind came up and snatched his breath from him; but there was no longer any need for crying out,— the dogs understood. They had passed the first revolt of physical terror, and remembered their obligations; their spirits touched the man's spirit and grappled with their work. They were no longer dogs, but heroes. Moreover, they knew now where they went, and helped him with their finer sense. Happen what would to the man and the dogs, the sheep would all come in.
Late, late they found the ravine of the Marionette. The Little Coyote had lost all sense of time and feeling. He drowsed upon his feet, but moved steadily about the flock. The dogs bayed, and he heard the sharper clang of the bells given back by the rocks as the sheep began to pour into the cavern of the mine. His head floated in space; he was warm and comforted, and he knew what these things might mean. His feet slipped in the yielding drifts.
"Moresco! Moresco!" he cried, as a man might call, in extremity, on God.
The morning broke steely blue and cold upon a white wonder. At Maverick, people looked up from their path-shoveling to ask if the men from the mines had all come in, and what was to be done for those who had not. Two miners, arriving late the previous day, had told redoubtable tales of the trail and the wind and the snow. Incidentally, they mentioned having seen the Little Coyote. By ten o'clock it was known in all the saloons that Moresco was offering inducements for men to go to the rescue of his shepherd. Opinion gained ground that the Coyote was a fool for not looking out for himself better, and that cold never hurt a Piute anyway, and if he was at the Marionette he was all right.
"Yes," said a man nursing a frozen foot,—"yes, if he got in."
Within an hour there were three found willing to start,—Salty Bill, an Indian called Jim, and one Duncan, a miner from Panniment way,—and who else but Moresco! People said it was ridiculous; Moresco was short and fat, and turned fifty. The barkeeper at the Old Corner wanted to know if anybody thought Moresco would trust the counting of his sheep to any other.
It is fifteen miles from Maverick to the Marionette, and all uphill. By the time they came to the turn of the trail they were knee-deep in the snow. It was soft and shifty, and balled underfoot. They kept as much as possible to the high places; this avoided the drifts, but made more climbing. Crossing the flats they floundered hip-deep, wide of the trail. Perspiration rolled from their foreheads and froze upon their beards. Their bodies were warm
"Give up," cried Salty Bill,—"give up, Moresco! We'll never make it. Such a peck of trouble about a Piute and a parcel of sheep. Better for the Coyote to freeze than us four. Give up, I say."
"Ah yes, der Kyode," said Moresco, dazed and feebly,—"der Liddle Kyode. He vas my son," and he burrowed on through the snow.
The men stared, but they followed. Salty Bill kept the lead; he was in a ferment to have the thing over with, that he might go home and tell his wife.
Six hours out, quite spent, and drunk with fatigue, they came to the ravine of the Marionette. They heard the sheep bleat and the dogs yelp, trailing frozen-footed across the snow. At the foot of the gully a white heap lay, covered but well defined, spread out in the symbol of a sacrifice that the Hebrew repudiated and the Indian had never known. Moresco brushed the snow from it with his hands, and, as he stooped above it, tears fell upon a face grown white in death and strangely like his own. It was the Little Coyote.
| The Little Coyote | |