EAGLE-HEART

By DAVID RINSER

WITH deep curiosity Henry Begay surveyed the Hopi village. He had heard of the Hopis, whom the Americans would have found it difficult to distinguish from his own Indian tribe, the Navahos. Nevertheless he regarded them as utterly different. It was almost a coincidence that they had brownish-red skin and dark hair. Their language was foreign, as queer as their habit of living in little communities and working on farms for a living. He did not understand them. He did not even like them. They were conservative, rather self-absorbed, people. He could not imagine any of them in his own free and wonderful life, riding after the horses and cattle on the red. Arizona prairie. He wondered if they had ever been on top of a mountain, and seen the deep red cracks of canyons stretching for a hundred miles, or heard the cool whisper of pines above the flower-covered mountainside.

He asked his father, riding along by his side. In a few hundred yards they would be inside the village itself, and he still wanted to know more about these people before he met them.

He asked him about the mountains.

" Oh, yes," his father said, in his soft Navaho, " they climb mountains." He pointed with his chin to the San Francisco peaks, magnificent and blue, to the south-east. " Over there," he said, " they have a sacred mountain."

" But they have no horses. Do they walk all that way?" " They run. In one day they can run there."

John Begay was silent. This was a new aspect of the Hopi life. He realised that running sixty miles in a day made them at least strong. " They should have horses," he said, " but that is a fine thing to do, to run that way."

" They are strong," said his father. " Also they grow very excellent peaches."

It was the peaches they had come for, and anything else they could get. His father came every year to Moenkopi to trade. For the first time he had allowed John Begay to come with him.

As they rode into the village John Begay was prepared to accept the Hopis. This running had undoubtedly impressed him. But almost the first thing he saw made his blood run suddenly cold. An eagle, leashed and unkempt, sat awkwardly on one of the stone walls. John Begay's secret name was Eagle Heart, and he had always loved to see eagles soaring and drifting in the deep blue Arizona sky. He was made ill by this captivity. Nevertheless, to please his father, he made no remark. He went to the house of his father's special friend, and sat there dutifully, listening to their casual laughter and half-understood jokes. For the most part his father used Hopi, or American ; Navaho was too hard for the Hopis to learn. He heard them talking about the season, and the rodeo at Flagstaff. And all the time he was worrying about the eagle.

Supposing he was chained here, he thought. Supposing he was not even chained, but just had to spend the rest of his time in this little village of houses. Just outside the door he could see the dramatic green of the Hopi farms. It was cheerful, pleasant, after the level dryness of the road from Red Lake. But if he had to stay here, never again ride his horse, how would he feel? And it must be worse for the eagle, oh, far worse. There was a long pause in the conversation, and he dared to speak to his father.

" That eagle," he said, " I do not understand what it is doing there on the wall."

His father hushed him. " It is something sacred," he said vaguely. " They keep it for a ceremony."

Then they would kill it. He was sure of that. And suppos- ing this was one of the eagles he had seen near his home, dipping and sailing above the magnificent bulk of Navaho Mountain. He had seen one himself, well above the top of the mountain. And yet on the top one could already see far beyond the Navaho reservation, which stretched a hundred and fifty miles to the southwards. The eagle must have seen further than that, for he was higher, and his eyes were clearer. Suppos- ing it was this eagle which now sat chained, his view blocked by little stone houses? Unkempt, forlorn, to be killed by these stolid Hopis who wore such outlandish clothes. Quietly he crept out of the house. It was evening, and there was no one about. He went and stood idly near the eagle, waiting with incredible patience for dusk. He was sure the eagle would strike at him if he came near. His only hope was that it would recognise a brother. But he had to go near. His name com- pelled him.

At last it was (lark. He walked forward, talking softly to the eagle in Navaho. " I am Eagle-Heart," he said. " I too have been on the high mountains. These people go to mountains, but they do not understand us. They live in villages, and are not at all free. I have come, I who am Eagle-Heart, because I am to free you."

The eagle looked at him with its fierce slits of eyes. John Begay was frightened, but still he advanced.

" I am Eagle-Heart," he repeated softly. " I am come to free you."

At last he was within striking range, and the eagle had not moved. He held out a hand tentatively, and clutched the strong leather leash. The eagle sat silently. Its eyes were half closed. It made no sign. He took out his knife and cut the leash, and then jumped backwards and into the shadows. The eagle did not move, and slowly John Begay crept away, too far away to be discovered. He came into the house where they were staying, quietly. He was disconcerted.

" I was up near the mesa," he said to his father. " The grazing is good there."

Next morning, at dawn, they woke up, and walked out into the village. The sun was rising, a curiously misshapen mass, far away beyond the sagebrush. In the distance someone was singing a dawn-song. He went, casually walking, to see where the eagle had been. He wondered if it had been dead the night before, or crushed in spirit, or if he had not cut the leash through properly. Suddenly one of the Hopis cried out in alarm, and his heart jumped with happiness. There was a terrific rush of wings in the dawn silence, the sight of a bird soaring just above one of the stone houses and then sweeping higher and higher. It set off north, upwards toward Navaho Mountain. A strip of leather dangled down.

John Begay found his father at his side and turned to him an expressionless face. " They have let the eagle go," he said. "I do not understand the Hopis. They have curious ideas. I am glad they have let him go, all the same." Luxuriously, he ate a peach.