The Basket Woman: A Book of Indian Tales for Children

In the dusk the mounted Indians rode down by the Creek of Tres Pinos. When they came by the ruined hut where his father had lived, Joe's heart grew hot again, and when he passed the arrow-maker's, he remembered his vow. Suddenly he wheeled his pony in the trail, hardly knowing what he would do. The man next to him laid an arrow across his bow and pointed it at the boy's breast.

"Coward," he whispered, but an older Indian laid his hand on the man's arm.

"Save your arrows," he said. Then the ponies swept forward in the charge, but Joe knew in an instant how it would be with him. He would be called false and a coward, killed for it, driven from the tribe, but he would not fight against his sworn brother. He would keep his vow.

A sudden rain of arrows flew from the advancing Paiutes; Joe fumbled his and dropped it on the ground. He was wondering if one of the many aimed would find his brother. Bullets answered the arrow flight. He saw the braves pitch forward, and heard the scream of wounded ponies.

He hoped he would be shot; he would not have minded that; it would be better than being called a coward. And then it occurred to him, if Walter and his father came out and found him when the fight was done, they would think that he had broken his word. The Paiutes began to seek cover, but Joe drove out wildly from them, and rode back in the friendly dark, and past the ruined campoodie, to the black rocks. There he crept into the cave which only he and Walter knew, and lay on his face and cried, for though he was an Indian he was only a boy, and he had seen his first fight. He was sick with the thought of his vow. He lay in the black rocks all the night and the day, and watched the cattlemen and the soldiers ranging all that county for the stragglers of his people, and guessed that the Paiutes had made the last stand. Then in the second night he began to work back by secret paths to the mountain camp. It never occurred to him not to go. He had the courage to meet what waited for him there, but he had not the heart to go to it in the full light of day. He came in by his mother's place, and she spat upon him, for she had heard how he had carried himself in the fight.

"No son of mine," said she.

He went by the women and children and heard their jeers. His heart was very sick. He went apart and sat down and waited what the men would say. There were few of them left about the dying fire. They had washed off their war paint, and their bows were broken. When they spoke at last, it was with mocking and sad scorn.

"We have enough of killing," said the one called Scar-Face. "Let him have a woman's dress and stay to mend the fire."

So it was done in the presence of all the camp; and because he was a boy, and because he was an Indian, he said nothing of his vow, nor opened his mouth in his defense, though his heart quaked and his knees shook. He had the courage to wear the badge of being afraid all his life. They brought him a woman's dress, though they were all too sad for much laughter, and in the morning he set to bringing the wood for the fire.

Afterward there was a treaty made between the Paiutes and the settlers, and the remnant went back to the campoodie of Tres Pinos, and Joe learned how Walter had been sent out of the valley in the beginning of the war, but that did not make any difference about the woman's dress. He and Walter never met again. He continued to go about in dresses, though in time he was allowed to do a man's work, and his knowledge of English helped to restore a friendly footing with the cattlemen. The vall