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THE TRAIL BOOK

BY

MARY AUSTIN

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY MILO WINTER

1918








[Illustration: "'Arr-rr-ump!' I said"]



TO MARY, MY NIECE

IN THE HOPE THAT SHE MAY FIND THROUGH THE TRAILS OF HER OWN COUNTRY THE
ROAD TO WONDERLAND CONTENTS




   I  HOW OLIVER AND DORCAS JANE FOUND THE TRAIL

  II  WHAT THE BUFFALO CHIEF TOLD

 III  HOW THE MASTODON HAPPENED FIRST TO BELONG TO A MAN, AS TOLD BY
      ARRUMPA

  IV  THE SECOND PART OF THE MASTODON STORY, CONCERNING THE TRAIL TO THE
      SEA AND THE TALKING STICK OF TAKU-WAKIN

   V  HOW HOWKAWANDA AND FRIEND-AT-THE-BACK FOUND THE TRAIL TO THE BUFFALO
      COUNTRY; TOLD BY THE COYOTE

  VI  DORCAS JANE HEARS HOW THE CORN CAME TO THE VALLEY OF THE MISSI-SIPPU;
      TOLD BY THE CORN WOMAN

 VII  A TELLING OF THE SALT TRAIL, OF TSE-TSE-YOTE AND THE DELIGHT-MAKERS;
      TOLD BY MOKE-ICHA

VIII  YOUNG-MAN-WHO-NEVER-TURNS-BACK: A TELLING OF THE TALLEGEWI, BY ONE
      OF THEM

  IX  HOW THE LENNI-LENAPE CAME FROM SHINAKI AND THE TALLEGEWI FOUGHT THEM:
      THE SECOND PART OF THE MOUND-BUILDER'S STORY

   X  THE MAKING OF A SHAMAN: A TELLING OF THE IROQUOIS TRAIL, BY THE
      ONONDAGA

  XI  THE PEARLS OF COFACHIQUE: HOW LUCAS DE AYLLON CAME TO LOOK FOR THEM
      AND WHAT THE CACICA FAR-LOOKING DID TO HIM; TOLD BY THE PELICAN.

 XII  HOW THE IRON SHIRTS CAME TO TUSCALOOSA: A TELLING OF THE TRIBUTE
      ROAD BY THE LADY OF COFACHIQUE.

XIII  HOW THE IRON SHIRTS CAME LOOKING FOR THE SEVEN CITIES OF CIBOLA;
      TOLD BY THE ROAD-RUNNER.

 XIV  HOW THE MAN OF TWO HEARTS KEPT THE SECRET OF THE HOLY PLACES; TOLD
      BY THE CONDOR.

  XV  HOW THE MEDICINE OF THE ARROWS WAS BROKEN AT REPUBLICAN RIVER; TOLD
      BY THE CHIEF OFFICER OF THE DOG SOLDIERS


APPENDIX

GLOSSARY




ILLUSTRATIONS


"'ARR-RR-UMP!' I SAID"

THE BUFFALO CHIEF

THE MASTODON

TAKU AND ARRUMPA

THE TRAIL TO THE SEA

THE TRAIL TO THE BUFFALO COUNTRY

SHOT DOWNWARD TO THE LEDGE WHERE HOWKAWANDA AND YOUNGER BROTHER HUGGED
THEMSELVES (in color)

THE CORN WOMEN

SIGN OF THE SUN AND THE FOUR QUARTERS

MOKE-ICHA

TSE-TSE-YOTE AND MOKE-ICHA (in Color)

TSE-TSE-YOTE AND MOKE-ICHA

THE MOUND-BUILDERS

THE IROQUOIS TRAIL

THE GOLD-SEEKERS

SHE COULD SEE THE THOUGHTS OF A MAN WHILE THEY WERE STILL IN HIS HEART
(in Color)

THE CACICA FAR-LOOKING MEETS THE IRON SHIRTS

THE DESERT

THE CONDOR THAT HAS HIS NEST ON EL MORRO

THE DOG SOLDIERS

LINE ART OF BUFFALO

THE TRAIL BOOK




I

HOW OLIVER AND DORCAS JANE FOUND THE TRAIL


From the time that he had first found, himself alone with them, Oliver
had felt sure that the animals could come alive again if they wished.
That was one blowy afternoon about a week after his father had been made
night engineer and nobody had come into the Museum for several hours.

Oliver had been sitting for some time in front of the Buffalo case,
wondering what might be at the other end of the trail. The cows that
stood midway in it had such a _going_ look. He was sure it must lead,
past the hummock where the old bull flourished his tail, to one of those
places where he had always wished to be. All at once, as the boy sat
there thinking about it, the glass case disappeared and the trail shot
out like a dark snake over a great stretch of rolling, grass-covered
prairie.

He could see the tops of the grasses stirring like the hair on the old
Buffalo's coat, and the ripple of water on the beaver pool which was
just opposite and yet somehow only to be reached after long travel
through the Buffalo Country. The wind moved on the grass, on the surface
of the water and the young leaves of the alders, and over all the
animals came the start and stir of life.

And then the slow, shuffling steps of the Museum attendant startled it
all into stillness again.

The attendant spoke to Oliver as he passed, for even a small boy is
worth talking to when you have been all day in a Museum where nothing is
new to you and nobody comes.

"You want to look out, son," said the attendant, who really liked the
boy and hadn't a notion what sort of ideas he was putting into Oliver's
head. "If you ain't careful, some of them things will come downstairs
some night and go off with ye."

And why should MacShea have said that if he hadn't known for certain
that the animals _did_ come alive at night? That was the way Oliver put
it when he was trying to describe this extraordinary experience to
his sister.

Dorcas Jane, who was eleven and a half and not at all imaginative, eyed
him suspiciously. Oliver had such a way of stating things that were not
at all believable, in a way that made them seem the likeliest things in
the world. He was even capable of acting for days as if things were so,
which you knew from the beginning were only the most delightful of
make-believes. Life on this basis was immensely more exciting, but then
you never knew whether or not he might be what some of his boy friends
called "stringing you," so when Oliver began to hint darkly at his
belief that the stuffed animals in the Mammal room of the Museum came
alive at night and had larks of their own, Dorcas Jane offered the most
noncommittal objection that occurred to her.

"They couldn't," she said; "the night watchman wouldn't let them." There
were watchmen, she knew, who went the rounds of every floor.

But, insisted Oliver, why should they have watchmen at all, if not to
prevent people from breaking in and disturbing the animals when they
were busy with affairs of their own? He meant to stay up there himself
some night and see what it was all about; and as he went on to explain
how it would be possible to slip up the great stair while the watchmen
were at the far end of the long hall, and of the places one could hide
if the watchman came along when he wasn't wanted, he said "we" and "us."
For, of course, he meant to take Dorcas Jane with him. Where would be
the fun of such an adventure if you had it alone? And besides, Oliver
had discovered that it was not at all difficult to scare himself with the
things he had merely imagined. There were times when Dorcas Jane's frank
disbelief was a great comfort to him. Still, he wasn't the sort of boy
to be scared before anything has really happened, so when Dorcas Jane
suggested that they didn't know what the animals might do to any one who
went among them uninvited, he threw it off stoutly.

"Pshaw! They can't do anything to us! They're stuffed, Silly!"

And to Dorcas Jane, who was by this time completely under the spell of
the adventure, it seemed quite likely that the animals should be stuffed
so that they couldn't hurt you, and yet not stuffed so much that they
couldn't come alive again.

It was all of a week before they could begin. There is a kind of feeling
you have to have about an adventure without which the affair doesn't
come off properly. Anybody who has been much by himself in the woods has
had it; or sometime, when you are all alone in the house, all at once
there comes a kind of pricking of your skin and a tightness in your
chest, not at all unpleasant, and a kind of feeling that the furniture
has its eye on you, or that some one behind your shoulder is about to
speak, and immediately after that something happens. Or you feel sure it
would have happened if somebody hadn't interrupted.

Dorcas Jane _never_ had feelings like that. But about a week after
