Sing Down the Moon by Scott O’Dell Read Free Book Online Page B

mother's sheep, saw them from the high mesa. He left his flock and ran across the mesa and down the trail, never stopping.
    He fell in front of his mother's hogan and lay there like a stone until someone threw a gourd of water in his face. By that time all the people in the village stood waiting for him to speak. He jumped to his feet and pointed into the south.
    "The white men come," he cried. "The sun glints on their knives. They are near."
    "How many?" Tall Boy said.
    "Many," cried Little Beaver, "too many."
    My father said, "We will take our goods and go into the high country. We will return when they are gone."
    "We will go," said other men.
    But Tall Boy held up his hand and shouted, facing the elder Indians, "If we flee they will follow. If we flee, our goods will remain to be captured. It is better to stay and fight the Long Knives."
    "It is not wise to fight," my father said.
    "No, it is not," my uncle said, and all the older men repeated what he said.
    It was decided then that we should go. But Tall Boy still would not yield. He called to five of the
young men to join him in the fight. They went and stood by him.
    "We will need you," my father said to the six young men, "We will have to go into high country. Your strength will help us there."
    Tall Boy was unbending. My father looked at him, at his arm held helplessly at his side.
    "How is it, Tall Boy, that you will fight?" he said. "You cannot string a bow or send a lance. Tell me, I am listening."
    I watched Tall Boy's face darken.
    "If you stay and cannot fight, what will happen?" my father asked him. "You will be killed. Others will be killed."
    Tall Boy said nothing. It hurt me to watch his face as he listened to words that he knew were true. I left them talking and went down to the river. When I came back Tall Boy had gathered his band of warriors and gone.
    We began to pack at once. Each family took what it could carry. There were five horses in the village and they were driven up the mesa trail and left there. The sheep and goats were driven a league away into a secret canyon where they could graze. My flock, my thirty sheep, went too, with the rest. I would have gone with them if I had not thought
that in a few days the Long Knives would leave and we could come back to our village. I would never have abandoned them.
    When the sun was high we filed out of the village and followed the river north, walking through the shallow water. At dusk we reached the trail that led upward to the south mesa. Before we went up the trail the jars were filled with water. We took enough to last us for a week and five sheep to slaughter. The cornmeal we carried would last that long. By that time the soldiers would be gone.
    The soldiers could not follow our path from the village because the flowing water covered our footsteps as fast as they were made. But when we moved out of the river our steps showed clear in the sand. After we were all on the trail some of the men broke branches from a tree and went back and swept away the marks we had left. There was no sign for the soldiers to see. They could not tell whether we had gone up the river or down.
    The trail was narrow and steep. It was mostly slabs of stone which we scrambled over, lifting ourselves from one to the other. We crawled as much as we walked. In places the sheep had to be carried and two of them slipped and fell into a ravine. The trail upward was less than half a mile long, but night was falling before we reached the end.
    We made camp on the rim of the mesa, among rocks and stunted piñón trees. We did not think that the soldiers would come until morning, but we lighted no fires and ate a cold supper of corncakes. The moon rose and in a short time shone down into the canyon. It showed the river winding toward the south, past our peach orchards and corrals and hogans. Where the tall cliffs ended, where the river wound out of the canyon into the flatlands, the moon shone on white tents and tethered