THE DESERT CLANS

The Moon Maid by Edgar Rice Burroughs, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. THE DESERT CLANS

THE DESERT CLANS

The January sun beat hotly down upon me as I reined Red Lightning in upon the summit of a barren hill and looked down upon the rich land of plenty that stretched away below me as far as the eye could see toward the mighty sea that lay a day’s ride, perhaps, to the westward—the sea that none of us had ever looked upon—the sea that had become as fabulous as a legend of the ancients during the almost four hundred years since the Moon Men had swept down upon us and overwhelmed the Earth in their mad and bloody carnival of revolution.

In the near distance the green of the orange groves mocked us from below, and great patches that were groves of leafless nut trees, and there were sandy patches toward the south that were vineyards waiting for the hot suns of April and May before they, too, broke into riotous, tantalizing green. And from this garden spot of plenty a curling trail wound up the mountainside to the very level where we sat gazing fiercely down upon this last stronghold of our foes. When the ancients built that trail it must have been wide and beautiful indeed, but in the centuries that have elapsed man and the elements have sadly defaced it. The rains have washed it away in places and the Kalkars have made great gashes in it to deter us, their enemies, from invading their sole remaining lands and driving them into the sea; and upon their side of the gashes they have built forts where they keep warriors always. And well for them that they do. It is so upon every pass that leads down into their country.

Since fell my great ancestor, Julian 9th, in the year 2122, at the end of the first uprising against the Kalkars, we have been driving them slowly back across the world. That was over three hundred years ago. For a hundred years they have held us here, a day’s ride from the ocean. Just how far it is we do not know; but in 2408 my grandfather, Julian 18th, rode alone almost to the sea. He had won back almost to safety when he was discovered and pursued almost to the tents of his people. There was a battle, and the Kalkars who had dared invade our country were destroyed, but Julian 18th died of his wounds without being able to tell more than that a wondrous rich country lay between us and the sea, which was not more than a day’s ride distant. A day’s ride, for us, might be anything under a hundred miles.

We are desert people. Our herds range a vast territory where feed is scarce that we may be always near the goal that our ancestors set for us three centuries ago—the shore of the western sea into which it is our destiny to drive the remnants of our former oppressors. In the forests and mountains of Arizona there is rich pasture, but it is far from the land of the Kalkars where the last of the tribe of Or-tis make their last stand, and so we prefer to live in the desert near our foes, driving our herds great distances to pasture when the need arises, rather than to settle down in a comparative land of plenty, resigning the age-old struggle, the ancient feud between the house of Julian and the house of Or-tis.

A light breeze moves the black mane of the bright bay stallion beneath me. It moves my own black mane where it falls loose below the buckskin thong that encircles my head and keeps it from my eyes. It moves the dangling ends of the Great Chief’s blanket where it is strapped behind my saddle. On the twelfth day of the eighth month of the year just gone this Great Chief’s blanket covered the shoulders of my father, Julian 19th, from the burning rays of the summer’s desert sun. I was twenty on that day and on that day my father fell before the lance of an Or-tis in the Great Feud and I became The Chief of Chiefs.

Surrounding me today, as I sit looking down upon the land of my enemies, are fifty of the fierce chieftains of the hundred clans that swear allegiance to the house of Julian. They are bronzed and, for the most part, beardless men. The insignias of their clans are painted in various colors upon their foreheads, their cheeks, their breasts. Ochre, they use and blue and white and scarlet. Feathers rise from the head bands that confine their hair—the feathers of the vulture, the hawk and the eagle. I, Julian 20th, wear a single feather. It is from a red-tailed hawk—the clan-sign of my family.

We are all garbed similarly. Let me describe The Wolf, and in his portrait you will see a composite of us all. He is a sinewy, well built man of fifty, with piercing, gray-blue eyes beneath straight brows. His head is well-shaped, denoting great intelligence. His features are strong and powerful and of a certain fierce cast that might well strike terror to a foeman’s heart—and does, if the Kalkar scalps that fringe his ceremonial blanket stand for aught. His breeches, wide below the hips and skin tight from above the knees down are of the skin of the buck deer. His soft boots, tied tight about the calf of each leg, are also of buck. Above the waist he wears a sleeveless vest of calfskin tanned with the hair on. The Wolf’s is of fawn and white. Sometimes these vests are ornamented with bits of colored stone or metal sewn to the hide in various manners of design. From The Wolf’s headband, just above the right ear, depends the tail of a timber-wolf—the clan-sign of his family.

An oval shield, upon which is painted the head of a wolf, hangs about this chief’s neck, covering his back from nape to kidneys. It is a stout, light shield—a hard wood frame covered with bull hide. Around its periphery have been fastened the tails of wolves. In such matters each man, with the assistance of his women folk, gives rein to his fancy in the matter of ornamentation. Clan-signs and chief-signs, however, are sacred. The use of one to which he is not entitled might spell death for any man. I say might, because we have no inflexible laws. We have few laws. The Kalkars were forever making laws, so we hate them. We judge each case upon its own merits, and we pay more attention to what a man intended doing than what he did.

The Wolf is armed, as are the rest of us, with a light lance about eight feet in length, a knife and a straight, two-edged sword. A short, stout bow is slung beneath his right stirrup leather and a quiver of arrows is at his saddle bow.

The blades of his sword and his knife and the metal of his lance tip come from a far place called Kolrado and are made by a tribe that is famous because of the hardness and the temper of the metal of its blades. The Utaws bring us metal, also, but theirs is inferior and we use it only for the shoes that protect our horses’ feet from the cutting sands and the rocks of our hard and barren country.

The Kolrados travel many days to reach us, coming once in two years. They pass, unmolested, through the lands of many tribes because they bring what none might otherwise have and what we need in our never-ending crusade against the Kalkars. That is the only thread that holds together the scattered clans and tribes that spread east and north and south beyond the ken of man. All are animated by the same purpose—to drive the last of the Kalkars into the sea.

From the Kolrados we get meager news of clans beyond them toward the rising sun. Far, far to the east, they say, so far that in a lifetime no man might reach it, lies another great sea, and that there, as here upon the world’s western edge, a few Kalkars are making their last stand. All the rest of the world has been won back by the people of our own blood—by Americans.

We are always glad to see the Kolrados come, for they bring us news of other peoples, and we welcome the Utaws, too, though we are not a friendly people, killing all others who come among us, for fear, chiefly, that they may be spies sent by the Kalkars. It is handed down from father to son that this was not always so, and that once the people of the world went to and fro safely from place to place and that then all spoke the same language; but now it is different. The Kalkars brought hatred and suspicion among us, until now we trust only the members of our own clans and tribes.

The Kolrados, from coming often among us, we can understand, and they can understand us, by means of a few words and many signs, though when they speak their own language among themselves we cannot understand them, except for an occasional word that is like one of ours. They say that when the last of the Kalkars is driven from the world we must live at peace with one another, but I am afraid that that will never come to pass, for who would go through life without breaking a lance or dipping his sword point now and again into the blood of a stranger? Not The Wolf, I swear, nor no more The Red Hawk. By The Flag! I take more pleasure in meeting a stranger upon a lonely trail than in meeting a friend, for I cannot set my lance against a friend and feel the swish of the wind as Red Lightning bears me swiftly down upon the prey as I crouch in the saddle, nor thrill to the shock as we strike.

I am The Red Hawk. I am but twenty, yet the fierce chiefs of a hundred fierce clans bow to my will. I am a Julian—the twentieth Julian—and from this year, 2434, I can trace my line back five hundred and thirty-four years to Julian 1st, who was born in 1896. From father to son, by word of mouth, has been handed down to me the story of every Julian, and there is no blot upon the shield of one in all that long line, nor shall there be any blot upon the shield of Julian 20th. From my fifth year to my tenth I learned, word for word, as had my father before me, the deeds of my forebears, and to hate the Kalkars and the tribe of Or-tis. This, with riding, was my schooling. From ten to fifteen I learned to use lance and sword and knife, and on my sixteenth birthday I rode forth with the other men—a warrior.

As I sat there this day, looking down upon the land of the accursed Kalkars, my mind went back to the deeds of the 15th Julian, who had driven the Kalkars across the desert and over the edge of these mountains into the valley below just one hundred years before I was born, and I turned to The Wolf and pointed down toward the green groves and the distant hills and off beyond to where the mysterious ocean lay.

“For a hundred years they have held us here,” I said. “It is too long.”

“It is too long,” replied The Wolf.

“When the rains are over The Red Hawk leads his people into the land of plenty.”

The Rock raised his spear and shook it savagely toward the valley far below. The scalp-lock fastened just below its metal-shod tip trembled in the wind. “When the rains are over!” cried The Rock. His fierce eyes glowed with the fire of fanaticism.

“The green of the groves we will dye red with their blood,” cried The Rattlesnake.

“With our swords, not our mouths,” I said, and wheeled Red Lightning toward the east. The Coyote laughed and the others joined with him as we wound downward out of the hills toward the desert.

On the afternoon of the following day we came within sight of our tents where they were pitched beside the yellow flood of The River. Five miles before that we had seen a few puffs of smoke rise from the summit of a hill to the north of us. It told the camp that a body of horsemen was approaching from the west. It told us that our sentry was on duty and that doubtless all was well. At a signal my warriors formed themselves in two straight lines, crossing one another at their centers. A moment later another smoke signal arose informing the camp that we were friends and us that our signal had been rightly read.

Presently, in a wild charge, whooping and brandishing our spears, we charged down among the tents. Dogs, children and slaves scampered for safety, the dogs barking, the children and the slaves yelling and laughing. As we swung ourselves from our mounts before our tents, slaves rushed out to seize our bridle reins, the dogs leaped, growling, upon us in exuberant welcome, while the children fell upon their sires, their uncles or their brothers, demanding the news of the ride or a share in the spoils of conflict or chase. Then we went in to our women.

I had no wife, but there were my mother and my two sisters, and I found them awaiting me in the inner tent, seated upon a low couch that was covered, as was the floor, with the bright blankets that our slaves weave from the wool of sheep. I knelt and took my mother’s hand and kissed it and then I kissed her upon the lips and in the same fashion I saluted my sisters, the elder first. It is custom among us; but it is also our pleasure, for we both respect and love our women. Even if we did not, we should appear to, if only for the reason that the Kalkars do otherwise. They are brutes and swine. We do not permit our women a voice in the councils of the men, but none the less do they influence our councils from the seclusion of their inner tents. It is indeed an unusual mother among us who does not make her voice heard in the council ring, through her husband or her sons, and she does it through the love and respect in which they hold her and not by scolding and nagging. They are wonderful, our women. It is for them and The Flag that we have fought the foe across a world for three hundred years. It is for them that we shall go forth and drive him into the sea.

As the slaves prepared the evening meal I chatted with my mother and my sisters. My two brothers, The Vulture and Rain Cloud, lay also at my mother’s feet. The Vulture was eighteen, a splendid warrior, a true Julian. Rain Cloud was sixteen then, and I think the most beautiful creature I had ever seen. He had just become a warrior, but so sweet and lovable was his disposition that the taking of human life seemed a most incongruous calling for him, yet he was a Julian and there was no alternative. Everyone loved him and respected him too, even though he had never excelled in feats of arms for which he seemed to have no relish; but they respected him because they knew that he was brave and that he would fight as courageously as any of them, even though he might have no stomach for it. Personally, I considered Rain Cloud braver than I, for I knew that he would do well the thing he hated while I would be only doing well the thing I loved.

The Vulture resembled me in looks and the love of blood, so we left Rain Cloud at home to help guard the women and the children, which was no disgrace since it is a most honorable and sacred trust, and we went forth to the fighting when there was likely to be any, and when there wasn’t we went forth and searched for it. How often have I ridden the trails leading in across our vast frontiers longing for sight of a strange horseman against whom I might bend my lance! We asked no questions then when we had come close enough to see the clan-sign of the stranger and to know that he was of another tribe and likely he was as keen for the fray as we, otherwise he would have tried to avoid us. We each drew rein at a little distance and set his lance, and each called aloud his name, and then with a mighty oath each bore down upon the other, and then one rode away with a fresh scalp-lock, and a new horse to add to his herd, while the other remained to sustain the vulture and the coyote.

Two or three of our great, shaggy hounds came in and sprawled among us as we lay talking with mother and the two girls, Nallah and Neeta. Behind my mother and sisters squatted three slave girls, ready to do their bidding, for our women do no labor. They ride and walk and swim and keep their bodies strong and fit that they may bear mighty warriors, but labor is beneath them as it is beneath us. We hunt and fight and tend our own herds, for that is not menial, but all other labor the slaves perform. We found them here when we came. They have been here always—a stolid, dark skinned people, weavers of blankets and baskets, makers of pottery, tillers of the soil. We are kind to them and they are happy. The Kalkars, who preceded us, were not kind to them—it has been handed down to them from father to son for over a hundred years that the Kalkars were cruel to them and they hate their memory, yet, were we to be driven away by the Kalkars, these simple people would remain and serve anew their cruel masters, for they will never leave their soil. They have strange legends of a far time when great horses of iron raced across the desert dragging iron tents filled with people behind them, and they point to holes in the mountain sides through which these iron monsters made their way to the green valleys by the sea, and they tell of men who flew like birds and as swiftly, but of course we know that such things were never true and are but the stories that the old men and the women among them told to the children for their amusement. However, we like to listen to them.

I told my mother of my plans to move down into the valley of the Kalkars after the rains. She was silent some time before replying.

“Yes, of course,” she said; “you would be no Julian were you not to attempt it. At least twenty times before in a hundred years have our warriors gone down in force into the valley of the Kalkars and been driven back. I wish that you might have taken a wife and left a son to be Julian 21st before you set out upon this expedition from which you may not return. Think well of it, my son, before you set forth. A year or two will make no great difference. But you are The Great Chief and if you decide to go we can but wait here for your return and pray that all is well with you.”

“But you do not understand, Mother,” I replied. “I said that we are going to move down into the valley of the Kalkars after the rains. I did not say that we are coming back again. I did not say that you would remain here and wait for our return. You will accompany us. The tribe of Julian moves down into the valley of the Kalkars when the rains are over, and they take with them their women and their children and their tents and all their flocks and herds and every other possession that is movable, and—they do not return to live in the desert ever more.”

She did not reply, but only sat in thought. Presently a man-slave came to bid us warriors to the evening meal. The women and the children eat this meal within their tents, but the warriors gather around a great, circular table, called The Council Ring.

There were a hundred of us there that night. Flares in the hands of slaves gave us light and there was light from the cooking fire that burned within the circle formed by the table. The others remained standing until I had taken my seat which was the signal that the eating might begin. Before each warrior was an earthenware vessel containing beer and another filled with wine, and there were slaves whose duty it was to keep these filled, which was no small task, for we are hearty men and great drinkers, though there is no drunkenness among us as there is among the Kalkars. Other slaves brought meat and vegetables—beef and mutton, both boiled and broiled, potatoes, beans and corn, and there were bowls of figs and dried grapes and dried plums. There were also venison and bear meat and fish. There was a great deal of talk and a great deal of laughter, loud and boisterous, for the evening meal in the home camp is always a gala event. We ride hard and we ride often and we ride long. Often we are fighting and much of the time away from home. Then we have little to eat and nothing to drink but water, which is often warm and unclean and always scarce in our country.

We sit upon a long bench that encircles the outer periphery of the table and as I took my seat, the slaves, bearing platters of meat, passed along the inner rim of the table, and as they came opposite each warrior he rose, and leaning far across the board, seized a portion of meat with a thumb and finger and cut it deftly away with his sharp knife. The slaves moved in slow procession without pause and there was a constant gleam and flash of blades and movement and change of color as the painted warriors rose and leaned across the table, the firelight playing upon their beads and metal ornaments and the gay feathers of their headdresses. And the noise!

Pacing to and fro behind the warriors were two or three score shaggy hounds waiting for the scraps that would presently be tossed them—large, savage beasts bred to protect our flocks from coyote and wolf, hellhound and lion, and capable of doing it, too.

As the warriors fell to eating the din subsided, and at a word from me a youth at my elbow struck a deep note from a drum. Instantly there was silence.

“For a hundred years we have dwelt beneath the heat of this barren waste land while our foes occupied a flowering garden, their cheeks fanned by the cooling breezes of the sea. They live in plenty; their women eat of luscious fruits, fresh from the trees, while ours must be satisfied with the dried and wrinkled semblance of the real; ten slaves they have to do their labor for every one that we possess; their flocks and herds find lush pasture and sparkling water beside their masters’ tents, while ours pick a scant existence across forty thousand square miles of sandy, rock-bound desert; but these things gall the soul of The Red Hawk least of all. The wine turns bitter in my mouth when in my mind’s eye I look out across the rich valleys of the Kalkars and I recall that here alone in all the world that we know there flies not The Flag.”

A great growl rose from the fierce throats. “Since my youth I have held one thought sacred in my breast against the day that the blanket of The Great Chief should fall upon my shoulders. That day has come and I but await the time that the rains shall be safely over before making of that thought a deed. Twenty times in a hundred years have the Julian warriors ridden down into the Kalkar country in force, but their women and their children and their flocks remained behind in the desert—an unescapable argument for their return.

“It shall not be so again. In April the tribe of Julian leaves the desert forever. With our tents and our women and all our flocks and herds we shall descend and live among the orange groves. This time there shall be no turning back. I, The Red Hawk, have spoken.”

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