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Updated: June 13, 2025
Without a word he gave the buck to the Priest's wife and turned away, 'Hai', said the mother, 'when a young man wins a girl he is permitted to say a few words to her! for she was pleased to think that her daughter had got a husband at last. "'I did not kill the buck by myself, said Ho-tai; and he went off to find the Chief Priest and tell him that he could not marry his daughter.
"Then the Padre began to exhort them to give up this evil man in their midst and rid themselves of the consequences of sin, which he assured them were most certain and as terrible as they were sure. Then the white heart of Ho-tai remembered his own anguish, and spoke thickly, as a man drunk with peyote speaks. "'He must be given up, he said.
His mother had been a woman of the Matsaki, and his father one of the Onate's men, so that he was half of the Sun and half of the Moon, as we say, for the Zunis called the first half-white children, Moon-children, and his heart was pulled two ways, as I have heard the World Encompassing Water is pulled two ways by the Sun and the Moon. Therefore, he was called Ho-tai the Two-Hearted.
But when Ho-tai came cheerfully down the ladder with his gift, the girl's heart was touched, for he was a fine gold color like a full moon, and his high heart gave him a proud way of walking.
"You forget," said the Road-Runner, "that he knew no more than the Iron Shirts did, where the gold was to be found. There were not more than two or three in any one of the Seven Cities that ever knew. Ho-tai of Matsaki was the last of those, and his own wife let him be killed rather than betray the secret of the Holy Places." "Oh, if you please " began the children.
Witchcraft and sorcery he called it, and in Zuni to be accused of witchcraft is death. "The people did not know what to do. They prayed secretly where they could. The Priests of the Rain went on with their preparations, and the soldiers of Father Letrado for he had a small detachment with him broke up the dance and profaned the sacred places. Those were hard days for Ho-tai the Two-Hearted.
Nights Father Letrado would hear the muffled beat of the drums in the kivas where the old religion was being observed, and because it was the only heart open to him, he twisted the heart of Ho-tai to see if there was not some secret evil, some seed of witchcraft at the bottom of it which he could pluck out."
'I am that man, said Ho-tai of the Two Hearts, and the Caciques put their hands over their mouths with astonishment." "But they never," cried Oliver, "they never let him be taken?" "A life for a life," said the Condor, "that is the law. It was necessary that the Spaniards be pacified, and the slayer could not be found.
She could give him peyote enough so that he should remember nothing and feel nothing of what the Spaniards should do to him. But to do that she had to make friends with one of the soldiers. She chose one Lujan, who had written his name on the Rock on the way to K'iakime. By him she sent a cake to Ho-tai, and promised to meet Lujan when she could slip away from the village unnoticed.
These were Ho-tai of the two hearts, and his wife, who had been called Flower-of-the-Maguey. But her unhappiness was not because the Padres had been killed. She had had her hand in that business, though only among the women, dropping a word here and there quietly, as one drops a stone into a deep well.
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