from Guaguey-bo to Guacho-chi. Perhaps the credit should go to the jipuri I had chewed before starting, for several times I found myself running faster than I ever have done in my life before or since that race. Those were the times when we came up to the posted sprinters and did our best to match their bursts of speed. And several times we passed the sprinters from Guacho-chi—they standing, not yet running—stationed to await the coming of their own racers from the opposite direction. Those competitors shouted cheerfully scornful names at us as we went by them—'Laggards!' and 'Limpers!' and the like—especially at me, because by then I was trailing the rest of the Guaguey-bo contingent.
Running full tilt through closely spaced trees and along ravine floors strewn with ankle-twisting rocks was something to which I was unaccustomed at the best of times, but I managed well enough as long as I had light to see. When the glow of afternoon began to diminish, I had to run with my topaz held to my eye, and that forced me to slow my pace considerably. As the twilight got darker, I saw the guide lights bloom out ahead of me, where the torch bearers were firing their bundles of splints. But of course none of those men would drop back to waste his light on a nonracer, so I was left farther and farther behind the running crowd, and its cries dimmed away.
Then, as full darkness closed around me, I saw a red gleam on the ground just ahead. The kindly Raramuri had not totally forgotten or dismissed their outlander companion Su-kuru. One of the torch bearers, after lighting his torch, had carefully set down his little clay pot of embers where I was sure to find it. So there I stopped, and laid and lit a campfire, and settled down to spend the night. I will admit that, despite my ingestion of the jipuri, I was sufficiently tired to have toppled over and slept, but I felt ashamed even to think of it, when every other male in the vicinity was exerting himself to the utmost. Also, I would have been intolerably humiliated, and so would my host village, if, when the rival runners from Guacho-chi came along that trail, they had found 'a Guaguey-bo man' lying there asleep. So I ate some of my pinoli and washed it down with a drink from my water pouch and chewed on some of the jipuri I had brought, and that revived me nicely. I sat up all night, throwing an occasional stick on the fire to keep myself comfortable but not so warm that I might become drowsy.
I should be seeing the Guacho-chi runners twice before I again saw Tes-disora and my other former companions. After the two contingents had passed each other at the midpoint of the course, the rival runners would appear from the southeast and reach my campfire at just about the exact middle moment of the night. Then they would arrive at Guaguey-bo and turn and come back from the northwest and pass me again in the morning. The returning Tes-disora and his fellows would not reach me—so I could again join their run and go home with, them— until the midday sun was overhead.
Well, my calculation of the first encounter was correct. With the aid of my topaz I kept watch of the stars and, according to them, it was the middle of the night when I saw bobbing blobs of firelight coming from the southeast. I decided to pretend that I was one of Guaguey-bo's posted sprinters, so I was on my feet, looking alert, before the first of the ball-kicking runners came in sight, and I began to shout, 'Laggards! Limpers!' The racers and their torch bearers did not shout back; they were too busy keeping their eyes on the wooden ball, which had lost whatever paint it had worn and was looking rather splintery and shredded. But the company of other Guacho-chi runners returned my taunts, yelling, 'Old woman!' and 'Warm your weary bones!' and such—and I realized that my having laid a fire made me, in Raramuri estimation, seem something less than manly. But it was too late then to douse the fire, and they all dashed past and became again just wavery red lights, dwindling to the northwestward.
After another long time, the sky in the east lightened, and finally Grandfather Fire made his reappearance, and more time passed while—as slowly as any aged human grandfather—he crept a third of the way up the sky. It was breakfast time and, by my calculations, time for the Guacho-chi men to be returning on their homeward run. I faced the northwest, where I had last seen them. Since in daylight there would be no torches to signal their coming, I strained my ears to hear them before they were in sight. I heard nothing, I saw nothing.
More time passed. In my mind I went over my reckoning, to find where I had miscalculated, but I could perceive no error. More time passed. I searched my mind, to remember whether or not Tes-disora had ever said anything about the racers' taking different routes on their return runs. More time passed, and the sun was almost directly overhead, when I heard a hail:
'Kuira-ba!'
It was a man of the Raramuri, wearing only a runner's loincloth and waist pouches and yellow designs on his bare skin, but he was no one I recalled ever having seen before, so I took him to be one of Guacho-chi's outpost sprinters. Evidently he took me to be a Guaguey-bo counterpart, for, when I had returned his greeting, he approached me with a friendly but anxious smile and said:
'I saw your fire last night, so I left my station and came here. Tell me confidentially, friend, how did your people arrange to detain our runners in your village? Were your women all waiting stripped naked and lying compliant?'
'It is a vision pleasant to entertain,' I said. 'But they were not, to my knowledge. I was wondering myself, is it possible that your men are returning by some other way?'
He started to say, 'It would be the first time ever—' when he was interrupted. We both heard another shout of 'Kuira-ba!' and turned to see the approach of Tes-disora and his five fellow racers. They were lurching and reeling with fatigue, and the ball they perfunctorily kicked among them had been worn down to about the size of my fist.
'We—' said Tes-disora to the man from Guacho-chi, and had to pause to gulp for air. Then he painfully panted, 'We have not yet—met your runners. What trickery—?'
The man said, 'This sprinter of yours and I were just asking each other what might have become of them.'
Tes-disora stared at the two of us, his chest heaving. Another man gasped, in a voice of disbelief, 'They have—not yet—passed here?'
As the whole company of Guaguey-bo runners straggled up to join us, I said, 'I asked the stranger if they might have taken a different course. He asked me if your women might have contrived to detain them in your village.'
There was a general shaking of heads. Then the heads moved more slowly, as the men looked at one another in bewilderment.
Somebody said, softly, worriedly, 'Our village.'
Somebody else said, more loudly, with more anxiety, 'Our women.'
And the stranger said, his voice quavering, 'Our best men.'
Then there was realization in all their eyes, and shock and anguish, and it was in the eyes of the Guacho-chi man as well. All those eyes turned bleakly to the northwest and, in the brief breathless moment before the men suddenly left me, all of them running harder than ever, someone among them said just one word: 'Yaki!'
No, I did not follow them to Guaguey-bo. I never went back there again. I was an outlander, and it would have been presumptuous of me to join the Raramuri men in bewailing their bereavement. I realized what they would find: that the Yaki marauders and the Guacho-chi runners had arrived in Guaguey-bo at about the same time, and the runners would have been too tired to have put up much of a fight against the savages. The Guacho-chi men would all have suffered having the scalps torn from their heads before they died. What the Si-riame and young Vi- rikota and the other Guaguey-bo women would have endured before they died I did not even want to think about. I presume that the surviving Raramuri men eventually repopulated their villages by dividing themselves and the Guacho-chi women between the two, but I will never know.
And I never saw a Yaki, not then or to this day. I would have liked to—if I could have managed it without the Yaki seeing me—for they must be the most fearsome human animals in existence, and wonderful to look upon. In all my years I have known only one man who did meet the Yaki and did live to tell of it, and he was that elder of The House of Pochtea who had no top to his head. Nor have any of you Spaniards yet encountered a Yaki. Your explorers of these lands have not yet ventured that far north and west. I think I might almost pity even a Spaniard who goes among the Yaki.
When the stricken men went running, I stood still and watched them disappear in the forest. I stayed looking toward the northwest for a while after they were out of sight, saying a silent farewell. Then I squatted down and made a meal of my remaining pinoli and water, and chewed a jipuri to keep me awake during the rest of the day. I dumped earth on the last embers of my campfire, then stood erect, glanced at the sun for direction, and strode off to the south. I had enjoyed my stay with the Raramuri, and I grieved at having it end so.
But I wore good clothing of deerskin and sandals of boar hide, and I had leather pouches in which to carry
