Laughing Boy (7 page)

She was tired and stiff. Already she had been alarmed, worried, tired, and hungry for this man. With a sudden fear, as she looked at him across the fire, she realized that she loved him. She had started something she could not stop, then. Well, it was all right, it was good. If only he hadn't gone off after that Pah-Ute, it wouldn't have happened; it was that waiting without understanding; it was that imperious warrior who gave her orders and was suddenly stronger than she, and apart from her. That had done it. While he sang, she looked at his hands locked across his knees, at the bow-guard on his left wrist. When he loosed his shaft, the bowstring had snapped down across the leather on the inside; towards her he turned the lovingly worked silver on the back of it. The shaft had gone true, into the shoulder, between the neck and the butt of the aimed rifle. She shivered.

He stopped singing. She rose and sat down again close beside him, and waited. He made no move. She knew now that these next few days when she would be with him alone were desperately important to her, but she was meeting with a restraint blended of tribal custom and ignorance for which her knowledge of the
American's world had not prepared her. It was beyond all other necessity to possess him fully now while the trail was single and straight, but he was a religious man, schooled to obedience of absolute conventions.

She thought. He was unused to her originality; she delighted him, but she came close at times to alarming him. She must go slow in all things. She would wait. The effort her decision cost her was so great that it frightened her. Perhaps, she told herself, it is a good thing to have to wait. I love him, but I must remain mistress of myself and him. This is good for me.

She wanted to touch his face with her fingertips, to brush his hair with her lips. When they galloped together and he sang exultantly beside her, she wanted him to swing her to his saddle. There is very little gesture of tenderness in Indian experience, but she thought she saw latent in him the same desires, promising herself days to come when she would teach him many things. She thought to herself, I shall complete him with my knowledge. I shall make a god of him.

 

IV

 

The town of Los Palos shimmered in the heat. A lot of adobe houses and frame shacks pushed carelessly together were beaten down by the sun. Behind them was a strip of irrigated green like a back-drop, alfalfa, corn, beans, cottonwoods, alfalfa, corn, cottonwoods, a mile long and a few hundred yards wide. Rich, deep, cool green was not part of the desert landscape; it was something apart that the sands held prisoner. The mean little town was a parasite on the goodness of the water; here water and earth and man made beauty; there man and mud and boards created squalor.

A few yards of concrete and some blistered paint made a gesture of civic pride at the railroad's edge. A two-story hotel, compounding Spanish mission with cubism, was a monument of the railroad's profitable beneficence. From a rise where the trail crossed the railroad track, a little way to the west, it all compounded into a picture; the dejected town with its dominant
hotel-station, the green strip behind it, yellow-grey sand, and farther, dancing buttes in the mirage.

Laughing Boy's attention was divided. 'Do these iron paths run all the way to Washindon? That is a beautiful place; there must be much water there. I have never seen so many houses; how many are there? Five hundred? I should like to go there. Are there many trading posts, or just one? Those are rich fields. Can one come here and see the iron-fire-drives?' He silenced himself, ashamed at having shown himself so carried away.

'Let us not go there now,' she told him quickly; 'it is better that we go first to my hogahn. The horses are tired.'

'You are right. Are there more than five hundred houses?'

'Yes, a few more. The iron-fire-drives goes by many times a day; it goes that way to Washindon and that way to Wide Water. Any one may see it. Come now.'

They gave the town a wide berth, trotting east past the end of the irrigated land along a trail between two buttes. About three miles farther on, where the clay walls widened again to face the southern desert, an adobe shack stood in the shadow of one wall. Behind it a tiny spring leaked out. Here they dismounted.

'But this is not a hogahn, it is a house. Did an American make it?'

'No, a Mexican built it. He went away to herd sheep, and I took it.'

He stepped inside. 'It does not smell like Mexicans.'

'I have been here a long time. Yellow Singer made the House Song for me. Is it not good? The door is to the east, like a hogahn.'

'Yes, it is good. It is better than a hogahn, I think; it is bigger and the rain will not come through. It will be good summer and winter.' He hobbled the horses. 'There is not much grass by that spring; we shall have to find pasture.'

'There is a little pasture just down there you can use. You must not let the horses run all over the place; this is American country. The Navajo country begins across the railroad track. There is good pasture just this side of Natahnetinn Mesa, enough for many horses. You must keep them up there.'

She lit a fire in front of the house.

'You have no loom. There is no sheep-pen.'

'I have been alone. I have had no one to weave for, and no sheep.'

'How do you live?'

She was laying the big logs over the first flame.

'I work a little bit, now and then, for the missionary's wife in the town. She is a good woman. Now I am going to set up a loom, and you shall have a forge.'

He thought that something was wrong. Her face was too blank. 'Not all missionaries are good, they say. There used to be a bad one at T'o Nanasdési, they say.'

'No, not all of them are good; but this one is.' She spoke musingly. 'His wife pays me much money. She is not strong; I am.'

Her strange, pensive smile troubled him. He thought how beautiful she was. He thought again of the magician's daughter. He did not care what bad magic she might do to him; just she was worth all other things.

Sprawled out on his saddle-blanket, he watched as she brought food from the house and began to prepare it. Her movements were like grass in the wind. He eyed a banquet of luxury—canned goods, tomatoes, fruit.

'Perhaps when we go into the town to-morrow we can buy some candy.'

She thought, he must be kept away from town. I must think of something. 'I have a little here.'

'Sticks with stripes on them?'

'Yes.'

He sighed luxuriously. The food on the fire smelt good. It was cool. With a couple of ditches one could make a good cornfield by that spring, and plant peaches, perhaps. If they were to have food like this all the time—It was important to find that pasture for the horses, he must tend to it to-morrow. The town could wait. A swift movement caught his eye, lifting the coffee-pot aside.
Ei!
she was beautiful.

 

V

 

They talked as they ate, lounging, while night filled the valley.

'Do you speak American then?' Laughing Boy asked. 'Is it hard to learn?'

'It is not hard; we had to learn it. They put me in a room with a Ute girl and a Moqui and a Comanche; all we could do was learn English. Sometimes some Navajo girls sneaked out and talked together, but not often. They did not want us to be Indians.' She rested on her elbow, staring into the fire. 'They wanted us to be ashamed of being Indians. They wanted us to forget our mothers and fathers.'

'That is a bad thing. Why did they do that?'

'Do not talk about it. I do not want to think about those things.'

When she had put away the dishes, as they lit their cigarettes she said, 'If ever they come to take a child of ours to school, kill her.'

'Is it like that?'

'Yes.'

'I hear you.'

They lay side by side against the wall of the house, watching the fire. Her shoulder moved closer to him. He said,

'Tell me your true name.'

'My name is Came With War. What is yours?'

'My parents named me Sings Before Spears. It is a good name. Yours is good.'

'Why do they always give women names about war?'

'They have always done it. It brings good fortune to the whole People, I think.'

She moved so that she touched him. Sings Before Spears!

He asked her, 'Have you any relatives here? Some one must get a singer to make the prayers over us. There are the four days after that to wait; that is a long time. Let us have them end soon.'

She caught her breath and looked at him despairingly. He felt a wind blow between them while he met her eyes, a hollowness behind his heart. He clenched his left hand against his side, repeating slowly,

'Four days is a long time to wait,' and then, almost inaudibly, 'Oh, beautiful!'

She looked away, wanting to laugh, to cry, to swear, and to kick him. He could not know; how could he know? She examined the line of his chin, the set of his lips, so very Indian in their fine chiselling and faint outthrust. Devices ran through her mind. This was a Navajo. This was something her missionaries and teachers never dreamed of. This was part of what she loved. She set her nails into the palms of her hands. Patience.

'I have a friend near here who will speak to a Singer to-morrow. He will be here to-morrow night.'

They smoked again. At last he said, 'I do not think I shall sleep in your house now. I think it will be well to sleep up there.'

'Yes; that will be better.'

He got his blanket. 'I shall forget the trail.'

He loomed above her, in the play of darkness and firelight. She saw all the strength of the Navajo people embodied, against the sky, and she felt ashamed before it.

'Four days is not long, Laughing Boy.'

I

 

Early in the morning she got Laughing Boy off with the horses to find pasture. When he was well away, she put on American clothes; high-laced shoes, an outmoded, ill-fitting dress, high to the neck, long-sleeved, dowdy, the inevitable uniform of the school-trained Indian. It was a poor exchange for barbaric velveteen and calico, gay blanket and heavy silver. She had deleted from the formula a number of layers of underclothing; the slack, thin stuff indicated her breasts with curves and shadow; a breath of wind or a quick turn outlined firm stomach, round thigh, and supple movement, very little, but enough.

It began to be hot when she reached the wretched 'dobes and stick hovels on the outskirts of Los Palos, among the tin cans and the blowing dust. She stopped by a dome of sticks, old boxes, and bits of canvas.

'Hé, shichai!'

Yellow Singer crawled out into the sun, blinking red eyes.

'Hunh! What is it?'

His dirty turban had slipped over one ear, his hair was half undone. He sat looking at her uncertainly, his open mouth showing the remnants of yellow teeth. She noticed his toes coming out from the ends of cast-off army boots.

'Wake up. Were you drunk last night?'

He grinned. 'Very drunk. You lend me a dollar, perhaps?'

'You keep sober this morning, perhaps I give you a bottle.'

'Hunh?' He focussed his attention.

'I am going to be married this afternoon. I want you to come and sing over us.'

'Coyote!' He swore, and then in English, 'God damn! What do
you
want to get married for? What kind of a man have you caught?'

'You talk too much, I think; it may be bad for you some day. You come this afternoon and sing over us; I shall give you a bottle. Then you keep your mouth closed.'

He read her face, remembering that her grandmother had been an Apache who, in her time, had sat contemplating the antics of men tied on ant-heaps. And he knew this woman pretty well.

'Good, Grandmother,' he said respectfully, 'we shall come.'

She left without more words. In the town she had shopping to do—food, a jeweller's simple tools from a trader, a can of Velvet tobacco and big, brown Rumanian cigarette papers. Then she rifted idly to the post-office, sauntering past it in an abstracted manner, not seeing the men who lounged there. One of them immediately walked off in the other direction. She continued down the street, till it became merely a strip more worn than the land on either side of it at the edge of the town, where she entered a small, neat 'dobe house. In a few minutes he followed, closing the door behind him.

He wore a clean, checked woollen shirt, the usual big hat, and very worn, well-cut whipcord riding-breeches. He was of good height, light-haired but tanned, with rather sad eyes and a sensitive mouth. Even now, when he was plainly happy, one could see a certain unhappiness about him. He threw his hat on the table, put his hands on his hips, and drew a breath as he looked down on her, smiling.

'Well, you're back on time.'

'Yes, why not? Didn't I tell you?' She held out her hand to him. Speaking English, she retained the Navajo intonation.

He sat down on the arm of her chair, and ran the tip of his index finger along the curve of her throat. 'That's a terrible dress, about the worst you've got. I'd like you to get some good clothes.'

'How will I do dat? Do you tink I can walk into dat store, dat one down dere, and dey sell me a dress? Will one of dose women, dey make dresses, work for me? You talk silly, you say dat. Maybe I
give you my measure, maybe you write to dat place in Chicago, hey?'

'Sears Roebuck, my God! Well, it's not such a bad idea. All right, bring me your measurements.' He leant over to kiss her.

'Don't start dat now. I got to go back soon now.'

'What the hell?'

'My husban', he makes trouble, dat one. I can' stay away right now. Soon maybe.'

He heaved a sigh of exasperation. 'Listen! you've kept me waiting a week while you went off on that trip. Now you put me off again. You're always putting me off. I don't think you've got a husband.'

'Yes, I have, an' he's a long-hair. You know dat. Don't I point him out to you one time, dat one? You want him to kill me, hey?'

'Well, all right. To-morrow, then.'

'I can' do it. It ain't I don' want to, George. I can', dat's all.' She passed her hand along his cheek, slowly. 'You know dat.'