When the Legends Die (7 page)

“I worry for my people,” Blue Elk said. “1 could find out these things, but it is a hard trip and I am an old man. I have no money for this trip.”

The preacher felt in his pocket. Blue Elk heard the clink of silver dollars. The preacher drew out one dollar and offered it to him.

Blue Elk shook his head. “This will be a very hard trip.”

“How much?”

“Ten dollars.”

“I haven’t got ten dollars. All I have is the mission money.” Then the preacher said, “I might make it five. And if you bring the boy in to the school the agent might give you five more.”

“I am a poor old man,” Blue Elk said, holding out his hand. “I do this for my people.”

The preacher gave him the dollar, produced two more, then drew out a handful of change and counted out two dollars in dimes and quarters. Blue Elk put the money in his pocket and walked away.

He went along the back streets to his house. There he made a packet of food, then went to the open shed behind the house and saddled his pony. He rode down the alleys and side streets until he was out of town, then cut through the brush to the road to Piedra Town. He stopped there and looked for tracks in the dust, and found none. The boy had taken the paths through the brush on the hillside. But Blue Elk knew that a traveler must drink. He rode down the road toward Piedra until he came to the first creek, then left the road and went up the creek. His eyes were not as good as they had been twenty years before, but they still knew a boy’s moccasin track and a cub bears paw print when he saw them, half a mile from the road, in the creekbank mud. After that he followed those tracks along the game trails. The boy, knowing those trails, could travel faster than Blue Elk. But Blue Elk knew that eventually the boy would lead him to his hideout.

I
T WAS MIDMORNING OF
the third day when Blue Elk came to the hollow and the small stream below the lodge. He sensed that he was near the place, but it took him half an hour to unravel the maze of trails from the stream and come to the tangle of down trees that hid the lodge itself. There he smelled a trace of smoke from a cooking fire, smoke with the faint odor of drying meat. Then a jay screamed at him, and continued screaming as he went on. A squirrel chattered at him.

Blue Elk found the path, found the boys moccasin prints. But, remembering the bear cub, he did not follow it among the trees. He waited, letting the jay and the squirrel say he was there.

Soon the boy appeared. He stopped a little away from Blue Elk and said, “Why did you come here?”

“I came here to talk with you.”

“We have talked.”

“I have come to help you. I have come a long way. I am tired and I am hungry.”

“I did not ask you to come.”

“I am here.”

The boy looked at him a long time. The jay perched on his shoulder and talked in his ear. The squirrel came and leaped into his hand and sat there, staring at Blue Elk. The boy said, “You may rest and you may eat. Then you must go away. Come.” He led the way among the trees to the door of the hidden lodge. Blue Elk followed.

It was cool and dark inside the lodge. As his eyes accustomed themselves to the dimness, Blue Elk remembered his own boyhood and his grandmother’s lodge. The boy set fresh berries and dried meat in front of him, and when he tasted the meat Blue Elk remembered again. It had the taste of meat he had eaten in the lodge of his grandmother.

His eyes searched the lodge as he ate. He saw the bed, the peeled rods with the robes, and the new red blanket. He saw the tanned robes hung along the walls, the new buckskin folded carefully, the sewing basket with its coil of dry sinew and its bone awls. He saw the white smoulder of the fire on the floor beneath the smoke hole in the roof and the drying rack above the fire. Long, thin slices of venison hung on the rack, drying and curing in the smoke and slow heat. He saw Bessie’s basket materials, the bundle of willow twigs, the black-stem ferns, the strips thin as a fingernail. There was a coil of strips in a bowl of water, pliant for weaving, and there was a partly finished blanket, its coiled twigs white as though freshly peeled. He saw two ironwood bows, sinew backed, and a quiver of arrows feathered with grouse feathers. He saw a lodge such as only the old people remembered.

He ate, and then he asked, “Where is your brother?”

“My brother,” the boy said, “will return when it is time to return.”

Blue Elk looked at the unfinished basket. “How long is it since your mother went away?”

The boy did not answer.

“Your mother was here a few days past.” He nodded toward the fresh coils of the basket.

“She is gone a long time,” the boy said.

“It is not right to tell lies to the old men of your people.”

“I tell the truth.”

Blue Elk said, “When I was young I knew a lodge such as this. My mother and my grandmother dried fish and cured meat, but when the short white days came we were hungry.”

“That is the way it is.”

“That is the way it was. The grandmothers said this thing. Now the grandmothers are gone on the long journey and now it is different. The old days are gone.”

The boy did not answer.

“Your father is gone.”

The boy nodded.

“When your father had trouble, I settled that trouble for him. Your father was my friend. I knew when I settled that trouble for him that I would be a grandfather to you when you needed a grandfather. I knew I must tell you what to do.”

“My mother told me what to do.”

“Your mother is gone. And your father is gone.”

The boy stared at the white ashes of the fire. He whispered the beginning of the mourning song. He stopped and looked at Blue Elk. “If you are a grandfather,” he said, “you will sing the mourning song.” He sang the mourning song aloud. Blue Elk tried to sing that song, but the words were dim. He sang a few phrases and was silent. The boy stopped and said, “How can you tell me what to do when you do not know the songs?”

“I sing the song inside.”

“My mother will not know if you sing the song inside. My father will not know.” He sang the song again, and Blue Elk closed his eyes and sang with him. His memory did not know the words, but his tongue remembered.

They sang the mourning song, and tears came to Blue Elk’s eyes. It was a song not only for Bessie Black Bull and George Black Bull, but for Blue Elk’s own mother, and his own grandmother, and all the grandmothers. It was a song for the old people and the old days.

They sang that song, and they sat in silence. Blue Elk opened his eyes, and he saw the boy and forgot the old people. He knew why he had come here. He said to the boy, “When did your mother go away?”

The boy said, “She went away in the short white days.”

“In the winter that is past,” Blue Elk said.

“In the winter before the winter that is past,” the boy said. He made the sign that it was a year and a half ago.

Blue Elk stared at him, unbelieving. He saw that the boy was telling the truth. He said, “I did not know. I should have come before this. You have been alone too many days.”

The boy made no answer.

“I am here,” Blue Elk said. “My ears are listening. It is good to talk of what happened.”

The boy stared at the ashes, struggling with himself. It was a long time since he had talked to anyone except the bear cub and the jay and the squirrels. He was a boy, with things to tell, not a man who can contain all the things that happen. At last he said, “I will tell of these things.” He began to tell of the winter when his mother died. He was telling of their trip to the low valleys to take fresh meat when there was a whine at the doorway. He stopped his talk. He said, “Come in, Brother. We have one of the grandfathers with us. Come in and sit with us.”

The bear cub came inside, sniffing warily. It came to where they sat. It nosed Blue Elk, who sat quietly and let it know his smell. It bristled and turned to the boy. The boy said, “Now you know. Come, lie beside me. I shall tell this grandfather about you.” The cub went to him and lay down between the boy and Blue Elk.

The boy told about the she-bear and her cubs, about the man who came with the burro, about how this man killed the she-bear and one cub. He told how the man went away, afraid the she-bear he had killed was killing him. He sang the song for a dead bear, and Blue Elk remembered a part of that song and sang with him.

They sat in silence after that. Then the boy told about his mother again, how they went on the hunt, how she sickened and died. He told about his father, how he died in the snow-slide and they found him and gave him burial.

He told these things, and Blue Elk heard them. Blue Elk was a boy again as he heard. This was the story of his own people.

By then the boy had told what he had to tell. He got up and moved about the lodge, touching the bow that had been his father’s, touching the knife his mother had used. He walked about the lodge, and Blue Elk stretched his legs. He was cramped from sitting so long. His joints were old. He watched the boy, and his eyes were full of years. He moved his toes in the boots he wore, and his toes tingled with thorns in them. His legs were asleep.

The light in the sky above the smoke hole was dimming. The day had passed while the boy talked.

The boy left the lodge, and the bear cub followed him. Blue Elk got to his feet. He could scarcely walk, his legs were so cramped. He made his way to the door and stood there until his feet would move again. Then he went outside.

The boy stood in the open, his face lifted to the sun, which was down near the peaks. He was singing a song softly to himself. Blue Elk knew it was the song to the setting sun, to the coming night. He had not sung that song for so long that not even his tongue remembered the words, but he stood silently until the boy had finished. Then he went to the boy, and together they went down to the stream. They drank, and they washed themselves, and Blue Elk went to where his pony was grazing and took off the saddle and the bridle and hobbled the pony for the night. Then they returned to the lodge and they ate.

The boy built up the fire, so there was light in the lodge. He turned the meat on the rack, so that it would cure another side in the warm smoke. Blue Elk said, “The winter is coming.”

The boy said, “That is the way it is.”

Blue Elk said, “The old days are gone.”

“The short white days come,” the boy said firmly.

“That is true. I have seen many short white days. Our people have known the white days—” and he made the sign for no end, forever—“Your mother told you this. I tell you the old days are gone. There is an end to the old days.”

The boy shook his head. “How can there be an end?” he asked. “There is the roundness.” He made the gesture for the circle, the no-end.

Blue Elk said, “There is the roundness. But today is gone. The day before today is gone.”

The boy made the no-end sign again. “It is like the sun, and the darkness. It is like the trunk of the aspen. It is like the basket,” and his finger made the circle, the coil of the basket.

Blue Elk stared at the fire. Finally he said, “We know these things. You know. I know.” He glanced at the boy, whose face was intent. “Some of our people do not know. They have forgotten.”

The boy made no answer.

Blue Elk said, “There is a song for remembering. Do you know that song?”

“I know that song.” The boy began to sing it. His voice was young, but the song was old, old as his people. He sang it, and it was a part of him.

He finished that song, and Blue Elk said, after a moment, “You are going with me to sing that song for remembering to those who have forgotten. We will go tomorrow, to our people down at Ignacio. You will tell them these things, and they will tell you what they know.”

The boy sat silent for a time. Then he said, “You will go and tell them. I will stay here.”

“I said I would be a grandfather to you. We will go together.”

“I will stay here.”

“They should hear these songs.” Blue Elk believed this as he said it.
It is good for a people to change but it is not good for them to forget.
He said this to himself, believing it, but he did not say this aloud. Then he remembered the agent, who might give him five dollars if he brought the boy to Ignacio. It had been a long journey here to the lodge. It was worth more than the five dollars the preacher had given him. Then he remembered that the preacher had said he felt responsible for the boy because he had baptized him. He told himself he must do this thing. He said, “Tomorrow we will go to Ignacio.”

The boy put a robe on the floor of the lodge. He made the sign that Blue Elk should have the bed. He said, “Tomorrow I will talk of this. Now I shall sleep.” He lay down on the robe and drew it around him, and the bear cub lay down close beside him.

Blue Elk went to the bed and lay down and drew the red blanket over him. Sleep was not long in coming. He was weary from the journey and from the long talk with the boy. He had dreams of his grandmother’s lodge. He went back to the old days in his sleep, and he sang those songs the boy had sung.

The boy wakened him the next morning and they went together down to the pool at the stream. The boy took off his moccasins and his clout and bathed himself in the pool, and when he asked why Blue Elk did not bathe, Blue Elk said, “I am an old man.”

The boy said, “If you are a grandfather and truly one of the people, you will bathe and sing the song to the sun and the morning.”

Blue Elk stripped and went into the pool. It was so cold it numbed his legs and took all the breath out of him. Then he bathed in that water and he was warm inside as he had not been warm in a long time. He gasped for breath and every part of him shrank at the icy coldness, but the warmth inside was good to know. He remembered this from the time when he was a boy.

When they had bathed, they sat on the big rock at the head of the pool and faced the sun rising over the far mountain. The boy sang the song to the sun and the morning, and Blue Elk’s tongue remembered. He, too, sang that song.

When they had finished, Blue Elk said, “It is good to sing this song.”’ Then, remembering why he had come, he added, “Our people should not forget this song.”