Yet, he was leaving. Famous Shoes knew that Pea Eye's woman was a teacher. He meant, someday, to have her teach him to read the strange tracks in books. Those were the only tracks he had never been able to master. For many years, he had carried a small Bible with him. It had been given to him by an old man who carried many such books in a wagon, and gave them to Indians.
The old man's name was Marshall. He had come among the Apaches when Famous Shoes was there, trying to persuade an old medicine man named Turtle to give up a little white girl he had captured in a raid. Turtle wouldn't give up the girl. His own wife was shriveled and had no interest in him, and he needed a young girl. The money Famous Shoes offered, money provided by the little girl's family, was not as important to Turtle as the little girl herself. Turtle patiently explained this to Famous Shoes, who understood it well enough. His own wife had lost interest in him, forcing him to find girls at a time when he would rather have been concentrating on other things.
But he had been younger then, and in those days, lack of a woman often caused his concentration to wander.
So he accepted Turtle's explanation, and did not try to take the girl, even though her family missed her and had paid him well to find her.
Mr. Marshall, the white man with the Bibles, did not accept Turtle's explanation as to why he needed the little girl, although it was a valid one, in Famous Shoes' opinion. Marshall tried to buy the girl from Turtle, despite the fact that Turtle had told him plainly that he would not sell her.
When Marshall saw that he would not be allowed to buy the white girl, he became angry. He began to say bad words, and make the Apaches feel bad. But a young Apache named Long Thorn lived up to his name by taking a bayonet he had picked up after a battle and sticking it all the way through Mr. Marshall, who soon died. It was agreed that Long Thorn had acted properly. The white man had become abusive, and deserved to be stuck with a bayonet. The Apaches could eat the horses that pulled the white man's wagon, but the load of books with meaningless tracks in them was a different matter. Marshall had told them that the books came from the god who made all the whites. There were many whites, and they were rich; the god must be powerful, if he had made them all. It might anger him if the book with his tracks in it was not treated properly, but the Apaches had no idea what they would have to do to treat the book properly. By accident, someone tore a few pages out of one of the books and threw them on a campfire. They burned so well that the Apaches decided to keep the books and use them to start fires. If the god who made the whites was offended, they would have to live with his wrath. But after a few days of starting fires with the pages from the Bibles, the Apaches decided that this god was too busy making whites to care what they did. After that, they relaxed and soon forgot the god altogether. They even forgot about Marshall, although they ate his horses and found them to be tasty.
Famous Shoes was given a Bible, in lieu of the little white girl. He would rather have had the girl, but he took the Bible and pored over it for years, in his spare time. He had never seen tracks as strange as the tracks in his Bible. After much study, he could see that the little tracks were individual, as were the tracks of all animals.
Even worms and snails made tracks that were unlike those of other creatures.
But in the end, Famous Shoes could make nothing of the tracks that were supposed to lead the whites to the spirit world. Famous Shoes would have liked to see a picture of the white man's god, but there were no pictures of him in the book. What this god's ways might be, Famous Shoes could not imagine. If he was wrathful, like his minister Marshall, then Famous Shoes was not interested in knowing too much about his ways.
One time, Famous Shoes showed the Bible to the old judge, Roy Bean, a white man who enjoyed hanging people. Famous Shoes had always kept to the law and had no fear of Roy Bean.
He didn't steal, and it was well known that Roy Bean was harshest on thieves and had a tendency to be tolerant of murder. Famous Shoes had rarely murdered, either, only a time or two when he was younger and had less control over his passions.
Now that he was older, he had his passions under control to such an extent that it was not really accurate to call them passions anymore. If he had a passion left, it was for the flight of the eagles. Fortunately, near his home in the Madre, there were many eagles whose pure, beautiful, soaring flight he could study at his leisure.
'Why, this is the Bible. It tells you about Jehovah and his angels,' Roy Bean said, when Famous Shoes handed him the book. Roy Bean was drunk; this was often the case, and he was not really eager to enter inffconversation with a talkative Indian.
'What is an angel? I have never seen one,' Famous Shoes replied.
'Nobody ain't. That is, they ain't if they're alive,' Roy Bean informed him, testily.
'Where is heaven?' Famous Shoes asked.
'It's the place you go to when you die, if you've been good,' Roy Bean said. 'You ain't been very good, and I ain't, either, so I doubt either one of us will ever see an angel.' After a little more questioning, Roy Bean let slip the exciting fact that angels were men with wings.
Famous Shoes had always suspected that there might be men with wings, somewhere. If he had been willing to risk freezing to death when he was near the edge of the world, he might have looked over the edge and seen these men with wings, flying around. Perhaps they would have helped him grow wings himself, so that he could fly off the edge of the world, as the great eagles flew off the cliffs of the Madre.
Then Roy Bean got so drunk, he couldn't talk. Before his tongue grew too thick to manage, Roy Bean became irritated with Famous Shoes for referring to the words in the Bible as tracks. It did seem to Famous Shoes that they resembled certain tracks, such as the track of the centipede, or of certain delicate birds who skimmed the water's edge for their prey.
'They're words, not tracks, you damn Indian!' Roy Bean insisted. 'They're words, like I'm saying to you, now.' 'But words are made from breath. How can they live in such a thing as this book?' Famous Shoes asked.
He might as well have asked his question of an eagle, or of the moon, for Roy Bean had not only lost interest, he had lost consciousness as well.
Famous Shoes kept the book for several more years, but he never learned to make much of the little tracks. Finally, he left the book on the ground, and a golden eagle came and tore out many of its pages to use to line its nest. That was a good use for such a book, Famous Shoes thought.
Later, though, he learned from the great Captain Marcy, for whom he had scouted when he was younger, that Roy Bean had been right: the little tracks in the book were words. Even when he learned this, Famous Shoes didn't regret giving the book to the golden eagle. The eagle had made better use of it than he had.
Seeing Pea Eye's track made him remember that Pea Eye's woman was a teacher, who well understood the
