feet blistered and sore in the stiff secondhand or thirdhand leather shoe_ the Outing matron had given her.
The train pulled into the station, causing the very ground to tremble.
Dancing Quail looked to the sky. Falling Star always signaled the shaking of the earth, but above her the sky was hazy with Chuk Shon's dust and smoke. If Falling Star tried to warn them just then, no one could have seen him.
The youngest child in the group, Dancing Quail watched in amazement as people climbed down from the train using steps a man had placed in front of the doors. They emerged carrying small cases and boxes. They looked all right. Dancing Quail had worried that whoever stepped inside that huge, smoking iron monster would be instantly devoured, eaten alive, but these people hadn't been. Maybe she wouldn't be, either.
Other people came out on the platform ' and began loading. Soon it would be Dancing Quail's turn. She 'prayed for courage.
clutched her magic rock and asked At last the outing matron motioned the children to move out, but not toward the doors of the train through which the other people had disappeared. Instead, they were herded back along the platform almost to the end of the train where they were ordered up a straight metal ladder on the' outside of one of the cars.
Faced with the unfamiliar ladder, Dancing Quail drew back in dismay.
She knew how to climb rocks and cliffs, but she had never seen a ladder before. She watched while one of the older boys pulled himself up it.
How could she climb that way and still hold on to her rock and her blanket?
Dancing Quail edged her way to the back of the line, hoping to escape notice. With the other children all on top of the car, Dancing Quail found herself being pushed forward by the outing matron.
There was no alternative. Dancing Quail stuck the magic rock in her mouth and gripped it between her teeth while she started up the ladder.
She was terrified climbing up, and even more terrified once she reached the top and looked back down. The ground was far away. What would happen to her if she fell?
Following the example of the other children, she dropped to a sitting position just as the whistle shrieked and the train lurched forward.
Wrapping her legs around the rolled blanket, she held on to a metal rail with both hands. Wind whipped her hair across her face, blinding her.
At first she was afraid the wildly rushing air would pry her loose. It was a long time before she dared let go with one hand long enough to remove Understanding Woman's precious rock from her mouth.
Afraid to sleep for fear of falling off, Dancing Quail tried to stay awake, but eventually' the rhythmic racket of metal on metal lulled her eyes closed.
'Rita!'
Someone from far away was calling her by that other name, the same name the outing matron had used.
'Rita,' the voice called again, more firmly this time.
Dancing Quail didn't want to answer. She didn't want to wake up because she knew when she did that it would be the same as it had been that long-ago morning when the train finally reached Phoenix. The sun would be bright overhead, and Understanding Woman's magic rock would be gone forever. Sometime during the night it had slipped from her grasp and fallen from the swaying boxcar.
More than half a century later, Dancing Quail still mourned its loss.
Juanita Ortiz rose stiffly from the uncomfortable chair where she had spent the night at her sister's bedside. She went to look out the window, while the nurse woke Rita to take her pulse and temperature.
Gabe hadn't come by the BIA compound to summon his mother until late, not until after Diana Ladd had picked up Davy. Fat Crack had given Juanita some lame excuse about promising Rita not to leave the child alone. His mother didn't approve. It wasn't right that Gabe should have waited with the little white boy all that time without coming to tell his own family about Rita's injuries. How could an Anglo's needs come before those of Gabe's own family?
Looking out the window, Juanita Ortiz shook her head in frustration.
There was much she didn't understand about her son, and she understood her sister even less.
Of all the people on the reservation, only a few-Juanita Ortiz among them-still remembered that, as a child, Rita Antone had once been called Dancing Quail. And only Rita remembered that their father's pet name for baby Juanita had been S-kehegaj, which means Pretty One. That was all a long time ago. Dancing Quail no longer danced, and no one had called Juanita pretty in more than forty years.
With chart in hand, the nurse left the room. Juanita went back over to the bed. Dr. Rosemead had told her that Rita's injuries weren't nearly as serious as he had at first s+posed, but that if she hadn't been in the ambulance when her heart stopped, she surely would have died.
' Juanita said softly. 'Elder Sister, how are you?'
'Thirsty, ni-shehpij,' Rita answered, opening her eyes and speaking formally to her younger sister. 'I sure am thirsty.'
The nurse had left a glass newly filled with crushed ice on the nightstand. Juanita ladled a spoonful of ice into Rita's parched mouth.
'I must see S-ab Neid Pi Has,' Rita whispered as soon as she could speak again after swallowing the ice.
Instantly, Juanita Ortiz's eyes hardened. S-ab Neid Pi Has, Looks At Nothing, was an aged, blind medicine man who lived as a hermit in Many Dogs, an almost-abandoned village just across the Mexican border from the rest of the reservation. He was a man who lived accordin to the old ways, who long ago had divorced himself from white man's liquor, whose lungs smoked only Indian tobacco.
