“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 tomorrow 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 tomorrow. The town could wait. A swift movement caught his eye, lifting the coffeepot 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? Someone 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 tomorrow. He will be here tomorrow 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.”
VII
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 focused 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
