“I thought all that all at once, then I felt behind, but there was nothing. Then people began shooting from the windows of the trading post, and the Pah-Utes went away. I rode up to the door and got off, wondering if I should fall. But I was all right. There was a bullet in the cantle of my saddle; that was what I had felt.
“We waited five days for the American war-party; meantime they got some good horses together. Blunt Nose was around all the time. People gathered together in groups of ten to twelve families, or more, like in the days when we were always at war. Then those men came.
“There were eight of them. They all had badges on their shirts, like policemen, only not quite the same. One of them was a fat man; we did not see why they brought him.
“They said they wanted four Navajos to be trackers. The Doer was to be head tracker. There were two other young men, and then they took me. They said they would pay me a dollar a day. That was a new idea to me, to be paid for hunting Pah-Utes. I thought you just hunted them.
“We tracked them for three days without seeing them. They tried to make us go at night, but we pretended not to be able to follow the trail. When The Doer told them that, they believed him. It was not an easy trail. Their horses were not shod, and they went a great deal over bald rock, they turned and doubled, they dragged branches behind them.
“We did not get much to eat, we could not make a fire. Those Americans brought a brown, sweet candy, and a little, dried-up black candy in boxes, something sticky. These we ate; you could go a long time on them. Then we had some dried corn. We started at first light; we went till it was quite dark. During the day it was hot among those rocks. We were hungry. It did not seem that we were following Pah-Utes; we were just following tracks in the sand, or little scratches on the rock, and some day we should come to the end of them, and something important would happen. Now the only thing in the world was those marks. When you saw one where you had not expected it, it seemed to shout at you.
“But we were gaining on them. On the fourth day they were much fresher, those tracks. We were close to them. Then we saw a couple of them, on lame horses, and we chased them. They had to cross a deep arroyo; when they went down into it we raced, hoping to catch them at the bottom of it. But they got up the other side; they just came up that side when we got to the near edge. Right away they started shooting. They shot at that fat man.
“Right away he fell off his horse. He landed on his stomach, and as soon as he landed he began to shoot. He shot between his horse’s legs. He hit one Pah-Ute in the leg and one in the arm. Then we knew why he had been brought along, that fat man.
“We wanted to kill them, but the chief American said that they had to go to T’o Nanasdési to be punished. Their horses were no good, so they put them on those two young men’s horses, and sent them back with them and one American to Oljeto. That left me and The Doer. I had never seen him before, that man, but everybody has heard about him. I was anxious to do well in his eyes.
“In the afternoon we came to the mouth of Yotatséyi Canyon. The trail was fresh and clear. The Doer told them that the other end of the canyon was halfway up Napani Mountain, to our right. It went in a big curve, he said. If they got out there, we could never catch them, he said. So he told them to send three men with him, and he would take them straight across there. He would reach it by nightfall, he said. Then, in the morning, we could start in from both ends and catch them, he said. So they did that. I stayed with the four at the lower end. I thought about there being still ten Pah-Utes, but I did not say anything. I did not want to seem afraid, if The Doer was not.
“We went a little way into the canyon and made camp. The chief American lent me a pair of magic tubes that he had, that you put to your eyes, and they made everything far away look near. I watched with them until I saw The Doer’s smoke signals. He signalled that they had had a fight, and the enemy were coming towards us. So we watched, but we saw no sign of them. It was dark soon after. We watched all night.
“When it was getting near dawn, but no light as yet, we started on foot. As soon as there was a little light, they sent me along the top of the talus along one wall, to look out for ambushes. The canyon was about five hundred paces wide; the walls were at least that high. The chief American watched me with those tubes. I would wave my hand, as a sign that I saw no one, and they would come forward, strung out across the canyon.
“It was full light when we got near where the canyon turned the corner. I went on ahead again, very slowly. I could look down into the sand and see the tracks that we had been following so long. I felt very much alone. I
