He had taken down the blanket and was pegging it out carefully. All he said was,
“Where are your wool cards?”
She brought them, two implements like very sharp currycombs, used to prepare the wool for spinning. She sat down to watch him, thinking, Perhaps I shall get very drunk. That might help.
He carded the face of the blanket energetically, so roughly that it seemed a gratuitous insult even to her poor work. The very coarseness of her spinning served his purpose, as the sharp teeth scraped and tore across the design. She wondered if he were trying to efface it. He stood up.
“Now come here and look.” He put his arm over her shoulder. “You have thought well. The picture is beautiful.”
The scraping had torn loose a long wool nap, almost a fur, fluffy and fine, that covered all the errors of the weaving. The sharp edges were lost, but the lovely combination she had dreamed of was there, soft and blurred, as though one saw it through tears. She could see how good her conception had been, how true and sure. She had made a beautiful thing. She looked and looked.
He loosened the pegs and turned up the untouched side. As he turned it, he jerked at the corners, throwing the uncertain weave out of shape. It looked like a child’s work.
“I am not telling you a lot of things. I am just letting you see something. I think you understand it.”
“I understand. You will be able to put my next blanket under your saddle, and be proud of it. Thank you.”
III
After that there were long, flawless days when they were at home together, he at his forge, she at her loom, time passing with the thump of the batten, the ring of the hammer or rasp of the file. There were chatter and laughter, songs, and long, rich silences. Work then was all love and inspiration.
She had known a good many different kinds of pleasure, but this was a new richness, something that did not exhaust itself, but grew, a sharing of achievement, designs, colours; fingers, hands, and brain creating, overcoming. There was the talk and hummed songs. There was a great deal to be silent about. It came to her as she was weaving the coloured threads to her intent, Why was this not enough?
This is it. This is the thing I have always wanted. There is nothing better; why endanger it. Why not let that man go now? Why not just do this?
The batten thumping down on the weft, the hammer ringing on white metal.
As long as I keep on my way, there is danger. I could never go back to what used to be now. This is what is worth while. A hogan in the Northern desert would be beautiful now.
Sure fingers interlocking dark blue and black, driving the toothed stick down over the juncture.
I cannot stop halfway now. I am making a new trail of beauty. When I get through, it will be wonderful. Nothing will ever have been like our life.
Lifting the treadle to let a line of crimson follow the shuttle through the design.
We shall command money, money will command everything. I have herded sheep, their dust in their lungs, hot, a little girl howling at the sheep. We shall be above that. Aigisi hogan hojoni. A little girl watching old Light Man drive by to his summer camp in a buckboard behind two spanking pintos.
A tiny touch of white brings the red meander to life, and deepens the thunderous background.
Navajo women are growing old when Americans are just getting really strong. I am not going to turn into a fat old squaw. My dear, my dear, will you be gay when you are old? Your silver is beautiful. Is anything in the world worth the risk of separating your forge and my loom?
The blue shuttle goes under six warp strands, the black, coming under two, meets it. A close weave looks like a true diagonal.
Are you afraid now, Came With War? I can handle these men. I make my own trail, and I do not stop halfway. I shall make something perfect, that nobody else has made. If I stop now, I might as well stop work on this blanket, after all it cost me to learn to make it. I shall pay myself back for everything that has been.
A single weft strand has no thickness at all, and a blanket is long. It needs patience to finish it, and to make it beautiful, one must not be afraid of the colours.
Laughing Boy, having done his thinking and made up his mind, did not mull over his decision, any more than when he had started a bracelet; he worried whether it ought to have been a necklace. If he did think of other forms, it was only in reflecting that after this was done he would make more, and always more.
You make your dies out of iron files, you get some small piece of iron from a trader for your anvil. In a hard wooden board you cut depressions for hammering out bosses and conchos and hemispheres for beads. When you have bought or made your tools, and have your skill, you go ahead. You make many things, rings, bracelets, bow-guards, necklaces, pendants, belts, bridles, buttons, hatbands. No two
