“Good, I take your bridle.” He reached for it, wanting to feel its possession.
“Wait a moment; put down the goods.”
He assembled them laboriously. “Forty-one dollars and one blue.”
“How?”
“Saddle, twenty-seven; blanket, ten—thirty-seven; tobacco, six blues; handkerchief, two dollars; knife, twelve bits; forty-one dollars and one blue. I make it forty-one dollars.”
Laughing Boy strung out the bargaining stubbornly, until he heard singing outside. The trader had stuck at thirty-five dollars.
“Good, I take them.”
He started to push over the bridle; Narrow Nose had his fingers on the heavy silver. Jesting Squaw’s Son and Slim Girl entered together.
“Ahalani!”
“Ahalani, shichai!”
The two men strode up to each other, Laughing Boy still clutching the harness. The trader’s hands felt empty. They hugged each other, wrestled, went through a huge pantomime of friendship.
“It is good to see you, my friend!”
“Very much it is good to see you!”
“Hozhoni!”
“Aigisi hozhoni!”
“What are you doing here?”
“I came up for the dance, but I am too late, they say. What are your news?”
“I have just got married. This is my wife, she comes from Maito.”
“Good!”
Narrow Nose thought he must be progressing in the language, he could understand most of what they said. Usually when they talked among themselves, he could not follow, they seemed to mess it around so. He had no idea that they were using babytalk for his special benefit, any more than it occurred to him as unusual that a man should be bringing a bride to live in his settlement, instead of going to hers.
Jesting Squaw’s Son shook hands with his other friends there, as though he had just come back from a trip.
“I have just finished building our hogan, over towards T’ies Napornss. We are going to make the House Prayer in a little while. I want you all to come now, we shall make a feast afterwards. You, my friend, you must come. Come now.”
He nodded at Tall Brave, who started to the door with a couple of the others.
“But I am making a trade here. I must finish it.”
“You can make a better trade with the trader at T’ies Napornss. He is a good man.”
Narrow Nose swore to himself. He wanted that bridle, and he wanted that new couple’s custom. Jesting Squaw was well-to-do; she would give her son plenty of sheep.
“I give you a good trade. Stay here and finish it.”
“I go with my friend to feast, I think. All these people are going.”
“Yes,” Tall Brave struck in from the doorway, “it is time to eat.”
“Why don’t you buy food and feast here?”
“I have food there, coffee and meat and bread. Why should they buy food here?” Jesting Squaw’s Son told him.
The trader made a quick calculation, involving about a dollar and a quarter.
“I will give you coffee and crackers and some canned plums. How is that?”
“Ei-yei! Then we shall stay.”
“He must be a good man to deal with,” Laughing Boy said solemnly.
Narrow Nose called through the back door,
“Make about three quarts of coffee, quick, and put jest a little sweetnin’ in it. Bring out ten cups.” He set out two boxes of saltines and four cans of plums. “Now, give me the bridle.”
“I think I get something more, a rope, perhaps. You are a good man to buy from.” He laid the bridle on the counter, but hung onto the reins.
Narrow Nose climbed onto the counter and pulled down a length of rope. “This is good.”
“No, I want horsehair.” With his mouth full.
“No horsehair.”
“Rawhide, then.”
He had to search under the counter for hide ropes that Indians had made. Laughing Boy went over them minutely. The coffee came. The Indians wolfed down the food and drink, and tipped up the cans to drain the fruit juice.
Laughing Boy said, before he had swallowed his last mouthful,
“I do not think I want those things.”
“Hunh?”
Drawing at the reins, he made the bridle seem to walk off the counter.
“Hey, stop!”
He turned at the door. “Another time, perhaps.”
“Hey, by Gawd!”
All the Indians streamed out, with the trader after them. Laughing Boy was off at a gallop, his wife and Jesting Squaw’s Son close behind. The rest followed, whooping and swinging their ropes and whips. Narrow Nose stood in the sand.
“Hey!”
Inside the store, Stinks Like a Mexican collected some tobacco and a handkerchief. He slid through the door, and vanished around the corner of the house.
“God damn a red devil!”
The Indians went fast; already their singing was distant. It was cold. He stuck his hands into his pockets and stared after them.
“God damn a red son of a bitch!”
XIV
I
It began to snow on the morning of the third day of their trip home, not far from Kintiel. The ground, where it had any dampness in it, had been frozen since the night before, and they had hurried under a threatening sky, having still a good day’s ride before them. The storm came down like timber-wolves, rushing. A mountain-top wind sent the dry flakes whirling past, stinging their ears and the sides of their faces; there was no sun, they could see only a few yards ahead of them. Pulling their blankets up over their heads, they guided themselves by the wind at their backs.
An Indian takes the weather passively, accepting and enduring it without the European’s mental revolt or impatience. Comfort and fat living had changed this to some degree in Laughing Boy; he was unusually aware of discomfort, and resentful, rating the blizzard as colder than it was. Slim Girl was simply miserable. They did not speak, but jogged on, punishing their horses.
Time passed and the wind slackened, so that the snow about their ponies’ hooves stayed still, although the fall of flakes continued. Laughing Boy was preoccupied with thoughts of the road, but his wife contrasted this ride with
