First it is the top of a stove and then it is an ice-machine,she thought;
yet I am beginning to love it.
Cliffs loomed before them, duskily blue with snowflakes rebounding and zigzagging before they touched the rock. The snow was beginning to drift.
“These are not the right cliffs,” he said; “the wind must have shifted, I think. I was afraid it would.”
“What shall we do, then?”
“I think this is Inaiyé Cletso’i; we follow to the left.”
“Why not camp here?”
“We must find firewood. We might just sleep here and not wake up. Come along, little sister, perhaps we shall find a hogan.”
They continued, he fully occupied, she miserable with nothing to do save follow. Sometimes the snow whirled up at them, sometimes a flaw would sting their faces with fine, white dust. Their heavy blankets felt thin as cotton over their shoulders.
“There’s a hogan.” She pushed forward.
“Hogay-gahn, bad. Do not stop here!”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t you see it is deserted? Don’t you see the hole in the north side? Someone has died here. Come along.”
She sighed in anger, gritted her teeth, swore under her breath, and turned her horse back. Nothing on earth would make a Navajo stop there; he would not even use the dry timbers for firewood to save his life. Well, it was part of the rest.
“We are coming somewhere now,” he called to her.
“How?”
“I smell smoke. There, you can see.”
It was a well-built hut beside a corral. Smoke issued from the hole in the roof. The dome of daubed mud and untrimmed logs looked beautiful just then. Laughing Boy shouted at the door, and a middle-aged man crawled out.
“Where are you going?”
“To Chiziai.”
“You are out of the trail; it is far.”
“This snow confused us.”
“Where from?”
“To Tlakai.”
“Where’s that?”
“Between Seinsaidesah and Agathla.”
“Ei-yei! You come far! Just beyond, there, is a box canyon. There is shelter and feed. Put your horses there, Grandfather. Drop your saddles here, I shall bring them in. Come in, Grandmother.”
They lost no time over the horses, and crawled gladly into the smoky, fetid, warm hogan. There were the man, two women, four children between eight and fifteen, and two dogs. The space was a circle some twelve feet in diameter—the average size; with the people, the fire in the middle, saddles, cooking utensils, a loom and blankets, it was well filled.
“You live at T’o Tlakai?”
“No, at Chiziai. My parents live there. There was a Night Chant; for that we went. It was a full ten days’ chant. Mountain Singer conducted it.”
“Beautiful!”
“Yes.”
The elder wife served them a pot of boiled mutton and corn, with a chunk of the usual tough wheat bread. They ate readily. It flashed through Laughing Boy’s mind that he had not enjoyed a meal so much since his arrival at Tsé Lani, but then he thought that that was silly. The foods to which he was accustomed!
II
They were storm-bound for all the next day. He was anxious to be home again, now that the restraint of the ceremony and after-ceremony was ended. He wanted to have Slim Girl to himself, at leisure, and to enjoy their own special kind of life once more. So he was impatient and ready to find fault.
It was a long time since he had been confined in a winter hogan, with its crowded things and people and close-packed smells. Their house at Los Palos was always aired. At T’o Tlakai it still had been warm enough to leave the door unblanketed during the day, and he had spent most of his time in the brush-walled medicine-lodge. He found it too close here, and was made self-conscious by fearing what she might think of it.
The modern Navajo diet, boiled mutton and tough bread, tough bread and boiled mutton, a little corn and squash, coffee with not enough sugar, tea as black as coffee, had none of the delicacy of the old ceremonial dishes. He went outside only on rising, when they all rolled in the snow (it had never occurred to him to warn Slim Girl of that custom, but she followed suit without a sign), and again for half an hour to look at his ponies. The thick air inside weighed upon him; he felt dull after a heavy breakfast, and had no more appetite.
Then there were the lice. His wife had rid him of them, conquering his sincere belief that they were a gift from Old Couple in the World Below to enable people to sleep. He had rated that as one of her minor magics. No new ones had got on to him at T’o Tlakai, but in this crowded place they stormed him. He was not used to being bitten, so he was tormented, and he scratched a great deal.
His host asked him naively, “You have many lice, Grandfather?”
He caught his tongue in time, answering, “No, but they nearly froze yesterday. Now they have waked up again, and they are hungry.”
Slim Girl gave him a look of approval and sympathy, with a little gesture of scratching furiously at herself. He smiled.
The afternoon and early evening were better, for his host recounted the second part of the Coming Up story to his children, the part about the Twin Gods, Slayer of Enemy Gods, and Child of the Waters, which Laughing Boy loved best. He noticed that Slim Girl listened intently. Some day he would be telling his children. It seemed a long time for them not to have had any, but he really did not know very much about these things. It was the woman’s business; the children were hers, after all. She would arrange it in due time, according to her wisdom. He drowsed and was soothed by the tale of the familiar, strange adventures, the gate of the Clashing Rocks, the trail over Boiling Sands, Monster Eagle and Monster Elk and Big God, lightning-arrows and cloud-blankets. After supper the close air drugged him; his
