Four days passed in vain. On the fifth, acting on the tip of a Hopi mail carrier, he picked up its trail north of Winslow. The next morning he found it, scarcely fifteen miles from Los Palos.
It had no mind to go back to the herd. At first sight of him it began walking as it grazed, then, seeing him draw slightly nearer, broke into a trot, and thus all morning, matching its pace to his, kept a quarter of a mile between them. He tried to edge it towards the left, but it seemed to guess his intention, taking advantage of a butte that prevented heading off to break sharply right and gallop furiously a mile in the direction of the railroad. It was never panicked, never too hurried, expending always just enough effort.
As he pursued, Laughing Boy admired. The chestnut stallion was coming into its strength, gleaming, round quarters, bunched muscles at the juncture of the throat and chest, a ripple of highlight and shadow on the withers, arched neck, pricked small Arab ears, bony head, eyes and nostrils of character and intelligence. It was one of those ponies, occasionally to be found, in which one reads a page of the history of that country; a throwback to Spanish Conquistadores and dainty-hooved, bony-faced horses from Arabia.
Midday was warm, sandy dust rose from the trail in clouds. Laughing Boy munched raisins and chocolate as he rode, remembering when the men on the posse had offered him the same rations. That girl, she was a whole war-party in herself! The stallion balked at the railroad tracks, considered, and cleared them with a nervous leap.
Now Laughing Boy thought he had it; the dingy suburbs of the town, on the far side from his hogan, made a half-circle before them. He advanced cautiously. It was a question of getting it cornered so that he could dismount, for Navajos do not rope from the saddle. Now the stallion began to rush, and the work became fast—a break to the right, Laughing Boy, pouring leather into his pony, headed it, then left, and the houses turned it again. A desperate race to prevent a desperate attempt to break back across the tracks; it wheeled again, straight between two houses, stallion and mounted man going like fury, to the admiration of an old Mexican woman and the clamorous terror of a sleeping cur.
The stallion drew away from him, and he slowed his pace. It cantered past an adobe house standing alone under two cottonwoods, and, just beyond, fell to grazing in a little hollow. Laughing Boy advanced cautiously, using the house as cover. He figured that he could dismount behind it, and with a quick rush corner the animal in the angle of two wire fences protecting irrigated fields. The pony was already moving into the trap, unconscious of the wire.
He rode at a walk, close along the mud wall from which the sun was reflected with a stuffy, muddy smell. As he passed the window, he looked in, and reined his horse so suddenly that it reared, while his heart stopped for a moment and his whole body was a great choking. An agonized, clear voice cried out, inside,
“Sha hast’ien, sha hast’ien codji!—My husband, my husband there!” And a man said, “My God!”
Before he had started thinking, he wheeled and rode madly for the door side. As he came around the corner, an American, hatless, came out, saw man and horse coming upon him, jumped aside and stood for a moment. His hands strung his bow without conscious willing. The man began to run towards the town. Arrow leaped to string almost of itself, hands and arms functioned, drew, released, but the excited pony would not keep still and the missile went wide, to the right. A second was in the air before the first landed, but it passed just over the man’s shoulder, hard by the ear, startling him into an amazing leap and burst of speed. There was something ridiculous about it which calmed Laughing Boy. He steadied his pony and shot with care. The arrow struck just below the shoulder, the American fell doubled up, almost turning a somersault, picked himself up, and with a last effort rounded the corner between the outermost houses at the end of the straggling street.
Calmly, he waited before the house. Afterwards there were going to be terrible feelings and thoughts, but now he knew what was to be done. His face showed no particular age, young or old; it was hardly the face of an individual, rather, of a race.
Slim Girl stood in the doorway, neat, dressed in American clothes.
“Come here, little sister.” Voice even and impersonal.
She walked slowly. For the first time since he had known her, he saw that her self-possession was only a surface. She looked as though a searing light were shining before her, showing her Hell. She stood beside his saddle.
“Did you kill him?”
“No, I hit him in the shoulder.”
This was the fourth arrow. It was right that such a thing should happen by fours. The gods were in it.
“You have killed us both, I think.”
She did not answer. He looked at her eyes, then avoided them; not from shame, but because there was too much in them. He did not want to begin to realize yet. He must keep his head. He thought how beautiful she was, and began to feel the greatness of his loss.
“You understand what I am doing?”
Again she did not answer.
He notched the fourth arrow meticulously, drew to the head, released. The twang of the string echoed and reechoed over great spaces. At the sound, he became aware of agony pent up behind his mind like high waters behind a too-slight dam, about to break through and carry away. At the same time, with the instant of releasing the string, he saw her open right hand pass across the face of the bow,
