Laughing Boy

slabs, of which there were plenty roundabout, in the talus. He began to bring them, covering her. He had placed the first few, at her feet, when he straightened up and stood still. He walked to his own pile of goods and looked at it. Returning to her, he found her arm under the blankets, and took from it a thin, gold bracelet that she had bought in California. From his own goods he set aside the finest saddle-blanket of her weaving, an old trade blanket, a coffeepot and coffee. Bundling all the rest together, he carried it to the grave and spread it over her. Slowly he took off his heavy silver belt, his turquoise and coral necklace, his two bracelets, his garnet ring and his turquoise ring, his earrings of turquoise matrix, laying each one gently upon the heap. He changed his old bow-guard for one he had made at their house. Remembering something, he went to his pony, took off his silver-mounted bridle, and added it.

With difficulty, he forced the thin gold circle up over his right hand, taking some of his skin with it: it was but little wider than his wrist, it would not come off easily. Then he continued covering her. It began to snow, in large, soft, slow flakes out of a grey-white sky.

It was nearly dark when he had laid on the last stone, and he began to be aware that he was weary. Blowing cigarette smoke four ways, he stood in prayer for a minute or two. He untethered her pony and led it into the niche. It stood patiently by the pile while he notched his arrow and spoke the requisite words. The string twanged, the shaft struck, the pony leapt and fell partly over the tomb. Those clear-cut things, happening rapidly, were out of tempo with everything else; they put a period to it.

XXI

I

Now began the four days of waiting. But just waiting was not enough; there had been no women to wail for her, no outcry of bereaved relatives; he would make it a vigil, all the four days should be one prayer. This was not an ordinary death.

It was quite dark, and the snow still drifted down like waterlogged leaves falling through water. He rebuilt the fire till it blazed, arranged the saddle-blanket and his saddle for a reclining place, pulled the trade blanket about him, and began the vigil, staring at the distant blacker place in the blackness of the cliffs behind the snowflakes that marked the niche.

He tried to pray, but his mind kept wandering, reviewing incidents of their life together, happy and unhappy, but so full of life, so charged with her personality. He would forget that she was dead, he would just be thinking about her. The cold coming through his clothing would wash along his skin, a flake would touch his face, and he would remember.

Now it is all over. Let it be altogether so. That horse is lucky; well, we shall go with her, too.

He got his pony, took his saddle in his hand, and went back into the niche. The animal was nervous and wild with the darkness and the cold and the smell of death. It would not stand still. Later it was to occur to him as part of the remarkableness that he went unhesitatingly into that place after dark, but now he thought nothing of it. Now he was not a Navajo terrified of the dead, not an Indian, not an individual of any race, but a man who had buried his own heart.

He selected his arrow.

“… It has not been in vain. You will remember me, I shall live in you.”

Wind God had spoken her words in his mind. She would not like this. He put back the arrow in his quiver, and led the horse out to the fire. There he took off its rope, and hobbled it.

“Go see if you can find food and water, little brother. Go away and be happy.”

He returned to his vigil, collecting a large pile of dead wood for the fire, and making himself as comfortable as possible with his blankets and his saddle. He began to feel some fear, conscious of the nearness of her tomb, being so very much alone in that narrow canyon. He set himself to the task of realizing what had happened, and conceiving a continuing life without Slim Girl. It was not easy; he spent a long time in rebellion, or in a mere thronging of bitter emotions that made him throw his shoulders from side to side.

Jesting Squaw’s Son had been lucky. But in the end he was better off, because there had been that year and a half. Not for anything would he lose that. He began remembering again⁠—it was a kind of anodyne⁠—until he came back to the inevitable starting point. Then it was worse.

After some hours he grew calmer, partly because of fatigue. The disaster was accepted and familiar; he told himself that he could see the life ahead growing, in a way, from what had gone before. Nothing could ever make him forget; what he was and always would be, what he did and thought, would always be conditioned by Slim Girl. The remainder of his life would be a monument to her. All this could not be changed or taken from him, he would never lose its mark. That was a comfort.

He was thinking this way with his intellect, it did not really go inside of him. It was still just platitudes.

He became more aware of things about him, the cold, the fire, the snow. Flakes fell into the flames with little hisses, and he remembered his dream.

“Slayer of Enemy Gods” she called me. But Slayer of Enemy Gods spared the Cold Woman and Old Age Woman and Poverty People and Hunger People. She tried to kill the Hunger People; I thought she could. If we had not