“Yes.” The second self that is a detached mentor in one’s mind recognized that he would never have talked this way with any other woman. Etiquette had been left behind down in the narrowness of Ane’é Tseyi.
“Perhaps you will listen to what he says, I think; perhaps you will not. Perhaps your mind is made up now.”
“I am thinking about what I intend to do. I shall not change.”
“We shall see then. Goodbye.”
She rose like smoke. He called a startled “Goodbye,” then began to follow at a distance. He stopped at the rim of the canyon, where the noise of singing that welled up from below passed him by as he stood watching her dark form, down to the bottom, along by the grove where his camp was, and beyond into the shadows.
He went back to the far edge of the mesa. He did not want to sleep, not ever again.
“Now with a god I walk,
Now I step across the summits of the mountains,
Now with a god I walk,
Striding across the foothills.
Now on the old age trail, now on the path of beauty wandering.
In beauty—Hozoji, hozoji, hozoji, hozoji-i.”
The deep resonance of the prayer carried his exaltation through the land. Then he began to analyse her words, finding in them nothing save unconventionality, no promise, and his own he found laggard and dull. Was she playing with him, or did she mean all he read into her brevity? Was she thus with other men?
“I ride my horse down from the high hills
To the valley, a-a-a …”
He was up and down, restless, no longer on the path of beauty, yet tormented by a new beauty. Far away, high-pitched, he heard the faint “Yo-o galeana, yo-o galeana,” and the thudding drum. He walked to and fro. My mind is made up, I shall make things as they should be. Now with a god I walk—or is it a game, looseness?
Suddenly he fled to sleep for refuge, rolling in his blanket by a high place under thickly clustered, brilliant, unhelpful stars, falling asleep with the feeling of vastness about him and clean, gracious silence.
III
He woke to a feeling of expectation, and made his Dawn Prayer with all the gladness that his religion prescribed. He could not wait to see his uncle and have the matter settled before they went to the trading post for the races. At the same time, his own certainty told him that his eldest uncle, his mother, and all her kin were only wanted to ratify a decision already made. What was, was; he would announce what he wanted to do, not ask for permission.
Now he stood on the rim above the canyon, bathed in sunlight, while below him in thick, visible shadow unimportant people moved, horses stamped, smoke rose from tiny fires.
His uncle was staying down by the trading post with Killed a Navajo. He started off without breakfast, leading the pony, and sorely tempted to mount and gallop those few miles, but the thought of the race and the pleasure of winning restrained him. I’ll win for Slim Girl, he thought with a smile, and burst into song, lustily pouring forth keen delight from tough lungs over the empty flat. The dusty walk and hot sun, the heat that lay over the baked adobe and dull sagebrush, troubled him not at all. The bleak, grey parts of the desert have a quintessential quality of privacy, and yet one has space there to air one’s mood. So Laughing Boy sang loudly, his horse nosed his back, a distant turtledove mocked him, and a high-sailing, pendent buzzard gave him up as far too much alive.
Killed a Navajo’s hogan was well built, of thick-laid evergreens over stout piñón poles. Looking in through the wide door one was conscious of cool darkness flecked with tiny spots of light, a central brilliance under the smoke-hole, vague outlines of reclining figures, their feet, stretched towards the centre, grotesquely clear. He stood in the doorway. Someone spoke to him, “Come in.” He shook hands all round. They offered him a little coffee, left over from breakfast, and tobacco. He made himself comfortable on the sheepskins beside his uncle in the place of honour.
One by one the family went about their work; the children to tend the sheep, Killed a Navajo down to the store where he did odd jobs, and was needed today for distributing free food, his younger wife to preparing a meal for the many guests expected that day, his first wife to weaving, outside. Laughing Boy’s cigarette smoke went up in shadow, was caught in a pencil of sunlight, disappeared, and gleamed once again before it seeped through the roof. A suggestion of a breeze rustled the green walls. He studied his uncle’s face—big and massive, with heavy, high-bridged nose and deep furrows enclosing the wide, sure mouth. Under the blue turban wisps of hair showed a little grey. Across his cheekbone ran the old scar from which he took his name, Wounded Face. It was an old eagle’s head. Laughing Boy was a little afraid of it.
“My uncle.”
“Yes, my child.” The old-fashioned, round silver earrings shimmered faintly.
“I have been thinking about something.”
They smoked on. A black-and-white kid slipped in the door, leaped up and poised itself on the cantle of a saddle. Outside was the rhythmic thump-thump-thump of a weaver pounding down the threads in her loom. A distant child laughed, someone was chopping wood—sounds of domesticity.
“I have been thinking about a wife.”
“You are old enough. It is a good thing.”
He finished his cigarette.
“You know that Slim Girl? The one who wears so much hard goods? She danced the first two nights.”
“She is a schoolgirl.” The tone was final. “She was taken away to that place, for six years.”
“That is all right. I like her.”
“That is not all right. I do not know how she came to be allowed to
