Laughing Boy (11 page)

This is it. This is the thing I have always wanted. There is nothing better; why endanger it. Why not let that man go now? Why not just do this?

The batten thumping down on the weft, the hammer ringing on white metal.

As long as I keep on my way, there is danger. I could never go back to what used to be now. This is what is worth while. A hogahn in the Northern desert would be beautiful now.

Sure fingers interlocking dark blue and black, driving the toothed stick down over the juncture.

I cannot stop halfway now. I am making a new trail of beauty. When I get through, it will be wonderful. Nothing will ever have been like our life.

Lifting the treadle to let a line of crimson follow the shuttle through the design.

We shall command money, money will command everything. I have herded sheep, their dust in their lungs, hot, a little girl howling at the sheep. We shall be above that.
Aigisi hogahn hojoni.
A little girl watching old Light Man drive by to his summer camp in a buckboard behind two spanking pintos.

A tiny touch of white brings the red meander to life, and deepens the thunderous background.

Navajo women are growing old when Americans are just getting really strong. I am not going to turn into a fat old squaw. My dear, my dear, will you be gay when you are old? Your silver is
beautiful. Is anything in the world worth the risk of separating your forge and my loom?

The blue shuttle goes under six warp strands, the black, coming under two, meets it. A close weave looks like a true diagonal.

Are you afraid now, Came With War? I can handle these men. I make my own trail, and I do not stop halfway. I shall make something perfect, that nobody else has made. If I stop now, I might as well stop work on this blanket, after all it cost me to learn to make it. I shall pay myself back for everything that has been.

A single weft strand has no thickness at all, and a blanket is long. It needs patience to finish it, and to make it beautiful, one must not be afraid of the colours.

Laughing Boy, having done his thinking and made up his mind, did not mull over his decision, any more than when he had started a bracelet; he worried whether it ought to have been a necklace. If he did think of other forms, it was only in reflecting that after this was done he would make more, and always more.

You make your dies out of iron files, you get some small piece of iron from a trader for your anvil. In a hard wooden board you cut depressions for hammering out bosses and conchos and hemispheres for beads. When you have bought or made your tools, and have your skill, you go ahead. You make many things, rings, bracelets, bow-guards, necklaces, pendants, belts, bridles, buttons, hatbands. No two are alike, but they are all of the silver, or of silver and turquoise.

Having what he had, he went ahead with living. There were many days, all different, some of high emotion, some of mere happiness, but they were all made of the same stuff; there was one element beautified in all of them. So he worked, content.

When he had made something that had truly satisfied him, he would give it to her, saying, 'That is for you. There is no use selling that to Americans, they do not understand.'

It always pleased her, but she would appraise the jewelry carefully, checking it against their mutual profits, his sales and horse trades, her blankets, and what she brought from the town. If it
could be paid for, she put it away, otherwise she required that it be earned. Her primitive banking won his astonished admiration. For her, it was a happy symbol that their fortune, however earned, should be stored in things of beauty.

And every day, at the end, the sun went down and the harsh horizons dimmed. Then there was the magic drink ready for him, and after that a banquet. They spoke dreamily in the firelight, side by side, and knew a great intimacy. They were not two individuals, but two parts who together made a whole, and there was no cleavage between them.

I

 

The first time Laughing Boy rode away to Natahnetinn with the horses, he rebelled against the need to leave their tiny valley, and against the prospect of recurring trips, some of several days' duration. But very shortly he found that, no matter how much in love, a man needs both time to himself, alone, and in general periods of being away from the sphere which is permeated by the influence of a woman. He had a use for these days alone. After all, at the end of a day the sun always set, and it was less than half the time that a strayed animal, a bit of trading, or the need of moving his herd kept him away overnight.

Here he could ride the range and sing. Here it was that he thought of the best designs for his silver. It was beautiful, too, watching the long-maned ponies in the good grass, or coming down to water. Then there was the trading, meat and drink to a Navajo—patience, bluff, deception, penetration. It was so pleasant to sit down with another Indian for a long morning of smokes, gossip, and business, learning all the news and driving a close bargain. Very few of his people ever came by his house, and those were mostly specimens like Yellow Singer. He did not want any one there; that was a place apart, just as here he always had the feeling of a secret knowledge he could not share, something beyond the comprehension of the men he encountered.

He listened to the gossip, jokes, and talk about women that was frank enough, seeing in it all that they had no idea of what he knew. He did not try to speak of his wife, knowing that he could never tell them about her, nor yet make a pretense of speaking as
if she were just a wife, as they did. Few ever asked after her, and then in a tone of a certain constraint, though their words were formal enough. He had expected something of the sort, after what his uncle had said; she broke the rules and upset things. If they knew her, she was troublesome to them. Of course they resented the disturbance of their minds, and called it bad, with tales that grew in telling. So he sat, as it were, on the edge of their domestic discussions. When it was a matter of horses, he came to be listened to with respect. Every one agreed that he knew horses, and that he was an excellent trader; when he was speaking about a horse he was trying to sell at the moment, nothing he said was believed.

Trading was brisk and profitable. His own people were active enough in it. Hopis came down that way, and occasionally a Zuni would pass by. A tourist company in Los Palos was having a good season; they found it convenient to tell Slim Girl that they wanted so many ponies delivered on such a day. They often got fearful cat-meat, but always sound, and profitable for all with the Easterners paying two dollars a day.

His profits went back into the herd. One by one he was getting himself animals that satisfied him, that made him happy to touch and proud to ride them. When the day came that they went back to T'o Tlakai, they would bring fine blankets and much jewelry on splendid horses. He made a pair of brass-mounted saddles, and began, little by little as he earned the silver, a squaw's bridle that should be envied from the San Juan to the Little Colorado.

Those days afield ceased to be penalties. As he settled in the saddle at dawn, it was rather like reentering the old, familiar life into which he carried the enchanted quality of the new. The trail to Natahnetinn was still cool; he loped and enjoyed himself. There would be the action of rounding up a loose pony, the pleasure of feeling a neat-footed horse under one, chance meetings, talk, and trade.

Almost best of all was to sit on a knoll, smoking and watch the animals feed. One never sees a horse so well as when he is grazing close by, intent upon the grass, oblivious of the man. Then one
sees how he moves his ears, how he blows through his soft nostrils, how his casual movements are made. He moves from clump to clump, making his selections by standards of his own, never still, yet entirely free of the restlessness of a stalled horse. It is the essence of pastoral life. Cigarette smoke rises lazily in the hot air, the sun is comfortable upon one's bones, the gently moving animals make peace.

He did his thinking then, detached from his emotions, mildly introspective, reflective. He would weigh each thing and value it, go back, retrace, and balance. It was one thing to have made up his mind, another to know exactly where he was—the difference between setting out on a new trail and marking down all the landmarks of the discovered country. The horse shifted from clump to clump, making soft noises, hooves in sand, and crunching. Cigarette smoke wavered and turned with breezes too soft to feel, the movement of the heat in the air. Thoughts became pictures, changing slowly.

He had accepted Slim Girl's difference and unconventionality, but for some time still she occasionally startled him. He wanted to understand her; he thought he was sure of what she was, but yet admitted that there were things about her that were beyond him. And for some reason, he always resented the idea of her working in the town. Not that it was a novelty for Navajos to work for Americans, or that he had any means of taking an attitude towards menial labour. His people had owned slaves in the old days; a few still survived, but he had no particular idea of the position of a servant. Yet he wished she would not go there. Then again, he sympathized entirely with her idea of amassing a fortune. Perhaps it was just because the town and its Americanism were part of an unknown world, perhaps because when she returned from there she seemed so tired, and once or twice he had surprised in her eyes a puzzling look, a look of a man who has just killed and scalped a hated enemy. But it was no use his trying to form an opinion. He did not know his way here; with only his people's judgments and measures, he could decide nothing. He certainly
could not expect everything to be the same. As well expect, when one had ridden beyond Old Age River, into the Mormon country, to turn and still see Chiz-na Hozolchi on the eastern horizon.

On those few occasions when she warned him that the missionary's wife would want her to stay overnight, he did not like to come home. He tried it once, and found that the house without her was a long song of emptiness. Usually he would stay with some friends on the reservation, feeling a little patronizing towards their family life, slightly disturbed only by the presence of their children. Those nights he missed his drink, finding himself with but a poor appetite for supper, and with little desire for talk. Their food seemed coarse to him nowadays.

Aside from all other things, going away was worth while for the sake of coming back, well tired, to be greeted at the house. It was so different from coming back to T'o Tlakai. There was a thrill in riding up to the door, particularly when he came on a newly traded, yet finer horse. Or it was a real source of pleasure to bring in a string for the tourist company, whooping at them as they debouched from the narrow place between the bluffs, herding and mastering them at a run, into the corral, conscious of Slim Girl leaning in the doorway, delightfully aware of her admiration. There would be news, talk, and all the magic when the sun began to set. Quite often he was first home. He would amuse himself by arranging things for supper, piling wood, drawing water. He learned to handle the can-opener. Then she would come through the opening; he would see her pace quicken as she noticed his horse in the corral, and he would sit back, smiling, to receive her smile.

 

II

 

One day he raced home before a thunderstorm that caught him just at the end, first a fine spray, then such a drenching as one might get from buckets, then the spray again, and a pale sun that had no warmth. The valley was all in shadow when he reached the
house; he was wet and cold. She had not arrived yet. He built up the fire, and then, searching for coffee, came across the bottle. That was just the thing. But no, he decided, it is she who understands that, and went on looking for coffee. He found the package, empty. Well, he would try a little whiskey.

There was no fruit in the house, so he poured himself about half a mug of clear liquor. Bah! It was filthy-tasting stuff.

'Mule's water!' he said.

But even that little taste was warming. He sugared the whiskey, held his nose, and bolted it. First he felt sick to his stomach, then he began to feel better.
Ei-yei!
There was a fire in the middle of him, he was warm all over. He was walking on air. He rolled and lit a cigarette. He began to feel so well! He sang,

 

'Now with a god I walk,
Striding the mountain-tops...'

 

That was the way to take it, it was fine stuff. He wished Slim Girl would come soon. He thought of many things to say to her. He would make her see how he felt about her, how beautifully he understood her. She must know what wonderful things he knew how to say, how perceptive he was. She must stop thinking about all those things she was always thinking about, and drink some of this, and sing with him. There would be such love as never had been in all the world before. To-morrow he would bring his horses and they would ride to T'o Tlakai, and if that missionary's wife said anything about it, he would shoot her and tie her scalp on his bridle. It was foolish working for her, when his jewelry and his horses were so entirely sufficient. Life in T'o Tlakai would be a dream. He could see just how beautiful it would be. A little more whiskey would be good.

It went down more easily, a second half-mug, nearer full than the last, on his empty stomach.

'T'o Tlakai and children.' He said out loud, 'I want some children.' And began to feel sorry for himself. Then he began to feel sick. He felt very sick. Everything was dark and whirling, and he
was miserable. He fell upon the floor, hiding his eyes to see if things wouldn't stay still. Immediately the floor began to rise on end, higher and higher; soon he would be pitched against the wall. He opened his eyes, the floor went back to level, but the whole business span. Then he was racked. The world heaved and bucked, waters roared in his ears. Then he went out completely.

She, too, was tired when she came in, having been kept back by the storm. She looked down on him, heaved a sigh, and then smiled as a mother might whose child had done something forbidden and hurt himself just enough to learn a lesson. Very gently, she pulled him so that his head lay in the ashes. One arm fell across his spew. She put the uncorked bottle beside him, where he would smell the stuff when he came to. She nodded to herself. It was well enough, lucky to have happened just like this. It would teach him. The place did not smell very well. She took some food and a blanket, and went up to the tree on top of the bluff.