Laughing Boy (22 page)

'Then by and by I fell in love with a man. He was big and good-looking and he talked pious. He was a cow-puncher; he worked on a ranch near there. Lots of American girls liked him. When he paid attention to me, I was flattered. He was wonderful, I thought. We should be married and have a ranch together; it was almost too good to believe, I thought.

'I was frightened when he wanted me to lie with him, but he made me feel all right. He knew all about how to make women forget themselves, that man.

'Then I saw I was going to have a child. The next time he came to town, I asked him to marry me quickly. He made promises. Then he didn't come to town again, so I went to the ranch where he worked. He was angry when he saw me there. He offered me money, but I said I wanted marriage.

'I became frightened, I begged and I cried. He got very angry, he called me names. He said to get out of his way, he couldn't be bothered with a "squaw." That is a word Americans use to mean Indian women; it is contemptuous. I learned a lot then; right then I was not so young as I had been, I think.

'I went back to the preacher's. I was not afraid to tell him, but I
was ashamed. I could not be calm about it, it was hard to say. I just walked in on them and said:

'"I am going to have a child. It is that man's. He will not marry me.

'They were astonished; then the preacher looked angry. He called me bad. He asked what good all my training had done me; he called me ungrateful. He said a lot of things. If I had waited until he got through, his wife would have spoken, and they would have taken care of me, I think. But I was finding out that every one said one thing and did another. The Jesus trail seemed to be a lie, too. I told him that. I threw his religion at him. Then he said all sorts of things about me, and ordered me out of his house.

'My money was soon gone. I went hungry. I thought I had shame written all over my face. But even then I was strong; I thought that the world had beaten me now, but I would keep on fighting and by and by I would beat it. But just then I was desperate.

'Then those bad women spoke to me. They took me in and fed me; they were kind, those bad women. All my ideas were turned upside down now. I did not care. My heart was numb. I learned their trade. I did what they did. In a few months so, with the baby in me, that made me very sick. They took care of me, those bad women.

'I suffered much pain, the child was born much too soon, dead. I was glad.

'When I was well, I went back to work among them. I had thought a lot, I learned a great deal. I saw how this new life was bad. I saw the faces, the empty hearts of those women, kind though they were. I hated all Americans, and I made up my mind that an American should pay for what an American had done. I remembered my true name. I would have gone to my people, but I did not know how, and I wanted to be paid back. I had my plan.

'I noticed one thing—that the men, when they went with those women, liked to be helped to fool themselves that they were with another kind of woman, that they were loved. I did not look like those women yet. I looked young, and decent. They liked that,
those men. By then it meant nothing to me; it was just as if I cooked them a meal. It had nothing to do with love, nothing to do with what you know.

'I watched for my chance, and by and by I saw it—a man from the East, that one. He had good manners. He was lonely. And he did not have the poor ideas about Indians that most of these people have, that man.

'I was very careful with him. I did not do any of the things those women usually do to get money away from a man and be rid of him quickly. I acted as innocent as I knew how. He said he was sorry to see me leading such a life. I caught him. He was in Kien Doghaiyoi three nights, and all three nights he came to me. I found out all about him.

'Two weeks later he came back, and I saw him again. I had him, I thought.

'Ten days after that I came here to Chiziai. I had money. I took that house where you saw me. I watched and waited. He lives a day from here. On the fifth day he came in. I managed to meet him when he was alone. He was surprised and glad. I asked him to come to my house in the evening. I had food and much whiskey for him, so that finally he went to sleep.

'When he woke up in the morning, that was the test. He felt badly then, and ashamed to wake up in the house of a bad woman. I handed him his money, two hundred dollars, and told him to count it, that it was all there. Then I gave him coffee, and a little whiskey, and then food. He asked how much I wanted. I said I was not doing this for money. Then I gave him a little more whiskey, and so I kept him all day. I did not let him get drunk, and I acted like a good woman who called him friend.

'The next morning he said he had to get back to work. He said he would see me when he came back to town, and he wished I was not what I was. He was lonely, that man. These were not his people, these Americans here; they did not talk the same. Like a Navajo living among Apaches.'

Her voice was taking on a timbre of triumph.

'I said, "You will not find me here."

'He said, "At Kien Doghaiyoi, then."

'"No," I said, "I am through with all that. I only did it because I had to. I hated it."

'He asked how that happened. I told him about half the truth and half lies, to make it sound better, saying I had been bad only a few weeks. Now I said an old Navajo whom I had always known was come for me; I did not love him, but he was a good man, and I was going to marry him. But first I wanted to see him—the American—I said, because he had been kind to me, because he was not like the others. So I had come here for just a few days, I said.

'He thought a little while. He said, "Stay." He said he would give me money. I pretended not to want to take money from him; I made him persuade me. I was afraid he might ask me to marry him, but he was not that much of a fool. Finally I said, "All right."

'I had conquered.'

There was a strong triumph in her voice at that last phrase; now it returned to the level, slow, tired speech.

'I told him I could not just live there, a Navajo woman. It would make talk, men would annoy me. It would be better if I married the old Navajo and lived near by, then I could meet him when he came to town. With whiskey, I said, that man could be kept happy. I said he was old.

'He did not want it to be known he was providing for a Navajo woman, so he agreed. He gave me fifty dollars.

'There was no Navajo.'

She paused. 'Roll me a cigarette.' She smoked it through, then resumed:

'I was not happy. I was provided for, I was revenging myself through him, but I was not living. I wanted my own people. I was all alone. That was why I made friends with Red Man. He is not good, that man. He did not care if I were bad, he hoped I might be bad with him. I never was, but I kept him hoping. With him I remembered the ways of The People, I became quick again in their speech. He helped me much. He is not all bad, that man.

'The People looked at me askance. I was a young woman living
alone, they did not know how, so they made it up. They do that. Your uncle knows that talk. This went on for over a year. Then I saw you, and everything changed. I had thought I was dead to men, and now I knew I loved you. With you I could live, without you I was already dead.

'I was right. Our way of life, to which you have led me, my weaving, our songs, everything, is better than the Americans'. You have made this.

'I had enough, but I thought I could have better. I wanted it for you; you were giving back to me what the Americans had robbed from me since they took me from my mother's hogahn. I thought it right that an American should pay tribute to you and me, I thought it was the perfection of my revenge. After what had happened to me, things did not seem bad that seem bad to other people. So I kept on. I did not tell you, I knew you would not like it.

'I thought it was all right. What I did with him had nothing to do with what I did with you, it was just work. It was for us, for our life.

'And I did not want to herd sheep and grow heavy and ugly early from work, as Navajo women do. I wanted much money, and then to go North and have children with you and stay beautiful until I am old, as American women do. I was foolish.

'Then I saw your face in the window, and the world turned to ashes, and I knew that there were things that were worse than death. That is all, that is the truth. I have spoken.'

She sank back, exhausted, with closed eyes. Laughing Boy lit a cigarette from the fire. Then he said:

'I hear you. Sleep. It is well.' He squatted in the doorway, smoking.

 

III

 

He was at peace within himself. Now at last he knew his wife, now at last he understood her, and it was all right. Error, not evil. Something inimical and proud in her had been destroyed. He was tired, emotionally drained, but he could let his smoke curl up to
the stars and feel the cold air penetrate his blanket, calmly, while he thought and knew his own mind. He had a feeling, without any specific reason, that he should keep a vigil over Slim Girl, but he became so sleepy. He went in by the fire, pulled sheepskins about himself, and slept.

In the morning he brought her food and tended her wound. After they had eaten and smoked, he spoke.

'You have lived in a terrible world that I do not know. I cannot judge you by my world. I think I understand. You have deceived me, but you have not been untrue to me, I think. Life without you would be a kind of death. Now I know that I do not have to do what I thought I had to, and I am glad for it. Now I know you, and there is no more of this secret thing that has been a river between us.

'As soon as you are able, we shall go North. If there is a place where you have relatives, we can go there. If not, we can go to T'o Tlakai, or some place where your clan is strong, or wherever you wish. We shall get the sheep that my mother is keeping for me, and we shall buy others, and we shall live among The People. That is the only way, I think.

'Understand, if we go on together, it is in my world, The People's world, and not this world of Americans who have lost their way.'

They kissed.

'I shall be happy with you anywhere that you wish to take me. As you have said, there is nothing between us now. You have made up to me, and revenged me, for everything the Americans have done to me, My Slayer of Enemy Gods.'

'You must not call me that; it is wicked to call a human being by such a name.'

She answered him with another kiss. He thought he had never seen her look so happy. For the first time since he had known her, she looked as young as she was, a year or so younger than himself. Her face was full of peace.

They fell to planning. Reckoning their resources, they coneluded that they had amassed the astounding sum of three thousand dollars in money, goods, and horses. He did not want to take what came through her lover, but she said:

'No; I took it like spoils in war. It was war I made with him. And you made it yours when your arrow struck him. And we both paid for it, I think.'

'Perhaps when he gets well he will send policemen after us.'

'No, I know him. He will say nothing; he will be ashamed, I think.'

I

 

During the interval, Laughing Boy moved most of his horses a couple of days' ride farther north, not far from Zhil Clichigi, where he penned them in a box cañón in which there was a spring and still a little feed. He bought provisions at a trading post on the road to T'o Hatchi. Slim Girl had confessed to him that the story about the warrant out for him on account of the Pah-Ute had been a lie, but, all things considered, she felt it best that he stay away from town. He said that it had seemed a little odd that there should be so much trouble over a Pah-Ute.

'No,' she said, 'they do not want any shooting.'

'That is true. Whenever there is cause for a fight, they want to send men to do the fighting, and only let us come as guides, like that time with Blunt Nose. They must be very fond of fighting, I think, and they have not enough of their own, so they do other people's fighting for them. It is a good thing and a bad thing.

'I do not understand them, those people. They stop us from raiding the Stone House People and the Mexicans, which is a pity; but they stop the Utes and the Comanches from raiding us. They brought in money and silver, and these goods for our clothes. They bring up water out of the ground for us. We are better off than before they came.

'But yet it does not matter whether they do good things or bad things or stupid things, I think. When one or two come among us, they are not bad. If they are, sometimes we kill them, as we did Yellow Beard at Kien Dotklish. But a lot of them and we cannot live together, I think. They do good things, and then they do
something like taking a child away to school for five years. Around Lukachukai there are many men who went to school; they wear their hair short; they all hate Americans. I understand that now. There is no reason in what they do, they are blind, but in the end they will destroy everything that is different from them, or else what is different must destroy them. If you destroyed everything in me that is different from them, there would only be a quarter of a man left, I think. Look at what they tried to do to you. And yet they were not deliberately trying.

'Well, soon we shall be where there are few Americans, very few. And we shall see that our children never go to school.'

'Soon we shall be where there are very few Americans'; that thought was constant in his mind. He was very happy, it was like a second honeymoon. He had kept all the good things of life, and he had saved himself. He saw that his wife depended on him; she was very tender and rather grave. He understood her gravity, in view of her wound and all that had happened. Soon in new surroundings there would be cause for only happiness. A little readjustment, a little helping her into a less comfortable life, but her courage would make nothing of that.

She was very tender and very grave, and she was thinking a great deal. That crisis like a blast of white light had shown her life and herself, it had ended her old independence. She had unravelled her blanket back to the beginning, and started again with a design which could not be woven without Laughing Boy, and she knew that there could be no other design.