I

Any married couple, no matter how perfect the match, will undergo a critical period of strain, and these two were no exception. For all the dances, winter was a hemmed-in time; repetitious days indoors were a searching test of companionship. Slim Girl went into town, Laughing Boy sallied forth to watch over the herd; but they moved out of the home atmosphere together only for those eight or nine ceremonies.

They were attempting a difficult thing. They needed not only to see occasional outsiders when they were apart, new faces made attractive by the mere fact that they break the sameness, but also the presence of a third person when they were together, that their solitude might retain its value, and their unity refresh itself from the sense of the outsider’s foreignness.

This same life, so closely together, will make people unusually sensitive to each other’s moods; sometimes, if they are fond of each other, almost morbidly so. He did not answer that question; perhaps he thinks it was stupid. She handed me that cup of coffee abruptly; perhaps I have offended her in something.

They came through it remarkably well, and still deeply in love. But Slim Girl, watching her husband with close attention, felt him change and was troubled. Feeling less sure of herself, she was overcareful, and betrayed more than ever that reserve of something withheld that belonged inevitably to her double life. Each increased the other’s uneasiness; it was a circle.

He did not read himself. The melting snows refreshed the pasturage, the grass grew tall. He gathered his scattered horses, shifted them, and watched them fatten. His peach trees grew, his corn was well above the sand. All these were good things, and in each he rejoiced as he enjoyed each detail of his day, the far riding and the loom before the house door, his wife’s talk, the ring of his hammer. Each thing was good, and yet the whole was dull and devoid of savour.

Laughing Boy knew well enough that people wore on each other, and that every couple underwent a period of adjustment. He knew that in many households, when the man became seriously restless, his first wife would arrange for him to take a second, to preserve the home. But such was hardly the case here. He was by habit one who faced issues squarely and thought them out tough-mindedly, but now in the back of his head were many thoughts, safely hidden from himself, from which unease, like an infection, flowed through his system.

He did not realize that he was studying his wife critically, as one might an opponent. Once or twice, to his own surprise, he caught himself about to become annoyed with her over little or nothing; once or twice, away from her, building up a quite unreasonable sense of wrong. Then he would be disgusted with himself, and alarmed. The process was really natural enough; being profoundly dissatisfied with something in her which he refused to recognize, the feeling sought to give itself outlet by picking causes of annoyance which could be admitted.

She had always foreseen a period of difficulty and settling down, and was prepared to adapt herself to it, but now she did not know what was needed. She thought she was sophisticated, she thought she knew all about men, and all about herself. She thought she had penetrated to the ultimate truth. She knew only a little of life, not all of herself, and of men there was a half which she knew through and through, and a half which she was just beginning to discover. She wondered if the time had come at last to give up her American and go North. But this was a bad year for them; wool, and hence the sheep which they would have to buy, had risen, while horses, blankets, and jewelry sold badly. The tourists were unusually few. And here she had her one sure source of income.

Then she had a fatal thought. She was learning, from herself and from Laughing Boy, how much more there is to love than what is covered by its lowest terms. She was thinking things out by herself⁠—particularly when she was weaving⁠—like a philosopher. With the realization of the other things that are needed to make love worthy of itself, the bare fact that her husband and herself were in love with each other ceased to be sufficient. She wondered if, by falling in love when she had thought to make a deliberate choice, she had really known what she was doing. She wondered if life with this man, who was sometimes silent and strange, sometimes stupid, and sometimes irritating, might not be dismal in that wild homeland of his.

She did not really believe in her own doubt; it was purely an intellectual concept; but the dominant motive in her life for so many years had been the determination to move coolly towards a predetermined, sure success. Had she studied Napoleon in that California school, she would have admired him, and she might have been warned by him. Now, looking back on her past triumphs, she decided to wait until she made surely sure. Just a few months more, a year at the most, and George was making a lot of money in sheep. Some of that would come in handy.

II

As summer approached, Laughing Boy became restless and more worried at his own condition. Had he offended a god, he wondered. He took a sweat-bath, sang, and tried a fast. It did not seem to make much difference.

He made up his mind one morning when he was leaving to round up three ponies for sale. Slim Girl had seemed abstracted; he had noticed her watching him curiously, seeming nervous. She had been like that various times lately, yet what could he say about it? It was just an impression. He felt sullen, snapped at her. Her hurt surprise made him miserable. As he mounted his horse, he thought, I must surely find a singer.

There could be no doubt that he had done some unconscious wrong, deserting the Trail of Beauty. Forces of evil were preying upon him, he was no longer immune from bad thoughts. Stated in the American idiom, he decided he must be sick.

It was the merest chance that he met Yellow Singer walking along the trail with a bundle over his shoulder. Laughing Boy debated consulting him, and decided against it: not that ugly man.

“Ahalani, Grandfather,” the medicine man called to him; “wait a minute.”

“Ahalani, Grandfather, I wait.”

The old rogue was standing straight and walking briskly; one saw that he was a tall man. Laughing Boy smelled whiskey.

“I see that you need medicine, little brother.”

“Unh! Why do you think that?”

Yellow Singer noted the grunt and followed his lead. “I dreamed last night that when you were at the dance at Buckho Dotklish, you put those prayer cigarettes wrong. They fell down into the sand. Now they have put a spider’s web into your brain.”

“You are right. I am not well.”

He nodded wisely. “So I went and got the remedy for you. I am ready to make you all right. You are a good young man; it will be my pleasure to make you all right.” He glowed with benevolence.

Evidently this man had more power than one would think. “How much will you want?”

“Twenty dollars.”

Laughing Boy considered. It was not a high fee. He counted out six dollars in coin, and pulled three plaques from his silver belt. “There, that is really worth more.”

The old man hefted the metal. “All right.”

“What must I do?”

“You must go to a place alone, you must wash your hair. Then pray to the Divine Ones whose cigarettes you offended. Then take this remedy.”

Out of the bundle he took a bottle of red liquor, looked at it a moment, and then, benevolence conquering, took out a second and handed them over.

“What is this?”

“It is a special kind of whiskey. It is very holy. The Americans drink it; it is so good they try to keep anyone else from having it.”

“How do I take it?”

“When you have prayed, just start drinking it. By and by you will feel your mind becoming all right, your heart will be high. Then you will sleep. When you wake up, you will feel badly, but if you take some more, you will feel all right. One bottle should be enough. Put the other away until something tells you you need it.”

“I see.”

“I shall go on the trail to Buckho Dotklish, and make a charm there, to prevent any more bad things coming to you from those cigarettes. Tell no one about this, above all no woman. It is very holy and secret; if you speak of it, it will do you harm. It will make you jump into the fire.”

“I see.”

“If you need more, let me know. I may be able to get you some.”

He rode to his usual camping place by Natahnetinn, and went solemnly about the prescribed ceremonial. Then he tasted the drink. It was unlike the white whiskey; not so bad, but still pretty bad⁠—low-grade, frontier tanglefoot rye, dear at a dollar a bottle.

After the first few drinks it came easier, but it did not make him feel very happy. As he grew drunk, he longed more and more for his own country, and for a truce from the constant feeling of the presence of alien things. About the time it grew dark, he stopped drinking and walked up and down. At first he sang, then he was silent.

Liquor, taken in solitude, sometimes has this effect. Along with a megalomaniac sense of his central position in the universe, a man grows bluntly honest with himself. All the secret, forgotten, stifled thoughts come out of the closet in his mind, and he must face them in turn, without a saving sense of proportion. This now was Laughing Boy’s portion.

I am not happy in the house at Chiziai. It is too lonely, too strange a life; no one ever comes. We see people only at dances. That American town, what is there there? What is this preacher’s wife? The look in her face when she returns⁠—I do not know. There is something wrong, always something hidden. She is always hiding something. Let us go North, go North, to T’o Tlakai! Oh, my mother!

When I told her about her weaving; when we rode together that time, then she needed me, then I, too, was strong. We were happiest then, both of us. She is stronger; it is she who leads me.

I am afraid to speak to her.

He stopped short and clutched his hands together.

Why? I am afraid to lose her. Am I losing myself? Oh, I do not know, I do not know; this life she has had, this wisdom of hers. What went on before? Who was the man, and what does Red Man know? Perhaps if I spoke to her, she would say no. She makes her own life. I am losing myself. And I cannot leave her, Came With War, Came With War. Oh, no, can’t leave her. She would say “No,” and I should say “All right,” and then I should be dead.

How long will it be before we are rich enough to suit her? Why will she not herd sheep? All women do. I do not know. This American life she has led, she will not leave such things. It is my enemy. Our life is not good enough for her.

She wants so much money. A year, another year, who knows? So long, long. When will there be children? We should have had children. I want children. I want to go home. What is happening to me? I am losing myself. She holds the reins and I am becoming a led horse. Two, three years, all like this, and Sings Before Spears, who was a warrior, will have ended, and there will just be that part of a man which worships a woman. Not the rest of him, just heat. A bowstring without a bow. Only good for a woman to tie something with.

I need some more medicine.

Another stiff drink sent him over the borderline into incoherent plans for performing wonders. Three or four more put him to sleep.

He was in pretty bad shape when he awoke, late, with the high sun beating upon him. He went down to the arroyo and dabbled in its shallow, unfresh water. He was not as sick as the other time, but he was sick.

“When you wake up, you will feel badly, but if then you take a little more, you will feel all right.”

He would try it. The smell made him feel worse. He poured some into a cup, returned to the arroyo and weakened it with water. Then he downed it in one straining gulp. He did feel better. Perhaps he might take a little more, he thought, reaching for the bottle, and paused with it half-tipped for pouring.

No. He was remembering last night, and that had been terrible. He put it down, and stared at the ashes of his fire.

“Coffee,” he said aloud.

He drank a lot more water when he went to fill his pot. The heat of the flames was unpleasant to him; he was beginning to feel badly again, and wanted a drink. He put a lot of coffee in.

That had been all true, what he had thought last night, but incomplete and exaggerated. He was homesick, he was afraid of losing her, but what kind of man could not wait a few years, three at the worst, for so reasonable a cause. She was wise, she was right, and he was sure she loved him. Well, then?

The whiskey now, this magic. It did drive the clouds out of his thoughts, but it made everything appear twisted.

He lifted the coffee off the fire. It was strong. Without waiting for the sugar, he tried to drink it, burning his tongue.

It was not magic. It was just something like jimpson-weed. Under its influence he had seen himself, but there was nothing holy about it. He remembered quite clearly how he had placed those cigarettes in a crevice in the rock. There had been nothing wrong about it. That old coyote had made a lucky guess, and followed it up with lies to make money, that was all.

He saw a very clear picture of Yellow Singer and his wife as he had first met them, sober, and reaching for the bottle; he saw other scarecrow Indians he had met in this American’s country. He looked at them, and behind them saw incoherently the great, ominous cloud of the American system, something for which he had no name or description.

That was another thing about which Slim Girl had been right, that drink. She knew how to tame it. She had the secret of how to prevent American knowledge from doing harm; she made it serve a good purpose.

He set down his cup of coffee, picked up a rock, and deliberately smashed the bottle. The liquid ran into the coals of the fire, caught, and for a moment the dampened sand burnt with a blue flame. That startled him. To drink something like that! He threw in the fragments of the bottle, in the bottom of which were still a few drops, and watched the blue light flicker briefly above them.

He drank another cup of coffee, with sugar, then unearthed the second bottle from its cache. That had cost money, much money. Well, he’d had his money’s worth. From now on he could think without the help of blue flames. He poured it over the fire, and the drenching put the fire out. Eh! This was strange stuff!

To try to round up horses seemed out of the question. He stretched out in the shade of the rocks, craving sleep, his limbs feeling as though he had been through a furious wrestling bout. The sky was too blue, it hurt his eyes; the circling of a distant buzzard made his head ache. He turned over and fixed his gaze on a crack, studying it, sleepy, yet unable to keep his eyes shut.

Yellow Singer and all his kind were bad. They were like an offensive smell. But a smell came from a carcass. Those people were the way they were because of the Americans. The town of Los Palos in the drenching sunlight, quiet, dead-looking beside its irrigated fields. What was it? Something in the air, something that perverted the world. Where they were was no place for Earth People. They had done something to Slim Girl, one could see that, but she seemed to have risen above it. But they were bad for her, too. It was beyond him.

He smoked, and at length slept fitfully through the noonday heat, wakened now and again by flies, to drowse delightfully and return to sleep. In the late evening he went to where a waterfall in the arroyo made a trickling shower bath. The water refreshed him; he was hungry once more, and felt better.

What he had thought last night had been true, but unbalanced; and all this about Americans had been just because he felt sick. He had always known Americans, traders and such, they were all right, just people of a different tribe. He stretched out, fed, smoking, surprised at his desire to sleep again. It would be pleasant, it would be beautiful, returning to T’o Tlakai rich, very rich, with her, and to settle down somewhere near there and have children. They needed children. Meantime they would make their way together. Oh, beautiful.

III

Next morning he felt better. The drunkenness and the emotiorial outburst had cleared his system. In pouring out the liquor, he felt that he had destroyed a bad thing; the enemies in his head had indeed proved to be nothing but cobwebs, and they were gone. Like the man who burned the tumbleweed when the Eagles were afraid of it, he thought.

He rounded up the three horses he wanted, good ones. Only the best horses sold this year, and they did not bring so good a price. He rode home contented, quiet, and determined to do better with himself.

He found his wife waiting before the door.

“I did not know you were going to be gone so long; I have been lonely without you. Bring in your saddle while I get supper. I am glad when you come back.”

“I am always glad to be back.”

“As long as you feel like that, I shall continue to be happy.”

Why should he worry himself about this woman? And why should he worry about anything else as long as he had this woman? He slapped the ponies’ flanks to make them run around the corral. He looked at his growing corn, and as he broke the little mud dam across his irrigation ditch, he felt the coolness of evening seep along his veins as the bright water spread through the narrow channels. Clay bluffs were not as fine as painted rock, there was too much adobe in this sand, but it was a fair place. The fire gleamed before his house, he heard the flow of water and the occasional stamp of a horse in the corral.

Slim Girl brought out the bottle and an orange.

“Do not make the drink, little sister, I do not want it. I think I shall try not taking it.”

She kept herself from looking at him. She was troubled.

“All right.”

What was this? Probably nothing. When one walks on the sheer edge of a precipice, the meaningless fall of a stone over the side momentarily stops the heart. She studied him while they ate. She began to talk with him gravely of the life they were to make together, of the happiness that was in store for them.

He said to himself, “She was bothered when I refused that drink, the way she looked at me afterwards. She is nervous about me. I have done that, by acting as I have. Now she is trying to tell me how she really is; she is talking true; I know. I have wronged her.”

She saw the last trailing clouds pass from him. That evening was perfect, so perfect that, with his doubts banished and the feeling of intimacy upon him, he almost told her everything he had done and thought, but he postponed. It was the last of its kind for many days.

Like an ancient magician who, by saying the forbidden names, evoked genii whom he could not then drive back, Laughing Boy had given form to thoughts which were not to be forgotten. Unhappily for himself, he was no fool, and of an honest habit of thought. There was love in that place, and sometimes happiness, but if a religious-minded Navajo had entered there, he would have felt that the air was empty.

IV

Slim Girl continued weaving despite the poor sales, because she found relief and, one might say, a confidant in her craft. And then, they two, working side by side, reconstructed at least the outward signs of the harmony that was gone.

He eased his soul by shaping the half-stubborn, half-willing metal. It is a matter of patience, from the lump or the coins to the bar, from the bar to the bracelet. This, the most precious and beautiful of metals, is the easiest to work. That is a gift of the gods. Slow, slow, under successive light strokes the bar becomes longer, flatter, thinner: it is struck and it grows towards its appointed shape.

I am impatient these days, I get tired of the finishing. One must have one’s mind made up to it from the start, from four Mexican coins to the finely finished ornament; one must see it as it will be, and not stop short of what he has seen.

Having woven about a foot of blanket, the head-sticks of the loom are lowered, and the finished part is rolled around the foot-sticks, out of sight.

This is like time. Here, this little part showing, where I am weaving, is the present; the past is rolled up and gone; there are those empty warp cords above me. The weft is like handling a nervous horse; I lead the blue strand gently to the green, or it will break; I hate to break a strand, the knot where it is mended will always show, a blemish. But then, I pound the fork and the batten down hard, hard; they lock the weave and that much more is past.

He was curving the strip of flattened silver. This bracelet is coming out just as I thought of it. One must know his design before he starts; when this strip was still four coins, I knew that there would be tracks pointing one way from each end to the centre, clouds at each end, and that stone where the tracks meet. How do I know it? Not all men can; what is it I have? The Mexicans are lazy, their money is pure, soft silver; the American coins have something in them to make them hard, they are hard to work with. Those Americans!

Her fingers were deft, and she pulled at the warp like a harp-player. I am not sure I like this pattern, but it is too late to change it. No, it is a good pattern. Should I unravel all I have done, when it grows so slowly? When the blanket has been started, it is too late to change. The man who is always coming back to where he started, to figure out another road, will never get far from home. I wish I could just think my design and have it woven at an American mill. No, I don’t; it is because I toiled over them that I love them.

The turquoise is the important thing in this bracelet. I looked at it and saw the setting for it. But much of the time now I cannot think well, I am not myself. I have no design for myself, I do not know the nature of my jewel. I am hammering a piece of silver, and I cannot stop hammering, every day is another stroke; yet I do not know what it is to be. In the end it may be just a piece of good metal pounded flat. I do not know my design.

This blanket is like the other things. I am always being uncertain now. It is all like this blanket. Shall I unravel it, when I have been so long in getting so far? The design is set, a blanket with a broken design would be absurd, a failure. The only thing to do is to carry it through, with softness and with strength. My design is set.