I

Laughing Boy went off alone to wrestle with gods: Slim Girl turned to loneliness as a tried friend and counsellor. To be with herself, complete to herself, that was familiar reality; distraction and strangeness was to be among many, to consult. On a high place she sat down to think, not facing the greatness of the desert, but where she could look on her gathered people, made small and impersonal below her. Long habit and self-training had made her cool and contained; she did not like to admit that she had need of mere emotion, and when she did allow herself a luxury of feeling, it had to be where none could spy on her. It was not that she would make any demonstration; she just did not want to be looked at when she was not quite mistress of herself. Now her isolated, high position put a physical difference between her impulses and those of the people in the valley, making them visibly superior. She lit a cigarette and relaxed.

If she did not watch out, she would love this man. She did not intend to love anyone; had she not learned enough of that? He was necessary to her; he was the perfect implement delivered to her hands; he was an axe with which to hew down the past; he was a light with which to see her way back to her people, to the good things of her people. She held him up against the past, matrons and teachers at school, platitudes and well-meaning lies. And now, for all their care and training and preaching, she was “going back to the blanket,” because under the blanket were the things worth while, and all the rest was hideous. With her knowledge and experience, with what the Americans had taught her, she would lead this man, and make for them both the most perfect life that could be made⁠—with an Indian, a long-haired, heathen Indian, a blanket Indian, a Navajo, the names thrown out like an insult in the faces of those who bore them, of her own people, Denné, The People, proud as she was proud, and clear of heart as she could never be.

There were to be no mistakes, and no chances. She could tie this man to her as surely as any prisoner; she would follow her clear plan to its victorious end. She had conquered herself, she had conquered circumstance; emerging from the struggle not American, not Indian, mistress of herself. Now from the Americans she took means, and in the Indians would achieve her end. Not such an amazing end, perhaps, but strange enough for her: a home in the Northern desert, and children, in a place where the agent’s men never came to snatch little children from their parents and send them off to school. They would be Navajo, all Navajo, those children, when the time came. This was her revenge, that all the efforts of all those very different Americans, to drag her up or to drag her down into the American way, in the end would be only tools to serve a Navajo end.

It made her happy to think of that man, Laughing Boy. He was more than just what that name implied; one felt the warrior under the gaiety, and by his songs and his silver, he was an artist. All Navajo, even to his faults, he would teach her the meaning of those oft-repeated phrases, “bik’é hojoni, the trail of beauty”; through him she would learn the content, and she would provide the means.

Yes, this was her man, as though he had been made expressly for her, strong, straight, gay, a little stubborn. He had character, she would develop it. And she would bind him. There would be no second wife in her hogan.

“Patience,” she told herself; “you are not in the Northern desert yet. You have a long road to travel yet, full of ambushes.”

She had no intention of herding sheep and slaving away her youth in a few years of hard labour, herding sheep, hoeing corn, packing firewood, growing square across the hips and flat in the face and heavy in the legs. No; she had seen the American women. First there was money; the Americans must serve her a little while yet; then, after that, the unmapped canyons, and the Indians who spoke no English.

She sat perfectly still, looking at nothing and hating Americans. She had not turned herself loose like this in a long time. Some young man, far below, was singing a gay song about the owl that turned her thoughts to Laughing Boy; she relaxed and smiled. This was something happy to think of. He came like the War God in the song, she thought, and began to sing it haltingly, not sure of the exact words⁠—

“Now Slayer of Enemy Gods, alone I see him coming;
Down from the skies, alone I see him coming.
His voice sounds all about. Lé-é!
His voice sounds, divine. Lé-é!”

That is he, she thought, Slayer of Enemy Gods. He would be shocked to hear me say it, to hear a woman sing that song.

She went on to the formal ending, “In beauty it is finished, in beauty it is finished,” then changed it, “In beauty it is begun. In beauty it is begun. Thanks.”

That is a good religion, as good as Christianity. I wonder if I can learn to believe in it? One needs some religion. At least, I can get good out of its ideas. If he is that god, what am I? White Shell Woman? Changing Woman, perhaps. I must mould and guide this War God I have made. I must not let him get away from me. None of the bad things must happen; I must make no mistakes. I am not a Navajo, nor am I an American, but the Navajos are my people.

II

The sun was low; the shadow sides of cliffs became deep pools of violet seeping out across the sand. She rose and drew her blanket about her, composing herself for contacts with intrusive humanity. Down the steep trail her little, moccasined feet sought the sure footholds lightly. Above her feet, the clumsy deerskin leggings were thick; the heavy blanket gave a quaint stiffness to her body. Wrapped so, her feet and head and slender hands alone showing, she became pathetically small, a wisp; but her thoughtful eyes were not pathetic.

The American guide hailed her as she passed his camp, using her school name, “Hi, there, Lily!” She dismissed him with a measuring glance that made his backbone feel cool.

“God-damnedest la-dee-dah squaw I ever run acrost!”

She had little appetite, but camped with a group of distant relatives all too ready to look askance at her, she took pains to do the normal, which was to sup well. She helped with the cooking, dipped into the pot of mutton, drank coffee, then rolled a cigarette. The Indians joked and laughed without reducing the speed of their eating. Chunks of meat and bits of squash were scooped, dripping, from the pot, to be compounded with bread into appalling, mouth-filling tidbits. Three coffee cups and a Hopi bowl served for all to drink in turn; a large spoon was purely a cooking implement. They sprawled on a half-circle of sheepskins within the open brush shelter, facing the fire, chattering and joking. Still in holiday mood, they heaped the blaze high, lighting up the circle and throwing lights that were ruddy, soft shadows on the bushes roundabout.

Some of them prepared to sleep. Visitors dropped in; more coffee was made. Slim Girl drew apart, into the darkness, and rolled up. Over there, a chink of light showed in the blanketed door of a big, earth-covered winter hogan. Singing came out of it, rollicking, running songs. They were gambling there; Laughing Boy would soon be penniless. She smiled at the thought of him and his stubbornness. The bushes rustled faintly. From where she lay, she could see a clump of yucca in a fixed pattern against the sky. The voices by the fire became distant. The stars stooped near.

“In beauty it is begun. In beauty it is begun. Thanks.”