by Win
Sam knew well that Tso didn’t trust anyone who wasn’t Navajo.
“It is so crazy for you to come here alone that I can see only one explanation, that you are speaking the truth.” He gave a big lizard smile.
“So, White Hair the brave and foolish, I will make you an offer. If you want to come to my home in Canyon de Chelly, we may be able to discover where your daughters are.”
Sam looked at Baptiste. Both of them understood. Hosteen Tso was offering them his protection. They didn’t know why. They would be volunteering to go very deep in Navajo country as outsiders. It was probably dangerous to refuse the invitation.
Sam said to Baptiste in English, “No choice.”
Baptiste gave an imperceptible nod.
Sam said to Tso, “We accept.”
The hosteen’s smile got broader. “Then would you like something eat?”
It was good to be crazy.
13
Sam was mesmerized by the beauty of Canyon de Chelly. They rode on a carpet of green grass beside a meandering stream the color of the sky, and were walled by vertical slopes that were sometimes a deep, burnt red, sometimes lustrous ocher. When they neared either side, here and there they could see the ruins of ancient pueblos.
“The Anasazi,” said Tso. Sam had heard of the ancient people who lived here, in pueblos like those along the Rio Grande. He knew that the Navajo would not go into these shattered buildings. They had an aversion to places of the dead.
“Look,” said Baptiste, “above the kiva.”
The art of the dead ones—handprints, animals, and strange shapes Sam couldn’t make out, painted on the rock or etched into it.
“I’d love to get a close look,” he said.
“When the time is right.”
Coy gave a little yip.
They turned a corner and saw a wonder. From the valley floor rose a slender pair of stone fingers, touching, and perhaps a thousand feet tall.
“Spider Rock,” said Tso.
After a long look, Sam said, “The taller finger, it’s white on top.”
“Those are the bones of children,” Tso said with a chuckle. “We tell our little ones, ‘If you don’t behave, Spider Woman will catch you in her web, and your bones will decorate her home.’”
They rode, and Sam turned in his saddle to keep watching the spire.
He also kept being aware, on every plop of every hoof, that Nez Begay was watching him with hostile eyes. He ignored it.
“Ahead,” said Tso, “is the hogan of Hosteen Narbona.”
Sam looked at Baptiste. Maybe this was why they’d been brought on this journey, to see the Navajo headman.
Nez Begay glared at them and smiled, as though satisfaction was at hand.
Narbona’s place was in fact several hogans, in both the male and female shapes of Navajo dwellings, some fruit trees, and clumps of sheep.
As they dismounted, a handsome man apparently in his sixties watched them. He had a glance like a spear. The party walked up to where he sat cross-legged. Tso introduced Sam and Baptiste to Narbona.
After a long look the old man said in unaccented Spanish, “You are not Spaniards.”
“No,” said Sam.
“You are men who hunt the beaver.”
“Yes.”
“Then sit. We are friends of beaver men. I am Narbona.”
“I am White Hair.”
“I am Baptiste.”
Coy trailed Sam to the council and started to sit. “Go away,” Sam said, pointing. “Lay down.”
“Let him stay,” said Narbona. “The song dog has a sweeter voice than ours, and he may be wiser.”
He repeated the little joke in Navajo and got a few chuckles.
Sam sat in the circle. He looked over the men who sat there, without the rudeness of gazing directly into their eyes. He guessed all were warriors except for Narbona and Tso, who were leaders. All their faces were impassive except for Nez Begay’s. This enemy stared aggressively at Sam and Baptiste.
“Would you like some water?” said Narbona.
They accepted, and dippers were passed.
“In a few minutes one of my wives will bring some coffee.”
Sam and Baptiste breathed easier. Hospitality meant safety.
“You are surprised that I speak Spanish. In fact,” said Narbona, “I am by birth one of the Spaniards I so hate. I was taken as a child from their country and brought to the land between the four sacred mountains. It was the luckiest thing that ever happened to me.
“White Hair, I wish you could see the expression on your face. Tell me you what you are thinking.”
Sam decided to take chance. “What sense would it make to return all captives to the Spaniards, when some are like Narbona, sixty years among the Navajo, and passionately one of the Dineh?”
“My opinion of you,” said Narbona, “just went up. I think you also enjoy the fact that life, which brings us to these strange corners, is amusing. Ah,” he said, reaching for a pot, “Let’s have some coffee.”
Narbona passed the pot, and all drank in a silence that seemed easy enough. Then for a while the old man spoke of his sheep, his orchards, how cold the winter had been, and how unruly his grandchildren were. Finally, he said, “We come together here with different purposes. You want to ask me some questions. I want to tell you some things. My friend Hosteen Tso thinks maybe you have ears to listen, and that is good.
“So. I suggest that I speak today, and you ask your questions tomorrow.”
The friends said yes, not that they really had a choice.
“When we are finished, I will ask you to carry a message to the Spaniards. Tell them exactly what I have to say.”
“We will,” Sam said.
“Good.” Narbona looked at them with eyes like eyes. “I spit on the Spaniards.” He reflected for a moment. “It is for their practice of slavery most of all that I despise them. Oh, you say, Navajos also take slaves. Apaches take slaves, Utes take slaves, Comanches take slaves—all the tribes do. So I will tell you the difference. No, I will show you.”
He spread his arms wide.
“Myself. I am the difference. Many decades I was taken from my family and brought to the land of the Dineh, to the ways of the Dineh. Now I am a head man. That is because I was invited in—invited into a family as a son, invited into the ranks of the young boys learning to be men, into the ranks of the warriors. Eventually I became a leader.
“Yes, I was brought here by force. Yes, I wept hot tears for my mother and father. But the Dineh gave me an opportunity to earn a place, and I did.
“All the tribes I am acquainted with are this way. A man is invited to fight shoulder to shoulder. A woman is welcome to become a mother, and a sister to other married women. A slave for a day, perhaps, but a member for a lifetime.”
Narbona looked off toward the canyon walls, as though seeing something there.
“The Spaniard does things differently. A slave is a slave forever. A man may be a peon, that only. And the Spaniards own—this is rank in my nostrils—the fruits of their loins. The children are born slaves.”
Sam thought of Sumner and said to himself, We Americans do it the same to blacks. He felt profoundly disgusted.
Narbona waited, just looking at them. “This is the first great reason I despise the Spaniards. The second, unfortunately, involves me personally. Do you know the story of Massacre Cave?”
“No.”
Narbona nodded. “Almost thirty winters ago, the Spaniards built the fort at Cebolleta, the one which is still there. You have seen it?”
“We know about it,” Sam said.
“It almost touches the slopes of Turquoise. This is the boundary of the lands given to the Navajo, the edge of our land closest to where the sun rises. The Spaniards built a settlement on the margin of our land, like a dare.
“We took up their challenge. I was even then head of the Tachii’nii clan. I gathered together about a thousand men and attacked Cebolleta over and over.
We taught them some hard lessons.”
His eyes changed. “However, they sent word far to the south for more soldiers, and the soldiers came from Chihuahua, where they live as many as ants. They attacked us. Not only near Turquoise did they strike us, but far into country they knew was ours, where soldiers had never marched. During that next winter they even came here.”
The old man took a moment to look into the past. “I wanted to draw the soldiers away from our hogans, our fields and orchards, our sheep, goats, and horses. I was glad to fight them, and whip them, young warrior against young warrior. Not trusting the Spaniards, I sent more than a hundred of our old men, women, and children into a cave in the place people now call Canyon del Muerto. Then I asked some of our young men to lure the soldiers onto the mesa above, where we would fight them like men.”
He sighed. “A foolish old woman, one who had been a slave among the Spaniards and hated them, she could not keep quiet. As their soldiers passed by the cave, she taunted them.
“The Spaniards ordered their troops to shoot against the sloping walls of the cave and make their bullets bounce down into those who were hiding. When they had finished this shooting, which wounded many people, they marched their soldiers up the wall and into the cave. There they finished the job. They shot all our people. They knifed them. And with their rifle butts they bashed their skulls in. Not one old man, woman, or child survived. That is why we call it Massacre Cave.”
Narbona didn’t speak for a long time. “I was a young leader, and I had failed my people. Also, I was stupefied at what the Spaniards had done. At the time I was ashamed that the blood of such men runs in my veins. What kind of men, I asked myself, make war on women, children, and old men? What honor do they find in that?
“Now White Hair and Baptiste, brave men, I ask you the same questions. What kind of men kill the defenseless?”
“There is no answer,” said Sam. He and Baptiste both thought the old man was right, and both knew the New Mexicans would tell similar stories about the Navajos.
The old man coughed and went on. “I have one. Crazy men, men who have lost their way utterly, only they do such things. The best thing to do with crazy men is stay far away from them.
“So for thirty years I have kept my people away from the Spaniards. Sometimes young men still make raids—young men are wild, and no one can control them. For thirty years I have raised my sheep, eaten my peaches, made love to my wives, walked the path of Hozhoji, and kept the peace.”
He gave a half smile and looked directly into Sam and Baptiste’s eyes. “So, White Hair, this is the message I want you to carry to my relatives and enemies, the Spaniards.” He took a moment to think. “If you come no further than Cebolleta, I will stay at home. But if you send a single soldier beyond that point into my country, I will unleash thirty winters of fury upon you. I do not forget. The Dineh do not forget. We will come as a storm of red sand and black wind. We will destroy you with arrows of lightning.”
And he laughed.
14
For a while they all looked at the words Narbona had thrown out before everyone. Then he said, “I understand that you have questions for me, and I am glad to receive them. However, my wives say it is time for us to begin our feast—we have butchered a sheep. I will discuss other matters with you tomorrow.”
Sam and Baptiste looked at each other. Stymied for the moment.
“Thank you,” Sam said to Narbona. Everyone rose and wandered away. Sam said to Baptiste, “Damn if we aren’t guests of honor.”
Later, when Sam was stuffed and twilight took over the deep canyon, Sam said in English to Baptiste, “Is Narbona the wise old man, the genial host, or the fierce warrior?”
“All three. Bet on it.”
“And how does Nez Begay fit into this?”
“Whenever I look at that son of a bitch, the skin on my back gets squirmy.”
“I prefer either of them to Armijo,” Sam said. “He is a shrewd politician who cares for nothing and no one.”
Sam fed Coy scraps of mutton. None of the Navajos seemed taken aback by a pet coyote, but they watched curiously when Sam fed him meat by hand.
“Let’s put out our bedrolls,” said Sam.
“Take turns at watch?”
“We’re safe here tonight. If we aren’t, we’ll never get back to Santa Fe anyway.”
Baptiste rummaged in his possible sack. “People say you play the tin whistle.” And he held up a harmonica.
In a few minutes Sam knew that Baptiste was a terrific musician. He bounced nicely along with Sam’s Irish jigs and crooned sweetly with his ballads. But he knew all sorts of other songs—German folk tunes, French ditties (genuinely French, he said, not French-Canadian), Hungarian songs, Spanish songs, and even a Gypsy melody.
Sam liked the Gypsy one a lot, and they worked out a pretty way for Sam to play melody while Baptiste made the harmony.
Sam watched Coy scrunch in the cottonwood leaves at Sam’s feet, and a special feeling came to him. The sun was down in the northwest, below the rim. Amethyst mist lined the creek. The canyon cupped the twilight like a precious fluid. The evening was lovely. Life was perfect. At hazard—wasn’t it always?—but perfect.
“You know, Spider Woman, she isn’t really a mean old woman,” Baptiste said. “I know one of the big stories about her, and as an outsider I can tell it even when it’s not winter.”
“Do it.”
As Baptiste began to speak, Sam pictured the two-fingered spire back around the corner of the canyon, graceful, delicate, and beautiful. He wanted to hear something mythic about its occupant.
“An old woman told me this story at Laguna Pueblo. She had been stolen by the Navajos and got back to her own people. As she talked, she wove a “slave blanket.” He smiled at the irony.
“Spider Woman is a weaver, she said, and she taught weaving to the Dineh—it is one of the great gifts.
“Picture, though, the first weaving of all. At the beginning Spider Woman wove the world itself. She sat in her room and imagined a blue sky, and as soon as she saw it, sky existed.
“Next, the earth. She dreamed of a broad earth, huge in every direction, and, lo, there were many lands.
“Now Spider Woman realized that creating the world was a lot of work. Therefore she imagined three more spider grandmothers right in the room with her, and the moment she did, they were there.
“The four of them set to work weaving the world from the yarn of thought.” Baptiste paused and then made a comment. “The way the old woman told the story, that phrase became a kind of chorus—‘Spider Woman wove the world from the yarn of thought.’
“One grandmother made rock and sand and dirt to cover the surface of the earth. Another made the waters, those that cascade down from the sky, those that flow, and those that fill the lakes and oceans.
“Another grandmother set herself to filling the world with grasses, trees, and flowers—there were so many to be made. At the same time the fourth grandmother made animals—rabbits, bears, lizards, hawks, swallows, coyotes, and every creature that walks the earth, burrows under it, or flies above it.
“All these things the weavers made from the yarn of their imagination—they created the whole world.
“The old Navajo woman stopped and thought for a moment and then said to me, ‘The Spider grandmothers created the sun and moon and all the stars in the sky. They created the Laguna, the Dineh, and all the other peoples. One day I will tell you these stories too.’”
The two men watched the of the last mint-colored light seep from the sky.
Sam gathered a few twigs and made a small fire. The desert evening was cool, and Coy stretched out close to the flames.
“You want to make a song?” said Baptiste.
Sam looked at him in wonder.
“We could make a song about Spider Woman creating the world.”
Long into the night the two of them piped and sang and made up the words:
Spider Woman sits in her room
And pictures in her mind
Rocks and river and sky
Grasses and trees and flowers
Birds, turtles, and coyotes
As she pictures them
These things appear on the earth
Spider Woman weaves the world
From the yarn of thought
Now she pictures three more mother spiders
And together the four women weave
The universe and all within it
The four worlds below and
This world above
Four spider women weave all creatures
From the yarn of thought
As they weave all things
They bless them with names—
Clouds and thunder and lightning
Corn and squash and beans
Rabbits, bears, and dragonflies
Four spider women weave all creatures
From the yarn of thought
Together the four women spiders
They weave all things that are
Me and the words I tell you
You and the story you hear.
Our universe is the web they weave
All that lives is the web they weave
Spider Woman weaves the world
From the yarn of thought
When he rolled into his blankets, Sam looked up at the ribbon of sky between the canyon walls. The sky, too, flowed—he knew that. The stars floated across the heavens. They did not wander—astronomers knew there were shapes in the paths they traveled.
But that part of the story was for another time.
He checked on Coy, at his feet. He looked over at Paladin, staked nearby. He re-played the story of Spider Woman in his mind, and as he fell asleep, he thought human beings were a little like her: They made music and poetry—clocks and kitchen utensils and maps and even businesses, hell, everything—on the loom of imagination.
15
“Before I put out my questions,” said Sam to Narbona, “I want to ask about this man. He seems…” Sam hesitated. Mentioning the rudeness of Nez Begay’ stare would itself be rude.
Narbona laughed a little. “He is my grandson, Nez Begay. As a young man should be, he is ready to fight all the time, and he wants you to know it. Besides the reasons any Navajo has to hate the Spaniards,” said Narbona, “he has something very special. Both of his daughters are now captives among them.”