Laughing Boy

by Oliver La Farge

  'I am not surprised.'

  'They call you "Went Away." Your uncle calls you "Blind Eyes."'

  'Unh! He would. Well, I am changed, it is right that my name should change.'

  Jesting Squaw's Son trailed his rope to get the kinks out of it. Coiling it again, 'But they miss you. You will always be welcome.'

  'In the end, we shall return.'

  'You live close to the Iron Trail?'

  'On the other side of it.'

  'Ei-yei! A good place?'

  'You will see, a fine place, but we cannot turn our horses out there, as it is Americans' country.'

  'But you are near the Zuñis, too.'

  'About a day's hard ride that way. I trade with them—horses for turquoise.'

  'Have you any children?'

  'Not now. We have a plan. We are making much money now, we are working as hard as we can. You would not believe how fast we make it. In a year or two we shall return to T'o Tlakai; we shall have perhaps fifty, perhaps sixty hundreds of dollars, in money and silver and horses, I think.'

  'Ei-yei!'

  'We shall be very rich. With that to start on, we shall be rich all our lives. We shall have our children then, we shall have a beautiful life. It is her idea, she thought of it. She takes care of the money, she trades with the Americans. She is remarkable.'

  'You must be very happy.'

  'I am.' He meant it.

  II

  Laughing Boy showed off the town, the irrigated strip, the railroad to his interested friend. Most delightfully, a passenger train went by; Jesting Squaw's Son sat his bolting, bucking horse with his head over his shoulder, his eyes glued on the marvel. His presence changed everything. Laughing Boy led him through the narrow place between the clay bluffs to his adobe house, the corral, the ditches and the hummocks of the summer's field, the sapling peaches. Jesting Squaw's Son admired, and a pain ran through him that there was not his own house and fields, and his own wife waiting by the fire.

  Slim Girl came to the door. The autumn nights were already cold enough for the cooking to be done indoors. She greeted the visitor correctly, hospitably, and saw that her husband, although he seemed grave, was at peace with himself.

  At the first moment when they were alone, Laughing Boy explained the situation, watching her anxiously. She nodded her head.

  'Poor man, I am sorry for him. We must help him. He is going to get over his love, I think. He is already reconciled to it. It is that in combination with the other that worries him, I think.' Her husband, after a moment's thought, agreed. 'Now this is what we must do; talk about what will keep him interested, talk about things you have done together, talk of what will remind him of the good taste of life in his mouth. Do not try to make him laugh, do not try to comfort him. We shall show him new things. I shall give him some of your drink, I shall talk about the Americans. Now, I think, he is keeping one thing in his mind all the time, we must make him let go of it. Do you see?'

  'Yes, that is very good.'

  Truly, his wife was a remarkable woman, so wise, so right. Hearing his friend returning, he kissed her quickly.

  That evening was blissful, so harmonious that in the middle of it Jesting Squaw's Son excused himself, went down to the corral, and cried into the shoulder of the first available horse. A horse, warm and silky, is very nice to cry into when it stands still. The tears came readily. He had not cried before.

  He stayed for three weeks, riding the range with Laughing Boy, watching the silversmithing, going down to see the trains pass by. He spent an entranced and delighted afternoon behind a bush, watching three negroes shoot craps, and nearly frightened them to death when he stood up suddenly, not five feet from them, bow in hand, to go away. He forgot about Alkali Water's daughter for hours at a time, until she became a curious, sad memory. He gave much thought to his hosts.

  The novelty idea had been a good one, and they had plenty to offer, from the railroad and the cocktail, with its taste and surprising effect, to Slim Girl's talk of Americans. At night she spoke of their ways, of California, and of the other nations of people like Americans of whom she had heard, across Wide Water, toning down the more amazing things to credibility. They compared her knowledge with their experience on the reservation, and discussed the Americans' works, the good and bad things their coming had brought to the Navajo. They talked about the posse that hunted Blunt Nose, and stories of old times and the soldiers. That would lead to old wars with the Utes and the Jicarillas and the Stone House people, and they argued whether they gained or lost under the present enforced peace. Laughing Boy and Slim Girl enjoyed themselves enormously.

  It was cold enough for a blanket over the shoulder, the day that Jesting Squaw's Son and Laughing Boy rode out to the pasture and caught his horse. Laughing Boy was sad at his friend's departure. They mounted their animals and clasped hands.

  'I shall wait for you in the North.'

  'We shall come, but I hope you will visit us here again.'

  'I hope you will come too soon for that. I have lived in your house, I have seen you. You are both happy, I think; you are both in love. But you are afraid. All the time you are enjoying yourselves you are watching for something over your shoulders, I think. I do not understand this. It is what I saw. This life of yours, it all looks like The People's life; only her going into town is strange. But it is not just she, it is you both that are not living like us, I think. I do not know what it is, but you are wearing moccasins that do not fit you. The sooner you both come back to your own people, the better, I think.

  'I shall be waiting for you. You have restored my life.'

  'It will be a good day when we meet again.'

  It was a pity he was gone; he had been such pleasant company. They had been too much alone, and he had cured that. He had misunderstood it, too. He wanted to see his wife and talk about their guest. He hurried home.

  18

  I

  It had come round to the beginning of Little Snow Moon again, a time of year when horses, seeking feed, are likely to wander. Laughing Boy kept close watch on his herd, and was little surprised, on one day of high wind that covered the tracks, to find a stallion, a three-year-old, missing. It must have been gone for some time; he was unable to find it in the immediate district, and soon lost its trail completely. Returning to his house, he made preparations to be away for a week in search of it; the animal was valuable.

  Slim Girl procured chocolate and other dainties for him. The weather was no longer warm, he could not tell where he might camp, she felt that he would undergo hardships. But, as he said, one could not let as good a pony as that wander at will in a country entirely populated by connoisseurs and lovers of horseflesh.

  Four days passed in vain. On the fifth, acting on the tip of a Hopi mail carrier, he picked up its trail north of Winslow. The next morning he found it, scarcely fifteen miles from Los Palos.

  It had no mind to go back to the herd. At first sight of him it began walking as it grazed, then, seeing him draw slightly nearer, broke into a trot, and thus all morning, matching its pace to his, kept a quarter of a mile between them. He tried to edge it towards the left, but it seemed to guess his intention, taking advantage of a butte that prevented heading off to break sharply right and gallop furiously a mile in the direction of the railroad. It was never panicked, never too hurried, expending always just enough effort.

  As he pursued, Laughing Boy admired. The chestnut stallion was coming into its strength, gleaming, round quarters, bunched muscles at the juncture of the throat and chest, a ripple of highlight and shadow on the withers, arched neck, pricked small Arab ears, bony head, eyes and nostrils of character and intelligence. It was one of those ponies, occasionally to be found, in which one reads a page of the history of that country; a throwback to Spanish Conquistadores and dainty-hooved, bony-faced horses from Arabia.

  Midday was warm, sandy dust rose from the trail in clouds. Laughing Boy munched raisins and chocolate as he rode, remembering when the men on the po
sse had offered him the same rations. That girl, she was a whole war-party in herself! The stallion balked at the railroad tracks, considered, and cleared them with a nervous leap.

  Now Laughing Boy thought he had it; the dingy suburbs of the town, on the far side from his hogahn, made a half-circle before them. He advanced cautiously. It was a question of getting it cornered so that he could dismount, for Navajos do not rope from the saddle. Now the stallion began to rush, and the work became fast—a break to the right, Laughing Boy, pouring leather into his pony, headed it, then left, and the houses turned it again. A desperate race to prevent a desperate attempt to break back across the tracks; it wheeled again, straight between two houses, stallion and mounted man going like fury, to the admiration of an old Mexican woman and the clamorous terror of a sleeping cur.

  The stallion drew away from him, and he slowed his pace. It cantered past an adobe house standing alone under two cottonwoods, and, just beyond, fell to grazing in a little hollow. Laughing Boy advanced cautiously, using the house as cover. He figured that he could dismount behind it, and with a quick rush corner the animal in the angle of two wire fences protecting irrigated fields. The pony was already moving into the trap, unconscious of the wire.

  He rode at a walk, close along the mud wall from which the sun was reflected with a stuffy, muddy smell. As he passed the window, he looked in, and reined his horse so suddenly that it reared, while his heart stopped for a moment and his whole body was a great choking. An agonized, clear voice cried out, inside,

  'Sha hast'ien, sha hast'ien codji!— My husband, my husband there!' And a man said, 'My God!'

  Before he had started thinking, he wheeled and rode madly for the door side. As he came around the corner, an American, hatless, came out, saw man and horse coming upon him, jumped aside and stood for a moment. His hands strung his bow without conscious willing. The man began to run towards the town. Arrow leaped to string almost of itself, hands and arms functioned, drew, released, but the excited pony would not keep still and the missile went wide, to the right. A second was in the air before the first landed, but it passed just over the man's shoulder, hard by the ear, startling him into an amazing leap and burst of speed. There was something ridiculous about it which calmed Laughing Boy. He steadied his pony and shot with care. The arrow struck just below the shoulder, the American fell doubled up, almost turning a somersault, picked himself up, and with a last effort rounded the corner between the outermost houses at the end of the straggling street.

  Calmly, he waited before the house. Afterwards there were going to be terrible feelings and thoughts, but now he knew what was to be done. His face showed no particular age, young or old; it was hardly the face of an individual, rather, of a race.

  Slim Girl stood in the doorway, neat, dressed in American clothes.

  'Come here, little sister.' Voice even and impersonal.

  She walked slowly. For the first time since he had known her, he saw that her self-possession was only a surface. She looked as though a searing light were shining before her, showing her Hell. She stood beside his saddle.

  'Did you kill him?'

  'No, I hit him in the shoulder.'

  This was the fourth arrow. It was right that such a thing should happen by fours. The gods were in it.

  'You have killed us both, I think.'

  She did not answer. He looked at her eyes, then avoided them; not from shame, but because there was too much in them. He did not want to begin to realize yet. He must keep his head. He thought how beautiful she was, and began to feel the greatness of his loss.

  'You understand what I am doing?'

  Again she did not answer.

  He notched the fourth arrow meticulously, drew to the head, released. The twang of the string echoed and reechoed over great spaces. At the sound, he became aware of agony pent up behind his mind like high waters behind a too-slight dam, about to break through and carry away. At the same time, with the instant of releasing the string, he saw her open right hand pass across the face of the bow, her left arm rise. Now she stood, smiling stiffly, her eyes her own again. Her right hand was still in front of the bow in a stiff, quaint gesture. There was blood on the tips of the fingers. The arrow stood, through nearly to the feathers, in her left forearm.

  He saw her as at a great distance. This was all wrong, something impossible had happened. She held her arm up rigidly, her lips remained set in that stiff smile. In a moment she was going to speak. The feelings and realizations were coming upon him. He lifted the reins and rode slowly around the corner of the house.

  The stallion watched him nervously.

  'Go your way, little brother.' He watched the animal as he rode past, then he contemplated the ears of his mount. 'You are saddled and ridden, but you are better off than I. This would be a good world if we were all geldings, I think.'

  II

  The pony, wandering unguided, brought him slowly within sight of his house. He turned it aside, making a wide circle to come to the high place by the tree from the other side. The house, the field of corn-stubble, the five struggling peach trees, the corral, all very dear, stood like unanswerable refutations in the long streaks of afternoon shadow. As the sight of the perfect, familiar body of some one just dead, or the little possessions, the objects just set down, ready to be picked up again as always, again and again render that death incredible, so was the sight of these things to Laughing Boy. Her loom stood under the brush sun-shelter before the door, with a half-finished blanket rolled at its foot. Unbelievable, not true, only—it was so. He went through the past day, searched the farther past, as though by travelling it again he could find where the false trail branched off, and reduce this calamity to an error.

  Ten thousand things told him that what he had learned was ridiculous, but it always led again to the window in the adobe house and the clear frightened voice crying, 'Sha hast'ien, sha hast'ien codji!'

  Now it was time to think, but an hour or more passed before he could prevent the beginnings of thought from turning to frantic revolt. Prayer helped him. He got himself in hand and rolled a cigarette.

  Now I must choose between her and myself. If I stay with her, I lose myself, really. I am a man. I am a warrior. If I do not give her up, I become something else from what I have always been. The world changes, the good things, the bad things, all change for me. And they change for the bad. I cannot shoot her again. I cannot do that thing. If I leave her, I am still I, but I and the world are dead. Oh, my friend, my friend, your choice was so simple, you were lucky. The arrow only grazed you; it has gone through my bowels. And when it came my turn to send the arrow back, I missed.

  Oh, well named, Came With War, Came With War, oh, beautiful! Why do they give women names about war? I know all about that now. My uncle was right. I cannot go now and see their faces. Kill myself. That would settle it. But not now, not in this place. If it keeps on being like this, I shall do that, in my own country. Came With War, Came With War, Slim Girl, you coyote, you devil, you bad woman.

  I must go away. I cannot stay with her. She is worth everything in the world, but there is something in me that I have no right to trade for her. That is what I must do.

  He struggled for a long time, facing this decision, until it sank into him. The sun was low, the little valley between the buttes was all shadow. He had not seen her return, and hoped she had not. There would be begging, talk, tears—terrible. If she were not there, he would just take his things and go; the missing goods would explain.

  It was all too much for him. He felt as if he were shaken by high winds. That little house down there was a place of waiting torment. He stood, clutching his hands together and weaving his head from side to side. This was far worse than war. He turned to the gods, making the prayer of a man going alone to battle:

  'Shinahashé nageï, nageï, alili kat' bitashah...

  'I am thinking about the enemy gods, the enemy gods, among their weapons now I wander.

  A-yé-yé-yé-ya-hai!
/>   Now Slayer of Enemy Gods, I go down alone among them,

  The enemy gods, the enemy gods, I wander among their weapons.

  Touched with the tops of the mountains, I go down alone among them,

  The enemy gods, the enemy gods, I wander among their weapons.

  Now on the old age trail, now on the path of beauty walking,

  The enemy gods, the enemy gods, I wander among their weapons.'

  It was apposite, and it helped enormously. Now it was not merely he battling with these terrific things, now the unseen power of good would uphold him. Leading his horse, he went down slowly to his house.

  19

  I

  There were her tracks, wind-blurred in the sand. She must have come straight home, arriving before he reached the high place. With dread he entered the door, grateful for the half-darkness inside. She had got back into Navajo clothes, moccasins, skirt, and sash, but her blouse was only pulled over the right shoulder, leaving the left arm and breast bare. Did she think—? He saw her as an enemy.

  'I am going away.'

  'All right. But first pull this out; I am not strong enough.' She held out her arm with the arrow through it.

  He stared at it, and it made him feel sick. He was frankly avoiding her face, but he knew that the blood was gone from beneath the bronze surface, leaving it yellow-white with a green tinge under it. He kept on looking at the arrow, his arrow, with his marks on it.

  'You must come out to the light.'

  She rose with difficulty, steadying herself against the wall. He supported her to the door.

  The arrow had passed through the flesh of the under side of her arm, just missing the artery and the bone. The shaft stood out on both sides. From the barbed, iron head to the wound there was blood in the zigzag lightning grooves. The roundness of her arm was caked with dried blood and already somewhat swollen. To the one side was the barbed point, to the other were the eagle feathers and the wrappings. He took out his knife.