Eye of the Wolf

by Theodore V. Olsen

  He passed over two more heavily brushed ridges and tackled a final rough ascent to the long plateau of Adakhai's village. The rocks and weeds under his feet gave way to cushiony clumps of bunchgrass. Dying fires spattered the night ahead of him; hogans mounded indistinctly against the purple-blue sky. The village was sleeping. He slowed his steps.

  Ulring wouldn't have overlooked the Navajos. He'd almost certainly paid the plateau a visit by now. Perhaps he'd searched the village—perhaps only issued a pointed warning. Remembering their old fear of the lawman, Will-Joe guessed that many would be reluctant to help him; others would stand by him no matter what.

  But none of these would make the decision. That rested in the withered palm of Adakhai himself.

  Will-Joe went slowly, ready for anything. Adakhai had always kept an armed sentinel or two patrolling the village outskirts by day and night. He had been a war chief in his early years; such precautions were second nature with him. But his war days were in the far past, when the Navajos had been as fierce and battle-blooded as their Apache cousins.

  Adakhai had been at Canyon de Chelly when Kit Carson had rounded up the Navajos and sent them to the Corn River bottoms to become peaceful herders and farmers. When the final bitter blow had fallen, the government selling their Corn River lands to the railroad, Adakhai had fled with his band to timber country in the mountainous north. Here, far from the cliffs and mesas of their ancestral home in the Painted Desert, they had made a last stand. But the expected move by the U. S. Army never came; their squatters' rights were never contested. Rooting a hundred or so Indians out of a remote stronghold would have been more trouble than it was worth—so long as whites in the region kicked up no great fuss about their presence. Adakhai had held his people generally in check, avoiding any major trouble. And even small-scale depredations by the band had ceased after Ulring's harsh ultimatum to the old chief…

  As Will-Joe had expected, the dogs picked him up. About a half-dozen of them filled the night with a fierce commotion. He walked boldly on till a man's sharp voice hailed him:

  "Taahoo nahi nani."

  It was an order to stand still. Will-Joe did as he was told. He saw a dark shape coming at a trot; starlight frosted the barrel of a rifle.

  "Haaash yinilege?" demanded the other, and now Will-Joe recognized the voice.

  "Ahalani, anaai" he said. "Greetings, brother. Is that Narbona?"

  Billy Hosteen halted in surprise. "Is that Jahzini?" Caution touched his voice. "Ha'at ishi?"

  "I want to see Adakhai."

  Billy Hosteen grunted and came toward him till his rifle muzzle was an inch from Will-Joe's belly. "You were a fool to come." His tone was curt and cold. "Tsi Tsosi has been here."

  "That is no surprise."

  "It is true? You killed a white-eyes?"

  Will-Joe looked down at the rifle, feeling a mingled hurt and irritation. Billy Hosteen had been one of the few Navajos to visit his camp after he had quit the band. They'd always been friendly, but there was no friendliness in this meeting.

  "I will talk to Adakhai."

  Billy Hosteen stepped to one side, then motioned with the rifle. "Walk ahead of me."

  He didn't move. A stubborn anger welled in him. "I came as a brother. If I am an enemy, there is a better thing to do."

  Billy Hosteen seemed to hesitate a long moment. Then he swung around and headed toward the lodges, and Will-Joe fell in behind him. The dogs were still yapping and baying, and several Navajos had emerged from their dwellings, their voices sleepy and querulous. A dog made a rush at Will-Joe and Billy Hosteen sent him howling away with a well-aimed kick.

  Somebody stirred up a fire. The sleepy mutterings died away. The Navajos stared as Will-Joe tramped past them. He knew all the faces. Some had once been friendly, but there was no reading what lay behind any of these. He said a quiet, courteous "Ahalani" to each. Several answered.

  Billy Hosteen halted by a logs-stacked-up house. A large hogan made of piñon logs, boughs and cedar bark, it showed the white man's influence. It boasted a lot more in room and comfort than the old-style forked-together hogans whose structure the talking God had decreed long ago. Billy scratched on the woven-reed door.

  Someone was already stirring around inside; the door was pushed open. A girl's face was dimly ovaled. "Ha'at ishi?" Her eyes moved to Will-Joe. She pressed a startled hand over her mouth, then quickly turned her head, speaking into the cherry-glowing dimness: "Natani—Natani!"

  A man came out, stooping beneath the low doorway. He was tall and old; the flesh had melted from his great bones and his shoulders were bent with years. He hugged a blue-and-red bayeta blanket around him against the night chill. His face was webbed with furrows of age and weather, like a mask of brown clay baked by endless suns.

  "Xoxo naxasi, Natani," Will-Joe said respectfully: it was the formal greeting reserved for a chief.

  Adakhai moved forward. One long step—then he caught himself. "Ahalani, shiyaazh" His voice trembled with feeling. "Greetings, my son. What do you want?"

  "Di bonaxo sinini," Will-Joe said slowly. "Of this you have been told."

  Adakhai gave a laborious nod and opened one clenched hand in a vague motion. "We will speak in my house. Leave us, Narbona."

  Billy Hosteen looked at him, then at Will-Joe; he looked longest at the girl in the doorway. Then he turned on his heel and walked away.

  The girl moved aside to let Will-Joe enter. A trench full of banked coals glowed in the center of the dirt floor. She dropped in some sticks and poked the fire to blazing life, coating the interior of the hogan with a vibrant play of light and shadows. The burst of heat gave a pungent edge to the smell of greasy mutton that filled the place.

  The girl straightened from her task and turned to look at him. Her hair shimmered like ink in the firelight. She was thin and slight in her blue velvet tunic and voluminous skirts of black wool, but there was something wiry and tough about her. Her face, though, was gentle and shy, her eyes like tar pools against her golden-copper skin.

  "Ahalani, Rainbow Girl."

  "Ahalani, Jahzini."

  Adakhai shuffled to the fire and seated himself with rheumatic difficulty, crossing his bony legs. Will-Joe eased himself down opposite the old man. The outfanning heat washed through him. The moment his quivering muscles relaxed, he felt the vast weariness hit him like a fist.

  "Tsi Tsosi came to us," Adakhai said.

  "This I know."

  "You bring danger to us, Jahzini. This you know too."

  Anger and dismay ran together in Will-Joe's mind, even though he'd been braced for something of the sort from this man who'd raised him as a son. "I did not mean to stay long. I came for food. And there is this—"

  He rolled up his sleeve and held out the swollen arm. The girl made a little throaty sound and stepped forward as if to see it better. Adakhai gave her a look that stopped her; she sank back on her knees by the fire, but the shiny tarspots of her eyes held on Will-Joe. Adakhai leaned forward, peering at the arm, then raised his eyes.

  "Tsi Tsosi says you killed a Belinkana."

  "He lies. Two Americans are dead, but it was Tsi Tsosi himself who killed them."

  Adakhai's eyes glimmered with a faint rising interest. "Tell me of this."

  Will-Joe began his story, but his words kept trailing away in heavy yawns. He nodded off twice during the telling. Adakhai toyed with the ancient bizha dangling by a thong from his belt. It was his personal fetish that Will-Joe had seen many times: made of turquoise because Noholike, god of gambling, had always been successful with turquoise; and even among the wager-loving Navajos, Adakhai had once been notorious for betting on anything and everything. But his gambling days were over, Will-Joe thought: Adakhai no longer took chances.

  When Will-Joe had finished, the old man seemed to retreat deeper into his blanket, mumbling, "You should not have come here. You bring trouble. We do not need trouble; we have had enough."

  "I didn't come to stay. I don't mean to stay long.
" Will-Joe tried to keep any feeling that savored of contempt from his voice. "Who can know?"

  "Tsi Tsosi has two men in the hills." Adakhai waved a hand vaguely southward. "They have a camp there and by day they watch us. They think we do not know of them. The white-eyed fools are like blindworms; they see yet do not see."

  "I came by night. They will not know."

  "Then you must be gone before the sun comes." Adakhai rocked to and fro, huddling to the fire as if his old bones couldn't absorb enough warmth. "We will give you food; Rainbow Girl will care for your arm. She knows the medicine secrets of our family. Then you must be gone, Jahzini. Do not come again."

  Will-Joe bit into his lower lip, hesitating—before the man he had once revered above all others—to say his mind. But the thoughts were too strong, and he bit them out like pebbles: "I wonder if this can be the one I knew. The Adakhai who fought the Apaches, the Mexicans, the Americans in our good days. The Adakhai whose body carries the scars of a grizzly he fought with bare hands. Who taught me that nothing should be feared but fear."

  A hot glaze passed over the old man's black-stone eyes and faded. "Youth sees nothing but itself," he muttered. "Nothing else—not even its own end. I spoke the truth to you, Jahzini. When a man learns what fear is…he fears."

  He rose slowly to his feet, moving like a man bowed with twice his years, and shuffled to his pallet of blankets in the corner. He sat heavily down, his legs crossed, and fumbled up a cork tusjeh and took a long pull at it. Rainbow Girl's skirts rustled as she came to Will-Joe's side and knelt. She grasped his arm at the wrist and ran her flat calloused palm along the swollen flesh.

  "A bullet made this?"

  "Yes."

  "How long ago?"

  "Three suns."

  She turned her head. "Natani."

  "Ehh?" Adakhai's eyes already had a hotly varnished sheen from the raw corn liquor.

  "You must not send him away tonight."

  "Ehh? What do you say, girl?"

  "This arm is very bad—"

  "It's a scratch."

  "It's a scratch that will kill. I'll have to make a good medicine. There are things I'll need… I cannot get them til the sun is up. Then—Jahzini must have rest."

  "He cannot stay," Adakhai singsonged. "There is great danger for all while he remains."

  "He must stay." Her voice did not sharpen but a quality entered it that Will-Joe recognized: this girl was, after all, Adakhai's own blood. "Through another sun at least. He can leave in the next dark."

  "Danger," muttered Adakhai.

  "There is always danger. Tsi Tsosi is a wolf; he has a wolf's eye. For no reason, not even for this, he might kill us all. Jahzini was as a son to you, Natani. You can't send him out to die!"

  Will-Joe felt something constrict in his chest like a tight-drawn knot. "I will not stay," he said suddenly. And started to rise.

  Her hand closed on his shoulder, pressing down with her weight against it, holding him. "Natani" she whispered.

  Adakhai took another swig from the tusjeh. He held out a shrunken, faltering hand. "Stay, Jahzini. Now it is I who ask."

  "Think of the people," Will-Joe said bitterly. "You were right."

  "For the people, I ask. Not for what we are, Jahzini. For what we were. Stay."

  Will-Joe sat back. Still resting her hand on his shoulder, Rainbow Girl said: "You must eat now."

  "I am not hungry now."

  "It will pass. Tonight you rest. Sleep well. It will work against the poison. In the morning, I will make the medicine."

  She began preparing a pallet for him by one wall. Will-Joe watched her gratefully, his eyes burning for sleep. Old Adakhai raised his cracked voice in a hozhoni song, the songs that made one holy. This one was the War God's song. Will-Joe listened with no feeling of irony and the burn in his eyes was softened by a misty remembering…

  For a moment, coming awake, he didn't know where he was. The bent-pole bark-thatched ceiling arched darkly above; roseate dawn stained its smokehole. Morning flooded through the open doorway, touching the simple furnishings of Adakhai's hogan with a muted pearling.

  The casual bark of a dog had wakened him. Other sounds washed into his awareness: a guttural music of voices, people going about their daily lives. It was strange, after so long away, to wake up to the familiar village noises. Through the doorway he saw a woman weaving at a frame-mounted blanket; he smelled the strong rendering of the sumac and piñon gum from which dyes were made. And he felt what he'd never expected to feel: the odd, quickening sense of homecoming.

  He moved his head slowly, looking about. Rainbow Girl was gone, her pallet empty. A blackened iron pot simmered on coals in the fire trench. Adakhai was wrapped to the neck in his blankets, snoring in thick boozy grunts. Looking at his withered claw clutching the blankets, Will-Joe thought of long ago, a rushing stream and a strong-faced man with patient eyes holding a fish-pole for a small boy, the brown hands finely formed and muscular and sensitive. He thought of those hands pointing out the secrets of sky and trail, stringing gut on a flexed bow, chipping minute flakes from a flint that would make an arrowhead, quick to a thousand tasks of strength or skill. Then the pictures faded: there was only a boozy dried husk of a man snoring in his blankets.

  Moving his head, arms, legs brought protesting cramps from all of Will-Joe's muscles. He raised his arm and looked at it. Hot and sore, livid and purplish around the troughed wound, but it didn't seem any worse.

  He heard the voices of two people approaching the hogan. Rainbow Girl and Billy Hosteen. They stopped near the doorway out of his line of sight and continued to talk, low-voiced. He couldn't make out the words, but Billy's voice was edged with anger. The talk broke off; Billy Hosteen walked into his sight and strode away through the village, stiff-backed. Rainbow Girl ducked through the doorway carrying a basket. Her face was warm-colored; she hardly looked at Will-Joe as she knelt and emptied her basket of the plants, herbs and roots it contained.

  After a moment he said: "What is it with Narbona?"

  "It's nothing."

  "Has he tied his pony by your hogan, skinny one?"

  She gave him a quick look and did not smile. "You talk too much."

  He watched her quick hands shred roots and leaves and drop them in a copper kettle. She laid paddles of prickly pear with the spines cut away on a flat rock and began mashing them with another rock.

  He felt a strange awareness of her. Rainbow Girl was Adakhai's granddaughter, the last living person of his line. She was two years younger than Will-Joe. As a boy, he remembered being embarrassed and proud and annoyed that the skinny brown toddler had chosen to idolize him, tagging everywhere in his steps. Later on they had been playmates, and Rainbow Girl had wrestled and raced and swum like a boy. All too quickly the formality of puberty rituals had split their lives into separate channels, and any common ground, it had seemed, was lost. Rainbow Girl, taking her place with the young women, had been just one more skinny girl. Skinny one, he had called her before and after.

  She was still skinny, her movements like the bend and rise of willow wands in a spring wind. She had always moved well. The coppery cameo of her face was finely planed and angled, like a handsome boy's. Yet she wasn't boyish. Stray motions made her heavy clothing yield in places; there were quick limnings of two sharp tiny breasts, of legs that were long and slim and hard-muscled. She was a little taller, hardly more developed, not really different after three years. It should have been disappointing, and oddly it wasn't.

  "Narbona and I were friends," he said. "It is why I asked."

  She scraped the prickly pear mash into the bowl and began stirring the ingredients together. She didn't answer at once. Finally: "Narbona waits for me sometimes when I go for water. We talk. There is nothing else."

  "Does he think so?"

  "It is nothing to me what he thinks."

  Will-Joe almost smiled. Girls. Here or in Spurlock, they were the same. Playing coquettes, teasing, setting men at jealous odds. Girls
everywhere were girls. But Rainbow Girl was only herself. Straightforward and plain-spoken, with no patience for natural caprice.

  "There is no man, then."

  "I do not think about such things. Natani needs me."

  Will-Joe looked at the old man sodden in his blankets, the empty tusjeh upended by his head. "You and the toghlepai?"

  "It kills the pain in his belly."

  Her reaction was sharp, and he didn't press the matter. She set the copper kettle on the coals, then fetched a ladle and a pueblo-fashioned bowl and scooped mutton stew from the iron pot into the bowl.

  "When you leave," she said, "where will you go?"

  "I don't know."

  "You cannot hide forever from Tsi Tsosi. He'll never stop looking for you. It is his way."

  "This I know."

  She brought him the bowl of stew and a plate of ash cakes, and Will-Joe sat up, stiffly crossing his legs, and began to eat hungrily. She squatted on her heels by the copper kettle, giving the mixture an occasional stir. People passing the hogan glanced in from time to time; none seemed disturbed by his presence. He guessed that Rainbow Girl had spread a word here and there to prepare them.

  "There was a place we had," she said, "long ago. Do you remember?"

  "What place?"

  "The cave where the water runs very fast below. Together we found it, when we were children. We went there often."

  He nodded, remembering. Downstream on the Winnetka tributary were giant bluffs where the stream had carved out a turbulent path. In one they had found the cave, deep and roomy, its mouth almost hidden by a rioting tangle of thickets and vines.

  "You can stay there," Rainbow Girl said. "I can bring food."

  "No. The white-eyes are watching. They would follow a woman."

  Rainbow Girl didn't comment. She thrust the stirring stick through the kettle bail and lifted it from the fire and set it down beside him. Motioning that he hold out his arm, she dipped a hand in the warm concoction and proceeded to smooth it over the infected area.