“It shall float on the water as you wish, oh, Woman of Turquoise.”
“And I want white shells, turquoise, abalone shells, jet, soap-stone, agate, and red stones all around my house.”
“You shall have all that you wish, my Woman of Turquoise.”
“I have not yet said I am your Woman of Turquoise,” she answered. “I am myself and free.”
The Sun Bearer smiled and the whole earth was warmed. Even the woman by his side became less cold.
She said, “If I go to the west I shall be lonely. I shall long for my sister and my sons. Could you make pets for me to take along ?”
“Surely,” he promised. “I will make elk, buffalo, deer and long-tail deer.”
“That will not be enough, oh, Bearer of the Day.”
The Sun Bearer looked at her. She was the loveliest thing in creation. He knew he could produce anything for her sake, so he promised to make mountain sheep, jack rabbits and prairie dogs.
“Will that satisfy you ?” he asked.
“I think I shall manage for a while,” she said.
So in time she started westward with all her animals. The Mirage People and the Ground Heat People went with her to help drive the animals.
They stopped at different places for ceremonies. In the Black Mountain country the buffalos stampeded. They didn’t like mountain country, so they stamped and tramped on the mountain till they made a big pass, and then they ran away back east. They stayed in the east always.
Some of the antelope and deer ran east too. Later the elks went back. All of them went back. They never returned to the Turquoise Woman in the west.
When the party arrived at the western mountain, a ceremony was held for the Turquoise Woman. She lay on top of the mountain with her head to the west. The Mirage People molded her body till it was perfect. Then they sang songs of her perfection.
After they left the western mountain to journey to the wide water, they followed a trail that nobody knows today. After long hard travel over deserts where water was scarce, they reached the western water. There the Turquoise Woman could see her floating house shimmering in the smile of the Sun Bearer.
It was as beautiful as she had wished, all made of turquoise and so high that its upper story was lost in the clouds.
The waves of the wide water sang a welcome to the Turquoise Woman, as she entered her new home.
The first thing she did was to build a fire so her husband would feel at home when he came bearing the sun.
Younger Brother, thinking of this story as he rode through the sagebrush, could see the western mountain far in the distance. The sight of it gave him courage to ride on during the long hot days. At night by the light of his campfire, he carved from a piece of cottonwood, the prayer stick he intended to offer to the western mountain.
The secret joy inside of him responded to the joy of all the desert world and he knew that the holy ones watched him from the heat waves and the mirage which danced before his eyes. They had helped the Turquoise Woman in her journey to the west and they would help him.
CHAPTER XIX
BEAUTIFUL UNDER THE COTTONWOODS
N THE freshness of a quiet desert morning, when no sound but the mocking-bird’s call is heard, it is good to take stock of blessings. So thought Younger Brother, lying wrapped in his blanket under the summer shelter of his newest friend.
He had spent the night with a family of his own clan. The woman of the place was a distant relative of his mother. “Beautiful under the Cottonwoods,” she called her home. A real river ran past it. In the summer-time corn fields flourished on its banks, due to the ease of irrigating.
Younger Brother could see the green tasseled corn from where he lay. The soil was rich with the silt of many overflows.
The woman at this camp was a widow with two daughters. She had decided to marry again, and hoped she would be acceptable to the brother of her late husband.
For days she had ground corn and made the thin corn bread the Navahos like so well. When Younger Brother had ridden to her camp the night before, he had found her spreading the thin batter on a hot rock. He had watched her roll the paper-thin sheets as she removed them from her primitive stove.
She told him that in the morning she would carry the bread and the meal in two baskets to the home of her brother-in-law.
As Younger Brother listened to the song of the mockingbird, he watched his relative prepare for her quest. She was a good-looking woman dressed in a dark blue velveteen jacket and a black skirt. The ends of her red woolen sash hung down the side with a few little sea shells tied to the fringe.
She carried her baskets of corn meal and paper bread. On top of the baskets she had formed a cross of wild grape vines. Younger Brother wondered where she had found the vine. She must have ridden a long way for that.
He hoped she would have good luck in finding a husband. She would place the baskets a short distance from the hogan where her brother-in-law lived. If he were willing to marry her, his family would eat the meal and the bread and in four days he would go to the widow’s house.
Younger Brother decided to stay with his relative to see what would happen. His pony could rest and graze and it was pleasant for the boy to be with his young cousins. They were glad to hear about his adventures and he felt like quite a hero as he told of his wanderings.
At sunset of the fourth day the family waited inside the hogan. Everything was ready for the hoped-for husband. Younger Brother was thinking any good man should be glad to marry his relative. She was a fine weaver and owned a large flock of sheep.
He was not surprised when he heard the dogs barking outside and saw the blanket lifted from the doorway, but he was surprised at the beauty and youth of the naked man who entered. He wore only his loin cloth. In his hand he carried a bow and arrows, which he put by the woman sitting in the west.
Younger Brother had never seen such a splendid-looking man. He was tall and straight and smooth skinned. Surely he was worthy of the wife he was accepting.
He stayed all night in the hogan and the following morning he and the woman washed in a bowl of yucca suds. Then they combed each other’s long black hair. The woman looked happy and contented. The home near the river was complete now, with a man to cook and weave for.
The holy ones should have looked down in approval on the happy family, but something very terrible was happening in the skies. The sun itself was sick. A shadow crept over it, bringing fear into every Navaho heart.
Every Indian in the country stopped his work or his journey to sit in silence watching the death of the orb. Younger Brother sang a song of blessing that his uncle had taught him, and a neighboring medicine man hurried to make a sand painting of the sun.
He drew it on the ground outside the hogan. It was a blue disk outlined with the sacred colors. Forty-eight rays of light were drawn around it, allowing twelve of every one of the four colors for every cardinal direction.
That was to give the Sun Bearer courage as he carried the dying sun. He could look down and know that the people of the earth were helping him with their perfect pictures of the sun.
The air grew cold. Shadows of the cottonwood leaves made a double outline on the ground. Soon all the earth was in shadow. A few chickens went to roost in the cottonwoods. The Navahos were still. Little by little the shadow passed from the sun. A rooster crowed as he would at dawn. The sun was well. The eclipse was over. Again the Sun Bearer traveled a trail of beauty to the west.
Younger Brother felt extremely sober. He feared disaster. The last time that darkness covered the sun, the people of the earth had suffered from a very bad sickness. Many had died from heat in the head.
That night while Younger Brother slept in the summer shelter, he was awakened by wind and rain, which forced him to join the family inside the hogan. His relative was awake and worried.
She said, “Why should we have such a storm this time of year ? Always when the Sun sickens there is trouble.”
“Yes, Moth
er, that is what my uncle has told me.”
“Your uncle should tell you how to make peace with the storm people.”
The boy thought of the time he had sprinkled pollen on the clouds. He thought of Hasteen Tso and the song they had sung together when they flew in the giant dragon-fly.
He felt very much alone. He missed Uncle. He missed Mother. He almost forgot the Turquoise Woman.
His relative put a wash tub under the smoke hole. Too much water was coming in. The little girls slept soundly through all the noise. So did the new man of the house.
All night the storm raged. In the morning the sky hung gray and heavy. The Sun Bearer did not leave his home in the east. Instead he sent the evil serpents of lightning across the sky.
Day after day no sun shone on the people of the earth, and the water continued to fall from the clouds. The red muddy river rose higher and higher.
The family in the hogan could look from the doorway and see bits of wreckage floating down the river. Logs and uprooted trees whirled past.
Prairie dogs, rabbits, snakes came out of their holes and traveled past the hogan to higher land.
The woman feared for her hogan. She asked her husband to help her move her household goods. The rain ceased for a while and the sun sent a feeble ray of light to shine on the hogan by the river.
Higher and higher the water rose. Sheep were floating down the muddy torrent. The woman feared for her flock. She started to drive them to the little rise of ground where the prairie dogs and the snakes had gone.
Bit by bit the water was eating away the bank by the corn fields. Everyone worked packing the household goods to the brushy hill a mile away.
Younger Brother helped the two little girls to carry their mother’s loom. All the afternoon the family struggled. By night time the green growing corn was all washed away and swept down the river.
Still the muddy water rose higher and higher. All night the family struggled to save its wealth. The beautiful young husband tried to drive the frantic sheep through two feet of water. In the darkness he worked in vain. Most of the sheep were lost.
Younger Brother waited on the hill with his cousins. He tried to make a fire. Everything was too wet to burn. With the woman’s help he managed to make a little shelter with the poles from the loom and what sheepskins they had saved.
Toward dawn the beautiful young husband staggered to the camp with half a dozen bleating sheep. He sank to the ground exhausted. All night he had been in the water. He was shivering. There was no fire, no hot coffee, no dry clothes.
The clouds were gone and the evil serpents of lightning no longer crossed the sky. The Bearer of the Day appeared in the east and looked down upon the destruction.
Younger Brother managed to get a fire started. He had enough water in his canteen to make the coffee. By the time the sun was high enough to dry things out a bit, the handsome young man was burning with fever. The struggle had been too much for him.
In two days he died of “no lungs” — pneumonia. His wife was dazed. When the water went down she walked to “Beautiful under the Cottonwoods.” Slippery red mud covered everything. The few bedraggled chickens were huddled on top of the hogan.
Inside it was a sorry sight, with slushy mud a foot deep. She walked to the west side and took from a niche between the logs, a bow and arrows. They were the symbols of her second marriage. She walked to the river and leaning over the red muddy water, threw the bow and arrows in with these words:
She threw the bow and arrows in with these words, “Tieholtsodi, monster of the waters, take these also.”
“Tieholtsodi, monster of the waters, take these also. You have taken my sheep, my corn, and my husband.”
With a little gurgling sound the water monster swallowed the bow and arrows.
The woman was alone, with two little girls to care for, and only six sheep left for her support.
“Beautiful under the Cottonwoods” was no longer beautiful.
CHAPTER XX
THE WESTERN MOUNT AIN
OR FOUR days the widow and her two little girls fasted and mourned for the loss of the man of their house. The fast was not required of Younger Brother because he had not been present at the death.
He had ridden to the home of a neighbor for help. There he found kindly people who offered shelter to the widow until she could arrange her affairs.
Younger Brother decided the old hogan must be moved to higher ground, so with the help of the neighbors it was taken apart and the logs hauled in a wagon to a site beyond reach of another overflow. A corral for the sheep was built of driftwood from the flood. The sheep were the widow’s only property. The horses that were saved were inherited by the relatives of her husband. His favorite riding horse had been saddled and shot beside his grave, so that he might have a mount in the spirit world.
Younger Brother felt that he must resume his journey. He had been two weeks with his relative. The woman begged him to stay. She had grown to love him as a son. Besides he was such a help to her in her poverty. He told her that he had left his own mother and he could remain no longer. He must be traveling to the west.
“What is it that you seek in the west ?” the woman asked, “Have you ever seen it or heard it ?”
“No, Mother.”
“Foolish boy. Why do you leave two mothers and ride to the west ?”
“Because I must see the wide water.”
“Is there not enough water here ? Think how cruel the water has been to me.” As she spoke the woman eloquently pointed to the desolate fields.
The boy had been thinking about it and he said, “Tieholtsodi claims his own. The water monster cannot forget that the coyote stole his children.”
“That was in the beginning, child, and has naught to do with us.”
Younger Brother again spoke, “I am not wise like Uncle. He could make you understand that all that has gone before has much to do with us.”
The two were sitting outside the newly-finished hogan. From its higher position, it commanded a view of the valley, stretching its gray waste far to the mesa country. The sunlit river glistened as it sinuously moved westward.
A black spot appeared in the distance and Younger Brother realized that an automobile was traveling in their direction. As it came nearer he recognized the roadster of the white boy.
He ran to stop the machine. The Navaho woman went inside the hogan.
The white boy was surprised to see Younger Brother and he couldn’t help talking even though he were not understood. He jumped out of the car saying, “Hello, there. I’m glad to see you’re not drowned out. We’ve all had an awful time back there.”
The two boys entered the hogan where the woman hospitably made some coffee. She had very little else to offer. The boy noticed this and by signs learned something of the tragedy caused by the flood.
He left some canned goods with the woman and bought a rug that she had saved from the wreck of her home. When Younger Brother helped to pack the rug in the back of the roadster, he noticed a large burlap-covered package. His friend took it out to rewrap carefully. Younger Brother’s keen eyes recognized the shape of a big pot.
He stopped packing, for instinctively he knew the white boy had found what he had stayed behind to find — the big red pot with the black snake pictured on the outside.
Younger Brother had no desire to touch it nor to see it. The white boy made no move to show it to him for he understood the sacredness of the ancient relic.
He was secretly elated at his success in finding the pot and was hurrying to get word to his father at Grand Canyon, for he thought he had discovered some unknown ruins buried in the sand.
The flood had washed away much more soil from the bank where the pony had found the pot and there were signs of stone walls, much chipped flint, and broken bits of pottery.
After the white boy left in his car, Younger Brother sat inside the hogan, thinking hard. He was trying to put two and two together. He said to himself, “First my pon
y finds the pot. Next the white boy finds it. Then comes the shadow on the Sun. Then comes the storm and the flood and the death of the beautiful young husband.”
Younger Brother continued his thinking. He couldn’t understand. If Uncle were only here he could help with his wisdom. He went on with his puzzling. He thought about the snake painted on the outside of the pot. It was one of the holy people who guarded the secrets of the underworld.
The snake must have told the Sun Bearer about the grave being disturbed. Probably that made the Sun sicken. But why must the handsome young husband die ?
Younger Brother was not wise enough to fathom that. The harder he thought and puzzled, the worse matters became. If Uncle were only there he would help him to understand. How he wished Uncle were with him.
He stopped puzzling his brain to remember Uncle’s kind, serious face, lit with the joy of the songs he sang. He could almost hear the songs of beauty.
Suddenly he remembered that he himself had not been singing in his heart. He had been too busy helping the woman to save her few possessions. That was why he couldn’t understand.
He ran outside and saddled his pony. He rode away, leaving the woman and her two little girls watching sadly from the doorway.
As his pony ran in the brilliant sunshine, Younger Brother looked with joy upon the western mountain, which now seemed very close. Soon he would be able to place the prayer stick upon its summit.
Again his heart sang and he understood. All his thinking could not make him understand, but his singing heart could. He called to the mountain, “Those people are earthbound. They heap too many goods. They have not learned the trail of beauty. They have never flown to the clouds.”
He was himself again, accepting whatever came without questioning. Never again would he forget Uncle’s teachings. He would travel the trail of beauty to the west. He would find the turquoise water. He knew he would find it.
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