The Indian watched the man move along the ironrail into the sweating heat of the yellow bodies. Beyond the yellowmen the burntland beat itself flat into the blurred horizon. He could smell the jackass Rabbits out across the land. He could smell them standing for miles around in the sagebrush, the cocked and trembling flesh of their ears half as long as his arm straining to the iron sound of the yellowmen. He could smell the Sun draw the hard Earth odor from the browned fur of their rigid backs while their soft mouths silently chewed the hollowed stalks of sun-dried grasses. He could smell the jackass Rabbits all the way to the blurred horizon and he knew the foreign sound of the yellowmen threw them out of their time, for the jackass Rabbit when the Sun is highest over his head keeps his body down and sheltered beneath the sprawl of brush on a slope of high ground where his eyes can seek out the restless black stripe of Coyote’s shadow. When Coyote wasn’t coming to get him there was always the blind eye of the Sun’s direct light, holding forever the winged threat of Hawk’s straight fall to Earth and the sudden clawed hook that could slash the fur of a body open before the sound of wind beating wings was heard. The Iron Road cutting through burntland had thrown the Rabbits off time, in the high Sun their erect bodies stood out over the hard ground, exposed. The Iron Road cut across the Indian’s time. He could smell the hot fur of the Rabbit and his blood pulled him with ancient cunning to hunt through the sage and trap the body of Rabbit. He felt himself move in another time, running the Rabbits across the burntland into waiting nets of strung hide, the shouts of the people growing in his ears as the Rabbits hit the nets and were clubbed down. He knew he should be with the Rabbits, eating their flesh, his tongue thick with the wild quicktaste of burnt meat just pulled from the fire. But he was not running across the hard ground with the Rabbits, the Iron Road slashed in front of him. He kicked the ironrail before him with the toe of his boot and felt the metal vibration throb through his body. The Sun came at him as it dropped lower. He took a long hard pull off the bottle he kept hidden beneath his thick checkered jacket and paced back and forth along the place where the iron had just been nailed to the Earth. He moved underneath the rush and shout of men who knocked his body as they pushed forward with their business of pounding steel. He was unnoticed. He was in the Sun that passed slowly over him, marking the day by touching the land with brilliance at two ends. Soon the Iron Road the yellowmen had built would trace the passage of the Sun, going from one end of the land to the other, as far as the eye of a man could see. He turned his back on the slamming rhythms of sledges and took another pull off the bottle. When he turned around he could see coming out of the haze toward the mountains the man-made clouds, thrown up black and long from the stack of the Iron-Engine, clashing its fierce body down the track, the wheels bigger than a man turning and spinning and spitting steam from an iron heart. He jumped back as the Engine slowed to a roll in front of him, its sudden rush of hot air spewing up the white dust along the track into his face. A gang of yellowmen ran through the dust. Before the man with the heavy gloved hands up in the Engine was able to bring the five loaded flatbed cars behind him to a stop the yellowmen jumped up on one and began throwing the stacked rails down. By the time the flatbed was cleared off most of the rails had been lugged forward to the track spiking gang and were already being pounded down over the wooden ties. Another line of yellowmen stood along one-side of the empty flatbed with long steel poles wedged under the weight of the iron wheels to the hard ground. They moved as the flexed muscle of one arm, leaning into the tension of the poles until the car was tipped up and its full bulk fell free of the track, slamming into the powdered white dust. The waiting Engine backed up over the cleared track and coupled with the next flatbed in line, then pulled all the loaded cars up to where the new rails just laid ended and steamed to a stop while the yellowmen unloaded the next flatbed, then tipped it over, allowing the loaded cars to pass even farther along the new track. The Indian watched as the cars were unloaded and the rails stacked for a mile along completed track, the steady stream of yellowmen carrying the dead metal weight balanced on their narrow shoulders to the forward pounding of the gangs. The empty cars were pulled back onto the tracks by sweating teams of men, then pushed by the steaming Engine into the blur of horizon where the mountains rose straight up. There had been three loads of rails before this, the Indian kept careful count, the loads measured off the hot hours through which the Railroad paid him to walk along behind the progress of the yellowmen. Before the day was done there would be one more Iron Engine with a line of cars behind stacked with rails to be fastened forever to the Earth’s hide. He turned his back on the yellowmen and drank his whiskey bottle empty until he sucked at only air. He threw the bottle off into a tight clump of low sage and heard it catch in the dried web of branches. He knew the Rabbits were out there, the flesh of their long ears pricked up to the foreign sound of the yellowmen. Deep within himself he held great respect for the power of the longeared Rabbit. When Rabbit was threatened he did not hide in burrows or run with his head down through the brush. He ran in the open with his body held high. He ran a straight trail. He ran steady until he was killed or escaped. The Indian slammed the toe of his boot into the rail before him, the iron obstacle pained the flesh of his foot and its metal vibration soared up to the heat of his head. He pressed the full weight of his body down on the injured foot and looked up at the Sky, already the Sun was dying, beginning to set on the goldsweat backs of the yellowmen spiking steel teeth into Earth.
Night was hotter than day in the burntland. The heat of the long hours of Sun rose back off the hard ground and held over the sagebrush like a hot lake. The twelve oxen grudged their way through the heat of the night, the iron of their hooves splashing great waves of white powdered dust up over the wagon chained to the bulk of their bodies. The Indian sat next to the driver with one hand hooked under the boardseat so he wouldn’t be bounced off. His lungs were heavy with the dust that clouded up into his face. He kept his mouth closed, breathing only in short sniffs through his nose. The driver punched him in the arm and handed over a warm bottle, the Indian uncorked it and gulped at the whiskey, the burning liquid rushing down his throat mixed with the sludge of dust he breathed as he drank.
“That ought to wash your mouth clean,” the driver laughed and lashed the long whip into the churning dust before him, cracking it over the broad backs he couldn’t see. “Gid Yup you mangy frog tits,” he snapped the end of the whip back into dust. “Here, you hogass buck,” he grabbed the bottle back from the Indian and swallowed until his cheeks bulged out red, then popped his mouth open in an O and blew out a grunt. “Whew, that’s hotter than a Virginia City whore! You ever had yourself a piece of them fireworks under skirts Cap? A twenty dollar goldpiece will buy you between the longest meanest legs into pure hot quicksilver. Cept so many men have mined that particular hole you’ll probably have to stuff a dog in it first then bam the dog, the dog’s only four-bits extra. Hah. But I shouldn’t go on to you about the Dee-Lights of Virginy City ladies. The old boys up there don’t take to no bucks mixing their time with a white as snow woman. And don’t you never try it neither Cap, you get a rise on you just better find some donkey to plug, cause if you don’t those boys will cut your berries off and leave em to cook in the sun.” He tipped the bottle up and took another pull. “Whew-Wee, this damn dust Cap, I’ve been ridin in it such a big part of my life that if they cut me open they’d find a bucket o dirt in each lung. This here run is as bad as when I worked for Pioneer Stages runnin coaches over the Echo Summit from Strawberry to Glenbrook Station, that was the most difficult stretch of the run, and I only busted in one stageload of travelers, but it were the last time, those stages is worth more than two-thousand bucks apiece and Pioneer took it right back out of my pay for three years. Fast horses is what you need on that run Cap. You can’t run your reg’lar mule-ass or old frog tit oxteams, you got to have yourself a fine set of horseflesh that can see in dust and knows every rat rut and hell hole in the Sierra. That
stageroad was so heavily run that the dust come up so thick in broad daylight you couldn’t see the horses ears. Why do you know Cap, Pioneer’s horses were so quick a body could board a stage at Frisco in the morning and soon’s he knows he’s in Virginy City by the next afternoon. Thirtysix hours of straight hightailin. But the Railroad’s changed all that, a body could now get from Sacramento up over the Donner Summit to Truckee in less than six hours. That’s what all but broke the coaches out o business Cap. The Railroad hired me on to drive supply wagon because from Truckee on they aint haulin no supplies. They’re keeping the track wide open for hauling only ties and rails. I do think they’re goin to beat that Major fella cross the Salt Lake. Heeyah-gidyup you oxen, gid along! Thing of it is Cap, when they git that thar railroad connected they aint goin to need my body no more. I been runnin stage since Forty-nine and damned if I know anything else other than breakin in new teams of horseflesh. I aint got it in me to lay bout all the day long with my pecker in a knothole the way some of you bucks do. Give me that thar bottle back Cap. Damn I shore wish it were October and we’d git the rain to wash all this dust outta here. But I was thinkin I might go over into the San Joaquin Valley and drive coaches for awhile, they ain’t got no railroad in there yet, though I heard it said they’s about to git one. Yes sir Cap, that there’s what I think I’m gonna do, run stages through the San Joaquin Valley. I’ve been in the business too long not to hook up with the last main stage line in the State. Git along you hogbacks!” He flicked the whip into the dust. “We’re almost into Genoa now. Gid along I said cowbrains!” He cracked the whip harder. The wagon jolted, almost throwing the Indian off, then moved more quickly, the wheels slamming over the rutted ground. “Damn I shore do wish it were time for October rain,” the driver coughed into the thicker blanket of dust churned up from the steady pounding of the iron hooves. “Heeyup there pigbacks! Have nother swig off my pistol Cap. That’s a boy, finish her off, I got nother one in the back wrapped in a blanket so’s it won’t get all broke up. Why don’t you crawl over into the back and sees you could find it Cap. That’s a boy, just step over easy. Watch it Cap, you drop off of this wagon and you’ll bust your neck shore.” The Indian crawled the length of the wagonbed on his hands and knees, patting the bare boards through the dust, feeling in the darkness for the bottle as he kept his lips pressed, breathing at the thick dust with only quick snorts. One of the wheels knocked a rock and bucked the bottom of the wagon into the Indian’s chin, driving his teeth into the dry flesh of his tongue and slamming him up against the boarded side. “What’s doin back there Cap!” The driver’s voice stabbed through the dust. “Don’t you hogass my whiskey like a thievin Injun.” The Indian rolled himself up onto his knees, slapping his way in the dust along the side of the wagon until by chance he touched a bundled blanket. He pressed the bundle and could feel the hard bottle in its folds. He tucked the blanket beneath his arm and stood, holding the high board of the side and keeping his feet moving with the sway of the hard bounces. The suddenness of his upright position released a balled pressure between his legs and shot a barbed pain into his bowels. He gritted his teeth and blindly felt his way along the side rail to the back of the wagon. He held onto the thickness of the tailgate with the arm that kept the rolled blanket pressed against his body. He used his free hand to fumble the buttons of his pants open, the lurching of the wagon slamming his knees against the gate as he waited for the water to pass from him. But it wouldn’t come, he had to put so much effort into keeping himself balanced in the bouncing darkness that it closed him up tight. He pinched the flesh between his fingers and shook it, but still the release did not come. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the barbed pain in his bowels, grinding his teeth as he sucked his stomach in, forcing the balled pressure down. He could feel the sting of whiskey as the pressure gathered and burned at the tip of his closed flesh. A few hot spurts shot out, the sudden tossing of the wagon directing them to his pant leg. He swore and grunted and pushed at the burning ball in the pit of his stomach until it burst, releasing a steady flow off the end of the wagon into darkness. He tried to hold himself straight, arching the stream away from his body, but he felt the bottle slipping from its hold, he let go of himself and reached to grab it, throwing his bouncing body out of time with the slamming wagon and tossing him over the gate into the boiling dust.
He lay on the ground until he could no longer hear the roar of the wagon and the last of its sound gave way to the night’s quiet. The clearing dust exposed the low streaks of stars over his head. He stayed on his back where he had fallen and thought about nothing until he heard a distant noise and thought it was the wagon coming back for him. Then the sound stopped and he knew it had been an animal still running from the ground shaking team of beasts that had invaded its territory. He knew the wagon was not coming back. He refused to move his body, he lay still and barely breathing, afraid to get up, afraid to find himself broken and unable to walk. He was very quiet and began to hear the talk of the stars, the slow insistent crack of their voices calling to him. And it was like this, late under the stars when he had been younger, but still a man, and the snow had long since cleared from the night Sky as he lay on his back in the shelter of the winter hut with his feet to the small fire. He could see up out the smoke hole at the top. The hot vapor from the fire rising and distorting his view of the stars, warping their brilliance and making them dance into wild bodies he had never before seen. He listened and heard the snapping of their talk, and he understood. It wasn’t a dream, it was talk from the stars. And the stars said go out from your people to the ones who have tamed the wild beasts. To the ones who have built shelters from tall trees stronger than the strongest wind. To the ones who can kill the journey of the longest rivers. Go out to them or you will die. You will be frozen in the Earth like your father Gayabuc. You have power to charm Antelope but the land is cut from you by their fences of metal thorns. Go into their shelters and learn their tongue or you will be shot through the heart like the father of your father, the Chief of the Rabbits. When his body passed from the Earth you saw a fire on the mountain and journeyed to that place but found no track, found no fire where before it had been. You found nothing. Do not try to find the source of the fire on the mountain. It is not there where death passes into new life. It is not there you will find the place of your Ancestors. The fire burns within you. When you run to the mountain to seek the fire every step you take is away from the source. Keep the fire within you and go out to them and learn their tongue and steal their ways. If you do not you are the Beaver, and they have the power to strip all trees in the forest naked of bark and let you die. Go out to them. Watch them. You cannot take their power by killing their bodies. Their bodies are too many, they grow faster than the grasses. Watch them. You cannot take their power by capture, it is like Bird in the Sky, beyond your touch, beyond the arrow of your bow. Watch them. Imitate them. Move in their shadow and you will become the shadow. You will become the body. You will become them. You will become the power. You will bring back the Gumsaba to your people. You will bring back the warmth of its days, the trees heavy with the fruit of the pine, the rivers filled with Fish. You will bring back the Big Time of the harvest, the time of plenty. You will charm the Antelope. Watch them. If you do not you will become powerless. You will become weak and without strength to shape the days beyond this one. That is what the stars told him as he watched the distortion of their brilliant bodies through the open smokehole. And the stars never lied. They returned every night to travel a straight path through the Sky. But he did not take their words into his heart. In his heart was only the sound of the child wrapped in the furskins of a Rabbit blanket. The child was daughter to him. She was buried beneath the skins in her mother’s arms and he could hear the cough that shook her small body and would not stop. He could hear the cough through the night. In the true way he did not sleep so she might stay awake and move quickly through all the tasks of her later life. But the gift of staying alert he was trying
to pass on to her he knew in his heart may never be used as the coughs of the child grew weaker and finally without sound. Her small mouth would open in pain as her whole body shuddered with a soundless cough. The mother of the child had few words. She was still weak from the loss of blood the birth of the child pulled from her body. She remembered how she lay with her back on the warm bed of cedar boughs, she was spread and waiting on the green rising smell of the fresh cut boughs while the old sister who had tied the buckskin belt beneath her breasts worked it down over her stmach, pressuring the child within forward in its natural rhythm, aiding with quick fingers the birth movements until the child was free of the mother’s body. The old sister cut the cord of blood to the baby’s body well, with a quick stroke of the stone blade. But she did not tie the cord tight with deer string. The woman wanted to tell the old sister the cord was not closed, but the old sister had already wrapped the baby’s stomach with strips of Antelope skin. It was too late to ask the old sister to undo her work, it was too late to make certain the cord had been tied tight. To undo the work of the old sister would be an insult so powerful it could kill the baby. So she let the old sister wet the baby’s stomach bindings with warm water and place it in the soft furs of a basket. Then the old sister made her drink. She drank of the warm sweet water heavy with the taste of sap from the tree of sugarpine as strong fingers worked over her still trembling body. The fingers pushing the blood that still pulsed in the hollowness of her stomach. The old sister made her sit through the night with her back to the branches of the shelter, her knees drawn up, touching her chin so all the blood could run free of her body, draining back into the Earth. The cord coming from the baby’s stomach did not dry in the days to come. Where it had not been tightly tied the blood had run and soaked the Antelope bindings. The severed end of the cord swelled as large as a small fist. When the man who had the power to kill or cure came from the low valley he entered the shelter and unwrapped the blood soaked bindings from the baby’s stomach and placed a dead Hummingbird on the swollen cord. He pulled free the Eagle feather stabbed through the length of his hanging black hair and held it flat over the baby’s eyes while he shook his cocoon rattle and sang out in the hut for the Hummingbirds to come and suck the bad blood from the baby’s flesh with their needle beaks. The people waited outside for the Man of Medicine to call up his magic. They sat with their haunches to the ground and swayed their bodies together in silent rhythm, thinking only of the Hummingbirds invisible flight. For four nights the Man of Medicine came and the people waited outside thinking only of invisible flight. On the fourth night the Man of Medicine brought a leather pouch filled with the dried petals of a golden flower which bled drops of scarlet across its bright face. He emptied the pouch into the fire and threw on green branches of bitterbrush with feathers from Owl tied into it. He sang the smoke up until its white body curled thick and twisted out the smokehole, sucking the heavy air of the hut free of all odor except the stench of burning feathers mingled with the perfume of smouldering flower petals. When the fire died down the Man of Medicine emptied a basket of water onto it and held the baby’s struggling body over the rising steam, then he covered her body in the damp grayness of the still warm ashes and left the hut forever. the next morning the swelling was gone from the cord, but a cough came up from the baby’s chest and did not stop. When the cord had emptied of all blood it dried into a hollow skin and fell from the baby’s body. The mother called the father of the child into her for the first time, she told him her fast was over, the cord was fallen, to go into the trees and bring warm meat to her to put the blood of strong legs running back into her. It was then he heard the cough of the child, but she did not tell him the old sister had not tied the cord to cut off the blood. She did not tell him for the fear within her rose that the insult would be so powerful the old sister’s shame would draw all the life from the baby. So he went out into the trees and there killed for her, and brought back warm meat of strong legs running. He thought close in himself that the cough of the child was of his doing, for when the birth was announced he went into the creek where his brother washed him clean as the new born so he would be worthy to guide the innocent life, but something could not be washed from him, some stain clung to his body. He was unclean because he had eaten of the flesh of the wild stone-eyed beasts they had brought. Others had eaten of this flesh, but he thought the power of the flesh had gone bad in him, killed something in him. He thought of the days when the father of his father still walked among the people in the time when those with skin the color of snow had searched rocks of gold. The days when they had driven his people out of the low hills as the giant limbed trees dropped their acorn fruit to the ground. The people returned over the mountains with baskets empty of acorns. The pinenuts had been few in the season before and the people were left with little to put in their stomachs when the first snows came. He remembered the Squirrel that was late on the snow and he had trapped it, bringing the small body back to the people. They did not put it over the fire for fear of losing the life juices. For twelve days they stripped raw shreds from the small body, that was all their teeth chewed for that time. The women needed little food. Their bodies had been prepared since birth to run many days with nothing in their stomachs. It was the men who began tearing the Rabbit blankets apart, scraping the dried fat from under hides and sucking it in their mouths to make it last longer. When the blankets were gone the people used the branches of low trees to cover their bodies against the cold. Then the men followed the Chief of the Rabbit for two days across snow until they saw the house of one who turned the Earth with an iron blade. The windows were boarded against the wind, the smoke from the chimney came thinly into the gray Sky. Behind the house was a smaller shelter where the men led the Horse out and came with him back to the camp for a feast. There was no falling snow for three nights. Into the fourth morning a man with a low hat came riding up, lifting his eyes from the tracks he had been following to the bloodied Horse lying on its side in front of the Rabbit Chief’s hut with hunks of meat cut from its ribs. Farther off, in one of the other shelters, there was a baby crying when the Rabbit Chief walked out in front of the halfeaten Horse. The man raised a metal stick in his gloved hands and a puff of smoke cracked in the cold air at its tip. The hole that was torn through the side of the Rabbit Chief’s head showed little blood as his body fell across the exposed bones of the Horse’s ribs. The noise from the man’s metal stick was still crashing through the snowcovered silence of the trees as he swung and rode off. The people brought the body of the Chief of the Rabbit into his shelter and then lit fire to it. The blaze burned a clearing of Earth in the snow, in front of it was the open body of the Horse. The flesh of the Horse was eaten slowly through the winter, it kept the people alive. After the birth of his child, standing in the cold waters of the creek, he knew what hung on his body and could not be washed clean by his brother was the taste of Horseflesh. All through that winter the taste of Horseflesh upon which the body of the Rabbit Chief had fallen was full on his tongue. There was little flesh for all the people, and he longed for the heavy feel of Horse in his mouth. As the white days grew into one another he thought only of the next piece of Horseflesh he would eat. At night he dreamed of the Horse’s body and many times he would awaken with the fear deep within him that the meat had been picked clean and sucked from the bones by the people, and he would go out into the open air and see for himself that the Horse was still there, running his hand over the ice-caked fur. He knew that at least for the next day he would again taste of that flesh. Many seasons after the death of the Chief of the Rabbit, after his own belly was full with meat of Antelope and Deer and sweet pinemeal, there was still within him a yearning, deep and hollow, for the flesh of the Horse. He tried many times to hide from his yearning but it always found him. Once he journeyed to the high valley where the clouds came up hot and steaming from the center of the Earth. He sat in the shelter built to catch the hot clouds and tried to sweat the desire for Horseflesh from h
is body. He breathed deep at the pure stench of the heavy air rising from the Earth, and still he was not cleaned out. And he was not cleaned in the creek by his brother. This he knew as he watched the stars dance through the smokehole and heard the shuddering of the child buried beneath the skins in her mother’s arms. He listened every night to the child as he watched the stars and they tried to make him listen to their voices. One night the sound of the child stopped. The mother did not even lift the skins cradled in her arms to see the child’s face. She simply rose and left him in the shelter behind. When she came back he knew the child was buried in the warm Earth the woman had prepared. He knew not where the body rested in the Earth, that was forbidden to him, and he did not search the place out. He took the basket the baby had been placed in the first day of her life and ran with it into the forest until he came to a spring running cool in a slight canyon. He walked into the water until he was beneath the branches of the slender birch trees growing up from wet soil in smooth ochre trunks. He placed the basket in the limbed saddle of the largest tree, facing it south with its side to the Sun, facing it the direction the Ancestors had long since journeyed to. The Ancestors would take the basket into them, and there the baby would sleep without trouble. He returned to the hut and burned it to the ground. He took the woman and left the people. They went into the high Mountain House to be alone with the knife going through their hearts. They went east to the mountains above the clouds. The woman had no words for him. The only time he spoke was to offer her the Fish he caught with his bare hands in the quiet of a dark pool. When the white days came they slept in a cave with their bodies close together while the ice ate the ends of their feet off. They began to talk again as the snows melted. It was warm and they followed the path of the downward streams. Their bodies were light from little food and their feet had healed. The stream they had been following into a valley stopped. It had been dammed and run off at a steep fall down a series of smooth slides cut from long trees. At the end of the wooden trough were men sorting through the heavy stones being washed free by the swift current of the channeled water. The men had long black hair braided and tied at the ends. Their skin was pale yellow, like the midday Sun. They stopped at their work as the two dark people half hidden above them in the trees moved their naked bodies into the brightness of the day. The man came down first, his palms held out to his sides. He stood before the yellowmen and raised his fingers to his mouth. One of the yellowmen ran off and came back with a tin barrel of crackers and broke one out. The Indian took it into his mouth, chewing slowly. Then he laughed at the dry salt taste, spattering white crumbs over his thin chest. The woman came down and stood with her body behind the man. She took one of the crackers and laughed with him. He turned to her laughing face that caught the Sun off the branches full in her brown eyes and spoke, “The men with yellow skin are not like the Whites, they will not kill us.” They sat in the shade of the trees and watched the yellowmen working the loads of loose dirt and gravel, searching the stones golden with streaks of Sun. When it was so dark the yellowmen could no longer see the stones washing clean in the racing water of the trough they squatted around a black kettle hung over a fire steaming young milkweed shoots pulled from further downstream. They ate the tender shoots with tins of beans. One of them brought an open can over to the people under the trees and watched as they scooped the beans into their mouths, sucking the last bit of juice from their fingers. The yellowmen spread blankets on the ground and the one with a cap that shined the color of the morning Sun on his shaved head stood up and talked, the singsong of his voice sounding distant and high like the white Birds from the big salt waters who were sometimes caught in high mountains. He spoke for a long time to those lying on the blankets before he took a box folded in layers of material that shined the same color as his cap. He sat and opened the box on the blanket spread before him. He took from the box a pipe with a long narrow stem bent in a high gentle curve like a gooseneck. He filled the flat barrel of the pipe with stiff black grasses and struck a wooden match, the flame lit up the smooth glass of his face before he touched it to the packed barrel, sucking the fire into the grass. His hollowed cheeks sunk in his face and his nostrils pinched closed as the fire took and he pulled the smoke deep within him. He passed the pipe to another man and folded his hands in his lap. The yellowmen all sucked at the grass in the pipe. Before the first pipe was burned out two others had been lit, each man put his lips to the hot stems and drew all his life air through the smouldering grass. The Moon pulled itself over the tops of the high trees and in its light one of the yellowmen rose and brought a pipe to the man and woman sitting close together and silent under the trees. The man took the pipe held out to him. He put the hot tip to his lips and watched the coal in the barrel fire bright as he sucked the smoke through the long stem. Many times on the flatlands with his people he had sat beneath a tree and drunk into his body the bitter sage smoke, but it was not like what he sucked from the pipe of the yellowman. His head dazzled and floated on the cloud of his body, the tiredness ran from his bones like melting snow, he sat within a Sun warm pond as he drew again at the pipe and let the yellowman slip it from his lips and pass it to the woman. He felt the water close on his body, the mud coming up soft and slick through his veins as he sank beneath himself. There was a time when the waterbabies waved in the slow water and wrapped his floating head in their long hair. There was a time when the waterbabies sang songs with their lips pressed to his ear. There was a time when he could walk free in the mountains, when there were no barriers of metal thorns. There was a time when the burnt land was green. There was a Big Time of Gumsaba when the people had plenty and their baskets were full. There was a time when the Butterflies he dead and scattered on the snow like dried flower petals. There was a time when he could charm the Antelope. There was a time when he did not hunger for Horseflesh. There was a time when he watched himself sitting against a tree with the sharp bark growing from his back. There was a time when he watched the Moon pass into the gray of dawn and the yellowmen were laughing in the stream with their mouths stuck on the dark skin of the woman. There was a time when they rolled her on the ground, their heavy belts anchoring their loosened pants at their feet. there was a time when they coiled like Snakes and came stiff into her body. There was a time they fell one by one limp from her yielding flesh. There was a time when she lay on the Earth with the wet hair between her legs heavy with the smell of yellowmen. There was a time he came down to her and washed the smell from her flesh in the clean waters of the stream while over his head the Sun found its place in the Sky. He carried her like a fresh killed fawn slung across his shoulders. He followed downstream until the Moon was up again. Then he slept, holding her cold body the way he had in the cave. In the morning he placed her weight across his back again. By midday the burden worked at the strength of his legs and caused them to buckle, dropping him to his bare knees. He continued into the late light, but he could not shoulder the weight for more than a hundred steps before he fell again and had to push back up to his feet. When the stream joined a river the skin of his knees had been torn off and ran blood. He stayed the night by the river until new light. He did not travel far before he saw them along the water’s edge, dipping wide pans that reflected the Sun into still pools pocketed between the rocks. He went up into the trees and around those who mined the golden waters. Then he cut back to the sound of rushing water and followed the river path until again his way was blocked by the ones with skin the color of snow who squatted in the shallowing water seeking stones heavy with streaks of Sun. He went back up into the trees and followed the sloping ground until the trees stopped and the rocks bigger than a man began. He lowered her body into the narrow gray space of two warm boulders and covered it with a bed of branches weighted down by stones. He traveled for six more days, making wide arcs around those who sought the golden rocks until finally he came in to the place of the people. His mother Painted Stick came to him and washed the dried blood from his legs with damp fe
rns. He told the people of the new ones, the ones with yellow skin who worked hard and sweated much. The yellowmen would not kill like the others, but they took in the smoke of a power stronger than the bitter sagebrush. They smoked into their bodies something that was poison to his people. He himself had smoked of the poison and lived, but his head spun high in the trees while the yellowmen used the woman’s body. When he came to the woman she had followed the path of the Ancestors, her Spirit had died away South. He did not know if her spirit was gone before the yellowmen left their smell on her skin. He washed her flesh clean and tried to bring it back into the people. But the ones who empty the rivers for the golden stones blocked his journey. He was afraid they would take the woman’s body and use it. So he took her to where the Eagles fly and rested her safe under a blanket of stones. After hearing his words Blue Breast, the father of his Mother, spoke that is was time to travel down to the lowland lake where the rules grew thick and the people could fashion boats and go out on the water to herd the flatbeak Birds who were too fat to fly into nets. The meat of the Birds was tender and easy to cook, the people would feed on Bird flesh and be happy. The mountains were many. Those who searched the rivers for gold stones were also plenty. The mountains would not be safe for the people this season. When the hot days turned to white and the snows melted the people could return to the Mountain House. The ones with white skins would have their gold stones, plenty were to be had just by picking them from the ground. They would have their want of gold stones and leave as quickly as they came. Again the mountains would belong as the peoples house. Blue Breast led the people out of the mountains, heading in the direction from which the Sun was born every morning. When they reached the lake there were others of the people from the north who were camped along the shores and they all banded together to take the Birds too burdened with flesh to fly. The people cooked the Birds in the pit of hot stones, the meat was tender and good in the mouth. But the people were uncertain in their hearts. They could see out across the flatland the tents on wheels still coming out of the east. The tents grew up off the horizon, the tamed beasts pulling them in straight lines. But they did not all journey past the people. Sometimes an entire line would roll up to the lake and the ones with white skin would lead the tamed beasts to drink from the still waters. The people watched this from the other shore of the lake. They saw these Whitemen were different from the ones who took the gold stones and built many houses from trees in the mountains. These Whitemen had in their rolling tents small children, and women who would clean their bodies in the still waters and cook foods in blackiron baskets. Some of the people came to those in the rolling tents and held out in their hands the gift of pinenuts. The White ones took the gift and gave back bright cloth for the people to cover the skin of their bodies. Some of the people wore the cloth, others did not, but soon all came to look inside the rolling tents, some even touched the hide of the tamed beasts. Each time a line of the tents rolled off from the lake some of the Whites stayed and built high flatsided shelters to protect them against the cold of the coming white days. The people set up their own small shelters around those of the Whites and waited for the things the Whites no longer had use for to be given to them. The time was past when the people could go onto the still water and capture the Birds too fat to lift their bodies to the Sky, the Birds were gone, taken by the Whites who killed from the muddy shore with loud noises from metal sticks. The people lived off what the Whites threw away. After the long white days more rolling tents came. As the Birds moved overhead to the south they were knocked from the Sky with loud noises from the many metal sticks of the Whites. There were now many tamed beasts eating the grasses around the lake. The White cut off great sections of the land with lines of metal thorns to keep the beasts from running. The days were warm and groups of the people drifted off to where the lands were still open to take game grown thick with meat, to harvest the fruit of the Piñon Trees. When the Skies turned dark again the people came back to the lake and found more Whites. More things no longer needed by the Whites lay about on the ground, they could be used to make the cold days easier. The people had much on their bodies now, they were covered with the patched clothes the Whites had discarded. They gave the skins of Animals to the Whites for metal coins. They killed the Rabbits on the land bounded by the lines of metal thorns which they could trade at the place filled with sacks of seeds. When it was time for the people to go again to harvest the fruit of the Sacred Piñon Tree many chose to stay and use what the Whites no longer needed, others found different groups of Whites and settled around them. Those who did travel for the harvest of pine fruit found many lines of metal thorns blocking their path, and the ones seeking gold stones had made their way over into the low hills and would take the life of the people if they stepped where before it had always been their way to do. The Deer and the Antelope had fled the lowlands where the tamed beasts trampled and cut the roots of thick grasses. It took the people many days to track the running game, and many times the Animals would not be waiting where the dreams of the Antelope Walker had shown them to be. At night, with the fires burning low, the people told stories until there were no more words, then they would fall silent and listen to the stars. But what the stars had to say could not always be heard.
Rabbit Boss Page 21