III
Next morning he felt better. The drunkenness and the emotiorial outburst had cleared his system. In pouring out the liquor, he felt that he had destroyed a bad thing; the enemies in his head had indeed proved to be nothing but cobwebs, and they were gone. Like the man who burned the tumbleweed when the Eagles were afraid of it, he thought.
He rounded up the three horses he wanted, good ones. Only the best horses sold this year, and they did not bring so good a price. He rode home contented, quiet, and determined to do better with himself.
He found his wife waiting before the door.
“I did not know you were going to be gone so long; I have been lonely without you. Bring in your saddle while I get supper. I am glad when you come back.”
“I am always glad to be back.”
“As long as you feel like that, I shall continue to be happy.”
Why should he worry himself about this woman? And why should he worry about anything else as long as he had this woman? He slapped the ponies’ flanks to make them run around the corral. He looked at his growing corn, and as he broke the little mud dam across his irrigation ditch, he felt the coolness of evening seep along his veins as the bright water spread through the narrow channels. Clay bluffs were not as fine as painted rock, there was too much adobe in this sand, but it was a fair place. The fire gleamed before his house, he heard the flow of water and the occasional stamp of a horse in the corral.
Slim Girl brought out the bottle and an orange.
“Do not make the drink, little sister, I do not want it. I think I shall try not taking it.”
She kept herself from looking at him. She was troubled.
“All right.”
What was this? Probably nothing. When one walks on the sheer edge of a precipice, the meaningless fall of a stone over the side momentarily stops the heart. She studied him while they ate. She began to talk with him gravely of the life they were to make together, of the happiness that was in store for them.
He said to himself, “She was bothered when I refused that drink, the way she looked at me afterwards. She is nervous about me. I have done that, by acting as I have. Now she is trying to tell me how she really is; she is talking true; I know. I have wronged her.”
She saw the last trailing clouds pass from him. That evening was perfect, so perfect that, with his doubts banished and the feeling of intimacy upon him, he almost told her everything he had done and thought, but he postponed. It was the last of its kind for many days.
Like an ancient magician who, by saying the forbidden names, evoked genii whom he could not then drive back, Laughing Boy had given form to thoughts which were not to be forgotten. Unhappily for himself, he was no fool, and of an honest habit of thought. There was love in that place, and sometimes happiness, but if a religious-minded Navajo had entered there, he would have felt that the air was empty.