II
As summer approached, Laughing Boy became restless and more worried at his own condition. Had he offended a god, he wondered. He took a sweat-bath, sang, and tried a fast. It did not seem to make much difference.
He made up his mind one morning when he was leaving to round up three ponies for sale. Slim Girl had seemed abstracted; he had noticed her watching him curiously, seeming nervous. She had been like that various times lately, yet what could he say about it? It was just an impression. He felt sullen, snapped at her. Her hurt surprise made him miserable. As he mounted his horse, he thought, I must surely find a singer.
There could be no doubt that he had done some unconscious wrong, deserting the Trail of Beauty. Forces of evil were preying upon him, he was no longer immune from bad thoughts. Stated in the American idiom, he decided he must be sick.
It was the merest chance that he met Yellow Singer walking along the trail with a bundle over his shoulder. Laughing Boy debated consulting him, and decided against it: not that ugly man.
“Ahalani, Grandfather,” the medicine man called to him; “wait a minute.”
“Ahalani, Grandfather, I wait.”
The old rogue was standing straight and walking briskly; one saw that he was a tall man. Laughing Boy smelled whiskey.
“I see that you need medicine, little brother.”
“Unh! Why do you think that?”
Yellow Singer noted the grunt and followed his lead. “I dreamed last night that when you were at the dance at Buckho Dotklish, you put those prayer cigarettes wrong. They fell down into the sand. Now they have put a spider’s web into your brain.”
“You are right. I am not well.”
He nodded wisely. “So I went and got the remedy for you. I am ready to make you all right. You are a good young man; it will be my pleasure to make you all right.” He glowed with benevolence.
Evidently this man had more power than one would think. “How much will you want?”
“Twenty dollars.”
Laughing Boy considered. It was not a high fee. He counted out six dollars in coin, and pulled three plaques from his silver belt. “There, that is really worth more.”
The old man hefted the metal. “All right.”
“What must I do?”
“You must go to a place alone, you must wash your hair. Then pray to the Divine Ones whose cigarettes you offended. Then take this remedy.”
Out of the bundle he took a bottle of red liquor, looked at it a moment, and then, benevolence conquering, took out a second and handed them over.
“What is this?”
“It is a special kind of whiskey. It is very holy. The Americans drink it; it is so good they try to keep anyone else from having it.”
“How do I take it?”
“When you have prayed, just start drinking it. By and by you will feel your mind becoming all right, your heart will be high. Then you will sleep. When you wake up, you will feel badly, but if you take some more, you will feel all right. One bottle should be enough. Put the other away until something tells you you need it.”
“I see.”
“I shall go on the trail to Buckho Dotklish, and make a charm there, to prevent any more bad things coming to you from those cigarettes. Tell no one about this, above all no woman. It is very holy and secret; if you speak of it, it will do you harm. It will make you jump into the fire.”
“I see.”
“If you need more, let me know. I may be able to get you some.”
He rode to his usual camping place by Natahnetinn, and went solemnly about the prescribed ceremonial. Then he tasted the drink. It was unlike the white whiskey; not so bad, but still pretty bad—low-grade, frontier tanglefoot rye, dear at a dollar a bottle.
After the first few drinks it came easier, but it did not make him feel very happy. As he grew drunk, he longed more and more for his own country, and for a truce from the constant feeling of the presence of alien things. About the time it grew dark, he stopped drinking and walked up and down. At first he sang, then he was silent.
Liquor, taken in solitude, sometimes has this effect. Along with a megalomaniac sense of his central position in the universe, a man grows bluntly honest with himself. All the secret, forgotten, stifled thoughts come out of the closet in his mind, and he must face them in turn, without a saving sense of proportion. This now was Laughing Boy’s portion.
I am not happy in the house at Chiziai. It is too lonely, too strange a life; no one ever comes. We see people only at dances. That American town, what is there there? What is this preacher’s wife? The look in her face when she returns—I do not know. There is something wrong, always something hidden. She is always hiding something. Let us go North, go North, to T’o Tlakai! Oh, my mother!
When I told her about her weaving; when we rode together that time, then she needed me, then I, too, was strong. We were happiest then, both of us. She is stronger; it is she who leads me.
I am afraid to speak to her.
He stopped short and clutched his hands together.
Why? I am afraid to lose her. Am I losing myself? Oh, I do not know, I do not know; this life she has had, this wisdom of hers. What went on before? Who was the man, and what does Red Man know? Perhaps if I spoke to her, she would say no. She makes her own life. I am losing myself. And I cannot leave her, Came With War, Came With War. Oh, no, can’t leave her. She would say “No,” and I should say “All right,” and then I should be dead.
How long will it be before we are rich enough to suit her? Why will she not herd sheep? All women do. I do not know. This American life she has led, she will not leave such things. It is my enemy. Our life is not good enough for her.
She wants so much money. A year, another year, who knows? So long, long. When will there be children? We should have had children. I want children. I want to go home. What is happening to me? I am losing myself. She holds the reins and I am becoming a led horse. Two, three years, all like this, and Sings Before Spears, who was a warrior, will have ended, and there will just be that part of a man which worships a woman. Not the rest of him, just heat. A bowstring without a bow. Only good for a woman to tie something with.
I need some more medicine.
Another stiff drink sent him over the borderline into incoherent plans for performing wonders. Three or four more put him to sleep.
He was in pretty bad shape when he awoke, late, with the high sun beating upon him. He went down to the arroyo and dabbled in its shallow, unfresh water. He was not as sick as the other time, but he was sick.
“When you wake up, you will feel badly, but if then you take a little more, you will feel all right.”
He would try it. The smell made him feel worse. He poured some into a cup, returned to the arroyo and weakened it with water. Then he downed it in one straining gulp. He did feel better. Perhaps he might take a little more, he thought, reaching for the bottle, and paused with it half-tipped for pouring.
No. He was remembering last night, and that had been terrible. He put it down, and stared at the ashes of his fire.
“Coffee,” he said aloud.
He drank a lot more water when he went to fill his pot. The heat of the flames was unpleasant to him; he was beginning to feel badly again, and wanted a drink. He put a lot of coffee in.
That had been all true, what he had thought last night, but incomplete and exaggerated. He was homesick, he was afraid of losing her, but what kind of man could not wait a few years, three at the worst, for so reasonable a cause. She was wise, she was right, and he was sure she loved him. Well, then?
The whiskey now, this magic. It did drive the clouds out of his thoughts, but it made everything appear twisted.
He lifted the coffee off the fire. It was strong. Without waiting for the sugar, he tried to drink it, burning his tongue.
It was not magic. It was just something like jimpson-weed. Under its influence he had seen himself, but there was nothing holy about it. He remembered quite clearly how he had placed those cigarettes in a crevice in the rock. There had been nothing wrong about it. That old coyote had made a lucky guess, and followed it up with lies to make money, that was all.
He saw a very clear picture of Yellow Singer and his wife as he had first met them, sober, and reaching for the bottle; he saw other scarecrow Indians he had met in this American’s country. He looked at them, and behind them saw incoherently the great, ominous cloud of the American system, something for which he had no name or description.
That was another thing about which Slim Girl had been right, that drink. She knew how to tame it. She had the secret of how to prevent American knowledge from doing harm; she made it serve a good purpose.
He set down his cup of coffee, picked up a rock, and deliberately smashed the bottle. The liquid ran into the coals of the fire, caught, and for a moment the dampened sand burnt with a blue flame. That startled him. To drink something like that! He threw in the fragments of the bottle, in the bottom of which were still a few drops, and watched the blue light flicker briefly above them.
He drank another cup of coffee, with sugar, then unearthed the second bottle from its cache. That had cost money, much money. Well, he’d had his money’s worth. From now on he could think without the help of blue flames. He poured it over the fire, and the drenching put the fire out. Eh! This was strange stuff!
To try to round up horses seemed out of the question. He stretched out in the shade of the rocks, craving sleep, his limbs feeling as though he had been through a furious wrestling bout. The sky was too blue, it hurt his eyes; the circling of a distant buzzard made his head ache. He turned over and fixed his gaze on a crack, studying it, sleepy, yet unable to keep his eyes shut.
Yellow Singer and all his kind were bad. They were like an offensive smell. But a smell came from a carcass. Those people were the way they were because of the Americans. The town of Los Palos in the drenching sunlight, quiet, dead-looking beside its irrigated fields. What was it? Something in the air, something that perverted the world. Where they were was no place for Earth People. They had done something to Slim Girl, one could see that, but she seemed to have risen above it. But they were bad for her, too. It was beyond him.
He smoked, and at length slept fitfully through the noonday heat, wakened now and again by flies, to drowse delightfully and return to sleep. In the late evening he went to where a waterfall in the arroyo made a trickling shower bath. The water refreshed him; he was hungry once more, and felt better.
What he had thought last night had been true, but unbalanced; and all this about Americans had been just because he felt sick. He had always known Americans, traders and such, they were all right, just people of a different tribe. He stretched out, fed, smoking, surprised at his desire to sleep again. It would be pleasant, it would be beautiful, returning to T’o Tlakai rich, very rich, with her, and to settle down somewhere near there and have children. They needed children. Meantime they would make their way together. Oh, beautiful.