II
When her arm was almost well, Laughing Boy brought three of his best horses to the corral. They prepared to move in beautiful, clear, cold, sunny weather following a first light snow, the slight thawing of which assured them of water. Their goods made little bulk—well over a thousand dollars in silver, turquoise, and coral, several hundred dollars in coin, his jeweller’s kit, her spindle, batten, cards, and fork, half a dozen choice blankets, some pots and pans and provisions. They carried a good deal on their saddles, and packed the rest, Navajo-fashion, which is to say badly, on the spare pony. They set out with fine blankets over their shoulders, their mounts prancing in the cold, their saddles and bridles heavy with silver and brass, leading the packhorse by a multicoloured horsehair rope, a splendid couple.
After a period of worrying, she had reacted, partly by deliberately living each day for itself only, partly by a natural and reasonable swing to optimism. So they were both gay as they rode, and chattered together of the future. Oljeto had been agreed upon for their new home. It was a good winter camp, he said, and he thought that at Segi Hatsosi or Adudjejiai, little over a day’s ride distant, he could find an unclaimed fertile strip for summer. There is good water there, even in dry summers.
“You have seen the stone granaries we build,” he said. “The rock around that part breaks easily into squares, there is lots of good adobe. I can build you a house as good as the one we just left. We shall make a tunnel like that for the smoke from the fire, and we shall have one of those wooden doors that swing. There will be no house like it around there, except the trader’s at T’o Dnesji.”
She smiled. “And a window?”
“Yes, but we cannot have that clear stone in it. We shall put a membrane across it, that will let in light, I think, but you cannot see through it.”
“That will be good enough.”
They came into the mouth of Chizbitsé Canyon. Here and there were fragments of petrified trees, all colours, some dull, some reflecting like marble, the many shades made brilliant by the thin blanket of snow around them, and the clear sunlight.
“Ei-yei! It is a place of jewels!”
They slowed from a jog-trot to a walk, looking about them at the reproductions of trunks, rings, branches, exact even to the way the snow lay upon them, beautiful in colour, and somehow frightfully dead.
“There is a piece I could use.” Laughing Boy dismounted and picked it up, marbled in ruddy blue and yellow. “I can cut it up and polish it, and use it in rings and bow-guards.”
“Yes, it will be a new thing, if it is not too hard to work.”
They searched for a few minutes for more good fragments, then he mounted, shouted the packhorse back onto the trail, and they rode on.