IV
The town of Los Palos shimmered in the heat. A lot of adobe houses and frame shacks pushed carelessly together were beaten down by the sun. Behind them was a strip of irrigated green like a backdrop, alfalfa, corn, beans, cottonwoods, alfalfa, corn, cottonwoods, a mile long and a few hundred yards wide. Rich, deep, cool green was not part of the desert landscape; it was something apart that the sands held prisoner. The mean little town was a parasite on the goodness of the water; here water and earth and man made beauty; there man and mud and boards created squalor.
A few yards of concrete and some blistered paint made a gesture of civic pride at the railroad’s edge. A two-story hotel, compounding Spanish mission with cubism, was a monument of the railroad’s profitable beneficence. From a rise where the trail crossed the railroad track, a little way to the west, it all compounded into a picture; the dejected town with its dominant hotel-station, the green strip behind it, yellow-grey sand, and farther, dancing buttes in the mirage.
Laughing Boy’s attention was divided. “Do these iron paths run all the way to Washindon? That is a beautiful place; there must be much water there. I have never seen so many houses; how many are there? Five hundred? I should like to go there. Are there many trading posts, or just one? Those are rich fields. Can one come here and see the iron-fire-drives?” He silenced himself, ashamed at having shown himself so carried away.
“Let us not go there now,” she told him quickly; “it is better that we go first to my hogan. The horses are tired.”
“You are right. Are there more than five hundred houses?”
“Yes, a few more. The iron-fire-drives goes by many times a day; it goes that way to Washindon and that way to Wide Water. Anyone may see it. Come now.”
They gave the town a wide berth, trotting east past the end of the irrigated land along a trail between two buttes. About three miles farther on, where the clay walls widened again to face the southern desert, an adobe shack stood in the shadow of one wall. Behind it a tiny spring leaked out. Here they dismounted.
“But this is not a hogan, it is a house. Did an American make it?”
“No, a Mexican built it. He went away to herd sheep, and I took it.”
He stepped inside. “It does not smell like Mexicans.”
“I have been here a long time. Yellow Singer made the House Song for me. Is it not good? The door is to the east, like a hogan.”
“Yes, it is good. It is better than a hogan, I think; it is bigger and the rain will not come through. It will be good summer and winter.” He hobbled the horses. “There is not much grass by that spring; we shall have to find pasture.”
“There is a little pasture just down there you can use. You must not let the horses run all over the place; this is American country. The Navajo country begins across the railroad track. There is good pasture just this side of Natahnetinn Mesa, enough for many horses. You must keep them up there.”
She lit a fire in front of the house.
“You have no loom. There is no sheep-pen.”
“I have been alone. I have had no one to weave for, and no sheep.”
“How do you live?”
She was laying the big logs over the first flame.
“I work a little bit, now and then, for the missionary’s wife in the town. She is a good woman. Now I am going to set up a loom, and you shall have a forge.”
He thought that something was wrong. Her face was too blank. “Not all missionaries are good, they say. There used to be a bad one at T’o Nanasdési, they say.”
“No, not all of them are good; but this one is.” She spoke musingly. “His wife pays me much money. She is not strong; I am.”
Her strange, pensive smile troubled him. He thought how beautiful she was. He thought again of the magician’s daughter. He did not care what bad magic she might do to him; just she was worth all other things.
Sprawled out on his saddle-blanket, he watched as she brought food from the house and began to prepare it. Her movements were like grass in the wind. He eyed a banquet of luxury—canned goods, tomatoes, fruit.
“Perhaps when we go into the town tomorrow we can buy some candy.”
She thought, he must be kept away from town. I must think of something. “I have a little here.”
“Sticks with stripes on them?”
“Yes.”
He sighed luxuriously. The food on the fire smelt good. It was cool. With a couple of ditches one could make a good cornfield by that spring, and plant peaches, perhaps. If they were to have food like this all the time—It was important to find that pasture for the horses, he must tend to it tomorrow. The town could wait. A swift movement caught his eye, lifting the coffeepot aside. Ei! she was beautiful.