Part 3
The Gods are singing.
Follow the trail of song.
Hu-Hu-Hu-Hu.
It is finished.
The Sing is finished.
Dawn light is here.
Gray light is here.
Morning is here.
Day is here.
The sun comes again to warm the world.
The Sing is finished.
It is finished.
Finished.
THE BETTING
The men go for horses that have walked away to find grass to eat.
The women put blankets and food in the wagons.
My uncle tells my father to wait awhile because my uncle says he knows a man who has a horse that can win a race.
All the men stand around. They talk together about this horse.
My father gets the things out of the wagon that my mother has put in it.
He is going to bet them on this horse that my uncle says can win a race.
The Trader comes.
He does not like the horse my uncle knows.
He puts up a hundred dollars against the horse.
All the Indian men take off their concho belts and rings and turquoise and bowguards and blankets.
They throw them on the ground to make a pile of things as much as a hundred dollars.
They say, "We will run to that place and back."
They mount their horses.
They line them up.
One man stands by the pool of things that are being bet against the hundred dollars.
With another man my father bets his bowguard against a concho belt on that horse my uncle knows.
The men choose a flat place to run the race.
THE RACE
The starter takes his hat off. He lifts it up. He lifts it up. He holds it there. He drops it. They are off. They are off. They are running together. No horse is in front. No horse is behind. They are together. Together. Running, running.
The black one that the Trader likes stretches out, running, running, gets in front, running, running.
Sand flies.
People shout.
The People shout.
Now comes the horse my uncle knows.
There he is, there he is, in front, in front, away in front.
He has won the race.
The horse my uncle knows has won the race.
The horses come back.
They are sweating.
Their sides go in and out just like my blouse goes in and out.
We are tired, the horses and I are tired.
It takes some running to win a race.
GOING HOME
The horse race is finished.
My father has a concho belt and money in his pocket.
Now we go back on the home trail.
Back to the hogan.
Back to the sheep.
Everything is finished.
We have listened to the Holy Songs.
We have walked on the Holy Trail.
It is finished.
Our hearts are good.
All around us is good.
We ride along on the home trail.
It is finished.
IN SPRING
IN SPRING
Page Morning 73
The Hogan 74
Breakfast 75
Possessions 76
Sheep Corral 78
The Puppy 79
The Waterhole 80
The Field 81
Little Lambs 82
Herding 83
Little Bells 85
Lambs In the Snow 86
The Wind 88
Noon 90
Thinking 91
Old Grandfather Goat 92
Baby Goats 93
Afternoon 94
Sunset 95
Greedy Goat 96
Beautiful Mountain 97
Meetings 98
Going Home 100
Night 101
MORNING
This morning, when I crawled from under my blanket, when I stood before my mother's hogan door, outside looked as if it had been crying.
The sky was hanging heavy with gray tears.
I stood at the door of my mother's hogan and looked out at the gray, sad morning.
My father came.
He stood beside us.
He spoke in a happy way to me and to my mother.
Then the gray tears on the sky's face melted.
The clouds pushed away and the sun smiled through them.
Now it is gray again, but I cannot forget that when my father spoke the sun came and looked down upon us.
THE HOGAN
My mother's hogan is dry against the gray mists of morning.
My mother's hogan is warm against the gray cold of morning.
I sit in the middle of its rounded walls, walls that my father built of juniper and good earth.
Walls that my father blessed with song and corn pollen.
Here in the middle of my mother's hogan I sit because I am happy.
BREAKFAST
On the fire in the middle of her hogan my mother cooks food.
My mother makes fried bread and coffee, and she cooks mutton ribs over the coals.
My father and I and my mother, we sit on the floor together, and we eat the good food that my mother has cooked for us.
POSSESSIONS
We have many things.
My mother has many sheep and goats and her hogan and the things of the hogan and me.
My father has many horses.
On his land he has many horses.
He has a wagon near the horse corral.
Inside my mother's hogan my father keeps his gun, and outside he hangs his sheepskin and his saddle and his blanket.
And I have my mother and my father, three baby lambs and a cat with a long tail.
I have a tree that I know.
It is a little tree.
It is a crooked tree on the top of a hill.
It knows me, too, I think, because it bends down low to let me climb it to hide away.
Behind my mother's hogan is Beautiful Mountain.
It is mine, I know, because always it is looking at me to make me happy.
We have many things.
All of us have many things.
One day my father told me that all The People had possessions.
He said, "Sheep and horses for the men and the women and land for all.
That is enough."
My father said this.
But I think there should be more than sheep and horses and land for all.
There should be little girls for little girls to play with.
That would be enough, I think.
SHEEP CORRAL
Near my mother's hogan is the sheep corral, a hard packed place fenced with poles.
There is a tree for shade.
There is a shelter for lambs in the sheep corral.
The sheep stand together in their corral.
They stand close to each other.
I think sheep like to know that they are many.
Sometimes I think that way.
I think that there are many children all around me, all about me.
When I am herding and I cannot see my mother, it is good to play that many children stand together with me, and that all outside is my corral.
THE PUPPY
Far from the hogan in a dry sand wash I found the gray dog and a new baby puppy gray with black spots.
Poor little puppy, it crawled to me crying.
Thin little baby, its pink cold nose found my hand.
Soft baby puppy, it was so little it made me feel gentle and strong like my mother.
When I picked it up, the gray mother dog did not growl.
She was glad for me to want her puppy.
She thumped her tail.
Listen, you gray pup with black spots, I will teach you to watch the sheep so that always there will be a place for you in our hogan.
THE WATERHOLE
The waterhole hides away behind the red rocks, but my sheep know where to find it.
Their little feet have made a deep trail from the corral to the waterhole.
THE FIELD
In a little delta of seepage water near the waterhole is a small place that my father has fenced to make a home for the corn, for the squash and the melons.
It is too cold now, but soon, when the snow melts and hides away in the warm sand, my father will go to his field.
There he will make the soil ready for planting.
He will break through the hard crust of winter and turn up toward the sun little lumps of fresh earth.
I like to go with my father to his field because I like the feel and the smell of new earth when it first sees the sun.
I want my father to take me with him when he goes to plant the corn because I forget how he does it.
LITTLE LAMBS
The little lambs are born.
Near the waterhole my mother makes shelters of green boughs for the mother sheep.
There in the shelters the little lambs are born.
The green boughs stand close together, they do not let the snow nor the wind nor the sand come in to hurt the lambs.
Soon the lambs will be big enough to play with me.
HERDING
All day I herd my mother's sheep.
The sheep and I, we have a way of going that is always the same.
From the corral we go to the waterhole and through the arroyo to the sagebrush then back again.
Outside is round like the sheep corral.
Outside is round like my mother's hogan, but it is bigger.
Outside is big, big, so big.
Sometimes when I am alone with my mother's sheep, I am afraid.
I cannot say with words the things that make me afraid because I do not know what they are.
But sometimes outside is so still and big and empty and I am so little.
The red rocks are so high and Beautiful Mountain behind my mother's hogan seems far away.
Nothing walks with me, but the sheep, just the sheep, and I am so little walking along in the big outside.
I am so little, I am afraid.
And then near by I see my mother at her hogan door.
The red rocks seem to bend down to look at me in a good way and Beautiful Mountain comes closer.
All things are good again because my mother is near me.
I am not afraid.
Today is cold.
There is wind and snow and sand and always wind.
I take the sheep to the waterhole and the wind goes with us.
LITTLE BELLS
I have little bells on my belt fringe.
Little bells, silver bells, hanging on my belt fringe.
My mother has a tin can filled with stones.
She rattles it to tell the sheep to hurry.
But I have little bells tied to my belt fringe.
When I run the little bells laugh and say to the sheep, "Hurry, hurry."
LAMBS IN THE SNOW
Today the cold comes in gray clouds of blowing snow.
The little lambs stand close to their mothers.
They think the cold has come to stay.
Yesterday the sky was blue and the sun warmed the land.
The lambs do not know that sometimes cold days make mistakes and come again after they should have gone away.
They do not know that tomorrow will be warm again.
They have not been here long enough to know these things and their mothers have not told them.
My mother is watching the lambs.
She will not let them get too cold.
My father says, "Next year I will try the white-man's way of breeding the sheep.
Then the lambs will be born later, when summer has come to stay."
My mother says, "Yes, next year we will try that way."
THE WIND
There are many things about the wind that I do not know.
I have not seen the wind, and no one has told me where the wind lives, or where it is going when I hear it and when I feel it rushing by.
And something more I do not know about the wind.
I do not know if it is angry or if it is playing and just doing the things it does for fun.
Sometimes the wind gathers the sand into whirlwinds and makes them dance over the flat lands until they are tired and lie down to get their breath.
Sometimes the wind bends the wild grass down to the ground, and makes the sagebrush bow its head as if a giant moccasin had stepped on them in passing.
Today the wind makes the tumbleweeds look like sheep jumping off high banks and racing up arroyos with no dog to guard them, with no herder to guide them.
Poor tumbleweeds are frightened because they do not know where to go.
I want someone to tell me if the wind is angry or if it is playing with me and racing with me and my many skirts across the sand.
When the wind blows my long skirts, my many skirts are in a hurry to get to the hogan where the wind cannot push them.
They pull me along when I am walking and my feet have a hard time to keep up with my skirts.
NOON
Now it is middle-time of day.
The sheep stand still.
The shadows sit under the trees.
Everything is resting, the sun and the sheep and the shadows.
I, too, rest.
And I look at Beautiful Mountain behind my mother's hogan.
I am thinking about something.
THINKING
Earth, they are saying that you are tired.
They are saying that for too long you have given life to the sheep and The People.
I am only little.
I cannot do big things, but I can do this for you.
I can take my sheep to new pastures.
I can take them the long way around the arroyos, not through them, when we go to the waterhole.
This way their little feet, their sharp pointed feet, will not make the cuts across your face grow deeper.
This way the worn pastures can sleep a little and grow new grass again.
I can do this to heal your cuts, to make you not so tired.
Earth, my mother, do you understand?
OLD GRANDFATHER GOAT
Grandfather Goat stands on the hilltop, shaking his whiskers, chewing something and looking wise.
Sometimes when I ask him things he looks at me as if he knew.
Perhaps he does.
BABY GOATS
Baby goats always are playing, climbing up and jumping down.
This small one always stands on the top of the storehouse.
He knows there are things to eat inside, I think.
AFTERNOON
Afternoon is long.
The sun goes slowly across the sky.
The sheep walk slowly, feeding.
I see them against the sky in a long, slow line.
I whisper to the wind to blow the sun and the sheep a little to make them hurry.
But it blows only the clouds and the sand and me.
SUNSET
Just now I watched the sun going.
It took a long time to say goodbye.
I think it knew that the land and the things of the land were sorry it had to go.
It said goodbye in such a good way.
Just for a little time it made the sky and the rocks and the sand like itself to let them know how it feels to be sun.
Then it went away and all things were still because the sun had gone.
GREEDY GOAT
The sheep know that the day is over, but Grandfather Goat stays behind to push his whiskers high up in a tree for one last bite.
Old Greedy Grandfather Goat.
BEAUTIFUL MOUNTAIN