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to Old Bear before she answered me.
"He asked Old Bear," she said, "'where are your
warriors?' Old Bear told him that they were in the north, hunting in the North Country. And the Long Knife said that was good, but if they were not hunting, if he learned that they were on a raid somewhere, he would come back and burn the houses and kill everyone in the village. Even the women and children he would kill, even the sheep and the dogs. That was the last thing he said to Old Bear."
"What did Old Bear say?" I asked her.
"He said that he would keep the peace. He would keep it unless our village was attacked by the Utes or the Spaniards or our other enemies. Then he would fight as he had fought before when they had come to plunder us."
"I hope Tall Boy does not raid among the Utes," I said.
"Or if he does," White Deer said, "the soldiers will never hear of it."
We had reached the stream and the sheep were wading toward the far shore. Suddenly Running Bird put her arm around my waist.
"Tall Boy is very brave but not foolhardy," Running Bird said. "He will come back safely and he will not bring back a Ute girl. You will see that I am right."
She gave me a squeeze and we walked on through
the river in silence. Dusk was falling and blue smoke rose from all the hogans. I drove my sheep into the corral and closed the gate and sang to myself as I walked homeward.
4
O UR HOGAN was quiet that night. All the hogans in our village were quiet. The Long Knives' threat hung over us. Had our young warriors been home there would have been much talk and chanting and threats against the Long Knives. But there were only women and children who had nothing to say and old men who had seen the power of the white man and feared it.
The evening fires went out early. The night was
long and I was glad when dawn came. At the first gray light I opened the gate and drove the sheep across the river and up the trail. As the sheep bells tinkled in the silent canyon, I sang little songs to myself. Some were happy and some were not, but all of them were meant for the ears of the gods who listen.
When I reached the mesa the sky was gold along the edges and pink overhead. With my black dog I drove the flock beyond the aspen grove to a place where the grass was uncropped.
Running Bird came soon and the two flocks grazed together. My sheep were easy to find because they were marked with red dye, a red circle on each ear. That afternoon when the sun was hot I would mark the ten sheep my mother had given me, using two red circles to show that they were mine.
Running Bird began to talk about the soldiers. I listened to her, nodding and making polite sounds, but I was thinking about my sheep all the time. The ewes my mother had given me would lamb in the summer. When spring came again I might have twenty or thirty sheep of my own to drive to the mesa. Thirty sheep! The thought made me dizzy with happiness. Right at the moment Running Bird asked me what my father had said about the soldiers I jumped up and began to dance. I could not help it,
thinking of thirty sheep grazing in the meadow, each one with two red circles on its ears.
Clouds drifted in from the north, but they were spring clouds, white as lamb's wool. In the stream that wandered across the mesa speckled trout were leaping. Jays were chattering in the aspen trees and two little red-tailed hawks came and hovered over the meadow.
It was the barking of my black dog that first alarmed me. None of the sheep had strayed. Everything was peaceful in the meadow. There was no reason for him to bark. Then, close to the aspen grove, I saw two long shadows.
I saw their shadows before I saw the men. They were not soldiers because they did not wear bright buttons on their coats and bright cloths around their necks. They were dressed in deerskin, with tall hats and silver spurs, riding horses that had heavy silver bits. They were Spaniards.
I jumped to my feet. They rode up at a trot and reined in a few paces