lime-encrusted earth.
“Miners? Them Injuns?” The young driver snorted contemptuously. “Shucks, no. They dig themselves holes in the ground to keep out of the weather—lessn’ they can find some old hides or sheets of tin to put up for a shack. Why should the lazy buggers mine or farm or even hunt when they can live on handouts from the good old United States Government?”
“You mean, they have no houses? No means of employment?” Miranda asked, horrified.
“Hell—” the young man swore, then broke off and began again. “’Scuse me, miss, but they’s Navajos. An’ Navajos got their own ways of doin’ things. General Carleton, afore he got his butt—’scuse me again, miss—afore he was dismissed from runnin’ this place, he got the idea of havin’ ’em build big adobe apartment houses like the Pueblos got. Right smart idea, if you ask me. But the Navajos, they wouldn’t have none of it. Wanted to live apart in their own kind of houses, little round huts they call hogans. Finally Carleton just threw up his hands and told ’em to go ahead! But did they build any hogans? Did they build anything a’tall? Look around you!”
The corporal worked his tobacco out of his cheek and spat over the edge of the wagon. “Only thing Navajos is any good at is forgin’ fake ration tokens so they can steal more supplies! Now that Carleton’s gone there’s been talk of movin’ ’em out, most likely to the Injun Territories in Oklahoma. Good riddance, I’d say. But nobody’s holdin’ their breath for that, I tell you, ’specially now that the Injun Bureau’s took ’em over from the army. Danged government bureaucrats won’t do much more’n hand out more flour and blankets.”
“But what a wretched way for people to live!” Miranda exclaimed in genuine horror. “No work, no homes, no dignity! Surely someone could help them, teach them—”
“Beggin’ your pardon, miss, but the Navajos brought their troubles on theirselves. They was raidin’ and murderin’ over half of Arizona afore Kit Carson and his boys brought ’em to heel an’ marched the lot of ’em here to Bosque Redondo.”
“Bosque Redondo?” Miranda frowned. “That means round grove in Spanish, doesn’t it? I certainly don’t see any grove in these parts!”
The corporal snorted with laughter. “Weren’t no more than a few trees to begin with, and the Navajos cut those down for firewood the first winter. Now there’s no shade in summer and nothin’ to burn when it gets cold. Never think past tomorrow, them murderin’ redskin fools. If you ask me, Carson shoulda killed ’em all while he had the chance!”
Miranda pulled her cloak tighter about her shoulders, willing herself to ignore the young driver’s unsettling talk. It would not do for her to get caught up in this Navajo business, she lectured herself. She had come to New Mexico to spend the holidays with her father, the last time they would be together before her June wedding, perhaps the last time ever. Nothing could be allowed to spoil their time together.
“There. Told you we’d be seein’ ’em soon.” The corporal’s nasal twang cut into her thoughts. Miranda leaned forward on the wagon seat. She shaded her eyes and scanned the horizon, expecting mounted savages to come whooping over the next rise. Only when the corporal nudged her arm and pointed sharply to the left did she realize her first Navajo was little more than a stone’s throw away.
Miranda turned, looked—and felt her heart contract with pity.
The old Navajo woman stood in the dust at the roadside, her withered body outlined against the blazing vermilion sunset. The desert wind whipped her faded rags against her bones, and the imploring hands that stretched upward like the thin branches of a winter tree shook with age and cold.
“Stop!” Miranda seized the corporal’s arm. The outriders swiveled their heads at the sound of her voice. They slowed their mounts, but did not halt.
“Didn’t you hear me?” Miranda tightened her grip, demanding the corporal’s attention. “I said stop the wagon! We’ve got to do something!”
His washed-out eyes stared at her blankly. “Do somethin’? For her, you mean? Lawse sake, miss, what for? That ain’t nothin’ but a dirty old squaw.” He spat another stream of tobacco over the side of the still-moving wagon. “Anyhow, we got to get you to the fort afore nightfall, or your pa will be fixin’ to throw us all in the stockade!”
He lifted the reins to slap them down on the backs of the plodding mules, but Miranda, anticipating the move, lunged forward, snatched the leather lines from his grip and jerked the team to an abrupt halt.
“What the hell—” the corporal sputtered.
“She’s not just a dirty old squaw. She’s a human being, and she needs help!” Miranda declared. “As for you and your fellow soldiers, if you don’t want to get involved, the least you can do is stand back and allow me to do what I can!”
The outriders had stopped now, and turned their mounts. They watched with varying degrees of amusement as Miranda lifted the skirt of her gray serge traveling suit and clambered down, unassisted, from the buckboard. None of them, it appeared, had the manners to help her or the compassion to aid a fellow being in need.
Over the past four years Miranda had read newspaper articles about the Navajos and how they’d been rounded up and force-marched from their homeland to the bleakness of Fort Sumner. But only now, at her first sight of a real Navajo, did the words she’d read take on life and meaning. In one shriveled face and a pair of twisted, begging hands, she saw the misery of an entire people. It tore at her heart and fueled her sense of outrage to a fever pitch.
The wispy-haired crone was clad in the remnant of a coarse woolen shift, handwoven in a striped pattern that might once have been colorful but was now faded and dirty, showing patches of warp where the weave had worn away. She shrank into herself as Miranda approached, her bare arms folding inward like the legs of a frozen insect. The small mewling noises she made scarcely sounded human.
“It’s all right, I won’t hurt you,” Miranda murmured, edging closer. She could see terror in the raisin-black eyes, and something else—something so disturbing that her heart crept into her throat.
“Give me those leftover biscuits from lunch,” she said softly, glancing up at the corporal in the wagon. When he hesitated, her eyes narrowed so sharply that he lunged to do her bidding. As the daughter of his commanding officer, Miss Miranda Howell was not without power.
Seconds later the biscuits were in Miranda’s hands. “Here, take them.” She held the food at arm’s length, standing quietly as the old woman crept toward her like a frightened, starving animal. “It’s all right,” Miranda urged gently. “No one’s going to hurt you.”
“I’d back off if I was you, miss.” One of the outriders spoke into the windy silence. “I know that old squaw. Crazy Sally, they call her. Hear tell she lit into a soldier one time and bit him on the arm. Tore him open so bad he needed stitches from the medic. No tellin’ what she might do to you.”
Miranda swallowed a knot of uneasiness as she chose to ignore the man’s warning. “It’s all right, Sally,” she coaxed, even more gently than before. “We don’t mean you any harm. Just take the food.”
Madness flashed in the ancient eyes as the old woman sidled closer. With a sudden move she snatched the biscuits away with her little clawed hands and scampered to the shelter of a dark sandstone outcrop. There she squatted on her haunches, glaring at Miranda while she stuffed the biscuits frantically into her near-toothless mouth. Saliva, mixed with
