says, ‘The government’s fixin’ to do something to the river, and I bet, by damn, they ruin it!’ ”
As South Boy didn’t answer him the white man said: “No savvy English. Must be one the school didn’t catch.”
The man in the stern said: “Must be a breed. He’s two or three shades too light for a Mojave, and too thin.”
“He’s a Chemehuevi and on the wrong side of the river,” said the man who lay across the thwarts amidships.
South Boy thought: Two or three years ago I’d have answered them; but I get so I like strangers less and less. Still, if I’m dressed and on horseback I stop and speak with strangers. And when I’m dressed and on a horse nobody but a tenderfoot would take me for an Indian.
Then he heard one of the men say, “Speaking of Chemehuevis, I wonder how the boys are making it up north with the Piutes?” Which meant nothing to South Boy at the time.
A big black horsefly lit on his arm. He slapped once and killed it. A little sweat bee buzzed by, and he slapped twice and it flew away. He found a gratifying release from the continuing and increasingly gnawing anxiety even in that small distraction. But there were no more insects. They died in crazy weather. Back in his mind the thought was running again: Sent away. Shut up with strangers! Three—four years—academy. Three—four years—college. Three—four years—divinity school. His mother wanted him to be a preacher.
He tried to find new distraction in counting the driftwood coming down the river, but pretty soon he was counting, “Nine years shut up, ten years shut up, eleven years . . .” This torment went on for some minutes, until a scattering of little logs came by in a bunch with a big log following, like a bunch of short yearlings being driven by a horseman.
And at the sight his heart bounded with hope. He remembered that his father grew silent and sulky whenever the go-away-to-school subject had been broached. Not that he ever said “No”; but it was certain that he didn’t like the idea, particularly since South Boy had learned to be handy in keeping books and, to a lesser degree, in the regular routine work around the ranch.
Maybe, he thought, maybe when she comes back she won’t be sickly any more, and we both can say No without worrying about how it will make her feel.
But it came to him then that if he approached his father in the matter of making a firm stand against the go-away-to-school he’d shake his big head solemnly and declare, “If I do that, you got to be more help around here. You got to take responsibilities.”
South Boy had been hearing too much of that “take responsibilities” this last year. There had been a time when he could work with the men when he wanted to, and when work no longer interested him he could go away and find something that did. But a couple of years ago his father made the first talk about taking responsibilities and foisted onto him the biweekly church trips to Needles. Then it was the bookkeeping. Then it was the screw-fly patrol. Every newborn calf had to be found and have its navel doctored with antiseptic and pine-tar salve against screw-fly blow, so the screw-fly patrol was a tediously regular, unending job. It didn’t take all of South Boy’s time by any means, but it was another continuing curtailment of his freedom.
He had the Yavapai roustabout to help him; but the Yavapai was a hired hand and an Indian besides, and wasn’t expected to take responsibilities. So if a newborn calf lay close under the low branches of a mesquite, as it usually did, it was South Boy who had to go into that mesquite. The Yavapai could pretend he didn’t see the calf. It was South Boy’s hide the thorns ripped while he got the calf out. It was South Boy who had to tie the calf and do the dirty work of doctoring while Yavapai got all the fun and excitement of fighting off the calf’s furious, red-eyed, bawling mother with the end of his rope.
Sitting, watching the river, South Boy came to the definite decision that taking responsibilities meant taking on all the disagreeable jobs no one else wanted. “And the way they’re piling up on me I won’t have five minutes’ time for fishing by a year from now.”
Somewhere in the “Gems of Great Literature” there was something said about the horns of a dilemma. South Boy knew then that he was caught between Hard Work and Exile-and-Involuntary-Confinement just as sure as he was at that moment sitting between two great limbs of a black-willow tree.
Again came diversion. A big, gray, naked drift log was floating down the river, and on the middle of the log—stretched out belly down, his bandanna-wrapped head resting on a projecting snag that had been a root, one hand dangling down in the red-brown water, his clothes in a bundle on his broad back—rode a sun-blackened naked Mojave, singing a song about the Pleiades. Singing loud and full and hearty, as a mockingbird sings on a hot night.
The log swung in on the Arizona side of the sand bar. The Mojave saw South Boy, raised his head, and pointed his wet hand upstream and shouted something about “Chemehuevi ah-way.”
This second reference to Piutes certainly would have gained South Boy’s immediate attention if he had been in anything like a normal state of mind. As it was, he raised his hand in a languid salute and turned his head to watch the log shoot over toward the sand bar as it caught a sudden crosscurrent. The Mojave dropped his hand into the water and once more began singing, and the song and the singer faded away together around a bend in the river.
There goes a man who is happy because he is an Indian, thought South Boy. An Indian was not faced with distressing alternatives, nor troubled by thoughts that raged in the back of his mind.
All at once the heat became unbearable. South Boy slid out of the fork of the tree, down the bank, and into the cool water. He washed the caked mud from his head and ran his fingers through his half-long hair. Then he remembered what old Hook-a-row had said about twisting it into fifty strands and becoming a Real Person.
South Boy rested his head on the root of the willow that projected just above the water and listened to the river grumbling like a drunken old man. It was talking Mojave:
Kee-glug—glug—emk, it said, go—go, with a gurgle in the middle of the word.
A great uprooted cottonwood tree came slowly tumbling through the current, end over end, top up first, leaf-covered branches held skyward for a moment, slowly falling over, disappearing beneath the water; then its torn and straggling roots came up to the sun, and down again.
It made South Boy feel sad. Yet his troubles were fading out of his mind, and before he realized it, he was asleep.
CHAPTER II
THE HAWKS
THE WILLOW’S shadow on the water was almost gone. The river was higher. It covered South Boy’s chest, and a wavelet lapped over his chin and filled his half-open mouth. South Boy sat up straight, sputtering, angry, surprised to see that the sun rode low over the stark, naked ridge on the Nevada side where Beale’s Trail crossed like a thin white scar.
The river’s voice was louder, still talking—in garbled Mojave.
Then another voice using good, plain Mojave spoke from above and behind, “I saw a dream on your face.”
South Boy choked and looked up quickly to see Havek staring down at him from the willow’s fork. Then he smiled and spat out river water. Here was company. Here was the end of boredom and worry.
“What did you dream?” Havek insisted. His black eyes were intent and his lips parted. He was a big boy, almost six feet tall—nearly “the
