The Native Blood

By Albert R. Lyman

(Previous chapter)

Chapter 5

THE STORY THUS FAR: Down in the land of the Navajos, where the great, weird shapes of Monument Valley punctuate the skyline of the Southwest, Yoinsnez and his son and his daughter, Eltceesie, lived in a hogan, neighboring Husteele and his little son Peejo. But despite their neighborliness in all other things there grew a bitter rivalry between the two for the capture of a phantom horse — Beeleh thlizhen (Blackhorse) — a stallion of Arabian type that appeared full-grown on Huskaniny Mesa on the Utah-Arizona line, and which defied all efforts for his capture, whether of trickery, stealth, or force. As the occupants of each hogan would attempt his capture, the occupants of the other would lie in wait to see if their rivals were successful. Suddenly, however, the dread influenza struck the hogan of Yoinsnez, crushing the life from his son and prostrating all others. While their rivals were so stricken, Husteele and Peejo sought again to capture Blackhorse — but without success. Then the devastating plague visited the hogan of Husteele. Ten days later, after Yoinsnez had finally gained strength enough to visit his neighbor and rival, only eleven-year-old Peejo was still alive. Yoinsnez took the boy to his own roof and cared for him. He also took Husteele’s horses and herds and mingled them with his own, and burned down Husteele’s hogan in an effort to blot out the dread epidemic.

Yoinsnez’s first feeling of compassion soon, however, turned to rising resentment and bitter distrust when Peejo seemed reluctant to tell all that he and his father, Husteele, had learned of Blackhorse. Before an adequate period of convalescence, Peejo and Eltceesie were out caring for the sheep, and as a rival for Eltceesie’s favor there came Natawney Begay, vain and favored son of the tribe’s big medicine man. In boyish physical conflicts he bested the sick-worn Peejo. Husteele’s open approval of Begay’s attentions widened the breach between Husteele and Peejo, and, driven to anger, Peejo told Husteele that he would never find Blackhorse until he had returned to Peejo the sheep and horses taken from his father s corral, and then Peejo disappeared. Months had lengthened into years when Begay returned home from a celebration in New Mexico to tell a brooding Yoinsnez of having seen Peejo — a new Peejo, now the adopted son of a wealthy white man, who sent word that he would come back some day — a day of triumph for Peejo in which Yoinsnez “will crawl on his belly and beg me to help him.” Then there came further to plague Yoinsnez’ life a burly white man who set up a questionable trading post.

The white man began by making a rude dugout in the hillside, and as he wielded the pick and shovel, throwing the dirt out behind him like a burrowing animal, the Navajos called him Na-hus-tcit, which means badger, and from that time he was known to the people of the reservation as The Badger.

From their camps all around they came to his dugout-store to smoke and listen while they commented on his half-filled shelves and asked for his prices. They wanted to know what he would give for their wool, their blankets, their silverware. What would he charge for flour, bacon, sugar? He laughed loud and carelessly — he would beat all the prices they had ever known — why should a store-man be stingy with his customers? They need not be at all afraid; he would buy high and sell low. He jingled his silver before them and slapped them on the back, “Ha, ha, ha, youbetcherlife!”

With lavish fellowship and shrewd understanding of the ordinary Navajo’s prevailing weakness, he threw a blanket on the counter and on it a deck of cards. It would be a little game of coon-can, they would play, of course. “Hacoon,” (Come on) he bantered, plunking down a handful of silver as if it were so many buttons.

They played coon-can and some of them won — more of them lost. The Badger appeared to have little concern for his money; all he wanted was a lively game. He laughed boisterously and slapped them on the back when they got his cash, tickling their ego and exaggerating their sense of gain. He lost a well-advertised little, but slyly and quietly gained by a safe margin all the time.

He would bet on races, cards, dice, anything. He carried his own special deck and his own attractive little cubes always in his pocket, preferring to stake his values on them as on some very familiar friend with dependable bias in his favor.

It was the men of influence who won, and they carried glowing reports of the store in all directions. They told of the big games, the easy winnings, the lowest prices when they bought, the highest prices when they sold. They came riding in from all around to buy, to sell, but when they had sold out, and before they bought the necessities they had in mind in making the trip, they heard the careless jingle of silver and figured they would double their little wad by the mere exercise of their wits.

This whole business was offensive to Yoinsnez; it was an insult to his cherished pride, another ugly shadow on his dark horizon. From the day The Badger first stuck his pick in that hillside, nothing connected with the dugout ever set right on the old man’s stomach. Whenever he went there, it was to protest, and every visit gave him added occasion.

The Badger laughed loud at all objections, drowning the old man’s arguments with his big noise,

“Ha, ha, ha, youbetcherlife,” he boomed, “the old Navajos are a hundred years behind time, but the young men are quick to pick up new ideas in spite of all these silly stories.”

The young men liked the compliment, and laughed at the troubled old man as he went in disgust and indignation from the hillside store to nurse his grievances in the dust of his flock and frame some better argument for next time.

With increasing antipathies for the trading post as the months slipped by, Yoinsnez watched it transfer business from the dugout to a neat stone building where his people sat losing their money to the big laugh for hours at a time. And the big laugh was always wise to send none of them away downcast or hungry; if they felt too bad about their losses he returned enough of, their money to soothe their wounded spirits. “Ha, ha, ha, youbetcherlife. We’re friends; we play for fun and nobody hurt.”

Yet however much the fun or strong the friendship, however great his much-advertised losses, and the generous amounts he returned after the game, the coon-can, the dice, or some other smooth kink in the system was making him rich at the expense of the old man’s simple people.

Yoinsnez knew by some unfailing intuition that it was fraudulent, though he could not point to the proof. He did know that the wool, the hides, and blankets were weighed in over one pair of scales, while the sugar, bacon, and other things were weighed out over another pair, and he insisted there was a snake hidden somewhere in the contraptions of the business. When he tried to tell that to his people, they laughed at him, and when he said as much to The Badger, he was called a slow and doting old man.

“It’s a trick!” he insisted, shouting to be heard above the big laugh, “‘A mean, sneaking trick!”

“Don’t I bet on horse-races and foot-races!” laughed the store-man, making Yoinsnez ridiculous before a full house, “Where’s my trick in that?”

“The races are few, but the tricks are all the time. You play—” but he was smothered under the big laugh and a slap on the bony old back.

It was an outrage! He withdrew to brood over the humiliation of it, and to tell it to himself in the way he had always failed to tell it in the store. That ponderous jackass laugh was always a slur at him and his people. White men were an effeminate breed unable to survive the stern realities through which the Navajos had been fighting for ages, yet this trickster was reaping the hard-earned crop which the Navajos had made the dry desert to yield. Yoinsnez looked back in anger at the neat warehouse packed with “wool, pelts, and blankets which his people had brought in by the backload only to go away practically empty; but worse still, to go away satisfied. The Badger had increased his stock, employed a clerk, and become free to give his own time to operating the big laugh and the mysterious separating machine which poured the Navajos out of one spout and their cash values out of another.

Yoinsnez watched the sly process and hated it more devotedly every day. Yet he couldn’t resist the hateful lure of the place, though he always came out inflamed afresh with another discovery or another hurt. He could seldom be heard above the laugh, nor could he always dodge the hated slap on the back. He could not forgive it.

One day The Badger boasted to a crowded house that his pale race had horses and men to run off and hide from the fleetest Navajo that ever rode or ran. The old man was on his feet with raised hands in a second — no patronizing slap could settle that into the tempest of his resentment, and no laugh, however bovine, could drown his angry protest. With his sloping brow deep-furrowed and his long teeth giving force to his words, he made The Badger listen.

“The Great Spirit has given no people faster horses or better legs than He has given us. Don’t boast any more!” he roared in a fury, his muddy old eyes ablaze. “Bring your fast horse and your fast man. Let your money talk about it.”

“Ha, ha, ha, youbetcherlife! That’s just the way we’ll do it,” rejoiced The Badger, as if he had caught a fish, “I’ll be ready for you in ten days. Send word to your people all around to come to the big races.”

Getting the people in from all around — that was the system; he could afford to make a generous bid for their coming since he would run them through his separator when they came. So he sent up the river for a fast horse and to Flagstaff for a man.

He put up fifty dollars on each race for them to cover if they could by joining together, for he knew that their cash was as short as their foresight on which he doted for his separating machine. With his silver up there to mock at their poverty, he pretended to care little what they did in answer, and told the old man to help himself.

Yoinsnez studied to make out what long-headed scheme was being incubated under The Badger’s red hair, and he bubbled with delight as he guessed it: Any footracer to be picked up at random in Flagstaff, and any horse to be found among the posts along the river could not be seriously expected to beat the Navajos — this was just a sly bait for another race later on, nothing more. The Badger expected them to win it, or to come so near it they would by all means want to run again. “Let it be just that way,” chuckled the old man to himself, “it is a game at which we can play.”

He asked Begay not to run in the race, to keep Tillego away out of sight, pretending that the brown colt was dead or hopelessly lame, but to bring the old bay mare and get some speedy Navajo boy to do the running for them. They would win if they could, but in any case they would be ready for the big race to follow.

The old man and his intended son-in-law chuckled to each other as the appointed day arrived, bringing with it a gray horse from a post on the river, and a trim athlete from the Arizona town. The bay mare was to do her best, which they confidently hoped would be enough, and the Navajo boy, not in on the secret, intended to win or burst a blood vessel.

The people of the reservation came from distant points, and a number of white men came in cars from towns in Utah and Arizona. The storeman, taking account of the profitable-sized crowd, made it a point to have the big events delayed till late in the day, giving him more time to run them through his separator before the cash values were too much disturbed.

The medicine man’s son encouraged the report that the brown colt was done for, and that he was running the fastest horse in the north side of the reservation. Husteele’s old mare was nothing for size, even if age had not begun telling against her. Her grooming in the great outdoors, where real fitness is supposed to sharpen its edge on the raw surface of adversity, had given her an appearance not promising to say the least. The storeman looked her over and conferred in a whisper with his jockey.

“Youbetcherlife! Come on, old man,” he called in tones audible like the voice of a yearling calf, “I’ll let this gray horse say it for me.”

(To be continued)