The old man regarded me for a while with that crinkled look of amusement about his eyes. “Grandson, you are in a hurry again,” he said. “Can you not wait for a story?”
XVI
Thanking the Food
“I have been thinking about roads,” the old man remarked musingly, with an air of reluctant return from somewhere far off. It was the next morning, and I had waited longer than usual for the story.
“About roads?” I said; “what roads, Grandfather?”
“Good roads, bad roads, Grandson,” he replied. “I have been thinking maybe the good road is the one a man does not walk because he does not see it until he is tired and looks back. Also I have been thinking the bad road is bad because he walks it, and maybe does not see it either, until he is very tired and stops to look back. There was a road I did not walk that time, because I did not find it until I had walked across the world.”
“And what road was that, Grandfather?” I asked.
“A girl’s road,” he answered slowly, fixing his long-focused gaze upon something beyond me. “Tashina went away on it.”
He was silent awhile, until the focus of his gaze shortened to include me, and then—
“My mother and step-father were proud of me because I had given the people a good day, and they were all praising me. I think I was very proud of myself too. Maybe afterwhile when I was older and had counted many coups and all the old people praised me because I always had a big pot and tender meat for them—maybe then the wichasha yatapika would make me one of them. And maybe when I was still older, I would be a great chief. That is what I was thinking all the time, after the sun dance, and maybe my step-father and my mother were thinking that too. So they said we must make a feast and invite very old men and women to come and eat. Also, we would ask some wise old man to come and thank the food.”
“Could not anyone give thanks for food, Grandfather?” I interrupted.