When a Navajo is ailing, they manage to combine exorcism of the evil spirits with the amusing dance, and whether or not old Beck-a-shay Thlani was improved physically, the girls had a good time. It often helps them to find a husband; and in this case, how were they to know that Roberts would desert them for an Albuquerque girl, or that in a few months I would be interested only in solemnizing the marriages of older sisters and the herding of the remainder into schools?
But I have often wondered, when on those trails leading down into Beck-a-shay Thlani’s district, and coming suddenly on a shy Navajo maiden chivvying a band of sheep, if she were one I danced with that night on the Little Colorado River, when I was simply “Nultsose,” and the worries and responsibilities of Nahtahni had not been clamped to my shoulders. [[78]]
VIII
OLD ORAIBI
But still the drowsy pueblo hears
The voices of the Bells;
They speak as ghosts of other years,
Their message faintly swells
And sighs away above the town,