“Oh, but Carson never tried to excuse his actions. At first, he thought he was doing the right thing to move the tribe onto a fine new reservation. But as soon as he had herded several thousand of them over to Bosque Redondo on the Pecos River, he changed his mind. Bosque Redondo means Round Forest in Spanish, but he found there weren’t more than half a dozen trees on the whole place, while good grazing grass was almost as rare. It was a hellhole and the Navajos hated it. They ran away or, if they weren’t able to do that, they just sat down and pined. A thousand of them died there from hunger and homesickness.
“So Carson climbed on a train, went to Washington, and told the Great White Father just what was happening. When he warned that all the Navajos at Bosque Redondo would be dead in a few years, nobody seemed to mind very much. ‘Good Indian: dead Indian,’ you know. When he added that the government was spending a million dollars a year just to help them die, a few ears pricked up. But when he said that half the Navajos had never left Arizona and that they were threatening to go on the warpath to help their imprisoned brothers, Carson got action. He was ordered to return the tribe to its original reservation—this one—and was given money to help them get a new start.”
“I’d like to tell Miss Gonzales what you just told me,” said Sandy. “I don’t want her to dislike me because she thinks my great-uncle was a monster.”
“Well, why don’t you? Her school trailer is located only about twenty miles from our well. Drop in on her when you get a day off.”
“Gee, I’d like to, Ralph,” said Sandy as they approached the ranch gate where Hall, Donovan and Chief Quail were waiting for them, “but she seemed pretty angry that night at the motel.”
“Kitty’s a fine girl,” Ralph answered slowly, “even though she tries to be more Navajo than the Navajos. Fact is, I’ll let you in on a secret: My last oil royalty check from the wells in the Southern Ute reservation amounted to $12,000. When I get a few more of them in my bank account, so I can give her a big marriage gift, I’m going to ask my uncle to ask her uncle if she’ll have me for a husband.”
“What have uncles got to do with marriage?” Sandy stared at Ralph in amazement, realizing for the first time that he really was an Indian and had ways of doing things that were hard to understand.
“It’s just an old Navajo custom.” Ralph grinned uncomfortably. “And that reminds me: If Kitty gets uppity about Carson again, you tell her I said to be nice or I’ll ask my great-uncle to step on her great-uncle’s shadow. That will make her behave!”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Back of Beyond
After a hurried lunch that ended with flabby apple pie, as Sandy had discovered most lunches usually did in the Southwest, the five men climbed into Quail’s pickup truck. (The Chief insisted that the jeep couldn’t possibly travel the trails they would have to follow.) Then they set out for the wild Dot Klish Canyon area, to the northwest of Chinle, where the Navajo thought Chief Ponytooth and his wife were “squatting,” as he put it.