It is lighter when Lanso turns back: all the Havasupai are astir. Acrid smoke begins to drift over the willow thickets; ethereal strata that rest in the still air against the towering rock walls; walls that stretch to the winter home high on the plateau above. There in the clearing is his home; the willow-thatched dome for rainy days, the branch-covered, dirt-roofed, box-like shade for refuge from the midday sun, and Hat’s sand-drifted hut merging in the swell of the creek bank.
Lanso scents breakfast in the bubbling clay pot, the inexhaustible pot that stands day-long with open-mouthed hospitality extended to all comers. But even a cold-whetted appetite will not tempt him to a sidelong foray on the mess; no, there was bravery needed for the sharp reproach and unbearable ridicule meted out to unmannerly pilferers. Better to wait until Round-one, Hat’s wife, should call the family, Lanso, her nephew, not last among them, to the stew of ground corn and big-horn meat, little loaves of corn meal tied in the husks and baked in the embers, sweet mescal juice, and salt from the cave far down the canyon. Then he would creep up to the elders grouped on the ground around the pots and baskets, and from the side of Fox, his favorite uncle, beg for tasty bits fished out with sharpened twigs, and to take his turn at the brimming, horn ladles.
“Now,” said old Sinyella, “the brush is burned and our fields are cleared: to-day we will plant.” So, off the whole family trooped; men and children on horses, the women, their babies strapped to the cradle board in their arms, trudging along beside them. Lanso, clutching hard at his grandfather’s back, rocked to the easy canter of their horse. Here was business afoot he understood: next to the victims that fell before his arrows—very small creatures, indeed—this would be his chief contribution to the family larder. Yesterday he had watched them playing shinney, gambling for the future crops, and he had guessed they would begin to-day.
Down through the broad fields they rode, noting here the dam that spread a somewhat broken wing to scoop the creek to the level of the fields, there an irrigation ditch that needed mending, until they reached the family fields. These were Sinyella’s and had been Sinyella’s father’s and grandfather’s, and one day would go to Lanso.
Turning out the horses to graze at the foot of the rocky slope, they climbed to the storage houses set high above the reach of devastating floods, plastered like swallows’ nests in a crevice at the base of the cliff. The seed corn secured, Sinyella knelt in the field and scratched a hole with his pointed digging-stick. Then he prayed, “Grow good, corn; when your stalk grows, grow tall; grow like the ancient corn up there,” and dropping some kernels in the hole, he chewed another and blew it toward the “corn,” two white rocks high on the canyon wall. Then two short steps forward and he knelt to dig again. Lanso watched, and then followed; first a few kernels, a deft sweep to fill the hole, and then the next hill. Row after row they planted together under the white morning sun that rose to flood the canyon with its light and heat....
Back in the deep shade of the huge cotton-wood he saw his grandfather playing with his little brother—a toddling fellow not yet worthy of a name. Now he was searching for his mislaid arrows for he heard a twittering from a nearby bush. “Yes,” Sinyella teased the baby, “that bird is calling to you, ‘You are not a boy; you have no arrow to kill me; you are a girl.’” Grandfather knew everything: he made fine bows and arrows, and he told long stories in the winter evenings. “Next winter,” Lanso thought, “I will track rabbits in the snow when it lies in the cedar glades where our other home is; now I must hunt down here....”
The bushes spawned boys, Lanso among them. There were birds to be shot, dogs to be worried, deadfalls to be looked to, horses to be watered, sprawled over, and raced. They all ran down the canyon to Coyote’s, where there was that curious Navaho visitor to watch. Mornings are short when there are cliffs to scale, tanning to watch, flat cactus to roll for arrow-marks, food to beg from some friend—and relatives lived everywhere; Wooden-leg to listen to as he told of his trip to the Walapai people to fetch a bride, mock ambushes in the willows, and the creek, with its cooling embrace as it closes overhead....
II
Panamida drove his horses down the creek bank in a cloud of dust. Standing belly deep, they sluiced the cool water through their outstretched throats. Panamida let it swirl around his dangling ankles; here was relief from the afternoon heat. Bending low he could look up-stream beneath the vaulting willows where the women were filling their water-baskets. “Fox,” one called to him. “Fox,” indeed! Who was this who did not know that they had begun to call him Panamida since his marriage. Couldn’t she see that these three were Left-hand’s horses: Left-hand, to whom he had given a big blanket, a black Hopi shirt, and much dried meat, all for Gathawinga when he had first gone to live at her father’s and work for him. “When I have a son, I will build my own house on my family fields; Sinyella will give me a place,” he thought. He knew he was to have a son: only yesterday Hat’s girl had made a string-figure that resembled a boy.
Shrill laughter came from the dance-ground beyond the screening thicket: the women were playing hiding games and tossing dice over there. He laughed abruptly; Swollen-wrist’s voice came bellowing the song,