When the Legends Die Read online

  When the Legends Die

  by Hal Borland

  For Barbara

  Who has gathered piñon nuts

  and heard the old songs

  in the firelight

  Contents

  I. Bessie

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  II. The School

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  III. The Arena

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  IV. The Mountains

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  When the legends die,

  the dreams end.

  When the dreams end,

  there is no more greatness.

  I. Bessie

  1

  HE CAME HOME IN midafternoon, hurrying through the alley. She was sitting on the back step of the unpainted two-room house, peeling willow twigs with her teeth and watching the boy chase butterflies among the tall horseweeds. She looked up and saw her man come in from the alley, through the horseweeds toward her. His face was bloody, his shirt torn and bloody down the front. She clapped a hand to her mouth to stifle the cry of hurt and surprise, and he stepped past her, into the house. She followed him and he gestured her to silence and whispered, in the Ute tongue, “They will come after me. Bring water to wash. Get the other shirt.”

  She went outside, filled the tin wash basin from the water pail on the bench beside the door, and brought it to him. She got the other shirt while he washed his face. There was a cut over his left eye and a darkening bruise beside his mouth. He washed his face, then his hands, and gave her the pan of red-stained water. She took it outside and poured it on the ground among the weeds, where it sank into the dry soil and left only a dark, wet spot. When she went inside again he had taken off the torn shirt and wrapped it into a tight bundle with the bloody places hidden. He pulled the clean shirt over his head, tucked the tails inside his brown corduroys and said, still in the Ute tongue, “I shall go to the stream with black-stem ferns on Horse Mountain. Come to me there.” He went into the other room and came back with the rifle. He tucked the bundled shirt under his arm and went to the door, looked, waited, then touched her face with his free hand and went outside. He hurried through the weeds and down the alley to the place where the scrub oak brush grew close by. He went into the brush, toward the river. The magpies screamed for a moment, then were silent. He was gone.

  She wiped the water from the table where he had spilled it, searched the floor for spots of blood, and wiped the tin basin with the rag. She went outside and put the basin beside the water pail and looked at the place where she had emptied the basin after he washed. The wet spot on the ground was almost gone. She came back and sat on the step again.

  The boy, who was five years old and only an inch or so taller than the horseweeds, came and stood at her knee, asking questions with his eyes. She smiled at him. “Nothing happened,” she told him. “Nobody came. Nothing happened. Remember, if they ask.” He nodded. She handed him a willow twig. He peeled the bark with his teeth, as she had done, chewed the bark for a moment, tasting the green bitterness, and spat it out. “Go catch a grasshopper,” she said, and he went back among the weeds.

  She waited half an hour. Then they came, up the street and around the house. They came and stood in front of her, the tall man who always came when there was trouble, the short, fat one from the sawmill, and Blue Elk, with his squeaky shoes, his black coat and derby hat, his wool-bound braids, his air of importance. She looked up at them, each in turn, and she clapped her hand to her mouth and began to wail. “You bring trouble!” she cried. Then, to Blue Elk, in the Ute tongue, “My man is hurt?”

  The tall man, the sheriff, watched her and said to Blue Elk, “See what she knows.”

  Blue Elk rubbed his hands together. They were the soft hands of a man who has not worked in a long time. He said, “Bessie! Stop the wailing. The wailing is for another woman. Let her make the mourning.”

  “My man is not hurt?”

  “You know he is not hurt. Where have you hidden him?” They both spoke Ute.

  “He is not here. Why do you come here for him?”

  “He was here. He came here.”

  “If you know this, then find him.” She gestured toward the house.

  “What does she say?” the sheriff asked.

  “She says he is not here. She says we should look.”

  The sheriff and the sawmill man went inside. She sat waiting. She asked Blue Elk, “Why do you want my man? What happened?”

  “He killed a man.”

  “Who?”

  “Frank No Deer.”

  “That one.” Scorn was in her eyes.

  “I know. Frank was a thief, a no-good. But George killed him. Where did George go?”

  She shrugged.

  The sheriff and the sawmill man came back. “No sign of him. What does she say now?”

  Blue Elk shrugged. “Nothing.”

  The sheriff and the sawmill man talked in low tones. Blue Elk turned to her again. “Where is the boy?”

  She glanced about the weed patch before her eyes met Blue Elk’s. She waved her hand vaguely. “Boys play, go where they will.”

  “They will watch you,” Blue Elk said, still in the tongue.

  “If they want me, I am here.”

  The Sheriff turned to Blue Elk. “Tell her we’ll find him if we have to run down every little bunch of Utes in the mountains, every fishing and berry camp. If he was here, he covered his tracks. Or she did. Tell her we’ll find him.”

  Blue Elk said to her, “You heard. For the cost of two horses I could settle this.”

  “I have not the cost of two horses.”

  “One horse,” Blue Elk offered.

  She shook her head. “I have not the cost of one goat.”

  “What does she say?” the sheriff asked.

  “She says he did not come here. She says she has not seen him.”

  “I think she’s lying.”

  “My people,” Blue Elk said in English, “do not lie.”

  The sheriff grunted. “They just kill each other over a lunch pail. Some day one of them is going to kill you, Blue Elk.”

  “I am an old man who has done much for my people.”

  “He’s probably hiding in the brush down along the river,” the sheriff said. He turned to the sawmill man. “We’d better go find Frank’s woman. She’s probably heard by now, but you better tell her you’ll pay for the funeral.”

  “For a coffin,” the sawmill man said. “Fifty dollars for a coffin. That’s all.”

  Blue Elk’s eyes had darted to him when the money was mentioned. The woman on the steps saw, and she said to him in Ute, “The cost of two ponies?” There was scorn in her voice.

  “What does she say?” the sheriff asked.

  “She says she is glad it was not her man who was killed.”

  “You know where to find Frank’s squaw?”

  Blue Elk nodded, and they left.

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sp; She sat on the steps another ten minutes. Then she said, “Come now,” and there was a movement among the horseweeds near the alley. The boy stood up and came to her and they went indoors. She praised him. She walked about the house, choosing certain things, not taking them from their places, but choosing them. The extra box of ammunition for the rifle. The package of fishhooks and spool of line. Two butcher knives. Spare moccasins for herself and the boy. The boy’s blue coat. Two brown blankets.

  She sent the boy for kindling, started a fire in the iron stove and put the piece of meat to boil. She neatened up the house, to leave it clean … and to occupy the time. It was a company house. The man at the pay desk took money from her man’s pay every week to pay for rent of the house and for buying the furniture, the old iron bed, the dresser with the broken leg, the four chairs, the table, the stove. For two years he had taken money to pay for these things and he said there was still more to pay. By now, she told herself, they had paid for the two blankets, and that was all she was taking, the blankets. The butcher knives were hers, from before they came here. She had made the moccasins, and the coat. She was no thief.

  Her choosing done, the house neat, she went outside and sat on the step again. The boy sat with her, in no mood for play. When the meat was cooked, they would eat. When it was dark, they would pack the things and go. Two years ago Blue Elk had brought them here, from Horse Mountain. Now, in a way, Blue Elk was sending them back to Horse Mountain.

  She thought of the summer two years ago.

  2

  IT WAS HOT, THAT summer of 1910. They lived near Arboles on the Southern Ute reservation in southwestern Colorado, and her man had a cornfield. The drought came and the corn burned up. In July her man said one evening, “We are going fishing.”

  “Who is going?”

  “Our friends, Charley Huckleberry, too, so it is all right.” Charley Huckleberry was a member of the council. “Maybe we will smoke fish, so take salt.”

  The next morning they went, in six wagons. They went up the Piedra to the reservation line and camped. The men caught fish and they ate their fill, and it was like the old days when they were children and all summer they ate fish and picked berries and there were no cornfields to worry about. In the evening the men wrestled and ran races and the children threw stones at the magpies and the women sat and talked. It was a happy time.

  The next day someone said they should go in to Piedra Town and buy candy for the children. Charley Huckleberry said it was all right to go. So they broke camp and went in to town and bought candy for the children and the women went to the store and fingered skirt cloth and admired it, but they had no money for skirt cloth. They had spent all the money they had. Then someone said, “Let us go on up the river and camp and catch fish.” Charley Huckleberry said he guessed that would be all right, too.

  They went on up the river and camped, and there were plenty of fish. Serviceberries were ripe. The men caught fish and the women and children picked berries, as in the old days, and they set up racks and smoked the fish they didn’t eat.

  They stayed there a week. Then they went up the river another day and found a place where there were more berries, more fish. And the men killed two fat deer that had come down to the river to drink. The venison tasted good after so much fish, and the women told the men to go up on Horse Mountain and get more deer and they would dry it, the old way, for winter. There were many deer on Horse Mountain and they made much meat. Nobody remembered how long they were there because it didn’t matter. When they had made meat for the winter, they said, and had smoked fish and dried berries for the winter, they would go back to the reservation.

  Then Blue Elk came and found them there, and Blue Elk said they were in bad trouble. He said the police would come after them because they had come to Horse Mountain without a permit.

  They all gathered around Blue Elk to hear this news. Charley Huckleberry said there wouldn’t be any trouble because he was in charge and he was a member of the council. But Blue Elk said the council had sent him to find them.

  “The council sent you?” Charley asked, and everybody knew that Charley Huckleberry was worried.

  “They said when I found you,” Blue Elk said, “I should tell you this. That there is trouble.”

  Then Charley asked, “Who paid you to come? Somebody always pays you to come to tell of trouble. The council didn’t pay you. Who did?”

  “I worry about my people,” Blue Elk said. “That is why I came.”

  Charley said, “The sawmill man in Pagosa pays you to do these things.” But Charley was worried. Everyone knew it. He said, “We came here because our cornfields are burned up. We came to dry fish and berries and make meat for the winter. Nobody can make trouble of this. We did not kill sheep or cows for meat. We killed deer. You are the one who is making trouble.”

  “I came to warn you,” Blue Elk said, “and to tell you that this trouble can be taken care of.”

  Johnny Sour Water said, “Maybe we should let our women put you on the drying rack, like a fat fish, and smoke you, too.”

  Everybody laughed at that because Blue Elk looked a little like a big, fat fish. But they didn’t laugh much. They didn’t know how this would come out.

  Bessie’s man, George Black Bull, said, “We made meat for the winter, and that is all we did. We will go back now and there will be no trouble.” Bessie was proud of him.

  “If you go back with me,” Blue Elk said, “1 can take care of this for you.”

  “How?” Charley Huckleberry asked.

  “I can get permits, and that will make it all right. When you have the permits I can get work for you and you will not have to worry about the winter.”

  “We do not worry about the winter,” Charley said. “We have made meat.”

  Blue Elk said, “You made meat without permits. Do you think you can keep that meat? You are not so foolish as to think that!” Then he said, “Your cornfields are burned. Your blankets are thin. Your women need new skirts.” Which was true. They had torn their clothes and worn them thin picking berries and smoking meat. “And,” Blue Elk said, “you already owe money to the trader.”

  Then Charley Huckleberry asked, “What do the sawmill men pay for you making this talk to us?”

  Blue Elk said, “I am an old man. I have nothing but the clothes I wear. I worry for my people. That is why I tell you now that the sawmill man will give you jobs. He has bought many more trees and he needs more men to work. He will pay two dollars a day, silver. And he will pay those dollars to you, not to me.”

  There was talk, at that. Two dollars, silver, for each day’s work! The men talked among themselves, and the women talked to the men.

  Charley Huckleberry said, “Don’t listen to old Fat Belly! He speaks lies about these things.”

  Blue Elk didn’t answer. He went off to one side and let them talk. And Charley Huckleberry said Blue Elk was right about the permits. It was all right to go on a fishing trip and stay a few days. The council would not make trouble over that. But they had come too far and stayed too long. About that, Blue Elk was right. Probably they would have to pay a fine for that. A fine that the council would write down in the book and they would pay when they had money to pay it. That was not big trouble. And that was all the trouble there would be, Charley Huckleberry said.

  But there still was this other matter, this two dollars a day, silver. The women said this might be a good thing, and even some of the men said it might not be too bad a thing. The women said they needed new skirts. They said the beans in tin cans would taste good with the meat they had made. The men said that if all of them went together to Pagosa it would be a happy time, maybe. And they said they did not have to stay very long. In two months, at two dollars a day, they would have more than a hundred dollars. The women said that was many dollars, and all silver.

  That was the way it was decided. They broke camp and went back to the reservation with Blue Elk. Charley Huckleberry told the council what they had done and whe
re they had gone, and Blue Elk said everything Charley had told the council was true. Blue Elk said that there should be a fine for this so that they would remember next time, and since they had no money he said it would be right for the council to take the meat they had made and the fish they had smoked. That was done. Then Blue Elk got permits for them to go to Pagosa and work in the sawmill so they would not have to be hungry that winter. The trouble was taken care of.

  So they went to Pagosa and Blue Elk helped the men to make their sign on the papers that said so much would be kept out of their pay each week to pay rent for the houses and to buy the furniture. And on the papers it said they could buy what they wanted at the company store and it would be paid for by taking part of their wages. The papers said they could not quit and go away while they owed money for these things. Blue Elk helped them sign the papers.

  3

  THAT WAS TWO YEARS ago. Some of them wanted to quit after they had been there two months and go back to the reservations, but they owed money to the company store and they had no money to pay it. Sometimes when pay day came they had only two or three dollars instead of two dollars a day. So they could not quit because they had signed the paper.

  One day Blue Elk came to the house and told Bessie that she and George must get married. Bessie said, “George is my man. That is enough. That is married, as it always was.”

  Blue Elk said, “There is the boy. You must be married for the boy, and he must be baptized.”

  “What is this ‘baptized’?” Bessie asked.

  “The preacher sprinkles him with holy water and gives him a name.”

  “I wash him with water when he is dirty,” Bessie said. “I have given him his name. Can the preacher do more than this?”

  “It must be done,” Blue Elk said. “It will cost five dollars.”

  “I do not have five dollars,” Bessie told him. “They take my man’s money and do not pay it to him.”

  “I will see that he gets five dollars this week,” Blue Elk said. And he did. George got the five dollars from the man at the pay desk and gave it to Blue Elk and he took them to the preacher. The preacher said words and wrote on a paper and they were married. Then he asked what they wanted to name the boy. Bessie said, “He is Little Black Bull. He will choose when he needs another name.”