"Hey, Chickadee!" Horse said, coming round and stopping. The child had observed, back in Coyote's town, that everybody treated Chickadee with respect She didn't see why. Chickadee seemed an ordinary person, busy and talkative like most of the small birds, nothing like so endearing as Quail or so impressive as Hawk or Great Owl.
"You're going on that way?" Chickadee asked Horse.
"The little one wants to see if her people are livingthere," Horse said, surprising the child. Was that what she wanted?
Chickadee looked disapproving, as she often did. She whistled a few notes thoughtfully, another of her habits, and then got up. "I'll come along."
"That's great," Horse said, thankfully.
"Ill scout," Chickadee said, and off she went, surprisingly fast, ahead of them, while Horse took up his steady long lope.
The sour smell was stronger in the air.
Chickadee halted, way ahead of them on a slight rise, and stood still. Horse dropped to a walk, and then stopped. "There," he said in a low voice.
The child stared. In the strange light and slight mist before sunrise she could not see clearly, and when she strained and peered she felt as if her left eye were not seeing at all. "What is it?" she whispered.
"One of the holes. Across the wall—see?"
It did seem there was a line, a straight, jerky line drawn across the sagebrush plain, and on the far side of it— nothing? Was it mist? Something moved there—"It's cattle!" she said. Horse stood silent, uneasy. Chickadee was coming back towards them.
"It's a ranch," the child said. "That's a fence. There's a lot of Herefords." The words tasted like iron, like salt in her mouth. The things she named wavered in her sight and faded, leaving nothing—a hole in the world, a burned place like a cigarette bum. "Go closer!" she urged Horse. "I want to see."
And as if he owed her obedience, he went forward, tense but unquestioning.
Chickadee came up to them. "Nobody around," she said in her small, dry voice, "but there's one of those fast turtle things coming."
Horse nodded, but kept going forward.
Gripping his broad shoulders, the child stared into the blank, and as if Chickadee's words had focused her eyes, she saw again: the scattered whitefaces, a few of them looking up with bluish, rolling eyes—the fences—over the rise a chimneyed house-roof and a high barn—and then in the distance something moving fast, too fast, burning across the ground straight at them at terrible speed. "Run!" she yelled to Horse, "run away! Run!" As if released from bonds he wheeled and ran, flat out, in great reaching strides, away from sunrise, the fiery burning chariot, the smell of acid, iron, death. And Chickadee flew before them like a cinder on the air of dawn.
***IV***
"Horse?" Coyote said. "That prick? Catfood!"
Coyote had been there when the child got home to Bide-A-Wee, but she clearly hadn't been worrying about where Gal was, and maybe hadn't even noticed she was gone. She was in a vile mood, and took it all wrong when the child tried to tell her where she had been.
"If you're going to do damn fool things, next time do 'em with me, at least I'm an expert," she said, morose, and slouched out the door. The child saw her squatting down, poking an old, white turd with a stick, trying to get it to answer some question she kept asking it The turd lay obstinately silent Later in the day the child saw two coyote men, a young one and a mangy-looking older one, loitering around near the spring, looking over at Bide-A-Wee. She decided it would be a good night to spend somewhere else.
The thought of the crowded rooms of Chipmunk's house was not attractive. It was going to be a warm night again tonight, and moonlit Maybe she would sleep outside. If she could feel sure some people wouldn't come around, like the Rattler... She was standing indecisive halfway through town when a dry voice said, "Hey, Gal."
"Hey, Chickadee."
The trim, black-capped woman was standing on her doorstep shaking out a rug. She kept her house neat, trim like herself. Having come back across the desert with her the child now knew, though she still could not have said, why Chickadee was a respected person.
"I thought maybe I'd sleep out tonight," the child said, tentative.
"Unhealthy," said Chickadee. "What are nests for?"
"Mom's kind of busy," the child said.
'Tsk!" went Chickadee, and snapped the rug with dis-' • approving vigor. "What about your little friend? At least they're decent people."
"Horny-toad? His parents are so shy..."
"Well. Come in and have something to eat, anyhow," said Chickadee.
The child helped her cook dinner. She knew now why there were rocks in the mush-pot
"Chickadee," she said, "I still don't understand, can I ask you? Mom said it depends who's seeing it, but still, I mean if I see you wearing clothes and everything like humans, then how come you cook this way, in baskets, you know, and there aren't any—any of the things like they have— there where we were with Horse this morning?"
"I don't know," Chickadee said. Her voice indoors was quite soft and pleasant "I guess we do things the way they always were done. When your people and my people lived together, you know. And together with everything else here. The rocks, you know. The plants and everything" She looked at the basket of willowbark, fernroot, and pitch, at the blackened rocks that were heating in the fire. "You see how it all goes together...?
"But you have fire—That's different—"
"Ah!" said Chickadee, impatient, "you people! Do you think you invented the sun?"
She took up the wooden tongs, plopped the heated rocks into the water-filled basket with a terrific hiss and steam and loud bubblings. The child sprinkled in the pounded seeds, and stirred.
Chickadee brought out a basket of fine blackberries. They sat on the newly-shaken-out rug and ate. The child's two-finger scoop technique with mush was now highly refined.
Won't You Come Out Toni^it^L43
"Maybe I didn't cause the world," Chickadee said, "but I'm a better cook than Coyote."
The child nodded, stuffing
"I don't know why I made Horse go there," she said, after she had stuffed. "I got just as scared as him when I saw it But now I feel again like I have to go back there. But I want to stay here. With my, with Coyote. I don't understand."
"When we lived together it was all one place," Chickadee said in her slow, soft home-voice. "But now the others, the new people, they live apart And their places are so heavy. They weigh down on our place, they press on it, draw it, suck it, eat it, eat holes in it, crowd it out... Maybe after a while longer there'll only be one place again, their place. And none of us here. I knew Bison, out over the mountains. I knew Antelope right here. I knew Grizzly and Grey-wolf, up west there. Gone. All gone. And the salmon you eat at Coyote's house, those are the dream salmon, those are the true food; but in the rivers, how many salmon now? The rivers that were red with them in spring? Who dances, now, when the First Salmon offers himself? Who dances by the river? Oh, you should ask Coyote about all this. She knows more than I do! But she forgets... She's hopeless, worse than Raven, she has to piss on every post, she's a terrible housekeeper..." Chickadee's voice had sharpened. She whistled a note or two, and said no more.
After a while the child asked very softly, "Who is Grandmother?"
"Grandmother," Chickadee said. She looked at the child, and ate several blackberries thoughtfully. She stroked the rug they sat on.
"If I built the fire on the rug it would bum a hole in it," she said. "Right? So we build the fire on sand, on dirt... Things are woven together. So we call the weaver the Grandmother." She whistled four notes, looking up the smokehole. "After all," she added, "maybe all this place, the other places too, maybe they're all only one side of the weaving. I don't know. I can only look with one eye at a \ time, how can I tell how deep it goes?"