The Big Wander by Will Hobbs

Author:Will Hobbs
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Published: 1992-08-20T04:00:00+00:00

13

“Three of our horses ran off the year before …” Russell’s father began. The big Navajo man looked only into the fire. He cleared his throat, then continued.

“We knew they’d be spooky and it would be hard to catch them. It was early in the summer, just after we’d come to the summer hogan with the sheep. The yucca was still blooming. Three of us, we searched for four days in all these canyons. We were about to give up. Then we came across your uncle. He rode an Appaloosa horse with two burros behind.

“We were surprised to find a biligaana—a white man—in such a place. One of us joked that he must be looking for Pish-la-ki, a silver mine only white men believe in. He had no digging tools, we found out later, only things a man needs to live.

“I asked if he had seen any horses. He knew where they were, he had seen them. He led us to them. That’s when we found out how much he knew about handling horses. The People are good horse wranglers from way back. Navajo people raided for horses a long time ago, we traded for horses, horses are in our blood as you say. But your uncle had his own way of gathering up horses. No one had seen anything like it.

“We invited him to come to the summer hogan and he came along with us. We only found out much later that he was a big rodeo star. Some people at the trading post recognized him and told us he used to be in all the big rodeos, that he was ‘All-Around Cowboy.’ Hosteen Clay had never told us that himself, and he lived with us the whole summer.

“All the kids liked him and would follow him around in a pack. The old people liked him, everyone liked him. The first time my sister—”

Sam Yazzie paused and looked straight down at the ground. It seemed to Clay almost as if Russell’s father had seen something. Quickly the man looked back into the fire and continued, by force of will it seemed. “The first time my sister saw him, she liked him. I saw it, I was there. I knew her feelings. She hadn’t married—no one could arrange a husband for her. She was a strong woman. But when she first saw this man it was different.

“Everyone could see that Hosteen Clay had deep feelings for her the first time he saw her. He didn’t speak to her for three days, he was so shy.

“I told my mother not to speak to him again because he would be her son-in-law. She said she didn’t need to be told, she already knew it.

“He hoed with us in the cornfield and in the bean field. He rode out with the sheep and kept them company every day. He worked on the stone corral where the stones had fallen down. He wanted to learn how to make silver, and I began to teach him.

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