Norton, Andre - Novel 32 Read Online Free Page B

lost. I missed
her a lot."
    "Do you live in the truck van all the time?" Christie wanted to know.
    "Mostly, except in the middle of the winter. My father is a geologist, only
right now he's working
for the Navajo Tribal Council, keeping in touch with all the herders out on the range in between his prospecting. He
does a lot of things—writes
pieces for magazines, goes rock hunting, now he's writing a history of our peo ple. He doesn't like to live
inside a town. Mother
paints pictures. They have shows of them sometimes. She even had a show all by herself last winter and a lot of
people came and bought
them. That was exciting. They inter viewed her on TV, too."
    "You don't—" Christie hesitated, and then spoke frankly. "You aren't
like what I thought Indians
are." Then she flushed. What a dumb, rude thing to say! She was sorry. But Libby was smiling instead of looking
mad.
    "We're Navajos, all right, but my mother and father went to college back
east. My father was
an officer in the army, too. But this is our real home country and we like it best here. We are truly of the Dineh —the People—even if we don't always stay on the reservation. Mother and I, we have Navajo dresses. We
wear them when we
visit with our people, but not when we travel. Those wide skirts are not good
for climbing
in and out of the van. Are you going to
live here now?"
    "I don't know," Christie admitted.
    Libby looked sober now. "Yes—maybe Mr. Toner won't let you."
    "Who is Mr. Toner?" Christie demanded in surprise. She had not heard that
name before in all
the talk between Father and Mother.
    "He has a ranch, over there—" Libby pointed eastward with her chin as
she still patted Shan. "He's been wanting to get
this valley for a
long time—because of the water. He's always riding over and trying to get Pinto to move out.
But Pinto has some kind of a paper that says he has a right to stay here for some years. It belongs to the stage
company still, so Mr.
Toner has had to wait. Only he said a cou ple of months ago that this year Pinto's paper wasn't any good anymore and now
he'd get the land.
He wants it very badly."
    "Well, he can't get it," returned Christie
firmly. "My father has it now."
    "He won't give up easily." Libby did not look so sure. "You'll see.
He'll come over again—probably
with Marlene."
    "Who's Marlene?"
    "His daughter." Libby's answer was very short and something in her tone
made Christie feel
that the Navajo girl did not like Marlene in the least.
    Neal and Toliver , with the twins
trailing them,
joined the girls.
    "Listen here, Chris, it's about the Plan." Neal was plainly excited. " Toliver , he thinks he knows where we can get some good arrow heads. Maybe it was one of those places where they had a fight in the old days."
    The Navajo boy nodded. "Come on over to the bus," he said. "I
can show you some we picked up last year. Remember, Libby, down that side wash?"
    Shan had stuck his claws into Libby's shirt for anchorage and was standing on
his hind feet. She
put her arm around the cat. "Can we take him with us?" she asked Christie.
    "If we keep him on the
leash. He
might stray off and
get lost."
    "You mean he'll walk on a leash—like a dog?" Toliver asked. "I never knew a cat would do that."
    "Siamese cats will. We taught Shan to when he was just a kitten. We didn't
want to lose him and
back home we lived on a street where there were a lot of cars passing all the
time—he could have
run out and been killed."
    She clipped on the leash and they all went to the truck-van. Toliver climbed inside and returned with a box in his hand. He led the way to the shadow of a tree and they all dropped down to watch him take out his discoveries.
    "This is a spearhead, and these are arrow- heads—you can see that by the
size. Look here, see this real small
one—it's really made of hard bone and was
probably for hunting birds. And this
is a knife, only the point is broken."
    "You want to collect arrowheads?" Libby asked