A Rainbow in Paradise (8 page)

The conversation turned then to their
memories of their college
alma
mater
. Although Logan
was a few months younger and had gone to the school in Tempe
sometime after Eden had completed most of her general coursework,
they had shared most of the same experiences, including the same
professor for their introductory geology course, and one
spectacular football win against rival University of Arizona that
they'd both attended in the Sun Devils' stadium during Eden's last
year and Logan's third.

"That's when I first started rooming with
Chris," Logan told her. "He insisted on taking me to that game. I'd
pretty much avoided the football stadium before then."

"Just too much studying?" Eden asked.

"That, too. Mostly I couldn't imagine being
in the same place with sixty-five thousand other people, all at the
same time."

Eden chuckled. "I guess that would be
something of a change."

"Compared to this?" Logan gestured around
them. They had passed onto the reservation shortly after leaving
Rainbow Rock, and they'd hardly seen another human being since
then. There wasn't another human in sight as Eden looked, following
Logan's gesture.

"You're right," she said. "It is a big
change."

"Call it culture shock."

"But you managed."

He shrugged. "A lot of good people helped me.
Most of the time I just wanted to duck my head and run—back to the
rez, to my grandmother's hogan, to the life I'd known as a
boy."

"So why didn't you?"

Logan shrugged. "I'm not always sure.
Sometimes I tell myself I just didn't want to disappoint all the
people who were counting on me, but when I'm most honest with
myself, I think maybe I'm the one I didn't want to disappoint.
Somehow I always knew my life and work would need to accommodate
the larger world, the world outside the reservation. Many of
us—that is, people in my generation and yours, and younger people,
too—know we must reach out to that world if the people are going to
have a place in the future."

"You feel a very great loyalty to your
people, don't you?"

"The greatest," he answered, and the look he
gave Eden shook her, making her think suddenly of his commitments
that couldn't be spoken.

* * * * *

"They're adorable, Logan. Hey, stop it, you!"
Eden laughed and pulled her shirttail away from the little
black-and-white doe that suckled it as if she expected it to feed
her. "Stop that!" she ordered, pushing the baby away, but bending
to rub her head. "Oh, aren't you a sweetheart?"

For the past few minutes, Eden had been
playing in the small paddock that housed the goat kids from the
last two births—all seven of them, the eldest only five days old.
The kids, their heads only slightly higher than Eden's knees, had
quickly captivated her with their antics. Logan had been content to
sit watching, amused at her childlike wonder, amazed at her
apparently unlimited capacity for joy. She laughed again as he
watched, turning in a circle to shake away the young buck that was
now chewing at the back of her shirt. Her tangle of black curls
rippled like a banner on the wind and her laughter flowed over him
like water from a desert spring. He felt that laughter clutching at
a place near his heart, and knew he was in trouble.

"If you were a Navajo child, I would have to
scold you," he said softly, his heart not in the mood for
scolding.

"Me? Why?" she asked, her face bright with
innocent delight.

"Navajo children always play with the young
animals," he answered, "but they're always admonished to remember
these goats are food."

He saw the shuttered look that came over her
eyes as she took the shirt from the little goat's mouth and pushed
out through the gate, closing it tightly behind her. “I guess I let
myself forget," she said. "I'm sorry."

"No,
I'm
sorry," he answered, feeling
like a heel for disrupting her moment of starry-eyed delight.

"Are you going to eat them all?"

"Well, probably not me personally, but that's
why they're here."

Her color darkened. "I didn't mean you
personally," she said. "I meant, won't you save any of these for
breeding purposes?''

"Actually, yes, we will. Most of the little
does, if they have the good characteristics we're looking for in
the breed, will be bred back to one of the other lines, not those
of their father or mother. That necessitates keeping excellent
records on all these births, of course."

"Of course. And the little bucks?" She
reached inside the pen to rub the ears of the one little buck that
had tried to eat her shirttail.

"Only the very biggest and best of those will
be saved," Logan answered, "and probably none from this batch."

"Oh." Eden drew her hand away from the hungry
little one.

"So, would you like to see the rest of the
operation?"

"Sure," she answered, following him away from
the baby goats.

Eden found the goat project a combination of
hodgepodge makeshift, largely in the building materials, and
meticulous crafting, particularly with regard to the way breeding
records were kept on each of the animals. Every goat was marked
with a tag in its right ear, the number on that tag corresponding
to its place on an elaborate pedigree chart kept both on paper, in
manual form, and on a computer hard drive belonging to the Navajo
nation and assigned to this project.

"We keep the manual backup system because we
can never guarantee a steady power supply," Logan explained as Eden
examined the records. "Then, every time the data in the pedigree
files are altered, we send data files to the mainframe computer at
the nation's headquarters in Window Rock, so there's another backup
copy."

"I'm impressed," Eden responded as she
examined the pedigree files. "You have complete data on every goat
in the project: when it was born and where, its parents and their
parents and theirs. It looks like you have the ancestry on most of
these goats back at least four generations."

"Four is the minimum we'll accept here,"
Logan answered. “We have data back for eight generations on some of
the younger goats, those in the lines that have been here
longer."

"Wow," Eden answered. "Most humans don't know
as much about their ancestry as you know about these goats'
ancestors."

Logan shrugged. “Most humans are choosing
their mates from an enormous gene pool. We have to be more careful
with these goats, since we're breeding them back a couple of times
a year, and we're working with only five bloodlines."

"Still, I think most people would be amazed
if they knew this much about their own pedigrees."

"Among the
belagaana
, perhaps," Logan
answered with a twinkle. "We Dineh have always prided ourselves on
knowing where we come from."

"I've heard that," Eden answered. "It's what
my anthropologist prof at ASU called your consanguinity laws."

"Right," Logan said, "our way of knowing who
is distantly or closely related to whom. In practice, it doesn't
seem to mean much except when you are thinking about getting
married and you need to consult the tribal elders to be sure the
clans aren't too closely related. Or"—his eyes danced with
mischief—"if you suddenly come into money and the People around you
want to know whether they can claim blood relationship or not."

"So tell me about your people," Eden asked,
fully aware that she was treading on unsteady ground should the
subject of his mother come up.

“Among the Dineh, every individual is
identified by his name and his parents’ clans. I am Logan Redhorse,
born to the Tall House People, born for the Salt People."

"So those are your clans," she said, trying
hard to remember what she knew of Navajo kinship laws, and the few
clans she had heard of before.

"Yes," he said, "but only because my
grandmother adopted me as her own son, giving me the same kinship
as my father has—more like his brother than his child. You see, the
Dineh inherit their clan affiliation through their mothers, and my
natural mother was—"

"—
belagaana
," Eden finished for him.
"Sarah told me.

He nodded. "I am born to the Tall House
People, my grandmother's clan, because she claims me as her child.
I am born for the Salt Clan—"

"—That would be your grandfather's
family..."

"Yes, but again, it is borrowed inheritance,
since I can't claim any right of inheritance from my mother, as
other Dineh do. My grandmother has often told me that my mother was
of the Surface-of-the-Earth people, those who walk upon the face of
their Mother without ever knowing her or belonging to her, as the
People do."

"You are very close to your grandmother,
aren't you?"

Again Logan shrugged. "Close or far, she's
the one person who has always been in my life. I owe her a great
deal."

Eden felt her throat tightening, but refused
to give in too much. "I hope she appreciates what a fine man you've
become," she said simply.

"She thinks I've become too like the
belagaana
I live among," he answered. "Well, how about a
picnic? Would you like to see some of Canyon de Chelly?"

"I'd love to," Eden answered, ready to let
the conversation take a different turn.

* * * * *

"All these years I lived within two hours'
drive of this, and I never even knew it was here." Eden shook her
head in wonder, amazed by everything she saw in the mystical
reaches of Canyon de Chelly. She and Logan had passed through
Chinle a little after 11:30. Now it was barely noon and already
they were moving into a deep and widening gorge that dwarfed them
with its sheer magnificence.

"Impressed?" Logan asked, apparently
pleased.

"Astounded." Eden leaned down to get an angle
on the truck's windshield. "How high are these walls, anyway?"

"I'm told they average about a thousand feet
although there clearly are exceptions. In one place, the walls
extend more than seventeen hundred feet above the canyon floor." He
drove toward them.

"Amazing," Eden said again, staring in
wonder. "Walls" was the right name for the carved sides of this
steep chasm. They appeared to have been chiseled from red and dun
sandstone and polished smooth. Striped with color, like the painted
hills that had given Rainbow Rock and the Painted Desert their
names, the layers of sandstone lay hundreds of feet thick, natural
monuments that towered above the canyon's tiny occupants. "I can
imagine how the old ones saw this place."

"It was the ancient heart of Dinehtah," Logan
answered, using the Navajos' name for their traditional
homeland.

Eden saw the look on his face and understood
more than Logan was telling her in words; much of his own heart was
here as well. "It's mystical," she answered. "In a place like this,
one could almost believe in magic."

"Or faith, perhaps." Logan drove the truck
off-road, heading toward one of the sheer rock walls that marked
the canyon's boundary. "This canyon is considered sacred to the
People, and within it, many places have specific meaning."

"I'm not surprised," Eden answered, trying to
sense the place's spirit. The canyon had a sacred feeling, like a
giant natural cathedral, its ceiling open to the sky. "There's a
reverent feeling here, like in a holy place."

"It has always been that," Logan agreed.
"It's also been a formidable fortress. In the history of the Dineh,
I expect this canyon has served one purpose at least as much as the
other."

"A fortress," Eden said thoughtfully, then
looking about at the faces of sheer, forbidding rock, she nodded.
"I can see that, too. People who holed up within these walls could
easily defend themselves against anyone trying to enter from
Chinle."

"It was actually much simpler than that,"
Logan said. He stopped the truck a few hundred yards from one
looming stone wall, turned off the engine, then turned to speak,
one arm on the back of the truck's seat. As his hand touched her
shoulder, the inevitable power flowed between them, enlivening the
small space within the pickup's cab. "Often during the Navajo Wars,
the people hid in the nooks and crannies along the canyon floor
while warriors gathered on the heights, raining down stones and
arrows on anyone who attempted to follow their innocent ones to
their hiding places."

Eden nodded. Encouraged, Logan toyed with a
tendril of her dark hair, the touch sending little shivers across
her skin as he went on with his story. "It's said that in the
spring of 1858, the Army's ongoing troubles with the Dineh heated
up. There were some raids against the People, who responded by
raiding one of Major Brooks's hay camps. It wasn't much of a raid,
though an Army dog was killed with an arrow.

"It was probably just intended as a warning
to get away, but Brooks retaliated by rounding up and slaughtering
more than sixty head of cattle and horses owned by Navajo head man
Manuelito, who was technically at peace with the Army. He'd been
grazing them on his own traditional pasturelands, which the
soldiers now told him were theirs, and they wanted the slaughter to
serve as a warning to others who thought they could use the Army's
land. He sent a group of warriors to the fort to protest the
action." Logan paused to gauge her interest.

"Um-hm," Eden said, hoping he'd continue
touching her, trying to stay focused on the story in spite of the
sensations coursing through her.

"There was an incident," Logan went on, "and
a young boy, a slave Major Brooks had brought from the East, was
killed by an arrow. The soldiers sent troops to demand that the
Dineh give up the murderer of the slave named Jim." He paused
again, watching the distress on her face. For the first time, the
story had become more compelling than the touch. "That incident
escalated into full-scale warfare and the people holed up here. In
early September, just about this time of year, Colonel Miles wrote
out a formal declaration of war and ordered the Army to march into
the canyon."