Redeye by Clyde Edgerton Read Free Book Online Page B

are deep set in light stone masonry, and the dark wooden walls are decorated with squaw dresses and sixteen Navajo Indian blankets. Libby explained that Navajo Indians are numerous in the area and long ago established sixteen different clans, each with a different symbol: bear clan, wolf clan, eagle clan, and so on. She said she had been unaware of the complexity of Indian customs and culture before she traveled west and met Mr. Merriwether, and through him, several Navajo and Mescadey Indians who are now her friends.
    Then, in walked Mr. Merriwether himself, short and dusty, intense, hat in hand. He’s the first man I’ve seen out here who takes his hat off inside the house. A welcomed sight! He introduced himself to me. His eyes, under bushy brows, glitter with what can only be called intellectual intensity. He joined our little tour, along with the children, now in my care during the hours I am on the ranch grounds—and what a good place to find activities for children. Educational.
    It is immediately apparent that Mr. Merriwether is an expert on the ways of Indians. There are, in fact—as he pointed out to me—
many
different tribes of Indians in the West, and he indicates that there are great differences among these tribes. In all my previous experiences at home in North Carolina and on the trip out here, Indians have been considered and pronounced assavages or worse and what I have
seen
supports this perspective. Mr. Merriwether says Indian culture is as complex as that of the ancient Egyptians, or any other culture.
    At dinner, I fed myself and the children on the porch. A family with a library, I expected, would not allow eating on the porch. But such are the altered customs of the West, after all. The dinner was elk steaks, corn on the cob, string beans, butterbeans, and biscuits, while through the open window from the porch into the dining room I watched as about twelve people, including Mr. and Mrs. Merriwether—Libby—ate dinner in complete silence.
    But oh, what a friendly and warm ranch it is—little Jose Hombre sang to us after supper—so much more . . . more vibrant than any place I remember back home, where our entire way of life
still
suffers the ravages of the sad, terrible, earth-and-life destroying war that none of us asked for, none of us wanted.
    â€”——
    After dinner, while the children played on blankets under the cottonwoods, Mr. Merriwether strolled out on the porch and sat down. Staring out into the distance and talking almost as if to himself, he said, “Most locals believe the cliff dwellings hold only old Aztec potsherds and other worthless tidbits so for a few years at least, I’ll have the mesa to myself.” He turned to me then and he told me the story of how he’d gone up on the mesa looking for missing cattle and discovered a cliff dwelling. Some Indians told him how to get up there, so he went up with his brother, Luke, looking.
    â€œOn the second afternoon,” he said, “a gray day, late, we were on top, had not seen a single cow, and it started snowing. We decided to camp instead of go back down.”
    He started talking, looking off at the mesa, rocking in his chair, almost as if he were in a trance. He spoke about the quiet snow, great big flakes, the sun, just before setting beneath a blanket of gray clouds, shining onto the falling snow, making the flakes golden.
    He said he hurried over to a ridge opposite his camp to look for cattle, and when he looked back at the cliff wall he saw a little city of stone carved into a long, shallow cave, up towards the top of the cliff. An entire lost city that nobody knew about, hidden away for hundreds of years. He said he’d never experienced anything like the feeling he had when he saw it.
    â€œNext morning, we got down into the little city by dropping two tall dead pinon trees lashed together over the ledge and using them as a ladder. The place had not been