Sing Down the Moon by Scott O’Dell Read Free Book Online Page A

with more husks.
    At nightfall we ate some of the corncake and went into the hogan and I sat on the west side across from the door. Then the medicine man sang the twelve songs. The other singers chanted lucky songs about sheep and jewelry and soft goods. They chanted all night. I had to keep awake and listen or else I would have bad luck.
    Just before dawn my mother gave me a basket with water and yucca root in it and helped me to wash my hair. Then, as the sun came up, I ran out from the hogan toward the east, past the orchard and the cornfield.
    All the boys ran after me, even Tall Boy, who still had not gained his strength. We raced to the river and back again. But it was not a real race to see who could run the fastest. For if any of the boys had won, had beaten me by so much as a step, then they would become old and toothless long before I did.
    I had hoped that Tall Boy would not try to run at all. But he was the first to start after me. I ran much slower than I could, hoping that it would help him. This he did not like. He shouted at me to go faster.
    "You run like an old woman," he cried.
    I went a little faster and came to the river and floundered around, pretending to slip on the grass bank.
    "My grandmother runs faster than you," he said.
    His words made me angry and I began to run as fast as I could and left him far behind. Pale and out of breath, he came in last. The rest of the morning he went around scowling. I tried to make him smile but he would not forgive me for running fast, even though he had taunted me.
    "You do not need to feel sorry about my arm," he said. "It is getting stronger every day."
    "Soon you will be bending a bow," I answered.
    "You do not think so, but I will bend many bows before I die," he said.
    "I think so."
    "No one thinks so, but I will," he said.
    That afternoon when the relatives and friends and the medicine man and his singers had gone, my mother sent me to the field. She gave me a sack of pinto beans and a long pointed stick. Though I was now a woman, I had to work the rest of the day planting seeds.
    Tall Boy rode through the field on his way home, but did not stop.
    "You think that I went to the white man's village just to rescue you," he said as he passed. "You are wrong. I went there for another reason."
    I watched him ride away, sitting stooped in the saddle, one shoulder lower than the other, and my heart went out to him.

14
    T HE PINTO BEANS pushed up through the earth and the peaches began to swell. Wool from the shearing was stored away for winter weaving. My father went into the mountains and brought back deer meat which we cut into strips and dried. It was a good summer and a good autumn.
    Then early one winter morning three Long Knives came. They were from the white man's fort and they
brought a message from their chief. When all of our people were gathered in the meadow one of the soldiers read the message, using Navaho words. He read fast and did not speak clearly, but this is what I remember.
People of the Navaho Tribe are commanded to
take their goods and leave Canyon de Chelly.
    The Long Knife read more from the paper which I do not remember. Then he fastened the paper to a tree where all in the village could see it and the three soldiers rode away.
    There was silence after the soldiers left. Everyone was too stunned to speak or move. We had been threatened before by the Long Knives, but we lived at peace in our canyon, so why should they wish to harm us?
    Everyone stared at the yellow paper fastened to the cottonwood tree, as if it were alive and had some evil power. Then, after a long time, Tall Boy walked to the tree. Grasping the paper, he tore it into many pieces and threw them into the river. We watched the pieces float away, thinking as they disappeared that so had the threat of the white men. But we were wrong. At night, in the dark of the moon, the Long Knives came.
    The morning of that day we knew they were coming. Little Beaver, who was tending his