"Tick, because I stick!" the child cried, gripping the wil-lowbark tie of the black mane, laughing with delight at being suddenly eight feet tall and traveling across the desert without even trying, like the tumbleweed, as fast as the wind.
Won't You Come Out Tonight A39
Moon, a night past full, rose to light the plains for them. Horse jogged easily on and on. Somewhere deep in the night they stopped at a Pygmy Owl camp, ate a little, and rested. Most of the owls were out hunting but an old lady entertained them at her campfire, telling them tales abbut the ghost of a cricket, about the great invisible people, tales that the child heard interwoven with her own dreams as she dozed and half-woke and dozed again. Then Horse put her up on his shoulders and on they went at a tireless slow lope. Moon went down behind them, and before them the sky paled into rose and gold. The soft nightwind was gone; the air was sharp, cold, still. On it, in it, there was a faint, sour smell of burning. The child felt Horse's gait change, grow tighter, uneasy.
"Hey, Prince!"
A small, slightly scolding voice: the child knew it, and placed it as soon as she saw the person sitting by a juniper tree, neatly dressed, wearing an old black cap.
"Hey, Chickadee!" Horse said, coming round and stopping. The child had observed, back in Coyote's town, that everybody treated Chickadee with respect She didn't see why. Chickadee seemed an ordinary person, busy and talkative like most of the small birds, nothing like so endearing as Quail or so impressive as Hawk or Great Owl.
"You're going on that way?" Chickadee asked Horse.
"The little one wants to see if her people are livingthere," Horse said, surprising the child. Was that what she wanted?
Chickadee looked disapproving, as she often did. She whistled a few notes thoughtfully, another of her habits, and then got up. "I'll come along."
"That's great," Horse said, thankfully.
"Ill scout," Chickadee said, and off she went, surprisingly fast, ahead of them, while Horse took up his steady long lope.
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The sour smell was stronger in the air.
Chickadee halted, way ahead of them on a slight rise, and stood still. Horse dropped to a walk, and then stopped. "There," he said in a low voice.
The child stared. In the strange light and slight mist before sunrise she could not see clearly, and when she strained and peered she felt as if her left eye were not seeing at all. "What is it?" she whispered.
"One of the holes. Across the wall -- see?"
It did seem there was a line, a straight, jerky line drawn across the
sagebrush plain, and on the far side of it -- nothing? Was it mist? Something moved there -- "It's cattle!" she said. Horse stood silent, uneasy. Chickadee was coming back towards them.
"It's a ranch," the child said. "That's a fence. There's a lot of Herefords." The words tasted like iron, like salt in her mouth. The things she named wavered in her sight and faded, leaving nothing -- a hole in the world, a burned place like a cigarette bum. "Go closer!" she urged Horse. "I want to see."
And as if he owed her obedience, he went forward, tense but unquestioning.
Chickadee came up to them. "Nobody around," she said in her small, dry voice, "but there's one of those fast turtle things coming."
Horse nodded, but kept going forward.
Gripping his broad shoulders, the child stared into the blank, and as if Chickadee's words had focused her eyes, she saw again: the scattered whitefaces, a few of them looking up with bluish, rolling eyes -- the fences -- over the rise a chimneyed house-roof and a high barn -- and then in the distance something moving fast, too fast, burning across the ground straight at them at terrible speed. "Run!" she yelled to Horse, "run away! Run!" As if released from bonds he wheeled and ran, flat out, in great reaching strides, away
Won't You Come Out TonightA. 41
from sunrise, the fiery burning chariot, the smell of acid, iron, death. And Chickadee flew before them like a cinder on the air of dawn.
IV
"Horse?" Coyote said. "That prick? Catfood!"
Coyote had been there when the child got home to Bide-A-Wee, but she clearly hadn't been worrying about where Gal was, and maybe hadn't even noticed she was gone. She was in a vile mood, and took it all wrong when the child tried to tell her where she had been.
"If you're going to do damn fool things, next time do 'em with me, at least I'm an expert," she said, morose, and slouched out the door. The child saw her squatting down, poking an old, white turd with a stick, trying to get it to answer some question she kept asking it The turd lay obstinately silent Later in the day the child saw two coyote men, a young one and a mangy-looking older one, loitering around near the spring, looking over at Bide-A-Wee. She decided it would be a good night to spend somewhere else.
The thought of the crowded rooms of Chipmunk's house was not attractive. It was going to be a warm night again tonight, and moonlit Maybe she would sleep outside. If she could feel sure some people wouldn't come around, like the Rattler... She was standing indecisive halfway through town when a dry voice said, "Hey, Gal."
"Hey, Chickadee."
The trim, black-capped woman was standing on her doorstep shaking out a rug. She kept her house neat, trim like herself. Having come back across the desert with her the child now knew, though she still could not have said, why Chickadee was a respected person.
"I thought maybe I'd sleep out tonight," the child said, tentative.
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"Unhealthy," said Chickadee. "What are nests for?"
"Mom's kind of busy," the child said.
'Tsk!" went Chickadee, and snapped the rug with dis-' • approving vigor. "What about your little friend? At least they're decent people."
"Horny-toad? His parents are so shy... "
"Well. Come in and have something to eat, anyhow," said Chickadee.
The child helped her cook dinner. She knew now why there were rocks in the mush-pot
"Chickadee," she said, "I still don't understand, can I ask you? Mom said it depends who's seeing it, but still, I mean if I see you wearing clothes and everything like humans, then how come you cook this way, in baskets, you know, and there aren't any -- any of the things like they have -- there where we were with Horse this morning?"
"I don't know," Chickadee said. Her voice indoors was quite soft and pleasant "I guess we do things the way they always were done. When your people and my people lived together, you know. And together with everything else here. The rocks, you know. The plants and everything" She looked at the basket of willowbark, fernroot, and pitch, at the blackened rocks that were heating in the fire. "You see how it all goes together... ?
"But you have fire -- That's different -- "
"Ah!" said Chickadee, impatient, "you people! Do you think you invented the sun?"
She took up the wooden tongs, plopped the heated rocks into the water-filled basket with a terrific hiss and steam and loud bubblings. The child sprinkled in the pounded seeds, and stirred.
Chickadee brought out a basket of fine blackberries. They sat on the newly-shaken-out rug and ate. The child's two-finger scoop technique with mush was now highly refined.
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"Maybe I didn't cause the world," Chickadee said, "but I'm a better cook than Coyote."
The child nodded, stuffing "I don't know why I made Horse go there," she said, after she had stuffed. "I got just as scared as him when I saw it But now I feel again like I have to go back there. But I want to stay here. With my, with Coyote. I don't understand."