When the Legends Die Read Online Free PDF

he could draw it a little farther. His arms grew strong. When there were leaves on the aspens again he could draw one of his father’s arrows almost to the point. Then the deer came back up the valleys and he made his first big meat. He killed a deer with his father’s arrows. The meat was tough and stringy, the fat and juice sucked out of it by the winter, but it was food, it was meat.
    She said, “Soon you will know a name for yourself.” He said, “This morning, before I made meat, I met a she-bear and she was not afraid of me. I was not afraid of her. We talked to each other. Then I killed the deer and I left a part of the meat for that she-bear. I shall call myself Bear’s Brother. That is a good name.”
    And that was his name. They sang the songs for finding a name.
    They dried berries. They smoked fish. They made meat. Summer passed like a white cloud drifting over the mountain. One day when she was cutting wood for the cooking fire the ax caught in a knot and she tried to drive it loose, using a stone for a hammer. The axhead broke, through the eye, and there was no way to use it except as a fist-ax. She knew they could not cut firewood for the winter with a fist-ax.
    She looked around the lodge, and she said to the boy. “We must go to Pagosa. We must have a new ax.” Then she said, “They cannot want him now for killing Frank No Deer.”
    So she took two of her best baskets and they went down to the road from Piedra Town to Pagosa. But she did not go to Pagosa by the road. She was not sure what she had told the boy was true. Maybe they still did want her man. She was tempted to go back, do without a new ax. They camped there beside the road, on the slope where no one could see them, for two days. Then she knew she had to go on.
    They kept to the hills, to the game trails, and they went to Pagosa. But when they came to the last hill and saw Pagosa there in the valley she was tempted to go back again, back to the lodge. They spent the night on that last hill, in the brush, and she knew she had to go on.
    The next morning they went down to Pagosa and along the street to Jim Thatcher’s store. People turned to look at them, because they wore the clothes she had made from deerskins. But nobody stopped them. Nobody said, “Where is your man? We want your man because he killed Frank No Deer.”
    They went to the store, and Jim Thatcher was there behind the counter. Jim Thatcher was a tall, thin man who had been in that store many years, and his father there before him. He knew Indians. He traded with Indians, for robes and leatherwork and baskets. He traded salt and sugar and knives and axes and tin cans of beans for those things the Indians had made. He sold those things to people who liked robes and baskets, and sometimes he sold them to other traders.
    They went to Jim Thatcher’s store and she set the two baskets on the counter. Jim Thatcher looked at the baskets and he looked at her, and then he said, “You want to trade these?”
    She said, “How much?”
    Jim Thatcher looked at her again, and he looked at the boy. He said, “You used to live here, didn’t you?”
    She shook her head, made the sign that she did not understand, and asked again, “How much?”
    “Do you want cash or trade?” he asked.
    She looked around the store, went over to the rack of axes and chose one. She laid it on the counter beside the baskets. She went to the shelf of rifle ammunition, chose a box that would fit the rifle. She put it beside the ax. She beckoned to the boy, and together they looked about the store. His eyes were all eagerness and careful excitement. They looked at the clothing, the work gloves, the shoes. He stopped at a case with hunting knives in it. He stared at a knife in that case. Then he turned away and looked at granite cooking kettles, and at calico for skirts, and at blue denim overalls. She asked what he would like. He said, in the tongue, “There is nothing.” But his eyes went back to the