First, he frowned as he puzzled over the cook’s talk about his hair. Then he squirmed over Hook-a-row’s mention of his mother. So the Mojaves had decided she was dead. That was why no one had asked about her lately.
Well, she’d be back by October, and he’d be very glad.
Truly, hadn’t he always been waiting by the Needles road each Tuesday and Saturday when the stage went by on its way to Fort Mojave to collect her long letter? Didn’t he read it to his father whenever he was home and see to it his father wrote an answer in time to make the down stage on Wednesdays and Mondays? Didn’t he always write her a full, honest page, himself, for every letter, and two pages when his father was not at home?
Still, when she came back he would be confronted with Cultural Advancement and Christian Instruction again. And he would hear the cry that grew in persistence every year. “When are we sending this boy away to school?”
For South Boy’s mother was not only a white woman, she was a lady. She said herself she belonged to Another World. Certainly she was no part of either of the two worlds around her—these, according to her own description, were the Rough World of the White Man and the Heathen World of the Indian. She had been forced by a fraud of nature to give South Boy to the breast of an Indian woman, but almost from the day he learned to drink cow’s milk out of a glass she had sought to armor him with Cultural Advancement and Christian Instruction against the Rough and the Heathen Worlds.
Every weekday South Boy received two hours of Cultural Advancement, which began with reading and writing when he was small and afterwards developed into two pages of Tarr and McMurry’s “Advanced Geography,” one chapter of Wells’s “History of the United States,” and two pages of “Gems of Great Literature,” the first two to be memorized at least in part, and the latter to be read “with feeling and proper pronunciation.” All this was no great chore for South Boy, who had all three volumes almost by heart within a year and had learned to think of more interesting things, like shooting ducks or wild pigs, while he was reciting.
At the end of the two hours he was turned over to his father, who spent fifteen or twenty minutes teaching him arithmetic and, lately, double entry bookkeeping—both of which he enjoyed. By that time his mother, always in delicate health, had retired to read in her own room; so South Boy sallied out into the Rough or the Heathen World, as suited his fancy, and learned all those things he had been armored against: from the Foreman; from various callous cowhands (most of them fugitives from something or other); from the Mormonhater; from the Yavapai roustabout; and from several score Mojaves, his most cherished companions.
Christian Instruction came on the long weary Sabbath. He read ten selected chapters out of the Bible—selected by his mother so he wouldn’t run into any embarrassingly frank language—and one sermon, long, tough, and dry, by some Scotchman. On the Sundays they stayed at home he could escape after dinner, when his mother took a nap. On alternate Sundays he was stuck for all day. He had to hitch up his mother’s surrey, drive around to the house for his mother and the cook, drive down to a point across the river from Needles, yell his lungs out to fetch the cable ferry, lead the skittish horses on and off the old flatboat—and carefully keep from cussing when they tried to jump into the river—drive the cook to the Catholic church, go with his mother to the Presbyterian mission, sit through a sermon, and then reverse all that tedium homeward.
All in his good clothes, too. The only bright spot on these days was when the rig would encounter a rattlesnake. As his mother loathed snakes and there was a biblical admonition against them, it was permissible for him to use the shotgun that he was allowed to carry in the rig for defense purposes only.
Usually he fired suddenly, scaring the wits out of his passengers and the horses. After he had checked the runaways and after the screams in the back seat had been reduced to gasps he would explain he had to shoot the snake without warning because it was coming to attack the horses.
Of course the cook never believed him, but his mother still thought a snake, no matter how far away it was, had murder on its mind. For all these years in the wilderness—her own term—she had lived in her own island of Culture and Civilization, hermetically sealed against the facts of the world without—Rough, Heathen or Herpetological.
Still, South Boy loved his mother. She was a dear, good woman. He missed her very much and he would be glad to give all his Sundays and two hours of every other day to have her back. It was the thought of being sent away to be shut up among white strangers in a school that made his skin prickle and the sweat beads form on his hands. As the day of her return approached, he had fought off thinking about it and had succeeded because he kept busy. Now that crazy weather enforced idleness he could fight it off no longer.
As though the thought of white strangers could conjure them up, the sound of voices talking English came floating down the river and after it came a good big boat with an awning rigged on willow poles and three white men under it, cursing the heat and dipping up hatfuls of water to pour over their perspiring heads. The boat drifted into the near channel.
“Hullo,” said the man in the bow. There was a surveying transit leaning against the gunwale beside him. South Boy said to himself: “Strangers. Government men. What are they doing always gadding up and down the river? The Mormonhater says, ‘The government’s fixin’ to do something to the river, and I bet, by damn, they ruin it!’ ”
As South Boy didn’t answer him the white man said: “No savvy English. Must be one the school didn’t catch.”
The man in the stern said: “Must be a breed. He’s two or three shades too light for a Mojave, and too thin.”
“He’s a Chemehuevi and on the wrong side of the river,” said the man who lay across the thwarts amidships.
South Boy thought: Two or three years ago I’d have answered them; but I get so I like strangers less and less. Still, if I’m dressed and on horseback I stop and speak with strangers. And when I’m dressed and on a horse nobody but a tenderfoot would take me for an Indian.
Then he heard one of the men say, “Speaking of Chemehuevis, I wonder how the boys are making it up north with the Piutes?” Which meant nothing to South Boy at the time.
A big black horsefly lit on his arm. He slapped once and killed it. A little sweat bee buzzed by, and he slapped twice and it flew away. He found a gratifying release from the continuing and increasingly gnawing anxiety even in that small distraction. But there were no more insects. They died in crazy weather. Back in his mind the thought was running again: Sent away. Shut up with strangers! Three—four years—academy. Three—four years—college. Three—four years—divinity school. His mother wanted him to be a preacher.
He tried to find new distraction in counting the driftwood coming down the river, but pretty soon he was counting, “Nine years shut up, ten years shut up, eleven years . . .” This torment went on for some minutes, until a scattering of little logs came by in a bunch with a big log following, like a bunch of short yearlings being driven by a horseman.
And at the sight his heart bounded with hope. He remembered that his father grew silent and sulky whenever the go-away-to-school subject had been broached. Not that he ever said “No”; but it was certain that he didn’t like the idea, particularly since South Boy had learned to be handy in keeping books and, to a lesser degree, in the regular routine work around the ranch.
Maybe, he thought, maybe when she comes back she won’t be sickly any more, and we both can say No without worrying about how it will make her feel.
But it came to him then that if he approached his father in the matter of making a firm stand against the go-away-to-school he’d shake his big head solemnly and declare, “If