Chapters (41)
- PART ONE
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- PART TWO
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- PART THREE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The sheep and goats were grazing far beyond their previous limits, farther even than before the US government had usurped Zuni land in the 1870s, first for Anglo homesteaders then for the logging companies depleting Zuni forests of millions of board feet of timber for the railroads. They’d left Zuni land completely denuded.
But now the sheep had multiplied.
There hadn’t been so many sheep since the 1930s, when the Bureau of Indian Affairs had built a fence around what was left of the reservation and prevented Zunis from both farming and herding outside their boundaries and instead implementing a sheep reduction program, rounding up thousands of animals, sold to Anglos in Gallup or slaughtered and dumped in pits, where they were left to rot.
Past the Coyote clan’s outdoor grill, as she neared the pueblo center, far from the stench of blood iron, another, sweeter smell wafted through the warm evening air. Honeyed pork. Calliope wished she could join whatever clan was cooking that meal for supper instead. The Badger clan, perhaps? She’d met all the clans at the sacred time of fasting and prayer and ritual, masked dancing called Shalako at the winter solstice, following harvest.
She’d made it her business to investigate as much as possible, considering her stay with Chance’s people a kind of anthropological study, but they kept the secrets of their religious ceremonies tightly sealed, and she could not probe much deeper than what Chance had divulged, what he said was too much information anyway—he was already in trouble, and did she want to get him even more punished? He still wouldn’t tell her what atonement ceremony he’d had to withstand or what sacrifice was approaching. It loomed over the bedroom they shared, the nights he slept on the floor beside her bed, and she begged to know if he would be all right. She felt responsible for whatever was going to happen. She couldn’t stand not knowing what or when. So many uncertainties beyond their main concern, her daily, no, hourly objective: how do I find my family? She hadn’t surrendered hope. She’d only had to find a new way of looking at the problem. She was biding her time.