Page:Laughing Boy-1929.djvu/262

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aa 250 } LAUGHING Boy a TT IT The pony, wandering unguided, brought him slowly within sight of his house. He turned it aside, making a wide circle to come to the high place by the tree from the other side. The house. the field of corn-stubble, the five struggling peach trees, the corral, all very dear, stood like un- answerable refutations in the long streaks of afternoon shadow. As the sight of the perfect, familiar body of some one just dead, or the little possessions, the objects just set down, ready to be picked up again as always, again and again render that death incredible, so was the sight of these things to Laughing Boy. Her loom stood under the brush sun-shelter before the door, with a half-finished blanket rolled at its foot. Un- believable, not true, only — it was so. He went through the past day, searched the farther past, as though by travelling it again he could find where the false trail branched off, and reduce this calamity to an error. Ten thousand things told him that what he had learned was ridiculous, but it always led again to the window in the adobe house and the clear frightened voice crying, ‘ Sha hast'ien, sha hast'ien codjil’ Now it was time to think, but an hour or more passed before he could prevent the beginnings of

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