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LaucHING Boy 285 mere thronging of bitter emotions that made him throw his shoulders from side to side. Jesting Squaw’s Son had been lucky. But in the end he was better off, because there had been that year and a half. Not for anything would he lose that. He began remembering again — it was a kind of anodyne — until he came back to the inevitable starting point. Then it was worse. After some hours he grew calmer, partly be- cause of fatigue. Tte disaster was accepted and familiar; he told himself that he could see the life ahead growing, in a way, from what had gone before. Nothing could ever make him forget; what he was and always would be, what he did and thought, would always be conditioned by Slim Girl. The remainder of his life would be a monument to her. All this could not be changed or taken from him, he would never lose its mark. That was a comfort. He was thinking this way with his intellect, it did not really go inside of him. It was still just platitudes. He became more aware of things about him, the cold, the fire, the snow. Flakes fell into the flames with little hisses, and he remembered his dream. ‘Slayer of Enemy Gods’ she called me. But Slayer of Enemy Gods spared the Cold Woman and Old Age Woman and Poverty People and