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his carving and his story that he did not notice. Beneath the hood made by this newcomer’s blanket, I could see a tobacco-colored face marked with deep lines from his nose to the corners of his mouth, and three furrows across his prominent, high forehead. I couldn’t tell whether he was pained or angry. He stood respectfully waiting for Sevenguns to finish speaking. But when Sevenguns came to the part of his tale about boiling spoiled meat and sick children dying, the man in the blue blanket grew agitated. He repositioned the package from one arm to the other. He threw the tail of his blanket over his shoulder, rearranging it around his face. He shifted his weight, rolling onto the balls of his buffalo moccasin soles as if he were preparing to sprint. He looked out the door, then back at Sevenguns, then at me, and quickly down to the floor when he saw that I was watching him.
    Sevenguns, once his story was finished, looked up and noticed the new presence in the small room. He looked at me and said, “This guy name Rule Abeyta. He live on Winter side of pueblo, over there.” He pointed across the tiny río that ran through the village, dividing the old part of the pueblo into two main multistory structures, which were referred to as Summer for the south side, and Winter for the north.
    Rule Abeyta nodded, but he did not speak.
    â€œHow do you do?” I said. “I’m Jamaica Wild. I work for the BLM.”
    Before he could respond, an earsplitting clang boomed from the nearby bell tower. Rule Abeyta ducked his head as if to avoid a blow, nearly dropping the package he’d brought. The bell pealed again, heralding the daily morning mass. Abeyta quickly recovered, took three steps across the room, and shoved the package into Sevenguns’s hands. “They left this at the gate for the governor,” he said. He nodded in my direction as he turned to leave, his eyes cast down to avoid meeting my gaze as he walked full-speed out the door.
    I watched him as he hurried away across the plaza. “Wow. The church bell really startled him,” I said.
    Sevenguns nodded. “Many our tribe have a scar inside from that time, you know. It is not good, that school. Tanoah of many age—my father, his father—many are wounded from that time at that place. Rule Abeyta is like that. They ring a bell at that school, up in that tower there, and it mean chore time, or it mean we have to pray now, or lesson time, or it time for someone get a beating, or they make us all stand and look while they have a trial and some little child they make a decision how to punish him. That bell ring and we march, we get up, we sit down, we kneel down, that bell ring and we are like children with no soul, you know? We just do.
    â€œWhen they close that school, some people from Tanoah Pueblo tie that bell out there with big rope. We push sage up in that bell until it cannot make a sound, we tie it down so it cannot move. It must be silent so it never sing again that sad song that make children slaves.”
    I felt such sadness that my body felt heavy, and I wanted to sit down by the fire, to not move, not think. I hadn’t had much sleep, and I knew I was tired, but this story reminded me of the way I had felt in the abandoned school. After a long silence, I said, “Thank you, Grandfather, for telling me about that time.”
    He nodded.
    â€œI thought you said you weren’t good at talking much.”
    He smiled. “Maybe today I am good.”
    It was my turn to smile.
    â€œYou want to catch that cat, put something that move.”
    â€œI was going to hang meat. The cats are starving.”
    â€œCat is not raven. Cat want food that move, not food already dead.”
    You’d be surprised, I thought to myself. Then I said aloud: “This cat knows what it means to be hungry.”

9
    The Coldfire Episode
    I went to talk with Scout and Lorena Coldfire, ranchers whose spread abutted the