"Where are the children?" exclaimed Mrs. Adams, hastily taking out of her bag a piece of chocolate and stooping down in order to enter through the low door of the wigwam.
"Well, young gentlemen," said Mr. Adams cheerfully, "which one of you wants to be the first to get the chocolate ? "
The youngsters began to bawl in fright. The beautiful mother distractedly tried to quiet them. Only the seven-year-old, who evidently also wanted to begin bawling, controlled himself, clenched his dirty little lists and looked at us with such ferocity that we immediately left.
"Here," said Mr. Adams in confusion, "Indians from the very earliest age teach their children hatred for the whites. Yes, yes, yes! The Navajo Indians are wise people. Why should they love the whites?"
When we were leaving the wigwam, a rusty old automobile (such an ancient specimen we had not seen even in Texas) drove up, and the father of the family walked out of it.
"How do you do, sir?" said Mr. Adams, trying to start a conversation.
The Indian did not reply. He pointed to his lips and made a negative gesture with his hand. He did not wish to converse with white people. Going to his wigwam with an armful of dry weeds, he did not even look in our direction. We interested him no more than the dust of the desert, liven an old English diplomat might envy the majesty of his gait and the inscrutability of his face.
How clearly we grasped at that moment the hypocrisy of all the Indian departments, schools, museums, reservations, all this busybody charity of an old sinner who clumsily tries to make up for the wrongs of the past!
When we were driving out of Cameron we were warned that from then on for a long time we would not find a place to stop.
A splendid road presented us with the opportunity to develop high speed. We raced across the desert for about five hours without meeting a soul, except that once a white horse appeared. It was going, in a sure manner, somewhere, alone, without a guide. A little farther on there was a detour for about ten miles. Here several workers in road machines were finishing up the final section of a road.
On both sides of the highway lay the painted desert. We were racing after the sun, which was slowly dropping into the Pacific Ocean, somewhere into Japan, which from the American point of view is the land of the setting sun. We crossed the territory of the Navajo; yet where were those sixty thousand poor but proud people? That we did not know. They must have been somewhere with their flocks, their fires, and their wigwams. Several times in the course of the day the figure of a rider would appear on the horizon, and with it a cloud of dust, and then both would quickly disappear.
If the desert had seemed varied to us, now it changed almost every minute. At first we saw level hills, which seemed to be covered over with cocoa, and in their forms reminiscent of wigwams (so this is where the Indians got the models for their architecture!). Then began a piling up of smooth and round dark-grey heights which looked as soft as pillow and were seamed at the edges like pillows. Then we found ourselves at the bottom of a small canyon. Here was such architecture—mausoleum, bastions, castles—that we gave up exclaiming over it, and, leaning out the windows, silently followed with our eyes the stone visions of the thousands of years that flew past us. The sun sank. The desert became pink. All of it culminated in a temple on a cliff surrounded by even terraces. The road turned toward this temple. Under it flowed the Little Colorado River. Across it was flung a new suspension bridge. Here was the end of the Navajo reservation.
It suddenly turned dark and cold. We ran out of petrol. We were hungry. But scarcely had Mr. Adams managed to express the thought that everything was over and we would have to sleep in the desert, when immediately from around the bridge a light gleamed, and we drove up to a house. Near the little house we noticed, with a sigh of relief, a petrol station. Nothing was there other than these two structures, which stood directly in the desert and were not even fenced in. The house represented what in Russian and in Spanish is called a "rancho" but in English a "ranch." So, here in the desert, where for two hundred miles around there is not a single settled habitation, we found: excellent beds, electric lights, steam heat, hot and cold water—we found all the conveniences of any house in New York, Chicago, or Gallup. In the dining-room we were served tomato juice in glasses and a steak with a bone in the shape of the letter T, just as handsome and as unappetizing as in Chicago, New York, or Gallup, and we were charged almost the same price as in Gallup, Chicago, or New York, although, if they wanted to take advantage of the helpless situation of the travellers, they could have got from us as much as they liked.
This spectacle of the American standard of living was no less grandiose than the painted desert. If we were asked to name the one distinguishing characteristic of America, we should say: this very little house in the desert. This little house contains all of American life: complete comfort in a desert side by side with the pauper wigwams of the Indians—quite as in Chicago, where side by side with Michigan Avenue is a rubbish heap of a slum. No matter where you might go as a traveller, to the North, to the South, or to the West, to New York, New Orleans, or New Jersey, you will see everywhere poverty and riches, which like two inseparable sisters stand hand in hand at all the roads and at all the bridges of this great country.
On the parapet of the entrance to the house lay an ox-yoke. At its sides were placed several chunks of petrified wood. On the porch we were met by a greyish cowboy, the master of the house and of the petrol station. He had come into the desert from Texas twenty years ago. In those days, without paying for it, any citizen of the United States could stake out in the desert sixty acres of land and take up cattle raising. All he had to invest in the land was two hundred dollars. In those days this cowboy was a young man. He brought his cattle, built a house, got married. Even five years ago it was two hundred miles from the house to the nearest road, and one could ride to it only on horseback. But recently the broader highway had been built, tourists began to appear, the cowboy built a petrol station, and converted his little house into .1 hotel. In the fireplace of his log hall a big fire blazes. On the walls hang deer heads, Indian rugs, and a leopard skin. Several rocking-chairs Rand about and several portable lamps with cardboard shades (just exactly as they stood in our New York hotel room). There is a piano— and a radio which never stops playing or broadcasting news. His wife and daughter cook and serve. The cowboy himself, a typical American husband and father, with a kindly and somewhat wistful smile, helps them cook and serve, puts logs into the fireplace, and sells petrol. But there are already visible elements of the future large hotel. There is already a table with a special department for envelopes and writing paper. So far, the envelopes are just ordinary ones, but soon there will appear on them a vignette representing the facade of the hotel, an Indian profile, and the beautifully printed title: "Hotel Desert" or "Hotel Navajo Bridge." And already Indian rugs and trifles are offered for sale. Among those rugs were two which the owner did not want to sell, although he had been offered fifty dollars apiece.
"Now," said Mr. Adams, impatiently moving from foot to foot, "you must tell us what is remarkable about these rugs."
The old cowboy proved to be good company.
"Well," he began slowly, "these are Indian religious rugs, or, as the Indians call them, garments. I got them a long time ago from a certain Indian. You see, the Indians have a belief that should anyone become ill he must be wrapped in these garments. Therefore, they always come to me for them. I, of course, never refuse them. While the sick man lies wrapped in the rugs, the tribe dances a special dance dedicated to his convalescence. At times they dance several days on end. I love and respect the Navajos very much. It would be most unpleasant for me to sell these rugs and deprive them of such a means of healing."