HOW THE PLAINS INDIANS GOT HORSES
for Two Skies, a chief of the Humanos, a Texas tribe
1
If
dogs had been your sole stock and trade
and during dry season
you had had to strap
your whole household
to a travio
to
be
dragged across the backside of a desert,
barely a foot from
bare earth, through scrub-brush,
mesquite, scab-cactus,
at each rest your two red feet
begging to be walked out of-
and sick of the whining and fleas
and meat-eating
h~nger
(this
animal
that will eat its own excrement
and urinates constantly)
and sometimes making only ten miles a day-
if on that sixth
in
a succession of the worst
you saw one, for the first time,
looking hornless and man-tall
at the shoulder,
perhaps fifty, a hundred yards off,
deep
in
its own peace,
taking water
in a deep, green place,
and you by now tasting yourself,
you too might let the dogs go
against air,
horseflesh,
the run of the arrow.
