Free Sing Down the Moon by Scott O’Dell

took me until noon to make my way through the hundreds of people working to make shelters for themselves.
    I saw her before I reached the river and she saw me. We ran toward each other through the thick brush.
    There was an open place covered with pale grass and we both stopped as we came to it and looked at each other.
    It was a short time that we stood there yet it seemed long. Then I went over to her and put my hand in hers. I could not think of anything to say, but I did not need to. She had been crying and I knew that her other child had died too. We put our arms around each other and stood together in the spring sun without speaking.

19
    T HE GRAY FLATLAND between the banks of the river was divided among the clans. Everyone shared alike and each family built some sort of a shelter—a cave in the earth, a brush lean-to, or a hut of whatever things could be gathered.
    Our hut was made of driftwood we found along the river and strips of old canvas. It kept out the sun but not the winds and it was hard to walk around in without bumping your head on something.
    Food was soon gone, so the Long Knives passed out
parcels of flour to all the families. There were few among us who did not get sick, for the flour was made of wheat, which we were not used to eating. And the water from the muddy river was bitter.
    There were several hundred Indians already living at Bosque Redondo. They were Apaches who had been driven out of their country and were being held prisoners by the Long Knives.
    The Apaches are smaller than we are, but thick and very strong. They are also quarrelsome. They want their way about everything and if they do not get it they fight. They fought with us as soon as we came, saying that the land belonged to them and that we were stealing it.
    My father and two other headmen from the clans told them that the Navahos did not like Bosque Redondo. If the Apaches wanted it they could have it. All we wanted was to live on it until the Long Knives found us a better place. These words did not please the Apaches and they tried to hurt us whenever they could.
    When every family had shelter and food the Long Knives sent all the men who were able to work with a hoe to break up the earth and plant it with corn and with wheat, which we did not like. Then they set them to digging ditches to carry water from the river into the fields.
    Thus summer began at Bosque Redondo, our new home. My mother and sister and I, like all the other women, had little to do. There was no corn to grind. Wagons came filled with flour. White soldiers stood in it up to their knees and passed it out to us on big wooden shovels. There were no sheep to tend or wool to shear and weave into blankets. There were no hunters to bring in hides to scrape and stretch and make into leggings. We were idle most of the time.
    It was the same with Tall Boy. He would come over every morning after breakfast and sit around in front of our hut until the sun was well up. Then he would wander down to the river and lie in the sun some more. He liked to show the other young Navahos the big white scar on his shoulder, where the Spaniard's bullet had struck him. Only he told them it was one of the Long Knives who had given him the scar.
    The other men were also idle most of the time, once the fields were planted and the water ditches dug. Like Tall Boy they enjoyed talking about the days before they came to Bosque Redondo. They sat around and bragged about things they had done. They made threats against the Long Knives, but the threats were weak and spoken quietly. They gossiped worse than the women. The heart had gone out of them. The spirit had left their bodies.
    It was a bad summer in Bosque Redondo. There were ghosts and witches everywhere and many people sickened and died. Then the first crop failed. There was little rain and our men had trouble leading water up from the river. Some of the fields were planted again, but winds blew the seeds away and fall came without a