Mabel McKay. Greg Sarris

nearly as large and lively as the men’s. Some wore shell pendants, abalone and clam, over their faces and on their dresses. In their hands they held long scarves, which they moved and waved as they danced in a wide circle around the men in the center. Frank Wright and Charlie Wright were Sectu, Roundhouse bosses. Frank stood on top of the Roundhouse, just in front of the smoke hole, and called in the different groups. Sarah went in with the Rumsey Wintun, because her son danced with them, and because she had been living in their territory and wanted to show them her respect. Only she did something she wasn’t supposed to do: she brought a small child into the dance house.

      Mabel cried. She did not want to be left alone. She hid under Sarah’s dress. Tiny feet that danced when Sarah danced, sat when she sat. People saw and laughed. How cute, Sarah Taylor’s granddaughter, the little sick one. Only the Moki did not think it was funny. That was the clown, Moki. A man covered head to toe in a striped black-and-white eagle feather cape. Nothing showing but his eyes and nose, so that no one knew who he was. The crucial element of the Hesi dance. He said nothing and was still only when Frank Wright came into the Roundhouse after everyone was gathered and named each plant and animal that had been harvested for the people. Each thing that was to be danced for. Once in the fall and again in the spring. If anything was forgotten, it would not grow anymore. The people would have to do without. And the Moki checked to see that all the rules were followed. He passed each person. Some he shook a stick at, or a cocoon rattle—that meant they were supposed to sing or leave a larger offering by the centerpole. He squealed, made high-pitched noises that were unearthly. Sometimes, he imitated people, their voices and gestures. The first three nights he took no notice of Mabel. On the fourth night, the last night, he went mad.

      He started scooping up hot coals in his hands and throwing them around the Roundhouse. The rafters caught fire and people’s clothing. The place filled with smoke so no one could see a thing. People panicked and made for the front and back doors. Sarah was closest to the back door, so she started out there. “Grandma, Grandma,” Mabel screamed, clinging to Sarah’s long dress. “Grandma, Grandma,” Mabel heard someone saying in her own voice, and when she turned, she saw that it was the Moki coming up behind her with a burning ember in his hand. He forced the hot coal into her shoulder, as if it were a cattle brand, and she screamed with all her might.

      It was odd. The next day there wasn’t a mark on the girl. Nothing. But Sarah stayed hidden in Rosie’s house. She heard the talk about how the Moki was enraged. It had been announced that the Moki would not appear again. People were saying that they had to put away their eagle feathers. The dances would be different from now on. Their feathers would be from turkeys, tame birds. A lot of the old foods would be gone. Sarah felt it was her fault.

      An old Cortina woman convinced Sarah otherwise. She was Mary Wright, the mother of Frank and Charlie Wright. One night, not too long after the fall Hesi, she visited Sarah. She had two men with her, who were even older than she was. She told Sarah that the trouble was not her fault, that the dances and the people were changing. She talked about the white man’s rule forbidding them to kill eagles. So much has changed, she said. Then the old men spoke. They were Stiffarm Jim Coper and his cousin Johnny Cline. They had grown up far in the south, below Mount Diablo, where their ancestors had prayed since the beginning of time. They escaped the Spanish who leveled their village, and fled north to Cortina. They talked about how no one was left to pray and give thanks for that sacred mountain. Sarah nodded. She understood. “Mary took us in, adopted us here,” they said, “and that’s why she is here tonight. She’s going to adopt in your granddaughter. Give her a name and a place.”

      So it happened. Just a few people in the Cortina Roundhouse. Old people from here and there. They witnessed the old woman pray for the sickly girl who stood staring beside her grandmother. They heard the name Catanum given to the centerpole, the name that was not new, but that her mother had given her shortly after she was born, a name that had a place now. Good old Grandma Mary Wright, who offered her own beautiful baskets to the centerpole and prepared a dinner of the finest old foods Sarah would ever see again. “For my new girl,” Grandma Mary said. Grandma Mary, who said in the Rumsey orchards that the girl was special. Mary Wright, whose voice Sarah listened for even after she left Cortina so she wouldn’t have to take from her son and his family, after she found herself back in Rumsey, at the same place along the creek, with the girl who was just the same as before . . .

      Sarah tried to think of good things, even as her eyes caught the sheriffs clothes draped over her wagon. Again, she thought of someone who had been watching Mabel, not to harm her but to help her. Someone like Mary Wright. But why didn’t they show themselves? What did they have to hide? Where were McKinley and the others when she needed them, when she needed eyes in the back of her head?

      Somehow she made it through the afternoon. Hadn’t she always? Good thoughts, memories, fear for the girl went around and around in her head until it was late afternoon. The birds were singing and darting in the long shadows across the water when she had packed the washed and pounded clothes on the wagon. She arranged the buckets of clothes on the wagon bed so anyone looking could see she had the sheriffs clothes. Then, with the girl seated next to her, she turned the horses and started off. She rode along, past the place where the horses had lifted their heads. Now they did nothing but push along, snorting out the dust from the dry empty road.

      As Sarah came into Rumsey, up to the general store, she laughed, thinking of the wagon draped with the sheriffs belongings. What if she had left it that way? Wouldn’t the white people think she was crazy? Old Sarah. Crazy Sarah. But it was the wagon draped with the sheriffs clothes that Sarah herself would first think of on the day six years later when she was returning from Mrs. Spencer’s place without the girl. Saved by white people again, Sarah thought, this time without a hint of anything but sorrow.

      It had all started late one night when Daisy appeared from Colusa. She was alone. She had lost her daughter from Andy Mitchell. A girl named Lena. And now she had left Andy. But there wasn’t any sadness about her that night. She had come to get Mabel. Not because she wanted the girl, but because she had taken a large sum of money from a sixty-year-old Colusa man for her. “But she is only twelve years old,” Sarah protested. “That’s old enough,” Daisy said adamantly. “But she knows nothing about marriage,” Sarah argued, “and she is weak, sickly. What good would she be to anyone? She can’t cook, clean house. She knows nothing. She’s useless.”

      On and on they argued. Mabel watched from behind the bedroom door. What is this thing marriage? she wondered. Why does my mother want to take me now, after all this time? My mother, who is a stranger. Then Mabel heard the voice that was always with her. “Don’t worry,” it said. “Wait to see how it turns out. You’ll not go anywhere in marriage. But you’ll go where it’s safe for you. A strange place, but you’re going to be all right. Now you’ll start to see everything I say is true. Watch how it turns out.”

      Daisy yelled at Sarah. “She’s my daughter, I’ll take her,” she said. “No,” Sarah said. “The white lady, Mrs. Spencer. You have to ask her.” The thought came to Sarah like a bolt of lightning. Mrs. Spencer, who hired the Indians to cut grapes each fall. Mrs. Spencer, who opened her abundant vegetable garden to the Indians. Mrs. Spencer, friend of the Indians. No one would do anything to upset her. No one would take away a starving Indian girl she was keeping and feeding. No one. Not even fast-talking Daisy. Mrs. Spencer had wanted to keep Mabel. Now she would have her chance. “You have to ask her,” Sarah repeated. “I have to take her back in the morning.”

      So while Daisy slept in the dark hours of the morning, Sarah was on her way with Mabel to the white two-story house with gables. And by the time the sun was on the hilltop, she was on her way back, the seat next to her empty for the first time in twelve years. Saved by the white people, but who would’ve thought like this?

      Daisy left. She went back to Colusa, but only for a while. She came home to Rumsey and married Harry Mateo Lorenzo, a man ten years younger than she was, whose father, Mateo Lorenzo, was chief of the Rumsey Wintun. Mabel stayed with the old woman who wore fancy clothes and kept horehound candy in big glass jars. Sometimes Sarah visited Mabel. Sometimes Sarah took her to dig sedge for baskets or to pick herbs. But not very often. Sarah thought to leave well enough alone. She kept busy. She had her work. But the nights alone in