We hear my father singing as he rides along the snowy trail.
My grandmother goes to her hogan and my mother and I, we stand together, laughing.
We stand together outside our door, happy because my father comes back again.
Behind my father's saddle is tied the flour sack filled with food.
It is not empty now, but a sack of bumps and bumps, and heavy looking.
In front of him my father carries a dry wood box that the Trader gave him.
My father takes the saddle from his horse.
We go into the hogan with our bundles in our arms.
The dry wood box makes the fire flame dance in the hogan fire.
She mixes flour and water, a little ball of lard, a little pinch of salt in our round tin bowl.
She takes some out and pats it flat, and pats it round, and pats it thin, and throws it in a kettle full of boiling fat.
This hunger pain inside me is bigger now than I am.
It is the smell of cooking food that makes it grow, I think.
Soon the fried bread in the hot fat swells big and brown.
Soon the meat in the stew pot makes bubbling noises.
The hunger pain is now so big I cannot understand Why I do not see it.
It went somewhere, but I do not know when, it left so quickly.
My father tells us that the wife of Tall-Man's brother suffers from something.
My father tells us that tomorrow there will be a Sing for this woman who has sickness.
We will go, he says, if the sun shines tomorrow.
We will go to the hogan of the wife of Tall-Man's brother.
Now that I am warm and have no pain and feel well fed with my mother's good cooking, I feel sleepy and glad.
Lying on my blanket bed on the floor of the hogan, I say to myself over and over, "If the sun shines tomorrow we will go to the Sing."
I open my eyes to a beautiful world of sun and snow.
Everywhere I look the snow shines as if someone had sprinkled it with broken bits of stars.
My father says, "snow is good for the land.
When the sun melts it the thirsty sand drinks in the snow water."
The goats hurry about eating all they can.
Even the sheep move more quickly, eating.
I sit by the door in the sunshine and think about the Sing.
My grandmother comes to my mother's hogan.
She will look after the sheep while we are gone to the Sing.
After awhile my father comes back with the wagon.