Canyons

ALSO AVAILABLE IN LAUREL-LEAF BOOKS:

THE TRANSALL SAGA
,
Gary Paulsen
THE WINTER ROOM
,
Gary Paulsen
THE CAR
,
Gary Paulsen
THE NIGHT THE WHITE DEER DIED
,
Gary Paulsen
THE ISLAND
,
Gary Paulsen
THE CROSSING
,
Gary Paulsen
AFTER THE FIRST DEATH
,
Robert Cormier
EIGHT PLUS ONE
,
Robert Cormier
THE CHOCOLATE WAR
,
Robert Cormier
I AM THE CHEESE
,
Robert Cormier
TENDERNESS
,
Robert Cormier

Soon he would be a man.

Not after months, or years, as it had been, but in a day. In a day Coyote Runs would be a man and take the new name which only he would know because finally after fourteen summers they were taking him on a raid.

He had difficulty believing it. For this summer and two summers past he had gone time and time again to the old place, the medicine place, the ancient place in another canyon only he knew about, and prayed for manhood—all for nothing. For the whole of this summer and two summers past he had been ignored, thought of as still a boy.

And now it was upon him.

In the morning he had risen early and walked
away from the camp before the fires yet smoked and gone to the stream to rinse his mouth and take a cool drink and nothing seemed different.

He had gone to the ponies and looked at them and thought how it would be someday to own a pony, two of them, many of them, when he was a man and could go on raids to take horses and a Mexican saddle with silver on it like Magpie had done when he became a man and who could now walk with his neck swollen.

All someday. That’s how he thought then, in the morning, it would all come someday. He would be an Apache warrior and ride down past the bluebellies’ fort across the dirty little river into Mexico and prove that he was a man.

Someday.

After he had watched the pony herd for a time he walked back to the huts in the early morning sun and saw that his mother was making a fire to heat a pot of stew made from a fat steer they had taken from Carnigan’s ranch. The rancher had many such steers and did not mind when the village took one. He liked to watch his mother make fire. She was round and her face shone in the sun and her hands were so sure when she piled the sticks and struck the white man’s lucifer stick to make the fire that he thought of her as not just his mother but the mother of the fire. As she was the mother of the stew and the wood and the sand and the hut and Coyote Runs. The mother of all things.

Then Magpie had come out of his hut where he slept with his family though he was a man because he did not have his own wife yet. He saw Coyote Runs sitting near his mother and came to him and squatted next to him in the dirt.

“It is a fine morning,” he said, which caused Coyote Runs to look at him because his voice was light and teasing. “A fine morning to be a man.…

Coyote Runs said nothing but had a sour taste in his mouth. It was not like Magpie to make fun of him or to be proud so that it showed in a teasing voice.

“I have heard stories,” Magpie said, and now Coyote Runs could tell that he was teasing openly. But he was smiling and his eyes were not mean.

“What kind of stories?”

“I have heard stories of a new raid to where the silver saddles are. A raid which will leave tomorrow. A raid which will have all the warriors on it.”

Coyote Runs felt it now, the small excitement that came from surprises.

“All the warriors and men there are. Tell me, warrior, do you have a pony?”

“I’m going?” Coyote Runs tried to keep his voice even.

Magpie smiled wider and nodded. “It is thought that you could come to hold the horses and see how it is to be on a raid. Sancta said it, said you could come by name.”

Coyote Runs thrilled inside but tried to remain cool, not show it, as was proper. For a man. As a man should act. Sancta was a scarred old man who could not be touched by arrows or bullets who had led all the raids since Coyote Runs knew there were raids; Sancta decided who would go and who would stay. And he had decided. “I do not have a proper pony for war but it is perhaps true that I have a friend with a pony.” He looked pointedly at Magpie. “Do I have such a friend?”

Magpie nodded. “I will loan you that small brown pony with the white eye. Until you can get your own.”

“Until I can get my own.”

Magpie stood. “I think I will go down to the stream now and clean myself.”

Coyote Runs nodded but did not stand. Inside he was ready to explode but he remained cool. “Yes. The water was good this morning.”

And he thought I am to be a man. I am going on a raid and I am to be a man.

There was much to do. He must ready himself and his bow and check his arrows; he must make certain that everything was the best that it could be.

I am to be a man.

There was much to do.

Brennan Cole lived in El Paso, Texas, and each afternoon after school he ran. He did not run from anything and did not run to anything, did not run for track nor did he run to stay in shape and lose weight.

He ran to be with himself.

He was tall and thin and healthy with brown hair that grew thick and had to be cut often and because he ran in shorts with no shirt and wearing a headband instead of a cap and because El Paso sits at the base of Mount Franklin and burns in the hot sun for most of the year he was the color of rich, burnt leather.

He did not know his father. He lived alone with his mother and when he was home—which was less and less as he approached fifteen and his mother spent more and more time working to live, working to be, working to feed and clothe
her only son—the two of them existed in a kind of quiet tolerance.

She did not dislike him so much as resent the burden she thought he was; and he did not dislike her so much as want to relieve her of the burden.

He was still too young for fast-food jobs but he mowed lawns for a lawn care service, working for an old man named Stoney Romero, who paid him in cash and did not ask questions nor give answers except to aim Brennan at yards with a mower. Brennan did not make much, but he fed himself and bought clothes for school and special shoes.