"What is your name?" I asked after we had been silent while her swift,
nervous fingers wove a red figure into a white background. "I'm Mollie,
Smolley's daughter." So the greedy old dog had sold his own child. That
is the usual thing, Mollie said. Girls are sold to the highest bidder,
but fortunately there is a saving clause. In case the girl dislikes her
husband too much she makes him so miserable he takes her back to her
father and they are divorced instantly. The father keeps the wedding
gifts and sells her again for more sheep and horses. The flocks really
belong to the women, but I can't see what good they do them. The women
tend them and shear them and even nurse them. They wash and dye and card
and weave the wool into rugs, and then their lordly masters take the
rugs and sell them. A part of the money is gambled away on pony races or
else beaten into silver jewelry to be turned into more money. A certain
number of rugs are turned in to the trading-post for groceries, calico,
and velvet. Navajos never set a table or serve a meal. They cook any
time there is anything to cook, and then when the grub is done, eat it
out of the pot with their fingers. They have no idea of saving anything
for the next meal. They gorge like dogs, and then starve perhaps for
days afterward.

Mollie had two children, a slim, brown lad perhaps ten years old, who
was watching the sheep near by, and a tiny maid of three, sitting
silently by her mother. The boy seemed to have inherited some of his
mother's rebellion and discontent, but it appeared on his small face as
wistfulness. He was very shy, and when I offered him a silver coin he
made no move to take it. I closed his fingers around it, and he ran to
his mother with the treasure. As he passed me going back to his sheep,
he raised his great, sad black eyes and for a second his white teeth
flashed in a friendly grin.