If Danny thought the previous day had been interesting – and it had been incredibly interesting – that first day spent with Ellen and Ruth and Debbie was even more interesting. He was a little surprised that he didn’t get put seriously through the wringer about his feelings regarding Debbie’s experience, or his reaction to it, but the questions that the two old women asked were obviously calculated to make him think, and they did make him think, hard.

Quite quickly, he found himself liking the two. They were friendly, gentle, and knowledgeable. At first he found it hard to believe that these women, and women like them, would have put Debbie through an ordeal as brutal as she had endured. He touched on that disbelief a little with them – to discover that they’d done it reluctantly indeed, and had been considerably worried about her. But he soon came to realize that the women all thought the power of Debbie’s vision and the way she’d reacted to it had been worth the risk and the worry. "It would not have been done that way if we had been able to think of a better way," Ruth said flatly.

Eventually, they got away from that subject. "Let’s talk about you," Ellen grinned as she refilled the coffee cups all around. "Debbie has been telling us that you had an interesting life changing experience of your own after your divorce." Danny’s jaw dropped, and he’d been unable to say anything. "Yes," Ellen laughed. "Debbie has told us some of your stories about this place in Nevada called the Redlite Ranch Bordello. We were a little surprised to hear that you’d gained so many insights in your own life out of the experience. If you don’t mind, we’d like to explore that with you a bit." Quite to his amazement, they managed to pull several insights out of him – things that he’d come to understand, but hadn’t yet verbalized, even to himself.

Not all of it was hard questions about understanding himself, and much of it was extremely interesting. For instance, even in the short time he’d come to know her, he’d noticed that Debbie almost always wore beadwork and quillwork jewelry. He hadn’t thought much about it – it was an Indian thing with her, and that was that. But now, he discovered that most of the jewelry was made by a master of the art – Ruth!

Ruth may have been blind, but he soon realized that she had an inner vision that was amazing. Ellen did set up various bowls of colored beads for her in specific positions on the work table, but from there on stayed out of her way, yet intricate designs flowed from her nimble fingers, with never a bead missed. One miss would mean a lot of having to back up to correct the mistake, but after years of practice, her inner vision did not fail her. Danny was amazed to just stand and watch over her shoulder as the patterns went together. Amazing patterns, magic, sometimes surreal – and she’d never seen the results of her work.

He learned a lot about the two women, too. Ellen had been the first Shakahatche woman to attend college, actually "Normal School" in those days, to be a teacher. Teaching requirements were different then, but she added on a bachelor’s degree a few years later. She returned to the reservation, partly to teach – a not very rewarding job financially in those days – but to also care for her sister, Ruth, who had little education except for what her sister had taught her, since the school was not prepared in those days to teach a blind child. Neither of them had ever married, but had lived out their lives together.

The very limited amount of Ruth’s education turned out to be a blessing in disguise, not only for them, but for the culture of the Shakahatche. Both of them had grown up speaking the language; in fact, English was a second language to them. The reservation school had tried hard to flush it out of Ellen – but failed, because Ruth wasn’t learning much English, and the school wasn’t trying to break her of her native language. So, when Ellen returned from Normal School, Ruth still pretty much spoke only the language of The People. She did not learn much English until she was in her thirties, and that from Ellen. Her sister had to somehow retrieve what she’d learned as a child to be able to communicate with her at all. By such accidents was the language preserved.

As far as anyone knew, Ruth was the last person to grow to adulthood with Shakahatche as her primary language, rather than a second language, so it made her possibly the purest speaker of the language alive – and a primary informant when another accident occurred.

The accident involved a Navajo woman named Norma Red Cliff, whose name was now spoken by the two old women with the same respect they held for Reverend Carter, if not more. She retained a lot of her native culture, which is not uncommon among Navajo. But, uncommon for a Navajo, she was a doctoral student in the philology of language. The accident occurred when she’d been doing some library research for her proposed doctoral thesis, and stumbled across a reference to a tiny eastern Indian group speaking an Athabaskan language, like hers. That was curious; she’d never heard anything about this little-known but obviously closely related tribe. The curiosity was enough that it caused her to visit Three Pines, and she was soon directed to Ellen and Ruth.

Norma Red Cliff’s doctoral thesis soon changed; it cost her an extra year to get her doctorate, but most of that year was spent at Three Pines. When she left, she’d outlined a Shakahatche written language, based on Navajo forms. Reverend Carter had taken a swing at that problem a century before and failed, but his attempt was based on English.

By the time the Navajo woman had her doctorate, less than thirty people spoke Shakahatche, and many of them were very old. But the attempt to make a written language out of it caused a few people who remembered rudiments of the language to get interested in saving it. Twenty years before, in the very same schoolroom where a white teacher had tried and almost succeeded in breaking her of speaking Shakahatche, Ellen was teaching it. She freely admitted that, the evening of the first classroom session, the irony of it all caused her to break down in tears.

In twenty years of effort, there’d been a net gain. Many of the old speakers of the language had died, but enough new speakers had been added to raise the number from twenty-eight to thirty-seven, not counting a dozen high school kids Ellen was teaching the language to as a part of a cultural enrichment project. It wasn’t the first time she’d done it. and she had hopes of picking up another three or four young ones.

Ellen was retired from teaching, now, except as a teacher of the language. The sisters lived on her pension, Social Security, Ruth’s SSI, and their dividends from the casino – Ruth’s was larger due to her blindness – and from the proceeds of Ruth’s beadwork, part of their joint income for many years. In money they got along, but in spirit they were rich indeed, and especially so since their reverence for the language carried along with it reverence of the culture.

The revival of the kataras was a rather similar story, involving many of the same people, and for the same reasons – respect for something that was being lost, and wanting to preserve it. Both Ellen and Ruth freely admitted that their understandings carried with them a tinge of Christianity, both from their own viewpoints and because much was necessarily based on Reverend Carter’s journal. But Christianity had a magic of its own and much of the magic translated, though in ways that Danny didn’t quite understand. What he did pick out of it was that both Ellen and Ruth thought that their understanding of Shakahatche spiritualism added depth to their Christianity.

"Almost universally, Danny," Ruth told him, "Christians revere the legend of the simplicity and the powerful faith of the primitive Christians, mostly of the first couple centuries after Christ. That simple, primitive message became diluted and distorted as time went on, and many people recognized it. That was why Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg. But that carried with it dilutions and distortions of its own. For myself, I feel that understanding it from the viewpoint of a Shakahatche breaks through many of those distractions and brings us closer to the message of the primitive Christians. So, no, I don’t see the conflicts, I see the agreements."

Ruth may have been unable to read – but she was certainly one of the more educated and brilliant people that Danny had ever met. But then, both the sisters were; the topics had been wide ranging, thought provoking, fascinating, and often amazing.

By the end of the day, Danny felt like his head was full of knowledge that had been forced in there with a large pump. They’d worked on everything from an offhand language lesson to wrestling with his questions about spirituality, and touched on a lot of places in between.

And, to his surprise, he was looking forward to the next time.

*   *   *

"They like you, Danny," Debbie told him as they lay in bed in her trailer back in Spearfish Lake, long after dark. "They like you a lot. I think you took exactly the right tone with them. I think you showed them that you have a genuine interest and a genuine desire to understand, not just a polite curiosity."

"I hope I did," he whispered. "Damn, there’s so much to learn there. I can see why you want to learn from them. I envy you for it."

"Do you, really?" she said, holding on to him and pulling him a little closer. "Danny, I was so worried that you’d just see them as a couple of crazy old women, pulling a crazy young woman along behind them."

"Debbie, maybe you don’t understand," he said. "Yes, you told me some things and they told me some things that I have a hard time swallowing. That doesn’t mean they’re wrong or that they’re crazy, it means that they don’t fit my frame of reference. You’re the one who’s always talking about cultural background. I have one, believe it or not. It’s a mess by comparison. Several nationalities, a hodge-podge of them, all mixed together and mostly forgotten. And, oh yeah, don’t forget several generations of a nutball sort-of-back-to-nature-but-not-very-much-so cult, for lack of a better word. Like I told you once, I grew up with it; there it is. I don’t even have those kinds of beliefs much anymore, since I recognize a lot of it as pure bullshit. Yeah, there’s a back-to-nature component, but it’s very narrow and focused and to my mind, forced and artificial by comparison to what we’ve been talking about all weekend."

"And that’s four-corners-of-the-earth stuff, I suppose," she laughed. She was silent for a second, then said softly, "You seem to be understanding my viewpoint better than I expected you to, and I think better than I’d understand yours."

"There were a couple times today," he laughed, "that I thought that maybe I ought to ask you out to the Club sometime to have Sunday dinner with Mom and Dad."

"Oh, wow, Danny," she said, embarrassed at the suggestion. "I don’t know that I could do that. I mean, well, uh, a katara, and, uh . . . "

"Don’t worry," he laughed. "I’ve already heard every possible excuse. Besides, I don’t want to go out there myself, at least while my ex-in-laws are out there. In fact, it’s made a pretty good excuse for me to not go out there this summer. I won’t make you do it if you don’t want to, even though I don’t think it’s extreme as being staked out in the woods naked for a couple days."

"You know," she smiled, "even though I learned a lot, had a powerful vision, and have some fascinating memories, I still can’t believe I ever allowed myself to go through with that. All right, if you think we need to some time, I’ll go with you."

"I won’t force you," he said. "Believe me, I know what that’s like. If you want to go by your own choice, just say the word and I’ll put up with Bob and Linda if I have to."

"I’ll think about it," she said. "After all the strangeness you’ve put up with from me the last couple days, I ought to be able to put up with some from you." She let out a sigh. "I guess we’ve made the decision, haven’t we?"

"Which decision?" he said.

"The one whether we’re just partying, or whether this is something else," she said. "We’ve been laying here cuddling and talking, and we haven’t even started to party. And as much as I enjoy the partying and want to get on with it, I think I’m enjoying just being with you and talking with you more. Doesn’t that pretty well say something?"

"I think it does," he agreed. "Look, let me be dead honest about one thing, let’s talk it out a little if we need to, then let’s party, OK?"

"Works for me," she grinned.

"Like I told you the other day, I hope this is the start of something. Debbie, I want it to be. I know we’ve only known each other a few days, and you’ve showed me an awful lot of you and what makes you tick. So far, I haven’t come across anything that would make me say, ‘Whoa, back off, this chick is too weird.’"

"I have to admit," she laughed, "there was a certain amount of wanting to show you some extremes that would make you want to think about that before we got going too hot and heavy."

"You did," he told her. "That was what I was thinking about last night. Now, I know I haven’t seen all of you yet, and I may never do that. But from what I’ve seen, I’d say the odds are pretty good that you’re not going to weird me out now. We’re going to have cultural issues, I’m sure of that. It would be surprising if we didn’t, but I think that after today I can at least attempt to see them through your frame of reference even if I can’t totally understand them. Unlike with Marsha, I think we can iron those issues out without hating each other in the process. I can’t guarantee it a hundred percent, but pretty close. Same thing goes with the spiritual issues. I can’t accept them a hundred percent, and you know why. But I can accept that you do, and we are different people, after all. You said it the other day – if we’re going to go ahead, I’m just going to have to accept a little mysterious from time to time. I think I can do that, knowing what I know now."

"Thank you, Danny," she said, pulling him tight. "Spirits, you’re more flexible and understanding about it than I think I would be. I mean, you’re accepting some things that are pretty off-the-wall to you. I, uh, I know I’ll have problems about doing the same thing with you, like the Club."

"Like I said, no big deal," he said softly. "You’re not the first."

"Yeah," she said sadly. "But there’s another issue that I’m having trouble with. Danny, I don’t know how to say this, but you’re white, and I’m an Indian."

"So, we knew that. What else is new?"

"It doesn’t bother you?" she said. "I don’t mean the cultural thing, I mean the skin color."

"It bothers me so little that I never thought of it that way till now," Danny told her. "Look, you remember the story from the Redlite Ranch, about the couple Jennlynn brought in because she wanted a taste of being a prostitute? I mean, I never even thought to include it in the story – he was just as European white as I am, maybe more. She was black. I don’t mean dark, I mean just about as black as a person can be. It doesn’t bother them at all. Debbie, the difference in our skin may bother other people, but it doesn’t bother me."

"Maybe you’re not seeing it with my frame of reference," she said sadly. "You know now how important my cultural background has become to me, the being a katara. You’ve seen the passion for saving the culture that Ellen and Ruth have and are passing along to me. It’s important for me to feel Indian. But suppose we do press on farther. Is it fair for me, being a katara, to have kids that are only half Indian?"

"I have to admit, the ball is in your court on that one," he told her slowly. "It is just not an issue for me. I guess about all I can say is to talk with Ellen and Ruth about it, maybe some of your other katara friends I didn’t get to meet."

"Do you think I haven’t done that already?" she snorted. "What do you think I was doing most of last week? And what do you think we were doing today?"

"I thought it was to give me a chance to understand where you’re coming from."

"Well, yes," she admitted. "But it was also to examine that question. I wanted you to have a fair look at me before you met Ellen and Ruth. I mean, I never thought it would get that far. I figured I’d gross you out up on the hill. But no, you took that fine, and then go down and thoroughly charm my two major katara mentors. They’re as close to family as I have anymore. Like I said, they like you, Danny." She let out a long sigh. "I guess that means that I’m falling in love with a tamboura."

"I don’t think I’m a tamboura," he said. "Unless there’s translations to that word that I don’t understand. I thought you said it was a spirit."

"I did," she replied. "But do you remember what we talked about, that it’s difficult to separate man, nature, and spirit? And yes, there’s more dimensions to that word than what I told you, that’s often the case with Shakahatche, you know that. It has connotations of being young and stupid, of lust, and infatuation, and falling in love with someone maybe you shouldn’t be falling in love with."

"Then wasn’t Kenny a tamboura?" he said softly.

"Yeah, I guess he was," she sighed. "Now that you put it that way. He may have been a louse, but at least he was an Indian louse. You’re no louse, Danny. You’re a good person who was handed a bad deal through your own infatuation with a tamboura, and you’re still digging out."

"You know," he said. "I don’t even know why we’re talking about this at all tonight. Maybe we’re running a little away with ourselves. I mean, aren’t things like dating and courtship supposed to address some of those questions?"

"How long did you date Marsha before you married her?" she snorted.

"OK, touché on that one," he laughed. "I was dumb, and if I now understand the word right, she was a tamboura. But I learned from it, like you learned from Kenny, but you did it faster than I. Falling in love is always a risk, and we both learned the hard way. Maybe we’re over it now; neither of us are exactly teenagers anymore. The only way I know to find out is to go ahead and find out."

"I’m beginning to wonder who the katara is here, anyway," she smirked. "You’re seeing some of these things better than I am. I guess we don’t get any choice but to push ahead despite our misgivings and see what happens, do we?"

"Not that I can see," he laughed. "Maybe it’d help if we quit thinking of each other as tambouras. Debbie, is there a Shakahatche word for ‘sexy young Indian maiden who makes white men horny as hell?’"

"Not quite," she laughed, seeing him trying to wisecrack her out of her pensive mood. "‘Hudaroi’ sort of means temptress, but it also means things like easy lay and prostitute and sex teacher. But then, katara touches on that last a little, too."

"Sounds like a sort of fit," he laughed. "How does the katara part fit in?"

"Do you remember," she giggled, "when we were talking about how the young women were supposedly sewn up to keep the young men out of them?"

"Yeah," he laughed. "We got way off track there."

"This is sort of legendary," she snickered. "That meant that there were a bunch of horny young men running around. In those days, men tended to die before women, in wars with the Sioux, or tangling with bears and the like. So, that meant there were some old widows around. They weren’t that old, probably, but people rarely lived over the age of fifty, then, and forty was getting pretty old. So the custom was that the young men would go to the old women kataras to learn how to make love properly, so that when their wife was unsewn for them he could keep her from running off with a tamboura."

"Actually, sounds like a fair deal, in its way," he laughed – but while he did he was thinking of Shirley in his room at the Sagebrush across the street from the Redlite Ranch.

"I’m sure the old women kataras thought that," she laughed along with him. "But korican, are we just going to lay here and talk about sex, or are we going to have some practical exercises?"

"Korican?" he frowned. "What does that mean?"

"It doesn’t quite mean ‘sexy white man who makes Indian maidens pant with lust and spread their legs,’" she laughed, "but pretty close. Close enough for me to call you that instead of ‘tamboura.’"

"If you’re going to talk like that, my hudaroi, maybe we’d be better off finding something better to do with our mouths than just talk about it."

"I’d love to," she whispered. "Practice some of your magic on me, my korican."

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