Sheepherding, Back on the Checkerboard: Mid-1920s
- We get a break from the Pacific theater: this chapter takes us back to Chester's childhood in the 1920s.
- It opens with little Chester, about six years old, waking up to the smell of Old Auntie's coffee.
- The family wakes up: Chester, his two brothers, Old Auntie's twelve-year-old sister, and his uncle.
- Chester's aunt refers to him as "Betoli." We learn that that's his traditional name, and it means "light complexion" in Navajo.
- Chester tells us that he belongs to his mother's clan, the Black Sheep.
- In Navajo culture, clan affiliations are passed down through the mom, not the dad (it's a matrilineal society).
- Chester starts on his morning errands: he milks a couple of ewes (not "ewww," as in yuck, but "ewe" as in female sheep).
- The family then gets together to chow down on breakfast, which consists of some cornmeal mush and goat's milk (all organic, of course).
- Today, the family's going to lead their herd—300 sheep and goats—to a new grazing area, so that the sheep can chow down too.
- The family begins packing up their stuff and loads their things onto a "sheep horse."
- No, it's not some weird animal that's a cross between a sheep and a horse; it's a horse that accompanies the family on their sheep herding expeditions.
- As the family follows the sheep, a little coyote grabs a kid (no—not human kid, a baby goat).
- Nez aims a slingshot he's carrying at the coyote. Young Auntie makes a big racket with a coffee can to scare it away. Three dogs run over and scare the coyote away.
- The coyote drops the kid, but he's injured. Still, the little guy manages to keep up with his mommy as the herd moves on.
- The Navajo don't like coyotes. Not only because they eat their livestock, but because in Navajo tradition it's believed that evil people come back as coyotes.
- The family covers about eleven miles that day with their herds, and they finally stop to camp under the shade of piñon grove.
- Chester has some fun practicing his sling-shooting skills as he waits for dinner. But then he's told off by Auntie, who doesn't want him to scare those scaredy-cat sheep.
- Chester thinks about his mother, trying to picture her. She died a couple of years before and Chester was too little to remember what she looked like.
- After his mom's death, Chester, his brothers, his sister and his dad went to live with their maternal grandmother.
- The whole family now lives on Grandmother's land in an area known as the Checkerboard, near the Navajo Reservation in the southwest U.S., where most of the Navajo people live.
- As they wait for dinner, Chester's brother Coolidge points out a porcupine in a tree.
- The two brothers manage to kill it by bashing it over the head with a tree limb.
- Auntie calls the boys to dinner. They don't get to eat the super-tasty porcupine meat because it will take all night to cook, so they eat some tortillas with goat cheese instead (which also sounds tasty).
- Auntie prepares a sage poultice for the injured kid and applies it to its wounded leg.
- Nez falls asleep to the smell of roasting porcupine.