WEBVTT

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I have this complete
collection "The Gourd Dancer"

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is composed of four sections
one of which has been published.

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The first section from
which I've been reading

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is entitled "The Gourd Dancer."

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The second section is called
"The Strange and True Story

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of My Life with Billy the Kid."

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The third section
is called "Anywhere

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is a Street Into the Night."

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And the fourth
and final section,

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which has been published
is called "Angle of Geese."

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I'll read one or two things
from "The Strange and True Story

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of My Life with Billy the Kid."

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It is again as a
section composed

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of both prose and poetry.

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The first section
is a piece in prose.

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It is called "Riding is
an Exercise of the Mind."

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"One autumn morning in 1946,
I woke up at Jemez Pueblo.

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I had arrived there in
the middle of the night

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and gone to sleep.

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I had no idea of the landscape,
no sense of where in the world

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I was.

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Now, in the bright
New Mexican morning,

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I began to look
around and settle in.

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It was the last best
home of my childhood.

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When my parents and I moved
to Jemez I was 12 years old.

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The world was a
different place than,

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and Jemez was the most
exotic corner within it.

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The village and the Valley,
the canyons and the mountains

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had been there from
the beginning of time

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waiting for me, so it seemed.

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Marco Polo in the court of
Kublai Khan had nothing on me.

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I was embarked upon the
greatest adventure of all,

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I had come to the
place of my growing up.

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The landscape was full
of mystery and of life.

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The autumn was in full bloom.

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The sun cast a golden
light upon the adobe walls

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and the cornfields, it set
fire to the leaves of willows

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and cottonwoods along the
river, and a fresh cold wind

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ran down from the canyons
and carried the good scents

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of pine and cedar
smoke, of bread

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baking in the beehive ovens,
and of rain in the mountains.

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There were horses in the plain
and angles of geese in the sky.

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One November, on the
Feast of San Diego,

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Jemez took on all the colors
of a Renaissance Fair.

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I lived on the Southwest
corner of the village,

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on the Wagon Road to San Ysidro.

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I looked southward
into the plains--

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there a caravan
of covered wagons

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reached as far as
the eye could see.

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These were the Navajos
coming in from Torreon.

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I had never seen
such a pageant--

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it was as if that whole,
proud people, that Dine,

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had been concentrated into
one endless migration.

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There was a great dignity
to them, even in revelry.

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They sat tall in the
wagons and on horseback,

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going easily with laughter and
singing their riding songs.

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And when they set up
camp in the streets

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they were perfectly at
home, their dogs about them.

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They made coffee and fried
bread and roasted mutton

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on their open fires.

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Gradually and without effort I
entered into the motion of life

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there.

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In the winter dusk
I heard coyotes

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barking away by the river, the
sound of the drums in the kiva,

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and the voice of the village
crier ringing at the rooftops.

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And on summer nights
of the full moon

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I saw old men in
their ceremonial garb,

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running after witches.

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And sometimes I thought I
saw the witches themselves

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in the forms of bats and
cats and owls on fence posts.

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I came to know the land by going
out upon it in all seasons,

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getting into it until it became
the very element in which I

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lived my daily life.

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I had a horse named Pecos,
a fleet-footed roan gelding,

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which was my great
glory for a time.

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Pecos could outrun every
other horse in the village

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and wanted always to prove it.

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We two came to a good
understanding of each other,

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I believe.

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I did a lot of
riding in those days,

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and I got to be very good at it.

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My Kiowa ancestors,
who were centaurs,

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should have been proud of me.

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Riding is an
exercise of the mind.

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I dreamed a good deal
on the back of my horse,

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going out into the hills alone.

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Desperados were
everywhere in the brush.

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More than once I came upon
roving bands of hostile Indians

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and had, on the
spur of the moment,

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to put down an uprising.

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Now and then I found a
wagon train in trouble,

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and always among
the settlers there

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was a lovely young girl from
Charleston or Philadelphia

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who needed simply and more
than anything else in the world

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to be saved.

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I saved her.

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After a time Billy
the Kid was with me

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on most of those adventures.

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He rode on my right side and
a couple of steps behind.

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I watched him out of
the corner of my eye,

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for he bore watching.

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We got on well
together in the main,

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and he was a good man to
have along in a fight.

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We had to be careful
of glory-seeking punks.

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Incredibly, there were
those in the world who

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were foolish enough to cross
us for the sake of gaining

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a certain reputation.

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When it came time for me to
leave home and venture out

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into the wider world, I sold
my horse to an old gentleman

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at Vallecitos.

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I like to think that Pecos
went on with our games

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long afterwards,
that in his old age

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he listened for
the sound of bugles

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and of gunfire and for the
pitiful weeping of young ladies

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in distress and that he heard
them as surely as I do now."

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