Stories, whisky and a dance

An intercalary chapter on the pleasures the migrants make for themselves. Around the fires a storyteller earns his listeners; one tells of shooting an Apache who stood naked and cross-armed against the sun — grand at four hundred yards, small and torn to pieces up close — and the shame of having spoiled something better than himself. A man with twenty cents may choose a picture show over food and retell the plot to a sceptical audience. Drink makes the earth soft and brings the stars close. Then the instruments: the harmonica anyone can replace for a quarter, the guitar handed down from a father, the rare fiddle learned by watching. The three together pull people into a square dance. At the end a preacher by an irrigation ditch throws the people in the water, and the children come back whispering that they will not sin again — wishing they knew what the sins were.