Along the Way

Along the Way MEET CHIEF YELLOWHORSE, NAVAJO ENTREPRENEUR

The land of the Navajo is spare, powerful a vast space where God seems to have stored ends and pieces from other scapes. There's a long bluff, full of lavender and sienna; a series of tiny alkaline washes that offers miniature lessons in how wind and water carved out the Grand Canyon; a progression of mounds that looks otherworldly, a village for Anasazi Picts.

The only real repetition out here is Chief Yellowhorse signs. Since Chief Yellowhorse grew up when the yellow-and-red Whiting Bros. gas-station signs punctuated the Arizona interstate, maybe they inspired the same color scheme for his: the Burma Shave of curios.

"Buy from Friendly Indians!" one sign urges. Then, in case you aren't sure how friendly, "Chief Yellowhorse Loves You." If you still aren't beguiled, you are begged to turn around after you've passed: "Come back You Missed Us!" and "Nice Indians Behind You."

We are on a pilgrimage, my father and I. We've come to photograph the signs both of us have been so entertained by for so many years. I know from stopping at one of the chief's roadside stands (quite the magnate: he runs a whole chain from his headquarters in Gallup) that some of the blankets come from Mexico, the steer horns from Texas, and the beads from Czechoslovakia. But tourists don't seem to mind anymore than they mind the tepees out front.

Tepees? How in tarnation is Native American awareness to flourish if even a Navajo eschews hogans for the more recognizable dwelling of Plains Indians? I even tracked Yellowhorse down by phone one time to ask.

"Tepees go over better," he said, on a crackly connection from Gallup. "They say 'Indian' to tourists. Hogans do, too but it's more subtle."

Anyway, since these signs seem the quintessence of the Arizona highways my father and I love, we're pulling off the road to take pictures of them.

After we've both posed by the barbed-wire fence next to the cheerful signs, we stop at the Yellowhorse stand near Cameron. A few pictures here, too, even though my favorite sign "We take-um MasterCard" has disappeared.

Then we drive over to Yellowhorse's stand by the Little Colorado River gorge.

"We should at least ask if he's here," my father says.

"He'll be in Gallup," I answer, but when we inquire, a young Navajo man wearing a diamond stud in his ear says, "Chief's at Cameron."

My father and I stare at each other. "We were just there!"

There's nothing but to go back. I'm as fas-cinated by the prospect of meeting Chief Yellowhorse as a child would be greeting Mickey Mouse or Santa Claus; you've seen evidence of their existence, but the real thing, up close and personal, astonishes you. Chief's at Cameron, all right. I can't believe it. Younger than I pictured, with denim jacket and jeans, a bandana around his forehead, he is unloading gold and turquoise jewelry in plastic packets from a big box.

I'm not sure what to say, but it isn't a problem. Chief Juan Yellowhorse is as genial as a talk-show host.

He tells us a little about the roadstand success story.

"Been in tourism since I was this high," he says, motioning with a silver-ringed hand near his knee. "We lived in Arizona near the New Mexico border; we would sell little things we could find and polished stones."

He said his mother made rugs they'd sell for around a dollar. (True Navajo work I'd weep for such a piece!) For so little?

"My father made 50 cents a day polishing turquoise, so she did better than him," he says.

Turns out all the Yellowhorse brothers are in curios now, although Sheesh, the fourth brother, is newer at it.

"Used to be Fred and John and I were the partners," he says.

But wait isn't Chief's first name Juan?

"That confuses you whites," he says, laughing. "To you, 'Juan' is Mexican for 'John' in English. To Navajo, it's two names."

The chief and my father start talking about Lupton, the village near the New Mexico border. It's by Sanders where my father's dad was superintendent of the school. So while Daddy was age four through eight there, Yellowhorse was age two through six.

They're off on a joyous reminiscing ride over hurdles of names. Remember Miller's Cave? Yes? It's Yellowhorse Cave now; he bought it and built a hogan near the front for tourists to visit. (Yay!) How 'bout Junior Balcomb did you know him? Boy, hadn't thought of him in years. And the McCarrells? and the year the school burned down, when they had to move in some old boxcars to hold classes?

Probably less than a few hundred people share these memories. Both men look charged up and animated discussing the little road to the buildings, the layout of this blot by the interstate.

Later, back at the Chief's stands, I wander down the velvetcased table rows and find sterling earrings I can afford. They triple in value to me when I turn them over to see "S. Yellowhorse" stamped on the back. Turns out it's the chief's son, Steve.

Awash in the fellowship of newly found old associations, we all pose for pictures with one another. I buy another pair of earrings for my mother.

Yellowhorse urges us to stop back. And even though he is surely in the Navajo 500 of success stories and clearly knows how to make a tourist want to spend I honestly believe he's inviting us back because he enjoys being able to stand with this other vigorous man who loves Arizona.

Because together they can recall the cave and boxcars that were part of an amazing world where two little boys lived.