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I wanted to go horseback riding on the San Carlos Apache reseration in east-central Arizona. So late one afternoon in June, I coaxed my little car through the axle-deep water at Highway Tank and bumped along a rocky road toward the Anchor Seven Cattle Association's ranch house at Hilltop. Harold Kenton, a licensed guide who also is a medicine man and the stockman for Anchor Seven, had agreed to take me riding in the high country nearby.

No one was home when I arrived dusty and sweaty at the small ranch house. The place looked deserted, and I wondered if Harold and I had misunderstood each other. Hilltop consists of two houses, the other one uninhabited. There's no electricity, phone, or running water. It takes an hour and a half to drive to San Carlos, the nearest town. I pitched my tent behind the house and waited.

About dusk Harold and his cowboys drove up in a battered pickup, even sweatier and dustier than I was.

Harold, who has shoulder-length black hair, a gold cap on his front tooth, and a tattoo of an eagle on his left arm, adjusted his felt cowboy hat. He looked at my tent, and his dark eyes turned to slits in his round face. "Better move that around to the front," he said in a clipped accent full of glottal stops and dropped consonants. "There are things out there in the night we don't know about."

I assumed he was referring to Apache beliefs in the supernatural, but I didn't want to start out by saying the wrong thing. "You mean, besides you and seven Apache cowboys?" I asked.

He laughed. I moved the tent.

Before dawn someone in the house began singing in Apache. It was Harold. "People used to sing a prayer every morning. It's the old Apache way," he told me, as he fried eggs in bacon grease for the cowboys.

At first Harold seemed to have forgotten he'd agreed to take me riding. I suspected that meant I was still too much the outsider. I waited and watched.

Harold and his cowboys roped wild cattle. They piled salt licks into the pickup and delivered them deeper into the backcountry to attract more mavericks. They fried elk steaks and sent someone to town to buy baking powder for biscuits. They also spent a lot of time spitting and fussing with cans of Copenhagen snuff.

Then Harold's uncle reached the ranch house just about the time his vehicle's tires all went flat. That meant another trip to town to fix four rock-lacerated tires.

That afternoon we all rattled down to the Salt River on the roughest road I'veever traveled. Prickly pear cactuses grew between the ruts. We passed agave plants whose magnificent towering flower stalks had been ripped off in jagged tears. "Bears," Harold said. "What a shame," I said. He looked at me the way you look at a child when you have a really important

Glimpses of the Apache World ervation

ever traveled. Prickly pear cactuses grew between the ruts. We passed agave plants whose magnificent towering flower stalks had been ripped off in jagged tears. "Bears," Harold said. "What a shame," I said. He looked at me the way you look at a child when you have a really important lesson to teach but don't know if the child is ready. "I grew up where we respect everything," he said. "I call it 'Apache law.' Us Apaches have great respect for bears. When they've been drinking in a pond, we don't drink there because we respect those bears. What they eat, we respect that, too. They like the sweetness of the agave just like we do." "I'm sorry I said that."

(OPPOSITE PAGE) Harold Kenton has many specializations: medicine man, stockman, and licensed guide. (ABOVE) Hot in pursuit of a maverick steer, the Apache cowboys charge through the ponderosa pines of the San Carlos Apache reservation.

For them it means working 15-hour days in exchange for an iron cot, greasy food, adventure, and the hope of rounding up enough wild cattle to start small herds of their own.

"In Apache, we don't have words for I'm sorry," he replied mildly.

That night as we bounced for three hours back toward Hilltop, Harold and his cowboys talked softly in Apache.

Once he switched to English. "Scientists are always looking for clues to where the Anasazi went. They should ask us. We know where they went, and why."

"Where?"

He hesitated. "I can't tell you." He switched back to Apache.

Late the next afternoon, Harold announced he was ready to ride. He suggested we climb Springwater Mountain.

We set off through the pines. "This was the old road to Whiteriver for the cavalry, too," he said. "The tribe is talking about improving the road, but I hope they won't because that will bring in too many outsiders."

He trotted along on a white gelding. I rode a horse named Shorty.

The air smelled of dust and freshly digested grass. Except for a few cans and other debris, it might have been 100 years ago. We were all alone with the birds, the trees, and the elk droppings.

We came to a squawberry bush, and Harold pulled off a handful of furry red berries. "In the old days, when we got sick, we'd get all our medicine in the woods," he said. "Now if we have money, we go to a When I turned back, Harold sat on his horse with his right arm outstretched to the north. He resembled a statue in a park, and I remembered him saying, "I'm against things like dancing in parades or putting up statues of dancers. It takes something sacred and makes it ordinary."

Far in the distance, the landscape rose with the Mogollon Rim. A couple of weeks earlier, I'd gone riding with a young Apache ranger on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation, between McNary and Sunrise. We wandered through picturesque countryside, past evergreens, aspens, and pond-dotted meadows. But that outing gave me no glimpses of another world view the way riding with Harold did.

Harold lowered his arm. "I was praying to the mountain," he said. "Telling it we are here to enjoy the scenery. I was praying for me and my boys. I was praying for you,"

I thanked him and remounted.

"In Apache we do not have words for 'thank you,'" he said.

Harold, who belongs to the eagle clan, imitated an eagle call again and again. Then he said, "There's a song goes with this mountain. When people went on the trail through here, they would sing for their loved ones. I'll sing it for you."

With all of Apacheland spread out below us in the twilight, Harold sat on the motionless horse and sang in Apache. When he finished, he said, "It says that I got to the top of Springwater Mountain, and I'm looking back at old San Carlos. That's where my people are. I left a beautiful hardworking woman back there, and I'm going to miss her. That's why I'm going to have my last look back."

He turned toward the sunset. "In the old days, when Apache scouts were looking for Geronimo, they didn't know if they were going to come back. This is the place where they prayed. For their people. Their children. Their family. One last look back."

He twitched the reins, and we started down the mountainside. "People had feelings then, too," he said.

As he rode, Harold sang more Apache He handed me some berries. They tasted acidic, like Vitamin C.

"They're Apache vitamins," he said. "In the old times, people used to soak them in water and make a drink, like Kool-Aid."

The fuzz on the berries made my nose itch. I sneezed.

"Apaches say when you sneeze, someone is calling your name," he said.

We rounded the side of Springwater Mountain, and a wild turkey gobbler waddled out of the brush. Harold cupped his hands and imitated a turkey hen's call.

The gobbler rushed away. Harold laughed. "I guess I sound like an ugly hen. He's afraid of getting stuck with her."

We reached the summit. To the north, juniper-covered hills sloped down toward Salt River Canyon. To the east, we could look out across more hills toward Point of Pines. Harold gestured to the south beyond the shimmer of San Carlos Lake. "That's Mount Turnbull. All these mountains are sacred, but the old people used to sing about four sacred mountains. Mount Turnbull. Mount Graham. Pinal Mountain. And some mountain in Mexico, Mount San Madre, or something."

"The Sierra Madre?"

He shrugged.

I dismounted and Shorty stepped on my