The storyteller bears enormous responsibility. In every line of "The Man to Send Rain Clouds," we feel the narrative's consciousness of such power and responsibility. As Silko showed us in Ceremony, a story is more than artifice; each story is a ceremony, and every ceremony changes the world. T h e M a n t o S e n d Rain C l o u d s Leslie M a r m o n Silko They found him under a big cottonwood tree. His Levi jacket and pants were faded light blue so that he had been easy to find. The big cottonwood tree stood apart from a small grove of winterbare cottonwoods which grew in the wide, sandy arroyo. He had been dead for a day or more, and the sheep had wandered and scattered up and down the arroyo. Leon and his brother-in-law, Ken, gathered the sheep and left them in the pen at the sheep camp before they returned to the cottonwood tree. Leon waited under the tree while Ken drove the truck through the deep sand to the edge of the arroyo. He squinted up at the sun and unzipped his jacket—it sure was hot for this time of year.
