Answer:
told from the point of view of Ben Benally, Abel's roommate in the apartment in Los Angeles. It is the day after Abel—badly beaten by unknown assailants and left in a ditch on the beach—has left Los Angeles to return to Walatowa. Ben remembers going up on a hill in the city with many Indians the night before. The group, which included Tosamah and Cristobal Cruz, started playing songs and dancing while Abel and Ben went off by themselves. Abel and Ben made a pact to meet sometime in the future, just the two of them and two horses among the hills, and to sing the song called "House Made of Dawn."
Ben gradually reveals the events of the prior weeks. We learn that Abel had been drinking far too much and finally quit working at the factory to spend all his time at bars. One evening, over a poker game at Tosamah's, Abel became so enraged with Tosamah that he tried to hit him. Abel was too drunk, however, and merely stumbled, provoking laughs from the others in the room.
From that point on, Abel descended further into drunkenness and poverty until he had a fight with Ben and left the apartment. Abel and Ben had been mugged by a corrupt local cop earlier that week, and Ben implies that Abel was perhaps intending some sort of revenge when he left the apartment. Regardless of whether or not Ben's guess is correct, Abel returns to the apartment three days later, crashing to the floor of the stairwell, badly beaten and seemingly close to death