DAWN LIGHT
It was curious that the guide had not seen the place where Bettina had
fallen.
A few moments after her burro had deserted her, Bettina, hurrying up the
incline to join her companions, slipped on a loose stone. Yet this would
not have been serious had she given up and allowed herself to go.
Instead she stumbled sideways, tried to regain her balance, stumbled a
second time, and then, looking down, found herself at the edge of a
ravine that had a sheer descent of thirty or more feet. Even now Bettina
might have saved herself by dropping down on her knees or flinging
herself backward. But the sight of the precipice must have made her
dizzy, or else she was too frightened to think. For she went over
quietly and without even a cry for help. And afterwards she did not call
out. In falling Bettina’s head had struck against a jutting rock, so
that she lay crumpled up between two walls of stone with a deep crevice
between them. Her position was a strange one. She seemed to be sitting
in a giant chair, except that one leg was bent beneath her and her head
drooped forward on her breast.
Yet the stones and earth were misplaced where Bettina had slipped, and
if the searchers had been less anxious, or more accustomed to their
task, they must have found her. Mr. Simpson had not this second excuse.
When he went back, after leaving Peggy and Vera, he did discover the
place where Bettina had disappeared, but by that time Bettina was not
there.
Yet, certainly an hour had not passed since her two friends and their
escort had gone slowly past.
It was perhaps about fifteen minutes after they had gone when a young
man appeared on the same trail. He was not riding, but walking more
swiftly and more surely than any four-footed animal trained to the
western trails.
He wore an odd costume—a soft shirt of an unbleached cotton almost the
color of the yellow sand; a pair of leather trousers fringed at the knee
and held about the waist with a broad leather belt brightly decorated in
beads, forming designs of animals and birds. His legs were bare and his
feet in moccasins.
Yet he was whistling as he came along—an unusual air and an unusual act
for an Indian. He was whistling the “Marseillaise,” perhaps the greatest
song of national freedom in the world. And the young man was an Indian,
although his skin was only a light bronze. The carriage of his head, the
free movements of his body, and in some strange way his expression
betrayed him.
So far as one could have observed him, he seemed to be looking neither
to the right nor the left; neither the glory of the encircling ledge of
blue hills nor the river gorge interesting him. Nevertheless, when he
came to the spot where Bettina had lost her footing, he stopped as
abruptly as an animal who is suddenly arrested by an unexpected smell.
The next instant the young Indian was lying across the trail, with his
head extending over the ledge and gazing down at the broken shelves of
rock.
At first he could see nothing unusual.
It was afternoon and the sun was casting a brilliant, slanting light
across the ravine. For the instant it blinded one. The next, the
Indian’s keen eyes were caught by what looked like a golden ball caught
between a wide split in two rocks about midway of the precipice. The
illusion was a ridiculous one and yet it made one think of some golden
legend of the sun.
However, almost before the impression came it was gone, and the Indian
discovered a figure held between the two rocks. He could not, of course,
see anything except that the figure was a woman’s, and that the sunlight
had made the hair a bright amber.
Yet, it was so extraordinary to find a human being alone and in such a
plight, it is small wonder that the young man remained staring. He was a
dreamer also. No man or woman can spend long hours in great open spaces
alone with only the wind and the sky and the desert for company without
being either a dreamer or a fool. Soon after he began climbing down the
sides of the ravine as quickly and as unafraid as another man might
descend the rounds of a ladder.
He used both his hands and feet, stepping from one almost invisible
projection to another, until he reached the summit of what appeared like
a stone chair with two great sides in which Bettina was imprisoned. Then
he dropped lightly down to the ledge and stood upright about a foot away
from the still figure.
She was not a woman, but a girl; this he saw at once, and she appeared
only unconscious. A cut was bleeding where her head must have struck.
Yet what could have happened that she could be thus alone?
Several times the young Indian called. No answer came. Then he lifted
Bettina and began the ascent of the slope. Another man—not accustomed to
the outdoors and not an athlete—could not have accomplished the feat of
getting Bettina back on the trail again without assistance. She was
slender enough, but tall and at present a dead weight.
Nevertheless the young Indian lifted her across his shoulder and,
holding her with one arm, climbed up the way he had come. He was panting
and his mouth set with fatigue and determination, however, when he
finally brought her to the small plateau where he could lay her down
comfortably. It was the place where her loss had been discovered a short
time before.
The Indian must have known the locality, for he went away and in a
little while came back with water which he held in a giant cactus leaf.
But Bettina did not respond to the cool water on her face, nor to the
air, nor her change of position.
Plainly her rescuer was puzzled what to do next. He stood erect a few
moments gazing up and down the trail, as if finding it impossible to
believe that the girl he had just found had been deserted by her
friends. Yet, calling again, he had no answer.
Something must be done; she must be taken to some one who would properly
care for her. How else could one know how serious her injury? She
appeared to be only stunned by her fall, and yet the cut near her temple
might be serious.
A second time the Indian picked up Bettina. This time, instead of
continuing along the trail in the direction he had been taking, he
turned backward; otherwise he must have met Mr. Simpson.
But the young man knew of no one in that direction to whom he could
safely deliver his charge, while a few miles to the north near the
border of the Painted Desert was one of the wisest persons in his
acquaintance. He had to leave the river trail and strike across the sand
dunes, but the way was familiar. The distance meant but little for the
Indian walked so swiftly.
Once he thought he felt the figure he carried stir a little, but looking
closely could see no change.
Nevertheless it was about an hour before sunset when the Indian came to
the friend he sought in the neighborhood of the desert. Nearer now he
could see the ancient terraces of the five Hopi villages built on top
the three mesas on the far side of the desert, and only to be entered by
long climbing up the precipitous walls.
But the home he sought was not in one of the villages.
[Illustration: A SECOND TIME THE INDIAN PICKED UP BETTINA]
The Indian would not have confessed, but he was glad when he saw a small
house, apparently built of clay dried by the sun, standing with one wall
formed of a sandstone cliff.
Squatting in front of this house was an Indian woman who appeared very
old. She had a big jar of brown pottery before her and with a yucca stem
was making a geometric design upon it. This was Nampu, who had come from
the village of Hano to settle at the edge of the desert, the better to
pursue her work unobserved. She was one of the most famous pottery
makers in all the region. But she was more than this. Nampu was a
medicine woman. It is one of the peculiarities of the Hopi Indians that
they have medicine women as well as medicine men.
The young Indian laid Bettina down at old Nampu’s feet.
“She had fallen over a cliff; I found her and did not know what to do.
Therefore I came to you,” he explained as briefly as possible.
But the Indian woman made no reply at all; she merely grunted. However,
she put down her work and, picking Bettina up, disappeared inside her
house.
The young man lay down on a mat outside the opening which served for the
door. Ten minutes went by. He could hear the woman moving about inside.
Then he thought he heard a voice that was not an Indian’s.
Afterwards Nampu came out and sat down at her pottery again.
“She will be all right soon. Sleep now best. Awake, tell us where she
come from. Then you can go find friends.”
So they waited and Se-kyal-ets-tewa saw the sun setting behind his
village and heard the peculiar bark of the coyote that comes at evening,
and the short, quick yelp of the prairie wolf.
Only once did the companions speak. Then the young man asked.
“Where is Dawapa?”
“She come later; gone to get water.”
Really it was Bettina who aroused them both.
The Indian woman had taken off her shoes, so she came quite noiselessly
and stood at the door of the hut.
She was puzzled beyond understanding by what must have happened to her.
But she was not frightened. For Bettina was not made nervous or unhappy
by the circumstances that would have alarmed most girls, but by little
ordinary things which would have affected some girls not at all.
Now the beauty and the strangeness of the scene before her filled her
with an emotion that was part pleasure and part pain. The evening was so
beautiful. Never had she seen such a glory of color in the sky, and the
Indian woman and the youth outside the door were like sentinels of some
past age.
Curiously it was Bettina who recognized having seen her rescuer before.
He had not known her as the girl whom he had met on the train coming
west in all the distance he had carried her to Nampu’s hut. But, then,
Bettina’s eyes were closed, her face smeared with blood and dirt, and
she was wearing a costume that seemed strange to the young man. It was
in a way like an Indian girl’s and yet oddly different. For Bettina was
wearing only a part of her Camp Fire costume—the riding trousers and
boots being an original departure—because of the unusual circumstances
of their present camp fire life in Arizona.
As soon as she walked toward him the Indian got up and stood as erect as
he had that day of their first odd meeting. But this second time was far
more interesting.
One could not have mistaken him for any other nation than his own at
this hour.
Still he showed no sign of ever having seen Bettina before until she put
out her hand.
“I have something to be grateful to you for; I am not sure just how
grateful I should be,” she began. “But I am glad that it is some one I
have met before who has helped me. Now will you be good enough to tell
me how I can manage to get back to my friends. We are camping at one end
of the Gardener’s ranch near the neighborhood of Cottonwood Creek. Is
there any way I could drive back?” Bettina smiled. “I am perfectly all
right, only I do feel a little weak and tired. Yet my friends will be so
uncomfortable not to know what has become of me. You remember meeting
Mrs. Burton, don’t you?”
“Yes,” the young man answered.
Nampu grunted again.
“You stay here the night; Gardener ranch fifteen, twenty mile away. Tewa
tired.”
The young Indian shook his head.
“I will find your camp tonight. You must stay here, Miss Graham.” He had
not forgotten Bettina’s name, at least.
But now it appeared strange to have him speak and behave in so quiet and
well-bred a fashion. Seeing him in an Indian costume, here in the land
of his birth and among his own friends, one forgot the young man’s
college training, and all that was supposed to go with it.
“But the distance! It is not possible,” Bettina urged.
The young man’s lips arched, showing white, strong teeth.
“I have been winner of the prize as runner at our Snake ceremony. If
that is not enough, I won the championship of the United States in the
University long-distance running contests this spring.”
Before Bettina could reply, the sound of some one approaching caught her
attention.
Then, as she turned, she saw a girl of about her own age coming near,
holding on her shoulder a large water jug. But the strange fact was that
the girl was blond—fairer than she herself or than Gerry. Indeed, she
had hair light as corn silk, pale blue eyes and a too white skin.
Nevertheless she was dressed like an Indian maiden. Her hair was
arranged over her ears in great puffs resembling squash blossoms,
signifying among the tribes of the Pueblo Indians that the girl is
unmarried.
“This is Dawapa,” the old Indian woman said civilly.
But Dawapa went shyly and quickly by into the house, not waiting for any
explanation of Bettina’s presence in her home.
And it was not until afterwards that Bettina learned Dawapa was an
Albino, and that there are such girls and boys born now and then among
the Hopis.