horses on a hard trail. Some one was coming into the village at a late
hour. Shefford thought of Joe Lake. But Joe lay right behind him, asleep
in his blankets. It could not be Withers, for the trader was in Durango
at that time. Shefford thought of Willetts and Shadd.
“Who's coming?” he asked low of the Indian.
Nas Ta Bega pointed down the trail without speaking.
Shefford peered through the white dim haze of starlight and presently
he made out moving figures. Horses, with riders--a string of
them--one--two--three--four--five--and he counted up to eleven. Eleven
horsemen riding into the village! He was amazed, and suddenly keenly
anxious. This visit might be one of Shadd's raids.
“Shadd's gang!” he whispered.
“No, Bi Nai,” replied Nas Ta Bega, and he drew Shefford farther into the
shade of the cedars. His voice, his action, the way he kept a hand on
Shefford's shoulder, all this told much to the young man.
Mormons come on a night visit! Shefford realized it with a slight shock.
Then swift as a lightning flash he was rent by another shock--one that
brought cold moisture to his brow and to his heart a flame of hell.
He was shaking when he sank down to find the support of a log. Like
a shadow the Indian silently moved away. Shefford watched the eleven
horses pass the camp, go down the road, to disappear in the village.
They vanished, and the soft clip-clops of hoofs died away. There was
nothing left to prove he had not dreamed.
Nothing to prove it except this sudden terrible demoralization of his
physical and spiritual being! While he peered out into the valley,
toward the black patch of cedars and pinyons that hid the cabins,
moments and moments passed, and in them he was gripped with cold and
fire.
Was the Mormon who had abducted Fay--the man with the cruel voice--was
he among those eleven horsemen? He might not have been. What a torturing
hope! But vain--vain, for inevitably he must be among them. He was there
in the cabin already. He had dismounted, tied his horse, had knocked on
her door. Did he need to knock? No, he would go in, he would call her in
that cruel voice, and then...
Shefford pulled a blanket from his bed and covered his cold and
trembling body. He had sunk down off the log, was leaning back upon it.
The stars were pale, far off, and the valley seemed unreal. He found
himself listening--listening with sick and terrible earnestness, trying
to hear against the thrum and beat of his heart, straining to catch a
sound in all that cold, star-blanched, silent valley. But he could hear
no sound. It was as if death held the valley in its perfect silence.
How he hated that silence! There ought to have been a million horrible,
bellowing demons making the night hideous. Did the stars serenely look
down upon the lonely cabins of these exiles? Was there no thunderbolt
to drop down from that dark and looming mountain upon the silent cabin
where tragedy had entered? In all the world, under the sea, in the
abysmal caves, in the vast spaces of the air, there was no such terrible
silence as this. A scream, a long cry, a moan--these were natural to
a woman, and why did not one of these sealed wives, why did not Fay
Larkin, damn this everlasting acquiescent silence? Perhaps she would fly
out of her cabin, come running along the path. Shefford peered into the
bright patches of starlight and into the shadows of the cedars. But he
saw no moving form in the open, no dim white shape against the gloom.
And he heard no sound--not even a whisper of wind in the branches
overhead.
Nas Ta Bega returned to the shade of the cedars and, lying down on his
blankets, covered himself and went to sleep. The fact seemed to bring
bitter reality to Shefford. Nothing was going to happen. The valley
was to be the same this night as any other night. Shefford accepted the
truth. He experienced a kind of self-pity. The night he had thought so
much about, prepared for, and had forgotten had now arrived. Then he
threw another blanket round him, and, cold, dark, grim, he faced that
lonely vigil, meaning to sit there, wide-eyed, to endure and to wait.
Jealousy and pain, following his frenzy, abided with him long hours, and
when they passed he divined that selfishness passed with them. What he
suffered then was for Fay Larkin and for her sisters in misfortune. He
grew big enough to pity these fanatics. The fiery, racing tide of blood
that had made of him only an animal had cooled with thought of others.
Still he feared that stultifying thing which must have been hate. What
a tempest had raged within him! This blood of his, that had received a
stronger strain from his desert life, might in a single moment flood out
reason and intellect and make him a vengeful man. So in those starlit
hours that dragged interminably he looked deep into his heart and tried
to fortify himself against a dark and evil moment to come.
Midnight--and the valley seemed a tomb! Did he alone keep wakeful? The
sky was a darker blue, the stars burned a whiter fire, the peaks stood
looming and vast, tranquil sentinels of that valley, and the wind rose
to sigh, to breathe, to mourn through the cedars. It was a sad music.
The Indian lay prone, dark face to the stars. Joe Lake lay prone,
sleeping as quietly, with his dark face exposed to the starlight. The
gentle movement of the cedar branches changed the shape of the bright
patches on the grass where shadow and light met. The walls of the valley
waved upward, dark below and growing paler, to shine faintly at the
rounded rims. And there was a tiny, silvery tinkle of running water over
stones.
Here was a little nook of the vast world. Here were tranquillity,
beauty, music, loneliness, life. Shefford wondered--did he alone keep
watchful? Did he feel that he could see dark, wide eyes peering into
the gloom? And it came to him after a time that he was not alone in his
vigil, nor was Fay Larkin alone in her agony. There was some one else in
the valley, a great and breathing and watchful spirit. It entered
into Shefford's soul and he trembled. What had come to him? And he
answered--only added pain and new love, and a strange strength from the
firmament and the peaks and the silence and the shadows.
The bright belt with its three radiant stars sank behind the western
wall and there was a paler gloom upon the valley.
Then a few lights twinkled in the darkness that enveloped the cabins; a
woman's laugh strangely broke the silence, profaning it, giving the lie
to that somber yoke which seemed to consist of the very shadows; the
voices of men were heard, and then the slow clip-clop of trotting horses
on the hard trail.
Shefford saw the Mormons file out into the paling starlight, ride down
the valley, and vanish in the gray gloom. He was aware that the Indian
sat up to watch the procession ride by, and that Joe turned over, as if
disturbed.
One by one the stars went out. The valley became a place of gray
shadows. In the east a light glowed. Shefford sat there, haggard and
worn, watching the coming of the dawn, the kindling of the light; and
had the power been his the dawn would never have broken and the rose and
gold never have tipped the lofty peaks.
. . . . . . . . . . .
Shefford attended to his camp chores as usual. Several times he was
aware of Joe's close scrutiny, and finally, without looking at him,
Shefford told of the visit of the Mormons. A violent expulsion of breath
was Joe's answer and it might have been a curse. Straightway Joe ceased
his cheery whistling and became as somber as the Indian. The camp was
silent; the men did not look at one another. While they sat at breakfast
Shefford's back was turned toward the village--he had not looked in that
direction since dawn.
“Ugh!” suddenly exclaimed Nas Ta Bega.
Joe Lake muttered low and deep, and this time there was no mistake about
the nature of his speech. Shefford did not have the courage to turn to
see what had caused these exclamations. He knew since today had dawned
that there was calamity in the air.
“Shefford, I reckon if I know women there's a little hell coming to
you,” said the Mormon, significantly.
Shefford wheeled as if a powerful force had turned him on a pivot. He
saw Fay Larkin. She seemed to be almost running. She was unhooded and
her bright hair streamed down. Her swift, lithe action was without
its usual grace. She looked wild, and she almost fell crossing the
stepping-stones of the brook.
Joe hurried to meet her, took hold of her arm and spoke, but she did not
seem to hear him. She drew him along with her, up the little bench under
the cedars straight toward Shefford. Her face held a white, mute agony,
as if in the hour of strife it had hardened into marble. But her eyes
were dark-purple fire--windows of an extraordinarily intense and vital
life. In one night the girl had become a woman. But the blight Shefford
had dreaded to see--the withering of the exquisite soul and spirit and
purity he had considered inevitable, just as inevitable as the death of
something similar in the flower she resembled, when it was broken and
defiled--nothing of this was manifest in her. Straight and swiftly she
came to him back in the shade of the cedars and took hold of his hands.
“Last night--HE CAME!” she said.
“Yes--Fay--I--I know,” replied Shefford, haltingly.
He was tremblingly conscious of amaze at her--of something wonderful in
her. She did not heed Joe, who stepped aside a little; she did not see
Nas Ta Bega, who sat motionless on a log, apparently oblivious to her
presence.
“You knew he came?”
“Yes, Fay. I was awake when--they rode in. I watched them. I sat up all
night. I saw them ride away.”
“If you knew when he came why didn't you run to me--to get to me before
he did?”
Her question was unanswerable. It had the force of a blow. It stunned
him. Its sharp, frank directness sprang from a simplicity and a strength
that had not been nurtured in the life he had lived. So far men had
wandered from truth and nature!
“I came to you as soon as I was able,” she went on. “I must have
fainted. I just had to drag myself around.... And now I can tell you.”
He was powerless to reply, as if she had put another unanswerable
question. What did she mean to tell him? What might she not tell him?
She loosed her hands from his and lifted them to his shoulders, and that
was the first conscious action of feeling, of intimacy, which she had
ever shown. It quite robbed Shefford of strength, and in spite of his
sorrow there was an indefinable thrill in her touch. He looked at her,
saw the white-and-gold beauty that was hers yesterday and seemed changed
to-day, and he recognized Fay Larkin in a woman he did not know.
“Listen! He came--”
“Fay, don't--tell me,” interrupted Shefford.
“I WILL tell you,” she said.
Did the instinct of love teach her how to mitigate his pain? Shefford
felt that, as he felt the new-born strength in her.
“Listen,” she went on. “He came when I was undressing for bed. I heard
the horse. He knocked on the door. Something terrible happened to me
then. I felt sick and my head wasn't clear. I remember next--his being
in the room--the lamp was out--I couldn't see very well. He thought I
was sick and he gave me a drink and let the air blow in on me through
the window. I remember I lay back in the chair and I thought. And I
listened. When would you come? I didn't feel that you could leave me
there alone with him. For his coming was different this time. That pain
like a blade in my side!... When it came I was not the same. I loved
you. I understood then. I belonged to you. I couldn't let him touch me.
I had never been his wife. When I realized this--that he was there, that
you might suffer for it--I cried right out.
“He thought I was sick. He worked over me. He gave me medicine. And then
he prayed. I saw him, in the dark, on his knees, praying for me. That
seemed strange. Yet he was kind, so kind that I begged him to let me go.
I was not a Mormon. I couldn't marry him. I begged him to let me go.
“Then he thought I had been deceiving him. He fell into a fury. He
talked for a long time. He called upon God to visit my sins upon me. He
tried to make me pray. But I wouldn't. And then I fought him. I'd have
screamed for you had he not smothered me. I got weak.... And you never
came. I know I thought you would come. But you didn't. Then I--I gave
out. And after--some time--I must have fainted.”
“Fay! For Heaven's sake, how could I come to you?” burst out Shefford,
hoarse and white with remorse, passion, pain.
“If I'm any man's wife I'm yours. It's a thing you FEEL, isn't it? I
know that now.... But I want to know what to do?”
“Fay!” he cried, huskily.
“I'm sick of it all. If it weren't for you I'd climb the wall and throw
myself off. That would be easy for me. I'd love to die that way. All my
life I've been high up on the walls. To fall would be nothing!”
“Oh, you mustn't talk like that!”
“Do you love me?” she asked, with a low and deathless sweetness.
“Love you? With all my heart! Nothing can change that!”
“Do you want me--as you used to want the Fay Larkin lost in Surprise
Valley? Do you love me that way? I understand things better than before,
but still--not all. I AM Fay Larkin. I think I must have dreamed of you
all my life. I was glad when you came here. I've been happy lately. I
forgot--till last night. Maybe it needed that to make me see I've loved
you all the time.... And I fought him like a wildcat!... Tell me the
truth. I feel I'm yours. Is that true? If I'm not--I'll not live another
hour. Something holds me up. I am the same.... Do you want me?”
“Yes, Fay Larkin, I want you,” replied Shefford, steadily, with his grip
on her arms.
“Then take me away. I don't want to live here another hour.”
“Fay, I'll take you. But it can't be done at once. We must plan. I need
help. There are Lassiter and Jane to get out of Surprise Valley. Give
me time, dear--give me time. It'll be a hard job. And we must plan so we
can positively get away. Give me time, Fay.”
“Suppose HE comes back?” she queried, with a singular depth of voice.
“We'll have to risk that,” replied Shefford, miserably. “But--he won't
come soon.”
“He said he would,” she flashed.
Shefford seemed to freeze inwardly with her words. Love had made her
a woman and now the woman in her was speaking. She saw the truth as he
could not see it. And the truth was nature. She had been hidden all her
life from the world, from knowledge as he had it, yet when love betrayed
her womanhood to her she acquired all its subtlety.
“If I wait and he DOES come will you keep me from him?” she asked.
“How can I? I'm staking all on the chance of his not coming soon. ...
But, Fay, if he DOES come and I don't give up our secret--how on earth
can I keep you from him?” demanded Shefford.
“If you love me you will do it,” she said, as simply as if she were
fate.
“But how?” cried Shefford, almost beside himself.
“You are a man. Any man would save the woman who loves him
from--from--Oh, from a beast!... How would Lassiter do it?”
“Lassiter!”
“YOU CAN KILL HIM!”
It was there, deep and full in her voice, the strength of the elemental
forces that had surrounded her, primitive passion and hate and love, as
they were in woman in the beginning.
“My God!” Shefford cried aloud with his spirit when all that was red in
him sprang again into a flame of hell. That was what had been wrong with
him last night. He could kill this stealthy night-rider, and now, face
to face with Fay, who had never been so beautiful and wonderful as in
this hour when she made love the only and the sacred thing of life, now
he had it in him to kill. Yet, murder--even to kill a brute--that was
not for John Shefford, not the way for him to save a woman. Reason
and wisdom still fought the passion in him. If he could but cling to
them--have them with him in the dark and contending hour!
She leaned against him now, exhausted, her soul in her eyes, and they
saw only him. Shefford was all but powerless to resist the longing to
take her into his arms, to hold her to his heart, to let himself go. Did
not her love give her to him? Shefford gazed helplessly at the stricken
Joe Lake, at the somber Indian, as if from them he expected help.
“I know him now,” said Fay, breaking the silence with startling
suddenness.
“What!”
“I've seen him in the light. I flashed a candle in his face. I saw it. I
know him now. He was there at Stonebridge with us, and I never knew him.
But I know him now. His name is--”
“For God's sake don't tell me who he is!” implored Shefford.
Ignorance was Shefford's safeguard against himself. To make a name of
this heretofore intangible man, to give him an identity apart from the
crowd, to be able to recognize him--that for Shefford would be fatal.
“Fay--tell me--no more,” he said, brokenly. “I love you and I will give
you my life. Trust me. I swear I'll save you.”
“Will you take me away soon?”
“Yes.”
She appeared satisfied with that and dropped her hands and moved back
from him. A light flitted over her white face, and her eyes grew
dark and humid, losing their fire in changing, shadowing thought of
submission, of trust, of hope.
“I can lead you to Surprise Valley,” she said. “I feel the way. It's
there!” And she pointed to the west.
“Fay, we'll go--soon. I must plan. I'll see you to-night. Then we'll
talk. Run home now, before some of the women see you here.”
She said good-by and started away under the cedars, out into the
open where her hair shone like gold in the sunlight, and she took the
stepping-stones with her old free grace, and strode down the path swift
and lithe as an Indian. Once she turned to wave a hand.
Shefford watched her with a torture of pride, love, hope, and fear
contending within him.
XIV. THE NAVAJO
That morning a Piute rode into the valley.
Shefford recognized him as the brave who had been in love with Glen
Naspa. The moment Nas Ta Bega saw this visitor he made a singular motion
with his hands--a motion that somehow to Shefford suggested despair--and
then he waited, somber and statuesque, for the messenger to come to him.
It was the Piute who did all the talking, and that was brief. Then
the Navajo stood motionless, with his hands crossed over his breast.
Shefford drew near and waited.
“Bi Nai,” said the Navajo, “Nas Ta Bega said his sister would come home
some day.... Glen Naspa is in the hogan of her grandfather.”
He spoke in his usual slow, guttural voice, and he might have been
bronze for all the emotion he expressed; yet Shefford instinctively
felt the despair that had been hinted to him, and he put his hand on the
Indian's shoulder.
“If I am the Navajo's brother, then I am brother to Glen Naspa,” he
said. “I will go with you to the hogan of Hosteen Doetin.”
Nas Ta Bega went away into the valley for the horses. Shefford hurried
to the village, made his excuses at the school, and then called to
explain to Fay that trouble of some kind had come to the Indian.
Soon afterward he was riding Nack-yal on the rough and winding trail up
through the broken country of cliffs and cañon to the great league-long
sage and cedar slope of the mountain. It was weeks since he had ridden
the mustang. Nack-yal was fat and lazy. He loved his master, but he did
not like the climb, and so fell far behind the lean and wiry pony that
carried Nas Ta Bega. The sage levels were as purple as the haze of the
distance, and there was a bitter-sweet tang on the strong, cool wind.
The sun was gold behind the dark line of fringe on the mountain-top. A
flock of sheep swept down one of the sage levels, looking like a narrow
stream of white and black and brown. It was always amazing for Shefford
to see how swiftly these Navajo sheep grazed along. Wild mustangs
plunged out of the cedar clumps and stood upon the ridges, whistling
defiance or curiosity, and their manes and tails waved in the wind.
Shefford mounted slowly to the cedar bench in the midst of which were
hidden the few hogans. And he halted at the edge to dismount and take
a look at that downward-sweeping world of color, of wide space, at the
wild desert upland which from there unrolled its magnificent panorama.
Then he passed on into the cedars. How strange to hear the lambs
bleating again! Lambing-time had come early, but still spring was there
in the new green of grass, in the bright upland flower. He led his
mustang out of the cedars into the cleared circle. It was full of colts
and lambs, and there were the shepherd-dogs and a few old rams and ewes.
But the circle was a quiet place this day. There were no Indians in
sight. Shefford loosened the saddle-girths on Nack-yal and, leaving him
to graze, went toward the hogan of Hosteen Doetin. A blanket was hung
across the door. Shefford heard a low chanting. He waited beside the
door till the covering was pulled in, then he entered.
Hosteen Doetin met him, clasped his hand. The old Navajo could not
speak; his fine face was working in grief; tears streamed from his
dim old eyes and rolled down his wrinkled cheeks. His sorrow was no
different from a white man's sorrow. Beyond him Shefford saw Nas Ta Bega
standing with folded arms, somehow terrible in his somber impassiveness.
At his feet crouched the old woman, Hosteen Doetin's wife, and beside
her, prone and quiet, half covered with a blanket, lay Glen Naspa.
She was dead. To Shefford she seemed older than when he had last seen
her. And she was beautiful. Calm, cold, dark, with only bitter lips to
give the lie to peace! There was a story in those lips.
At her side, half hidden under the fold of blanket, lay a tiny bundle.
Its human shape startled Shefford. Then he did not need to be told
the tragedy. When he looked again at Glen Naspa's face he seemed to
understand all that had made her older, to feel the pain that had lined
and set her lips.
She was dead, and she was the last of Nas Ta Bega's family. In the old
grandfather's agony, in the wild chant of the stricken grandmother, in
the brother's stern and terrible calmness Shefford felt more than the
death of a loved one. The shadow of ruin, of doom, of death hovered
over the girl and her family and her tribe and her race. There was no
consolation to offer these relatives of Glen Naspa. Shefford took one
more fascinated gaze at her dark, eloquent, prophetic face, at the
tragic tiny shape by her side, and then with bowed head he left the
hogan.
. . . . . . . . . . .
Outside he paced to and fro, with an aching heart for Nas Ta Bega, with
something of the white man's burden of crime toward the Indian weighing
upon his soul.
Old Hosteen Doetin came to him with shaking hands and words memorable of
the time Glen Naspa left his hogan.
“Me no savvy Jesus Christ. Me hungry. Me no eat Jesus Christ!”
That seemed to be all of his trouble that he could express to Shefford.
He could not understand the religion of the missionary, this Jesus
Christ who had called his granddaughter away. And the great fear of an
old Indian was not death, but hunger. Shefford remembered a custom of
the Navajos, a thing barbarous looked at with a white man's mind. If an
old Indian failed on a long march he was inclosed by a wall of stones,
given plenty to eat and drink, and left there to die in the desert. Not
death did he fear, but hunger! Old Hosteen Doetin expected to starve,
now that the young and strong squaw of his family was gone.
Shefford spoke in his halting Navajo and assured the old Indian that Nas
Ta Bega would never let him starve.
At sunset Shefford stood with Nas Ta Bega facing the west. The Indian
was magnificent in repose. He watched the sun go down upon the day that
had seen the burial of the last of his family. He resembled an impassive
destiny, upon which no shocks fell. He had the light of that flaring
golden sky in his face, the majesty of the mountain in his mien, the
silence of the great gulf below on his lips. This educated Navajo, who
had reverted to the life of his ancestors, found in the wildness and
loneliness of his environment a strength no white teaching could
ever have given him. Shefford sensed in him a measureless grief, an
impenetrable gloom, a tragic acceptance of the meaning of Glen Naspa's
ruin and death--the vanishing of his race from the earth. Death had
written the law of such bitter truth round Glen Naspa's lips, and the
same truth was here in the grandeur and gloom of the Navajo.
“Bi Nai,” he said, with the beautiful sonorous roll in his voice, “Glen
Naspa is in her grave and there are no paths to the place of her sleep.
Glen Naspa is gone.”
“Gone! Where? Nas Ta Bega, remember I lost my own faith, and I have not
yet learned yours.”