and it will become dust. But her spirit is in the air. It shall whisper
to me from the wind. I shall hear it on running waters. It will hide in
the morning music of a mocking-bird and in the lonely night cry of the
cañon hawk. Her blood will go to make the red of the Indian flowers and
her soul will rest at midnight in the lily that opens only to the moon.
She will wait in the shadow for me, and live in the great mountain that
is my home, and for ever step behind me on the trail.”
“You will kill Willetts?” demanded Shefford.
“The Navajo will not seek the missionary.”
“But if you meet him you'll kill him?”
“Bi Nai, would Nas Ta Bega kill after it is too late? What good could
come? The Navajo is above revenge.”
“If he crosses my trail I think I couldn't help but kill him,” muttered
Shefford in a passion that wrung the threat from him.
The Indian put his arm round the white man's shoulders.
“Bi Nai, long ago I made you my brother. And now you make me your
brother. Is it not so? Glen Naspa's spirit calls for wisdom, not
revenge. Willetts must be a bad man. But we'll let him live. Life will
punish him. Who knows if he was all to blame? Glen Naspa was only one
pretty Indian girl. There are many white men in the desert. She loved
a white man when she was a baby. The thing was a curse. ... Listen, Bi
Nai, and the Navajo will talk.
“Many years ago the Spanish padres, the first white men, came into the
land of the Indian. Their search was for gold. But they were not wicked
men. They did not steal and kill. They taught the Indian many useful
things. They brought him horses. But when they went away they left him
unsatisfied with his life and his god.
“Then came the pioneers. They crossed the great river and took the
pasture-lands and the hunting-grounds of the Indian. They drove him
backward, and the Indian grew sullen. He began to fight. The white man's
government made treaties with the Indian, and these were broken. Then
war came--fierce and bloody war. The Indian was driven to the waste
places. The stream of pioneers, like a march of ants, spread on into the
desert. Every valley where grass grew, every river, became a place for
farms and towns. Cattle choked the water-holes where the buffalo and
deer had once gone to drink. The forests in the hills were cut and the
springs dried up. And the pioneers followed to the edge of the desert.
“Then came the prospectors, mad, like the padres for the gleam of
gold. The day was not long enough for them to dig in the creeks and the
cañon; they worked in the night. And they brought weapons and rum to
the Indian, to buy from him the secret of the places where the shining
gold lay hidden.
“Then came the traders. And they traded with the Indian. They gave him
little for much, and that little changed his life. He learned a taste
for the sweet foods of the white man. Because he could trade for a sack
of flour he worked less in the field. And the very fiber of his bones
softened.
“Then came the missionaries. They were proselytizers for converts
to their religion. The missionaries are good men. There may be a bad
missionary, like Willetts, the same as there are bad men in other
callings, or bad Indians. They say Shadd is a half-breed. But the Piutes
can tell you he is a full-blood, and he, like me, was sent to a white
man's school. In the beginning the missionaries did well for the Indian.
They taught him cleaner ways of living, better farming, useful work with
tools--many good things. But the wrong to the Indian was the undermining
of his faith. It was not humanity that sent the missionary to the
Indian. Humanity would have helped the Indian in his ignorance of
sickness and work, and left him his god. For to trouble the Indian about
his god worked at the roots of his nature.
“The beauty of the Indian's life is in his love of the open, of all that
is nature, of silence, freedom, wildness. It is a beauty of mind and
soul. The Indian would have been content to watch and feel. To a white
man he might be dirty and lazy--content to dream life away without
trouble or what the white man calls evolution. The Indian might seem
cruel because he leaves his old father out in the desert to die. But the
old man wants to die that way, alone with his spirits and the sunset.
And the white man's medicine keeps his old father alive days and days
after he ought to be dead. Which is more cruel? The Navajos used to
fight with other tribes, and then they were stronger men than they are
to-day.
“But leaving religion, greed, and war out of the question, contact with
the white man would alone have ruined the Indian. The Indian and the
white man cannot mix. The Indian brave learns the habits of the white
man, acquires his diseases, and has not the mind or body to withstand
them. The Indian girl learns to love the white man--and that is death of
her Indian soul, if not of life.
“So the red man is passing. Tribes once powerful have died in the life
of Nas Ta Bega. The curse of the white man is already heavy upon my race
in the south. Here in the north, in the wildest corner of the desert,
chased here by the great soldier, Carson, the Navajo has made his last
stand.
“Bi Nai, you have seen the shadow in the hogan of Hosteen Doetin. Glen
Naspa has gone to her grave, and no sisters, no children, will make
paths to the place of her sleep. Nas Ta Bega will never have a wife--a
child. He sees the end. It is the sunset of the Navajo.... Bi Nai, the
Navajo is dying--dying--dying!”
XV. WILD JUSTICE
A crescent moon hung above the lofty peak over the valley and a train
of white stars ran along the bold rim of the western wall. A few young
frogs peeped plaintively. The night was cool, yet had a touch of balmy
spring, and a sweeter fragrance, as if the cedars and pinyons had
freshened in the warm sun of that day.
Shefford and Fay were walking in the aisles of moonlight and the patches
of shade, and Nas Ta Bega, more than ever a shadow of his white brother,
followed them silently.
“Fay, it's growing late. Feel the dew?” said Shefford. “Come, I must
take you back.”
“But the time's so short. I have said nothing that I wanted to say,” she
replied.
“Say it quickly, then, as we go.”
“After all, it's only--will you take me away soon?”
“Yes, very soon. The Indian and I have talked. But we've made no
plan yet. There are only three ways to get out of this country. By
Stonebridge, by Kayenta and Durango, and by Red Lake. We must choose
one. All are dangerous. We must lose time finding Surprise Valley. I
hoped the Indian could find it. Then we'd bring Lassiter and Jane here
and hide them near till dark, then take you and go. That would give us a
night's start. But you must help us to Surprise Valley.”
“I can go right to it, blindfolded, or in the dark.... Oh, John, hurry!
I dread the wait. He might come again.”
“Joe says--they won't come very soon.”
“Is it far--where we're going--out of the country?”
“Ten days' hard riding.”
“Oh! That night ride to and from Stonebridge nearly killed me. But I
could walk very far, and climb for ever.”
“Fay, we'll get out of the country if I have to carry you.”
When they arrived at the cabin Fay turned on the porch step and, with
her face nearer a level with his, white and sweet in the moonlight, with
her eyes shining and unfathomable, she was more than beautiful.
“You've never been inside my house,” she said. “Come in. I've something
for you.”
“But it's late,” he remonstrated. “I suppose you've got me a cake or
pie--something to eat. You women all think Joe and I have to be fed.”
“No. You'd never guess. Come in,” she said, and the rare smile on her
face was something Shefford would have gone far to see.
“Well, then, for a minute.”
He crossed the porch, the threshold, and entered her home. Her dim,
white shape moved in the darkness. And he followed into a room where the
moon shone through the open window, giving soft, mellow, shadowy light.
He discerned objects, but not clearly, for his senses seemed absorbed in
the strange warmth and intimacy of being for the first time with her in
her home.
“No, it's not good to eat,” she said, and her laugh was happy. “Here--”
Suddenly she abruptly ceased speaking. Shefford saw her plainly, and the
slender form had stiffened, alert and strained. She was listening.
“What was that?” she whispered.
“I didn't hear anything,” he whispered back.
He stepped softly nearer the open window and listened.
Clip-clop! clip-clop! clip-clop! Hard hoofs on the hard path outside!
A strong and rippling thrill went over Shefford. In the soft light her
eyes seemed unnaturally large and black and fearful.
Clip-clop! clip-clop!
The horse stopped outside. Then followed a metallic clink of spur
against stirrup--thud of boots on hard ground--heavy footsteps upon the
porch.
A swift, cold contraction of throat, of breast, convulsed Shefford. His
only thought was that he could not think.
“Ho--Mary!”
A voice liberated both Shefford's muscle and mind--a voice of strange,
vibrant power. Authority of religion and cruelty of will--these
Mormon attributes constituted that power. And Shefford suffered a
transformation which must have been ordered by demons. That sudden flame
seemed to curl and twine and shoot along his veins with blasting force.
A rancorous and terrible cry leaped to his lips.
“Ho--Mary!” Then came a heavy tread across the threshold of the outer
room.
Shefford dared not look at Fay. Yet, dimly, from the corner of his eye,
he saw her, a pale shadow, turned to stone, with her arms out. If he
looked, if he made sure of that, he was lost. When had he drawn his gun?
It was there, a dark and glinting thing in his hand. He must fly--not
through cowardice and fear, but because in one more moment he would
kill a man. Swift as the thought he dove through the open window. And,
leaping up, he ran under the dark pinyons toward camp.
Joe Lake had been out late himself. He sat by the fire, smoking his
pipe. He must have seen or heard Shefford coming, for he rose with
unwonted alacrity, and he kicked the smoldering logs into a flickering
blaze.
Shefford, realizing his deliverance, came panting, staggering into the
light. The Mormon uttered an exclamation. Then he spoke, anxiously, but
what he said was not clear in Shefford's thick and throbbing ears. He
dropped his pipe, a sign of perturbation, and he stared.
But Shefford, without a word, lunged swiftly away into the shadow of the
cedars. He found relief in action. He began a steep ascent of the east
wall, a dangerous slant he had never dared even in daylight, and he
climbed it without a slip. Danger, steep walls, perilous heights, night,
and black cañon the same--these he never thought of. But something
drove him to desperate effort, that the hours might seem short.
. . . . . . . . . . .
The red sun was tipping the eastern wall when he returned to camp, and
he was neither calm nor sure of himself nor ready for sleep or food.
Only he had put the night behind him.
The Indian showed no surprise. But Joe Lake's jaw dropped and his eyes
rolled. Moreover, Joe bore a singular aspect, the exact nature of which
did not at once dawn upon Shefford.
“By God! you've got nerve--or you're crazy!” he ejaculated, hoarsely.
Then it was Shefford's turn to stare. The Mormon was haggard, grieved,
frightened, and utterly amazed. He appeared to be trying to make certain
of Shefford's being there in the flesh and then to find reason for it.
“I've no nerve and I am crazy,” replied Shefford. “But, Joe--what do you
mean? Why do you look at me like that?”
“I reckon if I get your horse that'll square us. Did you come back for
him? You'd better hit the trail quick.”
“It's you now who're crazy,” burst out Shefford.
“Wish to God I was,” replied Joe.
It was then Shefford realized catastrophe, and cold fear gnawed at his
vitals, so that he was sick.
“Joe, what has happened?” he asked, with the blood thick in his heart.
“Hadn't you better tell me?” demanded the Mormon, and a red wave blotted
out the haggard shade of his face.
“You talk like a fool,” said Shefford, sharply, and he strode right up
to Joe.
“See here, Shefford, we've been pards. You're making it hard for me.
Reckon you ain't square.”
Shefford shot out a long arm and his hand clutched the Mormon's burly
shoulder.
“Why am I not square? What do you mean?”
Joe swallowed hard and gave himself a shake. Then he eyed his comrade
steadily.
“I was afraid you'd kill him. I reckon I can't blame you. I'll help you
get away. And I'm a Mormon! Do you take the hunch?... But don't deny you
killed him!”
“Killed whom?” gasped Shefford.
“Her husband!”
Shefford seemed stricken by a slow, paralyzing horror. The Mormon's
changing face grew huge and indistinct and awful in his sight. He was
clutched and shaken in Joe's rude hands, yet scarcely felt them. Joe
seemed to be bellowing at him, but the voice was far off. Then Shefford
began to see, to hear through some cold and terrible deadness that had
come between him and everything.
“Say YOU killed him!” hoarsely supplicated the Mormon.
Shefford had not yet control of speech. Something in his gaze appeared
to drive Joe frantic.
“Damn you! Tell me quick. Say YOU killed him!... If you want to know
my stand, why, I'm glad!... Shefford, don't look so stony! ... For HER
sake, say you killed him!”
Shefford stood with a face as gray and still as stone. With a groan the
Mormon drew away from him and sank upon a log. He bowed his head; his
broad shoulders heaved; husky sounds came from him. Then with a violent
wrench he plunged to his feet and shook himself like a huge, savage dog.
“Reckon it's no time to weaken,” he said, huskily, and with the words a
dark, hard, somber bitterness came to his face.
“Where--is--she?” whispered Shefford.
“Shut up in the school-house,” he replied.
“Did she--did she--”
“She neither denied nor confessed.”
“Have you--seen her?”
“Yes.”
“How did--she look?”
“Cool and quiet as the Indian there.... Game as hell! She always had
stuff in her.”
“Oh, Joe!... It's unbelievable!” cried Shefford. “That lovely, innocent
girl! She couldn't--she couldn't.”
“She's fixed him. Don't think of that. It's too late. We ought to have
saved her.”
“God!... She begged me to hurry--to take her away.”
“Think what we can do NOW to save her,” cut in the Mormon.
Shefford sustained a vivifying shock. “To save her?” he echoed.
“Think, man!”
“Joe, I can hit the trail and let you tell them I killed him,” burst out
Shefford in panting excitement.
“Reckon I can.”
“So help me God I'll do it!”
The Mormon turned a dark and austere glance upon Shefford.
“You mustn't leave her. She killed him for your sake.... You must fight
for her now--save her--take her away.”
“But the law!”
“Law!” scoffed Joe. “In these wilds men get killed and there's no law.
But if she's taken back to Stonebridge those iron-jawed old Mormons will
make law enough to--to... Shefford, the thing is--get her away. Once out
of the country, she's safe. Mormons keep their secrets.”
“I'll take her. Joe, will you help me?”
Shefford, even in his agitation, felt the Mormon's silence to be a
consent that need not have been asked. And Shefford had a passionate
gratefulness toward his comrade. That stultifying and blinding prejudice
which had always seemed to remove a Mormon outside the pale of certain
virtue suffered final eclipse; and Joe Lake stood out a man, strange and
crude, but with a heart and a soul.
“Joe, tell me what to do,” said Shefford, with a simplicity that meant
he needed only to be directed.
“Pull yourself together. Get your nerve back,” replied Joe. “Reckon
you'd better show yourself over there. No one saw you come in this
morning--your absence from camp isn't known. It's better you seem
curious and shocked like the rest of us. Come on. We'll go over. And
afterward we'll get the Indian, and plan.”
They left camp and, crossing the brook, took the shaded path toward the
village. Hope of saving Fay, the need of all his strength and nerve
and cunning to effect that end, gave Shefford the supreme courage to
overcome his horror and fear. On that short walk under the pinyons to
Fay's cabin he had suffered many changes of emotion, but never anything
like this change which made him fierce and strong to fight, deep and
crafty to plan, hard as iron to endure.
The village appeared very quiet, though groups of women stood at the
doors of cabins. If they talked, it was very low. Henninger and Smith,
two of the three Mormon men living in the village, were standing
before the closed door of the school-house. A tigerish feeling thrilled
Shefford when he saw them on guard there. Shefford purposely avoided
looking at Fay's cabin as long as he could keep from it. When he had to
look he saw several hooded, whispering women in the yard, and Beal, the
other Mormon man, standing in the cabin door. Upon the porch lay the
long shape of a man, covered with blankets.
Shefford experienced a horrible curiosity.
“Say, Beal, I've fetched Shefford over,” said Lake. “He's pretty much
cut up.”
Beal wagged a solemn head, but said nothing. His mind seemed absent or
steeped in gloom, and he looked up as one silently praying.
Joe Lake strode upon the little porch and, reaching down, he stripped
the blanket from the shrouded form.
Shefford saw a sharp, cold, ghastly face. “WAGGONER!” he whispered.
“Yes,” replied Lake.
Waggoner! Shefford remembered the strange power in his face, and, now
that life had gone, that power was stripped of all disguise. Death, in
Shefford's years of ministry, had lain under his gaze many times and in
a multiplicity of aspects, but never before had he seen it stamped so
strangely. Shefford did not need to be told that here was a man who
believed he had conversed with God on earth, who believed he had a
divine right to rule women, who had a will that would not yield itself
to death utterly. Waggoner, then, was the devil who had come masked to
Surprise Valley, had forced a martyrdom upon Fay Larkin. And this was
the Mormon who had made Fay Larkin a murderess. Shefford had hated
him living, and now he hated him dead. Death here was robbed of all
nobility, of pathos, of majesty. It was only retribution. Wild justice!
But alas! that it had to be meted out by a white-soled girl whose
innocence was as great as the unconscious savagery which she had
assimilated from her lonely and wild environment. Shefford laid a
despairing curse upon his own head, and a terrible remorse knocked at
his heart. He had left her alone, this girl in whom love had made the
great change--like a coward he had left her alone. That curse he visited
upon himself because he had been the spirit and the motive of this wild
justice, and his should have been the deed.
Joe Lake touched Shefford's arm and pointed at the haft of a knife
protruding from Waggoner's breast. It was a wooden haft. Shefford had
seen it before somewhere.
Then he was struck with what perhaps Joe meant him to see--the singular
impression the haft gave of one sweeping, accurate, powerful stroke. A
strong arm had driven that blade home. The haft was sunk deep; there was
a little depression in the cloth; no blood showed; and the weapon looked
as if it could not be pulled out. Shefford's thought went fatally and
irresistibly to Fay Larkin's strong arm. He saw her flash that white arm
and lift the heavy bucket from the spring with an ease he wondered at.
He felt the strong clasp of her hand as she had given it to him in a
flying leap across a crevice upon the walls. Yes, her fine hand and the
round, strong arm possessed the strength to have given that blade
its singular directness and force. The marvel was not in the physical
action. It hid inscrutably in the mystery of deadly passion rising out
of a gentle and sad heart.
Joe Lake drew up the blanket and shut from Shefford's fascinated gaze
that spare form, that accusing knife, that face of strange, cruel power.
“Anybody been sent for?” asked Lake of Beal.
“Yes. An Indian boy went for the Piute. We'll send him to Stonebridge,”
replied the Mormon.
“How soon do you expect any one here from Stonebridge?”
“To-morrow, mebbe by noon.”
“Meantime what's to be done with--this?”
“Elder Smith thinks the body should stay right here where it fell till
they come from Stonebridge.”
“Waggoner was found here, then?”
“Right here.”
“Who found him?”
“Mother Smith. She came over early. An' the sight made her scream. The
women all came runnin'. Mother Smith had to be put to bed.”
“Who found--Mary?”
“See here, Joe, I told you all I knowed once before,” replied the
Mormon, testily.
“I've forgotten. Was sort of bewildered. Tell me again.... Who
found--her?”
“The women folks. She laid right inside the door, in a dead faint. She
hadn't undressed. There was blood on her hands an' a cut or scratch. The
women fetched her to. But she wouldn't talk. Then Elder Smith come an'
took her. They've got her locked up.”
Then Joe led Shefford away from the cabin farther on into the village.
When they were halted by the somber, grieving women it was Joe who did
the talking. They passed the school-house, and here Shefford quickened
his step. He could scarcely bear the feeling that rushed over him. And
the Mormon gripped his arm as if he understood.
“Shefford, which one of these younger women do you reckon your best
friend? Ruth?” asked Lake, earnestly.
“Ruth, by all means. Just lately I haven't seen her often. But we've
been close friends. I think she'd do much for me.”
“Maybe there'll be a chance to find out. Maybe we'll need Ruth. Let's
have a word with her. I haven't seen her out among the women.”
They stopped at the door of Ruth's cabin. It was closed. When Joe
knocked there came a sound of footsteps inside, a hand drew aside the
window-blind, and presently the door opened. Ruth stood there, dressed
in somber hue. She was a pretty, slender, blue-eyed, brown-haired young
woman.
Shefford imagined from her pallor and the set look of shock upon her
face, that the tragedy had affected her more powerfully than it had the
other women. When he remembered that she had been more friendly with
Fay Larkin than any other neighbor, he made sure he was right in his
conjecture.
“Come in,” was Ruth's greeting.
“No. We just wanted to say a word. I noticed you've not been out. Do you
know--all about it?”
She gave them a strange glance.
“Any of the women folks been in?” added Joe.
“Hester ran over. She told me through the window. Then I barred my door
to keep the other women out.”
“What for?” asked Joe, curiously.
“Please come in,” she said, in reply.
They entered, and she closed the door after them. The change that came
over her then was the loosing of restraint.
“Joe--what will they do with Mary?” she queried, tensely.
The Mormon studied her with dark, speculative eyes. “Hang her!” he
rejoined in brutal harshness.
“O Mother of Saints!” she cried, and her hands went up.
“You're sorry for Mary, then?” asked Joe, bluntly.
“My heart is breaking for her.”
“Well, so's Shefford's,” said the Mormon, huskily. “And mine's kind of
damn shaky.”
Ruth glided to Shefford with a woman's swift softness.
“You've been my good--my best friend. You were hers, too. Oh, I know!
... Can't you do something for her?”
“I hope to God I can,” replied Shefford.
Then the three stood looking from one to the other, in a strong and
subtly realizing moment drawn together.
“Ruth,” whispered Joe, hoarsely, and then he glanced fearfully around,
at the window and door, as if listeners were there. It was certain
that his dark face had paled. He tried to whisper more, only to fail.
Shefford divined the weight of Mormonism that burdened Joe Lake then.
Joe was faithful to a love for Fay Larkin, noble in friendship to
Shefford, desperate in a bitter strait with his own manliness, but the
power of that creed by which he had been raised struck his lips mute.
For to speak on meant to be false to that creed. Already in his heart he
had decided, yet he could not voice the thing.
“Ruth”--Shefford took up the Mormon's unfinished whisper--“if we plan to
save her--if we need you--will you help?”
Ruth turned white, but an instant and splendid fire shone in her eyes.
“Try me,” she whispered back. “I'll change places with her--so you can
get her away. They can't do much to me.”
Shefford wrung her hands. Joe licked his lips and found his voice:
“We'll come back later.” Then he led the way out and Shefford followed.
They were silent all the way back to camp.
Nas Ta Bega sat in repose where they had left him, a thoughtful, somber
figure. Shefford went directly to the Indian, and Joe tarried at the
camp-fire, where he raked out some red embers and put one upon the bowl
of his pipe. He puffed clouds of white smoke, then found a seat beside
the others.