three others of his gang. Evidently the white men, the outlaws, were the
ones on foot. Shefford thrilled and his veins stung when he saw these
pursuers come passing what he considered the danger mark. But manifestly
they could not see their danger. Assuredly they were aware of the chasm;
however, the level upon which they were advancing narrowed gradually,
and they could not tell that very soon they could not go any farther nor
could they turn back. The alternative was to climb the slope, and that
was a desperate chance.
They came up, now about on a level with Shefford, and perhaps three
hundred yards distant. He gripped his rifle with a fatal assurance that
he could kill one of them now. Still he waited. Curiosity consumed
him because every foot they advanced heightened their peril. Shefford
wondered if Shadd would have chosen that course if he had not supposed
the Navajo had chosen it first. It was plain that one of the walking
Piutes stooped now and then to examine the rock. He was looking for some
faint sign of a horse track.
Shadd halted within two hundred yards of where Shefford lay hidden. His
keen eye had caught the significance of the narrowing level before he
had reached the end. He pointed and spoke. Shefford heard his voice.
The others replied. They all looked up at the steep slope, down into
the chasm right below them, and across into the cedars. The Piute in the
rear succeeded in turning his horse, went back, and began to circle
up the slope. The others entered into an argument and they became more
closely grouped upon the narrow bench. Their mustangs were lean, wiry,
wild, vicious, and Shefford calculated grimly upon what a stampede might
mean in that position.
Then Shadd turned his mustang up the slope. Like a goat he climbed.
Another Indian in the rear succeeded in pivoting his steed and started
back, apparently to circle round and up. The others of the gang appeared
uncertain. They yelled hoarsely at Shadd, who halted on the steep slant
some twenty paces above them. He spoke and made motions that evidently
meant the climb was easy enough. It looked easy for him. His dark face
flashed red in the rays of the sun.
At this critical moment Shefford decided to fire. He meant to kill
Shadd, hoping if the leader was gone the others would abandon the
pursuit. The rifle wavered a little as he aimed, then grew still. He
fired. Shadd never flinched. But the fiery mustang, perhaps wounded,
certainly terrified, plunged down with piercing, horrid scream. Shadd
fell under him. Shrill yells rent the air. Like a thunderbolt the
sliding horse was upon men and animals below.
A heavy shock, wild snorts, upflinging heads and hoofs, a terrible
tramping, thudding, shrieking melee, then a brown, twisting, tangled
mass shot down the slant over the rim!
Shefford dazedly thought he saw men running. He did see plunging horses.
One slipped, fell, rolled, and went into the chasm.
Then up from the depths came a crash, a long, slipping roar. In another
instant there was a lighter crash and a lighter sliding roar.
Two horses, shaking, paralyzed with fear, were left upon the narrow
level. Beyond them a couple of men were crawling along the stone. Up
on the level stood the two Indians, holding down frightened horses, and
staring at the fatal slope.
And Shefford lay there under the cedar, in the ghastly grip of the
moment, hardly comprehending that his ill-aimed shot had been a
thunderbolt.
He did not think of shooting at the Piutes; they, however, recovering
from their shock, evidently feared the ambush, for they swiftly drew up
the slope and passed out of sight. The frightened horses below whistled
and tramped along the lower level, finally vanishing. There was nothing
left on the bare wall to prove to Shefford that it had been the scene
of swift and tragic death. He leaned from his covert and peered over the
rim. Hundreds of feet below he saw dark growths of pinyons. There was no
sign of a pile of horses and men, and then he realized that he could not
tell the number that had perished. The swift finale had been as stunning
to him as if lightning had struck near him.
Suddenly it flashed over him what state of suspense and torture Fay and
Jane must be in at that very moment. And, leaping up, he ran out of the
cedars to the slope behind and hurried down at risk of limb. The sun had
set by this time. He hoped he could catch up with the party before dark.
He went straight down, and the end of the slope was a smooth, low wall.
The Indian must have descended with the horses at some other point. The
cañon was about fifty yards wide and it headed under the great slope of
Navajo Mountain. These smooth, rounded walls appeared to end at its low
rim.
Shefford slid down upon a grassy bank, and finding the tracks of the
horses, he followed them. They led along the wall. As soon as he had
assured himself that Nas Ta Bega had gone down the cañon he abandoned
the tracks and pushed ahead swiftly. He heard the soft rush of running
water. In the center of the cañon wound heavy lines of bright-green
foliage, bordering a rocky brook. The air was close, warm, and sweet
with perfume of flowers. The walls were low and shelving, and soon lost
that rounded appearance peculiar to the wind-worn slopes above. Shefford
came to where the horses had plowed down a gravelly bank into the clear,
swift water of the brook. The little pools of water were still muddy.
Shefford drank, finding the water cold and sweet, without the bitter
bite of alkali. He crossed and pushed on, running on the grassy levels.
Flowers were everywhere, but he did not notice them particularly. The
cañon made many leisurely turns, and its size, if it enlarged at all,
was not perceptible to him yet. The rims above him were perhaps fifty
feet high. Cottonwood-trees began to appear along the brook, and
blossoming buck-brush in the corners of wall.
He had traveled perhaps a mile when Nas Ta Bega, appearing to come out
of the thicket, confronted him.
“Hello!” called Shefford. “Where're Fay--and the others?”
The Indian made a gesture that signified the rest of the party were
beyond a little way. Shefford took Nas Ta Bega's arm, and as they
walked, and he panted for breath, he told what had happened back on the
slopes.
The Indian made one of his singular speaking sweeps of hand, and he
scrutinized Shefford's face, but he received the news in silence. They
turned a corner of wall, crossed a wide, shallow, boulder-strewn place
in the brook, and mounted the bank to a thicket. Beyond this, from a
clump of cottonwoods, Lassiter strode out with a gun in each hand. He
had been hiding.
“Shore I'm glad to see you,” he said, and the eyes that piercingly fixed
on Shefford were now as keen as formerly they had been mild.
“Gone! Lassiter--they're gone,” broke out Shefford. “Where's Fay--and
Jane?”
Lassiter called, and presently the women came out of the thick brake,
and Fay bounded forward with her swift stride, while Jane followed with
eager step and anxious face. Then they all surrounded Shefford.
“It was Shadd--and his gang,” panted Shefford. “Eight in all. Three or
four Piutes--the others outlaws. They lost track of us. Went below the
place--where they shot at us. And they came up--on a bad slope.”
Shefford described the slope and the deep chasm and how Shadd led up to
the point where he saw his mistake and then how the catastrophe fell.
“I shot--and missed,” repeated Shefford, with the sweat in beads on
his pale face. “I missed Shadd. Maybe I hit the horse. He
plunged--reared--fell back--a terrible fall--right upon that bunch of
horses and men below.... In a horrible, wrestling, screaming tangle they
slid over the rim! I don't know how many. I saw some men running along.
I saw three other horses plunging. One slipped and went over. ... I have
no idea how many, but Shadd and some of his gang went to destruction.”
“Shore thet's fine!” said Lassiter. “But mebbe I won't get to use them
guns, after all.”
“Hardly on that gang,” laughed Shefford. “The two Piutes and what others
escaped turned back. Maybe they'll meet a posse of Mormons--for of
course the Mormons will track us, too--and come back to where Shadd
lost his life. That's an awful place. Even the Piute got lost--couldn't
follow Nas Ta Bega. It would take any pursuers some time to find how we
got in here. I believe we need not fear further pursuit. Certainly not
to-night or to-morrow. Then we'll be far down the cañon.”
When Shefford concluded his earnest remarks the faces of Fay and Jane
had lost the signs of suppressed dread.
“Nas Ta Bega, make camp here,” said Shefford. “Water--wood--grass--why,
this 's something like.... Fay, how's your arm?”
“It hurts,” she replied, simply.
“Come with me down to the brook and let me wash and bind it properly.”
They went, and she sat upon a stone while he knelt beside her and untied
his scarf from her arm. As the blood had hardened, it was necessary to
slit her sleeve to the shoulder. Using his scarf, he washed the blood
from the wound, and found it to be merely a cut, a groove, on the
surface.
“That's nothing,” Shefford said, lightly. “It'll heal in a day. But
there'll always be a scar. And when we--we get back to civilization,
and you wear a pretty gown without sleeves, people will wonder what made
this mark on your beautiful arm.”
Fay looked at him with wonderful eyes. “Do women wear gowns without
sleeves?” she asked.
“They do.”
“Have I a--beautiful arm?”
She stretched it out, white, blue-veined, the skin fine as satin, the
lines graceful and flowing, a round, firm, strong arm.
“The most beautiful I ever saw,” he replied.
But the pleasure his compliment gave her was not communicated to him.
His last impression of that right arm had been of its strength, and
his mind flashed with lightning swiftness to a picture that haunted
him--Waggoner lying dead on the porch with that powerfully driven knife
in his breast. Shefford shuddered through all his being. Would this
phantom come often to him like that? Hurriedly he bound up her arm with
the scarf and did not look at her, and was conscious that she felt a
subtle change in him.
The short twilight ended with the fugitives comfortable in a camp that
for natural features could not have been improved upon. Darkness found
Fay and Jane asleep on a soft mossy bed, a blanket tucked around them,
and their faces still and beautiful in the flickering camp-fire light.
Lassiter did not linger long awake. Nas Ta Bega, seeing Shefford's
excessive fatigue, urged him to sleep. Shefford demurred, insisting that
he share the night-watch. But Nas Ta Bega, by agreeing that Shefford
might have the following night's duty, prevailed upon him.
Shefford seemed to shut his eyes upon darkness and to open them
immediately to the light. The stream of blue sky above, the gold tints
on the western rim, the rosy, brightening colors down in the cañon,
were proofs of the sunrise. This morning Nas Ta Bega proceeded
leisurely, and his manner was comforting. When all was in readiness
for a start he gave the mustang he had ridden to Shefford, and walked,
leading the pack-animal.
The mode of travel here was a selection of the best levels, the best
places to cross the brook, the best banks to climb, and it was a process
of continual repetition. As the Indian picked out the course and the
mustangs followed his lead there was nothing for Shefford to do but take
his choice between reflection that seemed predisposed toward gloom and
an absorption in the beauty, color, wildness, and changing character of
Nonnezoshe Boco.
Assuredly his experience in the desert did not count in it a trip down
into a strange, beautiful, lost cañon such as this. It did not widen,
though the walls grew higher. They began to lean and bulge, and the
narrow strip of sky above resembled a flowing blue river. Huge caverns
had been hollowed out by some work of nature, what, he could not tell,
though he was sure it could not have been wind. And when the brook ran
close under one of these overhanging places the running water made a
singular, indescribable sound. A crack from a hoof on a stone rang like
a hollow bell and echoed from wall to wall. And the croak of a frog--the
only living creature he had so far noted in the cañon--was a weird and
melancholy thing.
Fay rode close to him, and his heart seemed to rejoice when she spoke,
when she showed how she wanted to be near him, yet, try as he might,
he could not respond. His speech to her--what little there was--did
not come spontaneously. And he suffered a remorse that he could not be
honestly natural to her. Then he would drive away the encroaching gloom,
trusting that a little time would dispel it.
“We are deeper down than Surprise Valley,” said Fay.
“How do you know?” he asked.
“Here are the pink and yellow sago-lilies. You remember we went once to
find the white ones? I have found white lilies in Surprise Valley, but
never any pink or yellow.”
Shefford had seen flowers all along the green banks, but he had not
marked the lilies. Here he dismounted and gathered several. They were
larger than the white ones of higher altitudes, of the same exquisite
beauty and fragility, of such rare pink and yellow hues as he had never
seen. He gave the flowers to Fay.
“They bloom only where it's always summer,” she said.
That expressed their nature. They were the orchids of the summer cañon.
They stood up everywhere starlike out of the green. It was impossible
to prevent the mustangs treading them under hoof. And as the cañon
deepened, and many little springs added their tiny volume to the
brook, every grassy bench was dotted with lilies, like a green sky
star-spangled. And this increasing luxuriance manifested itself in the
banks of purple moss and clumps of lavender daisies and great clusters
of yellow violets. The brook was lined by blossoming buck-rush; the
rocky corners showed the crimson and magenta of cactus; ledges were
green with shining moss that sparkled with little white flowers. The hum
of bees filled the air.
But by and by this green and colorful and verdant beauty, the almost
level floor of the cañon, the banks of soft earth, the thickets and
the clumps of cotton-woods, the shelving caverns and the bulging
walls--these features gradually were lost, and Nonnezoshe Boco began to
deepen in bare red and white stone steps, the walls sheered away from
one another, breaking into sections and ledges, and rising higher and
higher, and there began to be manifested a dark and solemn concordance
with the nature that had created this rent in the earth.
There was a stretch of miles where steep steps in hard red rock
alternated with long levels of round boulders. Here one by one the
mustangs went lame. And the fugitives, dismounting to spare the faithful
beasts, slipped and stumbled over these loose and treacherous stones.
Fay was the only one who did not show distress. She was glad to be on
foot again and the rolling boulders were as stable as solid rock for
her.
The hours passed; the toil increased; the progress diminished; one
of the mustangs failed entirely and was left; and all the while the
dimensions of Nonnezoshe Boco magnified and its character changed. It
became a thousand-foot walled cañon, leaning, broken, threatening, with
great yellow slides blocking passage, with huge sections split off from
the main wall, with immense dark and gloomy caverns. Strangely, it had
no intersecting cañon. It jealously guarded its secret. Its unusual
formations of cavern and pillar and half-arch led the mind to expect any
monstrous stone-shape left by an avalanche or cataclysm.
Down and down the fugitives toiled. And now the stream-bed was bare of
boulders, and the banks of earth. The floods that had rolled down that
cañon had here borne away every loose thing. All the floor was bare red
and white stone, polished, glistening, slippery, affording treacherous
foothold. And the time came when Nas Ta Bega abandoned the stream-bed to
take to the rock-strewn and cactus-covered ledges above.
Jane gave out and had to be assisted upon the weary mustang. Fay was
persuaded to mount Nack-yal again. Lassiter plodded along. The Indian
bent tired steps far in front. And Shefford traveled on after him,
footsore and hot.
The cañon widened ahead into a great, ragged, iron-hued amphitheater,
and from there apparently turned abruptly at right angles. Sunset rimmed
the walls. Shefford wondered dully when the Indian would halt to camp.
And he dragged himself onward with eyes down on the rough ground.
When he raised them again the Indian stood on a point of slope with
folded arms, gazing down where the cañon veered. Something in Nas Ta
Bega's pose quickened Shefford's pulse and then his steps. He reached
the Indian and the point where he, too, could see beyond that vast
jutting wall that had obstructed his view.
A mile beyond all was bright with the colors of sunset, and spanning
the cañon in the graceful shape arid beautiful hues of a rainbow was a
magnificent stone bridge.
“Nonnezoshe!” exclaimed the Navajo, with a deep and sonorous roll in his
voice.
XVIII. AT THE FOOT OF THE RAINBOW
The rainbow bridge was the one great natural phenomenon, the one grand
spectacle, which Shefford had ever seen that did not at first give vague
disappointment, a confounding of reality, a disenchantment of contrast
with what the mind had conceived.
But this thing was glorious. It silenced him, yet did not awe or stun.
His body and brain, weary and dull from the toil of travel, received a
singular and revivifying freshness. He had a strange, mystic perception
of this rosy-hued stupendous arch of stone, as if in a former life
it had been a goal he could not reach. This wonder of nature, though
all-satisfying, all-fulfilling to his artist's soul, could not be a
resting-place for him, a destination where something awaited him, a
height he must scale to find peace, the end of his strife. But it seemed
all these. He could not understand his perception or his emotion. Still,
here at last, apparently, was the rainbow of his boyish dreams and of
his manhood--a rainbow magnified even beyond those dreams, no longer
transparent and ethereal, but solidified, a thing of ages, sweeping up
majestically from the red walls, its iris-hued arch against the blue
sky.
Nas Ta Bega led on down the ledge and Shefford plodded thoughtfully
after him. The others followed. A jutting corner of wall again hid the
cañon. The Indian was working round to circle the huge amphitheater. It
was slow, irritating, strenuous toil, for the way was on a steep slant,
rough and loose and dragging. The rocks were as hard and jagged as
lava. And the cactus further hindered progress. When at last the long
half-circle had been accomplished the golden and rosy lights had faded.
Again the cañon opened to view. All the walls were pale and steely and
the stone bridge loomed dark. Nas Ta Bega said camp would be made at
the bridge, which was now close. Just before they reached it the Navajo
halted with one of his singular actions. Then he stood motionless.
Shefford realized that Nas Ta Bega was saying his prayer to this great
stone god. Presently the Indian motioned for Shefford to lead the others
and the horses on under the bridge. Shefford did so, and, upon turning,
was amazed to see the Indian climbing the steep and difficult slope on
the other side. All the party watched him until he disappeared behind
the huge base of cliff that supported the arch. Shefford selected a
level place for camp, some few rods away, and here, with Lassiter,
unsaddled and unpacked the lame, drooping mustangs. When this was done
twilight had fallen. Nas Ta Bega appeared, coming down the steep slope
on this side of the bridge. Then Shefford divined why the Navajo had
made that arduous climb. He would not go under the bridge. Nonnezoshe
was a Navajo god. And Nas Ta Bega, though educated as a white man, was
true to the superstition of his ancestors.
Nas Ta Bega turned the mustangs loose to fare for what scant grass grew
on bench and slope. Firewood was even harder to find than grass. When
the camp duties had been performed and the simple meal eaten there was
gloom gathering in the cañon and the stars had begun to blink in the
pale strip of blue above the lofty walls. The place was oppressive and
the fugitives mostly silent. Shefford spread a bed of blankets for
the women, and Jane at once lay wearily down. Fay stood beside the
flickering fire, and Shefford felt her watching him. He was conscious of
a desire to get away from her haunting gaze. To the gentle good-night he
bade her she made no response.
Shefford moved away into a strange dark shadow cast by the bridge
against the pale starlight. It was a weird, black belt, where he
imagined he was invisible, but out of which he could see. There was a
slab of rock near the foot of the bridge, and here Shefford composed
himself to watch, to feel, to think the unknown thing that seemed to be
inevitably coming to him.
A slight stiffening of his neck made him aware that he had been
continually looking up at the looming arch. And he found that insensibly
it had changed and grown. It had never seemed the same any two moments,
but that was not what he meant. Near at hand it was too vast a thing for
immediate comprehension. He wanted to ponder on what had formed it--to
reflect upon its meaning as to age and force of nature, yet all he could
do at each moment was to see. White stars hung along the dark curved
line. The rim of the arch seemed to shine. The moon must be up there
somewhere. The far side of the cañon was now a blank, black wall. Over
its towering rim showed a pale glow. It brightened. The shades in the
cañon lightened, then a white disk of moon peered over the dark line.
The bridge turned to silver, and the gloomy, shadowy belt it had cast
blanched and vanished.
Shefford became aware of the presence of Nas Ta Bega. Dark, silent,
statuesque, with inscrutable eyes uplifted, with all that was spiritual
of the Indian suggested by a somber and tranquil knowledge of his place
there, he represented the same to Shefford as a solitary figure of
human life brought out the greatness of a great picture. Nonnezoshe Boco
needed life, wild life, life of its millions of years--and here stood
the dark and silent Indian.
There was a surge in Shefford's heart and in his mind a perception of a
moment of incalculable change to his soul. And at that moment Fay Larkin
stole like a phantom to his side and stood there with her uncovered head
shining and her white face lovely in the moonlight.
“May I stay with you--a little?” she asked, wistfully. “I can't sleep.”
“Surely you may,” he replied. “Does your arm hurt too badly, or are you
too tired to sleep?”
“No--it's this place. I--I--can't tell you how I feel.”
But the feeling was there in her eyes for Shefford to read. Had he too
great an emotion--did he read too much--did he add from his soul? For
him the wild, starry, haunted eyes mirrored all that he had seen and
felt under Nonnezoshe. And for herself they shone eloquently of courage
and love.
“I need to talk--and I don't know how,” she said.
He was silent, but he took her hands and drew her closer.
“Why are you so--so different?” she asked, bravely.
“Different?” he echoed.
“Yes. You are kind--you speak the same to me as you used to. But since
we started you've been different, somehow.”
“Fay, think how hard and dangerous the trip's been! I've been
worried--and sick with dread--with--Oh, you can't imagine the strain I'm
under! How could I be my old self?”
“It isn't worry I mean.”
He was too miserable to try to find out what she did mean; besides, he
believed, if he let himself think about it, he would know what troubled
her.
“I--I am almost happy,” she said, softly.
“Fay!... Aren't you at all afraid?”
“No. You'll take care of me.... Do--do you love me--like you did
before?”
“Why, child! Of course--I love you,” he replied, brokenly, and he drew
her closer. He had never embraced her, never kissed her. But there was
a whiteness about her then--a wraith--a something from her soul, and he
could only gaze at her.
“I love you,” she whispered. “I thought I knew it that--that night. But
I'm only finding it out now.... And somehow I had to tell you here.”
“Fay, I haven't said much to you,” he said, hurriedly, huskily. “I
haven't had a chance. I love you. I--I ask you--will you be my wife?”