To Margaret the day was very fair, and the omens all auspicious. She
carried with her close to her heart two precious letters received that
morning and scarcely glanced at as yet, one from Gardley and one from
her mother. She had had only time to open them and be sure that all was
well with her dear ones, and had left the rest to read on the way.
She was dressed in the khaki riding-habit she always wore when she went
on horseback; and in the bag strapped on behind she carried a couple of
fresh white blouses, a thin, white dress, a little soft dark silk gown
that folded away almost into a cobweb, and a few other necessities. She
had also slipped in a new book her mother had sent her, into which she
had had as yet no time to look, and her chessmen and board, besides
writing materials. She prided herself on having got so many necessaries
into so small a compass. She would need the extra clothing if she stayed
at Ganado with the missionaries for a week on her return from the trip,
and the book and chessmen would amuse them all by the way. She had heard
Brownleigh say he loved to play chess.
Margaret rode on the familiar trail, and for the first hour just let
herself be glad that school was over and she could rest and have no
responsibility. The sun shimmered down brilliantly on the white, hot
sand and gray-green of the greasewood and sage-brush. Tall spikes of
cactus like lonely spires shot up now and again to vary the scene. It
was all familiar ground to Margaret around here, for she had taken many
rides with Gardley and Bud, and for the first part of the way every turn
and bit of view was fraught with pleasant memories that brought a smile
to her eyes as she recalled some quotation of Gardley's or some prank of
Bud's. Here was where they first sighted the little cottontail the day
she took her initial ride on her own pony. Off there was the mountain
where they saw the sun drawing silver water above a frowning storm.
Yonder was the group of cedars where they had stopped to eat their lunch
once, and this water-hole they were approaching was the one where
Gardley had given her a drink from his hat.
She was almost glad that Bud was not along, for she was too tired to
talk and liked to be alone with her thoughts for this few minutes. Poor
Bud! He would be disappointed when he got back to find her gone, but
then he had expected she was going in a few days, anyway, and she had
promised to take long rides with him when she returned. She had left a
little note for him, asking him to read a certain book in her bookcase
while she was gone, and be ready to discuss it with her when she got
back, and Bud would be fascinated with it, she knew. Bud had been dear
and faithful, and she would miss him, but just for this little while
she was glad to have the great out-of-doors to herself.
She was practically alone. The two sphinx-like figures riding ahead of
her made no sign, but stolidly rode on hour after hour, nor turned their
heads even to see if she were coming. She knew that Indians were this
way; still, as the time went by she began to feel an uneasy sense of
being alone in the universe with a couple of bronze statues. Even the
papoose had erased itself in sleep, and when it awoke partook so fully
of its racial peculiarities as to hold its little peace and make no
fuss. Margaret began to feel the baby was hardly human, more like a
little brown doll set up in a missionary meeting to teach white children
what a papoose was like.
By and by she got out her letters and read them over carefully, dreaming
and smiling over them, and getting precious bits by heart. Gardley
hinted that he might be able very soon to visit her parents, as it
looked as though he might have to make a trip on business in their
direction before he could go further with what he was doing in his old
home. He gave no hint of soon returning to the West. He said he was
awaiting the return of one man who might soon be coming from abroad.
Margaret sighed and wondered how many weary months it would be before
she would see him. Perhaps, after all, she ought to have gone home and
stayed them out with her mother and father. If the school-board could be
made to see that it would be better to have no summer session, perhaps
she would even yet go when she returned from the Brownleighs'. She would
see. She would decide nothing until she was rested.
Suddenly she felt herself overwhelmingly weary, and wished that the
Indians would stop and rest for a while; but when she stirred up her
sleepy pony and spurred ahead to broach the matter to her guide he shook
his solemn head and pointed to the sun:
"No get Keams good time. No meet Aneshodi."
"Aneshodi," she knew, was the Indians' name for the missionary, and she
smiled her acquiescence. Of course they must meet the Brownleighs and
not detain them. What was it Hazel had said about having to hurry? She
searched her pocket for the letter, and then remembered she had left it
with Mrs. Tanner. What a pity she had not brought it! Perhaps there was
some caution or advice in it that she had not taken note of. But then
the Indian likely knew all about it, and she could trust to him. She
glanced at his stolid face and wished she could make him smile. She cast
a sunny smile at him and said something pleasant about the beautiful
day, but he only looked her through as if she were not there, and after
one or two more attempts she fell back and tried to talk to the squaw;
but the squaw only looked stolid, too, and shook her head. She did not
seem friendly. Margaret drew back into her old position and feasted her
eyes upon the distant hills.
The road was growing unfamiliar now. They were crossing rough ridges
with cliffs of red sandstone, and every step of the way was interesting.
Yet Margaret felt more and more how much she wanted to lie down and
sleep, and when at last in the dusk the Indians halted not far from a
little pool of rainwater and indicated that here they would camp for
the night, Margaret was too weary to question the decision. It had not
occurred to her that she would be on the way overnight before she met
her friends. Her knowledge of the way, and of distances, was but vague.
It is doubtful if she would have ventured had she known that she must
pass the night thus in the company of two strange savage creatures. Yet,
now that she was here and it was inevitable, she would not shrink, but
make the best of it. She tried to be friendly once more, and offered to
look out for the baby while the squaw gathered wood and made a fire. The
Indian was off looking after the horses, evidently expecting his wife to
do all the work.
Margaret watched a few minutes, while pretending to play with the baby,
who was both sleepy and hungry, yet held his emotions as stolidly as if
he were a grown person. Then she decided to take a hand in the supper.
She was hungry and could not bear that those dusky, dirty hands should
set forth her food, so she went to work cheerfully, giving directions as
if the Indian woman understood her, though she very soon discovered that
all her talk was as mere babbling to the other, and she might as well
hold her peace. The woman set a kettle of water over the fire, and
Margaret forestalled her next movement by cutting some pork and putting
it to cook in a little skillet she found among the provisions. The woman
watched her solemnly, not seeming to care; and so, silently, each went
about her own preparations.
The supper was a silent affair, and when it was over the squaw handed
Margaret a blanket. Suddenly she understood that this, and this alone,
was to be her bed for the night. The earth was there for a mattress,
and the sage-brush lent a partial shelter, the canopy of stars was
overhead.
A kind of panic took possession of her. She stared at the squaw and
found herself longing to cry out for help. It seemed as if she could not
bear this awful silence of the mortals who were her only company. Yet
her common sense came to her aid, and she realized that there was
nothing for it but to make the best of things. So she took the blanket
and, spreading it out, sat down upon it and wrapped it about her
shoulders and feet. She would not lie down until she saw what the rest
did. Somehow she shrank from asking the bronze man how to fold a blanket
for a bed on the ground. She tried to remember what Gardley had told her
about folding the blanket bed so as best to keep out snakes and ants.
She shuddered at the thought of snakes. Would she dare call for help
from those stolid companions of hers if a snake should attempt to molest
her in the night? And would she ever dare to go to sleep?
She remembered her first night in Arizona out among the stars, alone on
the water-tank, and her first frenzy of loneliness. Was this as bad? No,
for these Indians were trustworthy and well known by her dear friends.
It might be unpleasant, but this, too, would pass and the morrow would
soon be here.
The dusk dropped down and the stars loomed out. All the world grew
wonderful, like a blue jeweled dome of a palace with the lights turned
low. The fire burned brightly as the man threw sticks upon it, and the
two Indians moved stealthily about in the darkness, passing silhouetted
before the fire this way and that, and then at last lying down wrapped
in their blankets to sleep.
It was very quiet about her. The air was so still she could hear the
hobbled horses munching away in the distance, and moving now and then
with the halting gait a hobble gives a horse. Off in the farther
distance the blood-curdling howl of the coyotes rose, but Margaret was
used to them, and knew they would not come near a fire.
She was growing very weary, and at last wrapped her blanket closer and
lay down, her head pillowed on one corner of it. Committing herself to
her Heavenly Father, and breathing a prayer for father, mother, and
lover, she fell asleep.
It was still almost dark when she awoke. For a moment she thought it was
still night and the sunset was not gone yet, the clouds were so rosy
tinted.
The squaw was standing by her, touching her shoulder roughly and
grunting something. She perceived, as she rubbed her eyes and tried to
summon back her senses, that she was expected to get up and eat
breakfast. There was a smell of pork and coffee in the air, and there
was scorched corn bread beside the fire on a pan.
Margaret got up quickly and ran down to the water-hole to get some
water, dashing it in her face and over her arms and hands, the squaw
meanwhile standing at a little distance, watching her curiously, as if
she thought this some kind of an oblation paid to the white woman's god
before she ate. Margaret pulled the hair-pins out of her hair, letting
it down and combing it with one of her side combs; twisted it up again
in its soft, fluffy waves; straightened her collar, set on her hat, and
was ready for the day. The squaw looked at her with both awe and
contempt for a moment, then turned and stalked back to her papoose and
began preparing it for the journey.
Margaret made a hurried meal and was scarcely done before she found her
guides were waiting like two pillars of the desert, but watching keenly,
impatiently, her every mouthful, and anxious to be off.
The sky was still pink-tinted with the semblance of a sunset, and
Margaret felt, as she mounted her pony and followed her companions, as
if the day was all turned upside down. She almost wondered whether she
hadn't slept through a whole twenty-four hours, and it were not, after
all, evening again, till by and by the sun rose clear and the wonder of
the cloud-tinting melted into day.
The road lay through sage-brush and old barren cedar-trees, with rabbits
darting now and then between the rocks. Suddenly from the top of a
little hill they came out to a spot where they could see far over the
desert. Forty miles away three square, flat hills, or mesas, looked like
a gigantic train of cars, and the clear air gave everything a strange
vastness. Farther on beyond the mesas dimly dawned the Black Mountains.
One could even see the shadowed head of "Round Rock," almost a hundred
miles away. Before them and around was a great plain of sage-brush, and
here and there was a small bush that the Indians call "the weed that was
not scared." Margaret had learned all these things during her winter in
Arizona, and keenly enjoyed the vast, splendid view spread before her.
They passed several little mud-plastered hogans that Margaret knew for
Indian dwellings. A fine band of ponies off in the distance made an
interesting spot on the landscape, and twice they passed bands of sheep.
She had a feeling of great isolation from everything she had ever known,
and seemed going farther and farther from life and all she loved. Once
she ventured to ask the Indian what time he expected to meet her
friends, the missionaries, but he only shook his head and murmured
something unintelligible about "Keams" and pointed to the sun. She
dropped behind again, vaguely uneasy, she could not tell why. There
seemed something so altogether sly and wary and unfriendly in the faces
of the two that she almost wished she had not come. Yet the way was
beautiful enough and nothing very unpleasant was happening to her. Once
she dropped the envelope of her mother's letter and was about to
dismount and recover it. Then some strange impulse made her leave it on
the sand of the desert. What if they should be lost and that paper
should guide them back? The notion stayed by her, and once in a while
she dropped other bits of paper by the way.
About noon the trail dropped off into a cañon, with high, yellow-rock
walls on either side, and stifling heat, so that she felt as if she
could scarcely stand it. She was glad when they emerged once more and
climbed to higher ground. The noon camp was a hasty affair, for the
Indian seemed in a hurry. He scanned the horizon far and wide and
seemed searching keenly for some one or something. Once they met a
lonely Indian, and he held a muttered conversation with him, pointing
off ahead and gesticulating angrily. But the words were unintelligible
to Margaret. Her feeling of uneasiness was growing, and yet she could
not for the life of her tell why, and laid it down to her tired nerves.
She was beginning to think she had been very foolish to start on such a
long trip before she had had a chance to get rested from her last days
of school. She longed to lie down under a tree and sleep for days.
Toward night they sighted a great blue mesa about fifty miles south, and
at sunset they could just see the San Francisco peaks more than a
hundred and twenty-five miles away. Margaret, as she stopped her horse
and gazed, felt a choking in her heart and throat and a great desire to
cry. The glory and awe of the mountains, mingled with her own weariness
and nervous fear, were almost too much for her. She was glad to get down
and eat a little supper and go to sleep again. As she fell asleep she
comforted herself with repeating over a few precious words from her
Bible:
"The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him and
delivereth them. Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is
stayed on Thee because he trusteth in Thee. I will both lay me down
in peace and sleep, for Thou Lord only makest me to dwell in
safety...."
The voice of the coyotes, now far, now near, boomed out on the night;
great stars shot dartling pathways across the heavens; the fire snapped
and crackled, died down and flickered feebly; but Margaret slept, tired
out, and dreamed the angels kept close vigil around her lowly couch.
She did not know what time the stars disappeared and the rain began to
fall. She was too tired to notice the drops that fell upon her face. Too
tired to hear the coyotes coming nearer, nearer, yet in the morning
there lay one dead, stretched not thirty feet from where she lay. The
Indian had shot him through the heart.
Somehow things looked very dismal that morning, in spite of the
brightness of the sun after the rain. She was stiff and sore with lying
in the dampness. Her hair was wet, her blanket was wet, and she woke
without feeling rested. Almost the trip seemed more than she could bear.
If she could have wished herself back that morning and have stayed at
Tanners' all summer she certainly would have done it rather than to be
where and how she was.
The Indians seemed excited--the man grim and forbidding, the woman
appealing, frightened, anxious. They were near to Keams Cañon.
"Aneshodi" would be somewhere about. The Indian hoped to be rid of his
burden then and travel on his interrupted journey. He was growing
impatient. He felt he had earned his money.
But when they tried to go down Keam's Cañon they found the road all
washed away by flood, and must needs go a long way around. This made the
Indian surly. His countenance was more forbidding than ever. Margaret,
as she watched him with sinking heart, altered her ideas of the Indian
as a whole to suit the situation. She had always felt pity for the poor
Indian, whose land had been seized and whose kindred had been
slaughtered. But this Indian was not an object of pity. He was the most
disagreeable, cruel-looking Indian Margaret had ever laid eyes on. She
had felt it innately the first time she saw him, but now, as the
situation began to bring him out, she knew that she was dreadfully
afraid of him. She had a feeling that he might scalp her if he got tired
of her. She began to alter her opinion of Hazel Brownleigh's judgment as
regarded Indians. She did not feel that she would ever send this Indian
to any one for a guide and say he was perfectly trustworthy. He hadn't
done anything very dreadful yet, but she felt he was going to.
He had a number of angry confabs with his wife that morning. At least,
he did the confabbing and the squaw protested. Margaret gathered after a
while that it was something about herself. The furtive, frightened
glances that the squaw cast in her direction sometimes, when the man was
not looking, made her think so. She tried to say it was all imagination,
and that her nerves were getting the upper hand of her, but in spite of
her she shuddered sometimes, just as she had done when Rosa looked at
her. She decided that she must be going to have a fit of sickness, and
that just as soon as she got in the neighborhood of Mrs. Tanner's again
she would pack her trunk and go home to her mother. If she was going to
be sick she wanted her mother.
About noon things came to a climax. They halted on the top of the mesa,
and the Indians had another altercation, which ended in the man
descending the trail a fearfully steep way, down four hundred feet to
the trading-post in the cañon. Margaret looked down and gasped and
thanked a kind Providence that had not made it necessary for her to make
that descent; but the squaw stood at the top with her baby and looked
down in silent sorrow--agony perhaps would be a better name. Her face
was terrible to look upon.
Margaret could not understand it, and she went to the woman and put her
hand out sympathetically, asking, gently: "What is the matter, you poor
little thing? Oh, what is it?"
Perhaps the woman understood the tenderness in the tone, for she
suddenly turned and rested her forehead against Margaret's shoulder,
giving one great, gasping sob, then lifted her dry, miserable eyes to
the girl's face as if to thank her for her kindness.
Margaret's heart was touched. She threw her arms around the poor woman
and drew her, papoose and all, comfortingly toward her, patting her
shoulder and saying gentle, soothing words as she would to a little
child. And by and by the woman lifted her head again, the tears coursing
down her face, and tried to explain, muttering her queer gutturals and
making eloquent gestures until Margaret felt she understood. She
gathered that the man had gone down to the trading-post to find the
"Aneshodi," and that the squaw feared that he would somehow procure
firewater either from the trader or from some Indian he might meet, and
would come back angrier than he had gone, and without his money.
If Margaret also suspected that the Indian had desired to get rid of her
by leaving her at that desolate little trading-station down in the cañon
until such time as her friends should call for her, she resolutely put
the thought out of her mind and set herself to cheer the poor Indian
woman.
She took a bright, soft, rosy silk tie from her own neck and knotted it
about the astonished woman's dusky throat, and then she put a silver
dollar in her hand, and was thrilled with wonder to see what a change
came over the poor, dark face. It reminded her of Mom Wallis when she
got on her new bonnet, and once again she felt the thrill of knowing the
whole world kin.
The squaw cheered up after a little, got sticks and made a fire, and
together they had quite a pleasant meal. Margaret exerted herself to
make the poor woman laugh, and finally succeeded by dangling a
bright-red knight from her chessmen in front of the delighted baby's
eyes till he gurgled out a real baby crow of joy.
It was the middle of the afternoon before the Indian returned, sitting
crazily his struggling beast as he climbed the trail once more.
Margaret, watching, caught her breath and prayed. Was this the
trustworthy man, this drunken, reeling creature, clubbing his horse and
pouring forth a torrent of indistinguishable gutturals? It was evident
that his wife's worst fears were verified. He had found the firewater.
The frightened squaw set to work putting things together as fast as she
could. She well knew what to expect, and when the man reached the top of
the mesa he found his party packed and mounted, waiting fearsomely to
take the trail.
Silently, timorously, they rode behind him, west across the great wide
plain.
In the distance gradually there appeared dim mesas like great fingers
stretching out against the sky; miles away they seemed, and nothing
intervening but a stretch of varying color where sage-brush melted into
sand, and sage-brush and greasewood grew again, with tall cactus
startling here and there like bayonets at rest but bristling with
menace.
The Indian had grown silent and sullen. His eyes were like deep fires of
burning volcanoes. One shrank from looking at them. His massive, cruel
profile stood out like bronze against the evening sky. It was growing
night again, and still they had not come to anywhere or anything, and
still her friends seemed just as far away.
Since they had left the top of Keams Cañon Margaret had been sure all
was not right. Aside from the fact that the guide was drunk at present,
she was convinced that there had been something wrong with him all
along. He did not act like the Indians around Ashland. He did not act
like a trusted guide that her friends would send for her. She wished
once more that she had kept Hazel Brownleigh's letter. She wondered how
her friends would find her if they came after her. It was then she began
in earnest to systematically plan to leave a trail behind her all the
rest of the way. If she had only done it thoroughly when she first began
to be uneasy. But now she was so far away, so many miles from anywhere!
Oh, if she had not come at all!
And first she dropped her handkerchief, because she happened to have it
in her hand--a dainty thing with lace on the edge and her name written
in tiny script by her mother's careful hand on the narrow hem. And then
after a little, as soon as she could scrawl it without being noticed,
she wrote a note which she twisted around the neck of a red chessman,
and left behind her. After that scraps of paper, as she could reach them
out of the bag tied on behind her saddle; then a stocking, a bedroom
slipper, more chessmen, and so, when they halted at dusk and prepared to
strike camp, she had quite a good little trail blazed behind her over
that wide, empty plain. She shuddered as she looked into the gathering
darkness ahead, where those long, dark lines of mesas looked like
barriers in the way. Then, suddenly, the Indian pointed ahead to the
first mesa and uttered one word--"Walpi!" So that was the Indian village
to which she was bound? What was before her on the morrow? After eating
a pretense of supper she lay down. The Indian had more firewater with
him. He drank, he uttered cruel gutturals at his squaw, and even kicked
the feet of the sleeping papoose as he passed by till it awoke and cried
sharply, which made him more angry, so he struck the squaw.
It seemed hours before all was quiet. Margaret's nerves were strained to
such a pitch she scarcely dared to breathe, but at last, when the fire
had almost died down, the man lay quiet, and she could relax and close
her eyes.
Not to sleep. She must not go to sleep. The fire was almost gone and the
coyotes would be around. She must wake and watch!
That was the last thought she remembered--that and a prayer that the
angels would keep watch once again.
When she awoke it was broad daylight and far into the morning, for the
sun was high overhead and the mesas in the distance were clear and
distinct against the sky.
She sat up and looked about her, bewildered, not knowing at first where
she was. It was so still and wide and lonely.
She turned to find the Indians, but there was no trace of them anywhere.
The fire lay smoldering in its place, a thin trickle of smoke curling
away from a dying stick, but that was all. A tin cup half full of coffee
was beside the stick, and a piece of blackened corn bread. She turned
frightened eyes to east, to west, to north, to south, but there was no
one in sight, and out over the distant mesa there poised a great eagle
alone in the vast sky keeping watch over the brilliant, silent waste.