_The Little Bent Man at the Foot of the Cross_
It was dusk when they rode down the hill together. They followed the
canon road to its meeting with the main highway at the northern edge of
Amalon. Where the roads joined they passed Bishop Wright, who, with his
hat off, turned to stare at them, and to pull at his fringe of whisker
in seeming perplexity.
"He must have been on his way to our house," Prudence called.
"With that hair and whiskers," answered Follett, with some irrelevance,
"he looks like an old buffalo-bull just before shedding-time."
They rode fast until the night fell, scanning the road ahead for a
figure on horseback. When it was quite dark they halted.
"We might pass him," suggested Follett. "He was fairly tuckered out, and
he might fall off any minute."
"Shall we go on slowly?" she asked.
"We might miss him in the dark. But the moon will be up in an hour, and
then we can go at full speed. We better wait."
"Poor little sorry father! I wish we had gone home sooner."
"He certainly's got more spunk in him than I gave him credit for! He had
old Brigham and the rest of them plumb buffaloed for a minute. Oh, he
did crack the old bull-whip over them good!"
"Poor little father! Where could he have gone at this hour?"
"I've got an idea he's set out for that cross he's talked so much
about--that one up here in the Meadows."
"I've seen it,--where the Indians killed those poor people years ago.
But what did he mean by the crime of his Church there?"
"We'll ask him when we find him. And I reckon we'll find him right there
if he holds out to ride that far."
He tied her pony to an oak-bush a little off the road, threw Dandy's
bridle-rein to the ground to make him stand, and on a shelving rock near
by he found her a seat.
"It won't be long, and the horses need a chance to breathe. We've come
along at a right smart clip, and Dandy's been getting a regular
grass-stomach on him back there."
Side by side they sat, and in the dark and stillness their own great
happiness came back to them.
"The first time I liked you very much," she said, after he had kissed
her, "was when I saw you were so kind to your horse."
"That's the only way to treat stock. I can gentle any horse I ever saw.
Are you sure you care enough for me?"
"Oh, yes, yes, _yes_! It must be enough. It's so much I'm frightened
now."
"Will you go away with me?"
"Yes, I want to go away with you."
"Well, you just come out with me,--out of this hole. There's a fine big
country out there you don't know anything about. Our home will reach
from Corpus Christi to Deadwood, and from the Missouri clear over to
Mister Pacific Ocean. We'll have the prairies for our garden, and the
high plains will be our front yard, with the buffalo-grass thicker than
hair on a dog's back. And, say, I don't know about it, but I believe
they have a bigger God out there than you've got in this Salt Lake
Basin. Anyway, He acts more like you'd think God ought to act. He isn't
so particular about your knowing a lot of signs and grips and passwords
and winks. Going to your heaven must be like going into one of those
Free Mason lodges,--a little peek-hole in the door, and God shoving the
cover back to see if you know the signs. I guess God isn't so trifling
as all that,--having, you know, a lot of signs and getting ducked under
water three times and all that business. I don't exactly know what His
way is, but I'll bet it isn't any way that you'd have to laugh at if you
saw it--like as if, now, you saw old man Wright and God making signs to
each other through the door, and Wright saying:--
_'Eeny meeny miny mo!
Cracky feeny finy fo!'_
and God looking in a little book to see if he got all the words right."
"Anyway, I'm glad you weren't baptised, after what Father said to-day."
"You'll be gladder still when you get out there where they got a
full-grown man's God."
They talked on of many things, chiefly of the wonder of their love--that
each should actually be each and the two have come together--until a
full yellow moon came up, seemingly from the farther side of the hill in
front of them. When at last its light flooded the road so that it lay
off to the north like a broad, gray ribbon flung over the black land,
they set out again, galloping side by side mile after mile, scanning
sharply the road ahead and its near sides.
Down out of Pine Valley they went, and over more miles of gray alkali
desert toward a line of hills low and black in the north.
They came to these, followed the road out of the desert through a narrow
gap, and passed into the Mountain Meadows, reining in their horses as
they did so.
Before them the Meadows stretched between two ranges of low, rocky
hills, narrow at first but widening gradually from the gap through
which they had come. But the ground where the long, rich grass had once
grown was now barren, gray and ugly in the moonlight, cut into deep
gullies and naked of all but a scant growth of sage-brush which the moon
was silvering, and a few clumps of shadowy scrub-oak along the base of
the hills on either side.
Instinctively they stopped, speaking in low tones. And then there came
to them out of the night's silence a strange, weird beating; hollow,
muffled, slow, and rhythmic, but penetrating and curiously exciting,
like another pulse cunningly playing upon their own to make them beat
more rapidly. The girl pulled her horse close in by his, but he
reassured her.
"It's Indians--they must be holding the funeral of some chief. But no
matter--these Indians aren't any more account than prairie-dogs."
They rode on slowly, the funeral-drum sounding nearer as they went.
Then far up the meadow by the roadside they could see the hard, square
lines of the cross in the moonlight. Slower still they went, while the
drumbeats became louder, until they seemed to fall upon their own
ear-drums.
"Could he have come to this dreadful place?" she asked, almost in a
whisper.
"We haven't passed him, that's sure; and I've got a notion he did. I've
heard him talk about this cross off and on--it's been a good deal in his
mind--and maybe he was a little out of his head. But we'll soon see."
They walked their horses up a little ascent, and the cross stood out
more clearly against the sky. They approached it slowly, leaning forward
to peer all about it; but the shadows lay heavy at its base, and from a
little distance they could distinguish no outline.
But at last they were close by and could pierce the gloom, and there at
the foot of the cross, beside the cairn of stones that helped to support
it, was a little huddled bit of blackness. It moved as they looked, and
they knew the voice that came from it.
"O God, I am tired and ready! Take me and burn me!"
She was off her horse and quickly at his side. Follett, to let them be
alone, led the horses to the spring below. It was almost gone now, only
the feeblest trickle of a rivulet remaining. The once green meadows had
behaved, indeed, as if a curse were put upon them. Hardly had grass
grown or water run through it since the day that Israel wrought there.
When he had tied the horses he heard Prudence calling him.
"I'm afraid he's delirous," she said, when he reached her side. "He
keeps hearing cries and shots, and sees a woman's hair waving before
him, and he's afraid of something back of him. What can we do?"
At the foot of the cross the little man was again sounding his endless
prayer.
"Bow me, bend me, break me, for I have been soul-proud. Burn me out--"
She knelt by his side, trying to soothe him.
"Father--it's all right--it's Prudence--"
But at her name he uttered a cry with such terror in it that she
shuddered and was still. Then he began to mutter incoherently, and she
heard her own name repeated many times.
"If that awful beating would only stop," she said to Follett, who had
now brought water in the curled brim of his hat. She tried to have the
little man drink. He swallowed some of the water from the hat-brim,
shivering as he did so.
"We ought to have a fire," she said. Follett began to gather twigs and
sage-brush, and presently had a blaze in front of them.
In the light of the fire the little man could see their faces, and he
became suddenly coherent, smiling at them in the old way.
"Why have you come so far in the night?" he asked Prudence, taking one
of her cool hands between his own that burned.
"But, you poor little father! Why have _you_ come, when you should be
home in bed? You are burning with fever."
"Yes, yes, dear, but it's over now. This is the end. I came here--to be
here--I came to say my last prayer in the body. And they will come to
find me here. You must go before they come."
"Who will find you?"
"They from the Church. I didn't mean to do it, but when I was on my feet
something forced it out of me. I knew what they would do, but I was
ready to die, and I hoped I could awaken some of them."
"But no one shall hurt you."
"Don't tempt me to stay any longer, dear, even if they would let me. Oh,
you don't know, you don't know--and that Devil's drumming over there to
madden me as on that other night. But it's just--my God, how just!"
"Come away, then. Ruel will find your horse, and we'll ride home."
"It's too late--don't ask me to leave my hell now. It would only follow
me. It was this way that night--the night before--the beating got into
my blood and hammered on my brain till I didn't know. Prudence, I must
tell you--everything--"
He glanced at Follett appealingly, as he had looked at the others when
he left the platform that day, beseeching some expression of
friendliness.
"Yes, I must tell you--everything." But his face lighted as Follett
interrupted him.
"You tell her," said Follett, doggedly, "how you saved her that day and
kept her like your own and brought her up to be a good woman--that's
what you tell her." The gratitude in the little man's eyes had grown
with each word.
"Yes, yes, dear, I have loved you like my own little child, but your
father and mother were killed here that day--and I found you and loved
you--such a dear, forlorn little girl--will you hate me now?" he broke
off anxiously. She had both his hands in her own.
"But why, how _could_ I hate you? You are my dear little sorry
father--all I've known. I shall always love you."
"That will be good to take with me," he said, smiling again. "It's all
I've got to take--it's all I've had since the day I found you. You are
good," he said, turning to Follett.
"Oh, shucks!" answered Follett.
A smile of rare contentment played over the little man's face.
In the silence that followed, the funeral-drum came booming in upon them
over the ridge, and once they saw an Indian from the encampment standing
on top of the hill to look down at their fire. Then the little man spoke
again.
"You will go with him," he said to Prudence. "He will take you out of
here and back to your mother's people."
"She's going to marry me," said Follett. The little man smiled at this.
"It is right--the Gentile has come to take you away. The Lord is cunning
in His vengeance. I felt it must be so when I saw you together."
After this he was so quiet for a time that they thought he was sleeping.
But presently he grew restless again, and said to Follett:--
"I want you to have me buried here. Up there to the north, three
hundred yards from here on the right, is a dwarf cedar standing alone.
Straight over the ridge from that and half-way down the other side is
another cedar growing at the foot of a ledge. Below that ledge is a
grave. There are stones piled flat, and a cross cut in the one toward
the cedar. Make a grave beside that one, and put me in it--just as I am.
Remember that--_uncoffined_. It must be that way, remember. There's a
little book here in this pocket. Let it stay with me--but surely
uncoffined, remember, as--as the rest of them were."
"But, father, why talk so? You are going home with us."
"There, dear, it's all right, and you'll feel kind about me always when
you remember me?"
"Don't,--don't talk so."
"If that beating would only stay out of my brain--the thing is crawling
behind me again! Oh, no, not yet--not yet! Say this with me, dear:--
"_'The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.
"'He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the
still waters.'_"
She said the psalm with him, and he grew quiet again.
"You will go away with your husband, and go at once--" He sat up
suddenly from where he had been lying, the light of a new design in his
eyes.
"Come,--you will need protection now--I must marry you at once. Surely
that will be an office acceptable in the sight of God. And you will
remember me better for it--and kinder. Come, Prudence; come, Ruel!"
"But, father, you are sick, and so weak--let us wait."
"It will give me such joy to do it--and this is the last."
She looked at Follett questioningly, but gave him her hand silently when
he arose from the ground where he had been sitting.
"He'd like it, and it's what we want,--all simple," he said.
In the light of the fire they stood with hands joined, and the little
man, too, got to his feet, helping himself up by the cairn against which
he had been leaning.
Then, with the unceasing beats of the funeral-drum in their ears, he
made them man and wife.
"Do you, Ruel, take Prudence by the right hand to receive her unto
yourself to be your lawful and wedded wife, and you to be her lawful and
wedded husband for time and eternity--"
Thus far he had followed the formula of his Church, but now he departed
from it with something like defiance coming up in his voice.
"--with a covenant and promise on your part that you will cleave to her
and to none other, so help you God, taking never another wife in spite
of promise or threat of any priesthood whatsoever, cleaving unto her
and her alone with singleness of heart?"
When they had made their responses, and while the drum was beating upon
his heart, he pronounced them man and wife, sealing upon them "the
blessings of the holy resurrection, with power to come forth in the
morning clothed with glory and immortality."
When he had spoken the final words of the ceremony, he seemed to lose
himself from weakness, reaching out his hands for support. They helped
him down on to the saddle-blanket that Follett had brought, and the
latter now went for more wood.
When he came back they were again reciting the psalm that had seemed to
quiet the sufferer.
"_'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will
fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort
me.'_"
Follett spread the other saddle-blanket over him. He lay on his side,
his face to the fire, one moment saying over the words of the psalm, but
the next listening in abject terror to something the others could not
hear.
"I wonder you don't hear their screams," he said, in one of these
moments; "but their blood is not upon you." Then, after a little:--
"See, it is growing light over there. Now they will soon be here. They
will know where I had to come, and they will have a spade." He seemed to
be fainting in his last weakness.
Another hour they sat silently beside him. Slowly the dark over the
eastern hill lightened to a gray. Then the gray paled until a flush of
pink was there, and they could see about them in the chill of the
morning.
Then came a silence that startled them all. The drum had stopped, and
the night-long vibrations ceased from their ears.
They looked toward the little man with relief, for the drumming had
tortured him. But his breathing was shallow and irregular now, and from
time to time they could hear a rattle in his throat. His eyes, when he
opened them, were looking far off. He was turning restlessly and
muttering again. She took his hands and found them cold and moist.
"His fever must have broken," she said, hopefully. The little man opened
his eyes to look up at her, and spoke, though absently, and not as if he
saw her.
"They will have a spade with them when they come, never fear. And the
spot must not be forgotten--three hundred yards north to the dwarf
cedar, then straight over the ridge and half-way down, to the other
cedar below the sandstone--and uncoffined, with the book here in this
pocket where I have it. 'Thou preparest a table before me in the
presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup
runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of
my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.'"
He started up in terror of something that seemed to be behind him, but
fell back, and a moment later was rambling off through some sermon of
the bygone year.
"Sometimes, brethren, it has seemed to my inner soul that Christ came
not alone to reveal God to man, but to reveal man to God; taking on that
human form to reconcile the Father to our sins. Sometimes I have thought
He might so well have done this that God would view our sins as we view
the faults of our well-loved little children--loving us through
all--perhaps touched--even more amused than offended, at our childish
stumblings in these blind, twisted paths of right and wrong; knowing at
the last He should save the least of us who have been most awkward. But,
oh, brethren! beware of the sin for which you cannot win forgiveness
from that other God, that spirit of the true Father, fixed forever in
the breast of each of you."
The light was coming swiftly. Already their fire had paled, and the
embers, but a little before glowing red, seemed now to be only white
ashes.
From over the ridge back of them, whence had come the notes of the
funeral-drum, an Indian now slouched toward them, drawn by curiosity;
stopping to look, then advancing, to stop again.
At length he stood close by them, silent, gazing. Then, as if
understanding, he spoke to Follett.
"Big sick--go get big medicine! Then you give chitcup!"
He ran swiftly back, disappearing over the ridge.
The sick man was now delirious again, muttering disjointed texts and
bits of old sermons with which the Lute of the Holy Ghost, young and
ardent, had once thrilled the Saints.
"'For without shedding of blood there shall be no remission'--'but where
are now your prophets which prophesied unto you, saying the King of
Babylon shall not come against you nor against this land'--'But I say
unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you,
bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use
you.' That is where the stain was,--the bloody stain that held the
leaves together--but I tore them apart and read,--"
The Indian who had come to them first now appeared again over the ridge,
and with him another. The second was accoutered lavishly with a girdle
of brilliant feathers, anklets of shell, and bracelets of silver, his
face barred by alternating streaks of vermilion and yellow, a lank braid
of his black hair hanging either side of his face, and on his head the
horns and painted skull of a buffalo. In one hand was a wand of red-dyed
wood with a beaded and quilled amulet at the end. The other down by his
side held something they did not at first notice.
The little man was growing weaker each moment, but still muttered as he
turned restlessly on the blanket.
"'And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them
likewise.'" His quick ear detecting the light step of the approaching
Indians, he sat up and grasped Follett's arm.
"What do they want? Let no one come now. Death is here and I am going
out to meet it--I am glad to go--so tired!"
Follett, looking up at the two Indians now standing awkwardly by them,
said, in a low tone, with a wave of his free arm:
"_Vamose_!"
"Big medicine!" grunted the Indian who had first come to them, pointing
to his companion. In an instant this other was before the sick man,
chanting and making passes with his wand.
Then, before Follett could rise, the Indian's other hand came up, and
they saw, slowly waved before the staring eyes of the little man, a long
mass of yellow hair that writhed and ran in little gleaming waves as if
it lived. It was tied about the wrist of the Indian with strips of
scarlet flannel--tied below a broad silver bracelet that glittered from
the bronzed arm.
The face of the sick man had a moment before been tranquil, almost
smiling; but now his eyes followed the hair with something of
fascination in them. Then a shade of terror darkened the peaceful look,
like the shadow of a cloud hurried by the wind over a fair green garden.
But with its passing there came again into his eyes the light of sanity.
He gazed at the hair, breathless, still in wonder; and then very slowly
there grew over his face the look of an unearthly peace, so that they
who were by him deferred the putting aside of the Indian. With eyes wide
open, full of a calm they could not understand, he looked and smiled,
his wan face flushing again in that last time. Then, reaching suddenly
out, his long white fingers tangled themselves feebly in the golden
skein, and with a little loving uplift of the eyes he drew it to his
breast. A few seconds he held it so, with an eagerness that told of some
sweet and mighty relief come to his soul,--some illumination of grace
that had seemed to be struck by the first sunrays from that hair into
his wondering eyes.
Slowly, then, the little smile faded,--the wistful light of it dying for
the last time. The tired head fell suddenly back and the wan lids closed
over lifeless eyes.
Still the hand clutched the hair to the quiet heart, the yellow strands
curling peacefully through the dead fingers as if in forgiveness. From
the look of rest on the still face it was as if, in his years of service
and sacrifice, the little man had learned how to forgive his own sin in
the flash of those last heart-beats when his soul had rushed out to
welcome Death.
Prudence had arisen before the end came and was standing in front of the
Indian to motion him away. Follett was glad she did not see the eyes
glaze nor the head drop. He leaned forward and gently loosed the limp
fingers from the yellow tangle. Then he sprang quickly up and put his
arm about Prudence. The two Indians backed off in some dismay. The one
who had first come to them spoke again.
"Big medicine! You give some chitcup?"
"No--no! Got no chitcup! _Vamose_!"
They turned silently and trotted back over the ridge.
"Come, sit here close by the fire, dear--no, around this side. It's all
over now."
"Oh! Oh! My poor, sorry little father--he was so good to me!" She threw
herself on the ground, sobbing.
Follett spread a saddle-blanket over the huddled figure at the foot of
the cross. Then he went back to take her in his arms and give her such
comfort as he could.