by Zane Grey
Withers allowed her to ride for a long distance. A sandy bank ran under the right wall. Running water dashed over the rocks at the bottom of this gorge. Cottonwood trees, with foliage bright green and fresh, shaded part of the trail. Soon the rocks began to encroach upon that sandy strip. Marian saw the Indians above her on the left, toiling over the weathered slide.
At a crossing of the stream Withers bade her dismount. He filled her canteen. Marian found the water cold and fine, free of acrid taste, and very satisfying.
“You should drink oftener,” he said, as he watched her. “You’ll dry up in this desert. Well, shore you’ve a climb ahead. Go slow. Be careful. Rest often. You can’t miss the trail.”
With that he started up a ledge of soft blue rock, leading Marian’s horse. His own was evidently in charge of one of the Indians.
Marian gazed aloft, with something of shock and awe. She actually saw a wedge of blue sky, fitting into that red notch far above her. This gorge dug deeply back into the solid earth, and sides and floor were one bewildering jumble of rocks of every size and shape. She felt impelled to gaze upward, but the act was not conducive to encouragement.
The climb she began with forced husbanding of her strength and a restraint to her eagerness. Time enough, if she ever surmounted this frightful steep, to think of Nophaie! In spite of what Withers had said, Marian had little faith in her hopes. To-morrow perhaps she would meet Nophaie. With eyes seeking out the tracks of the horses and marks of the trail, Marian slowly lent her energies to the ascent. This trail must have been very old, she thought, judging from unmistakable ruts worn in ledges and places where avalanches and weathering slides had not covered it. At every convenient rock to sit or lean upon she rested. In half an hour she found the gorge opening wide, bowl shaped in the center, with slopes of broken rock leading up on all sides. Another half- hour apparently made little progress toward the distant rim, yet it brought her to solid rock. All below now appeared the slanted floor of this gorge, choked with the debris from the cliffs above.
The trail kept to the left side and led up toward the face of an overhanging mountain of ledges, walls, juts, and corners, the ensemble of which seemed an unscalable precipice. Marian had climbed an hour, just to get started. Moreover, the character of the ascent changed. She became fronted by a succession of rocky steps, leading up to ledges that ran at right angles with the trail, and long narrow strips of rock standing out from the slope, all bare and smooth, treacherous in slant and too hard to catch the nails of her boots. How the horses ever climbed these slippery places was a mystery to Marian. But they had done so, for she saw the white scratches made by their iron shoes on the stone.
More than once Marian heard the Indians and Withers working far above her. The clang of a hammer rang out with keen metallic sound. She had observed a short- handled sledge on one of the mule-packs; now she understood its use on the trail. Withers was cracking rocks to roll them, and breaking the corners of jutting cliff to permit the mules to swing by with their packs. She welcomed these periods, for she had long rests, during which she fell into dreams.
When she ascended to the points where trail work had been necessary she had all she could do to scramble up. And her hands helped as much as her feet. An endless stairway of steps in solid rock, manifold in character, with every conceivable angle and crack and sharp point and narrow ledge. Mostly she feared the narrow ledges. For if she slipped on those it might mean the end of her. Treading these, she dare not look over into the abyss, now assuming dreadful depths.
This toil took Marian not only far upward, but far back into the gorge. The sky began to lighten. The ragged red rim above seemed possibly attainable. Below her shadows of purple began to gather under the deep walls. Her watch told the hour of five. Marian feared she had made too leisurely a task of it, or had rested too long. Still, these had been her orders from Withers. But the long climb all alone, the persistent exertion, the holding back of emotion, the whole time increasingly fraught with suspense had begun to weaken her. Resting long might have been advisable, but she could not do it. At every risky place she grew nervous and hurried. Once she lost her footing and fell, to slide hard against a projecting rock. That hurt her. But the fright she suffered was worse than the hurt. For an instant she shook all over and her heart seemed to contract. Suppose she had slipped on one of the narrow ledges!
“Oh! this is — new and — hard for me,” she panted. “Mr. Withers shouldn’t — have trusted me — to myself.”
She realized she had been thrown upon her own resources. If she had not been equal to this climb Withers would never have left her. That moment alone there in the gorge, calling upon all her courage and reserve force, was one Marian felt to her depths. She scorned herself, but she recognized natural fear- -an emotion she had never felt before in her life. She conquered it. And resolutely, but with trembling lips she had to bite to still, she began to climb again.
Once more the character of the slope changed. The solid gleaming granite gave way to soft red sandstone; and the long reaches of ledge and short steps to wide zigzags, the corners of which turned on promontories that sheered out over the depths. Marian found the going easier here, and if she had not been worn out she would have climbed well. As it was she dragged her weary feet, slow step after step, up the long slants of trail.
Six o’clock by her watch and the gold of sunset on the far points of the rim! It seemed only a short climb now, from every turn, yet she did not get there. Nevertheless, weary and almost desperate as she was, the moment came when the strange glamour of that canyon stole over her. Perhaps the sunset hour with its gold gleams high, and purple shadows low, could be held accountable for this, or the sublimity of the heights she had attained. Wild realm of solitude! Here must the eagles clasp the crags with crooked claws.
Slowly Marian toiled round an abrupt corner on a bare promontory. She paused, her eyes on the incredible steps she had ascended. Her breast heaved. A cold wind from above cooled her hot, uncovered brow.
Suddenly a cry startled her. Piercingly high and strange it pealed down, and the echoes from the canyon walls magnified it and clapped it from cliff to cliff, until it died weirdly far below.
With uplift of head Marian swept the rim above. An Indian stood silhouetted against the gold of sky. Slender and tall, motionless as a statue, he stood, a black figure in singular harmony with the wildness and nobility of that height.
“Nophaie!” whispered Marian, with a leap of her heart.
He waved his hand aloft, a slow gesture, significant and thrilling. Marian waved her sombrero in reply, and tried to call out, but just then her voice failed. Wheeling away with swift strides, shot through and through with a current of fire, she began the last few zigzags of that trail.
Endless that last climb — unattainable the rim! Marian had overreached herself. Dizzy, half blind, with bursting heart she went on, upward, toward Nophaie. She saw him dimly as in a dream. He was coming. How strange the light! Night already? Vaguely the rim wall waved and rocked, grew darker.
No, she had not fainted. Not for one second had she wholly lost sense of that close, hard contact, of an arm like iron around her, of being borne upward. Then — one long moment — not clear, and again she felt the bursting throb of her heart — that pang in her breast. Her breath came and went in hurried little gasps. The dimness left her eyes. She saw the gorge, a blue abyss, yawning down into the purple depths of Pahute Canyon. But she could not see anything else, for she was unable to move. Nophaie held her close, her cheek against his breast.
“Benow di cleash!”
“Nophaie!”
There was no other greeting between them. He did not kiss her, and his close clasp slowly loosened. Marian rallied to the extent of being able to stand and she slipped away from him, still holding his hand. The Indian she had known as Lo Blandy had changed with the resigning of that white man’s name. Dark as bronze his fine face had grown, lean and older, graver, with long sloping lines of pain, not w
holly hidden by his smile of welcome. His eyes, black and piercing with intense light, burned into hers. Unutterable love and joy shone in them.
“Nophaie — you have — changed,” she said, breathlessly.
“So have you,” he replied. An indefinable difference in the tone of his voice struck Marian forcibly. It was lower, softer, with something liquid in its depth, something proving that his mother tongue had returned to detract from the white man’s.
“How have — I — changed?” murmured Marian. Her pent-up emotions had been eased, if not expressed. The great longed-for moment had come, strangely unlike what she had expected, yet full and sweet. Slowly she was realizing.
“Still Benow di cleash, but woman now, more than girl.... It’s the same face I saw first at Cape May, only more beautiful, Marian.”
“At least you’ve not changed Lo Blandy’s habit of flattery.”
“Do not call me that,” he said, a somber look momentarily shadowing the gladness of his eyes.
Marian hesitated. She was trying to realize him, to find him again as she had known and loved him. But it was not easy.
“Must we get acquainted all over?” she asked, seriously.
“You must.”
“Very well, I am ready.”
“Then you have come to work among my people?”
“Of course,” replied Marian, simply. “I’ve come to do what you want me to.”
Love and loyalty spoke unmistakably in her voice and in the gaze with which she met his piercing eyes. For an instant, then, Marian trembled in a consciousness of his gratitude, of his sudden fierce desire to gather her to his breast. She felt that, and saw it in the slight leap of his frame.
“You are noble. You prove my faith. You save me from hate of the white race.” Loosening her hands, he took a long stride toward the rim and gazed away across the purple canyon.
Then Marian had her first real sight of him. This appeared but a shadow of the magnificent form of the famous athlete, Lo Blandy. Thinned out, lean and hard he looked. He was dressed in worn corduroy and velveteen, with silver- buckled belt and brown moccasins. His black hair was drawn back and bound under a red band that encircled his head. This garb, and the wonderful poise of his lofty figure against the background of wild canyon, removed him immeasurably from the man Marian had known as Lo Blandy. If there had ever been anything untrue or unreal about him, it was gone now. He satisfied some long unknown yearning in Marian’s heart. Even the suggestion of the tragic was not discordant. What was in his soul then?
“I’m glad for what you think I am,” she said, stepping to his side. “For what you say I do... and I want to — to make you happy.”
“Happy! Benow di cleash, this is the first happy moment I have ever lived- - since I was a shepherd boy — Nophaie, down there with the sheep. Happy, because, Indian as I am, I know you love me.”
“Yes, I — I love you, Nophaie,” she said, low, unsteadily. She wanted him to know again, at once.
Hand in hand then they gazed out across the purpling depths and the gold- rimmed walls, to the vast heave of desert beyond. The sun set while Marian watched and divined the strange exaltation of the moment. Incalculable were to be her blessings — the glory of loving, and forgetting self, the work that was to be hers, the knowledge of this lonely and beautiful land, seen through the eyes and soul of an Indian. Marian marveled now that she had ever hesitated or feared.
“Come, we must go,” said Nophaie. “You are tired and hungry. Withers will make camp some miles from here.”
“Withers!” echoed Marian, with a little laugh. “I had forgotten him — and camp — and that I ever was hungry.”
“Do you remember how you used to hate clams and like ice-cream, back in those Cape May days?” he asked.
“Yes, and I haven’t changed in that respect,” she replied, gayly. “You do remember, don’t you?... Well, sir, how about Jack Bailey?”
“Your dancing lizard. I am jealous again — to hear you speak his name.”
“Nophaie — after you went away there was no more cause. I have been true to you.”
Marian felt, too, that she was ridiculously happy, and quite unlike herself in some wild desire to torment Nophaie and break his reserve. Always she had felt this Indian’s strength, and, woman-like, half resented it. She found him stranger than ever, harder to reach, in spite of the love in his eyes.
His mustang was the largest Marian had seen, a wild shaggy animal of tan color. When it came to getting upon her own horse again she was not above a little feminine vanity in her hope to accomplish a graceful mount before Nophaie. But she made indeed a sorry one, for almost all her strength was gone. Then they rode side by side through a fragrant level land of piñon and sage, with the afterglow of sunset lighting the western sky. The romance of that moment seemed an enchantment of her dreams. Here was the gloaming hour, and a beautiful place of the desert wilderness, and the man she loved. His color and his race were no hindrances to her respect. She talked a little while of their last times together at the seashore, and then of friends of hers whom he knew, and lastly of her home, in which she had no longer seemed to fit happily. Nophaie listened without comment. When, however, she broached the subject of her arrival in the West, and her reception by the Withers, she found him communicative. Withers was a good man, a trader who helped the Indians and did not make his post a means to cheat them. Mrs. Withers was more to the Indians than any other white person had ever been.
Presently the thickening twilight was pierced by the bright blaze of a campfire. And Marian followed the Indian down into a shallow ravine where a gleam of water reflected the blaze and the dark branches of cedar trees. Withers was busy at the supper tasks.
“Well, here you are,” he called out, cheerily. “Marian, you’re a little white through your sunburn. Get down and come in. Did you climb up Pahute Canyon? Ha- ha! I kept an eye on you.... Nophaie, turn Buckskin loose and lend a hand here. Shore, we’ll soon have this lady tenderfoot comfortable and happy.”
Marian thought she might be a good deal more comfortable, but scarcely happier. It was about all she could do to drag herself to the seat Withers made for her. The warmth that stole over her, and the languor, would have ended in sleep but for the trader’s hearty call, “Come and get it.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to bring it to me,” replied Marian. “If I get up I’ll fall down.”
Withers and Nophaie served her, and she discovered that exhaustion and physical pangs did not destroy hunger, or, in her case, keen enjoyment of the meal. Nophaie sat beside her, the light of the camp fire playing upon his face. The other two Indians came for their supper, soft-footed and slow, and they sat down to eat.
After the meal Withers and Nophaie made short work of what tasks were left to do. The two Indians appeared to mingle with the encircling darkness. For a moment the low, strange notes of their voices came back to Marian, and then were heard no more. Withers erected the little tent under the piñon near the fire, and then drawled, “Shore, I reckon that’s about all.” Then bidding Nophaie and Marian good night, he discreetly retired to his own bed under an adjoining piñon. The night silence settled down upon the camp, so lonely and sweet, so strangely full for Marian, that she was loath to break it. She watched Nophaie. In the flickering light his face seemed impassively sad, a bronze mask molded in the mood of sorrow. From time to time he would lift his face and turn his dark gaze upon Marian. Then she thrilled, and felt a warmth of gladness wave over her.
“Will you stay with us to-night?” she asked, at last.
“No. I will ride back to my hogan,” he said.
“Is it far?”
“For you, yes. I will ride back to meet you in the morning.”
“Is your — your home at Oljato?”
“No. Oljato is down in the lowland. Some of my people live there.”
“People? You mean relatives?”
He replied in the negative, and went on to tell of his only living kin. And he fell
to talking of himself — how he had chosen this wildest and loneliest part of the reservation because he wanted to be far away from white people. It was a custom of the tribe for the women to own the sheep, but he had acquired a small flock. He owned a few mustangs. He was the poorest Indian he knew. He did not possess even a saddle or a gun. His means of livelihood was the selling of wool and hides, and working for some of the rich Indians in that section. He had taught them how much better corn would grow in plowed land. He built dams to hold the spring freshets from the melting snows and thus conserve water for the long period of drought. What his tribe needed most was to learn ways that were better than theirs. But they were slow to change. They had to see results. And therefore he did not find a great deal of work which was remunerative.
It had never occurred to Marian that Nophaie might be poor. She remembered him as the famous athlete who had been highly salaried at Cape May. Yet she might have guessed it. The white people had taught him to earn money in some of their pursuits, which he had renounced.
Poverty had always seemed a hideous condition. Marian had never known real luxury and did not want it, but she had never been in need of the simple and necessary things of life. Perhaps to the Indian poverty was nothing. The piñons might be his room and warmth, the sage-covered earth his bed, the sheep his sustenance. Marian hesitated to voice her sympathy and perplexity. She could help Nophaie. But how? Maybe he did not want more sheep, more horses, more clothes and blankets, a gun and a saddle. Marian felt that she must go slowly. Nophaie’s simplicity was striking and it was easy for her to see that he had not been well fed. His lean face and his lean form were proofs of that. Had she ever dined at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel with this very Indian? Incredible! Yet no more incredible than this hour on the lonely desert, with a flickering camp fire lighting Nophaie’s dark face! How much stranger was real life than the fiction of dreams!