by Zane Grey
Most significant of all was the singular fact that letters written to Washington, and to the Mission Board were not only never answered, but never received by the officials to whom they were addressed. The chief of all the Nopahs, a most intelligent Indian, wrote through an interpreter a letter to Washington, telling and substantiating facts important to the government and to the reservation. He concluded this letter — a copy of which Marian read and considered a remarkable document — by asking a question: “Is this reservation a reservation for Indians?” No reply was ever received.
Marian had great difficulty in learning the real deep significance of the Indian’s religion. The Nopahs prayed to the Sun, Moon, Stars, Wind, Thunder, Lightning — anything beyond their understanding, and all of which they symbolized. They recognized the unseen power which sent the sun each day, and the warm winds and the cold, and all physical phenomena. They heard the idea that God was a person and abided in a particular place, but they argued if there was a personal God and a material Heaven, there would be a road leading to it. They believed there was a physical life for spirits of the good, which belief accounted for their custom of sending with the dead the best horses, bridle, saddle, belt, beads, gun. Tools of all sorts were sent — the spirits of the tools — everything that was sent along for the spirit of the dead man had to be killed so that they could go along. Nopahs believed that spirits of evil persons went into animals here on earth — into the coyote, bear, cougar, snake — and this was the reason why the Indians seldom or never killed these creatures.
Yet keen as was Marian’s curiosity, she avoided some things that would have been easy to see. On the other hand, there were incidents she did not care to see yet could not help seeing. At the midweek service Morgan slapped the Indian boys who did not remain quiet while he ridiculed the beliefs of their people. Morgan often reported the children to the matron with instructions that they be punished. Marian had seen several instances of Miss Herron’s punishments. She compelled children to bend forward, hands touching the floor, or to stand erect, with hands lifted high, for as many minutes as they could endure it. Not unusual was it for a girl to faint under this punishment. One day some Indian boys ran across the porch of Blucher’s house. Marian saw the agent run out, catch one of them, knock him down, and kick him after he was down. The little fellow did not rise very readily.
Another day, early in December, when, despite the bright sunshine, there were ragged edges of ice along the irrigation ditches, Marian was hurrying by the cellar door of one of the storehouses. Through the door she saw two tiny Indian boys trying to assort a huge pile of potatoes. It was very cold down there in the cellar and the potatoes were covered with frost. The boys were so cold they could not speak and could scarcely hold a potato in their little hands. Marian took them to the engine room, where they could get warm. Then she reported the incident to Blucher, who insulted her for her pains.
By a process of elimination Marian arrived at a few proofs of the compulsory school education being beneficial to the Indians. Perhaps ninety- nine out of a hundred students returned to the old life, the hogan and the sheep. They could not help but carry ideas of better life, better methods, better management. They could understand English and knew the value of money and of a trade. So that whether they liked it or not they were somewhat better equipped to meet the inroads of the white man. These advantages, however, were negligible, especially in case of the Indian girls, when compared with the disadvantages of the compulsory school system. Marian inclined more and more to the conviction that the whole government school and reservation system was wrong.
These weeks of comparative inaction for Marian and the dearth of news from Nophaie and the apparent indifference of Blucher and Morgan to her presence as an employee of the government in no wise lulled her fears, and certainty of ultimate dismissal. The powers were intent on matters of more importance. Marian grew brooding and nervous, and was troubled by strange portents impossible to define. She felt that something was about to happen.
And one morning, when Miss Herron, her hard face pale and agitated, came running into the room where Marian was working she felt a shock. Her intuition had prompted her aright.
The matron ran into Blucher’s office, the door of which was open.
“Where’s Morgan,” she asked, shrilly. “I can’t — find him.”
“What’s wrong?” queried Blucher, with a frown of annoyance at this intrusion or disruption of his thought.
“That college Indian — forced himself into the school room,” cried Miss Herron. “He scared me out of — my wits. He’s dragged Gekin Yashi into the hall — where he’s talking to her. I heard Morgan’s name — then I ran out — over to his house — to tell him.... Oh, that Indian looked terrible!”
“Nophaie!” ejaculated Blucher. Manifestly that Indian name conjured up swift and bewildering ideas. Blucher looked mightily concerned. When Miss Herron started to run out he detained her. “You stay right here — and keep your mouth shut.” Then he grasped the telephone.
The shock to Marian had kept her standing just where she had been when Miss Herron entered. Shuffling, soft footsteps that she recognized as Morgan’s gave her another shock. Then the missionary entered. Certain it was he did not know of the presence of Nophaie. But his glance at Marian, and then sight of Miss Herron in the next room, told him something was amiss.
“What — why are you here?” he demanded, entering the office.
“Shut up!” interrupted Blucher. “Morgan, there’s hell to pay. Your college Indian is here — with Gekin Yashi.... Hello!... Yes, this is Blucher. Where’s Rhur?... Not there? Where is he? Find him quick.”
Blucher slammed down the receiver of the telephone and glared at Morgan. Marian could only partially see the missionary’s face, and what she saw was pale.
“Morgan, that Indian is with Gekin Yashi now,” said the agent, hoarsely. “Your friend Herron here heard him speak your name.”
“What’s — it mean?” blurted out Morgan, incredulously.
“I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be in your boots for a million,” replied Blucher, sardonically. “Have you got a gun?”
“No.”
“Well, the Old Book won’t be behind or in front of you now!”
“Lock the door,” shouted Morgan, wheeling. He banged it hard. Marian heard the key turn.
Marian had a glimpse of his face as he shut the door and somehow sight of it roused her. She peered through the open door, out into the yard, toward the dormitory. A tall Indian was running fleetly toward the office. Marian thrilled to her depths. Had she not seen that magnificent stride? This Indian was Nophaie, running as she had seen him many a time — running with the incomparable swiftness that had made him famous. Before she could draw another breath he had reached the porch steps to mount them in one pantherish bound. His moccasined feet padded on the floor. Then — he flashed in upon her, somehow terrible. A soiled handkerchief, folded narrow, and spotted with blood now dry, circled his brow and black hair. His eyes seemed to pierce Marian.
“I saw Morgan come in,” he said. “Is he there — with Blucher?”
“Oh — yes,” gasped Marian. “They’re locked in. You mustn’t.... Oh!”
Nophaie pulled a gun from somewhere, and lunging at the locked door, he shoved his foot against it with tremendous force. The lock broke. The door swung in. Nophaie bounded across the threshold.
Marian, suddenly galvanized into action, ran after him.
Miss Herron lay on the floor in a faint. Blucher sat back in his chair, mouth agape, eyes wide. Amaze had begun to give way to fear. Morgan was ghastly.
Nophaie, with his right hand, held the gun low. It was cocked and it had an almost imperceptible quiver. With left hand Nophaie significantly touched the bloody bandage round his head.
“Do etin’s murderers did not give me that,” said Nophaie. “They came three times to find me. But they failed. It was your Noki who ambushed my trail and shot me.... I have his confession
.”
Neither of the accused could utter a word. The Indian’s menace was unmistakable, as inevitable as it was terrible.
“Morgan — I thought well to get Gekin Yashi’s confession also — so I can kill you without the compunction white education fostered in me.”
Morgan gasped and sagged against the wall. Blucher, livid and fearful, began to stammer incoherently.
Marian felt a tremendous sensation in her breast. It seemed to lift her. It passed, and she found herself burning deep within, suddenly undamped from that icy terror.
“I am going to kill you both,” said Nophaie.
With that Marian shut the door behind her. Then she got between Nophaie and the men, facing them. She realized what she had to do, and was equal to it.
“Keep quiet,” she ordered.
Wheeling to Nophaie, she went closer to him, with one hand going to his shoulder, the other forcing down the leveled gun.
“You must not kill these men.”
“Why not? Blucher had his men murder Do etin. Morgan has murdered Gekin Yashi’s soul.”
“That may be true,” responded Marian. “It’s not a question of justice. If you shoot them you will go to the gallows.”
“Yes, if I were caught. And then I would like to tell in a court-room what these men are.”
“Nophaie, you would not be believed except by a few who could not help you.”
“Then I’ll kill them in revenge. For Gekin Yashi — for my people.”
“No! No! You are above that, too. It’s only your passion. There is no good to be accomplished. The evil these men have done will earn its punishment. Don’t kill them.”
“I must. There is no justice. Your government is not honest or fair with the Indian. It never was and never will be. Not to save the Indian! These reservations are not for Indians. They are desert fields, isolated wastes with which a few white men induce the government to appropriate fifteen million dollars — that they may keep their fat, useless jobs.... The whites have educated me. And all I know cries out to kill these devils. I must do it.”
“But you are the man I love,” cried Marian, driven to desperation by his cold truth, by the remorselessness of his just wrath. “You are the man. It would break my heart if you became a murderer — a fugitive from justice — and if — if they hanged you — I’d die!... My God! Nophaie, for sake of my love — for me- -let these men live. Think of what it means to me. I’ll marry you. I’ll live with you. I’ll spend my life helping your people — if — if only you — will not — spill blood.”
She embraced him, clung to him, weakening at the end of her long appeal.
Nophaie slowly let down the hammer of his gun. “Benow di cleash, hold this for me,” he said.
Trembling, Marian accepted the heavy weapon, wondering the while what he meant to do. She began to throb and thrill. His look, his demeanor, the very radiation of him had undergone a remarkable transformation. The deadliness, the something foreign to Marian’s conception of him, had vanished. Strangely he recalled Lo Blandy.
“Gentlemen, this girl of your race has saved your lives,” he said. “I meant to kill you.... But not even she, or your government, or the God you pretend to worship, can save you wholly from the Indian.”
Then with swift violence he turned upon Morgan, and in one singular powerful motion, in which his whole body appeared to participate, he shot his knee up into the man’s prominent abdomen. The blow made a sodden sound not unlike a heavy beat upon a drum. Morgan crashed against the wall, his head struck hard, his mouth spread wide, and a tremendous expulsion of breath followed. All the wind had been kicked out of him. As he sank to his knees his face grew hideous. His hands beat the air!
Next, in one bound Nophaie leaped upon the desk, and from that right down on Blucher, breaking the chair and sending the agent hard to the floor. Nophaie did not even lose his balance. How light, supple, wonderful his movements!
Marian could not have cried out or moved to intercept him to save her life. She was in the grip of an absolutely new and strange and terrible spell. Nophaie no longer meant to kill: he meant only to hurt. And that liberated something deep in Marian’s blood. It seemed to burst and shoot in fiery currents all over her. The Indian’s actions fascinated her. How strange that he never made a move to strike Blucher, who was cursing in fury and terror, trying to get up! But he could not. Nophaie kept kicking him down. Every time the German got to hands and knees Nophaie would swing a moccasined foot. He kicked and he shoved. And then it appeared he was plunging Blucher nearer and nearer to Morgan, whose convulsions had evidently gained him some breath. Another kick sent the agent hard against the kneeling missionary, knocking him over.
“At college I learned a great many white man’s tricks,” said Nophaie, with grim humor. “And one of them was to kick. College men claimed I could kick a football harder and farther than any other athlete who ever lived. Now since I scorn to soil my heathen red hands on such dirty beasts as you I must resort to kicking.”
And without particular violence or rancor, he kept up this game of football until both men were disheveled bloody-nosed wretches. Suddenly he ceased. Marian saw then that Miss Herron had revived and was sitting up. Nophaie looked at her with the same disgust that the men had inspired in him.
“I ought to kick you too,” he said. “But I have a white man’s education.” Drawing Marian out of the room, he closed the door and took his gun from her shaking hands.
“Don’t be frightened, Benow di cleash,” he said, with a strong, tender arm round her. “You saved me again. I can do nothing but love you more — and go back to my canyons.... Don’t worry about what Blucher and Morgan will do. They are cowards. They will not speak one word of this. If you get dismissed, go to the trader’s house. I beg of you — stay on the reservation yet awhile. Send me word through Withers. Good-by.”
“Oh, Nophaie!” cried Marian, trying to find her voice.
He glided out upon the porch, looked to right and left, and then leisurely trotted down the steps, down the path to the road. Marian espied his horse tied to the fence near the gate. She expected to see men running from all directions. But there were none. Marian’s heart slowly moved down out of her throat. She saw Nophaie mount his horse and lope away.
CHAPTER XV
DEEP IN THE canyoned recesses of the rock- ribbed earth, far beneath the white dome of Nothsis Ahn, Nophaie established his refuge in one of the almost inaccessible niches of his Canyon of Silent Walls.
He had packed supplies in from Kaidab and had left the post with an arrangement whereby any letters from Marian and more supplies would be sent once a month by a trusted Pahute.
Nophaie held dear to heart and conscience Marian’s appeal that he would not become a murderer. And it seemed the only way he could escape spilling blood was to hide himself in the canyons, there to spend the winter months, and to wait. He had little fear of Blucher’s hired policemen finding him here. Long before they could get near the only entrance to the Canyon of Silent Walls they would have lost any possible trace of him. Between his retreat and the upland plateau of Nothsis Ahn lay many miles of labyrinthine canyons, and the great western roll of the Marching Rocks. There was no trail over these hills of marble. The smooth wind-worn slopes left no trace of hoofs or moccasins. Many were the perilous precipices along which wound the only course over this range of wind-carved mounds. The last Pahute hogan stood on the cedared brow of the upland slope, thirty miles away in an air line, three days of exceedingly toilsome travel up and ever upward out of the rocky depths.
Nophaie penetrated to the furthermost corner of one of the canyoned wings of the valley; and here where the foot of white man had never trodden, under gleaming white walls lifting to the sky, he pitched his camp. It was a place of all places for the lonely Indian. The upland country was now in the grip of winter. Down here the grass and moss were still green, the willow and oak leaves had thinned out, yet many were left, fluttering gold in the sunlight, and the cottonwo
ods tenaciously clung to their autumn hues. Flowers still bloomed on the benches where the sun lingered longest. Bees and beetles buzzed throughout the noonday hours. Choe, the spruce tree, beloved by Nophaie, could be seen standing black and slender far up on the snow-margined brow of Nothsis Ahn, but down here in the valley gahd, the cedar, flourished and kept its everlasting rich green. Tolie, the blue jay, sacred to Nopah ceremonies, had come down off the mountain to spend the winter where the heat of the sun was reflected from lofty walls. Mocking-birds heralded the late sunrise with bursts of melody. Shy wild little birds, nameless for Nophaie, darted among the willows above the murmuring stream, now and then uttering melancholy notes. And from the high niches and crannies pealed down the sweet, strange piercing twitter of the canyon swift, bird that pitched downward like the gleam of an arrow.
Nophaie had reasoned that if there was anything to help him now in his extremity it was communion with his soul, and mastery of his physical self, here in the shadow of these lonely, silent walls. If arrest for assault threatened him out there on the reservation he could not long have gone on working among his people. Besides, more than arrest surely threatened him. The wound from Noki’s treacherous bullet had scarcely healed. So that there were several reasons why it was well for him to hide, to be alone, to await some mystic issue which was written. He would escape his enemies; he would be free of the cold winter that bound all Indians to their hogans; he could live in utter freedom here in this beautiful valley; he could dream and think the hours away, facing his soul, finding himself, growing away from that fierce hatred, realizing some melancholy happiness in the sweetness of love for Benow di cleash.