by Zane Grey
“Hang him!” this Indian yelled in Noki.
A roar broke from the crowd. In a twinkling the somber spirit broke to let out the devil. The time was evil. Long had the war oppression and passion been dammed in the breasts of these Indians. Their wrongs burned for revenge. Some of their number were undoubtedly the worse for liquor. But one of this crowd recognized the peril to Friel and chose to divert it. He yelled piercingly and split the cordon of Indians closing around the missionary.
That piercing yell not only silenced the angry Nokis; it gave Marian the most startling shock of her life. She recognized that voice.
The tall Nopah reached Friel’s side and his long arms grasped the taut lasso. With one powerful lunge he jerked the Noki from his horse.
That tall form! That action! Marian thought she had lost her mind. Then the Nopah, in recovering from this exertion, rose to expose his face.
Nophaie! Marian screamed the name, but no sound left her lips. She reeled in her saddle. She clutched the pommel. A terrible uplift of her heart seemed to end in bursting gush of blood all over her.
One sweep of long arms sent the noose flying from Friel’s neck. How ghastly and livid his face! He fell against the Indian, either in collapse or feigning faint.
The Indian braced Friel, shook him hard, hauled and pushed him through the crowd, and released him at the door of the school. Friel staggered in out of sight. When the Indian turned to face the crowd, tall, lithe, with singularly free stride, Marian assuredly recognized Nophaie. He began to push back members of that mob, once again pressing toward the schoolhouse. Other Indians, guided by his example, fell in line to avert further violence, and at length the whole mass, sullen and gesticulating, was forced back into the village.
It was afternoon and Marian waited in Paxton’s sitting room for Nophaie.
She had met Withers at the post. He had come to Mesa with Nophaie to take her back to Kaidab. They needed her there. Outside the dark day had grown colder and grayer. A snow-flurry whitened the ground. The wind mourned. Withers had said Nophaie looked well enough. No one could tell! He had reached the reservation from a point on the railroad east of Flagerstown. Two whole days! Forty-eight hours he had been on the desert without her knowledge! He had ridden down to the village to find her. God indeed had smiled on a missionary that day. A Nopah had saved his life.
Would Nophaie never come? Withers had gone to fetch him back. But Marian could not wait. If she could only see him, feel him, make sure this was not the madness of a dream — then she could be calm, unutterably thankful, strong to stand any shock!
Suddenly she heard a step. Soft, quick, padded sound of Indian moccasin! Her heart stopped beating. Nophaie entered. He was the Indian of her memories.
“Benow di cleash,” he said, in voice that was rich and happy.
She raised both arms and lips before strength left her. Then as he enveloped her she needed nothing but to feel. One woman’s flash of sight — the keen, dark Indian face, thinner, finer, softening in its bronze — then she could see no more. But she felt — rippling of muscles that clasped and set round her like iron bands. Pressed against his wide breast, she felt its heave and pound. And his lips!
“Oh, you seem well! Are you well?” Marian was saying, later, for what seemed the hundredth time.
“Well, yes — but I’ll never again climb the north wall of Nothsis Ahn,” he replied, with a sad smile.
“Nophaie! Oh, I am not quite myself,” she whispered. “You feel strong — you look the same.... No, there’s a strange change.... Your eyes!... Nophaie, your mouth! They twitch.”
“That’s only shell shock,” he said. “It will pass away. Really I am pretty well, considering. The gas left me liable to consumption, but I haven’t got it yet. And my old sage uplands will cure me.”
Marian could scarcely believe her eyes. She had expected to see him maimed, broken, aged, wrecked, but he was none of these. Slowly she realized. Then she espied a medal on the dark velveteen shirt he wore. His D.S.! How did he win that? Was she not a woman?
“Benow di cleash, my dearest, I’ve not been to pink teas, like the ones you used to drag me to at Cape May,” he replied, with a laugh that signalized the acuteness of her joy.
“You fought! Oh, I’ve heard!” she cried out. “The Withers boy wrote home. He had met a soldier who knew you — told him all about you.... Munson!”
“Yes. We met over there. But soldiers are apt to be quiet about themselves and to praise the other fellow.”
“Nophaie — forgive me — something in me demands to know,” she said, unable to repress her strange emotion. “I — I think loving you and living out here has made me — a little more American than I was.... More Indian! Did you play football with any Germans?”
He laughed, but not the same way. For an instant he seemed no longer Nophaie.
“Benow di cleash, I did — yes. I got into a field of Germans — scattered — running like the old football players.... Only I had a bayonet!”
CHAPTER XX
A MODERATION OF the severe January weather attended Marian’s arrival at Kaidab.
Withers had said to her: “We’re a pretty discouraged outfit and we need a little of your sunshine. We all had the ‘flu’ except Colman. Mrs. Withers isn’t her old self yet. That’s the worst of this queer sickness. It leaves half its victims with some infirmity. We’re going to need you, and I reckon you’ll be better off and shore happier at Kaidab. And if it’s work you’re looking for among these poor Indians — Ha! — I reckon you’ll have enough. For this winter has started in a way to scare the daylights out of us.”
At first Marian did not see justification for the trader’s grim statements. His wife was rather pale and weak, but she was getting well, and certainly was cheerful. The son was still in France, safe, now, at least, from the Germans. Colman had grown thin and somewhat somber, yet appeared perfectly well. The Indian servants were identically the same as when Marian had last seen them. She felt that she must not, however, be oversanguine as to the well- being of the Withers household. She sensed, rather than saw, an encroaching shadow.
Nophaie had no home now, except the open, and Withers forced him to accept room and board in his house. Marian was sure that one of the trader’s needs of her was to help him keep Nophaie from going back to the hogans of his people, to do which in mid-winter would be fatal for him.
The afternoon of Marian’s arrival at Kaidab was not without something of pleasure and happiness. The dark cloud hovered at the horizon of the mind. She herself brought cheer and gayety, for she felt she certainly owed them that. Besides the proximity of Nophaie made her more light-headed than she would have cared to confess.
“Marian, you should see Nophaie in the uniform he wore when he got here,” said Mrs. Withers.
“His service uniform?” responded Marian, eagerly.
“Yes, and it sure showed service.”
Whereupon Marian conceived an irresistible desire to see Nophaie in the garb of a soldier. So she asked him to put it on. He refused. She importuned him, only to be again refused. Nophaie seemed a little strange about the matter. But Marian did not care, and, persisting, she followed him into the long hall of the Indian decorations, and there she waylaid him.
“Please Nophaie, put your uniform on for me,” she begged. “It’s only a girl’s sentimental whim. But I don’t care what it is. That girl loves you.”
“Benow di cleash, I hate the sight of that uniform now,” he said.
“Oh, why?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t hate it until I got back here — on the desert — home.”
“Oh! Well, you need never put it on again after this time. Just once for me. I want to take your picture. Think — I have pictures of you in football suit, baseball suit, Indian suit, and now I want one of you as a soldier — an American soldier. Why not?”
And she was not above lending her arms and lips to persuasion, which quite vanquished him.
“You’re a whit
e girl, all right,” he laughed.
“White? Certainly, and your white girl.”
Somehow she seemed to want to be unutterably tender and loving to him, as if to make up for what she owed him. But when she saw him stride out in his uniform she quite lost her teasing and affectionate mood. It was almost as if sight of him had struck her dumb. The slouchy loose garb of an Indian had never done justice to Nophaie. As a soldier he seemed magnificent. She dragged him out in the sunlight and photographed him to her satisfaction. Then all the rest of the afternoon, which they spent in the living room before the big open fireplace, she was very quiet, and watched him.
After dinner he went to his room and returned in velveteen and corduroy, with his silver-buckled belt and moccasins. Nophaie again! Marian felt glad. That soldier uniform had obsessed her. Its meaning was so staggering.
Withers seemed to throw off cares of the present and forebodings of the future. He teased Marian and he kept coaxing Nophaie to tell something about the war. Marian added her entreaties to those of the trader. But Nophaie would not speak of himself. He told about the deaths of four of his Nopahs, all in action at the front, and each story had for Marian a singular tragic significance. Then he told about Shoie, who had turned out to be more than a bear-trapper of Germans. American officers discovered late Shoie’s remarkable gift for seeing or picking out weaknesses in the German front line, when they were driving. Nophaie said it was simply the Nopah’s wonderful eyesight. At any rate Shoie was sent out on scout duty, by both day and night. He could hide himself on apparently level bare ground. He needed no more cover than a jackrabbit. He had the Indian’s instinct for stealthiness.
From one of his scouting trips Shoie did not return. He was reported among the missing. But sometime during the fourth night of his absence he crawled back to his own trenches. A sentry stumbled over him. Shoie could not talk, and appeared covered with blood, probably seriously wounded. Examination proved that he had been spiked to a wall through hands and feet, and his tongue had been cut out. As Shoie could not write his own language or understand much of the white man’s, it was difficult to find out what had happened to him. Indians of his own kind at length pieced out the probable truth of his story. He had ventured too far and had been captured. The Germans had tried to force him to talk, or to make signs in regard to his regiment and trenches. They did not understand an Indian. Shoie made faces at them. They drove spikes through his hands and feet and left him to hang for a day. Then they tried again to make him tell what they wanted to know. Shoie stuck out his tongue at the intolerant Germans. They ordered his tongue cut out. And still they left him to hang. That night Shoie worked the spikes through his hands, then pulled out those that held his feet. And he crawled across No Man’s Land to his own trenches. He recovered from his injuries.
“Oh — monsters!” cried out Marian. “Could they not have killed him?”
“Benow di cleash, the Huns were like Blucher,” replied Nophaie.
That was the only word he ever said against the Germans, the only time he ever spoke of them.
“And is Shoie here?” queried Marian, eagerly.
“Wal, I reckon so,” replied Withers. “He was in the store to- day, begging tobacco. Sure, it’s a sight when he tries to talk. The Indians are more scared of him than ever. They think he has offended the evil spirits who had his tongue cut out to punish him for casting spells. Something strange about what’s happened to Shoie!”
It was intensely interesting to hear Nophaie talk of Paris, and crossing on the troop-ships, and his return to New York. Marian could not be sure, but she divined somehow that women had been one of the incomprehensible side factors of the war. A flash of jealousy, like fire, flamed over Marian, only to subside to her absolute certainty of Nophaie’s aloofness.
“Withers, this will interest you particularly,” said Nophaie, “as it deals directly with the Indian problem.... In New York I ran into one of my old college teachers. He remembered me well. Was not at all surprised to see me in Uncle Sam’s uniform. And he was glad I had done something. He took me to dinner and we talked over my school days and football records. Asked me what I was going to do, and if I’d like a job. I told him I was going home to work with my people. That made him serious. He said: ‘The work needed among the American Indians now lies along the line of citizenship. This government reservation bureau is obsolete. The Indian myth is punctured. Whenever the Indians protest against attempts to civilize them it is owing to the influence of reservation officers and politicians who want to keep their easy pickings. These fakers encourage the belief that the Indian question is still serious, and that the government must still control them. Almost all the Indians have been born under bureau administration. They have been controlled by the political bureau. Most of them have learned to be dependent upon the government. They know nothing of white men’s ways — which certainly is a black mark against the Indian Bureau.
“The Indian in the war service brought to all intelligent and honest American thinkers something of vital significance. The Indians did not have to go to fight. They enlisted, perhaps ten thousand of them. Many were killed. They were in all branches of the service. I am absolutely certain that these Indian soldiers were not in sympathy with the bunko game of adopting American generals into the tribe. That was only some more of the politician’s tricks to keep the reservations under government control and restrict the Indian to the desert.
“And it is not only unjust to the Indian, but a detriment to the government and people. If never before the Indian has now earned a right to get out among white men if he wants to or to live free upon his unmolested land. If these Indian Bureau men were honest in their work to civilize Indians they would make them free and give them the rights of citizenship. Suppose the government restricted all the aliens and immigrants who settle in America. They would never become real Americans as most of them do.
“The real good to the Indian has been subordinated to the main issue — and that is the salary of eight thousand government employees. It is a waste of money. Actually most of it is wasted!”
Withers then indulged in some language a good deal more forcible than elegant; and he concluded his outburst by asking Nophaie if the official had mentioned Morgan.
“No,” returned Nophaie. “Well, when I told him how the missionary with the Old Book behind him actually governed this reservation he was dumfounded.”
“Nophaie, how would you decide the Indian problem?” asked Withers. “I’ve been among Indians all my life. My wife knows Indians better than any other white person I’ve ever heard of. It’s a problem with us. As old Etenia says, you’ve got a white mind and red blood. Tell us your angle.”
Nophaie leaned on the high mantle and poked his moccasined toe at a stick of wood fallen from the fire. He seemed tranquil and sad. He had a thoughtful brow. His eyes had the piercing look, the somber blackness peculiar to his kind, but they had something more, and it was much for this nameless light that Marian loved him. She seemed to see it as the soul of an Indian — a something the white man did not believe in. She was curious to see how Nophaie would answer the trader’s earnest question, and did not believe he would answer at all.
“I could solve the Indian problem. First I’d exclude missionaries like Morgan,” he replied, with a strange, dark bitterness. “Then I’d give the Indian land and freedom. Let him work and live as he chose — send his children to school — move among white men and work with and for them. Let the Indians marry white women and Indian girls marry white men. It would make for a more virile race. No people can overcome handicaps now imposed upon us. Not much can be done in the way of changing or improving the matured Indian. But he was good enough as he was. This Indian wants none of the white man’s ways. He cares only for his desert and his people. He hates the idea of being dependent. Let him work or idle for himself. In time he would develop into a worker. The Indian children should be educated. Yes! But not taught to despise their parents and forego their religi
on. Indian children would learn — even as I have learned. What ruined me was to make me an infidel. Let the Indian’s religion alone.... The Indian is no different from a white man — except that he is closer to elemental life — to primitive instincts. Example of the white man’s better way’s would inevitably follow association. The Indian will absorb, if he is not cheated and driven.... I think the Golden Rule of the white men is their best religion. If they practiced that the Indian problem would be easy.”
Late that night after the Withers family and others of their household had gone to bed Marian sat a while with Nophaie before the glowing embers in the fireplace.
This hour really was the happiest and most beautiful in its teaching of any she had ever spent with him. Much of his bitterness had vanished. If he had been great before he went to war, what was he now? Marian could only feel little, humble, adoring, before this strange composite of a man. For Marian he was now more of a lover than he had ever been. Marian trembled a little, fearful even in her hour of bliss. Why had he let down his Indian reserve? What did he know that she did not? If he had gotten rid of the scourge of his soul — his unbelief — he would have told her. But she would have divined that. Nophaie was at once closer to her than ever, yet farther away. All she could do was to grasp at the skirts of the happy and thrilling and thought-provoking hour.
Next day Marian encountered Shoie. It seemed to her that Withers tried to attract her attention from the Indians in the trading post, but he was not successful.
She went into the store, back of the counter, and drew closer to this Indian hero who had been mutilated by the Germans. She did not recognize Shoie. He was some other Indian, like the evil spirit he claimed to possess. His face had been strangely lacerated, and he resembled a creature distorted by demoniacal laughter. Shoie was a physical wreck. His Indian garb, that manifestly he had acquired from an Indian of larger stature, hung loosely upon him, and it was ragged. She did not see how he could keep warm, for he had no blanket. And he huddled over the stove. Presently he observed that Marian was looking at him. She could not tell whether he was angry or glad. He opened his mouth. His scarred lips moved to let out a strange sound. It bore no semblance to words. Yet how plain it was that he tried to speak! Only a roar issued from that tongueless cavity. To Marian it was horrible. She fled.