The Vanishing American

by Zane Grey

  From the window of this house Marian had a wonderful view that fascinated and repelled her. How desolate and dreary! The immense basin appeared to spread to all points of the compass. Ponds of water glimmered under the lowering sky. Vegetation was so scanty that bushes here and there resembled animals. Across the void rose a whorl of white cliffs, bold and bleak, worn by the elements into strange and irregular conformation. This mass of rock ended abruptly in a sheer bluff facing the south. A wide avenue of spotted desert land separated it from the rise and heave of a black flat mountain to the eastward. Marian saw the almost level line of this tableland wander away into the distance, gradually to disappear in the north. And following the horizon round toward the west she suddenly beheld a dim purple-and-white dome. For long it held her gaze, not alone because of its beauty. It called. It did not seem real, so deep was the purple, so ethereal the white.

  “Is that a mountain?” she asked one of the traders.

  “It shore is,” he replied. “That’s old Nothsis Ahn. It’s worshiped by the Indians.”

  Marian went back to the car, where the Indian sat waiting for her. Almost she resented this swift passage across the desert. It left no time for realization, let alone contemplation. One more moment she gave to Red Sandy. It had beauty, but how austere! There was no life, no movement. The red colors dominated, but did not stand out. They merged with the drab, brown, mauve, and gray. Perhaps the lowering clouds caused the effect of gloom. The silence was impressive.

  On the way down across the sandy basin Marian espied dark riders approaching from around the bluff. She watched them grow until they met and passed her, two Indian men and one woman, riding shaggy ponies and packing blankets and sheepskins behind their saddles. The woman was heavy, garbed in loose dirty garments, with dull, dark face and unkempt hair. It was only at a distance that these Indians looked picturesque.

  Then there ensued an hour in which the car chugged over a sandy road, mostly uphill, with view restricted except on the eastern side. Here the long black flat mountain assumed nobler proportions. Bands of little horses dotted the gray-green rise of ground. An Indian rider appeared on the rim of a ridge, loping along, lending a touch of wildness and life to the scene. Presently the driver called Marian’s attention to a mound of earth with a dark hole leading into it. “Hogan. Indian house,” he said. How crude and primitive! Verily the wants and the comforts of the Indians must be few.

  It was only from the high places, Marian came to learn, that the incredible openness and boundlessness of the desert could be grasped. And there came a ridge summit from which she could see afar, down and across a land of prairie, on to slowly rising bare waste that swept upward to purple and black heights. These colors held her gaze. A round knob of stony hill on the left and the continuous range of mesa on her right seemed gradually to become less prominent in her sight. In another hour she learned that the black heights were forests of cedar and the purple ones were meadows of sage. Long before she reached these beautiful open patches of purple she became aware of a pervading fragrance in the air. It grew keener, stronger, sweeter. Marian recognized the odor of sage. Only how wild and strange, stifling almost, and wholly exhilarating! Here the barrenness of the desert was not in evidence. They had climbed to a high elevation. Forest of cedar and field of sage encompassed her on all sides.

  If this long twenty mile upgrade of desert had not slowly grown from waste to verdure, from desolate, sinister badlands to noble heights of keen sweet air and beautiful color, Marian would not have been prepared for the next phase of this bewildering country. But she had been given time. She had grown with the miles.

  So that when the Indian driver sped his car down a steep break, round curve and corner, out of the forest into a changed world of stone, Marian was not utterly confounded. The road stretched on through a long narrow pass, above which towered cliffs of red and gold and yellow, so lofty that she had to look almost straight up to see their rims. They seemed not to be cliffs, but stone faces of mountains. Marian gazed upward until her eyes ached.

  All too swiftly ran the car and all too short was that pass. It opened out upon ridged gray desert, with the black mesa on the right zigzagging away to the eastward and the red corrugated wall of stone on the left notching its bold skyline away to the north. Ten more miles of travel removed both ramparts far to either side. And another hilltop gave Marian her first sight of Kaidab. Her letters, her gifts to Lo Blandy, had been sent to this trading post. All she saw was several low flat stone houses. A crude and dreary habitation! Yet no splendid spectacle of the whole long ride had given Marian the thrill that now shot over her.

  CHAPTER IV

  Close at hand, Kaidab trading post showed striking aspects of life and activity. Marian looked and looked, with mounting delight and wonder.

  First there were a number of the shaggy Indian ponies, unhaltered, standing with uplifted heads, and black rolling eyes askance on the mail carrier’s car. Several were without saddles, having blankets tied on their backs; one was of a cream color almost pink, with strange light eyes and wonderful long mane and tail; most of them were a reddish bay in color; and there was a fiery little black that took Marian’s eye.

  Huge bags of burlap containing wool were being packed into a wagon by Indian freighters. And Indians were lounging around, leaning against the stone wall of the trading post. The look of them somehow satisfied Marian. Raven- black hair, impassive faces of bronze, eyes of night, lean and erect figures clad in velvet and corduroy, with glints of silver and bead ornament–these circumstances of appearance came somewhere near fitting Marian’s rather sentimental anticipations.

  Before the open front of one building, evidently a storehouse, other Indians were packing wool in long sacks, a laborsome task, to judge from their efforts to hold the sack erect and stamp down the wool. The whole interior of this open house appeared hung and littered with harness, rope, piles of white sacks, piles of wool and skins. The odor of sheep struck Marian rather disagreeably. The sun was hot, and fell glaringly upon the red blankets. Flies buzzed everywhere. And at least a dozen lean, wild- looking and inquisitive- eyed dogs sniffed around Marian. Not one of them wagged its tail. White men in shirt sleeves, with sweaty faces and hands begrimed, were working over a motor- car as dilapidated as the mail carrier’s. Two Indian women, laden with bundles, came out of the open door of the trading post. The older woman was fat and pleasant-faced. She wore loose flowing garments, gaudy in color, and silver necklaces, and upon her back she carried a large bundle or box. When she passed, Marian caught a glimpse of a dark little baby face peering out of a hole in that box. The younger female was probably a daughter, and she was not uncomely in appearance. Something piquant and bright haunted her smooth dark face. She was slender. She had little feet incased in brown moccasins. She wore what Marian thought was velveteen, and her silver ornaments were studded with crude blue stones. She glanced shyly at Marian. Then an Indian came riding up to dismount near Marian. He was old. His lean face was a mass of wrinkles, and there was iron gray in his hair. He wore a thin cotton shirt and overalls– white man’s apparel much the worse for wear. Behind his saddle hung a long bundle, a goatskin rolled with the fur inside. This he untied and carried into the trading post. More Indians came riding in; one of the ponies began to rear and snort and kick; the dogs barked; whisks of warm and odorous wind stirred the dust; the smell of the sheep wool grew stronger; low guttural voices of Indians mingled with the sharper, higher notes of white men.

  A sturdily built, keen-eyed man stalked out of the post, with a hand on the Indian mail carrier’s shoulder. He wore a vest over a flannel shirt, but no coat or hat. His boots were rough and dusty.

  “Take her bags in,” he said to the Indian.

  Then, at his near approach, Marian felt herself scanned by a gaze at once piercing and kindly.

  “Glad to welcome you, Miss Warner,” he said. “Been expecting you for two hours. I’m John Withers.”

  Marian offered her hand. “Exp
ecting me?” she queried, curiously.

  “News travels fast in this country,” he replied, with a smile. “An Indian rode in two hours ago with the news you were coming.”

  “But my name?” asked Marian, still curious.

  “Mrs. Withers told me that and what you looked like. She’ll shore be glad to see you. Come, we’ll go in.”

  Marian followed him into the yard beside the trading post, where somewhat in the background stood a low, squat, picturesque stone house with roof of red earth. Her curiosity had developed into wonder. She tingled a little at an implication that followed one of her conjectures. How could Mrs. Withers know what she looked like? Withers ushered her into a wonderful room that seemed to flash Indian color and design at her. Blankets on floor and couch, baskets on mantel and wall, and a strange painted frieze of Indian figures, crude, elemental, striking–these lent the room its atmosphere. A bright fire blazed in the open stone fireplace. Books and comforts were not lacking. This room opened into a long dining-room, with the same ornamental Indian effects. And from it ran a hallway remarkable for its length and variety and color of its decorations.

  Marian’s quick eyes had only time for one look when a woman of slight stature and remarkable face entered.

  “Welcome to Kaidab, Miss Warner,” she said, warmly, with extended hands. “We’re happy to meet you. We hope you will stay long.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Withers. You’re very kind. I–I am very glad to get here,” replied Marian, just a little confused and nervous.

  “You’ve had a long, cold ride. And you’re red with dust. Oh, I know that ride. I took it first twenty-five years ago, on horseback.”

  “Yes, it was hard. And cold–I nearly froze. But, oh, it was wonderful!”

  Withers laughed his pleasure at her words. “Why, that’s no ride. You’re just on the edge of real wild country. We’re going to show you.”

  “John, put Miss Warner’s bags in the second room. And send some hot water. After she’s comfortable and rested we can talk.”

  Marian found the room quaint and strange as the others. It had a clean, earthy smell. The walls appeared to be red cement–adobe, Marian supposed–and they were cold. While washing and changing her dusty clothes she pondered over her singular impressions of Mrs. Withers. She was no ordinary woman. For some reason not apparent to Marian her hostess had a strong personal regard for her. Marian had intuitively felt this. Besides she must have been a woman used to welcoming strangers to this wild frontier. Marian sensed something of the power she had felt in women of high position, as they met their guests; only in the case of Mrs. Withers it was a simplicity of power, a strange, unconscious dignity, spiritual rather than material. But Marian lost no time in making herself comfortable or conjecturing about Mrs. Withers. She felt drawn to this woman. She divined news, strange portents, unknown possibilities, all of which hurried her back to the living room. Mrs. Withers was there, waiting for her.

  “How sweet and fair you are!” exclaimed Mrs. Withers, with an admiring glance at Marian’s face. “We don’t see your kind out here. The desert is hard on blondes.”

  “So I imagine,” replied Marian. “I’ll not long remain ‘Benow di cleash!'... Is that pronounced correctly?”

  Mrs. Withers laughed. “Well, I understand you. But you must say it this way... ‘Benow di cleash!’”

  Her voice had some strange, low, liquid quality utterly new to Marian.

  “Mrs. Withers, you know where I got that name,” asserted Marian.

  “Yes, I’m happy to tell you I do,” she rejoined, earnestly. Marian slowly answered to the instinct of the moment. Her hands went out to meet those offered by Mrs. Withers, and she gazed down into the strange strong face with its shadows of sorrow and thought, its eyes of penetrating and mystic power.

  “Let us sit down,” continued Mrs. Withers, leading the way to the couch. “We’ll have to talk our secrets at odd moments. Somebody is always bobbing in.... First, I want to tell you two things–that I know will make us friends.”

  “I hope so–believe so,” returned Marian, trying to hold her calm.

  “Listen. All my life I’ve been among the Indians,” said Mrs. Withers, in her low voice. “I loved Indians when I was a child. I’ve been here in this wild country for many years. It takes years of kindness and study to understand the Indian.... These Indians here have come to care for me. They have given me a name. They believe me–trust me. They call on me to settle disputes, to divide property left by their dead, to tell their troubles. I have learned their dreams, their religion, their prayers and legends and poetry, their medicine, the meaning of their dances. And the more I learn of them the more I love and respect them. Indians are not what they appear to most white people. They are children of nature. They have noble hearts and beautiful minds. They have criminals among them, but in much less proportion than have the white race. The song of Hiawatha is true–true for all Indians. They live in a mystic world of enchantment peopled by spirits, voices, music, whisperings of God, eternal and everlasting immortality. They are as simple as little children. They personify everything. With them all is symbolic.”

  Mrs. Withers paused a moment, her eloquent eyes riveted upon Marian.

  “For a good many years this remote part of the Indian country was far out of the way of white men. Thus the demoralization and degradation of the Indian were retarded, so far as this particular tribe is concerned. This Nopah tribe is the proudest, most intelligent, most numerous, and the wealthiest tribe left in the United States. So-called civilization has not yet reached Kaidab. But it is coming. I feel the next few years will go hard with the Indian–perhaps decide his fate.”

  “Oh–there seems no hope!” murmured Marian.

  “There indeed seems none, if you look at it intelligently and mercilessly. But I look at this question as the Indian looks at everything. He begins his prayer, ‘Let all be well with me,’ and he ends it, ‘Now all is well with me.’ He feels–he trusts. There really is a God. If there were not I would be an infidel. Life on the desert magnified all.... I want you to let me help you to understand the Indian.... For sake of your happiness!”

  Marian could not voice her surprise. A tremor ran over her.

  “Nophaie showed me your picture–told me about you,” went on Mrs. Withers, with an exquisite softness of voice. “Ah! do not be shocked. It was well for him that he confided in me.... I met him the day he returned from the East. I remembered him. I knew him as a boy, a little shepherd who refused to leave his flock in a sandstorm. I know the place where he was born. I know the sage where he was stolen. I knew the horsethief who stole him. I knew the woman who took him East and put him in school.... But Nophaie did not remember me. He went out to the sage slopes of Nothsis Ahn, and when he rode back he had not his white man’s clothes, or speech, or name. He was Nophaie. And he rode here now and then. The Indians told me about him. He is a chief who wants to help them in a white man’s way. But the Indians want him to be a medicine man.... Well, I saw his trouble, and when he came here I talked. I helped him with his own language. It returned but slowly. I saw his unhappiness. And in the end he told me about you–showed me your picture– confessed his love.”

  Marian covered her burning face with trembling hands. She did not mind this good woman knowing her secret, but the truth spoken out, the potent words, the inevitable fact of it being no dream shocked her, stormed her heart. Nophaie loved her. He had confessed it to this noble friend of the Indians.

  “Marian, do not be ashamed of Nophaie’s love,” went on Mrs. Withers, appealingly. “No one else knows. John suspects, but is not sure. I understand you–feel with you... and I know more. You’d not be here if you did not love Nophaie!”

  “Of–course I love–him,” said Marian, unsteadily, as she uncovered her face. “You misunderstand. I’m not ashamed.... It’s just the shock of hearing- -knowing–the suddenness of your disclosure.”

  “You musn’t mind me–and my knowing all,” returned the wo
man. “This is the desert. You are among primitive peoples. There’s nothing complex out here. Your sophistication will fall from you like dead scales.”

  Gathering courage, and moved by an intense and perfect assurance of sympathy, Marian briefly told Mrs. Withers of her romance with Nophaie, and then of her condition in life and her resolve to have her fling at freedom, to live a while in the West and in helping the Indians perhaps find something of happiness.

  “Ah! You will grieve, but you will also be wonderfully happy,” replied Mrs. Withers. “As for Nophaie–you will save him. His heart was breaking. And when an Indian’s heart breaks he dies.... I kept track of Nophaie. He had a remarkable career in college. He was a splendid student and a great athlete. I’ve heard that Nophaie’s father was a marvelous runner. And he carried the Testing Stone of the braves the farthest for generations.... But what good Nophaie’s education and prowess will do out here is a question. He must learn to be an Indian. Eighteen years away made him more white than red. He will never go back to the white man’s life.... Marian, I wonder–does that worry you? Be honest with me?”

  “No. I would not want him to go back,” replied Marian.

  “And you said you had no near and dear ties?” queried Mrs. Withers, with her magnetic eyes on Marian’s.

  “None very near or dear.”

  “And you were sick of artificial life–of the modern customs–of all that- -”

  “Indeed I was,” interrupted Marian.

  “And you really have a longing to go back to simple and outdoor ways?”