The Vanishing American

by Zane Grey

  “Missionary Morgan, do you really believe what you say?” queried Blucher.

  “I know,” said Morgan, with finality.

  “Hell!... You and what you believe will go smash some day–the longer you last the harder you’ll smash.”

  “Perhaps. But you’ll not be here to enjoy it,” retorted Morgan. “We get off the issue.... I think we need to make further charges against Wolterson. I suggest you involve him in this kidnapping of Gekin Yashi.”

  “It won’t be necessary. Wolterson will be through here when I approve this transfer. I advised his dismissal, but evidently that was a little strong.”

  “So much for him,” mused Morgan, with deep gaze into space. “Before we get on to the Do etin case let’s thresh out this matter of the Indian young men getting into the girls’ dormitory at night.”

  “Isn’t that my affair?” queried Blucher. “Are you superintendent of this school and reservation?”

  Morgan’s reply was neither negative nor affirmative. It was a silent study of the face of the agent.

  “I got the truth of it,” slowly began Blucher.

  “From what source?–Miss Herron told me all she knew before you heard of the goings-on.”

  “You think she told you all,” retorted Blucher, with malice. “As a matter of fact, she didn’t. I believe she had something to do with those Indian youths stealing into the dormitory.”

  It was Morgan’s turn to show amaze and skepticism.

  “I knew Miss Herron before she became matron of the school,” declared Morgan, as if the bare statement of such fact refuted any possibility of culpability.

  The superintendent stared. Then he laughed outright. Evidently this interview was not wholly irksome.

  “What’s that to do with it?”

  “It has all to do with it,” replied Morgan. “I gave Miss Herron the responsible duty of looking after the moral welfare of the girl students.”

  “Bah! Morgan, can’t you call things by their proper names, at least to me?” queried Blucher. “What you mean is that this particular matron was put in her job by you. Therefore she is responsible to you. Responsible to you, yes, for the moral welfare of these Indian girls–and for accurate record of what goes on, so that you could be kept posted.”

  Morgan made a gesture which seemed to intimate that Blucher’s talk was Sanscrit to him.

  “I can’t prove anything on Miss Herron, so there’s no need of my giving reasons for what I believe,” went on Blucher.

  “Yes, there is,” returned Morgan, sharply. “I am responsible for Miss Herron. And any word breathed against her must be substantiated with facts.”

  Blucher did not appear so dense that he was unconscious of being dominated by this missionary. Nor was his impotence a lack of courage or wit to resist. There was something else.

  “Facts? Well, the first fact I established is that this night-visit business has been going on for a long time.”

  “How long?”

  “Ever since you first evinced interest in Gekin Yashi,” returned Blucher, significantly.

  Significance appeared to be lost upon Morgan. “So? Then say about six months.”

  “Yes. And you know how Miss Gale started the investigation by telling us Gekin Yashi had run to her room for protection. This happened only a few days after Gekin Yashi was brought back to the school. Now Gekin Yashi told me that several times before she left the school she had to run to Miss Herron for protection.... Funny, now, that your conscientious matron did not report that to the superintendent?”

  If Morgan strove to keep his face from being a study he did not altogether succeed. Blucher took a cigar from his desk, and lighting it, puffed a few times, all the while watching his visitor.

  “Morgan, I know you and others credit me with the block-headedness supposedly common to Germans,” continued Blucher. “But I’m not so thick that I miss everything.... I suspect, mind you, I suspect that Miss Herron did not lie awake at nights praying for the protection of Indian girls–especially Gekin Yashi. I know beyond a doubt that Miss Herron was glad when Gekin Yashi disappeared. Also I know from Miss Herron’s own lips that she strongly disapproves of the rule making it compulsory for the Indian girls to go to your chapel.... Are any of these facts illuminating to you?”

  “Not particularly,” returned Morgan, with a heavy expulsion of breath. “But the goings-on of these young Indians prove they are heathen and will stay heathen until they are Christians.”

  “Which will be never,” declared the superintendent.

  The missionary was not proof against this outspoken repudiation of his entire work in the Indian field.

  “I have many converts,” he declared, haughtily, with the blood rising to his temples.

  “Morgan, your converts are illusions of your fertile brain,” said the German, contemptuously. “You show a paper to an Indian. You pretend to read what is not there. You say to this Indian: ‘Have you not learned from my sermons? Have you not accepted my God?...’ And the Indian replies, ‘Yes.'... What he means is, ‘Yes, I have not!'... And you get his thumbprint on your paper and send it to your mission, your church.”

  “Blucher, what you think of me and what I think of you are not the issues at present,” said Morgan, deliberately. “By and by we are going to clash. But just now we’ve serious business that necessitates unity.”

  “Yes, I know,” grunted Blucher, “and I hate to get down to it.”

  “If you don’t make examples of Do etin and Nophaie your authority on this reservation will absolutely cease,” declared Morgan, impressively. A singular force emanated from him. He radiated strong suggestiveness of will.

  “Damn that old Indian!” exclaimed Blucher, with sudden passion. His face set like that of a bulldog. “I’ll make him consent to that rule or–or–”

  “You’ll never make him do anything,” interrupted Morgan. “You don’t know Indians. Do etin will keep his word. He’ll never consent to Gekin Yashi coming to my church.”

  “I don’t blame him a damn bit for that,” retorted Blucher, brutally. “But Gekin Yashi is not the point with me. Do etin has bucked me. He has opposed me. He will make me look weak to all the Indians. But how to make an example of him!”

  Morgan leaned forward to whisper tensely. “Send Rhur, the policeman, Glendon and Naylor, at night to arrest Do etin. Do etin will refuse to consent to the new rule of the government. He will resist arrest.”

  “For once we agree,” said Blucher in reply. “And how about the college graduate?”

  Swiftly Morgan snapped his fingers, but the lifted hand shook before Blucher’s strained gaze.

  “That educated Indian is the most dangerous man, red or white, on this reservation,” hissed Morgan. “Leave him to me!”

  “Then it’s settled,” replied Blucher.

  “Send your men after Do etin to-night,” added the missionary.

  “Yes, the sooner the better. And that compulsory rule goes into effect right now.”

  Morgan hurried across the wide avenue toward his house. He strode as a man who would be dangerous to meet on a narrow footway. Apparently all he saw was the hard-packed sand upon which he trod.

  In his study sat the Indian whom he had expected–Noki, a slim, tall, very dark man with straight black hair, and eyes of piercing sharpness. This Indian’s latest service to Morgan had been the bringing back of Gekin Yashi. Long had he been the missionary’s spy and tool of craft.

  Morgan gripped his arm and dragged him to the couch, there to force him down and loom masterfully over him. Moistening his lips, Morgan began in hoarse whisper of singular potency.

  “Noki, to-night you pay your full debt to the white man of God.... Go to Do etin’s hogan. Be there just at dark. Let the Indians see you, but not the white men who come. Watch these white men go into Do etin’s hogan. Steal close and listen to what they say. Trust to the darkness. Listen to that council. Remember every word you hear. And watch–see every move.–When the white men go awa
y you hurry back to me.”

  The Noki’s sloe-black eyes shone with something more than comprehension. The Nopahs were hereditary foes of the Nokis.

  For a long time after the Indian had left Morgan sat motionless in his study, locked in thought, his brow a congested mass of furrows. What bound him there was a habit of mind–a recourse to invention to meet every possible future angle, to fortify against the unexpected, to hide the machinations of a master strategist, to satisfy a monstrous egotism. No still small voice pierced the conscience of this man of God!

  At last he arose, muttering, half aloud:

  “That for sure puts the steam-roller under Blucher.”

  CHAPTER XIII

  Morgan stayed up until a late hour that night, expecting the Noki to return with news of what had actually happened. But the Indian did not come. Morgan grew rather toward a conviction that nothing unusual had occurred. So at midnight he put aside the Bible he had been studying and went to bed. His slumbers were not disturbed by nightmare or visitor.

  Next morning, while at breakfast Morgan had a caller–the old man who had been the government farmer at Mesa for years. His short wedge-shaped figure seemed energized by rugged vitality; his features were a record of the desert.

  “Mr. Morgan, the Nokis down at Copenwashie are raisin’ hell with me,” he began.

  “Yes? What for? And when you address me pray do not be profane.”

  “It’s a dry season. All but two of the springs have failed. The Nokis haven’t enough water for their alfalfa. Friel gets the water first for his land. That’s what the Nokis are sore about. An’ I’m sayin’ they’ve got reason!”

  “Why do you come to me? I deal with the souls of Indians, not their water rights.”

  “Wal, Friel’s deals are mostly with their water rights,” replied the farmer, bluntly. “Now my stand is this. The Nokis are industrious farmers. They’ve worked hard on that alfalfa. An’ I don’t want to see it burn up. Friel said what he did was none of my business. I want the Indians to have more of the water that belongs to them.”

  “Belongs to them? How do you figure that?”

  “The Nokis were here before either the Nopahs or the whites.”

  “That’s nothing. The water belongs to the government. And Mr. Friel has a patent on land and water from the government. I couldn’t do anything, even if I wanted to.”

  “Friel has no horses suffering for hay or water. He sells his hay. The Indians need good hay and plenty of water. They can’t send their horses out into the desert to live on soapweed and greasewood. These Nokis are freighters. They freight supplies from Flagerstown. That’s how they earn their living.... They’re not gettin’ a square deal.”

  “Go to Blucher,” replied Morgan.

  “I just left him,” returned the farmer. “He wasn’t interested–sent me to you. I reckon he was upset by his men havin’ to kill an Indian last night.”

  “That so? I hadn’t heard,” rejoined Morgan, with no especial interest. He might not have been aware of the grey desert eyes bent upon him.

  “Wal, it was owin’ to some new rulin’ or other Blucher ordered,” went on the farmer. “Do etin refused to obey, as I heered the story. When Rhur with his deputies, Glendon and Naylor, tried to arrest Do etin he fought–an’ they had to kill him.”

  “That was unfortunate,” said Morgan, gravely shaking his head. “But Indians must learn to obey.”

  “Mr. Morgan, would you be good enough to have Friel ease up on the water?” asked the farmer, earnestly. “He’s usin’ more than he needs. An’ we haven’t had a lot of rain at Copenwashie.”

  “No. Such a request from me would imply that I shared your opinion as to Mr. Friel’s wastefulness, which I don’t.”

  “Ah-huh!” ejaculated the government man, and abruptly turned on his heel. His heavy boots thumped on the porch. Then he was gone.

  In the course of the day Morgan heard many versions of the killing of Do etin. He read Blucher’s brief statement to the officials at Washington; he asked for the distressed Miss Warner’s knowledge of it; he heard Rhur tell how it had happened, and also Glendon. He showed grave concern as he met the stockman, Wolterson, and asked what he had heard about it. All stories were substantially the same, precisely what the school policeman and his deputies had reported first to the superintendent and later told to other government employees. There was no excitement nor any particular comment. The death of an Indian was nothing. But when Morgan asked Jay Lord what he had heard, he added a few trenchant words of his own to the reiterated story: “Wal, that’s what they say!”

  Late that day Morgan received the Noki spy in his study, the windows and blinds of which were closed. And peering down into the dark, inscrutable face of this Noki who hated Nopahs, Morgan heard a long story, told with all the singular detail of an Indian’s subtle and faithful observance, a story strangely and vastly different from all the others concerning Do etin’s tragic death.

  It was again night, and one of those nights set for the Indian girls selected by Morgan to come to his chapel to hear him preach. This missionary had not mastered the Nopah language; he had merely been among the Indians so long that he had acquired a use of their tongue sufficiently to make his meaning clear.

  He harangued at the still, dark faces. “You must learn to obey me. Your people are too old to learn. They are heathen. Their God is no good. Their religion is no good. Your parents have no chance for heaven. They are steeped in ignorance and sin. They will burn forever in Hell’s fire.”

  “Heaven and Hell are places. Most of the things you do and believe now will send you straight to Hell when you die, unless you take my religion. The fox made the Nopah Indian, and the fox is the lowest of beasts. As you are now, each of you is like a big ugly sore. The school doctor, the medicine man, makes medicine over it, and it looks fine from the outside. But under that coat it is still a sore. So are you Nopah girls rotten at the heart. You think if you can put on bright clothes so you will appear fine on the outside you are all right. For this you are going straight to Hell!”

  “You must forget the songs and the legends and the prayers of your people. Indians are heathen. They must accept the white man’s way, his clothes, his work, his talk, his life, and his God. Then some day the Indians will become white in heart.”

  Thus the missionary preached for an hour to those still, dark faces. Then he dismissed his congregation, but at the door of the chapel he drew one Indian girl back.

  “Gekin Yashi–you stay,” he said, as he held her. “I will preach to you alone, so you can spread my word to your sisters.”

  This Indian maiden did not have a still, dark face. It was pale and agitated, yet beautiful with its contour, its great dusky eyes, its red lips. She was trembling as the missionary led her back from the door. Suddenly he pushed her into a seat and towered over her, strung in all his body, obsessed with his fanaticism.

  “Gekin Yashi, do you know your father is dead?” he asked, in harsh sharp voice.

  “Oh–no, sir,” the girl faltered, sinking back.

  “He is.... He was killed last night–killed because he fought the white men who went to arrest him. But it was sin that killed him. He would not obey.”

  The missionary paused. Gekin Yashi’s sweet and youthful face slowly changed–quivered with tears streaming from her tragic eyes–and set in a strange dull expression of fear, bewilderment, and misery. Then her dark head drooped.

  “You ran off to the Pahutes,” went on the missionary. “Who took you?”

  Gekin Yashi made no answer.

  “It was Nophaie. He will be shot the same as your father–unless you confess your sin–and then accept my religion.... Speak! Did Nophaie take you away?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “But Gekin Yashi has not sinned. She is like the white girl Benow di cleash.”

  Then the missionary thundered at her.

  “Yes, you have sinned. You are all sin. Only the Word can wash you clean. Bid me speak it–pray fo
r you to Jesus Christ.... I will save you from the ice-pits and the fire- caves of Hell.... Tremble in your fear!–Fall on your knees, you daughter of heathen!... Hate that false nature worship!... Love me–the white man of God!... Promise to do what I tell you!”

  The Indian girl lifted her face, and then her little brown hands that fluttered like leaves in a storm.

  “Gekin Yashi–promises,” she breathed, almost inaudibly.

  CHAPTER XIV

  Marian, while waiting for the dismissal she expected every day, worked on as if no untoward thing had happened. But in reality nothing was left for her save a morbid curiosity in the affairs of this government school and her faithful, stubborn, unquenchable desire to help the Indians.

  The autumn days wore on close to winter–wonderful keen clear days with the desert imperceptibly changing its hue. At night the wind mourned outside her sleeping quarters and moaned in the poplar trees. By day the sun shone in a cloudless sky, blazing over the desert, a flooding, all-embracing light.

  No more did Marian ride out to Castle Rocks. No more did she have the thrill and joy of meeting Nophaie. Neither he nor she had any proof that his life was in danger, but they suspected it, and they knew his liberty was threatened. Nophaie had entrusted one letter to Withers and another to a Nopah sheepherder, both of whom delivered these missives through Wolterson. A note of despair and of love rang through Nophaie’s wild words, troubling her soul, yet somehow they were inexpressibly sweet. Separation made him desperate. He needed her. And Marian, in her growing poignancy, longed to go to him, to be his wife. She would have lived in a hogan. Yet even in her longing she realized the nobility of the Indian and his attitude toward her. She was not meant for a hogan–to raise her children in a mound of earth, like a troglodyte. Infinite respect for Nophaie had added to her love. He was a man. How passionately she burned to prove to the world what an Indian could be! Somehow she would prove that, if not by her own modest pen, then by the power of some one to whom she could tell her story. Nophaie, the same as she, was waiting for developments– perhaps for the hour of her dismissal. Meanwhile his entreaty was for her to hold on and keep her courage, and do what good she could in her own way. What sustained Marian most of all was the cry of his heart for her.