The Vanishing American

by Zane Grey

  One day, from far down the canyon, pealed and echoed the call of an Indian. It startled Nophaie. He had forgotten the Pahute whom Withers was to send with supplies. He had forgotten that and more. Surely there would be news of the world beyond these silent walls, of the reservation, and of the affairs at Mesa–last and most desired, word from Benow di cleash.

  Nophaie ran. It was with the fleetness of an Indian, but the gladness of a white man. Almost he scorned that eagerness, that strange knocking at his heart. The solitude he had sought seemed to stand out clearer now, an enemy to his intelligence. Lonely canyons were abodes for barbarians, savages, Indians– not for men with developed thought. The work of white men should ever be to help the increasing progress of the world toward better life. But he was not a white man. And as he ran his thoughts multiplied.

  Nophaie found the Pahute in the main arm of the canyon. He had brought a pack- mule heavily laden. Nophaie led him to his camp, and there unpacked the mule, and cooked a meal for the Indian, and learned from him that white policemen had sought him all over the reservation and had returned to Mesa. No other news had the Pahute, except that the trader at Kaidab had told him to get to Nophaie on this day. “Jesus Christ Day,” added the Indian with a grin.

  “Christmas!” exclaimed Nophaie, and strange indeed were his memories.

  The Pahute left early in the afternoon, saying he wanted to get over the Marching Rocks before nightfall. Nophaie was again alone. Yet how different the loneliness now! There were packets and packages in that pile of supplies which, despite their outside wrappings of burlap and paper, did not bear the hall-mark of an Indian trader. Nophaie felt rich. It struck him significantly that he was unutterably glad. But was it not a certainty of messages from Marian? That assuredly, yet he could not be sure it was all! Unpacking the heavier parcels first, Nophaie found that the trader had added considerable to the monthly order. Then there was a bundle of lighter weight, more carefully packed, and inside was a tag upon which was written in English. “Merry Christmas from Withers’ outfit.”

  Nophaie tried to be annoyed at this, but he could not, and he found that what irritated him was the happy greeting in English. “I am an Indian,” muttered Nophaie. Yet he did not speak that in the Indian language. “Christmas gifts and greetings,” he added, “and I am glad.” Indian or not he could not help his feelings. It was kind of the Withers family to remember the educated Indian in his lonely solitude. Nophaie found cigarettes, matches, chocolate, raisins, a clasp knife, a little hand-ax, a large piece of tanned buckskin with needles and thread, and woolen socks and a flannel shirt. Withers had guessed his needs and had added luxuries.

  Then with hasty fingers Nophaie opened the smallest packet that he somehow knew was from Marian. Inside the heavy paper was more paper, and inside that waterproof cloth, and inside this a silken scarf all neatly folded round a soft flat object. Nophaie unfolded the scarf to behold a large clean thick white envelope upon which had been written one word: Nophaie. Marian’s handwriting! A thrill went over him. There were illusions, but also there were realities. No moment of life that did not bring happiness to some mortal!

  He put the letter aside, and opened the second packet, larger, flatter, more strongly wrapped, incased in pasteboard. He expected to find a photograph and was not disappointed. But before he opened the cover out dropped an envelope containing snap-shot pictures of Marian taken at Mesa with her own camera. The best picture was one of her riding the white mustang he had given her. They were all good, yet not one of them seemed like the image he had in memory. The desert was hard on Marian. But when Nophaie opened the large envelope he saw a beautiful likeness of the fair face he loved and remembered so well. This was a fine photograph, taken in Philadelphia, probably some time after he had left the East.

  “Benow di cleash!” he murmured, and all the white flower-like fairness seemed to flash in a beautiful light from that pictured face. Gazing, he forgot everything for a while.

  When he went back to his packages he found books, magazines, late newspapers, pads and pencils and envelopes, a small hunter’s sewing kit, a box of medicines, bandages, candy, nuts and cakes, and last of all, a watch with radium numerals, and a buckskin fob decorated with Nopah buttons. She had not forgotten to include in all this loving munificence some token of the Indian. That thrilled him as nothing else had.

  One by one he handled these gifts and pondered over the effect they had upon him. Beyond peradventure of doubt these established the connection between him and the world of white people. Eighteen years of his life, the forming and fixing period, had developed to such things as these, and not those of the red man. He might starve naked in a cave of the canyons, with nothing representative of the white race near him, but that could not change facts. He loved Marian Warner. Her gifts made him happy. The isolated solitudes of the desert were good for his soul and body, but they could never wholly satisfy.

  CHAPTER XVI

  Nophaie carried Marian’s letter to his favorite resting and dreaming place. Not on the heights did he care to read her message, but in the amber shadow of the Silent Walls.

  This place was a strange one, a narrow section of canyon, where the west wall leaned to meet the cavernous eastern wall, the lofty red rims of which showed a blue ribbon of sky above. Here the canyon turned sharply to the left and then to the right, giving a strange impression of stupendous leaning walls. At the base of the cavernous cliff ran the murmuring stream of clear green water. Banks of moss and grass stood out from the wall, dry, odorous, and gray. The leaves of the cottonwoods were not yet devoid of their autumn hue. And sound here was weird, hollow, ringing, melodious, and echoes magnified all. Nophaie found his accustomed seat and with mounting beat of heart he opened Marian’s letter. Was he really there–lonely outcast Nopah in the solitude of a silent canyon–holding in his hands the letter of a noble and loving woman of a hated race?

  Dearest Nophaie:

  Greetings on your Christmas Day! I could not be happy without sending to you my greeting, and love, and my gifts. May these find you well. May they assure you at least of the constancy of Benow di cleash. I shall not be able even on Christmas Day to believe wholly in the spirit: “Peace on earth–good will to man.” Not when the one I love, whom I know is worthy, lies hidden in the wilds, persecuted by men of my color!

  If I could write you a whole volume I would never be able to crowd in all. My dismissal came quite some time after your visit. In fact, I ran the office until Blucher and Morgan came out of seclusion. Then I got the “steam- roller” all right and without my month’s pay. I’m grateful for that, because it gives me an excuse to go back to the office, which I have done regularly since I came here to stay with the Paxtons. They are very kind to me, and allow me to pay my board. I help in the trading store sometimes and thus I keep up my study of the Indians. Here I get another angle on the reservation.

  As far as I am able to tell, nothing has yet leaked out in Mesa about that football match you had with Blucher and Morgan. I will never get over that day. Never will I trust myself again. If you were an Indian, I was a savage. I just swelled and tingled and burned with fiendish glee every time you kicked one of the–footballs. My only regret rises from the fact that I never saw you play real football in the college games that made you famous.

  My last interview with Blucher and Morgan was a nightmare. Blucher was poison. Morgan tried to intimidate me and drive me off the reservation. He said- -but never mind what he said. The Indian police have returned from their search for you, I imagine. You will do well to lie low for awhile. There is a seething volcano under this particular part of the reservation. The Woltersons expect dismissal any day. All communication to Wolterson comes through the superintendent. Why, I could run this reservation better than it is run. The whole Indian Service, if judged by this arm of it, is merely a gigantic political machine. But that you know.

  I suspect that Blucher is greatly concerned about the possibility of the U. S. being drawn into war with Ge
rmany. There is indeed a grave possibility of that very thing. You will see the latest news in the papers I send. These came to- day with the mail carrier from Flagerstown. Read them carefully. You may be a Nopah, but you are also an American. One of the truest of Americans–the red- blooded species. German militarism threatens not only the peace of the world, but also the freedom. If war is declared I trust you will tell the truth to every Nopah on this reservation. For I absolutely know that Blucher will oppose any Indian help to the United States army. I read a letter he wrote to a German in New York. He was typing it himself and when some one called him I read it. If I could only have secured a copy of it or have remembered it. But I was excited–shocked. Blucher is all German. If war is declared the situation here on this reservation will be a terrible one. Think how to meet that, Nophaie.

  I have seen Gekin Yashi but once. She was in the school yard near the fence as I passed on my way here from Woltersons’. I got close to her before she saw me. Her face has altered strangely. It gave me a pang. For a second I felt that I could tear and rend.... When she espied me she ran. I called, but she paid no heed.

  The Indian girl who was put in the maternity hospital here recently, gave birth to a child. She will be sent to Riverside–separated from her baby under the mandate of studying for five years before she can have it. Indian women love their babies. I hear Blucher has sent the father to jail. Various and weird the law of this reservation school!

  I have no plans. I am waiting. You may be sure I’ll not leave the reservation. I might be taken off, but they’ll have to carry me. This winter is no great problem. I need rest and I want to write some. Later, if nothing comes up here, I might go out to Kaidab. In the spring I hope to see you, I want you to know that I meant what I said in Blucher’s office the day you confronted him and Morgan there. I would be happy to marry you and share what I have with you, and your life and work among your people. I have the means for a start. And we can work. I ask only that we spend some part of each year in California or the East. I have vanity enough not to let myself dry up in this desert air and blow away!

  Time and trouble change character, do they not? I am the stronger for what has come to me out here. The desert is terrible. It destroys and then builds. I never knew what light was–the wonderful sun–and wind and dust and heat–stars and night and silence–the great emptiness–until I came to the desert. Perhaps so with love!

  Somehow I will endure the long silence, for you must not risk writing me yet. I will dream of you–see you among the rocks. Always, as long as I live, rocks and walls of stone will have thrilling and sad significance for me.

  Benow di cleash.

  Nophaie gazed in seeming terror at the stupendous wall of stone opposite. He could not see either of its corners or its base. Solid rock, impenetrable and immovable and insurmountable! The temptation that confronted him now was just as much a wall, a barrier, an overpowering weight.

  Benow di cleash loved him. She would marry him. She would share all she had as she would share his life. Live with him! Belong to him alone!

  The fact was a staggering blow. Here under the accusing eyes of his silent walls he had feeling that no other place could inspire. Loneliness had augmented his hunger for a mate. Nature importuned him for her right. And suddenly Nophaie found himself stripped bare of all ideals, chivalries, duties, of the false sophistries of his education, of the useless fetters of his unbelief.

  Human being, man, Indian, savage, primitive beast–so he retrograded in the scale. As a human he aspired to martyrdom, as a man he sacrificed love, as an Indian he steeped his soul in noble exaltation, as a savage he felt only the fierce race of hot blood, as a primitive beast he struggled in the throes of hereditary instincts, raw and wild, ungovernable–the imperious and inscrutable law of nature.

  While he lay motionless on that mossy bank it seemed the elemental–the natural–the mindless automaton of living flesh must win. There was nothing else in life. This staggering bundle of nerves, vessels, organs, blood, and bone that constituted his body had millions of cells, each one of which clamored for its right to completion, expression, reproduction. Death to cell, organ, body, individual, but life to the species! This instinct that Nophaie strove to kill was the strangest of all forces in the universe.

  One terrible moment Nophaie lay there under the walls that seemed to thunder the meaning of nature. Then he sprang up to force this living body of his, this vehicle he abhorred, this beating, burning frame of blood- veined muscle, into violent and sustained effort, into exhausting physical activity that must bring subjugation of the instincts which threatened his downfall. He must win now–in this hour–or lose forever. Thought, reflection, reason, argument–these faded in his consciousness like pale vapors of mist when the blazing sun rose. Before he could think he must subdue something in him, hydra- headed, multiple-lunged, insatiate instinct to project his life into another life. Nophaie refused that species of self-preservation. If it was instinct that maddened him and instinct that he fought, it was also instinct that sent him out to move, to run, to climb.

  There were none of his race to see him, to bring their medicine men to exorcise the evil spirits which possessed him. Only the silent walls had eyes to watch him in his terror.

  Nophaie ran. He leaped the brook. From bowlder to bowlder he bounded. Along the grassy benches, under the looming ledges, over the washes, through the thickets, up the canyon he sped with that incomparable stride of the Indian runner trained under the great masters of college athletics. Strange place for the famous athlete who had delighted the crowds–who had heard their trampling, pealing roar when he ran! The white man had trained him–the white man had educated him. But it was now the Indian nature that gave Nophaie the instinct to run away from himself.

  He halted at his camp long enough to lay aside the precious letter from Benow di cleash. He did not want to soil that white paper with its beautiful and appalling words of love. All his life he must keep them. And he feared them now. Again the shuddering of his flesh, the burning of the marrow of his bones. Out he ran–straight for the notch of the canyon–with wild eyes on the white- towered wall of Nothsis Ahn. No Indian had ever surmounted that wall. But Nophaie would surmount it or perish in the attempt. To see afar over the desert, to pray and to absolve himself, the Indian had always climbed high.

  Nophaie’s moccasined feet padded softly over the bare stone slope. He ran up the long wavy red mound, and from its round dome, where often he had watched the eagles and the sunset, he put his keen vision to the task of finding a way to climb the north face of Nothsis Ahn. There were a hundred intricate zigzag ascents up that mountain wall, not one of which seemed possible for man.

  Down the waved knoll Nophaie ran, light and sure as a wildcat, and over the wide area of bare rock to the main base of the wall.

  There he began to climb in a long slant, up the brown smooth incline, veined and striped, and around the headed corners, and back to a long slant in the other direction, up and up by these zigzag courses, to the curved and rolling rim of red, where began the vast slow heave of the white amphitheater.

  All this slope was wind-swept, bare, soft to the foot, a white stone that disintegrated under force; and it was like a rolling sea slanted on end. Levels, mounds, benches, ridges, holes, gorges, all rounded and smooth, with never a crack or cutting edge or loosened fragment, passed by under Nophaie’s swift steps. Impetuosity and passion drove him. He climbed on, gradually slowing to the steeper ascent. From far below this white amphitheater had appeared what it was not. Its dimensions magnified with approach. A line of cleavage seen from below was on nearer view a great wide dip in the ocean slope of rock. Nophaie’s detours consumed miles of travel. To and fro across the corrugated face of this mountain wall he traveled, always climbing higher. A rare cold atmosphere, thin in oxygen, further slowed his efforts. Climbing grew hard. He no longer ran. He sweat, he burned, he panted. He saw only the stone under his feet and the gray looming towers above, still seemingl
y as unattainable as ever.

  Along the last circling ledge of the amphitheater he worked around to the bold rugged bluff, surmounted it, and climbed into a world of cliffs, precipices, promontories, sharp and jagged and jutting in strange contrasts to the waved and heaved ascent he had accomplished. Here he had exercise for the eye of an eagle, the leap of a mountain sheep, the sure- footedness of a goat. Far back on the other side of the towers he worked, finding them still high above him, still unscalable. On and upward he toiled, and at last reached a point where the huge white-towered abutment joined the bulk of Nothsis Ahn. Nothing of this was visible to eye below in the valley. He had ascended to the white crags that stood out and up to hide all but the dome of the mountain. Nophaie pulled himself up, he let himself down, he leaped fissures, he crept along abysmal chasms blue in depth, he rimmed the base of crags, and climbed around and between them.

  Out of the zone of white pillars and turrets at last! Level with the nests of eagles! Nophaie stood at the base of the weathered slope of Nothsis Ahn, the track of the avalanches, the tilted level of loose rocks; and he looked almost straight up to the green band of timber and the glistening dome of snow. If climbing had been difficult and hazardous before, now it was approaching the impossible. Nophaie sent the rocks sliding below him; he started the slides into avalanches. He loosened the slopes above him. He performed miracles of agility, speed, and endurance. Like the Indian masters of the legends, he consorted with eagles, bounded with the feet of the wind, and swung on the edges of the clouds.

  Snow and spruce halted Nophaie, a forest of evergreens, matted and webbed into impenetrable windfalls, buried deep in the white ice of the heights. He could not go higher. At the edge of the snow line, on a gray brow of rock, he built a monument, so that it would be visible to eye of Indian from below. But he offered no prayer to the god of the mountain.