by Zane Grey
Nophaie rested there that night and the next day. In this deep canyon where water and grass were abundant Nophaie’s horse profited by the stay. As for Nophaie, he strove valiantly to make the idle hours those of an Indian contented with natural things. Still he felt the swelling in him of a great wave of emotion. Something was about to burst within him, like the breaking of a dam. Yet he knew that with every moment he grew farther away from and above any passion similar to that of Beeteia’s. A power of the working of which he was conscious, seemed to be gradually taking possession of his soul.
Starting on his pilgrimage again at sunset, Nophaie rode all night, down Naza Boco, the canyon in the far depths of which hid the great Nopah god.
That ride seemed a vigil. Daylight would have robbed it of some strange spiritual essence. The shadows under the mounting walls now showed black and again silver. The star- fired stream of blue sky above narrowed between the black rims, farther and higher as he rode down and down into the silent bowels of the rock-ribbed earth. Every hour augmented the sense of something grand, all-sufficing, final, that awaited him at the end of his pilgrimage.
Dawn came with an almost imperceptible change from black to gray. Daylight followed slowly, reluctantly. It showed Nophaie the stupendously lofty walls of Naza Boco. Sunrise heralded its state by the red-gold crown on the rims. Gradually that gold crept down.
Nophaie rode round a rugged corner of wall to be halted by a shock.
Naza! The stone bridge–god of the Nopahs arched magnificently before him, gold against the deep-blue sky. He gazed spellbound for a long time, then rode on. At first it had seemed unreal. But grand as Naza towered there, it was only a red-stained, black-streaked, notched and cracked, seamed and scarred masterpiece of nature. Wind and rain, sand and water were the gods that had sculptured Naza. But for Nophaie the fact that his education enabled him to understand the working of these elements did not mitigate in his sight their infinite power.
He rode under the bridge, something that a Nopah had never done before him. The great walls did not crumble; the stream of blue sky did not darken; Nothsis Ahn, showing his black-and-white crown far above the notch of the canyon, did not thunder at Nophaie for what would have been a sacrilege for a Nopah. Nothing happened. The place was beautiful, lonely, silent, dry and fragrant, strangely grand.
Leisurely Nophaie unsaddled and unpacked in the shade of a cedar. Already the canyon was hot. The crystal amber water of the stream invited relief from thirst and heat.
Nophaie spent the long austere day watching the bridge from different angles, waiting for what was to happen to him.
Then came the slow setting of the sun, a strange thing here in the depths of the canyon. Nophaie watched the marvelous changing of colors, from the rainbow hues of the arch to the gold of the ramparts and the rosy glow on the snowy summit of Nothsis Ahn. Twilight lingered longer than in any other place Nophaie remembered. It was an hour full of beauty, and of a significance of something evermore about to be.
Darkness fell. The low murmur of the stream seemed to emphasize the lonesomeness. At long intervals owls mourned their melancholy refrain. Naza stood up dark and triumphant, silhouetted against the sky, crowned with silver stars. Nophaie saw the Dipper turned upside down. By night the bridge gained something spectral and mysterious. Night augmented its grandeur.
Nophaie did not sleep. He never closed his eyes. Every moment hastened what he now divined to be an illumination of his mind.
Toward dawn a faint green light shone on the walls facing the south. The moon was rising. After a while the gleam grew stronger. Soon the shadow of the bridge curved on the opposite wall, and under the arch shone a dim moonlight, weird and beautiful.
After twenty-four hours of vigil under this shrine Nophaie prayed. With all the passion of his extremity he recalled the prayers of the Nopahs, and spoke them aloud, standing erect, with face uplifted in the moonlight. His impulse had been mystic and uncontrollable. It came from the past, the dim memories of his childhood. It was the last dying flash of Indian mysticism and superstition. The honesty and yearning of it had no parallel in all the complex appeals of the past. But it left him cold. Despair chained his soul. Then that strangely loosed its icy clutch. He was free. He realized it.
Time ceased for Nophaie. Earth and life seemed to stand still. Would there ever be another dawn? How locked he was in the rock confines of the earth! At last he found a seat against a huge fragment of cliff and from here he gazed with renewed eyes. What was the secret of Naza? The name was only Indian, handed down from those remote progenitors of the Nopahs who came from the north. Was there any secret? The spirit abiding in that magnificent bridge was an investiture from the soul of man. The Indian mind was still struggling far back along the dim trails of the progress of civilization. Blank wall of black on one side, wall of moonlit marble on the other, gleaming pale, sheered to the wan-blue, star-fretted sky; and across the opaque space arched the spectral rock rainbow, magnified in its night shadows.
Nophaie saw it now as if blindness had fallen from his eyes–saw it in all its nakedness and strength, its appalling beauty, its terrific strangeness. But it had become a thing, physical, inanimate, static. It needed the tremendous sheer of walls to uphold that massive arch. Beauty upheld by stark stone! Sublimity carved by the chisels of wind and water! Elemental toil of ages! A monument to the spirit of nature! But it could not endure.
Naza! The Nopah God! Bridge of sandstone! It was there. How grand the walls it joined! Those walls had been cut by the flowing of water, by the blowing of wind. Thousands of millions of tons of sand had eroded away–to leave Naza arched so magnificently there, as if imperishable. But it was not imperishable. It was doomed. It must fall or wear away. All that exceeding beauty of line and color, that vastness of bulk, must in time pass away in tiny grains of sand, flowing down the murmuring stream.
Then to Nophaie came the secret of its great spell.
Not all beauty or grandeur or mystery or immensity! These were only a part of its enchantment. For Nophaie it spelled freedom. Its isolation and loneliness and solitude meant for him the uttermost peace. There dawned upon Nophaie the glory of nature. Just so long as he could stay there he would be free, all- satisfied. Even sorrow was sweet. Memory of his white sweetheart was exalting.
The world of man, race against race, the world of men and women, of strife and greed, of hate and lust, of injustice and sordidness, the materialism of the Great War and its horrible aftermath, the rush and fever and ferocity of the modern day with its jazz and license and drink and blindness– with its paganism,–these were not here in the grand shadow of Naza. No sharp wolfish faces of men limned against this silence! No beautiful painted faces of women! No picture of the Indian tribes, driven from the green pastures and running water of their forefathers, herded into the waste places of the earth! The white man had not yet made Naza an object of his destructiveness. Nothing of the diseased in mind and body, the distorted images of mankind, the incomprehensible stupidity, the stony indifference to nature and beauty and ideals and good–nothing of these here in this moon-blanched canyon.
For the period of its endurance Naza would stand there, under its gleaming silent walls, with its rainbow hues and purple shadows at sunset, its golden glows and rosy veils at sunrise. The solemn days would pass and the dreamful nights. Peace and silence would reign. Loveliness would vie with austerity.
As the sun cleared away the shadows of night, so the spell of Naza clarified Nophaie’s mind of Indian superstition, of doubt and morbid fear. The tragic fate of the vanishing American, as he had nursed it to his sore heart, ceased to exist.
For Nophaie the still, sweet air of that canyon was charged. In this deserted, haunted hall of the earth, peace, faith, resurging life all came simply to him. The intimation of immortality–the imminence of God! That strife of soul, so long a struggle between the Indian superstitions of his youth and the white teachings forced upon him, ended forever in his realization of the Univer
sal God of Indian and white man.
CHAPTER XXIII
At Kaidab trading post Marian watched the desert horizon with troubled eyes.
Nophaie had been absent for over two weeks. And developments of the last few days and nights had somewhat disrupted the even tenor of Withers’s household. One night signal fires had suddenly blazed up on all the lofty points around Kaidab. Next day bands of Indians rode by, silent and grim, scarcely halting at the trading post. This latter fact was unprecedented. Even Mrs. Withers could not extract from any Indian what it was all about. But the trader said he did not need to be told.
“There’ll be trouble at Mesa,” he said, with fire in his eye. “Reckon I haven’t seen the Indians like this since they killed my brother, years ago.”
In the afternoon he drove away in his car.
That night more fires burned. Marian went with Mrs. Withers and others of the post to see the wonderful spectacle of signal fires on Echo Peaks. To Marian it seemed that the heavens were aflame. She, like Mrs. Withers, was silent, not joining in the loud acclaim and awe of their companions. The trader’s wife had lived her life among the Indians, and her face was an augury of calamity.
Next day many Nopahs trooped by the post. Then with the advent of darkness the magnificent panorama of fires was repeated. By midnight they burned out.
Marian lay sleepless in her dark little room. Some time late the hum of a motor car thrilled her. Withers was returning, and the fact of his return seemed propitious. But the automobile hummed on by the post, at a high rate of speed. That dismayed Marian. It had never happened before. Kaidab was a stopping-place for every car, at any hour. Somehow this incident portended evil. Thereafter Marian slept fitfully and was harassed by fearful dreams.
Next morning she was on the verge of despair. Catastrophe had befallen Nophaie or he would have returned long ago. She connected his lengthy absence with this uprising of the Nopahs. Nevertheless, she scanned the desert horizon to the north, praying that she might see Nophaie ride into sight.
Her attention, however, was attracted to the other direction. The droning of another motor car roused Marian to eagerness. She ran from the porch to the gate. Dust clouds were traveling swiftly along the road toward the post. Then they disappeared. Marian watched the point where the road turned over the ridge. Soon an open car shot into sight. She thought she recognized it. The driver appeared to neglect risk for the car or himself. Marian ran outside into the wide open space before the trading post.
In a moment more she was confronted by a dust-begrimed Withers.
“Howdy, Marian!” he greeted her. “Where’s everybody? I shore drove some. But bad news travels fast on the desert, an’ I wanted to beat it here.”
“Bad–news?” faltered Marian.
“Wal, I reckon,” he returned, darkly. “Come on in an’ find my wife.”
“Nophaie!–Have you seen him?” whispered Marian.
“See here, lass, you’re white as a sheet. An’ you’re shakin’ too. Wal, no wonder. But you’ve got to stand up under the worst.... They’re bringin’ Nophaie in Presbrey’s car. He’s alive–an’ for all we could see he’s unhurt. But he’s in bad shape. Strange!... Come, here’s the wife. She looks scared, too.”
While Withers half led and half carried her into the living room Marian fought desperately to ward off the sick faint blackness that threatened to overcome her. Withers lowered her into a chair, and then stood erect to wipe his dusty face.
“Wal, wife, you’re ‘most as pale round the gills as Marian,” he began. Then, having cleaned his face, he heaved a great breath of relief and flopped into a chair. “Listen. Beeteia’s uprisin’ flivvered worse then we’d have dared to hope for. Strange! Reckon it’s the strangest thing in all my desert experience.... When I got to Mesa there was a mob, a thousand Nopahs an’ Nokis hanging around pow-wowin’, waiting for Blucher an’ Morgan. Luckily they’d gone away–to fire some poor devil off the reservation, I heard. The Indians thought they’d run away to Washington, to get the soldiers. They cooled off. Then old Indians harangued them on the foolishness of this uprisin’ business. Beeteia was hustled away to save him from arrest. So far so good!”
Withers paused to catch his breath, perhaps to choose words less calculated to startle the staring women.
“Last night we got word that Presbrey’s post was to be burned,” went on the trader. “I didn’t believe it because Presbrey stands well with the Indians. But it worried me. So I left Mesa an’ drove pronto for Presbrey’s. Was shore relieved when I saw his tradin’ post safe an’ sound. Presbrey met me, some excited for him. An’ he told me Blucher, Morgan, an’ Glendon had hid all night in his post an’ had just left, takin’ the old road over the ridge. Presbrey said a good many Indians had passed his post in three days. Yesterday they petered out, an’ last night Blucher an’ Morgan came.”
“I heard their car. I thought it was you returning,” spoke up Marian.
“Wal, while Presbrey an’ me were talkin’ three Nopahs rode up,” continued Withers. “We figgered somethin’ was wrong, an’ finally got news that Shoie was at the mouth of the Nugi with a gang of Nopahs. They had been on their way to burn Presbrey’s post an’ were stopped by Nophaie. So tellin’ Presbrey to follow me I hit only the high places. At the Nugi I found Shoie with some two hundred Indians. Nophaie was there, lying under a cedar beside my horse he’d evidently ridden to death. Shoie was with him. First off I thought Nophaie was dead. But he was alive, though exhausted almost to the last heartbeat. Shoie couldn’t talk. The Indians were sullen. It took some time for me to piece together what this all meant. But I’m sure I got it figgered. Nophaie must have heard on the uplands that Shoie was bent on mischief. Wal, from the looks of my horse an’ Nophaie I’d say there had been a wild ride. Anyway, Nophaie headed off Shoie, an’ at least stopped the burnin’ of Presbrey’s post. Doesn’t it have a strange look, when you think about Blucher an’ Morgan bein’ hid in that very tradin’ post at that very hour? Shoie would have burned them alive. Nophaie is the only man who could have stopped Shoie.”
“Then–Nophaie saved their lives–Morgan–Blucher–Glendon?” burst out the trader’s wife.
“Wal, I reckon,” replied Withers, grimly. “It’s quite beyond me.... Presbrey came along soon an’ we put Nophaie in his car, where there was more room. They’ll be here presently.”
Mute and stifled, racked by a convulsion rising in her breast, Marian fled to her room and locked the door and pulled down the shades. She wanted it dark. She longed to hide herself from even her own sight.
Then in the gloom of the little adobe- walled room she succumbed to the fury of a woman once in her life reverting to primitive instincts. “Oh, I could kill them–with my bare hands!” she panted. She had not known such black depths existed in her. She was worse than a mother bereft of her child. Her mood was to destroy. But for the collapse swiftly following she might have done herself physical violence.
When her mind cleared she found herself lying on the bed, spent and disheveled. Slowly she realized what havoc had been wrought in her by passion. She was amazed at this hitherto unknown self, but she made no apologies and suffered no regrets. In a revulsion of feeling that ensued she crept off the bed to her knees, and thanked God. For she divined that Nophaie’s great deed had been dominated by the spirit of Christ. Nophaie had always been a man, and one prompted to swift, heroic, generous acts, but this saving of the Mesa triumvirate from the vengeance of Gekin Yashi’s race, from a horrible death by fire, could mean only that Nophaie’s pilgrimage to Naza had saved his soul. She absolutely knew it.
A knock on the door interrupted her devotions.
“Marian, come,” called Mrs. Withers. “Nophaie is here.”
Leaping to her feet, Marian stood a moment, trembling and absorbed.
It took a few moments to smooth out hair and attire and erase somewhat the havoc of emotion from her face. Then she opened the door and stepped into the long hall. By the time she had travers
ed it and passed through the living room to the door she was outwardly composed.
Through the green cottonwoods Marian espied a car in front of the gate, with an excited crowd around it. Mrs. Withers stood holding the gate open. Marian halted outside the door. She saw moccasined feet and long limbs incased in yellow corduroy slowly slipping down out of the car. Then she saw a silver- ornamented belt, and a garnet velveteen shirt. She recognized them. They were moving and her heart seemed to swell to bursting. Next Nophaie’s dark face and bare black head emerged from the car. Withers and another man helped him out.
Marian’s devouring gaze flew over him. His tall lithe form, so instinct with grace and strength, seemed the same as always. Then she saw his face distinctly. There shone upon it a kind of dark radiance. He smiled at her. And suddenly all her icy terror and numb agony vanished. She ran to meet him to halt the little procession.
“Nophaie!” she said, tremulously.
“All is well,” he replied.
Everything that was humanly possible was done for Nophaie. But it was manifest that he was dying and that the last flickering of his spirit had been held for this moment with the white girl.
She knelt beside him.
“Nophaie–your pilgrimage was not–in vain,” she asserted, brokenly. “You found––”
“Your God and my God–Benow di cleash,” he whispered, a dark mystic adoration in the gaze he fixed on her. “Now all is well!... Now–all–is– well!”
Some hours later Marian stood in the doorway watching the Indians ride away into the sunset.
It was a magnificent, far-flung sunset, the whole west flaming with intense golden red that spread and paled far into the north.