by Zane Grey
“Say, Johnny, will you run in the house and ask for Miss Warner,” he said, quite seriously.
Marian was nonplused and then confused. Could it be possible that Mr. Withers did not recognize her? Indeed, it was a fact that the dignity of her twenty- three years and something of her stature seemed to vanish when she put on masculine garb.
“But–Mr. Withers. I–I am Miss Warner,” she said, almost involuntarily. She did not quite trust him.
A broad smile spread over his face and a twinkle shone in his eye.
“Shore I thought you were a boy,” he said. “Was wondering where such a boy might come from. You shore look good medicine to me.”
His frank admiration was pleasing to Marian. She would have much preferred to appear before Nophaie in distinctly feminine apparel, such as she had worn when he first saw her. But it would have been out of place here, and she had a moment of happiness in the thought that perhaps Nophaie, too, would find her attractive in this riding suit.
“Reckon we’re going to have some wind to-day,” said Withers, as he scanned the eastern horizon. “Couldn’t you put off going till to- morrow?”
“Oh no, I couldn’t!” cried Marian, aghast. “Mr. Withers, you don’t really mean we oughtn’t to go?”
“Yes, I do, but if you feel that way, we’re shore going,” he replied, decidedly. “You may as well get used to blowing sand now as later. Have you got glasses?”
“Yes, I have my auto glasses.”
“That’s good. But you’ll have to find another hat.”
“Oh, I was afraid of this–the looks of it, I mean. What’s wrong with it?”
“Shore, its looks are great. But it’s no good. You want a sombrero with a wide brim. It protects your face from sun and rain. You’re going to get sunburnt, miss.”
“That won’t bother me, Mr. Withers,” replied Marian, “My skin looks delicate, but really it’s tough. I burn red–then brown.”
“Well, we shall see. If you haven’t a sombrero I’ll dig up one for you.”
Marian never experienced such an endless hour as the ensuing one before Withers was ready to start. Breakfast for her seemed a superfluous thing. Yet she was hungry. All the time she was aware of Mrs. Withers’s eloquent and penetrating glances, and the subtle little smile of understanding and sympathy. This woman who loved Indians understood her, and was living with her these thrilling, calling moments of young life. Yet a haunting sadness, too, seemed to hover, like a shadow, in those magnetic eyes. Withers was gay, and given to raillery, directed at Marian’s boyish looks. But at last breakfast was over, and the interval of wait following.
“Marian, you’re in for a hard but glorious trip. No words of mine can tell you. Nophaie’s country is beyond words to describe. Remember, study of this desert will reward you.... Be careful on high trails. Good-by.”
Two Indians drove the pack-mules ahead of Marian. Withers had instructed her to mount and ride after them. He would presently follow. To her disappointment, she had been given a horse instead of one of the shaggy Indian mustangs–a short, stocky horse not at all spirited and quite ugly. But when she had gotten astride him, ready to try to adapt herself to saddle and motion, she found to her amaze that she did not seem to need to do anything. The horse started off. He moved briskly. But it was not a trotting gait. She had ridden at a trot yesterday, and assuredly soon tired of it. This gait was new to her, and she had imagined she knew something about horses. She felt as if she were riding in a rocking- chair that moved on a level, if such a thing were possible. The motion delighted her.
One of the Indians was old, judging from his gray hair and sloping shoulders. He wore a red bandana round his head; a thin cotton blanket, gaudily colored like calico, covered his shoulders, and his long legs dangled below his stirrups. The other Indian was a boy of sixteen years, perhaps, and sight of him was pleasing to Marian. His ebony hair waved in the wind; his darkly brown face was round and comely; he had eyes as black as his hair, and these, together with the smiling parted lips showing white even teeth, made of him a handsome youth.
To see everything was Marian’s resolve. Yet just sight of these colorfully clad Indians and the bobbing pack-mules made her forget to look anywhere else. She felt the cold puff of wind, she smelled the dust, she rode easily without any strain whatever. Then the mustangs and mules ahead suddenly went out of sight. The trail had led down over a steep bank. Presently Marian reached it. She was amazed to see a deep red gash in the earth, with crumbling walls, and a muddy, noisy stream. Mules and mustangs were edging foot by foot down a declivity right at the edge of the water. The Indians rode fast into the stream, making mud and water fly. They yelled at the mules. Marian felt her skin begin to prickle and her heart to beat unwontedly. This horse of hers manifestly had no more regard for perpendicular places than for levels. He went right down! Marian had no easy time holding on. And though not looking directly at the mules, she seemed aware of the sudden shortening of their legs. Also she heard a noise behind her.
“That’s quicksand,” called Withers from above. “Safe, but you need to hurry Buckskin.”
Marian had no time even to make up her mind. Buckskin piled off the bank and floundered into the quicksand. Marian had her first fright. She felt one of his legs go in deep, then another, and another. But he kept moving. He did not let two hoofs sink at once. And once well started, he crossed that muddy stream at a sharp gait, and climbed a sandy steep trail to the top of the bank. There Marian got her foot back in the stirrup and regained some semblance of her composure before Withers reached her side.
“How do you like Buckskin?” queried he. Not a word about that awful place!
“I–I guess I like him a lot,” she replied.
“Shore thought you would. He’s a pacer. You’ll ride him where you’d fall off another horse. Just let him go. He knows the trail and he’ll keep up. Afraid we’re in for some squalls of wind.”
Withers rode ahead to the pack-mules and quickened their pace. The Indians jogged on in the lead. And Marian appeared to be left to her horse and the trail and the encompassing scenery. Ahead bare hills of yellow stone loomed up high toward the overcast sky. Behind, the desert across the wash yawned wide, with level brown floor leading away to the trading post and then swelling to bolder heave, swept away to meet the irregular mesa wall, black against the sky.
“This–this is just not happening to me,” murmured Marian to herself. She would not have changed places with anyone in the world. She was free to let herself feel.
The trail led into a defile through the hills of rock. Slanting surfaces rose on both sides of her and gradually lifted to imposing heights. In pockets and niches grew stunted cedar trees, with roots growing out of the solid rock. The wind did not strike her here, a fact she found relieving. Buckskin held to a pace that kept him within sight of the horses ahead. On rocky places of the trail he appeared as surefooted as in the sand. Marian began to appreciate why Withers had chosen him for her. Slowly the slopes closed in, grew higher, and the trail led uphill. Marian could not see far. She now felt comfortably warm. Perhaps half an hour of a gradual climb brought Marian out on top of a ridge from which she soon saw into the distance. How splendid a scene greeted her! Withers had waited for her, evidently anticipating her delight.
“Thought you’d like this ten-mile strip,” he said. “The big black rock standing out of the plain is called ‘the Captain.’ And the Indians call that sharp monument you see ‘Slim Rock that stands High.’ It’s twice as high as your Washington soldier monument.”
Long and green and broad appeared the level hollow of desert that led to these upstanding figures, lonely and sentinel-like in the distance. Ten miles! It did not seem a third of that. Yet Marian, riding on and on, always watching these statues of rock, soon discovered how deceiving was the distance. For a whole hour these desert monuments did not change shape or size or color. In another hour Marian rode between them, to gaze up in awe, to marvel at the black granite grandeur of
the Captain and the red sandstone splendor of Slim Rock that stands High. And these were outposts to the gateway of desert land, beyond Marian’s comprehension. She could only look and look, and ask Withers questions, and ride on and on, slowly to grow, hour after hour, into realization of the deceit of distance, the marvel of color, the immensity of these uplands, and the weird, fantastic, and sublime nobility of sculptured shafts of stone.
Cold wind, and overshadowing clouds, and frequent gusts of flying dust, and brief squalls of pelting sleet, passed by over Marian with no more effect than if they had never been. Something great was entering her soul. Was this the home of Indians? What did white people realize of the nature and wildness and loneliness that had created these children of the desert? What must dwell in the minds of a race living in this land of enchantment?
Then, toward mid-afternoon, what Withers had feared and predicted came to pass. “Sandstorm,” he said. “But not bad. It won’t last long. Get on your glasses, and cover your mouth and nose with your scarf.”
A pall of yellow swooped down out of the west. Dark and weird, magenta in hue, the sun shone through this wall of dust. The wonderful landmarks ahead were blotted out. The sweep of this desert storm seemed fierce and swift, swallowing up the monuments and the plains, and moving down upon Marian with a majestic and inevitable precision. Then it enveloped her.
Marian imagined she grew suddenly blind. And she began to choke and suffocate. She had to breathe through the scarf, which seemed a thick band and permitted no air to pass. There was not enough air. Her lungs lifted and heaved. The smell of dust seemed as stifling as the substance of it. She felt the fine, thin, stinging particles on face and neck. And when that heavy front of the storm passed by Marian emerged just in time to escape acute distress. Riding was disagreeable still, but gradually the gusts of whirling dust lessened, until the storm blew away toward the eastward, enveloping the uplands there as it had in the west. The sun came out, most pleasantly warming Marian’s cold hands and face and lighting the desert. Soon there came the best hour of that day, close to sunset, warmer and without wind.
Again Withers waited for her.
“We’re getting somewhere. I didn’t tell you before. This is the sage flat where Nophaie used to shepherd his sheep. Here he was stolen.... Yonder, under that red mesa, is the place where the thieves drove his flock. We’ll camp near it. Way over here–that great break in the red wall–is the pass into the Valley of Gods. Nophaie was born there.”
Withers rode on. Marian stared after him and then down at the gray sage. She reined in her horse. Here! Nophaie, the little Indian boy, lonely shepherd, here stolen! A wave of emotion swelled Marian’s breast. Tears dimmed her eyes, so that the gray soft color beneath her grew blurred and misty. She wiped her eyes. There appeared to be no mark of stone within the circle of her vision. A wide gray-green, gently rolling plain of sage led everywhere toward the upstanding rocks, the closest of which was the red mesa Withers had signified. Marian dismounted and, gathering a bit of the fragrant sage, she placed it in the pocket of her blouse, and meant to treasure it always. Then with a hand on her horse she gazed away across the plain toward the uplands where Nophaie had been born. It meant much to her, to tread on the earth that had known Nophaie’s boyhood feet, to see the wild rock towers that had shadowed his birthplace. Magnificent monuments, pillars and columns and shafts, all reflecting the gold and red of the sunset, far away and infinitely lonely, speared the horizon line and the white clouds. Valley of Gods!
Marian mounted and did not look back. Her heart was full. To the fore stretched the trail, winding through the sage. It led her under the shadow of the ponderous red mesa, a massive butte with columns like an organ, standing out alone in the desert, far from the main wall of the uplands. Upon a grassy bench Withers had made camp. Already a fire was burning. The horses were rolling. The Indians were unpacking the mules.
“Get down and come in,” said Withers, cheerily. “Find a seat and rest yourself. We’ll soon have supper.”
Marian became conscious of aching bones and tired muscles. She was glad to rest. All that pertained to this trip was of extreme interest to her, but just now seemed subservient to the personal haunting thoughts in connection with Nophaie. She forced herself to watch Withers at his camp tasks. He did not appear to be in a hurry, yet results multiplied magically, and all in a few minutes, apparently, there was supper steaming fragrantly, and a little tent stretched over a roll of blankets for her bed. Camping out was not entirely new to Marian. She had sat round camp fires in Maine and the Adirondacks. But this was different, just as the Dutch oven was a strange and fascinating cooking utensil in her sight. It was a black iron pot with a lid. Withers had thrown the lid into the fire. The pot sat upon a bed of red coals, raked to one side. Withers deposited the hand-modeled biscuits in the oven, lifted the lid out of the fire with a stick and set it on the pot. Then he piled red-hot coals over the lid, and apparently forgot this part of his task. Marian was curious to see what happened.
“Come and get it,” presently spoke up Withers, in his hearty voice.
“Get what?” queried Marian.
“That speech is the Western call to eat.”
“Oh... and what’s to become of the biscuits in that black pot?”
“Young lady, after you eat some of my biscuits you will never be happy again,” replied the trader, laughing, and forthwith proceeded to knock the lid off the oven. Marian could scarcely believe her eyes. Next moment she was sitting cross- legged before a strip of canvas upon which Withers spread the repast. The odor that assailed her suddenly awakened a ravishing hunger. And Marian began her first meal out on the desert, with an appreciation and relish never before experienced in her life. Withers served her, then the Indians, who stood by with eager eyes, and then himself. Marian’s acute senses fixed the reality of that hour–the picturesque Indians, the Western trader, forceful and wholesome and kindly, the fragrance of bacon and coffee and hot biscuits, the penetrating cold wind that swept in and blew the pungent smoke in her face, the pleasant heat of the fire on her back, and outside of that camp circle the vague sage-plain environed by looming walls.
“Shore there’s nothing wrong with your appetite,” remarked Withers, in his quaint way.
“I’m ashamed of myself, Mr. Withers,” replied Marian. “But my excuse is that I never was so hungry nor did I taste such good things to eat. Your boast about your biscuits was not an idle one.”
The trader evidently enjoyed Marian’s hearty appetite and her praise. Later, too, when she insisted upon doing some little share of the after-supper tasks, he seemed amused. Marian began to associate the simplicity of this Westerner with the bold ruggedness of force that characterized him.
Marian found she needed her heavy coat, but in lieu of that she wrapped a blanket round her and strolled away from the camp for a while. The afterglow of sunset came out on the distant walls, as if for her especial benefit. How delicate and exquisite the softness of rose and gold! They faded while she watched. Twilight seemed to last long, but at length night fell. Marian felt alone in the desert. The place where Nophaie had been captive with his flock was infinitely lonely and sad. The cold wind chilled her and swept by her, strangely soundless. There was absolutely no break in the silence. She felt that she could not have borne such silence for long. Great white stars fired the blue sky above the black walls. Thought and emotion and loneliness, such as Marian had then, would soon have driven her back to camp. But beyond these she was growing very cold, and the strange dead darkness roused fear, and she was worn out from the long ride. So she turned toward the flare of light and the red blaze which marked camp.
Upon near approach Marian had a picture etched upon her mind’s eye–the bright glow of camp fire, emphasizing the black windy hall of the desert, with the Indians sitting before the ruddy blaze and Withers standing with back to the heat. Rough bold figures, singularly typical of all that pertained to Western color and life, they stood out in sharp relief.
“Shore, I was just going to call you,” said the trader. “You mustn’t stray far at night, or any time. Reckon you’d better turn in. To-morrow we hit that Pahute trail.”
Marian crawled into the little tent, that was so low it touched her head as she sat upon her bed, and, making a pillow of sweater and coat, she wearily unlaced her boots and slipped gratefully down under the heavy woolen blankets. She tried to think some more, to realize all that had happened, to ponder and dream over the future, but at once she was claimed by sleep.
In the morning Withers called her, and when she crawled out of the little tent it was into a wonderful gray of dawn, cold and pure, stingingly sweet with its perfume of desert, with the great mesa standing clear and sharp and black against the eastern gold of sky.
“To-day we climb out on top,” was one of the trader’s droll remarks.
An hour after starting, Marian appreciated what he meant, though she was utterly at a loss to see how they could ever surmount the tremendous red wall toward which they were riding. It looked the scarred, blunt face of a mountain. The slant of broken rock that leaned against its base might be surmountable, but it did not extend far up. For the hundredth time Marian learned that what she saw at a distance was vastly different at close range.
Marks that had appeared to be scars turned out to be ledges and lines of broken cleavage and slopes of talus and masses of broken rock, through and over which it at last seemed barely possible to climb. The close approach to this lofty barrier was not without excitement for Marian. And when Withers led off the well-defined trail that kept to the lowlands, to take a dim rough trail which turned straight for the wall, she felt a deep thrill. This must be the Indian trail never traveled by white people.
“Here’s our Pahute trail,” said Withers, as he dismounted. “It heads in from cross country.... I’m sorry to say you’ll have to walk. Climb slow– rest often–and in bad places keep on the up side of your horse.”
