by Zane Grey
Marian thought she might be a good deal more comfortable, but scarcely happier. It was about all she could do to drag herself to the seat Withers made for her. The warmth that stole over her, and the languor, would have ended in sleep but for the trader’s hearty call, “Come and get it.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to bring it to me,” replied Marian. “If I get up I’ll fall down.”
Withers and Nophaie served her, and she discovered that exhaustion and physical pangs did not destroy hunger, or, in her case, keen enjoyment of the meal. Nophaie sat beside her, the light of the camp fire playing upon his face. The other two Indians came for their supper, soft-footed and slow, and they sat down to eat.
After the meal Withers and Nophaie made short work of what tasks were left to do. The two Indians appeared to mingle with the encircling darkness. For a moment the low, strange notes of their voices came back to Marian, and then were heard no more. Withers erected the little tent under the piñon near the fire, and then drawled, “Shore, I reckon that’s about all.” Then bidding Nophaie and Marian good night, he discreetly retired to his own bed under an adjoining piñon. The night silence settled down upon the camp, so lonely and sweet, so strangely full for Marian, that she was loath to break it. She watched Nophaie. In the flickering light his face seemed impassively sad, a bronze mask molded in the mood of sorrow. From time to time he would lift his face and turn his dark gaze upon Marian. Then she thrilled, and felt a warmth of gladness wave over her.
“Will you stay with us to-night?” she asked, at last.
“No. I will ride back to my hogan,” he said.
“Is it far?”
“For you, yes. I will ride back to meet you in the morning.”
“Is your–your home at Oljato?”
“No. Oljato is down in the lowland. Some of my people live there.”
“People? You mean relatives?”
He replied in the negative, and went on to tell of his only living kin. And he fell to talking of himself–how he had chosen this wildest and loneliest part of the reservation because he wanted to be far away from white people. It was a custom of the tribe for the women to own the sheep, but he had acquired a small flock. He owned a few mustangs. He was the poorest Indian he knew. He did not possess even a saddle or a gun. His means of livelihood was the selling of wool and hides, and working for some of the rich Indians in that section. He had taught them how much better corn would grow in plowed land. He built dams to hold the spring freshets from the melting snows and thus conserve water for the long period of drought. What his tribe needed most was to learn ways that were better than theirs. But they were slow to change. They had to see results. And therefore he did not find a great deal of work which was remunerative.
It had never occurred to Marian that Nophaie might be poor. She remembered him as the famous athlete who had been highly salaried at Cape May. Yet she might have guessed it. The white people had taught him to earn money in some of their pursuits, which he had renounced.
Poverty had always seemed a hideous condition. Marian had never known real luxury and did not want it, but she had never been in need of the simple and necessary things of life. Perhaps to the Indian poverty was nothing. The piñons might be his room and warmth, the sage-covered earth his bed, the sheep his sustenance. Marian hesitated to voice her sympathy and perplexity. She could help Nophaie. But how? Maybe he did not want more sheep, more horses, more clothes and blankets, a gun and a saddle. Marian felt that she must go slowly. Nophaie’s simplicity was striking and it was easy for her to see that he had not been well fed. His lean face and his lean form were proofs of that. Had she ever dined at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel with this very Indian? Incredible! Yet no more incredible than this hour on the lonely desert, with a flickering camp fire lighting Nophaie’s dark face! How much stranger was real life than the fiction of dreams!
After a long silence, which Marian yearned to break, but could not, Nophaie rose and touched her hair with his hand.
“Benow di cleash, your eyes are heavy,” he said. “You must sleep. But I shall lie awake. I will start back with the sunrise. Good night.”
Would he bend to kiss her? She had treasured and remembered his kisses, few as they had been. But he moved away, silently, his tall form dark against the pale starlit sky, and vanished from her sight.
Long Marian sat there, fighting sleep, fighting to stay awake to think of this place and Nophaie and her love, and what must be the outcome. Fatality hovered there in the night shadow. In Nophaie’s look and voice, and the condition he confessed, she had read catastrophe for the Indian. Yet Marian could not be unhappy. She divined her power to give; and that Nophaie, stoic, nailed to his Indian martyrdom, would not wholly miss the blessedness and glory of love.
Marian repaired to the little tent and its bed of blankets. How good they felt! What a wonderful relief to stretch out and lie still! Sleep soon must deaden the throbbing of pulse, the aching of muscle, the burn of cheek. But would not her thoughts of Nophaie persist even in her dreams? Shadows of branches cast by the firelight moved on the walls of her tent, weird and strange. A low wind rose to moan in the piñions. The desert seemed to brood over her.
CHAPTER VII
Upon awakening next morning Marian realized how dearly she must pay for her horseback rides and climbs on foot. Breakfast had to be kept waiting for her, and Withers expressed both solicitude and amusement.
“I may look funny, but I don’t feel funny,” complained Marian, with a rueful face. “How will I ever live through this trip?... Oh-h-h! those awful trails straight down and up!”
“We’ll not go back the Pahute Canyon,” replied Withers. “Now you eat all you can and walk around some. You’ll find you feel better.”
Marian was so sore and stiff that she had not the slightest faith in what he said, yet upon following his advice she found he had spoken truly. Nevertheless, when she came to mount Buckskin she had an ordeal that left her smarting with pain. There was nothing to do but endure until gradually the exercise warmed her blood and eased her pangs. Then she began again to have interest in her surroundings.
The slow heave of piñion and cedar forest reached its highest ridge after perhaps an hour of riding. The sun was then high, and it lighted an enormous country of purple sage and clumps of piñions and yellow mounds of rock, now clear to Marian’s gaze. How strong the sweet scent of sage! And seemingly the whole quarter of the west swelled and bulged into a superb mountain, rising to a dome of black timber and white snow. Away to the northward rose dim, faint outline of a red-walled desert chaos.
The splendid spectacle, the fragrance of sage, the cold air, so untainted, the marvelous purple of the undulating desert, here no longer dominated by naked expanse of rock or forest green–these stirred in Marian the emotion of yesterday. How wild and free! This upland appeared verdant, a beautiful surprise of the stark and naked desert. The same loneliness and solitude reigned over it, the same intense and all-pervading light of sun, the same mystery of distance, the same incomprehensible magic of nature.
Withers waited for her, and as she rode abreast of his position he pointed far down and across the purple plain.
“Nophaie is riding to meet us,” he said. “Show me how good eyes you have.”
Eagerly Marian strained her gaze in the direction he was pointing, but she could not see anything that resembled a horse and rider.
“Oh, I can’t see him!” she cried.
“Farther to the left. There, in line with that clay-colored bluff under the mountain. Keep your eye close down along the sage.... Two moving dots, one white–one black.”
“Yes! Yes! I see those dots. But how tiny! Can they be horses?”
“Shore they can. Nophaie is riding the black and driving the white. I’ll bet there’s a present for you. Nophaie has one fine mustang, I’ve been told. But he never rode it into the post.”
“For me! You think so? That would be wonderful. Oh, will I be able to ride it?”
“Some of these Pahute ponies are well broken and gentle. I don’t think Nophaie would give you anything else.”
Marian had use for her eyes from that moment on. She rode with gaze searching for the moving dots. Sometimes she lost them and had difficulty in finding them again. But gradually they grew larger and larger until they assumed the forms of horses, loping gracefully across the sage, lending wild and beautiful life to that lonely desert. The time came when she clearly saw Nophaie, and after that when she recognized him. Then she made the astonishing discovery that the white mustang had a long black mane and tail, flying in the breeze. At closer view Marian was sure she had never seen any horse so beautiful. At sight of the Indians and the mules he halted, standing on a ridge, head up, mane flying. Then Nophaie caught up with him and drove him down into the trail, where he swerved to go round the mules. He pranced and tossed his head and whistled. His hoofs rang like bells on the stones. Marian now saw that he was almost pure white, of medium build, and well set up, with black mane and tail reaching almost to the ground. These alone would have made any horse beautiful. It appeared presently that his wildness was only a spirit of youth and temper, for he evinced an inclination to trot along with the other horses. Nophaie’s mount, however, was a really wild creature, a black, shaggy stallion, powerfully built, but ungainly, that had a halter round his nose as well as bridle.
Nophaie’s greeting to Marian was in his Indian language, the meaning of which was unmistakable. His smile and handclasp would have been enough to make her happy. Then, indicating the white mustang, he said. “I’ve brought you one of my ponies. He’s Pahute, and the gentlest and best gaited horse I’ve seen out here.”
“Oh, thank you, Nophaie! How beautiful he is! You are very kind indeed.... Gentlest, did you say? He looks as if he’d jump right over the moon.”
“He wants to run, and he’s lively, but you can ride him,” replied Nophaie. “Would you like to try him now?”
“I’d love to, but, Nophaie, I–well–it’s just all I can do to stay on this horse at the present moment. Perhaps to-morrow I will feel up to it.... How far to your camp, Nophaie?”
“I never think of distance as miles. Riding at this gait, we’ll get there at noon. Suppose we lope ahead. That will rest you.”
“Lope!... Withers says ‘just hang on’ and now you say lope. Very well. I consign my poor aching bones to your machinations.”
A touch and word from her were all Buckskin needed. Indeed, he seemed to be both surprised and pleased. He broke into a long lope that Marian found, to her amaze, a most agreeable change of gait and altogether delightful motion. It changed everything–her sensations, the scenery, the colors and smells, the feel of the wind. Nophaie loped beside her, outside of the trail, through the sage. How sweet to Marian the cool fragrance blowing hard in her face! Her blood began to race, her nerves to tingle. Always she had loved to go fast, to be in action, to feel her own spirit and muscle in dominance of the moment. This was beyond her wildest dreams. She could ride. She really had not believed it. On and on they loped, each horse gradually warming to the work, and at last settling down to a steady swinging gait that covered ground swiftly. Marian imagined there could be no place in the world more beautiful than this boundless sage-plain, purple in color and heavy with its dry, sweet tang, lonely and wild, with the great mountain to the fore, and away across the distance the strange, calling, vast and naked desert of rock.
That ride intoxicated Marian. When at the end of three or four miles Nophaie called for her to pull Buckskin to a walk she found herself breathless, utterly reckless, and full of wild longings to race on and on, to capture this new exquisite joy just liberated, to range the desert and forget the world.
“Oh!–splendid!” she cried. “I–never knew–what a ride–could be.... You must race–with me.”
“Wait till you get on your white pony to- morrow. He will run like the wind.”
They slowed to a walk and rode side by side. Marian awoke to the realization of a stinging happiness. Could it last? What was the cause? Herself, Nophaie, their love–these did not account wholly for that new significance of life. Then she remembered what Withers had said–that places had more to do with happiness than people. What did he mean by that? She told Nophaie this remark of the trader’s and asked for an explanation.
Nophaie did not reply for some moments. “People are false. Human nature is imperfect. Places are true. Nature itself is evolution–an inexorable working for perfection.”
His reply made Marian thoughtful. How strange, coming from an Indian! For a moment she had forgotten that Nophaie had been almost as famous for his scholarship in college as for his athletic prowess. She must learn from him and in that learning perhaps realize the strange combination of his Indian nature developed by the white man’s intellect. Could any such training be other than tragic? Marian divined what she had not knowledge to explain.
They rode on across the undulating sea of purple, for a while at a walk, talking, and then breaking again into a lope, and from that to slower progress once more. For Marian time ceased to exist.
The baa-baa of sheep suddenly pierced the air.
“My flock,” replied Nophaie, answering Marian’s quick look.
“Where?” she asked, eagerly.
“In the cedars there.... Benow di cleash, here is the home of Nophaie.”
Marian’s keen eyes swept the half-circle of country indicated by Nophaie’s slow impressive gesture. She saw that they had ridden down miles and miles of gentle slope, which ended in a vale marked by richer luxuriance and purple of the sage, by clumps of beautiful cedar trees, and by isolated red and yellow mounds of rock. Above loomed the great mountains, now close enough to dominate and protect. A bare rock-floored stream bed meandered through the vale, with crystal water gleaming on smooth inclines and tinkling over little falls. A column of blue smoke rose from among the cedars. Marian could smell that smoke, and it brought rushing to memory the delight she always had in burning autumn leaves. A brooding summer solitude and peace hung over this vale.
Nophaie led Marian in among the cedars. They were not numerous enough to make a forest, yet they furnished all that was needful to make this spot absolutely perfect in Marian’s eyes. For her camp site Nophaie chose a very large cedar, with branches spreading over a little sliding fall and pool in the stream. The rock floor of the stream appeared to be solid as granite and as smooth as glass. The ground under the cedar was soft and brown and fragrant. Indian paint- brush, with its vermilion hue vied with white and purple primroses.
“Here I have thought of you many and many an hour, and dreamed, and tried to pray,” said Nophaie. “We will put your tent here, and your bed here, for you must sleep in the open, unless it rains.... Come now, rest a while–then you can meet Maahesenie, my relative. You will see my hogan and my sheep.”
Nophaie helped her out of the saddle, a service she welcomed, for she was very near exhaustion again; and he arranged a comfortable seat for her in the shade of the old cedar with the beautiful pool of amber water at her feet.
“Cold snow water from Nothsis Ahn, my Mountain of Light,” he said.
“Nophaie, fill my canteen,” she replied. “Oh, how thirsty I am!”
When she had drunk deep of that pure water, so cold it had to be taken slowly, she understood another meaning of the desert.
Nophaie unsaddled the horses and turned them loose. A shaggy gray animal came bounding to him. Marian thought it a wolf, but it was a dog.
“Here’s Taddy, my shepherd–and he looks like the Taddy of my boyhood.... Taddy, go to Benow di cleash.”
Marian held out her hand and called “Taddy.” He advanced slowly, obediently, and without fear or distrust. But in the pale strange eyes shone a watchful, inquisitive light. This dog was like the soft-footed canines Marian had feared at the post. But he permitted her hand to pat his fine head. Marian had been used to vicious dogs and fawning dogs and jealous dogs, all of which were as unlike Taddy as if
he had really been a wolf. He was as curious about Marian as she was about him, and vastly less inclined to friendliness.
Nophaie came to look down upon Marian, with something soft and glad in his dark eyes.
“Benow di cleash to see you here–to have you come for my sake!” he exclaimed, with emotion he had not shown before.
“Nophaie, it is as good for me as for you,” replied Marian.
“That could not be,” he replied, with grave smile. “Your soul is not in danger.”
“Nophaie!” she exclaimed.
But he offered no word in explanation of his strange speech, and, bidding her rest, he strode away, with the dog beside him. Marian was left alone. The shade was cool, making it needful to cover herself with her coat. A drowsy buzz of bees or other insects mingled with the murmuring and dreamy low song of the stream. They seemed to lull her thoughts and burden her eyelids. She fell asleep. Upon awakening, it seemed to her a long time had lapsed, for she felt wonderfully rested. But she could not have slept long. Withers and the Indians had arrived with the pack outfit and were making camp some little distance away. It was Nophaie who brought her duffle bag and roll of bedding. Withers followed, carrying tent and ax.
“Shore you look comfortable,” was the trader’s greeting. “Isn’t this sage- cedar country great? I’ve never seen any part of the desert to equal this.”
“A land where it is always afternoon,” interposed Nophaie, with his eyes on Marian.
“Quote all the poetry you want to,” she said, languidly. “I refuse to be surprised by you again.”
The two men erected the tent on one side of Marian, and spread the canvas roll with the blankets on the other.
“Young lady, you’ll see the stars and get your nose nipped to- night,” observed Withers.
