Book: The Rainbow Trail

Z >> Zane Grey >> The Rainbow Trail




Then followed a time that was hell--worse than fire, for fire would
have given merciful death--agony under which his physical being began
spasmodically to jerk and retch--and his eyeballs turned and his
breast caved in.

A cry rang through the roar in his ears. "Bi Nai! Bi Nai!"

His fading sight seemed to shade round the dark face of Nas Ta Bega.

Then powerful hands dragged him from the mound, through the grass
and sage, rolled him over and over, and brushed his burning skin with
strong, swift sweep.




IX. IN THE DESERT CRUCIBLE


That hard experience was but the beginning of many cruel trials for
John Shefford.

He never knew who his assailants were, nor their motive other than
robbery; and they had gotten little, for they had not found the large
sum of money sewed in the lining of his coat. Joe Lake declared it
was Shadd's work, and the Mormon showed the stern nature that lay
hidden under his mild manner. Nas Ta Bega shook his head and would
not tell what he thought. But a somber fire burned in his eyes.

The three started with a heavily laden pack-train and went down the
mountain slope into West Canyon. The second day they were shot at from
the rim of the walls. Lake was wounded, hindering the swift flight
necessary to escape deeper into the canyon. Here they hid for days,
while the Mormon recovered and the Indian took stealthy trips to try
to locate the enemy. Lack of water and grass for the burros drove
them on. They climbed out of a side canyon, losing several burros on
a rough trail, and had proceeded to within half a day's journey of
Red Lake when they were attacked while making camp in a cedar grove.
Shefford sustained an exceedingly painful injury to his leg, but,
fortunately, the bullet went through without breaking a bone. With
that burning pain there came to Shefford the meaning of fight, and his
rifle grew hot in his hands. Night alone saved the trio from certain
fatality. Under the cover of darkness the Indian helped Shefford to
escape. Joe Lake looked out for himself. The pack-train was lost,
and the mustangs, except Nack-yal.

Shefford learned what it meant to lie out at night, listening for
pursuit, cold to his marrow, sick with dread, and enduring frightful
pain from a ragged bullet-hole. Next day the Indian led him down into
the red basin, where the sun shone hot and the sand reflected the
heat. They had no water. A wind arose and the valley became a place
of flying sand. Through a heavy, stifling pall Nas Ta Bega somehow
got Shefford to the trading-post at Red Lake. Presbrey attended to
Shefford's injury and made him comfortable. Next day Joe Lake limped
in, surly and somber, with the news that Shadd and eight or ten of his
outlaw gang had gotten away with the pack-train.

In short time Shefford was able to ride, and with his companions went
over the pass to Kayenta. Withers already knew of his loss, and all
he said was that he hoped to meet Shadd some day.

Shefford showed a reluctance to go again to the hidden village in the
silent canyon with the rounded walls. The trader appeared surprised,
but did not press the point. And Shefford meant sooner or later to
tell him, yet never quite reached the point. The early summer brought
more work for the little post, and Shefford toiled with the others.
He liked the outdoor tasks, and at night was grateful that he was
too tired to think. Then followed trips to Durango and Bluff and
Monticello. He rode fifty miles a day for many days. He knew how a
man fares who packs light and rides far and fast. When the Indian
was with him he got along well, but Nas Ta Bega would not go near the
towns. Thus many mishaps were Shefford's fortune.

Many and many a mile he trailed his mustang, for Nack-yal never forgot
the Sagi, and always headed for it when he broke his hobbles. Shefford
accompanied an Indian teamster in to Durango with a wagon and four
wild mustangs. Upon the return, with a heavy load of supplies,
accident put Shefford in charge of the outfit. In despair he had to
face the hardest task that could have been given him--to take care of
a crippled Indian, catch, water, feed, harness, and drive four wild
mustangs that did not know him and tried to kill him at every turn,
and to get that precious load of supplies home to Kayenta. That he
accomplished it proved to hint the possibilities of a man, for both
endurance and patience. From that time he never gave up in the front
of any duty.

In the absence of an available Indian he rode to Durango and back in
record time. Upon one occasion he was lost in a canyon for days, with
no food and little water. Upon another he went through a sand-storm in
the open desert, facing it for forty miles and keeping to the trail;
When he rode in to Kayenta that night the trader, in grim praise, said
there was no worse to endure. At Monticello Shefford stood off a band
of desperadoes, and this time Shefford experienced a strange,
sickening shock in the wounding of a man. Later he had other fights,
but in none of them did he know whether or not he had shed blood.

The heat of midsummer came, when the blistering sun shone, and a hot
blast blew across the sand, and the furious storms made floods in the
washes. Day and night Shefford was always in the open, and any one who
had ever known him in the past would have failed to recognize him now.

In the early fall, with Nas Ta Bega as companion, he set out to the
south of Kayenta upon long-neglected business of the trader. They
visited Red Lake, Blue Canyon, Keams Canyon, Oribi, the Moki villages,
Tuba, Moencopie, and Moen Ave. This trip took many weeks and gave
Shefford all the opportunity he wanted to study the Indians, and the
conditions nearer to the border of civilization. He learned the truth
about the Indians and the missionaries.

Upon the return trip he rode over the trail he had followed alone
to Red Lake and thence on to the Sagi, and it seemed that years had
passed since he first entered this wild region which had come to be
home, years that had molded him in the stern and fiery crucible of
the desert.




X. STONEBRIDGE


In October Shefford arranged for a hunt in the Cresaw Mountains with
Joe Lake and Nas Ta Bega. The Indian had gone home for a short visit,
and upon his return the party expected to start. But Nas Ta Bega did
not come back. Then the arrival of a Piute with news that excited
Withers and greatly perturbed Lake convinced Shefford that something
was wrong.

The little trading-post seldom saw such disorder; certainly Shefford
had never known the trader to neglect work. Joe Lake threw a saddle
on a mustang he would have scorned to notice in an ordinary moment,
and without a word of explanation or farewell rode hard to the north
on the Stonebridge trail.

Shefford had long since acquired patience. He was curious, but he
did not care particularly what was in the wind. However, when Withers
came out and sent an Indian to drive up the horses Shefford could not
refrain from a query.

"I hate to tell you," replied the trader.

"Go on," added Shefford, quickly.

"Did I tell you about the government sending a Supreme Court judge out
to Utah to prosecute the polygamists?"

"No," replied Shefford.

"I forgot to, I reckon. You've been away a lot. Well, there's been
hell up in Utah for six months. Lately this judge and his men have
worked down into southern Utah. He visited Bluff and Monticello a
few weeks ago. . . . Now what do you think?"

"Withers! Is he coming to Stonebridge?"

"He's there now. Some one betrayed the whereabouts of the hidden
village over in the canyon. All the women have been arrested and
taken to Stonebridge. The trial begins to-day."

"Arrested!" echoed Shefford, blankly. "Those poor, lonely, good women?
What on earth for?"

"Sealed wives!" exclaimed Withers, tersely. "This judge is after the
polygamists. They say he's absolutely relentless."

"But--women can't be polygamists. Their husbands are the ones wanted."

"Sure. But the prosecutors have got to find the sealed wives--the
second wives--to find the law-breaking husbands. That'll be a job, or
I don't know Mormons. . . . Are you going to ride over to Stonebridge
with me?"

Shefford shrank at the idea. Months of toil and pain and travail had
not been enough to make him forget the strange girl he had loved. But
he had remembered only at poignant intervals, and the lapse of time
had made thought of her a dream like that sad dream which had lured
him into the desert. With the query of the trader came a bitter-sweet
regret.

"Better come with me," said Withers. "Have you forgotten the Sago
Lily? She'll be put on trial. . . . That girl--that child! . . .
Shefford, you know she hasn't any friends. And now no Mormon man
are protect her, for fear of prosecution."

"I'll go," replied Shefford, shortly.

The Indian brought up the horses. Nack-yal was thin from his long
travel during the hot summer, but he was as hard as iron, and the way
he pointed his keen nose toward the Sagi showed how he wanted to make
for the upland country, with its clear springs and valleys of grass.
Withers mounted his bay and with a hurried farewell to his wife
spurred the mustang into the trail. Shefford took time to get his
weapons and the light pack he always carried, and then rode out after
the trader.

The pace Withers set was the long, steady lope to which these Indian
mustangs had been trained all their lives. In an hour they reached the
mouth of the Sagi, and at sight of it it seemed to Shefford that the
hard half-year of suffering since he had been there had disappeared.
Withers, to Shefford's regret, did not enter the Sagi. He turned off
to the north and took a wild trail into a split of the red wall, and
wound in and out, and climbed a crack so narrow that the light was
obscured and the cliffs could be reached from both sides of a horse.

Once up on the wild plateau, Shefford felt again in a different world
from the barren desert he had lately known. The desert had crucified
him and had left him to die or survive, according to his spirit and
his strength. If he had loved the glare, the endless level, the
deceiving distance, the shifting sand, it had certainly not been as
he loved this softer, wilder, more intimate upland. With the red peaks
shining up into the blue, and the fragrance of cedar and pinyon, and
the purple sage and flowers and grass and splash of clear water over
stones--with these there came back to him something that he had lost
and which had haunted him.

It seemed he had returned to this wild upland of color and canyon and
lofty crags and green valleys and silent places with a spirit gained
from victory over himself in the harsher and sterner desert below.
And, strange to him, he found his old self, the dreamer, the artist,
the lover of beauty, the searcher for he knew not what, come to meet
him on the fragrant wind.

He felt this, saw the old wildness with glad eyes, yet the greater part
of his mind was given over to the thought of the unfortunate women he
expected to see in Stonebridge.

Withers was harder to follow, to keep up with, than an Indian. For one
thing he was a steady and tireless rider, and for another there were
times when he had no mercy on a horse. Then an Indian always found
easier steps in a trail and shorter cuts. Withers put his mount to
some bad slopes, and Shefford had no choice but to follow. But they
crossed the great broken bench of upland without mishap, and came out
upon a promontory of a plateau from which Shefford saw a wide valley
and the dark-green alfalfa fields of Stonebridge.

Stonebridge lay in the center of a fertile valley surrounded by pink
cliffs. It must have been a very old town, certainly far older than
Bluff or Monticello, though smaller, and evidently it had been built
to last. There was one main street, very wide, that divided the town
and was crossed at right angles by a stream spanned by a small natural
stone bridge. A line of poplar-trees shaded each foot-path. The
little log cabins and stone houses and cottages were half hidden in
foliage now tinted with autumn colors. Toward the center of the town
the houses and stores and shops fronted upon the street and along one
side of a green square, or plaza. Here were situated several edifices,
the most prominent of which was a church built of wood, whitewashed,
and remarkable, according to Withers, for the fact that not a nail had
been used in its construction. Beyond the church was a large, low
structure of stone, with a split-shingle roof, and evidently this
was the town hall.

Shefford saw, before he reached the square, that this day in
Stonebridge was one of singular action and excitement for a Mormon
village. The town was full of people and, judging from the horses
hitched everywhere and the big canvas-covered wagons, many of the
people were visitors. A crowd surrounded the hall--a dusty, booted,
spurred, shirt-sleeved and sombreroed assemblage that did not wear
the hall-mark Shefford had come to associate with Mormons. They were
riders, cowboys, horse-wranglers, and some of them Shefford had seen
in Durango. Navajos and Piutes were present, also, but they loitered
in the background.

Withers drew Shefford off to the side where, under a tree, they
hitched their horses.

"Never saw Stonebridge full of a riffraff gang like this to-day," said
Withers. "I'll bet the Mormons are wild. There's a tough outfit from
Durango. If they can get anything to drink--or if they've got it--
Stonebridge will see smoke to-day! . . . Come on. I'll get in that
hall."

But before Withers reached the hall he started violently and pulled
up short, then, with apparent unconcern, turned to lay a hand upon
Shefford. The trader's face had blanched and his eyes grew hard and
shiny, like flint. He gripped Shefford's arm.

"Look! Over to your left!" he whispered. "See that gang of Indians
there--by the big wagon. See the short Indian with the chaps. He's
got a face big as a ham, dark, fierce. That's Shadd! . . . You ought
to know him. Shadd and his outfit here! How's that for nerve? But
he pulls a rein with the Mormons."

Shefford's keen eye took in a lounging group of ten or twelve Indians
and several white men. They did not present any great contrast to
the other groups except that they were isolated, appeared quiet and
watchful, and were all armed. A bunch of lean, racy mustangs, restive
and spirited, stood near by in charge of an Indian. Shefford had to
take a second and closer glance to distinguish the half-breed. At
once he recognized in Shadd the broad-faced squat Indian who had paid
him a threatening visit that night long ago in the mouth of the Sagi.
A fire ran along Shefford's veins and seemed to concentrate in his
breast. Shadd's dark, piercing eyes alighted upon Shefford and rested
there. Then the half-breed spoke to one of his white outlaws and
pointed at Shefford. His action attracted the attention of others
in the gang, and for a moment Shefford and Withers were treated to
a keen-eyed stare.

The trader cursed low. "Maybe I wouldn't like to mix it with that
damned breed," he said. "But what chance have we with that gang?
Besides, we're here on other and more important business. All the
same, before I forget, let me remind you that Shadd has had you
spotted ever since you came out here. A friendly Piute told me
only lately. Shefford, did any Indian between here and Flagstaff
ever see that bunch of money you persist in carrying?"

"Why, yes, I suppose so--'way back in Tuba, when I first came out,"
replied Shefford.

"Huh! Well, Shadd's after that. . . . Come on now, let's get inside
the hall."

The crowd opened for the trader, who appeared to be known to
everybody.

A huge man with a bushy beard blocked the way to a shut door.

"Hello, Meade!" said Withers. "Let us in."

The man opened the door, permitted Withers and Shefford to enter, and
then closed it.

Shefford, coming out of the bright glare of sun into the hall, could
not see distinctly at first. His eyes blurred. He heard a subdued
murmur of many voices. Withers appeared to be affected with the same
kind of blindness, for he stood bewildered a moment. But he recovered
sooner than Shefford. Gradually the darkness shrouding many obscure
forms lifted. Withers drew him through a crowd of men and women to
one side of the hall, and squeezed along a wall to a railing where
progress was stopped.

Then Shefford raised his head to look with bated breath and strange
curiosity.

The hall was large and had many windows. Men were in consultation upon
a platform. Women to the number of twenty sat close together upon
benches. Back of them stood another crowd. But the women on the
benches held Shefford's gaze. They were the prisoners. They made a
somber group. Some were hooded, some veiled, all clad in dark garments
except one on the front bench, and she was dressed in white. She wore
a long hood that concealed her face. Shefford recognized the hood and
then the slender shape. She was Mary--she whom her jealous neighbors
had named the Sago Lily. At sight of her a sharp pain pierced
Shefford's breast. His eyes were blurred when he forced them away
from her, and it took a moment for him to see clearly.

Withers was whispering to him or to some one near at hand, but
Shefford did not catch the meaning of what was said. He paid more
attention; however, Withers ceased speaking. Shefford gazed upon the
crowd back of him. The women were hooded and it was not possible to
see what they looked like. There were many stalwart, clean-cut, young
Mormons of Joe Lake's type, and these men appeared troubled, even
distressed and at a loss. There was little about them resembling the
stern, quiet, somber austerity of the more matured men, and nothing at
all of the strange, aloof, serene impassiveness of the gray-bearded
old patriarchs. These venerable men were the Mormons of the old
school, the sons of the pioneers, the ruthless fanatics. Instinctively
Shefford felt that it was in them that polygamy was embodied; they
were the husbands of the sealed wives. He conceived an absorbing
curiosity to learn if his instinct was correct; and hard upon that
followed a hot, hateful eagerness to see which one was the husband
of Mary.

"There's Bishop Kane," whispered Withers, nudging Shefford. "And
there's Waggoner with him."

Shefford saw the bishop, and then beside him a man of striking
presence.

"Who's Waggoner?" asked Shefford, as he looked.

"He owns more than any Mormon in southern Utah," replied the trader.
"He's the biggest man in Stonebridge, that's sure. But I don't know
his relation to the Church. They don't call him elder or bishop.
But I'll bet he's some pumpkins. He never had any use for me or any
Gentile. A close-fisted, tight-lipped Mormon--a skinflint if I ever
saw one! Just look him over."

Shefford had been looking, and considered it unlikely that he would
ever forget this individual called Waggoner. He seemed old, sixty at
least, yet at that only in the prime of a wonderful physical life.
Unlike most of the others, he wore his grizzled beard close-cropped,
so close that it showed the lean, wolfish line of his jaw. All his
features were of striking sharpness. His eyes, of a singularly
brilliant blue, were yet cold and pale. The brow had a serious,
thoughtful cast; long furrows sloped down the cheeks. It was a
strange, secretive face, full of a power that Shefford had not seen
in another man's, full of intelligence and thought that had not been
used as Shefford had known them used among men. The face mystified
him. It had so much more than the strange aloofness so characteristic
of his fellows.

"Waggoner had five wives and fifty-five children before the law went
into effect," whispered Withers. "Nobody knows and nobody will ever
know how many he's got now. That's my private opinion."

Somehow, after Withers told that, Shefford seemed to understand the
strange power in Waggoner's face. Absolutely it was not the force, the
strength given to a man from his years of control of men. Shefford,
long schooled now in his fair-mindedness, fought down the feelings of
other years, and waited with patience. Who was he to judge Waggoner or
any other Mormon? But whenever his glance strayed back to the quiet,
slender form in white, when he realized again and again the appalling
nature of this court, his heart beat heavy and labored within his
breast.

Then a bustle among the men upon the platform appeared to indicate
that proceedings were about to begin. Some men left the platform;
several sat down at a table upon which were books and papers, and
others remained standing. These last were all roughly garbed, in
riding-boots and spurs, and Shefford's keen eye detected the bulge
of hidden weapons. They looked like deputy-marshals upon duty.

Somebody whispered that the judge's name was Stone. The name fitted
him. He was not young, and looked a man suited to the prosecution of
these secret Mormons. He had a ponderous brow, a deep, cavernous eye
that emitted gleams but betrayed no color or expression. His mouth
was the saving human feature of his stony face.

Shefford took the man upon the judge's right hand to be a lawyer,
and the one on his left an officer of court, perhaps a prosecuting
attorney. Presently this fellow pounded upon the table and stood up
as if to address a court-room. Certainly he silenced that hallful of
people. Then he perfunctorily and briefly stated that certain women
had been arrested upon suspicion of being sealed wives of Mormon
polygamists, and were to be herewith tried by a judge of the United
States Court. Shefford felt how the impressive words affected
that silent hall of listeners, but he gathered from the brief
preliminaries that the trial could not be otherwise than a crude,
rapid investigation, and perhaps for that the more sinister.

The first woman on the foremost bench was led forward by a deputy to
a vacant chair on the platform just in front of the judge's table.
She was told to sit down, and showed no sign that she had heard. Then
the judge courteously asked her to take the chair. She refused. And
Stone nodded his head as if he had experienced that sort of thing
before. He stroked his chin wearily, and Shefford conceived an idea
that he was a kind man, if he was a relentless judge.

"Please remove your veil," requested the prosecutor.

The woman did so, and proved to be young and handsome. Shefford had
a thrill as he recognized her. She was Ruth, who had been one of his
best-known acquaintances in the hidden village. She was pale, angry,
almost sullen, and her breast heaved. She had no shame, but she
seemed to be outraged. Her dark eyes, scornful and blazing, passed
over the judge and his assistants, and on to the crowd behind the
railing. Shefford, keen as a blade, with all his faculties absorbed,
fancied he saw Ruth stiffen and change slightly as her glance
encountered some one in that crowd. Then the prosecutor in deliberate
and chosen words enjoined her to kiss the Bible handed to her and swear
to tell the truth. How strange for Shefford to see her kiss the book
which he had studied for so many years! Stranger still to hear the
low murmur from the listening audience as she took the oath!

"What is your name?" asked Judge Stone, leaning back and fixing the
cavernous eyes upon her.

"Ruth Jones," was the cool reply.

"How old are you?"

"Twenty."

"Where were you born?" went on the judge. He allowed time for the
clerk to record her answers.

"Panguitch, Utah."

"Were your parents Mormons?"

"Yes."

"Are you a Mormon?"

"Yes."

"Are you a married woman?"

"No."

The answer was instant, cold, final. It seemed to the truth. Almost
Shefford believed she spoke truth. The judge stroked his chin and
waited a moment, and then hesitatingly he went on.

"Have you--any children?"

"No." And the blazing eyes met the cavernous ones.

That about the children was true enough, Shefford thought, and he
could have testified to it.

"You live in the hidden village near this town?"

"Yes."

"What is the name of this village?"

"It has none."

"Did you ever hear of Fre-donia, another village far west of here?"

"Yes."

"It is in Arizona, near the Utah line. There are few men there. Is
it the same kind of village as this one in which you live?"

"Yes."

"What does Fre-donia mean? The name--has it any meaning?"

"It means free women."

The judge maintained silence for a moment, turned to whisper to his
assistants, and presently, without glancing up, said to the woman:

"That will do."

Ruth was led back to the bench, and the woman next to her brought
forward. This was a heavier person, with the figure and step of a
matured woman. Upon removing her bonnet she showed the plain face
of a woman of forty, and it was striking only in that strange, stony
aloofness noted in the older men. Here, Shefford thought, was the real
Mormon, different in a way he could not define from Ruth. This woman
seated herself in the chair and calmly faced her prosecutors. She
manifested no emotion whatever. Shefford remembered her and could not
see any change in her deportment. This trial appeared to be of little
moment to her and she took the oath as if doing so had been a habit
all her life.

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