Book: The Rainbow Trail

Z >> Zane Grey >> The Rainbow Trail




"Shore thet's fine!" said Lassiter. "But mebbe I won't get to use
them guns, after all."

"Hardly on that gang," laughed Shefford. "The two Piutes and what
others escaped turned back. Maybe they'll meet a posse of Mormons--
for of course the Mormons will track us, too--and come back to where
Shadd lost his life. That's an awful place. Even the Piute got lost
--couldn't follow Nas Ta Bega. It would take any pursuers some time
to find how we got in here. I believe we need not fear further
pursuit. Certainly not to-night or to-morrow. Then we'll be far
down the canyon."

When Shefford concluded his earnest remarks the faces of Fay and Jane
had lost the signs of suppressed dread.

"Nas Ta Bega, make camp here," said Shefford. "Water--wood--grass--
why, this 's something like. . . . Fay, how's your arm?"

"It hurts," she replied, simply.

"Come with me down to the brook and let me wash and bind it properly."

They went, and she sat upon a stone while he knelt beside her and
untied his scarf from her arm. As the blood had hardened, it was
necessary to slit her sleeve to the shoulder. Using his scarf, he
washed the blood from the wound, and found it to be merely a cut,
a groove, on the surface.

"That's nothing," Shefford said, lightly. "It'll heal in a day. But
there'll always be a scar. And when we--we get back to civilization,
and you wear a pretty gown without sleeves, people will wonder what
made this mark on your beautiful arm."

Fay looked at him with wonderful eyes. "Do women wear gowns without
sleeves?" she asked.

"They do."

"Have I a--beautiful arm?"

She stretched it out, white, blue-veined, the skin fine as satin, the
lines graceful and flowing, a round, firm, strong arm.

"The most beautiful I ever saw," he replied.

But the pleasure his compliment gave her was not communicated to him.
His last impression of that right arm had been of its strength, and
his mind flashed with lightning swiftness to a picture that haunted
him--Waggoner lying dead on the porch with that powerfully driven
knife in his breast. Shefford shuddered through all his being.
Would this phantom come often to him like that? Hurriedly he bound
up her arm with the scarf and did not look at her, and was conscious
that she felt a subtle change in him.

The short twilight ended with the fugitives comfortable in a camp that
for natural features could not have been improved upon. Darkness found
Fay and Jane asleep on a soft mossy bed, a blanket tucked around them,
and their faces still and beautiful in the flickering camp-fire light.
Lassiter did not linger long awake. Nas Ta Bega, seeing Shefford's
excessive fatigue, urged him to sleep. Shefford demurred, insisting
that he share the night-watch. But Nas Ta Bega, by agreeing that
Shefford might have the following night's duty, prevailed upon him.

Shefford seemed to shut his eyes upon darkness and to open them
immediately to the light. The stream of blue sky above, the gold
tints on the western rim, the rosy, brightening colors down in the
canyon, were proofs of the sunrise. This morning Nas Ta Bega proceeded
leisurely, and his manner was comforting. When all was in readiness
for a start he gave the mustang he had ridden to Shefford, and walked,
leading the pack-animal.

The mode of travel here was a selection of the best levels, the best
places to cross the brook, the best banks to climb, and it was a
process of continual repetition. As the Indian picked out the course
and the mustangs followed his lead there was nothing for Shefford to
do but take his choice between reflection that seemed predisposed
toward gloom and an absorption in the beauty, color, wildness, and
changing character of Nonnezoshe Boco.

Assuredly his experience in the desert did not count in it a trip down
into a strange, beautiful, lost canyon such as this. It did not widen,
though the walls grew higher. They began to lean and bulge, and the
narrow strip of sky above resembled a flowing blue river. Huge caverns
had been hollowed out by some work of nature, what, he could not tell,
though he was sure it could not have been wind. And when the brook ran
close under one of these overhanging places the running water made a
singular, indescribable sound. A crack from a hoof on a stone rang
like a hollow bell and echoed from wall to wall. And the croak of a
frog--the only living creature he had so far noted in the canyon--was
a weird and melancholy thing.

Fay rode close to him, and his heart seemed to rejoice when she spoke,
when she showed how she wanted to be near him, yet, try as he might,
he could not respond. His speech to her--what little there was--did
not come spontaneously. And he suffered a remorse that he could not
be honestly natural to her. Then he would drive away the encroaching
gloom, trusting that a little time would dispel it.

"We are deeper down than Surprise Valley," said Fay.

"How do you know?" he asked.

"Here are the pink and yellow sago-lilies. You remember we went once
to find the white ones? I have found white lilies in Surprise Valley,
but never any pink or yellow."

Shefford had seen flowers all along the green banks, but he had not
marked the lilies. Here he dismounted and gathered several. They
were larger than the white ones of higher altitudes, of the same
exquisite beauty and fragility, of such rare pink and yellow hues
as he had never seen. He gave the flowers to Fay.

"They bloom only where it's always summer," she said.

That expressed their nature. They were the orchids of the summer
canyon. They stood up everywhere starlike out of the green. It was
impossible to prevent the mustangs treading them under hoof. And as
the canyon deepened, and many little springs added their tiny volume to
the brook, every grassy bench was dotted with lilies, like a green sky
star-spangled. And this increasing luxuriance manifested itself in the
banks of purple moss and clumps of lavender daisies and great clusters
of yellow violets. The brook was lined by blossoming buck-rush; the
rocky corners showed the crimson and magenta of cactus; ledges were
green with shining moss that sparkled with little white flowers. The
hum of bees filled the air.

But by and by this green and colorful and verdant beauty, the almost
level floor of the canyon, the banks of soft earth, the thickets and
the clumps of cotton-woods, the shelving caverns and the bulging
walls--these features gradually were lost, and Nonnezoshe Boco began
to deepen in bare red and white stone steps, the walls sheered away
from one another, breaking into sections and ledges, and rising higher
and higher, and there began to be manifested a dark and solemn
concordance with the nature that had created this rent in the earth.

There was a stretch of miles where steep steps in hard red rock
alternated with long levels of round boulders. Here one by one
the mustangs went lame. And the fugitives, dismounting to spare
the faithful beasts, slipped and stumbled over these loose and
treacherous stones. Fay was the only one who did not show distress.
She was glad to be on foot again and the rolling boulders were as
stable as solid rock for her.

The hours passed; the toil increased; the progress diminished; one
of the mustangs failed entirely and was left; and all the while the
dimensions of Nonnezoshe Boco magnified and its character changed.
It became a thousand-foot walled canyon, leaning, broken, threatening,
with great yellow slides blocking passage, with huge sections split
off from the main wall, with immense dark and gloomy caverns.
Strangely, it had no intersecting canyon. It jealously guarded
its secret. Its unusual formations of cavern and pillar and half-
arch led the mind to expect any monstrous stone-shape left by an
avalanche or cataclysm.

Down and down the fugitives toiled. And now the stream-bed was bare
of boulders, and the banks of earth. The floods that had rolled down
that canyon had here borne away every loose thing. All the floor was
bare red and white stone, polished, glistening, slippery, affording
treacherous foothold. And the time came when Nas Ta Bega abandoned
the stream-bed to take to the rock-strewn and cactus-covered ledges
above.

Jane gave out and had to be assisted upon the weary mustang. Fay was
persuaded to mount Nack-yal again. Lassiter plodded along. The Indian
bent tired steps far in front. And Shefford traveled on after him,
footsore and hot.

The canyon widened ahead into a great, ragged, iron-hued amphitheater,
and from there apparently turned abruptly at right angles. Sunset
rimmed the walls. Shefford wondered dully when the India would halt
to camp. And he dragged himself onward with eyes down on the rough
ground.

When he raised them again the Indian stood on a point of slope with
folded arms, gazing down where the canyon veered. Something in Nas Ta
Bega's pose quickened Shefford's pulse and then his steps. He reached
the Indian and the point where he, too, could see beyond that vast
jutting wall that had obstructed his view.

A mile beyond all was bright with the colors of sunset, and spanning
the canyon in the graceful shape arid beautiful hues of a rainbow was a
magnificent stone bridge.

"Nonnezoshe!" exclaimed the Navajo, with a deep and sonorous roll in
his voice.




XVIII. AT THE FOOT OF THE RAINBOW


The rainbow bridge was the one great natural phenomenon, the one grand
spectacle, which Shefford had ever seen that did not at first give
vague disappointment, a confounding of reality, a disenchantment of
contrast with what the mind had conceived.

But this thing was glorious. It silenced him, yet did not awe or
stun. His body and brain, weary and dull from the toil of travel,
received a singular and revivifying freshness. He had a strange,
mystic perception of this rosy-hued stupendous arch of stone, as if
in a former life it had been a goal he could not reach. This wonder
of nature, though all-satisfying, all-fulfilling to his artist's soul,
could not be a resting-place for him, a destination where something
awaited him, a height he must scale to find peace, the end of his
strife. But it seemed all these. He could not understand his
perception or his emotion. Still, here at last, apparently, was the
rainbow of his boyish dreams and of his manhood--a rainbow magnified
even beyond those dreams, no longer transparent and ethereal, but
solidified, a thing of ages, sweeping up majestically from the red
walls, its iris-hued arch against the blue sky.

Nas Ta Bega led on down the ledge and Shefford plodded thoughtfully
after him. The others followed. A jutting corner of wall again
hid the canyon. The Indian was working round to circle the huge
amphitheater. It was slow, irritating, strenuous toil, for the way
was on a steep slant, rough and loose and dragging. The rocks were
as hard and jagged as lava. And the cactus further hindered progress.
When at last the long half-circle had been accomplished the golden
and rosy lights had faded.

Again the canyon opened to view. All the walls were pale and steely
and the stone bridge loomed dark. Nas Ta Bega said camp would be
made at the bridge, which was now close. Just before they reached
it the Navajo halted with one of his singular actions. Then he stood
motionless. Shefford realized that Nas Ta Bega was saying his prayer
to this great stone god. Presently the Indian motioned for Shefford
to lead the others and the horses on under the bridge. Shefford did
so, and, upon turning, was amazed to see the Indian climbing the steep
and difficult slope on the other side. All the party watched him until
he disappeared behind the huge base of cliff that supported the arch.
Shefford selected a level place for camp, some few rods away, and here,
with Lassiter, unsaddled and unpacked the lame, drooping mustangs.
When this was done twilight had fallen. Nas Ta Bega appeared, coming
down the steep slope on this side of the bridge. Then Shefford divined
why the Navajo had made that arduous climb. He would not go under the
bridge. Nonnezoshe was a Navajo god. And Nas Ta Bega, though educated
as a white man, was true to the superstition of his ancestors.

Nas Ta Bega turned the mustangs loose to fare for what scant grass
grew on bench and slope. Firewood was even harder to find than grass.
When the camp duties had been performed and the simple meal eaten
there was gloom gathering in the canyon and the stars had begun to
blink in the pale strip of blue above the lofty walls. The place was
oppressive and the fugitives mostly silent. Shefford spread a bed of
blankets for the women, and Jane at once lay wearily down. Fay stood
beside the flickering fire, and Shefford felt her watching him. He
was conscious of a desire to get away from her haunting gaze. To
the gentle good-night he bade her she made no response.

Shefford moved away into a strange dark shadow cast by the bridge
against the pale starlight. It was a weird, black belt, where he
imagined he was invisible, but out of which he could see. There was
a slab of rock near the foot of the bridge, and here Shefford composed
himself to watch, to feel, to think the unknown thing that seemed to
be inevitably coming to him.

A slight stiffening of his neck made him aware that he had been
continually looking up at the looming arch. And he found that
insensibly it had changed and grown. It had never seemed the same
any two moments, but that was not what he meant. Near at hand it
was too vast a thing for immediate comprehension. He wanted to
ponder on what had formed it--to reflect upon its meaning as to
age and force of nature, yet all he could do at each moment was to
see. White stars hung along the dark curved line. The rim of the
arch seemed to shine. The moon must be up there somewhere. The
far side of the canyon was now a blank, black wall. Over its
towering rim showed a pale glow. It brightened. The shades in
the canyon lightened, then a white disk of moon peered over the dark
line. The bridge turned to silver, and the gloomy, shadowy belt it
had cast blanched and vanished.

Shefford became aware of the presence of Nas Ta Bega. Dark, silent,
statuesque, with inscrutable eyes uplifted, with all that was
spiritual of the Indian suggested by a somber and tranquil knowledge
of his place there, he represented the same to Shefford as a solitary
figure of human life brought out the greatness of a great picture.
Nonnezoshe Boco needed life, wild life, life of its millions of
years--and here stood the dark and silent Indian.

There was a surge in Shefford's heart and in his mind a perception of
a moment of incalculable change to his soul. And at that moment Fay
Larkin stole like a phantom to his side and stood there with her
uncovered head shining and her white face lovely in the moonlight.

"May I stay with you--a little?" she asked, wistfully. "I can't
sleep."

"Surely you may," he replied. "Does your arm hurt too badly, or are
you too tired to sleep?""

"No--it's this place. I--I--can't tell you how I feel."

But the feeling was there in her eyes for Shefford to read. Had he
too great an emotion--did he read too much--did he add from his soul?
For him the wild, starry, haunted eyes mirrored all that he had seen
and felt under Nonnezoshe. And for herself they shone eloquently of
courage and love.

"I need to talk--and I don't know how," she said.

He was silent, but he took her hands and drew her closer.

"Why are you so--so different?" she asked, bravely.

"Different?" he echoed.

"Yes. You are kind--you speak the same to me as you used to. But
since we started you've been different, somehow."

"Fay, think how hard and dangerous the trip's been! I've been worried
--and sick with dread--with-- Oh, you can't imagine the strain
I'm under! How could I be my old self?"

"It isn't worry I mean."

He was too miserable to try to find out what she did mean; besides,
he believed, if he let himself think about it, he would know what
troubled her.

"I--I am almost happy," she said, softly.

"Fay! . . . Aren't you at all afraid?"

"No. You'll take care of me. . . . Do--do you love me--like you did
before?"

"Why, child! Of course--I love you," he replied, brokenly, and he drew
her closer. He had never embraced her, never kissed her. But there
was a whiteness about her then--a wraith--a something from her soul,
and he could only gaze at her.

"I love you," she whispered. "I thought I knew it that--that night.
But I'm only finding it out now. . . . And somehow I had to tell you
here."

"Fay, I haven't said much to you," he said, hurriedly, huskily. "I
haven't had a chance. I love you. I--I ask you--will you be my wife?"

"Of course," she said, simply, but the white, moon-blanched face
colored with a dark and leaping blush.

"We'll be married as soon as we get out of the desert," he went on.
"And we'll forget--all--all that's happened. You're so young. You'll
forget."

"I'd forgotten already, till this difference came in you. And pretty
soon--when I can say something more to you--I'll forget all except
Surprise Valley--and my evenings in the starlight with you."

"Say it then--quick!"

She was leaning against him, holding his hands in her strong clasp,
soulful, tender, almost passionate.

"You couldn't help it. . . . I'm to blame. . . . I remember what I
said."

"What?" he queried in amaze.

"'YOU CAN KILL HIM!' . . . I said that. I made you kill him."

"Kill--whom?" cried Shefford.

"Waggoner. I'm to blame. . . . That must be what's made you different.
And, oh, I've wanted you to know it's all my fault. . . . But I
wouldn't be sorry if you weren't. . . . I'm glad he's dead."

"YOU--THINK--I--" Shefford's gasping whisper failed in the shock of
the revelation that Fay believed he had killed Waggoner. Then with
the inference came the staggering truth--her guiltlessness; and a
paralyzing joy held him stricken.

A powerful hand fell upon Shefford's shoulder, startling him. Nas Ta
Bega stood there, looking down upon him and Fay. Never had the Indian
seemed so dark, inscrutable of face. But in his magnificent bearing,
in the spirit that Shefford sensed in him, there were nobility and
power and a strange pride.

The Indian kept one hand on Shefford's shoulder, and with the other
he struck himself on the breast. The action was that of an Indian,
impressive and stern, significant of an Indian's prowess.

"My God!" breathed Shefford, very low.

"Oh, what does he mean?" cried Fay.

Shefford held her with shaking hands, trying to speak, to fight a way
out of these stultifying emotions.

"Nas Ta Bega--you heard. She thinks--I killed Waggoner!"

All about the Navajo then was dark and solemn disproof of her belief.
He did not need to speak. His repetition of that savage, almost
boastful blow on his breast added only to the dignity, and not to
the denial, of a warrior.

"Fay, he means he killed the Mormon," said Shefford. "He must have,
for _I_ did not!"

"Ah!" murmured Fay, and she leaned to him with passionate, quivering
gladness. It was the woman--the human--the soul born in her that
came uppermost then; now, when there was no direct call to the wild
and elemental in her nature, she showed a heart above revenge, the
instinct of a saving right, of truth as Shefford knew them. He took
her into his arms and never had he loved her so well.

"Nas Ta Bega, you killed the Mormon," declared Shefford, with a voice
that had gained strength. No silent Indian suggestion of a deed would
suffice in that moment. Shefford needed to hear the Navajo speak--to
have Fay hear him speak. "Nas Ta Bega, I know I understand. But tell
her. Speak so she will know. Tell it as a white man would!"

"I heard her cry out," replied the Indian, in his slow English. "I
waited. When he came I killed him."

A poignant why was wrenched from Shefford. Nas Ta Bega stood silent.

"BI NAI!" And when that sonorous Indian name rolled in dignity from
his lips he silently stalked away into the gloom. That was his answer
to the white man.

Shefford bent over Fay, and as the strain on him broke he held her
closer and closer and his tears streamed down and his voice broke in
exclamations of tenderness and thanksgiving. It did not matter what
she had thought, but she must never know what he had thought. He
clasped her as something precious he had lost and regained. He was
shaken with a passion of remorse. How could he have believed Fay
Larkin guilty of murder? Women less wild and less justified than she
had been driven to such a deed, yet how could he have believed it of
her, when for two days he had been with her, had seen her face, and
deep into her eyes? There was mystery in his very blindness. He cast
the whole thought from him for ever. There was no shadow between Fay
and him. He had found her. He had saved her. She was free. She
was innocent. And suddenly, as he seemed delivered from contending
tumults within, he became aware that it was no unresponsive creature
he had folded to his breast.

He became suddenly alive to the warm, throbbing contact of her bosom,
to her strong arms clinging round his neck, to her closed eyes, to the
rapt whiteness of her face. And he bent to cold lips that seemed to
receive his first kisses as new and strange; but tremulously changed,
at last to meet his own, and then to burn with sweet and thrilling
fire.

"My darling, my dream's come true," he said. "You are my treasure. I
found you here at the foot of the rainbow! . . . What if it is a stone
rainbow--if all is not as I had dreamed? I followed a gleam. And it's
led me to love and faith!"

. . . . . . . . . . .

Hours afterward Shefford walked alone to and fro under the bridge. His
trouble had given place to serenity. But this night of nights he must
live out wide-eyed to its end.

The moon had long since crossed the streak of star-fired blue above
and the canyon was black in shadow. At times a current of wind, with
all the strangeness of that strange country in its hollow moan, rushed
through the great stone arch. At other times there was silence such as
Shefford imagined dwelt deep under this rocky world. At still other
times an owl hooted, and the sound was nameless. But it had a mocking
echo that never ended. An echo of night, silence, gloom, melancholy
death, age, eternity!

The Indian lay asleep with his dark face upturned, and the other
sleepers lay calm and white in the starlight.

Shefford saw in them the meaning of life and the past--the illimitable
train of faces that had shone the stars. There was a spirit in the
canyon, and whether or not it was what the Navajo embodied in the great
Nonnezoshe, or the life of this present, or the death of the ages, or
the nature so magnificently manifested in those silent, dreaming
waiting walls--the truth for Shefford was that this spirit was God.

Life was eternal. Man's immortality lay in himself. Love of a woman
was hope--happiness. Brotherhood--that mystic and grand "Bi Nai!" of
the Navajo--that was religion.




XIX. THE GRAND CANYON OF THE COLORADO


The night passed, the gloom turned gray, the dawn stole cool and pale
into the canyon. When Nas Ta Bega drove the mustangs into camp the
lofty ramparts of the walls were rimmed with gold and the dark arch
of Nonnezoshe began to lose its steely gray.

The women had rested well and were in better condition to travel. Jane
was cheerful and Fay radiant one moment and in a dream the next. She
was beginning to live in that wonderful future. They talked more than
usual at breakfast, and Lassiter made droll remarks. Shefford, with
his great and haunting trouble ended for ever, with now only danger
to face ahead, was a different man, but thoughtful and quiet.

This morning the Indian leisurely made preparations for the start. For
all the concern he showed he might have known every foot of the canyon
below Nonnezoshe. But, for Shefford, with the dawn had returned
anxiety, a restless feeling of the need of hurry. What obstacles,
what impassable gorges, might lie between this bridge and the river!
The Indian's inscrutable serenity and Fay's trust, her radiance, the
exquisite glow upon her face, sustained Shefford and gave him patience
to endure and conceal his dread.

At length the flight was resumed, with Nas Ta Bega leading on foot,
and Shefford walking in the rear. A quarter of a mile below camp
the Indian led down a declivity into the bottom of the narrow gorge,
where the stream ran. He did not gaze backward for a last glance at
Nonnezoshe; nor did Jane or Lassiter. Fay, however, checked Nack-
yal at the rim of the descent and turned to look behind. Shefford
contrasted her tremulous smile, her half-happy good-by to this place,
with the white stillness of her face when she had bade farewell to
Surprise Valley. Then she rode Nack-yal down into the gorge.

Shefford knew that this would be his last look at the rainbow bridge.
As he gazed the tip of the great arch lost its cold, dark stone color
and began to shine. The sun had just arisen high enough over some
low break in the wall to reach the bridge. Shefford watched. Slowly,
in wondrous transformation, the gold and blue and rose and pink and
purple blended their hues, softly, mistily, cloudily, until once again
the arch was a rainbow.

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.