Book: The Rainbow Trail

Z >> Zane Grey >> The Rainbow Trail




Days passed swiftly. Joe Lake did not return. The Indian rode in and
out of camp, watered and guarded the pack-burros and the mustangs.
Shefford grew strong and active. He made gardens for the women; he cut
cords of fire-wood; he dammed the brook and made an irrigation ditch;
he learned to love these fatherless children, and they loved him.

In the afternoons there was leisure for him and for the women. He had
no favorites, and let the occasion decide what he should do and with
whom he should be. They had little parties at the cottages and picnics
under the cedars. He rode up and down the valley with Ruth, who could
ride a horse as no other girl he had ever seen. He climbed with
Hester. He walked with Joan. Mostly he contrived to include several
at once in the little excursions, though it was not rare for him to be
out alone with one.

It was not a game he was playing. More and more, as he learned to know
these young women, he liked them better, he pitied them, he was good
for them. It shamed him, hurt him, somehow, to see how they tried to
forget something when they were with him. Not improbably a little of
it was coquetry, as natural as a laugh to any pretty woman. But that
was not what hurt him. It was to see Ruth or Rebecca, as the case
might be, full of life and fun, thoroughly enjoying some jest or play,
all of a sudden be strangely recalled from the wholesome pleasure of
a girl to become a deep and somber woman. The crimes in the name of
religion! How he thought of the blood and the ruin laid at the door
of religion! He wondered if that were so with Nas Ta Bega's religion,
and he meant to find out some day. The women he liked best he imagined
the least religious, and they made less effort to attract him.

Every night in the dark he went to Mary's home and sat with her on the
porch. He never went inside. For all he knew, his visits were unknown
to her neighbors. Still, it did not matter to him if they found out.
To her he could talk as he had never talked to any one. She liberated
all his thought and fancy. He filled her mind.

As there had been a change in the other women, so was there in Mary;
however, it had no relation to the bishop's visit. The time came when
Shefford could not but see that she lived and dragged through the long
day for the sake of those few hours in the shadow of the stars with
him. She seldom spoke. She listened. Wonderful to him--sometimes
she laughed--and it seemed the sound was a ghost of childhood pleasure.
When he stopped to consider that she might fall in love with him he
drove the thought from him. When he realized that his folly had become
sweet and that the sweetness imperiously drew him, he likewise cast
off that thought. The present was enough. And if he had any treasures
of mind and heart he gave them to her.

She never asked him to stay, but she showed that she wanted him to.
That made it hard to go. Still, he never stayed late. The moment
of parting was like a break. Her good-by was sweet, low music; it
lingered on his ear; it bade him come to-morrow night; and it sent
him away into the valley to walk under the stars, a man fighting
against himself.

One night at parting, as he tried to see her face in the wan glow of
a clouded moon, he said:

"I've been trying to find a sago-lily."

"Have you never seen one?" she asked.

"No." He meant to say something with a double meaning, in reference
to her face and the name of the flower, but her unconsciousness made
him hold his tongue. She was wholly unlike the other women.

"I'll show you where the lilies grow," she said.

"When?"

"To-morrow. Early in the afternoon I'll come to the spring. Then I'll
take you."

. . . . . . . . . . .

Next morning Joe Lake returned and imparted news that was perturbing
to Shefford. Reports of Shadd had come in to Stonebridge from
different Indian villages; Joe was not inclined to linger long at the
camp, and favored taking the trail with the pack-train.

Shefford discovered that he did not want to leave the valley, and the
knowledge made him reflective. That morning he did not go into the
village, and stayed in camp alone. A depression weighed upon him.
It was dispelled, however, early in the afternoon by the sight of a
slender figure in white swiftly coming down the path to the spring.
He had an appointment with Mary to go to see the sago lilies;
everything else slipped his mind.

Mary wore the long black hood that effectually concealed her face. It
made of her a woman, a Mormon woman, and strangely belied the lithe
form and the braid of gold hair.

"Good day," she said, putting down her bucket. "Do you still want to
go--to see the lilies?"

"Yes," replied Shefford, with a short laugh.

"Can you climb?"

"I'll go where you go."

Then she set off under the cedars and Shefford stalked at her side.
He was aware that Nas Ta Bega watched them walk away. This day, so
far, at least, Shefford did not feel talkative; and Mary had always
been one who mostly listened. They came at length to a place where
the wall rose in low, smooth swells, not steep, but certainly at an
angle Shefford would not of his own accord have attempted to scale.

Light, quick, and sure as a mountain-sheep Mary went up the first
swell to an offset above. Shefford, in amaze and admiration, watched
the little moccasins as they flashed and held on to the smooth rock.

When he essayed to follow her he slipped and came to grief. A second
attempt resulted in like failure. Then he backed away from the wall,
to run forward fast and up the slope, only to slip, halfway up, and
fall again.

He made light of the incident, but she was solicitous. When he assured
her he was unhurt she said he had agreed to go where she went.

"But I'm not a--a bird," he protested.

"Take off your boots. Then you can climb. When we get over the wall
it'll be easy," she said.

In his stocking-feet he had no great difficulty walking up the first
bulge of the walls. And from there she led him up the strange waves of
wind-worn rock. He could not attend to anything save the red, polished
rock under him, and so saw little. The ascent was longer than he would
have imagined, and steep enough to make him pant, but at last a huge
round summit was reached,

From here he saw down into the valley where the village lay. But for
the lazy columns of blue smoke curling up from the pinyons the place
would have seemed uninhabited. The wall on the other side was about
level with the one upon which he stood. Beyond rose other walls and
cliffs, up and up to the great towering peaks between which the green-
and-black mountain loomed. Facing the other way, Shefford had only a
restricted view. There were low crags and smooth stone ridges, between
which were aisles green with cedar and pinyon. Shefford's companion
headed toward one of these, and when he had followed her a few steps
he could no longer see down into the valley. The Mormon village where
she lived was as if it were lost, and when it vanished Shefford felt
a difference. Scarcely had the thought passed when Mary removed the
dark hood. Her small head glistened like gold in the sunlight.

Shefford caught up with her and walked at her side, but could not
bring himself at once deliberately to look at her. They entered a
narrow, low-walled lane where cedars and pinyons grew thickly, their
fragrance heavy in the warm air, and flowers began to show in the
grassy patches.

"This is Indian paint-brush," she said, pointing to little, low,
scarlet flowers. A gray sage-bush with beautiful purple blossoms she
called purple sage; another bush with yellow flowers she named buck-
brush, and there were vermilion cacti and low, flat mounds of lavender
daisies which she said had no name. A whole mossy bank was covered
with lace like green leaves and tiny blossoms the color of violets,
which she called loco.

"Loco? Is this what makes the horses go crazy when they eat it?" he
asked.

"It is, indeed," she said, laughing.

When she laughed it was impossible not to look at her. She walked a
little in advance. Her white cheek and temple seemed framed in the
gold of her hair. How white her skin! But it was like pearl, faintly
veined and flushed. The profile, clear-cut and pure, appeared cold,
almost stern. He knew now that she was singularly beautiful, though
he had yet to see her full face.

They walked on. Quite suddenly the lane opened out between two rounded
bluffs, and Shefford looked down upon a grander and more awe-inspiring
scene than ever he had viewed in his dreams.

What appeared to be a green mountainside sloped endlessly down to a
plain, and that rolled and billowed away to a boundless region of
strangely carved rock. The greatness of the scene could not be grasped
in a glance. The slope was long; the plain not as level as it seemed
to be on first sight; here and there round, red rocks, isolated and
strange, like lonely castles, rose out of the green. Beyond the green
all the earth seemed naked, showing smooth, glistening bones. It
was a formidable wall of rock that flung itself up in the distance,
carved into a thousand canyon and walls and domes and peaks, and there
was not a straight nor a broken nor a jagged line in all that wildness.
The color low down was red, dark blue, and purple in the clefts, yellow
upon the heights, and in the distance rainbow-hued. A land of curves
and color!

Shefford uttered an exclamation.

"That's Utah," said Mary. "I come often to sit here. You see that
winding blue line. There. . . . That's San Juan Canyon. And the other
dark line, that's Escalante Canyon. They wind down into this great
purple chasm--'way over here to the left--and that's the Grand Canyon.
They say not even the Indians have been in there."

Shefford had nothing to say. The moment was one of subtle and vital
assimilation. Such places as this to be unknown to men! What
strength, what wonder, what help, what glory, just to sit there an
hour, slowly and appallingly to realize! Something came to Shefford
from the distance, out of the purple canyon and from those dim, wind-
worn peaks. He resolved to come here to this promontory again and
again, alone and in humble spirit, and learn to know why he had been
silenced, why peace pervaded his soul.

It was with this emotion upon him that he turned to find his companion
watching him. Then for the first time he saw her face fully, and was
thrilled that chance had reserved the privilege for this moment. It
was a girl's face he saw, flower-like, lovely and pure as a Madonna's,
and strangely, tragically sad. The eyes were large, dark gray, the
color of the sage. They were as clear as the air which made distant
things close, and yet they seemed full of shadows, like a ruffled pool
under midnight stars. They disturbed him. Her mouth had the sweet
curves and redness of youth, but it showed bitterness, pain, and
repression.

"Where are the sago-lilies?" he asked, suddenly.

"Farther down. It's too cold up here for them. Come," she said.

He followed her down a winding trail--down and down till the green
plain rose to blot out the scrawled wall of rock, down into a verdant
canyon where a brook made swift music over stones, where the air was
sultry and hot, laden with the fragrant breath of flower and leaf.
This was a canyon of summer, and it bloomed.

The girl bent and plucked something from the grass.

"Here's a white lily," she said. "There are three colors. The yellow
and pink ones are deeper down in the canyon."

Shefford took the flower and regarded it with great interest. He
had never seen such an exquisite thing. It had three large petals,
curving cuplike, of a whiteness purer than new-fallen snow, and a
heart of rich, warm gold. Its fragrance was so faint as to be almost
indistinguishable, yet of a haunting, unforgettable sweetness. And
even while he looked at it the petals drooped and their whiteness
shaded and the gold paled. In a moment the flower was wilted.

"I don't like to pluck the lilies," said Mary. "They die so swiftly."

Shefford saw the white flowers everywhere in the open, sunny places
along the brook. They swayed with stately grace in the slow, warm
wind. They seemed like three-pointed stars shining out of the green.
He bent over one with a particularly lofty stem, and after a close
survey of it he rose to look at her face. His action was plainly one
of comparison. She laughed and said it was foolish for the women to
call her the Sago Lily. She had no coquetry; she spoke as she would
have spoken of the stones at her feet; she did not know that she was
beautiful. Shefford imagined there was some resemblance in her to the
lily--the same whiteness, the same rich gold, and, more striking than
either, a strange, rare quality of beauty, of life, intangible as
something fleeting, the spirit that had swiftly faded from the plucked
flower. Where had the girl been born--what had her life been?
Shefford was intensely curious about her. She seemed as different
from any other women he had known as this rare canyon lily was
different from the tame flowers at home.

On the return up the slope she outstripped him. She climbed lightly
and tirelessly. When he reached her upon the promontory there was a
stain of red in her cheeks and her expression had changed.

"Let's go back up over the rocks," she said. "I've not climbed for--
for so long."

"I'll go where you go," he replied.

Then she was off, and he followed. She took to the curves of the bare
rocks and climbed. He sensed a spirit released in her. It was so
strange, so keen, so wonderful to be with her, and when he did catch
her he feared to speak lest he break this mood. Her eyes grew dark
and daring, and often she stopped to look away across the wavy sea of
stones to something beyond the great walls. When they got high the
wind blew her hair loose and it flew out, a golden stream, with the
sun bright upon it. He saw that she changed her direction, which
had been in line with the two peaks, and now she climbed toward the
heights. They came to a more difficult ascent, where the stone still
held to the smooth curves, yet was marked by steep bulges and slants
and crevices. Here she became a wild thing. She ran, she leaped,
she would have left him far behind had he not called. Then she
appeared to remember him and waited.

Her face had now lost its whiteness; it was flushed, rosy, warm.

"Where--did you--ever learn--to run over rocks--this way?" he panted.

"All my life I've climbed," she said. "Ah! it's so good to be up on
the walls again--to feel the wind--to see!"

Thereafter he kept close to her, no matter what the effort. He would
not miss a moment of her, if he could help it. She was wonderful. He
imagined she must be like an Indian girl, or a savage who loved the
lofty places and the silence. When she leaped she uttered a strange,
low, sweet cry of wildness and exultation. Shefford guessed she was
a girl freed from her prison, forgetting herself, living again youthful
hours. Still she did not forget him. She waited for him at the bad
places, lent him a strong hand, and sometimes let it stay long in his
clasp. Tireless and agile, sure-footed as a goat, fleet and wild she
leaped and climbed and ran until Shefford marveled at her. This
adventure was indeed fulfilment of a dream. Perhaps she might lead
him to the treasure at the foot of the rainbow. But that thought, sad
with memory daring forth from its grave, was irrevocably linked with
a girl who was dead. He could not remember her, in the presence of
this wonderful creature who was as strange as she was beautiful. When
Shefford reached for the brown hand stretched forth to help him in a
leap, when he felt its strong clasp, the youth and vitality and life
of it, he had the fear of a man who was running towards a precipice
and who could not draw back. This was a climb, a lark, a wild race
to the Mormon girl, bound now in the village, and by the very freedom
of it she betrayed her bonds. To Shefford it was also a wild race,
but toward one sure goal he dared not name.

They went on, and at length, hand in hand, even where no steep step
or wide fissure gave reason for the clasp. But she seemed unconscious.
They were nearing the last height, a bare eminence, when she broke
from him and ran up the smooth stone. When he surmounted it she was
standing on the very summit, her arms wide, her full breast heaving,
her slender body straight as an Indian's, her hair flying in the wind
and blazing in the sun. She seemed to embrace the west, to reach for
something afar, to offer herself to the wind and distance. Her face
was scarlet from the exertion of the climb, and her broad brow was
moist. Her eyes had the piercing light of an eagle's, though now
they were dark. Shefford instinctively grasped the essence of this
strange spirit, primitive and wild. She was not the woman who had
met him at the spring. She had dropped some side of her with that
Mormon hood, and now she stood totally strange.

She belonged up here, he divined. She was a part of that wildness.
She must have been born and brought up in loneliness, where the wind
blew and the peaks loomed and silence held dominion. The sinking sun
touched the rim of the distant wall, and as if in parting regret shone
with renewed golden fire. And the girl was crowned as with a glory.

Shefford loved her then. Realizing it, he thought he might have
loved her before, but that did not matter when he was certain of
it now. He trembled a little, fearfully, though without regret.
Everything pertaining to his desert experience had been strange--
this the strangest of all.

The sun sank swiftly, and instantly there was a change in the golden
light. Quickly it died out. The girl changed as swiftly. She seemed
to remember herself, and sat down as if suddenly weary. Shefford went
closer and seated himself beside her.

"The sun has set. We must go," she said. But she made no movement.

"Whenever you are ready," replied he.

Just as the blaze had died out of her eyes, so the flush faded out of
her face. The whiteness stole back, and with it the sadness. He had
to bite his tongue to keep from telling her what he felt, to keep from
pouring out a thousand questions. But the privilege of having seen
her, of having been with her when she had forgotten herself--that he
believed was enough. It had been wonderful; it had made him love her
But it need not add to the tragedy of her life, whatever that was. He
tried to eliminate himself. And he watched her.

Her eyes were fixed upon the gold-rimmed ramparts of the distant wall
in the west. Plain it was how she loved that wild upland. And there
seemed to be some haunting memory of the past in her gaze--some happy
part of life, agonizing to think of now.

"We must go," she said, and rose.

Shefford rose to accompany her. She looked at him, and her haunting
eyes seemed to want him to know that he had helped her to forget the
present, to remember girlhood, and that somehow she would always
associate a wonderful happy afternoon with him. He divined that
her silence then was a Mormon seal on lips.

"Mary, this has been the happiest, the best, the most revealing day of
my life," he said, simply.

Swiftly, as if startled, she turned and faced down the slope. At the
top of the wall above the village she put on the dark hood, and with
it that somber something which was Mormon.

Twilight had descended into the valley, and shadows were so thick
Shefford had difficulty in finding Mary's bucket. He filled it at
the spring, and made offer to carry it home for her, which she
declined.

"You'll come to-night--later?" she asked.

"Yes," he replied, hurriedly promising. Then he watched her white form
slowly glide down the path to disappear in the shadows.

Nas Ta Bega and Joe were busy at the camp-fire. Shefford joined them.
This night he was uncommunicative. Joe peered curiously at him in the
flare of the blaze. Later, after the meal, when Shefford appeared
restless and strode to and fro, Joe spoke up gruffly:

"Better hang round camp to-night."

Shefford heard, but did not heed. Nevertheless, the purport of the
remark, which was either jealousy or admonition, haunted him with the
possibility of its meaning.

He walked away from the camp-fire, under the dark pinyons, out into
the starry open; and every step was hard to take, unless it pointed
toward the home of the girl whose beauty and sadness and mystery had
bewitched him. After what seemed hours he took the well-known path
toward her cabin, and then every step seemed lighter. He divined he
was rushing to some fate--he knew not what.

The porch was in shadow. He peered in vain for the white form against
the dark background. In the silence he seemed to hear his heart-beats
thick and muffled.

Some distance down the path he heard the sound of hoofs. Withdrawing
into the gloom of a cedar, he watched. Soon he made out moving horses
with riders. They filed past him to the number of half a score. Like
a flash of fire the truth burned him. Mormons come for one of those
mysterious night visits to sealed wives!

Shefford stalked far down the valley, into the lonely silence and the
night shadows under the walls.




VIII. THE HOGAN OF NAS TA BEGA


The home of Nas Ta Bega lay far up the cedared slope, with the craggy
yellow cliffs and the black canyon and the pine-fringed top of Navajo
Mountain behind, and to the fore the vast, rolling descent of cedar
groves and sage flats and sandy washes. No dim, dark range made bold
outline along the horizon; the stretch of gray and purple and green
extended to the blue line of sky.

Down the length of one sage level Shefford saw a long lane where the
brush and the grass had been beaten flat. This, the Navajo said,
was a track where the young braves had raced their mustangs and had
striven for supremacy before the eyes of maidens and the old people
of the tribe.

"Nas Ta Bega, did you ever race here?" asked Shefford.

"I am a chief by birth. But I was stolen from my home, and now I
cannot ride well enough to race the braves of my tribe," the Indian
replied, bitterly.

In another place Joe Lake halted his horse and called Shefford's
attention to a big yellow rock lying along the trail. And then he
spoke in Navajo to the Indian.

"I've heard of this stone--Isende Aha," said Joe, after Nas Ta Bega
had spoken. "Get down, and let's see." Shefford dismounted, but the
Indian kept his seat in the saddle.

Joe placed a big hand on the stone and tried to move it. According
to Shefford's eye measurement the stone was nearly oval, perhaps three
feet high, by a little over two in width. Joe threw off his sombrero,
took a deep breath, and, bending over, clasped the stone in his arms.
He was an exceedingly heavy and powerful man, and it was plain to
Shefford that he meant to lift the stone if that were possible. Joe's
broad shoulders strained, flattened; his arms bulged, his joints
cracked, his neck corded, and his face turned black. By gigantic
effort he lifted the stone and moved it about six inches. Then as
he released his hold he fell, and when he sat up his face was wet
with sweat.

"Try it," he said to Shefford, with his lazy smile. "See if you can
heave it."

Shefford was strong, and there had been a time when he took pride in
his strength. Something in Joe's supreme effort and in the gloom of
the Indian's eyes made Shefford curious about this stone. He bent over
and grasped it as Joe had done. He braced himself and lifted with all
his power, until a red blur obscured his sight and shooting stars
seemed to explode in his head. But he could not even stir the stone.

"Shefford, maybe you'll be able to heft it some day," observed Joe.
Then he pointed to the stone and addressed Nas Ta Bega.

The Indian shook his head and spoke for a moment.

"This is the Isende Aha of the Navajos," explained Joe. "The young
braves are always trying to carry this stone. As soon as one of them
can carry it he is a man. He who carries it farthest is the biggest
man. And just so soon as any Indian can no longer lift it he is old.
Nas Ta Bega says the stone has been carried two miles in his lifetime.
His own father carried it the length of six steps."

"Well! It's plain to me that I am not a man," said Shefford, "or else
I am old."

Joe Lake drawled his lazy laugh and, mounting, rode up the trail. But
Shefford lingered beside the Indian.

"Bi Nai," said Nas Ta Bega, "I am a chief of my tribe, but I have
never been a man. I never lifted that stone. See what the pale-
face education has done for the Indian!"

The Navajo's bitterness made Shefford thoughtful. Could greater injury
be done to man than this--to rob him of his heritage of strength?

Joe drove the bobbing pack-train of burros into the cedars where the
smoke of the hogans curled upward, and soon the whistling of mustangs,
the barking of dogs, the bleating of sheep, told of his reception.
And presently Shefford was in the midst of an animated scene. Great,
woolly, fierce dogs, like wolves, ran out to meet the visitors. Sheep
and goats were everywhere, and little lambs scarcely able to walk,
with others frisky and frolicsome. There were pure-white lambs, and
some that appeared to be painted, and some so beautiful with their
fleecy white all except black faces or ears or tails or feet. They
ran right under Nack-yal's legs and bumped against Shefford, and kept
bleating their thin-piped welcome. Under the cedars surrounding the
several hogans were mustangs that took Shefford's eye. He saw an iron-
gray with white mane and tail sweeping to the ground; and a fiery
black, wilder than any other beast he had ever seen; and a pinto as
wonderfully painted as the little lambs; and, most striking of all,
a pure, cream-colored mustang with grace and fine lines and beautiful
mane and tail, and, strange to see, eyes as blue as azure. This albino
mustang came right up to Shefford, an action in singular contrast with
that of the others, and showed a tame and friendly spirit toward him
and Nack-yal. Indeed, Shefford had reason to feel ashamed of Nack-
yal's temper or jealousy.

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