CHAPTER XX

A moderation of the severe January weather attended Marian’s arrival at Kaidab.

Withers had said to her: “We’re a pretty discouraged outfit and we need a little of your sunshine. We all had the ‘flu’ except Colman. Mrs. Withers isn’t her old self yet. That’s the worst of this queer sickness. It leaves half its victims with some infirmity. We’re going to need you, and I reckon you’ll be better off and shore happier at Kaidab. And if it’s work you’re looking for among these poor Indians–Ha!–I reckon you’ll have enough. For this winter has started in a way to scare the daylights out of us.”

At first Marian did not see justification for the trader’s grim statements. His wife was rather pale and weak, but she was getting well, and certainly was cheerful. The son was still in France, safe, now, at least, from the Germans. Colman had grown thin and somewhat somber, yet appeared perfectly well. The Indian servants were identically the same as when Marian had last seen them. She felt that she must not, however, be oversanguine as to the well- being of the Withers household. She sensed, rather than saw, an encroaching shadow.

Nophaie had no home now, except the open, and Withers forced him to accept room and board in his house. Marian was sure that one of the trader’s needs of her was to help him keep Nophaie from going back to the hogans of his people, to do which in mid-winter would be fatal for him.

The afternoon of Marian’s arrival at Kaidab was not without something of pleasure and happiness. The dark cloud hovered at the horizon of the mind. She herself brought cheer and gayety, for she felt she certainly owed them that. Besides the proximity of Nophaie made her more light-headed than she would have cared to confess.

“Marian, you should see Nophaie in the uniform he wore when he got here,” said Mrs. Withers.

“His service uniform?” responded Marian, eagerly.

“Yes, and it sure showed service.”

Whereupon Marian conceived an irresistible desire to see Nophaie in the garb of a soldier. So she asked him to put it on. He refused. She importuned him, only to be again refused. Nophaie seemed a little strange about the matter. But Marian did not care, and, persisting, she followed him into the long hall of the Indian decorations, and there she waylaid him.

“Please Nophaie, put your uniform on for me,” she begged. “It’s only a girl’s sentimental whim. But I don’t care what it is. That girl loves you.”

“Benow di cleash, I hate the sight of that uniform now,” he said.

“Oh, why?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t hate it until I got back here–on the desert– home.”

“Oh! Well, you need never put it on again after this time. Just once for me. I want to take your picture. Think–I have pictures of you in football suit, baseball suit, Indian suit, and now I want one of you as a soldier–an American soldier. Why not?”

And she was not above lending her arms and lips to persuasion, which quite vanquished him.

“You’re a white girl, all right,” he laughed.

“White? Certainly, and your white girl.”

Somehow she seemed to want to be unutterably tender and loving to him, as if to make up for what she owed him. But when she saw him stride out in his uniform she quite lost her teasing and affectionate mood. It was almost as if sight of him had struck her dumb. The slouchy loose garb of an Indian had never done justice to Nophaie. As a soldier he seemed magnificent. She dragged him out in the sunlight and photographed him to her satisfaction. Then all the rest of the afternoon, which they spent in the living room before the big open fireplace, she was very quiet, and watched him.

After dinner he went to his room and returned in velveteen and corduroy, with his silver-buckled belt and moccasins. Nophaie again! Marian felt glad. That soldier uniform had obsessed her. Its meaning was so staggering.

Withers seemed to throw off cares of the present and forebodings of the future. He teased Marian and he kept coaxing Nophaie to tell something about the war. Marian added her entreaties to those of the trader. But Nophaie would not speak of himself. He told about the deaths of four of his Nopahs, all in action at the front, and each story had for Marian a singular tragic significance. Then he told about Shoie, who had turned out to be more than a bear-trapper of Germans. American officers discovered late Shoie’s remarkable gift for seeing or picking out weaknesses in the German front line, when they were driving. Nophaie said it was simply the Nopah’s wonderful eyesight. At any rate Shoie was sent out on scout duty, by both day and night. He could hide himself on apparently level bare ground. He needed no more cover than a jackrabbit. He had the Indian’s instinct for stealthiness.

From one of his scouting trips Shoie did not return. He was reported among the missing. But sometime during the fourth night of his absence he crawled back to his own trenches. A sentry stumbled over him. Shoie could not talk, and appeared covered with blood, probably seriously wounded. Examination proved that he had been spiked to a wall through hands and feet, and his tongue had been cut out. As Shoie could not write his own language or understand much of the white man’s, it was difficult to find out what had happened to him. Indians of his own kind at length pieced out the probable truth of his story. He had ventured too far and had been captured. The Germans had tried to force him to talk, or to make signs in regard to his regiment and trenches. They did not understand an Indian. Shoie made faces at them. They drove spikes through his hands and feet and left him to hang for a day. Then they tried again to make him tell what they wanted to know. Shoie stuck out his tongue at the intolerant Germans. They ordered his tongue cut out. And still they left him to hang. That night Shoie worked the spikes through his hands, then pulled out those that held his feet. And he crawled across No Man’s Land to his own trenches. He recovered from his injuries.

“Oh–monsters!” cried out Marian. “Could they not have killed him?”

“Benow di cleash, the Huns were like Blucher,” replied Nophaie.

That was the only word he ever said against the Germans, the only time he ever spoke of them.

“And is Shoie here?” queried Marian, eagerly.

“Wal, I reckon so,” replied Withers. “He was in the store to- day, begging tobacco. Sure, it’s a sight when he tries to talk. The Indians are more scared of him than ever. They think he has offended the evil spirits who had his tongue cut out to punish him for casting spells. Something strange about what’s happened to Shoie!”

It was intensely interesting to hear Nophaie talk of Paris, and crossing on the troop-ships, and his return to New York. Marian could not be sure, but she divined somehow that women had been one of the incomprehensible side factors of the war. A flash of jealousy, like fire, flamed over Marian, only to subside to her absolute certainty of Nophaie’s aloofness.

“Withers, this will interest you particularly,” said Nophaie, “as it deals directly with the Indian problem.... In New York I ran into one of my old college teachers. He remembered me well. Was not at all surprised to see me in Uncle Sam’s uniform. And he was glad I had done something. He took me to dinner and we talked over my school days and football records. Asked me what I was going to do, and if I’d like a job. I told him I was going home to work with my people. That made him serious. He said: ‘The work needed among the American Indians now lies along the line of citizenship. This government reservation bureau is obsolete. The Indian myth is punctured. Whenever the Indians protest against attempts to civilize them it is owing to the influence of reservation officers and politicians who want to keep their easy pickings. These fakers encourage the belief that the Indian question is still serious, and that the government must still control them. Almost all the Indians have been born under bureau administration. They have been controlled by the political bureau. Most of them have learned to be dependent upon the government. They know nothing of white men’s ways–which certainly is a black mark against the Indian Bureau.

“The Indian in the war service brought to all intelligent and honest American thinkers something of vital significance. The Indians did not have to go to fight. They enlisted, perhaps ten thousand of them. Many were killed. They were in all branches of the service. I am absolutely certain that these Indian soldiers were not in sympathy with the bunko game of adopting American generals into the tribe. That was only some more of the politician’s tricks to keep the reservations under government control and restrict the Indian to the desert.

“And it is not only unjust to the Indian, but a detriment to the government and people. If never before the Indian has now earned a right to get out among white men if he wants to or to live free upon his unmolested land. If these Indian Bureau men were honest in their work to civilize Indians they would make them free and give them the rights of citizenship. Suppose the government restricted all the aliens and immigrants who settle in America. They would never become real Americans as most of them do.

“The real good to the Indian has been subordinated to the main issue–and that is the salary of eight thousand government employees. It is a waste of money. Actually most of it is wasted!”

Withers then indulged in some language a good deal more forcible than elegant; and he concluded his outburst by asking Nophaie if the official had mentioned Morgan.

“No,” returned Nophaie. “Well, when I told him how the missionary with the Old Book behind him actually governed this reservation he was dumfounded.”

“Nophaie, how would you decide the Indian problem?” asked Withers. “I’ve been among Indians all my life. My wife knows Indians better than any other white person I’ve ever heard of. It’s a problem with us. As old Etenia says, you’ve got a white mind and red blood. Tell us your angle.”

Nophaie leaned on the high mantle and poked his moccasined toe at a stick of wood fallen from the fire. He seemed tranquil and sad. He had a thoughtful brow. His eyes had the piercing look, the somber blackness peculiar to his kind, but they had something more, and it was much for this nameless light that Marian loved him. She seemed to see it as the soul of an Indian–a something the white man did not believe in. She was curious to see how Nophaie would answer the trader’s earnest question, and did not believe he would answer at all.

“I could solve the Indian problem. First I’d exclude missionaries like Morgan,” he replied, with a strange, dark bitterness. “Then I’d give the Indian land and freedom. Let him work and live as he chose–send his children to school–move among white men and work with and for them. Let the Indians marry white women and Indian girls marry white men. It would make for a more virile race. No people can overcome handicaps now imposed upon us. Not much can be done in the way of changing or improving the matured Indian. But he was good enough as he was. This Indian wants none of the white man’s ways. He cares only for his desert and his people. He hates the idea of being dependent. Let him work or idle for himself. In time he would develop into a worker. The Indian children should be educated. Yes! But not taught to despise their parents and forego their religion. Indian children would learn–even as I have learned. What ruined me was to make me an infidel. Let the Indian’s religion alone.... The Indian is no different from a white man–except that he is closer to elemental life–to primitive instincts. Example of the white man’s better way’s would inevitably follow association. The Indian will absorb, if he is not cheated and driven.... I think the Golden Rule of the white men is their best religion. If they practiced that the Indian problem would be easy.”

Late that night after the Withers family and others of their household had gone to bed Marian sat a while with Nophaie before the glowing embers in the fireplace.

This hour really was the happiest and most beautiful in its teaching of any she had ever spent with him. Much of his bitterness had vanished. If he had been great before he went to war, what was he now? Marian could only feel little, humble, adoring, before this strange composite of a man. For Marian he was now more of a lover than he had ever been. Marian trembled a little, fearful even in her hour of bliss. Why had he let down his Indian reserve? What did he know that she did not? If he had gotten rid of the scourge of his soul– his unbelief–he would have told her. But she would have divined that. Nophaie was at once closer to her than ever, yet farther away. All she could do was to grasp at the skirts of the happy and thrilling and thought-provoking hour.

Next day Marian encountered Shoie. It seemed to her that Withers tried to attract her attention from the Indians in the trading post, but he was not successful.

She went into the store, back of the counter, and drew closer to this Indian hero who had been mutilated by the Germans. She did not recognize Shoie. He was some other Indian, like the evil spirit he claimed to possess. His face had been strangely lacerated, and he resembled a creature distorted by demoniacal laughter. Shoie was a physical wreck. His Indian garb, that manifestly he had acquired from an Indian of larger stature, hung loosely upon him, and it was ragged. She did not see how he could keep warm, for he had no blanket. And he huddled over the stove. Presently he observed that Marian was looking at him. She could not tell whether he was angry or glad. He opened his mouth. His scarred lips moved to let out a strange sound. It bore no semblance to words. Yet how plain it was that he tried to speak! Only a roar issued from that tongueless cavity. To Marian it was horrible. She fled.

Bad news arrived that day, along with more raw, cloudy weather. Both white travelers and Nopah couriers reported increasing illness in the sections of desert they had traversed.

“It’s come,” grated out Withers, somber as an Indian.

That night the desert wind mourned under the eaves of the house. Marian could not sleep for a long while. How mournful! It wailed low and rose to a shriek and lulled again. It made Marian shiver. It had an unearthly sound. Its portent was storm, cold, evil, plague, death, desolation.

At dawn a blizzard was blowing. Snow and sleet and dust sheeted across the bleak levels, obscuring the mesa. It lasted two days, and broke to raw rain that melted most of the snow. Then sleet again, followed by bitter cold! The sun did not show. At night the moon and stars were hidden. A dark leaden rolling canopy obscured the heavens.

Nophaie rode the ranges. Neither Withers nor Marian could keep him in. And the concluding weeks of that month brought the catastrophe Withers had predicted.

The Indians were caught like rats in a trap. Their hogans were no places to fight influenza. Three months of growing poverty had suddenly culminated in a terrible situation. These Indians had saved no money. They had only horses, sheep, and corn. The price of wool fell to nothing. Withers managed to hold the best of the blanket weavers working at a loss to himself. He kept these families. And no Indian was turned away empty-handed from the store. Meat and corn were about all most of the Nopahs had to eat, and the time came when many of them did not have that. From a prosperous people they fell in six months to a starving people, at the mercy of a disease that seemed fatal to most. It killed them quickly. Those it did not kill it left blind or infirm or deaf.

In February hundreds died of the disease, within a radius of fifty miles of Kaidab. Whole families were taken. For many more days the sun did not shine, and the nights were black. The Indians thought the sun and moon had failed them. The medicine men prevailed upon them to believe that the only thing left to save them was the eating of horseflesh. Therefore they killed and ate great numbers of their best horses.

One morning Colman found a dead Nopah lying beside the stove in the trading post. He had probably hidden behind the counter while the trader was locking up. Apparently he had not been ill the previous day. But the influenza had attacked him in the night and had killed him.

This mystery and terrible nature of the disease absolutely appalled the Indians. They could not regard it as a natural sickness. It was a scourge of the evil one. And most certainly it was not a sickness carried by one Indian to another, though just as certainly it was contagious. It struck here and there and everywhere. Lone sheepherders who had not been seen or met by any Nopah for weeks were found dead. Hogans full of Indians were found dead. Young and old went alike, but the strong and healthy braves in the prime of life were killed quickest. Peculiarly raw and brutal were the ravages of the scourge. It came unawares like a lightning stroke. And the Indian suddenly filled with palsy and fever surrendered at once. He was like a wolf caught in a trap, stricken, spiritless, ready for death. The proud spirit of Nopah bowed under this brand of his evil gods.

“Influenza–pneumonia?” queried Withers, scoffingly. “Hell! It’s a plague. A black plague. A war plague! Don’t I know these Indians? Why, bad colds and pneumonia are nothing. But this damned disease is a beast of hell. Don’t talk to me of germs. It’s no germ. It strikes from the air. It comes down. It must be some of that infernal gas the Huns let loose on the world. How else can we explain the strange way it acts? Yesterday some Mormons rode through. They told of meeting seven Nopahs on the trail. These Nopahs were O.K. Next day they went down in a heap. I sent men over there. Six of the Nopahs were dead. A little boy was living, half buried under the dead bodies. Old Etenia fell off his horse and died in two hours. His family has been nearly wiped out. Nopahs die on their way here. Do you think they were sick when they started? That’s what jars me–the way it strikes these Indians and how quick it kills! A white man will fight, but an Indian won’t. Not this plague! It has got his goat, as the cowboys say.”

In the midst of this tragic time Withers received word that Gekin Yashi had fallen victim to the dread malady. A sick Indian rode in with the news, disclosing the whereabouts of the Little Beauty. She was married to Beeteia, a young Nopah chief who had been to France, but who had never given Withers a hint that might have cleared up the mystery of her disappearance.

“Just like a Nopah!” ejaculated the trader. “Well, Gekin Yashi is down with ‘flu.’ It’ll kill her–almost sure. Maybe we can get her out in time. Her husband’s a fine Nopah. His hogan is somewhere up Nugi Canyon. I’ve sent Indians with horses to the mouth of the canyon. I’ll take the car. Maybe I can drive up to the pass–maybe to the canyon.... Give me medicines and whiskey.”

He had been talking to Colman and his wife. Marian sat beside the fire, startled and grieved into silence. Suddenly Nophaie entered, unfolding his blanket. His quirt hung on his wrist. Snowflakes gleamed on his sombrero.

“Ah! Here’s Nophaie,” said Withers. “I was hoping you’d get back. Have you heard about Gekin Yashi?”

“Yes. We must hurry. She is dying. And she has a baby.”

Marian leaped up, stung into action. “Let me go with you,” she entreated.

Nophaie showed less willingness to take her than Withers. But Marian prevailed upon both of them, helped by Mrs. Withers.

“Bundle up warm. Take a hot stone for your feet,” she advised, “and don’t get either overheated or chilled. It’s a squally day–storm and shine.”

“Don’t count the shine,” observed Withers. “You’ll have to ride against the wind. Reckon you’ll not forget it.”

The ride in the car, with a hot stone at her feet and heavy blankets round her and over her face, was not much for Marian to endure. But when she got into the saddle, headed toward the wind, it was a different matter.

The day was not far advanced, and the sky appeared divided into sections of lowering gray pall, broken purple clouds, and steely blue sky. The sun shone fitfully. At the outset the cold was not bitter, though the wind cut like a knife.

Neither sad errand nor inevitable discomfort could keep Marian from being responsive to other sensations. The mouth of Nugi Canyon yawned wide, a jagged red-cliffed portal, specked with white snow-patches and black cedar trees. The bold faces of stone were glistening wet. A deep wash meandered out of the canyon. Cold and wintry as was the scene it held fascination for Marian; and though not in any degree so magnificent as Pahute Canyon it was impressive and beautiful. The towers stood up carved, cragged, creviced, yellow in the sun, red in the shade, white on the north summits.

A familiar yet strange sensation assailed Marian–something which at first she was at a loss to define. Presently, however, she associated it with the icy, cutting, tangible quality of the air, and from that she discovered it was a fain fragrance of sage. Again she had come in contact with the most significant feature of the uplands. But she could not see any sage and concluded it must be farther on.

The threatened storm held off and the wind appeared to be shifting and falling. Marian grew fairly comfortable in the saddle, warming to the exercise. And when the clouds broke and the sun shone forth she had opportunity to see this canyon.

It appeared to be a grand winding portal into the solid rock bulk of the upland desert. Pahute Canyon was too deep and wide and tremendous to grasp. This canyon was on a scale that did not stun the faculties. It had a noble outline of rim, exceedingly broken into spires, domes, crags, peaks, monuments, escarpments, promontories; and the side canyons intersecting it were too numerous to count. That appeared its most singular feature. At one point Marian rode across a wide open space that might have been classified as the hub of a wheel, from which many canyon spokes ran off in all directions. From above Nugi Canyon must have had the shape of a centipede, with the main canyon constituting the body, and the fringe of side canyons the legs.

About five or six miles up the Nugi there came a change of conformation. It spread wider, the cliffs lowered, the perspective was much better because the former overpowering proximity was now gone. Marian was now not so close to the canyon that she could not see it.

THE STORM SWEPT ON, WREATHING THE RIMS AND FILLING THE NARROW CANYON BEHIND

Wide flats of greasewood sloped up gradually from the steep red-earth banks of the wash. A shallow muddy creek, lined with shelves of dust-colored ice, wound between them. Riding across this creek, which had to be done several times, was an ordeal for Marian. The ice shelves broke under the hoofs of the horses; and they had to trot through the water to keep from miring in quicksand. The steep trails up soft sandy banks further worried her. She had to grasp pommel and mane to hang on; and when she rode down, that was worse, because she slid far forward.

“Benow di cleash, do you see there is no feed for horses or sheep here?” asked Nophaie, turning once to wave his hand toward the flats. “This used to be the most fertile of canyons. Two dry years! And do you see the empty hogans?”

Marian had not observed either of these features. But now the fact struck her forcibly. How bare the soil! Not a blade of bleached grass! Dead greasewood, gray as ashes, vied with the stunted cedars and a few scrubby oaks in relieving the barrenness of the canyon floor. Long slopes of yellow sand, spotted with horse tracks, ran up from the wash. Slopes of snow showed white in protected places on the north side.

Gradually the trail climbed, and gradually the canyon took on more of beauty and less of grandeur. The colors grew brighter. Patches of purple sage made wonderful contrast to the red cliffs. This softer aspect accentuated the loneliness and desolateness of the deserted hogans. How dark, haunting the eye- like doors, facing the east! No more did Indian rise to stand on his threshold, to see the sun break over the eastern ramparts! A melancholy stillness pervaded the atmosphere of this canyon. No sound, no living creature! Winter had locked the canyon in its grip, but there was more than winter to hold accountable for the solitude, the seeming death of life.

A gray moving cloud, low down, filling the canyon thickly as fog, came swooping down. It was a snow-squall. It obscured cliffs, side canyons, turrets and towers, yet Marian could see its upper margin, a soft rolling gray mass, against the blue of sky.

Withers led off to the left into one of the intersecting canyons. It looked narrow, steep-sided, gloomy, and mysterious under the approaching storm. When the snow reached Marian she had a few moments of exhilaration in the feathery white pall; and then as it came thick and cold she protected her face and paid attention only to the trail.

That appeared to go on end more than its predecessors. Marian rode up and down until she felt she was not sure of her equilibrium. Finally the trail took to the bottom of a wash, on a stream bed of sand and icy sheets and an inch of clear water. The snow squall lost its vigor, thinned out, and began to blow away as it had come.

Suddenly Marian saw a strange radiance. She looked up. The snow was still slanting down, large white flakes far apart, and they seemed to be of some exquisite composite hue. Blue–white–gold! Or was it only the strange light? Marian had never seen the like. The sun was shining somewhere and through the marvelous moving veil of snow gleamed the blue sky. How unreal! Then it became a transparent medium, revealing the golden rims of canyon above, and magnified a tower into a Babel of mosaics. Clearer, more amber, grew the light; and soon purple slopes of sage rose from the streambed to the snow-banks under the cliffs. Here the sage gave off pungent odor too thick and powerful to be fragrance. It was a breath, cold, spicy, intoxicating. The storm swept on, wreathing the rims and filling the narrow canyon behind. To the fore all was clear once more–blue sky–golden towers–gleaming down upon a closed notched end of this canyon. It was a wild, beautiful place, inclosed by wet-faced cliffs, fringed by black spruce, sloped in snow and sage.

The storm swept on, wreathing the rims and filling the narrow canyon behind.

When Withers rode up a bank, and into a clump of cedars to dismount before a hogan, Marian realized with a shock that she was at the end of the ride. She had forgotten its portent.

Nophaie slid off his horse, and dropping his blanket from his shoulders he bent his lofty form and entered the hogan. Withers ordered the two Indians he had brought with him to build a fire under the cedars.

“Get down and exercise a bit,” he said to Marian. “They’ll soon have a fire to warm you.”

“Won’t–you let me see Gekin Yashi?” asked Marian, with hesitation.

“Yes–but wait,” he replied, and taking a saddle- bag off his saddle he hurried into the hogan.

Marian had scarcely dismounted before the trader came out again, with a look on his face that made Marian’s halting lips stiffen.

“Too late!” he ejaculated, a little huskily. “Gekin Yashi died in the night. Beeteia’s mother must have gone sometime yesterday.... And–”

“Some one said there was a–a baby,” faltered Marian, as the trader hesitated.

“Come here to the fire,” rejoined the practical Withers. “You look blue.... Yes, there is a baby–and it’s half white, as any one could see.... It’s about gone too, breathing its last. I can’t do anything but stay–and bury them.”

“Oh! Withers, let me go into the hogan?” asked Marian.

“What for? It’s no sight for you–let alone the risk.”

“I’m not afraid of sight or risk. Please. I feel it’s a duty.... I cared for Gekin Yashi.”

“Reckon that’s one reason why I’d rather you remembered her as she used to be.... By God! every white man who has wronged an Indian girl should see Gekin Yashi now!”

“I will never forget the Little Beauty of the Nopahs,” murmured Marian, sorrowfully.

“All right–you can go, but wait,” went on Withers. “I want to tell you something. Beeteia was one of the best of the young Nopahs. He had loved Gekin Yashi since she was a kid. But she didn’t care for him, and Do etin wouldn’t make her marry him. She ran off from the school at Mesa–in her shame. For Gekin Yashi was as good as she was pretty. But if she did run off it was made easy for her. Beeteia found her–his brother, who’s with us, told me–and he took her home and married her. The half-white baby was welcome, too. Now he’s in there holding on to the poor little dying beggar–as if it were his own.”

It took courage for Marian to walk up to that hogan and enter. The smouldering fire was almost out. She saw Nophaie sitting with bowed head beside a young Nopah–the counterpart of hundreds she had seen–who held a four or five months old baby on his lap.

Nophaie did not look up; neither did the other Indian. Marian bent over that tiny bundle and peered into the convulsed face. How dark the Indian’s hand alongside of the baby’s cheek! Even as Marian gazed an indefinable changing reached its culmination and set. She believed that had been the passing instant of life. Marian felt the drawing back of her instinctive self, repelled and chilled at heart.

Beyond these sitting Indians lay a blanketed form close to the hogan wall. It suggested the inanimate nature of stone. Snow had drifted in through the open framework of the hogan upon the folds of blanket. Behind Marian on the other side next the wall lay a slighter form, not wholly covered. Marian saw raven- black hair and shape of head she thought she recognized.

“Nophaie,” she whispered. “This–this one must be Gekin Yashi.”

“Yes,” replied Nophaie, and rising he stripped back the blanket from the dead girl.

At once Marian recognized Gekin Yashi and yet did not know her. Could this be the face of a sixteen-year-old girl? Disease and death had distorted and blackened it, but this change was not alone what Marian imagined she saw. Gekin Yashi’s songs and dreams and ideals had died before her flesh. She looked a matured, settled Indian wife. She had gone back to the Indian way of thought and feeling, somber, mystic, without bitterness or hope, pagan or barbarian now, infinitely worse off for her contact with civilization.

Marian fled out of the hogan, back to the fire under the cedar. A horror possessed her–of she knew not what. Her own religion and faith rocked on its foundation. Plague and death were terrible, but not so terrible to contemplate as human nature, passion, hate, and life. Gekin Yashi had passed away. It was better so. Bruised, trampled flower of the desert! Had she not cried out to Marian, “No one ever tells me beautiful things!” What was that cry of the soul? How great had been the potentiality of that awakening mind?

Marian’s poignant reflections were interrupted by the voice of Withers inside the hogan.

“Nophaie, the baby is dead. Make Beeteia give it up. We’ve got to bury these Indians and beat it out of here pronto.”

Marian spread her cold and trembling hands to the fire. Somehow the trenchant words of the practical trader roused her out of the depths. Such men as Withers bore the greater burdens. He had kindness, sympathy, but he dealt with the cold hard facts. He was making himself a poor man for this Nopah tribe and working like a galley slave and risking his life. Through him Marian saw more of the truth. And it roused a revolt in her–against weakness and a too great leaning toward idealism and altruism–and for the moment against this stark and awful plague of influenza.

Nophaie might be taken. He would be if he kept riding the range day and night, exposing himself to both bitter weather and the disease. The fear struck at Marian’s heart. It did not pass. It shook her and stormed her. If there were lioness instinct in her it raged then.

Withers strode out of the hogan, accompanied by the Indians.

“Get the tools,” he said, pointing to the pack he had brought.

Nophaie remained beside the hogan door where Beeteia leaned, a tragic and strangely striking figure. He seemed a groper in the dark. Trouble and grief burdened him, like weights. He did not seem to hear the earnest words of Nophaie or see the tall form before him. Marian sensed a terrible revolt in him.

Beyond the hogan, in a level patch of sage half-circled by cedars, Withers set the two Indians to digging graves. Then the trader approached the hogan and, wielding an ax began to chop a hole through the earthen covering and interlaced poles beneath. Marian remembered that the dead bodies of Indians should not be taken out at the door. Manifestly, where it was possible Withers did not spare himself in observing the customs of these people of the desert.

Beeteia turned away from Nophaie and went back to his dead. Marian called Nophaie to her, and she led him behind the clump of cedars, where the horses were nibbling at the sage. Nophaie’s mind seemed clouded. She held his hand, endeavoring to quell her mounting excitation. The sun had come out momentarily, crowning the towers with gold. How deeply purple bloomed the sage!

“Benow di cleash, you should not have come,” said Nophaie, regretfully.

“I’m glad. It has hurt me–done something more than that,” she replied. “I was sick–sick deep in my soul. But I’m over it, I think... and now I want to talk.”

“Why–you’re white–you’re shaking!” he exclaimed.

“Is it any wonder? Nophaie, I love you–and I’m terror- stricken.... This awful plague!”

He did not reply, but his hands pressed hers closely and his eyes dilated. Marian had learned to sense in him the mystic, the Indian, when it stirred. She wrenched her hands free and then threw her arms around his neck. The action liberated and augmented the storm in her breast. What she had meant to express utterly, in her frenzy to save Nophaie and make him take her out of the desert, burst all bounds of woman’s subtlety and deliberation. What she said or did in this mad moment of self- preservation she never realized. But she awakened to a terrifying consciousness that she had inflamed the savage in Nophaie.

He crushed her in his arms and bent to her face with eyes of black fire. He did not kiss her. That was not the Indian way. Tenderness, gentleness, love had no part in this response to her woman’s allurement. His mastery was that of the primal man denied; his brutality went to the verge of serious injury to her. But for the glory of it–the sheer backward step to the uttermost thrill of the senses–deep in the marrow of her bones–she would have screamed out in her pain. For he handled her, bent her, swung and lifted her, and flattened her body as might have a savage in sudden possession of a hitherto unconquerable and unattainable woman of the wilds.

Like a sack he threw her across her saddle, head and feet hanging. But Marian, once partially free of his iron arms, struggled and rose, and got into better position on her horse. She reeled against Nophaie. She could scarcely see. But she felt release from his grip. Something checked him, and his blurred face began to grow distinct–to come closer–until it pressed against her bosom.

“White woman–you’ll make–an Indian of me,” he panted, in husky, spent passion.

It pierced Marian. What more strange, incomprehensible appeal could he have made? Yet how deep it struck! She–who had loved the nobility of him–to drag him from the heights! To use her physical charm, her power in supreme selfishness! It was damnable. It showed the inherent nature of the female. She abhorred it. Then came her struggle. Only the tragedy of this Indian man could ever have mastered the woman at that moment. Gekin Yashi, the poor demented Shoie, Beeteia and his unquenchable sense of loss, Do etin and Maahesenie– these strange figures loomed beside Nophaie’s. That was a terrible moment. She could work her will with Nophaie. Nature had made the man stronger, but the ultimate victory was woman’s. But what of the soul? Could she deny it, crush it, repudiate it?

“Nophaie–forgive!” she whispered, encircling his head with her arms, and pressing it closer to her breast. “I’ve been–beside myself. This plague–this death has made me a coward. And I tried to make you–”

“Benow di cleash, that’ll be about all,” he said, raising his face, and he smiled through tears.

An hour later Withers’s melancholy task had been completed. Beeteia refused to leave with the party. Marian’s last sight of him was one she could never forget–the dark-faced Indian standing before the hogan he could never enter again, peering across the graves of his mother and wife, and the ill- gotten baby he had meant to father–across the gray sage flat to the blank walls of stone. What did he see? What did he hear? Whence came his strength?

Withers grumbled as he rode past Marian, to take the lead.

“I can’t do more. He wouldn’t come. That Nopah is going to do something terrible. He worries me.... Well, it’ll be a hard ride back. Rustle along. Get-up, Buckskin!”

Snow began to fall and the canyon grew gray as twilight. Marian followed the others at a brisk trot. The air had grown colder. When they rode up into the open reach of the main canyon a driving wind made riding against it something to endure. Gray, dull, somber, and dreary wound the Nugi, with palls of snow swooping low down, roaring through the cedars. The snow was wet. It adhered to Marian’s clothes, and grew thicker as she rode on. She could scarcely see where to guide her horse. And she suffered with the cold.

That snow-squall passed to permit wider prospect of gloomy canyon, obscured towers, white mantled rims, dark caverns, and forlorn barren benches. Another storm, with long gray veils sweeping the cliffs, came up the canyon. The wind and snow made a sweeping whine through the cedars. As fast as Marian shook off the white covering it returned, until, too weak and frozen to try any longer, she gave up. Branches of cedar stung her cold face. When at last she reached the end of that ride she was indeed glad to let Nophaie lift her off the horse.

The car ploughed homeward through snow and mud, down out of the pass into level valley. Again the gray masses of clouds spread and rolled away.

Marian saw the great tilted ledges, mountains in themselves, the tip of the lonely black sentinel above the red north wall, the round- knobbed horizon line to the east, and the gray cold wet waste of the desert.