CHAPTER XXIII

At Kaidab trading post Marian watched the desert horizon with troubled eyes.

Nophaie had been absent for over two weeks. And developments of the last few days and nights had somewhat disrupted the even tenor of Withers’s household. One night signal fires had suddenly blazed up on all the lofty points around Kaidab. Next day bands of Indians rode by, silent and grim, scarcely halting at the trading post. This latter fact was unprecedented. Even Mrs. Withers could not extract from any Indian what it was all about. But the trader said he did not need to be told.

“There’ll be trouble at Mesa,” he said, with fire in his eye. “Reckon I haven’t seen the Indians like this since they killed my brother, years ago.”

In the afternoon he drove away in his car.

That night more fires burned. Marian went with Mrs. Withers and others of the post to see the wonderful spectacle of signal fires on Echo Peaks. To Marian it seemed that the heavens were aflame. She, like Mrs. Withers, was silent, not joining in the loud acclaim and awe of their companions. The trader’s wife had lived her life among the Indians, and her face was an augury of calamity.

Next day many Nopahs trooped by the post. Then with the advent of darkness the magnificent panorama of fires was repeated. By midnight they burned out.

Marian lay sleepless in her dark little room. Some time late the hum of a motor car thrilled her. Withers was returning, and the fact of his return seemed propitious. But the automobile hummed on by the post, at a high rate of speed. That dismayed Marian. It had never happened before. Kaidab was a stopping-place for every car, at any hour. Somehow this incident portended evil. Thereafter Marian slept fitfully and was harassed by fearful dreams.

Next morning she was on the verge of despair. Catastrophe had befallen Nophaie or he would have returned long ago. She connected his lengthy absence with this uprising of the Nopahs. Nevertheless, she scanned the desert horizon to the north, praying that she might see Nophaie ride into sight.

Her attention, however, was attracted to the other direction. The droning of another motor car roused Marian to eagerness. She ran from the porch to the gate. Dust clouds were traveling swiftly along the road toward the post. Then they disappeared. Marian watched the point where the road turned over the ridge. Soon an open car shot into sight. She thought she recognized it. The driver appeared to neglect risk for the car or himself. Marian ran outside into the wide open space before the trading post.

In a moment more she was confronted by a dust-begrimed Withers.

“Howdy, Marian!” he greeted her. “Where’s everybody? I shore drove some. But bad news travels fast on the desert, an’ I wanted to beat it here.”

“Bad–news?” faltered Marian.

“Wal, I reckon,” he returned, darkly. “Come on in an’ find my wife.”

“Nophaie!–Have you seen him?” whispered Marian.

“See here, lass, you’re white as a sheet. An’ you’re shakin’ too. Wal, no wonder. But you’ve got to stand up under the worst.... They’re bringin’ Nophaie in Presbrey’s car. He’s alive–an’ for all we could see he’s unhurt. But he’s in bad shape. Strange!... Come, here’s the wife. She looks scared, too.”

While Withers half led and half carried her into the living room Marian fought desperately to ward off the sick faint blackness that threatened to overcome her. Withers lowered her into a chair, and then stood erect to wipe his dusty face.

“Wal, wife, you’re ‘most as pale round the gills as Marian,” he began. Then, having cleaned his face, he heaved a great breath of relief and flopped into a chair. “Listen. Beeteia’s uprisin’ flivvered worse then we’d have dared to hope for. Strange! Reckon it’s the strangest thing in all my desert experience.... When I got to Mesa there was a mob, a thousand Nopahs an’ Nokis hanging around pow-wowin’, waiting for Blucher an’ Morgan. Luckily they’d gone away–to fire some poor devil off the reservation, I heard. The Indians thought they’d run away to Washington, to get the soldiers. They cooled off. Then old Indians harangued them on the foolishness of this uprisin’ business. Beeteia was hustled away to save him from arrest. So far so good!”

Withers paused to catch his breath, perhaps to choose words less calculated to startle the staring women.

“Last night we got word that Presbrey’s post was to be burned,” went on the trader. “I didn’t believe it because Presbrey stands well with the Indians. But it worried me. So I left Mesa an’ drove pronto for Presbrey’s. Was shore relieved when I saw his tradin’ post safe an’ sound. Presbrey met me, some excited for him. An’ he told me Blucher, Morgan, an’ Glendon had hid all night in his post an’ had just left, takin’ the old road over the ridge. Presbrey said a good many Indians had passed his post in three days. Yesterday they petered out, an’ last night Blucher an’ Morgan came.”

“I heard their car. I thought it was you returning,” spoke up Marian.

“Wal, while Presbrey an’ me were talkin’ three Nopahs rode up,” continued Withers. “We figgered somethin’ was wrong, an’ finally got news that Shoie was at the mouth of the Nugi with a gang of Nopahs. They had been on their way to burn Presbrey’s post an’ were stopped by Nophaie. So tellin’ Presbrey to follow me I hit only the high places. At the Nugi I found Shoie with some two hundred Indians. Nophaie was there, lying under a cedar beside my horse he’d evidently ridden to death. Shoie was with him. First off I thought Nophaie was dead. But he was alive, though exhausted almost to the last heartbeat. Shoie couldn’t talk. The Indians were sullen. It took some time for me to piece together what this all meant. But I’m sure I got it figgered. Nophaie must have heard on the uplands that Shoie was bent on mischief. Wal, from the looks of my horse an’ Nophaie I’d say there had been a wild ride. Anyway, Nophaie headed off Shoie, an’ at least stopped the burnin’ of Presbrey’s post. Doesn’t it have a strange look, when you think about Blucher an’ Morgan bein’ hid in that very tradin’ post at that very hour? Shoie would have burned them alive. Nophaie is the only man who could have stopped Shoie.”

“Then–Nophaie saved their lives–Morgan–Blucher–Glendon?” burst out the trader’s wife.

“Wal, I reckon,” replied Withers, grimly. “It’s quite beyond me.... Presbrey came along soon an’ we put Nophaie in his car, where there was more room. They’ll be here presently.”

Mute and stifled, racked by a convulsion rising in her breast, Marian fled to her room and locked the door and pulled down the shades. She wanted it dark. She longed to hide herself from even her own sight.

Then in the gloom of the little adobe- walled room she succumbed to the fury of a woman once in her life reverting to primitive instincts. “Oh, I could kill them–with my bare hands!” she panted. She had not known such black depths existed in her. She was worse than a mother bereft of her child. Her mood was to destroy. But for the collapse swiftly following she might have done herself physical violence.

When her mind cleared she found herself lying on the bed, spent and disheveled. Slowly she realized what havoc had been wrought in her by passion. She was amazed at this hitherto unknown self, but she made no apologies and suffered no regrets. In a revulsion of feeling that ensued she crept off the bed to her knees, and thanked God. For she divined that Nophaie’s great deed had been dominated by the spirit of Christ. Nophaie had always been a man, and one prompted to swift, heroic, generous acts, but this saving of the Mesa triumvirate from the vengeance of Gekin Yashi’s race, from a horrible death by fire, could mean only that Nophaie’s pilgrimage to Naza had saved his soul. She absolutely knew it.

A knock on the door interrupted her devotions.

“Marian, come,” called Mrs. Withers. “Nophaie is here.”

Leaping to her feet, Marian stood a moment, trembling and absorbed.

It took a few moments to smooth out hair and attire and erase somewhat the havoc of emotion from her face. Then she opened the door and stepped into the long hall. By the time she had traversed it and passed through the living room to the door she was outwardly composed.

Through the green cottonwoods Marian espied a car in front of the gate, with an excited crowd around it. Mrs. Withers stood holding the gate open. Marian halted outside the door. She saw moccasined feet and long limbs incased in yellow corduroy slowly slipping down out of the car. Then she saw a silver- ornamented belt, and a garnet velveteen shirt. She recognized them. They were moving and her heart seemed to swell to bursting. Next Nophaie’s dark face and bare black head emerged from the car. Withers and another man helped him out.

Marian’s devouring gaze flew over him. His tall lithe form, so instinct with grace and strength, seemed the same as always. Then she saw his face distinctly. There shone upon it a kind of dark radiance. He smiled at her. And suddenly all her icy terror and numb agony vanished. She ran to meet him to halt the little procession.

“Nophaie!” she said, tremulously.

“All is well,” he replied.

Everything that was humanly possible was done for Nophaie. But it was manifest that he was dying and that the last flickering of his spirit had been held for this moment with the white girl.

She knelt beside him.

“Nophaie–your pilgrimage was not–in vain,” she asserted, brokenly. “You found––”

“Your God and my God–Benow di cleash,” he whispered, a dark mystic adoration in the gaze he fixed on her. “Now all is well!... Now–all–is– well!”

Some hours later Marian stood in the doorway watching the Indians ride away into the sunset.

It was a magnificent, far-flung sunset, the whole west flaming with intense golden red that spread and paled far into the north.

Against this glorious background the Indians were riding away, in dense groups, in long straggling lines, in small parties, down to couples. It was an austere and sad pageant. The broken Indians and the weary mustangs passed slowly out upon the desert. Shoie, the tongueless, was the last to depart. It appeared that he turned with gleaming visage and gesture of denunciation. Far to the fore the dark forms, silhouetted against the pure gold of the horizon, began to vanish, as if indeed they had ridden into that beautiful prophetic sky.

“It is–symbolic–“ said Marian. “They are vanishing–vanishing. Oh! Nopahs!... Only a question of swiftly flying time! My Nophaie–the warrior– gone before them!... It is well.”

At last only one Indian was left on the darkening horizon–the solitary Shoie–bent in his saddle, a melancholy figure, unreal and strange against that dying sunset–moving on, diminishing, fading, vanishing–vanishing.

THE END