CHAPTER VII

Upon awakening next morning Marian realized how dearly she must pay for her horseback rides and climbs on foot. Breakfast had to be kept waiting for her, and Withers expressed both solicitude and amusement.

“I may look funny, but I don’t feel funny,” complained Marian, with a rueful face. “How will I ever live through this trip?... Oh-h-h! those awful trails straight down and up!”

“We’ll not go back the Pahute Canyon,” replied Withers. “Now you eat all you can and walk around some. You’ll find you feel better.”

Marian was so sore and stiff that she had not the slightest faith in what he said, yet upon following his advice she found he had spoken truly. Nevertheless, when she came to mount Buckskin she had an ordeal that left her smarting with pain. There was nothing to do but endure until gradually the exercise warmed her blood and eased her pangs. Then she began again to have interest in her surroundings.

The slow heave of piñion and cedar forest reached its highest ridge after perhaps an hour of riding. The sun was then high, and it lighted an enormous country of purple sage and clumps of piñions and yellow mounds of rock, now clear to Marian’s gaze. How strong the sweet scent of sage! And seemingly the whole quarter of the west swelled and bulged into a superb mountain, rising to a dome of black timber and white snow. Away to the northward rose dim, faint outline of a red-walled desert chaos.

The splendid spectacle, the fragrance of sage, the cold air, so untainted, the marvelous purple of the undulating desert, here no longer dominated by naked expanse of rock or forest green–these stirred in Marian the emotion of yesterday. How wild and free! This upland appeared verdant, a beautiful surprise of the stark and naked desert. The same loneliness and solitude reigned over it, the same intense and all-pervading light of sun, the same mystery of distance, the same incomprehensible magic of nature.

Withers waited for her, and as she rode abreast of his position he pointed far down and across the purple plain.

“Nophaie is riding to meet us,” he said. “Show me how good eyes you have.”

Eagerly Marian strained her gaze in the direction he was pointing, but she could not see anything that resembled a horse and rider.

“Oh, I can’t see him!” she cried.

“Farther to the left. There, in line with that clay-colored bluff under the mountain. Keep your eye close down along the sage.... Two moving dots, one white–one black.”

“Yes! Yes! I see those dots. But how tiny! Can they be horses?”

“Shore they can. Nophaie is riding the black and driving the white. I’ll bet there’s a present for you. Nophaie has one fine mustang, I’ve been told. But he never rode it into the post.”

“For me! You think so? That would be wonderful. Oh, will I be able to ride it?”

“Some of these Pahute ponies are well broken and gentle. I don’t think Nophaie would give you anything else.”

Marian had use for her eyes from that moment on. She rode with gaze searching for the moving dots. Sometimes she lost them and had difficulty in finding them again. But gradually they grew larger and larger until they assumed the forms of horses, loping gracefully across the sage, lending wild and beautiful life to that lonely desert. The time came when she clearly saw Nophaie, and after that when she recognized him. Then she made the astonishing discovery that the white mustang had a long black mane and tail, flying in the breeze. At closer view Marian was sure she had never seen any horse so beautiful. At sight of the Indians and the mules he halted, standing on a ridge, head up, mane flying. Then Nophaie caught up with him and drove him down into the trail, where he swerved to go round the mules. He pranced and tossed his head and whistled. His hoofs rang like bells on the stones. Marian now saw that he was almost pure white, of medium build, and well set up, with black mane and tail reaching almost to the ground. These alone would have made any horse beautiful. It appeared presently that his wildness was only a spirit of youth and temper, for he evinced an inclination to trot along with the other horses. Nophaie’s mount, however, was a really wild creature, a black, shaggy stallion, powerfully built, but ungainly, that had a halter round his nose as well as bridle.

Nophaie’s greeting to Marian was in his Indian language, the meaning of which was unmistakable. His smile and handclasp would have been enough to make her happy. Then, indicating the white mustang, he said. “I’ve brought you one of my ponies. He’s Pahute, and the gentlest and best gaited horse I’ve seen out here.”

“Oh, thank you, Nophaie! How beautiful he is! You are very kind indeed.... Gentlest, did you say? He looks as if he’d jump right over the moon.”

“He wants to run, and he’s lively, but you can ride him,” replied Nophaie. “Would you like to try him now?”

“I’d love to, but, Nophaie, I–well–it’s just all I can do to stay on this horse at the present moment. Perhaps to-morrow I will feel up to it.... How far to your camp, Nophaie?”

“I never think of distance as miles. Riding at this gait, we’ll get there at noon. Suppose we lope ahead. That will rest you.”

“Lope!... Withers says ‘just hang on’ and now you say lope. Very well. I consign my poor aching bones to your machinations.”

A touch and word from her were all Buckskin needed. Indeed, he seemed to be both surprised and pleased. He broke into a long lope that Marian found, to her amaze, a most agreeable change of gait and altogether delightful motion. It changed everything–her sensations, the scenery, the colors and smells, the feel of the wind. Nophaie loped beside her, outside of the trail, through the sage. How sweet to Marian the cool fragrance blowing hard in her face! Her blood began to race, her nerves to tingle. Always she had loved to go fast, to be in action, to feel her own spirit and muscle in dominance of the moment. This was beyond her wildest dreams. She could ride. She really had not believed it. On and on they loped, each horse gradually warming to the work, and at last settling down to a steady swinging gait that covered ground swiftly. Marian imagined there could be no place in the world more beautiful than this boundless sage-plain, purple in color and heavy with its dry, sweet tang, lonely and wild, with the great mountain to the fore, and away across the distance the strange, calling, vast and naked desert of rock.

That ride intoxicated Marian. When at the end of three or four miles Nophaie called for her to pull Buckskin to a walk she found herself breathless, utterly reckless, and full of wild longings to race on and on, to capture this new exquisite joy just liberated, to range the desert and forget the world.

“Oh!–splendid!” she cried. “I–never knew–what a ride–could be.... You must race–with me.”

“Wait till you get on your white pony to- morrow. He will run like the wind.”

They slowed to a walk and rode side by side. Marian awoke to the realization of a stinging happiness. Could it last? What was the cause? Herself, Nophaie, their love–these did not account wholly for that new significance of life. Then she remembered what Withers had said–that places had more to do with happiness than people. What did he mean by that? She told Nophaie this remark of the trader’s and asked for an explanation.

Nophaie did not reply for some moments. “People are false. Human nature is imperfect. Places are true. Nature itself is evolution–an inexorable working for perfection.”

His reply made Marian thoughtful. How strange, coming from an Indian! For a moment she had forgotten that Nophaie had been almost as famous for his scholarship in college as for his athletic prowess. She must learn from him and in that learning perhaps realize the strange combination of his Indian nature developed by the white man’s intellect. Could any such training be other than tragic? Marian divined what she had not knowledge to explain.

They rode on across the undulating sea of purple, for a while at a walk, talking, and then breaking again into a lope, and from that to slower progress once more. For Marian time ceased to exist.

The baa-baa of sheep suddenly pierced the air.

“My flock,” replied Nophaie, answering Marian’s quick look.

“Where?” she asked, eagerly.

“In the cedars there.... Benow di cleash, here is the home of Nophaie.”

Marian’s keen eyes swept the half-circle of country indicated by Nophaie’s slow impressive gesture. She saw that they had ridden down miles and miles of gentle slope, which ended in a vale marked by richer luxuriance and purple of the sage, by clumps of beautiful cedar trees, and by isolated red and yellow mounds of rock. Above loomed the great mountains, now close enough to dominate and protect. A bare rock-floored stream bed meandered through the vale, with crystal water gleaming on smooth inclines and tinkling over little falls. A column of blue smoke rose from among the cedars. Marian could smell that smoke, and it brought rushing to memory the delight she always had in burning autumn leaves. A brooding summer solitude and peace hung over this vale.

Nophaie led Marian in among the cedars. They were not numerous enough to make a forest, yet they furnished all that was needful to make this spot absolutely perfect in Marian’s eyes. For her camp site Nophaie chose a very large cedar, with branches spreading over a little sliding fall and pool in the stream. The rock floor of the stream appeared to be solid as granite and as smooth as glass. The ground under the cedar was soft and brown and fragrant. Indian paint- brush, with its vermilion hue vied with white and purple primroses.

“Here I have thought of you many and many an hour, and dreamed, and tried to pray,” said Nophaie. “We will put your tent here, and your bed here, for you must sleep in the open, unless it rains.... Come now, rest a while–then you can meet Maahesenie, my relative. You will see my hogan and my sheep.”

Nophaie helped her out of the saddle, a service she welcomed, for she was very near exhaustion again; and he arranged a comfortable seat for her in the shade of the old cedar with the beautiful pool of amber water at her feet.

“Cold snow water from Nothsis Ahn, my Mountain of Light,” he said.

“Nophaie, fill my canteen,” she replied. “Oh, how thirsty I am!”

When she had drunk deep of that pure water, so cold it had to be taken slowly, she understood another meaning of the desert.

Nophaie unsaddled the horses and turned them loose. A shaggy gray animal came bounding to him. Marian thought it a wolf, but it was a dog.

“Here’s Taddy, my shepherd–and he looks like the Taddy of my boyhood.... Taddy, go to Benow di cleash.”

Marian held out her hand and called “Taddy.” He advanced slowly, obediently, and without fear or distrust. But in the pale strange eyes shone a watchful, inquisitive light. This dog was like the soft-footed canines Marian had feared at the post. But he permitted her hand to pat his fine head. Marian had been used to vicious dogs and fawning dogs and jealous dogs, all of which were as unlike Taddy as if he had really been a wolf. He was as curious about Marian as she was about him, and vastly less inclined to friendliness.

Nophaie came to look down upon Marian, with something soft and glad in his dark eyes.

“Benow di cleash to see you here–to have you come for my sake!” he exclaimed, with emotion he had not shown before.

“Nophaie, it is as good for me as for you,” replied Marian.

“That could not be,” he replied, with grave smile. “Your soul is not in danger.”

“Nophaie!” she exclaimed.

But he offered no word in explanation of his strange speech, and, bidding her rest, he strode away, with the dog beside him. Marian was left alone. The shade was cool, making it needful to cover herself with her coat. A drowsy buzz of bees or other insects mingled with the murmuring and dreamy low song of the stream. They seemed to lull her thoughts and burden her eyelids. She fell asleep. Upon awakening, it seemed to her a long time had lapsed, for she felt wonderfully rested. But she could not have slept long. Withers and the Indians had arrived with the pack outfit and were making camp some little distance away. It was Nophaie who brought her duffle bag and roll of bedding. Withers followed, carrying tent and ax.

“Shore you look comfortable,” was the trader’s greeting. “Isn’t this sage- cedar country great? I’ve never seen any part of the desert to equal this.”

“A land where it is always afternoon,” interposed Nophaie, with his eyes on Marian.

“Quote all the poetry you want to,” she said, languidly. “I refuse to be surprised by you again.”

The two men erected the tent on one side of Marian, and spread the canvas roll with the blankets on the other.

“Young lady, you’ll see the stars and get your nose nipped to- night,” observed Withers.

“Nipped? By stars–or what?” she queried.

“By frost,” he returned. Then seriously he continued: “I love this purple sage upland. I’ve come here often, though not by the Pahute trail. You wouldn’t dream this fine open country jumps off over here–down into the most terrible broken desert. Rocks–canyons that’re impassable.”

“Yes, I would. I saw where,” replied Marian.

“Well, I’m going to ride over here some ten miles south, round the corner of the mountain where an old Pahute lives,” continued Withers. “I buy a good deal from him, and he buys from me. He’s rich and an old scoundrel. He salts his wool. Now only few Indians do that.”

“Salts his wool? What does that mean?”

“He spreads his wool out in the sun and covers it with salt. That salt draws moisture from the air and melts into the wool, making it almost twice as heavy.”

“Withers, I’ve persuaded Etenia not to do that any more,” spoke up Nophaie.

“You have! Well, by golly! I’m shore glad, as much for Etenia’s sake as mine. I like him. He’s an industrious, intelligent Indian. The blankets of his women are the best we buy. Nophaie, he’s wealthy. I should think he would go shares with you in some sheep deal.”

“Yes, he would,” replied Nophaie, “but he wanted me to marry his daughter, and when I refused he grew very angry. Said I had Indian body and white-man mind.”

“Humph! that’s pretty serious,” returned Withers, soberly, and, shouldering his ax, he turned toward his camp.

“Is it serious, Nophaie?” asked Marian.

“I’m afraid so–for me.”

“Why? Because you can’t–can’t marry or become what this Indian thinks?”

“Both. You see my position is hard. My people are proud that I have renounced the white man. But they expect me to fall at once into their ways. I tried. I have failed in many things.”

Thought-provoking indeed were these words to Marian, and she began to get a glimpse of the problem before her.

“I’m rested now,” she said, rising. “Take me to see your hogan and Maah– whatever you called him.”

Beyond the stream some hundred or more yards, in an open space of higher ground, stood a large beehive-shaped mound of red earth with a column of blue smoke rising from the center of its round roof. At nearer view Marian saw that the earth had been plastered thickly over a framework of wood. The open door faced the east.

Nophaie spoke to her in his Indian tongue–something she sensed to be ceremonious and indicative of the sacredness of his act in bidding her enter. She stooped to go in. A smoldering fire occupied the center of this habitation called a hogan, and the smoke from it seemed to float round and round, to drift at last up through the hole in the roof. This roof was a marvel of ingenuity and skill, being constructed of heavy trunks of cedars planted in the ground, and affording support for the many thick branches that formed a concave network to hold the covering of red earth. How substantial and strong this Indian edifice! Something about it impressed Marian with a significance of its long adoption by the tribe.

A few iron and stone utensils lay scattered beside the fire. A haunch of meat hung from one of the posts, and beside it on the ground lay a sack of flour, with some boxes and tins that evidently contained food supplies. Besides these there were two beds in the hogan, one on either side of the fire, close to the wall.

“Which bed is yours?” asked Marian, unable to restrain her curiosity.

“Here,” said Nophaie.

His action designated an Indian blanket and a sheepskin with woolly side uppermost. Obviously the former was Nophaie’s coverlet, and the latter was his mattress. Marian thought of the hard bed of the Spartans. So Nophaie slept there! She forced her gaze to search farther, to the end that she saw an old coat, a leather pouch studded with silver buttons, and a worn hunting knife. These then were Nophaie’s possessions and this was his home. Suddenly Marian’s eyes blurred and smarted. Was that because of the acrid wood smoke and the heavy pungent odor? Whatever the causes, Marian realized she could not have remained there for five minutes longer. Nor could she utter one word as to her feelings or impressions.

“I sleep out under the cedar often, but Maahesenie doesn’t like that,” said Nophaie.

“Let me see your sheep,” rejoined Marian.

She did not speak, nor did Nophaie, while they were threading a way through the tall sagebrush, the long light-green, purple-tinted sprigs of which reached to her shoulder. She stripped a tiny branch and, crushing the soft leaves, she pressed them to her lips and nostrils. How bitter the taste–how like a drug the intoxicating pungency of fragrance! She saw purple berries on the cedar trees, and a golden dust-like powder upon the foliage. Then she heard the baa of sheep and bleat of lambs.

Soon Marian emerged from the zone of cedars into the open sage, and here her sight was charmed by a flock of sheep and goats, and many lambs. If Nophaie had only a small flock, Marian wondered what a large one would be. No less than several hundred was her calculation of their number. Most of them were white, and many were black, and some were brown. The lambs all appeared as fleecy white as wool could be. They played round Marian’s feet and had no fear of her. The baaing and bleating were incessant and somehow struck pleasantly upon Marian’s ear.

Then she observed another Indian, tall and gaunt, with stoop of shoulders and iron-gray hair. He folded a thin blanket round him as he walked toward her. What a record of life was his face! Years and storms of the desert!

“Maahesenie–Benow di cleash,” said Nophaie.

“How do?” returned the Indian, extending a brown hand to Marian.

She shook hands with him and greeted him, not, however, without hesitation over the pronunciation of his name.

“White girl come far?” he asked, with slow curving arm extended toward the east. His English was intelligible.

“Yes, very far,” replied Marian.

“Saddle heap hard seat–huh?” he queried, with a twinkle in his eyes.

Marian nodded and laughed her affirmation. What sharp sight these Indians had! From a distance this Maahesenie had observed in her walk the evident tell- tale truth of how the saddle had punished her. Moreover, besides keen eyes he also had a keen sense of humor. This old Indian was laughing at her. But when he addressed Nophaie it was with dignity and gravity, and his gestures made known to Marian the fact that he was talking about her. When he ended Nophaie led her back toward the camp.

“What did he say about me?” she asked, very curious.

“I didn’t get it all. You see, my mother tongue comes back slowly to me. But I got enough to make you vain. He said, ‘Eyes of the sky and hair of the sun.’ Then something about your skin being like a sago lily.”

“Well, bless him!” exclaimed Marian, in delighted surprise. “And what’s a sago lily?”

“Most beautiful of desert flowers. They grow in the deep canyons.”

Marian slept again for a couple of hours, and awoke to feel somewhat eased of pangs and weariness. The afternoon was far spent, waning in a solemn glory of light and peace. Marian listened to the hum of bees and the murmur of water. Gentle stream and colorful sage! The cruelty of nature and life did not seem to abide in them, yet a few moments of sharp-eyed scrutiny made known to her tiny denizens of both, seeking to destroy. Mystery of mysteries that living creatures must prey upon other living creatures! Where was God in such nature? If species preyed upon species, why not man upon man?

“I declare,” murmured Marian, suddenly aghast at her thoughts, “this desert is giving me the queerest ideas.”

Withers called her to an early supper. Nophaie sat with her, and the other Indians sat opposite. All of them did justice to the extraordinary meal served by the trader.

“Well,” he said, “my plan is to eat all the grub quick at the beginning of a hard trip. That builds up strength to finish.”

After supper Nophaie walked with Marian, singularly thoughtful and sad. Suddenly he pointed to a distant cone-shaped mound of stone that appeared to have a monument on its summit.

“I want you to climb there with me–to-night or to- morrow,” he said.

“Take me now,” she replied. “But why there particularly?”

“I want you to see my Marching Rocks from there–and my Mountain of Light.”

“Nophaie–you want me to climb there–just because they are beautiful?” she queried, keen to divine his unexpressed thought.

“No. But because seen from that height they give me strength.”

“Strength?” she echoed. “For what–do you need strength now?”

He seemed to shudder and shrink, with a strange, faint vibrant convulsion not natural to him.

“To tell you my trouble!”

Nophaie’s somber gaze, and the pathos and solemnity of his voice, further augmented Marian’s fears and prepared her for catastrophe. His trouble must become hers. How singular his desire for her to climb to this particular height so that he could unburden himself! Their silent walk through the sage, and slow climb up a hill of smooth bare stone, gave Marian time to fortify herself against disaster of her hopes. She also anticipated some extraordinary spectacle from the summit of this hill. The slope was steep, and ascent difficult. Looked at from their camp, it had not appeared nearly so high as it actually was. They climbed from the eastern side, walking in long zigzag slants, and resting often. Near the summit there was a depression, the upper side of which terminated in the point of stone that supported the monument. This pyramid of rocks stood eight or ten feet high, and crude as it was it had some semblance of symmetry and dignity. It meant something more than a landmark to passing Indians.

“Who built it?” asked Marian.

“Men of my tribe,” replied Nophaie.

“What does it mean?”

“It signifies a place for prayer. Indians climb here to pray. Never unless they have something to pray for.”

“Does each Indian make his own prayer?”

“No. There are many prayers, but they are those used by our forefathers.”

“Have you prayed here?” asked Marian, speaking low.

“Many times,” replied Nophaie.

“Are you going to pray–now?”

“Yes, to my Marching Rocks and to my Mountain of Light and to the Blue Wind.”

“Will you let me hear your prayers?”

“Indeed, I want you to!”

With that Nophaie again took Marian by the hand and led her up the remaining few steps to the summit of this stone hill which had obstructed the view.

“Look, Benow di cleash,” he said.

Marian did as she was bidden, suddenly to become silent and thrilled, motionless as the monument upon which she rested a reverent hand. As she gazed Nophaie began his prayer.

“Marching beautiful Rocks, Part red and part white, With light falling on you from the sky. The wonderful light! I give you this; This a prayer for you. On this day make my foot well, Make my leg well, Make my body well, Make my face well, Make my soul well. On this day let me rise from my bed, Let me walk straight, Let me not have fever, Let it be well before me, Let all that I see be well, Let me believe now all is well.” Marian listened as she gazed, and felt that forever on her memory would be limned the splendor and the strange phenomenon of the apparent life of this weird land of Marching Rocks.

Below Marian a cedared plateau, gray with grass and sage, led eastward toward bare mounds of rock, isolated and strangely set, with semblance to great prehistoric beasts. Scattered and striking they led on over the wide green plain, round and bare and huge, all seeming to move forward, to march on, to be impelled, to be endowed with mighty and majestic life. Marching Rocks! Van of the army of naked earth, vast riven mass of rock, rising and spreading from north to south, marching down from afar, driven by the dim slopes and immense heave of mountains!

“Benow di cleash, the sculptor who carved those Marching Rocks is the wind,” said Nophaie. “Listen to our prayer:”

“Blue wind, beautiful chieftess,  Send out a rainbow by which let me walk.  Blue clouds, blue clouds,  With your shoes let me walk.  Blue clouds, with your leggings make me walk;  Blue clouds, with your shirt let me walk;  Blue clouds, with your hat let me walk;  Blue clouds, make it dark behind me;  Blue wind, make it light before me;  Earth Woman let it rain much for me,  By which let the green corn ripen.  Make all peaceful with me.” Then Nophaie bade Marian sit down and lean against him beside the monument.

“We will watch the sun set over the desert,” he added. “Sunset–the fulfilment, the glory, the end of the Indian’s day!... White people do not rise to see the breaking of the morning light. And they do not care to watch the declining sun. But for Indians these hours are rituals.”

To the west, where Nophaie directed Marian’s rapt gaze, the scale grew grand, a supreme manifestation of nature’s sculpturing. The purple shadows now began to define the canyons and lift the wavy knolls of red rock. From out that thick sunset haze of the direct west swept majestic escarpments, level and dark, to overshadow the world of carved and graven marching rocks. Farther around, beyond the blazing center of the west, began the black jagged uplift of Nophaie’s Mountain of Light. It sheered up to a round, white-patched, black- fringed dome. The pure snow and lofty pine held dominion there.

Every moment the spectacle changed, and out over the wasteland there was chaos of light and color. The purple shadows turned to black; the red and yellow grew less intense. Vast rays of light slanted down from the broken sunset of clouds. Marian’s emotion increased with the growing transformation. Before her eyes stretched a belt of naked earth, two hundred miles long and one hundred wide, curving from east to west. No human sight was adequate to grasp its tremendousness and its meaning. Eye of eagle or condor, most delicate and powerful of all organs of vision, must be limited here. There was no movement of anything–only the illusion of the Marching Rocks; no sound, nothing but the stark upflung nakedness of the earth, beyond comprehension to the human mind, exalting to the soul. A world of naked rock, and cedar, and sage for the Indian! Marian cried out in her heart in pity for the Indians that eventually must be driven from this world, so still, so solemn, so awful, yet a refuge and an abode of life.

The dark walls of granite grew dusky red; the marching rocks moved like mammoths, mystic evidence of the ages. Distance was made clear by the lifting of haze from the canyoned shadows, by the last piercing light of the sun. It seemed that a million facets of chiseled rock caught this dying glow of sunset and reflected it, throwing the marvel of light upon the clouds. The shadows lengthened and widened and deepened. Marian’s sense of color and proportion grew magnified or dwarfed, she could not tell which. Thousands of rock ridges, facing the sun, marched down to meet it.

The air grew chill. Farthest away across the riven rock a grayness blotted out the horizon. The splendid landmarks seemed to be receding, retreating, dying with the sunset. Every moment became more solemn than that preceding. It was a place not meant for white man. Yet how beautiful! The great light was fading. Over most of the rocky area the strange gray shadow encroached while Marian gazed; only to the eastward did the bright gleams of sunlight fall upon the highest faces of the Marching Rocks. Again these rays shot slanting from out of rifts in the clouds, growing strong and glorious, strangely lighting for the moment the horizon peaks of white. Then all that far east, as had the north, paled and darkened. It was a blight. It spread toward the sunset. Low down ruddy gleams suddenly caught the van of the Marching Rocks. But that beauty of radiance was ephemeral. The ball of half-clouded fire tipped the slope of Nothsis Ahn, and the chasms became veiled in haze of rose. Nophaie’s mountain grew dark and clear against the steel-blue sky. All the upland in its shadow seemed bathed in ethereal light. Strange change! How cold! The sun was sinking. The desert darkened. Only a disk of the sun remained, still overpowering, still master of the day. It was sinking farther. The day was nearly done. How rosy the tips of the stone hills! Then the radiant disk of white fire vanished. A golden glow on cloud and sky marked the place where the sun had gone down. The earth of naked stone seemed to gather power, to rise, to come out clear and cold, to reach for the encroaching twilight.

Marian turned to Nophaie and said: “I have seen. I feel all you feel.... Now tell me your trouble.”

Nophaie rose, lifting her with him, and towered over her, his face as she had never beheld it. Mystery and grief, age and strength, came out in the bronzed lineaments; and his eyes were terrible. Marian imagined she saw the soul of the Indian.

“I am an infidel!” he said, hoarsely.

The shock of intense surprise sustained by Marian precluded her utterance.

“I did not know this when I came back to the reservation,” Nophaie went on, as if passion-driven. “I tried to return to the religion of my people. I prayed–trying to believe. But I cannot.... I am an infidel!... I cannot believe in the Indian’s God–I will not believe in the white man’s God.”

“Oh, Nophaie!” gasped Marian, suddenly released from stunning surprise to the consternation and horror. “Your faith–will come back.”

“Never. My white teaching killed it. The Indian’s religion is best for him. This Morgan kills the Indian’s simple faith in his own God–makes him an infidel–then tries to make him a Christian. It cannot be done. There is not one real Christian Indian on the reservation.”

“Why–that is terrible!” replied Marian. “But you–Nophaie–I am distressed. Oh, do you mean you have no belief in a future life?”

“An infidel has no faith.”

“But yours will come back. It must. I will help you. Surely your religion is as good as mine. No one realizes more than I the necessity of faith in God and immortality. What good could life be without them?... Nophaie, we must strive and pray for yours.”

“Marian, cannot you understand?” asked Nophaie, in pathetic earnestness. “The knowledge forced upon me by white people–my developed intelligence–makes it impossible for me to believe in the Indian’s religion.”

“Impossible!” echoed Marian.

A silent and impressive spreading of his hands, gesture of impotence and helplessness, fixed in Marian’s mind the immutability of Nophaie’s spiritual catastrophe. The certainty of it pierced her heart. Sorrow for him was succeeded by resentment and anger at the white people who had done his soul this injury. Nophaie’s soul had as much right to its inheritance of ideals and faiths as any white man’s. Marian could not bring herself to the point of wanting Nophaie to accept the white man’s religion. If she were in his place she would not do it. But how to help him!

“Let us go down before night falls,” said Nophaie, taking her hand.

With careful little steps Marian essayed the descent of the stone hill, which in the gathering darkness was difficult. An infinite melancholy pervaded the gray, silent desert. A camp fire blazed out of the shadow of the cedars. And by the time they had reached a level twilight had enfolded the sage.

“Nophaie, listen to my plan for work among your people,” said Marian. And forthwith she briefly told him the result of her interviews with Mrs. Withers. Nophaie not only expressed approval, but also gratitude, and was particularly desirous of having her find a place at Mesa, in the school.

“You can do so much good,” he said. “The young Indian girls will love you. And as soon as you can speak their language you will influence them against evil. They are primitive children. There’s one Indian girl you must look after. She is Gekin Yashi–the Little Beauty. She is fourteen years old and large for her age. I know her father, Do etin–the Gentleman. He is a fine old Indian. He approves of the school and likes good missionaries, but he hates Morgan, who seems to be in control at Mesa. He is too much interested in Gekin Yashi.”

“Ah!–Nophaie, I am beginning to understand a little of the Indian problem,” replied Marian.

“That is good. Now tell me, you will stay here a little? So we can ride and climb and talk?”

“Yes, I’ll stay two days. Withers cannot spare more.... Ride? I’ll race you through the sage.... Then I’ll go back to Kaidab–then to Mesa, where I’ll begin my work, for you, Nophaie. You will come to Mesa?”

“Yes. I’ll ride there every week. But we must meet in secret–somewhere out in the desert, to protect you. The agent Blucher has only seen me twice, but he took instant dislike to me as soon as he learned I was an educated Indian. He is bad medicine, Marian. Blucher and Morgan run the reservation and the school, not for government or Indians, but for themselves. They keep down the better influences. They dominate government employees, and either get rid of good missionaries or put obstacles in their way. You will soon see through them.”

“Then you’ll come every week,” rejoined Marian, gladly. “Oh, that will be fine! And you think I must meet you secretly? I am not ashamed, Nophaie. I am proud of–of my friendship with you.”

“Blucher and Morgan must not know you meet me,” declared Nophaie. “You could not stay there after they found out. I’ll ride to Kaidab in ten days and find out from Mrs. Withers what you’ve done at Mesa. Then I’ll write you and tell you when I’ll come.”

“And how and where to meet you? I’ll have my white pony, you know. I can ride out on the desert.”

“Yes,” he said, simply.

With this most important matter understood, Marian once more felt a warmth and stirring along her veins, a regurgitating of that happiness which had been suddenly crushed by Nophaie’s disclosure. She would be able to see him often! That was the shibboleth of her joy–the inspiration to her endeavor. Would not her love for him and faith in him somehow gladden the dark days of his martyrdom? For she considered his life no less.

The desert night settled down, cool and still, with a blackness of shadow over sage and cedar, and the velvet sky effulgent with its myriads of white stars. Marian walked beside Nophaie, hand in hand, through the sage toward the flicker of camp fire. A coyote wailed its cry out of the silence. Marian felt more than the fullness of her heart. The sage, the rocks, the murmuring stream, the desert night seemed invested with a spiritual power, a breathing soul.