Jamuga, by nature apprehensive and doubtful, did not expect, at the last, too much of the Naiman whom he was to rule. The Naiman who had been absorbed directly into Temujin’s people had not been distinguished by gentleness of soul, or less ferocity, than their new masters. The nomad peoples, of whatever tribe or origin, were singularly alike, both in nature and feature. Realists all, knowing with sensible clarity that the only thing worth fighting for was sustenance and pastures, they were expedient and direct.
However, from the first moment of his arrival, after a long journey, at the site of this camp of the Naiman, Jamuga’s joy was tinged with incredulity. For here there was little outward ferocity or truculence. The camp was situated in a warm and gentle valley, sheltered by the bare white sides of enormous sterile mountains which guarded it from the more fierce winds and the sharper cold. Through this narrow green valley, level and grassy, ran a smooth and quiet river, and along the banks of this river the Naiman had planted slender fields of millet and com and wheat. Oftentimes, when a winter was somewhat mild, they did not leave this site, but remained the year around. The nomad people rarely planted anything, and this, perhaps, was the true source of their ferocity, restlessness, and the hunger which was both physical and spiritual. But by planting, this tribe had become less warlike and brutal. Having to guard their fields, and till them, they were not often induced to go hunting or marauding. Civilization, by way of the growth of the earth, had begun to pervade them, and a sort of calm peacefulness had already settled over their bronzed faces.
The plow, thought Jamuga, with a sudden sense of refreshment, is the weapon of the civilized against the uncivilized, the first stone in the wall raised against barbarism. For the man who plowed the earth, and tended it, had no desire to heap it with corpses. The first step towards chaos, too, was the huge paved city, which removed its people from the earth, and filled them with the restless and rapacious spirit of the nomads. Between the barbarism of the city hordes, and the barbarism of the desert hordes, there was no difference. Ferocity and brutality sprang from homelessness, whether it be on barren or city street. The barbarian urbanite and the barbarian desert-dweller were blood brothers, having nothing to lose but their miserable lives, and having everything to gain by murder and cruelty and rapacity.
Peace cometh from the earth, Jamuga had read. He had read it, but had not understood it. But now, looking at the yellow heads of the grain, watching them ripple like a golden sea in the wind, he understood. The man who raised bread was the man of peace, but the homeless man who hated and sharpened his sword was the enemy of all other men. Wars and oppressions would end on the day when every man had a plot of earth to call his own. Who could watch the sun rising and setting on his own plowed land, and observe how the rains and the snows came to make fertility, and bear upon his hands the darkness of his own soil, and then lust to go forth and subjugate and destroy others?
Not far from this valley was another, in a long chain of valleys, and in this particular spot lived a tribe of the Uighur, whom Jamuga knew and respected as an able and responsible people, probably one of the first to become settled and agricultural, as well as highly civilized. Even those who developed and lived in cities did not forget their tie with the land. Between this tribe of the Naiman and the Uighur was a very friendly fraternalism, and they intermarried and held mutual celebrations. Manichaeism, Buddhism and Christianity were practised among them with fine impartiality and tolerance.
Jamuga was received at first with reserve, for every one knew of the exigency and relentlessness of Temujin, their feudal lord. They had awaited Jamuga’s arrival with apprehension, believing that Temujin would send some one like himself, who would despise their agricultural life, and whip them into militarism. It was said among them that he would immediately instill hostility in them against the Uighur, who lived such a proud and independent life, and who hated to pay tribute to any one. Because of this rumor, the Uighur had, for some weeks, kept to themselves, with sad cautiousness, and their friends, the Naiman, were miserable in consequence.
But when the old men saw Jamuga, and observed his gentle hesitant manners, and saw his blue eyes and his smile, their hearts lifted with joy. Here was one they could understand, and who would understand them. “The lord Temujin,” they cried, “is a lord of great wisdom!”
On the second night of his arrival, the old man who had been the previous nokud suggested, with a simple forthrightness, that Jamuga marry his granddaughter, Yesi, and become in truth, one of the Naiman.
“I have no desire to marry,” replied Jamuga abruptly. “There are men who are celibate, and live only for their own thoughts, and service.”
The old man spread out his hands with deprecating gentleness. “But how can a man serve men unless he giveth sons to serve his people, also?”
“Thou dost mean, to serve Temujin,” answered Jamuga, with bitterness.
The old man sighed. “It is the will of God. We must give tribute to our lord, not only in corn and horses and herds, but in soldiers, also. But peace is precious, and no price is too high to pay for it.”
He urged Jamuga to look at Yesi at least, who was skilled in all womanly duties, a gentle Christian woman who knew her place and had a soft tongue. At first Jamuga, remembering Bortei, and recalling that women were at best a danger to men, refused. But later, he reconsidered. Perhaps the old men were right; perhaps it would be comfortable to have a wife, whom he need not look at except at night. She would bear him children and tend his fires and his yurt. Suddenly he was conscious of his great loneliness. A wife became a warm fire in the midst of strangers. If he truly wished to be one of this people, he must marry one of their women.
He sent for Yesi and her grandfather. The old man came at once, gleefully, leading the girl by the hand. Jamuga saw that she was tall, and that she kept her head modestly bent, covered by a striped shawl. She stood before him, trembling a little, her head hidden.
Jamuga felt a great tenderness and gentleness. He stretched out his hand and removed the girl’s shawl. He looked long at her blushing face. And then he knew that never again would he be lonely and homeless, without a friend and without love.
Then man and woman regarded each other in a deep silence. The girl had a sweet and tinted face, full of honesty and innocence and fearlessness, with a pale rosy mouth, a small straight nose, and the bluest eyes he had ever seen. In her eyes he saw courage and gentleness and modesty, and a steadfast intelligence. Her hair, pale brown and smooth and straight as silk, hung to her knees in shining braids, and gave her a look of proud meekness and aristocracy. Her figure was slender and exceedingly beautiful in its robe of rough white wool. She had tied a scarf of multi-colored striped silk about her narrow waist, and a silver cross hung between her breasts.
Jamuga’s heart turned over with a sensation of infinite sweetness and pain. For a moment he thought that she resembled Azara, who had so bewitched and changed Temujin.
He extended his hand to her, and said: “Come.” She hesitated; color flooded her cheeks. Her eyes filled with tears. Then she smiled, and gave him her hand, bending her head to hide her face. He felt her hand tremble, then nestle closely in his.
There was a great marriage feast. The Uighur came, singing hoarsely, and stamping their rough deerskin boots in an uncouth dance. The Naiman rejoiced. The fires burned until dawn, and there was more wine than any one man could drink. The old men sang songs, not of warlike heroes, but of sunlight and earth, wheat and rain, peace and love.
Yesi sat by the side of her husband, and received, with him, the homage of their people. And Jamuga, listening and looking and smiling, with Yesi’s hand in his, thought at last that he had come home, and that never again for him would there be unrest and misery, homelessness and sorrow.
When he slept that night with Yesi beside him, he had a strange dream, which, upon waking, seemed an omen not only of the present, but of the world to come, still in the embryo of the future.
He thought that he stood on the white crystalline shores of the Lake of the Damned. He was filled with his old pain and sadness, his old sensation of imminent death and disaster and complete hopelessness. The sky was as red as blood, and streaked with yellow fire. The Lake lay in its awful mystery of purple shadows and silence. And then, all at once, he heard a dim far shout, and saw an army of men approaching the Lake, on foot. But they were not armed with swords. Their horses went before them, dragging plows. And they drove these horses and plows over the terrible Lake, shouting and singing and calling to each other in voices of jubilant triumph. The ominous silence of the red-lit air was broken, and echoes flew through it, like white doves. And then, in the wake of the plows rose the wheat, wave upon wave, resistless and golden, the sound of its growing like a loud and rustling wind. The bloody sky faded; it was sunset, and the sky was a deep shadowy blue, full of peace and promise. And the men continued to plow until all the earth was waving with grain, and the Lake was gone. Then, the plowers rested on their plows, and looked back at what they had done. And their faces were filled with the peace of the fertile land.
Jamuga sighed in his dream. It seemed to him that all the hot anguish flowed out of him and was lost in the fruitful silence. Some one was speaking to him, but he could not see the speaker.
“The earth is the Lord’s,” said the unseen one. “Always, and forever, the earth is the Lord’s!”