XIV. THE NAVAJO
That morning a Piute rode into the valley.
Shefford recognized him as the brave who had been in love with GlenNaspa. The moment Nas Ta Bega saw this visitor he made a singular motionwith his hands--a motion that somehow to Shefford suggested despair--andthen he waited, somber and statuesque, for the messenger to come to him.It was the Piute who did all the talking, and that was brief. Thenthe Navajo stood motionless, with his hands crossed over his breast.Shefford drew near and waited.
"Bi Nai," said the Navajo, "Nas Ta Bega said his sister would come homesome day.... Glen Naspa is in the hogan of her grandfather."
He spoke in his usual slow, guttural voice, and he might have beenbronze for all the emotion he expressed; yet Shefford instinctivelyfelt the despair that had been hinted to him, and he put his hand on theIndian's shoulder.
"If I am the Navajo's brother, then I am brother to Glen Naspa," hesaid. "I will go with you to the hogan of Hosteen Doetin."
Nas Ta Bega went away into the valley for the horses. Shefford hurriedto the village, made his excuses at the school, and then called toexplain to Fay that trouble of some kind had come to the Indian.
Soon afterward he was riding Nack-yal on the rough and winding trail upthrough the broken country of cliffs and canyon to the great league-longsage and cedar slope of the mountain. It was weeks since he had riddenthe mustang. Nack-yal was fat and lazy. He loved his master, but he didnot like the climb, and so fell far behind the lean and wiry pony thatcarried Nas Ta Bega. The sage levels were as purple as the haze of thedistance, and there was a bitter-sweet tang on the strong, cool wind.The sun was gold behind the dark line of fringe on the mountain-top. Aflock of sheep swept down one of the sage levels, looking like a narrowstream of white and black and brown. It was always amazing for Sheffordto see how swiftly these Navajo sheep grazed along. Wild mustangsplunged out of the cedar clumps and stood upon the ridges, whistlingdefiance or curiosity, and their manes and tails waved in the wind.
Shefford mounted slowly to the cedar bench in the midst of which werehidden the few hogans. And he halted at the edge to dismount and takea look at that downward-sweeping world of color, of wide space, at thewild desert upland which from there unrolled its magnificent panorama.
Then he passed on into the cedars. How strange to hear the lambsbleating again! Lambing-time had come early, but still spring was therein the new green of grass, in the bright upland flower. He led hismustang out of the cedars into the cleared circle. It was full of coltsand lambs, and there were the shepherd-dogs and a few old rams and ewes.But the circle was a quiet place this day. There were no Indians insight. Shefford loosened the saddle-girths on Nack-yal and, leaving himto graze, went toward the hogan of Hosteen Doetin. A blanket was hungacross the door. Shefford heard a low chanting. He waited beside thedoor till the covering was pulled in, then he entered.
Hosteen Doetin met him, clasped his hand. The old Navajo could notspeak; his fine face was working in grief; tears streamed from hisdim old eyes and rolled down his wrinkled cheeks. His sorrow was nodifferent from a white man's sorrow. Beyond him Shefford saw Nas Ta Begastanding with folded arms, somehow terrible in his somber impassiveness.At his feet crouched the old woman, Hosteen Doetin's wife, and besideher, prone and quiet, half covered with a blanket, lay Glen Naspa.
She was dead. To Shefford she seemed older than when he had last seenher. And she was beautiful. Calm, cold, dark, with only bitter lips togive the lie to peace! There was a story in those lips.
At her side, half hidden under the fold of blanket, lay a tiny bundle.Its human shape startled Shefford. Then he did not need to be toldthe tragedy. When he looked again at Glen Naspa's face he seemed tounderstand all that had made her older, to feel the pain that had linedand set her lips.
She was dead, and she was the last of Nas Ta Bega's family. In the oldgrandfather's agony, in the wild chant of the stricken grandmother, inthe brother's stern and terrible calmness Shefford felt more than thedeath of a loved one. The shadow of ruin, of doom, of death hoveredover the girl and her family and her tribe and her race. There was noconsolation to offer these relatives of Glen Naspa. Shefford took onemore fascinated gaze at her dark, eloquent, prophetic face, at thetragic tiny shape by her side, and then with bowed head he left thehogan.
. . . . . . . . . . .
Outside he paced to and fro, with an aching heart for Nas Ta Bega, withsomething of the white man's burden of crime toward the Indian weighingupon his soul.
Old Hosteen Doetin came to him with shaking hands and words memorable ofthe time Glen Naspa left his hogan.
"Me no savvy Jesus Christ. Me hungry. Me no eat Jesus Christ!"
That seemed to be all of his trouble that he could express to Shefford.He could not understand the religion of the missionary, this JesusChrist who had called his granddaughter away. And the great fear of anold Indian was not death, but hunger. Shefford remembered a custom ofthe Navajos, a thing barbarous looked at with a white man's mind. If anold Indian failed on a long march he was inclosed by a wall of stones,given plenty to eat and drink, and left there to die in the desert. Notdeath did he fear, but hunger! Old Hosteen Doetin expected to starve,now that the young and strong squaw of his family was gone.
Shefford spoke in his halting Navajo and assured the old Indian that NasTa Bega would never let him starve.
At sunset Shefford stood with Nas Ta Bega facing the west. The Indianwas magnificent in repose. He watched the sun go down upon the day thathad seen the burial of the last of his family. He resembled an impassivedestiny, upon which no shocks fell. He had the light of that flaringgolden sky in his face, the majesty of the mountain in his mien, thesilence of the great gulf below on his lips. This educated Navajo, whohad reverted to the life of his ancestors, found in the wildness andloneliness of his environment a strength no white teaching couldever have given him. Shefford sensed in him a measureless grief, animpenetrable gloom, a tragic acceptance of the meaning of Glen Naspa'sruin and death--the vanishing of his race from the earth. Death hadwritten the law of such bitter truth round Glen Naspa's lips, and thesame truth was here in the grandeur and gloom of the Navajo.
"Bi Nai," he said, with the beautiful sonorous roll in his voice, "GlenNaspa is in her grave and there are no paths to the place of her sleep.Glen Naspa is gone."
"Gone! Where? Nas Ta Bega, remember I lost my own faith, and I have notyet learned yours."
"The Navajo has one mother--the earth. Her body has gone to the earthand it will become dust. But her spirit is in the air. It shall whisperto me from the wind. I shall hear it on running waters. It will hide inthe morning music of a mocking-bird and in the lonely night cry of thecanyon hawk. Her blood will go to make the red of the Indian flowers andher soul will rest at midnight in the lily that opens only to the moon.She will wait in the shadow for me, and live in the great mountain thatis my home, and for ever step behind me on the trail."
"You will kill Willetts?" demanded Shefford.
"The Navajo will not seek the missionary."
"But if you meet him you'll kill him?"
"Bi Nai, would Nas Ta Bega kill after it is too late? What good couldcome? The Navajo is above revenge."
"If he crosses my trail I think I couldn't help but kill him," mutteredShefford in a passion that wrung the threat from him.
The Indian put his arm round the white man's shoulders.
"Bi Nai, long ago I made you my brother. And now you make me yourbrother. Is it not so? Glen Naspa's spirit calls for wisdom, notrevenge. Willetts must be a bad man. But we'll let him live. Life willpunish him. Who knows if he was all to blame? Glen Naspa was only onepretty Indian girl. There are many white men in the desert. She loveda white man when she was a baby. The thing was a curse. ... Listen, BiNai, and the Navajo will talk.
"Many years ago the Spanish padres, the first white men, came into theland of the Indian. Their search was for gold. But they were not wickedmen. They did not steal and kill. They taught the Indian many usefu
lthings. They brought him horses. But when they went away they left himunsatisfied with his life and his god.
"Then came the pioneers. They crossed the great river and took thepasture-lands and the hunting-grounds of the Indian. They drove himbackward, and the Indian grew sullen. He began to fight. The white man'sgovernment made treaties with the Indian, and these were broken. Thenwar came--fierce and bloody war. The Indian was driven to the wasteplaces. The stream of pioneers, like a march of ants, spread on into thedesert. Every valley where grass grew, every river, became a place forfarms and towns. Cattle choked the water-holes where the buffalo anddeer had once gone to drink. The forests in the hills were cut and thesprings dried up. And the pioneers followed to the edge of the desert.
"Then came the prospectors, mad, like the padres for the gleam ofgold. The day was not long enough for them to dig in the creeks and thecanyon; they worked in the night. And they brought weapons and rum tothe Indian, to buy from him the secret of the places where the shininggold lay hidden.
"Then came the traders. And they traded with the Indian. They gave himlittle for much, and that little changed his life. He learned a tastefor the sweet foods of the white man. Because he could trade for a sackof flour he worked less in the field. And the very fiber of his bonessoftened.
"Then came the missionaries. They were proselytizers for convertsto their religion. The missionaries are good men. There may be a badmissionary, like Willetts, the same as there are bad men in othercallings, or bad Indians. They say Shadd is a half-breed. But the Piutescan tell you he is a full-blood, and he, like me, was sent to a whiteman's school. In the beginning the missionaries did well for the Indian.They taught him cleaner ways of living, better farming, useful work withtools--many good things. But the wrong to the Indian was the underminingof his faith. It was not humanity that sent the missionary to theIndian. Humanity would have helped the Indian in his ignorance ofsickness and work, and left him his god. For to trouble the Indian abouthis god worked at the roots of his nature.
"The beauty of the Indian's life is in his love of the open, of all thatis nature, of silence, freedom, wildness. It is a beauty of mind andsoul. The Indian would have been content to watch and feel. To a whiteman he might be dirty and lazy--content to dream life away withouttrouble or what the white man calls evolution. The Indian might seemcruel because he leaves his old father out in the desert to die. But theold man wants to die that way, alone with his spirits and the sunset.And the white man's medicine keeps his old father alive days and daysafter he ought to be dead. Which is more cruel? The Navajos used tofight with other tribes, and then they were stronger men than they areto-day.
"But leaving religion, greed, and war out of the question, contact withthe white man would alone have ruined the Indian. The Indian and thewhite man cannot mix. The Indian brave learns the habits of the whiteman, acquires his diseases, and has not the mind or body to withstandthem. The Indian girl learns to love the white man--and that is death ofher Indian soul, if not of life.
"So the red man is passing. Tribes once powerful have died in the lifeof Nas Ta Bega. The curse of the white man is already heavy upon my racein the south. Here in the north, in the wildest corner of the desert,chased here by the great soldier, Carson, the Navajo has made his laststand.
"Bi Nai, you have seen the shadow in the hogan of Hosteen Doetin. GlenNaspa has gone to her grave, and no sisters, no children, will makepaths to the place of her sleep. Nas Ta Bega will never have a wife--achild. He sees the end. It is the sunset of the Navajo.... Bi Nai, theNavajo is dying--dying--dying!"