retraced his steps toward the post. Halfway back he espied a tall, dark figure moving toward him, and presently the shape and the step seemed familiar. Then he recognized Nas Ta Bega. Soon they were face to face. Shefford felt that the Indian had been trailing him over the sand, and that this was to be a significant meeting. Remembering Withers’s revelation about the Navajo, Shefford scarcely knew how to approach him now. There was no difference to be made out in Nas Ta Bega’s dark face and inscrutable eyes, yet there was a difference to be felt in his presence. But the Indian did not speak, and turned to walk by Shefford’s side. Shefford could not long be silent.
“Nas Ta Bega, were you looking for me?” he asked.
“You had no gun,” replied the Indian.
But for his very low voice, his slow speaking of the words, Shefford would have thought him a white man. For Shefford there was indeed an instinct in this meeting, and he turned to face the Navajo.
“Withers told me you had been educated, that you came back to the desert, that you never showed your training.... Nas Ta Bega, did you understand all I told Withers?”
“Yes,” replied the Indian.
“You won’t betray me?”
“I am a Navajo.”
“Nas Ta Bega, you trail me—you say I had no gun.” Shefford wanted to ask this Indian if he cared to be the white man’s friend, but the question was not easy to put, and, besides, seemed unnecessary. “I am alone and strange in this wild country. I must learn.”
“Nas Ta Bega will show you the trails and the water-holes and how to hide from Shadd.”
“For money—for silver you will do this?” inquired Shefford.
Shefford felt that the Indian’s silence was a rebuke. He remembered Withers’s singular praise of this red man. He realized he must change his idea of Indians.
“Nas Ta Bega, I know nothing. I feel like a child in the wilderness. When I speak it is out of the mouths of those who have taught me. I must find a new voice and a new life.... You heard my story to Withers. I am an outcast from my own people. If you will be my friend—be so.”
The Indian clasped Shefford’s hand and held it in a response that was more beautiful for its silence. So they stood for a moment in the starlight.
“Nas Ta Bega, what did Withers mean when he said go to the Navajo for a faith?” asked Shefford.
“He meant the desert is my mother.... Will you go with Nas Ta Bega into the canyon and the mountains?”
“Indeed I will.”
They unclasped hands and turned toward the trading-post.
“Nas Ta Bega, have you spoken my tongue to any other white man since you returned to your home?” asked Shefford.
“No.”
“Why do you—why are you different for me?”
The Indian maintained silence.
“Is it because of—of Glen Naspa?” inquired Shefford.
Nas Ta Bega stalked on, still silent, but Shefford divined that, although his service to Glen Naspa would never be forgotten, still it was not wholly responsible for the Indian’s subtle sympathy.
“Bi Nai! The Navajo will call his white friend Bi Nai—brother,” said Nas Ta Bega, and he spoke haltingly, not as if words were hard to find, but strange to speak. “I was stolen from my mother’s hogan and taken to California. They kept me ten years in a mission at San Bernardino and four years in a school. They said my color and my hair were all that was left of the Indian in me. But they could not see my heart. They took fourteen years of my life. They wanted to make me a missionary among my own people. But the white man’s ways and his life and his God are not the Indian’s. They never can be.”
How strangely productive of thought for Shefford to hear the Indian talk! What fatality in this meeting and friendship! Upon Nas Ta Bega had been forced education, training, religion, that had made him something more and something less than an Indian. It was something assimilated from the white man which made the Indian unhappy and alien in his own home—something meant to be good for him and his kind that had ruined him. For Shefford felt the passion and the tragedy of this Navajo.
“Bi Nai, the Indian is dying!” Nas Ta Bega’s low voice was deep and wonderful with its intensity of feeling. “The white man robbed the Indian of lands and homes, drove him into the deserts, made him a gaunt and sleepless spiller of blood.... The blood is all spilled now, for the Indian is broken. But the white man sells him rum and seduces his daughters.... He will not leave the Indian in peace with his own God!... Bi Nai, the Indian is dying!”
. . . . . . . . . . .
That night Shefford lay in his blankets out under the open sky and the stars. The earth had never meant much to him, and now it was a bed. He had preached of the heavens, but until now had never studied them. An Indian slept beside him. And not until the gray of morning had blotted out the starlight did Shefford close his eyes.
. . . . . . . . . . .
With break of the next day came full, varied, and stirring incidents to Shefford. He was strong, though unskilled at most kinds of outdoor tasks. Withers had work for ten men, if they could have been found. Shefford dug and packed and lifted till he was so sore and tired that rest was a blessing.
He never succeeded in getting on a friendly footing with the Mormon Whisner, though he kept up his agreeable and kindly advances. He listened to the trader’s wife as she told him about the Indians, and what he learned he did not forget. And his wonder and respect increased in proportion to his knowledge.
One day there rode into Kayenta the Mormon for whom Withers had been waiting. His name was Joe Lake. He appeared young, and slipped off his superb bay with a grace and activity that were astounding in one of his huge bulk. He had a still, smooth face, with the color of red bronze and the expression of a cherub; big, soft, dark eyes; and a winning smile. He was surprisingly different from Whisner or any Mormon character that Shefford had naturally conceived. His costume was that of the cowboy on active service; and he packed a gun at his hip. The hand-shake he gave Shefford was an ordeal for that young man and left him with his whole right side momentarily benumbed.
“I sure am glad to meet you,” he said in a lazy, mild voice. And he was taking friendly stock of Shefford when the bay mustang reached with vicious muzzle to bite at him. Lake gave a jerk on the bridle that almost brought the mustang to his knees. He reared then, snorted, and came down to plant his forefeet wide apart, and watched his master with defiant eyes. This mustang was the finest horse Shefford had ever seen. He appeared quite large for his species, was almost red in color, had a racy and powerful build, and a fine thoroughbred head with dark, fiery eyes. He did not look mean, but he had spirit.
“Navvy, you’ve sure got bad manners,” said Lake, shaking the mustang’s bridle. He spoke as if he were chiding a refractory little boy. “Didn’t I break you better’n that? What’s this gentleman goin’ to think of you? Tryin’ to bite my ear off!”
Lake had arrived about the middle of the forenoon, and Withers announced his intention of packing at once for the trip. Indians were sent out on the ranges to drive in burros and mustangs. Shefford had his thrilling expectancy somewhat chilled by what he considered must have been Lake’s reception of the trader’s plan. Lake seemed to oppose him, and evidently it took vehemence and argument on Withers’s part to make the Mormon tractable. But Withers won him over, and then he called Shefford to his side.
“You fellows got to be good friends,” he said. “You’ll have charge of my pack-trains. Nas Ta Bega wants to go with you. I’ll feel safer about my supplies and stock than I’ve ever been.... Joe, I’ll back this stranger for all I’m worth. He’s square.... And, Shefford, Joe Lake is a Mormon of the younger generation. I want to start you right. You can trust him as you trust me. He’s white clean through. And he’s the best horse-wrangler in Utah.”
It