The Vanishing American Read online

  “What a handsome Indian lad!” exclaimed one.

  “Let us take him along,” said another.

  An older woman of the group, with something more than curiosity in her face, studied Nophaie for a moment. She, too, was kind. She imagined she was about to do a noble thing.

  “Indian boy, I will take you and put you in a school.”

  They took Nophaie with them by force. They took him out of the desert and far to the east.

  And Nophaie lived and studied in the white man’s school and college for eighteen years.

  CHAPTER II

  As the train neared the Western town which was her destination Marian Warner realized that this ride was not a dream, but the first act of the freedom she had yearned for, the first step in her one great adventure. All the excitement and audacity and emotion that had been her undoing now seemed to swell into a thrilling panic.

  Long days of travel had passed since she had boarded the train at Philadelphia. The faces of friends, of her aunt–the few who loved her–had grown dim, as if every revolution of the wheels had deadened memory as well as lengthened miles. Little had she guessed how she had cut herself adrift. But to the last she had kept her secret.

  Somewhere back along the way, where she had crossed the line into this desert state, she had become conscious of a quickening of her long apathetic feelings. Had her first glimpses of the bleached gray of the desert stirred her heart? What of that strange line of red and yellow cliffs–bold rock fronts almost incredible to her? Deep and vague was the emotion they roused. It was April, and the clouds were gray, the weeds tumbling over the land before the wind, the dust puffs whipping up and circling into yellow columns. Bold and raw and inhospitable indeed this desert land! Its bigness began to amaze and frighten her. Miles and miles of barrenness–rocks–flats of gray–black mountains in the distance–and again those strange façades of red cliff! Few and far between were the ranches. And the occasional herd of cattle appeared lost in immensity. Marian strained her tired eyes searching for horses and riders, for the flashes of red blankets of Indians, but these were denied her.

  Then, as many times during this long ride, she had recourse to the letter that had influenced her to come west.

  Oljato (Moonlight on the Water),

  Feb. 10, 1916.

  Dear Marian:

  Your letters and gifts were welcome as May flowers. I did not get them at Christmas time because I did not ride into Kaidab. The weather then was cold and I had my only living relative to look after. He was ill. He is better now.

  I rode the ninety-odd miles to the post between sunrise and sunset, over a trail known only to Indians. And all the way I thought of you, of the love for you that only strengthens with distance and time. Remembering your fondness for horses and how you used to long for wild and lonely places, I wanted you to be with me.

  But in spite of the joy that came with your remembrances, my ride back from the post was full of bitterness. I was again brought into contact with the growing troubles of my tribe, and with the world of white men which I have given up.

  Marian, my people now are very prosperous. The war has brought false values. Wool is fifty cents a pound. Horses and sheep bring higher prices than any Indians ever dreamed of. They think this will last always. They will not save. They live from day to day, and spend their money foolishly. And when the reaction comes they will be suddenly poor, with the trader’s prices for food and clothing higher than ever.

  I have been here nearly a year now, and have yet to find one single Indian who is really a Christian. I have gone all over this part of the reservation. The Indians tell me there have been many good missionaries among those sent out here. White men who were kind, who studied the Indians’ need, who helped them with their hands, who might in time have won their confidence. But for some reason or other they never remained long enough.

  And we greatly need help. Come out to the reservation and work for a year or two among my people. It could not hurt you. And you might do much for them. You could be a teacher at Mesa or one of the other schools. None would ever know that you came for my sake.

  Your letters heaped upon me terms of reproach. Marian, I have not forgotten one moment of our summer at Cape May. I live over every meeting with you. I love you more than I did then. It seems I am old now. Wisdom came to me here in my desert home, under the shadow of old Nothsis Ahn. I was born under this great mountain. When a boy I was stolen from my home under its red walls. And after eighteen years I have come back. I burned my white man’s clothes and books–even the records of my football games–all except your picture. I put on buckskin and corduroy and silver. I seldom speak English and I am again an Indian. No more Lo Blandy, but Nophaie!

  I was young and full of fire that summer at Cape May. I drank the white man’s liquor, Marian. I was praised, fêted, sought because I had become a famous athlete–the football and baseball player, winner of so many points against the great colleges. I danced and played the same as white college men.

  Then I met you, Marian. You were different from most of the white girls. I loved you at sight and respected you when I knew you. I stopped drinking for you. And for an Indian to give up whisky, once he knows its taste, is no small thing. I loved a white girl. I called you Benow di cleash, the white girl with blue eyes. And I’m sure your influence kept me from the fate of more than one famous Indian athlete–Sockalexis, for instance, who ruined career and health in one short year.

  But when I returned to my people the great change came. Not in my love for you, but in my youth. I am a man now, old as these sage hills, and I’ve learned from them. It was selfish and wrong for me to run after you, to love you, to take your kisses–wrong though it was, the best influence of my life. I am an Indian.

  Then, once here, whatever wild dreams I may have had were forgotten. I see the life of my tribe as a tragedy. The injustice to them is the blackest of white men’s baseness. The compulsory school system for the Indian boys and girls has many bad points. The bad missionary is the apostle of hate and corruption. His ways are not the ways of the good missionary. I am an educated Indian–a chief in my tribe. I see their misery. I see them vanishing. I cannot marry an Indian girl, because I love you. I cannot have a child, because I love you. I cannot know any woman because I love you. When an Indian loves he loves forever. It is infinitely easier for an Indian to love a white woman than for her to love him. I don’t know why.

  So Marian, I am here, no longer Lo Blandy, but Nophaie. My name means Warrior. The red sand I tread is part the bones and flesh of my ancestors. I will live my life here and mingle my bones with theirs. I will do all I can for them. But alas! the eighteen years’ education forced upon me by the whites enables me only to see the pitiful state and the doom of the Indians.

  Come, Marian, to Oljato–come to help me awhile or just to see the wildness and beauty of my home, so that always afterward your memory will be full of the color and music and grandeur and fragrance of the Indian land.

  Nophaie.

  Marian put the letter away, conscious only at that moment of her emotions. Every perusal of it seemed to glean new sensations of pain, regret, sweetness and love, and awe.

  “Nophaie, the Warrior,” she soliloquized, dreamily. “Somehow it suits him.”

  She recalled the first time she had ever seen him. It was at Cape May, where a group of college men maintained baseball games with visiting teams, professional and otherwise. Her aunt, with whom she lived, and most of her Philadelphia friends, always spent some weeks at the seashore. And Marian enjoyed games and bathing and dancing as well as anyone. One summer afternoon a friend took her to the athletic field and pointed out the famous Indian star. How curious she had felt! There was a strange pain in the recall of that first sensation. Her eyes fell upon a tall bareheaded athlete, slenderly yet powerfully built, his supple form broadening wide at the shoulders. His face was dark, his hair black as coal. Striking and handsome as he was, it was not his appearance alone that thr
illed her so. She was a thoroughly modern young woman and had seen her share of college games. In action the Indian was simply beautiful. He had earned his great fame as a football star, and had been picked by experts for the All American team three successive years. But he did not need to be so great a baseball player to be good to look at. He played an outfield position, and the chances of the game fell so that he had little to do except run. And his running grew more and more thrilling to Marian. How easily he moved–what a stride he had! Marian found she was not alone in her admiration. This Indian athlete did not need her applause. Toward the end of the game, at a critical time for the home team, he hit a ball far beyond the reach of the opposing fielders. The crowd roared its delight. The Indian dashed down toward first base, and, turning, appeared to gather speed as he ran. Marian felt the pound of her heart, the sudden shock of delight and pride in the Indian’s sheer physical prowess. He ran as the Greek runners must have run, garlanded for their victories. How fleet! How incredibly faster and faster! Then he was making the turn for home base, and the crowd was yelling wildly. He seemed to be facing Marian as he sped on, magnificent in his action. He beat the throw and scored his home run, a feat the audience applauded with prodigious abandon. Marian then became aware that she too had been rather undignified.

  That night at a dance one of Marian’s friends had asked her.

  “Have you met Lo?”

  “Lo! and who’s he or she?” queried Marian.

  “He’s the Indian crack. You saw him play to-day. Lo Blandy.”

  And so it came about presently that Marian found herself facing the Indian athlete she had admired. Not just then had she realized it, but the truth was she had fallen in love with him at first sight. Something in her nature, never dreamed of before, went out to the Indian. He had a fine face, dark and strong, with eyes of piercing blackness. There was something noble in his stature, or the poise of his head, or the eagle look of him.

  “Will you dance with me?” he had asked, and appeared as much at his ease as any of the college men.

  Marian found herself dancing with an Indian–a very strange and momentous circumstance, it seemed. Evidently he had not made dancing one of his college courses, as most young men made. But he was light and strong; he carried her on without the bold contact so prevalent among most dancing men; and so Marian enjoyed that dance.

  They met again by accident on the beach, and because no one else came and they were interesting to each other, they talked for long. After that day Marian went to all the baseball games. And Lo Blandy became one of her numerous admirers, to the amusement of her aunt and friends.

  But these meetings had been deadly earnest for Marian. She loved the Indian. She fought against herself–then surrendered and fought no more. He had more principle and better habits than any white boy she knew. So that summer, in the cool amber-lighted mornings by the seashore and on the moonlit nights when dance and music held their sway, Marian quaffed the spiced magic draught of love.

  She wondered if she had as true and steadfast a nature as the Indian? Would she love once and once only? Vain queries. She loved now and that was all of pain.

  Marian gazed out of the train window at the scenery flashing by. The topography of the country had changed. Dark bushy green trees, very beautiful, had appeared on the slowly rising desert land, and the spaces between them were white with bleached grass. No more cliffs of stone passed under her sight. There were wooded hills in the background. And presently these low green trees gave place to larger ones, growing wide apart, brown-trunked, with spreading branches and thin green foliage at the tops. Pines! She welcomed them. She greeted every little gain of pleasure or knowledge, somehow trying to persuade herself that there was to be education and broadening of sympathy in this wild trip to the West. Marian had not been ashamed of her love for Lo Blandy. She felt that she might reach a point where she would glory in it. But she had shrunk from making confidants of her aunt and her friends. No one guessed the truth of that summer at Cape May. And now she was on a train, far out in the West, soon to take whatever means offered to reach the Indian reservation. The farther she traveled the more untrue her situation seemed. Yet she was glad. A deep within her stirred to strange promptings. She strove to justify her action in her own eyes. Surely one flight of freedom need not be denied her. The laxity of Marian’s social set in no wise gave her excuse for wildness and daring. She hated the drinking and smoking of women, the unrestrained dances, the lack of courtesy, the undeniable let-down of morals. She had welcomed an opportunity to escape from that atmosphere. Outside of love for Lo Blandy or an earnest desire to help his people there had been a trenchant call to some subtle innate wildness in her. The prairie, the mountain, the sea, the desert all called to her with imperious voice. Some day she would surely have listened.

  “I have no close family ties,” she said to herself, in sincere defense. “I am twenty-three. I am my own master. I’ve always dreamed of love with honor– of marriage with children. Perhaps in vain! My aunt, my friends, would call me mad. They do not understand me. I am not throwing my life away. I can do good out here. I can help him.... Nophaie–what a strange, beautiful name!... I am not rich. But I have some money, and that I will gladly use now. Let the future take care of itself.”

  So she settled the matter of perplexity and of conscience, and gave up to the singular appeal of the prospect before her. Always Marian had yearned to do something different, unusual, big. She had traveled a little, taught school, tried journalistic work, and had one short weakness for dramatics. And she knew she had accomplished nothing. Here indeed was the bright face of adventure, mysterious and alluring, coupled with a work she might make uplifting and all- satisfying.

  Flagerstown, the first Western town Marian had ever been in, was not at all like what she had imagined it would be. Her impressions of the West had come from books and motion pictures, which mediums, she was to learn, did not always ring true to life.

  It was a thriving little city, bustling with motorcars and active over its lumber, railroad, and cattle interests. It bore no signs of the typical frontier town. What surprised Marian a little was the fact that neither hotel proprietor nor banker, post-office official nor clerk in the store, nor a cattleman she chanced to address showed any curiosity concerning her. When she made inquiry about the Indian reservation she simply stated that she was interested in Indians and might do some journalistic work out there. Marian was compelled to confess that these Western men did not seem to be impressed with her. They were courteous and kindly, yet somehow aloof. It was a novelty to her. In the East she had been endlessly confronted with the fact of her femininity and youth and attractiveness. Here she seemed to catch a breath of life not thick and heavy with the atmosphere of sex. The West was young, virile, open. Already she began to feel free of fetters that had weighed upon her. Back home the ideals of most people were the pursuit of wealth, pleasure, excitement. The cities were congested. Young people left the wholesome countryside to flock to the centers of population, there to mix and strive in crowded places. Marian felt the futility and falseness of such life–that the threshold of decadence had been crossed.

  She ascertained that a mail carrier left Flagerstown twice a week for the places on the reservation–Mesa, Red Sandy, and Kaidab. And the post- office man was kind enough to engage passage for her. Next morning the hotel porter called to take her baggage. Marian saw the most dilapidated Ford car that had ever come before her vision. What there was of it appeared to be wired and roped together. And it was loaded heavily with mail bags, boxes, and sacks. There was a coop containing some chickens going by parcel post. Next to the driver’s seat had been left a small space, evidently for Marian.

  “Goodness!” ejaculated Marian, as she surveyed this doubtful contraption. “Will it hold together? Is it safe to ride in?”

  “Why miss, sho thet Injun will get you thar,” replied the porter.

  “Indian! Is the driver an–Indian?”

  “Yes-s
um. An’ sho blowin’ snow er sand makes no difference to him.”

  Marian could have laughed, in spite of her uneasiness. But all she could do was to gaze helplessly at that machine. Then appeared a young man in ragged dark suit. His small feet were incased in brown buckskin moccasins with silver buttons. His dark face appeared to be half hidden by a black sombrero. She could see that he was young. She noted his hands as they slipped over the wheel- -dark, thin, nervous, sinewy hands, well formed and mobile. Then he got into the driver’s seat and looked up at her. He was only a youth. His face was keen, smooth as silk, without a line, dark as bronze. He had a level brow and eyes black as night. Suddenly they gleamed with intelligence and humor. This Indian sensed her consternation.

  “You ready go?” he queried, in intelligible English. The tone of it gave Marian a little shock. Something about it, the low pitch or timbre, recalled the voice of Lo Blandy.

  “Y-yes, I guess so,” faltered Marian. Dare she trust this frightful junk heap of a car and its Indian driver on a long desert journey? Marian’s Eastern compunctions did not die easily.

  “You go Kaidab?” asked the driver.

  “Yes,” replied Marian.

  “I get you there–five o’clock,” he returned, with a smile. It seemed a flash of understanding. He read her mind, and wished to reassure her. Marian’s new spirit revived with a rush. She had burned her bridges behind her.

  “Will it be cold?” she asked, as she was about to climb into the car.