A Daughter of the Middle Border Part 15

Though hairy and spectacled he was a comparatively young man, but his mixed blood had already given him a singular power over his dark-skinned neighbors of the territory.

His wife and children were spending the summer in Albuquerque, and in the intimacy of our long days together I spoke of my approaching marriage. "I want to buy some native blankets and some Navajo silver for our new home."

His interest was quick. "Let me send your wife a wedding present. How would she like some Hopi jars?"

The off-hand way in which he used the words, "your wife," startled me--reminded me that in less than two weeks I was due at Professor Taft's home to claim my bride. I accepted his offer of the vases and began to collect silver and turquoise ornaments, in order that I might carry back to Zulime some part of the poetry of this land and its people.

"The more I think about it," I wrote to her, "the more I want you to share my knowledge of 'the High Country.' Why not put our wedding a week earlier and let me take you into the mountains? If you will advance the date to the eighteenth of November, we can have an eight-day trip in Colorado and still reach mother and the Homestead in time for Thanksgiving. I want to show you my best beloved valleys and peaks."

Though addressing the letter to her Chicago home, I knew that she was about to leave for Kansas; therefore I added a postscript: "I am planning to meet you in your father's house about the eighteenth of the month, and I hope you will approve my scheme."

In the glow of my plan for a splendid Colorado wedding journey, I lost interest in Ganado and its Indians. Making arrangements for the shipment of my treasures, I saddled my horse one morning, waved Hubbell a joyous farewell, and started back toward the Agency in the hope of finding there a letter from my girl.

In this I was not disappointed. She wrote: "I shall leave for Kansas on the Burlington, Sunday night. You can write me at Hanover." It was plain she had not received my latest word.

I began to figure. "If I leave here to-morrow forenoon, and catch the express at Gallup to-morrow night, I can make the close connection at Topeka, and arrive in St. Joseph just half an hour before Zulime's train comes in on Monday morning. I shall surprise her--and delight myself--by having breakfast with her!"

However, I could not get away till morning, and with an evening to wear away I accepted the Agent's invitation to witness a native dance which had been announced to him by one of the young Navajo policemen. I had never seen a Navajo dance, and gladly accepted the opportunity to do so.

It was a clear, crisp November evening as we started out, the clerk, his sister, one of the teachers and myself riding in a two-seated open wagon, drawn by a pair of spirited horses. The native village was some ten miles to the north, and all the way up hill, so that before we came in sight of it darkness had fallen, and in the light of a bonfire the dancers were a.s.sembling.

Of the village, if there was a village, I could see little, but a tall old man (the town crier) was chanting an invitation or command of some sort, and dark forms were moving to and fro among the shadows of the pinon trees. How remote it all was from the white man's world, how self-sufficing and peaceful--how idyllic!

The master of ceremonies met us and gave us seats, and for three hours we sat in the glow of the fire, watching the youthful, tireless dancers circle and leap in monotonous yet graceful evolutions. Here was love and courtship, and jealousy and faithful friendship, just as among the white dancers of Neshonoc. Roguish black eyes gleamed in the light of the fire, small feet beat the earth in joyous rhythm, and the calm faces of the old men lent dignity and a kind of religious significance to the scene. They were dreaming of the past, when no white man had entered their world.

The young people were almost equally indifferent to us, and as the night deepened we who were white merged more and more indistinguishably with the crowd of dusky onlookers. It was easy to imagine ourselves back in the sixteenth century, looking upon this scene from the wondering viewpoint of the Spanish explorers. Whence came these people, these dances, these ceremonials?

At last the time came for us to set forth upon our long ride back to the Agency, and so, silently, we rose and slipped away into the darkness, leaving the dancers to end their immemorial festival without the aliens'

presence. They had no need of us, no care for us. At a little distance I turned and looked back. The songs, interrupted by shrill, wolfish howlings and owl-like hootings, rang through the night with singular savage charm, a chant out of the past, a chorus which was carrying forward into an individualistic white man's world the voices of the indeterminate tribal past.

The sky was moonless, the air frosty, and after we had entered the narrow canon, which was several miles long and very steep, the clerk, who was not very skilled with horses, turned the reins over to me, and for an hour or more I drove with one foot on the brake, trusting mainly to the horses to find their way. It was bitter cold in the canon, and my cramped right leg became lame--so lame that I could hardly get out of the wagon after we reached the Agency. Excruciating pain developed in the sciatic nerve, and though I pa.s.sed a sleepless night I was determined to leave next morning. "I shall go if I have to be carried to my horse," I said grimly to the clerk, who begged me to stay in bed.

Fortunately, the trader was going to the railway and kindly offered to take me with him; and so, laden with Navajo silver (bracelets, buckles and rings), I started out, so lame that I dragged one leg with a groan, hoping that with the warmth of the sun my pain would pa.s.s away.

Reaching Gallup at noon, I spent the afternoon sitting in the sun, waiting for the train. At six o'clock it came, and soon I was washed and shaved and eating dinner on the dining-car of the Continental Limited.

All that night and all the next day and far into the second night I rode, my fear of missing connection at Topeka uniting with my rheumatism to make the hours seem of interminable length. It seemed at times a long, long "shot"--but I made it! I reached the station at Topeka just in time to catch the connecting train, and I was on the platform at St.

Joseph at sun-rise a full half-hour before the Burlington coaches from Chicago were due.

As I walked up and down, I smiled with antic.i.p.ation of the surprise I had in store. "If she keeps her schedule I shall see her step from the Pullman car without the slightest suspicion that I am within six hundred miles of her," I thought, doing my best to walk the kink out of my leg, which was still painful. "She is coming! My wife is coming!" I repeated, incredulous of the fact.

At eight o'clock the engine came nosing in, and while watching the line of pa.s.sengers descend, I lost hope. It was too much to expect!

She was there! I saw her as she stepped down from the rear Pullman, and just as she was about to take her valise from the porter, I touched her on the shoulder and said, "I'll take charge of that."

She started and turned with a look of alarm, a look which changed to amazement, to delight. "Oh!" she gasped. "Where did _you_ come from?"

"From the Navajo reservation," I replied calmly.

"But how did you _get here_?"

"By train, like yourself."

"But when--how long ago?"

"About thirty minutes," I laughed. "I'm a wizard at making close connections." Then, seeing that she must know all about it at once, I added, "Come into the station restaurant, and while we are eating breakfast I will tell you where I have been and what brought me back so soon."

While waiting for our coffee I took from my valise a bracelet of silver, a broad band shaped and ornamented by some Navajo silversmith. "Hold out your arm," I commanded. She obeyed, and I clasped the barbaric gyve about her wrist. "That is a sign of your slavery," I said gravely.

Smilingly, meditatively, she fingered it, realizing dimly the grim truth which ran beneath my jesting. She was about to take on a relationship which must inevitably bring work and worry as well as joy.

(That silver band has never left her wrist for a moment. For twenty-two years she has worn it, keeping it bright with service for me, for her children and for her friends. There is something symbolic in the fact that it has never lost its clear l.u.s.ter and that it has never tarnished the arm it adorns.)

Her joy in this present, her astonishment at my unexpected appearance on the railway platform, amused and delighted me. I could scarcely convince her that at six o'clock on Sat.u.r.day night I was in a New Mexico town, waiting for the eastern express. It was all a piece of miraculous adventure on my part, but her evident pleasure in its successful working out made me rich--and very humble. "What did you do it for?" she asked; then, with a look of dismay, she added, "What am I going to do with you in Hanover?"

"I think I can find something to do," I answered, and entered upon a detailed statement of my plan. "I want you to see the mountains. We'll set our wedding day for the eighteenth--that will give us a week in Colorado, and enable us to eat Thanksgiving dinner with the old folks at the homestead. You say you have never seen a real mountain--well, here's your chance! Say the word, and I'll take you into the heart of the San Juan Range. I'll show you the splendors of Ouray and the Uncompagre."

Holding the floor, in order that she might not have a chance to protest, I spread an alluring panorama of peaks and valleys before her eyes, with an eloquence which I intended should overcome every objection. That she was giving way to my appeal was evident. Her negatives, when they came, were rather feeble. "I can't do it. It would be lovely, but--oh, it is impossible!"

"It is done--it is arranged!" I replied. "I have already sent for the railway tickets. They will be at your home to-morrow night. All is settled. We are to be married on the eighteenth, and----"

"But our cards are all in Chicago and printed for the twenty-third!"

"What of that? Get some more--or, better still, forget 'em! We don't need cards."

"But--my sewing?"

"Never mind your sewing. Would you let a gown come between you and a chance to see the Needle Peak? I am determined that you shall see Ouray, Red Mountain, and the San Juan Divide."

At last she said, "I'll think about it."

She was obliged to think about it. All the forenoon, as the train ambled over the plain toward the village in which Professor Taft had established his bank, I kept it in her mind. "It may be a long time before we have another chance to visit Colorado. It will be glorious winter up there. Think of Marshall Pa.s.s, think of Uncompagre, think of the Toltec Gorge!" My enthusiasm mounted. "Ouray will be like a town in the Andes. We must plan to stay there at least two days."

She fell into silence, a dazed yet smiling silence, but when at last I said, "Every hour in the low country is a loss--let's be married to-morrow," she shook her head. I had gone too far.

She confessed that a stay in Hanover was in the nature of a punishment.

"I never liked it here, and neither did my little mother," she said, and then she described her mother's life in Hanover. "I was called home to nurse her in the last days of her illness," she explained. "Poor little mamma! She came out here unwillingly in the first place, and I always resented her living so far away from the city. After her death I seldom came here. Father does not care. He is so absorbed in his business and in his books that it doesn't matter where he lives."

Professor Taft and his son, Florizel, were both at the train to meet Zulime, and both were properly amazed when I appeared. As a totally unexpected guest I was a calamity--but they greeted me cordially. What Zulime said in explanation of my presence I do not know, but the family accepted me as an inevitable complication.

My lameness, which dated from that ride down the Navajo canon, persisted, which was another worriment; for Zulime was too busy with sewing-women to give much time to me and walking was very painful, hence I spent most of my day down at the bank, talking with my prospective father-in-law, who interested me much more than the sordid little village and its empty landscape. He was a st.u.r.dy, slow-moving man with long, gray beard, a powerful and strongly individual thinker, almost as alien to his surroundings as a Hindoo Yoghi would have been. With the bland air of a kindly teacher he met his customers in the outer office and genially discoursed to them of whatever happened to be in his own mind--what they were thinking about was of small account to him.

As a deeply-studied philosopher of the old-fashioned sort, his words, even when addressed to a German farmer, were deliberately chosen, and his sentences stately, sonorous and precise. Regarding me as a man of books, he permitted himself to roam widely over the fields of medieval history, and to wander amid the gardens of ancient faiths and dimly remembered thrones.

Although enormously learned, his knowledge was expressed in terms of the past. His quotations, I soon discovered, were almost entirely confined to books whose covers were of a faded brown. His scientists, his historians were all of the Victorian age or antecedent thereto. Breasted and Ferrero did not concern him. His biologists were of the time of Darwin, his poets of an age still earlier, and yet, in spite of his musty citations, he was a master mind. He knew what he knew (he guessed at nothing), and, sitting there in that bare little bank, I listened in silence what time he marched from Zoroaster down to Charlemagne, and from Rome to Paris. He quoted from Buckle and Bacon and Macaulay till I marveled at the contrast between his great s.h.a.ggy head and its commonplace surroundings, for in the midst of a discussion of the bleak problems of Agnosticism, or while considering Gibbon's contribution to the world's stock of historical knowledge, certain weather-worn Bavarian farmers came and went, studying us with half-stupid, half-suspicious glances, having no more kinship with Don Carlos Taft than so many Comanches.

It is probable that the lonely old scholar rejoiced in me as a comprehending, or at least a sympathetic, listener, for he talked on and on, a steady, slow-moving stream. I was content to listen. That I allowed him to think of me as a fellow-student, I confess, but in my failure to undeceive him I was only adding to the comfort which he took in my company. It would have been a cruelty to have confessed my ignorance. It was after all only a negative deception, one which did neither of us any harm.