The High Calling Part 29

"About Van Shaw. Such men have no business to make love to pure girls like Helen."

Walter remonstrated.

"It's absurd, Felix. He isn't making love to her. Nonsense."

"He is!" said Bauer with a pa.s.sionate burst that astonished Walter. "You do not know him as well as I do. I am acquainted with Van Shaw's history through the Raines-Bracken affair. You were not at Burrton when that happened. Nothing but the fear of losing some of old Van Shaw's legacies to the school prevented young Van Shaw's expulsion at the time. I can't go into the affair, Walter, but it gave me a loathing for Van Shaw that I never can overcome. It isn't because I feel holier than thou or anything like that; G.o.d knows I am in need of his great forgiveness; but it seems as wrong for us to leave your sister unacquainted with the real character of Van Shaw as it would to let her play with one of these rattlesnakes we are going to see in Oraibi the day after to-morrow, not knowing how deadly they were."

"Who'll tell her? Will you?"

"I? How can I do it. No. But it would seem quite the thing for you or your mother------"

"Mother doesn't know him," Walter interrupted somewhat curtly. "I don't see how I can say anything," Walter went on, with the caution many school boys feel about telling on others. "I really believe Helen is capable of protecting herself. And one of the quickest ways to get a girl interested in a man is to hint that he is not as good as he might be."

"That's your philosophy imbibed from your six best sellers," retorted Felix. Walter was a constant novel reader. "I am going to have a talk with your mother about the whole affair. She will know what to do."

"Will you tell her how you feel about Helen?"

Felix winced.

"She knows already."

"Oh, you have told her."

"No, she knows without my telling."

"Have you spoken to Helen?"

The colour swept up over Bauer's face.

"No, and I never will."

"Does she know?" Walter persisted.

"I looked at her once," faltered Bauer, and for the soul of him Walter could not help roaring out at him.

As they rose to make their way to the wagons which had halted in a group to wait for them and others who had fallen behind, Walter smote Bauer on the back.

"Courage, old man. The case is not all hopeless. If you have got as far as a look, that's progress. What did Helen do?"

But Bauer drew into his reserve at this point and gravely refused to talk any more, and Walter did not venture to insist. Only, as they were going to their wagons Bauer simply said, "I shall tell your mother. It would not be right not to let her know."

"I don't know what mother can do about it," Walter replied dubiously.

"Mrs. Douglas is very wise." said Bauer. To that Walter made no answer, and they joined the rest of the party without further words.

That night the two camps were pitched close together, and two fires burned like red specks in the holes dug for the sagebrush and cedar roots. The chuck wagon in which Helen had been riding was left standing close by the tent pitched for her mother and Mrs. Masters. She seemed unusually cheerful and in answer to many inquiries a.s.sured all that she was resting easily and was nearly free from pain.

After the camp meal was over and the desert grey of the soft night had begun to wrap itself like an enveloping cloak about the two camps, as quietly and without warning of their presence natives of that weird tract of earth began to appear. When the camp was made there was not a hogan or any form of human habitation to be seen. But as Paul came back to the fire circle after helping Masters pitch the last of the tents he was astonished to see a dozen Indians, mostly young men, sitting on the sand close by. Masters spoke a word to them when he came up to the fire and one of the men answered briefly.

"They have come all the way from Leupp," he said to Paul. "Walked the entire distance of sixty-seven miles since sunrise."

"Do you know any of them?" Paul asked curiously.

"Yes, I have met one of the young men at Shungapavi. They are all going up to see the snake dance. It's the only feature about the Hopi that appeals to them."

Miss Gray began to sing; it seemed to Walter who was sitting on the Navajo blanket near her that he had never heard a voice of just that particular quality. It fitted into the surroundings wonderfully. The dusky faces with the inevitable head-cloth of red or white were intent on hers, and when the song ceased and Walter looked up and around he saw the members of the other camp had come over and were standing or sitting about. Among the faces that were most noticeable to Walter was Van Shaw's. He was standing almost directly opposite Miss Gray staring at her with a strange look as if he were in doubt of the reality of Miss Gray's presence in this group. It seemed to Walter that he was about to ask a question, but Masters, who at campfire was always intent on bringing his Gospel message to the miscellaneous audience he might not see again in many months, began to speak softly and affectionately.

The visitors from the outside world, including the party from Pittsburgh, could not understand one word. It was not that that moved them. But Masters was gifted with a splendid voice in full control.

After he had been speaking ten minutes the figures about the little fire crept closer up and narrowed the circle. Masters's face was eloquent.

Tears rolled down his cheeks. His gestures were wide and conveyed tender invitation. He spoke only a few moments more and ended abruptly. Old Peshlekietsetti gently dropped a root of dowegie bush on the almost extinct fire. The coals burst into a new flame and the light flared up again, showing to Felix, Helen's wondering face framed in the opening fold of the wagon cover, while Mrs. Douglas close by her was listening with sympathetic attention deepened into reverent surprise when Elijah Clifford with his hands over his knees, his head bowed, prayed the evening prayer in a spirit that seemed to proclaim another man from the one they had known during the day. And then another hymn in which all were asked by Miss Gray to join. It all smote Felix with a feeling of wonder, it was so new and unusual to his experience. But to Masters and Miss Gray and Clifford it was the regular daily habit of their lives, as common and necessary to them as it was for the tourist crowd looking on to close the day's life with a heavy dinner of seven courses and bridge whist into the next morning. The last glimpse Walter had of Van Shaw as he moved off towards his own wagons was the look he cast at Miss Gray again and then transferred to the canvas that covered the chuck wagon where Helen and her mother sat talking over the strange events of the day and its strange ending.

The next day was a severe experience for old desert travellers. The wind blew almost a gale. The sand drifted like snow and the mid day meal was taken standing, everyone eating as best he could, standing up, and making no attempt at the setting of a table or the formality of a regular meal.

Late in the afternoon the grey rock of Oraibi showed through the whistling sand storm. The wagons halted a little while by the Oraibi Wash before making the last miles through the difficult sand hillocks at the foot of the cliff. And it was during this resting period that word came to Masters from one of the Hopis who had a corn field on the Wash that recent rains at Oraibi had so damaged the wagon trial leading to the top that it would be impossible to drive up. All visitors and tourists must walk up the foot trail.

"That means that Helen can't get to the village. It will be a great disappointment," said Mrs. Douglas.

It was on the tongue of Felix Bauer to suggest a plan for carrying Helen up the trail on one of the camp cots when Van Shaw struck in.

"Pardon me, Mrs. Douglas, but it will be an easy thing to carry Miss Douglas up the trail on a camp cot. Four of us can do it easily. Just put some tent poles under the sides and let the two behind rest the poles on their shoulders and the two in front carry lower. In that way I'm sure we can get Miss Douglas to the top without any inconvenience to her. It would be a shame to come all this distance and eat all this dirt and miss the real thing after all."

"I don't want to miss it, of course," Helen faltered, looking at the group of young men, Walter, Felix, Van Shaw and his two friends. "But I'm giving a lot of trouble and I'm afraid I'm a nuisance."

"Then we will abate it by carrying you up there," said Van Shaw smiling, and Helen smiled back at him, to Felix Bauer's rage. The whole thing was getting to be torture to him. And it all intensified his determination to have a plain talk with Mrs. Douglas. The opportunity for it was not easy. Mrs. Douglas was close by Helen nearly every moment. The camp duties were many and the little company was of necessity grouped close together during the march. But Bauer with his regular stock of dogged patience bided his time, sure it would come.

Camp was pitched that night at the foot of the Oraibi trail. Almost as soon as the wagons were located Van Shaw came over to Mrs. Douglas carrying a cot.

"We've got an extra cot, Mrs. Douglas, and it won't take any time to fix that litter. We can use some of our tent poles. I'll be glad to fix the thing up in the morning."

Mrs. Douglas thanked him quietly, and Helen expressed her grat.i.tude.

"Oh, I wouldn't miss seeing the sight to-morrow for anything. Isn't it wonderful. That rock? How weird it all is. Why, you can hardly tell where the rock begins and the houses leave off. Just to think of seven or eight hundred people living up there all these centuries keeping up these queer customs. And oh, look! What is that?"

A line of Indian women filed past up the trail about twenty-five feet apart, each one carrying on her back a large clay water jar. They did not walk, they trotted along in a tireless steady stride that spoke of centuries of training before them. The weight of the jars was not far from thirty pounds.

Masters was pa.s.sing Helen's wagon.

"That's woman's rights," he said gravely. "The water supply at Oraibi for centuries has been jars on the backs of women. You must get used to thinking of seven hundred people dependent on the daily trips of these women for all the water used on top of that rock for washing, cooking, drinking. The women of Oraibi also have the right of building the houses the men live in. They are the masons, while the men are the dressmakers.

And there are people who would like to keep these women perpetually at these tasks, they say it so 'picturesque.'"

"I was just going to say that myself," said Helen.

Masters smiled sadly. "Look at the mothers in Oraibi to-morrow. See what heathenism has done for them." He pa.s.sed on and Van Shaw who had stared at Masters as he spoke said to Helen--"They're queer beggars, ain't they. But I don't believe in trying to change them. They belong here.

Might as well let 'em go on the way they've been going the last thousand years."

Helen looked at him with the first feeling she had had of possible distrust or dislike. Van Shaw had spoken just as he really felt, and Helen saw a brief ways into his real character. But as she looked again at the winding figures steadily trotting up the steep path, she had a momentary doubt in her own mind as to the ultimate wisdom of Masters and Clifford in trying to change the century old customs and habits of these desert people.

The day of the snake dance at Oraibi dawned strangely with a heavy shower.