John agreed wearily. He heard steps outside. Weston entered. He was the color of ashes.

  “Bad business, John,” he said. “Got to clear it up quick. Beany an’ I are going straight to Flaggerston with the body in the truck, an’ we’re takin’ Pete. I’ll report all the details to the sheriff. Come on yourself tomorrow an’ bring High-Lo an’ Magdaline. Make a clean sweep — Hanley an’ everything. A couple of deaths in a liquor clean-up won’t mean much nowadays.”

  “You’re right,” said John. “Pete’s a good witness in the first shooting case. My wound will speak for itself. Pete has Hanley’s gun. He took it to use in case Newton got gay.”

  “Sure he has it?”

  “Did you ever know an Indian to throw away anything useful?” John asked tersely. “As for Magdaline,” he added, “she’ll be her own witness. Let her pour out the tragedy of her life. It will be a good thing for our executives to hear.”

  “You’ve got a clear case, but the law has to take its course,” Weston concluded. “What bail is needed, if any, Miss Katharine an’ I will supply. You know her. She’ll do anything to help you folks out.”

  “You bet I know her!” ejaculated John. “God bless her, is what I say, and all of you. I’ve sure found the time when I need my friends.”

  After the truck with its grim freight had left, the silence of unrelieved tragedy pervaded the house. Mrs. Weston, absent for a long time, at length appeared before John in the living room where he restlessly paced the floor.

  “Magdaline won’t be a mother now,” she said in her quiet direct way. “That’s over. She’s in no condition to appear in court for days. You and High-Lo must go without her tomorrow. Miss Katharine will bring her to Flaggerston later.”

  “Nature, cruelly kind,” muttered John.

  Unable to restrain his anxiety about Mary longer, he asked, “And Mrs. Newton? How is she?”

  Mrs. Weston gave a backward glance down the hall. “Here’s Miss Katharine. She’s just looked in on her. She’ll tell you.”

  When the Eastern girl entered the room, she saw Curry’s mute question in his eyes.

  “I’d give everything I own if she would only cry,” said Katharine. “It’s you she needs. Go to her. Third door to the right.”

  John went. He was in the room, without memory of having knocked or entered. He was at the side of her bed kneeling, begging forgiveness.

  “I wondered if you were coming!”

  Her cry pierced his heart. His head sank to the pillow into the dark cloud of her hair.

  She was whispering to him, her words falling in hysterical haste. “I love you. I need you. I can’t go on without you!”

  Her cheek was against his, soft as velvet. He heard a convulsive sob. He felt something wet slip down the relaxed smoothness of her skin. She was crying.

  CHAPTER XXI

  MR. WESTON WAS right. The trials were called early and dispatched speedily. Mary, saved by Dr. Kellogg, who voluntarily testified under oath as to her blameless character, did not have to appear in court. Newton was declared a scoundrel of whom the community was well rid, and Hanley’s name was blackened for all time. The most prominent women of Flaggerston, amazed to discover that the estate of an educated Indian girl was commonly less fortunate than that of her mother, flung high the banners of reform.

  Meanwhile, at Black Mesa, where Joy and Alice came to join her, Mary lived in sad-glad expectation from mail to mail. At first John avoided any mention of the trials. Mary loved him all the more for this consideration; but recognizing the major part she had unwittingly played in the tragedies, she would not be spared the details of their reparation. After her protest that she must know everything that was taking place at Flaggerston, his letters gave full details of the court proceedings. Thus she suffered with him, prayed with him, shared his hope, and, at last, the final victories. A day of rejoicing was at hand. The valiant ones were soon to return. The fifteenth of June brought word of their coming.

  “Let’s celebrate!” suggested Beany at breakfast the next morning, while the others nodded approvingly. “Every cowboy’s back, an’ the season’s not begun. Let’s have some Indians come over for races, and a sing and dance at night. Pop Weston’s partial to it. He’s so glad to have things smoothin’ out, he’d give the post away.”

  The only word of protest came from Mary. “Suppose they don’t come until evening?” She was thinking how tired they would be.

  “All the better,” spoke up Beany. “They’d hit right into high doin’s. That’s the idee. We want to have things altogether different from what they was when they went away.”

  Mary read Beany’s mind. It was he who had instigated the destruction of the hogan where Wilbur had met his death; and now he was scheming a whirl of excitement to change the once solemn prospect utterly.

  “It’s really a great idea,” Mary said. “Could you gather the Indians in time? It’s tomorrow, you know.”

  Beany ventured a scathing look of scorn. “What’s Pop Weston got a bunch of riders for?”

  Accounting that remark, the deeds were as good as done.

  * * * * *

  During the following day, from noon on, Mary’s ear was attuned to catch the sound of an automobile. It took considerable restraint not to precede the others to the ridge to scan the trail. When Stub came in to say the folks were about to leave, she could have kissed his plump, beardless cheek. Indeed she wanted to embrace the world.

  More than three hundred Indians, men, women and children, had answered the summons; a race meant exchange of jewelry and money, and a dance gave like advantages. On the level desert floor, where greasewood and brush were sparse, they had laid out their racecourse, and they moved over and around it, some mounted, some on foot, bright splashes of color against the black wall of the mesa. Tryouts were in progress, as shrill cheers indicated even before the moving forms of the riders became visible. Other Indians were encouraging betting among the groups on the side lines. Somehow gambling did not seem a vice among these child-like people. They mobbed the cowboys, who, ever good spenders, had helped to make up the purse, and were willing to part with even more silver to add flavor to the betting.

  It was thrilling to witness the races. But the growing excitement that stirred Mary had its being in that day’s one great expectation for her — John’s return. The desert floor stretched for weary miles between her and the man she loved. She saw only the league-long distances, not the race; she watched for a whirl of dust on the motionless plain.

  Long, almost endless seemed the day. Westward mountains eclipsed the sun, the colors of the afterglow faded, the gray of evening enclosed distance in dim obscurity, and still John had not come.

  The Indians made a great brushwood fire and smaller individual campfires. Mrs. Weston, Alice and Mary prepared food for the hungry cowboys and joined them at the repast. Only Mary could not eat. Everyone pretended not to notice her lack of appetite. Flame licked the great pile of brushwood, a beacon light for John. Mary’s ear tried to pierce the sound of its crackling for the vibration of a low distant motor. She understood the meaning of eternity, of never-endingness. At last she heard the long anticipated sound. She imagined she had cried out to the others, the wild voice within her was so strong. It did not matter if she had.

  Presently Beany shouted, “Hoo-ray! The folks are comin’! Put an eye to them lights!”

  Calm as she appeared, Mary’s swelling heart threatened to burst with its child-like song: “I heard them long ago! I heard them long ago!”

  They were camped near the road. The car came to a stop in the circle of their firelight. There was a general exodus from the car; people were crowding around. Mary distinguished only John, whose roving eyes did not rest until they found her. Now he was coming to her, his dear, glad smile still a bit uncertain. Her fingers, fluttering like her heart, sought his protecting grasp. Neither spoke. Almost at once they were separated by the boys and High-Lo and Magdaline who could scarcely wait their turn to speak. There was no hint of sadness in this homecoming. They had relegated the past to oblivion, as if their lives now lay only in the happy future.

  The voices of Indian men rose from the direction of the large central fire. The sing was in progress, and the women and girls with the younger men were circling the firelight ready for the dance. John sought Mary, and they went hand in hand to join the Indians. They stood behind the squatting figures and smiled at each other over the intrigue going on about them.

  “It’s not the best dancer, it’s the wealthiest dancer an Indian girl wants,” John explained. “The idea is that a girl nails a man who isn’t quick enough to escape her and makes him dance until he buys himself free. They’ll go for the cowboys, too. Cowboys pay in cash. They prefer it to jewelry. Watch the fun.”

  Here, there, girls voluntarily, or urged with a whack or push from their mothers, made a beeline each for a particular man, who, the minute he realized his danger, fled. Should he be captured, the man was dragged to the center of light where his dusky captor, keeping to the rear, clung to the waist of her partner’s garment, turning him dizzily round and round, herself supplying a tapping step as she circled with him. Thus they slowly spun to the staccato song of the men, which rose and fell in a strange, wild cadence of boldly accentuated notes. The song had no ending. Couples quit whenever a bargain was consummated. Girls refused to be bought off cheaply. They argued as they danced. Everywhere men were dodging. Now and then a cowboy came sprawling into the ring. There was always someone dancing. Magdaline dragged in High-Lo, and a general shout went up.

  Mary felt a pressure on her hand, to which John still clung. He leaned close and whispered, “A deep and abiding affection has sprung between them. I think High-Lo will be happy.”

  Again Mary looked their way. What she saw was a tall, handsome cowboy and a slim, stylishly dressed Indian girl pirouetting in and out among the other dancers. They stopped and the girl delivered an imperious command, only to be seized in a great bear hug, the toll she evidently had exacted, and she was borne from the lighted circle in the cowboy’s arms amid the renewed shouts of the crowd.

  John drew Mary from the shifting firelight to the shadow and obscurity beyond. Hand in hand they walked away, continuing to the corral and up over the ridge to a place where even the post was shut from view.

  The desert lay in glistening serenity. Through moon-blanched luster solitary, solemn peaks and the sacred prayer rocks of the uplands loomed. A time of transfiguration had come. The hours of doubt and waiting were gone. The desert silence, vast yet intimate, enveloped them.

  “Desert-bound!” murmured Mary, touched by the profound tranquility of the scene.

  “Together!” added John.

  Mary felt his arm about her, a gentle hand tilted her face. As their lips met, a flame of ecstasy enveloped her. There was tenderness in his embrace and shy, yet eloquent desire. She lay back presently in the crook of his arm, and they smiled into each other’s eyes with the supreme consciousness of love.

  “My little sweetheart. That’s what you are,” he said. “And soon you will be my wife, as soon as the missionary can get here from Taho.”

  His words were like a perfect gift.

  “Whenever you say,” Mary whispered. And she smiled again from the sweet security of his embrace.

  It was the same day of another week.

  Katharine and Alice from a lofty perch watched two riders and a pack mule moving westward far down Black Mesa valley into the heart of the desert. So close did they ride that at times one rider would shut the other from view. A nearby ring of hoofs against rock told them that High-Lo, with Joy and Magdaline, were starting back to the post.

  “They’ll be gone three weeks,” said Alice, her eyes on the broad sweep of valley.

  “And in the fall we’ll have the fun of hunting twin ranches,” returned Katharine. “John says High-Lo’s just the man to take care of our place when we get it.”

  “A little gray home in the west, eh, Sis?”

  “Yes, dear,” said Katharine smiling.

  Then Alice said dreamily, “It was a pretty wedding, wasn’t it, with Cathedral Rock for their church?”

  Memory of it stirred Katharine. “And the desert an organ on which to play age-long love songs.”

  Now the two riders were becoming smaller and smaller. There came a moment when they quite disappeared into the haze that softened the valley horizon.

  “I’m so glad they are happy,” Alice declared, with a gentle laugh that seemed to her sister to express more of sadness than joy. “But it is you that John Curry should have married, dear. I — I never had the courage to tell you, Katharine, until it was too late. But — but now — it’s out. How I hoped and prayed that he would marry you — in the end. I truly hope that they will be happy. He is—” Alice paused a long, long time before she finished “ — a man you could love!”

  Almost Katharine lost her composure. A mist came before her eyes and her lips trembled. She turned away from the girl beside her, pretending to fasten the laces of her boots, lest Alice see the confusion her words had caused.

  “Just good friends, Sister dear,” she managed to say. “And perhaps someday business partners, if he still wants my small legacy to invest. I’ve been happy to be admitted to his confidence — and his friendship. There never was anything else — with him or — with me. I’m happy about John and Mary. They were fated to love each other — from the beginning.... Come, Sister darling. There’s a chill in the air. We must go.”

  THE END

  The Vanishing American

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHAPTER XVII

  CHAPTER XVIII

  CHAPTER XIX

  CHAPTER XX

  CHAPTER XXI

  CHAPTER XXII

  CHAPTER XXIII

  The first edition

  CHAPTER I

  AT SUNRISE NOPHAIE drove his flock of sheep and goats out upon the sage slopes of the desert. The April air was cold and keen, fragrant with the dry tang of the uplands. Taddy and Tinny, his shepherd dogs, had wary eye and warning bark for the careless stragglers of the flock. Gray gaunt forms of wolf and tawny shape of wild cat moved like shadows through the sage.

  Nophaie faced the east, where, over a great rugged wall of stone, the sky grew from rose to gold, and a splendor of light seemed about to break upon the world. Nophaie’s instinct was to stand a moment, watching and waiting without thought. The door of each hogan of his people opened to the rising sun. They worshiped the sun, the elements, all in nature.

  Motionless he stood, an Indian lad of seven years, slim and tall, with his dark face turned to the east, his dark eyes fixed solemnly upon that quarter whence the light and warmth always came. One thin brown hand held a blanket round his shoulders, and the other clasped his bow and arrows.

  While he gazed a wondrous change came over the desert. The upstanding gloomy wall of rock far to the fore suddenly burned with a line of flame; and from that height down upon the gray lowlands shone the light of the risen sun. For Nophaie sunrise was a beginning — a fulfillment of promise — an answer to prayer.

  When that blazing circle of liquid gold had cleared the rampart of the desert, too fiery and intense for the gaze of man, Nophaie looked no more, and passed on down the aisles of sage behind his flock. Every day this task was his. For two years he had been the trusted shepherd of his father’s sheep. At five years of age Nophaie had won his first distinction. With other children he was out in charge of the accumulated flocks of the tribe. A sandstorm suddenly swooped down upon the desert, enveloping them in a thick yellow pall. Except Nophaie, all the little shepherds grew frightened and fled back to find their hogans. But Nophaie stayed with the sheep. They could not be driven in the face of the storm. They wandered on and on and became lost. Nophaie became lost with them. Three days later Nophaie’s father found him, hungry and fearful, but true to his charge. He was praised. He was taught. He was trusted. Legend and lore, seldom told so young a boy, were his to ponder and dream over.

  Nophaie’s shepherding task was lonely and leisurely. He had but to drive the flock from grassy flat to sage slope, slowly on and on, and back again by sunset to the home corral, always alert for the prowling beasts of prey.

  He seemed a part of that red and purple desert land. It was home. He had been born under the shadow of the wonderful mountain wall which zigzagged from east to west across the wasteland. The niches were canyons. Its broken segments were pinnacles and monuments, shafts of red stone lifted to the skies, bold, stark, and mighty, chiseled by wind and sand and frost. Between these walls and monuments spread the sandy floor of desert, always gray-spotted with sage, always gray-green with patches of grass and weed, purple in the distance.

  That spring the lambs had come early — too early, considering the frosty breath of the dawns. A few lambs had succumbed to the cold. Many a pink-and- white little lamb had been tenderly folded in Nophaie’s blanket, and warmed, and cared for until the heat of the sun made safe its return to its mother. The lambs and kids were all several days old now, fleecy and woolly, grown sturdy enough to gambol in the sage. A few were solid black, and many were all white, and some had beautiful markings, spots of black on white, and four black feet, and two black ears. One was pure white with a black face; another was all black except for a white tail. The dead stillness of the desert dawn was often pierced by the sweet, high-pitched bleat of these lambs and kids. Nophaie wandered on with them, finding a stone seat from time to time, always watching, listening, feeling. He loved the flock, but did not know that. His task was lonely, but he did not realize it.