CHAPTER XVI

NATACHEE

“My gifts are only the gifts of an Indian, Miss Hillgrove; I see with the eyes of a red man, that is all.”

As consciousness returned to Marta, her first sensation was that of physical comfort. She thought that she was in her own bed at home, awakening from a dream. Slowly she opened her eyes. Instead of her own familiar room she saw the rough, unhewn rafters, the log walls, and the rude furnishings of an apartment that was strange.

Wonderingly, without moving, she looked at the unfamiliar details--at the fireplace of uncut rocks with a generous fire blazing on the hearth--the lighted lamp on the table--the rough board cupboard in the far corner--the cooking utensils hanging beside the fireplace--and at the skins of mountain lion and lynx and fox and wolf and bear that hung upon the walls. It all seemed real enough, and yet she felt that it must be a part of her dream. She would awaken presently she thought--how curious--how real it was.

She put a hand and arm out from under the covers and touched, not the familiar blankets of her own bed, but a fur robe. The effect was as if she had come in contact with an electric wire. In the same instant she saw the sleeve of her jacket, and realized that she was not in her own bed at all, but was lying fully dressed on a rude couch--that her clothing was still wet from a storm that was not a dream storm, and that everything else was as real.

But where was she? Who had brought her to this strange place? Fully awake now, the girl made a more careful survey of the room, and this time saw hanging on a peg in the log wall near the fireplace a bow with a sheaf of arrows, and on the floor beneath a pair of moccasins.

“Natachee!”

With a shudder, as if from a sudden chill, Marta threw back the fur robe and sat up. She was not frightened. It is doubtful if Marta had ever in her life known real fear. But there was something about the Indian that always, as she had expressed it, “gave her the creeps.”

Swiftly her mind reviewed the hours that had passed since she left her home to go to Oracle. Her good-by to Edwards, her happiness as she rode over the familiar trail, her meeting with the Wheeler children and their parents, the incident at the store, her troubled thoughts as she started homeward, and then, the crushing shame--the horror of the things that the Lizard had made known to her. Of her actual movements after the Lizard left her, she remembered almost nothing clearly. That part of her experience remained to her still as a dream. But that one dominant necessity which had driven her into the storm and the night; _that_ stood clear in all its naked and hideous reality. She could not, with the burning certainty of her shame, she could not see Saint Jimmy nor Hugh Edwards again.

Rising, she went to the fireplace and stood before the blaze to dry her still damp clothing. She was calmer now. The wild uncontrolled storm of her emotions had passed. With her physical exhaustion had come a sort of relief from her emotional strain. She could think now. As she stood looking down into the fire she told herself, with a degree of calmness, that she _must_ think. She must plan--she must decide--what should she do?

She was standing there, with her eyes fixed on the blazing logs in the fireplace, when she became aware that she was not alone. As clearly as if she had seen it, she felt a presence in the room. She turned to look over her shoulder. Natachee stood just inside the closed door of the cabin. He had entered, opening and closing the heavy door without a sound.

As she whirled to face him, the Indian bowed with grave courtesy.

“I beg your pardon, Miss Hillgrove, I did not mean to startle you but I thought you might be sleeping.”

There was nothing either in the Indian’s face or in his manner to alarm her. Save for his savage dress he might have been any well-bred college or university man. Nor did the girl in the least fear him. She only felt that curious creepy feeling that she always experienced in his presence.

As if to put her more at ease, Natachee went to bring a rustic chair from the other end of the room, saying in a matter-of-fact tone:

“I have been out taking care of your little horse. He will be comfortable for the night, I think.” He placed the chair before the fire and drew back. “Won’t you be seated? You can dry your boots so much better.”

Marta sat down and, holding her wet feet to the blaze, looked again into the ruddy flames. The Indian, standing at the other side of the room, waited, motionless as a graven image, for her to speak.

“Thank you,” she said at last.

At her words, or rather at her air of utter hopelessness, a flash of cruel satisfaction gleamed for an instant in the somber eyes of the red man.

But Marta did not see.

“It is nothing,” said the Indian and his deep voice gave no hint of the fire that had, for the instant, blazed in his dark impassive countenance. “It is a pleasure to be of any service.” And then with a smile which again the girl did not see, he added, “I was caught in the storm myself.”

Without raising her eyes Marta said wearily, as if it did not in the least matter:

“It was you who found me and brought me here?”

“I was on my way home from the cañon below when I chanced to catch a glimpse of you and your horse against the sky. Naturally I was curious to know who it was that rode in these unfrequented mountains through such a storm and at such an hour. I managed to follow you and so found your horse. Then I found you and brought you here.”

When the girl was silent he continued:

“My poor little hut is not much, I know, but it is a shelter at least, and I assure you you are as welcome as if it were the home of your dreams.”

At this the girl threw up her head with a start. Staring at him with wide questioning eyes she said wonderingly:

“The home of my dreams? What do you know of my dreams?”

Natachee bowed his head.

“I beg your pardon. My choice of words was unfortunate but unintentional, I assure you. And yet,” he finished with quiet dignity, “it would be difficult for any one to imagine a woman like you being without a dream home.”

With a shudder the girl turned back to the fire.

Again that gleam of savage pleasure flashed in the eyes of the Indian.

“But I am forgetting,” he said, “you have had nothing to eat since noon and it is now past midnight. This is a poor sort of hospitality indeed.”

As he spoke he went to the cupboard and began putting dishes and food on the table.

The girl watched him curiously--his every movement was so sure, so complete and positive. There was no show of haste and yet every motion was as quick as the movements of a deer. He gave the impression of tremendous strength and energy, yet his touch was as light as the hand of a child, and his step as noiseless as the step of that great cat, the cougar. Indeed, as he went to and fro between the table, the cupboard and the fireplace, Marta thought of a mountain lion.

“And how do you know that I have had nothing to eat since noon?” she asked presently.

Without looking up from the venison steak he was preparing, he answered:

“You went to Oracle early in the afternoon--you did not stop at the Wheeler ranch on your way back--you did not go to Saint Jimmy’s--you did not go to Hugh Edwards’--you did not go home.”

The girl’s cheeks flushed as she persisted:

“But how do you know? Have you some supernatural gift that enables you to see what people are doing no matter where you are?”

Natachee laughed.

“My gifts are only the gifts of an Indian, Miss Hillgrove; I see with the eyes of a red man, that is all.”

The girl looked again into the fire.

“I wish you did have the gift of second sight,” she said, speaking half to herself.

The Indian flashed a look at her that would have startled her had she seen it.

“Why?”

“Because,” she answered slowly, “because then perhaps you could tell me something that I want very much to know.”

The Indian, who was behind her, smiled.

“Dinner is served,” he said.

“Really I--I don’t think I can eat a thing,” she faltered, looking up at him.

“I know,” he returned gravely, “but perhaps if you try--“ he placed a chair for her and stood expectantly.

And Marta felt herself compelled to obey his unspoken will. Perhaps because of the strange effect of the Indian’s personality upon her, or perhaps because she sought relief from the pain of thoughts which she could not express, the girl encouraged the red man to talk of his life in the mountains. And Natachee, as if courteously willing to serve her purpose, followed her conversational leadings with no mention of her own life in the Cañada del Oro or of her friends. Over their simple meal, of which Marta managed to partake because she felt she must, he told her of his hunting experiences and drew from his seemingly inexhaustible store of desert and mountain lore many strange and interesting things. Nor was there, in anything that he said or in his way of speaking, the slightest hint of his Indian nature.

As they left the table, and Marta resumed her seat before the fire, she said:

“But I do not understand how a man educated as you are can be satisfied to live like--“ she hesitated.

“Like an Indian?” he finished for her.

“Well, yes.”

There was a long moment of silence before he replied with a marked change in his voice:

“I live like an Indian because I am an Indian. Because if I would I could not be anything else.”

As he spoke he came to the other side of the fireplace and seated himself on the floor and the act had for the girl the odd effect of a deliberate renunciation of the civilization which she, in her chair, seemed for the moment to personify. It was as if in answering her question he had cast off the habit of his white man’s schooling; had thrown aside mask and cloak and placed before her his true self. As he sat there, in the picturesque garb of his savage fathers, with the ruddy light of the fire playing on his bronze, impassive countenance and glinting in the somber depths of his steady eyes, the young white woman looking down upon him could detect no trace of the white man’s training.

“And yet,” she said, “this cabin--this room--does not look like any Indian’s home that I ever saw.”

He answered with the native imagery of a red man:

“The cougar that has been taught to jump through a hoop at the crack of his trainer’s whip is still a cougar. The eagle in a white man’s cage never acquires the spirit of a dove.”

“But I should think that with your education you would live among your people and teach them.”

Gazing steadfastly into the fire he answered grimly:

“And what would you have me teach my people?”

“Why, teach them what you have learned--teach them how to live.”

The Indian looked at her, and the girl saw something in his countenance that made her feel, all at once, very weak and helpless. She was embarrassed as if caught in some petty meanness. In her confusion she began to stammer an apology but the red man raised his hand.

“You, a white woman, shall hear an Indian. I, Natachee, will speak.

“It would be easier to number the drops of water that fell in the storm to-night than to tell the years of these mountains that look down upon the Cañada del Oro and the desert beyond. They have seen the ages pass as the cloud shadows that race across their foothills when the spring winds blow. Before the beginnings of what you white people call history they had watched many races of men rise to the fullness of their strength and pride, and fall as the flowers of the thistle poppies fall in the desert dust. In the time appointed the Indians came.

“From the peaks of these mountains Natachee the Indian can see far. From the place where the sun rises in the east, to the mountains behind which he goes down in the west, and from the farthest range that lies like a soft blue shadow in the north, to that line in the south where the desert and the sky become one, this land was the homeland of my Indian fathers. Since the God of all life placed us here it has been our home. What has the Indian to-day?

“Was there a place where the tall pines grew and the winter snows lingered long into the dry season to feed the streams where the wild creatures drink--‘I want those trees, they are mine,’ said the white man. And he cut them down and sold them for gold, and the naked mountains held no snows to feed the creeks; and the meadows that God made became barren wastes--lifeless. Was there a spring of water--‘It is mine,’ cried the white man, and he built a fence around it and made a law to punish any thirsty creature that might dare to drink without paying him. In this homeland of my fathers the wild life was as the grass on the mesas. The Indian took what he needed. It was here for all. The white man saw the antelopes in the foothills, the deer on the mountain slopes, the bear in the cañon, the sheep among the peaks, and he shouted: ‘They are mine--all mine.’ And every man in his white madness, for fear some brother would destroy one more wild thing than he himself could count among his spoils, killed and killed and killed; and only the buzzards profited by the slaughter. But I, Natachee, an Indian, here in this homeland of my fathers, because I dared to kill the deer from which we had our meat this evening, am a violator of the white man’s laws, and subject to the white man’s punishment.

“You tell me that I should teach my people how to live? By that you mean that I should teach them the ways of the white people? Is it the duty of one who has been robbed of all that was his to accept the thief as his schoolmaster and spiritual guide? Would you say that one who had been tricked and cheated out of his birthright must adopt the principles and customs of the trickster? Could you expect one who had been humiliated and shamed and broken to set up the author of his degradation as his ideal and pattern?

“The schools of the white people taught me nothing that would cause the white people to permit me ever to make a place for myself among them as their equal. No education can ever, in the eyes of the white man, make a white man of an Indian. All kinds of animals are educated for the circus ring, and the show bench, and the vaudeville stage. If they prove clever enough you applaud them. You reward them for amusing you. You educate the Indian. If he be clever enough you give him a place in your social circus so long as he amuses you. But do you permit him to become one of you in your homes, your professions, your law-making, your business--no--he is no more one of you than the performing bear is one of you. Do you think that I, Natachee, do not know these things? Do you think my people do not know that, when one of their boys is put in the white man’s schools, he grows up to be something that is neither a white man nor an Indian? It is because they do know, that they look upon me, Natachee, as an outcast of the tribe. Would the outcast, without place or people in the world, teach others the things that made him an outcast?

“The only thing that an Indian can teach an Indian is to die. In the day of their strength and pride my fathers in these mountains saw the smoke from the first camp fire made by a white man in the Cañada del Oro. It was a signal smoke--but no Indian then could read its meaning. We know now that it meant the time had come when the Indians, too, must go into the shadows, even as the many races that had passed before them. But my people shall not be unavenged--as the red man is going, the white man too shall go.

“The strength of the Indian was the red strength of the mountains and deserts and forests and streams. The Indian is dying because the white man stole his red strength and turned it into a white man’s strength, which is yellow gold. But the white man’s yellow strength is his weakness. In the golden flower of his greatness are the seeds of his decay. For gold, your people destroy the forests--tear down the mountains--dry up or poison the streams--lay waste the grass lands and bring death to all life. For gold they would rob, degrade, enslave and kill every race that is not of white blood. For gold they rob, degrade, enslave and kill their own white brothers. Even the natural mating love of their men and women they have made into a thing to buy and sell for gold. In this lust for gold their children are begotten, and born to live for gold, and of gold to perish. The very diseases that rot the white man’s bones, wither his flesh, dim his eyes and turn his blood to water are diseases which he buys with his gold. And the only heaven that his religious teachers can conceive for his celestial happiness is a place where he may forever wear a crown of gold, make music upon a harp of gold, and walk upon streets of gold. It was this gold, which is both the white man’s strength and his weakness, that brought your race like a pestilence upon my people. By this same gold for which the Indian peoples have been destroyed shall the Indians be revenged; for by this gold shall the destroyers themselves, in their turn, be destroyed.

“There is nothing left for the Indian but to die. I, Natachee, have spoken.”

At his closing words Marta Hillgrove caught her breath sharply.

“Nothing left but to die? And you--have you never dreamed of--“ she could not speak her thought.

Again that quick light of savage pleasure flashed across the dark face of the red man.

“An Indian has no right to dream of love,” he answered, “for love to an Indian means children. Why should an Indian wish to have children?”

When the girl hid her face in her hands, he continued with cruel purpose:

“Is it so hard for Marta Hillgrove to understand that there might be circumstances under which it would become a duty to deny one’s self the happiness of loving? If it is there are two men who could, I am sure, make it clear to her.”

For some time the Indian sat watching the white woman as one of his ancestors might have watched an enemy undergoing the agony of torture. Then rising he said:

“Come, it is time that you were taking your rest. You have nearly reached the limit of your endurance. You will sleep there on the couch. I shall be within call. In the morning I will take you home.”

He threw more wood upon the fire and turned to leave the room.

“You are very kind,” said the girl, “but I cannot go home.”

Natachee faced her and she saw the savage triumph that for the moment burned through the mask of stolid indifference which he habitually wore.

“Kind?” he said with cruel insolence. “Kind! And why should I, Natachee, an Indian, be kind to you, a white woman? Make no mistake, Miss Hillgrove, if I do not to-night treat you as my fathers treated the women of their enemies, it is not because I am kind. It is only because it will afford me a more enduring and keener pleasure to return you to your friends down there in the Cañon of Gold.”

The girl, cowering in her chair, heard no sound when the Indian left the room.

When morning came and Natachee again appeared he was his usual stolid, courteous self. But Marta knew now what fires of bitter hatred smoldered beneath the red man’s calm exterior. He made no reference to her statement that she could not go home, nor did the girl dare to repeat what she had said. She felt that she was powerless to do other than resign herself to the will of the Indian who seemed to find a cruel satisfaction in returning her to Saint Jimmy and Hugh Edwards.

When they had eaten breakfast, Natachee brought her horse.

The cañon creek below was still a roaring torrent, impossible to cross, but the red man led her by ways known only to himself around the head of the cañon and so at last to Saint Jimmy and Mother Burton.

For the next two or three weeks Marta avoided Hugh Edwards. She saw him frequently at a distance, and when he came to spend an evening hour on the porch, but she did not go to his cabin alone and always managed that her fathers were present when she talked with him in her own home. Edwards accepted the situation understandingly, and said no word, but worked harder than ever. Neither did she spend much time with Saint Jimmy, though she went nearly every day to see Mother Burton. The girl was very gentle with the two old prospectors and with tender thoughtfulness sought to make them feel that she was their partnership girl exactly as she had been ever since she could remember. But she would not go to Oracle, so either Bob or Thad was forced to go to the store whenever it was necessary for some one to bring supplies.

Doctor Burton blamed himself bitterly for the whole affair, but the Pardners insisted that the fault was theirs.

“You can see yourself, sir,” said Bob, “that if we’d raised the gal up knowin’ all the time what she had to know some day, it couldn’t never a-struck her like this.”

And Thad added:

“The God almighty truth is that me an’ my pardner was jest too darned anxious to shirk what was plain enough our duty, and so shifted the responsibility on to you. It was a mean, low-down trick an’ no way fair to you, an’ you jest got to see it that way. We know how you feel about not tellin’ her ’cause we’re feelin’ that way a heap ourselves, but it ain’t addin’ none to our comfort to have you tryin’ to shoulder the blame what belongs to us.”

The two old men were so miserable that Saint Jimmy’s sympathy for them lessened somewhat his own suffering, and the three agreed that the only thing they could do was, as Bob said, “to blame everybody in general and nobody in perticler and make it up to the girl the best they could.”

Then came that eventful day when Sheriff Jim Burks and two of his deputies rode into the Cañada del Oro.