The High Calling/Chapter 12

THE penetrating light of the desert came into the east opening of the Council Hogan at Tolchaco, and bathed in its enveloping flood the strip of sand that lay in the opening, up to a white and black Navajo rug on which was lying a quiet figure over which had been thrown a bright coloured Mexican serape.

An old Indian was sitting outside the hogan close by the entrance, and within an arm's length just inside sat a white man gravely watching the recumbent figure on the rug.

Across the figure on the rug, opposite the white man, sat a young woman, also quietly and gravely watching.

Outside, the 'dobe flats stretched brown and bare until they melted into the confused and fantastic rock piles of twisted and pictured desert stone. In the other direction an irregular streak of light green trailed along, marking the winding of the river bound by twisted cottonwoods and vivid patches of corn fields. Through the shimmer of the heat far off, fifty miles distant, were flung up against a turquoise sky the peaks of the San Francisco mountains, across the front of which a trailing cloud had begun to form. On a slightly rising ledge of rock stood the mission buildings, and through the clear still air, children's voices came floating down to the hogan, where the white man and the young woman were silently watching. A group of Navajos was gathered at the trader's store, some little distance away, their faces turned in the direction of the hogan, their ponies standing near by or tethered to the cottonwood, by the river.

Suddenly the figure on the rug stirred, its right arm rose slowly and the hand made an effort to touch the fringe of the serape.

The white man stooped forward, gently took the hand and held it a moment in his own. As he laid it down, he smiled at the other watcher and said:

"I believe he's coming on all right. The Father is good to him."

The young woman put her hands over her face and her fingers were trembling. A tear was on her cheek when she took her hands away and clasped them over her knees. Then she rose and went out of the eastern doorway, when she stood a moment, her clear gaze resting on the old Indian sitting there with his back against the hogan. He raised his head and asked her a question.

"Yes, the Father is good. He will live, Mr. Clifford says."

She went back into the hogan and to her surprise the figure on the rug was sitting up. It was Bauer, and he was saying in his slow, deliberate fashion:

"I'm not certain, I seem to be confused, but this is Tolchaco, isn't it? When did I arrive? I don't seem to remember well."

"You arrived rather unexpectedly yesterday," said Clifford, with a smile that had a good day's nursing in it. "In fact, you arrived in a hurry. Don't talk. You don't have to."

"My head," said Bauer, and he laid down again.

"That's right, son. We prescribe perfect quiet for you. You don't need even to ask a question. There will be time enough."

And so Bauer found out as the desert days slipped by and he slowly and surely drank in health and strength. He would lie there in perfect contentment, each day noting a little more of life. The nights were splendid with God's own peace. The friends would place his cot near the opening of the hogan and from where he lay he could see the stars come out and blaze all up the half dome of the visible sky, Peshlekietsetti, the old silver smith, who had been near the door the first morning after the accident on the river, would come and sit down inside the hogan to relieve the other watchers. And even after there was no particular need of special nursing, the old man would come and gravely, without attempt to speak, sit there by him, occasionally working at some bit of silver ornament. Groups of the children from the mission would come and stand at the hogan opening, and often come by twos or threes sent by Mr. Clifford with some token which they left on the sand and then shyly ran back to the mission. The doctor at Flagstaff had been over and he had pronounced Bauer's case to be entirely susceptible to climate, diet and time. And Bauer, who had heard him talking with Clifford, from that moment made wonderful progress, and to Clifford's delight was soon able to walk about, and even go as far as the river, where he would sit down on the fallen trunk of an old cottonwood and watch the Navajos on the other side cultivate their corn and melon patches.

He was sitting there one afternoon watching the thick waters trickling by and wondering how such an insignificant and shallow stream could overturn a heavy wagon and two horses, when the man called Clifford, who had been mending a harness at a bench under a tree near by, came and sat down by him, bringing a part of his work from the bench.

"I have a lot of questions I want to ask," said Bauer, watching the Mission worker as he sewed on a buckle.

"All right. But before you begin might as well say to you I was born in Vermont."

"Born in Vermont?"

"Yes, ever hear of it?"

"Yes," said Bauer slowly. "But what has that to do with my asking questions?"

"You'll see when you begin."

Bauer smiled at the other's irresistible grin. He had already made up his mind to like Clifford tremendously.

"Well, then, I want to know, first, who saved my life when I was drowning?"

"Why don't you ask Miss Gray?"

"I will, if you can't tell me."

Clifford chuckled softly.

"I don't know why I shouldn't tell you. But do you feel strong enough to stand a good sized shock?"

"It takes a good deal to shock me," said Bauer gravely, his mind recurring to his father.

"Of course we haven't encouraged your talking much up to this time, and you don't strike me as a very rapid fire speaker, not exactly what is called garrulous, you know. We've been wondering whether you would care to hear about your little upset in there."

Bauer coloured a little. "I feel somewhat ashamed to think I haven't asked before--But--"

"Yes, we know. Perfectly. You don't need to say anything. But you feel pretty strong now, don't you?"

"Yes," said Bauer patiently. "I feel strong enough to know a good many things about this wonderful place."

"'Tis wonderful, isn't it?" said Clifford, laying his work down on the log and pointing at the river. "That old stream is one of the queerest productions God ever made. I'm not criticising it, or saying I could have done any better. But one day it rares up big enough to drown a pair of hippopotamuses and the next day a child can dam it up with a piece of mud, and the dust blows out of the channel so bad that it needs a sprinkler to settle it. That's the Little Colorado. It will bear watching."

Clifford picked up his work and seemed to be waiting for Bauer to repeat his question, but that was not Bauer's way, and Clifford, after glancing at him sharply, laughed and said:

"You can thank Miss Gray for pulling you out of the river."

"Miss Gray?"

"Yes. We sort of suspicioned that Tracker, that's the teamster you came up with from Hardy, would try the ford and we went up there that day to tell him not to go in because a part of the ford ledge had broken off and we feared he hadn't heard of it. Well, we were too late. You had driven down the bank and were half way across before we sighted you. Miss Gray was in the water before you upset. She knew it was bound to come. I got tangled up with the horses and Tracker--"

"Wait!" said Bauer with more emotion than he could control, "do you mean to say that Miss Gray and you swam out to us while we were being rolled over--"

"Well, what would you do? I was occupied, as I said, with Tracker and the horses, and half the time I couldn't tell 'em apart. But I saw Miss Gray grab you by the hair and then she--you'll forgive her for it, I hope--she struck you with her fist right in the face."

Bauer looked bewildered. "What did she do that for?"

"I thought maybe you would want to know. I would. Well, how could she save you when your arms were thrashing around like a windmill and you were liable to grab her arms and drown her and you, too. So she had to strike you. I know she is waiting till you get a little stronger so she can apologise."

"Apologise," murmured Bauer.

"Yes. It wasn't a ladylike thing to do in polite society. But there wasn't time to ask your permission or tell you why it was necessary. Well, after that little incident, Tracker and the horses and I got so mixed up with each other that we haven't hardly got untangled since. There was one time there when I wasn't quite certain whether I was a horse or a wagon wheel. We drifted down here and it just seemed providential and saved a lot of carrying when we finally got out right here."

Clifford pointed to a spot down the stream a short ways from where they were sitting.

"We saved the horses, cut the harness to bits off of 'em, but the wagon went down and got sucked into the Black Bear quicksands and you can see one of the wheels. See! over there."

Clifford stood up and Bauer in his excitement got up on the log to see better. Far down the channel near the opposite bank, one wheel of the teamster's wagon showed a little, the rest of the vehicle buried in the treacherous sands.

"You and Miss Gray came ashore up above. Right there." Clifford pointed to a great root of a tree that swayed out from an old stump six feet above the channel. It protruded from the bank like some fantastic sprawling arm.

"She grabbed that old root as you went whirling down and I guess it was about time. We had quite a time pumping the water out of her and for one while,--but it's lucky you have a good head of hair and that you hadn't been to a barber lately. Miss Gray got a regular grip on it. We had quite a time separating her fingers from your locks. You see, I'm telling you because I thought maybe she might be a little timid about the details. If she has to apologise for hitting you in the face, it would be too bad to have to go on and ask to be excused for pulling your hair."

"Pulling my hair," murmured Bauer, in astonishment.

"Yes," said Clifford, winking one eye. "Pulling it as if she wanted a lock to remember you by. But that's nothing. You ought to see Miss Gray pull two Hopis out of the river one day last winter. That was just above the Black Falls. A Hopi can't swim any more than a sailor. But they never cut their hair, so it's just made for rescue work. You're the fifth person Miss Gray has pulled out of this so-called stream. She's entitled to that many Carnegie medals, but no one knows about it down east and our daily papers here at Tolchaco never mention such common events as rescue from drowning. That isn't news."

Bauer was silent for several minutes as Clifford resumed his work. He had been obliged to thread a needle and in the process had put the end of the thread in his mouth.

"You don't mind if I ask more questions? It's all so remarkable here and all that's happened. I would like--"

"Don't hesitate. It is one of the rules of the Mission here never to get offended, no matter what anyone says. You couldn't hurt our feelings if you tried."

"And I don't want to try. I don't know how I'm going to express my thanks for all you have done, and especially to Miss Gray."

"That is a kind of difficult place, isn't it? Now I was never rescued by anyone; and I don't know just what I would say. 'Thank you' sounds kind of tame. Perhaps you could throw it into German and make it sound better."

Bauer looked embarrassed and Clifford at once hastened to say.

"Don't worry over a little matter like that. You don't need to say anything about it. Miss Gray will say she was only too glad to do it, no trouble at all, don't think of such a thing, etc. You know how the ladies talk. If you go to say anything about it that's what she will say, ten to one. You needn't be afraid she'll ask you to marry her or anything like that."

Bauer blushed furiously and Clifford laughed so heartily that Bauer could not help joining him, although he had never met anyone like Clifford and did not exactly understand him.

"Tell me about yourself, Mr. Clifford. I'm not a native of Vermont but I am curious and I've been wondering as I lay in the hogan what your position here was, if you will pardon me?"

"Pardon you?" said Clifford cheerfully, as he proceeded to punch holes in a tug. "There's nothing I like to talk about so much as myself. You couldn't hit on a more interesting topic of conversation for me. Well, I'm a general all around missionary at large and handy man. One day I shoe the horses and next day I help Mr. Masters translate the Bible into Navajo. Next day I dig a well and day after that I help old Touchiniteel build a house. Then I send word to the President of the U. S. to let him know that the cattle men at Flagstaff are trespassing on our rights at Canyon Diablo and next day I'm medicine man for some poor devil that has tumbled over the twisted falls at Neota. I teach school while Mr. and Mrs. Masters are gone right now over to Tuba at the convention. And when there isn't anything else to do, I help Miss Gray rescue people from that old mud hole. Being a missionary is no end of fun. It's a wonder to me how most people get any fun out of life unless they are missionaries."

"And the elderly woman who wears glasses is your sister. She has been so kind to me. I can never repay her."

"Don't try. Yes, Hannah and I have been here at Tolchaco a long time. We have had the fun of our lives here. She does about everything in the house from washing the dishes to converting the heathen. She works for nothing and throws in her time."

"And--and Miss Gray?"

"I thought maybe you might enquire about her, after awhile. Well, Miss Gray is one of the salt of the earth. She's a whole salt mine. She's not been here long, but she's got 'em all going,--Indians, cowboys, traders, gamblers, missionaries, teamsters, everybody. Everybody is in love with her. I've asked her to marry me several times, that is, I've only asked her to marry me once, several times, and I get the same answer every time. She's a graduate of Mt. Holyoke and used to be physical director of the girl's school at Peekskill. That's where she learned to swim and rescue people. She knows several languages and can talk Navajo better than Peshlekietsetti. And she is the friend of every Indian, Navajo or Hopi, between Sunshine and Castle Butte. And she is not proud a little bit. And cheerful? Well, she is just as cheerful every time she says no to me as if it was the first time. And she can sing--you've heard her Sunday nights. She can sing a rattlesnake out of its skin. Well, there is a lot more, but I consider that much a pretty good introduction. If I had one like it, I'd feel as if the press notices had the performance distanced a mile."

Bauer stared at Clifford, hardly knowing how to take all he said. The German mind was not acclimated to this special kind of humour. But Clifford was so absolutely frank, and happy, so free from any hint of heartbreak or trouble, that the more Bauer listened to him the more he liked him and the more fascinated he became with his peculiar surroundings. He had never known any real Christian people except the Douglas family, and the spectacle of the genuine self sacrifice, the bearing of daily discomfort and pain and wrong, with such cheerfulness and even hilarity, moved him with a feeling of astonishment.

Clifford's description of Miss Gray filled Bauer with wonder that a young woman of such character and attainments was willing to go to such a place and give her life to the seemingly impossible task of Christianising a lot of dirty, superstitious, lazy Indians. That was his definition of her task and of the people whom she had come to serve. But he had not yet learned even the first short lesson of the attractiveness of the missionary call. And he had not even a glimmer of the great fact that the history of missions in every age reveals the beautiful fact that some of earth's choicest spirits have considered missionary work as the most honourable and honouring work in the world, and that no grace or strength of mind or body is too great to pour it all out unstintedly on just such dirty, unattractive beings as Indians. Bauer was destined to begin by pitying a mistake which such a young woman as Miss Gray was making, and end by envying her the place which she had made for herself in the hearts of these neglected people.

He was silent during a period while Clifford was busy with some part of his harness demanding his attention, then Clifford said, after whistling a bar of "Anywhere with Jesus I can safely go":

"Any more of our folks you want ante mortem epitaphs of?"

"Mr. and Mrs. Masters. Of course I've not seen them. I've heard Mr. and Mrs. Douglas speak of them. It was through Mr. Douglas, you know, that I came out here."

"Yes, the Douglases are good friends of the mission. Mr. Douglas sends us two hundred dollars a year and sometimes as high as four hundred and twenty. Wish he'd come out here and bring his family. Hasn't he got a daughter by the name of Helen?"

"Yes," said Bauer. And try as hard as he would he could not conceal his embarrassment.

"Do you know her? Is she a nice girl?"

"Yes," said Bauer, again blushing deeply. And then he hastened to say, quickly for him:

"You were going to tell me about Mr. and Mrs. Masters?"

"Oh, was I? Well, they're the salt of the earth, too. They don't count any cost and the harder the work, the better it seems to suit. Mr. Masters can live on eighteen dollars a month and board himself. There isn't anything he can't do, from making a windmill out of a bushel of old tin cans to preaching seven times on Sunday. And Mrs. Masters is a prize winner for making trouble feel ashamed of itself. She never complains about anything. One week last summer we had eight days of continuous wind. You never saw a desert wind, did you? Or taste one? Well, you have one of the times of your life coming to you. The sand cavorts around like spring lamb and peas. You can't shut it out of a hardboiled egg. It drifts into the house and covers the dishes and the beds and the books and the chairs and the floors and does the work of blotting paper while you're writing letters to the Agricultural Department in Washington asking them to irrigate the Little Colorado so we can raise garden truck in the channel between the rainy seasons. At the dinner table the custard pie looks as if it was dusted with pulverised sugar and you eat so much sand that you begin to feel the need of a gizzard like a hen. It fills your pockets, and at night you can shake a pint out of each ear, if your ears are big enough. It drifts up on the porch like snow and sifts through a pane of glass like a sieve.

"Well, all through that eight-day week, Mrs. Masters was so cheerful it was actually depressing. She couldn't have looked more cheerful if she had been going over to Flagstaff to sit for her photograph on her birthday. The rest of us just groaned and bore it. We lost our temper with one another and never found it again till the wind quit. We were ornery and fractious. We just couldn't help it. But Mrs. Masters went around the house nursing the baby and a toothache and singing so loud you could hear her way out to the graveyard:

"'The sands of Time are sinking,   The dawn of heaven breaks,    The summer morn I've sighed for,    The fair sweet morn awakes.'

"My! I used to think to myself if the man that wrote that hymn knew how the sands of Tolchaco were sinking into our hair and spirits, he'd a written another verse, to cheer us on our sandy way. But any woman that can keep up her spirits during a desert sand storm is more than a half sister to a cherubim. I don't want to know anyone better than that. It would scare me to be in the same room alone with him."

"I'm sure I shall like them both," said Bauer. "It seems to me that all the people here at this mission are pretty near the angels."

"Well, some of us are a little lower, I guess. But we do have some jolly times and no mistake. Barring the heat and the sand and the floods and the drinking water and the wind and the canned goods and the absence of pasture and the high price of hay and the lack of shade and a few other little things, Tolchaco is a great resort all the year around for people that aren't too particular about trifles.

"But you've pumped me dry about us; mind if I ask a few questions about you?"

"No," said Bauer with a smile. "There isn't much for me to tell."

"I take it you're a German to start with?" said Clifford gravely, but he managed in some remarkable manner to work and whistle at the same time he spoke.

"Yes."

"You won't have much use for the language out here, except Miss Gray uses it if she wants to. She's reading a book right now in German, written by a Mr. Goethe. If I had a name like that, I'd have it broken up and set again in a new frame. Mr. Douglas in his letter about you said you were an inventor by trade. But he didn't go into particulars. What can you invent?"

Bauer started to tell Clifford about his incubator. Clifford grew so interested that he dropped his work and came over on the log by Bauer to listen. He was just eagerly beginning to ask a number of questions when he looked up and exclaimed,

"There's that old white face broke his hobbles again and he's heading for the corn patch. I'll have to head him off."

He started towards the unshackled offender, and Bauer was amused to see the animal, the moment it caught sight of its keeper kick up its heels and make a dash for the 'dobe flats into which it madly galloped, Clifford disappearing in its wake, enveloped in a cloud of dust.

The afternoon sun was pleasantly flecked as it sifted down through the cottonwoods on Bauer, and he sat there going over his talk with Clifford and smiling once in awhile in his own fashion as he recalled a sentence here and there. It was pleasant to be with friends, to feel the strength coming back, to note the response of his lungs to the full drawn breath. He had not had a hemorrhage since reaching Tolchaco. And in spite of his submersion in the river he had suffered almost no pain. He began to construct some kind of a future, and wonder what he could do while at the mission to help in any way. He was paying for his board, and by the plan arranged between Douglas and Masters they were to provide medical help or nursing if necessary. But Bauer had surprised everyone by his wonderful response to nature's help and it looked now very much as if in less than six months he would be on the road to full recovery. It was now the last of June and the desert heat was pulsing over all the strange land, but Bauer was drinking in health and beginning to yield to the glamour of the place.

"Guide me, Oh, Thou Great Jehovah, Pilgrim through this desert land"--a voice soared up close by, ringing down past Bauer, and he looked up towards the Mission.

Down the slight elevation came a young woman with a group of children following. As they came down near where he sat, Bauer saw it was Miss Gray and half a dozen of her charges who had been left in her care while Miss Clifford and one of the housemaids had driven over to the Canyon to see a sick woman.

She came and sat down on the sand at the side of the old log and said in a perfectly simple and friendly manner, free from all hint of embarrassment:

"I saw you were all alone here, Mr. Bauer, and came down to see if there was anything you needed. If you want to be alone, I'll go away."

"Why, no, I don't need anything, and I don't want you to go away, at least not until I have tried to tell you what is not easy to say, what a wonderful thing that you--that you actually saved my life from that treacherous stream!"

"Oh, I was only too glad to do it, it wasn't any trouble at all, don't think of such a thing," the young woman tried to speak lightly, thinking she detected a note of unnecessary shyness in the German youth.

To her surprise Bauer burst out laughing.

"I beg pardon, Miss Gray, but that is just what Mr. Clifford said you would say if I tried to thank you, and I couldn't help laughing, it sounded so strange."

"What else did Mr. Clifford say?" asked the lifesaver, looking up quickly at Bauer.

Bauer was so taken back he couldn't reply. Miss Gray laughed, the most jolly, contagious laugh Bauer had ever heard.

"Never mind. But isn't Mr. Clifford a character? He's one of the rarest fellows you ever saw. The most self sacrificing and self forgetful man I ever knew. And the bravest. I wish you could have seen him in that tangle with Tracker and the horses. I never expected he would get out alive. Did he tell you about it?"

"He told me about you. How you--"

"Had to strike you in the face? It seems dreadful, doesn't it? But I had to or you would have drowned both of us. You'll forgive that, won't you?"

"Forgive?" murmured Bauer.

"Because you see the Little Colorado is one of the most treacherous streams in the world. It's full of sink holes and they make eddies and whirlpools and when it's in flood as that day, it's carrying down all sorts of drift stuff and you are liable to get hit and pulled down. Well, Mr. Clifford went clear under twice, carried down by getting caught between the fork branch of an old water log. All the time he was pulling at Tracker and cutting away with his knife at the harness. If he hadn't cut the harness just in time, I couldn't have got you out, for you were caught around the feet with the lines. I suppose you got tangled in them when you fell over. We had a serious time getting Mr. Clifford back to consciousness. So if you are going to thank anyone it is Mr. Clifford who deserves most of it. I simply towed you to the bank after he had cut you loose."

"Then I owe my life to both of you. That makes you doubly my friends. You do not know how much it means to me."

"Consider everything said," interrupted Miss Gray with a cheery tone, "and of course you will excuse me for pulling your hair?"

"Pulling my hair," murmured Bauer.

"It couldn't be helped. Say no more. Oh, I want to tell you how lucky you are a German. I run across some hard places in Goethe's Hermann und Dorothea. Will you help me out with the translation?"

"Indeed I will, Miss Gray."

"You will have to do it in payment for saving you," she said lightly. And then with a change of manner--"How little we know the real value of life. Of any life. Now, that little girl Ansa. Come, Ansa, come here a minute."

Ansa, a six year old, came at once and stood by Miss Gray, looking up at her out of the blackest eyes. The American turned the little Indian face towards Bauer. "Look!" she said passionately. "Look at one of my beloved ones! Is she not entitled to a full womanhood redeemed and developed by Christ? Has any living being a right to deny her that boon? Can America call itself Christian and go on refusing the water of life to these lost lambs of the desert?"

She seemed to forget Bauer's presence as she swept her arms about the child and enveloped it in a comprehensive enfolding of salvation as if by that act she would compel life abundantly for a soul that otherwise would never know it. Bauer had never seen anything like it and he was almost bewildered by it. He could not accustom himself to the sight of this talented, educated, cultured young woman giving her life to the hard, uncouth, repulsive surroundings. There were whole volumes of life that Felix Bauer had never opened, to say nothing of whole volumes he had never known to be in existence.

After a short silence, Miss Gray said softly, "You know the Douglas family? They are great friends of us here at the mission. We want them to come out here some time. Do you know Helen Douglas? She and I were together one year at Manitou. She is a lovely girl."

"Yes," said Bauer. At that moment a call came from the mission house for Miss Gray and she rose to go.

"Don't forget the Goethe when you're strong enough. Isn't it fine you're getting well so fast?"

She nodded a good-bye to him and left him to dwell over their little talk, but most of all he recurred again and again to the sight of her with her arms about the child, kneeling on the sand and looking off to the east, to that far east that might, if it would, with its opulence, save life, instead of waste it.

Mr. and Mrs. Masters came back from Tuba two days after and Bauer found them all that Clifford had said. Never in all his life had the lonely student been so petted and surrounded by friendship. He grew strong with amazing rapidity. Clifford joked him about his appetite and Masters threatened to raise his board bill.

One evening as Clifford and Peshlekietsetti were sitting by the hogan and Bauer was between them, Masters came down from the Mission waving a letter.

"Listen to this! Douglas and his wife, daughter and oldest son are coming to pay us a visit first of August. Isn't that jolly! We'll plan a trip to Oraibi. It's their turn for the snake dance. I haven't seen Douglas since we graduated from Phillips Andover. It's fine!"

Bauer was excited over the prospect.

"When will they be here?"

"First of August. In about three weeks now. We'll all go together. You'll be strong enough by that time. Mrs. Masters needs a little vacation. We'll leave someone in charge here and go and play a little."

Masters was as pleased as a child. Later on, after the papers had come in from Flagstaff, he announced that there were two parties from New York and one from Pittsburgh, going to cross up to Oraibi to see the snake dance from Canyon Diablo. "The Van Shaws are listed. You remember, Miss Gray. Old friends of yours, aren't they?"

Miss Gray looked annoyed. The first time Bauer had ever seen such a look on her face. She answered, however, cheerfully enough, "The Van Shaws are relatives of mother's." Masters did not ask anything more and Bauer did not dwell on the incident. That night he lay watching the stars through the hogan door. Life was meaning so much to him now. But could he bear to see too much of Helen Douglas in this desert land? He was troubled over the question and its unsettled answer.