Published May, 1910
To
MY FATHER AND MOTHER
WHOSE YOUNG HEARTS HAVE PRESERVED THE IDEALS OF
OLD-FASHIONED ROMANCE THROUGH FIFTY-THREE YEARS OF
WEDDED LIFE, THIS STORY IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED BY
THE AUTHOR
April 12th, 1910
THE SILENT CALL
CHAPTER I
Not even snow is as white as these great masses of congealed foam floating in a deep blue sky, six thousand feet above the sea, and yet somewhere out of this deep cool infinity flamed a sun that searched the mesa until it blistered and cracked. The alkali plain quivered and burst into spirals of heat that were visible to the eye. A cloud of dust hung like white smoke above the fiery trail over which a band of Indian police was slowly and painfully crawling. This dust is very penetrating and very irritating. The reins hung limp on the ponies' necks and their heads swung low as though they looked for a place to sink down.
As far as the eye could see you would have known that they were Indians. The uniform furnished them by the government is a dark purplish blue with a red piping down the trousers. It's a plain affair, but each Indian wears it with a difference and adds a decorative touch that is his own, and that is always pictorial and Indian. One had encircled his broad-brimmed black hat with a wide purple ribbon, lapped by a narrow pink ribbon. A yellow neckerchief rested on his green silk shirt, and about his waist was a sash braided of many colored worsteds, and, strange to say, the result was pleasing if rather brilliant. Another had a pink feather apparently plucked from the tail of the domestic duster tied loosely to his hat, which lent to the changing airs a graceful note of color. Some wore cowboy boots, yellow and elaborately stitched in fancy designs; others adhered to the ever beautiful moccasins. Most of them wore brown or drab cowboy hats, but made them their own by beautifully beaded hat-bands. Here and there gleamed gauntlets heavy with a stiff beaded deer which seemed trying to jump away from the cuffs, but couldn't because it was so obviously and eternally stiff and beaded. Some had beaded sleeve bands and all sported guns hung in holsters elaborately outlined in brass. No one wore a coat except a tall elderly man with glasses who, in spite of the torture, felt that his out-of-date captain's uniform enhanced his straight unbending dignity.