The Silent Call

by Edwin Milton Royle

And the poker players and Roach lurched out into the night fairly on their way to forgetfulness.

McShay followed them to the door and watched their receding figures. When it was safe, he shut the door, and the rough men left in the Palace Saloon could be seen hugging each other, giving each other huge slaps on the back, and rolling around on the bar, the tables, and the floor with wild guffaws and paroxysms.

When the enthusiasm had spent itself McShay lifted his glass, the first he had poured for himself that night, and said: "Well, boys; here's hoping you may like your new job over on the Red Butte Ranch."

CHAPTER XI

When the asphalt conference broke up with the spectacular departure of Hal and Bill, no one gave a thought to the little Indian woman. Almost before the two horsemen were engulfed in their own dust she was in action, without conscious plans or purposes, but also without hesitation. Perhaps she was stirred by vague premonitions, but of this too she was unconscious. She knew that the man she loved was riding away, riding away into danger, and to follow was inevitable. It was an instinct she could not resist, which she did not try to resist or even understand. Behind Cadger's store were hitched the horses of the police. She took the first one she came to. It happened to belong to Charlie Chavanaugh. Chavanaugh was a sport, a lover of horse-flesh, and before she had gone far she knew that she had picked a good horse, in fact his pet racer. She knew how to ride. It was her favorite dissipation, and in the first mad exhilaration she and the fine animal came to a complete understanding. She knew all the crosscuts, cutoffs, and trails. She did not follow directly, but took to the open, over sage-brush and hillock. It was hurdle-racing, only more dangerous, with hidden pitfalls of gopher holes and prairie-dogs' homes. She knew the Knife-edge and took it as a matter of course. It never occurred to her to think what she would do when she got to the ranch, or her possible connection with what might happen there. The ranch was his objective! Therefore it was hers. She seemed to be two persons, the one riding a horse over difficult and dangerous ground, picking, choosing, active, alert; the other free from the limitations of the flesh, absorbed in her own thoughts, thoughts always of him, going over their acquaintance from the beginning, trying to find herself and him, and what it meant and was to mean. When the young chief of police had bundled her out of the sun-dance, she was not conscious so much of his protection or the need of it as of a wonderful glow and thrill. Something that made existence new and strange and divine. That he liked her in return she had known for a long time. There was no mistaking his look. And yet why had he never spoken? There was only one reason—he was a white man and she was an Indian. And that made her draw herself away cold and proud. She did not suppose it was because she was poor. She had the Indian's metaphysical contempt for the material, and she felt that this white man was superior to the failings of his race. No; this man was not absorbed in getting things, in taking them from others and keeping them from others. He could stop to dream and to wonder. No; it was not because she was poor. It was because she was Indian. She knew all the phases of the white man's sense of race superiority. That would account for everything. Then came the revelation that Nat-u-ritch was his mother. That explained many things, but not everything. She knew at last that he did not hate his mother's people. Indeed, this understanding seemed to set them apart from others and then bring them together in a way neither had known before. Still there was something. What was it? She went over the possible rivals. There was the pretty little teacher, Miss Olmstead. She was effective in a pale, blond indefiniteness, but she was a teacher from necessity, not from choice, and uncongenial routine had left her diluted. That Miss Olmstead had cast longing eyes in the direction of the chief of police was obvious, but even jealousy could not suggest that this interest had been returned. Why was he silent? Why was the shadow of restraint over all their intercourse? This eddied in endless circles and always came back as it started, unanswered.

When she got close to the ranch it occurred to her for the first time that Hal might be displeased that she had followed him, so, while he and Bill were busy with Curley, she had slipped by them into the cow-sheds, from there crept into the stable and up into the loft. Fortunately for Hal he had no suspicion that she was the witness of his trial and execution. Fortunately the knowledge of her sufferings was not added to his own. As for her, she was on the rack and acutely conscious. Nothing escaped her. Every twist and turn of the wheel brought a new pang, an added element of torture. It was the sublimation of cruelty brought to a white heat. She saw it in detail and the end from the beginning. She had a quick and complete sense of the frightened, savage, covetousness of these lawless men. She saw, too, that she was powerless to stop or prevent the murder of the man she loved. She would have tried the impossible, but she was paralyzed with the obvious futility of every wild expedient that rushed through her brain, and while she groped for something else, something sane, the crime went relentlessly on to its certain and ghastly end. Then she tried to shut her eyes and pray, but her eyes refused to close. She prayed wide-eyed, prayed first as an Indian, to the bear to give him strength, to the wolf to give him cunning, to the eagle to give him freedom, to the sun, to Shinob. Then she remembered that she had passed beyond all that, and she called upon God, John McCloud's God. Who shall say that God, the god of the bear, of the Indian, and of John McCloud did not hear her? But to her He did not seem to care. Perhaps it was because she had not shut her eyes. The white people shut their eyes in prayer. She closed hers for a terrible moment, and as she did so she heard the rope creak and groan as the body of her man shot up into the air. When she opened them it was to glare at the awful thing in cold and empty horror. She could not even cry out. She staggered to her feet with an impulse to throw herself from the loft. Something hard in the buckskin pouch struck her sharply as it swung. Then she found it in her hand. She didn't know how to shoot, had not been taught, but something happened. She saw a flash near her hand; her right hand. She felt weak and faint. With the left hand she steadied herself against the adobe wall. Something cut her hand. It was a scythe. If she smote the rope she did not remember it. She only remembered gazing into the beloved face distorted in the agony of a horrible death. Had he passed beyond all help? As she started in panic to the spring her toe struck Curley's half empty flask. That and the ice-cold water of the spring, and her love—surely that would bring him back to life. It was a relief to be doing something at last, even if it should prove futile. Then when all was done, it seemed so little, there was only to wait. That was hard—to wait and watch. Suddenly, was it her own delusion? His eyelid fluttered. Yes, he lived. Then the mountains waved, and the stars danced, and it seemed that days and nights passed as she sat waiting and watching each returning sign of life. She had died with him step by step; so now she returned with him to life. When she remembered again she was sitting with his head in her arms and weeping.

Consciousness came back to Hal through the flickering lights that snapped and cracked, burnt and went out, then burned again in a vast smother of writhing darkness. The first breath of fresh air choked him. He felt that he was drowning in it. Then he slipped out of the mountainous whirlpools into still waters, and he saw the face of Wah-na-gi bending over him, and he felt that this was what men called Heaven. He tried to reach out his arms and take her but they wouldn't move. It was a dream. She seemed to say: "Don't try, just rest." When he was conscious again his limbs responded and he drew her face down and murmured: "Wah-na-gi, you're mine. I love you. I want you. I want you now." And she kissed him.

The moon, now white and cold, still hung in the heavens, but in the east the day was coming with a passionate rush. The snow-white bosom of the Moquitch glowed with its fervor, and through the chill of the dawn stole the breath of a languorous day.

"Deliver us from evil!" That is the only prayer of those who lie helpless in the grip of a mastering passion.

"Deliver us from evil."