CHAPTER VII
Sunset Pass
Two days later, however, a few hours after breakfast, Mrs. Polly Burton was also interested in Bettina’s new acquaintance, and was making the young man useful.
The afternoon of their meeting Bettina had endeavored to introduce him, but had found this difficult because she did not know his name.
At the time, the Indian had met the situation with no more awkwardness than any other young fellow in the same position would have shown. He had at once given his name to Mrs. Burton as John Mase. However, both she and the girls, who were her companions, understood this was not the young man’s Indian name, but probably the one which had been bestowed upon him at a government school and which he evidently preferred using at college and among strangers of the white race.
The following day none of the Camp Fire party saw anything of him, though frankly all the girls were curious, after learning of Bettina’s escapade. It was on the second morning that, going back to his own coach from the dining car, the young man chanced to pass Bettina and Mrs. Burton. At the moment they were seated side by side in one compartment. But it was Mrs. Polly Burton—the official guardian of the new group of Camp Fire girls en route to their desert camp—who this time accosted him. For the young Indian had only bowed and continued to walk gravely on.
But the train was now entering the Arizona plateau country. By nightfall the Camp Fire party expected to arrive at a tiny village not far from Winslow and the next day begin the trek to their own camp.
Already the air was clear and brilliant. Away to the west were the outlines of high mountains and the peaks of giant canyons. Here and there were bits of dreary, olive-gray desert and then an unexpected green oasis.
In the night it appeared as if the face of the world had changed, and with it the Camp Fire girls had changed also. If there were further coldness or friction between them, it had disappeared in their great common interest in the things before them and in the dream of their new life together in the desert. And, though they were too absorbed at the time for reflection, this is the way in which all friction between human beings may be destroyed; unconsciously the girls were acquiring one of the big lessons of the Camp Fire work—to live and think outside themselves.
At every station there were dozens of Indians offering their wares for sale. To eastern girls it seemed scarcely possible that they were still in the United States, so unlike was this new land. Yet the Camp Fire girls nobly refrained from making purchases, having solemnly promised to add nothing to their luggage until they reached camp.
Yet, in reality, it was the sight of so many Indian treasures which inspired Mrs. Burton to speak to Bettina’s Indian acquaintance. She appreciated that he must know more of the requirements of camp life in Arizona than she could learn from any number of books or from the conversation of a dozen acquaintances.
Yet possibly this was just a “Pollyesque” excuse. She may have been attracted by the young Indian’s appearance, as Bettina had previously been, and simply wished to be entertained by him.
He was so grave and yet so courteous; and his voice had the gentle, caressing sound which afterwards the campers learned was a peculiarity of Hopi Indians.
“My father is a kiva chief,” he explained good-naturedly. “We have many chiefs among the Hopis, but the kiva is the underground chamber for our religious ceremonies, and the kiva chief has charge of them.”
He seemed to be as willing to talk to Polly as he had to Bettina on their first meeting. But then Bettina was beside them, listening with the soft color coming in her cheeks from her deep interest, and the blue in her sometimes gray eyes.
She had been sitting with Mrs. Burton and separated from the others when the young Indian joined them. It was extraordinary how soon they were surrounded.
First Peggy came and took a seat across from her aunt and then Alice Ashton, intending to make a special study of Indian custom, therefore felt it her duty to make the young man’s acquaintance. Ellen Deal frankly leaned over from her place on the opposite side of the aisle and Gerry came and stood beside Bettina. Only Vera and Sallie Ashton appeared uninterested. Vera, because she was too shut up inside herself to be natural; and Sallie, because she was too much entertained by a light novel and a five-pound box of chocolates, into which she had been dipping steadily for several days without the least injury to her disposition or her complexion.
When the young Indian sat down she had simply given him a glance from over the pages of her book and then glanced at Bettina. Afterwards she had smiled and gone on reading. Sally and Bettina knew each other, of course, though not intimately, considering the fact that their mothers were sisters. But then they only met now and then and there was no congeniality between them. Alice and Bettina were better friends.
“Gerry Williams and Bettina looked a little alike,” Mrs. Burton reflected, even while she was listening with interest to the conversation of their new acquaintance. But then it had become second nature to study the girls traveling with her ever since their departure.
“Gerry was perhaps prettier than Bettina, or at least some people might think so,” Polly decided, feeling that in some way the idea was a disloyalty to her own friendship with Bettina’s mother. And certainly Gerry was easier to understand!
She was standing now beside Bettina, her eyes a lighter blue, her hair a paler gold, but she was about the same in height and slenderness. And she was talking to the young Indian as if they had known each other a long time, while Bettina, now that other people were present, remained silent.
“Do you mean to be a chief yourself some day?” Gerry asked, her blue eyes widening like a child’s from curiosity.
Gerry was a pretty contrast to the young Indian; so delicately fair in comparison with his bronze vigor.
She looked almost poorly dressed as she stood by Bettina, but girls do not realize that handsome clothes are not necessary when one is pretty and young. Gerry’s traveling dress was also blue, a brighter color, and equally becoming. Just for half an instant, and before the young man answered, it flashed through Polly Burton’s mind that the young Indian might become interested in Gerry if they should chance to meet often. And Gerry had not the social training to make her realize how wrong it might be to cultivate such a friendship. The next instant, however, Mrs. Burton had forgotten the absurdity of her own idea. Besides, in all probability they would not see the young man again.
“I am studying law at Yale,” he answered, surveying Gerry with a peculiar long stare he had given no one else. “It is my plan to work among my own people, but in the white man’s way.”
Before the morning had passed he had confessed to Mrs. Burton his own name. At least he made his confession looking directly at her as the official chaperon. But really he seemed less conscious of the group of girls about him than any American college fellow could have managed to be.
“Se-kyal-ets-tewa (Dawn Light). The name was a beautiful one, but small wonder the young man preferred being called by his adopted name! He smiled when he explained that it was against the better judgment of a Hopi Indian to confess his own title. A friend might tell it for him, but to speak one’s own name was to invite disaster.
Indeed, during the long morning’s talk together, Mrs. Burton was puzzled to discover how far the young man had been converted to American ideas and ideals, and how far he still believed in and preferred his own. He made no criticism of either. He merely answered a hundred inquiries from half a dozen young women for the distance of a hundred miles or more, and never lost his temper or suggested that some of the questions were absurd. Only once did he smile with slight sarcasm. In her best Boston manner Alice Ashton had asked a question not complimentary to Indian women.
“The Hopi women have always had the privilege of voting,” he replied. “I believe you will find them the original American suffragettes, since we came to this country a good many years before the Pilgrim fathers. You do not vote in Boston, I think.” And then all the party laughed except Alice, who had not a sense of humor.
Although Sallie, her younger sister, was not supposed to hear, she flashed a pleased smile above the pages of her book. For Alice was the learned member of the family and Sally the frivolous, so now and then it was fun to score.
When lunch time arrived the Indian would not remain longer with the Camp Fire party, although Mrs. Burton felt it her duty to issue an invitation. She was pleased with his good sense in declining.
However, on leaving, he did say: “You may some day wish to come to my village in Oraibi, and then I would like to show you both beautiful and curious things.”
For an instant, just as he was making this remark, his glance rested on Bettina. She could not have defined it to herself, but in some way his invitation appeared to have been addressed to her. And Bettina determined to accept. The young Indian had interested her in the account he gave of his life and people. Bettina was not fond of a conventional existence and had often wished to see a simpler and freer life. The Hopi Indians appeared to have arrived at a curious combination of civilization and what we call savagery. For instance, the old and infirm in a Hopi community are never allowed to want. The “Law of Mutual Help” suggests a better way of life than Lloyd George’s far-famed “old-age pensions” in the British Isles.
So Bettina sat dreaming and reflecting the greater part of the afternoon, while the other girls packed and unpacked, laughed and talked, excited over the prospect of arrival.
By an accident it was just before sunset when they reached a small wayside station known as Sunset Pass, because the Sunset trail led away from it. The party expected to spend the night at a big ranch house some miles away and, if possible, make camp the next morning.
But, as they left the train, suddenly the day had changed from heat to coldness. The girls and Mrs. Burton, as well, felt an uncomfortable sense of chill at their surroundings.
The little western station looked so bare and dreary. There were scarcely a dozen frame houses in view and these were all built alike and had no flowers or shrubbery to relieve their dullness.
Near the station was an extraordinary structure, which covered more than a half acre of ground. It was built of wooden planks so crossed and recrossed as to form small rooms or pens. It might have been an enormous open-air prison and was in fact. Weird and lonely noises issued from it—the bleating of hundreds of sheep waiting for a cattle train to ship them to the eastern market.
Had she been alone, Mrs. Burton felt she would have given way to homesickness. However, as Camp Fire guardian and the oldest member of what was after all her own expedition, she must appear cheerful.
Then Marie unexpectedly relieved the situation.
Descending from the train to the wooden platform, Marie gave a long look at the surroundings and burst into tears. And her tears were not of the silent variety.
Sally Ashton and Peggy giggled irresistibly, but everybody smiled.
Marie looked so incongruous. Her costume was the perfectly correct one she wore when following her famous mistress through a sometimes curious crowd at the Grand Central Station in New York City, or through another almost equally large.
But it was Gerry Williams, after all, who went to Marie and patted her sympathetically on the shoulder. Mrs. Burton was pleased. And it was true that, in spite of other weaknesses, Gerry did things like this naturally, although she may not have been entirely unconscious, even at this moment, of their Camp Fire guardian’s presence.
Gerry knew that the celebrated Mrs. Burton had taken a fancy to her and intended making the most of it.
Then Gerry’s prettiness also appealed strongly to Polly Burton. It was of the fair ethereal kind—an entire contrast to her own appearance. Moreover, one must remember how Polly O’Neill had always admired beauty and how great a point she had made of her friend Betty Ashton’s in their old Camp Fire days.
Although Gerry’s sympathy was not effective, Mrs. Burton knew how to check her maid’s tears.
“I am cold; will you please put my fur coat on me, Marie,” she suggested, whispering something consoling as Marie slipped her into it.
Then Mrs. Burton became nervous.
She and her Camp Fire party were standing alone on a deserted platform in a place which appeared to be a thousand miles from nowhere. For there was no one in sight except a little bent-over station master inside a kind of wooden box, who looked like a clay model of a man molded by an amateur artist.
As he did not emerge from his shack, Mrs. Burton started toward him.
Certainly she had expected that every arrangement for meeting them had been made beforehand, her husband having spent a small fortune on telegrams for this purpose.
However, she had gone but a few steps when the tallest man she ever remembered seeing came striding toward her.
“I guess this is the party looked for,” he remarked with an agreeable smile. “Arizona hasn’t seen such a bunch of pretty girls in a long spell. Come this way; my wife is expecting you at the ranch house, but I got tired waiting for you and have been loafing about in the neighborhood.”
Then he led the way, the Sunrise Camp Fire party of course following.
Waiting for them a little out of sight was an old-fashioned stage-coach drawn by a pair of fine horses.
The driver, who was Mr. Gardener, the wealthy owner of Sunset Ranch, assisted by the dwarf station master piled all the girls’ luggage on top the stage; the heavier trunks were to be sent for later.
Then the coach started down a long, straight road facing the west.
The sky was a mass of color far more vivid and brilliant than an eastern sunset. Beyond, almost pressing up into the clouds, were the distant peaks of extinct volcanoes. It was as if they had once flung their molten flames up into the sky and there they had been caught and held in the evening clouds.
It does not seem credible that eight women can remain silent for three-quarters of an hour, and yet the Camp Fire party was nearly so. Then they drew up in front of a big one-story house with a grove of cottonwood trees before it.
On the porch waiting to receive them stood Mrs. Gardener, the wife of their driver and the owner of the ranch house and the great ranch itself, near whose border the Camp Fire party expected to pitch their tents.