It was the evening after the funeral, and Rawley was sitting again on the porch, staring out gloomily over a cold pipe into the yard. His grandfather’s death had hit him a harder blow than he would have thought possible. The shock of it, coming close on the heels of his first keen realization that Grandfather King was a vivid personality, left him numbed with a sense of loss.
His mother’s evident relief at the removal of an unpleasant problem chilled and irritated him. Her calm assumption that the Indian must also be removed from the place, now that his master was gone, seemed to Rawley almost like sacrilege. The place belonged to his mother only by right of his grandfather’s generosity. To rob the Indian of a home he had enjoyed since boyhood was unthinkable.
He turned his head and glanced toward the west wing, his eyes following his thoughts. A dimly outlined figure stood erect upon the porch of the west wing. Pity gripped Rawley by the throat; pity and half-conscious admiration. Even the greatest grief of his life could not bow the shoulders of Johnny Buffalo. With no definite purpose, drawn only by the kinship of their loss, Rawley rose, crossed the grass plot by the syringas and sat down on the top step of the west porch.
Johnny Buffalo stood with his arms folded, the fringe on his buckskin sleeves whipping gently in the soft breeze that rose when the sun went down. He was staring straight out at nothing,—the nothingness that epitomized his future. Rawley slanted a glance up at him and began thoughtfully refilling his pipe. By his silence he was unconsciously bringing himself close to the soul of the Indian, the traditions of whose race forbade hasty speech.
Half a pipe Rawley smoked, staring meditatively into the dusk. In that time Johnny Buffalo had moved no more than if he were a statue of brown stone. Then Rawley tipped his head sidewise and looked up at him.
“Sit down, Johnny. I want to talk.”
“Talk is useless when the heart is dead,” said Johnny Buffalo after a long pause. But he came down two steps and seated himself, straight-backed, head up, beside Rawley.
“The man I love is cold. His spirit has gone. So I am left cold, and my heart is dead. I shall wait—and be glad when my body is dead.”
Rawley felt a sharp constriction in his throat. For one moment he almost hated his mother who would drive this stricken old man out into a world he did not know. A gun against his temple would be kinder. He drew a long breath.
“Would you like to wait here, where he lived?” Intuitively he crystallized his thoughts into the briefest words possible to express his meaning.
Johnny Buffalo shook his head slowly, with a decisiveness that could not be questioned. He folded his arms again across his grief-laden breast.
“It is your mother’s. In the fields I can wait for death, which is my friend. I shall walk toward the land of my people. When death finds me I shall smile.”
Rawley turned this over in his mind, seeking some point where argument might break down bitter resolution.
“Cowards wait for death when life grows hard,” he said at last. “The brave man meets life and faces sorrow because he is brave and will overcome. The brave man fights death which is an enemy. He does not run away from life and welcome his enemy. My grandfather found life very hard. For fifty years my grandfather faced it because his spirit was strong.”
“Your grandfather’s spirit was strong. His body was broken. My body is strong. My spirit is broken. Can a strong body live with a broken spirit inside?”
Rawley had to smoke over this for a while. Johnny Buffalo, he conceded privately, was no man’s fool. Rawley tried to put himself in the Indian’s place and discover, if he could, something that would make life worth the living.
“Your people are scattered,” he said quietly. “Few are left. The Mohaves are a broken tribe.”
“The Mohaves are not my people,” the Indian corrected him calmly. “I am Pahute. In the mountains along the river you call the Colorado, my people lived and hunted—and fought. My uncle was the chief, and I was proud. One day my mother beat me with a stick. I took my bow and my arrows and some dried meat, and that night I left my people, for I was angry and ashamed. With my bow I had killed two mountain sheep. With my bow I had hidden in the rocks and had wounded a white man who was digging in the hillside. I thought I was a warrior and not to be beaten by a squaw.
“The great thirst found me as I was walking toward the mountains where all my life I had seen the sun go down. With my bow and arrow I could get meat, but I could not get water. All my life I had lived near the river. The great thirst I did not know.
“I fell in the sand. When I awoke, water was in my mouth. I looked, and I was lying in the arms of a white man. He was big and strong and very handsome. He was Sergeant King. Your grandfather. I looked into his eyes and I was not afraid. There was no hate in my heart for him, but all other whites I hated. He lifted me and carried me in his arms and laid me in a wagon with white women and children. I hated them. I was weak from the thirst and from much walking, but I bit deep into the arm of a woman who put her hand on me.
“There was much yelling in that wagon. The woman struck me many times. A horse came galloping. Your grandfather lifted me out of the wagon and put me on the horse with him. So we rode together in one saddle. I loved him.
“The Mohaves attacked the whites when we had gone many days. My sergeant left me with his horse by the wagons. He crept behind bushes and killed many. He was a great warrior and I was proud when his gun brought death to a Mohave. I watched him, for I loved him. When I saw him fall from his knees and lie on his face in the sand, I jumped from the horse and went creeping through the brush. He was not dead. I took his gun and killed Mohaves. Pretty soon my sergeant looked at me and smiled while I killed. When there were no more Mohaves, the captain came. They put my sergeant in a wagon and I sat beside him. I gave him water, I gave him food. With my fists I beat back those who would take from me the joy of serving him.
“A long time he was sick in the town we entered. I was with him. Every day and every night he could open his eyes and see that I was with him.”
The sonorous voice ceased its monotone and the Indian sat silent, staring into the past. After a while he turned his head and looked full at Rawley.
“I was a boy when he took me. Now I am an old man. Since he took me there has been no night when my sergeant could call and get no answer. There has been no day when my sergeant could look and could not see me. Now my sergeant is gone. My heart is gone with him.”
Enthralled by the picture vividly painted with bold strokes by the Indian, Rawley sat hunched over his pipe, cuddling the cooling bowl in his fingers.
“Your sergeant was my grandfather. At the last I loved him, too. I am a King. I need you.” His tone stamped the lie as truth. Later he would find some way of making it the truth, he thought.
Johnny Buffalo eyed him sharply in the deepening dusk.
“You have read the book?” he asked after a minute. “If you have read, then I will go with you. The spirit of my sergeant will go. My heart may live again.”
“What book?” Rawley’s eyes widened.
“Your grandfather gave you the book. Your grandfather commanded that you read.” Reproach was in the voice of Johnny Buffalo.
“I have read the diary—the book where he wrote of his travels. Do you mean that book?”
Johnny Buffalo gave a grunt that was pure Indian and signified disgust.
Rawley frowned over the puzzle and his very evident defection. It must be the Bible that was meant, he decided. But he could see no reason why he should read the Bible and then go somewhere. Still, the thing seemed to have pulled Johnny Buffalo out of his slough of despond, and that was what Rawley had been working for.
“If you mean the Bible,” he said tentatively, “I read it a little, that night.”
Johnny Buffalo peered at him. “Read that book more. Your grandfather commanded that you should read. I heard the promise you gave. You said, ‘You bet.’ It was a promise to obey your grandfather.”
“I mean to keep the promise,” Rawley replied defensively. “I haven’t had time. Things have been pretty much upset since that night.”
The Indian meditated. “You read,” he admonished after due deliberation. “Your grandfather never talked to make words. I think he would have told you more. But his spirit went. I will stay in a tent by the river. When you have read, you come. We will talk more when you have read.”
Rawley felt the dismissal under the words. He offered the Indian money, which was refused by a gesture. Then, conscious of a certain vague excitement in the back of his mind, he went back to his own part of the house.