Charles M. Sheldon
The High Calling
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.
CHAPTER XIII
IT was an hour before sunrise at Tolchaco and Bauer had awakened from a restful sleep and from the place where he lay in the Council Hogan he noted with pure enjoyment the splendid colour of the sky framed in the opening, the exquisite blending from the pearly grey into the unpaintable, soft moving colours that he had looked at with growing awe during many wonderful mornings in July. He could not remove the impression that it was God's hand that moved over the sky, painting with an art that man's cheap imitation could never approach even in the faintest degree.
It was the morning of the day they were all to start for Oraibi to see the snake dance which was to be given in three or four days according to announcements sent out by the runners. The Douglases had come as they had planned and had been visiting at the mission now for two weeks. Mr. and Mrs. Douglas were delighted with what they saw and heard of the mission work. Walter had made a horseback trip to the Grand Canyon through the solemn dry pine forest from Flagstaff and had returned to Tolchaco in time to join the party for Oraibi. Helen had been received at once as a favourite by all the mission people, had renewed her acquaintance with Miss Gray, and had shown herself friendly, yet not too friendly, with Bauer, who had steadily gained in strength and was looking forward with great anticipation, as they all were, to the Oraibi trip.
He lay there contentedly musing in his deliberate way, for he mused as slowly as he spoke, when he was roused by a voice that came with clear accents across the 'dobe flats. He had heard it often in the early morning, but the sound of it never ceased to create in him a wondering awe and more or less bewilderment to reconcile his first thought of Elijah Clifford with other impressions that came on later. For it was Clifford's voice quietly speaking, yet in such distinct fashion that, although he was kneeling out on the edge of the 'dobe flats, what he said was plainly heard by Bauer where he lay and unless he had covered his ears he could not avoid catching the words.
"O Thou Dayspring from on high, what a glorious world we live in! Forgive us that we shut our eyes to its beauty and close our ears to its music. I thank you, God, for a good night's sleep and a good morning's wakening. Help all of us to make it a good day for one another. We think so much of ourselves, of our body's comfort, and what we shall eat and drink and be clothed withal that sometimes a whole day has gone and we no nearer the Kingdom. We've lost our way in the desert and the water all gone. We are going to start out to-day to see these poor creatures of yours go through their ancient prayer for rain. Forgive them, good God. How should they know any better. No one ever told them of a better way. And there's old Touchiniteel, poor old savage. I would give anything, most anything, to see him brought into the fold. Is he too old to be saved, Lord Jesus? Can't you save him? It's not easy, I know, but we aren't asking you to do easy things out here. Most of them are hard, but don't you like to do hard things? Isn't that what being God means? And Peshlekietsetti—he's another, I want to see him saved. And old Begwoettin. You know how the old man never told a lie in his life. And he loves his grandchildren. Why, he would die in a minute for Ansa and Riba. He can't be so very bad. Somehow I can't think of his being lost. He isn't half so bad as Jake Rambeau, the trader. And Jake's had a high school education and calls himself civilised.
"We are all in need of the Spirit's presence to-day. I want more of the presence. My heart longs to walk with the Master to-day. If the Master will be gentle with me as he was with Peter two or three times when he didn't deserve it, I would be glad. O Master, tell me your will. I need you so much, so much–"
And then the sound of the voice trailed off into a murmur indistinguishable to Bauer from where he lay. But he knew that Elijah Clifford had thrown himself full length on the ground and was pleading in his own way for the Divine presence, for victory over himself and triumph for the Kingdom in that desert, for once in the dawn when he had heard his voice, Bauer had poked a hole through the dirt over the wall of the hogan and for one moment, during which he felt almost ashamed for looking, he had seen Clifford prostrate himself thus and lie there outstretched for how long, he did not know. It did not seem right to him to look for more than a minute.
After a silence of about half an hour, during which Bauer had risen,
Clifford appeared in the doorway of the hogan with his usual cheerful
"Good-morning; Sehr gut?"
"Ja, sehr gut," replied Bauer. "When do we start?"
"Right after breakfast."
"How long will it take us to make the trip to Oraibi?"
"Oh, it depends on how often we lose the way. May take two days, may take three."
"Have you been there before?"
"Seen the snake dance five times."
"Is it as wonderful as they say?"
"Is it? I am just as much interested in it now as I was the first time. But the poor devils! Half of 'em don't know what their rigamarole means. And Mr. Masters thinks the government ought to put an end to it. Last time there were over a hundred tourists came up from all over the country and turned Oraibi into a sort of bargain day. The dance confirms 'em in their superstitions. But no mistake it's a wonderful sight to be going on in the U. S."
"Mr. Masters said several parties were going to come this year from
Pittsburgh and New York."
"Yes. The Van Shaws are among them. I understood Miss Douglas to tell Miss Gray that one of these Van Shaws was in the same school with her brother and you. Do you know him?"
"Yes—I know who he is," said Bauer, slower than usual. He could not forget the incident that occurred in Walter's room when Van Shaw had started to relate an objectionable story and Walter had prevented him from telling it. Van Shaw's general reputation for fast and questionable habits corresponded with this incident and Bauer felt annoyed at the possibility of a chance meeting with his party.
But in the bustle of preparation for the journey, everything else was soon forgotten except the immediate interest. Bauer was not expected to do anything except get his own few travelling necessities together. But he quietly helped Mrs. Masters in a number of ways and she afterwards told Clifford that the laconic German student was the most remarkable young man she ever knew to anticipate a want and do a thing right the first time.
"Just the opposite of me," said Clifford. "I have to do a thing twice anyway to make sure, like the doctor in our old town in Vermont, who used to say that if he didn't kill with the first operation he was dead sure to cure with the next."
When the chuck wagons were all ready Bauer found to his pleasure that he was assigned to the light platform spring wagon in which Esther and Helen, together with Clifford and Mrs. Masters, were going. Mr. Masters, Miss Gray, Walter and Miss Clifford were assigned to one of the chuck wagons and Peshlekietsetti with two of the older pupils in the school and one of the younger Indians had charge of a third wagon containing the tents and the water.
The party was on the way shortly after sunrise and reached the place of the ford in about an hour. The river was very low and as the wagons went over on the rock ledge, only a few inches of water were trickling through the wheels.
"You wouldn't believe, would you, Miss Douglas, that Mr. Bauer and I had a good swim right about here a few weeks ago?"
"Oh, tell me about that," cried Helen, who with all the rest of the visitors had of course heard of Bauer's rescue, and in her heart was envious of Miss Gray for her physical prowess. But she had never been able to prevail on her to give any but the most unsatisfactory account of the rescue.
So Clifford launched into a glowing account of the affair, obliterating himself entirely and making it seem that Miss Gray was the only person present, so that Bauer had to give Helen the full account as near as he could of Clifford's part in the rescue.
"It's a wonderful land! I wish such things would happen in Milton! And, oh, look at those colours! Was anything ever like them!" Helen exclaimed as the wagons came up out of the river bed and in full view of the painted desert as it stretched out in its weird, fascinating beauty. "Oh, I just can't contain it all!"
"You remind me," said Clifford who was driving, and now gave the horses a free rein on a hard 'dobe stretch, "of a young lady who was writing letters home from her first trip abroad for the use of the county paper. She said, when she was in Venice, 'Last night I lay in a gondola in the Grand Canal, drinking it all in, and life never seemed so full before.'" Clifford winked at Bauer who was on the front seat with him, and Helen, who was not yet used to Elijah Clifford's ways, at first turned red and looked vexed, but afterwards laughed with the rest.
"Well, if your young lady was here she would have to say the same thing about all this. I never had any thought that a desert was like this. I supposed it was just nothing but sand spread out on a flat surface. But look at those flowers! Did you ever see anything more delicate for colour and form?"
"Most people think that way about the desert," said Clifford. "There are more than sixty distinct varieties of vegetation this side of the river between here and Red Stone Tank. Mr. Bauer can tell you the names of some of 'em. He has begun to make a collection."
Bauer modestly replied in answer to a question from Helen that he had classified only a few distinct species that he had found in his short strolls from the Mission. He had the book with his things at Tolchaco and would show it to her when they came back.
"I didn't know you cared for Botany," said Helen a little flippantly. "I supposed you were all absorbed in your inventions."
Bauer's face changed colour slightly.
"I have always enjoyed God's earth," he said. "Anything that grows is always more wonderful than anything that has to be made."
"I should think this would be a good place to try your incubator, it's so hot," said Helen, feeling that she had made a foolish remark, but letting it go rather than try to apologise to Bauer for her poor judgment of him.
"Oh, say, tell us about that incubator," said Clifford. "Must be a lot of money in a thing like that. I believe we could use some of 'em out here to good advantage and make something for the Mission. There's a great demand for broilers at Flagstaff, and the Harvey eating houses would give us big money for any quantity of either eggs or young chickens. If we could only educate 'em to live on sand and cactus. Trouble is, feed is so high and we're so used to eating up everything, that there ain't anything left over from meals, to give to chickens. I suppose there ain't any way to fatten chickens without feeding 'em."
When Clifford spoke of Bauer's invention as a money maker, Helen was reminded again of what she had almost forgotten, that Bauer had lost the largest part of his profits from the sale of the patent rights.
Walter had written home about Bauer's father returning a part of what he had stolen, and of Bauer's quiet acceptance of the event. Helen, as she caught the look on his face whenever he partly turned about to speak to those on the seat behind, could not help feeling a real interest in him–if only he were not so plain looking, and so serious and above all, so poor, and so destined to remain poor. No; she shut her eyes, opened them again, looked at Bauer pensively, shook her head as if in answer to a question, and then with a feeling of determination turned her attention to the remarkable land through which the party was travelling.
The sky was cloudless. The heat was dry and penetrating, and as the forenoon wore away everyone grew thirsty. The cloth covered canteens were called for often. At noon the wagons drew together and camped for dinner. Two of the wagons were driven up side by side about ten feet apart and the horses unhitched and hobbled. A spare canvas was drawn over the tops of the two wagons to make shade for the dinner party. Clifford, who acted as cook on camping out occasions, dug a hole in the sand, filled it with dowegie roots and started his fire and in what seemed an incredibly short time to the visitors from Milton a hearty meal was ready. The Indians and their helpers squatted around on rugs within the circle, Mr. Masters asked grace in a delightful tone of genuine thanksgiving and added a few words in Navajo in which Peshlekietsetti and the young Indians joined.
"This what I call the real thing," said Paul, as he helped himself to his fourth sandwich and passed his cup for the third time for coffee.
"Yes, these are real sandwiches all right," said Clifford as he turned over some pancakes which were cooking on a flat stone. "Anyone else want a hot one made by the slab artist?"
Walter expressed a desire for one and politely handed it over to Miss Gray. Clifford looked at him a moment and then at Miss Gray, who was smiling her thanks.
"How's the batter?" he said to Walter.
"Good," said Walter who seemed in unusual spirits. "It's equal to a home run with the bases all full."
"Do you think it needs to be any thicker?"
"No. It's thick enough," said Walter with his eyes on Miss Gray.
"Yes, what did I tell you," muttered Clifford to Bauer when an hour later he and the German student were alone and out of ear shot from the rest of the campers. Bauer had offered to help Clifford wash the dishes at a water hole some hundred yards from the camp. "What did I tell you? It's just as I said. Miss Gray has 'em all going. Cowboys, Indian traders, missionaries, visitors, everybody. Now it's your friend Douglas. He's a goner so soon. You watch when the wagons load up if he don't manage to sit with Miss Gray. He's lost and there's no use sending out an expedition to find him. He doesn't want to be found. And the mystery of it is Miss Gray never tries. She just simply looks at you and it's all over."
Bauer was amused and perplexed at Clifford's absolutely frank confidence. There was nothing flippant about it either. It was the simple expression of a nature that had nothing to conceal. There was not even a hint of gossip about it, nor of ill nature. In a land where there were no newspapers, telegraphs, telephones, railroads, or neighbours, it seemed like the expression of a confidence which had in it neither malice nor impertinent coarseness. And yet Bauer was puzzled to know what Clifford's real feeling was towards Miss Gray even after Clifford's own open statement made to him that day while they were sitting on the old cottonwood by the river.
When the party started on again after a two hours' rest, Clifford nudged Bauer to call attention to the fact that Walter and Miss Gray were in the back seat of the chuck wagon in front of them. But he never mentioned the matter again during the day, and until they reached the night camping place he was alive with stories and information about the desert, the Indians, the habits of the horses, the work of the Mission and the coming snake dance.
The place chosen for the first night's camp was the Red Stone Tanks. This consisted of a pool of tepid water and a few rocks, from the crevices of which a straggling fringe of desert cedars was trying to grow.
Camp was made here by pitching one of the big tents for the women. A big fire of roots was started after the supper had been eaten, and when they were all seated in the circle about the fire, Mr. Masters began a story.
Gradually as he went on with the old, old story of the lost sheep, figures stole up around the fire. Paul, who with Esther and all the rest was simply fascinated with the entire surroundings, although he did not understand a word Masters was speaking, was startled as he looked around and saw a dozen dark faces of young men and boys. They had risen out of the desert barrenness and gloom, the sudden twilight, and silently appeared. When the camp was chosen there was not a hogan or a living creature anywhere in sight. But all of these quiet visitors knew that the mission party was on the way to Oraibi and some of them had been riding all day to meet Mr. and Mrs. Masters at this point.
