Charles M. Sheldon
The High Calling
Camp was pitched that night at the foot of the Oraibi trail. Almost as soon as the wagons were located Van Shaw came over to Mrs. Douglas carrying a cot.
"We've got an extra cot, Mrs. Douglas, and it won't take any time to fix that litter. We can use some of our tent poles. I'll be glad to fix the thing up in the morning."
Mrs. Douglas thanked him quietly, and Helen expressed her gratitude.
"Oh, I wouldn't miss seeing the sight to-morrow for anything. Isn't it wonderful. That rock? How weird it all is. Why, you can hardly tell where the rock begins and the houses leave off. Just to think of seven or eight hundred people living up there all these centuries keeping up these queer customs. And oh, look! What is that?"
A line of Indian women filed past up the trail about twenty-five feet apart, each one carrying on her back a large clay water jar. They did not walk, they trotted along in a tireless steady stride that spoke of centuries of training before them. The weight of the jars was not far from thirty pounds.
Masters was passing Helen's wagon.
"That's woman's rights," he said gravely. "The water supply at Oraibi for centuries has been jars on the backs of women. You must get used to thinking of seven hundred people dependent on the daily trips of these women for all the water used on top of that rock for washing, cooking, drinking. The women of Oraibi also have the right of building the houses the men live in. They are the masons, while the men are the dressmakers. And there are people who would like to keep these women perpetually at these tasks, they say it so 'picturesque.'"
"I was just going to say that myself," said Helen.
Masters smiled sadly. "Look at the mothers in Oraibi to-morrow. See what heathenism has done for them." He passed on and Van Shaw who had stared at Masters as he spoke said to Helen—"They're queer beggars, ain't they. But I don't believe in trying to change them. They belong here. Might as well let 'em go on the way they've been going the last thousand years."
Helen looked at him with the first feeling she had had of possible distrust or dislike. Van Shaw had spoken just as he really felt, and Helen saw a brief ways into his real character. But as she looked again at the winding figures steadily trotting up the steep path, she had a momentary doubt in her own mind as to the ultimate wisdom of Masters and Clifford in trying to change the century old customs and habits of these desert people.
The day of the snake dance at Oraibi dawned strangely with a heavy shower.
"They're getting their answer to their prayer before they offer it," said Mr. Douglas to Clifford as they sat up on their rugs and listened to the downpour on the tent.
"It has no effect on them," replied Clifford. "The snake dance means a prayer for rain for the whole season. This rain the poor devils believe is an answer to their prayer made two years ago. It's a little late in getting here but every drop of water between the two dances is so accounted for."
By the middle of the forenoon it had cleared up and the two parties, increased by other tourist crowds that had come in during the night, proceeded to climb the trail into Oraibi.
Van Shaw and his two friends in spite of the rain had got up early and finished making the litter. When the moment came for Helen to be transferred to it there was an embarrassing halt and the young men eyed one another. Felix was determined to be one of the carriers and Walter was bound to be another. Van Shaw seemed to take for granted that as he was the one who had suggested the affair he should be another. The two friends from Pittsburgh protested that they would be desolate if not allowed to help.
Felix and Walter had gone to the head of the cot and seized the ends of the tent poles and Van Shaw had stepped up to one of the poles at the other end when Esther, who perhaps sensed some electricity in the air not caused by the recent thunder storm, said to Paul:
"You take hold with Mr. Van Shaw, Paul, and let Mr. Coleman and Mr. Calder take their turn later. The trail looks very steep. I'm sure you will need to be relieved occasionally."
They started accordingly and Helen laughingly complimented her cavaliers as they picked up the cot and after several trials discovered the most effective way of handling it.
The trail was bounded on one side by the Oraibi cemetery. The recent rains had washed some of the bodies out of their graves made in the loose gravel of the steep hill. The trail wound up sharply, disclosing at every turn some new marvel of the limitless expanse below. A Hopi came out on a ledge far above them and chanted his song to the sun. Every step brought the party nearer the queer built houses and the kivas with their projecting ladders. Other visitors and tourists were on the trail in front and the progress was slow. Several stops were made and changes occurred in the order of carriers, but when the top of the rock was reached, Masters, who with Mrs. Masters and Miss Gray were close behind the litter, suddenly exclaimed, "There is Talavenka!" pointing to the roof of the first house fronting the trail. A Hopi maiden, distinguished by her whorl of hair as unmarried, stood up by the ladder, smiling down at the party.
Mrs. Douglas, who was walking with Mrs. Masters and who had during the trip heard of this one Christian Hopi, went over to the foot of the ladder with her. Paul, who was tremendously interested in all sorts of Indian lore, went into the house to examine some wedding baskets. The two Pittsburgh young men suddenly found themselves surrounded with an Indian group selling curios, Walter sauntered over in the direction of Miss Gray to ask her about the kivas. Felix stayed jealously for a while by Helen who was simply carried away with the wonderful sights all about her, but looking over in Mrs. Douglas's direction and seeing her for a moment alone, thought his opportunity to speak to her ought to be seized at once, and went over towards her. And so it happened naturally enough that for a moment Helen and Van Shaw were left together. The crowd of tourists, curious, chattering, laughing, careless, flowed up the trail past them and began scattering over the village seeking curios and poking their heads into the doors of the little houses. The sun flamed out in a clear blue sky, the grey rock turned red under its hot stroke, and Helen, who lay restfully on her litter which had been placed on top of one of the kivas, indulged her romance loving spirit to the full as she lay there almost forgetful of Van Shaw's presence until she was startled out of her day dream by his voice as he moved from where he had been standing and came and sat down on the edge of the kiva near her.
CHAPTER XV
"MISS DOUGLAS, I haven't had half a chance to talk to you and you'll forgive me, won't you, if I take advantage of this moment."
Helen was not in the slightest degree prepared for what Van Shaw was going to say. She was conscious, as every beautiful young woman must be, of her charms and of the effect of them on the young men she met, but she would have been a most remarkably vain and shallow person if she had ever imagined for herself such a scene as the one now being acted out on the top of the rock at Oraibi. The wildest stretch of her romantic temperament had never carried her so far, and when she first began to really grasp the sense of what Van Shaw was saying she was frightened and angry. At the same time there was a certain feeling of pride and exultation of which she was vaguely ashamed.
Helen quietly began to say some simple thing in reply to Van Shaw's first remark when he hurriedly went on, interrupting her:
"I won't have much time to speak now, but I'm going to risk everything, and tell you. I just can't keep it to myself. It may sound awfully absurd to you,—I suppose it does, but I can't help it. I'm just simply dead in love with you and I want you to know that I–"
"What!" said Helen sharply. She was so disturbed, so confused in her mind that Van Shaw's words seemed unreal, as unreal as the kiva on which she was sitting or the changing groups of vivid colour moving about on the tops of the houses.
"I can't help it," Van Shaw began again hurriedly, "You do not know how fascinating you are. It has just swept me off my feet."
This time Helen understood what Van Shaw was saying and her face was flooded with a swift wave of colour. And she said coldly:
"You have no right to talk to me like that. I will not listen." She turned her head and saw her mother just coming out of Talavenka's house, standing at the foot of the ladder as if preparing to go up with Mrs. Masters to the house roof.
"Mother!" she called, in a dim way thinking of nothing except her desire somehow to escape a very embarrassing scene with Van Shaw. But there was so much noise made by the clattering groups of tourists and the sudden arrival of new comers that Mrs. Douglas did not hear. Besides at that moment Helen saw Bauer speaking to her and the next moment he and her mother had walked slowly off together up the tortuous village street and were lost to sight in the crowd.
Van Shaw sat down on the kiva, and smiled a little. But his face was pale, and evidently for one of the rare occasions in his life he was truly and desperately in earnest.
"You can't blame me, can you?"
"It's—it's simply impossible. It's out of the question. I have not known you two days."
"It doesn't take lighting two days to hit," said Van Shaw doggedly.
"I won't listen. I forbid your talking to me," said Helen haughtily.
"All right. But you can't forbid my thinking of you."
"But I can and I will refuse to be in your company!" said Helen. She was angry now at something undefined in Van Shaw's manner. "If you do not leave me at once, I will try to leave you." She actually made a movement to rise and put her foot on the ground at the edge of the kiva. Van Shaw instantly got up and said quickly, "Of course I'll go. But I can't change my feelings and never shall. Promise me one thing. Don't believe all the stories you may hear about me."
He had turned and walked up the street and Helen sank back with a strange feeling of relief mingled with shame and again that other feeling—what was it, pride? The sense of power over men? The feeling that her beauty was a gift or something else? She was frightened at it all put together and felt irritated to be left alone by the rest of the party as she looked around at the medley of old and new jumbled together in that Hopi village. And then the next reaction left her nervous and somewhat hysterical as she tried to imagine such a thing in a book. She actually laughed and the next moment Miss Gray and Walter appeared, at the edge of the kiva. Miss Gray came running up to her.
"It's a shame to leave you here alone. How did that happen?"
"Oh, I don't know. I haven't been alone long. How strange everything is."
"Yes. And it gets stranger the more you see of it. Talavenka and her mother have asked us to eat with them. They will have something ready in about an hour. You had better go in and rest there a while. It's too hot out here. Where are your jinrikisha men?"
"Van Shaw just went up the street," said Walter looking closely at
Helen.
"We don't need him," said Miss Gray. "Mr. Douglas, will you get Mr. Coleman and Mr. Calder? There they are, over there. I'll help, and we'll take Helen over to Talavenka's."
Walter went over to call the Pittsburgh young men and Miss Gray and
Helen were together a moment. Helen suddenly asked:
"Do you know Mr. Van Shaw, Lucy? Didn't I hear you say to mother yesterday that he was related distantly to your mother?"
"Yes," said Miss Gray slowly. "He is. What do you want to know?"
"Anything you can tell me."
Miss Gray looked troubled.
"Are you willing to tell me why you want to know?"
Helen hesitated. Walter and the young men were approaching.
"Give me your full confidence," Miss Gray smiled at Helen. "And I will know better what to tell."
"I will when there is time for it," Helen said and that was all she could say, before she was carried into Talavenka's house.
Once inside the little square room with its corn grinding boxes taking up one whole side of it there was so much of interest that Helen let everything else wait, as she watched the preparations for the meal soon to be served. It would be several hours before the snake dance and in that time there was no likelihood that Van Shaw would try to speak to her again. She was not afraid of that, but she felt uneasy at the thought of some future scene, just what she was not clear about, but it vexed and allured her until finally the surroundings compelled all her attention and drove everything else out of her imagination.
Her father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. Masters and Miss Gray were invited with her to the mid day meal in the house. The rest of the Tolchaco party ate out of doors on the platform by the door. There was boiled mutton, red, white and blue wafer bread made of corn meal that made one think he was eating wall paper, Elijah Clifford said, melons, green peas taken from a can that had a Ft. Wayne, Ind., label on it, and to Mr. and Mrs. Douglas's astonishment some delicious peaches brought by Talavenka's brother all the way from their little garden down by the Oraibi Wash. In reply to questions from Mr. Masters, who used Talavenka as interpreter, Schewingoiashchi said, as if it were an ordinary every day occurrence, that her oldest boy nineteen years old had run twenty-five miles that forenoon to get the peaches from the orchard for their anticipated guests.
About an hour before sunset they all went out to the village plaza to witness the great event of the year in Oraibi. And as long as they live they will need no photographs or pictures to make the weird scene vivid to them.
Picture a grey mass of rock rising up abruptly above the desert, bare of tree or shrub; scattered over its irregular top, blocks of two and three story stone and dried brick houses, for the most part square in outward shape, with steps on the outside built into the wall, or heavy ladders with long projecting ends resting upon platforms built in front of small square topped doorways, the roofs flat and covered with dried grasses. No stairways within these houses permitting passage from lower to upper rooms, and all built after century old architectural plans, by the hands of women. Between the blocks of irregular houses picture rectangular slabs of stone rising two feet above the ground, containing an opening in the middle out of which project high in the air the two ends of a hard-wood ladder, the rungs of which have been worn almost through by the passage of naked feet that have pressed up and down on these bits of wood for scores of years. It is not easy to imagine the real fact that down in those upstairs cellars the men of Oraibi lead their club life, weaving down there in the dim light that filters past the ladder, the rugs and belts and other material mysteriously used for religious ceremonial. And down in the snake priests' kiva, just over yonder, the venomous reptiles have been kept for weeks past in the sacrificial clay jars, out of which they have crawled during the rites of their purification and hung in twisted hissing knots out of the crevices between the sides of the kiva walls, from which places the brown hands of old Thisdoa, Talavenka's father, have only this morning taken them to put in the cottonwood booth out on the village plaza, where they are now awaiting their part in the coming ceremony. For old Thisdoa is the head priest and knows more of the mysteries of the snake nature than any being in Oraibi.
The sun is just on the edge of the desert. All traces of the morning storm are vanished. Out on the tops of the houses all about the open plaza, groups of men and women begin to appear, the unmarried girls distinguished from the married by the graceful whorls of black hair standing out in marked contrast with the two rolls that hang down past the ears of the matrons. Cowboys, Navajo horsemen, traders, all the non-acting part of Oraibi's population, tourists, photographers, visitors, crowd up in a rainbow coloured fringe about the sandy depression which now contains only one conspicuous object, the cottonwood booth or kisi, the size of a boy's wigwam, having a canvas flap on the side opening close by the broad board over which the feet of the priests will thump as they file past. A moving picture machine is installed on top of a near-by house. The Boston, New York, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Chicago tourists and newspaper men are grouped about in what they believe are advantageous positions. The costumes vary from smart tailor made dresses worn by the tourist girls from Cincinnati to a Hopi child's dress made of a piece of a gunny sack bearing the name of a Minnesota flouring mill. Over all the jumble of old and new, modern and ancient, the setting sun floods the medley of colour and language and dress and Christian and pagan. And in the stillness that waits the coming of the twenty-four priests out of the kivas, the town crier walks out on the corner of a house top and cries aloud an announcement of a service to be held that night in the little mission chapel out there on the edge of the rock.
"What's that?" asked one of the tourists near Clifford.
"That's the town crier of Oraibi," said Clifford. "There are no newspapers up here and the official village news purveyor is telling the crowd to come over to the Gospel meeting to-night. He says Mr. Masters is going to preach in three languages. Better come and hear him in one of 'em."
The tourist stares at Clifford. "Well of all the places on earth for preaching, this beats me. Do you mean to say a preacher will actually hold a service up here after this snake dance and expect to get an audience?"
"Will he?" says Clifford cheerfully. "You had better come early or you won't get a seat. And as for preaching you'll hear a better sermon than you ever heard in Cincinnati, Ohio."
"I guess that may be so," says the tourist. "For I haven't been to church since I don't know when."
"You need preaching then, like the rest of these heathen," said Clifford so simply that the Cincinnati man takes no offence but promises to go over to the service if he isn't too tired.
The rim of the sun is an hour above the horizon and the crowd has ceased its chatter. It is very quiet on the grey rock of Oraibi, although a thousand people are looking intently at the openings of the two kivas. Suddenly from the one nearest the Tolchaco party up the ladder the chief of the Antelope priests appears. He holds the rattle box in his hand and is followed by the eleven priests, the last one a lad twelve years old. The line twists through the fringe of visitors, as oblivious of any onlookers as if they were going through this ceremony five hundred years ago when not a white face was dreamed of and when the Hopi was doing exactly what old Thisdoa and his grandson are doing to-day.
Then from out the other kiva the stately snake priests emerge, a group of twelve old men each bearing the rattle which contains the grains of corn. The incessant pattering of the rattles is the only sound heard in the plaza until the soft moccasined feet reach the board over the hole in front of the kisi. The thump, thump, thump of the feet pound over the board to call the attention of the underworld gods to the needs of their children up here. The sandy plaza is traversed and the two lines of priests circle about, finally stopping in front of the kisi, facing one another; then rises the "wo, wo, wo, wo," the guttural chant. The Hopis have been for many years a peaceful people, but this monotonous chant, rising occasionally into a swelling crescendo howl sends delightful cold shivers down the backs of the visitors, and even Elijah Clifford says he wouldn't want to meet that howl unexpectedly around the corner. Then the priests file past the kisi one by one, stoop by the opening and receive from the old warrior priest sitting within, a snake. Each one raises his snake to his mouth and holds it there between his teeth as he walks about the plaza accompanied by his hugger or companion. Suddenly the snakes are released and thrown down upon the sand. They make swift and desperate efforts to escape but are caught up again with such rapidity of movement that the closest attention paid by the tourists can not discover how it is done. Round and round the procession of twenty-four moves. Out from the houses near the snake kiva a group of girls and women suddenly run. They stop at the edge of the plaza near the Tolchaco party and scatter the sacred corn meal on the ground. Navajo horsemen dismount and pick up pinches of this sacred meal to put in their pouches for good luck. The twenty-four priests with their snakes twisting in their sinewy brown hands turn together and with a common movement all dart up to the place where the meal lies. They circle about the spot. Paul raises Helen up a little higher so that she can throw a horrified gaze into that astonishing scene. For a moment the only thing she and the rest can see is a squirming, hissing heap of snakes, apparently tangled together in an angry mass. And then the twenty-four priests shoulder one another as they stoop and with both hands grab up as many snakes as they can hold in their fingers, and suddenly separating, turn and face towards the edge of the rock, running with all their might, thrusting the snakes into the faces of any unlucky tourist or visitor who may be in the way.
There is a rush for the edge of the rock. Those who line up there see the lean figures of the priests leaping down the wild trail. Their forms can hardly be distinguished as they reach the desert and are dimly seen to be kneeling in prayer over the snakes as they let them go, down to the great plumed snake to beseech him to send rain, rain, rain, on the corn and melons of his children up here.
The rest of the ceremony is purification. The priests come panting and sweating up the rock. On the edge of the snake priests' kiva the women bring out huge jars of mysterious brown liquid. The panting figures kneel there in the now desert twilight and drink great draughts of this liquor. Kneeling about over the rock they disgorge from their mouths what they have been drinking. The merciful darkness is closing in swiftly over this disgusting scene, participated in, however, in all reverence by the priests and gazed upon in astonishing seriousness by the spectators, for is it not all a part of the painful crucifying of the flesh that these poor creatures have been subjecting themselves to for centuries in their blind but constant desire to find God, the God of the rain, the rain, the rain.
Gradually the priests disappear down into the kiva where a feast has been prepared for them by the women. The great festival, which will not occur again at Oraibi for two years, is over.
Paul sees Masters standing by him. In the dim light he realises with a start as he looks up, that the tears are rolling down over Masters's face.
"Oh, the people! How long will they seek after God in these ways! Oh, for the power to open their eyes to see him as He is!"
Through the growing darkness groups of tourists and visitors pass, choking the narrow paths between the houses, crowding into the trail down to the wagons at the foot of the rock. Among the confusion of chattering voices and exclamations one shrill voice of a girl penetrates through to the hearing of Masters and Paul.
"Wasn't it the greatest thing you ever saw? and oh, how picturesque! Those people, those girls on the houses! What a pity it would be to spoil it by trying to civilise these nature children!"
Masters looked at Paul grimly.
"Yes, it would be a great pity, wouldn't it? I wish that girl could stay here one winter and enjoy the picturesqueness of a Hopi Indian girl's life. I wonder if she has any little thought of the real life of these 'nature children'? Of its misery, its impurity, its dreadful sin and superstition and darkness; its infant mortality; its pain and disease due to the absence of any sanitary or medical skill. But most of all its ignorance of Jesus Christ and his love. 'Picturesque!' I grant you it is. But Christianity would not destroy anything worth keeping. For centuries these 'nature children' have walked in darkness. Are they not entitled, like that white girl, to the light of life? And did you see Talavenka when her father reached into the kisi for the snake?"
"No," said Paul, "I must confess my eyes were on the priests, not the spectators."
"Talavenka was crying all through the ceremony. Her father can not understand her new life. The girl stands alone in the midst of this superstition. What will become of her? The estrangement in the family is one of the most painful things I ever knew. Her mother Schewingoiashchi is the only one who seems kind to her. At times I think Schewingoiashchi is not far from the Kingdom herself. She does not object to Talavenka's baptism. We have talked of that. It will be a part of our service to-night. I must go and get ready."
Paul and Esther and the rest of the party went to Talavenka's house for the evening meal. Masters, who was of the old school of preachers, they learned afterwards had spent the hour before the service out on the edge of the rock a little past the mission chapel, praying in the darkness for the people of Oraibi.
Helen was very eager to go to see Talavenka baptised. During the afternoon she had noticed the girl's grief and had been deeply touched by it. They were of the same age, she had learned from Mrs. Masters. The few words she spoke in English during the midday meal had revealed a quiet dignity and a genuine Christian faith. Already Helen's romantic temperament was constructing a plan to have Talavenka leave Oraibi and finish her education in Milton academy.
"We can carry you over to the chapel all right," her father said. "Where are those young men? I haven't seen Van Shaw or his friends all the afternoon."
"They were there, I saw them," said Walter.
"I saw them on the other side of the plaza," said Bauer who had not lost sight of Van Shaw during the afternoon and had wondered more than once why he was avoiding Helen. He had had his talk with Mrs. Douglas and had been tormented all through that ancient prayer for rain with questions as to his wisdom in telling some things to Helen's mother. But he was not given to doubt concerning his motives and in this particular instance he had no hesitation over his own absolutely clean and disinterested motive. He wanted Helen to escape the horror of a union with a degenerate mind and heart as he knew they existed in Van Shaw's character and his own feeling for her did not occupy a prominent place in his motive. Of that much he was sure and it helped him somewhat to get through one of the most trying experiences of his life.
Bauer went on to say to Mr. Douglas that he had seen Van Shaw and his two friends go down the trail to their wagons and had not seen them come back up the rock. So Paul and Walter, Clifford and Felix took Helen over to the mission chapel towards which various groups could be seen moving through the unlighted spaces of Oraibi's crooked and narrow windings.
The chapel had been built by a small missionary society ambitious to signalise its existence by doing something desperately hard in a corner of the world where no missionary work had ever been done. The missionary in charge had laboured several years with that marvelous patience and persistence which nothing but the history of missions in this old world has ever recorded. And as a result of his work Talavenka had come into the light. She had spent two winters at the mission in Tolchaco and Masters had shaped and enlarged the faith that first had begun to glow on the grey rock of Oraibi. And the missionary had been planning to have Masters hold this special service and baptise Talavenka from the time he heard of his coming up to the snake dance.
Masters found a place on one end of the little platform for Helen's cot where she lay propped up in comfortable fashion. The room was very small and it filled up rapidly. When it would hold no more it is doubtful if any man with a message ever faced a more mixed or astonishing audience.
There were native Hopis, old men and women who did not understand a word of English. Navajo visitors, men who never appeared at Oraibi except once in two years. Paul recognised one man whom Masters had pointed out one day at Tolchaco as a notorious gambler and horse trader, known all over the painted desert as "Iadaka" the gambler; there were traders from the different government posts; a few teachers from the government schools; a bunch of cowboys from Flagstaff; half a dozen Apaches who had come up to Oraibi from an encampment near the Bottomless Pits; a dozen tourists from a half dozen different cities in the east attracted from tourist curiosity; three interpreters, one of whom happened to be in government employ and had been caught at Oraibi and detained there by an accident to his team on the way to Shungapavi. Masters knew him and asked him to come in and help at the service.
Besides this miscellaneous and polyglot audience inside the room, Helen soon became aware of nearly as many more spectators and listeners outside the building crowded about the open windows. The night was warm and still. The chapel had three windows on each side, and two at the rear behind the platform, and at each opening dark faces of various nationalities grouped and peered in with stoical or wondering interest. After the service had begun Helen suddenly became aware of the presence of Van Shaw and his two friends. They had evidently finished their supper and camp work and come back up the rock to be present at the chapel service but had been too late to get inside. Helen felt Van Shaw's gaze directed constantly at herself. He had secured a position close up to the second window from the platform. Helen again had that curious blending of anger and exultation, of shame and gratified vanity as if there were forces at work in her at war with one another tempting and antagonistic, attractive and repellant. But after one look had been exchanged between her and Van Shaw she changed her position on the cot so that she was partly hidden from him by a lamp which stood on one corner of the little parlour organ of the platform.
