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Updated: May 29, 2025
He has killed the white man's friends, stolen his cattle, and his water. To-day the white man laid another son in his grave. What thinks the chief? Would he not crush the scorpion that stung him?" The old Navajo answered in speech which, when translated, was as stately as the Mormon's. "Eschtah respects his friend, but he has not thought him wise.
When the old chieftain's lips opened Hare anticipated the austere speech, the import that meant only pain to him, and his whole inner being seemed to shrink. "The White Prophet's child of red blood is lost to him," said Eschtah. "The Flower of the Desert is as a grain of drifting sand." AUGUST NAAB hoped that Mescal might have returned in his absence; but to Hare such hope was vain.
August Naab walked swiftly from the circle of light into the darkness; his heavy steps sounded on the porch, and in the hallway. His three sons went toward their cabins with bowed heads and silent tongues. Eschtah folded his blanket about him and stalked off into the gloom of the grove, followed by his warriors. Hare remained in the shadow of the cottonwood where he had stood unnoticed.
It's a beautiful place, my Navajo oasis. The Indians call it the Garden of Eschtah. If you can get well anywhere it'll be there." "I'll go but I ought not. What can I do for you? "No man can ever tell what he may do for another. The time may come well, John, is it settled?" He offered his huge broad hand. "It's settled I " Hare faltered as he put his hand in Naab's.
Eschtah understands. He remembers his daughter lying here. He closed her dead eyes and sent word to his white friend. He named this child for the flower that blows in the wind of silent places. Eschtah gave his granddaughter to his friend. She has been the bond between them. Now she is flown and the White Father seeks the Navajo. Let him command. Eschtah has spoken."
Happy congratulations of the Mormon family, a merry romp of children flinging flowers, marriage-dance of singing Navajos these, with the feast spread under the cottonwoods, filled the warm noon-hours of the day. Then the chief Eschtah raised his lofty form, and turned his eyes upon the bride and groom. "Eschtah's hundred summers smile in the face of youth.
August shook like a mountain in an earthquake. "Eschtah says, 'you hurry, get many squaws many wives." Other Indians, russet-skinned warriors, with black hair held close by bands round their foreheads, joined the circle, and sitting before the fire clasped their knees and talked. Hare listened awhile, and then, being fatigued, he sought the cedar-tree where he had left his blankets.
"Jack," said August Naab, "our friends the Navajo chiefs, Scarbreast and Eschtah, are coming to visit us. Take no notice of them at first. They've great dignity, and if you entered their hogans they'd sit for some moments before appearing to see you. Scarbreast is a war-chief. Eschtah is the wise old chief of all the Navajos on the Painted Desert.
"He says you need meat lots of deer-meat," translated Naab. "Sick," repeated Eschtah, whose English was intelligible. He appeared to be casting about in his mind for additional words to express his knowledge of the white man's tongue, and, failing, continued in Navajo: "Tohodena moocha malocha." Hare was nonplussed at the roar of laughter from the Mormons.
At noon a solemn procession wended its slow course to the shadow of the red cliff, and as solemnly returned. Then a long-drawn piercing Indian whoop broke the midday hush. It heralded the approach of the Navajos. In single-file they rode up the lane, and when the falcon-eyed Eschtah dismounted before his white friend, the line of his warriors still turned the corner of the red wall.
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