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Updated: June 28, 2025
And I will commune with God and make it right and good that you have more wives. That is Mormonism." "Nas Ta Bega, you mean the Mormons are a great and good people blindly following a leader?" "Yes. And the leader builds for himself not for them." "That is not religion. He has no God but himself." "They have no God. They are blind like the Mokis who have the creeping growths on their eyes.
The mother sprang to her feet in sudden terror, her heart fluttering wildly. "Henry! Are you here? Where is what nas happened to Dorothy?" she cried. A trembling old man and a frantic woman bumped against each other in the darkness and the search began. There were but two people in the room!
The old Navajo could not speak; his fine face was working in grief; tears streamed from his dim old eyes and rolled down his wrinkled cheeks. His sorrow was no different from a white man's sorrow. Beyond him Shefford saw Nas Ta Bega standing with folded arms, somehow terrible in his somber impassiveness.
Old Hosteen Doetin expected to starve, now that the young and strong squaw of his family was gone. Shefford spoke in his halting Navajo and assured the old Indian that Nas Ta Bega would never let him starve. At sunset Shefford stood with Nas Ta Bega facing the west. The Indian was magnificent in repose. He watched the sun go down upon the day that had seen the burial of the last of his family.
Shefford took one more fascinated gaze at her dark, eloquent, prophetic face, at the tragic tiny shape by her side, and then with bowed head he left the hogan. Outside he paced to and fro, with an aching heart for Nas Ta Bega, with something of the white man's burden of crime toward the Indian weighing upon his soul.
Shefford did not show that he had heard. Hurley waited, leering as looked from the keen listeners to Shefford. "Want to have them all yerself, eh?" he jeered. Shefford struck him sent him tumbling heavily, like a log. Hurley, cursing as he half rose, jerked his gun out. Nas Ta Bega, swift as light, kicked the gun out of his hand. And Joe Lake picked it up.
The gray searching eyes went right through him. "Glad to see you. Get down and come in. Just heard from an Indian that you were coming. I'm the trader Withers," he said to Shefford. His voice was welcoming and the grip of his hand made Shefford's ache. Shefford told his name and said he was as glad as he was lucky to arrive at Kayenta. "Hello! Nas Ta Bega!" exclaimed Withers.
Upon Nas Ta Bega had been forced education, training, religion, that had made him something more and something less than an Indian. It was something assimilated from the white man which made the Indian unhappy and alien in his own home something meant to be good for him and his kind that had ruined him. For Shefford felt the passion and the tragedy of this Navajo. "Bi Nai, the Indian is dying!"
Nas Ta Bega called Joe and Shefford to the window he had been stationed at. From here they saw the unwelcome visitors ride down the trail, to disappear in the cedars toward the outlet of the valley. Joe, who had numbered them, said that all but one of them had gone. "Reckon he got it," added Joe.
Lassiter and Jane were looking back. Shefford, becoming aware of a steep slope to his left, looked down to see a narrow chasm and great crevices in the cliffs, with bunches of cedars here and there. Presently Nas Ta Bega disappeared with the mustangs. He had evidently turned off to go down behind the split cliffs.
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