



Produced by Al Haines.





[Illustration: Wah-na-gi.]




                           *THE SILENT CALL*


                                   BY

                          *EDWIN MILTON ROYLE*

         AUTHOR OF "THE SQUAW-MAN," "THE STRUGGLE EVERLASTING,"
                            "FRIENDS," ETC.



                              ILLUSTRATED



                            GROSSET & DUNLAP
                         PUBLISHERS :: NEW YORK

         Published by arrangement with Charles Scribner's Sons




                          COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY
                           EDWIN MILTON ROYLE

                          Published May, 1910




                                   To

                          MY FATHER AND MOTHER

            WHOSE YOUNG HEARTS HAVE PRESERVED THE IDEALS OF
           OLD-FASHIONED ROMANCE THROUGH FIFTY-THREE YEARS OF
         WEDDED LIFE, THIS STORY IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED BY

                               THE AUTHOR

                            April 12th, 1910




                           *THE SILENT CALL*



                              *CHAPTER I*


Not even snow is as white as these great masses of congealed foam
floating in a deep blue sky, six thousand feet above the sea, and yet
somewhere out of this deep cool infinity flamed a sun that searched the
mesa until it blistered and cracked.  The alkali plain quivered and
burst into spirals of heat that were visible to the eye.  A cloud of
dust hung like white smoke above the fiery trail over which a band of
Indian police was slowly and painfully crawling. This dust is very
penetrating and very irritating. The reins hung limp on the ponies'
necks and their heads swung low as though they looked for a place to
sink down.

As far as the eye could see you would have known that they were Indians.
The uniform furnished them by the government is a dark purplish blue
with a red piping down the trousers.  It's a plain affair, but each
Indian wears it with a difference and adds a decorative touch that is
his own, and that is always pictorial and Indian.  One had encircled his
broad-brimmed black hat with a wide purple ribbon, lapped by a narrow
pink ribbon.  A yellow neckerchief rested on his green silk shirt, and
about his waist was a sash braided of many  worsteds, and,
strange to say, the result was pleasing if rather brilliant. Another had
a pink feather apparently plucked from the tail of the domestic duster
tied loosely to his hat, which lent to the changing airs a graceful note
of color.  Some wore cowboy boots, yellow and elaborately stitched in
fancy designs; others adhered to the ever beautiful moccasins.  Most of
them wore brown or drab cowboy hats, but made them their own by
beautifully beaded hat-bands.  Here and there gleamed gauntlets heavy
with a stiff beaded deer which seemed trying to jump away from the
cuffs, but couldn't because it was so obviously and eternally stiff and
beaded.  Some had beaded sleeve bands and all sported guns hung in
holsters elaborately outlined in brass.  No one wore a coat except a
tall elderly man with glasses who, in spite of the torture, felt that
his out-of-date captain's uniform enhanced his straight unbending
dignity.

The police had no prisoner in charge, nor even an air of expectancy, or
remote or possible interest. Horse and man were as near sleep as it was
possible to be in the quivering heat.  The pack animals were loaded with
surveyors' instruments, and there was evidently nothing more warlike or
strenuous on foot than to creep across the table-land and reach the
Agency.  To the close observer even at a distance there was a difference
in the figures as they straggled through the sage-brush.  The man who
rode behind was well set up and sat his horse like a cavalryman. He wore
khaki that fitted well his close-knit and athletic figure, and he
carried the suggestion of authority.  He was the chief of Indian police.
"Calthorpe," as he called himself, hadn't explained himself and nothing
had as yet explained him.  He had been from the first a mild mystery to
his neighbors, in a country where neighbors were few and far between,
and as he had a gift for silence, and it did not appear to be any one's
business in particular to unravel him, a task which might, too, involve
risk as well as trouble, he had remained a mystery.  Oscar Wilde once
expressed great astonishment at finding a miner in Leadville reading
Darwin's "Origin of Species," but in this Western country one ought to
be surprised at nothing.

On closer observation, there was a certain resemblance between the
leader and his men.  He might have been one of them with his swarthy
skin and coarse black hair, but that a startling pair of frank blue eyes
flashed out from their dark surroundings. They were friendly eyes set in
a strong, immobile face.  He glanced at his companions, at the burning
plateau, then at his companions again.

"And they expect the hunter and warrior to turn farmer in a country like
this," he thought.  A horned toad startled by the intrusion darted
across the trail from the shelter of one sage-brush to another--"In a
country that raises sage-brush, horned toads, and hell," and he laughed
softly to himself.  "The Indian only gets the land the white man
wouldn't have."  Then his eyes fell on the pack mules, and again the
blue eyes gleamed with amusement.  "And sometimes valuable minerals are
found on land the white man refused, and then he wants even the
God-forsaken remnant he promised by solemn treaty never to take from the
red man and his children's children."  "God-forsaken" was a stock phrase
for that country and Calthorpe reflected, "And it _is_ the last word in
desolation, the last word, but _I_ like it. Yes, I like it."  And he was
amused with himself.

He didn't understand it or try to, but something in him responded to the
crimson and yellow glory of the cactus flower, the purple of the
thistle, the dull red of the "Indian's paintbrush," or, as the mountain
children call them, "bloody noses."  He knew a secret joy when the pale
greens of the sage-brush and greasewood, and the live shimmer of the
scrub oak were relieved by the larkspur, wild roses, the white columbine
and sago lillies, and the flashing black and white of the magpie's wing,
and somehow he knew that these things were more appealing because set in
wide spaces and in silence and desolation.

By chance or telepathy something like this was passing through the mind
of another, a man in middle life who sat in front of a tent pitched on
the bank of a clear mountain stream that separated the Agency from the
rest of the Reservation.  He was a big framed man, stoop shouldered,
with the face of a scholar and a saint.  His clothes hung loosely on
him, and he sat as though it would be an exertion for him to rise.  Near
by was the blasted trunk of a hollow tree.  It had been fired by the
cigarette of some careless smoker, and it was afire within and
smouldering.  A look at the man's pensive eyes showed that he too was
afire within and smouldering.

"Fine boy, strange boy," he mused.  Then he caught the vibration of the
thought of the young chief of police who was riding toward him on the
dusty trail.

"Some sins," he thought, "are magnificent.  Milton's villain is superb,
but"--and his eyes rested on the rather pretty cottage of the agent
nestling in a grove of trees below--"small sins are really inexcusable."
Rather an unusual reflection for a clergyman, who ought surely to be
irreconcilable to sin in any form.  But then he _was_ unusual, the Rev.
Dr. John McCloud.  "We send these wild children to our great cities, and
show them how hopeless it would be to resist our countless millions, but
we never show them righteousness.  We only make the Indian hopeless.
And who of the countless millions knows or cares what happens to this
bewildered anachronism, this forlorn child of a day that is gone?  With
really generous and noble purposes we hand him over to the spoiler, and
so a great people becomes _particeps criminis_ in petty larcenies and
other pitiful and ignoble wrongs.  I wish I could awaken our people to
their privileges, their divine opportunities--not so much for the sake
of the Indian, but for our own sakes."  And he coughed and sank deeper
into his camp chair.  "Why should a great, mighty, enlightened people
stoop to crush such obviously harmless and helpless ones?  Is it because
they have no votes, no lobby in Washington, are unorganized, obscure,
and ignorant?"  And his eyes drooped to the book open on his lap and
rested on these figures: "7,000,000 families on a medium wage of $436 a
year, and 5,000,000 farmers with an average income of $350 a year.
Which means that 60,000,000 people must think before buying a penny
newspaper, that they must save and plan for months to get a yearly
holiday, that sickness means debt or charity, that things that make for
comfort or beauty in a home are out of the question."

"Yes, yes," he reflected, "that is it.  Why should we trouble to save
the Indian?  We are not even troubled to save our own.  At least the Red
Man has the fresh air, the light, the sun," and his mind wandered back
to the crowded cities, with their gaunt men, slatternly women, and
pallid children.

Between this middle-aged man sitting under the flap of his tent and the
young man riding across the desert there had been from the first, quick,
instantaneous sympathy and understanding.  And now the thought of each
jumped from the general to the particular.

"She's a fine woman," clicked the instrument in the elder man's head.
"It's very tragic, her situation. I wonder if the boy realizes its full
significance? I wonder if he knows his own peril?"

"She's a fine woman," was the response in the younger man's
consciousness.  "I must speak to the agent about her.  I've given her
such protection as I could, but he _is_ the man; it is _his_ duty.  Duty
isn't Ladd's strong point, but perhaps I can ram it gently down his
throat.  If he doesn't do it, it will lead to trouble," and he looked
grim and his teeth set.

He reined in his horse for a moment to take in the beauties of the view.
His men