A man must know a savage as Gale knew
Yaqui before he could speak authoritatively, and then something
stilled his tongue. In the first stage of Gale's observation of
Yaqui he had marked tenaciousness of life, stoicism, endurance,
strength. These were the attributes of the desert. But what of
that second stage wherein the Indian had loomed up a colossal
figure of strange honor, loyalty, love? Gale doubted his convictions
and scorned himself for doubting.
There in the gloom sat the silent, impassive, inscrutable Yaqui.
His dark face, his dark eyes were plain in the light of the stars.
Always he was near Gale, unobtrusive, shadowy, but there. Why?
Gale absolutely could not doubt that the Indian had heart as well
as mind. Yaqui had from the very first stood between Gale and
accident, toil, peril. It was his own choosing. Gale could not
change him or thwart him. He understood the Indian's idea of
obligation and sacred duty. But there was more, and that baffled
Gale. In the night hours, alone on the slope, Gale felt in Yaqui,
as he felt the mighty throb of that desert pulse, a something that
drew him irresistibly to the Indian. Sometimes he looked around
to find the Indian, to dispel these strange, pressing thoughts
of unreality, and it was never in vain.
Thus the nights passed, endlessly long, with Gale fighting for his
old order of thought, fighting the fascination of the infinite sky,
and the gloomy insulating whirl of the wide shadows, fighting for
belief, hope, prayer, fighting against that terrible ever-recurring
idea of being lost, lost, lost in the desert, fighting harder than
any other thing the insidious, penetrating, tranquil, unfeeling
self that was coming between him and his memory.
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