g heart for Nas Ta Bega, with
something of the white man's burden of crime toward the Indian weighing
upon his soul.

Old Hosteen Doetin came to him with shaking hands and words memorable of
the time Glen Naspa left his hogan.

"Me no savvy Jesus Christ. Me hungry. Me no eat Jesus Christ!"

That seemed to be all of his trouble that he could express to Shefford.
He could not understand the religion of the missionary, this Jesus
Christ who had called his granddaughter away. And the great fear of an
old Indian was not death, but hunger. Shefford remembered a custom of
the Navajos, a thing barbarous looked at with a white man's mind. If an
old Indian failed on a long march he was inclosed by a wall of stones,
given plenty to eat and drink, and left there to die in the desert. Not
death did he fear, but hunger! 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. He resembled an impassive
destiny, upon which no shocks fell. He had the light of that flaring
golden sky in his face, the majesty of the mountain in his mien, the
silence of the great gulf below on his lips. This educated Navajo, who
had reverted to the life of his ancestors, found in the wildness and
loneliness of his environment a strength no white teaching could
ever have given him. Shefford sensed in him a measureless grief, an
impenetrable gloom, a tragic acceptance of the meaning of Glen Naspa's
ruin and death--the vanishing of his race from the earth. Death had
written the law of such bitter truth round Glen Naspa's lips, and the
same truth was here in the grandeur and gloom of the Navajo.

"Bi Nai," he said, with the beautiful sonorous roll in his voice, "Glen
Naspa is in her grave and there are no paths to the place of her sleep.
Glen Naspa is gone."

"Gone! Where? Nas Ta Bega, remember I lost my own faith, and I have not
yet learned yours."

"The Navajo has one mother--the earth. Her body has gone to the earth
and it will become dust. But her spirit is in the air. It shall whisper
to me from the wind. I shall hear it on running waters. It will hide in
the morning music of a mocking-bird and in the lonely ni