“Nas Ta Bega, what did Withers mean when he said go to the Navajo for a faith?” asked Shefford. “He meant the desert is my mother.... Will you go with Nas Ta Bega into the cañon and the mountains?” “Indeed I will.” They unclasped hands and turned toward the trading-post. “Nas Ta Bega, have you spoken my tongue to any other white man since you returned to your home?” asked Shefford. “No.” “Why do you--why are you different for me?” The Indian maintained silence. “Is it because of--of Glen Naspa?” inquired Shefford. Nas Ta Bega stalked on, still silent, but Shefford divined that, although his service to Glen Naspa would never be forgotten, still it was not wholly responsible for the Indian's subtle sympathy. “Bi Nai! The Navajo will call his white friend Bi Nai--brother,” said Nas Ta Bega, and he spoke haltingly, not as if words were hard to find, but strange to speak. “I was stolen from my mother's hogan and taken to California. They kept me ten years in a mission at San Bernardino and four years in a school. They said my color and my hair were all that was left of the Indian in me. But they could not see my heart. They took fourteen years of my life. They wanted to make me a missionary among my own people. But the white man's ways and his life and his God are not the Indian's. They never can be.” How strangely productive of thought for Shefford to hear the Indian talk! What fatality in this meeting and friendship! 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's low voice was deep and wonderful with its intensity of feeling. “The white man robbed the Indian of lands and homes, drove him into the deserts, made him a gaunt and sleepless spiller of blood.... The blood is all spilled now, for the Indian is broken. But the white man sells him rum and seduces his daughters.... He will not leave the Indian in peace with his own God!... Bi Nai, the Indian is dying!” . . . . . . . . . . . That night Shefford lay in his blankets out under the open sky and the stars. The earth had never meant much to him, and now it was a bed. He had preached of the heavens, but until now had never studied them. An Indian slept beside him. And not until the gray of morning had blotted out the starlight did Shefford close his eyes. . . . . . . . . . . . With break of the next day came full, varied, and stirring incidents to Shefford. He was strong, though unskilled at most kinds of outdoor tasks. Withers had work for ten men, if they could have been found. Shefford dug and packed and lifted till he was so sore and tired that rest was a blessing.