"I see my Christian duty in helping people," he said, "irrespective of what religion they profess. I have thought it all out thoroughly. If you have no objections, I shall remain in the desert with the Indians, but I warn you I will not make the slightest effort to convert them to Christianity. Otherwise, I could never be accepted by the Indians as one of them. I will simply help them the best I can. I will call doctors for them, explain to them how they must take care of their children. I will give them advice on how to live. So far there has never been a case of the Navajo-accepting a white man. Only if I should succeed can we begin to consider the possibility of converting them to Christianity."
The church administration thought such talk too radical.
"You must act like all missionaries," they told him.
He refused.
Then they dismissed him. Yet, this odd fellow remained true to his dangerous ideas, although he had his wife to support and not a penny with which to do it.
He again went into the desert, this time with the firm determination never to return. That was eighteen years ago. He settled in a nomad camp of the Navajos and began to lead the life of an Indian. He had no money. Like the Indians, he took up hunting and cattle raising.
Years passed. The Indians became accustomed to the brave and cheerful man in eyeglasses. Little by little they began to show confidence in him, and he began to be one of them. Occasionally he would go into the city, arrange a public subscription for the Indian children, and persuade the Indians to go to doctors for medical aid and not to tie their infants to the little boards. He mastered the Navajo language. He came to love the Indians very much. He somehow could never begin his propaganda of Christianity. "I'll have time for that yet," he thought. But after a while he even stopped thinking about Christianity. Looking back, he understood that the greater and probably the better part of his life had already passed and that it had passed well. He was happy.
"I wanted to make Christians out of the Indians," the man in the red shirt, with a cartridge belt, told us, "but it didn't turn out as I expected: they made an Indian out of me. Yes! Now I am a real Indian. If you like I'll take your scalp off!"
And laughing loudly he pretended to scalp Mr. Adams.
Then he sat down and, still smiling, added thoughtfully:
"And to tell you the truth, I don't know more honest, noble, and clean-cut people than the Indians. They taught me to love the sun, the moon, the desert. They taught me to understand nature. I cannot imagine now how I could live away from the Indians."
"Sir," Mr. Adams said suddenly, "you are a good man."
He took out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes, without taking off his eyeglasses.
On the morrow we rose at six o'clock. Day was beginning to break, although the sun had not yet risen. It was as cold as it is in Moscow at that hour. We shivered under our topcoats. The little forest was covered with hoar frost. The desert seemed dark and not so beautiful as yesterday. We ran to the bridge for another look at the Little Colorado River. Above us was the cliff in the shape of a temple surrounded by terraces. Even that did not seem so magic to us as it had the day before. When in an effort to warm up we ran back to the little house, the sun appeared. The desert at once was alight and became beautiful. Half an hour later we took off our coats, and in another half-hour it was downright hot.
Before starting off on our long journey (we had to travel three hundred miles to Boulder Dam), we stopped at the petrol station. There we saw the missionary in the red shirt. He had taken the place of the cowboy, who was occupied with his household affairs. Again he and Adams began to whack each other's shoulder.
"I am a Bolshevik!" shouted the former missionary in farewell, pointing to his red shirt and roaring with laughter. "Good-bye!" " Good-bye!" cried Mr. Adams in response.
The road went up into the hills. So, looking back on the desert of the Navajos, we could see for a long time the little house, and the bridge, and the petrol station beside which could be seen the red shirt of the missionary who had become an Indian. We were gazing for the last time at the Navajo desert, wondering how in the centre of the United States —between New York and Los Angeles, between Chicago and New Orleans, surrounded on all sides by electric stations, oil derricks, railways, millions of automobiles, thousands of banks, stock exchanges and churches, deafened by the clamour of jazz bands, motion-picture films and gangster machine-guns—these people managed to preserve in its full untouchability their manner of living.
28 A Young Baptist
THE ASCENT among the yellow cliffs continued for an hour and a half. The little house of the cowboy, the petrol station, and the bridge across the Little Colorado River had long ago vanished from view, yet the desert of the Navajo Indians still lay in the valley behind us, the last barren refuge of pure-blooded, one-hundred-per-cent. Americans whose only misfortune was that their skin was red and that they had no aptitude for trade, but rather for drawing and for warlike but not dangerous dances.
Two or three more turns, and the desert disappeared. Suddenly we found ourselves at a beautiful health resort in the Tyrol, in Switzerland, in the Caucasus. It was like the return of interplanetary travellers from Mars to earth, to one of its most beautiful corners, the virgin forest of Kanab. Pure flaky snow lay on the road. Large smooth pines rose on either side. And over all the sparkle of the December sun.
Such metamorphoses occur in America.
The beautiful vision soon came to an end. The road descended, and we entered the state of Utah, announced by a small bill-board. Here again was the desert, but this one was warmer. We passed a small settlement. Around the houses grew trees, and there were several petrol stations. Two white women passed. One of them wheeled a baby in a carriage, a civilized baby, whose parents knew about radio, pinball, and vitamins. This was no Indian baby strapped to a board!
"Did you know, gentlemen, that in the state of Utah live—Mormons?" asked Mr. Adams.
We were again sorry that we had not driven into Salt Lake City and that we would depart from America without having seen Mormons.
"Seriously, you must not talk like that," said Mr. Adams. "From Salt Lake City we could not have made our way to California, because at this time of the year the mountain- passes are undoubtedly full of ice. Oh, no! I ask you to remember the Rocky Mountains!"
"Hitchhiker!" Mrs. Adams suddenly cried.
We saw a man standing at the side of the road, a suitcase between his legs.
"Shall we take him?" asked Mr. Adams.
For a little while we looked at the hitchhiker, appraising him. He wore a bright yellow gabardine duster. He appeared to be about twenty years old.
"Is it worth while? That duster he is wearing is altogether too optimistic and as dull as ditchwater."
"But suppose he is a Mormon!" said Mr. Adams.
That decided the matter.
"Let's take him!"
The hitchhiker, to our regret, proved to be not a Mormon, but a quite ordinary and devoutly professing Baptist.
He was a good boy. He took off his duster, disclosing a grey coat and rusty corduroy trousers. He had a swarthy, pimply face and small black sideburns. His story was the ordinary story of an American young man. The son of a poor farmer from Nebraska. Of course, he had graduated from high school. Of course, he had travelled to Arizona to find work and to save money for matriculation at some college. Of course, he did not find any work. Now he was ready to do anything at all. He had capable hands. And he was willing to work. He wanted to try his luck in California. If nothing happened there, he would have to return to his father and spend a dull country winter. Well, what of it? He would take to hunting wild cats and coyotes. And in the spring he would see. More truly he would see nothing. Business was bad. College was unattainable. And there was no hope that matters would improve. Like all young men of his age, our hitchhiker was completely devoid of any feeling of curiosity, and throughout the entire journey did not ask us about anything whatever. But to make up for that, he talked willingly about himself and answered all questions.