by Zane Grey
Snow on the grey old peak! It reminded Adam how, long ago, from far down the valley, he had watched the mountain crown itself in dazzling white. Snow on the heights meant winter that tempered the heat, let loose the storm winds; and therefore, down in the desert, comfort and swiftly flying days. Indeed, so swift were they that Adam, calling out sad and well-remembered words, “Oh, time, stand still here!” seemed to look at a few more golden sunsets and, lo! again it was spring. Time would not stand still! Nor would the budding, blossoming youth of Genie! Nor would the slow-mounting might of the tumult in Adam’s soul!
Then swifter than the past, another year flew by. Genie’s uncle did not come. And Adam began to doubt that he would ever come. And the hope of Genie’s, that he never would come, began insidiously to enter into Adam’s thought. Again the loneliness, the solitude and silence, and something more he could not name, began to drag Adam from duty, from effort of mind. The desert never stopped its work, on plant, or rock, or man. Adam knew that he required another shock to quicken his brain, to stir again the spiritual need, to make him fight the subtle, all-pervading, ever-present influence of the desert.
In all that time Adam saw but two white men, prospectors passing by down the sandy trails. Indians came that way but seldom. Across the valley there was an encampment, which he visited occasionally to buy baskets, skins, meat, and to send Indians out after supplies. The great problem was clothes for Genie. It was difficult to get materials, difficult for Genie to make dresses, and impossible to keep her from tearing or wearing or growing out of them. Adam found that Indian moccasins, and tough overalls such as prospectors wore, cut down to suit Genie, and woollen blouses she made herself, were the only things for her. Like a road runner she ran over the rocks and sand! For Genie, cactus was as if it were not! As for a hat, she would not wear one. Adam’s responsibility weighed upon him. When he asked Genie what in the world she would wear when he took her out of the desert, to pass through villages and ranches and towns, where people lived, she naively replied, “What I’ve got on!” And what she wore at the moment was of course, the boyish garb that was all Adam could keep on her, and which happened just then to be minus the moccasins. Genie loved to scoop up the warm white sand with her bare brown feet, and then to dabble them in the running water.
“Well, I give up!” exclaimed Adam, resignedly. “But when we do get to Riverside or San Diego, where there’s a store, you’ve got to go with me to buy girl’s dresses and things — and you’ve got to wear them.”
“Oh, Wanny, that will be grand!” she cried, dazzled at the prospect. “But — let’s don’t go — just yet!”
In the early fall — what month it was Adam could not be sure — he crossed the arm of the valley to the encampment of the Coahuilas. The cool nights and tempering days had made him hungry for meat. He found the Indian hunters at home, and, in fact, they had just packed fresh sheep meat down from the mountain. They were of the same tribe as the old chief, Charley Jim, who had taught Adam so much of the desert during those early hard years over in the Chocolates. Adam always asked for news of Charley Jim, usually to be disappointed. He was a nomad, this old chieftain, and his family had his wandering spirit. Adam shouldered his load of fresh meat and took his way down out of the canyon where the encampment lay, to the well-beaten trail that zigzagged along the irregular base of the mountain.
Adam rested at the dividing points of the trails. It was early in the day, clear and still. How grey and barren and monotonous the desert! All seemed dead. A strange, soft, creeping apathy came over Adam, not a dreaminess, for in his dreams he lived the past and invented the future, but a state wherein he watched, listened, smelled, and felt, all unconscious that he was doing anything. Whenever he fell into this trance, and was roused out of it, or came out of it naturally, then he experienced a wonderful sense of vague content. That feeling was evanescent. Always he longed to get it back, but could not.
In this instant his quick eye caught sight of something that was moving. A prospector with a brace of burros — common sight indeed it was to Adam, though not for the last few years.
The man was coming from the south, but outside of the main trail, for which, no doubt, he was heading. Adam decided to wait and exchange greetings with him. After watching awhile Adam was constrained to mutter “Well, if that fellow isn’t a great walker, my eyes are failing!” That interested him all the more. He watched burros and driver grow larger and clearer. Then they disappeared behind a long, low swell of sand fringed by sage and dotted by mesquite. They would reappear presently, coming out behind the ridge at a point near Adam.
Some minutes later he saw that the burros and driver had not only cleared the end of the ridge, but were now within a hundred yards of where he sat. The burros were trotting, with packs bobbing up and down. Only the old slouch hat of the prospector showed above the packs. Manifestly he was a short man.
“Say, but he’s a walker!” ejaculated Adam.
Suddenly sight of that old slouch hat gave Adam a thrill. Then the man’s shoulders appeared. How enormously broad! Then, as the burros veered to one side, the driver’s whole stature was disclosed. What a stride he had, for a man so short! Almost he seemed as wide as he was long. His gait was rolling, ponderous. He wore old, grey, patched clothes that Adam wildly imagined he had seen somewhere.
Suddenly he yelled at the burros: “Hehaw! Gedap!”
That deep voice, those words, brought Adam leaping to his feet, transfixed and thrilling. Had he lost his mind? What trick of desert mirage or illusion! No — the burros were real — they kicked up the dust — rattled the pebbles in the sage; no — the man was real, however he seemed a ghost of Adam’s past.
“Dismukes!” shouted Adam, hoarsely.
The prospector halted his long, rolling stride and looked. Then Adam plunged over sand and through sage. He could not believe his eyes. He must get his hands on this man, to prove reality. In a trice the intervening space was covered. Then Adam, breathless and aghast, gazed into a face that he knew, yet which held what he did not know.
“Howdy, Wansfell! Thought I’d meet you sooner or later,” said the man.
His voice was unmistakable. He recognised Adam. Beyond any possibility of doubt — Dismukes! In the amaze and gladness of the moment Adam embraced this old saviour and comrade and friend — embraced him as a long-lost brother or as a prodigal son. Then Adam released him, with sudden dawning consciousness that Dismukes seemed to have no feeling whatever about this meeting.
“Dismukes! I had to grab you — just to feel if it was you. I’m knocked clean off my pins,” declared Adam, breathing hard.
“Yes, it’s me, Wansfell,” replied Dismukes. His large, steady eyes, dark brown like those of an ox, held an exceeding and unutterable sadness.
“Back on the desert? You!” exclaimed Adam. “Dismukes, then you lost your gold — bad luck — something happened — you never went to the great cities — to spend your fortune — to live and live?”
“Yes, friend, I went,” replied Dismukes.
A great awe fell upon Adam. His keen gaze, cleared of the mist of amaze, saw Dismukes truly. The ox eyes had the shadow of supreme tragedy. Their interest was far off, as if their sight had fixed on a dim, distant mountain range of the horizon. Yet they held peace. The broad face had thinned. Gone was the dark, healthy bronze! And the beard that had once been thick and grizzled was now scant and white. The whole face expressed resignation and peace. Those wonderful wide shoulders of Dismukes appeared just as wide, but they sagged, and the old, tremendous brawn was not there. Strangest of all, Dismukes wore the ragged grey prospector’s garb which had been on his person when Adam saw him last. There! the yellow stain of Death Valley clay — and darker stains — sight of which made Adam’s flesh creep!
“Ah! So you went, after all,” replied Adam, haltingly. “Well! Well!...Let’s sit down, old comrade. Here on this stone. I confess my legs feel weak...Never expected to see you again in this world!”
“Wa
nsfell, no man can ever tell. It’s folly to think an’ toil an’ hope for the future.”
What strong, sad history of life revealed itself in that reply!
“Ah!...I — But never mind what I think. Dismukes, you’ve not been on the desert long.”
“About a week. Outfitted at San Diego an’ came over the mountain trail through El Campo. Landed in Frisco two weeks an’ more ago. By ship from Japan.”
“Did you have these old clothes hid away somewhere?” inquired Adam. “I remember them.”
“No, I packed them wherever I went for the whole three years.”
“Three years! Has it been that long?”
“Aye, friend Wansfell, three years.”
Adam gazed out across the desert with slowly dimming eyes. The wasteland stretched there, vast and illimitable, the same as all the innumerable times he had gazed. Solemn and grey and old, indifferent to man, yet strengthening through its passionless fidelity to its own task!
“Dismukes, I want you to tell me where you went, what you did, why you came back,” said Adam, with earnestness that was entreaty.
Dismukes heaved a long sigh. He wagged the huge, shaggy head that was now grey. But he showed no more indication of emotion. How stolid he seemed — how locked in his aloofness!
“Yes, I’ll tell you,” he said. “Maybe it’ll save you somethin’ of what I went through.”
Then he became lost in thought, perhaps calling upon memory, raking up the dead leaves of the past. Adam recalled that his own memory of Dismukes and the past brought note of the fact how the old prospector had loved to break his habit of silence, to talk about the desert, and to smoke his black pipe while he discoursed. But now speech did not easily flow and he did not smoke.
“Lookin’ back, I seem to see myself as crazy,” began Dismukes. “You’ll remember how crazy. You’ll remember before we parted up there on the Mohave at that borax camp where the young man was — who couldn’t drive the mules...Wansfell, from the minute I turned my back on you till now I’ve never thought of that. Did you drive the ornery mules?”
“Did I?” Adam’s query was a grim assertion. “Every day for three months! You remember Old Butch, that grey devil of a mule. Well, Dismukes, the time came when he knew me. If I even picked up the long bull whip Old Butch would scream and run to lay his head on me.”
“An’ you saw the young driver through his trouble?”
“That I did. And it was more trouble than he told us then. The boss Carricks had was low-down and cunning. He’s got smitten with the lad’s wife — a pretty girl, but frail in health. He kept Carricks on jobs away from home. We didn’t meet the lad any too soon.”
“Humph! That’s got a familiar sound to me,” declared Dismukes. “Wansfell, what’d you do to thet low-down boss?”
“Go on with your story,” replied Adam.
“Aha! That’s so. I want to make Two Palms Well before dark...Wansfell, like a horned-toad on the desert, I changed my outside at Frisco. Alas! I imagined all within — blood — mind — soul had changed!...Went to Denver, St. Louis, an’ looked at the sights, not much disappointed, because my time seemed far ahead. Then I went to my old home. There I had my first jar. Folks all dead! Not a relation livin’. Could not even find my mother’s grave. No one remembered me an’ I couldn’t find anyone I ever knew. The village had grown to a town. My old home was gone. The picture of it — the little grey cottage — the vines an’ orchard — lived in my mind. I found the place. All gone! Three new houses there. Forty years is a long time! I didn’t build the church or set out a park for the village of my boyhood...Then I went on to Chicago, Philadelphia, New York. Stayed long in New York. At first it fascinated me. I felt I wanted to see it out of curiosity. I was lookin’ for some place, somethin’ I expected. But I never saw it. The hotels, theatres, saloons, gamblin’ hells, an’ worse — the operas an’ parks an’ churches — an’ the wonderful stores — I saw them all. Men an’ women like ants rushin’ to an’ fro. No rest, no sleep, no quiet, no peace! I met people, a few good, but most bad. An’ in some hotels an’ places I got to be well known. I got to have a name for throwin’ gold around. Men of business sought my acquaintance, took me to dinners, made much of me — all to get me to invest in their schemes. Women! Aw! the women were my second disappointment! Wansfell, women are like desert mirages. Beautiful women, in silks an’ satins, diamonds blazin’ on bare necks an’ arms, made eyes at me, talked soft an’ sweet, an’ flattered me an’ praised me an’ threw themselves at me — all because they thought I had stacks an’ rolls an’ bags of gold. Never a woman did I meet who liked me, who had any thought to hear my story, to learn my hope! Never a kind whisper! Never any keen eye that saw through my outside!
“Well, I wasn’t seein’ an’ findin’ the life I’d hoped for. That New York is as near hell as I ever, got. I saw men with quiet faces an’ women who seemed happy. But only in the passin’ crowds. I never got to meet any of them. They had their homes an’ troubles an’ happiness, I figured, an’ they were not lookin’ for anyone to fleece. It was my habit to get into a crowd an’ watch, for I come to believe the mass of busy, workin’ ordinary people were good. Maybe if I’d somehow made acquaintance with a few of them it ‘d have been better. But that wasn’t seein’ life. I thought I knew what I wanted.
“All my yearnin’s an’ dreams seemed to pall on me. Where was the joy? Wansfell, the only joy I had was in findin’ some poor beggar or bootblack or poor family, an’ givin’ them gold. The great city was full of them. An’ I gave away thousands of dollars. God knows that was some good. An’ now I see if I could have stuck it out, livin’ among such people, I might have been of some use in the world. But, man! livin’ was not possible in New York. All night the hotels roared. All night the streets hummed an’ clanged. There was as many people rushin’ around by night as by day, an’ different from each other, like bats an hawks. I got restless an’ half sick. I couldn’t sleep. I seemed suffocatin’ for fresh air. I wanted room to breathe. When I looked up at night I couldn’t see the stars. Think of that for a desert man!
“At last I knew I couldn’t find what I wanted in New York, an’ I couldn’t hunt any longer there. I had to leave. My plans called for goin’ abroad. Then came a strange feelin’ that I must have had all the time, but didn’t realise. The West called me back. I seemed to want the Middle West, where I’d planned to buy the green farm. But you know I’m a man who sticks to his mind, when it’s made up. There were London, Paris, Rome I’d dreamed about an’ had planned to see. Well, I had a hell of a fight with somethin’ in myself before I could get on that ship. Right off then I got seasick. Wansfell, the bite of a rattlesnake never made me half as sick as that dirty-grey, windy sea. The trip across was a nightmare...London was a dreary place as big as the Mohave an’ full of queer fishy-eyed people whom I couldn’t understand. But I liked their slow, easygoin’ ways. Then Paris...Wansfell, that Paris was a wonderful, glitterin’ beautiful city, an’ if a city had been a place for me, Paris would have been it. But, I was lost. I couldn’t speak French — couldn’t learn a word. My tongue refused to twist round their queer words. All the same, I saw what I’d set out to see...Wansfell, if a man fights despair for the women of the world, he’ll get licked in Paris. An’ the reason is, there you see the same thing in the homely, good, an’ virtuous little wives as you see in those terrible, fascinatin’, dazzlin’ actresses. What that somethin’ is I couldn’t guess. But you like all French-women. They’re gay an’ happy an’ square. If I applied the truth of this desert to these Frenchwomen, I’d say the somethin’ so fascinatin’ in them is that the race is peterin’ out an’ the women are dyin’ game.
“From Paris I went to Rome, an’ there a queer state of mind came to me. I could look at temples an’ old ruins without even seein’ them — with my mind on my own country. All this travel idea, seein’ and learnin’ an’ doin’ changed so that it was hateful. I cut out Egypt, an’ I can’t remember much of India an’ Japan. But whe
n I got on ship bound for Frisco I couldn’t see anythin’ for a different reason, an’ that was tears. I’d come far to find joy of life, an’ now I wept tears of joy because I was homeward bound. It was a great an’ splendid feeling!
“The Pacific isn’t like the Atlantic. It’s vast an’ smooth an’ peaceful, with swells like the mile-long ridges of the desert. I didn’t get seasick. An’ on that voyage I got some rest. Maybe the sea is like the desert. Anyway, it calmed me, an’ I could think clear once more. As I walked the deck by day, or hung over the rail by night, my yearnin’s an’ dreams came back. When I reached Frisco I’d take train for the Middle West, an’ somewhere I’d buy the green ranch an’ settle down to peace an’ quiet for the rest of my life. The hope was beautiful. I believed in it. That wild desire to search for the joy of life had to be buried. I had been wrong about that. It was only a dream — a boy’s dream, on the hope of which I had spent the manhood of my best years. Ah! it was bitter to realise that. I — who had never given in to defeat...But I conquered my regret because I knew I had just mistaken what I wanted. An’ it was not wholly too late!...Wansfell, you’ve no idea of the size of the old earth. I’ve been round it. An’ that Pacific! Oh, what an endless ocean of waters! It seemed eternal, like the sky. But — at last — I got to — Frisco.”
Here Dismukes choked and broke down. The deep, rolling voice lost its strength for a moment. He drew a long, long breath that it hurt Adam to hear.
“Wansfell, when my feet once more touched land it was as though I’d really found happiness,” presently went on Dismukes, clearing his throat of huskiness. “I was in the clouds. I could have kissed the very dirt. My own, my native land!...Now for the last leg of the journey — an’ the little farm — the home to be — friends to make — perhaps a sweet-faced woman an’ a child! Oh, it was as glorious as my lost dreams!