by Zane Grey
“I know, but if Mary is in trouble—”
“You don’t want to leave her either,” accused Katharine.
“We must make up our minds,” Alice remonstrated. “If we are to go we must leave on the eighteenth and today is the sixteenth. We’ve already arranged with Mr. Reynolds to take us. We should give him time to accept other passengers if we change our plans.”
“I’ll pay him whether we go or not, if you’ll only iron out that funny wrinkle over your nose!” cried Katharine.
Alice’s face was still too softly girlish to have its wan beauty marred by wrinkles. Katharine wanted to preserve her sister’s youth and beauty and have perfect health glorify it again. She received Alice’s sudden glance with a smile.
“Suppose I run over to see Mary and let my visit decide for us,” she said. “I think the coast is clear. I’d be furious if it wasn’t. I’d sooner run into a rattlesnake than Wilbur. His sister certainly put the finishing touches on his regard for me. Behold a thoroughly dissolute woman who would not be running around the desert if she had the common decency to stay at home. My friend Wilbur, it would seem, has relegated me to the derelict ragbag with that one stinging remark. Ah, the terrible ignominy of it!”
Alice laughed. “I’d like to relegate him somewhere, and I would if he belonged to me.”
“Here! Help me out of this awful apron,” begged Katharine. “There! Will I do? ... Have an eye on the road and if you see my friend Wilbur coming shout, ‘Fire! Fire!’ at the top of your voice and I’ll come sneaking round the back way.”
With that jocular admonition Katharine left, Alice’s wish for a pleasant visit following after.
It was obvious that Mary was glad to see her friend. Immediately she laid aside the corduroy breeches she was mending, and forcing Katharine into Wilbur’s chair, drew up a footstool for herself.
“Oh!” she cried. “I’ve missed you terribly these past two days. It’s all right for you to come here. I don’t think Wilbur expects I can put you out bodily. But I don’t dare stray to your house. For me, at present, there is no greater wifely transgression than that. Oh, Katharine, I feel so bitter! Wilbur is stifling all my better nature. I feel hate creeping in and I have no defense.”
Ostensibly, under Mary’s vehement mood rancorous memories were seething. Katharine’s heart went out to her, but in the tension of the moment she hesitated to offer sympathy.
“Doesn’t your sense of humor help a little, dear?” she ventured.
“Wilbur has a way of twisting all the humor out of any situation, though he did accuse me of trying to suffocate Lenora when I poured water over her to bring her out of her pretended faint. I really have had it in my heart to suffocate her since. I’m sure I have. The indignities I suffered before that girl left! Wilbur says I drove her out. That isn’t true. I fought with myself so hard! Every time she said, ‘We’ll have dinner at such and such an hour. Could you have it ready then? Wilbur wants it on time,’ and a hundred other commands issued to impress me with my inferiority, I’d try to pretend to myself that I hadn’t heard a word that she said, or I’d silently hum a snatch of one of the dear old familiar hymns— ‘Rescue the Perishing,’ no doubt. It should have been that. To her I presented a smiling exterior. Anyway, I did refuse to do her wash, and that precipitated her flurried departure. That very day she had said to Wilbur that I had the hands of a kitchen slattern, and placed her white ones before him for his approval. Not a half-hour later she descended upon me with her dirty laundry.”
“The little fool,” cried Katharine. “Her hands are like putty. Yours are graceful and capable and strong.”
“It wasn’t just vanity that made me rebuke her by refusing to do her personal laundry. My vanity has suffered so many indignities at Wilbur’s hands that I doubt if I have any left. Only Lenora’s remark about my hands was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Thank goodness she’s gone now. That’s over. Now I have a little chance for diversion.”
“Diversion?” Katharine repeated.
“Yes. Mr. MacDonald fired Wilbur yesterday.”
Katharine frowned through a minute of abstraction. “I call that bad, Mary. I happen to know Mr. MacDonald has been dissatisfied with Wilbur’s service for months and kept him on only because he couldn’t get other reliable help. Poor gabby Mrs. MacDonald told me, and she’s spread the news. I doubt if Wilbur can get other employment at Taho.”
“The reservation trip ended it,” Mary declared. “Wilbur was gone almost two weeks and he brought back the scantiest and poorest assortment of stuff Mr. MacDonald ever saw.”
“You must tide over this period somehow. Please don’t be hurt if I suggest that you let me help with a little money,” protested Katharine.
Mary’s upturned eyes smiled into hers through a mist of tears. “Thank you, old faithful. Not yet. There’s the poultry money. And I’ll take a position somewhere — here at Taho, if possible. If not, over at Flaggerston.”
“But Wilbur won’t stand for that. Don’t forget his drivel about family pride. He wouldn’t let you take a position as secretary at the Indian school, if you’ll remember.”
“I’ve met with his objections again,” confessed Mary. “He doesn’t know it, but this time they’ll be overruled. It’s not only that we’ll be in need of money. There’s the dreadful monotony of my days. There’s my childlessness.” A mild note of anguish crept into Mary’s voice. “I would welcome any occupation. I am really glad that Wilbur lost his position. All day I have been almost happy about it. I haven’t had such luck in years!”
Katharine was alive to the passionate earnestness of Mary’s avowal. It exalted her that at last determination and self-confidence had taken root in Mary’s soul.
“Then you may be leaving soon?” she asked.
“It might be a matter of two or three weeks. Mrs. Jenkins is going to Flaggerston before she returns to Leupp and she’s going to look into prospects there and let me know. She’s a splendid woman. She’s mastered the art of always keeping to herself other people’s affairs whether they reach her accidentally or intentionally.”
“If there’s the slightest chance of your going away that soon, I won’t go to Black Mesa,” declared Katharine stoutly.
“By all means go!” protested Mary. “It wouldn’t do any good to stay. You won’t want to visit with Wilbur around. He says he needs a rest. He doesn’t intend to look for employment for a month. That means he’ll be home all day, day after day. He’s riding out this afternoon to see some Indians on a sheep transaction for Mr. Weston. It’s just a lucky accident that he isn’t here.”
Katharine smiled. “You can’t chase me from Taho as easily as that. At least I can sit on my porch and watch you pass down the street. And I’ll be near should any emergency arise.”
There was something unfathomable in Mary’s quick upward glance which followed upon Katharine’s words. The Eastern girl expected immediate opposition to her suggestion, and she saw it in the wondering depths of Mary’s eyes which begged for understanding.
“I want you to go to Black Mesa for my sake. I want you to take a message to John Curry,” she said.
“If it’s imperative, of course I’ll go,” returned Katharine, warily concealing her surprise. She would not question Mary’s intention. It was enough that Mary depended on her now.
“It may seem strange to you, and it may seem inconsequential. Just a verbal message. I’d like you to tell John Curry that if I leave Taho, I will do so of my own volition. You see, if I go he is bound to hear about it. Tell him I’ll be not much farther away than the outskirts of the desert — that I remember what he said to me at Oraibi. But tell him if it’s to Flaggerston I finally go, and he comes there on business, and we should happen to meet, to pass me by with a greeting and avoid me thereafter. Katharine, I have a strange divination that he distrusts Wilbur to the extent of feeling that my safety is in danger, and he might follow me across the desert thinking, metaphorically speaking, to snatch me from anot
her cliff. It may be nonsense for me to feel that way — it may be just because that’s what I really would have him do.”
Katharine met the astonishing statement with all the indifference she could assume. “You mean—” she started, not knowing how to express the wonder in her mind.
Mary’s serious face was cupped in her hands. Not for a moment had her eyes left her friend’s. “I really and truly mean what I said,” she interrupted. “I felt a restfulness and security in John Curry’s presence that I have never known in all my life before. I feel that his friendship might make something within me that is now stunted grow. I’ve been like a plant born in a dark canyon that once in the year of its life happened to feel the sun. After that the plant would struggle harder than ever toward the light, wouldn’t it?”
“So nature intended,” Katharine responded quietly.
“But I must hide away in my canyon. I must avoid the sun. I have no choice. And you’ll help me, won’t you? You’ll go to Black Mesa — you’ll tell John Curry?”
Katharine was moved to a complete realization of her love for Mary. “It’s the least that I would do for you,” she said.
* * * * *
Outside the post office an hour later Katharine saw Wilbur talking with several town retainers who, common gossip had it, were a nuisance in the community; and she noted grimly that not one of the familiar figures was that of an Indian or a sheep dealer.
“Did Mr. Newton just come along?” she asked the postmistress, who from her window had command of the porch and the broad thoroughfare beyond, and exercised the gift of sight most conscientiously.
“He’s been here all the afternoon. Too bad he lost his job. It’s likely to make bad feelings between his wife and Mrs. MacDonald.”
“No one knows. But I don’t think so,” Katharine averred, her mind running riot with thoughts that would have startled the postmistress had she been able to read the girl’s mind.
“Of course you know that poor Mrs. Gordon has another baby, and to me that’s worse than Mr. Newton’s losing his job.”
Katharine mumbled something about Taho’s sudden increase in population and maneuvered a few sidesteps that removed her from confidential range, after which she successfully bolted. Once outside, throwing discretion to the winds, she approached Wilbur.
“Have you had a busy day?” she asked in a sweet, disarming manner. “I saw Mary for a moment and she told me you were off on some sheep business for Mr. Weston.”
Newton colored slightly. From the tail of her eyes Katharine saw the other men were exchanging amused glances.
“I’m leaving for Black Mesa in a couple of days,” she went boldly on. “I thought you might have some word for Mr. Weston about the sheep. I’ll gladly deliver it. It would save you writing.”
A dead white spread beneath the fading color in Newton’s face. “Thank you, Katharine. Yo’re shore most accommodating,” he drawled. “This sheep business is confidential. It wouldn’t be wise even to mention it to Mr. Weston. My wife’s a little indiscreet airing my business aboot.”
Katharine met his rebuff demurely. “Oh, I’m sorry I can’t facilitate matters for you! I got the impression it was very important — business that had to be transacted quickly.”
When Katharine reached home she repeated the incident to Alice.
“But what made you talk to him?” Alice asked. “Were you really serious about it?”
“I was deadly serious in my purpose. Mary clings to her faith in Wilbur’s honesty. I’ve suspected it since I first set eyes on him. I’ve taken every chance I ever had to embarrass him. He has no sheep business for Mr. Weston. That’s his lodge-meeting-tonight excuse to make absences of any duration he pleases seem plausible. Likely his sheep deal with Mr. Weston will carry weight for the next month or more.... Do you know, Alice, I’ve come to think that Wilbur Newton will do worse than break Mary’s heart? I used to think that he was merely negative, a harmless egotist, as lazy as he was vain, but to me now there is something sinister about the man. I had the strangest feeling as I walked away, a feeling that I would never see him again.”
“Oh, come,” chided Alice. “You’ve never been the least bit psychically inclined. You’re doing away with him in your mind because he’s a burden to Mary.”
“I don’t mean that he is going to die,” corrected Katharine. “Why did you interpret my words so unconditionally, you scamp! It may be that he’ll take Mary far away, search pastures new in which to promenade.”
Alice met the defense with laughter. “You’d never leave Mary for an instant if you really thought that.”
* * * * *
During the time prior to her departure from Taho, Katharine did not encounter Wilbur again. She had tempted Providence by calling on Mary to say good-by, but found her alone as her strange presentiment forebode that she would. Her solicitude for Mary grew, and she begged her, if she could manage it, to send a letter to Black Mesa post with each trip of the mail stage.
It was on the mail stage of the following day, at an hour safely early to escape the surveillance of the late-rising Wilbur, that Alice and Katharine waved good-by to Mary.
“Sure, she’s a saint of a woman, she is,” Reynolds acclaimed in an Irish accent as broad as his red-mottled face.
Forthwith Katharine acknowledged him as a judge of a good woman.
They rode down the tree-lined avenue of Taho, and circled the mesa, high above the several green acres of Indian farms that beautified the immediate neighborhood of the valley below them. Then the road led away from the rim across the sandy level of the mesa, away from the red country through pearl-sheen and gray. It was an exceedingly sandy stretch. Time and again the wheels of the automobile ground and whirled and barely escaped digging themselves to a stop. The great expanse of free, open country seemed the very top of the world, yet the vast encircling horizon rose grandly above it, bold jagged cliffs, leagues upon leagues of unbroken walls. Black Mesa, the dark haze-obscured buttress to the fore, seemed almost unattainable. Yet it called across the desert miles in its purple loneliness.
“Are we really going somewhere near that mesa?” questioned Alice incredulously.
“Yes, my dear. Black Mesa post is named after that tremendous looming upland. The post is about four miles east of the mesa, isn’t it, Mr. Reynolds?”
“About, Ma’am,” Reynolds agreed after a moment’s serious speculation.
“Look! Look! Oh, the darlings,” cried Alice, pointing to three jack rabbits which scampered almost from under the wheels into the brush.
“What easy targets they would have been for an Indian youngster!” Katharine said. “The Navaho children hunt them with bows and arrows, even the very little tots. The Indian men do the same, ever since the war, Mary told me, when they were left so impoverished they couldn’t afford ammunition for their guns. Few were lucky enough even to retain their guns.”
Alice swept the country with her searching gaze. “Don’t you love it all!” she exclaimed. “Doesn’t it just break your heart with happiness! Such a wonderful sense of freedom it gives me!”
These words made Katharine regard Alice seriously. Her little sister was not given to extravagance of speech. Her soul had been stirred by the incomprehensible call of the desert.
For a while Katharine vied with Alice in a test of observation powers. In this way they called each other’s attention to the tenants of the desert, the prairie dogs, rabbits, pack rats, a lone hawk and a wary rattlesnake, and a sly coyote slinking behind a barricade of greasewood bushes. They found the desert a homey place, surprisingly teeming with life.
“This is their home, these hundreds and hundreds of miles of unconquerable country,” remarked Alice. “It is their domain, not man’s.”
They lapsed into silence after a time, through which came the lonely whistle of the sweeps of sand that spread across the trail behind them. Black Mesa loomed ever higher. As they covered the miles between, they rode a gentle downward grade which continually chan
ged the perspective for them. The grade ended abruptly beyond a hill so steep that Alice exclaimed aloud. It took on the aspect of a tremendous sand dune. The wind had covered all traces of a trail.
“It’s loikely if this wasn’t sand, after tryin’ it once we wouldn’t have to be a-worryin’ no more about payin’ rent an’ taxes,” declared Reynolds. “As it is, you couldn’t pitch over if you tried.”
Once Katharine felt her heart flutter as the front wheels projected over the ledge, the same sickly feeling that used to come over her when she experienced the highest drop of a roller coaster. Alice clutched her. They clung together, their fear unmitigated by Reynolds’ reassuring words. But the wild forward plunge they anticipated did not materialize. The car might have been operated from above by slow-moving pulleys, so gentle was the descent down the precipitous slope.
“There! Wasn’t I roight?” asked Reynolds, with a twinkle that betrayed what amusement their discomfiture had afforded him. “Bless yer souls! I’m not blamin’ yer fer bein’ scared. I was two hours makin’ up me moind to do it, the first toime I tried it.”
So intent had Katharine been on the terror of the incline that appreciation of the new vista was slow to come. They were in a valley now, more narrowly encompassed than before. Black Mesa, ever elusive, was still remote. New terraces, rocky red steeps, and a yellow range stretched away before them. They rode parallel to the white slope of the plateau they had just left. Greasewood brush grew high and close. The trail showed like a furrow through a green field. Long-eared rabbits, frightened by their approach, bounded quickly to and fro across the road in an effort to reach their shaded coverts. Mounds of red rock sparsely fringed with cedars rose here and there above the plain, and near one, which they passed close by, was a lonely hogan. Chickens scratched around the sand outside the door, and several mules stared at them stupidly, but the Indians were nowhere in sight.
“Good spring round about here somewheres,” vouchsafed Reynolds over the stem of an unlit pipe. “But I ain’t never looked it up. Them prehistoric fellers that used to live in the caves round about here weren’t totin’ water any farther than they could help.”