by Zane Grey
“Ethel! You’re a crazy, lovesick schoolgirl!” cried Virginia, in desperation.
“You bet your life I am. That’s why I know things...Didn’t I see Clifton Forrest looking at you when you didn’t know it?”
“I don’t dare believe you,” protested Virginia.
“Suit yourself. But I could save you a lot of agony.”
“You’ll only make agony for me. Suppose I listened to you — believed you, and then it turned out you were mistaken?”
“You’d never be. I’m sure death on these affairs of the heart. Have seen so many, then had one of my own. But for the sake of argument, to salve your wounded feelings, we’ll assume I am wrong. We’ll assume a lot of rot. Clifton home, broken in body and spirit. Haunted by the war. Penniless and unable to do a man’s work. Occupied with his pangs and his lonely soul. Turgid ebb and flow of misery stuff. Too sick to be lovesick!...Do you follow me, darling?”
“I — I think so, though it is a bewildering process.”
“Very well. The rest is simple. You’ll stay with me in Colorado for a while, until that scandal blows over. Then go back home and waylay Cliff at every turn.”
“Waylay him? But I couldn’t...Even if I could what use would it be?”
“O Lord!...Well, maybe that’s why I love you so. — Virginia, you don’t have to do anything to make people love you. All that is necessary is for you to happen across their horizon. Once ought to be enough. If not once, then twice. Three times would be an avalanche. And after that we’d only have burials.”
“You might help me if you could be serious,” returned Virginia, plaintively.
“I may be slangy, honey, but I’m in dead earnest.”
“You’re very blind and loyal, Ethel. It’s well for me that I can keep my head...Now let’s forget my troubles and plan to have a good time.”
Virginia spent three weeks with Ethel at Colorado Springs and did not know where the days fled.
There were few social exactions. They passed most of the daylight hours outdoors, hiking, motoring, climbing the foothills, playing golf. Saddle horses were to be had for the asking, but Virginia could not be induced to ride.
She enjoyed most an afternoon in the Garden of the Gods. A motor car was not available at the hour, so the girls, bent on a lark, hired an old relic of a Westerner, a driver of a dilapidated open vehicle with a horse that matched both man and hack. He took them for tourists and proceeded to acquaint them with himself.
“My name air Josh Smith an’ I hail from Indianer. Fust come West in ‘sixty-eight. Was a lad then an’ the redskins made me an orphan. Reckon thet everythin’ the West could give I got— ‘cept six feet of ground, an’ I near got thet a hundred times. I be’n teamster on the plains, helped to build the Santa Fé, freighter, scout, cowboy, miner, gambler, an’ ‘most everythin’.”
“My, Mr. Smith, but you’ve seen a lot!” said Ethel, with a mischievous wink at Virginia.
“Right smart, though I’ve knowed fellars who’d seen more.”
“And how old are you?”
“Reckon I don’t know. But I’m over eighty.”
“Were you ever married?”
“Haw! Haw! Lots of times, on an’ off,” he replied, plying his whip to the almost motionless horse.
“Well, that’s fine. Then you didn’t find marriage a failure, like so many people of today?”
“No, indeedee. Marriage is all right, if you kin change often enough.”
“That’s an original idea,” went on Ethel, unmindful of a dig from Virginia’s elbow.
“Air you married?”
“Oh dear, yes! At least I was. And I’ve four children. My husband deserted us, and now I have to — to travel around and write for newspapers to make a living.”
“You’re purty young-lookin’. No one would guess thet...An’ your quiet friend hyar — is she married, too?”
“Oh dear, no! She’s deaf and dumb and doesn’t care much for men. She’s very rich. I’m her traveling companion. She pays me for it.”
“Wal, by golly! Deaf an’ dumb? I’ll never grow too old to get a stumper. Who’d have thunk it?”
“Isn’t she handsome?” went on this incorrigible little devil, despite sundry covert kicks and cuffs. “Oh, you can say what you like about her. She can’t hear and I won’t tell.”
“Handsomest gal I’ve seen this summer, an’ thar’s some peaches hyar durin’ July an’ August. I ain’t seen one, though, with the shape your friend’s got. Te-he, te-he, te-he! She’d drive any young buck to drink. I shore wish I was young again.”
Ethel by this time was bursting with glee, and Virginia, too, could scarcely contain herself; but their arrival in the Garden of the Gods changed the direction of the old Westerner’s mind to the natural spectacles of the wondrous rock formation out of which he made his living.
“See thet rock?” he queried, becoming professional. “Thet’s the Elephant. Thar’s the bulk of the body, haid an’ ears, an’ the trunk. One tusk missin’.”
“Oh, it’s a perfect elephant!” declared Ethel, clapping her hands. As a matter of fact it did not resemble an elephant more than any other of the many rocks near at hand.
Next came the Tomcat, and close to him the Mud Turtle. Following them in succession was a remarkable assortment of animals, evidently, to this old man, admirable stone statues of the creatures he named.
“An’ thar’s Apollonaris Belvedeerie,” he announced, grandly, waving his whip at a huge red crag, fluted and draped, and, without a distorting name, a beautiful thing to gaze upon.
“But last summer you told me that one was Ajax defying the Lightning,” rejoined Ethel, in demure amaze.
“What? Was you out hyar with me last summer?” he queried, sharply.
“To be sure I was. I’d never forget you.”
“Wal, mebbe ’tis Ajax. I see these doggone gods so doggone much.”
They rode on, and he seemed a little less declamatory about the significance of cliffs and stones. Nevertheless, he had a label for each and every one. Virginia had been there before, and of course the Garden was like an old book to Ethel.
“Now looka thar,” suddenly spoke up their guide, once more animated. “Thar’s the Wild Stallion. Thet one fetches all my patrons. It’s shore the beautifulest picture of a great wild hoss turned into a stone god. See his noble haid an’ his flyin’ mane, an’ thet wind hole which is his eye.”
This was too much for Virginia. The rock designated resembled nothing alive, let alone the wondrous beauty of a wild horse.
“That?” she burst out. “It’s a dumpy red rock. No more.”
In his amazement the imaginative guide dropped his whip. His lean jaw dropped, too.
“Hey, wasn’t you deaf an’ dumb?” he ejaculated.
Ethel vented a silvery peal of laughter and leaped gaily out to the ground. Virginia followed, though less actively.
“No, I wasn’t deaf and dumb,” she retorted. “And I’m no tourist, either. I live on a ranch so big you could lose your old Garden in it...Aren’t you ashamed, trying to fool people about these rocks?”
“Wal, by gum!”
“Wait for us, driver,” said Ethel. “And think up some more fakes. You sure are the bunk.”
“Reckon I be’n buncoed, too,” he returned, grinning. “I’ll bet four bits them four kids of yours is bunk...Haw! Haw!”
Ethel mumbled something, what Virginia was unable to distinguish.
“Come, you kid,” she called to Virginia. “I’ll beat you to the top of the slide.”
Next day they went to Denver. And Virginia was once again in contact with the theater, the motion-picture, the department stores and restaurants of a city. While there she ascertained the name of a well-known mining engineer and contractor, with whom she made an appointment.
She found Mr. Jarvis a middle-aged man, a Westerner, shrewd and plain, and one inclined to inspire confidence.
“My errand may be absurd,” she explained, “but
then again it may be important. That is for you to say.”
“I’m at your service, Miss Lundeen,” he replied, with interest.
Thereupon Virginia related as briefly as possible the circumstances connected with her last visit to Padre Mine.
“Now what I want to know,” she concluded, “is whether or not you suspect there might have been something queer about that mine.”
“Queer indeed,” he returned, almost with amusement. “If the facts you have told so clearly can be substantiated, it will lay bare something more than queer.”
“And what may that be?”
“Nothing more nor less than a plain crooked mining deal.”
“As I suspected,” returned Virginia, breathing quickly. “The gold was brought to the mine — planted there — and then blown up, so that it’d be scattered everywhere. All to deceive my father into believing it was a rich mine.”
“Exactly. May I ask, did he sell the mine?”
“No.”
“Then he invested money in the operating of it?”
“Yes. I have no idea how much. But altogether I imagine several hundred thousand went into that mine.”
The engineer lifted his brows in surprise. “So much! Well, this is worth digging into. Of course the mine is abandoned now?”
“Yes, for two years and more. Now, Mr. Jarvis, if you will give me reasonable assurance that you can prove whether or not this was a crooked deal, I will engage you to investigate.”
“If the mine is as accessible to me as to your cowboy prospector, I can absolutely give you proof.”
“Can it be done quickly?”
“How far from town is this mine?”
“I can take you there in less than two hours from Las Vegas.”
“Then half a day will be ample.”
“Very well. Consider it settled,” rejoined Virginia, rising. “I’ll be going home soon. I’ll choose an opportune time — for I want it to be secret, so we are not intercepted — wire you to come on, meet you upon your arrival and take you directly to the mine.”
Chapter Thirteen
THE SHEEP WERE grazing south. Every day they made a few leisurely miles, keeping to the grass and sage benches, never straying far from the water-courses.
November heralded the beginning of winter in that latitude, but only toward the high slopes was the weather severe. Old Baldy had put on his white cap, and there were patches of snow along the black-fringed rims of the battlements. The wind whipped down from the heights, bitter cold and mournful at night, keen across the bright steely desert at dawn, and lulling and tempering through the noon hours.
The sheep route, over which the Mexicans had driven their herds for a hundred years and more, gradually drew down and away from the mountains, southward toward the vast open, with dim purple ranges in the distance.
At sunset the shepherds with their dogs rounded the flocks into a natural corral, a protective corner of canyon, or under the lee of a ledge, and there passed the night, to leisurely move on again at sunrise. Since the failure of cattle on the range there was grazing in abundance, but the sheep had to be worked down into lower and warmer country. This old custom had worn a rut in the commerce of the state, as it had worn broad trails up and down the desert.
The last of these widely separated bands of sheep to leave the uplands of San Luis halted late one afternoon at Gray Rocks, far out on the windy plain.
The shepherd was a white man, and he had a Mexican lad as assistant, and four dogs. He moved with extreme weariness, this man, as he unpacked the two burros and turned them loose. The lad was active, and with the dogs drove the pattering, baaing flock into the wide notch of a low gray broken cliff.
A few scraggy cedars marked this camp site, old trees devoid of sheaths of gray bark and gnarled dead branches so characteristic of the species. This stripping attested to past camp fires, and yet to the regard with which the lonely shepherds held trees on the desert.
The shepherd threw the rope of his little peak tent over a limb and pulled it up, and tied the rope to the trunk. Then he rested a moment, dark face lowered, a hand on his breast. Next he unrolled his bed, consisting of some sheepskins and a blanket, which he spread inside the tent. After that he opened the other pack and spread its contents of utensils and bags upon a canvas.
Meanwhile the Mexican lad returned with an armload of bits of dead sage, and weed roots, and sticks of cottonwood. He whistled while he lighted a fire, but he did not talk. Next he picked up a little black bucket and pot, and went off down the slope for water, with one of the dogs at his heels. Soon he returned, whistling the few notes of a Spanish tune.
It was evident that the white shepherd was about at the end of his tether, for that day at least. The lad saw it and was quick to help prepare the meal, where he was permitted. Presently the coffee-pot steamed and the sheep meat sizzled in the pan. There were also dried fruit heated in water, and hard biscuits which were warmed on a rock beside the fire. Soon, then, the shepherds sat to their frugal meal, generous only in supply of meat. And they ate hungrily and drank thirstily, while the lean shaggy dogs stood around with shining eyes to beg for bones. They were not neglected. When the meal ended the man washed the utensils and the boy wiped them dry.
Meanwhile the sun had set stormily amid dusky and dull red clouds far down in the west. The weird lights of the desert began to darken, and far behind, the mountain range stood up black as ebony, sharp and bold against the cold sky. One by one pale stars shone out, blinking, obscure, aloof. The sheep bleated, and the cold wind tore through the cedars.
The lad spread his sheepskins under the tree, and rolled in his blanket upon them. One of the dogs, evidently young, curled close to him. The others had gone out to guard the flock.
The white shepherd sat by the fire and fed bits of sage and dead sticks to the glowing bed of coals. His hands were dark and lean like his face, that a month’s growth of beard did not hide. The flickering blaze lighted somber hollow eyes that found ghosts in the opal embers, and ever and anon gazed out over the melancholy desert to see nothing there. He had a racking cough and it appeared he could not warm his palms enough.
Night fell, growing colder, and the desert lay black under the hazy sky and wan stars. Coyotes raised their hue and cry, and the wary dogs yelped their menace. A lonesome owl hooted from the recesses of the rocks; faint rustlings came from the sage; a rush of wings overhead attested to the passage of an invisible bird of the night.
These sounds mitigated the pressure of the solitude, which lay like a thick mantle over the earth. They made it bearable to the man who was scarcely conscious of any save physical agonies. At last all the sticks were burned. The fire died down. Still he lingered over the ruddy embers, from which sparks flew away on the wind, to die out in the blackness.
When the red faded out of the fire he crawled into the little tent, and wearily stretched his aching body upon the sheepskins, and covered himself with the blanket. He did not remove even his hat, which perhaps he had forgotten. And he groaned: “O God — O God!”
The sleep of exhaustion ended his tortures. And inside his tent the desert night increased its somber mystery, its weird voice on the wind, its staccato alarms of prowling coyotes, its bleak and ruthless solitude.
Clifton Forrest had been a month on the desert. Sunset of that day in which he had horsewhipped Malpass, and had been made an outcast by his father, found him at the hacienda of Don Lopez, a rancher outside of San Luis. There he spent the night, grateful for succor he felt would be denied him by people of his own color. And the next day he became the shepherd of a Mexican’s flock, at a wage of a few cents a day.
The world had about come to an end for Clifton. But the beating he had given Malpass had no place in his remorse. His heart was weighed down because his natural and unfortunate subjection to passion had been a betrayal of the woman he loved, who owed to him the loss of parents and home. She had trusted him — she had appealed to him alone of all her friends — she migh
t one day, if he had proved worthy, have reciprocated in some degree his love. And he had failed her. What avail to blame endlessly that cursed Malpass and his own hot jealousy? He had been weak. His manhood was gone. And, perhaps as reprehensible, he had added to his mother’s burden of sorrow.
So he had taken to the lonely reaches of the desert, as a winter shepherd. The constant movement and the labor of this job were beyond his strength. Three days after leaving San Luis his remorse and grief had been overshadowed by the horror of old bodily pangs, which soon augmented into agonies. Cottonwoods and Virginia Lundeen and his mother became dim phantoms back in a past that was gone. Before him stretched the naked shingles of the desert, the brutal destroying ruthlessness of which he welcomed, but which brought back the rend of nerve, the ache of bone, the torture of muscle, the hell of physical suffering without making an end of him. He would lie for half the night in misery, but at dawn he would get up and go on. He fell in the trails, but he rose and stumbled on. Then at the worst of his collapse he lay for days on his back, tended by the faithful Mexican lad. But he did not die and he could not surrender. He crawled out to plod on behind the sheep for a half day, and the next he went farther, until as the days passed he reached a full one in travel again — ten terrible hours that brought him to Gray Rocks, a resting and grazing point for the sheep on the southern drive.
November dawn on the desert came reluctantly, gray and slowly brightening, to diffuse a pale rose along the eastern skyline, and turn to the yellow flare of sunrise.
Clifton saw it through the open flap of his tent. Another day! He had never moved during the night and his feet were like clods of cold lead. To start to arise was a horrible wrench — on one elbow, then his hand, a lift of back that had to be accomplished with gritted teeth, a turn of body which was the worst, then on hands and knees, and at last up, though bowed like an old man.
Yet this morning he proved something that had haunted him with mocking insistence — there had come an appreciable difference in the length of time, the terror of effort, the reflux of pain that it cost him to arise.