The Water Hole

by Zane Grey

  “Well, Dad, you appear to be having a most enjoyable time,” she said.

  “Ah! Hello, Cherry. Yes, I’m having a grand time. Ha! Ha!” he replied.

  It was worse than Cherry had imagined. She began to soften a little, though she never would let it show. “How do you like Beckyshibeta?” she asked.

  “Becky-hell and blazes!”

  “What’s happened, Dad?” she went on quietly.

  “Nothing. I’ve had the most uncomfortable hour of my life,” he rejoined miserably. She saw that unburdening himself would be well, so she encouraged him.

  “I didn’t know that man Heftral at all,” he exploded.

  “Neither did I,” replied Cherry musingly.

  “Cherry, that confounded Westerner came up to me with fire in his eye. And he said…‘Damn you, Winters. I ought to punch you good.’ I thought he was going to do it, too. So I made some feeble reply about how sorry I was to place him in such a fix. ‘Fix? Hell!’ he yelled at me. ‘I’m not thinking of myself. It’s the fix you’ve got her in. It’s not I who’ll have ruined her reputation. It’s you! You made a fool of me. But you’ve hurt her. Those Sarlands will be nasty. Your own daughter. You made me believe she was a wild girl, going straight to the devil.’ I yelled back at him that you were. Then he shut me up all right. I knew I was going to get something. He was red as a lobster. He shook that big fist under my very nose. He called me a blankety-blank liar! Then he swore at me. He cussed me. Such profanity I never heard. He must have collected it from every cowboy in the West. He never stopped until he was out of breath. Then he went off somewhere with Linn.”

  Cherry was certainly experiencing drains upon her feelings and willpower that she had not bargained for. And the fear that she might betray herself made her flippant.

  “Is that all?” she inquired.

  “All? Good God! What would you want? Have him beat me up like he did that cowboy?”

  “I thought perhaps he might.”

  “You’d have been an orphan all right, if he had…Cherry, you don’t mean you’re dead sore at me?”

  “You are an unnatural parent,” returned Cherry, beginning to revel.

  “Why, I thought I’d been the easiest dad any girl ever had,” he protested, not without pain. “Our friends always took me to task for giving you freedom…everything you wanted.”

  “Yes. But never the love I was so hungry for,” Cherry said cruelly.

  “Cherry!” he exclaimed, amazed and shocked. “I always worshiped you…and spoiled you. This miserable trick I played on you…that’s turned out so badly…why it was a proof of…of…”

  “Not of faith, Father,” she interrupted coldly.

  “Faith! Of course it was faith. I swore to myself that our rotten life in the East had not yet ruined you.”

  “Please do not argue with me,” she returned sweetly. “The thing’s done. You have ruined me, that’s certain. And I’ll never, never forgive you.”

  This so crushed him that she had to leave before she must yield to an irresistible softness. And by way of a counter-irritant she went over to talk to the Sarlands. They were cold as Greenland’s icy mountains. But presently her sad face, and the struggle she apparently was making to keep up, quite warmed Mrs. Sarland. Her son, however, came around slowly. Finally he broke out in a tirade against Heftral and her father.

  “Yes, I know, Chauncey, they’re all you say and more. But that doesn’t help me. I was perfectly innocent. You know what kind of a girl I am.”

  “You bet I do. But, Cherry, that about coming here willingly? Then you stood up so…so wonderfully and said you loved him!”

  “You dumbbell. I was trying to save his life,” protested Cherry.

  “It was great of you, old girl, believe me,” Chauncey replied fervently. “And I believe you did.”

  Cherry decided that would be about all for an entering wedge. The Sarlands would be hard to handle. Under her direct influence they would respond, but, once away from it, they would be likely to gossip, unless she could make them loyal to her. On the face of it that seemed an impossible task. And she was silly to hope for it, selfish to ask for it. She began to stroll around, hoping to get a peep at Heftral, conscious of a sneaking delight. She saw Linn returning to camp, but the archaeologist had vanished. Could it be possible that the man was again digging for Beckyshibeta? If so, she would have to hand him a laurel wreath. She could not, however, venture to find out, and had to content herself with waiting.

  Out of sight of camp Cherry found a lofty perch in the sun and there she succumbed to the glory and dream of this cañon country. There was no sense or use in trying to resist its charm. But it was a way with Cherry to try to understand what got the best of her. This place had taken hold of her heart. It would have done so even if that rather unknown organ had not shown astonishingly weak points.

  What was the spell of this deep fissure in the rocks? She dreamily attended to her senses. It had such a strange sweet dry fragrance, with sage predominating, but with other perfumes almost as clean and insidious. It was as colorful as a rainbow. It changed with the movements of the sun, never very long the same. It had mystic veils of light, rose and pink at dawn, amber and gold at this hour of high noon, and in the afternoon with shadows lengthening, deepening into lilac, purple, black. Then the immensity of the cliffs, the lofty rims, the far higher domes and mesas beyond, the hundreds of inaccessible and fascinating places where only squirrels and birds could rest—these added to the spell. Not a little, too, was the evidence of a wild people once having lived and fought and died here. Perhaps loved! Lastly Cherry was discovering the blessedness of solitude, the something leveling in loneliness, the elevating power of the naked sheer walls with their inscrutable meaning.

  All of which led to a consciousness of the thing that had come to her. She called it thing, when she confessed to her soul that it was new, transforming, exalting love. And she dared not give in to that just yet. When she must, when she could no longer stand the old Cherry Winters, when pride and vanity, and a bevy of other faults must go by the board, then she would face the truth and its appalling problems. She had a tremendous consciousness that she would engulf all—this marvelous desert, her aging, worrying father, her friends—and Heftral. And it was going to hurt almost mortally.

  * * * * *

  Cherry returned to camp. Sight of Heftral thrilled yet shocked her. That hour alone in the cañon had transformed him in her mind. And the reality of him was confounding.

  Evidently she had interrupted a conference, or at least an argument. She caught Heftral’s slight gesture to enjoin silence.

  “Wal, Heftral,” Linn said. “I reckon Miss Cherry needn’t be excluded.”

  “If I’m intruding,” Cherry replied haughtily, turning to go.

  Linn detained her. “We was jest talkin’,” he said, “an’ mebbe you might put a word in. Heftral has lost his job. Mister Elliott, haid of the New York Museum, is now at the post, waitin’ for some of his men to come over from New Mexico. ’Pears he’s been ag’in’ Heftral’s explorations out heah. Wants to find Beckyshibeta himself. After Heftral has dug up the desert. Wal, he took this unauthorized trip of Heftral’s out heah as an excuse, an’ fired him. Your father feels bad aboot bein’ to blame, and he offered Heftral substantial means to go on with his explorations on his own hook. Heftral turned it down cold…What do you think aboot it?”

  “I? Oh, I think it very unfortunate and distressing that Mister Heftral should be discharged…and disgraced through father’s idiotic scheme,” replied Cherry. “Certainly Father could do no less than offer to repair the material loss. And just as certainly Mister Heftral could not accept it.”

  “Why not?” demanded Winters.

  “Well, Dad, if you’re so dense you can’t see why…I am not going to enlighten you.”

  “Thank you, Miss Winters,” said Heftral. �
��You understand, at least.”

  Winters might have exploded then, if he had had energy enough left to express himself as he looked. As it was, his first exclamation was unintelligible and scarcely mild. Then he added: “If you temperamental young fools weren’t at loggerheads, I could still save the situation.”

  “Yes, you could,” declared Heftral sarcastically. “Winters, my private opinion is that you might save your face if…”

  “See here, you hot-headed jackanapes!” interrupted Winters. “You’ve insulted me enough.”

  “I could still add injury to insult,” Heftral retorted.

  Here Linn stepped into the breach and tried his Western common sense and kindliness upon the troubled waters. Cherry had been thinking desperately. What astounded her now was that she simply could not stand Heftral’s unhappiness. She, who had wanted to make him writhe and moan and curse himself with remorse!

  “Mister Heftral, may I have a word with you alone?” she asked, very business-like. No one could have guessed there was a lump in her throat.

  “Certainly,” he said with freezing politeness, “if you consider it necessary.”

  He went aside with her, manifestly with misgivings. Cherry heard her father whisper to Linn: “Now what’s she up to? There’s no telling about a woman.”

  Cherry maintained an outward composure. She could rise to the moment and this one was big. “Will you make me a promise?” she asked.

  “I couldn’t very well be surprised at you. And if you’ll pardon my bluntness…no, I won’t,” he replied.

  Cherry was looking with a woman’s penetrating intuitive eyes into his face, and what she read there made the ordeal worse, yet gave her a hint of the assurance she needed.

  “Well then, if you make me a promise…will you keep it?” she continued steadily.

  “Yes. If!”

  “Do you recall the last time I was around where you were digging?”

  “I’m not likely to forget it.”

  “I am going to tell you the honest truth.”

  “Miss Winters, are you capable of that?” he asked acidly.

  “If you were big enough to fight for my honor, you can be big enough to give me the benefit of the doubt…when I particularly appeal to you. Will you?”

  That struck him deeply. He lost his grim cold look of doubt and became merely wretched. “I’m not quite myself. But tell me what you want to.”

  “If I reveal something to you, will you promise never to tell it to anyone?” she asked hurriedly and low.

  “I don’t see any need of your revealing secrets to me,” he replied.

  “Will you promise?” she went on, appealing as well with her eyes.

  “You can trust me,” he said, surrendering in spite of himself.

  “Thank you. The secret you have promised to keep is that I have found Beckyshibeta for you,” she whispered. “Go at once far beyond that place where I crossed and risked my life…where I taunted you and you told me to go to the devil…Go high up around the great cracked leaning rock. Find a stairway of little cut steps in the stone. Follow them. They will lead you to Beckyshibeta. Don’t doubt. Don’t laugh. But go!”

  Cherry did not wait to see his incredulity or to hear whatever he might have to say. She hurried away, up to her ledge, the attaining of which was about all she could do. What had it not cost her to hide her joy at this priceless gift to him, and her own great secret? When she sank to her knees upon her bed, and looked back, Heftral had disappeared. Soon he would learn that her words had not been idle. The greatest ambition of his life attained! Beckyshibeta! How would he return to her?

  Fourteen

  Cherry had anticipated peace, satisfaction, relief from her whirling thoughts. But the exact reverse was the case. Suppose it had not been Beckyshibeta at all? What a horrible mistake! Her eloquence, her exaction of a sacred promise, her cool certainty had convinced Heftral. But she might have been wrong. How could she be sure about cliff dwellings?

  So she was tortured. How to make amends to Heftral if she had blundered. Of course she could give him herself. It did not seem possible that she could rival Beckyshibeta in this mad scientist’s valuation; nevertheless she might be some little consolation. That would be what she must do; that was what she had intended for long endless growing hours. Only it would have to be done at once, right there where this catastrophe had happened, instead of waiting until she felt utterly and forever avenged.

  An hour passed, surely an hour Cherry would never want to live over. The camp was deserted. She had not heard anyone leave. And presently she felt that she could not lie there any longer, waiting in actionless suspense. She must move around, do something.

  Cherry wandered in the opposite direction to the one she was sure the others had taken. She went around under the cliffs farther on that side than she had ever been. But for once the speaking walls had no power of solace. She was not ready to take earnest heed of her own spiritual case. It was Heftral of whom she was thinking. If she had actually discovered Beckyshibeta, she would presently be the most fortunate—the happiest of women. She did not try now to reason out why. It was something she most devoutly believed and prayed for.

  She found a clump of sage and lingered in it, reveling in its fragrance and color. She gathered an armful of the sprigs, meaning to treasure them in a pillow, to have near her a memory—stirring sweetness of the desert. Then she sat down with the sage in her lap, and tried to plan clearly her procedure from this hour. But she could only dream, because everything was uncertain.

  Time passed, however, and upon her return to camp she found all the others there, except Heftral. At first glance they appeared to be friendly enough. There must be some occasion for intimate talk. Then her father espied her and came running. Cherry breathed a deep full relief. Mr. Winters was not given to overexertion in ordinary movements or when he was gloomy.

  “I’ve had the very devil of good luck,” he announced as he reached her, and, quite forgetful of a former state of mind, he put his arm around her and squeezed her.

  “You have? Well, that’s fine,” replied Cherry, yielding to him, as he pulled her to a seat on a rock.

  “Heftral and I have made up,” said Mr. Winters with great pleasure and satisfaction.

  “Made up! Indeed? I did not imagine it possible that he would ever forgive you…either.” Cherry added the either as an afterthought. It quite escaped Mr. Winters.

  “Cherry, the lucky dog discovered the lost pueblo…Beckyshibeta!” exclaimed her father.

  “Oh! How wonderful!” Cherry did not have to dissimulate. She must be very careful not to show how happy the information made her. After that sudden start of joy, of flashing heat on her face, of bursting blood, she managed to find herself again.

  “It’s true. And, well, I don’t know when I’ve been so glad about anything.”

  “Tell me about it,” said Cherry composedly, although she kept her face half averted.

  “Linn was showing us the ruins,” Winters went on, wiping his hot face. “We ran into Heftral. I declare I thought he was crazy. So did Linn. At first we did not take him at all seriously. He convinced us finally. He had discovered Beckyshibeta…the pueblo about which archaeologists have been raving for years. Quite by a strange lucky accident. He was radiant. I never saw a man so completely happy. He was so absurdly grateful to me for sending him out here. Why, the fellow embraced me. I was embarrassed, remembering how he treated me a few hours before…Cherry, he had actually forgotten. I declare it upset me…I was so glad. I like Heftral, and when I queered myself with him, it hurt. He’s one of the finest chaps I ever knew.”

  “I’m glad…for his sake and yours,” rejoined Cherry. “This discovery must mean a great deal to him?”

  “I didn’t understand that until after he rushed off again,” replied Winters. “Linn told me. It means fame and money to Heftral. In
one word…success. Scientifically this is a very important discovery. Beckyshibeta is one of the greatest pueblos, says Linn. An ancient buried city. Then the best of it is that Heftral was not working for the museum people when he found the pueblo. He was all on his own. That upstart Elliott, you know, fired him. Linn says Elliott will about expire. Heftral will have the credit, and everything else that comes with it. The work of excavation will be under his control, instead of Elliott’s. I’m just tickled over it.”

  “Excavation,” mused Cherry. “He will undertake that? Won’t it be expensive?”

  “I’ll back him. It’s a big thing,” Winters replied heartily.

  “Do you think Mister Heftral would accept that?”

  “Stephen has already accepted,” went on her father happily. “He said he could raise any amount of money. The government would want to help. Patrons of scientific research would want to donate…to have their names connected with Beckyshibeta. But I beat them to it. And Stephen was delighted.”

  “Where is…he now?” asked Cherry with her glance downcast upon the bunch of sage. It would never have done for her to let anyone see her eyes then.

  “He went back. Linn and I tried to follow him. But he crossed a terrible place. We’d have broken our necks. So we returned to camp.”

  * * * * *

  It was night with silvery radiance streaming down over the dark cañon rims. The moon was rising. Cherry lay in her blankets, waiting to see the white disk slide up over the black ragged rock line above. She had not cared to trust meeting Heftral at the campfire and, pleading fatigue, had retired to her ledge, where her father brought her supper.

  Heftral did not return until the others had finished their meal, and then he quite forgot to eat. His ragged appearance attested to hours of contact with the rough rocks, and his radiant face to the discovery that had made him a changed man. While he talked to Linn and Winters his glance went so often toward Cherry’s perch that she feared she might be caught peeping. But she was in dark shadow there, and could safely revel in watching and listening. If she had ever seen three happy men, it was then.