Stairs of Sand

by Zane Grey

  First Skyhorse Edition 2017 by arrangement with Golden West

  Literary Agency

  Copyright © 1928 by Zane Grey, Inc.

  Copyright © renewed 1956 by Lina Elise Grey

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

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  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Cover design by Tom Lau

  Cover photo: iStock.com

  Print ISBN: 978-1-63450-071-5

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63450-081-4

  Printed in the United States of America

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter One

  THE CANYON, with its gleaming walls, dark as ebony on the shady side, gold where the desert sun burned, afforded some relief from the heat, if not from the sight of the infernal, endless sand—sand blowing, shifting, heaving like billows of a silver sea, rolling away dune after dune, rising in steps, beautiful, mystic, beckoning toward the cool blue heights—stairs of sand, treacherous and alluring.

  Ruth Virey settled back in the wagon seat and dragged her gaze from that canyon gateway, through which the desert seemed to mock her.

  Old Butch, the mule on the right, had balked. After thirty miles of travel he had become as immovable as the cliff of rock. Ruth had heard he was noted for balking, at strange times and places. He dropped now beside his mate, weary, sand-laden, obstinately set in his tracks.

  The young man, Ruth’s companion, had evidently abandoned any hope of starting the mule. He had coaxed, pulled and beaten, all to no avail. Then he had flung himself down in the shade, where he now sat wiping his wet brown face, and pushing back his long damp hair with nervous hand. A radiance had faded from that youthful face.

  “Hal Stone, do you mean we are stuck here?” repeated Ruth, this time sharply.

  “Well, I guess—for today, anyhow,” he replied, grimly. “Old Butch won’t budge till he gets ready.”

  “My grandfather told me he had heard there was only one man on the desert who could move Butch when he balked. I wish that man would happen along.”

  “I don’t,” said Stone, significantly, raising sand-reddened blue eyes that held a smouldering fire.

  “How far have we come?” she went on, quickening.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe thirty miles.”

  “If so we’re still ten miles from the Indian settlement where you said we could stay all night?”

  “Yes, about that, I guess,” he returned, avoiding her steady gaze.

  “And from there, two days more to San Diego?”

  “I didn’t say so.”

  “Yes, you did,” she flashed.

  “Well, since you ran off with me—of your own free will—what difference does it make, whether it’s two miles or ten?” he retorted, defiantly.

  “That depends on you,” she rejoined, gravely. “What are you going to do?”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “I won’t go back. Can’t we walk on to the Indian settlement?”

  “No. It’s too late in the day. The cursed sand is still blowing. After dark I’d not be sure of the road.”

  Ruth saw the sand out there between the gap of the cliffs—a filmy haze, moving, streaming, thinning—and she heard it too, a soft silky seeping roar, low, strange, menacing.

  “What can we do?” she asked, after a long pause.

  “Stay here till Old Butch wants to move. We’ve water, food, blankets. We can make out quite well.”

  “I did not expect to camp out with you—alone, on the desert,” declared Ruth.

  “What did you expect?” he asked, almost harshly.

  “God only knows. I never thought of anything except to get away from that awful hole—and from him.”

  Stone rose to approach her and lean over the front wheel.

  “Well, you’ve gotten away, and you won’t go back. Isn’t it about time now to think of me?”

  His tone was that of a lover, appealing, yet tinged with a resentful uncertainty.

  “Of you?” she asked, studying the boyish reckless face with a sudden remorse.

  “Yes, me,” he returned, taking her gloved hand in his.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean, Ruth Larey.”

  “I told you not to call me Larey,” she said, angrily, and pulled to free her hand.

  Stone held it, until seeing she would not soften, he flung it from him.

  “You let me make love to you—kiss you,” he burst out. “You said you would love me. You’ve run away with me.”

  “I know, Hal,” she returned, contritely, reaching out as if to give him her hand again. “I’m to blame. But can’t you see it with my eyes? You happened along. I was lonely, sick of the desert, distracted. I—I think I did love you. And I was certainly glad to run off with you. But I never would have—if I’d suspected you’d be so selfish and swift in—in your demands.”

  “Humph! You’re a funny woman,” he said, with faint sarcasm. “Lead a fellow to risk his hide by eloping with you—then flout him when he wants what he had a right to expect.”

  Ruth’s self-reproach, that had prompted her toward warmth, suffered an eclipse. This escapade of hers, which had promised deliverance, began to take on another aspect. She had thought to escape the desert, as she had yearned to for years, but the desert had betrayed her. Dare she go farther with this young man, whom she had known only a few weeks, and therefore not at all? Could she force herself to return to Lost Lake? Almost anything would be preferable. Remembrance of the freighting post in its ghastly setting, and the man she hated and feared roused such revulsion that she shook.

  Meanwhile Stone lifted the canteens and baskets, and a roll of blankets out of the wagon, and carried them to a flat rock at the base of the shaded cliff. Then he returned to help her out of the high-wheeled vehicle.

  “Come. You might as well be as comfortable as possible while we have to stay here.”

  Ruth stood up, and leaned to reach his hands, intending to jump down, but he pulled her, and she stumbled On the wheel and fell into his arms. Then he swung her away toward the cliff, unmindful of the undignified disarray of her apparel.

  “Put me down,” she commanded.

  Not only did he not comply with her demand but he clasped her close and bent low, trying to kiss her lips. Ruth, suddenly furious, beat at him, and wrestled so effectively that his kisses fell upon her neck and hair. She had to fight then to free herself.

  “I thought—you
were—a gentleman,” she cried, in breathless anger.

  Stone laughed and spread wide his hands. The heat died out of his face.

  “I don’t know that it matters,” he said. “Here we are. It’ll be fine if you kick like a lassoed jack-rabbit every time I touch you.”

  Ruth smoothed her dishevelled hair and garments, striving the while to hold her tongue. She had gotten herself into a dilemma from which it would take a woman’s wit to extricate her.

  “I’ll see if I can find some wood to start a fire,” he added, and strode down the canyon.

  Ruth sank upon the roll of blankets, conscious of weariness and disgust, and a miserable sense of the return of the very bitterness and futility that had betrayed her to this step. Whatever she had felt for this boy had vanished, even the regret. Again, for the hundredth time, it seemed, she had mistaken something for love—love that she yearned for and which she needed so greatly. She blamed the interminable four years of fruitless life at a barren desert water-hole for the vacillation and desperation which had all but ruined her.

  “I swore I’d run away from it all and never go back,” she mused, broodingly. “But already I see … it was wicked of me to desert grandfather. He needs me. Long ago, but for me, he’d have been at the mercy of Guerd Larey and that scar-faced Collishaw…. It’ll be best to go back, though I hate it so…. Oh, if I could only give up and not care. But neither mother nor I were born to stand this awful desert life. It takes peace of soul—sacrifice—strength in God—qualities, alas! I never had. And mother, she—she found an unmarked grave in Death Valley. Oh, what will become of me!”

  Presently she became aware of Stone’s return. He carried a scant bundle of sticks.

  “Tears, eh?” he queried, with hard blue eyes on her face. “I didn’t know you could cry. I sure am flattered.”

  “My tears are not for you,” rejoined Ruth, dispiritedly.

  “Nor your smiles and kisses, I gather,” he flared, sullenly. “Well, we’ll have it out right here, before Old Butch makes up his mind to move.”

  “Hal, we don’t need to have it out—whatever you mean by that,” returned Ruth. “For I’m not going on with it.”

  “What?” he demanded, harshly, throwing down the sticks.

  “We’ll not go any further. You can take me home.”

  “Like hell I will! … Go sneaking back to Lost Lake for Guerd Larey to make a sieve out of me with bullets. Ha, senora, I see myself taking you!”

  “Guerd will believe me when I tell him I was solely to blame.”

  “What difference would that make to him? He’d kill me for taking you off, just the same.”

  Ruth reflected that it was likely Larey would not be influenced by her in the slightest, except on terms to which she would not surrender.

  “I shall go back alone,” she announced.

  “How, may I ask?” he queried.

  “I’ll walk.”

  “Walk! When? You’d lose your way at night. And by day you’d fall on the hot sand and die. Haven’t your four years of desert life—which you rave about—taught you that much? No, Ruth Larey, you’ll go on with me. It’s too late.”

  “It is never too late. That is why I have fought and fought. I shall walk back, Hal.”

  “Ruth, you’d risk your life rather than get out of this desert hell with me?” he asked, with poignant amaze.

  “I’d lose my life before I’d go,” she returned.

  “Why, for God’s sake?” he went on, hoarsely.

  “You compel me to face the reality of such a step,” she said, earnestly. “I think I have labored under a dream. I dreamed of you as a liberator whom I would come to love. You would take me far across this terrible desert to the green vineyards and the pine groves—to the cool seaside. Some day when I was free you’d marry me and make me happy. That was my dream. But you have-shown me the reality, and I want none of it.”

  “Damn your fickleness!” he exclaimed, passionately. “You’re as changeable as the shifting sands out there.”

  “Changeable? Why, of course. That’s a woman’s privilege,” she retorted, with a lift of her chin.

  “Ah, I see. You swore you loved me and now you don’t?”

  “I never swore that. I only thought I might love you some day.”

  He flung out his hands with a gesture which did not lack a dignity of disillusion and grief. He paled and his eyes gleamed with blue fire. Whatever his weakness, he had sincerely believed he had won her.

  “Bah! You’ve fooled me as you have every white man who drifted into Lost Lake,” he declared. “As for me—even if you’d never whispered one word it’d have been bad enough. You let me walk with you in the moonlight—and at last kiss you—though you must have known what your cursed beauty would do …. Your purple eyes—your golden skin—your hair like spun silk—your panther body with its softness and heat! Lord knows I wasn’t an angel, but if I had been one, I’d have fallen …. You’ve done this thing before, Ruth Larey. Oh, I’ve heard all about you—from people who like you, as well as others who hate you. I’ve been warned not to lose my head over you. You were never one single day the same. Like that damned sand out there—beautiful to look at but treacherous.”

  “Thank you for all that, Hal Stone,” replied Ruth, with a pale smile. “You have done me a good turn. I was grateful to you, sorry for you, and full of regret. But you have spared me further concern.”

  “I don’t want your gratitude or your pity,” he said. “It was your love I wanted. But I’ll have you just the same. They told me you weren’t in love with your husband—that he didn’t care for that just so long as he——”

  “I told you I was Guerd Larey’s wife in name only,” she interrupted, coldly.

  “Sure you told me,” he shot back at her, his face flushing hot. “But I believe you lied. You can’t expect me to swallow that. I never knew anybody who could, except old Mrs. Dorn…. Guerd Larey to let you be his wife in name only! Why it’s desert gossip that he couldn’t pass by a Mexican girl, or even an Indian…. No, Ruth, you invented that little story to make it easier for men to want you. It sure fooled me.”

  “I despise you. I wonder I ever imagined otherwise,” returned Ruth, scornfully.

  “All the same you’re out here alone in the desert with me,” he rejoined, with a bitterness that held a menace. And then as he dropped to his knees to gather the firewood together he spoke as if to himself alone: “A man is what a woman makes him.”

  Ruth sought to conceal a dread that swiftly succeeded her scorn. Had she been wise to alienate this young man, in whom passion and violence evidently ran counterpart to his recklessness? Her situation had assumed alarming proportions. The afternoon was far spent, and despite her courage she hesitated about taking the road back. She saw that the wind was lessening and the gray haze of sand clearing. There would be early moonlight. Suddenly she decided that it would be best for her to leave Stone at once. She would take only a canteen and walk as long as she could make out the road, then rest until daylight. But next day—the sun! It would beat her down as might a savage with a club. Still, there was no alternative. It was impossible for her to stay there over night with Stone, let alone go on with him next morning. Perhaps she could keep on the road all night, and during the heat of the following day conserve her strength by resting in the shade of palo verdes and ironwood trees she remembered having seen. She must not ponder over the possibilities any longer, but go at once.

  Stone had succeeded in starting a little fire and was now engaged in pouring water into a coffee pot.

  “Open up the basket. I’ll have coffee made soon,” he ordered, gruffly.

  Ruth arose, but instead of the basket she picked up a canteen and spread the canvas strap to sling over her shoulder. Stone stared at her until suddenly his eyes dilated and his face changed. Slowly he got to his feet.

  “What dodge are you up to?” he demanded.

  “I’m going back,” replied Ruth, firmly, though her lips tremb
led. Suiting the action to the words she wheeled and started away.

  She heard a muttered curse, then quick footsteps on the gravel. Stone caught her arm in a grasp that hurt. Wrenching free she turned and struck him with all her might across the mouth.

  “You keep your hands off me,” she cried.

  A flame of fury leaped into Stone’s eyes. He seized her and flung her back. The canteen flew out of Ruth’s hands and she fell upon the blankets. She struggled to her knees, slowly, because his violence had badly shaken her. It did not take a second glance at Stone to realize that he held her at his mercy and knew it. Moreover, the evil in him was in the ascendant.

  “You didn’t say that last night,” he muttered, extending toward her the hands she had found offensive. And he clutched at her dress.

  As Ruth leaped erect one of her sleeves tore, leaving her bare arm in Stone’s grasp. Sight and touch of it, combined with her resistance, inflamed him to a savage degree. He jerked her into his arms and held her as if in a vise.

  Suddenly over his shoulder Ruth saw two men and two burros entering the canyon at its far end. Their amazing appearance changed what had been a hopeless situation for her. Fiercely, with redoubled strength, she fought Stone, and spared breath for one piercing cry. And she gave Stone all he could do to handle her.

  The moment came just when she was about to collapse. Something heavy and irresistible laid hold of Ruth from behind. She opened her eyes. Over her shoulder extended a brawny arm, half covered by a rent and ragged sleeve. At the end of that arm a great brown hand shoved Stone back yet appeared also to hold him as if he had been an empty sack. Ruth grasped then that one of the men she had seen had come up behind her. Even at the moment she felt how he towered above her.

  “Young man, let go—quick!” he said in deep voice that had a curious cold ring.

  But Stone did not release his hold of Ruth. His mood had been too savage to change in a twinkling. Then the brown arm flashed back and forth. Stone’s face seemed suddenly obliterated behind a huge fist. With, the sodden sound that followed, warm wet drops splashed over Ruth, and she felt herself freed in a violent wrench. Stone fell backward, and he rolled over and over to land against the cliff wall. There he sank down and lay still.