Stairs of Sand

by Zane Grey

  “You are already married?” he went on, a little huskily.

  “Yes. But it’s not only that. It’s not only that I bear a man’s name. Any day I might be free of him. Life is uncertain on this desert. He is hated and feared. He is a dishonest man. Some day he will be killed…. But I meant, too late for another and more serious reason. I fear I have become a hopeless, miserable, half-mad woman, with no longer a belief in self or God. The desert has ruined me. I would never drag down and ruin a man whom my mother knew and trusted—cared for, perhaps.”

  “Your mother did care for me, Ruth.”

  “Oh, I guessed it. That brings me closer to you. Yet it can’t change the hard facts.”

  “Ruth, tell me your story and let me judge of the hard facts. Trust me.”

  “Yes, I will. You must—think me so weak—and shallow. But it’s no wonder I’m unstrung. To meet you, who knew my mother, who—But listen, I think I’d like Merryvale to hear my story. If he has wandered with you all over this terrible desert, helping you search for me, I’d like him to know about me, from my own lips.”

  “Merryvale, come here,” called Adam, to the motionless figure beside the camp fire. “Sit down here,” went on Adam. “Ruth has something to tell us.”

  “Wal, now, I’m shore glad,” said the old man, knocking the embers out of his pipe. “I’ve been wonderin’ a lot, an’ troublin’ myself. But shore, Ruth, you’ll be talkin’ to a friend.”

  Ruth drew a deep breath that was half sigh, half sob, and surrendered to some emotion beyond her ken.

  “I’ll begin where you left me—at Santa Ysabel,” she said. “My grandfather, Caleb Hunt, about that time became interested in water rights on the desert. He had considerable money which he wanted to invest in desert holdings. And he was affected with a pulmonary disease, from which he suffered less on the desert than anywhere. Indeed he recovered from this…. We went first to Yuma, where he fell in with the men who figure largely in my story. Grandfather went into the freighting business with these men. Supplies from San Francisco came by sea and river round to Yuma, and were there freighted in wagons into the interior.

  “Grandfather invested heavily in this business. He bought a water hole from the Indians, and here established a freighting post. Lost Lake, they call it. There was a lake there in ages past. It’s now a ghastly place, on the edge of these sand dunes.

  “The man who won my grandfather to this enterprise was a young handsome fellow who fascinated me. But I did not love him. He kept at me to marry him, and grandfather favored his suit. Between them they made my life wretched. The desert had begun to pall on me. I grew moody and uncertain of myself. At last grandfather told me that if I did not consent to this marriage he would be ruined. I did not know which way to turn. All my girlhood my mother had taught me never to give myself where I did not love. I told grandfather and the man who wanted me to be his wife. But their argument was that love would come. My suitor swore that if I would only marry him he would wait for love to come—before asking me to be really a wife. I didn’t trust him—I feared him. Yet they finally wore me out.

  “The very first night after my marriage my husband, under the influence of drink, tried to force his way into my bedroom. I learned that he considered our compact mere nonsense. At my refusal to let him in he grew violent and nearly wrecked the place. But I escaped to grandfather’s house.

  “Next day he approached me, sober, with all his blandishments, and begged me to overlook his action.

  “I told him I loathed him, and that was the end. He tried for weeks to change me, and failing, he stood out in his true colors. He was a gambler, a dissolute adventurer who gradually gained power in Yuma. He robbed grandfather.

  “That was over three years ago. Grandfather has kept his hold on the water rights at Lost Lake, and he fights still to regain something he lost in the freighting business. But this is futile. Eventually they will get the water hole from him and then he will be ruined. Lost Lake is an important post on the freighting line, and of course the water is the valuable asset there.

  “All this would have been bad enough for me, without the terrible devastating maddening effect of the desert. In winter I endured. In summer the blasting sun, the moaning wind, the flying sand or the endless waste of desert, pitiless, encompassing, shutting me in, the awful heat and glare,—these at times drove me to desperation. I grew obsessed with the idea of getting away. Twice grandfather took me to Yuma. That was almost as bad. Wicked, whirling, terrible town of blood and heat and dust! Both times I had to leave on account of men who tormented me, fought over me … Oh, no doubt I was much to blame. I looked always for some one to free me. At first it was some man whom I could care for. But it came to mean some man who would care enough for me to take me away. Back at Lost Lake I would have weeks of awful loneliness. Then some traveler, some miner or gambler, or adventurer would see me—and the bitter lesson I learned did not seem to change me. I grew sick at my fate … A few weeks ago this young man I was with, Hal Stone, came to Lost Lake. He was a horse dealer and made money. His infatuation for me was welcome, I am bound to admit. But I had no sense, no judgment. He was kind, pleasant, engaging at first, and he loved me. I persuaded myself that I was attracted to him, and might some day love him. He had little trouble in getting me to run away. We left Lost Lake at daylight this morning, and not until late did I suspect Stone was off the road. Old Butch balked here in this canyon or you might—never have—met us…. I see no way out—I can’t go back home, yet—somehow—I thank God—you found me.”

  Chapter Three

  BOTH Ruth’s listeners maintained a profound silence. She was aware of Wansfell pressing her hand so tightly that it pained. The camp fire had burned down to ruddy embers. A lonesome desert owl hooted dismally down the darkening canyon. Ruth experienced an incomprehensible relief.

  “Wal, Ruth,” said Merryvale, at last breaking the silence, “I’ve seen forty years of desert life. An’ I reckon your little time heah hasn’t been so bad.”

  “It could have been vastly worse,” added Wansfell, in voice which seemed full of relief. “I expected worse. Have you told us everything?”

  “Yes, everything vital. I held back his name because I hate to speak it.”

  “There is no need. It doesn’t matter who your—the man is. What does matter is the need for you to learn a lesson from the past.” Merryvale spoke in terms of the physical. Most desert people do that. Only in rare cases does a man or woman grow spiritually on the desert. It is too hard, too fierce, too relentless, too bound by the elements. Desert creatures all, particularly human beings, concentrate on survival. A fight for life! … “Ruth, you have neglected your spiritual side.”

  “Are you preaching to me?”’ queried Ruth, almost mockingly.

  “No. I want to wake you to facts that are outside your thinking. You imagine you’ve suffered terribly. But you have not—as we desert folk know suffering.”

  “My heart is broken,” said Ruth.

  “No,” he contradicted, and placed his great hands on her shoulders, bending to look into her eyes. “I believe that hearts can break. And on this desert I have met many persons with broken hearts and ruined lives. But you are not one of them, Ruth.”

  “If I think I am, doesn’t that make it so?” she asked, stubbornly.

  “Yes, for the time being, until you find the truth.”

  “The truth? You’re beyond me, Adam. I never understood you back there at Santa Ysabel. Much less can I now. You—you seem to make light of my situation.”

  “Indeed, I do not. It is sad enough. But the desert, for all your hatred, has not yet betrayed you. I see it has given you more wonderful health and beauty. You are not broken—lost. And now you will not be.”

  He drew back from her and stood erect, towering and dark. Merryvale gave her a kindly touch, as if to express something he could not voice; then he stole away into the shadow of the wall.

  “Not broken—lost!” repeated Ruth. “And now
I never will be … Why?”

  “Because I have found you,” he said, simply.

  She could not reply to that, though it astounded and irritated, and somehow warmed her cold gratitude.

  “Go to bed and rest,” he said. “Tomorrow we will decide what to do.”

  He moved away into the gloom, his slow footfalls padding on the sand. Ruth roused herself, and groping for the blankets she sat down to remove her shoes and outer garments. Slipping down between the blankets she covered herself and lay still. It was a hard bed, yet such was her fatigue, something to be grateful for. She would rest and think, but not sleep.

  As she endeavored to settle down to regulate her disordered thoughts she saw the gloom of the canyon lightening. This silvering of the shadows and the walls did not come from the cold radiant stars, for they were losing their brilliance under the influence of a stronger luminary. The moon had risen. Every moment afterward the canyon grew lighter.

  What would Stone tell her husband, Guerd? He had wit enough to know that if he told the truth, Guerd would kill him. He would lie, and somehow twist the affair to Ruth’s further discredit. She did not care what his machinations might be, and dismissed him with a sickening wonder at her rashness.

  She lingered longer in reflection about her grandfather. Somehow the resentment she had labored under for so long had lessened. Almost, she had hated him for dragging her into the desert. But it had been a matter of life for him, and otherwise he had been most kind and loving. Remorse stirred in her. What would become of him now? Guerd Larey and Collishaw, with their hirelings, would devour him as wolves a sheep. She had been the power that had held these hardened men leashed. The irony of fate for Larey had been that the greater grew her loathing, the more he desired her. More than once he had threatened to carry her off to some lonely oasis and bend her to his will.

  She knew her husband would try it. And she would kill him. That alone was enough to keep her from going back. But there were many other reasons. No, her grandfather would have to go on alone. Poor old man! The desert would claim him, as it had claimed her mother and father. But never would it destroy her!

  She would not return to Lost Lake. The decision sent a tingling all over her body. To get away from the heat, the copper sky, the blazing sun, the insulating ridged waste of changing sand—what joyous prospect! How good not to be ogled by sloe-eyed Mexicans, not to be watched by silent stealthy Indians, not to live among hard men, in color and action and mood like the desert! What sweetness there could be in verdant green surroundings, by the cool seaside, in the vineyards and groves of the coast!

  Ruth had clung tenaciously to the money given her by her parents when they left her. She had spent less and less of it as time went by on the desert. Some day she would need that money, and now the time had come. She remembered she had confided in Stone. Had that actuated him in any measure? More than once he had tried to find out how much it was, and where she kept it. Ruth, making sure she had not lost the money, went on dreaming of travel, change, work, a new life.

  Suddenly a footstep on the sand broke her brooding meditation. She had closed her eyes, and forgotten for the moment the night, the canyon, and the men who were there.

  The moon stood above the gateway of the canyon, full and resplendent, flooding the desert with silver light. Far out there Ruth saw her stairs of sand, beautiful, illusive, mystic, climbing away to the starry heavens. Her heart sank. She had been dreaming. The desert was there, illimitable and encompassing. Could she ever climb out of it?

  Another footstep caused her to raise her head. A tall dark form moved in the moonlight. Wansfell! He walked by her, down the middle of the canyon a few rods, his hands folded behind him. How lofty his stature! Turning back he retraced his steps, walked up the canyon a like distance, then faced round to repeat the performance. He passed scarcely a dozen yards from Ruth, and in the white moonlight she could see him distinctly. She watched him patrol this beat.

  His bare head had the cast of a striking eagle. He walked erect, with free step, though he gave an impression of a man burdened. What was on his mind that he did not rest and sleep? Ruth knew, and she could not control womanly emotions. A sense of protection suddenly struck her. Never a night had she lain down in her desert home without dread! But this night the sombre shadow of mind had not returned. No man, not even Guerd Larey, could harm her now, while that giant stalked out there. And the difference became incalculable in its far-reaching influence.

  Genie Linwood returned clearer than ever before to Ruth. She recalled how Genie had talked about this man.—He was like Tanquitch the mountain God of the Indians. His face was like the sun…. Genie’s mother had prayed for someone to find them—when they were starving. And the day came when desert robbers stole Genie away. But Adam met and killed them. How terrible he was! … Genie’s mother had said her prayer had been answered. And she died leaving Genie to him.

  Ruth’s heart swelled high in her breast. The thing that this desert man had done for a child could not be mistaken or underestimated. Moreover Genie had dwelt vaguely on hints she had gotten from the Indians. Had they called him Eagle only for his shape of head and gray lightning of eyes? White men had named him the Wanderer.

  To think that this strange man had fallen in love with her at Genie’s—four years past—had fled from her because he believed he had murdered his brother…. And now he had found her. What did it mean? What would it lead to?

  She felt that she must flee from him before he found her to be even a shallower creature than she had confessed herself. But Adam had known her mother, loved her, no doubt, as all men had loved her. Ruth recalled the times of her girlhood that had been darkened by her father’s jealousy of her mother. It was hardly possible for Ruth to go away from Wansfell without learning all he knew about her mother and the tragedy of her end in Death Valley. Yet Ruth, much as she longed to hear it, dreaded it even more. It might be a link in a chain which bound her to Wansfell.

  Was there not a chain? She had been ready to fall in love with him four years ago. She wanted to now…. Oh, that overwhelming craving to love and be loved! To love someone! That was the awful thing the desert had magnified in Ruth. She could not deny it…. But she was a woman now. It would be like the raging flood or the desert sun…. Not Genie’s Eagle! She must not love him, for he soared on the heights.

  As long as Wansfell paced to and fro, Ruth lay wide awake, prey to changeful thought and emotion. At last she saw him lie down on his bed between her and the gateway of the canyon. Utter silence settled down then, brooding, inscrutable. The moon sank behind the rim of the nearer wall, and once again dark shadows encroached upon the silver. Desert night enfolded her, and the protection of these companions who had so strangely sought and found her. Closing heavy eyelids, Ruth surrendered to a drowsiness that gradually dulled her thought, and at length she fell asleep.

  A voice pierced Ruth’s slumbers. She awoke in a rosy cool dawn. The sun had not risen. The wall in front of her was not that of her adobe room at home, but the wall of a cliff. She remembered with a shock.

  “Adam, I tell you that son-of-a-gun of a mule has stood right there in his tracks all night,” Merryvale was saying. “Shore beats me for a balky beast.”

  “Merryvale, you know burros, but not mules,” replied Adam. “Old Butch’s performance is unusual, but not extraordinary.”

  “Old Butch? Do you know this old gray long-eared cuss?”

  “I guess. I drove him eight years ago up in the Mohave. He was noted then for balking. The packers at the mine where I worked couldn’t drive him. They shot him more than once.”

  “Wal, he shore ain’t any the worse, for all I can see.”

  “Butch shows the wear and tear of the desert, same as we do. I wonder how he got way down here in the sand dunes. It’ll be funny when he wakes up and recognizes me.”

  “See, heah, Adam, shore you ain’t tryin’ to make me believe that mule will know you after eight years?”

  “You be
t he will. Merryvale, I’m the only man who could fetch Butch out of a balk. I’ll bet you hell walk right out of that and lay his head on my shoulder.”

  “Humph! I ain’t bettin’ you. But I’ll say he’ll have to grow lots taller. An’ I’m curious to know just how you handle him.”

  “Wait and see,” replied Wansfell. “Let’s rustle some wood.”

  “It ain’t very plenty, onless my eyes are pore.”

  The men parted, and left camp without being aware that Ruth had awakened. She got up, dressed, and found water in one of Stone’s canteens, which he had left in the wagon. Old Butch never flicked an eyelash.

  “You reprobate,” said Ruth, eyeing the mule. “I’m as curious as Merryvale to see how Wansfell will make you move.”

  Ruth took advantage of the opportunity to walk to and fro, and back into recesses of the canyon which she had not noticed yesterday. She found a nervous strain disturbing the calm in which she had awakened. Her mind had been made up and now it seemed to be wavering, to what end she had no inkling. This was another day, and it was different.

  “I won’t go back to Lost Lake,” she announced aloud, as if to fortify herself.

  Upon returning to camp, she found Merryvale there, breaking up a meagre supply of wood.

  “Mawnin’, Ruth,” he greeted her, with a smile. “Strikes me you look like the break of day.”

  “Good morning,” replied Ruth. “I don’t feel quite so bright, for all your compliment.”

  “Wal, I’ve learned things an’ people are what they look like. They can’t help it. Take Adam for instance…. Wal, heah he comes, an’ I reckon I’d better wait till some other time.”

  “Make a time then, Merryvale, for I want to know all about him,” replied Ruth, earnestly.

  Adam arrived with an armful of brush and dead cactus, which he dropped upon the sand.

  “It’s a glorious morning, Ruth,” he declared. “The sun is stepping red down over the sand dunes. Aren’t you glad to be alive, young, so good to look at, with all the world before you?”