Stairs of Sand

by Zane Grey

  “Bah! You’re an old fool, Merryvale,” retorted Stone. “You don’t know women, much less Ruth Larey. She’s like this desert. She has as many moods as the wind. She’d purr at me one minute and the next scratch my eyes out. Like as not she’ll want me back.”

  “I reckon not, young man,” returned Merryvale, shortly. “But find it out for yourself An’ if you caint take advice from a man who knows the desert an’ who meant kindly, wal, go on your wild way.”

  Merryvale left the bedside and went out, satisfied that Stone’s love for Ruth would turn to hate, and that he would be an enemy whom it would be well to watch. The passions of men know no curb in this sun-blasted waste. Every element of nature worked to augment the primitive; and hate, greed, envy, jealousy, lust—all the dark and evil traits of humanity seemed unleashed and rampant. Merryvale reflected that, as often before in his desert experience, he had fallen upon an intricate and baffling drama, which, if indeed it did not end tragically, must grow terrible before there could be any light for the principals.

  At the post there was a break in the day’s drowsy lull. Bustle and dust and noise attended the unhitching of the sweaty mule teams, three to a wagon, and the unloading of boxes and bales and barrels into the freight house. This was a busy hour for the Mexican and Indian laborers. Caleb Hunt stood at the wide door, directing the disposition of supplies, and making entries in a book.

  Merryvale lounged in the shade of the porch, which ran along the front of the post, and played the part he had chosen—that of an idle old man, past labor or activity, and not particularly interested in anything save rest. But as a matter of fact he was keenly alert to see what went on, to note the ever-increasing amount of freight—which in itself was a significant matter—to listen to the teamsters and the handlers of stores, to watch Hunt and his man, the crafty-faced Dabb, and especially, if possible, to get a glimpse of Guerd Larey.

  One of the grimy drivers halted near Merryvale to catch his breath and wipe his dripping face.

  “Warm day, old timer,” he remarked.

  “Reckon so, for you. It’s only fair to middlin’ warm for me. Lots of freight you’re handlin’.”

  “More comin’ all the time,” he replied, nodding vigorously. “We left the dock stacked full. You see, freight is comin’ to Yuma on the railroad now.”

  “You don’t say. Wal, that’s news. So the railroad’s built far as Yuma?”

  “Yep, an’ she’s headed north.”

  “Wal, then, there was somethin’ in the talk we’ve been heahin’ for years. Where do they aim to build this way?”

  “Don’t know for sure,” replied the teamster. “But course the rails will have to go between the Chocolate Range an’ the sand dunes. They couldn’t run no railroad over them.”

  “Shore couldn’t. It’d be buried every day. Reckon they’ll lay tracks round the west end of the dunes, an’ mebbe cut north across the valley this heah way.”

  “I heard a railroad man say Lost Lake was in line,” replied the freighter, and went his way.

  Here was extraordinary news. A railroad north through the valley meant an enormous increase in value of property. Merryvale saw that the water rights on the land belonging to Hunt would be worth a fortune. Guerd Larey had long been trying to buy Hunt out; and of late, according to Ruth, had been offering more, and nagging Hunt to sell.

  Then the stage came rolling up with its six horses caked with dust and lather, and the driver looking like a snow man.

  “Hyar we air, boys,” he shouted, flinging the reins Lost Lake or bust! Howdy Bill—howdy Tim. We come hell bent fer election, with twelve passengers an’ one devil aboard…. Hi, Tony, have a care of the hosses.”

  Dust flew in clouds as the stage door opened to emit, first, a tall man in a long frock coat. He had a hard gray face, grim, lined, square-jawed, more striking for a hideous scar that blotted out his left eye.

  Merryvale controlled the start with which he recognized Collishaw, the sheriff who had been Guerd Larey’s ally at Picacho years before. Collishaw had not changed much, except to grow grayer. Merryvale’s mind flashed back, bringing a picture of the fight between Guerd and Adam. Again he saw Adam fall back from the ghastly brother and fling the gun with terrific force in Collishaw’s face. He would carry that mark, that loss to his grave. His one eye burned with the spirit of an implacable and ruthless man.

  One by one the other passengers descended from the stage, weary and begrimed, and mostly silent. They were all men, most of them rough-garbed, and from their appearance, intimately associated with the desert. They filed into the lodging-house that adjoined the post.

  Merryvale remembered well indeed the part Collishaw had played in Ruth’s narrative. He and Guerd Larey had indentical interests, if they were not hand and glove. Moreover Collishaw conducted one of the many gambling saloons in Yuma. Merryvale saw Collishaw met by Larey with outstretched hand, and led toward the bar. Merryvale decided to follow. In the crowded saloon he contrived to edge close to the couple.

  “Guerd, heah’s to luck,” Collishaw was saying, low-voiced, holding up his glass. “The S. P. is shore goin’ to take in Lost Lake!”

  “The hell you say!” whispered Larey, hoarsely, lifting his glass; and a light brightened the heat from his face.

  “Shore. I got inside information,” replied Collishaw. “For reasons of their own the directors have let it go they were runnin’ the railroad up the east side of the valley. But it’s comin’ on this side.”

  “We want Lost Lake, Salton Spring and Twenty Nine Palms…. Drink!” returned Larey.

  Merryvale edged away from behind the tall Texan, not wishing to take the risk of being recognized in such suspicious proximity. But once outside in the lobby, he waited to place himself where the ex-sheriff could not fail to see him. The two men emerged, evidently in high spirits, and encountered Merryvale apparently bent on going into the bar.

  “Hullo. Wher’d I ever see you?” Collishaw queried, gruffly, his eye boring at Merryvale.

  “Wal, I’m shore I don’t know,” replied Merryvale.

  “You’re a Texan.”

  “Bettja. I’d never disown the old Lone Star State.”

  “I never forget a face,” went on Collishaw. “What’s your name?”

  “Wal, it might be Jones, only it ain’t,” returned Merryvale, with asperity.

  Well pleased with himself and Collishaw’s failure to recognize him, Merryvale hurried out and into the storeroom of the post, where Hunt was still receiving and recording freight.

  “Hunt, I’ve a bit of news for your ear,” said Merryvale.

  “Ah! Merryvale. How do. Thank you, I’ll be at your service presently,” rejoined Hunt.

  Merryvale waited in the gathering shadow, watching the piling up of tier after tier of freight. It was a large storehouse and now almost half full. When at length the work was done darkness had intervened.

  “It’s supper time. Come with me, Merryvale. Ruth will be glad to see you,” invited Hunt.

  Merryvale did not choose to speak while they were walking along in front of the post, where there were passers-by, and dark figures of Indians leaning against the railing. But when they turned the comer to pass on toward the hedge he said: “Mr. Hunt, shore there’s a lot of freight comin’ in.”

  “Indeed there is. We’re handling twice the volume of business we used to.”

  “Who’s it all billed to?” asked Merryvale, curiously.

  “Most of this lot today is billed to names I don’t know. Struck me queer. And now I have time to think, I see it is most unusual.”

  “Wal, I reckon it is. Mebbe I can give you a hunch aboot it.”

  “Ah, that’s your bit of news,” replied Hunt.

  It was dark inside the hedge, so that Merryvale had to peer down to locate the narrow path. The tinkle of running water fell pleasantly on the sultry air. Far to the north sheet lightning flared along a dark battlemented horizon. They reached the porch, where a slender white figure sto
od out from the gloom.

  “Who’s with you, grandad?” came the query in Ruth’s soft voice.

  “Merryvale, my lass, I’ve asked him to supper.”

  “Oh—I’ve looked for you all day, Merryvale,” she said, taking his arm and squeezing it. “I’m lonelier than ever. I used to go down to the post. But now I stay in the yard.”

  “Ruth, lass, go tell Marta to hurry supper,” requested Hunt, taking a seat. Opening his shirt at the neck and brushing back his hair, he met the faint breeze with evident gratitude. “Now tell me the hunch and the bit of news.”

  “Wal, I reckon that excess freight is for railroad men,” replied Merryvale.

  Hunt leaned forward in his chair so abruptly that Ruth, returning from the house, marked it and stopped short.

  “Your faith in this water-hole is justified,” went on Merryvale, impressively. “The S. P. is goin’ to run the railroad through heah.”

  “Oh, how wonderful!” exclaimed Ruth, slipping to the arm of Hunt’s chair.

  He gave vent to a hard expulsion of breath. “Merryvale, how do you know?”

  “Collishaw came on the stage. An’ I overheard him tell Larey that he had inside information.”

  “Well, well! I always believed it’d come…. And what did Larey say?”

  Merryvale leaned forward to whisper: “He said ‘We want Lost Lake, Salton Spring an’ Twenty-nine Palms.’ ”

  Hunt uttered an imprecation that was unintelligible and sank back in his chair. “He named the three best water holes in the valley. These will be important railroad stations and eventually towns. For the valley above here has rich soil. All it needs is water. I can see it green over and blossom like the land of Canaan.”

  “Wal, Hunt, I reckon you had better vision than most desert prospectors. For you bought Lost Lake.”

  “Yes and I have a clear title. I took the Indians to Yuma. I own this water and when I die it’ll go to Ruth. She’ll be rich some day.”

  “Hush, grandad. You are full of life and energy,” said Ruth. “Oh, I am so glad…. Yet it troubles me. If Guerd Larey said he wanted Lost Lake, and those other places, he meant something.”

  “Ruth, he has always wanted it. You see the post was built on my land. He always disputed this, but the Indians can verify it. These six acres I own constitute the value of Lost Lake.”

  “Wal, all I say is you’re goin’ to hang on to it,” interposed Merryvale, doggedly.

  “My friend, as yet the only law on this desert is the law of might,” replied Hunt.

  “Shore. An’ that’s where Wansfell will come in.”

  Merryvale saw the girl’s face flash at him and her eyes widen and gleam in the gloom. She put out an entreating hand.

  “I don’t understand you, Merryvale,” said Hunt.

  “Never mind. My temper was up. Shore I talk too much, anyhow. But I jest had to tell you the news—good an’ bad,” returned Merryvale, apologetically.

  At this juncture the Indian woman called them to supper. As Merryvale rose to follow his host Ruth took his hand and clasped it, whispering: “You musn’t frighten me. Remember, I’ve heard Genie Linwood tell how terrible Adam can be.”

  They went into the little dining room where, in the light of the lamps, Merryvale looked across the table at this girl who had begun to twine herself about his heart. His friendship for Adam and the long search to find Ruth had engendered his interest in her. He was old and he had traveled, but never had he seen so lovely and so disturbing a creature as Ruth. The pliant form, slender yet full, the beautiful lines of her golden throat, the oval face with its curved red lips, drooping and sweet, the delicate nostrils, the wide purple eyes and the rippling hair of gold,—these he felt stir his pulse and gladden his sight; but it was not only her beauty that had called to the depths of him. Adam loved her, but it was not wholly that which had inspired him to chivalry. He wondered at himself, at the capacity for fight there seemed still to abide in him. Ruth had not painted herself in glowing colors. And what he had learned from the Indians and Mexicans, and the several white women of Lost Lake, was not calculated to change for him the estimate she had given of herself. Yet Merryvale was forming his own opinion, and seemed to divine how the desert might take a girl’s wild potentialities and mould them into noble womanhood.

  After the meal they again repaired to the porch where Hunt talked a few moments, then went down to his work at the post.

  “Let us go,” said Ruth. “Some one might come.” And she led him beyond the house, up a path to the dark hedge, where in the shadow of palo verdes there was a bench.

  “I can hear him—when he comes,” whispered Ruth, panting a little.

  “Ruth, I dropped in to see Stone today,” said Merryvale, low-voiced. “He told me you had been there.”

  “Yes, I went to see him, and took him some fruit. I felt sorry for him. Sight of him so pale, hollow-eyed with those bloody bandages on him, stung me with remorse.”

  “Wal, it’s to your credit, but you musn’t go again. An’ you must avoid him heahafter. He’s bad medicine, Ruth, an’ doesn’t deserve your pity.”

  “I have two task masters now,” she replied, with a little laugh. “But oh, if you only knew how I need and want to be guided and helped.”

  “Wal, I’ll shore try to live up to that,” returned Merryvale.

  “God knows it’s hard enough to stay here,” she said, twisting her hands in her dress. “I resigned myself. I let Adam dominate me. But I didn’t realize. I’m shut in, walled up by the desert. I try to work, read, sleep, but I can’t do any for any length of time. By day the sun glares down—the monotony of endless barren ground ever meets my eyes. By night I hear the tinkle of this spring that means so much to grandad. It haunts me. Then the dead silence and after that the wind. You know the wind—how mournful—how it seeps the sand—how it rustles the leaves! I am alone—alone. And I feel I’ll go mad. Then the night turns gray and then—that awful rose of dawn.”

  Merryvale racked by his mind for a suggestion that might lend some ray of comfort.

  “But, Ruth, heah are those who love you,” he said, feelingly. “Your grandfather an’ Adam…. An’ wal, I reckon me.”

  “You, Merryvale,” she replied in soft surprise. “Oh, you are good. And I feel so worthless, useless, helpless. I don’t fit here. Just today I’ve had a thousand thoughts, all faithless to you who care for me. It would be better if I didn’t know it. I used not to know or I didn’t care. But now I have other kinds of discontent, I—”

  “Listen,” interrupted Merryvale, in a husky whisper. “I heah a step.”

  In the silence which ensued Merryvale felt her hands trembling on his. They had a clinging quality of which she seemed unaware. A soft footfall sounded outside the hedge.

  “It is Adam,” she whispered.

  “Reckon so. I know that step.”

  Merryvale slipped along the hedge to an aperture, which let him out into the desert. A lofty figure took shape against the opaque gloom. Merryvale advanced and silently meeting his friend led him back through the hedge and under the shadow to where the white form of Ruth gleamed wanly like marble in the starlight.

  “Adam?” she whispered, rising to meet him.

  “Yes, Ruth,” he answered.

  They clasped hands. And Merryvale, standing close, saw with his nighthawk eyes, that they forgot him.

  “Ruth, dear, I do not like this,” said Adam very low.

  “What? Seeing me again?”

  “No. Meeting you in secret.”

  “But you must. I’m afraid—if you meet your—my—Guerd Larey. You couldn’t avoid it. And the thought frightens me.”

  “I understand. I don’t want to meet Guerd and I don’t want him or anyone to—know I see you. Still—”

  “You must meet me here. Adam, I’d never have gotten through this day but for you.”

  It needed no word from Merryvale to bind Adam to the inevitable, yet Merryvale chose to speak it, proving to himself how
far, that night, he had gone on the road of friendship.

  “Adam, shore there’s no way out of meetin’ Ruth heah, even if you wanted one, which you don’t. There’s hell ahatchin’ down at the post. Collishaw is heah, drinkin’ with Larey.”

  “Collishaw?” muttered Adam. He drew Ruth out into the starlight close to Merryvale.

  “Shore. Listen, pard,” began Merryvale, and in forceful whisper he told what little he had seen and heard, and how much he suspected. “I’m an old hand at figerin’ such men. An’ you know, Adam, how I feel toward you an’ Ruth. I seen through Guerd Larey! I read his mind. When he said ‘Drink!’ he meant to the possession of Lost Lake Spring, an’ of the lass whose hand you’re holdin’ now.”

  “I can’t speak for the water-hole, but he shall never have Ruth,” returned Adam.

  “If he did get me, it’d be only my dead body,” said Ruth, her face pale, and her great eyes mirroring the brilliance and mystery of the stars as she gazed up at Adam.

  “Wal, I’ll walk up an’ down outside the hedge,” said Merryvale.

  “You needn’t leave us alone,” objected Adam. “If anyone did surprise us I’d rather you’d be here.”

  “No one is goin’ to surprise you, I’ll swear to that,” rejoined Merryvale. “Not with my eyes an’ ears peeled.”

  Merryvale slipped away noiselessly along the hedge to the opening. Here he paused. The moment seemed exhilarating, and revived long dormant emotions. In his youth he had loved romance, adventure, women, and the feelings they had aroused in him seemed somehow linked with the present. He worshipped Adam. He, who knew the desert, saw in Adam all it exemplified. Adam was his hero. And now he felt himself finally committed to Ruth.

  Merryvale stood in the shadow, peering forth, listening while his thoughts revolved round his friends. There was no light now in the Hunt house. Evidently the Indian woman had gone down to visit her people, as was her habit. Hunt, no doubt, was at work at the post. The usual silence characteristic of Lost Lake was disrupted this night. The sound of footsteps, the hum of voices, broken occasionally by a discordant laugh, the lights that threw a glow on the palo verdes, somehow seemed unfitting to this lonesome water-hole. Merryvale heard the gurgle and tinkle and a murmur of running water. Hunt’s spring! The water-hole which the Indians claimed had never gone dry! It had turned out to be a well-spring of gold, a treasure mine.