Stairs of Sand

by Zane Grey

  Merryvale saw trouble hovering over this waterhole. In his day he had known of countless feuds over water rights. The desert recorded more bloodshed over water than over all its other treasures. Larey and Collishaw would stop at nothing to gain their ends. Hunt would refuse to sell. And these men would involve him in some plot of debt or former claim, and failing that they would resort to harsher methods. The Indians hated Hunt, though he kept them from starving. There were degenerate Mexicans in Lost Lake, and always the nameless desert rats, the tramps of the wasteland, were passing through. Collishaw had a foothold in Yuma, and Larey held a controlling interest in the freighting business. Merryvale saw clearly that the situation was hopeless for Hunt.

  With this conviction settled in his mind, Merryvale sought to decide how he would meet the issue. He could never influence Adam without facts. Ruth was an unknown quantity, a creature all fire and moods, unstable as water, yet he believed he could influence her. He could play upon her emotions. It was written that she would love Adam. Already Merryvale felt her dependence upon Adam, her thought and feeling centering round him, her sorrow over the tragedy of his lonely life, and her horror at the blow a cruel fate had dealt him—in finding her his brother’s wife. Merryvale had sensed her torture over this. Out of it surely would grow love—such a love as might save Ruth Larey’s soul.

  Merryvale had likewise divined Ruth’s fear. She had not betrayed the all of Guerd Larey’s villainy. She knew that Adam still loved this brother and playmate of his childhood—loved him because in his great heart love was ineradicable. And if, through her, Adam should really kill this brother, for whose supposed murder he had been an outcast for fourteen years, he must go on to a lonelier, more terrible wandering, the misery of which even God could not assuage.

  But Merryvale did not hold with what he considered Ruth’s point of view, which was actuated by emotion, and the birth of unconscious love. Secretly Merryvale had always regretted that Adam had not killed this green-eyed snake of a brother; and also that one-eyed, gun-packing, hangman sheriff, Collishaw.

  The early frontier had developed Merryvale. This later day was lawless enough, in remote districts, but he despised the bloodless wrangles. Unknown to Adam he had acquired from every source possible on the desert, knowledge of Adam’s fame as Wansfell the Wanderer. To save his own bitter soul from sinking to the beastly, Adam had sought out all the unfortunates he could find on the desert. And these, whom the desert had wrecked, and the desperate dogs of men who plundered and ravaged the weak, somehow had fatefully gravitated across Wansfell’s trail. Merryvale kept this knowledge warm in his heart. Had he not been the first to set Adam toward the greatness of the desert—eighteen years before?

  So Merryvale, pacing to and fro in the shadow, alert to outside things, formulated a plot of his own, matched his wits against the craft of Collishaw and Larey, dedicated the last service of his waning years to the happiness of his friends.

  The night wind rose and moaned through the hedge—desert wind with its mystery, its voice, its latent power, its breath of sand. The stars brightened. And the running water tinkled on. Out there the desert slept, black, unfathomable, brooding, accomplishing its inscrutable design.

  Merryvale heard soft steps. A towering dark figure with a slight white one close beside it, moved toward him.

  “We must go. It grows late,” said Adam.

  Ruth had her arm through Adam’s, holding herself close to him, and her face was turned upward to his, mute, yet exquisitely eloquent under the starlight.

  After a moment she withdrew from him and turned to Merryvale:

  “Goodnight, my friend,” she whispered, and with light hold upon his arm she raised herself to kiss his cheek with soft cool lips. Then she glided down the path, disappearing like a pale spectre, in the gloom of the trees.

  “My Gawd, I wish I was young again,” ejaculated Merryvale, fervently.

  “If wishes were horses…. you know,” answered Adam, sadly.

  “You’d have a rival, Adam,” went on Merryvale.

  “Come,” replied his companion. They went noiselessly along the hedge to the desert. Adam did not speak. And Merryvale kept pace with him until, far from the post, they found seats upon a rock.

  “Wal, Adam, what’re you thinkin’?” began Merryvale, with a sense of pleasure in the moment.

  “Thinking! My mind’s in a whirl,” muttered Adam.

  “What’re you goin’ to do?”

  “Quien sabe?” replied his friend, breathing deeply of the cool air.

  “Ahuh. Wal, pard, I confess to bein’ some flabbergasted myself,” returned Merryvale. “But we’ve got to tackle it. When’re you comin’ in again?”

  “Tomorrow night,” returned Adam.

  “Good,” blurted out Merryvale.

  “I ought not. Yet how could I refuse? How could I when I wander out there all day in the canyons, hunting rabbits, gathering firewood, trying to keep active, cursing my loneliness—fighting the longing to see her.”

  “Ha, pard, you’re shore comin’ around. I reckon I’m downright glad to see it.”

  “Coming round to what, man?” demanded Adam, as if suddenly conscious of himself.

  “Why, to thinkin’ of her, an’ not so much of her troubles an’ frailties. Reckon helpin’ her is all right, an’ shore savin’ her soul might be important. But what she needs worse is to be loved—the way a woman wants to be loved.”

  Adam relaxed from his sudden rigidity. “Good heavens, pardner, have you no idea of the awful fix I’m in?” he exclaimed, with hopeless importunity.

  “Shore. I’m figurin’ on it all the time. An’ I’m askin’ you—do you know Ruth loves you?”

  Adam’s eyes blazed at him in the starlight. He made a ponderous gesture, as if thrusting a mighty thing from him.

  “Wal, she does,” went on Merryvale, mercilessly. “She doesn’t know it yet, an’ that’s how I found out aboot it. But she loves you. An’ pard Adam, when she finds it out—wal, I reckon you’ll be the luckiest an’ distractedest man in this whole world.”

  “Merryvale, old friend,—don’t—don’t make me believe that,” implored Adam, huskily. “It’s hard enough … She’s Guerd’s wife…. I couldn’t be strong to—”

  “Hell, man!” burst out Merryvale, tom by his friend’s pain. “Get that Guerd’s wife idee out of your haid. Ruth’s not his wife. She never was…. I swear to you she loves you. Wal, now, when you see her again take her in your arms.”

  Adam towered to his lofty height, shaken as an oak in storm.

  “My love is greater than that…. Could I make of Ruth what her mother feared other men might make?”

  Merryvale laid a pitying reverent hand upon his friend. “Wal, let’s not quarrel. It’s a hell of a mess. But we cain’t leave that girl alone for one single day. I wish now the S. P. wasn’t comin’ to Lost Lake. We might have persuaded Hunt to sell the water-hole. But not now. So we must meet what comes—anticipate it, if we’re keen enough.”

  “Yes—yes,” returned Adam, hurriedly. “I must go now. My part is to wait—and pray, if that were any use…. You must get the drift of things, and watch over Ruth.”

  Merryvale bade his friend goodnight and watched the tall figure merge into the blackness. Then, deep in thought, he took a roundabout course toward his lodgings. Far out on a ridge wailed up the desolately lonely mourn of a wolf. It suited the desert and the hour. It struck Merryvale with the implacability of nature. Man was only an animal, too, subject to the same physical laws—hunger, fear, instinct to preserve life and reproduce it. Yet what of the beating of that collossal heart—the spirit which enveloped the desert and the night, and reached to the whirling stars and into the void beyond?

  Chapter Six

  MERRYVALE, in staying up late at night, had departed radically from his regular habits. He slept late the morning after his talk with Adam. A ray of sunshine, creeping between the poles of the wall behind his bed, fell hot upon his face, awakening him.
/>   He got up, laced his worn boots, and made ready for what he felt would be a day of moment. His food had about petered out, as he had insisted on Adam’s taking most of their supplies. It was necessary, now, that he eat at the inn, or the little restaurant kept by a Mexican. This would further his plan of mingling with the natives of Lost Lake, and of watching, listening, peering, of becoming an idler at the store and the post, a habitue of the saloon, all in the driving interest of his friends. These water-holes of the desert were hot-beds of intrigue, of sordid greed, of sinister motive. There were no petty or little things. The desert did not develop human beings any different from its few surviving wild creatures. Even Adam, gentlest of men, had at times the swoop and ruthlessness of an eagle.

  As Merryvale sauntered toward the post he espied Stone sitting outdoors in the Mexican’s yard, propped in a chair. Merryvale passed, with a nod, which was not acknowledged. Stone would be well soon, he reflected, to further complicate Ruth’s situation.

  In front of the post, the northbound stage was about ready to depart, with passengers climbing aboard. There was only half the number Merryvale had seen arrive, and Collishaw was not among them. Merryvale approached the stage driver, who stood waiting, long whip doubled in hand. The driver was loquacious. It served Merryvale’s turn to make his acquaintance, and to hold him in conversation until it was time to depart.

  “Adios, old timer, hope you strike it rich out in the hills,” were the driver’s parting words.

  Then Merryvale found his way to the Mexican’s place for breakfast. Here again he made himself agreeable, and was not long in discovering that the Mexican, Jose Garcia by name, had lived at Lost Lake when it was known as Indian Wells, and could add considerably to his store of information.

  When he had finished his morning meal he wandered into the post. Mr. Hunt was dealing with the freighters, four of whom were to start back that day to Yuma. The others were bound north. It was not lost upon Merryvale that four wagonloads of freight had gotten no farther than Lost Lake.

  Merryvale ventured to approach Dabb, whom he had distrusted at first glance.

  “Reckon this heah freight business is boomin’,” he remarked presently. “Shore, I’ve a notion to give up prospectin’ an’ go in for hoss-dealin’.”

  “What’s your name?” inquired Dabb, pricking up his jack-rabbit ears. He had deep-set eyes, and his forehead was knotted with wrinkles.

  “Merryvale. My pardner an’ me dropped in some days ago. He’s out in the hills workin’ a lead. Reckon he likes it better outside. But I’ve got some money banked in Yuma. An’ I’ve a darn good notion to go into hoss-dealin’, if not freightin’ outright. What’s your idee aboot it?”

  “It’s something you’re not the only one who’s thought of,” replied Dabb, meaningly.

  “Ahuh? Wal, I’m not so doggone smart, after all,” returned Merryvale, with apparent disappointment.

  “It takes more than being smart. You’ve got to have money,” said Dabb, with intensity. “That’s what keeps me back. I’d been talking some to Hal Stone about throwing in with him. But he got shot up bad…. Say, Merryvale, what money could you invest?”

  “Wal, I reckon ten thousand,” replied Merryvale, thoughtfully. “But I’m gettin’ along in years, an’ shore I’d want to go slow, so’s not to make a bad deal.”

  “Man, with that much capital the horse-dealing would be only a side issue,” returned Dabb, with a sharp crushing of the paper he held in his hand. Then he fastened his deep-set eyes on Merryvale. “Lost Lake is not the place to begin operations.”

  “Wal, you don’t say. An’ why?”

  “There’s going to be a change here soon. Besides it’s on the edge of the sand dunes. Never will be anything but a water station. Important, yes, and a gold mine for somebody. But there’ll never be any development of the land here. A man wants to look ahead. There’s a big future for this old prospector’s trail through the valley.”

  “Shore. I know the railroad’s comin’,” ventured Merryvale, sagely. “That’s one reason for my idee.”

  “How’d you find that out?” queried Dabb, surprised.

  “Wal, I’m posted from Yuma.”

  “So…. You’re on the right track, Merryvale. Suppose you meet me tonight, for supper. We’ll have a little talk. Maybe I’ll take you in with me. Keep mum about your idea,” he said, and bending nearer to Merryvale he whispered. “It’d never do for Larey to get wind of this.”

  “Ahuh. Wal, I’ll meet you aboot sundown,” returned Merryvale, and went out, to find a seat in one of the windows in front of the post. Already the heat of the day had set in, and under this long wide stone porch, with its archways, Indians were lounging, and Mexicans passing to and fro.

  Merryvale knew that Dabb was employed by Hunt, and he suspected that he was dominated by Larey. What had Dabb meant by a change at the post? The answer was not difficult to find. Dabb’s whispered words, however, were not so easily analyzed to their exact purport. Recalling Dabb’s air of mystery, his crafty look and assurance, Merryvale arrived at the conclusion that Dabb knew of a prospect of gain which Larey would be quick to snap up. In his own interest Dabb evidently would not hesitate at anything short of jeopardizing his skin. And Merryvale, shrewdly weighing the consequences, concluded he had found a way to get conversant with Larey’s plans, if not direct knowledge of his machinations.

  Whereupon Merryvale went on his way to see Ruth.

  The sun beat down. The heat waved up. There was again a gray haze over the desert, hiding the reach of sand. A hot wind blew in from the open, dry, fragrant, bearing its almost invisible burden of dust. A row of buzzards perched upon the end wall of the post. But inside the hedge which enclosed Hunt’s property there was relief for the eyes, if not from the heat. The green flags rustled, the pond rippled gently, the water ran on with its musical tinkle.

  Before Merryvale was half way up the winding green-bordered path he espied Ruth on the porch. She had seen him. No doubt she kept sharp lookout for visitors, some of whom she might not want to meet.

  Ruth was standing when he reached her. She wore a simple gray dress, rather short, which made her look like a girl. She gave him her hand with a smile he had not seen before. The intensity he always felt in her seemed absent. She must have had pleasant dreams, which the day had not wholly dispelled.

  “Wal, lass, I told Adam last night if I was younger he’d shore have a rival. An’ this mawnin’ you look like a desert lily—the white an’ gold kind that grows in deep canyons,” drawled Merryvale, as he took the chair she pulled forward for him, and laid his hat down.

  “Flatterer! I’ll bet you were a gay gallant back in those old Texas days,” she replied.

  “Yes, I reckon. Gay an’ wild,” he said, with pathos. “Some day I’ll tell you my story…. You shore look different this mawnin’, Ruth. I don’t know jest how.”

  “Merryvale, I slept and I dreamed—and awoke almost happy,” she replied, resting her elbows on her knees and her chin on her hands, while she looked gravely into his eyes.

  “I’m glad, lass. An’ so you should after last night,” returned Merryvale. “Shore Adam was out of his haid.”

  “Oh! What—how?” she queried, startled out of her reverie.

  “Wal, I went off on the desert with him for a while,” replied Merryvale, watching her with a little twinge. But he could not depart from the deliberate course he had set. “I wanted to talk aboot your grandpa an’ trouble impendin’ heah. But Adam never ketched a word. He was like a man in a trance.”

  “Why—what was the matter?” asked Ruth, her eyes opening wide.

  “Wal, he jest loves you so turrible, Ruth.”

  She was startled. A great wave of scarlet spread under the golden tan, and she covered her face a moment. “Merryvale—I—you—” she faltered. Then she looked up, trying to meet his gaze to laugh something away. Merryvale thought he had never seen anything so lovely. Where now were the discontent, the passion, the wayward emo
tions of a woman fighting herself and a hateful environment? This perhaps was just another phase of her marvellous capacity for change, but it was beautiful, and Merryvale thought he would give his life to make it permanent in her.

  “Ruth, lass,” he began, very seriously. “I’m a blunt old desert rat. You mustn’t mind my way. I’m Adam’s pard, an’ I’m heah to plan an’ work an’ spy for you…. An’ as I was sayin’, Adam loves you turrible. It almost struck me dumb to see him. An’ if I hadn’t got mad, I’d shore been tongue-tied. Wal, we talked then, of course, aboot you an’ your bein’ together. An’ presently I got a hunch that the darn fool didn’t even tell you he loved you.”

  “Not last night,” murmured Ruth. “We talked of—of the trouble brewing here. How to meet it—to help grandfather—and I guess that’s about all. The time flew by.”

  “Wal! An’ he never made you kiss him?” queried Merryvale, in pretended amaze.

  Ruth shook her head and again the blood dyed her cheek. His rude query had more than embarrassed her.

  “Adam’s a strange man,” went on Merryvale, in apparent wonder and disdain. “After four years of huntin’ for you all over the Southwest he caint tell you the truth. An’ he caint demand even a kiss from you. Wal, I would. Of course, you’re married—even if it is only a name—an’ you couldn’t belong to Adam till you’re free. But jest the same you do belong to him. Not only because your mother gave you to him. But because of the agony he has lived an’ the mighty love for you that’s come out of it. Why, Gawd will make you love Adam, if you don’t already. It’s written. It’s the law of this desert. Adam has spent the best of his youth on this desert, searchin’ for tasks no other man would dare. An’ now the desert has fetched him to you, his best an’ last an’ greatest opportunity. He will save you. This Lost Lake is hell for a woman, let alone such as you. Some day he’ll take you away from it—when he can do so without hurtin’ your good name. He’s foolish aboot that. But it’s because of your mother. That’s why he caint make love to you an’ be like other men.”