Stairs of Sand

by Zane Grey

  All save the driver were huddled inside the stagecoach, when Adam helped Ruth in. The Chinaman had a blanket over him; the Mexican his colored scarf. Merryvale lifted handkerchief and coat to show his bright blue smiling eyes and to yell at her: “This heah’s one of Adam’s fiestas.”

  There was a moaning out in the trees and a sweeping rush of sand under the coach. But the roar seemed still at a distance.

  Adam’s swift capable hands hurried Ruth into her linen coat, and tucked the flowing veil around her, leaving roomy space within but no aperture. Through the veil Ruth saw him cover his head with a silk scarf and settle back in the comer.

  Then, as a terrible bellowing came and a yellow darkness, and a whistling of sand right through the coach, Ruth seized Adam’s arm with both hands, and sinking against him, she shut her eyes in a kind of strange exultance. She had no fear. What could blowing sand do to her? Let the fiendish sand come in palls and mounds, and bury her and Adam, deep as under the ocean, forever and ever.

  Her ears were assailed by teriffic din, until they became deaf to sound. She did not lift her eyelids, but she could see the blackness as of night through them. The sand weighted her down, and the dust, sifting through her veil, choked her. The air grew vitiated and her breathing labored under oppression. Once that might have been a terrible ordeal. But now she made endurance a passionate defiance. This desert would make a weak and crawling beast of her. Drag her back to her forebears! Could any man be mightier of spirit than a woman?

  Closer she clung to Adam. She felt the bands and cords of muscle in that arm. She would hold on there, with love of this man and scorn for the wretchedness of physical distress, until death came, if so it chose, without one single protest. It was the flesh that had ruined her—worship of her golden skin and graceful contour, and a madness to have these ever beloved by men. Let the storm howl like the demons of hell, and swell to the skies, and roll the sand dunes into one colossal avalanche, and give her a sepulchre like her mother’s!

  Her breast strained against the crushing need for oxygen. A million tiny sparks burst into the blackness before her eyes. Slowly beat her heart, and slower the pulse in her temples. And into her brain seemed to be beating the wind, the sand, the storm, like ruthless desert talons, cruel and agonizing.

  She drooped lower and her head lodged on Adam’s breast. She felt the heat and dampness through her veil. His mighty breast heaved and his heart pounded, regularly and evenly, without stress. Had he not weathered a thousand sand-storms? Ruth clung to the massiveness of him, and yearned for the soul that seemed beyond her.

  She drifted then, losing at the last the consciousness of her revel in the storm, and wearying to the extremity of physical endurance, to the elemental instincts, and finally to oblivion.

  Ruth opened her eyes to clear day. She was lying under a tree and Adam was bathing her face. Merryvale too was kneeling anxiously beside her.

  “Aw, now,” he said, with a great burst of relief, “she’s come back!”

  “Where did—I go?” asked Ruth, faintly, as she smiled up at them.

  “I think you would have gone with the sand, if that storm had lasted longer,” replied Adam.

  She could see the brown hue of his face returning.

  “Shore it was a rippin’ snortin’ blow, but short, thank the Lord,” added Merryvale, wagging his head. “Once In a while this old desert acts pretty decent.”

  The driver hailed them from his seat.

  “Hey, if you folks get aboard we can make Bitter Seeps by sundown, an’ the post by midnight.”

  “Keep your shirt on,” replied Merryvale, irascibly.

  While being helped back to the coach Ruth saw the rear of the great storm, a horizon-blotting yellow cloud. Pilot Knob and Picacho, the landmarks to the south, were invisible. The sun shone again as hot as fire. It seemed that all the wind in the world had passed by. Horses and conveyance were sand burdened.

  Adam folded blankets in a comer next to the window, making a comfortable seat for Ruth. It was on the shady side, a circumstance that made it possible for her to look out toward the glistening white sand dunes.

  Once more they rolled on and Ruth was grateful for the motion. The air fanned her cheeks and blew her hair, rendering the heat less intolerable.

  Her fellow passengers lounged asleep in their seats. Even Adam nodded with closed eyes and seeing him thus she fancied she could trace the havoc the last few days had wrought. Was not his hair a little whiter over his temples than on the day he had encountered her with Stone in the canyon? Ruth had to avert her gaze. Must a woman always be a destroyer? Were there no women who made men stronger, nobler, happier?

  The hard gravel road slid behind the rolling wheels, and the miles could be counted by the ever-changing nature of desert plants. This was the zone where ironwoods, palo verdes, ocatilla, mesquite, catclaw, and the hardy greasewoods attained their greatest size and perfection. Probably the soil in that fertile belt stored and held more water than zones to north and south. Observed from the distance, these desert growths resembled a forest of different shades of green, with the gold blossoms of the palo verdes and the red of the ocatillas shining out in beautiful contrast. But the rising heat veils and the shimmering mirages betrayed this illusion of the eye—that this wonderful stretch so seemingly verdant was not forest but the caustic bitter wasteland.

  Ruth leaned at the window and watched till her eyes were tired, and then resting them, dozing the hot hours away, she awoke to watch again. Her mind was as wearied as her emotions and her body. But in spite of that she felt something new, dawning, unaccountable as it was prophetic, beginning to work upon her.

  The sand dunes again! Clear, soft, blown clean by the wind, rippled as by shore waves, rising from the desert in long smooth rounded slopes, climbing and swelling and mounting, curved, scalloped, knife-edged, lacy, exquisitely silver, on and up alluring steps toward the infinite blue!

  The stagecoach rolled on through the pass, down hill to the northward, and slowed only at places where fresh sand had piled across the road.

  The sun was setting when the stage emerged from the pass, and turned somewhat westward, facing the bare, stark and naked basin in which Lost Lake shone a green spot in all that ghastliness.

  But it was somehow a different place at the end of this strange day. Ruth had never before seen that vast hollow between the dunes and the black range to the north free of haze, drifting palls of sand, driving yellow dust-devils, and always the omnipresent and deceitful mirages. This hour it was silver and gold, an endless desert scene, beginning to tinge with the slow stealing red of sunset.

  They presently turned a ridge comer, to roll down a gentle slope into Bitter Seeps.

  “All out. Thirty minutes for refreshments,” shouted the driver facetiously.

  Ruth let Adam help her. It was relief to stretch her cramped limbs. For food and drink Merryvale preferred to offer what he had fetched from Yuma rather than what the Indians could supply. The water was warm and the bread gritty with sand, yet Ruth forced herself to appease hunger and thirst.

  “I must leave you here,” announced Adam, presently.

  Ruth gave him a swift stare of surprise.

  “I left my burros and packs here,” he went on. “I’ll find them and come on to Lost Lake tonight.”

  “Oh!—You’ll walk?” she returned.

  “Surely. It will not take more than six hours. I’m used to walking, Ruth, and like night best. Why do you imagine they called me a wanderer?”

  “There’ll be another wanderer—if you abandon me to the tender mercy of your brother!” retorted Ruth, rebelliously. Then the instant the rude retort was out she regretted it. But the thought of Adam not being near her gave swift release to the dread that always hovered under the surface.

  “How like a child you talk!” he remonstrated, patiently.

  “How like a cowardly woman,” she added. “But I can’t help it. I thought I could. But have I changed? Will I ever change?”<
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  “Ruth, must I tell you again—what torture I endure—at the thought of Guerd recognizing me?”

  “No. No. Forgive me. I understand why you ought not to take the risk…. I am as fearful as you. Not to save me—even though what I’ve lived through these last three days—would I have you meet him. But I forget. And then I always slip back to that other Ruth. Alas, the real Ruth!”

  “If my brother is at Lost Lake now, then we may doubt Stone’s story. But if not—”

  “Oh, Stone lied!” interrupted Ruth, hurriedly, guiltily conscious of her own falsehood. “He swore he would get even with me. Merryvale heard him. Well, Stone inveigled Collishaw somehow; and each had his own treacherous motive. Stone told me Collishaw tried to sell me to Sanchez.”

  “How terribly I want to believe that Stone lied about my brother!”

  “Adam—that ought to make it easy,” faltered Ruth.

  “Yes. I will believe until I know surely.”

  “You will see me tomorrow night, without fail?” entreated Ruth.

  He gazed down upon her with the strange look that always troubled her soul.

  “Ruth, what will become of us if you make it so that I’ll have to see you all the time?”

  “It would be very wonderful for me,” she returned, ashamed yet unabashed. “But I never can make it so.”

  “Take care,” he warned, but with pathos. “Even the loneliest of desert eagles has a mate once in its life.”

  “Wouldn’t you be happy, too,—if such a wonderful thing came true,” she asked, softly.

  “Happy if I killed my brother!” he ejaculated, sternly.

  “My God—You—you—I didn’t mean that!—Oh, I can’t see why—” cried Ruth, breaking off in anguish.

  “Ruth, you can’t see. That’s the trouble. But let me tell you. The noblest way you can be true to your mother’s prayer—and save me, is to keep me from killing Guerd.”

  “Adam, I would sacrifice my life for that,” she answered passionately.

  “Then fight it out. I don’t mean alone. I’ll help all I can. For let me swear this to you. If Guerd ever finds out I am Adam Larey—that I am your friend and protector—that I love you, he will be a fiend. Nothing on earth or in heaven could hold him in his hate…. Then I’d be driven to kill him!”

  “Adam, I promise you I’ll fight it out, and never forget,” replied Ruth. “But I’m only a woman—unstable as the winds—weak as water up to this very hour…. I must know you are near me.”

  “I shall be,” he replied, in earnest relief. “Listen, I have a plan which I talked over with Merryvale. I know a hiding place in the rocks near Lost Lake. I can see your home. I can even see you with the field glass I bought at Yuma. I can see your signal. But there is no water at this place. I shall leave my packs there tonight and take my burros to the canyon where Merryvale found me. Then I’ll come back to this new camp. I’ll have to fetch water from Lost Lake. But that’ll be easy at night.”

  “You will be quite near?” asked Ruth, eagerly.

  “It is scarce two miles.”

  “Oh! That big jumble of rocks to the east of Lost Lake?”

  “Yes.”

  “Grandpa has a field glass. I might even see you.”

  “Merryvale will show you where to look.”

  “Then I think I’ll manage to exist,” she concluded, looking up with a coquetry as natural to her as breathing. “It is romantic, don’t you think? … Ah, the eternal woman!”

  Merryvale approached them at this juncture.

  “Wal, Adam, we ain’t had a chance to finish the talk we began in Yuma this mawnin’. An’ if you’re leavin’ us heah—”

  Adam told him briefly and substantially the plan as outlined to Ruth, and then he added:

  “I think it advisable for you to live at Ruth’s house now. There will be no longer any reason for secrecy. Everyone will know you and I brought Ruth back again. You can make some pretense of work, if it’s only to run errands.”

  “I shore will be tickled to death,” returned Merryvale. “An’ I reckon I will see you some nights at Lost Lake?”

  “You will see him every night,” interposed Ruth.

  “Ahuh! Wal, that’ll shore be fine.”

  Here Adam put a brawny hand on Merryvale’s shoulder.

  “It’s a hard place for me,” he said, with emotion. “I am used to facing the desert, and men and events. But I am powerless here…. The trust I give you is this. Never let Ruth out of your sight. I mean when she is not in the house. She can’t be cooped up all the time. Never let her out of your sight. And if any man lays a hand on her—shoot him!”

  “Wal, pard, I savvy. An’ I shore have a hankerin’ for my job,” drawled Merryvale.

  Adam loomed over Ruth then, with smile and touch that thrilled her. “Adios, l’luvia d’oro!”

  “Ah, not gold. You should say ‘shower of trouble’ … and I should say, ‘Adios, grande Senor!’”

  Ruth walked a little way down the road, watching Adam, as he strode among the mesquites. Presently he disappeared and she stifled a deep sigh.

  The sun had just slipped below the wavering line of western hills. The low desert had succumbed to shadow. But the sand dunes, rising far out from Bitter Seeps, were bathed from their lowest steps up and up their million slopes to their magnificent heights, in a glory of sunset gold.

  These were Ruth’s stairs of sand—the golden stairway over the insurmountable barrier of the desert. The great sloping wall of sand—the million dunes that constituted a mountain—the shifting, changing, blowing atoms—these reflected the sunlight in one glorious blaze, transparent and magnifying, through which the successive steps with their shadows, like waves of the sea, rose so gradually and so symmetrically that only in the grand ensemble could any ascent be discernible.

  Here were the physical details, the innumerable details that made up a colossal hill of sand.

  But it was impossible for Ruth’s sensitive and morbid mind not to symbolize this phenomenon of nature and see in it the stairway of her imprisonment, the barrier and gateway to her freedom, the deceit and allurement and pang and uncertainty and strife of love, the slipping, sliding footsteps of her fate.

  While she gazed the glory dimmed, the gold paled, the high light shaded, the pale silver intervened, and then the dark cold shadow of the desert levelled all.

  Darkness caught the stagecoach traveling down from Bitter Seeps. Toward the end of that long journey Ruth slept from sheer exhaustion, too wearied to give one more anxious thought to Lost Lake, or home, or self or anything. Merryvale watched over her as if she had been a child.

  The hour was late when the coach, with weary horses at a walk, reached the outskirts of Lost Lake. Merryvale had the driver stop at the gate of Ruth’s home. There were lights at the post, but elsewhere was darkness.

  It was all Ruth could manage, encircled by Merryvale’s arm, to climb the winding path to the house. Had she been gone only a few days? She smelled the dank weedy pond and heard the sweet low tinkle of running water. Insects were humming. The night wind moaned softly in the palo verdes. Over all hung a mystical blue sky fretted with white stars. The desert brooded, slumbered, waited. Lost Lake was the same lonely, isolated shut-in, silent abode for a few miserable souls of humans. But Ruth felt that she was not the same.

  Resting on Merryvale’s arm she called in her grandfather’s window:

  “Ruth—Ruth!” he answered, as a man in a dream.

  “Yes, it is I, grandad,” she replied, somehow glad. “Home, safe and sound, but very very tired.”

  “Who brought you, child?”

  “Who could, but Adam and Merryvale. I did not run away from you this time, grandad. But I’ll tell you tomorrow…. Are you well? And—and is Larey at the post?”

  “I’m well, I guess, though the heat and worry have dragged me low. Larey left the post three days ago and has not come back.”

  “Do not worry anymore, grandad. Goodnight.”

&nb
sp; Ruth found her door open and her room as she had left it.

  “Lass, go to bed an’ get the rest you need,” commanded Merryvale. “I’ll fetch my bed up an’ sleep heah on the porch.”

  Ruth bade him goodnight, and closing the door, with slow and thoughtful action, she dropped the bar in place, and stood motionless in the little moonlit room. The night wind, cool, dry, with the fragrance of the open barrens, fluttered the curtain of her window.

  Chapter Thirteen

  SOMETIMES, though rarely in summer, there came a day which was hot, but not so hot that Ruth could never forget it for a moment, in sun or shade, asleep or awake. The light wind was north, from off the far-distant snow-capped peaks of San Jacinto and Gorgonio, visible from Lost Lake on such a dustless day.

  Ruth suffered a physical reaction from the severe hardship and loss of sleep to which she had been subjected, but on no other morning of her desert experience had she felt so revivifying a joy, so inextinguishable a buoyant spirit. And never had she known the unintelligible, expanding fullness of heart that awoke her this day, and would not yield to thought, and utterly destroyed the old mocking self-depreciation, and the sword of dread.

  Guerd Larey was gone; the post was in charge of freighters, as Dabb had mysteriously disappeared; Merryvale had taken up quarters under a dense low-branched mesquite that flourished across the pond below Ruth’s door; and from the porch Ruth could see with naked eye the rugged unheaved rocks and cliffs that marked Adam’s new hiding place.

  How different this morning! The deceitful old desert was in gentle mood. The sun was not white, the sky not copper, the waste of ground not so ghastly. Birds and rabbits visited the pond. Ruth embraced something sweet and blinding, and hugged it to her. This day held much for her, and though she yearned for the starlight and Adam, she wished there were double the intervening hours, so that she could give them to a profound analysis of her perplexing self.

  Merryvale, passing along the path with some of his belongings, encountered Ruth limping from her room, with apron on and broom in hand.