Even Hope, ignorant as she was of technical matters concerning stock raising in that country, realized that this was a serious blow. She saw disaster reflected in the faces of Crossley and her uncle. And suddenly it was impressed upon her more than ever that it was the water that made Rancho del Encanto so valuable; it was the water that kept it green and beautiful. And now the water was gone.
“But we have the spring left,” she said hopefully.
“Just enough for the house,” declared her uncle. “Enough to drink for ourselves an’ maybe the horses. It was the water rights to that stream that caused me to buy this place. I harnessed the creek and built the dam, put in the ditches, an’ the laterals. An’ Mendicott undoes it all with three shots of dynamite. By the heavens over this country, it’s too much!”
He rose and stood shaking with rage, while Hope tried in vain to quiet him.
“Did you notice any water running in the big ditch at all, Crossley?” he asked.
“Just a little, sir. I figured what was in the ditch was just part of the stream that was still runnin’ into it. Of course they can ruin the ditch quick enough.” He hesitated as he saw the look on Nathan Farman’s face.
“I know what you mean!” roared the rancher. “But they don’t have to bother with the ditch now that the dam’s gone with all the water in it. That stream’ll be almost dry in a month!” He sat down again and put his face in his hands. “If I hadn’t been flat on my back from the day this thing started, Crossley, an’ so slow getting around since, I’d have gone after that fellow up in the hills myself!”
“It maybe won’t get him so much as he thinks,” said Crossley in an effort to cheer the rancher. “I’ll bet Channing knows where there’s water an’ plenty of feed in the desert to carry the stock through if you want to keep ’em.”
“But I’ve got to fatten the beeves,” said Farman. “I’ve always fattened ’em in here on the mesa. They’ve got to carry good weight out of here to be in any sort of shape when they get to the shipping point. It’s . . . it’s . . . .” He swore roundly under his breath and looked at Hope. “This wasn’t the kind of a time I planned for you out here, child,” he said bitterly. “Maybe you would like to go over across the mountains an’ down into southern Californy. Maybe we’d better go.”
“No, Uncle,” said Hope with a sober smile. “Let’s stick it out. I’m getting something out of this . . . oh, I don’t know what, but I feel different . . . more as if you . . . all of us amounted to something in the world. I’m beginning to understand what it means to fight for things.”
“Then fight it is!” cried Nathan Farman. “An’ I’m going to carry the fight to the man who’s trying to ruin us. I’m going to the county seat an’ put it up to the sheriff!”
He rose and called to Crossley, who was moving toward his horse. “Crossley, get the spring wagon greased an’ bring in the grays. We’ll start for the county seat in the morning.”
Crossley acknowledged the order with a nod and led his horse away. “Uncle,” protested Hope, “you are not going to start on this trip until Channing gets back, are you?”
“We’re going tomorrow,” replied her uncle sternly. “Channing only has an option on this ranch, an’ with the dam out it isn’t worth a fraction of the price that’s named in the option. That lets the option out an’ Channing with it. If the sheriff won’t take a hand, I’ll offer my cattle as a reward for Mendicott’s scalp . . . an’ I’ll get it!”
He went into the house leaving Hope standing on the porch looking wistfully toward the ridge that shut off the desert.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Hope found at suppertime that her uncle had meant what he said. His determination to carry the whole business to the authorities was unshaken. It seemed to have lent him strength, or it might have been the natural result of his recovery from his wound. It was a peculiar fact that he did not once refer to Brood in a vindictive way. If he entertained the wish to be avenged, so far as his former foreman was concerned, he did not so express himself in word or manner. It was evident that he blamed Mendicott for all the troubles that beset him. He inquired of Jim Crossley if arrangements had been made for the trip to the county seat and learned that the spring wagon was in shape and the horses ready in the barn. His manner of making the inquiry banished any last doubt of his intention that might have lingered in the minds of the others.
After supper Hope asked Jim Crossley if she could have a horse to ride. He said she could have his pony and in a short time he brought the rangy little bay to the porch. When Nathan Farman saw what was going on, he instructed Crossley to take the bay away and bring Firefly. Firefly proved to be a sleek, black gelding a little smaller than the big horse belonging to Channing.
“That’s the prettiest and best horse on the ranch,” Jim Crossley whispered to Hope, and Hope saw that it was, indeed, a beautiful, spirited animal. “Do you like him?” asked the rancher.
“He’s as pretty as Black Beauty must have been in his prime,” replied Hope, rubbing Firefly’s nose—a procedure that the horse did not seem to mind.
“He’s yours,” said her uncle. “I’ve been saving him for you. You could have had him long ago.”
Hope ran to her uncle, threw her arms about his neck, and kissed him.
“I’ve learned to love to ride since I’ve been out here,” she told him. “I never realized it could be such fun.”
“Better not ride him too hard at the start,” her uncle cautioned. “Just a little canter, child. He’s been on the grass. When he gets hardened a bit, you can ride him to your heart’s content.”
“I won’t go farther than the ridge, Uncle,” she promised.
Firefly took her in a flying spur across the mesa, and she turned him up the road to the top of the ridge beyond. When they reached the crest, she stopped and looked for a long time down into the desert. The sunset was flaming above the mountains, hurling its banners into the high skies gilding the peaks with gold. The air was cool after the heat of the day, but now and then a breath of wind would steal up from the desert and it was like the hot blast of a furnace. Hope surmised that summer had come on the heels of the transient storm.
She saw no sign of life anywhere in the great waste space that reached out to eastward. The sea of sage and greasewood was laved in a soft, pink glow and streamers of blue and turquoise hung on the far horizon, punctured by rose-colored cones of the lava hills. Somewhere in the north was Arsenic Spring; in the northeast was Ghost Wash; in the southeast was Bandburg. Strange what memories these places held for her. She remembered how she had ridden from the railroad far in the south and had imagined that one could never associate definite spots in that land of desolation with real happenings—with life. Yet now she was looking into it, dreaming, recalling incidents that seemed a part of some previous existence. Was she beginning to love the desert? She knew one could come to love it, but she did not believe that anyone not born to it could come readily to the resignation of living upon it.
She sat her horse, looking into it until the twilight had fallen and the land was bathed in purple veils. Then she turned back to the mesa and the portal of Rancho del Encanto. How long, she wondered, would it remain the Ranch of Enchantment with the water gone? More and more she understood her uncle’s love for the place; more and more she thought she understood why Mendicott wanted it—was determined to have it. She did not like the idea of leaving for the county seat across the range until Channing had returned. And why didn’t he return? Had he not had time to hide the cattle near some water hole and get back to the ranch? Had something happened to him? Would it be reasonable for her to assume that something had happened to him and open the letter? She decided not. She found herself thinking that nothing could happen to Channing.
When she rode back to the house, she saw a rider coming in from the mesa, and recognized Jim Crossley. She smiled, knowing that he had been watching her movements—standing guard over her at a distance.
Mrs. McCaffy was in a f
luster when she entered the kitchen after turning her horse over to Crossley.
“Wants me to go to town,” scolded the housekeeper. “Why should I go to town? I’m not afraid to stay here. Somebody’s got to stay. Besides, there’d hardly be room for all of us in that wagon.”
Hope was willing to be cheered, and Mrs. McCaffy’s blustering way of talking and practical view of things in general never failed to amuse her.
Jim Crossley came in while the discussion was under way. “Why, Missus McCaffy,” he bantered, “you know you’ve been complainin’ about not havin’ a chance to go to town forever to get some finery to dress up in. This is your chance.”
“Jim Crossley, you shut your face!” exclaimed Mrs. McCaffy, growing red. “An’ who would I dress up for around here? Sure not for the likes of you!”
“Oh, you can’t tell,” replied Crossley. “I might appreciate it.”
“You’re too fresh, an’ you’re getting worse,” said the housekeeper, her hands on her hips. “It takes a little runt like you to think up lots to say without it meaning anything.”
That night, as Hope sat by her darkened window, looking out into the star-filled night, she thought of Channing, and began to wish he would return before their start in the morning. She remembered Lillian Bell’s quotation of his saying: Words are what you make them. It rang in her ears. And Lillian had said: We’re all outlaws. Just what did she mean by that?
Hope was trying to adjust herself to an order of things that she never dreamed could possibly enter into her life. What she did not recognize was the fact that she was witnessing a country in its transitory period. It was like the thunder and lightning of a storm at its most violent height, just before the break.
Morning came with no sign of Channing, and, true to Farman’s word, they started immediately after breakfast on his order. Jim Crossley and the rancher sat in the front seat, Crossley handling the lines with one hand and Farman spelling him at driving. Hope sat alone in the rear seat. Mrs. McCaffy remained at the ranch to care for the two injured men.
“Channing will likely be back in a day or two,” Nathan Farman told the housekeeper.
“I’m not scared none,” said Mrs. McCaffy stoutly, pointing to the rifle in a corner near the stove. “I’ll shoot the first suspicious character that comes nosing around an’ ask him questions afterwards . . . if he can talk.”
So they took leave of Rancho del Encanto, driving over the ridge to the road that led southward where the foothills met the desert. Once more Hope found herself viewing the wasteland at close hand. It was fearfully hot, but there was no wind and but little dust. They had to go south almost to the railroad before they reached the road leading west over the mountains. Thus she saw again the fantastic Joshua trees, the yucca, juniper, paloverdes, mesquite, and the giant cactus; the saffron-colored patches of baked earth, the unending gray sage and dull green greasewood; the painted buttes and cones with their mineral stains of red and green; the bare, forbidding hills clothed in purple haze; the burning ball of the sun shining mercilessly from a cloudless sky.
They turned west in the late afternoon and stayed that night at a roadhouse in the hills. Next day they crossed the range, and at sunset they stopped at another diminutive hotel with the burning valley of the San Joaquin below them. The following day they descended into a land of orchards and vineyards, where the heat waves simmered almost as fiercely as those of the desert, and in the latter part of the day arrived in Kernfield, the county seat.
Hope was left at the hotel, and Crossley drove Nathan Farman directly to the sheriff’s office before he put up the team.
Farman found the sheriff in—Roscoe Kemp was his name. He was a large raw-boned man with sandy mustaches, a long face, and piercing gray eyes. He motioned the rancher to a chair at his desk and listened while Nathan Farman introduced himself and stated his errand.
As the rancher proceeded, becoming more energetic in his manner of speech as he outlined the happenings at Rancho del Encanto, the sheriff frowned and tapped his desk with a pencil stub, looking out the window into the hot street.
“Just why do you come to me?” he asked when Farman paused and mopped his brow.
“Why?” said the rancher in surprise. “You’re the sheriff of this county, are you not?”
“I am,” admitted Kemp. “But you seem to have just found it out.”
“What do you mean by that?” demanded Farman with a scowl.
“I mean that you fellows over there have had a way for a long time of settling things to suit yourself without consulting this office,” replied the sheriff. “Now that you’re up against a boomerang, you come here for help.”
“It isn’t a boomerang,” said Farman hotly. “It’s a case of out-and-out desperadoes an’ bandits, rustlers an’ killers, with the worst man in the state at their head.”
“We’ve been after that man more than once,” said Kemp calmly, “and we never got any help from you fellows over there. We’ve tried to raise posses and couldn’t get enough men to go out on the trail.”
“That’s because they were afraid to go, an’ Mendicott has lots of friends in those little desert towns an’ camps,” Farman interrupted.
“Sure. Exactly. Then how do you expect me to raise a posse now?”
“You can take men from here,” said the rancher, “an’ you can get some over there. In a case like this you could even call out the state guard.”
“Not in my county,” said the sheriff, shaking his head decisively. “Not on your life. An’ the governor would laugh at me.”
“I’ll go to Sacramento an’ see the governor!” cried Farman.
Sheriff Kemp waved a hand. “That’s up to you,” he said quietly. “Do you think a troop of soldiers coming up into those hills could catch this bad outfit? They’d know they were coming days in advance. They’d scatter and hide. They’d pot the militia from safe spots all through those hills. It would take men who knew the mountains and desert . . . natural-born trailers . . . to catch Mendicott and his men. You know that.”
“Then you mean to say you don’t intend to do anything about this?” demanded the rancher.
“I’m not making any promises. Why didn’t you report it when you were first shot?”
“Because I didn’t think it would do any good,” said Farman, glowering.
“Then why do you think it’s going to do any good now?” asked Kemp.
“Because it’s more serious!” cried Farman, striking the table with his fist. “It’s got to a point where my property is being destroyed, my niece has been kidnapped . . . our lives aren’t safe over there.”
“Property has been threatened before . . . and stolen,” the sheriff pointed out. “Mendicott has raided more than one town and we haven’t been able to raise a posse in the very towns he raided. There hasn’t been any cooperation with this office from that part of the county. Right now you have a man working for you, or have given him an option on your ranch, who doesn’t seem to be right. We’ve asked this man Channing to help us on one or two occasions and he turned us down. He seems to be with you. He’s run hog wild through the desert towns, I hear, but you’re trusting him.”
“He rescued my niece,” said Farman “an’ he helped drive them off the other night.”
The sheriff laughed. “And now he’s gone off with your cattle and got an option on your ranch. Ever think very hard about that?”
Nathan Farman was silent. It was true Channing had the cattle and the option. He had expected him back to the ranch before they left. Had Channing taken the stock? Had the option been a blind and the raid a trick? Would Mendicott really pay $150,000 for the ranch?
“Here’s another thing,” continued the sheriff. “The men on your ranch came around all right after this Channing took charge, didn’t they? And in quick order? Doesn’t that look peculiar?”
“The men seemed to have confidence in him,” Farman defended doubtfully. “An’ don’t forget there were men killed in that raid the ot
her night, Sheriff. That don’t look like it was a trick . . . like Channing an’ Mendicott were in together.”
Again the sheriff laughed. “You know Mendicott wouldn’t think anything of sacrificing a man or two to gain his ends. And what does Channing care about the men working on your ranch? Look at this thing from my standpoint. What am I to think?”
“You can find out,” declared Farman
“I can arrest Channing . . . if I can find him,” said the sheriff, frowning. “But what he’s done seems all regular, thanks to you. And I can’t make him say what I want him to say.”
Nathan Farman rose with a gesture of disgust. “Then I’ve had my trip for nothing,” he said angrily.
“I don’t know that,” said Sheriff Kemp. “But I’m not making any promises one way or the other. That’s final.”
Farman stalked out of the office. He hadn’t proceeded a block along the street when he saw a figure slip into a resort. He knew the man instantly. It was Mendez, the Mexican. He hurried into the place after him, but he had disappeared, and he couldn’t find him or obtain any information about him.
Meanwhile, Hope had remained in her room. She was lying down with the shades drawn against the heat of the dying day when there came a tap at her door. When she opened it, she found Crossley.
“There’s a party in town that wants to see you an’ me down the street,” he said. “This party says it’s important that we come along pronto, an’ I don’t think he wants anybody to know he’s here.”
Hope put the question with her eyes although she felt she knew the answer.
“It’s Channing,” said Crossley. “Will you come?”
Hope hesitated for an interval of bare seconds. Then she quickly put on her hat and hurried out with Crossley.
Man of the Desert: A Western Story Page 19