by Grey, Zane
"Yes, my friend. Life is strange on the desert," replied Adam. "And now unpack your burros. Make camp with me here. We'll eat and talk together."
A sunset, rare on the Mohave, glowed over the simple camp tasks of these men who in their wanderings had met again. Clouds hung along the mountain tops, coloured into deeper glory as the sun sank. The dark purples had an edge of silver, and the fleecy whites turned to pink and rose, while golden rays shot up from behind the red-hazed peaks. Over the valley fell a beautiful and transparent light, blending and deepening until a shadow as blue as the sea lay on Tecopah.
While the men ate their frugal repast they talked, each gradually growing used to a situation that broke the desert habit of silence. There was an unconscious deference of each man toward the other--Wansfell seeing in Dismukes the saviour of his life and a teacher who had inspired him to scale the heights of human toil and strife; Dismukes finding in Wansfell a development of his idea, the divine spirit of man rising above the great primal beasts of the desert, self-preservation and ferocity.
"Wansfell, have you kept track of time?" asked Dismukes, reflectively, as he got out a black, stumpy pipe that Adam remembered.
"No. Days and weeks glide into years--that's all I can keep track of," replied Adam.
"I never could, either. What is time on the desert? Nothin'. Well, it flies, that's sure. An' it must be years since I met you first down there in the Colorado. Let's see. Three times I went to Yuma--once to Riverside--an' twice to San Diego. Six trips inside. That's all I've made to bank my money since I met you. Six years. But, say, I missed a year or so."
"Dismukes, I've seen the snows white on the peaks eight times. Eight years, my friend, since Jinny cocked her ears that day and saved me. How little a thing life is in the desert!
"Eight years!" echoed Dismukes, and wagged his huge shaggy head. "It can't be...Well, well, time slips away. Wansfell, you're a young man, though I see grey over your temples. And you can't have any more fear because of that--that crime you confessed to me. Lord! man, no one would ever know you as that boy!"
"No fear that way any more. But fear of myself, Dismukes. If I went back to the haunts of men I would forget."
"Ah yes, yes!" sighed Dismukes. "I understand. I wonder how it'll be with me when my hour comes to leave the desert. I wonder."
"Will that be long?"
"You can never tell. I might strike it rich to-morrow. Always I dream I'm goin' to. It's the dream that keeps a prospector nailed to the lonely wastes."
Indeed, this strange man was a dreamer of dreams. Adam understood him now, all except that obsession for just so much gold. It seemed the only flaw in a great character. But the fidelity to that purpose was great, as it was inexplicable.
"Dismukes, you had a third of your stake when we met years ago. How much now?"
"More than half, Wansfell, safe in banks an' some hid away," came the answer, rolling and strong. What understanding of endless effort abided in that voice!
"A quarter of a million! My friend, it is enough. Take it and go--fulfil your cherished dream. Go before it's too late."
"I've thought of that. Many times when I was sick an' worn out with the damned heat an' loneliness I've tempted myself with what you said. But no. I'll never do that. It's the same to me now as if I had no money at all."
"Take care, Dismukes," warned Adam. "It's the gaining of gold--not what it might bring--that drives you."
"Ah! Quien sabe, as the Mexicans say?...Wansfell, have you learned the curse--or it may be the blessing--of the desert--what makes us wanderers of the wastelands?"
"No. I have not. Sometimes I feel it's close to me, like the feeling of a spirit out there on the lonely desert at night. But it's a great thing, Dismukes. And it is linked to the very beginnings of us. Some day I'll know."
Dismukes smoked in silence, thoughtful and sad. The man's forceful assurance and doggedness seemed the same, yet Adam sensed a subtle difference in him, beyond power to define. The last gold faded from the bold domes of the mountains, the clouds turned grey, the twilight came on as a stealthy host. And from across the creek came discordant sounds of Tecopah awakening to the revelry of a gold diggings by night.
"How'd you happen along here?" queried Dismukes, presently.
"Tecopah was just a water-hole for me," replied Adam.
"Me, too. An' I'm sure sayin' that I like to fill my canteens here. Last year I camped here, an' when I went on I kept one of my canteens so long the water spoiled. Found some gold trace up in Kingston range, but my supplies ran low an' I had to give up. My plan now is to go in there an' then on to the Funeral Mountains. They're full of mineral. But a dry, hard, poison country for a prospector. Do you know that country?"
"I've been on this side of the range."
"Bad enough, but the other side of the Funerals is Death Valley. That gash in summer is a blastin', roarin' hell. I've crossed it every month in the year. None but madmen ever tackle Death Valley in July, in the middle of the day. I've seen the mercury go to one hundred and forty degrees. I've seen it one hundred and twenty five at midnight, an', friend, when them furnace winds blow 'down the valley at night sleep or rest is impossible You just gasp for life. But strange to say, Wansfell, the fascination of the desert is stronger in Death Valley than at any other place."
"Yes, I can appreciate that," replied Adam, thoughtfully. "It must be the sublimity of death and desolation--the terrible loneliness and awfulness of the naked earth. I am going there."
"So I reckoned. An' see here, Wansfell, I'll get out my pencil an' draw you a little map of the valley, showin' my trails an' water holes. I know that country better than any other white man. It's a mineral country. The lower slope of the Funerals is all clay, borax, soda, alkali, salt, nitre, an' when the weather's hot an' that stuff blows on the hot winds, my God! it's a horror! But you'll want to go through it all an' you'll go back again."
"Where do you advise me to go in?"
"Well, I'd follow the Amargosa. It's bad water, but better than none. Go across an' up into the Panamints, an' come back across again by Furnace Creek. I'll make you a little map. There's more bad water than good, an' some of it's arsenic. I found the skeletons of six men near an arsenic water hole. Reckon they'd come on this water when bad off for thirst an' didn't know enough to test it. An' they drank their fill an' died in their tracks. They had gold, too. But I never could find out anythin' about these men. No one ever heard of them an' I was the only man who knew of the tragedy. Well, well, it's common enough for me, though I never before run across so many dead men. Wansfell, I reckon you've found that common, too, in your wanderings--dried-up mummies, yellow as leather or bleached bones an' grinnin' skull, white in the sun?"
"Yes, I've buried the remains of more than one poor devil," replied Adam.
"Is it best to bury them? I let them lay as warnin' to other poor devils. No one but a crazy man would drink at a water hole where there was a skeleton. Well, to come hack to your goin' to Death Valley. I'd go in by the Amargosa. It's a windin' stream an' long, but safe. An' there's firewood an' a little grass. Now when you get across the valley you'll run into prospectors an' miners an' wanderers at the water holes. An' like as not you'll meet some of the claim jumpers an' robbers that live in the Panamints. From what I hear about you, Wansfell, I reckon a meetin' with them would be a bad hour for them, an' somethin' of good fortune to honest miners. Hey?"
"Dismukes, I don't run from men of that stripe," replied Adam, grimly.
"Ahuh! I reckon not," said Dismukes, just as grimly. "Well, last time I was over there--let's see, it was in September, hotter 'n hell, an' I run across two queer people up in a canyon I'd never prospected before. Didn't see any sign of any other prospectors ever bein' in there. Two queer people--a man an' a woman livin' in a shack they'd built right under the damnedest roughest slope of weathered rock you ever saw in your life. Why, it was a plain case of suicide, an' so I tried to show them! Every hour you could hear the crack of a rollin' boulder
or the graty slip of an avalanche, gettin' uneasy an' wantin' to slide. But the woman was deathly afraid of her husband an' he was a skunk an' a wolf rolled into a man, if I ever saw one. I couldn't do anythin' for the poor woman, an' I couldn't learn any more than I'm tellin' you. That's not much. But, Wansfell, she wasn't a common sort. She'd been beautiful once. She had the saddest face I ever saw. I got two feelin's, one that she wasn't long for this earth, an' the other that the man hated her with a terrible hate. I meet with queer people an' queer situations as I wander over this desert, but here's the beat of all my experience. An', Wansfell, I'd like to have you go see that couple. I reckon they'll be there, if alive yet. He chose a hidden spot, an' he has Soshone Indians pack his supplies in from the ranches way on the other side of the Panamints. A queer deal, horrible for that poor woman, an' I've been haunted by her face ever since. I'd like you to go there."
"I'll go. But why do you say that, Dismukes?" asked Adam, curiously.
"Well--you ought to know what your name means to desert men," replied Dismukes, constrainedly, and he looked down at the camp fire, to push forward a piece of half-burnt wood.
"No, I never heard," said Adam. "I've lived 'most always alone. Of course I've had to go to freighting posts and camps. I've worked in gold diggin's. I've guided wagon trains across the Mohave. Naturally, I've been among men. But I never heard that my name meant anything."
"Wansfell! I remember now that you called yourself Wansfell. I've heard that name. Some of your doings, Wansfell, have made camp-fire stories. See here, Wansfell, you won't take offence at me."
"No offence, friend Dismukes," replied Adam, strangely affected. Here was news that forced him to think of himself as a man somehow related to and responsible to his kind. He had gone to and fro over the trails of the desert, and many adventures had befallen him. He had lived them, with the force the desert seemed to have taught him, and then had gone his way down the lonely trails, absorbed in his secret. The years seemed less than the blowing sand. He had been an unfortunate boy burdened with a crime; he was now a matured man, still young in years, but old with the silence and loneliness and strife of the desert, grey at the temples, with that old burden still haunting him. How good to learn that strange men spoke his name with wonder and respect! He had helped wanderers as Dismukes had helped him; he had meted out desert violence to evil men who crossed his trail; he had, doubtless, done many little unremembered deeds of kindness in a barren world where little deeds might be truly over-appreciated; but the name Wansfell meant nothing to him, the reputation hinted by Dismukes amazed him, strangely thrilled him; the implication of nobility filled him with sadness and remorse. What had he done with the talents given him?
"Wansfell, you see--you're somethin' of the man I might have been," said Dismukes, hesitatingly.
"Oh no, Dismukes," protested Adam. "You are a prospector, honest and industrious, and wealthy now, almost ready to enjoy the fruits of your long labours. Your life has a great object...But I--I am only a wanderer of the wasteland."
"Aye, an' therein lies your greatness!" boomed the prospector, his ox eyes dilating and flaring. "I am a selfish pig--a digger in the dirt for gold. My passion has made me pass by men, an' women, too, who needed help. Riches--dreams! But you--you Wansfell--out there in the loneliness an' silence of the wastelands--you have found God!...I said you would. I've met other men who had."
"No, no," replied Adam. "You're wrong. I don't think I've found God. Not yet!...I have no religion, no belief. I can't find any hope out there in the desert. Nature is pitiless, indifferent. The desert is but one of her playgrounds. Man has no right there. No. Dismukes, I have not found God."
"You have, but you don't know it," responded Dismukes, with more composure, and he began to refill a neglected pipe. "Well, I didn't mean to fetch up such talk as that. You see, when I do fall in with a prospector once in a month of Sundays I never talk much. An' then it 'd be to ask him if he'd seen any float lately or panned any colour. But you're different. You make my mind work. An', Wansfell, sometimes I think my mind has been crowded with a million thoughts all cryin' to get free. That's the desert. A man's got to fight the desert with his intelligence or else become less than a man. An' I always did think a lot, if I didn't talk."
"I'm that way, too," replied Adam. "But a man should talk when he gets the chance. I talk to my burros, and to myself, just to hear the sound of my voice."
"Ah! Ah!" exclaimed Dismukes, with deep breath. He nodded his shaggy head. Adam's words had struck an answering chord in his heart.
"You've tried for gold here?" queried Adam.
"No. I was here first just after the strike, an' often since. Water's all that ever drew me. I'd starve before I'd dig for gold among a pack of beasts. I may be a desert wolf, but I'm a lone one."
"They're coyotes and you're the grey wolf. I liken most every man I meet to some beast or creature of the desert."
"Aye, you're right. The desert stamps a man. An', Wansfell, it's stamped you with the look of a desert eagle. Ha-ha! I ain't flatterin' to either of us, am I? Me a starved grey wolf, huntin' alone, mean an' hard an' fierce I An' you a long, lean-headed eagle, with that look of you like you were about to strike--gong!...Well, well, there's no understandin' the work of the desert. The way it develops the livin' creatures! They all have to live, an' livin' on the desert is a thousand times harder than anywhere else. They all have to be perfect machines for destruction. Each seems so swift that he gets away, yet each is also so fierce an' sure that he catches his prey. They live on one another, but the species doesn't die out. That's what stumps me about the desert. Take the human creatures. They grow fiercer than animals. Maybe that's because nature did not intend man to live on the desert. An' it is no place for man. Nature intended these classes of plants an' these species of birds an' beasts to live, fight, thrive, an' reproduce their kind on the desert. But men can't thrive nor reproduce their kind here."
"How about the Indians who lived in the desert for hundreds of years?" asked Adam.
"What's a handful of Indians? An' what's a few years out of the millions of years that the desert's been here, just as it is now? Nothin'--nothin' at all! Wansfell, there will be men come into the desert, down there below the Salton Sink, an' in other places where the soil is productive, an' they'll build dams an' storage places for water. Maybe a lot of fools will even turn the Colorado River over the desert. They'll make it green an' rich an', like the Bible says, blossom as a rose. An' these men will build ditches for water, an' reservoirs an' towns an' cities, an' cross the desert with railroads. An' they'll grow rich an' proud. They'll think they've conquered it. But, poor fools I they don't know the desert! Only a man who has lived with the desert much of his life can ever know. Time will pass an' men will grow old, an' their sons an' grandsons after them. A hundred an' a thousand years might pass with fruitfulness still in the control of man. But all that is only a few grains of time in all the endless sands of eternity. The desert's work will have been retarded for a little while. But the desert works ceaselessly an' with infinite patience. The sun burns, the frost cracks, the avalanche rolls, the rain weathers. Slowly the earth crust heaves up into mountains an' slowly the mountains wear down, atom by atom, to be the sands of the desert. An' the winds--how they blow for ever an' ever! What can avail against the desert winds? They blow the sand an' sift an' seep an' bury. Men will die an' the places that knew them will know them no more an' the desert will come back to its own. That is well, for it is what God intended."
"God and nature, then, with you are one and the same?" queried Adam.
"Yes. Twenty years sleepin' on the sand with the stars in my face has taught me that. Is it the same with you?"
"No. I grant all that you contend for the desert and for nature. But I can't reconcile nature and God. Nature is cruel, inevitable, hopeless. But God must be immortality."
"Wansfell, there's somethin' divine in some men, but not in all, nor in many. So how can that divinity be God? The immortality
you speak of--that is only your life projected into another life.
"You mean if I do not have a child I will not have immortality?"
"Exactly."
"But what of my soul?" demanded Adam, solemnly.
Dismukes dropped his shaggy head. "I don't know. I don't know. I've gone so deep, but I can't go any deeper. That always stumps me. I've never found my soul! Maybe findin' my soul would be findin' God. I don't know. An' you, Wansfell--once I said you had the spirit an' mind to find God on the desert. Did you?"
Adam shook his head. "I'm no farther than you, Dismukes, though I think differently about life and death...I've fought to live on this wasteland, but I've fought hardest to think. It seems that always nature strikes me with its terrible mace! I have endless hours to look at the desert and I see what you see--the strange ferocity of it all--the fierce purpose. No wonder you say the desert stamps a man!"
"Aye! An' woman, too! Take this she-devil who runs a place here in Tecopah--Mohave Jo is the name she bears. Have you seen her?"
"No, but I've heard of her. At Needles I met the wife of a miner, Clark, who'd been killed here at Tecopah."
"Never heard of Clark. But I don't doubt the story. It's common enough--miners bein' killed an' robbed. There's a gang over in the Panamints who live on miners."
"I'm curious to see Mohave Jo," said Adam.
"Well, speakin' of this one-eyed harridan reminds me of a man I met last trip across the Salton flats, down on the Colorado. Met him at Walters--a post on the stage line. He had only one eye too. There was a terrible scar where his eye, the right one, had been. He was one of these Texans lookin' for a man. There seems to be possibilities of a railroad openin' up that part of the desert. An' this fellow quizzed me about water holes. Of course, if anyone gets hold of water in that country he'll strike it rich as gold, if the country ever opens up. It's likely to happen, too. Well, this man had an awful face. He'd been a sheriff in Texas, some one said, an' later at Ehrenberg. Hell on hanging men! Of course I never asked him how he lost his eye. But he told me--spoke of it more than once. The deformity had affected his mind. You meet men like that--sort of crazy on somethin'. He was always lookin' for the fellow who'd knocked out his eye. To kill him!"