A very teary Amelia Ellen climbed into the train a few hours later, looking back dismally, hopelessly, toward the old stage they’d just left, and wondering after all if she’d ever get back to Granville safe and alive. She had strange fears of dangers that might come to Burley during her absence, which if they did she’d never forgive herself for leaving him, and strange horrors of how things might hinder her return. She began to regard her, until now, beloved traveling companion with almost suspicion, as if she were a conspirator against her welfare.
As the miles grew and the wonders along the route multiplied, however, Amelia Ellen sat up and took notice and was even exulting that she’d come. Weren’t they nearing the great famed West now, and wouldn’t it soon be time to see the big trees and turn back home again? She was almost glad she had come. She’d be wholly glad when she was safely home again.
And so one evening about sunset they arrived at the little station in Arizona which more than a year ago Hazel had left in her father’s private car.
Chapter 14
Home
Amelia Ellen, stiff from the unaccustomed travel, powdered with desert dust, weary with the excitement and lack of sleep amid her strange surroundings, stepped down on the wooden platform and surveyed the magnificent distance between her and anywhere. She observed the vast emptiness, with purpling mountains and limitless stretches of multicolored ground arched by a dome of sky, higher and wider and more dazzling than her stern New Hampshire soul ever conceived. And she turned panic-stricken back to the train already moving away from the station.
Her first sensation was relief at feeling solid ground under her feet again, for this was Amelia Ellen’s first trip into the world, and the cars bewildered her. Her second impulse was to get back into that train as fast as her feet could carry her and get this awful journey over so she might earn the right to return to her quiet home and her faithful beloved.
But the train was well under way. She looked after it half in envy. It could go on with its work and not have to stop in this wild wasteland.
She gazed about again with the frightened look a deserted child gives before it puckers its lips and screams.
Hazel was talking calmly with the rough-looking man on the platform, who wore a wide felt hat and a pistol in his belt. He didn’t even look respectable to Amelia Ellen’s provincial eyes. And behind him—horror of horrors!—loomed a real live Indian, with long hair, high cheekbones, blanket and all, just as she’d seen them in the geography! Her blood ran cold. Why, oh, why did she ever do this daring thing—leave civilization and come away from her good man, and the quiet home awaiting her, to certain death in the desert? All the stories of horrid scalpings she’d ever heard appeared before her excited vision. With a gasp she turned again to the departing train, now a mere speck on the desert. And even as she looked, it vanished around a curve and was lost in the dim foothills of a mountain.
Poor Amelia Ellen! Her head reeled, and her heart sank. The vast prairie engulfed her, as it were, and she stood trembling and staring in dazed expectancy of an attack from the earth or air or sky. The very sky and ground seemed tottering together and threatening to extinguish her, and she closed her eyes, caught her breath, and prayed for Peter. It was always her habit in any emergency to pray for Peter Burley.
It was no better when they took her to the eating house across the track. She picked her way among the rough-looking men and surveyed the long dining table with its coarse food and its broad seats with disdain. She declined to take off her hat when she reached the room the slatternly woman showed them because she said there was no suitable place to lay it down. She scorned the simple bed, refused to wash her hands at the basin furnished for all, and was more disagreeable than Hazel dreamed her gentle, serviceable Amelia Ellen could ever be. She ate no supper and remained only briefly at the table after the men began to file in, with curious eyes toward the strangers.
She stalked to the rough, unroofed porch in the front and stared off at the dark vastness, afraid of the strangeness, the looming mountains, the multitude of stars. She said it was ridiculous to have so many stars. It wasn’t natural. It was irreverent. It was like looking too close into heaven when you weren’t intended to.
And then a bloodcurdling sound arose! Her hair stood on end. She turned with wild eyes and grasped Hazel’s arm, but she was too frightened to utter a sound. Hazel had just come out to sit with her. Out of deference to the strangers, the men had withdrawn from their customary smoking place on the porch to the back of the woodpile behind the house. They were alone—the two women—out there in the dark, with that awful sound!
Amelia Ellen’s white lips framed the words “Indians?” “War whoop?” But her throat refused her sound, and her breath came short.
“Coyotes!” laughed Hazel, secure in her wide experience, with almost a joyous ring to her voice. The sound of those distant beasts assured her she was in her beloved’s land at last, and her soul rejoiced.
“Coy—oh—”
But Amelia Ellen’s voice was lost in the recesses of her skimpy pillow where she fled to bury her startled ears. She’d heard of coyotes, but she never imagined to hear one outside of a zoological garden, of which she’d read and always hoped one day to visit. There she lay on her hard little bed and quaked until Hazel, laughing still, came to find her. But all she could get from the poor soul was a pitiful wail about Burley.
“And what would he say if I was to be et by one of them creatures? He’d never forgive me, never s’long ‘s I lived! I hadn’t ough’ to ‘a’ come!”
Nothing Hazel could say would allay her fears. She listened with horror as the girl attempted to show how harmless the beasts were by telling about her own night ride up the canyon and how nothing harmed her.
Amelia Ellen merely looked at her with a frozen glance made fiercer by the flickering candle flare and answered dully, “An’ you knew ’bout ’em all ‘long, an’ yet you brung me! It ain’t what I thought you’d do! Burley, he’ll never fergive me’s ‘long ‘s I live ef I get et up. It ain’t ez if I was all alone in the world, you know. I got him to think of, an’ I can’t afford to run no resks of bein’ et, ef you can.”
Not a wink of sleep did she get that night. When morning dawned, to the night’s horrors was added a telegram from a neighbor of Burley’s saying Burley had fallen from the haymow and broken his leg; but he sent his respects and hoped they’d have a good journey. Amelia Ellen grew uncontrollable. She declared she wouldn’t stay in that awful country another minute. She’d take the first train back—back to her beloved New Hampshire that she’d never leave again as long as her life was spared, unless Burley went along. She wouldn’t even wait until Hazel delivered her message. How could two lone women deliver a message in a land like that?
Never would she ride, drive, or walk, no, or even set foot on the desert sand. She’d sit by the track until a train came along, and she wouldn’t look further than she had to. The frenzy of fear that sometimes possesses simple people on seeing a great body of water or a roaring torrent pouring over a precipice had gripped her when she saw the desert. It filled her soul with its immensity, and poor Amelia Ellen just wanted to sit down on the wooden platform and hold onto something firmly until a train rescued her from this awful emptiness that was trying to swallow her up.
Poor Peter, with his broken leg, was her weird cry! One would think by the way she took on about it and blamed herself that she broke it with the wheels of the car in which she traveled away from him. The tragedy of a broken vow and its consequences was the subject of her discourse. Hazel laughed, then argued, and finally cried and pleaded. But nothing could avail. Go she would, and speedily, back to her home.
When it was evident that arguments and tears were of no use and Amelia Ellen was determined to go home with or without her, Hazel withdrew to the front porch and took counsel with the desert in its morning brightness, with the luring purple mountains and the smiling sky. Go back on the train that would stop at the station in h
alf an hour, with the desert there and the wonderful land and its strange, wistful people, and not even glimpse him whom she loved? Go back with the letter still in her possession and her message still undelivered? Never! Surely she wasn’t afraid to stay long enough to send for him. The woman who fed and sheltered them for the night would be her protector. She’d stay. Some refined woman must live somewhere nearby where she could go for a few days until her errand was performed. And what was her hospital training worth if it didn’t give her some independence? Out here in the wild free West, women had to protect themselves. She could surely stay in the uncomfortable quarters where she was for another day until she could get word to the missionary. Then she could decide whether to proceed on her journey alone to California or go back home. There was really no reason why she shouldn’t travel alone if she chose. Plenty of young women did, and, anyway, the emergency wasn’t of her choosing. Amelia Ellen would make herself sick fretting over her Burley, that was plain, if she were detained even a few hours.
Hazel came back to the nearly demented Amelia Ellen with her chin tilted firmly and a straight little set of her sweet lips that indicated resolve. The train arrived in a brief space of time, and, weeping but firm, Amelia Ellen boarded it, dismayed at the thought of leaving her dear young lady, yet stubbornly determined to go. Hazel gave her the ticket and plenty of money, charged the conductor to look after her, waved a brave farewell, and turned back to the desert alone.
A brief conference with the woman who had entertained them, who was also the wife of the station agent, revealed that the missionary hadn’t yet returned from his journey. But a message received from him a few days earlier spoke of his probable return on the next day or the day after. The woman advised Hazel to go to the fort where visitors were always welcomed and where they had luxuries more suited to the stranger’s custom. She eyed her guest’s dainty apparel enviously as she spoke. Hazel, keenly alive to the meaning of her look, realized that the woman, like the missionary, judged her unfit for desert life. She was half determined to stay where she was until the missionary returned and show she could adapt herself to any surroundings, but she saw the woman was anxious for her to go. It probably put her out to have a guest from a world different from her own.
The woman told her a trusty Indian messenger was there from the fort and riding back soon. If the lady cared she could get a horse and go under his escort. She opened her eyes in wonder when Hazel asked if a woman was to be in the party and whether she couldn’t leave her work for a while and ride over with them if she paid her well for the service.
“Oh, you needn’t bring none o’ them fine lady airs out here!” she declared rudely. “We-all ain’t got time fer no sech foolery. You needn’t be afraid to go back with Joe. He takes care of the women at the fort. He’ll look after you fine. You mebbe kin hire a horse to ride an’ strop yer bag on. Yer trunk ye kin leave here.”
Hazel, half frightened at the position she let herself be placed in, considered the woman’s words and, when she saw the Indian’s stolid countenance, decided to accept his escort. He was an old man with furrowed face and sad eyes that looked as if they could tell great secrets, but something in his face made her trust him.
An hour later, with deep excitement and her necessary baggage strapped to the back of the saddle on a wild-looking pony, Hazel mounted and rode away behind the solemn, silent Indian. She was going to the fort to ask for shelter, until her errand was accomplished, of the only women in that region who’d likely take her in. She had a feeling the thing she was doing was a wild, unconventional act and would come under the grave condemnation of her aunt and all her New York friends. She was thankful they were far away and couldn’t interfere, for somehow she felt she must do it anyway. She must put the letter, with her own hands, into the possession of its owner.
It was a glorious morning. The earth and the heavens seemed newly made for the day. Hazel felt a gladness that wouldn’t fade, even when she thought of poor Amelia Ellen crouched in her corner of the sleeper, miserable at her desertion, yet determined to go. She thought of the dear mother and wondered if she could know now how she was trying to fulfill her last wish. It was pleasant to think she knew and was glad, and Hazel felt as though her presence were near and protecting her.
The silent Indian made a few remarks. He rode ahead with a thoughtful expression, like a student whose thoughts aren’t to be disturbed. He nodded gravely in answer to the questions Hazel asked him whenever they stopped to water the horses, but he volunteered no information beyond calling her attention to a lame foot her pony was developing.
Several times Joe got down, examined the pony’s foot and shook his head, with a grunt of worried disapproval. Presently, as the miles passed, Hazel noticed the pony’s lameness and became alarmed lest he’d break down altogether in the midst of the desert. Then what would the Indian do? Certainly not give her his horse and walk, as the missionary had. She couldn’t expect every man in this desert to be like the one who’d cared for her before. What a foolish girl she was to get herself into this fix! And now there was no father to send out search parties for her and no missionary at home to find her!
The dust, the day’s growing heat, and the anxiety began to wear on her. She was tired and hungry. At noon the Indian dismounted beside a waterhole where the water tasted of sheep that had passed through a short time before. He handed her a package of corn bread and cold bacon and withdrew to the horses’ company for his own siesta. She was inclined to put her head down on the coarse grass and weep for her folly in coming out to this wild country alone, or at least in staying when Amelia Ellen deserted her. Then the question suddenly occurred to her: How would Amelia Ellen have figured in this morning’s journey on horseback? And instead of weeping she fell to laughing almost hysterically.
She munched the corn bread—the bacon she couldn’t eat—and wondered if the woman at the stopping place realized what an impossible lunch she provided for her guest. But here was one of the tests. She wasn’t worth much if a little thing like coarse food annoyed her so much. She drank some of the bitter water and bravely ate a second piece of corn bread and tried to hope her pony would be all right after his rest.
But it was evident after they went a mile or two farther that the pony was growing worse. He lagged and limped and stopped, and it seemed almost cruel to urge him on. Yet what could be done? The Indian rode behind now, watching him and speaking in low grunts to him occasionally, and finally they came in sight of a speck of a building in the distance. Then the Indian spoke.
Pointing toward the distant building, which seemed too tiny for human habitation, he said, “Aneshodi hogan. Him friend me. Lady stay. Me come back good horse. Pony no more. He bad!”
Dismay filled Hazel’s heart. She gathered that her guide wished to leave her by the way while he went on for another horse, and maybe he’d return and maybe not. Meanwhile, what kind of place was he leaving her in? Would there be a woman there? “Aneshodi” sounded as if it might be a woman’s name.
“Is this Aneshodi a woman?” she questioned.
The Indian shook his head and grunted. “Na, na. Aneshodi, Aneshodi. Him friend me. Him good friend. No woman!”
“Is there no woman in the house?” she asked anxiously.
“Na! Him heap good man. Good hogan. Lady stay. Rest.”
Suddenly her pony stumbled and nearly fell. She saw she couldn’t depend on him for long now.
“Couldn’t I walk with you?” she asked, her eyes pleading. “I’d rather walk than stay. Is it far?”
The Indian nodded his head vigorously.
“Lady no walk. Many suns lady walk. Great mile. Lady stay. Me ride fast. Back sundown.” He pointed to the sun which was even now beginning its downward course.
Hazel saw there was nothing to do but what the Indian said, and indeed his words seemed reasonable, but she was very frightened. What kind of place was she to stay in? As they neared it, she saw only a little weather-beaten shanty, with a curiously familiar
look, as if she’d passed that way before. A few chickens were picking about the yard, and a vine grew over the door. But she saw no sign of a human being around, and the desert stretched wide and barren on every side. Her old fear of its vastness returned, and she began to feel as Amelia Ellen had. She realized now that she should have gone with Amelia Ellen back to civilization and found somebody who’d come with her on her errand. But then the letter would have been delayed longer!
The thought of the letter kept up her courage, and she descended doubtfully from her pony’s back and followed the Indian to the shanty door. The vine growing luxuriantly over the window and casement and door frame reassured her somewhat, though she couldn’t tell just why. Perhaps somebody with a sense of beauty lived in the ugly little building, and a man with a sense of beauty couldn’t be wholly bad. But how was she to stay alone in a man’s house where no woman lived? Perhaps the man would have a horse to lend or sell them. She’d offer any sum he wanted if she could only get to a safe place.
But the Indian didn’t knock at the door as she expected him to do. Instead he stooped to the lower step, put his hand into a small opening in the woodwork of the step, fumbled there a minute, and presently brought out a key he fitted into the lock. Then he threw the door wide open to her astonished gaze.
“Him friend me!” explained the Indian again.
He walked into the room with the manner of a partial proprietor of the place, looked about, stooped down to the fireplace where a fire was neatly laid, and set it blazing cheerfully. Then he took the water bucket, filled it, and poured some water into the kettle, swinging it over the blaze to heat.
Turning, he spoke again. “Lady stay. Me come back—soon. Sun no go down. Me come back. Good horse get lady.”
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