Wanderer of the Wasteland

by Grey, Zane

  With that outburst came sobering thought. Adam’s resolve not to ponder and brood about himself was as if it had never been. He knew he would never make such a resolve again. For hours he strolled up and down the sandy bank, deep in thought, yet aware of the night and the stars, the encompassing mountains, and the silent, gleaming river winding away in the gloom. As he had become used to being alone out in the solitude and darkness, there had come to him a vague awakening sense of their affinity with his nature. Success and people might fail and betray him, but the silent, lonely starlit nights were going to be teachers, even as they had been to the Wise Men of the Arabian waste.

  Adam at length gave up in despair and went to bed, hoping in slumber to forget a complexity of circumstance and emotion that seemed to him an epitome of his callow helplessness. The desert began to loom to Adam as a region inimical to comfort and culture. He had almost decided that the physical nature of the desert was going to be good for him. But what of its spirit, mood, passion as typified by Margarita Arallanes?

  Adam could ask himself that far-reaching query, and yet, all the answer he got was a rush of hot blood at memory of the sweet fire of her kisses. He saw her to be a simple child of the desert, like an Indian, answering to savage impulses, wholly unconscious of what had been a breach of womanly reserve and restraint. Was she good or bad? How could she be bad if she did not know any better? Thus Adam pondered and conjectured, and cursed his ignorance, and lamented his failings, all the time honest to acknowledge that he was fond of Margarita and drawn to her. About the only conclusion he formed from his perplexity was the one that he owed it to Margarita to live up to his principles.

  At this juncture he recollected Merryvale’s significant remarks about the qualities needed by men who were to survive in the desert, and his nobler sentiments suffered a rout. The suddenness, harshness, fierceness of the desert grafted different and combating qualities upon a man or else it snuffed him out, like a candle blown by a gusty wind.

  Next morning, as every morning, the awakening was sweet, fresh, new, hopeful. Another day! And the wonderful dry keenness of the air, the colors that made the earth seem a land of enchantment, were enough in themselves to make life worth living. In the morning he always felt like a boy.

  Margarita’s repentance for her moods of yesterday took a material turn in the preparation of an unusually good breakfast for Adam. He was always hungry, and good meals were rare. Adam liked her attentions, and he encouraged them; though not before the señora or Arallanes, for the former approved too obviously and the latter disapproved too mysteriously.

  When, some time later, a boat arrived, Adam was among the first to meet it at the dock.

  He encountered MacKay coming ashore in the company of a man and two women, one of whom was young. The manager showed a beaming face for the first time in many days. Repairs for the mill engine had come. MacKay at once introduced Adam to the party; and it so turned out that presently the manager, who was extremely busy, left his friends for Adam to entertain. They were people whom Adam liked immediately, and as the girl was pretty, of a blonde type seldom seen in the southwest, it seemed to Adam that his task was more than agreeable, He showed them around the little village and then explained how interesting it would be for them to see the gold mill. How long a time it seemed since he had been in the company of a girl like those he had known at home! She was merry, intelligent, a little shy.

  He was invited aboard the boat to have lunch with the mother and daughter. Everything tended to make this a red-letter day for Adam. The hours passed all too swiftly and time came for the boat to depart. When the boat swung free from the shore Adam read in the girl’s eyes the thought keen in his own mind—that they would never meet again. The round of circumstances might never again bring a girl like that into Adam’s life, if it were to be lived in these untrodden ways. He waved his hand with all the eloquence which it would express. Then the obtruding foliage on the bank hid the boat, and the girl was gone. His last thought was a selfish one—that his brother Guerd would not see her at Ehrenberg.

  Some of MacKay’s laborers were working with unloaded freight on the dock. One of these was Regan, the little Irishman who had been keen to mark Adam on several occasions. He winked at MacKay and pointed at Adam.

  “Mac, shure thot boy’s a divil with the wimmen!”

  MacKay roared with laughter and looked significantly past Adam as if this mirth was not wholly due to his presence alone. Someone else seemed implicated. Suddenly Adam turned. Margarita stood there, with face and mien of a tragedy queen, and it seemed to Adam that her burning black eyes did not see anything in the world but him. Then, with one of her swift actions, graceful and lithe, yet violent, she wheeled and fled.

  “O, Lord!” murmured Adam, aghast at the sudden-dawning significance of the case. He had absolutely forgotten Margarita’s existence. Most assuredly she had seen every move of his with her big eyes, and read his mind, too. He could not see the humor of his situation at the moment, but as he took a shortcut through the shady mesquites toward his hut, he presently espied Margarita in ambush. What fiendish glee this predicament of his would have aroused in his brother Guerd! Adam, the lofty, the supercilious, had come a cropper at last—such would have been Guerd’s scorn and rapture!

  Margarita came rushing from the side, right upon him even as he turned. So swiftly she came that he could not get a good look at her, but she appeared a writhing, supple little thing, instinct with fury. Hissing Spanish maledictions, she flung herself upward, and before he could ward her off she had slapped and scratched his face and beat wildly at him with flying brown fists. He thrust her away, but she sprang back. Then, suddenly hot with anger, he grasped her, and jerking her off her feet, he shook her with far from gentle force, and did not desist till he saw that he was hurting her. Letting her down and holding her at arm’s length, he gazed hard at the white face framed by disheveled black hair and lighted by eyes so magnificently expressive of supreme passion that his anger was shocked into wonder and admiration. Desert eyes! Right there a conception dawned in his mind— he was seeing a spirit through eyes developed by the desert.

  “Margarita!” he exclaimed, “are you a cat—that you—”

  “I hate you,” she hissed, interrupting him. The expulsion of her breath, the bursting swell of her breast, the quiver of her whole lissom body, all were exceedingly potent of an intensity that utterly amazed Adam. Such a little girl, such a frail strength, such a deficient brain to hold all that passion! What would she do if she had real cause for wrath?

  “Ah, Margarita, you don’t mean that. I didn’t do anything. Let me tell you.”

  She repeated her passionate utterance, and Adam saw that he could no more change her then than he could hope to move the mountain. Resentment stirred in him.

  “Well,” he burst out, boyishly, “if you’re so darned fickle as that I’m glad you do hate me.”

  Then he released his hold on her arms and, turning away without another glance in her direction, he strode from the glade. He took the gun he had repaired and set off down the river trail. When he got into the bottomlands of willow and cottonwood he glided noiselessly along, watching and listening for game of some kind.

  In the wide mouth of a wash not more than a mile from the village, Adam halted to admire some exceedingly beautiful trees. The first was one of a species he had often noted there, and it was a particularly fine specimen, perhaps five times as high as his head and full and round in proportion. The trunk was large at the ground, soon separating into innumerable branches that in turn spread and drooped and separated into a million twigs and stems and points. Trunk and branch and twig, every inch of this wonderful tree was a bright, soft green color, as smooth as if polished, and it did not have a single leaf. As Adam gazed at this strange, unknown tree, grasping the nature of it and its exquisite color and grace and life, he wondered anew at the marvel of the desert.

  As he walked around to the side toward the river he heard a cry. Whe
eling quickly, he espied Margarita running toward him. Margarita’s hair was flying. Blood showed on her white face. She had torn her dress.

  “Margarita!” cried Adam, as he reached her. “What’s the matter?”

  She was so out of breath she could scarcely speak.

  “Felix—he hide back there—in trail,” she panted. “Margarita watch—she know—she go round.”

  The girl labored under extreme agitation, which, however, did not seem to be fright.

  “Felix? You mean the Mexican who drew a knife on your father? The fellow I threw around—up at Picacho?”

  “Sí—señor,” replied Margarita.

  “Well, what of it? Why does Felix hide up in the trail?”

  “Felix swore revenge. He kill you.”

  “Oh—ho! … So that’s it,” ejaculated Adam, and he whistled his surprise. A hot, tight sensation struck deeply inside him. “Then you came to find me—warn me?”

  She nodded vehemently and clung to him, evidently wearied and weakening.

  “Margarita, that was good of you,” said Adam, earnestly, and he led her out of the sun into the shade of the tree. With his handkerchief he wiped the blood from thorn scratches on her cheek. The dusky eyes shone with a vastly different light from the lurid hate of a few hours back. “I thank you, girl, and I’ll not forget it … But why did you run out in the sun and through the thorns to warn me?”

  “Señor know now—he kill Felix before Felix kill him,” replied Margarita, in speech that might have been naive had its simplicity not been so deadly.

  Adam laughed again, a little grimly. This was not the first time there had been forced upon him a hint of the inevitable-ness of life in the desert. But it was not his duty to ambush the Mexican who would ambush him. The little coldness thrilled out of Adam to the close, throbbing presence of Margarita. The fragrance, the very breath of her, went to his head like wine.

  “But girl—only a little while ago—you slapped me— scratched me—hated me,” he said, in wonder and reproach.

  “No—no—no! Margarita love señor!” she cried, and seemed to twine around him and climb into his arms at once. The same fire, the same intensity as of that unforgetable moment of hate and passion, dominated her now, only it was love.

  And this time it was Adam who sought her red lips and returned her kisses. Again that shuddering wild gust in his blood! It was as strange and imperious to him then as in a sober reflection it had been bold, gripping, physical, a drawing of him not sanctioned by his will. In this instance he was weaker in its grip, but still he conquered. Releasing Margarita, he led her to a shady place in the sand under the green tree, and found a seat where he could lean against a low branch. Margarita fell against his shoulder, and there clung to him and wept. Her dusky hair rippled over him, soft and silky to the touch of his fingers. The poor, faded dress, of a fabric unknown to Adam, ragged and dusty and torn, and the little shoes, worn and cracked, showing the soles of her stockingless feet, spoke eloquently of poverty. Adam noted the slender grace of her slight form, the arch of the bare instep, and the shapeliness of her ankles, brown almost as an Indian’s. And all at once there charged over him an overwhelming sense of the pitifulness and the wonderfulness of her—a ragged, half-dressed little Mexican girl, whose care of her hair and face, and the few knots of ribbon, betrayed the worshipful vanity that was the jewel of her soul, and whose physical perfection was in such strange contrast to the cramped, undeveloped mind.

  “My God!” whispered Adam, under his breath. Something big and undefined was born in him then. He saw her, he pitied her, he loved her, he wanted her; but these feelings were not so much what constituted the bigness and vagueness that waved through his soul. He could not grasp it. But it had to do with the life, the beauty, the passion, the soul of this Mexican girl; and it was akin to a reverence he felt for the things in her that she could not understand.

  Margarita soon recovered, and assumed a demeanor so shy and modest and wistful that Adam could not believe she was the same girl. Nevertheless, he took good care not to awaken her other characteristics.

  “Margarita, what is the name of this beautiful tree?” he asked.

  “Paloverde. It means green tree.”

  It interested him then to instruct himself further in regard to the desert growths that had been strange to him; and to this end he led Margarita from one point to another, pleased to learn how familiar she was with every growing thing.

  Presently Margarita brought to Adam’s gaze a tree that resembled smoke, so blue-grey was it, so soft and hazy against the sky, so columnar and mushrooming. What a strange, graceful tree and what deep-blue blossoms it bore! Upon examination Adam was amazed to discover that every branch and twig of this tree was a thorn. A hard, cruel, beautiful tree of thorns that at a little distance resembled smoke!

  “Palo Christi,” murmured Margarita, making the sign of the cross. And she told Adam that this was the Crucifixion tree, which was the species that furnished the crown of thorns for the head of Christ.

  Sunset ended several happy and profitable hours for Adam. He had not forgotten about the Mexican, Felix, and had thought it just as well to let time pass and to keep out of trouble as long as he could. He and Margarita reached home without seeing any sign of Felix. Arallanes, however, had espied the Mexican sneaking around, and he warned Adam in no uncertain terms. Merryvale, too, had a word for Adam’s ear; and it was significant that he did not advise a waiting course. In spite of all Adam’s reflections he did not need a great deal of urging. After supper he started off for Picacho with Arallanes and a teamster who was freighting supplies up to the camp.

  Picacho was in full blast when they arrived. The dim lights, the discordant yells, the raw smell of spirits, the violence of the crude gambling hall worked upon Adam’s already excited mind; and by the time he had imbibed a few drinks he was ready for anything. But they did not find Felix.

  Then Adam, if not half drunk, at least somewhat under the influence of rum, started to walk back to his lodgings. The walk was long and, by reason of the heavy, dragging sand, one of considerable labor. Adam was in full possession of his faculties when he reached the village. But his blood was hot from the exercise, and the excitement of the prospective battle of the early evening had given way to an excitement of the senses, in the youthful romance felt in the dark, the starlight, the wildness of the place. So when in the pale gloom of the mesquites Margarita glided to him like a lissom specter, to enfold him and cling and whisper, Adam had neither the will, nor the heart, nor the desire to resist her.

  Chapter

  V

  Adam’s dull eyelids opened on a dim, grey desert dawn. The coming of the dawn was in his mind, and it showed pale through his shut lids. He could not hold back the hours. Something had happened in the night, and he would never be the same again. With a sharp pang, a sense of incomprehensible loss, Adam felt die in him the old unreasoning, instinctive boy. And there was more, too deep and too subtle for him to divine. It had to do with a feminine strain in him, a sweetness and purity inherited from his mother and developed by her teachings. It had separated him from his brother Guerd and kept him aloof from a baseness common to their comrades. Nevertheless, the wildness of this raw, uncouth, primitive West had been his undoing.

  It was with bitterness that Adam again faced the growing light. All he could do was to resign himself to fate. The joy of life, the enchantments—all that had made him feel different from other boys and hide his dreams—failed now in this cool dark morning of reality. He could not understand the severity of the judgment he meted out to himself. His spirit suffered an ineffaceable blunting. And the tight-drawing knot in his breast, the gnawing of remorse, the strange, dark oppression—these grew and reached a climax, until something gave way within him and there was a sinking of the heart, a weary and inscrutable feeling.

  Then he remembered Margarita, and the very life and current of his blood seemed to change. Like a hot wave the memory of Margarita surged over
Adam, her strange new sweetness, the cunning of her when she waylaid him in the dead of the night, the clinging lissomness of her and the whispered incoherence that needed no translation, the in-evitableness of the silent, imperious demand of her presence, unashamed and insistent.

  Adam leaped out of his blankets, breaking up this mood and thought by violent action. For Adam then the sunrise was glorious, the valley was beautiful, the desert was wild and free, the earth was an immense region to explore, and nature, however insatiable and inexorable, was prodigal of compensations. He drank a sweet cup that held one drop of poison bitterness. Life swelled in his breast. He wished he were an Indian. As he walked along there flashed into mind words spoken long ago by his mother: “My son, you take things too seriously, you feel too intensely the ordinary moments of life.” He understood her now, but he could not distinguish ordinary things from great things. How could anything be little?

  Margarita’s greeting was at once a delight and a surprise. Her smile, the light of her dusky eyes, would have made any man happier. But there was a subtle air about her this morning that gave Adam a slight shock, an undefined impression that he represented less to Margarita than he had on yesterday.

  Then came the shrill whistle of the downriver boat. Idle men flocked toward the dock. When Adam reached the open space on the bank before the dock he found it crowded with an unusual number of men, all manifestly more than ordinarily interested in something concerning the boat. By slipping through the mesquites Adam got around to the edge of the crowd.

  A tall, gaunt man, clad in black, strode off the gangplank. His height, his form, his gait were familiar to Adam. He had seen that embroidered flowery vest with its silver star conspicuously in sight, and the brown beardless face with its square jaw and seamy lines.

  “Collishaw!” ejaculated Adam, in dismay. He recognised in this man one whom he had known at Ehrenberg, a gambling, gunfighting sheriff to whom Guerd had became attached. As his glance swept back of Collishaw his pulse beat quicker. The next passenger to stride off the gangplank was a very tall, superbly built young man. Adam would have known that form in a crowd of a thousand men. His heart leaped with a great throb. Guerd, his brother!