by Grey, Zane
“Regan!” he exclaimed.
“You know him?” queried Dismukes.
“Yes. He was an Irishman I knew years ago. A talky, cheerful fellow. Hard drinker. He loved the desert, but drink kept him in the mining camps. The last time I saw him was at Tecopah, after you left.”
“Poor devil! He died of thirst. I know that cast of face … Let’s give him a decent burial.”
“Yes. Poor Regan! He was the man who named me Wans-fell. Why he called me that I never knew—never will know.”
Deep in the sand they buried the remains of Regan and erected a rude cross to mark his lonely grave.
Dismukes led Adam off the well-beaten trail one day, up a narrow sandy wash to a closed pocket that smelled old and musty. Here a green spring bubbled from under a bank of sand. Water clear as crystal, slightly green in tinge, sparkled and murmured. A whitish sediment bordered the tiny stream of running water.
“Arsenic!” exclaimed Adam.
“Yes. An’ here’s where I found a whole caravan of people dead. It was six years ago. Place hasn’t changed much. Guess it’s filled up a little with blowin’ sand … Aha! Look here!”
Dismukes put the toe of his boot against a round white object protruding from the sand. It was a bleached skull.
“Men mad with desert thirst never stop to read,” replied Adam, sadly.
In silence Adam and Dismukes gazed down at the glistening white skull. Ghastly as it was, it yet had beauty. Once it had been full of thought, of emotion; and now it was tenanted by desert sand.
Adam and Dismukes spent half a day at that arsenic spring, under the burning sun, suffering the thirst they dared not slake there, and they erected a rude cross that would stand for many and many a day. Deep in the crosspiece Adam cut the words: “DEATH! ARSENIC SPRING! DON’T DRINK! GOOD WATER FIVE MILES. FOLLOW DRY STREAMBED.”
Dismukes appeared to get deep satisfaction and even happiness out of this accomplished task. It was a monument to the end of his desert experience. Goodwill toward his fellow men!
At last the day came when Adam watched Dismukes drive his burros out on the lonely trail, striding along with his rolling gait, a huge, short, broad-backed man, like a misshapen giant. What a stride he had! The thousands of desert miles it had mastered had not yet taken its force and spring. It was the stride of one who imagined he left nothing of life behind and saw its most calling adventures to the fore. He had tired of the desert. He had used it. He had glutted it of the riches he craved. And now he was heading down the trail toward the glittering haunts of men and the green pastures. Adam watched him with grief and yet with gladness, and still with something of awe. Dismukes’s going forever was incomprehensible. Adam felt what he could not analyze. The rolling voice of Dismukes, sonorous and splendid, still rang in Adam’s ears; “Pard, we’re square! … Good-bye!” Adam understood now why a noble Indian, unspoiled by white men, reverenced a debt which involved life. The paying of that debt was all of unity and brotherhood there existed in the world. If it was great to feel gratitude for the saving of his life, it was far greater to remember he had saved the life of his savior. Adam, deeply agitated, watched Dismukes stride down the barren trail, behind his bobbing burros, watched him stride on into the lonely, glaring desert, so solemn and limitless and mysterious, until he vanished in the grey monotony.
Chapter
XXII
When the following March came, Adam had been a week plodding southward over the yucca plateaus of the Mohave. The desert had changed its face. Left behind were the rare calico-veined ranges of mountains, the royal-purple porphyries, the wonderful white granites, the green-blue coppers, the yellow sulphurs, and the ruddy red irons. This desert had color, but not so vivid, not so striking. And it had become more hospitable to the survival of plant life. The sandy floor was no longer monotonously grey.
Adam loved the grotesque yucca trees. They were really trees that afforded shade and firewood, and they brought back no bittersweet memories like the paloverdes. The yuccas were fresh and green, renewed in the spring from the dusty grey sunburnt trees they had been in the autumn. Many of them bore great cone-shaped buds about to open, and on others had blossomed large white flowers with streaks of pink. A yucca forest presented a strange sight. These desert trees were deformed, weird, bristling, shaggy trunked, with grotesque shapes like specters in torture.
Adam traveled leisurely, although a nameless and invisible hand seemed to beckon him from the beyond. His wandering steps were again guided, and something awaited him far down toward the Rio Colorado. He was completing a vast circle of the desert, and he could not resist that call, that wandering quest down toward the place which had given the color and direction to his life. But the way must be long, and as there were the thorns and rocks for his feet, so must there be bruises to his spirit.
At night on the moon-blanched desert, under the weird, spectral-armed yuccas, Adam had revelation of the clearness of teaching that was to become his. The years had been preparing him. When would come his supreme trial? What would it be? And there came a whisper out of the lonely darkness, on the cool night wind, that some day he would go back to find the grave of his brother and to meet the punishment that was his due. Then all that was physical, all that was fierce, enduring, natural, thrust the thought from him. But though the savage desert life in him burned strong and resistless, yet he began to hear a new, a different, a higher voice of conscience. He imagined he stifled it with fiercely repudiating gestures, but all the wonderful strength of his brawny hands, magnified a thousand times, could not thrust a thought from him.
Toward sunset one day Adam was down on the level desert floor, plodding along a sandy trail around the western wall of San Jacinto. The first bisnagi cacti he saw seemed to greet him as old friends. They were small, only a foot or so high, and sparsely scattered over the long rocky slope that led to the base of the mountain wall. The tops of these cacti were as pink as wild roses. Adam was sweeping his gaze along to see how far they grew out on the desert when he discovered that his burro Jinny had espied moving objects.
Coming toward Adam, still a goodly distance off, were two men and two burros, one of which appeared to have a rider. Presently they appeared to see Adam, for they halted, burros and all, for a moment. It struck Adam that when they started on again they sheered a little off a straight following of the trail. Whereupon Adam, too, sheered a little off, so as to pass near them. When they got fairly close he saw two rough-looking men, one driving a packed burro, and the other leading a burro upon which was a ragged slip of a girl. The sunlight caught a brown flash of her face. When nearly abreast, Adam hailed them.
“Howdy, stranger!” they replied, halting. “Come from inside?”
“No. I’m down from the Mohave,” replied Adam. “How’s the water? Reckon you came by the cottonwoods?”
“Nope. There ain’t none there,” replied one of the men, shortly. “Plenty an’ fine water down the trail.”
“Thanks. Where you headed for?”
“Riverside. My gal hyar is sick an’ pinin’ fer home.”
Adam had been aware of the rather sharp scrutiny of these travelers and that they had exchanged whispers. Such procedures were natural on the desert, only in this case they struck Adam as peculiar. Then he shifted his gaze to the girl on the burro. He could not see her face, as it was bowed. Apparently she was weeping. She made a coarse, drab little figure. But her hair shone in the light of the setting sun—rather short and curly, a rich dark brown with glints of gold.
Adam replied to the curt good-bye of the men, and after another glance at them, as they went on, he faced ahead to his own course. Then he heard low sharp words, “Shet up!” Wheeling, he was in time to see one of these men roughly shake the girl and speak further words too low for Adam to distinguish. Adam’s natural conclusion was that the father had impatiently admonished the child for crying. Something made Adam hesitate and wonder; and presently, as he proceeded on his way, the same subtle something turned him
round to watch the receding figures. Again he caught a gleam of sunlight from that girl’s glossy head.
“Humph! Somehow I don’t like the looks of those fellows,” muttered Adam. He was annoyed with himself, first for being so inquisitive, and second for not having gone over to take a closer look at them. Shaking his head, dissatisfied with himself, Adam trudged on.
“They said no water at the cottonwood,” went on Adam. “No water when the peak is still white with snow. Either they lied or didn’t know.”
Adam turned again to gaze after the little party. He had nothing tangible upon which to hang suspicions. He went on, then wheeled about once more, realizing that the farther on he traveled the stronger grew his desire to look back. Suddenly the feeling cleared of its vagueness—no longer curiosity. It had been his thoughts that had inhibited him.
“I’ll go back,” said Adam. Tying his burros to greasewood bushes near the trail, he started to stride back over the ground he had covered. After a while he caught a glimmer of firelight through the darkness. They had made dry camp hardly five miles beyond the place where Adam had passed them.
It developed that these travelers had gone off the trail to camp in a wide, deep wash. Adam lost sight of the campfire glimmer, and had to hunt round until he came to the edge of the wash. A good-sized fire of greasewood and sage had been started, so that it would burn down to hot embers for cooking purposes. As Adam stalked out of the gloom into the camp he saw both men busy with preparations for the meal. The girl sat in a disconsolate attitude. She espied Adam before either of the men heard him. Adam saw her quiver and start erect. Not fright, indeed, was it that animated her. Suddenly one of the men rose, with his hand going to his hip.
“Who goes thar?” he demanded, warningly.
Adam halted inside the circle of light. “Say, I lost my coat. Must have fallen off my pack. Did you fellows find it?”
“No, we didn’t find no coat,” replied the man, slowly. He straightened up, with his hand dropping to his side. The other fellow was on his knees mixing dough in a pan.
Adam advanced with natural manner, but his eyes, hidden under the shadow of his wide hat brim, took swift stock of that camp.
“Pshaw! I was sure hoping you’d found it,” he said, as he reached the fire. “I had a time locating your camp. Funny you’d come way off the trail, down in here.”
“Funny or not, stranger, it’s our bizness,” gruffly replied the man standing. He peered keenly at Adam.
“Sure,” replied Adam, with slow and apparent good nature. He was close to the man now, as close as he ever needed to get to any man who might make a threatening move. And he looked past him at the girl. She had a pale little face, too small for a pair of wonderful dark eyes that seemed full of woe and terror. She held out thin brown hands to Adam.
“Reckon you’d better go an’ hunt fer yer coat,” returned the man, significantly.
In one stride Adam loomed over him, his leisurely, casual manner suddenly transformed to an attitude of menace. He stood fully a foot and a half over this stockily built man, who also suddenly underwent a change. He stiffened. Warily he peered up, just a second behind Adam in decision. His mind worked too slowly to get the advantage in this situation.
“Say, I’m curious about this girl you’ve got with you,” said Adam, deliberately.
The man gave a start. “Aw, you are, hey?” he rasped out. “Wal, see hyar, stranger, curious fellers sometimes die sudden, with their boots on.”
Adam’s force gathered for swift action. Keeping a sharp gaze riveted on this man, he addressed the girl: “Little girl, what’s wrong? Are you—”
“Shet up! If you blab out I’ll slit your tongue,” yelled the fellow, whirling fiercely. No father ever spoke that way to his child. And no child ever showed such terror of her father.
“Girl, don’t be afraid. Speak!” called Adam, in a voice that rang.
“Oh, save me—save me!” she cried, wildly.
Then the man, hissing like a snake, was reaching for his gun when Adam struck him. He fell clear across the fire, and, rolling over some packs, lay still. The other one, cursing, started to crawl, to reach with flour-whitened hand for a gun lying in a belt upon the sand. Adam kicked the gun away and pounced upon the man. Fiercely he yelled and struggled. Adam bore him down, burrowing his face in the sand. Then placing a ponderous knee on the back of the man’s neck, he knelt there, holding him down.
“Girl, throw me that piece of rope,” said Adam, pointing.
She shakily got up, her bare feet sinking in the sand, and, picking up the rope, she threw it to Adam. In short order he bound the man’s arms behind his back.
“Now, little girl, you can tell me what’s wrong,” said Adam, rising.
“Oh, they took me away—from Mother!” she whispered.
“Your mother? Where?”
“She’s at the cottonwoods. We live there.”
Adam could not see her plainly. The fire had burned down. He threw on more greasewood and some sage that flared up with sparkling smoke. Then he drew the girl to the light. What a thin arm she had! And in the small face and staring eyes he read more than the fear that seemed now losing its intensity. Starvation! No man so quick as Adam to see that!
“You live there? Then he lied about the water?” asked Adam.
“Oh yes—he lied.”
“Who are these men?”
“I don’t know. They camped at the water. I—I was out— gathering firewood. One of them—the one you hit—grabbed me—carried me off. He put his hand—on my mouth. Then the other man came—with the burros … My mother’s sick. She didn’t know what happened. She’ll be terribly frightened … Oh, please take me—home!”
“Indeed I will,” replied Adam, heartily. “Don’t worry anymore. Come now. Walk right behind me.”
Adam led the way out of camp without another glance at the two men, one of whom was groaning. The girl kept close at Adam’s heels. Away from the circle of campfire glow, he could see the grey aisles of clean sand between the clumps of greasewood, and he wound in and out between these until he found the trail. Suddenly he remembered the girl had no shoes.
“You’ll stick your feet full of cactus,” he said. “You should have on your shoes.”
“I have no shoes,” she replied. “But cactus doesn’t hurt me—except the cholla. Do you know cholla? Even the Indians think cholla bad.”
“Guess I do, little girl. Let me carry you.”
“I can walk.”
So they set off on the starlit trail, and here she walked beside him. Adam noted that she was taller than he would have taken her to be, her small head coming up to his elbow. She had the free stride of an Indian. He gazed out across the level grey and drab desert. Whatever way he directed his wandering steps over this land of waste, he was always gravitating toward new adventure. For him the lonely reaches and rockribbed canyons were sure to harbor, sooner or later, some humanity that drew him like a magnet. Everywhere the desert had its evil, its suffering, its youth and age. The heat of Adam’s anger subsided with the thought that somehow he had let the ruffians off easily; and the presence of this girl, a mere child, apparently, for all her height, brought home to him the mystery, the sorrow, the marvel of life on the desert. A sick woman with a child living in the lonely shadow of San Jacinto! Adam felt in this girl’s presence, as he had seen starvation in her face, a cruelty of life, of fate. But how infinitely grateful he felt for the random wandering steps which had led him down that trail!
All at once a slim, rough little hand slipped into his. Instinctively Adam closed his own great hand over it. That touch gave him such a thrill as he had never before felt in all his life. It seemed to link his strength and this child’s trust. The rough little fingers and callused little palm might have belonged to a hard-laboring boy, but the touch was feminine. Adam, desert trained by years that had dominated even the habits ingrained in his youth, and answering mostly to instinct, received here an unintelligible shock that sti
rred to the touch of a trusting hand but was nothing physical. His body, his mind, his soul seemed but an exhaustive instrument of creation over which the desert played masterfully.
“It was lucky you happened along,” said the girl.
“Yes,” replied Adam, as if startled.
“They were bad men. And, oh, I was so glad to see them—at first. It’s so lonely. No one ever comes except the Indians—and they come to beg things to eat—never to give. I thought those white men were prospectors and would give me a little flour or coffee—or something Mother would like. We’ve had so little to eat.”
“That so? Well, I have a full pack,” replied Adam. “Plenty of flour, coffee, sugar, bacon, canned milk, dried fruit.”
“And you’ll give us some?” she asked, eagerly, in a whisper.
“All you need.”
“Oh, you’re good—good as those men were bad!” she exclaimed, with a throb of joy. “Mother has just starved herself for me. You see, the Indian who packed supplies to us hasn’t come for long. Nobody has come—except those bad men. And our food gave out little by little. Mother starved herself for me … Oh, I couldn’t make her eat. She’d say she didn’t want what I ’d cook. Then I ’d have to eat it.”
“Isn’t your mother able to get about?” asked Adam, turning to peer down into the dark little face.
“Oh no! She’s dying of consumption,” was the low, sad reply.