Arthur Preston Hankins

“ Great thinkers invariably have tucked away in their brains a little spring, which, when unexpectedly released, reveals a flaw in their mental equilibrium. The flaw is always some delightfully, laughably human conceit, trait, hobby, or perhaps merely a great longing for something unattainable and amusingly foreign to what they have set out to do in life. And the flaw in the brain of Joshua Cole demanded a prancing horse, a hand-carved saddle with low-swinging tapaderos, a plaited, silver-mounted bridle with martingales to match, and some one to stare at him open-mouthed as he rode by. ”

“ Sheep glands substituted for his own worthless organs would not serve to purge his corroded soul nor wipe from his fading mind the cobwebs of superstition and ignorance and prejudice that put him out of step in the march of progress. Such as he should be left to die and be forgotten; it seemed a crime to help him to perpetuate himself, and bring into the world stupid offspring handicapped by heredity from the very start! No, the hope of progress lay in new blood. Let the old generation, with its ignorance and its out-of-tune ideas, become extinct. ”

“ With the city smells still in his nostrils, the buzz of city life still in his ears, and the countless lights twinkling in a frame about the white face of a brown-haired, red-lipped girl, he fell asleep from sheer fatigue. But with unaccountable perversity his dreaming mind dwelt not upon the beautiful vision he had come to love in fifteen seconds, but on the whispering firs and twinkling streams of Mendocino, and on a plodding ten-horse jerkline team hauling tanbark over the mountains to the coast. ”

“ Only fifteen of the Showut Poche-dakas plodded now about the failing fire, by this time smouldering at their very feet. Fifteen Showut Poche-dakas—and Oliver Drew! All were men, young men in life's full vigour. Yet they swayed and reeled and staggered drunkenly as the dizzying ordeal went on through the grey silence of dawn.
Now dawn came fast and spread its inchoate light over the silent assemblage in the hills. Then like a burst of sound disturbing a weary sleeper, the cherry stones resumed their rattling. ”

“ Knew nothing but mules and horses until I was eighteen or over—cared for nothing else. And I love them still; but I've grown ambitious to get all that I can from life. I like you, Hiram Hooker. You're a big, clean-minded, simple-souled man. I'll help you all I can."
Hiram's experience with Lucy Dalles, and now with this splendid girl called Jerkline Jo, might have turned the head of a more sophisticated male. But the big woods of the North teach a man his insignificance in the scheme of life, teach him honesty and simplicity of heart and sincerity. So now Hiram Hooker's ego was not inflamed. ”

“ Joshua rode with California Bill, who drove six big slick mules hitched to a tremendous load of baled alfalfa. They had a place midway in the train. The wagons rumbled over the bridge that crossed the river flowing through the town, ascended a sharp grade hacked in a rocky butte, and reached a level plateau beyond. Here, far as the eye could see, stretched the sandy desert, bare in spots, but for the most part covered sparsely with sage and greasewood. Jack-rabbits loped off down the avenues between the breast-high plants, bronze-green in the brilliant sunlight. ”

“ Down on the desert there was no rain whatever, but the wind blew with such terrific force as to flatten many of the railroad camps, whirl desert cabins around, carry away chimneys, and send a sand storm raging over the level stretches which was more than cruel to man and beast. Down there men staggered around in the blackness, their shelter swept from over their heads, their eyes and teeth filled with sand—a scene of turmoil and intense discomfort if not of actual suffering. ”

“ On and on, always climbing higher into an atmosphere more breath-taking, more crystalline. The chilled silences became awesome. Unfamiliar growths presented themselves, stunted, grotesque. An occasional patch of snow was crossed. A snow-white bird as large as a pigeon fluttered down to their camping ground, cocked his head on one side, and surveyed them with comical curiosity. A few grains of rolled barley, left by the wasteful burros, lay on the ground, for a small quantity had been brought along to tempt them back to camp when they wandered, browsing throughout the nights. ”

“ Tall pines and spruce stood black and bar-like against the silver radiance. Away in the distance coyotes lifted their yodel, half jocular, half mournful, as a maudlin drunkard sings dolefully a merry tune.
In a cup of the hills, surrounded by acres and acres of almost impenetrable chaparral and timber, a hundred or more human beings were clustered about a blazing fire. Horses stamped in the corrals. Now and then an Indian dog cast back a vicious challenge at the wild dogs on the hill. ”

“ No land seems so delectable as the desert early on a crisp morning. The rare air causes the blood to pound through one's veins, and an unexplainable rapture seizes man's spirits.
Jo's black mare, Babe, had not been ridden for weeks, and every greasewood bush that she saw became in the weird light of sunrise a grotesque goblin ready to spring at her and devour her whole. At least, so she pretended, and as her natural weapon of defense lay in flight, she kept Hiram Hooker busy holding her down to a fast gallop. ”

“ ADRIFT ON LOST RIVER HERE sat Charmian abreast the pounding waters, sobbing at times as if her heart would break, while up at the cave lolled the drivelling thing that once had been a man, young and handsome and pulsing with the thrill of life. The little water ouzel bowed and bobbed to her, perched on a stone in the frothy pool below. ”

“ Physically Madge was even more glorious than he had expected her to be, but he grew a trifle morose when he remembered her reference to money-making. Joshua was too much of a dreamer, too thoroughly wrapped up in the romance of astronomy, to give great heed to money matters. And he wanted the woman he was going to love—Madge, in short—to be as indifferent to the moron idea of slaving day and night for riches as he was. But Madge would be all right—he was too young, too full of youth’s enthusiasm over life in general to beckon difficulties. ”

“ Lardo’s long white forefinger might scoop up the bedraggled insect and hurl it with a battery spat against the tent wall. But to think of Lardo the Cook as fate or destiny or any other of the forces that control nature brought a smile to the flunky’s lips. But the desert was big and flat and awe-inspiring, and the human speck moving over its vast expanse seemed as helpless and insignificant as the ill-fated fly.
Presently Falcon the Flunky waved his hat. Before long Manzanita Canby reined in the blowing pinto mare beside him and dismounted. ”

“ What a romance that old father had woven about the life of his son! How skilfully and craftily he had planned so that Oliver would be thrown on his own resources for an answer when he came face to face with the question! How cleverly Jessamy had carried out the part entrusted to her, despite her aversion to intrigues and plottings! Step by step she had led him on till at last the question confronted him, just as it had confronted his father before him.
To gain possession of the gems would be a simple matter. They were on his land somewhere—were his by every right in law. ”

“ Lucy's dark eyes flashed daggers at the broad back of Hiram Hooker as he left her and swung along indifferently up the street. With a woman's intuition she had known in San Francisco that the big, handsome countryman with the soft, drawling voice had fallen a victim to her charms. Now, because of Jerkline Jo, he was utterly indifferent to her. Lucy was piqued, angry at him, angrier at Jerkline Jo. She did not love Hiram, but she wanted him to love her, and though she did not want him she wanted no other woman to own him. ”

“ The banks of the river were endowed with graceful willows, alders, yews, incense cedars, cottonwoods, oaks, California buckeyes, red madrones, spicy bays, and occasional pines and spruces, with grape vines crawling and climbing everywhere. The river bottoms were rank with huckleberry bushes, and Andy said:
“Find a bee tree and we’ll get some honey and preserve those berries and grapes in Indian jars—if we find any more. Stretch a piece of hide over the mouth and seal it with spruce gum. Stay here all our lives, by golly! No? Yes?”
It was like a park, this Valley of Arcana. ”

“ Joshua slumped down in his chair, and copied Madge by extending his legs and crossing them at the ankles. Then he tamped the burning tobacco in his briar pipe and gave his soul to dreams.
“For me,” he said, “what I consider an ideal life is just opening. I love the freedom of these majestic mountains, the grandeur of the clean, cool forests, the fascinating colors of the lake. Up here a person can be himself and will be able to rise above the petty squabbles, struggles, ambitions, hatreds, and copycatism of life in the congested districts. ”

“ Mangan knew his own end of the work and nothing more. He was not an engineer, merely a good rock man and a dirt mover. But Falcon the Flunky talked like a man who had studied every phase of railroad construction, from the preliminary survey of a proposed route to the laying of the steel. He talked not from a contractor’s viewpoint, but from that of a high-salaried man employed by the company whose money was being invested, and who demanded that all phases of the work tend toward one ultimate idea, the excellence of their railroad. ”

“ You are the Watchman of the Dead. You own the land on which the treasure lies. You are brother of the Showut Poche-dakas. The treasure is yours almost for the lifting of a hand. You are almost penniless.
"There's your question, Oliver Drew. Say Yes and the gems are yours. Say No, and you have forty acres of almost worthless land, a saddle horse and outfit, and youth and health, and the lifetime office of Watchman of the Dead!" ”

“ So Joshepha Modock grew to young womanhood, admired, loved, and spoiled by the thousands of nomad laborers who knew her. At eighteen she could truthfully boast of a hundred proposals of marriage, and some of them had been worth an ambitious girl's consideration. Gypo Jo they called her, and she was known all over the West, where her foster father's operations were confined, and stories of her beauty and horsewomanship had gone East and North and South, for railroad-construction laborers are a nomadic brood and repeat their tales and traditions from coast to coast. ”

“ Lofty peaks covered with untarnished snow looked down upon the camp, and the placid lake lay like a blue teardrop in the hollow of a gigantic, caressing hand. Lush meadows surrounded the lake, and here grazed innumerable cattle, the property of Box-R Ranch, down on the desert. All winter long they had cropped bunchgrass that grew under sage bushes on the sandy waste, and had just been driven into the mountains for the summer pasture of saltgrass and bluejoint. Occasionally Joshua saw cowpunchers working with them and heard their shouting from afar. ”

“ Occasionally some fanatic would spring from the line and rush upon the fire, striking at it with his feet, slapping at it with his hands, growling at it and threatening it in his guttural tongue. Then the dance would grow fiercer, and the chanting would break out anew, while always the cherry stones rattled dismally and urged the zealots on.
When would it end? There was fresh, clean pitch in the great logs that blazed; and it seemed to Oliver that the exorcism must continue to the end of time. ”

“ They spoke a thousand words that night, reclining in each other’s arms on the uncompromising floor of that severe old gorge, but they only said, “I love you.” They said it in a hundred ways, lips to lips, but no way was original. Love knows no originality when it is sincere. “I love you” is all that can be said—three words, “I love you,” but they are the hinges that swing the door of life.
“And to-morrow you’re going with him to the Valley of Arcana, Charmian! Will you think of me all the time, dearest? You won’t listen if he makes love to you, will you, Charmian? ”

“ Few women could help admiring such a handsome young giant as was Hiram, strong as a bull, symmetrical as some sturdy plant; and his drawling, soft voice was a caress that bespoke the kindly heart of a child and the tenderness of a woman. Withal he had a poet's soul, and all women love poetry in a man.
"Tell me about Twitter-or-Tweet, and so forth," she begged finally. "I can't understand that man. Is he a pure fake?" ”

“ When you begin to realize the vastness of the universe, and know that beyond the one in which we live lie countless other universes as stupendous or even more stupendous than this one, you—you begin to realize that you are like a tiny straw in the wind—that your little difficulties, disappointments and fruitless struggles on this insignificant ball of stones and earth are not worthy of a moment’s thought. Slim Wolfgang has been the means of robbing me of the girl I love. If I had fallen heir to that money— Well, you remember what I told you about Madge. ”

“ The rollicking songs that the male quartet had sung changed to the bellowing of Satan, as when the angel of the Lord came down from heaven with the key to the bottomless pit and chained him for a thousand years. Wrapped in her blankets, nightmares came to her so that she was afraid to sleep without the flickering light of a pine knot near her. Often she awoke screaming, gripped by an icy, throat-contracting fear. And once the nightmare took upon itself reality—and Madame Destrehan’s prophecy was fulfilled. ”

“ A longdrawn, derisive "Hi-yi!" floated back, and the clatter of the roan's hoofbeats died away.
The girl had sprung from her mare and was bending over the fallen man. The others crowded about her now, all talking at once. She lifted a white, tragic face to them, a face so wildly beautiful that, even under the stress of the moment, Oliver Drew felt that sudden fierce pang of desire which the first startled sight of "the one woman" brings to a healthy, manly man.
"He's dead! I've killed him!" she cried.
"No, no, no, Miss Jessamy," protested a hoarse voice quickly. ”

“ He felt that he could not stand one more submersion in that terrible water, with his pulse throbbing at his temples and the horrible pangs of strangulation clutching at his throat and contracting his heart, and everything growing black. No, no more of that! He might not go West, but he never would return home with that awaiting him.
The hours dragged on, and when the warm sun was high in the heavens the entrance of the brick schoolhouse vomited a stream of yelling, shoving, elbowing young humanity that at once disintegrated and spread in all directions. ”

“ CHAPTER XIV A WIRE TO JULIA
"I wanted you to tell me something about yourself, Hiram," said Jerkline Jo. "That's why I called you. What a giant of a man you are! Tell me about Wild-cat Hill and the big woods of Mendocino. I've never been so far north in California."
She seated herself on the stool, and Hiram sat cross-legged on the floor of the freight rack. Ahead the many silvery bells, hung on steel bows over the hames of each of Jo's white beauties, jingled merrily as the wagon rolled on into the illimitable desert. ”

“ Abruptly Chupurosa came to a full stop, backed from the fire, and squatted on the ground inside the circle. No applause, not a word, no sign of any nature followed the cessation of his harangue.
Now two young Indians led forth an old, old man. Each of them held one of his arms. He was stooped and trembly, and his feet dragged pitiably; and as he neared the fire Oliver saw that he was totally blind.
Never before in his life had the white man seen age so plainly stamped on human countenance. ”

“ She had lighted her signal fire, heaping on green boughs to make dense smoke. There was little wind in the valley, and the smoke streamed aloft in a graceful spiral above the treetops. Every morning she rebuilt the fire and heaped on boughs when it was burning brightly. And now came a day when she stood often at the edge of the grove and scanned the zigzag trail into the sink with her binoculars. Or, gathering nuts and acorns and mushrooms in the open, stopped her work and trained her glasses about every fifteen minutes. ”

“ Above them towered the mountains, the old men of the earth, symbols of wisdom and understanding, forbidding and grim to those who love them not, friendly and tolerant to those who do. And over all lay that uncompromising hush that throttles the souls of men who cannot think, but which, to those who are masters of their minds, is like the touch of a mother’s hand at bedtime. ”

“ And thinking is the hardest work that one can do.
Andy loved her—or thought he did. Quite well was she aware of that. And it pleased her. She wanted fine young men to love her. She could not help it. She—they—are born that way. Would men have it otherwise?
But Dr. Shonto! The radiance with which the morning had endued her transparent skin was heightened by the glowing thought. If she had swayed Shonto, either by her physical or her mental or her plain womanly charms, or all these combined (herself, in short) , she had made a conquest to be proud of. ”

“ Sheep, all of them—bleating, crowding sheep, shouldering one another aside in an effort to gain the protection of the middle of the flock, where no one might single them out and accuse them of being anything but sheep! Could he, Joshua Cole, a man now, hope to become the bellwether of this wriggling, woolly mass? No, because he would not stoop to setting a pace that their newspaper, moving-picture minds would follow. Pitiable worms slathering in the slime of up-to-dateness! Afraid of their own minds, afraid of their neighbors’ minds, afraid of life itself! ”

“ Clinker Creek Cañon dipped so steadily below Sulphur Spring that it had been possible to lay the pipe to this hidden spot in the heart of the chaparral, far up on the hillside, and still maintain a goodly fall for the flow of water.
Only by crawling flat on his face could one reach this secluded rendezvous; and in all the years that they had made molasses rum here the Poison Oakers had not been disturbed. Not even a hunter would find it necessary to penetrate this fastness. Men would have laughed if told that water was flowing up here on the dry, rocky eminence. ”

“ As the magnificent whites plodded steadily on, there was added to the music of the nickeled bells the rapid clicking of Jo at the portable typewriter, or the slower, hesitating peck of Hiram Hooker. They were a silent pair, for they were deep in their studies. ”

“ Joshua had become an artistic hammerman, and, though the youngest man in his crew, he was a welcome addition. Always quiet and reserved, he had none of the qualities that often make youth obnoxious to such old-timers as it fell to his lot to labor with. And as he swung his striking hammer or turned the drill he thought of Madge Mundy of the frizzly bronze-gold hair, and wondered if ever he would find courage to go to her. ”

“ I hate orchards because they supplant the trees and chaparral that Nature has planted. I hate the irrigating systems, because the dams and reservoirs that they demand ruin rugged cañons and valleys. I hate railroads, because their hideous old trains go screeching through God's peaceful solitudes. I hate automobiles, because they bring irreverent unbelievers into God's chapels. ”

“ Once as he walked up the trail to the observatory a bullet had whizzed close to his head, followed by the distant bark of a heavy firearm. And when Sweet’s vaqueros had driven the first of the cattle into the mountains the herd had stampeded Argo, at graze on his rope beside the lake, and Joshua had scoured the country a week before he found him. The gray had pulled his pin and raced away in a frenzy of fright as the cowpunchers, with deliberate intent, drove the cows upon him, yelling and firing into the air. ”

“ As Poche picked his way out of the cañon Oliver espied Jessamy Selden on her white mare, standing still in the county road.
"Good morning," said the girl. "You're late. I've been waiting for you ten minutes."
Oliver's lips parted in surprise, and she laughed good-naturedly.
"I thought you'd be riding out early this morning," she explained, "so I rode down to meet you. I feel as if a long ride in the saddle would benefit me today. Do you mind if I travel with you to the county seat?"
He had ridden close to her by this time, and offered his hand.
"You like to surprise people, don't you?" ”

“ Nothing was to happen to Andy! The doctor had needlessly distressed her. Here he was in her arms, big and strong and virile and handsome as a god—what ever could happen to such a man! There was food in the valley—nuts and game and fish. And if the huckleberries would only last she would be content to live on them alone, while Andy was with her in the valley. The doctor might never return if he chose to leave them there [198] together. What mattered it, when she had Andy? The Valley of Arcana had lost its grimness. ”