Adeline Knapp

“ Across the desert came the sound of a man’s voice, calling angrily. ’Chita put out a hand, arresting Gard’s steps.
“It is my father,” she whispered. “He is blind; but he has ears of the coyote. If he hears you—if he knows—he will beat me!”
She was but a child, now, in her terror, and Gard reassured her.
“He’ll never know,” he said. “No one will ever know. You go back, now, like a good girl. And remember: you must never do a silly thing like this again. Will you promise me?”
She lifted a pale face toward his, in the starlight. ”

“ The night was far spent when Gard awoke. A late moon rode high in the heavens, flooding the glade with white light. The familiarity of the scene bewildered his rousing consciousness. The circling trees, the murmur of water, the far-seeming faint glow of embers in the great fireplace, his narrow ocotilla bed with its bear-skin covering: how well he knew them all! Had he but slept and dreamed, to awaken after all to the daily round of his accustomed solitude?
He raised himself upon one elbow. On the cot which they had brought for her, there, within reach of his hand, Helen lay sleeping. ”

“ All day they had moved steadily mountainward, and now they began to draw nearer the range that ever since dawn had reared a jagged line along the horizon. Gard had not known whether they would reach the mountains that day. One does not predicate distances in the desert. They may be long, or short; the lying air gives no clue.
But as the afternoon shadows were turning to mauve and blue, what had for hours looked like sloping foothills, leading gently toward further heights, suddenly reared itself before them in a long stretch of high, perpendicular wall. ”

“ He dreaded what might have taken place at the Palo Verde. What had taken Mrs. Hallard there? What had Sandy Larch been told? What did Miss Anderson believe?
The last was the question of his deepest thought. He was not fearful for himself, of anything that might come. The doubts and the temptations of the situation had all been settled in his mind. He had learned stern lessons in solitude, and he brought them sternly to bear in this exigency. This thing had been given to him, Gabriel Gard, to carry through. Whatever might come to him as one human being did not count. ”

“ As Gard put back his shell, with its contents of thorns and turned toward the pool sudden recognition came to him of a heretofore unsuspected truth.
“By the great face of clay, Jinny,” he said, drawing a long breath, “We’re not so bad off, after all!”
Again his eyes ranged the green circle of the glade; at the farther side, where the growth was sparse, he could see the valley with its yellow sands and rose-tinted air. The bright red of blossoming cacti made vivid patches here and there in the waste; even the great barren felt the touch of spring. ”

“ The luminous blue sky, the colorful air, the immensity of the waste plain, gave him pleasure. Even the weird desert growths no longer oppressed him.
“After all, Jinny,” he said, as they threaded their way gingerly past a great patch of cholla, with its vicious, hooked spines, “there’s as much life here as there is death. I never sensed it before; but everything’s got a claw to hang onto life with.” ”

“ Everywhere were the desert growths, travesties of vegetation, twisted, grotesque, ghostly gray and pale green in hues. A profound stillness, insistent, oppressive, was upon everything. The yellow sand, the glowing air, the cloudless dome of the sky, the far-off mountains, all seemed to soak up sound. The world lay hushed in fierce, tense quiet, as though waiting the appearance of some savage portent.
The camel did not hasten. Gard, walking beside it, had a feeling that the creature was very old. ”

“ The desert stretched away before Gard, vast, silent, untamed, at this moment a thing of gold and flame, touched, far in the distance, by great cloud-shadows, that sent the man’s gaze from the fierce plain to the wide blue overhead. But not a cloud was in sight and he realized that, probably for the hundredth time, he had been deceived by patches of lava cropping up among the red and yellow sands.
Something that was not a cloud arrested his attention. Far in the sky half a dozen great black birds flew, now high, now lower, but circling always above one spot. ”

“ A bunch of future polo ponies in one enclosure were the only creatures in sight as he rode on toward the casa. These nickered to his own horse and the sound brought Wing Chang to the door of his adobe kitchen. The Chinaman’s face wrinkled in a genial smile as he recognized Gard. The latter waved a hand to him and turned toward the horse-rail; for he had caught sight of a slender figure under the cottonwoods. ”

“ Helen called a gay greeting to her and she looked up, showing her white teeth in a broad smile. Then she paused in her deft handling of the wet, red clay, to flip a bit gently at the inquisitive nose of Patsy, Helen’s fox terrier, who was minded to investigate the pottery operations. Helen called the dog and lifted her pony to a gallop. So the three went scampering off in a wild race over the level sand. A mile was measured before the girl drew rein again, with a blissful sigh of pure happiness. ”

“ As the lantern cast its light upon Hickey’s face it seemed to Gard that he looked startled. He realized, with a sick feeling of helplessness that the fellow’s participation in this deed was due solely to his condition. He even felt a sort of pity for the man when to-morrow’s awakening should bring the knowledge of what he had done. If he could but reach the real man buried in the addled brain.
“I did not kill Dan Lundy,” he insisted, still addressing Hickey; “You will know that some day. Killing me to-night will not be the end of it. ”

“ The lurking snake that lay in wait to take him subtly; the lank coyote, more cunning than he, if not so swift; even the Gila monster, slow and hideous; the savage, sneaking wild-cat, and the little hydrophobia skunk, were constantly on the alert to surprise those wide-open eyes and ears. These all preyed upon him, and upon one another, caught in the endless struggle of the desert, moved upon by constant need to sustain life, and to hold it against all other life. ”

“ Once they were started he let the strap hang loose and gradually fell behind. The camel went forward a few paces in the direction ahead of them, but feeling no guidance, gradually deflected its course toward the west. Gard followed every movement eagerly, until presently they were going 36forward at a steady pace, as travelers with a definite aim.
The sun was well up now, and its beams warmed the man’s chilled, sore body. The desert was no longer gray, but a glowing yellow. Even the air was warm-hued, suffusing the landscape with a roseate loveliness that yet seemed less of life than of death. ”

“ The poster itself was sun-bleached and weather-worn, peppered with the bullets of passing cowboys who had taken jocular shots at it, and beaten by the blown desert-sand, but still legible. Kate Hallard had seen many of its kind; had passed this very one on her way out that morning. She glanced at it now.
“FOR GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD THAT HE GAVE HIS ONLY-BEGOTTEN SON, THAT WHOSOEVER BELIEVETH ON HIM SHOULD NOT PERISH—” The rest was obliterated. ”

“ The need of haste was increasing every second, and Gard worked breathlessly, now, till at last he could touch his fellow, lying there.
Still marking time with his feet upon the sand, he slipped from his own waist the riata he always carried when he came down to the plain. He had made it himself of finely braided hide, suppled and wrought with faithful care, and he knew its strength. Working fast, he raised the man’s shoulders, ever so little, and slipped the rope beneath his arms. ”

“ Another year, and then, ... by Heaven! Everything was going to be straight! There should be nothing that those clear gray eyes might not see!
But this matter must not come out! He would see Mrs. Hallard in the town while Gard was laid up. His career should not be ruined, just as he was getting where he could hold up his head and choose the straight path. He was weary in his soul of the other.
Helen looked up with a glance of inquiry. ”

“ A moment later the patter of his pony’s unshod feet came to the listening ears within.
Gard still held the other men in a gaze that seemed to search and estimate the hidden thought of each.
“Now they’ll kill him, sure,” Sandy Larch thought, slipping nearer, but the stranger took no notice of him.
“Friends,” he said, breaking at last the tense silence that ruled the room, “There’s a law against making an Indian drunk, and there’s a law against robbing him. They’re white men’s laws; and white men ought to keep ’em.” ”

“ What funny things you see when you ain’t got a gun!”
Kate Hallard, meantime, was thinking of many things as she rode back to Sylvania. The tide of old memories was at flood as she thought of the man whom she was going to see in Gard’s behalf. She had spoken truly when she told Sandy Larch she had once known the Governor well. How well, was a matter that lay deep in her heart, a part of her hard, sordid, unprotected girlhood, dead and buried now these thousand years, it seemed to her. ”

“ He looked beyond the fringe of cottonwoods, out across the plain, quivering in the mid-forenoon heat.
“Don’t you like it?” he asked.
“I love it! It’s so big, and beautiful, in spite of its dreadfulness; it’s so positive!” Helen was sitting on the ground, her hands in her lap, her eyes turned toward the far mountains. Gard considered her words.
“Positive:” he repeated, thoughtfully, “Yes: it’s sure that. There ain’t any half-way place,” he added, drawing a deep breath. “A man, he gets big, or he gets little, living in it.” ”

“ There was silence for a while, till Gard spoke again.
“I hate to make you walk,” he apologized, “You’ll be all tuckered out.”
“Not a bit,” she declared, stoutly. “You must be new to the desert, if you don’t know what miles people can walk here, without getting tired.”
The bronze of his face was tinged with a faint red.
“No,” said he, “I ain’t new to the desert. Not much I ain’t new; even—” with a mortified laugh—“if I did let my bronco throw me. I guess, though, I’m new to little girls,” he continued. “Seem’s if you ought to be tired. You don’t look so very big.” ”

“ Hallard, Father?” Helen regarded her father now, with interest in her level grey eyes.
“Why,” Anderson said, doubtfully. “She’s not the kind I should think would catch him. It’s a case of catch, all right, though, I guess; even Westcott seemed to know about it.”
He considered a moment, frowning.
“She’s loud, and coarse, I suppose; but she’s a mighty handsome woman, if a man don’t care about some other things. And I somehow should think Gard would. I like a different sort, myself.” ”

“ Helen murmured.
“There were times when I would if I could have got to him,” Gard replied, “but I got over my hate. Somehow, that kind of thing can’t live in big, clean places like that I drifted to. The desert’s a hard place, my girl. It don’t look lovely as this when you’re fighting for life in it. It’s fierce as a tiger, but there ain’t any hate in it. That’s only in men, but it’s deadlier than anything the desert’s got.”
“There’s got to be desert, I guess. There was a man in the surveyor’s gang I was with once, years ago, always said that. ”

“ In one of the corrals the future work-cattle were penned, half a dozen head, lean, leggy brutes, wild-eyed and ugly. They kept together, moving restlessly about in a bunch, watching the visitors sullenly, and occasionally lunging at one another with wide, wicked horns.
“They’re beauts, for fair,” Sandy Larch remarked, “Only they can’t seem to make up their minds to look it in public. They’re that kind o’ modest vi’lets.” ”

“ The pool had overflowed, and swept across the glade in a broad stream, pouring down the defile in a whelming tide. The heavens seemed to have opened, torrentially; Gard’s bed was beaten down, and the fire was flooded. Gard himself was almost thrown to earth by the thrashing rain ere he could reach the cabin, into which he darted, Jinny close at his heels. ”

“ Hallard and Unricht saw him in the St. Augustine he had just come in from the north. He spent no time in Tucson, looking up records which he took for granted Gard had already made right. He was sure that the latter’s first act upon returning to civilization would be to put his own affairs into secure shape. Only in some such way was it possible for a mind like Westcott’s to understand a man’s willingly remaining in a position which must otherwise seem to him perilous, for the sake of seeing right done to a woman like Mrs. Hallard. ”

“ Somehow, the desert solitude had grown all at once more complex than ever the busy, active city life had been. The well-loved plain lay all about her as of old, fraught with all its remembered delight, yet imminent with a new mystery. Some message, luring yet baffling, quivered through it. The far blue hills, the golden-roseate sky, the shimmering, wind-stirred air, breathed of 230life; but the grim waste, yellow, seared, ancient, the scant, spectral trees, the uncouth cacti, warned, rather, to thoughts of death ”

“ Hallard said, grimly.
“You couldn’t.” Gard shook his head thoughtfully.
“You couldn’t see the whole scheme,” he continued. “And we don’t need to want to. Whoever’s doing it is making up a whole piece out of ’em. That’s this world we’re in. It’s our world. We belong in it; and there ain’t anything in it for us to be afraid of but just ourselves.” ”

“ Helen interrupted, “it’s different when a man digs it out of the earth. He doesn’t rob, or defraud anybody, then; and think of all it can do!”
“Yes.” There was a slow twinkle in Gard’s eyes as he spoke. “There’s solid satisfaction to me in thinking that one o’ these days, if I want to, I can get Jinny a solid gold collar.”
They laughed together over this bit of foolishness, feeling, suddenly, that they were very good friends. It was almost with a little sense of something unwelcome that Helen, looking across the level plain, saw a horseman in the distance, coming toward the rancho-gate. ”

“ Gard said, simply, meeting her eyes.
“And this Westcott,” she exclaimed, sharply, “If he’s done me so! If he has—”
She gripped the counter, her teeth showing, savagely.
“Easy!” said Gard quietly, “Better keep cool. The man ain’t worth riling yourself up over. Besides, I believe we can do something, with this.”
He touched the deed, and she picked it up again.
“I want to try to get hold of Oliphant,” he began, outlining his plan, “and this notary, Arthur Sawyer.”
Kate Hallard regarded him with an unwonted expression of mingled helplessness and perplexity. ”

“ Once yoked and hitched, with a riata from the horns of each to the saddle-horn of a good man on a clever pony, to tow them along, the creatures could move forward, or die in their tracks. When, as was usual, they decided to do the former, they were considered gentled. Their future, thereafter, was in the keeping of the Mexican who might have them in hand to plow with.
“Hullo, you heap heathen!” Sandy Larch called out to the Chinese cook in the big wagon as the outfit came thundering up. “How’d you git out here?”
Wing Chang grinned, as was his habit whenever the foreman addressed him. ”