E-text prepared by Al Haines
THE DESERT VALLEY
by
JACKSON GREGORY
Author of _The Bells of San Juan_, _Man to Man_
Hodder and Stoughton Limited LondonCharles Scribner's Sons
1921
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
THE DESERT I A BLUEBIRD'S FEATHER II SUPERSTITION POOL III PAYMENT IN RAW GOLD IV IN DESERT VALLEY V THE GOOD OLD SPORT VI THE YOUTHFUL HEART VII WAITING FOR MOONRISE VIII POKER AND THE SCIENTIFIC MIND IX HELEN KNEW X A WARNING AND A SIGN XI SEEKING XII THE DESERT SUPREME XIII A SON OF THE SOLITUDES XIV THE HATE OF THE HIDDEN PEOPLE XV THE GOLDEN SECRET XVI SANCHIA SCHEMES XVII HOWARD HOLDS THE GULCH XVIII A TOWN IS BORN XIX SANCHIA PERSISTENT XX TWO FRIENDS AND A GIRL XXI ALMOST XXII THE PROFESSOR DICTATES XXIII THE WILL-O'-THE-WISP XXIV THE SHADOW XXV IN THE OPEN XXVI WHEN DAY DAWNED
The Desert
Over many wide regions of the south-western desert country of Arizonaand New Mexico lies an eternal spell of silence and mystery. Acrossthe sand-ridges come many foreign things, both animate and inanimate,which are engulfed in its immensity, which frequently disappear for alltime from the sight of men, blotted out like a bird which flies freefrom a lighted room into the outside darkness. As though incompensation for that which it has taken, the desert from time to timeallows new marvels, riven from its vitals, to emerge.
Though death-still, it has a voice which calls ceaselessly to thosehuman hearts tuned to its messages: hostile and harsh, it draws andurges; repellent, it profligately awards health and wealth; inviting,it kills. And always it keeps its own counsel; it is without peer inits lonesomeness, and without confidants; it heaps its sand over itssecrets to hide them from its flashing stars.
You see the bobbing ears of a pack-animal and the dusty hat and stoopshoulders of a man. They are symbols of mystery. They rise brieflyagainst the skyline, they are gone into the grey distance. Somethingbeckons or something drives. They are lost to human sight, perhaps tohuman memory, like a couple of chips drifting out into the ocean.Patient time may witness their return; it is still likely that soonanother incarnation will have closed for man and beast, that they willhave left to mark their passing a few glisteningly white bones,polished untiringly by tiny sand-chisels in the grip of the desertwinds. They may find gold, but they may not come in time to water.The desert is equally conversant with the actions of men mad with goldand mad with thirst.
To push out along into this immensity is to evince the heart of a braveman or the brain of a fool. The endeavour to traverse the forbiddengarden of silence implies on the part of the agent an adventurousnature. Hence it would seem no great task to catalogue those humanbeings who set their backs to the gentler world and press forward intothe naked embrace of this merciless land. Yet as many sorts andconditions come here each year as are to be found outside.
Silence, ruthlessness, mystery--these are the attributes of the desert.True, it has its softer phases--veiled dawns and dusks, rainbow hues,moon and stars. But these are but tender blossoms from a spiked,poisonous stalk, like the flowers of the cactus. They are brief andevanescent; the iron parent is everlasting.
Chapter I
A Bluebird's Feather
In the dusk a pack-horse crested a low-lying sand-ridge, put up itshead and sniffed, pushed forward eagerly, its nostrils twitching as itturned a little more toward the north, going straight toward thewater-hole. The pack was slipping as far to one side as it had listedto the other half an hour ago; in the restraining rope there were adozen intricate knots where one would have amply sufficed. The horsebroke into a trot, blazing its own trail through the mesquite; a parcelslipped; the slack rope grew slacker because of the subsequentreadjustment; half a dozen bundles dropped after the first. A voice,thin and irritable, shouted 'Whoa!' and the man in turn was brieflyoutlined against the pale sky as he scrambled up the ridge. He was alittle man and plainly weary; he walked as though his boots hurt him;he carried a wide, new hat in one hand; the skin was peeling from hisblistered face. From his other hand trailed a big handkerchief. Hewas perhaps fifty or sixty. He called 'Whoa!' again, and made whathaste he could after his horse.
A moment later a second horse appeared against the sky, following theman, topping the ridge, passing on. In silhouette it appeared nonormal animal but some weird monstrosity, a misshapen body coveredeverywhere with odd wart-like excrescences. Close by, these uniquegrowths resolved themselves into at least a score of canteens andwater-bottles of many shapes and sizes, strung together with bits ofrope. Undoubtedly the hand which had tied the other knots hadconstructed these. This horse in turn sniffed and went forward with aquickened pace.
Finally came the fourth figure of the procession. This was a girl.Like the man, she was booted; like him, she carried a broad hat in herhand. Here the similarity ended. She wore an outdoor costume, alittle thing appropriate enough for her environment. And yet it waspeculiarly appropriate to femininity. It disclosed the pleasing linesof a pretty figure. Her fatigue seemed less than the man's. Her youthwas pronounced, assertive. She alone of the four paused more than aninstant upon the slight eminence; she put back her head and looked upat the few stars that were shining; she listened to the hushed voice ofthe desert. She drew a scarf away from her neck and let the coolingair breathe upon her throat. The throat was round; no doubt it wassoft and white, and, like her whole small self, seductively feminine.
Having communed with the night, the girl withdrew her gaze from the skyand hearkened to her companion. His voice, now remarkably eager andyoung for a man of his years, came to her clearly through the clumps ofbushes.
'It is amazing, my dear! Positively. You never heard of such a thing.The horse, the tall, slender one, ran away, from me. I hastened inpursuit, calling to him to wait for me. It appeared that he had becomesuddenly refractory: they do that sometimes. I was going to reprimandhim; I thought that it might be necessary to chastise him, as sometimesa man must do to retain the mastery. But I stayed my hand. The animalhad not run away at all! He actually knew what he was doing. He camestraight here. And what do you think he discovered? What do youimagine brought him? You would never guess.'
'Water?' suggested the girl, coming on.
Something of the man's excitement had gone from his voice when heanswered. He was like a child who has propounded a riddle that hasbeen too readily guessed.
'How did you know?'
'I didn't know. But the horses must be thirsty. Of course they wouldgo straight to water. Animals can smell it, can't they?'
'Can they?' He looked to her inquiringly when she stood at his side.'It is amazing, nevertheless. Positively, my dear,' he added with atouch of dignity.
The two horses, side by side, were drinking noisily from a smalldepression into which the water oozed slowly. The girl watched them amoment abstractedly, sighed and sat down in the sand, her hands in herlap.
'Tired, Helen?' asked the man solicitously.
'Aren't you?' she returned. 'It has been a hard day, papa.'
'I am afraid it has been hard on you, my dear,' he admitted, as hiseyes took stock of the drooping figure. 'But,' he added morecheerfully, 'we are getting somewhere, my girl; we are gettingsomewhere.'
'Are we?' she murmured to herself rather than for his ears. And whenhe demanded 'Eh?' she said hastily: 'Anyway, we are doing something.That is more fun than growing moss, even if we never succeed.'
'I tell you,' he declared forensically, lifting his hand for a gesture,'I know! Haven't I demonstrated the infallibility of my line ofaction? If a man wants to--to gather cherries, let him go to a cherrytree; if he seeks pearls, let him
find out the favourite habitat of thepearl oyster; if he desires a--a hat, let him go to the hatter's. Itis the simplest thing in the world, though fools have woven mystery anddifficulty about it. Now----'
'Yes, pops.' Helen sighed again and saw wisdom in rising to her feet.'If you will begin unpacking I'll make our beds. And I'll get the firestarted.'
'We can dispense with the fire,' he told her, setting to work with thefirst knot to come under his fingers. 'There is coffee in the thermosbottle and we can open a tin of potted chicken.'
'The fire makes it cosier,' Helen said, beginning to gather twigs.Last night coyotes had howled fearsomely, and even dwellers of thecities know that the surest safeguard against a ravening beast is acamp-fire. For a little while the man strove with his tangled rope;she was lost to him through the mesquite. Suddenly she came runningback.
'Papa,' she whispered excitedly. 'There's some one already here.'
She led him a few paces and pointed, making him stoop to see. Underthe tangle of a thin brush patch he made out what she had seen. But ashort distance from the spot they had elected for their camp site was atiny fire blazing merrily.
'Ahem,' said Helen's father, shifting nervously and looking at hisdaughter as though for an explanation of this oddity. 'This ispeculiar. It has an air of--of----'
'Why, it is the most natural thing in the world,' she said swiftly.'Where would you expect to find a camp-fire if not near a spring?'
'Yes, yes, that part of it is all right,' he admitted grudgingly. 'Butwhy does he hold back and thereby give one an impression of a desire onhis part for secrecy? Why does he not come forward and make himselfknown? I do not mean to alarm you, my dear, but this is not the way anhonest fellow-wayfarer should behave. Wait here for me; I shallinvestigate.' Intrepidly he walked toward the fire. Helen kept closeto his side.
'Hello!' he called, when they had taken a dozen steps. They paused andlistened. There was no reply, and Helen's fingers tightened on hisarm. Again he looked to her as though once more he asked theexplanation of her; the look hinted that upon occasion the fatherleaned on the daughter more than she on him. He called again. Hisvoice died away echoless, the silence seeming heavier than before.When one of the horses behind them, turning from the water, trod upon adry twig, both man and girl started. Then Helen laughed and wentforward again.
Since the fire had not lighted itself, it merely bespoke the presenceof a man. Men had no terror to her. In the ripe fullness of hersomething less than twenty years she had encountered many of them.While with due modesty she admitted that there was much in the worldthat she did not know, she considered that she 'knew' men.
The two pressed on together. Before they had gone far they weregreeted by the familiar and vaguely comforting odours of boiling coffeeand frying bacon. Still they saw no one. They pushed through the lastclump of bushes and stood by the fire. On the coals was the blackcoffee-pot. Cunningly placed upon two stones over a bed of coals wasthe frying-pan. Helen stooped instinctively and lifted it aside; thehalf-dozen slices of bacon were burned black.
'Hello!' shouted the man a third time, for nothing in the world wasmore clear than that whoever had made the fire and begun his supperpreparations must be within call. But no answer came. Meantime thenight had deepened; there was no moon; the taller shrubs, aspiring totree proportions, made a tangle of shadow.
'He has probably gone off to picket his horse,' said Helen's father.'Nothing could be more natural.'
Helen, more matter-of-fact and less given to theorizing, looked abouther curiously. She found a tin cup; there was no bed, no pack, noother sign to tell who their neighbour might be. Close by the spotwhere she had set down the frying-pan she noted a second spring.Through an open space in the stunted desert growth the trail came infrom the north. Glancing northward she saw for the first time theoutline of a low hill. She stepped quickly to her father's side andonce more laid her hand on his arm.
'What is it?' he asked, his voice sharpening at her sudden grip.
'It's--it's spooky out here,' she said.
He scoffed. 'That's a silly word. In a natural world there is noplace for the supernatural.' He grew testy. 'Can I ever teach you,Helen, not to employ words utterly meaningless?'
But Helen was not to be shaken.
'Just the same, it is spooky. I can feel it. Look there.' Shepointed. 'There is a hill. There will be a little ring of hills. Inthe centre of the basin they make would be the pool. And you know whatwe heard about it before we left San Juan. This whole country isstrange, somehow.'
'Strange?' he queried challengingly. 'What do you mean?'
She had not relaxed her hand on his arm. Instead, her fingerstightened as she suddenly put her face forward and whispered defiantly:
'I mean _spooky_!'
'Helen,' he expostulated, 'where did you get such ideas?'
'You heard the old Indian legends,' she insisted, not more than halffrightened but conscious of an eerie influence of the still lonelinessand experiencing the first shiver of excitement as she stirred her ownfancy. 'Who knows but there is some foundation for them?'
He snorted his disdain and scholarly contempt.
'Then,' said Helen, resorting to argument, 'where did that fire comefrom? Who made it? Why has he disappeared like this?'
'Even you,' said her father, quick as always to join issue where soundargument offered itself as a weapon, 'will hardly suppose that a spookeats bacon and drinks coffee,'
'The--the ghost,' said Helen, with a humorous glance in her eyes,'might have whisked him away by the hair of the head!'
He shook her hand off and strode forward impatiently. Again and againhe shouted 'Hello!' and 'Ho, there! Ho, I say!' There came no answer.The bacon was growing cold; the fire burning down. He turned aperplexed face towards Helen's eager one.
'It is odd,' he said irritably. He was not a man to relish beingbaffled.
Helen had picked up something which she had found near the spring, andwas studying it intently. He came to her side to see what it was. Thething was a freshly-peeled willow wand, left upright where one end hadbeen thrust down into the soft earth. The other end had been split;into the cleft was thrust a single feather from a bluebird's wing.
Helen's eyes looked unusually large and bright. She turned her head,glancing over her shoulder.
'Some one was here just a minute ago,' she cried softly. 'He wascamping for the night. Something frightened him away. It might havebeen the noise we made. Or--what do you think, papa?'
'I never attempt to solve a problem until the necessary data are givenme,' he announced academically.
'Or,' went on Helen, at whose age one does not bother about suchtrifles as necessary data, 'he may not have run away at all. He may behiding in the bushes, listening to us. There are all kinds of peoplein the desert. Don't you remember how the sheriff came to San Juanjust before we left? He was looking for a man who had killed a minerfor his gold dust.'
'You must curb a proclivity for such fanciful trash.' He cleared histhroat for the utterance. He put out his hand and Helen hastilyslipped her own into it. Silently they returned to their own campsite, the girl carrying in her free hand the wand tipped with thebluebird feather. Several times they paused and looked back. Therewas nothing but the glow of the dwindling fire and the sweep of sand,covered sparsely with ragged bushes. New stars flared out; the spiritof the night descended upon the desert. As the world seemed to drawfurther and further away from them, these two beings, strange to thevastness engulfing them, huddled closer together. They spoke little,always in lowered voices. Between words they were listening, awaitingthat which did not come.