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 London
Charles 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 Arizona
and New Mexico lies an eternal spell of silence and mystery. Across
the sand-ridges come many foreign things, both animate and inanimate,
which are engulfed in its immensity, which frequently disappear for all
time from the sight of men, blotted out like a bird which flies free
from a lighted room into the outside darkness. As though in
compensation for that which it has taken, the desert from time to time
allows new marvels, riven from its vitals, to emerge.
Though death-still, it has a voice which calls ceaselessly to those
human hearts tuned to its messages: hostile and harsh, it draws and
urges; repellent, it profligately awards health and wealth; inviting,
it kills. And always it keeps its own counsel; it is without peer in
its lonesomeness, and without confidants; it heaps its sand over its
secrets to hide them from its flashing stars.
You see the bobbing ears of a pack-animal and the dusty hat and stoop
shoulders of a man. They are symbols of mystery. They rise briefly
against the skyline, they are gone into the grey distance. Something
beckons or something drives. They are lost to human sight, perhaps to
human memory, like a couple of chips drifting out into the ocean.
Patient time may witness their return; it is still likely that soon
another incarnation will have closed for man and beast, that they will
have left to mark their passing a few glisteningly white bones,
polished untiringly by tiny sand-chisels in the grip of the desert
winds. 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 gold
and mad with thirst.
To push out along into this immensity is to evince the heart of a brave
man or the brain of a fool. The endeavour to traverse the forbidden
garden of silence implies on the part of the agent an adventurous
nature. Hence it would seem no great task to catalogue those human
beings who set their backs to the gentler world and press forward into
the naked embrace of this merciless land. Yet as many sorts and
conditions 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 and
evanescent; 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 its
head and sniffed, pushed forward eagerly, its nostrils twitching as it
turned a little more toward the north, going straight toward the
water-hole. The pack was slipping as far to one side as it had listed
to the other half an hour ago; in the restraining rope there were a
dozen intricate knots where one would have amply sufficed. The horse
broke into a trot, blazing its own trail through the mesquite; a parcel
slipped; the slack rope grew slacker because of the subsequent
readjustment; half a dozen bundles dropped after the first. A voice,
thin and irritable, shouted 'Whoa!' and the man in turn was briefly
outlined against the pale sky as he scrambled up the ridge. He was a
little 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 his
blistered face. From his other hand trailed a big handkerchief. He
was perhaps fifty or sixty. He called 'Whoa!' again, and made what
haste he could after his horse.
A moment later a second horse appeared against the sky, following the
man, topping the ridge, passing on. In silhouette it appeared no
normal animal but some weird monstrosity, a misshapen body covered
everywhere with odd wart-like excrescences. Close by, these unique
growths resolved themselves into at least a score of canteens and
water-bottles of many shapes and sizes, strung together with bits of
rope. Undoubtedly the hand which had tied the other knots had
constructed these. This horse in turn sniffed and went forward with a
quickened 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 her
hand. Here the similarity ended. She wore an outdoor costume, a
little thing appropriate enough for her environment. And yet it was
peculiarly appropriate to femininity. It disclosed the pleasing lines
of a pretty figure. Her fatigue seemed less than the man's. Her youth
was pronounced, assertive. She alone of the four paused more than an
instant upon the slight eminence; she put back her head and looked up
at the few stars that were shining; she listened to the hushed voice of
the desert. She drew a scarf away from her neck and let the cooling
air breathe upon her throat. The throat was round; no doubt it was
soft and white, and, like her whole small self, seductively feminine.
Having communed with the night, the girl withdrew her gaze from the sky
and hearkened to her companion. His voice, now remarkably eager and
young for a man of his years, came to her clearly through the clumps of
bushes.
'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 in
pursuit, calling to him to wait for me. It appeared that he had become
suddenly refractory: they do that sometimes. I was going to reprimand
him; I thought that it might be necessary to chastise him, as sometimes
a man must do to retain the mastery. But I stayed my hand. The animal
had not run away at all! He actually knew what he was doing. He came
straight here. And what do you think he discovered? What do you
imagine brought him? You would never guess.'
'Water?' suggested the girl, coming on.
Something of the man's excitement had gone from his voice when he
answered. He was like a child who has propounded a riddle that has
been too readily guessed.
'How did you know?'
'I didn't know. But the horses must be thirsty. Of course they would
go 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 a
touch of dignity.
The two horses, side by side, were drinking noisily from a small
depression into which the water oozed slowly. The girl watched them a
moment abstractedly, sighed and sat down in the sand, her hands in her
lap.
'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 his
eyes took stock of the drooping figure. 'But,' he added more
cheerfully, 'we are getting somewhere, my girl; we are getting
somewhere.'
'Are we?' she murmured to herself rather than for his ears. And when
he 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 of
action? If a man wants to--to gather cherries, let him go to a cherry
tree; if he seeks pearls, let him find out the favourite habitat of the
pearl oyster; if he desires a--a hat, let him go to the hatter's. It
is the simplest thing in the world, though fools have woven mystery and
difficulty 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 fire
started.'
'We can dispense with the fire,' he told her, setting to work with the
first knot to come under his fingers. 'There is coffee in the thermos
bottle 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 the
cities know that the surest safeguard against a ravening beast is a
camp-fire. For a little while the man strove with his tangled rope;
she was lost to him through the mesquite. Suddenly she came running
back.
'Papa,' she whispered excitedly. 'There's some one already here.'
She led him a few paces and pointed, making him stoop to see. Under
the tangle of a thin brush patch he made out what she had seen. But a
short distance from the spot they had elected for their camp site was a
tiny fire blazing merrily.
'Ahem,' said Helen's father, shifting nervously and looking at his
daughter as though for an explanation of this oddity. 'This is
peculiar. 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. 'But
why does he hold back and thereby give one an impression of a desire on
his part for secrecy? Why does he not come forward and make himself
known? I do not mean to alarm you, my dear, but this is not the way an
honest fellow-wayfarer should behave. Wait here for me; I shall
investigate.' Intrepidly he walked toward the fire. Helen kept close
to his side.
'Hello!' he called, when they had taken a dozen steps. They paused and
listened. There was no reply, and Helen's fingers tightened on his
arm. Again he looked to her as though once more he asked the
explanation of her; the look hinted that upon occasion the father
leaned on the daughter more than she on him. He called again. His
voice died away echoless, the silence seeming heavier than before.
When one of the horses behind them, turning from the water, trod upon a
dry twig, both man and girl started. Then Helen laughed and went
forward again.
Since the fire had not lighted itself, it merely bespoke the presence
of a man. Men had no terror to her. In the ripe fullness of her
something less than twenty years she had encountered many of them.
While with due modesty she admitted that there was much in the world
that she did not know, she considered that she 'knew' men.
The two pressed on together. Before they had gone far they were
greeted by the familiar and vaguely comforting odours of boiling coffee
and frying bacon. Still they saw no one. They pushed through the last
clump of bushes and stood by the fire. On the coals was the black
coffee-pot. Cunningly placed upon two stones over a bed of coals was
the frying-pan. Helen stooped instinctively and lifted it aside; the
half-dozen slices of bacon were burned black.
'Hello!' shouted the man a third time, for nothing in the world was
more clear than that whoever had made the fire and begun his supper
preparations must be within call. But no answer came. Meantime the
night had deepened; there was no moon; the taller shrubs, aspiring to
tree 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 about
her curiously. She found a tin cup; there was no bed, no pack, no
other sign to tell who their neighbour might be. Close by the spot
where she had set down the frying-pan she noted a second spring.
Through an open space in the stunted desert growth the trail came in
from the north. Glancing northward she saw for the first time the
outline of a low hill. She stepped quickly to her father's side and
once 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 no
place 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.' She
pointed. 'There is a hill. There will be a little ring of hills. In
the centre of the basin they make would be the pool. And you know what
we heard about it before we left San Juan. This whole country is
strange, somehow.'
'Strange?' he queried challengingly. 'What do you mean?'
She had not relaxed her hand on his arm. Instead, her fingers
tightened 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 half
frightened but conscious of an eerie influence of the still loneliness
and experiencing the first shiver of excitement as she stirred her own
fancy. '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 come
from? Who made it? Why has he disappeared like this?'
'Even you,' said her father, quick as always to join issue where sound
argument offered itself as a weapon, 'will hardly suppose that a spook
eats 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 again
he shouted 'Hello!' and 'Ho, there! Ho, I say!' There came no answer.
The bacon was growing cold; the fire burning down. He turned a
perplexed face towards Helen's eager one.
'It is odd,' he said irritably. He was not a man to relish being
baffled.
Helen had picked up something which she had found near the spring, and
was studying it intently. He came to her side to see what it was. The
thing was a freshly-peeled willow wand, left upright where one end had
been 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 was
camping for the night. Something frightened him away. It might have
been the noise we made. Or--what do you think, papa?'
'I never attempt to solve a problem until the necessary data are given
me,' he announced academically.
'Or,' went on Helen, at whose age one does not bother about such
trifles as necessary data, 'he may not have run away at all. He may be
hiding in the bushes, listening to us. There are all kinds of people
in the desert. Don't you remember how the sheriff came to San Juan
just before we left? He was looking for a man who had killed a miner
for his gold dust.'
'You must curb a proclivity for such fanciful trash.' He cleared his
throat for the utterance. He put out his hand and Helen hastily
slipped her own into it. Silently they returned to their own camp
site, the girl carrying in her free hand the wand tipped with the
bluebird feather. Several times they paused and looked back. There
was nothing but the glow of the dwindling fire and the sweep of sand,
covered sparsely with ragged bushes. New stars flared out; the spirit
of the night descended upon the desert. As the world seemed to draw
further and further away from them, these two beings, strange to the
vastness engulfing them, huddled closer together. They spoke little,
always in lowered voices. Between words they were listening, awaiting
that which did not come.