In Desert Valley
The world is an abiding-place of glory. He who cannot see it dyed and
steeped in colourful hues owes it to his own happiness to gird up his
loins and move on into another of the splendid chambers of the vast
house God has given us; if the daily view before him no longer offers
delight, it is merely and simply because his eyes have grown accustomed
to what lies just before them and are wearied with it. For, after all,
one but requires a complete change of environment to quicken eye and
interest, to fill again the world with colour. Thus, put the man of
the sea in the heart of the mountains and he stares about him at a
thousand little things which pass unnoted under the calm eyes of the
mountaineer. Or take up the dweller of the heights and set him aboard
a wind-jammer bucking around the Horn and he will marvel at a sailor's
song or the wide arc of a dizzy mast. So Helen Longstreet now, lifted
from a college city of the East and set down upon the level floor of
the West; so, in the less nervous way of greater years, her father.
The three were full two hours in walking from the base of the hills to
Howard's ranch headquarters. Continuously the girl found fresh
interests leaping into her quick consciousness. They waded knee-deep
in lush grass of a meadow into which Howard had brought water from the
hills; among the grass were strange flowers, red and yellow and blue,
rising on tall stalks to lift their heads to the golden sun. From the
grass rose birds, startled by their approach, one whirring away
voicelessly from a hidden nest, another, a yellow and black-throated
lark, singing joyously. They crossed the meadow and came up the
swelling slope of a gentle hill; upon its flatfish top were oaks; in
the shade of the oaks three black-and-white cows looked with mild,
approving eyes upon their three tiny black-and-white calves. With the
pictured memory unfading, Helen's eyes were momentarily held by an
eagle balancing against the sky; the great bird, as though he were
conscious that he held briefly centre stage, folded his wings and
dropped like a falling stone; a ground squirrel shrilled its terror
through the still afternoon and went racing with jerking tail toward
safety; the great bird saw the frantic animal scuttle down a hole and
unfolded its wings; again it balanced briefly, close to the ground;
then in a wide spiral reascended the sky.
Came then wide fields with cattle browsing and drowsing; it was the
first time Helen had harkened to a bellowing bull, the first time she
had seen one of his breed with bent head pawing up grass and earth and
flinging them over the straight line of his perfect back; she sensed
his lusty challenge and listened breathlessly to the answering trumpet
call from a distant, hidden corral. She saw a herd of young horses,
twenty of them perhaps, racing wildly with flying manes and tails and
flaring nostrils; a strangely garbed man on horseback raced after them,
shot by them, heading them off, a wide loop of rope hissing above his
head. She saw the rope leap out, seeming to the last alive and endowed
with the will of the horseman; she heard the man laugh softly as the
noose tightened about the slender neck of one of the fleeing horses.
'That's Gaucho,' said Howard. 'He's my horse breaker.'
But already the girl's interests had winged another way. Within ten
steps they had come to a new view from a new vantage point. From some
trick of sweep and slope the valley seemed more spacious than before;
through a natural avenue in an oak grove they saw distinctly the still
distant walls of the ranch house; the sun touched them and they gleamed
back a spotless white. Helen was all eagerness to come to the main
building; from afar, here of late having seen others of its type, she
knew that it would be adobe and massive, old and cloaked with the
romance of another time; that even doors and windows, let into the
thick walls, would be of another period; that somewhere there would be
a trellis with a sprawling grape-vine over it; that no doubt in the
yard or along the fence would be the yellow Spanish roses.
Below the house they came to the stable. Here Howard paused to tie the
three horses, but not to unpack or unsaddle.
'I haven't anybody just hanging around to do things like this for me,'
he said lightly as he rejoined his guests. 'Not until I get the whole
thing paid off. What men I've got are jumping on the job from sun-up
to dark. I'll turn you loose in the house and then look after the
stock myself.'
They passed several smaller outbuildings, some squat and
ancient-looking adobes, others newer frame buildings, all neatly
whitewashed. And then the home itself. Quite as Helen had
provisioned, there was a low wooden fence about the garden; over the
gateway were tangled rose vines disputing possession with a gnarled
grape; the walk from the gate was outlined with the protruding ends of
white earthen bottles, so in vogue in the southland a few years ago; a
wide, coolly-dark veranda ran the length of the building; through
three-feet-thick walls the doorways invited to further coolness.
Howard stood aside for them to enter. They found underfoot a bare
floor; it had been sprinkled from a watering pot earlier in the
afternoon. The room was big and dusky; a few rawhide-bottomed chairs,
a long rough table painted moss-green, some shelves with books,
furnished the apartment. At one end was a fireplace.
Howard tossed his hat to the table and opened a door at one end of the
room. Before them was a hallway; a few steps down were two doors, one
on each hand, heavy old doors of thick slabs of oak, hand-hewn and with
rough iron bands across them, top and bottom, the big nail heads
showing. Howard threw one open, then the other.
'Your rooms,' he said. 'Yours, Miss Helen, opens upon the bath.
You'll have to go down the hall to wash, professor. Make yourselves
free with the whole house. I'll feed the horses and be with you in
three shakes.'
Before his boot heels had done echoing through the living-room it was
an adventure to Helen to peep into her room. She wondered what she was
going to find. Thus far she had had no evidence of a woman upon the
ranch. She knew the sort of housekeeper her father had demonstrated
himself upon occasions when she had been away visiting; she fully
counted upon seeing the traces of a man's hand here. But she was
delightfully surprised. There was a big, old-fashioned walnut bed
neatly made, covered in smooth whiteness by an ironed spread. There
was a washstand with white pitcher like a ptarmigan in the white nest
of a bowl, several towels with red bands towards their ends flanking
it. There was a little rocking-chair, a table with some books. The
window, because of the thickness of the wall, offered an inviting seat
whence one could look into the tangle of roses of the _patio_.
'It is like a dream,' cried Helen. 'A dream come true.'
She glanced into her father's room. It was like hers in its neatness
and appointments, but did not have her charming outlook. She was
turning again into her own room when she heard Howard's voice outside.
'Angela,' he was calling, 'I have brought home friends. You will see
that they have everything. There is a young lady. I am going to the
stable.'
She heard Angela's mumbled answer. So there was, after all, at least
one woman at the ranch. Helen awaited her expectantly, wondering who
and what she might be. Then through her window she saw Angela come
shuffling into the _patio_. She was an old woman, Mexican or Indian,
her hair grey and black in streaks, her body bent over her thumping
stick and wrapped in a heavy shawl. Never had Helen seen such
night-black, fathomless, inscrutable eyes; never had she looked upon a
face so creased and lined or skin so like dry, wrinkled parchment.
Angela pounded across the floor looking like a witch with her great
stick, and waved a bony hand to indicate the bathroom. Catching her
first glimpse of Longstreet, who came to his daughter's door, she
demanded:
'Your papa?'
'Yes,' Helen answered her.
'You frien's Señor Alan?' And when Helen, hesitating briefly, said
'Yes,' Angela asked:
'You come from Santa Rita, _no_?'
'No,' said Helen. 'From San Juan and beyond.'
'You come far,' mumbled Angela. She scrutinized the girl keenly. Then
abruptly, 'Senor Alan got _muchos amigos_ to-day. Senor Juan Carr
comes; El Joven with him.'
Helen asked politely who these two were Juan Carr and El Joven. But
the old woman merely shook her head and relapsed into silence frankly
studying her. The girl was glad of the interruption when Howard rapped
at the door. His arms were full of bundles.
'I've brought everything I could find that looked like your and your
father's personal traps,' he informed her as he came in and put the
things down on the floor. 'I looked in at the kitchen and figure it
out we've got about twenty or thirty minutes before dinner. Come on,
Angela; give Miss Longstreet a chance to get ready.'
Angela transferred her scrutiny to him; Howard laughed at her
good-humouredly, laid his hand gently on her shrunken shoulder and side
by side they went out.
Helen went singing into her bath, her weary body rested by the thought
of coolness and cleanliness and a change of clothing. Little enough
did she have in the way of clothing, especially for an evening when she
was to meet still other strangers. But certain feminine trinkets had
come with her journeying across the desert, and a freshly laundered
wash dress and a bit of bright ribbon work wonders. When she heard
voices in the _patio_, that of Alan Howard and of another man, this a
sonorous bass, she was ready. She went to her father's door;
Longstreet was in the final stages of his own toilet-making, his face
red and shiny from his towelling, his sparse hair on end, his whole
being in that condition of bewildering untidiness which comes just
before the ultimate desired orderliness quite as the thick darkness
before the dawn. In this case the rose fingers of Aurora were Helen's
own, patting, pulling and readjusting. Within three minutes she
slipped her hand through the arm of a quiet scholarly looking gentleman
and together they paced sedately into the _patio_.
Howard jumped up from a bench and dragged forward his friend John Carr,
introducing him to his new friends. And in employing the word friend
and repeating it, he spoke it as though he meant it. Here was a
characteristic of the man; he was ready from dawn until dark to put out
his big square hand to the world and bring the world home to his home
for supper and bed and all that both connote.
But Helen's interest, at least for the flitting moment, was less for
him than for his friend; Howard she had known since dawn, hence hers
had been ample time to assign him his proper place in her human
catalogue. Now she turned her level eyes upon the new man.
Immediately she knew that if Alan Howard were an interesting type, then
no less so, though in his own way, was John Carr. A bigger man, though
not so tall; an older man by something like half a dozen years, but
still young in the eyes and about the clean-shaven mouth; a man with
clear, unwinking bluish-grey eyes and a fine head carried erect upon a
massive brown throat. Carr was dressed well in a loose serge suit; he
wore high-topped tan boots; his soft shirt was of good silk; his
personality exuded both means and importance. He glanced at Longstreet
and looked twice or three times as long at Longstreet's daughter.
Helen was quite used to that, and it was for no particular reason that
she felt her colour heighten a little. She slipped her hand through
her father's arm again and they went in to supper. Howard, having
indicated the way, clapped Carr upon the thick shoulders and the two
friends brought up the rear.
Helen was still wondering where was the second guest; Angela had
distinctly mentioned Juan Carr and another she termed El Joven. Yet as
they passed from the _patio_ into the big cool dining-room with its
white cloth and plain service and stiff chairs, she saw no one here.
Nor did she find any answer in the number of places set, but rather a
confused wonder; the table was the length of the long room, and, at
least in so far as number of plates went, suggested a banquet.
Howard drew out chairs at one end of the table so that the four sat
together.
'The boys will be rolling in for supper in half an hour,' he explained.
'But you folks are hungry and will want to get to bed early, so we are
not waiting for them.'
The 'boys' were, supposedly, the men he had working for him; there must
be close to a score of them. And they all ate at one table, master and
men and guests when he had them.
'Who is El Joven?' asked Helen.
Howard looked puzzled; then his face cleared.
'Angela told you El Joven was here, too?' And to Carr: 'He came with
you, John?'
Carr nodded. Howard then answered Helen.
'That's Angela's pet name for him; it means The Youngster. It is
Barbee, Yellow Barbee the boys call him. He's one of John's men. They
say he's a regular devil-of-a-fellow with the ladies, Miss Helen. Look
out he doesn't break your heart.'
Angela peered in from the kitchen and withdrew. They heard her
guttural utterance, and thereafter a young Indian boy, black of eyes,
slick of plastered hair and snow-white of apron, came in bringing the
soup. Howard nodded at him, saying a pleasant '_Qué hay, Juanito_?'
The boy uncovered the rare whiteness of his splendid teeth in a quick
smile. He began placing the soup. Helen looked at him; he blushed and
withdrew hastily to the kitchen.
Throughout the meal the four talked unconstrainedly; it was as though
they had known one another for a dozen years and intimately.
Longstreet, having pushed aside his soup plate, engaged his host in an
ardent discussion of the undeveloped possibilities of the Last Ridge
country; true, he had never set foot upon it, but he knew the last word
of this land's formation and geological construction, its life history
as it were. All of his life, he admitted freely, he had been a man of
scholarship and theory; the simplest thing imaginable, he held blandly,
was the demonstration of the correctness of his theories. Meantime
Helen talked brightly with John Carr and listened to Carr's voice.
And a voice well worth listening to it was. Its depth was at once
remarkable and pleasing. At first one hearkened to the music of the
rich tone itself rather than to the man's words, just as one may thrill
to the profound cadences of a deep voice singing without heeding the
words of the song. But presently she found herself giving her rapt
attention to Carr's remarks. Here again was one of her own class, a
man of quiet assurance and culture and distinction; he knew Boston and
he knew the desert. For the first time since her father had dragged
her across the continent on his hopelessly mad escapade, Helen felt
that after all the East was not entirely remote from the West. Men
like Howard and his friend John Carr, types she had never looked to
find here, linked East and West.
Juanito, with lowered, bashful eyes, brought coffee, ripe olives from
the can, potato salad, and thick, hot steaks. Soon thereafter the boys
began to straggle in. Helen heard them at the gate, noisy and eager;
for them the supper hour was diurnally a time of a joyous lift of
spirit. They clattered along the porch like a crowd of schoolboys just
dismissed; they washed outside by the kitchen door with much splashing;
they plastered their hair with the common combs and brushes and entered
the shortest way, by the kitchen. They called to each other back and
forth; there was the sound of a tremendous clap as some big open hand
fell resoundingly upon some tempting back and a roar from the stricken
and a gale of booming laughter from the smiter and the scuffle of boots
and the crashing of two big bodies falling. Then they came trooping in
until fifteen or twenty had entered.
One by one Howard introduced them. Plainly none of them knew of
Helen's presence; all of their eyes showed that. Among them were some
few who grew abashed; for the most part they ducked their heads in
acknowledgment and said stiffly, 'Pleased to meet you,' in wooden
manner to both Longstreet and his daughter. But their noisiness
departed from them and they sat down and ate in business-like style.
Never had Helen sat down with so rough a crowd. They were in shirt
sleeves; some wore leathern wrist guards; their vests were open, their
shirts dingy, they were unshaven and their hair grew long and ragged;
they brought with them a smell of horses. There was one man among them
who must have been sixty at the least, a wiry, stoop, white-haired,
white-moustached Mexican. There were boys between seventeen and
nineteen. There were Americans; at least one Swede; a Scotchman;
several who might have been any sort of mixture of southern bloods.
And among them all Helen knew at once, upon the instant that he
swaggered in, El Joven, Yellow Barbee.
The two names fitted him as his two gloves may fit a man's hands; among
the young he was The Youngster, as among blondes he was Yellow Barbee.
His dress was extravagantly youthful; his boots bore the tallest heels,
he was full-panoplied as to ornate wristbands and belt and chaps as
though in full holiday attire; one might wager on the fact of his hat
on a nail outside being the tallest crowned, the widest brimmed. His
face was like a girl's for its smoothness and its prettiness; his eyes
were like blue flowers of sweet innocence; on his forehead his hair was
a cluster of little yellow ringlets. And yet he managed full well to
convey the impression that he was less innocent than insolent, a
somewhat true impression; for from high heels to finger-tips he was a
downright, simon-pure rascal.
Yellow Barbee's eyes fairly invaded Helen's as he jerked her his bow.
They were two youngsters, and in at least, and perhaps in at most, one
matter they were alike: she prided herself that she 'knew' men, and to
Barbee all women were an open, oft-read book.
Plainly Barbee was something of a favourite here; further, being a
visitor, he was potentially of interest to the men who had not been off
the ranch for matters of weeks and months. When Alan Howard and the
professor picked up their conversation, and again Helen found herself
monopolized by John Carr, from here and there about the table came
pointed remarks to Yellow Barbee. Helen, though she listened to Carr
and was never unconscious of her father and Howard, understood, after
the strange fashion of women, all that was being said about her. Early
she gathered that there was, somewhere in the world, a dashing young
woman styled the 'Widow.' Further, she had the quick eyes to see that
Barbee blushed when an old cattle-man with a roguish eye cleared his
throat and made aloud some remark about Mrs. Murray. Yes; Barbee the
insolent, the swaggering, the worldly-wise and conceited Barbee,
actually blushed.
Though the hour was late it was not yet dark when the meal was done.
Somehow Howard was at Helen's side when they went to the living-room
and out to the front porch; Carr started with them, hesitated and held
back, finally stepping over for a word with an old Mexican. Helen
noted that Barbee had moved around the table and was talking with her
father. As she and Howard found chairs on the porch, Longstreet and
Barbee passed them and went out, talking together.