Helen Knew
Second only to her father's was Helen's eager interest in the world
about her. The ride back to Desert Valley through the rich moonlight
was an experience never to be forgotten. She and Howard alone in what
appeared an enchanted and limitless garden of silence and of slumber,
their horses' feet falling without noise as though upon deep carpets,
the bright moon and its few attendant stars working the harsh land of
the day over into a soft sweet country of subtle allurement--the
picture of all this was to spring up vivid and vital in many an idle
hour of the days to follow. Little speech passed between them that
night: they rode close together, they forgot the wagon which rocked and
jolted along somewhere far behind them; they were content to be content
without analysing. And at the end of the ride, when she felt Alan's
strong hands aiding her from her saddle, Helen sighed.
The next morning early she and her father left Desert Valley, going
straight to the professor's destination in the Last Ridge country.
They did not see Howard, who had breakfasted and ridden away before
dawn, leaving with the kitchen boy a brief note of apology. The note
said that his business was urgent and that he would call to see them in
a day or so; further that Tod Barstow and Chuck Evans had orders to
haul their goods in the wagon for them and to help them pitch camp.
Their departure was like a small procession. The wagon, carrying all
their household goods, went ahead. Longstreet's two pack-horses were
tied to the tail end of the wagon and trotted along with slack
tie-ropes. Behind them rode the Longstreets upon saddle-horses, which
Chuck Evans had brought to the house for them with his employer's
compliments.
'Al said you was to ride this one, miss,' said Chuck Evans.
It was the black mare on which Howard had ridden into their camp the
first morning--Sanchia or Helen.
'What is her name?' asked Helen quite innocently when she had mounted.
Chuck Evans grinned his characteristic happy grin.
'Funny thing about that mare's name,' he conceded brightly.
'What do you mean?' queried Helen.
'Yesterday,' he explained, 'I heard Al talking to her down to the
stable. He does talk to a horse more'n any man I know, and what's more
they talk back to him. 'S a fact, miss. And what he said was, "Helen,
you little black devil, I wouldn't sell you for a couple million
dollars; no, not now." Calling her Helen, understand?'
'Well?' asked the other Helen.
'And,' went on Chuck Evans, 'that mare's been on the ranch six months
and never did I hear him call her another thing than Sanchia.'
'Sanchia?' she repeated after him. 'What a pretty name!' And then,
more innocently than ever, 'I don't think I ever heard the name before.
She was named after somebody, I suppose?'
'Sure,' laughed Chuck. 'After a certain lady known in these parts as
Mrs. Murray. Her name is Sanchia.'
'Oh!' said Helen.
'And,' continued Chuck, 'that ain't all. This morning, just like he
knew folks was going to ask her name, he tells me: "Say, Chuck; this
here mare's name, if anyone asks you, is Sweetheart. Don't it just
suit her?" he says. And when you come right down to it----'
'Hey, Chuck,' called Tod Barstow from his high seat. 'Get a move on.
We better get started before it's hot.'
So Chuck Evans departed and Helen sat straight in the saddle, her eyes
a little puzzled. When her father rode to her side she was adjusting a
bluebird's feather in her hatband. The feather, pointing straight up,
gave a stiff, almost haughty look to the young woman's headgear.
They crossed the big meadow, wound for an hour among the little hills,
and then began a slow, gradual climb along a devious dusty road. Less
and ever less fertile grew the dry earth under them, more still and hot
and hostile the land into which they journeyed. In three hours,
jogging along, they came to Last Ridge.
'There's only one spot up this way that's fit to live in for more'n an
hour at the stretch,' Barstow told them. 'There's a spring and some
shade there. We'll drive right under it, and from there up we'll have
to finish the job monkey-style.'
He stopped his horses in a little flat, just under a steep wall of
reddish cliff. Here he and Chuck Evans unhitched and here the horses
were tethered. Helen looked about her curiously, and at first her
heart sank. There was nothing to greet her but rock and sweltering
patches of sand and gravelly soil, and sparse, harsh brush. She turned
and looked back toward the sweep of Desert Valley; there she saw green
fields, trees, grazing stock. It was like the Promised Land compared
with this bleak desolate spot her father had chosen. She turned to
him, words of expostulation forming. But his eyes were bright, his
look triumphant. He had already dismounted and was poking about here
and there, examining everything at hand from a sand-storm stratum at
the cliff's foot to loose dirt in the drifts and the hardy, wiry grass
growing where it could. Helen turned away with a sigh.
From here the two Desert Valley men went forward on foot to show them
the spot which Alan Howard had chosen as the most likely site for a
camp. They walked to the end of the flat where the reddish, walls shut
in; here was an angle of cliff and in the angle was a cleft some three
or four feet wide. They passed into this and found that it offered a
steep, winding way upward. But the distance was not great, and in ten
minutes they had come to the top. Here again was a level space, a wide
tableland, offering less of the desert menace and hostility and
something more of charm and the promise of comfort. For a gentle
breeze stirred here, and off yonder were scattered pines and cedars and
in a clump of trees was a ring of verdure. They went to it and saw the
spring. It was but a sort of mud-hole of yellowish, thickish water.
But water it was, with green grass growing about it and with the shade
of dusty trees over it. Beyond were the strange-shaped uplands,
distant cliffs and peaks broken into a thousand grotesque forms, with
bands of colour in horizontal strata across them as though they had
been painted with a mighty brush.
'What though I have never been here until this second?' cried
Longstreet triumphantly. 'I know it, all of it, every inch and
millimetre of it! I could have made a map of it and laid the colours
in. I have read of it, studied it--I have written of this country!
Having been right in everything else, am I to be mistaken in the matter
of its minerals? I said give me three months to find gold! Why, it's
a matter to wonder at if I don't locate my mine in three days!'
The two men grinned readily. Before now they had heard men talk with
the gold fever upon them.
'There's gold pretty near everywhere,' admitted Barstow, 'if a man can
make it pay. But right now I guess me and Chuck had better start
getting your stuff up the rocks. Suit you all right here for a camp?'
Helen turned and looked toward the south. There, broad and fertile
below her, running away across the miles, were the Howard acres. She
even made out the clutter of head-quarters buildings. Somehow she
fancied that the sweep of homely view snatched from these bleak uplands
something of their loneliness. When her father announced that this was
just the spot he had longed for, Helen nodded her approval. Here for a
time was to be home.
Throughout the day and until dusk the four of them laboured, making
camp. Barstow and Evans lugged the various articles, boxes, rolls of
bedding, up through the cleft in the rocks. They had brought in the
wagon-bed some loose boards of various sizes; these they made into a
rough floor. At the four corners of the floor they erected studding of
two-by-four lumber. These they braced and steadied; they nailed other
lengths of two-by-four material along the tops, outlining walls; they
hacked and sawed and hammered and nailed to such advantage that in the
end they had the misshapen frame of a cabin, rafters and all. Then
over the rafters and along the sides they secured the canvas destined
for the purpose. Doors and windows were canvas flaps; the sheet-iron
stove was set up on four flat stones for legs; the stovepipe was run
through a hole in the roof. And when Chuck Evans and Tod Barstow,
amateurs in the carpenter's line, stood back and wiped the sweat off
their brown faces and looked with fond and prideful eyes at their
handiwork, Helen and her father were no whit less delighted.
'If you want more room after a while,' said Barstow, 'it'd be easy to
tack more sheds on and run canvas over them, just the same as what we
done. Me and Chuck would come up most any time and lend a hand.'
The breeze stiffened and the crazy edifice shivered.
'I don't know as I'd make it much bigger,' said Evans. 'If a real blow
come on and the wind got inside--Say, Tod, how about a few guy ropes?
Huh?'
Barstow agreed, and they brought what ropes they had in the wagon and
'staked her out, same as if she was a runaway horse,' as Chuck put it.
In other words, they ran one rope from the rear end of the ridge of the
house to the base of a conveniently-located pine tree; then they
secured the second rope to the other end of the ridge-pole and anchored
it to a big boulder. Meanwhile Helen opened some cans and made coffee
on the newly-adjusted stove and they sat on the grass by the spring and
made their evening meal. After which Barstow and Evans went down to
their wagon and returned to Desert Valley. And James Edward Longstreet
and his daughter sat alone upon their camp-stools in front of their new
abode and looked off across the valley and into the distances.
The day departed slowly, lingeringly. The soft night came little by
little, a misty veil floating into a hollow yonder, a star shining, the
breeze strengthening and cooling. Before the twilight was gone and
while one might look for miles across the billowing landscapes, they
saw a horseman riding down in the valley; he appeared hardly more than
a vague moving dot. And yet----
'It's Mr. Howard!' cried Helen.
Longstreet withdrew his straining eyes and turned them wonderingly upon
his daughter.
'How in the world do you know?' he asked.
Helen smiled, a quiet smile of transcendent wisdom.
'Oh, I just knew he'd come over.' she said.