The days immediately following his return to Sylvania were hard ones for
Gard. The few cautious inquiries he had dared to make in the
investigation of his own affairs had resulted in the information that
Jim Texas was dead and that Hart Dowling had left Wyoming and gone on
into Idaho. Gard’s messenger had been unable to get to him on account of
the deep snow.
He read the letter containing this news lying coatless upon the sand,
far beyond the town. The desert was his one solace in the enforced
idleness of waiting for word from Sawyer, for which he had written to
San Francisco. The vast barren seemed in tune with his own mood.
The fierceness of his ache was there; the yearning of his solitude: he
tried to picture the vast sea of sand overgrown with verdure, calling up
cool visions of tree and pool, and gentle growths born of the small
spring rain on the green grass. The picture came before him like a
memory of delicious holidays in lush woods.
It was but a vision however. The scent of the desert was in his
nostrils; the impress of the desert upon his brain. He opened his eyes
and saw again the silent reaches of the waste—wide, untamed,
untamable—and sat up, the better to view the lean landscape.
At his first movement a jack-rabbit, observing him from beneath a
cholla, gathered its swift hind-legs under him and fled, with incredible
rapidity, before the shadow of fear. Gard laughed, but there was
underneath his amusement a sense of the constant deadly strife of the
place. If he had no designs upon the jack-rabbit, plenty of other
creatures had. 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.
The thought brought Gard to a sharpened sense of his own danger, and of
the enemies who, if they but knew, would be so quick to hunt and harry
him. The savagery of it all smote him with a keener desolation. The
armed vegetation, grotesque and menacing; the preying creatures of the
plain; the sand-laden wind that was constantly tearing down and
rebuilding the shifting scene—were not all these but a commentary upon
the mad, devouring human world about him?
But the wind that laid bare the earth’s nakedness clothed and healed as
well, purifying the air and cleansing the waste. The give as well as the
take of life was there. Death was in the desert, but not decay. Gard,
feeling it all in the whirl of his emotions, knew that the grim plain
which mothered the whole fierce brood had mothered him as well, giving
him back health and strength from her own burning heart, and he loved
her, as her children must.
His thoughts turned inevitably to the glade. He had a whimsical idea
that his trouble would all seem easier if he could but talk it over with
Jinny. Deep down, however, he knew better. Not even to that faithful
listener could he have voiced the longing of his whole nature for Helen
Anderson. He cherished the thought of her in his secret heart, going
over, minute by minute, the hours they had spent together. Each word of
hers, each look, gesture, had its special power of endearment!
What if he were to tell her the whole story, would she believe him?
Would she consent to go away with him into a new life? He could realize
enough from the mine to make such a life full of rich possibilities, and
there were far countries enough!
But what sort of a man would it be, who could ask the woman he loved to
help him live a lie? He asked himself the question and awoke to a
realization of his further folly. What right had he even to dream of
her—to imagine that she could ever care for him at all? Even though he
should stand before her without a shadow in his past he would be a brave
man who dared raise his eyes to her. How could he, of all men?
Then he remembered Westcott. He had seen with his own eyes that _he_
dared. Could that man ever hope to win her?
The torture of this thought drove him out over the desert at noon, when
the sky closed brassy-yellow above him, and the heat-reddened air over
the sand seemed the hue of his own thoughts. He fought his way through
it to peace, far out in the open, when the afternoon wind was driving
the heat of the plain skyward, and seaward over the mountains, and he
came back against that cleansing breath, his wonted strong self, to a
conference with Kate Hallard. She was bitter against Westcott that day,
breathing out wrath, and the desire for vengeance.
“If you’ve ever noticed it,” Gard said, “there’s a kind of
reasonableness in the way things happen, even when they look black. They
happen out of each other; and there’s Something managing them, no matter
how it looks, sometimes. I’ve found that out.”
“I’d like to help in the managin’,” Mrs. 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.”
He pondered his own saying for a moment, repeating it as if to reassure
himself.
“That’s sure right.” He took up the thread again.
“It makes me think of a game I played once at a party I went to, when I
was a kid, back in the states. They had a big, round paper apple fixed
up, with something in it for each of us; and we each had a string given
us to follow up till we came to the end and each found what belonged to
him. Ever see anything like that?”
Mrs. Hallard nodded.
“They worked a game o’ that sort once at some Christmas doin’s where I
was raised. Did you ever think o’ me goin’ to Sunday School?” she asked,
with a bitter little laugh.
“Sure I did.” Gard went on with his simile. “A man’s got to hold on to
his own string,” he said. “And follow it up till he gets to the core of
the apple. He’ll find his own share there. This Westcott, he’s trying to
haul on other folkses’ lines, as well’s his own, and that gets things in
a mix-up. We’ve got to try and make him play the thing right; but it
ain’t our party, and therefore it ain’t our job to throw him out of the
game altogether.”
Mrs. Hallard’s brows were knit in the effort to follow. She had not
herself learned, as yet, to lean upon the logic of events, and vengeance
was a part of her own theory of life. Then, because she seemed to find
no thoroughfare through the subject, she turned abruptly away from it.
“I met up with your Miss Helen Anderson yesterday,” she said, suddenly.
The light in Gard’s face was revealing, but he merely stood, expectant,
until she had told him the whole of the encounter at Old Joe Papago’s,
even to Helen’s proffer of friendship.
“Bless her!” the man murmured, with face illumined. “Ain’t she a brick,
though?”
“She’s better ’n a brick,” said Kate Hallard, promptly. “She’s a real
woman, with a lovin’ honest heart. Look here, Mr. Gabriel Gard! Be you
goin’ to stand round with your quirt in your hand, while that there
Westcott devil rides off the range with her?”
Gard’s face was pale, and the sweat stood upon his forehead.
“Don’t!” cried he, sharply. “You don’t know what you’re talking about! A
man’s got to follow his own line, I tell you, and get it clear before
him, before he asks any woman to take hold of it with him!”
He turned abruptly and left her. Yes: that was what he must do. Whatever
was to be met, he must meet it, and clear the way, before he took one
step nearer Helen.
“But it’s hard to wait,” he muttered, pacing the desert with clenched
hands; “hard as wickedness!”
The stage that night brought him a letter from San Francisco. Sawyer, it
told him, had left the city. The writer believed that he had gone to
Arizona for the winter. He was thought to be somewhere on a ranch in the
neighborhood of the Navajo reservation. Gard read that with a little
feeling of dismay. He did not care to go up there. He had grown
confident that he was not likely to be recognized; but still, there was
danger, and he wanted to keep clear of complications until such time as
he was ready to act for himself. If anything should happen to him he had
no one to take up his work on the outside. He must find someone whom he
could trust.
Suddenly he bethought himself of Sandy Larch. They were friends. He
could trust Sandy, and he would.
He spent a long time that evening, writing a letter of instructions for
Sandy Larch to read, in the event of any failure in his own plans. This
he put carefully inside a worn memorandum book, and did the whole up in
a neat packet which he meant to leave with the foreman, together with a
heavy money-belt which he was then himself wearing. If necessity arose
he would have to trust much to the foreman’s shrewd judgment in action,
but at least he would fix things so that Sandy should not be acting in
the dark.
He got an early start in the morning, and rode out to the Palo Verde.
Morgan Anderson was away. He had left at daylight, to go down into
Mexico, Sandy Larch explained, on some mining business. Incidentally, he
was going to see about some choice lemon trees that he had set his heart
upon, and before their arrival ground must be broken to receive them.
“So it’s up to us to git them workin’ cows gentled an’ onto their job,”
the foreman told Gard; “We’re goin’ to bust ’em out right now.”
“Say,” he added, “That lawyer-sharp ’s here. Came down last night, to
see the _patron_; he’s goin’ on to Sylvania, I guess. He said somethin’
about it, awhile ago.”
“I came out to see you on a little business matter, Sandy,” Gard had
begun, when one of the cow-punchers demanded the foreman’s attention.
Ere he could turn back to Gard, Westcott came down from the casa and
mounted his horse which was standing at the rail.
He greeted Gard curtly. “Going to stay and see the fun?” He queried,
with a jaunty air of being entirely at home. “I think I will, too. We’ll
be glad to have you.”
The future working-stock had been removed to an outlying corral, to make
room for the horses the men had been working out. The Palo Verde was
short of men that season, and Sandy was obliged to plan his work
carefully. The punchers who were to break in the cattle were grouped
now, and ready for the fray.
“Come on,” the foreman called to Gard, who had tossed his saddlebags
down in front of Sandy’s shack, and the outfit went tearing across the
sand to the outer corrals.
A wagon and a plow had been hauled out to the scene of action the night
before. The principles of gentling the steers were brief and
fundamental. Two punchers threw their ropes over the horns of one big
brute and dragged him out upon the desert, while two others brought up
his yoke-fellow. 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.
“Heap tallee fun,” he explained. “Me come look see.”
Sandy Larch and Manuel had already brought out a steer. Broome threw his
rope next, cursing roundly at the greenhorn who was helping him, and
whose first wild throw covered the horns of the wrong animal. Since it
would be quicker work for him to change than for the other, Broome
released his “cow,” the big steer that had run him from the corral the
week before, and took hold with the greenhorn.
The brutes were yoked and hitched to the wagon, and the fun began with
Chang’s precipitate and unpremeditated departure from the vehicle. He
rolled over and got to his feet as the cowboys started out over the
sand, pell-mell, “pully haul,” in a medley of shrieks and oaths and
thunderous bellowings. The spectators of the proceedings kept along upon
the flanks of the procession, shouting encouragement or derision to the
sweating cowboys as they galloped, and occasionally lending a hand so
far as to lean over and apply the spur to one or the other resisting
“bos.” In two minutes’ time the wildly gyrating mass was well out on the
plain.
Then from the corral came the sound of a sudden crash. A huge red and
white bulk hurled itself over the bars, and the steer that Broome had
released came charging out, mad with rage and fear.
For an instant he stood dazed by the success of his own exploit. None of
the other cattle had followed. He alone had possessed the wit and
prowess to essay the barrier, one bar of which the greenhorn had failed
to secure.
The great brute’s hesitation was brief. For an instant he pawed the
sand, bellowing challenge to the world; then, head down and tail up, he
started like a streak of lightning for the only man on foot.
Wing Chang had already realized his danger, and was flying for his life,
his pigtail streaming behind him, his yellow face distorted by fright.
The outfit wheeled and took notice.
“Wow! Wow! Fli’ gun. Allee samee fli’ gun!”
The high-pitched shrieks of the terrified Chinamen rose above the noise
of hoofs, the shouts of men, the bellowing of cattle. On he sped, the
mighty bulk of his pursuer flashing along in what looked like a
continuous streak of red, behind him.
“Hell!” One of the punchers ejaculated. “It’s us to be hunting a new
cook!”
The next instant his bronco’s heels were twinkling as he raced to the
rescue.
Gard had already started. He had no rope, but he was nearest the scene,
and he saw, as did the others, that no rope could be flung in time. He
was sending his pony along at full speed, minded to get in and head
“bos” off. It was Wing Chang’s only hope.
The great steer was already perilously near, when the Chinaman stumbled,
falling his full length on the sand. His yells still pierced the air in
high falsetto, and his feet continued the motions of running, flinging
up and down with the regularity of pistons as his long yellow fingers
clutched the desert.
Down came the foe! An instant, and the thing would be done; but in
between him and his yelling victim flashed a man and a horse, and Gard,
reaching down, caught the Chinaman by the belt.
A quick, skilful jerk brought him up as the pony dashed on, and in the
same instant the cowboy’s rope caught the steer by one upflung hind
hoof. The great brute turned a clean somersault in the air, and landed
with a crash upon his back.
Gard, keeping hold of the Chinaman, brought his horse to a standstill
near a great branching suhuaro, and set the still vociferating Wing
Chang upon his feet. The cowboys already had two ropes over the
recalcitrant steer, and were leading him back to the corral, minus one
long, murderous horn, and greatly chastened in spirit.
It was high noon before the three pairs of cattle were gentled
sufficiently to permit of their being yoked without absolute danger to
life. By that time each “yoke” had pulled the wagon a quarter of a mile,
with more or less sobriety, and had plowed a torturous furrow on the
desert.
“Which I would rise in my place,” Sandy Larch said, seriously, “an’
point with pride at them yoke o’ cows as a good morning’s work.”
He and Gard had ridden back together, and were in the foreman’s shack.
Westcott had gone on his way to Sylvania.
“I want you to do something for me, Sandy,” Gard said. “I’ve got to go
up north, and I want to leave—”
His hand sought an inner pocket as he spoke, and he drew it out with a
look of dismay. Then he began searching his other pockets.
“Lost something?” the foreman said, watching him.
“I—should—say—I—had!”
The full significance of his loss was telegraphing itself to the inner
strongholds of Gard’s consciousness.
“Sandy!” He sprang to his feet. “I’ve got to find it—in a hurry, too!”
He was outside, now, looking for his horse, which had been turned in to
feed with the others.
“We’ll rustle a couple more,” Sandy said.
“Lord!” he thought, “Something’s eatin’ him. I never thought I’d see
_him_ in a flurry.”
They were ready in a moment, and riding back to the ground they had gone
over in the forenoon.
“You kin bet your hat you let it go overboard when you reached fer that
blasted Chink,” Sandy said, and they made for the spot where Gard had
rescued Wing Chang.
But no brown packet rewarded their scrutiny of the ground. They paced
the desert on to where Gard had set the Chinaman on his feet, and found
nothing but the hole of a Gila monster. Sandy kicked it open with his
heel, and the occupant came up, hissing hideously, but that was all.
They circled the whole ground of the morning’s operations, but without
result, and at last they returned to the shack. Gard’s face was drawn in
haggard lines, but he had recovered his poise.
“I reckon that thing’s got tromped down into the ground,” Sandy said, by
way of consolation. “I didn’t see none of the boys pick up nothin’.
They’d a’ hollered if they had, an’ we was all together.”
“All except Westcott.” Gard spoke very quietly, but Sandy shouted.
“Gosh! That’s so,” He cried, “I fergot him fer a minute. I swan! Would
it be mighty bad if he was the one to find it?”
“A little worse, in some ways, than anybody else living.”
“Lord! Lord! But I don’t see how he could, Gard: He rode off to
Sylvania. It’s happened the way I said. They was a mighty lot o’ hoofs
rampaging round there, an’ your goods, whatever ’t was, got tromped in;
but you can bet Sandy Larch’ll keep his peepers open fer’t if it’s on
top the ’arth.”
“Anyway,”—Gard roused himself—“there’s all the more reason why I should
do what I’ve got to do while I can.”
He was undressing as he spoke, and presently produced the belt.
“I want you to put this away somewhere, Sandy,” he said. “If I send you
word to do some things for me it may come in handy. And Sandy, if
anything happens to me you go and see Mrs. Hallard, and do what you can
to help her. She’ll need help.”
Not a flicker moved the serenity of the foreman’s steady eyes. His was
not the friendship that questions.
“I’ll do anything you send word to do, Gard,” said he, “but I don’t
believe I’ll need all that money. You got plenty to use?”
“Sure—” with a sigh. “Money ain’t the thing I need most, Sandy.”
“Bless yourself for that,” was the quick reply. “When it comes to a
pinch the filthy’s one of the things inconvenient to miss.”
He put the belt away in his own secret hiding-place and busied himself
with getting up his friend’s horse. Gard meant to ride to Bonesta, and
there board the train. If, as he suspected, Westcott had found that
tell-tale packet, he must himself move quickly, and settle Mrs.
Hallard’s matter before he could be apprehended as a fugitive from
justice. Not that Gard meant to be apprehended. But he did not intend
that any thought of risk to his personal safety should interfere with
the discharge of his duty as he saw it.
“So long, Sandy,” he said, out beyond the corrals.
“_Adios!_”
Sandy gripped his hand heartily, and the two men parted; but Gard made a
wide detour, ere he took the desert road, to glimpse from afar the
low-walled casa, white in the glaring December sunlight.
He had left the Palo Verde well behind, and was in a little sandy
valley, the dry bed of some ancient lake, when he dismounted to tighten
his saddle cincha. Pausing an instant, before remounting, he cast a
weary glance skyward and gave a cry of surprise.
High in the ether an enchanted landscape, huge, distorted, hung before
his vision. Rocks and trees, vast cacti and shimmering plain were there,
and moving among them were a horse and rider, followed by a dog.
There was no mistaking the figures. Helen, upon Dickens, was riding on
the plain, Patsy keeping her company. The blessed mirage showed them
plainly and Gard gazed, dizzy with emotion.
It was but a fleeting vision. Some movement of the upper air-currents
disturbed it and even as he looked it broke into fragments, dissolved
and was gone, ere Gard’s swelling heart had ceased its wild pounding.
“She is out there in the desert,” he murmured, a sobbing catch in his
throat, “Oh, God bless her! I love her! I love her!”
He mounted his horse again and rode on, his heart light as a feather,
and on his lips the words of a half-forgotten old song.