Please do not picture a level waste of sand and scant sagebrush when
you think of the Nevada desert. Barren it is, where water is not to
be had; but level it is not, except where the beds of ancient lakes
lie bare and yellow, hard as cement except when the rains soften the
surface to sticky, red mud. Long mesas, with scattering clumps of
greasewood and sage, lie gently tilted between sporadic mountain
ranges streaked and scalloped with the varying rock formations that
tell how long the world was in the making. Here and there larger
mountains lift desolate barriers against the sky. Seen close, any
part of the scene is somber at best. But distance softens the
forbidding bleakness of the uplifted hummocks and crags, and paints
them with magic lights and shadows.
In the higher altitudes the mountains are less bare; more friendly
in a grim, uncompromising way and grown over scantily sometimes with
piñons and juniper and the flat-leafed cedar whose wood is never too
wet to burn with a great snapping, and is as likely to char
temperamentally and go black. In these great buttes secret stores of
water send little searching streams out through crevices among the
rocks. Each cañon has its spring hidden away somewhere, and the
water is clear and cold, stealing away from the melting snows on
top.
A rough, little-used trail barely passable to a car, led into
Johnnywater Cañon. To Gary the place was a distinct relief from the
barren land that stretched between this butte and Las Vegas. The
green of the piñon trees was refreshing as cool water on a hot day.
The tiny stream that trickled over water-worn rocks in the little
gully beside the cabin astonished him. For hours he had ridden
through the parched waste land. For hours Monty had talked of scanty
grazing and little water. In spite of himself, Gary’s eyes
brightened with pleasure when he first looked upon Johnnywater.
The sun still shone into the cañon, though presently it would drop
behind the high shoulder of the butte. The little cabin squatting
secretively between two tall piñons looked an ideal “set” for some
border romance.
“It’s not a bad-_looking_ place,” he commented with some reluctance.
“Maybe Pat didn’t pull such a boner after all.” He climbed out of
the car and walked toward the tiny stream. “Golly grandma, what’s
that! Chickens?”
“It shore enough is--but I kinda thought the coyotes and link-cats
would of got all Waddy’s chickens. He’s been gone a week away.”
“Good heck! I thought chickens liked to partake of a little
nourishment occasionally. All the kinds I’ve met do.”
Monty laughed lazily.
“Oh, Waddell he fixed a kind of feed box for ’em that lets down a
few grains at a time. I reckon he filled it up before he went.”
Monty sent seeking glances into the undergrowth along the creek.
“There ought to be a couple of shoats around here, too. And a cat.”
Gary went into the cabin and stood looking around him curiously.
Some attempt had been made to furnish the place with a few comforts,
but the attempt had evidently perished of inanition. Flowered calico
would have hidden the cubboard decently, had the curtains been
clean. A box tacked against the wall held magazines and a book or
two. The bunk was draped around the edge with the same flowered
calico, with an old shoe protruding from beneath. One square window
with a single sash looked down upon the little creek. Its twin
looked down the cañon. Cast-off garments hung against the wall at
the foot of the bunk.
“Great interior set for a poverty scene,” Gary decided, rolling
himself a smoke. “I don’t intend to stay out on this location, you
know. I’m here to sell the damned place. What’s the quickest way to
do that--quietly? I mean, without advertising it.”
Monty Girard turned slowly and stared.
“There ain’t no quick way,” he said finally. “Waddy, he’s been
tryin’ for three months to sell it--advertisin’ in all the papers. He
was in about as much of a hurry as a man could get in--and he was
just about at the point where he was goin’ to walk off and leave it,
when this Mr. Connolly bit.”
“Bit?”
“Bought. Yuh-all must have misunderstood.”
“Either way, I don’t feature it.” Gary lighted the cigarette
thoughtfully. “It looks a pretty fair place--for a hermit, or a man
that’s hiding out. What did this man Waddell buy it for? And how
long ago?”
“I reckon he thought he wanted it. A couple of years ago, I reckon
he aimed to settle down here.”
“Well, why the heck didn’t he do it then?” Gary sat down on the edge
of the table and folded his arms. “Spread ’em out on the table,
Monty. I won’t shoot.”
“You say yuh-all don’t aim to stay here?” Monty leveled a glance at
him.
“Not any longer than it takes to sell out. You look like a live
wire. I’m going to appoint you my agent and see if you can’t rustle
a buyer--_quick_. I’ll go back with you, when you go. That will be in
a couple of days, you said. So tell me the joke, Monty. I asked you
in town, yesterday, and you didn’t do it.”
“I can’t say as I rightly know. I reckon maybe it was Waddy himself
that was wrong, and nothin’ the matter with Johnnywater. He got
along all right here for awhile--but I guess he got kind of edgey,
livin’ alone here so much. He got to kinda imaginin’ he was seein’
things. And along last spring he got to hearin’ ’em. So then he
wanted to sell out right away quick.”
“Oh.” Gary sounded rather crestfallen. “A nut, hunh? I thought there
was something faked about the place itself.”
“Yuh-all read what I swore to,” Monty reminded him with a touch of
dignity. “I wouldn’t help nobody fake a deal; not even a fellow in
the shape Waddy was in. He had his money in here, and he had to git
it out before he could leave. At that, he sold out at a loss. This
is a right nice little place, Mr. Marshall, for anybody that wants a
place like this.”
“But you don’t, hunh? Couldn’t you buy the cattle?”
Monty shook his head regretfully.
“No, I couldn’t. I couldn’t buy out the Walkin’ X brand now at a
dime a head, and that’s a fact. Cattle’s away down. I’m just hangin’
on, Mr. Marshall, and that’s the case with every cattle owner in the
country. It ain’t my put-in, maybe, but if Johnnywater was mine, I
know what I’d do.”
“Well, let’s hear it.”
“Well, I’d fix things up best I could around here, and hang on to it
awhile till times git better. Waddell asked seven thousand at
first--and it’d be worth that if there was any market at all for
cattle. Up the cañon here a piece, Waddy’s got as pretty a patch of
alfalfa as you’d want to look at. And a patch of potatoes that was
doing fine, the last I see of ’em. He was aimin’ to put the whole
cañon bottom into alfalfa; and that’s worth money in this country,
now I’m tellin’ yuh.
“Yuh see, Johnnywater’s different from most of these cañons. It’s
wider and bigger every way, and it’s got more water. A man could
hang on to his cattle, and by kinda pettin’ ’em along through the
winter, and herdin’ ’em away from the loco patches in the spring, he
could make this a good payin’ investment. That’s what I reckoned
this Mr. Connolly aimed to do.”
“Pat Connolly bought this place,” said Gary shortly, “because it
sounded nice in the ad. It was a nut idea from the start. I’m here
to try and fish the five thousand up out of the hole.”
“Well, I reckon maybe that same ad would sound good to somebody
else,” Monty ventured.
But Gary shook his head. Since Patricia made up her mailing lists
from the newspapers, Gary emphatically did not want to advertise.
They ended by cooking late dinner together, frying six fresh eggs
which Gary discovered in the little dugout chicken house. After
which Monty Girard unloaded what supplies Gary had brought, smoked a
farewell cigarette and drove away to his own camp twenty miles
farther on.
“It’s a great life if you don’t weaken,” Gary observed tritely. “I
might get a kick out of this, if Pat hadn’t been so darned fresh
about the movies, and so _gol_-darned stubborn about me camping here
and doing the long-haired hick act for the rest of my life.”
He went away then to hunt for the chicken feed; found it in another
dugout cellar, and fed the chickens that came running hysterically
out of the bushes when Gary rattled the pan and called them as he
had seen gingham-gowned ingénues do in rural scenes.
“Golly grandma! If I could catch a young duck now, and cuddle it up
under my dimpled chin, I’d make a swell Mary Pickford close-up,” he
chuckled to himself. “Down on the farm, by gum! ‘_Left the town to
have some fun, and I’m a goin’ to have some, yes, by gum!_’ Pat
Connolly’s going to do some plain and fancy knuckling under, to pay
for this stunt. Gosh, and there’s the cat!”