southern Arizona once--before we came. Then fill up your valleys with
sand until the mountains show no feet or shoulders, but become as men
buried to the neck. That is what makes separate islands of their
protruding peaks, and that is why water slinks from the surface whenever
it can and flows useless underneath, entombed in the original valley.
This is Arizona now--since the pterodactyls have gone. In such a place
the traveller turns mariner, only, instead of the stars, he studies the
water-wells, shaping his course by these. Not sea-gulls, but ravens, fly
over this waste, seeking their meal. Some were in front of Genesmere
now, settled black in the recent trail of the cattle. He did not much
care that the last well was gone by, for he was broken in by long travel
to the water of the 'dobe-holes that people rely upon through this
journey. These 'dobe-holes are occasional wallows in clayey spots, and
men and cattle know each one. The cattle, of course, roll in them, and
they become worn into circular hollows, their edges tramped into muck,
and surrounded by a thicket belt of mesquite. The water is not good, but
will save life. The first one lay two stages from the well, and
Genesmere accordingly made an expected dry camp the first night,
carrying water from the well in the Santa Cruz, and dribbling all of it
but a cupful among his animals, and the second night reached his
calculated 'dobe-hole. The animals rolled luxuriously in the brown,
dungy mixture, and Genesmere made his coffee strong. He had had no shade
at the first camp, and here it was good under the tangle of the
mesquite, and he slept sound. He was early awakened by the ravens, whose
loose, dislocated croaking came from where they sat at breakfast on the
other side of the wallow. They had not suspected his presence among the
mesquite, and when he stepped to the mud-hole and dipped its gummy fluid
in his coffee-pot they rose hoarse and hovering, and flapped twenty
yards away, and sat watching until he was gone into the desert, when
they clouded back again round their carrion.
This day was over ground yellow and hard with dearth, until afternoon
brought a footing of sifting sand heavy to travel in. He had plenty of
time for thinking. His ease after the first snapping from his promise
had changed to an eagerness to come unawares and catch the man in the
steeple-hat. Till that there could be no proofs. Genesmere had along the
road nearly emptied his second canteen of its brown-amber drink, wetting
the beasts' tongues more than his own. The neighborhood of the next
'dobe-hole might be known by the three miles of cactus you went through
before coming on it, a wide-set plantation of the yucca. The posted
plants deployed over the plain in strange extended order like legions
and legions of figures, each shock-head of spears bunched bristling at
the top of its lank, scaly stalk, and out of that stuck the
blossom-pole, a pigtail on end, with its knot of bell-flowers seeded to
pods ten feet in the air. Genesmere's horse started and nearly threw
him, but it was only a young calf lying for shade by a yucca. Genesmere
could tell from its unlicked hide that the mother had gone to hunt
water, and been away for some time. This unseasonable waif made a try at
running away, but fell in a heap, and lay as man and mules passed on.
Presently he passed a sentinel cow. She stood among the thorns guarding
the calves of her sisters till they should return from getting their
water. The desert cattle learn this shift, and the sentinel now, at the
stranger's approach, lowered her head, and with a feeble but hostile
sound made ready to protect her charge, keeping her face to the passing
enemy. Farther along gaunt cows stood or lay under the perpetual yuccas,
an animal to every plant. They stared at Genesmere passing on; some rose
to look after him; some lifted their heads from the ground, and seeing,
laid them down again. He came upon a calf watching its mother, who had
fallen in such a position that the calf could not suck. The cow's
foreleg was caught over her own head, and so she held herself from
rising. The sand was rolled and grooved into a wheel by her circlings;
her body heaved and fell with breathing, and the sand was wet where her
pivot nostrils had ground it. While Genesmere untangled her and gave her
tongue the last of his canteen the calf walked round and round. He
placed the cow upon her feet, and as soon as he moved away to his horse
the calf came to its mother, who began to lick it. He presently marked
ahead the position of the coming 'dobe-hole by the ravens assembled in
the air, continually rising and lighting. The white horse and mules
quickened their step, and the trail became obliterated by hundreds of
hoof-marks leading to the water. As a spider looks in the centre of an
empty web, so did the round wallow sit in the middle of the plain, with
threaded feet conducting from everywhere to it. Mules and white horse
scraped through the scratching mesquite, and the ravens flapped up. To
Genesmere their croaking seemed suddenly to fill all space with loud
total clamor, for no water was left, only mud. He eased the animals of
their loads and saddles, and they rolled in the stiff mud, squeezing
from it a faint ooze, and getting a sort of refreshment. Genesmere
chewed the mud, and felt sorry for the beasts. He turned both canteens
upside down and licked the bungs. A cow had had his last drink. Well,
that would keep her alive several hours more. Hardly worth while; but
spilled milk decidedly. Milk! That was an idea. He caught animal after
animal, and got a few sickly drops. There was no gain in camping at this
spot, no water for coffee; so Genesmere moved several hundred yards away
to be rid of the ravens and their all-day-long meal and the smell. He
lay thinking what to do. Go back? At the rate he could push the animals
now that last hole might be used up by the cattle before he got
there--and then it was two stages more to the Santa Cruz well. And the
man would be gaining just so many more days unhindered at the cabin. Out
of the question. Forward, it was one shortish drive to the next hole. If
that were dry, he could forsake the trail and make a try by a short-cut
for that Tinaja place. And he must start soon, too, as soon as the
animals could stand it, and travel by night and rest when the sun got
bad. What business had October to be hot like this? So in the darkness
he mounted again, and noon found him with eyes shut under a yucca. It
was here that he held a talk with Lolita. They were married, and sitting
in a room with curtains that let you see flowers growing outside by the
window, as he had always intended. Lolita said to him that there was no
fool like an old fool, and he was telling her that love could make a man
more a fool than age, when she threw the door open, letting in bright
light, and said, "No proofs." The bright light was the real sun coming
round the yucca on his face, and he sat up and saw the desert. No cows
were here, but he noticed the roughened hides and sunk eyes of his own
beasts, and spoke to them.
"Cheer up, Jeff! Stonewall!" He stopped at the pain. It was in his lips
and mouth. He put up his hand, and the feel of his tongue frightened
him. He looked round to see what country he was in, and noted the signs
that it was not so very far now. The blue crags of the islands were
showing, and the blue sterile sky spread over them and the ceaseless
sunlight like a plague. Man and horse and mules were the only life in
the naked bottom of this caldron. The mirage had caught the nearest
island, and blunted and dissolved its points and frayed its base away to
a transparent fringe.
"Like a lump of sugar melts in hot tod," remarked Genesmere, aloud, and
remembered his thickened mouth again. "I can stand it off for a while
yet, though--if they can travel." His mules looked at him when he
came--looked when he tightened their cinches. "I know, Jeff," he said,
and inspected the sky. "No heaven's up there. Nothing's back of that
thing, unless it's hell."
[Illustration: "'YOU DON'T WANT TO TALK THIS WAY. YOU'RE ALONE'"]
He got the animals going, and the next 'dobe-hole was like the
last, and busy with the black flapping of the birds. "You didn't fool
me," said Genesmere, addressing the mud. "I knew you'd be dry." His
eye ran over the cattle, that lay in various conditions. "That foreman
was not too soon getting his live-stock out of your country," he
continued to the hole, his tongue clacking as it made his words. "This
live-stock here's not enjoying itself like its owners in town. This
live-stock was intended for Eastern folks' dinner.--But you've got
ahead of 'em this trip," he said to the ravens. He laughed loudly,
and, hearing himself, stopped, and his face became stern. "You don't
want to talk this way, Russ Genesmere. Shut your head. You're
alone.--I wish I'd never known!" he suddenly cried out.
He went to his animals and sat down by them, clasping and unclasping his
hands. The mules were lying down on the baked mud of the wallow with
their loads on, and he loosed them. He stroked his white horse for some
little while, thinking; and it was in his heart that he had brought
these beasts into this scrape. It was sunset and cool. Against the
divine fires of the west the peaks towered clear in splendor impassive,
and forever aloof, and the universe seemed to fill with infinite
sadness. "If she'll tell me it's not so," he said, "I'll believe her. I
will believe her now. I'll make myself. She'll help me to." He took what
rest he dared, and started up from it much later than he had intended,
having had the talk with Lolita again in the room with the curtains. It
was nine when he set out for the short-cut under the moon, dazed by his
increasing torture. The brilliant disk, blurring to the eye, showed the
mountains unearthly plain, beautiful, and tall in the night. By-and-by a
mule fell and could not rise, and Genesmere decided it was as well for
all to rest again. The next he knew it was blazing sunshine, and the sky
at the same time bedded invisible in black clouds. And when his hand
reached for a cloud that came bellying down to him, it changed into a
pretzel, and salt burned in his mouth at the sight of it. He turned away
and saw the hot, unshaded mountains wrinkled in the sun, glazed and
shrunk, gullied like the parchment of an old man's throat; and then he
saw a man in a steeple-hat. He could no more lay the spectre that wasted
his mind than the thirst-demon which raged in his body. He shut his
eyes, and then his arm was beating at something to keep it away.
Pillowed on his saddle, he beat until he forgot. A blow at the corner of
his eye brought him up sitting, and a raven jumped from his chest.
"You're not experienced," said Genesmere. "I'm not dead yet. But I'm
obliged to you for being so enterprising. You've cleared my head. Quit
that talk, Russ Genesmere." He went to the mule that had given out
during the night. "Poor Jeff! We must lighten your pack. Now if that
hunchback had died here, the birds would have done his business for him
without help from any of your cats. Am I saying that, now, or only
thinking it? I know I'm alone. I've travelled that way in this world.
Why?" He turned his face, expecting some one to answer, and the answer
came in a fierce voice: "Because you're a man, and can stand this world
off by yourself. You look to no one." He suddenly took out the
handkerchief and tore the photograph to scraps. "That's lightened my
pack all it needs. Now for these boys, or they'll never make camp." He
took what the mules carried, his merchandise, and hid it carefully
between stones--for they had come near the mountain country--and,
looking at the plain he was leaving, he saw a river. "Ha, ha!" he said,
slyly; "you're not there, though. And I'll prove it to you." He chose
another direction, and saw another flowing river. "I was expecting you,"
he stated, quietly. "Don't bother me. I'm thirsty."
But presently as he journeyed he saw lying to his right a wide, fertile
place, with fruit-trees and water everywhere. "Peaches too!" he sang
out, and sprang off to run, but checked himself in five steps. "I don't
seem able to stop your foolish talking," he said, "but you shall not
chase around like that. You'll stay with me. I tell you that's a sham.
Look at it." Obedient, he looked hard at it, and the cactus and rocks
thrust through the watery image of the lake like two photographs on the
same plate. He shouted with strangling triumph, and continued shouting
until brier-roses along a brook and a farm-house unrolled to his left,
and he ran half-way there, calling his mother's name. "Why, you fool,
she's dead!" He looked slowly at his cut hands, for he had fallen among
stones. "Dead, back in Kentucky, ever so long ago," he murmured, softly.
"Didn't stay to see you get wicked." Then he grew stern again. "You've
showed yourself up, and you can't tell land from water. You're going to
let the boys take you straight. I don't trust you."
He started the mules, and caught hold of his horse's tail, and they set
out in single file, held steady by their instinct, stumbling ahead for
the water they knew among the mountains. Mules led, and the shouting man
brought up the rear, clutching the white tail like a rudder, his feet
sliding along through the stones. The country grew higher and rougher,
and the peaks blazed in the hot sky; slate and sand and cactus below,
gaping cracks and funnelled erosions above, rocks like monuments
slanting up to the top pinnacles; supreme Arizona, stark and dead in
space, like an extinct planet, flooded blind with eternal brightness.
The perpetual dominating peaks caught Genesmere's attention. "Toll on!"
he cried to them. "Toll on, you tall mountains. What do you care? Summer
and winter, night and day, I've known you, and I've heard you all along.
A man can't look but he sees you walling God's country from him, ringing
away with your knell."
He must have been lying down during some time, for now he saw the full
moon again, and his animals near him, and a fire blazing that himself
had evidently built. The coffee-pot sat on it, red-hot and split open.
He felt almost no suffering at all, but stronger than ever in his life,
and he heard something somewhere screaming "Water! water! water!" fast
and unceasing, like an alarm-clock. A rattling of stones made him turn,
and there stood a few staring cattle. Instantly he sprang to his feet,
and the screaming stopped. "Round 'em up, Russ Genesmere! It's getting
late!" he yelled, and ran among the cattle, whirling his rope. They
dodged weakly this way and that, and next he was on the white horse
urging him after the cows, who ran in a circle. One struck the end of a
log that stuck out from the fire, splintering the flames and embers, and
Genesmere followed on the tottering horse through the sparks, swinging
his rope and yelling in the full moon: "Round 'em up! round 'em up!
Don't you want to make camp? All the rest of the herd's bedded down
along with the ravens."
The white horse fell and threw him by the edge of a round hole, but he
did not know it till he opened his eyes and it was light again, and the
mountains still tolling. Then like a crash of cymbals the Tinaja beat
into his recognition. He knew the slate rock; he saw the broken natural
stairs. He plunged down them arms forward like a diver's, and ground his
forehead against the bottom. It was dry. His bloodshot eyes rolled once
up round the sheer walls. Yes, it was the Tinaja, and his hands began to
tear at the gravel. He flung himself to fresh places, fiercely grubbing
with his heels, biting into the sand with his teeth; while above him in
the canon his placid animals lay round the real Tinaja Bonita, having
slaked their thirst last night, in time, some thirty yards from where he
now lay bleeding and fighting the dust in the dry twin hole.
He heard voices, and put his hands up to something round his head. He
was now lying out in the light, with a cold bandage round his forehead,
and a moist rag on his lips.
"Water!" He could just make the whisper.
But Lolita made a sign of silence.
"Water!" he gasped.
She shook her head, smiling, and moistened the rag. That must be all
just now.
His eye sought and travelled, and stopped short, dilating; and Lolita
screamed at his leap for the living well.
"Not yet! Not yet!" she said in terror, grappling with him. "Help!
Luis!"
So this was their plot, the demon told him--to keep him from water! In a
frenzy of strength he seized Lolita. "Proved! Proved!" he shouted, and
struck his knife into her. She fell at once to the earth and lay calm,
eyes wide open, breathing in the bright sun. He rushed to the water and
plunged, swallowing and rolling.
Luis ran up from the cows he was gathering, and when he saw what was
done, sank by Lolita to support her. She pointed to the pool.
"He is killing himself!" she managed to say, and her head went lower.
"And I'll help you die, caberon! I'll tear your tongue. I'll--"
But Lolita, hearing Luis's terrible words, had raised a forbidding hand.
She signed to leave her and bring Genesmere to her.
The distracted Luis went down the stone stairs to kill the American in
spite of her, but the man's appearance stopped him. You could not raise
a hand against one come to this. The water-drinking was done, and
Genesmere lay fainting, head and helpless arms on the lowest stone, body
in the water. The Black Cross stood dry above. Luis heard Lolita's
voice, and dragged Genesmere to the top as quickly as he could. She,
seeing her lover, cried his name once and died; and Luis cast himself on
the earth.
"Fool! fool!" he repeated, catching at the ground, where he lay for some
while until a hand touched him. It was Genesmere.
"I'm seeing things pretty near straight now," the man said. "Come close.
I can't talk well. Was--was that talk of yours, and singing--was that
bluff?"
"God forgive me!" said poor Luis.
"You mean forgive me," said Genesmere. He lay looking at Lolita. "Close
her eyes," he said. And Luis did so. Genesmere was plucking at his
clothes, and the Mexican helped him draw out a handkerchief, which the
lover unfolded like a treasure. "She used to look like this," he began.
He felt and stopped. "Why, it's gone!" he said. He lay evidently seeking
to remember where the picture had gone, and his eyes went to the hills
whence no help came. Presently Luis heard him speaking, and, leaning to
hear, made out that he was murmuring his own name, Russ, in the way
Lolita had been used to say it. The boy sat speechless, and no thought
stirred in his despair as he watched. The American moved over, and put
his arms round Lolita, Luis knowing that he must not offer to help him
do this. He remained so long that the boy, who would never be a boy
again, bent over to see. But it was only another fainting-fit. Luis
waited; now and then the animals moved among the rocks. The sun crossed
the sky, bringing the many-colored evening, and Arizona was no longer
terrible, but once more infinitely sad. Luis started, for the American
was looking at him and beckoning.
"She's not here," Genesmere said, distinctly.
Luis could not follow.
"Not here, I tell you." The lover touched his sweetheart. "This is not
her. My punishment is nothing," he went on, his face growing beautiful.
"See there!"
Luis looked where he pointed.
"Don't you see her? Don't you see her fixing that camp for me? We're
going to camp together now."
But these were visions alien to Luis, and he stared helpless, anxious to
do anything that the man might desire. Genesmere's face darkened
wistfully.
"Am I not making camp?" he said.
Luis nodded to please him, without at all comprehending.
"You don't see her." Reason was warring with the departing spirit until
the end. "Well, maybe you're right. I never was sure. But I'm mortal
tired of travelling alone. I hope--"
That was the end, and Russ Genesmere lay still beside his sweetheart. It
was a black evening at the cabin, and a black day when Luis and old
Ramon raised and fenced the wooden head-stone, with its two forlorn
names.
A PILGRIM ON THE GILA
Midway from Grant to Thomas comes Paymaster's Hill, not much after Cedar
Springs and not long before you sight the valley where the Gila flows.
This lonely piece of road must lie three thousand miles from Washington;
but in the holiday journey that I made they are near together among the
adventures of mind and body that overtook me. For as I turned southward
our capital was my first stopping-place, and it was here I gathered the
expectations of Arizona with which I continued on my way.
Arizona was the unknown country I had chosen for my holiday, and I found
them describing it in our National House of Representatives, where I had
strolled for sight-seeing but stayed to listen. The Democrats were hot
to make the Territory a State, while the Republicans objected that the
place had about it still too much of the raw frontier. The talk and
replies of each party were not long in shaking off restraint, and in the
sharp exchange of satire the Republicans were reminded that they had not
thought Idaho and Wyoming unripe at a season when those Territories were
rumored to be Republican. Arizona might be Democratic, but neither
cattle wars nor mine revolutions flourished there. Good order and
prosperity prevailed. A member from Pennsylvania presently lost his
temper, declaring that gigantic generalities about milk and honey and
enlightenment would not avail to change his opinion. Arizona was well on
to three times the size of New York--had a hundred and thirteen thousand
square miles. Square miles of what? The desert of Sahara was twice as
big as Arizona, and one of the largest misfortunes on the face of the
earth. Arizona had sixty thousand inhabitants, not quite so many as the
town of Troy. And what sort of people? He understood that cactus was
Arizona's chief crop, stage-robbing her most active industry, and the
Apache her leading citizen.
And then the Boy Orator of the Rio Grande took his good chance. I forgot
his sallow face and black, unpleasant hair, and even his single
gesture--that straining lift of one hand above the shoulder during the
suspense of a sentence and that cracking it down into the other at the
full stop, endless as a pile-driver. His facts wiped any trick of manner
from my notice. Indians? Stage-robbers? Cactus? Yes. He would add
famine, drought, impotent law, daily murder; he could add much more, but
it was all told in Mr. Pumpelly's book, true as life, thirty years
ago--doubtless the latest news in Pennsylvania! Had this report
discouraged the gentleman from visiting Arizona? Why, he could go there
to-day in a Pullman car by two great roads and eat his three meals in
security. But Eastern statesmen were too often content with knowing
their particular corner of our map while a continent of ignorance lay in
their minds.
At this stroke applause sounded beside me, and, turning, I had my first
sight of the yellow duster. The bulky man that wore it shrewdly and
smilingly watched the orator, who now dwelt upon the rapid benefits of
the railways, the excellent men and things they brought to Arizona, the
leap into civilization that the Territory had taken. "Let Pennsylvania
see those blossoming fields for herself," said he, "those boundless
contiguities of shade." And a sort of cluck went off down inside my
neighbor's throat, while the speaker with rising heat gave us the
tonnage of plums exported from the Territory during the past fiscal
year. Wool followed.
"Sock it to 'em, Limber Jim!" murmured the man in the duster, and
executed a sort of step. He was plainly a personal acquaintance of the
speaker's.
Figures never stick by me, nor can I quote accurately the catalogue of
statistic abundance now recited in the House of Representatives; but as
wheat, corn, peaches, apricots, oranges, raisins, spices, the rose and
the jasmine flowered in the Boy Orator's eloquence, the genial antics of
my neighbor increased until he broke into delighted mutterings, such as
"He's a stud-horse," and "Put the kybosh on 'em," and many more that
have escaped my memory. But the Boy Orator's peroration I am glad to
remember, for his fervid convictions lifted him into the domain of
metaphor and cadence; and though to be sure I made due allowance for
enthusiasm, his picture of Arizona remained vivid with me, and I should
have voted to make the Territory a State that very day.
"With her snow-clad summits, with the balm of her Southern vineyards,
she loudly calls for a sister's rights. Not the isles of Greece, nor any
cycle of Cathay, can compete with her horticultural resources, her Salt
River, her Colorado, her San Pedro, her Gila, her hundred irrigated
valleys, each one surpassing the shaded Paradise of the Nile, where
thousands of noble men and elegantly educated ladies have already
located, and to which thousands more, like patient monuments, are
waiting breathless to throng when the franchise is proclaimed. And if my
death could buy that franchise, I would joyfully boast such martyrdom."
The orator cracked his hands together in this supreme moment, and the
bulky gentleman in the duster drove an elbow against my side, whispering
to me at the same time behind his hand, in a hoarse confidence:
"Deserted Jericho! California only holds the record on stoves now."
"I'm afraid I do not catch your allusion," I began. But at my voice he
turned sharply, and, giving me one short, ugly stare, was looking about
him, evidently at some loss, when a man at his farther side pulled at
his duster, and I then saw that he had all along been taking me for a
younger companion he had come in with, and with whom he now went away.
In the jostle we had shifted places while his eyes were upon the various
speakers, and to him I seemed an eavesdropper. Both he and his friend
had a curious appearance, and they looked behind them, meeting my gaze
as I watched them going; and then they made to each other some laughing
comment, of which I felt myself to be the inspiration. I was standing
absently on the same spot, still in a mild puzzle over California and
the record on stoves. Certainly I had overheard none of their secrets,
if they had any; I could not even guess what might be their true opinion
about admitting Arizona to our Union.