DUSK ON THE DESERT
LARDO the Cook and The Falcon’s fellow flunkies had left the cook tent
for the day. Falcon the Flunky poured boiling water over the knives
and forks and spoons in a gigantic dishpan and hurriedly dried them.
Then he removed his apron and scoured the kitchen odors from his hands,
combed his brown hair, and called it a day.
Outside he tied the flaps of the tent against erratic winds of the
night, and, turning away, strolled off over the desert.
The red glow of the summer sun still hung over the mountains to the
west, making a host of speared warriors of the pines that lived on the
ridges and lighting the desert. Between hummocks of sand blown up about
greasewood bushes Falcon the Flunky wound his way, with lizards that
had lingered for the last rays of sunlight scampering to cover before
his feet.
He wandered north, smoking a cigarette, his hands locked behind him,
deeply brooding. To the west a black speck took form in contrast with
the sable dusk colors of the desert. The Falcon saw it; his pulse
quickened. At the same time he frowned and sighed as if all were not
well with his soul.
On toward him moved the black speck, growing larger as it came. He
thought of a fly fallen in Lardo’s big bowl of flapjack batter,
swimming desperately toward solid footing. Lardo’s long white
forefinger might scoop up the bedraggled insect and hurl it with a
battery spat against the tent wall. But to think of Lardo the Cook as
fate or destiny or any other of the forces that control nature brought
a smile to the flunky’s lips. But the desert was big and flat and
awe-inspiring, and the human speck moving over its vast expanse seemed
as helpless and insignificant as the ill-fated fly.
Presently Falcon the Flunky waved his hat. Before long Manzanita Canby
reined in the blowing pinto mare beside him and dismounted.
“Hello!” she greeted, her face lighted with color, her hazel eyes half
hidden by long lashes.
Falcon the Flunky silently took the mare’s reins, and she trailed the
pair as they walked on into the north.
“Doesn’t the desert seem big to-night,” remarked the girl. “When the
sun goes down it seems to expand, and then as darkness comes on it
contracts more and more, till finally you’re all shut in.”
“Yes,” he said simply; and for a time they walked on silently.
“Why are you so still this evening?” asked Manzanita. “Is there
something the matter?”
Falcon the Flunky cleared his throat. “I’ve been thinking,” he told
her, “that we oughtn’t to meet like this, Manzanita.”
“Why?”
“For one thing, your father wouldn’t approve. And back there at camp
they can’t help knowing about it.”
“Well? I’m of age. I can do as I choose. If I want to be with you, it’s
nobody’s business, is it?”
“That’s the old, old, commonplace defense,” he said. “But they’re
wondering and chuckling in their sleeves back there in camp. And that
won’t do where you’re concerned. They can’t understand, of course. If
you have a friend in camp, he should be Hunter Mangan or the walking
boss, or perhaps one of the bookkeepers--not one of the stiffs, a
flunky.”
“Oh, you know you’re not a flunky, so far as that goes! And so does
every one, I guess.”
“Perhaps. But that doesn’t help matters. It’s a rather difficult
subject for a man to talk upon. You’re used to men--accustomed to being
comradely with them. So you don’t exactly see the difference, now that
the camps have come. And to save my soul I can’t exactly explain it
myself. Somehow or other, I should think it right and proper for you
to be friendly and democratic with your cowmen, but it’s different with
the stiffs. And I can’t tell you why or how, but I feel it.”
“What old hens all men are!” and Manzanita sighed. “Pa Squawtooth and
Hunt Mangan, and now even you! Nobody ever takes the time to insult me.
No man ever has insulted me.”
“Not to your face, perhaps,” said The Falcon significantly.
“Well, if you don’t want me to come and walk with you----” Manzanita’s
chin was a trifle elevated.
“Can’t I go to the ranch sometimes of evenings instead?”
For quite a time she withheld her reply.
“I--I hardly think so,” she told him finally.
“Your father wouldn’t approve, of course.”
“I--I’m afraid that’s it.”
“All the more reason, then, why we should not meet out here on the
desert. Listen: I’m going to ask you what may seem to be an unfair
question--from a man. Why did you make friends with me so readily in
the cook tent the first day you came to the camp?”
“Perhaps I liked you,” she suggested in a low tone.
“No, you didn’t. You knew nothing about me then. I was no more to you
than Lardo the Cook or Baldy or Rambo the Bouncer.”
“Does a person have to know all about another before she can like his
looks--and--and other things about him? I’m rather an instinctive
person.”
“Yes, but you don’t trust to instinct altogether. I think you had a
reason for offering me friendship.”
“Perhaps I had--then,” she admitted after a little. “But it’s been
different since. It was silly, I suppose--stupid. But I liked you
almost at once; and when I like a person I’m not slow to show it.”
“I believe you,” he said. “Otherwise I’d not be here with you now. But
tell me what was the beginning of it all.”
Another pause. Then: “I’d rather not--just yet.”
“All right. I’ll not press you for an answer. But I imagine it’s hardly
necessary. I think I know.”
“But you can’t!”
“Oh, yes, I can. I think I almost knew even that first day. But now
about seeing you in the future. I want to, of course, and I think you
want me to. I believe I’ll walk over to the ranch to-morrow evening and
call on you. Would there be a great upheaval?”
“I’m afraid there would be--afterward. You see, Pa Squawtooth is pretty
much of a snob. I have to admit it. He’s been getting pretty well
off the last few years; and now this railroad will make him rich, he
thinks. For my part, I have no desire to be wealthy--but that has
nothing to do with the situation. Pa’s only a money snob, though.
He’s democratic enough other ways, and has always encouraged me to be
the same. That is, up until lately. Since I’ve grown up I notice he
doesn’t approve of many of the things I do. We have dances around here
sometimes. I used always to go with Ed Chazzy or ‘Lucky’ Gilfoyle or
Splicer Kurtz, or some other desert rat, and he’d say nothing. But now
he takes me himself, or tags along; and if I’m with any particular
vaquero two minutes longer than I’m with any of the others he nearly
strokes his whispers out. In fact, he’s told me outright that, since
he’s becoming rich, I mustn’t be too free with the cow-punchers and all
that. Now, if ‘Limpy’ Pardoe, for instance, were to strike it rich in a
gold claim that he does assessment work on every year, why, I’ll bet pa
would let me dance with him. So you see what kind of a snob he is--just
a money snob, not a folks snob. And it’s so new I haven’t got used to
it. It came on him all of a sudden when beef sold so high, and the
railroad began to boom up. He’ll get over it. I hope so, anyway. So you
see--well, I don’t know whether he’d like you or not. That is, admit he
liked you. And he’d probably ask me not to invite you to come again.
Then I’d have to meet you like this, if I saw you at all, while now I
just do it.”
“Suppose we try it, anyway,” he suggested. “Maybe he’ll like me despite
himself. Do I sound egotistical--too confident? But maybe we can break
him of this newly formed habit.”
“I don’t know,” she said skeptically. “He and I had a long talk last
night. He came home and found me irrigating the alfalfa. You see, I’d
begun to realize what a useless life I’ve been living. I think I grew
up in a day when I saw Wing o’ the Crow sticking pigs and driving a
team, then hurrying to camp to get a meal for the stiffs. So I decided
to remodel my life. I went home, and as there was nothing I could do in
the house, I put on rubber boots and went to irrigating. I had tried to
help Wing-o, but I proved a failure at sticking pigs. I was hopeless
for a time, then suddenly I realized that I was trying to do something
out of my sphere, and that that was the trouble. So I went home and
began in my own sphere to make amends. And then pa took me to the
house; it was then that we had our talk.”
“And do you wish to tell me about it?”
“Well, he said irrigating wasn’t my sphere, either. He wants me to
practice more on the piano and study more and do housework--if I must
work--and not run around so much, and--and----”
“Yes?”
“Well, grow up a little more, he said--and think about getting married
and settling down.”
“Good advice, I should say.”
“And he said I ought to take more interest in the men he brings to the
ranch from Los Angeles sometimes, and in--in Hunter Mangan.”
“Oh!”
“Mangan has lots of money, pa says; and he’s not so terribly
old--twenty-nine. Of course, you know he comes over to Squawtooth
often. Pa invites him. And, by the way, he’s to be there for supper
to-morrow night. So you wouldn’t want to come then.”
“Wouldn’t I? I’ll come if you invite me.”
“I would, of course--you know. But I’m afraid it might spoil
everything.”
“I’ll risk it. Suppose I go and try to make your father like me, even
though I’m only a flunky.”
“If you want to try it----”
“Do you invite me?”
“Certainly. But--but----”
“It’s settled then. We’ll see what can be done to cure your father of
this sudden complaint. Now let’s talk of something else.”
* * * * *
While these two walked slowly over the soft carpet of sand Mr. Halfaman
Daisy was repairing to the camp of Jeddo the Crow, swinging along with
an exalted stride. As he strode along he lifted his voice in song, or,
rather, dropped it out of one corner of his mouth, to convince himself
that his head was still unbowed. And thus he sang the ninety-seventh
and the hundred-and-sixth stanzas of his favorite lay:
“Chi to the Kerry Woman’s out in Sac
I rides the rods--ain’t a-comin’ back.
She slips me a dollar and I buys a stack,
And I holds four aces on a lumberjack--
For his pay day--for me ba-bay!
For the pay day of that lumberjack!
“Starts for Dallas on the M. K. and T.,
In a Memphis town I caught the ole I. C.
Tanked up in Chi on the M. and Saint P.,
And a-sobered up in Frisco on the Santa Fee--
Without me pay day--for me ba-bay!
Without me pay day from the M. K. and T!”
As he drew near to the blinking lights of Jeddo’s camp his song trailed
off; and when he reached the front of the cook tent he was silent
altogether.
The cook tent was dark, and its flaps tied together inhospitably,
proving that its presiding angel had thriftily finished her work for
the day. Mr. Daisy walked around it, stumbled over a guy rope, righted
himself and the new pink tie which he fondly imagined went well with
his sandy kinks, and continued his approach toward the van in the rear.
Mr. Daisy cleared his throat and knocked on the oaken doubletrees.
Achieving nothing beyond a faint, unresounding tattoo and aching
knuckle bones, he repeated the signal on the wagon box.
“Well? Who’s there?” came from within.
“Hello, Wing-o! It’s me. How’s each trivial detail this large evening?”
“The can’s three quarters full. You filled ’er this mornin’, you
remember.”
“I did, at that I’d forgotten. I’m afoot now, though, Wing-o.”
“Keep that way.”
“You ain’t gone to bed?”
“How d’ye know I ain’t?”
Mr. Daisy pondered over this. “I don’t,” he finally confessed. “But
lissen here, Wing-o: I got somethin’ to tell you.”
“Never saw you when you didn’t have somethin’ to tell somebody.”
“Ha-ha! You sure got on yer kid gloves to-night, sw-sweetheart.”
“I don’t need ’em to handle the likes o’ you. Peddle that
‘sw-sweetheart’ stuff where its welcome.”
“Aw, say now! I was afraid you wasn’t gonta think o’ that. Lissen,
deary--honest I got somethin’ to tell you.”
“I can’t believe it!”
“Somethin’ big, too. It’ll make yer eyes stick out.”
“It would if I was to swallow it, I guess. But you never saw me have to
push ’em in with a pick handle after listenin’ to you, did you?”
“Ain’t you the cuttin’ kid, though! But honest, pettie--this here’s
great. Honest!”
“Pettie! Say, how’d you get that way?”
“Are you gonta ask me to climb up and set on the seat and talk to you?”
“Nobody ever had to ask you to talk to ’em. Trouble is to get you to
break it off so’s a body c’n get a mite o’ sleep now an’ then. But go
on--say what you got to say. I reckon it’s cruelty to animals to stop
you.”
“Did you say climb up, Wing-o?”
“If I did I was talkin’ in my sleep. I been asleep for ten minutes. You
always put me to sleep. Maybe it was me snorin’ you heard.”
“Aw, now le’s cut out the funny stuff! I’m comin’ up there. Shall I?”
“I thought you said you was comin’.”
“I don’t want to unless you want me to.”
“It’s a cinch you don’t want to, then!”
“H’m-m!” muttered the cornered Mr. Daisy. “Well, I’m comin’ up,
anyway,” he added, and climbed on the wagon tongue.
“Shall I?”
“Shall you what?”
“Come on up? I’m standin’ on the tongue.”
“Not your own. I’d get a little rest if you was.”
“H’m-m!” Halfaman Daisy raised himself to his full height, though not
in outraged dignity, and peered in over the seat. “Here I am,” he
announced in doubtful triumph.
In one corner of the van was a cot, just large enough for the tired
little body that slept on it night after night. About the walls hung
the meager wardrobe of the queen of the van. There was a tiny homemade
table with writing materials, a few books, and a kerosene lamp on it.
Before it, in a camp chair, sat the girl of Mr. Daisy’s heart.
Her black hair was down and in a state of picturesque disorder.
Someway, the more tumbled her hair, the more fascinating to mankind
was the daughter of the one-armed Jeddo. She wore a straight, formless
lightweight dress of brown and white plaid--a homely thing on any other
woman.
“Heavens, you’re pretty!” Halfaman Daisy said fervently. “You start the
joy bells ringin’ in me heart. What’re you doin’?”
“Studyin’.” The tones were more soothing. Mr. Daisy had said much in
those last few words.
“’Rithmetic?”
“Yep--an’ hist’ry.”
“How much is two an’ a quarter times thirty?”
She figured with a pencil. “Sixty-seven-fifty,” she reported.
“Less two-fifty fer a shirt and a dollar fer tobacco, an’ fifty cents
fer this here tie I’m wearin’?”
After a pause: “Sixty-three dollars and fifty cents.”
“That’s what’s right here in me jeans, kiddo. The way I’m hoardin’ it
up these days is what’s makin’ hard times. I’m gonta set on the seat,
Wing-o.”
As she did not dispute this he clambered to the seat and sat facing
her, his legs draped over the low back uncomfortably. He took from his
pocket the stub of a pencil and abstractedly wrote on the seat back
between his long legs: “And the sons also of Aaron; Nadab and Abihu,
Eleazar and Ithamar.”
“Don’t begat all over that there seat!” warned the girl. “Can’t you
think of anything but ‘The sons also of Aaron?’ You talk it an’ dream
it an’ write it everywhere you go. You’re a begatto-maniac, Jack!”
Mr. Daisy wet the rubber eraser and tried to obliterate the words.
“Bring your chair over here by me,” he suggested.
“I’m doin’ well enough right here, thank you. Why don’t you get ye a
rubber stamp with that Aaron business on it, an’ have it and a pad
handy in your pocket?”
“Huh! But I got somethin’ to tell you.”
“I’ll begin to b’lieve that pretty soon. Or you might get you one o’
these little typewriters they carry in a case. ’Twouldn’t be heavy.
You could keep it on yer tank wagon and begat all the way to Squawtooth
an’ back.”
“Huh! Come on over closter. I oughtn’t to butt in there, an’ I gotta
talk low. This here’s an important secret.”
She shrugged, rose, and carried her camp chair nearer to the wagon
seat, setting it down so that she would be safely out of the reach of
this obstinate male.
“They c’n hear me all over camp. This here’s sumpin just between you
an’ me.”
With a pout Wing o’ the Crow rose again and moved the chair nearer. But
as she started to sit down Halfaman reached out and moved it nearer
still, so that she alighted on the bare edge of it and was saved from
toppling off by his ready hand. Apparently she considered the near
catastrophe as due to her own awkwardness, for she said nothing to show
that she thought her lover responsible.
“Well, shoot!” she encouraged, demurely folding her hands in her lap.
Mr. Daisy leaned so that his lips were close to her little ear and shot.
“Kid, I’m crazy about you!” was the ammunition that he used.
“Aw, bunk! Is that all ye got to tell me?”
She made as if to rise immediately, but Halfaman grasped the chair,
and of course she could not rise and leave the chair to withstand these
indignities alone.
“Don’t you believe me? You know you do! Why’m I here?--tell me that.
Why’d I ramble West?--tell me that!”
“Maybe Lil o’ the Lobbies could.”
“Aw, now, sweetheart, that ain’t fair! You know that’s all past.
Listen: I got somethin’ to tell you.”
“Yeah? Where’ve I heard that before?”
“Now listen. You think I’m kiddin’ you. How ’bout that little
Squawtooth girl?”
“Oh, it’s her now, is it? You big stiff--she wouldn’t use you for a
doormat!”
“Maybe not; maybe not. Just the same, you’re all wrong again. She likes
you. She slipped it to me that she did, to-day when I was at the ranch.
Did she ever say anything to you ’bout me?”
“Her! About you! Say, this is good! Why, say, Halfaman--she can’t talk
about anything else.”
Halfaman removed his broken-visored cap and scratched his head. “You’re
kiddn’ me again,” he decided. “But did she?”
“You poor fish, she don’t know you’re on earth!”
“Maybe not; maybe not. Just the same, there’s one stiff she’s keen
enough about. And I thought maybe she said sumpin about him--see? If
she did, she mighta mentioned me. ’Cause this bird and me’s pals. They
call um Falcon the Flunky. How ’bout it?”
“She said somethin’ about a stiff with a moniker like that first time I
met her,” admitted Wing o’ the Crow, her curiosity aroused.
“What’d she say, apple blossoms?”
“Say, for Heaven’s sake. Apple blossoms! You’re kinda nutty, ain’t you?
She just said he was at Mangan-Hatton’s.”
“Uh-huh--he’s s’posed to be a flunky there. Is, fer that matter. But
everybody don’t know what I know about um. Him an’ me’s pals, and he
slipped me the dope about umself last night. I’ll bet you’d open yer
eyes if you savvied what I do, Wing-o. An’ lissen--you don’t wanta
ferget about that guy. He’s strong for me, and I’ll bet if you knew
what I do you wouldn’t be so placid, kinda.”
“You talk like a Hamburger sandwich! I heard you say you had somethin’
to tell me.”
“Ain’t I tellin’ you? But I can tell you more: This little Canby girl
is nuts about Falcon the Flunky. First day she was in camp she was
there to see Mangan. An’ Mangan he was showin’ her ’round--see--and
when he takes ’er to the cook shack she sees Falcon the Flunky, and
from then on she gives Mangan the begone sir. Lissen: Every night
Falcon the Flunky beats it out over the desert, and pretty soon here
she comes to meet um from the ranch. Everybody’s onto it--even Mangan.”
“I don’t believe it!”
“It’s the truth, so help me! But lissen: There’s a joker. If you knew
this Falcon the Flunky an’ what I do about um you’d savvy. Nobody knows
it but me--see?”
“I’ll bet he’s crooked. Well?”
“Well, I can’t tell you much, ’cause he tells me not to spill it. But
Falcon the Flunky’s an educated guy, and--and he’s there, that’s all.
Believe me, kiddo, that guy’s a go-getter!”
“You talk like a man up a tree! I thought ye had somethin’ to tell me.
Just trying to horn in as usual?”
“There’s lots to tell, but I dassent spill it. No foolin’! And lissen:
It’s got lots to do with you an’ me, kiddo.”
“I don’t know where I come in.”
“Why, this plug’s me pal--see? An’ you’re me little gypo queen that I
rambled acrost four States to see again.”
“Is that so?”
“Sure. An’ one o’ these days you’ll say: ‘Gee! I never savvied that guy
was the reg’lar feller he is. Say, I was rubber from the chin up when I
slipped that Jasper them unkind words!’ No foolin’! You wait an’ see!
Later on everything’ll be jake, and there’ll be some eye openin’ in
this shanty camp. No foolin’! Gettin’ sleepy, honey?”
“Oh, no--not a-tall.”
“I guess you are. Well, I’ll beat it. Any chance fer a little kiss?
Then I’ll go.”
“Not the slightest in the world.”
Mr. Daisy sighed as does one who has quested long in vain, and turned
on the seat.
“Well, good night,” he said as he climbed to the ground. “The day’s
comin’, though--an’ she ain’t far off--when you’ll say: ‘Sucker that I
was! I coulda had that fella Daisy fer just sayin’ a word. But I wasted
me opportunity. Now look at um! And it’s too late--too late!’”
“Is that all?” asked Wing o’ the Crow.
“All for the present.”
“Good night!”