Daylight showed to Adam the cottonwood oasis as he had it pictured in
memory, except for the palm-thatched hut.
He was hard at camp duties when Genie came out. The sun was rising,
silver and ruddy and gold, and it shone upon her, played around her
glossy head as she knelt on the grass beside the running water. While
she bathed there, splashing diamond drops of water in the sunshine,
she seemed all brightness and youth. But in the merciless light of day
her face was too small, too thin, too pinched to have any comeliness.
Her shining hair caught all the beauty of the morning. In one light
it was auburn and in another a dark brown, and in any light it had
glints and gleams of gold. It waved and curled rebelliously, a rich,
thick, rippling mass falling to her shoulders. When, presently, she
came over to Adam, to greet him and offer to help, then he had his
first look at her eyes by day. Gazing into them, Adam hardly saw the
small, unattractive, starved face. Like her hair, her eyes shone dark
brown, and the lighter gleams were amber. The expression was of a
straightforward soul, unconscious of unutterable sadness, gazing out at
incomprehensible life, that should have been beautiful for her, but was
not.
“Good morning, Genie,” said Adam, cheerily. “Of course you can help me.
There’s heaps of work. And when you help me with that I’ll play with
you.”
“Play!” she murmured, dreamily. She had never had a playmate.
Thus began the business of the day for Adam. When breakfast was over
and done with he set to work to improve that camp, and especially with
an eye to the comfort of the invalid. Adam knew the wonderful curative
qualities of desert air, if it was wholly trusted and lived in. On
the shady side of the hut he erected a wide porch with palm-thatched
roof that cut off the glare of the sky. With his own canvases, and
others he found at the camp, he put up curtains that could be rolled
up or let down as occasion required. Then he constructed two beds, one
at each end of the porch, and instead of palm leaves he used thick
layers of fragrant sage and greasewood. Mrs. Linwood, with the aid of
Genie, managed to get out to her new quarters. Her pleasure at the
change showed in her wan face. The porch was shady, cool, fragrant. She
could look right out upon the clean, brown, beautiful streams where
they met, and at the camp fire where Adam and Genie would be engaged,
and at night she could see it blaze and glow, and burn down red. The
low-branching cottonwoods were full of humming birds and singing birds,
and always the innumerable bees. The clean white sand, the mesquites
bursting into green, the nodding flowers in the grassy nooks under the
great iron-rusted stones, the rugged, upheaved slope of mountain, and
to the east an open vista between the trees where the desert stretched
away gray and speckled and monotonous, down to the dim mountains over
which the sun would rise; these could not but be pleasant and helpful.
Love of life could not be separated from such things.
“Mrs. Linwood, sleeping outdoors is the most wonderful experience,”
said Adam, earnestly. “You feel the night wind. The darkness folds
around you. You look up through the leaves to the dark-blue sky and
shining stars. You smell the dry sand and the fresh water and the
flowers and the spicy desert plants. Every breath you draw is new,
untainted. Living outdoors, by day and night, is the secret of my
strength.”
“Alas! We always feared the chill night air,” sighed Mrs. Linwood.
“Life teaches so many lessons--too late.”
“It is never too late,” returned Adam.
Then he set himself to further tasks, and soon that day was ended.
Other days like it passed swiftly, and each one brought more hope
of prolonging Mrs. Linwood’s life. Adam feared she could not live,
yet he worked and hoped for a miracle. Mrs. Linwood improved in some
mysterious way that seemed of spirit rather than of flesh. As day after
day went by and Adam talked with her, an hour here, an hour there, she
manifestly grew stronger. But was it not only in mind? The sadness
of her changed. The unhappiness of her vanished. The tragic cast and
pallor of her face remained the same, but the spirit that shone from
her eyes and trembled in her voice was one of love, gratitude, hope.
Adam came at length to understand that the improvement was only a
result of the inception of faith she had in him. With terrible tenacity
she had clung to life, even while starving herself to give food to
her child; and now that succor had come, her spirit in its exaltation
triumphed over her body. Happiness was more powerful than the ravages
of disease. But if that condition, if that mastery of mind over body,
had continued, it would have been superhuman. The day came at last in
which Mrs. Linwood sank back into the natural and inevitable state
where the fatality of life ordered the eminence of death.
When she was convulsed with the spasms of coughing, which grew worse
every day, Adam felt that if he could pray to the God she believed in,
he would pray for her sufferings to be ended. He hated this mystery
of disease, this cruelty of nature. It was one of the things that
operated against his acceptance of her God. Why was life so cruel? Was
life only nature? Nature was indeed cruel. But if life was conflict,
if life was an endless progress toward unattainable perfection, toward
greater heights of mind and soul, then was life God, and in eternal
conflict with nature? How hopelessly and impotently he pondered these
distressing questions! Pain he could endure himself, and he had
divined that in enduring it he had enlarged his character. But to
suffer as this poor woman was suffering--to be devoured by millions of
infinitesimal and rapacious animals feasting on blood and tissue--how
insupportably horrible! What man could endure that--what man of huge
frame and physical might--of intense and pulsing life? Only a man in
whom intellect was supreme, who could look upon life resignedly as not
the ultimate end, who knew not the delights of sensation, who had no
absorbing passion for the gray old desert or the heaving sea, or the
windy heights and the long purple shadows, who never burned and beat
with red blood running free--only a martyr living for the future, or a
man steeped in religion, could endure this blight of consumption. When
Adam considered life in nature, he could understand this disease. It
was merely a matter of animals fighting to survive. Let the fittest
win! That was how nature worked toward higher and stronger life. But
when he tried to consider the God this stricken woman worshiped, Adam
could not reconcile himself to her agony. Why? The eternal Why was
flung at him. She was a good woman. She had lived a life of sacrifice.
She had always been a Christian. Yet she was not spared this horrible
torture. Why?
What hurt Adam more than anything else was the terror in Genie’s mute
lips and the anguish in her speaking eyes.
One day, during an hour when Mrs. Linwood rested somewhat easily, she
called Adam to her. It happened to be while Genie was absent, listening
to the bees or watching the flow of water.
“Will you stay here--take care of Genie--until her uncle comes back?”
queried the woman, with her low, panting breaths.
“I promised you. But I think you should not want me to keep her here
too long,” replied Adam, earnestly. “Suppose he does not come back in a
year or two?”
“Ah! I hadn’t thought of that. What, then, is your idea?”
“Well, I’d wait here a good long time,” said Adam, soberly. “Then if
Genie’s uncle didn’t come, I’d find a home for her.”
“A home--for Genie!... Wansfell, have you considered? That would take
money--to travel--to buy Genie--what she ought to--have.”
“Yes, I suppose so. That part need not worry you. I have money. I’ll
look out for Genie. I’ll find a home for her.”
“You’d do--all that?” whispered the woman.
“I promise you. Now, Mrs. Linwood, please don’t distress yourself.
It’ll be all right.”
“It _is_ all right. I’m not--in distress,” she replied, with something
tremulous and new in her voice. “Oh, thank God--my faith--never failed!”
Adam was not sure what she meant by this, but as he revolved it in
his mind, hearing again the strange ring of joy which had been in her
voice, he began to feel that somehow he represented a fulfillment and a
reward to her.
“Wansfell--listen,” she whispered, with more force. “I--I should have
told you.... Genie is not poor. No!... She’s rich!... Her father
found gold--over in the mountains.... He slaved at digging.... That
killed him. But he found gold. It’s hidden inside the hut--under the
floor--where I used to lie.... Bags of gold! Wansfell, my child will be
rich!”
“Well!... Oh, but I’m glad!” exclaimed Adam.
“Yes. It sustains me.... But I’ve worried so.... My husband expected
me--to take Genie out of the desert.... I’ve worried about that money.
Genie’s uncle--John Shaver is his name--he’s a good man. He loved
her. He used to drink--but I hope the desert cured him of that. I
think--he’ll be a father to Genie.”
“Does he know about the gold that will be Genie’s?”
“No. We never told him. My husband didn’t trust John--in money
matters.... Wansfell, if you’ll say you’ll go with Genie--when her
uncle comes--and invest the money--until she’s of age--I will have no
other prayer except for her happiness.... I will die in peace.”
“I promise. I’ll do my best,” he declared.
* * * * *
The next time she spoke to him was that evening at dusk. Frogs were
trilling, and a belated mocking bird was singing low, full-throated
melodies. Yet these beautiful sounds only accentuated the solemn desert
stillness.
“Wansfell--you remember--once we talked of God,” she said, very low.
“Yes, I remember,” replied Adam.
“Are you just where you were--then?”
“About the same, I guess.”
“Are you sure you understand yourself?”
“Sure? Oh no. I change every day.”
“Wansfell, what do you call the thing in you--the will to tarry here?
The manhood that I trusted?... The forgetfulness of self?... What do
you call this strength of yours that fulfilled my faith--that gave
me to God utterly--that enables me to die happy--that will be the
salvation of my child?”
“Manhood? Strength?” echoed Adam, in troubled perplexity. “I’m just
sorry for you--for the little girl.”
“Ah yes, sorry! Indeed you are! But you don’t know yourself....
Wansfell, there was a presence beside my bed--just a moment before I
called you. Something neither light nor shadow in substance--something
neither life nor death.... It is gone now. But when I am dead it will
come to you. _I_ will come to you--like that.... Somewhere out in the
solitude and loneliness of your desert--at night when it is dark and
still--and the heavens look down--there you will face your soul....
You’ll see the divine in man.... You’ll realize that the individual
dies, but the race lives.... You’ll have thundered at you from the
silence, the vast, lonely land you love, from the stars and the
infinite beyond--that your soul is immortal.... That this _Thing_ in
you is God!”
When the voice ceased, so vibrant and full at the close, so more than
physical, Adam bowed his head and plodded over the soft sand out to the
open desert where mustering shadows inclosed him, and he toiled to and
fro in the silence--a man bent under the Atlantean doubt and agony and
mystery of the world.
The next day Genie’s mother died.
* * * * *
Long before sunrise of a later day Adam climbed to the first
bulge of the mountain wall. On lofty heights his mind worked more
slowly--sometimes not at all. The eye of an eagle sufficed him. Down
below, on the level, during these last few days, while Genie sat mute,
rigid, stricken, Adam had been distracted. The greatest problem of his
desert experience confronted him. Always a greater problem--always
a greater ordeal--that was his history of the years. Perhaps on the
heights might come inspiration. The eastern sky was rosy. The desert
glowed soft and gray and beautiful. Gray lanes wound immeasurably
among bronze and green spots, like islands in a monotonous sea. The
long range of the Bernardinos was veiled in the rare lilac haze of the
dawn, and the opposite range speared the deep blue of sky with clear
black-fringed and snowy peaks. Far down the vast valley, over the dim
ridge of the Chocolates, there concentrated a bright rose and yellow
and silver. This marvelous light intensified, while below the wondrous
shadows deepened. Then the sun rose like liquid silver, bursting to
flood the desert world.
The sunrise solved Adam’s problem. His kindness, his pity, his patience
and unswerving interest, his argument and reason and entreaty, had all
failed to stir Genie out of her mute misery. Nothing spiritual could
save her. But Genie had another mother--nature--to whom Adam meant to
appeal as a last hope.
He descended the slope to the oasis. There, near a new-made grave that
ran parallel with an old one, mossy and gray, sat Genie, clamped in her
wretchedness.
“Genie,” he called, sharply, intending to startle her. He did startle
her. “I’m getting sick. I don’t have exercise enough. I used to walk
miles every day. I must begin again.”
“Then go,” she replied.
“But I can’t leave you alone here,” he protested. “Some other bad men
might come. I’m sorry. You _must_ come with me.”
At least she was obedient. Heavily she rose, ready to accompany him, a
thin shadow of a girl, hallowed eyed and wan, failing every hour. Adam
offered his hand at the stream to help her across. But for that she
would have fallen. She left her hand in his. And they set out upon the
strangest walk Adam had ever undertaken. It was not long, and before it
ended he had to drag her, and finally carry her. That evening she was
so exhausted she could not repel the food he gave her, and afterward
she soon fell asleep.
Next day he took her out again, and thereafter every morning and every
afternoon, relentless in his determination, though his cruelty wrung
his heart. Gentle and kind as he was, he yet saw that she fell into
the stream, that she pricked her bare feet on cactus, that she grew
frightened on the steep slopes, that she walked farther and harder
every day. Nature was as relentless as Adam. Soon Genie’s insensibility
to pain and hunger was as if it had never been. Whenever she pricked or
bruised the poor little feet Adam always claimed it an accident; and
whenever her starved little body cried out in hunger he fed her. Thus
by action, and the forcing of her senses, which were involuntary, he
turned her mind from her black despair. This took days and weeks. Many
and many a time Adam’s heart misgave him, but just as often something
else in him remained implacable. He had seen the training of Indian
children. He knew how the mother fox always threw from her litter the
black cub that was repugnant to her. The poor little black offspring
was an outcast. He was soon weaned, and kicked out of the nest to
die or survive. But if he did survive the cruel, harsh bitterness
of strife and heat and thirst and starvation--his contact with his
environment--he would grow superior to all the carefully mothered and
nourished cubs. Adam expected this singular law of nature, as regarded
action and contact and suffering, to be Genie’s salvation, provided it
did not kill her; and if she had to die he considered it better for her
to die of travail, of effort beyond her strength, than of a miserable
pining away.
One morning, as he finished his camp tasks, he missed her. Upon
searching, he found her flat on the grassy bank of the stream, face
downward, with her thin brown feet in the air. He wondered what she
could be doing, and his heart sank, for she had often said it would be
so easy and sweet to lie down and sleep in the water.
“Genie, child, what are you doing?” he asked.
“Look! the bees--the honey bees! They’re washing themselves in the
water. First I thought they were drinking. But no!... They’re washing.
It’s so funny.”
When she looked up, Adam thrilled at sight of her eyes. If they had
always been beautiful in shape and color, what were they now, with
youth returned, and a light of the birth of wonder and joy in life?
Youth had won over tragedy. Nature hid deep at the heart of all
creation. The moment also had a birth for Adam--an exquisite birth of
the first really happy moment of his long desert years.
“Let me see,” he said, and he lowered his ponderous length and
stretched it beside her on the grassy bank. “Genie, you’re right about
the bees being funny, but wrong about what they’re doing. They are
diluting their honey. Well, I’m not sure, but I think bees on the
desert dilute their honey with water. Watch!... Maybe they drink at
the same time. But you see--some of them have their heads turned away
from the water, as if they meant to back down.... Bees are hard to
understand.”
“By the great horn spoon!” ejaculated Genie, and then she laughed.
Adam echoed her laugh. He could have shouted or sung to the skies.
Never before, indeed, had he heard Genie use such an expression, but
the content of it was precious to him. It revealed hitherto unsuspected
depths in her, as the interest in bees hinted of an undeveloped love of
nature.
“Genie, do you care about bees, birds, flowers--what they do--how they
live and grow?”
“Love them,” she answered, simply.
“You do! Ah, that’s fine! So do I. Why, Genie, I’ve lived so long on
the desert, so many years! What would I have done without love of
everything that flies and crawls and grows?”
“You’re not old,” she said.
“It’s good you think that. We’ll be great pards now.... Look, Genie!
Look at that humming bird! There, he darts over the water. Well! What’s
he doing?”
Adam’s quick ear had caught the metallic hum of tiny, swift wings. Then
he had seen a humming bird poised over the water. As he called Genie’s
attention it hummed away. Then, swift as a glancing ray, it returned.
Adam could see the blur of its almost invisible wings. As it quivered
there, golden throat shining like live fire, with bronze and green
and amber tints so vivid in the sunlight, it surely was worthy reason
for a worship of nature. Not only had it beauty, but it had singular
action. It poised, then darted down, swift as light, to disturb the
smooth water, either with piercing bill or flying wings. Time and again
the tiny bird performed this antic. Was the diminutive-winged creature
playing, or drinking, or performing gyrations for the edification of
a female of his species, hidden somewhere in the overhanging foliage?
Adam knew that some courting male birds cooed, paraded, strutted,
fought before the females they hoped to make consorts. Why not a
humming bird?
“By your great horn spoon, Genie!” exclaimed Adam. “I wonder if that’s
the way he drinks.”
But all that Adam could be sure of was the beautiful opal body of
the tiny bird, the marvelous poise as it hung suspended in air, the
incredibly swift darts up and down, and the little widening, circling
ripples on the water. No, there was more Adam could be sure of, and
Genie’s delight proved the truth of it--and that was how sure the
harvest of thought, how sure the joy of life which was the reward for
watching!
* * * * *
One morning when Adam arose to greet the sunrise he looked through the
gap between the trees, and low down along the desert floor he saw a
burst of yellow. At first he imagined it to be a freak of sunlight or
reflection, but he soon decided that it was a _palo verde_ in blossom.
Beautiful, vivid, yellow gold, a fresh hue of the desert spring. May
had come. Adam had forgotten the flight of time. What bittersweet
stinging memory had that flushing _palo verde_ brought back to him! He
had returned to the desert land he loved best, and which haunted him.
Genie responded slowly to the Spartan training. She had been frail,
at best, and when grief clamped her soul and body she had sunk to the
verge. The effort she was driven to, and the exertion needful, wore her
down until she appeared merely skin and bones. Then came the dividing
line between waste and repair. She began to mend. Little by little her
appetite improved until at last hunger seized upon her. From that time
she grew like a weed. Thus the forced use of bone and muscle drove her
blood as Adam had driven her, and the result was a natural functioning
of physical life. Hard upon that change, and equally as natural, came
the quickening of her mind. Healthy pulsing blood did not harbor morbid
grief. Action was constructive; grief was destructive.
Adam, giving himself wholly to this task of rehabilitation, added to
his relentless developing of Genie’s body a thoughtful and interesting
appeal to her mind. At once he made two discoveries--first, that Genie
would give herself absorbingly to any story whatsoever, and secondly,
that his mind seemed to be a full treasure house from which to draw. He
who had spoken with so few men and women on the desert now was inspired
by a child.
He told Genie the beautiful Indian legend of Taquitch as it had been
told to him by Oella, the Coahuila maiden who had taught him her
language.
When he finished Genie cried out: “Oh, I know. Taquitch is up on the
mountain yet! In summer he hurls the lightning and thunder. In winter
he lets loose the storm winds. And always, by day and night, he rolls
the rocks.”
“Yes, Genie, he’s there,” replied Adam.
“Why did he steal the Indian maidens?” she asked, wonderingly.
Genie evolved a question now and then that Adam found difficult to
answer. She had the simplicity of an Indian, and the inevitableness,
and a like ignorance of the so-called civilization of the white people.
“Well, I suppose Taquitch fell in love with the Indian maidens,”
replied Adam, slowly.
“Fell in love. What’s that?”
“Didn’t your mother ever tell you why she married your father?”
“No.”
“Why do you think she married him?”
“I suppose they wanted to be together--to work--and go places, like
they came West when they were sick. To help each other.”
“Exactly. Well, Genie, they wanted to be together because they loved
each other. They married because they fell in love with each other.
Didn’t you ever have Indians camp here, and learn from them?”
“Oh yes, different tribes have been here. But I didn’t see any Indians
falling in love. If a chief wanted a wife he took any maiden or squaw
he wanted. Some chiefs had lots of wives. And if a brave wanted a wife
he bought her.”
“Not much falling in love there,” confessed Adam, with a laugh. “But,
Genie, you mustn’t think Indians can’t love each other. For they can.”
“I believe I’ve seen birds falling in love,” went on Genie, seriously.
“I’ve watched them when they come to drink and wash. Quail and road
runners, now--they often come in pairs, and they act funny. At least
one of each pair acted funny. But it was the pretty one--the one with a
topknot--that did all the falling in love. Why?”
“Well, Genie, the male, or the man-bird, so to speak, always has
brighter colors and crests and the like, and he--he sort of shines up
to the other, the female, and shows off before her.”
“Why doesn’t she do the same thing?” queried Genie. “That’s not fair.
It’s all one-sided.”
“Child, how you talk! Of course love isn’t one-sided,” declared Adam,
getting bewildered.
“Yes, it is. She ought to show off before him. But I’ll tell you
what--after they began to build a nest I never saw any more falling
in love. It’s a shame. It ought to last always. I’ve heard mother say
things to father I couldn’t understand. But now I believe she meant
that after he got her--married her--he wasn’t like he was before.”
Adam had to laugh. The old discontent of life, the old mystery of the
sexes, the old still, sad music of humanity spoken by the innocent and
unknowing lips of this child! How feminine! The walls of the inclosing
desert, like those of an immense cloister, might hide a woman all her
days from the illuminating world, but they could never change her
nature.
“Genie, I must be honest with you,” replied Adam. “I’ve got to be
parents, brother, sister, friend, everybody to you. And I’ll fall
short sometimes in spite of my intentions. But I’ll be honest....
And the fact is, it seems to be a sad truth that men and man-birds,
and man-creatures generally, are all very much alike. If they want
anything, they want it badly. And when they fall in love they do act
funny. They will do anything. They show off, beg, bully, quarrel, are
as nice and sweet as--as sugar; and they’ll fight, too, until they
get their particular wives. Then they become natural--like they were
before. It’s my idea, Genie, that all the wives of creation should
demand always the same deportment which won their love. Don’t you agree
with me?”
“I do, you bet. That’s what _I’ll_ have.... But will _I_ ever be
falling in love?”
The eyes that looked into Adam’s then were to him as the wonder of the
world.
“Of course you will. Some day, when you grow up.”
“With you?” she asked, in dreamy speculation.
“Oh, Genie! Not me. Why--I--I’m too old!” he ejaculated. “I’m old
enough to be your daddy.”
“You’re not old,” she replied, with a finality that admitted of no
question. “But if you were--and still like you are--what difference
would it make?”
“Like I am! Well, Genie, how’s that?” he queried, curiously.
“Oh, so big and strong! You can do so much with those hands. And your
voice sort of--of quiets something inside me. When I lie down to sleep,
knowing you’re there under the cottonwood, I’m not afraid of the
dark.... And your eyes are just like an eagle’s. Oh, you needn’t laugh!
I’ve seen eagles. An Indian here once had two. I used to love to watch
them look. But then their eyes were never kind like yours.... I think
when I get big I’ll go falling in love with you.”
“Well, little girl, that’s a long way off,” said Adam, divided between
humor and pathos. “But let’s get back to natural history. A while ago
you mentioned a bird called a road runner. That’s not as well-known a
name among desert men as chaparral cock. You know out in the desert
there are no roads. This name road runner comes from a habit--and it’s
a friendly habit--of the bird running along the road ahead of a man or
wagon. Now the road runner is the most wonderful bird of the desert.
That is saying a great deal. Genie, tell me all you know about him.”
“Oh, I know all about him,” declared Genie, brightly. “There’s one
lives in the mesquite there. I see him every day, lots of times. Before
you came he was very tame. I guess now he’s afraid. But not so afraid
as he was.... Well, he’s a long bird, with several very long feathers
for a tail. It’s a funny tail, for when he walks he bobs it up and
down. His color is speckled--gray and brown and white. I’ve seen dots
of purple on him, too. He has a topknot that he can put up and lay
down, as he has a mind to. When it’s up it shows some gold color,
almost red underneath. And when it’s up he’s mad. He snaps his big
bill like--like--oh, I don’t know what like, but it makes you shiver.
I’ve never seen him in the water, but I know he goes in, because he
shakes out his feathers, picks himself, and sits in the sun. He can
fly, only he doesn’t fly much. But, oh, how he can run! Like a streak!
I see him chase lizards across the sand. You know how a lizard can run!
Well, no lizard ever gets away from a road runner. There’s a race--a
fierce little tussle in the sand--a snap! snap!--and then old killer
road runner walks proudly back, carrying the lizard in his bill. If it
wasn’t for the way he kills and struts I could love him. For he was
very tame. He used to come right up to me. But I never cared for him as
I do for other birds.”
“Genie, you’ve watched a road runner, all right. I didn’t imagine you
knew so much. Yes, he’s a killer, a murderer. But no worse than other
desert birds. They all kill. They’re all fierce. And if they weren’t
they’d die.... Now I want to tell you the most wonderful thing a road
runner does. He’ll fight and kill and eat a rattlesnake!”
“No! Honest Injun?” cried Genie.
“Yes. I’ve watched many a battle between a road runner and a
rattlesnake, and nearly all of those battles were won by the birds.
But _that_ is not the most wonderful thing a road runner does. I’ll
tell you. I’ve never seen this thing myself, but a friend of mine, an
old prospector named Dismukes, swears it’s true. He knows more about
the desert than any man I ever met, and he wouldn’t tell a lie. Well,
here’s what it is. He says he saw a road runner come upon a sleeping
rattlesnake. But he didn’t pounce upon the snake. It happened to be
that the snake slept on the sand near some bushes of _cholla_ cactus.
You know how the dead cones fall off and lie around. This wonderful
bird dragged these loose pieces of cactus and laid them close together
in a circle, all around the rattlesnake. Built a fence around him!
Penned him in! Now I can vouch for how a rattlesnake hates cactus....
Then the fierce bird flew up and pounced down upon the snake. Woke him
up! The rattlesnake tried to slip away, but everywhere he turned was a
cactus which stuck into him, and over him the darting, picking bird. So
round and round he went, striking as best he could. But he was unable
to hit the bird, and every pounce upon him drew the blood. You’ve heard
the snap of that big long beak. Well, the rattlesnake grew desperate
and began to bite himself. And what with his own bites and those of his
enemy he was soon dead.... And then the beautiful, graceful, speckled
bird proceeded to tear and devour him.”
“I’ll bet it’s true!” ejaculated Genie. “A road runner could and would
do just that.”
“Very likely. It’s strange, and perhaps true. Indeed, the desert is the
place for things impossible anywhere else.”
“Why do birds and beasts kill and eat each other?” asked Genie.
“It is nature, Genie.”
“Nature could have done better. Why don’t people eat each other? They
do _kill_ each other. And they eat animals. But isn’t that all?”
“Genie, some kinds of people--cannibals in the South Seas--and
savages--do kill and eat men. It is horrible to believe. Dismukes told
me that he came upon a tribe of Indians on the west coast of Sonora
in Mexico. That’s not more than four hundred miles from here. He went
down there prospecting for gold. He thought these savages--the Seri
Indians, they’re called--were descended from cannibals and sometimes
ate man flesh themselves. No one knows but that they do it often.
I’ve met prospectors and travelers who scouted the idea of the Seris
being cannibals. But I’ve heard some bad stories about them. Dismukes
absolutely believed that in a poor season for meat, if chance offered,
they would kill and eat a white man. Prospectors have gone into that
country never to return.”
“Ughh! I’ve near starved, but I’d never get that hungry. I’d die.
Wouldn’t you?”
“Indeed I would, child.”
And so, during the leisure hours, that grew more and longer as the
hot summer season advanced, Adam led Genie nearer to nature, always
striving with his observations to teach the truth, however stern, and
to instruct and stimulate her growing mind. All was not music of birds
and perfume of flowers and serene summer content at the rosy dawns and
the golden sunsets. The desert life was at work. How hard to reconcile
the killing with the living! But when Adam espied an eagle swooping
down from the mountain heights, its wings bowed, and its dark body
shooting so wondrously, then he spoke of the freedom of the lonely king
of birds, and the grace of his flight, and the noble spirit of his life.
Likewise when Adam heard the honk of wild geese he made haste to have
Genie see them winging wide and triangular flight across the blue sky,
to the north. He told her how they lived all the winter in the warm
south, and when spring came a wonderful instinct bade them rise and fly
far northward, to the reedy banks of some lonely lake, and there gobble
and honk and feed and raise their young.
On another day, and this was in drowsy June when all the air seemed
still, he was roused from his siesta by cries of delight from Genie.
She knelt before him on the sand, and in one hand she held a beautiful
horned toad, and the other hand she stretched out to Adam.
“Look! Oh, look!” she cried, ecstatically, and her eyes then rivaled
the jeweled eyes of the desert reptile. Some dark-red drops of bright
liquid showed against the brown of Genie’s hand. “There! It’s blood! I
picked him up as I had all the others, so many hundreds of times. Only
this time I felt something warm and wet. I looked at my hand. There! He
had squirted the drops of blood! And, oh, I was quick to look at his
eyes! One was still wet, bloody. I know he squirted the drops of blood
from his eyes!”
Thus Adam had confirmed for him one of the mysteries of the desert.
Dismukes had been the first to tell Adam about the strange habit of
horned toads ejecting blood from their eyes. One other desert man, at
least, had corroborated Dismukes. But Adam, who had seldom passed a
horned toad without picking it up to gaze at the wondrous coloration,
and to see it swell and puff, had never come upon the peculiar
phenomenon. And horned toads on his trails had been many. To interest
Genie, he built her a corral of flat stones in the sand, and he
scoured the surrounding desert for horned toads. What a miscellaneous
collection he gathered! They all had the same general scalloped
outlines and tiny horns, but the color and design seemed to partake of
the physical characteristics of the spot where each was found. If they
squatted in the sand and lay still, it was almost impossible to see
them, so remarkable was their protective coloration. Adam turned the
assortment over to Genie with instruction to feed them, and play with
them, and tease them in the hope that one might sometime eject drops of
blood from his eyes. When it actually happened, Genie’s patience was
rewarded.
Adam’s theory that the reward of the faithful desert watcher would
always come was exemplified in more than one way. Genie had never
seen or heard of a tarantula wasp. She had noticed big and little
tarantulas, but of the fierce, winged, dragon-fly hawk of the
desert--the tarantula wasp--she had no knowledge. Adam, therefore, had
always kept a keen lookout for one.
They were up in the canyon on a hot June day, resting in the shade of
the rustling palms. A stream babbled and splashed over the stones,
and that was the only sound to break the dreaming silence of the
canyon. All at once Adam heard a low whir like the hum of tiny wings.
As he turned his head the sound became a buzz. Then he espied a huge
tarantula wasp. Quickly he called to Genie, and they watched. It flew
around and around about a foot from the ground, a fierce-looking, yet
beautiful creature, with yellow body and blue gauzy wings. It was fully
two inches and more long.
“He sees a tarantula. Now watch!” whispered Adam.
Suddenly the wasp darted down to the edge of a low bush, into some
coarse grass that grew there. Instantly came a fierce whiz of wings,
like the buzz of a captured bumblebee, only much louder and more
vibrant. Adam saw the blades of grass tumble. A struggle to the death
was going on there. Adam crawled over a few yards, drawing Genie with
him; and they saw the finish of a terrific battle between the wasp and
a big hairy tarantula.
“There! It’s over, and the tarantula is dead,” said Adam. “Genie, I
used to watch this kind of a desert fight, and not think much more
about it. But one day I made a discovery. I had a camp over here, and
I watched a tarantula wasp kill a tarantula. I didn’t know it then,
but this wasp was a female, ready to lay her eggs. Well, she rolled
the big spider around until she found a place that suited her. Then
she dug a hole, rolled him into it, covered him over, and flew away. I
wondered then why she did that. I went away from that camp, and after a
while I came back. Then one day I remembered about the wasp burying the
tarantula. And so, just for fun and curiosity, I found the grave--it
was near the end of a stone--and I opened it up. What do you think I
discovered?”
“Tell me!” exclaimed Genie, breathlessly.
“I found the tarantula almost eaten up by a lot of tiny wasps, as
much like worms as wasps! Then I understood. That tarantula wasp had
killed the tarantula, laid her eggs inside his body, tumbled him into
his grave, and covered him over. By and by those eggs hatched, and the
little wasps ate the tarantula--lived and grew, and after a while came
out full-fledged tarantula wasps like their mother.”