Time passed. The days slipped by to make weeks, and weeks merged into
months. Summer with its hot midday hours, when man and beast rested or
slept, seemed to shorten its season by half. No human creature ever
entered a desert oasis without joy, nor left it without regret. As
time went fleeting by Adam now and then remembered Dismukes, and these
memories were full of both gladness and pathos. He tried to visualize
the old prospector in the new role of traveler, absorber of life,
spendthrift, and idler. Nevertheless, Adam could never be sure in his
heart that Dismukes would find what he sought.
But for the most part of the still, hot, waking hours, Adam, when he
was not working or sleeping, devoted himself to Genie. The girl changed
every day--how, he was unable to tell. Most wondrous of all in nature
was human life, and beyond all sublimity was the human soul!
Every morning at sunrise Genie knelt by her mother’s grave with bowed
head and clasped hands, and every evening at sunset or in the golden
dusk of twilight she again knelt in prayer.
“Genie, why do you kneel there--now?” asked Adam once, unable to
contain his curiosity. “You did not use to do it. Only the last few
weeks or month.”
“I forgot I’d promised mother,” she replied. “Besides, could I pray
when I wanted to die?”
“No, I suppose not. It would be hard,” replied Adam, gravely. “Please
don’t think me curious. Tell me, Genie, what do you pray for?”
“I used to pray, ‘Now I lay me down to sleep,’ as mother taught me
when I was little. But now I make up my own prayers. I ask God to keep
the souls of mother and father in heaven. I pray I may be good and
happy, so when they look down and see me they will be glad. I pray for
you, and then for every one in the world.”
Slow, strong unrest, the endless moving of contending tides, heaved in
Adam’s breast.
“So you pray for me, Genie?... Well, it is good of you. I hope I’m
worthy.... But, _why_ do you pray?”
She pondered the question. Thought was developing in Genie. “Before
mother died I prayed because she taught me. Since then--lately--it--it
lifts me up--it takes away the sorrow here.” And she put a hand over
her heart.
“Genie, then you believe in God--the God who is supposed to answer your
prayers?”
“Yes. And he is not a god like Taquitch--or the beasts and rocks that
the Indians worship. My God is all around me, in the sunshine, in the
air, in the humming bees and whispering leaves and murmuring water. I
feel him everywhere, and in me, too!”
“Genie, tell me one prayer, just _one_ of yours or your mother’s that
was truly answered,” appealed Adam, with earnest feeling.
“We prayed for some one to come. I know mother prayed for some one to
save me from being alone--from starving. And I prayed for some one to
come and help her--to relieve her terrible dread about me.... And _you_
came!”
Adam was silenced. What had he to contend with here? Faith and fact
were beyond question, as Genie represented them. What little he knew!
He could not even believe that a divine guidance had been the spirit
of his wandering steps. But he was changing. Always the future--always
the unknown calling--always the presentiment of sterner struggle, of
larger growth, of ultimate fulfillment! His illusion, his fetish, his
phantasmagoria rivaled the eternal and inexplicable faith of his friend
Dismukes.
* * * * *
Andreas Canyon was far from the camp under the cottonwoods, but Adam
and Genie, having once feasted their eyes upon its wildness and
beauty and grandeur, went back again and again, so that presently the
distance in the hot sun was no hindrance, and the wide area of white,
glistening, terrible _cholla_ cactus was no obstacle.
For that matter the cactus patch was endurable because of its singular
beauty. Adam could not have told why _cholla_ fascinated him, and,
though Genie admitted she liked to look at the frosty silver-lighted
cones and always had an impulse to prick her fingers on the cruel
thorns, she could not explain why.
“Genie, the Yaqui Indians in Sonora love this _cholla_,” said Adam.
“Love it as they hate Mexicans. They will strip a Mexican naked, tear
the skin off the soles of his feet, and drive him through the _cholla_
until he’s dead. It wouldn’t take long!... All prospectors hate
_cholla_. I hate it, yet I--I guess I’m a little like the Yaquis. I
often prick my finger on _cholla_ just to feel the sting, the burn, the
throb. The only pain I could ever compare to that made by _cholla_ is
the sting of the sharp horn of a little catfish back in Ohio. Oh! I’ll
never forget that! A poison, burning sting!... But _cholla_ is terrible
because the thorns stick in your flesh. When you jerk to free yourself
the thorns leave the cones. Each thorn has an invisible barb and it
works deeper and deeper into flesh.”
“Don’t _I_ know!” exclaimed Genie, emphatically. “I’ve spent whole
hours digging them out of my feet and legs. But how pretty the _cholla_
shines! Only it doesn’t tell the truth, does it, Wanny?”
“Child, please don’t call me Wanny. It’s so--so silly,” protested Adam.
“It’s not. No sillier than your calling me child! I’m nearly fifteen.
I’m growing right out of my clothes.”
“Call me Adam.”
“No, I don’t like that name. And I can’t call you mister or father or
brother.”
“But what’s wrong with Adam?”
“I read in mother’s bible about Adam and Eve. I hated her when the
devil got into her. And I didn’t like Adam. And I don’t like the _name_
Adam. You’d never have been driven from heaven.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” said Adam, ruefully. “Genie, I was wicked
when I was a--a young man.”
“You were! Well, I don’t care. _You’d_ never be tempted to disobey the
Lord--not by Eve with all her stolen apples!”
“All right, called me Wanny,” returned Adam, and he made haste to
change the subject. There were times when Genie, with her simplicity,
her directness, her curiosity, and her innocence, caused Adam extreme
perplexity, not to say embarrassment. He remembered his own bringing
up. It seemed every year his childhood days came back closer. And
thrown as he was in constant companionship with this child of nature,
he began to wonder if the sophisticated education of children,
especially girls, as it had been in his youth, was as fine and simple
and true to life as it might have been.
Andreas Canyon yawned with wide mouth and huge yellow cliffs. Just
beyond the mouth of the canyon and across the wide space from cliff
to slope bloomed the most verdant and beautiful oasis of that desert
region. Huge gray bowlders, clean and old, and russet with lichen, made
barricade for a clear stream of green water, as if to protect it from
blowing desert sand. Yet there were little beaches of white sand, lined
by colored pebbles. Green rushes and flags grew in the water. Beyond
the stream, on the side of the flat-rocked slope, lay a many-acred
thicket of mesquite, impenetrable except for birds and beasts. The
green of the leaves seemed dominated by bronze colors of the mistletoe.
The oasis proper, however, was the grove of cottonwoods, sycamores,
and palms. How bright green the foliage of cottonwoods--and smooth
white the bark of sycamores! But verdant and cool as it was under
their shade, Adam and Genie always sought the aloof and stately palms,
wonderful trees not native there, planted years and years before by the
Spanish padres.
“Oh, I love it here!” exclaimed Genie. “Listen to the palms whisper!”
They stood loftily, with spreading green fanlike leaves at the tops,
and all the trunks swathed and bundled apparently in huge cases of
straw. These yellow sheaths were no less than the leaves that had died.
As the palms grew the new leaves kept bursting from the tufted tops,
and those leaves lowest down died and turned yellow.
“Genie, your uncle seems a long time coming back for you,” remarked
Adam.
“I hope he never comes,” she replied.
Adam was surprised and somewhat disconcerted at her reply, and yet
strangely pleased.
“Why?” he asked.
“Oh, I never liked him and I don’t want to go away with him.”
“Your mother said he was a good man--that he loved you.”
“Uncle Ed was good, and very kind to me. I--I ought to be ashamed,”
replied Genie. “But he drank, and when he drank he kissed me--he put
his hands on me. I hated that.”
“Did you ever tell your mother?” inquired Adam.
“Yes. I told her. I asked her why he did that. And she said not to
mind--only to keep away from him when he drank.”
“Genie, your uncle did wrong, and your mother did wrong not to tell you
so,” declared Adam, earnestly.
“Wrong? What do you mean--wrong? I only thought I didn’t like him.”
“Well, I’ll tell you some day.... But now, to go back to what you said
about leaving--you know I’m going with you when your uncle comes.”
“Wanny, do _you_ want that time to come soon?” she asked, wistfully.
“Yes, of course, for your sake. You’re getting to be a big girl. You
must go to school. You must get out to civilization.”
“Oh! I’m crazy to go!” she burst out, covering her face. “Yet I’ve a
feeling I’ll hate to leave here.... I’ve been so happy lately.”
“Genie, it relieves me to hear you’re anxious to go. And it pleases me
to know you’ve been happy lately. You see I’m only a--a man, you know.
How little I could do for you! I’ve tried. I’ve done my best. But at
that best I’m only a poor old homeless outcast--a desert wanderer!
I’m----”
“Hush up!” she cried, with quick, sweet warmth. Swiftly she enveloped
him, hugged him close, and kissed his cheek. “Wanny, you’re grand!...
You’re like Taquitch--you’re _my_ Taquitch with face like the sun! And
I love you--love you as I never loved anyone except my mother! And I
hope Uncle Ed never comes, so you’ll have to take care of me always.”
Adam gently disengaged himself from Genie’s impulsive arms, yet,
despite his embarrassment and confused sense of helplessness, he felt
the better for her action. Natural, spontaneous, sincere, it warmed his
heart. It proved more than all else what a child she was.
“Genie, let me make sure you understand,” he said, gravely. “I love
you, too, as if you were my little sister. And if your uncle doesn’t
come I’ll take you somewhere--find you a home. But I never--much as I
would like to--never can take care of you always.”
“Why?” she flashed, with her terrible directness.
Adam had begun his development of Genie by telling the truth; he had
always abided by it; and now, in these awakening days for her, he must
never veer from the truth.
“If I tell you why--will you promise never to speak of it--so long as
you live?” he asked, solemnly.
“Never! I promise. Never, Wanny!”
“Genie, I am an outcast. I am a hunted man. I can never go back to
civilization and stay.”
Then he told her the story of the ruin of his life. When he finished
she fell weeping upon his shoulder and clung to him. For Adam the
moment was sad and sweet--sad because a few words had opened up the
dark, tragic gulf of his soul; and sweet because the passionate grief
of a child assured him that even he, wanderer as he was, knew something
of sympathy and love.
“But, Wanny, you--could--go and--be--pun--ished--and then--come back!”
she cried, between sobs. “You’d--never--have to--hide--any more.”
Out of her innocence and simplicity she had spoken confounding truth.
What a terrible truth! Those words of child wisdom sowed in Adam the
seed of a terrible revolt. Revolt--yea, revolt against this horrible
need to hide--this fear and dread of punishment that always and forever
so bitterly mocked his manhood! If he could find the strength to rise
to the heights of Genie’s wisdom--divine philosophy of a child!--he
would no longer hate his shadowed wandering steps down the naked
shingles and hidden trails of the lonely desert. But, alas! whence
would come that strength? Not from the hills! Not from the nature that
had made him so strong, so fierce, so sure to preserve his life! It
could only come from the spirit that had stood in the dusky twilight
beside a dying woman’s side. It could come only from the spirit to whom
a child prayed while kneeling at her mother’s grave. And for Adam that
spirit held aloof, illusive as the specters of the dead, beyond his
grasp, an invisible medium, if indeed it was not a phantom, that seemed
impossible of reality in the face of the fierce, ruthless, inevitable
life and death and decay of the desert. Could God be nature--that
thing, that terrible force, light, fire, water, pulse--that quickening
of plant, flesh, stone, that dying of all only to renew--that endless
purpose and progress, from the first whirling gas globe of the
universe, throughout the ages down to the infinitesimal earth so fixed
in its circling orbit, so pitiful in its present brief fertility? The
answer was as unattainable as to pluck down the stars, as hopeless as
to think of the fleeting of the years, as mysterious as the truth of
where man came from and whence he was to go.
* * * * *
Snow on the gray old peak! It reminded Adam how, long ago, from far
down the valley, he had watched the mountain crown itself in dazzling
white. Snow on the heights meant winter that tempered the heat, let
loose the storm winds; and therefore, down in the desert, comfort and
swiftly flying days. Indeed, so swift were they that Adam, calling out
sad and well-remembered words, “Oh, time, stand still here!” seemed
to look at a few more golden sunsets and, lo! again it was spring.
Time would not stand still! Nor would the budding, blossoming youth of
Genie! Nor would the slow-mounting might of the tumult in Adam’s soul!
* * * * *
Then swifter than the past, another year flew by. Genie’s uncle did
not come. And Adam began to doubt that he would ever come. And the
hope of Genie’s, that he never would come began insidiously to enter
into Adam’s thought. Again the loneliness, the solitude and silence,
and something more he could not name, began to drag Adam from duty,
from effort of mind. The desert never stopped its work, on plant, or
rock, or man. Adam knew that he required another shock to quicken his
brain, to stir again the spiritual need, to make him fight the subtle,
all-pervading, ever-present influence of the desert.
In all that time Adam saw but two white men, prospectors passing by
down the sandy trails. Indians came that way but seldom. Across the
valley there was an encampment, which he visited occasionally to buy
baskets, skins, meat, and to send Indians out after supplies. The great
problem was clothes for Genie. It was difficult to get materials,
difficult for Genie to make dresses, and impossible to keep her from
tearing or wearing or growing out of them. Adam found that Indian
moccasins, and tough overalls such as prospectors wore, cut down to
suit Genie, and woolen blouses she made herself, were the only things
for her. Like a road runner she ran over the rocks and sand! For Genie,
cactus was as if it were not! As for a hat, she would not wear one.
Adam’s responsibility weighed upon him. When he asked Genie what in
the world she would wear when he took her out of the desert, to pass
through villages and ranches and towns, where people lived, she naïvely
replied, “What I’ve got on!” And what she wore at the moment was, of
course, the boyish garb that was all Adam could keep on her, and which
happened just then to be minus the moccasins. Genie loved to scoop up
the warm white sand with her bare brown feet, and then to dabble them
in the running water.
“Well, I give up!” exclaimed Adam, resignedly. “But when we do get to
Riverside or San Diego, where there’s a store, you’ve _got_ to go with
me to buy girl’s dresses and things--and you’ve _got_ to wear them.”
“Oh, Wanny, that will be grand!” she cried, dazzled at the prospect.
“But--let’s don’t go--just yet!”
* * * * *
In the early fall--what month it was Adam could not be sure--he crossed
the arm of the valley to the encampment of the Coahuilas. The cool
nights and tempering days had made him hungry for meat. He found the
Indian hunters at home, and, in fact, they had just packed fresh sheep
meat down from the mountain. They were of the same tribe as the old
chief, Charley Jim, who had taught Adam so much of the desert during
those early hard years over in the Chocolates. Adam always asked for
news of Charley Jim, usually to be disappointed. He was a nomad, this
old chieftain, and his family had his wandering spirit. Adam shouldered
his load of fresh meat and took his way down out of the canyon where
the encampment lay, to the well-beaten trail that zigzagged along the
irregular base of the mountain.
Adam rested at the dividing point of the trails. It was early in the
day, clear and still. How gray and barren and monotonous the desert!
All seemed dead. A strange, soft, creeping apathy came over Adam, not
a dreaminess, for in his dreams he lived the past and invented the
future, but a state wherein he watched, listened, smelled, and felt,
all unconscious that he was doing anything. Whenever he fell into this
trance and was roused out of it, or came out of it naturally, then
he experienced a wonderful sense of vague content. That feeling was
evanescent. Always he longed to get it back, but could not.
In this instant his quick eye caught sight of something that was
moving. A prospector with a brace of burros--common sight indeed it was
to Adam, though not for the last few years.
The man was coming from the south, but outside of the main trail, for
which, no doubt, he was heading. Adam decided to wait and exchange
greetings with him. After watching awhile Adam was constrained to
mutter, “Well, if that fellow isn’t a great walker, my eyes are
failing!” That interested him all the more. He watched burros and
driver grow larger and clearer. Then they disappeared behind a long,
low swell of sand fringed by sage and dotted by mesquite. They would
reappear presently, coming out behind the ridge at a point near Adam.
Some minutes later he saw that the burros and driver had not only
cleared the end of the ridge, but were now within a hundred yards of
where he sat. The burros were trotting, with packs bobbing up and down.
Only the old slouch hat of the prospector showed above the packs.
Manifestly he was a short man.
“Say, but he’s a walker!” ejaculated Adam.
Suddenly sight of that old slouch hat gave Adam a thrill. Then the
man’s shoulders appeared. How enormously broad! Then, as the burros
veered to one side, the driver’s whole stature was disclosed. What
a stride he had, for a man so short! Almost he seemed as wide as he
was long. His gait was rolling, ponderous. He wore old, gray, patched
clothes that Adam wildly imagined he had seen somewhere.
Suddenly he yelled at the burros: “Hehaw! Gedap!”
That deep voice, those words, brought Adam leaping to his feet,
transfixed and thrilling. Had he lost his mind? What trick of desert
mirage or illusion! No--the burros were real--they kicked up the
dust--rattled the pebbles in the sage; no--the man was real, however he
seemed a ghost of Adam’s past.
“_Dismukes!_” shouted Adam, hoarsely.
The prospector halted his long, rolling stride and looked. Then Adam
plunged over sand and through sage. He could not believe his eyes.
He must get his hands on this man, to prove reality. In a trice the
intervening space was covered. Then Adam, breathless and aghast, gazed
into a face that he knew, yet which held what he did not know.
“Howdy, Wansfell! Thought I’d meet you sooner or later,” said the man.
His voice was unmistakable. He recognized Adam. Beyond any possibility
of doubt--Dismukes! In the amaze and gladness of the moment Adam
embraced this old savior and comrade and friend--embraced him as a
long-lost brother or as a prodigal son. Then Adam released him, with
sudden dawning consciousness that Dismukes seemed to have no feeling
whatever about this meeting.
“Dismukes! I had to grab you--just to feel if it was you. I’m knocked
clean off my pins,” declared Adam, breathing hard.
“Yes, it’s me, Wansfell,” replied Dismukes. His large, steady eyes,
dark brown like those of an ox, held an exceeding and unutterable
sadness.
“Back on the desert? _You!_” exclaimed Adam. “Dismukes, then you lost
your gold--bad luck--something happened--you never went to the great
cities--to spend your fortune--to live and live?”
“Yes, friend, I went,” replied Dismukes.
A great awe fell upon Adam. His keen gaze, cleared of the mist of
amaze, saw Dismukes truly. The ox eyes had the shadow of supreme
tragedy. Their interest was far off, as if their sight had fixed on a
dim, distant mountain range of the horizon. Yet they held peace. The
broad face had thinned. Gone was the dark, healthy bronze! And the
beard that had once been thick and grizzled was now scant and white.
The whole face expressed resignation and peace. Those wonderful wide
shoulders of Dismukes appeared just as wide, but they sagged, and the
old, tremendous brawn was not there. Strangest of all, Dismukes wore
the ragged gray prospector’s garb which had been on his person when
Adam saw him last. There! the yellow stain of Death Valley clay--and
darker stains--sight of which made Adam’s flesh creep!
“Ah! So you went, after all,” replied Adam, haltingly. “Well! Well!...
Let’s sit down, old comrade. Here on this stone. I confess my legs feel
weak.... Never expected to see you again in this world!”
“Wansfell, no man can ever tell. It’s folly to think an’ toil an’ hope
for the future.”
What strong, sad history of life revealed itself in that reply!
“Ah!... I-- But never mind what I think. Dismukes, you’ve not been on
the desert long.”
“About a week. Outfitted at San Diego an’ came over the mountain trail
through El Campo. Landed in Frisco two weeks an’ more ago. By ship from
Japan.”
“Did you have these old clothes hid away somewhere?” inquired Adam. “I
remember them.”
“No. I packed them wherever I went for the whole three years.”
“Three years! Has it been that long?”
“Aye, friend Wansfell, three years.”
Adam gazed out across the desert with slowly dimming eyes. The
wasteland stretched there, vast and illimitable, the same as all the
innumerable times he had gazed. Solemn and gray and old, indifferent to
man, yet strengthening through its passionless fidelity to its own task!
“Dismukes, I want you to tell me where you went, what you did, why you
came back,” said Adam, with earnestness that was entreaty.
Dismukes heaved a long sigh. He wagged the huge, shaggy head that was
now gray. But he showed no more indication of emotion. How stolid he
seemed--how locked in his aloofness!
“Yes, I’ll tell you,” he said. “Maybe it’ll save you somethin’ of what
I went through.”
Then he became lost in thought, perhaps calling upon memory, raking
up the dead leaves of the past. Adam recalled that his own memory of
Dismukes and the past brought note of the fact how the old prospector
had loved to break his habit of silence, to talk about the desert, and
to smoke his black pipe while he discoursed. But now speech did not
easily flow and he did not smoke.
“Lookin’ back, I seem to see myself as crazy,” began Dismukes. “You’ll
remember how crazy. You’ll remember before we parted up there on the
Mohave at that borax camp where the young man was--who couldn’t drive
the mules.... Wansfell, from the minute I turned my back on you till
now I’ve never thought of that. Did you drive the ornery mules?”
“Did I?” Adam’s query was a grim assertion. “Every day for three
months! You remember Old Butch, that gray devil of a mule. Well,
Dismukes, the time came when _he_ knew me. If I even picked up the long
bull whip Old Butch would scream and run to lay his head on me.”
“An’ you saw the young driver through his trouble?”
“That I did. And it was more trouble than he told us then. The boss
Carricks had was low-down and cunning. He’d got smitten with the lad’s
wife--a pretty girl, but frail in health. He kept Carricks on jobs
away from home. We didn’t meet the lad any too soon.”
“Humph! That’s got a familiar sound to me,” declared Dismukes.
“Wansfell, what’d you do to thet low-down boss?”
“Go on with _your_ story,” replied Adam.
“Aha! That’s so. I want to make Two Palms Well before dark....
Wansfell, like a horned-toad on the desert, I changed my outside at
Frisco. Alas! I imagined all within--blood--mind--soul had changed!...
Went to Denver, St. Louis, an’ looked at the sights, not much
disappointed, because my time seemed far ahead. Then I went to my old
home. There I had my first jar. Folks all dead! Not a relation livin’.
Could not even find my mother’s grave. No one remembered me an’ I
couldn’t find any one I ever knew. The village had grown to a town.
My old home was gone. The picture of it--the little gray cottage--the
vines an’ orchard--lived in my mind. I found the place. All gone! Three
new houses there. Forty years is a long time! I didn’t build the church
or set out a park for the village of my boyhood.... Then I went on to
Chicago, Philadelphia, New York. Stayed long in New York. At first
it fascinated me. I felt I wanted to see it out of curiosity. I was
lookin’ for some place, somethin’ I expected. But I never saw it. The
hotels, theaters, saloons, gamblin’ hells, an’ worse--the operas an’
parks an’ churches--an’ the wonderful stores--I saw them all. Men an’
women like ants rushin’ to an’ fro. No rest, no sleep, no quiet, no
peace! I met people, a few good, but most bad. An’ in some hotels an’
places I got to be well known. I got to have a name for throwin’ gold
around. Men of business sought my acquaintance, took me to dinners,
made much of me--all to get me to invest in their schemes. Women! Aw!
the women were my second disappointment! Wansfell, women are like
desert mirages. Beautiful women, in silks an’ satins, diamonds blazin’
on bare necks an’ arms, made eyes at me, talked soft an’ sweet, an’
flattered me an’ praised me an’ threw themselves at me--all because
they thought I had stacks an’ rolls an’ bags of gold. Never a woman did
I meet who liked _me_, who had any thought to hear my story, to learn
my hope! Never a kind whisper! Never any keen eye that saw through my
outside!
“Well, I wasn’t seein’ an’ findin’ the life I’d hoped for. That New York
is as near hell as I ever got. I saw men with quiet faces an’ women who
seemed happy. But only in the passin’ crowds. I never got to meet any
of them. They had their homes an’ troubles an’ happiness, I figured,
an’ they were not lookin’ for anyone to fleece. It was my habit to get
into a crowd an’ watch, for I come to believe the mass of busy, workin’
ordinary people were good. Maybe if I’d somehow made acquaintance with
a few of them it’d have been better. But that wasn’t seein’ life. I
thought I knew what I wanted.
“All my yearnin’s an’ dreams seemed to pall on me. Where was the
joy? Wansfell, the only joy I had was in findin’ some poor beggar or
bootblack or poor family, an’ givin’ them gold. The great city was full
of them. An’ I gave away thousands of dollars. God knows _that_ was
some good. An’ now I see if I could have stuck it out, livin’ among
such people, I might have been of some use in the world. But, man!
livin’ was not possible in New York. All night the hotels roared. All
night the streets hummed an’ clanged. There was as many people rushin’
around by night as by day, an’ different from each other, like bats
an’ hawks. I got restless an’ half sick. I couldn’t sleep. I seemed
suffocatin’ for fresh air. I wanted room to breathe. When I looked up
at night I couldn’t see the stars. Think of that for a desert man!
“At last I knew I couldn’t find what I wanted in New York, an’ I
couldn’t hunt any longer there. I had to leave. My plans called for
goin’ abroad. _Then_ came a strange feelin’ that I must have had all
the time, but didn’t realize. The West called me back. I seemed to
want the Middle West, where I’d planned to buy the green farm. But
you know I’m a man who sticks to his mind, when it’s made up. There
were London, Paris, Rome I’d dreamed about an’ had planned to see.
Well, I had a hell of a fight with somethin’ in myself before I could
get on that ship. Right off then I got seasick. Wansfell, the bite of
a rattlesnake never made me half as sick as that dirty-gray, windy
sea. The trip across was a nightmare.... London was a dreary place as
big as the Mohave an’ full of queer fishy-eyed people whom I couldn’t
understand. But I liked their slow, easy-goin’ ways. Then Paris....
Wansfell, that Paris was a wonderful, glitterin’ beautiful city, an’
if a city had been a place for me, Paris would have been it. But I was
lost. I couldn’t speak French--couldn’t learn a word. My tongue refused
to twist round their queer words. All the same, I saw what I’d set
out to see.... Wansfell, if a man fights despair for the women of the
world, he’ll get licked in Paris. An’ the reason is, there you see the
same thing in the homely, good, an’ virtuous little wives as you see in
those terrible, fascinatin’, dazzlin’ actresses. What that somethin’ is
I couldn’t guess. But you like all Frenchwomen. They’re gay an’ happy
an’ square. If I applied the truth of this desert to these Frenchwomen,
I’d say the somethin’ so fascinatin’ in them is that the race is
peterin’ out an’ the women are dyin’ game.
“From Paris I went to Rome, an’ there a queer state of mind came to me.
I could look at temples an’ old ruins without even seein’ them--with
my mind on my own country. All this travel idea, seein’ an’ learnin’
an’ doin’, changed so that it was hateful. I cut out Egypt, an’ I can’t
remember much of India an’ Japan. But when I got on ship bound for
Frisco I couldn’t see anythin’ for a different reason, an’ that was
tears. I’d come far to find joy of life, an’ now I wept tears of joy
because I was homeward bound. It was a great an’ splendid feelin’!
“The Pacific isn’t like the Atlantic. It’s vast an’ smooth an’
peaceful, with swells like the mile-long ridges of the desert. I didn’t
get seasick. An’ on that voyage I got some rest. Maybe the sea is
like the desert. Anyway, it calmed me, an’ I could think clear once
more. As I walked the deck by day, or hung over the rail by night,
my yearnin’s an’ dreams came back. When I reached Frisco I’d take
train for the Middle West, an’ somewhere I’d buy the green ranch an’
settle down to peace an’ quiet for the rest of my life. The hope was
beautiful. I believed in it. That wild desire to search for the joy
of life had to be buried. I had been wrong about that. It was only a
dream--a boy’s dream, on the hope of which I had spent the manhood of
my best years. Ah! it was bitter--bitter to realize that. I--who had
never given in to defeat!... But I conquered my regret because I knew
I had just mistaken what I wanted. An’ it was not wholly too late!...
Wansfell, you’ve no idea of the size of the old earth. I’ve been round
it. An’ that Pacific! Oh, what an endless ocean of waters! It seemed
eternal, like the sky. But--at last--I got to--Frisco.”
Here Dismukes choked and broke down. The deep, rolling voice lost its
strength for a moment. He drew a long, long breath that it hurt Adam to
hear.
“Wansfell, when my feet once more touched land it was as though I’d
really found happiness,” presently went on Dismukes, clearing his
throat of huskiness. “I was in the clouds. I could have kissed the
very dirt. My own, my native land!... Now for the last leg of the
journey--an’ the little farm--the home to be--friends to make--perhaps
a sweet-faced woman an’ a child! Oh, it was as glorious as my lost
dreams!
“But suddenly somethin’ strange an’ terrible seized hold of me. A hand
as strong as the wind gripped my heart.... _The desert called me!_...
Day an’ night I walked the streets. Fierce as the desert itself I
fought. Oh, I fought my last an’ hardest fight!... On one hand was
the dream of my life--the hope of a home an’ happiness--what I had
slaved for. Forty years of toil! On the other hand the call of the
desert! Loneliness, solitude, silence, the white, hot days, the starlit
nights, the vast open desert, free and peaceful, the gray wastes, the
colored mountains, sunrise and sunset. Ah! The desert was my only
home. I belonged to the silence an’ desolation. Forty years a wanderer
on the desert, blindly seekin’ for gold! But, oh, it was not gold I
wanted! Not gold! Nor fortune! That was my dream, my boyish dream. Gold
did not nail me to the desert sands. That was only my idea. That was
what brought me into the wastelands. I misunderstood the lure of the
desert. I thought it was gold, but, no! For me the desert existed as
the burrow for the fox. For me the desert linked my strange content to
the past ages. For me the soul of the desert was my soul.... _I had to
go back!_... I could live nowhere else.... Forty years! My youth--my
manhood!... I’m old now--old! My dreams are done.... Oh, my God!... I
HAD TO COME BACK!”
Adam sat confounded in grief, in shock. His lips were mute. Like
a statue he gazed across the wasteland, so terribly magnified, so
terribly illumined by the old prospector’s revelation. How awful the
gigantic red rock barriers! How awful the lonely, limitless expanse of
sand! The eternal gray, the eternal monotony!
“Comrade, take the story of my life to heart,” added Dismukes. “You’re
a young man still. Think of my forty years of hell, that now has made
me a part of the desert. Think of how I set out upon my journey so
full of wild, sweet hope! Think of my wonderful journey, through the
glitterin’ cities, round the world, only to find my hope a delusion!...
A desert mirage!”
“Man, I cannot think!” burst out Adam. “I am stunned.... Oh, the
pity of it--the sickening, pitiless fatality! Oh, my heart breaks
for you!... Dismukes, of what use is hope? Oh, why do we fight?
Where--where does joy abide for such as you and me?”
The great, rolling ox eyes gleamed upon Adam, strong with the soul of
peace, of victory in their depths.
“Wansfell, joy an’ happiness, whatever makes life worth livin’, is in
_you_. No man can go forth to find what he hasn’t got within him.”
Then he gazed away across the desert, across sand and cactus and
mesquite, across the blue-hazed, canyon-streaked ranges toward the
north.
“I go to Death Valley,” he continued, slowly, in his deep voice. “I had
left enough gold to grub-stake me. An’ I go to Death Valley, but not
to seek my fortune. It will be quiet and lonely there. An’ I can think
an’ rest an’ sleep. Perhaps I’ll dig a little of the precious yellow
dust, just to throw it away. Gold!... The man who loves gold is ruined.
Passion makes men mad.... An’ now I must go.”
“Death Valley? No! No!” whispered Adam.
“Straight for Death Valley! It has called me across half the earth. I
remember no desert place so lonely an’ silent an’ free. So different
from the noisy world of men that crowds my mind still! There I shall
find peace, perhaps my grave. See! life is all a hopin’ to find! I
go on my way. Wansfell, we never know what drives us. But I am happy
now.... Our trails have crossed for the last time. Good-by.”
He wrung Adam’s hand and quickly whirled to his burros.
“Hehaw! Gedap!” he shouted, with a smack on their haunches. Adam
whispered a farewell he could not speak. Then, motionless, he watched
the old prospector face the gray wastes toward the north and the
beckoning mountains. Adam had an almost irresistible desire to run
after Dismukes, to go with him. But the man wanted to be alone. What a
stride he had! The fruitless quest had left him that at least. The same
old rolling gait, the same doggedness! Dismukes was a man who could not
be halted. Adam watched him--saw him at last merge and disappear in
the gray, lonely sage. And then into Adam’s strained sight seemed to
play a quivering mirage--a vision of Death Valley, ghastly and white
and naked, the abode of silence and decay set down under its dark-red
walls--the end of the desert and the grave of Dismukes.