“The foxes have holes--the birds of the air have nests!” cried Adam.
Was it he who lay there with aching heart and burning eyes? Ah! Again
the lonely wasteland claimed him. That illimitable desert was home.
Whose face was that limned on the clouds, and set into the beaten bossy
mosaic of the sands, and sculptored in the contour of the dim, colored
ranges?
His burros nipped the sage behind him as he lay, back against a stone,
on the lofty height of the Sierra Madre divide, gazing down into that
boundless void. What was it that had happened? Ah! He had fled! And he
lived over again for the thousandth time, that week--that fleeting week
of transport with its endless regrets--in which he had found Genie a
home, in which the daughter of Magdalene Virey had stormed his soul.
Vague and happy those first days when he bought the valley lands and
flooded them with cattle--vague because of the slow gathering of
insupportable and unconscious love--happy because he lived with Genie’s
rapture and her romance. Vivid were some of the memories--when he
placed in Genie’s little brown hands papers and deeds and bankbooks,
and by a gesture, as if by magic, proclaimed to her wondering
sense the truth of a tale of Aladdin; when, to the serious-faced
mother, pondering the costs, he announced her once more owner of the
long-regretted land; when, to a fire-eyed lad, he had drawn aside the
veil of the future.
But vague, mystic as a troubled dream, the inception of a love that
rose like the blaze of the sun--vague as the opaque dawn of the
desert! Whenever he looked up, by night or day, at task or idleness,
there shone the lovely face, pale as a dawn-hazed star, a face like
Magdalene Virey’s, with all of its beauty, but naught of its passion;
with all of its charm, yet none of its havoc. With youth, and bloom,
and wide-open purple eyes, dark as midnight, staring at fate. And a
voice like the voice of her mother, sweet, but not mocking, haunted the
dreams of the man and lived in the winds.
“And you are a desert man,” she had said.
“Yes--a desert man,” he had replied.
“There’s a place I want to go some day--when I am twenty-one.... Death
Valley! Do you know it? My grandfather says I’m mad.”
“Death Valley! For such as you? Stay--never go near that awful hell!”
The ghastly white pit and its naked red walls, the midnight furnace
winds with their wailing roar, the long, long slopes to the avalanche
graves! Ah! the torment of his heart, the tragedy he would hide,
and the secret he must keep, and the miniature that burned in its
place--they drew her with the invisible cords of life and fate. What he
would spare her surged in the air that she breathed.
She had come to him under the oaks, and yet again, quitting her
friends, drawn to the lonely desert man.
“They told me Genie’s story,” she said, and her eyes spoke eloquent
praise her lips denied. “And so--her mother and father died on the
desert.... Tell me, desert man, what does Death Valley look like?”
“It is night; it is hell--death and desolation--the grave of the
desert, yellow and red and gray--lonely, lonely, lonely silent land!”
“But you love it!... Genie says the Indians call you Eagle--because you
have the eye of the eagle.... Tell me.... Tell me....”
And she made him talk, and she came again. Vague, sweet, first hours
they were, with their drawing pain. Was it well to wake in the night,
with eyes darker than the darkness, peering into his soul? Her mother’s
eyes--with all the glory and none of the shame! She had come another
day and then the next, while time stood still with its mocking wait.
Not vaguely came a scene: “I will tell you of the desert,” and a part
of his story followed, brief and hard.
“Ah! I would be a man,” she said. “I would never run. I would never
hide.”
Mocking words from a tongue too sweet to mock! She had her mother’s
spirit. And Adam groped in the gloom, to the glee of his devils of
scorn. The grass by day and the grass by night felt the impress of
his face. Then love--first real love of youth, and noble passion of
man--blazed as the sun in his face. From that revelation all was clear
in the bursting light of calamity.
* * * * *
Ruth was coming under the oaks. She liked the cool shade and hated
the glare. She was nineteen, with a woman’s form and her mother’s
eyes--proud, sweet, aloof.
“Desert man, I am lonesome,” she said. “My grandfather has gone again.
He is chasing some new will-o’-the-wisp. Gold and mines, cattle and
land--and now it’s water. He has an ear for every man.”
“Lonesome? You! What do you know of loneliness?” asked Adam.
“There’s a loneliness of soul.”
“Ah! but you are young. Go help Genie plan her home.”
“Genie and Gene! Two people with but one voice! They cannot hear or see
anyone but themselves. It’s a pity to invade their paradise. _I_ will
not.... And, oh, how beautiful the world must be to them!”
“Ruth, is it not so to you?”
“Beautiful lands and greens and waters!” she exclaimed, in restless
discontent. “But I cannot live on scenery. There is joy here, but none
for me.... I lost my mother and I can’t forget. She _had_ to leave me
and go with him--my father. My father who loved me as a child and hated
me as a girl. Oh, it’s all a mystery! She went with him to the desert.
Gold mad--she said he was. She had her debt to pay. And _I_ could not
be taken to Death Valley.”
“You have never heard from her since the parting?”
“Never.... And I am a woman now. Some day I will go to Death Valley.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Because _they_ went there.”
“But no one lives long in that valley of death.”
“Then I will find their graves,” she said.
“Ruth, you must not. What good can come of your traveling there? I’ve
told you of its desolate and forbidding nature. You are all wrong.
Wait! Perhaps your mother will--perhaps you will hear of her some day.”
“Oh, desert man, I was a child when we parted. I’m a woman now. I want
to _know_. The mystery haunts me. _She_ loved me--ah, so well!...
Sometimes I cannot bear to live. My grandfather hides me in lonely
places. We meet but few people, and those he repels. It is because of
_me_.... Desert man, I am lonelier than was Genie. She is like a bird.
She must have lived on the sun and the winds. But _I_ am no child, and
_I_ am forlorn.”
Brooding purple eyes of trouble, of longing, of discontent, of fire
for life! The heart and soul of Ruth Virey--the heritage of need and
unrest--shone from her eyes. All unconsciously she longed to be loved.
She stood on the threshold of womanhood like a leaf in a storm.
“Talk with me, walk with me, desert man,” she said, wistfully. “You
were Taquitch for Genie. Be Eagle for me. Your eyes know the desert
where my mother sleeps--where perhaps her spirit wanders. You soothe my
troubled heart. Oh, I can feel _myself_ with you, for you understand.”
* * * * *
Thus Adam’s soul was stormed. Magdalene Virey had presaged the future.
In the dark stillness of the night, sleepless, haunted, tossed by
torment, it was revealed to him that Magdalene Virey had risen out of
the depths on noble love for him, and through that love she had seen
with mystic eyes into the future. She had projected that love into the
spirit of the desert, and it had guided Adam’s wandering steps to her
daughter Ruth. Was this only a wanderer’s dream as he lay on the hills?
Was it only a knot in the tangled skein of his desert life? Was it
inscrutable design of a power he disdained?
Be what this might, the one great love of his years possessed him,
fierce and resistless on its march to his defeat. It mocked his ordeal.
It flaunted a banner in his face--noble love, noble passion, love of
the soul, all that revered woman, wife, mother, and babe. He had found
his mate. Strange how he remembered Margarita Arallanes and the wild
boy’s love of a day. Poor, pale, wasteful, sinful, lustful little
gleam! And he recalled the spell of Genie--that strong call of nature
in the wilderness. Above both he had arisen. But Ruth Virey was _the_
woman. He could win her. The truth beat at his temples, constricted his
throat. Ruth was the flower of her mother’s tragic longing to be loved.
Ruth burned with that longing. And life was not to be denied. Magdalene
Virey had given him this child of her agony. She trusted the fate of
Ruth in his hands. She saw with superhuman eyes.
A deep tenderness for Ruth pervaded Adam’s soul. Who, of all men,
could love her, save her, content her as he? It was not thought of her
kisses, of her embraces, that plucked at the roots of his will. Like a
passing wave the thrill of such bliss went out to the might of a nobler
tide. To save Ruth from the fate of her mother, from the peril of her
own heart! And in the saving, a home--happiness--the tender smile of a
mother--and the kiss of a child!
“But I am a criminal! I am a murderer! Any day I might be hanged before
her very eyes!” he whispered, with his face in the grass, his fingers
digging the turf. “Still--no one would ever recognize me now.... Ah!
but _he_--that human wolf Collishaw--would not he know me?... Oh, if
there be God--help me in my extremity!”
* * * * *
Once again he met her. As he rode up the valley at sunset she came out
of the oak grove.
“I’ve been with Genie. Desert man, her happiness frightens me. Oh, I
love her! You tell me of your hard, lonely, terrible desert life. Why,
your ears should ring with bells of joy forever. It is _you_ who have
built her castle. What other deeds, like that, have you done--in those
bitter years you tell of?”
“Not many, Ruth--perhaps not one.”
“I don’t believe you. I am learning you, desert man. And, oh, I wish
you knew how it swells my heart to hear Genie tell of what you did for
her. Every day she tells me something new.... Ah! and more--for to-day
she said you would be leaving soon.”
“Yes, Ruth--soon,” he said.
“Back to the lonely land?”
“Yes, back to the sage and sand and the big dark hills. Yes, it will be
a lonely land,” he replied, sadly.
“And you will wander down the trails until you meet some one--some
woman or child or man--sick or miserable or lost--and then you will
stop.”
Adam had no answer.
“The Indians called you Eagle,” she went on, and her tone startled him
with its hint of remembered mockery. “You have the desert eye--you
see so far.... But you don’t see _here_!... Why should you waste your
splendid strength, your magnificent manhood, wandering over the desert
_if_ it’s only for unhappy people? Desert man, you are great. But you
could do more good here--you could find more misery here.... I know one
whose heart is breaking. And you’ve never _seen_, for all your eagle
eye!”
“Listen, you morbid girl,” he returned, stung as with fire. “I am not
great. I am lost. I go to the desert because it is home.... Don’t think
of me! But look to yourself. Look into your heart. Fear it, Ruth Virey.
You are a spoiled, dreamful, passionate child. But you have a mind and
you have a will. You can conquer your unrest, your discontent. Revere
the memory of your mother, but grieve no more. The past is dead. Learn
to fight. You are no fighter. You are weak. You give in to loneliness,
sadness, longing. Resolve to be a woman! You must live your life.
Make it worth while. Every man, every woman, has a burden. Lift yours
cheerfully and begin to climb.... Work for your grandfather. He needs
your help. Love those with whom fate has placed you. And fight--fight
the dark moods, the selfish thoughts, the hateful memories! Fight
like a desert beast for your life. Work--work till you bruise those
beautiful hands. Work with a hoe, if you can find nothing else. Love to
see things grow green and flower and give fruit. Love the animals, the
birds, and learn from them; love all nature, so that when you meet a
man some day, _the_ man, you can love him. That is what it means to be
a woman. You are a beautiful, sweet, useless, and petulant girl. But be
so no more. Be a woman!”
Pale and shocked, with brimming eyes and tremulous lips, she replied:
“Stay--stay, desert man, and make me a woman!”
And those sad dark eyes and those sweet murmured words had made him
flee--flee like a craven in the night. Yes, for Ruth’s sake he had
fled. Not a farewell to Genie--not a wave of his hand, but gone in the
night--gone forever out of their lives!
* * * * *
“The foxes have holes--the birds of the air have nests!” cried Adam, to
the listening silence.
Was it he who lay there with broken heart and magnified sight? Yes,
wanderer of the wasteland again! Back to the lonely land! That
limitless expanse of rock and sand was home. Was not that Ruth’s face
limned on the clouds? Did not her sad, reproachful eyes haunt him in
the dim, purple distances?
From the lofty divide of the Sierra Madres Adam gazed down into the
void he called home. Beyond the gray sands and far beyond the red
reaches he saw across the California Desert into Arizona, and down into
Mexico, and to the dim, blue Gulf.
Home! All the years of Adam’s desert experience were needed to grasp
the meaning of the stupendous scene. The eye of the eagle, the sight
of the condor, supreme over the desert, most marvelous and delicate
work of nature, could only behold, could only range that sun-blasted
burned-out empire of the wastelands. Only the mind of man, the thought
of man, could understand it. And for Adam it was home, and to his
piercing eyes a thing, a place, a world, terribly true and beautiful
and comforting, upon which he seemed driven to gaze and gaze, so that
forever it must be limned on his vision and his memory.
The day was one of sunlight and storm, of blue sky and purple clouds
and fleecy white, of palls of swirling gray snow and dark veils of
downward-streaming rain. The Sierra Madres rolled away on either side,
range on range, rising to the north in the might of slow league-long
mountain swell, until far against the stormy sky stood the old
white-capped heave of San Gorgonio looming over the gray Mohave; and to
the south, like the wave undulations of a calm sea, sank the long low
lines of the arid arm of desert land.
Beneath Adam piled the foothills, round and old and gray, sage gray,
lavender gray, lilac gray, all so strangely gray--upheaved hills of
aged earth and dust and stone. Hill by hill they lowered, with glaring
gorges between, solitary hills and winding ranges and clustered domes,
split by canyons and cleft by brushy ravines--miles and miles of
foothills, reluctantly surrendering allegiance to the peaks above,
moving downward as surely as the grains of their slopes, weathering and
spreading at last in the sands.
Away and away flowed that gray Sahara with its specks of sage, ribbed
by its ridges of dunes. Immense and unbounded it swept to its center,
the Salton Sink--bowl of the desert--a great lake of colored silt,
a ghastly, glaring stain on the earth, over which the storm clouds
trailed their veils of rain, and shadows like colossal ships sailed
the sandy main. Away to the southward it flowed, level and shining, at
last to rise and meet the blue sky in lucent spurs of gold and white.
This landmark contrasted singularly with the Salton Sink. It was the
illusive and shifting line of the Superstition Mountains, where the
wind sheeted the sands, and by night or day, like the changing of
tides, went on with its mysterious transformation. These giant sand
hills caught the sunlight through a rift in the broken clouds. And dim
under the dunes showed the scalloped, dark shadows.
But these foothills and sand plains were only the edge of the desert.
Beyond marched the mountain ranges. Vast, upheaved, crinkled crust of
the naked earth, scored by fire, scarred by age, cracked by earthquake,
and stained in the rusty reds and colored chocolates of the iron rocks!
Down to the rim of the Salton Sink sheered a ragged range. Over it
centered the lowering storm clouds, gray and drab and purple, with rays
of the sun filtering through, lighting the grim, dark hardness, showing
the smoky gloom. And where the ridge ran down to the desert, to make
the lines of the sandy lake, it resembled a shore of the river Styx.
Beyond gleamed the Chocolate Mountains, sharp in the sunshine, canyoned
and blue. And still beyond them, over the valley and far, rose the
myriad mountains of Arizona, dim, hazed land, mystic land, like a land
of desert dreams. In the distant south, around the blunt end of the
Chocolates, came a valley winding palely green, with a line following
its center, where the Rio Colorado meandered in its course to the blue
waters of the Gulf. Over the shadowy shapes of mountains in haze, over
the horizon of Arizona, there seemed a blank, pale wall of sky, strange
to the eye. Was it the oblivion of sight, the infinitude of heaven?
Piercing constant gaze at last brought to Adam the ghostly mountains of
Mexico, the faintest of faint tracery of peaks, doubtful, then lost,
the lonely Sonorian land.
“And that is my home!” he cried to the winds. Slow tears bathed his
eyes, and, closing them, he rested his strained sight. A strange peace
seemed to have stolen over him with his vision and grasp of the desert.
A low, soft moan of wind in the crevices of rocks lulled his senses
for the revel that was to come. He heard his burros nipping at the
brush behind his back. From the heights an eagle shrilled its wild
whistle of freedom and of solitude. One of the burros brayed, loud and
bawling, a jarring note in a silence. Discordant sound it was, that yet
brought a smile and a pang to Adam. For only yesterday--or was it long
ago--what was it that had happened?
When he opened his eyes the desert under him and the infinity over him
had been transfigured.
Only the full blaze of the sun! But a glory dwelt in the clouds and
in the wide blue expanse of heaven. Silver-edged rents, purple ships
in a golden sky, the long, fan-shaped rays of the sun, white rainbows
of haze--these extended from the north across the arch to the open--a
great peacefulness of light, deep and tender and blue.
Beneath lay the mirror of earth, the sun-fired ranges like chased
and beaten gold, laid with shining jewels all around the resplendent
desert. Mountains of porphyry marched down to the sands, rocks of
bronze red burned down to the sands. The white columnar pillars of the
clouds seemed reflected in the desert, slow-gliding across the lucent
wastes; and the mosaic of mountain and plain had its mirage in the sky.
Above and below worked the alchemy of nature, mutable and evanescent,
the dying of day, the passing of life.