WHAT THEY FOUND AT THE WATER-HOLE
Half an hour later Scribner, who was frequently back on the first
division during these dragging days, was informed that Mr. Carhart
wished to see him at once. Walking back to the engineers’ tent he
found the chief at his table.
“You wanted me, Mr. Carhart?”
“Oh,”--the chief looked up--“Yes, Harry, we’ve got to get away from
this absolute dependence on that man Peet. I want you to ride up ahead
and bore for water. You can probably start inside of an hour. I’m
putting it in your hands. Take what men, tools, and wagons you
need--but find water.”
With a brief “All right, Mr. Carhart,” Scribner left the tent and set
about the necessary arrangements. Carhart, this matter disposed of,
called a passing laborer, and asked him to tell Charlie that he was
wanted at headquarters.
The assistant cook--huge, raw-boned, with a good-natured and not
unintelligent face--lounged before the tent for some moments before he
was observed. Then, in the crisp way he had with the men, Carhart told
him to step in.
“Well,” began the boss, looking him over, “what kind of a cook are
you?”
A slow blush spread over the broad features.
“Speak up. What were you doing when I sent for you?”
“I--I--you see, sir, Jack Flagg was gone, and there wasn’t anything
being done about dinner, and I--”
“And you took charge of things, eh?”
“Well--sort of, sir. You see--”
“That’s the way to do business. Go back and stick at it. Wait a
minute, though. Has Flagg been hanging around any?”
[Illustration: “‘Well,’ began the boss, looking him over, ‘what kind
of a cook are you?’”]
“I guess he has. All his things was took off, and some of mine.”
“Take any money?”
“All I had.”
“I’m not surprised. Money was what he was here for. He would have
cleaned you out, anyway, before long.”
“I’m not so sure of that, sir. We cleaned him out last time.”
“And you weren’t smart enough to see into that?”
“Well--no, I--”
“Take my advice and quit gambling. It isn’t what you were built for.
What did you say your name was?”
“Charlie.”
“Well, Charlie, you go back and get up your dinner. See that it is a
good one.”
Charlie backed out of the tent and returned to his kettles and pans
and his boy assistants. He was won, completely.
Late on Thursday evening that mythical train really rolled in, and
half the night was spent in preparations for the next day. Friday
morning tracklaying began again. In the afternoon a second train
arrived, and the air of movement and accomplishment became as keen as
on the first day of the work. Paul Carhart, in a flannel shirt, which,
whatever color it may once have been, was now as near green as
anything, a wide straw hat, airy yellow linen trousers, and laced
boots, appeared and reappeared on both divisions--alert, good-natured,
radiating health and energy. The sun blazed endlessly down, but what
laborer could complain with the example of the boss before him! The
mules toiled and plunged, and balked and sulked, and toiled again, as
mules will. The drivers--boys, for the most part--carried pails of
water on their wagons, and from time to time wet the sponges which
many of the men wore in their hats. And over the grunts and heaves of
the tie squad, over the rattling and groaning of the wagon, over the
exhausts of the locomotives, sounded the ringing clang of steel, as
the rails were shifted from flat-car to truck, from truck to ties. It
was music to Carhart,--deep, significant, nineteenth-century music.
The line was creeping on again--on, on through the desert.
“What do you think of this!” had been Young Van’s exclamation when the
second train appeared.
“It’s too good to be true,” was the reply of his grizzled brother.
Old Vandervelt was right: it was too good to be true. Soon the days
were getting away from them again; provisions and water were running
short, and Peet was sending on the most skilful lot of excuses he had
yet offered. For the second time the tracklaying had to stop; and
Carhart, slipping a revolver into his holster, rode forward alone to
find Scribner.
He found him in a patch of sage-brush not far from a hill. The heat
was blistering, the ground baked to a powder. There had been no rain
for five months. Scribner, stripped to undershirt and trousers, was
standing over his men.
“Glad to see you, Mr. Carhart!” he cried. “You are just in time. I
think I’ve struck it.”
“That’s good news,” the chief replied, dismounting.
They stepped aside while Scribner gave an account of himself. “I first
drove a small bore down about three hundred feet, and got this.” He
produced a tin pail from his tent, which contained a dark, odorous
liquid. Carhart sniffed, and said:--
“Sulphur water, eh!”
“Yes, and very bad. It wouldn’t do at all. But before moving on, I
thought I’d better look around a little. That hill over there is
sandstone, and a superficial examination led me to think that the
sandstone dips under this spot.”
“That might mean a very fair quality of water.”
“That’s what I think. So I inserted a larger casing, to shut out this
sulphur water, and went on down.”
“How far?”
“A thousand feet. I’m expecting to strike it any moment now.”
“Your men seem to think they have struck something. They’re calling
you.”
The engineers returned to the well in time to see the water gushing to
the surface.
“There’s enough of it,” muttered Scribner.
The chief bent over it and shook his head. “Smell it, Harry,” he said.
Scribner threw himself on the ground and drank up a mouthful from the
stream. But he promptly spit it out.
“It’s worse than the other!” he cried.
They were silent a moment. Then Carhart said, “Well--keep at it,
Harry. I may look you up again after a little.”
He walked over to his horse, mounted, nodded a good-by, and cantered
back toward the camp. Scribner watched him ride off, then soberly
turned and prepared to pack up and move on westward. He was thinking,
as he gave the necessary orders, how much this little visit meant. The
chief would have come only with matters at a bad pass.
* * * * *
Over a range of low waste hills, through a village of
prairie-dogs,--and he fired humorously at them with his revolver as
they sat on their mounds, and chuckled when they popped down out of
sight,--across a plain studded from horizon to horizon with the
bleached bones and skulls of thousands of buffaloes, past the camp and
the grade where the men of the first division were at work, Paul
Carhart rode, until, finally, the main camp and the trains and wagons
came into view.
It was supper-time. The red, spent sun hung low in the west; the
parched earth was awaiting the night breeze. Cantering easily on,
Carhart soon reached the grade, and turned in toward the tents. The
endless quiet of the desert gave place to an odd, tense quiet in the
camp. The groups of laborers, standing or lying motionless, ceasing
their low, excited talk as he passed; the lowered eyes, the circle of
Mexicans standing about the mules, the want of the relaxation and
animal good-nature that should follow the night whistle: these signs
were plain as print to his eyes and his senses.
He dismounted, walked rapidly to the headquarters tent, and found the
two Vandervelts in anxious conversation. He had never observed so
sharply the contrast between the brothers. The younger was smooth
shaven, slender, with brown hair, and frank blue eyes that were dreamy
at times; he would have looked the poet were it not for a square
forehead, a straight, incisive mouth, and a chin as uncompromising as
the forehead. There was in his face the promise of great capacity for
work, dominated by a sympathetic imagination. The face of his brother
was another story; some of the stronger qualities were there, but they
were not tempered with the gentler. His stocky frame, his strong neck,
the deep lines about his mouth, even the set of his cropped gray
mustache, spoke of dogged, unimaginative persistence.
Evidently they were not in agreement. Both started at the sight of
their chief--the younger brother with a frank expression of relief.
Carhart threw off his hat and gauntlet gloves, took his seat at the
table, and looked from one to the other.
The elder brother nodded curtly. “Go ahead, Gus,” he said. “Give Paul
your view of it.”
Thus granted the floor, Young Van briefly laid out the situation. “We
put your orders into effect this morning, Mr. Carhart, and shortened
the allowance of drinking water. In an hour the men began to get
surly--just as they did the other time. But we kept them under until
an hour or so ago. Then the sheriff of Clark County--a man named Lane,
Bow-legged Bill Lane,”--Young Van smiled slightly as he pronounced the
name,--“rode in with a large posse. It seems he is on the trail of a
gang of thieves, greasers, army deserters, and renegades generally. He
had one brush with them some miles below here,--I think I had better
tell you about this before I go on,--but they broke up into small
parties and got away from him. He had some reason to think that they
would work up this way, and try to stampede our horses and mules some
night. He advises arming our men, and keeping up more of a guard at
night. Another thing; he says that a good many Apaches are hanging
around us,--he has seen signs of them over there in the hills,--and
while they would never bother such a large party as this of ours,
Bow-legged Bill”--he smiled again--“thinks it would be best to arm any
small parties we may send out. If the Indians thought Harry Scribner,
for instance, had anything worth stealing they might give him some
trouble.”
“Send half-a-dozen wagons forward to him to-morrow, under Dimond,”
said Carhart, briefly. “See that they carry rifles and cartridges
enough for Scribner’s whole party. And wire Tiffany to send on three
hundred more rifles.”
“All right; I will attend to it. I told the sheriff we came down here
as peaceful railroad builders, not as border fighters; but he said
what we came for hasn’t much to do with it,--I couldn’t repeat his
language if I tried,--it’s how we’re going back that counts; whether
it’s to be on a ‘red plush seat, or up in the baggage car on ice.’ But
so much for that. It seems that his men, mixing in with ours, found
out that we are short of water. They promptly said that there is a
first-rate pool, with all the water we could use, only about
thirty-five miles southwest of here.” He was coming now, having
purposely brought up the minor matters first, to the real business.
Carhart heard him out. “It didn’t take long to see that something was
the matter with the men. Before the posse rode off the sheriff spoke
to me about it, and offered to let us have a man to guide us to the
pool if we wanted him. I am in favor of accepting. The men are
trembling on the edge of an outbreak. If there was a Jack Flagg here
to organize them, they would have taken the mules and started before
you got back; and if they once got started, I’m not sure that even
shooting would stop them. They are beyond all reason. It’s nothing but
luck that has kept them quiet up to now,--nobody has happened to say
the word that would set them off. I think we ought to reassure
them,--tell the sheriff we’ll take the guide, and let the men know
that a wagon train will start the first thing in the morning.”
“That’s it! That’s it!” Old Van broke out angrily. “Always give in to
those d--n rascals! There’s just one thing to do, I tell you. Order
them to their quarters and stand a guard over them from the iron
squad.”
“But you forget,” Young Van replied hotly, “that they are not to
blame.”
“Not to blame! What the--!”
“Wait a minute!--They are actually suffering now. We are not dealing
with malicious men--they are not even on strike for more pay. We’re on
the edge of a panic, that’s what’s the matter. And the question is,
What is the best way to control that panic?”
“Wait, boys,” said Carhart. “Gus is right. This trouble has its roots
away down in human nature. If water is to be had, those men have a
right to it. If we should put them under guard, and they should go
crazy and make a break for it, what then? What if they call our bluff?
We must either let them go--or shoot.”
“Then I say shoot,” cried Old Vandervelt.
“No, Van,” Carhart replied, “you’re wrong. As Gus says, we are
uncomfortably close to a panic. Well, let them have their panic. Put
them on the wagons and let them run off their heat. Organize this
panic with ourselves at the head of it.” His voice took on a crisper
quality. “Van, you stay here in charge of the camp. Pick out a dozen
of the iron squad, give them rifles, and keep three at a time on extra
watch all night.”
“Hold on,” said the veteran, bewildered, “when are you going to start
on this--?”
“Now.”
“Now? To-night?”
“To-night. Gus, you find your sheriff. He can’t be far off.”
“No; half a mile down the line.”
“You find him, explain the situation, and tell him we want that man in
half an hour.”
The conference broke up sharply. Gus Vandervelt hurried out, saddled
his horse, and rode off into the thickening dusk. Old Van went to
select his guards. Carhart saw them go; then, pausing to note with
satisfaction the prospect of only moderate darkness, he set about
organizing his force. All the empty casks and barrels were loaded on
wagons. Mules were hitched four and six in hand. Water, beyond a
canteen for each man, could not be spared; but Charlie packed
provisions enough--so he thought--for twenty-four hours.
The tremulous, brilliant afterglow faded away. The stars peeped out,
one by one, and twinkled faintly. The dead plain--alive only with
scorpions, horned frogs, tarantulas, striped lizards, centipedes, and
the stunted sage-brush--stretched silently away to the dim mountains
on the horizon. The bleaching bones--ghostly white out there in the
sand--began to slip off into the distance and the dark. All about was
rest, patience, eternity. Here in camp were feverish laborers with
shattered nerves; men who started at the swish of a mule’s tail--and
swore, no matter what their native tongue, in English, that famous
vehicle for profane thoughts. The mules, full of life after their
enforced rest, took advantage of the dark and confusion to tangle
their harness wofully. Leaders swung around and mingled fraternally
with wheelers, whereupon boy drivers swore horrible oaths in voices
that wavered between treble and bass. Lanterns waved and bobbed about.
Men shouted aimlessly.
Suddenly the babel quieted--the laborers were bolting a belated
supper. Then, after a moment of confusion, three men rode out of the
circle of lanterns, put their horses at the grade, stood out for a
vivid moment in the path of light thrown by the nearest engine,--Paul
Carhart, Young Vandervelt, and the easy-riding guide,--plunged down
the farther side of the grade, and blended into the night. One after
another the long line of wagons followed after, whips cracking, mules
balking and breaking, men tugging at the spokes of the wheels. Then,
at last, they were all over; the shouts had softened into silence. And
Old Van stood alone on the grade and looked after them with eyes that
were dogged and gloomy.
* * * * *
Paul Carhart had organized the panic; now he was resolved to “work it
out of them,” as he explained aside to Young Van. He estimated that
they should reach the pool before eight o’clock in the morning. That
would mean continuous driving, but the endurance of mules is a
wonderfully elastic thing; and as for the men, the sooner they were
tired, the less danger would there be of a panic. Accordingly, the
three leaders set off at a canter. The drivers caught the pace,
lashing out with their whips and shouting in a frenzied waste of
strength. The mules galloped angrily; the wagons rattled and bumped
and leaped the mounds, for there was not the semblance of road or
trail. Now and again a barrel was jolted off, and it lay there
unheeded by the madmen who came swaying and cursing by. Here and there
one calmer than his fellows climbed back from a seat by his driver and
kept the kegs and barrels in place.
Wonderfully they held the pace, over mile after mile of rough plain.
Then, after a time, came the hills,--low at first, but rising steadily
higher.
In the faint light the sage-brush slipped by like the ghosts of dead
vegetation. The rocks and the heaps of bones gave the wheels many a
wrench. The steady climb was telling on the mules. They hung back,
slowed to a walk all along the line, and under the whip merely plunged
or kicked. Up and up they climbed, winding through the low range by a
pass known only to the guide. One mule, a leader in a team of six,
stumbled among the rocks, fell to his knees, and was dragged and
pushed along in a tangle of harness before his fellows came to a stop.
In a moment a score of men were crowding around. Up ahead the wagons
were winding on out of sight; behind, the line was blocked.
[Illustration: “Wonderfully they held the pace.”]
“Vat you waiting for?” cried a New Orleans man, feverishly. He had
been drinking, and had lost his way among the languages. “_Laissez
passer! Laissez passer!_”
The boys were cooler than the men--not knowing so well what it all
meant. “Hi there, _Oui-Oui_, gimme a knife!” cried the youthful
driver, shrilly.
He slashed at the harness, cut the mule loose, and drove on. And one
by one the wagons circled by the struggling beast and pushed ahead to
close up the gap in the line.
Eight hours were got through. It was four in the morning. The hills
lay behind, an alkaline waste before. The mules were tugging heavily
and dejectedly through the sand. Certain of the drivers sat upright
with lined faces and ringed eyes, others lay sleeping on the seats
with the reins tied. All were subdued. The penetrating dust aggravated
their thirst.
Carhart pricked forward beside the guide.
“How much farther?” he asked.
“Well, it ain’t easy to say. We might be halfway there.”
“Halfway! Do you mean to say we’ve done only fifteen or eighteen miles
in eight hours?”
“No, I didn’t say that.”
“Look here. How far is it to this pool!”
“Well, it’s hard to say.”
Carhart frowned and gave it up. The “thirty or thirty-five miles” had
apparently been the roughest sort of an estimate.
Then the sun came up and beat upon them, and the sand began to radiate
heat by way of an earnest of the day to follow; and then the wheels
sank so deeply that the chief and Young Van tossed their reins to the
guide and walked by the wagons to lend a hand now and then at the
spokes. All the crazy energy of the evening was gone; men and mules
were alike sullen and dispirited. Of the latter, many gave out and
fell, and these were cut out and left there to die. So it went all
through that blazing forenoon. They halted at twelve for lunch; but
the dry bread and salt pork were hardly stimulating.
Carhart again sought the guide. “Do you know yourself where the pool
is?”
The guide shaded his eyes and searched the horizon. “It was in a spot
that looked something like this here,” he said in a weak, confidential
sort of way.
Carhart answered sharply, “Why don’t you say you are lost, and be done
with it!”
“Well, I ain’t lost exactly. I wouldn’t like to say that.”
“But you haven’t the least idea where the pool is.”
“Well, now, you see--”
“Is there any other water on ahead?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Where?”
“The Palos River can’t be more than a dozen miles beyond the place
where we found the pool.”
He had unconsciously raised his voice. A laborer overheard the remark,
whipped out his knife, hacked at the harness of the nearest mule,--it
would have been simpler to loosen the braces, but he was past all
thinking,--threw himself on the animal’s back, and rode off, lashing
behind him with the end of the reins. The panic broke loose again. Man
after man, the guide among them, followed after, until only the wagons
and about half the animals remained.
“Come, Gus,” called the chief, “let them go.”
Young Van turned wearily, mounted his panting horse, and the two
followed the men. But Carhart turned in his saddle to look back at the
property abandoned there in the sand.
Half an hour later, Young Van’s horse stumbled and fell, barely giving
his rider time to spring clear.
“Is he done for?” asked Carhart, reining up.
“It looks like it.”
“What’s the matter--done up yourself?”
“A little. I’ll sit here a minute. You go ahead. I’ll follow on foot.”
“Not a bit of it. Here--can you swing up behind me?”
“That won’t do. Texas can’t carry double. Go ahead; I’m all right.”
But Carhart dismounted, lifted his assistant, protesting, into the
saddle, and pushed on, himself on foot, leading the horse.
They went on in this way for nearly an hour. Young Van found it all he
could do to hold himself in the saddle. Then the horse took to
staggering, and finally came to his knees.
Carhart helped his assistant to the ground, pulled his hat brim down
to shade his eyes, and looked ahead. A cloud of dust on the horizon, a
beaten trail through the sand, here and there a gray-brown heap where
a mule had fallen,--these marked the flight of his drivers and
laborers.
His eyes came back to the fainting man at his feet. Young Van had lost
all sense of the world about him. Carhart saw that his lips were
moving, and knelt beside him. Then he smiled, a curious, unhumorous
smile; for the young engineer was muttering those words which had of
late been his brother’s favorites among all the words in our rich
language: “D--n Peet!”
The chief stood up again to think. And as he gazed off eastward in the
general direction of Sherman, toward the place where the arch enemy of
the Sherman and Western sat in his office, perhaps devising new
excuses to send to the front, those same two expressive words might
have been used to sum up his own thoughts. What could the man be
thinking of, who had brought the work practically to a stop, who was
now in the coolest imaginable fashion leaving a thousand men to mingle
their bones with the bones of the buffalo--that grim, broadcast
expression of the spirit of the desert.
[Illustration: “They went on in this way for nearly an hour.”]
But these were unsafe thoughts. His own head was none too clear. It
was reeling with heat and thirst and with the monotony of this
desolate land. He drew a flask from his pocket,--an almost empty
flask,--and placed it against Young Van’s hand. With their two hats
propped together he shaded his face. Then, a canteen slung over each
shoulder, he pushed ahead, on foot.
* * * * *
“The Palos River can’t be more than a dozen miles--” had said the
guide, pointing southward. That was all. Somewhere off there in the
desert it lay, flowing yellow and aimless. Perhaps it was a lie.
Perhaps the guide was mistaken, as he had been in the search for the
pool. But the last feeble tie that bound these outcasts to reason had
snapped at the sight of that unsteady, pointing finger, and only the
original sin in them was left. The words of the guide had been heard
by one man, and he was off at the instant, his only remark a curse as
he knocked a boy out of his way. But others had seen the pointing
finger. And still others were moved by the impulse which spurs men, in
frantic moments, to any sort of action.
In the rush for mounts two men, a half-breed from the Territory and a
Mexican, plunged at the same animal. The half-breed was hacking at the
nigh trace and the Mexican at the off rein when their eyes met. The
mule both had chosen was the nigh leader in a double team. But instead
of turning to one of the other three, the men, each with a knife in
his hand, fell to fighting; and while they struggled and fell and
rolled over and over in the sand, a third man mounted their prize and
galloped away.
But it was the boys who suffered most. None but hardy youngsters had
been chosen for the drive, but their young endurance could not help
them in personal combat with these grown men; and personal combat was
what it came to wherever a boy stood or sat near a desirable mule. The
odd thing was that every man and boy succeeded in getting away. Hats
were lost. Shirts were torn to shreds, exposing skins, white and
brown, to the merciless sun. Even the half-breed and the Mexican,
dropping their quarrel as unreasonably as they had begun it, each
bleeding from half-a-dozen small wounds, finally galloped off after
the others. And when these last were gone, and the dust was billowing
up behind them, something less than two minutes had passed since the
guide had pointed southward.
The Palos River is probably the most uninviting stream in the
Southwest. It was at this time sluggish and shallow. The water was so
rich with silt that a pailful of it, after standing an hour, would
deposit three inches of mud. The banks were low and of the same gray
sand as the desert, excepting that a narrow fringe of green announced
the river to the eye. It was into and through this fringe that the
first rider plunged. It had been a long two-hour ride, and the line
straggled out for more than a mile behind him. But he was not
interested in his companions. His eyes were fixed on the broad yellow
river-bed with the narrow yellow current winding through it. Drinking
could not satisfy him. He wanted to get into the water, and feel his
wet clothes clinging about him, and duck his face and head under, and
splash it about with his hands. His mount needed no lash to slip and
scramble down the bank and spurt over the sand. The animal was so
crazily eager that he stumbled in the soft footing and went to his
knees. But the rider sailed on over his head, and with a great shout,
arms and legs spread wide, he fell with a splash and a gurgle into the
water. The mule regained his feet and staggered after him, and then
the two of them, man and beast, rolled and wallowed and splashed, and
drank copiously.
The second man reached the bank on foot, for his mule had fallen
within sight of the promised land. He paused there, apparently
bewildered, watching his fortunate comrade in the water. Then, with
dazed deliberation, he removed his clothes, piled them neatly under a
bush, and walked out naked, stepping gingerly on the heated sand. But
halfway to the channel a glimmer of intelligence sparkled in his eyes,
and he suddenly dashed forward and threw himself into the water.
One by one the others came crashing through the bushes, and rode or
ran down the bank, swearing, laughing, shouting, sobbing. And not one
of them could have told afterward whether he drank on the upstream or
the downstream side of the mules.
When Paul Carhart, a long while later, parted the bushes and stood out
in relief on the bank, leaning on a shrub for support, he saw a
strange spectacle. For a quarter of a mile, up and down the channel,
were mules, some drinking, some rolling and kicking some lying out
flat and motionless. Near at hand, hanging from every bush, were
shirts and trousers and stockings; at the edge of the bank was a long,
irregular line of boots and shoes. And below, on the broad reach of
sand, laughing, and bantering, and screaming like schoolboys, half a
hundred naked men stood in a row, stooping with hands on knees, while
a dozen others went dancing and high-stepping and vaulting over them.
They were playing leap-frog.
Carhart walked across to the upstream side of the mules and drank.
Then, after filling two canteens, he returned to the bank and sat down
in such small shade as he could find. It was at this moment that the
men caught sight of him. The game stopped abruptly, and for a moment
the players stood awkwardly about, as schoolboys would at the
appearance of the teacher. Then, first one, and another, and a group
of two or three more, and finally, all of them, resumed their simple
clothing, and sat down along the bank to await orders. The panic was
over.
Now the chief roused himself. “Here, you two!” he cried. “Take these
canteens and the freshest mules you can find, and go back to Mr.
Vandervelt. Ride hard.”
And almost at the word, eager, responsive, the men he had addressed
were off.
* * * * *
As soon as the worst of the shakiness passed out of his legs, Carhart
rose. His next task was to get the mules back to the wagons, and bring
them on to the river in order to fill the barrels, and this promised a
greater expenditure of time and strength than he liked to face. But
there was no alternative, it seemed, so he caught a mule, mounted it,
and rode back. And the men trailed after him, riding and walking, in a
line half a mile long.
Carhart found Young Van sitting up, too weak to talk, supported by the
two men whom he had sent back.
“How is he?” asked the chief.
“It’s hard to say, Mr. Carhart,” replied one of the men. “He don’t
seem quite himself.”
Carhart dismounted, felt the pulse of the young man, and then bathed
his temples with the warmish water. “Carry him over into the shade of
that wagon, boys,” he said. “Here, I’ll give you a hand.”
The earth, even beneath the wagon, was warm, and Carhart and the two
laborers spread out their coats before they laid him down. The chief
poured a little water on his handkerchief, and laid it on Young Van’s
forehead.
And then, when Carhart had got to his feet and was looking about,
holding down his hat-brim to shade his eyes, an expression of inquiry,
which had come into his face some little time before, slowly deepened.
“Boys,” he said, “what’s become of the mules that were left here?”
The men looked up. “Don’t know, Mr. Carhart,” replied the more
talkative one. “I ain’t seen ’em.”
Carhart turned away, and again his eyes roved about over the beaten
ground. Very slowly and thoughtfully he began walking around the
deserted wagons in widening circles. Those of the men who were back
from the river watched him curiously. After a time he stopped and
looked at some tracks in the sand, and then, still walking slowly,
followed them off to the right. A few of the men, the more observant
ones, fell in behind him, but he did not glance around.
The foremost laborer stopped a moment and waited for the man next
behind.
“The boss is done up,” he said in a low voice.
The other man nodded. “Unsteady in the legs,” he replied. “And he’s
gone white. I see it when we was at the river.”
The tracks were distinct enough, but Carhart did not quicken his pace.
He was talking to himself, half aloud: “It’ll go on until it’s
settled,--those things have to, out here. He’s a coward, but he’ll
drink it down every day until the idea gets to running loose in his
head.”--He staggered a little, then pulled himself up short.
“What’s the matter with me, anyway!” he muttered. “This is a pretty
spectacle!” And he walked deliberately on.
The trail led him, and the quiet little file of men behind him, over
and around a low ridge and a chain of knolls. “This heat keeps a dead
rein on you,” he said, again speaking half aloud. “Let’s see, what was
I thinking,--oh, the boys at the camp, they needed water too; I was
going to load up and hurry back to help them out.”
And then, as he walked on with a solemn precision not unlike that of a
drunken man, the scene shifted, and another scene--one which had long
ago slipped out of his waking thoughts,--took its place. He was
fishing a trout stream in the Adirondacks. He had found a series of
pools in a narrow gorge where the brook came leaping merrily down from
one low ledge to another. The underbrush on the steep banks was dark
and impenetrable. The pine and hemlock and beech and maple and
chestnut trees grew thick on either hand, and so matted their branches
overhead that only a little checkered light could sift through. The
rocks were dark with moss; the stream was choked at certain points
with the debris of the last flood. He was tired after the day’s
fishing. A storm came up. It grew very black and ugly in that little
ravine. And then, for no reason, a thing happened which had not
happened in his steady mind before or since. He fell into a curious
horror, in which the tangled wilderness and the gloom and the rushing
rain and the creaking trees and the noise of the falling water and
that of the thunder all played some part. He recalled that he had
found a hollow in the bank, where a large tree had been uprooted, and
had taken shivering refuge there.
The wilderness had always before seemed man’s playground. It suddenly
became a savage living and breathing thing to which a man was
nothing.
And now the desert was showing its teeth, and Carhart knew that he was
trembling again on the brink of the horrors. He understood the sort of
thing very well. He had seen men grow crafty and cowardly or ugly and
murderous out there on the frontier. He had been in Death Valley. And
as he had seen the symptoms in other men’s faces, so he now felt them
coming into his own. He knew how a man’s sense of proportion can go
awry,--how a mere railroad, with its very important banker-officials
in top hats and its very elaborate and impressive organization, could
seem a child’s toy here in the desert where the wonderful spaces and
the unearthly atmosphere and the morning and evening colors lie very
close to the borders of another realm, and where the eye of God blazes
forever down on the just and the unjust.
None of the little devices of a sophisticated world pass current in
the desert. Carhart knew all this, as I have said, very well. He knew
that a man’s mind is searched to the bottom out here, that the morbid
tone and the yellow streak are inevitably dragged to the surface and
displayed to the gaze of all men. But he also knew that where the mind
is sound, the trouble may arise from physical exhaustion, and this
knowledge saved him. He deliberately recalled the fact that for
thirty-six hours he had not slept and that the work he had done and
the strain he had been under would have sent many men to the nearest
hospital, or, in the desert, to the nearest shallow excavation in the
ground. And he walked slowly and steadily on, in that same shaky,
determined manner.
On the summit of a knoll he stopped short, and looked down at
something on the farther side. The men came up, one by one, and joined
him; and they, too, stopped short and looked. And then Carhart raised
his eyes and watched their faces steadily, eagerly wondering if they
saw what he saw,--a water-hole, fringed with green, and a mule lying
at the water’s edge and a number of other mules quietly grazing. It
was his test of himself. For a full half minute he gazed into those
sweaty, drink-bleared faces. And then, at what he saw there, his own
tense expression gave way to one of overwhelming relief. The men ran
pell-mell down the slope, shouting with delight. And Carhart sat down
there on the knoll, and his head fell a little forward over his knees.
“Will you have a little of this, Mr. Carhart?”
A big renegade with the face of a criminal was holding out a flask.
The chief took it, and gulped down a few swallows. “Thank you,” he
said quietly.
“One of the boys found this here, down among them tin cans, Mr.
Carhart.”
It was the crumpled first page of the _Pierrepont Enterprise_. Carhart
stiffened up, spread it out on his knees, and read the date line. The
paper was only two days old.
“Where’s Pierrepont?” he asked.
“About a day’s journey down the river, sir.”
Again the chief’s eyes ran over the sheet. Suddenly they lighted up.
Here is what he saw:--
GOSSIP OF THE RAILROADS
Commodore Durfee Gets the
“Shaky & Windy”
Mr. De Reamer and Mr.
Chambers in contempt of
Court--Durfee and Carrington
directors allied at
last against De Reamer--It
is said that Durfee already
has a majority--Meeting
to be held nex
will be decid
De Rea
The rest of it was torn off, but he read these headings three times.
Then he lowered his knees, with the paper still lying across them, and
looked over it at the little group of men and mules about the
water-hole. “Can that be true, or can’t it?” he asked himself. “And
what am I going to do about it? I don’t believe it; it’s another war
of injunctions, that’s what it is, and it isn’t likely to be settled
short of the Supreme Court. We can start back in an hour or so, and as
soon as we reach camp I’ll take the five-spot”--Carhart’s two engines
happened to bear the numbers five and six--“the five-spot and the
private car and see if Bill Cunningham can’t make a record run toward
Sherman. It’s a little puzzling, but I’m inclined to think it’s a
mighty good thing that I found this paper.”
He tossed it away, and then, catching sight for the first time of the
other side, he took it up again. The second page was nearly covered
with crude designs, made with a blue pencil. There were long rows of
scallops, and others of those aimless markings a man will make when
pencil and paper are before him. And in the middle, surrounded by a
sort of decorative border, was printed out “MR. CARHART,” then a blank
space and the name “JACK FLAGG.”
Carhart rose to his feet, folded the paper, put it in his hip pocket,
and looked cheerfully around. “So, Mr. Flagg, it’s you I’m indebted to
for this information. I’m sure I’m greatly obliged.” Then he waved to
the men. “Come on, boys,” he shouted. “Bring those animals back to the
wagons. We’ll fill the barrels here.”
Slowly and not without difficulty he walked back. But the unsteadiness
in his legs no longer disturbed him. The panic was over,--and
something else was over too.