To get to that pin-prick on the map called Monument, Arizona, you drop
off the railroad at Defiance, which is somewhere east of the water tank
named Phantom, and then follow an old post road across the lofty plateau
in the direction of the mountains to the southwest. After something more
than twenty miles, the trail strikes a deeply sunk river bed that winds
like a gigantic serpent over the desert toward the declining sun. In one
of the coils of this dead river serpent lies what is left of the mining
camp of Monument.
From the dusty trail over the alkali plain Brainard emerged one blazing
July afternoon, saddle-sore after his unaccustomed exercise, and
red-faced from the pitiless glare of the Arizona sun. As he climbed the
rocky path on the farther side of the river bed, the sun was sinking in a
gorgeous sky behind the wooden shacks of Monument.
The place had the desolate air of a mining camp that had been smothered
before its boom had really come. The stack of a large smelter rose from
a group of corrugated iron buildings at the further end. Beyond, on the
summit of a curious detached mound, set quite apart from all other
features of the landscape, there was a considerable mansion with tall
pillars along its southern front. This, Brainard surmised, must have
been the residence of the owner or the manager of the mine, and his
present goal.
Apparently Monument had not enough life left to bestir itself, even on
the arrival of a stranger. Brainard slid from his horse unobserved in
front of the Waldorf Hotel, which was apparently the most pretentious
hostelry in the town. Inside the Waldorf, a Chinaman was serving a
customer with a meal of fried steak and liver-colored pie. The only
other person in the establishment was a fat Irishwoman dozing in one
corner of the large bar-room, to which the Chinaman referred the
stranger, with a silent nod. The landlady—for such he took her to
be—looked at Brainard stupidly, and to his request for a room merely
dropped her head on her ample breast and resumed her nap.
Brainard turned back to the street, and there the only human being in
sight was an old man sitting in front of a tiny cottage, which seemed
more decent in appearance than the other residences of Monument.
Brainard hailed him, and inquired if there was another hotel in Monument
in which he might take refuge.
“There’s hotels enough,” the old citizen replied with placid irony, “but
they ain’t doing business these days. I reckon you’ll have to put up
with the Waldorf, stranger—it ain’t so worse!”
In reply to Brainard’s complaint that the landlady of the Waldorf would
not take notice of his arrival, the old man remarked:
“I expect Katie’s just getting over her yesterday’s booze. She’ll come
around after sundown. Come over and sit awhile. There ain’t any use of
worryin’ yourself in this here country!”
He waved an arm slowly over the empty landscape.
“That’s a fact—Monument doesn’t seem greatly rushed with business,”
Brainard observed, taking the proffered seat beside the old man. “What’s
the matter with the place?”
“The matter is that nothing has been doing in this here camp for ’most
ten years,” the miner replied, pointing to the smokeless smelter.
“Mine gave out?”
“Mine’s all right—they never really got into it. The money gave out!”
The old man explained, in his placid drawl, how Monument once had great
hopes. Then there had been a dozen Waldorfs in full swing. The smelter
had been built, and shafts sunk in the red-brown hills behind the town.
“The Melody Mine?”
“That’s what they called it, and it’s as good a mine as there ever was in
Arizony—better ore than the El Verde ever had—more money in it than three
El Verdes rolled into one, I say!”
“Gold?”
The old man spat contemptuously at a venturesome lizard.
“Gold! Hell, no—copper! High-grade ore.”
“What was the matter?”
“Them panic times came along, and the fellow that owned the Melody went
broke. He went back to Frisco. I always expected him to ride into camp
some day, when the panic was over, hitch down there at the Waldorf, and
sing out, ‘Howdy, Steve!’ and things would begin to hum once more. But
he never come back. Guess it’s likely he ain’t made good out in
California.”
“Perhaps he’s dead now,” Brainard suggested.
“P’r’aps—but some other feller will work the mine, one of these days.
Copper’s booming all over the world, you understand. I’m waiting for
that day!”
The old man spat meditatively.
“What is that large house on the hill?” Brainard asked, pointing to the
lonely mansion beyond the town.
“That’s where the old man lived—Krutzmacht’s house,” he replied. “He
used to live there with his folks.”
“He had a family, then?” Brainard inquired quickly.
“Some said she warn’t really his wife—couldn’t be, because she had a
husband where she came from, back East. I don’t know. I never asked
him. Folks always talk, you understand. Well, she’s dead now. The old
man left her here when he went away. She stayed on with the girl—”
“With what girl?”
“Her darter, stranger—not his, I guess. She was a scraggly little
black-haired thing, more like a boy.”
Brainard smiled as his young man’s dream of a beautiful heroine, with
aristocratic manners and gracious character, crumbled at the miner’s
touch.
“She used to ride all over the place on her pony—she was a wild sort.
Sometime after her mother died, she disappeared.”
“Where did she go?”
The old man shook his head slowly.
“Nobody could tell. One night, a month or more ago, she just rode off on
the trail. I seed her going down there at a run on her pony, and she
never came back. P’r’aps she was going to look for Krutzmacht. They
caught the pony over by Phantom, but nothing has been heard of her
since.”
“Melody—”
“Yes, that was her name, stranger!” the old miner said with a look of
surprise. “Melody White! How did you come to know it?”
“I must have guessed it,” Brainard replied with a smile.
“The mine was named after her, or she after the mine; I don’t know
which.”
Brainard stared out into the grim Arizona landscape, before which rose
the deserted mansion. There was a Melody! He had never really doubted
her existence, but this assurance of his conviction pleased him, even
though she might not be all that his ardent fancy had imagined.
“And now the house is empty, same as the mine, and I dunno what will
become of it all. Sold for taxes, I expect, if they can git any one to
buy it!”
They strolled up the road in the direction of the house upon the hill.
The austere dusk of the desert was settling over the dreary habitations
of Monument. Far away along the horizon purple mountains lifted their
heads in grandeur.
The house was so placed that it gave a large view of the horizon from the
mountains to the distant rim of the desert and again to mountains. Close
beneath, in wide folds, the river bed wound its serpent course westward
into the dusk. Before the broad southern veranda there were signs of old
flower beds, which had once been cherished with precious water brought in
iron pipes from the river below. The great white pillars had peeled
their one coat of paint, and underfoot the sun-dried boards rattled.
The scene was large and grand, but inhumanly empty—as empty as the great
house itself. No wonder that the young girl, her mother dead, had fled
from this parched desert and these bony mountains in search of the world
of men and women, in search of life!
“Kind of lonesome here?” the miner observed.
“It’s like death!”
“But you get used of it, same as death. . . . She and her mother stayed
here by themselves after the old man went, and I guess the girl had
enough of it.”
“How old was she, do you think?”
The old miner wrinkled his brows thoughtfully.
“She must have been nigh on sixteen,” he said. “She warn’t quite ten
when Krutzmacht left.”
This girl of “nigh on sixteen” had gone forth alone in search of the
stepfather, who for long years had left her and her mother neglected
here.
“Don’t you want to see the house? Krutzmacht fixed it up real
elegant—carpets and mahogany stuff. Nothing like it in this country.”
The old man pressed against the warped door, which yielded after a slight
resistance. An odor of warm, musty air from the empty dwelling filled
the lofty hall, which was quite bare. The miner opened a door leading to
a western room.
“They lived mostly in here,” he said.
On the floor was a thick Oriental rug, and there were several pieces of
handsome furniture, especially a massive, old-fashioned mahogany writing
desk and a large divan. On the divan lay a quirt and a woman’s cloak, as
if they had been thrown there carelessly the day before.
The dust of the desert had already settled on the rug, the desk, the
table, and the chairs. Nevertheless, the room presented a singularly
living look, such as only the life of people with certain habits and
education can impress upon an abiding place. Brainard felt as if he had
entered a drawing-room whose mistress had left it in the care of
neglectful servants.
Beside the window a small piano stood open, with a piece of music on the
rack. Some dead stalks of flowers drooped from a vase, and on the hearth
lay a charred log. Among the spools and pieces of cloth on a worktable
was a drawing board, to which was fastened a water-color sketch. A
brush, carelessly dropped, had stained one corner of the sketch with a
blotch of red. Brainard looked at the water color with some curiosity.
It was a young girl’s attempt to seize the barbaric splendor of the arid
plain outside of the window, fringed with ranges of savage mountains,
lighted by the fire of the setting sun.
The two men went up the broad staircase with its white-painted handrail.
Only one of the bedrooms had been recently occupied—the one in the
southwestern corner, facing the winding river. There a dresser drawer
was pulled out, as if it had been rifled by hasty hands.
“Seems as if they were really coming back agin!” the old miner remarked,
feeling the personal touch of occupancy. “They allus kep’ to themselves.
You see, they didn’t really belong,” he added, as if in explanation.
Brainard went back into the living room once more, and examined the
water-color sketch. It seemed to him that this rough sketch was like a
sign left for him. It breathed the passion and the longing of the girl
hidden away in this lonely corner of the earth. He detached it gently
from the board, and put it into his pocket. Then, with another glance
around the deserted room, he followed his guide out upon the veranda.
While the old man busied himself carefully shutting up the place,
Brainard leaned against one of the white pillars and stared into the gray
evening that had stolen over the plain. She had gone—the mistress whom
he had tried to serve so faithfully. She had disappeared into that vast,
gray outer world, that the twilight was gradually covering.
All the way across the ocean and the land, and especially on the blazing
trail over the alkali plain from Defiance, he had pictured to himself the
woman he hoped to find at the end of his journey. He had imagined his
interview with her, her emotions of surprise and delight, when he
accounted for the fortune he was bringing her. At first she had been but
a name, then an idea, and this idea had gradually assumed, in his
imagination, the vivid sense of personality. But somehow, in all his
speculation, he had never contemplated this! She lived, but she had just
flitted forth—whither?
Suddenly it came over him that there was no clear next step. For the
first time since he had obeyed Krutzmacht’s will and taken the train
westward for San Francisco, his spirit was dampened, and in the gray
evening a weight of depression fell upon him. For the moment he had no
will, no plan. That which had held all his acts together and made them
reasonable to himself had vanished.
Yet the girl had left behind her an impression—a sense of being some one,
a person—which he had never had completely before. Somewhere in the
universe there really was a young creature with the strange name of
Melody White, to whom belonged sundry important properties now in his
possession. It was clearly his business to find her if he could! . . .
The old miner came stamping over the loose boards of the veranda.
“The place will sure drop to pieces, like all the rest,” he observed, “if
something ain’t done to it mighty quick.”
“Where do you suppose she went?” the young man asked abruptly.
“The girl? Goodness only knows. P’r’aps she went to her mother’s folks,
or p’r’aps out to the coast after him—who can tell? ’Twould be like
hunting for a young rabbit out there!” He nodded toward the gray plain.
By the time that Brainard reached the Waldorf, the landlady had roused
herself, and she undertook to provide the traveler with food and room.
After disposing of John Chinaman’s fried steak and liver-colored pie, he
went forth again into Monument, seeking further information about the
former occupants of the mansion beyond the town. But nothing was known
of the two women except the vague rumor that the mother had come
originally from “Louisiany way.” She had held herself apart from the
little community, and most of the present inhabitants of the place, it
seemed, were derelicts who had gathered there after the closing of the
mine. All the vital population had taken the trail back to the railroad
shortly after Krutzmacht’s disappearance from the scene.
“Faith, I knew the gurl,” admitted Kate, of the Waldorf. “A queer wan
she was, too, ridin’ around by night and singin’ loud up there in the
big, lonely house. When you heard her singin’ in the dark, it would
frighten the heart in you!”
But more positive information the landlady did not possess. When
Brainard went to his hot room for the night, he felt “lonesome,” as the
miner had said—as if some one had missed an appointment with him here in
the Arizona desert.
The more he thought about the description the old miner had given him,
the date of her final departure, the more he became convinced that he had
seen this elusive Melody that night at Phantom when he had dropped from
the Santa Fé train and practically thrown himself upon the girl’s good
nature to guide him into safety. He was so preoccupied with his own
danger at the time, and the loss of his precious bag, that he had not
given much thought to the girl, had not even remembered the talk about
Krutzmacht’s mining venture in Arizona until later. So he had passed her
in the dark almost at the start of his adventure—the one whom now he was
seeking in a circle!
Even then, in all probability, she had planned her flight,—he remembered
how evasive she had been in reply to his blunt questions,—and she had
left not long afterwards, within a few days, as far as he could make out.
Yes, that must be Melody White,—the girl “nigh on sixteen,” the shy
little girl with the appealing Southern accent, who had seemed to him so
lonely sitting her yellow pony among the cactus as the night fell on the
desert. His imagination fastened strongly on this belief, for it gave
him fresh courage and purpose. If she were a being of flesh and blood
four weeks before, she must be somewhere now. It was his business to
find her. Probably she had gone first to San Francisco in search of
Krutzmacht; but when she had learned of his death, where had she gone?
At any rate California was the place from which to start the long trail.
And a long trail, indeed, it might prove—the search for a wild young girl
on her first journey into the wide world.