A ROBINSON CRUSOE OF THE DESERT
JOYCE stood in the door of the little adobe house, and looked out across
the desert with tears in her eyes. If _this_ was to be their home
through all the dreary years that stretched ahead of them, it hardly
seemed worth while to go on living.
Jack, in the bare unfurnished room behind her, was noisily wielding a
hatchet, opening the boxes and barrels of household goods which had
followed them by freight. He did not know which one held his gun, but he
was determined to find it before the sun went down.
For nearly three weeks they had been at Lee's Ranch, half a mile farther
down the road, waiting for the goods to come, and to find a place where
they could set up a home of their own. Boarding for a family of six was
far too expensive to be afforded long. Now the boxes had arrived, and
they had found a place, the only one for rent anywhere near the ranch.
Joyce felt sick at heart as she looked around her.
"Here it is at last," called Jack, triumphantly, dropping the hatchet
and throwing pillows and bedding out of the box in reckless haste to
reach his most cherished possession, the fine hammerless shotgun which
Mr. Link had given him Christmas. He had intended to carry it with him
on the journey, in its carved leather case, but in the confusion of the
hurried packing, some well-meaning neighbour had nailed it up in one of
the boxes while he was absent, and there had been no time to rescue it.
He had worried about it ever since.
"Oh, you beauty!" he exclaimed, rubbing his hand along the polished
stock as he drew it from the case. Sitting on the floor tailor-fashion,
he began whistling cheerfully as he fitted the parts together.
"Joyce," he called, peering down the barrels to see if any speck of rust
had gathered in them, "do you suppose we brought any machine-oil with
us? I'll uncrate the sewing-machine if you think that the can is likely
to be in one of the drawers."
"I don't know," answered Joyce, in such a hopeless tone that Jack
lowered his gun-barrels and stared at her in astonishment. Her back was
toward him, but her voice certainly sounded choked with tears. It was so
unusual for Joyce to cry that he felt that something very serious must
be the cause.
"What's the matter, sister?" he inquired. "You aren't sick, are you?"
"Yes!" she exclaimed, with a sob, turning and throwing herself down on
the pile of pillows he had just unpacked. "I'm sick of everything in
this awful country! I'm sick of the desert, and of seeing nothing but
invalids and sand and cactus and jack-rabbits wherever I go. And I'm
sick of the prospect of living in this little hole of a mud-house, and
working like a squaw, and never doing anything or being anything worth
while. If I thought I had to go on all my life this way, I'd want to die
right now!"
Jack viewed her uneasily. "Goodness, Joyce! I never knew you to go all
to pieces this way before. You've always been the one to preach to us
when things went wrong, that if we'd be inflexible that fortune would at
last change in our favour."
"Inflexible fiddlesticks!" stormed Joyce from the depths of a bolster,
where she had hidden her face, "I've been holding out against fate so
long that I can't do it any more, and I'm going to give up, right here
and now!"
"Then I don't know what will become of the rest of us," answered Jack,
raising his empty gun to aim at a butcher-bird in the fig-tree outside
the door. "It's you that has always kept things cheerful when we were
down in the mouth."
Joyce sat up and wiped her eyes. "I think that it must be that old
camel-back mountain out there that makes me feel so hopeless. It is so
depressing to see it kneeling there in the sand, day after day, like a
poor old broken-down beast of burden, unable to move another step. It is
just like us. Fate is too much for it."
Jack's glance followed hers through the open door. Straight and level,
the desert stretched away toward the horizon, where a circle of
mountains seemed to rise abruptly from the sands, and shut them in.
There was Squaw's Peak on the left, cold and steely blue, and over on
the right the bare buttes, like mounds of red ore, and just in front was
the mountain they must face every time they looked from the door. Some
strange freak of nature had given it the form of a giant camel, five
miles long. There it knelt in the sand, with patient outstretched neck,
and such an appearance of hopeless resignation to its lot, that Joyce
was not the only one who found it depressing. More than one invalid,
sent to the surrounding ranches for the life-giving atmosphere of
Arizona, had turned his back on it with a shiver of premonition, saying,
"It's just like me! Broken-down, and left to die on the desert. Neither
of us will ever get away."
It made no difference to Jack what shape the mountains took. He could
not understand Joyce's sensitiveness to her surroundings. But it made
him uncomfortable to see her so despondent. He sat hugging his gun in
silence a moment, not knowing how to answer her, and then began idly
aiming it first in one direction, then another. Presently his glance
happened to rest upon a battered book that had fallen from one of the
boxes. He drew it toward him with his foot. It was open at a familiar
picture, and on the opposite page was a paragraph which he had read so
many times, that he could almost repeat it from memory.
"Hello!" he exclaimed. "Here's an old friend who was in as bad a fix as
we are, Joyce, and he lived through it."
Leaning over, without picking up the book from the floor, he began
reading from the page, printed in the large type of a child's
picture-book:
"'September 30, 1609. I, poor, miserable Robinson Crusoe, being
shipwrecked during a dreadful storm in the offing, came on shore this
dismal, unfortunate island, which I called the Island of Despair, all
the rest of the ship's company being drowned, and myself almost dead.
All the rest of the day I spent in afflicting myself at the dismal
circumstances I was brought to, viz., I had neither house, clothes,
weapons, nor place to fly to, and in despair of any relief saw nothing
but death before me, either that I should be devoured by wild beasts,
murdered by savages, or starved to death for want of food.'"
A long pause followed. Then Joyce sat up, looking teased, and held out
her hand for the book. "I don't mind old Crusoe's preaching me a
sermon," she said, as she turned the tattered leaves. "Now he's done it,
I'll quit 'afflicting myself at the dismal circumstances I was brought
to.' I've wished a thousand times, when I was smaller, that I could have
been in his place, and had all his interesting adventures. And to think,
here we are at last, in almost as bad a plight as he was. Only we have a
weapon," she added, with a mischievous glance at the gun Jack was
holding.
"And that means food, too," he answered, proudly, "for I expect to kill
many a quail and duck with this."
"Oh, we're better off than Crusoe in a thousand ways, I suppose, if we'd
only stop to count our blessings," she answered, now ready to take a
more cheerful view of life since she had had her little outburst of
rebellion. "He didn't have a Chinaman driving by with fresh vegetables
twice a week, as we will have, and we have clothes, and a house, such as
it is, and a place to fly to, for Lee's Ranch will always be open to us
if we need a refuge."
"So we can start at the place where Crusoe was when he really began to
enjoy his Island of Despair," said Jack. "Shall I go on unpacking these
things? I stopped when you announced that you were going to give up and
die, for I thought there wouldn't be any use trying to do anything, with
you in the dumps like that."
Joyce looked around the dingy room. "It's not worth while to unpack till
the place has been scrubbed from top to bottom. If we're going to make a
home of it, we'll have to begin right. The landlord won't do anything,
and we could hardly expect him to, considering the small amount of rent
we pay, but I don't see how we can live in it without fresh paper and
paint."
"I wish we'd find a ship cast up on the sands of the desert to-morrow,"
said Jack, "that would have all sorts of supplies and tools in it. The
shipwrecks helped old Robinson out amazingly. I'd make a bookcase if we
did, and put up shelves and all sorts of things. This would be a fine
place to show what I learned in the manual training-school. We need
benches and rustic seats out under those umbrella-trees."
"We'll have to buy some tools," said Joyce. "Let's make out a list of
things we need, and go to town early in the morning. Mrs. Lee said we
could borrow Bogus and the surrey to-morrow."
"All right," assented Jack, ready for anything that promised change.
"And _Jack_!" she exclaimed, after a long slow survey of the room,
"let's paint and paper this place ourselves! I'm sure we can do it.
There's a tape measure in one of the machine drawers. Suppose you get it
out and measure the room, so we'll know how much paper to buy."
Joyce was her old brave, cheery self again now, giving orders like a
major-general, and throwing herself into the work at hand with
contagious enthusiasm. With the stub of a pencil Jack found in his
pocket, she began making a memorandum on the fly-leaf of Robinson
Crusoe. "Paint, turpentine, brushes, screws, nails, saw, mop, broom,
scrubbing-brush, soap," she wrote rapidly.
"And a hatchet," added Jack. "This one belongs to the Mexican at the
ranch. And, oh, yes, an axe. He says that Holland and I can get all the
wood we need right here on the desert, without its costing us a cent, if
we're willing to chop it; mesquite roots, you know, and greasewood."
"It's fortunate we can get something without paying for it," commented
Joyce, as she added an axe to the list. Then she sat studying the
possibilities of the room, while Jack knocked the crate from the
machine, found the tape measure, and did a sum in arithmetic to find the
amount of paper it would take to cover the walls.
"I can see just how it is going to look when we are all through," she
said, presently. "When this old dark woodwork is painted white, and
these dismal walls are covered with fresh light paper, and there are
clean, airy curtains at the windows, it won't seem like the same place.
Mamma mustn't see it till it is all in order."
Exhausted by the journey, Mrs. Ware had been too weak to worry over
their future, or even to wonder what would become of them, and had
handed over the little bank-book to Joyce.
"Make it go just as far as it will, dear," she said. "You are too young
to have such a load laid on your shoulders, but I see no other way now."
Joyce had taken up the burden of responsibility so bravely that no one
but Jack knew of her moments of discouragement, and he was forgetting
her recent tears in her present enthusiasm.
"Oh, I wish it was to-morrow," she exclaimed, "and we had all our
supplies bought so that we could begin."
"So do I," answered Jack. "But it's nearly sundown now, and the
supper-bell will be ringing before we get back to the ranch, if we don't
start soon."
"Well, lock the doors, and we'll go," said Joyce, beginning to pin on
her hat.
"Oh, what's the use of being so particular! Mrs. Lee says everybody is
honest out in this country. They never turn a key on the ranch, and
they've never had anything taken either by Mexicans or Indians in all
the years they've lived here. It isn't half as wild as I hoped it would
be. I wish I could have been a pioneer, and had some of the exciting
times they had."
Nevertheless, Jack barred the back door and locked the front one, before
following Joyce across the yard, and over the little bridge spanning the
irrigating canal, into the public road. They stood there a moment,
looking back at the house, just one big square adobe room, with a
shed-kitchen in the rear. Around three sides of it ran a rough sort of
porch or shack, built of cottonwood posts, supporting a thatch of
bamboo-stalks and palm-leaves. While it would afford a fine shelter from
the sun in the tropical summer awaiting them, it was a homely,
primitive-looking affair, almost as rough in its appearance as if
Robinson Crusoe himself had built it.
"It's hopeless, isn't it!" said Joyce, with a despairing shake of the
head. "No matter how homelike we may make it inside, it will always be
the picture of desolation outside."
"Not when the leaves come out on that row of umbrella-trees," answered
Jack. "Mrs. Lee says they will be so green and bushy that they will
almost hide the house, and the blossoms on them in the spring are as
purple and sweet as lilacs. Then this row of fig-trees along the road,
and the clump of cottonwoods back of the house, and those two big
pepper-trees by the gate will make it cool and shady here, no matter
how scorching hot the desert may be. We'll have to give them lots of
water. Oh, that reminds me, I'll have to have a pair of rubber boots, if
I am to do the irrigating. The water will be in again day after
to-morrow."
Joyce groaned as she opened the book she was carrying, and added boots
to the long list on the fly-leaf. "What a lot it's going to take to get
us started. Crusoe certainly had reason to be thankful for the
shipwrecked stores he found."
"But it'll cost less to get the boots than to hire a Mexican every eight
days to do the irrigating," said Jack.
Following the road beside the canal, they walked along in the last rays
of the sunset, toward the ranch. Birds twittered now and then in the
fig-trees on their right, or a string of cows went lowing homeward
through the green alfalfa pastures, to the milking. The road and canal
seemed to run between two worlds, for on the left it was all a dreary
desert, the barren sands stretching away toward the red buttes and old
Camelback Mountain, as wild and cheerless as when the Indians held
possession. Some day it too would "rejoice and blossom like the rose,"
but not until a network of waterways dug across it brought it new life.
Once as they walked along, a jack-rabbit crossed their path and went
bounding away in a fright. A covey of quail rose with a loud whirr of
wings from a clump of bushes beside the road, but they met no human
being until Holland and Mary, just from school, came racing out from the
ranch to meet them with eager questions about the new home.
Chris, the Mexican, had made the round of the tents, building a little
fire of mesquite wood in each tiny drum stove, for in February the air
of the desert grows icy as soon as the sun disappears. Mrs. Ware was
sitting in a rocking-chair between the stove and table, on which stood a
lamp with a yellow shade, sending a cheerful glow all over the tent.
Joyce took the remaining chair, Jack sat on the wood-box, and Mary,
Norman and Holland piled upon the bed, to take part in the family
conclave. The canvas curtain had been dropped over the screen-door, and
the bright Indian rugs on the floor gave a touch of warmth and cosiness
to the tent that made it seem wonderfully bright and homelike.
"I don't see," said Mary, when she had listened to a description of the
place, "how we are all going to eat and sleep and live in one room and a
kitchen. It takes three tents to hold us all here, besides having the
ranch dining-room to eat in. What if Eugenia Forbes should come from
the Waldorf-Astoria to visit us, or the Little Colonel, or some of the
other girls from Kentucky, that you knew at the house-party, Joyce?
Where would they sleep?"
"Yes," chimed in Holland, teasingly, "or the Queen of Sheba? Suppose
_she_ should come with all her train. It's about as likely. We would
have to play 'Pussy wants a corner' all night, Mary, and whoever
happened to be 'it' would have to sit up until he happened to find
somebody out of his corner."
"Goosey!" exclaimed Mary, sticking out her tongue at him and making the
worst face she could screw up. "Honestly, what would we do, Joyce?"
"We're not going to try to live in just one room," explained Joyce. "The
doctor said mamma ought to sleep in a tent, so we'll get a big double
one like this, wainscoted up high, with floor and screen-door, just like
this. Mamma and you and I can use that, and the boys will have just an
ordinary camping-tent, without door or floor. They have been so wild to
be pioneers that they will be glad to come as near to it as possible,
and that means living without extra comforts and conveniences. In the
house one corner of the room will be the library, where we'll put papa's
desk, and one corner will be the sewing-room, where we'll have the
machine, and one will be a cosy corner, with the big lounge and lots of
pillows. If the Queen of Sheba or the Little Colonel should do such an
improbable thing as to stray out here, we'll have a place for them."
"There goes the supper-bell," cried Norman, scrambling down from the bed
in hot haste to beat Mary to the table. Joyce waited to turn down the
lamp, close the stove draughts, and bring her mother's shawl, before
following them.
"How bright the camp looks with a light in every tent," she said, as
they stepped out under the stars. "They look like the transparencies in
the torchlight processions, that we used to have back in Plainsville."
Mrs. Ware's tent was in the front row, so it was only a step to the door
of the dining-room in the ranch house. The long table was nearly filled
when they took their seats. Gathered around it were people who had
drifted there from all parts of the world in search of lost health. A
Boston law-student, a Wyoming cowboy, a Canadian minister, a Scotchman
from Inverness, and a jolly Irish lad from Belfast were among the
number.
The most interesting one to Joyce was an old Norwegian who sat opposite
her, by the name of Jan Ellestad. Not old in years, for his hair was
still untouched by gray, and his dark eyes flashed at times with the
spirit of the old vikings, when he told the folk-lore of his fatherland.
But he was old in sad experiences, and broken health, and broken hopes.
The faint trace of a foreign accent that clung to his speech made
everything he said seem interesting to Joyce, and after Mrs. Lee had
told her something of his history, she looked upon him as a hero. This
was the third winter he had come back to the ranch. He knew he could not
live through another year, and he had stopped making plans for himself,
but he listened with unfailing cheerfulness to other people's. Now he
looked up expectantly as Joyce took her seat.
"I can see by your face, Miss Joyce," he said, in his slow, hesitating
way, as if groping for the right words, "that you are about to plunge
this ranch into another wild excitement. What is it now, please?"
"Guess!" said Joyce, glancing around the table. "Everybody can have one
guess."
During the three weeks that the Wares had been on the ranch they had
made many friends among the boarders. Most of them could do little but
sit in the sun and wait for the winter to creep by, so they welcomed
anything that relieved the monotony of the long idle days. Mary's
unexpected remarks gave fresh zest to the conversation. The boys,
bubbling over with energy and high spirits, were a constant source of
entertainment, and Joyce's enthusiasms were contagious. She was
constantly coming in from the desert with some strange discovery to
arouse the interest of the listless little company.
Now, as her challenge passed around the table, any one hearing her laugh
at the amusing replies would not have dreamed that only a few hours
before she was sobbing to Jack that she was sick of seeing nothing but
invalids and sand and cactus.
"We haven't any name for our new home," she announced, "and I'm thinking
of having a name contest. Any one can offer an unlimited number, and the
best shall receive a prize."
"Then I'll win," responded the Scotchman, promptly. "There's nae mair
appropriate name for a wee bit lodging-place like that, than
_Bide-a-wee_."
"That is pretty," said Joyce, repeating it thoughtfully. "I love the old
song by that name, but I'm afraid that it isn't exactly appropriate. You
see, we may have to bide there for years and years instead of just a
wee."
"Give it a Spanish name," said the minister. "Alamo means cottonwood,
and you have a group of cottonwoods there. That would be just as good as
naming it The Pines, or The Oaks, or The Beeches."
"No, call it something Indian," said the cowboy. "Something that means
little-mud-house-in-the-desert, yet has a high-sounding swing to the
syllables."
"Wait till we get through fixing it," interrupted Jack. "It'll look so
fine that you won't dare call it little-mud-house-in-the-desert. We're
going to paint and paper it ourselves."
"Not you two children," exclaimed the Norwegian, in surprise.
"With our own lily fingers," answered Joyce.
"Then you'll have an interested audience," he answered. "You'll find all
of us who are able to walk perching in the fig-trees outside your door
every morning, waiting for the performance to begin."
"Whoever perches there will have to descend and help, won't they, Jack?"
said Joyce, saucily.
"Oh, mamma," whispered Mary, "is Mr. Ellestad really going to climb up
in the fig-tree and watch them? _Please_ let me stay home from school
and help. I know I can't study if I go, for I'll be thinking of all the
fun I'm missing."