LOST ON THE DESERT
IF Washington had not lost a shoe on the way home from church, and if
Joyce had not been seized with a violent headache that sent her to bed
with a bandage over her eyes, the day would have ended far differently
for Lloyd.
The afternoon went by quickly, for, lulled by the drowsy hum of the
bees, she had fallen asleep in the hammock under the umbrella-tree, and
slept a long time. Then supper was earlier than usual, as Jack wanted
his before starting to the ranch. Chris, the Mexican, was taking a
holiday, and had offered Jack a quarter to do the milking for him that
evening. Holland strolled down the road with him, since the lost
horseshoe prevented him taking the ride he had expected to enjoy.
Scarcely were they out of sight when an old buggy rattled up from the
other direction, bringing a woman and her two little girls from a
neighbouring ranch for an evening visit. Lloyd, who was on her way to
the tent to see if she could do anything for Joyce's comfort, heard a
voice which she recognized as Mrs. Shaw's, as the woman introduced
herself to Mrs. Ware.
"I've been planning to get over here ever since you came," she began,
"and specially since I got acquainted with your daughter over them bees,
but 'pears like there's nothing in life on week-days but work; so this
evening, when my little girls begged to come over and see your little
girl, says I to myself, it's now or never, and I just hitched up and
came."
"Oh, deah!" sighed Lloyd. "I don't want to spend the whole evening
listening to that tiahsome woman. The boys are gone, and Joyce's head
aches too bad for her to talk. I don't know what to do."
She stepped softly into the tent, insisting on rubbing Joyce's head, or
doing something to make her more comfortable, but Joyce sent her away,
saying that the pain was growing less, and that she didn't want her to
stay shut up in the tent that smelled so strongly of the camphor she had
spilled.
Lloyd turned away and wandered down to the pasture bars, where she stood
looking over toward the west. The sun was dropping out of sight. For
the first time since she had come to the Wigwam she felt lonesome. She
was so full of life after her long sleep, so fresh and wide-awake, that
she looked around her restlessly, wishing that something exciting would
happen. She was in the mood to enjoy an adventure of some kind, no
matter what.
While she stood there, her pony, who had often been coaxed up to the
bars for sugar, now came up through curiosity, evidently wondering at
her silence. "Come on, old boy," she said, reaching through the bars to
grasp the rope that trailed from his neck. "You've settled it. We'll go
off and have a ride togethah."
With some difficulty, she saddled him herself, and then because she did
not want to disturb Joyce by going back to the tent to change her white
dress for her divided skirt, she mounted as if the cross-saddle were a
side-saddle, and rode slowly out of the yard bareheaded.
Mrs. Ware fluttered her handkerchief in response to the wave of Lloyd's
hand, and looked after her as she took the road to the ranch. "She's
going to see Mrs. Lee," she thought, and then turned her attention to
her talkative visitor.
It was merely from force of habit that Lloyd had taken the ranch road.
She was in sight of the camp before she became aware of where the pony
was carrying her.
Then she turned abruptly, hardly knowing why she did so. Phil was at the
ranch. She would not have him think that she had gone down with the hope
of seeing him. She did not put the thought into words, but that is what
influenced her to turn. In front of her Camelback Mountain loomed up,
looking larger and more lifelike than usual, with the reflected light of
the sunset lying rosy red on its summit. She knew that there is
something extremely deceptive in the clear Arizona atmosphere, and had
been told that the distance to the mountain was over five miles. But it
was hard to believe. It looked so near that she was sure that she could
reach it in a few minutes' brisk ride,--that she could easily go that
far and back before daylight was entirely gone.
An old game that she had played at the Cuckoos' Nest sent a verse
floating idly through her memory:
"How many miles to Barley-bright?"
"_Three score and ten!_"
"Can I get there by candle light?"
"_Yes, if your legs are long and light--
There and back again!_
_Look out! The witches will catch you!_"
With somewhat of the same eerie feeling that had affected her when she
joined in the game with Betty and the little Appletons, she turned the
pony into the narrow trail that led across the sand in and out among the
sage-brush. Later, those same gray bushes might look startlingly like
witches reaching up out of the gloaming.
"It's a good thing that yoah legs _are_ long and light," she said to the
pony, as he started off with a long, rabbit-like lope. "And it's a good
thing that you seem as much at home heah as Br'er Rabbit was in the
brush-pile when Br'er Fox threw him in for stealing his buttah. I'm glad
it isn't old Tar Baby that I'm on. He wouldn't be used to these gophah
holes, and would stumble into the first one we came to. Oh, this is
glorious!"
She shook back her hair as the soft, orange-perfumed breeze blew it
about her face. Her full white sleeves fluttered out from her arms.
Again she had that delightful sense of birdlike motion, of free, wild
swinging through space. On and on they went, never noticing how far they
had travelled or how dark it was growing, till suddenly she saw that she
was not on any trail. A thick growth of stubby mesquit bushes made
almost a thicket in front of her. An enormous cactus, thirty feet high,
stood in her way like one of the Barley-bright witches. From its thorny
trunk stretched two great arms, thrown up as if to ward off her coming.
Its resemblance to a human figure was uncanny, and she stood staring at
it with a fascinated gaze.
"It's big enough to be the camel-drivah of the camel in the mountain,"
she said in a half-whisper to the pony. Then looking on toward the
mountain, she realized that she had to strain her eyes to see it through
the rapidly gathering gloom. Night had fallen suddenly, and the mountain
seemed farther away than when she started.
"Oh, it will be black night befoah we get home," she thought, turning in
nervous haste. Then a new trouble confronted her. She was facing a dim,
trackless wilderness, and she did not know how to get home. She had kept
the mountain steadily in view as she rode toward it, but now she
realized that it was so large that she could easily do that, and still
at the same time go far out of her course.
"You'll have to find the way home," she said, helplessly, to the pony,
failing to remember that the Wigwam pasture had been his home for only a
few weeks, and that, left to himself, he would go directly to his native
ranch.
[Illustration: "CLATTERING DOWN THE ROAD AS FAST AS HIS FEET COULD CARRY
HIM"]
In a few minutes Lloyd found herself carried along a narrow road, not
more than a wagon track. While she knew that she had never been over it
before, it was some comfort to find that she was on a human
thoroughfare, and not lost among the tracks of wandering coyotes and
jack-rabbits.
The pony, feeling that he was headed toward his own home, went willingly
enough, and Lloyd began to enjoy her adventure.
"How exciting it will sound back in that tame little Valley," she
thought, "lost in the desert! I'll give the girls such a thrilling
description of it that they'll feel cold chills running up and down
their spines. It's a wondah that the cold chills don't run up and down
me! But I'm not one bit afraid now. This road is bound to lead to
somebody's house, and everybody is so friendly out heah in the West that
whoevah finds me will take me home."
The pony swung along a few rods farther, then, startled by an owl rising
suddenly out of the wayside bushes with a heavy flopping of wings,
jumped sideways with such a start that Lloyd was almost thrown from her
seat. It was an insecure one at best, and she was about to throw her
foot over into the other stirrup when a forward plunge sent the pony
into a gopher hole, and Lloyd over his head.
When she picked herself up from the road and looked dizzily around, she
gave a little gasp of horror. The pony, freed of his burden and spurred
on by his fright, was clattering down the road as fast as his feet could
carry him, and she was left helpless in what seemed to her the very
heart of the great, desolate desert. She stood motionless till the last
faint thud of the pony's hoofs died away down the road. Then she looked
around her and shivered. The possibility of the pony's not going
straight to the Wigwam had not yet occurred to her, but she felt that
under any circumstances she was doomed to stay in the desert until
morning. They would be badly frightened at the Wigwam, and would rouse
the ranch to send out a searching-party, but they might as well look for
a needle in a haystack as to make an attempt to find her in the
darkness. She did not know where she was herself. She was within a
stone's throw of one of the buttes, out which one she could not tell.
She stood peering around her through the twilight with eager, dilated
eyes. A twig crackled near her, trampled underfoot by some little wild
creature as startled as she. The desert had seemed so still before, but
now it was full of strange whisperings and rustlings. Remembering what
Jack had told her when he showed her the nest shared by snakes and owls,
she dared not sit down for fear some snake should come crawling out of
the hole from which the owl had flown. She felt that it would be useless
to walk on, since every step might be carrying her farther away from the
Wigwam.
How long she stood there in the road she could not tell, but presently
it seemed to her that it was growing lighter. She could see the outlines
of the butte more distinctly, and the sky behind it was growing
gradually luminous. Then she remembered that the moon would be up in a
little while, and her courage came back as she stood and waited. When
its round, familiar face came peeping up over the horizon, she felt as
if an old friend were smiling at her.
"I'm neahly as glad to see you as if you were one of the family," she
said, aloud, with a little sob in her throat. The feeling that this was
the same moon that had looked down on her through the locusts, all her
life, and had even peeped through the windows and seen Mom Beck rocking
her to sleep in her baby days, gave her a sense of companionship that
was wonderfully comforting.
It was tiresome standing in the road, and, as she dared not sit down and
risk finding snakes, she decided to climb up the side of the butte and
look out over the country. Maybe she might see the light from some ranch
house. At least on its rocky slope she would be freer from snakes than
down among the bushes and the owls' nests.
Scrambling over a ledge of rock she stumbled upon a pile of tin cans and
broken bottles, which told of many past picnic parties near that spot. A
little higher up she clasped her hands with a cry of pleased
recognition. She was at the beginning of the great hole that led through
the rock. Only two nights before she had sat on that very boulder, and
speared olives out of a bottle with a hat-pin. There were their own
sardine cans, and the fragments of the teacup Hazel had dropped. A mound
of ashes and some charred sticks marked the spot where the camp-fire had
blazed.
She looked around, wondering if by some happy chance Jo could have left
any matches. A brilliant idea had come to her of lighting a bonfire. She
knew that it could be seen from the ranch, and would draw attention to
her at once. A long search failed to show any stray matches, and she
wondered if she could find flint among the rocks, or how long it would
take to get fire by rubbing two sticks together.
Some of the gruesome tales of Apache warfare that had been told around
the fire came back to her as she stood looking at the ashes, but she
resolutely turned her thoughts away from them, to the Indian school she
had seen the day before. It was wonderfully comforting to think of that
little Indian girl at the piano, patiently practising her five-finger
exercises, and of the Indian boy in the brass-buttoned uniform ploughing
in the fields. It made them seem so civilized and tame. The time of
tomahawks and tortures was long past, she assured herself, and there was
not nearly so much to fear from the peaceful Pimas and Maricopas as
there was sometimes from the negroes at home.
So, quieting herself with such assurances, she climbed up to a
comfortable seat on a rock, where she could lean back against the
cavelike wall, and sat looking out through the great hole, as the moon
rose higher and higher in the heavens. Half an hour slipped by in
intense silence. Then her heart gave a thump of terror, so loud that she
heard the beating distinctly. There was a fierce, hot roaring in her
ears.
Down at the foot of the butte, going swiftly along with moccasined
tread, was a stalwart Indian. Not one of the peaceful Pimas she had been
accustomed to seeing, but a cruel-mouthed, eagle-eyed Apache. At least
he looked like the pictures she had seen of Apaches.
He had a lariat in his hand, and he stooped several times to examine the
tracks ahead of him, as if following a trail. Instantly there flashed
into Lloyd's mind what Mrs. Lee had told them about the Indians allowing
their ponies to run loose on the desert. Sometimes the settlers'
children used to catch them, and keep them all day to ride. But woe be
it, she said, if the owner tracked his pony to a settler's house before
it was turned loose. He always took his revenge. Lloyd was sure that
this was what the Indian was after, as she noticed the lariat, and the
way his keen eyes followed the trail. She almost held her breath as she
waited for him to pass on. But he did not pass.
Throwing up his head he looked all around, and then, leaving the trail,
started swiftly up the butte toward her. Almost frozen with fear, Lloyd
drew back into the shadow, and, rolling over the ledge, drew herself
into as small a space as possible, crouching down to hide her white
dress. Through a crevice between the rocks she watched his approach with
wide, terrified gaze, sure that some savage instinct, like a
bloodhound's sense of smell, had warned him of her presence.
For an instant, as he reached the remains of the camp-fire, he stood
motionless, looking out across the country, silhouetted darkly against
the sky, like the head on the leather cushion she was taking home to her
grandfather, she thought, or rather that she had intended to take. Maybe
she would never live to see her home again.
She crouched still closer against the rock, rigid, tense, scarcely
breathing. With a grunt the Indian stooped, and began poking around
among the scraps left by the picnickers. He turned the blackened brands
with his foot, then moved farther along, attracted by the gleam of a bit
of broken bottle. Evidently the coyotes had been there before him, for
not a scrap was left of sandwiches or chicken bones; but, like the
coyotes, he knew from past experiences that it was profitable to prowl
where picnics were almost weekly occurrences.
The gleam of something steely and bright caught his eye. Lloyd saw the
object flash in the moonlight as he picked it up. It was the
carving-knife Jo had dropped in his excitement, when he found the "lucky
cuts" on his forefingers. With another grunt he turned it this way and
that, examined the handle and tried the edge, and then looked stealthily
around. Lloyd closed her eyes lest the very intensity of their gaze
should draw him to her hiding-place. She knew that another step or two
would bring him to higher ground, where he could look over the ledge and
see her.
How she ever lived through the moments that followed, she never knew. It
seemed to her that her heart had stopped beating, and she was growing
clammy and faint. It could not have been more than a few minutes, but it
seemed hours to her, when, the suspense growing unbearable, she opened
her eyes, and peered fearfully through the crack again.
He had disappeared. Trembling so that she could scarcely stand, she
ventured, little by little, to raise herself until she could look over
the rock. Then she saw him moving leisurely down the path at the foot of
the butte. In a moment more he had reached the road, and, striding
along, he grew smaller and smaller to her sight till he disappeared
among the dark patches of sage-brush.
Lloyd sank limply down among the rocks again, so exhausted by the
nervous strain that the tears began to come. The night was passing like
a hideous dream. Half an hour went by. She could hear the distant
barking of coyotes, and a nervous dread took possession of her, a fear
that their long, gaunt forms might come sneaking up the path after
awhile in search of other picnic leavings. She eyed the swaying shadows
apprehensively.
Presently, as she sat and watched, tense and alert, she saw some one
coming along the wagon track far below. He was on horseback, and riding
slowly, as if enjoying the calm beauty of the night. She could hear him
whistling. As he reached the foot of the butte the whistling changed to
singing. The full, strong voice that rang out on the deathlike stillness
was wonderfully rich and sweet:
"From the desert I come to thee!"
It was the Bedouin song. Lloyd listened wonderingly, her lips half-open.
Was this part of the dream? she asked herself. Part of the strange,
unreal night? That was certainly Phil's voice, and yet it was past
belief that he should be riding by this out-of-the-way place at such an
hour of the night. But there was no mistaking the voice, nor the song
that had been haunting her memory for the last two days:
"Till the sun grows cold,
And the stars are old."
Lloyd hesitated no longer. Scrambling up from the rocks, she went
running down the steep path, calling at the top of her voice, "Phil! Oh,
Phil! Wait!"
It was Phil's turn to think he was dreaming. Flying down the path with
her white dress fluttering behind her in the moonlight, and her long,
fair hair streaming loosely over her shoulder, Lloyd looked more
wraithlike than human, and to be confronted by such a figure in the
heart of a lonely desert was such a surprise that Phil could scarcely
believe that he saw aright.
A moment more, and with both her cold, trembling little hands in his big
warm ones, Lloyd was sobbing out the story of her fright. The reaction
was so great when she found herself in his protecting presence, that she
could not keep back the tears.
He swung her up into his saddle in the same brotherly way he had lifted
Mary into the cart, the day he found her running home from school, and
proceeded to comfort her in the same joking fashion.
"This is the second time that I have been called on to play the bold
rescuer act. I'll begin to think soon that my mission in life is to
snatch fair maidens from the bloody scalpers of the plains." Then more
gently, as he saw how hard it was for her to control herself, he spoke
as he often spoke to Mary:
"There, never mind, Lloyd. Don't cry. It's all right, little girl. We'll
soon be home. It's only a few miles from here. It isn't as late as you
think--only half-past eight."
Slipping his watch back into his pocket, he began to explain how he
happened to be passing. He had stayed to supper at the camp where he had
gone to call on his new acquaintance, and had purposely waited for the
moon to come up before starting home.
He had put the rein into her hands at first, but now, taking it himself,
he walked along beside her, leading the horse slowly homeward. With the
greatest tact, feeling that Lloyd would gain her self-possession sooner
if he did not talk to her, he began to sing again, half to himself, as
if unmindful of her presence, and of the little dabs she was making at
her eyes with a wet handkerchief.
"Maid Elsie roams by lane and lea." It was the song that his old English
nurse had sung:
"Kling! lang! ling!
She hears her bonny bride-bells ring."
When he had sung it through, Lloyd's handkerchief was no longer making
hasty passes at her eyes.
"I wonder what my little sister Elsie is doing to-night," he said. "That
song always makes me think of her."
"Tell me about her," said Lloyd, who wanted a little more time to regain
her composure. He understood why she asked, and began to talk, simply to
divert her mind from her recent fright. But presently her eager
questions showed that she was interested, and he talked on, feeling that
it was good to have such an appreciative listener. He began to enjoy the
reminiscences himself, and as he talked, the old days seemed to draw
very near, till they gave him a homesick feeling for the old place that
would never welcome him again. It had gone to strangers, he told her,
and Aunt Patricia was dead.
"Poor old Aunt Patricia," he added, after laughing over one of the
pranks they had played on her. "She never did understand boys. We tried
her patience terribly. She did the best she could for us, but I've
often thought how different it would have been if my mother had lived. I
had a letter from Daddy to-day, in answer to the one I wrote about
leaving school. It broke me all up. Made me think of the time when I was
a little fellow, and he rocked me to sleep one night when I had been
naughty, and explained why I ought to be a good boy. It almost made me
wish I could be a little kid again, and curl up in his arms, and tell
him I was sorry, and would turn over a new leaf."
Lloyd liked the affectionate, almost wistful way in which he spoke of
his father as Daddy. Whatever indignation she had felt toward him was
wiped away by those confidences. And when he apologized presently, in
his most winning way, for not keeping his engagement, and told her
frankly what had prevented, she liked him better than she had done
before. She wondered how it could be so, but she felt now that she knew
him as well as Malcolm or Rob, and that their friendship was not the
growth of a few weeks, but that it reached back to the very beginning of
things.
"You can't imagine what a fascination there is in seeing that roulette
wheel whirl around," he said, "but I'm done with that now. Daddy's
letter settled the question. And even if that hadn't come, I would have
stopped. I don't want to lose my precious turquoises--my friendship
stones," he added, meaningly. "I know how you and Joyce feel about it.
Look at old Alaka's eyes, twinkling up there over Camelback. They seem
to know that I have heeded their warning."
Presently, as they went along, he glanced up at her with a smile. "Do
you know," he said, "you look just as you did the first time I saw you,
as you rode up to the gate at Locust, all in white, and on a black
horse. Maybe having your hair hanging loose as you did then makes me
think so. I never imagined then that I'd ever see you again, much less
find you away out here on the desert."
"It is queah," answered Lloyd. "I thought I must be dreaming when I
heard you sing 'From the desert I come to thee.'"
"And I certainly thought I was dreaming," answered Phil, "when, in
answer to my call, you appeared all in white. You could have knocked me
down with a feather, for an instant. I was startled. Then I thanked my
lucky stars that led me your way."
He began again humming the Bedouin song. Lloyd, looking out across the
wide, moonlighted desert and up at the twinkling stars, wondered if it
was fate that had brought him to her rescue; if it could be possible
that through him was to come the happiness written for her in the stars.
"There's the Wigwam light," said Phil, presently, pausing in his song to
point it out to her. "We're almost there. I'll never forget this
adventure--till--" He took up the refrain again, smiling into her eyes
as he hummed it. The refrain that was to ring through Lloyd's memory for
many a year to come, whenever she thought of this ride across the
moonlighted desert:
"_Till the sun grows cold,
And the stars are old,
And the leaves of the Judgment
Book unfold!_"