Starr, of the Desert

by B. M. Bower

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  MOONLIGHT, A MAN AND A SONG

  Just out from the entrance to a deep, broad-bottomed arroyo where anautomobile had been, Starr came upon something that surprised him verymuch, and it was not at all easy to surprise Starr. Here, in the firstglory of a flaming sunset that turned the desert to a sea of unearthly,opal-tinted beauty, he came upon Helen May, trudging painfully along withan old hoe-handle for a staff, and driving nine reluctant nanny goatsthat alternately trotted and stood still to stare at the girl withfoolish, amber-colored eyes.

  Starr was trained to long desert distances, but his training had made itsecond nature to consider a horse the logical means of covering thosedistances. To find Helen May away out here, eight miles and more fromSunlight Basin, and to find her walking, shocked Starr unspeakably;shocked him out of his shyness and into free speech with her, as thoughhe had known her a long while.

  "Y' _lost_?" was his first greeting, while he instinctively swung Rabbitto head off a goat that suddenly "broke back" from the others.

  Helen May looked up at him with relief struggling through the apathy ofutter weariness. "No, but I might as well be. I'll never be able to gethome alive, anyhow." She shook the hoe-handle menacingly at a hesitatinggoat and quite suddenly collapsed upon the nearest rock, and began tocry; not sentimentally or weakly or in any other feminine manner known toStarr, but with an angry recklessness that was like opening a safetyvalve. Helen May herself did not understand why she should go along forhalf a day calmly enough, and then, the minute this man rode up and spoketo her sympathetically, she should want to sit down and cry.

  "I just--I've been walking since one o'clock! If I had a gun, I'd shootevery one of them. I just--I think goats are simply _damnable_ things!"

  Starr turned and looked at the animals disapprovingly. "They sure are,"he assented comfortingly. "Where you trying to take 'em--or ain't you?"he asked, with the confidence-inviting tone that made him so valuable tothose who paid for his services.

  "Home, if you can call it that!" Helen May found her handkerchief andproceeded to wipe the tears and the dust off her cheeks. She looked atStarr more attentively than at first when he had been just a human beingwho seemed friendly. "Oh, you're the man that stopped at the spring.Well, you know where I live, then. I was hunting these; they wandered offand Vic couldn't find them yesterday, so I--it was just accident that Icame across them. I followed some tracks, and it looked to me as ifthey'd been driven off. There were horse tracks. That's what made me keepgoing--I was so mad. And now they won't go home or anywhere else. Theyjust want to run around every which way."

  Starr looked up the arroyo, hesitating. On the edge of San Bonito he hadpicked up the track of Silvertown cord tires, and he had followed it tothe mouth of this arroyo. From certain signs easy for an experienced manto read, he had known the track was fairly fresh, fresh enough to make itworth his while to follow. And now here was a girl all tired out and along way from home.

  "Here, you climb onto Rabbit. He's gentle when he knows it's all right,and I won't stand for him acting up." Starr swung off beside her. "I'llhelp get the goats home. Where's your dog?"

  "I haven't any dog. The man we bought the goats from wanted to sell meone, to help herd them, he said. But he asked twenty-five dollars forit--I suppose he thought because I looked green I'd stand for that!--andI wouldn't be held up that way. Vic and I have nothing to do but watchthem. You--you mustn't bother," she added half-heartedly. "I can get themhome all right. I'm rested now, and there's a moon, you know. Really, Ican't let you bother about it. I know the way."

  "Put your foot in the stirrup and climb on. You, Rabbit, you stand still,or I'll beat the--"

  "Really, you mustn't think, because I cried a little bit--"

  "Pile on to him now, while I hold him still. Or shall I pick you up and_put_ you on?" Starr smiled while he said it, but there was a look in hiseyes and around his mouth that made Helen May yield suddenly.

  By her awkwardness Starr and Rabbit both knew that she had probably neverbefore attempted to mount a horse. By the set of her lips Starr knew thatshe was afraid, but that she would break her neck before she wouldconfess her fear. He liked her for that, and he was glad to see thatRabbit understood the case and drew upon his reserve of patience and goodnature, standing like a rock until Helen May was settled in the saddleand Starr had turned the stirrups on their sides in the leather so thatthey would come nearer being the right length for her. Starr's handsliding affectionately up Rabbit's neck and resting a moment on his jawwas all the assurance Rabbit needed that everything was all right.

  "Now, just leave the reins loose, and let Rabbit come along to pleasehimself," Starr instructed her quietly. "He'll follow me, and he'll pickhis own trail. You don't have to do a thing but sit there and take iteasy. He'll do the rest."

  Helen May looked at him doubtfully, but she did not say anything. Shebraced herself in the stirrups, took a firm grip of the saddlehorn withone hand, and waited for what might befall. She had no fear of Starr, nofurther uneasiness over the coming night, the loneliness, the goats, oranything else. She felt as irresponsible, as safe, as any sheltered womanin her own home. I did not say she felt serene; she did not know yet howthe horse would perform; but she seemed to lay that responsibility alsoon Starr's capable shoulders.

  They moved off quietly enough, Starr afoot and driving the goats, Rabbitpicking his way after him in leisurely fashion. So they crossed thearroyo mouth and climbed the ragged lip of its western side and traveledstraight toward the flaming eye of the sun that seemed now to have winkeditself nearly shut. The goats for some inexplicable reason showed nofurther disposition to go in nine different directions at once. HelenMay relaxed from her stiff-muscled posture and began to experiment alittle with the reins.

  "Why, he steers easier than an automobile!" she exclaimed suddenly. "Youjust think which way you want to go, almost, and he does it. And youdon't have to pull the lines the least bit, do you?"

  Starr delayed his answer until he had made sure that she was notirritating Rabbit with a too-officious guidance. When he saw that shewas holding the reins loosely as he had told her to do, and was merelylaying the weight of a rein on one side of the neck and then on theother, he smiled.

  "I guess you've rode before," he hazarded. "The way you neck-rein--"

  "No, honest. But my chum's brother had a big six, and Sundays he used tolet me fuss with it, away out where the road was clear. It steered justlike this horse; just as easy, I mean. I--why, see! I just _wondered_ ifhe'd go to the right of that bush, and he turned that way just as if I'dtold him to. Can you beat that?"

  Starr did not say. Naturally, since she was a girl, and pretty, and sincehe was human, he was busy wondering what her chum's brother was like. Hepicked up a small rock and shied it at a goat that was not doing a thingthat it shouldn't do, and felt better. He remembered then that at anyrate her chum's brother was a long way off, and that he himself hadnothing much to complain of right now. Then Helen May spoke again andshifted his thoughts to another subject.

  "I believe I'd rather have a horse like this," she said, "than own thatbig, lovely take-me-to-glory car that was pathfinding around like amillion dollars, a little while ago. I'll own up now that I was weepingpartly because four great big porky men could ride around on cushions afoot thick, while a perfectly nice girl had to plough through the sandafoot. The way they skidded past me and buried me in a cloud of dust mademe mad enough to throw rocks after them. Pigs! They never even stopped toask if I wanted a ride or anything. They all glared at me through theirgoggles as if I hadn't any business walking on their desert."

  "Did you know them?" Starr came and walked beside her, glancingfrequently at her face.

  "No, of course I didn't. I don't know anybody but the stage driver. Iwouldn't have ridden with them, anyway. From what I saw of them theylooked like Mexicans. But you'd think they might have shown someinterest, wouldn't you?"

  "I sure would," Starr stated with emphasis. "What kind
a car was it, didyou notice? Maybe I know who they are."

  "Oh, it was a great big black car. They went by so fast and I was sotired and hot and--and pretty near swearing mad, I didn't notice thenumber at all. And they were glaring at me, and I was glaring at them,and then the driver stepped on the accelerator just at a little crook inthe road, and the hind wheels skidded about a ton of sand into my faceand they were gone, like they were running from a speed cop. I'd muchrather have a nice little automatic pony like this one," she addedfeelingly. "You don't have to bundle yourself up in dusters and gogglesand things when you take a ride, do you? It--it makes the bigness of thecountry, and the barrenness of it, somehow fit together and take you intothe pattern, when you ride a horse over it, don't you think?"

  "I guess so," Starr assented, with an odd little slurring accent on thelast word which gave the trite sentence an individual touch thatappealed to Helen May. "It don't seem natural, somehow, to walk in acountry like this."

  "Oh, and you've got to, while I ride your horse! Or, have you got to? Isit just movie stuff, where a man rides behind on a horse, and lets thegirl ride in front? I mean, is it feasible, or just a stunt forpictures?"

  "Depends on the horse," Starr evaded. "It's got the say-so, mostly,whether it'll pack one person or two. Rabbit will, and when I get tiredwalking, I'll ride."

  "Oh, that makes it better. I wasn't feeling comfortable riding, but menare so queer about thinking they must give a woman all the choice bits ofcomfort, and a woman has to give in or row about it. If you'll climb upand ride when you feel like it, I'll just settle down and enjoy myself."

  Settling down and enjoying herself seemed to consist of gazing out overthe desert and the hills and up at the sky that was showing the deeppurple of dusk. It was what Starr wanted most of all, just then, for itleft him free to study what she had told him of the big black automobilewith four coated and goggled men who had looked like Mexicans; four menwho had glared at her and then had speeded up to get away from herpossible scrutiny.

  For the first time since she had seen it from the spring seat of ajolting wagon from the one livery stable in Malpais, Helen May discoveredthat this wild, strange land was beautiful. For the first time shegloried in its bigness and its wildness, and did not resent itsbarrenness. The little brown birds that fluttered close to the ground andcheeped wistfully to one another in the dusk gave her an odd, sweetthrill of companionship. Jack rabbits sitting up on their hind legs fora brief scrutiny before they scurried away made her laugh to herself. Thereddened clouds that rimmed the purple were the radiant shores of awonderful, bottomless sea, where the stars were the mast lights on shipshull down in the distance. She lifted her chest and drew in long breathsof clean, sweet air that is like no other air, and she remembered all atonce that she had not coughed since daylight. She breathed again, deepand long, and felt that she was drawing some wonderful, healing etherinto her lungs.

  She looked at Starr, walking steadily along before her, swinging thehoe-handle lightly in his right hand, setting his feet down in thesmoothest spots always and leaving nearly always a clear imprint of hisfoot in the sandy soil. There was a certain fascination in watching thelines of footprints he left behind him. She would know those footprintsanywhere, she told herself. Small for a man, they were, and well-shaped,with the toes pointing out the least little bit, and with no blurringdrag when he lifted his feet. She did not know that Starr wore ridingboots made to his measure and costing close to twenty dollars a pair; ifshe had she would not have wondered at the fine shape of them, or at theindividuality of the imprint they made. She conceived the belief thatRabbit knew those footprints also. She amused herself by watching howcarefully the horse followed wherever they led. If Starr stepped to theright to avoid a rock, Rabbit stepped to the right to avoid that rock;never to the left, though the way might be as smooth and open. If Starrcrossed a gully at a certain place, Rabbit followed scrupulously thetracks he made. Helen May considered that this little gray horse showedreally human intelligence.

  She realized the deepening dusk only when Starr's form grew vague andshe could no longer see the prints his boots made. They were nearing thebrown, lumpy ridge which hid Sunlight Basin from the plain, but HelenMay was not particularly eager to reach it. For the first time sheforgot the gnawing heart-hunger of homesickness, and was content withher present surroundings; content even with the goats that trottedsubmisively ahead of Starr.

  When a soft radiance drifted into the darkness and made it a luminous,thin veil, Helen May gave a little cry and looked back. Since her handsmoved with the swing of her shoulders, Rabbit turned sharply and facedthe way she was looking, startled, displeased, but obedient. Starrstopped abruptly and turned back, coming close up beside her.

  "What's wrong?" he asked in an undertone. "See anything?"

  "The moon," Helen May gave a hushed little laugh. "I'dforgotten--forgotten I was alive, almost. I was just soaking in thebeauty of it through every pore. And then it got dark so I couldn't seeyour footprints any more, and then such a queer, beautiful look came oneverything. I turned to look, and this little automatic pony turned tolook, too. But--isn't it wonderful? Everything, I mean. Justeverything--the whole world and the stars and the sky--"

  Starr lifted an arm and laid it over Rabbit's neck, fingering thesilver-white mane absently. It brought him quite close to Helen May, sothat she could have put her hand on his shoulder.

  "Yes. It's wonderful--when it ain't terrible," he said, his voice low.

  After a silent minute she answered him, in the hushed tone that seemedmost in harmony with the tremendous sweep of sky and that great stretchof plain and bare mountain. "I see what you mean. It is terrible evenwhen it's most wonderful. But one little human alone with it would be--"

  "Sh-sh." he whispered. "Listen a minute. Did you ever _hear_ a bigsilence like this?"

  "No," she breathed eagerly. "Sh-sh--"

  At first there was nothing save the whisper of a breeze that stirred thegreasewood and then was still. Full in their faces the moon swung clearof the mountains behind San Bonito and hung there, a luminous yellow ballin the deep, star-sprinkled purple. Across the desert it flung a faint,straight pathway in the sand. Rabbit gave a long sigh, turned his head tolook back at his master, and then stood motionless again. Far on ahilltop a coyote pointed his nose to the moon and yap-yap-yapped, with ashrill, long-drawn tremolo wail that made the girl catch her breath.Behind them the nine goats moved closer together and huddled afraidbeside a clump of bushes. The little breeze whispered again. A night birdcalled in a hurried, frightened way, and upon the last notes came theeerie cry of a little night owl.

  The girl's face was uplifted, delicately lighted by the moon. Her eyesshone dark with those fluttering, sweet wraiths of thoughts which we maynot prison in speech, which words only deaden and crush into vapidsentimentalism. Life, held in a great unutterable calm, seemed to lie outthere in the radiant, vague distance, asleep and smiling crypticallywhile it slept.

  Her eyes turned to Starr, whose name she did not know; who had twice comeriding out of the distance to do her some slight service before he rodeon into the distance that seemed so vast. Who was he? What petty round ofduties and pleasures made up his daily, intimate life? She did not know.She did not feel the need of knowing.

  Standing there with his thin face turned to the moon so that she saw,clean-cut against the night, his strong profile; with one arm thrownacross the neck of his horse and his big hat tilted back so that shecould see the heavy, brown hair that framed his fine forehead; with thelook of a dreamer in his eyes and the wistfulness of the lonely on hislips, all at once he seemed to be a part of the desert and its mysteries.

  She could picture him living alone somewhere in its wild fastness, alooffrom the little things of life. He seemed to epitomize vividly themeaning of a song she had often sung unmeaningly:

  "From the desert I come to thee,On my Arab shod with fire;And the winds are left behindIn the speed of my desire."

  While she looked--whil
e the words of that old _Bedouin Love Song_thrummed through her memory, quite suddenly Starr began to sing, takingup the song where her memory had brought her:

  "Till the sun grows cold,And the stars are old,And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold!"

  Softly he sang, as though he had forgotten that she was there. Softly,but with a resonant, vibrating quality that made the words alive andquivering with meaning.

  Helen May caught her breath. How did he know she was thinking that song?How did he chance to take it up just at the point where her memory hadcarried it? Had he read her mind? She stared at him, her lips parted;wondering, a little awed, but listening and thrilling to the humansweetness of his tones. And when he had sung the last yearning note ofprimitive desire, Starr turned his head and looked into her eyes.

  Helen May felt as though he had taken her in his arms and kissed herlingeringly. Yet he had not moved except to turn his face toward her. Shecould not look away, could not even try to pull her eyes from his. It wasas though she yielded. She felt suffocated, though her breath camequickly, a little unevenly.

  Starr looked away, across the desert where the moon lighted it whitely.It was as though he had released her. She felt flustered, disconcerted.She could not understand herself or him, or the primary forces that hadmoved them both. And why had he sung that _Bedouin Love Song_ just as shewas thinking it as something that explained him and identified him? Itwas mysterious as the desert itself lying there so quiet under the moon.It was weird as the cry of the coyote. It was uncanny as spirit rappings.But she could not feel any resentment; only a thrill that was partpleasure and part pain. She wondered if he had felt the same; if he knew.But she could not bring herself to face even the thought of asking him.It was like the night silence around them: speech would dwarf and cheapenand distort.

  Rabbit lifted his head again, perking his ears forward toward a new soundthat had nothing weird or mysterious about it; a sound that wasessentially earthly, material, modern, the distant purr of a high-poweredautomobile on the trail away to their right. Starr turned his face thatway, listening as the horse listened. It seemed to Helen May as though hehad become again earthy and material and modern, with the desert lovesong but the fading memory of a dream. He listened, and she received theimpression that something more than idle curiosity held him intent uponthe sound.

  The purring persisted, lessened, grew louder again. Starr still lookedthat way, listening intently. The machine swept nearer, so that the clearnight air carried the sounds distinctly to where they stood. Starr evencaught the humming of the rear gears and knew that only now and then doesa machine have that peculiar, droning hum; Starr studied it, tried toimpress the sound upon his memory.

  The trail looped around the head of a sandy draw and wound over the crestof a low ridge before it straightened out for a three-mile level run inthe direction of San Bonito, miles away. In walking, Starr had cutstraight across that gully and the loop, so that they had crossed thetrail twice in their journey thus far, and were still within half a mileof the head of the loop. They should have been able to see the lights, orat least the reflection of them on the ridge when they came to the draw.But there was no bright path on sky or earth.

  They heard the car ease down the hill, heard the grind of the gears asthe driver shifted to the intermediate for the climb that came after.They heard the chug of the engine taking the steep grade. Then theyshould have caught the white glare of the headlights as the car toppedthe ridge. Starr knew that nothing obstructed the view, that in daylightthey could have seen the yellow-brown ribbon of trail where it curvedover the ridge. The machine was coming directly toward them for a shortdistance, but there was no light whatever. Starr knew then that whoeverthey were, they were running without lights.

  "Well, I guess we'd better be ambling along," he said casually, when theautomobile had purred its way beyond hearing. "It's three or four milesyet, and you're tired."

  "Not so much." Helen May's voice was a little lower than usual, but thatwas the only sign she gave of any recent deep emotion. "I'd as soon walkawhile and let you ride." She shrank now from the thought of both riding.

  "When you've ridden as far as I have," said Starr, "you'll know it's arest to get down and travel afoot for a few miles." He might have addedthat it would have been a rest had he not been hampered by thosehigh-heeled riding boots, but consideration for her mental ease did notpermit him to mention it. He said no more, but started the goats ahead ofhim and kept them moving in a straight line for Sunlight Basin. Asbefore, Rabbit followed slavishly in his footsteps, nose dropped to theangle of placid acceptance, ears twitching forward and back so that hewould lose no slightest sound.

  Helen May fell again under the spell of the desert and the moon. Starr,walking steadily through the white-lighted barrenness with his shadowalways moving like a ghost before him, fitted once more into the desert.Again she repeated mentally the words of the song:

  Let the night-winds touch thy browWith the breath of my burning sigh,And melt thee to hear the vowOf a love that shall not die!

  Till the sun grows cold,And the stars are old,And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold!

  And now the lines sung themselves through her brain with the memory ofStarr's voice. But Starr did not sing again, though Helen May, curious toknow if her thoughts held any power over him, gazed intently at his backand willed him to sing. He did not look back at her, even when shefinally descended weakly to the more direct influence of humming the airsoftly--but not too softly for him to hear.

  Starr paid no attention whatever. He seemed to be thinking deeply--but hedid not seem to be thinking of Helen May, nor of desert love songs. HelenMay continued to watch him, but she was piqued at his calm indifference.Why, she told herself petulantly, he paid more attention to those goatsthan he did to her--and one would think, after that song and thatlook.... But there she stopped, precipitately retreating from the thoughtof that look.

  He was a queer fellow, she told herself with careful tolerance and alittle condescension. A true product of the desert; as changeable and assphynxlike and as impossible from any personal, human standpoint. Lookhow beautiful the desert could be, how terribly uplifting and calmand--and big. Yet to-morrow it might be either a burning waste of heatand sand and bare rock, or it might be a howling waste of wind and sand(if one of those sand storms came up). To herself she called him the Manof the Desert, and she added the word mysterious, and she also added twolines of the song because they fitted exactly her conception of him asshe knew him. The lines were these:

  From the desert I come to thee,On my Arab shod with fire.

  This, in spite of the fact that Rabbit had none of the fiery traits of anArabian steed; nor could he by any stretch of the imagination be accusedof being shod with fire, he who planted his hoofs so sedately! Shod withvelvet would have come nearer describing him.

  So Helen May, who was something of a dreamer when Life let her alone longenough, rode home through the moonlight and wove cloth-of-gold from themagic of the night, and with the fairy fabric she clothed Starr--who was,as we know, just an ordinary human being--so that he walked before her,not as a plain, ungrammatical, sometimes profane young man who washelping her home with her goats, but a mysterious, romantic figureevolved somehow out of the vastness in which she lived; who wouldpresently recede again into the mysterious wild whence he had come.

  It was foolish. She knew that it was foolish. But she had been livingrather harshly and rather materially for some time, and she hungered forthe romance of youth. Starr was the only person who had come to heruntagged by the sordid, everyday petty details of life. It did not hurthim to be idealized, but it might have hurt Helen May a little to knowthat he was pondering so earthly a subject as a big, black automobilecareering without lights across the desert and carrying four men wholooked like Mexicans.