Starr, of the Desert

by B. M. Bower

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  HOLMAN SOMMEKS, SCIENTIST

  Helen May, under a last year's parasol of pink silk from which the sunhad drawn much of its pinkness and the wind and dust its freshness, satbeside the road with her back against the post that held the macaronibox, and waited for the stage. Her face did not need the pink light ofthe parasol, for it was red enough after that broiling walk of yesterday.The desert did not look so romantic by the garish light of midday, butshe stared out over it and saw, as with eyes newly opened toappreciation, that there was a certain charm even in its garishness. Shehad lost a good deal of moodiness and a good deal of discontent,somewhere along the moonlight trail of last night, and she hummed a tunewhile she waited. No need to tell you that it was: "_Till the sun growscold, till the stars are old_--" No need to tell you, either, of whom shewas thinking while she sang.

  But part of the time she was wondering what mail she would get. Her chumwould write, of course; being a good, faithful chum, she would probablycontinue to write two or three letters a week for the next three months.After that she would drop to one long letter a month for awhile; andafter that--well, she was a faithful chum, but life persists in bearingone past the eddy that holds friendship circling round and round in apool of memories. The chum's brother had written twice, however;exuberant letters full of current comedy and full-blooded cheerfulnessand safely vague sentiment which he had partly felt at the time he wrote.He had "joshed" Helen May a good deal about the goats, even to the extentof addressing her as "Dear Goat-Lady" in the last letter, with the word"Lady" underscored and scrawled the whole width of the page. Helen Mayhad puzzled over the obscure meaning of that, and had decided that itwould have sounded funny, perhaps, if he had said it that way, but thatit "didn't get over" on paper.

  She wondered if he would write again, or if his correspondence wouldprove as spasmodic, as easily interrupted as his attentions had been whenthey were both in the same town. Chum's brother was a nice, big, comfykind of young man; the trouble was that he was too popular to give allhis interest to one girl. You know how it is when a man stands six feettall and has wavy hair and a misleading smile and a great, big,deep-cushioned roadster built for two. Helen May appreciated his writingtwo letters to her, he who hated so to write letters, but her faith inthe future was small. Still, he might write. It seemed worth while towait for the stage.

  Just when she was telling herself that the stage was late, far over theridge rose the dust signal. Her pulse quickened expectantly; so much hadloneliness done for her. She watched it, and she tried not to admit toherself that it did not look like the cloud kicked up by the fourtrotting stage horses. She tried not to believe that the cloud was muchtoo small to have been made by their clattering progress. It must be thestage. It was past time for it to arrive at the post. And it had not goneby, for she had sent for a can of baking powder and a dozen lemons andfifty cents worth of canned milk (the delicatessen habit of buying insmall quantities still hampered her) and, even if the stage had passedearlier than usual, the stuff would have been left at the post for her,even though there was no mail. But it could not have passed. She wouldhave seen the dust, that always hung low over the trail like the droopingtail of a comet, and when the day was still took half an hour at least tosettle again for the next passer-by. And besides, she had come to knowthe tracks the stage left in the trail. It _could not_ have passed. Andit had to come; it carried the government mail. And yet, that dust didnot look like the stage dust. (Trivial worries, you say? Then try livingforty miles from a post office, ten from the nearest neighbor, andfifteen hundred from your dearly beloved Home Town. Try living there, notbecause you want to but because you must; hating it, hungering for humancompanionship. Try it with heat and wind and sand and great, aridstretches of a land that is strange to you. Honestly, I think you wouldhave been out there just after sunrise to wait for that stage, and if itwere late you would have walked down the trail to meet it!)

  Helen May remained by the post, but she got up and stood on a rock thatprotruded six inches or so above the sand. Of course she could not seeover the ridge--she could not have done that if she had climbed atelegraph pole; only there was no pole to climb--but she felt a littlecloser to seeing. That dust did not look like stage dust!

  You would be surprised to know how much Helen May had learned about dustclouds. She could tell an automobile ten miles away, just by the swiftgathering of the gray cloud. She could tell where bands of sheep or herdsof cattle were being driven across the plain. She even knew when a saddlehorse was coming, or a freight team or--the stage.

  She suddenly owned to herself that she was disappointed and ratherworried. For behind this cloud that troubled her there was no second onebuilding up over the skyline and growing more dense as the disturberapproached. She could not imagine what had happened to thatred-whiskered, tobacco-chewing stage driver. She looked at her wristwatch and saw that he was exactly twenty minutes later than his verylatest arrival, and she felt personally slighted and aggrieved.

  For that reason she sat under her pink silk parasol and stared crosslyunder her eyebrows at the horse and man and the dust-grimedrattle-wheeled buggy that eventually emerged from the gray cloud. Thehorse was a pudgy bay that set his feet stolidly down in the trail, anddragged his toes through it as though he delighted in kicking up all thedust he could. By that trick he had puzzled Helen May a little, just atfirst, though he had not been able to simulate the passing of fourhorses. The buggy was such as improvident farmers used to drive (beforethey bought Fords) near harvest time; scaly as to paint, warped andloose-spoked as to wheels, making more noise than progress along thecountry roads.

  The man held the lines so loosely that they sagged under the wire-mendedtraces of sunburned leather. He leaned a little forward, as though it wasnot worth while sitting straight on so hot a day. He wore an old Panamahat that had cost him a good deal when it was new and had saved him agood deal since in straw hats which he had not been compelled to buy solong as this one held together. It was pulled down in front so that itshaded his face--a face lean and lined and dark, with thin lips thatcould be tender and humorous in certain moods. His eyes were hazel, likethe eyes of Starr, yet one never thought of them as being at all likeStarr's eyes. They burned always with some inner fire of life; theylaughed at life, and yet they did not seem to express mirth. They seemedto say that life was a joke, a damnable joke on mankind; that they sawthe joke and resented it even while they laughed at it. For the rest, theman was more than fifty years old, but his hair was thick and black as acrow, and his eyebrows were inclined to bushiness, inclined also to slantupward. A strong face; an unusual face, but a likeable one, it was. Andthat is a fair description of Holman Sommers as Helen May first saw him.

  He drove up to where she sat, and she tilted her pink silk parasolbetween them as though to keep the dust from settling thick upon herstained khaki skirt and her desert-dingy high-laced boots. She was notinterested in him, and her manner of expressing indifference could nothave misled a horned toad. She was too fresh from city life to havefallen into the habit of speaking to strangers easily and as a matter ofcountry courtesy. Even when the buggy stopped beside her, she did notshow any eagerness to move the pink screen so that they might look ateach other.

  "How do you do?" said he, quite as though he were greeting her in her ownhome. "You are Miss Stevenson, I feel sure. I am Holman Sommers, at yourservice. I am under the impression that I have with me a few articleswhich may be of some interest to you, Miss Stevenson. I chanced to comeupon the stage several miles farther down the road. A wheel had givenaway, and there was every indication that the delay would prove serious,so when the driver mentioned the fact that he had mail and merchandisefor you, I volunteered to act as his substitute and deliver them safelyinto your hands. I hope therefore that the service will in some slightmeasure atone for my presumption in forcing my acquaintance upon you."

  At the second sentence the pink parasol became violently agitated. At thethird Helen May was staring a
t him, mentally if not actuallyopen-mouthed. At the last she was standing up and reaching for her mail,and she had not yet decided in her mind whether he was joking or whetherhe expected to be taken seriously. Even when he laughed, with that odd,dancing light in his eyes, she could not be sure. But because his voicewas warm with human sympathy and the cordiality of a man who is verysure of himself and can afford to be cordial, she smiled back at him.

  "That's awfully good of you, Mr. Sommers," she said, shuffling herhandful of letters eagerly to see who had written them; more particularlyto see if Chum's brother had written one of them. "I hope you didn'tdrive out of your way to bring them" (there _was_ one; a big, fat onethat had taken two stamps! And one from Chum herself, and--but she wentback gloatingly to the thick, heavy envelope with the bold, blackhandwriting that needed the whole face of the envelope for her name andaddress), "because I know that miles are awfully long in this country."

  "Yes? You have discovered that incontrovertible fact, have you? Then Ihope you will permit me to drive you home, especially since thesepackages are much too numerous and too weighty for you to carry in yourarms. As a matter of fact, I have been hoping for an opportunity to meetour new neighbors. Neighbors are precious in our sight, I assure you,Miss Stevenson, and only the misfortune of illness in the household hasprevented my sister from looking you up long ago. How long have you beenhere? Three weeks, or four?" His tone added: "You poor child," orsomething equally sympathetic, and he smiled while he cramped the oldbuggy so that she could get into it without rubbing her skirt against thedustladen wheel.

  Helen May certainly had never seen any one just like Holman Sommers,though she had met hundreds of men in a business way. She had met men whoran to polysyllables and pompousness, but she had never known thepolysyllables to accompany so simple a manner. She had seen men slouchingaround in old straw hats-and shoddy gray trousers and negligee shirtswith the tie askew, and the clothes had spelled poverty or shiftlessness.Whereas they made Holman Sommers look like a great man indulging himselfin the luxury of old clothes on a holiday.

  He seemed absolutely unconscious that he and his rattly buggy and theharness on the horse were all very shabby, and that the horse was fat andpudgy and scrawny of mane; and for that she admired him.

  Before they reached the low adobe cabin, she felt that she was muchbetter acquainted with Holman Sommers than with Starr, whose name shestill did not know, although he had stayed an hour talking to Vic andpraising her cooking the night before. She did not, for all the timeshe had spent with him, know anything definite about Starr, whereasshe presently knew a great deal about Holman Sommers, and approved ofall she knew.

  He had a past which, she sensed vaguely, had been rather brilliant. Hemust have been a war correspondent, because he compared the present greatwar with the Japanese-Russian War and with the South African War, and heseemed to have been right in the middle of both, or he could not havespoken so intimately of them. He seemed to know all about the real,underlying causes of them and knew just where it would all end, and whatnations would be drawn into it before they were through. He did not saythat he knew all about the war, but after he had spoken a few casualsentences upon the subject Helen May felt that he knew a great deal morethan he said.

  He also knew all about raising goats. He slid very easily, too, from thewar to goat-raising. He had about four hundred, and he gave her a lot ofvaluable advice about the most profitable way in which to handle them.

  When he saw Vic legging it along the slope behind the Basin to head offBilly and his slavish nannies, he shook his head commiseratingly. "Thereis not a scintilla of doubt in my mind," he told her gently, "that atrained dog would be of immeasurable benefit to you. I fear you made agrave mistake, Miss Stevenson, when you failed to possess yourself of agood dog. I might go so far as to say that a dog is absolutelyindispensable to the successful handling of goats, or, for that matter,of sheep, either." (He pronounced the last word eyether.)

  "That's what my desert man told me," said Helen May demurely, "only hedidn't tell me that way, exactly."

  "Yes? Then I have no hesitation whatever in assuring you that your desertman was unqualifiedly accurate in his statement of your need."

  Helen May bit her lip. "Then I'll tell him," she said, still moredemurely.

  Secretly she hoped that he would rise to the bait, but he apparentlyaccepted her words in good faith and went on telling her just how torange goats far afield in good weather so that the grazing in the Basinitself would be held in reserve for storms. It was a very grave error,said Holman Sommers, to exhaust the pasturage immediately contiguous tothe home corral. It might almost be defined as downright improvidence.Then he forestalled any resentment she might feel by apologizing for hisseeming presumption. But he apprehended the fact that she and her brotherwere both inexperienced, and he would be sorry indeed to see them sufferany loss because of that inexperience. His practical knowledge of thebusiness was at her service, he said, and he should feel that he wasculpably negligent of his duty as a neighbor if he failed to point out toher any glaring fault in their method.

  Helen May had felt just a little resentful of the words downrightimprovidence. Had she not walked rather than spend money and grass on ahorse? Had she not daily denied herself things which she considerednecessities, that she might husband the precious balance of Peter'sinsurance money? But she swallowed her resentment and thanked him quitehumbly for his kindness in telling her how to manage. She owned to herinexperience, and she said that she would greatly appreciate any advicewhich he might care to give.

  Her Man of the Desert, she remembered, had not given her advice, thoughhe must have seen how badly she needed it. He had asked her where her dogwas, taking it for granted, apparently, that she would have one. But whenshe had told him about not buying the dog, he had not said another wordabout it. And he had not said anything about their letting the goats eatup all the grass in the Basin, first thing, instead of saving it for badweather. This Holman Sommers, she decided, was awfully kind, even if hedid talk like a professor or something; kinder than her desert man. No,not kinder, but perhaps more truly helpful.

  At the house he told her just how to fix a "coolereupboard" under thelone mesquite tree which stood at one end of the adobe cabin. It wasreally very simple, as he explained it, and he assured her, in hisscientific terminology, that it would be cool. He went to the spring andshowed her where she could have Vic dig out the bank and fit in a rockshelf for butter. He assured her that she was fortunate in having aliving spring so near the house. It was, he said, of incalculableimportance in that country to have cold, pure water always at hand.

  When he discovered that she was a stenographer, and that she had hertypewriter with her, he was immensely pleased, so pleased that his eyesshone with delight.

  "Ah! now I see why the fates drove me forth upon the highway thismorning," said he. "Do you know that I have a large volume of work for anexpert typist, and that I have thus far felt that my present isolation inthe desert wastes was an almost unsurmountable obstacle to having thework done in a satisfactory manner? I have been engaged upon a certainwork on sociological problems and how they have developed with the growthof civilization. You will readily apprehend that great care must beexercised in making the copy practically letter perfect. Furthermore, Ifind myself constantly revising the manuscript. I should want tosupervise the work rather closely, and for that reason I have not as yetarranged for the final typing.

  "Now if you care to assume the task, I can assure you that I shall feeltremendously grateful, besides making adequate remuneration for the laborinvolved."

  That is the way he put it, and that is how it happened that Helen May letherself in for the hardest piece of work she had ever attempted since shesold gloves at Bullocks' all day and attended night school all theevening, learning shorthand and typewriting and bookkeeping, andpermitting the white plague to fasten itself upon her while she bent toher studies.

  She let herself in for it because she believed she had p
lenty of time,and because Holman Sommers was in no hurry for the manuscript, which hedid not expect to see completed for a year or so, since a work so eruditerequired much time and thought, being altogether different from currentfiction, which requires none at all.

  Helen May was secretly aghast at the pile of scrawled writing interlinedand crossed out, with marginal notes and footnotes and references andwhat not; but she let herself in for the job of typing his book forhim--which is enough for the present.