The Winning of Barbara Worth
Page 21
CHAPTER XIX.
GATHERED AT BARBARA'S COURT.
Barbara's trip to the South Central District was full of interest.Riding with Texas Joe in a light buckboard drawn by a span of livelybroncos with El Capitan leading behind, she was as merry as aschool-girl out for a long-talked-of holiday. The dark-faced oldplainsman, whose iron will and marvelous endurance had brought hiscompanions and the baby safely out of that land of death years before,turned often to look at her now while his keen eyes, dark still undertheir grizzly brows, were soft with fond regard, and his voice, gentleand drawling as ever, was filled with tender affection. Under hisdrooping gray mustache, black once, his slow smile came in the readyanswer of full sympathy with her mood.
Eager as ever to know all about the work of reclaiming her Desert, theyoung woman plied him with questions and Texas exerted himself torecall scenes and incidents of which he had not told her before. Hereviewed the work from that first survey to the present with vividpictures of life in the camps, in the towns, or on the trail, withconstruction gangs and grading crews or freighters' outfits, and theglimpses of toil and hardship, discomforts and suffering lost none oftheir reality in the dry humor of his words. Texas Joe was of that sortwho habitually laugh at hardships, who, indeed, could not otherwiselive in the wild lands they helped to tame. Nor did the shrewd oldfrontiersman fail to observe how most of Barbara's questions requiredin their answers something touching Willard Holmes, or how theincidents that pleased her most were those in which the engineerfigured. On her part the young woman was secretly delighted to see howloyally her companion spoke in admiring praise of the desert-bredsurveyor, Abe Lee. Whenever the name of Holmes was mentioned, Abe wassomehow brought into the story.
"Mr. Holmes is really a fine engineer, don't you think?" asked Barbaramischievously at the conclusion of a story in which both Holmes and Abefigured.
"Sure he is. I don't reckon them eastern schools ever turned out abetter. And what counts more, sometimes, he's all man, he is. But yousee, honey, he belongs to the Company. Abe now, wal--you see, Abe, hesabeys the country like a burro does the cook shack and he's just asgood a man as the Easterner, though not so pretty to look at. And youcan bet there don't no Company get a hobble on Abe."
"Do the men who work for the Company like Mr. Holmes?"
"Sure they do. All the men like Holmes fine. But they just naturallylove Abe."
But when they had turned into the San Felipe trail and were travelingeastward, Barbara ceased to question Texas about the reclamation workand led him to tell her again the familiar story of his journey fromSan Felipe with Mr. Worth, the Seer, Pat and the boy Abe, in the dayswhen that old road was the only mark of man in all those miles ofdesolate waste.
Reaching a point where the sand hills could be distinguished, hepointed them out to her, and the young woman, at sight of the hugerolling drifts that shone all golden in the desert sun, grasped his armwith a low exclamation. In silence, as they drew nearer, they watchedthe low yellow hills lift their naked bulk up from the gray and greenpatches of salt-bush and greasewood that so thinly carpeted the plain.When even the desert vegetation could find no life in the ever shiftingsands and the first of the great drifts loomed huge and forbiddingagainst the sky, seeming to bar their way, Barbara spoke again. "Nowtell me, Uncle Tex; tell me as we go just how it was and show me theplaces."
The plainsman did not answer and she urged again: "Please, Uncle Tex,tell me. I want to see it all just as it happened. I feel that I must,don't you understand?"
So the old plainsman told her and pointed out the places as nearly ashe could, explaining how the drifts moved always eastward under thewinds; how at times, most frequently in the spring months, when thefierce gales swept down through the Pass and across the Basin, the hugebillows of sand would roll forward so swiftly that tents or wagons intheir path would be buried in a few hours, and how, in the calmseasons, with every light breeze they work their silent way inch byinch. Even as he spoke Barbara, looking, saw a thin film of sand, fineas powdered snow, curl like mist over the edge of a drift as a breathof air swept lightly up the western slope and over the summit of thehill.
At the point where Mr. Worth's party had camped to await the passing ofthe storm, Texas stopped the team and showed her how they had riggedtheir rude canvas shelter on one side of the wagon to protectthemselves from the cutting blast. Farther on he pointed out the spotwhere they had found the horse with the broken halter strap, and thenthey came to the great drift where her people had made their last campand where, later, Jefferson Worth had spent that night alone with thespirit that lives in La Palma de la Mano de Dios.
Again Texas halted his team, and Barbara, leaving her companion in thebuckboard, climbed to the top of the hill that held buried deep in itsheart--what? Was the body of her true father buried there? Were therebrothers, sisters, lying under that huge mound? Could the sands, ifthey could speak, tell her who she was, her name and people? Couldthey, if they would, make known to her relatives and friends of her ownblood?
Coming slowly down the shoulder of the drift she went around to thefoot of the steep eastern side and there, in the lee of the billow thatcurled high above her, she tried to dig with her hands a tiny hole. Atevery movement that displaced a handful of sand, a dry golden floodpoured down from above, covering instantly the mark she had made. Withsudden, energy the young woman exerted all her strength, digging fasterand faster. But still, from above her head, down the steep side of thedrift the sand slid without effort, making a faint whispering sound asif to mock her labors. Then Texas called and she went back to him, herbrown eyes hard and dry.
The old plainsman, quick to feel her mood, would have driven swiftly onpast the remaining scenes of the tragedy and tried to talk of otherthings. But she would not have it so. She must know all. So he showedher where he had first found the tracks in the sand and then where thebaby feet had left their marks when the tired mother had set her downto rest.
Thus they came at last, when the day was almost gone, to the gravebeside the trail--the trail that had beside its many miles so manygraves. And Barbara stood before the simple headstone that bore onlythe date and one word "Mother." And the silent man, who had in his wildadventurous life witnessed so many scenes of death, turned away hisface that he might not see the girl kneeling beside the mound of earth.
When Barbara, coming back to the buckboard, saw him so, she understood;and when Texas, hearing her light steps, turned quickly toward her hesaw the brown eyes filled now with softening tears while her faceexpressed the gratitude she could not put into words.
Behind them the upper rim of the sun shone blood-red above the top ofthe purple mountain wall; over their heads in the soft still depths ofthe velvet sky an early star appeared. Around them on every side thegreat desert lay under its seas of soft color, its veils of misty lightand streaming scarfs of lilac and rose. Even as they looked the dusk oftwilight fell upon the great plain. The ground-owl's weird call camefrom a hummock near the trail, the ghostly form of a coyote slippedstealthily past like a shadow moving from shadow to shadow until he waslost in the deeper shade, out of which, as if in mocking challenge of aspirit band to any mortal who would follow, came the wild, snarling,unearthly cries of his invisible mates. And still to the eastward thehigher levels of the Mesa above the rim of the dark Basin, the slowdrifting clouds of dust that lifted from the tired feet of the gradingteams coming into the camp from the day's work on the canals, or fromfreighters drawing near their journey's end, caught the last of thelight and showed long level bands and bars and threads of gold againstthe deep purple of the hills beyond, whose peaks and domes and ridgeswere flaming crimson, burnished copper and gleaming silver on the deepbackground of the sky. Before them on the other side of the deep DryRiver channel, through which now a generous stream of water flowed,they could see the tents of the camp--some glowing brightly from lightswithin, others showing mere spots of dull white in the gloom, whilehere and there lanterns, like great fireflies, flitted aimlessly to and
fro.
Before two tent houses, some distance apart from the main camp andbuilt under a wide ramada made of willow poles and arrow weed broughtfrom the distant river, Texas stopped his team. From the open door ofone of the tents Jefferson Worth came quickly, at the sound of theirarrival, to receive his daughter, and from her father's arms Barbaraturned to greet Abe Lee who, following his chief from the canvas house,had paused a little back from the group in the shadow of the ramada.Later in the evening, when Barbara had had her supper with her fatherand Abe in the big camp dining tent and the three were sitting in thedark under the wide brush porch, Pat came with Texas, as the bigIrishman said, "to see how the new boss liked her quarters." And thenPablo came softly out of the darkness with his guitar to bid LaSenorita welcome and to ask if she would care that night to listen alittle to the music that he knew she loved.
So Barbara held her little court before the rude tent house under thearrow weed ramada, in the heart of her Desert, within a stone's throwof the spot where they had gathered once before around a baby girlwhose mother lay dead beside a dry water hole. And not one of themthought of the significance of the group or how each, representing adistinct type, stood for a vital element in the combination of humanforces that was working out for the race the reclamation of the land.The tall, lean, desert-born surveyor, trained in no school but theschool of his work itself, with the dreams of the Seer ruling him inhis every professional service; the heavy-fisted, quick-witted,aggressive Irishman, born and trained to handle that class of men thatwill recognize in their labor no governing force higher than thephysical; the dark-faced frontiersman, whom the forces of nature,through the hard years, had fashioned for his peculiar place in thismovement of the race as truly as wave and river and wind and sun hadmade The King's Basin Desert itself; the self-hidden financier who,behind his gray mask, wrought with the mighty force of hisage--Capital; and a little to one side, sitting on the ground,reclining against one of the willow posts that upheld the arrow weedshelter, dark Pablo, softly touching his guitar, representing a peoplestill far down on the ladder of the world's upward climb, but stillsharing, as all peoples would share, the work of all; and, in the midstof the group, the center of her court--Barbara, true representative ofa true womanhood that holds in itself the future of the race, even asthe desert held in its earth womb life for the strong ones whom theslow years had fitted to realize it.
"Faith," said Pat, when Pablo's guitar was silent for a little, "avonly the Seer was here the family wud be altogether complete."
"Dear old Seer," said Barbara softly. "How he would love to be here;and how we would love to have him!"
But under cover of the darkness a warm blush colored the young woman'scheeks, for when Pat spoke she had not been thinking of the absence ofher old friend, but wishing for the presence of another engineer, whoalso was working for the reclamation of her Desert and who was himselfin turn being wrought upon by his work, learning as the girl had hopedhe would learn, the language of the land.
Jefferson Worth spoke in his exact way. "Even if he is not here this isall the Seer's work."
And just then from a distance up the old wash came the weird, unnaturalcry of a coyote. It was as though the spirit of the desert spoke inanswer to the banker's words.
"Yell, ye sneaking thievin' imp. Yer time in this counthry is aboutup!" exclaimed the Irishman with a growl of deep satisfaction. Andagain out of the shadow the soft, plaintively sweet music of Pablo'sguitar floated away on the still darkness of the night.