by Gwen Bristow
Garnet looked up at him. It was hard to see a man’s expression when his face was all rough with a week’s beard. “I don’t believe you like people very much,” she said.
He laughed tersely. “Do you?”
“Of course I do. Most people seem to me to be all right. And the ones who aren’t—lots of the time it’s not their fault.”
“Possibly not. But don’t you find it restful to get away from them, now and then, into a great emptiness like this?”
“Restful? Why no, I hadn’t thought of that.” She looked out at the goblin shadows. “Some day, you know, this may not be empty. People might come to live here.”
“I don’t think they can improve it much,” John said dryly. He glanced over his shoulder. “I think I hear the spoons jingling. Come on, nobody’s going to feed us if we don’t go ask for it.”
They started to walk back toward the campfires. “I think you’re rather horrid,” said Garnet.
“Do you? I think you’re rather funny.” He touched his hatless forehead, and walked off to speak to one of his muleteers.
A boy filled her bowl with meat from one of the big kettles. Garnet sat down on the ground and ate her supper. When she had washed the bowl, she sat by the entrance of her saddle-house and watched the men hurrying around to make camp for the night. The shadows had drawn in thickly now, and the evening was chilly. She would have liked to sit by the fire, but Oliver had warned her never to sit by the fire after sunset. Silhouetted against the flames, she would make a perfect target for a roaming Comanche. Garnet looked out at the great rocks, wild black shadows now against the gray-blue twilight sky, and wondered if there would ever be towns among them. She remembered the day she had seen the California traders ride into Santa Fe, dirty and fierce and tired, when she had thought they looked like the sort of men who crossed all boundaries and set up empires in the waste places.
Oliver came over to her. “It’s getting dark,” he said, “and the mules are all picketed. Shall we go to bed?”
He pushed aside the blanket that hung down over the entrance to their shelter. Garnet went inside and began to take off her clothes. She slipped in between the buffalo robes and stretched out.
“Oliver,” she said as he came to lie down by her, “why didn’t you tell me how gorgeous this scenery was?”
In the darkness she heard him laugh. “My darling girl, in another month you’re going to be so sick of scenery that you’d give your thumbs for the sight of a blank brick wall.”
“John Ives isn’t tired of it.”
“John’s an odd creature. I suppose he likes rocks and mountains because they can’t talk.”
“Who is he, Oliver?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” said Oliver. “John came to San Diego on one of the Yankee clipper ships. He walked up to Los Angeles and presented himself at Mr. Abbott’s store, asking for work.”
“Who’s Mr. Abbott?”
“He’s a fat jolly Yankee from Maine. He has a big store in Los Angeles, where he trades in hides from the ranchos. All the Yankees who come to buy hides know about him. I suppose John had heard of him on the ship. Mr. Abbott put him to work stacking hides and keeping credit records—they don’t handle much money, you know. It’s all done on paper. Very few people in Los Angeles know how to read and write, so John made himself very useful as soon as he’d learned Spanish. I met him at the store. John had saved some money, and when he found out I traded with Santa Fe he asked me about it, saying he wanted to go into the trade himself. I know a smart man when I see one, so it wasn’t long before we were working together. He’s a mighty good trader.”
“And that’s all you know about him?”
“Yes, it is. When he got off the ship he had nothing but a bundle of clothes, but he’s obviously a man of education.”
“Hasn’t he any friends at all?”
“Well, there’s a half-civilized Russian who rambled down from one of the fur stations up north. John picked him up and taught him a little English. They seem to like each other.”
Oliver laughed to himself again.
“Garnet,” he added, “I’m not jealous. But don’t get the idea that John admires you for your beautiful black hair and rosy cheeks. He’ll notice you today, and tomorrow he’ll pass you by as if you were invisible.”
“Yes, I think he’ll do just that,” she said thoughtfully. “I wish I understood him. I like to understand people.”
“Your boundless curiosity,” said Oliver, “is going to get you in trouble one of these days. Speaking practically, where’s your rifle?”
“Right here by me. Is anything happening?”
“No, but I’ve got a shift of guard duty at midnight. John’s on guard till then and he’ll wake me. You’ll have to be alone for a couple of hours. But you’ll be all right. I’ll be back before daybreak. I won’t ever take the dawn shift if I can help it.”
“What is it about the dawn shift?” asked Garnet.
“Organized raids nearly always happen at daybreak. If there should be anything like that, I want to be with you.”
Garnet smiled happily as she felt Oliver slip his arm around her. She remembered her own dismay when she had suspected that Oliver was not entirely brave. Now she wondered why she had thought of that at all. Oliver was not afraid of anything, except the chance that she might be hurt.
NINETEEN
THEY WENT UP THE Chama to its source. As the stream dwindled they had less and less water to use. The air was so dry that Garnet was thirsty all the time, and the dust blew into her nose and mouth, and made her teeth feel gritty. When they stopped to make camp the boys built her house as snugly as ever, but they could bring her only half a pail of water for washing.
Then the Chama gave out completely. The next creek, which was called the Rio Piedra, was thirty-five miles away. The dry stretch took them only two days’ riding, but they were the longest days Garnet had ever lived through.
The boys had filled the bottles before they left the Chama, but the water was so precious that she could take only a sip at a time, and Oliver warned her not to waste any on washing. The heat was violent, and the sun glared on the bare rocks around them. Most of the men wore goggles, and thick leather gloves to shield their hands from sunburn. They protected their heads with high-crowned Mexican hats. Since Garnet and Florinda could not grow beards, they wrapped their faces in veils. Garnet looked enviously at the Mexican women and the half-Indian prostitutes. They did not seem to mind the sun at all.
She and Florinda rode side by side, but they talked very little. Talking made your throat feel crustier than it did already. When they did speak, they talked about the river ahead, and how good it would be to drink cool water and get clean again.
But when they came to the Rio Piedra, at the end of a long morning’s ride, she found that it was not a river at all.
It was a shallow ditch with a bottom of sand. There was no water in it except a few mud-puddles. The mules rushed for the mud-puddles and drank them up immediately.
The cooks cut down some dry bushes that grew in the ditch, and managed to roast some mutton. Garnet’s mouth was so dry that she could hardly eat it. There was only a little water left in her bottle, and though she drank it all she felt as if she had not had any. But Oliver told her to go to sleep, everything was going to be all right. She was so tired that she lay down on her blanket and obeyed him.
When she woke up that afternoon, she saw with amazement that now there was water in the ditch. The men had dug holes in the sandy bottom, and the holes had filled with water and were spilling over. These creeks, Oliver told her, sank underground in summer. You had to dig for water as though it were gold.
The water had a funny taste, but she did not mind a bit. She drank and drank, and she even had a basin-full for bathing purposes. They filled the leather bottles and crossed the ditch, and set out again over another stretch of dryness.
The landscape was still full of splendid colors, and there were great cactus
growths like writhing arms. But in spite of her goggles the light hurt her eyes, and she did not look around as eagerly as she had at first. “What are you thinking about?” Florinda asked her as they rode.
“A green hill,” said Garnet, “with a brook tinkling down the side of it.”
“I wish I hadn’t asked you,” said Florinda. She pushed down her wrappings of veil and took a sip from her bottle. “My hair is turning the color of an old brick,” she added, “from all this dust.”
Mr. Penrose, who rode up just then, hastened to reassure her. “We’ve only got about ten more miles of this stretch, Florinda. Then we hit the Rio Dolores. It always has water in it.”
“Gee, that’s fine, Mr. Penrose,” Florinda exclaimed. She gave him a winning smile before she began to pull up her veil. “It’s really fun, seeing all this new country. And I’ve been in the habit of washing my hair too much anyway.”
“This hot weather doesn’t bother you, does it?” Mr. Penrose asked.
“Not a bit,” Florinda lied brightly.
Mr. Penrose smiled at her with worshipful admiration, and rode off to pick up the leather thong that was dragging from one of his mules. Garnet reflected that sometimes it must be very inconvenient to be a strumpet. She was bearing the dry stretches grimly, but she didn’t have to pretend to Oliver that she liked them.
Florinda never complained about anything to Mr. Penrose. She took care of him as she had taken care of Mr. Bartlett, performing all sorts of small feminine services that the boys would never have thought of. Mr. Penrose would never have thought of them either, but he loved receiving them. When he napped at the nooning Florinda folded a blanket to put under his head; when he broke his boot-lacings she put in new ones, so he would not have to tie knots in the old lacings as he had always done before; and she was always telling him to stay right here and rest while she brought him another cup of coffee. She treated him with sprightly good-humor, and gave him no excuse to be jealous. If any of the other men made advances to her, she let them know, with steel-edged pleasantness, that it was no use.
They climbed for a day and a half, till they were so high that they could see for miles over ranges of blue mountains. At last they came to the Rio Dolores. It was a small thin stream, but it was water, cool and wet and delicious. Along the bank there were cottonwood trees, and in the creek there was even a bed of watercress.
After dinner Garnet went down to the creek to wash some clothes. She was hanging them on the bushes to dry when she saw John coming toward her. Taking up an armful of garments she had wrung out, he helped her spread them on the bushes. Garnet felt a moment’s embarrassment at having a man who was almost a stranger handle her drawers and stockings, but he did it indifferently, and when they had finished he said,
“Come up here a little farther. I’ll show you something you might find interesting.”
She followed him, past the guard, up toward the place where the stream came bubbling out of the rocks.
“Here,” John said, and they paused. He pointed down at the water. “Take a look at that.”
“But what is it?” she asked. “It’s just the source of the creek, isn’t it?”
He smiled. “This is the first river you’ve ever seen flowing west.”
“Why—” Garnet hesitated, and tried to think back. The Hudson, the Mississippi—they flowed south; the Arkansas flowed east and southeast; the Rio Grande went south and then east; but she could not remember all the smaller streams she had ever seen. She looked up at him. “Why yes, it’s flowing west, but is that important?”
“It’s important if you’re interested,” said John. “Right here, we’re standing on top of the North American continent. This is the Great Divide.”
Garnet looked wonderingly at the spring, and back at John’s face with its thick black beard and his green eyes under their black eyebrows. He looked more friendly than she had ever seen him. “What is the Great Divide?” she asked. “I never heard of it.”
John told her about the rib that divided all the rivers of North America. Garnet sat on a rock, looking with astonishment at the great harsh mountains around them. “This is an amazing country,” she said at length. “You were right—beautiful isn’t the word for it. What would you call it? Spectacular?”
John had picked up a handful of pebbles and was throwing them one by one into the water. “I don’t think there are any words for it, Mrs. Hale. The civilized languages were made by people who’d never seen it. Maybe we’ll have to wait another thousand years for the words.”
“It’s so big,” said Garnet. “I don’t think I ever knew what bigness meant till I came out here. Oliver told me that when he came back to New York everything looked so little, and jammed so close together. Now I know what he meant.”
John picked up more pebbles and threw them in, one by one, as though he enjoyed the clink they made when they hit the water. Garnet said,
“Of course, I haven’t seen California.”
Without turning around, John said, “You’re going to like California.”
“I’m sure I will,” she answered. “Oliver says it’s a glorious country.”
“It’s more glorious,” said John, “than Oliver or anybody else can tell you.” He spoke in a low voice. He was half turned away from her and she could not see his face, but she thought he sounded like a man talking about a beloved woman.
“You like it very much, don’t you?” she said.
“Yes,” said John, “I like it very much.”
She wished he would go on. From the way he spoke, she thought his description would be more exciting than Oliver’s. “What do you like best about it?” she asked.
“The bigness,” said John, “and the emptiness, and the flowers. But it’s hard to talk about it to someone who hasn’t been there.”
“Why?”
“Because—” He turned his head to smile at her over his shoulder. “Because you won’t believe California till you see it. Nobody does.”
“Yes I will. And I wish you’d tell me about it. Because, don’t you understand, these dry stretches are so hard. You’ve crossed here before. You know what you’re going to have at the end of the crossing, but I don’t. If you’ll tell me about it, the way you see it, I’ll have it to think about when I get so thirsty and tired.”
“Yes, I do understand that. When we’re on the dry stretches, I always think about California. The snow on the mountains, and the miles of flowers.”
He looked out over the barren rocks, as though he could see the flowers of California beyond them. He spoke slowly.
“The flowers don’t just bloom here and there. They grow in solid sheets, acres and acres of wild yellow poppies like a cloth of gold. Beyond them are acres of blue lupin, and then sheets of pink sand-verbena and purple sage—it’s like a great patchwork quilt spread over the world. Up on the slopes is the dark green chaparral, and in the chaparral there’s the yucca, like white candles twenty feet tall, and higher up you see more acres of flowers edging against the snowline. All around you there’s the scent of the sage. It’s a hard spicy fragrance that blows over you all the time. You stop your horse on a hill, you sit and look because it hurts you down in your chest and you can’t go on. The mountain peaks are white, and the sky is so blue it’s almost purple, and there’s the endless distance of mountain ranges around you and those miles of flowers below, and you want to burst into tears. You’re ashamed of yourself, and you turn your horse around to go on about your business, and just then you catch sight of some horny old rascal who left the States just in time to escape being hanged, and he’s looking at it and you hear him say ‘God Almighty!’ and by the way he says it you know he’s not swearing.”
There was a silence. Garnet looked around at the hard bare rocks, and at the thin little stream that was leading them to California. From below them the noise of the camp sounded faint and far away.
“Thank you,” she said softly. “Thank you very much.”
John was sti
ll looking out at the distance. As she spoke he turned sharply, as though he had forgotten she was there. He gave a short grim little laugh.
“If you ever tell anybody I talked like that,” he said, “I’ll swear the sun is afflicting your head. Come on, let’s go down. I’ve got a shift of guard duty pretty soon, and I want to get some sleep.”
He took her arm and helped her scramble down the rocks. When they had passed the guard, John said goodby and walked away. A few minutes later she saw him stretched on the ground alongside several other men, sound asleep.
Garnet reflected that he was a very puzzling person. He liked the earth he lived on. But he did not like the people who lived on it with him. The other men, whatever their backgrounds, merged into a neighborly unit; their common undertaking and their common peril drew them together. But though John did his part of camp duty so well that they all respected him, he shared nothing of himself.
Yet he did talk to her, and she wondered why. Maybe it was because she liked the earth as much as he did. She also liked John, in an odd way that she did not understand.
For six days they followed the Rio Dolores. The river led them west and then northwest among the mountains. The going was tiresome, but they had water and good food—fresh mutton and wild birds, besides the salt meat they had brought, and the corn-meal porridges. The days were blazing hot, the nights were colder and colder. One afternoon they ran into a shower of rain, but they rode through it gratefully, and Garnet found to her surprise that nobody caught cold.
The Comanches were behind them now. They had had no Indian trouble. Now and then they saw a few stray Indians, but the men sent scouts to meet them, carrying presents of beads and ribbons and bright cloth. Sometimes they traded with the Indians for game or fresh fish.
When they left the Dolores they turned due west, and for forty miles they went panting through a stretch of bare purple mountains, without water. Garnet rode until she ached with weariness, then both she and Florinda got off their horses and walked. Florinda looked very tired. There were dark rings under her eyes, made darker by the dust that had settled there. “This is one hell of a country, isn’t it?” she remarked as they toiled upward. Her voice was husky with dust.
