by Gwen Bristow
“Why, to eat,” he answered in some surprise.
“Do they eat mules?” she asked in disgust.
“Of course. They’ll eat anything. If they can get a mule, they stick an arrow into it and go off to call their friends. By the time they get back the mule is dead and they have a party.”
“You make me sick!” she cried.
“Well,” said Oliver, “you asked me.”
When they left the Virgin River they went through a dry, ugly country to another stream suitably called Muddy Creek. They were going downhill, and the days were getting fiercely hot again. They started before daybreak, took long noonings, and rode till late at night. Garnet began to dread seeing the sun come up. Even early in the morning it beat furiously on their heads, and though they rested during the worst heat the days were dreadful. The only growth was cactus and low dry shrubs, and there was no shade but that of the rocks. Even on their shady sides the rocks flung out waves of heat.
The men wrapped their heads with strips of cloth, like turbans, and over the turbans they wore their high-crowned Mexican hats. Garnet and Florinda wrapped their veils close about their necks and faces. Sometimes it was hard to tell who was who, because they were all so covered against the sun.
The mules were so wretched that they gave endless trouble. Garnet suggested that to save the boys work, Florinda could share her saddle-house at the noonings. Instead of eating outdoors they carried their bowls of atole into the shelter to escape the sun, raising the blanket over the entrance to give them air. They were lying down in the shelter, trying to get comfortable for their noon sleep, the day the Diggers came to dinner.
They heard one of the men shouting words in a strange language, and Garnet looked outside. She saw Oliver and Penrose running toward the shelter. “You stay there, ladies!” Penrose called before he reached it.
Oliver pulled the blanket down over the entrance and flung himself on the ground before it. He held up the blanket a few inches from the ground, speaking to them through the crack.
“An old Digger yelled to us from a rock. We had to yell back that we were friends, so now there’s a pack of them coming into camp. We’ll feed them. Stay here, and you’ll be all right.”
As they had done when the Utahs called, Oliver and Penrose hurried to pile packs and saddles around the shelter so it would look like a stack of goods. “This,” said Florinda, “is getting monotonous.”
But it was better than being covered by the blankets. The shelter was too low for them to stand up in it but at least they could sit up and move a little. They sat there, baking like muffins in the airless heat. Pretty soon Florinda made a wry face.
“Do you smell what I smell?”
“Yes,” said Garnet. “They’re worse than the Utahs.”
“I didn’t think anything could be worse. But they are. Let’s peek.”
They crawled forward and raised the blanket an inch or two from the ground. A Digger was sitting only a few feet away. He smelt like a privy. He was quite naked. His skin was nearly black, what they could see of it, for he was caked with dirt. His hair, straight and coarse as a horse’s tail, hung wildly over his face and his back. Caught in it here and there were leaves and burrs and bits of twigs, and crawling through his hair were colonies of vermin. As they looked, he glanced at the ground and picked up a lizard that was running alongside him. He pulled off the lizard’s tail and thrust the squirming rest of it into his mouth. As his teeth crunched on it he grunted with satisfaction.
From where they lay, Garnet and Florinda could partly see nine or ten others. Most of them were stark naked. The rest were draped with bits of cloth or strings of beads. Their filthy hair streamed over their faces, and behind their hair they had nasty little eyes and big drooling mouths. Their bodies were squat and pot-bellied. As they waited for the white men’s food they kept picking up creeping things from the ground and eating them. They gave forth a nauseating stink.
Garnet felt goose-flesh rising all over her. She could not look any more. She let the blanket fall, and in the dark little shelter she and Florinda waited, trying not to get sick from the odor. When she thought about why she was hiding from them, Garnet felt her flesh crawl.
She remembered the Utahs. They had at least been healthy-looking; all they needed was soap and water. But those things out there—she hated to call them men. She wished she had not looked. She hoped she would never have to see a Digger again.
But she did have to, not long afterward.
They crossed Muddy Creek, and for five days they rode across a vast plain of sand ringed with mountains. The heat was fearful. To spare themselves and their mules they traveled at night, riding under a sky set with enormous white stars. Though the days were so hot, the nights were cold. The men wrapped blankets around their shoulders, and shivered in the hard dry chill. Hot or cold, they were always thirsty. There were depressions in the sand called waterholes, but there was seldom any water in them. The men dug, and waited till water seeped into the holes, but there was never enough. They rationed the water by cupfuls.
The plain was littered with the white bones of mules, left from the feasts of Diggers who had raided earlier caravans. Among the mule-bones were human skeletons, broken and tossed about in the sand. These were the bones of traders who had not evaded the Digger arrows, and bones of Diggers who had been killed in their fights for mules. The skulls grinned blankly at the sky.
The men paid very little attention to the bones. They were so used to the sight of death in the desert that they simply kicked a skull aside if it got in their way. But Garnet and Florinda shivered at the sight of them.
The train started every evening at sunset. At midnight they paused for a rest and supper. The mules gnawed at the dry desert brush; the men’s food was pinole mixed with cold water. Even if they could have gathered enough brush for a fire, they would not have dared to make a fire at night. Diggers might be lurking anywhere among the mountains, and the light of a fire could be seen for miles. If Diggers saw the camp they would come swarming down, panting for a mule-feast. As the pinole was made of corn that had been parched before the grinding, it was a wholesome food, but a cold soggy mush was not tempting.
After the midnight rest, they mounted again and rode to the next waterhole. Sometimes they reached it at sunrise, sometimes they had to plod for hours after the sun came up and turned the sky white with heat. When they came to the waterhole they stopped again, and after another bowl of pinole they tumbled down exhausted on the sand, pulling blankets over their heads to shut out the glare. It was like trying to sleep in an oven.
Garnet was so scorched and tired that she could hardly move. Her throat burned and the whites of her eyes were red with the glare. She knew now what Oliver had meant when he told her, on the heights of Santa Clara, that the worst part of the journey was still ahead.
Oliver tried to make the going endurable. He told her this stretch of desert was brief and there was a good camping ground ahead, with a fine fresh spring called the Archillette. Garnet set her sand-crusted teeth and went on. She watched Florinda with awesome admiration. Florinda was suffering tortures from the heat and dryness, but she almost never said anything about it. She was evidently doing her cynical best to give Mr. Penrose no trouble. Penrose liked Florinda very much, and was proud to be the recipient of her favors. But his attitude toward her was about like the attitude of a child toward a doll. When he wanted her, he took it for granted that she would be available. But when he had something else to do, he took it for granted that she was getting along all right by herself.
Florinda had expected this sort of arrangement, and did not protest it. Her white skin blistered and her eyes were nearly blind with the harsh light; sometimes Garnet saw her put both hands to her head as though she thought it would burst open if she did not hold it together. But she did not complain. Though Garnet was herself aching with weariness, she knew Florinda was suffering more than she was. Her own hair was black and her skin could turn brown to protect itself. But Flo
rinda had received her pale beauty from a race bred among the icy fiords and cold green mountains of the North. She was a healthy woman, but her constitution had never been meant to bear the baking of a desert sun. Garnet spoke to her with sympathy. Florinda gave a tired sigh, but all she said was, “Yes, dearie, it’s pretty awful. But I’ll get there. See if I don’t.”
As they rode under the big white stars, Garnet tried to tell her about the flowery shores of California. Out here in this place of sand and bones, it was hard to remember what flowers looked like.
And then at last, three wretched weeks after they had left the meadows of Santa Clara, they reached the oasis of the Archillette.
Maybe, Garnet thought, the Archillette did not really look like a bit of paradise. Maybe it was not as beautiful as the most beautiful park in the world. But here, after that stretch of sand, it was the most beautiful place she had ever seen, and she went up to the spring and knelt down on the grass and let the tears pour out of her burning eyes.
The Archillette was green. It was threaded by a clear cool stream that gushed out of the rocks and went chattering between two lines of willows and cottonwood trees. The time was October, and the leaves of the cottonwoods were yellow as butter. They blew over the grass like flakes of gold. Kneeling on the stones, Garnet cupped her hands and dipped them into the water and drank and drank, and she washed her face and threw handfuls of water into her hair to cool her aching head. Oliver came over and knelt by her and put his arm around her shoulders.
“Great, isn’t it?” he said. “And you’ve been great. Now you can rest. We’re going to camp here three days.”
“Can I drink all I want, Oliver?”
“Yes.”
“And have a real bath?”
“Several baths, if you like. And we’ll have something fit to eat. The boys are gathering sticks right now. There’ll be a hot meat stew and hot porridge and coffee. We might even bring down a bird or two.”
They had a royal supper, and that night Garnet slept as long and as peacefully as she had slept on the Santa Clara heights three weeks ago. But the next morning, she found that the Archillette was not quite the haven she had thought it was.
She was walking around, enjoying the miracle of the bright green coolness. Downstream, near the place where they had picketed the mules, she saw some green sprigs that looked like watercress. As she walked over to gather it, she stopped in horror.
In front of her was a field of human bones. In the early sun the bones were white and shining. They were scattered aimlessly, as though the place were a dreadful dump-heap, skulls and ribs, arms and legs and pelvic bones. Garnet turned her head, toward the men who were busy with the mules.
The men were working calmly. They were filling the pails, attending to mules that had bad legs or shoulders, mending the thongs that held the mules to the picket-pins, as though a field of bones was no more remarkable than a field of grass. As she looked, one of the boys found something in the way of a picket-pin he was driving into the ground. He picked up a thigh-bone, and without a second glance at it he tossed it over to the main dump before going on with his work. Garnet turned around and ran back the way she had come.
At the edge of the picket-ground she found Oliver directing his muleteers. He saw that she was distressed, and walked a little way off with her, asking what the trouble was. Who, Garnet demanded shakily, had those people been?
Oliver led her to a flat stone by the side of the stream and they sat down. He said he had not wanted to frighten her yesterday. But the Archillette was a famous camping ground. It was as well known to the Diggers as to the white people. Diggers often prowled about the Archillette, hoping to spy travelers with fine mules and horses that could be stolen for their feasts. These bones, like the bones in the desert, were the remains of people who had been killed here in years past. She probably had not noticed, but they had put on a double guard last night.
There had been some bad attacks here. Only last year, the Diggers had massacred a group of Mexicans from Los Angeles who were trying to catch up with the main caravan. The Diggers had murdered the men, carried off the women, and were feasting on the horses in a cave when a party of white scouts had found the bodies. The white men had pursued the Diggers and killed most of them at their feast, and they had managed to rescue one of the Mexicans alive.
Garnet was shuddering. Oliver smiled at her gently.
“Yes, Garnet, they’re loathsome creatures. Try not to notice the bones. Keep busy, and don’t walk beyond the guards for any reason. If you hear a long low whistle, grab your gun.”
Garnet tried to take his advice and keep busy. She had plenty to do. Since they left Santa Clara there had been very little chance for washing clothes. Already, all the other women and a good many of the men were doing their laundry in the stream. She brought a pile of clothes and a cake of soap, and got to work.
Florinda was scrubbing briskly. She looked fairly well, and was in good spirits. Yes, she said, she had seen the bones. “But I guess,” she added, “when you get used to this desert, you forget they were ever human.”
Garnet bent her head and rubbed a dress of hers against a rock in the water. “Yes,” she agreed grimly, “that’s how we’ve got to think of them. They’re just things. Like old clothes.”
They heard laughter and the sound of shots. The men were setting up the skulls and using them for target practice. They were having a contest, to see which one could put a bullet through an eye-socket at the greatest distance. Garnet felt her skin crawling. She kept her eyes on the soapy water. “They’re just things,” she repeated under her breath.
Beside her she heard Florinda’s voice. “Honestly, Garnet, do the fellows have to be that gruesome?”
“Nobody thinks it’s gruesome but us,” said Garnet. “This is our first crossing.”
The rifles cracked over the bone-field. Somebody shouted that Texas was a great shot. Texas said why, that was nothing, he could put a bullet through an eye from farther than that and he’d prove it if they’d move back a bit. All of a sudden, as she wrung out the dress, Garnet found that she was not shocked any more. She looked up at Florinda, and they both began to laugh.
“It’s just plain ridiculous,” said Florinda.
“They’re like children,” said Garnet.
“Like kids who’ve got nothing to play with, so they make toys out of whatever they can find.”
“After all,” said Garnet, “those skulls aren’t people any more. These traders will do anything for living people. When those Mexicans were attacked here last year, the other white men chased the Diggers at risk of their own lives—they’ll do that without a minute’s hesitation. But once you’re dead, you’re dead. They can’t do anything, so they just don’t pretend.”
Mr. Penrose strolled up to them, carrying his rifle. “Say, Florinda, that’s fine, all that washing. I haven’t had a clean shirt in so long—say, do I smell cooking?”
“I believe you do, Mr. Penrose. I can finish these later. Let’s go over and see how dinner’s coming along.”
Garnet spread her clothes to dry. The rest of the day she lay dreamily on a blanket, dozing and enjoying the rare luxury of idleness. At dark she watched the men change guard before she went into her saddle-house to sleep.
She slept soundly, but she had rested so much in the afternoon that she woke up while it was still dark. Oliver had had a shift of night guard duty, and he was still asleep. Moving carefully so as not to wake him, Garnet lifted the flap in front of the entrance. The stars were shining and the camp was quiet but for the occasional bray of a mule. There was a pail in one corner of the shelter. It was only half full, but that was enough. She made her toilet and softly began to get dressed. Any minute now the camp would come to life and there would be a smell of coffee. She was hungry.
She had put on her dress and was tying her second shoe when she heard a long sharp whistle. Oliver sat up.
“What’s that? My God, it’s the signal!”
&
nbsp; Before she could answer they heard a shot, then another shot, then rifles began to crack all over the camp. Oliver had pulled down the blanket that covered the saddle-house. He was on his knees, holding his gun over the wall, sighting. She heard him say,
“Your gun, Garnet! It’s a Digger raid.”
Garnet had grabbed her gun. She knelt by him, holding it. She could hear the other shots, and the voices of the men; she saw the dawn like a gray streak among the stars; she saw figures, and among the shots she heard cries. She set her teeth hard, and felt sweat creeping down from her armpits, and heard what was like a voice speaking to her from inside her head.
“Here it is, Garnet. This is what you expected so long that you stopped expecting it. This is an Indian fight. And you are going to shoot. You are not going to scream or shiver or act like a lady. You are going to shoot.”
The noise around her was tremendous. From all the saddle-houses, the men were shooting. They were pushing down the back walls of the houses and shoving the saddles forward to give themselves a solid line of breastworks. Keeping his gun in his right hand, with his left Oliver broke down the back wall of his shelter to give himself room to move. Holding his gun over the side wall, he fired twice and reloaded.
Sighting again, he moved away from her, past the place where the back wall had been. He fired again. The animals were kicking and howling in terror. There was more light now. Garnet saw figures crawling on their bellies, black against the sky like great worms. She took aim, but she had never fired at a moving target, and as soon as she took aim at a figure it was not there. The voice inside her head ordered her, “Shoot!” Another weak little voice protested in sudden horror, “I can’t! I can’t kill a human being! I can’t!”
She bit her lip so hard she thought she was going to bite it in two. She took aim, and the figure moved; she aimed again, and fired. Nothing happened. The figure came on.
There were other figures, not human, mules that had broken from their picket-thongs in a surge of fright. The light was clearer. There was a red streak in the sky. She saw an animal running. It was not a mule. It was Sunny, her brave little mare, Sunny who had carried her so many tiresome hot miles and had swum her safely over the rivers. “Don’t run away, Sunny!” the little voice in her tried to cry out. “Don’t run away. This is where you belong—not with them—they’ll eat you!”
