Stairs of Sand

by Zane Grey

  Merryvale was stirring at dawn, packing the few belongings he chose to take on the journey. His money was about gone, but that did not worry him, for he could get some from Adam. There was gold in Adam’s belt—gold coins he had heard clink less and less as the years had passed.

  Merryvale went out to breakfast and did not forget to get some food packed and his canteen filled. The stagecoach, with its six fresh horses champing their bits, stood in front of the post. Hank Day had a cheerful word for Merryvale. “Up with you,” he directed. “Say, you’re spry for an old timer. We’ll be leavin’ pronto.”

  There was another passenger besides himself already aboard, but Merryvale could not get a good look at him. Presently two more emerged from the inn with their baggage, and entered the stage. After a glance at them, Merryvale felt assured they would not have any interest in him or Adam.

  Day climbed to the driver’s seat beside Merryvale, and untied the reins. He was loquacious and merry.

  “Say, old timer, if I get shot off by bandits can you drive the six in?”

  “Wal, I could make a stab at it.”

  “Soon as the mail comes out we’re off. Dabb’s slow this mornin’. He’s carryin’ extra weight on his jaw. Haw! Haw!”

  Presently Dabb arrived with a mail bag and parcel, which he deposited inside the stage.

  “Where you goin’?” he asked, with speculative glint of eyes on Merryvale.

  “Yuma. I shore got to see my banker an’ buy a new outfit,” drawled Merryvale.

  “I’ll bet your bank’s in your pocket an’ that’s got a hole in it,” declared Dabb, half in jest, half in earnest.

  Hank Day cracked his whip and called cheerily to his horses: “Out of hyar—on the way—while it’s cool—an’ we can see!”

  Merryvale’s ride to Yuma had begun. He leaned back, as if in unconscious relief that he had not been halted. Wansfell would be out there on the desert, waiting, as surely as the red sun burned the sea of sand into waves of rose. If only no harm had befallen Ruth! Merryvale tingled to the adventure now at hand, but he checked his fears, his insistent and profitless conjectures, his unformed plans. They all could be left in abeyance.

  “Goin’ to Yuma, eh?” inquired the driver, genially. “When was you there last?”

  “Reckon aboot the first of April,” replied Merryvale, reflectively.

  “Yuma’s a boomin’ town now. She always was a hummer, but she’s aroarin’ these days.”

  “Wal, you don’t say? Yuma always was the liveliest place I ever struck. What’s the difference now?”

  “All she used to be an’ a dinged sight more,” replied Day, emphatically. “Course the railroad buildin’ has fetched the darndest lot of greasers, niggers, redskins, chinks, gamblers an’ robbers an’ bad wimmin you ever seen in your life. But there’s a lot of honest bizness goin’ on an’ comin’.”

  “Ahuh! Plenty of money in sight an’ a wide open town?”

  “You bet. What law there is amounts to nothin’. Leastways it’s Arizona law, an’ don’t go far on the California side. Some time ago Jim Henshall, the only sheriff who was any good, got killed in a fight. An’ nobody’s took his place. I heard nobody was keen to take it except Collishaw, an’ he’s not very well liked by the solid citizens.”

  “Collishaw? He was an old time Texas sheriff, a hanger. What’s agin him in Yuma?”

  “For one thing, Collishaw has an interest in the hardest place there,” answered the driver. “Old three story Spanish buildin’ called Del Toro. Saloon, gamblin’-hell, lodgin’-house, an’ that’s not all. It’s owned by a Mexican named Sanchez, an’ Collishaw is in with him. Sanchez is pretty well heeled, an’ he’s been able to smooth over some of the hard deals credited to the Del Toro.”

  “I recollect bein’ in the Del Toro,” said Merryvale, “An’ shore it didn’t strike me no wuss than some of the other places.”

  “Wait till you see Yuma now, old timer,” vociferated Day, cracking his whip. “She’s speeded up, an’ it’s a safe bet she’ll go faster before she slows down.”

  “Wal, come to think aboot it, I’ve no love for a wide-open town any more…. Will you have a smoke?”

  “Don’t care if I do,” replied Day.

  The stage rolled on down the winding desert road. It was a hard gravel road, slightly down hill, over which the horses traveled at a brisk trot, covering distance rapidly. Merryvale enjoyed the rhythmic beat of hoofs, the clinking of the chains and creaking of harness, and the rattle of the wheels; and especially the sweet dry fragrance of the desert air, still cool at that early hour.

  Clumps of bright green greasewood grew at regular distances apart, as if they had been planted by a gardener. Mounds of silver sand, glistening almost white, heaved up here and there, held from blowing away by thick massed roots of the mesquites. And beautifully red and gold against the light lacy green of these mesquites were the knots and balls of the parasitic mistletoe, which by some strange chance lived off the harsh desert trees. In the gray sandy washes the smoke trees appeared like soft blue clouds rising from a campfire. At long intervals of distance a palo verde, exquisitely delicate and green, dotted with its yellow blossoms, stood out against the pale desert background.

  A jack rabbit, rangy and wild, with his enormous ears grotesquely erect, bounced away to disappear among the mounds. A little speckled hawk poised, fluttering its wings over one certain spot where no doubt some luckless desert rodent was hiding. Then the rarest of desert birds, a chapparel cock, ran with remarkable swiftness across the road, his long slender tail spread, his mottled gray back shining, his tufted crest erect showing the red, like flame. His cruel beak held a lizard.

  Always there seemed to be beautiful life on the desert—creatures that were fleet and sure and destructive.

  Merryvale did not know how far down the road Bitter Seeps lay, and he did not care to excite the stage-driver’s curiosity by asking. So he contented himself with watching. He could not see the vast range and sweep of the desert from this winding course of low country.

  In the distance the green heightened and thickened. Then a palm tree lifted its graceful head. A patch of darker green gave relief to the eye. The road wound along a deepening wash, where desert growths multiplied and flourished. Merryvale sighted two gray burros grazing out toward the hill. They might be Adam’s, but were too far away to recognize. Next an Indian shelter of poles and palms greeted Merryvale’s seeking eyes and beyond that a small adobe house, squatting under palo verdes.

  From behind this house a tall man stepped, to gaze toward the stage. Merryvale’s heart gave a great leap. Wansfell!

  “Driver, what place is this?” inquired Merryvale.

  “Bitter Seeps. There’s enough water to keep a few Indians alive.”

  “Reckon you’re goin’ to pick up a passenger,” remarked Merryvale. “Looks familiar to me. Yep, he’s a prospector.”

  “Tall bombre, ain’t he?…. Whoa, Bill!—Whoa thar Iron-Jaw!”

  Day brought the six horses gradually to a stop opposite the adobe house, in front of which Wansfell stood waiting, with a small bundle tied in a red scarf.

  “Howdy. Want a lift?” called Day, leaning over.

  “Yes. To Yuma,” replied Wansfell.

  “Twenty dollars from here,” he said, and then caught the bright gold coin Wansfell flipped up to him. “Climb in.”

  “Wal, hello there, prospector,” greeted Merryvale. “Thought I’d seen you somewheres before.”

  “Howdy, Merryvale. I saw you first,” replied Wansfell, as he stepped to enter the stage.

  “I’ll bet you did—me settin’ up heah like a buzzard on a daid cottonwood.”

  The stage door closed upon Wansfell, the horses took to their eager trot; and Merryvale leaned back in his seat, conscious of a grim and exalted emotion. Now! Wansfell had joined him. What a terrible reckoning for some man or men was rolling toward them in this stagecoach.

  That was the break in Merryvale’s strained mentality.
The next hour he talked Hank Day to the limit of that individual’s knowledge of Yuma. Meanwhile the miles slipped by under the rolling stage. It progressed through the last of Lost Lake basin and began to climb. The horses slowed and sweat, the driver dozed on his seat, the sun burned so that Merryvale hid his hands.

  Out on top at last—and Merryvale seemed to feel something magnificent flung in his face. The silver sea of sand, the vast rising, heaving billows barred the way to the south. Ruth Virey’s stairs of sand. Merryvale caught the symbol; and all his old deep mystic fear of the desert mocked at his hope for Ruth. Who could surmount that sliding stairway? Up and up, toiling, dragging, panting, fighting, only to find it false!

  There was no wind to blind the eyes. The barrier was a mountain range of shifting sand dunes, curved, scalloped, rounded, rippled, in a million beautiful shapes, silver and gold and gray. It stretched across the desert ninety miles, a strange phenomenon of nature, unsurmounted except for one wide pass, through which the road ascended and wound.

  Here the horses toiled, the hours lagged, the miles magnified. Merryvale succumbed to the heat, the weary climb, the glaring sky, the encompassing slopes of sand, and he dozed until the stage at last emerged from the silver inferno upon the level hard desert.

  Merryvale awoke to have his drowsy senses electrified. There gleamed Black Pilot Knob, the prospectors’ landmark, and on the left the crinkled Chocolate Mountains, and above the desert floor to the fore, the grand purple mass of Picacho.

  Again the scene changed. The sand lay behind, and all forward and on each side spread the desert, flat and hard, with ocatilla and mesquite and ironwood green against the drab, and the red Chocolates looming closer, and dim in the distance hazy ghost shapes of mountain peaks, ragged and wild and unattainable.

  The sun set over a scene that, for Merryvale, could not be equalled in all the West. From the stagecoach, at the last height of the long plateau, he gazed down into the Colorado Basin. There wound the red river of the desert, fringed by vast borders of bright green cottonwood and arrowweed; and above the bends of the stream, and heaving on all sides, rose the banks and benches, the mesas and mountains, the corrugated mosaic of this wasteland gulf, at once beautiful in its wonderful coloring and ghastly in its jagged and barren wildness. A yellow pall of dust rose from the point where Yuma lay.

  The coach rolled down gravelly hills, down and down for miles, until the far-flung scene of beauty was lost in the intimacy of the lowland, and dust that rose like smoke from a prairie fire. The sun shone magenta through the pall. Twilight and dusk! The coach rolled on, round bends, and always between walls of dusty arrowweed. And at last night fell, so black that Merryvale’s tired eyes could not see a rod ahead. The weary horses plodded on.

  The last turn of the road Merryvale saw the lights of Yuma.

  Chapter Nine

  MERRYVALE had to lengthen his stride to keep up with Adam down the wide dark main street of Yuma.

  Lights were many, but their yellow flare did not extend beyond the pavement. Dark figures showed back under the arches; tall Indians with great coils of hair on the tops of their heads moved like shadows. Mexicans, small of stature, with their huge sombreros and colored scarves lounged before the shops, jabbering like so many monkeys. Miners and other white men in rough garb were sprinkled here and there in the throng.

  “Ain’t this heah the Del Toro?” asked Merryvale, as they came to a three story structure of Spanish design, on the corner of an intersecting street.

  Adam nodded and pointed to the figure painted on the wall between the arches. Bulls and matadors and mounted bandilleros, executed in colors on the white background, symbolized the name of this notorious resort.

  A wide dark hallway opened to the right, and led upward, suggestive of the secretiveness of the Mexicans. The doors of the saloon were painted in fantastic designs, permitting light from inside to show them in silhouette. Adam and Merryvale halted on the comer.

  The place was humming inside. The doors swung continuously with the passage of a motley file of men. Adam drew Merryvale across the street to an opposite comer. From this vantage point they studied the Del Toro. The second story had a line of arched openings down the side street, and these gave upon a veranda that evidently extended the same length. On this hot night no lights shone. Here and there the red glow of a cigarette emphasized the gloom. Low voices and laughter, the wail of a guitar, the melody of a Spanish song, the light sound of footsteps, and then the trill of a woman’s laughter—these lent some of the romance and atmosphere of the past to the mystery of Sanchez’s Del Toro.

  The third story was low, with dark eye-like windows, not one of which showed a light. Adam gazed up at them as a man who would pierce their gloom and learn what was inside.

  Presently, in silence, he led Merryvale down the street, towards the less pretentious section, where the lights grew fewer. At length he entered a narrow areaway that led into a patio, dark, smelling of smoke and mescal, where figures moved like shadows.

  “This is Augustine’s place,” explained Adam, as they mounted some stone steps to a stone porch, and from there entered what appeared to be a kind of marketplace. A robust, black-browed Mexican stared with sloe eyes at Adam, got up and threw away his cigarette. His swarthy face suddenly beamed, and he leaped at Adam.

  “Santa Maria! It is my grande senor,” he said, embracing Adam. Merryvale did not need to be told that somewhere and sometime this Mexican had run across Wansfell, the Wanderer.

  “Si, Augustine,” returned Adam, pushing the man back to wring his hand. “My pard Merryvale. Were starved, thirsty—and in trouble.”

  Augustine’s gladness and gaiety changed into serious solicitude. “Come in,” he said, abruptly, and led into a large bare stone room. It had few articles of furniture—a table and two benches, a lighted lamp smelling of oil, and a long hammock that curved from a ring in one wall to a ring in the opposite wall. He clapped his hands, and when a fat dark woman, and two slender little girls came running in, he talked swiftly in Mexican. Then, as they departed to fulfill his orders he turned to the white men.

  “Senor Adam, my house, my people, my friends are at your service.”

  Without wasting words Adam told him the particulars of Ruth’s disappearance from Lost Lake, according to Merryvale’s information and deductions.

  “Senor Collishaw is in Yuma. I saw him today,” said Augustine.

  “Let me describe Stone to you,” returned Adam, and gave minute particulars of Stone’s appearance.

  “No,” said the Mexican, decidedly. “Senor, be seated. Eat and drink. I will go see.”

  “Collishaw had a Mexican driver with him. Can you locate that man?” went on Adam, as he disposed of his long legs under the table.

  “Senor Adam, there could be nothing hid long from Augustine,” he replied, his sloe-black eyes glittering.

  “Find out from that driver if Collishaw had the girl, and if so where they took her.”

  “Senor, if Collishaw brought the senorita to Yuma for himself, she will not be at the Del Toro,” said the Mexican, with a subtle smile. “But it is nothing for a white girl to be taken there. Sanchez brings women from Guaymas, from Frisco, Sacramento—from everywhere. Yuma is a town where women do not last long.”

  “Augustine, I served you once. The time has come when you can serve me,” rejoined Adam, with deep feeling.

  “Ah! Is the senorita daughter or sweetheart?” he asked, softly, with his hand going to Adam’s shoulder.

  “She is the woman I love, Augustine,” returned Adam.

  “Senor, if she is in Yuma we shall find her. I go now. You will lodge here with me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Eat and drink. My women will serve you and show you rooms. Do not leave here. Augustine works slowly. But you may be sure.”

  He bowed with ceremonious assurance and left the room. Adam and Merryvale turned in silence to appease their hunger and thirst. One of Augustine’s household, a daughter, proba
bly, came in and stood near, a slender girl clad in a dark loose gown. She had a small oval face, olive in hue, red lips, and eyes large and dusky and beautiful. Her hair was a black mass. Merryvale looked at her again and again, and each time something more was added to a ghost of resemblance, until a clear image stood forth.

  “Pard, look at that girl,” whispered Merryvale, in Adam’s ear.

  “I did, old friend. Once was enough,” replied Adam, sadly.

  “The ghost of Margarita Arallanes!” exclaimed Merryvale.

  “Yes. She is like Margarita—without the devil in her eyes.”

  “Wal! Queer things do happen,” muttered Merryvale.

  They finished the meal and drew the benches away from the table.

  “Adam, I reckon waitin’ around will go hard on us,” said Merryvale.

  “Patience. We are lucky to find Augustine here. Sometimes he is at his rancho across the border. He knows every Mexican in this country. As he said, he can find anything. If Ruth was brought to Yuma by Collishaw, we’ll soon know.”

  “Why would Collishaw fetch Ruth heah?” whispered Merryvale, huskily.

  “Have you forgotten what Augustine told us about Sanchez’s place?”

  “But Collishaw is a Texan,” replied Merryvale. “It is born in him to respect women.”

  “Is he not hand and glove with my brother?” queried Adam, the gray storm of his gaze on Merryvale.

  “Shore. But even so…. why I heard him snap up Larey for talkin’ so low-down to Ruth.”

  “Friend Merryvale, my brother Guerd never deals with men he can’t control. Besides, Collishaw, for all his Texas breeding, is a desert blackguard. He was the worst kind of criminal on the border. A man, once backed by the law, who affects honesty, when under his mask he is desperate, base. Collishaw has had his day.”

  After that Adam lapsed into a silence Merryvale did not care to intrude upon. The minutes dragged along. The stealthy shadows of women passed the doors. Outside there were faint sounds—voices and steps, laughter and far-off music. A hot wind sometimes waved in, redolent of dry dust and over-ripe fruit and the sweet smell of flowers and a faint hint of smoke. The house hung oppressively over Adam. He longed for the open, for the stars, for the desert wind, that was pure, if it did burn and blast, and bring the ever-present melancholy tidings of the wasteland.