Stairs of Sand

by Zane Grey

  “Wal, you are shore surprisin’ to me,” he ejaculated, as he stared at her. “I expected you’d be half daid in bed. An’ heah you are with jest a little limp.”

  “Merryvale, I could run over rocks and cactus today,” she exulted.

  “Shore you look it,” he replied. “Ruth, I never seen the likes of you in all my born days.”

  “Likes! Is that a compliment or—” she returned, breaking off with an interrogating smile.

  “Jest plain truth…. You gold, purple-eyed blossom of the desert!—Ruth, if I were young I’d be mad, too. I’d have to wear you on my heart or die.”

  “Why, Merryvale!” exclaimed Ruth, amazed, and deeply pleased.

  He laughed at his own sentimentality and passed on down the path, wagging his gray head as if cogitating a weighty problem.

  Ruth halted in her work, and gazed with dreamy unseeing eyes out into space. Did Adam think she was like that? So many men raved about her beauty, but Adam could not see it. With him it did not seem to be how she looked, but what she was! The paradox of Ruth’s life was that the desert had given her many of its attributes:—its changeableness, its fiery depth, its mystery and moods and passion, and its beauty; and withheld its freedom, its strength, its indifference.

  Ruth was surprised to have a visitor in the shape of Mrs. Dorn. She was a little woman, of middle age, dark like an Indian, with finely serrated skin and sharp eyes. She wished to borrow some household utensil, she gave as an excuse for her visit.

  “So you come back?” she asked, curiously. “I should think once you got away from this hot hole that you’d stay.”

  “Well, Mrs. Dorn, I didn’t have any choice about leaving, and very little about coming back,” replied Ruth.

  “See here, Ruth Larey, you don’t expect anyone to believe that, do you?” queried the woman.

  “Come to think of it, I don’t,” said Ruth, with a laugh. “I’m sure I don’t care what anyone believes.”

  “That’s plain enough,” snapped Mrs. Dorn. “It’s a pity you don’t care more. But some one ought to tell you a few things.”

  “You seem to be bursting to do so,” returned Ruth, with sarcasm.

  “Everybody here, even the Indians, feel sorry for that young Stone.”

  “Indeed. You’re all very kind. I think I felt sorry for Stone myself.”

  “Yes, you acted like it. Guerd Larey told my husband you made a thief of Stone. And when he left, he swore he’d drag you back by the hair of your head.”

  “My husband’s lies are the least of his villainy, Mrs. Dorn. Perhaps you will be enlightened some day.”

  The woman gave Ruth a suspicious uncomprehending look, and shrugging her thin shoulders she passed on down the path.

  Ruth sat down, conscious that her rare beautiful day had sustained its first break. Then her grandfather emerged from his room, manifestly having heard Mrs. Dorn’s remarks.

  “You are being made the subject of vile gossip, Ruth,” he said, severely.

  “By whom?” she asked, lifting her head.

  “By everybody who lives here and who passes through.”

  “What do they say, grandad?” she asked, with an interest that surprised her.

  “Many things I could not repeat,” he said. “But they say you are a beautiful hussy. That you have been an unfaithful wife. That you have made men mad about you and then flouted them. That you made young Stone a thief. That your husband should whip you naked through the post.”

  “I deserve it all,” flashed Ruth. “And no more than a day ago I could have grovelled in the dust with shame…. Now I am above and beyond slander, however just. Poor miserable desert creatures! Warped, dried up, poisoned, these withered souls—I pity them.”

  “It might be better to reserve some pity for yourself,” he said.

  “Grandad, you believe I ran off with Stone, again?”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “No! … I was kidnapped. Stone came to me pleading that I use my influence with Larey. He had stolen money from Larey. It now seems such an absurd story. But I was sorry, excited. I let myself be led without considering. You know how impulse governs me. Well, before we got out the gate I was seized and smothered in a blanket and thrown into a wagon. Driven away in the night! … My captors were Collishaw and Stone. They fought over me. They took me to Yuma, to that dive, Del Toro, where Merryvale found me. Later Adam rescued me, and they fetched me home.”

  “Most extraordinary, if true!” returned Hunt.

  That was indeed a rebuff for which Ruth was ill prepared. The hot blood burned her face, and a sharp retort trembled on her lips. But this was another day and Ruth Virey seemed far behind with the bitter yesterdays.

  “Grandad, you will not believe, either, that Guerd Larey is behind all this. He and Collishaw got their heads together. They made Stone their tool. They hired him to let on he stole the money, just as a ruse to get me out of the house. Stone did it, but he had his own plan. Collishaw, too, betrayed the trust Larey put in him. It was Larey’s plan to follow to Yuma, break my spirit there, and drag me back. But the plot failed. They did not consider my friend Wansfell.—I saved Stone’s life. But Collishaw is dead.”

  “Ruth! Has the desert madness gotten into you? Are you in your right mind?” ejaculated Hunt, incredulously.

  “You will hear of Collishaw’s death from others,” replied Ruth, coldly.

  Hunt paced the porch in nervous agitation. “Ruth, I didn’t tell you Larey made me another proposition—a most surprising and friendly one. Made it before others! I—I have been considering it.”

  “Pray save yourself the trouble of confiding in me. I don’t want to know. Anything Guerd Larey proposes is fair on its face, but foul underneath.”

  Ruth left her grandfather then, with pity and horror and amaze storming the door of self-control. But she was victor. She saw as in an illumining flash the net of circumstance and evil drawing closer around her grandfather and herself. Yet she was unfalteringly sustained by new-found strength in herself and faith in Wansfell. She had a divination that she had been on the verge of destruction, but had been drawn back by something she had not yet mastered.

  Merryvale hailed her from his mesquite tree; and Ruth, forgetting her introspection and also her physical disability, started to run to him. Quickly, however, she discovered her soreness again, and limped as best she could round and down to Merryvale’s new camp. He had a canvas stretched for a low open tent, under which he had snugly arranged his bed and belongings. On the moment he stood a little away from the tree with his hands behind his back and a wonderful smile on his face.

  “Oh—I—I know,” cried Ruth, out of breath. “You’ve seen—Adam!”

  “Wal, what’ll you give, young woman, to lay your eyes on him right this heah minnit?” drawled Merryvale, provokingly.

  “Give? Why, my friend, I have nothing to give. But Oh! please—please—”

  “Shore couldn’t think aboot it for nothin’,” he replied.

  “You tease. You fraud. You don’t mean it.—But you’re holding my field glass behind your back. Let me have it—show me! … I—I will kiss you, if you do.”

  “Wal, in that case I’ll reconsider,” replied Merryvale, drawing her to where he stood. “Now look over the fence, out across the desert, at that wall of broken rock. Reckon it doesn’t look like a big country from heah. But what you see is only the top an’ that hides as rough a badland as I’ve seen…. Wal, now take the glass an’ focus it to suit your eyes.”

  Ruth, with trembling hands levelled the glass, and endeavored to adjust it to her vision.

  “My hands are so unsteady,” she whispered. “I’ve got the glass clear, but it wobbles so.”

  “Lass, Adam is lookin’ at you right this heah minnit,” said Merryvale.

  “No!” cried Ruth, radiantly. “Oh, I’ve got to control myself…. There. I see the rocks quite close. But the size of them! What broken cliffs!”

  “Wal, move the glass along slow
to the right—up a little—till you come to a dark shadow. That’s shade. Adam is there, an’ I’ll bet he’s wavin’ to you right this heah minnit.”

  “Oh, I can’t find him,” whispered Ruth, almost frantically. “How silly of me!—I feel so—so much over nothing…. I’ll try again…. Yes. I see the shadow…. There’s something red. It moves.”

  “That’ll be Adam’s scarf.”

  Then Ruth straining all nerve to achieve a tense body and keen sight, finally discerned a man standing on a cliff, waving. It was Adam. She recognized the stature, the pose, the action. How tiny that dot of red! Then a commotion in her breast upset all delicate mechanism of vision, and even the huge gray rocks blurred.

  “I saw him, but this pesky glass or my sight has failed. Oh, I will wave to him.”

  “Wal, I reckon that’ll be safe. I’ve been lookin’ around, an’ nobody sees us,” replied Merryvale.

  Ruth had only her apron, which she took off and waved again and again, wildly and eagerly.

  “Fine. Adam sees you,” said Merryvale, who had taken the glass. “There he goes down off the rock. Gone! … Wal, it shore worked fine. An’ the idee is this. Adam hasn’t much to do but walk out there often an’ see if you’re heah. If he sees you or me wavin’ somethin’ red, he’s to come fast as he can get heah. But of course we ain’t to wave anythin’ red onless we need him awful bad. Savvy, senorita?”

  “Yes, indeed. And it makes me feel so happy, so strong,” replied Ruth; and quite weak from her exertion and excitement she stepped back under the mesquite to sit down upon Merryvale’s blankets.

  “Wal, I reckon I feel aboot the same,” rejoined Merryvale.

  “Have you been down to the post?”

  “Shore. Early this mawnin’. It’s been closed for three days, an’ you bet the greasers an’ injuns were mad. Dabb went away before Larey, an’ somebody told me he got hold of Salton Springs ahaid of Larey. It was a freighter who told me. Said Larey was drinkin’ hard an’ poison sore.”

  “Ah! Things are not going to suit him,” mused Ruth. “I hope he doesn’t return here that way.”

  “It’s daid sartin he will, an’ be wuss’n ever.”

  “Was the post open? I must send Marta down to buy things.”

  “Yes, it’s open. An’ I reckon that’s queer to me. Frank Dorn got word on last night’s stage that he was to take charge. Now jest who sent that word? Who knew in Yuma the post was closed?”

  “Who except Larey?” queried Ruth, gravely questioning Merryvale.

  “No one else, by thunder. He’s in Yuma.”

  “Then he knows—”

  “You can bet he knows. Sanchez wouldn’t be slow to tell him what Wansfell did to Collishaw…. Larey is drunk or sick right this heah minnit!”

  “Sanchez could only guess that Adam went to Yuma after me.”

  “Aw, it’d be easy for Larey to figger out, ‘specially if he met Stone. An’ it’s a thousand to one Stone will tell our part in the deal, an’ leave out his.”

  “Soon we may expect Guerd Larey back here?”

  “Shore. An’ at the end of his tether,” replied Merryvale, forcibly. “It’ll show whether he’s yellow clear through. An’ I expect him to show yellow.”

  “You think hell be afraid of my mysterious friend Wansfell?”

  “Precisely. He’ll shore get a snook full of news aboot Wansfell. An’ if he’s not a rum-soaked desert-eaten fool he’ll quit or at least go powerful slow.”

  “Merryvale, that is not my idea at all,” said Ruth, compellingly. “I know Guerd Larey, both intuitively, and from personal observation. I believe he will react to this defeat in a deeper, blacker way. Larey is a moral coward, but he’s not afraid of any man.”

  “But Ruth—he’s heard aboot Collishaw. Ten to one he’s seen him daid. An’ that’d be no pleasant sight—with Collishaw’s other eye shot out. That may strike Larey most damn strange. It was a strange thing for Wansfell to do. Eighteen years ago he put out an eye for the Texan, an’ now he shoots out the other.”

  “It was horrible. Beyond my understanding…. Did Collishaw guess who his assailant was?”

  “Guess! I guess not. Wansfell told him. An’ I hope to Gawd I never see another man as turrible lookin’ as Collishaw.”

  “Oh, that was worse,” said Ruth, with a shudder. “How could Adam do it? … I begin to understand a little more what Wansfell means.”

  “Ruth he’s the desert Nemesis,” returned Merryvale, in a kind of awe. “An’ if Guerd Larey doesn’t realize this he’s doomed.”

  “Oh, Merryvale, don’t say that—don’t think it!” implored Ruth, wringing her hands.

  “But, child, facts are facts,” declared Merryvale, stubbornly, “an’ we’ve got to face them. If you’re right that Larey will be all the wickeder now, then I’m right in figgerin’ what he’s goin’ to get.”

  “I will have to save Adam from killing Guerd.”

  “Shore. I approve. But how you goin’ to do it—if Guerd keeps on after you? Shore you’re not goin’ to tie Adam’s hands so he caint defend himself?”

  “Never!” cried Ruth, firing up.

  “Wal, then, when Guerd an’ Adam meet—if they do—an’ Guerd recognizes his brother—which the devil would see to—it’ll be Cain an’ Abel over again. Only this time Abel will kill Cain. It is written in blood on this desert.”

  “Suppose—I—went back to Guerd—to be his wife—truly?” whispered Ruth, hoarsely.

  “Aw, woman! What’re you hintin’ at?” queried Merryvale, in dark passion. “It’d be better to let Guerd kill Adam outright…. Ruth, lass, you couldn’t send Adam back to the desert with that awful wound? To crawl into some lonely canyon, like a deer shot through, an’ die a slow an’ lingerin’ death! Not Adam with his wonderful love for you? Ruth, say you couldn’t do that?”

  “No! No! No!” she cried, fighting herself. “Anything but that! Death to us both before that! … I talk at random. But there must be some way to prevent this tragedy.”

  “Shore I hope so, with all my heart,” replied Merryvale, fervently. “But I’ve lived long on the desert. An’ when life heah begins tragic for a man or woman it shore ends tragic. There ain’t no help for it. That is the desert.”

  “But it began—so—for me” whispered Ruth, fearfully.

  “It never did,” denied Merryvale, with strong feeling, as if he were cornered. “I know your story. An’ me an’ Adam are agreed. You were a weak, vain, hot-blooded girl. An’ you fell into the last place in the world for a girl to find what she needed most—love an’ happiness. Your parents’ death was tragic. But if you only see clear you’d know up to now your experience on the desert hasn’t been honest reason for agony. Now, Ruth, ain’t that true?”

  “Yes it is. But I believed in my misery.”

  “Shore. An’ that misery was jest discomfort an’ longin’ an’ wilfulness. Wal, so far so good. You ought to be finding yourself now.”

  “Perhaps Ï am,” replied Ruth, dreamily, and left him.

  Ruth had a great need to be alone. Merryvale had given her an inspiration. It took shuddering hold of her heart and mind.

  Alone in her room, with door barred and window darkened, she had courage to voice the insidious thought. She could kill Guerd Larey. The recognizing of her consciousness of this inspiration threw her into tumultuous passion, that blinded her and held her in thrall one sickening appalling moment, before she fell prostrate before the temptation. It was irresistible. It was justice. It was fate. It would save Adam from staining his hands with the blood of a beloved and prodigal brother.

  She lay on the bed, realizing the enormity of her decision, marveling at the tigerish leap of her instinct, bewildered at the revelation of her nature. Here it was stalking from ambush—the raw elemental force of the desert.

  If Larey sought her again to bind her and break her, to make of her a fallen despicable creature, she would kill him. The decision had all the heat of the desert sun and the power of th
e wind and the ghastliness of the naked wasteland. It shook her as if a superhuman hand had gathered her up and shaken her. And then it left her in strange sombre peace. If the worst came to the worst she knew how to meet it, to save Adam and herself.

  But her peace was shortlived. With her mind settled ruthlessly, she had flung at her the mighty question, “Why?” Why would she stoop to a deed of blood, so foreign to her breeding, and the gentleness that had once been hers? The answer was love. It was desert love, and Ruth suddenly fell prey to a paroxysm more riotous than that in which she had received the inception of murder.

  The room, the house could not hold her. She could not breathe there. She must flee to the desert, to the boundless open and the illimitable air and the infinite sun. But once outside, flying up the path, without limp or twinge now, the thought of Adam restrained her. She remembered that it would not be fair to him to take such risk. Instead, then, she threw herself on the sand under the drooping palo verde, and there, with her rapt gaze enveloping half the circle of horizon, she looked through the veils of heat, the white glare, the purple haze, through the silver sand dunes and the dim ranges, through all the vastness and terror and beauty of the desert into the mystery of her own heart.

  Ruth had loved Adam at Santa Ysabel, with a strange dreamy girlish reverence; she had cherished that for long; when Adam had first met her in the canyon with Stone there had come again the perplexing attraction she had felt in other men, and then afterward what she look for love; and on the way home from Yuma, with her hold on his arm, with the consciousness of what it had dealt in defense of her honor and life, with the sand storm bellowing the menace of this desert hell she had come to the first real honest love of all her life. But that had been nothing to this white flame, this noonday bursting molten fire of the sun.

  Physically she was part of all she looked at—these terrible elements of nature that had transformed and transfixed her. Spiritually, she had given to her all the tremendous incentives to a woman’s love and passion.

  She went back in retrospect to her vain wild weaknesses for this and that man. How slight, how shallow, how selfish those pale little gleams! She had stooped lower than flirtations. She had lent her beauty, her hands, her lips, her lying tongue to the winning of men. Unconscious? Only steps in her development? Just the mind—wanderings of a female, drawn by attractions she had no knowledge of? She had been vile. She should have perished in her self-contempt.