Dust of the Desert

by Robert Welles Ritchie

  CHAPTER X

  AT THE CASA O'DONOJU

  Six days after Quelele the Papago set out on his mission of mercyfrom the Casa O'Donoju he returned to the oasis. It was in the firstflush of dawn that the _shuf-shuf_ of the little car roused masterand servants; Quelele had travelled all night and at a pace toconserve the strength of the wounded man, who lay on thick straw inthe box body. All night without lights save the thickly strewn lampsin the firmament, wending hither and thither through the scrub wherehalf-guessed lines in the sand marked the Road of the Dead Men--ajourney weird enough.

  For Grant Hickman it was but part of the moving drama of a dream. Thatinstant of flight from the chain gang, when a bullet tore through hisshoulder and sent him toppling into the arroyo, was the visitationof death; in his flickering perceptions all else following was butadventuring in the country beyond death--incidents to paint impressionson a consciousness otherwise wiped clean of otherworld recollections.First of these exposures on the cloudy plate of his mind came many daysafter the rurales had left him for dead in the desert: a face deep-dyedas mahogany and with white bristles of a beard about chin and lips,a face kindly withal, which bent near his as a hand lifted his headto bring his lips to a vessel of pungent brew. Then another age ofdrifting and swimming through soft clouds.

  Grant had just come to accept the grey-thatched face of El DoctorCoyote Belly as part of a permanent picture when another Indianappeared between himself and the bundles of sticks making a roof overhis head. This second personage in the world of the unreal, a giantwith the features of a boy, had spelled El Doctor in ministering herbbrews and keeping the wet cloths under the burning wound in his backfor what seemed many years. Then Grant had felt himself lifted, carriedfrom the hut with the bundles of sticks for a roof and laid on sweetsmelling straw. In the starshine he felt the hand of El Doctor closeover his own with a heartening squeeze.

  Then--wonder of wonders!--the racking cough of a gas engine, and Grantwas soaring back to that familiar earth which had been lost to him solong.

  Upon the arrival of the car bringing Grant to the Casa O'Donoju DonPadraic, hastily dressed, superintended the moving of his guest toa small, clean room, candle lit. The wounded man felt the gracioussoftness of feathers under him, the suave clinging of sheets. An agedIndian woman, working under the white man's direction, divested him ofhis tattered clothes and patted everything comfortable. Drowsy luxurystole across his consciousness to cloud it and bring sleep.

  Sunlight flooded the room when Grant awoke. He was alone. His mind wasclearer than it had been since he was shot. Only the steady burningin his vitals linked this moment of comfort with the tortured past.His eyes roved about the room to take in its appointments. White wallsdevoid of ornamentation; by the heavy door with its curiously wroughtiron latch a single chest of drawers of some antique pattern; the bedhe lay upon massive as a galleon of old days and with a canopy ofcarved wood and tapestry for a sail: here was a room from the perioddepartment of the Metropolitan Museum.

  Grant was patiently trying to fit together the jig-saw scraps of hismemory when the door opened and the white man he had seen the nightbefore entered. Seeing the light of reason in the patient's eyes, DonPadraic smiled and bowed. Something mighty heartening lay in thatwelcome and the warm cordiality of Don Padraic's features.

  "I am rejoiced to find you better to-day," he said as he drew a chairto the side of the bed. "Yours was a hard journey last night."

  "I am still a little uncertain up here"--Grant tapped his forehead withan attempt at a laugh. "For instance, I was just thinking I had beenlifted straight into a room of the Metropolitan in New York."

  The host's brows were knitted an instant, then he caught the allusionand smiled.

  "Ah, yes; we have rather ancient furnishings here. But you are quite adistance from New York, senor. This is the Casa O'Donoju in the Gardenof Solitude, and I am Don Padraic O'Donoju."

  The name crashed into Grant's consciousness like the clang of iron. Hisheart gave a great leap. Could it be possible--? No, this must be butpart of the aurora dreams of the vague eternity still just behind hisback. Grant wished to make no blunder which might belie the presentsoundness of his mind, so he held his tongue over the question burningto be asked. Instead:

  "My name is Grant Hickman, sir. I am deeply obliged to you for yourcharity in bringing me here. Of course, I do not know quite how itall happened--my coming here from some place else, where an Indian,or two of them--seemed to be caring for me. And I fear I am hardly apresentable guest." The sick man's hand passed ruefully over his stubbychin.

  Don Padraic made a gesture dismissing Grant's fastidiousness. "Senor, agentleman should not consider the state of his beard and the state ofhis health with equal seriousness. The one may be repaired at once evenif our wishes cannot immediately effect a cure of the other. Permitme to retire, senor, and not tax you with questions until you arestronger."

  Shortly after the gentle host had bowed himself out an Indian servantentered with basin and razor and effected an agreeable change in thepatient's appearance. Then Grant was left alone with the tab to awonderful possibility to turn over and over in his mind.

  He was in the house of the O'Donoju. Could there be more than onefamily of that unusual name in the desert country; or had fate thrownhim a recompense for all he'd suffered by lifting him from a line ofchained convicts to carry him through a nightmare straight to the onespot in all the world he most desired to be in? Perhaps under the sameroof, near enough to him to permit the carrying of her laughter, wasBenicia, the vivid creature who had won his heart into captivity.

  He was not kept long in suspense. The door opened and Don Padraic'swhite clad figure appeared, behind it Benicia. She was in khaki, asGrant had last seen her at the Arizora station, wide-brimmed hat noosedunder her chin just as she had come in from a ride through the oasis.All the wild, free spaces of the wilderness seemed compacted in thegirl's trim figure, in the flush of her browned cheeks touched by thesun.

  "Senor Hickman--" Don Padraic began introduction, but Benicia was atthe bedside; her cool hand was given to Grant's clasp with a gesture ofboyish comradeship.

  "We need not be introduced, father," Benicia laughed, and there wasa queer catch in her throat. "Senor Hickman did me a service on thetrain which served as the best introduction in the world." Turning backto Grant--"I did not know, senor, you were the wounded man Quelelebrought into our home so early this morning--did not even know we hada guest until my father told me when I returned from my ride a fewminutes ago."

  Grant strove to put all his heart prompted in words that were mete:"And I did not dare hope that this house to which a miracle has broughtme was the desert home you described on the train."

  Benicia's eyes read surely what his lips would not frame. She saw inthe white face of the wounded man a touch of that old hardihood andforthright spirit of address which had commended this American to herat first meeting--commended him even against her own impulse to resenthis self-assurance. But she saw, too, how suffering battled to dim thevaliant spirit, and something deeper than abstract sympathy stirred inher heart.

  "But, senor, to meet you again this way! Father has told me the messagebrought from El Doctor: how you were found among dead men on theHermosillo road and brought back to life by that old Papago. You, astranger and unknown here in the desert country--how could this happento you, senor?"

  Don Padraic interposed:

  "Perhaps, 'Nicia, when Senor Hickman is stronger he will answerquestions. Would it not be better--?"

  The girl was quick to appreciate her father's considerate thought.Again she laid her hand in Grant's.

  "If you will permit me to play the doctor--at least to see to it thatlazy old 'Cepcion, your nurse, does not neglect you?" The smile thatwent with this promise was tonic for the sick man. It remained likean afterglow when the door was closed behind the girl. And when thewrinkled Indian woman came an hour later with broth on a silver traythat smile reappeared, translated into the fragrant be
auty of rosepetals laid by the side of the bowl.

  Five luxurious days passed--days each with a wonderful spot of sunshinein them--that when Benicia accompanied the aged 'Cepcion to hischamber. On these daily visits she would draw her chair to the side ofthe great bed--she looked very small below the high buttress of themattress--and while he quaffed his chicken broth and nibbled his flakytortillas Benicia would talk. 'Cepcion, like some mahogany colouredmanikin in her flaring skirts and winged bodice, always stood, armsakimbo and features passive as a graven image, behind her mistress'chair.

  The girl's talk was directed away from the personal; with an artconcealing art she evaded Grant's frequent endeavours to swingconversation into more intimate channels. She brought the world ofthe desert into the sick room, unconsciously revealing herself asa flashing, restless creature of the wastes: now on horseback andthreading dim trails over the Line to carry quinine to a familyof Papagoes down with the fever; now beside Quelele in the littlegas-beetle and skimming to Caborca, the southern town, to buy a weddingdress for an Indian belle.

  Not once did she touch again upon the subject of Grant's misadventuresand how he came to be found on the road to Hermosillo. A delicatesense of the fitness of things prompted her to await the moment whenhe himself should volunteer explanations. Grant, on his part, felt animpelling reluctance to give details, for to do so would necessitatehis revealing his conviction that little Colonel Urgo's was the handthat had pushed him so near death. A delicate--perhaps quixotic--senseof personal honour prompted that he keep his enemy's name out ofany explanations. He could not know how close might be the littleSpaniard's relations with Benicia and her father--even discountingUrgo's boast that he expected to make the girl his wife--and, besides,he felt the score between himself and Urgo must be evened before helinked the Colonel's name with his experiences.

  With Benicia's father Grant modified his resolution to a certaindegree. It was no more than proper, he argued with himself, that themaster of the Casa O'Donoju have some explanation for the presence inhis house of a man from a Mexican chain gang.

  "Senor O'Donoju," Grant addressed his host when the latter was come onone of his daily visits, "you have been more than kind to me, but Ifear I may be an embarrassment to you--a fugitive, you know, if that ismy status before the law."

  "My dear sir"--the courtly Spaniard waved away Grant's scruples witha smile--"you forget that the evidence El Doctor Coyote Belly foundon the Hermosillo Road--you the only survivor among eight men who hadbeen murdered, eight men with marks of fetters on their wrists; thatthis evidence, I say, clearly indicates you now have no status whateverbefore what the Mexicans call their law."

  Grant looked his surprise. Don Padraic continued easily:

  "You are officially dead, Senor Hickman. It is the _ley de fuga_--thelaw of flight. You were shot trying to escape while being transferredfrom one prison to another. Monstrous barbarism! So the president,Francisco Madero, met his end; so, perhaps, Carranza. When you werechained to other convicts and sent afoot out into the desert you weredoomed; the men responsible for that act counted you as dead the minutethey ordered you overland to Hermosillo."

  Grant recalled the mask of fear he'd seen settle over the features ofthe big Indian, his chain mate, when the rurales began to loose thefetters in the sunset hour of that fateful night on the desert; how theasthmatic little Chinaman had commenced his chant to the joss--men whohad known every weary hour of that march brought them nearer to thestroke of doom.

  "I have no direct evidence to explain why I was in that chain gang,"Grant began, honestly enough; then he told the story of the fight inthe gambling palace after the discovery of the counterfeit dollars inhis pocket, reserving only all reference to Colonel Urgo. His hostheard him through with a grave face.

  "Perhaps," he ventured, "you were on some mission to the Border whichran counter to the interests of a scheming official on the Mexicanside."

  "To be honest, I do not know yet on what mission I came to Arizora,"Grant conceded with a laugh. "A friend of mine wrote me in New Yorkhe wanted me to join him in 'a whale of a proposition' out here alongthe Border. I was fool enough to come just on that, and when I had aninterview with a Dr. Stooder--"

  "Ah!" The interjection escaped Don Padraic against instant reflex ofjudgment, as his hand part way raised to his lips betrayed. Grantcaught the other's quickly covered confusion and suddenly was sensibleof his careless garrulity. Here he was bandying names in a matter hisfriend Bagley had surrounded with unexplained secrecy. He finishedlamely:

  "And so on my first night in Arizora I fell into a trap."

  When Don Padraic left the chamber Grant still was dwelling upon hishost's involuntary exclamation at the name of Doc Stooder. What wasthere about the saturnine physician, what notorious reputation whichcould lead a hermit such as Don Padraic away off in this desert oasisto evince surprise that one under his roof had had dealings with him?More and more an undefined regret for his mention of the name ofStooder plagued him.

  In truth, the whole reason for his coming to Arizora and whateverfantastic project might be at the bottom of it appeared now strangelylinked with this latest turn of fate, his coming to the Casa O'Donoju.Grant became aware of a duty long overlooked and wrote a brief andnon-committal note to Bim Bagley, in Arizora, saying only he hadsuffered an accident and would return to the Border town as soon as hewas able. This Benicia took from him to give to Quelele when he shouldgo to the nearest railroad town.

  Two days thereafter befell a boon the wounded man had dreamed of duringmany yearning hours. Two male servants of the household came to dresshim in one of Don Padraic's white suits--his own clothes were rags--andassisted him down a long hall which turned into the green paradiseof the patio. There under the royal date palm they sat him, with thefountain pool and its magic purple sails of the hyacinth at his feet,behind and on either hand the green and crimson glory of the geraniums.

  Benicia was awaiting him there alone. The girl, in a simple green frockwhich revealed bare arms and the warm round of her shoulders, was theembodiment of the garden's fairy essence. She was a sprite of thisgreen and glowing place. Hot sunlight falling upon her head made it agreat exotic flower.

  "Now both of us can revel in being lawbreakers," she exclaimed when theIndians had bowed themselves out. She was hovering about Grant, pattinginto place the gay serape which covered his knees.

  "Lawbreakers!" Grant's glowing eyes bespoke the intoxication ofpleasure. "I feel, rather, like a prisoner whose sentence is commuted."

  The girl's rippling laughter ended with, "Oh, but my father said youshould not be moved for three days yet. Now he has gone into town withQuelele and you and I are breaking the law--with you equally guilty."

  "What man would not rush into crime with you to lead?" he rallied,and the little game of give and take in joke and repartee which hadbeen of their devising these last few days of Grant's convalescence,when Benicia made her daily visits at his bedside, was resumed. It wasin this course their friendship had grown: on a basis of comradeshipand with healthy minds in apposition, giving and finding something ofhumour, of rollicking fun. No angling for sickly sentimentalism on thepart of this unspoiled girl of the waste places--so Grant during hoursof staring at the ceiling had appraised the heart of Benicia O'Donoju;no place in their communion for any of the trite nothings a man burblesinto concealed ear of a flapper over tea or whatever else comes fromthe sophisticated city teapot.

  During these delicious hours in the shadow-dappled patio, asheretofore, Benicia continued a tantalizing enigma to the man ofcities. While seeming to give so freely of herself in laughing quipand quick answer to his sallies, never was there that least suspicionof some overtone to her buoyancy the man yearned to catch; not thequick revealing of secret depths in the eyes which would betray aheart responsive to the waves of the man's love enveloping her. Yetthe lips of the girl, full, soft, trembling with unconcealed promiseof richness to the one conquering them: these were not the lips of onedevoid of love's alluring tyr
annies. Nor was the rounded body of her,fully ripened to share in the law of life giving, one to wither outsidelove's garden.

  Grant could not speculate, with tremors of eagerness, on the flood ofpassion that was dammed behind the girl's sure mastery of herself. Darehe believe that he might be the one to loose that flood? As he satthere in the odorous garden the nimble, superficial part of his brainwas playing with bubbles while the deeper fibre of him resolved thatnothing in the world mattered beyond possessing Benicia's love.

  When luncheon was cleared away--it had been a veritable feast oflaughter--Benicia clapped her hands and gave some direction to theservant answering. The Indian woman disappeared in the body of thehouse, soon to come waddling out under the weight of the great harp.Grant gasped his surprise; he never had associated harps with anysurroundings other than the orchestra pit.

  "My Irish ancestors, who were kings in Donegal, always called for theirharp after a feast," Benicia declared with laughter in her eyes. "Thatis the reason we Irish are such dreamers. The harp is the stairs todreams. Listen, senor, and hear if I tell the truth."

  Grant watched her, fascinated. Her slender body was in the shade ofa great palm frond, but when she leaned her head forward against thecarved sounding board a narrow lance of sunshine shot down to kindleher hair to flame there against the gold. As her bare arms passedin swift flight of swallows across the field of strings shadows andsunlight played upon them in gules and chevrons of black and ivory.

  First she gave the solo, _Depuis le Jour_, from some opera Grantvaguely recalled; it was a mad thing, wherein the great instrumentthundered to the far recesses of the patio garden. Then the girl's moodchanged and was interpreted in the sighing motif of _In the Garden_.It was all bird song and lisping fountains. Grant allowed his eyes toclose so his soul could take flight with the music.

  Slowly, reluctantly, Benicia's fingers swept the final chords. Thegreat harp was still.

  Out from the shadow of a flanking archway stepped a dapper littlefigure in a cloak. Heels clicked sharply and the marionette bowed low.It was Colonel Hamilcar Urgo.