Man of the Desert: A Western Story

by Robert J. Horton

  Copyright © 2009 by Golden West Literary Agency

  First Skyhorse Publishing edition published 2014 by arrangement with Golden West Literary Agency

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Print ISBN: 978-1-62873-627-4

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-62873-984-8

  Printed in the United States of America

  Chapter One

  The desert road led up a long acclivity toward the mesa. On either side the grotesque branches of the Joshua trees, resembling long, green, bristle brushes, were tipped with clusters of white blossoms. Between clumps of juniper and yucca, among patches of gray sage, little red and yellow flowers peeped forth in radiant bloom, lending an unaccustomed flow of color to the saffron-tinted earth. The sun swam in a cloudless, high-arched sky of blue, and struck fires of brilliancy from the green and crimson stains on mineral rocks. A breath of wind laved a land of desolate, unending distances, cooling and soothing in subtle mockery of the inferno’s blistering blast soon to come. It was the brief season of the desert spring.

  The road was a cushion of dust in which the wheels of a buckboard, drawn by two sturdy grays, moved noiselessly. But the familiar sounds of slow travel were audible—creak of harness, squeak of floor board, the crunch of hoofs. And there was dust, and noonday heat, and the scent of sweating horses. In the buckboard were two people, a man, who was driving, and a girl. The man was short, slender, with prominent knees and a stoop, but displaying a wiry strength in his movements that belied a first impression of frailty. He was not young. There was an intricate network of wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, his neck was seamed and lined, and gray hair showed under his headgear. His neck and gnarled hands were burned a deep brown, but his face was of a lighter shade, almost rosy. His eyes were of a washed-out blue, and constantly twinkling. He wore faded blue overalls, riding boots, flannel shirt, a hat with a medium brim, undented high crown, and adorned with a narrow, fanciful band of leather.

  The girl was a blonde with laughing gray eyes that were frequently serious, rather full-lipped and soft-cheeked, but not enough so to be merely pretty, or really beautiful. Her face and smile indicated a likeable personality; her eyes mirrored a certain strength of character while frankly flashing a question. She seemed cool, radiant, composed, glowingly healthful in a neat blue suit and snug blue turban. The wisps of hair that peeped from beneath the turban were the color of spun gold in the dazzling sunlight.

  “You say, Mister Crossley . . . but I believe you told me you wished me to call you Jim?” She favored the man with a smile that caused him to catch up on the lines with a jerk.

  “Jim it is, Miss Farman,” he said. “It’s what most of ’em call me. My name’s Crossley, all right, but Jim’s easier on the breath an’ the ear, I reckon.”

  “Very well, Jim.” The girl laughed lightly, easily, reassuringly. “Jim, what did you say was the name of my uncle’s place?”

  “Rancho del Encanto,” Jim recited with a lingering accent.

  “Spanish, of course. And what does it mean, Jim?”

  “Means ‘Ranch of Enchantment’ or something like that.” Jim reached for the plug of tobacco in his hip pocket, remembered just in time, and sighed. Hard luck, this, hard work driving a team without the comforting taste of strong tobacco. But wasn’t Miss Hope Farman a lady? And wasn’t she a New Englander? He didn’t know exactly what a New Englander was, although he knew they came from the East, but the housekeeper had warned him to be careful when he had left the ranch the day before to go to the distant railway station. Well, he would play safe; he would forego the chew.

  They were nearing the mesa and the girl looked back over the gray and yellow expanse of desert. Rancho del Encanto—enchantment in this wild and lonely desolation? Perhaps the wife of her uncle, Nathan Farman, had so named the ranch. Perhaps she had found enchantment there; surely she had found love. Her uncle never had remarried after his wife’s death. He had written of her often. He had sorrowed long and deep after he had lost her. It was one reason why Hope Farman had decided to visit him and spend the summer on his ranch.

  The girl looked long and wonderingly at the desert. It seemed so empty! It was so utterly devoid of life. Even with its scant vegetation, it appeared bare. The green grass and trees of her native Connecticut! The contrast was so vivid, had been brought about so suddenly after her long journey, that it left her numbed by its very reality. She found it hard to adjust her mind to the new order of things inanimate. But it interested her, as did Jim Crossley, who handled the horses so easily that he appeared to drive by instinct.

  “Do you know, Jim,” she said suddenly, “do you know . . .” She hesitated.

  “Nope, I reckon I don’t, ma’am.”

  “I don’t believe half what I’ve read and heard of the West,” she said boldly.

  “Don’t blame you a bit, ma’am. There’s liars in all countries.”

  She looked at him quickly. He had subtly turned the edge of her point. If his reply was a sample of the dullness of the desert breed, it occurred to her that she had been misinformed in a quarter she had not suspected.

  “I mean, Jim, that I’m minded to think some of the things that have taken place out here have been exaggerated,” she explained.

  “Mebbe so,” he considered. “An’ I reckon half ain’t been told about some of ’em.”

  The horses pulled up a last stiff piece of grade and came out upon the mesa. Then the wind hit them. It was a chilling wind, sweeping down the great trough east of the foothills of the Sierras. League on league the desert stretched northward and eastward, rimmed by jagged mountains, naked save for a veil of blue haze.

  Hope Farman caught her breath at the stupendous sight. Gone were the fantastic Joshua trees, the junipers, and the yucca, gone were all the beautiful flowers.

  “Why, it’s changed!” she exclaimed.

  Jim shrugged, made another false move toward his hip pocket, and shook out the lines. “Yep, she’s a tough proposition from here on in,” he announced. “Nuthin’ but greasewood an’ sage till we get pretty close to the ranch. We come on it sudden like . . . off there.” He pointed toward the northwest and the foothills.

  “Is it all like this at the ranch?” she asked with a feeling of revulsion.

  “Nope. There’s trees there, an’ water.”

  She smiled at him gratefully. That was it. Water! It was the water she missed so acutely. There was so little of it. They were carrying it in bags. They hadn’t passed a single water hole or spring since leaving the small town at the railroad. It was good to know there was water somewhere in that barren country.

  “Are there any towns . . . places of interest . . . near here?” she asked.

  Jim motioned eastward. “Bandburg’s off there. Mining town. Ever hear of a glory hole? Bandburg’s got one. They’re scoo
ping the gold out of the mountain like it was soft coal! They’ve gutted the hill five million dollars’ worth already.”

  Hope was thrilled. She always had associated the thought of the desert with gold. Here was evidence that it was not a fallacy that the two words were synonymous.

  Jim was pointing again, northeastward this time. “Death Valley’s up there. Can’t see it. Too far away an’ the Slate range shuts it off. Panamint’s on this side an’ Funeral Mountains on the other.”

  She had heard of it, a dreaded sink in the desert, sometimes white as though covered with the dust of powdered skulls, glowing with color at sunset, practically waterless, below the level of the sea.

  “How did it get that name?” she inquired.

  “Bunch of Mormons, headed for the gold fields, tried to cross it an’ died there,” Jim replied. “Plenty has died there since,” he added as an afterthought.

  Slowly the significance of his laconic speech dawned upon her. It was the water. It made her thirsty, and she said so. Jim drew a drink from one of the water bags.

  Refreshed, she again scanned the far-flung reaches of desert. The mesa was a long tableland and the horses were taking it at a jog trot. In the north it sloped down into a great basin. The wind had freshened and Hope took her coat from the back of the seat and put it on. She saw what appeared to be a dark, filmy cloud in the basin. She pointed to it and remarked about it.

  “That’s dust, ma’am,” said Jim readily. “We skirt the basin on the west an’ mebbe we won’t get much of it. It’s mighty dusty in here when it blows.”

  They rode on in silence. Jim, on such short acquaintance, was naturally reticent. Hope was turning over in her mind the many remarkable things she had read and heard of in this new land, in which she intended to stay several months. The nature of the landscape seemed to inspire silence. But Hope had been bred where conversation is a habit. Besides, she was curious. After all, it was an astonishing adventure—this change from the soft, æsthetic beauty of her native New England to the forbidding, sinister land that lay spread out before her. That it held a menace, she sensed, rather than knew; the thing she did not realize was that she had yet to learn the inexorable nature of that menace.

  “We never see anyone,” she complained suddenly. “There isn’t a single living thing in sight except a few wandering birds, and I feel that they have gotten here by mistake.”

  “There ain’t much travel in this direction,” Jim commented. “Your uncle’s is the only ranch in here. If we was to see anybody sloping this way, I’d be curious.”

  “Why? They might be going to the Rancho del Encanto.”

  “They might,” was Jim’s matter-of-fact rejoinder.

  “There’s a certain element of mystery in your replies, Jim,” said the girl in a tone that hinted of severity. “Has there been any . . . is there ever any trouble at the ranch?”

  “Hasn’t been any all winter, ma’am.” Jim was giving the horses closer attention.

  “I believe you are trying to intrigue my curiosity,” she said reprovingly. “Next thing you will be telling me there are outlaws in the country.” She had read of outlaws and she awaited his reply with amused interest.

  “Mendicott’s still here somewheres,” he said with a drawl, favoring her with a side glance.

  “Mendicott? Who is he?”

  “An outlaw just like you mentioned, ma’am.”

  “But, what kind of an outlaw?”

  Jim’s right hand got clear into his hip pocket and was closing on the plug of tobacco before he recollected his decision. He withdrew it reluctantly. “He’s the regular kind, ma’am.” His drawl was now pronounced.

  “But what does he do?”

  “He does a general outlawin’ business, ma’am. Takes what he wants an’ don’t bother ’bout receipts.”

  Hope Farman’s chin tilted a bit. “I suppose it’s impossible to catch him,” she observed, mildly sarcastic.

  “Has been so far,” answered Jim cheerfully.

  “Do they . . . the authorities . . . know where he is?”

  “They think they do,” replied Jim, grinning.

  “Then why is it that they don’t go in force and capture him?” the girl demanded.

  “He throws a wicked gun for one thing,” drawled Jim patiently. “Then he usually ain’t where they think he is, an’ it irritates him an’ his gang to be follered.”

  Hope’s chin went up another degree and she regarded the little driver coldly. “Then I am to assume that the authorities cater to the whims of this desperado?”

  “They sure do, ma’am, most of ’em bein’ men of family.”

  “Humph!” It was a prim exclamation, but the girl managed to put considerable feeling into it. “Do you know what I would like to see, Jim?”

  “People, probably,” Jim conjectured.

  “Yes, and one . . . ah . . . character in particular.”

  Jim looked at her speculatively. “An outlaw?” he ventured.

  She shook her head a bit disdainfully. “No, I can’t say I am particularly interested in that class of misguided humanity. I’d like to see one of these famous men of yours, the specimen that is tall, broad-shouldered, slim-waisted, and tanned a beautiful brown, that can ride the wild horses, and throw a lariat without ever missing, and draw his revolver and fire it and hit the mark before you can wink an eye, and . . . and all that. What do you call them . . . buckaroos? Are there any buckaroos on Rancho del Encanto, Jim?”

  “Nope, I reckon not,” Jim confessed slowly.

  “I thought so!” exclaimed the girl with a note of triumph.

  They had reached the north end of the mesa where the road turned westward in descent. The force of the wind had increased as the afternoon wore on, and now it flung blinding clouds of dust in their faces. The horses snorted and tossed their heads, straining in the harness so that Jim had to keep a tight rein. Hope drew her coat closely about her and buttoned it tightly. The air was growing colder with the approach of sunset. The foothills loomed close ahead through the dust veil. As Jim had said they would come upon the ranch unexpectedly, she felt a growing interest. Suddenly she gripped Jim’s right arm and cried out in excitement.

  “There’s a man on a horse down there!” She pointed eastward into the basin. He looked quickly, nodded, and again gave his entire attention to the horses.

  They came to the rolling ground on the west side of the basin and started north at a brisk trot. The dust swept down upon them. Jim drew a blue bandanna handkerchief over his mouth and nostrils, while the girl buried the lower part of her face in her coat collar for protection. She shielded her eyes with an arm. To the left she saw an opening in the foothills, and through this opening came rolling clouds of dust, riding fiercely on the wind.

  Jim turned to her and shouted: “That’s live dust, ma’am!”

  She looked at him queerly, as if she suspected an awkward jest.

  “I mean it’s kicked up by something that’s alive an’ movin’,” he called. “There! Just what I thought. It’s cattle that’s kickin’ up that fog!”

  Her eyes widened as she caught a glimpse of tossing horns through the dust. The bellowing of cattle came to her ears on the wind. She caught her breath sharply as the horses lunged under Jim’s whip. The buckboard careened as they dashed wildly ahead.

  Chapter Two

  Hope held up her left hand in a futile effort to shield her eyes while she clung to the seat with the other. The road led down for a short distance and then cut straight across in front of the opening. Although she was far from experienced in such matters, the girl realized that the little driver intended to try to cross in front of the onrushing cattle before the maddened animals could reach them. It was the only course left to him. He could not turn around in the narrow road, lined with boulders and rock outcroppings, and to stop would mean merely to await the inevitable in the path of the herd. She heard him swearing, and the words—“Lost Cañon”—came to her. She assumed that it was the name of t
he opening in the hills.

  The dust stung their faces and nearly blinded them. Hope closed her smarting eyes for a few moments. She opened them when Jim yelled: “They’re drivin’ ’em!”

  A rift in the dust clouds enabled her to determine what he meant. For, at a distance up the cañon, she descried the dim, swift-moving forms of horses and riders. There were men with the cattle. Very likely the herd had gotten away from them. She remembered what she had read of stampedes, and shuddered. Terror seized her, left her white and shaken, clinging to the seat of the swaying buckboard, as Jim flung away the whip he no longer needed.

  The horses were galloping madly and they made the turn at the foot of the grade on two wheels. The buckboard came down with a jolt, bumped and swerved, and again the world was blotted out by a solid wall of dust through which the dying sun shone obscurely in a dull, yellow opaqueness. The effect was weird, uncanny, and added to the terror inspired by the danger of being run over by the oncoming herd. The air was filled with the thunder of pounding hoofs, and the raucous bellowing of the cattle. Jim braced his feet against the dash, leaned forward on the lines, but gave the horses their heads. Then the vanguard of the stampede loomed directly ahead, so close that they could see the wild, red light in the eyes of the frightened animals.

  Jim pulled in on the lines, shouting to the horses, causing them to slacken their pace a bit. Over they went to the right, the buckboard tipping to a dangerous angle, the right wheels nearly buckling. They left the road just ahead of the cattle, now almost upon them, and started down the steep grade into the basin. It was impossible to mark their course any distance ahead because of the dust. The girl was choking, and she saw the wind strip Jim’s hat from his head. The horses plowed through clumps of greasewood and sage; rocks jolted the buckboard until it became a twisting, writhing thing, with no balance of motion, in imminent danger of overturning.

  Hope’s gaze seemed riveted on the flying ground under the light tongue of the vehicle. She dared not look up; she could only hold on with all her strength in the effort to keep in the seat. She glimpsed a streak of gray under the tongue; one of the horses stumbled, recovered; there was a shock as the front wheels struck an obstruction. The right side of the little buckboard was lifted high. She was thrown heavily against Jim. Then came a confused moment and something struck her on the left side and head. It was some moments before she realized she had been thrown.