Wanderer Of the Wasteland (1982)

by Grey, Zane

  "It was frightful--terrible at first," she returned. "But after the gun went flying--and you had stopped trying to make him eat the--the spider--ugh! how sickening I...After that it got to be--well, Wansfell, it was the first time in the years I've known my husband that I respected him. He meant to kill you. It amazed me. I admired him...And as for you--to see you tower over him--and parry his blows--and hit him when you liked--and knock him and drag him--oh, that roused a terrible something in me! I never felt so before in my whole life. I was some other woman. I watched the blood flow, I heard the thuds and heavy breaths, I actually smelled the heat of you, I was so close--and it all inflamed me, made me strung with savage excitement--I had almost said joy...God knows, Wansfell, we have hidden natures within our breasts."

  "If only it's a lesson to him!" sighed Adam.

  "Then it were well done," she replied, "but I doubt--I doubt. Virey is hopeless. Let us forget...And now will you please help me search in the sand here for something I dropped. It fell from my lap when I fainted, I suppose. It's a small ivory case with a miniature I think all the world of. Last and best of my treasures!"

  Adam raked in the sand along the base of the bench, and presently found the lost treasure. How passionately, with what eloquent cry of rapture, did she clutch it!

  "Look!" she exclaimed, with wonderful thrill in her voice, and held the little case open before Adam's eyes.

  He saw a miniature painting of a girl's face, oval, pure as a flower, with beautiful curls of dark bronze, and magnificent eyes. In these last Adam recognised the mother of this girl. The look of them, the pride and fire, if not the colour, were the same as Magdalene Virey's.

  "A sweet and lovely face," said Adam.

  "Ruth!" she whispered. "My daughter--my only child--my baby that I abandoned to save her happiness!...Oh, mockery of life that I was given such a heart to love--that I was given such a perfect child!"

  The midsummer midnight furnace winds began to blow.

  They did not blow every night or many nights consecutively; otherwise all life in the valley would soon have become extinct. Adam found the hot winds heretofore, that he had imagined were those for which the valley was famed, were really, comfortable compared with these terrible furnace blasts. In trying to understand their nature, Adam concluded they were caused by a displacement of higher currents of cool air. Sometime during the middle of the night there began a downward current of cool air from the mountain heights; and this caused a disturbance of the vast area of hot air in the burning valley below sea level. The tremendous pressure drove the hot air to find an outlet so it could rise to let the cool air down, and thus there came gusts and gales of furnace winds, rushing down the valley, roaring up the canyons.

  The camp of the Vireys, almost in the centre of one of these outlets and scarcely a quarter of a mile from the main valley, lay open to the full fury of these winds.

  The first of August was a hazy, blistering day in which the valley smoked. Veils of transparent black heat--shrouds of moving white transparent heat! The mountains' tops were invisible, as if obscured in thin, leaden-hued fog; their bases showed dull, sinister red through the haze. Nothing moved except the strange veils and the terrible heaven-wide sun that seemed to have burst. It was a day when, if a man touched an unshaded stone with his naked hand, he would be burned as by a hot iron. A solemn, silent, sulphurous, smoky, deadly day, inimical to life!

  But at last the sunset of red hell ended that day and merciful darkness intervened. The fore part of the night was hot, yet endurable, and a relief compared to the sunlit hours. Adam marked, however, or imagined, a singular, ominous, reddish hue of the dim stars, a vast still veil between him and the sky, a waiting hush. He walked out into the open, peering through the dimness, trying to comprehend. The colour of the stars and heavens, and of the dull black slopes, and of the night itself, seemed that of a world burned out. Immense, dim, mysterious, empty, desolate! Had this Death Valley finally unhinged his mind? But he convinced himself that it was normal. The unreality, the terror, the forbidding hush of all the elements, the imminence of catastrophe--these were all actually present. Anything could happen here. Exaggeration of sense was impossible. This Death Valley was only a niche of the universe and the universe only a part of the infinite. He felt his intelligence and emotion, and at the same time the conviction that only a step away was death. The old wonder arose--was death the end? Not possible! Yet the cruelty, the impassivity of nature, letting the iron consequences fall--this seemed to crush him. For the sake of a woman who suffered agony of body and mind, Adam was at war with nature and the spirit of creation. Why? The eternal query had no answer. It never would be answered.

  As the hours wore away the air grew hotter, denser. Like a blanket it seemed to lie heavily on Adam. It was the hottest, stillest, most oppressive, strangest night of all his desert experience. Sleep was impossible. Rest was impossible. Inaction was impossible. Every breath seemed impossible of fulfilment. A pressure constricted Adam's lungs. The slow, gentle walk that he drove himself to take, which it was impossible to keep from taking, brought out a hot flood of sweat on his body, and the drops burned as they trickled down his flesh.

  "If the winds blow to-night!" he muttered, in irresistible dread.

  Something told him they would blow. To-night they would blow harder and hotter than ever before. The day of leaden fire had promised that. Nature had her midnight change to make in the elements. Time would not stand still. The universe prevailed on its inscrutable course; the planets burned; the suns blazed upon their earths; and this ball of rock on which Adam clung, groaning with the other pygmies of his kind, whirled and hurtled through space, now dark and then light, now hot and then cold slave to a blazing master ninety million miles away. It was all so inconceivable, inscrutable, unbelievable.

  There came a movement of air fanning his cheek, emphasising the warmth. He smelled anew the dry alkali dust, the smoky odour, almost like brimstone. The hour was near midnight and the death-like silence brooded no more. A low moan, as of a lost soul, moved somewhere on the still air. Weird, dismal, uncanny, it fitted the spectral shadows and shapes around him, and the night with its mystery. No human sound, though it resembled the mourn of humanity! A puff of hot wind struck Adam in the face, rushed by, rustling the dead and withered brush, passed on to lull and die away. It seemed to leave a slow movement in the still air, a soft, restless, uneasy shifting, as of an immense volume becoming unsettled, Adam knew. Behind that sudden birth of life the dead air pressed the furious blasts of hell--the midnight furnace wind of Death Valley.

  Adam listened. How strange, low, sad the moan! His keen ears, attuned to all varieties of desert sound, seemed to fill and expand. The moan swelled to a low roar, lulling now, then rising. Like no sound he had ever heard before, it had strange affinity with the abyss of shadows. Suddenly the air around Adam began a steady movement northward. Its density increased, or else the movement, or pressure behind, made it appear so. And it grew swift, until it rustled the brush. Down in the valley the roar swelled like the movement of a mighty storm through a forest. When the gale reached the gateway below Adam it gave a hollow bellow.

  The last of the warm, still air was pressed beyond Adam, apparently leaving a vacuum, for there did not appear to be air enough to breathe. The roar of wind sounded still quite distant, though now loud. Then the hot blast struck Adam--a burning, withering wind. It was as if he had suddenly faced an open furnace from which flames and sparks leaped out upon him. That he could breathe, that he lived a moment, seemed a marvel. Wind and roar filled the wide space between the slopes and rushed on, carrying sand and dust and even shadows with it. That blast softened in volume and had almost died away when another whooped up through the gateway, louder and stronger and hotter than its predecessor. It blew down Adam's sun shelter of brush and carried the branches rustling away. Then stormed contending tides of winds until, what with burning blasts and whirling dust devils and air thick with powdered salt and alkali, life b
ecame indeed a torment for Adam, man of the desert as he was.

  In the face of these furnace winds, tenacity of life had new meaning for Adam. The struggle to breathe was the struggle of a dying man to live. But Adam found that he could survive. It took labour, greater even than toiling through a sandstorm, or across a sun-scorched waste to a distant water-hole. And it was involuntary labour. His great lungs were not a bellows for him to open when he chose. They were compelled to work. But the process, in addition to the burn and sting, the incessant thirst, the dust-laden air, the hot skull-bone like an iron lid that must fly off, and the strange, dim, red starlight, the sombre red varying shadow, the weird rush and roar and lull--all these created heroic fortitude if a man was to endure. Adam understood why no human being could long exist in Death Valley.

  "She will not live through the night," muttered Adam, "But if she does, I think I'll take her away."

  While in the unearthly starlit gloom, so dimly red, Adam slowly plodded across to the Virey camp, that idea grew in his mind. It had augmented before this hour, only to faint at the strength of her spirit, but to-night was different. It marked a climax. If Magdalene Virey showed any weakening, any change of spirit, Adam knew he would have reached the end of his endurance.

  She would be lying or sitting on the stone bench. It was not possible to breathe inside the shack. Terrible as were the furnace winds, they had to be breasted--they had to be fought for the very air of life. She had not the strength to walk up and down, to and fro, through those endless hours.

  Adam's keen eyes, peering through the red-tinged obscurity, made out the dark shape of Virey staggering along back and forth like an old man driven and bewildered, hounded by the death he feared. The sight gave Adam a moment of fierce satisfaction. Strong as was the influence of Magdalene Virey, it could not keep down hate for this selfish and fallen man. Selfish beyond all other frailty of human nature! The narrow mind obsessed with self--the I and me and mine--the miserable littleness that could not forgive, that could not understand! Adam had pity even in his hate.

  He found the woman on the bench, lying prone, a white, limp, fragile shape, motionless as stone. Sitting down, he bent over to look into her face. Her unfathomable eyes, wide and dark and strained, stirred his heart as never before. They were eyes to which sleep was a stranger--haunted eyes, like the strange midnight at which they gazed out, supernaturally bright, mirroring the dim stars, beautiful as the waking dreams never to come true--eyes of melancholy, of unutterable passion, of deathless spirit. They were the eyes of woman and of love.

  Adam took her wasted hand and held it while waiting for the wind to lull so that she could hear him speak. At length the hot blast moved on, like the receding of a fire.

  "Magdalene, I can't stand this any longer," he said.

  "You mean--these winds--of hell?" she panted, in a whisper.

  "No. I mean your suffering. I might have stood your spiritual ordeal. Your remorse--your agony of loss of the daughter Ruth--your brave spirit defying Virey's hate...But I can't stand your physical torment. You're wasting away. You're withering--burning up. This hand is hot as fire--and dry as a leaf. You must drink more water...Magdalene, lift your head."

  "I--cannot," she whispered, with wan smile. "No--strength left."

  Adam lifted her head and gave her water to drink. Then as he laid her back another blast of wind came roaring through the strange opaque night. How it moaned and wailed around the huge boulders and through the brush! It was a dance of wind fiends, hounding the lost spirits of this valley of horrors. Adam felt the slow, tight tide of his blood called stingingly to his skin and his extremities, and there it burned. It was not only his heart and his lungs that were oppressed, but the very life of his body seemed to be pressing to escape through the pores of his skin--pressed from inward by the terrible struggle to survive and pressed back from outside by the tremendous blast of wind! The wind roared by and lulled to a moan. The wave of invisible fire passed on. Out there in the dim starlight Virey staggered back and forth under the too great burden of his fate. He made no sound. He was a spectre. Beyond the grey level of gloom with its strange shadows rose the immense slope of loose stones, all shining with dim, pale-red glow, all seemingly alive, waiting for the slide of the avalanche. And on the instant a rock cracked with faint ring, rolled with little hollow reports, mockingly, full of terrible and latent power. It had ominous answer in a slight jar of the earth under Adam's feet, perhaps an earthquake settling of the crust, and then the whole vast slope moved with a low, grating sound, neither roar nor crash, nor rattle. The avalanche had slipped a foot. Adam could have pealed out a cry of dread for this woman. What a ghastly fantasy the struggle for life in Death Valley! What mockery of wind and desert and avalanche!

  "Wansfell--listen," whispered the woman. "Do you hear--it passing on?"

  "Yes," replied Adam, bending lower to see her eyes. Did she mean that the roar of wind was dying away?

  "The stormy blast of hell--with restless fury--drives the spirits onward!" she said, her voice rising.

  "I know--I understand. But you mustn't speak such thoughts. You must not give up to the wandering of your mind. You must fight," implored Adam.

  "My friend--the fight is over--the victory is mine...I shall escape Virey. He possessed my body--poor weak thing of flesh!...but he wanted my love--my soul...My soul to kill! He'll never have either...Wansfell, I'll not live--through the night...I am dying now."

  "No--no!" cried Adam, huskily. "You only imagine that. It's only the oppression of these winds--and the terror of the night--this awful, unearthly valley of death. You'll live. The winds will wear out soon. If only you fight you'll live...And to-morrow--Magdalene, so help me God--I'll take you away!"

  He expected the inflexible and magnetic opposition of her will, the resistless power of her spirit to uplift and transform. And this time he was adamant. At last the desert force within him had arisen above all spiritual obstacles. The thing that called was life--life as it had been in the beginning of time. But no mockery or eloquence of refusal was forthcoming from Magdalene Virey. Instead, she placed the little ivory case, containing the miniature painting of her daughter Ruth, in Adam's hand and softly pressed it there.

  "But--if I should die--I want you to have this picture of Ruth," she said. "I've had to hide it from Virey--to gaze upon it in his absence. Take it, my friend, and keep it, and look at it until it draws you to her...Wansfell, I'll not bewilder you by mystic prophecies. But I tell you solemnly--with the clairvoyant truth given to a woman who feels the presence of death--that my daughter Ruth will cross your wanderer's trail--come into your life--and love you...Remember what I tell you. I see!...You are a young man still. She is a budding girl. You two will meet, perhaps in your own wastelands. Ruth is all of me--magnified a thousand times. More--she is as lovely as an unfolding rose at dawn. She will be a white, living flame...It will be as if I had met you long ago--when I was a girl--and gave you what by the nature of life was yours...Wansfell, you wakened my heart--saved my soul--taught me peace...I wonder how you did it. You were just a man...There's a falseness of life--the scales fell from my eyes one by one. It is the heart, the flesh, the bursting stream of red blood that count with nature. All this strife, this travail, makes toward a perfection never to be attained. But effort and pain, agony of flesh, and victory over mind make strength, virility...Nature loves barbarian women who nurse their children. I--with all my love--could not nurse my baby Ruth. It's a mystery no longer. Death Valley and a primitive man have opened my eyes. Nature did not intend people to live in cities, but in forests, as lived the Aryans of India, or like the savages of Brazilian jungles. Like the desert beasts, self-sufficient, bringing forth few of their kind, but better, stronger species. The weak perish. So should the weak among men...Ah! hear the roar! Another wind of death!...But I've said all...Wansfell, go find Ruth--find me in her--and--remember!"

  The rich voice, growing faint at the last, failed as another furnace blast came swooping up w
ith its dust and heat. Adam bowed his head and endured. It passed and another came. The woman lay with closed eyes and limp body and nerveless hands. Hours passed and the terrible winds subsided. The shadow of a man that was Virey swaying to and fro, like a drunken spectre, vanished in the shack. The woman slept. Adam watched by her side till dawn, and when the grey light came he could no more have been changed than could the night have been recalled. He would find the burros and pack them and saddle one for Magdalene Virey to ride; he would start to climb out of Death Valley and when another night fell he would have her safe on the cool mountain heights. If Virey tried to prevent this, it would mean the terrible end he merited. Adam gazed down upon the sleeping woman. How transparent, how frail a creature! She mystified Adam. She represented the creative force in life. Shep possessed that unintelligible and fatal thing in nature--the greatest, the most irresistible, the purest expression of truth, of what nature strove so desperately for--and it was beauty. Her youth, her error, her mocking acceptance of life, her magnificent spirit, her mother longing, her agony and her physical pangs, her awakening and repentance and victory--all were written on the pale face and with the indestructible charm of line and curve and classic feature constituted its infinite loveliness. She was a sleeping woman, yet she was close to the angels.

  Adam looked from her to the ivory case in his hand.

  "Her daughter Ruth--for me!" he said, wonderingly. "How strange if we met! If--if--But that's impossible. She was wandering in mind."

  He carried the little case to his camp, searched in his pack for an old silk scarf, and, tearing this, he carefully wrapped the gift and deposited it inside the leather money belt he wore hidden round his waist.

  "Now to get ready to leave Death Valley!" he exclaimed, in grim exultance.

  Adam's burros seldom strayed far from camp. This morning, however, he did not find them near the spring nor down in the notches of the mountain wall. So he bent his steps in the other direction. At last, round a corner of slope, out of sight of camp, he espied them, and soon had them trotting ahead of him.