Wanderer Of the Wasteland (1982)

by Grey, Zane

  "Don't I know!" exclaimed Genie, emphatically. "I've spent whole hours digging them out of my feet and legs. But how pretty the cholla shines! Only it doesn't tell the truth, does it, Wanny?"

  "Child, please don't call me Wanny. It's so--so silly," protested Adam.

  "It's not. No sillier than your calling me child! I'm nearly fifteen. I'm growing right out of my clothes."

  "Call me Adam."

  "No, I don't like that name. And I can't call you mister or father or brother."

  "But what's wrong with Adam?"

  "I read in mother's Bible about Adam and Eve. I hated her when the devil got into her. And I didn't like Adam. And I don't like the name Adam. You'd never have been driven from heaven."

  "I'm not so sure about that," said Adam, ruefully. "Genie, I was wicked when I was a--a young man."

  "You were! Well, I don't care. You'd never be tempted to disobey the Lord--not by Eve with all her stolen apples!"

  "All right, call me Wanny," returned Adam, and he made haste to change the subject. There were times when Genie with her simplicity, her directness, her curiosity, and her innocence, caused Adam extreme perplexity, not to say embarrassment. He remembered his own bringing up. It seemed every year his childhood days came back closer. And thrown as he was in constant companionship with this child of nature, he began to wonder if the sophisticated education of children, especially girls, as it had been in his youth, was as fine and simple and true to life as it might have been.

  Andreas Canyon yawned with wide mouth and huge yellow cliffs. Just beyond the mouth of the canyon and across the wide space from cliff to slope bloomed the most verdant and beautiful oasis of that desert region. Huge grey boulders, clean and old, and russet with lichen, made barricade for a clear stream of green water, as if to protect it from blowing desert sand. Yet there were little beaches of white sand, lined by coloured pebbles. Green rushes and flags grew in the water. Beyond the stream, on the side of the flat-rocked slope, lay a many-acred thicket of mesquite, impenetrable except for birds and beasts. The green of the leaves seem dominated by bronze colours of the mistletoe.

  The oasis proper, however, was the grove of cotton-woods, sycamores, and palms. How bright green the foliage of cottonwoods--and smooth white the bark of sycamores! But verdant and cool as it was under their shade, Adam and Genie always sought the aloof and stately palms, wonderful trees not native there, planted years and years before by the Spanish padres.

  "Oh, I love it here!" exclaimed Genie. "Listen to the palms whisper!"

  They stood loftily, with spreading green fanlike leaves at the tops, and all the trunks swathed and bundled apparently in huge cases of straw. These yellow sheaths were no less than the leaves that had died. As the palms grew the new leaves kept bursting from the tufted tops, and those leaves lowest down died and turned yellow.

  "Genie, your uncle seems a long time coming back for you," remarked Adam.

  "I hope he never comes," she replied.

  Adam was surprised and somewhat disconcerted at her reply, and yet strangely pleased.

  "Why?" he asked.

  "Oh, I never liked him and I don't want to go away with him."

  "Your mother said he was a good man--that he loved you."

  "Uncle Ed was good, and very kind to me. I--I ought be ashamed," replied Genie. "But he drank, and when he drank he kissed me--he put his hands on me. I hated that."

  "Did you ever tell your mother?" inquired Adam.

  "Yes. I told her. I asked her why he did that. And she said not to mind--only to keep away from him when he drank."

  "Genie, your uncle did wrong, and your mother did wrong not to tell you so," declared Adam, earnestly.

  "Wrong? What do you mean--wrong? I only thought I didn't like him."

  "Well, I'll tell you some day...But now, to go back to what you said about leaving--you know I'm going with you when your uncle comes."

  "Wanny, do you want that time to come soon?" she asked, wistfully.

  "Yes, of course, for your sake. You're getting to be a big girl. You must go to school. You must get out to civilisation."

  "Oh! I'm crazy to go!" she burst out, covering her face. "Yet I've a feeling I'll hate to leave here...I've been so happy lately."

  "Genie, it relieves me to hear you're anxious to go. And it pleases me to know you've been happy lately. You see I'm only a--a man, you know. How little I could do for you! I've tried. I've done my best. But at that best I'm only a poor old homeless outcast--a desert wanderer! I'm--"

  "Hush up!" she cried, with quick, sweet warmth. Swiftly she enveloped him, hugged him close, and kissed his cheek. "Wanny, you're grand!...You're like Taquitch--you're my Taquitch with face like the sun! And I love you--love you as I never loved anyone except my mother! And I hope Uncle Ed never comes, so you'll have to take care of me always."

  Adam gently disengaged himself from Genie's impulsive arms, yet, despite his embarrassment and confused sense of helplessness, he felt the better for her action. Natural, spontaneous, sincere, it warmed his heart. It proved more than all else what a child she was.

  "Genie, let me make sure you understand," he said, gravely. "I love you, too, as if you were my little sister. And if your uncle doesn't come I'll take you somewhere--find you a home. But I never--much as I would like to--never can take care of you always."

  "Why?" she flashed, with her terrible directness.

  Adam had begun his development of Genie by telling the truth; he had always abided by it; and now, in these awakening days for her, he must never veer from the truth.

  "If I tell you why--will you promise never to speak of it--so long as you live?" he asked, solemnly.

  "Never! I promise. Never, Wanny!"

  "Genie, I am an outcast. I am a hunted man. I can never go back to civilisation and stay."

  Then he told her the story of the ruin of his life. When he finished she fell weeping upon his shoulder and clung to him. For Adam the moment was sad and sweet--sad because a few words had opened up the dark, tragic gulf of his soul; and sweet because the passionate grief of a child assured him that even he, wanderer as he was, knew something of sympathy and love.

  "But, Wanny, you--could--go and--be--punished--and then--come back!" she cried, between sobs. "You'd--never--have to--hide--any more."

  Out of her innocence and simplicity she had spoken confounding truth. What a terrible truth! Those words of child wisdom sowed in Adam the seed of a terrible revolt. Revolt--yea, revolt against this horrible need to hide--this fear and dread of punishment that always and forever so bitterly mocked his manhood If he could find the strength to rise to the heights of Genie's wisdom--divine philosophy of a child!--he would no longer hate his shadowed wandering steps down the naked shingles and hidden trails of the lonely desert. But, alas! whence would come that strength? Not from the hills! Not from the nature that had made him so strong, so fierce, so sure to preserve his life I It could only come from the spirit that had stood in the dusky twilight beside a dying woman's side. It could come only from the spirit to whom a child prayed while kneeling at her mother's grave. And for Adam that spirit held aloof, illusive as the spectres of the dead, beyond his grasp, an invisible medium, if indeed it was not a phantom, that seemed impossible of reality in the face of the fierce, ruthless, inevitable life and death and decay of the desert. Could God be nature--that thing, that terrible force, light, fire, water, pulse--that quickening of plant, flesh, stone, that dying of all only to renew--that endless purpose and progress, from the first whirling gas globe of the universe, throughout the ages down to the infinitesimal earth so fixed in its circling orbit, so pitiful in its present brief fertility? The answer was as unattainable as to pluck down the stars, as hopeless as to think of the fleeting of the years, as mysterious as the truth of where man came from and whence he was to go.

  Snow on the grey old peak! It reminded Adam how, long ago, from far down the valley, he had watched the mountain crown itself in dazzling white. Snow on the heights mean
t winter that tempered the heat, let loose the storm winds; and therefore, down in the desert, comfort and swiftly flying days. Indeed, so swift were they that Adam, calling out sad and well-remembered words, "Oh, time, stand still here!" seemed to look at a few more golden sunsets and, lo! again it was spring. Time would not stand still! Nor would the budding, blossoming youth of Genie! Nor would the slow-mounting might of the tumult in Adam's soul!

  Then swifter than the past, another year flew by. Genie's uncle did not come. And Adam began to doubt that he would ever come. And the hope of Genie's, that he never would come, began insidiously to enter into Adam's thought. Again the loneliness, the solitude and silence, and something more he could not name, began to drag Adam from duty, from effort of mind. The desert never stopped its work, on plant, or rock, or man. Adam knew that he required another shock to quicken his brain, to stir again the spiritual need, to make him fight the subtle, all-pervading, ever-present influence of the desert.

  In all that time Adam saw but two white men, prospectors passing by down the sandy trails. Indians came that way but seldom. Across the valley there was an encampment, which he visited occasionally to buy baskets, skins, meat, and to send Indians out after supplies. The great problem was clothes for Genie. It was difficult to get materials, difficult for Genie to make dresses, and impossible to keep her from tearing or wearing or growing out of them. Adam found that Indian moccasins, and tough overalls such as prospectors wore, cut down to suit Genie, and woollen blouses she made herself, were the only things for her. Like a road runner she ran over the rocks and sand! For Genie, cactus was as if it were not! As for a hat, she would not wear one. Adam's responsibility weighed upon him. When he asked Genie what in the world she would wear when he took her out of the desert, to pass through villages and ranches and towns, where people lived, she naively replied, "What I've got on!" And what she wore at the moment was of course, the boyish garb that was all Adam could keep on her, and which happened just then to be minus the moccasins. Genie loved to scoop up the warm white sand with her bare brown feet, and' then to dabble them in the running water.

  "Well, I give up!" exclaimed Adam, resignedly. "But when we do get to Riverside or San Diego, where there's a store, you've got to go with me to buy girl's dresses and things--and you've got to wear them."

  "Oh, Wanny, that will be grand!" she cried, dazzled at the prospect. "But--let's don't go--just yet!"

  In the early fall--what month it was Adam could not be sure--he crossed the arm of the valley to the encampment of the Coahuilas. The cool nights and tempering days had made him hungry for meat. He found the Indian hunters at home, and, in fact, they had just packed fresh sheep Meat down from the mountain. They were of the same tribe as the old chief, Charley Jim, who had taught Adam so much of the desert during those early hard years over in the Chocolates. Adam always asked for news of Charley Jim, usually to be disappointed. He was a nomad, this old chieftain, and his family had his wandering spirit. Adam shouldered his load of fresh meat and took his way down out of the canyon where the encampment lay, to the well-beaten trail that zigzagged along the irregular base of the mountain.

  Adam rested at the dividing points of the trails. It was early in the day, clear and still. How grey and barren and monotonous the desert! All seemed dead. A strange, soft, creeping apathy came over Adam, not a dreaminess, for in his dreams he lived the past and invented the future, but a state wherein he watched, listened, smelled, and felt, all unconscious that he was doing anything. Whenever he fell into this trance, and was roused out of it, or came out of it naturally, then he experienced a wonderful sense of vague content. That feeling was evanescent. Always he longed to get it back, but could not.

  In this instant his quick eye caught sight of something that was moving. A prospector with a brace of burros--common sight indeed it was to Adam, though not for the last few years.

  The man was coming from the south, but outside of the main trail, for which, no doubt, he was heading. Adam decided to wait and exchange greetings with him. After watching awhile Adam was constrained to mutter "Well, if that fellow isn't a great walker, my eyes are failing!" That interested him all the more. He watched burros and driver grow larger and clearer. Then they disappeared behind a long, low swell of sand fringed by sage and dotted by mesquite. They would reappear presently, coming out behind the ridge at a point near Adam.

  Some minutes later he saw that the burros and driver had not only cleared the end of the ridge, but were now within a hundred yards of where he sat. The burros were trotting, with packs bobbing up and down. Only the old slouch hat of the prospector showed above the packs. Manifestly he was a short man.

  "Say, but he's a walker!" ejaculated Adam.

  Suddenly sight of that old slouch hat gave Adam a thrill. Then the man's shoulders appeared. How enormously broad! Then, as the burros veered to one side, the driver's whole stature was disclosed. What a stride he had, for a man so short! Almost he seemed as wide as he was long. His gait was rolling, ponderous. He wore old, grey, patched clothes that Adam wildly imagined he had seen somewhere.

  Suddenly he yelled at the burros: "Hehaw! Gedap!"

  That deep voice, those words, brought Adam leaping to his feet, transfixed and thrilling. Had he lost his mind? What trick of desert mirage or illusion! No--the burros were real--they kicked up the dust--rattled the pebbles in the sage; no--the man was real, however he seemed a ghost of Adam's past.

  "Dismukes!" shouted Adam, hoarsely.

  The prospector halted his long, rolling stride and looked. Then Adam plunged over sand and through sage. He could not believe his eyes. He must get his hands on this man, to prove reality. In a trice the intervening space was covered. Then Adam, breathless and aghast, gazed into a face that he knew, yet which held what he did not know.

  "Howdy, Wansfell! Thought I'd meet you sooner or later," said the man.

  His voice was unmistakable. He recognised Adam. Beyond any possibility of doubt--Dismukes! In the amaze and gladness of the moment Adam embraced this old saviour and comrade and friend--embraced him as a long-lost brother or as a prodigal son. Then Adam released him, with sudden dawning consciousness that Dismukes seemed to have no feeling whatever about this meeting.

  "Dismukes! I had to grab you--just to feel if it was you. I'm knocked clean off my pins," declared Adam, breathing hard.

  "Yes, it's me, Wansfell," replied Dismukes. His large, steady eyes, dark brown like those of an ox, held an exceeding and unutterable sadness.

  "Back on the desert? You!" exclaimed Adam. "Dismukes, then you lost your gold--bad luck--something happened--you never went to the great cities--to spend your fortune--to live and live?"

  "Yes, friend, I went," replied Dismukes.

  A great awe fell upon Adam. His keen gaze, cleared of the mist of amaze, saw Dismukes truly. The ox eyes had the shadow of supreme tragedy. Their interest was far off, as if their sight had fixed on a dim, distant mountain range of the horizon. Yet they held peace. The broad face had thinned. Gone was the dark, healthy bronze! And the beard that had once been thick and grizzled was now scant and white. The whole face expressed resignation and peace. Those wonderful wide shoulders of Dismukes appeared just as wide, but they sagged, and the old, tremendous brawn was not there. Strangest of all, Dismukes wore the ragged grey prospector's garb which had been on his person when Adam saw him last. There! the yellow stain of Death Valley clay--and darker stains--sight of which made Adam's flesh creep!

  "Ah! So you went, after all," replied Adam, haltingly. "Well! Well!...Let's sit down, old comrade. Here on this stone. I confess my legs feel weak...Never expected to see you again in this world!"

  "Wansfell, no man can ever tell. It's folly to think an' toil an' hope for the future."

  What strong, sad history of life revealed itself in that reply!

  "Ah!...I--But never mind what I think. Dismukes, you've not been on the desert long."

  "About a week. Outfitted at San Diego an' came over the mountain trail throu
gh El Campo. Landed in Frisco two weeks an' more ago. By ship from Japan."

  "Did you have these old clothes hid away somewhere?" inquired Adam. "I remember them."

  "No, I packed them wherever I went for the whole three years."

  "Three years! Has it been that long?"

  "Aye, friend Wansfell, three years."

  Adam gazed out across the desert with slowly dimming eyes. The wasteland stretched there, vast and illimitable, the same as all the innumerable times he had gazed. Solemn and grey and old, indifferent to man, yet strengthening through its passionless fidelity to its own task!

  "Dismukes, I want you to tell me where you went, what you did, why you came back," said Adam, with earnestness that was entreaty.

  Dismukes heaved a long sigh. He wagged the huge, shaggy head that was now grey. But he showed no more indication of emotion. How stolid he seemed--how locked in his aloofness!

  "Yes, I'll tell you," he said. "Maybe it'll save you somethin' of what I went through."

  Then he became lost in thought, perhaps calling upon memory, raking up the dead leaves of the past. Adam recalled that his own memory of Dismukes and the past brought note of the fact how the old prospector had loved to break his habit of silence, to talk about the desert, and to smoke his black pipe while he discoursed. But now speech did not easily flow and he did not smoke.

  "Lookin' back, I seem to see myself as crazy," began Dismukes. "You'll remember how crazy. You'll remember before we parted up there on the Mohave at that borax camp where the young man was--who couldn't drive the mules...Wansfell, from the minute I turned mr back on you till now I've never thought of that. Did you drive the ornery mules?"

  "Did I?" Adam's query was a grim assertion. "Every day for three months! You remember Old Butch, that grey devil of a mule. Well, Dismukes, the time came when he knew me. If I even picked up the long bull whip Old Butch would scream and run to lay his head on me."