by Zane Grey
“To be sure I was. I’d never forget you.”
“Wal, mebbe ’tis Ajax. I see these doggone gods so doggone much.”
They rode on, and he seemed a little less declamatory about the significance of cliffs and stones. Nevertheless, he had a label for each and every one. Virginia had been there before, and of course the Garden was like an old book to Ethel.
“Now looka thar,” suddenly spoke up their guide, once more animated. “Thar’s the Wild Stallion. Thet one fetches all my patrons. It’s shore the beautifulest picture of a great wild hoss turned into a stone god. See his noble haid an’ his flyin’ mane, an’ thet wind hole which is his eye.”
This was too much for Virginia. The rock designated resembled nothing alive, let alone the wondrous beauty of a wild horse.
“That?” she burst out. “It’s a dumpy red rock. No more.”
In his amazement the imaginative guide dropped his whip. His lean jaw dropped, too.
“Hey, wasn’t you deaf an’ dumb?” he ejaculated.
Ethel vented a silvery peal of laughter and leaped gaily out to the ground. Virginia followed, though less actively.
“No, I wasn’t deaf and dumb,” she retorted. “And I’m no tourist, either. I live on a ranch so big you could lose your old Garden in it. . . . Aren’t you ashamed, trying to fool people about these rocks?”
“Wal, by gum!”
“Wait for us, driver,” said Ethel. “And think up some more fakes. You sure are the bunk.”
“Reckon I be’n buncoed, too,” he returned, grinning. “I’ll bet four bits them four kids of yours is bunk. . . . Haw! Haw!”
Ethel mumbled something, what Virginia was unable to distinguish.
“Come, you kid,” she called to Virginia. “I’ll beat you to the top of the slide.”
Next day they went to Denver. And Virginia was once again in contact with the theater, the motion-picture, the department stores and restaurants of a city. While there she ascertained the name of a well-known mining engineer and contractor, with whom she made an appointment.
She found Mr. Jarvis a middle-aged man, a Westerner, shrewd and plain, and one inclined to inspire confidence.
“My errand may be absurd,” she explained, “but then again it may be important. That is for you to say.”
“I’m at your service, Miss Lundeen,” he replied, with interest.
Thereupon Virginia related as briefly as possible the circumstances connected with her last visit to Padre Mine.
“Now what I want to know,” she concluded, “is whether or not you suspect there might have been something queer about that mine.”
“Queer indeed,” he returned, almost with amusement. “If the facts you have told so clearly can be substantiated, it will lay bare something more than queer.”
“And what may that be?”
“Nothing more nor less than a plain crooked mining deal.”
“As I suspected,” returned Virginia, breathing quickly. “The gold was brought to the mine—planted there—and then blown up, so that it’d be scattered everywhere. All to deceive my father into believing it was a rich mine.”
“Exactly. May I ask, did he sell the mine?”
“No.”
“Then he invested money in the operating of it?”
“Yes. I have no idea how much. But altogether I imagine several hundred thousand went into that mine.”
The engineer lifted his brows in surprise. “So much! Well, this is worth digging into. Of course the mine is abandoned now?”
“Yes, for two years and more. Now, Mr. Jarvis, if you will give me reasonable assurance that you can prove whether or not this was a crooked deal, I will engage you to investigate.”
“If the mine is as accessible to me as to your cowboy prospector, I can absolutely give you proof.”
“Can it be done quickly?”
“How far from town is this mine?”
“I can take you there in less than two hours from Las Vegas.”
“Then half a day will be ample.”
“Very well. Consider it settled,” rejoined Virginia, rising. “I’ll be going home soon. I’ll choose an opportune time—for I want it to be secret, so we are not intercepted—wire you to come on, meet you upon your arrival and take you directly to the mine.”
Chapter Thirteen
THE sheep were grazing south. Every day they made a few leisurely miles, keeping to the grass and sage benches, never straying far from the watercourses.
November heralded the beginning of winter in that latitude, but only toward the high slopes was the weather severe. Old Baldy had put on his white cap, and there were patches of snow along the black-fringed rims of the battlements. The wind whipped down from the heights, bitter cold and mournful at night, keen across the bright steely desert at dawn, and lulling and tempering through the noon hours.
The sheep route, over which the Mexicans had driven their herds for a hundred years and more, gradually drew down and away from the mountains, southward toward the vast open, with dim purple ranges in the distance.
At sunset the shepherds with their dogs rounded the flocks into a natural corral, a protective corner of canyon, or under the lee of a ledge, and there passed the night, to leisurely move on again at sunrise. Since the failure of cattle on the range there was grazing in abundance, but the sheep had to be worked down into lower and warmer country. This old custom had worn a rut in the commerce of the state, as it had worn broad trails up and down the desert.
The last of these widely separated bands of sheep to leave the uplands of San Luis halted late one afternoon at Gray Rocks, far out on the windy plain.
The shepherd was a white man, and he had a Mexican lad as assistant, and four dogs. He moved with extreme weariness, this man, as he unpacked the two burros and turned them loose. The lad was active, and with the dogs drove the pattering, baaing flock into the wide notch of a low gray broken cliff.
A few scraggy cedars marked this camp site, old trees devoid of sheaths of gray bark and gnarled dead branches so characteristic of the species. This stripping attested to past camp fires, and yet to the regard with which the lonely shepherds held trees on the desert.
The shepherd threw the rope of his little peak tent over a limb and pulled it up, and tied the rope to the trunk. Then he rested a moment, dark face lowered, a hand on his breast. Next he unrolled his bed, consisting of some sheepskins and a blanket, which he spread inside the tent. After that he opened the other pack and spread its contents of utensils and bags upon a canvas.
Meanwhile the Mexican lad returned with an armload of bits of dead sage, and weed roots, and sticks of cottonwood. He whistled while he lighted a fire, but he did not talk. Next he picked up a little black bucket and pot, and went off down the slope for water, with one of the dogs at his heels. Soon he returned, whistling the few notes of a Spanish tune.
It was evident that the white shepherd was about at the end of his tether, for that day at least. The lad saw it and was quick to help prepare the meal, where he was permitted. Presently the coffee-pot steamed and the sheep meat sizzled in the pan. There were also dried fruit heated in water, and hard biscuits which were warmed on a rock beside the fire. Soon, then, the shepherds sat to their frugal meal, generous only in supply of meat. And they ate hungrily and drank thirstily, while the lean shaggy dogs stood around with shining eyes to beg for bones. They were not neglected. When the meal ended the man washed the utensils and the boy wiped them dry.
Meanwhile the sun had set stormily amid dusky and dull red clouds far down in the west. The weird lights of the desert began to darken, and far behind, the mountain range stood up black as ebony, sharp and bold against the cold sky. One by one pale stars shone out, blinking, obscure, aloof. The sheep bleated, and the cold wind tore through the cedars.
The lad spread his sheepskins under the tree, and rolled in his blanket upon them. One of the dogs, evidently young, curled close to him. The others had gone out to guard the flock.
/> The white shepherd sat by the fire and fed bits of sage and dead sticks to the glowing bed of coals. His hands were dark and lean like his face, that a month’s growth of beard did not hide. The flickering blaze lighted somber hollow eyes that found ghosts in the opal embers, and ever and anon gazed out over the melancholy desert to see nothing there. He had a racking cough and it appeared he could not warm his palms enough.
Night fell, growing colder, and the desert lay black under the hazy sky and wan stars. Coyotes raised their hue and cry, and the wary dogs yelped their menace. A lonesome owl hooted from the recesses of the rocks; faint rustlings came from the sage; a rush of wings overhead attested to the passage of an invisible bird of the night.
These sounds mitigated the pressure of the solitude, which lay like a thick mantle over the earth. They made it bearable to the man who was scarcely conscious of any save physical agonies. At last all the sticks were burned. The fire died down. Still he lingered over the ruddy embers, from which sparks flew away on the wind, to die out in the blackness.
When the red faded out of the fire he crawled into the little tent, and wearily stretched his aching body upon the sheepskins, and covered himself with the blanket. He did not remove even his hat, which perhaps he had forgotten. And he groaned: “O God—O God!”
The sleep of exhaustion ended his tortures. And inside his tent the desert night increased its somber mystery, its weird voice on the wind, its staccato alarms of prowling coyotes, its bleak and ruthless solitude.
Clifton Forrest had been a month on the desert. Sunset of that day in which he had horsewhipped Malpass, and had been made an outcast by his father, found him at the hacienda of Don Lopez, a rancher outside of San Luis. There he spent the night, grateful for succor he felt would be denied him by people of his own color. And the next day he became the shepherd of a Mexican’s flock, at a wage of a few cents a day.
The world had about come to an end for Clifton. But the beating he had given Malpass had no place in his remorse. His heart was weighed down because his natural and unfortunate subjection to passion had been a betrayal of the woman he loved, who owed to him the loss of parents and home. She had trusted him—she had appealed to him alone of all her friends—she might one day, if he had proved worthy, have reciprocated in some degree his love. And he had failed her. What avail to blame endlessly that cursed Malpass and his own hot jealousy? He had been weak. His manhood was gone. And, perhaps as reprehensible, he had added to his mother’s burden of sorrow.
So he had taken to the lonely reaches of the desert, as a winter shepherd. The constant movement and the labor of this job were beyond his strength. Three days after leaving San Luis his remorse and grief had been overshadowed by the horror of old bodily pangs, which soon augmented into agonies. Cottonwoods and Virginia Lundeen and his mother became dim phantoms back in a past that was gone. Before him stretched the naked shingles of the desert, the brutal destroying ruthlessness of which he welcomed, but which brought back the rend of nerve, the ache of bone, the torture of muscle, the hell of physical suffering without making an end of him. He would lie for half the night in misery, but at dawn he would get up and go on. He fell in the trails, but he rose and stumbled on. Then at the worst of his collapse he lay for days on his back, tended by the faithful Mexican lad. But he did not die and he could not surrender. He crawled out to plod on behind the sheep for a half day, and the next he went farther, until as the days passed he reached a full one in travel again—ten terrible hours that brought him to Gray Rocks, a resting and grazing point for the sheep on the southern drive.
November dawn on the desert came reluctantly, gray and slowly brightening, to diffuse a pale rose along the eastern skyline, and turn to the yellow flare of sunrise.
Clifton saw it through the open flap of his tent. Another day! He had never moved during the night and his feet were like clods of cold lead. To start to arise was a horrible wrench—on one elbow, then his hand, a lift of back that had to be accomplished with gritted teeth, a turn of body which was the worst, then on hands and knees, and at last up, though bowed like an old man.
Yet this morning he proved something that had haunted him with mocking insistence—there had come an appreciable difference in the length of time, the terror of effort, the reflux of pain that it cost him to arise.
He had not prayed for that. He had hardly wanted it. But as he faced the cold gray monotonous waste, stretching and rolling and breaking away, lonely, barren, lifeless, magnificent in its isolation, appalling in its desolation, stupendous in its distances and beautiful with all the strange somber mystery of the desert, he felt the link between his unquenchable instinct to survive and a spiritual consciousness stronger than anything in primal nature. While there was life there was hope, good, truth, joy, and God. It came to him. He could not deny it. His bitterness was of no avail. The pagan specter that had hovered like a shadow on his trail faded away.
Clifton began the tasks of the day, lighter here by reason of the fact that there was to be a break in the drive south, a two-day stop at Gray Rocks.
“Buenos días, señor,” said the Mexican lad, in his soft liquid accents, as he came with his arms full of firewood.
Clifton discarded his limited Spanish and spoke to the boy in his own tongue. A subtle change affected him. Nevertheless, he went at his camp tasks with slow guarded movements. The lean dogs came down to sit on their haunches and watch him. They were ragged, thin mongrel canines, bred by the Indians and trained by Mexicans, antagonistic to white men. It had been the province of Julio to govern these shepherd dogs, so that Clifton had made no attempt to lessen their animosity. Julio was a son of Don Lopez, and had been brought up with the dogs and the sheep.
Clifton saw them all less aloofly this morning. They had accepted him. Why had he not accepted them? He spoke to the dogs. How clear-eyed, watchful, knowing! Were they only hungry beasts?
The camp fire was a comfort. It sent up a thin column of fragrant smoke—the scent of burning sage. It crackled and blazed, and burned red. It warmed Clifton’s cold feet and took the sting out of his fingers. The water left in the pan had become solid ice. All around, the sage and brittle-bush and creeping vines glistened with silvery frost. What would the desert have been without fire? The earliest man-creatures must have developed in a tropic clime.
After breakfast the bleating, restless sheep were released. With a tiny trampling roar they poured in a woolly stream down out of the rocky fastness, to spread out over the shallow wash. They nipped the grass, the weeds, the brush, and the sage.
In number the flock approached three thousand, a very large one, especially to belong to a Mexican. But as food and water were abundant, two shepherds with trained dogs could easily care for the flock, their main duty being vigilance. Straggling sheep sometimes got lost in the brush, to become prey for coyotes, and wildcats and cougars that occasionally stole down from the cliffs, and a wolf now and then that came from out the desert.
Julio carried a light rifle and always ranged out at the fore of the grazing flock, accompanied by the young dog. Clifton, with a heavier rifle, which had been a burden, followed in the rear, keeping to high places, always watchful, true to the trust imposed in him. The other three dogs, older, marvelously trained, did not require to be ordered about. They knew their work. Seldom could a sheep straggle away from the main flock into the sage. When one did it was promptly chased back.
Grazing of sheep was slow, as far as travel was concerned. Clifton had to walk and stand and sit to suit their convenience. Over barren ground they were driven consistently until good grazing was again encountered.
On cold mornings like this one Clifton was hard put to it to keep from freezing. His blood was thin and apparently there was not much of it. The necessity of keeping continually in action was what had made it so desperately hard to stand up under this job. During the middle of sunny days, however, he could rest often. But back beneath the forbidding mountains there had been much cloudy and windy weather,
which had been the greatest factor in breaking him down.
Around Gray Rocks there was ample feed. Clifton chose a high point and patrolled it, his eye ever alert for prowling beasts. Sometimes, despite the vigilance of the shepherds, a lamb would be snatched by a coyote and carried off. Usually, however, in daylight the dogs kept the flock condensed and safe from depredations.
He had a bitter few hours before the sun offered him a respite. Still he watched even while he rested, for at this season cottontail rabbits were wholesome eating and furnished welcome change from sheep meat. In fact a shepherd on that range developed into something of a hunter.
An hour’s scanning of this apparently barren desert would have surprised an inexperienced traveler. Clifton espied a gray fox stepping through the sage, and several hungry, sneaking coyotes afar, jack rabbits in plenty, several cottontails, one of which he shot, packrats and gophers, and some skulking animal which he could not name. Hawks sailed by, and ravens croaked from the rocks. A flock of blackbirds winged irregular flight down the wash; a lonely gray speckled bird flitted through the sage.
These living creatures, and the various aspects of the desert, had begun to interest Clifton. It was an indication of release from himself, fragmentary at first, then more and more frequent.
At high noon he drew from his pocket a hard biscuit and some chops, well cooked and salted. These constituted his midday meal. He gnawed the bones with a relish, suddenly to be struck with the fact that he was nearly always hungry, and particularly so this day. In the past he had not cared for mutton. The tastes of a man varied according to his needs.
The sheep, however, did not linger in one place. They nibbled and nipped while passing on. Soon Clifton had to follow. He caught up with the flock, found a rock to sit on, and basked in the warm sun for a few moments. Many times he repeated this. As the afternoon began to wane Julio led back in a circle, and at sundown they were approaching camp. And by dark Clifton was through with work for the day, warming his palms over the coals, weary and dark-faced again, prone to the dejection that accompanied fatigue. Yet this night he did not crawl to bed.
