by Zane Grey
He came abruptly upon a huge jumble of rocks, where he halted to listen. He heard running water, but no other sound. Even the leaves were still.
Whereupon he considered the situation. If he could not light a fire he was in for an uncomfortable night. The four Indians he had seen did not present any great obstacle, and if they had not joined others at this camp, he thought it just as well to rout them at once, instead of waiting for daylight. He wanted to be certain, however, before he alarmed the dogs. He had heard one and there would certainly be more. So with extreme caution he set out to circle the rocks.
It struck him presently, however, that he could not have been any cooler. He remembered the excitement caused by disturbances with the Indians years before, when he was a boy. A situation approaching this would have stopped his heart. But he had done this sort of thing under cannon fire that was like terrific thunder. He had done it alone, and in company with hundreds of men.
This was vaguely amusing, but at length it roused him. The night, the desert loneliness, the presence of unseen Indians, the stalking as of big game, contributed to a quickening of pulse and a tightening of his skin. It was action that created excitement.
A break in the bank of rock afforded him a place to enter and climb up to where he could see a glow of fire. But there was brush or cover on the flat top, so he slipped down on the right side, and worked around that way.
Presently he saw the firelight and moving dark figures, more, he was sure, than those of the Indians he had tracked. Carefully picking the best covert from which to watch them, he stole stealthily on, sank to his hands and knees, and halted in shadow.
With the first clear look his grimness turned to amazement. There were a dozen figures, perhaps, before him, but not one of them was an Indian. They were Mexicans, and indeed a poor, ragged, starved lot. One woman held a baby to her breast, and it did not look many days old. They were cooking a sheep, which task was manifestly of profound importance. They jabbered gaily, and some of them performed antics not unlike dancing. The idea of pursuit was the remotest from their minds. Half a dozen gaunt dogs crouched before the fire. No doubt the only scent they could catch then was that of roast sheep.
They had no horses, Clifton could see, and only the most meager of camp equipment. If there was a gun in the party, Clifton could not spy it out. The dark lean faces, the wild eyes, and straggling black hair, the brown bodies showing through rents in their clothes, the mouths opening and shutting, the tiny baby and the tender mother who looked hungry as a wolf herself—these stirred Clifton to pity.
A few rifle-shots would have scattered that group like a fox running among a covey of quail. They were going to have a feast. Clifton felt that he would not lift a hand to prevent it. Silently he crawled back, and rising behind the brush to shoulder his rifle he strode away across the desert.
“Poor peons!” muttered Clifton. “I wonder if God knows how full the world is of misery. . . . Old Don Lopez can afford to lose those sheep. If he can’t, I’ll pay for them.”
He headed for the dark walls that appeared to shed luster from the stars. Weary though he was, he did not slacken his pace until he was several miles up the slope, and then he chose a secluded spot rich in sage and hemmed round by outcropping rocks.
It amused Clifton to consider this protected nook, which would insure him comfort for part of the night at least, as a reward for his generous act. There was abundance of dead sage all around, which, broken into bits, would burn like coals. He collected a goodly supply, then built a little fire against a rock. He roasted pieces of meat on a sharpened stick, and did not fare ill. He fancied, though, that he would be thirsty on the morrow, before he found water.
With his hand-ax he cut enough live sage brush to make a soft bed. That done, he sat cross-legged before the little white-and-gold fire, and divided his gaze between that and the stars. Both were intimate tonight. He was no longer alone. He, who had been so utterly wretched a few months earlier, now experienced sweet sensations in extreme fatigue. He did not desire to be anywhere else. College, the war, government, friends, and family had all repudiated him, cast him out, like the mother fox the black cub in her litter. Bitterness had gone from his heart. There were things on the earth no one had ever dreamed of. What man needed was silence, loneliness, to be helpless in agony, to accept death while fighting for life, to be in contact with the earth and the elements. There was something infinite in the stars. Here the stars that once had been pitiless now spoke to him.
He put more fuel on the fire. How it sparkled, crackled, burst into tiny flames! He recalled a fire he had once sat over in a trench, with a stinking dead man lying on the ice a yard away. Fire, man, and ice had left him unmoved. Here, however, he was thankful in his soul. He had erected a temple.
The desert wind sprang up. It moaned over the tops of the rocks and the tips of the sage. He was snug there. He toasted his palms and heated the soles of his boots. Fire-worshiper by night, sun-worshiper by day! They gave birth to such beautiful thoughts. He marveled no more at Julio, who could sit all day and look, and be happy; nor at the range-rider who never forsook the range, nor the lonely prospector his hunt for gold. They could never lose. Because it was the seeing, the searching, that brought joy.
He lay down, and his heavy eyelids refused to open again. He fell asleep. When he awoke stars and sky had changed, dimmed, grayed over. His fire was dead ashes. He rebuilt it, and warmed himself again. The night was ghostly now, strange, with a wailing wind, and the coyotes seemed like lost spirits.
Once he nodded and fell asleep over the fire, and awakening with a start he stacked on all his store of wood, and stretched himself upon the sage.
In February the cottonwoods shed their leaves, carpeting the ground with gold. Clifton and Julio were returning from a visit to other shepherds in the valley. Some of these got supplies from the border, and readily shared them. Clifton carried two sacks, and Julio one. Clifton laughed when he reached camp. What was a heavy burden to him? Daily for two months he had packed logs of firewood to camp. He was stronger than ever before in his life. He gazed at his brown arms and hands as if they belonged to a stranger. He felt his powerful legs, hard as iron. The wounds he had sustained were as if they had never been.
What little winter Guadaloupe Springs ever knew in the run of the seasons had passed. The dawns were cold, crisp, but no longer did ice film over the still pools. Day by day the frost lessened, until that morning came when there was no glistening white on the logs.
It was getting time to think of the long return trip back to San Luis. The sheep were full and fat and lazy. Lambing season was near at hand, a little while after which, when the lambs were able to travel, the journey north would begin. Clifton was jubilant over prospects of a large number of lambs. How pleased old Don Lopez would be! He had predicted a poor season for reasons quite beyond Clifton.
More than once Clifton recalled the news given him by the three sheepmen who had told him Malpass was negotiating with Lopez for this flock of sheep. Whenever Clifton thought of this, it rankled. But somehow he had a conviction that he would never again clash with Malpass. Still many of his instincts had faded here in this red-walled solitude. Where was the crippled, embittered, hopeless, and atheistic soldier of last year? Clifton was confronted with the surety of a future, but he shirked the thought of it. He loved this nomad life. And upon his return to civilization, if he found the same things that he had contended with before his recovery, he would come back to life in the open. It was impossible now and then not to wonder about his mother, but he did not waste any feeling upon his other parent. Virginia had become a sad and beautiful memory, seldom recalled now. It had hurt to think of her, and gradually he had overcome the habit. By this time she would have divorced him.
Lambing season was late, but Clifton had the satisfaction of counting a thousand new sheep. What good business it would have been if he could have purchased this flock from Lopez.
“Grande! grande!” cried Julio,
clapping his hands.
Clifton shared his enthusiasm, and he enjoyed the sight of the little lambs. It seemed absurd, but no two lambs looked alike. At least Julio claimed they did not. Clifton, however, would not have cared for the responsibility of the mothers in this regard. The lambs were some variety of white and brown and black. Wholly black ones were rare indeed in this family. A few days after birth they were as lively as crickets. Clifton never tired of playing with them. One evening in camp he had a number he had picked out. There was a black one, with only the tail white. There was a white one with a brown and a black ear, a brown one with white face, and another with black feet. Some of them looked as if they were painted, especially one with a brown leg, a white leg, a black leg, and all the rest of him a combination of the three colors.
Clifton lingered at Guadaloupe because he was loath to leave the beautiful lonely place, and because the longer he stayed the stronger the lambs would be. Fortunately, he did not need to worry about grass and water. At first he would travel a day and then camp a day.
This planning somehow seemed to break his tranquillity, for when he once turned his steps northward, every step would bring him nearer to San Luis, to home, and to Virginia Lundeen.
But soon now he must return. The long two-month journey would seem short. Clifton pondered whether or not to give up this sheep-herding for Lopez. He did not like the thought of driving sheep near San Luis and Cottonwoods. On the other hand, however, he had grown to love both the flock and the free life in the open. At some future day he might accumulate a flock of his own.
The sheep range back of San Luis was open to automobilists and horsemen. He would always run the chance of meeting them, and that was not a pleasant anticipation. Clifton Forrest—returned soldier! One of the principals of the Lundeen-Forrest secret marriage! Cast off by his father! A herder of sheep! Divorced by Virginia Lundeen! He hated the idea of being the butt of such scandal. Especially the last! But for that certainty he might find the return bearable. Yet it was so utterly ridiculous for him to resent a divorce. What wild dreams he had entertained!
It was not conceivable that he could stay away permanently from his mother. Not during her lifetime! That was the strongest magnet to draw him back. So there was no use to deceive himself with false hopes of avoiding the embarrassment which would result. Sooner or later he would meet Malpass again; and he did not trust himself. He was now physically twice the man he had been when he went to war. He felt like flint charged with latent fire.
He had no illusions about Virginia’s being permanently forbidden her father’s house. As soon as Lundeen came to his senses and found out Virginia was her own mistress, then he would implore her to return to Cottonwoods. Nothing else was conceivable. To be sure, he would insist that Virginia divorce her undesirable husband. And Virginia could purchase freedom from persecution by breaking this marriage. Clifton could not think these thoughts without discovering that the ghost of his old self hung upon his steps like a shadow.
As he and Julio had been the last shepherds to come to Guadaloupe, so they were the last to leave. Julio became anxious and alarmed. “Mucho malo!” he would say, pointing to the sheep and the north.
“Mañana,” always replied Clifton, and at last realized he must start on the morrow.
That night there happened to be a full moon. The air was almost balmy, like spring at home. The valley was flooded with silver light. Clifton could only force himself to leave by promising himself that he would come back. He walked under the cottonwoods, listening to the soft ba-ba of the lambs and the tinkle of the bells, and the music of water flowing over the stones.
He tried to gauge the change, the growth in himself, the transformation that had been wrought. But it was impossible. He recalled the war with only pity for those who had caused it and for those who had endured it. His late ordeal of physical agony seemed like a hideous nightmare, gradually fading. He conceived that he might one day think of it without horror. He confessed to himself that it was love of Virginia Lundeen as much as the magic medicine of the desert that had worked a miracle. They were inseparable.
He seemed to feel himself more than human as he walked there in the lonely solitude. The earth, with its rocks, trees, sages, water, its strange leaven and strength, had gone into him. Moreover, there were also the beauty, the spirit, the nameless fulfillment of nature that forever forbade him mockery or revolt.
The moon soared white, and fleecy clouds crossed it, to make moving shadows on the valley. The sheep quieted down, and only the stream gave sound to the wilderness. How infinite and incomprehensible the heavens! How sweet, all-satisfying the sense of his presence completing that lonely scene! He asked no more of man or God.
Chapter Fifteen
EARLY in November Virginia returned to Las Vegas and took up her abode at the Castaneda. She had been so engrossed in her project to investigate the Padre Mine that she quite forgot circumstances likely to accrue when she arrived. It was a small town, and in half an hour everybody apparently had heard of her return. When she had answered the telephone a dozen or more times she realized that she had achieved a popularity that was almost notorious.
“Well, this is the limit,” she said, resignedly, as she sat down by the window. “I ought to have let Ethel come with me. Where was my head, anyhow?”
When she answered the telephone the next time she heard a familiar gruff voice that made her jump with surprise.
“Hello! Is this you, Virginia?”
“Yes. Who’s speaking, please?”
“Lundeen,” came the answer.
“Who?”
“Your father. . . . Don’t you know my voice?”
“Oh—father! Excuse me. I didn’t credit my ears. How are you?”
“Not any too damn good,” he growled.
“I always knew you weren’t. . . . How is mother? Have you heard from mother lately?”
“Yes. An’ I heah she’s some better.”
“That’s good. I’m very glad. She was always in better health in Atlanta.”
“An’ how’re you, Virginia?”
This was an amazing prelude to something, Virginia reasoned, and it sent a tingle over her.
“Me? Oh, I’m fine! Thank you for inquiring.”
“Reckon I’ll run down to see you,” he replied.
“You needn’t. I wouldn’t see you if I bumped into you on the street.”
“Ahuh! Wal, I sort of had a hunch you wouldn’t. So I called you up.”
“Pray, why should I?” inquired Virginia, with faint sarcasm.
“Virginia, I’m shore sorry aboot it all.”
“Indeed! What a pity! But it’s too late.”
“Lass, I’m not gettin’ any younger. An’ mother’s gone. She’ll never come back. I’ve a hunch I’ll never see her again. An’ I’m sort of lonely.”
“But you have your slick Señor Malpass,” returned Virginia, cruelly.
She heard him curse under his breath.
“Virginia, I’ll take you back if you’ll divorce Forrest.”
“Divorce Clifton!” she cried, as if in great amaze. “I couldn’t think of that. How can you ask?”
“But you don’t care for him!” expostulated Lundeen.
“Why, daddy darling, I just worship Clifton!” rejoined Virginia, tantalizingly.
“My Gawd! An’ I’ve lived to heah a Lundeen say that!”
After a long pause Virginia continued: “Well, is there any more I can tell you? I’m very busy.”
“Hold on. . . . Virginia, aren’t you hard up for money?”
“Indeed I am! But don’t let it worry you.”
“Wal, it does worry me. You never knew the value of money. You’ll be borrowing from the hotel, or the taxi-drivers—anybody.”
“Oh, so you think anybody would lend me money?”
“Shore. I reckon you’d be good at the bank for what you wanted. But I don’t like the idea, Virginia.”
“So you want to save your face by
sending me some?”
“Wal, if you put it that way.”
“Dad, I’d starve before I’d take two bits from you. Presently I’ll get a job here. Oh, I can do ’most anything from stenography to millinery. I might borrow some money and start a millinery store. But, if I’m not so much as I think I am, I could at least be a waitress. Reckon I’d be an attraction at the Harvey lunch-room here. Or——”
“Shut up! I’d buy the place an’ close it. Do you think I’d stand for a Lundeen——”
“Listen, papa,” interrupted Virginia, sweetly. “You forget I’m no longer a Lundeen. . . . I’m registered here at the hotel as Mrs. Clifton Forrest.”
Crash! He had slammed up the receiver. Virginia fell away from her end of the line breathless, excited, and exultant.
“That’ll do him for a spell. . . . Poor dad!—ready to crawl! If I can get anything on Malpass——Oh!
What can’t I hope for?”
Virginia’s task of unpacking suffered intervals of inaction when she stood idly gazing out of the window at the distant white-tipped range. Her father’s appeal had given the situation an unexpected turn. Anything might be possible now. The overthrow of Malpass, which she was planning and which was all she hoped for, now seemed but the beginning of the crucial step in her career.
She caught a glimpse of her face in the mirror and stared aghast. There was a glow in her cheeks, a half smile on her lips, a radiant light in her eyes long a stranger there. And these persisted when later she went out. She had no particular errand in mind, but she wanted to walk. The November air was cold; the leaves were gone from the trees; she saw the range bare and yellow, and snow on the peaks. Before she reached the park she encountered Gwen Barclay, one of her friends. Gwen’s greeting brought a blush to Virginia’s cheek and further augmented her high spirits. They talked a moment, and then parted with agreement to meet later. Virginia continued her walk, and returning to the business section of town, she met another of her old friends, Richard Fenton, who happened to be coming out of the bank.
