Wanderer of the Wasteland

by Grey, Zane

  “Well! … Oh, but I’m glad!” exclaimed Adam.

  “Yes. It sustains me … But I’ve worried so … My husband expected me—to take Genie out of the desert … I’ve worried about that money. Genie’s uncle—John Shaver is his name—he’s a good man. He loved her. He used to drink— but I hope the desert cured him of that. I think—he’ll be a father to Genie.”

  “Does he know about the gold that will be Genie’s?”

  “No. We never told him. My husband didn’t trust John— in money matters … Wansfell, if you’ll say you’ll go with Genie—when her uncle comes—and invest the money— until she’s of age—I will have no other prayer except for her happiness … I will die in peace.”

  “I promise. I’ll do my best,” he declared.

  The next time she spoke to him was that evening at dusk. Frogs were trilling, and a belated mockingbird was singing low, full-throated melodies. Yet these beautiful sounds only accentuated the solemn desert stillness.

  “Wansfell—you remember—once we talked of God,” she said, very low.

  “Yes, I remember,” replied Adam.

  “Are you just where you were—then?”

  “About the same, I guess.”

  “Are you sure you understand yourself?”

  “Sure? Oh no. I change every day.”

  “Wansfell, what do you call the thing in you—the will to tarry here? The manhood that I trusted? … The forgetful-ness of self? … What do you call this strength of yours that fulfilled my faith—that gave me to God utterly—that enables me to die happy—that will be the salvation of my child?”

  “Manhood? Strength?” echoed Adam, in troubled perplexity. “I’m just sorry for you—for the little girl.”

  “Ah yes, sorry! Indeed you are! But you don’t know yourself … Wansfell, there was a presence beside my bed—just a moment before I called you. Something neither light nor shadow in substance—something neither life nor death … It is gone now. But when I am dead it will come to you. I will come to you—like that … Somewhere out in the solitude and loneliness of your desert—at night when it is dark and still—and the heavens look down—there you will face your soul … You’ll see the divine in man … you’ll realize that the individual dies, but the race lives … You’ll have thundered at you from the silence, the vast, lonely land you love, from the stars and the infinite beyond—that your soul is immortal … That this Thing in you is God!”

  When the voice ceased, so vibrant and full at the close, so more than physical, Adam bowed his head, and plodded over the soft sand out to the open desert where mustering shadows enclosed him, and he toiled to and fro in the silence—a man bent under the Atlantean doubt and agony and mystery of the world.

  The next day Genie’s mother died.

  Long before sunrise of a later day Adam climbed to the first bulge of the mountain wall. On lofty heights his mind worked more slowly—sometimes not at all. The eye of an eagle sufficed him. Down below on the level, during these last few days, while Genie sat mute, rigid, stricken, Adam had been distracted. The greatest problem of his desert experience confronted him. Always a greater problem—always a greater ordeal—that was his history of the years. Perhaps on the heights might come inspiration. The eastern sky was rosy. The desert glowed soft and grey and beautiful. Grey lanes wound immeasurably among bronze and green spots, like islands in a monotonous sea. The long range of the Bernardinos was veiled in the rare lilac haze of the dawn, and the opposite range speared the deep blue of sky with clear black-fringed and snowy peaks. Far down the vast valley, over the dim ridge of the Chocolates, there concentrated a bright rose and yellow and silver. This marvelous light intensified, while below the wondrous shadows deepened. Then the sun rose like liquid silver, bursting to flood the desert world.

  The sunrise solved Adam’s problem. His kindness, his pity, his patience and unswerving interest, his argument and reason and entreaty, had all failed to stir Genie out of her mute misery. Nothing spiritual could save her. But Genie had another mother—nature—to whom Adam meant to appeal as a last hope.

  He descended the slope to the oasis. There, near a new-made grave that ran parallel with an old one, mossy and grey, sat Genie, clamped in her wretchedness.

  “Genie,” he called, sharply, intending to startle her. He did startle her. “I’m getting sick. I don’t have exercise enough. I used to walk miles every day. I must begin again.”

  “Then go,” she replied.

  “But I can’t leave you alone here,” he protested. “Some other bad men might come. I’m sorry. You must come with me.”

  At least she was obedient. Heavily she rose, ready to accompany him, a thin shadow of a girl, hollow-eyed and wan, failing every hour. Adam offered his hand at the stream to help her across. But for that she would have fallen. She left her hand in his. And they set out upon the strangest walk Adam had ever undertaken. It was not long, and before it ended he had to drag her, and finally carry her. That evening she was so exhausted she could not repel the food he gave her, and afterward she soon fell asleep.

  Next day he took her out again, and thereafter every morning and every afternoon, relentless in his determination, though his cruelty wrung his heart. Gentle and kind as he was, he yet saw that she fell into the stream, that she pricked her bare feet on cactus, that she grew frightened on the steep slopes, that she walked farther and harder every day. Nature was as relentless as Adam. Soon Genie’s insensibility to pain and hunger was as if it had never been. Whenever she pricked or bruised the poor little feet Adam always claimed it an accident; and whenever her starved little body cried out in hunger he fed her. Thus by action, and the forc- ing of her senses, which were involuntary, he turned her mind from her black despair. This took days and weeks. Many and many a time Adam’s heart misgave him, but just as often something else in him remained implacable. He had seen the training of Indian children. He knew how the mother fox always threw from her litter the black cub that was repugnant to her. The poor little black offspring was an outcast. He was soon weaned, and kicked out of the nest to die or survive. But if he did survive the cruel, harsh bitterness of strife and heat and thirst and starvation—his contact with his environment—he would grow superior to all the carefully mothered and nourished cubs. Adam expected this singular law of nature, as regarded action and contact and suffering, to be Genie’s salvation, provided it did not kill her; and if she had to die he considered it better for her to die of travail, of effort beyond her strength, than of a miserable pining away.

  One morning, as he finished his camp tasks, he missed her. Upon searching, he found her flat on the grassy bank of the stream, face downward, with her thin brown feet in the air. He wondered what she could be doing, and his heart sank, for she had often said it would be so easy and sweet to lie down and sleep in the water.

  “Genie, child, what are you doing?” he asked.

  “Look! the bees—the honeybees! They’re washing themselves in the water. First I thought they were drinking. But no! … They’re washing. It’s so funny.”

  When she looked up, Adam thrilled at sight of her eyes. If they had always been beautiful in shape and color, what were they now, with youth returned, and a light of the birth of wonder and joy in life? Youth had won over tragedy. Nature hid deep at the heart of all creation. The moment also had a birth for Adam—an exquisite birth of the first really happy moment of his long desert years.

  “Let me see,” he said, and he lowered his ponderous length and stretched it beside her on the grassy bank. “Genie, you’re right about the bees being funny, but wrong about what they’re doing. They are diluting their honey. Well, I’m not sure, but I think bees on the desert dilute their honey with water. Watch! … Maybe they drink at the same time. But you see—some of them have their heads turned away from the water, as if they meant to back down … Bees are hard to understand.”

  “By the great horn spoon!” ejaculated Genie, and then she laughed.

  Adam echoed her laugh.
He could have shouted or sung to the skies. Never before, indeed, had he heard Genie use such an expression, but the content of it was precious to him. It revealed hitherto unsuspected depths in her, as the interest in bees hinted of an undeveloped love of nature.

  “Genie, do you care about bees, birds, flowers—what they do—how they live and grow?”

  “Love them,” she answered, simply.

  “You do! Ah, that’s fine! So do I. Why, Genie, I’ve lived so long on the desert, so many years! What would I have done without love of everything that flies and crawls and grows?”

  “You’re not old,” she said.

  “It’s good you think that. We’ll be great pards now … Look, Genie! Look at that hummingbird! There, he darts over the water. Well! What’s he doing?”

  Adam’s quick ear had caught the metallic hum of tiny, swift wings. Then he had seen a hummingbird poised over the water. As he called Genie’s attention it hummed away. Then, swift as a glancing ray, it returned. Adam could see the blur of its almost invisible wings. As it quivered there, golden throat shining like live fire, with bronze and green and amber tints so vivid in the sunlight, it surely was worthy reason for a worship of nature. Not only had it beauty, but it had singular action. It poised, then darted down, swift as light, to disturb the smooth water, either with piercing bill or flying wings. Time and again the tiny bird performed this antic. Was the diminutive-winged creature playing, or drinking, or performing gyrations for the edification of a female of his species, hidden somewhere in the overhanging foliage? Adam knew that some courting male birds cooed, paraded, strutted, fought before the females they hoped to make consorts. Why not a hummingbird?

  “By your great horn spoon, Genie!” exclaimed Adam. “I wonder if that’s the way he drinks.”

  But all that Adam could be sure of was the beautiful opal body of the tiny bird, the marvelous poise as it hung suspended in air, the incredibly swift darts up and down, and the little widening, circling ripples on the water. No, there was more Adam could be sure of, and Genie’s delight proved the truth of it—and that was how sure the harvest of thought, how sure the joy of life which was the reward for watching.

  One morning when Adam arose to greet the sunrise he looked through the gap between the trees, and low down along the desert floor he saw a burst of yellow. At first he imagined it to be a freak of sunlight or reflection, but he soon decided that it was a paloverde in blossom. Beautiful, vivid, yellow gold, a fresh hue of the desert spring. May had come. Adam had forgotten the flight of time. What bittersweet stinging memory had that flushing paloverde brought back to him! He had returned to the desert land he loved best, and which haunted him.

  Genie responded slowly to the Spartan training. She had been frail, at best, and when grief clamped her soul and body she had sunk to the verge. The effort she was driven to, and the exertion needful, wore her down until she appeared merely skin and bones. Then came the dividing line between waste and repair. She began to mend. Little by little her appetite improved until at last hunger seized upon her. From that time she grew like a weed. Thus the forced use of bone and muscle drove her blood as Adam had driven her, and the result was a natural functioning of physical life. Hard upon that change, and equally as natural, came the quickening of her mind. Healthy pulsing blood did not harbor morbid grief. Action was constructive; grief was destructive.

  Adam, giving himself wholly to this task of rehabilitation, added to his relentless developing of Genie’s body a thoughtful and interesting appeal to her mind. At once he made two discoveries—first, that Genie would give herself absorbingly to any story whatsoever, and secondly, that his mind seemed to be a full treasure house from which to draw. He who had spoken with so few men and women on the desert now was inspired by a child.

  He told Genie the beautiful Indian legend of Taquitch as it had been told to him by Oella, the Coahuila maiden who had taught him her language.

  When he finished Genie cried out: “O, I know. Taquitch is up on the mountain yet! In summer he hurls the lightning and thunder. In winter he lets loose the storm winds. And always, by day and night, he rolls the rocks.”

  “Yes, Genie, he’s there,” replied Adam.

  “Why did he steal the Indian maidens?” she asked, won-deringly.

  Genie evolved a question now and then that Adam found difficult to answer. She had the simplicity of an Indian, and the inevitableness, and a like ignorance of the so-called civilization of the white people.

  “Well, I suppose Taquitch fell in love with the Indian maidens,” replied Adam, slowly.

  “Fell in love. What’s that?”

  “Didn’t your mother ever tell you why she married your father?”

  “No.”

  “Why do you think she married him?”

  “I suppose they wanted to be together—to work—and go to places, like they came west when they were sick. To help each other.”

  “Exactly. Well, Genie, they wanted to be together because they loved each other. They married because they fell in love with each other. Didn’t you ever have Indians camp here, and learn from them?”

  “Oh, yes, different tribes have been here. But I didn’t see any Indians falling in love. If a chief wanted a wife he took any maiden or squaw he wanted. Some chiefs had lots of wives. And if a brave wanted a wife he bought her.”

  “Not much falling in love there,” confessed Adam, with a laugh. “But, Genie, you mustn’t think Indians can’t love each other. For they can.”

  “I believe I’ve seen birds falling in love,” went on Genie, seriously. “I’ve watched them when they come to drink and wash. Quail and roadrunners, now—they often come in pairs, and they act funny. At least one of each pair acted funny. But it was the pretty one—the one with a topknot that did all the falling in love. Why?”

  “Well, Genie, the male, or the man-bird, so to speak, always has brighter colors and crests and the like, and he—he sorts of shines up to the other, the female, and shows off before her.”

  “Why doesn’t she do the same thing?” queried Genie. “That’s not fair. It’s all one-sided.”

  “Child, how you talk! Of course love isn’t one-sided,” declared Adam, getting bewildered.

  “Yes, it is. She ought to show off before him. But I’ll tell you what—after they began to build a nest I never saw any more falling in love. It’s a shame. It ought to last always. I’ve heard Mother say things to Father I couldn’t understand. But now I believe she meant that after he got her—married her—he wasn’t like he was before.”

  Adam had to laugh. The old discontent of life, the old mystery of the sexes, the old still, sad music of humanity spoken by the innocent and unknowing lips of this child. How feminine! The walls of the enclosing desert, like those of an immense cloister, might hide a woman all her days from the illuminating world, but they could, never change her nature.

  “Genie, I must be honest with you,” replied Adam. “I’ve got to be parents, brother, sister, friend, everybody to you. And I’ll fall short sometimes in spite of my intentions. But I’ll be honest … And the fact is, it seems to be a sad truth that men and man-birds, and man-creatures generally, are all very much alike. If they want anything, they want it badly. And when they fall in love they do act funny. They will do anything. They show off, beg, bully, quarrel, are as nice and sweet as—as sugar; and they’ll fight, too, until they get their particular wives. Then they become natural—like they were before. It’s my idea, Genie, that all the wives of creation should demand always the same deportment that won their love. Don’t you agree with me?”

  “I do, you bet. That’s what I’ll have … But will I ever be falling in love?”

  The eyes that looked into Adam’s then were to him as the wonder of the world.

  “Of course you will. Someday, when you grow up.”

  “With you?” she asked, in dreamy speculation.

  “Oh, Genie! not me. Why—I—I’m too old!” he ejaculated. “I’m old enough to be your da
ddy.”

  “You’re not old,” she replied, with a finality that admitted of no question. “But if you were—and still like you are, what difference would it make?”

  “Like I am! Well, Genie, how’s that?” he queried, curiously.

  “Oh, so big and strong! You can do so much with those hands. And your voice sort of—of quiets something inside me. When I lie down to sleep, knowing you’re there under the cottonwood, I’m not afraid of the dark … And your eyes are just like an eagle’s. Oh, you needn’t laugh! I’ve seen eagles. An Indian here once had two. I used to love to watch them look. But then their eyes were never kind like yours … I think when I get big I’ll go falling in love with you.”

  “Well, little girl, that’s a long way off,” said Adam, divided between humor and pathos. “But, let’s get back to natural history. A while ago you mentioned a bird called a roadrunner. That’s not as well known a name among desert men as chaparral cock. You know out in the desert there are no roads. This name roadrunner comes from a habit—and it’s a friendly habit—of the bird running along the road ahead of a man or wagon. Now the roadrunner is the most wonderful bird of the desert. That is saying a great deal. Genie, tell me all you know about him.”

  “Oh, I know all about him,” declared Genie, brightly. “There’s one lives in the mesquite there. I see him every day, lots of times. Before you came he was very tame. I guess now he’s afraid. But not so afraid as he was … Well, he’s a long bird, with several very long feathers for a tail. It’s a funny tail, for when he walks he bobs it up and down. His colour is speckled—grey and brown and white. I’ve seen dots of purple on him, too. He has a topknot that he can put up and lay down, as he has a mind to. When it’s up it shows some gold color, almost red underneath. And when it’s up he’s mad. He snaps his big bill like—like—oh, I don’t know what like, but it makes you shiver. I’ve never seen him in the water, but I know he goes in, because he shakes out his feathers, picks himself, and sits in the sun. He can fly, only he doesn’t fly much. But, oh, how he can run! Like a streak! I see him chase lizards across the sand. You know how a lizard can run! Well, no lizard ever gets away from a roadrunner. There’s a race—a fierce little tussle in the sand—a snap! snap!—and then old killer roadrunner walks proudly back, carrying the lizard in his bill. If it wasn’t for the way he kills and struts I could love him. For he was very tame. He used to come right up to me. But I never cared for him as I do for other birds.”