by Grey, Zane
“From Paris I went to Rome, an’ there a queer state of mind came to me. I could look at temples an’ old ruins without even seein’ them—with my mind on my own country. All this travel idea, seein’ and learnin’ an’ doin’ changed so that it was hateful. I cut out Egypt, an’ I can’t remember much of India an’ Japan. But when I got on ship bound for Frisco I couldn’t see anythin’ for a different reason, an’ that was tears. I ’d come far to find joy of life, an’ now I wept tears of joy because I was homeward bound. It was a great an’ splendid feeling!
“The Pacific isn’t like the Atlantic. It’s vast an’ smooth an’ peaceful, with swells like the mile-long ridges of the desert. I didn’t get seasick. An’ on that voyage I got some rest. Maybe the sea is like the desert. Anyway, it calmed me, an’ I could think clear once more. As I walked the deck by day, or hung over the rail by night, my yearnin’s an’ dreams came back. When I reached Frisco I ’d take a train for the Middle West, an’ somewhere I ’d buy the green ranch an’ settle down to peace an’ quiet for the rest of my life. The hope was beautiful. I believed in it. That wild desire to search for the joy of life had to be buried. I had been wrong about that. It was only a dream—a boy’s dream, on the hope of which I had spent the manhood of my best years. Ah! it was bitter to realize that. I—who had never given in to defeat … But I conquered my regret because I knew I had just mistaken what I wanted. An’ it was not wholly too late! … Wansfell, you’ve no idea of the size of the old earth. I’ve been round it. An’ that Pacific! Oh, what an endless ocean of waters! It seemed eternal, like the sky. But—at last—I got to—Frisco.”
Here Dismukes choked and broke down. The deep, rolling voice lost its strength for a moment. He drew a long, long breath that it hurt Adam to hear.
“Wansfell, when my feet once more touched land it was as though I ’d really found happiness,” presently went on Dis-mukes, clearing his throat of huskiness. “I was in the clouds. I could have kissed the very dirt. My own, my native land! … Now for the last leg of the journey—an’ the little farm—the home to be—friends to make—perhaps a sweet-faced woman an’ a child! Oh, it was as glorious as my lost dreams!
“But suddenly somethin’ strange an’ terrible seized hold of me. A hand as strong as the wind gripped my heart … The desert called me! … Day an’ night I walked the streets. Fierce as the desert itself I fought. Oh, I fought my last an’ hardest fight! … On one hand was the dream of my life— the hope of a home an’ happiness—what I had slaved for. Forty years of toil! On the other hand the call of the desert! Loneliness, solitude, silence, the white, hot days, the starlit nights, the vast open desert, free and peaceful, the grey wastes, the colored mountains, sunrise and sunset. Ah! The desert was my only home. I belonged to the silence an’ desolation. Forty years a wanderer on the desert, blindly seekin’ for gold! But, oh, it was not gold I wanted! Not gold! Nor fortune! That was my dream, my boyish dream. Gold did not nail me to the desert sands. That was only my idea. That was what brought me into the wastelands. I misunderstood the lure of the desert. I thought it was gold, but, no! For me the desert existed as the burrow for the fox. For me the desert linked my strange content to the past ages. For me the soul of the desert was my soul … I had to go back! … I could live nowhere else … Forty years! My youth—my manhood! … I’m old now—old! My dreams are done … Oh, my God! … I HAD TO COME BACK!”
Adam sat confounded in grief, in shock. His lips were mute. Like a statue he gazed across the wasteland, so terribly magnified, so terribly illumined by the old prospector’s revelation. How awful the gigantic red rock barriers! How awful the lonely, limitless expanse of sand! The eternal grey, the eternal monotony!
“Comrade, take the story of my life to heart,” added Dis-mukes. “You’re a young man still. Think of my forty years of hell, that now has made me a part of the desert. Think of how I set out upon my journey so full of wild, sweet hope! Think of my wonderful journey, through the glitterin’ cities, round the world, only to find my hope a delusion … A desert mirage!”
“Man, I cannot think!” burst out Adam. “I am stunned … Oh, the pity of it—the sickening, pitiless fatality! Oh, my heart breaks for you! … Dismukes, of what use is hope? Oh, why do we fight? Where—where does joy abide for such as you and me?”
The great, rolling ox eyes gleamed upon Adam, strong with the soul of peace, of victory in their depths.
“Wansfell, joy an’ happiness, whatever makes life worth livin’, is in you. No man can go forth to find what he hasn’t got within him.”
Then he gazed away across the desert, across sand and cactus and mesquite, across the blue-hazed, canyon-streaked ranges toward the north.
“I go to Death Valley,” he continued, slowly, in his deep voice. “I had left enough gold to grubstake me. An’ I go to Death Valley, but not to seek my fortune. It will be quiet and lonely there. An’ I can think an’ rest an’ sleep. Perhaps I’ll dig a little of the precious yellow dust, just to throw it away. Gold! … The man who loves gold is ruined. Passion makes men mad … An’ now I must go.”
“Death Valley? No! No!” whispered Adam.
“Straight for Death Valley! It has called me across half the earth. I remember no desert place so lonely an’ silent an’ free. So different from the noisy world of men that crowds my mind still. There I shall find peace, perhaps my grave. See! life is all a hopin’ to find! I go on my way. Wansfell, we never know what drives us. But I am happy now … Our trails have crossed for the last time. Good-bye.”
He wrung Adam’s hand and quickly whirled to his burros.
“Hehaw! Gedap!” he shouted, with a smack on their haunches. Adam whispered a farewell he could not speak. Then, motionless, he watched the old prospector face the grey wastes toward the north and the beckoning mountains. Adam had an almost irresistible desire to run after Dis-mukes, to go with him. But the man wanted to be alone. What a stride he had! The fruitless quest had left him that at least. The same old rolling gait, the same doggedness! Dis-mukes was a man who could not be halted. Adam watched him—saw him at last merge and disappear in the grey, lonely sage. And then into Adam’s strained sight seemed to play a quivering mirage—a vision of Death Valley, ghastly and white and naked, the abode of silence and decay set down under its dark-red walls—the end of the desert and the grave of Dismukes.
Chapter
XXV
The November morning was keen and cold, and Adam and Genie were on their way to spend the day at Andreas Canyon. Adam carried a lunch, a gun, and a book. Genie seemed so exuberant with wonderful spirits that she could scarcely keep her little moccasined feet on the sand. Adam had an unconscious joy in the sight of her.
A dim old Indian trail led up one of the slopes of Andreas Canyon, to which Adam called Genie’s attention.
“We’ll climb this someday—when it comes time to take you away,” said Adam. “It’s a hard climb, but the shortest way out. And you’ll get to see the desert from the top of old Jacinto. That will be worth all the climb.”
His words made Genie pensive. Of late the girl had become more and more beyond Adam’s comprehension—wistful and sad and dreamy by turns, now like a bird and again like a thundercloud, but mostly a dancing, singing creature full of unutterable sweetness of life.
Beyond the oasis, some distance up the canyon, was a dense growth of mesquite and other brush. It surrounded a sandy glade in which bubbled forth a crystal spring of hot water. The bottom was clean white sand that boiled up in the center like shining bubbles. Indians in times past had laid stones around the pool. A small cottonwood tree on the west side of the glade had begun to change the green color of the leaves to amber and gold. All around the glade, like a wild, untrimmed hedge, the green and brown mesquites stood up, hiding the grey desert, insulating this cool, sandy, beautiful spot, hiding it away from the stern hardness outside.
Genie had never been here. Quickly she lost her pensive-ness and began to sing like a lark. She kicked one moccasin one w
ay and the other in another direction. Straightway she was on the stones, with her bare, slender, brown feet in the water.
“Ooooo! It’s hot!” she cried, ecstatically. “But, oh, it’s fine!” And she dipped them back.
“Genie, you stay here and amuse yourself,” said Adam. “I’m going to climb. Maybe I’ll be back soon—maybe not. You play and read, and eat the lunch when you’re hungry.”
“All right, Wanny,” she replied, gaily. “But I should think you’d rather stay with me.”
Adam had to be alone. He needed to be high above the desert, where he could look down. Another crisis in his transformation was painfully pending. The meeting with Dismukes had been of profound significance, and its effect was going to be far reaching.
He climbed up the zigzag, dim trail, rising till the canyon yawned beneath him, and the green thicket where he had left Genie was but a dot. Then the way led round the slope of the great foothill, where he left the trail and climbed to the craggy summit. It was a round, bare peak of jagged bronze rock, and from this height half a mile above the desert the outlook was magnificent. Beyond and above him the grey walls and fringed peaks of San Jacinto towered sculptured and grand against the azure blue.
Finding a comfortable seat with rest for his back, Adam faced the illimitable gulf of color and distance below. Always a height such as this, where, like a lonely eagle, he could command an unobstructed view, had been a charm, a strange delight of his desert years. Not wholly had love of climbing, or to see afar, or to feel alone, or to travel in beauty, been accountable for this habit.
Adam’s first reward for this climb, before he had settled himself to watch the desert, was sight of a condor. Only rarely did Adam see this great and loneliest of lonely birds— king of the eagles and of the blue heights. Never had Adam seen one close. A wild, slate-colored bird, huge of build, with grisly neck and wonderful, clean-cut head, cruelly beaked! Even as Adam looked the condor pitched off the crag and spread his enormous wings.
A few flaps of those wide wings—then he sailed, out over the gulf, and around, rising as he circled. When he started he was below Adam; on the first lap of that circle he rose even with Adam’s position; and when he came round again he sailed over Adam, perhaps fifty feet. Adam thrilled at the sight. The condor was peering down with gleaming, dark, uncanny eyes. He saw Adam. His keen head and great, crooked beak moved to and fro; the sun shone on his grey-flecked breast; every feather of his immense wings seemed to show, to quiver in the air, and the tip feathers were ragged and separate. He cut the air with a soft swish.
Around he sailed, widening his circle, rising higher, with never a movement of his wings. That fact, assured by Adam’s sharp sight, was so marvelous that it fascinated him. What power enabled the condor to rise without propelling himself? No wind stirred down there under the peaks, so he could not lift himself by its aid. He sailed aloft. He came down on one slope of his circle, to rise up on the other, and always he went higher. How easily! How gracefully! He was peering down for sight of prey in which to sink cruel beak and talons. Once he crossed the sun and Adam saw his shadow on the gleaming rocks below. Then his circles widened across the deep canyon high above the higher foothills, until he approached the lofty peak. Higher still, and here the winds of the heights caught him. How he breasted them, sailing on and up, soaring toward the blue!
Adam watched the bird with strained eyes that hurt but never tired. To watch him was one of the things Adam needed. On and ever upward soared the condor. His range had changed with the height. His speed had increased with the wind. His spirit had mounted as he climbed. The craggy grey peak might have harbored his nest and his mate, but he gave no sign. High over the lonely cold heights he soared. There, far above his domain, he circled level for a while, then swooped down like a falling star, miles across the sky, to sail, to soar, to rise again. Away across the heavens he flew, wide winged and free, king of the eagles and of the winds, lonely and grand in the blue. Never a movement of his wings! Higher he sailed. Higher he soared till he was a fading speck, till he was gone out of sight to his realm above.
“Gone!” sighed Adam. “He is gone. And for all I know he may be a spirit of the wind. From his invisible abode in the heavens he can see the sheep on the crags—he can see me here—he can see Genie below—he can see the rabbit at his burrow … Nature! Life! Oh, what use to think? What use to torture myself over mystery I can never solve?—I learn one great truth only to find it involved in greater mystery.”
Adam had realized the need of shocks, else the desert influence would insulate him forever in his physical life. The meeting with Dismukes had been one.
Why had Dismukes been compelled to come back to the desert? What was the lure of the silent places? How could men sacrifice friends, people, home, love, civilization for the solitude and loneliness of the wastelands? Where lay the infinite fascination in death and decay and desolation? Who could solve the desert secret?
Like white, living flames, Adam’s thoughts leaped in his mind.
These wanderers of the wastelands, like Dismukes and himself, were not laboring under fancy or blindness or ignorance or imagination or delusion. They were certainly not actuated by a feeling for some nameless thing. The desert was a fact. The spell it cast was a fact. Also it began to dawn upon Adam that nothing in civilization, among glittering cities and moving people, in palaces or hovels, in wealth or poverty, in fame or ignominy, in any walk of worldly life, could cast a spell of enchantment, could swell women’s hearts and claim men’s souls like the desert. The secret then had to do with a powerful effect of the desert—that was to say, of lonely and desolate and wild places—upon the mind of human beings.
Adam remembered how Dismukes had loved to travel alone. If he had any selfishness in his great heart, it had been to gloat over the lonely places by himself. Even with Adam he seldom shared those moments of watching and listening. Always, some part of every day, he would spend alone on a ridge, on a height, or out on the sage, communing with this strange affinity of the desert. Adam had known Dismukes, at the end of a hard day’s travel, to walk a mile and climb to a ledge, there to do nothing at all but watch and listen. It was habit. He did it without thinking. When Adam confronted him with the fact he was surprised. On Adam’s side, this strange faculty or obsession, whatever it was, seemed very much more greatly marked. Dismukes had, or imagined he had, the need to seek gold. Adam had little to do but wander over the waste ways of the desert.
And now Adam, stirred to his depths by the culminating, fatal tragedy of Dismukes’s life, and a passionate determination to understand it, delved into his mind and memory as never before, to discover forgotten lessons and larger growths. But not yet in his pondering did they prove to him why every day of his desert life, and particularly in the last few years, had he gone to this or that lonely spot for no reason at all except that it gave him strange, vague happiness. Here was an astounding fact. He could have seen the same beauty, color, grandeur, right from his camp. The hours he had passed thus were innumerable.
What had he done, what had gone on in his mind, during all these seemingly useless and wasted hours? Nothing! Merely nothing it seemed to sit for hours, gazing out over the desolate, grey-green, barren desert, to sit listening to the solitude, or the soft wind, or the seep of sand, or perhaps the notes of a lonely bird. Nothing, because most of all that time he did not have in his mind the significance of his presence there. He really did not know he was there. This state of apparent unconsciousness had never been known to Adam at all until Magdalene Virey had given him intimation of it. He had felt the thing, but had never thought about it. But during these three years that he had lived near San Jacinto, it had grown until he gained a strange and fleeting power to exercise it voluntarily. Even this voluntary act seemed unthinking.
Adam, now, however, forced it to be a thinking act. And after many futile efforts he at last, for a lightning flash of an instant, seemed to capture the state of mind again. He recognized it because o
f an equally swift, vague joy that followed. Joy, he called it, for want of a better name. It was not joy. But it was wildly sweet—no—not so—but perhaps sweetly wild. That emotion, then, was the secret of the idle hours—the secret of the doing nothing. If he could only grasp the secret of the nothing! Looked at with profound thought, this nothing resolved itself into exactly what it had seemed to his first vague, wandering thought—merely listening, watching, smelling, feeling the desert. That was all. But now the sense of it began to assume tremendous importance. Adam believed himself to be not only on the track of the secret of the desert’s influence, but also of life itself.
