The Long Chance
by Peter B. Kyne · English · Gutenberg #6115 · 576,493 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Long Chance
Author: Peter B. Kyne
Release date: July 1, 2004 [eBook #6115]
Most recently updated: March 12, 2018
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6115
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LONG CHANCE ***
Produced by Anne Soulard, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
THE LONG CHANCE
By Peter B. Kyne
Illustrated By Frank Tenny Johnson
1914
[Illustration: IT WAS THE DESERT CALL FOR HELP; THREE FIRES IN A ROW BY
NIGHT. THREE COLUMNS OF SMOKE AGAINST THE HORIZON BY DAY.]
Printed At Garden City, N. Y., U. S. A.
THE LONG CHANCE
CHAPTER I
It was sunrise on the Colorado desert.
As the advance guard of dawn emerged from behind the serrated peaks to
the east and paused on their snow-encrusted summits before charging down
the slopes into the open desert to rout the lingering shadows of the
night, a coyote came out of his den in the tumbled _malpais_ at the foot
of the range, pointed his nose skyward and voiced his matutinal salute
to the Hosts of Light.
Presently, far in the distant waste, seven dark objects detached
themselves from the shadows and crawled toward the mountains. Like motes
swimming in a beam of light, they came out of the Land of Nowhere, in
the dim shimmering vistas over west, where the gray line of grease-wood
met the blue of the horizon. Slowly they assumed definite shape; and the
coyote ceased his orisons to speculate upon the ultimate possibility of
breakfast and this motley trio of “desert rats” with their burro train,
who dared invade his desolate waterless kingdom.
For, with the exception of the four burros, the three men who followed
in their wake did, indeed, offer the rare spectacle of variety in this
land of superlative monotony. One of the men wore a peaked Mexican straw
hat, a dirty white cotton undershirt, faded blue denim overalls and
a pair of shoes much too large for him; this latter item indicating a
desire to get the most for his money, after the invariable custom of a
primitive people. He carried a peeled catclaw gad in his right hand, and
with this gad he continually urged to a shuffling half-trot some one of
the four burros. This man was a Cahuilla Indian.
His two companions were white men. The younger of the pair was a man
under thirty years of age, with kind bright eyes and the drawn but
ruddy face of one whose strength seems to have been acquired more
from athletic sports than by hard work. He was tall, broad-shouldered,
slim-waisted, big-hipped and handsome; he stepped along through the
clinging sand with the lithe careless grace of a mountain lion. An old
greasy wide-brimmed gray felt hat, pinched to a “Montana peak,” was
shoved back on his curly black head; his shirt, of light gray wool, had
the sleeves rolled to the elbow, revealing powerful forearms tanned to
the complexion of those of the Indian. He seemed to revel in the airy
freedom of a pair of dirty old white canvas trousers, and despite the
presence of a long-barreled blue gun swinging at his hip he would
have impressed an observer as the embodiment of kindly good nature and
careless indifference to convention, provided his own personal comfort
was assured.
The other white man was plainly an alien in the desert. He was slight,
blonde, pale--a city man--with hard blue eyes set so close together that
one understood instantly something of the nature of the man as well as
the urgent necessity for his thick-lensed, gold-rimmed spectacles.
He wore a new Panama hat, corded riding breeches and leggings. He was
clean-shaven and sinfully neat. He wore no side-arms and appeared as
much out of harmony with his surroundings as might a South American
patriot at a Peace Conference.
“I say,” he began presently, “how much further is it to this prospect
hole of yours, if, indeed, you have a prospect as you represented to
me a week ago?” His tone was fretful, peevish, complaining. One would
readily have diagnosed the seat of his trouble. He had come prepared to
ride--and he had been forced to walk.
The young man frowned. He seemed on the point of swearing, but appearing
to think better of it, he replied banteringly, “_Por ahi. Por ahi._”
“What in blazes does that mean?”
“Oh, I was just talking the language of the country--a language, by
the way, toward which you seem most indifferently inclined. '_Por ahi_'
means 'a considerable way,' 'a right smart piece, I reckon,' and conveys
about the same relative amount of definite information as _manana._
Never having measured the distance to my prospect, I have tried for the
past two days to give you an approximate idea. But in this country you
must know that distance is a deceptive, 'find X' sort of proposition--so
please refrain from asking me that same question every two miles. If the
water holds out we'll get there; and when we get there we'll find more
water, and then you may shave three times a day if you feel so inclined,
I'm sorry you have a blister on your off heel, and I sympathize with you
because of your prickly-heat. But it's all in the day's work and you'll
survive. In the meantime, however, I suggest that you compose your
restless New England soul in patience, old man, and enjoy with our
uncommunicative Cahuilla friend and myself the glories of a sunrise on
the Colorado desert.”
“Damn the sunrise,” the other retorted. He would have damned his
tormentor had he dared. “I do not wish to be insulted.”
“Listen to that coyote,” replied the careless one, ignoring his
companion's rising anger. “Listen to him yip-yapping over there on the
ridge. There sits a shining example of bucolic joy and indifference to
local annoyances. Consider the humble coyote, Boston, and learn wisdom.
Of course, a coyote doesn't know a whole lot, but he does recognize
a good thing when he sees it. His appreciation of a sunrise is always
exuberant. Ever since that coyote's been big enough to rustle his own
jack-rabbits he's howled at a lovely full moon, and if he's ever missed
his sun-up cheer it's because something he ate the night before didn't
agree with him.”
“Sir,” snapped the irascible one, “you're a trifler.
You're--you're--a--”
“Say it,” soothed the student of nature.
“Oh, damn it,” rasped his victim, “talk business. This is a business
trip, not a rehearsal for a comic opera. Talk sense.”
“Well, all right--since you insist,” drawled the other, smiling
brightly. “In the first place, after this morning you will permit your
whiskers to grow. Out here water is too precious to waste it shaving
every morning. I suggested that point last night, but you ignored my
polite hint. I hate to appear boorish, but I must remind you that these
jacks are mine, that the four little kegs of water that they're carrying
are mine, that this _mozo_--I beg your pardon--that this Indian is mine,
and lastly--forgive me if I ascend once more into the realm of romance
and improbability--this country is mine, and I love it, and I won't have
it profaned by any growling, dyspeptic little squirt from a land where
they have pie for breakfast. I positively forbid you to touch that
water without my permission. I forbid you to cuss my mozo without my
permission, and I forbid you to damn this country in my hearing. Just at
this particular moment, Boston, the only things which you have and which
you can call your own, and do what you please with, are your soul, your
prickly-heat and your blistered heel. I'm fully convinced that you're
quite a little man back in Boston for the reason that you're one hell of
a small man out here, even if you do wear a string of letters after your
name like the tail on a comet.
“You were swelling around in San Berdoo, talking big and hollering for
an investment. I showed you samples of ore from my desert prospect and
you got excited. You wanted to examine my claim, you said, and if
you liked it you would engage to bring it to the attention of 'your
associates' and pay me my price. I offered to bring you in here as my
guest, and ever since you got off the train at Salton you've snarled and
snapped and beefed and imposed on my hospitality, and it's got to
stop. I don't need you; I don't care for you; I think you're a renegade
four-flusher, bluffing on no pair, and if I had known what a nasty
little old woman you are I'd never have opened negotiations with you.
Now, you chirk up, Boston, and smile and try to be a good sport, or I'll
work you over and make a man out of you. Savvy?”
Thoroughly squelched, the malingerer flushed, mumbled an apology and
held out his hand. The Desert Rat took it, a little sorry that he had
not been more temperate in his language.
“All right, we'll bury the hatchet” he said generously. “Maybe I'm a
little too exacting and hard to get along with. I've got more on my
brain than this prospect hole, and I'm worried. When I left the wife
at San Berdoo we were expecting an arrival in camp, and--well, we were
right down to bed-rock, and as it was a case of go now or never with
you, I had to bring you in here or perhaps lose the opportunity for a
fortune. She wanted me to go. She's a mighty brave little woman. You
don't happen to be a married man, do you? With kids? I've got--”
The Indian had paused and was pointing with his gad to the south.
Miles and miles away a great yellow cloud was gathering on the horizon,
shutting out the sunlight and advancing with incredible speed.
“Sandstorm” warned the Desert Rat, and spoke quickly to the mozo in
Spanish. The latter at once turned the cavalcade of burros toward the
hills, less than a mile distant; shouting and beating the heavily laden
little beasts into a trot, the party scurried for the shelter of a rocky
draw before the sandstorm should be upon them.
They won. Throughout that day and night they camped up the draw, safe
from the sand blast. Early next morning the wind had subsided and with
the exception of some slight changes in topography due to the sandstorm,
the desert was the same old silent pulseless mystery.
The party resumed its journey. While the Easterner remained with the
Indian, the Desert Rat circled out into the open, heading for a little
backbone of quartz which rose out of the sand. He had not noticed this
exposed ledge during their flight into the draw, and it was evident that
the sandstorm had exposed it.
Suddenly the mozo uttered a low “Whoa,” and the burros halted. Off in
the sage and sand the Desert Rat was standing with upraised arm, as a
signal for them to halt and wait for him. For nearly half an hour
he circled around, stepping off distances and building monuments.
Presently, apparently having completed his investigations, he beckoned
the rest of his party to approach.
“What's up?” demanded the Boston man the moment he and the Indian
arrived.
“I've just found Jake Revenner's lost claim. It's one of these
marvelously rich ledges that have been discovered and located and lost
and found and lost again, and cost scores of human lives. The sandstorms
expose them and cover them up again, and after a storm--as now--the
contour of the desert is so changed that a man, having staked his claim
and gone out for grub, can't find the claim when he comes back. It was
that way with the Nigger Ben placer. It's been found and lost half a
dozen times. There was a claim discovered out here by a man named Jake
Revenner, but he lost it and blew out his brains in sheer disgust. I
have just stumbled across one of his monuments with his old location
notices buried in a can. The late sandstorm uncovered the ledge, and it
looks 'fat' enough for yours truly. _Mira?_”
He tossed a sample to the Indian, and another of about the same size to
the white man. The latter lifted it, examined it closely and sat down.
He was quite excited.
“By thunder!” he managed to say. “We're in luck.”
A slight smile flickered across the face of the Desert Rat, but his
voice was as calm and grave as usual.
“Yes, it's rich--very rich. There's a comfortable fortune lying exposed
on the surface. By the way, I think I shall pay you a liberal fee for
your lost time and abandon that prospect I was taking you in to see.
Compared with this, it's not worth considering.”
“I should say you should abandon it” the other exulted. “You'd have
a fine time trying to get me away from this ledge now. Why, there's
millions in it, and I suggest we stake it out at once. Let's get busy.”
He jumped up eagerly--from force of habit dusting the seat of his riding
breeches--and turned peremptorily to the mozo.
“Get those packs off, Joe, or Jim or whatever your name is, and be
quick--”
“You forget, old man,” interjected the Desert Rat gently. “He doesn't
speak English, and if he did he wouldn't obey you. You see,” he added
naively, “I've told him not to.”
“Oh, well, I didn't mean anything. Don't be so touchy. Let's get busy,
for heaven's sake, and stake this claim.”
The Desert Rat stretched himself with feline grace. “I'm sorry” he
replied with his tantalizing good-natured smile, “to be forced to object
to your use of the plural pronoun in conjunction with that certain
tract, piece and parcel of land known and described as the Baby Mine
claim. The fact of the matter is, I have already staked it. You see, I
was thinking of the little one that will be waiting for me in San Berdoo
when I get back. See the point? My baby--Baby Mine--rather a neat play
on words, don't you think?”
“Do you mean to say that I'm not in on this find?” demanded the man from
Boston.
“Your penetration is remarkable. I do.”
“But such a course is outrageous. It's opposed--”
“Please do not argue with me. I found it. Naturally I claim it. I
could quote you verbatim the section of the mining law under which I am
entitled to maintain this high-handed--er--outrage; but why indulge
in such a dry subject? I found this claim, and since I don't feel
generously disposed this morning, I'm going to keep it.”
“But I'm in the party with you. It seems to me that common justice--”
“For goodness' sake, Boston, don't throw up to me the sins of my past.
Of course you're in my party. That's my misfortune, not my fault. I
observed this little backbone of quartz and asked you to walk over here
with me for a look at it. You wouldn't come. You said your foot hurt
you. So I came alone. If you had been with me at the time, now, of
course that would have been different. But--”
“But I--well, in a measure--why, we're out here together, sort of
partners as it were, and--”
“The Lord forgive you, Boston. My partner! You never were and never
could be. I'm particular in the matter of partners. All Desert Rats in
good standing are. You're the last man on earth I'd have for my partner.
A partner shares the expenses of a trip and bears the hardships without
letting out a roar every half mile. A partner _sticks,_ Boston. He
shares his grub and his money and his last drop of water, and when
that's gone he'll die with you like a gentleman. That's what a partner
does, but you wouldn't do it.”
“Well, I'm entitled to a half interest and I'll see that I get it,”
shrilled the other furiously. “I'll sue you--”
“How about the Indian?”
“Why, he--he's--”
“Only an Indian, eh? Well, you're entitled to your point of view. Only
that mozo and I have slept under the same blanket so often--”
“You can't stop me from staking this claim, too” shouted the Boston man,
and shook his skinny little fist under the Desert Rat's nose. The latter
slapped him across the wrist.
“Pesky fly” he said.
“You can't stop me, I tell you.”
“I can. But I won't. I'm not a bully.”
“You think you can beat me out of my rights, do you? I'll show you. I'll
beat you out of your half before I'm through with you.”
“On whose water!”
The bantering smile broadened to a grin--the graceless young desert
wanderer threw back his head and laughed.
“You're such a card, Boston” he chortled. “Such exquisite notions of
social usage I have never observed outside the peerage. Really, you
shouldn't be allowed to go visiting. You're unmannerly enough to ask for
a third helping to cake.”
“I insist that I am entitled to a half interest in this claim. As you
decline to recognize my rights, I must take the matter in my own hands.
I, too, shall stake the claim and endeavor to get my location notice
filed in the land office before yours. If you haven't any sense of
justice and decency, I have.”
“Oh, all right, fire away. I'll take you back to civilization and see
that you don't starve or die of thirst on the way. I'm not entirely
heartless, Boston. In the meantime, however, while you're staking the
claim, it occurs to me that I can gather together a very snug fortune in
the next day or two. There appears to be more gold than quartz in this
rock--some indeed, is the pure quill. All hands, including the jacks,
will go on a short ration of water from now on. Of course we're taking
chances with our lives, but what's life if a fellow can't take a chance
for a fortune like this? I'd sooner die and be done with, it than live
my life without a thrill. That's why I've degenerated from a perfectly
matriculated mining engineer into a wandering desert rat. Would you
believe it, Boston, I lived in your town once. Graduated from the Tech.
Why, I once made love to a Boston girl in a conservatory. I remember her
very well. She spilled pink lemonade over my dress shirt. I took a long
chance that time; but out here, even if the chances are longer, when you
win--”
He kissed his grimy paw airily and flung it into space.
“'The Lord is my shepherd,' he quoted, 'I shall not want.' This morning
He left the door opened and I wandered into His Treasure House, so I
guess I'll get busy and grab what I can before the Night Watchman comes
around. Ever see the Night Watchman, Boston? I have. He's a grave old
party with a long beard, and he carries a scythe. You see him when
you're thirsty, and--well, in the pursuit of my inborn hobby for taking
chances, I'll introduce you to him this trip. Permit me to remind you
once more of the consequences if you help yourself to the water without
consulting me. It'll militate against your chances of getting to the
land office first.”
The Desert Rat helped the mozo unpack the burros, while the man from
Boston tore some pages from his notebook and proceeded to write out his
location notices and cache them in monuments which he built beside those
of his predecessors. He even copied the exact wording on the Desert
Rat's notices. He forgot his blistered heel and worked with prodigious
energy and interest, receiving with dogged silent disdain the humorous
sallies of the Desert Rat, to whom the other's sudden industry was a
source of infinite amusement. The Desert Rat and the Indian were busy
with pans and prospector's picks gouging out “stringers” and crevices
and picking up scattered pieces of “jewelry” rock. When all the “color”
in sight had been cleaned up, the Desert Rat produced a drill and a
stick of dynamite from the pack, put in a “shot” and uncovered a
pocket of such richness that even the stolid Cahuilla could not forbear
indulgence in one of his infrequent Spanish expletives. It was a deposit
of rotten honeycombed rock that was nine-tenths pure gold--what is known
in the parlance of the prospector as a “kidney.”
The disgruntled claimant to a half interest in the Baby Mine reached
into the hole and seized a nugget worth fully a thousand dollars. The
Desert Rat tapped him smartly across the knuckles with the handle of his
prospector's pick and made him drop it.
“If you please, Boston” he said gently. “You're welcome to share my
grub, and I'll whack up even with you on the water, and I'll cook for
you and wait on you, but I'll be doggoned if it isn't up to you to
furnish your own dynamite. There was ten thousand in loose stuff lying,
on the surface, and you might have been pardoned for helping yourself to
as much of it as you could carry personally, but you elected to restake
the claim and now all that easy picking belongs to the Indian and me.
He's a good Indian and I'm going to let him have some of it. He won't
take much because he's fond of me. I saved him from being lynched for
killing a white man who deserved it. But for years he's just hungered
for a top-buggy, with side bars and piano box and the whole blamed rig
painted bright red, so he can take his squaw out in style; and I'm going
to see that he gets it. However, that's neither here nor there. You keep
your fingers out of the sugar bowl, old sport. It's a lovely sight and
hard to resist, I know, but do be careful.”
All that day the Desert Rat and his Indian retainer worked through the
stringers and pockets of the Baby Mine, while the man from Boston sat
looking at them, or, when the spirit moved him, casting about in the
adjacent sand for stray “specimens” of which he managed to secure quite
a number. The next morning, as soon as it was light enough to see,
the work was commenced again, and by noon the last piece of rotten
honeycombed rock with its streaks and wens of dull virgin gold had
been cleaned up. The Desert Rat used the last of his dynamite in a vain
endeavor to unearth another “kidney,” and finally decided to call it
quits.
“They took eighty-two thousand dollars out of one little carload of ore
in the Delhi mine in Nevada county” he announced, “but the Baby Mine
makes that record look amateurish. It's the richest strike I have ever
heard of, with the exception, possibly, of the big strike at Antelope
Peak. They took out nearly three hundred thousand there in less than
three days, just scratching it out of stringers and crevices with their
jack-knives. Boston, my dear man, I have more than three hundred pounds
of gold with, as I said before, some quartz, but not enough to bother.
At twelve ounces to the pound, twenty dollars to the ounce, I'm going
back to San Bernardino and buy a bath, a new suit of store clothes and
a fifty-dollar baby carriage for my expected heir. With my dear little
wife and the baby and all this _oro,_ I'll manage to be quite happy.
“However, just to show you that there isn't a mean bone in my body, I'm
going to withdraw my claim to the Baby Mine. My mozo and I are about to
load this magnificent bunch of untainted wealth into the kyacks, and hit
for civilization, and while we're getting ready to break camp you run
out and destroy my location notices. I leave the whole works to you. I
do this for a number of reasons--the first being that you will thus
be induced to return to this section of California. Not knowing the
country, you will doubtless perish, and thus from the placid bosom of
society a thorn will be removed. Secondly, if you should survive long
enough to get in, you could never find your way out without me for a
guide--and it wouldn't be safe to hire this Indian. He dislikes you. The
third reason is that I believe this is just a phenomenally rich pocket
and that I have about cleaned it out. The fourth reason is that another
sandstorm will probably cover the Baby Mine before long, and the fifth
reason is: 'What's the use going desert-ratting until your money's all
gone!'”
“Well, I'll see that I get my share of that plunder” snapped the unhappy
tenderfoot. “Of course, right now, it may seem perfectly proper
from your point of view to take advantage of certain adventitious
circumstances, but--”
“Yes, the humble little jackass is really an adventitious circumstance.
By jingo, that hadn't occurred to me at all. I guess you're right,
Boston. I'll have to give you half the plunder. Now that we've settled
that point, let's divide the adventitious circumstances. I have four
of them and I'll sell you two for your half of the gold. No? Price too
high? All right! I'll agree to freight your share in for you, only I'm
afraid transportation rates are so high in the desert that the freight
will about eat up all the profit. I'm afraid that the best I can do for
you is to give you your half and let you carry it yourself. If you want
to tote it out on your back, Boston, help yourself. No! Well, well!”
“We'll not discuss the matter further, if you please. At another time
and place, perhaps--”
“Perhaps? Perhaps! Well, I'm stripping down our food supply to the bare
necessities in order to make room for this gold, and the water is pretty
low. If we don't strike water at Chuckwalla Tanks there'll be real
eloquence to that word 'perhaps.' However, that discussion can wait.
Everything appears to be propitious for an immediate start, so let's
defer the argument and _vamoose._ Giddap, you hairy little desert birds.
Crack along out o' this.”
But following the dictates of his nature, when Fortune smiled and bade
him “take a chance,” the Desert Rat had already delayed too long his
departure from the Baby Mine. The supply of water still left in the kegs
was so meager that with any other man the situation would have given
rise to grave concern. As it was, however, all that troubled the Desert
Rat was what he was going to do with the man from Boston when that
inconsistent and avaricious individual should “peter out.” More than
once, in his pursuit of the rainbow, the Desert Rat had known what it
was to travel until he couldn't travel another yard; then to jump up and
travel ten miles more--to water! He did not know the extent of his
own strength, but whatever might be its limitations he knew that the
Cahuilla was good for an equal demonstration of endurance. But the man
from Boston! He was quickly read. The Desert Rat gave him until midnight
that night, but he wilted at ten o'clock.
“A sore heel, a mean soul and no spunk have killed more men than whisky”
the Desert Rat commented whimsically, as he pulled the weak brother out
of a cluster of catclaw. “Boston, you're an awful nuisance--you are, for
a fact. You've had water three times to our once, and yet you go to
work and peter out with Chuckwalla Tanks only five miles away. Why, I've
often covered that distance on my hands and knees. Come, now, buck up.
Hang on to the rear cross of one of the pack saddles and let the jack
snake you along.”
“I can't, I'm exhausted. I'll die if I don't have a drink.”
“No, you'll not die. No such luck. And there isn't any more water.
However, you've been spoiled in the raising, so I suppose we'll have
to defer to you--particularly since it's my fault that we're short of
water. What can't be cured must be endured, and I can't let you die.”
He spoke to the Indian, who took two canteens and departed into the
night.
“He's going to hike on ahead to Chuckwalla Tanks and bring back some
water for you, Boston” the Desert Rat explained. “He'll return about
daylight, and we'll wait here until he arrives. It's dangerous, but the
jacks aren't in a bad way yet. They can make it to the Tanks, even after
sunrise.”
“Thanks” murmured the sufferer.
The Desert Rat grinned. “You're getting on” he commented.
“Where is Chuckwalla Tanks?” The tenderfoot sat up and stared after the
figure of the departing Indian, still visible in the dim moonlight.
“In a little gorge between those low hills. You can just make out their
outlines.”
“Yes, I see them. And after that the closest water is where?”
“The Colorado river--forty miles due south. But we're headed northwest
and must depend on tanks and desert water-holes. It's hard to tell
how close one is to water on that course. But it doesn't matter. We'll
refill the kegs at Chuckwalla Tanks. There's most always water there.”
“And you say the Colorado river is forty miles due south.”
“Well, between forty and fifty.”
“Much obliged for the information, I'm sure.”
He straightened suddenly and drew back his arm. The Desert Rat saw that
he was about to hurl a large smooth stone, and simultaneously he dodged
and reached for his gun. But he was a fifth of a second too slow.
The stone struck him on the side of the head, rather high up, and he
collapsed into a bloody heap.
On the instant the footsore man from Boston developed an alacrity and
definiteness of purpose that would have surprised the Desert Rat, had
he been in condition to observe it. He seized the gad which the mozo had
dropped, climbed upon the lightest laden burro and, driving the others
before him, set off for Chuckwalla Tanks. The Indian had disappeared by
this time, and there was little danger of overtaking him; so with the
two low hills as his objective point, the Easterner circled a mile out
of the direct course which he knew the Indian would take, and when the
dawn commenced to show in the east he herded the pack-animals down into
a swale between two sand-dunes. With remarkable cunning he decided to
scout the territory before proceeding further; hence, as soon as there
was light enough to permit of a good view, he climbed to the crest of
a high dune and looked out over the desert. As far as he could see no
living thing moved; so he drove the pack train out of the swale and
headed for the gorge between the hills. The thirsty burros broke into
a run, hee-hawing with joy as they sniffed the water, and within a few
minutes man and beasts were drinking in common at Chuckwalla Tanks.
The man permitted them to drink their fill, after which they fell to
grazing on the short grass which grew in the draw. While he realized the
necessity for haste if he was to succeed in levanting with the gold, the
tenderfoot had been too long a slave to his creature comforts to face
another day without breakfast. He abstracted some grub from one of the
packs and stayed the pangs of hunger. Then he bathed his blistered feet,
filled the water kegs, rounded up his pack train and departed up the
draw. After traveling a mile the draw broadened out into the desert, and
the man from Boston turned south and headed for the Rio Colorado. He was
walking now and appeared to have forgotten about his blistered heel, for
at times he broke into a run, beating the burros, screaming curses at
them with all the venom of his wolfish soul, for he was pursued now by
the fragments of his conscience. His attack upon the Desert Rat had been
the outgrowth of a sudden murderous impulse, actuated fully as much by
his hatred and fear of the man as by his desire to possess the gold. One
moment he would shudder at the thought that he had committed murder; the
next he was appalled at the thought that after all he had only stunned
the man--that even now the Desert Rat and his Indian retainer were
tracking him through the waste, bent on wreaking summary vengeance.
He need not have worried so prematurely. A low range of black malpais
buttes stretched between him and the man he had despoiled, and as yet
the direction of his flight could not be observed. He drifted rapidly
south and presently disappeared into one of those long swales which
slope gradually to the river.
Here, weaving his way among the ironwood that grow thickly in this
section of the desert, for the first time since the commission of his
crime he felt safe.
CHAPTER II
It was still dark when the Desert Rat regained consciousness. He lay for
quite a while thereafter, turning things over in his befuddled brain,
striving to gather together the tangled thread of the events of the
night. Eventually he succeeded in driving his faculties into line. He
rolled over, got to his hands and knees and paused a minute to get a
fresh grip on himself. His aching head hung low, like that of a dying
horse; in the silence of the night he could hear the drip, drip of his
blood into the sand.
Presently he began to move. Round and round in the sage he crawled, like
some weary wounded animal, breaking off the rotten dead limbs which, lie
close to the base of the shrub. Three piles of sage he gathered, placing
the piles in a row twenty feet apart. Then he set fire to them and
watched them burst into flame.
It was the desert call for help: three fires in a row by night, three
columns of smoke against the horizon by day--and the Cahuilla Indian,
coming down the draw from Chuckwalla Tanks five miles away, saw flaming
against the dawn this appeal of the white man he loved, for whom he
lived and labored. Straight across the desert he ran, with the long
tireless stride that was the heritage of his people. His large heavy
shoes retarded him; he removed them, tucked them under his arm and
with a lofty disdain of tarantulas and side-winders fled barefooted.
Three-quarters of an hour from the time he had first seen the
signal-fires, the mozo was kneeling beside the stricken Desert Rat, who
lay unconscious close to one of the fires. The water from the mozo's
canteen revived him, however, and presently he sat up, while the
Cahuilla washed the gash in his head and bound it up with his master's
bandanna handkerchief.
As the Indian worked, the white man related what had occurred and how.
He recalled his conversation with his assailant, and shrewdly surmised
that he would head for the Colorado river, after having first secured a
supply of water at Chuckwalla Tanks. The Desert Rat's plan of action was
quickly outlined.
“You will help me to get to the Tanks, where I'll have water and a
chance to rest for a day or two until I'm able to travel; then I'll
head for the Rio Colorado and wait for you in Ehrenburg. I'll keep one
canteen and you can take the other; I have matches and my six-shooter,
and I can live on quail and chuckwallas until I get to the river. You
have your knife. Track that man, if you have to follow him into hell,
and when you find him--no, don't kill him; he isn't worth it, and
besides, that's my work. It's your job to run him down. Bring him to me
in Ehrenburg.”
It was past noon when they arrived at the Tanks, and the Indian was
carrying the Desert Rat on his back. While the man was quite conscious,
he was still too weak from the effect of the blow and loss of blood to
travel in the heat.
At the Tanks the Indian picked up the trail of four burros and a man.
He refilled his canteen, took a long drink from the Tank, grunted an
“_Adios, senor,_” and departed up the draw at the swift dog-trot which
is typical of the natural long-distance runner.
The Desert Rat gazed after him. “God bless your crude untutored soul,
you best of mozos” he murmured. “You have one virtue that most white men
lack--you'll stay put and be faithful to your salt. And now, just to be
on the safe side, I'll make my will and write out a detailed account of
this entire affair--in case.”
For half an hour he scribbled haltingly in an old russet-covered
note-book. This business attended to, he crawled into the meager shade
of a _palo verde_ tree and fell asleep. When he awoke an hour or two
later and looked down the draw to the open desert, he saw that another
sandstorm was raging.
“That settles it” he soliloquized contentedly. “The trail is wiped out
and the best Indian on earth can't follow a trail that doesn't exist,
But that wretched little bandit is out in this sandstorm, and the jacks
will stampede on him and he'll pay _his_ bill to society--with interest.
When the wind dies down the pack outfit will drift back to this
water-hole, and when Old Reliable finds out that the trail is lost,
_he'll_ drift back too. Anyhow, if the burros don't show we'll trail
_them_ by the buzzards and find the packs. Ah, you great mysterious
wonderful desert, how good you've been to me! I can sleep now--in
peace.”
He slept. When he awoke again, he discovered to his surprise that he had
been walking in his sleep. He had an empty canteen over his shoulder and
he was bareheaded. His head ached and throbbed, his tongue and throat
felt dry and cottony; he seemed to have been wandering in a weary land
for a long time, for no definite reason, and he was thirsty.
He glanced around him for the water-hole beside which he had lain
down to sleep and await the mozo and the burros. On all sides the vast
undulating sea of sand and sage stretched to the horizon, and then the
Desert Rat understood. He had been delirious. With the fever from his
wound and the thought of the fortune of which he had been despoiled,
uppermost even in his subconscious brain, he had left Chuckwalla Tanks
and started in pursuit. How far or in what direction he had wandered he
knew not. He only knew that he was lost, that he was weak and thirsty,
that the pain and fever had gone out of his head, and that the Night
Watchman walked beside him in the silent waste.
It came into his brain to light three fires--to flash the S. O. S. call
of the desert in letters of smoke against the sky--and he fumbled in his
pocket for matches. There were none; and with a sigh, that was almost a
sob the dauntless Argonaut turned his faltering footsteps to the south
and lurched away toward the Rio Colorado.
Throughout the long cruel day he staggered on. Night found him close
to the mouth of a long black canyon between two ranges of black hills,
whose crests marked them as a line of ancient extinct volcanoes.
“I'll camp here to-night,” he decided, “and early tomorrow morning I'll
go up that canyon and hunt for water. I might find a 'tank.'”
He lay down in the sand, pillowed his sore head on his arm, and, God
being merciful and the Desert Rat's luck still holding, he slept.
At daylight he was on his way, stiff and cramped with the chill of the
desert night. Slowly he approached the mouth of the canyon, crossing a
bare burnt space that looked like an old “wash.”
Suddenly he paused, staring. There, before him in the old wash, was the
fresh trail of two burros and a man. The trail of the man was not well
defined; rather scuffed in fact, as if he had been half dragged along.
“Hanging to the pack-saddle and letting the jack drag him” muttered the
lost Desert Rat. “I'll bet it's little Boston, after all, and I'm not
yet too late to square accounts with that _hombre._”
In the prospect of twining his two hands around the rascal's throat
there was a certain primitive pleasure that added impetus to the passage
of the Desert Rat up the lonely canyon. The thought lent new strength
to the man. Dying though he knew himself to be, yet would he square
accounts with the man who had murdered him. He would--
He paused. He had found the man with the two burros. There could be no
mistake about that, for the canyon ended in a sheer cliff that towered
two hundred feet above him, and in this horrible _cul de sac_ lay the
bleached bones of two burros and a man.
Here was a conundrum. The Desert Rat had followed a fresh trail and
found stale bones. Despite his youth, the desert had put something of
its own grim haunting mystery into this man who loved it; to him had it
been given to understand much that to the layman savored of the occult;
at birth, God had been very good to him, in that He had ordained that
during all his life the Desert Rat should be engaged in learning how to
die, and meet the issue unafraid. For the Desert Rat was a philosopher,
and even at this ghastly spectacle his sense of humor did not desert
him. He sat down on the skull of one of the burros and laughed--a dry
cackling gobble.
“What a great wonderful genius of a desert it is!” he mumbled. “It's
worth dying in after all--a fitting mausoleum for a Desert Rat. Here I
come staggering in, with murder in my heart, stultifying my manhood with
the excuse that it would be justice in the abstract, and the Lord shows
me an example of the vanity and littleness of life. All right, Boston,
old man. You win, I guess, but I've got an ace coppered, and even if you
do get through, some day you'll pay the price.”
He sat there on the bleached skull, his head in his hands, trembling,
pondering, yet unafraid in the face of the knowledge that here his
wanderings must end. He was right. It was a spot eminently befitting the
finish of such a man. It was at least exclusive, for the vulgar and the
common would never perish here. In all the centuries since its formation
no human feet, save his own and those of the man whose skeleton lay
before him, had ever awakened the echoes in its silent halls. Pioneers,
dreamers both, men of the Great Outdoors, each had heard the call of
the silent places--each had essayed to fight his way into the treasure
vaults of the desert; and as they had begun, so had they finished--in
the arms of Nature, who had claimed the utmost of their love.
The Desert Rat was a true son of the desert. To him the scowl of the
sun-baked land at midday had always turned to a smile of promise at
dawn; to him the darkest night was but the forerunner of another day of
glorious battle, when he could rise out of the sage, stretch his young
legs and watch the sun rise over his empire. He knew the desert--he saw
the issue now, but still he did not falter.
“Poor little wife,” he mumbled; “poor little unborn baby! You'll hope,
through the long years, waiting for me to come back--and you'll never
know!”
His faltering gaze wandered down the canyon where his own tracks and
those of the dead shone gray against the brown of the sun-swept wash. He
had followed a trail that might have been ten years old; perhaps, in
the years to come, some other wanderer would see _his_ tracks, halting,
staggering, uncertain, blazing the ancient call of the desert: “Come
to me or I perish.” And following the trail, even as the Desert Rat had
followed this other, he, too, in his own time, would come at length to
the finish--and wonder.
The Desert Rat sighed, but if in that supreme moment he wept it was not
for himself. He had many things to think of, he had much of happiness to
renounce, but he was of that breed that dares to approach the end.
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch.
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
For him the trail had ended here, as it had for this other remnant of
vanished life that lay before him now with arms outstretched. The Desert
Rat stared at the relic. A cross! The body formed a cross! Here again
was The Promise--
A thought came to the perishing wanderer. “I'll leave a message” he
gobbled. He could not forbear a joke. “To be delivered when called
for” he added. “This other man might have done the same, but perhaps he
didn't care--perhaps there wasn't anybody waiting at home for him.”
From his shirt pocket he drew the stub of a lead pencil and the
note-book in which he had written his will and the record of his
betrayal. He added the story of his wanderings since leaving Chuckwalla
Tanks, and the postscript:
The company in which I will be found was not of my own seeking.
He was here before me by several years and I found nothing
whereby he might be identified.
He tore the leaves out of the note-book, stuffed them inside his empty
canteen and screwed the cap on tight; after which he cast about for a
prominent place where he might leave his last message to the world.
At the head of the canyon stood an extinct volcano, its precipitous
sides forming the barrier at the western end of the canyon. Away back in
the years when the world was young, a stream of thin soupy lava, spewed
from this ancient crater, had flowed down the canyon out onto the
desert. It was this which the Desert Rat had at first taken for an old
“wash.” Owing to the pitch of the canyon floor, most of the lava had run
out, but a thin crust, averaging in thickness from a quarter to three
quarters of an inch, still remained. Originally, this thin lava had been
a creamy white, but with the passage of centuries the sun had baked it
to a dirty brown and the lava had become disintegrated and rotten. As
the hot lava had hardened and dried it had cracked, after the fashion of
a lake bed when the water has evaporated, but into millions and millions
of smaller cracks than in the case where water has evaporated from mud.
As a result of this peculiar condition, the entire lava capping in the
canyon was split into small fragments, each fragment fitting exactly
into its appointed place, the whole forming a marvelous piece of natural
mosaic that could only have been designed by the Master Artist.
With the point of his pocket knife the Desert Rat pried loose one of
these sections of lava. Where it had been exposed to the sun on top it
was brown, but the under side was the original creamy white.
The mystery of the phantom trail was solved at last. In fact, not to
state a paradox, there had been no mystery at first--at least to the
Desert Rat. The moment he saw the bones he guessed the answer to that
weird puzzle.
The tracks were easily explained. When one walked on the surface of this
thin lava crust it broke beneath him and crumbled into dust. The brown
dust on top mingled with the underlying white, the blend of colors on
the whole forming a slate-colored patch with creamy edges, marking the
boundaries of the footprints; and here, in this horrible canyon, where
rains would never erode nor winds obliterate, the tracks would show for
years until the magic of the desert had again wrought its spell on the
landscape and the ghostly white tracks had faded and blended again into
the all-prevailing brown.
The Desert Rat was something of a geologist, and had he not been dying,
an extended examination of this weird formation would have interested
him greatly. But he had his message to leave to his loved ones, and time
pressed. In the joy and pride of his strength and youth he had dared
the desert. He had dreamed of a fortune, and this--this was to be the
awakening...
He crawled out into a smooth undisturbed space and fell to work with the
point of his knife. Carefully he raised piece after piece of the natural
mosaic, inverted it and laid it back in its appointed place. At the
end of two hours he finished. There, in inlaid letters of creamy white
against the desert brown, his message flared almost imperishable:
Friend, look in my canteen and see that I get justice.
A century must pass before that message faded; as for the coming of the
messenger, he would leave that to the Almighty.
The Desert Rat was going fast now. He moved back a few feet, fearful
that at the end he might obliterate his message. With his fading gaze
fixed on the mouth of the canyon he lay waiting, hoping, praying, brave
to the last ... and presently help came.
It was the Night Watchman!
CHAPTER III
Serenely indifferent to the fact that but a few hours' average running
time intervenes between it and San Francisco on the north, and Los
Angeles on the south, the little desert station of San Pasqual has
always insisted upon remaining a frontier town.
One can pardon San Pasqual readily for this apparent apathy. Not to do
so would savor strongly of an application of the doctrine of personal
responsibility in the matter of a child with a club-foot. San Pasqual
isn't responsible. It has nothing to be proud of, nothing to incite even
a sporadic outburst of civic pride. It never had.
Here, in this story, occurs a description. In a narrative of human
emotions, descriptions are, perhaps, better appreciated when they are
dispensed with unless, as in the case of San Pasqual, they are worth the
time and space and trouble. Assuming, therefore, that San Pasqual,
for all its failings, is distinctive enough to warrant this, we will
describe the town as it appeared early in the present decade; and, for
that matter, will continue to appear, pending the day when they strike
oil in the desert and San Pasqual picks itself together, so to speak,
and begins to take an interest in life. Until then, however, as a center
of social, scenic, intellectual and commercial activity, San Pasqual
will never attract globe-trotters, folks with Pilgrim ancestors or
retired bankers from Kansas and Iowa seeking an attractive investment in
western real estate.
San Pasqual is such a weather-beaten, sad, abject little town that one
might readily experience surprise that the trains even condescend to
stop there. It squats in the sand a few miles south of Tehachapi pass,
hemmed in by mountain ranges ocher-tinted where near by, mellowed by
distance into gorgeous shades of turquoise and deep maroon. They are
very far away, these mountains, even though their outlines are so
distinct that they appear close at hand. The desert atmosphere has cast
a kindly spell upon them, softening their hellish perspective into lines
of beauty in certain lights. It is well that this is so, for it helps to
dispel an illusion of the imaginative and impressionable when first they
visit San Pasqual--the illusion that they are in prison.
The basin that lies between these mountains is the waste known as the
Mojave desert. It stretches north and south from San Pasqual, fading
away into nothing, into impalpable, unlovely, soul-crushing suggestions
of space illimitable; dancing and shimmering in the heat waves, it seems
struggling to escape. When the wind blows, the dust-devils play tag
among the low sage and greasewood; the Joshua trees, rising in the
midst of this desolation, stretch forth their fantastically twisted and
withered arms, seeming to invoke a curse on nature herself while warning
the traveler that the heritage of this land is death. There is a bearing
down of one's spirit in the midst of all this loneliness and desolation
that envelops everything; yet, despite the uncanny mystery of it, the
sense of repression it imparts, of unconquerable isolation from all that
is good and sweet and beautiful, there are those who find it possible to
live in San Pasqual without feeling that they are accursed.
At the western boundary of the Mojave desert lies San Pasqual, huddled
around the railroad water tank. It is the clearing-house for the Mojave,
for entering or leaving the desert men must pass through San Pasqual.
From the main-line tracks a branch railroad now extends north across the
desert, through the eastern part of Kern county and up the Owens river
valley into Inyo, although at the time Donna Corblay enters into this
story the railroad had not been built and a stage line bore the brunt of
the desert travel as far north as Keeler--constituting the main outlet
from that vast but little known section of California that lies east of
the Sierra Nevada range.
Hence, people entering or leaving this great basin passed through San
Pasqual, which accounted for the town that grew up around the water
tank; the little row of so-called “pool parlors,” cheap restaurants,
saloons and gambling houses, the post-office, a drug store, a tiny
school-house with a belfry and no bell and the little row of cottages
west of the main-line tracks where all the _good_ people lived--which
conglomerate mass of inchoate architecture is all that saved San Pasqual
from the ignominy of being classed as a flag station.
We are informed that the _good_ people lived west of the tracks. East
of the tracks it was different. The past tense is used with a full
appreciation of the necessity for grammatical construction, for times
have changed in San Pasqual, since it is no longer encumbered with
the incubus that made this story possible--Harley P. Hennage, the town
gambler and the worst man in San Pasqual.
Close to the main-line tracks and midway between both strata of society
stood San Pasqual's limited social and civic center--the railroad hotel
and eating-house. Here, between the arrival and departure of all through
trains, the San Pasqualians met on neutral ground, experiencing mild
mental relaxation watching the waitresses ministering to the gastronomic
necessities of the day-coach tourists from the Middle West. At the
period in which the action of this story takes place, however, most
people preferred to find relief from the aching desolation of San
Pasqual and its environs in the calm, restful, spiritual face of Donna
Corblay.
Donna was the young lady cashier at the combination news stand, cigar
and tobacco emporium and pay-as-you-leave counter in the eating-house.
She was more than that. She was an institution. She was the day hotel
clerk; the joy and despair of traveling salesmen who made it a point of
duty to get off at San Pasqual and eat whether they were hungry or not;
information clerk for rates and methods of transportation for all desert
points north, south, east and west. She was the recipient of confidences
from waitresses engaged in the innocent pastime of across-the-counter
flirtations with conductors and brakemen. She was the joy of the men and
the envy of the women. In fact, Donna was an exemplified copy of that
distinctive personality with which we unconsciously invest any young
woman upon whose capable shoulders must fall such multifarious duties as
those already described; particularly when, as in Donna's case, they
are accepted and disposed of with the gentle, kindly, interested yet
impersonal manner of one who loves her little world enough to be a very
distinct part of it; yet, seeing it in its true light, manages to hold
herself aloof from it; unconsciously conveying to one meeting her for
the first time the impression that she was in San Pasqual on her own
sufferance--a sort of strayling from another world who had picked upon
the lonely little desert town as the scene of her sphere of action
for something of the same reason that prompts other people to collect
postage stamps or rare butterflies.
It has already been stated that Donna Corblay was an institution. That
is quite true. She was the mistress of the Hat Ranch.
This last statement requires elucidation. Just what is a hat ranch? you
ask. It is--a hat ranch. There is only one Hat Ranch on earth and it may
be found a half mile south of San Pasqual, a hundred yards back from the
tracks. Donna Corblay owned it, worked it in her spare moments and made
it pay.
You see, San Pasqual lies just south of Tehachapi pass, and about five
days in every week, the year round, the north wind comes whistling down
the pass. When it strikes the open desert it appears to become possessed
of an almost human disposition to spurt and get by San Pasqual as
quickly as possible. Hence, when the tourist approaching the station
sticks his head out of the window or unwisely remains on the platform
of the observation car, this forty-mile “zephyr,” as they term it in San
Pasqual, sighs joyously past him, snatches his headgear, whirls it down
the tracks and deposits it at the western boundary of Donna's “ranch.”
This boundary happens to be a seven-foot adobe wall--so the hat sticks
there.
In the days when Donna lived at the Hat Ranch she would pause at this
wall every evening on her way home from work long enough to gather up
the orphaned hats. Later, after cleaning and brushing them, she would
sell them to the boys up in San Pasqual. There was a wide variety of
style, size and color in Donna's stock of hats, and fastidious indeed
was he who could not select from the lot a hat to match his peculiar
style of masculine beauty. And, furthermore: damned was he who so far
forgot tradition and local custom as to purchase his “every-day” hat
elsewhere. He might buy his Sunday hat in Bakersfield or Los Angeles
and still retain caste, but his every-day hat--never! Such a proceeding
would have been construed by Donna's admirers as a direct attack on
home industry. In fact, one made money by purchasing his hats of
Donna Corblay. If she never accepted less than one dollar for a hat,
regardless of age, color, original price and previous condition of
servitude, she never charged more. Hence, everybody was satisfied--or,
if not satisfied at the time, all they had to do was to await the
arrival of the next train. The “zephyrs” were steady and reliable and in
San Pasqual it is an ill wind that doesn't blow somebody a hat.
In San Pasqual stray hats were not looked upon as flotsam
and jetsam and subject to a too liberal interpretation of the
“Losers-weepers-finders-keepers” rule. There was a dead-line for hats
beyond which no gentleman would venture, for, after a hat had once
blown beyond the town limits it was no longer a maverick and subject to
branding, but on the other hand was the absolute, undeniable and legal
property of Donna Corblay.
So much for the hats. As for the ranch itself, it wasn't, properly
speaking, a ranch at all. It was a low, four-room adobe house with a
lean-to kitchen built of boards. It had a dirt roof and iron-barred
windows and in the rear there was a long rectangular patio with a
fountain and a flower garden. In fact, the ranch was more of a fortress
than a dwelling-place and was surrounded by an adobe wall which
enclosed about an acre of the Mojave desert. Originally it had been the
habitation of a visionary who wandered into San Pasqual, established the
ranch and sunk an artesian well. With irrigation the rich alluvial soil
of the desert will grow anything, and the original owner planned to
raise garden-truck and cater to the local trade. He prospered, but being
of that vast majority of humankind to whom prosperity proves a sort
of mental hobble, he made up his mind one day to go prospecting. So he
wrote out a notice, advertising the property for sale, and tacked it to
a telegraph pole in front of the eating-house.
Alas for the frailty and suspicion of human nature! The self-centered
and self-satisfied citizens of San Pasqual had condemned the vegetable
venture from the start. It had been too radical a departure from the
desert order of things, and the fact that a mere stranger had conceived
the idea sufficed to damn the enterprise even with those who gloried in
the convenience of fresh vegetables; while the fact that the vegetable
culturist was now about to leave branded the experiment a failure and
was productive of a chorus of “I told you so's.” The announcement of the
proprietor of the ranch that he would entertain offers on a property to
which he had no title other than that entailed in the God-given right
of every American citizen to squat on a piece of land until he is driven
off, was received as a rare piece of humor. In disgust the founder
of the Hat Ranch abandoned his vegetable business, loaded his worldly
effects on two burros and departed, leaving the kitchen door wide open.
He never returned.
In the course of time a young woman with a two-months-old daughter came
to San Pasqual to accept the position of cashier in the eating-house.
The old adobe ranch was still deserted--the kitchen door still wide
open. It was the only vacant dwelling in San Pasqual, and the woman
with the baby decided to move in. She hired a Mexican woman to clean
the house, sent to Bakersfield for some installment furniture and to Los
Angeles for some assorted seeds. About a week later a Cahuilla buck with
his squaw alighted from a north-bound train and were met by the woman
with the baby girl. That night the entire party took possession of the
Hat Ranch.
That first mistress of the Hat Ranch was Donna Corblay's mother, so
before we plunge into the heart of our story and present to the reader
Donna Corblay as she appeared at twenty years of age behind the counter
at the eating-house on the night that Bob McGraw rode into her life on
his Roman-nosed mustang, Friar Tuck, a short history of those earlier
years at the Hat Ranch will be found to repay the time given to its
perusal.
For more than sixteen years after her arrival in San Pasqual, Donna's
mother had presided behind the eating-house pay counter. She was quiet
and uncommunicative--a handsome woman whose chief beauty lay in her
eyes--wonderful for their brilliance and color and the shadows that
lurked in them, like the ghosts of a sorrow ineffable. Up to the day she
died nobody in San Pasqual knew very much about her--where she came from
or why she came. She gave no confidences and invited none. In a general
way it was known that she was a widow. Her husband had gone away and
never returned, and it was a moot question in San Pasqual whether the
Widow Corblay was grass or natural. Be that as it may, the fact remains
that the absent one was missed and that his wife remained faithful to
his memory, as several frontier gentlemen, who had sought her hand in
marriage, might have testified had they so desired.
Mrs. Corblay lived for her child, and was accused of being wantonly
and sinfully extravagant in her manner of dressing this child. She
maintained and supported two Indian servants, which fact alone raised
her a notch or two socially above the wives, sisters and daughters of
the railroad men and local business men who lived in the cottages west
of the tracks. A great many of these estimable females disliked her
accordingly and charged her with “'puttin' on airs.” Indeed, more than
one of them had ventured the suggestion that Mrs. Corblay had a past,
and that her child was its outward expression. Of course, they couldn't
prove anything, but--and there the matter rested, abruptly. That “but”
ended it, even as the tracks end at the bumper in a roundhouse. One felt
the jar just the same.
Some hint of this provincial interest in her and her affairs must have
reached Mrs. Corblay shortly after her arrival, so with true feminine
obstinacy she declined to alleviate the abnormal curiosity which
gnawed at the heart of the little community. She died as she had lived,
considerable of a mystery, and San Pasqual, retaining its resentment of
this mystery, visited its resentment upon Donna Corblay when Donna,
in the course of time, gave evidence that she, also, possessed an
ultra-feminine, almost heroic capacity for attending strictly to her own
business and permitting others to attend to theirs.
Early in her occupation of the adobe ranch house Mrs. Corblay had
inaugurated the hat industry, with fresh vegetables as a side line. The
garden was presided over by a dolorous squaw who responded to the rather
fanciful appellation of Soft Wind. Sam Singer, her buck, was a stolid,
stodgy savage, with eyes like the slits in a blackberry pie. Originally
the San Pasqualians had christened him “Psalm Singer,” because of the
fact that once, during a revival held by an itinerant evangelist in
a tent next door to the Silver Dollar saloon, the buck had attended
regularly, attracted by the melody of a little portable organ, the
plaintive strains of which appeared to charm his heathen soul. An
unorthodox citizen, in the sheer riot of his imagination, had saddled
the buck with his new name. It had stuck to him, and since in the
vernacular psalm singer was pronounced “sam singer,” the Indian came in
time to be known by that name and would answer to none other.
Donna grew up slightly different from the other little girls in San
Pasqual. For instance: she was never allowed to play in the dirt of the
main street with other children; she wore white dresses that were always
clean, new ribbons in her hair; she always carried a handkerchief; she
attended the little public school with the belfry but no bell, and her
mother trained her in domestic science and the precepts of religion,
which, lacking definite direction perhaps by reason of the fact that
there was no church in San Pasqual, served, nevertheless, as a bulwark
against the assaults of vice and vulgarity which, in a frontier town,
are very thinly veiled. As a child she was neither precocious nor shy.
From a rather homely, long-legged gangling girl of fourteen she emerged
apparently by a series of swift transitions into a young lady at
sixteen, giving promise of a beauty which lay, not so much in
her physical attractions, which were generous, but in that easily
discernible nobility of character which indicates beauty of soul--that
superlative beauty which entitles its possessor to be alluded to as
“sweet,” rather than pretty or handsome. At the dawn of womanhood she
was a lovely little girl, kind, affectionate, imaginative, distinctly
virginal,
--a flower... born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
When Donna was nearly seventeen years old her mother died. It was the
consensus of opinion that heart trouble had something to do with it. In
fact, Mrs. Corblay had often complained of pains in her heart and was
subject to fainting spells; besides which, there was that in her eyes
which seemed to predicate a heartache of many years' standing. At any
rate, she fainted at the eating-house one day and they carried her home.
She passed away very quietly the same night, leaving an estate which
consisted of Donna, the two Indian servants, and a quantity of coin in
a teapot in the cupboard at the Hat Ranch which upon investigation
was found to total the stupendous sum of two hundred and twenty-eight
dollars and ninety-five cents.
There was no one except Donna to attend to the funeral arrangements, and
for eight hours following her mother's death she was too distracted to
think of anything but her great grief. Soft Wind prepared her mistress
for the grave after a well-meant but primitive fashion, while Sam Singer
squatted all morning in the sand in front of the compound and smoked
innumerable cigarettes. Presently he got up, went to his own little
cabin within the enclosure and was invisible for ten minutes. When
he emerged he was clad in a new pair of “bull breeches,” a white
stiff-bosomed shirt without a collar but with a brass collar button
doing duty nevertheless, while a red silk handkerchief, with the ends
drawn through a ring fashioned from a horseshoe nail, enveloped his
swarthy neck. He had rummaged through the stock of hats and appropriated
a Grand Army hat with cord and tassels, and arrayed thus Sam Singer
walked up the tracks to San Pasqual.
Arrived here Sam's very appearance heralded news of grave importance at
the Hat Ranch. Such extraordinary and unwonted attention to dress
could portend but one of two things--a journey or a funeral. Inasmuch,
however, as Sam was coatless and Mrs. Corblay had been carried home ill
the day before, San Pasqual allowed itself one guess and won.
To those who sought to question him, however, Sam Singer had nothing
more polite than a tribal grunt. He proceeded directly to the Silver
Dollar saloon, where he held converse with a man who seemed much
interested in the news which Sam had to impart, for he nodded gravely
several times, gave Sam fifty cents and a cigar and then hurried around
to the public telephone station in “Doc” Taylor's drug store.
Five minutes later, by some mysterious person, Mrs. Daniel Pennycook,
wife of the yardmaster, was informed over the telephone that Donnie
Corblay's mother was dead.
“So I understand” replied Mrs. Pennycook volubly. “Poor thing! There was
always somethin' so mysterious like about--”
The use of the word “like” was habit with Mrs. Pennycook. She rarely
took a decided stand in anything except Mr. Pennycook, and always
modified her modifying adjective with the word “like”; an annoying
practice which had always rendered her an object of terror to Mrs.
Corblay. To the latter it always seemed as if Mrs. Pennycook was
desirous of saying something nasty, but lacked the courage to come out
flatfooted with it.
Her unknown informant interrupted, or attempted to interrupt, but Mrs.
Pennycook was now started on her favorite topic, in such haste that she
failed to give the customary telephonic challenge:
“Who's speaking, please?”
She continued. “Yes, she was kinder quiet like any kept to herself
like--”
“Well,” said the unknown, “she's dead now, and that little daughter o'
hers is all alone down there with her Indian woman. If you knew Mrs.
Corblay was dead, why in blue blazes didn't you or some other woman in
this heartless village go down there and comfort that child? I've asked
three of your neighbors already, but they're washin' or dustin' or
cookin' or somethin'.”
“I was so terrible shocked like when I heard it--”
“Well, if the shock's over, for decency's sake, Mrs. Pennycook, go down
to the Hat Ranch and keep that little girl comp'ny till this afternoon.”
“Who's talkin'?” demanded Mrs. Pennycook belligerently.
“I am.”
“Who are you?”
“Nobody!”
For several seconds Mrs. Pennycook shot questions into the transmitter,
but receiving no response she hung up, furious at having been denied the
inalienable right of her sex to the last word. Shortly thereafter
her worthy spouse, Dan Pennycook, came in for his lunch. To him Mrs.
Pennycook imparted the tale of the strange man who had rung her up,
demanding that she go down to the Hat Ranch and see Donnie Corblay.
Pennycook's stupid good-natured face clouded.
“Then,” he demanded, “why don't you do it? I've been workin' with that
string of empties below town all mornin', an' if any woman in this
charitable community passed me goin' to the Hat Ranch I didn't see her.
It's a shame. Put on your other things right after lunch, Arabella, an'
go down. I'll go with you.”
“But the gall o' the man, askin' me to do this! I intended goin' anyhow,
but him ringin' me up so sudden like, I--”
“My dear,” said Mr. Pennycook, “he paid you a compliment.”
“Humph” responded Mrs. Pennycook. Then she sniffed. She continued to
sniff at intervals during the meal; she was still sniffing when later
she joined her husband at the front gate and set off with him down the
tracks to the Hat Ranch.
Arrived at the Hat Ranch Mrs. Pennycook saw at once that Donna was “too
upset like” to have any of the details of her mother's funeral thrust
upon her. Here was a situation which required the supervision of a calm,
executive person--Mrs. Daniel Pennycook, for instance. At any rate
Mrs. Pennycook decided to take charge. She was first on the scene and
naturally the task was hers, not only as a matter of principle but also
by right of discovery.
Now, under the combined attentions of Donna, Mrs. Corblay and Soft Wind,
the house, while primitive, had, nevertheless, been made comfortable and
kept immaculate. But there is a superstition rampant in all provincial
communities which dictates that the first line of action to be pursued
when there is a death in the family is to scrub the house thoroughly
from cellar to garret, and Mrs. Pennycook had been inoculated with the
virus of this superstition very early in life. She tucked up her skirts,
seized a broom and a mop, rounded up Soft Wind and proceeded to produce
chaos where neatness and order had always reigned.
It was at this juncture that Donna Corblay first gave evidence of having
a mind of her own. She dried her tears and gently but firmly informed
Mrs. Pennycook that the house had been thoroughly cleaned and scrubbed
three days previous. She begged Mrs. Pennycook to desist. Mrs. Pennycook
desisted, for if Donna couched her request in the language of entreaty,
her young eyes flashed a stern command, and Mrs. Pennycook was not
deficient in the intuition of her sex. So she composed herself in a
rocking chair and by blunt brutal questioning presently ascertained that
Mrs. Corblay had left her daughter two hundred and twenty-eight dollars
and ninety-five cents.
This decided Mrs. Pennycook. She dilated upon the importance of having a
clergyman come down from Bakersfield for the funeral, and suggested the
services (at the metropolitan rates usually accorded such functionaries)
of the local alleged quartette, which regularly made night hideous in
San Pasqual's lone barber shop.
“It'll be kinder nice like, don't you think, Donna?” she queried.
Donna nodded dubiously.
“An' what was your poor dear mamma's church?” continued Mrs. Pennycook.
“She didn't have any” Donna answered, truthfully enough.
Again Mrs. Pennycook sniffed. “Well, then, I suppose Mr. Tillingham, of
the Universal Church--”
Donna interrupted. “Mamma always knew she would be taken from me without
warning, and she often told me not to give her an expensive funeral. I
think she would have liked some services but I can't afford them.”
“But, dearie, that's so barbarous like!” exclaimed the dismayed
Samaritan. “There ought to be some one to say some prayers an' sing a
hymn or two.”
“Mamma always said she wanted to be buried simply. She thought it was
sweet and beautiful to have services, but not essential. She was always
skimping and saving for me, Mrs. Pennycook. She said I wasn't to wear
mourning; that the--living needed more prayers than--the--dead. She--she
said that when she was gone God would be good to her and that--I--she
said I would need all the money we had.”
“A-a-h-h-h!” breathed Mrs. Pennycook. She understood now. What a baggage
the girl was! How heartless, begrudging her poor dead mother the poor
comfort of a Christian burial, because she wanted the money for herself!
Privately Mrs. Pennycook prophesied a bad ending for Donnie Corblay. She
winked knowingly at her husband, then with truly feminine sarcasm:
“Well, at _least,_ Donna, you'll _have_ to buy a coffin an' a _grave_
an' have the grave _dug_--”
“Sam Singer will attend to that. I'm going to bury mamma among the
flowers at the end of our garden. I'll have a nice plain coffin made in
San Pasqual--”
“Oh!” Mrs. Pennycook trembled.
“Mamma always said,” Donna continued, “that undertakers preyed on the
dead and traded in human grief, and for me not to engage one for her
funeral. I'm going to do just what she told me to do, Mrs. Pennycook.”
“Quite right, Donnie, quite right” interjected Mr. Pennycook. He was
an impulsive creature and even under the hypnotic eye of Mrs. P. he
sometimes broke out of bounds.
“Daniel! Come!”
_Daniel!_ At the mention of his Christian name Mr. Pennycook quivered.
He knew he was in for it now, but he didn't care. It occurred to him
that he might as well, to quote a homely proverb, “be hanged for a sheep
as a lamb.” He had visited the Hat Ranch to tender aid and sympathy, and
despite the impending visitation of his wife's wrath he resolved to be
reckless for once and deliver the goods in bulk.
“Your poor mother was a sensible woman, Donnie girl,” he told the
orphan, “an' you're a dutiful daughter to follow out her last wishes
under these--er--deplorable circumstances--er--er--I mean it's a
terrible hard thing to lose your mother, Donnie, an'--damme, Donnie, I'm
sorry. 'Pon my word, I'm sorry.”
Mrs. Pennycook's lips moved, and while no sound issued therefrom,
yet did Dan Pennycook, out of his many years of marital submission,
comprehend the unspoken sentence:
“_Dan Pennycook, you're a fool!_”
“Ya-a-h” growled Mr. Pennycook, thoroughly aroused now and striving to
appear belligerent. His wife silenced him with a look; then turned to
Donna. She had a duty to perform. She was a great woman for “principle”
and the performance of what she conceived to be her duty. She was a
well-meaning but misguided person ordinarily, who loved a fight with
her own family on the broad general ground that it denoted firmness of
character. Mrs. Pennycook was so long on virtue and character herself
that half her life was spent disposing of a portion of these attributes
to the less fortunate members of her household.
She entered now upon a calm yet stern discussion of the perfectly
impossible proceeding of making a private cemetery out of one's back
yard; but Mr. Pennycook had recovered his poise and decided that
here was one of those rare occasions when it behooved him to declare
himself--by the way, a very rare proceeding with Mr. Pennycook, he being
known in San Pasqual as the original Mr. Henpeck.
“Mrs. Pennycook,” he thundered, “you will please 'tend to your own
business, ma'am. Donnie, my dear, I'm goin' to wire Los Angeles an'
order up a heap o' big red roses on 25--damme, Mrs. Pennycook, what the
devil are _you_ lookin' at, ma'am?”
“Nothing” she retorted, although it is a fact that had she been Medusa
a singularly life-like replica of Dan Pennycook in concrete might have
been produced, upon which the posterity of San Pasqual might gaze and be
warned of the dangers attendant upon mating with the Mrs. Pennycooks of
this world.
Donna commenced to cry. Mr. Pennycook's sympathy, albeit checked
and moderated to a great extent by the presence of his wife, was,
nevertheless, the most genuine sample of that rare commodity which
she had received up to that moment. His action had been so--brave--so
spontaneous--he knew--he understood; Dan Pennycook had a soul. And
besides he was going to wire for some red roses--and O, how scarce were
red roses in San Pasqual!
“O Mr. Pennycook, dear Mr. Pennycook” she wailed, and sought instant
refuge on his honest breast. She placed her arms around his neck
and cried, and Mr. Pennycook cried also, until his single Sunday
handkerchief was used up--whereat he pleaded dumbly with his wife for
her handkerchief--and was refused. So, like some great blubbering boy,
he used his fists, while Mrs. Pennycook looked coldly on, working her
lower lip and the tip of her nose, rabbit-fashion, for all the world
like one who, having anticipated a sniff of the spices of Araby, has
detected instead a shocking aroma of corned beef and cabbage.
It was a queer tableau, indeed; Donna weeping on Mr. Pennycook's breast,
when every instinct of her sex, even the vaguest acceptance of tradition
and custom, dictated that she should have wept on Mrs. Pennycook's
breast. Mrs. Pennycook realized the incongruity of the situation and was
shrewd enough to attribute it to a strong aversion to her on the part
of Donna Corblay. She resolved to make them both pay for her
humiliation--Dan, within the hour, Donna whenever the opportunity should
occur.
CHAPTER IV
When Donna and Mr. Pennycook had succeeded eventually in overcoming
their emotions, the worthy yardmaster and his wife took their departure.
Mr. Pennycook was compelled to return to work and something told him
that Donna would be happier alone than with Mrs. Pennycook; hence he
made no objection to her leaving the Hat Ranch.
They had scarcely left when the man whom Sam Singer had consulted at the
Silver Dollar saloon earlier in the day appeared from the north angle of
the adobe wall, where he had been lurking, and dodged into the Hat Ranch
enclosure. Donna was seated at the kitchen table, her face in her hands,
when he arrived. He could see her through the open half-window of the
lean-to, so he came to the window, thrust his head and shoulders in and
coughed.
Donna raised her head and gazed into the face of the worst man in San
Pasqual!
This peculiarly distinguished individual was Mr. Harley P. Hennage,
the proprietor of a faro game in the Silver Dollar saloon. He had an
impassive, almost dull, face (accentuated, perhaps, from much playing of
poker in early life) which, at times, would light up with the shy smile
of a trustful child, revealing three magnificent golden upper teeth. He
bore no more resemblance to the popular conception of a western gambler
than does a college professor to a coal passer. Mr. Hennage lived in his
shirtsleeves, paid cash and hated jewelry. He had never been known to
carry a derringer or a small, genteel, silver-plated revolver in his
waist-coat pocket. Neither did he appear in public with a bowie knife
down his bootleg. Not being a Mexican, he did not carry a knife, and
besides he always wore congress gaiters. Owing to the fact that he was a
large florid sandy person, with a freckled bristly neck and a singularly
direct fearless manner of looking at his man with eyes that were small,
sunken, baleful and rather piggy, the exigencies of Mr. Hennage's
profession had never even warranted recourse to his two most priceless
possessions--his hands. Yet, despite this fact, and the further fact
that he had never accomplished anything more reprehensible than staking
his coin against that of his neighbor, Mr. Hennage had acquired the
reputation of being the worst man in San Pasqual. In the language of the
country, he was a hard _hombre,_ for he looked it. When one gazed at Mr.
Hennage he observed a human bulldog, a man who would finish anything he
started. Hence, he was credited with the ability and inclination to
do the most impossible things if given half an excuse. It is needless,
therefore, to remark that Mr. Hennage's depravity, like Mrs. Pennycook's
virtue, partook more or less of the nature of the surrounding country;
that is to say, it was susceptible of development.
Most people in this queer world of ours harbor an impression that if you
make friends with a dog he will not bite you, and that lion tamers are
enabled to accumulate gray hairs merely by the exercise of nerve and the
paralyzing influence of the human eye. Hence, when the worst man in San
Pasqual confronted Donna, she did not at once scream for Sam Singer, but
looked Mr. Hennage in the eye and quavered.
“Good morning, Mr. Hennage.”
It was hard work continuing to look Mr. Hennage in the eye. To-day he
looked more like a bulldog than ever, for his eyes were red-lidded and
watery.
Mr. Hennage nodded. He drew a silk handkerchief from his coat pocket and
blew his nose with a report like a pistol shot before he spoke.
“How's the kitty?” he demanded.
Donna glanced toward the store and about the kitchen wearily and
replied.
“I don't know, Mr. Hennage. I guess she's around the house somewhere.”
“The Lord love you” murmured the gambler. The hard lips lifted, the dull
impassive face was lit for an instant by the trustful childish smile,
and through the glory of that infrequent facial expression Harley P.'s
three gold front teeth flashed like triple searchlights.
“I mean, Miss Corblay, have you any money?”
“Only a little bit, Mr. Hennage” Donna quavered. The question frightened
her and she hastened to assure the bad man that it was a very little bit
indeed, and all that her mother had been able to save. She trembled lest
the monster might take a notion to rob her of even this meager amount.
“I just had a hunch it was that way with you.” The worst man in San
Pasqual wagged his great head, as if to compliment himself on his
penetration. “I just knew it.”
This was not strictly the truth. Sam Singer had managed to convey to
the gambler some hint of the Corblay fortunes, financial as well as
material, and had begged of him to exercise his superior white man
intelligence to aid the Indian in wrestling with this white man's
problem that confronted the dwellers at the Hat Ranch. Rather a queer
source, indeed, for Sam Singer to seek help for his young mistress; but
then Sam was not an educated aborigine; he was not given to reflecting
upon the ethics of any given line of procedure. The fact of the matter
was that Harley P. Hennage was the only white man in San Pasqual who
deigned to honor Sam Singer with a greeting and his cast-off shoes. In
return Sam had honored Harley P. with his confidence and an appeal to
him for further aid.
“I have attended to everything” continued Mr. Hennage. “Preacher,
quartette from Bakersfield--they're real good, too. Playin' in a
theater up there, but I engaged to get 'em back in time for the evenin'
performance on a special train--so they said they'd come. An' I've
ordered an elegant coffin, the best they had in stock, with a floral
piece from Sam Singer an' his squaw an' a piller o' white carnations
with 'Mother' in violets--from you, understand? Everything the best,
spick an' span an' no cost to the estate. Compliments o' Harley P.
Hennage, Miss Donna.” He paused and rubbed his hairy freckled hands
together in an embarrassed manner. “I hope you won't think I'm actin'
forward, because I ain't one o' the presumin' kind. I just wanted to do
somethin' to help out because--your mother was a very lovely lady. Three
times a day for ten years she give me my change an' there never was a
time when she didn't have a decent, kindly word for me--the only good
woman in this town that'd look at me--God bless her! Mum's the word,
Miss Donnie. Don't let nobody know I did it, because it'd hurt your
reputation. And don't tell Mrs. Pennycook! Pennycook's a clean, decent
old sport, but look out for the missus!” Here Mr. Hennage lowered his
voice, glanced cautiously around to make certain that he would not
be overheard by Mrs. Pennycook, leaned further in the window and
improvising a megaphone with his hands, whispered hoarsely the damning
words: “She _talks!_”
Donna nodded. For a long time she had suspected Mrs. Pennycook of this
very practice.
“I've got to light out now” Mr. Hennage continued. “Folks'll wonder if
they see _me_ hangin' around here. But before I go I want to tell you
somethin'. Your mother was a-countin' out my change yesterday when she
got took. She thought she was goin' then on account o' the pain bein'
sharper than common, an' she cries out: 'Donnie! Donnie! My baby,
whatever is a-goin' to become o' you when I'm gone!' I was the only one
that heard her say it. I caught her when she was fallin', an' I told her
I'd see that you didn't lack for nothin' while I lived an' that I'd keep
an eye on you an' see that nothin' wrong happened to you. Your mother
couldn't speak none then, Miss Donnie, but she give my hand a little
press to show she was on an' that whatever I did was done with her
say-so. Consequently, Miss Donnie, any time you need a friend you just
ring up the Silver Dollar saloon an' tell the barkeep to call Hennage
to the 'phone. Remember! I ain't the presumin' kind, but I can be a good
friend--”
He dodged back as if somebody had struck at him. Before Donna could
quite realize what he had been saying he had disappeared. She ran to the
iron-barred gate, looked out and saw him walking up the railroad tracks
toward San Pasqual. She called after him. He turned, waved his hand
and continued on--a great fat bow-legged commonplace figure of a man,
mopping his high bald forehead--a plain, lowly citizen of uncertain
morals; a sordid money-snatcher coming forth from his den of iniquity to
masquerade for an hour as the Angel of Hope, and returning--hopeless.
For the last tie that bound Harley P. Hennage to San Pasqual was
severed. His soul was not mediocre; he could dwell no longer in San
Pasqual without feeling himself accursed. Never again could he bear to
sit on his high stool at the lunch counter in the railroad eating-house,
where he had boarded for ten years, and watch a stranger taking cash. He
had watched Donna's mother so long that the vigil had become a part of
his being--a sort of religious ceremony--and in this little tragedy of
life no understudy could ever star for Harley P. Her beautiful sad eyes
were closed forever now and the tri-daily joy of his sordid existence
had vanished.
“What little things go to make up the big pleasures of life! Who
could guess, for instance, that the simple deceit of presenting a
twenty-dollar piece in payment of a fifty-cent meal check had held for
Harley P. a greater joy than the promise of ultimate salvation? Yet it
had; for during the slight wait at the pay counter while the cashier
counted out his change he had been privileged to view her at close
quarters, to mark the contour of her nose, to note the winning sweetness
of her tender mouth, to hearken to the music of her low voice counting
out the dollars, and, perchance, saying something commonplace himself as
he gathered up his change! Yet that had been sufficient to make of
San Pasqual a paradise for Harley P. He knew his limitations; he had
presumed but once, long enough to ask the cashier to marry him. Her
refusal had made him worship her the more, only he worshiped thereafter
in silence and from afar. She had not laughed at him nor scorned him nor
upbraided him, lowly worm that he was, for daring to hope that he might
be good enough for her! No. She had told him about her husband, who had
gone prospecting and never returned; of Sam Singer who had been rescued
on the desert when close to death, of his return with a wild story of
much gold and a man, whose name he did not know, who had killed her
husband and escaped with the gold. She respected Mr. Hennage, she
admired him, she knew he was good and kind--and she did not refer to his
method of making a living. She merely laid her soft hand on his, as he
reached for his nineteen dollars and a half change, and said:
“Do you understand, Harley?”
Yes, she had called him Harley that day, and he had understood. Her
heart was out in the desert. He took the terrible blow with a smile and
a flash of his gold teeth, and never referred to his secret again.
He thought of her now, as he waddled back to his neglected game in the
Silver Dollar saloon. He wished that he might have been privileged to
admittance into that little room off the kitchen where something told
him she was lying; he wished that he might see her once again before
they buried her--but that would be presuming. He wished he knew of some
plan whereby that poor body might be spared the degradation of interment
in the lonely, windswept, desert cemetery, side by side with Indians,
Mexicans, Greek section hands and the rude forefathers of San Pasqual.
What a profanation! That horrible cemetery, surrounded by a fence of
barbed wire and superannuated railroad ties, to receive that beloved
clay. He pictured her as he had seen her every day for ten years, and
a rush of vain regret brought the big tears to his buttermilk eyes; the
chords of memory twanged in his breast and he paused on the outskirts
of San Pasqual with hands upraised, fists clenched in an agony of
desperation.
“I can't stand it” he muttered. “I can't. It'll be lonely. I've got to
get out. I'll close my game after the funeral an' _vamose._”
But to return to affairs at the Hat Ranch.
While Harley P. Hennage sat in the Silver Dollar saloon that afternoon
dealing faro automatically and pondering the problem of the precise
purpose for which he had been created; and while Mrs. Pennycook went
from house to house west of the tracks, expounding her personal view of
the extraordinary situation at the Hat Ranch, a south-bound train pulled
in and discharged a trained nurse, an undertaker, a rectangular redwood
box and more floral pieces than San Pasqual had seen in a decade.
After instituting some inquiries as to its location, the nurse and the
undertaker proceeded to the Hat Ranch, followed by a wagon bearing the
box and the flowers.
But why dilate on these mournful details! Suffice the fact that Mrs.
Corblay was laid away next morning in conformity with the wishes of the
only human being who had any right to express a wish in the matter.
The Bakersfield quartette was there and sang “Lead, Kindly Light” and
“Nearer My God To Thee”; the Bakersfield minister was there and read: “I
am the Resurrection and the Life”; Soft Wind threw ashes on her head and
cried in the Cahuilla tongue, “Ai! Ai! Beloved,” after the manner of her
people, while Sam Singer stood at the head of the grave like a figure
done in bronze. Dan Pennycook was there, supporting Donna, and made a
spectacle of himself. Mrs. Pennycook was there--and superintended the
disposal of the flowers on the grave; in fact, all San Pasqual was
there, with the exception of Harley P. Hennage--and nobody wondered
why _he_ wasn't there. It was well known that he was not one of the
presuming kind and had nothing in common with respectable people. And
when it was all over, the San Pasqualians went their several ways,
assuming--if, indeed, such an assumption did occur to any of them--that
the unknown who had provided these expensive obsequies would without
doubt provide for Donna also.
That night as Donna lay awake in bed, grieving silently and striving to
adjust herself to a philosophical view of the situation, she heard the
front gate open and close very softly; then slow, stealthy footsteps
passed on the brick walk around the house and down the patio to the end
of the garden. It was very late. Donna wondered who could be visiting
the Hat Ranch at such an hour, for No. 25, which was due in San Pasqual
at midnight, had just gone thundering by. She crept to the window and
looked out.
Beside the flower-covered mound at the end of the garden a man was
kneeling, with the moonlight casting his grotesque shadow on the
blossoms. Presently he stood up, and Donna saw that he had detached one
of Dan Pennycook's big red roses and was reverently hiding it away in
his breast pocket. Standing hidden in the darkness of her room, Donna
could see Harley P.'s face distinctly as he came down the moonlit patio.
The terrible mouth was quivering pitifully, tears bedimmed the little,
deep-set, piggy eyes to such an extent that Harley P. groped before him
with one great, freckled, hairy hand outstretched. He passed her open
window.
“My love! My love!” she heard him mutter, and then the slow stealthy
footsteps passed around the corner of the house and died away in the
distance. Harley P. Hennage had said his farewell to happiness. He
was an outcast now, a soul accursed, fleeing from the soul-crushing
loneliness and desolation of San Pasqual.
When two weeks had passed, the nurse so thoughtfully provided by the
gambler that Donna Corblay might not be obligated even to the slight
extent of companionship and comfort during that trying period to the
women of San Pasqual, returned to Bakersfield. In the interim Donna had
been offered, and had accepted, the position at the railroad hotel and
eating-house so long held by her mother. It was a good position. The
salary was sixty dollars a month. With this princely stipend and
the revenue from the Hat Ranch, and feeling perfectly safe under the
watchful eyes of Sam Singer and Soft Wind, Donna faced her little world
at seventeen years of age in blissful ignorance of the fact that she was
marked in San Pasqual.
She had committed two crimes. In the matter of her mother's funeral she
had scorned the advice of her elders and had dared to overthrow ancient
custom; and--ridiculous as the statement may appear--she had aroused in
Mrs. Pennycook the demon of jealousy! It is a fact. In the bigness of
his simple heart the yardmaster had yielded up to Donna a spontaneous
portion of tenderness and sympathy, which first amazed Mrs. Pennycook,
because she never suspected her husband of being such an “old softy,”
and then enraged her when she reflected that never since their honeymoon
had Dan shown _her_ anything more than the prosaic consideration of the
unimaginative married man for an unimaginative wife.
It did not occur to Mrs. Pennycook that she had not sought to bring out
these qualities in her husband by a display of affection on her part. It
never occurred to her that Dan Pennycook was a homely, ordinary, rather
dull fellow, in dirty overalls and in perpetual need of a shave; that
Donna was a beauty who could afford to pick and choose from a score of
eager lovers. She only knew that Donna had aroused in Dan Pennycook the
flames of revolt against the lawful domination of his lawful wife;
that he was of the masculine gender and would bear watching. Miss Molly
Pickett, the postmistress, whose official duties not so onerous as to
preclude the perusal of every postal card that passed through her hands
(in addition to an occasional letter, for Miss Molly was not above
the use of a steam kettle and her own stock of mucilage), was Mrs.
Pennycook's dearest friend and her authority for the knowledge that
while all men will bear watching, married men will bear a most minute
scrutiny. Mrs. Pennycook knew that as a wife she was approaching the
unlovely age when fickle husbands tire and cast about for younger and
prettier women. Hence she decided to trim her mental lamps and light the
dastard Daniel out of temptation.
Her first move was a master-stroke of feminine genius. She issued an
order to her husband to buy no more hats of Donna Corblay.
Three loud cheers for Mr. Pennycook! He revolted. He did more. He turned
on Mrs. Pennycook--he shook a smutty finger under her nose. He said
something. He said he would see her, Mrs. Pennycook, further--in fact,
considerably further--than that! All of which was very rude and vulgar
of Mr. Pennycook, we must admit, but--
And now our stage is set at last; so assuming three years to have
passed, behold the curtain rising, discovering Donna Corblay behind
the cashier's counter in the railroad eating-house in the little desert
hamlet of San Pasqual.
It is a different Donna that confronts us now, and the first glimpse
is almost sufficient to cause us to view with a more complacent eye the
mental travail of any married lady whose husband might be exposed to the
battery of Donna's eyes.
Such wonderful eyes! Dark blue, wide apart, intelligent, tender, with
a trick of peeping up at one from under the long black lashes, and
conveying such a medley of profound emotions that it is small wonder
that men--and occasionally women--forgot their change in the excitement
of gazing upon this superior attraction.
In his old favorite seat down at the end of the lunch counter we see Mr.
Harley P. Hennage partaking of his evening meal. He has been away from
San Pasqual for three years, and he has just returned. Also he has just
decided to remain (for reasons best known to himself), although we may
be pardoned for presuming that it may be because he sees an old, tender
memory reflected in Donna's eyes. _Quien sabe?_ He is older, homelier,
sandier than when we saw him last, and he has gambled much. So we can't
read anything in his face. Moreover, we do not care to. Instinctively
our gaze reverts to Donna, for the day's work is finished, she had
proved her cash and is about to go home to the Hat Ranch.
She is a woman now, a glorious, healthy, athletic creature, with wavy
hair, very fine and thick and black, and glossy as polished ebony. Her
face is tanned and glowing, and the halo of brilliant black hair only
serves to accentuate the glow and to remind us of an exquisite cameo
set in jet. She is taller by three inches than the average woman,
broad-shouldered, full-breasted, slim-waisted, a figure to haunt a
sculptor's memory.
She is dressed in a wash frock of light blue material, with a low sailor
collar that shows to bewildering effect her strong full throat. She
wears a flowing black silk navy reefer and when she puts on her hat
prior to leaving we realize that she has not studied male head-gear
alone, but has taken advantage of her semi-public position to copy
styles and to glean from the women's magazines, on sale at the counter,
the latest hints in metropolitan millinery.
This is the Donna Corblay that faces us this September evening. She has
developed from a girl into a woman, and we wonder if her mind, her soul,
has had equal development, or has it slowly starved in her unlovely and
commonplace surroundings?
It has not. Donna has never been away from San Pasqual since the day she
entered it a babe in arms, but--she presides over the news counter in
addition to her other duties. Here she has access to all the latest
“best-sellers,” also the big national magazines, and through these means
she has kept pace with a world that is continually passing her by
in Pullman sleepers. To her has been given the glorious gift of
imagination, and dull, sordid, lonely San Pasqual, squatting there in
the desert sands, cannot rob her of her dreams. Rather has she grown to
tolerate the place, for at her will she can summon up a host of unreal
people to throng its dreary single street; she can metamorphose the
water tank into a sky-scraper, the long red lines of box cars on the
sidings into rows of stately mansions. She reads and dreams much, for
only between the arrival and departure of trains is she kept busy. She
sends for books that would never find a sale in San Pasqual, and some
day--ah! the glory of anticipation! she is going to Los Angeles, where
the event of her life is to take place. Going to be married? No? No,
indeed. She is going to a theater.
So much for an intimate description of our leading lady as she appears
when the curtain rises. But in all plays, whether in real life or on the
stage, there must be a leading man. Very well, be patient. In due course
he will appear. Donna has been dreaming much of this hero of late. His
name is Gerald Van Alstyne, and he is tall, with curly golden hair,
piercing blue eyes and a cleft chin; in short, a veritable Adonis and
different, so different, from the traveling salesmen who leer at her
across the counter and the loutish youths of San Pasqual who, despairing
of her favor, call her by her first name because they know it annoys
her. Donna has not the slightest doubt but that this young fellow will
come rushing in to the eating-house some day, discover her when he comes
to pay his check, and eventually return and keep on returning until that
final happy day when they shall go away together, to walk hand in hand
through green fields and listen to the birds and bees, to linger under
the shade of green trees, to wander in an Elysium. She does not know
what green fields and running water look like, but she has read about
them--
The director's whistle is heard in the wings; the play is on at last!
As Donna thrust the last hatpin through her glorious hair and turned to
leave the place of her employment, her glance rested upon Mr. Harley
P. Hennage, covertly watching her over the edge of his soup spoon. She
removed her glove, walked around the end of the lunch counter and held
out her hand.
“Well, Mr. Hennage. This _is_ a delightful surprise. I'm _so_ glad
to see you back in San Pasqual. Where have you been these past three
years?”
Harley P. scrambled down from his high stool, took her cool hand and
blushed.
“I wouldn't like to tell you,” he said, “but I've been in some
mighty-y-y funn-y-y places, where I didn't meet no beautiful young
ladies like you, Miss Donnie. I ain't much of a man at handin' out
compliments--I never was one o' the presumin' kind--but you sure do put
San Pasqual on the map. Miss Donnie, you do, for a fact.”
Donna smiled her appreciation of Harley P.'s gallantry. “You left
without saying good-by” she reminded him. “If I had needed you I
couldn't have found you. Do you remember? You said if I ever needed a
friend--”
The big gambler grinned. “You never needed me, Miss Donnie. You never
would need a man like me, but you might have needed money. If you'd
a-needed money, now, why, Dan Pennycook he'd a-seen you through.”
Mr. Hennage did not judge it necessary to tell Donna that he had left
the worthy yardmaster in charge of her destinies, with a thousand
dollars on deposit in a bank in Bakersfield, in Dan's name, for Donna's
use in case of emergency. Mr. Hennage lived in an atmosphere of money,
where everybody fought to get his money away from him and where he
fought to get theirs; hence finances were ever his first thought. As for
Donna, she did not think it necessary that she should express a contrary
opinion regarding Dan Pennycook. She said:
“Why didn't you come to the counter at once and say hello?”
He shook his head, “I wanted to all right, but I hated to appear
presumin', an' with my rep in this village you know how people are
liable to talk. World treatin' you well, Miss Donnie?”
“I think I get more fun out of San Pasqual than most of the people in
it.”
“Well, then, you must spend a lot o' time lookin' into a mirror” replied
Harley P., and blushed at his effrontery. “That's the only way the San
Pasqual folks can get any fun--a-lookin' at your face.”
“Mr. Hennage, I fear you're getting to be one of the presuming kind.
I declare I haven't had such pretty speeches made me this year. By the
way, how's the kitty?”
Harley P.'s russet countenance swelled like the wattles on a
Thanksgiving turkey. He leaned over the counter and gazed under it;
his glance swept the room; he even, peered under his stool. Finally
he looked up at Donna with his three gold teeth flashing through his
trustful, childish smile.
“I dunno” he answered. “I guess she's around the house somewheres. I
ain't seen her in quite a spell.”
“I thought so,” she answered gravely, “or you wouldn't have returned to
San Pasqual. Small game for a small pocketbook, eh, Mr. Hennage?” She
came closer to him. “I don't mind telling you--just between friends, you
understand--that I have a couple of hundred to stake you to if you're
hard up, but for goodness sake don't tell Mrs. Pennycook. She talks.”
“Good Lord” gasped the gambler, and choked on a crouton. “D'ye mean it,
Miss Donna?”
“Certainly.”
“You're a dead game sport and I'd take you up, because I understand that
it's between pals, but you ain't got no notion o' tryin' to square me
for--you know!”
“I might--if I didn't understand all about that--you know? As it is I
want to show you that I'm grateful, and my experienced eye informs me
that you arrived in a box car. An empty furniture car, I should say,
judging by that scrap of excelsior in your back hair, although the car
might have been loaded with crockery.”
Mr. Hennage removed the evidence and gazed at it reflectively.
“I suppose, now, if that'd been a feather, you'd a-swore I flew in.”
“Possibly. You've been a high flyer in your day, haven't you?”
Mr. Hennage grinned. “I've flew some, but I've come home to roost now.
How's the old savage down at the Hat Ranch?”
“Sam Singer is unchanged. Nothing ever changes in this country, Mr.
Hennage.”
“Nothin' but money,” he corrected, as he fished a bill out of his vest
pocket, “an' money sure changes hands, more particular when I'm around.”
“Are you going back to the Silver Dollar saloon?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Faro, roulette, black jack, coon can or craps?”
“The old game--faro.”
“I'll bank you up to five hundred.”
“That's not the right thing for a young lady to do, is it?” queried the
gambler. “Havin' truck wit' my kind o' people. Me--I'll do anything, but
a young lady, now--”
“Please do not compare me with Mrs. Pennycook” Donna pleaded. “I am not
the guardian of San Pasqual's morals. I'll stake you because I like you
and I don't care who knows it--if you don't.”
“You're a brick” the gambler declared. “I don't need your money, you
blessed woman. I'm 'fat'” and he waved a thousand-dollar bill at her.
“I did ride into San Pasqual on a freight, but I did it from choice, an'
not necessity. The brakie was an old friend o' mine an' asked me to ride
in wit' him. But all the same it's grand to think that there's women
like you in this tough old world. It helps out a heap. You're just like
your poor mother--a real lady an' no mistake.”
Donna blushed. She was embarrassed, despite the earnest praise of Harley
P. She gave him her hand. He took it with inward trembling, lest
she might be seen shaking hands with him and dishonored. She said
good-night.
“Walkin' home alone?” Harley P. was much concerned. “Not that I'm
fishin' for an invitation to see you safe to the Hat Ranch, because
that'd start talk, an' anyhow I ain't one o' the presumin' kind an' you
know it; but it's dark an' the zephyr's blowin' like sixty, an' if there
was one hobo on that freight I come in on there was a dozen.”
“Why, I didn't realize it was so late,” Donna answered. “I'll have to
wait until the moon comes up. But I never walk home when I'm kept late.
The division superintendent lends me the track-walker's velocipede and
I whiz home like the limited. There isn't any danger, and if there was
I could outrun it. Do you wish to register before I go, Mr. Hennage? I
suppose you'll want your old room?”
The gambler nodded and Donna returned to the cashier's counter. After
assigning Mr. Hennage to his quarters she telephoned to the baggage
room next door where the track-walker for that division stored his
velocipede, and asked to have the machine brought out and placed on the
tracks.
For perhaps half an hour she conversed with Harley P., much to that
careless soul's discomfort, for he was terribly afraid of affording the
San Pasqualians grounds for “talk.” And as she waited the moon arose,
lighting up the half mile of track that led past the Hat Ranch; and
Fate, under whose direction all the dramas of life are staged, gave the
cue to the Leading Man.
He entered San Pasqual, riding down through the desert from Owens river
valley. But he was not in the least such a Leading Man as Donna had
pictured in her dreams. He was tall enough but his hair was not crisp
and curly and golden. Most people would have called it red. Not, praise
be, a carroty red, a dull negative, scrubby red, but a nicer red than
that--dark auburn, in fact. And he had an Irish nose and an Irish jaw
and Irish eyes of bonny brown. In but one particular did he resemble the
dream man. He did have a cleft in his chin. But even that was none of
nature's doing. A Mexican with a knife was solely responsible. Yet,
worse than all of these disappointments is the fact that his name was
_not_ Gerald Van Alstyne. No, indeed. The Leading Man owned to the
plain, homely, unromantic patronymic of Bob McGraw. The only thing
romantic and--er--literary about Bob McGraw was his Roman-nosed mustang,
Friar Tuck--so called because he had been foaled and raised on a wooded
range near Sherwood in Mendocino county. As a product of Sherwood
forest, Mr. McGraw had very properly christened him Friar Tuck, and as
Friar Tuck's colthood home lay five hundred miles to the north, it will
be seen that Mr. McGraw was a wanderer. Hence, if the reader is at all
imaginative or inclined to the science of deduction, he will at one
mental bound, so to speak, arrive at the conclusion that Bob McGraw,
if not actually an adventurous person, was at least fond of
adventure--which amounts to the same thing in the long run. Most people
who read Robin Hood are, as witness Mr. Tom Sawyer.
The moon was coming up just as the red-headed young man from Owens river
valley rode into San Pasqual. As he approached the railroad hotel and
eating-house he saw a girl emerge, and pause for a moment before walking
out to climb aboard a track-walker's velocipede. In the light that
streamed through the open door he saw her face, framed in a tangle of
black wind-blown wisps of hair; so he reined in Friar Tuck and stared,
for he--well! Most people looked twice at Donna Corblay, and the
red-headed man was young.
So he sat his horse in the dribbling moonlight and watched her seize the
handles of the lever and glide silently off into the night. He had been
standing in the stirrups, leaning forward to look at her hands as they
grasped the lever, and now he sat back in his saddle, much relieved.
“No wedding ring in sight” he mused. “My lady of the velocipede, I'll
marry you, or my name's not Bob McGraw.”
Just then Mr. Harley P. Hennage appeared in the doorway. He saw Bob
McGraw, recognized him, and immediately dodged back and went out another
door. He wanted to rush out and shake hands with Mr. McGraw, of whom
he was very fond, but we regret to state that Mr. McGraw owed Harley P.
Hennage the sum of fifty dollars and had owed it for three years, and
Mr. Hennage hesitated to seek Mr. McGraw out for purposes of friendship,
fearing that Mr. McGraw might construe his advances as a roundabout dun.
Ergo, Mr. Hennage fled.
Bob McGraw watched Donna Corblay, and when she was about three hundred
yards distant and beyond the town limits, he saw that a switch had
been left open, for the velocipede suddenly left the outside track,
cut obliquely across several parallel rows of tracks before she could
control it, and shot in behind a string of box cars. As the girl
disappeared, three dark figures sprang after her and a scream came very
faintly against the wind.
Bob McGraw laughed and drew a gun from under his left armpit.
“I'd ride to hell for you” he muttered joyously, and sank the rowels
home in Friar Tuck.
CHAPTER V
As has been intimated elsewhere in this story, San Pasqual has the
reputation of being a “tough” town. This is due in a large measure to
the fact that it is a division terminal, and at all division terminals
train crews must reckon with that element in our leisure class which
declines to pay railroad fare and elects to travel on brake-beams rather
than in Pullman sleepers. Having been unceremoniously plucked from his
precarious perch, the dispossessed hobo, finding himself stranded in a
desert town where the streets are not electrically lighted, follows the
dumb dictates of his stomach and the trend of his abnormal ambition, and
promptly “turns a trick.” Occasionally there is an objection on the part
of the “trickee” and somebody gets killed. Naturally enough, it follows
that the sound of pistol shots is frequently heard in the land, and
since it happens nine times out of ten that the argument is between
transients, the permanent resident is not nearly so interested in the
outcome as one might imagine--particularly when the shooting takes place
at night and beyond the town limits.
Harley P. Hennage had crossed from the eating-house, and had just
reached the porch of the Silver Dollar saloon, when above the whistling
of the “zephyr” he heard the muffled reports of three pistol shots.
One “Borax” O'Rourke, a “mule-skinner” from up Keeler way, who had just
arrived in San Pasqual to spend his pay-day after the fashion of the
country, heard them also.
“Down the tracks,” O'Rourke elucidated. “Tramps fightin' with a railroad
policeman, I guess. Let's go down.”
“What's the use?” objected Mr. Hennage. “A yegg never does any damage
unless he's right on top of his man. They all carry little short bulldog
guns, an' I never did see one o' them little bar pistols that would
score a hit at twenty yards after sundown. They carry high.”
At that instant the sound of another shot was heard, but faintly.
“That's the hobo” announced Mr. Hennage with conviction. “Them first
three shots came from a life-size gun.”
Half a minute passed; then came the report of six shots, following so
quickly upon each other that they sounded almost like a volley.
“Nine shots” commented “Borax” O'Rourke. “That's an automatic.”
“That's what it is!” Mr. Hennage walked to the end of the porch. He was
just a little excited. “It's all off with the hobo” he continued. “I
know the man that's using that automatic, and he can shoot your eye
out at a hundred yards. I saw him ridin' in just as I left the eatin'
house.”
“He must have been movin' to get down there in such a hurry. What's a
man on horseback doin' chasin' hobos across a web of railroad tracks,
an' if he was headed south, seems to me he'd have laid over for
supper--”
But Harley P. had a flash of inspiration now. “Come on, O'Rourke” he
shouted, and made a flying leap off the saloon porch. Borax followed,
and the two raced down the street at top speed--which, in the case of
Mr. Hennage, owing to his weight and his bow-legs, was not remarkable.
Borax easily outdistanced him.
Meanwhile, a rather spectacular panorama had been unfolding itself back
of the string of box-cars. Guided by Donna's screams, Bob McGraw sent
his horse away at a tearing gallop, lifting him in great leaps across
the maze of railroad tracks, and in a shower of flying cinders brought
him up, almost sitting, in the little foot-path between two lines of
track. Almost under Friar Tuck's front feet, Donna was struggling in
the grasp of three ruffians, one of whom was endeavoring to tie a
handkerchief across her mouth. The velocipede had been derailed by means
of a car-stake placed across the track.
Bob McGraw's long gun rose and fell three times, and at each deadly drop
a streak of flame punctured the moon-light. The three assailants went
down, shot through their respective legs--which remarkable coincidence
was not a coincidence at all, but merely a touch of kindly consideration
on the part of Bob McGraw, who didn't believe in killing his man when
wounding him would serve the same purpose.
As the three brutes dropped away from her the man from Owens river
valley lowered his weapon, and Donna, pale, terrorized and disheveled,
reeled toward him. He swung his horse a little, leaned outward and
downward, and with a sweep of his strong left arm he lifted her off the
ground and set her in front of him on Friar Tuck's neck, just as one of
the wounded thugs straightened up, cut loose with his bulldog gun and
shot Bob McGraw through the right breast.
Donna heard a half-suppressed “Oh!” from her deliverer, and felt him
sway forward a little. Then, seeming to summon every atom of grit and
strength he possessed, he whirled his horse, scuttled away around the
rear of the box-car, out of danger, and set Donna on the ground.
“Wait here” he commanded, through teeth clenched to keep back the blood
that welled from within him. “I was too kind--to those hounds.”
He rode back and finished his night's work. War-mad, he sat his horse,
reeling in the saddle, and emptied his gun into the squirming wretches
as they sought to crawl under the car for protection.
Donna was terribly frightened, but she was the last woman in the world
to go into hysterics. She realized that she was saved, and accordingly
commenced to cry, while waiting for the horseman to reappear. A minute
passed and still he did not come, and suddenly, without quite realizing
what she was doing or why she did it, the girl went back to the scene
of the battle to look for him. She was not so badly frightened now, but
rather awed by the silence, Donna was desert-bred, and in all her life
she had never fainted. For a girl she was remarkably free from “nerves,”
and she had lived too long in San Pasqual to faint now at sight of the
three still figures huddled between the ties, even had she seen them;
which, she had not. All that Donna saw was a roan range pony, standing
quietly with drooping head, while his master sprawled in the saddle with
his arms around his horse's neck. Donna went quickly to him, and when
the moon came out from behind a hurrying cloud she was enabled, with the
aid of the ghastly green glare from a switch lantern which shone on his
face, to observe that he was quite conscious and looking at her with
untroubled boyish eyes.
His hat was lying on the ground, securely anchored by the pony's left
fore foot. With rather unnatural calmness and following, subconsciously
perhaps, her acquired instinct for salving hats for the men of her
little world, Donna stooped, slapped the pony's leg to make him release
the hat and picked it up. She stood for a few seconds, with the hat in
her hand, looking at him pityingly. The man's brown eyes blazed with
admiration.
“What a woman!” he wheezed. “You're brave--like a man. You came back.
I'd like--to live--to serve you further--”
He gurgled, a red stain appeared at the corners of his mouth, and he
closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again his soul was
shining through and he smiled a little. He did not again attempt to
speak, yet, for all that, Donna heard the man-call to the woman that
belonged to him, the mate for whom he had been destined when the world
was first created. There are in this world personalities so finely
attuned to each other that mere words are unnecessary to express the
feelings of each for the other when first they meet. Between certain
rare souls the gulf of convention may be bridged by a glance; the divine
miracle of a pure and holy love, leaping to life in an instant, can
suffer no defilement by a spontaneous and human impulse to grasp the
precious gift ere life departs.
Some women love at first sight, but the vast majority, lacking the
imagination to perceive, at a glance, the attributes that go toward the
making of a Man, only think they love and delay a conventional period
before yielding. But Donna Corblay had lived so long in sordid,
unimaginative, unromantic San Pasqual that, from much inhibition and
introspection, she was different from most women. She had grown to rely
on herself, to trust her own judgment and to bank on first impressions.
As she faced Bob McGraw now, her first impression was that he was
telling her with his eyes that he loved her, that he had ridden in
behind this string of box-cars to purchase her honor at the price of his
life, because he loved her. And inasmuch as there appeared to be nothing
unusual or unconventional in his telling her this--with his eyes, Donna
was sensible of but one feeling and one desire; a feeling of gratitude
to him for the priceless gift of his love and her honor, a desire to--
She dropped his hat, wiped the blood from his lips and kissed him.
Bob McGraw smiled wistfully.
“It's worth it,” he whispered, “and few women are--worth--dying for.”
“You must not die,” the girl cried passionately. “You're my Dream Man
and I've waited so long for you and dreamed of your coming! I'll pray
for you, I'll ask God to give you to me--”
An almost fanatical joy beamed in her wonderful eyes, the color had
returned to her cheeks; and to Bob McGraw, faltering there on the edge
of eternity, her radiant regal presence brought a wondrous peace. For a
moment he saw the moonlight reflecting the light in her eyes; a
strand of her hair blew across his face--he smelled its perfume; the
intoxication of her glorious personality caused him to marvel and doubt
his own waning sense of the reality of things. He leaned toward her
hungrily and lapsed into unconsciousness, while his big limp body
commenced to slide slowly out of the slippery saddle. She caught him in
her strong arms, eased him to the ground and knelt there with his red
head in her lap, showering his face with her kisses and her tears. It
was thus that “Borax” O'Rourke, badly blown after his three-hundred-yard
dash, found them.
“Great snakes, young lady, what's happened?” gasped Mr. O'Rourke.
“Three brutes and a man have been killed” she replied.
“What the--who--who's that feller? Are you--”
“Don't ask questions, Borax. I am not hurt, but I have no time to answer
questions. Please remove that car-stake and replace the velocipede on
the tracks.”
Her cool demeanor, despite her tears, her terse commands, indicating
a plan for prompt action of some kind, flabbergasted Borax to such an
extent that he commenced to swear very fluently, without for a moment
realizing that there was a lady present. And just at this juncture
Harley P. Hennage arrived.
As might be expected, Harley P. wasted no time catering to the call of
curiosity.
“Let me have him, Miss Donna,” he ordered. “We'll put him on the
velocipede and rush him up to the hotel. I'll--”
“No, Mr. Hennage. He belongs to me. Place him on the velocipede and help
me take him home.”
“To the Hat Ranch?”
“Yes, of course, I can care for him there, if he lives.”
“Why, Miss Donna--”
“Do it, please” she commanded. “I know best. Set him on the little
platform and tie his legs to the reach. Then stand behind him to work
the lever, and let him rest against your knees. I'll follow with the
horse.”
“Remarkable! Very remarkable!” soliloquized the big gambler. Without
further ado he proceeded to carry out Donna's orders.
“Borax,” Donna continued, “you run up to the drug store and tell Doc
Taylor what's happened. I'll send Sam Singer back with the velocipede
for him.”
She gathered the reins in her left hand and swung aboard Friar
Tuck. Harley P., having disposed of his gory burden on the limited
accommodations of the track velocipede, seized the levers and trundled
away, followed by Donna on Friar Tuck, cautiously picking his way
between the ties.
Borax O'Rourke stood for a moment, gazing after them.
“She acts like a mother cat with a kitten” he muttered. “Damned if she
wasn't kissin' the feller--an' him a stranger in town!”
He walked rapidly back to San Pasqual, and such was his perturbation
that he sought to have “Doc” Taylor unravel the puzzle for him.
“Hysterics” was the doctor's explanation.
“Rats” retorted O'Rourke.
“All right, then. It's rats.” The doctor grabbed his emergency grip and
departed on the run for the Hat Ranch. Sam Singer met him half-way with
the velocipede.
O'Rourke returned to the Silver Dollar saloon where, since he was a
vulgarian and a numbskull, he retailed his story to the loungers there
assembled.
“I'll never git over the sight o' that girl a-kissing that young feller”
he concluded. “Why, I'd down a hobo every mornin' before breakfast if I
knowed for certain she'd treat _me_ that-a-way for doin' it.”
The situation was canvassed at considerable length, and only the
entrance of the constable with a request, for volunteers to help him
remove the “remainders” that were littering up the right of way below
town, served to turn the conversation into other channels.
Upon their arrival at the Hat Ranch a shout from Harley P. Hennage
brought Sam Singer and Soft Wind to the front gate. Donna dismounted,
tying Friar Tuck to the “zephyr” by the simple process of dropping the
reins over his head, and hurried into the house to prepare her mother's
old room for the reception of the wounded man. Bob McGraw was very
limp and white as Harley P. and the Indian carried him in. The gambler
undressed him while Sam Singer sprang aboard the velocipede and sped
back toward town to meet the doctor.
When the doctor arrived, he and Harley P. Hennage went into the bedroom,
closing the door after them. Donna remained in the kitchen. She had
already ordered Soft Wind to light a fire in the range and heat some
water, and when presently the gambler came out to the kitchen he nodded
his appreciation of her forethought ere he disappeared again with the
hot water and a basin.
In about an hour Doctor Taylor emerged, grip in hand.
“I've done all I can for him, Miss Corblay” he told her. “I'm going up
town to close the drug store and get a few things I may need, but I'll
be back within an hour and spend the balance of the night with him.”
“Will he live?”
Donna's voice was calm, her tones hinting of nothing more than a
friendly interest and sympathy; yet Harley P., watching her over the
doctor's shoulder, guessed the stress of emotion under which she strove,
for he, too, had seen her kiss Bob McGraw as he lay unconscious in her
arms.
“I fear he will not. The bullet ranged upward, perforating the top of
his right lung, and went on clean through. I've seen men recover from
wounds in more vital parts, but a .45-caliber bullet did the trick to
our young friend, and a .45 tears quite a hole. He's big and strong and
has a fighting chance, but I'm afraid--very much afraid--of internal
hemorrhage, and traumatic pneumonia is bound to set in.”
“He will not die!” said Donna.
The doctor looked at her curiously. “I hope not” he said. “But he'll
need a trained nurse and the best of care to pull through. It's long
odds.”
“That young feller's middle name is Long Odds.” Mr. Hennage had arrived
at the conclusion that Donna needed a great deal of comforting at that
moment. “He's lived on long odds ever since he came into this country.”
“How do you know, Hennage?” the doctor demanded. “I tell--”
“Long odds an' long guns, like birds o' feather always flock together”
the gambler answered him drily, “This young feller wouldn't feel that he
was gettin' any joy out o' life if he didn't tackle the nub end o'
the deal. I'm layin' even money he comes up to the young lady's
expectations.”
Donna thanked him with her eyes, and Harley P. crossed to the door and
looked down the long patio to where a small white wooden cross gleamed
through the festoons of climbing roses.
“He ought to have a nurse” the doctor advised Donna.
“Very well, doctor. You will telephone to Bakersfield, or Los Angeles,
will you not, and engage one?”
“I don't think our patient can afford the expense. Hennage frisked him
and all the money--”
“Thank you, I will attend to the financial side of this case, Doctor
Taylor.”
Mr. Hennage turned from his survey of the patio.
“Doc,” he complained, “it's time for you to move out o' San Pasqual.
You've stayed too long already. You're gettin' the San Pasqual sperrit,
Doc. You ain't got no sympathy for a stranger.”
“Well, you don't expect me to put up twenty-five a week and railroad
fare--”
“Never mind worryin' about what you've got to put up with, Doc. If you
know all the things I put up with--thanks, Doc. Hurry back, and don't
forget to 'phone for that nurse.”
“Ain't it marvelous how a small camp always narrers the point o' view?”
the gambler observed when the doctor had gone. “Always thinkin' o'
themselves an' money, A man in my business, Miss Donna, soon learns that
mighty few men--an' women, too--will stand the acid. That young feller
inside (he jerked a fat thumb over his shoulder) will stand it. I know.
I've applied the acid. An' you'll stand the acid, too,” he added--“when
Mrs. Pennycook hears you kissed Bob McGraw. Ouch! That woman's tongue
drips corrosive sublimate.”
Donna blushed furiously.
“You--you--won't tell, will you, Mr. Hennage?”
“Of course not. But that chuckleheaded roughneck O'Rourke will. Why did
you kiss him? I ain't one o' the presumin' kind, but I'd like to know,
Miss Donna.”
“I kissed him”--Donna commenced to cry and hid her burning face in her
hands. “I kissed him because--because--I thought he was dying--and he
was the first man--that looked at--me so different. And he was so brave,
Mr. Hennage--”
“That you thought he was a man an' worth the kiss, eh, Miss Donna?”
“I guess that's the explanation” she confessed, the while she marveled
inwardly that she should feel such relief at unburdening her secret to
the worst man in San Pasqual.
“If some good woman had only done that for me” the gambler murmured a
little wistfully. “If she only had! But of course this young Bob, he's
different from--what I was at his age--”
“I couldn't help it” Donna sobbed; “he's one of the presuming kind.”
Harley P. sat down and laughed until his three gold teeth almost
threatened to fall out.
“God bless your sweet soul, Miss Donna,” he gasped, “go in and kiss
him again! He needs you worse than he does a nurse. Go in an' kiss the
presumin' cuss.”
“You're making fun of me” Donna charged.
“I'm not. Can't a low-down, no-account man like me even laugh where
there's happiness? Why, if that young feller goes to work an' spoils it
all by kickin' the bucket, I'd die o' grief.”
“You know him, do you not?”
“I should say so.”
“Is he--”
“Yes, he's the nicest kind of a boy.”
“How old is he!”
“Twenty-eight.”
Donna was thoughtful.
“Nice disparity in ages, don't you think, Miss Donna?”
Donna blushed again. “What is his business!” she asked.
“Well, that's a right hard question to answer, Miss Donna. He was a
lawyer once for about a month, after he got out o' college, an' then he
worked on a newspaper. After that, just to prove he was a human bein',
he got the notion that there was money in the chicken business. Well,
he got out o' the chicken business with a couple o' hundred dollars,
an' then he come breezin' into a minin' camp one day an' tried bustin'
a faro bank. Failed agin. I'm responsible for that failure, though. The
next I see of him is a year later, in McKittrick, where he's runnin' a
real estate office an' dealin' in oil lands. But somehow there never was
no oil on none o' the land that Bob tied up, so he got plumb disgusted
an' quit. He was thinkin' o' tourin' the country districts sellin'
little pieces o' bluestone to put in the bowls of kerosene lamps to keep
'em from explodin', when I see him next. He borrowed fifty dollars from
me--which he ain't paid back yet, come to think on't--an' went to
Nevada minin' an' just at present he's about settled into his regular
legitimate business. He was headed that way from birth. I could read the
signs.”
“What is his present profession?”
“He's an Inspector o' Landscapes.”
“You're wrong. He's not a Desert Rat.”
“He is. I can prove it.”
“He's too young. They don't begin to 'rat' until they're close to forty.
I could name you a dozen, and the youngest is thirty-eight.”
“Oh, you're thinkin' o' the ordinary, garden variety. But I tell you
this McGraw man's a Desert Rat. The desert's got him. Generally it don't
get 'em so young, but once in a while it does, An' of all the Desert
Rats that ever sucked a niggerhead cactus, the feller that goes huntin'
lost mines is the worst. They never get over it.”
Donna permitted herself a very small smile.
“Sometimes they do” she reminded him.
“I wouldn't be surprised. But not until they've found what they're
lookin' for. However, we'll wait an' see if Bob McGraw--like that name,
Miss Donna?”
“I love it.”
“We'll wait an' see if he pulls through this, an' then we'll find out if
he can be cured o' desert-rattin'. In the meantime I'll wait here until
Doc gets back. I ain't one of the presumin' kind, but I think I'd better
stay. An' you--I think you'd better go in an' have another good look
at this Desert Rat o' yours. He's breathin' like the north wind sighin'
through a knot-hole.”
He watched her disappear.
“For the sight o' a good woman, O Lord, we thank Thee,” he murmured,
“an' for the sight o' a good woman with grit, we thank Thee some more.
Great grief, why wasn't I born good an' good-lookin' 'stead o' fat an'
no account?”
At ten o'clock Doc Taylor returned to the Hat Ranch and found the
condition of his patient unchanged. He was still unconscious and his
loud, stertorous breathing, coupled with the ghastly exhaust of air
through the hole on his breast, testified to the seriousness of his
condition. Throughout the night Donna sat by the bedside watching him,
while the doctor remained in the kitchen with Mr. Hennage.
Toward morning Bob McGraw opened his eyes and looked at Donna very
wonderingly. Then his glance wandered around the room and back to the
girl. He was plainly puzzled.
“Where's my horse,” he whispered, “and my spurs and my gun and hat?”
Donna bent over him and placed two cool fingers on his lips.
“The hemorrhage has stopped,” she warned him, “and you mustn't speak or
move, or you may bring it on again.”
“I remember--now. I fired--low--and he--got me. Where's Friar Tuck?”
“Your horse? He's in the corral at San Pasqual, and your gun is in the
kitchen with your spurs, and your hat--why, I guess I forgot to bring
your hat with me. But don't worry about it. I'm Donna Corblay of the Hat
Ranch, and I'll give you your choice of a hundred hats if you'll only
get well.”
“Are you--the--girl--that kissed me?”
Donna's voice was very low, her face was very close to his as she
answered him. His lean brown hand stole confidingly into hers--for a
long time he was silent, content to lie there and know that she was near
him.
Presently he looked up at her again, with the same dominating, wistful
entreaty in his brown eyes. She lowered her head until her cheek rested
against his, and his arm went upward and around her neck.
“God--made you--for me” he whispered. “I love you, and my name is Bob
McGraw. I guess--I'll--get well.”
“Beloved,” she breathed, “of course you'll get well. I want you to.” She
smoothed the wavy auburn hair back from his forehead. “Go to sleep” she
commanded. “You can't talk to me any more. I'm going to go to sleep,
too.”
She drew a bright Mexican serape over her shoulders, sat down in a
rocking-chair by the side of the bed and closed her eyes. For what
seemed to her a lapse of hours, although in reality it was less than
five minutes, she tried to induce a clever counterfeit of sleep, but
unable longer to deprive herself of another look at her prize she opened
her eyes and gazed at Bob McGraw. To her almost childish delight he was
watching her; and then she noticed his little, cheerful, half-mocking
smile.
She flushed hotly. For the first time she permitted the searchlight of
reason to play on the events of the night, and it occurred to her
now that she had been guilty of a monstrous breach of convention, an
unprecedented, unmaidenly action. She felt like crying now, with the
thought that she had held herself so cheap. Bob McGraw saw the flush
and the pallor that followed it. He read the unspoken thought behind the
changing rush of color.
“Don't feel--that way--about it” he whispered haltingly. “It's
unusual--but then--you and I are unusual, too. There seems to
be--perfect--understanding, and between a--man and a woman that
means--perfect peace. It had to--be. It was preordained--our meeting.
What is--your name?”
Donna again told him.
“Nice--name. Like it.”
He closed his eyes and dropped off to sleep like a tired boy.
CHAPTER VI
Donna sat there until sunrise, rocking back and forth, striving to weave
an orderly pattern of reason out of the tangle of unreason in which she
found herself when, confronted by that look in Bob McGraw's brown eyes.
She failed. She could not think calmly. She was conscious of but one
supreme emotion as she gazed at this man who had ridden into her life,
gun in hand. She was happy. Heretofore her life had been quiet,
even, unemotional, always the same--and now she was happy, riotously,
deliriously happy; and it did not occur to her that Bob McGraw might
die. She willed that he should live, for life was love, and love--what
was love? Something that surged, a wave of exquisite tenderness, through
Donna's lonely heart, something that throbbed in the untouched recesses
of her womanhood, arousing in her a fierce, almost primitive desire to
possess this man, to fondle his auburn head, to caress him, to work for
him, slave for him, to show her gratitude and adoration by living for
him, and--if need be--by dying for him!
It occurred to her presently that there was nothing so very unmaidenly
in her action, after all. She felt no distinct loss of womanly
reserve--no crumbling of the foundations of dignity. She still had those
attributes; to-morrow, when she returned to the cashier's counter at the
eating-house, she would still have these defensive weapons against the
invasions of the sensual, smirking, patronizing male brutes with
which every passing train appeared to be filled; the well-dressed,
hard-finished city men, who held her cheap because she presided behind
an eating-house cash-register. How well she knew their quick, bold
stares, their so clumsy subterfuges to enter into conversation with her;
and how different was Bob McGraw to such as they!
Here at last was the reason, unseen and unrecognized at first,
manifesting itself merely in the spontaneous and unconscious shattering
of her maidenly reserve, but distinctly visible now. It was not that Bob
McGraw had come to her out of the desert at a time when she needed him
most; it was not that he came in all the bravery and generous sacrifice
of youth, shedding his blood that she might not shed tears; it was not
the service he had rendered her that made her love him, for San Pasqual
was “long” on mere animal courage. It was the adoration that gleamed in
his eyes--an adoring stare, revealing respect behind his love--that one
quality without which love is a dead and withered thing.
She knew him now--the man he was. She saw the priceless pearl of
character he possessed. Bob McGraw was a wild, reckless, unthinking,
impulsive fellow, perhaps, but for all that he was the sort of man at
whose feet women, both good and bad, have laid their hearts since the
world began. He was kind. Harley P. Hennage was right. Bob McGraw was
a Desert Rat. But a Desert Rat lives close to the great heart of Mother
Nature, and his own heart is clean.
The dawn-light came filtering across the desert and lit up the room
where she sat. She turned to the bed and saw that Bob McGraw was
watching her again, and on his face was that little, cheerful, mocking,
inscrutable smile.
Again Donna found herself powerless to resist the appeal in the man's
eyes. She was crying a little as she slipped to her knees beside the bed
and laid her cheek against his.
“I can't help it” she whispered. “I seem to have loved you always, and
oh, Bob, dear, you'll be very, very good to me, won't you? You must be
brave and try to get well, for both our sakes. We need each other so.”
Bob McGraw did not answer readily. He was too busy thanking God for the
great gift of perfect understanding. Moreover, he had a perforated lung
and a heart whose duties had suddenly been increased a thousand-fold,
if it was to hold inviolate this sacred joy of possession which thrilled
him now. He was alert and conscious, despite the shock of his wound, and
the reserve strength in his six feet of splendid manhood was coming to
his aid. When he could trust himself to speak, he said:
“You're a very wonderful woman.”
“But you were laughing at me--a little.”
“Not at you, at Fate--the great, big, bugaboo Fate.”
“Why?”
“Because I--can afford to. My luck's--turned.”
“You dear, big, red-headed philosopher.”
“And you--didn't you save my hat?”
“No, dear. Don't worry over such a trifle as a hat. I'll give you a--”
“But this was--a--good hat” he complained. “I paid twenty dollars--”
“Never mind your old hat. Don't talk. I'm selfish. I want to listen to
you, but for all that, you must be quiet.”
He sighed. Forget all about that big, wide sombrero--genuine
beaver--that cost him twenty dollars only a week ago? His horse, his
saddle, his hat, his spurs, his gun--he was particular about these
possessions, for in his way Mr. McGraw was something of a frontier
dandy. His calm contempt of life and death amused Donna when she
compared it with his boyish concern for his dashing equipment. Hats,
indeed! Worrying over a lost hat while a guest at the Hat Ranch! If Bob
McGraw could only have understood Donna Corblay's contempt for hats he
would never have mentioned the matter twice.
She gauged the size of his red head with the practiced eye of one who
has sold many hats.
“Seven and a quarter” she mused fondly. “Wouldn't he look splendid in
that big new Stetson that blew in the day before yesterday! You great
big man-baby. I'll save that one for you.”
And having decided this momentous question of hats, she kissed him
and went out to the kitchen to prepare breakfast for Doctor Taylor and
Harley P. Hennage.
After having breakfasted at the Hat Ranch, Harley P. Hennage helped
himself to Bob McGraw's automatic gun, reloaded it and walked back to
San Pasqual. He had never carried a gun before, but something seemed to
tell him that he might need one to-day. Borax O'Rourke generally carried
one and if Borax had talked, Mr. Hennage meant to chastise him. In
consequence of which decision, Mr. Hennage, like a good gambler, decided
to fill his hand and not be caught bluffing.
Arrived outside the Silver Dollar, Harley P. immediately found himself
greatly in demand. Borax O'Rourke, having told all he knew, which was
little enough, and aching to supply further details, was the first man
to accost him.
“Well, Hennage,” he began, “what's the latest? Any more kissin' goin'
on?”
Mr. Hennage's baleful eyes scouted the mule-skinner's person
for evidence of hardware. Observing none, he said fiercely “You
mutton-headed duffer!” and for the first time within the memory of the
citizens of San Pasqual he had recourse to his hands. He clasped Mr.
O'Rourke fondly around the neck and choked him until his eyes threatened
to pop out, the while he shook O'Rourke as a terrier shakes a rat. Then,
after two prodigious parting kicks, accurately gauged and delivered,
the gambler crossed over to the hotel, leaving the garrulous one to
pick himself out of the dust, gasping like a chicken with the pip. It is
worthy of remark that the discomfiture of Borax O'Rourke was observed
by Mrs. Daniel Pennycook, who having noted from afar the approach of Mr.
Hennage, had endeavored to intercept him first. Judging from his hasty
action that the gambler was not in that state of mind most propitious
to the dissemination of the information which she sought, Mrs. Pennycook
decided to bide her time and returned to her cottage and her neglected
housework.
Mr. Hennage went at once to his room, where he lay down and went to
sleep. Late in the afternoon he was awakened by a knocking at his door.
He sprang out of bed and unlocked the door, and Dan Pennycook came into
the room.
“Hello, Dan” the gambler greeted him. “You look worried.”
“You would too, if you knew what I know” replied Pennycook. He sat down.
“Harley, old man, you've laid violent hands on a mighty hard character.”
“Well,” retorted the gambler, “ain't that the kind to lay violent hands
on? You wouldn't expect me to choke old Judge Kenny, or that little Jap
laundryman, would you?”
“But O'Rourke is dangerous. He's got two guns reachin' down to his hocks
an' he's tellin' everybody he'll get you on sight.”
“Barkin' dogs never bite, Dan. However, I wish you'd carry a message for
me. Will you?”
“Who to?”
“The dangerous Mr. O'Rourke. Tell him from me he'd better go back to the
borax works at Keeler, where he got his nickname, an' take up his old
job o' skinnin' mules. Tell him I'll loan him that roan pony in the
corral, an' he can saddle up an' git. Tell him to send the little horse
back with the stage-driver. I want him to ride out tonight, Dan. Tell
him it's an order.”
Pennycook nodded. “If I was you, though, Harley, I'd heel myself.”
The gambler opened a bureau drawer and brought forth McGraw's automatic
pistol. He smiled brightly.
“No use givin' orders unless a feller can back 'em up, Dan” he said.
“Thanks for the hint, though. Of course you'll tell Borax privately. No
use arousin' his pride lettin' the whole town know he had to go. He's
a rat, but a rat'll fight when he's cornered--an' I don't want to kill
him.”
“I will” replied Mr. Pennycook. “I'd hate to see any more trouble in
this town.”
“Thank you, Dan.”
“Donna all right?”
“Yes.”
“Who's the feller that interfered?”
“Stranger ridin' through.”
“Hard hit?”
“Right lung. He'll pull through.”
“Hope so” responded the amiable yardmaster, and left. Mr. Hennage got
back into bed and pulled the sheet over him again. But it was too hot
to sleep, so he lay there, rubbing his chin and thinking. Late in
the afternoon he heard the sound of a horse loping through the street
beneath his window. He sprang up and looked out, just in time to see
Borax O'Rourke riding out of town on Bob McGraw's roan bronco.
Mr. Hennage permitted himself a quiet little smile. “Now there goes the
star witness for the prosecution” he mused. “But I'll stay an' tell 'em
Borax was mistaken. I guess, even if I ain't a gentleman, I can lie like
one.”
He bathed and dressed and started over to the post-office--not because
he expected any mail, for he did not. No one ever wrote to Mr. Hennage.
But he had seen Mrs. Pennycook dodging into the post-office, and it was
his intention to have a quiet little conversation with the lady.
When he arrived at the post-office, however, Mrs. Pennycook was not in
sight. Mr. Hennage stepped lightly inside, and at that moment he heard
Miss Molly Pickett, the postmistress, exclaim: “Well, for the land's
sake!”
“It's a fact, Miss Pickett. She kissed him!”
The voices came from the inner office, behind the tier of lock boxes.
Realizing that he was in a public place, Mr. Hennage did not feel it
incumbent upon him to announce his presence by coughing or shuffling
his feet. He remained discreetly silent, therefore, and Mrs. Pennycook's
voice resumed:
“She had him taken right down to the Hat Ranch, of all places. Of course
it wouldn't do to bring him up town, where he could be looked after.
Of course not! He might be sent to a hospital and she wouldn't have a
chance to look after him herself. I never heard of such carryings-on,
Miss Pickett. It's so scandalous like.”
Miss Pickett sighed. “Who is he?” she demanded.
“That's what nobody can find out. I told Dan to ask Harley Hennage, but
you know how stupid a man is. I don't suppose he even asked.”
“Well, all I've got to say, Mrs. Pennycook, is that Donna Corblay's
taking a mighty big interest in a man she's never even been introduced
to. Still, I'm not surprised at anything she'd do, the stuck-up thing.
She just thinks she's it, with her new hats and a different wash-dress
every week, and her high an' mighty way of looking at people. She could
have been married long ago if she wasn't so stuck-up.”
“Oh, nobody's good enough for _her_” sneered Mrs. Pennycook. “If a dook
was to ask her she wouldn't have him. She'd sooner make fools of half
the married men in town.”
“She thinks she's too good for San Pasqual” Miss Pickett supplemented.
“I suppose she imagines her grand airs make her a lady,” Mrs. Pennycook
deprecated, “but for my part, I think it shows that she's kinder vulgar
like.”
“Well, what do you think o' last night's performance?” Miss Pickett
demanded.
“I can't think, dearie” murmured Mrs. Pennycook weakly. “I'm so shocked
like. It's hard to believe. I know the girl for a sly, scheming,
hoity-toity flirt, but to think that she'd act so low like! Who told
_you_ she kissed him?”
“Borax O'Rourke.”
“He told everybody.”
“Well, then, if it's got around, public like, we can't shield her, Miss
Pickett, an' I guess it's no use trying. Water will seek its own level,
Miss Pickett. You remember her mother. Nobody ever knew a thing about
her, an' you remember the talk that used to be goin' around about
_her._”
“The tree grows as the twig is bent” Miss Pickett murmured.
“I'll say this much, though, Miss Pickett” continued Mrs. Pennycook.
“You're a woman an' so'm I, an' you know, just as well as I do, that no
man or set o' men ever looks twice at any respectable woman that goes
right along tendin' to her business. You know that, Miss Pickett. A
man's got to have _some_ encouragement.”
“Well” Miss Pickett was forced to remark. “I've been postmistress
an' assistant postmistress here for fifteen years, an' nobody's ever
insulted me, or tried to flirt with me. I can take my oath on that.”
“I believe you, Miss Pickett” interrupted Harley P. Hennage serenely.
“Even in a tough town like San Pasqual human courage has its
limitations.”
Miss Pickett flew to the delivery window and looked out. Harley P. was
looking in.
“Is that so!” sneered Miss Pickett.
“Looks like it” retorted the gambler. “You're Exhibit A to prove it,
ain't you, Miss Pickett? I hope I see you well, Mrs. Pennycook” he
added.
“So you're back, are you?” Mrs. Pennycook's voice dripped with sarcasm.
“Yes, I've been away three years, but I see time ain't softened the
tongues nor sharpened the consciences o' some of my old lady friends.
You're out late this afternoon, Mrs. P., with your scandal an' your
gossip.”
“There ain't no mail for you, Mr. Card Sharp” Miss Pickett informed him
acidly.
“I didn't call for any” the gambler replied, and eyed her sternly. She
quivered under his glance, and he turned to Mrs. Pennycook. “Would
you oblige me, Mrs. Pennycook, with a few minutes of your valuable
time--where Miss Pickett can't hear us talk? Miss Pickett, you can go
right on readin' the postal cards.”
“I'm a respectable woman--” Mrs. Pennycook began.
“Well, it ain't ketchin', I guess” he retorted. “I ain't afraid.”
“What do you want? If you've got anything to say to me, speak right out
in meeting.”
“Not here” the gambler answered. “It'll keep.”
He walked out of the post-office and waited until Mrs. Pennycook came
by.
“Mrs. Pennycook, ma'am.”
She tilted her nose and glanced at him scornfully, but did not stop.
“It's about Joe” the gambler called after her.
If he had struck her she could not have stopped more quickly. She
turned, facing him, her chin trembling.
“I thought you'd stop” he assured her. “Nothin' like shakin' the bones
of a family skeleton to bring down the mighty from their perch. Bless
you, Mrs. Pennycook, this thing o' bein' respectable must be hard on
the constitution. Havin' been low an' worthless all my life, I suppose
I can't really appreciate what it means to a respectable lady with a
angelic relative like your brother.”
The drawling words fell on the gossip like a rain of blows. Her eyelids
grew suddenly red and watery.
“It ain't a man's trick to hammer you like this, Mrs. Pennycook,” the
gambler continued, almost sadly, “but for a lady that's livin' in a
glass house, you're too fond o' chuckin' stones, an' it's got to stop.
Hereafter, if you've got somethin' to say about Donna Corblay you see
that it's somethin' nice. You gabbed about her mother when she was
alive, and the minute I saw you streakin' it over to Miss Pickett I knew
you were at it again. Now you do any more mud-slingin', Mrs. Pennycook,
and I'll tell San Pasqual about that thug of a brother o' yours. He's
out o' San Quentin.”
“But his time wasn't up, Mr. Hennage,” wailed Mrs. Pennycook. “He got
fifteen years.”
“He served half of it and was paroled.”
Mrs. Pennycook bowed her head and quivered. “Then he'll be around here
again, blackmailing poor Dan an' me out of our savings.” She commenced
to cry.
“No, he won't. I'll protect you from him, Mrs. Pennycook. I want to make
a bargain with you. Every time you hear any of the long-tongued
people in this town takin' a crack at Donna Corblay because they don't
understand her and she won't tell 'em all her business, you speak a good
word for her. Understand? And the first thing tomorrow mornin' I want
you to get out an' nail that lie that Donna Corblay kissed the feller
that saved her from them tramps last night. It's a lie, Mrs. Pennycook.
I was there, an' I know. I ordered O'Rourke out o' town for circulatin'
that yarn. Suppose this town knew your twin brother was a murderer an' a
highwayman? Would they keep still about it?”
“No” faltered Mrs. Pennycook.
“I can keep Joe away from you, I have somethin' on him. You'll never see
him again. I'll save you from gossip an' blackmail, but you've got to
take programme.”
“I will” Mrs. Pennycook promised him fervently.
“Then it's a go” said Harley P. and walked away. He returned to the
Silver Dollar saloon, smiling a little at the joke in which he had
indulged at the expense of Mrs. Pennycook. He had informed her that he
had “something on” her brother Joe, but he had neglected to inform her
what the “something” was which he had “on” brother Joe. Mr. Hennage
could see no profit in telling her that it was a blood-stained
tarpaulin, under which Mrs. Pennycook's brother reposed, quite dead,
in the back room of the stage stable, to which impromptu morgue Joseph,
with his two companions, had been borne by the committee of citizens
headed by the constable, shortly after the elimination of the trio by
Mr. Bob McGraw.
No, Mr. Hennage, while a man of firmness and resource, was not brutal.
He contrived, however, to avoid identification of the body by keeping
Dan Pennycook from attending the coroner's inquest, for he was a good
gambler and never wasted a trump.
“I never knew there was such fun at funerals” he soliloquized while
returning from the cemetery. He bit a large piece out of his “chewing”
and gazed around him. “Doggone it” he muttered, “if this ain't the worst
town in California for killin's. I never did see such a one-horse camp
with such a big potter's field. If I wasn't a inquisitive old hunks I'd
get out of such a pesky hole P. D. Q. I wouldn't a' come back in the
first place if it hadn't a' been for that Joe person. Dog-gone him!”
This was quite true. For some months Mr. Hennage had been running a
game in Bakersfield, which, at that time, was a wide open town, just
beginning to boom under the impetus of rich oil strikes. It had been
one of his diversions, outside of business hours, to walk down to the
freight yards once a week and fraternize with the railroad boys. In
this way he managed to keep track of affairs in San Pasqual. Upon
the occasion of his last trip to the freight yards he had spied Mrs.
Pennycook's brother dodging into an empty box-car. Mr. Hennage had seen
this worthy upon the occasion of his (Joe's) last visit to San Pasqual,
the object of the said visit having been imparted to him by Dan
Pennycook himself. Having no money available for the blackmailer, poor
Pennycook had come to Hennage to borrow it. Upon the occasion of the
payment of the loan, Pennycook informed Mr. Hennage joyfully that Joe
was out of the way for fifteen years and Mr. Hennage had rejoiced with
the yardmaster. Hence, when Mr. Hennage observed Joe sneak into the
box-car, he at once surmised that Joe was broke and headed for San
Pasqual to renew his fortunes. Having a warm spot in his heart for
Dan Pennycook, Mr. Hennage instantly decided to follow Joe in another
box-car, which, in brief, is the reason why he had returned to San
Pasqual.
Presently Mr. Hennage paused and glanced across the blistering half-mile
of desert, to where the sun glinted on the dun walls of the Hat Ranch.
In the middle distance a dashing girlish figure in a blue dress was
walking up the tracks.
Mr. Hennage's three gold teeth flashed like heliographs.
“This world is so full o' a number o' things,
I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings”
he quoted, and walked across to meet her.
CHAPTER VII
Early in the forenoon of the day following Bob McGraw's spectacular
advent into San Pasqual, the nurse for whom Doc Taylor had telephoned
to Bakersfield arrived at the Hat Ranch. She proved to be a kind
middle-aged woman, devoted to her profession and thoroughly competent
to do everything for Bob McGraw that could be done. Her arrival released
Donna from the care of watching the wounded man, and she rested at last.
It was late in the afternoon before she appeared again in the sick room,
when she was overjoyed to learn of the change in Bob's condition. There
was no further hemorrhage from the wound, although his pulse was racing
at several degrees above normal. He was awake when Donna entered the
room and greeted her with a weak smile of welcome. It may be that at the
moment Mr. McGraw fondly hoped that he might be further rewarded with
another kiss; but if so he was disappointed. Donna favored him with
nothing more tangible than a rather sad, wistful, interested scrutiny,
and then, satisfied that he was making his fight, she turned to leave
the room, whereupon Mr. McGraw, disregarding his nurse's explicit
instructions, presumed to enter into conversation.
“Hello, Donna,” he whispered, “aren't you going to speak to a fellow?”
Donna shook her head.
“But I might die” he pleaded piteously. The nurse intervened.
“Nobody's worried over that remote contingency,” she retorted, “so do
not endeavor to seek sympathy.”
He looked at her so tragically that she could not forbear a little
laugh, as she ordered Donna to leave the room.
“The right of free speech--and free assemblage,” Mr. McGraw protested
hoarsely, “is guaranteed to--every American citizen--under the con--”
“Silence!” commanded the nurse.
Mr. McGraw muttered something about gag rule and the horror of being
mollycoddled, sighed dismally and predicted his death within the hour.
Donna left the room and he was forced to amuse himself, until he fell
asleep, watching the antics of an inquisitive lizard which in turn was
watching him from a crack in the sun-baked adobe wall. As for Donna, the
very fact that Bob was still a fighter and a rebel proved conclusively
that within a week he would be absolutely unmanageable. This thought was
productive of such joy in Donna's heart that she became a rebel herself.
In the bright evening she took her guitar and went out into the patio,
where she stood under Bob's window and sang for him a plaintive little
Spanish love song. Donna's voice, while untrained, was, nevertheless,
well pitched, sweet and true, and to Bob McGraw, who for three years had
not heard a woman's voice raised in song, the simple melody was a treat
indeed.
The nurse came out, looked at her and laughed, as who would not; for all
the world loves a lover, and the nurse was very human.
“That's quite irregular, Miss Corblay,” she commented, “but in this
particular case I believe it has a soothing effect. Mr. McGraw has
promised me that he will be very good if I can induce you to sing for
him every evening. He said 'Bravo' three times.”
“Then he has decided not to die after all.”
“I think he has changed his mind.”
“I'll sing him to sleep” Donna answered--and forthwith did so. And that
night, when she retired, she could not sleep herself for the happiness
that was hers; that excessive happiness which, more poignant than pain,
is often productive of tears.
The wounded man slept well that night. If he suffered nobody knew it.
In the morning his condition was slightly improved, and after hearing
a most cheerful and favorable report from both doctor and nurse, Donna
decided not to prejudice her position at the eating-house by staying
away another day, and accordingly she set off up the track to the town.
She was half-way there when she observed Harley P. Hennage walking
toward her from the direction of the cemetery.
“Well, Miss Donna,” he began as he approached, “how are you after the
battle?”
“Still a little shaky, Mr. Hennage, but not enough to prevent my going
to work. I can count change, to-day, I think.”
“Good news, good news. If I was governor of this state I'd declare
to-day a legal holiday. How's the wounded hero? Able to sit up and take
some food?”
“No, no food as yet. Nothing but nutriment. Who ever heard of a sick man
getting anything but that?”
Mr. Hennage showed his three gold teeth. “Ain't Mrs. Pennycook been
down with a plate o' calf's-foot jelly or somethin' o' that nature?” he
asked.
It was Donna's turn to laugh. “I hardly think she'll come. She hasn't
given me a friendly look in three years.”
“Well, of course, you haven't needed her,” the gambler reminded her,
“but she'll be droppin' in before long, now--Bob McGraw's a stranger in
town, an' entitled to the kindly services o' the community as a whole,
so Mrs. P. can show up at the Hat Ranch under those conditions without
unbendin' her dignity.”
“I suppose she is kind enough in her way,” Donna began, “but--”
“You don't like her way, eh?”
“I'm afraid I'm inclined to be uncharitable at times.”
“Nonsense!” he corrected. “Ain't you been a' nursin' the sick?”
“Yes. Which reminds me that you, also, have been performing one of the
works of mercy. You came from the cemetery, did you no?!”
“Yes, I've been buryin' the dead. They had me as witness on the
coroner's jury last night, an' after the jury decided that it was
justifiable homicide, there was nothin' to do but plant the three o'
'em--before the sun got too high. But let's take up some live topic--”
Again Donna laughed, for while Harley P.'s humor was rather grim, Donna
had lived long enough in San Pasqual to appreciate it. The big gambler
loved to see her laugh, and the thought that she was courageous enough
to enjoy his jest, considering the terrible experience which she had
lately undergone, filled him with manly admiration.
“It's another joke,” he began presently, “only this time it's on San
Pasqual. I want to put up a job on the town, an' you've got to help me,
Miss Donna.”
Donna gave him a graceful travesty of a military salute.
“'Onward, Heart of Bruce, and I will follow thee,'” she quoted. “But
before you explain your plans, tell me what has poor little San Pasqual
been doing of late to earn your enmity?”
“Nothin' much. The town ain't no worse than any other one-horse camp for
wantin' to know everybody's business but its own. They never found
out any o' mine, though, you can bank on that; and it always hurt 'em
because they never found out any of your poor mother's when she was
livin'. An' since your trouble the other night, they're all itchin' to
learn the name o' the brave that saved you. Some o' the coroner's jury
was for callin' you to testify at the inquest, but considerin' the hard
looks o' the deceased an' what you told me--an' what Borax O'Rourke told
everybody else before he left town yesterday, I prevailed on Doc Taylor
to testify that you weren't in no fit frame o' mind to face the music,
so they concluded to bring in a verdict _muy pronto,_ an' let it go at
that. They tell me there's been a plague o' hard characters droppin' off
here lately, an' anyway, to make a long story short, the boys rendered
a verdict on general principles an' there ain't no news for the rest
o' the town--particularly the women. The way some o' them women's been
dodgin' back and forth between their own homes and the post-office,
you'd think it was the finish of a jack-rabbit drive. They're just plumb
_loco,_ Miss Donna, to find out the name o' this gallant stranger that
saved you. They want to know what he looks like, the color o' his
hair an' how he parts it, how he ties his necktie, an' if he votes the
Republican ticket straight and believes in damnation for infants.”
“I see,” said Donna, “and you want to let them suffer, do you?”
“I wouldn't wag my tongue to save 'em” he retorted bitterly. “Now here's
the programme. You've got young McGraw bottled up there at the Hat
Ranch, and I want you to keep him there until he's able to walk away
without any assistance, an' all that time don't you let nobody see
him. I've got Doc Taylor fixed already, which was easy, Doc bein' a
bachelor--an' now if you stand in we'll have 'em goin' south. On account
o' bein' postmistress an' in a position to get all the news, the town's
lookin' to Miss Pickett to produce, an' if she can't produce, I'm hopin'
she'll go into convulsions.”
“Mr. Hennage,” said Donna, “this is most unworthy of you. I didn't think
you would harbor a grudge.”
“Why, you know my reputation, Miss Donna.”
“Yes, you're the worst man in San Pasqual. But I'm afraid I can't agree
to enter into this conspiracy.”
“Why not?”
“It's unlawful.”
“Miss Donna, I'm serious--”
“It's cruel and unusual punishment--”
“I'd light a fire under 'em” said Harley P. ferociously. “Better stand
in, Miss Donna--to oblige me.”
“All right, it's a go, if you put it that way.”
“Shake! You'll enjoy it, Miss Donna. You'll find yourself real popular
when you get up to the hotel. Some o' the natives was thinkin' o'
bringin' their blankets an' three days' rations, an' campin' in front o'
the hotel until you arrived. Well, good-by, till supper-time. I'm goin'
to breeze along down to the Hat Ranch an' warn the nurse agin spies an'
secret emissaries masqueradin' as angels o' mercy.”
He waved his big hand at her and waddled down the track toward the Hat
Ranch. Arrived there, he introduced himself to the nurse and made a
few perfunctory inquiries regarding the condition of her patient, after
which, with many premonitory coughs, he ventured to outline his campaign
as San Pasqual's official news censor. The nurse was not lacking in a
sense of humor, and readily agreed to enlist under the banner of Harley
P.
“An' remember,” he warned her, as he prepared to leave, “to look sharp
if you see a forty-five-year-old damsel, with a little bright red face,
all ears an' no chin, like the ace o' hearts. That'll be Miss Pickett.
She'll have with her, like as not, a stout married lady, all gab an'
gizzard, like a crow, an' a mouth like a new buttonhole. That'll be Mrs.
Pennycook. Look out for 'em both. They talk!”
And having played this unworthy trick on the gossips of San Pasqual,
Mr. Hennage returned to town in a singularly cheerful state of mind, and
devoted the balance of the day to the duties of his profession.
That night, when he went to his dinner at the eating-house, he stopped
at the counter to have a little chat with Donna.
“What luck?” he asked.
“I declare I'm almost exhausted. I've been dodging questions and
tripping over hints all day long.”
“Miss Pickett come over to offer sympathy.”
“Yes.”
“Hu-u-um! An' after she went away, I suppose Mrs. Pennycook come in as
thick as three in a bed?”
“She was very nice.”
“She'd better be” he remarked, and Donna thought that beneath the
jocularity of his manner she detected a menace.
“What have you heard?” she queried.
“I've heard,” he replied deliberately, “that Donna Corblay is harboring
a desperate character in her home.”
“I heard something else to-day. While we're gossiping, Mr. Hennage, I'll
tell you the latest--the very latest. It's reported that Dan Pennycook
is drinking.”
“No!” Mr. Hennage was concerned. He was fond of Dan Pennycook. “Who told
you!” he inquired.
“He was seen buying a bottle of port wine in the Silver Dollar saloon
this afternoon, and you know his wife is strictly temperance.”
“Oh, shucks! There's nothin' to that report. I can account for that just
as easy as lookin' through a hoop. It's goin' to be wine jelly, after
all. I thought maybe it might be calf's-foot, but--” he broke off. “I
wish,” he said earnestly, “I could get hold of a low-spirited billy
goat, Miss Donna, an' tie him to your front gate when Mrs. P. arrives.
You want to warn the nurse, Miss Donna. Remember what the old sharp in
the big book says: 'Beware o' the Greeks when they come into camp with
gifts.' Hey, Josephine!”
He hailed his waitress.
“About twenty-five dollars' worth o' ham an' eggs,” he ordered, “with
some pig's ear and cauliflower on the side. I ain't had such a big
appetite for my grub since I was a boy.”
That evening, when Donna left the eating-house for her home, it seemed
to her that the Hat Ranch must be situated at least ten miles further
from San Pasqual than it had been two days previous. It almost seemed as
if she would never reach the gate that pierced the big seven-foot adobe
wall which shut Bob McGraw in from the prying eyes of the townspeople;
she felt that her heart, over-burdened with its weight of agonized
happiness, must break before she found herself once more standing by
Bob's bed, gazing down at him with a look of proprietorship and love.
As she stood there, smiling, her face flushed from the exertion of her
rapid walk, her jaunty straw hat casting little vagrant shadows across
her great, dark, sparkling eyes, he awakened and looked up. She was
drawing off her gloves, and one who has ridden in the waste places
as much as had Bob McGraw soon learns that simple signs are sometimes
pregnant of big things. The big thing, as Bob read it then, was the fact
that she had just come home; that she had hurried, for she was breathing
hard. Why had she hurried? Why, to see him, Bob McGraw--and in such a
hurry was she that she had not waited to remove her hat and gloves. This
was all very gratifying; so gratifying that Mr. McGraw would almost, at
that moment, have welcomed a .45 through his other lung, if thereby he
could only make her understand how deeply gratified he really was--how
dearly he loved her and would continue to love her. He was so filled
with such thoughts as these that he continued to gaze at her in silence
for fully a minute before he spoke.
“It's been a long, hot day” he whispered. “I worried. Thought you might
be kept--late--again.”
The adorable old muggins! The very thought of having somebody to worry
over her was so very new to Donna, and so very sweet withal, that she
_called_ Mr. McGraw an adorable old muggins, and pinched the lobe of
his left ear, and tweaked the sunburned apex of his Irish nose. Then she
kissed the places thus pinched and tweaked, and declared that she was
happy enough to--to--to _swear!_ “I understand--perfectly” said Bob
McGraw, and there is no doubt that he did. The idea of a glorious young
Woman like Donna swearing was, indeed, perfectly ridiculous. Of course,
nerve-racked tired waitresses and be-deviled chefs “cussed each other
out” as a regular thing up at the eating-house during a rush, and Donna,
having listened to these conversational sparks, off and on, for
three years, felt now, for the first time, as she imagined they must
feel--that the unusual commotion in one's soul occasionally demands some
extraordinary outlet.
“I could beat Soft Wind with the broom, or tip over the stove, or do
something equally desperate” she told him. “I feel so deeply--it hurts
me--here,” and she pressed her hand to her heart.
“Think of me,” he whispered, “hurt on--both sides. Bullet--hole
in--right lung--key-hole in--my heart.”
The blarney of the wretch! Really, this McGraw man was the most forward
person! As if he could ever, by any possibility, love her as she loved
him!
“You great red angel” she said. Then she ruffled his hair and fled out
to the kitchen to investigate the exact nature of the savory concoction
which the nurse was preparing for her invalid. No royal chef,
safe-guarding the stomach of his monarch against the surreptitious
introduction of a deadly poison in the soup, could have evinced a
greater interest in the royal appetite than did Donna in Bob McGraw's
that night. As the nurse was about to take the bowl of broth which she
had prepared, in to her patient, Donna dipped up a small quantity on a
teaspoon and tasted it.
“A little more salt, I think” she announced, with all the gravity of her
twenty years.
The nurse glanced at her for a moment, before she took her glowing
face between her cool palms and kissed the girl on each cheek. Then she
reached for the salt cellar, dropped a small pinch into the soup, seized
the tray and marched out, smiling. She was one of the women on this
earth who can understand without asking--at least Donna thought so, and
was grateful to her for it.
The three weeks that followed, while Bob McGraw, having battled his way
through the attack of traumatic pneumonia incident to the wound in his
lungs, slowly got back his strength, seemed, indeed, the most marvelous
period of Donna Corblay's entire existence. On the morning after her
conversation with Harley P., Mrs. Pennycook, true to the gambler's
prediction, did favor the Hat Ranch with her bustling presence, and
wrapped in a snow-white napkin the said Mrs. Pennycook did carry the
hereinbefore mentioned glass of wine jelly for the debilitated stranger
in their midst. Donna was at the eating-house when Mrs. Pennycook
called, but the nurse received her--not, however, without an inward
chuckle as she recalled Mr. Hennage's warning and discovered that Mrs.
Pennycook's mouth did really resemble a new buttonhole--as the mouth
of every respectable, self-righteous, provincial female bigot has had
a habit of resembling even as far back as the days of the Salem
witchcraft.
For her wine jelly, Mrs. Pennycook received due and courteous thanks
from the nurse personally, and also on behalf of Miss Corblay and the
patient. To her apparently irrelevant and impersonal queries, regarding
the identity of the wounded man, his personal and family history, Mrs.
Pennycook received equally irrelevant and impersonal replies, and when
she suggested at length that she “would dearly love to see him for a
moment--only a moment, mind you--to thank him for what he had done for
that dear sweet girl, Donna Corblay,” the nurse found instant defense
from the invasions by reminding Mrs. Pennycook of the doctor's orders
that his patient be permitted to remain undisturbed.
Two days later Mrs. Pennycook, accompanied by Miss Pickett, called
again. Miss Pickett carried the limp carcass of a juvenile chicken, and
armed with this passport to Bob McGraw's heart and confidence, she too,
endeavored to run the guard. Alas! The young man was still in a very
precarious condition, and baffled and discouraged, the charitable pair
departed in profound disgust.
The next day Dan Pennycook called, at Mrs. Pennycook's orders. The
yardmaster, as he bowed to the nurse and ventured a mild inquiry as to
the patient's health, presented a remarkable imitation of a heretofore
conscientious dog that has just been discovered in the act of killing
a sheep. Poor Daniel was easy prey for the efficient nurse. He retired,
chop-fallen and ashamed, and the day following, two conductor's wives
and the sister of a brakeman, armed respectively with a brace of
quail, a bouquet of assorted sweet peas and half a dozen oranges, came,
deposited their offerings, were duly thanked and dismissed.
To all these interested ladies, Donna, at the suggestion of Harley P.
(who, by the way, fell heir to the brace of quail, which he had prepared
by the eating-house chef, and later consumed with great gusto), wrote
a polite note of thanks. This, of course merely served to irritate an
already irritated community, without affording them an opportunity for
what Mr. Hennage termed “a social comeback.” He contracted the habit,
during that first week, of coming in to his dinner earlier, in order
that he might hear from Donna a detailed report of the frantic efforts
of her neighbors to get at the bottom of the mystery. Mr. Hennage was
enjoying himself immensely.
After the first week had passed without developments, interest in Donna
and her affairs began to dwindle, for not infrequently matters move
in kaleidoscopic fashion in San Pasqual, and the population, generally
speaking, soon finds itself absorbed in other and more important
matters. Mrs. Pennycook was quick to note that Donna (to quote Mr.
Hennage) was “next to her game,” and with the gambler's threat hanging
over her she was careful to refrain from expressing any decided opinions
in the little circle in which she moved.
At the end of the second week the news that development work was
projected somewhere near the town, doubtless by some syndicate
whose operations were so extensive that the work would likely mean a
construction camp conveniently near, swept the Bob McGraw-Donna Corblay
episode completely aside. Rumor, fanned by the eager desires of the
business element of the hamlet, gained headway, despite the fact that
false rumor was all too frequent a visitor to San Pasqual, until not
more than half a dozen people in the town remembered that Donna Corblay
had had an adventure, the details of which they had failed to unearth.
During those three weeks of convalescence, Bob McGraw's splendid
condition, due to his clean and hardy life on the range and desert,
caused him to rally with surprising rapidity from his dangerous wound.
At the end of ten days he was permitted to sit up in bed and talk
freely, and a few days later with the assistance of the nurse and Sam
Singer he was lifted into a chair and spent a glorious day sitting in
the sun in the wind-protected patio. The slight cough which had troubled
him at first commenced to disappear, proving that the wound was healing
from within, and the doctor announced that at the end of a month Bob
would be able to leave the house.
As the reader may have had cause to suspect earlier in this recital,
Bob McGraw was not the young man to permit the grass to sprout under his
feet in the matter of a courtship. The brief period each evening which
he and Donna spent together served to convince each that life without
the other would not be worth the living. Their wooing was dignified
and purposeful; their love was too pure and deep to be taken lightly
or tinged with the frivolity that too often accompanies an ardent love
affair between two young people who have not learned, as had Bob and
Donna, to view life seriously. Both were graduates of the hard school
of practicalities, and early in life each had learned the value
of self-reliance and the wisdom of thinking clearly and without
self-illusion.
The last week of Bob's stay at the Hat Ranch, under the chaperonage of
the nurse, was not spent in planning for the future, for the lovers did
not look beyond the reality of their new-found happiness. True, Bob
had tried it once or twice, during the long hot days in the patio while
waiting for Donna to return from her work, but the knowledge of his
inability to support a wife, the present desperate condition of his
finances and the unsettled state of his future plans, promptly
saturated his soul in a melancholy which only the arrival of Donna could
dissipate. As for Donna, like most women, she was content to linger in
that delightful state of bliss which precedes marriage. Never having
known real happiness before, she was, for the present at least,
incapable of imagining a more profound joy than walking arm in arm in
the moonlit patio with the man she loved. Without the adobe walls, the
zephyr lashed the sage and whirled the sand with fiendish disregard of
human happiness, but within the Hat Ranch enclosure Donna Corblay knew
that she had found a paradise, and she was content.
CHAPTER VIII
Donna's mail-order library proved a great source of comfort to Bob
during the lonely days at the Hat Ranch. At night she sang to him, or
sat contentedly at his side while he told her whimsical tales of his
wanderings. He was an easy, natural conversationalist, the kind of a man
who “listens” well--an optimist, a dreamer. He was, seemingly, possessed
of a fund of unfailing good-nature, and despite the fact that the past
seven years of his life had been spent far from that civilization in
which he had grown to manhood, in unconventional, occasionally sordid
surroundings, he had lost none of an innate gentleness with women, that
delicate attention to the little, thoughtful, chivalrous things which,
to discerning women, are the chief charm in a man. And withal he was a
droll rascal, a rollicking, careless fellow who quickly discovered that,
next to telling her that he loved her and would continue to love her
forever and ever, it pleased Donna most to have him tell her about
himself, to listen to his Munchausenian tales of travel and adventure.
Did he speak of cities with their cafes, parks, theaters and museums,
she was interested, but when he told her of the country that lay just
beyond the ranges, east and west, or described the long valley to the
north, rolling gradually up to the high Sierra, with their castellated
spires, sparkling and snow-encrusted; of little mountain lakes,
mirroring the firs of the heights above them, of meadows and running
water and birds and blossoms, he could almost see the desert sadness
die out in her eyes, as she trailed him in spirit through this marvelous
land of her heart's desire.
“When we're married, Donna,” he told her, when there came to him for the
first time a realization of the hunger in the girl's heart for a change
from the drab, lifeless, unchanging vistas of the open desert, “we'll
take horses and pack-animals and go up into that wonderful country on
our honeymoon.”
She turned to him with glistening eyes, seized his hand and pressed it
to her cheek.
“How soon?” she murmured.
He was silent, wishing he had not spoken. He was a little subdued as he
answered.
“As soon as my ship comes in, Donna. Just at present it seems quite a
long way off, although if nothing happens to upset a little scheme of
mine, it will not be more than a year. Things are very uncertain right
now.” He smiled sheepishly as he thought of his profitless wanderings.
“You know, Donna, I've been a rolling stone, and I haven't gathered very
much moss.”
“We can wait. I haven't thought much about the future, either, Bob. I'm
just content to know I've got you, and the problem of keeping you hasn't
presented itself as yet.”
They were silent, listening to the zephyr whistling around the Hat
Ranch.
“Do you know,” she told him presently, “I haven't stopped to gather up
the hats since the night you came. Bob, dear, I'm afraid you're ruining
my business.”
He stared at her amazed. “I don't understand” he said.
“I don't gather moss,” she taunted him; “my specialty is hats,” and then
she explained for the first time the peculiar side-line in which she was
engaged. It was their first discussion of any subject dealing with the
practical side of her life, and Bob was keenly interested. He laughed as
Donna related some homely little anecdote of the hat trade, and later,
after plying her with questions regarding her life, past and present,
the mood for a mutual exchange of confidences seized him and he told her
something of his own checkered career.
Bob McGraw's father had been a mining engineer who had never
accomplished anything more remarkable than proving himself a failure in
his profession. He was of a roving, adventurous disposition, the kind
of a man to whom the fields just ahead always look greenest, and as a
result his life had been a remarkable series of ups and downs--mostly
downs. Bob's mother had been an artist of more or less ability--probably
less--who, having met and fallen in love with McGraw senior in New York
during one of his prosperous periods, had continued to love him when the
fortune vanished. Bob had been born in a mining camp in Tuolumne county.
He had never seen his mother. She died bringing him into the world.
His father had drifted from camp to camp, each successive camp being a
little lonelier, less lively and less profitable than its predecessor.
He had managed to keep his son by him until Bob was about ten years
old, when he sent him to a military academy in southern California. At
eighteen, Bob had graduated from the academy, and at his father's desire
he entered the state university to study law.
Long before he had waded half-way through the first book of Blackstone,
Bob had become fully convinced that he was his father's son, and
that mining engineering would be vastly more to his liking. It was a
profession, however, upon which his father frowned. Like most men who
have made a failure of their vocation, he dreaded to see his son follow
in his father's footsteps. He was insistent upon Bob following the law;
so to please him young Bob had managed to struggle through the course
and by dint of much groaning and burning of midnight oil, eventually
he was admitted to practice before the Superior Court. Unknown to his
father, however, he had been attending the courses in geology and mining
engineering, in which he had made really creditable progress. He was
unfortunate enough to pass his law examinations, however, whereupon his
father declared that he must make his own way in the world thereafter.
He secured for his son a position in the office of an old friend, a
corporation lawyer named Henry Dunstan, where Bob while not actively
engaged upon some minor detail of Dunstan's large practice had the
privilege of going down into the police courts for a little practical
experience in the gentle art of pleading.
A month later, McGraw, pere, while ascending the shaft of the mine where
he was employed as superintendent, was met by an ore bucket coming down.
Bob closed his office, went up country to the mine and saw to it that
his father was decently buried. Fortunately there was sufficient money
on hand to do this, Bob's parent having received his pay check only the
day before.
There had been no estate for Bob to probate, and his few briefless weeks
scouting around the police courts and acting as a messenger boy for
Henry Dunstan had given him a thorough disgust for the profession of
the law. He left his position with Dunstan and went to work on a morning
paper at fifteen dollars a week. At the end of two months he was getting
twenty--also he was very shabby and in debt. It was his ambition to
gather together sufficient money to enable him to complete his mining
course and secure his degree.
He hated the city; it was not in his nature to battle and grub with his
fellows for a few paltry dollars, and the call of his father's blood was
strong in his veins. Bob was the kind of fellow who likes to make a heap
of his winnings, when he has any, and stake it all on the turning of a
card; if this metaphor may be employed to designate Bob McGraw's nature
without creating the impression that he had, inherited a penchant for
the gaming table. It had been born in him to take a chance. And the gold
fever, inherited from his father, still burned in his blood. He drifted
to Nevada, where he did a number of things--including the assault on
Mr. Hennage's faro bank, which, as we have already been informed, also
resulted disastrously.
These adventures occupied the first two years of Bob McGraw's
wanderings. For the next eighteen months he worked in various mines in
various capacities, picking up, in actual experience, much of the mining
wisdom which circumstances had denied that he should acquire in college.
His Nevada experiences had given him a taste of the desert and he liked
it. There was a broad strain of poetry in his make-up, inherited perhaps
from his mother, and the desert appealed to that mystical sixth sense
in him, arousing his imagination, taunting him with a desire that was
almost pre-natal to investigate the formation on the other side of the
sky-line. It pandered to the spirit of adventure in him, the purple
distances lured him with promise of rich reward, and the day he made
the remarkable discovery that he had saved enough money to purchase
two burros, an automatic pistol, a box of dynamite and the usual
prospector's outfit, he took the trail through Windy Gap and Hell's Bend
into Death Valley.
Here Bob McGraw learned the true inwardness of a poem which he had once
recited as a boy at school. “Afar In the Desert I Love to Ride.” Only
Bob walked. And after walking several hundred miles he found nothing.
But he had seen lots of country, and the silence pleased him. Also he
had met and talked with other desert wanderers, with whom he had shared
his water and his grub, and in return they had infected him still
further with the microbe of unrest. He heard tales of lost mines, of
marvelous strikes, of fortunes made in a day, and that imaginative
streak in him, inherited from his mother, fused with the wanderlust of
his father, combined to make of him a Desert Rat at twenty-three.
He came out of the desert, on that first trip, at Coso Springs, and
doubled north along the western edge of the White mountains up through
Inyo county picking, prospecting, starving, thirsting cheerfully as he
went. At the town of Bishop, his stomach warned him that it would be a
wise move to sell his outfit and seek a job; which he accordingly did.
He found employment with a cattle company and went up to Long valley in
Mono county. Here he was almost happy. Life on a cow range suited him
very well indeed, for it took him away from civilization and carried
him through a mineral country. He rode with a prospector's pick on his
saddle, and in addition the scenery just suited him. There was just
enough of desert and bare volcanic hills, valley and meadow and
snow-capped peaks to please the dreamer and lover of nature; there
was always the chance that a “cow,” scrambling down a hillside, would
unearth for him a fortune.
Thus a few more years had slipped by. In the summer and fall Bob McGraw
rode range. In the winter he quit his job, invested his savings in two
burros and a prospector's outfit and roved until summer came again and
the heat drove him back to the range once more. He was very happy, for
the future was always rose-tinted and he had definitely located two lost
mines. That is to say, he could say almost for a certainty that they lay
within five miles of certain points. Somehow, his water had a habit of
always giving out just when he got to those certain points, and when
he had gone back after more water something had happened--a new strike
here, a reported rush elsewhere, to lure him on until he was once more
forced to abandon the trail and return to work for his grubstake in the
fall.
This was the man who had ridden into San Pasqual and got as far as the
Hat Ranch; when as usual, something had happened.
He told Donna his story simply, with boyish frankness, interlarding the
narrative with humorous little anecdotes that robbed the tale of the
stigma of failure and clothed it in the charm of achievement. She
laughed in perfect understanding when he described how some desert wag
had placed a sign beside the trail at Hell's Bend at the entrance to
Death Valley. “Who enters here leaves hope behind.”
“I saw that sign when I came by, Donna,” he told her, “and I didn't like
it. It sounded too blamed pessimistic for me, so when I broke camp next
morning I changed the sign to read 'Soap' instead of 'Hope.'”
Donna's laughter awoke the echoes in the silent patio, and Bob McGraw,
certain of his audience, rambled on. Ah, what a dreamer, what a lovable,
careless, lazy optimist he was! And how Donna's whole nature went out
in sympathy with his! She knew so well what drove him on; she envied
him the prerogative of sex which denied to her these joyous, endless
wanderings. “I love it” he told her presently. “I can't help it. It
appeals to something in me, just like drink appeals to a drunkard. I'm
never so happy as when gophering around in a barren prospect hole or
coyoting on some rocky hillside. But it's only another form of the
gambling fever, and I realize that whether my present plans mature or
not I've got to give it up. It was all right a few years ago, but now
the idea of wandering all my life over the mountains and desert, and in
the end dying under a bush, like a jack-rabbit--no, I've got to give it
up and follow something definite.”
Again she patted his hand. She knew the resolution cost him a pang; it
pleased her to learn that he had made it because he realized that he
owed something to himself; not because of the fact of his love for her.
“It won't take you long, once you have made up your mind” she encouraged
him.
“I don't want to be rich,” he explained. “When I started out, Donna, I
had that idea. I wanted money--in great big gobs, so I could throw it
around with both hands and enjoy myself. I used to think a good deal
about myself in those days, but five years in the desert and riding the
range changes one. It takes the little, selfish foolish notions out of
one's head and substitutes something bigger and nobler and--and--well,
I can't exactly explain, dear, but I know a little verse that covers the
subject very thoroughly:
The little cares that fretted me,
I lost them yesterday
Among the fields above the sea,
Among the winds at play,
Among the lowing of the herds,
The rustling of the trees,
Among the singing of the birds,
The humming of the bees;
The foolish fears of what might happen,
I cast them all away
Among the clover-scented grass,
Among the new-mown hay,
Among the hushing of the corn
Where drowsy poppies nod,
Where ill thoughts die and good are born,
Out in the fields with God.”
The hint of the desert sadness died out in the girl's eyes as he
declaimed his gospel.
“Oh,” she cried softly, “that's beautiful--beautiful.”
“That's the Litany of a Pagan, Donna,” he answered. “One has to believe
to understand when he goes to church in a city, but if you're a Pagan
like me, you only have to understand in order to believe.”
“I am,” she interrupted passionately, “I'm a Pagan and the daughter of a
Pagan. My father was a Sun Worshiper--like you.”
“Tell me about yourself and your people,” he said, and Donna told him
the story with which the reader is already familiar. He questioned her
carefully about Sam Singer and the man who had murdered her father and
despoiled him of his fortune.
“Who was this tenderfoot person?” he asked. “Didn't Sam Singer know his
name?”
“No. We never knew the man's name. When my father left for the desert
he merely told mother that he was going to meet an Eastern capitalist at
Salton. Sam says the only name my father called the man was Boston.”
“Boston?”
Donna nodded.
“That means he hailed from Boston, and your father called him that in
sheer contempt. No wonder they fought.”
He was silent, thinking over that strange tale of a lost mine which Sam
Singer had told Donna's mother.
“Well, I'm not going to keep on desert ratting until somebody cracks me
on the head and stows me on the shelf” he said presently.
He waved his arm toward the north. “Away up there, a hundred and fifty
miles, I've cast my fortune--in the desert of Owens river valley. I've
cut out for myself a job that will last me all my life, and win or lose,
I'll fight the fight to a finish. I'm going to make thirty-two thousand
acres of barren waste bloom and furnish clean, unsullied wealth for a
few thousand poor, crushed devils that have been slaughtered and maimed
under the Juggernaut of our Christian civilization. I'm going to plant
them on ten-acre farms up there under the shadow of old Mt. Kearsarge,
and convert them into Pagans. I'm going to create an Eden out of an
abandoned Hell. I'm going to lay out a townsite and men will build me
a town, so I can light it with my own electricity. It's a big Utopian
dream, Donna dear, but what a crowning glory to the dreamer's life if it
only comes true! Just think, Donna. A few thousand of the poor and lowly
and hopeless brought out of the cities and given land and a chance for
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; to know that their toil will
bring them some return, that they can have a home and a hope for the
future. That's what I want to do, and when that job is accomplished I
will have lived my life and enjoyed it; when I pass away, I want them
to bury me in Donnaville--that's to be the name of my colony--and for an
epitaph I'd like Robert Louis Stevenson's “Requiem”:
Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie,
Glad did I live and gladly die
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me;
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.”
He paused, a little flushed and exalted. Never before had Bob McGraw
unburdened his heart of its innermost secrets, its hopes, its fears,
its aspirations; for a moment now he almost quivered at the thought that
Donna would look upon him as a dreamer, an idealist--perhaps a fool--he,
a penniless desert wanderer assuming to hold in his sunburnt palm the
destinies of the under dogs of civilization--the cripples too weak and
hopeless to be anything more than wretched camp-followers in the Army of
Labor.
He glanced down at her now, half expecting, dreading to meet, the look
of gentle indulgence so common to the Unbeliever. But there was no
patronizing smile, no tolerant note in her voice as she asked simply:
“And this great, beautiful Utopia of yours, Bob--what did you call it?”
“It doesn't exist yet,” he explained hastily, “but it--it may. And when
it does become a reality, I'm going to call it Donnaville.”
“Why?”
“Because it sounds so much better than Bobville or Robertstown, and
because it will be beautiful. It will be the green fields of God after
centuries upon centuries of purgatory; because it will be the land I've
been telling you about, where you'll find all the things your soul is
hungry for; where we will own a big farm, you and I, with great fields
of alfalfa with purple blossoms; and there'll be long rows of apple and
pear trees and corn and--don't you understand, dear? It will be the most
beautiful thing in the desert. And yet,” he added a little sadly, “I may
be beaten into the earth and all my life Donnaville will remain nothing
but a dream, a desire, and so I--I--”
“Nobody can despoil you of your dreams,” she interrupted, “and hence
you'll never be beaten, Bob. The dreamers do the world's work. But tell
me. How do you propose to establish Donnaville? Tell me all about it,
dear. I want to--help.”
He gave her a grateful glance. “I guess I must be wound up to-night,”
he began, “but it is good to talk it over after hugging it to myself so
many years, and suffering and striving as I have suffered and striven
since I came into this country.
“When I pulled out of Death Valley on my first trip I came into Inyo
from the south and worked up along the base of the White mountains as
far as Bishop. The Owens river valley runs north and south, with the
White mountains flanking it on the east and the high Sierra on the west.
It is from ten to fifteen miles wide, that valley, with the Owens river
running down the eastern side most of the way until it empties into
Owens lake just above Keeler. The lake is salty, bitter, filled with
alkali, boras and soda, and for nearly forty miles above its mouth the
river itself is pretty brackish and alkaline. Away up the valley the
river water is sweet but as it approaches the lake it gathers alkali and
borax from the formation through which it flows. This
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