The days immediately following his return to Sylvania were hard ones for Gard. The few cautious inquiries he had dared to make in the investigation of his own affairs had resulted in the information that Jim Texas was dead and that Hart Dowling had left Wyoming and gone on into Idaho. Gard’s messenger had been unable to get to him on account of the deep snow.
He read the letter containing this news lying coatless upon the sand, far beyond the town. The desert was his one solace in the enforced idleness of waiting for word from Sawyer, for which he had written to San Francisco. The vast barren seemed in tune with his own mood.
The fierceness of his ache was there; the yearning of his solitude: he tried to picture the vast sea of sand overgrown with verdure, calling up cool visions of tree and pool, and gentle growths born of the small spring rain on the green grass. The picture came before him like a memory of delicious holidays in lush woods.
It was but a vision however. The scent of the desert was in his nostrils; the impress of the desert upon his brain. He opened his eyes and saw again the silent reaches of the waste—wide, untamed, untamable—and sat up, the better to view the lean landscape.
At his first movement a jack-rabbit, observing him from beneath a cholla, gathered its swift hind-legs under him and fled, with incredible rapidity, before the shadow of fear. Gard laughed, but there was underneath his amusement a sense of the constant deadly strife of the place. If he had no designs upon the jack-rabbit, plenty of other creatures had. The lurking snake that lay in wait to take him subtly; the lank coyote, more cunning than he, if not so swift; even the Gila monster, slow and hideous; the savage, sneaking wild-cat, and the little hydrophobia skunk, were constantly on the alert to surprise those wide-open eyes and ears. These all preyed upon him, and upon one another, caught in the endless struggle of the desert, moved upon by constant need to sustain life, and to hold it against all other life.
The thought brought Gard to a sharpened sense of his own danger, and of the enemies who, if they but knew, would be so quick to hunt and harry him. The savagery of it all smote him with a keener desolation. The armed vegetation, grotesque and menacing; the preying creatures of the plain; the sand-laden wind that was constantly tearing down and rebuilding the shifting scene—were not all these but a commentary upon the mad, devouring human world about him?
But the wind that laid bare the earth’s nakedness clothed and healed as well, purifying the air and cleansing the waste. The give as well as the take of life was there. Death was in the desert, but not decay. Gard, feeling it all in the whirl of his emotions, knew that the grim plain which mothered the whole fierce brood had mothered him as well, giving him back health and strength from her own burning heart, and he loved her, as her children must.
His thoughts turned inevitably to the glade. He had a whimsical idea that his trouble would all seem easier if he could but talk it over with Jinny. Deep down, however, he knew better. Not even to that faithful listener could he have voiced the longing of his whole nature for Helen Anderson. He cherished the thought of her in his secret heart, going over, minute by minute, the hours they had spent together. Each word of hers, each look, gesture, had its special power of endearment!
What if he were to tell her the whole story, would she believe him? Would she consent to go away with him into a new life? He could realize enough from the mine to make such a life full of rich possibilities, and there were far countries enough!
But what sort of a man would it be, who could ask the woman he loved to help him live a lie? He asked himself the question and awoke to a realization of his further folly. What right had he even to dream of her—to imagine that she could ever care for him at all? Even though he should stand before her without a shadow in his past he would be a brave man who dared raise his eyes to her. How could he, of all men?
Then he remembered Westcott. He had seen with his own eyes that he dared. Could that man ever hope to win her?
The torture of this thought drove him out over the desert at noon, when the sky closed brassy-yellow above him, and the heat-reddened air over the sand seemed the hue of his own thoughts. He fought his way through it to peace, far out in the open, when the afternoon wind was driving the heat of the plain skyward, and seaward over the mountains, and he came back against that cleansing breath, his wonted strong self, to a conference with Kate Hallard. She was bitter against Westcott that day, breathing out wrath, and the desire for vengeance.
“If you’ve ever noticed it,” Gard said, “there’s a kind of reasonableness in the way things happen, even when they look black. They happen out of each other; and there’s Something managing them, no matter how it looks, sometimes. I’ve found that out.”
“I’d like to help in the managin’,” Mrs. Hallard said, grimly.
“You couldn’t.” Gard shook his head thoughtfully.
“You couldn’t see the whole scheme,” he continued. “And we don’t need to want to. Whoever’s doing it is making up a whole piece out of ’em. That’s this world we’re in. It’s our world. We belong in it; and there ain’t anything in it for us to be afraid of but just ourselves.”
He pondered his own saying for a moment, repeating it as if to reassure himself.
“That’s sure right.” He took up the thread again.
“It makes me think of a game I played once at a party I went to, when I was a kid, back in the states. They had a big, round paper apple fixed up, with something in it for each of us; and we each had a string given us to follow up till we came to the end and each found what belonged to him. Ever see anything like that?”
Mrs. Hallard nodded.
“They worked a game o’ that sort once at some Christmas doin’s where I was raised. Did you ever think o’ me goin’ to Sunday School?” she asked, with a bitter little laugh.
“Sure I did.” Gard went on with his simile. “A man’s got to hold on to his own string,” he said. “And follow it up till he gets to the core of the apple. He’ll find his own share there. This Westcott, he’s trying to haul on other folkses’ lines, as well’s his own, and that gets things in a mix-up. We’ve got to try and make him play the thing right; but it ain’t our party, and therefore it ain’t our job to throw him out of the game altogether.”
Mrs. Hallard’s brows were knit in the effort to follow. She had not herself learned, as yet, to lean upon the logic of events, and vengeance was a part of her own theory of life. Then, because she seemed to find no thoroughfare through the subject, she turned abruptly away from it.
“I met up with your Miss Helen Anderson yesterday,” she said, suddenly.
The light in Gard’s face was revealing, but he merely stood, expectant, until she had told him the whole of the encounter at Old Joe Papago’s, even to Helen’s proffer of friendship.
“Bless her!” the man murmured, with face illumined. “Ain’t she a brick, though?”
“She’s better ’n a brick,” said Kate Hallard, promptly. “She’s a real woman, with a lovin’ honest heart. Look here, Mr. Gabriel Gard! Be you goin’ to stand round with your quirt in your hand, while that there Westcott devil rides off the range with her?”
Gard’s face was pale, and the sweat stood upon his forehead.
“Don’t!” cried he, sharply. “You don’t know what you’re talking about! A man’s got to follow his own line, I tell you, and get it clear before him, before he asks any woman to take hold of it with him!”
He turned abruptly and left her. Yes: that was what he must do. Whatever was to be met, he must meet it, and clear the way, before he took one step nearer Helen.
“But it’s hard to wait,” he muttered, pacing the desert with clenched hands; “hard as wickedness!”
The stage that night brought him a letter from San Francisco. Sawyer, it told him, had left the city. The writer believed that he had gone to Arizona for the winter. He was thought to be somewhere on a ranch in the neighborhood of the Navajo reservation. Gard read that with a little feeling of dismay. He did not care to go up there. He had grown confident that he was not likely to be recognized; but still, there was danger, and he wanted to keep clear of complications until such time as he was ready to act for himself. If anything should happen to him he had no one to take up his work on the outside. He must find someone whom he could trust.
Suddenly he bethought himself of Sandy Larch. They were friends. He could trust Sandy, and he would.
He spent a long time that evening, writing a letter of instructions for Sandy Larch to read, in the event of any failure in his own plans. This he put carefully inside a worn memorandum book, and did the whole up in a neat packet which he meant to leave with the foreman, together with a heavy money-belt which he was then himself wearing. If necessity arose he would have to trust much to the foreman’s shrewd judgment in action, but at least he would fix things so that Sandy should not be acting in the dark.
He got an early start in the morning, and rode out to the Palo Verde. Morgan Anderson was away. He had left at daylight, to go down into Mexico, Sandy Larch explained, on some mining business. Incidentally, he was going to see about some choice lemon trees that he had set his heart upon, and before their arrival ground must be broken to receive them.
“So it’s up to us to git them workin’ cows gentled an’ onto their job,” the foreman told Gard; “We’re goin’ to bust ’em out right now.”
“Say,” he added, “That lawyer-sharp ’s here. Came down last night, to see the patron; he’s goin’ on to Sylvania, I guess. He said somethin’ about it, awhile ago.”
“I came out to see you on a little business matter, Sandy,” Gard had begun, when one of the cow-punchers demanded the foreman’s attention. Ere he could turn back to Gard, Westcott came down from the casa and mounted his horse which was standing at the rail.
He greeted Gard curtly. “Going to stay and see the fun?” He queried, with a jaunty air of being entirely at home. “I think I will, too. We’ll be glad to have you.”
The future working-stock had been removed to an outlying corral, to make room for the horses the men had been working out. The Palo Verde was short of men that season, and Sandy was obliged to plan his work carefully. The punchers who were to break in the cattle were grouped now, and ready for the fray.
“Come on,” the foreman called to Gard, who had tossed his saddlebags down in front of Sandy’s shack, and the outfit went tearing across the sand to the outer corrals.
A wagon and a plow had been hauled out to the scene of action the night before. The principles of gentling the steers were brief and fundamental. Two punchers threw their ropes over the horns of one big brute and dragged him out upon the desert, while two others brought up his yoke-fellow. Once yoked and hitched, with a riata from the horns of each to the saddle-horn of a good man on a clever pony, to tow them along, the creatures could move forward, or die in their tracks. When, as was usual, they decided to do the former, they were considered gentled. Their future, thereafter, was in the keeping of the Mexican who might have them in hand to plow with.
“Hullo, you heap heathen!” Sandy Larch called out to the Chinese cook in the big wagon as the outfit came thundering up. “How’d you git out here?”
Wing Chang grinned, as was his habit whenever the foreman addressed him.
“Heap tallee fun,” he explained. “Me come look see.”
Sandy Larch and Manuel had already brought out a steer. Broome threw his rope next, cursing roundly at the greenhorn who was helping him, and whose first wild throw covered the horns of the wrong animal. Since it would be quicker work for him to change than for the other, Broome released his “cow,” the big steer that had run him from the corral the week before, and took hold with the greenhorn.
The brutes were yoked and hitched to the wagon, and the fun began with Chang’s precipitate and unpremeditated departure from the vehicle. He rolled over and got to his feet as the cowboys started out over the sand, pell-mell, “pully haul,” in a medley of shrieks and oaths and thunderous bellowings. The spectators of the proceedings kept along upon the flanks of the procession, shouting encouragement or derision to the sweating cowboys as they galloped, and occasionally lending a hand so far as to lean over and apply the spur to one or the other resisting “bos.” In two minutes’ time the wildly gyrating mass was well out on the plain.
Then from the corral came the sound of a sudden crash. A huge red and white bulk hurled itself over the bars, and the steer that Broome had released came charging out, mad with rage and fear.
For an instant he stood dazed by the success of his own exploit. None of the other cattle had followed. He alone had possessed the wit and prowess to essay the barrier, one bar of which the greenhorn had failed to secure.
The great brute’s hesitation was brief. For an instant he pawed the sand, bellowing challenge to the world; then, head down and tail up, he started like a streak of lightning for the only man on foot.
Wing Chang had already realized his danger, and was flying for his life, his pigtail streaming behind him, his yellow face distorted by fright. The outfit wheeled and took notice.
“Wow! Wow! Fli’ gun. Allee samee fli’ gun!”
The high-pitched shrieks of the terrified Chinamen rose above the noise of hoofs, the shouts of men, the bellowing of cattle. On he sped, the mighty bulk of his pursuer flashing along in what looked like a continuous streak of red, behind him.
“Hell!” One of the punchers ejaculated. “It’s us to be hunting a new cook!”
The next instant his bronco’s heels were twinkling as he raced to the rescue.
Gard had already started. He had no rope, but he was nearest the scene, and he saw, as did the others, that no rope could be flung in time. He was sending his pony along at full speed, minded to get in and head “bos” off. It was Wing Chang’s only hope.
The great steer was already perilously near, when the Chinaman stumbled, falling his full length on the sand. His yells still pierced the air in high falsetto, and his feet continued the motions of running, flinging up and down with the regularity of pistons as his long yellow fingers clutched the desert.
Down came the foe! An instant, and the thing would be done; but in between him and his yelling victim flashed a man and a horse, and Gard, reaching down, caught the Chinaman by the belt.
A quick, skilful jerk brought him up as the pony dashed on, and in the same instant the cowboy’s rope caught the steer by one upflung hind hoof. The great brute turned a clean somersault in the air, and landed with a crash upon his back.
Gard, keeping hold of the Chinaman, brought his horse to a standstill near a great branching suhuaro, and set the still vociferating Wing Chang upon his feet. The cowboys already had two ropes over the recalcitrant steer, and were leading him back to the corral, minus one long, murderous horn, and greatly chastened in spirit.
It was high noon before the three pairs of cattle were gentled sufficiently to permit of their being yoked without absolute danger to life. By that time each “yoke” had pulled the wagon a quarter of a mile, with more or less sobriety, and had plowed a torturous furrow on the desert.
“Which I would rise in my place,” Sandy Larch said, seriously, “an’ point with pride at them yoke o’ cows as a good morning’s work.”
He and Gard had ridden back together, and were in the foreman’s shack. Westcott had gone on his way to Sylvania.
“I want you to do something for me, Sandy,” Gard said. “I’ve got to go up north, and I want to leave—”
His hand sought an inner pocket as he spoke, and he drew it out with a look of dismay. Then he began searching his other pockets.
“Lost something?” the foreman said, watching him.
“I—should—say—I—had!”
The full significance of his loss was telegraphing itself to the inner strongholds of Gard’s consciousness.
“Sandy!” He sprang to his feet. “I’ve got to find it—in a hurry, too!”
He was outside, now, looking for his horse, which had been turned in to feed with the others.
“We’ll rustle a couple more,” Sandy said.
“Lord!” he thought, “Something’s eatin’ him. I never thought I’d see him in a flurry.”
They were ready in a moment, and riding back to the ground they had gone over in the forenoon.
“You kin bet your hat you let it go overboard when you reached fer that blasted Chink,” Sandy said, and they made for the spot where Gard had rescued Wing Chang.
But no brown packet rewarded their scrutiny of the ground. They paced the desert on to where Gard had set the Chinaman on his feet, and found nothing but the hole of a Gila monster. Sandy kicked it open with his heel, and the occupant came up, hissing hideously, but that was all.
They circled the whole ground of the morning’s operations, but without result, and at last they returned to the shack. Gard’s face was drawn in haggard lines, but he had recovered his poise.
“I reckon that thing’s got tromped down into the ground,” Sandy said, by way of consolation. “I didn’t see none of the boys pick up nothin’. They’d a’ hollered if they had, an’ we was all together.”
“All except Westcott.” Gard spoke very quietly, but Sandy shouted.
“Gosh! That’s so,” He cried, “I fergot him fer a minute. I swan! Would it be mighty bad if he was the one to find it?”
“A little worse, in some ways, than anybody else living.”
“Lord! Lord! But I don’t see how he could, Gard: He rode off to Sylvania. It’s happened the way I said. They was a mighty lot o’ hoofs rampaging round there, an’ your goods, whatever ’t was, got tromped in; but you can bet Sandy Larch’ll keep his peepers open fer’t if it’s on top the ’arth.”
“Anyway,”—Gard roused himself—“there’s all the more reason why I should do what I’ve got to do while I can.”
He was undressing as he spoke, and presently produced the belt.
“I want you to put this away somewhere, Sandy,” he said. “If I send you word to do some things for me it may come in handy. And Sandy, if anything happens to me you go and see Mrs. Hallard, and do what you can to help her. She’ll need help.”
Not a flicker moved the serenity of the foreman’s steady eyes. His was not the friendship that questions.
“I’ll do anything you send word to do, Gard,” said he, “but I don’t believe I’ll need all that money. You got plenty to use?”
“Sure—” with a sigh. “Money ain’t the thing I need most, Sandy.”
“Bless yourself for that,” was the quick reply. “When it comes to a pinch the filthy’s one of the things inconvenient to miss.”
He put the belt away in his own secret hiding-place and busied himself with getting up his friend’s horse. Gard meant to ride to Bonesta, and there board the train. If, as he suspected, Westcott had found that tell-tale packet, he must himself move quickly, and settle Mrs. Hallard’s matter before he could be apprehended as a fugitive from justice. Not that Gard meant to be apprehended. But he did not intend that any thought of risk to his personal safety should interfere with the discharge of his duty as he saw it.
“So long, Sandy,” he said, out beyond the corrals.
“Adios!”
Sandy gripped his hand heartily, and the two men parted; but Gard made a wide detour, ere he took the desert road, to glimpse from afar the low-walled casa, white in the glaring December sunlight.
He had left the Palo Verde well behind, and was in a little sandy valley, the dry bed of some ancient lake, when he dismounted to tighten his saddle cincha. Pausing an instant, before remounting, he cast a weary glance skyward and gave a cry of surprise.
High in the ether an enchanted landscape, huge, distorted, hung before his vision. Rocks and trees, vast cacti and shimmering plain were there, and moving among them were a horse and rider, followed by a dog.
There was no mistaking the figures. Helen, upon Dickens, was riding on the plain, Patsy keeping her company. The blessed mirage showed them plainly and Gard gazed, dizzy with emotion.
It was but a fleeting vision. Some movement of the upper air-currents disturbed it and even as he looked it broke into fragments, dissolved and was gone, ere Gard’s swelling heart had ceased its wild pounding.
“She is out there in the desert,” he murmured, a sobbing catch in his throat, “Oh, God bless her! I love her! I love her!”
He mounted his horse again and rode on, his heart light as a feather, and on his lips the words of a half-forgotten old song.