Please do not picture a level waste of sand and scant sagebrush when you think of the Nevada desert. Barren it is, where water is not to be had; but level it is not, except where the beds of ancient lakes lie bare and yellow, hard as cement except when the rains soften the surface to sticky, red mud. Long mesas, with scattering clumps of greasewood and sage, lie gently tilted between sporadic mountain ranges streaked and scalloped with the varying rock formations that tell how long the world was in the making. Here and there larger mountains lift desolate barriers against the sky. Seen close, any part of the scene is somber at best. But distance softens the forbidding bleakness of the uplifted hummocks and crags, and paints them with magic lights and shadows.
In the higher altitudes the mountains are less bare; more friendly in a grim, uncompromising way and grown over scantily sometimes with piñons and juniper and the flat-leafed cedar whose wood is never too wet to burn with a great snapping, and is as likely to char temperamentally and go black. In these great buttes secret stores of water send little searching streams out through crevices among the rocks. Each cañon has its spring hidden away somewhere, and the water is clear and cold, stealing away from the melting snows on top.
A rough, little-used trail barely passable to a car, led into Johnnywater Cañon. To Gary the place was a distinct relief from the barren land that stretched between this butte and Las Vegas. The green of the piñon trees was refreshing as cool water on a hot day. The tiny stream that trickled over water-worn rocks in the little gully beside the cabin astonished him. For hours he had ridden through the parched waste land. For hours Monty had talked of scanty grazing and little water. In spite of himself, Gary’s eyes brightened with pleasure when he first looked upon Johnnywater.
The sun still shone into the cañon, though presently it would drop behind the high shoulder of the butte. The little cabin squatting secretively between two tall piñons looked an ideal “set” for some border romance.
“It’s not a bad-looking place,” he commented with some reluctance. “Maybe Pat didn’t pull such a boner after all.” He climbed out of the car and walked toward the tiny stream. “Golly grandma, what’s that! Chickens?”
“It shore enough is—but I kinda thought the coyotes and link-cats would of got all Waddy’s chickens. He’s been gone a week away.”
“Good heck! I thought chickens liked to partake of a little nourishment occasionally. All the kinds I’ve met do.”
Monty laughed lazily.
“Oh, Waddell he fixed a kind of feed box for ’em that lets down a few grains at a time. I reckon he filled it up before he went.” Monty sent seeking glances into the undergrowth along the creek. “There ought to be a couple of shoats around here, too. And a cat.”
Gary went into the cabin and stood looking around him curiously. Some attempt had been made to furnish the place with a few comforts, but the attempt had evidently perished of inanition. Flowered calico would have hidden the cubboard decently, had the curtains been clean. A box tacked against the wall held magazines and a book or two. The bunk was draped around the edge with the same flowered calico, with an old shoe protruding from beneath. One square window with a single sash looked down upon the little creek. Its twin looked down the cañon. Cast-off garments hung against the wall at the foot of the bunk.
“Great interior set for a poverty scene,” Gary decided, rolling himself a smoke. “I don’t intend to stay out on this location, you know. I’m here to sell the damned place. What’s the quickest way to do that—quietly? I mean, without advertising it.”
Monty Girard turned slowly and stared.
“There ain’t no quick way,” he said finally. “Waddy, he’s been tryin’ for three months to sell it—advertisin’ in all the papers. He was in about as much of a hurry as a man could get in—and he was just about at the point where he was goin’ to walk off and leave it, when this Mr. Connolly bit.”
“Bit?”
“Bought. Yuh-all must have misunderstood.”
“Either way, I don’t feature it.” Gary lighted the cigarette thoughtfully. “It looks a pretty fair place—for a hermit, or a man that’s hiding out. What did this man Waddell buy it for? And how long ago?”
“I reckon he thought he wanted it. A couple of years ago, I reckon he aimed to settle down here.”
“Well, why the heck didn’t he do it then?” Gary sat down on the edge of the table and folded his arms. “Spread ’em out on the table, Monty. I won’t shoot.”
“You say yuh-all don’t aim to stay here?” Monty leveled a glance at him.
“Not any longer than it takes to sell out. You look like a live wire. I’m going to appoint you my agent and see if you can’t rustle a buyer—quick. I’ll go back with you, when you go. That will be in a couple of days, you said. So tell me the joke, Monty. I asked you in town, yesterday, and you didn’t do it.”
“I can’t say as I rightly know. I reckon maybe it was Waddy himself that was wrong, and nothin’ the matter with Johnnywater. He got along all right here for awhile—but I guess he got kind of edgey, livin’ alone here so much. He got to kinda imaginin’ he was seein’ things. And along last spring he got to hearin’ ’em. So then he wanted to sell out right away quick.”
“Oh.” Gary sounded rather crestfallen. “A nut, hunh? I thought there was something faked about the place itself.”
“Yuh-all read what I swore to,” Monty reminded him with a touch of dignity. “I wouldn’t help nobody fake a deal; not even a fellow in the shape Waddy was in. He had his money in here, and he had to git it out before he could leave. At that, he sold out at a loss. This is a right nice little place, Mr. Marshall, for anybody that wants a place like this.”
“But you don’t, hunh? Couldn’t you buy the cattle?”
Monty shook his head regretfully.
“No, I couldn’t. I couldn’t buy out the Walkin’ X brand now at a dime a head, and that’s a fact. Cattle’s away down. I’m just hangin’ on, Mr. Marshall, and that’s the case with every cattle owner in the country. It ain’t my put-in, maybe, but if Johnnywater was mine, I know what I’d do.”
“Well, let’s hear it.”
“Well, I’d fix things up best I could around here, and hang on to it awhile till times git better. Waddell asked seven thousand at first—and it’d be worth that if there was any market at all for cattle. Up the cañon here a piece, Waddy’s got as pretty a patch of alfalfa as you’d want to look at. And a patch of potatoes that was doing fine, the last I see of ’em. He was aimin’ to put the whole cañon bottom into alfalfa; and that’s worth money in this country, now I’m tellin’ yuh.
“Yuh see, Johnnywater’s different from most of these cañons. It’s wider and bigger every way, and it’s got more water. A man could hang on to his cattle, and by kinda pettin’ ’em along through the winter, and herdin’ ’em away from the loco patches in the spring, he could make this a good payin’ investment. That’s what I reckoned this Mr. Connolly aimed to do.”
“Pat Connolly bought this place,” said Gary shortly, “because it sounded nice in the ad. It was a nut idea from the start. I’m here to try and fish the five thousand up out of the hole.”
“Well, I reckon maybe that same ad would sound good to somebody else,” Monty ventured.
But Gary shook his head. Since Patricia made up her mailing lists from the newspapers, Gary emphatically did not want to advertise.
They ended by cooking late dinner together, frying six fresh eggs which Gary discovered in the little dugout chicken house. After which Monty Girard unloaded what supplies Gary had brought, smoked a farewell cigarette and drove away to his own camp twenty miles farther on.
“It’s a great life if you don’t weaken,” Gary observed tritely. “I might get a kick out of this, if Pat hadn’t been so darned fresh about the movies, and so gol-darned stubborn about me camping here and doing the long-haired hick act for the rest of my life.”
He went away then to hunt for the chicken feed; found it in another dugout cellar, and fed the chickens that came running hysterically out of the bushes when Gary rattled the pan and called them as he had seen gingham-gowned ingénues do in rural scenes.
“Golly grandma! If I could catch a young duck now, and cuddle it up under my dimpled chin, I’d make a swell Mary Pickford close-up,” he chuckled to himself. “Down on the farm, by gum! ‘Left the town to have some fun, and I’m a goin’ to have some, yes, by gum!’ Pat Connolly’s going to do some plain and fancy knuckling under, to pay for this stunt. Gosh, and there’s the cat!”