TOMORROW’S TANGLE
“To every man a damsel or two.”
—JUDGES.
The vast, gray expanse of the desert lay still as a picture in the heat of the early afternoon. The silence of waste places held it. It was gaunt and sterile, clad with a drab growth of sage, flat as a table, and with the white scurf of the alkali breaking through its parched skin. It was the earth, lean, sapless, and marked with disease. A chain of purple hills looked down on its dead level, over which a wagon road passed like a scar across a haggard face. From the brazen arch of the sky heat poured down and was thrown back from the scorched surface of the land. It was August in the Utah Desert in the early fifties.
In the silence and deadness of the scene there was one point of life. The canvas top of an emigrant wagon made a white spot on the monotone of gray. At noon there had been but one shadow in the desert and this was that beneath the wagon which was stationary in the road. Now the sun was declining from the zenith and the shadow was broadening; first a mere edge, then a substantial margin of shade.
In it two women were crouched watching a child that lay gasping. Some distance away beside his two horses, a man sat on the ground, his hat over his eyes.
One of the thousand tragedies the desert had seen was being enacted. Crushed between that dead indifference of earth and sky, its participators seemed to feel the hopelessness of movement or plaint and sat dumb, all but the child, who was dying with that solemn aloofness to surroundings, of which only those who are passing know the secret. His loud breathing sounded like a defiance in the silence of that savagely unsympathizing nature. The man, the women, the horses, were like part of the picture in their mute immobility, only the dying child dared defy it.
He was a pretty boy of three, and had succumbed to one of the slight, juvenile ailments that during the rigors of the overland march developed tragic powers of death. His mother sat beside him staring at him. She was nineteen years of age and had been married four years before to the man who sat in the shadow of the horses. She looked forty, tanned, haggard, half clad. Dazed by hardship and the blow that had just fallen, she had the air of a stupefied animal. She said nothing and made no attempt to alleviate the sufferings of her first-born.
The other woman was some ten years older, and was a buxom, handsome creature, large-framed, capable, stalwart—a woman built for struggles and endurance—the mate of the pioneer. She, too, was the wife of the man who sat by the horses. He was of the Mormon faith, which he had joined a year before for the purpose of marrying her.
The sun sloped its burning course across the pale sky. The edges of the desert shimmered through veils of heat. Far on the horizon the mirage of a blue lake, with little waves creeping up a crescent of sand, painted itself on the quivering air. The shadow of the wagon stealthily advanced. Suddenly the child moved, drew a fluttering breath or two, and died. The two women leaned forward, the mother helplessly; the other, with a certain prompt decision that marked all her movements, felt of the pulse and heart.
“It’s all over, Lucy,” she said bruskly, but not unkindly; “I guess you’d better get into the wagon; Jake and I’ll do everything.”
The girl rose slowly like a person accustomed to obey, moved to the back of the wagon, and climbed in.
The man, who had seen this sudden flutter of activity, pushed back his hat and looked at his wives, but did not move or speak. The second wife covered the dead child with her apron, and approached him.
“He’s dead,” she said.
“Oh!” he answered.
“We must bury him,” was her next remark.
“Well, all right,” he assented.
He went to the wagon and detached from beneath it a spade. Then he walked a few rods away and, clearing a space in the sage, began to dig. The woman prepared the child for burial. The silence that had been disturbed resettled, broken at intervals by the thud of the spade. The heat began to lessen and a still serenity to possess the barren landscape. The desert had received its tribute and was appeased.
The rites of the burial were nearly completed, when a sound from the wagon attracted the attention of the man and the woman. They stopped, listened and exchanged a glance of alarmed intelligence. The woman walked to the wagon rapidly, and exchanged a few remarks with the other wife. Her voice came to the man low and broken. He did not hear what she said, but he thought he knew the purport of her words. As he shoveled the earth into the grave his brow was contracted. He looked angrily harassed. The second wife came toward him, her sunburnt face set in an expression of frowning anxiety.
“Yes,” she said, in answer to his look, “she feels very bad. We got to stop here. We can’t go on now.”
He made no answer, but went on building up the mound over the grave. He was younger by a year or two than the woman with whom he spoke, but it was easy to be seen that of her, as of all pertaining to him, he was absolute master. She watched him for a moment as if waiting for an order, then, receiving none, said:
“I’d better go back to her. I wish a train’d come by with a doctor. She ain’t got much strength.”
He vouchsafed no answer, and she returned to the wagon, and this time climbed in.
He continued to build up and shape the mound with sedulous and evidently absent-minded care. The sweat poured off his forehead and his bare, brown throat and breast. He was a lean but powerful man, worn away by the journey to bone and muscle, but of an iron fiber. He had no patience with those who hampered his forward march by sickness or feebleness.
When he had finished the mound the sun was declining toward the tops of the distant mountains. The first color of its setting was inflaming the sky and painting the desert in tones of strange, hot brilliancy. The vast, grim expanse took on a tropical aspect. Against the lurid background the chain of hills turned a transparent amethyst, and the livid earth, with its leprous eruption, was transformed into a pale lilac-blue. Presently the thin, clear red of the sunset was pricked by a white star-point. And in the midst of this vivid blending of limpid primary colors, the fire the man had kindled sent a fine line of smoke straight up into the air.
The second wife came out of the wagon to help him get the supper and to eat hers. They talked a little in low voices as they ate, drawn away from the heat of the fire. The man showed symptoms of fatigue; but the powerful woman was unconquered in her stubborn, splendid vigor. When she had left him, he lay down on the sand with his face on his arm and was soon asleep. The sounds of dole that came from the wagon did not wake him, nor disturb the deep dreamlessness of his exhausted rest. The night was half spent, when he was wakened by the woman shaking his shoulder. He looked up at her stupidly for a minute, seeing her head against the deep blue sky with its large white stars.
“It’s over. It’s a little girl. But Lucy’s pretty bad.”
He sat up, fully awake now, and in the stillness of the night heard the cat-like mew of the new-born. The canvas arch of the wagon glowed with a fiery effect from the lighted lanterns within.
“Is she dying?” he said hurriedly.
“No—not’s bad as that. But she’s terribly low. We’ll have to stay here with her till she pulls up some. We can’t move on with her this way.”
He rose and, going to the wagon, looked in through the opened flap. His wife was lying with her eyes closed, waxen pale in the smoky lantern-light. The sight of her shocked him into a sudden spasm of feeling. She had been a fresh and pretty girl of fifteen when he had married her, four years before at St. Louis. He wondered if her father, who had given her to him then, would have known her now. In an excess of careless pity he laid his hand on her and said:
“Well, Lucy, how d’ye feel?”
She shrank from his touch and tried to draw a corner of the blanket, on which her head rested, over her face.
He turned away and walked back to the fire, saying to the second wife:
“I guess she’ll be able to go on to-morrow. She can stay in the wagon all the time. I don’t want to run no risks ’er gittin’ caught in the snows on the Sierra. I guess she’ll pull herself together all right in a few days. I’ve seen her worse ’n that.”