Читать книгу Black Mesa - Zane Grey - Страница 3

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Flowing out from the moss-greened base of a bluff under the bold, looming bulk of Black Mesa was a small spring of alkaline water. It was the only oasis in that desolate country for leagues around. The Indian brought his mustangs there, and the squaw filled her earthen olla; the cowboy trailed his lost cattle over the bleak, cedar-dotted divide down to this spring, and the traveler followed the hard-beaten path to eye askance the strange, clear pool. Cougar and cat tracks showed in the soft red sands. The deer and coyote and jack rabbit slaked their thirst there. But the winged creatures of the desert, those whose wide pinions gave them dominance over distance, never visited the foot of Black Mesa.

The spring had been named Bitter Seeps by the Mormons when they forded the Rio Colorado at the Crossing of the Fathers. Noddlecoddy, the old Navajo chief, said of Bitter Seeps: “It is not good water, but it will sustain life.”

A great geologist, studying that region, had remarked that the nature of man and beast dependent upon the water of the spring and its forbidding surroundings must partake of its hard and bitter quality.

Two young men sat upon a rock of the cedar ridge that commanded a view of the trading post, the spring, the mesa, and the illimitable desert beyond.

“Paul, yore askin’ me aboot this heah place,” drawled the younger, a lean brown-faced, tow-headed cowboy. “Wal, I reckon it’s hell an’ I wouldn’t be caught heah daid.”

His companion laughed a little regretfully at this frank opinion. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It appeals to me. Perhaps you’ve explained why.”

“Nope,” rejoined Wess Kintell, “I shore didn’t explain nothin’.”

“I think hell is a rather descriptive epithet. If it doesn’t explain Bitter Seeps, what does?”

“Wal, come to think aboot it, I cain’t say. I’ve rode a sight of ranges in my day, but never none like this one. An’ I’d hev to ride heah awhile before I could tell jest what it is that makes me feel sorta creepy.”

“It doesn’t lack color, beauty, magnificence,” replied Paul Manning thoughtfully. “There is a difference, though, between this and the Painted Desert behind us, or the canyon country beyond. And that difference is exactly what gripped me.”

“Hev you been oot heah before?” asked the cowboy.

“Only once. I’d ridden all over before I struck Bitter Seeps. Trying to find a place where I could stay. This is it. I was fascinated by that huge mesa up behind the trading post. It seems to stand for the loneliness and peace that pervade this desert.”

“Peace?—ah-huh. I reckon I get you,” replied Kintell slowly. “I’ve had my ideas aboot you, Manning. An’ if ever I seen a driven man you shore was him.... But thet doesn’t give me any hunch why you fetched me oot heah.”

“I must have some kind of work. Always leaned toward a ranch, cattle, horses, you know. But that always seemed impossible until last November when I inherited a little money. Now I can have what I used to want, and maybe having it will make me want it again.... I like you, Kintell. You’re the man to run my ranch.”

“How do you know thet?”

“I just feel it.”

“Wal, if I’d turn oot true to past performances you’d hev the wrong man.”

“Kintell, you hinted once before of a shady past. You can tell me what you’ve been and done, if you choose, but I’d rather you didn’t. I’ll gamble on you.”

“Did you hev this in mind when you got me oot of jail an’ mebbe saved my neck?”

“My memory is hazy on that point. I remember my trouble seemed so unendurable that I wanted to help some other poor devil. And I got you out of your fix. Then came my drunken spree, about which I can recollect but little. After that, then, the idea grew, and finally I brought you out here.”

While Wess Kintell pondered the matter, Paul watched him unobtrusively, conscious again of a return of the warm feeling the cowboy had stirred in him. No other person or thing had roused such a semblance of warmth in Paul Manning since the shock that had changed him. And he wanted to hold on to it. He yearned to recapture the old significance of life, the hope and joy that had been his, the love of adventure, the ambition to become a writer, the undaunted challenge to the future, to all that he had been before.... But at the moment he could not bring himself to again think over the long ruinous story of his relationship with Amy, and he shut the painful memories out of his mind.

This Texan, if he could be won over, appeared to be a man to tie to. He was a superb figure of a rider, tall, wide-shouldered, small-hipped and wiry, scarcely beyond his teens in years, yet exhibiting in his lean, lined face the sadness, the reckless hardness of maturity developed by life on the ranges.

“Wal, Manning, no man ever did so much for a stranger, an’ for Wess Kintell, as what you did,” the cowboy said with a slow and forceful earnestness. “I’ve shore been a hard nut, but to myself it always seemed every man’s hand, an’ every turn of luck was set against me. I wondered why you took it on yoreself to help me oot of the rottenest mess I was ever in. An’ you’ve told me, yore trouble was so great thet you had to help some other fellar in trouble. Thet’s a new idee, but I understand it.... An’ heah’s my hand, if you’ll take it, for all thet’s good in Wess Kintell.”

Paul felt a significance in the steellike grip of the cowboy’s lean brown hand, and the gray eyes that met his piercingly. The moment and the place were not commonplace. Something deep and intangible vibrated from that viselike hand-clasp along Paul’s nerves.

“Wess, I’m glad you are making a big issue of this moment,” he replied. “I recognize it, though I may not be able yet to rise to it.... I’ve been down so long. This wild idea of mine—to fight it out here in this desert—may be futile.”

“Wal, if the desert doesn’t kill you it shore will cure,” responded the Texan. “Yore bet is a good one.... May I ask, jest what yore trouble was? I’ve seen some drunks in my day, but thet last one of yore’s beat them all hollow. I shore was curious aboot you, after you got me oot. I heahed you never was strong for likker until this time. You ain’t a drinkin’ man, I know. Jest one turrible drunk ... ! What was to blame, Manning? Now, don’t feel bad aboot comin’ clean with it. Mebbe gettin’ it oot will help. Anyway, then I’ll understand an’ never speak of it again.”

Paul bent over to hide his face from the other’s kind and searching gaze. To open that closed wound, to feel again the pang and the sting were not easy. But sooner or later he knew Kintell would want the truth.

“It was—a woman,” he finally said awkwardly.

“Wal, I reckoned so. Someone you loved an’ lost?”

“Yes.”

“Ah-huh. That happened to me onct. It only comes onct, the real genuine article. Thet was what made me a rollin’ stone. I shot the man ... Wal, never mind aboot thet.... Did yore girl die?”

“No. She was—faithless.”

“Aw ... ! Thet’s even wuss.... An’ pard, I’ll bet she was thet gold-haired dame you used to be seen with last fall. It comes back to me now.”

“Yes. She was the one.”

“Wal, no wonder! Thet girl was the loveliest I ever seen. I’d jest come to Wagontongue aboot thet time, an’ I shore recollect her. I seen her often. Not too tall an’ real slim, but say what a shape! An’ she had eyes thet could bore through a feller. Big brown eyes, wonderful bold an’ bright. She was not afraid to look at anyone, thet girl.”

“No doubt of the accuracy of your memory, Wess,” replied Paul.

“An’ she ran oot on you... !”

Kintell looked away across the desert. His lean brown jaw set hard. Paul divined that his admission had somehow pierced the cool, baffling armor of the Texan, and at that moment Paul could almost feel the intentness of the man, and something else that seemed imponderable, hard, even ruthless about him. The cowboy would not have taken such an episode lying down.

There was such a thing as revenge. Kintell had answered to that. The thought sent a hot gust, like a wave of fire, over Paul.... There had been a rival. All the time there had been a lover. But as swiftly as it had come the heat in his veins cooled.

The Texan spread a slow hand toward Black Mesa and the wide desert beyond—somehow reminiscent of the eloquent gesture of an Indian.

“An’ you reckon all this heah will ease you?” he queried.

Paul nodded. Ease him! He gazed down into the shallow gulch with its banks scarred by avalanches, its jumble of huge boulders, at the green-bordered pool shining yet strangely dark under the sun, at the mossy cliff with its streaks of gray, at the dark-portaled trading post among the cedars on the knoll, at the frowning black front of the mesa, wild in its magnificence of ruin, with its bleak rim reaching skyward. Then his eyes swept farther out to the gray desert, and once again he felt the strange, vague kinship with this desolation that had prompted his rash and inexplicable step.

“Quién sabe?” muttered the Texan, simply, as if he were alone. “Bitter water, hard as the hinges on the gates of hell. Stunted cedar an’ sage. Rocks forever an’ thet wasteland oot there. A black mountain with the face of the devil. A tradin’ post over the reservation line. A wretched lot of Indians, stuck for life in this ghastly hole. Haw, haw... ! Thet’s the ticket, an’ my friend wants to live heah!”

It seemed beyond the Texan’s comprehension. “Manning,” he went on, “I’ve rode this country. The human bein’s who live oot heah don’t count. Nature rules heah. This desert will be locked in snow an’ ice in winter, the coldest, dreariest, hardest place on earth. In spring when the thaw comes you’ll wade in ’dobe mud for weeks. Then the dust an’ sandstorms, shore the bane of a cowboy’s life. A yellow wall of flyin’ sand, thick as a curtain, swoops down on you, an’ you pile off yore hoss an’ cover yore face, an’ suffocate. Then comes the blastin’ hot summer with its turrible lightnin’ an’ thunder. Why, Texas hasn’t got anythin’ on this country for thet. An’ altogether, it’s jest one hell-bent range, fit only for rattlesnakes an’ coyotes.”

“Wess, you’re way off if you are trying to discourage me. All that you say only strengthens my desire to come.”

“Wal, by Gawd!” ejaculated Kintell, with a snatch at a cedar branch close by. “I get you now. Yore lookin’ to help some more pore devils, red or white, jest as you helped me.”

“No! I hadn’t thought of that,” replied Paul hastily.

“Shore, it’s in the back of yore mind,” declared the cowboy, as he arose to his lean height. “Wal, I reckon you’re gonna need me powerful bad.... Let’s go down an’ look the place over.”

“You go. Talk to the trader. You’re a cattleman. Find out all you think I should know. Then come back and we’ll decide how best to carry out my plan.”

“Good idee, boss. I reckon I’ll heah a hell of a lot an’ see more.”

Paul watched the lithe rider stride down the rock-strewn slope. “That cowboy will be good for me, if anyone could be,” he said with a nod of his head. “He gave me a hunch. ‘Looking to help some more poor devils... !’ It sounds good. But I’m not out of the woods myself, so why should I bother my head about helping anyone else? Misery loves company, they say. Not mine. But are loneliness, solitude, desolation all I want? For God’s sake, what do I want? What do I imagine I see here?”

Again he turned his gaze toward the desert, first the section near at hand and then to the gray horizon line. He failed to see what Kintell had pointed out. The early spring sunshine, pale and without heat, shone steelily down upon the little valley of the seeping spring. The place appeared abandoned. Red and gray boulders, slopes of weathered earth, scrubby brush and dwarfed cedars spread tortured, naked branches, like arms, to the sky. A forlorn garden patch with a broken fence of poles, a bare plot of sand which soon swallowed up the stream of water from the gleaming pool, the stained bluff glistening with its wet seepings and white residue, the long, low mud-roofed cabin with its gaping door, and above it all the stupendous slope of splintered cliff and jumble of rock and massed tangle of cedars, up and up in wild and ragged ruin to the black unscalable wall—all these passed in slow review before Paul’s absorbed gaze, and instead of revulsion he felt only a strange sense of attraction, as if these evidences of nature’s havoc had formed their counterpart in the abyss of his soul.

Black Mesa sheered up abruptly to the east behind the post; and far away, high on the rolling slope to the north, appeared the lofty lines of green poplar trees and the white walls and red roofs which marked the site of the government school and station, Walibu. Paul reflected that this nearest outpost of civilization encroached but little upon Bitter Seeps.

Farther northward the broken mesa wall loomed in lonely magnificence, until seventy miles away its battlements ended in a black crown against the blue sky. Below it and to the west spread the desert, so vast as to be staggering to the senses of man. Streaked by the black and suggestive lines of canyon, it reached to the dim, upflung plateau, topped by bands of purple and white.

This expanse held Paul Manning’s gaze until at last it began to mean something for him. Somehow this melancholy waste had begun to give him the first illusive sense of peace. It rested him. The littleness of man, his futile despair, his brief span of life—what were they to this indefinite breadth of sage, broad as the dome of sky above it? For millions of years live creatures of some kind had eked out their short existences out on that lonely waste, and their bones had gone to nourish the roots of the sage.

In the foreground, just beyond the red knoll on which stood the trader’s cabin, a band of goats dotted the sage, shepherded by an Indian boy mounted on a burro. The lonely figure of the boy lent the only visible sign of life to the scene and somehow made it real. Beyond waved the gray sea of bleached grass and seared sage. Red rocks, like sentinels, stood up at intervals but they were blended into the universal grayness. This sameness extended for leagues on leagues, the long rolling swell of the desert. But keen sight and long study discovered real or miraged changes out there in the lonely gray sea. Ghosts of ruined walls and fallen castles showed dimly through the curtain of haze. Areas of flood-worn rock checkered the long levels that verged on the blue canyons. Farther on pale specters of mesas, domes, bluffs rose through the sweeping gray, until they appeared to end in blank space, beyond which the plateau, like a mirage in the sky, hung foundationless and unreal.

This dead sea of melancholy gray and its myriad manifestations of ruin possessed for Paul Manning a growing absorption. Under the brow of the ridge he would build a cabin with a little porch facing this scene and there he would gaze until the strength of the wasteland had entered into him, or until his restless spirit was quieted forever.

The dark figure of a ragged mustang and a wild rider suddenly appeared silhouetted against the skyline above the knoll. Paul heard the strains of a weird chant carried on the solemn air. The Indian slowed his horse’s easy lope to head down toward the trading post. And presently Paul espied Kintell emerging from the post with a burly white man, no doubt the trader. The man was making forceful gestures and appeared reluctant to let the cowboy leave. The Indian rider dismounted before them to untie a pelt of some kind from his saddle. He went into the post, followed by the trader. Kintell headed for the ridge where Paul awaited him. When he had ascended to within speaking distance, he shouted: “No laigs—will ever take—place of a hawse with Wess Kintell.” He found a seat, and removing his sombrero, he mopped his brow with a soiled scarf. “Wal, boss, you don’t ’pear powerful curious.”

“No. And that worries me. I can’t stick to an idea any more than I seem to be able to stay in one place,” replied Paul.

“Ah-huh. Thet last is a damn good habit—so far as Bitter Seeps is concerned.... Trader’s name is Belmont. Guy I didn’t like on sight. He fell for my line pronto an’ I seen through him aboot as quick. Says he hails from Utah. I seen a sour-faced woman an’ a slip of a girl, sorta big-eyed an’ sad. An’ I heahed a kid cryin’.... Belmont bought out the Reed brothers heah two years ago. He’s runnin’ a bunch of cattle oot on the range. Tradin’ with the Indians, of course. An’ last, but not least, he’s sellin’ rotgut whisky.”

“How do you know that last?” queried Manning.

Kintell produced a bottle of liquor which he uncorked and smelled.

“Take a whiff of thet,” he said with a grimace. Then as Manning drew back, Kintell tossed the bottle among the rocks, where it popped. “Never, no more for me—if I have to drink pizen like thet.”

“Belmont didn’t strike you favorably?” queried Paul thoughtfully.

“Not so I’d notice it,” drawled the Texan.

“Well, that’s no matter. I could buy him out.”

“I reckon you couldn’t. He’s got a good thing heah, an’ he ain’t sellin’. Doesn’t want no pardner in the tradin’ post, neither. But I took it he’d grab most any cattle deal. Didn’t pump him too hard. He’s off the reservation an’ has the only water for miles, except Walibu, which he says is all took up with nary a drop to spare.”

“Lord of Bitter Seeps, eh?”

“I reckon. An’ if you want to play with him, it’ll cost you plenty.”

“You advise against it?”

“Shore do.”

“But, Wess, it’s this place I want.”

“Wal, you’ll shore hev to take Belmont with it. An’ he won’t make for peace, believe me. But if you’re set on a deal thet’ll give you work an’ a place heah, I’d say take an interest in Belmont’s cattle. It won’t be easy for him to stick you with me in charge an’ you won’t be oot a lot when you get sick of it.”

“Okay. We’ll go down,” replied Manning soberly, conscious that he was no longer eager. “Suppose we look at the spring and have a drink of it before we see Belmont.”

A short time later they were standing under the looming wet cliff that was mirrored in the deep, dark pool beneath. A hundred little threads of water trickled down with soft silky sounds, like the seep of blowing sand in the sage. The pool resembled a huge repellent eye, clear and dark and hard. In the shadow of the cliff it looked deep. At one side, an iron pipe ran from a barrel set in a niche of the cliff, and from this spilled a clear stream of water, splashing on a flagstone. For the rest, the pool was open to wild animals and to the stock of the range. Paul bent down to drink from the end of the pipe. The water was cold and bitter.

Color, sound, the shadow of the cliff, the white band of alkali, like crusted salt, the absence of frogs and water insects, and the rank green sedge—all gave the scene a compelling aspect, as if to force its undeniable power upon the spectator.

Trails led from it in three directions, the largest and most trodden of which struck off to the west, between the knoll and the base of the great slope of the mesa. Down this wide strip of sand and sage Manning espied the moundlike hogans, earth-covered frames, that furnished homes for the nomad Indians. Lean, ugly canines barked and slunk out of sight. Columns of blue smoke rose from the holes in the roofs of the hogans. A black disheveled head peeped from behind a blanketed doorway.

Paul slowly followed Kintell toward the trading post. It stood almost on the top of the knoll, which from this angle appeared to be low. Gray-barked cedars, with naked, twisted branches standing out from the scant green foliage, covered the knoll back of the cabin. It was a big house, irregular in shape, rough and crude, built of logs and clapboards, and roofed with red earth, in which weeds grew luxuriously. Evidently section after section had been added to this rambling jumble of cabins, each with a window but minus doors opening to the outside.

The ragged mustang stood haltered by a leather riata to the hitching rail. The little beast had a mean eye, a humped nose, and a broom-tail. A red blanket lay pressed in the saddle. Several Indians lounged on the porch. Manning was used to seeing Indians at Wagontongue, and had long ceased to look for a picturesque one. These appeared swarthy, beady-eyed, sullen savages. A squaw ambled out of the door of the post. She had a huge, round, pleasant face. She wore a dirty gingham dress and high-heeled shoes that had once been patent leather.

Paul sat down on the edge of the porch. “Ask Belmont to come out,” he said to Kintell. Just after the cowboy had entered, an Indian girl emerged. She was young, and the dark face, with its great, dusky eyes, and the small birdlike head, with its tangled raven tresses, had a singular wild attractiveness. She wore a dark ragged skirt, silver-ornamented moccasins, and a purple velveteen blouse that revealed her full breasts.

Then, with heavy tread that shook the porch, a rugged white man in the prime of life strode out. With coarse and familiar gesture he gave the Indian girl a resounding slap on the backside. “Get the hell out of here, Natasha,” he said, with a voice as hearty as his action. The squaw giggled, but the girl gave him a magnificent, blazing look of hate. At that instant the trader accosted Manning.

“Howdy, Mr. Manning. I’m glad to make your acquaintance.” He had a big voice, a big frame, a big hand. His boldly cut features were not unhandsome, but gave an impression other than pleasant. For a desert man he had a pale complexion. His eyes were a shade between green and hazel. Evidently he was a hard drinker.

Paul shook hands with him, making a commonplace greeting. His instincts were always keen, and instantly he sensed something strong and inhibitive in this meeting.

“Won’t you come in?” asked Belmont. “I can offer you a drink.”

“Thanks, presently. I’d like to sit out here for a while,” returned Paul. “I want to make you a proposition, Belmont.”

“So your cowboy friend said. Glad to hear it.”

Paul called to Kintell, who was trying to flirt with the Indian girl. She was shaking her dusky head and twisting her brown hands in the folds of her dress. She appeared to be a wild and shy creature.

As Belmont plumped himself down expectantly and Kintell joined them to squat after the fashion of outdoor men, Manning continued, “I don’t know, though, just what kind of a proposition I want to make you.”

“Cattle,” interposed Kintell shortly.

“Strikes me fine,” replied the trader, enthusiastically rubbing his big hands. “I’m runnin’ only a thousand head or so. Can’t attend much to range work. An’ the Indians are lazy. But we could run ten thousand head between this post an’ the river. There’s a big basin out here, long easy slope, southern exposure an’ good grass, where the snow melts quick.”

“Reckon Mr. Manning doesn’t aim to throw in any cattle at present,” said Kintell. “He’d buy an interest. Then if the deal panned out he would go in deeper.”

“I see,” rejoined Belmont, plainly disappointed. “Well, I’d consider sellin’ a half interest an’ furnish the water. My partner to run the stock.”

“That sounds reasonable and fair to me,” spoke up Manning.

“Shore, so far as it goes,” drawled the Texan. “How much a head?”

“Forty dollars.”

“Too high. Cattle sellin’ at Wagontongue for thirty.”

“We won’t haggle over that,” returned Belmont impatiently.

“Any hawses?”

“Plenty of mustangs. You’re welcome to your pick.”

Kintell turned to Paul, spreading his expressive hands. “Reckon it’s up to you now, boss.”

“Then it’s a deal,” replied Paul, glad to get the wearisome details settled. He had a feeling that if he considered the matter further he would lose his interest altogether. And he must have some place to stay, some work to do.

“Wal, Belmont, you an’ me will make the count of cattle. Then we’ll all ride into Wagontongue, fix up papers, payments an’ such.... After which I’ll teach Manning to be a cowpuncher.”

“Right-o,” acceded the trader, beaming.

“Wess, I don’t want to go back to town,” said Paul thoughtfully. “You won’t need me. I’ll give you a blank check. Get a lawyer to draw up the contract.... Go to my room and fetch all my clothes, everything. Buy me a saddle, bridle, blanket, spurs—all a rider needs—”

“You can buy all that right here,” interrupted Belmont, with gusto.

“Wal, if Belmont wants to rustle with me we can make thet count today an’ get off for Wagontongue tonight.”

“Rustle is my middle name, cowboy,” returned the trader heartily.

“Rustle or—rustler?” drawled Kintell, with a geniality that robbed the query of all save subtlety.

“Yes, I’ve been that last, too, in my younger days,” boomed Belmont, with a loud laugh. “Suppose you come in, Manning. This post ain’t no hotel, but I can put you up tolerable. An’ Sister can’t be beat as a cook.”

Despite Paul’s year of residence in Wagontongue, where he had gone from college at Lawrence, Kansas, to take up a career of writing, he had never been inside a trading post. The great, poorly lighted, barnlike place smelled of sheep wool, tobacco, hides and other odorous things Paul could not identify. A high counter ran the length of the room on one side and a low one on the other. Both were piled with colorful merchandise. Behind the low counter stretched rows of shelves packed with a miscellaneous assortment of objects, most prominent of which were saddles, blankets, bridles, harnesses, boots and sombreros, and a bewildering array of utensils for camp use. A rack of farming tools and one for guns, and shelves full of dry goods, mostly cheap gaudy ginghams and various colored velveteens, attested further to the trader’s surprising stock of merchandise.

A wide door opened into a stone-floored storeroom containing barrels, tins, bins of carded wool and huge burlap sacks, stuffed full, and piles of stinking goat hides.

Belmont led Manning down a long corridor with an uneven earthen floor, covered by coarse blankets, and whitewashed adobe walls thickly hung with blankets and scarfs. Doors opened into rooms on the right side, and windows on the left let in the light from a patio.

The trader entered the last room. Being at the end of that section of the house it had a window, as well as a door, and consequently was well lighted. It contained a narrow bed covered by a red blanket woven with Indian designs, a washstand, a bureau with a spotted mirror, and a shelf in the corner from which hung a curtain. The floor, like that of the corridor, was of uneven, bare earth covered by thickly woven Indian blankets. The walls and ceiling were adobe, pale brown in hue, cracked in places and stained by water. A small open fireplace of crudely cemented stones and a chimney of like construction completed the interior of the small compartment.

“Here you are,” said Belmont. “A table an’ lamp, with some fixin’ up, will make you comfortable. It’ll be cool in summer an’ warm in winter. An’ that’s luxury out here.”

“It’ll be good enough for me,” replied Manning.

The trader made an excuse for the fact that summer storms flooded the corridor at times, a defect he would remedy, and that when the dust storms raged in the spring it was necessary to keep door and window closed.

Kintell followed them with Paul’s coat and belongings from the wagon.

“Let’s rustle, Belmont,” said the cowboy. “When I count cattle I shore count ’em.”

“Right-o. It’s a big range, but if you’re not too damned good a counter we can finish before sunset.... Manning, make yourself at home. Loaf in the post an’ learn Indian ways. My woman will call you when supper is ready.”

Paul lay down on the bed with a sudden realization that the impulse under which he had taken this serious step had evaporated. Like all of his late, restless, unhappy impulses! He had become a rudderless craft.

A faint pungent smell, not unpleasant, assailed his nostrils. It was not the mingled odor of blankets, wool, pelts and other Indian essentials of the desert so thickly charging the atmosphere of the trading post. It entered the open door from outside and permeated his room. Wood smoke, that was it. At the same time he heard the faint wails of a baby and a soft crooning song, somehow poignant and sad, then sounds come from a cabin just beyond the corridor. Paul could see a portion of a peeled log wall and a slanting roof covered with red adobe mud.

There was a mother in that cabin and Paul, keenly susceptible to grief, had caught the note in her voice. No doubt she was the woman Belmont had called Sister, probably a sobriquet for his wife. It seemed to be a young voice, however, sweet and slightly contralto; and it arrested Paul’s wandering interest.

After a while silence prevailed and Paul fell prey to the dark mood he had feared, and against which this decisive step had been directed. He had to bow to what he could not break.

The four dismal walls of the adobe room appeared to press down upon him. They were stained and cracked, somber and inscrutable, like the walls of life which had fallen in upon him. They suited this uncanny place. For a long while he gazed around and upward, discovering much that he had not seen upon first glance. The nests of mason bees and wasps, a black spider spinning his web across a corner, faint Indian marks near the door, and a motionless praying mantis on the windowpane. He could see through those walls to the outside world, with its strife and beauty and passion, or through the ceiling to the blue sky and white clouds. Or he could make out of those blank spaces storied walls of his own conceiving. Did he not intend to go on with his long struggle to write? It all lay in the mind.

“Ah!” he mused bitterly. “That’s it.... All in the mind! Happiness or hell, life or death, all in the mind. It is what you think.”

And so the old, familiar, yet somehow inexplicable battle began all over again. He had won it before and he could do so again. And yet, why was it still so difficult to throw off the despair he felt? But to what end? He had struggled up out of the abyss; he had progressed; the beautiful and wonderful thing he had felt was dead; love was dead, hate was dead, vivid and torturing memories were dying. And he believed that he was ready to face the future, with courage and intelligence if not with hope.

Of the hundred and one plans that he had considered since his recovery from his futile debauch of oblivion, nothing had developed. They were futile as well. Still the days had passed. Something had been gained from merely living on.

This desert place of bitter water, this lonely upflung world of rock and earth and sage, this barren wasteland keeping its secret—was this the place that could save him? No! Those four blank walls had told him that. No place could give him back what he had lost. He need go no farther to seek, to search, to find what must be in his own soul, or else unattainable.

Therefore, this last and deliberate move to isolate himself on a forbidding and inhospitable desert was only another hopeless gesture. He would give it up. When Belmont and Kintell returned he would recompense them for their labors and abandon the cattle project. It would be far better to interest himself in lumbering, south of Wagontongue. The altitude was lower, the country one of forested plateaus and canyons, the water pure, the wild game abundant. Why had he not considered that? How infinitely preferable the fragrant, sun-flocked pine forests and the amber brooks to this rock-ribbed region from the bowels of which poured only bitterness! He had been mad to imagine that toil on a bleak, hard range might constitute his salvation.

Nevertheless Paul divined that wherever he went the same problem would present itself, the same shadow would keep step on his trail, the same naked shingle of sorrow would be his beat. Unless he could find something—not a place, nor any labor, nor an anchor to hold to, but some new meaning that would make life worth living!

“I am getting somewhere,” he muttered aloud. “That cowboy—did he hit upon it?”

To alleviate his own trouble by taking up the burden of others! What a splendid prospect! But it was beyond Paul Manning. He was not good enough nor Christian enough to accept such a role. Never again would he pass by a fellow man in distress without lending a kindly hand, but to devote his whole future to benevolence—that was beyond him. What had he wanted before this blow had struck him? To travel, to experience, to know adventure, to achieve, to write the old dreams, to live and to love.

To live and to love! But it had been love which had desolated him. The strangeness of his nature loomed out at that moment; the recollection of more than one direct ancestor who had been ruined by an unrequited passion; the memory of his adoration for his mother; the fact that he recognized a strong feminine strain of tenderness in himself. But perhaps he had made too much of his infatuation for Amy. He was still young and healthy—at least in body, if not in spirit. He would forget in time. And then the old bitterness and despair swept over him. How could any kind of love ever be possible for him again? That was the insupportable truth.

So profound was Paul’s absorption in his self-analysis that he paid no heed to a thumping sound at his door until he was sharply disrupted by a vociferous baby voice: “Da!”

Suddenly he became aware of the fact that the baby he had heard crying a short time ago had entered his door and was crawling over the floor toward the bed.

“Well! Say, youngster, where you going?” burst out Paul, at once amused and concerned.

The baby kept on with a singleness of purpose. He might have been a year or more old, and he was most decidedly pretty, though not robust. Reaching the bed he caught Paul’s leg and elevated himself to a standing position and then, with the manifest delight of conquest, he crowed lustily.

Paul lifted him up to his knee, feeling a queer little thrill at the tight grip of tiny hands. “You’re lost, doggone you. And what am I to do about it?”

Soft footfalls outside were accompanied by an anxious voice: “Tommy ... Tommy, where are you?”

Paul did not reply as promptly as might have been required of him, and in another moment the quick muffled footsteps entered the corridor. A young girl peered in through the doorway and seeing Paul with his charge, she uttered a little cry of relief and surprise. Then she entered.

“Oh! The little rascal! I hope he didn’t disturb you,” she exclaimed, and the contralto voice was the one that Paul had heard crooning to the baby.

“Very pleasantly so,” replied Paul with a smile. “I don’t remember being so popular before.”

“It was kind of you to take him up,” she said, and coming forward she bent to lift the baby from Paul’s lap. The baby had other ideas about that. He clung to his refuge, and a slight struggle ensued before the girl could lift the child into the hollow of her elbow. A vivid blush directed Paul’s closer attention to her face.

“I—I did not know anyone was here—in this room, or I should not have let him out,” she said.

“My name is Paul Manning,” he replied. “I am going to be a partner of Belmont’s in the cattle business.”

“Partner?” she echoed.

“Yes. And live here.”

“Live—here!” she ejaculated incredulously.

By this time Paul had discerned that she was more than pretty, though it took an effort to remove his gaze from her eyes. They were large, and either their dark topaz hue or their expression gave them a singular, haunting beauty. For the rest she had a pale oval face, sweet lips youthful in color and curve but old in wistful sadness, a broad low forehead crowned by rippling bronze hair with glints of gold in it.

“Yes, I’m going to live here for a while, until I can build a shack,” replied Paul. “I’m a quiet fellow and won’t be in the way.”

“Oh! I—I didn’t mean ... You’re welcome indeed. I was just surprised.”

“You are Belmont’s daughter?” asked Paul.

“No.”

“A relative, then—or maybe working here?” went on Paul kindly, wanting her to introduce herself.

“Working, yes. But I’m neither relative nor servant.”

That low reply, tinged with bitterness, effectually checked Paul’s curiosity. But he could scarcely restrain his gaze. And suddenly he became aware of a change in the girl, as well as of the fact that he had not really observed her closely.

“I am Louise—this baby’s mother—and Belmont’s wife,” she added, a curious dullness about her tone.

“My God! Mother? Why, you can’t be more than a child,” Paul blurted out, shocked out of his composure.

“I am seventeen years old,” she said, and if one were to judge from the solemnity of her tone she might have been fifty.

“Seventeen!” echoed Paul, and became suddenly silent, aware of an expression of intolerable pain in her eyes. It was the look of a hunted fugitive—of a creature fettered, tortured. It called to the depths of Paul, in a message that fired his pity and understanding. Through his own suffering he comprehended her trouble. She was literally a child, already forced into motherhood. If she had told him in so many words that her life was despair and misery—that she hated the father of this baby—the fact could not have been any clearer. And he had raved about his own loss, his own grief! What did he know of either?

Paul stared up at her, conscious of the significance of the moment, released and delivered from the past, flooded by the appalling reality of life; while she stared down at him, wide-eyed and wondering, somehow transfixed by what she had suddenly felt in this stranger but could not understand.