Following the Grass (20 page)

“I wish you well, my friends,” he said to them. “Here is one whom you can serve for me.” Joseph's arms drew Necia into their embrace. “Whatever you do for her is done for me.”

Necia no longer cried, but her eyes were dull, unseeing. In a daze she spoke to Joseph. He bent his head and kissed her before them all.

“God be with you, Necia,” he murmured. He turned away then without saying good-by, and old Thad caught Necia as she swayed back and forth helplessly.

The wind had risen until it blew a gale. Black clouds raced along the eastern horizon now. Grimm had long since come to earth, and he fluttered to Joseph's shoulder as the boy took up his staff and trudged after the sheep which Slippy-foot had already started on their way.

No sound came from the little group that watched Joseph go. Quickly the distance between them widened. Once he thought he heard Necia call his name, but he dared not turn back. A second time he thought he heard her cry—or was it the moaning of the wind as it screamed its way across the valley?

His roving eye caught sight of the men and women who had gathered at his grandfather's house. They had come forth fearfully as the sky had darkened and Angel had not returned. They stood bent over against the wind, their clothes whipping about them.

A booming as of distant surf reached Joseph's ears. Grimm cawed nervously and jumped down on Joseph's arm, hiding his head beneath his wings.

A calling sound came again, and Joseph strained his ears as he walked on. It was a voice! Thad Taylor's voice! He was shouting to make himself heard.

Joseph stopped and looked back. Thad was running toward him. He saw him half stumble once, but he got up and came on.

“Joseph!” he called repeatedly. “Come back! Come back!”

Joseph stopped, wonder holding him.

“I can't do it!” Thad cried: “ . . . I can't let you go! You've got to stay! You've got to come back! I was wrong! I couldn't take nothin' from your father knowin' what I'd done to you. If your father's a-goin' to help me save my ranch, you've got to help me save Necia. She looks like she's dyin'.”

The wind whipped the words away from his lips.

“Don't mock me, Joseph! Look at the sky! It's like night. What's it waitin' for? What's it gittin' ready to do? Is it me? Is God gittin' ready to strike me?”

The others had come up and their eyes went wide with fear as they heard Thad cry:

“Hold your lightnin', God! Don't strike me down! I believe. . . . I believe!”

A sob choked him, and he sank to his knees muttering a prayer that only his God could understand.

Something thudded in the dust beside him. Here, there—wherever Joseph looked he saw the dust rise in tiny puffs. Something wet struck his face.

It was rain! . . .

It was rain! It was raining! The dry earth sucked in the big drops hungrily. Slippy-foot barked the joy that was in her. Grimm raised his head to confirm the miracle.

The big drops passed. On their heels came the fine, sod-soaking downpour that gives lives to the earth. Men and women were down on their knees, a prayer on their lips.

Joseph went to Necia and bent over her, so white and still. She smiled at him faintly.

Andres took off his coat and offered it to her, but she would not have it. This long awaited rain was balm to her skin.

In the hills to the north, thunder roared. Martin Creek, that had been so low, began to rise. Rivulets grew until they raced through the fields to the ditches. The ditches began to overflow. The earth seemed to stir as it felt the life-saving moisture seeping into its veins.

Rob MacMonnies, a dry-farmer from east of town, raised his voice, thick with its Scotch burr, in a brave Presbyterian hymn heard more often in some humble cotter's cabin in the highlands of Perth or Inverness than on the sage-brush plains of northern Nevada. As his great voice challenged the noise of wind and rain others joined him.

That their words were in different tongues, their simple melodies no whit alike, mattered not at all. The joy and thankfulness in their hearts sprang from a common seed that made light of such barriers.

“They are singing, Joseph,” Necia murmured. “They know they have been saved.”

Joseph stroked the hair back from her forehead.

“They have been saved,” he repeated. “God only waited for them to accept Him. There is no need now of asking my father to help them. It seems as if God had but waited for your grandfather's acknowledgment.

“To each it must be plain that as soon as he had found a way to face whatever misfortune the drought brought him that the drought ended. And that way was through faith and good-will.

“These men will not forget. They will thank me, but it is you whom they should thank. I have only handed down to them what you gave to me.”

Necia patted his hand. Strength was flowing back into her young body. She smiled up at him.

“Does it please you to think so, Joseph? I can hear you saying to your grandfather, that first time you came to the ranch: ‘I am a shepherd!' Your words were truer than you knew. You have led your flock into green pastures, haven't you, dear?”

The light of her eyes lifted him to a strange world. He closed his own, and his spirit soared with hers.

Grimm and Slippy-foot came close, but the man and woman they loved were in a land into which it was not possible for them to follow.

THE END.