The Man of the Desert (2 page)

“Yes, I knew you’d be surprised. It’s almost too good to be true, after all my trouble to get Ellen to consent.”

“But she—your wife—where will she go? What will she do?”

She didn’t realize the horses had stopped and that he still held her hand as she grasped the reins.

“Oh, Ellen will marry at once. That’s why she’s finally consenting. She’s going to marry Walling Stacy. From being stubborn about it, she’s quite in a hurry to make any arrangement now.”

“She’s going to marry!” gasped Hazel as if she’d rarely heard of such things. It hadn’t come so close to her friendships before.

“Yes, she’s going to marry at once, so you see there’s no need to think of her again. But why don’t you ask me what I’m going to do?”

“Oh yes!” she exclaimed. “You startled me so. What are you going to do? You poor man—what can you do? Oh, I’m so sorry for you!” Tears welled up in her eyes.

“No need to feel sorry for me, little one,” said the exultant voice, and he looked at her now with an expression she’d never seen in his face. “I’ll be happier than I’ve ever dreamed,” he said. “I’m going to marry, too—someone who loves me, I’m sure, though she’s never told me. I’m going to marry you, little sweetheart!”

He leaned toward her before she could understand his meaning and, flinging his free arm around her, pressed his lips on hers.

With a wild cry like some terrified creature, Hazel tried to pull herself away. Finding herself held tight, she lifted the hand holding the whip and slashed the air blindly about her. Her eyes closed; her heart swelled with fear. She felt suddenly repulsed by this man she’d respected deeply. She lashed out again with her whip, not seeing what she struck.

Hamar’s horse reared and plunged, almost unseating his rider. As he struggled to keep his seat, he released the girl, and the second cut of the whip stung across his eyes. He cried out. The horse reared again and sent him sprawling on the ground, his hands to his face.

Knowing only she was free, Hazel instinctively struck her own horse on the flank. The little beast turned sharply to the right from the trail he was following and darted across the level plateau. It was all Hazel could do to keep her seat.

She’d sometimes enjoyed a run in the park with her groom at a safe distance behind her. She was proud of her ability to ride and could take fences as well as her young brother. But a run like this across an undefined space, on a creature of speed like the wind, goaded by fear, was different. She tried to hold on to the saddle with shaking hands, for the reins were flying in the breeze. But each moment she expected to lose her slight hold and find herself lying huddled on the plain with the horse far in the distance.

Her lips grew white and cold, her breath short and painful. She strained her eyes to look ahead at the constantly receding horizon. Was there no end? Would they ever reach civilization? How long could a horse stand a pace like this? And how long could she hold on?

Off to the right at last she thought she saw a building. In a second they neared a cabin, standing alone on the great plain with sagebrush in patches about the door and a neat rail fence around it. She could see one window at the end and a tiny chimney at the back. Could anyone live in such a forlorn place?

Summoning her strength as they passed, she yelled out. But the wind caught the feeble effort and flung it into the vast spaces like a worthless fragment of sound.

Tears stung their way into her wide, dry eyes. The last hairpin left its mooring and slipped down to earth. The loose golden hair streamed back on the wind like hands of despair clutching wildly for help, and the jaunty green riding cap was snatched by the breeze and hung on a bush not fifty feet from the cabin gate. But the horse rushed on with the frightened girl still clinging to the saddle.

The Man

A
bout noon the same day, John Brownleigh stopped his horse on the edge of a flattopped mesa and looked away to the clear blue mountains. He’d lived in Arizona for nearly three years, but the desert hadn’t lost its charm. Now his eyes sought the vast distances stretching in every direction. More than a hundred miles away, the mountains rose distinctly in the clear air but seemed only a short journey from there.

Below him ledges of rock were piled one upon another in yellow and gray, crimson and green, with sunlight playing over them and turning their colors into a blaze of glory. Beyond was the sand, broken here and there by sagebrush, greasewood, or cactus rearing its prickly spines grotesquely. Off to the left stood pink-tinted cliffs and a little farther, dark conelike buttes. Low brown-and-white hills stretched away to the right to the petrified forest, where great tracts of fallen tree trunks and chips lay locked in glistening stone. To the south he could see the familiar waterhole and farther on, the entrance to the canyon, fringed with cedars and pines.

“Beautiful,” he murmured, “and a grand God to have it so!”

Then a shadow crossed his face, and he spoke again out loud as was his habit now.

“I guess it’s worth the lonely days and discouragement, just to be alone with a wonderful Father like mine!”

He’d just come from a three-day trip with another missionary whose station was two days by horseback from his own. A sweet woman, who’d recently come from the East to share that man’s fortunes, presided over the cheerful home. She’d prepared a delicious dinner for her husband and his guests, made the three-room shack comfortable and added the warm touches of a woman’s hand.

All these filled Brownleigh with a noble envy; not until this visit had he realized how lonely his life was. But he was busy from morning till night and more enthusiastic about his work now than nearly three years ago when the board sent him to minister to the Indians’ needs. He had many friends in the region, whether white man, trader, or Indian, and was always welcome in their homes.

He’d come now to visit an Indian hogan where the shadow of death was lingering over a little maiden beloved by her father. He was weary from spending long days in the saddle. But the young girl smiled when she saw him. And death’s dark valley seemed more like her own flower-filled canyon leading to a brighter day, when she heard the message of life he brought her.

But as he looked over the long trail and thought of the home where he dined the day before, the sadness stayed.

“It would be good to have somebody like that,” he said out loud again, “somebody to expect me and be happy I’ve come. But then—I suppose not many girls are willing to give up their homes and go out to rough it as she’s done. It’s a hard life for a woman—for that kind of woman! And I wouldn’t want any other kind!”

His eyes grew large with wistfulness. A cheerful man, John Brownleigh didn’t often stop to think about his life. His heart was in his work. He could turn his hand to anything, and there was always plenty to be done. Yet today, for the first time since plunging into the work and outgrowing his first homesickness, he was hungry for companionship. He’d seen a light in his fellow missionary’s eyes that revealed the comfort and joy he was missing, and it struck deep into his heart. So he stopped on the mesa, with the vast panorama of the desert before him, to have it out with himself.

The horse breathed slowly, dropping his head and closing his eyes, and the man sat thinking, trying to fill his soul with the beauty of the desert and crowd out the longings that had pressed upon him.

Then he raised his head and said quietly, “Lord, You know what this loneliness is. You were lonely, too. It’s the way You chose. I’ll walk with You, and it will be good!”

He sat for a moment with his face toward the sky, until his features were touched with a tender light, changing sadness into peace. Then with his old cheerfulness he turned to the matters at hand.

“Billy, it’s time we’re getting on,” he told his horse. “We’re due at the fort tonight if we can make it. We had too much vacation, and now we’re spoiled and lazy. But we have to get to work. How about it? Can we make it to that waterhole in half an hour? Let’s try, old fellow, and then we’ll have a good drink, a bite to eat, and maybe ten minutes for a nap before we take the short trail home. You have some of that corn chop left, so hustle up, old boy, and get there.”

With a snort Billy responded to his master’s words and carefully picked his way over boulders and rocks down to the valley below.

But within a half mile of the waterhole, the young man halted his horse and dismounted. Something gleaming in the sand beside a tall yucca had caught his eye and held his attention. It might only be a bit of broken glass from an empty flask flung carelessly aside, but he must see.

He stooped down as the sun glanced off a bit of bright gold on the handle of a riding whip. Picking it up, he turned it in his hand. How did the whip get there? he wondered. It had to belong to a woman and a wealthy one at that, as far removed from this scene as possible, for the people of that region didn’t carry such dainty whips. Set in the end of the handle was a single clear stone of transparent yellow, a topaz likely, he thought. That had probably caught the light and his attention. Looking closely, he saw a handsome monogram engraved on the side and made out the letters H.R. But that told him nothing.

He lingered, one foot in the stirrup, the other still on the desert, surveying the elegant whip. Now who would be so foolish as to bring a thing like that into the desert? No lady riders were anywhere about that he knew, except the major’s sister at the military station, and she was given to simple accessories. This wasn’t hers, and tourists seldom came this way. What did it mean?

He sprang into the saddle and scanned the plain, but only the warm shimmer of sun-heated earth appeared. Nothing living could be seen. What should he do, and how could he find the owner and restore the lost property?

Soon they arrived at the waterhole. Brownleigh dismounted, his thoughts still on the little whip.

“It’s very strange, Billy. I can’t figure out a theory that suits me,” he mused aloud. “If someone’s ridden out this way and lost it, will that person return and look for it? Yet if I leave it where I found it, the sand might drift over it, or someone might steal it. Surely, in this sparsely settled country, I’ll hear of any strangers who might have carried such a foolish thing. Well, I guess we’ll take it with us, Billy. We’ll likely hear of its owner somewhere.”

The horse answered with a snort of satisfaction as he lifted his moist muzzle from the water’s edge and looked contentedly about.

The missionary unstrapped his saddle and flung it on the ground, unfastening the bag of corn chop and spreading it before his companion. Then he gathered a few sticks and started a small blaze. In a few minutes the water was bubbling in his folding tin cup for tea, and a bit of bacon was frying in a skillet beside it. Corn bread, tea, and sugar came from the capacious saddle pockets, and the two travelers had a good meal beneath the bright sky.

After Billy finished the corn chop, his long lashes drooped, and his nose hung down until it almost touched the ground. But his master, stretched at full length on that same ground nearby with his hat drawn over his eyes, couldn’t sleep. His thoughts were on the jeweled whip. He reached over for it and, shoving back his hat, watched the glinting of lights in the topaz, as the sun caught and tangled its beams in the sharp facets of the cutting. One reads life by details in that wide and lonely land, and this might mean something. But what? he wondered.

At last he dropped his hand and sat up, saying aloud with an upward glance, “Father, if there’s any reason why I should look for the owner, guide me.”

He spoke as if addressing someone present in his consciousness, with whom he was intimate. Then he stood up and, with a lighter heart, packed his things in the saddle, for he knew the burden was no longer his to bear.

They were soon on their way again, Billy swinging along with the realization of the nearness of home.

The trail now led toward hazy blue lines of mesas with crags and ridges here and there. Across the valley, looking like a cloud-shadow in the distance, lay a long black streak, the line of the canyon gorge. Its dim presence seemed to grow in the missionary’s thought as he drew closer. He hadn’t been to that canyon for over a month.

A few scattered Indians lived there with their families in corners where there was little soil. The thought of them drew him now. He must visit them soon. If Billy hadn’t traveled so far already, he’d go up there this afternoon. But the horse needed rest if the man didn’t, and there was, of course, no real hurry. He could go in the morning. Meanwhile it would be good to get to his own fireside and attend to a few letters that should be written.

He was invited to the fort that night for dinner, honoring some visitors from the East. He’d promised to come if he reached home in time, and he probably would. He’d rather read and go to sleep early, and in his present mood the festivities at the fort didn’t appeal to him. But such opportunities were infrequent in this lonely land. It meant a ride of ten miles farther, but of course he’d go.

He mused over the whip again and in due time arrived at his own home, a one-room shanty with a chimney at the back and four large windows. At the extreme end of the fenced enclosure about the structure stood a shed for Billy, and all about was the vast plain dotted with bushes and weeds, with its panorama of mountain and hill, valley and gorge. It was beautiful, but desolate. His few neighbors lived at great distances.

“We should have a dog to welcome us home, Billy,” said Brownleigh, slapping the horse’s neck affectionately as he dismounted. “But then a dog would go along with us, wouldn’t he? So there’d be three of us to come home instead of two, and that wouldn’t do any good. How about chickens? But the coyotes would steal them. I guess we’ll have to get along with each other, old fellow.”

The horse, relieved of his saddle, shook himself, as a man might stretch after a weary journey, and trotted off into his shed. Brownleigh made him comfortable and turned to go to the house.

As he walked along by the fence he caught sight of a small dark object hanging on a sagebrush not far from the front of his house. It moved slightly, and he stopped to watch, thinking an animal might be hiding in the bush. It seemed to stir again as watched objects often will. Brownleigh climbed over the rail fence to investigate. Nothing in that country was left to uncertainty. Men liked to know what was around them.