Wanderer Of the Wasteland (1982) (25 page)

"He's ill, don't you think?" queried the woman.

"No. But he recovers slowly. A man must have a perfect heart and powerful lungs to battle against the many perils in this country. But Virey will get over this all right.

"You never give up, do you?" she inquired.

"Come to think of that, I guess I never do," replied Adam.

"Such a spirit is worthy of a better cause. You are doomed here to failure."

"Well, I'm not infallible, that's certain. But you can never tell. The fact of my standing here is proof of the overcoming of almost impossible things. I can't make Death Valley habitable for you, but I can lessen the hardships. How long have you been here?"

"Several months. But it's years to me."

"Who brought you down? How did you get here?"

"We've had different guides. The last were Shoshone Indians, who accompanied us across a range of mountains, then a valley, and last over the Panamints. They left us here. I rode a horse. Virey walked the last stages of this journey to Death Valley--from which there will be no return. We turned horse and burros loose. I have not seen them since."

"Are these Shoshones supposed to visit you occasionally?"

"Yes. Virey made a deal with them to come every full moon. We've had more supplies than we need. The trouble is that Virey has the inclination to eat, but I have not the skill to prepare food wholesomely under these rough conditions. So we almost starved."

"Well, let me take charge of camp duties. You nurse your husband and don't neglect yourself. It's the least you can do. You'll have hardship and suffering enough, even at best. You've suffered, I can see, but not physically. And you never knew what hardship meant until you got into the desert. If you live, these things will cure you of any trouble. They'll hardly cure Virey, for he has retrograded. Most men in the desert follow the line of least resistance. They sink. But you will not...And let me tell you. There are elemental pangs of hunger, of thirst, of pain that are blessings in disguise. You'll learn what rest is and sleep and loneliness. People who live as you have lived are lopsided. What do they know of life close to the earth? Any other life is false. Cities, swarms of men and women, riches, luxury, poverty--these were not in nature's scheme of life...Mrs. Virey, if anything can change your soul it will be the desert."

"Ah, Sir Wansfell, so you have philosophy as well as chivalry," she replied, with the faint accent that seemed to be mockery of herself. "Change my soul if you can, wanderer of the desert I I am a woman, and a woman is symbolical of change. Teach me to cook, to work, to grow strong, to endure, to fight, to look up at those dark hills whence cometh your strength...I am here in Death Valley. I will never leave it in body. My bones will mingle with the sands and moulder to dust...But my soul--ah! that black gulf of doubt, of agony, of terror, of hate--change that if you can!"

These tragic, eloquent words chained Adam to Death Valley as if they had been links of steel; and thus began his long sojourn there.

Work or action was always necessary to Adam. They had become second nature. He planned a brush shelter from the sun, a sort of outside room adjoining the shack, a stone fireplace and table and seats, a low stone wall to keep out blowing sand, and a thick, heavy stone fence between shack and the slope of sliding rocks. When these tasks were finished there would be others, and always there would be the slopes to climb, the valley to explore. Idleness in Death Valley was a forerunner of madness. There must be a reserve fund of long work and exercise, so that when the blazing, leaden-hazed middays of August came, with idleness imperative, there would be both physical force and unclouded mind to endure them. The men who succumbed to madness in this valley were those who had not understood how to combat it.

That day passed swiftly, and the twilight hour seemed to have less of gloom and forbidding intimations. That might well have been due to his eternal hope. Mrs. Virey showed less gravity and melancholy, and not once did she speak with bitterness or passion. She informed Adam that Virey had improved.

Two more days slipped by, and on the third Virey got up and came forth into the sunlight. Adam happened to be at work near by. He saw Virey gaze around at the improvements that had been made and say something about them to his wife. He looked a man who should have been in the prime of life. Approaching with slow gait and haggard face, he addressed Adam.

"You expect pay for this puttering around?"

"No," replied Adam, shortly.

"How's that?"

"Well, when men are used to the desert, as I am, they lend a hand where it is needed. That's not often."

"But I didn't want any such work done round my camp."

"I know, and I excuse you because you're ignorant of desert ways and needs."

"The question of excuse for me is offensive."

Adam, rising abreast of the stone wall he was building, fixed his piercing eyes upon this man. Mrs. Virey stood a little to one side, but not out of range of Adam's gaze. Did a mocking light show in her shadowy eyes? The doubt, the curiosity in her expression must have related to Adam. That slight, subtle something about her revealed to Adam the inevitableness of disappointment in store for him if he still entertained any hopes of amenable relations with Virey.

"We all have to be excused sometimes," said Adam, deliberately. "Now I had to excuse you on the score of ignorance of the desert. You chose this place as a camp. It happens to be the most dangerous spot I ever saw. Any moment a stone may roll down that slope to kill you. Any moment the whole avalanche may start. That slope is an avalanche."

"It's my business where I camp," rejoined Virey.

"Were you aware of the danger here?"

"I am indifferent to danger."

"But you are not alone. You have a woman with you."

Manifestly, Virey had been speaking without weighing words and looking at Adam without really seeing him. The brooding shade passed out of his eyes, and in its place grew a light of interest that leaped to the crystal-cold clearness of a lens.

"You're a prospector," he asserted.

"No. I pan a little gold dust once in a while for fun because I happen across it."

"You're no miner then--nor hunter, nor teamster."

"I've been a little of all you name, but I can't be called any one of them."

"You might be one of the robbers that infest these hills."

"I might be, only I'm not," declared Adam, dryly. The fire in his depths stirred restlessly, but he kept a cool, smothering control over it. He felt disposed to be lenient and kind toward this unfortunate man. If only the woman had not stood there with that half-veiled mocking shadow of doubt in her eyes!

"You're an educated man!" ejaculated Virey, incredulously.

"I might claim to be specially educated in the ways of the desert."

"And the ways of women, are they mysteries to you?" queried Virey, with scorn. His interrogation seemed like a bitter doubt flung out of an immeasurable depth of passion.

"I confess that they are," replied Adam. "I've lived a lonely life. Few women have crossed my trail."

"You don't realise your good fortune--if you tell the truth."

"I would not lie to any man," returned Adam, bluntly. "Bah! Men are all liars, and women make them so. You're hanging around my camp, making a bluff of work."

"I deny that. Heaving these stones is work. You lift a few of them in this hot sun...And my packing you on my back for ten miles over the floor of Death Valley--was that a bluff?"

"You saved my life!" exclaimed the man, stung to passion. There seemed to be contending tides within him--a fight of old habits of thought, fineness of feeling, against an all-absorbing and dominating malignancy. "Man, I can't thank you for that...You've done me no service."

"I don't want or expect thanks. I was thinking of the effort it cost me."

"As a man who was once a gentleman, I do thank you--which is a courtesy due my past. But now that you have put me in debt for a service I didn't want, why do you linger here?"

"I wish to help your wife."

"Ah! that's frank of you. That frankness is something for which I really thank you. But you'll pardon me if I'm inclined to doubt the idealistic nature of your motive to help her."

Adam pondered over this speech without reply. Words always came fluently when he was ready to speak. And he seemed more concerned over Virey's caustic bitterness than over his meaning. Then, as he met the magnificent flash in Magdalene Virey's eyes, he was inspired into revelation of Virey's veiled hint and into a serenity he divined would be kindest to her pride.

"Go ahead and help her," Virey went on. "You have my sincere felicitations. My charming wife is helpless enough. I never knew how helpless till we were thrown upon our own resources. She cannot even cook a potato. And as for baking bread in one of those miserable black ovens, stranger, if you eat some of it I will not be long annoyed by your attentions to her."

"Well, I'll teach her," said Adam.

His practical response irritated Virey excessively. It was as if he wished to insult and inflame, and had not considered a literal application to his words.

"Who are you? What's your name?" he queried, yielding to a roused curiosity.

"Wansfell," replied Adam.

"Wansfell?" echoed Virey. The name struck a chord of memory--a discordant one. He bent forward a little, at a point between curiosity and excitement. "Wansfell? I know that name. Are you the man who in this desert country is called Wansfell the Wanderer?"

"Yes, I'm that Wansfell."

"I heard a prospector tell about you," went on Virey, his haggard face now quickened by thought. "It was at a camp near a gold mine over here somewhere--I forget where. But the prospector said he had seen you kill a man named Mc something--McKin--no, McKue. That's the name...Did he tell the truth?"

"Yes, I'm sorry to say. I killed Baldy McKue--or rather, to speak as I feel, I was the means by which the desert dealt McKue the death justly due him."

Virey now glowed with excitement, changing the man.

"Somehow that story haunted me," he said. "I never heard one like it...This prospector told how you confronted McKue in the street of a mining camp. In front of a gambling hell, or maybe it was a hotel. You yelled like a demon at McKue. He turned white as a sheet. He jerked his gun, began to shoot. But you bore a charmed life. His bullets did not hit you, or, if they did, to no purpose. You leaped upon him. His gun flew one way, his hat another...Then--then you killed him with your hands!...Is that true?"

Adam nodded gloomily. The tale, told vividly by this seemingly galvanised Virey, was not pleasant. And the woman stood there, transfixed, with white face and tragic eyes.

"My God! You killed McKue by sheer strength--with your bare hands!...I had not looked at your hands. I see them now...So McKue was your enemy?"

"No. I never saw him before that day," replied Adam.

Virey slowly drew back wonderingly, yet with instinctive shrinking. Certain it was that his lips stiffened.

"Then why did you kill him?"

"He ill-treated a woman."

Adam turned away as he replied. He did not choose then to show in his eyes the leaping thought that had been born of the memory and of Virey's strange reaction. But he heard him draw a quick, sharp breath and step hack. Then a silence ensued. Adam gazed up at the endless slope, at the millions of rocks, all apparently resting lightly in their pockets, ready to plunge down.

"So--so that was it," spoke up Virey, evidently with effort. "I always wondered. Wild West sort of story, you know. Strange I should meet you...Thanks for telling me. I gather it wasn't pleasant for you."

"It's sickening to recall, but I have no regrets," replied Adam.

"Quite so. I understand. Man of the desert--ruthless--inhuman sort of thing."

"Inhuman?" queried Adam, and he looked at Virey, at last stung. Behind Virey's pale, working face and averted eyes Adam read a conscience in tumult, a spirit for the moment terrorised. "Virey, you and I'd never agree on meaning of words...I broke McKue's arms and ribs and legs, and while I cracked them I told him what an inhuman dastard he had been--to ruin a girl, to beat her, to abandon her and her baby--to leave them to die. I told him how I had watched them die...then I broke his neck!...McKue was the inhuman man--not I."

Virey turned away, swaying a little, and his white hand, like a woman's, sought the stone wall for support, until he reached the shack, which he entered.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Virey, that story had to come up," said Adam, confronting her with reluctance. But she surprised him again. He expected to find her sickened, shrinking from him as a bloody monster, perhaps half fainting; he found, however, that she seemed serene, controlling deep emotions which manifested themselves only in the marble whiteness of her cheek, the strained darkness of her eye.

"The story was beautiful. I had not heard it," she said, and the rich tremor of her voice thrilled Adam. "What woman would not revel in such a story?...Wansfell the Wanderer. It should be Sir Wansfell, Knight of the Desert!...Don't look at me so. Have you not learned that the grandest act on earth is when a man fights for the honour or love or happiness or life of a woman?...I am a woman. Many men have loved me. Virey's love is so strong that it is hate. But no man ever yet thought of me--no man ever yet heard the little songs that echoed through my soul--no man ever fought to save me!...My friend, I dare speak as you speak, with the nakedness of the desert. And so I tell you that just now I watched my husband--I listened to the words which told his nature, as if that was new to me. I watched you stand there--I listened to you. And so I dare to tell you--if you come to fight my battles I shall have added to my life of shocks and woes a trouble that will dwarf all the others...the awakening of a woman who has been blind!...The facing of my soul--perhaps its salvation! A crowning agony--a glory come too late!"