Wanderer Of the Wasteland (1982) (49 page)

"Genie, did you ever see that?" he asked.

"Yes," she replied, with a start of recognition. "It was my father's. He gave it to my uncle."

Adam nodded to the Indian. "Chief, you were right."

"Oh, Wanny--it means he's found my uncle--dead!" exclaimed Genie, in awe.

"Yes, Genie," replied Adam, with a hand of sympathy upon her shoulder. "We know now. He'll never come back."

With the buckle in her hands the girl slowly walked toward the graves of her parents.

Charley Jim mounted his pony to ride away.

"Chief--tell me of Oella," said Adam.

The Indian gazed down upon Adam with sombre eyes. Then his lean, sinewy hand swept up with stately and eloquent gesture to be pressed over his heart.

"Oella dead," he replied, sonorously, and then he looked beyond Adam, out across the lonesome land, beyond the ranges, perhaps to the realm of his red gods. Adam read the Indian gesture. Oella had died of a broken heart.

He stood there at the edge of the oasis, stricken mute, as his old Indian friend turned to go back across the valley to the Coahuila encampment. A broken heart! That superb Indian maiden, so lithe and tall and strong, so tranquil, so sure--serene of soul as the steady light of her midnight eyes--dead of a broken heart! She had loved him--a man alien to her race--a wanderer and a stranger within her gates, and when he had gone away life became unendurable. Another mystery of the lonely, grey, melancholy wastelands! Adam quivered there in the grip of it all.

Later when he returned to Genie it was to say, simply, "My dear, as soon as I can find my burros we pack for the long trail."

"No!" she exclaimed, with lighting eyes.

"Yes. I shall take you out to find you a home."

"Honest Injun?" she blazed at him, springing erect.

"Genie, I would not tease about that. We know your uncle is dead. The time to go has come. We'll start at sunrise."

Forgotten were Genie's dreams of yesterday! A day at her time of life meant change, growth, oblivion for what had been. With a cry of wondering delight she flung herself upon Adam, leaped and climbed to the great height of his face, and there, like a bird, she pecked at him with cool, sweet lips, and clung to him in an ecstasy.

"Don't!...Still a child, Genie," he said, huskily, as he disengaged himself from her wild embrace. He meant that she was not still a child. It amazed him and hurt him to see her radiance at the thought of leaving the desert oasis which had been home for so long. Fickleness of youth! Yesterday she had wanted to live there forever; to-day the enchantments of new life, people, places, called alluringly. It was what Adam had expected. It was what he wanted for her. How clear had been his vision of the future! How truly, the moment he had fought down his selfish desires, had he read her innocent heart! His own swelled with gladness, numbing out the pang. For him, some little meed of praise! Not little was it to have conquered self--not little was it to have builded the happiness of an orphan!

Adam's burros had grown grey in their years of idle, contented life at the oasis. Like the road runners, they enjoyed the proximity of camp; and he found them shaggy and fat, half asleep while they grazed. He drove them back to the shade of the cottonwoods, where Genie, seeing this last and immutable proof of forthcoming departure, began to dance over the sand in wild glee.

"Genie, you'll do well to save some of your nimbleness," admonished Adam. "We'll have a load. You've got to climb the mountain and walk till I can buy another burro."

"Oh, Wanny, I'll fly!" she cried.

"Humph! I rather think you will fly the very first time a young fellow sees you--a big girl in those ragged boy's clothes."

Then Adam thrilled anew with the sweetness, the wonder of her. His cold heart warmed to the core. How he would live in the hope and happiness and love that surely must be awaiting this girl! His mention of a young fellow suddenly rendered Genie amazed, shy, bewildered.

"But--but--Wanny--you--you won't let any yo--young fellow see me this way!" she pleaded.

"How can I help it? You just wouldn't sew and make dresses. Now you're in for it. We'll meet a lot of lads...And, Genie, just the other day you didn't care how I saw you."

"Oh, but you're different! You're my dad, my brother, old Taquitch, and everything."

"Thank you. That makes me feel a little better." Suddenly she turned her dark eyes upon him, piercing now and dilating with thought.

"Wanny! Are you sorry to leave?"

"Yes," he replied, sadly.

"Then I'll stay, if you want me--ever--always," she said, very low. The golden flush paled on her cheek. She was a child, yet on the verge of womanhood.

"Genie, I'm sorry, but I'm glad, too. What I want most is to see you settled in a happy home, with a guardian, young friends about you--all you want."

She appeared sober now, and Adam gathered that she had thought more seriously than he had given her credit for.

"Wanny, you're good, and your goodness makes you see all that for me. But a guardian--a happy home--all I want!...I'll be poor. I'll have to work for a living. I won't have you!"

Then suddenly she seemed about to weep. Her beautiful eyes dimmed. But Adam startled her out of her weakness.

"Poor! Well, Genie Linwood, you've got a surprise in store for you."

Wherewith he led her to the door of the hut and tearing up the old wagon boards that had served as a floor, he dug in the sand underneath and dragged forth bag after bag, which he dropped at her feet with sodden, heavy thumps.

"Gold, Genie! Gold! Yours!...You'll be rich...All this was dug by your father. I don't know how much, but it's a fortune...Now what do you say?"

The rapture Adam had anticipated did not manifest itself. Genie seemed glad, certainly, but the significance of the gold did not really strike her.

"And you never told me!...Well, by the great horn spoon, I'm rich!...Wanny, will you be my guardian?"

"I will, till I can find you one," he replied, stoutly.

"Oh, never look for one--then I will have all I want!"

The last sunlight, the last starlight night, the last sunrise for Adam and Genie at the oasis, were beautiful memories of the past.

Adam, driving the burros along the dim old Indian trail, meditated on the inevitableness of the end of all things. For nearly three years he had seen that trail every few days and always he had speculated on the distant time when he would climb it with Genie. That hour had struck. Genie, with the light feet of an Indian, was behind him, now chattering like a magpie and then significantly silent. She had her bright face turned to the enchanting adventures of the calling future; she was turning her back upon the only home she could remember.

"Look Genie, how grey and dry the canyon is," said Adam hoping to divert her. "Just a little water in that white wash, and you know it never reaches the valley. It sinks in the sand...Now look way above you--high over the foothills. See those gleams of white--those streaks of black...Snow, Genie, and the pines and spruces!"

They camped at the edge of the spruces and pines. How sweet and cool and damp the air to desert dwellers! The wind sang through the trees with different tone. Adam, unpacking the burros, turned them loose, sure of their delight in the rich green grass. Genie, tired out with the long climb, fell upon one of the open packs to rest.

With his rifle Adam strode away among the scattered pines and clumps of spruce. The smell of this forest almost choked him, yet it seemed he could not smell and breathe enough. The dark-green, spear-pointed spruces and the brown-barked pines, so lofty and spreading, intoxicated his desert eyes. He looked and revelled, forgetting the gun in his hands, until his aimless steps frightened deer from right before him. Then, to shoot was habit, the result of which was regret. These deer were tame, not like the wary, telescope-eyed mountain sheep; and Adam, after his first exultant thrill--the old recurrent thrill from out the past--gazed down with sorrow at the sleek, beautiful deer he had slain. What dual character he had--what contrast of thrill and pang, of blood and brain, of desert and civilisation, of physical and spiritual, of nature and--But he did not know what!

He laughed later, and Genie laughed too, at how ravenous he was at supper, how delicious the venison tasted, how good it was to eat.

"Guess I'll give myself up as a bad job," he told her.

"Wanny, for me you'll always be Taquitch, giant of the desert and god of the clouds."

"Ah! You'll forget me in ten days after you meet him!" replied Adam, somewhat bitterly.

Genie could only stare her amaze.

"Forgive me, child. I don't mean that. I know you'll never forget me...But you've been my--my little girl so long that it hurts to think of your being some other man's." Then he was to see the marvel of Genie's first blush.

It was well that Adam had thought to pack extra blankets for Genie. She had never felt the nip of frost. And when night settled down black, with the wind rising, she needed to be warmly wrapped. Adam liked the keen air, and also the feel of the camp-fire heat upon his outstretched palms. Next morning the sky was overcast with broken, scudding clouds, and a shrill wind tossed the tips of the pines. Genie crawled out of her blankets to her first experience of winter. When she dipped her hands into the water she squealed and jerked them out. Then at Adam's bantering laughter she bravely dashed into the ordeal of bathing face and hands with that icy water.

Adam did not have any particular objective point in mind. He felt strangely content to let circumstances of travel or chance or his old wandering instinct guide him.

They travelled leisurely through the foothills on the western side of the Sierra Madres, finding easy trails and good camp sites, and meeting Indians by the way. Six days out from the desert they reached a wagon road, and that led down to a beautiful country of soft velvety-green hills and narrow, pleasant valleys where clumps of live oaks grew, and here and there nestled a ranch.

So they travelled on. The country grew less rugged and some of it appeared to belong to great ranches, once the homes of the Spanish grandees. Late one afternoon travel brought them within sight of Santa Ysabel. Adam turned off the main road, in search of a place to camp, and, passing between two beautiful hills, came upon a little valley, all green with live oaks and brown with tilled ground. He saw horses, cattle, and finally a farmhouse, low and picturesque, of the vine-covered adobe style peculiar to a country first inhabited by the Spanish.

Adam went toward the house, which was mostly concealed by vines and oaks, and presently happened upon a scene that seldom gladdened the eyes of a desert wanderer. On a green plot under the trees several children stopped their play to stare at Adam, and one ran to the open door. There were white pigeons flying about the roof, and grey rabbits in the grass, and ducks wading in the brook. Adam heard the cackle of hens and the bray of a burro. A column of blue smoke lazily rose upward from a grey, adobe fire-blackened oven.

Before Adam got to the door a woman appeared there, with the child at her skirts. She was middle-aged and stout, evidently a hard-working rancher's wife. She had a brown face, rather serious, but kind, Adam thought. And he looked keenly, because he was now getting into the civilised country that he expected would become Genie's home.

"Good evening, ma'am!" he said. "Will you let me camp out there by the oaks?"

"How d'ye do, stranger," she replied. "Yes, you're welcome. But you're only a mile or so from Santa Ysabel. There's a good inn."

"Time enough to go there to-morrow or next day," replied Adam. "You see, ma'am, I'm not alone. I've a young girl with me. We're from the desert. And I want her to have some--some decent clothes before I take her where there are people."

The woman laughed pleasantly.

"Your daughter?" she asked, with interest.

"No relation," replied Adam. "I--I was a friend of her mother, who died out on the desert."

"Stranger, you're welcome to my house overnight."

"Thank you, but I'd rather not trouble you. We'll be very comfortable. It's a nice place to camp."

"Come far?" asked the woman, whose honest blue eyes were taking stock of Adam.

"Yes, far for Genie. We've been about ten days coming over the mountains."

"Reckon you'd like some milk and eggs for supper?"

"Well, now, ma'am, if you only knew how I would like some," returned Adam, heartily. "And poor Genie, who has fared so long on desert grub, she'd surely appreciate your kindness."

"I'll fetch some over, or send it by my boy," she said.

Adam returned thoughtfully to the little grove where he had elected to camp. This woman's kindness, the glint of sympathy in her eyes, brought him up short with the certitude that they were the very virtues he was looking for in the person to whom he intended to trust Genie. It behoved him from now on to go keenly at the task of finding that person. It would not be easy. For the present he meant to hide any hint of Genie's small fortune, and had cautioned her to that end.

Genie appeared tired and glad to sit on the green grassy bank. "I'll help--in a little while," she said. "Isn't this a pretty place? Oh, the grass feels so cool and smells so sweet!...Wanny, who'd you see at the house?"