CHAPTER XXXV
THE DESERT
It was only recently that Clint Wadley had become a man of wealth, andlife in the Panhandle was even yet very primitive according topresent-day standards. There was no railroad within one hundred andfifty miles of the A T O ranch. Once in two weeks one of the cowboysrode to Clarendon to get the mail and to buy small supplies. Otherwisecontact with the world was limited to occasional visits to town.
As a little girl Ramona had lived in a one-room house built of roundlogs, with a stick-and-mud chimney, a door of clapboards daubed with mudat the chinks, and a dirt floor covered with puncheons. She had slept ina one-legged bedstead fitted into the wall, through the sides and endsof which bed, at intervals of eight inches, holes had been bored toadmit of green rawhide strips for slats. She had sat on a home-madethree-legged stool at a home-made table in homespun clothes and eaten adish of cush[8] for her supper. She had watched her aunt make soap outof lye dripping from an ash-hopper. The only cooking utensils in thehouse had been a Dutch oven, a three-legged skillet, a dinner-pot, atea-kettle, a big iron shovel, and a pair of pot-hooks suspended from aniron that hung above the open fire.
But those were memories of her childhood in southern Texas. With thecoming of prosperity Clint had sent his children to Tennessee to school,and Ramona had been patiently trained to the feebleness of purposecivilization in those days demanded of women of her class and section.She had been taught to do fancy needlework and to play the piano as aparlor accomplishment. It had been made plain to her that her businessin life was to marry and keep the home fires burning, and her schoolinghad been designed, not to prepare her as a mate for her future husband,but to fit her with the little graces that might entice him intochoosing her for a wife.
Upon her return to the ranch Ramona had compromised between her trainingand her inheritance. She took again to horseback riding and to shooting,even though she read a good deal and paid due attention to herpink-and-white complexion.
So that when she looked up from the cavern in which she was buried andcaught a gleam of a star in the slit of blue sky above, she was not sohelpless as her schooling had been designed to make her. The girl wascompact of supple strength. Endurance and a certain toughness of fiberhad come to her from old Clint Wadley.
She began the climb, taking advantage of every bit of roughness, ofevery projection in the almost sheer wall. A knob of feldspar, a stuntedshrub growing from a crevice, a fault in the rock structure, offeredhere and there toe-or hand-holds. She struggled upward, stopped morethan once by the smooth surface against which her soft warm body waspressing. On such occasions she would lower herself again, turn to theright or the left, and work toward another objective.
Ramona knew that the least slip, the slightest failure of any one of hermuscles, would send her plunging down to the bottom of the crevasse. Theworst of it was that she could not put any dependence upon her injuredleg. It might see her through or it might not.
It was within a few feet of the top, just below the arrowweed bush, thatshe came to an _impasse_. The cold wall offered no hand-hold by whichshe could gain the few inches that would bring her within reach of thebunched roots. She undid her belt, threw one end of it over the body ofthe bush, and worked it carefully down until she could buckle it. Bymeans of this she went up hand over hand till she could reach thearrowweed. Her knee found support in the loop of the belt, and inanother moment she had zigzagged herself inch by inch over the edge tothe flat surface above.
No sign of the Apaches was to be seen. 'Mona recovered her belt andbegan to move up the rock spur toward the summit of the hill. A soundstopped her in her tracks. It was the beating of a tom-tom.
She knew the Indians must be camped by the lake. They were probablyhaving a feast and dances. In any case she could not strike direct forhome. She must keep on this side of the hill, make a wide circuit, andcome in from the west.
Already her leg was paining her a good deal. Since five o'clock in themorning she had eaten nothing. Her throat was parched with thirst. Butthese were details that must be forgotten. She had to tramp more thantwenty miles through the desert regardless of her physical condition.
The girl went at it doggedly. She limped along, getting wearier everymile of the way. But it was not until she discovered that she was lostto all sense of direction that she broke down and wept. The land herewas creased by swales, one so like another that in the darkness she hadgone astray and did not know north from south.
After tears came renewed resolution. She tried to guide herself by thestars, but though she could hold a straight course there was noassurance in her mind that she was going toward the A T O. Each stepmight be taking her farther from home. A lime kiln burned in her throat.She was so worn out from lack of food and the tremendous strain underwhich she had been carrying on that her knees buckled under her weightas she stumbled through the sand. The bad ankle complained continuously.
In this vast solitude there was something weird and eerie that shook hercourage. Nor was the danger all fantastic imaginings. The Indians mightyet discover her. She might wander far from beaten trails of travel anddie of thirst as so many newcomers had done. Possibilities of disastertrooped through her mind.
She was still a child, on the sunny side of seventeen. So it was naturalthat when she sat down to rest her ankle she presently began to sobagain, and that in her exhaustion she cried herself to sleep.
When her eyes opened, the sun was peeping over the desert horizon. Shecould tell directions now. The A T O ranch must be far to the northeastof where she was. But scarcely a mile from her ran a line of stragglingbrush. It must be watered by a stream. She hobbled forward painfully torelieve the thirst that was already a torment to her.
She breasted the rise of a little hill and looked down a gentle slopetoward the thicket. For a moment her heart lost a beat. A trickle ofsmoke was rising from a camp-fire and a man was bending over it. He wasin the clothes of a white man. Simultaneously there came to her thesound of a shot.
From her parched throat there came a bleating little cry. She hurriedforward, and as she went she called again and still again. She waspitifully anxious lest the campers ride away before they should discoverher.
A man with a gun in his hand moved toward her from the creek. She gave alittle sobbing cry and stumbled toward him.
[Footnote 8: Cush is made of old corn bread and biscuits in milk, beatento a batter and fried in bacon grease with salt.]