CHAPTER XXXI
A TALE OF THE DESERT'S DEAD
No land seems so delectable as the desert early on a crisp morning.The rare air causes the blood to pound through one's veins, and anunexplainable rapture seizes man's spirits.
Jo's black mare, Babe, had not been ridden for weeks, and everygreasewood bush that she saw became in the weird light of sunrise agrotesque goblin ready to spring at her and devour her whole. Atleast, so she pretended, and as her natural weapon of defense lay inflight, she kept Hiram Hooker busy holding her down to a fast gallop.
The low-hanging tapaderos flapped loosely. Hiram's borrowedsilver-mounted spurs--a reminder of Tom Gulick's cow-punching days inUtah--jingled merrily. The heavy six-gun at his hip flopped againstthe silver-rimmed cantle of Jo's fifty-pound saddle. The smells of themorning were sweet. Away over the vast expanse of bronze greasewood,far-flung buttes caught the early rays of the sun and took on somethingof the likeness of a solar spectrum, purple at their bases, the colorsranging upward through blues and greens and yellows to a spun-goldglitter at their summits. Jack rabbits loped away through the brush.Now and then a coyote, ears pricked up, trotted along, his taildragging. Tecolote, the little desert owl, came from his hole and saton the pile of dirt beside it, while his wife peeked out with her roundhead just above the ground and gave silent approval to her lord andmaster's querulous criticism of the rider.
Life was good--life was glorious. Life was love! The poetic heart ofthe man from Wild-cat Hill sang ceaselessly. He was away on hisromantic quest to serve the most splendid girl a man had ever loved!
As the morning progressed and the sun climbed higher and higher, Babebore him through many camps, both large and small. At each he drewrein and made inquiry after an old prospector called Basil Filer, whodrove six burros. No one had seen such a man, however, and Hiramcontinued on toward the north until noon. Then he stopped for dinnerand to feed and rest the mare at Demarest, Spruce & Tillou's CampNumber Two. They had come twenty-one miles that morning, he learned atdinner in the huge dining tent; and when he started out again he heldBabe in, because she was soft for want of exercise.
On and on they traveled, nevertheless, Hiram making inquiry at everycamp. At last, thirty miles from Ragtown, he got word of theprospector. A camp freighter who traveled to the north for suppliesfrom Demarest, Spruce & Tillou's Camp Number Three had seen such a mantrudging along with his long staff, eyes bent on the ground, behind hissix burros. He had been seen about ten miles farther north, travelingsouth, the day before.
Hiram loped on, and now reached a strip of the right-of-way where campswere few and far between. The desert was dryer here than in thevicinity of Ragtown, and greasewood and whispering yuccas gave place tolow sage and the shimmering dry lakes, which lure thirsting men on totheir doom with their mocking resemblance to the life-saving water thewanderer craves.
Always, it seemed, there was somewhere within the range of Hiram'svision one of those weird whirlwinds sweeping along. Often they wereso far away they seemed motionless, and looked like brown funnel-shapedpillars, wrong end up, supporting the turquoise sky. Again, they wereclose--sometimes six or seven in sight at once--as they spun like hugetops, sucking up everything loose in their path, and whirling it roundand round with stupefying rapidity.
At last one of them overtook the horse and rider, and the mare stoppedshort, thrusting her head between her front legs and tucking in herflowing tail. Hiram had time only to grab his hat and throw himselfforward along the mare's neck; the next instant it seemed as if amillion tugging hands had hold of him and were trying to whirl him intothe heavens and carry him, like a garment whipped from a clothesline,into mysterious distances.
When it had passed he sat erect once more and dug the dirt from hisears and eyes, trying to follow the twister's progress as it speddrunkenly on to find other victims.
Then it was that Hiram saw the pack train, not far distant over thedesert, making ready to receive the coming whirlwind. The burros, wiselittle animals that they are, had huddled together, tails outward,heads down; and in the center of them Hiram saw a man just stooping forthe protection of their bodies. Next instant the group vanished--wasswallowed up by the wind demon.
When the old man looked up after the onslaught, Hiram was riding uponhim. The prospector stood trying to stare at him from the center ofhis pack train, wiping his watering eyes and sand-stained mouth.
"Hello, there!" called Hiram. "It spoke to us in passing, too. How doyou like 'em?"
"I got to like 'em," returned the old man. "I eat 'em--breakfast,dinner, and supper. Grub don't taste good any more 'less a twister'spassed over it and seasoned it up. Who are you?"
Hiram swung his great frame from the creaking saddle.
"I'm Hiram Hooker," he announced, lowering the mare's reins andadvancing until a mouse-colored burro aimed a kick at him to show himthat he was a rank outsider whose company was not desired.
"Why, Muta, that ain't no way to act!" mildly expostulated the burro'smaster. "She's just a mite playful," he explained apologetically toHiram. "Muta, she thinks a heap o' the ole man, ye see, an' she'salways lookin' out that strangers don't mean 'im any harm."
He placed both arms about the shaggy burro's neck. "You must be morepolite, Muta," he said chidingly, while the little animal trust out herupper lip and nibbled at the large horn buttons on his dusty canvascoat.
"Which way are you bound?" asked Hiram.
"South now. Just travelin'. Maybe I'll make it over to RattlesnakeButtes"--he raised an arm toward the northeast--"and maybe down CaldronCanon way." He pointed southeast toward the mountains. "I dunno--justdriftin' along, me an' the little fellas. Sometimes we drift here, andsometimes we drift there. Don't matter much, s'long's there's grub an'a little rolled barley in the pack-bags. What's the dif'rence anyway?"His red-lidded eyes looked up weirdly at Hiram.
Bent and pathetic he was, this old man of the hills and deserts--thisold lizard of the unfriendly sands. In his eyes all time seemed tohave written its history. His brows were shaggy and desert-colored,like the brows of the Ancient Mariner whose scrawny, clutching fingersrobbed the Wedding Guest of his night of pleasure. His hands shook,and he carried a long cane; but for him the merciless desert seemed tohold no lasting terror, for he spent his life on its desert searchingfor the treasure that is hidden there.
"Me and the little fellas just drift along. We get work at the campswhen our grubstake's gone; and then we ramble on and on--just driftin',kinda. I got a ole jack rabbit for supper, pardner. He was sleepin'under a sagebrush, and I puts out his eye with my six and twenty paces.Can you do that? But you're young--young and got a clever eye.Anyway, I got a ole jack for supper. Now, if you had a bottle on youcouldn't we have a time!"
"I've no bottle," Hiram said. "I'm sorry. But, if you'll invite me,I'll help you with the jack."
"Got blankets behind yer saddle, I see. All right, my friend. OleFiler's always ready to share his grub with a passer-by on the desert.There's water in my little tank. Burros don't drink much, you know. Ataste's enough till we get to a camp to-morrow. Handy, those camps,for prospectors needin' a grubstake. Let's camp over there by thatlonesome yucca palm. He looks as if he wanted company. Maybe he'llwhisper where they's gold to-night--if we keep on ear awake. He-he!Oh, they whisper lots--lots--lots! But they always lie like sin!"
When the "ole jack" had paid the final price of his lack ofwatchfulness, Hiram Hooker and the crazy prospector leaned back andlooked up at the cold stars that smiled cruelly down on the arid waste.The wind whispered mysteriously through the bayonets of the yucca palmabove them. Not long would one be obliged to live and move and havehis being alone on this desert before strange messages would begin toformulate in the wind's eerie whispering in the yuccas.
The burros ranged about, browsing off the desert growth. There hadbeen barley for Babe, and Hiram had watered her at the last camp. Arinse-out of her mouth and she would do very well till morni
ng.
And there under the scornful stars Hiram and the old man lounged onpackbags and talked, with their tiny camp fire of greasewood rootsbetween them. And gradually as Hiram told what he knew and convincedthe gray old rat of his honesty, an uncanny tale of the barren landsbegan unfolding, a tale revolving about a little girl baby left byprospectors in a yucca-trunk corral--the tale of Jean Prince, daughterof Leonard Prince, whose bones had been gnawed by coyotes and coveredby the shifting sands for over twenty years. And the baby girl, JeanPrince, was none other than the magnetic, dark-haired woman who nowdrove jerkline to Ragtown and numbered her admirers by thethousand--Jerkline Jo, Queen of the Outland Camps.
"They was three of us at first," narrated Filer in a shaky voice."Three of us and Baby Jean. Baby Jean and me and Len Prince and 'TheChink.' And that makes four. But Baby Jean was only two years old.
"Hong Duo was the chink--a grinnin' yenshee hound from up beyond theTehachapi--way up--up toward the Sierra Nevadas, in the placer country.White prospectors ner white miners don't often work with chinks.Chinks is only good for workin' tailin's when it comes to mines. ButLen he'd saved Hong Duo's life in trouble in a dump in Placerville--ol'Hangtown--and the chink had clung to um like a burro to somethin' he'sswiped from Camp.
"Agin' that, too, the chink had money--an' Len and me was broke. Fer ayear he grubstaked us, and followed us around pocketin' up that a way,cookin' and such, and livin' for Len and Baby Jean.
"Baby Jean's maw she died when the kid was borned; and everywhere Lenwent after she was a year or more he took her. We drifted south--meand Len and the chink and Baby Jean.
"Up Death Valley way we got wind o' somethin' good. Days and days wemakes it into the land that God forgot, and here and there we peckedout a little color. Then Len and me we gets a lead, and we leaves thechink and Baby Jean and drifts on into a country that makes me shiveryet ta think of.
"We got some gold--quite some. And me"--his voice grew low--"I wasyounger then, and mean as dirt. I was high-gradin' on my pardner rightand left. I guess I was always mean; but I've paid the price.
"Then Len he gets onto me, but he holds his tongue. And we make it onand on into Little Hall, till the sandstorm come.
"Fer nigh onto fifty-nine years I've roamed the desert, pardner, butI've never seen another storm like that. Days and days she blowed, andsometimes you couldn't see yer hand before yer face for the flyin'sand. Someway we gets out of it, the Almighty knows how! But fromthat day to this I've never been able to find that place ag'in.
"There was gold there--piles and piles o' gold--and Len he'd found it.Found it out alone one day before the storm set in. And knowin' I'dbeen high-gradin' on him, he kep' this find to 'imself. Then come thestorm, and we fought out just ahead o' death.
"Then Len he keeps tryin' to go back--wants to work long for a biggrubstake, and is quiet and dreams a lot, with Baby Jean in his arms,and the chink settin' cross-legged lookin' at 'em with his glitterin'little eyes--half full o' hop, I guess. And I gets onto why Len wantsto drift back there to that land o' dead men's bones, and I watch 'im,and freeze to 'im continual.
"Len he makes a bluff at this an' that an' the other--him and me andthe chink driftin' from here to there over this part o' the desert, orhereabouts, scratchin' a little now and ag'in. But Len his heart ain'tin it, I see; and all the time he's tryin' to shake me off, I get it.But I won't shake.
"Well, Len he ain't no more good after the awful time we went throughup there in that terrible land. He never was a man ag'in after that;and he gets scared, I guess, and thinks he's gonna cash his chips.They's a queer look in his eyes, and in camp he just sets and sets withBaby Jean in his arms, and the hophead lookin' at 'em from across thefire with his glitterin' little eyes. And sometimes Len he just setsand sets and watches Baby Jean asleep, and his eyes are worried like ahorse's eyes when he knows he's starvin'; and the yenshee hound he justsets and looks at Len, and Heaven only knows what he's thinkin'!
"Then we make it up along in where the Salt Lake road was buildin'then--up Barstow way--all wild them days. And one day Len and me andthe chink goes out into the buttes, and leaves Baby Jean in ayucca-stump corral so's the c'yotes can't get at her, like we didsometimes. She wasn't never a yellin' kid. Give her a bottle o'canned cow, and she'd suck herself to sleep with varmints prowlin'about and sandstorms blowin'. Sometimes she'd sob if things was goin'wrong in her little world--low and heartbroken, like a woman cries.But yell--never!
"So we leaves her suckin' at her bottle, for Len he'd never broke herof it, and out we goes to scratch around some more up in Turkey Buttes.
"It was lookin' to storm and we hadn't oughta gone maybe; but we didn'taim to make it far, and could come back any time. But when she brokeshe broke sudden; and only once before had I seen such a blow as that.We got plumb lost five miles from camp; and all that day and all thatnight and all next day we wandered about in the whirlin' sand, outawater, and goin' crazier every minute. The chink he gives up, and sodoes Len; and I'm too crazy to make 'em keep on fightin'. I draggedout two days later, way north o' the buttes--plumb bughouse, my tongueall black and stiff as rubber. I've never been the same man since, Iguess. I dream about them days and nights.
"The folks that found me they go huntin' for Len and the chink and BabyJean t'other side o' the buttes. They find Len and the chink, bothdead, their faces and tongues---- But I don't like to remember that!Sometimes the yuccas they whisper about it; but I always plug my earsand begin to sing, or talk to the asses about the fun we'll have whenwe find Jean Prince and get the gold Len knew about up there DeathValley way.
"They turned Len's things over to me. The baby they couldn't find; butafter weeks they stumbled onto the camp where we'd left her and foundeverything almost buried in sand. The kid was gone, and the c'yoteshadn't got her. They was a piece o' paper in the camp; but it hadrained and rained since it was stuck up there, and all the writin' wasgone. In Len's things I finds the paper that I'm carryin', and I kep'it to myself. I've got it now--right here"--he thumped hisbreast--"and for twenty years I've hunted for Baby Jean and never foundher.
"They's gold up there--up where Len Prince found it. The paper tellsonly half o' how to relocate Len's claims. At the beginnin' it saysthe paper's for Baby Jean, and no one else is to have it. Len knew hewas soon goin' to croak--and he fixed it for Baby Jean when he wasgone. He done his best. Any one who's got the paper knows only half.Whoever's got the paper can't do nothin' without Baby Jean.
"The chink he done it. It was crazy--loco, you'll say. But what c'nyou expect from a man who's suffered as he did? Lissen, pardner--thechink he done it. The paper tells about it. The chink he doped thekid--with opium, some way, I guess--so's it wouldn't hurt her, and thenhe tattooed the rest o' the directions for findin' the gold on the heado' Baby Jean. Cut off some hair in back, and shaved a spot on herlittle head, and tattooed it there. The chink he did. And then thehair grew out ag'in, and nobody ever knew!
"Even Baby Jean don't know--a woman grown up now. And years and yearsI've hunted for her, but couldn't find her. Cause I couldn't stick, Iguess. Somethin' always kep' callin' me back into the hills, and I'dforgot. Just me and the little fellas, we understand. And we'redriftin' about ag'in huntin' for Baby Jean.
"I had a funny dream. I dreamed I'd found her--a young woman grown.And in that dream she told me she was Baby Jean, and I told her allabout the paper and the tattoo marks. And then it looked like Idrifted into deeper sleep and I woke up in camp way out in nowhere.I'd forgot again, you see, and drifted for the hills just when I'dfound Baby Jean. Or so I dreamed. But sometimes I think I wasn'tdreamin', pardner. It wasn't just like other dreams I've had. I gotit that I was in a place called Ragtown, and I know they's such aplace, cause everybody tells me so. And I was sick after the dream.Funny! I'm drifting that a way now. I want to see that Ragtown. Wasit a dream? Or was the yuccas laughin' at ole Filer ag'in? I dunno.But how come it I dreamed about a place called Ragtown
, a place thatreally is but that I never seen?"