CHAPTER II.
A ROBINSON CRUSOE OF THE DESERT
JOYCE stood in the door of the little adobe house, and looked out acrossthe desert with tears in her eyes. If _this_ was to be their homethrough all the dreary years that stretched ahead of them, it hardlyseemed worth while to go on living.
Jack, in the bare unfurnished room behind her, was noisily wielding ahatchet, opening the boxes and barrels of household goods which hadfollowed them by freight. He did not know which one held his gun, but hewas determined to find it before the sun went down.
For nearly three weeks they had been at Lee's Ranch, half a mile fartherdown the road, waiting for the goods to come, and to find a place wherethey could set up a home of their own. Boarding for a family of six wasfar too expensive to be afforded long. Now the boxes had arrived, andthey had found a place, the only one for rent anywhere near the ranch.Joyce felt sick at heart as she looked around her.
"Here it is at last," called Jack, triumphantly, dropping the hatchetand throwing pillows and bedding out of the box in reckless haste toreach his most cherished possession, the fine hammerless shotgun whichMr. Link had given him Christmas. He had intended to carry it with himon the journey, in its carved leather case, but in the confusion of thehurried packing, some well-meaning neighbour had nailed it up in one ofthe boxes while he was absent, and there had been no time to rescue it.He had worried about it ever since.
"Oh, you beauty!" he exclaimed, rubbing his hand along the polishedstock as he drew it from the case. Sitting on the floor tailor-fashion,he began whistling cheerfully as he fitted the parts together.
"Joyce," he called, peering down the barrels to see if any speck of rusthad gathered in them, "do you suppose we brought any machine-oil withus? I'll uncrate the sewing-machine if you think that the can is likelyto be in one of the drawers."
"I don't know," answered Joyce, in such a hopeless tone that Jacklowered his gun-barrels and stared at her in astonishment. Her back wastoward him, but her voice certainly sounded choked with tears. It was sounusual for Joyce to cry that he felt that something very serious mustbe the cause.
"What's the matter, sister?" he inquired. "You aren't sick, are you?"
"Yes!" she exclaimed, with a sob, turning and throwing herself down onthe pile of pillows he had just unpacked. "I'm sick of everything inthis awful country! I'm sick of the desert, and of seeing nothing butinvalids and sand and cactus and jack-rabbits wherever I go. And I'msick of the prospect of living in this little hole of a mud-house, andworking like a squaw, and never doing anything or being anything worthwhile. If I thought I had to go on all my life this way, I'd want to dieright now!"
Jack viewed her uneasily. "Goodness, Joyce! I never knew you to go allto pieces this way before. You've always been the one to preach to uswhen things went wrong, that if we'd be inflexible that fortune would atlast change in our favour."
"Inflexible fiddlesticks!" stormed Joyce from the depths of a bolster,where she had hidden her face, "I've been holding out against fate solong that I can't do it any more, and I'm going to give up, right hereand now!"
"Then I don't know what will become of the rest of us," answered Jack,raising his empty gun to aim at a butcher-bird in the fig-tree outsidethe door. "It's you that has always kept things cheerful when we weredown in the mouth."
Joyce sat up and wiped her eyes. "I think that it must be that oldcamel-back mountain out there that makes me feel so hopeless. It is sodepressing to see it kneeling there in the sand, day after day, like apoor old broken-down beast of burden, unable to move another step. It isjust like us. Fate is too much for it."
Jack's glance followed hers through the open door. Straight and level,the desert stretched away toward the horizon, where a circle ofmountains seemed to rise abruptly from the sands, and shut them in.There was Squaw's Peak on the left, cold and steely blue, and over onthe right the bare buttes, like mounds of red ore, and just in front wasthe mountain they must face every time they looked from the door. Somestrange freak of nature had given it the form of a giant camel, fivemiles long. There it knelt in the sand, with patient outstretched neck,and such an appearance of hopeless resignation to its lot, that Joycewas not the only one who found it depressing. More than one invalid,sent to the surrounding ranches for the life-giving atmosphere ofArizona, had turned his back on it with a shiver of premonition, saying,"It's just like me! Broken-down, and left to die on the desert. Neitherof us will ever get away."
It made no difference to Jack what shape the mountains took. He couldnot understand Joyce's sensitiveness to her surroundings. But it madehim uncomfortable to see her so despondent. He sat hugging his gun insilence a moment, not knowing how to answer her, and then began idlyaiming it first in one direction, then another. Presently his glancehappened to rest upon a battered book that had fallen from one of theboxes. He drew it toward him with his foot. It was open at a familiarpicture, and on the opposite page was a paragraph which he had read somany times, that he could almost repeat it from memory.
"Hello!" he exclaimed. "Here's an old friend who was in as bad a fix aswe are, Joyce, and he lived through it."
Leaning over, without picking up the book from the floor, he beganreading from the page, printed in the large type of a child'spicture-book:
"'September 30, 1609. I, poor, miserable Robinson Crusoe, beingshipwrecked during a dreadful storm in the offing, came on shore thisdismal, unfortunate island, which I called the Island of Despair, allthe rest of the ship's company being drowned, and myself almost dead.All the rest of the day I spent in afflicting myself at the dismalcircumstances I was brought to, viz., I had neither house, clothes,weapons, nor place to fly to, and in despair of any relief saw nothingbut death before me, either that I should be devoured by wild beasts,murdered by savages, or starved to death for want of food.'"
A long pause followed. Then Joyce sat up, looking teased, and held outher hand for the book. "I don't mind old Crusoe's preaching me asermon," she said, as she turned the tattered leaves. "Now he's done it,I'll quit 'afflicting myself at the dismal circumstances I was broughtto.' I've wished a thousand times, when I was smaller, that I could havebeen in his place, and had all his interesting adventures. And to think,here we are at last, in almost as bad a plight as he was. Only we have aweapon," she added, with a mischievous glance at the gun Jack washolding.
"And that means food, too," he answered, proudly, "for I expect to killmany a quail and duck with this."
"Oh, we're better off than Crusoe in a thousand ways, I suppose, if we'donly stop to count our blessings," she answered, now ready to take amore cheerful view of life since she had had her little outburst ofrebellion. "He didn't have a Chinaman driving by with fresh vegetablestwice a week, as we will have, and we have clothes, and a house, such asit is, and a place to fly to, for Lee's Ranch will always be open to usif we need a refuge."
"So we can start at the place where Crusoe was when he really began toenjoy his Island of Despair," said Jack. "Shall I go on unpacking thesethings? I stopped when you announced that you were going to give up anddie, for I thought there wouldn't be any use trying to do anything, withyou in the dumps like that."
Joyce looked around the dingy room. "It's not worth while to unpack tillthe place has been scrubbed from top to bottom. If we're going to make ahome of it, we'll have to begin right. The landlord won't do anything,and we could hardly expect him to, considering the small amount of rentwe pay, but I don't see how we can live in it without fresh paper andpaint."
"I wish we'd find a ship cast up on the sands of the desert to-morrow,"said Jack, "that would have all sorts of supplies and tools in it. Theshipwrecks helped old Robinson out amazingly. I'd make a bookcase if wedid, and put up shelves and all sorts of things. This would be a fineplace to show what I learned in the manual training-school. We needbenches and rustic seats out under those umbrella-trees."
"We'll have to buy some tools," said Joyce. "Let's make out a list ofthings we need, and go to town early in the morning. M
rs. Lee said wecould borrow Bogus and the surrey to-morrow."
"All right," assented Jack, ready for anything that promised change.
"And _Jack_!" she exclaimed, after a long slow survey of the room,"let's paint and paper this place ourselves! I'm sure we can do it.There's a tape measure in one of the machine drawers. Suppose you get itout and measure the room, so we'll know how much paper to buy."
Joyce was her old brave, cheery self again now, giving orders like amajor-general, and throwing herself into the work at hand withcontagious enthusiasm. With the stub of a pencil Jack found in hispocket, she began making a memorandum on the fly-leaf of RobinsonCrusoe. "Paint, turpentine, brushes, screws, nails, saw, mop, broom,scrubbing-brush, soap," she wrote rapidly.
"And a hatchet," added Jack. "This one belongs to the Mexican at theranch. And, oh, yes, an axe. He says that Holland and I can get all thewood we need right here on the desert, without its costing us a cent, ifwe're willing to chop it; mesquite roots, you know, and greasewood."
"It's fortunate we can get something without paying for it," commentedJoyce, as she added an axe to the list. Then she sat studying thepossibilities of the room, while Jack knocked the crate from themachine, found the tape measure, and did a sum in arithmetic to find theamount of paper it would take to cover the walls.
"I can see just how it is going to look when we are all through," shesaid, presently. "When this old dark woodwork is painted white, andthese dismal walls are covered with fresh light paper, and there areclean, airy curtains at the windows, it won't seem like the same place.Mamma mustn't see it till it is all in order."
Exhausted by the journey, Mrs. Ware had been too weak to worry overtheir future, or even to wonder what would become of them, and hadhanded over the little bank-book to Joyce.
"Make it go just as far as it will, dear," she said. "You are too youngto have such a load laid on your shoulders, but I see no other way now."Joyce had taken up the burden of responsibility so bravely that no onebut Jack knew of her moments of discouragement, and he was forgettingher recent tears in her present enthusiasm.
"Oh, I wish it was to-morrow," she exclaimed, "and we had all oursupplies bought so that we could begin."
"So do I," answered Jack. "But it's nearly sundown now, and thesupper-bell will be ringing before we get back to the ranch, if we don'tstart soon."
"Well, lock the doors, and we'll go," said Joyce, beginning to pin onher hat.
"Oh, what's the use of being so particular! Mrs. Lee says everybody ishonest out in this country. They never turn a key on the ranch, andthey've never had anything taken either by Mexicans or Indians in allthe years they've lived here. It isn't half as wild as I hoped it wouldbe. I wish I could have been a pioneer, and had some of the excitingtimes they had."
Nevertheless, Jack barred the back door and locked the front one, beforefollowing Joyce across the yard, and over the little bridge spanning theirrigating canal, into the public road. They stood there a moment,looking back at the house, just one big square adobe room, with ashed-kitchen in the rear. Around three sides of it ran a rough sort ofporch or shack, built of cottonwood posts, supporting a thatch ofbamboo-stalks and palm-leaves. While it would afford a fine shelter fromthe sun in the tropical summer awaiting them, it was a homely,primitive-looking affair, almost as rough in its appearance as ifRobinson Crusoe himself had built it.
"It's hopeless, isn't it!" said Joyce, with a despairing shake of thehead. "No matter how homelike we may make it inside, it will always bethe picture of desolation outside."
"Not when the leaves come out on that row of umbrella-trees," answeredJack. "Mrs. Lee says they will be so green and bushy that they willalmost hide the house, and the blossoms on them in the spring are aspurple and sweet as lilacs. Then this row of fig-trees along the road,and the clump of cottonwoods back of the house, and those two bigpepper-trees by the gate will make it cool and shady here, no matterhow scorching hot the desert may be. We'll have to give them lots ofwater. Oh, that reminds me, I'll have to have a pair of rubber boots, ifI am to do the irrigating. The water will be in again day afterto-morrow."
Joyce groaned as she opened the book she was carrying, and added bootsto the long list on the fly-leaf. "What a lot it's going to take to getus started. Crusoe certainly had reason to be thankful for theshipwrecked stores he found."
"But it'll cost less to get the boots than to hire a Mexican every eightdays to do the irrigating," said Jack.
Following the road beside the canal, they walked along in the last raysof the sunset, toward the ranch. Birds twittered now and then in thefig-trees on their right, or a string of cows went lowing homewardthrough the green alfalfa pastures, to the milking. The road and canalseemed to run between two worlds, for on the left it was all a drearydesert, the barren sands stretching away toward the red buttes and oldCamelback Mountain, as wild and cheerless as when the Indians heldpossession. Some day it too would "rejoice and blossom like the rose,"but not until a network of waterways dug across it brought it new life.
Once as they walked along, a jack-rabbit crossed their path and wentbounding away in a fright. A covey of quail rose with a loud whirr ofwings from a clump of bushes beside the road, but they met no humanbeing until Holland and Mary, just from school, came racing out from theranch to meet them with eager questions about the new home.
Chris, the Mexican, had made the round of the tents, building a littlefire of mesquite wood in each tiny drum stove, for in February the airof the desert grows icy as soon as the sun disappears. Mrs. Ware wassitting in a rocking-chair between the stove and table, on which stood alamp with a yellow shade, sending a cheerful glow all over the tent.Joyce took the remaining chair, Jack sat on the wood-box, and Mary,Norman and Holland piled upon the bed, to take part in the familyconclave. The canvas curtain had been dropped over the screen-door, andthe bright Indian rugs on the floor gave a touch of warmth and cosinessto the tent that made it seem wonderfully bright and homelike.
"I don't see," said Mary, when she had listened to a description of theplace, "how we are all going to eat and sleep and live in one room and akitchen. It takes three tents to hold us all here, besides having theranch dining-room to eat in. What if Eugenia Forbes should come fromthe Waldorf-Astoria to visit us, or the Little Colonel, or some of theother girls from Kentucky, that you knew at the house-party, Joyce?Where would they sleep?"
"Yes," chimed in Holland, teasingly, "or the Queen of Sheba? Suppose_she_ should come with all her train. It's about as likely. We wouldhave to play 'Pussy wants a corner' all night, Mary, and whoeverhappened to be 'it' would have to sit up until he happened to findsomebody out of his corner."
"Goosey!" exclaimed Mary, sticking out her tongue at him and making theworst face she could screw up. "Honestly, what would we do, Joyce?"
"We're not going to try to live in just one room," explained Joyce. "Thedoctor said mamma ought to sleep in a tent, so we'll get a big doubleone like this, wainscoted up high, with floor and screen-door, just likethis. Mamma and you and I can use that, and the boys will have just anordinary camping-tent, without door or floor. They have been so wild tobe pioneers that they will be glad to come as near to it as possible,and that means living without extra comforts and conveniences. In thehouse one corner of the room will be the library, where we'll put papa'sdesk, and one corner will be the sewing-room, where we'll have themachine, and one will be a cosy corner, with the big lounge and lots ofpillows. If the Queen of Sheba or the Little Colonel should do such animprobable thing as to stray out here, we'll have a place for them."
"There goes the supper-bell," cried Norman, scrambling down from the bedin hot haste to beat Mary to the table. Joyce waited to turn down thelamp, close the stove draughts, and bring her mother's shawl, beforefollowing them.
"How bright the camp looks with a light in every tent," she said, asthey stepped out under the stars. "They look like the transparencies inthe torchlight processions, that we used to have back in Plainsville."
Mrs. Ware's te
nt was in the front row, so it was only a step to the doorof the dining-room in the ranch house. The long table was nearly filledwhen they took their seats. Gathered around it were people who haddrifted there from all parts of the world in search of lost health. ABoston law-student, a Wyoming cowboy, a Canadian minister, a Scotchmanfrom Inverness, and a jolly Irish lad from Belfast were among thenumber.
The most interesting one to Joyce was an old Norwegian who sat oppositeher, by the name of Jan Ellestad. Not old in years, for his hair wasstill untouched by gray, and his dark eyes flashed at times with thespirit of the old vikings, when he told the folk-lore of his fatherland.But he was old in sad experiences, and broken health, and broken hopes.The faint trace of a foreign accent that clung to his speech madeeverything he said seem interesting to Joyce, and after Mrs. Lee hadtold her something of his history, she looked upon him as a hero. Thiswas the third winter he had come back to the ranch. He knew he could notlive through another year, and he had stopped making plans for himself,but he listened with unfailing cheerfulness to other people's. Now helooked up expectantly as Joyce took her seat.
"I can see by your face, Miss Joyce," he said, in his slow, hesitatingway, as if groping for the right words, "that you are about to plungethis ranch into another wild excitement. What is it now, please?"
"Guess!" said Joyce, glancing around the table. "Everybody can have oneguess."
During the three weeks that the Wares had been on the ranch they hadmade many friends among the boarders. Most of them could do little butsit in the sun and wait for the winter to creep by, so they welcomedanything that relieved the monotony of the long idle days. Mary'sunexpected remarks gave fresh zest to the conversation. The boys,bubbling over with energy and high spirits, were a constant source ofentertainment, and Joyce's enthusiasms were contagious. She wasconstantly coming in from the desert with some strange discovery toarouse the interest of the listless little company.
Now, as her challenge passed around the table, any one hearing her laughat the amusing replies would not have dreamed that only a few hoursbefore she was sobbing to Jack that she was sick of seeing nothing butinvalids and sand and cactus.
"We haven't any name for our new home," she announced, "and I'm thinkingof having a name contest. Any one can offer an unlimited number, and thebest shall receive a prize."
"Then I'll win," responded the Scotchman, promptly. "There's nae mairappropriate name for a wee bit lodging-place like that, than_Bide-a-wee_."
"That is pretty," said Joyce, repeating it thoughtfully. "I love the oldsong by that name, but I'm afraid that it isn't exactly appropriate. Yousee, we may have to bide there for years and years instead of just awee."
"Give it a Spanish name," said the minister. "Alamo means cottonwood,and you have a group of cottonwoods there. That would be just as good asnaming it The Pines, or The Oaks, or The Beeches."
"No, call it something Indian," said the cowboy. "Something that meanslittle-mud-house-in-the-desert, yet has a high-sounding swing to thesyllables."
"Wait till we get through fixing it," interrupted Jack. "It'll look sofine that you won't dare call it little-mud-house-in-the-desert. We'regoing to paint and paper it ourselves."
"Not you two children," exclaimed the Norwegian, in surprise.
"With our own lily fingers," answered Joyce.
"Then you'll have an interested audience," he answered. "You'll find allof us who are able to walk perching in the fig-trees outside your doorevery morning, waiting for the performance to begin."
"Whoever perches there will have to descend and help, won't they, Jack?"said Joyce, saucily.
"Oh, mamma," whispered Mary, "is Mr. Ellestad really going to climb upin the fig-tree and watch them? _Please_ let me stay home from schooland help. I know I can't study if I go, for I'll be thinking of all thefun I'm missing."