The Desert Valley Part 29

For a long time he sat very still. Then his face hardened.

'If she has gone, then I am going, too,' he told himself. 'And I am going to bring her back.'

He turned his horse and rode swiftly to Sanchia's Town. They would have gone that way, on to Big Run, San Ramon and down to the railroad.

In such a case he would have word of them in the mining-camp. In his present mood he required only a few minutes to come to the new settlement. Had he been less absorbed in his own thoughts he must have been amazed at what he saw about him. He had known men before now to make towns upon dry bare ground and in a mere handful of days; not even he, with his first-hand knowledge of such venturings, had ever seen the like of Sanchia's Town. The spirit which had initiated it into the world was still its driving spirit. It sprawled, it overflowed its boundaries incessantly, it hooted and yelled and sang. It grew like a formless ma.s.s lumped about fermenting yeast. Already there were shacks and tents up and down both sides of Dry Gulch and strung along in the gravelly bed. There were gambling-houses, monstrosities which named themselves hotels and rooming-houses, stores, lunch counters. The streets were crooked alleys; everywhere dust puffed up and thickened and never settled; teams and jolting wagons and pack burros disputed the congested way; there were seasoned miners, old-time prospectors, going their quiet ways; there were tenderfeet of all descriptions. Not less than five thousand human souls had already found their way to Sanchia's Town and more were coming.

In all of this to-day, Howard took scant interest. His major emotion was one of annoyance. Among such a seething crowd where should he ask of the Longstreets? He sat his horse in a narrow s.p.a.ce between a lunch counter and a canvas bar-room and stared about him. Then he saw that the solitary figure perched upon a box before the lunch counter was Yellow Barbee. He called to him quickly.

Barbee's young eyes, which he turned promptly, were still eloquent of an amorous joyousness within Barbee's young soul. He bestowed his glance only fleetingly upon Howard, said a brief 'h.e.l.lo, Al,' and turned immediately to the cause of the obvious flutter in Barbee's bosom. Howard expected to see Sanchia Murray behind the counter.

Instead he saw a young girl of a little less than Barbee's age, roguish-eyed, black-haired, red-mouthed, plump and saucy. Her sleeves were up; her arms were brown and round; there was flour on them.

'Where are the Longstreets, Barbee?' asked Howard.

'Gone,' announced Barbee cheerfully. And as though that closed the matter to his entire satisfaction, he demanded: 'Come on, Pet; be a good kid. Going with me, ain't you?'

Pet laughed and thereafter turned up her pretty nose with obviously mock disdain.

'Dancing old square dances and polkas, I'd bet a stack of wheats,' she scoffed. 'Why, there ain't any more real jazz in your crowd of cow-hands than there is in an old man's home. What do you take me for, anyway?'

'Aw, come on,' grinned Barbee. 'You're jos.h.i.+ng. If it's jazz you want----'

'Look here,' said Howard impatiently. 'I'm just asking a question, and I'll get out of your way. Where did they go?'

'Who?' asked Barbee.

'The Longstreets.'

'Dunno,' Barbee shrugged. Then, as an afterthought, 'Sanchia Murray could tell you; she's been sticking tight to them. She's got a tent up yonder, back of the Courtot House on the edge of town.'

Howard hurried on. The lunch counter girl, following him with critical eyes, demanded for him or anyone else to hear:

'Who's your bean-pole friend, Kid?'

But the answer Howard did not hear. He swung out to the side to be free of the town and galloped on to Sanchia's tent, which he found readily. Sanchia herself was in front of it, just preparing to saddle her white mare.

'h.e.l.lo, Al,' she greeted him carelessly, though her eyes narrowed at him speculatively.

'Where have the Longstreets gone?' he asked without preliminary.

'Back in the hills, Bear Valley way,' she replied, still scrutinizing him. She marked the look of relief in his eyes and laughed cynically and withal a trifle bitterly. 'On the Red Hill trail. Going to see them?'

'Yes.' He reined away, and then added stiffly, 'Thank you.'

'Wait a minute,' she called to him. 'I'm just going up there myself.

You might saddle for me, and I'll ride with you.'

He paused and looked her sternly and steadily in the eyes. His voice was cold and his words were outspoken.

'I had rather ride alone, and you know it. Further, after the way you have tricked that man, I'd think you'd draw off and leave them alone.

You can't do a thing like that twice.'

For an instant the look in her eyes was baffling. Then there shot through the inscrutability of it a sudden gleam of malice that was like a spurt of flame. It was the fire which before now Howard's att.i.tude had kindled there.

'What you men see in that little fool, I don't know!' she cried hotly.

'What has she that I haven't? I could have made you the biggest man in the country; I would have given everything and held nothing back. I am even honest enough to say so, and I am not afraid to say so. And you are stupid like every other man. Oh, I am done with the crowd of you!'

she broke out violently, half hysterically. 'Laugh at me, will you?

Turn your back on me, will you?' She paused and panted out the words.

'Why, if you came crawling to me now I'd spit on you. And, so help me G.o.d, I'll ruin the last one of you and your precious flock of lambs before I have done with you. If Jim Courtot can't do the trick, I'll do for you first and Jim next.'

He wheeled his horse and left her, groping wonderingly for an explanation of her fury. He had not spoken with her above a score of times in his life. He had merely been decent to her when, in the beginning, it struck him that after all she was only a defenceless woman and that men were hard on her. That his former simple kindness would have awakened any serious affection had failed to suggest itself to him.

But swiftly he forgot Sanchia and her vindictiveness. She had mentioned Courtot; for a little as he rode into the hills he puzzled over Courtot's recurrent disappearances. He recalled how, always when he came to a place where he might expect to find the gambler, he had pa.s.sed on. Here of late he was like some sinister will-o'-the-wisp.

What was it that urged him? A lure that beckoned? A menace that drove? He thought of Kish Taka. There was a nemesis to dog any man.

Jim Courtot had dwelt with the desert Indians; he had come to know in what savage manner they meted out their retributive justice. Was Kish Taka still unsleeping, patient, relentless on Courtot's trail? Kish Taka and his dog?

But his horse's hoofs were beating out a merry music on the winding trail that led toward the Red Hill country, and at the end of the trail was Helen. Helen had not gone East. The frown in his eyes gave place to his smile; the sunlight was again golden and glorious; the emptiness of the world was replaced by a large content.

'They just couldn't stand being so close to what they had lost,' he argued. 'It was a right move to come up here.'

He found the new camp without trouble. As he entered the lower end of the tiny valley he saw the canvas-walled cabin at the farther end, under the cliffs. He saw Helen herself. She was just stepping out through the door. He came racing on to her, waving his hat by way of greeting. He slipped down from the saddle, let his bundle fall and caught both of her hands in his.

After this long, unexplained absence Helen had meant to be very stiff when, on some fine day, Alan Howard remembered to come again. But now, under his ardent eyes, the colour ran up into her cheeks in rebellious defiance of her often strengthened determination and, though she wrenched herself free from him, something of the fire in his eyes was reflected in hers.

'Good afternoon, Mr. Cyclone,' she said quite as carelessly as his sudden appearance permitted her vaguely disturbed senses. 'What are you going to do? Run over me?'

He laughed joyously.

'I could eat you,' he told her enthusiastically. 'You look just that good to me. Lord, but I'm hungry for the sight of you!'

'That's nice of you to say so,' Helen answered. And now she was quite all that she had planned to be; as coolly indifferent as only a girl can be when something has begun to sing in her heart and she has made up her mind that no one must hear the singing. 'But I fail to see why this very excellent imitation of a man who hasn't seen his best friend for a couple of centuries.'

'It has been that long, every bit of it--longer.'

Helen's smile was that stock smile to be employed in answer to an inconsequential compliment paid by a chance acquaintance.

'Three or four days is hardly an eternity,' she retorted.

'Three or four days? Why, it's been over nine! Nearly ten.'

She appeared both amazed and incredulous. Then she waved the matter aside as of no moment.

'I was going out to the spring for a drink,' she said. 'Will you wait here? Father will be in soon.'

'I'll come along, if there's room for two.' He picked up his parcel, which Helen noted without seeming to note anything. 'Look here, Helen,' as she started on before him to the thicket of willows, 'aren't you the least little bit glad to see me?'

'Why, of course I am,' she a.s.sured him politely. 'And papa was wondering about you only this morning. Isn't it pretty here?'

He admitted without enthusiasm that it was. He had not seen anything but her. She had on a blue dress; she wore a wide hat; her eyes were nothing less than maddening. He recalled the prettiness of Barbee's new girl at the lunch counter; he remembered Sanchia's regular features; these two were simply not of the same order of beings as Helen. No woman was. He strode behind her as she flitted on up the trail and felt thrilling through him an odd commingling of reverence, of adoration, of infinite yearning.