Desert Conquest Part 28

"I'll come over and arrange things in the rooms, of course," Sheila acquiesced.

And so, when Casey awaited the coming of the train which bore his guests, it was with the knowledge that his rough-and-tumble, quarters had been made as presentable as possible.

Wade and his party descended, attended by an obsequious porter laden with bags, and in a moment Casey was shaking hands.

"And so this is your country!" said Mrs. Wade eying her surroundings rather dubiously. In her heart she was appalled at the prospect of pa.s.sing several weeks in such a place.

"Well, some of it isn't mine," he laughed. "I wish it were. This is only the makings, Mrs. Wade. Wait a few years. Now, here's what we do.

We have dinner at the hotel. Afterward we drive out to the ranch where you are all to stay."

Wade and his wife protested. They couldn't think of it. Clyde said nothing. Casey appealed to her.

"What do you say Miss Burnaby? Will you brave the discomforts of a shack in the dry belt?"

"I'm in the hands of my friends," she laughed.

"That includes me," said Casey. "Everything's fixed for you. This is my stamping ground, and I'm boss. What I say goes." He introduced Mr.

Quilty, who was hovering in the background, and chuckled as that garrulous gentleman proceeded to unwind an apparently endless welcome.

"I like him," Clyde whispered.

"Pure gold," said Casey, and created a diversion. He helped Quilty deposit the bags in the station.

"Thon's a fine gyurrl," said the latter, with a jerk of his thumb toward the platform."

"Right," Casey replied.

"Oh, trust a quiet devil like yourself to pick wan out," said the little station agent. "I was the same meself, whin I was more younger nor what I am now. I fell dead in love with a fine, big gyurrl be th'

name iv--iv--dom'd if I don't forget the name iv her, onless it was Mary or Josephine--no, thim came afther. What th' divil are ye laughin'

at? Annyways, me an' this gyurrl that I loved that I forget the name iv, was strollin' wan night be moonlight, d'ye see me, now? And we come to where there was a stump risin' maybe two fut clear iv th'

ground--ye'll wonder what th' stump had to do wid ut, but listen--and I stopped and put me arrm around her waist--or tried to; for a fine circ.u.mferenshus waist she had. Faix, a wan-arrmed man'd've been up against it intirely wid her--and I sez to her, 'Lena'--that was her name, Lena, I remimber now, and she was a Swede--'Lena,' I sez, 'luk at the moon!' 'Ay see him,' she sez. 'Turn yer sweet face a little more to the southeast,' I sez, that bein' to'rd the stump I mintioned before; an' when I had her at the right angle I made a lep up on the stump and kissed her. Faix, and the same was a forced play, me bein' the height I am, and her over six fut. 'I love yez,' I sez; 'say yez love me!'"

"Well, what did she say?" asked Casey, as Mr. Quilty paused for breath.

"She concealed her feelin's," Mr. Quilty replied sadly. "She said, 'Ay tenk ve go home now. Ay don't vant no feller vat have to mek love med a step-ladder!' And afther that, mind ye, what does she do but take up wid another little divil wid no legs at all, havin' lost them under a shuntin' ingin. But his artfulness is such that he gets extra-long imitation wans, like stilts, to do his coortin' on. An', though he looks like a cross bechune a sparrow and a crane and has to carry an oil can when he walks or else creak like a stable door in Janooary, she marries him and keeps him in luxury be takin' in washin' for the camps.

And so, ye see, though I had stood on wan stump to kiss her, ivery time he done the likes he had to stand on _two_!"

"Corney," said Casey gravely, "you are an awful liar."

"I will not be insulted by yez," Mr. Quilty retorted with equal gravity. "I will consider the soorce from which ut comes. G'wan out of here, before I do yez injury."

Immediately after dinner Casey brought up his road team, two wiry, slashing chestnuts. The Wades occupied the rear seat. Clyde sat beside Casey. The horses started with a rush that brought a gasp from Mrs.

Wade. Clyde involuntarily caught the seat rail.

"It's all right," Casey a.s.sured them. "A little fresh, that's all. They know they're going home. It's their way of saying they're glad. You, d.i.c.k--you, Doc! Behave, behave!" He had them in hand, checking their impatience to an easy jog, holding them fretting against the bit. "I'll let them out in a mile or two. Do you know horses, Miss Burnaby?"

"A very little. I ride and drive; but I like quiet animals."

"Oh, these are quiet." He smiled back at Mrs. Wade.

"Are they?" that lady commented. "Then I don't want to drive behind wild ones."

A light wind was in their faces, blowing the dust backward. The town vanished suddenly, lost behind swells of brown gra.s.ses. The road wound tortuously onward, skirting little groves of cottonwoods, swinging along gulches, sometimes plunging down them and ascending in long grades on the thither side.

Clyde drank in the sweet, thin air eagerly. The city and her everyday life seemed far behind. Heretofore her holidays had been pa.s.sed in places where pleasure was a business. This was to be different. She would not look for amus.e.m.e.nt; she would let it come to her. She felt that she was entering a world of which she knew little, peopled by those whose outlook was strange. It seemed, somehow, that this journey was to be fateful--that she had placed herself in the grip of circ.u.mstances which moved her without volition. Where and how, she wondered vaguely, would it end?

She glanced at Dunne's profile, shaded by the hat brim tilted over his eyes against the sun; at his buckskin-gloved hands holding the reins against the steady pull of the big chestnuts; downward over the dashboard at their hoofs falling with the forceful impact of hammers and yet rising with the light springiness of an athlete's foot, throwing the miles behind them scornfully. And she was dreamily content.

"You're going to like it," said Dunne suddenly.

"Am I?" she smiled. "How do you know? How did you know?"

"It's largely a guess. I was nervous at first."

"And now?"

"No. This is a plain, dusty trail, the gra.s.s is so dry it's almost dead, the scenery is conspicuously absent, the smell of leather and horseflesh isn't especially pleasant--and yet you are not noticing these things. The bigness and the newness of the land have got you, Miss Burnaby. You don't know it and you can't put it into words--I can't myself--but the feeling is there. You are one of us at heart."

"Of 'us'?"

"The people of the new lands--the pioneers, if you choose, the modern colonists, the trail blazers."

"I wonder." The idea was new. She considered it gravely. "My parents were city folks; I have lived in the city all my life. And yet I think I have the feeling you speak of. Only I can't put it into words either."

"If you could you would be the most famous person in the world. The song is there, waiting the singer. It has always been there, waiting, and the singer has never come. We who hear it in our hearts have no voices. Now and then some genius strikes the chord by accident, almost, and loses it. I don't think any one will ever find it completely. But if some one should! Heavens! What a grand harmony it would be."

She glanced at him curiously. He was not looking at her. His eyes were on a little cloud, a white island in a sapphire sea. He seemed to be paying no attention whatever to the road, to his surroundings. But as one of the chestnuts stumbled over a loose stone he lifted him instantly with the reins and administered a sharp word of reproof and a light cut of the whip.

"He didn't mean to stumble," said Clyde.

"He should have meant not to. A horse that isn't tired and is paying attention to business should never stumble on a road. It's the slouchy horse that breaks his kind owner's neck some day. Now I'm going to let them out."

So far as Clyde could observe, he did absolutely nothing. But immediately, as though some subtle current had pa.s.sed from his hands along the lines, the horses' heads came up, their ears p.r.i.c.ked forward, their stride quickened and lengthened, and the measured beat of their hoofs became a quickstep. The horses themselves seemed to exult in the change of pace, filling their great lungs through widened nostrils and expelling the air noisily, shaking their heads, proud of themselves and their work.

Mrs. Wade laid a nervous hand on her husband's arm as the light wagon rattled down a descent. But Clyde sat quietly, her lips slightly parted, her eyes shining as the warm wind poured past in a torrent plucking at vagrant strands of her coppery golden hair.

"Fifteen miles an hour," said Casey. "Like it?"

"It's better than fifty in a car," she replied.

"The difference between G.o.d-made and man-made horsepower. Some people can't appreciate it."

"I can. It isn't the end--the pace alone. It's the means to the end."

"Plus the love of human flesh and blood for other flesh and blood.

You've got it. I won't keep them at this. Too warm."

It was late afternoon when Chakchak came into view. It appeared suddenly as they swung around the corner of a b.u.t.te, lying below them, the emerald of its fields drenched with the gold of the sloping sun.