Desert Dust Part 30

CHAPTER XIV

I TAKE A LESSON

From this hour's brief camp, early made, we should have turned southward, to leave the railroad line and cross country for the Overland Stage trail that skirted the southern edge of the worse desert before us. But Captain Hyrum was of different mind. With faith in the Lord and bull confidence in himself he had resolved to keep straight on by the teamster road which through league after league ever extended fed supplies to the advance of the builders.

Under its advent.i.tious guidance we should strike the stage road at Bitter Creek, eighty or one hundred miles; thence trundle, veering southwestward, for the famed City of the Saints, near two hundred miles farther.

Therefore after nooning at a pool of stagnant, sc.u.mmy water we hooked up and plunged ahead, creaking and groaning and dust enveloped, constantly outstripped by the hurrying construction trains thundering over the newly laid rails, we ourselves the tortoise in the race.

My Lady did not join me again to-day, nor on the morrow. She abandoned me to a sense of dissatisfaction with myself, of foreboding, and of a void in the landscape.

Our sorely laden train went swaying and pitching across the gaunt face of a high, broad plateau, bleak, hot, and monotonous in contour; underfoot the reddish granite pulverized by grinding tire and hoof, over us the pale bluish fiery sky without a cloud, distant in the south the shining tips of a mountain range, and distant below in the west the slowly spreading vista of a great, bared ocean-bed, simmering bizarre with reds, yellows and deceptive whites, and ringed about by battlements jagged and rock hewn.

Into this enchanted realm we were bound; by token of the smoke blotches the railroad line led thither. The teamsters viewed the unfolding expanse phlegmatically. They called it the Red Basin. But to me, fresh for the sight, it beckoned with fantastic issues. Even the name breathed magic.

Wizard spells hovered there; the railroad had not broken them--the cars and locomotives, entering, did not disturb the brooding vastness. A man might still ride errant into those slumberous s.p.a.ces and discover for himself; might boldly awaken the realm and rule with a princess by his side.

But romance seemed to have no other sponsor in this plodding, whip-cracking, complaining caravan. So I lacked, woefully lacked, kindred companionship.

Free to say, I did miss My Lady, perched upon the stoic mule while like an Arab chief I convoyed her. The steady miles, I admitted, were going to be as disappointing as tepid water, when not aerated by her counsel and piquant allusions, by her sprightly readiness and the essential elements of her blue eyes, her facile lips, and that bright hair which no dust could dim.

After all she was distinctly feminine--bravely feminine; and if she wished to flirt as a relief from the c.o.c.k-sure Daniel and the calm methods of her Mormon guardians, why, let us beguile the way. I should second with eyes open. That was accepted.

Moreover, something about her weighed upon me. A consciousness of failing her, a woman, in emergency, stung my self-respect. She had twitted me with being "afraid"; afraid of her, she probably meant. That I could pa.s.s warily. But she had said that she, too, was afraid: "horribly afraid," and an honest shudder had attended upon the words as if a real danger hedged.

She had an intuition. The settled convictions of my Gentile friends coincided. "With Daniel in the Lion's den"--that phrase repeated itself persistent. She had uttered it in a fear accentuated by a mirthless laugh.

Could such a left-handed wooer prove too much for her? Well, if she was afraid of Daniel I was not and she should not think so.

I could see her now and then, on before. She rode upon the wagon seat of her self-appointed executor. And I might see him and his paraded impertinences.

Except for the blowing of the animals and the mechanical noises of the equipment the train subsided into a dogged patience, while parched by the dust and the thin dry air and mocked by the speeding construction crews upon the iron rails it lurched westward at two and a half miles an hour, for long hours outfaced by the blinding sun.

Near the western edge of the plateau we made an evening corral. After supper the sound of revolver shots burst flatly from a mess beyond us, and startled. Everything was possible, here in this lone horizon-land where rough men, chafed by a hard day, were gathered suddenly relaxed and idle.

But the shots were accompanied by laughter.

"They're only tryin' to spile a can," Jenks rea.s.sured. "By golly, we'll go over and l'arn 'em a lesson." He glanced at me. "Time you loosened up that weepon o' yourn, anyhow. Purty soon it'll stick fast."

I arose with him, glad of any diversion. The circle had not yet formed at Hyrum's fire.

"It strikes me as a useless piece of baggage," said I. "I bought it in Benton but I haven't needed it. I can kill a rattlesnake easier with my whip."

"Wall," he drawled, "down in yonder you're liable to meet up with a rattler too smart for your whip, account of his freckles. 'Twon't do you no harm to spend a few ca'tridges, so you'll be ready for business."

The men were banging, by turn, at a sardine can set up on the sand about twenty paces out. Their shadows stretched slantwise before them, grotesquely lengthened by the last efforts of the disappearing sun. Some aimed carefully from under pulled-down hat brims; others, their brims flared back, fired quickly, the instant the gun came to the level. The heavy b.a.l.l.s sent the loose soil flying in thick jets made golden by the evening glow. But amidst the furrows the can sat untouched by the plunging missiles.

We were greeted with hearty banter.

"Hyar's the champeens!"

"Now they'll show us."

"Ain't never see that pilgrim unlimber his gun yit, but I reckon he's a bad 'un."

"Jenks, old hoss, cain't you l'an that durned can manners?"

"I'll try to oblige you, boys," friend Jenks smiled. "What you thinkin' to do: hit that can or plant a lead mine?"

"Give him room. He's made his brag," they cried. "And if he don't plug it that pilgrim sure will."

Mr. Jenks drew and took his stand; banged with small preparation and missed by six inches--a fact that brought him up wide awake, so to speak, badgered by derision renewed. A person needs must have a bull hide, to travel with a bull train, I saw.

"Gimme another, boys, and I'll hit it in the nose," he growled sheepishly; but they shoved him aside.

"No, no. Pilgrim's turn. Fetch on yore shootin'-iron, young feller. Thar's yore turkey. Show us why you're packin' all that hardware."

w.i.l.l.y-nilly I had to demonstrate my greenness; so in all good nature I drew, and stood, and c.o.c.ked, and aimed. The Colt's exploded with prodigious blast and wrench--jerking, in fact, almost above head; and where the bullet went I did not see, nor, I judged, did anybody else.

"He missed the 'arth!" they clamored.

"No; I reckon he hit Montany 'bout the middle. That's whar he scored center!"

"Shoot! Shoot!" they begged. "Go ahead. Mebbe you'll kill an Injun unbeknownst. They's a pack o' Sioux jest out o' sight behind them hills."

And I did shoot, vexed; and I struck the ground, this time, some fifty yards beyond the can. Jenks stepped from amidst the riotous laughter.

"Hold down on it, hold down, lad," he urged. "To hit him in the heart aim at his feet. Here! Like this----" and taking my revolver he threw it forward, fired, the can plinked and somersaulted, lashed into action too late.

"By Gawd," he proclaimed, "when I move like it had a gun in its fist I can snap it. But when I think on it as a can I lack guts."

The remark was pat. I had seen several of the men snip the head from a rattlesnake with a single offhand shot--yes, they all carried their weapons easily and wontedly. But the target of an immobile can lacked in stimulation to concord of nerve and eye.

Now I shot again, holding lower and more firmly, out of mere guesswork, and landed appreciably closer although still within the zone of ridicule.

And somebody else shot, and somebody else, and another, until we all were whooping and laughing and jesting, and the jets flew as if from the b.a.l.l.s of a mitrailleuse, and the can rocked and gyrated, spurring us to haste as it constantly changed the range. Presently it was merely a twist of ragged tin. Then in the little silence, as we paused, a voice spoke irritatingly.

"I 'laow yu fellers ain't no great shucks at throwin' lead."

Daniel stood by, with arms akimbo, his booted legs braggartly straddled and his freckled face primed with an intolerant grin at our recent efforts. My Lady had come over with him. Raw-boned, angular, cloddish but as strong as a mule, he towered over her in a maddening atmosphere of proprietorship.

She smiled at me--at all of us: at me, swiftly; at them, frankly. And I knew that she was still afraid.

"Reckon we don't ask no advice, friend," they answered. Again a constraint enfolded, fastened upon us by an unbidden guest. "Like as not you can do better."

Daniel laughed boisterously, his mouth widely open.

"I couldn't do wuss. I seen yu poppin' at that can. Hadn't but one hole in it till yu all turned loose an' didn't give it no chance. Haw haw! I 'laow for a short bit I'd stand out in front o' that greenie from the States an'

let him empty two guns at me."