Hidden Water Part 19

"Rufus Hardy," cried Miss Lucy indignantly, "if you mention those sheep again until you are asked about them, I'll have you attended to.

Do you realize how far I have come to see your poems and hear you talk the way you used to talk? And then to hear you go on in this way! I thought at first that Mr. Creede was a nice man, but I am beginning to change my opinion of him. But you have just got to be nice to me and Kitty while we are here. I had so many things to tell you about your father, and Tupper Browne, and The Circle, but you just sit around so kind of close-mouthed and silent and never ask a question! Wouldn't you like to know how your father is?" she asked.

"Why, yes," responded Hardy meekly. "Have you seen him lately?"

"I saw him just before we came away. He is dreadfully lonely, I know, but he wouldn't send any message. He never says _anything_ when I tell him what you are doing, just sits and twists his mustache and listens; but I could tell by the way he said good-bye that he was glad I was coming. I am sorry you can't agree--isn't there something you could do to make him happier?"

Hardy looked up from his dish-washing with a slow smile.

"Which do you think is more important?" he asked, "for a man to please his father or his best friend?"

Lucy suspected a trap and she made no reply.

"Did you ever quote any of my poetry to father?" inquired Hardy casually. "No? Then please don't. But I'll bet if you told him I was catching wild horses, or talking reason to these Mexican herders, you'd have the old man coming. He's a fighter, my father, and if you want to make him happy when you go back, tell him his son has just about given up literature and is the champion bronco-twister of the Four Peaks range."

"But Rufus--would that be the truth?"

Hardy laughed. "Well, pretty near it--but I'm trying to please my best friend now."

"Oh," said Lucy, blushing. "Will--will that make much difference?" she asked.

"All the difference in the world," declared Hardy warmly. "You want me to become a poet--he wants me to become a fighter. Well now, since I haven't been able to please him, I'm going to try to please you for a while."

"Oh, Rufus," cried Lucy, "am I really--your best friend?"

"Why sure! Didn't you know that?" He spoke the words with a bluff good-fellowship which pleased her, in a way, but at the same time left her silent. And he, too, realized that there was a false note, a rift such as often creeps in between friends and if not perceived and checked widens into a breach.

"You know," he said, quietly making his amends, "when I was a boy my father always told me I talked too much; and after mother died I--well, I didn't talk so much. I was intended for a soldier, you know, and good officers have to keep their own counsel. But--well, I guess the habit struck in--so if I don't always thank you, or tell you things, you will understand, won't you? I wasn't raised to please folks, you know, but just to fight Indians, and all that. How would you like to be a soldier's wife?"

"Not very well, I am afraid," she said. "All the fear and anxiety, and--well, I'm afraid I couldn't love my husband if he killed anybody." She paused and glanced up at him, but he was deep in thought.

"My mother was a soldier's wife," he said, at last; and Lucy, seeing where his thoughts had strayed, respected his silence. It was something she had learned long before, for while Rufus would sometimes mention his mother he would never talk about her, even to Lucy Ware.

So they finished their housework, deep in their own thoughts. But when at last they stepped out into the sunshine Lucy touched him on the arm.

"Wouldn't you like to bring your poems with you?" she suggested. "We can read them when we have found the spring. Is it very beautiful up there?"

"Yes," answered Hardy, "I often go there to write, when n.o.body is around. You know Jeff and all these cowboys around here don't know that I write verse. They just think I'm a little fellow from somewhere up in California that can ride horses pretty good. But if I had handed it out to them that I was a poet, or even a college man, they would have gone to tucking snakes into my blankets and dropping _chili bravos_ into my beans until they got a rise out of me, sure. I learned that much before I ever came up here. But I've got a little place I call my garden--up in the canon, above Hidden Water--and sometimes I sneak off up there, and write. Would you like to see a poem I wrote up there? All right, you can have the rest some other time." He stepped into the storeroom, extracted a little bundle from his war bag, and then they pa.s.sed on up the valley together.

The canon of the Alamo is like most Arizona stream beds, a strait-jacket of rocky walls, opening out at intervals into pocket-like valleys, such as the broad and fertile flat which lay below Hidden Water. On either side of the stream the banks rise in benches, each a little higher and broader and more heavily covered: the first pure sand, laid on by the last freshet; the next grown over with gra.s.s and weeds; the next bushed up with baby willows and arrow weed; and then, the high bench, studded with mesquite and _palo verdes_; and at the base of the solid rim perhaps a higher level, strewn with the rocks which time and the elements have hurled down from the cliff, and crested with ancient trees. Upon such a high bench stood the Dos S ranch house, with trails leading off up and down the flat or plunging down the bank, the striated cliff behind it and the water-torn valley below.

Up the canon a deep-worn path led along the base of the bluff; and as the two best friends followed along its windings Hardy pointed out the mysteries of the land: strange trees and shrubs, bristling with thorns; cactus in its myriad forms; the birds which flashed past them or sang in the wild gladness of springtime; lizards, slipping about in the sands or pouring from cracks in the rocks--all the curious things which his eyes had seen and his mind taken note of in the long days of solitary riding, and which his poet's soul now interpreted into a higher meaning for the woman who could understand. So intent were they upon the wonders of that great display that Lucy hardly noticed where they were, until the trail swung abruptly in toward the cliff and they seemed to be entering a cleft in the solid rock.

"Where do we go now?" she asked, and Hardy laughed at her confusion.

"This is the gate to Hidden Water," he said, lowering his voice to its old-time poetic cadence. "And strait is the way thereof," he added, as he led her through the narrow pa.s.s, "but within are tall trees and running water, and the eagle nests undisturbed among the crags."

"What _are_ you quoting?" exclaimed Miss Lucy, and for an answer Rufus beckoned her in and pointed with his hand. Before them stood the tall trees with running water at their feet, and a great nest of sticks among the crags.

"Hidden Water!" he said, and smiled again mysteriously.

Then he led the way along the side of the stream, which slipped softly over the water-worn bowlders, dimpling in pool after pool, until at the very gate of the valley it sank into the sand and was lost. Higher and higher mounted the path; and then, at the foot of a smooth ledge which rose like a bulwark across the gorge, it ended suddenly by the side of a cattle-tracked pool.

"This is the wall to my garden," said Hardy, pointing to the huge granite d.y.k.e, "beyond which only the elect may pa.s.s." He paused, and glanced over at her quizzically. "The path was not made for ladies, I am afraid," he added, pointing to a series of foot holes which ran up the face of the ledge. "Do you think you can climb it?"

Lucy Ware studied his face for a moment; then, turning to the Indian stairway, she measured it with a practised eye.

"You go up first," she suggested, and when he had scaled the slippery height and turned he found her close behind, following carefully in his steps.

"Well, you _are_ a climber!" he cried admiringly. "Here, give me your hand." And when he had helped her up he still held it--or perhaps she clung to his.

Before them lay a little glade, shut in by painted rocks, upon whose black sides were engraved many curious pictures, the mystic symbols of the Indians; and as they stood gazing at it an eagle with pointed wings wheeled slowly above them, gazing with clear eyes down into the sunlit vale. From her round nest in the crotch of a sycamore a great horned owl plunged out at their approach and glided noiselessly away; and in the stillness the zooning of bees among the rocks came to their ears like distant music. Beneath their feet the gra.s.s grew long and matted, shot here and there with the blue and gold of flowers, like the rich meadows of the East; and cl.u.s.tering along the hillsides, great bunches of grama gra.s.s waved their plumes proudly, the last remnant of all that world of feed which had clothed the land like a garment before the days of the sheep. For here, at least, there came no nibbling wethers, nor starving cattle; and the mountain sheep which had browsed there in the old days were now hiding on the topmost crags of the Superst.i.tions to escape the rifles of the destroyers. All the world without was laid waste and trampled by hurrying feet, but the garden of Hidden Water was still kept inviolate, a secret shrine consecrated to Nature and Nature's G.o.d.

As she stood in the presence of all its beauty a mist came into Lucy's eyes and she turned away.

"Oh, Rufus," she cried, "why don't you live up here always instead of wasting your life in that awful struggle with the sheep? You could--why, you could do anything up here!"

"Yes," a.s.sented Hardy, "it is a beautiful spot--I often come up here when I am weary with it all--but a man must do a man's work, you know; and my work is with the sheep. When I first came to Hidden Water I knew nothing of the sheep. I thought the little lambs were pretty; the ewes were mothers, the herders human beings. I tried to be friends with them, to keep the peace and abide by the law; but now that I've come to know them I agree with Jeff, who has been fighting them for twenty years. There is something about the smell of sheep which robs men of their humanity; they become greedy and avaricious; the more they make the more they want. Of all the sheepmen that I know there isn't one who would go around me out of friendship or pity--and I have done favors for them all. But they're no friends of mine now," he added ominously. "I have to respect my friends, and I can't respect a man who is all hog. There's no pretence on either side now, though--they're trying to sheep us out and we are trying to fight them off, and if it ever comes to a show-down--well--"

He paused, and his eyes glowed with a strange light.

"You know I haven't very much to live for, Miss Lucy," he said earnestly, "but if I had all that G.o.d could give me I'd stand by Jeff against the sheep. It's all right to be a poet or an artist, a lover of truth and beauty, and all that, but if a man won't stand up for his friends when they're in trouble he's a kind of closet philosopher that shrinks from all the realities of life--a poor, puny creature, at the best."

He stood up very straight as he poured out this torrent of words, gazing at her intently, but with his eyes set, as if he beheld some vision. Yet whether it was of himself and Jeff, fighting their hopeless battle against the sheep, or of his life as it might have been if Kitty had been as gentle with him as this woman by his side, there was no telling. His old habit of reticence fell back upon him as suddenly as it had been cast aside, and he led the way up the little stream in silence. As he walked, the ardor of his pa.s.sion cooled, and he began to point out things with his eloquent hands--the minnows, wheeling around in the middle of a gla.s.sy pool; a striped bullfrog, squatting within the spray of a waterfall; huge combs of honey, hanging from shelving caverns along the cliff where the wild bees had stored their plunder for years. At last, as they stood before a drooping elder whose creamy blossoms swayed beneath the weight of bees, he halted and motioned to a shady seat against the canon wall.

"There are gardens in every desert," he said, as she sank down upon the gra.s.sy bank, "but this is ours."

They sat for a while, gazing contentedly at the cl.u.s.ters of elder blossoms which hung above them, filling the air with a rich fragrance which was spiced by the tang of sage. A ruby-throated humming-bird flashed suddenly past them and was gone; a red-shafted woodp.e.c.k.e.r, still more gorgeous in his scarlet plumage, descended in uneven flights from the _sahuaros_ that clung against the cliff and, fastening upon a hollow tree, set up a mysterious rapping.

"He is hunting for grubs," explained Hardy. "Does that inspire you?"

"Why, no," answered Lucy, puzzled.

"The Mexicans call him _pajaro corazon_--_pah-hah-ro cor-ah-sone_,"

continued the poet. "Does that appeal to your soul?"

"Why, no. What does it mean--woodp.e.c.k.e.r?"

Hardy smiled. "No," he said, "a woodp.e.c.k.e.r with them is called _carpintero_--carpenter, you understand--because he hammers on trees; but my friend up on the stump yonder is _Pajaro Corazon_--bird of the heart. I have a poem dedicated to him." Then, as if to excuse himself from the reading, he hastened on: "Of course, no true poet would commit such a breach--he would write a sonnet to his lady's eyebrow, a poem in memory of a broken dream, or some sad lament for Love, which has died simultaneously with his own blasted hopes. But a sense of my own unimportance has saved me--or the world, at any rate--from such laments. _Pajaro Corazon_ and _Chupa Rosa_, a little humming-bird who lives in that elder tree, have been my only friends and companions in the muse, until you came. I wouldn't abuse _Chupa Rosa's_ confidence by reading my poem to her. Her lover has turned out a worthless fellow and left her--that was him you saw flying past just now, going up the canon to sport around with the other hummers--but here is my poem to _Pajaro Corazon_."

He drew forth his bundle of papers and in a shamefaced way handed one of them to Lucy. It was a slip of yellow note paper, checked along the margin with groups of rhyming words and scansion marks, and in the middle this single verse.

"Pajaro Corazon! Bird of the Heart!

Some knight of honor in those bygone days Of dreams and gold and quests through desert lands, Seeing thy blood-red heart flash in the rays Of setting sun--which lured him far from Spain-- Lifted his face and, reading there a sign From his dear lady, crossed himself and spake Then first, the name which still is thine."

Lucy folded the paper and gazed across at him rapturously.

"Oh, Rufus," she cried, "why didn't you send it to me?"

"Is it good?" asked Hardy, forgetting his pose; and when she nodded solemnly he said: