Wunpost Part 14

"It is not for us to judge our neighbors--the Bible says: Judge not, lest ye be judged--but I'm sorry, Mr. Calhoun, that you think so poorly of us as to boast of the deception you practised. He's no friend of us, this Judson Eells, but surely you cannot think it was aught but dishonest to sell him a salted mine. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, and because he took your property is no excuse for committing a crime."

"A _crime_!" repeated Wunpost, and turned to look at Billy, who hung her head regretfully. "Did you hear that?" he asked. "She says I'm a criminal! Well, I won't bother you folks any more. But before I go, Mrs. Campbell, I might as well tell you that these criminals sometimes come in danged handy. Suppose I'd buried that ore in Happy Canyon, for instance, or over the summit in Hanaupah--where would the Campbell family be for a road? They wouldn't have one, _would_ they? And this here Providence that you talk about would be distributing its rewards to others. But there's too many good people for the rewards to go around--that's why some of us get out and rustle. No, you want to be thankful that a criminal came along and took a flyer at being Providence himself; otherwise you'd be stuck with your mine on your hands--because I gave you that road, myself."

He started for the door and Mrs. Campbell let him go, for the revelation had left her thunderstruck. Never for a moment had she doubted that the sterling integrity of her husband had brought a special dispensation of Providence, and while her faith in Divine Providence was by no means shaken, she did begin to doubt the miracle. Perhaps, after all, this loud and boastful Wunpost had been more than an instrument of Providence--he might, in fact, have been a kindly but misguided friend, who had shaped his vengeance to serve their special needs. For he knew they needed the road and, since he could salt a crevice anywhere, he had located his mine up their canyon. And then Eells had jumped the mine and built the road, and----Well, really, after all, it was no more than right to go out and thank him for his kindness. He was wrong, of course, and led astray by angry pa.s.sions; but Wilhelmina and he were friends and----She rose up and hurried out after him.

The blazing light in the heavens almost blinded her sight as she stepped out into the sun; and high up above the peaks, like cones of burnished metal, she saw two thundercaps, turning black at the base and mounting on the superheated air. There was the hush in the air which she had learned to a.s.sociate with an explosion such as was about to take place, and she looked back anxiously, for her husband was up the canyon and the downpour might strike above Panamint. It was clouds such as these that had come together before to form the cloudburst which had isolated their mine, and though they now appeared daily she could never escape the fear that once more they would send down their floods. Every day they struck somewhere, and one more bone-dry canyon ran bank-high and spewed its refuse across the plain, and each time she had the feeling that their sins might be punished by another visitation from on high. But she only glanced back once, for Wunpost was packing and Billy was looking on hopelessly.

"Oh, Mr. Calhoun!" she called, "please don't go up the canyon now--there's a cloudburst forming above the peaks."

"I'll make it," he grumbled, c.o.c.king his eye at the clouds--and then he stopped and looked again. "There went lightning," he said; "that's a mighty bad sign--they're stabbing out towards each other."

"Yes, I'm sure you'd better stay," she went on apologetically, "and please don't think you're not welcome. But oh! this heat is terrible--I'll have to go back--but Billy will stop and help you."

She raised her sunshade as if she were fleeing from a rain-storm and hastened back out of the sun; and Wunpost, after a minute of careful scrutiny, unpacked and squatted down in the shade.

"They're moving together," he said to Billy, "and see that lightning reaching out? This is going to bust the world open, somewhere. That's no cloudburst that's shaping up, it's a regular old waterspout; I know by the way she acts."

He settled back on his heels to await the outcome, and as the thunder began to roll he turned to his companion and shook his head in ominous silence. There were but two clouds in the sky, all the rest was blazing light; and these two clouds were moving slowly together, or rather, towards a common center. One came on from the southeast, the other from the west, and some invisible force seemed to be drawing them towards the peaks which marked the summit of the Panamints. The play of the lightning became almost constant, the rumbling rose to a tumult; and then, as if caught by resistless hands, the two clouds rushed together.

There was a flash of white light, a sudden blackening of the ma.s.s, and as Wunpost leapt up shouting a writhing funnel reached down as if feeling for the palpitating earth.

"There she goes!" he cried; "it's a waterspout, all right--but it ain't going to land near here."

He talked on, half to himself, as the great spiral reached and lengthened; and then he shouted again, for it had struck the ground, though where it was impossible to tell. The high rim of the canyon cut off all but the high peaks, and they could see nothing but the waterspout now; and it, as if stabilized by its contact with the earth, had turned into a long line of black. It was a column of falling water, and the two clouds, which had joined, seemed to be discharging their contents down a hole. They were sucked into the vortex, now turned an inky black, and their millions of tons of water were precipitated upon one spot, while all about the ground was left dry.

Wunpost knew what was happening, for he had seen it once before, and as he watched the rain descend he imagined the spot where it fell and the wreck which would follow its flood. For the Panamints are set on edge and shed rain like a roof, the water all flowing off at once; and when they strike a canyon, after rushing down the converging gulches, there is nothing that can withstand their violence. Every canyon in the range, and in the Funeral Range beyond, and in Tin Mountain and the Grapevines to the north--every one of them had been swept by the floods from the heights and ripped out as clean as a sand-wash. And this waterspout, which had turned into a mighty cloudburst, would sweep one of them clean again. The question was--which one?

A breeze, rising suddenly, came up from the Sink and was sucked into the vortex above; the black line of the downfall turned lead-color and broadened out until it merged into the clouds above; and at last, as Wunpost lingered, the storm disappeared and the canyon took on the hush of heavy waiting. The sun blazed out as before, the fig-leaves hung down wilted; but the humidity was gone and the dry, oven-heat almost created the illusion of coolness.

"Well, I'm going," announced Wunpost, for the third or fourth time. "She must have come down away north."

"No--wait!" protested Billy, "why are you always in such a hurry? And perhaps the flood hasn't come yet."

"It'd be here," he answered, "been an hour, by my watch; and believe me, that old boy would be coming some. Excuse _me_, if it should hit into one end of a box canyon while I was coming up the other. My friends could omit the flowers."

"Well, why not stay, then?" she pouted anxiously; "you know Mother didn't mean anything. And perhaps Father will be down, to see if there was any damage done, and we could catch him first and explain."

"No explaining for me!" returned Wunpost, beginning to pack; "you can tell them whatever you want. And if your folks are too religious to use my old road maybe the Lord will send a cloudburst and destroy it. That's the way He always did in them old Bible stories----"

"You oughten to talk that way!" warned Wilhelmina soberly, "and besides, that's what made Mother angry. She isn't feeling well, and when you spoke slightingly of Divine Providence----"

"Well, I'm going," he said again, "before I begin to quarrel with _you_. But, oh say, I want to get that dog."

"Oh, it's too hot!" she protested, "let him stay under the house. He and Red are sleeping there together."

"No, I need him," he grumbled, "liable to be bushwhacked now, any time; and I want a dog to guard camp at night."

He started towards the house, still looking up the canyon, and at the gate he stopped dead and listened.

"What's that?" he asked, and glanced about wildly, but Billy only shook her head.

"I don't hear anything," she replied, turning listlessly away, "but I wish you wouldn't go."

"Well, maybe I won't," he answered grimly, "don't you hear that kind of rumble, up the canyon?"

She listened again, then rushed towards the house while Wunpost made a dash for the corral. The cloudburst was coming down their canyon.

CHAPTER XVII

THE ANSWER

The rumbling up the canyon was hardly a noise; it was a tremulous shudder of earth and air like the grinding that accompanies an earthquake. But Wunpost knew, and the Campbells knew, what it meant and what was to follow; and as it increased to a growl they threw down the corral bars and rushed the stock up to the high ground. They waited, and Wunpost ran back to get his dog, and then the dammed waters broke loose.

A great spray of yellow mud splashed out from Corkscrew Gorge and a pinon-trunk was snapped high into the air; and while all the earth trembled the dam of mud burst forth, forced on by the weight of backed-up waters. Then more trees came smashing through, followed by muddy tides of driftwood, and as suddenly the debacle ceased.

There was quiet, except for the hoa.r.s.e rumble of boulders as they ground their way down through the Gorge; and for the m.u.f.fled crack of submerged tree-trunks, straining and breaking beneath the ever-mounting jamb. It rose up and overflowed in a gush of turbid waters, rose still higher and overflowed again; and then it broke loose in a crash like imminent thunder--the cloudburst had conquered the Gorge. It went through it and over it, spreading out on its sloping sides; and when the worst crush seemed over it washed higher yet and came through with an all-devouring surge. In a flash the whole creekbed was a ma.s.s of mud and driftwood, which swashed about and swayed drunkenly on; and, as great tree-boles came battering through, the jamb broke abruptly and spewed out a sea of yellow water.

The fugitives climbed up higher, followed by the cat and dog, and the burros which had been left in the corrals; but the flood bore swiftly on, leaving the ranch unsullied by its burden of brush and mud. The jamb broke down again, letting out a second gush of water which crept up among the lower trees, but just as the Gorge opened up for the third time the flood-crest struck the lower gorge and stopped. Once more the trees and logs which had formed the jamb above bobbed and floated on the surface of a pond; and while the Campbells gazed and wept the turbid flood swung back swiftly, inundating their ranch with its mud.

First the orchard was overflowed, then the garden above the road, then the corrals and the flowers by the gate; and as they ran about distracted the water crept up towards the house and out over the verdant alfalfa. But just when it seemed as if the whole ranch would be destroyed there was a smash from the lower point; the jamb went out, draining the waters quickly away and rushing on towards the Sink. The great ma.s.s of mud and boulders which had been brought down by the flood ceased to spread out and cover their fields, and as the millrace of waters continued to pour down the canyon it began to dig a new streambed in the debris. Then the thunder of its roaring subsided by degrees and by sundown the cloudburst was past.

Where the creek had been before there was a wider and deeper creek, its sides c.u.mbered with huge boulders and tree-trunks; and the mixture of silt and gravel which formed its cut banks already had set like cement.

It _was_ cement, the same natural concrete which Nature combines everywhere on the desert--gravel and lime and bone-dry clay, sluiced and mixed by the pa.s.sing cloudburst and piled up to set into pudding-stone.

And all the mud which had overlaid the garden and orchard was setting like a concrete pavement. The ancient figs and peach-trees, half buried in the slime, rose up stiffly from the fertile soil beneath; and the Jail Canyon Ranch, once so flamboyantly green, was now sh.o.r.e-lined with a blotch of dirty gray. Only the alfalfa patch remained, and the house on the hill--everything else was either washed away or covered with gravel and dirt. And the road--it was washed away too.

Wunpost worked late and hard, shoveling the muck away from the trees and clearing a section of the corral; but not until Cole Campbell came down the next day was the Stinging Lizard road even mentioned. It was gone, they all knew that, and all their prayers and tears could not bring back one rock from its grade; and yet somehow Wunpost felt guilty, as if his impious words had brought down this disaster upon his friends. He rushed feverishly about in the blazing sun, trying to undo the most imminent damage; and Billy and Mrs. Campbell, half divining his futile regrets, went about their own tasks in silence. But when Campbell came down over the mountain-sheep trail and beheld what the cloudburst had done he spoke what came first into his mind.

"Ah, my road," he moaned, talking half to himself after the manner of the lonely and deaf, "and I let it lie idle six weeks! All my ore still sacked and waiting on the dump, and now my road is gone."

He bowed his head and gave way to tears, for he had lost ten years' work in a day, and then Mrs. Campbell forgot. She had remained silent before, not wishing to seem unkind, but now she spoke from her heart.

"It's a visitation!" she wailed; "the Lord has punished us for our sins.

We should never have used the road."

"And why not?" demanded Campbell, rousing up from his brooding, and he saw Wunpost turning guiltily away. "Ah, I knew it!" he burst out; "I mis...o...b..ed it all the time, but you thought you could keep it from me.

But when I came down from Panamint, to see where the waterspout had struck, and found it tearing in from Woodp.e.c.k.e.r Canyon, I said: 'It is the hand of G.o.d!' We had not come by our road quite honestly."

"No," sobbed Mrs. Campbell, "and I hate to say it, but I'm glad the road is destroyed. What you built we came by honestly, but the rest was obtained by fraud, and now it has all been destroyed. You have worked long and hard, Cole, and I'm sorry this had to happen; but G.o.d is not mocked, we know that. I tried to keep it from you, and to keep myself from knowing; but he told me himself that he salted the mine on purpose, so that Eells would build us a road!"

"Aha!" nodded Campbell, and looked out from under his eyebrows at the man who had befriended him by fraud. But he was a man of few words, and his silence spoke for him--Wunpost scuffled his feet and withdrew.

"Well I'm going," he announced to Billy as he threw on his packs; "this is getting too rough for me. So I crabbed the whole play, eh, and fetched that cloudburst down Woodp.e.c.k.e.r? And it washed out your father's road! It's a wonder Divine Providence didn't ketch _me_ up the canyon, and wipe me off the footstool, too!"

"Perhaps He spared you," suggested Billy, whose eyes were big with awe, "so you could repent and be forgiven of your sins."

"I bet ye!" scoffed Wunpost; "but you can't tell _me_ that G.o.d Almighty was steering that waterspout. It just hit in Woodp.e.c.k.e.r Canyon, same as one hit Hanaupah last week and another one washed out down below. They're falling every day, but I'm going up into them hills, and do you reckon one will drop on me? Don't you think it--G.o.d Almighty has got more important business than following me around through the hills.

I'm going to take my little dog, so I'll be sure to have Good Luck; and if I don't come back you'll know somebody has got me, that's all."