Chapter XXXI: A Tale of the Desert's Dead

No land seems so delectable as the desert early on a crisp morning. The rare air causes the blood to pound through one's veins, and an unexplainable rapture seizes man's spirits.

Jo's black mare, Babe, had not been ridden for weeks, and every greasewood bush that she saw became in the weird light of sunrise a grotesque goblin ready to spring at her and devour her whole. At least, so she pretended, and as her natural weapon of defense lay in flight, she kept Hiram Hooker busy holding her down to a fast gallop.

The low-hanging tapaderos flapped loosely. Hiram's borrowed silver-mounted spurs--a reminder of Tom Gulick's cow-punching days in Utah--jingled merrily. The heavy six-gun at his hip flopped against the silver-rimmed cantle of Jo's fifty-pound saddle. The smells of the morning were sweet. Away over the vast expanse of bronze greasewood, far-flung buttes caught the early rays of the sun and took on something of the likeness of a solar spectrum, purple at their bases, the colors ranging upward through blues and greens and yellows to a spun-gold glitter at their summits. Jack rabbits loped away through the brush. Now and then a coyote, ears pricked up, trotted along, his tail dragging. Tecolote, the little desert owl, came from his hole and sat on the pile of dirt beside it, while his wife peeked out with her round head just above the ground and gave silent approval to her lord and master's querulous criticism of the rider.

Life was good--life was glorious. Life was love! The poetic heart of the man from Wild-cat Hill sang ceaselessly. He was away on his romantic quest to serve the most splendid girl a man had ever loved!

As the morning progressed and the sun climbed higher and higher, Babe bore him through many camps, both large and small. At each he drew rein and made inquiry after an old prospector called Basil Filer, who drove six burros. No one had seen such a man, however, and Hiram continued on toward the north until noon. Then he stopped for dinner and to feed and rest the mare at Demarest, Spruce & Tillou's Camp Number Two. They had come twenty-one miles that morning, he learned at dinner in the huge dining tent; and when he started out again he held Babe in, because she was soft for want of exercise.

On and on they traveled, nevertheless, Hiram making inquiry at every camp. At last, thirty miles from Ragtown, he got word of the prospector. A camp freighter who traveled to the north for supplies from Demarest, Spruce & Tillou's Camp Number Three had seen such a man trudging along with his long staff, eyes bent on the ground, behind his six burros. He had been seen about ten miles farther north, traveling south, the day before.

Hiram loped on, and now reached a strip of the right-of-way where camps were few and far between. The desert was dryer here than in the vicinity of Ragtown, and greasewood and whispering yuccas gave place to low sage and the shimmering dry lakes, which lure thirsting men on to their doom with their mocking resemblance to the life-saving water the wanderer craves.

Always, it seemed, there was somewhere within the range of Hiram's vision one of those weird whirlwinds sweeping along. Often they were so far away they seemed motionless, and looked like brown funnel-shaped pillars, wrong end up, supporting the turquoise sky. Again, they were close--sometimes six or seven in sight at once--as they spun like huge tops, sucking up everything loose in their path, and whirling it round and round with stupefying rapidity.

At last one of them overtook the horse and rider, and the mare stopped short, thrusting her head between her front legs and tucking in her flowing tail. Hiram had time only to grab his hat and throw himself forward along the mare's neck; the next instant it seemed as if a million tugging hands had hold of him and were trying to whirl him into the heavens and carry him, like a garment whipped from a clothesline, into mysterious distances.

When it had passed he sat erect once more and dug the dirt from his ears and eyes, trying to follow the twister's progress as it sped drunkenly on to find other victims.

Then it was that Hiram saw the pack train, not far distant over the desert, making ready to receive the coming whirlwind. The burros, wise little animals that they are, had huddled together, tails outward, heads down; and in the center of them Hiram saw a man just stooping for the protection of their bodies. Next instant the group vanished--was swallowed up by the wind demon.

When the old man looked up after the onslaught, Hiram was riding upon him. The prospector stood trying to stare at him from the center of his pack train, wiping his watering eyes and sand-stained mouth.

"Hello, there!" called Hiram. "It spoke to us in passing, too. How do you like 'em?"

"I got to like 'em," returned the old man. "I eat 'em--breakfast, dinner, and supper. Grub don't taste good any more 'less a twister's passed over it and seasoned it up. Who are you?"

Hiram swung his great frame from the creaking saddle.

"I'm Hiram Hooker," he announced, lowering the mare's reins and advancing until a mouse-colored burro aimed a kick at him to show him that he was a rank outsider whose company was not desired.

"Why, Muta, that ain't no way to act!" mildly expostulated the burro's master. "She's just a mite playful," he explained apologetically to Hiram. "Muta, she thinks a heap o' the ole man, ye see, an' she's always lookin' out that strangers don't mean 'im any harm."

He placed both arms about the shaggy burro's neck. "You must be more polite, Muta," he said chidingly, while the little animal trust out her upper lip and nibbled at the large horn buttons on his dusty canvas coat.

"Which way are you bound?" asked Hiram.

"South now. Just travelin'. Maybe I'll make it over to Rattlesnake Buttes"--he raised an arm toward the northeast--"and maybe down Caldron Cañon way." He pointed southeast toward the mountains. "I dunno--just driftin' along, me an' the little fellas. Sometimes we drift here, and sometimes we drift there. Don't matter much, s'long's there's grub an' a little rolled barley in the pack-bags. What's the dif'rence anyway?" His red-lidded eyes looked up weirdly at Hiram.

Bent and pathetic he was, this old man of the hills and deserts--this old lizard of the unfriendly sands. In his eyes all time seemed to have written its history. His brows were shaggy and desert-colored, like the brows of the Ancient Mariner whose scrawny, clutching fingers robbed the Wedding Guest of his night of pleasure. His hands shook, and he carried a long cane; but for him the merciless desert seemed to hold no lasting terror, for he spent his life on its desert searching for the treasure that is hidden there.

"Me and the little fellas just drift along. We get work at the camps when our grubstake's gone; and then we ramble on and on--just driftin', kinda. I got a ole jack rabbit for supper, pardner. He was sleepin' under a sagebrush, and I puts out his eye with my six and twenty paces. Can you do that? But you're young--young and got a clever eye. Anyway, I got a ole jack for supper. Now, if you had a bottle on you couldn't we have a time!"

"I've no bottle," Hiram said. "I'm sorry. But, if you'll invite me, I'll help you with the jack."

"Got blankets behind yer saddle, I see. All right, my friend. Ole Filer's always ready to share his grub with a passer-by on the desert. There's water in my little tank. Burros don't drink much, you know. A taste's enough till we get to a camp to-morrow. Handy, those camps, for prospectors needin' a grubstake. Let's camp over there by that lonesome yucca palm. He looks as if he wanted company. Maybe he'll whisper where they's gold to-night--if we keep on ear awake. He-he! Oh, they whisper lots--lots--lots! But they always lie like sin!"

When the "ole jack" had paid the final price of his lack of watchfulness, Hiram Hooker and the crazy prospector leaned back and looked up at the cold stars that smiled cruelly down on the arid waste. The wind whispered mysteriously through the bayonets of the yucca palm above them. Not long would one be obliged to live and move and have his being alone on this desert before strange messages would begin to formulate in the wind's eerie whispering in the yuccas.

The burros ranged about, browsing off the desert growth. There had been barley for Babe, and Hiram had watered her at the last camp. A rinse-out of her mouth and she would do very well till morning.

And there under the scornful stars Hiram and the old man lounged on packbags and talked, with their tiny camp fire of greasewood roots between them. And gradually as Hiram told what he knew and convinced the gray old rat of his honesty, an uncanny tale of the barren lands began unfolding, a tale revolving about a little girl baby left by prospectors in a yucca-trunk corral--the tale of Jean Prince, daughter of Leonard Prince, whose bones had been gnawed by coyotes and covered by the shifting sands for over twenty years. And the baby girl, Jean Prince, was none other than the magnetic, dark-haired woman who now drove jerkline to Ragtown and numbered her admirers by the thousand--Jerkline Jo, Queen of the Outland Camps.

"They was three of us at first," narrated Filer in a shaky voice. "Three of us and Baby Jean. Baby Jean and me and Len Prince and 'The Chink.' And that makes four. But Baby Jean was only two years old.

"Hong Duo was the chink--a grinnin' yenshee hound from up beyond the Tehachapi--way up--up toward the Sierra Nevadas, in the placer country. White prospectors ner white miners don't often work with chinks. Chinks is only good for workin' tailin's when it comes to mines. But Len he'd saved Hong Duo's life in trouble in a dump in Placerville--ol' Hangtown--and the chink had clung to um like a burro to somethin' he's swiped from Camp.

"Agin' that, too, the chink had money--an' Len and me was broke. Fer a year he grubstaked us, and followed us around pocketin' up that a way, cookin' and such, and livin' for Len and Baby Jean.

"Baby Jean's maw she died when the kid was borned; and everywhere Len went after she was a year or more he took her. We drifted south--me and Len and the chink and Baby Jean.

"Up Death Valley way we got wind o' somethin' good. Days and days we makes it into the land that God forgot, and here and there we pecked out a little color. Then Len and me we gets a lead, and we leaves the chink and Baby Jean and drifts on into a country that makes me shiver yet ta think of.

"We got some gold--quite some. And me"--his voice grew low--"I was younger then, and mean as dirt. I was high-gradin' on my pardner right and left. I guess I was always mean; but I've paid the price.

"Then Len he gets onto me, but he holds his tongue. And we make it on and on into Little Hall, till the sandstorm come.

"Fer nigh onto fifty-nine years I've roamed the desert, pardner, but I've never seen another storm like that. Days and days she blowed, and sometimes you couldn't see yer hand before yer face for the flyin' sand. Someway we gets out of it, the Almighty knows how! But from that day to this I've never been able to find that place ag'in.

"There was gold there--piles and piles o' gold--and Len he'd found it. Found it out alone one day before the storm set in. And knowin' I'd been high-gradin' on him, he kep' this find to 'imself. Then come the storm, and we fought out just ahead o' death.

"Then Len he keeps tryin' to go back--wants to work long for a big grubstake, and is quiet and dreams a lot, with Baby Jean in his arms, and the chink settin' cross-legged lookin' at 'em with his glitterin' little eyes--half full o' hop, I guess. And I gets onto why Len wants to drift back there to that land o' dead men's bones, and I watch 'im, and freeze to 'im continual.

"Len he makes a bluff at this an' that an' the other--him and me and the chink driftin' from here to there over this part o' the desert, or hereabouts, scratchin' a little now and ag'in. But Len his heart ain't in it, I see; and all the time he's tryin' to shake me off, I get it. But I won't shake.

"Well, Len he ain't no more good after the awful time we went through up there in that terrible land. He never was a man ag'in after that; and he gets scared, I guess, and thinks he's gonna cash his chips. They's a queer look in his eyes, and in camp he just sets and sets with Baby Jean in his arms, and the hophead lookin' at 'em from across the fire with his glitterin' little eyes. And sometimes Len he just sets and sets and watches Baby Jean asleep, and his eyes are worried like a horse's eyes when he knows he's starvin'; and the yenshee hound he just sets and looks at Len, and Heaven only knows what he's thinkin'!

"Then we make it up along in where the Salt Lake road was buildin' then--up Barstow way--all wild them days. And one day Len and me and the chink goes out into the buttes, and leaves Baby Jean in a yucca-stump corral so's the c'yotes can't get at her, like we did sometimes. She wasn't never a yellin' kid. Give her a bottle o' canned cow, and she'd suck herself to sleep with varmints prowlin' about and sandstorms blowin'. Sometimes she'd sob if things was goin' wrong in her little world--low and heartbroken, like a woman cries. But yell--never!

"So we leaves her suckin' at her bottle, for Len he'd never broke her of it, and out we goes to scratch around some more up in Turkey Buttes.

"It was lookin' to storm and we hadn't oughta gone maybe; but we didn't aim to make it far, and could come back any time. But when she broke she broke sudden; and only once before had I seen such a blow as that. We got plumb lost five miles from camp; and all that day and all that night and all next day we wandered about in the whirlin' sand, outa water, and goin' crazier every minute. The chink he gives up, and so does Len; and I'm too crazy to make 'em keep on fightin'. I dragged out two days later, way north o' the buttes--plumb bughouse, my tongue all black and stiff as rubber. I've never been the same man since, I guess. I dream about them days and nights.

"The folks that found me they go huntin' for Len and the chink and Baby Jean t'other side o' the buttes. They find Len and the chink, both dead, their faces and tongues---- But I don't like to remember that! Sometimes the yuccas they whisper about it; but I always plug my ears and begin to sing, or talk to the asses about the fun we'll have when we find Jean Prince and get the gold Len knew about up there Death Valley way.

"They turned Len's things over to me. The baby they couldn't find; but after weeks they stumbled onto the camp where we'd left her and found everything almost buried in sand. The kid was gone, and the c'yotes hadn't got her. They was a piece o' paper in the camp; but it had rained and rained since it was stuck up there, and all the writin' was gone. In Len's things I finds the paper that I'm carryin', and I kep' it to myself. I've got it now--right here"--he thumped his breast--"and for twenty years I've hunted for Baby Jean and never found her.

"They's gold up there--up where Len Prince found it. The paper tells only half o' how to relocate Len's claims. At the beginnin' it says the paper's for Baby Jean, and no one else is to have it. Len knew he was soon goin' to croak--and he fixed it for Baby Jean when he was gone. He done his best. Any one who's got the paper knows only half. Whoever's got the paper can't do nothin' without Baby Jean.

"The chink he done it. It was crazy--loco, you'll say. But what c'n you expect from a man who's suffered as he did? Lissen, pardner--the chink he done it. The paper tells about it. The chink he doped the kid--with opium, some way, I guess--so's it wouldn't hurt her, and then he tattooed the rest o' the directions for findin' the gold on the head o' Baby Jean. Cut off some hair in back, and shaved a spot on her little head, and tattooed it there. The chink he did. And then the hair grew out ag'in, and nobody ever knew!

"Even Baby Jean don't know--a woman grown up now. And years and years I've hunted for her, but couldn't find her. Cause I couldn't stick, I guess. Somethin' always kep' callin' me back into the hills, and I'd forgot. Just me and the little fellas, we understand. And we're driftin' about ag'in huntin' for Baby Jean.

"I had a funny dream. I dreamed I'd found her--a young woman grown. And in that dream she told me she was Baby Jean, and I told her all about the paper and the tattoo marks. And then it looked like I drifted into deeper sleep and I woke up in camp way out in nowhere. I'd forgot again, you see, and drifted for the hills just when I'd found Baby Jean. Or so I dreamed. But sometimes I think I wasn't dreamin', pardner. It wasn't just like other dreams I've had. I got it that I was in a place called Ragtown, and I know they's such a place, cause everybody tells me so. And I was sick after the dream. Funny! I'm drifting that a way now. I want to see that Ragtown. Was it a dream? Or was the yuccas laughin' at ole Filer ag'in? I dunno. But how come it I dreamed about a place called Ragtown, a place that really is but that I never seen?"