Chapter TWELVE

Whether warned by intuition that one more step would be fatal, or whether his blinded sense of right was asserting itself, the fact remained that for several days, Elijah was hardly ever in the office and even then for only a brief time. He seemed to Helen, absorbed if not sullen. At first she noticed this with positive relief; later she had misgivings which grew more insistent as time went on. She saw and she could not see. She saw the dream of Elijah's solitary years daily taking shape and form. She saw that his work had roots which struck deep in solid, lasting worth; she saw Ysleta founded on drifting sand. The one had solid business principles; the other had glittering promises as worthless as fairy gold. Was this all? From here on, her vision was blurred. Was this principle which one had and the other had not, after all, rooted deep in the mysterious influence which guided Elijah's life?

It was with positive gratitude one morning that she heard Uncle Sid's ponderous knock on her door and his raucous voice calling to her.

"Come, Helen. Let's you and me take a walk before the sun has burned the dust all off o' the grass."

"All right, Uncle Sid! I'll be there in a moment."

She was up and dressed almost before the echo of Uncle Sid's voice had died away.

Uncle Sid eyed her approvingly as she stepped into the hall.

"Pretty trim lookin' craft," he remarked. "Don't take you long to get under way, either."

"Where are you going, Uncle Sid?"

"Anywhere, so I get out o' the smell o' varnish! Sand's better'n that." Uncle Sid wrinkled his nose in deep disgust. "You can blow sand off; but this stuff! It just soaks into you till you can taste it."

Helen laughed.

"It is penetrating."

"Penetratin'!" Uncle Sid snorted. "I should say it was. If starvin' cannibals just got one whiff of us they'd never think o' cookin' us unless they'd got used to lunchin' off pitch pine."

They passed through the office, startling a dozing clerk and porter to forced attention; but these, discovering that their services were not needed, settled themselves to their former positions.

The outside air was heavy with the indescribable odor of newness and of hustling activity in drowsy repose.

Uncle Sid had a bag in his hand which bumped softly against the outer door as he opened it.

"Oranges," he explained. "Hope to Gracious they ain't infected. I gave 'em a good chance. I kept 'em in my room last night."

Outside the door, he gained his first knowledge of a California fog. The sticky, clammy chill penetrated their garments like water. Uncle Sid buttoned his sailor jacket as he descended the broad steps.

"This settles it!"

"Settles what?" Helen inquired, her teeth chattering.

"This 'ere fog has given me an idea. I'm goin' down to the river, the Christopher Sawyer, or some such heathen name. I just bet it's one of those uncanny sort o' streams that fit this country like a wet sail to a spar."

"You'll have to explain, Uncle Sid; I'm stupid this morning."

Uncle Sid looked sceptical, but resumed his point.

"Just look at this fog! I bet that the Christopher Sawyer gets out o' bed nights and distributes itself through the air general, an' waits for the sun to herd it back. I'm goin' down to see."

Helen followed the old gentleman, absently humoring him in his fancy. She was in a listening mood rather than a talkative one, and Uncle Sid distracted her thoughts from her own perplexities.

"Gosh a'mighty!" Uncle Sid was out in the street, peering through the mist. "Seems like wadin' through skim milk."

"Which way?" Helen paused beside him.

"I snum to Gracious if I know! I didn't adjust my compasses last night, an' I guess I'll have to sail by dead reckonin'. Every country that ever I was in before, an' I've been in most of 'em, the water ran down hill. Now here, what there is of it, don't seem to pay any attention to grades. When it comes to a hill, it just changes to gas, coagulates on the other side, an' goes on."

Uncle Sid was under way; Helen, absorbed in thought, followed absently in his wake. The palms which the industrious boomers had planted along the streets, loomed hazily through the fog ahead, gradually sharpened in outline, and again grew hazy with distance, as they passed them by. From each palm, a tuft of yellow-green spears stood up defiantly above a cluster of gray spikes pointing downward to their warty trunks; a picture of hope eternal in spite of inevitable death, as cheerfully suggestive of mortality, as the upward pointing hands, and the downward-drooping willows on the tombstones of New England's puritan dead.

Helen was wondering what possible pleasure there could be in this walk, but it was new and strange to Uncle Sid and he ploughed steadily ahead. In spite of the dragging sand that made her feet feel like lead, the exercise did not stir her blood to a glow of warmth. The physical chill of the fog, the tawny sand that seemed to tinge the creeping mist, the mental chill of her mood affected her so that it suddenly seemed to her as if she could not take another step.

"Aren't you hunting needless trouble, Uncle Sid?" she suddenly cried, stopping short and looking at Uncle Sid. "Let's go back. We can be no end more miserable in our awful hotel with only half the trouble."

"I ain't seen no signs of the Christopher Sawyer yet, exceptin' this." Uncle Sid clove a semicircle through the mist with his outstretched arm.

"Oh, well, if it's a scientific voyage, Uncle Sid, let's go right on."

"Must be that. It's something an' it ain't no pleasure excursion, that's sure!"

They plodded on. It seemed to Helen as if it were miles, she was certain it was hours. At last it grew lighter, and the yellow tawn of the sand appeared to have risen higher and higher, till the whole of the shrouding mist was a yellow haze.

"I can't go another step, Uncle Sid." Helen stopped short and sat down on a hummock of sand.

"What's the matter little girl? You seem sort o' done up this mornin'," Uncle Sid dropped beside her with a sounding slump. "There! here I be! If I didn't ring, it ain't because I ain't hollow."

He unfolded a paper bag and drawing forth some formidable sandwiches passed one to Helen and began eating one himself. The sandwiches disposed of, he again investigated the bag. This time he brought out two large oranges.

"They do one thing shipshape in this country." He was eyeing Helen keenly while tearing the rind from his orange. "They do up water in mighty neat shape, but they do charge for it though. That's what they do!" he rattled on. "These yellow water-balls cost me five cents apiece, they did!" He parted the segments carefully, anxious lest a drop of the juice should be wasted. Again his eyes rested thoughtfully on Helen's somber face.

"What's the trouble, Helen?"

Helen's answer was accompanied by a blended look of assent to Uncle Sid's assumption and a humorous denial of it.

"One is often absent minded over troubles that can't be explained even to one's best friends."

"Well," Uncle Sid was not wholly satisfied, "perhaps by the time I'm your best friend, you'll be ready to tell me."

"I think that may be very soon," said Helen soberly, as she finished her orange.

"Have another?" Uncle Sid held out the bag cordially.

Helen was morally certain that Uncle Sid's New England thrift was dwelling on the five cents apiece; but she took the proffered orange. Uncle Sid rose clumsily to his feet.

"Now for the Christopher Sawyer."

The mist was rapidly clearing. Without visible means of locomotion, wisps of fog rose from the ground in the distance, trailed along like a sea-bird rising from the water, then melted in the air. They were standing on the edge of a mesa. Below them, tall cottonwoods rose in a straggling, sinuous line, their trunks matted with clinging vines, their branches loaded almost to the breaking point with clusters of parasitic plants. A line of shrubs, filling in between the trees, were bowed in a mat of tangled verdure that was dotted and sprinkled with rainbow colors. White-rimmed ditches appeared from behind projecting promontories of yellow sand, crawled under wire fences whose crooked, ghostly sticks, like the legs of some gigantic centipede, straggled around patches of wheat and barley. Outside these patches of green, adobe huts were surrounded by other scraggly sticks, driven into the ground and held upright by wires which were stretched out to them from occasional cottonwoods.

Back of them, Ysleta was lost to sight behind a rising grade of yellow sand, dotted by clumps of chaparral and cactus. Across the barranca, over the tops of the highest cottonwoods, the rolling mesa stretched as barren and forbidding as that on which they were standing.

"I bet that's the Christopher Sawyer!" Uncle Sid was pointing to the tangled mass of vegetation. "These are the first things I've seen that look as if they'd had enough to drink."

Helen was looking in another direction.

"How queer those cattle are acting."

She was watching a bunch of cattle about three hundred yards away. They were clustered thickly, their heads pointed towards herself and Uncle Sid. In front of the herd, a huge bull was pawing the sand. There was a muffled bellowing and from beneath the nostrils of his low-hanging head, spurts of dust rose in the air.

"Those critters do look hostile, an' there ain't no fence to get over an' not a gosh-hanged tree to climb." Uncle Sid spoke uneasily.

Across the barranca, they caught sight of another cloud of dust, from which swung wildly gesticulating arms. At the same time, from one of the adobes, they saw a vaquero emerge. His arms too, were wildly waving. In response to his cries which they heard only faintly, two bunches of yapping gray fur swept across the white-rimmed ditches and rolled up the bank.

There was evidently an unwonted excitement of which Helen and Uncle Sid were an important part. Then the cattle came to a conclusion and, with lowered heads and tails sticking upright, they charged straight for Uncle Sid and Helen.

The horsemen, meanwhile had crossed the barranca, and the next instant, horses and riders with the yapping fur, had turned the vigorously charging cattle to an equally vigorous retreat.

Winston sprang from his horse in front of Uncle Sid. His face was white with anger.

"Where did you come from?--" he began.

"From God's country, young man, and we got lost." Uncle Sid was unabashed. Winston's face broke into a smile; then he caught sight of Helen.

"You ought to know better than this, Helen."

"Better than what, young man?"

"Better than to go walking around here. You see these cattle are more than half wild. They don't often see a footman, and when they have calves, they are dangerous. If you had been mounted, you could have ridden through the bunch and they wouldn't have noticed you."

"Well; we shall have to walk back, apparently." Helen's smile was not wholly spontaneous.

"To God's country? It's a long way." Ralph was smiling at Helen's chagrin.

Helen laughed.

"Perhaps you could show us the way?"

"You would better go down to Pedro's ranch and wait. Our supply wagons will be along shortly, and they will take you to town."

"Young man," Uncle Sid broke in, "you seem to know this country. Is that strip o' damp sand down there, the Christopher Sawyer?"

"The what?" For a moment, Ralph's face was blank astonishment, then he burst into a hearty laugh.

"Oh, the Sangre de Christo! Yes."

"They both mean the same thing. Whew! Helen, I've got another idea about this country. It's a great country for raisin' ideas, if it ain't good for anything else. It's prolific! It would make a stone man think." He paused, fanning himself vigorously. "There ain't any use talkin'; it's great! Soaks thinks full o' fog-water nights, an' then the sun comes out mornin's and boils 'em. If it wasn't for fogs 'twould roast 'em. I don't wonder 'Lige Berl gets a broad view o' Providence. You can get all sorts o' vittles in this country, roasted, boiled and dried. I bet those critters are carryin' around dried beef on their bones right now."

Ralph's look of amusement gave way to one of inquiry.

"Are you a friend of Elijah Berl?" he asked. "Helen, why don't you introduce us?"

But Uncle Sid again interrupted.

"Worse than that, young man, worse than that. It's most as bad as blood relations. Me and 'Lige Berl's folks have been brought up in the same neighborhood back in New England for ages."

Ralph started to reply to Uncle Sid, but a glance at Helen changed his mind.

"Let's get down to Pedro's ranch, in the shade. The wagons won't be along for an hour yet." He tried to walk by Helen's side, but she waited for Uncle Sid.

The last remnant of the fog had departed; the sun was blazing fiercely. Toward Ysleta, the air was already shimmering over the sand. By the ditches and among the vines, was the music of many birds and the cheerful notes of Bob White.

Half stifled with the choking dust, they scuffled and slid down the steep trail that led to Pedro's adobe.

Pedro was following, his stolid face stifling his emotions. At the gate, the vaquero and Winston, drawing their reins over their ponies' heads, dropped them on the ground. Pedro stepped forward, swept his hat from his head and held the gate open for his guests to pass through. Following them, he pointed to an inviting hammock, swung between two fruit trees. Again he swept his hat from his head.

"Perhaps the senorita will honor my poor hammock by reposing in it."

Helen stepped to the hammock. Another graceful bow from Pedro.

"At your feet, senorita."

Uncle Sid, uninvited, explored the garden. Pedro was marching to the adobe. To Helen it seemed as if she had never before experienced such a delicious sensation as the resting of her tired body in the perfectly adjusted hammock. Ralph was watching her.

"Pedro has departed, may I take his place?" Assuming an affirmative answer, he stretched himself at her feet.

"Helen, what's wrong?" he asked anxiously.

"Nothing, that I know of." She replied evasively.

"Is it the office?" persisted Winston.

"Why can't you believe me?" There was a trace of annoyance in her manner.

"Because when your eyes tell me one thing and your lips another, I'm going to take my choice."

"I really don't like to ask you to attend to your own business, Ralph." There was a flash of the old humor in her voice.

"You oughtn't to say that to me, Helen, for the sake of old times--if for nothing more," he added deliberately.

Helen understood the conditional "if", as well as the expression of his eyes. A suggestion of red tinged the clear olive of her cheeks.

"This is no place for confidences, even if I had any to exchange!"

"Later on then." Ralph's lips were decided. "Who is your friend?" he added.

"Uncle Sid? He is an old friend of Elijah's. He and his sister are stopping at the Vista."

There sounded the leisurely chut-chut of the lumbering wagons. Ralph rose to his feet.

"There come the wagons."

At the wagon, Helen insisted upon riding in the driver's seat. Uncle Sid was stowed in the rear. Ralph flashed a look toward Helen.

"My horse won't lead," he declared. "You ride him in, Jim, and I'll drive."

If Ralph had counted upon a quiet talk with Helen during the ride to Ysleta, he was certainly disappointed. Uncle Sid's position in the background was the only thing in the rear which he accepted. In the matter of conversation, he was well to the front.

"What's 'Lige Berl doin' in this country anyway?" he questioned Ralph.

"'Lige?" repeated Ralph. "Oh, he dreamed a dream; was five years at it. He dreamed of oranges, big fellows without seeds; of mountains with too much water and of deserts without enough. Then he dreamed of bunching the three together for their mutual benefit. He convinced some Eastern capital that it was no dream after all. Now we are trying to make good."

Uncle Sid grunted.

"That's tolerably condensed."

Ralph laughed at Uncle Sid's disapproval.

"If you are really interested, you'd better let us show you around a little. You can see a good deal better than I can tell you."

Uncle Sid's face had lost its humorous wrinkles.

"'Lige is really doin' something worth while out here, is he?"

"He's got me on the jump. That's a good deal in itself."

"What are you doin'?"

"Oh," Ralph laughed. "I'm being bossed."

Uncle Sid looked sharply at Ralph.

"If I was on the quarter deck as I used to be, an' saw you afore the mast, I'd think over my orders before I handed 'em to you. If 'Lige has any sense with his dreamin', he'll do the same."

"Helen's helping 'Lige to boss me. When he isn't around, she does it alone."

Uncle Sid looked at Helen. The humorous wrinkles returned to his face.

"What's the matter with you? You swallowed your tongue?"

"No; I'm holding it." She answered Uncle Sid's look as well as his words.

The lumbering wagon drew up in front of the Rio Vista. Before Ralph could dispose of the reins, Helen was on the ground and ascending the steps of the hotel. At the top she paused, speaking to Ralph.

"I'm going to take Uncle Sid out to the works before long." Then she entered the door.

Uncle Sid turned to Ralph.

"I don't guess you're bein' bossed quite so much as you say." He slowly clambered from the wagon and stood, looking at Ralph, his hand on the wheel. "I ain't askin' questions just for fun," he began.

Ralph interrupted.

"I won't answer your questions in fun either. But you do what Helen says. Come out to the works."

Perhaps it was because she had expected too much, but Helen was disappointed in the morning. Certain things had been disquieting. Ralph's words "For the sake of old times, if for nothing else"--had at first annoyed her. The annoyance changed to a questioning disquietude. The very annoyance suggested possibilities which had never distinctly occurred to her before. She did not, she could not resent it as she would like to do. She could not avoid a comparison between the clear, steady eyes of Ralph Winston and the glowing, shifting ones of Elijah Berl which had moved her so profoundly.

The contrast between the two men forced itself upon her. The convincing alertness of Ralph Winston, clear and cool and bracing, the glowing mystical enthusiasm of Elijah Berl that breathed upon her, laid hold upon her like languorous exhalations from a tropic growth. She recalled her childhood days with Ralph Winston. His masterful ways which flashed out in open revolt against her impetuous temper, that took her in his arms and in spite of her panting protests, soothed her into forgiving smiles. There was no yielding to her wrongs, no tyranny in his right, but a subtle stimulating air that suggested no personality, rather an impersonal force which compelled him, even as it did her.

There were tears in her eyes now. There was a great longing to go to Ralph as she had gone years ago, to hear again the words which had melted her darkness into clear light. An almost irresistible impulse came to her. "Why not go to him now?" He had opened the way. A word, a motion, a glance from her eyes and the way would open again. She rose to her feet and laid her hand upon the door.

Had Winston been in the hotel that night! But he was miles away and she returned to her seat. Her brain went on and on, twisting and turning the same old problem. Ralph knew Elijah Berl, yet he had cast in his lot with him. Ralph trusted in his own strength, why should not she trust in hers? She drew a long, shuddering breath. Elijah had asked her for bread. Could she give him a stone?