Nevada (1995) Read online

  But at last they rode round under this colossal wall, and Hettie Ide gasped. Desolation and ruin of earth seemed flung in her face.

  Splintered and tumbled wall of red wound down to a notch where the sinister red river broke through; and on the other side, another wall as red and ghastly, and lifting its rent and riven front high to serrated crags, formed the far side of that great Y-shaped pocket of the desert. No eye-soothing greens softened the glaring red and yellow. It was a pit of hell, from which the river gleamed through the split at the apex of the notch.

  The sun beat down terribly hot. The red dust rose in clouds. Ever lifted the vast overhanging bulge of the plateau, from the ruins of which countless avalanches had crushed down, to litter the whole slope between wall and river with myriads of rocks, huge, sand- and wind-worn into grotesque shapes, adding to the ghastliness of this inferno.

  Here the wagons crept along on slow-creaking wheels; here the horses lagged and the riders sagged in their saddles; here Hettie closed her eyes to shut out the glare, the dreadful decay and devastation, and the millions of glistening surfaces of rock, red and redder as the red sun sank to rest.

  But before the afternoon light failed the travelers rounded the last corner of the wall, and Hettie opened her eyes upon a scene that seemed one of enchantment.

  A rich dark green oasis lay deep down under lofty precipitous walls. On three sides these walls enclosed the oval acres of green, and on the other the sullen river swept by, as sinister as its surrounding confines, and slid swiftly on into the dark box- like canyon head, whence floated a bellowing roar of waters.

  "Lee's Ferry," announced Raidy to the speechless onlookers. "An' the river's low. I was afeared of meltin' snow up in the mountains. There's the old scow we cross in. Wal, wal! if luck ain't settin' right in the saddle of this Ide outfit!"

  Chapter nine.

  It was late July and the long wagon-train journey had ended. The Ides were comfortably camped on a running brook in a grove of cottonwoods outside the little Arizona hamlet of Sunshine. Ben had secured a grazing permit for his horses on a ranch near by; and while his family rested, he scoured the ranges round about in search of a new home.

  Hettie had never seen a man so full of zest and thrill over any project as Ben was in his search for a ranch in this amazing and glorious Arizona. His happy eagerness seemed reflected in all.

  But on the other hand, it turned out he had difficulty in finding a place which suited him.

  "I want a thousand acres or more--five thousand if I can get them," he said. "Good water most important. Next I want grass and timber. Next a fine site for a ranch house, with a splendid view."

  "Say, boss, you sure don't want very much a-tall," declared old Raidy, a little sarcastic. "Why, they hain't got all thet in this darned country."

  Hettie shared Ben's enthusiasm, and encouraged him in his ambition.

  They had journeyed days up from the Colorado River to this high plateau, where westward the gray-green range seemed like a vast ocean, waving away into purple distance. To the north and east it rose to dark red-banded mountains. Hettie loved the physical attributes of this bewildering Arizona, and so did Ina. But both of them were anxiously concerned about the wildness of the place, the aloofness of the few settlers, herders, riders whom they met, the fact that those mystic, forbidding mountains, seeming so close, were no other than the Mogollons, which Ben had been cautioned to avoid. Moreover, they were not so sure that he would make the wisest of business deals. Yet the buoyancy of his spirit, the change in him, and the undoubted improvement in Mrs. Ide's health, who had not been so active and happy for years, influenced Hettie and Ina not to discourage Ben and to resolve to stand by him, come what might. Added to this was the actual romance and appeal of this wilderness.

  In the middle of the day it was very hot. The sun blazed down, burning face and hands. Yet it seemed to cast a dry heat that was bearable, even at its worst. Then, no matter how hot the sun, the shade was always cool. That seemed a strange property of this Arizona atmosphere. Anywhere in the shade it was cool. The sunshine was golden, the sky azure blue, the desert changeful at every hour, yet always dreamy, mystic, dim, and wonderful. At night the dark velvet dome of heaven burned with great white stars.

  The little town, Sunshine, was on the railroad line and trains passed the Ide camp every day, to little Blaine's infinite delight.

  Hettie, too, found them a novelty and she never failed to watch them. Forty miles from Sunshine, down on a level bare reach of the desert, lay the town Winthrop. The Ides had stopped there a day.

  It was a stock-dealing and freighting town, with a main street on which saloons were remarkably numerous and prominent. Ben had preferred not to leave his family there, nor did he wish to advertise the fact that a rich Californian was looking for a ranch.

  They had stayed long enough in Winthrop, however, to ascertain that there were a number of good stores, two banks, a huge sawmill, workmen available, and a sprinkling of solid prosperous Westerners.

  After an absence of three days Ben returned on the train late one afternoon, to descend upon his camp like a whirlwind.

  Hettie, who first heard him, called out to Ina: "It's Ben. And you can bet we're settled now."

  "Listen to him," replied Ina, in wondering gladness. "Well!"

  They ran out to find him surrounded by his men, from whom, as Ina eagerly called, he broke away.

  Whereupon she and Hettie and his mother were treated to bearish hugs, accompanied by various exclamations.

  "Oh, gee! Oh, gee!" he continued, dragging them all to the camp table and benches under a cottonwood. "Give me a drink of water.

  I'm thirsty. And I've got to wash my hands and face. Hungrier than a wolf, too."

  They waited on him, after the manner of loving women, plying him all the while with questions. Presently he flopped down on the grass and leaned back against the tree.

  "I've bought my ranch," he said, with solemn finality, eying them.

  Hettie and Ina regarded him in a momentous silence, but his mother spoke dryly: "Humph! we know that. I said you'd buy without even lettin' us women see the place."

  "You'll all be crazy about it," he returned.

  "Where?" asked Ina, slowly sinking on her knees in front of him.

  "Sixty miles from Winthrop and about a hundred from here."

  "How much land?"

  "A thousand acres. Fine grazing all around. No other ranches near. Ten thousand head of cattle. Forty thousand dollars! Isn't that a bargain?"

  "It remains to be seen. You've settled the deal, then?"

  "I should smile," he replied, suiting the action to the words.

  "Weren't you rather quick?"

  "Yes. Had to be."

  "Did you see all those ten thousand cattle? Count them?"

  "Gracious, no! Ina, do you think I'm chain lightning? I took their word for it. The lawyer I engaged in Winthrop found the title of property okay. So I bought."

  "Ben, I hope your ranch isn't out there--toward those Mogollons," said Hettie, breaking silence and pointing across the purple-hazed desert to the strange dark uplands.

  "By George! Hettie, it IS," he declared, smacking a hand on his knee. "It's right under the brakes of the Mogollons. But such a beautiful wild country. I couldn't resist it."

  "Didn't you remember what your friend the sheriff said about the Mogollons?"

  "I did, honest I did, Hettie," replied Ben, hastily. "But listen.

  I'll tell you all about it. . . . Day before yesterday I rode back to Winthrop after a hard and disappointing trip to half a dozen ranches. I was pretty discouraged and was coming back here pronto.

  Some horsemen rode up to the hotel where I was sitting out in front. They got off and tied up to the hitching-rail. I've gotten used to seeing these Arizonians. They're sure a rangy, hard- looking lot. But this outfit struck me as one to look at twice.

  Several of them packed two guns. They had fine horses and saddles.

  When
they went in to drink I asked a cattleman sitting near me who and what they were. 'Wal,' he said, 'it ain't done in these parts-- talkin' aboot your neighbors. Sort of onhealthy.' . . .

  Presently some one touched me on the shoulder. I turned round to see one of the riders, a tall fellow, blond and good-looking, not so young, but not old, either. He had eyes that looked right through you, but his manner was easy, friendly. 'Excuse me, sir,' he said. 'Are you the Californian who's lookin' for a ranch hereabouts?'"

  "'Yes, sir. My name's Ide,' I replied, 'and I'm not having much luck.'"

  "'They tell me you're hard to please. But I'm makin' bold to ask you personally just what kind of a ranch you want to buy?'"

  "So I up and told him, elaborately, just what I was looking for.

  Then he laughed, sort of amused and, pulling at his long mustache, he said: 'My name's Burridge. I've got exactly what you want.

  Somewheres around ten thousand head. Lots of unbranded calves an' yearlin's. Cabins an' corrals not worth speakin' of. But water, grass, timber, an' range can't be beat in Arizona. It suits me to sell for cash. That's what they call me--Cash Burridge. Suppose you get a lawyer an' come over to the city hall an' see my title.

  Then if it strikes you right, I'll take you out to my ranch.'

  "Well," went on Ben, reflectively, "Mr. Cash Burridge hit me about right. I liked his blunt way of putting the deal, and knew he didn't care a rap whether he sold or not. I consulted a lawyer recommended by the hotel man, and we met Burridge at the town hall.

  The title was clear. So I told Burridge I'd like a look at his property. We started right out in a buckboard behind a team of fast horses, I'll tell you. For thirty miles or more the road was good. Then we pitched off into what he called the brakes.

  Briefly, that part of the road was a terror. It was only a trail, up and down, narrow and rough. Burridge said there was a better way in, but longer. We reached his ranch before sunset. I'm only going to tell you that it was the most beautiful and wildest place I ever saw in my life. But the cabins were filthy, tumbledown huts. I slept out under the pines. This morning I was up before sunrise, and if I ever fell in love with anything, it is that place. It was on a high slope, with level benches reaching out, all covered with pines. I saw deer, wolves, bear, turkeys, antelope right from where I stood. Marvie will go crazy over the place. Also, everywhere I looked there were cattle. You can look out from the high pine benches down over the most beautiful valley of grass and sage and cedar, and then down into the red-and-gold desert, over a hundred miles away. Right there I asked Burridge how much he wanted. He said fifty thousand. On a venture I offered forty. He thought it over and took me up. We returned to Winthrop and closed the deal, at noon to-day. I had some hours to kill before train-time, so I strolled around into the stores and saloons. The last I saw of Cash Burridge was in a gambling hell, and from his look I gathered he was getting rid of some of his cash. I introduced myself to storekeepers as a prospective buyer and so gained their interest. But all of them were rather close- mouthed. They don't talk here in Arizona. One man told me Burridge probably had ten thousand head of stock. Then another man said Burridge didn't have so many, but it was hard to tell. The truth is I didn't get much satisfaction. I called to see a Mr.

  Franklidge, the largest cattle-owner in these parts, and also president of the bank. But he wasn't in. Now to wind up, I figured Burridge would be shy a lot of cattle on that number he gave--perhaps a thousand head or more. That is a wide margin for any kind of a cattle deal, and I'm more than satisfied. I'll make that the finest ranch in Arizona. We'll go out there at once and camp, and start the work of home building. If I don't miss my guess, you'll all fall in love with it as quickly as I did."

  "I have already, Ben," was Ina's reply. "What you love I love.

  Your home is my home."

  "Ben, am I in on this ranch deal with you?" asked Hettie, gravely.

  "That's for you to say, my dear sister," replied Ben. "But I believe I'd rather you didn't come in, for it is a risk."

  "Then if Ina has no objection, I'll take the risk."

  "So will I. We'll share the risk, and together make a grand success of it," added Ina, happily.

  Ben hired a guide from Winthrop to lead his horses and riders across country to the ranch. On the next day the wagons made Winthrop, where Ben expected to meet Burridge, as agreed. But Burridge failed to appear. Ben said this was strange, as Burridge was due to take his outfit over the better road and to make a count of the cattle, but it was not so strange, nor half so illuminating, as the glances Ben encountered when he mentioned Burridge casually to bystanders in Winthrop.

  Whereupon Ben procured another guide, a Mexican sheepherder, who guaranteed to pilot the heavily-laden wagons safely to their destination.

  The four horse teams made good time over the open desert road, reaching the brakes some thirty miles out by sundown.

  Hettie was enthralled by the sunset over the yellow sloping land and the weird mountains to the west. A storm had been gathering all day in that direction. The atmosphere had been sultry. Toward late afternoon the clouds coalesced and hung over the black ranges, so that when the sun set, the reds and golds and purples, heightened by the exquisite light, were lovely beyond compare. At dusk sheet lightning flared low down across the sky, and faint rumblings of thunder rolled along the battlements of the desert.

  Next morning the travelers rode into rough forest land, where the main grade was uphill, but the apology for a road plunged down so often into dry hot ravines that the general ascent had to be taken for granted.

  The forest consisted of cedars, oaks, pi+-ons, and scattered pines, all of which grew more abundant and larger, sturdier as the caravan progressed. Travel was exasperatingly slow. In some places the road was not safe, and the women had to get out and walk. Ridges like those of a washboard sloped irregularly down from the south; outcroppings of limestone showed on the gully banks, pools of water gleamed in the shady washes. Open sandy flats, where the horses labored, had to be crossed. At length the cedars and pi+-ons gave place to a heavier growth of pines. Here the real forest began, and except for the difficulty of travel, it was vastly satisfying to Hettie. She had her first view of wild deer and wild turkeys.

  Marvie reacted to sight of this game as might have been expected.

  For that matter, Ben leaped off his wagon, gun in hand. The progress of the train had to be halted while the hunters stalked the game. Soon shots reverberated throughout the forest. Ben returned empty-handed, but Marvie, with face glowing, exhibited a fine gobbler.

  Only fifteen miles were covered that day, and everybody was wearied and glad to make camp. Before sleep came to Hettie she heard a blood-curdling cry of a wild beast unknown to her. It seemed a deep far-away moan, so sad and uncanny that she shuddered. Next morning Ben told her the cry had come from a timber wolf, a beast the guide called a lofer and said was plentiful in those parts.

  Tedious travel began into an ever-increasingly wild and wonderful woodland. The trees hid any possible view of the country beyond.

  The air grew clearer, less oppressive, and the heat no longer made the shade desirable. Massed foliage, like green lace, dark-brown seamed boles of pines, patches of sunlight on the white grass, the red of a tufted flower, like a stiff brush dipped in paint, and golden aisles of needles up and down the forest, held for Hettie a never-failing delight.

  About the middle of the afternoon the travelers rode to the edge of open light forest.

  "We're here," shouted Ben, leaping down. "California to Arizona! . . . Ina--mother--Blaine--Hettie, get down and come in, as these Arizonians say."

  "Gee! I see turkeys!" cried Marvie, leaping off his horse and tearing his rifle from the saddle sheath.

  "Indian!" called Ben, after him.

  Hettie sat under a great spreading pine on the edge of one of the level benches that sloped down into the open sage and cedar country.

  She had tramped around until exhausted. A bubbling spring th
at gushed from under a mossy rock in a glen had held her only long enough to yield her a drink. She had passed by the long-unused and dilapidated corrals, and the ruined old log cabin which Ben had laughingly told the stricken Ina was to be their abode. The brook that came singing down from the dark forest slope above caused Hettie to linger and listen to its music. Across the brook on another bench stood another old log cabin, or in fact two small one- roomed cabins, with porch between, and all sheltered under one long sloping wide-eaved roof of rough moss-stained shingles. The picturesqueness of this woodland structure appealed to Hettie.

  Warily she peeped in, with vivid sense of the vacant speaking rooms and tumbled-down stone fireplaces, and the lofts that reached out over half the rooms. What had happened there? How dark, musty, woody!

  "I'll make this my abode and mother's," she decided, with a thrill at the prospect of home-building. "Repairs, windows, floors, sheathing! Oh! I can see it! I'll not have a new house."

  And so at last she had found herself on the edge of the wide bench, back against the last pine, with fascinated gaze riveted upon the view that Ben had raved about.

  "No wonder!" whispered Hettie. "If there were nothing else, THAT would be enough."

  Her position was on the edge of the irregular timber line, which stretched on each side of her, with fringes of the forest here running down to end in straggling lonesome pines, and there skirting the edge of the steep benches, as if the greatest of landscape gardeners had planted them there. And so he had, Hettie averred! What majestic pines! How the summer wind roared above and back of her, now low, now high, deepening upward with the denser growth of forest!

  But it was the desert that enchanted Hettie. For she doubted not that the edge of the bench where she sat was the edge of the desert. Yet how soft, how marvelously purple and gray, how grandly the slope fell for league on league, widening, rolling, lengthening, descending, down to the blazing abyss of sand and rock and canyon.

  Sage and grass in the foreground gave that vast valley its softest beauty, its infinite charms, its mistiness and brilliance, as if drenched with dew. How like troops of great beasts appeared the isolated green cedars and the lonely jutting rocks, some gray, others red. This valley was a portal down to the dim unknown. On each side it swelled to ranges of foothills, themselves like trains of colossal camels trooping down to drink. They were rounded, soft as clouds, gray and pink and faintly green, without a tree, a rock to mar their exquisite curve. From the dignity of low mountains these hills dwindled in size until they were mere mounds that at last flattened out into the desert.