The Forbidden Trail, Honoré Willsie [digital e reader TXT] 📗

start them on their way. Neither man spoke for some time, then Ernest remarked in his gentle voice:

"Extraordinarily lovely girl!"

Roger grunted.

Ernest flushed. "Honestly, Roger, you are the limit! She's too fine a woman to be turned off with a grunt."

"Who's turning her off?" demanded Roger. "I don't see why you're always accusing me of hating women. I don't hate 'em. I'm keen about them and you know how I ran after them until I had to cut them out and attend to business. But now, my scheme of life can't include them. You waste enough time and thought every year on petticoats to have made you president of the university. Now, I'm trying to concentrate on one thing, solar heat. It's a full job for any man, that's all. If you want to get up a case on Charlotte Preble, go to it. She's too big for my taste, even if I had time to think about her."

Ernest groaned and once more silence fell until he roused himself to ask: "Would that be a monument yonder?"

They pulled up before a heap of stones, the marker of a mining claim, so familiar to the desert dweller, and spread the government map on their knees.

"Let's see," said Roger. "Here's Preble's claim, and next him, west, is the Mellish claim, and beyond that, still west, is government land. Simple enough if the sand hasn't drifted on their monuments."

It was not difficult. They passed the Mellish workings, a great hole in the ground, with a deserted shack beside the windlass. A short distance on, they located his monument and quickly found themselves on government land.

"Well," sighed Ernest, "it certainly is God-forsaken!"

They looked about them. Far to the west lay a jagged line of blue mountains, against a blue sky. To the east, the barren tortured peaks of Coyote Range, brown and black in the blazing morning sun, so near that they could see the smoke rising from Charley's kitchen chimney, so far that the adobe looked like a doll house against the range. Between them and Coyote Range lay the desert valley, a rich yellow, thick dotted with fantastic growths of cactus and cat's claw.

"Lord, I think it's great!" Roger drew a deep breath. "Let's unload, old man."

They worked without stopping except for lunch, until five o'clock. With ax and shovel they cleared away cactus and drifts of sand for a level space on which to set up their living tent. Austin had given them plans for this. They laid a rough floor and raised around this a four foot wainscoating. They used no tent pole, but stretched their canvas on a frame of two by fours, above the wainscoating. The result was a pleasant airy compartment with headroom even for Roger. They had not finished their tent when suppertime arrived. But they took Dick's word that tools and supplies would be unmolested.

"We may have trouble locating water," said Ernest as they started the team homeward. "Austin thought we'd strike it most anywhere in the valley, you remember, but Dick says Mellish never reached it."

"I'll bet we find water if we go deep enough." Roger lighted his pipe with the sense of comfort of a man whose back is aching from honest toil. "Dick's information is only hearsay. He's got a good spring there at the corral and he told me there was considerable water in the lower workings of the old mine up in the range. We'll dig till we reach water if we have to tap Hades. And the Lord send that we don't have to waste much time on a detail like that!"

"Right-O! Those must be buzzards circling toward the mountains. Rog, what do you suppose the folks at home are doing about now?"

"Thinking about us. It's pretty early to be homesick, old boy."

Ernest smiled in his gentle way. His eyes looked bluer than ever in his parboiled face. "Don't worry about me, old man. I'm not getting cold feet, only your folks were pioneers and mine were not. We Germans are gregarious."

"Shucks!" replied Roger. "Some of the best pioneers in this country were Germans. And you aren't German, anyhow. You're an American. Buck up, Ernest!"

"I will! See what's coming!" Ernest pointed with a laugh to a tiny figure flying toward them along the trail.

"I came further than I dared to come!" screamed Felicia, "but you were so slow. And Charley's got a great big supper for you. Dicky shot some quail. And oh, I've missed you both so!" This last as she climbed up on the wheel and Ernest lifted her to the seat.

"Now, everything's all right," said Ernest.

Eight o'clock the next morning found Roger and Ernest finishing the living tent. By noon the kitchen tent, which really was a fly resting on four poles, was up, and the gasoline stove installed. It required the remainder of the day to knock together a rough table, two long benches and to prepare supper. And at eight o'clock that night both men were glad to go to bed.

The next day they began work on the well. The ultimate success of the plant rested on the premise that not too far below the surface of the valley there was water. Dick was pessimistic on the subject. He came down one evening to view progress when, after three days of toil, the boys had dug to the depth of about ten feet. The three men lighted their pipes and squatted in the sand by the well hole.

"I don't see why you don't establish your plant up in the range and use your power for mining," said Dick. "You'll never strike water here."

"Unless we can develop irrigation plants, the idea would be just a toy here," replied Roger. "There's bound to be water here, if we go deep enough. You tell me the lower levels of the mines up in the ranges on both sides are wet."

"Yes, they are," agreed Dick. "Why don't you fellows get an Indian to help you on this kind of work?"

"Where would we get one?" asked Ernest doubtfully.

"Oh, one is liable to mooch along the desert any time."

"Are they good workmen?" Roger's voice was absentminded as he scowled at the well.

"Some of them are wonders, but they are no good, unless you get a bunch of them under a chief. Then they're O. K."

Roger groaned. Ernest laughed. "Remember, Rog," he said, "what Austin told us about the unexpected problems in the building of a desert plant."

"You'll get plenty of those," agreed Dick. "Well, I'll be going back. If I see an Indian, I'll send him to you. In the meantime, remember that I'm your first purchaser of water, though my well's a regular gusher and will take care of more than the twenty-five acres I can get in this winter."

"Don't be so sure," Roger chuckled. "You may come and apologize to our well and ask for a drink yet."

Dick joined in the laugh at this suggestion and started homeward and the two Sun Planters went to bed.

As if the desert were determined to show them early in the game a fair sample of its lesser annoyances, when Ernest entered the cook tent the next morning he found it fairly wrecked. All the canned goods had been rolled off the shelves and the labels had disappeared. Flour, sugar, crackers were knocked about in the sand. Ernest roared for Roger, who came on a run.

"Looks as if a burro had been here from the tracks," exclaimed Roger.

"Two or three burros, I should judge," said Ernest. "Why, Rog, the beggars have eaten all the can labels! We'll never know whether we're opening tomatoes or beans. That flour's useless, and so's the sugar. Look at the coffee! I told you not to leave it in a sack. Oh, hang it all! What a country!"

"Let's see where the little devils went." Roger started out of the tent. The small hoof tracks were not difficult to find. Beyond the confines of the camp, the sand lay like untracked snow. When they picked up the trail, it led directly to the Coyote Range.

Ernest suddenly spoke cheerfully. "We'll have to go up and ask Charley for some breakfast. It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good!"

"We'll have to shave if we're going up there and that takes time," protested Roger.

"What are you going to eat? No sugar, no flour, no coffee!"

"Let's be quick about it, then," said Roger, hurrying into the living tent.

The Prebles laughed, but they were very sympathetic and blamed themselves for not warning the boys that stray burros and coyotes were a menace to any stores left unprotected.

"String some wire about six inches apart around your four poles and weave yucca stalks in and out. It makes a bully cool wall and keeps the varmints out," said Dick.

"My heavens, man! I haven't time to do raffia work," cried Roger, half laughing, half serious.

"I'll do it for you," said Felicia. "I can weave like I did in school. And if I do that, Charley won't make me have lessons with her every day."

"Oh, won't I!" returned Charley. "Roger, you get the wires up. That won't take but a few minutes and when old Fanny Squaw comes along in a week or so to sell ollas I'll send her down to cut and weave yucca for you. It can't cost you more than four bits. In the meantime, I can let you have some supplies to tide you over till some one goes to town."

"You see what it means to have brains in the family," said Dick.

"It's lucky some one in this bunch possesses them," laughed Roger. "By the way, how do there come to be stray burros in the mountains?"

"Miners die or desert them and they go wild," replied Dick. "I must try to catch and tame one for Felicia, after the alfalfa is in. Which reminds me that I must get on the job. I've got your barrel of water ready in the wagon, so come along."

The start was late that day and they had not gone down a foot when they struck rock. Another trip had to be made to the Prebles to procure some sticks of dynamite from Dick's little store at the neglected turquoise mine. And still no sign of water.

The evenings were lonely. At first the two went frequently to the ranch house, as Dick, sweating in his barren alfalfa fields, insisted that the house be called. But everybody was too tired for social effort. Dick was grading and plowing all day long and Charley, after her housework was finished, often drove for him in the field. The mid-day heat and the unwonted labor made Ernest and Roger glad to go to bed early. After they had eaten supper and cleared up the dishes, they would build a little fire in the sand outside the living tent and for an hour sit before it. Even on chilly evenings the fire had to be small, for the firewood was bought from Dick's none too great supply. He in turn bought from an Indian who cut mesquite far up in the ranges and toted it by burro pack to the corral.

Ernest, sitting thus, would pluck at his banjo and sing to the stars, finding ease thus for his homesick heart. Roger sat in silent contemplation, now of the fire, now of the stars. In spite of his impatience over petty details, he was happier than he had been since his undergraduate days. The marvelous low-lying stars, the little glow of fire on Ernest's pleasant face, the sweet tenor voice and the mellow plunking of the banjo were a wonderful background for his happy dreams. Roger still believed that a man's work could fill every desire of his mind and soul.

"I have so loved thee,"

(sang Ernest one evening),

"But cannot, cannot hold thee.
Fading like a dream the shadows fold thee,
Slowly thy perfect beauty