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

fades away,
Good-by, sweet day! Good-by, sweet day!"

There was the soft thud of a footstep in the sand and an Indian appeared in the soft glow of the fire. Ernest broke off his song, abruptly. The newcomer was of indeterminate age, with black hair falling nearly to his waist over a bright red flannel shirt. He wore black trousers girdled at the waist by a broad twist of blue silk. His feet were bare.

"How!" he said, nodding and smiling. "I hear music way out. Come see maybe white medicine man."

"Good evening," returned Ernest. "Sit down by the fire."

"How'd you like a job?" asked Roger. "Did Mr. Preble send you?"

"No job!" The Indian shook his head. "Sick!"

"Is that so?" Roger's voice was sympathetic. "My friend's a good medicine man. Where are you sick?"

"In my tooth!" The visitor opened a capacious mouth, displaying a badly ulcerated gum.

"That's easy! Get the peroxide bottle and a teaspoon, Ern. We'll fix him up, poor duck. What's your name, old man?"

"Qui-tha," replied the Indian.

"All right, Qui-tha. Now you take a teaspoonful of this and hold it in the front of your mouth, see!"

Qui-tha looked closely into the faces of the two men, then with touching docility he did as Roger bade him. In a moment he was blowing foam violently into the fire. The two men looked at each other a little aghast.

"You should have held it in your mouth, Qui-tha!" cried Ernest.

The Indian reached for the teaspoon and poured himself another dose. This he held in his mouth for a moment, gazing at his physicians solemnly the while. Then he again blew foam into the fire.

"Heap strong medicine," he said. "Fine, strong medicine. Never saw such strong medicine. You good medicine men. Qui-tha stay work for you. You let keep bottle."

"Sure," replied Ernest, "only be very careful of it. Don't use it up too fast."

Qui-tha nodded. "You give blanket. Qui-tha sleep here by fire."

And sleep he did, rolled up even as to his head, his feet to the dying embers, while his hosts, undressing by candle light, grinned at each other in silent amusement. When Dick came down with the triweekly barrel of water he was astonished to see Qui-tha slowly weaving yucca stalks into the wire that now bound the poles of the cook tent.

"For heaven's sake, Qui-tha, you old bum, you've always refused to work for me!" he shouted.

The Indian grinned, then explained very seriously. "These white men heap smart. Make strong medicine. Qui-tha work one week, pay white medicine men."

Ernest called Dick into the living tent and made him an explanation while Qui-tha looked inquiringly at Roger at the sound of Dick's laughter.

"Do, for the love of all of us, keep feeding him peroxide until he's cajoled into giving me a hand in the field. Won't Charley be amused by this?"

But Qui-tha was not to be cajoled. He prolonged his promised week to two, but would serve only his two medicine men. He was a most erratic workman, but what he did, he did exceedingly well. The cook tent with its woven sides of faded green was a structure of real beauty. Qui-tha consumed a week in the doing of this job, and ate all of three dozen cans of tomatoes, for which he displayed what Ernest called an abandoned passion. After he had finished with the cook tent, he sat for a day at the edge of the well, watching the two white men at their back breaking toil, then he silently undertook to man the bucket hoist for them. At frequent intervals he would refuse to hoist for a time and would urge Roger and Ernest to rest with him.

"Why work all time, uh? Wind no blow all time. Sun no shine all time. You no dig all time, uh? Sit with Qui-tha and smoke and think."

"He's got a lot of horse sense, Roger, after all, hasn't he?" said Ernest one day after the Indian had laughed at them for their mad driving at the waterless well.

Roger straightened his tired back. "Fine, for an Indian! I like to hear him laugh. On things that don't demand our white sophistication, do you notice what a good sense of humor he has?"

"By Jove, I wish he'd go up and help the Prebles. I think it's a fright for Charley to be working in the fields," exclaimed Ernest.

Roger nodded. "Guess I'll try him on that angle." He clambered out of the well and squatted by Qui-tha on the ever-increasing pile of sand and stone by the well edge.

"Do you see that white girl up there in the field, driving the horse?" pointing over the lifting desert to the distant figure, difficult to see now as the sun sank.

"Yes," replied the Indian.

"Won't you go up and help so the girl can go back to the house and do a woman's work?"

The Indian puffed thoughtfully at his cigarette. "Why?" he asked, finally.

"Because they need help. They'll pay you."

"Would you go help Indian squaw so she no have do hard work?" queried the Indian.

Roger scratched his head.

"Charley Preble, she heap strong, like a man. Work no hurt her. No hurt Injun squaw. Let 'em work."

Roger had nothing more to say. But the fact that Charley worked so hard bothered both men, though Ernest, with his unconsciously German attitude toward women, was much less troubled about the matter than Roger. Roger, for all his neglect of the gentler sex for the past few years, had that attitude toward women, half of tenderness, half of good fellowship, that is characteristic of the best American men. And although he laughed at Ernest's sentimental mooning about Charley, he really was more concerned over the girl's hard life than was his friend.

She was still to him Felicia, grown up, and Felicia was still the little Charley Preble of the swimming pool. It was a confusion of personalities that might easily have grown into romance had not Roger been too completely and honestly preoccupied with his work.

The next afternoon the hoist broke and leaving Ernest and Qui-tha to patch it up, Roger plodded up to the alfalfa field.

The valley sloped very gradually from the mountains. Dick was working with a scraper, carefully throwing line after line of the shallowest possible terraces at right angles to the valley's slope. The irrigating ditch which was to carry the water that was to flow gently over the terraces was already finished.

Charley, who had been driving the horses while Dick handled the scraper, sat on a heap of stones beside the fence. She was very brown, yet in spite of her rough work she looked well. Her khaki blouse, her short skirt and high laced boots were smart and her broad soft hat, though covered with dust, was picturesque and becoming. Roger dropped on the rocks beside her, with a sigh.

"Tired?" asked Charley. "Aren't you off duty early?"

"I came up to labor with you," replied Roger, his blue eyes very clear in his tanned face. "You're working too hard."

"What would you have me do? Sit on the front porch and watch Dicky work? That's not my idea of a pioneer's mate."

"But can you stand it?" asked Roger.

"It's no harder than golf and tennis and a swim all in one day. I've done that many a time. And I'm as eager as Dick is to reclaim this desert. I'm almost if not quite as interested in this as you are in your work."

"I didn't mean to intrude or criticize," began Roger.

"You didn't do either. I appreciate your interest, and I'm just trying to make you see that the pioneer women aren't all dead yet. Some day there'll be pepper trees and peach trees along that ditch, and for miles and miles round here, the green of alfalfa."

"If you get enough water," murmured Roger.

"If we get enough water," agreed Charley.

They both paused and looked from Dick, sweating behind the horses, to the unending yellow of the desert against which Dick and the horses looked like pygmies. Finally Charley said with a sudden chuckle,

"Roger, one thing I do remember is your spitfire rages—very vaguely, but they must have been rather devastating to have made an impression on my baby mind."

Roger's smile was a little twisted. "Nice thing to remember of me. Where is your tact, woman!"

"Mercy! You aren't sensitive about it after all these years? I thought it funny that your baby temper and the pool were all I could rake up out of our past."

"Where is Felicia?" asked Roger, abruptly.

"She went up to the spring to fill my little canteen with water."

"Thank heaven," said Roger, "that she can't rake up my past. I'm going to stroll up to meet her." And he doffed his hat and was off, feeling that somehow he had not made great headway.