Wanderer of the Wasteland
Zane Grey (1923)
Country of origin: USA
Available texts by the same author here
Chapter 13
When Adam awoke he saw that Dismukes had breakfast steaming on the fire."I'm on my way to-day," announced the prospector. "What'll you do?"
"Well, I'll hang around Tecopah as long as I can stand it," replied Adam.
"Humph! That won't be long, unless you got in mind somethin' like you did at the Donner Placers, down in the Providence Mountains."
"Friend, what do you know about that?" queried Adam.
"Nothin'. I only heard about it. Wansfell, do you pan any gold?"
"Sometimes, when I happen to run across it," replied Adam, "but that isn't often."
"Do you work?"
"Yes, I've worked a good deal, taking it all together. In the mines, on the river at Needles, driving mule teams and guiding wagon trains. Never got paid much, though."
"How do you live?" asked Dismukes, evidently curious.
"Oh, I fare well enough to keep flesh on my bones."
"You've got flesh--or I reckon it's muscle. Wansfell, you're the best-built man I ever saw on the desert. Most men dry up an' blow away. Will you let me give you--lend you some money?"
"Money! So that's why you're so curious?" responded Adam. "Thanks, my friend. I don't need money. I had some, you know, when you ran across me down in the Chocolates. I used about a thousand dollars while I lived with the Coahuila Indians. And I've got nine thousand left."
"Say, you don't pack all that money along with you?"
"Yes. Where else would I keep it."
"Wansfell, some of these robbers will murder you."
"Not if I see them first. My friend, don't be concerned. Surely, I don't look sick."
"Humph! Well, just the same, now that you're headin' up into this country, I advise you to be careful. Don't let anybody see you with money. I've been held up an' robbed three times."
"Didn't you make a fight for your gold?"
"No chance. I was waylaid--had to throw up my hands...They tell me you are ready with a gun, Wansfell?"
"Dismukes, you seem to have heard much about me."
"But you didn't throw a gun on Baldy McKue," said Dismukes, with a dark flare from his rolling eyes.
"No--I did not." replied Adam.
"You killed McKue with your bare hands," flashed Dismukes. A red stain appeared to come up under his leathery skin. "Wansfell, will you tell me about that?"
"I'd rather not, Dismukes. There are some things I forget."
"Well, it meant a good deal to me," replied Dismukes. "McKue did me dirt. He jumped claims of mine down here near Soda Sink. An' he threatened to kill me--swore the claims were his--drove me off. I met him in Riverside, an' there he threatened me with arrest. He was a robber an' a murderer. I believe he ambushed prospectors. McKue was like most men who stick to the desert--he went down to the level of the beast. I hated him. This stranger who told me--he swore there wasn't an uncracked bone left in McKue's body. Wansfell, if you did that to McKue you've squared accounts. Is it true?"
"Yes."
Dismukes rubbed his huge hands together and his ox eyes rolled and dilated. A fierce and savage grimness distorted his hard face for an instant and passed away.
"What 'd you kill him for?"
"Because he'd have killed me."
"Didn't you look him up on purpose to kill him?"
"No. A year before that time I went to Goffs. Some one took me into an old tent where a woman lay dying. I could do little for her. She denounced McKue; she blamed him that she lay there, about to die. She did die and I buried her. Then I kept an eye open for McKue."
"I wondered--I wondered," said Dismukes. "It struck me deep. Lord knows fights are common out here. An' death--why, on the desert every way you turn you see death. It's the life of the desert. But the way this was told me struck me deep. It was what I'd like to have done myself. Wansfell, think of the wonderful meetin's of men on the desert--an', aye, meetin' of men with women, too! They happen different out here. Think of the first time we met! An' this time! Wansfell, we'll meet again. It's written in those trails of sand out there, wanderin' to an' fro across the desert."
"Dismukes, the desert is vast. Sometimes you will not meet a man in months of travel--and not in years will you meet a woman. But when you do meet them life seems intensified. The desert magnifies."
"Wansfell, I want you to go across into Death Valley," declared Dismukes, with the deep boom in his voice. "That woman in the shack! Her eyes haunt me. Somethin' terrible wrong! That man who keeps her there--if he's not crazy, he's worse than a gorilla. For a gorilla kills a woman quick. Wansfell, I'd give a lot to see you handle this man like you handled McKue!"
"Quien sabe, as you say?" replied Adam. "Draw that map of your trails in Death Valley. I've got a little book here, and a pencil."
It was singular to see the gold digger labour with his great, stumpy, calloused fingers. He took long to draw a few lines, and make a few marks, and write a few names in the little book. But when he came to talk of distance and direction, of trails and springs, of flat valley and mountain range--then how swift and fluent he was! All that country lay clearly in his mind, as if he were a great desert condor gazing down from the heights upon the wasteland which was his home.
"Now, I'll be goin' down into the Funerals soon," concluded Dismukes. "You see here's Furnace Creek where it runs into Death Valley. You'll cross here an' come up Furnace Creek till you strike the yellow clay hills on the right. It's a hell of a jumble of hills--absolutely bare. I think there's gold. You'll find me somewhere."
It seemed settled then that Adam and Dismukes were to meet in some vague place at some vague time. The desert had no limitations. Time, distance, and place were thought of in relation to their adaptation to desert men.
"Well, it's gettin' late," said Dismukes, looking up at the white flare of sun. "I'll pack an' go on my way."
While Dismukes strode out to drive in his burros Adam did the camp chores. In a short time his companion appeared with the burros trotting ahead of him. And the sight reminded Adam of the difference between prospectors. Dismukes was not slow, easy, careless, thoughtless. He had not suffered the strange deterioration so common to his class. He did not belong to the type who tracked his burros all day so that he might get started manana. Adam helped him pack.
"Wansfell, may we meet again," said Dismukes, as they shook hands.
"All trails cross on the desert. I hope you strike it rich."
"Some day--some day. Goodbye," returned Dismukes, and with vigorous slaps he started the burros.
Adam was left to his own devices. After Dismukes passed out of sight in the universal grey of the benches Adam spent a long while watching a lizard on a stone. It was a chuckwalla, a long, slim, greenish-bronze reptile, covered with wonderful spots of vivid colour, and with eyes like jewels. Adam spent much time watching the living things of the desert, or listening to the silence. He had discovered that watching anything brought its reward--sometimes in a strange action or a phenomenon of nature or a new thought.
Later he walked down to the creek bottom, where the smelter was in operation. Labourers were at a premium there, and he was offered work. He said he would consider it. But unless there turned out to be some definite object to keep him in Tecopah, Adam would not have bartered his freedom to the dust-clouded mill for all the gold it mined. These clanging mills and hot shafts and dark holes oppressed him.