CHAPTER IXDUSK ON THE DESERT
LARDO the Cook and The Falcon’s fellow flunkies had left the cook tent for the day. Falcon the Flunky poured boiling water over the knives and forks and spoons in a gigantic dishpan and hurriedly dried them. Then he removed his apron and scoured the kitchen odors from his hands, combed his brown hair, and called it a day.
Outside he tied the flaps of the tent against erratic winds of the night, and, turning away, strolled off over the desert.
The red glow of the summer sun still hung over the mountains to the west, making a host of speared warriors of the pines that lived on the ridges and lighting the desert. Between hummocks of sand blown up about greasewood bushes Falcon the Flunky wound his way, with lizards that had lingered for the last rays of sunlight scampering to cover before his feet.
He wandered north, smoking a cigarette, his hands locked behind him, deeply brooding. To the west a black speck took form in contrast with the sable dusk colors of the desert. The Falcon saw it; his pulse quickened. At the same timehe frowned and sighed as if all were not well with his soul.
On toward him moved the black speck, growing larger as it came. He thought of a fly fallen in Lardo’s big bowl of flapjack batter, swimming desperately toward solid footing. Lardo’s long white forefinger might scoop up the bedraggled insect and hurl it with a battery spat against the tent wall. But to think of Lardo the Cook as fate or destiny or any other of the forces that control nature brought a smile to the flunky’s lips. But the desert was big and flat and awe-inspiring, and the human speck moving over its vast expanse seemed as helpless and insignificant as the ill-fated fly.
Presently Falcon the Flunky waved his hat. Before long Manzanita Canby reined in the blowing pinto mare beside him and dismounted.
“Hello!” she greeted, her face lighted with color, her hazel eyes half hidden by long lashes.
Falcon the Flunky silently took the mare’s reins, and she trailed the pair as they walked on into the north.
“Doesn’t the desert seem big to-night,” remarked the girl. “When the sun goes down it seems to expand, and then as darkness comes on it contracts more and more, till finally you’re all shut in.”
“Yes,” he said simply; and for a time they walked on silently.
“Why are you so still this evening?” asked Manzanita. “Is there something the matter?”
Falcon the Flunky cleared his throat. “I’ve been thinking,” he told her, “that we oughtn’t to meet like this, Manzanita.”
“Why?”
“For one thing, your father wouldn’t approve. And back there at camp they can’t help knowing about it.”
“Well? I’m of age. I can do as I choose. If I want to be with you, it’s nobody’s business, is it?”
“That’s the old, old, commonplace defense,” he said. “But they’re wondering and chuckling in their sleeves back there in camp. And that won’t do where you’re concerned. They can’t understand, of course. If you have a friend in camp, he should be Hunter Mangan or the walking boss, or perhaps one of the bookkeepers—not one of the stiffs, a flunky.”
“Oh, you know you’re not a flunky, so far as that goes! And so does every one, I guess.”
“Perhaps. But that doesn’t help matters. It’s a rather difficult subject for a man to talk upon. You’re used to men—accustomed to being comradely with them. So you don’t exactly see the difference, now that the camps have come. And to save my soul I can’t exactly explain it myself. Somehow or other, I should think it right and proper foryou to be friendly and democratic with your cowmen, but it’s different with the stiffs. And I can’t tell you why or how, but I feel it.”
“What old hens all men are!” and Manzanita sighed. “Pa Squawtooth and Hunt Mangan, and now even you! Nobody ever takes the time to insult me. No man ever has insulted me.”
“Not to your face, perhaps,” said The Falcon significantly.
“Well, if you don’t want me to come and walk with you——” Manzanita’s chin was a trifle elevated.
“Can’t I go to the ranch sometimes of evenings instead?”
For quite a time she withheld her reply.
“I—I hardly think so,” she told him finally.
“Your father wouldn’t approve, of course.”
“I—I’m afraid that’s it.”
“All the more reason, then, why we should not meet out here on the desert. Listen: I’m going to ask you what may seem to be an unfair question—from a man. Why did you make friends with me so readily in the cook tent the first day you came to the camp?”
“Perhaps I liked you,” she suggested in a low tone.
“No, you didn’t. You knew nothing about me then. I was no more to you than Lardo the Cook or Baldy or Rambo the Bouncer.”
“Does a person have to know all about another before she can like his looks—and—and other things about him? I’m rather an instinctive person.”
“Yes, but you don’t trust to instinct altogether. I think you had a reason for offering me friendship.”
“Perhaps I had—then,” she admitted after a little. “But it’s been different since. It was silly, I suppose—stupid. But I liked you almost at once; and when I like a person I’m not slow to show it.”
“I believe you,” he said. “Otherwise I’d not be here with you now. But tell me what was the beginning of it all.”
Another pause. Then: “I’d rather not—just yet.”
“All right. I’ll not press you for an answer. But I imagine it’s hardly necessary. I think I know.”
“But you can’t!”
“Oh, yes, I can. I think I almost knew even that first day. But now about seeing you in the future. I want to, of course, and I think you want me to. I believe I’ll walk over to the ranch to-morrow evening and call on you. Would there be a great upheaval?”
“I’m afraid there would be—afterward. You see, Pa Squawtooth is pretty much of a snob. I have to admit it. He’s been getting pretty welloff the last few years; and now this railroad will make him rich, he thinks. For my part, I have no desire to be wealthy—but that has nothing to do with the situation. Pa’s only a money snob, though. He’s democratic enough other ways, and has always encouraged me to be the same. That is, up until lately. Since I’ve grown up I notice he doesn’t approve of many of the things I do. We have dances around here sometimes. I used always to go with Ed Chazzy or ‘Lucky’ Gilfoyle or Splicer Kurtz, or some other desert rat, and he’d say nothing. But now he takes me himself, or tags along; and if I’m with any particular vaquero two minutes longer than I’m with any of the others he nearly strokes his whispers out. In fact, he’s told me outright that, since he’s becoming rich, I mustn’t be too free with the cow-punchers and all that. Now, if ‘Limpy’ Pardoe, for instance, were to strike it rich in a gold claim that he does assessment work on every year, why, I’ll bet pa would let me dance with him. So you see what kind of a snob he is—just a money snob, not a folks snob. And it’s so new I haven’t got used to it. It came on him all of a sudden when beef sold so high, and the railroad began to boom up. He’ll get over it. I hope so, anyway. So you see—well, I don’t know whether he’d like you or not. That is, admit he liked you. And he’d probably ask me not to invite you to come again. ThenI’d have to meet you like this, if I saw you at all, while now I just do it.”
“Suppose we try it, anyway,” he suggested. “Maybe he’ll like me despite himself. Do I sound egotistical—too confident? But maybe we can break him of this newly formed habit.”
“I don’t know,” she said skeptically. “He and I had a long talk last night. He came home and found me irrigating the alfalfa. You see, I’d begun to realize what a useless life I’ve been living. I think I grew up in a day when I saw Wing o’ the Crow sticking pigs and driving a team, then hurrying to camp to get a meal for the stiffs. So I decided to remodel my life. I went home, and as there was nothing I could do in the house, I put on rubber boots and went to irrigating. I had tried to help Wing-o, but I proved a failure at sticking pigs. I was hopeless for a time, then suddenly I realized that I was trying to do something out of my sphere, and that that was the trouble. So I went home and began in my own sphere to make amends. And then pa took me to the house; it was then that we had our talk.”
“And do you wish to tell me about it?”
“Well, he said irrigating wasn’t my sphere, either. He wants me to practice more on the piano and study more and do housework—if I must work—and not run around so much, and—and——”
“Yes?”
“Well, grow up a little more, he said—and think about getting married and settling down.”
“Good advice, I should say.”
“And he said I ought to take more interest in the men he brings to the ranch from Los Angeles sometimes, and in—in Hunter Mangan.”
“Oh!”
“Mangan has lots of money, pa says; and he’s not so terribly old—twenty-nine. Of course, you know he comes over to Squawtooth often. Pa invites him. And, by the way, he’s to be there for supper to-morrow night. So you wouldn’t want to come then.”
“Wouldn’t I? I’ll come if you invite me.”
“I would, of course—you know. But I’m afraid it might spoil everything.”
“I’ll risk it. Suppose I go and try to make your father like me, even though I’m only a flunky.”
“If you want to try it——”
“Do you invite me?”
“Certainly. But—but——”
“It’s settled then. We’ll see what can be done to cure your father of this sudden complaint. Now let’s talk of something else.”
While these two walked slowly over the soft carpet of sand Mr. Halfaman Daisy was repairing to the camp of Jeddo the Crow, swinging along with an exalted stride. As he strode along helifted his voice in song, or, rather, dropped it out of one corner of his mouth, to convince himself that his head was still unbowed. And thus he sang the ninety-seventh and the hundred-and-sixth stanzas of his favorite lay:
“Chi to the Kerry Woman’s out in SacI rides the rods—ain’t a-comin’ back.She slips me a dollar and I buys a stack,And I holds four aces on a lumberjack—For his pay day—for me ba-bay!For the pay day of that lumberjack!“Starts for Dallas on the M. K. and T.,In a Memphis town I caught the ole I. C.Tanked up in Chi on the M. and Saint P.,And a-sobered up in Frisco on the Santa Fee—Without me pay day—for me ba-bay!Without me pay day from the M. K. and T!”
“Chi to the Kerry Woman’s out in SacI rides the rods—ain’t a-comin’ back.She slips me a dollar and I buys a stack,And I holds four aces on a lumberjack—For his pay day—for me ba-bay!For the pay day of that lumberjack!“Starts for Dallas on the M. K. and T.,In a Memphis town I caught the ole I. C.Tanked up in Chi on the M. and Saint P.,And a-sobered up in Frisco on the Santa Fee—Without me pay day—for me ba-bay!Without me pay day from the M. K. and T!”
“Chi to the Kerry Woman’s out in SacI rides the rods—ain’t a-comin’ back.She slips me a dollar and I buys a stack,And I holds four aces on a lumberjack—For his pay day—for me ba-bay!For the pay day of that lumberjack!
“Chi to the Kerry Woman’s out in Sac
I rides the rods—ain’t a-comin’ back.
She slips me a dollar and I buys a stack,
And I holds four aces on a lumberjack—
For his pay day—for me ba-bay!
For the pay day of that lumberjack!
“Starts for Dallas on the M. K. and T.,In a Memphis town I caught the ole I. C.Tanked up in Chi on the M. and Saint P.,And a-sobered up in Frisco on the Santa Fee—Without me pay day—for me ba-bay!Without me pay day from the M. K. and T!”
“Starts for Dallas on the M. K. and T.,
In a Memphis town I caught the ole I. C.
Tanked up in Chi on the M. and Saint P.,
And a-sobered up in Frisco on the Santa Fee—
Without me pay day—for me ba-bay!
Without me pay day from the M. K. and T!”
As he drew near to the blinking lights of Jeddo’s camp his song trailed off; and when he reached the front of the cook tent he was silent altogether.
The cook tent was dark, and its flaps tied together inhospitably, proving that its presiding angel had thriftily finished her work for the day. Mr. Daisy walked around it, stumbled over a guy rope, righted himself and the new pink tie which he fondly imagined went well with his sandy kinks, and continued his approach toward the van in the rear.
Mr. Daisy cleared his throat and knocked on the oaken doubletrees. Achieving nothing beyond a faint, unresounding tattoo and aching knuckle bones, he repeated the signal on the wagon box.
“Well? Who’s there?” came from within.
“Hello, Wing-o! It’s me. How’s each trivial detail this large evening?”
“The can’s three quarters full. You filled ’er this mornin’, you remember.”
“I did, at that I’d forgotten. I’m afoot now, though, Wing-o.”
“Keep that way.”
“You ain’t gone to bed?”
“How d’ye know I ain’t?”
Mr. Daisy pondered over this. “I don’t,” he finally confessed. “But lissen here, Wing-o: I got somethin’ to tell you.”
“Never saw you when you didn’t have somethin’ to tell somebody.”
“Ha-ha! You sure got on yer kid gloves to-night, sw-sweetheart.”
“I don’t need ’em to handle the likes o’ you. Peddle that ‘sw-sweetheart’ stuff where its welcome.”
“Aw, say now! I was afraid you wasn’t gonta think o’ that. Lissen, deary—honest I got somethin’ to tell you.”
“I can’t believe it!”
“Somethin’ big, too. It’ll make yer eyes stick out.”
“It would if I was to swallow it, I guess. But you never saw me have to push ’em in with a pick handle after listenin’ to you, did you?”
“Ain’t you the cuttin’ kid, though! But honest, pettie—this here’s great. Honest!”
“Pettie! Say, how’d you get that way?”
“Are you gonta ask me to climb up and set on the seat and talk to you?”
“Nobody ever had to ask you to talk to ’em. Trouble is to get you to break it off so’s a body c’n get a mite o’ sleep now an’ then. But go on—say what you got to say. I reckon it’s cruelty to animals to stop you.”
“Did you say climb up, Wing-o?”
“If I did I was talkin’ in my sleep. I been asleep for ten minutes. You always put me to sleep. Maybe it was me snorin’ you heard.”
“Aw, now le’s cut out the funny stuff! I’m comin’ up there. Shall I?”
“I thought you said you was comin’.”
“I don’t want to unless you want me to.”
“It’s a cinch you don’t want to, then!”
“H’m-m!” muttered the cornered Mr. Daisy. “Well, I’m comin’ up, anyway,” he added, and climbed on the wagon tongue.
“Shall I?”
“Shall you what?”
“Come on up? I’m standin’ on the tongue.”
“Not your own. I’d get a little rest if you was.”
“H’m-m!” Halfaman Daisy raised himself to his full height, though not in outraged dignity, and peered in over the seat. “Here I am,” he announced in doubtful triumph.
In one corner of the van was a cot, just large enough for the tired little body that slept on it night after night. About the walls hung the meager wardrobe of the queen of the van. There was a tiny homemade table with writing materials, a few books, and a kerosene lamp on it. Before it, in a camp chair, sat the girl of Mr. Daisy’s heart.
Her black hair was down and in a state of picturesque disorder. Someway, the more tumbled her hair, the more fascinating to mankind was the daughter of the one-armed Jeddo. She wore a straight, formless lightweight dress of brown and white plaid—a homely thing on any other woman.
“Heavens, you’re pretty!” Halfaman Daisy said fervently. “You start the joy bells ringin’ in me heart. What’re you doin’?”
“Studyin’.” The tones were more soothing. Mr. Daisy had said much in those last few words.
“’Rithmetic?”
“Yep—an’ hist’ry.”
“How much is two an’ a quarter times thirty?”
She figured with a pencil. “Sixty-seven-fifty,” she reported.
“Less two-fifty fer a shirt and a dollar fer tobacco, an’ fifty cents fer this here tie I’m wearin’?”
After a pause: “Sixty-three dollars and fifty cents.”
“That’s what’s right here in me jeans, kiddo. The way I’m hoardin’ it up these days is what’s makin’ hard times. I’m gonta set on the seat, Wing-o.”
As she did not dispute this he clambered to the seat and sat facing her, his legs draped over the low back uncomfortably. He took from his pocket the stub of a pencil and abstractedly wrote on the seat back between his long legs: “And the sons also of Aaron; Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar.”
“Don’t begat all over that there seat!” warned the girl. “Can’t you think of anything but ‘The sons also of Aaron?’ You talk it an’ dream it an’ write it everywhere you go. You’re a begatto-maniac, Jack!”
Mr. Daisy wet the rubber eraser and tried to obliterate the words. “Bring your chair over here by me,” he suggested.
“I’m doin’ well enough right here, thank you. Why don’t you get ye a rubber stamp with that Aaron business on it, an’ have it and a pad handy in your pocket?”
“Huh! But I got somethin’ to tell you.”
“I’ll begin to b’lieve that pretty soon. Or you might get you one o’ these little typewriters theycarry in a case. ’Twouldn’t be heavy. You could keep it on yer tank wagon and begat all the way to Squawtooth an’ back.”
“Huh! Come on over closter. I oughtn’t to butt in there, an’ I gotta talk low. This here’s an important secret.”
She shrugged, rose, and carried her camp chair nearer to the wagon seat, setting it down so that she would be safely out of the reach of this obstinate male.
“They c’n hear me all over camp. This here’s sumpin just between you an’ me.”
With a pout Wing o’ the Crow rose again and moved the chair nearer. But as she started to sit down Halfaman reached out and moved it nearer still, so that she alighted on the bare edge of it and was saved from toppling off by his ready hand. Apparently she considered the near catastrophe as due to her own awkwardness, for she said nothing to show that she thought her lover responsible.
“Well, shoot!” she encouraged, demurely folding her hands in her lap.
Mr. Daisy leaned so that his lips were close to her little ear and shot.
“Kid, I’m crazy about you!” was the ammunition that he used.
“Aw, bunk! Is that all ye got to tell me?”
She made as if to rise immediately, but Halfamangrasped the chair, and of course she could not rise and leave the chair to withstand these indignities alone.
“Don’t you believe me? You know you do! Why’m I here?—tell me that. Why’d I ramble West?—tell me that!”
“Maybe Lil o’ the Lobbies could.”
“Aw, now, sweetheart, that ain’t fair! You know that’s all past. Listen: I got somethin’ to tell you.”
“Yeah? Where’ve I heard that before?”
“Now listen. You think I’m kiddin’ you. How ’bout that little Squawtooth girl?”
“Oh, it’s her now, is it? You big stiff—she wouldn’t use you for a doormat!”
“Maybe not; maybe not. Just the same, you’re all wrong again. She likes you. She slipped it to me that she did, to-day when I was at the ranch. Did she ever say anything to you ’bout me?”
“Her! About you! Say, this is good! Why, say, Halfaman—she can’t talk about anything else.”
Halfaman removed his broken-visored cap and scratched his head. “You’re kiddn’ me again,” he decided. “But did she?”
“You poor fish, she don’t know you’re on earth!”
“Maybe not; maybe not. Just the same, there’s one stiff she’s keen enough about. And I thought maybe she said sumpin about him—see? If shedid, she mighta mentioned me. ’Cause this bird and me’s pals. They call um Falcon the Flunky. How ’bout it?”
“She said somethin’ about a stiff with a moniker like that first time I met her,” admitted Wing o’ the Crow, her curiosity aroused.
“What’d she say, apple blossoms?”
“Say, for Heaven’s sake. Apple blossoms! You’re kinda nutty, ain’t you? She just said he was at Mangan-Hatton’s.”
“Uh-huh—he’s s’posed to be a flunky there. Is, fer that matter. But everybody don’t know what I know about um. Him an’ me’s pals, and he slipped me the dope about umself last night. I’ll bet you’d open yer eyes if you savvied what I do, Wing-o. An’ lissen—you don’t wanta ferget about that guy. He’s strong for me, and I’ll bet if you knew what I do you wouldn’t be so placid, kinda.”
“You talk like a Hamburger sandwich! I heard you say you had somethin’ to tell me.”
“Ain’t I tellin’ you? But I can tell you more: This little Canby girl is nuts about Falcon the Flunky. First day she was in camp she was there to see Mangan. An’ Mangan he was showin’ her ’round—see—and when he takes ’er to the cook shack she sees Falcon the Flunky, and from then on she gives Mangan the begone sir. Lissen: Every night Falcon the Flunky beats it out over the desert,and pretty soon here she comes to meet um from the ranch. Everybody’s onto it—even Mangan.”
“I don’t believe it!”
“It’s the truth, so help me! But lissen: There’s a joker. If you knew this Falcon the Flunky an’ what I do about um you’d savvy. Nobody knows it but me—see?”
“I’ll bet he’s crooked. Well?”
“Well, I can’t tell you much, ’cause he tells me not to spill it. But Falcon the Flunky’s an educated guy, and—and he’s there, that’s all. Believe me, kiddo, that guy’s a go-getter!”
“You talk like a man up a tree! I thought ye had somethin’ to tell me. Just trying to horn in as usual?”
“There’s lots to tell, but I dassent spill it. No foolin’! And lissen: It’s got lots to do with you an’ me, kiddo.”
“I don’t know where I come in.”
“Why, this plug’s me pal—see? An’ you’re me little gypo queen that I rambled acrost four States to see again.”
“Is that so?”
“Sure. An’ one o’ these days you’ll say: ‘Gee! I never savvied that guy was the reg’lar feller he is. Say, I was rubber from the chin up when I slipped that Jasper them unkind words!’ No foolin’! You wait an’ see! Later on everything’llbe jake, and there’ll be some eye openin’ in this shanty camp. No foolin’! Gettin’ sleepy, honey?”
“Oh, no—not a-tall.”
“I guess you are. Well, I’ll beat it. Any chance fer a little kiss? Then I’ll go.”
“Not the slightest in the world.”
Mr. Daisy sighed as does one who has quested long in vain, and turned on the seat.
“Well, good night,” he said as he climbed to the ground. “The day’s comin’, though—an’ she ain’t far off—when you’ll say: ‘Sucker that I was! I coulda had that fella Daisy fer just sayin’ a word. But I wasted me opportunity. Now look at um! And it’s too late—too late!’”
“Is that all?” asked Wing o’ the Crow.
“All for the present.”
“Good night!”