holding up hands"HE WAS HOLDING OUT BOTH FOREFINGERS"
He laughed and jabbered excitedly, with a broad grin on his face. Finally he succeeded in making Mrs. Lee understand that the cutting of both forefingers at the same moment was the sign that there was some extraordinary good fortune in store for him. It was the luckiest thing that could have befallen him, and he declared that he must go at once to the Chinese lottery in Phœnix.
"If I toucha ticket with these," he cried, holding up his bleeding fingers, "I geta heap much money; fo', five double times so much as I puta in. I be back fo' geta breakfus'," he called, suddenly darting away. Before Mrs. Lee could protest, he was on his wheel, tearing across the desert trail toward Phœnix like some uncanny wild thing of the night.
"The superstitious little heathen!" exclaimed Mrs. Lee. "If he should win, I may never lay eyes on him again. He's not the first good cook that I've lost in that way. I have found that, if one once gets the gambling fever, I may as well begin to look immediately for a new one."
"Chris says that he has seen men lose ten thousand dollars at a time," broke in Holland, his eyes big with interest. "Prospectors used to come in from the mines with their gold-dust and nuggets, and they'd spread down a blanket right on the street corner and play sometimes till they'd lose everything they had."
"It's the curse of the West," sighed Mrs. Lee. "I could tell some pitiful tales of the young men and boys I have known, who came out here for their health, got infatuated with the different games of chance, and lost everything. One man I knew was such a nervous wreck from the shock of finding himself a pauper as well as an invalid that he lost his mind and committed suicide. Another had to be taken care of in his last days and be buried by a charitable society, and another had to write to his sister that he was penniless. She sewed for a living, and she sewed then to support him, till she worked herself ill and died before he did. He spent his last days in the almshouse."
"We should have showed Jo Alaka's eyes, and told him the Indian legend," said Mr. Ellestad,pointing up to the stars. "Do you see those two bright ones just over Camelback Mountain? Look up in a straight line from the head, and you will see two stars unusually brilliant and twinkling. Those are the eyes of the god Alaka. He lost them in gambling. An old settler told me the story. He got it from an Indian, and, as I read something like it in a Chicago paper this winter, I think we may be justified in believing it. At least it is as plausible as the old myths the ancients told of the stars,—Cassiopeia's chair, for instance, and Leo's sickle."
"Tell it," begged Lloyd. "I'd rathah heah them than those blood and thundah Apache stories. I'll not be able to close my eyes to-night."
Every voice in the circle joined in the chorus of assents that went up, except Phil's, and no one noticed his silence but Lloyd.
It seemed to her that he had looked uncomfortable ever since Mrs. Lee had spoken so feelingly of the curse of the West; but she told herself that it must be just her imagination,—that it was the flickering shadows of the camp-fire that gave his face its peculiar expression. He moved back into the darkness against the rock, with his hat over his eyes, as Mr. Ellestad began the story:
"Once there was a young god named Alaka sent by the Great Spirit to live awhile among the cliff-dwellers of the Southwest. Now in that country there is a fever that lays hold of the children of the sun. It comes you know not how, and you cannot stop it. And this fever that runs hot in the veins of men began to course through the blood of Alaka, a fierce fever to gamble.
"At first, when men challenged him to pit his skill against theirs, he refused, knowing that the Great Spirit had forbidden it; but they jeered him, saying: 'Ah, ha! He is afraid that he will lose. This can be no god, or he would not fear us.' So when they had made a mock of him until he could no longer endure it, he cried: 'Come! I will show you that I am a god! that I fear nothing!'
"Forgetting all that the Great Spirit had enjoined upon him, he plunged madly into the game. Now the most precious thing known to that people is the turquoise, for it is the stone that stole its colour from the sky. Around the neck of the young god hung a string of these turquoises, and one by one he lost them, till the morning found him with only an empty string in his hand.
"Still the fever was upon him, and he could not assuage it, so he put up his shells from the GreatWater in the west. These people had heard of a great water many days' journey toward the setting sun, but to the dwellers in the Land of Thirst it seemed incredible to them that there could be so much water in the world as Alaka told them of. But they looked upon the exquisite colour of the shells he brought, which held the murmur of the sea in their hearts, and counted them wonderful treasures. And they gambled all day with Alaka to gain possession of them.
"Still the fever waxed hotter than ever within him, and, when he had lost his shells, he put up his measure of sacred meal. When he lost that, they made a mock of him again, saying not that he was afraid to lose, but that he had no skill, that he was not a god. He was less than a man,—he was only a papoose, and that he should play no more until he had learned wisdom.
"Then Alaka was beside himself with rage. 'I will show you,' he cried. 'I will venture such mighty stakes that I must win.' He plucked out his right eye and laid it where the turquoises, the shells, and the sacred meal had lain. But the eye was lost also, and after that the left eye, so that, when morning dawned, he staggered into the sunrise, blind and ruined.
"Then he called upon the Great Spirit to give him back his sight, but the Great Spirit was angry with him, and drove him away into the Land of Shadows. And He caught up the eyes and said: 'I will hang them up among the stars to be a warning for ever to the children of men not to gamble.'
"So they hang there to this day, and the wise look up, and, seeing them, pray to the Great Spirit to keep them from the fever; but the unheeding go on, till, like Alaka, they lose their all, and are lost themselves in the Land of Shadow."
That was the last story told that evening around the camp-fire. The moon was coming up, and Phil brought out Mrs. Ware's old guitar, which he had restrung for the occasion. Striking a few rattling chords, he started off on an old familiar song, calling on all the company to join. His voice was a surprise to every one, a full, sweet tenor, strong and clear, that soared out above all the others, except Mrs. Lee's full, high soprano. The Scotchman rumbled along with a heavy bass. One by one the others caught up the song, even little Norman joining in the chorus. Lloyd was the only one who sat silent.
"Sing," whispered Joyce, giving her a commandingnudge. Lloyd shook her head. "It's so heavenly sweet I want to listen," she replied, under cover of the song. The music and the mountains and the moonlight, with the wide, white desert stretching away on every side, seemed to cast some sort of witchery over her, and she sat with hands clasped and lips parted, almost afraid to breathe, for fear that what seemed to be a beautiful dream would come to end.
A tremulous little sigh escaped her when it did come to an end. "It's time to strike the trail again," called Mrs. Lee. "That is the worst of these outings. We can't stay singing on the mountains. We have to get down to earth again. My return to valley life will take me into the deepest depths if Jo doesn't come back in the morning to get breakfast."
"Oh, it was so beautiful!" sighed Lloyd, later, when the party finally started homeward across the moon-whitened desert. It had taken some time to collect all the chairs, hampers, and cushions which George and Holland took home in the ranch wagon. The moon was directly overhead.
Lloyd was riding beside Phil a little in advance of the others. "It was the very nicest picnic I evah went to, Phil," she said, "and it's the loveliestmemory that I'll have to take home with me of this visit to Arizona."
"I'm glad you enjoyed it," he answered, taking off his hat, and riding along beside her bareheaded in the moonlight. How big and handsome he looked, she thought, sitting up so erect in his saddle, with his eyes smiling down into hers.
"I don't want you ever to forget—" he hesitated an instant, then added in a lower tone, "Arizona."
The sweet odours of the night came blowing up from every direction, the ethereal fragrance of the mistletoe bloom, the heavy perfume of the orange-blossoms hanging white in distant orchards. Behind them the picnickers began to sing again, "Roll along, silver moon, guide the traveller on his way."
Lloyd looked around for Joyce. She was riding far in the rear of the caravan, beside the carriage where Mrs. Lee led the chorus. Presently the old tune changed, and some one started the Bedouin love-song, "From the desert I come to thee."
Looking down at her again with smiling eyes, Phil took up the words, sending them rolling out on the night in a voice that thrilled her with itssweetness, as they rode on side by side across moonlighted desert:
"Till the sun grows cold,And the stars are old,And the leaves of the JudgmentBook unfold!"
THE LOST TURQUOISES
Thatnight there was a whispered consultation in Mrs. Ware's tent while Lloyd was undressing in the other one. Sitting on the edge of her mother's bed, Joyce rapidly outlined a plan which she had thought of on her way home.
"You see, I haven't done anything special at all to give Lloyd a good time," she began. "This picnic was Phil's affair. When I was at her house-party, there was something new on the programme nearly every day. She's been here nearly a month now, and her visit will soon be over. I'd like to give her one real larky day before she goes. Mrs. Lee said that I could have Bogus to-morrow, and, as it is Saturday, the children will be at home to help you. So I thought it would be fun for Jack and Lloyd and me to ride over to the Indian school. It's so interesting, and it doesn't cost anything to get in. Then we could go on to the ostrich farmjust outside of Phœnix. Lloyd wants to get some kodak pictures of the ostriches. The admission fee will only be seventy-five cents for the three of us. I can pay that out of the money that Mrs. Link sent, and get a nice little lunch at Coffee Al's restaurant, and still have enough left to pay for my hive of bees. We can spend the rest of the afternoon prowling around the curio shops and picture stores. Lloyd wants to get ever so many things to take home,—bead belts and moccasins, and things made out of cactus and orangewood. I haven't said anything to her about it yet, but Phil said that if we went he would join us."
"I think that is a very good plan," said Mrs. Ware, entering into whatever Joyce proposed with hearty interest. "You'd better not tell her to-night, or you'll lie awake talking about it too long, and you'll need to make an early start, you know."
By half-past eight next morning the little cavalcade was on its way, Jack and Lloyd riding on ahead, and Phil and Joyce following leisurely. The road they took led through irrigated lands, and green fields and blooming orchards greeted them at every turn, instead of the waste stretches of desert that they were accustomed to seeing.
"I wish you'd look!" exclaimed Lloyd, drawingrein to wait for Joyce and Phil, and then pointing to a field where a boy was ploughing a long, straight furrow. "That's anIndianploughing there! An Indian in a cadet unifawm, with brass buttons on it. Doesn't it seem queah? Jack says it's the unifawm of the school, and that they have to weah it when they hiah out to the fahmahs. This is paht of their education. I like them best in tomahawks and blankets. It seems moah natural."
"This isn't Hiawatha's land," laughed Phil, "nor the Pathfinder's country. I was disappointed, too, to find them so tame and unromantic-looking, but they're certainly more pleasant as neighbours since they have taken to civilization. You remember the horrible tales we heard last night."
Lloyd had expected to see a large school-building, but she was surprised to find in addition so many other buildings. Dormitories, workshops, a public hall, and the fine, wide streets leading around the central square gave the appearance of a thrifty little village. They lingered long in the kindergarten, where the bright-eyed little papooses were so interested in watching them that they almost forgot the song they were singing about "Baby's ball so soft and round." They went through the great kitchens, where Indian girls were learning tocook, and the tailoring establishment where the boys were turning out the new uniforms. Down in one of the parlours a little eagle-eyed girl, with features strikingly like those of Sitting Bull, practised the five-finger exercises at the piano. Only twice did they see anything that reminded them of the primitive Indians. In one of the workshops a swarthy boy sat before a loom such as the old squaws used to have, weaving patiently a Navajo blanket. And in one of the buildings where dressmaking was taught there was a table surrounded by busy bead-workers, working on chains and belts and gaily decorated trinkets that made Lloyd wish for a bottomless purse. They were all so tempting.
So much time was occupied in watching the classes in wood-carving, and in listening to recitations in the various rooms, that it was nearly noon when they reached the ostrich farm. It was not the ranch where the great birds were hatched and raised, but a large enclosure near the street-car line, where they were brought to be exhibited to the tourists. So, after watching the foolish-looking creatures awhile, laughing at their comical expressions as they tilted mincingly up and down in what Lloyd called the perfection of cake-walking, and taking several snap-shots of them, Joyce proposedthat they should leave their horses at a corral farther down the street, and go at once for their lunch.
It was the first time that Jack had been inside the restaurant, and he was glad that Phil, who often lunched there, was with them to take the lead. He felt very young and inexperienced in the ways of the world, as he marched in behind him, and, while he secretly admired the lordly air with which Phil gave his orders, he saw that the girls were impressed by it, too, and he inwardly resented being made to appear such an insignificant small boy by contrast.
He had supposed that they would sit up on the stools at the lunch-counters which one could see from the street. That is where he, in his ignorance, would have piloted the party. But Phil, passing them by, led the way up-stairs. An attractive-looking dining-room opened out from the upper hall, but, ignoring that also, Phil kept on to a balcony overlooking the street, where there were several small tables.
"They serve out here in hot weather," he said, "and it's warm enough to-day, I'm sure. Besides, we'll be all by ourselves, and can see what is going on down below. Here, Sambo!"
He beckoned to a coloured waiter passing throughthe hall, and soon had him scurrying around in haste to fill their orders. It was the most enjoyable little lunch Lloyd could remember. Phil, who somehow naturally assumed the part of host, had never been so entertaining. Time slipped by so fast while they laughed and talked that the hour was finished before they realized that it had fairly begun.
Then Phil, putting Lloyd's camera on an opposite table, and focussing it on the group, showed the waiter how to snap the spring, and hurried back to his chair to be included in the picture which they all wanted as a souvenir of the day's excursion.
They made arrangements for the rest of the afternoon after that. Jack was to take the camera to a photographer's and leave it for the roll of films to be developed, and then go to a shoestore and the grocery. Phil had an errand to attend to for Mrs. Lee and a few purchases to make. Lloyd had a long list of things she hoped to find in the Curio Building. They agreed to meet at a drug store on that street which had a corner especially furnished for the comfort of its out-of-town patrons. Besides numerous easy chairs and tables, where tired customers could be served at any time from the soda-fountain, there were daily papers to help passthe time of waiting, and a desk provided with free stationery.
It was just four o'clock when Joyce and Lloyd, coming back to the drug store with their arms full of packages, found Jack already there waiting for them. He was weighing himself on the scales near the door.
"I've been knocking around here for the last half-hour," he said. "I'll go out and look for Phil now, and tell him you are ready, and we'll get the horses and bring them around."
"How long will it take?" asked Joyce.
"Fifteen or twenty minutes, probably. He's just up the street."
"Then I'll begin a lettah to mothah," said Lloyd, depositing her bundles on a table, and sitting down at the desk. Joyce picked up an illustrated paper and settled herself comfortably in a rocking-chair.
The big clock over the soda-fountain slowly dropped its hands down the dial, but Joyce, absorbed in her reading, and Lloyd in her writing, paid no attention until half an hour had gone by. Then Lloyd, folding her letter and slipping it into an envelope, looked up.
"Mercy, Joyce! It's half-past foah! What do you suppose is the mattah?"
Before Joyce could answer, she caught sight of Jack, through the big show-window, hurrying down the street by himself. He was red in the face from his rapid walking when he came in, and had a queer expression about his mouth that he always had when disgusted or out of patience.
"Phil's busy," he announced. "He wants me to ask you if you'd mind waiting a few minutes longer. He wouldn't ask it, but it's something quite important."
"We ought to get back as soon as we can," said Joyce, "for I've been away all day, and there's the ride home still ahead of us. I'm afraid mamma will start to get supper herself if I'm not there."
"I think I'll put in the time we're waiting in writing to the Walton girls," said Lloyd, drawing a fresh sheet of paper toward her. Joyce picked up her story again, and Jack went out into the street, where he stood tapping one heel against the curbstone, and with his hands thrust into his pockets. Then he walked to the corner and back, and peered in through the show-window at the clock over the soda-fountain. When he had repeated the performance several times, Joyce beckoned for him to come in.
"It's after five o'clock," she said. "It must be very important business that keeps him so long."
"It is," answered Jack. "I'll go back once more, and if I can't get him away, I'll go around and get the horses and we'll just ride off and leave him."
"Can't get him away!" repeated Joyce. "Where is he?"
"Oh, just up the street a little way," said Jack, carelessly, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb.
Joyce looked at him steadily an instant, then, as if she had read his mind, said, with startling abruptness: "Jack Ware, you might as well tell me. Is he doing what Mr. Ellestad says all the boys out here do sooner or later, getting mixed up in some of those gambling games?"
There was no evading Joyce when she spoke in that tone. Jack had learned that long ago. But, with a glance toward Lloyd, who sat with her back toward them, he only nodded his reply. Startled by the question, Lloyd turned just in time to see the nod.
"I didn't intend to tell on him," blurted Jack, "but you surprised it out of me. He put some money on a roulette wheel, and lost all the first part of the afternoon. Now his luck has begun to change,and he says he's got to stick by it till he makes back at least a part of what he started with."
Joyce looked up at the clock. "We ought to be going," she said, drumming nervously on the arm of her chair with her fingers. Then she hesitated, a look of sisterly concern on her face. "I hate, though, to go off and leave him there. No telling when he'll come home if he feels he is free to stay as long as he pleases. Goodness, Jack! I'm glad it isn't you. I'd be having a fit if it were, and I can't help thinking how poor Elsie would feel if she knew it. Lloyd, what do you think we ought to do?"
"I think we ought to go straight off and leave him!" she answered, hotly. "It's perfectly horrid of him to so fah fo'get himself as a gentleman as to pay no attention to his promises. He made a positive engagement with us to meet us heah at foah o'clock, and now it's aftah five. I nevah had a boy treat me that way befoah, and I must say I haven't much use for one that will act so."
Presently, after some slight discussion, the girls slowly gathered up the bundles and walked up the street to the corral. Jack hurried on ahead, so that by the time they reached it, the men there had the ponies saddled and were waiting to help themmount and tie on the packages by the many leather thongs which fringed the saddles for that purpose.
It was a quiet ride homeward. A cloud seemed to have settled over their gay spirits. Nobody laughed, nobody spoke much. The story of Alaka was still fresh in each mind, and what Mrs. Lee had said about the curse of the West, and the fate of the men she had known who had become possessed by the same fever.
They remembered how Jo had come in at daylight, red-eyed and sullen, after his night's losses, for the lucky feeling which seized him at the sight of his cut fingers had been a mistaken omen of success. All that he had saved in months of service had vanished before sunrise in the same way that Alaka's turquoises and shells and eyes had gone.
Deeper than the indignation in Lloyd's heart, deeper than her sense of wounded pride that Phil should have been so indifferent about keeping his engagement to meet them, was a sore feeling of disappointment in him. He had seemed so strong and manly that she had thought him above the weakness of yielding to such temptations.
She recalled the expression of his face the night before when he drew back from the firelight intothe shadow, and pulled his hat over his eyes, as Mr. Ellestad began the story of Alaka. Evidently he had played Alaka's game before.
Ah, that night before! How the whole moonlighted scene rolled back over her memory, as she rode along now, slightly in advance of Joyce and Jack. Phil had been with her that night before, and, as the sweet strains of the Bedouin love-song floated out on the stillness of the desert, something had stirred in her girlish heart as she looked up at him. A vague wonder if it were possible that in years to come this would prove to be the one the stars had destined for her. And, as if in answer to her unspoken wonder, his voice had joined in, higher and sweeter than all the others, as he smiled down into her eyes. But now—there was a little twinge of pain when she thought that he wasn't a prince at all when measured by the yard-stick of old Hildgardmar and her father, much less the one written in the stars for her. He wasn't strong, and he wasn't honourable if he gambled, and she told herself that she was glad that she knew it. And now that she had found out how much she had been mistaken in him, she didn't care any more for his friendship, and that she never intended to have anything more to do with him.
A dozen times on the way home Joyce said to herself: "Oh, what if it had been Jack!" And, thinking of Elsie and the father so far away across the seas, she wished that she could do something to get him away from the surroundings that were sure to work to his undoing if he persisted in staying there.
Supper was ready when they reached home. Afterward there were all Lloyd's purchases to be unwrapped and admired. Mary had hoped for a candy-pull, as it was Saturday, and they had not had one during Lloyd's visit; but the girls were too tired after so many miles in the saddle, and by nine o'clock all lights were out and a deep quiet reigned over Ware's Wigwam and the tents.
The moonlight flooding the white canvas kept Lloyd awake for awhile. As she lay there, listening to the distant barking of coyotes, and going over the events of the day, she heard the approaching sound of hoof beats. Some lonely horseman was coming down the desert road. She raised herself on her elbow to listen, recognizing the sound. It was Phil's horse clattering over the little bridge. But it paused under the pepper-trees.
"I suppose Phil has come up to apologize," she said to herself, "but he might as well save himselfthe trouble. No explanation could evah explain away the fact that he was rude to us and that hegambled. I could forgive the first, but I nevah can forgive being so disappointed in him."
A moment later, seeing no light, and evidently concluding that his visit was untimely, he turned and rode back toward the ranch. Lloyd, still leaning on her elbow, strained her ears to listen till the last footfall died away in the distance.
"He'll be back in the mawning," she thought, as she laid her head on the pillow. "He always comes Sunday mawnings; but he'll not find us this time, because we'll be gone befoah he gets heah."
Joyce had arranged to keep Bogus part of the next day, so that they could ride into Phœnix to church. So it happened that when Phil came up next morning, it was to find nobody but Mary in sight. Mrs. Ware had gone to the seat under the willows to read to Norman and Holland.
The beehive had been brought over during Joyce's absence the day before, and placed in the shade of the bushy umbrella-tree where the hammock swung, and Mary was swinging in the hammock now, with a book in her lap. It was closed over one finger to keep the place, for she was listening to the droning of the bees, breathing in the sweetnessthat floated in across the desert from its acres of vivid bloom, and paying more attention to the sunny, vibrant world about her than to the hymn she was learning.
"What are you doing, Mary?" he called, as his step on the bridge made her look around. She held up a battered old volume of poems, and moved over in the hammock to make room for him beside her.
"I'm learning a hymn. That's the way we always earned our missionary money back in Kansas. I'm going to Sunday school with Hazel and George this afternoon in the surrey over to the schoolhouse. Her uncle has one there. I didn't have any pennies to take, so mamma said I could begin learning hymns again, as I used to do back home."
As usual Mary rattled on, scarcely pausing to take breath or give her listener a chance to make reply.
"This isn't one of the singing hymns, the kind they have in church. It's by Isaac Watts. I like it because it's about bees, and it's so easy to say:
"How doth the little busy beeImprove each shining hour,And gather honey all the dayFrom every opening flower.'
"Joyce picked it out for me, and said that she guessed that Isaac Watts must have gone to the School of the Bees himself, and that was where he learned that 'Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do.' The bees hate idle hands, you know, that's the drones, and, although they are patient with them longer than you'd suppose they'd be, it always ends in their stinging the drones to death.
"And Lloyd said it was a pity that some other people she knew not a thousand miles away couldn't go to school to the bees and learn that about Satan's finding mischief for idle hands to do.
"And Joyce said yes, it was, for it was too bad for such a fine fellow to get into trouble just because he was a drone, and had no ambition to make anything of himself. And I asked them who they meant, but they just laughed at each other and wouldn't tell me. I don't see why big girls always want to be so mysterious about things and act as if they had secrets. Do you?"
"No, indeed!" answered Phil, in his most sympathetic manner. He stooped and picked a long blade of grass at his feet.
"And Joyce said that if Alaka had gone to school to the bees, he wouldn't have lost his eyes,and Lloyd said that if somebody kept on, he would lose at least his turquoises. When I asked her what she meant, she said, oh, she was just thinking of what Mr. Ellestad told at the picnic, that the Indians thought the turquoises were their most precious stones because they stole their colour from the sky, and she called turquoise the friendship stone because it was true blue."
Phil began whistling softly, as he pulled the blade of grass back and forth between his fingers.
"So they think that somebody is like Alaka, do they?" he asked, presently, "in danger of losing his turquoises, his friendship stones. Well, I can imagine instances when that would be as bad for Alaka as losing his eyes."
Phil had walked up to the Wigwam more buoyantly than usual that morning. He knew that he owed the girls an apology for not meeting them as he had promised, and he was prepared to make it so penitently and gracefully that he was sure that they would accept his excuses without a question. The big roll of bills in his pocket, which he had won by a lucky turn of the wheel, did not lie heavy on his conscience at all. It rather added to his buoyance of spirit, for it was so large that it would enable him to do several things he had long wishedto do. Because of it, too, he had come up to plan another picnic, this time an excursion to Paradise Valley on the other side of Camelback.
But Mary's report of the conversation which had puzzled her gave him an uncomfortable feeling. He could not fail to understand its meaning. Evidently the girls knew what had detained him in town and were displeased with him.
"Oh, aren't you going to stay for dinner?" asked Mary, as he slowly rose and stretched himself. "It's Sunday, you know, and we always expect you on Sunday."
"No, thank you," he answered, yawning. "I've changed my programme to-day."
"Aren't you coming back this afternoon?" she asked, anxiously. "They'll all be home then."
He studied the distant buttes a moment before he answered, then squared back his shoulders in a decided way, settling his hat firmly on his head.
"No," he answered, finally, "I promised a fellow I met in town at the hotel the other day that I'd ride over and see him soon. He has a camp over on the other side of Hole-in-the-Rock, with an old duffer that's out here for rheumatism. I took a fancy to the fellow the minute I saw him, and it turns out that he's the cousin of a boy Iknew at military school. It's funny the way you run across people that way out here."
One of Phil's greatest charms to Mary was the deferential way he had of talking to her as if she were his age, and taking the trouble to explain his actions. Now, as he turned away, with a pleasant good morning, it was with as polite a lifting of his hat as if she had been nineteen instead of nine.
She watched him swing down the road with his quick, military step, never dreaming in her unsuspecting little heart thathewas the mysterious person who, the girls wished, could learn about Satan and the work he finds for idle hands. Nor did she dream that the words she had so innocently repeated were still sounding in his ears: "If somebody keeps on, he'll at least lose his turquoises. It's the friendship stone—true blue!"
LOST ON THE DESERT
IfWashington had not lost a shoe on the way home from church, and if Joyce had not been seized with a violent headache that sent her to bed with a bandage over her eyes, the day would have ended far differently for Lloyd.
The afternoon went by quickly, for, lulled by the drowsy hum of the bees, she had fallen asleep in the hammock under the umbrella-tree, and slept a long time. Then supper was earlier than usual, as Jack wanted his before starting to the ranch. Chris, the Mexican, was taking a holiday, and had offered Jack a quarter to do the milking for him that evening. Holland strolled down the road with him, since the lost horseshoe prevented him taking the ride he had expected to enjoy.
Scarcely were they out of sight when an old buggy rattled up from the other direction, bringing a woman and her two little girls from a neighbouringranch for an evening visit. Lloyd, who was on her way to the tent to see if she could do anything for Joyce's comfort, heard a voice which she recognized as Mrs. Shaw's, as the woman introduced herself to Mrs. Ware.
"I've been planning to get over here ever since you came," she began, "and specially since I got acquainted with your daughter over them bees, but 'pears like there's nothing in life on week-days but work; so this evening, when my little girls begged to come over and see your little girl, says I to myself, it's now or never, and I just hitched up and came."
"Oh, deah!" sighed Lloyd. "I don't want to spend the whole evening listening to that tiahsome woman. The boys are gone, and Joyce's head aches too bad for her to talk. I don't know what to do."
She stepped softly into the tent, insisting on rubbing Joyce's head, or doing something to make her more comfortable, but Joyce sent her away, saying that the pain was growing less, and that she didn't want her to stay shut up in the tent that smelled so strongly of the camphor she had spilled.
Lloyd turned away and wandered down to the pasture bars, where she stood looking over towardthe west. The sun was dropping out of sight. For the first time since she had come to the Wigwam she felt lonesome. She was so full of life after her long sleep, so fresh and wide-awake, that she looked around her restlessly, wishing that something exciting would happen. She was in the mood to enjoy an adventure of some kind, no matter what.
While she stood there, her pony, who had often been coaxed up to the bars for sugar, now came up through curiosity, evidently wondering at her silence. "Come on, old boy," she said, reaching through the bars to grasp the rope that trailed from his neck. "You've settled it. We'll go off and have a ride togethah."
With some difficulty, she saddled him herself, and then because she did not want to disturb Joyce by going back to the tent to change her white dress for her divided skirt, she mounted as if the cross-saddle were a side-saddle, and rode slowly out of the yard bareheaded.
Mrs. Ware fluttered her handkerchief in response to the wave of Lloyd's hand, and looked after her as she took the road to the ranch. "She's going to see Mrs. Lee," she thought, and then turned her attention to her talkative visitor.
It was merely from force of habit that Lloydhad taken the ranch road. She was in sight of the camp before she became aware of where the pony was carrying her.
Then she turned abruptly, hardly knowing why she did so. Phil was at the ranch. She would not have him think that she had gone down with the hope of seeing him. She did not put the thought into words, but that is what influenced her to turn. In front of her Camelback Mountain loomed up, looking larger and more lifelike than usual, with the reflected light of the sunset lying rosy red on its summit. She knew that there is something extremely deceptive in the clear Arizona atmosphere, and had been told that the distance to the mountain was over five miles. But it was hard to believe. It looked so near that she was sure that she could reach it in a few minutes' brisk ride,—that she could easily go that far and back before daylight was entirely gone.
An old game that she had played at the Cuckoos' Nest sent a verse floating idly through her memory:
"How many miles to Barley-bright?""Three score and ten!""Can I get there by candle light?""Yes, if your legs are long and light—There and back again!Look out! The witches will catch you!"
With somewhat of the same eerie feeling that had affected her when she joined in the game with Betty and the little Appletons, she turned the pony into the narrow trail that led across the sand in and out among the sage-brush. Later, those same gray bushes might look startlingly like witches reaching up out of the gloaming.
"It's a good thing that yoah legsarelong and light," she said to the pony, as he started off with a long, rabbit-like lope. "And it's a good thing that you seem as much at home heah as Br'er Rabbit was in the brush-pile when Br'er Fox threw him in for stealing his buttah. I'm glad it isn't old Tar Baby that I'm on. He wouldn't be used to these gophah holes, and would stumble into the first one we came to. Oh, this is glorious!"
She shook back her hair as the soft, orange-perfumed breeze blew it about her face. Her full white sleeves fluttered out from her arms. Again she had that delightful sense of birdlike motion, of free, wild swinging through space. On and on they went, never noticing how far they had travelled or how dark it was growing, till suddenly she saw that she was not on any trail. A thick growth of stubby mesquit bushes made almost a thicket in front of her. An enormous cactus, thirty feethigh, stood in her way like one of the Barley-bright witches. From its thorny trunk stretched two great arms, thrown up as if to ward off her coming. Its resemblance to a human figure was uncanny, and she stood staring at it with a fascinated gaze.
"It's big enough to be the camel-drivah of the camel in the mountain," she said in a half-whisper to the pony. Then looking on toward the mountain, she realized that she had to strain her eyes to see it through the rapidly gathering gloom. Night had fallen suddenly, and the mountain seemed farther away than when she started.
"Oh, it will be black night befoah we get home," she thought, turning in nervous haste. Then a new trouble confronted her. She was facing a dim, trackless wilderness, and she did not know how to get home. She had kept the mountain steadily in view as she rode toward it, but now she realized that it was so large that she could easily do that, and still at the same time go far out of her course.
"You'll have to find the way home," she said, helplessly, to the pony, failing to remember that the Wigwam pasture had been his home for only a few weeks, and that, left to himself, he would go directly to his native ranch.
horse running away"CLATTERING DOWN THE ROAD AS FAST AS HIS FEET COULD CARRY HIM"
In a few minutes Lloyd found herself carriedalong a narrow road, not more than a wagon track. While she knew that she had never been over it before, it was some comfort to find that she was on a human thoroughfare, and not lost among the tracks of wandering coyotes and jack-rabbits.
The pony, feeling that he was headed toward his own home, went willingly enough, and Lloyd began to enjoy her adventure.
"How exciting it will sound back in that tame little Valley," she thought, "lost in the desert! I'll give the girls such a thrilling description of it that they'll feel cold chills running up and down their spines. It's a wondah that the cold chills don't run up and down me! But I'm not one bit afraid now. This road is bound to lead to somebody's house, and everybody is so friendly out heah in the West that whoevah finds me will take me home."
The pony swung along a few rods farther, then, startled by an owl rising suddenly out of the wayside bushes with a heavy flopping of wings, jumped sideways with such a start that Lloyd was almost thrown from her seat. It was an insecure one at best, and she was about to throw her foot over into the other stirrup when a forward plunge sentthe pony into a gopher hole, and Lloyd over his head.
When she picked herself up from the road and looked dizzily around, she gave a little gasp of horror. The pony, freed of his burden and spurred on by his fright, was clattering down the road as fast as his feet could carry him, and she was left helpless in what seemed to her the very heart of the great, desolate desert. She stood motionless till the last faint thud of the pony's hoofs died away down the road. Then she looked around her and shivered. The possibility of the pony's not going straight to the Wigwam had not yet occurred to her, but she felt that under any circumstances she was doomed to stay in the desert until morning. They would be badly frightened at the Wigwam, and would rouse the ranch to send out a searching-party, but they might as well look for a needle in a haystack as to make an attempt to find her in the darkness. She did not know where she was herself. She was within a stone's throw of one of the buttes, out which one she could not tell. She stood peering around her through the twilight with eager, dilated eyes. A twig crackled near her, trampled underfoot by some little wild creature as startled as she. The desert had seemedso still before, but now it was full of strange whisperings and rustlings. Remembering what Jack had told her when he showed her the nest shared by snakes and owls, she dared not sit down for fear some snake should come crawling out of the hole from which the owl had flown. She felt that it would be useless to walk on, since every step might be carrying her farther away from the Wigwam.
How long she stood there in the road she could not tell, but presently it seemed to her that it was growing lighter. She could see the outlines of the butte more distinctly, and the sky behind it was growing gradually luminous. Then she remembered that the moon would be up in a little while, and her courage came back as she stood and waited. When its round, familiar face came peeping up over the horizon, she felt as if an old friend were smiling at her.
"I'm neahly as glad to see you as if you were one of the family," she said, aloud, with a little sob in her throat. The feeling that this was the same moon that had looked down on her through the locusts, all her life, and had even peeped through the windows and seen Mom Beck rocking her tosleep in her baby days, gave her a sense of companionship that was wonderfully comforting.
It was tiresome standing in the road, and, as she dared not sit down and risk finding snakes, she decided to climb up the side of the butte and look out over the country. Maybe she might see the light from some ranch house. At least on its rocky slope she would be freer from snakes than down among the bushes and the owls' nests.
Scrambling over a ledge of rock she stumbled upon a pile of tin cans and broken bottles, which told of many past picnic parties near that spot. A little higher up she clasped her hands with a cry of pleased recognition. She was at the beginning of the great hole that led through the rock. Only two nights before she had sat on that very boulder, and speared olives out of a bottle with a hat-pin. There were their own sardine cans, and the fragments of the teacup Hazel had dropped. A mound of ashes and some charred sticks marked the spot where the camp-fire had blazed.
She looked around, wondering if by some happy chance Jo could have left any matches. A brilliant idea had come to her of lighting a bonfire. She knew that it could be seen from the ranch, and woulddraw attention to her at once. A long search failed to show any stray matches, and she wondered if she could find flint among the rocks, or how long it would take to get fire by rubbing two sticks together.
Some of the gruesome tales of Apache warfare that had been told around the fire came back to her as she stood looking at the ashes, but she resolutely turned her thoughts away from them, to the Indian school she had seen the day before. It was wonderfully comforting to think of that little Indian girl at the piano, patiently practising her five-finger exercises, and of the Indian boy in the brass-buttoned uniform ploughing in the fields. It made them seem so civilized and tame. The time of tomahawks and tortures was long past, she assured herself, and there was not nearly so much to fear from the peaceful Pimas and Maricopas as there was sometimes from the negroes at home.
So, quieting herself with such assurances, she climbed up to a comfortable seat on a rock, where she could lean back against the cavelike wall, and sat looking out through the great hole, as the moon rose higher and higher in the heavens. Half an hour slipped by in intense silence. Then her heart gave a thump of terror, so loud that she heard thebeating distinctly. There was a fierce, hot roaring in her ears.
Down at the foot of the butte, going swiftly along with moccasined tread, was a stalwart Indian. Not one of the peaceful Pimas she had been accustomed to seeing, but a cruel-mouthed, eagle-eyed Apache. At least he looked like the pictures she had seen of Apaches.
He had a lariat in his hand, and he stooped several times to examine the tracks ahead of him, as if following a trail. Instantly there flashed into Lloyd's mind what Mrs. Lee had told them about the Indians allowing their ponies to run loose on the desert. Sometimes the settlers' children used to catch them, and keep them all day to ride. But woe be it, she said, if the owner tracked his pony to a settler's house before it was turned loose. He always took his revenge. Lloyd was sure that this was what the Indian was after, as she noticed the lariat, and the way his keen eyes followed the trail. She almost held her breath as she waited for him to pass on. But he did not pass.
Throwing up his head he looked all around, and then, leaving the trail, started swiftly up the butte toward her. Almost frozen with fear, Lloyd drew back into the shadow, and, rolling over the ledge,drew herself into as small a space as possible, crouching down to hide her white dress. Through a crevice between the rocks she watched his approach with wide, terrified gaze, sure that some savage instinct, like a bloodhound's sense of smell, had warned him of her presence.
For an instant, as he reached the remains of the camp-fire, he stood motionless, looking out across the country, silhouetted darkly against the sky, like the head on the leather cushion she was taking home to her grandfather, she thought, or rather that she had intended to take. Maybe she would never live to see her home again.
She crouched still closer against the rock, rigid, tense, scarcely breathing. With a grunt the Indian stooped, and began poking around among the scraps left by the picnickers. He turned the blackened brands with his foot, then moved farther along, attracted by the gleam of a bit of broken bottle. Evidently the coyotes had been there before him, for not a scrap was left of sandwiches or chicken bones; but, like the coyotes, he knew from past experiences that it was profitable to prowl where picnics were almost weekly occurrences.
The gleam of something steely and bright caught his eye. Lloyd saw the object flash in the moonlightas he picked it up. It was the carving-knife Jo had dropped in his excitement, when he found the "lucky cuts" on his forefingers. With another grunt he turned it this way and that, examined the handle and tried the edge, and then looked stealthily around. Lloyd closed her eyes lest the very intensity of their gaze should draw him to her hiding-place. She knew that another step or two would bring him to higher ground, where he could look over the ledge and see her.
How she ever lived through the moments that followed, she never knew. It seemed to her that her heart had stopped beating, and she was growing clammy and faint. It could not have been more than a few minutes, but it seemed hours to her, when, the suspense growing unbearable, she opened her eyes, and peered fearfully through the crack again.
He had disappeared. Trembling so that she could scarcely stand, she ventured, little by little, to raise herself until she could look over the rock. Then she saw him moving leisurely down the path at the foot of the butte. In a moment more he had reached the road, and, striding along, he grew smaller and smaller to her sight till he disappeared among the dark patches of sage-brush.
Lloyd sank limply down among the rocks again, so exhausted by the nervous strain that the tears began to come. The night was passing like a hideous dream. Half an hour went by. She could hear the distant barking of coyotes, and a nervous dread took possession of her, a fear that their long, gaunt forms might come sneaking up the path after awhile in search of other picnic leavings. She eyed the swaying shadows apprehensively.
Presently, as she sat and watched, tense and alert, she saw some one coming along the wagon track far below. He was on horseback, and riding slowly, as if enjoying the calm beauty of the night. She could hear him whistling. As he reached the foot of the butte the whistling changed to singing. The full, strong voice that rang out on the deathlike stillness was wonderfully rich and sweet: