Persuasive Odor of Food Cooking
3 In the Desert
The lad slept long. He had been keyed to high tension, both physical and mental, and nature now demanded the price of many hours from youth and health. The night sank away, and the day flooded the earth with a great light of white and yellow, in which the yellow gradually gained upon the white. The sun, in time, turned to glowing brass, and the desert quivered under the hot and pitiless glare. A single vulture of the southwest wheeled slowly in the blue.
Charles Wayne awoke at last, and found, to his surprise, that the noon hour had passed. Yet he was not sorry, knowing that, in his case at least, the maxim of more haste less speed was true. Moreover, he had all the time there was.
He rebuilt his fire, ate a little dinner, and again he was ready for the trail, but he advanced slowly, resolving that he would do most of his traveling by night, and rest in the day to escape the heat and glare.
He came after a while to the bed of a creek in which flowed a slender rill, and he followed it steadily to the north. By and by the bed of the creek widened out, the living stream disappeared, but here and there were tiny pools of surface water, with green grass around them, a fortunate thing for the animals, and better than he had hoped. He arrived at a pool larger than the rest, and in its muddy edge he distinctly saw the traces of horses’ feet. How many had passed he could not tell, but he reckoned at least six or eight, and the fact set him to wondering. Who were they? He followed the traces to the hard plain, but there, being no experienced trailer, he quickly lost them. He concluded, however, that they were only cowboys, not worth the trouble of another thought, and he went on.
Weird night came again, black and vast, enfolding the earth. Charles still clung to the friendly creek bed, for the sake of the water to be found there, and continued his course. He did not stop until nearly midnight, and, once more, fell asleep, as soon as his preparations for bed were complete. But his slumber that night was troubled. He dreamed again the bad dream that he had dreamed at Phoenix. Someone, whose face he could not see, was in the tent, searching minutely through all his belongings. He saw the man dimly, from eyes heavy with slumber, which at last overpowered him, and he did not awaken until the day. Then he remembered his dream, and again he found evidences of another presence than his own. His goods were moved about, but, as before, nothing was missing.
In the sand of the creek bed in front of his tent he saw traces of footsteps, evidently those of only one man. The horse and the mule had not been disturbed. The boy, western born and bred, was not superstitious, but he felt a chill. If he had seen the stranger twice, in what then looked like a dream, how often had the man come when he was not seen at all? What did he want? That was the strangest part of it. This constant search, and the taking away of nothing was beyond explanation.
But with his breakfast before him, Charles forced himself to believe that it was, after all, a dream, and that the footsteps in the sand had been made by some wandering cowboy. He drew comfort, too, from the fact that he was always left unharmed, if it should prove to be other than a dream. Nevertheless, the circumstance induced him to hasten, and, after eating, he left the bed of the creek and struck out across the desert.
Now he was amid the desolation of sand and cactus, a burned, dreary, God-forsaken land, hot sand under a hotter sky, in which every scanty little shrub seemed to say wearily, “I thirst.” Now and then a “dust devil” whirled on the horizon, but nothing else that moved met his eyes. Once he passed bleaching bones, but he would not stop to see whether they were those of man or beast, and rode on, not looking back.
The dust, picked up by stray gusts of wind, powdered the boy and his beasts until they were a ghastly whitish-gray. Fine and stinging, it crept, too, into his eyes and ears and down his back. But he pushed steadily on. His lips parched, and his throat grew hot and husky. He moistened both with a little water from the Indian bottles that he carried—how cool and glorious it was to the taste!—and he craved more, but he resisted the temptation; he knew how precious water might become.
Charles had only a general idea of the country, but he believed that he could pass this portion of the desert before nightfall, and he was both brave and hardy. In fact, he felt less fear for himself than for his animals, which were very necessary to him.
Toward noon he stopped once on the crest of a bare hill and examining all the horizon still saw nothing but desolation. The desert stretched away on every side, bare and endless. He was gripped for the first time by a sudden fear. How could he, a mere dot in the wilderness, succeed in such a quest as his?
He crushed down the fear and rode on, not so fast as before, but with a strong heart. The sun passed the zenith, but was hotter than ever. He felt himself grow dizzy in the fiery rays and the desert danced before him. Blue peaks, with green slopes beneath, rose out of the sand, but he knew that it was only a trick of his heated fancy, and he permitted himself no such false cheer. Again he spared a little of the water, and poured a portion of it down the throats of the animals at the imminent risk of losing it all, and then went doggedly on. The wind rose and clouds of dust and alkali swept over him, filling eyes and nostrils, and scorching like hot ashes. The horse neighed wearily, but the mule plodded along with his head down. The sun shone through the haze like a great globe of molten fire.
The horse began to stumble and at last Charles got down and walked, finding some relief in the physical exertion. He sought vainly through the clouds of dust for the blue of the mountains, but he refused to despair. He was well aware that his life was in danger, although he resolutely shoved the fact aside, drawing instead upon those deep wells of tenacity that were in his nature. He had the invaluable quality that causes one to grip all the harder when defeat seems certain, and with head bent and hat well down over his eyes, he plodded resolutely forward in the way that his compass told him to go.
The afternoon touched the zenith of glare and heat, and then began to decline. The sun faded into the west and night came, where the burning day had been. The dark and the coolness were grateful, but the boy was still on the sands, where naught lived but the cactus. The water in the bottles was low, none to spare for the beasts now, although they neighed pathetically, and he slept at last, wrapped in his blanket.
He rose in the morning, with a clearer and stronger head, but with a dry throat and aching limbs, and resumed his flight over the gray desert. Presently the sun shot high again, and glowed with living fire, but from the deeps of Charles Wayne’s tenacity fresh courage rose. The spirit of combat flamed out, he would match himself against the desert, and he would conquer, his victory all the greater because of his foe’s greatness. He knew that he was lost, but he was resolved to find himself.
The hours passed and the little dot that was a human being still struggled over the immensity of the plain, the head bent lower perhaps, and the steps somewhat slower, but the spirit as firm and high as ever. Behind followed the two animals, the horse first, and then the mule.
Noon came and passed, and again the heat and glare were at the extreme point. Charles once more saw a mirage, a mountain slope with pine trees on the side and the hope of green grass and water. But when he rubbed the sand from his eyes, he knew that it was reality and no false hope; the mountains were there, they refused to move away, but stood immovable, awaiting his coming. The animals raised their heads and hastened their steps, and if he had doubted himself, here was the proof of keener instincts than his own.
Charles felt all the joy of victory, all the surge of a strong spirit that has triumphed over a great enemy, and new strength created itself in him. To his sanguine courage it was also an omen of other and greater success yet to come.
Although he increased his speed the mountains did not seem to come nearer, they were before him, solid and blue, a fortress, but the thin, clear air was deceptive, and he knew that where one mile seemed to be, there were ten. The ground grew rougher, running away in waves, and his feet sank in the sand. He shifted his stores to the horse, and tried riding the surer-footed mule, but the animal, exhausted by the heat and lack of water, stumbled so badly that he dismounted and took his place again at the head of the dusty and weary little procession. Then as the sun began to wane, a storm of dust and sand came out of the south, and clothed him about in darkness and suffocation. He struggled through it a long time, fiercely resolving that he would not yield, but staggering more and more, and beating the air with his hands like a blind man. His senses wavered. Again and again, with the force of his will, he called them back to their duty, but at last they wandered away into infinity, and he fell unconscious upon the earth.
When Charles returned from the vague country to which he had gone so suddenly, he was lying comfortably upon his back, with his head upon something soft, and he looked up at a clear sky, in which a peaceful moon and peaceful stars swam in the same old placid way.
“Ha! our young friend is taking notice at last!” said a jerky, merry voice. “That canteen again, if you please, Jedediah, and we’ll see how he likes a draught of the pure and beautiful. This is not the vintage of Flora, ‘cooled in the deep-delved earth,’ but it is something a good deal better for you, namely, fresh water.”
The boy sat up abruptly. Before him was the short figure of Professor Longworth, merry and perky, beneath his huge helmet, the canteen of water in his outstretched right hand, and the long figure of Jedediah Simpson just behind him.
“You may drink deep, my son,” said the Professor, “because as you have already imbibed while in your unconscious condition the stage of approach has been passed.”
Charles needed no urging, but promptly drank deep, and the fire of life coursed anew through his veins.
“It was a lucky thing for you,” said the Professor, “that my scientific investigations led me in this direction. You fell almost in sight of the promised land, scarcely a mile from trees and water. In fact, the instinct of your two animals caused them to continue, and when we brought you here, we found them drinking peacefully along the slope, not fifty feet from where you are now lying.”
“Professor,” said Charles gratefully, “you have saved my life, and, of course, I can never repay you, unless I find a chance to save yours.”
The Professor chuckled merrily.
“Say no more about it,” he said; “but it proves that we scientists are sometimes better plainsmen than you who do nothing but roam the plains. Exact knowledge, founded upon mathematics and an observation of nature’s processes for thousands of years, is not to be beaten.”
“I yield, Professor,” said Charles humbly.
Professor Longworth, M.A., Ph.D., etc., sat down upon a fallen pine stem, adjusted his glasses, and regarded the boy critically.
“It strikes me, my young friend,” he said, “that you have not taken the direct route to San Francisco, where you told me you were going. There is a railroad from Phoenix to that city, but the way that you have chosen is long, hot, tedious, and, as you now know, not without dangers.”
Charles flushed. He was truthful, not liking to tell even an innocent falsehood under the stress of circumstances, and liking still less, if he should have to tell one, to be caught in it. He hesitated a little, and then he decided that it would be best to come somewhere near the truth.
“I fibbed a little there, Professor,” he said. “As a matter of fact, having a great deal of time and very little of anything else, I decided to prospect a while through the mountains. Whenever a fellow does that he grows secretive, with or without reason, and here I am. That’s all there is to it.”
“It’s enough,” said the Professor with irony. “I was young once myself, but young men remain a cause of wonder. You risk your life in a search for what you have not one chance in a thousand to find. Moreover, it would be a bald, uninteresting accident if you found it, while I am armed with knowledge and all the exactitude of science, which, with mathematical and absolute certainty, is bound to lead to a result: the only doubt is about the nature of that result, and in that very doubt lie the charm and mystery of my expedition.”
“Again I yield, Professor,” said Charles humbly.
Professor Longworth glowered at him for a few moments through his great glasses, and then resumed cheerfully:
“At any rate, we are here. The desert is passed, there is water for drinking, game may be found in the mountains, and life should not be wholly unpleasant. Let that suffice for the present. Now, as the night is young, if you will eat a little of the food that Jedediah has ready for you, and then go to sleep, you will find profit in it.”
This seemed to Charles good advice, and he was ready to take it, while he lazily watched the Professor pottering about on various little offices. He was lying on soft pine boughs and his head reposed on a pillow made of his own saddle with a blanket spread over it. The Professor’s party consisted only of himself and Jedediah Simpson, but they had several animals. Various articles scattered about indicated thorough equipment, and Charles was bound to confess that the scientist, indeed, had shown more prevision than himself, who, presumably, knew something of wild life.
The boy’s confession brought no sting to him now. He felt a most singular comfort, both of the mind and the body. He was on the slope of the mountain, and he lay in a pine forest. Below him and far out glimmered the gray desert, which still threatened, but now in vain. Grass grew here and there, grass thick and rich by contrast with the bare plain, and as he lay he heard at last that most wonderful of all sounds in a parched land, the trickle of running water.
The moonlight brightened and then he saw it, a baby waterfall, a stream that he could step over, falling down a mighty precipice almost a foot high. But it glittered bravely in the rays of the silver moon, and to the worn eyes of the desert traveler it looked like the stream of life. And such it was!
Charles, despite his willingness, could not go to sleep just yet. He was deeply grateful to the Professor, and he did not rest easy under a sense of obligation. Yet he did not see how he could repay him, except in one way. He could confide to him the object of his search, take him as a partner, and then they might push on together. But he hesitated, the Professor’s mind seemed to be on other things, and his proposal might not be taken at its full value. He concluded that, on the whole, it was better to wait.
His sense of peace and ease increased. Far up the mountain side he heard the wind among the pines, and its tone was like music to him. The fire near him burned red and cast out a glowing heat. The great stems of the pines began to waver at last, and then the boy hastened away to the land of dreamless sleep.
When he awoke in the morning the fire was burning more merrily than ever, and there was a most persuasive odor of cooking food. He sprang to his feet, a little ashamed of himself. He was not willing to let others serve him, and he so young and strong.
He drank at the little waterfall that he had admired so much by night, and he admired it not less by day. All his supplies he found in a pack, neatly arranged for him.
“I had Jedediah clean out the dust and the alkali,” said Professor Longworth. “You would have found them very annoying.”
“Jest you set still,” said Jedediah Simpson, “it ain’t no use to fuss yourself up, when the best cook this side o’ Lexin’ton, K—y, is gettin’ breakfast an’ is enjoyin’ his task.”
“Better do as he says,” said Professor Longworth. “Jedediah is a really wonderful cook, and he does not like to be interfered with.”
The coolness of the early dawn was still in the air, and a singularly pleasant aroma was arising from strips of bacon that Jedediah was frying over some coals. A few moments later another aroma, that of glorious coffee, arose and mingled with the first. Then Jed sliced bread that he took from a box, and set out three tin plates.
“Ef you can find a better meal in Arizony than this is,” said he to Charles, “I’d like for you to show it to me. Me an’ the Purfessor have traveled in strange lands an’ we have hobnobbed with strange people, but wherever we have gone, I’ve hung on to this here old dishpan, this an’ my accordion that’s packed on one o’ the mules. Ef you want me to, I’ll git down that accordion after breakfast, an’ play you ‘My Old Kentucky Home.’ It’s a pow’ful movin’ tune.”
“Never mind about the tune, Jed,” said the Professor hastily. “This is wild country and Apaches might hear it.”
“What ef they do? ‘Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast’ is an old proverb, an’ I guess it would work here.”
Nevertheless he refrained from taking out the accordion, and the three sat down on the grass to the finest breakfast that Charles whose appetite was of the keenest had ever eaten. The boy’s heart warmed to the two men, and he was sorely tempted to mention his quest, but after all they were little more than strangers. The Professor spoke.
“Charles, how old are you?” he suddenly asked.
“Nearly eighteen.”
“Hum! Well, you are large for your age, and your birth and life in wild surroundings have made you courageous and resourceful, but you are nevertheless young to be so deep in the wilderness alone. Yours is bound to be a very dangerous quest.”
“With nobody to cook your victuals,” said Jed.
Charles was moved again to confide in them, but again he refrained.
“I must go on, Professor,” he said.
A shade of sadness passed over Professor Longworth’s face, but he said no more on the subject. Presently the shade of sadness was replaced by an unmistakable look of anger.
“I made a terrible discovery a little while ago,” said the Professor in ominous tones. “The worst that I feared has happened.”
His countenance bore out fully the import of his words, and, Charles, in silence and apprehension, awaited his further explanation.
“Jedediah and I have found the trail of footsteps,” said the Professor, “and I am sure that the rascal and fraud, Cruikshank, is in these mountains near us. He is spying upon me. He wishes to reap the reward of my labors, to profit by an intelligence that he knows to be vastly superior to his own. We must evade him!”
Charles wondered at the bitterness of this rivalry, but he reflected that science was everything in the world to these men, and hence there might be cause for it. It was not for him, whose mind was on other things, to criticize them.
Jed packed quickly under the directions of Professor Longworth, whose manner became abrupt and decisive. Charles was in a quandary, not seeing his own way clear, but the Professor promptly solved it for him.
“We leave you, my young friend,” he said. “Although you had a bad time of it in the desert, you know how to take care of yourself. This duel is none of yours, and it would not be fair to drag you into it. It must be fought to the bitter end by Cruikshank and myself. I wish you success in your search, as I know you wish me success in mine, and I hope that we shall meet well, successful and happy in Phoenix, say, six months hence.”
His animals stood loaded and ready, Jed was waiting, and, springing upon one of the horses, Professor Longworth led the way rapidly. Charles stared after them until they were lost among the pines on the slopes.
“Professors are certainly queer,” he said. Then he turned his attention to his own affairs, which now seemed to him to promise well. The sun was again a glittering ball, and the heat entered the pine woods, but he sat by the side of the cool rivulet, and studied the little map of his own making that he had taken from his pocket and that had never left his person night or day.
Somewhere in the vast chain of mountains upon whose fringe he now was, towered Old Thundergust, his white head high among the clouds, and beyond His Majesty, the peak, the road led, but by the vaguest of directions. The immensity of his task once more was borne upon him, but did not appal him. He calculated that Thundergust was yet at least a hundred miles away, but he could travel nearly all the distance through the vast pine forest which occupies so large a space in Northern Arizona, and whatever happened at the end of it he would have a journey worth remembering.
Despite his absorption of mind and his intense interest in the great quest, he felt lonely now. He missed the Professor and Jed of the musical mind. When he had wondered at the Professor’s queer words and abrupt departure, he did not know that they had perhaps been caused by the man’s own sorrow at leaving alone in the wilderness a youth whom he had learned to like—perhaps that more than geological rivalry.
He rode steadily for two days in the direction in which he surmised Old Thundergust lay, and now he enjoyed the march, though often the way was rough and not without danger for both man and beast. At the end of the second day he shot a deer, and, as he saw a new stretch of desert ahead, he stopped to dry and cure the meat which he would certainly need.
He made his camp in a little glen, that contained a water hole, and here he luxuriated, feeling how he had grown since he left Phoenix, how his muscles had toughened, and how his self-reliance had increased.
He yet had all the time there was, and knowing it, he let one day slide into another while he lingered. The weather had been misty, as if threatening an unusual rain, but now it cleared until the air became of a transparent brilliancy. Then Charles saw a beautiful white dome showing in the north, and he knew that it was Old Thundergust. He was flushed at once with zeal and enthusiasm, and a half hour later was on the march again.
The new desert was not as bad as the first, and he crossed it in a few hours, riding straight on toward Old Thundergust, who rose before him, grand and white, always growing in size and majesty.
He again reached the foothills, the pine trees and little streams that trickled down the slopes, and now he began the semicircle around Old Thundergust which would take him to the northern side, a task of several days. He explored for two or three days more, and, at last, he came to a deep ravine almost choked with dwarf pines, but leading in a general way toward the north, the bottom of the ravine gradually ascending, but its cliffs rising and falling in height. He felt sure that this was what Ananias Brown had meant by “up and down, up and down,” and his heart, suffusing with joy, bounded within him. He had taken the longest of chances, merely an opinion formed from the few vague words of a dying man, but his hope was coming true, at least so far; one link in the chain would lead to others.
It was hard footing in the great ravine for the animals and at one of the widest and smoothest portions Charles stopped to camp, although it was only a little after the noon hour. He had killed small game and he had an abundance of food. At the bottom of the ravine flowed a creek or little river, now narrow and deep, now wide and shallow, and feeling that he lacked nothing he made himself easy.
After dinner, while the animals grazed, he climbed the side of the ravine. It was a hundred feet up, but as the slope was gradual and bushes grew in plenty for support, he was soon at the crest. Here the sweep of his eye took in a vast expanse of broken country, but when he looked again, he saw something that gave him an unpleasant surprise. A thin blue line of smoke to the eastward rose up and lost itself in the bluer sky. Somebody was trespassing upon his domain!
The boy felt all the rage of one whose rightful possession has been assailed by impudent interlopers. The whole country, as far as he could see, was his by right of occupancy! Who were they, and why had they come? But he was a youth of action, and his resolution was quickly taken.