To the end of the trail

Front matter

BY

FRANK LEWIS NASON

3, ty

Contents

CHAPTER

Dry CREEK .

. PETER AND BAarTHOLOMEW

CHAPTER I DRY CREEK “‘ HELLO, partner!”

** Hello to you!”

“How ’s goat-ranging ?”’

“¢Can’t complain. How’s — er — er—’

“Tramping? Dry and not especially filling.”

The tramp slowly swung his blankets from his shoulder, and laying them on the ground, seated himself, thrusting his bended knees between his clasped hands. The other sat sideways on his horse, crossing one leg over the horn of the saddle, the bridle loose in his hands. His horse stood with braced legs, drooping head, and closed eyes, dreaming, evidently, from the pendulous, working lips, of sucking up sweet water or gathering juicy herbage. The horseman turned lazily to the seated figure.

“ Traveled far?”

‘¢ From Bed Rock.”

‘“‘ How ’s things down there?”’

‘Oh, rustling mavericks and scrapping as usual. Are n’t troubled up here, are you?”’

“No, too dry for cattle. Had a little trouble at first over limits; but we compromised. You can do anything, even with cowboys, if you treat them square.”

This remark was delivered with a satisfied air that denoted finality.

The tramp looked up with a questioning half smile, but said nothing.

The wide, concave cylindrical valley was dotted here and there with groups of browsing Angoras, each group with its self-important sentinel standing with bunched feet on a huge rock from the bounding cliffs, with pendant beard wagging from grinding jaws. The horseman threw his leg astride and thrust his feet in the stirrups. The horse, wakened from his pleasing dream, champed discontentedly on the dry bits.

“ Are you looking for a job?”

A pair of shrewdly shallow blue eyes pointed from a handsome mustached face.

ci wake t thinking of it Mar i ae ; but I’ take one.’

“ Not quite broke yet, eh?” with a knowing smile.

“No, not quite.’ The tramp laughed quietly.

“ Ever herded goats?”

“No, but I’ve ridden a cattle range.”

“ How ’Il Fon. a month and grub suit you?”

“ First-rate.””

“When ’ll you go to work?”

“That ’s good. Let’s go to the house for dinner. Then we'll get your outfit together and Ill show you the herders’ cabin.”

“You haven’t been here long?” the tramp asked.

“ Little over a year. I looked around a good bit before I picked this place. They tried to rope me in at Montrose and Delta, but I didn’t rope. Then I heard of Paradox. It took my fancy someway, the name did; but I didn’t get farther than here.”

“ Where ’s old Mizzou? He was here the last time I went through.”

“T bought him out. He’d got sick of the place. You see, he’s one of those restless fellows that would n’t stick in quicksand.”

The tramp smiled, but said nothing.

*“‘ You know this country, I judge?” The horseman looked at the tramp interrogatively.

“ Yes, fairly well. I’ve been in the San Juan for the last ten years.”

“ You ’re not a native, then?”

“No; I came from the East.”

“That so? What part?”

*“¢ Massachusetts.”

“SodidI. Well, here we are. (Guess the place has changed a little since you saw it.”

The tramp looked around approvingly.

“Yes, decidedly,” he said.

Within an inclosed, irrigated space bunches of cactus flourished, putting out delicate flowers from grotesque angles and into awkward shapes under the benign influence of abundant water. Clumps of thrifty sage loaded the air with its pungent aroma, clusters of yerba buena tossed yellow heads, grimacing derisively at the burning sands without. Clambering vines of purple-flowered clematis half — hid in cooling shadows the wide piazza that reached out from the curving earth-covered roof of the adobe range house.

The horseman, while tying his horse, noted the look of approbation.

“You see,I’ve brought my wife out here,” he said in explanation.

Dry Creek was not an ideal place for a honeymoon; but if love can idealize and make beautiful a city flat, there is no reason why it should not be. equally successful with an adobe hut surrounded — by sagebrush and cactus. Besides, if the adobe is one’s own, as well as a wide goat range, that, at least, is a point in its favor as compared with a city flat. Whether the comparison ever occurred to the very recent Mrs. Mary Ingalls, it hardly - matters. It certainly does not alter the fact that — the exclusive and undisputed ownership of a house is a very great pleasure in itself.

On either hand, in the nearer distance, rose great cliffs of brown sandstone that formed the side walls of the box caiion of Dry Creek. Underneath the cliffs the long, steep-sloped talus was covered with scraggy pijion and cedar, grading abruptly into the nearly level, but yet concave ae bottom of Dry Creek. To the east the caiion nar. rowed and rose to meet the level mesa whose rim formed the eastern sky line; to the west it widened and deepened till it was closed in the distance by the timbered slopes and snow-clad peaks of the La Sal Mountains.

As a rule, Dry Creek deserved its name. Only during the rainy season, or an occasional cloudburst, was it amisnomer. On these occasions from a thousand crevices in the cliffs there poured forth gushing streams of muddy water, and these, hastening toward the parched creek-bed, transformed it into a moving mass of red mud that crawled rather than ran, towards the Dolores. On its way the stream grew thicker with the masses of adobe that it tore from its startled banks, and then woe to the luckless kine or traveler that was caught in its flood !

But the adobe banks took toll as well as gave, and from the moving mass sucked moisture that _ nourished thrifty clumps of yerba buena and an occasional cottonwood, that lifted its ghostly scragginess high above the stream bed and gave notice, to whom it might concern, that water could be found there, occasionally at least.

After these periodic assertions of its vested rights and titles to its bed, Dry Creek claimed the balance of its prerogatives by adorning its banks with erusts of white alkali, and impregnating its occasional pools with the same nauseating salt, to the point where man and beast drank of it only because it was wet.

“Come in.” Ingalls hospitably held open the little gate, with a glance at the calm, brown-eyed woman who stood on the piazza.

“My wife, Mrs. Ingalls. Mm—er” — He looked inquiringly at the tramp.

“¢ Chase — William Chase.” He smiled easily, acknowledging the introduction.

Mrs. Ingalls felt an aversion to tramps in general, but she noted with approval the firm, wellknit figure as she answered : —

“Will you come in, Mr. Chase? Unless” — she looked at Chase’s swinging blankets apprehensively; but they evidently passed inspection — “you prefer the piazza. It’s cooler.”

Chase swung his blankets from his shoulder to the floor, and stood leaning against one of the posts of the piazza.

“You must find it rather lonely out here, Mrs. Ingalls. It’s a great change from New England. You said New England?” looking at Ingalls.

Ingalls nodded assent to his inquiry. He answered the question addressed to his wife.

“Oh, I don’t know about that. Change, of course. But Mrs. Ingalls is dreadfully in love with everything so far, — the dear little conies, the dignified ground hogs, and all that sort of thing; something different every day.”

“They are dear and dignified, are n’t they, Mr. Chase? Here’s Waddles now. Isn’t he dignified, even as a suppliant?”

A fat, gray ground hog waddled up to Mary and sat, shaking his forepaws up and down as if emphasizing wise remarks.

“1 ’m very glad to agree with you, Mrs. Ingalls. I’ve always thought so.”

“Umph,” grunted Ingalls. ‘ That’s all well enough for sentiment, but when they dig holes that you stumble into, and eat up your crops, that ’s business, and mighty unpleasant, too.”

Mary began to reply, but ended with, ‘“ There’s something burning; excuse me, please.”

Ingalls followed his wife into the house.

“*Who’s Mr. Chase?” Mary asked in the seclusion of the kitchen.

“ How do I know? I don’t keep track of every tramp that turns up,” her husband answered.

“Tramp?” repeated Mary. “ He’s no tramp.”

Ingalls laughed.

“ Going to put a halo on tramps, too?”

“] tell you he isn’t a tramp. He’s a gentleman.”

In spite of a warning look from Mary, Ingalls burst into a hearty laugh.

“Did his blankets pass inspection? I saw you looking at them,” he added mischievously.

“Indeed they did!” She spoke decidedly. “ They were n’t thrown together. Now come,” she added; ‘“ dinner ’s ready.”

*‘ 1 hope experience will keep up your illusions,” Ingalls said, as he stood aside for his wife to pass.

“They are n’t illusions,” she retorted. ‘ They are conclusions.”

The little dinner table was attractively set forth. The linen was snow white, and in the centre a jardiniere glowed crimson with delicate cacti. They chatted easily of their former homes, and the thousand and one things so dear when so far away. Each was strengthened in his first impressions.

“You haven’t given me a chance to tell you that Mr. Chase is going to help me herding.”

“It’s quite a distance to the cabin.” Ingalls turned to Chase. “I guess you’ll have to look out for yourself. You’re used to that, I take it.”

“ Sure thing.”

“* Are you really going on the range?” asked Mary. There was aslight surprise manifest. The man and the position seemed incongruous.

“Yes, if I prove acceptable.” There was a faint challenge in his tone in reply to her surprise. —

‘‘] hope you won’t prove as attractive as those wretched goats. I’ve hardly seen Mr. Ingalls since we came out here. He has spent most of his time on the range.” She rose as she spoke and led the way to the door. Outside the dazzling sun beat pitilessly on the sand, in harsh contrast to the subdued light of the dining-room.

‘“‘ My extra riding outfit is n’t a very good one.” Ingalls turned inquiringly to Chase.

“That does n’t matter for a day or two,” replied Chase. ‘“ When you go to Manzanita, if you ‘ll call at Tice’s he’ll give you mine. It’s stored there. You’re going to-morrow, are n’t you?”

“Yes; I think I’ll have to. Anything else?”

“ How about cooking outfit at the cabin?” inquired Chase.

“Tf you ll make out a list of what you want Ill do the best I can with what we’ve got, and bring the rest from Manzanita.”

Chase took out a note-book and pencil and wrote hastily fora moment. He tore out the leaf and handed it to Ingalls.

“That will do for a month.”

Ingalls drew a bunch of keys from his pocket and opened the door of a small storeroom that stood apart from the house. Both entered and busied themselves sacking beans, bacon, coffee, sugar, and other fundamentals ; a scant list, but the great West has grown to what it is on far less sumptuous fare. The parcels were wrapped in gunnysacks and packed on a patient burro. Then Chase, with Ingalls, turned and rode away across the valley, where shimmering heat waves wriggled up from scorching sand only to meet the steady downbeat of the fervid sun; around bunches of cactus with leathery skins and subtle spines, through clumps of chaparral that put out dusty leaves from behind their barrier of thorns, every plant and shrub bristling a cave canem to the tactless marauders who should seek to prey upon them.

Deep in the earth great roots swelled and thrust, sucking up the last drop of moisture from the erudging soil and storing it away in well-protected vaults. Everything spoke of the merciless struggle for self. And yet once each year the miserly plants poured out their treasured hoard in delicate flowers that loaded the air with perfume, and dotted the desert with glowing colors, tiny microcosms that reflect the greed of mankind, that grinds and grasps and bites and stings all the world, only to pour forth the spoils of strife into the protected lap of the one it loves.

They reached the cabin and dismounted. It was an adobe, like the range house, only smaller. Inside, a rude bunk and undecided table, with X-legged chairs, completed the inventory of furniture, unless were included rusty knives and forks. An adobe fireplace was strewn with charred sticks, and an iron frying-pan was half buried in the ashes.

Ingalls looked uneasily at Chase.

“ Pretty tough layout for a Christian,” he ventured tentatively.

“Oh, I’ve seen worse in this man’s country,” was the reassuring answer. ‘ By the way, I wish you 'd tell Tice to give you my trunk. I’ve got some plunder in there that may come in handy.”

Ingalls entered a memorandum on his list.

“There’s one good thing, anyway. There’s a sweet spring at the foot of the slide. No better water in New England, even. I1’ll show you.”

At the spring they sat down and drank of the grateful water.

“That is good,” assented Chase. “A man might give up a good many things for water like that.”

“ Lucky for me there’s so little of it, though. I would n’t have had this range if there ’d been a hundred inches instead of three.”

“Guess you ’re right,” answered Chase. “It’s magnificent farming land here if it had water.”

“JT had a little scrap to keep it, as it was. Some coyote dug a hole down there and called it amine. Located this place for water. It didn’t work, though.” He rose to go as he spoke. “‘ Guess you ’d better corral the goats every night. Coyotes are pretty thick, and. they’re getting worse. Now, don’t stand on ceremony. Come down to the house when you feel like it, and let me know if you want anything.”

At the cabin Ingalls mounted and rode away. Chase began putting his scanty belongings in order. Two blankets sewed together and stuffed with pifion needles made a fragrant mattress on which he spread his blankets. Wisps of cedar he fashioned into a broom with which he swept his floor. Knives and forks were scoured by thrusting in the sand, utensils were washed, frying-pans cleaned. A bundle of wood placed near the fireplace completed his preparations. Then he sat down and contemplated the room with a degree of satisfaction.

The necessities of life are, after all, only the children of our way of looking at things. The more closely we are wedded to the idea of equaling or rivaling others, the more numerous and exasperating the progeny.

Chase grinned at his few possessions and thought of how often he had done with fewer. At the Ingalls’s, what a superabundance of dishes! the picture-covered walls! the upholstered chairs! the subdued rugs! All these meant worry and vexation of spirit. With how few things men of his present habits rubbed along, and, as a rule, how care-free they were !

Then came wealth and many other things, and among these, woman.

Was it the things or the woman? One never appeared without the other. What was the matter down at the range house?

He shook his head, rose up, and rode out on the range. It was late that night when the last woolly tail was snapped inside the sheltering corral. Many atime and oft in his life had Chase exhorted fervently over the cussedness of inanimate things, sworn perfervid oaths over the blind stupidity of stampeding herds of cattle ; but never before had he felt the utter limitations of language as over his first attempt to corral the infinite perversity of the elastic-bodied, fickle-minded goat.

Chapter II Peter And Bartholomew

Two years before the date of this story, Herbert Ingalls had wandered to Dry Creek, and being impressed with its undeveloped possibilities, had bought out the former owner’s improvements, said adobe hut and corral, as well as his bunch of Angora goats. With the purchase money in his pockets, the former owner moved on to seek out a new field, as he had done many a time before, and as he was likely to do to the end of his worthless days.

Herbert Ingalls was no tenderfoot in this transaction, in spite of the former owner’s statement to the contrary, as he jingled the transferring coins in his pocket, remarking as he did so, that “ he had got shut of the worst fool layout he had ever tackled.” Ingalls had rightly judged that the land could never be irrigated and so would never be taken up as farm land, and that he could graze his flocks indefinitely without hindrance on the wide range.

Carefully he had tended his bunch of goats, and in his spare time he had improved the land around the adobe, brought water from a distant spring for household use and for the irrigation of a small garden, uprooted sage and grease-wood, fenced in his oasis, and built additional corrals for his stock. He had also built other corrals to protect his increasing flocks from sneaking coyotes. His ambition was then in sight, and, within a year and a half, his house was as ready as he could make it for the girl in New England who had promised to share his life with him.

He had been East and married her; and now, having returned, he went whistling and singing about his work with no thought of a possible cloudy future before him.

It is true that coming events are always more or less foreshadowed, for plastic minds are moulded by insistent conditions; they never seize conditions and bend them to their own ends. Minatory shadows, cast by mental tendencies, may be — dimmed and even obscured to the end of life by the strong light of benign influences; but remove this light, and the black shadows reassert themselves, and the wrecked life gropes around in darkness to a disastrous end.

A pleasure yacht can sweep in safety over the quiet waters of a land-locked bay; only a strong ship can buffet the mighty waves of the open sea.

Both Ingalls and his wife were in reality unfitted for a frontier life, — he, because of a volatile, unbalanced enthusiasm which the first favorable wind strongly impelled in uncharted channels; she, because of a mind too rigid in its ideas of right and wrong to adapt itself readily to new conditions: The possible sedate and quiet life of a New England town, with its monotonous routine and mild dissipations, repelled them as strongly as the distorted idealisms of color-blind, perspectiveless writers of the West attracted them. The purposeless whoop of careering cowboys, the reckless daring of prospectors, the rattle and clash of boomed and booming towns, all spoke to them of a wild, care-free life where monotony was stillborn and thrust into its grave by the unceasing procession of ever-changing scenes.

The frequent letters of her promised husband only made Mary count more restlessly the impatient days that yet separated her from her coming life. The first few weeks in the West had fired her with a painful excitement, akin to that of a child with a superabundance of Christmas toys.

The power of novelty was even yet strong enough to enable her to live down the insuperable annoyances of tactless sandstorms that sifted incisive dust in heavy coats over her household belongings, of the daily procession of cloudless suns, and of the semi-weekly mail that reminded her of _ the distance from her old friends, incidentally impressing upon her the fact that the greatest charm in novelty after all lies in exciting the mild jealousy of open-eyed friends. As a matter of fact, novelty is a shallow well, but the unavoidable duties of life anywhere and everywhere lay hold upon us with the resistless tug of gravity.

- The strongest castle needs constant repair, — leave it alone, and patient gravity has its way and drags it to earth.

This July morning saw Ingalls on the way to Manzanita, and Mary with sketch-book and box of colors picking her way over her favorite walk along the steep talus that broke the sheer descent of the cliff and eased it to meet the nearly level valley. At the outer edge of a clump of pifions she paused and let her eyes wander down the series of white-fringed pools of Dry Creek, over the silver thread of the Dolores and up to where the Paradox climbed the purple heights of the distant La Sals. The hot, dry air was pleasantly stimulating, conducive rather to the prolonged sweetness of day dreams than to the senseless stupor of sleep. ?

Mary lazily opened her sketch-book and arranged her paints and brushes. In her was enough of artistic ability to deter her from landscapes as a whole, and to direct her in the selection of detachable units that had a beauty of their own apart from their pretentious settings. Idly turning the leaves of her book and extracting a pardonable amount of comfort from desert flowers and picturesque rocks, she was startled into active consciousness when a black-haired beast, whose fur was powdered white with alkali, dropped with a restful sigh at her feet.

‘ Bartholomew! Where did you come from? Where’s Peter?” |

As she lifted her eyes from the dog, they rested on a little gnome-like man who stood before her. The leathery skin of his face was half hidden behind a tangled maze of thin, grizzled beard, the ears by long locks of hair, and finally shrewd, kindly gray eyes pierced from beneath the shadow of ragged eyebrows. As soon as the little figure perceived that her attention was attracted, he swept a much ventilated hat from his head and, bowing grotesquely, said : —

** Pardon, lady! I hope I do not unforgivably intrude myself?” _

“No, indeed,” she replied. “But how you frightened me, Peter! I never met any one here before.”

Peter straightened himself imposingly, his hat hanging in his hand.

“J can believe you, lady. Only those come here who haf the luff of the beautiful. Down there the trail is straight, and no stones in it to make it rough, and down there men luff to walk.” He pointed to the main trail in the valley below, with a gesture half scornful, half pitiful.

Mary did not reply immediately, but sat drawing Bartholomew’s ears through her fingers. She had made the acquaintance of Peter and his dog almost the first day of her arrival at Dry Creek. At first Peter had attracted her by his vague mysticisms, much in the same manner as she had been attracted by other novel surroundings of which she considered him an interesting part. But, as her acquaintance with Peter grew, it ripened into a sincere friendship. Embedded in his rambling figures of speech were many grains of hard common sense that, though at first almost wholly obscured, appealed to her strongly, even after the glamor of novelty had vanished.

As for Peter, in spite of his earnest convictions, he was not invulnerable to flattery; but that it might prove acceptable, it must be genuine, springing from acquiescent appreciation. His acceptance of Mary was cordial, and in her presence he spoke without reserve. He tendered to her the considerate reverence which his chivalrous nature prompted.

‘“ Bartholomew!” Peter exclaimed reproachfully, looking at the recumbent dog. “ Why do you trouble the lady? Homme here, sir!”

Bartholomew raised his head and looked inquiringly at his master.

“Let him stay here, Peter. He doesn’t trouble me.” Mary spoke without looking up.

Bartholomew, thus reassured, closed his eyes, gave a few hasty sniffs, then, with a long-drawn sigh, replaced his head on Mary’s feet.

Peter shook his head reflectively.

“ Uff Bartholomew I haf no hope. I haf by my example taught him to gif up all things to do his master’s bidding, but with him’ — He spread out his hands. ‘“ He still gifs up the what is right for the what is pleasant.”

Mary looked up, smiling.

“ Because a thing is pleasant, it isn’t necessarily wrong, is it?”

“No.” Peter spoke meditatively. ‘ But it iss here.” He raised an emphatic finger. ‘“ We luff the pleasant things so much that many times we say it is right because it is pleasant.”

Mary shifted to another point.

“ Why aren’t you at your mine, Peter? You have n’t given it up, have you?”

Peter grew rigid.

“Gif up my mine!” he exclaimed. ‘ No, lady. When I gif up my mine, then will I be dead.”

“Ts it pleasant to work in your mine all alone ?”

Peter did not see the trend of Mary’s question.

“ No, lady, it iss not. Yet I work there all alone, Bartholomew and I.”

*‘ But it is pleasant down here, isn’t it?” persisted Mary.

“Yes, here it iss pleasant,” Peter answered absently, his eyes wandering through the opening trees to the landscape beyond.

Mary’s eyes twinkled mischievously.

‘‘Then sometimes you do pleasant things just because they are pleasant.”

Peter came to sharp attention.

** Did you ever see a flock of geese driven to market? No?” he asked incisively. ‘“* When you look at them, you will say, ‘ This one goes forward, this one goes backward, this one goes this way and another goes that,’ and you say, ‘ These geese, they all go nowhere.’ You haf not looked at the goose-herd. ‘The goose-herd, he knows that go as they will, they go to market.”

Mary smiled.

“You have answered a fool according to his folly.”

Peter paid no attention to her words, then asked abruptly : —

“What do you in the little book?”

Mary shook her head dubiously.

“ Nothing you will care for, Peter,’ she answered, passing the sketches to him one by one.

Her comments on them, at first invitingly depreeative, became nervously embarrassed, as Peter solemnly absorbed them with half audible grunts instead of the naive delight she had really expected.

‘You don’t like them?” she ventured, with a shade of annoyance.

Peter shuffled the leaves compactly and returned them.

“They are good, lady; but they haf nothing, no meaning beyond themselves. Why should I spend my time over pictures of this” — he swept his hand comprehensively around — “ when I haf it all, the thing itself? It iss always with me, and always, when I look, it iss something different.”

He looked at her solemnly, as with absent hand she swept the fragments of an unappreciated sketch from her lap.

‘“¢ Peter, you make me feel as if I were of no account. I thought these were good. See!”

She held up her last sketch. It was a stunted spruce, from which fierce winds and drifting sand had swept every trace of verdure, and it stood thrusting out its poor denuded branches, pathetically defiant to the last. Peter looked sorrowful but resolute as he waved the proffered sketch aside.

“Pardon, lady, but you do not understand. Many things in life would please me; but I do not ask this, ‘ Will it please me?’ I ask, ‘ Does it make my work to grow?’”’ Peter again paused, looking at his silent listener.

Mary sat thoughtfully turning her discarded sketches.

“Then,” she spoke reflectively, ‘‘ you do not think these are bad ?”’

“No,” interrupted Peter; “only they are nothing to me.”

“ But,” pursued Mary, “I thought you liked paintings.”

Peter looked solemn again.

“You do not understand me. The great masters — yes. hey did not waste their time on these.” Again he swept his hand from Mary’s sketches to the surrounding landscape. ‘The great masters, they studied the souls of men; always the souls of men that look out to the eyes that can see. And always there is something they saw that they could not paint. We feel this that they saw and could not paint; we feel this that they strove for and could not paint; and we look at their work and we feel their longing, and we go away and are better because we are no longer satisfied.”

‘“‘ But, Peter,” she began, with a nervous smile, ‘“‘we were speaking of the right and wrong of pleasant things. I don’t mean that it’s wrong for you to love the old masters; but — Peter, I don’t know. Your geese are all mixed up.”

“So?” Peter smiled benevolently. “I will show you. In the mountains it iss lonely and the mine iss dark. And the shadows of the mine eat into my soul so there iss no light. Then I come here where there are sun and stars, and these make the shadows to go away.”

Peter’s thin voice was resonant. He stood braced, his head thrown back, his hands outstretched. Mary was watching him with parted lips, in her eyes a questioning light. Her eyes dropped. It was not acting. No one could look upon the distant eyes, the ready pose, and question the reality. Mary would never dream of questioning the exaltation bred in monastic cells; she with many others had to learn that long vigils on mountain tops or in solitary deserts can call to life the same absorbed, ecstatic visions.

For a long time he stood, Mary not moving, disliking to break the spell. At length he slowly came back to present consciousness; but he remained silent for a long time.

‘You shall see,” he resumed finally, “ that the light has come. To-morrow I shall go back to the mountains.”

The smile faded. He rose and called to Bartholomew.

Mary gathered her materials together and followed his lead to the house. Neither spoke. Mary was thinking many things. As for Peter, the spirit that moved him had departed.