Wolf moon; a romance of the great Southwest

Contents

I A Spectre in the Gloom_ 9

II The Palmist’s Words_ 27

III The Night Ride._ 43

Foreword

Romance builds its altar in the hearts of us all and we worship there openly or in secret. We feed its fires with stories of love and adventure, of loss and gain, of gold and tears. No matter what the theme, we love its setting none the less , be it the frozen North or the Louisiana Gulf coast where in fancy one sees the fine flash i of roses and live oaks festooned with Spanish moss or hears the tumult of mocking bird voices, the rustle of palmetto leaves, the soft lilt of creole patois and the eternal chant of a fragrant sea over which gulls and pelicans poise in flight.

This is a story \of Oklahoma, rich in oil and romance Its Indians have been sung and painted. I leave them to far more facile pens. In the following pages May be found a glimpse i of the Southwest, colorful, dom¬ inant, free. The gypsy characters have been taken from bands that camp in the river bottoms or pass along the hot, red, dusty road£, day by day, to God knows where. The range riders , More picturesque than last year because of encroaching modernism, were found in wide stretches where the merciless suns and parching winds drive back all but the fittest. Bottled up in the Southivest, since the days when Coronado sought the seven fabled cities, is romance enough to feed the heart of the world for years. And when it dies, the sun, the stars, the mesa and those peopling this vast empire will fashion more .

J. J. Q.

Oklahoma City, November, 1923.

Chapter I. ’ECTRE IN THE GLOOM

rain imps danced upon the yellow t. Nava rose from her sagging cot the first drops splashed and drumi upon the canvas. At last the drought was broken. The great swirl¬ ing dust devils would fly no more. The camp could now move on from the shimmering prairie caps, cracked and blistered by untempered desert heat, on past the shrivelled skulls of corroded rocks pencilled to pastel shades by the everlast¬ ing beat of fiery suns, and on until the broad mesa, tranquil under the reign of a million starthrown shadows, sweeps into view. The gypsy advanced to the opening, cupped her coppery hands and shouted:

“ Bluebonnet.’ ’

1*

The call floated clear upon the evening air. It lifted high over the sand hills burnt dry through countless torrid summers, up, up, across gaunt ridges and melted into nothingness out there where the beetling crags keep watch, as they have watched through ages of sunlit peace. Through the red and pearl and gray of fluted can¬ yons, where night had early trailed her dusky garments, the cry penetrated, and further to the crotches of the hills until lost in diminuendo whisper in the gulf of space beyond.

‘ ‘ Bluebonnet! Bluebonnet! ’’

The cry rose sharper. A little woodland nymph hidden in a nearby grove started and gave answer. The call was as a sword-winged dart that cut her soul, crushed it with its import. She had heard it a thousand times before from those same lips and each time it had meant a bitter command to rise from the reverie into which she inevitably had fallen. She rebelled against it inwardly but what had rebellion meant but a resurgence of gusts of bitter passion? Tonight the feeling of repulsion toward the very word “gypsy” seemed nourished by the thought of what would transpire between the going down of the sun and its rising on the morrow.

Bluebonnet was seized with a desire to tear herself aAvay forever from the summons of this tyrant. It was as if she passed into a world of peace and happiness whenever she stole from the routine of the camp, as though she were driven through a roaring torrent one moment and then, in the next, drifting into the hush and calm of a broad expanse of river. Here in the grove life came to rest. In sunshine she could trace her fingers along the arabesques that shadows wove upon her dress. Then it always brought dreams, indistinct dreams of other days that she couldn’t quite bring forth from the world of phantasy into a realization of what they possibly could be.

Her dream world shattered by the cry that came rushing over the shoulders of the ridge above, Bluebonnet arose, dipped her bucket into the cool water bubbling forth from leaves and dancing sand and started to mount the slope.

Up near the crest light from the leaden sky was gradually receding. Bluebonnet gazed far into the distance, over and beyond the high caps that merged with the plains, gazed until she stumbled and sprawled among the leaves. Some¬ where out there in the hills Pemella, the gypsy chief, was coming toward her. And she, a frail, young thing, child-like, with a world of pleasure missed and a world of sorrow gained, would be his bride.

[ii]

Pemella! The very word sent the thought of a viper rising to her weary brain. She beheld a vision of a copperhead with monstrous jaws, its black fangs darting in and out of an iron-edged mouth. She buried her face in the wet leaves, a thousand moods taking possession of her at once. Shame, fear, anger, disgust mounted in one full sweep to her mind and loosed tears from her eyes She would not, she could not marry Pemella. His dark, lowering eyes, with the faint glimmer of gloating behind them, shot deep into her soul whenever he spoke to her or laid his large rough hands like coils upon her. Bluebonnet pushed her wet face further into the leaves and wished that she could lie there until dawn, until a thou¬ sand dawns had come. Her wounded feelings, bruised in countless places, had narrowed her vision until she felt as if she were forever walk¬ ing in a cavern, groping, now driven, now led brusquely, her footing uncertain, her face bleed¬ ing, her hands filled with thorns. Life to her was only toil and torture and each night a wait for the coming dawn.

“Bluebonnet!”

The woodland nymph startled by the nearness of the cry looked up into the face of Nava. The muscles under the wrinkled skin of the gypsy queen were ironed, an ugly contortion worked in her bulging neck. There was an intense show of indignation in her bloodshot eyes. Her lower jaw was caught up by its muscles until it closed like a steel safe. She crouched for a moment, brandished a large club over her head and with violent oath rushed forward. Bluebonnet crushed her face into the sand and dirt but the sharp, bruising blow she was expecting never fell.

“Don’t Nava, Nava!” she screamed, her plea narrowing the eyes of the queen into knife-like slits. Her throat was dry, her body quivered in agony. But there came no hiss, no guttural harangue, furious and raging, from the queen. A moment of silence passed. Bluebonnet lifted her face and gazed up into Nava’s eyes. Into those wicked orbs had come a new light. Dark shadows seemed to leave. Their coal-black depths were filled with liquid merriment while a wan smile played across her face as sunlight in a dark canyon. But to Bluebonnet it was sickly. It reminded her of adobe walls under a high noon sun. It was ghastly because uncommon, weird because new.

Nava shook her jet earrings as she pointed back to the tents and commanded:

“Come to camp.”

The huge, lumbering form of the gypsy ambled to the crest and disappeared over the ridge. Bluebonnet followed sheepishly, her head throbbing with wonderment at the inexplicable action of the camp qneen. What did it fortell? Would it mean that her life of torture, of harrassed, haunt¬ ed existence was over? What did the coming of Pemella portend? Was she to be taken from the rack and her body freed from the pain of years? Never had she known Nava to drop a threat once goaded into fury. She felt that back of her action was a purpose she could not divine. Each step toward camp only increased her amazement.

Arriving near the fire Bluebonnet set down her bucket and stirred the glowing ashes. She piled high the dry cottonwood until the flames leaped to the lowermost boughs of the overhanging trees. Great raindrops hissed upon the black pot. Nava had disappeared into the darkness of her tent.

Everywhere there was hustle and excitement for the camp was in consternation over the return of Pemella. He had gone to Arizona a month before to attend a monster meeting of the gyp¬ sies near the border. Well-known in the South¬ west and Mexico his reputation had extended as far as Sinaloa. In some Spanish-speaking com¬ munities it was said he was a diviner or seer. Pemella had declared he would return to camp on the full moon of October. Tonight the moon was due to rise, round and golden, and Pemella kept his word. It was his law.

Anemia that had blued the veins in the under parts of her arms poured into Bluebonnet’s spirit a desire to crawl away from camp to the high hills and sleep. Continual slavery in camp condemned her weakened body to nights of torture. And it was ever thus from the Dakotas to New Mexico, l^ow the camp was moving slowly southward for the winter but the furnace winds of Oklahoma imprisoned them until rain beat down the dust and sand and made traveling possible. For weeks the sun had shone from brassy skies, the wind driven from the Southwest unceasingly; everywhere were moving sheets of biting sand that stung the face and burned the earth into a huge brown puffball. Out on the plains the desert sun heated the ugly bodies of the tarantulas until they slipped under rocks to protect themselves from the rays; here in the cottonwood grove it had shriveled the leaves on the trees until at each flare of wind they crackled like high-pitched voices of ghosts.

The burden of the world lay heavy on Blue¬ bonnet. There was no exuberance in her nature ; adversity had driven it from those barren shores. There was no smile upon her face for the tyranny of Nava had abraised it. She cried rather than laugh for a hundred tragedies arose each day to draw tears from her. She was unhappy yet she had never known happiness. And all because Nava had early taken a dislike to her. Nava through her jealous eyes had seen the beauty that was to be in the child. She would have crushed it with her huge, horny hands had it not been for Pemella who was saving her for himself. He, too, saw in her face a comliness that could not be equalled in all the camps from Butte to Chihuahua. Her blue eyes, though ringed with circles of brown, had caught the color from desert skies; her tender mouth, twitching always when under command, was sweet though sensitive. Although the suns of the Southwest had poured color into her cheeks the trying, exhausting life in camp and the bru¬ tality of Nava had withdrawn it. Her appealing beauty had arrested Pemella’s attention even when she was a child but when childhood had given way to the bloom of womanhood he had felt him¬ self drawn toward her with a love that surprised him. Obsessed by the grace of her face and form, the tenderness of her expression, the appealing look in her eyes he consciously experienced an in¬ fatuation that strengthened and grew fibrous with each passing day. It sought out some weakness in her and that weakness was that she needed protection. From then on he became her protector. The cold-blooded ways of Nava met with rebuffs and warnings that halted the gypsy queen and transformed her into a monster, reminding Blue¬ bonnet of nothing less than a giant horned toad. Pemella cursed her shyness yet blamed it all on Nava. The latter cowered glumly until Pemella had disappeared only to turn on her victim with increased fury.

Thus Pemella worshipped at the tiny shrine he had built to her in his heart. He had become the gypsy chief when twenty-five years old upon the death of Guadalajara. Yet he was fitted for his post. The finely cut Grecian features, the deep set eyes, dark and penetrating under black brows, showed an unrelenting character. Gypsy-like he held to his purpose if that was gain. In his veins coursed the blood of a thousand nomads. Close-up he was Hungarian and spoke its gypsy dialect. Far-re¬ moved the nomadic races of India gave him his wandering desires and aversion to a fixed home.

In the long silences of the night on their trips west to the Gulf of California Bluebonnet often started into wakefulness. Somewhere near camp a tinkle of a bell would tell of the lead horse grazing. At times a night bird screamed weirdly by. At others she could hear naught but the snoring of the gypsies. She had thought of es¬ cape often, had tried it once only to slink back to her cot as she perceived figures in the gloom. She felt that she was watched both night and day.

In cursory analysis she often sought out the factor in this repugnance to gypsy life. She could not fathom the reason. In her heart rankled re¬ bellion which contrasted with the satisfaction of the other children. She firmly believed that she was not a gypsy. She had blue eyes; the others had black or brown. Her skin was whiter, her ways gentler. She felt that she must be different from the gypsies who snatched the warm bones from the improvised table and gnawed upon them for hours at a time. They could slumber in the hot sun, in rumbling wagons with only a sad¬ dle for a pillow. She worked from the moment that dawn came stealing over the hills until night grouped its shadows around the camp. As she grew older dark shadows crept into her eyes and the circles under them grew more pronounced. The routine was beginning to tear her apart from within, crush her slowly, perceptibly; it was drag¬ ging her down until her anemic form appeared as a spectre flitting through the brakes and deadwood of the grove.

Two looming phantoms stalked through her life—the tyrant Nava and her marriage to Pemella. Bluebonnet realized what the return of Pemella meant. On that dark gray day in September, when he left for Arizona, he had clasped her to him, crushed her lips to his and warned, ‘ 4 When I come back, be ready.” His kisses burnt her mouth like pressed hot steel and his words went deep until it seemed they seared her soul. She staggered back into her tent, reeled blindly ahd fell. A wild, fierce passion to hurt, to tear, to fling back upon him with intense fury tightened her will but she was powerless, subdued exteriorly.

The threat that she had heard drummed into her ears was about to be fulfilled. Now she under¬ stood why Pemella had guarded her insanely, threatened death to the other men were they even to touch her. An evil design on the part of the slothful gypsy drones would have converted him into a furious, raging beast. His love for her was sensitive yet strong, born as it was under the parching suns of Summer and the ice of Winter. To him Bluebonnet was a flower that he guarded while near and dreamed of from afar.

The thought of living with Pemella sent the blood sledging against the base of Bluebonnet’s brain. It would be impossible; she would rather crush her very life into nothingness, to die sudden¬ ly than live and be his bride. For she was a woman now with all the complexity of a woman’s heart. She could not understand the counter cur¬ rents of love for life and loathing for it, were she the gypsy’s bride. She knew that behind his smile to her was a scowling 1 , brutal nature. She had seen him rise as a volcano in action and storm through camp, wild-eyed, cursing, breaking that which met his grasp. Men ?ud women quailed in fear at his approach. During his spells even Nava avoided him for she avered that the god of fire came down and excited his being. Then at the sight of Bluebonnet he w^ould calm, his writhing muscles would quiet. She seemed to charm him yet she felt the time would come when she, too, would be caught up, shattered and cast aside.

For some unknown reason he wished her to speak with him in a language unknown to Nava who, fired to revenge, set the dark and evil forces within her designing ways to torture the object of Pemella’s love. Their conversings in English were taken as plots to destroy her queenly reign. The books and magazines that Pemella brought for her to read were torn to a thousand pieces. From those that Bluebonnet saved she gleaned her in¬ formation of the doings of the world that moved far away from the drab little gypsy camp.

The night of her marriage had come. The great day of dread was here. It had been looming long on the horizon of her life; now it overspread it like a net. The web that the spider had spun around her was as fine as gossamer, strong as adamant, inevitable as fate. It was narrowing subtley and surely. There could be no escape.

Sinister shadows crept down through the trees. Water dripped from the cottonwood leaves, dropped from the rim of the tents and ran in streams along the guy ropes to the ground. Red logs, spitting at each dash of rain, sent steam hurtling from the large iron kettle that contained food for the entire camp. One by one, boys straggled in from their depredations of the day and passed boisterously into the tents. A girl was gathering blankets hung from a rusty wire stretched between two wagons. Barefooted children pattered from one place to another, ran around wagon wheels and screeched to one an¬ other as they dodged between the taut ropes of the tents. Supper was waiting upon Pemella who was due on the evening train from Tucumcari. The gypsy men had gone to meet him. Bluebonnet watched them as they silently left leading the horse that only Pemella mounted. His silvered saddle, too, was gone.

A desperate resolve came to Bluebonnet. Why should she await the stroke of fate that lay before her? Something from within urged her to flee. But she recalled when little Nadina had attempted to escape close to Denver a few months before. Nava had almost beaten her to death. Nadina’s broken arm would always be a lesson. But the terror of the coming of Pemella, the realization that she would be forced to marry him, made her sink her face between her hands. She ran from her tent into the open only to see figures moving near the fire. Back near the wagons she heard a sound. She turned. Nava was gazing at her, a puzzled expression on her lowered face. Bluebonnet plunged back into her tent and staggered as if swooning. It would be impossible. She could not lift her hand without being seen.

Far off in the distance sounded the whistle of the oncoming train. It echoed in her ears as if it were bearing dowp on her at full speed. Blue¬ bonnet, startled, looked up through the gloom of the tent. She felt that the same God who was sending the rain would bring deliverance from this fate. She could not wait much longer. Pemella would return in a few moments. From experience she knew that he would come to her tent a minute after his arrival, take her in his arms and kiss her upon the lips. A blind fury at the thought drenched her soul with disgust. But the actuality of the marriage itself would leave her broken as a wounded bird is left by the gunner.

Bluebonnet slipped to the front of the tent and peeped out. Near the fire several gypsies were moving. Voices mingled with the falling rain¬ drops from the trees. She watched for a moment. A spectre showed itself in the gloom near a clump of trees off to the left. Bluebonnet observed it move. It passed from one tree to the other, came nearer, receded and was swallowed up in the gloom. Could it be Nava? Did she surmise her intention? Had she the power of divination that she claimed? Bluebonnet thought not, for had she seen the picture of her frenzied brain she would have grasped her by the throat, her dark fingers would have sunk deeper and deeper. Bluebonnet dropped to the ground under the vividness of such a vision. A short, sharp cry escaped her throat. Forced imagination was driving her desperate.

Another long-drawn blast announced that the train was coasting into the station. In an agony of shame she sprang to her feet. She must go now. She could stay no longer. Whatever the consequences they must be accepted. If death, then death would come as a sweet victory to her tired body and soul. Despair and abandon were driven against her in a mad rush. Gypsy life with its wandering from post to pillar and pillar to post must end. Hounded by the law, driven like disease and pestilence from the cities, she felt that gypsies were the scum of the earth, the jetsam of humanity that floated with the tides of adversity.

The crisis came and demanded its answer. Must she face the love-frenzied gypsy or escappe? Must she flee now or marry him and live there with the gypsies until she broke down and died. The night under and beyond the trees looked dark but her soul was filled with a million dis¬ torted apparations, pitch black, now grovelling, again winging through space. The chains of her bondage were about to be broken. The nomadic life, not one mood of which she had ever assimi¬ lated, w r as to be thrown oft. She was to be free, free to glide away and live out there somewhere in the trackless, treeless country. A strange stimulus gripped her, stiffened her will until she stood erect. She would not face martyrdom. She would live.

Indistince voices of women and children blended. At times they arose to a crescendo and died away to a whisper. Bluebonnet peered out to where the gypsies were moving. She heard someone stir back of the tent. Perhaps it was only the rising wind brushing the trees. Cauti¬ ously she dropped back to the center. A huge shadow of a man passed along the side of the canvas. It looked familiar. She crept to the flap and pulled it aside. A sweep of rain was driven against her face. Not two feet away from her was Pemella. He was standing, watching intently something near the fire. So close was he that she could have touched his shoulder. Then he recoiled a step and started toward the main tent. Bluebonnet watched him until the firelight flickered on a silver spangle of his hat. A guttural sound of surprise came from the dis¬ tance, a discord of voices, high pitched now, again low, mumbling.

All of the power that she had summoned from within seemed to vanish. She felt her face with her fingers that were as long icy strands, chilled to the bone and stiff with fear. Like a cowering frightened animal before a beating storm she huddled in a heap near the opening, her body shaken with sobs. She closed her eyes for a moment. In the darkness instead of finding despair she was given quiet and peace, alluring inspiration. An inner voice was whispering to her softly but with persuasive blandishment. She rose and gripped her throat in desperation.

A loud curse from Nava was followed by a string of oaths. It was Pemella’s tirade. A streak of light flashed through Bluebonnet’s mind. It seemed to insulate her from the fear that gripped her heart. Before she knew it she had slipped out into the rain to meet the mys¬ teries of the night.

Chapter II

F AR out against a skyline of lightningsplashed clouds the Menhaden fishing boats dreamed lazily on their course. From off the sea came puffs of salty air filled with moisture. Great cotton-capped waves broke here and there, leav¬ ing a trace of silver on the water. It was sum¬ mer and summer at the seashore means lovliness.

This was to be Jack Corcoran’s last day in sight of the old Atlantic. Through two short months he had disported at Cape May, had danced, swum, ridden horseback, played tennis, golf, whiled away hours that seemed to vanish with their coming. But now it was to end. His father had sent him to Cape May late in June to rest after a strenuous year at college. It was not altogether the realization of the work accomplished and the needed rest that made John Corcoran, Senior, decide to send Jack to the shore as usual but the remembered picture of him on that evening when he gracefully bowed to the audience in recognition of the applause accorded him when he received his sheepskin.

After all there had not been many pleasures in the elder Corcoran’s life. He had had his alloted share of trouble. The bitter pang of losing his wife had been supplemented by early financial failures. Some great tornado of trouble that rushed across his soul uprooting all the tender fibres of hope in worldly happiness had caused him to move from Georgia to Philadel¬ phia some years before.

He had looked forward to the graduation of his son from college as the great ambition of his life. Talking about it, dreaming about it, the thought was uppermost in his mind. It never left him. To close associates he unfolded his plans for his only son. He had always insisted, in a rather boastful way, that Jack must face the world, must become acquainted with its tur¬ bulent spirit, receive some of its knocks and scrape bottom on adversity for a year or two before he wbuld send him back to the University for his profession.

Jack had never quite understood his father. He was aware that he had been moulded in the crucible of experience but the product ground in the mortar of hard knocks by the pestle of the ways of the world seemed too soft, too pliant, lie had the gentle nature of a woman with all her piety. Yet at times he threw off his mantle of suave gentleness and displayed the inner fires that had sent him hurtling to success in younger days. At these times he became transformed. It was as if he had tried to replace for Jack the mother who had died and the burden had become too great. But he had done his best. With a form of mother instinct he had shielded the grow¬ ing boy, had formed him on the anvil of his own experience and given him the benefit of the wis¬ dom that was his.

Even on nights when the elder Corcoran had stormed into bed, the old being reasserting itself, Jack knew that on the morrow he would be as plastic as a child. Each morning before seven he watched his father slipping away to a little closeby church to pray before the Holy Taber¬ nacle. Down in his heart Jack wondered what was the compelling petition that his father laid before the Supreme Being. There was some great favor that God in his wisdom had never granted to his father, some desire that forced him each day in sunshine and storm to visit the little church. Could it be prayers for the de¬ parted soul of Jack’s mother? Or was it that great event in his life that had driven him from Georgia to the North?

Jack had often watched the restless spirit of his father when in recollective mood. Before the giant fireplace in winter or on the cool veranda in summer he saw the disturbance of some great memory as it swooped down on him from out of the past. A hasty stirring of his chair, a nervous clearing of throat were sure to be followed by a pacing to and fro, into the hall¬ way and back to the room, only to end with retiring from sight to his chamber. In all these seances with the past his lips moved as if in prayer, words were formed but never uttered.

Jack regretted that summer had drawn to a close. Not only because it forced the severing of college friendships for the time being but because it meant parting for a while from Janet Hathaway.

Janet had been Jack’s playmate ever since he could remember. They had sojourned each sum¬ mer season at Cape May, had played together on the beach with tiny buckets and later experi¬ enced childhood companionship give way to youthful affection. For the last summer or two an infatuation had developed, one that the elder Corcoran had observed with curiosity mingled with pride. Jack had selected Janet from the usual bevy of seashore girls for the simple reason that Janet had chosen him from the crowd of college youths. With the knowledge that Jack was about to leave on a long absence Janet found herself growing deeply in love.

The summer seashore colony was in the midst of breaking in September. That accounts for the hastily arranged party one evening on the eve of Jack’s departure for the west. The farewell party turned out to be a mass of toasting marsh¬ mallows surrounded by a score of boys and girls, among whom Janet chose herself chief toaster.