Stairs of Sand Read online

  “Buenos dias, senor, I’d like to say I’m not glad, but I’m afraid I am a little.”

  “Ruth, you’re not going home?” he queried, with gray flash of glance at her.

  “How did you guess?”

  “It came to me,” he returned, simply.

  “When?”

  “Just now.”

  “Adam, you don’t approve?”

  “I’m afraid not. Well, let’s have breakfast. Then I’ll tackle the job.”

  “You mean changing Old Butch and me? Two mules with but a single thought!”

  He laughed, the first time she had heard him do so. It was a mellow sound, ringing pleasantly upon the air. Then while he fell to helping Merryvale she watched him with studious, critical eyes. If she remembered him perfectly, there was a little more gray above his temples, but she could formulate no other change. He was so tall that his massive shoulders did not get correct estimate at first glance. Yet he was not heavy. His muscles rippled and bulged when he moved, yet appeared to sink in when he was still. He looked neither young nor middle-aged nor old. There was a lithe magnificence in his action. His hands were huge yet shapely, indicating good birth. But it was the mould of his head, the contour of his face that fascinated Ruth. Seen in profile it was clear, sharp, cruel, almost ruthless, yet singularly beautiful in its likness to a bird of prey.

  His attire was that of the desert prospector—a ragged shirt the color of sand, through rents in which gleamed the brown muscles, frayed and stained corduroys stuck in the rough heavy worn boots of a miner, his belt, one of wide dark leather, shiny and thin from long service.

  While Ruth scrutinized Adam, she suddenly experienced a sensation that was familiar. It was undeniably a warmth of interest and kindness and wondering pity; and beyond that something deeper, vaguer, becoming lost in the recesses of feeling. Stone had awakened this in her, in some degree—a fact which she remembered now with disdain. Other men in the past had roused it, fleetingly. It never lasted. Here it came again, stronger than ever before, somehow changed—sweet and thrilling, until she deliberately beat it down.

  Ruth strolled away then, beset again by the complexity of herself. But she did not begrudge this sentiment, or whatever it was. She thought it was singular that she would fight it, resist it, in Adam’s case, when in regard to other men, she had rather encouraged it. What an ingrate she would be not to feel greatly touched at this man’s regard for her.

  “Wal, Ruth, come to the festal board,” invited Merryvale. “What with the grub in your basket there, we’ll shore make out a breakfast fit for the gods.”

  It was Merryvale who did all the talking during the meal. He appeared to be a loquacious old man, as spry of wit and humor as he was on his feet. His attachment for Adam showed markedly. Ruth received strengthening of the impression that Merryvale regarded her as long associated with Adam and himself. She began to like him, to feel that he could be trusted.

  “Shore, you folks ain’t very hungry this mawnin’,” he remarked, slyly.

  “Indeed I was—for me,” replied Ruth, smiling.

  Adam rose without comment, and his first task was to roll up Ruth’s bed, which he threw into the wagon. Old Butch twitched his ears. Adam gave the mule a glance which promised much. Then he set about other tasks of packing.

  “Wal, Ruth, it’ll be a better day for travelin’ than yesterday,” said Merryvale.

  “Thank goodness. I hate the sand.”

  “I used to, when I first took up this wanderin’ life with Adam. But I got used to it, an’ now it’s home.”

  “Used to it?” queried Ruth, restlessly. “Why, this waste of sand doesn’t stay the same long enough for that.”

  “Wal, it’s all in the way you feel,” replied Merryvale, placidly. “If you loved the desert you’d understand.”

  “Love this hell of sand and stone and solitude!” exclaimed Ruth, shudderingly.

  “Young woman, you may live to love what makes you suffer most,” said the old man, nodding sagely.

  Adam approached from behind.

  “Merryvale, are you about cleaned up?”

  “Jest about. I’m shore waitin’ to see you wake up Butch.”

  “So am I,” added Ruth, rising.

  “That’ll take only a minute,” said Adam.

  “See heah, Adam,” rejoined Merryvale plaintively, “I’d shore like to see you get stuck on some job once.”

  “It won’t be on this mule, Merryvale. But you may have your satisfaction soon,” said Adam, with serious glance at Ruth. “Are you ready to talk over what you want to do?”

  “Quite ready,” answered Ruth, with a lightness that was not genuine.

  Adam drew her back to a seat on the flat rock. “Well, then, what is it?”

  “I want to go out of this desert,” announced Ruth, and the expression of her yearning broke her calm.

  “Where to?”

  “To the coast. Or anywhere, for that matter, away from the sand and heat—this endless open space.”

  “What would you do?”

  “Find work somewhere.”

  “Could you do any kind of work that would make you self-supporting?”

  “I don’t know. I never could keep house for grandpa, that’s certain. But I’d have to work at something. I’ve some money to start with. But it wouldn’t last forever.”

  “Ruth, this plan won’t do,” said Adam, gravely.

  “I’ve made up my mind,” she returned, stubbornly. “You can’t change it.”

  “Yes, I can. But let me reason with you.”

  “I’m afraid I’m not one to listen to reason. I never was.”

  “Isn’t it selfish of you to leave your grandfather?”

  “Yes, of course it is,” she replied, in impatient regret. “But I can’t help that.”

  “You could make this a turning point in your life. To go back to him, to your obligations, to overcome your loathing of the desert, to endure and to serve—that would make you a real woman. If you run off alone, footloose and reckless and beautiful as you are, it will be only to ruin.”

  “Mr. Wansfell, are you suggesting that I go back to my husband?” she queried, with sarcasm.

  “No. If he is truly what you say, it’s right that you never go. But your grandfather—what you owe him, and more, what you owe yourself——”

  “I owe myself freedom from this desert hell.”

  “Ruth, it was hell to me once,” he replied, gently. “But not now. In conquering the desert I have conquered myself.”

  “I am a woman,” she returned, bitterly. It roused her anger that already his look, his tone, his thought for her had begun to work upon her.

  “Do you deny the risk you run, if you persist in going?”

  “Risk—of what?”

  “Of hardship, of trouble—of ruin?”

  “Deny risk of all that?” she flashed. “No, I don’t. But the same thing holds if I remain and at least I’d have a chance. Here I’m absolutely sure of ruin, sooner or later … or death!”

  Adam rose perturbed and paced before her, as she had seen him in the moonlight. Yes, there was a burden upon him.

  “If I let you go, I shall go too,” he said, halting before her.

  “Of course,” replied Ruth, eagerly. “How else could I? I expect and hope you will take me out and set me upon my feet somewhere.”

  “And then?”

  “Why, why, you could leave me to my fate.”

  “No. What of my promise to your mother?” he returned, sternly.

  “My—mother?” echoed Ruth, falteringly. “I—I didn’t know you——”

  “You shall know presently. But know now that I wouldn’t leave you whether you go or stay.”

  Ruth vibrated to that with an emotion that held back her rising antagonism.

  “You need someone just as badly as ever Genie Linwood did,” went on Adam.

  “God knows I do,” returned Ruth, poignantly. She mastered her feeling, and continued. “Very we
ll, then, you go with me. I can’t drive you away. I—I believe I’m glad—glad, though I’m not worthy of your devotion.”

  “Ruth, it’s not a question of my devotion,” he said impatiently. “I would do this for you if I’d never heard of you until now.”

  “How can you expect me to believe that?” she demanded, despising herself for a doubt she could not help.

  “Well, you’re right. I shouldn’t have expected you to. Your husband, and the desert men you’ve met, and this boy Stone, according to your story, if it’s true—”

  “Do you accuse me of lying?” interrupted Ruth, sharply.

  “Ruth, look me straight in the eyes. There…. You have no call for fury. Tell me, have you always been truthful?”

  “No. I suppose I lied to Stone—and the rest,” she burst out, as if compelled. “But I told you the truth.”

  “I believe you, and that helps,” he said. “But to get back to the main issue…. I don’t think it womanly or right for you to abandon your grandfather.”

  “Right or wrong, I must,” she rejoined.

  “His home is your home, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to oppose you, but I’ll have to take you back,” he replied, conclusively.

  Ruth felt the blood rush hot to her cheeks.

  “You shall not!” she retorted, passionately. “Unless you resort to force as Stone did. In which case I shall have merely leaped out of the frying pan into the fire.”

  He did not seem quickly to comprehend her bitter speech. When he did it was if she had struck him.

  “Forgive me, Adam,” she said, cooling. “I didn’t mean that last. I am a cat, you see. I fear I’m not even woman enough to appreciate you—your kindness—what you believe your duty…. But I did mean you are not going to take me home.”

  “Indeed I am.”

  “No!” she cried, wildly, driven to desperation by a consciousness of weakness.

  “Ruth, I want to spare you pain,” he said, bending over her. “At least until you’re home, recovered from this mad jaunt.”

  “Spare me pain? You’re not doing it. What do you mean?”

  “Will you take my word, until some time later, that I have the power now to make you change your mind?”

  “No, I won’t.”

  “You will not trust me?”

  “I can’t. I don’t believe…. There’s not anyone who can change me.”

  “You refuse to go home?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You are disappointing me terribly. I hoped to find you more of a woman. At least one in whom earnestness and nobility had not wholly died.”

  “I don’t care what you hoped for me—or have found in me,” she returned, in heated bitterness, averting her gaze from the gray pitying storm of eyes she could not meet. “I’m no good. Or if I am it’ll not be for long. Take me to the first settlement, and leave me.”

  “No. You go home,” he thundered at her. Then turning his back he appeared to be fumbling at his blouse. She heard a musical clink of gold coins. Then he wheeled, strangely pale, and forced something into her hand.

  “Look inside,” he said, huskily.

  The object was an oval locket, large and heavy, of dull gold worn smooth. With trembling fingers Ruth essayed to open it. The blood receded to her heart. Suddenly the locket flew open and lay flat in her palm, disclosing two faces done in miniature.

  “Mother … and I!” gasped Ruth.

  Adam made no reply. As she stared down, her mother’s lovely face stared up at her. And opposite was the youthful portrait of herself. What a proud petulant looking child! She had been fourteen when this was painted in Philadelphia. Oh, so long ago! Her look returned to the beloved features of this mother she had lost. Her eyes dimmed so that she could not see, and at last her hot tears fell upon the open locket.

  “Adam, where did you get this?” she whispered.

  “Your mother gave it to me,” he replied.

  “When?”

  “This is May…. It will be eight years ago in July.”

  “How did she—come to give it?” went on Ruth, drying her eyes, and striving for self-control.

  “That is your mother’s story.”

  “Ah! … Tell me now.”

  He dropped down beside her, so that his eyes were on a level with hers.

  “Years ago an old prospector friend of mine, Dismukes by name, told me about a man and woman living in Death Valley under strange circumstances. They were gentle folk, he said, not inured to the hardship of desert life, and death surely awaited them there. It was my way to help people whom the desert had fettered one way or another. So I went to Death Valley.

  “Eventually I found this couple living in a comfortless shack, under the shadow of the most terrible slope of weathered rock in all that valley of destruction. The woman was exceedingly beautiful and frail—your mother, Magdalene Virey. And the man was her husband.”

  “My father,” murmured Ruth, with eager parting lips.

  “I saw at once that I was not wanted there, but I decided to stay to try and help your mother. Virey was beyond me. He was half mad, I think. Anyway he had brought her there to the nakedest, and loneliest and most forbidding desolate spot on earth, away from the world of men. He loved her so madly that he hated her. It was jealousy of men, terrible jealousy that had brought this about. Your mother had never loved Virey and she admitted to me that she had been unfaithful to him. She had come willingly to Death Valley to suffer any privation or torture that he chose to inflict. She had a great spirit. But she was a wordly woman, with a mocking doubt of man and herself and God.

  “Well, here I found the cruelest and most hopeless task the desert had ever given me. I could not persuade your mother to leave Death Valley. She vowed she would perish there as Virey wished. No woman can live through a summer in that valley of burning days and midnight blasting winds of fire. I feared she was doomed, but I fought with all my strength. She had a wonderful mind, and I interested her in Death Valley. Gradually she improved in health and strength. She came to love the grandeur and sublimity of that appalling place. Virey looked on, distrustful of me, and he listened to the falling, rolling, ringing rocks that all hours heralded the avalanche to come. I would have killed him, but for your mother.

  “All that I had suffered I told your mother. All I knew of the desert. In the end it saved her soul. Then July came, with its infernal heat.”

  Ruth, gazing spellbound, with hands locked like a vise, saw a sombre change pass over Adam’s face. She seemed to be peering through a mask, at dim shadows and lines of torture.

  “July came with its torrid sun by day and those awful winds by night. Then I had to fight death itself, One morning, after a night when for hours I believed your mother was dying, she took this locket from her bosom and gave it to me, with a sacred trust, which I will tell you last.

  “The day came when I could endure her agony no longer. I decided to kill Virey, or leave him there to a worse fate, and take your mother away. So that morning I went in search of my burros. Upon my return I heard the cracking of rocks. It had an ominous sound. I ran. There was Virey high on the slope rolling rocks down. I had to dodge great boulders as I ran to get your mother from the shack. Suddenly the avalanche started with a crash. Your mother came running out. But it was too late. I could not save her. I climbed a high rock just in the nick of time. The avalanche that was carrying Virey to destruction rolled down with terrific bellowing roar. The gray mass of stones and dust, like a cloud, enveloped your mother, carried her away—buried her forever.”

  His deep voice, ending abruptly, released Ruth with a violent wrench of clamped emotions. She sank against Adam’s shoulder, with bursting heart and blinded eyes.

  “Oh, my God! How horrible!” she moaned. “Oh, mother—mother!…. I knew something dreadful would happen to her…. Father was cruel to her. I came to hate him for it…. Mother, dear, who loved me so—dead and buried where I can never see
her grave!”

  “No, Ruth, you can never go there,” said Adam.

  “Death Valley! It has always haunted me since you talked of it at Santa Ysabel…. Oh, you might have saved her!”

  “Yes, Ruth, but only against her will. I could not have done it except toward the end. And I meant to.”

  “Adam, you must—have loved mother,” murmured Ruth, brokenly.

  “Not at first, but at the last I did love her,” returned Adam, hoarsely.

  “Oh, it’s come—release from that knot in my breast. The fear—the haunting fear! And now it’s a pang that will kill me.”

  “No, Ruth. Only change you—uplift you,” he replied.

  “And my mother’s sacred trust?” asked Ruth, with trembling lips.

  “Was you, Ruth. She bade me seek you, find you, and save you from a fate such as hers had been. She said by her own love for me you would love me too. You would be like her. You would have all of her weaknesses and none of her strength. The same wild longings and passions without the desire to thwart them!”

  “Oh, how true!” cried Ruth, bitterly.

  “That was your mother’s sacred trust. She gave me you.”

  “Why, oh, why didn’t you tell me at Santa Ysabel?” demanded Ruth.

  “I believed I’d killed my brother and was a fugitive from justice.”

  “What matter? I would gladly have gone with you to the very end of the world…. Now, too late—too late!”

  “Yes, for that, but not for all the rest.”

  Ruth drew away from him and rose. “I yield to my mother’s trust, knowing that I am more lost than ever,” she replied, unsteadily. “Take me where you will.”

  Chapter Four

  MERRYVALE hailed Adam with a shout: “Hey. We’re all packed heah, an’ shore ready to move. How aboot Old Butch?”

  The gray mule had been unhitched and haltered to the wagon for the night. Evidently he had moved around a little, but the moment Merryvale approached and untied him, he froze in his tracks, very like an opossum when disturbed.

  “Son-of-a-gun never looks you in the eye,” observed Merryvale.

  Adam strode to the wagon and took off the seat a long black leather whip, the kind teamsters called a blacksnake. With this doubled in his hands Adam walked round the mule to a position about ten feet in front of him. And there he stood eyeing the stubborn brute. It was easy to see that this situation might become extraordinary, if it were possible that Old Butch would recognize the man.