Nevada (1995) (19 page)

"I have already, Ben," was Ina's reply. "What you love I love.

Your home is my home."

"Ben, am I in on this ranch deal with you?" asked Hettie, gravely.

"That's for you to say, my dear sister," replied Ben. "But I
b
elieve I'd rather you didn't come in, for it is a risk."

"Then if Ina has no objection, I'll take the risk."

"So will I. We'll share the risk, and together make a gran
d
success of it," added Ina, happily.

Ben hired a guide from Winthrop to lead his horses and rider
s
across country to the ranch. On the next day the wagons mad
e
Winthrop, where Ben expected to meet Burridge, as agreed. Bu
t
Burridge failed to appear. Ben said this was strange, as Burridg
e
was due to take his outfit over the better road and to make a coun
t
of the cattle, but it was not so strange, nor half so illuminating
,
as the glances Ben encountered when he mentioned Burridge casuall
y
to bystanders in Winthrop.

Whereupon Ben procured another guide, a Mexican sheepherder, wh
o
guaranteed to pilot the heavily-laden wagons safely to thei
r
destination.

The four horse teams made good time over the open desert road
,
reaching the brakes some thirty miles out by sundown.

Hettie was enthralled by the sunset over the yellow sloping lan
d
and the weird mountains to the west. A storm had been gatherin
g
all day in that direction. The atmosphere had been sultry. Towar
d
late afternoon the clouds coalesced and hung over the black ranges
,
so that when the sun set, the reds and golds and purples
,
heightened by the exquisite light, were lovely beyond compare. A
t
dusk sheet lightning flared low down across the sky, and fain
t
rumblings of thunder rolled along the battlements of the desert.

Next morning the travelers rode into rough forest land, where th
e
main grade was uphill, but the apology for a road plunged down s
o
often into dry hot ravines that the general ascent had to be take
n
for granted.

The forest consisted of cedars, oaks, pi+-ons, and scattered pines
,
all of which grew more abundant and larger, sturdier as the carava
n
progressed. Travel was exasperatingly slow. In some places th
e
road was not safe, and the women had to get out and walk. Ridge
s
like those of a washboard sloped irregularly down from the south;
o
utcroppings of limestone showed on the gully banks, pools of wate
r
gleamed in the shady washes. Open sandy flats, where the horse
s
labored, had to be crossed. At length the cedars and pi+-ons gav
e
place to a heavier growth of pines. Here the real forest began
,
and except for the difficulty of travel, it was vastly satisfyin
g
to Hettie. She had her first view of wild deer and wild turkeys.

Marvie reacted to sight of this game as might have been expected.

For that matter, Ben leaped off his wagon, gun in hand. Th
e
progress of the train had to be halted while the hunters stalke
d
the game. Soon shots reverberated throughout the forest. Be
n
returned empty-handed, but Marvie, with face glowing, exhibited
a
fine gobbler.

Only fifteen miles were covered that day, and everybody was wearie
d
and glad to make camp. Before sleep came to Hettie she heard
a
blood-curdling cry of a wild beast unknown to her. It seemed
a
deep far-away moan, so sad and uncanny that she shuddered. Nex
t
morning Ben told her the cry had come from a timber wolf, a beas
t
the guide called a lofer and said was plentiful in those parts.

Tedious travel began into an ever-increasingly wild and wonderfu
l
woodland. The trees hid any possible view of the country beyond.

The air grew clearer, less oppressive, and the heat no longer mad
e
the shade desirable. Massed foliage, like green lace, dark-brow
n
seamed boles of pines, patches of sunlight on the white grass, th
e
red of a tufted flower, like a stiff brush dipped in paint, an
d
golden aisles of needles up and down the forest, held for Hettie
a
never-failing delight.

About the middle of the afternoon the travelers rode to the edge o
f
open light forest.

"We're here," shouted Ben, leaping down. "California t
o
Arizona! . . . Ina--mother--Blaine--Hettie, get down and com
e
in, as these Arizonians say."

"Gee! I see turkeys!" cried Marvie, leaping off his horse an
d
tearing his rifle from the saddle sheath.

"Indian!" called Ben, after him.

Hettie sat under a great spreading pine on the edge of one of th
e
level benches that sloped down into the open sage and ceda
r
country.

She had tramped around until exhausted. A bubbling spring tha
t
gushed from under a mossy rock in a glen had held her only lon
g
enough to yield her a drink. She had passed by the long-unused an
d
dilapidated corrals, and the ruined old log cabin which Ben ha
d
laughingly told the stricken Ina was to be their abode. The broo
k
that came singing down from the dark forest slope above cause
d
Hettie to linger and listen to its music. Across the brook o
n
another bench stood another old log cabin, or in fact two small one-
r
oomed cabins, with porch between, and all sheltered under one lon
g
sloping wide-eaved roof of rough moss-stained shingles. Th
e
picturesqueness of this woodland structure appealed to Hettie.

Warily she peeped in, with vivid sense of the vacant speaking room
s
and tumbled-down stone fireplaces, and the lofts that reached ou
t
over half the rooms. What had happened there? How dark, musty
,
woody!

"I'll make this my abode and mother's," she decided, with a thril
l
at the prospect of home-building. "Repairs, windows, floors
,
sheathing! Oh! I can see it! I'll not have a new house."

And so at last she had found herself on the edge of the wide bench
,
back against the last pine, with fascinated gaze riveted upon th
e
view that Ben had raved about.

"No wonder!" whispered Hettie. "If there were nothing else, THAT
w
ould be enough."

Her position was on the edge of the irregular timber line, whic
h
stretched on each side of her, with fringes of the forest her
e
running down to end in straggling lonesome pines, and ther
e
skirting the edge of the steep benches, as if the greatest o
f
landscape gardeners had planted them there. And so he had, Hetti
e
averred! What majestic pines! How the summer wind roared abov
e
and back of her, now low, now high, deepening upward with th
e
denser growth of forest!

But it was the desert that enchanted Hettie. For she doubted no
t
that the edge of the bench where she sat was the edge of th
e
desert. Yet how soft, how marvelously purple and gray, how grandl
y
the slope fell for league on league, widening, rolling, lengthening
,
descending, down to the blazing abyss of sand and rock and canyon.

Sage and grass in the foreground gave that vast valley its softes
t
beauty, its infinite charms, its mistiness and brilliance, as i
f
drenched with dew. How like troops of great beasts appeared th
e
isolated green cedars and the lonely jutting rocks, some gray
,
others red. This valley was a portal down to the dim unknown. O
n
each side it swelled to ranges of foothills, themselves like train
s
of colossal camels trooping down to drink. They were rounded, sof
t
as clouds, gray and pink and faintly green, without a tree, a roc
k
to mar their exquisite curve. From the dignity of low mountain
s
these hills dwindled in size until they were mere mounds that a
t
last flattened out into the desert.

Every time Hettie moved her absorbed gaze from one far point t
o
another of the valley, the outlines, the colors, the distances, th
e
lines of lonely cedars, the winding black threads of gullies--al
l
seemed to change, to magnify in her sight, to draw upon he
r
emotion, and to command her to set her eyes upon that sublim
e
distance, that ethereal blending of hues and forms, that stunnin
g
mystery of the desert, of that magnificent arid zone which gav
e
this country its name.

"I can only look--and learn to worship," whispered Hettie, in
a
rapture. "It awakens me. What little have I seen and known! . . .

Oh, lonely wild land--oh, Arizona! if you shelter HIM my prayer i
s
answered, my cup is full!"

The Ides, imbued with Ben's spirit, set earnestly to work to wres
t
a beautiful home from this wilderness.

Two gangs of Mexican laborers, lent by the railroad, in the charg
e
of capable men, were put to work clearing and grading a road
,
felling and hauling timber. Teamsters from Winthrop made a tri
p
out every other day, bringing lumber, shingles, windows and doors
,
bricks and cement, pipe and plumbing, which were housed in
a
temporary shelter. Carpenters began to erect Ben's house, whic
h
was to be a long, one-story structure, with log walls, high peake
d
roofs, wide porches. Barns and corrals were planned, a reservoi
r
from which the cold spring water could be piped into the houses an
d
corrals, corn cribs and storehouses, and many other practica
l
things Ben considered necessary.

Those were busy days. The work caused almost as much interest as
a
circus might have. There were many visitors, mostly sheepherder
s
and cowmen from the surrounding range. Occasionally riders on high-
g
aited horses rode in, watched the work from a distance, looke
d
long at Ben's fine horses, and especially California Red, and rod
e
away without any pretense of friendliness. Old Raidy shook hi
s
head dubiously at sight of these men. Apparently they caused n
o
concern to Ben. Hettie imagined that she alone divined what wa
s
going on in her brother's mind. She dared not voice it, but in he
r
own secret thoughts she hugged it to her heart. She believed tha
t
Ben had deliberately chosen this wild spot in a wild range t
o
develop a famous ranch, which would become a lodestone for cowboys
,
ranchers, cattlemen of all types, sheepmen, rustlers, outlaws
,
gunmen, through one of whom he might locate his lost friend Nevada.

Hettie was convinced of this. It thrilled her very soul. What
a
reckless, yet grand thing for a man to do in search of his friend!

Hence, Hettie decided, Ben's intense interest in all visitors di
d
not spring wholly from his desire to be neighborly. Yet, despit
e
the good words that at once spread abroad his generosity an
d
kindliness, and the fact that his coming meant much for thi
s
section of Arizona, the ranchers along the three hundred miles o
f
the Mogollon Plateau were slow to call.