A Madonna of the Desert

Originally published in Harpers Sept. 1905: 507-518; reprinted in The Argosy (UK) November 1932

The "Dancers" trip it for twenty miles along the Mojave Desert—grotesque forms in the red lava rock, fixed in a horrible static saraband. The trail to Camp Crowe leads through this mocking company and takes its name from them, though for the last twenty-five miles it emerges from the "Ball Room" and climbs a dun mesa which terminates in a fortresslike outcropping of quartz, which is at once the lure and the shelter of the men who live at its base.

On a certain March day in 1899 the overland stopped at San Miguel—an almost unprecedented event—and let off two passengers. The man was lifted down carefully by the train crew. The woman, forgetful of self, neglected the casual hand of the porter, offered for her assistance.

"Well, ma'am," said the conductor, "there's the wagon to meet you. I swear, that takes a burden off my mind. Now you're all right, ma'am; though I do hate to leave you here among them blamed Dancers. Here's the man to meet you, ma'am. And I'm thankful you got through without any—any–accident."

He gave a swift clasp to the woman's hand and swung on the slow-moving train. Her companion sat on the embankment, leaning against her, as she waved a farewell to the men who had helped her through the long and cruel journey, and then turned to greet the driver of the wagon her husband's cousin had sent from Camp Crowe. The supply-wagon was visible a little way off, hitched to four "clay-bank" mules—creatures which suited their environment in every respect, and at a comparatively short distance melted completely into the monochrome of the desert, the driver of the wagon had a stretcher with him, as if quite prepared for the helplessness of his passenger. He and the woman carried the sick man to the wagon, the man on the stretcher saving his strength in every way. He did not so much as trouble himself to look around, but had the air of one who guards a very precious thing and cannot afford to have his attention diverted. He did, indeed, guard the one thing that money, science, and faith cannot supply—the light of life, which flickered low in its socket and which a breath could extinguish.

The woman had a voice both cheerful and clear, and as she staggered along over the rough embankment, carrying her end of the stretcher, she said:

"It's such a relief to find you here waiting! When I was told that the train never stops here at San Miguel's unless it was signaled I realized what a deserted place it must be, and I wondered what we would do if you didn't happen to be here on time."

"The hull camp was worryin' fur fear I wouldn't git here," admitted the man. "An' Hank Crowe wanted to send another man with me, but I knew he couldn't well spare one. I said to him I calkilated a woman would come out to this place, an' leave her baby an' all, would git up spunk enough to help me with the stretcher."

His kind glance met hers and seemed to applaud her as they stumbled over the uneven ground with their light load.

"But is there no man at all at San Miguel's?" she asked.

"None to speak of," said the other, gruffly.

They had reached the wagon with its covering of white canvas, and Sandy Rich slipped the stretcher adroitly in its place. He went back for the trunks and hampers which had been thrown off, while the woman gave her attention to the invalid.

"Air you goin' to set inside?" he asked, "or will you git up on the driver's seat with me? I put in a foldin'-chair so's you could stay inside if you wanted."

Claudia Judic looked questioningly at her husband.

"I'm feeling very well," he whispered, still with an air of guarding that unspeakably precious thing. "Sit outside, Claudia."

"You see," said Rich, under his breath, as they walked around to the front of the wagon together, "there is another man here. He's the agent of the station yon, and he does the telegraphing. But, thunder and mud! It wouldn't do Mr. Judic to see him! He's a scarecrow—come out six months ago much in the same way Mr. Judic is now. He's doing fine, but it wouldn't have done to have him carryin' that stretcher. It would 'a' scared Mr. Judic outright at the start. I went to him and said, 'Hull, don't you so much as stick your head out of the door.'"

"Poor fellow!" said the woman.

"Who? Hull? Oh, he's all right. Hull ain't the sort that frets about a missin' lung or two. There he is now!"

Claudia looked over where the dark-red station-house squatted in a patch of green, which lay like an emerald in the dull gold of the desert. A slender young man stood at the side waving a handkerchief.

"Does he want something?" she asked.

"Hull? No. That's his way of sayin' 'good luck.'"

"Oh!" said Claudia Judic. She snatched her own handkerchief from her belt and fluttered the white signal. The desert, which a moment before had seemed limitless and alien, already showed signs of neighborliness.

They had been talking almost in whispers, but now she spoke aloud.

"I've just given him his milk and his stimulants," she said, looking back in the wagon from the seat to which she had with some difficulty attained, and speaking as women do in hours of wifely anxiety, as if there were but one being in the world entitled to the masculine pronoun. "For half an hour, at least, I think he will be safe. It takes us a very long time to reach the Camp, I suppose?"

Rich said nothing for a second or two. He gathered the reins in his hands and chirruped low to his animals. Sixteen staunch legs stretched forth in unison, and with a curious, soft, steady movement the wagon began to whirl along the desert. Claudia Judic thought she had never experienced a more delightful motion.

"They're as smooth as silk, them mules," said Rich, referring to the locomotive qualities of the excellent beasts and not to their mottled skins of cream and tan. "And though it is a good way to Camp, we'll git there as safe an' as quick as the critters ken git us."

"Well," said Claudia, in a tone of resignation, "it seems as if things were going to come out right. I can't help feeling it. And, anyway, I've done all I could."

"Yes'm," said Rich, with conviction, 'I'll bet you have."

From time to time he stole a glance at the woman by his side. She was a small creature with a delicate face, sweetly featured and tinted. Her eyes were a soft brown; the brows above them were rather highly arched, and the lashes long. Her ears were pink and small; her brown hair, touched with gold, curled about her ears and waved on her brow in filmy bannerets. She sat soldier-straight, but she was full of impulsive and graceful motions, and when she turned-as she did every moment or two-to look at the prone figure within the wagon, there was something so protecting and efficient in her look and gesture that Rich felt if "anything happened" she would meet it with courage. He had been warned that something might happen. At the Camp they were under the impression that he had gone out to meet a dying man. James Judic was the cousin of Henry Crowe, the owner and promoter of Crowe's Mine, and of the cyanide plant which made marketable its economic product, and Crowe had offered the sick man his last chance for life in extending to him the hospitality of the desert.

Every half-hour the mules were reined in while the sick man was given food and stimulants. He seldom spoke, and his eyes had that lonely and forbidding look which comes to those who stand at the beginning of the Long Trail. His wife spoke to him as if her were a child. She used tones of command, for all her tenderness. She was the directress of his destiny, and unconsciously she suited voice and action to the part.

Claudia was almost childishly amused at the "dancers," and when she came to two that stood apparently with lifted skirts, toes pointed high and arms poised above the head, she laughed outright.

"I believe it does me good to laugh," she said piteously, clasping and unclasping her hands. "I never would have dared to do it if the place weren't so large. There's no use in keeping shut up in your trouble in such a big place as this!"

She took in the vast wild, the arching heavens, the flight of a proud eagle, with her sad, gentle eyes.

"No use on yearth!" agreed Mr. Rich. "I say nothin' was any better for pullin' a long face over it. We may as well whopp it up while we're on this yearth below." He said it with a twang that semed to give it a Scriptural turn.

The wind blowing over the desert was cool and refreshing. The gray-green flora of the waste mitigated the expanse of sand, and here and there a few piñons cluttered, or a patch of alfileria grew. The distance was lilac, the sky a cloudless sapphire.

"It doesn't look so terrible," said Claudia Judic under her breath. "I had always thought the desert would be very terrible."

"It gits riled," said Rich. "But I never saw none so ugly they was riled all the time."

Mrs. Judic laughed lightly.

"That's true enough," she said, and settled her feet on the dashboard. She was ready, evidently, to accept both the comforts and the philosophy of the place. She had left behind her the freshly weaned babe of her love and all the friends of her native town; left behind the snug home-life, the ease which had always been hers. She had set out to race and to struggle with Death, and she was nerved to the contest. She had no thought and no hope that did not relate to it.

"It's a pity," said Rich, as they ate together from the lunch-basket he had spread between them on the high seat, "that you couldn't have brought your baby. Hank Crowe was tellin' me how you had to leave it behind. I said to him I thought that was mighty tough."

"Oh," said Mrs. Judic, with a catch in her throat, "I couldn't bring him. He was just six months old the very day the doctor told me that if I wanted to keep Mr. Judic alive I'd have to take him to another climate. You see, Mr. Judic couldn't go alone. He depends on me so. About one-tenth of him is body and all the rest is spirit, you may say. The doctor—old Doctor Reynolds that we've always had—said if I sent him off alone he was as good as doomed. I had to hold James in my arms a good part of the way here. His vitality was so low I was afraid he might—might go, and I not know it. You see, I simply couldn't bring the baby."

She looked at the man with an expression at once wistful and defensive.

"Oh, pshaw, no!" he cried. "What could you 'a'done with a baby?"

"I just gave him over to Mother Judic," said she. "Mother has such a nice little home, with a beautiful yard and all. And all the neighbors are interested in Jamie. He's a very healthy baby, and he's quick to make friends—holds out his hands to every one and is forever laughing. His hair is the brightest yellow you ever saw. You'd think it was spun gold if you were to see it in the sun, and there's a dimple at every finger and one at each knee and elbow,–besides, of course, those in his cheeks."

"Must be as full of holes as a sieve," laughed Rich, rather huskily.

"You never had a baby, I suppose, Mr. Rich?"

"Who? Me? Oh, thunder! yes, I've had a kid. Dead, though. Mother dead too. His mother was part Mojave—part Indian, you know. But she was a good woman. And the kid—he was all right too. We had a smallpox summer here once and—"

"I see," said Claudia Judic, softly. "And your boy—how old was he?"

"Why, he was three. He was mighty cute, too—used to pretend to help me hitch up, and 'd ride with me everywhere. I was doin' haulin' for the old Bonaventure mine then. I just quit and come away after he was gone. It was too all-fired lonesome; I couldn't stand it."

"No," said the woman softly. They drove on for some time in silence, each absorbed in his own thoughts. The breathing of the sick man came to them heavily.

"It's a long way yet, I suppose," said Mrs. Judic.

"Oh, not so far," heartened the other, and whipped his mules into a faster run. The woman's small hands were clasped in her lap, and Rich could see her whole being was at a tension. She was listening, body and soul, to that labored breathing. She had asked her husband a dozen times if he wanted her to hold his head or sit by him, but he had more air, he said, if he had the whole space to himself. There was air enough, surely—air sweeping out of the lilac distance, quivering visibly on the horizon, tossing the finer sand in soft hillocks. From time to time Mrs. Judic gave her husband whiskey and water from a flask, but betweentimes she used all of her self-control to feign indifference. It annoyed him, to be the constant subject of attention.

At twilight they reached the Camp. It was a group of tents set in the sand. A cold and beautiful spring bubbled up out of the ground and trickled away in a small rivulet. In the shadow of the Fortress, as the rock was called, stood the cyanide plant, with its fresh pine sides—an ungainly edifice.

There was a new tent set apart among a group of piñons, with its door opening to the expanse of the desert. Rich pointed it out.

"That's your home, ma'am," he said. "No front steps to scrub, you see." He did not drive up to the tent, but kept on the road and stopped before a hitching-post.

"I ain't goin' to cut your yard all up," he explained.

Their approach had been silent, and the men, who were at supper in the eating-tent, had not heard their arrival.

"The dogs usually let folk know when there's anything doin'," said Rich, "but this time we've fooled them."

In the dim interior of the wagon they could make out the sick man lying motionless. His eyes were closed, his breath feeble, his hands shut in a curious grip.

Rice started back from the wagon, but Mrs. Judic gave a reassuring whisper.

"He's just holding on to himself," she said. "Let them know he's here, and tell them to bring something hot—coffee or soup."

A moment later the men came pouring out of the eating-tent. They were silent, having evidently been warned against a commotion. At their head walked Henry Crowe, Judic's cousin. He strode up to Claudia, looking gigantic in the twilight, and grasp her hand in awkward congratulation.

"Well, you got here!" he said, significantly.

He had made the Judics' tent comfortable in soldier fashion, with two cots covered with gray blankets, a table, some folding-stools, a stove, and a wash-stand. He and Rich carried in the sick man. The Chinese cook came running along in the windy dusk bearing a tray of hot food, and Claudia threw off her hat to make ready to feed her husband. At the end of an hour he was sleeping comfortably. Then she stood up and wiped the perspiration from her face.

"Come," Crowe whispered. "Come over and get something to eat. One of the men will look after James."

She obeyed without a word, and Crowe sent one of the men to keep watch till her return.

"Well," said Henry Crowe, suiting his pace to hers as they crossed the camp-yard, "I like your way of doing things, Claudia. If James lives, I guess he'll know where to put the blame. I always knew you had sentiment, but I wasn't sure you had sense. I thought perhaps you were too sweet to have any sense."

His cousin's wife looked up wanly.

"Oh, Henry," she laughed, "how queer it sounds to have anyone talking about me! I've almost forgotten that I existed. It's been so horrible about James, and it was such torture for his mother to part with him, and every one has been so wondering how the baby would get on and if it would live, that I've ceased to have any life except through these others."

Crowe seated her at the table and waited on her, even cutting the bread from the loaf.

"That's all right, too," he said, heartily. "You've been living, Claudia. Some of us wouldn't care that much about any one if we wanted to, and if we did care we'd never know how to think of anybody but ourselves."

As Claudia Judic ate the coarse food of the camp, washing the meal down with the hot, grateful tea, she thought of her cousin's words. Perhaps this labor, this consuming anxiety, this utter submergence of self, was life. Maybe it was a privilege—this responsibility, this midnight flow of tears, this relinquishment of delight. She fell to thinking of her wedding romance, of the days of joy and service and of pleasant neighborly offices and domestic tasks, of her first house-keeping and all the pleasures of that placid, useful, wholesome time. Then came the revelation of Jamie, the child of her heart, and, suddenly, as his father and herself worked and loved and planned together, brooding over the child, building for it, and nurtured with the sweet food of content, James had been stricken down. Had he been a heartier man, the physician said, he would have died. As it was, he hung somewhere between life and death, and fared forth neither way. Then came the period of horrible waiting, while the soul and the mind of the sick man grew torpid, while all planning and initiative devolved upon her, so unexperienced and untrained, and their small store dwindled, and the dread of want overtook them.

She looked up suddenly, remembering where she was. Not far from her, in a corner, her cousin sat smoking his pipe. Six feet two inches in height, with his sand-colored khaki, yellow leggings, and his sun-bleached hair, he was typical of the West of which Claudia had dreamed—dreaming not so much with anticipation as with dread.

"You'll sleep well tonight," said her cousin, "And in the morning we'll talk things over. I don't say James's prospects are bright, but I say he has a fighting chance—a fighting chance! As for you—"

Claudia Judic held up a fragile hand on which glittered her diamond engagement ring, and the plain gold band that James Judic had placed on that finger on a yet more significant occasion.

"Don't speak of me!" she cried, with a kind of gayety. "I—I think I'd rather talk of anything else."

They went out-of-doors together and paced up and down the sands, talking of their friend and neighbors back in Craven, Iowa. Crowe wanted to say something about the baby, but she avoided that subject, and turned him from it whenever he approached it. So, after a time, he left her at her tent. He paced up and down at a distance for a while, watching her as she made preparations to care for the sick man during the night. She had not asked to have any one near her, had expressed no fear of the black waste without her door, had not even so much as inquired if there were wild animals or prowling Indians. There were both, in fact, but the men at Camp Crowe took their chances even as men in the city take theirs, with the expectation that disaster will come to other men, but not to themselves. After a while she let down the flap of her tent. She was ready for the night—the night which would bring her little refreshment and many interruptions.

And when, the next morning, she came early from her tent, hollowed-eyed, but smiling, went to breakfast with the rest, she was accepted as part and parcel of Camp Crowe. The men accepted her, liked her pluck, her reserve, the courageous cheerfulness of her voice. The desert accepted her, and tanned her delicate skin and took the brilliant gloss from her hair, nourished her limbs and strengthened her spirit. The day and night accepted her and gave her work and rest. She worked more hours than any man in the Camp, but she had a power of recuperation that none of the rest had. While they plodded along the sand, she tripped; when they gloomed, she laughed. It was not a laugh which sprang from gayety, for there was nothing to inspire that. It was the maternal laugh—the laugh the brave spirit makes to hearten those about it. And from the first she assumed maternal responsibilities in the Camp. She began by looking after her husband's cousin, but presently she was looking after every one—even Li Chung, the Chinese cook.

For the first two months her husband's destiny hung in doubt. It was a gambling crowd at Crowe's Camp, but no one was taking chances on James Judic's life. Then, almost in a day it seemed, he began to walk up and down outside his tent in the morning sun, and to wonder what the mail would bring, and to laugh at the songs the men sang. After this his improvement was rapid, and presently he was given small tasks to do about the camp, and Henry Crowe consulted him on business. He had a head for business, and his practical training in a bank made it easy for him to assume the responsibilities of the bookkeeping and the correspondence for the Crowe Mining Company.

At the end of six months he began to feel himself established there, in a way. He was still far from strong, and it was impossible for him to make even moderate excursions. But he was comfortable; he slept and ate well, and his spirits were good. He began to develop a taste for life, and he left Claudia much alone while he sat with the men, listening to their stories or their songs, or taking a hand with them at poker.

Something curious had befallen James Judic in that strange twilight of existence when he hung between life and death. His soul had somehow divested itself of consciousness, and he had shuffled out responsibility. He fell into the way of living for the hour, of avoiding thought of the future, and it was evident that he regarded the past as a time of heavy burdens. He seldom referred to it, seldom spoke of his mother or his child. He seemed, in the revival of animal life that had come to him, to find sufficient satisfaction in the mere facts of the sun, wind, sleep, food, laughter, and converse. He had preserved that unspeakably precious thing which he had clutched with eager hands. It was his. He lived. To-day was to-day; all that went before was with yesterday's seven thousand years, and to-morrow was an unknown quantity.

Claudia had begun to take up other tasks. She went into the kitchen at least once a day to direct the cooking, and she often prepared dishes with her own hands, transforming the table by these ministrations. She kept Henry Crowe's tent in a condition of exquisite cleanliness, and if any man required to have a needle used they came to her, sure of her gracious service. She was a practical and an honest woman, and she gave these offices in reciprocity for the hospitality which she received—hospitality for which she could make no other return. James paid his way by his bookkeeping—paid it and more,—and after a time Crowe recognized this fact and gave him a stated stipend. How much it was Claudia did not know, for she never saw any of it.

It is wonderful how Time can cheat the unwary. In this little sequestered community, where each day was like the last, where no events of importance disturbed the trivial usualness, the weeks and the months slipped by like beads on a string. The gray djinn of the waste are wizards and mesmerize the soul. At least every one seemed sordidly content, though the mine gave small profits, and nothing occurred to justify the sacrifice represented by this isolation.

But there was one member of the party who was actively discontented, and that was the one who habitually spoke words of content. Claudia Judic, as has been said, had no thought at first but to spend herself for her husband. She was consumed with desire to see him well. It was as if she hung over a pit, holding him from the abyss with her fragile arms. But when she had lifted him, when he stood at the rim—though, perchance, somewhat too near the sheer dark edge—her generic maternity recurred to something more specific. She began to remember the babe she had left thousands of miles behind. Not but that she had always remembered him in a sense. A child is always in a mother's mind, furnishing the substructure of thought and feeling. Or, to speak with clearer simile, the voice of the child is forever audible to the mother; it is the fundamental, ever-present harmony, and as the diapason of the sea lies behind the other harmonies of nature, making the voices of the wind, the cries of men, birds, and trees but accessories, so the sounds of the world relate themselves to the voice of the child in the heart's-ear of the mother. This consciousness had always been Claudia's. But now more definite longing came to her. She was ready for her babe, and therefore her being cried out for him. Nor was it alone her spirit that made this demand, nor yet merely that she might learn how he had grown in thought, what words came to his lips, what expectations and fears looked out of his heaven-blue eyes. It was these things, truly, but it was much more. Her whole body desired him. The passion of the lover for the mistress is a little thing compared to this maternal hunger. Her arms ached, literally, to clasp him, her shoulders ached to bear his weight, her feet ached to run to his service; her eyes were hot for want of beholding him. At night she dreamed she felt him tugging at her long hair, or nestling his satin-soft and dimpled hand in her bosom, his delicious, perfumed body against her own.

She did not dare to speak. More than ever James needed her. His health would have deserted him with his first week's residence in a less arid climate, and there were other physical reasons why she now felt she must remain with him. She set herself against the atmosphere of the camp, contriving this thing and that to keep her husband with her after work-hours, and pouring her love upon him like a libation. She gave so freely that she did not realize that she was giving, and neither, indeed, did James. He took her devotion as he did the sunshine, not analyzing the cause of his elasticity of heart, nor, perhaps, understanding it. It is not the way with most men to notice the presence of happiness, but only the absence of it.

"It is a free life," he would say to his wife. "I never dreamed, Claudia, how free life could be. I wouldn't go back to the conventionalities and restraints for anything that could be given me. Oh, if I had my health, of course, it might be different! But as it is, this is the life for me."

It never seemed to occur to him that she wanted to go back. And she knew there was not enough money with which to pay for that long journey. They were all but penniless. Such small investment as they had—and it was only a few hundred dollars-Claudia had placed at the disposal of her mother-in-law to use for the child. She was much too proud to ask her husband's cousin for any money, and, indeed, he had hard enough work at times to pay off his men and purchase the supplies. It was not oftener than once a fortnight that the wagon was sent for the mail. Then it went the forty miles to San Miguel and ten miles beyond, following along the railroad to the town of Santa Cerro, where there was a supply-store as well as a post-office. The hour of return was always uncertain. The men were sent turn and turn about, that they might have the taste of the pleasures of the town, and if these proved particularly enticing, the return of the wagon might be delayed a good many hours, sometimes even a day or two. Such dereliction as this met with general disapprobation, it is true, but it was looked upon in the light of an accident, which the man who had lapsed fro the path of rectitude and punctuality regarded with almost as much regret as did his fellow campers.

Mail-days became active torture to Claudia Judic. She would await with tense expectation the appearance upon the horizon of the dusty "schooner" drawn by its four "clay-bank" mules. Fortunately her tent stood farthest desertward, and sitting at her door she could see for five miles down the level floor of the mesa. Certain days she could see even farther. She had a remarkable sight, and the desert life sharpened it. She could pick out a bird that others could not see, could catch its wings glinting in the sun in the burning sapphire; note the distant movements of the prairie-dogs and catch the flick of the rabbit's tail when none but herself could detect them. Sometimes for hours she sat with her eyes focused on the most distant visible part of the dusty mesa. But the most terrible moment of all, perhaps, was when was the wagon was entering the camp. She was suspicious if the driver chanced to withhold his gaze from her, imagining that he had no letter and was loath to confess it; if her signaled her with his glance, she was equally certain it was from pity, and that he had come letterless. She felt like shrieking with impatience while she stood among the others, commanding her face to impassivity, till the letters were handed round. It was taken for granted that nothing was to be done by any one till that ceremony was over. Men were excused from their work, meals stood uneaten, everything waited for this event.

A yet more poignant instant came when the letter was actually in her hand. She could not bring herself to read it before the others, and often she could hardly summon the strength to walk away with it to her tent. Then, alone, she hesitated to tear it open, and would compel herself to the nice use of her pen-knife, opening the letter properly. At the first reading she could understand nothing. Her eyes would eat up the words, which conveyed no meaning to her. All was as confused as if it had been written in a foreign tongue. But she would discipline herself to patience and to perception, and slowly, word by word, like a child learning to read, she would follow her mother-in-law's small, neat chirography through the closely written pages.

Usually the letters were filled with anecdotes of Jamie—he had teeth like grains of rice; he was running around the yard alone; he was talking, and there would be an attempt to reproduce his speeches. Now he had some escapade, now he had some unusual pleasure; or he was indisposed with a cold, or he had a new Sunday frock, or his grandmother had bought him some toys. The reports were minute and merciful. Across the jealousy which a woman feels for a son's wife the mother-bond spanned, making the old woman compassionate to the young one. She actually refrained from telling all the child's loveliness and cleverness lest she should cause unnecessary torture. She tried to think of ways in which Claudia could contrive to come back for a visit; she apologized for not being able, physically or financially, to bring the child out to Camp Crowe.

It was in the second year that Claudia began to lay a plan. She had accustomed herself to the idea that if her husband was to live at all he must stay where he was. He was making himself useful, and his income was now of some account. Claudia began to ask him for a little each week, and this she scrupulously put away. She was nest-building, and once the idea seized her, it became an absorbing passion.

"I want a house, Henry," she said one night to her husband's cousin.

They were walking, as they often did, up and down, on the soft earth, in the wild wonder of the sunset. It turned their very faces into gold, tinged their sun-faded hair with glory, and lighted their eyes with a sort of over-beauty. Their clothes no longer appeared worn and work-stained, but garments splendid. When they spoke simple words, it was as those who can afford to use plain language, because of some ardent richness of thought lying behind the words. About them was a vastness; and their isolation became at such moments not pitiable, but proud. They seemed allied to historic desert-dwellers, and they felt sure of the possession of the virtues which have made such dignified among men—the virtues of hospitality, of courage, of tribal faith. This night the glow was paler than it sometimes was, and they spoke softly, and of home things, Claudia following with idle gaze a humming-bird that nested in the branching cactus, unafraid of harm.

"You should have had a house long ago," said Crowe, "only I had a fear that you might think we were trying to tie you down here. Neither James nor I wish to do that, of course."

"Destiny has made this my home," she said, gravely. "It is here that I live." There was no sadness in the tone. The soft vibrations of the voice seemed tinged with gentle pride.

"I would have built a house for myself," continued her companion, "only I've always liked that little bunch of tents. It reminds me of a Bible picture I used to look at when I was a little fellow. Probably the picture was all wrong, and that tents of that particular sort had nothing to do with the case; but, anyway, it's in my mind and won't get out. I always wanted camels and some date-palms."

Claudia gave a gurgling, birdlike laugh in her throat.

"I know," she said, "but, dear me! You never can have camels. And you can't make a tent-woman out of me. I'm not that kind, you see."

"No," admitted Crowe, looking at her, "you aren't."

She had never lost her look of fragility, of gentleness. She was essentially domestic. Her smile was made to welcome one at the threshold. Her voice was for sheltered rooms. It suited itself to the hearth, the cradle, and the family table. The wild might be all about her, but she remained a tame thing, a creature of roof and fire, of songs and dreams, of the quiet arts, of housed loves.

So the men were set to work to put her up an adobe. It was in two parts, with a patio between, and in the patio she swung hammocks and set certain potted vines—things not of that environment. One room was for sleeping. It was bare and clean and comfortable, with the air blowing in from every side, if the occupants so willed.

The other room was for living—for it was still Crowe's idea to have his cousins eat at the general table, that being economy both of food and service. This second room Claudia decorated with the conventionalized leaf of the yucca splashed in dull red upon the walls. She had, among the things she had brought from home with her, a roll of dark-red Indian cotton flecked with peacock's feathers, and of this she made draperies and a couch-cover. James's invalid-chair and her own rocker, brought over from Santa Cerro, stood beside the reading-table, and there were a few books and twenty photographs of Jamie. The floor of pounded earth was made gay with Indian rugs, and baskets, both for use and ornament, played a conspicuous part in the furnishing. A well-tended olla stood in the shadiest corner, and a flowing Mexican shawl flaunted itself—a piece of flamboyant tapestry—from the wall. It was rather a gay little apartment, and when its mistress was in it her qualities of femininity seemed to become accentuated.

"I would know it was your room, Claudia," said Henry Crowe, "if I stumbled in it without a notion that you were this side of the Rockies."

It seemed to speak of home and old association to Judic, too, and he was in it a good deal more than might have been expected. He and Crowe got in the way of playing chess together, and Claudia sewed or watched them.

But this room, sociable as it was, could not be said to be her favorite. She liked better the night—room-the room where she slept. For sleep had come to be the doorway to an enchanted castle of Heart's Desire. There baby kisses were ready at hand to warm a mother's starved lips; baby hands tugged at one's skirts; a baby voice shattered the great bubble of silence. Sometimes, even, warm, down-soft baby fingers cuddled in one's palm. And when dawn came, overbright, awaking one to the bald facts of life, there was—well, anything but that which came in dreams.

By common consent the group of piñon-trees near as Mrs. Judic's adobe was considered as her private garden, though no wall surrounded it save the blue horizon, and no flowers grew there except those of the fancy. But the scrub-pines made a sort of screen, so low did their branches grow upon the trunks; and the point of honor, which was to avoid scrutinizing Mrs. Judic when she retired to this spot, gave it a privacy which walls might not have secured. It had from the first been Claudia's custom to spend much time there, but when for several days she came to haunt the spot, then men grew curious. And at last Sandy Rich played the Peeping Tom. Mrs. Judic had gone for a canter, and when her white mare and blue frock were splotches of color on the mesa, Sandy, feeling mean to the very boots of him, ventured into the "garden." What he saw made him worried for a moment about Mrs. Judic's sanity. For there were little shelves fitted in between the trees, with low benches before them, and on the shelves were broken bits of quartz, mica chips, a foolish array of shards and scraps such as a child might gather. Sandy, heavy-jawed and wide-eyed, stood staring. He thought hard and low, and by degrees an idea dawned.

"It's the kid!" he decided. "She's plannin' to git the kid out."

He told first one and then another of the men, till all the camp knew. It needed this explanation, perhaps, to account for the change that was coming over her. Something half-coquettish or expectant, something sweetly and timorously gay, showed itself in her manner and her looks. She was laying aside the old frocks which she had worn till they were almost in rags, and was appearing in new clothes, made by her own hands, and girded with scarlet or blue. She donned little cloth caps of the same colors, and she had the appearance when she came from her tent of having a new toilet. The sum represented in these purchases was a minute one, but forethought had been given, that was evident. James Judic happened to mention, casually, that his wife was sending back a red tam-o'-shanter because she didn't like the shade.

It may have been about this time that he began to notice that he had lost his abject servitor. He no longer required close service, it is true, but his sick vanity had got into the way of expecting it. His wife, however, appeared to have too many matters in hand to spend her time in watching or anticipating his moods. She was continually occupied with something, he noticed with an irritation of which he felt ashamed and for which he could not account. She was riding, or housekeeping, or sewing, or touching with fingers reminiscent of the old days the zither which Henry Crowe had bought for her on her last birthday. The music, soft as an æolian harp, crept into the air, spending itself like a slow wave. Under her fingers it was a soft and yearning as a woman's voice; and, indeed, the melodies took to themselves—or so it seemed to him who had given her the instrument—the accents of supplication. They appeared to woo and call and coax. Sandy Rich, striding up and down in the night, unseen and vaguely dreaming of things he could not voice, tormented, too, with a pain he did not understand, made out the meaning of all of this.

"She's callin' the kid," he said, in his beard. "An' by gosh! if I was dead I believe I'd hear her—callin' like that!"

Presently it was known that Sandy's surmises had been correct, and that "the kid" was coming out in the care of a woman who lived at Towner, the next village to Craven and that she was going to Pasadena, and was to drop little Jamie Judic off at San Miguel, where the train was to be slacked for the purpose. The day was set. He was coming; and it was considered good form for every one to make some reference to it when Mrs. Judic was around.

"I tell ye what," said Sandy, "you'll have to keep him clost to the house, Mis' Judic. You mustn't let him git around the blastin'."

"There's that colt of Nancy's," said Crowe, speaking of the flecked colt of the white mare. "By the time it's old enough to saddle, Jamie'll bee the right size to mount him."

"I cal'late we'll have to shet off Sandy's vile swearin' tongue," declared Judson Shafer, the overseer of the mill. "He ain't fit for no kid to be around."

Crowe decided to build himself a home; and after that had been built in the odd hours of the men, Shafer, the overseer, went in with two other men to put up a third residence. Camp Crowe began to lose its gipsy look—its appearance of being an overnight caravan.

Moreover, Claudia contrived a sundial, and she got Sandy Rich to build a spring-house. It was of rough rock, with seats by the side, and Sandy fretted out, crudely, in the stone, this doggerel which Claudia wrote for the purpose:

Comfort give to great and least,

Wandering man and weary beast.

She sent for some pepper-tree saplings and willow cuttings, and set them out near the spring, where they took kindly to their environment.

But Claudia Judic, working, laughing, cajoling, was, after all, merely cheating time. Her hands were busy, but her eyes were, so to speak, on the clock. She was set to one tune, wound up for a certain hour, focused to a coming event!

"I think," she said, gravely, to the men at supper one night, "that though it may seem foolish in me, I'd better start for the train the night before Jamie is expected. You see, starting at dawn is all very well ordinarily, and I know you've made it with the mules over and over again. Yet, if one of them should happen to fall lame, or anything break about the wagon—" She broke off in horror at the thought.

"But where could you sleep?" asked Crowe, turning a deep gaze upon her. "You can't lie out in the desert, you know."

Claudia had a vision of the dark wonder of the pulsing sky, and the star of the Nativity above the place where the Babe lay.

"Oh, I should not at all mind lying out in the sand," she said. "And in the morning we could build a fire and make our coffee, and have Mr. Hull over to eat with us. I have always liked Mr. Hull so much!" She referred to the station agent who had signaled her good luck the day of her arrival.

So it was agreed. Sandy was to drive, and Judic and his wife were to go in the wagon, which was to be taken on to Santa Cerro for supplies, and then, returning to San Miguel, pick them up.

But from excitement or detect of will, James Judic fell ill, suddenly and acutely, and his wife could not leave him. She came to breakfast and told the men.

"I can't go," she said, in a voice they had never heard her use before. "Mr. Judic is very ill indeed. He'll be well by to-morrow or the next day if I nurse him properly, but I couldn't leave him. It's out of the question. You'll have to—to go alone, Mr. Rich."

A stormy silence spread around the table. Tornado seemed imminent, and Claudia quivered to it. She held the men steady with her brave, tortured eyes.

"Mr. Judic is terribly distressed about—about disappointing me," she said. "But he knows that Mr. Rich will take good care of—of—" She could not utter another syllable. For the first time in their three years' experience with her she broke down. But she had a proud frankness about it. She put her hand first to her trembling lips and then to her eyes, and arose with dignity and made her way to the door.

Sandy Rich was off early. He started, indeed, a day in advance of the appointed time, but there was, of course, the marketing to do at Santa Cerro.

"Thunder and mud!" sighed Sandy, "but I'll bet them mules do go lame! I'll bet you two to one the darned wagon breaks! I'd rather be chased by Injuns than go on this yere errand!'

"See you do it well," growled Judson Shafer. "If you come back here without that kid, you'll be lynched."

It was meant for a jest, but it sounded curiously unlike one. Sandy knew the eyes that watched from the adobe by the piñons, and as he flicked his sand-colored mules down the mesa, they seemed to be burning holes in his back—those eyes with their soft fires. He resisted the impulse to turn as long as he could. It seemed almost too familiar, too confidential, for him to respond to this mystic and imperious message. But the force was compelling. He turned and waved his hand. Something scarlet flashed back and forth in answer. It was the red cap—of the right shade—which Claudia Judic had got to please the critical, heaven-blue eyes of her son!

Work went badly at the blastings and worse at the mill. An air of uncertainty pervaded everything. Mrs. Judic was not at dinner nor at supper. The sound of her zither was not heard. An appalling and, it seemed, a presageful silence hung over her house. The night settled down, with purple sky and stars of burning beauty; the dawn was pellucid, with a whispering ground-wind. But still, at breakfast, she was not visible. The camp had fed and battened on her good cheer, but she hid herself in the hour of her fears. The gay mask was down, and she spared them the sight of the bared, truthful face.

The long day waned—the long, bland, golden, unemphasized day. It drew to its close, as all days have to, whether of agony or ecstasy. And on the mesa, a little bunch against the sky, appeared the familiar wagon.

"It's Sandy," said the men, drawing long breaths and lighting their pipes—for supper was just over. "It's that fool Sandy." And they smoked silently, waiting in vicarious agony.

Had the train been smashed? Had the woman kidnapped the child? Had the child died on the way? These questions, crudely put and jokingly exchanged, represented the sympathy felt for that invisible woman in the adobe. They did not know that at their utmost they could encompass only a portion of her fears.

It came on along the mesa—the wagon came on. It was at first an exasperatingly small thing, but it grew. It attained its normal size. It drove into the camp yard. A glorious gold from the uttermost west enveloped the earth, and all things were visible by it, though beautified. They all saw Sandy there in the wagon, and saw him sitting—alone. The men were as statues—immovable as those hideous dancers back on the old trail—as Claudia Judic came out of the adobe and drifted like an ungraved ghost down the warm sands. She was dressed in white—none of them had ever seen her so dressed before—and she wore a little trailing vine in her hair.

The eyes they had known so patient had a different look in them now. They held a consuming expectancy, a terrible impatience, a sort of divine torment. But there was only Sandy on the seat, busying himself with something back in the wagon, and for very mercy the men looked away.

What did she mean by coming on like that when she saw there was only Sandy? They were indignant. They wanted to shout to her to go back. Shafer tried to wave to her, but his arms fell powerless. She came on so swiftly, too! A miserable panic seized upon the men. They wanted to run.

Then, as they looked, as they flinched, as they inwardly cursed, up above the seat rose a tousled head of gold, a pair of wondering eyes filled with baby-wisdom, a dew-damp face flushed from sleep, smiling yet tremulous!

Sandy leaned back and lent a hand. "Up with you, old man!" he cried. "Here ye are, honey-heart, and here's yer ma!"

They saw her come on and reach up slender arms. They saw the boy look at her with adorable timidity; saw her beaming beauty banish his fears, saw her gather him close and walk away with his head pillowed in her neck.

Sandy got down from the wagon seat and stood on the shining earth in the glorified light. He began to unharness the mules, and three men came to assist him. Silence hung heavy sweet. But Sandy valorously broke it.

"I calkilate I don't git lynched," he said.

September, 1905, 507–518

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