tremulous utterance.
The
ceremony ended, the onlookers came forward with pleasant words on
their lips, pleasant smiles on their faces. The children filed by his
couch,
bashful yet
sympathetic; the women murmured, the young men grasped
his hand. Mescal flitted by with
downcast eye, with shy smile, but no
word.
"Your fever is gone," said August Naab, with his hand on Hare's cheek.
"It comes and goes suddenly," replied Hare. "I feel better now, only I'm
oppressed. I can't breathe
freely. I rant air, and I'm hungry."
"Mother Mary, the lad's hungry. Judith, Esther, where are your wits?
Help your mother. Mescal, wait on him, roe to his comfort."
Mescal brought a little table and a pillow, and the other girls soon
followed with food and drink; then they hovered about, absorbed in caring
for him.
"They said I fell among thieves," mused Hare, when he was once more
alone. "I've fallen among saints as well." He felt that he could never
repay this August Naab. "If only I might live!" he ejaculated. How
restful was this
cottage garden! The green sward was a balm to his eyes.
Flowers new to him, though of familiar
springtime hue, lifted fresh faces
everywhere; fruit-trees, with branches intermingling, blended the white
and pink of blossoms. There was the soft
laughter of children in the
garden. Strange birds darted among the trees. Their notes were new, but
their song was the old
delicious monotone--the joy of living and love of
spring. A green-bowered
irrigation ditch led by the porch and unseen
water flowed
gently, with
gurgle and
tinkle, with music in its hurry.
Innumerable bees murmured amid the blossoms.
Hare fell asleep. Upon returning drowsily to
consciousness he caught
through half-open eyes the gleam of level shafts of gold
sunlight low
down in the trees; then he felt himself being carried into the house to
be laid upon a bed. Some one
gently unbuttoned his shirt at the neck,
removed his shoes, and covered him with a blanket. Before he had fully
awakened he was left alone, and quiet settled over the house. A
languorous sense of ease and rest lulled him to sleep again. In another
moment, it seemed to him, he was awake; bright
daylight streamed through
the window, and a morning
breeze stirred the faded curtain.
The drag in his breathing which was always a forerunner of a
coughing-spell warned him now; he put on coat and shoes and went outside,
where his cough attacked him, had its sway, and left him.
"Good-morning," sang out August Naab's
cheery voice. "Sixteen hours of
sleep, my lad!"
"I did sleep, didn't I? No wonder I feel well this morning. A
peculiarity of my
illness is that one day I'm down, the next day up."
"With the
goodness of God, my lad, we'll gradually increase the days up.
Go in to breakfast. Afterward I want to talk to you. This'll be a busy
day for me, shoeing the horses and packing supplies. I want to start for
home to-morrow."
Hare pondered over Naab's words while he ate. The
suggestion in them,
implying a relation to his future, made him wonder if the good Mormon
intended to take him to his desert home. He hoped so, and warmed anew to
this friend. But he had no
enthusiasm for himself; his future seemed
hopeless.
Naab was
waiting for him on the porch, and drew him away from the
cottagedown the path toward the gate
"I want you to go home with me."
"You're kind--I'm only a sort of beggar--I've no strength left to work my
way. I'll go--though it's only to die."
"I haven't the gift of revelation--yet somehow I see that you won't die
of this
illness. You will come home with me. It's a beautiful place, my
Navajo oasis. The Indians call it the Garden of Eschtah. If you can get
well
anywhere it'll be there."
"I'll go but I ought not. What can I do for you?
"No man can ever tell what he may do for another. The time may come--
well, John, is it settled?" He offered his huge broad hand.
"It's settled--I--" Hare faltered as he put his hand in Naab's. The
Mormon's grip straightened his frame and braced him. Strength and
simplicity flowed from the giant's toil-hardened palm. Hare swallowed
his thanks along with his
emotion, and for what he had intended to say he
substituted: "No one ever called me John. I don't know the name. Call
me Jack."
"Very well, Jack, and now let's see. You'll need some things from the
store. Can you come with me? It's not far."
"Surely. And now what I need most is a razor to
scrape the
alkali and
stubble off my face."
The wide street, bordered by
cottages peeping out of green and white
orchards, stretched in a straight line to the base of the
ascent which
led up to the Pink Cliffs. A green square enclosed a gray church, a
school-house and public hall. Farther down the main
thoroughfare were
several weather-boarded whitewashed stores. Two dusty men were riding
along, one on each side of the wildest, most
vicious little horse Hare
had ever seen. It reared and bucked and kicked,
trying to escape from
two lassoes. In front of the largest store were a number of mustangs all
standing free, with bridles thrown over their heads and t
railing on the
ground. The loungers leaning against the
railing and about the doors
were lank brown men very like Naab's sons. Some wore sheepskin "chaps,"
some blue
overalls; all wore boots and spurs, wide soft hats, and in
their belts, far to the back, hung large Colt's
revolvers.
'We'll buy what you need, just as if you expected to ride the ranges for
me to-morrow," said Naab. "The first thing we ask a new man is, can he
ride? Next, can he shoot?"
"I could ride before I got so weak. I've never handled a
revolver, but I
can shoot a rifle. Never shot at anything except targets, and it seemed
to come natural for me to hit them."
"Good. We'll show you some targets--lions, bears, deer, cats, wolves.
There's a fine forty-four Winchester here that my friend Abe has been
trying to sell. It has a long
barrel and weighs eight pounds. Our
desert riders like the light carbines that go easy on a
saddle. Most of
the mustangs aren't weight-carriers. This rifle has a great range; I've
shot it, and it's just the gun for you to use on wolves and coyotes.
You'll need a Colt and a
saddle, too."
"By-the-way," he went on, as they mounted the store steps, "here's the
kind of money we use in this country." He handed Hare a slip of blue
paper, a written check for a sum of money, signed, but without register
of bank or name of firm. "We don't use real money," he added. "There's
very little coin or
currency in southern Utah. Mast of the Gentiles
lately come in have money, and some of us Mormons have a bag or two of
gold, but scarcely any
it gets into
circulation. We use these checks, which go from man to man
sometimes for six months. The roundup of a check means sheep, cattle,
horses, grain,
merchandise or labor. Every man gets his real money's
value - without paying out an
actual cent."
"Such a
system at least means honest men," said Hare, laughing his
surprise.
They went into a wide door to tread a maze of narrow aisles between boxes
and
barrels, stacks of canned vegetables, and piles of
harness and dry
goods; they entered an open space where several men leaned on a
counter.
"Hello, Abe," said Naab; "seen anything of Snap?"
"Hello, August. Yes, Snap's inside. So's Holderness. Says he rode in
off the range on purpose to see you." Abe designated an open
doorway from
which issued loud voices. Hare glanced into a long narrow room full of
smoke and the fumes of rum. Through the haze he made out a crowd of men
at a rude bar. Abe went to the door and called out: "Hey, Snap, your dad
wants you. Holderness, here's August Naab."
A man staggered up the few steps leading to the store and swayed in. His
long face had a hawkish cast, and it was gray, not with age, but with the
sage-gray of the desert. His eyes were of the same hue, cold yet burning