Ed Bocker had some marks, but, on the whole, he seemed fairly beautiful compared with the other guy. I flung my rifle in the general direction of the long-legged customer.
“Now then, you get your gun stretched out in the sand and your hands up, and—”
My jaw sagged. The long-legged cuss was old Pete himself. He started to laugh. And the girl was laughing. Ed Bocker was as speechless as I was.
Pete did the talking. “I never had but one school, the old desert. I knew there was pay dirt in this kid, but he’d had things too soft. Civilization wasn’t bringing it out. So I framed it with old Doc Smith to give me some sort of a powder and paint my lips blue. Then I planted some gold and pretended to have a mine out in the worst section of the desert goin’.
“I didn’t intend nothin’ else, not me. But Martha Stout embellished the idea. She said Ed would never get no self-respect until he’d mastered Big Bill over the girl. So she let Big Bill Bruze bribe her for a rough copy of the map and started him out here. Then they shipped the girl in by plane.
“Big Bill got a couple of his buddies to locate on the spring, figuring they’d keep you from water and make you surrender the map for water. He just didn’t figure you right.
“I wanted Old Mother Desert to take this lad in hand and bring out the pay dirt in him. I was the one that followed you and run off the burros and punctured the canteens. I been watchin’ all the time. And I been waitin’ for Big Bill to find out the girl was here and come after her.
“The old desert took things in hand and ripped off some of the softness from my boy and done brought out the pay dirt.”
I let the information soak in.
“One of those guys might have killed me,” I said.
Pete snorted.
“If’n you can’t take care of yourself in the desert you’d oughta cash in your chips.”
“And there wasn’t any gold at all?”
He shook his head. “Only what I bought from a placer mine and stuffed into my pockets.”
I could feel myself getting madder and madder.
“And all this time I thought I was carrying out your dying wishes I was just playing schoolma’am for a kid that couldn’t absorb nothing from college?”
Pete’s eyes got sort of gray, like the desert sand. His voice had that whisper to it that comes to those who have lived long where they can hear the sand whispering to the sand, a dry huskiness.
“The desert did the teachin’,” he said. “She’s the cruelest and the kindest mother a man ever had. Now I can give this kid his money an’ let him get married and know that the money won’t ruin him. We’ve brought out the pay dirt, you an’ me. You’re mad now, but you’ll be glad for what you’ve done ’fore you get back out.”
I turned my back and walked away.
That night though, when the sand commenced to whisper, I could see things in a little different light.
I lay and listened to the sand. Then the wind died down, and I could hear Ed Bocker and Nell Thurmond talking in low tones over the embers of the fire.
And I could hear something soft and hissing that I thought was sand whispering; but the wind had lulled. I propped myself up on an elbow to hear what it was.
It wasn’t sand. It was old Pete, the damned old galoot, chuckling to himself, and his throat had got so dry from years in the desert that it sounded like a sand whisper.
Then I knew how much I liked the old cuss, and I got over being mad and commenced to chuckle, too.
Nature had played a funny stunt when she’d delivered Harrisson Bocker and Judge McNaught into the desert. If the old judge had been trustee for Ed Bocker he’d have trained him up to be a pampered son of luxury, never worth a damn.
But the desert had taken a hand. Seemed sort of like she’d known what she was doing when she slipped Pete in as guardian and trustee of young E. Reed Bocker.
And then the wind, which had lulled, sprang up again, and the sand began to stir and rustle, and it sounded just like Pete’s chuckle. I got to wondering if the desert was chuckling, too, and was still wondering when I dropped off to sleep.
The Land of Poison Springs
I. A Strange Expedition
If the girl had come clean with me, right from the start, it wouldn’t have happened.
But my first contact was with the man.
He was all dressed up for the desert, the way a Los Angeles tailor thinks a man should be dressed to go hunting. His boots laced all the way up, and his breeches were tailored to a tight fit, pegged out and pressed. The shirt was one of those sport affairs, and the coat was pinched in at the back.
But out on the desert we don’t notice clothes so much, even when they are so gosh-awful as these. We look at the man.
“You’re Bob Zane,” he said, walking up to me in the back of the grocery store where I was outfitting. “I’m George Fargo, and I want to see you on a matter of business.”
He didn’t offer to shake hands, and his words were close clipped, like the words of a business executive who’s accustomed to make men grovel before him or else lose their jobs. I didn’t like the tone, and I didn’t like the eyes.
Out in the desert we don’t grovel. We’re too close to blue skies, the quiet of the stars, and the edict of nature that says the fit ones are going to survive, while the weak ones get pushed under, grovel or not.
“Yes,” I said, “I’m Bob Zane, and I don’t take out fishing parties.”
He frowned.
“I didn’t say anything about a fishing party. This is different. If you’re interested in twenty dollars a day I can talk.”
Twenty dollars a day is big money anywhere. Out in the desert it’s bigger.
He saw my eyes light, and he turned away, so I’d have to follow him to the other end of the store.
I hesitated, weighed the twenty a day against what I’d have to put up with, and turned back to my groceries.
He paused, looked back over his shoulder, saw I wasn’t following, and had to swallow his pride and come back to me. I knew then that we were going to hate each other.
“Go on and talk,” I said.
He straightened, very rigid, very much under control, and very mad down underneath it all.
“My business can’t be discussed right here,” he observed.
“I’ll drop around and see you then, after a while,” I told him, getting the groceries put in the kyaks so that they balanced about even. “My business is right here, and if I get these things outa balance it’s going to mean a sore back for my burro.”
He lowered his voice.
“I am interested in a mine,” he said.
“Yeah?” I observed, getting some flour wedged nicely into a corner.
“And I must start right away. There are three men and a woman in the party.”
I straightened, dusted the flour off my hands.
“Okay,” I said. “A woman’s different. Where do you want to talk?”
He walked back to the other side of the store. I followed him. He was so mad his eyes were pale, but he managed to keep control of his voice.
“They tell me you know the desert as no other living man,” he said, grudgingly.
I said nothing.
“I must have the best guide that money can buy. Can you get a pack train outfit together, get provisions and blankets and leave by afternoon?”
“It’ll take a lot of money to get an outfit like that on such short notice. We’ll have to pick up local stuff, and they’ll stick us.”
“I have the money,” he snapped.
“I can get the stuff,” I said, and my tone was just as crisp as his.