To Zane, the desert is a woman. She is ever restless and ever changing: her dunes alternate with broken rocks and mountains, her chilly nights with burning days, and her absolute silence with whirling sandstorms. Yet she is always the same: awesome miles of barren waste operating under immutable laws. She is the crudest country in the world, yet she is the kindest. Her rabbits are the swiftest; her rattlesnakes are the deadliest; her coyotes the most cunning. Even her plants have to be coated with a natural varnish and studded with thorns. The desert is the world’s greatest natural obstacle, and Zane feels that life can progress only by overcoming obstacles. In civilization, people do not have to be tested. There are fancy veneers and distractions which allow them to hide from others, even from themselves. But they cannot hide from the desert. Its vastness and nothingness force them to look inward, and those who cannot accept their findings panic and flee to their doom. Those willing to learn, who are clear of mind, keen of eye, and swift of hand, may live long; those who are not will die. For only by knowing and embracing the desert can one survive in this never-ending contest which results in self-respect and tranquility.
Zane loves this fascinating lady. And perhaps the reason he seems not to have married is because he cannot find another as exciting and satisfying. The desert satisfies his desires for adventure and a simple, self-reliant life, and it is these desires rather than the weaknesses of the greedy such as gambling or drinking which keep him prospecting. Indeed, when he has the chance, he is likely to try to salvage city slickers by forcing them to undergo the desert’s rite of passage. For example, in “Sand Blast” he goes back east and rescues George Ringley, an old partner’s dissolute son, from gangsters. Then, to try to straighten the young man out, Zane drags George back to the western deserts and maneuvers him into a position where he must demonstrate his character by defending a young woman from a gang of claim jumpers.
The desert plays a leading role in each of the Whispering Sand stories and, to those who know the desert well, her whispers are her most enchanting feature. Late at night, in the silence, the sand often brushes against the sage or the cactus and sometimes rubs against itself or the soft sandstone to make a soothing, crooning whisper much like that of a mother reassuring her child. Sometimes just before sleep or while awakening, one seems to hear the whispering form into words and sentences. Many people, including Zane, believe that these are desert messages which lodge in the unconscious and provide them with warnings, guidance, and love — messages that result in special intuitions.
One cannot help but think that such whispers inspired Erle Stanley Gardner himself, for he camped out much of his life and did a lot of his writing while traveling in various western deserts. Mr. Gardner is, of course, best known for his work in the mystery field; indeed, sales of his books that feature investigators such as Perry Mason, Doug Selby, and Lam and Cool exceed 300 million copies. But Gardner thought of himself not only as a lawyer and a writer but also as a westerner, and during his career he was to produce over seventy western novelettes and short stories.
In fact, Gardner bears a striking resemblance to his most notable western protagonist, Bob Zane. At the time the stories were written, both were middle-aged; both were of average height, intelligent, and curious; both were experienced in the ways of the desert, had a strong sense of justice, and were convinced of the values of desert living. Gardner spoke contemptuously of New Yorkers and seemed to enjoy destroying their city by flooding, as in “New Worlds,” or by bombing the bejazzers out of it, as in “As Far as the Poles.” Zane is disgusted with urbanites and continually refers to them as “city” folk. Gardner kept taking visiting New York editors on camping trips into the desert to see what they were made of, and Zane lures people out into the desert to try to develop their characters.
But Gardner found writing westerns frustrating, because he felt that editors had false ideas about what the West was really like and did not appreciate, and sometimes interfered with, his intent to portray it accurately. He was also a hardheaded businessman who realized that the real money lay in novels and not shorter works. So when his Perry Mason novels caught on, Gardner shifted his attention more and more to detective novels, until finally by 1935 the desert s beautiful whispers were rarely heard again in his works.
Charles G. Waugh and Martin H. Greenberg
Sand Blast
I
Cool Reception
The house was a magnificent palace. It sat back from the streets, surrounded by fresh green grass which was kept moist by fountains of spray that spouted up from a buried water system.
There were great shade trees around the house, furnishing rich patches of green color against the stucco of the walls, forming deep pools of inviting shade beneath them.
I felt out of place as I looked around at the shade and the grass. Grass is something we don’t have in the desert. It seems an awful waste of water somehow to have all this water cascading over a lawn just because it looks pretty.
I was halfway up the stairs and wondering whether a butler would hold out a silver platter for me to put a card on, when the door flung open and Pete Ringley himself stood in the doorway.
He was heavier than when I’d seen him last, and the fat was a moist, well-nourished, puffy fat that made his face look round and plump, like the breast of a picked goose.
“Bob Zane!” he shouted, and then came galloping across the porch to slam me between the shoulders with a hand that had lost nothing of its strength. “The same as you were seven years ago!” he said. “You haven’t changed a particle. You haven’t aged a day. You look hard and fit, as though you could start out for Death Valley with nothing but a burro, a canteen of water, a sack of beans and a roll of blankets.”
I looked at him in surprise. “Of course I could,” I said. “What else would I want?”
He laughed and whacked me between the shoulders again. “Come on in,” he said. “I was looking out of the window when the taxicab drove up. I saw you get out, and couldn’t believe my eyes for a minute. Lord! but it’s good to see you again.”
I followed him into the house and didn’t say much.
“Well,” he said, as he paused in the doorway of the living room, “what do you think about it?”
“It doesn’t look much like the old cabin down in the cottonwoods,” I told him.
He laughed at that, but there was something wistful in his laugh.
A door opened and a woman entered the room. She was young, stylish, tailored, manicured, hairdressed, massaged, powdered, perfumed and lipsticked, and her fingernails had been painted.
“Dearest,” said Pete Ringley, “I want you to meet the best friend I have in the world — Bob Zane. Bob, this is Evelyn — the wife.”
I started to shake hands, then remembered something I’d read somewhere about a man not shaking hands until a woman offered him hers.
She didn’t offer me hers.
Pete Ringley kept on talking. “Bob Zane,” he said, “was my partner out there in the desert when we struck it rich. Lord! what a battle we had with those claim jumpers. Bob is the fellow that saved my life. I’ve told you about it, dearest.”
“Lots of times,” she said in a voice that was without interest.
Pete Ringley laughed again. “We sold out our claim that spring,” he said. “Two hundred thousand dollars cash was what we got.”
He looked over at me, and there was the glitter of a lighter in his eyes. “I always wanted to come back to civilization,” he said, “and let my money make money for me. I had my boy, George, you know. I thought he needed a father’s care. I came on East, and my money made lots of money for me. And then I met Evelyn and married her.”