Evelyn Ringley looked me over coolly.
“What did you do with your money, Mr. Zane?” she asked tonelessly.
Pete Ringley laughed booming merriment and answered the question for me.
“Blew it in!” he said. “Went down to Los Angeles and blew it all in, and then went back to the desert to look for more.”
She looked at me as though I had been a specimen of something that was under glass.
“And I never was so tired of money in my life,” I told Pete. “I can remember how fed up I was when I got down to the last twenty-five thousand dollars. I went through that in a week and it was the longest week I ever put in.”
“Why didn’t you save it?” Evelyn Ringley asked.
“I don’t want money, ma’am,” I told her. “I want the desert. I want the making of money. I want the thrill of fighting; the adventure of searching; the big spaces of the outdoors.”
“I’m quite sure,” she said icily, “that you’re entirely welcome to them. Are you going to be long, Pete?”
Pete looked a little flabbergasted.
She turned and left the room. Pete put a hand on my shoulder.
“No, ma’am,” I called as she went through the door, “he won’t be long.”
“Don’t mind her,” Pete said. “She is a city girl. All of her interests are in the city. She doesn’t understand anything else.”
She was ten years younger than Pete, maybe fifteen — it’s hard to tell. There wasn’t a wrinkle or a line on her face. It was all smooth, as though it had been molded and then plastered over with some kind of a pink plaster so it wouldn’t crack or weather.
“Where’s your bag?” said Pete Ringley. “You’ve got to stay here for a week anyway. You can’t go back...”
“In about an hour, Pete.” I told him. “This isn’t my country.”
There was genuine disappointment on his face.
“Oh, listen,” he said, “I haven’t seen you since we signed the deed to the mine. We’ve got to have a little celebration, just for old times’ sake.”
I grinned at him and shook my head. “Where can we talk?” I asked.
He led the way to a room on the second floor.
“This is my den,” he said. “No one ever disturbs me here.”
It was a comfortable room. There were a few relics of the old days scattered around — a pair of alforjas, with some of the hide pretty badly worn, where the pack ropes had rubbed. There was a battered Stetson, with a sweat-grimed band, a hat that had absorbed so much sunlight and desert dust it had turned gray like the desert. There were an old riata, a gold pan and a shovel that was covered with gilt paint and tied with a ribbon.
I looked at the shovel.
“That was the shovel,” he said, “that we turned over the first gold of our bonanza with.”
“Why the gilt paint,” I asked, “and the ribbon?”
“That was Evelyn’s idea,” he said. “She thought it should be decorated somehow. She said that it had brought her gold, so we should put gold paint on it.”
I didn’t say anything. Pete looked uncomfortable.
“Of course,” he said, “it sort of takes away the charm of the thing, but Evelyn wanted to have her way about it, and she’s a city girl. She knows what’s proper in such matters.”
“Yes,” I said, “she’s a city girl.”
I looked at the woodwork of the den. It was a peculiar light color. It looked comfortable and weatherbeaten.
“Like it?” he asked.
I nodded.
I went over and felt of it. It looked like the old driftwood that would be found around the washes in the desert where cloudbursts had carried it along for a mile or two, and then the sand had blown across it.
“What kind of wood is it?” I asked.
“It’s the way it’s treated, Bob,” he told me. “It’s given a sand blast.”
“A what?”
“A sand blast. They blow sand against the wood through a nozzle. The sand is sent out under pressure. It cuts the wood, and then they wax the surface. It gives it that weatherbeaten appearance.”
I nodded and kept my hand on the wood. It seemed to give me something to tie to, something that I could understand.
“I came to see you about the old Chuckwalla claims,” I said.
He frowned and shook his head. “I don’t remember any Chuckwalla claims,” he said.
“You remember the time that the burro stepped on the canteen, and—”
“Why,” he said, “that stuff wasn’t any good!”
“It is now,” I told him.
He looked at me curiously.
“There’s been a big change in the desert,” I told him. “The price of gold is going up. What’s more, it’s easier to get transportation now than it was. Those Chuckwalla claims were low-grade, but they were uniform in gold content. There’s all kind of rock in there. With the increased price in gold and the chance to get at them, it’s one of the biggest propositions we’ve ever tackled.”
“Why,” he said, “I’d clean forgotten about those! As I remember it, I threw the samples away.”
“No,” I told him, “we didn’t throw them away; Sally Ehlers got them.”
His face lit up. “That’s right,” he said. “Sally was there. That was the time we found the kid out in the desert. Her dad had been killed. She’d taken the wrong road and run out of gas. What was she — around thirteen or fourteen, wasn’t she? Just a kid.”
“She isn’t a kid any more,” I told him. “She’s grown up. She’s a young woman. She put herself through business college, got a job as a stenographer in a law office, and then went out to Blythe and became a notary public. She does stenographic work and notary public stuff. She’s got the desert in her blood; she can’t keep away from it.”
He looked moodily meditative.
“Gosh,” he said, “it makes me feel old to think that that kid has grown up. Remember what an impulsive little kid she was?”
I nodded.
“She remembers where the claims were,” I said.
“Well,” he told me, “what about it?”
“I think we’d better go out and relocate them,” I said.
He shook his head.
“I’m finished with the desert, Bob,” he said. “It’s cruel.”
I looked him over.
“It’s not cruel,” I said. “It’s kind.”
His laugh was scornful and bitter.
“Kind!” he exclaimed. “My God, Bob! Have you forgotten the burning heat of those suns? The shimmering sand that bums up through your boots until the soles of your feet blister? Have you forgotten those days when you can cook an egg simply by putting it out in the sun and leaving it for five minutes? The days when the air is just like the breath out of a furnace, when the moisture dries right out of your blood and your muscles shrivel? Have you forgotten those awful desert winds? The bitter cold of the winter nights? The everlasting sand? The rattlesnakes? The Gila monsters? The tarantulas? The centipedes? The scorpions? My God! It’s so cruel that even the bushes have to grow thorns in order to protect themselves, and nature coats their leaves with some kind of a resinous substance. If it wasn’t for that the water would evaporate right out of them!”
I shook my head at him and smiled.
“No,” I said, “I haven’t forgotten those things. I just came from the desert, Pete. But that’s why the desert is so kind. It’s cruel to those that don’t understand it; to the person who can understand her moods she’s a kind and loving mother. There’s nothing that develops character like cruelty, and the development of character is all life is for.”