that she could pit her will against his. He would fight it out again with her. Yet as he thought it, Tom realized that his peaceful life with Eliza and Baby, had taken some of the fight out of him. "Hello, hello, there!" "Hello," responded Tom mechanically; and with an odd, dragging, tired motion of his hand across his forehead, he dismissed Eliza from his mind. Tom passed under the "fig" trees laden with odorous fruit, passed by the deep pool of water lying in the shade of broad palms, and finally, in a round-about way that took him through a flourishing vegetable garden, came to the gate. Here a dusty man of small stature was reaching up in search of a latch. "Good afternoon," said the little man in husky tones, though they were evidently meant to be cheery. "Good day," said Tom in a detached way, letting his glance roam over the outfit. A decrepit wagon with a tattered cover of stained canvas, the customary tin pails and cups hanging underneath. Peering from between the folds of the canvas were the pale faces of a boy and a woman; the latter, Tom decided, might have been pretty when she started on her trip. Tom nodded to the woman, and turned his attention to the man, who volunteered: see you have water-water for sale." "I-we-that is," stumbled the man, "We are out of water." He stopped, his bloodshot eyes upraised to Tom. "We need water.' "How many gallons do you want?" Tom pushed his sombrero back from his forehead, wiped the perspiration from his face, and stood silently facing the desert. Deep lines had come between his eyebrows, his cheekbones had sharpened, and his lips were a faint line of purple. He forced his breath through in-drawn nostrils, and the pupils of his eyes were so distended that he could barely see; but he waited with a control which he had acquired under just such conditions spanning many years. "I am sorry to say," began the little man, who was seemingly an itinerate preacher, "that we are also out of 99 money. "We haven't many belongings," went on the husky voice, "but we will gladly give you whatever you choose from our small store. He rested a thin hand on one of the bars of the gate and peered through at Tom. "May we have water?" "I don't keep a second-hand shop. The next water-hole is only ten miles ahead." The ashen face looking in at Tom as through the bars of a cell, flushed, and in "We are on our way to California. I declamatory tones, the stranger quoted: "The earth is the Lord's and the ful- speech. "Perhaps you'll understand betness thereof:' Tom regarded the stranger quietly for a moment, then, striving to repress the passion in his voice, he said: "I think you're mistaken. Do you see that?" He swung an arm toward the garden lying in gracious green in the scorching heat. "I did that myself alone. alone. I came out here and scratched a hole in the ground. I kept on. At last when I was dying of thirst, I found water. Lying there on that burning desert, 1 lifted that first handful of wet sand to Heaven, and I took an oath that never would I give a drop of water to anyone. I've kept my oath." Tom raised his tones: "As for that quotation, sir, the water was the Lord's when it was underground. It's mine now." He turned impatiently, for the thin voice of the limp woman came from the house-door. "Tom! Tom!" ter, though I don't know why I should explain about what's my own; but it's this:" He caught at one of the stout ropes and twisted on it as bitter memories swept over him, but he controlled himself. "Thirty years ago," he said, “thirty years ago I was the oldest of a large family. There were too many of us. I found myself on the edge of this desert when I was nine years old. Since that I have fended for myself. No man, no woman has ever done me a favor. Of no man have I asked a favor, of no- -" his voice was almost a shriek as his hand pointed to the desert- "of no woman have I asked a favor. I would as soon ask it of that hag lying there, that hag of the Desert. Do you understand?" Tom held to the rope,. but he bent a little to see the effect of his words. Slowly there dawned in the little preacher's eyes the hated look that was in "Didn't I tell you to stay inside?" he Eliza's, that had been in the eyes of all roared. "Go in!" "But Tom, I can't." "Go in;!" he ordered, and stood looking to see that he was obeyed. "The cattle?" suggested the little man, whose face was still pressed against the bars, and who was staring at Tom in a scared, wondering way. "Oh, they'll reach the water-hole all right," said Tom indifferently. "You see, stranger, if you fellows didn't trust so much to your calling, and used your muscle-" Tom indicated the desert-"you wouldn't be here." "Tom! Tom!" again the thin voice came, and more insistently. "By the Lord Harry!" He took a step or two in the direction of the house. "Go in!" He saw that she went. The missionary was still clinging to the bars as if glad of their support. He turned his face toward the wagon where his wife was trying to smile at him, her dry lips distorted in the effort. Tom looked away quickly. With an attempt at a propitiating smile on his own seared lips, the small man met Tom's eyes, and gently reminded him: "A cup of cold water in My Name.'" "See here, man!" Tom felt that his words were hissing hot, and made an effort to subdue them to more moderate who had stopped at his gate: Pity. Tom wanted to go out and crush the small man into the sands of the desert, for that look was catching. Soon the woman would have it, then it would peer out from the face of the pale child. Some day, some day, Baby would catch it from Eliza. When that day came the hag of the Desert should have him for her own. He groaned aloud and caught himself up sharply. The little preacher's face was still close, and Tom jerked back from the tone in which he said: "Yes, I do understand. You poor man, you poor man!, crazy!" he murmured, so low that Tom did not hear. He stood as if considering, then went to the wagon and consulted with his wife, the pale boyface close to hers as they talked. Tom wished the child were not there; but if people were so foolish as to bring a baby to the desert without sufficient funds to care for him, that was their lookout and they must take the consequences. Tom plucked some "figs" from the cactus and passed them between the bars to the man who had returned to the gate. "For the boy," he said. The man took them eagerly and ran to the woman, and immediately ran back. "Thank you for the figs." He indi cated the boy who already had one of the rich, lemony things crushed to his parched lips. "The nearest water-hole?" questioned the man, as if anxious to be off. "Ten miles," replied Tom, wishing he had never seen them. impulse he could not understand, started to open the gate. He was glad they were out of his sight forever. His oath must be kept. He must be getting old if a man like that could, even for one moment, make him feel that his oath might be The preacher had a foot on the forward broken. He scorned himself as he stood wheel, as he turned to ask: "That water, can we can we-?" "That's Government water; that's free." A sound in Tom's throat might have started for a laugh, but it never reached birth, for he bit his lip and scowled. His eyes stared into space; he listening to the rickety wagon, rattling its wheels and spewing out the sand, and hardened his heart anew at the chirpy, husky voice encouraging the thirsty horses with a gentle: "Git up there, Molly, water ahead! Git up!" saw the water-hole, at times only a cattle wallow. The small preacher was smiling all over his wasted face. Would they never go! "My boy says he never had anything so nice as those figs; they are better than lemonade. God bless you for them!" He seemed searching for words, and at last he spoke further: "I wanted to tell you, sir, that if ever I can do you a favor I shall be very happy." In response to Tom's raised eyebrows, the little man acknowledged; "Of course it doesn't seem as if we would ever meet again; but the world isn't so very big after all." "Thank you!" Tom was astonished at the heartiness of his own voice. "II-" The man was off before Tom, under an Tom shook the strangers from his mind, and turned to the enjoyment of his Oasis. He held himself on the path. Surely that was the rumble of an earthquake. Possibly, though, it was a band of cattlemen hurrying to the water-hole for camping-ground. He laughed crustily. They never troubled him any more. "Tom! Tom!" cried the thin voice of the limp woman; and she came running across the pleasant garden. "Tom, where is Baby?" "In the house. I told her to go to you and stay there. Why?" He looked down at the pale, cowed woman wringing her futile hands, and found a new emotion; he had never before been sorry for her, and he dismissed the thought as quickly as it came. "She isn't in the house, she isn't in the garden, nor-" "Where's Tip?" he demanded. "Tip," she repeated. "Why-why-" She pressed her hands to her meagre breast. "Tom! My Baby! Husband, I shall die if anything has happened to my Baby." She raised her filled eyes to his and clutched his arm. "Find her for me! Find her!" Suddenly, under his eyes she dashed the tears away; she became another woman than the one he had known. She stood up straight with a hand on his shoulder, and said with desperate earnestness: "You have got to bring her to me at once! If you don't-" Her face was convulsed, and close to his again. "I shall Listen to me! I mean what I say! If my baby is—” She choked on the word. "I shall-" She shook him in her bitter distress. "Find Baby!" she screamed. Tom was amazed. She had always been colorless, emotionless. (Continued on Page 91) THE DESERT TRAIL. By Mable I. Clapp Mesquite and cactus and sage, And bones that bleach by the way, And queer little blooms that are born And gone again in a day. And I know not whither you lead Nor why you must have it so, But a voice from the hills calls "Come," And I shoulder my burden and go. Fair have you promised and smooth Some you have favored with death. Valiant and eager eyed, Sinewy, lean and strong, They have worn your favor with pride, They have entered your lists with a song. Capricious the guerdon bestowed, Fickle the fortune you gave, Up where the purple hills An Etching of the Drear November By Fiswoode Tarleton HEN I was a boy of ten or thereWabouts, he sat in front of the ceme tery gates, as he does yet, on nice days to see that no one trespasses on the grounds. But sometimes he would fall asleep in his chair, and then we would steal past his motionless form and make for the nut groves within to fill our sacks. His hair was white, even then-twenty or more years ago—and his back quite stooped from age. When he walked, a twisted cane helped along his withered body. Usually a clay pipe stuck from his mouth and he smoked in long puffs. In bad weather, a little house, that was set aside for his use, protected him from the rain and cold, and by means of a rope, he could open and shut the gates from the inside. Sometimes when a funeral party approached he would examine their permit through the window, and if it was all right, nod for them to enter. On Sundays and holidays when the people flocked to the Cemetery to look after their lots, he would put on a white shirt, and a black tie, and limp about from one end of the cemetery to the other. Such was Uncle Henry as I have always known him. The One day-about the end of November, last year a hike, undertaken primarily for some rabbit shooting, brought me, toward evening, to the cemetery gates. Winter had already taken hold. trees were bare, and birds, there were none, except a few jays that fluttered about among the branches. The wind The wind was bitter cold and sent the dead leaves flying through the air; this way and that, until they banked up against the fence in high piles. On the road, a man was walking behind a creaking wagon and swinging his arms to keep warm. A party of mourners, wrapped up to their chins, were filing slowly down a path between the graves; the women weeping; the men bowing their heads from grief. One of the party (She must have been the widow) often paused to look back at a new grave, which two men were closing over; their spades ringing against the hard earth, and their bodies bending backward as if worked by springs. My dog, hot on the trail of a rabbit, began to yelp in a near-by wood. Smoke was pouring from the chimney of the old Keeper's house and I stepped in to warm up my numb feet and to chat. With his usual greeting, "Glad to see you, son," he pushed a stool toward me and with it, his tobacco box. We talked of the weather, and the chances for a long, severe winter; the strikes that were tying up the mills in the city; and at last the high cost of living, which led him to compare, the conditions with what they were in seventy or seventy two. Even a grave cost ten times as much, he declared as it did in "sixtysix." After a while he pointed out of the window to a large sycamore which had been badly damaged by a recent wind. "I'm afraid," said he, "that tree is going to die," and it has stood for fifty years.' "Uncle Henry, what has kept you here, so long-among the dead?" I asked. He only puffed at his pipe the harder and looked out of the window-at nothing of course, while I sat there turning the logs with the toe of my shoe. Outside it was growing dark. You could no longer see the wagons that squeaked and rumbled along the road. The wind howled down the chimney and around the eaves of the house like the voice of a drifting soul. The old keeper's dog in the corner, a fine mastiff, raised his head and growled. Then as if to make sure that no one was prowling about, he paced the floor and sniffed the air before stretching himself out again. At last when I got up and put on my (Continued on Page 93.) |