Collected Works of Zane Grey, page 733
Following this comment Reynolds gave himself completely to the business of wheel and pipe. Katharine noticed that Alice was soon far afield in thought. All the joy emanating from the young spirit within lit her delicate features with a sublimity which stirred her elder sister almost to tears. If good health sprang from peace and contentment, Alice’s recovery was sure.
Mile upon mile sped away behind them. Presently the trail branched toward the foot of the curving plateau and clung to its shadow for a considerable distance. Whether the great plateau sloped toward the valley at this point, or whether they had been ascending a gradual rise, was hard to tell, but a change of levels was manifest. Another few miles and a very defined ascent confronted them. The car swung up the trail over slopes and into hollows, but continued its gradual climb toward the last ridge, a sand dune, white as had been the terrifying slope by which they had descended the plateau. The wind had molded this dune with the pattern of its action, and left it as rippling and glistening as a breeze-furrowed sea.
“And here’s Castle Mesa, our first stop,” announced Reynolds.
Whereupon there suddenly hove in view a strange house rising just below the ridge out of billows of sand. It was an octagonal structure built of stone, and it reminded Katharine of an observatory she once had visited in the East.
“Like a lighthouse on a wind-swept shore,” exclaimed Alice. “But the sea is only sand. And look! Oh, look, Katharine!”
Katharine’s eyes had caught at once the vast panorama of yellow and red ranges and the beetling battlements of the black mesa. Here was sinister solitude; here was barren, bleak beauty; here was the home of the wind and the abode of desolation.
“It’s as Mary said it would be,” cried Katharine. “Oh, how glad I am that we came!”
On closer approach they saw that the stone house, which stood boldly against the sandy slope, commanded a regal view of the sinister and barren valley. Soon a woman appeared from a doorway and a cheery call reached them.
The woman, tall and comely, with twinkling blue eyes and hair as raven-black as Mary’s, grasped their hands in a most cordial welcome.
“Mr. Reynolds brings me the nicest people,” she said. “I wish he came this way more often. I don’t need to be introduced to you. Think of that!” She nodded to Katharine. “I know by description that you are Miss Winfield. And this young lady, I take it, is your sister.” She smiled at Alice then. “She doesn’t look a bit like you. Like me, you must be the black sheep of your family.”
“And you are Mrs. Shelley?” Katharine asked.
Mrs. Shelley nodded. “That’s right. Better come in. You’re going to have lunch with me.”
Without remonstrance Katharine, followed by Alice, entered by the same door through which Mrs. Shelley had come, and they found themselves in a trader’s store, amid shelves of canned goods, print materials, velveteens, cases of candy and Indian jewelry. There were baskets and plaques hanging everywhere, and piles of rugs on the floor.
“Don’t mind going through the store, do you?” Mrs. Shelley asked. “Jim, my husband, always says he cut our front door for nothing.”
She lifted a hinged section of the counter and directed them to pass through the door beyond. That brought them to a cool adobe room much like a storeroom, where quantities of boxes and rugs were stacked. A shaft of light coming from an outside door revealed a stairway.
“That’s the front door,” Mrs. Shelley acclaimed with a smile. “You see, it leads directly to the stairs and was intended to isolate our quarters from the store. But I always feel to get the atmosphere of Castle Mesa post, visitors should see the store first.”
They mounted the stairs to quarters which drew from Katharine a cry of delight. There was only one room, as large as half the length of the building, which at a glance one could see contained all the utilities essential to the needs of home-making. In the farthermost corner tied-back cretonne curtains revealed a bed, bureau and a rocking chair, and diagonally opposite was a stove with a crackling fire in it and pots atop from which came appetizing odors. There was a cupboard near by and a sink. Over the sink was a window, and Katharine knew that the view from that window was such as to make a housewife’s kitchen tasks seem lighter. Toward the center of the room was a dining room table already set, and several straight-backed chairs stood around it. The remaining area had the atmosphere of a living room, with bookcases, a desk, two couches and low comfortable chairs. There were Indian blankets on the floor and silver-ornamented Indian articles on the walls, and plaques, and some excellent paintings which Mrs. Shelley explained were presented to her by artists who had visited Castle Mesa. The several corners were brightened by tall hand-woven baskets of Hopi design.
A doorway had been cut directly above the door which on the floor below led to the store. It served as a sort of desert French window with a single protective bar across the opening. Through it great broad bands of light sifted, and they drew Katharine to the view it offered. Behind her she heard Alice exclaiming, “What a charming and unique place!” And then Mrs. Shelley, “It’s from this door we see the yellow mesa that looks so much like a grand castle. It was an artist, I believe, who named it.”
Katharine drank her fill of the rugged, wild glory of Castle Mesa before she accepted an invitation from Mrs. Shelley to tidy up a bit if she pleased before lunch. Alice preceded Katharine to washbasin and mirror, and was helping their hostess serve the delicious luncheon when she, tardy but refreshed, joined them. Reynolds appeared presently accompanied by a man so like Mrs. Shelley in coloring and general aspect that Katharine was surprised to discover that he was Mrs. Shelley’s husband and not her brother.
Mrs. Shelley, it developed in their conversation at the table, had been reared in Kansas City, but had not the slightest desire to return or to reside in any other metropolis. She protested that the desert had become part of her and was necessary to her happiness. “When it gets you, it never lets go,” she warned them.
“And do you never grow lonesome?” asked Alice.
“Only once in a while in the winter, now that the children are grown up, and away at school after the first week in September. Mr. Shelley has to leave me once in a while when he goes on buying trips, and at such times I usually send for Mother. She lives in California now. I meet more interesting people here in a year, natives and tourists, than I would meet in a lifetime anywhere else. But even without the people the desert still would hold me.”
“Even without me, so she doesn’t hesitate to tell me,” Mr. Shelley interrupted.
Mrs. Shelley laughed the most pleasing laugh Katharine had ever heard. “I always tell Jim not to put me through the third degree about why I never am lonely. I can’t explain why I am willing to give up the things that seem so necessary to other people’s happiness for the life here. Ask the desert, I say.”
“The desert is a sphinx. It won’t tell. It’s inscrutable. Believe me, I’ve tried,” confessed Katharine.
The two girls were reluctant to leave Castle Mesa and their kind host and hostess. However, they had no alternative but to accept Mr. Reynolds’ hint, delivered immediately after lunch was over, that the mail must be moving on.
They rode away with an oft-repeated invitation by Mr. and Mrs. Shelley to come again called in final adieu from the door of the store.
Once they had negotiated the white sandy slope, they were again on the level floor of a valley. They passed a windmill and near by it a pool of discolored water around which some sheep, several cows and two horses were gathered. Then, once more, they were lost in the anything but monotonous isolation of bleak, barren country. The winding trail which they followed cut between Castle Mesa and the gradual rise of ground that stretched on their right as far as the looming bulk of Black Mesa.
“There’s the gateway to a whole new country,” Katharine said to Alice.
As soon as they had passed through this gateway, there rose before them two great yellow buttes of tremendous height.
“Them’s called ‘Elephant Legs,’” announced Mr. Reynolds, pointing a stubby forefinger at the great rock formations at the very moment that Katharine was forming the comparison for herself.
To their left, beyond the buttes, ran low bluffs, and between them and Black Mesa was a valley, slowly ascending. Thus confined they rode for miles through stretches of greasewood, until at last the trail climbed high enough to meet a new prospect, where a greater span of country spread before their eyes. Black Mesa completely dominated the northward country. All the other eminences seemed low and regular, so remote were they, save one tall yellow spire in the foreground. Ever the aspect of the country changed, and every mile of the journey offered new sights and thrills for the eyes of the two Eastern girls. They moved into an area of yellow rocks where the trail dipped behind hummocks and rose over small passes, always ascending. Before long they were riding on an upland of sage where occasional stubby cedars grew. Black Mesa seemed very close now, even though cedar-crested hills intervened. The stretch of sage was like a beautiful garden; green and yellow were the flowering stalks, purple gray were those bushes now half-dead and those late to bloom. Between the clumps of sage waved dainty purple asters and a few black-eyed Susans.
Suddenly, beyond the garden of sagebrush the stage passengers saw a tremendous blaze of great red, rocky ramparts of staggering magnitude appear before their startled eyes, just as the car rounded the great jutting wall of Black Mesa where it turned away to the north. Down between these ramparts wound a canyon. Katharine scarcely dared to look from the breath-taking reach of the tallest spire down to the silver stream of water that wound through the canyon.
With a jerk of his thumb Reynolds indicated the green country westward. “That valley between them rock mountains is Noname Valley. Just beyond there we come to Cedar Pass.”
First descending, and then climbing, they finally reached the pass. The country beyond, a level and green valley dominated by Black Mesa and the great peak of gold, delighted Katharine’s fancy, but it lacked the bewildering majesty of the country around Cedar Pass.
Ever since they had left Castle Mesa, Alice had been lost in an enchanted reverie, the lovely light on her face speaking her appreciation more loudly than words.
“Four miles to go,” announced Reynolds, after they had crossed the rain-washed gash in the earth which had been named for its distance from the Black Mesa post.
Now that they were approaching the end of their journey, Alice was aroused to comment excitedly on the things she had been led to expect on their arrival. Katharine’s own expectation was disturbed by a flurry of nervous thoughts in anticipation of her meeting with Curry. She felt that destiny was using her to pull together the broken threads of Mary’s life, yet what part Curry would play in it she did not know, and how or when destiny was to take a hand, she could not tell.
The last four miles seemed the longest stretch of the trip, which came to an abrupt and unexpected end, when suddenly and without warning from Reynolds they swung off the main trail down over a ridge and came upon a group of buildings hidden in what had seemed an uninhabited valley.
Loud blasts from Reynolds’ horn enlivened the silence. At once from the low, rambling adobe structures a dozen people, several Indians among them, came running.
Alice grasped Katharine’s hand and whispered, “Just like Western townsfolk meeting a stage in pictures of the old days. Isn’t it thrilling!”
Katharine noted quickly the barnlike store building from which a sign hung, bearing the name of the post, the wide, green lawn hemmed in by a wire fence, the long, low red-walled house behind it, the cottonwoods with leaves aquiver in action much like her own pulse, and then the people, some of whom she now could identify. There were Mrs. Weston, Mr. Weston, and that harum-scarum cowboy, Beany, who had been at the Snake Dance.
Soon she was among them shaking hands, introducing Alice and in turn being introduced with her to others. Then a tall man in corduroys and gray woolen shirt appeared in the doorway of the post. It was John Curry! She heard his strong pleasant voice, “Well! Well! This sure is great!”
He came to her with hand outstretched and took hers and pressed it in a handshake unmistakably the firmest she had ever known.
“I’m sure glad to see you, Miss Winfield,” he said. “And where’s the little sister I’ve heard so much about?”
His eyes lit on Alice with a smile.
“Yes, my sister Alice, I would like you to meet her, Mr. Curry,” said Katharine.
Alice acknowledged the introduction in her quiet, dignified way. Katharine saw that Curry was captivated by her sister’s gentle smile. Then vaguely, because Mrs. Weston was plying questions thick and fast, she realized that Alice and Curry were engrossed in conversation. Her attention was divided. Her sub-conscious self kept repeating, “I have a message for you, John Curry, from Mary Newton.”
The very richest of Indian silverwork and rugs and baskets lined the walls and floor and corners of the living room, through which, later, the girls passed to their bedroom with its cool, unpainted adobe interior. The clean white of washstand, table, beds and chairs added to the refreshing coolness of this retreat. Navaho rugs and a few pieces of pottery completed Katharine’s idea of a perfect desert bedroom.
The Indian maid who had led them there bowed solemnly and left.
“I want to stay here all the rest of my life!” Katharine exclaimed, backing with spread hands to the bed where she relaxed in an abandon of pleasure.
“And I’ll stay with you,” said Alice. “I like these people very much. That Mr. Curry I could love. He’s the only man who ever made me feel that way.”
Katharine felt a tremor pass through her. It was as if Alice with that honest declaration had uncovered the one thing she had not told her about Mary. However, she made no comment. She was conscious suddenly of how obvious to everyone was John Curry’s complete integrity.
CHAPTER IX
THE READINESS WITH which Katharine had agreed to carry Mary’s message to John Curry now seemed to fail her in the execution of her promise. She passed four days at the post and three on a trip to Cathedral Valley without Mary Newton’s name even being mentioned by either of them. On the eighth day, the day that was to see them break camp in Cathedral Valley, she resolutely determined to break the silence. Katharine and Curry were sitting on a log in a cedar cove when she suddenly determined to take the bull by the horns.
Before her in a clearing burned a cheery fire; pots were heating in the cinders, hooks were warming on the crane. The crackle of the fire sounded close, and there came to her above it the tinkling sound of bells that swung from the halter ropes of the feeding horses. The cowboy cook whistled softly over the potatoes he was peeling. Katharine, pleasantly aware of these things, stared into the fire, as if she could snatch courage from the red-hot bed of coals. Alice came up to her. She had been watching High-Lo hobble the pack mules and was returning flushed, to tell of High-Lo’s miraculous escape from a rain of blows from a mule’s hoofs.
“There are three of those mules I’d never want to ride,” she declared. “But I’m getting very proud of my riding at that. High-Lo says no one would guess I was a tenderfoot.”
“Beware of the flattery of a cowboy,” Katharine cautioned her with a laugh. “I think High-Lo is smitten with my sister.”
Katharine had observed High-Lo’s attentiveness. At each camp he had made a bed of cedar boughs for Alice, unwilling to be outdone by John Curry who served Katharine in this way. Such consideration Katharine rather expected from Curry, and she knew he intended to make Alice comfortable too. But handsome, carefree High-Lo was only an apprentice aping his master, and in his deference to Alice he was following a will-o’-the-wisp fancy. Katharine had sensed at once the relationship that existed between John and High-Lo, and Mrs. Weston, always ready in praise of the elder man, had told her the details of their friendship. It was one of her chief delights to discover the many evidences of High-Lo’s fierce loyalty.
At supper to which they were summoned with the lusty call, “Come and get it,” High-Lo served Alice, and Curry served Katharine. Occasionally Beany would look on with his tongue in his cheek and a mischievous twinkle in his eye and waft some remark to the nearest bystander about one man’s success being another man’s failure. And after supper when Katharine drew Curry away from the others by boldly suggesting that they climb the mountain behind camp, she felt Beany’s eyes upon her and also Alice’s, which plainly asked why she should not be invited to go too. When Katharine sauntered past her sister, she was not as serene as she appeared to be.
They climbed around the mound that sheltered camp and over the rocky bluff until they reached a resting place midway up to the top of the great hummock. From this craggy height they could see the tremendous spread of the valley where insurmountable temples and wind-carved domes wore halos of the last low gleams of the sun. Purple shadows were meeting across the darker sage. Over the westward mesa pink, gold and carmine clouds floated through thin, gray-white light, and lower clouds that a short while ago had pushed themselves above the horizon hung high in the heavens like plumes of smoke still tinged with the red of fire. The mellow call of the wind, soughing through the pines below them, made a cheerful sound.
“I wish Mary Newton could be here to enjoy this,” said Katharine gently.
John sent a small stone spinning down the rock. Then he spoke up. “I wish so, too.”
“Because she would love it,” added Katharine.
“And she makes a good companion on the trail,” was John’s cautious return.
“It’s too bad that soon she may have to leave all this.”
Immediately John fell into the trap that Katharine had so warily laid. “Leave it? What do you mean, Miss Winfield?”
“She may be going to Flaggerston to accept a position there. Her husband has lost his job.”
