The Desert

: THE RAWHIDE
: Arizona Nights

Button was a trusty of Senor Johnson's private animals. He was never

known to leave his master in the lurch, and so was habitually allowed

certain privileges. Now, instead of remaining exactly on the spot

where he was "tied to the ground," he had wandered out of the dry

arroyo bed to the upper level of the plains, where he knew certain

bunch grasses might be found. Buck Johnson climbed the steep wooded

bank in searc of him.



The pony stood not ten feet distant. At his master's abrupt appearance

he merely raised his head, a wisp of grass in the corner of his mouth,

without attempting to move away. Buck Johnson walked confidently to

him, fumbling in his side pocket for the piece of sugar with which he

habitually soothed Button's sophisticated palate. His hand encountered

Estrella's letter. He drew it out and opened it.



"Dear Buck," it read, "I am going away. I tried to be good, but I

can't. It's too lonesome for me. I'm afraid of the horses and the

cattle and the men and the desert. I hate it all. I tried to make you

see how I felt about it, but you couldn't seem to see. I know you'll

never forgive me, but I'd go crazy here. I'm almost crazy now. I

suppose you think I'm a bad woman, but I am not. You won't believe

that. Its' true though. The desert would make anyone bad. I don't

see how you stand it. You've been good to me, and I've really tried,

but it's no use. The country is awful. I never ought to have come.

I'm sorry you are going to think me a bad woman, for I like you and

admire you, but nothing, NOTHING could make me stay here any longer."

She signed herself simply Estrella Sands, her maiden name.



Buck Johnson stood staring at the paper for a much longer time than was

necessary merely to absorb the meaning of the words. His senses,

sharpened by the stress of the last sixteen hours, were trying mightily

to cut to the mystery of a change going on within himself. The phrases

of the letter were bald enough, yet they conveyed something vital to

his inner being. He could not understand what it was.



Then abruptly he raised his eyes.



Before him lay the desert, but a desert suddenly and miraculously

changed, a desert he had never seen before. Mile after mile it swept

away before him, hot, dry, suffocating, lifeless. The sparse

vegetation was grey with the alkali dust. The heat hung choking in the

air like a curtain. Lizards sprawled in the sun, repulsive. A

rattlesnake dragged its loathsome length from under a mesquite. The

dried carcass of a steer, whose parchment skin drew tight across its

bones, rattled in the breeze. Here and there rock ridges showed with

the obscenity of so many skeletons, exposing to the hard, cruel sky the

earth's nakedness. Thirst, delirium, death, hovered palpable in the

wind; dreadful, unconquerable, ghastly.



The desert showed her teeth and lay in wait like a fierce beast. The

little soul of man shrank in terror before it.



Buck Johnson stared, recalling the phrases of the letter, recalling the

words of his foreman, Jed Parker. "It's too lonesome for me," "I'm

afraid," "I hate it all," "I'd go crazy here," "The desert would

make anyone bad," "The country is awful." And the musing voice of the

old cattleman, "I wonder if she'll like the country!" They reiterated

themselves over and over; and always as refrain his own confident

reply, "Like the country? Sure! Why SHOULDN'T she?"



And then he recalled the summer just passing, and the woman who had

made no fuss. Chance remarks of hers came back to him, remarks whose

meaning he had not at the time grasped, but which now he saw were

desperate appeals to his understanding. He had known his desert. He

had never known hers.



With an exclamation Buck Johnson turned abruptly back to the arroyo.

Button followed him, mildly curious, certain that his master's

reappearance meant a summons for himself.



Down the miniature cliff the man slid, confidently, without hesitation,

sure of himself. His shoulders held squarely, his step elastic, his

eye bright, he walked to the fearful, shapeless bundle now lying

motionless on the flat surface of the alkali.



Brent Palmer had fallen into a grim silence, but Estrella still moaned.

The cattleman drew his knife and ripped loose the bonds. Immediately

the flaps of the wet rawhide fell apart, exposing to the new daylight

the two bound together. Buck Johnson leaned over to touch the woman's

shoulder.



"Estrella," said he gently.



Her eyes came open with a snap, and stared into his, wild with the

surprise of his return.



"Estrella," he repeated, "how old are you?"



She gulped down a sob, unable to comprehend the purport of his question.



"How old are you, Estrella?" he repeated again.



"Twenty-one," she gasped finally.



"Ah!" said he.



He stood for a moment in deep thought, then began methodically, without

haste, to cut loose the thongs that bound the two together.



When the man and the woman were quite freed, he stood for a moment, the

knife in his hand, looking down on them. Then he swung himself into

the saddle and rode away, straight down the narrow arroyo, out beyond

its lower widening, into the vast plains the hither side of the

Chiricahuas. The alkali dust was snatched by the wind from beneath his

horse's feet. Smaller and smaller he dwindled, rising and falling,

rising and falling in the monotonous cow-pony's lope. The heat shimmer

veiled him for a moment, but he reappeared. A mirage concealed him,

but he emerged on the other side of it. Then suddenly he was gone.

The desert had swallowed him up.