Wanderer Of the Wasteland (1982) (7 page)

"Ha-ha!" laughed Adam, tauntingly. "I say to you what I said to Collishaw--you will--like hell!"

Guerd Larey's lips framed curses that were inaudible. He was astounded. The red flamed his neck and face.

"I'll meet you after I get through talking to this girl." he said.

"Any time you want," rejoined Adam, bitingly, "but I'll have my say now, once and for all...The worm has turned, Guerd Larey. Your goose has stopped laying golden eggs. I will take no more burdens of yours on my shoulders. You've bullied me all my life. You've hated me. I know now. Oh, I remember so well! You robbed me of toys, clothes, playmates. Then girl friends! Then money!...Then--a worthless woman!...You're a fraud--a cheat--a liar...You've fallen in with your kind out here and you're going straight to hell."

The whiteness of Guerd's face attested to his roused passion. But he had more restraint than Adam. He was older, and the difference of age between them showed markedly.

"So you followed me out here to say all that?" he queried.

"No, not altogether," replied Adam. "I came after Margarita."

"Came after Margarita?" echoed Guerd, blankly. "Is that her name? Say, Adam, is this one of your goody-goody tricks? Rescuing a damsel in distress sort of thing!...You and I have fallen out more than once over that. I kick--I----"

"Guerd, we've fallen out for ever," interrupted Adam, and then he turned to the girl. "Margarita, I want you--"

"But it's none of your damned business," burst out Guerd, hotly, interrupting in turn. "What do you care about a Mexican girl? I won't stand your interference. You clear out and let me alone."

"But Guerd--it is my business," returned Adam, haltingly. Some inward force dragged at his tongue. "She's--my girl."

"What!" ejaculated Guerd, incredulously. Then he bent down to peer into Margarita's face, and from that he swept a flashing, keen glance at Adam. His eyes were wonderful then, intensely bright, quickened and sharpened with swift turns of thought. "Boy, you don't mean you're on friendly terms with this greaser girl?"

"Yes," replied Adam.

"You've made love to her!" cried Guerd, and the radiance of his face then was beyond Adam's understanding.

"Yes."

Guerd violently controlled what must have been a spasm of fiendish glee. His amaze, deep as it was, seemed not to be his predominant feeling, but that very amaze was something to force exquisitely upon Adam how far he had fallen. The moment was dark, hateful, far-reaching in effect, impossible to realise. Guerd's glance flashed back and forth from Adam to Margarita. But he had not yet grasped what was the tragic thing for Adam--the truth of how fatefully far this love affair had fallen. Adam's heart sank like lead in his breast. What humiliation he must suffer if he betrayed himself! Hard he fought for composure and dignity to hide his secret.

"Adam, in matters of the heart, where two gentlemen admire the lady in question, the choice is always left to her," began Guerd, with something of mockery in his rich voice. A devil gleamed from him then, and the look of him, the stature, the gallant action of him as he bowed before Margarita, fascinated Adam even in his miserable struggle to appear a man.

"But, Guerd, you--you've known Margarita only a few moments," he expostulated, and the sound of his voice made him weak. "How can you put such a choice to--to her? It's--it's an insult."

"Adam, that is for Margarita to decide," responded Guerd. "Women change. It is something you have not learned." Then as he turned to Margarita he seemed to blaze with magnetism. The grace of him and the beauty of him in that moment made of him a perfect physical embodiment of the emotions of which he was master. He knew his power over women. "Margarita, Adam and I are brothers. We are always falling in love with the same girl. You must choose between us. Adam would tie you down--keep you from the eyes of other men. I would leave you free as a bird."

And he bent over to whisper in her ear, with his strong brown hand on her arm, at once gallant yet masterful.

The scene was a nightmare to Adam. How could this be something that was happening? But he had sight! Margarita seemed a transformed creature, shy, coy, alluring; with the half-veiled dusky eyes, heavy-lidded, lighted with the same fire that had shone in them for Adam.

"Margarita, will you come?" cried Adam, goaded to end this situation.

"No," she replied, softly.

"I beg of you--come!" implored Adam.

The girl shook her black head. A haunting mockery hung around her, in her slight smile, in the light of her face. She radiated a strange glow like the warm shade of an opal. Older she seemed to Adam and surer of herself and somewhat deeper in that mystic obsession of passion he had often sensed in her. No spiritual conception of what Adam regarded as his obligation to her could ever dawn in that little brain. She loved her pretty face and beautiful body. She gloried in her power over men. And the new man she felt to be still unwon--who was stronger of instinct and harder' to hold, under whose brutal hand she would cringe and thrill and pant and fight--him she would choose. So Adam read Margarita in that moment. If he had felt love for her, which he doubted, it was dead. A great pity flooded over him. It seemed that of the three there, he was the only one who was true and who understood.

"Margarita, have you forgotten last night?" asked Adam huskily.

"Ah, senor--so long ago and far away!" she said.

Adam whirled abruptly and, plunging into the thicket of mesquites, he tore a way through, unmindful of the thorns. When he reached his quarters there was blood on his hands and face, but the sting of the thorns was as nothing to the hurt in his heart. He lay down.

"Again!" he whispered. "Guerd has come--and it's the same old story. Only worse!...But, it's better so! I--I didn't know--her!...Arallanes knew--he told me...And I--I dreamed so many--many fool things. Yes--it's better--better. I didn't love her right. It--it was something she roused. I never loved her--but if I did love her--it's gone. It's not loss that--that stabs me now. It's Guerd--Guerd! Again--and I ran off from him...'So long ago and far away,' she said! Are all women like that? I can't believe it. I never will. I remember my mother."

Chapter
VI

That night in the dead late hours Adam suddenly awoke. The night seemed the same as all the desert nights--dark and cool under the mesquites--the same dead, unbroken silence. Adam's keen intentness could not detect a slightest sound of wind or brush or beast. Something had pierced his slumbers, and as he pondered deeply there seemed to come out of the vagueness beyond that impenetrable wall of sleep a voice, a cry, a whisper. Had Margarita, sleeping or waking, called to him? Such queer visitations of mind, often repeated, had convinced Adam that he possessed a mystic power or sense.

When Adam awoke late, in the light of the sunny morning, unrealities of the night dispersed like the grey shadows and vanished. He arose eager, vigorous, breathing hard, instinctively seeking for action. The day was Sunday. Another idle wait, fruitful of brooding moods! But he vowed he would not go to the willow brakes, there to hide from Guerd and Collishaw. Let them have their say--do their worst! He would go up to Picacho and gamble and drink with the rest of the drifters. Merryvale's words of desert-learned wisdom rang through Adam's head. As for Margarita, all Adam wanted was one more look at her face, into her dusky eyes, and that would for ever end his relation to her.

At breakfast Arallanes presented a thoughtful and forbidding appearance, although this demeanour was somewhat softened by the few times he broke silence. The senora's impassive serenity lacked its usual kindliness, and her lowered eyes kept their secrets. Margarita had not yet arisen. Adam could not be sure there was really a shadow hovering over the home, or in his own mind, colouring, darkening his every prospect.

After breakfast he went out to stroll along the river bank and then around the village. He ascertained from Merryvale that Collishaw, Guerd, and their associates had found lodgings at different houses for the night, and after breakfast had left for the mining camp. As usual, Merryvale spoke pointedly: "You're brother said they were goin' to clear out the camp. An' I reckon he didn't mean greasers, but whiskey an' gold. Son, you stay away from Picacho to-day." For once, however, the kind old man's advice fell upon deaf ears. Adam had to fight his impatience to be off up the canyon; and only a driving need to see Margarita held him there. He walked to and fro, from village to river and back again. By and by he espied Arallanes and his wife, with their friends, dressed in their best, parading toward the little adobe church. Margarita was not with them.

Adam waited a little while, hoping to see her appear. He did not analyse his strong hope that she would go to church this Sunday as usual. But as no sign of her was forthcoming he strode down to the little brown house and entered at the open door.

"Margarita!" he called. No answer broke the quiet. His second call, however, brought her from her room, a dragging figure with a pale face that Adam had never before seen pale.

"Senor Ad--dam," she faltered.

The look of her, and that voice, stung Adam out of the gentleness habitual with him. Leaping at her, he dragged her into the light of the door. She cried out in a fear that shocked him. When he let go of her, abrupt and sharp in his emotions, she threw up her arms as if to ward off attack.

"Do you think I would hurt you?" he cried, harshly. "No Margarita! I only wanted to see you--just once more."

She dropped her arms and raised her face. Then Adam, keen in that poignant moment, saw in her the passing of an actual fear of death. It struck him mute. It betrayed her. What had been the dalliance of yesterday, playful and passionate in its wild youth, through the night had become dishonour. Yesterday she had been a cat that loved to be stroked; to-day she was a maimed creature, a broken woman.

"Lift your face--higher," said Adam, hoarsely, as he put out a shaking hand to touch her. But he could not' touch her. She did lift it and looked at him, denying nothing, still unashamed. But now there was soul in that face. Adam felt it limned on his memory for ever--the stark truth of her frailty, the courage of a primitive nature fearing only death, yearning for brutal blows as proof of the survival of jealous love, a dawning consciousness of his honesty and truth. Terrible was it for Adam to realise that if she had been given that choice again she would have decided differently. But it was too late.

"Adios, senorita," he said, bowing, and backed out of the door. He stopped, and the small pale face with its tragic eyes, straining, unutterably eloquent of wrong to him and to herself, passed slowly out of his sight.

Swiftly Adam strode up the canyon, his fierce energy in keeping with his thoughts. He overtook the Irishman, Regan, who accosted him.

"Hullo, Wansfell, ould fri'nd!" he called. "Don't yez walk so dom' fast."

"Wansfell! Why do you call me that?" asked Adam. How curiously the name struck his ear!

"Ain't thot your noime?"

"No, it's not."

"Wal, all right. Will yez hey a dhrink?" Regan produced a brown bottle and handed it to Adam.

They walked on up the canyon. Regan with his short, stunted legs being hard put to it to keep up with Adam's long strides. The Irishman would attach himself to Adam, that was evident; and he was a most talkative and friendly fellow. Whenever he got out of breath he halted to draw out the bottle. The liquor in an ordinary hour would have befuddled Adam's wits, but now it only heated his blood.

"Wansfell, if yez ain't the dorndest foinest young feller in these diggin's!" ejaculated Regan.

"Thank you, friend. But don't call me that queer name. Mine's Adam."

"A-dom?" echoed Regan. "Phwat a hell of a noime! Adorn an' Eve, huh? I seen yez with that black-eyed wench. She's purty."

They finished the contents of the bottle and proceeded On their way. Regan waxed warmer in his regard for Adam Ind launched forth a strong argument in favour of their going on a prospecting trip.

"Yez would make a foine prospector an' pard," he said. "Out on the desert yez are free an' happy, b'gorra! No place loike the desert, pard, whin yez come to know it! Thar's air to breathe an' long days wid the sun on yer back an' noights whin a mon knows shlape. Mebbe we'll hey the luck to foind Pegleg Smith's lost gold mine."

"Who was Pegleg Smith and what gold mine did he lose?" queried Adam.

Then as they plodded on up the canyon, trying to keep to the shady strips and out of the hot sun, Adam heard for a second time the story of the famous lost gold mine. Regan told it differently, perhaps exaggerating after the manner of prospectors. But the story was impelling to any man with a drop of adventurous blood in his veins. The lure of gold had not yet obsessed Adam, but he had begun to feel the lure of the desert.

Adam concluded that under happier circumstances this Regan would be a man well worth cultivating in spite of his love for the bottle. They reached the camp about noon, had a lunch at the stand of a Chinaman, and then, entering the saloon, they mingled with the crowd, where Adam soon became. separated from Regan. Liquor flowed like water, and gold thudded in sacks and clinked musically in coins upon the tables. Adam had one drink, and that incited him to take another. Again the throb and burn of his blood warmed out the coldness and bitterness of his mood. Deliberately he drank and deliberately he stifled the voice of conscience until he was in a reckless and dangerous frame of mind. There seemed to be a fire consuming him now, to which liquor was only fuel.