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You see something out there that I can't see. Your eyes are haunted.
I've a feeling that if I'd look into them I'd see the sun setting, the clouds
coloring, the twilight shadows changing; and then back of that the secret of
it all--of you--Oh! I can't explain, but it seems so."
"I never had a secret, except the one you know," she answered. "You ask me so
often what I think about, and you always ask me when we're here."
She was silent for a pause. "I don't think at all till you make me.
It's beautiful out there. But that's not what it is to me. I can't tell you.
When I sit down here all within me is--is somehow stilled. I
watch--and it's different from what it is now, since you've made me think.
Then I watch, and I see, that's all."
It came to Hare afterward with a little start of surprise that Mescal's
purposeless, yet all-satisfying, watchful gaze had come to be part of his
own experience. It was inscrutable to him, but he got from it a fancy, which
he tried in vain to dispel, that something would happen to them out there on
the desert.
And then he realized that when they returned to the camp-fire they seemed
freed from this spell of the desert. The blaze-lit circle was shut in by the
darkness; and the immensity of their wild environment, because for the hour it
could not be seen, lost its paralyzing effect.
Hare fell naturally into a talkative mood. Mescal had developed a vivacity,
an ambition which contrasted strongly with her silent moods;
she became alive and curious, human like the girls he had known in the
East, and she fascinated him the more for this complexity.
The July rains did not come; the mists failed; the dews no longer freshened
the grass, and the hot sun began to tell on shepherds and sheep. Both sought
the shade. The flowers withered first--all the blue-bells and lavender
patches of primrose, and pale-yellow lilies, and white thistle-blossoms. Only
the deep magenta of cactus and vermilion of
Indian paint-brush, flowers of the sun, survived the heat. Day by day the
shepherds scanned the sky for storm-clouds that did not appear. The spring
ran lower and lower. At last the ditch that carried water to the corral went
dry, and the margin of the pool began to retreat. Then
Mescal sent Piute down for August Naab.
He arrived at the plateau the next day with Dave and at once ordered the
breaking up of camp.
"It will rain some time," he said, "but we can't wait any longer. Dave, when
did you last see the Blue Star waterhole?"
"On the trip in from Silver Cup, ten days ago. The waterhole was full then."
"Will there be water enough now?"
"We've got to chance it. There's no water here, and no springs on the upper
range where we can drive sheep; we've got to go round under the
Star."
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"That's so," replied August. His fears needed confirmation, because his hopes
always influenced his judgment till no hope was left. "I wish I had brought
Zeke and George. It'll be a hard drive, though we've got Jack
and Mescal to help."
Hot as it was August Naab lost no time in the start. Piute led the train on
foot, and the flock, used to following him, got under way readily.
Dave and Mescal rode along the sides, and August with Jack came behind, with
the pack-burros bringing up the rear. Wolf circled them all, keeping the
flanks close in, heading the lambs that strayed, and, ever vigilant, made the
drive orderly and rapid.
The trail to the upper range was wide and easy of ascent, the first of it
winding under crags, the latter part climbing long slopes. It forked before
the summit, where dark pine trees showed against the sky, one fork ascending,
the other, which Piute took, beginning to go down. It admitted of no extended
view, being shut in for the most part on the left, but there were times when
Hare could see a curving stream of sheep on half a mile of descending trail.
Once started down the flock could not be stopped, that was as plain as Piute's
hard task. There were times when Hare could have tossed a pebble on the
Indian just below him, yet there were more than three thousand sheep, strung
out in line between them. Clouds of dust rolled up, sheets of gravel and
shale rattled down the inclines, the clatter, clatter, clatter of little
hoofs, the steady baa-baa-baa filled the air. Save for the crowding of lambs
off the trail, and a jamming of sheep in the corners, the drive went on
without mishap. Hare was glad to see the lambs scramble back bleating for
their mothers, and to note that, though peril threatened at every steep turn,
the steady down-flow always made space for the sheep behind. He was glad,
too, when through a wide break ahead his eye followed the face of a vast cliff
down to the red ground below, and he knew the flock would soon be safe on the
level.
A blast as from a furnace smote Hare from this open break in the wall.
The air was dust-laden, and carried besides the smell of dust and the warm
breath of desert growths, a dank odor that was unpleasant.
The sheep massed in a flock on the level, and the drivers spread to their
places. The route lay under projecting red cliffs, between the base and
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