The Rim of the Desert

by Ada Woodruff Anderson

When they reached the flat rock in the shade of the pine tree, he took the reclamation plan from his inner pocket and seated himself beside her. "This is Weatherbee's drawing," he said. "See how carefully he worked in the detail. This is the spring and that upper reservoir, and this lower one is a natural dry basin up there under that bluff, a little to the left of those granite chimneys; you can see its rocky rim. All it needs is this short flume sketched in here to bring the water down, and a sluice-gate to feed the main canal that follows this bench we are on. Spillways would irrigate a peach orchard along this slope below us and seep out through this level around us to supply home gardens and lawn. Just imagine it!" He paused, while her glance followed his brief comparisons, moving from the plan to the surface of the bench and down over the slope to the vale. "Imagine this tract at the end of four years; a billowing sea of green; with peach trees in bearing on this mountainside; apples, the finest Jonathans, Rome Beauties if you will, beginning to make a showing down there. Water running, seeping everywhere; strawberries carpeting the ground between the boles; alfalfa, cool and moist, filling in; and even Cerberus off there losing his sinister shape in vineyards."

"Then it is feasible," she exclaimed softly, and the sparkles broke subdued in her eyes. "And the price, Mr. Tisdale; what would you consider a fair price for the property as it stands now, unimproved?" Tisdale rose. He paused to fold the drawing and put it away, while his glance moved slowly down over the vale to the goat-keeper's cabin and her browsing flock. "You must see, Miss Armitage," he said then, "that idea of Mr. Morganstein's to plat this land into five-acre tracts for the market couldn't materialize. It is out of range of the Wenatchee valley projects; it is inaccessible to the railroad for the small farmer. Only the man with capital to work it on a large scale could make it pay. And the property is Mrs. Weatherbee's last asset; she is in urgent need of ready money. You should be able to make easy terms with her, but I warn you, if it comes to bidding, I am prepared to offer seven thousand dollars."

He turned, frowning a little, to look down at her and, catching those covert sparkles of her side-glance, smiled.

"You may have it," she said.

"Wait. Think it over," he answered. "I am going down to the gap now to find the surveyor's monument and trace the section line back to the top of the plateau. Rest here, where it's cooler, and I will come down this way for you when I am through. Think the project over and take my word for the spring; it's well worth the investment."

Doubtless Miss Armitage followed his suggestion, for she sat thoughtfully, almost absently, watching him down the slope. At the foot of the vale, the goat-woman joined him, and it was clear he again used his magic art, for presently he had her chaining for him and holding an improvised flag, while he estimated the section line. But finally, when they left the bed of the pocket and began to cross-cut up the opposite mountainside, the girl rose and looked in the direction of the spring. It was cooler; a breeze was drawing down from the upper ridge; a few thin clouds like torn gauze veiled the sky overhead; the blue lost intensity. She began to walk across the bench towards the granite chimneys. In a little while she found the dry reservoir, walled, where the plateau lifted, in the semi-circular bluff; then she stopped at the foot of an arid gully that rose between this basin and a small shoulder which supported the first needle. This was the stairway she had seen Tisdale descend, and presently she commenced to climb it slowly, grasping bunches of the tenacious sage or jutting points of rock to ease her weight.

The stairs ended in a sharp incline covered with debris from the decomposing pillars; splinters of granite shifted under her tread; she felt the edges cutting through her shoes. Fragments began to rattle down; one larger rock crashed over the bluff into the dry basin. Then, at last, she was on the level, fighting for breath. She turned, trembling, and braced herself against the broken chimney to look back. She shrank closer to the needle and shook her head. It was as though she said: "I never could go back alone."

But when her glance moved to the opposite mountainside, Tisdale was no longer in sight. And that shoulder was very narrow; it presented a sheer front to the vale, like the base of a monument, so that between the chimney and the drop to the gully there was little room in which to stand. She began to choose a course, picking her foothold cautiously, zigzagging as she had seen Hollis do on the slope above. Midway another knob jutted, supporting a second pillar and a single pine tree, but as she came under the chimney she was forced to hurry. Loose chippings of granite started at every step. They formed little torrents, undermining, rushing, threatening to sweep her down; and she reached the ledge in a panic. Then she felt the stable security of the pine against her body and for a moment let herself go, sinking to the foot of the tree and covering her eyes with her hands.

Up there a stiff wind was blowing, and presently she saw the snow-peak she had missed in the vale. The ridge lifted less abruptly from this second spur, and in a little while she rose and pushed on, lagging sometimes, stumbling, to the level of the plateau. The Wenatchee range, of which it was a part, stretched bleak and forbidding, enclosing all those minor arid gulfs down to the final, long, scarred headland set against the Columbia desert. She was like a woman stranded, the last survivor, on an inhospitable coast. Turning to look across the valley of the Wenatchee, she saw the blue and glaciered crests of the Chelan mountains, and behind her, over the neck of a loftier height, loomed other white domes. And there yesterday's thunder-caps, bigger and blacker, with fringed edges, drove along the sky line. One purplish mass was streaming like a sieve. For an interval the sun was obscured, and her glance came back to the vale below where Cerberus reclined, watchful, his tawny head lifted slightly between two advanced paws. Suddenly the lower clouds grew brilliant, and shafts of light breaking through changed the mountain before her to a beast of brass.

She turned and began to pick her way through grease brush and insistent sage towards a grove of pines. In a little while she saw water shining through the trees. She hesitated—it was as though she had come to the threshold of a sanctuary—then went on under the boughs to the opal pool.