Another train rolled into Spur, carrying the third section of Demarest, Spruce and Tillou’s outfit, before they were ready to take up the long, tiresome trip to the mountains. But on the third day after Joshua’s coming the first six-horse team moved out ahead of a wagonload of tents, and one by one others fell in behind it until the long train, stretched out over the desert, was more than a mile in length.
Joshua rode with California Bill, who drove six big slick mules hitched to a tremendous load of baled alfalfa. They had a place midway in the train. The wagons rumbled over the bridge that crossed the river flowing through the town, ascended a sharp grade hacked in a rocky butte, and reached a level plateau beyond. Here, far as the eye could see, stretched the sandy desert, bare in spots, but for the most part covered sparsely with sage and greasewood. Jack-rabbits loped off down the avenues between the breast-high plants, bronze-green in the brilliant sunlight. A coyote stared at them, ears erect, then vanished. Here grew a clump of stately yuccas, that mysterious tree of the desert with swords for leaves and a trunk as pithy as a cornstalk. There in the mirage-steeped distance a desert whirlwind traveled along, a funnel-shaped pillar of sand and dust that scarce seemed to move, but which in reality was sweeping along at dizzying speed. Dust clouds arose from the wagon train and hung in the air. The dust was filled with alkali, and it stung the lips and the eyes and made men frequently seek the desert water-bags that hung handy on every wagon.
California Bill lolled on his high seat and smoked brown-paper cigarettes. Somehow, Joshua thought, his bearded lips and his mature years called for a corn-cob pipe, but Bill was too strongly Western for that.
They talked of many things, and as Joshua’s confidence in the man grew firmer he told the strange story of his life, omitting nothing. From time to time, as he listened, California Bill sagely nodded his head, as if all matters in the universe were understood by him.
“Well, Tony,” he remarked, as Joshua came to a pause and looked off over the desert with unseeing gray-blue eyes, “you’ve had enough experience to make a man out of you, and I guess it’s done it.”
“Don’t call me Tony,” objected Joshua. “That name calls up memories that are not all pleasant.”
“I was just thinkin’,” said Bill. “Seems to me that name’s kinda appropriate. It set you apart from the other kids in the House of Refuge—seems—and it meant somethin’. If I was you, I’d take that name just to kinda spit in the face of Old Lady Fate. D’ye get what I mean? S’pose, f’r instance, that an hombre was to peddle me a salted mine and went away chucklin’ in his sleeve. Then s’pose that mine was to unexpectedly show a big pay streak, and make me rich. Now ye get me. Joshua ain’t any kind of a name for a jasper like you, anyway. When ye get to be a big astronomer, which ye will some day, Joshua’ll be plumb hi-yu-skookum—which is Cayuse Indian for ‘mighty fine’—but out here on the desert an’ in the mountains Tony sounds more sociable. Le’s make it Tony. Tony Cole—that’s muy bueno. But ten years from now Dr. Joshua Cole will be the proper caper. Ye must ’a’ learned a lot from that ole Clegg party, Tony.”
“He taught me all that I know,” Joshua replied.
“I’d like to ’a’ met that man,” said California Bill. “I cottoned to him the minute you began to tell about ’im. I like ugly men. Somehow er nuther they seem the most dependable.”
“I heard something about you yesterday,” Joshua told him. “They tell me you were once deputy sheriff of one of the northern counties in California.”