The valley of Arcana

by Arthur Preston Hankins

They left Diamond H Ranch at sunup next morning, driving the laden burros ahead of them. Their course took them at right angles to the road over which they had reached the oasis, and extended in a northeasterly direction through the trackless sage and greasewood.

The sand grew heavier as they progressed. The wind came up and drove clouds of it into their faces, sometimes with stinging force. Laden with alkali as it was, their lips and eyelids soon began to swell, and their throats grew parched. They drank heavily of the water in the desert bags on the burros’ backs, for Morley assured the party that there would probably be sufficient water near the claims at that time of year. There was an intermittent spring in the buttes, he explained, that went dry during the hot months through evaporation. But with the approach of winter, even though no rain had fallen, the water rose again in the spring because the evaporation was lessened by the coolness in the air.

They camped at noon, halfway to the buttes. The morning had been cool and bracing, and the temperature of the noontide was moderate. Morley informed the newcomers that in less than a month the weather would be cool enough to suit any of them, and that snow, even, might sweep down from the mountains and lie on the ground for several hours.

It was a long, hard trip, for none of them, with the exception of the young widow, had been in the saddle to any great extent for many months. Charmian rode just behind the waddling burros, with Andy at her side. Shonto rode beside Mary Temple, who for the most part made an uncommunicative companion. The prospectors rode with Morley’s wife in the rear, and the trio had very little to say to the others.

Dr. Shonto watched Andy and Charmian and could not help but admire them. Physically they were well suited to each other, and both were young and handsome. Since their first meeting Shonto had taken note of the gradual drawing together of the two. He realized that, on the surface of things, this was as it should be. They were equals socially and intellectually, and few there were who would not have called it a fine match.

Still, Dr. Shonto knew in his heart that he could not allow this thing to go on and culminate in the age-old life partnership between man and woman. He sincerely believed that he himself was the man for Charmian Reemy. Never before had he met a woman who appealed to him as she did, both physically and mentally. Despite the difference in their ages, he felt that he, rather than Andy, was the one to satisfy her and round out her life to a point as near completeness as humanity can achieve. She was far older than Andy mentally. Andy was only a strong, handsome boy. He—the doctor—was a man of experience, of achievement, of broad ideals. But all that aside, Dr. Shonto knew that he was falling in love with Charmian, and that, if necessary, he would sacrifice Andy’s friendship to win her. For love is primitive; and when a man of the doctor’s age and experience falls in love for the first time he makes a rival that will brook no interference. In shorter phraseology, the doctor wanted this girl—and he meant to have her.

As the long evening shadows crawled over the yucca- and cactus-studded wastes the party entered the buttes. Here they found relief from the monotonous desolation they had left, for huge rocks squatted on either side of their course, and the yuccas were larger and seemed more friendly. The buttes themselves showed a variety to which the level land could not lay claim, and here and there was a juniper tree, alone and unwatered, but displaying a greenery that made it in a way companionable.

Darkness had overtaken them when Smith Morley called a halt. They were far within the chain of buttes, in an enfilade with walls of stone towering high above them on either side. They had reached the spring, and, after an examination of it, the prospector made the welcome announcement that there was considerable water in the natural stone basin beneath the drip. For some time, however, the water supply would be short, and it would possibly prove necessary to take the saddle horses into the mountains, the foothills of which were about five miles distant, and leave them there in a certain well-watered meadow of which the opal miners knew. The burros, camel-like, could live on very little water; and the spring perhaps would drip enough for them and the domestic use of the party. The claims were two miles farther on, in the direction of the mountains.

They pitched camp at once. Leach and Mrs. Morley went on a search for petrified yucca with which to build a fire. The others unpacked the burros, hobbled the horses, and pitched the tents.

Mary Temple, because of her superior culinary knowledge—which no one disputed—constituted herself camp cook; and the first thing she had not condemned since leaving El Trono de Tolerancia was the excellent fire that the petrified yucca made. Her appetizing supper was ready before the last tent had been pitched, and they all gathered around it under the cold desert stars and ate as enjoyably as their cracked and swollen lips would permit.