Gary listened, taking it all in. His eyes, trained to the profession of putting emotions, thoughts, even things meant to be hidden, into the human face, so that all might see and read the meaning, watched Monty’s face as he talked.
“Just what is it that made Waddell sell the Johnnywater ranch and clear out of the country?” he asked. “Just what makes you hate the place?”
Monty sent him a startled look.
“I never said I hated it,” he parried. “It ain’t anything to me, one way or the other.”
“You do hate it. Why?”
“Wel-l—I dunno as I can hardly say. A man’s got feelin’s sometimes he can’t hardly put into words. Lots of places in this country has got histories, Mr. Marshall. I guess—Johnnywater’s all right. Waddy was a kind of nervous cuss.”
CHAPTER SIX
JOHNNYWATER
Please do not picture a level waste of sand and scant sagebrush when you think of the Nevada desert. Barren it is, where water is not to be had; but level it is not, except where the beds of ancient lakes lie bare and yellow, hard as cement except when the rains soften the surface to sticky, red mud. Long mesas, with scattering clumps of greasewood and sage, lie gently tilted between sporadic mountain ranges streaked and scalloped with the varying rock formations that tell how long the world was in the making. Here and there larger mountains lift desolate barriers against the sky. Seen close, any part of the scene is somber at best. But distance softens the forbidding bleakness of the uplifted hummocks and crags, and paints them with magic lights and shadows.
In the higher altitudes the mountains are less bare; more friendly in a grim, uncompromising way and grown over scantily sometimes with piñons and juniper and the flat-leafed cedar whose wood is never too wet to burn with a great snapping, and is as likely to char temperamentally and go black. In these great buttes secret stores of water send little searching streams out through crevices among the rocks. Each cañon has its spring hidden away somewhere, and the water is clear and cold, stealing away from the melting snows on top.
A rough, little-used trail barely passable to a car, led into Johnnywater Cañon. To Gary the place was a distinct relief from the barren land that stretched between this butte and Las Vegas. The green of the piñon trees was refreshing as cool water on a hot day. The tiny stream that trickled over water-worn rocks in the little gully beside the cabin astonished him. For hours he had ridden through the parched waste land. For hours Monty had talked of scanty grazing and little water. In spite of himself, Gary’s eyes brightened with pleasure when he first looked upon Johnnywater.