The voice at Johnnywater

by B. M. Bower

Unconsciously Gary laid aside his movie habit of weaving in and out among the sage at a gallop, and dropped back into the old, shacking trail-trot he had learned from his father’s riders. It was the gait to which Jazz was long accustomed, and it carried them steadily over the rough mesa to where the road angled off through the foothills.

The distant hills looked more unreal than ever. The clouds that grouped themselves around the violet-tinted peaks were like dabs of white paint upon a painted sky line. Again the sense of waiting in a tremendous calm impressed Gary with the immeasurable patience of the universe.

Insensibly the mental burden of loneliness, the nameless dread of things unseen and incomprehensible, lightened. The strained look left his eyes; the lines in his face relaxed as if he slept and, sleeping, forgot the worries of his waking hours. The world around him was so big, so quiet—the forces of nature were so invincible in their strength—that the cares of one small human being seemed as pettily unimportant as the scurrying of a lizard down the road. It occurred to Gary whimsically that the lizard’s panicky retreat before the approaching cataclysm of the horse’s shadow was very real and tremendously important—to the lizard. Quite as important, no doubt, as the complexity of emotions that filled the human soul of a certain Gary Marshall in Johnnywater Cañon. And the great butte that stood in its immutable strength under the buffetings of wind and sun and rain looked alike upon the troubles of the lizard and of Gary Marshall.

“After all, Jazz, we haven’t got such a heck of a lot to worry about. If I was a jack rabbit I reckon I’d still have troubles of my own. Take your ears off your neck, Jazz, and shack along. Packing me over to Kawich isn’t the worst thing could happen you, you lazy brute.”

Gradually it dawned upon Gary that the road was creeping around the great butte that held Johnnywater Cañon gashed into the side turned toward the southeast. He wondered if the place called Kawich might not be just across the butte from Johnnywater. There was a certain comfort in the thought that Monty might not be so far from him, after all. Above him towered the bold outline of the butte, capped by the sheer wall of rock that rose like a cliff above its precipitous slopes. The trail itself followed the line of least resistance through the wrinkles formed in the foothills when this old world was cooling. But however deep the cañon, wherever the winding trail led, always the butte stood high-shouldered and grim just under the clouds. Gary could not wonder at the dilapidated condition of Monty’s Ford, when he saw the trail it had been compelled to travel.

He ate his lunch beside a little spring that trickled out from beneath a rock just above the trail. Another hour’s riding brought him into the very dooryard of a camp which he judged was Monty’s, though no one appeared in answer to his call.

In point of picturesqueness and the natural beauty of its surroundings, Gary felt impelled to confide to Jazz that Johnnywater had Kawich beaten to a pulp. Kawich lacked the timber and the talkative little stream that distinguished Johnnywater Cañon. The camp itself was a rude shack built of boards and canvas, with a roof of corrugated iron and a sprinkle of tin cans and bits of broken implements surrounding it. The sun beat harshly down upon the barren knoll, and heat waves radiated from the iron roof. A cattle-trodden pathway led down to a zinc-lined trough in a hollow. The trough was full, with little lips of water pushing out over the edge here and there in a continuous drip-drip that muddied the ground immediately beneath the trough and made deep trampling tracks when the cattle crowded down to water. A crude corral was built above the trough, enclosing one end so that corralled stock could drink at will. The charred remains of the burnt Ford tilted crazily on the slope with its nose toward a brushy little gulch.

Gary took in all the bleak surroundings and the general air of discomfort that permeated the place. It struck him suddenly that Johnnywater Cañon was not so bad a place after all, with its whispery piñons, its picturesque log cabin set in the grove and the little gurgling stream just beyond. If it were not for the Voice and the eerie atmosphere of the place, he thought a person might rather enjoy a month or two there in the summer. Certainly it held more of the vacation elements than did this camp at Kawich.

He dismounted, led Jazz down into the corral, unsaddled him and left him to his own devices. There did not seem to be any feed about the place, and he was glad that he had brought plenty of grain for Jazz. He could do very well for twenty-four hours on rolled barley rations, Gary thought.

Monty could not be very far away, for he had eaten his breakfast there and had left cooked food covered under a cloth on the table for his next meal. As to the comforts of living, Monty seemed to be no better off than was Gary in Johnnywater Cañon. A camp bed in its canvas tarp was spread upon the board bunk in one corner of the shack. The cook stove was small and rusty from many rains that had beaten down through the haggled hole in the corrugated iron roof. The stovepipe was streaked with red lines of rust. There was the inevitable cupboard built of boxes nailed one above the other, bottoms against the wall. There was the regulation assortment of necessary supplies: coffee, salt, lard, a can of bacon grease, rice, sugar, beans and canned corn and tomatoes. Of reading matter, Monty seemed to have a little more than Waddell had left behind him. There was a small pile of Stock Growers Journals, some old Salt Lake papers and half a dozen old Populars with the backs torn off.