The Winning of Barbara Worth

by Harold Bell Wright

Leisurely Abe Lee rode along the main street of the little town. The strikers, idling in front of the stores, leaning against the buildings or awning posts, squatting on their heels on the sidewalks, or sitting in rows on the curbing, saw him pass without interest. If they thought anything it was that the superintendent was going to Kingston on some business or other for their employer, Senor Worth, or that to-morrow the man on the buckskin horse would give them the slips of paper that they would take to the senor at the bank, who would give them their money.

Still riding leisurely, Abe left behind the town that Jefferson Worth had built in the barren desert and passed the newly improved ranches on the outskirts. Without hurry, even checking his horse to a shuffling fox-trot at times, he reached Kingston.

From the window of his office in the Company building Mr. Burk saw the horseman as he passed, and the Company manager, who was paid for thinking, shifted his cigar to one corner of his mouth and, tilting his head, grew thoughtful while the buckskin horse carried his rider out of Kingston toward the south.

Reaching the old San Felipe trail the surveyor swung his horse to the west and, leaving behind all that man had so far wrought in La Palma de la Mano de Dios, rode straight toward the mountain wall that in grim barrenness and forbidding solitude had stood sentinel through the unnumbered ages, shutting out from the land of death the world of life that lay on the other side. As that mighty wall had from the beginning turned back every moisture-laden cloud from the thirsty, starving land, so it seemed now to impose itself as an impassable barrier against the man who rode to save the work of Jefferson Worth.

The buckskin horse, as if realizing that this was no jaunt of ten or twenty miles, held to his steady, machine-like lope that measured the distance of each swing with the accurate regularity of a pendulum; while the lean, loose body of his rider, resting easily in the saddle, yielded without resistance to the horse's every movement so that those laboring muscles, working so smoothly under the yellow hide, might not be called upon to adjust themselves to the sudden strain of unexpected changes in balance. Mile after mile of the dun plain slipped away under those apparently slow-measuring hoofs at surprising speed. Now and then, at the slightest signal from Abe, the gait was changed from a lope to that easy shuffling fox-trot that lifted the dust in a great yellow cloud.

Straight ahead the rider saw the sun go slowly down behind the mountain wall. He watched the purple shadows that he knew were canyons deepen, and the blue that he knew to be shoulders and spurs and points change and darken until every detail was lost in the slate gray mass, while against the light that lingered in the west every tooth, knob and peak of the sky-line showed a sharp, clean-cut silhouette. He saw the colors of the desert fade and melt as the dark mantle of the night was drawn quietly over the plain. He heard the night voices of the desert awakening and sensed the soft breathing of the lonely land. And in his nostrils was the indescribable odor of the ancient sea-bed that, for uncounted thousands of years, had lain under a blazing sun and scorching wind and mistless nights, knowing no touch of human life save the passing presence of those who dared to follow that one thin trail.

And always with that dogged regularity the sandy miles were being measured by those steady hoofs. At Wolf Wells, as the last faint tinge of light went out of the sky beyond the black mass of No Man's Mountains, Abe drew rein for the first time. Dismounting, he slipped the bit from the horse's mouth and the animal plunged his nose deep into the refreshing water. The buckskin, with the blood of his wild ancestors strong in his veins, was no dainty, tenderly-nourished aristocrat that needed to be rested, cooled and blanketed before he could slake his thirst. Without pausing he drank his fill and then, lifting his head, drew one long, deep breath of satisfaction and stood ready.

In the dark Abe felt his saddle girths, then ran his hand over the moist warm neck and slapped the strong hips approvingly. "Good boy, Buck! Good old boy!" Without thought of further rest they went on—on—and on, without pause or cheek save the occasional change in gait from the swinging lope to the shuffling fox-trot, until they reached the line of the ancient beach, and the buckskin, with head down, labored heavily up the steep grade to the Mesa.

It was at this point, years before, that the four men and the boy had stopped to look away over the awe-inspiring scenes of wide sky, measureless plain, rolling sand hills, dream lakes and ever-changing seas of color, all hidden now in the blackness of the night.

In the dark, hall-like Devil's Canyon the sound of the horse's feet echoed and re-echoed sharply from the rock walls, while the darkness was so thick that Abe could not see the animal's head.