CHAPTER VII
IF THIS BE LOVE
Shortly after five o’clock that same day, Johnny and Tony emerged from the lava beds to the east of the Diamond-Bar stronghold. Below them, its fringe of poplars glistening in the sunlight, stood the comfortable old house and its outbuildings.
The trail from town led across miles of uninteresting flats, alkali patches and finally by means of much tortuous winding through the lava beds. A haze, as of smoke, hung in the sky. The air was warm. At midday it had been hot in the open. Sage hen and mountain quail rose before them, the old cocks and hens so heavy that the frantic flapping of their wings as they got into the air made the horses throw up their heads every time they flushed a covey.
Sleeping in a saddle is a little trick the rangeman soon acquires. Many times on this same trail Johnny and the Basque had ridden with closed eyes, their minds in dreamland. Not so today! And wherever men toiled north of the Humboldt this exception held true. This day was one of the awaited ones—one of those few, brief days of Indian summer when the desert smiles and relents. Perhaps because the time is so short, God pours the wine of life with a lavish hand. Mexican peon, Basque pellado, argonaut, prospector, cowman, herder—not one but answers to the spell of this magic which the red gods long ago gave to the tribes.
And yet this marvelous day found a peculiar sadness in Johnny’s heart. Restless, untalkative, he had ridden the long miles, little understanding the misery which was in him. The sight of the old Diamond-Bar house seemed to furnish him with an answer, for he squinted his eyes to blot out some sudden emotion. Was he homesick? Was it the knowledge that he would not be riding this trail again that was setting so heavily upon him?
Johnny need not have wondered longer. He had discovered the truth. And this day of days had only accentuated his unhappiness.
This was his country. He knew every mesa, draw and coulee as a city boy knows his own block. Far horizons, towering peaks—they were landmarks to him; things of life, with personalities. There were things here that he loved because they were beautiful—colors unequaled, vistas beyond comparison.
To say that he ever referred to it in these or similar terms would be more than the truth. But he felt it; answered to the tug of it. And Johnny Dice was not an emotional person.
And yet men called his chosen land a desert. Passing strange it is that so ill a name suffices.
When they reached the house they found it seemingly as lazy as the day. Charlie Sam, the Chinese cook, lay sprawled upon a bench in the sun. He did not so much as move as Johnny rode past him. Little Hughie High, who combined the duties of ranch blacksmith, filer, and man of all work, had been tinkering with the windmill. He waved a careless hand from his perch above them, but made no word of greeting, fearing to break the undisturbed comfort which so rarely came his way.