The Loom of the Desert

by Idah Meacham Strobridge

Almost a double score of years had gone since the place knew human voice or human movement, save when some lone prospector passed along the brush-grown street that crept upward with the cañon’s slope. The dead town’s very stillness and desolation were full of charm, albeit tempered with that sadness a ruin always has for the beholder. For through the empty doorways came the whisperings of those who were gone; and looking through the sashless windows as you rode by, you saw wraithlike figures pass and repass within. It might have been only the wind’s breath as it rustled the dark leaves of branches overhanging the crumbling walls, and the ghosts, mayhap, were but the waving boughs which tremulously moved over the gray adobes; but when you were there—in that stillness and amid all that mystery—you felt it was true. You hushed your quickening breath to listen for the breath of some other. You moved through the silence with wide-lidded eyes looking for—you knew not what. You felt yourself out of place there—an alien. Only the lizards on the decaying walls, and the little brown birds that pecked at berries growing on the bushes along the creek, and the cottontails that scurried away to hide in the brush, seemed to have honest claim there.

On a level with the dead camp’s one street, the short tunnel of the Spencer mine ran into the cliff which pushed itself forward from the cañon’s general contour—the mouth itself being all but hidden by the falling walls of what had once been an adobe dwelling, its rear wall but a few feet from the limestone bluffs. To it, old Zeke brought Sherwood and showed him the tunnel below and the croppings of white quartz on the cliff top. It looked barren and worthless; but an assay certificate, in which the values were marked in four figures, held before Sherwood’s astonished eyes, sent his hopes up to fever mark, and left him eager to begin the work whereby he might reach the precious stuff hidden well away within the dull-colored bluffs. If the croppings promised such wealth, what might not the mine itself yield when he extended the tunnel, and had tapped the ledge at a greater depth? He felt his heart beating the faster for his dreams. A fortune! His, and—hers! All that was needed to bring it about were pick strokes, powder and patience. It all seemed very simple to Hume Sherwood. Without doubt he was a “tenderfoot.”

So the Summer found him putting every pulse-throb into his labor. Was it not for her that he wanted it? For what other end was he working, than to win the maid who had come into this land of enchantment? To him, it was as Paradise—these great broad levels of alkali, and sand (blotches of white on a blur of gray) and the sagebrush and greasewood-covered foothills that lay, fold upon fold, against the base of grim mountains—prickly with splintered and uncovered rocks.

Each day he blessed the fate which had called her from her home by the Western sea and placed her under the same roof that sheltered him in the rough little Nevada camp that called itself a town since a railroad had found it, and given it a name.

Here Judge Blaine and his daughter settled themselves for the Summer. That is, an array of suit-cases and handbags, great and small, and a trunk or two, proclaimed the hotel their headquarters. That was all. Every day saw the Judge up near the top of the mountain, getting the Monarch’s new machinery into running order; while trails, and roads—old and new—and even the jack-rabbit paths that lay like a network over the land, saw more of the young woman in khaki than ever the hotel did, so long as daylight lasted—the light which she grudged to have go.

It was Evaleen herself who had suggested coming to Nevada with her father, instead of spending the season in the usual way with Mrs. Blaine and the other girls at whatsoever place fashion might dictate as the Summer’s especial (and expensive) favorite for the time.

“Daddy, dear,” she had said, standing behind his chair, with both arms tight clasped around his neck, “I’ve made up my mind to do something that is going to surprise you. Listen; I’m not going with Mamma and the girls when she shuts up the house for the Summer. But, I—am—going—with—you! Oh, yes, I am! No, no! Not a word! I’ve always wanted to know what a mining camp was like; and this is my golden opportunity. You know you do want me there. Say so! While you are putting up the new works, I can go roaming over the country in old clothes. Listen to that, Daddy—old clothes! A lovely Summer; and not a cent spent on gowns!”

Ways and means at just that time being matters of difficult solution with the Judge, her argument had force and bore fruit. Midsummer found them where the alkali plains stretched away to distant ranges, and the duns and drabs of valleys reached across to the blended purples and blues. Such distances! And such silence! She had never dreamed of their like before.

On the levels or on the heights, she was day by day finding life a new and a beautiful thing. It was all so good; so fresh, and sweet, and strong! How easily she had fitted into her new surroundings and the new order of things—crude though they were, beyond any of her preconceived ideas. And now how far away seemed all the other Summers she had ever known. She felt that, after all, this was the real life. The other (that which Jean and Lili had their part in) was to her, now, as something known only in a dream. She was learning a grander, fuller sense of living since all that other world was shut away. So (companioned by her would-be lovers, Hume Sherwood and Elwyn Cadwallader, through a Summer of glad, free, full indrawn breaths) she rode the days away, while under the campaign hat she wore her face was being browned by the desert winds. Hot winds. But, oh, how she had learned to love their ardent touch! No sun was ever too hot, nor road too rough or long, to keep her back from this life in the open; and in the saddle she had come to know the valleys and mountains as one born to them.

The cañon which held the ruined walls had for her an especial charm, and toward it she often turned her horse’s head. It lay but a short distance from the road leading to her father’s mines. So, turning aside, she often took this short cut through the deserted town. There, one day she heard from Cadwallader the story of Crazy Dan, whose home had once been within the walls that hid the entrance to the tunnel of the Spencer—the mine which had been a gift to Sherwood.