“She must have been nigh on sixteen,” he said. “She warn’t quite ten when Krutzmacht left.”
This girl of “nigh on sixteen” had gone forth alone in search of the stepfather, who for long years had left her and her mother neglected here.
“Don’t you want to see the house? Krutzmacht fixed it up real elegant—carpets and mahogany stuff. Nothing like it in this country.”
The old man pressed against the warped door, which yielded after a slight resistance. An odor of warm, musty air from the empty dwelling filled the lofty hall, which was quite bare. The miner opened a door leading to a western room.
“They lived mostly in here,” he said.
On the floor was a thick Oriental rug, and there were several pieces of handsome furniture, especially a massive, old-fashioned mahogany writing desk and a large divan. On the divan lay a quirt and a woman’s cloak, as if they had been thrown there carelessly the day before.
The dust of the desert had already settled on the rug, the desk, the table, and the chairs. Nevertheless, the room presented a singularly living look, such as only the life of people with certain habits and education can impress upon an abiding place. Brainard felt as if he had entered a drawing-room whose mistress had left it in the care of neglectful servants.
Beside the window a small piano stood open, with a piece of music on the rack. Some dead stalks of flowers drooped from a vase, and on the hearth lay a charred log. Among the spools and pieces of cloth on a worktable was a drawing board, to which was fastened a water-color sketch. A brush, carelessly dropped, had stained one corner of the sketch with a blotch of red. Brainard looked at the water color with some curiosity. It was a young girl’s attempt to seize the barbaric splendor of the arid plain outside of the window, fringed with ranges of savage mountains, lighted by the fire of the setting sun.
The two men went up the broad staircase with its white-painted handrail. Only one of the bedrooms had been recently occupied—the one in the southwestern corner, facing the winding river. There a dresser drawer was pulled out, as if it had been rifled by hasty hands.
“Seems as if they were really coming back agin!” the old miner remarked, feeling the personal touch of occupancy. “They allus kep’ to themselves. You see, they didn’t really belong,” he added, as if in explanation.