So it happened that on the third night of his march, when Ygnacio had paused to munch a segment of the sustaining root, came to his ears the sound of a voice, faintly and from a great distance. It might be a human voice, though there was a burred and thickened quality to it almost like a burro’s bray.
The Indian boldly followed where his ears gave direction. “Gol’—gol’—gol’” was the monotonous iteration, sounding almost like the muffled tapping of a clapper against metal. He walked a mile—so clearly do sounds carry in the desert night—and suddenly came upon the figure of a white man. Naked above the waist, wisp of a goatee tilted at the stars, arms rigid at sides and with fingers widespread, the spectre of a white man chanted the single word, “Gold.”
[CHAPTER XX]
THE COMING OF EL DOCTOR
The sandstorm that overwhelmed Stooder and his guide on the Road of the Dead Men brought the mighty voice of the desert to the Garden of Solitude in requiem for the soul of Don Padraic O’Donoju. Savage elegy of a life lived in communion with the spirit of the wild.
There was no priest to order the funeral rites of the Church. Though a day’s journey in Quelele’s car to Caborca and back would have fetched a minister of religion, Benicia was determined word of her father’s death should not reach the man who provoked it sooner than the courses of rumour allowed. The Caborca priest posting out to the Casa O’Donoju would set tongues wagging instantly and the seal of silence imposed by miles of unpeopled space between the casa and the nearest community would be broken. “The service of the heart will be just as acceptable to my father’s spirit,” was Benicia’s simple justification to herself of breach of custom.
So in the heat haze preceding the storm six Indians bore the body of their master through fields of alfalfa behind the white house down to a grove of shimmering alamo trees which fringed a reservoir of the oasis’ precious water. Here beneath the white and silver-green tent of the trees was sanctified ground. Here lay the dust of lords and ladies of a desert principality who, for their spans of years, had been inheritors of the desert’s cruelties and benefices.
Grant fell in with the file of dark-skinned mourners that followed behind the body of Don Padraic, with him Bagley. They did this unbidden of Benicia. Neither had seen her since the dramatic climax of the ordeal of the kettle the day before; no word had come from her. Yet each had felt the need to succour the bereaved girl in her great loneliness, forgetting unhappy events of the dawn in the patio.
For Grant there had been a brief struggle with pride and outraged sensibilities—blessedly brief because a broader tolerance and finer manhood had rallied to overthrow the narrower view of selfishness. In the light of the terrific blow that had been dealt the girl he loved—all the more crushing because of its suddenness—the savage reaction of a high spirit seemed to him not so to be wondered at. Nor Benicia’s silence since. In these dark hours there was no place in her heart for aught but unassuaged grief.