MODJESKA AS OPHELIA.
A DAUGHTER OF THE DESERT.
By Thomas Winthrop Hall.
A tired horse ambled slowly up to the solitary adobe house, or rather hut, that meets the sight of the dusty traveler who journeys between a certain station on the Southern Pacific railroad and the famous Indian station at San Carlos. One hundred miles of dusty road that wound over a naked, sandy plain sparsely dotted with hideous cactus, a stretch of the desert on either side, and on the horizon walls of gray mountains treeless as the desert itself—these were the uncheerful surroundings of McCoy’s ranch. Worse than a prison, more remote than a Siberian mine, lonelier than the grave, here two human souls, father and daughter, had lived for more than twelve years, and during that twelve years they had been away from that adobe oasis, the girl at least, not one single day, and the father never longer than it would take him to ride over to the mountains for a short hunt. It was a watering station on the stage road. An artesian well had been sunk there in the early days. Like every other work of man it had to have its human slaves, and from the day the last adobe had been laid these slaves had been McCoy and his daughter Sis. The latter was a child of six when she was lifted out of the ox wagon at the door of the house. She was now a girl of eighteen.
What a life hers had been! One unvarying monotony of cooking and of washing, of chopping wood and feeding the horses and of looking anxiously one day up the road for the stage to come down and the next day down the road for the stage to come up so that she might have dinner (a pretentious name for a meal that consisted always of bacon, eggs, coffee and hot bread) prepared for the stage driver and what unfortunate companions in misery he might be transporting to or from the agency. These, alas, gulped down their food as hastily as possible and hastened away at once, only too anxious to get the thing over with. That was all she saw of them. Once in a while she caught sight of a muffled figure in an ambulance that stopped for water for its thirsty mules and knew that it was a woman because it did not get out and swear at the heat and dust, an officer’s wife probably—ah! how she longed to speak to her. The rough freighters often camped there. This was the sum total of the girl’s experience with beings of her kind save one.
That was the man who sat carelessly erect on the tired horse that ambled up to the adobe house. Lieutenant Jack Harding was he, of Uncle Sam’s —th regiment of cavalry. And what a man he was, to be sure! Handsome as a Greek god, stalwart as a Norse warrior, reckless, brave, accomplished, as gentle as a girl until aroused, then as wild and defiant as an Apache, he was a Bayard in the eyes of most women and a demi-god in the estimation of poor Sis. He had stopped over night at the watering station six times in four years. Sis dreamed of his coming months before he appeared, and dreamed, too, of his going months after he went. She worshiped him from the moment she first saw him. That was all. She had read many books, for her father had taught her to read, and Jack Harding served in turn as the hero of each novel she became possessed of, and, of course, (O dear little trait of woman’s nature) she as the heroine.
Lieutenant Jack jumped from his horse as lightly as though a ride of fifty miles were a mere bagatelle, and walked smilingly up to the door. Just as he reached it Sis came bashfully to the doorway.
“Hello, Sis,” said the lieutenant cheerfully.