“That’s Lem,” Dan explained. “When he was a kid he ran around in a gee string. I reckon his wife doesn’t want to meet the in-laws.”
We came upon him a moment later and while he and Dan talked of old times Jack rushed down and embraced Lem. “Come up,” he urged, but Lem’s interest was lukewarm. Mary was busy and he would see her later. No, he didn’t wish a drink. He had cigars. Just stopped in to see how Jack was and if he’d changed his mind.
Dan and I moved away and sat under a shed along the runoff of the spring and had no choice about listening to a conversation not intended for our ears.
Jack was squatted on his heels and his brother was sitting on a boulder. Lem was talking, his voice brittle: “Of course, we married squaws ... but we are more white than Indian. I’ll give you all the money you need. Let Mary go back to her people. She’ll be happy. Look at Anna ... she’s contented and better off with her own people and it will be the same with Mary.”
Lem lifted his hand, a big diamond ring flashing on his finger as he pointed to the squalid cabin where Jack’s fat squaw, her face beaming, was serving the guests. “Look at that hovel. Just a pig sty. If you prefer that to $10,000 a year, it’s your business. I’ve come out for the last time....”
Jack, bareheaded, rose, his hair rumpled in the wind as he glanced at the things about—the sagging roof, the shade tree beside it and following his glance I saw Mary smile at him and wave. Then he turned to Lem: “A pig sty, huh? Ten thousand a year. Mansion in the city.” His eyes traveled over Lem’s smart tailored suit, the diamond, the malacca cane pecking the gravel at his feet. I could see Jack’s fingers digging at his palms, the muscles rippling along his wrists and I sensed that he was seething inside.
“Pig sty.... One year I recollect, no crop. No meat. No game. Nothing. I was down with fever. She was down too, but she got up and walked and crawled from here to Indian Springs. Through the brush. Over the mountain to get grub from her people. Why, sometimes I’d feel like going off by myself and bawling....” Jack turned again to his brother, flint in his dark eyes. “I ought to brain you. To hell with your money. She stuck with me and bigod, I’ll stick with her.”
Then Jack calmly strode back to his party, and somehow it seemed to me the hovel had suddenly become a holy shrine.
Chapter XIII
Sex in Death Valley Country
Sex, of course, went with the white man to the desert, but because there were no Freuds, no Kinseys stirring the social sewage, it was considered merely as a biologic urge and thus its impact on the lives of the early settlers was a realistic one. It was not good for man to live alone. The husky young adventurer found a water hole and a cottonwood tree and built a cabin. But he found it wasn’t a home. The lonely immensity of space he knew, was no place for a white woman and none were there. He faced the fundamental problem squarely and looked about for a squaw.