“Well, let me take charge of camp duties. You nurse your husband and don’t neglect yourself. It’s the least you can do. You’ll have hardship and suffering enough, even at best. You’ve suffered, I can see, but not physically. And you never knew what hardship meant until you got into the desert. If you live, these things will cure you of any trouble. They’ll hardly cure Virey, for he has retrograded. Most men in the desert follow the line of least resistance. They sink. But you will not.... And let me tell you. There are elemental pangs of hunger, of thirst, of pain that are blessings in disguise. You’ll learn what rest is and sleep and loneliness. People who live as you have lived are lopsided. What do they know of life close to the earth? Any other life is false. Cities, swarms of men and women, riches, luxury, poverty—these were not in nature’s scheme of life.... Mrs. Virey, if anything can change your soul it will be the desert.”
“Ah, Sir Wansfell, so you have philosophy as well as chivalry,” she replied, with the faint accent that seemed to be mockery of herself. “Change my soul if you can, wanderer of the desert! I am a woman, and a woman is symbolical of change. Teach me to cook, to work, to grow strong, to endure, to fight, to look up at those dark hills whence cometh your strength.... I am here in Death Valley. I will never leave it in body. My bones will mingle with the sands and molder to dust.... But my soul—ah! that black gulf of doubt, of agony, of terror, of hate—change that if you can.”
These tragic, eloquent words chained Adam to Death Valley as if they had been links of steel; and thus began his long sojourn there.
* * * * *
Work or action was always necessary to Adam. They had become second nature. He planned a brush shelter from the sun, a sort of outside room adjoining the shack, a stone fireplace and table and seats, a low stone wall to keep out blowing sand, and a thick, heavy stone fence between the shack and the slope of sliding rocks. When these tasks were finished there would be others, and always there would be the slopes to climb, the valley to explore. Idleness in Death Valley was a forerunner of madness. There must be a reserve fund of long work and exercise, so that when the blazing, leaden-hazed middays of August came, with idleness imperative, there would be both physical force and unclouded mind to endure them. The men who succumbed to madness in this valley were those who had not understood how to combat it.
That day passed swiftly, and the twilight hour seemed to have less of gloom and forbidding intimations. That might well have been due to his eternal hope. Mrs. Virey showed less gravity and melancholy, and not once did she speak with bitterness or passion. She informed Adam that Virey had improved.
Two more days slipped by, and on the third Virey got up and came forth into the sunlight. Adam happened to be at work near by. He saw Virey gaze around at the improvements that had been made and say something about them to his wife. He looked a man who should have been in the prime of life. Approaching with slow gait and haggard face, he addressed Adam.
“You expect pay for this puttering around?”
“No,” replied Adam, shortly.
“How’s that?”