“I have no shoes,” she replied. “But cactus doesn’t hurt me—except the cholla. Do you know cholla? Even the Indians think cholla bad.”
“Guess I do, little girl. Let me carry you.”
“I can walk.”
So they set off on the starlit trail, and here she walked beside him. Adam noted that she was taller than he would have taken her to be, her small head coming up to his elbow. She had the free stride of an Indian. He gazed out across the level gray and drab desert. Whatever way he directed his wandering steps over this land of waste, he was always gravitating toward new adventure. For him the lonely reaches and rock-ribbed canyons were sure to harbor, sooner or later, some humanity that drew him like a magnet. Everywhere the desert had its evil, its suffering, its youth and age. The heat of Adam’s anger subsided with the thought that somehow he had let the ruffians off easily; and the presence of this girl, a mere child, apparently, for all her height, brought home to him the mystery, the sorrow, the marvel of life on the desert. A sick woman with a child living in the lonely shadow of San Jacinto! Adam felt in this girl’s presence, as he had seen starvation in her face, a cruelty of life, of fate. But how infinitely grateful he felt for the random wandering steps which had led him down that trail!
All at once a slim, rough little hand slipped into his. Instinctively Adam closed his own great hand over it. That touch gave him such a thrill as he had never before felt in all his life. It seemed to link his strength and this child’s trust. The rough little fingers and calloused little palm might have belonged to a hard-laboring boy, but the touch was feminine. Adam, desert trained by years that had dominated even the habits ingrained in his youth, and answering mostly to instinct, received here an unintelligible shock that stirred to the touch of a trusting hand, but was nothing physical. His body, his mind, his soul seemed but an exhaustive instrument of creation over which the desert played masterfully.
“It was lucky you happened along,” said the girl.
“Yes,” replied Adam, as if startled.
“They were bad men. And, oh, I was so glad to see them—at first. It’s so lonely. No one ever comes except the Indians—and they come to beg things to eat—never to give. I thought those white men were prospectors and would give me a little flour or coffee—or something mother would like. We’ve had so little to eat.”
“That so? Well, I have a full pack,” replied Adam. “Plenty of flour, coffee, sugar, bacon, canned milk, dried fruit.”
“And you’ll give us some?” she asked, eagerly, in a whisper.