Then he told her the story of the ruin of his life. When he finished she fell weeping upon his shoulder and clung to him. For Adam the moment was sad and sweet—sad because a few words had opened up the dark, tragic gulf of his soul; and sweet because the passionate grief of a child assured him that even he, wanderer as he was, knew something of sympathy and love.
“But, Wanny, you—could—go and—be—pun—ished—and then—come back!” she cried, between sobs. “You’d—never—have to—hide—any more.”
Out of her innocence and simplicity she had spoken confounding truth. What a terrible truth! Those words of child wisdom sowed in Adam the seed of a terrible revolt. Revolt—yea, revolt against this horrible need to hide—this fear and dread of punishment that always and forever so bitterly mocked his manhood! If he could find the strength to rise to the heights of Genie’s wisdom—divine philosophy of a child!—he would no longer hate his shadowed wandering steps down the naked shingles and hidden trails of the lonely desert. But, alas! whence would come that strength? Not from the hills! Not from the nature that had made him so strong, so fierce, so sure to preserve his life! It could only come from the spirit that had stood in the dusky twilight beside a dying woman’s side. It could come only from the spirit to whom a child prayed while kneeling at her mother’s grave. And for Adam that spirit held aloof, illusive as the specters of the dead, beyond his grasp, an invisible medium, if indeed it was not a phantom, that seemed impossible of reality in the face of the fierce, ruthless, inevitable life and death and decay of the desert. Could God be nature—that thing, that terrible force, light, fire, water, pulse—that quickening of plant, flesh, stone, that dying of all only to renew—that endless purpose and progress, from the first whirling gas globe of the universe, throughout the ages down to the infinitesimal earth so fixed in its circling orbit, so pitiful in its present brief fertility? The answer was as unattainable as to pluck down the stars, as hopeless as to think of the fleeting of the years, as mysterious as the truth of where man came from and whence he was to go.
* * * * *
Snow on the gray old peak! It reminded Adam how, long ago, from far down the valley, he had watched the mountain crown itself in dazzling white. Snow on the heights meant winter that tempered the heat, let loose the storm winds; and therefore, down in the desert, comfort and swiftly flying days. Indeed, so swift were they that Adam, calling out sad and well-remembered words, “Oh, time, stand still here!” seemed to look at a few more golden sunsets and, lo! again it was spring. Time would not stand still! Nor would the budding, blossoming youth of Genie! Nor would the slow-mounting might of the tumult in Adam’s soul!
* * * * *
Then swifter than the past, another year flew by. Genie’s uncle did not come. And Adam began to doubt that he would ever come. And the hope of Genie’s, that he never would come began insidiously to enter into Adam’s thought. Again the loneliness, the solitude and silence, and something more he could not name, began to drag Adam from duty, from effort of mind. The desert never stopped its work, on plant, or rock, or man. Adam knew that he required another shock to quicken his brain, to stir again the spiritual need, to make him fight the subtle, all-pervading, ever-present influence of the desert.
In all that time Adam saw but two white men, prospectors passing by down the sandy trails. Indians came that way but seldom. Across the valley there was an encampment, which he visited occasionally to buy baskets, skins, meat, and to send Indians out after supplies. The great problem was clothes for Genie. It was difficult to get materials, difficult for Genie to make dresses, and impossible to keep her from tearing or wearing or growing out of them. Adam found that Indian moccasins, and tough overalls such as prospectors wore, cut down to suit Genie, and woolen blouses she made herself, were the only things for her. Like a road runner she ran over the rocks and sand! For Genie, cactus was as if it were not! As for a hat, she would not wear one. Adam’s responsibility weighed upon him. When he asked Genie what in the world she would wear when he took her out of the desert, to pass through villages and ranches and towns, where people lived, she naïvely replied, “What I’ve got on!” And what she wore at the moment was, of course, the boyish garb that was all Adam could keep on her, and which happened just then to be minus the moccasins. Genie loved to scoop up the warm white sand with her bare brown feet, and then to dabble them in the running water.
“Well, I give up!” exclaimed Adam, resignedly. “But when we do get to Riverside or San Diego, where there’s a store, you’ve got to go with me to buy girl’s dresses and things—and you’ve got to wear them.”
“Oh, Wanny, that will be grand!” she cried, dazzled at the prospect. “But—let’s don’t go—just yet!”