CHAPTER X

SUMMER

“Daddy,” says she, “Hugh has changed a lot since he come to us, ain’t he?”

The weeks of the spring passed. The gleaming snow fields vanished from the dark pine heights of Mount Lemmon. The creek, which ran through the Cañon of Gold with such boisterous strength that day when the stranger came and Marta talked with Saint Jimmy under the old cedar on the mountain side, crept lazily now, with scarce a murmur, pausing often to rest in the shady quiet of an overhanging rock or to sleep, half hidden, among the roots of a giant sycamore.

The Sonora pigeon, his mission accomplished, had long since ceased to give his mating call. The nest in the mesquite thicket had been filled and was empty again. The partridge was leading her half-grown covey far from the mescal plant where they were born. The vermilion flycatcher was too busy, with his exacting parental duties, even to think of indulging in those fantastic exhibitions which ultimately had placed the burdens of fatherhood upon his shoulders.

There was not a day of those passing months that the Pardners and their girl did not in some way come in touch with their neighbor. Sometimes Edwards would go to counsel with the two old prospectors as they worked in their little mine. Again, they would go over to his place to advise him, with their years of experience, in his small operations. Often he would spend the evening with them on the porch in neighborly fashion, or they would go to smoke with him before the door of his tiny cabin. Occasionally, it was no more than a shout of greeting across the three hundred or more yards that separated the two places; but always the contact that had been established that day when the Lizard brought the stranger to the Pardners’ door was maintained.

Hugh Edwards might have gone from the place where he labored to the Pardners’ mine, along the creek under the high bank, without passing their house at all, but he never did. That is, he never both went and returned by the creek route. Either going or coming, he would always climb out of the deep cut made by the stream to the level of the main floor of the cañon where the house stood--except, of course, when Marta had gone to the store at Oracle or to see Saint Jimmy and Mother Burton.

The girl was always included, too, in those evenings on the porch or before his cabin door. Always, on her way to the store, she stopped to see if she could bring anything for him. And often, with the freedom of the rude environment she had known since she could remember, and with the frank innocence of her boyish nature, Marta would run over to give him a lesson in the arts of the kitchen; or, perhaps, to contribute something of her own cooking--a pie or cake or pudding--that would be quite beyond the range of his poor culinary skill. It was indeed all very natural--perhaps, as Thad had said that first day, it was too darned natural.

To the Pardners, Hugh Edwards was an object of continued speculative interest, a subject of endless and somewhat violent arguments; and, it must be added, a never-failing source of amusement and delight. The genuineness and depth of this friendship for their young neighbor was evidenced at last by their telling him the story of their partnership daughter as they had told it to Saint Jimmy and Mother Burton. It was not long after this mark of their confidence that the old prospectors were led into a characteristic discussion of their observations.

Hugh had gone to them at their mine with a bit of quartz which he had picked up in the bed of the creek. The consultation was over and the two old prospectors were sitting in the shade of the tunnel opening watching the younger man as he climbed up the steep bank toward the house. Old Bob was grinning.

“He sure thought he had found somethin’ good this time, didn’t he? The boy’s all right, don’t never show a sign of bein’ sore when his rich rocks turn out to be jest nothin’ but rock--jest keeps right on tryin’. Don’t seem to care a cuss how many blanks he draws.”

Thad chuckled:

“If hard work will get him anything, he’s sure due to strike it rich. Hits it up from crack of day ’til plumb dark an’ acts like he hated even to think of sleepin’ or eatin’.”

“It’s funny, too,” said Bob, “’cause you remember at first he didn’t ’pear to take no interest a-tall. Jest poked along in a come-day, go-day, God-send-Sunday sort of a gait, as if all he wanted was to git his powder back with what frijoles, bacon, and coffee he had to have. He’s sure come alive, though. I wonder----“

Thad was rubbing his bald head with a slow, speculative movement.

“Had you took notice how he allus goes up to the house when he brings them pieces of fool rock to us? My gal, she says to me the other evenin’----“

“Your gal! Your gal!” Marta’s father shouted. “This here’s my week, and you know it blamed well, you old love pirate, you. Can’t you never be satisfied with your share? Have you got to be allus tryin’ to euchre me out of my rights?”

“I apologize, Pardner, I forgot, I apologize plenty,” said Thad hurriedly. “As I was meanin’ to say, that gal of yourn, she says to me, ‘Daddy’--last Saturday it was, so she had a right to call me daddy--‘Daddy,’ says she, ‘Hugh has changed a lot since he come to us, ain’t he?’”

“Well,” returned Bob, “what if my daughter did make such a remark, it----“

“She was my daughter then,” interrupted Thad sternly.

“She’s mine right now,” retorted Bob with equal force. “What if she did say it? I maintain it only goes to show what a smart, observin’ gal she’s growed up to be.”

Thad grunted disgustedly.

“It’s almighty plain that she didn’t inherit none of her observin’ powers from you.”

Bob glared at him.

“Wal, what are you seein’ that I ain’t?” he demanded. “Somethin’ that’s wrong, I’ll bet--By smoke! Thad, if you was to happen to get into Heaven by any hook or crook so ever, you’d set yourself first off to suspicionin’ them there angels of high gradin’ the gold they say the streets up there is paved with.”

The other returned with withering contempt:

“You’ve said it! But don’t it signify nothin’ to you when your gal--when any gal takes notice of how a feller is lookin’ different from what he did when she first met up with him? Ain’t it got no meanin’ for you when she says, ‘Since he come to us’? _Come to us--to us_--can’t you see nothin’? If I was as dumb as you be, I’d set off a stick of powder under myself to see if I couldn’t get some sort of, what I heard Doctor Jimmy once call, a re-action.”

Bob laughed.

“I figger on gettin’ all the reactions I need from you, without wastin’ any powder. Hugh did come to us, didn’t he? Even if that measly Lizard did fetch him far as the gate.”

“Oh, sure,” grumbled the other with fine sarcasm. “Hugh, he didn’t come to this here Cañada del Oro--not a-tall--he jest come to _us_.”

Bob continued as if the other had not spoken:

“As far as his not bein’ the same as when he come, well, he ain’t--anybody can see that. ’Tain’t only that he’s started in to workin’, all at once, like he jest naterally _had_ to get rich. He’s different in a lot of ways. Take his looks, for instance--he used to be kind of white like--you remember, and now he’s tanned as black as any of us old desert rats. He’s sturdier and heavier like, every way. Hard work agrees with him, ’pears like.”

“’Tain’t only that,” said Thad.

“Sure--his hair ain’t so short no more.”

“There’s more than hair an’ bein’ tanned,” said Thad.

“Yep, there is,” agreed Bob. “Do you mind how, when he first come, he acted sort of scared like--right at the very first, I mean.”

“That’s it,” returned Thad, “his eyes was like he was expectin’ one or t’other, or both of us, to throw down a gun on him. An’ yet I sensed somehow, after the first minute, that it wasn’t us he was afraid of. He sure walks up to a man now, though, like he could jump down his throat if he had to.”

“I’ll bet my pile he would, too, if he was called,” chuckled Bob. “And have you noticed how easy he laughs, an’ the way he sings and whistles over there when he’s fussin’ ’round his shack of a mornin’ or evenin’?”

“He sure seems contented enough,” said Thad, “an’ that’s another thing I’ve noticed, too,” he added slowly. “The boy ain’t been out of the cañon since he come.”

“Ain’t no reason for him to go,” said Bob. “We take out what little gold he pans with ourn, don’t we? An’ it’s easy for Marta to buy his supplies for him while she’s buyin’ for us. There ain’t nobody at Oracle that he’d be wantin’ to see.”

“Mebby that’s it,” said Thad.

“Mebby what’s it?” demanded Bob.

“That there ain’t nobody at Oracle that he wants to see--or that he don’t want to see him--whichever way you like to say it.”

“There you go again,” said Bob. “Can’t talk more’n a minute on any subject without hintin’ that somethin’ is wrong. The boy is all right, I tell you.”

“Well, Holy Cats! who said he wasn’t?” cried Thad. “I wouldn’t hold it against him much if he never went to Oracle or nowhere else; jest stuck in this here cañon ’til he died, hidin’ out in the brush somewhere every time anybody strange showed up nearer than George Wheeler’s. You an’ me has both suffered from the same sort of sickness more’n once, or I’m a-losin’ my memory. You’re allus makin’ out that I’m thinkin’ evil when I’m only jest tryin’ to look at things as they actually are. If I’d intimated that the boy was a hoss-thief or a claim-jumper or somethin’ like that, you’d have reason to climb on to me, but I’m likin’ him an’ believin’ in him as much as ever you or anybody else ever dared to.”

Bob grinned.

“It’s funny how we’re all agreed on that, ain’t it? He is sure a likable cuss. I was a-warnin’ him the other day about handlin’ his powder. ‘You don’t want to forgit, son,’ says I, ‘that there’s enough in one of them sticks to blow you so high that you’d think you was one of them heavenly bodies up yonder.’ He laughed an’ says, says he, ‘That bein’ the case, it would be mighty comfortin’ to know there was no one to dock me for the time I was up in the air, wouldn’t it?’”

“Huh!” grunted Thad, “that’s an old one.”

“Sure it’s an old one,” retorted Bob, “but nobody can’t say it ain’t a good one; and I’m here to maintain that you can tell a heap more about a man by the jokes he laughs at than you can by the religions he claims to believe in.”

“Yes,” retorted Thad grimly, “I’ve allus took notice, too, that them that’s all the time seein’ evil in whatever anybody does is dead immortal certain to be havin’ a lot of their own doin’s that need to be kept in the dark. As for this game of lookin’ for some sort of insinuations in everything a body says, it’s like a lookin’ glass--what you see is mostly yourself. That’s what I’m meanin’.”

“Hugh is a good boy all right,” said Bob.

“He’s all of that and then some,” said Thad.

The truth of the matter is, Hugh Edwards had found, in the Cañada del Oro, something more than the gold for which he worked so laboriously through the long days, and which he had come to hoard with such miserly care. In the Cañon of Gold, he had found more than rugged health; more than a sanctuary from whatever it was that had driven him from the world to which he belonged into the lonely seclusion of that wild country. Into his loneliness had come a sweet companionship that had grown every day more dear. In this new joy and gladness, bitterness and pain had ceased to darken his hours with hatred and with useless and vengeful longings. Crushed and beaten, humiliated and shamed, his every hour an hour of dread, he had found inspiration and spirit to plan his life anew. Out of his hopelessness, a glorious new hope had come. He had learned again to dream; and he had gained strength to labor for his dreams.

But he had not told Marta what it was that he had found. He could not tell her yet. Before he could tell her, he must have gold. And he must have, not merely an amount that would satisfy the bare necessities of life--he must have much more than that. He was not so foolish as to feel that he must be in a position to offer this girl the extravagant luxuries of life. But his need was born of a dire necessity--a necessity as vital as the need of food. Without gold, the realization of his dream was an impossibility. His only hope of happiness was in the possibility of his success in finding a quantity of the yellow metal for which, through the centuries, so many men had labored, as he was laboring now, in the Cañon del Oro. He could not explain to Marta--he could only dream and hope and work, as those others before him had dreamed and hoped and worked in the Cañon of Gold. And so, with a strength that was like the strength of Saint Jimmy, this man was resolutely hiding the love that had re-created him. Marta must not know--not now.

But Marta knew--knew and yet did not know. The girl, whose womanhood had developed in the peculiarly sexless environment that had been hers since she could remember, had formed no habit of self-analysis. She was wholly inexperienced in those innocent but emotionally instructive friendships which girls and young women normally have with boys and men of their own age. Except for her fathers and Saint Jimmy, she had had no contact with men. In her childlike ignorance she asked of herself no questions. She gave no more thought to the meaning of her interest in Hugh Edwards than a wild bird gives to its mating instinct. But as their friendship grew and ripened, this girl of the desert and mountains knew that she was happy as she had never been happy before. She felt a kinship with the wild life about her that thrilled her with its poignant mystery. The flowers had never before bloomed in such passionate profusion. The birds had never voiced such melodies. The very winds were freighted with perfumes that filled her with strange delight. The days, indeed, flew by on wings of sunshine--the nights were haunted with shadowy promises as vague and intangible as they were sweet.

Natachee, as the weeks passed, seemed to develop a strange interest in the man who was so obviously from a world that is far indeed from the haunts of the lonely red man. Frequently the Indian called at the little cabin to spend an hour or more. Always he appeared suddenly, at the most unexpected moments, as if he were a spirit materialized that instant from an invisible world, and always he disappeared in the same startling fashion.

Sometimes, when he was with Edwards and the Pardners, he would discuss matters of general interest with the speech and manner of any well-bred college man. Save for his savage costume, his dusky countenance, and a certain touch of poetic feeling in his choice of words and figures of speech, there would be nothing, on these occasions, to mark him as different, in any way, from his white companions. But on other occasions, when Natachee and Edwards were alone, the red man would, for the moment, cast aside every mark of his training in the schools, and, with the voice, words, and gestures peculiar to his race, express thoughts and emotions that were purely Indian. Much of the time, however, he would sit silently watching the white man at his work. Often he would come and go without a word. He would sometimes appear, too, when Marta and Edwards were together, and on these occasions, save for a courteous greeting, he was rarely more than a silent observer.

The Lizard had at first endeavored to cultivate the stranger’s friendship, but, receiving no encouragement, had soon limited his attentions to a sullen “Howdy” when he passed on his way to or from Oracle.

But Saint Jimmy had not yet met the man who was living next door to Marta. Often the girl begged her teacher to go with her to call on the new neighbor. Mother Burton frequently scolded him, gently, for his discourtesy to the stranger. And Saint Jimmy promised many times that he would call, but he invariably postponed the date of his visit. He would set out on his social mission in all good faith, but invariably, when he came within sight of the cabin so near to Marta’s home, he would stop and, instead of going on, would spend the hours alone on the mountain side looking out over the desert. Had Saint Jimmy been other than the gentle spirit he was, he might have said that he heard quite enough about Hugh Edwards from Marta without going to visit him.

Many times, too, Saint Jimmy thought to tell Marta the story her fathers had intrusted to him, but for some reason he always found it as difficult to talk to his pupil about the mystery of her early childhood as he found it hard to call on this man in whom she was so interested.

Often he said to his mother that he would delay no longer--that he would tell the girl the next time she came to see them; but each time he put it off. The girl was always so radiantly happy, so overflowing with the joy of life. Perhaps, Saint Jimmy told himself, perhaps, it might never be necessary for her to know.

The dry season of the summer passed--the summer rains came; and again the desert, the foothills and mountain sides were bright with blossoms. It was during this “Little Spring,” as the Indians call this second blossoming time of the year, that Saint Jimmy finally called on Hugh Edwards.

And--it was the Lizard who brought it about.