XI. The Desert-Hawk

by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

　　TOWARD the close of the next day Jack Hare arrived at Seeping Springs. Apile of gray ashes marked the spot where the trimmed logs had lain.Round the pool ran a black circle hard packed into the ground by manyhoofs. Even the board flume had been burned to a level with the glancingsheet of water. Hare was slipping Silvermane's bit to let him drink whenhe heard a halloo. Dave Naab galloped out of the cedars, and presentlyAugust Naab and his other sons appeared with a pack-train.

　　"Now you've played bob!" exclaimed Dave. He swung out of his saddle andgripped Hare with both hands. "I know what you've done; I know whereyou've been. Father will be furious, but don't you care."

　　The other Naabs trotted down the slope and lined their horses before thepool. The sons stared in blank astonishment; the father surveyed thescene slowly, and then fixed wrathful eyes on Hare.

　　"What does this mean?" he demanded, with the sonorous roll of his angryvoice.

　　Hare told all that had happened.

　　August Naab's gloomy face worked, and his eagle-gaze had in it a strangefar-seeing light; his mind was dwelling upon his mystic power ofrevelation.

　　"I see--I see," he said haltingly.

　　"Ki--yi-i-i!" yelled Dave Naab with all the power of his lungs. His headwas back, his mouth wide open, his face red, his neck corded and swollenwith the intensity of his passion.

　　"Be still--boy!" ordered his father. "Hare, this was madness--but tell mewhat you learned."

　　Briefly Hare repeated all that he had been told at the Bishop's, andconcluded with the killing of Martin Cole by Dene.

　　August Naab bowed his head and his giant frame shook under the force ofhis emotion. Martin Cole was the last of his life-long friends.

　　"This--this outlaw--you say you ran him down?" asked Naab, rising haggardand shaken out of his grief.

　　"Yes. He didn't recognize me or know what was coming till Silvermane wason him. But he was quick, and fell sidewise. Silvermane's knee sent himsprawling."

　　"What will it all lead to?" asked August Naab, and in his extremity heappealed to his eldest son.

　　"The bars are down," said Snap Naab, with a click of his long teeth.

　　"Father," began Dave Naab earnestly, "Jack has done a splendid thing.The news will fly over Utah like wildfire. Mormons are slow. They needa leader. But they can follow and they will. We can't cure these evilsby hoping and praying. We've got to fight!"

　　"Dave's right, dad, it means fight," cried George, with his fist clinchedhigh.

　　"You've been wrong, father, in holding back," said Zeke Naab, his leanjaw bulging. "This Holderness will steal the water and meat out of ourchildren's mouths. We've got to fight!"

　　"Let's ride to White Sage," put in Snap Naab, and the little flecks inhis eyes were dancing. "I'll throw a gun on Dene. I can get to him.We've been tolerable friends. He's wanted me to join his band. I'llkill him."

　　He laughed as he raised his right hand and swept it down to his leftside; the blue Colt lay on his outstretched palm. Dene's life andHolderness's, too, hung in the balance between two deadly snaps of thisdesert-wolf's teeth. He was one of the Naabs, and yet apart from them,for neither religion, nor friendship, nor life itself mattered to him.

　　August Naab's huge bulk shook again, not this time with grief, but inwrestling effort to withstand the fiery influence of this unholy fightingspirit among his sons.

　　"I am forbidden."

　　His answer was gentle, but its very gentleness breathed of his battleover himself, of allegiance to something beyond earthly duty. "We'lldrive the cattle to Silver Cup," he decided, "and then go home. I giveup Seeping Springs. Perhaps this valley and water will contentHolderness."

　　When they reached the oasis Hare was surprised to find that it was theday before Christmas. The welcome given the long-absent riders was likea celebration. Much to Hare's disappointment Mescal did not appear; thehomecoming was not joyful to him because it lacked her welcoming smile.

　　Christmas Day ushered in the short desert winter; ice formed in theditches and snow fell, but neither long resisted the reflection of thesun from the walls. The early morning hours were devoted to religiousservices. At midday dinner was served in the big room of August Naab'scabin. At one end was a stone fireplace where logs blazed and crackled.

　　In all his days Hare had never seen such a bountiful board. Yet he wasunable to appreciate it, to share in the general thanksgiving.Dominating all other feeling was the fear that Mescal would come in andtake a seat by Snap Naab's side. When Snap seated himself opposite withhis pale little wife Hare found himself waiting for Mescal with anintensity that made him dead to all else. The girls, Judith, Esther,Rebecca, came running gayly in, clad in their best dresses, with brightribbons to honor the occasion. Rebecca took the seat beside Snap, andHare gulped with a hard contraction of his throat. Mescal was not yet aMormon's wife! He seemed to be lifted upward, to grow light-headed withthe blessed assurance. Then Mescal entered and took the seat next tohim. She smiled and spoke, and the blood beat thick in his ears.

　　That moment was happy, but it was as nothing to its successor. Under thetable-cover Mescal's hand found his, and pressed it daringly and gladly.Her hand lingered in his all the time August Naab spent in carving theturkey--lingered there even though Snap Naab's hawk eyes were never faraway. In the warm touch of her hand, in some subtle thing that radiatedfrom her Hare felt a change in the girl he loved. A few months hadwrought in her some indefinable difference, even as they had increasedhis love to its full volume and depth. Had his absence brought her tothe realization of her woman's heart?

　　In the afternoon Hare left the house and spent a little while withSilvermane; then he wandered along the wall to the head of the oasis, andfound a seat on the fence. The next few weeks presented to him asituation that would be difficult to endure. He would be near Mescal,but only to have the truth forced cruelly home to him every sane moment--that she was not for him. Out on the ranges he had abandoned himself todreams of her; they had been beautiful; they had made the long hours seemlike minutes; but they had forged chains that could not be broken, andnow he was hopelessly fettered.

　　The clatter of hoofs roused him from a reverie which was half sad, halfsweet. Mescal came tearing down the level on Black Bolly. She pulled inthe mustang and halted beside Hare to hold out shyly a red scarfembroidered with Navajo symbols in white and red beads.

　　"I've wanted a chance to give you this," she said, "a little Christmaspresent."

　　For a few seconds Hare could find no words.

　　"Did you make it for me, Mescal?" he finally asked. "How good of you!I'll keep it always."

　　"Put it on now--let me tie it--there!"

　　"But, child. Suppose he--they saw it?"

　　"I don't care who sees it."

　　She met him with clear, level eyes. Her curt, crisp speech was full ofmeaning. He looked long at her, with a yearning denied for many a day.Her face was the same, yet wonderfully changed; the same in line andcolor, but different in soul and spirit. The old sombre shadow lay deepin the eyes, but to it had been added gleam of will and reflection ofthought. The whole face had been refined and transformed.

　　"Mescal! What's happened? You're not the same. You seem almost happy.Have you--has he--given you up?"

　　"Don't you know Mormons better than that? The thing is the same--so faras they're concerned."

　　"But Mescal--are you going to marry him? For God's sake, tell me."

　　"Never." It was a woman's word, instant, inflexible, desperate. With adeep breath Hare realized where the girl had changed.

　　"Still you're promised, pledged to him! How'll you get out of it?"

　　"I don't know how. But I'll cut out my tongue, and be dumb as my poorpeon before I'll speak the word that'll make me Snap Naab's wife."

　　There was a long silence. Mescal smoothed out Bolly's mane, and Haregazed up at the walls with eyes that did not see them.

　　Presently he spoke. "I'm afraid for you. Snap watched us to-day atdinner."

　　"He's jealous."

　　"Suppose he sees this scarf?"

　　Mescal laughed defiantly. It was bewildering for Hare to hear her.

　　"He'll--Mescal, I may yet come to this." Hare's laugh echoed Mescal's ashe pointed to the enclosure under the wall, where the graves showed bareand rough.

　　Her warm color fled, but it flooded back, rich, mantling brow and cheekand neck.

　　"Snap Naab will never kill you," she said impulsively.

　　"Mescal."

　　She swiftly turned her face away as his hand closed on hers.

　　"Mescal, do you love me?"

　　The trembling of her fingers and the heaving of her bosom lent his hopeconviction. "Mescal," he went on, "these past months have been years,years of toiling, thinking, changing, but always loving. I'm not the manyou knew. I'm wild-- I'm starved for a sight of you. I love you! Mescal,my desert flower!"

　　She raised her free hand to his shoulder and swayed toward him. He heldher a moment, clasped tight, and then released her.

　　"I'm quite mad!" he exclaimed, in a passion of self-reproach. "What arisk I'm putting on you! But I couldn't help it. Look at me-- Justonce--please-- Mescal, just one look. . . . Now go."

　　The drama of the succeeding days was of absorbing interest. Hare hadliberty; there was little work for him to do save to care for Silvermane.He tried to hunt foxes in the caves and clefts; he rode up and down thebroad space under the walls; he sought the open desert only to be drivenin by the bitter, biting winds. Then he would return to the bigliving-room of the Naabs and sit before the burning logs. This spaciousroom was warm, light, pleasant, and was used by every one in leisurehours. Mescal spent most of her time there. She was engaged upon a newfrock of buckskin, and over this she bent with her needle and beads.When there was a chance Hare talked with her, speaking one language withhis tongue, a far different one with his eyes. When she was not presenthe looked into the glowing red fire and dreamed of her.

　　In the evenings when Snap came in to his wooing and drew Mescal into acorner, Hare watched with covert glance and smouldering jealousy.Somehow he had come to see all things and all people in the desert glass,and his symbol for Snap Garb was the desert-hawk. Snap's eyes were aswild and piercing as those of a hawk; his nose and mouth were as the beakof a hawk; his hands resembled the claws of a hawk; and the spurs hewore, always bloody, were still more significant of his ruthless nature.Then Snap's courting of the girl, the cool assurance, the unhasteningease, were like the slow rise, the sail, and the poise of a desert-hawkbefore the downward lightning-swift swoop on his quarry.

　　It was intolerable for Hare to sit there in the evenings, to try to playwith the children who loved him, to talk to August Naab when his eyeseemed ever drawn to the quiet couple in the corner, and his ear wasunconsciously strained to catch a passing word. That hour was amiserable one for him, yet he could not bring himself to leave the room.He never saw Snap touch her; he never heard Mescal's voice; he believedthat she spoke very little. When the hour was over and Mescal rose topass to her room, then his doubt, his fear, his misery, were as thoughthey had never been, for as Mescal said good-night she would give him onelook, swift as a flash, and in it were womanliness and purity, and some-thing beyond his comprehension. Her Indian serenity and mysticism veiledyet suggested some secret, some power by which she might yet escape theiron band of this Mormon rule. Hare could not fathom it. In thatgood-night glance was a meaning for him alone, if meaning ever shone inwoman's eyes, and it said: "I will be true to you and to myself!"

　　Once the idea struck him that as soon as spring returned it would be aneasy matter, and probably wise, for him to leave the oasis and go up intoUtah, far from the desert-canyon country. But the thought refused tostay before his consciousness a moment. New life had flushed his veinshere. He loved the dreamy, sleepy oasis with its mellow sunshine alwaysat rest on the glistening walls; he loved the cedar-scented plateau wherehope had dawned, and the wind-swept sand-strips, where hard out-of-doorlife and work had renewed his wasting youth; he loved the canyon windingaway toward Coconina, opening into wide abyss; and always, more than all,he loved the Painted Desert, with its ever-changing pictures, printed insweeping dust and bare peaks and purple haze. He loved the beauty ofthese places, and the wildness in them had an affinity with somethingstrange and untamed in him. He would never leave them. When his bloodhad cooled, when this tumultuous thrill and swell had worn themselvesout, happiness would come again.

　　Early in the winter Snap Naab had forced his wife to visit his father'shouse with him; and she had remained in the room, white-faced,passionately jealous, while he wooed Mescal. Then had come a scene.Hare had not been present, but he knew its results. Snap had beenfurious, his father grave, Mescal tearful and ashamed. The wife foundmany ways to interrupt her husband's lovemaking. She sent the childrenfor him; she was taken suddenly ill; she discovered that the corral gatewas open and his cream-colored pinto, dearest to his heart, was runningloose; she even set her cottage on fire.

　　One Sunday evening just before twilight Hare was sitting on the porchwith August Naab and Dave, when their talk was interrupted by Snap's loudcalling for his wife. At first the sounds came from inside his cabin.Then he put his head out of a window and yelled. Plainly he was bothimpatient and angry. It was nearly time for him to make his Sunday callupon Mescal.

　　"Something's wrong," muttered Dave.

　　"Hester! Hester!" yelled Snap.

　　Mother Ruth came out and said that Hester was not there.

　　"Where is she?" Snap banged on the window-sill with his fists. "Findher, somebody--Hester!"

　　"Son, this is the Sabbath," called Father Naab, gravely. "Lower yourvoice. Now what's the matter?"

　　"Matter!" bawled Snap, giving way to rage. "When I was asleep Hesterstole all my clothes. She's hid them--she's run off--there's not ad--n thing for me to put on! I'll--"

　　The roar of laughter from August and Dave drowned the rest of the speech.Hare managed to stifle his own mirth. Snap pulled in his head andslammed the window shut.

　　"Jack," said August, "even among Mormons the course of true love neverruns smooth."

　　Hare finally forgot his bitter humor in pity for the wife. Snap came tocare not at all for her messages and tricks, and he let nothing interferewith his evening beside Mescal. It was plain that he had gone far on theroad of love. Whatever he had been in the beginning of the betrothal, hewas now a lover, eager, importunate. His hawk's eyes were softer thanHare had ever seen them; he was obliging, kind, gay, an altogetherdifferent Snap Naab. He groomed himself often, and wore clean scarfs,and left off his bloody spurs. For eight months he had not touched thebottle. When spring approached he was madly in love with Mescal. Andthe marriage was delayed because his wife would not have another woman inher home.

　　Once Hare heard Snap remonstrating with his father.

　　"If she don't come to time soon I'll keep the kids and send her back toher father."

　　"Don't be hasty, son. Let her have time," replied August. "Women mustbe humored. I'll wager she'll give in before the cottonwood blows, andthat's not long."

　　It was Hare's habit, as the days grew warmer, to walk a good deal, andone evening, as twilight shadowed the oasis and grew black under thetowering walls, he strolled out toward the fields. While passing Snap'scottage Hare heard a woman's voice in passionate protest and a man's instrident anger. Later as he stood with his arm on Silvermane, a woman'sscream, at first high-pitched, then suddenly faint and smothered, causedhim to grow rigid, and his hand clinched tight. When he went back by thecottage a low moaning confirmed his suspicion.

　　That evening Snap appeared unusually bright and happy; and he asked hisfather to name the day for the wedding. August did so in a loud voiceand with evident relief. Then the quaint Mormon congratulations wereoffered to Mescal. To Hare, watching the strange girl with thedistressingly keen intuition of an unfortunate lover, she appeared aspleased as any of them that the marriage was settled. But there was noshyness, no blushing confusion. When Snap bent to kiss her--his firstkiss--she slightly turned her face, so that his lips brushed her cheek,yet even then her self-command did not break for an instant. It was atask for Hare to pretend to congratulate her; nevertheless he mumbledsomething. She lifted her long lashes, and there, deep beneath theshadows, was unutterable anguish. It gave him a shock. He went to hisroom, convinced that she had yielded; and though he could not blame her,and he knew she was helpless, he cried out in reproach and resentment.She had failed him, as he had known she must fail. He tossed on his bedand thought; he lay quiet, wide-open eyes staring into the darkness, andhis mind burned and seethed. Through the hours of that long night helearned what love had cost him.

　　With the morning light came some degree of resignation. Several dayswent slowly by, bringing the first of April, which was to be thewedding-day. August Naab had said it would come before the cottonwoodsshed their white floss; and their buds had just commenced to open. Theday was not a holiday, and George and Zeke and Dave began to pack for theranges, yet there was an air of jollity and festivity. Snap Naab had aspringy step and jaunty mien. Once he regarded Hare with a slow smile.

　　Piute prepared to drive his new flock up on the plateau. The women ofthe household were busy and excited; the children romped.

　　The afternoon waned into twilight, and Hare sought the quiet shadowsunder the wall near the river trail. He meant to stay there until AugustNaab had pronounced his son and Mescal man and wife. The dull roar ofthe rapids borne on a faint puff of westerly breeze was lulled into asoothing murmur. A radiant white star peeped over the black rim of thewall. The solitude and silence were speaking to Hare's heart, easing hispain, when a soft patter of moccasined feet brought him bolt upright.

　　A slender form rounded the corner wall. It was Mescal. The white dogWolf hung close by her side. Swiftly she reached Hare.

　　"Mescal!" he exclaimed.

　　"Hush! Speak softly," she whispered fearfully. Her hands were clingingto his.

　　"Jack, do you love me still?"

　　More than woman's sweetness was in the whisper; the portent ofindefinable motive made Hare tremble like a shaking leaf.

　　"Good heavens! You are to be married in a few minutes--What do you mean?Where are you going? this buckskin suit--and Wolf with you-- Mescal!"

　　"There's no time--only a word--hurry--do you love me still?" she panted,with great shining eyes close to his.

　　"Love you? With all my soul!"

　　"Listen," she whispered, and leaned against him. A fresh breeze bore theboom of the river. She caught her breath quickly: "I love you!--I loveyou!--Good-bye!"

　　She kissed him and broke from his clasp. Then silently, like a shadow,with the white dog close beside her, she disappeared in the darkness ofthe river trail.

　　She was gone before he came out of his bewilderment. He rushed down thetrail; he called her name. The gloom had swallowed her, and only theecho of his voice made answer.