The Heritage of the Desert: A Novel, Page 7

turkey-

  gobblers, that gobbled and gobbled, and guinea-hens with their shrill

  cries, and cackling chickens, and a lame wild goose that hobbled along

  alone. Then there were shiny peafowls screeching clarion calls from the

  trees overhead, and flocks of singing blackbirds, and pigeons hovering

  over and alighting upon the house. Last to approach were a woolly sheep

  that added his baa-baa to the din, and a bald-faced burro that walked in

  his sleep. These two became the centre of clamor. After many tumbles

  four chubby youngsters mounted the burro; and the others, with loud

  acclaim, shouting, "Noddle, Noddle, getup! getup!" endeavored to make

  him go. But Noddle nodded and refused to awaken or budge. Then an

  ambitious urchin of six fastened his hands in the fur of the sheep and

  essayed to climb to his back. Willing hands assisted him. "Ride him,

  Billy, ride him. Getup, Navvy, getup!"

  Navvy evidently had never been ridden, for he began a fair imitation of

  a bucking bronco. Billy held on, but the smile vanished and the corners

  of his mouth drew down.

  "Hang on, Billy, hang on," cried August Naab, in delight. Billy hung on

  a moment longer, and then Navvy, bewildered by the pestering crowd about

  him, launched out and, butting into Noddle, spilled the four youngsters

  and Billy also into a wriggling heap.

  This recess-time completed Hare's introduction to the Naabs. There were

  Mother Mary, and Judith and Esther, whom he knew, and Mother Ruth and

  her two daughters very like their sisters. Mother Ruth, August's second

  wife, was younger than Mother Mary, more comely of face, and more sad

  and serious of expression. The wives of the five sons, except Snap

  Naab's frail bride, were stalwart women, fit to make homes and rear

  children.

  "Now, Jack, things are moving all right," said August. "For the present

  you must eat and rest. Walk some, but don't tire yourself. We'll

  practice shooting a little every day; that's one thing I'll spare time

  for. I've a trick with a gun to teach you. And if you feel able, take a

  burro and ride. Anyway, make yourself at home."

  Hare found eating and resting to be matters of profound enjoyment.

  Before he had fallen in with these good people it had been a year since

  he had sat down to a full meal; longer still since he had eaten

  wholesome food. And now he had come to a "land overflowing with milk and

  honey," as Mother Ruth smilingly said. He could not choose between roast

  beef and chicken, and so he waived the question by taking both; and what

  with the biscuits and butter, apple-sauce and blackberry jam, cherry pie

  and milk like cream, there was danger of making himself ill. He told his

  friends that he simply could not help it, which shameless confession

  brought a hearty laugh from August and beaming smiles from his women-

  folk.

  For several days Hare was remarkably well, for an invalid. He won golden

  praise from August at the rifle practice, and he began to take lessons

  in the quick drawing and rapid firing of a Colt revolver. Naab was

  wonderfully proficient in the use of both firearms; and his skill in

  drawing the smaller weapon, in which his movement was quicker than the

  eye, astonished Hare. "My lad," said August, "it doesn't follow because

  I'm a Christian that I don't know how to handle a gun. Besides, I like

  to shoot."

  In these few days Hare learned what conquering the desert made of a man.

  August Naab was close to threescore years; his chest was wide as a door,

  his arm like the branch of an oak. He was a blacksmith, a mechanic, a

  carpenter, a cooper, a potter. At his forge and in his shop, everywhere,

  were crude tools, wagons, farming implements, sets of buckskin harness,

  odds and ends of nameless things, eloquent and pregnant proof of the

  fact that necessity is the mother of invention. He was a mason; the

  levee that buffeted back the rage of the Colorado in flood, the wall

  that turned the creek, the irrigation tunnel, the zigzag trail cut on

  the face of the cliff--all these attested his eye for line, his judgment

  of distance, his strength in toil. He was a farmer, a cattle man, a

  grafter of fruit-trees, a breeder of horses, a herder of sheep, a

  preacher, a physician. Best and strangest of all in this wonderful man

  was the instinct and the heart to heal. "I don't combat the doctrine of

  the Mormon church," he said, "but I administer a little medicine with my

  healing. I learned that from the Navajos." The children ran to him with

  bruised heads, and cut fingers, and stubbed toes; and his blacksmith's

  hands were as gentle as a woman's. A mustang with a lame leg claimed his

  serious attention; a sick sheep gave him an anxious look; a steer with a

  gored skin sent him running for a bucket of salve. He could not pass by

  a crippled quail. The farm was overrun by Navajo sheep which he had

  found strayed and lost on the desert. Anything hurt or helpless had in

  August Naab a friend. Hare found himself looking up to a great and

  luminous figure, and he loved this man.

  As the days passed Hare learned many other things. For a while illness

  confined him to his bed on the porch. At night he lay listening to the

  roar of the river, and watching the stars. Twice he heard a distant

  crash and rumble, heavy as thunder, and he knew that somewhere along the

  cliffs avalanches were slipping. By day he watched the cotton snow down

  upon him, and listened to the many birds, and waited for the merry show

  at recess-time. After a short time the children grew less shy and came

  readily to him. They were the most wholesome children he had ever known.

  Hare wondered about it, and decided it was not so much Mormon teaching

  as isolation from the world. These children had never been out of their

  cliff-walled home, and civilization was for them as if it were not. He

  told them stories, and after school hours they would race to him and

  climb on his bed, and beg for more.

  He exhausted his supply of fairy-stories and animal stories; and had

  begun to tell about the places and cities which he had visited when the

  eager-eyed children were peremptorily called within by Mother Mary. This

  pained him and he was at a loss to understand it. Enlightenment came,

  however, in the way of an argument between Naab and Mother Mary which he

  overheard. The elder wife said that the stranger was welcome to the

  children, but she insisted that they hear nothing of the outside world,

  and that they be kept to the teachings of the Mormon geography--which

  made all the world outside Utah an untrodden wilderness. August Naab did

  not hold to the letter of the Mormon law; he argued that if the children

  could not be raised as Mormons with a full knowledge of the world, they

  would only be lost in the end to the Church.

  Other developments surprised Hare. The house of this good Mormon was

  divided against itself. Precedence was given to the first and elder

  wife--Mother Mary; Mother Ruth's life was not without pain. The men were

  out on the ranges all day, usually two or more of them for several days

  at a time, and this left the women alone. One dau
ghter taught the

  school, the other daughters did all the chores about the house, from

  feeding the stock to chopping wood. The work was hard, and the girls

  would rather have been in White Sage or Lund. They disliked Mescal, and

  said things inspired by jealousy. Snap Naab's wife was vindictive, and

  called Mescal "that Indian!"

  It struck him on hearing this gossip that he had missed Mescal. What had

  become of her? Curiosity prompting him, he asked little Billy about her.

  "Mescal's with the sheep," piped Billy.

  That she was a shepherdess pleased Hare, and he thought of her as free

  on the open range, with the wind blowing her hair.

  One day when Hare felt stronger he took his walk round the farm with new

  zest. Upon his return to the house he saw Snap's cream pinto in the

  yard, and Dave's mustang cropping the grass near by. A dusty pack lay on

  the ground. Hare walked down the avenue of cottonwoods and was about to

  turn the corner of the old forge when he stopped short.

  "Now mind you, I'll take a bead on this white-faced spy if you send him

  up there."

  It was Snap