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Page 7
She was thinking of anything in the world but of a tragedy not yet
grown cold, so near her that for a little it had seemed to embrace her.
Now it was almost as though it had not occurred. The world was all
unchanged about her, the town somnolent. She had shuddered as Ignacio
played upon his bell; but the shudder was rather from the bell's
resonant eloquence than from any more vital cause. A man she had never
seen, whose name even she did not know, had been shot by another man
unknown to her; she had heard only the shots, she had seen nothing.
True, she had heard also a voice crying out, but she sensed that it had
been the voice of an onlooker. She felt ashamed that the episode did
not move her more.
As, earlier in the afternoon, she had been drawn from the heat of her
room at Struve's hotel by the shade to be found in the Mission garden,
so now did a long, wavering line of cottonwoods beckon to her. In
files which turned eastward or westward here and there only to come
back to the general northerly trend, they indicated where an arroyo
writhed down, tortured serpent-wise, from the mountains. Through their
foliage she had glimpsed the Engle home. She expected to find running
water under their shade, that and an attendant coolness.
But the arroyo proved to be dry and hot, a gash in the dry bosom of the
earth, its bottom strewn with smooth pebbles and sand and a very
sparse, unattractive vegetation, stunted and harsh. And it was almost
as hot here as on San Juan's street; into the shade crept the
heat-waves of the dry, scorched air.
Led by the line of cottonwoods she found a little path and followed it,
experiencing a vague relief to have the town at her back. She knew
that distances deceived the eye in this bleak land, and yet she thought
that before dark she could reach the hills, where perhaps there were a
few languid flowers and pools, and return just tired enough to eat and
go to sleep. She rather thought that she would postpone her call on
the Engles until to-morrow.
"It's ma�ana-land, after all," she told herself with a quick smile.
Half an hour later she found a spot where the trees stood in a denser
growth, looking greener, more vigorous . . . less thirsty. She could
fancy the great roots, questing far downward through the layers of dry
soil, thrusting themselves almost with a human, passionate eagerness
into the water they had found. Here she threw herself down, lying upon
her back, gazing up through the branches and leaves.
Never until now had she known the meaning of utter stillness. She saw
a bird, a poor brown, unkempt little being; it had no song to offer the
silence, and in a little flew away listlessly. She had seen a rabbit,
a big, gaunt, uncomely wretch, disappearing silently among the clumps
of brush.
Her spirit, essentially bright and happy, had striven hard with a new
form of weariness all day. Not only was she coming into another land
than that which she knew and understood, she was entering another phase
of her life. She had chosen voluntarily, without advice or suggestion;
she had had her reasons and they had seemed sufficient; they were still
sufficient. She had chosen wisely; she held to that, her judgment
untroubled. But that stubbornly recurrent sense that with the old
landmarks she had abandoned the old life, that both in physical fact
and in spiritual and mental actuality she was at the threshold of an
unguessed, essentially different life, was disquieting. There is no
getting away from an old basic truth that a man's life is so strongly
influenced as almost to be moulded by his environment; there was
uneasiness in the thought that here one's existence might grow to
resemble his habitat, taking on the gray tone and monotony and bleak
barrenness of this sun-smitten land.
Yielding a little already to the command laid upon breathing nature
hereabouts, she was lying still, her hands lax, her thoughts taking
unto themselves something of the character of the listless, songless
brown bird's flight. She had come here to-day following in the
footsteps of other men and a few women. Her own selection of San Juan
was explicable; the thing to wonder at was what had given the hardihood
to the first men to stop here and make houses and then homes? Later
she would know; the one magic word of the desert lands: water. For San
Juan, standing midway between the railroad and the more tempting lands
beyond the mountains, had found birth because here was a mud-hole for
cradle; down under the sand were fortuitous layers of impervious clay
cupping to hold much sweet water.
The slow tolling of a bell came billowing out through the silence. The
girl sat up. It was the Captain. Never, it seemed to her, had she
heard anything so mournful. Ignacio had informed himself concerning
all details and had returned to the garden at the Mission. The man was
dead, then. There could be no doubt as one listened to the measured
sorrowing of the big bell.
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