VII
Thea's twelfth birthday had passed a few weeks
before her memorable call upon Mrs. Tellamantez.
There was a worthy man in Moonstone who was already
planning to marry Thea as soon as she should be old enough.
His name was Ray Kennedy, his age was thirty, and he was
conductor on a freight train, his run being from Moonstone
to Denver. Ray was a big fellow, with a square, open
American face, a rock chin, and features that one would
never happen to remember. He was an aggressive idealist,
a freethinker, and, like most railroad men, deeply senti-
mental. Thea liked him for reasons that had to do with
the adventurous life he had led in Mexico and the South-
west, rather than for anything very personal. She liked
him, too, because he was the only one of her friends who
ever took her to the sand hills. The sand hills were a con-
stant tantalization; she loved them better than anything
near Moonstone, and yet she could so seldom get to them.
The first dunes were accessible enough; they were only a
few miles beyond the Kohlers', and she could run out there
any day when she could do her practicing in the morning
and get Thor off her hands for an afternoon. But the real
hills--the Turquoise Hills, the Mexicans called them--
were ten good miles away, and one reached them by a
heavy, sandy road. Dr. Archie sometimes took Thea on
his long drives, but as nobody lived in the sand hills, he
never had calls to make in that direction. Ray Kennedy
was her only hope of getting there.
This summer Thea had not been to the hills once, though
Ray had planned several Sunday expeditions. Once Thor
was sick, and once the organist in her father's church was
away and Thea had to play the organ for the three Sunday
services. But on the first Sunday in September, Ray drove
up to the Kronborgs' front gate at nine o'clock in the morn-
ing and the party actually set off. Gunner and Axel went
with Thea, and Ray had asked Spanish Johnny to come
and to bring Mrs. Tellamantez and his mandolin. Ray was
artlessly fond of music, especially of Mexican music. He
and Mrs. Tellamantez had got up the lunch between them,
and they were to make coffee in the desert.
When they left Mexican Town, Thea was on the front
seat with Ray and Johnny, and Gunner and Axel sat be-
hind with Mrs. Tellamantez. They objected to this, of
course, but there were some things about which Thea would
have her own way. "As stubborn as a Finn," Mrs. Kron-
borg sometimes said of her, quoting an old Swedish saying.
When they passed the Kohlers', old Fritz and Wunsch
were cutting grapes at the arbor. Thea gave them a busi-
nesslike nod. Wunsch came to the gate and looked after
them. He divined Ray Kennedy's hopes, and he dis-
trusted every expedition that led away from the piano.
Unconsciously he made Thea pay for frivolousness of this
sort.
As Ray Kennedy's party followed the faint road across
the sagebrush, they heard behind them the sound of church
bells, which gave them a sense of escape and boundless
freedom. Every rabbit that shot across the path, every
sage hen that flew up by the trail, was like a runaway
thought, a message that one sent into the desert. As they
went farther, the illusion of the mirage became more in-
stead of less convincing; a shallow silver lake that spread
for many miles, a little misty in the sunlight. Here and
there one saw reflected the image of a heifer, turned loose
to live upon the sparse sand-grass. They were magnified
to a preposterous height and looked like mammoths, pre-
historic beasts standing solitary in the waters that for
many thousands of years actually washed over that desert;
--the mirage itself may be the ghost of that long-vanished
sea. Beyond the phantom lake lay the line of many-colored
hills; rich, sun-baked yellow, glowing turquoise, lavender,
purple; all the open, pastel colors of the desert.
After the first five miles the road grew heavier. The
horses had to slow down to a walk and the wheels sank
deep into the sand, which now lay in long ridges, like waves,
where the last high wind had drifted it. Two hours brought
the party to Pedro's Cup, named for a Mexican desperado
who had once held the sheriff at bay there. The Cup was a
great amphitheater, cut out in the hills, its floor smooth
and packed hard, dotted with sagebrush and greasewood.
On either side of the Cup the yellow hills ran north and
south, with winding ravines between them, full of soft sand
which drained down from the crumbling banks. On the
surface of this fluid sand, one could find bits of brilliant
stone, crystals and agates and onyx, and petrified wood as
red as blood. Dried toads and lizards were to be found
there, too. Birds, decomposing more rapidly, left only
feathered skeletons.
After a little reconnoitering, Mrs. Tellamantez declared
that it was time for lunch, and Ray took his hatchet and
began to cut greasewood, which burns fiercely in its green
state. The little boys dragged the bushes to the spot that
Mrs. Tellamantez had chosen for her fire. Mexican women
like to cook out of doors.
After lunch Thea sent Gunner and Axel to hunt for
agates. "If you see a rattlesnake, run. Don't try to kill
it," she enjoined.
Gunner hesitated. "If Ray would let me take the
hatchet, I could kill one all right."
Mrs. Tellamantez smiled and said something to Johnny
in Spanish.
"Yes," her husband replied, translating, "they say in
Mexico, kill a snake but never hurt his feelings. Down in
the hot country, MUCHACHA," turning to Thea, "people
keep a pet snake in the house to kill rats and mice. They
call him the house snake. They keep a little mat for him
by the fire, and at night he curl up there and sit with the
family, just as friendly!"
Gunner sniffed with disgust. "Well, I think that's a
dirty Mexican way to keep house; so there!"
Johnny shrugged his shoulders. "Perhaps," he muttered.
A Mexican learns to dive below insults or soar above them,
after he crosses the border.
By this time the south wall of the amphitheater cast a
narrow shelf of shadow, and the party withdrew to this
refuge. Ray and Johnny began to talk about the Grand
Canyon and Death Valley, two places much shrouded in
mystery in those days, and Thea listened intently. Mrs.
Tellamantez took out her drawn-work and pinned it to her
knee. Ray could talk well about the large part of the conti-
nent over which he had been knocked about, and Johnny
was appreciative.
"You been all over, pretty near. Like a Spanish boy,"
he commented respectfully.
Ray, who had taken off his coat, whetted his pocket-
knife thoughtfully on the sole of his shoe. "I began to
browse around early. I had a mind to see something of this
world, and I ran away from home before I was twelve.
Rustled for myself ever since."
"Ran away?" Johnny looked hopeful. "What for?"
"Couldn't make it go with my old man, and didn't take
to farming. There were plenty of boys at home. I wasn't
missed."
Thea wriggled down in the hot sand and rested her chin
on her arm. "Tell Johnny about the melons, Ray, please
do!"
Ray's solid, sunburned cheeks grew a shade redder, and
he looked reproachfully at Thea. "You're stuck on that
story, kid. You like to get the laugh on me, don't you?
That was the finishing split I had with my old man, John.
He had a claim along the creek, not far from Denver, and
raised a little garden stuff for market. One day he had a
load of melons and he decided to take 'em to town and sell
'em along the street, and he made me go along and drive
for him. Denver wasn't the queen city it is now, by any
means, but it seemed a terrible big place to me; and when
we got there, if he didn't make me drive right up Capitol
Hill! Pap got out and stopped at folkses houses to ask if
they didn't want to buy any melons, and I was to drive
along slow. The farther I went the madder I got, but I was
trying to look unconscious, when the end-gate came loose
and one of the melons fell out and squashed. Just then a
swell girl, all dressed up, comes out of one of the big houses
and calls out, `Hello, boy, you're losing your melons!'
Some dudes on the other side of the street took their hats
off to her and began to laugh. I couldn't stand it any
longer. I grabbed the whip and lit into that team, and they
tore up the hill like jack-rabbits, them damned melons
bouncing out the back every jump, the old man cussin' an'
yellin' behind and everybody laughin'. I never looked be-
hind, but the whole of Capitol Hill must have been a mess
with them squashed melons. I didn't stop the team till I
got out of sight of town. Then I pulled up an' left 'em with
a rancher I was acquainted with, and I never went home to
get the lickin' that was waitin' for me. I expect it's waitin'
for me yet."
Thea rolled over in the sand. "Oh, I wish I could have
seen those melons fly, Ray! I'll never see anything as
funny as that. Now, tell Johnny about your first job."
Ray had a collection of good stories. He was observant,
truthful, and kindly--perhaps the chief requisites in a
good story-teller. Occasionally he used newspaper phrases,
conscientiously learned in his efforts at self-instruction, but
when he talked naturally he was always worth listening to.
Never having had any schooling to speak of, he had, almost
from the time he first ran away, tried to make good his loss.
As a sheep-herder he had worried an old grammar to tatters,
and read instructive books with the help of a pocket dic-
tionary. By the light of many camp-fires he had pondered
upon Prescott's histories, and the works of Washington
Irving, which he bought at a high price from a book-agent.
Mathematics and physics were easy for him, but general
culture came hard, and he was determined to get it. Ray
was a freethinker, and inconsistently believed himself
damned for being one. When he was braking, down on the
Santa Fe, at the end of his run he used to climb into the
upper bunk of the caboose, while a noisy gang played poker
about the stove below him, and by the roof-lamp read
Robert Ingersoll's speeches and "The Age of Reason."
Ray was a loyal-hearted fellow, and it had cost him a
great deal to give up his God. He was one of the step-
children of Fortune, and he had very little to show for all
his hard work; the other fellow always got the best of it.
He had come in too late, or too early, on several schemes
that had made money. He brought with him from all his
wanderings a good deal of information (more or less correct
in itself, but unrelated, and therefore misleading), a high
standard of personal honor, a sentimental veneration for
all women, bad as well as good, and a bitter hatred of
Englishmen. Thea often thought that the nicest thing
about Ray was his love for Mexico and the Mexicans, who
had been kind to him when he drifted, a homeless boy, over
the border. In Mexico, Ray was Senor Ken-ay-dy, and
when he answered to that name he was somehow a different
fellow. He spoke Spanish fluently, and the sunny warmth
of that tongue kept him from being quite as hard as his
chin, or as narrow as his popular science.
While Ray was smoking his cigar, he and Johnny fell to
talking about the great fortunes that had been made in
the Southwest, and about fellows they knew who had
"struck it rich."
"I guess you been in on some big deals down there?"
Johnny asked trustfully.
Ray smiled and shook his head. "I've been out on some,
John. I've never been exactly in on any. So far, I've either
held on too long or let go too soon. But mine's coming to
me, all right." Ray looked reflective. He leaned back in
the shadow and dug out a rest for his elbow in the sand.
"The narrowest escape I ever had, was in the Bridal Cham-
ber. If I hadn't let go there, it would have made me rich.
That was a close call."
Johnny looked delighted. "You don' say! She was silver
mine, I guess?"
"I guess she was! Down at Lake Valley. I put up a few
hundred for the prospector, and he gave me a bunch of
stock. Before we'd got anything out of it, my brother-in-
law died of the fever in Cuba. My sister was beside herself
to get his body back to Colorado to bury him. Seemed
foolish to me, but she's the only sister I got. It's expensive
for dead folks to travel, and I had to sell my stock in the
mine to raise the money to get Elmer on the move. Two
months afterward, the boys struck that big pocket in the
rock, full of virgin silver. They named her the Bridal
Chamber. It wasn't ore, you remember. It was pure, soft
metal you could have melted right down into dollars. The
boys cut it out with chisels. If old Elmer hadn't played
that trick on me, I'd have been in for about fifty thousand.
That was a close call, Spanish."
"I recollec'. When the pocket gone, the town go bust."
"You bet. Higher'n a kite. There was no vein, just a
pocket in the rock that had sometime or another got filled
up with molten silver. You'd think there would be more
somewhere about, but NADA. There's fools digging holes in
that mountain yet."
When Ray had finished his cigar, Johnny took his man-
dolin and began Kennedy's favorite, "Ultimo Amor." It
was now three o'clock in the afternoon, the hottest hour
in the day. The narrow shelf of shadow had widened until
the floor of the amphitheater was marked off in two halves,
one glittering yellow, and one purple. The little boys had
come back and were making a robbers' cave to enact the
bold deeds of Pedro the bandit. Johnny, stretched grace-
fully on the sand, passed from "Ultimo Amor" to "Fluvia
de Oro," and then to "Noches de Algeria," playing lan-
guidly.
Every one was busy with his own thoughts. Mrs.
Tellamantez was thinking of the square in the little town
in which she was born; of the white churchsteps, with
people genuflecting as they passed, and the round-topped
acacia trees, and the band playing in the plaza. Ray Ken-
nedy was thinking of the future, dreaming the large Western
dream of easy money, of a fortune kicked up somewhere in
the hills,--an oil well, a gold mine, a ledge of copper. He
always told himself, when he accepted a cigar from a newly
married railroad man, that he knew enough not to marry
until he had found his ideal, and could keep her like a queen.
He believed that in the yellow head over there in the sand
he had found his ideal, and that by the time she was old
enough to marry, he would be able to keep her like a queen.
He would kick it up from somewhere, when he got loose
from the railroad.
Thea, stirred by tales of adventure, of the Grand Canyon
and Death Valley, was recalling a great adventure of her
own. Early in the summer her father had been invited to
conduct a reunion of old frontiersmen, up in Wyoming,
near Laramie, and he took Thea along with him to play
the organ and sing patriotic songs. There they stayed
at the house of an old ranchman who told them about
a ridge up in the hills called Laramie Plain, where the
wagon-trails of the Forty-niners and the Mormons were
still visible. The old man even volunteered to take Mr.
Kronborg up into the hills to see this place, though it was
a very long drive to make in one day. Thea had begged
frantically to go along, and the old rancher, flattered by
her rapt attention to his stories, had interceded for her.
They set out from Laramie before daylight, behind a strong
team of mules. All the way there was much talk of the
Forty-niners. The old rancher had been a teamster in a
freight train that used to crawl back and forth across the
plains between Omaha and Cherry Creek, as Denver was
then called, and he had met many a wagon train bound for
California. He told of Indians and buffalo, thirst and
slaughter, wanderings in snowstorms, and lonely graves
in the desert.
The road they followed was a wild and beautiful one. It
led up and up, by granite rocks and stunted pines, around
deep ravines and echoing gorges. The top of the ridge, when
they reached it, was a great flat plain, strewn with white
boulders, with the wind howling over it. There was not one
trail, as Thea had expected; there were a score; deep fur-
rows, cut in the earth by heavy wagon wheels, and now
grown over with dry, whitish grass. The furrows ran side
by side; when one trail had been worn too deep, the next
party had abandoned it and made a new trail to the right
or left. They were, indeed, only old wagon ruts, running
east and west, and grown over with grass. But as Thea ran
about among the white stones, her skirts blowing this way
and that, the wind brought to her eyes tears that might
have come anyway. The old rancher picked up an iron
ox-shoe from one of the furrows and gave it to her for a
keepsake. To the west one could see range after range of
blue mountains, and at last the snowy range, with its white,
windy peaks, the clouds caught here and there on their
spurs. Again and again Thea had to hide her face from the
cold for a moment. The wind never slept on this plain, the
old man said. Every little while eagles flew over.
Coming up from Laramie, the old man had told them
that he was in Brownsville, Nebraska, when the first tele-
graph wires were put across the Missouri River, and that
the first message that ever crossed the river was "West-
ward the course of Empire takes its way." He had been
in the room when the instrument began to click, and all
the men there had, without thinking what they were doing,
taken off their hats, waiting bareheaded to hear the mes-
sage translated. Thea remembered that message when she
sighted down the wagon tracks toward the blue moun-
tains. She told herself she would never, never forget it.
The spirit of human courage seemed to live up there with
the eagles. For long after, when she was moved by a
Fourth-of-July oration, or a band, or a circus parade, she
was apt to remember that windy ridge.
To-day she went to sleep while she was thinking about
it. When Ray wakened her, the horses were hitched to the
wagon and Gunner and Axel were begging for a place on
the front seat. The air had cooled, the sun was setting, and
the desert was on fire. Thea contentedly took the back seat
with Mrs. Tellamantez. As they drove homeward the stars
began to come out, pale yellow in a yellow sky, and Ray
and Johnny began to sing one of those railroad ditties that
are usually born on the Southern Pacific and run the length
of the Santa Fe and the "Q" system before they die to give
place to a new one. This was a song about a Greaser dance,
the refrain being something like this:--
"Pedro, Pedro, swing high, swing low,
And it's allamand left again;
For there's boys that's bold and there's some that's cold,
But the gold boys come from Spain,
Oh, the gold boys come from Spain!"
