Five Mile Beach weekly journal., 1923-02-16

ut leuBLu 10 TedllZe mat the ueSef
was a teacher. He did not realize al
that he had learned, but he was
different man.. And when he decided
upon that, he was not thinking of thu
slow, ure call to the primal instinct
of man; he was thinking that thu
desert, as much as he had experiences
and no more, would absolutely over
turn the whole scale of a mans val
ues, break old habits, form new ones
remake him. More of desert expert
ence, Gale believed, would be too mucl
for intellect. The desert did not bree,
civilized man.
Thus the nights passed, ~endlessl!
long, with Gale fighting for his old or
der of thought, fighting the fascina
ton of that infinite sky, and tn,
gloomy insulating whirl of the wild
shadows, fighting for belief hope
prayer, fighting against the terribli
e-ver-recurring idea of being lost, lost
lost in the desert, fighting harder thai
any other thing the insidious, pene
trating, tranquil, unfeeling self tina
was coming between him and his mem
DRY.
He felt he was losing the battle
losing his hold on tangible things, los
Ing his power to stand up under thi
p%onderous, merciless weight of deser
space and silence.
AT the moment he was alone on tn,
promontory. The night was far spent
4 CHASTITY moon haunted the black
volcanic spurs. The winds blew ST.
lently. Was he alone? No, he did
not seem to be alone. The Yaqui was
there. Suddenly a strange, cold sensa-
tiosl crept over Gale. 1t was new.
He felt a presence. Turning, he ex-
pected to see the Indian, but instead.
"a slight shadow, pale, almost white,
stood there, not close nor yet distant.
1t seemed to brighten. Then he saw
a woman who resembled a girl he had
seemed to know long ago. She was
twhite-faced, golden-haired, and her
lips were sweet, and her eyes were
turning black. Nell! He had forgot
ten her. Over him flooded a torrent
of memory. There was tragic woe in
this sweet face. Nell was holding out
her arms-she was crying aloud to him
across the sand and the cactus and
the lava. She was in trouble, and he
had been forgetting.
That night he climbed the lava to
the topmost cone, and never slipped
on a ragged crust nor touched a choya
thorn. A voice had called to him.
He saw Nell's eyes in the stars, in the
velvet blue of sky, in the blackness of
the engulfng shadows. She was with
him, a slender shape, a spirit, keeping
step with him, and memory was
strong, sweet, beating, beautiful. Far
down in the west, family golden with
light of the sinking moon, he saw a
cloud that resembled her face. A
cloud on the desert horizon! He gazed
and gazed. Was that a spirit face like
the one by his side? No-he did not
dream.
In the hot, sultry morning Yaqui
appeared at camp, after long hours of
absence, and he pointed with a long,
dark arm toward the west. A bank of
clouds was rising above the mountain
barrier.
Rain" he cried; and his sOnorous
voice rolled down the arroyo.
Those who heard him were as ship
wrecked mariners at sight of a dis
tant sail.
Dick Gale, silent, grateful to the
depths of his soul, stood with arm
over Blanco Sol and watched the
Transforming west, where clouds of
wondrous size and hue piled over n
another, rushing, darkening, spreading,
sweeping upward toward that white
and glowing sum-.
"Oh! l felt a drop of rain on my
face =" cried Mercedes; and, whisper
ing the name of a saint, she kissed
her husband.
Laid, gaunt, old, bent, looked up
at the maelstrom of clouds, and he
said, softly, "Shore Wen get in the
bosses, an pack light, an hit the trail,
an make night marches! -
Then up out of the gulf of the west
swept a believing wind and a black
pail and terrible flashes of lightning
and thunder like the end of the world
fury, blackness, chaos, the desert
storm.