Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1923-05-10
Author of
The Riders Of the Purple Sage,
Wildf1re. Etc.
By ZANE GREY
Author of
Copyright by Harper & Brothers /.

| When Yaqui came up they set about
the hardest task of all, to pack the
best Of that heavy sheep down miles
of steep, ragged, choya-covered lava.
The torrid summer heat came i'm
perceptibly, or it could never have
been borne by white men. 1t changed
the lives Of the fugitives, making
them partly nocturnal in habit. The
| nights had the balmy GOODNESS of
| spring, and would have been delight
full for sleep, but that would have
made the blazing days uncomfortable
AS Ladd had said, one of their
greatest problems was the passing of
time. The nights were inrerminably
long, but they had to be passed in
work or play or dream-anything ex-
cept sleep. That was Ladds most in
flexible command. He gave no rea-
son. But not improbably the ranger
thought that the terrific heat Of the
day spent in slumber lessened wear
and strain, If not a real danger of
madness.
Accordingly, at first the occupations
of this little group were many and
various They worked if they had
something to do, or could invent a
pretext. They told and retold stories
until all were wearfsome. They sang
songs. Mercedes taught Spanish.
They played every game they knew.
They invented others that were so
trivial children would scarcely have
been interested, and these they played
seriously. In word, with intelli-
gence and passion, with all that was
civilized and human, they fought the
ever-infringing loneliness, the savage
solitude of their environment.
Gale believed himself the keenest
of the party, the one who thought
most, and he watched the effect of the
desert upon his companions For
hours, it seemed, Ladd would bend
over his checkerboard and never
make a move. It mattered not now
whether or not he had a partner Jim
Lash, the calmest, coolest, most nom
chalant, best-hlmored westerner Gale
had ever met, had by slow degrees
lost that cheerful character which
would have been of such infinite good
to his companions and always he sat
brooding, silently brooding. Jim had
no ties, few memories, and the desert
was claiming him.
Thorne and Mercedes, however,
were living, wonderful proof that spir-
it, mind, and heart were free-free to
soar in scorn of the colossal barren
ness and silence and space of that
terrible hedging prison of lava. They
were young; they loved; they were
together; and the oasis was almost a
paradise. Thorne and Mercedes had
forgotten the outside world If they
had been existing on the burned-out
desolate moon they could hardly have
been in a harsher. grimmer lonelier
spot than this red-Walled arroya.
Although the Yaqui was as his
shadow, Gale reached a point when
he seemed to wander alone at twi-
light, in the night, at dawn At night
he had formed a habit of climbing up
the lava slope as far as the smooth
trail extended, and there on a promon-
tory he paced to and fro and watched
! the stars, and sat stone-stiH for hours
looking down at the vast void with its
moving, changing shadows. He came
| at length to, realize that the desert
| was a teacher. He did not realize all
that he had learned, but he was
different man. And when he decided
upon that, he was not thinking of the
slow, sure call to the primal instincts
Of man; he was thinking that the
desert as much as he had experienced
/ 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 much
for intellect. The desert did not breed
civilized man.
Thus the nights passed, endlessly
| long, with Gale fighting for his old or
der of thought, fighting the fascina-
ton of that Infinite sky, and the
gloomy insulating whirl of the wide
shadows, fighting for belief, hope,
prayer, fighting against the terrible
ever-recurring idea of being lost, lost,
lOSl III the desert; uSHllIlS HdFd0f imam
any other thing the insidious, pene-
trating, tranquil. unfeeling self that
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 this
ponderous, merciless weight of desert
space and silence.
At the moment he was alone on the