The Red Book Magazine/Volume 12/Number 5/The Enchanted Valley

by Eugene Manlove Rhodes

 

The Enchanted Valley

BY EUGENE MANLOVE RHODES

ILLUSTRATED BY
WILL CRAWFORD

Reeling, the white wrack of stars fled down the west, save where a grim rear-guard, rock-stubborn in the rout, still held the dawn at bay.

In the Hueco stage, L. Orrin Sewall, cramped and stiffened from the long night-ride, glanced enviously at his one fellow-passenger sleeping peacefully on the impromptu berth—happily combined of seat, baggage, lap-robe, and mail-sack—which Sewall had found impossible. Thereon as to the manner born, Jeff Bransford curled luxuriously, oblivious to whip-crack, lurch, and jolting wheel.

Weird, ghostly, the giant candelabra of the saguarro shaped forth from the shadows ahead, bore down upon them, slipped by and faded back to dimness in the rear.

As it grew lighter, Sewall saw that they were plunging against an enormous mass of mountain, blue-black, huge, forbidding. The black became gray—brown—pink—but Sewall looked vainly for gap or gateway in the frowning wall. He was about to question the silent driver, when Jeff rolled over and sat up.

“Ugh-h! I dreamed I was asleep!” he said, blinking and stretching. “Hello! here we are! Say! you'd hate to make that drive in the heat—Look back!”

Sewall turned. The grouped windmills of La Mancha, the last stage-station, were already far below them, so clearly outlined as to seem almost at hand, yet shrunken to toy dimensions. Tiny but distinct, a meager feather of smoke curled lazily above the cook-house.

Beyond, the stage-road, white and straight, dimmed to a line, a speck—nothing. The overwhelming desert, which Sewall knew to be almost water-level, seemed now, looking down, uptilted to an interminable slope, along which his eye toiled wearily—up—up—up till the far foothills of the Sacremento as its farthest marge seemed the very roof of the world; while, still above, the mighty mountain itself loomed monstrous and unbelievable. The early camp-fires of La Luz shone redly, palpitant, firefly sparks through the faint thin mists of dawn.

“There's where started from—those fires yonder,” said Jeff pointing. “That's where La Luz gets it's name—'The Lights.' See 'em from most everywhere. Eighty consecutive miles from here, these fires are. Don't look it, do they?”

They wheeled swiftly up the steady slope of foot-hill, over a road of decomposed granite, yellow and red and golden warm, picked with white gleam of crystal and quartz; so beaten and packed that it was resonant under the scampering, rhythmical feet. Scurry of rabbit, whir of startled quail, perfume of blossomed mesquite; the rank saguarro, the giant cactus, fluted and gray-green now in the clearer light! To right, to left, down the spinning brown aisles of pungent tar brush, there was a flaunting of riotous scarlet like a flash of crimson flame—the smaller cacti innumerable, with ever the modest yellow of tuna and prickly-pear, or the red of the yucca's waxen bells. That was the picture.

Snuffing cheerfully in the cool freshness, the four ponies swung gayly around the long sinuous curves, eluding ridge or arroyo, ever sacrificing distance to grade

And now they were at the very base of the Hueco's mighty, prodigious, buttressed, bulk. The hazy crest formed a battlement frowning and sheer, crenellated to a titanic parapet; with upshoot of granite needle and spur, already flushing to a delicate pink in the upper sunrise.

“So that's the Hoo-ee-co mountain, is it,” asked Sewall.

Jeff sat up, a malicious light in his eye. All the long road from La Luz to sleepy-time his companion had persistently enlightened the aboriginal mind with precisely worded, cocksure information—more especially crushing current political heresies under the weight of expert authority. In labeled pigeon-holes of Sewall's neat and orderly mind filed phonographically accurate records of the wisdoms promulgated by Prof. J. Langdon Leighton, of Pharos University—endorsed by men whose names were synonyms of success—full of sonorous words as blessed as Mesopotamia. Jeff had been so entranced with some of the more poetical terms that he had privately added them to his own vocabulary: rolling them in silent anticipation as sweet morsels under his tongue. “Empiric,” “demagogue” and “charlatan”—always delivered by Sewall in accents of virulent and scornful superiority—especially appealed to Jeff as words useful to him in his vocation of broncho-buster.

“Hoo-ee-co?” he echoed. “No siree! H-u-e-c-o. You pronounce it 'W-h-a-c-o,' and it means 'hollow,' like a tree.”

“Why do you call it that?” continued Sewall. “And where's the town?”

Jeff looked puzzled. “Why—why, we call it that—well, partly because that's its name, partly because its hollow. And the town's in the hollow—basin inside, like a saucer.”

“Someway,” said Sewall, disappointed, “I'd got the impression that the town—what's the name?—Son Todos was quite a place.”

“Oh. well—like a butter-bowl, then,” said Jeff generously. “Saucer-shaped, I meant, not saucer-sized. Strictly speaking, there aint no town. Just a four story settlement, like. Farms in the valley, cows and horses on the hillsides, mines underground and goats in the upper air. Son Todos, where we stop—stage-station, postoffice, store, everything else—was the first ranch, and the valley took the name.”

“But why Son Todos?”

“What d'ye want us to call it?” said Jeff petulantly. “'South West New J. Q. Adamsburg?? 'New Canterbury?' 'Versailles Center?' 'Tyre and Sidon?' 'Son Todos' means 'That's all.' Because—well just because that's all. You can't go no further.”

“What queer names you have in this country,” meditated Sewall.

“You from Schenectady, too?” queried Jeff tartly.

“Schenectady? Oh, no; I'm from Poughkeepsie,” said Sewall, in all simplicity.

The driver choked. “This here dust all the time is mighty bad for my throat,” he explained; his first—and last—contribution to the council.

A pipe-line, straddling on crazy stilts, rambled drunkenly down the tangled hill-side to a string of watering troughs. where a few cattle were straggling in. In the overhanging, broken precipice ahead Sewall now became aware of a shallow fissure set obliquely to the mountain's trend. Suddenly it became an appalling chasm, deep-hewn by the stupendous chisels of fire and frost and flood. Into this they plunged blindly, though it apparently ended in a hope less “box” a little higher up.

“Surely, there is some mistake!” ejaculated the Easterner. “We can never get up there!”

“Yes, we can. There's an elevator. You'll see!” said Jeff most reassuringly.

“I'll give you the gun for your white pig”

At the last moment, rounding a turmoil of broken and splintered rock, they came to an angled cleft, narrow, portentous, dark; widening to a wide cañon, scarred and gashed and torn, its cliffs carven grotesquely to dragon and gnome and leering face, spiteful, haggard, importunate, sinister. Turning, twisting, by boulder and gully and scar and cairn, flood-torn wash, abrupt steeps, hog-back, with downward plunge and squeal of protecting brakes, they held their doubtful way, for the solid rock had opened magically before, then closed irrevocably behind.

“We call this Zig-Zag,” volunteered Jeff. “A—eh—a whim of ours,” he added, diffidently.

Sewall actually smiled.“It is crooked,” he admitted.

“Yes. Good thing, too. No snakes in the valley. Break their backs trying to get through.”

Another turn followed by a long steep pitch up a buttressed shoulder and a black-lettered boulder flashed them ironical warning:

Danger!

Slow Down to Eight Miles an Hour!

They came to the top in a breathless scramble, bursting through that unquiet gateway, that shuddering confusion of hobgoblin nightmare, into a waiting, waking sunlit world.

So beautiful was it, so peaceful and sheltered, so sharp the contrast with the savage grandeur of the Pass, that Sewall involuntarily broke into an exclamation of delight.

{{block center|

“The island-valley of Avilion;
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,
Nor ever wind blows loudly,”
he quoted, under his breath.

The air was fragrant, balmy, a-quiver with bird-song and questing bee. The saucer slopes, though boulder strewn, were smooth and symmetrical in contour, thin-parked, with cedar and live oak and dotted with strange flowers. Cattle and horses grazed leisurely, raising their heads to regard the intruders with mild contemplation. Bands of snow-white Angora-goats, escorted by knowing collies, were on their browsing way to the herbs and shrubs of the higher reaches. Above the winding road they could see the frequent scar of dump and tunnel, rock huts clinging to the hill sides.

The flat floor of the saucer was a sweeping field of shaded emerald, unbroken save for winding irrigating ditches and dividing fences, and twice grateful after the pale desert. There were no buildings on the floor; the level land, which alone could be cultivated to advantage, was too valuable.

On the lower hill, barely above the floor, the road circled 'round this farm land. Just above it, wherever a tiny rill ran sparkling down from the mountain, were nestled homes of flat roofed adobe or stone, deep set in orchards, vineyards, and gardens. For this, the hill was terraced with much toil to a sort of giant stairway, blasted from the rocky slope. The lower side of each step was walled with the boulders, filled in behind with small rocks and debris, laboriously covered with soil and leveled for irrigation; always with a “tank” on the highest step for the hoarding of water.

“I have never seen a fairer spot,” said Sewall, drawing a long breath. “But I suppose, like every other place, it has its drawbacks?”

“It has,” assented Jeff, decidedly. “Real things—beer, milk, eggs, grain, fruit—they have the best and to spare. The mines are good, too—but low grade ore and the long haul to the smelter—see? Even their beef-herds can't be driven across the desert in first class shape. Too far between water-holes. They get the highest market-price for what they use, but the surplus—well, freight and shrinkage wipes out the profit. You just merely get day-wages for your trip. Then you blow in the day-wages seeing El Paso. That's about right.

“So there's no money. They're learning though. They're raising their own pork now, which isn't considered a proper thing for a cowman to do. They make ropes out of colt's tails and rawhide, mold their own candles, and let the women wash with amole to save buying soap. But there's no ready money. Everything's bought on time. One week after steer-sale the money's all back in Kansas City. Exports: Ore, cattle, mohair, fruit and raw material for freshmen. Imports postage-stamps, playing-cards, school-ma'ams, and other necessaries. But they'd be the happiest gente on earth only for one thing.”

“What's that?” asked the tourist, interested.

“Debt.”

“Whom do they owe?”

“Each other,” said Jeff, with an explanatory wiggle of his fingers. “Always buying and trading—no cash. It spoils their peace of mind. And here we are.”

Where the largest rivulet tinkled bell-like over mimic cascades to a natural shelf, stood a cottonwood grove. In its dense, impenetrable shade the stage drew up before the low rambling building of Son Todos—postoffice, store. hotel, livery-stable, blacksmith-shop, saloon—adorned with a comprehensive sign,

Entertainment Within For Man and Beast

Freight-depot, it was too, judging from the evidence of the huge wheeled wagons rigged with chains and stretchers for twenty-horse “jerk-line” teams; each with another wagon, smaller indeed, but still enormous, “trailed” behind. A chuck-box, in the trail-wagons, replaced the usual end-gate; water barrels were swung on platforms built at either side, just forward of the rear wheels.

“You see,” explained Jeff, as they sat at a delicious breakfast al fresco, with an orchestra of far-off mocking-birds and the cheerful undertone of broken waters. “You see, it's no trouble to produce here, but it's a long, long ways to the consumer. If you do your own hauling—well, you likely aint got more'n one little, muzzle-loading, four-horse rig. You go down full of freight, come back mebbe empty—and mebbe full of booze. Got your choice of bad or worse. Whitely now, he's got five or six big freight outfits like yonder. He does the freighting as cheap as the boys could do themselves. But still he makes money on it, for he freights, as you may say, by the wholesale, and gets retail rates, d'ye see? And he gets his own stuff brought back for nothing. Keeps the teams on the road all the time, no loss for idle plant.”

“He ought to get rich,'” said Sewall.

“Well, yes. He is doing well—buying some city property in El Paso. But as for actual cash—well, you see, he carries us all over and that takes a lot of money.”

“Carries you over? I don't understand.”

“He sells us everything we need—grub, clothes, barbed-wire, saddles, everything—on a year's time,” explained Jeff. “Sells them, I mean; I don't live here myself. Just come down once or twice in a while to get rested. So they bring their produce—ore, mohair, grain, baled alfalfa—whatever it is—and turn it in on account. He don't buy it, 'cause naturally, mail only coming in once a week, he can't keep track of prices. He just credits 'em with the quantity, sells it for them the best he can, and charges a fair freight. If there's anything over, he pays their taxes for 'em or may-be-so sends money for their girls to come on to get married or to the kids off at school—as the case may be.

“Yes—he's well fixed. all right. They don't grudge it to him. He keeps a lookout for good things. If there's a boy that ought to go to college or a young man of energy and enterprise wanting to try the city—why, Whitely finds 'em a chance. But as for cash, he spends it fixin' up things; improvements, you know—a little old flour-mill here, a sorghum-mill there—something to help 'em all. And he coughs up surreptitious for valley-folks out in said world, that's sick or in trouble. There aint many of 'em.”

Sewall nodded. “I can understand that,” he said. “Prisoners of content.”

“So while the old man handles lots of coin he don't keep it in stock,” continued Jeff. “Any margin that might be comin' to the valley he brings back in the shape of canned progress—the latest thing in sewing-machines, phonographs, and the like. He's comfortable—same as the rest—and he saves 'em the trouble of thinking. But about all he gets out of it is the fun of being boss.

“Well, so long. I'm going up to see a friend. Folks'1l begin to drop in bimeby after their mail. Be good!”

II

“No,” said Jeff, carelessly, an hour later, answering Cal Rucker's question as to the newcomer, “not a bad sort of fellow. He'll maybe want to measure the Huecos with his little foot-rule and reduce 'em to grains Troy—but there's no harm in him.”

Here he was interrupted.

George, brother to Cal, rode into the yard, coming directly to the “gallery” of Cal's bachelor-home, and to the point.

“Hulloo, Cal! Howdy, Mr. Bransford. Say, Cal—you got any money?”

Cal turned his pockets wrong side out, made hopeful search of his hat, and shook his head with decision.

“Too bad,” said George. “I owe Tom Hendricks on them milk-cows and he needs it. I allowed maybe I could borrow it of Whitely, but he'd just sent off his last cent. Told me he hadn't cash to give Tom Garrett an advance for boring a well over the Divide. I've got a good lot comin' from the boarding-house at the Modoc mine, for milk, butter, eggs, and garden-truck. But, 'course, she can't pay till the boarders pay and they can't pay till Jimmy Dodds gets returns from his last shipment.”

“So Hendricks'll nicely have to wait,” interrupted Cal, cheerfully dismissing the subject as trivial. “Come along, you two, and see my pigs.”

“Miss Hagan puts Bobby on a burro and surprises me”

They stirred up the sleeping beauties—one white and one spotted.

“Now, them's sure nice hawgs,” said George admiringly. “Say, Cal, give you that gun you was wantin' for 'em.”

“I'll give you one of 'em for it,” the counter offer.

“No you wont. Tell you what I will do, though,” George proposed. “You've got to be gone to the round-ups. Let me fat 'em on shares. I got plenty milk and corn and I stay to home steady.”

“All right,” said Cal, nothing loth. “Keep 'em till December first for half?”

“Help me start 'em!” said George.

After some jockeying the pigs went merrily frisking on their way.

Jeff and his host were returning when George came back. “Hey, buddie! 'Spose one of them hawgs dies? How about that? Do we whack on the other one?”

“Nary whack. I was always luckier'n you was,” returned Cal, confidently. (“George's married!” he added in a commiserating aside to Jeff.) “White one's mine, spotted one yours, for better or worse.

“That's fair. It's understood then—the white one's yourn, and Spot's mine?”

“Sure thing,” Cal agreed.

George rode a few steps and turned back again, struck with a sudden thought.

“Tell you what, Cal—I'll give you the gun for your white pig!”

He held out the gun, tempting in its silver and pearl. Cal's eyes twinkled covetously

“Belt and all?” he queried, shrewdly.

“Belt and all.”

“I'll go you once.”

Whereupon George promtly unbuckled the belt and handed it over.

Then Jeff spoke up for the first time.

“Run along now, Callie boy, and shoot tin-cans. I want a little talk with your brother.”

When Cal was on his way, Jeff, twisting his hands in the saddle-strings, said diffidently,

“I didn't want to be too forward, Mr. Rucker—not knowing you very well, but—well, your brother's an old friend of mine, and this is no use to me just now if it'll help you any—you're welcome. Been there myself.”

Awkwardly he held out a crumpled and wadded hundred dollar bill.

“Let me make you acquainted with the boys”

George spread it out, regarding him gravely.

“Why, this is right clever of you, Mr. Bransford. If you're sure you can spare it—?”

Jeff waved his hand.

“All right, then, and thank you kindly. We'll go back and have Cal stand good for this, if you'd rather. Good old noodle, Cal,” said George with fraternal indulgence. “Lucky chap!”

Jeff looked back.

Lucky Cal stood half-turned toward them, scratching his head, glancing alternately at his brother and at the six shooter on his open palm, his whole attitude expressive of dawning distrust.

“I guess that wont be necessary,” drawled Jeff, tone and face of preternatural gravity. “I have a good deal of confidence in your commercial ability, Mr. Rucker.”

“Thank you again, then. I'll do as much for some other fellow. See them blame pigs hike, will you? Adios!”

“Me for a nap,” announced Jeff, as he came up the path.

Cal sat on the gallery, a puzzled look on his face, regarding the six-shooter with marked disfavor.

“Good gun, Cal?” asked Jeff, with lifted brows.

Cal half raised the gun and gazed solicitously after his departing brother.

“I've a blame good mind to see!” he said earnestly.

When Jeff awoke in the late afternoon his host was not visible. He made his way to Son Todos, finding there a lively crowd of old acquaintances. But Sewall adroitly appropriated him and drew him apart. He had changed notably in twenty-four hours, his slightly patronizing attitude being abandoned for one of enthusiasm, informality, and eager inquiry.

“This is the greatest place I ever saw,” he said. “I want you to explain a number of things to me. In the first place, how do you reconcile Mr. Whitley's benevolent guidance with his saloon-keeping?”

“That's easy,” returned Jeff. “He does that to hold the boys down. He hates whisky some but drunkenness a good deal more. So long as he keeps a saloon, d'ye see, no one else is going to—not in this valley. And when a man you like, a man that's done you favors, advises you to taper off—especially if you owe him a good deal of money and intend to owe him more—why you're apt to heed as well as hear. Besides you know he wont let you have another drop anyhow.”

“That's clear enough,” said Sewall. “But, see here,” he added suspiciously, “you mustn't play any more tricks on travelers.”

“Tricks?” echoed Jeff, mystified.

“Oh, you're innocent, aren't you? You told me these people had no money. Why, they've got it to burn! Buying, selling, paying debts, trading and giving to boot, and always handing over the cash.”

Jeff recalled the solemn political and financial maxims laid down by his fellow traveler on the previous night, but refrained from comment

“Oh, well!” he said with lightsome gesture, “I told you they had the real thing—land, stock, produce. If there's more money in circulation than there used to be, they're not really any better off than they were before—they just seem to be.”

Sewall chuckled.

“Oh you don't fool me any more with your whimsicalities. Your pretended opinions are just part of the characteristic quiet fun that seems to prevail here—like the 'slow down' sign at the pass. Oh, I like it here! The people are the jolliest, friendliest, best natured set I've ever met. No blues or hard-luck stories here.

“I don't mind telling you, in confidence, that I came here to look into Mr. James Dodd's copper-mining proposition. I'll own that you fooled me with your humorous account of financial conditions, and that I had formed an unfavorable opinion of the business-ability and energy of these people. But when I see them, everyone with elastic step, sparkling eye, high spirits—even Mr. Dodd's miners—with the confident assumed air of men on the winning side, it's prepossessing, I tell you. Of course, one cannot allow such things to influence one's business judgment, but I will admit that their jaunty, care-free bearing has impressed me, and that I rather expect to find the mine a good thing.”

“Oh, it's a good mine, all right, all right,” murmured Jeff.

“Be the mine what it may,” declared the Easterner, bubbling with enthusiasm, “it is a great country! I intend to secure a holding here—shooting-box, Summer house, that sort of thing—and bring out my nervously prostrated friends to get back into tune with life.”

“Let me make you acquainted with some of the boys,” said Jeff.

So presently they were the center of an animated group under the trees. Cal and George were among the number. When most of the male population were gathered to entertain Sewall, George edged Jeff to one side. He was highly elated.

“I wonder if all them debts is paid”

“There's been the blamedest goin's-on you ever heard of,” he confided. “You see, that there bill yourn was about the first real loose money around here for quite some time. Our credit's good; we all know each other. We'll pay, all right, some time. We'd rather owe a man always than go back on a debt. But somehow a good debt aint just the same thing as good coin. I reckon every fellow around here either. owed debts he hated not payin', or else there was something he'd been a-wantin' bad for some time. Cash made quick tradin'. You never saw such circulation since you was rolled down hill in a barrel, never.”

“I tried to overtake a lie, once,” suggested Jeff, thoughtfully. “I think I understand.”

“That's the way this was. I paid Hendricks. He handed it over to Nate for four ponies he'd bought. Nate turned it in on his store-bill. Whitley advanced it to Tommy Garrett on the well-borin'; and Tom paid it to his fireman. He'd been lettin' Tom hold out his wages, 'count of Mis' Garret bein' sick.”

“Well, Tom's man, he's sparkin' Miss Berenice. So he put the greenback up agin Squatty Robinson's new buggy and harness, first throw at dice. Squatty bought a stack of alfalfa from Lon—”

“—That tossed the dog, that worried the cat, that caught the rat, and so forth?” intimated Jeff, politely.

“Anyway,” George persevered, “along towards supper-time them Foy boys that's driftin' on the Mormon paid it to Bill McCall for last Winter's beef. Mac got four bronc's from Nate for it—pick 'em anywhere on the range. Nate was so plumb affluent that he loaned it to Jimmy Dodds. There bein' no change, Jimmy just give it to the four men on the night-shift. They put their heads together and handed it over to Mis' Hagan on their board-bill. Miss Hagan's that tickled she puts Bobby on a burro and surprises me with it—the same old bill with a red ink blot on it—and I hereby returns the same to you, with my compliments. Much obliged for the loan.”

“Don't mention it,” said Jeff, pocketing the bill. “Whitley's lighting up. Guess the boys are going in.”

The crowd was, in fact, slowly sauntering by, deep in conversation.

“Really, I don't know,” said Cal to Sewall, as they passed. “George, here, speaks pretty Spanish. George, what does 'gue tomas ustedes?' mean?”

“What will you have?” translated the unsuspecting George. The assembly, turning briskly to the saloon, answered in joyful chorus,

“Beer!”

And Cal, most ungenerously, squealed like a pig.

Alone that night, Jeff stirred up the fire, took out the bill that had so prospered Son Todos, looked it over carefully, then sadly held it to the flame.

“Pity it's a counterfeit!” he said. “I wonder, now, if all them debts is squared up honest?”