Captives of the Desert. Zane Grey
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Wilbur Newton had failed in the ranch enterprise, though Mary had struggled to keep up her end. Of course, so proud a man as he had to flee from his disgrace, so they migrated to southern Arizona. Two years later his farming project in some remote Arizona valley was abandoned—for what reason Katharine never knew—and they transferred their meager possessions to Taho, on the Navaho Indian Reservation, where the man of infinite daring prospered on a salary as assistant to a trader. He was the kind of person who would prosper under any condition, where his wife could scrape and sweat. Katharine had seen. Indignation burned within her. Once Katharine had written from the East, admonishing Mary not to wait too long with news of a little Wilbur Junior. Such news never came, nor any comment on Katharine’s suggestion. The time had come when Katharine was profoundly grateful: neither dogs nor children liked Wilbur.
“The desert is thought-provoking, isn’t it?” Mary’s even words broke through her stormy meditation.
Katharine flushed and hastily replied that it was. But Mary’s eyes, quick and roving, had left her.
“Look!” the older girl cried. “There’s Leupp. See that windmill? See those specks? They’re the government buildings.”
“But that isn’t fifteen miles away!” Katharine protested.
“Oh, yes, good long desert miles. Distances are deceiving, and so is the general topography of this country. Notice that brownish line like a thread dropped carelessly—about halfway between here and Leupp? That’s Canyon Diablo, a great deep canyon. We must cross it to make Leupp.”
“Canyon Diablo? Devil’s Canyon, I presume. Oh, how thrilling! Who’d ever guess this desert below us was anything but a perfectly level floor? . . . Now I know I’ll be broken-hearted if we aren’t rescued soon!”
“It’s a strange thing to consider,” Mary explained, “that Indians at Leupp doubtless know this very minute that a party of four people, two men and two women, are stalled on the desert near—well, whatever they call this particular landmark. . . . More of what I call desert magic. I never yet traveled anywhere on the desert that news of my coming did not precede me.”
“Oh, how spooky!” Katharine cried, thrilled to the marrow. “We are being watched, you mean. While we sit here thinking we are the only souls for miles around, Indian eyes are peering at us and riders are carrying word of our coming.”
Mary laughed, a low, pleasing musical laugh. “There’s not an Indian behind every greasewood bush and cactus patch,” she corrected. “But rest assured, the eyes of the desert are on you.”
“Would the Indians be likely to send back help from Leupp?” queried Katharine.
“No, unless some white friend were expecting a party of our description. That doesn’t happen to be our luck.”
“Anyway, it’s a lark, whatever comes.” Katharine’s words were profoundly sincere. She was seeing so much, living so much, learning so much. “Tell me some more about your fascinating Indians,” she begged.
And as they sat there, looking out over the wasteland, Mary related much that she had learned about the desert dwellers, explaining graphically the dissimilar customs of the gypsy-like, nomadic Navahos and the civic-spirited Hopis who were planning for the solemn snake dance rituals. As Katharine listened she watched the gray tide of cloud shadow slowly advance before a lowering sun. Now the desert appeared more defined through dissolving haze. The distant irregular purple frieze grew bold in profile. Shadow lay upon it like folds pressed in velvet.
“You have only to watch evening come to the desert to understand what stirs these Indians to such religious fervor,” concluded Mary.
“Can we stay here till the sun goes down?” Katharine asked.
“Heavens, no!” returned Mary, swinging to her feet with a start. “There are things to do.”
“Things to do? Surely the only thing to do is wait, watch and enjoy.”
“Yes. Campfire to make—supper to get. The driver will rustle some wood. I’ll handle the rest.”
“And Wilbur, poor dear, what will he do? . . . Ah, think, no doubt!” Katharine mimicked the slow, even drawl of the man she ridiculed, then added tartly, “Someday he’ll die from what the observer might call overthoughtfulness, but at the post-mortem it will be discovered that his brains are only cotton wool!”
“Katharine!” begged Mary, with just the least sign of reproach in her searching gray eyes. “I’m sure Wilbur’s a good camper when he’s alone on the trail, or with men. But when I’m along. . . .”
“Oh, yes, dear. I understand, and I’m sorry. But I feel like the bubble in that fairy story my mother used to tell us—the bubble who wanted to burst and couldn’t. You remember: ‘One day the poor bubble got giddy and gay.’ Well, look out!”
“But the consequences were dire,” remarked Mary thoughtfully. “The bubble found that things could never be the same again.”
The full weight of the remark escaped Katharine. Far off in the direction from which they had ridden, she espied a slow-moving object. Could it be a car?
“Look!” she cried.
“That’s a car,” Mary declared. “It’s moving faster than it appears to be. Still pretty far away; but I think it will get to us before dark. Come along now.”
The descent was easy and swift, and they covered the ground between the slope and the stalled car with buoyant steps. The driver was asleep curled over his wheel. Wilbur was nowhere in sight.
“Fine!” thought Katharine. Aloud she said, “Don’t wake the driver. I’ll find wood. These clumps of dead greasewood will do, won’t they?”
Katharine’s fire was not much of a success at first, but was saved under Mary’s instructions.
“Anyone as stubbornly persistent as you will learn,” laughed Mary.
She had laid a small rug at a comfortable distance from the fire and spread camp tableware and a tempting picnic lunch. Katharine sauntered over, feeling very important now that her fire was burning.
“What’s that black iron-pot affair?” she asked curiously.
“Dutch oven,” Mary replied.
“Dutch oven?” Katharine echoed.
“The joy of a cowboy’s existence,” added Mary.
She was busy with flour and water and baking powder, and Katharine watched her quick fingers prepare a biscuit dough.
“One uses different proportions of ingredients in this altitude,” Mary explained. “I could have bombarded a town with the first biscuits I made here by the rule I used back East. . . . Now you can help by poking out some hot cinders from the bed of your fire. Make a nice little nest of them alongside. That’s for the Dutch oven.”
Katharine applied herself thoughtfully to the task. Poking hot coals from a fire was terrifying. The burning wood above had a way of collapsing and sending out showers of sparks when part of its support was dug away. She was concentrating so intently that when a voice sounded at her elbow she gave a violent start.
“I ain’t being much help to you.” It was the driver, looking decidedly sheepish.
“Oh, I’m enjoying this!”
Her sally was cut with an exclamation of approval from Mary who was coming toward them, the oven swinging from one hand, its lid in the other.
“Splendid work. It isn’t every cook who has an assistant like you. . . . Look here!”
She swung the oven toward Katharine. Neat little mounds of dough lay compact on the bottom of the pot. Mary set the pot on the bed of cinders, then, laying the lid on a stone conveniently near the fire, she raked out more coals and with a swiftness that excited Katharine’s admiration transferred them to the iron lid. A protecting edge an inch high held