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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
In "The Parowan Bonanza," B. M. Bower weaves a captivating tapestry of life in the rugged American West during the early 20th century, illuminating the complexities of pioneer spirit and community dynamics. Set against the backdrop of a burgeoning mining town, Bower's narrative blends vivid, descriptive prose with dialect-rich dialogue, bringing her characters to life amid real-world challenges. The novel, published in a time when stories of the frontier were increasingly popular, functions as both an adventure and a social commentary, exploring themes of fortune, risk, and human relationships in a transforming society. B. M. Bower, a prominent figure in early Western fiction, drew inspiration from her own experiences in the West. Having spent considerable time in Montana, her familiarity with the landscape and its people profoundly influenced her writing. Bower often infused her novels with authentic regional insights and a deep understanding of the zeitgeist surrounding the frontiers during a period marked by economic opportunity and hardship. This book is recommended for readers who appreciate richly drawn characters and evocative settings that provoke thought about the American identity. "The Parowan Bonanza" not only serves as an entertaining tale of adventure but also invites reflection on the broader societal implications of living in pursuit of dreams amid the raw beauty of the wild.
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The Parowan Bonanza
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
HOPEFUL BILL DALE
To those who do not know the desert, the word usually conjures a picture of hot, waterless wastes of sand made desolate by sparse, withered gray sage more depressing than no growth at all; blighted by rattlesnakes and scorpions and the bleached bones of men from which lean coyotes go skulking away in the brazen heat that comes with the dawn; a place where men go mad with thirst and die horribly, babbling the while of mountain brooks and the cool blur of lakes shining blue in the distance, painted treacherously there by the desert mirage.
Sometimes the desert is like that in certain places and at certain seasons of the year, but the men who know it best forgive the desert its trespasses, and love it for its magnificent distances, always beautiful, always changing their panorama of lights and shadows on uptilted mesas and deep, gray-green valleys. Such men yield to the thrall of desert sorcery that paints wonderful, translucent tints of blue, violet and purple on all the mountains there against the sky. They love the desert nights when the stars come down in friendly fashion to gaze tranquilly upon them as they sit beside their camp fires and smoke and dream, and see rapturous visions of great wealth born of that mental mirage which is but another bit of desert enchantment.
Bill Dale was such a man. Hopeful Bill, men called him, with the corners of their mouths tipped down. Bill loved the desert, loved to wander over it with his two burros waddling under full packs of grub and mining tools and dynamite. He loved to pry and peck into some mineral outcropping in a far canyon where no prospector had been before him. And though he sometimes cursed the heat and the wind and brackish water, where he expected a clear, cold spring, he loved the desert, nevertheless, and called it home.
Men jibed at his unquenchable optimism and mistook the man behind his twinkling eyes for a rainbow chaser, mirage-mad in a mild way. For even in Nevada, where the hills have made many a man a millionaire, they laugh at the seeker and call failure after him until he has found what he seeks. Then they want his friendship and a share in his good fortune; and this merely because Nevada is peopled—very thinly—with human beings and not by gods or saints.
Occasionally, when Bill Dale came to town for fresh supplies and mail, some one would wonder why a great, strapping fellow like Hopeful didn't go to work. Perhaps that was because Hopeful carried a safety razor in his pack, and had the knack of looking well-groomed on a pint of water, a clean shirt, an aluminum comb and six inches of mirror. Your orthodox prospector (at least in fiction) promises himself a bath and a clean shave when he strikes it rich, and frequently is made to forego the luxury for years.
Men liked Hopeful Bill, but they thought he was a shiftless cuss who would never amount to anything, since he had taken to the burro trail. A few remembered that Hopeful's father had been unlucky in a boom when Hopeful was just a kid. They thought it was a bad thing to have the legend of a gold mine in the family. Personally they called him a good scout,—and that was because they could borrow money from him, if he had any, and need not fear the embarrassment of being asked to repay it. They could tell their private troubles to Bill and be sure that he would never betray the confidence. But it never occurred to any man that knew him that Hopeful Bill Dale might now and then need money, or sympathy, or some one besides his menagerie to tell his troubles to.
It was the menagerie that belittled Hopeful Bill Dale in the eyes of his fellows. Commonplace souls they were, their brains dust-dry in that cranny where imagination should flourish. They could not see why any grown man should carry a green parrot and a great, gray, desert turtle around with him wherever he went. They were willing to concede the harmlessness of the fuzzy-faced Airedale, since any man is entitled to own a dog if he wants one. But they could not understand a man who would call a dog Hezekiah; which was not a dog's name at all. The mournful, hairy-chopped Hezekiah was therefore a walking proof of Hopeful Bill Dale's eccentricity. And as all the world knows, a man must be rich before he dare be different from his fellows.
Of course, they argued in Goldfield, any grown man that would keep a turtle on a string—tied firmly through a hole bored in the tail of its shell—might be expected to call it Sister Mitchell and claim that it had a good Methodist face. Who ever heard of a turtle having a face? And there was the parrot, that cooed lovingly against Bill's cheek and made little kissing sounds with its beak,—the same beak that had taken a chunk out of a stranger's hand, swearing volubly at her victim afterward. Even if Goldfield could overlook the parrot, there was its name to damn Hopeful Bill Dale finally and completely. Couldn't call it Polly, which is the natural, normal name for a parrot! No, he had to name the thing Luella. Add to that Bill's burros, that answered gravely to the names Wise One and Angelface. Could any man know these things and still take Bill Dale seriously?
Goldfield shook its head—behind Bill's back—and said he was a nice, likable fellow, but—a little bit "off" in some ways.
So there you have him, according to the estimate of his acquaintances: A great, good-natured, fine-looking man in his early thirties; a man always ready to listen to a tale of woe or to put his hand in his pocket and give of what he had, nor question the worthiness of the cause; but a man who seemed content to wander through the hills prospecting, when he might have made a success of some business more certain of yielding a good living—and mediocrity; a man with a queer kink somewhere in his make-up that prevented his taking life seriously.
Prospectors were usually men who, having failed, through age or other cause, to make good at anything else, took to burrowing in the hills and pecking at rocks and dreaming. If the habit fixed itself upon them they became plain desert rats, crack-brained and useless for any other vocation. Hopeful Bill Dale was too young, too vigorous to have the name "desert rat" laid upon him,—yet. But it was tacitly agreed that he was in a fair way to become a desert rat, if he did not pull up short and turn his mind to something else. The purposeless life he was leading would "get" him in a few more years, they prophesied sagely.
One day in spring Bill Dale walked behind his burros into Goldfield and outfitted for a long trip. Had any one examined closely Bill's pack loads, he would have guessed that Hopeful Bill had a camp established somewhere in the wilderness and was in for all the grub his two burros and a borrowed one could carry.
The storekeeper knew, as he weighed out sugar, rice, beans, dried fruit (prunes, raisins and apricots mostly), that Bill was buying with a careful regard for the maximum nourishment coupled with the minimum weight. For instance, Bill bought five pounds of black tea, though he loved coffee with true American fervor. Rolled oats he also bought,—a twenty-five pound sack. There was a great deal of nourishment in rolled oats, properly cooked. And when Bill called for two large cans of beef extract, the storekeeper looked at him knowingly.
"Goin' to develop something you've struck, hey?" he guessed with unconscious presumption.
"Going to stay till the grub's low, anyway," Bill drawled imperturbably. "Hazing burros over the trail is going to be hot work, from now on until fall. It's cooler in the hills. I'm taking out a rented burro that will come back alone. I figure this grubstake ought to run me until cool weather."
"Got a pretty good claim?" Storekeepers in mining towns are likely to be inquisitive.
"Can't say as I have," Bill grinned. "Open for engagements with old Dame Fortune, though. Kinda hoping, too, that she don't send her daughter, instead, to make a date with me."
"Her daughter?" The storekeeper was one of those who had desert dust in the folds of his brain. "Who's she?"
Bill looked at him soberly, rolling a smoke with fingers smoother and better kept than prospectors usually could show.
"Mean to tell me you never met Miss Fortune yet?" His lips were serious; as for his eyes, one never could tell. His eyes always had a twinkle. "She can sure keep a man guessing," he added. "I like her mother better, myself."
"Oh. Er—he-he! Pretty good," testified the storekeeper dubiously. Something queer about a fellow that springs things you never heard of before, he was thinking. The storekeeper liked best the familiar jokes he had heard all his life. He didn't have to think out their meaning.
"Hey! Cut that out! Bill! Take a look at that!" A voice outside called imperiously, and Bill swung toward the door.
"What is it, Luella?"
"Take a look at that! Git a move on!"
In the doorway Bill stopped. Luella was walking pigeon-toed up and down the back of Wise One, where she usually perched while Bill traveled the desert. Three half-grown boys were crowding close, trying to reach the string of Sister Mitchell, who had crawled under the store steps. The string was fastened to the crotch of Wise One's pack saddle, and Wise One was circling slowly, keeping his heels toward the enemy. Luella's tail was spread fanwise, showing the red which even Nature seems to recognize as a danger signal. Her eyes were yellow flames, her neck feathers were ruffled. By all these signs Luella was not to be trifled with.
"Cut that out! Hez! Here, Hez! Where the hell is that dog? Hezekiah! Bill! Come alive, come alive!" Up and down, up and down, one foot lifted over the other, her eyes on the giggling boys, Luella expostulated and swore.
Bill stepped outside, throwing away the burnt stub of a match. The three boys looked at him and fled, though Bill was not half so dangerous as Luella or Wise One, either of which would have sent them yelping in another minute.
"Hez! Here, Hez! Where the hell's that dog?" Luella called again impatiently and wheeled, stepping up relievedly upon Bill's outstretched finger. "Lord, what a world!" she muttered pensively, and subsided under Bill's caressing hand.
Bill dragged Sister Mitchell from under the steps and swung her, head down, to the porch. He sat down beside her, his knees drawn up, Luella perched upon one of them.
"Add two cartons of Durham, will you?" Bill called over his shoulder to the storekeeper and turned back to his perturbed pets.
Sister Mitchell thrust forth a cautious head and craned a skinny neck, looking for fresh alarms. Luella tilted her head and eyed the turtle speculatively. "Cut that out!" she commanded harshly, and Sister Mitchell drew in her head timorously before she realized that it was only parrot talk and not to be taken seriously.
The storekeeper asked Bill a question which necessitated Bill's personal examination of two brands of bacon; wherefore, he placed Luella on the porch beside Sister Mitchell and went inside to finish making up his load of supplies. When he emerged with a sack of flour on his shoulder and three sides of bacon under one arm, Luella was riding up the platform on Sister Mitchell's back and telling her to "git a move on." At the other end of the porch a small audience stood laughing at the performance.
"What'll you take for that parrot, Hopeful?" a man asked, grinning.
"Same price you ask for your oldest kid," Bill retorted, and returned for another load from the store.
"Make that strike yet?" another called, as Bill came out with his arms full.
"You bet! Solid ledge of gold, Jim. Knock it off in chunks with a single-jack and gadget. Bring you a hunk next trip in—if I can think of it."
"Hate to hang by the heels till you do," Jim retorted.
"Hate to have you," Bill agreed placidly, stepping over Luella and her mount that he might deposit his load on the edge of the porch.
"What yuh got out there, anyway?" Jim persisted curiously. "You aren't packing all that grub out in the desert just to eat in the shade of a Joshuway tree. What yuh got?"
"Hopes." Bill bent and slid a sack from his shoulder to the pile of supplies. "Outcropping of lively looking rock, Jim. Good indications. I'm hoping it'll turn out something, maybe, when I get into it a ways."
"Get an assay on it?" Jim's curiosity was fading perceptibly. The same old story: lively looking rock, indications; desert rats all came in with that elusive encouragement.
"Trace of silver, two dollars in gold," Hopeful Bill replied. "I'm hoping it'll run into higher values when I hit the contact."
"What contact you got?" Jim's tone was plainly disparaging. "You can't bank too strong on values at contact, Bill."
"Well, this looks pretty fair," Bill argued mildly. "A showing of quartzite,—if it's in place; which I'm digging to find out. Nothing lost but a little sweat and powder, if I don't hit it. I can eat as cheaply in the hills as I can here. Cheaper." From under his dusty hat brim he sent a glance toward the restaurant across the street. "And I know it's clean. I like to have eat a fly, this noon."
"Why didn't you try the Waffle Parlor? They've got screens."
"My own cooking suits me just fine," Bill returned amiably.
"All right, if you like that kinda life," Jim carped. "I should think you'd want to get into something, Bill. You aren't any has-been——"
"Nope, I'm a never-was," Bill retorted shamelessly. "And a going-to-be," he added with naïve assurance. "You mark that down in your book, Jim. Some day you're going to brag about knowing Bill Dale. Some day your tone's going to be hearty and your hand'll be out when you see me coming. You guys will all of you be saying you knew me when."
The group bent backward to let the laughs out full and free. Into the midst of their mirth Luella came scrabbling with her pigeon-toed walk, her tail spread wide and her throat ruffled.
"You cut that out!" she shrieked angrily. "Hez! Here, Hez! Where the hell's that dog? Git outa here! Git a move on."
Bill grabbed her before she succeeded in shedding blood.
"Luella doesn't like the tone of that applause," he observed, holding her close to his chest while he smoothed her ruffled feathers. "Luella's a sensitive bird, and she stands up for her folks."
With three loaded burros nipping along before him, the whiskered Hezekiah slouching at his heels, and Luella and Sister Mitchell riding serenely the pack of Wise One, Bill left the town and struck off up the hill by a trail he knew that would cut off a great elbow of the highway, which was dusty and rutted with the passing of great, heavy ore wagons and automobiles loaded with fortune-hunters and camp equipment. At the crest of the long slope the burros stopped to breathe, and Bill turned and stood gazing back at the camp whose first fever was already cooling a bit, leaving the restless ones a bit bored and eager for some new strike in a fresh district, with the whooping boom times that must inevitably follow.
"Laugh, darn you!" Bill figuratively addressed Jim and his companions down there in the town. "You're bone from your necks up, or you'd see plumb through my talk—and be on my trail like ants after a leaky syrup can. Go ahead and laugh, and call me a fool behind my back! You won't take the notion to follow me, anyway."
"Lord, what a world!" chuckled Luella, scrambling for fresh foothold on the canvas pack as Wise One started on with a lurch.
"You're dead right, old girl," Bill agreed; and went on, grinning at something hidden in his thoughts.
CHAPTER TWO
MUSIC HATH CHARMS
Just before sundown, while Bill and his burros and Hezekiah were plodding down the highway toward the sporadic camp called Cuprite, a big touring car came roaring up behind and passed Hopeful Bill in a smothering cloud of yellow dust. Bill observed that it was loaded with luggage and stared after it with that aimless interest which the empty desert breeds in men. A coyote on a hilltop, a strange track in the trail, human beings traveling that way,—it matters little what trivial thing breaks the monotony of plodding through desert country.
Bill could remember when this same road was peopled with men rushing here and there after elusive fortune. Good men and bad, honest men and thieves, the dust never settled to lie long upon the yellow trail. That last two years had made a difference. The tide was fast ebbing, and men were rushing elsewhere in search of the millions they coveted.
"Get a move on!" Bill called to Wise One, at the head of the pack train, with the strange burro tied behind at a sufficient length of rope to protect him from Wise One's heels, which were likely to lift unexpectedly. Luella repeated the command three times without stopping, and the burros shuffled a bit faster in the lowering dust cloud kicked up by the speeding car.
Farther on, Wise One stopped short, backing up from an object in the trail. Bill went forward to investigate, and lifted from the ground a black leather case such as musicians use to hold band instruments. Bill undid the catches and looked in upon a shining, silver object with a gold-lined, bell-shaped mouth and many flat discs all up and down its length. He gazed up the road, already veiled with the purplish haze that comes to the desert before dusk, when the sun has dipped behind a mountain. The car was gone, hidden completely from sight by a low ridge.
"They'll be back," Bill observed tranquilly, and tied the case securely upon the pack of Angelface. "They're bound to miss a thing like that. Anyway, I'll probably run across 'em somewhere."
"Hate to hang till yuh do," remarked Luella, who had evidently been adding to her repertoire in Goldfield while no one thought she was taking heed; which is the way of parrots the world over.
"I don't know about that, now," Bill grinned. "Anyway, if it was mine, I know I'd miss it. I always did want to play a horn."
"Aw, cut it out!" Luella advised him shrewishly. "Git a move on!" Which pertinent retort may possibly explain why Hopeful Bill Dale looked upon the parrot as a real companion. He swore that the bird understood what he said and conversed intelligently, so far as her vocabulary permitted. And her vocabulary, while simple, seemed sufficient for her needs.
Instead of turning aside to a certain spring and camping there for the night, Bill camped near the road where he could not miss seeing and being seen, if any came that way. It was quite a tramp to the spring, so he took a couple of desert water bags and mounted Wise One, leaving the other two burros to follow, and trusting his supplies to the care of Hezekiah and the parrot.
He was not approached that night, nor the next day. Cars passed him, it is true, hurrying through dust clouds from either direction; but never the automobile that had lost the horn. So Bill arrived, in the course of time, at his camp, richer—or poorer, according to viewpoint—by one band instrument of doubtful name and unknown possibilities.
In spring the desert is beautiful. Bill loved the desert flowers, vivid pinks and blues and yellows, dainty of form, sweet as honeycomb. He loved the desert lights, as delicately vivid as were the flowers growing out of the sandy soil, shyly snuggled against some stiff, scraggy bush. Cottontails romped through the sage in the afterglow that lingers long in that high altitude, and Bill let them go unmolested, and gave Hezekiah a lecture. He did not believe in killing just because one can, and there was meat in camp already. From the juniper bushes above the spring the quail were calling. "Shut-that-door! Shut-that-door!"—or so Bill and Luella interpreted the call. Farther up on the hillside, doves were crying mournfully. And Bill knew that higher, on the very top of the butte, mountain sheep, deer and antelope were hiding their bandy-legged young away from the prowling coyotes and "link cats" that were less conscientious than Bill when the chance came for a killing.
Yet this was the desert, against which men rail. There was no mistaking. Out there stood a barrel cactus, almost within reach of a gaunt yucca whose awkward, spiny limbs were rigidly upheld like bloated arms,—colloquially called Joshua trees because they seemed always to be imploring the sun. Down in the valley a dry lake lay baked yellow, hard as cement, with dust devils whirling dizzily down its bald length when Bill looked that way. On the map you will see that valley. It is officially known as the Amargosa Desert. And over the ridge which wore a mystic veil of blended violet and amethyst, Death Valley lay crouched low amongst the hills. The maps call that amethyst and violet pile the Funeral Mountains; and away to the east, Bill could see the faint blue line of Skull Mountains and the Specter Range standing bold behind the Skeleton Hills; proof enough that this was the desert, since it bore the sinister names given it by those who knew too little and dared too much.
It could be cruel,—but not crueller than the cities. It could be lonely, though not so lonely as a multitude. The air was clean and sweet and of that heady quality that only altitude can give. Bill squatted on his heels by his camp fire, just about four thousand feet above sea level,—higher than that above the floor of Death Valley, whose rim he could see, whose poison springs he knew, whose terrible breath he had drawn into his nostrils.
From now on the geography will remain closed and you must take my word for it. And when I tell you that the great, blunt-topped butte behind him was Parowan Peak, don't look for it on the map; you'll never find it. It's a great, wild country, a beautiful, savage country, and if you don't love it you will fear it greatly. And fear it is that rouses the sleeping devil of the desert and sets the bones of men bleaching under the arid sky.
Hopeful Bill Dale knew the desert, and loved it, and made friends with it. He plucked a bright red "Indian paintbrush" from beside a rock and held it up to Luella, watching him cock-eyed from her crude perch of juniper laid across two forked sticks driven into the sand. Luella took the flower in one claw, looked it over and dropped it disdainfully.
"Aw, cut it out! Let's eat," she suggested.
"You're on," Bill replied amiably, turning fried potatoes out of the frying pan. "Come and get it, old girl."
Luella was not a flying bird, except under stress of great emotion. Now she leaned head downward, her beak closing upon a knob where a small branch had been lopped off the stick. Turning like an acrobat, she went down with the aid of beak and claws, and pigeon-toed over to Bill's crude table, crawled upon a convenient rock and waited solemnly for her first helping of fried potato, which she ate daintily, holding it in one claw.
"I've got a surprise for you, old girl," Bill began, when the edge of their hunger had dulled a bit. "That horn we picked up in the road,—it's mine now, by right of discovery. You saw how I stuck to the Goldfield road and made an extra day's journey of the trip, just in case that car came back, hunting for the horn. Lord knows where they are, by now. So I figure the thing belongs to me. After supper, I'm going to open her up and give you some music."
"Hate to hang till yuh do," Luella observed pessimistically. "Let's eat."
Bill dipped a piece of bread in his coffee and gave it to her, unmoved by her pessimism. "One thing a fellow needs out here alone is distraction," he went on. "You're getting so you know more than I do—leave you to tell it—and you're more human than lots of folks. You've reached the point where I can't seem to teach you anything more, Luella. You could almost hold down a claim alone, except for the cooking and maybe swinging a single-jack. So I figure a little diversion will come in about right."
"You're on," said Luella. "Git a move on."
So that is how Hopeful Bill Dale conceived the idea of becoming a musician, thus making use of the opportunity which Providence—or something not so kind—had thrown in his way. It may seem a trivial thing, but trivial things have a fashion of tripping one's feet in the race for happiness, or perchance proving to be the one factor that makes success certain. Bill washed his dishes and tidied his camp, and then he opened the instrument case and for the first time removed the shining thing within. Luella, once more back on her perch, watched him distrustfully.
"Luck's own baby boy!" he ejaculated under his breath. "Here's a book goes with it. 'Progressive Method for the Saxophone.' Saxophone, hunh? I always did want to learn one, Luella; believe it or not. Well, let's go."
"Aw, cut it out!" Luella advised him gloomily, but Bill was absorbed in putting together the instrument and in reading certain directions on the first page of the book.
Followed a muttered monologue, accompanied by certain unusual grimaces and gestures.
"'Upper and lower lips slightly over the teeth—chin must be down—lips drawn back as when laughing.' I got that, all right. 'Put the mouthpiece into the mouth a little less than halfway.'" Goggling down at the page, Bill obeyed,—or tried to. When he recovered from that experiment, he read in silence and looked up at Luella puzzled.
"Now if you were human, you could maybe explain to me how a fellow is going to breathe steadily without making use of his nose, mouth, ears or eyes," he hazarded. "Your mouth is full of saxophone to your palate and past it, and you mustn't breathe through your nose, because that looks bad, and your eyes must follow the notes and it's against the rule to puff out your cheeks, which is unbecoming. I figure, Luella, a man's got to curl up his toes and die till he's through playing. Hunh?"
"Git a move on! Come alive, come alive!"
"Oh, well,—" said Bill, and began again.
Nothing happened, save imminent death from strangulation. Bill looked foolishly at the instrument. Once more he placed certain fingers carefully upon certain keys, flattened his lips to a fixed, painful grin, swallowed as much mouthpiece as was possible without choking himself to death, and blew until his eyes popped. Sister Mitchell came slowly forward and stood with her skinny gray neck stretched toward Bill, her melancholy eyes regarding curiously the long silver thing in Bill's tense embrace. Hezekiah came up and squatted on his stump of a tail, his ugly, hairy face tilted sidewise while he stared. Bill's family were always keenly interested in everything that concerned Bill, if it were only a new label on a can of tomatoes.
"Didn't get a rise out of it yet," Bill apologized embarrassedly, "but I will. I've heard fellows warble on these brutes till your heart fair melts in your chest. What they can do, I can do. A little music, evenings, is what this camp needs."
In the dimming light he read the confusing instructions all over again, engulfed the ebony mouthpiece within his carefully grinning mouth, took a deep breath,—and something slipped. A terrific, deep bass note rumbled forth quite unexpectedly, before Bill had fairly begun to blow.
Bill jumped. Sister Mitchell disappeared precipitately into her shell, Luella let out an oath which Bill only used under sudden overwhelming emotion, and Hezekiah gave a howl and streaked it into the desert.
Bill recovered first, and on the whole he was pleased with himself. He had gotten the hang of it by sheer accident, and he sat and made terrible sounds while Luella paced up and down her perch with her tail spread, cursing and imploring by turns.
She wronged Bill if she thought that Bill enjoyed his spasmodic blattings and squeakings. He did not. He winced at every squawk, even while he persisted doggedly in the uproar. Through discord only might he hope to become a master of the melody he craved, wherefore he endured the discord, thankful that no human being was near. It took him all the next day to round up the burros, however, and Sister Mitchell went into retirement in her shell and remained there stubbornly.
Thereafter, the stars looked down upon a pathetic little desert comedy enacted every night: The pathetic comedy of Bill Dale tying up his burros and his dog and anchoring a gray desert turtle to a rock before he sat down, with a dull-green instruction book before him on the ground, its corners weighted with small rocks, and practiced dolefully and indefatigably upon a silver-plated saxophone. As long as he could see he would sit cross-legged, humped over his notes,—of which he possessed a rudimentary knowledge learned in school. When darkness blurred the staff, Bill would tootle up and down the scale to the accompaniment of vituperous remarks from Luella and an occasional howl from Hez.
Down deep in his heart there was a reason, which he would not divulge to any one, much less Luella. Twenty miles away, in a vine-covered ranch house that looked out upon the desert from under the branches of cool, green cottonwoods, a certain Doris Hunter sang sweet old songs sometimes in the twilight, and played a sketchy, pleasant little accompaniment upon the piano. Bill knew no ecstasy sweeter than sitting in the gloaming, staring dreamily up through the cottonwood branches at the evening star, while Doris sang "Love's Old Sweet Song."
The pathetic note in the little comedy, the note which his outraged menagerie missed altogether, was the fact that Bill would sit for hours, there under the stars, and try to play "Love's Old Sweet Song." And while he tried patiently to make the notes come true, his heart was away over the ridge and down in that little, vine-covered ranch house, worshiping Doris Hunter while she sang.
A dream came to him every night while he played and watched the stars. He dreamed of some day going down to the Hunter ranch, with some perfectly convincing excuse for a visit. He would have the saxophone tied on Wise One, who was more dependable in his habits than Angelface, who was a devil. He would wait until after supper, when Doris would finally settle down on the piano stool. Then he would remember his saxophone and suggest nonchalantly that they try a few little things together. Doris would round her eyes at him, and the dimple would show in her left cheek when she begged him to bring it in.
Then,—Bill's lips would smile in spite of the correct position of the mouth, when he reached that point in his dream—then, after a little talk, and the whole family gathering around to exclaim over the beautiful instrument (which really was beautiful, in cold reality), why, then Bill would suggest something, and Doris would strike a preliminary chord or two, and Bill would follow her voice softly with his music while she sang:
Bill's lips would soften, his eyes would grow luminous and very, very tender. He would forget to play and would stare up into the gemmed purple, and wonder, and dream, and hope.
