The Desert Valley

The Desert Valley

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Desert Valley, by Jackson Gregory
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: The Desert Valley
Author: Jackson Gregory
Release Date: March 30, 2005 [eBook #15502]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
DESERT VALLEY***
E-text prepared by Al Haines

THE DESERT VALLEY
by
JACKSON GREGORY
Author of The Bells of San Juan, Man to Man Hodder and Stoughton
Limited London Charles Scribner's Sons
1921

CONTENTS

CHAPTER
THE DESERT I A BLUEBIRD'S FEATHER II SUPERSTITION
POOL III PAYMENT IN RAW GOLD IV IN DESERT VALLEY V
THE GOOD OLD SPORT VI THE YOUTHFUL HEART VII

WAITING FOR MOONRISE VIII POKER AND THE SCIENTIFIC
MIND IX HELEN KNEW X A WARNING AND A SIGN XI
SEEKING XII THE DESERT SUPREME XIII A SON OF THE
SOLITUDES XIV THE HATE OF THE HIDDEN PEOPLE XV THE
GOLDEN SECRET XVI SANCHIA SCHEMES XVII HOWARD
HOLDS THE GULCH XVIII A TOWN IS BORN XIX SANCHIA
PERSISTENT XX TWO FRIENDS AND A GIRL XXI ALMOST
XXII THE PROFESSOR DICTATES XXIII THE
WILL-O'-THE-WISP XXIV THE SHADOW XXV IN THE OPEN
XXVI WHEN DAY DAWNED

The Desert
Over many wide regions of the south-western desert country of Arizona
and New Mexico lies an eternal spell of silence and mystery. Across
the sand-ridges come many foreign things, both animate and inanimate,
which are engulfed in its immensity, which frequently disappear for all
time from the sight of men, blotted out like a bird which flies free from
a lighted room into the outside darkness. As though in compensation
for that which it has taken, the desert from time to time allows new
marvels, riven from its vitals, to emerge.
Though death-still, it has a voice which calls ceaselessly to those
human hearts tuned to its messages: hostile and harsh, it draws and
urges; repellent, it profligately awards health and wealth; inviting, it
kills. And always it keeps its own counsel; it is without peer in its
lonesomeness, and without confidants; it heaps its sand over its secrets
to hide them from its flashing stars.
You see the bobbing ears of a pack-animal and the dusty hat and stoop
shoulders of a man. They are symbols of mystery. They rise briefly
against the skyline, they are gone into the grey distance. Something
beckons or something drives. They are lost to human sight, perhaps to
human memory, like a couple of chips drifting out into the ocean.
Patient time may witness their return; it is still likely that soon another
incarnation will have closed for man and beast, that they will have left
to mark their passing a few glisteningly white bones, polished
untiringly by tiny sand-chisels in the grip of the desert winds. They
may find gold, but they may not come in time to water. The desert is

equally conversant with the actions of men mad with gold and mad
with thirst.
To push out along into this immensity is to evince the heart of a brave
man or the brain of a fool. The endeavour to traverse the forbidden
garden of silence implies on the part of the agent an adventurous nature.
Hence it would seem no great task to catalogue those human beings
who set their backs to the gentler world and press forward into the
naked embrace of this merciless land. Yet as many sorts and conditions
come here each year as are to be found outside.
Silence, ruthlessness, mystery--these are the attributes of the desert.
True, it has its softer phases--veiled dawns and dusks, rainbow hues,
moon and stars. But these are but tender blossoms from a spiked,
poisonous stalk, like the flowers of the cactus. They are brief and
evanescent; the iron parent is everlasting.

Chapter I
A Bluebird's Feather
In the dusk a pack-horse crested a low-lying sand-ridge, put up its head
and sniffed, pushed forward eagerly, its nostrils twitching as it turned a
little more toward the north, going straight toward the water-hole. The
pack was slipping as far to one side as it had listed to the other half an
hour ago; in the restraining rope there were a dozen intricate knots
where one would have amply sufficed. The horse broke into a trot,
blazing its own trail through the mesquite; a parcel slipped; the slack
rope grew slacker because of the subsequent readjustment; half a dozen
bundles dropped after the first. A voice, thin and irritable, shouted
'Whoa!' and the man in turn was briefly outlined against the pale sky as
he scrambled