Hidden Creek

Thatcher spoke to his horses, now fatherly, now masterly, now with a professorial sarcasm: "Come on, Monkey, there's a good girl! Get out of that, you Fox! Dern you! You call that pulling? It's my notion of layin' off for the day." Even at its most urgent, his voice was soft, hushed by the great loneliness of this ca?on up which he slowly crept. Monkey and Fox had been plodding, foot by foot, the creaking wagon at their heels, since dawn. It was now ten o'clock and they were just beginning to climb. The Hill, that looked so near to the mesa above Hudson's yard, still stood aloof.

It had towered there ahead of them as they jerked and toiled across the interminable flat in their accompanying cloud of dust. The great circle of the world had dwarfed them to a bitter insignificance: a team of crickets, they seemed, driven by a gnome. The hushed tone of Thatcher's voice made unconscious tribute to this immensity.

As they came to the opening of the ca?on, the high mountain-top disappeared; the immediate foothills closed down and shut it out. The air grew headily light. Even under the blazing July sun, it came cool to the lungs, cool and intensely sweet. Thousands of wild flowers perfumed it and the sun-drawn resin of a thousand firs. All the while the rushing of water accompanied the creaking of Thatcher's progress. Not far from the road, down there below in a tangle of pine branches, willows, and ferns, the frost-white stream fled toward the valley with all the seeming terror of escape. Here the team began their tugging and their panting and their long pauses to get breath. Thatcher would push forward the wooden handle that moved his brake, and at the sound and the grating of the wheel the horses would stop automatically and stand with heaving sides. The wagon shook slightly with their breathing. At such times the stream seemed to shout in the stillness. Below, there began to be an extraordinary view of the golden country with its orange mesas and its dark, purple rim of mountains. Millings was a tiny circle of square pebbles, something built up by children in their play. The awful impersonalities of sky and earth swept away its small human importance. Thatcher's larkspur-colored eyes absorbed serenity. They had drawn their color and their far-sighted clearness from such long contemplations of distant horizon lines.

Now and again, however, Thatcher would glance back and down from his high seat at his load. It consisted, for the most part, of boxes of canned goods, but near the front there was a sort of nest, made from bags of Indian meal. In the middle of the nest lay another bundle of slim, irregular outline. It was covered with a thin blanket and a piece of sacking protected it from the sun. A large, clumsy parcel lay beside it. Each time Thatcher looked at this portion of his load he pulled more anxiously at his mustache. At last, when the noon sun stood straight above the pass and he stopped to water his horses at a trough which caught a trickle of spring water, he bent down and softly raised the piece of sacking, suspended like a tent from one fat sack to another above the object of his uneasiness. There, in the complete relaxation of exhausted sleep, lay Sheila, no child more limp and innocent of aspect; her hair damp and ringed on her smooth forehead, her lips mournful and sweet, sedately closed, her expression at once proud and innocent and wistful, as is the sleeping face of a little, little girl. There was that look of a broken flower, that look of lovely death, that stops the heart of a mother sometimes when she bends over a crib and sees damp curls in a halo about a strange, familiar face.

Thatcher, looking at Sheila, had some of these thoughts. A teamster is either philosopher or clown. One cannot move, day after day, all day for a thousand days, under a changeless, changeful sky, inch by inch, across the surface of a changeless, changeful earth and not come very near to some of the locked doors of the temple where clowns sleep and wise men meditate. And Thatcher was a father, one of the wise and reasonable fathers of the West, whose seven-year-old sons are friends and helpmates and toward whom six-year-old daughters are moved to little acts of motherliness.

The sun blazed for a minute on Sheila's face. She opened her eyes, looked vaguely from some immense distance at Thatcher, and then sat up.

"Oh, gracious!" said Sheila, woman and sprite and adventurer again.

"Where the dickens is my hat? Did it fall out?"

"No, ma'am," Thatcher smiled in a relieved fashion. "I put it under the seat."

Sheila scrambled to a perch on one of the sacks and faced the surface of half a world.

"Oh, Mr. Thatcher, isn't it too wonderful! How high are we? Is this the other side? Oh, no, I can see Millings. Poor tiny, tiny Millings! It is small, isn't it? How very small it is! What air!" She shut her eyes, drawing in the perfumed tonic. The altitude had intoxicated her. Her heart was beating fast, her blood tingling, her brain electrified. Every sense seemed to be sharpened. She saw and smelt and heard with abnormal vividness.

"The flowers are awfully bright up here, aren't they?" she said. "What's that coral-colored bushy one?"

"Indian paint-brush."

"And that blue one? It is blue! I don't believe I ever knew what blueness meant before."

"Lupine. And over yonder's monkshead. That other's larkspur, that poisons cattle in the spring. On the other side you'll see a whole lot more-wild hollyhock and fireweed and columbine-well, say, I learned all them names from a dude I drove over one summer."

"And such a sky!" said Sheila, lifting her head, "and such big pines!" She lost herself for a minute in the azure immensity above. A vast mosque of cloud, dome bubbles great and small, stood ahead of them, dwarfing every human experience of height. "Mr. Thatcher, there isn't any air up here. What is it we're trying to breathe, anyway?"

He smiled patiently, sympathetically, and handed her a tin mug of icy water from the little trickling spring. The bruise of Hudson's kiss ached at the cold touch of the water and a shadow fell over her excitement. She thanked the driver gravely.

"What time is it now?" she asked.

"Past noon. Better eat your sandwich."

She took one from its wrapping pensively, but ate it with absent-minded eagerness. Thatcher's blue eyes twinkled.

"Seems like I recollect a lady that didn't want no food to be put in for her."

"I remember her, too," said Sheila, between bites, "but very, very vaguely."

She stood up after a third sandwich, shook crumbs from her skirt, and stretched her arms. "What a great sleep I've had! Since six o'clock!" She stared down at the lower world. "I've left somebody at Millings."

"Who's that?" asked Thatcher, drawling the words a trifle as a Westerner does when he is conscious of a double meaning.

"Me."

Thatcher laughed. "You're a real funny girl, Miss Arundel," he said.

"Yes, I left one Me when I decided to go into the saloon, and now I've left another Me. I believe people shed their skins like snakes."

"Yes'm, I've had that notion myself. But as you get older, your skin kind of peels off easy and gradual-you don't get them shocks when you sort of come out all new and shiny and admirin' of yourself."

Sheila blushed faintly and looked at him. His face was serene and empty of intention. But she felt that she had been guilty of egotism, as indeed she had. She asked rather meekly for her hat, and having put it on like a shadow above her fairness, she climbed up to Thatcher's side on the driver's seat. The hat was her felt Stetson, and, for the rest, she was clad in her riding-clothes, the boy's shirt, the short corduroy skirt, the high-laced boots. Her youthfulness, rather than her strange beauty, was accentuated by this dress. She had the look of a super-delicate boy, a sort of rose-leaf fairy prince.

"Are we on the road?" asked Sheila presently.

Thatcher gave way to mirth. "Don't it seem like a road to you?"

She lurched against him, then saved herself from falling out at the other side by a frantic clutch.

"Is it a road?" She looked down a dizzy slope of which the horse's foothold seemed to her the most precarious part.

"Yes'm-all the road there is. We call it that. We're kind of po-lite to these little efforts of the Government-kind of want to encourage 'em. Congressmen kind of needs coaxin' and flat'ry. They're right ornery critters. I heard an argyment atween a feller with a hoss and a feller with a mule onct. The mule feller was kind of uppish about hosses; said he didn't see the advantage of the critter. A mule now was steady and easy fed and strong. Well, ma'am, the hoss feller got kind of hot after some of this, so he says, 'Well, sir,' he says, 'there's this about it. When you got a hoss, you got a hoss. You know what you got. He's goin' to act like a hoss. But when you got a mule, why, you can't never tell. All of a sudden one of these days, he's like as not to turn into a Congressman.' Well, ma'am, that's the way we feel about Congressmen.-Ho, there, Monkey! Keep up! I'll just get out an' hang on the wheel while we make this corner. That'll keep us from turnin' over, I reckon."

Sheila sat and held on with both hands. Her eyes were wide and very bright. She held her breath till Thatcher got in again, the corner safely made. For the next creeping, lurching mile, Sheila found that every muscle in her body had its use in keeping her on that seat. Then they reached the snow and matters grew definitely worse. Here, half the road was four feet of dirty, icy drift and half of abysmal mud. They slipped from drift to mire with awful perils and rackings of the wagon and painful struggles of the team. Sometimes the snow softened and let the horses in up to their necks when Thatcher plied whip and tongue with necessary cruelty. At last there came disaster. They were making one of those heart-stopping turns. Sheila had got out and was adding her mosquito weight to Thatcher's on the upper side, half-walking, half-hanging to the wagon. The outer wheels were deep in mud, the inner wheels hung clear. The horses strained-and slipped.

"Let go!" shouted Thatcher.

Sheila fell back into the snow, and the wagon turned quietly over and began to slide down the slope. Thatcher sprang to his horses' heads. For an instant it seemed that they would be dragged over the edge. Then the wagon stopped, and Thatcher, grim and pale, unhitched his team. He swore fluently under his breath during this entire operation. Afterwards, he turned to the scarlet and astounded passenger and gave her one of his shining smiles.

"Well, ma'am," he said, beginning to roll a cigarette, "what do you think of that?"

"Whatever shall we do now?" asked Sheila. She had identified herself utterly with this team, this load, this driver. She brushed the snow from her skirt, climbed down from the drift to the edge of the mire by Thatcher's elbow. The team stood with hanging heads, panting and steaming, glad of the rest and the release.

"Well, ma'am," said Thatcher, looking down at the loyal, anxious face with a certain tenderness, "I'm agoin' to do one of two things. I'm agoin' to lead my team over The Hill and come back with two more horses and a hand to help me or I'm agoin' to set here and wait for the stage."

"How long will it be before the stage comes?"

"Matter of four or five hours."

"Oh, dear! Then I can't possibly overtake my-my friend, Miss Blake!"

"No, ma'am. But you can walk on a quarter-mile; take a rest at Duff's place top of The Hill. I can pick you up when I come by; like as not I'll spend the night at Duff's. By the time I get my load together it'll be along dark-Hullo!" He interrupted himself, lifting his chin. "I hear hosses now."

They both listened. "No wagon," said Thatcher.

Five minutes later, a slouching horseman, cigarette in mouth, shaggy chaps on long legs, spurred and booted and decorated with a red neck-scarf came picturesquely into view. His pony dug sturdy feet into the steep roadside, avoiding the mud of the road itself. The man led two other horses, saddled, but empty of riders. He stopped and between him and Thatcher took place one of the immensely tranquil, meditative, and deliberate conversations of the Far West.

Sheila's quick, Celtic nerves tormented her. At last she broke in with an inspiration. "Couldn't I hire one of your horses?" she asked, rising from an overturned sack of which she had made a resting-place.

The man looked down at her with grave, considerate eyes.

"Why, yes, ma'am. I reckon you could," he said gently. "They're right gentle ponies," he added.

"Are they yours?"

"One of 'em is. The other belongs to Kearney, dude-wrangler up the valley. But, say, if you're goin' to Rusty you c'd leave my hoss at Lander's and I c'd get him when I come along. I am stoppin' here to help with the load. It would cost you nothin', lady. The hoss has got to go over to Rusty and I'd be pleased to let you ride him. You're no weight."

"How good of you!" said Sheila. "I'll take the best care of him I know how to take. Could I find my way? How far is it?"

"All downhill after a half-mile, lady. You c'd make Rusty afore dark. It's a whole lot easier on hoofs than it is on wheels. You can't miss the road on account of it bein' the only road there is. And Lander's is the only one hotel in Rusty. You'd best stop the night there."

He evidently wanted to ask her her destination, but his courtesy forbade.

Sheila volunteered, "I am going to Miss Blake's ranch up Hidden Creek."

A sort of flash of surprise passed across the reserved, brown, young face. "Yes, ma'am," he said with no expression. "Well, you better leave the rest of your trip until to-morrow."

He slipped from his horse with an effortless ripple, untied a tawny little pony with a thick neck, a round body, and a mild, intelligent face, and led him to Sheila who mounted from her sack. Thatcher carefully adjusted the stirrups, a primitive process that involved the wearisome lacing and unlacing of leather thongs. Sheila bade him a bright and adventurous "Good-bye." thanked the unknown owner of the horse, and started. The pony showed some unwillingness to leave his companions, fretted and tossed his head, and made a few attempts at a right-about face, but Sheila dug in her small spurred heels and spoke beguilingly. At last he settled down to sober climbing. Sheila looked back and waved her hand. The two tall, lean men were gazing after her. They took off their hats and waved. She felt a warmth that was almost loving for their gracefulness and gravity and kindness. Here was another breed of man than that produced by Millings. A few minutes later she came to the top of The Pass and looked down into Hidden Creek.