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About The Augusta daily herald. (Augusta, Ga.) 1908-1914 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 12, 1909)
THE COPYRIGHT 1903 'HE only decent thing ' about him was his horse. His clothes were ragged, and they flapped against ) the saddle as he rode; > they were stained by sun, ; wind and rain, and coated with gray dust whicb had n eaten its way into the texture of the material. His boots gaped wounds; his white hair showed anxiously beneath the soft hat; stir rup leather had been tod often mended with thongs; he carried neither whip nor spur; long and lean he was; sunburnt, with large, sunken black eyes, and a short crop of iron gray hair about his face. His horse was well-fed, well-groomed, a thoroughbred; his coat shone in the sun, his long tail and mane waved as the breeze caught them. A cloud of dust pursued them to the land office. There Brinkley drew rein and threw himself from the saddle. A boy jeered at his A smart Western girl, booted, short skirted, the loose shirt dis closing brown arms and neck, watched him swing heavily through the doors and lean over the desk where a neatly dressed clerk struggled with the accounts of his books. Rosalia was not often guilty of curiosity, but she drew nearer the office and peered through the window, wondering what had brought such a human scarecrow to the Western Development and Real I.state Corn pany’s offices. A daughter of the hills and plains, she knew most men within a hundred miles east and west, but this man was a stranger. The clerk glanced tip as Brinkley entered, then with a supert ilious grin bent over his books again. The man of rags and tatters waited patiently, chewing the stump of a cigar. A big fly buzzed around his head, the dust filtered through his rags as he shifted his position. But the clerk continued to ignore him. “Say -when yu’re through?” There was no response, not even an incli nation of the head. “Young man, 1 don’t know whether yu’re here for business or if yur boss pays yu’ wages as an ornament; either way he's losing money —'spose you git a move on ycr!” The clerk raised his head; the sleek hair was well brushed, the round face well shaved. “And who the hell d’you think you’re talking to?” “A kid that don’t know his business and wants a lesson, (lit off that stool, and come here.” For reply the clerk expectorated in Brink ley's direction and turned his back on him. Now Rosalia, acting on a sudden impulse, pushed open the tloors apd entered the office. In an instant the clerk was grinning at her across the desk. “Say, you're quite a stranger here, Mias Rosa!” She looked him squarely in the eyes: “There's another stranger here; you'd better attend to him first.” The i lerk managed to raise a leer. “ Ladies first, I guess.” “Sure,” echoed the ragged one softly, as he removed his sombrero. Rosalia smiled, ami Jim Brinkley felt as good as if he had just swallowed a pint of beer at T 'om Craik’s Thirst Pond; he forgot the growth upon his face, the dust ingrained on boots, body and clothes. But looking at this daughter of the West; he remembered her youth and the object of his visit. He had come to buy an Oasis! lie lipped the word lovingly with the stump of his rigar. The large, sunken eyes grew moist, the dusty head inclined a little. “Guess 1 won’t trouble the boss after all,” he mumbled; “think I've altered my mind.” “Forget it,” the girl said quickly; then to the youth, frowning sulkily now: “Just hurrv, you, and take this gentleman's name to Mr. Seidlcr.” The clerk obeyed, glaring. Brinkley ran his fingers through his hair, removed the cigar stump from his lips, and throwing it on the tloor placed the heel of his boot upon it. “Yu* shouldn't have butted in on my ac count,” lie said awkwardly. “ 1 only came in ter see if there was a piece of waste land I could buy. But I don’t know 'f 1 want it now —anyhow ” The girl swung herself on to the edge of the desk and looked Brinkley up and down, as if he were a horse, kindly and critically. “What were you going to do with waste land?” Her voice had changed; it had been sharp when she addressed the clerk, now it was like the wind calling down Red Wood Cafion. He looked through the window into the street where his horse stood in the sun, as if asking explanation—or protection—from his only friend. Rosalia followed his gaze. "lie's all right,” she smiled. “As good a one as I'vc seen round here.” Brinkley's eyes brightened. “ Yu’ bet!” “You were going to tell me why you changed your mind about buying the land you're after.” Brinkley searched in strange places for an other cigar. Failing to find one, he replaced his hat. and then hid his hands in his breeches pockets. “ Twem’t exactly land, either; more’n that,” he said dreamily. “ 1 don’t know rightly now what 'lis. Something that a poet-fellow 1 know of calls an ou^w.” “Poet!” Rosalia’s eyes opened wide. “Didn’t know there was one around here; what’s his name, anyway ? ” Again Brinkley hunted in strange places, and after a struggle produced a small, dirty volume, which he held toward Rosalia. “That’s the boy; he’s got a queer name, but he’s a poet all right. Me and the hoss have sat up readin’ him aloud a good many nights when there was a full moon; though I bet I could see to read him in the dark.” Rosalia was fingering the volume gently. “An oasis? That’s a place all green and damp and flowery in the middle of a desert, isn’t it ?” “That’s what th’ poet says, and I’ve been ’most crazy to find an oasis all my life, pretty near. But I figgered out ’twould cost a stake -'eos what's the good of the oasis, if yu' haven’t got the desert to keep it in?" “ You’re a philosopher!” Brinkley looked puzzled for a while, then he nodded: “Guess that’s so, but it aren’t no good; a fellow never gets no for’arder. I was a philosopher —as yu’ c alled it —for years and years ’fore I struck gold.” “Gold?” Rosalia stared, and an appre ciative smile played about her lips. Brinkley nodded. “’Spose I don’t look a lot like a lucky strike? Well, I guess 1 am kind o’ careless-like about my looks—ain’t never been nobody that keered how I looked, ’cept old hoss there, and he’s never kicked at the cut of my Prince Albert.” “ I beg your pardon,” Rosalia said gently. “ I smiled because —oh, because I am glad, perhaps, that you struc k gold at last.” Brinkley again ran his fingers through his hair. “ Mcbbe it has come rather late,” he said thoughtfully. “I’m none so old, fer all thet. Mcbbe I’m like that oasis I’m after— all desert on the outside: gray and dusty-like and some parched and dried up, but away down in the middle of me is a kind o’ spring thet’s just bubblin’ and bubblin’—and waitin’ fer someone ter dig through the dust and let it come up, and make the flowers and things ’pear like ’twas summer.” Rosalia slipped from her seat on the desk and turning her back on the stranger stared into the street. The clerk returned. “Step right in—the boss’ll see you now.” Brinkley obeyed. The agent sized him up quickly and curtly demanded his business. Brinkley again assayed an unsuccessful search for a cigar. “ I want ter buy a chunk of desert. Don’t much kcer where ’bouts— guess Nevada’s good enough as long as yu’ steers clear of Las Vegas. It must be real desert, mind —a good long jump away from any blamed gang ” The agent interrupted with the remark that deserts were not in his line, and recom mended a nice plot of land on the Shore Front Development, at seven hundred dollars -payable in instalments. Brinkley moved toward the door. “ Not fer me! But it looks to me yu’ don’t know what kind o’ man yu're talkin’ to, pardner — I ken pay cash down —” he produced a roll of notes from a pocket hidden in his rags. A broken cigar protruded from the center of them, and he hastily placed it between his lips. “And I'm calculating to pay in thou sands. So long! ” “ Hold on!” The agent was on his feet. In another minute both men were seated at the table, a box of imported hav&nas and a map of Nevada between them. \\ hen Brinkley shuttled out of the office into the street he found the girl and the horse in earnest conversation. The clerk looked up from his desk and glared through the win dows. “Sav, that's fine!” Brinklev cried. “He don't go round makin’ friends with every body that speaks ter him, thet hoss don’t. "YU' IKY RIGHT THERE, WHERE I WAS SITTINT ” Guess he can size up a feller quicker than I ken—that’s sure.” The girl laid her brown face against the chestnut with the white star on his forehead. “I’m wishing he was mine; he’s a great horse.” A shadow crossed Brinkley’s face. He was about to (ling himself into the saddle when he changed his mind. “Mcbbe he’ll be wishin’ the same, not as he’d leave me—willin’, fer any livin’ creature. But I guess yu’ ain’t—well, ordinary. Say, what’s yur name?” “ Rosalia.” “Gee, I might hev guessed it.” He ran his hands lovingly over the horse’s shoulders, and looked at Rosalia under the shade of his sombrero. “If yu’d like ter git on him I reckon he wouldn’t hev no objection —though it’ud be the first time any woman ” Rosalia was already in the saddle. Brink ley’s teeth took a firmer hold of the land agent’s imported cigar; his eyes shohe. “May I take him down the road a turn?” For a moment Brinkley hesitated and his great hands started out as if feeling for the reins, then he nodded: “Yep!” The clerk rose from his seat and flattened his nose against the hot window-pane, his pale face expressive of disgust. And the horse and the girl disappeared in a little cloud. Brinkley stood alone, bis eyes pierc ing the floating must; the cigar, bitten through, fell to the ground. Presently Rosalia re turned, and the horse nosed his master approvingly. She dismounted and held out her hand. “Thanks . . . I understand.” Brinkley nodded, and jerked himself into the saddle. “Did you locate your oasis?” she asked. “Got ter come again, inside of a month,” Brinkley snapped. He moved his horse for ward. “Mebbe I’ll see yu’ —when I come.” “Maybe,” Rosalia whispered. And she watched him out of sight. Inside of a month Brinkley returned. He returned with his well-groomed, well-bred horse, with his rags, his dust, and his gray matted hair; but the clerk in the Land Estate Agent’s office received him almost politely, and at once ushered him into the presence of his chief. When he came out, his face, in spite of the dust upon it, shone, for in the pocket where the fat wad of notes had lain now rested the title to a big slice of the coveted desert. “ If you strike a good thing,” the clerk sug gested, “maybe you’d put me on to it, Mr. Brinkley?” Brinkley took off his hat and pushed the hair from his forehead. “Young man, I’m glad to see that since I was here last yu’ve lamed some manners; most people in this blamed country seem to think manners ain't no use at all. But let me tell yu’, right here, that manners make dollars about as quick as anything else. And that’s about the best thing yu'U ever be put on to; don’t forget it!" He strolled out and was reaching for the stirrup, when he was arrested by a moving pillar of dust at the far end of the straggling street. The pillar approached quickly, and out of it emerged a horse and rider. Rosalia drew rein beside Brinkley and threw herself off the gray Pinto. “Say, yu're in some hum-,” the man said slowly, running his eyes over the pony. “ 1 was 'way up on the hills,” Rosalia re plied. “ and I saw you come down the street —’fraid I might miss you.” "Yu’ saw me —from them hills?” “ 1 had glasses,” Rosalia smiled —“ and Pinto can go some.” "Yu’ bet he can!” Brinkley nodded ap provingly in the direction of the pony. “ Well, have you got your desert ?” Brinklev raised his head and looked into the girl’s face. “ Sure . . . but now I don’t know as I want it —much.” She smiled, and Brinkley thought he saw something in her eyes of which he disap proved. “That’s the way with most things, isn’t it?” He had no reply for this question, and moreover the silence contented him. Pres ently he suggested they should ride a little way together. He noted the easy grace with which Rosalia swung into her saddle; he noted how she controlled her wicked little pony, not with rein or spur, but with voice, touch of knee and hand, and that seventh sense which is as yet unnamed. “ Where d’yu’ live?” he asked presently. “’Most anywhere.” Again he noted that change in her eyes, rather as if a cloud sud denly hid the sunshine. “ Got any people ? ” “ No—not living.” “That’s bad.” “I’m used to it; and I’ve grown to sort of like it. Nobody to boss me. And I’ve got Pinto, and a good chestnut, Kentucky bred.” Brinkley shook his head. He had a small opinion of Eastern bred horses. “Comes dark pretty sudden here; yu’d better be gettin’.” “ I’m not afraid of the dark,” she laughed. “Pinto is, though; he’s a devil in the dark. But it’s fun.” Brinkley smiled. It was so rare with him that for a moment his sun-baked face seemed in danger of splitting. “Guess ther’ ain’t much yu’re skeered of . . . Wonder if yu’d be skeered of—the desert?” “ It’s lonesome, isn’t it ? ” she acknowledged after a slight pause. “ And cruel, too.” Brinkley nodded; all traces of the smile had vanished. “Damned cruel; that’s why we love one another, the desert and me.” Suddenly he drew rein. “ Yu’ve got to go back, whether yu’ want ter or not.” He took off his hat, and pulling his horse up, held out his hand. “ And say —d’yu’ care to meet me agen?” For a moment Rosalia hesitated, her eyes hidden, then she raised her head and looked into his face. “Sure!” “ You can’t raise me on that! Say, this here desert” —he tapped his pocket with his hand —“ is goin’ to be my—home. I’m goin’ to build a shack on it, not an ordinary one, either; I’m goin’ to raise flowers and trees and things. How would it strike yu’ and Pinto and that Kentucky bred to come out there, some time, and sort of watch the flowers grow?” “ It’d strike us as being bully,” she whis pered. And then, ere he knew it, she had gone; and Brinkley was alone. And the sun had spilled all his glory on the hills and was now dipping into a purple bed. * * * * A gray tent shone in the pitiless sun in the midst of the hot sand; some hundred yards from it Brinkley sat, careless of the heat. He sat hunched up, looking more like a camel than a man, his clothes more ragged, and dust upon him everywhere. His big hat was pulled over his eyes; he was watching a group of men a distance off who for many days had been digging and probing—searching for the oasis which they had been bidden to find.* His desert! lie looked at it —north, south, east and west, and cursed it. “Cruel,” Ro salia had said; aye! than the desert nothing crueller. “Guess the Lord had His eye on this when He thought o’ hell,” one of the men said, standing over a puncture in the sand. “Water! —that blamed old fool’d ought to be soaked in the cooler —making money sudden has turned his head.” “Well, we’re gettin’ some of it,” another laughed. “And we’ll be gettin’ bit by a rattler, or driv’ crazy by this infernal sun.” “Guess well quit it, boys,” the engineer said, who, bribed by Brinkley’s dollars, had come on what he described as a wild water chase. “ I told the old idiot there would be more sense in lookin’ for diamonds than water, and now it’s about time to tell him to go to hell.” Straightening himself and wiping the per spiration from his forehead, he strode over to Brinkley —and told him. Brinkley nodded. “Yu’don’t know yu’r job or yu’ wouldn’t quit it so soon. ” He spat into the burning sand. “ I never was no quit ter; I looked for gold for nigh twenty years ’fore I struck it, but I knew it had got to come, and so it came.” He laid his hand on his hip where his gun protruded, “And now I'm alter water, and I guess it’s got to come, too. Go back and get on with your probin’.” The F.astemer laughed uncomfortably; he began to fear the sun had done its work. “ Bluff won’t carry, Mr. Brinkley, you’ve got to pay up the balance of what you owe me, and then we’re goin’.” Brinkley slowly stretched, rolled over twice, and then pulled out his gun. “ Yu’ try right there, where I was sittin’l I don’t bluff, and BY MTHUR UPPLiN I ain’t to be bluffed.” He wagged his head to and fro, whispering as if to himself. “ Sure as I was sittin’ there, I heerd it . . . callin’ to me to be set free; it was ripplin’ and gur glin’ underneath me. Why, I ’most felt the wind in the trees and the leaves rattlin’.” He glared angrily at the engineer. “ Git a move on, son!” The man hesitated, shrugged his shoulders, and, beckoning to his companions, started again to place his plant and bore for water. They worked and sweated and cursed, while the sun, with an evil red leer, dropped slowly, slowly, toward the West. The little hills which had looked so close receded, and it seemed as if the sun would never reach them. But at last it dropped, and only the sand gave off its heat into the quiet evening. Brinkley’s head dropped on his breast; his eyes closed; he nodded. At first he thought there was an earth quake, then he guessed nature had gone crazy suddenly and sent a thunderstorm, but he blessed the rain that whirled around him. “CAN YOU TELL ME IF there’s A MAN CALLED BRINKLEY HANGS OUT AROUND HERE?” Above the sudden uproar he heard veils and oaths and cries of astonishment. He rubbed his eyes and laughed stupidly; a river rushed around, threatening to carry him away. Like a madman, he dabbled his hands in the cool waters, and lay flat and let them cover his neck and face and arms; he drank of them, and bathed in them —laughing, shouting, like a child. For he knew what had happened. They had struck water. The old tired earth flowed youth at his feet, and he lay in the midst of the oasis of which he had so long dreamed. “ Yu’ ken go now,” he shouted to tht three men staring stupidly at him. “Yu’ ken go now, and take yer engines, and all the damned dollars 1 owe ye.” He hurled wads of notes at them and, rising with difficulty, stood up right while the waters rushed around him. “Guess I ken fix this up on my own hook. Git off my land, d’ye hear? Git off, and tell ’em that Brinkley, the Water King, will be at home every afternoon from four to seven.” So they left him, babbling like a child, while the night crept down and the stars came out and blinked their little eyes at the miracle they saw. * * * * Brinkley sat at the door of his shack and smoked his pipe. As yet the trees scarcely topped his head, but the green alfalfa bor dered the tiny stream that whispered over the sands; and flowers blazed as the sun blazed, and threw their perfume to the four winds. A bird sang in his cage beneath the shadow of the overhanging roof. The shack was built of rough pine and stones and mud, and though but little over a year old, resembled somewhat an English farm-house; already creepers attempted the roof, and purple flow ers clung to the pine logs. “ Guess she’s forgot me,” he muttered un der his breath for perhaps the hundredth time. “Guessshe’Sforgotten! S’posehosses is the only things that don’t forgit.” Time had hurried while Brinkley built, and planned and conjured flowers and trees to life. And though, now, many men and women visited him and drank the Healing Waters of Life. She never came. “ She must have forgot,” he said sadly each night as the sun went down, “as I guess by now we’re famous from ’Frisco to Omaha.” One morning, out of the dust into the sun shine ambled a weary Pinto. On his back a youth swayed to and fro, as tired as the beast. Brinkley watched them curiously, then of a sudden sprang forward; for the youth resolved itself into a girl—short-skirted, booted, a light shirt disclosing brown arms and neck; dark hair, with a glint of gold clustering round her forehead; large eyes, staring hungrily between the pony’s ears. The man and the girl looked at one another. Pulling off her soft hat, Rosalia fanned the dust from her face. “ Stranger, can you tell me if there’s a shack where a spring rises, and a man called Brinkley hangs out, any where round here?” Brinkley drew his horse a little closer, and leaned forward until his great hand rested on Rosalia’s knee. “ I’ve heerd tell of such a man; they say he’s crazy. He’s a feller that was looking for an oasis, and didn’t find it.” Rosalia swayed forward, the ghost of a smile on her lips. “ Why, you —you ” “Sure! I’m it!" She drew back, the coicr returned to her face, her eyes sparkled., “But you were an old man ” “The Healing Waters,” he mumbled. . . . “ I’ve been sittin’ by them a long time now, Rosalia, waitin’ for you. And last night I began to feel I was growin’ old agen, in spite of’em.” He turned his horse’s head. “Best bring Pinto along and have a look at the shack. It ain’t much yet, but it’s gettin’ along; and the flowers —well, they know their business!” In silence they rode to where the healing waters sprang and the young trees whispered. The flowers at their approach flung perfume in their faces, a little breeze kissed lips and eyes. In silence they entered the shack, and passed from living room to dining room; from kitchen to sleeping chamber. “That was your room if you ever came,” Brinkley whispered, pushing Rosalia through an open door. “ And there’s a stall out there for the pony. Yu’d better both get in and have a wash and brush up. I’ll be knockin’ the dust out of him while yu’ do the same for yourself.” It took the whole day showing Rosalia round the oasis; as Brinkley said, it was quitei a little oasis in a mighty fine desert, and it was! all his, and he and-the old horse were alone! in the midst of it. There were the house and stables, the spring ever bubbling and the little stream that ran away to lose itself in the sand; and the trees! “Yu’ ken watch ’em grow if yu’ stand still a minute.” And the long stretch of green grass, and the flowers christened with names Brinkley had chosen. “ Birds don’t seem to come here, somehow, so I had to buy one, and though he sings fine, yet yu’ know there’s somethin’ missin’.” He laid his hand on the bosom of his shirt. “Or, there’s somethin’ wantin’.” Dinner was a success, though Brinkley apologized for it. “I have to go back to canned goods; but I’m raisin’ chickens, and there’s an orchard at the back that’ll be doin’ business next year or so.” That evening when the sun set he smoked his pipe outside the shack door with Rosalia beside him. He waited until darkness came, then he spoke his thoughts. “D’yu’ remember sayin’ once to me that there was nothin’ yu’ were ’feerd of?” He fingered his pipe awkwardly. “ Would yu’ be ’feerd of stayin’ here till to-morrow? I’m tellin’ yu’ the place isn’t right yet; it wants a woman around. . . . Wre as safe, as if yu’ was ’way back in the town —mebbe safer.” He did not look at her, or he would .have seen that her eyes were moist and that tears threatened to overflow. “ You thought I was a long time coming,” she whispered at last, “ but I started a time or two, and couldn’t find you. Then, last year, I got ill, and though I’m all right now ” She left her speech unfinished, and Brink-i ley filled another pipe and smoked it before) the silence was broken. All the stars were shining now —they danced as merrily as on that night when the water gushed from the barren womb of the desert. “ Yu’ll stay till to-morrow, then ? ” Brinkley stammered. Rosalia’s reply seemed a long time coming, and the smoke died from the bowl of Brink ley’s pipe, and a shadow of fear flitted across his eyes. He was looking across the desert, and he saw the desert of his own life. And there was still no oasis in that. Then, ere he knew it, Rosalia had slipped 'o her knees, and was by his side, her small brown hands seeking his. “ Say, if I stayed till to-morrow, couldn’t 1 stay always ? ” And she did.
