The thick moss was turning yellow and brittle, and the ferns around the cave had wilted. The stream still stole out of the hole in the rock, but it was not a quarter as large as it had been. Joseph walked to the rock apprehensively and pulled out some of the moss. It was not dead. He dug a hole in the stream bed, a deep hole, and when it was full he took up water in his hat and threw it over the rock and saw it go sucking into the dying moss. The hole filled slowly. It took a great many hatfuls of water to dampen the moss, and the moss drank thirstily, and showed no sign that it had been dampened. He threw water on the scars where Elizabeth’s feet had slipped. He said, “Tomorrow I’ll bring a bucket and a shovel. Then it will be easier.” As he worked, he knew the rock no longer as a thing separated from him. He had no more feeling of affection for it than he had for his own body. He protected it against death as he would have saved his own life.
When he had finished throwing water, he sat down beside the pool and washed his face and neck in the cold water and drank from his hat. After a while he leaned back against the rock and looked across at the protecting ring of black trees. He thought of the country outside the ring, the hard burned hills, the grey and dusty sage. “Here it is safe,” he thought. “Here is the seed that will stay alive until the rain comes again. This is the heart of the land, and the heart is still beating.” He felt the dampness of the watered moss soaking through his shirt, and his thought went on, “I wonder why the land seems vindictive, now it is dead.” He thought of the hills, like blind snakes with frayed and peeling skins, lying in wait about this stronghold where the water still flowed. He remembered how the land sucked down his little stream before it had run a hundred yards. “The land is savage,” he thought, “like a dog far gone in hunger.” And he smiled at the thought because he nearly believed it. “The land would come in and blot this stream and drink my blood if it could. It is crazy with thirst.” He looked down at the little stream stealing across the glade. “Here is the seed of the land’s life. We must guard against the land gone crazy. We must use the water to protect the heart, else the little taste of water may drive the land to attack us.”
The afternoon was waning now; the shadow of the tree-line crossed the rock and closed on the other side of the circle. It was peaceful in the glade. “I came in time,” Joseph said to the rock and to himself. “We will wait here, barricaded against the drought.” His head nodded forward after a while, and he slept.
The sun slipped behind the hills and the dust withdrew, and the night came before he awakened. The hunting owls were coasting in front of the stars and the breeze that always followed the night was slipping along the hills. Joseph awakened and looked into the black sky. In a moment his brain reeled up from sleep and he knew the place. “But some strange thing has happened,” he thought. “I live here now.” The farmhouses down in the valley were not his home any more. He would go creeping down the hill and hurry back to the protection of the glade. He stood up and kicked his sleeping muscles awake, and then he walked quietly away from the rock, and when he reached the outside he walked secretly, as though he feared to awaken the land.
There were no lights in the houses to guide him this time. He walked in the direction of his memory. The houses were close before he saw them. And then he saddled his horse and tied blankets and a sack of grain and bacons and three hams and a great bag of coffee to the saddle. At last he crept away again, leading the packed horse. The houses were sleeping, the land rustled in the night wind. Once he heard some heavy animal walking in the brush and his hair pricked with fear, and he waited until the steps had died away before he went on.
He arrived back at the glade in the false dawn. This time the horse did not refuse the path. Joseph tied it to a tree and fed it from the bag of rolled barley; then he went back to the rock and spread his blankets beside the little pool he had built. The light was coming when he lay down to sleep in safety beside the rock. A little tattered fragment of cloud, high in the air, caught fire from the hidden sun, and Joseph fell asleep while he watched it.
24
ALTHOUGH the year turned into autumn and the weeks built months, the summer’s heat continued on, and at length withdrew so gradually that no change of season was perceptible. The doves, which flocked near water, were gone long ago, and the wild ducks flying over looked for their resting ponds in the evening and flew tiredly on, while the weaklings landed in dry fields and joined some new flock in the morning. It was November before the air cooled and the winter seemed really coming in, and by then the earth was tinder-dry. Even dry lichens bad scaled off the rocks.
The hot weeks drew on, and Joseph lived in the circle of the pines and waited for the winter. His new life had built its habits. Each morning he carried water from the deep wide pool he had dug and flooded the mossy rock with it, and in the evening he watered it again. The moss had responded; it was sleek and thick and green. And in the whole land there was no other green thing. Joseph watched it closely to see that there was no sign of dryness. The stream decreased little by little, but winter was coming, and there was still plenty of water to keep the rock dripping with moisture.
Every two weeks Joseph rode through the parched hills Nuestra Señora for his food supply. Early in the fall he found a letter waiting for him there.
Thomas wrote only information: “There is grass here, we lost three hundred head of stock on the way over. What’s left is fat. Rama is well, and the children The pasture rent is too high because of the dry years The children swim in the river.”
Joseph found Romas in town, and Romas told fully of the trip over the mountains. He told how the cows dropped, one by one, and did not get up under the goad, but only looked tiredly at the sky. Romas could tell their condition to an ounce of strength. He looked at their eyes, and then he shot the tired beasts, and the weary eyes set and glazed, but did not change. Little feed and little water—the moving herds filled the road and the farmers along the road were hostile. They patrolled their fence lines and shot any stock that broke through. The roads were lined with dust-covered carcasses and the path of travel stank from end to end with rotting flesh. Rams, afraid the children might sicken with the smell, kept their faces covered with wet handkerchiefs. The miles covered daily grew fewer and fewer, and the tired stock rested all night, and did not search for food. A rider was sent back, and then another, as the herd dwindled, but Romas stayed, and the two home men, until the little band came stiffly to the river and rested on their knees to eat all night. Romas smiled as he told it, and his voice had no inflection. When the account was finished he walked quickly away, calling over his shoulder, “Your brother paid me,” and he went into the saloon, out of sight.
While Joseph listened to the report a hollow pain came into his stomach, and he was glad when Romas went away. He bought his supplies and rode back to the barricade. For once he did not see the dry earth, cracked in long lightning lines. He did not feel the feeble tugging of the brittle brush as he rode through. His mind was a dusty road, and the weary cattle died in his brain. He was sorry be had heard, for now this new enemy would crowd up against the protecting pines.
The underbrush of the grove was dead by now, but the straight trunks still guarded the rock. The drought crept along the ground first, and killed all the low vines and the shrubs, but the pine roots pierced to bedrock and still drank a little water, and the needles were still black-green. Joseph rode back to the glade and he felt the rock to be sure it was moist, and he studied the little stream of water. This was the first time he set markers on the water’s edge to determine how quickly it diminished.