In December the black frost struck the country. The sun rose and set redly and the north wind surged through the country every day, filling the air with dust, and tattering the dry leaves. Joseph went down to the houses and brought up a tent to sleep in. While he was among the quiet houses, he started the windmill and listened for a moment while it sucked air through the pipes, and then he turned the little crank that stopped the blades. He did not look back on the houses as he rode up the slope. He cut a wide path around the graves on the sidehill.
That afternoon he saw the fog heads on the western range. “I might go back to the old man,” he thought. “There may be more things he could tell me.” But his thought was play. He knew he couldn’t leave the rock, for fear the moss would wilt. He went back into the silent glade and spread his tent. He picked the bucket from his gear and walked over to throw water on the rock. Something had happened. The stream had receded from his marking pegs a good two inches. Somewhere under the earth the drought had attacked the spring. Joseph filled his bucket at the pool and threw water on the rock, and then filled again. And soon the pool was empty—he had to wait half an hour for the dying stream to fill it again. For the first time a panic fell upon him. He crawled into the little cave and looked at the fissure from which the water slowly trickled, and he crawled out again, covered with the moisture of the cave. He sat beside the stream and watched it flow into the pool. And he thought he could see it decrease while he looked. The wind ruffled the pine branches nervously.
“It will win,” Joseph said aloud. “The drought will get in at us.” He was frightened.
In the evening he walked out the path and watched the sun setting in the Puerto Suelo. The fog came out of the hidden sea and swallowed the sun. In the chill winter evening Joseph gathered an armful of dead pine twigs and a bag of cones for his evening’s fire. He built his fire close to the pool this night, so that its light fell on the tiny stream. When his meager supper was finished, he leaned back against his saddle and watched the water, slipping noiselessly into the pool. The wind had fallen, and the pines were quiet. All around the grove Joseph could hear the drought creeping, slipping on dry scales over the ground, circling and exploring the edges of the grove. And he heard the dry frightened whisper of the earth as the drought passed over it. He stood up now and put his bucket in the pool, under the stream, and each time it filled he poured it over the rock and sat down to wait for the bucket to fill again. It seemed to take a longer time with each bucketful. The owls flew ceaselessly about in the air, for there were few little creatures to catch. Then Joseph heard a faint slow pounding on the earth. He stopped breathing to listen.
“It’s coming up the hill now. It will get in tonight.” He took a new breath and listened again for the rhythmic pounding, and he whispered, “When it gets here, the land will be dead, and the stream will stop.” The sound came steadily up the hill, and Joseph, trapped with the rock, listened to it coming. Then his horse lifted its head and nickered, and an answering nicker came back from the hillside below the grove. Joseph started up and stood by his little fire, waiting with his shoulders set and his head forward to resist the blow. In the dim night light he saw a horseman ride into the glade and pull up his horse. The horseman looked taller than the pines, and a pale blue light seemed to frame his head. But then his voice called softly, “Señor Wayne.”
Joseph sighed, and his muscles relaxed. “It is you, Juanito,” he said tiredly. “I know your voice.”
Juanito dismounted and tied his horse and then he strode to the little fire. “I came first to Nuestra Señora. They told me there that you were alone. I went to the ranch, then, and the houses were deserted.”
“How did you know to look for me here?” Joseph asked. Juanito knelt by the fire and warmed his hands, throwing on twigs to make a fresh blaze. “I remembered what you told your brother once, señor. You said, ‘This place is like cool water.’ I came over the dry hills, and I knew where you’d be.” Now that the blaze was leaping, he looked into Joseph’s face. “You are not well, señor. You are thin and sick.”
“I am well, Juanito.”
“You look dry and feverish. You should see a doctor tomorrow.”
“No, I am well. Why did you come back, Juanito?”
Juanito smiled at a remembered pain. “The thing that made me go was gone, señor. I knew when it was gone, and I wanted to come back. I have a little son, señor. I just saw him tonight. He looks like me, with blue eyes, and he talks a little. His grandfather calls him Chango, and he says it is a little piojo, and he laughs. That Garcia is a happy man.” His face had grown bright with all this gladness, but he grew sad again. “You, señor. They told me about you and the poor lady. There are candles burning for her.”
Joseph shook his head a little against the memory. “There was this thing coming, Juanito. I felt it coming. I felt it creeping in on us. And now it is nearly through, just this little island left.”
“What do you mean, señor?”
“Listen, Juanito, first there was the land, and then I came to watch over the land; and now the land is nearly dead. Only this rock and I remain. I am the land.” His eyes grew sad. “Elizabeth told me once of a man who ran away from the old Fates. He clung to an altar where he was safe.” Joseph smiled in recollection. “Elizabeth had stories for everything that happened, stories that ran alongside things that happened and pointed the way they’d end?”
A silence fell upon them. Juanito broke up more sticks and threw them on the fire. Joseph asked, “Where did you go, Juanito, when you went away?”
“I went to Nuestra Señora. I found Willie and took him away with me.” He looked hard at Joseph. “It was the dream, señor. You remember the dream. He told me often. He dreamed he was on a hard dusty land which shone. There were holes in the ground. The men who came out of the holes pulled him to pieces like a fly. It was a dream. I took him with me, that poor Willie. We went to Santa Cruz and worked on a ranch nearby, in the mountains. Willie liked the big trees on the hills. The country was so different from that place in the dreams, you see.” Juanito stopped and looked up into the sky at a half moon that showed its face over the tree-tops.
“One moment,” Joseph said, and he lifted the full bucket from the hole and flung the water on the rock.
Juanito watched him and made no comment. “I do not like the moon any more,” Juanito continued. “We worked there on the mountain, herding cattle among the trees, and Willie was glad. Sometimes he had the dream, but I was always there to help him. And after each time he dreamed, we went to Santa Cruz and drank whiskey and saw a girl.” Juanito pulled his hat down to keep the moonlight from his face. “One night Willie had his dream, and the next night we went to town. There is a beach in Santa Cruz, and amusements, tents, and little cars to ride on. Willie liked those things. We walked along in the evening by the beach, and there was a man with a telescope, to see the moon. Five cents, it cost. I looked first, and then Willie looked.” Juanito turned away from Joseph. “Willie was very sick,” he said. “I carried him in front of me on my saddle and led his horse. But Willie couldn’t stand it, and he hanged himself from a tree limb with a riata that night. It had been all right when he thought it was a dream, but when he saw the place was really there, and not a dream, he couldn’t stand it to live. Those holes, señor, and that dry dead place. It was really there, you see. He saw it in the telescope.” He broke some twigs and threw them in the fire. “I found him hanging in the morning.”