Foxfire (23 page)

Tessie was sweet, she had made many friendly gestures and it bothered Amanda that she could not repay in kind. But Tessie was comparatively well off; Tom Rubrick's pay as shift boss was little below Dart's and then, besides, Tessie had the post office and the little store.

The thought of the post office momentarily dimmed Amanda's zest, for there had been no letters from home in two weeks. Tessie, as always, had been comforting. “It'll be naught but some delay along the way, or likely one of those planes down, if 'twas anything grave they'd telly-graph.” Which was true, of course, and no use fretting until Roy's next trip in from Hayden tomorrow.

The house clean and garnished, Amanda found her energy still unslaked, and she debated several ways of passing the time, though the possibilities were strictly limited. She decided to call on Hugh, whom she had not seen for several days, and then take a walk up the canyon, maybe go see Mrs. Cunningham, though here she felt a reluctance. The Cunningham mansion had for her become inextricably associated with the discovery she had made there, the memory of her excitement and exaltation; painful now since she had forbidden herself to think of it, and all frustrated emotions become painful and rather shameful in retrospect.

She walked back towards the Company hospital dressed just as she was, in levis and a cotton shirt. It had finally dawned on her that the trousseau clothes would have to last a long while, and she had bought the levis in Pottner's store for $2.98 and found them sufficiently comfortable and becoming. The ladies of Lodestone did not wear pants, that aberration was reserved for dudes and little girls, and Amanda's new costume shocked them as much as had her Scottish tweeds and cashmere sweaters and pearls, but this never occurred to her.

Hugh was at home, hunched over the desk in the consulting room, and in no hospitable mood. “My God, what do
you
want?” he growled at her as she appeared in the doorway. His eyes were bloodshot, and under the little mustache his mouth twitched spasmodically.

“Nothing,” she said. “Just wondered how you were, we haven't seen you in ages.” She sat down, ignoring his glare with the assurance of a pretty woman, certain of masculine welcome when she deigns to court it.

Hugh made an angry noise in his throat. With his square freckled hand he covered something he had been looking at. “You haven't seen me because I've been drunk, and I'd still be drunk if I hadn't run out of my goddam alcohol allotment.”

“Well,” she said, lighting herself a cigarette, “there'll be plenty of real liquor soon, I guess; you won't have to drink alcohol.”

“Government going to give it away free, too? Or restore my credit at the local bars? Go away, Andy. I don't want to chit-chat.”

“It's a beautiful day,” she said, smiling indulgently. “Come for a walk with me. It'll do you good.”

His little green eyes sharpened with malice, his muscles tensed to rise, then he slumped in the chair again. He gave a curt laugh. “Unfortunately I like Dart.”

“Why, Dart wouldn't care,” she said staring at him. “What kind of a crack was that?”

“No, Dart wouldn't care, you little dope, but it would be all over Lodestone in half an hour—‘Oh, look at those two sneaking off together while poor Mr. Dartland's up at the mine.'”

“Nonsense—” she said flushing. “You've got a filthy mind.”

Hugh wheeled in his chair, and spoke toward a crack in the door which led to the kitchen. “Have I got a filthy mind, Maria? Come on out from behind the door and tell the lady.”

Amanda suppressed a gasp, then waited with tightened lips while the door slowly opened, and Maria appeared in her disheveled whitish uniform. Her limpid dark eyes surveyed Amanda insolently through thick lashes, her full red lips were drawn into a pout. “I was just going to boil up your knives and things—” she said sulkily, “I wasn't listening.”

“Of course not,” said Hugh. He slipped the article about Viola under the blotter and leaned back in his chair watching the two women with sardonic malice; Maria's suspicious baffled jealousy and Amanda's discomfiture and resentment. For a second this comedy pleased him, stopped the pounding in his head, and the gnawing blackness in his soul, then the pounding and the gnawing resumed. He lifted his hand and banged it on the desk. “Get out, both of you—” he shouted. “Leave me alone!”

Amanda left, her face flaming, but as she strode up the canyon road mentally hurling epithets at Hugh some pity began to seep in and undermine the anger. For she had recognized the look in his eyes while he shouted at them to get out. They had betrayed an emotion which she had never seen in her life before and yet she knew with that universal intuition which lies in all of us—that it was the look of utter and hopeless despair.

But what can anyone do? she thought, nobody can help him, even if one knew how to, he wouldn't let them. She sighed and put the thought of Hugh from her, determined not to let it mar the brightness of the day. And her attention was soon distracted by an encouner.

She heard the jingle of a bell, the thud of little hoofs behind her, and a short bark, and turned to see Old Larky on his burro plodding up the hill. Susan, of course, waddling alongside.

“Good day, ma'am—” said Old Larky lifting his greasy felt hat and bowing. “Agreeable spring weather, isn't it?” He emitted a strong smell of bootleg whisky, but Amanda was startled again as she had been in the post office by the cultivated English voice that emerged from this old wreck, and she suddenly remembered the question Roy had asked him. “Found your lost mine yet, Larky?”

She smiled, agreed that it was a lovely day, and fell into step beside the burro. “Do you mind if I walk along with you a bit?”

“Indeed not, I should be honored—Down Susan!” he added tenderly as the spaniel made one halfhearted exploratory jump at Amanda's legs.

“Where are the puppies?” she asked.

“We left them at home today. This was merely a quick trip down because I broke my pick and had to replace it.”

“Do you do much digging up there in the mountains?”

He nodded. “Quite a lot. I'm searching for my lost mine, you know.” Her heart gave an unexpected little jump.

“Do you mind, I mean, could you tell me anything about it?” she said. “Lost mines are so interesting.”

Larky nodded again. He was used to this. People were always inquiring about his lost mine, sometimes seriously, sometimes humorously, and sometimes with purpose to defraud, and find it first for themselves.

“It's either in these mountains or across the Gila in the Mescals,” he said. “My partner was a very ignorant man, and he wasn't certain, but I spent twelve years searching in the Mescals so I don't imagine it's there.”

“Twelve years!”

He waggled his head, his bleary eyes looked down at her solemnly. “And four years here in the Dripping Springs, but I believe I have a fresh clue. I made an error in the map.”

“What sort of a map?” she asked diffidently.

“Oh, I drew it myself from directions my partner gave me before he died. He was the one who found the mine in the first place, only he fell down a cliff and got hurt so badly that he never could go back.”

“What sort of a mine was it?” she asked after walking along a minute in silence.

“Silver. Richer even than the first strikes at the Old Dominion in Globe. My partner said he saw a boulder of pure silver so heavy he couldn't lift it, but he brought a few pieces of ore back.”

“And you believed his story?” asked Amanda, softening the question with a smile.

“Certainly, he was an honest man and a good prospector. It's merely a matter of locating the mine again.”

See, thought Amanda to Dart, here's an educated man and he believes in a lost mine, he's willing to spend most of his life hunting for it. The idea's not so silly.

“You come from England?” she ventured, hoping that he would say some more about the mine. “I was there last summer, I loved it.”

“Were you indeed?” said Larky politely. “I haven't seen England in over forty years.” He turned on the saddle blanket to look for Susan, who had lumbered into the creosote bushes to investigate an interesting smell. He whistled and she reappeared. “Did you happen to visit Oxford?” he asked turning around again.

“Oh, yes. I was fascinated.” She stared up at the hunched figure on the burro, the dirty levis, the flapping hat over stringy gray hair. “Did you—I mean, by any chance did you——”

He gave a wheezy chuckle. “I went to Magdalen.”

Amanda had an instant recollection of the beautiful old college by the stone bridge, of elegant young men in emblazoned jackets, of a sherry party in an oak-paneled room with mullioned windows made in the time of Henry the Eighth. And she dared not ask the questions which she longed to ask. Then how in the world did you get here into this crude wilderness of rocks? What transformed you from one of those finedrawn aristocratic youths, “the flower of Old England” as the guidebook said, into a filthy old scarecrow of an Arizona prospector?

“Do you ever get homesick?” she ventured at last.

“Never,” said Old Larky with conviction. “This country suits me. One becomes a part of it. And there is freedom to do as one pleases.”

He pulled up the burro and turned its head towards the south. “Here's my trail,” he said lifting his hat. “It's been a pleasure talking with you.”

She murmured a good-bye, and stood on the dusty road watching the burro with its slouched rider, and Susan, all amble down a dry wash. The burro's bell tinkled peacefully in the still air. She could still hear it even after they veered left for the climb up switchbacks towards a gap between two of the low, mesquite-tufted mountains. How strangely self-sufficient they were, some of these people she had met, she thought with both contempt and envy. There was no other similarity between Calise Cunningham and this old British reprobate who called himself Larky, and yet they both exuded a maddening atmosphere of indifference to the normal world, to comforts and companionship and the enjoyment of all the benefits civilization had painfully evolved for mankind.

If Larky finally found his lost mine, I bet he wouldn't know what to do with it, she thought, he'd never change his way of living, never go back to the grace and the refinement that must have once been his. He and Mrs. Cunningham were both escapists, she thought, visionaries, and she found comfort in relegating them to a certain psychological category. For by contrast she felt herself practical and determined. There might be those who could be happy wandering through life communing with nature and ignoring the material values which the majority of mankind thought essential, but she was not one of them. She might be romantic, as Dart said, but she also knew the necessity of a definite goal.

You get what you go after in this world, she thought, and she must manage Dart since he would not do it for himself. Her thoughts reverted to the Pueblo Encantado. Maybe there was no gold there, but surely it was only common sense to find out. It was ridiculous to pay too much attention to Dart's prohibition. Her mistake with him had been over-emotionalism, and no wonder Dart had been annoyed. With time, however, and logic and tact, his mind could be changed for him.

She would begin tonight, she decided, using a new and casual approach.

But there was no chance to talk to Dart that night. A far more immediate matter claimed them both.

A
MANDA
turned towards home after her encounter with Old Larky, completely abandoning the half-formed project of visiting Mrs. Cunningham. She found that the memory of her hour with Calise had lost all its magic. The atmosphere of singular purity in that orderly room, her own involuntary frankness, and Calise's talk of God and content and mountain flowers, all seemed slightly ridiculous in retrospect. Perhaps this was in part due to Luther Mablett's comments on Calise in the mine office, “batty as a March hare, sees ghosts and stuff,” but it was largely due to Amanda's fear that she might again betray her thoughts and that mention of her preoccupation with the Pueblo Encantado would elicit from Calise even less approval than it had from Dart. She had no reason for this conviction, but it was nevertheless a certainty.

She reached home again about one o'clock, ate some bread and jam and drank some tea, then looked longingly at
Anthony Adverse,
the last book Jean had sent her. She had already been entranced by its opening pages, and the atmosphere of romantic passion and derring-do. There was, however, a pile of Dart's shirts to be pressed, and there was mending, and at both tasks she continued to be remarkably inept.

“When duty whispers low,
Thou must,
The youth replies,
I can,
" she thought, flinging the heavy black sadiron on the stove. Except I don't
want
to; what do you do about that, stern daughter of the voice of God?

So Amanda compromised. She ironed three shirts, mended two pairs of Dart's socks, hoping that the puckered darns would not give him blisters, and then she threw herself across the bed on her stomach, and propped up
Anthony Adverse.
She became so engrossed that she did not at first hear a knock on the door. The second one roused her and she shut the book reluctantly, and walked across the room still in a daze of emotion with the lovers and the cruel Don Luis.

A plump copper-skinned Indian with ear-length hair, a black felt hat, red plaid shirt, and faded levis stood on her doorstep looking up at her with a grave scrutiny.

Amanda stared down at him blankly.

“You Dartland's woman?” asked the Indian, examining her in one glance, then averting his eyes.

“Why, yes. I'm Mrs. Dartland. What is it you wanted?”

The Indian had a round, good-natured face, though he did not respond to her tentative smile, nor did he answer her question at once. He simply stood there by the doorstep, his unwinking black eyes fixed upon the giant saguaro at the corner.