The triumph of the nut, and other parodies

I

“Buenas dias, señor!”

The girl’s liquid accents exactly fitted the dark, piquant, little face whence they had emerged. The slender grace of her slight form, the delicate arch of her instep, the shapely grace of her dainty ankle, all marked her as the child of a Mexican laborer, Margarita the Maid of Muchacho.

“Muchus gracious, seenora!”

Adam Larey’s Spanish was not that of the lower class of Mexicans, but it was the best he had. Adam Larey’s face flushed beneath its coat of tan and his breath came in short pants, for he was clothed in the innocence of eighteen summers. Though his lofty stature betokened budding manhood, Adam Larey had never before spoken to a woman other than his mother or an occasional sister.

Then, suddenly, Margarita launched herself upon him. Her slender twining form enveloped him like a wind of flame, like a lissom spectre. A strong shuddering shook his heart. His blood leaped, beat, burnt in his veins. He was gathered in her close embrace.

“Don’t! don’t!” he gasped. “You mustn’t! Someone will see——”

His words were stifled by those eager searching lips and—she kissed him.

It was over in a single, scorching, flaming moment. Exerting his enormous strength to the utmost, he tore himself from her twining arms, half ran, half stumbled up the rocky path to his cabin, flung himself upon his bed and burst into a blinding flood of tears.

II

Adam Larey’s aching eyelids opened on the cold gray dawn of the morning after. Simultaneously, the dread realization of his loss overwhelmed him, devastated him, made him feel very bad. He had been through the fires of passion, through the flames of dishonor. He could never, never be the same pure man again as previously he had been before. She must atone. She must marry him, make an honest man of him.

He found her in converse with his brother Guerd Larey—tall, superbly built, handsome, bold, keen, reckless, gay Guerd Larey—whose face was perfect of feature, not a single one missing—Guerd Larey, a creature of G—dlike beauty, with a heart as false as h—l!!

“Margarita! Maggie! Mag!” he faltered. “Will you—won’t you—ain’t you going to—marry me? After what happened—last night—you won’t, will you?—I mean, you will, won’t you? You ain’t chucked me, are you? I’m on, ain’t I? You can’t can me, can you? Aw! You know what I mean!”

“Nachitoches, señor!” she answered lightly.

“Meaning?” he inquired.

“Nay—no—not—nix—never—not at all—nothing doing—and several other expressions of like import,” said she.

“Ha! ha!” commented Guerd Larey.

His mocking tones roused all the d—vil in the breast of Adam Larey.

“Take care, Guerd Larey!” he said omnivorously.

“Say not so, Adam! say not so!” taunted Guerd Larey, and at the same time seized a huge rock of several hundred-weight and hurled it at his brother. It struck Adam Larey full in the face and dazed him for a moment.

Then a rushing gush of rage overwhelmed him. He snatched his gun from its holster.

“You have snore your last sneer, Guerd Larey!” he cried, closed both eyes and pulled the trigger—or whatever you call that little thing that makes it shoot—turned and fled to the desert—the registered trade-mark of Cain upon him.

III

Adam Larey’s dull eyelids opened on the grim, dim dawn of the zanegrey desert. Before him a wide, barren, endless, bleak, lifeless, silent, desolate plateau—illimitable space and silence and solitude and desolation stretched illimitably to a illimitable horizon—wild and black and sharp—colossal buttresses, chocolate mountain ranges, bare and jagged peaks, silhouetted against the hazel dawn.

Here and there were sparse, vague tufts of sage-brush, greasewood, sneezewood, cacti, neckti, octopi, ocatilla, ocarina and similar hardy perennials—the strange verbiage of the desert.

On the left, lofty Pistachio lifted its pale green peak. On the right Eskimopi, in lofty grandeur, heaved its chocolate height.

IV

Two weeks had elapsed since Adam Larey had flown the coop. Two weeks without food, without water, had left him both hungry and thirsty. Punctured by cactus-spines, his boots had suffered several important blow-outs and now he was traveling practically on his rims.

More than fifty miles a day he had fled over the desert floor, composed chiefly of sand, gravel, lime, cement and other building materials, yet every one of the last ten nights he had slept in the same place.

Morning after morning, he had set out. Day after day, he had followed his own trail, now a broad, well-beaten track. Night after night, he had reached the same starting point. The doom of the desert had fallen on the wanderer. He was traveling in a circle.

V

The blazing disc of the sun mounted the coppery sky—the lord of day ascending the throne of this, his empire. The desert seemed aflame, when Adam Larey set out on his daily round. The rocks were hot as red-hot plates of iron or steel. The sand was very warm, also.

And now a low, seeping, silken rustle filled the air, sometimes rising to a soft roar—the dread simoom of the desert! It whipped up the sand in clouds, sheets, blankets, quilts, mattresses, till all the air was pale yellow, thick and opaque and moaning. It was hot with the heat of a blast-furnace, heavy with the weight of leaden fire.

It burned Adam Larey’s brow, charred his cheeks and baked his brains—seared, scorched the rest of him. His blood was boiling in his head. His motometer burst, steam issued from his ears and there was no water to replenish his radiator. Still doggedly Adam Larey strove forward.

Fiercer and hotter blew the wind. His hair was ignited. His celluloid collar button exploded. His shirt was charred to tinder. His suspender buttons melted. His trousers fell from him. Still doggedly Adam Larey strove forward.

Fiercer and hotter blew the wind. His skin dried, shriveled, was calcined, blew away in dust. His flesh followed. As deep inroads were thus made in his muscular substance, unarticulated bones, having no means of support, were detached and fell from him. Still doggedly Adam Larey strove forward.

But when both knee-caps dropped and his knee-joints worked with equal ease forward or backward, even he could no more. The skeleton of Adam Larey fell rattling to the ground.

VI

There Dismukes, the old prospector, found him. It was a heart-breaking job to rebuild Adam Larey—to find the missing parts. But the pertinacity of the old prospector was rewarded. Adam Larey’s chassis was re-assembled. A few cups of soup were administered, carefully at first because the gas-tank leaked, and at last Adam Larey, re-built, re-finished throughout, stood erect once more.

Dismukes gave him a new outfit, including a burro, showed him how to pack the burro neatly, so the drawers would close, and Adam Larey set out again on his travels.

VII

Eight years Adam Larey dwelt in the desert, growing daily stronger, finer, purer in its illimitable wilds—the abode of purity, silence and tarantulas. Climbing inaccessible heights, striding over impassable plains, stalking the savage antelope, the impatient grizzly, the querulous bob-cat, he acquired the eye of a mountain-sheep, the ear of a deer, the nose of a wolf and many other trophies of the chase.

He loved the lure of the desert. He learned its lore. The secrets of nature were disclosed to him. He knew whether the antelope chews her cud with a full set of teeth, upper and lower, or has to gum it in part—why grizzly-bears always walk in single file and why they never do—why the bark of a coyote or of a tree, whichever it is, is always rougher on the north or the south side, as the case may be—wherein the joyous cry of the great blue condor, weeping for its children, differs from the melancholy note of the lounge lizard courting its mate—whether the gray desert wolf is indigenous, like the horned toad, or monogamous, like the rattlesnake—whether the jack-rabbit’s tail curls in the direction of the movement of hands of a watch, like the trailing arbutus, or counter-clockwise, like the lesser celandine—whether the giraffe lies down to sleep or merely appears to do so—whether the mesquite-bush attracts lightning or whether it is the lightning’s own fault—whether sound travels faster in the direction in which it is going or in the opposite direction—whether the vulture finds carrion by the odor emanating from its prey or by its own sense of smell—whether the bob-cat can see in the dark as well or not as well or better or worse or at all or not at all or at night or partially or impartially or which, if any—Adam Larey at last knew the answers to all these questions as well as Stewart Edward White or any Boy Scout in America.

He had adopted the name of Woncefell—in memory of his single lapse from virtue, his momentary liaison with Margarita, the Maid of Muchacho. As Woncefell, the Wanderer, he was known and feared throughout that desert land.

Death Valley! Surrounded by ragged, jagged peaks, floored with ashes, borax, sandsoap, dutch-cleanser, watered by arsenic springs, swept by furnace blasts, it was, indeed, an unpleasant place. “The lid of h—ll,” a profane prospector had called it.

Yet there, in a rude shack on the sloping mountain side, overhung by an impending mass of loose rock, from which ever and anon gigantic fragments detached themselves to roll with a booming crash into the valley below, missing the cabin only by inches, dwelt Magdalene Virey and Elliott, her husband.

She was a woman of noble proportions, though frail—at least she had been on one occasion. She suffered from insomnia because Elliott spent his nights in the mass of rocks above the cabin, detaching great boulders and rolling them down with a booming crash into the valley below, trying to frighten his wife to death.

Elliott did not love his wife and he was a very disagreeable man. He was, perhaps, a little mad, but his wife never got that way. She had a very sweet forgiving nature. The great boulders always narrowly missed the tiny cabin. They bounded over, knocking the top off the chimney, and she had to rebuild it every morning. But the sad-eyed saint never complained.

IX

Thither came Woncefell, the Wanderer.

“Magdalene Virey, why do you dwell in this horrible place?” he asked.

“Woncefell, the Wanderer,” she answered, “I love the silence, the loneliness, the mystery of the great open spaces and, besides, dear Elliott finds his rock-golf so amusing. He is so ambitious to make the chimney in one.

“I can endure it only because I am sustained by my faith in G—d and by the hope that some night he’ll break his dod-gasted neck or pinch his fingers or something.”

“Magdalene Virey,” he said, “why does he do it?”

“Woncefell, the Wanderer,” she said, “because my daughter Ruth is not Elliott Virey’s daughter.”

“Magdalene Virey, who is Elliott Virey’s daughter, then?” he asked.

“Woncefell, the Wanderer, I do not know,” she answered.

“Magdalene Virey, my G—d!” he exclaimed.

Who was Elliott Virey’s daughter? The mystery was insoluble. It was plain to him now that he must kill Elliott Virey with his bare hands, like he had killed Baldy McKue, breaking his arms, one at a time, then his legs, then his ribs seriatim, then his neck—and that was about all.

X

That night Elliott Virey engaged as usual in his favorite outdoor sport. Rock after rock, boulder and yet more bould, crashed, streaked, hurtled down the mountain. Singly, in pairs, in column of fours, in mass formation, by dozens and hundreds, they crashed and boomed as the madman hurled them at the humble dwelling of his lawful wife.

The time had come! Adam Larey started up the slope.

“Virey,” he roared above the thunder of the rocks, “I’m going to break your bones like I done Baldy McKue’s.”

The madman heard him.

“Fore!” he yelled and with one last supreme effort tore loose the whole mountain side. Down it came with a thunderous roar, a cataclysmic rush, and with it came Virey. It swept the cabin from its underpinning.

As the mass of rocks bearing the little shack crashed past Adam Larey, the saintly woman leaned far out o’er the window sill and handed him a small photograph.

“Woncefell, the Wanderer,” she said in a low, clear voice, “take it. It is my daughter, my child, not Elliott’s. With the clairvoyant truth given to a dying woman, I tell you that you and she will meet. Go find her. And now, I do not know where we’re going but we’re certainly on our way. You’ll excuse my leaving you, won’t you? Her name is Ruth. Au revoir!”

“What a pretty name,” said Adam Larey, musingly, as the avalanche and Mr. and Mrs. Virey spilled over into the declivity below, lifting to heaven a thick, crashing, rolling roar of thunder. When the last rumble died away, silence and solitude reigned over all. Adam Larey was alone at last.

XI

He did meet Ruth on page 392. Her mother had evidently been reading ahead.

“Oh, you Sheik,” she said. “Desert man, I am lonesome. Stay—stay, desert man, and make me a woman.”

Gosh! wasn’t she awful? Adam Larey fled. The younger generation was too much for him. Besides, he had yet to atone for his brother’s death—to surrender to the sheriff, be hanged for murder—then, only then, would his conscience cease its seventeen years’ bickering—then, only then, could he return and claim her for his bride.

Muchacho again—the scene of his boyhood—and his old friend, Merrywell.

“Old friend,” said Adam Larey, “lead me to my brother’s grave.”

“His grave?” said Merrywell. “Gosh! he ain’t got none, as I knows on.”

“What?” cried Adam Larey. “Why didn’t they bury him?”

“’Cause he ain’t dead yit.”

“Didn’t I kill him?”

“Gosh, no! Your pistol missed fire. Guerd Larey’s ’live as you be.”

“Do you mean to say,” cried Adam Larey, “that I’ve been expiating Guerd Larey’s death in the desert for seventeen years with sandstorms and tarantulas and everything, and he ain’t dead? This is an outrage! Somebody’ll pay for this!”

“Go easy, young man,” said Merrywell. “Ain’t you been workin’ fer Mr. Zane Grey? Well, don’t you know as Mr. Grey don’t never let his heroes do nothin’ ’at’s really bad?”