Drawn by F. Graham COOTES
Often as Barbara sat looking
over that great basin her
heart cried out to know the
secret it held.
He had lifted the canteen
and was holding it upside
down.
“But I don’t ride, you
know.”
More to regain his composure
than because he was thirsty,
helped
himself from the earthen water
jar.
“Adios. Tell Barbara I’m
all right.”
Without A word—for no
word was needed—their
hands met in A firm
grip.
Into the infinite long ago.
Jefferson Worth’s outfit of four mules and a
big wagon pulled out of San Felipe at daybreak, headed
for Rubio City. From the swinging red tassels
on the bridles of the leaders to the galvanized iron
water bucket dangling from the tail of the reach back
of the rear axle the outfit wore an unmistakable air
of prosperity. The wagon was loaded only with
a well-stocked “grub-box,” the few necessary
camp cooking utensils, blankets and canvas tarpaulin,
with rolled barley and bales of hay for the team,
and two water barrels—empty. Hanging
by its canvas strap from the spring of the driver’s
seat was a large, cloth-covered canteen. Behind
the driver there was another seat of the same wide,
comfortable type, but the man who held the reins was
apparently alone. Jefferson Worth was not with
his outfit.
By sending the heavy wagon on ahead and following
later with a faster team and a light buckboard, Mr.
Worth could join his outfit in camp that night, saving
thus at least another half day for business in San
Felipe. Jefferson Worth, as he himself would have
put it, “figured on the value of time.”
Indeed Jefferson Worth figured on the value of nearly
everything.
Now San Felipe, you must know, is where the big ships
come in and the air tingles with the electricity of
commerce as men from all lands, driven by the master
passion of human kind—Good Business—
seek each his own.
But Rubio City, though born of that same master passion
of the race, is where the thin edge of civilization
is thinnest, on the Colorado River, miles beyond the
Coast Range Mountains, on the farther side of that
dreadful land where the thirsty atmosphere is charged
with the awful silence of uncounted ages.
