Part 36 (2/2)

”Fer nigh onto fifty-nine years I've roamed the desert, pardner, but I've never seen another storm like that. Days and days she blowed, and sometimes you couldn't see yer hand before yer face for the flyin'

sand. Someway we gets out of it, the Almighty knows how! But from that day to this I've never been able to find that place ag'in.

”There was gold there--piles and piles o' gold--and Len he'd found it.

Found it out alone one day before the storm set in. And knowin' I'd been high-gradin' on him, he kep' this find to 'imself. Then come the storm, and we fought out just ahead o' death.

”Then Len he keeps tryin' to go back--wants to work long for a big grubstake, and is quiet and dreams a lot, with Baby Jean in his arms, and the c.h.i.n.k settin' cross-legged lookin' at 'em with his glitterin'

little eyes--half full o' hop, I guess. And I gets onto why Len wants to drift back there to that land o' dead men's bones, and I watch 'im, and freeze to 'im continual.

”Len he makes a bluff at this an' that an' the other--him and me and the c.h.i.n.k driftin' from here to there over this part o' the desert, or hereabouts, scratchin' a little now and ag'in. But Len his heart ain't in it, I see; and all the time he's tryin' to shake me off, I get it.

But I won't shake.

”Well, Len he ain't no more good after the awful time we went through up there in that terrible land. He never was a man ag'in after that; and he gets scared, I guess, and thinks he's gonna cash his chips.

They's a queer look in his eyes, and in camp he just sets and sets with Baby Jean in his arms, and the hophead lookin' at 'em from across the fire with his glitterin' little eyes. And sometimes Len he just sets and sets and watches Baby Jean asleep, and his eyes are worried like a horse's eyes when he knows he's starvin'; and the yenshee hound he just sets and looks at Len, and Heaven only knows what he's thinkin'!

”Then we make it up along in where the Salt Lake road was buildin'

then--up Barstow way--all wild them days. And one day Len and me and the c.h.i.n.k goes out into the b.u.t.tes, and leaves Baby Jean in a yucca-stump corral so's the c'yotes can't get at her, like we did sometimes. She wasn't never a yellin' kid. Give her a bottle o'

canned cow, and she'd suck herself to sleep with varmints prowlin'

about and sandstorms blowin'. Sometimes she'd sob if things was goin'

wrong in her little world--low and heartbroken, like a woman cries.

But yell--never!

”So we leaves her suckin' at her bottle, for Len he'd never broke her of it, and out we goes to scratch around some more up in Turkey b.u.t.tes.

”It was lookin' to storm and we hadn't oughta gone maybe; but we didn't aim to make it far, and could come back any time. But when she broke she broke sudden; and only once before had I seen such a blow as that.

We got plumb lost five miles from camp; and all that day and all that night and all next day we wandered about in the whirlin' sand, outa water, and goin' crazier every minute. The c.h.i.n.k he gives up, and so does Len; and I'm too crazy to make 'em keep on fightin'. I dragged out two days later, way north o' the b.u.t.tes--plumb bughouse, my tongue all black and stiff as rubber. I've never been the same man since, I guess. I dream about them days and nights.

”The folks that found me they go huntin' for Len and the c.h.i.n.k and Baby Jean t'other side o' the b.u.t.tes. They find Len and the c.h.i.n.k, both dead, their faces and tongues---- But I don't like to remember that!

Sometimes the yuccas they whisper about it; but I always plug my ears and begin to sing, or talk to the a.s.ses about the fun we'll have when we find Jean Prince and get the gold Len knew about up there Death Valley way.

”They turned Len's things over to me. The baby they couldn't find; but after weeks they stumbled onto the camp where we'd left her and found everything almost buried in sand. The kid was gone, and the c'yotes hadn't got her. They was a piece o' paper in the camp; but it had rained and rained since it was stuck up there, and all the writin' was gone. In Len's things I finds the paper that I'm carryin', and I kep'

it to myself. I've got it now--right here”--he thumped his breast--”and for twenty years I've hunted for Baby Jean and never found her.

”They's gold up there--up where Len Prince found it. The paper tells only half o' how to relocate Len's claims. At the beginnin' it says the paper's for Baby Jean, and no one else is to have it. Len knew he was soon goin' to croak--and he fixed it for Baby Jean when he was gone. He done his best. Any one who's got the paper knows only half.

Whoever's got the paper can't do nothin' without Baby Jean.

”The c.h.i.n.k he done it. It was crazy--loco, you'll say. But what c'n you expect from a man who's suffered as he did? Lissen, pardner--the c.h.i.n.k he done it. The paper tells about it. The c.h.i.n.k he doped the kid--with opium, some way, I guess--so's it wouldn't hurt her, and then he tattooed the rest o' the directions for findin' the gold on the head o' Baby Jean. Cut off some hair in back, and shaved a spot on her little head, and tattooed it there. The c.h.i.n.k he did. And then the hair grew out ag'in, and n.o.body ever knew!

”Even Baby Jean don't know--a woman grown up now. And years and years I've hunted for her, but couldn't find her. Cause I couldn't stick, I guess. Somethin' always kep' callin' me back into the hills, and I'd forgot. Just me and the little fellas, we understand. And we're driftin' about ag'in huntin' for Baby Jean.

”I had a funny dream. I dreamed I'd found her--a young woman grown.

And in that dream she told me she was Baby Jean, and I told her all about the paper and the tattoo marks. And then it looked like I drifted into deeper sleep and I woke up in camp way out in nowhere.

I'd forgot again, you see, and drifted for the hills just when I'd found Baby Jean. Or so I dreamed. But sometimes I think I wasn't dreamin', pardner. It wasn't just like other dreams I've had. I got it that I was in a place called Ragtown, and I know they's such a place, cause everybody tells me so. And I was sick after the dream.

Funny! I'm drifting that a way now. I want to see that Ragtown. Was it a dream? Or was the yuccas laughin' at ole Filer ag'in? I dunno.

But how come it I dreamed about a place called Ragtown, a place that really is but that I never seen?”

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