Deserted by Edward Bellamy (bookreader TXT) 📖

would be if she had only said Yes, instead of No, that afternoon. People have odd notions sometimes, and it actually seemed to him that his vexation with her for destroying the pleasure of the present occasion was something quite apart from, and in addition to, his main grievance against her. It might have been so jolly, and now she had spoiled it. He could have boxed her pretty little ears.

She wondered why he did not try to light a fire, but she wouldn't ask him another thing, if she died. In point of fact, he knew the sagebrush would not burn. Suddenly the wind blew fiercer, there came a rushing sound, and the top and walls of the wigwam were whisked off like a flash, and as they staggered to their feet, buffeted by the whirling bushes, a cloud of fine alkali-dust enveloped them, blinding their eyes, penetrating their ears and noses, and setting them gasping, sneezing, and coughing spasmodically. Then, like a puff of smoke, the suffocating storm was dissipated, and when they opened their smarting eyes there was nothing but the silent, glorious desolation of the ghostly desert around them, with the snow-peaks in the distance glittering beneath the moon. A sand-spout had struck them, that was all,--one of the whirling dust-columns which they had admired all day from the car-windows.

Wretched enough before, both for physical and sentimental reasons, this last experience quite demoralized Miss Dwyer, and she sat down and cried. Now, a few tears, regarded from a practical, middle-aged point of view, would not appear to have greatly complicated the situation, but they threw Lombard into a panic. If she was going to cry, something must be done. Whether anything could be done or not, something _must_ be done.

"Don't leave me," she cried hysterically, as he rushed off to reconnoitre the vicinity.

"I 'll return presently," he called back.

But five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes passed, and he did not come back. Terror dried her tears, and her heart almost stopped beating. She had quite given him up for lost, and herself too, when with inexpressible relief she heard him call to her. She replied, and in a moment more he was at her side, breathless with running.

"I lost my bearings," he said. "If you had not answered me, I could not have found you."

"Don't leave me again," she sobbed, clinging to his arm.

He put his arms round her and kissed her. It was mean, base, contemptible, to take advantage of her agitation in that way, but she did not resist, and he did it again and again,--I forbear to say how many times.

"Is n't it a perfectly beautiful night?" he exclaimed, with a fine gush of enthusiasm.

"Is n't it exquisite?" she echoed, with a rush of sympathetic feeling.

"See those stars: they look as if they had just been polished," he cried.

"What a droll idea!" she exclaimed gleefully. "But do see that lovely mountain."

Holding her with a firmer clasp, and speaking with what might be styled a fierce tenderness, he demanded, "What did you mean, miss, by refusing me this afternoon?"

"What did you go at me so stupidly for? I had to refuse," she retorted smilingly.

"Will you be my wife?"

"Yes, sir; I meant to be all the time."

The contract having been properly sealed, Lombard said, with a countenance curiously divided between a tragical expression and a smile of fatuous complacency, "There was a clear case of poetical justice in your being left behind in the desert to-night. To see the lights of the train disappearing, leaving you alone in the midst of desolation, gave you a touch of my feeling on being rejected this afternoon. Of all leavings behind, there's none so miserable as the experience of the rejected lover."

"Poor fellow! so he should n't be left behind. He shall be conductor of the train," she said, with a bewitching laugh. His response was not verbal.

"How cold the wind is!" she said.

"Shall I build you another wigwam?"

"No; let us exercise a little. You whistle 'The Beautiful Blue Danube,' and we'll waltz. This desert is the biggest, jolliest ball-room floor that ever was, and I dare say we shall be the first to waltz on it since the creation of the world. That will be something to boast of when we get home. Come, let's dedicate the Great American Desert to Terpsichore."

They stepped out from among the ruins of their sagebrush booth upon a patch of hard, bare earth close to the railroad track. Lombard puckered his lips and struck up the air, and off they went with as much enthusiasm as if inspired by a first-class orchestra. Round and round, to and fro, they swept until, laughing, flushed, and panting, they came to a stop.

It was then that they first perceived that they were not without a circle of appreciative spectators. Sitting like statues on their sniffing, pawing ponies, a dozen Piute Indians encircled them. Engrossed with the dance and with each other, they had not noticed them as they rode up, attracted from their route by this marvelous spectacle of a pale-face squaw and brave engaged in a solitary war dance in the midst of the desert.

At sight of the grim circle of centaurs around them Miss Dwyer would have fainted but for Lombard's firm hold.

"Pretend not to see them; keep on dancing," he hissed in her ear. He had no distinct plan in what he said, but spoke merely from an instinct of self-preservation, which told him that when they stopped, the Indians would be upon them. But as she mechanically, and really more dead than alive, obeyed his direction and resumed the dance, and he in his excitement was treading on her feet at every step, the thought flashed upon him that there was a bare chance of escaping violence, if they could keep the Indians interested without appearing to notice their presence. In successive whispers he communicated his idea to Miss Dyer: "Don't act as if you saw them at all, but do everything as if we were alone. That will puzzle them, and make them think us supernatural beings, or perhaps crazy: Indians have great respect for crazy people. It's our only chance. We will stop dancing now, and sing awhile. Give them a burlesque of opera. I 'll give you the cues and show you how. Don't be frightened. I don't believe they 'll touch us so long as we act as if we did n't see them. Do you understand? Can you do your part?"

"I understand; I 'll try," she whispered.

"Now," he said, and as they separated, he threw his hat on the ground, and, assuming an extravagantly languishing attitude, burst forth in a most poignant burlesque of a lovelorn tenor's part, rolling his eyes, clasping his hands, striking his breast, and gyrating about Miss Dwyer-in the most approved operatic style. He had a fine voice and knew a good deal of music; so that, barring a certain nervousness in the performer, the exhibition was really not bad. In his singing he had used a meaningless gibberish varied with the syllables of the scale, but he closed by singing the words, "Are you ready now? Go ahead, then."

With that she took it up, and rendered the prima donna quite as effectively, interjecting "The Last Rose of Summer" as an aria in a manner that would have been encored in San Francisco. He responded with a few staccato notes, and the scene ended by their rushing into each other's arms and waltzing down the stage with abandon.

The Indians sat motionless on their horses, not even exchanging comments among themselves. They were evidently too utterly astonished by the goings on before them to have any other sentiment as yet beyond pure amazement. Here were two richly-dressed pale-faces, such as only lived in cities, out in the middle of an uninhabitable desert, in the freezing midnight, having a variety and minstrel show all to themselves, and, to make the exhibition the more unaccountable, without apparently seeing their auditors at all. Had they started up the show after being captured, Indian cunning would have recognized in it a device to save their lives, but the two had been at it before the party rode up,-- had, in fact, first attracted attention by their gyrations, which were visible for miles out on the moony plain.

Lombard, without ever letting his eyes rest a moment on the Indians so as to indicate that he saw them, had still managed by looks askance and sweeping glances to keep close watch upon their demeanor, and noted with prodigious relief that his wild scheme was succeeding better than he had dared to hope. Without any break in the entertainment he communicated his reassurance to Miss Dwyer by singing, to the tune of "My Country, 'tis of Thee," the following original hymn:--


"We 're doing admir'blee--
They 're heap much tickledee:
Only keep on."


To which she responded, to the lugubrious air of "John Brown's Body:"--


"Oh, what do you s'pose they 'll go for to do,
Oh, what do you s'pose they 'll go for to do,
Oh, what do you s'pose they 'll go for to do,
When we can sing no more?"


A thing may be ridiculous without being amusing, and neither of these two felt the least inclination to smile at each other's poetry. After duly joining in the chorus of "Glory, Hallelujah!" Lombard endeavored to cheer his companion by words adapted to the inspiriting air of "Rally Bound the Flag, Boys." This was followed by a series of popular airs, with solos, duets, and choruses.

But this sort of thing could not go on forever. Lombard was becoming exhausted in voice and legs, and as for Miss Dwyer, he was expecting to see her drop from moment to moment: Indeed, to the air of "'Way down upon the Swanee River" she now began to sing:--


"Oh, dear! I can't bear up much longer:
I 'm tired to death;
My voice's gone all to pie-ee-ee-ces,
My throat is very sore."


They must inevitably give out in a few minutes, and then he--and, terribly worse, she--would be at the mercy of these bestial savages, and this seeming farce would turn into most revolting tragedy. With this sickening conviction coming over him, Lombard cast a despairing look around the horizon to see if there were no help in their bitter extremity. Suddenly he burst forth, to the tune of "The Star-Spangled Banner: "--


"Oh, say can you see,
Far away to the east,
A bright star that doth grow
Momentarily brighter?
'Tis the far-flashing headlight
Of a railroad-train:
Ten minutes from now
We shall be safe and sound."


What they did in those ten minutes neither could tell afterward. The same idea was in both their minds,--that unless the attention of the Indians could be held until the train arrived, its approach would only precipitate their own fate by impelling the savages to carry out whatever designs of murder, insult, or capture they might have. Under the influence of the intense excitement of this critical interval it is to be feared that the performance degenerated from a high-toned concert and variety show into something very like a