XIII

CHANGES AT FORLORN RIVER

The first of March saw the federal occupation of the garrison at Casita.  After a short, decisive engagement the rebels were dispersed into small bands and driven eastward along the boundary line toward Nogales.

It was the destiny of Forlorn River, however, never to return to the slow, sleepy tenor of its former existence.  Belding’s predictions came true.  That straggling line of home-seekers was but a forerunner of the real invasion of Altar Valley.  Refugees from Mexico and from Casita spread the word that water and wood and grass and land were to be had at Forlorn River; and as if by magic the white tents and red adobe houses sprang up to glisten in the sun.

Belding was happier than he had been for a long time.  He believed that evil days for Forlorn River, along with the apathy and lack of enterprise, were in the past.  He hired a couple of trustworthy Mexicans to ride the boundary line, and he settled down to think of ranching and irrigation and mining projects.  Every morning he expected to receive some word form Sonoyta or Yuma, telling him that Yaqui had guided his party safely across the desert.

Belding was simple-minded, a man more inclined to action than reflection.  When the complexities of life hemmed him in, he groped his way out, never quite understanding.  His wife had always been a mystery to him.  Nell was sunshine most of the time, but, like the sun-dominated desert, she was subject to strange changes, wilful, stormy, sudden.  It was enough for Belding now to find his wife in a lighter, happier mood, and to see Nell dreamily turning a ring round and round the third finger of her left hand and watching the west.  Every day both mother and daughter appeared farther removed from the past darkly threatening days.  Belding was hearty in his affections, but undemonstrative.  If there was any sentiment in his make-up it had an outlet in his memory of Blanco Diablo and a longing to see him.  Often Belding stopped his work to gaze out over the desert toward the west.  When he thought of his rangers and Thorne and Mercedes he certainly never forgot his horse.  He wondered if Diablo was running, walking, resting; if Yaqui was finding water and grass.

In March, with the short desert winter over, the days began to grow warm.  The noon hours were hot, and seemed to give promise of the white summer blaze and blasting furnace wind soon to come.  No word was received from the rangers.  But this caused Belding no concern, and it seemed to him that his women folk considered no news good news.