Brothers -- Fiction; Deserts -- Fiction; Southwest, New -- Fiction; Western stories
Thus began the business of the day for Adam. When breakfast was over
and done with he set to work to improve that camp, and especially with
an eye to the comfort of the invalid. Adam knew the wonderful curative
qualities of desert air, if it was wholly trusted and lived in. On
the shady side of the hut he erected a wide porch with palm-thatched
roof that cut off the glare of the sky. With his own canvases, and
others he found at the camp, he put up curtains that could be rolled
up or let down as occasion required. Then he constructed two beds, one
at each end of the porch, and instead of palm leaves he used thick
layers of fragrant sage and greasewood. Mrs. Linwood, with the aid of
Genie, managed to get out to her new quarters. Her pleasure at the
change showed in her wan face. The porch was shady, cool, fragrant. She
could look right out upon the clean, brown, beautiful streams where
they met, and at the camp fire where Adam and Genie would be engaged,
and at night she could see it blaze and glow, and burn down red. The
low-branching cottonwoods were full of humming birds and singing birds,
and always the innumerable bees. The clean white sand, the mesquites
bursting into green, the nodding flowers in the grassy nooks under the
great iron-rusted stones, the rugged, upheaved slope of mountain, and
to the east an open vista between the trees where the desert stretched
away gray and speckled and monotonous, down to the dim mountains over
which the sun would rise; these could not but be pleasant and helpful.
Love of life could not be separated from such things.
“Mrs. Linwood, sleeping outdoors is the most wonderful experience,”
said Adam, earnestly. “You feel the night wind. The darkness folds
around you. You look up through the leaves to the dark-blue sky and
shining stars. You smell the dry sand and the fresh water and the
flowers and the spicy desert plants. Every breath you draw is new,
untainted. Living outdoors, by day and night, is the secret of my
strength.”
“Alas! We always feared the chill night air,” sighed Mrs. Linwood.
“Life teaches so many lessons--too late.”
“It is never too late,” returned Adam.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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