Blaine M. Yorgason 4-in-1 eBook Bundle by Blaine M. Yargason

Author:Blaine M. Yargason [Yorgerson, Blaine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Bundle, Fiction
Publisher: Deseret Book Company
Published: 2014-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

2

The Old Man

The sun had finally dropped behind the distant Kaiparowits Plateau when the steamingjeep topped the lip of the steep descent and lurched downward into the narrow defile known as Wilson Canyon. Through burning eyes the driver glanced around, saw no sign of the water anywhere, and suddenly feared that the tanks he had so longed to reach might be empty.

When the Hole-in-the-Rock scouts had discovered these tanks, there had been water in them, plenty of it. But it had been winter then, not so hot, and so the tanks had not seemed so precious as they did now to him. Still, in a land so infernal and so desolate, tanks of water were a godsend wherever they were. And the land he crossed was truly infernal, truly desolate.

At the bottom of the slick-rock descent, the driver paused for a moment to gaze toward the opposite slope and up the incredibly steep defile the old pioneers had called the Chute and up which they had hauled their wagons when they had left Mormon Wells. He thought for a moment of driving up it in the morning.

Of course it was steep, but he had driven up it before. What made it interesting was that the old Hole-in-the-Rock folks had declared that the Lord had prepared that defile expressly for their wagons to climb out through. The driver always grinned at that thought. If it were true, then the Lord must have been a tolerably poor engineer. Had the driver created the Chute instead of the Lord, he’d have lessened the grade and probably made it smoother while he was at it.

The driver grunted again at the thought of folks believing such nonsense, turned up an apparently dead-end draw, pulled onto a sandy bench, and stopped. In the sudden stillness he gazed upward into the rocks, and only after a long moment did the whisper of the wind find its way past the hissing of the radiator and into his consciousness.

He loved the wind. He loved the way it moaned across the rocks, sang through the rare junipers that grew here and there, and whispered as it lifted the dry June-grass to dance. Now for a moment he listened to its soft music, and then with a sigh he reached for his empty jug, swung out the open side of the jeep, and began to climb.

The first tanks he came to were empty of all but dry sand and gravel, but the driver climbed on, forcing himself to be confident, and was soon rewarded with the sight of water. The first three holes were small and shallow, but just beyond them were two others, larger and much deeper.

Lying down on the rock near the deepest of the tanks, he pushed back the scum and watched as the pollywogs wriggled away. Then joyfully he scooped the water out and splashed it across his face and behind his neck. That done, he drank thirstily, thinking all the while of how reluctant his wife would be to taste the same cool water, and of how much she would be missing by not doing so.

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