“He was bold enough for anything, but
sufficiently smart to take his good time to read what he saw.”
Mr. Haycox’s 1940 Rim of the Desert is the
usual Haycox fare, and that is a very good thing.
We have plot points that are very familiar, but…we
have insights into character that can only come from a man of keen observation
and deep understanding.
I’ll allow several extracts from the novel to stand-in
for my “review.” If you like these, well, you’re in for a treat when you read
it for yourself.
“Keene watched Aurora disappear beyond the opposite
rim of the river bluff, attracted by the shape she made in the sun, in the
golden haze of dust. These were the things, though he didn’t know it, his
senses forever awaited in eagerness---sounds and blends of fragrance and scenes
which took fugitive shape and left their unforgettable impressions: the single
moment when a campfire flamed formed a perfect taper against the heart of night;
the echo of one word spoken by a women from the depths of her soul; the cold
and immaculate deadliness of a diamond-back coiled at the instant of striking;
the thread of some strange smell in the spring wind which, caught briefly and
by accident, broke every old thread of a man’s career and set him off on
strange roads. These were the fragments of a greater mystery, the revealed
pieces of an unrevealed puzzle whose answer he sought—yet he knew not what he
sought. All the cold ashes of his campfires made an unerring line of search.
Some duty, some labor, some love. Somewhere---”
She spoke in complete candor. “It would be
that way if I married you, Cleve. A bargain between us, and no love. I don’t love
trust very much. I know how it should be but I never really see it. Half of the
women in this world marry without it and some of the others lie to themselves
when they think they have it. I don’t like that. I’d rather not have any of it
than to have a miserable little bit to dole out here and there over a whole
life.”
He was flat on his back, long and
boneless, soaking in the night’s comfort. He had the ability to seize whatever goodness
the current moment offered, to enjoy it before it vanished.
He walked forward, his hand extended, and
when Keene took his hand Stewart said, “Well, it was none of my business.” He
ran the flat of a palm across his mouth, staring strangely at the blood there. “I
didn’t feel you land that blow. Odd.” He wanted to say something to Keene, but
he could not bring himself to admit the depth of fear that had been in him—the
fear of being afraid. Nothing but the bitterest torture of soul had driven him
to this fight, nothing but the insufferable agony of a man who had to know
about himself at last. Now he was silently saying: “The worst of it is the
thinking of it—afterwards there is nothing to be afraid of,” and a great load
rolled off Cleve Stewart’s heart and he was a bigger man than he had ever been.
“I want to tell you something. I followed
the trail for many years. When you get to the other side of the hill—remember
this, son—the only thing you’ll find there is just what you brought with you.”
He swung to the saddle and for a moment his
eyes admired her. She showed no fear and she said none of those things that
disturbed a man or tried to take him away from the things that had to be done.
She had will, she had composure.
“The harder life is,” she murmured, “the
less people ask of it. People who don’t know fear or hunger or pain want a lot.
Those that face those things are happy if they have one small break. Terror
makes us all very humble. How quickly pride falls.”
“You never worry about the future, do
you?”
“No use. All things come in time.”
“So, then,” she said, “it is today you
love. Yesterday’s gone and tomorrow isn’t here—and it is just today that
counts.”
“Best that way,” he answered. “Feels fine
to eat when you’re hungry, to watch the ground turn color when the sun goes
down. Maybe to smell water when you’re thirsty, or see lights shining over the
flats when you’re tired of riding. If you look too far ahead you miss what goes
on now. You never stop to enjoy the present.”
“But pretty soon the present is gone and
then you are old and alone and what do you have?”
“That comes too,” he admitted. For me and
for you, for everybody. Makes no difference, does it? The thing is, what can
you look back on when you’re old? What can you remember?”
He found more in Keene to admire at this
moment than ever before. It was not a simple thing to fight. It was not easy to
move blindly through snow, playing hide and seek with trouble. It took courage,
but it took something more as well—it took a sound knowledge of other men, the
ability to read in their eyes the things they would do; it took a hard-gained experience
in all the clever tricks of living, an ability to listen into the wind, to read
the patterns on the earth, to make a story out of dust and distant motion. As
an educated man, possessing the prejudices of education, Cleve Stewart always
had felt a certain contempt for men whose lives were confined to action; to him
they were half-blind, knowing nothing of the great and gentle philosophies
which made life understandable.
But somewhere in the last twenty-four
hours Stewart’s world had come down about him; a complete change had occurred
in him. The wisdom which came from earthy men, the wisdom of survival and
bitter wind beating into a man’s bones, of hunger suffered and thirst endured—this
was the real wisdom, gained not from books or the tales of other travelers but
personally experienced so that a man got it into his spirit and nerves and blood.
A man had to know of what he was made. Knowing that, he knew everything.
“Any time you pass my house, now and twenty
years from now, there’s a chair at the table.”