Memorial Day began after the Civil War, as "Decoration Day," when the graves of those fallen were cleaned (the family's reponsibility back then, not the graveyard's) and decorated with flowers and flags, hence the name. It seems a bleak life today for such a boy.There was not even a house within thirty miles of them. Two tents by a driven well, a pile of baled hay, half a dozen drooping horses vainly trying to find a patch of shade, and a row of dusty water barrels comprised the new stage station set down in the heart of the Nevada desert. The white sand and sage-brush stretched desolate to the bare brown mountains that cut the sky-line along the rim of Death Valley. A little dust cloud moved far out on the dazzling plain and marked the crawling progress of a freighters' outfit. Except for this there were no signs of mankind anywhere beyond the camp.
A boy in his early teens came out of one of the tents, and blinked in the glare of sand and sky. He was burned blacker than the deepest seashore tan, and the powdery alkali dust had turned his hair and clothes to a grayish white. He shaded his eyes with a battered sombrero and looked across the desert beyond the dust that hung above the freighters' wagons. A blue lake sparkled miles away, and its banks were green with trees and undergrowth. The boy was not deceived by the mirage. He shook his head as if to say "You can't fool me; I know your tricks," and kept on gazing into the north. His vigilance was well-timed, for presently another whirl of dust showed against the horizon, and the boy shouted to some one in the tent:
"Here comes the stage, Uncle John. I hope there are some passengers for us to feed. My, if they 'd only bring just one boy through, and I could talk to him for half an hour. Would n't it be great! I have n't seen a boy since we came in the desert to live."
The "boss" of the station replied, as he poked the tent flap aside:
"This desert don't sprout youngsters, that 's a fact. Jimmy. We 're lucky if we get a stray man to pass the time o' day with. Help me get the relay horses ready, and then dust off an extra plate and cup. Jake may have a hungry passenger. It's about time. Nobody's been here in two days."
The boy led a pair of lanky grays out of the little corral by the well, tied them to a post in front of the tents, and scurried inside with an excited air as if great things were about to happen. His few duties were soon done and he was perched on the well box in waiting eagerness long before the stage emerged from its curtain of dust. This was no towering coach with four horses such as "dashed up to the old-fashioned tavern" with a fine clatter and the music of a horn. Two straining horses pulled a battered Concord wagon through the deep sand at a snail's pace. Their slow walk quickened a little as they drew near the tents, and the boy saw with a pang of disappointment that the bent and white-whiskered driver was the only occupant. He grinned through the alkali mask that covered his wrinkled face and called to the boy: "Nothin' doin', Jimmy. This route ain't as popular as if it had Pullman sleeping-cars. I 've been eight hours makin' thirty miles. Grub ready?"
Jimmy followed the driver to the mess-tent and peppered him with questions about the news from the big outside world beyond the desert. The old man fished a newspaper from an inside pocket, and said:
"Here 's a Los Angeles Times that was passed along from Las Vegas. It 's four days old, but it may cheer you up some."
Jimmy acted as waiter while the driver bolted his beans, bacon, canned corned-beef and coffee, and then the two shifted the harness to the fresh team of horses.
A few minutes later the stage moved on like a boat steering out of sight across a lonely sea, and Jimmy felt the isolation of the desert closing down around him again. His uncle stretched out on a blanket in the sleeping-tent and soon his snores told the boy that there was not a living soul to talk to anywhere. He sat down in the mess-tent, spread the newspaper on the rough plank table, and slowly read the head-lines. It was hard for him to realize that men and women and boys and girls were still working and playing in crowded city streets.
It seemed a whole lifetime since he had left the home in Los Angeles he had always known, and ihe faces of his young friends were blurred and fading in his memory. He had been in the desert only three months, but its utter loneliness had made him sometimes think he was getting to be a little old man.
He looked through the newspaper idly until this brief article caught his eye:
"The Phil Sheridan Post, G. A. R., has completed its arrangements for the Memorial Day exercises and parade. There is much regret among the veterans in blue that their old Post Commander, Captain John Bright, will be absent from the ranks. For ten years he had led the Memorial Day pilgrimage to the graves of the heroes who fought for Old Glory. He left the city recently to take up his residence in Nevada, but the old soldiers are hoping that if Captain Bright is alive, he will get here to take his old place at the head of the thinning column."
The boy ran into the other tent waving the newspaper around his head, shouting:
"Uncle John! Here 's something for you. Wake up! They have n't forgotten us back home."
Captain Bright sat up on his blanket and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He read the paragraph and his gray beard could not hide the quivering lip. Then he said slowly, as if it hurt him:
"Yes, they 're looking for me, but I won't be there this year. Jimmy. We can't go back. Why, it 's only two days to the thirtieth of May. Not that I 've lost track of the date. Not for a minute. I 've been thinking of it a whole lot. But we can't leave the station, and—and—well. I sort of wish I had n't seen this. I do, Jimmy."
Jimmy's sympathies were deeply stirred, and with an unusual show of affection he nestled on the blanket beside Uncle John and flung an arm around his neck. The old soldier re-read the paragraph, this time aloud, and his voice trembled a little when it came to the mention of "Old Glory." Then he rose to his feet and stood very erect as if ashamed of his show of feeling, and rested his hands on the boy's slim shoulders as he told him:
"We 'll make the best of it, Jimmy. There is n't much chance for a celebration out here, but they have not forgotten us, and you bet we have n't forgotten them, those above the ground and those that are under the sod. Pshaw, it 's tougher for you to be stuck out here a hundred miles from nowhere than it is for me. Don't you hate me for it sometimes?"
"I get kind of homesick and lonesome, but you 're all I 've got, Uncle John, and we 're pardners," the boy responded. "There 's nobody else to grub-stake me, and we 're going to win out yet, you bet. And you 'll go back and lead the Grand Army, sure. Maybe next year."
The old man shook his head. It seemed to him that he had made a failure of his life. A slack and dishonest partner had wrecked the business he had toiled for years to build up. On the brink of old age, and without capital, he had been unable to make a new start in the crowded commercial life of the city. The help offered by his friends had seemed to him little more than disguised charity, and he had grasped the chance to take charge of one of the stations of the stage line flung across the desert to reach the new gold camps in southwestern Nevada.
The care of his dead sister's only boy had sorely perplexed him when he faced the exile that was almost ghastly for a seasoned man to endure. He wrestled with the problem, and it seemed best to take Jimmy with him through the first summer. By autumn he might have saved enough from his wages to outfit the boy for school and keep him there. A touch of selfishness had swayed this decision. The old man sighed over his weakness. But he could not bear to face the lonely life without a companion. Jimmy was the pluckier of the two, the old man thought to himself, as he looked down into the eager face of the lad who wanted to be a help in time of trouble.
No more was said about Memorial Day, but after supper they sat together under the stars that blazed low in the velvet sky, and the old man was moved to tell stories that thrilled the blood of youth:—of Antietam and Fredericksburg, of forlorn hopes, and of thin lines of blue and gray hurled in desperate charges, until to the wide-eyed boy, the dusky desert was peopled with marching men. In the shadows beyond the fire the cacus took the shape of crouching sentries, and the seriied sage-brush, vaguely glimpsed in the darkness, was like infantry sleeping on its arms.
Through the forenoon of Memorial Day, Captain John Bright was restless and absent-minded. His thoughts were back with his comrades. He could see them tramping behind the band to the strains of "Marching through Georgia," here and there a straggler falling out to rest, and some of those who kept up with the flag walking with feeble and halting gait. He had been one of the youngest and strongest of the little column last year, and he wondered who could take his place this year and step out with something of the old stride that had carried him with Sherman to the Sea.
Jimmy wrestled with a problem of his own. He was too young to give up the idea of some kind of a celebration. There were no soldiers' graves, there were no flowers, but he did find a mite of an American flag that had been brought along with his slender outfit as a souvenir of a Fourth of July parade of the "Golden West Cadets," in which imposing organization he had been a corporal. He waited until the stage had passed through, and then announced to Uncle John:
"I don 't think it 's right to let the day go by without doing something,—honest I don 't. You know that prospector's grave about two miles over toward Funeral Range? I mean the man that got lost and died of thirst last year. There 's nothing but a little heap of rocks, but for all we know he may have been an old soldier. You can 't say he was n't. And anyhow he was a brave man or he would n't have been going into Death Valley alone. I 'm going to ride my burro over, and stick this little flag on his grave. I 'll feel a heap better and it won't do any harm, will it?"
Captain Bright looked pleased and touched, but replied with a slightly worried air:
"I 'm not sure you won't get lost yourself. But I think I can see you all the way from here. Be sure to fill your canteen. Jimmy, and don't get out of sight of camp. I 'd go with you, but there 's a freight outfit coming in from the southward and they 'll want water."
The boy scampered over to the corral and saddled his mouse-colored burro, which protested with a pair of agile heels and a voice of surprising volume for the absurd dimensions of the beast. With the little flag tucked inside his shirt, Jimmy marched off in the wake of the burro, preferring to go on foot through the deep sand of the first mile. As he trudged along, steering the wrong-headed burro, which behaved like a rudderless skiff in a big wind, the boy busied himself weaving stories, as he had done so often, about the unknown prospector whose bleached bones lay under the heap of rock surrounded by four dusty sage-bushes.
Perhaps he had found a mine and was trying to get out of the desert with the news of his treasure when he lost his way and ran out of water. Or maybe he had been hurt or fallen sick, and his burros had run away from him. Was there a boy waiting for him somewhere at home? It was very sad and mysterious, but it was a part of life of the desert, and Jimmy though it over as only one of the many stories of the same kind that had come out of the Death Valley country. It was the most vivid of all to him, and one that he longest remembered, because there was the pile of stone to make it very real.
By the time he had crossed the two miles of brush and sand the boy had made up a new story about the lost prospector to fit the day and the deed. He was an old soldier, a Grand Army man, of course, and he had fought bravely in many battles. This was what made it so hard to think of his losing his life in a fight with heat and thirst, with no comrades to keep his memory green.
Jimmy took off his hat while he stuck his flag between two fragments of lava on the rude mound. Then while his burro drifted off to browse on the sage-brush, the boy gathered more stones and heaped them high at the head of the grave.
He was tired and hot when he finished his labor of love, and plodded after the burro, that had ambled several hundred yards from the scene. Having caught the beast, he cinched up the saddle and then gazed across the desert toward the Funeral Range whose ramparts hid the basin of Death Valley. Those bare and ragged walls, swimming in a blue haze of heat, sometimes frightened him. They spoke of the terrors which they hid from his view. He was glad that Uncle John was not a prospector, toiling among those forbidding mountains.
He was about to turn his face toward the camp, when he thought he saw something move over toward the mountains. He shaded his eyes and stared with idle curiosity, for he had learned that what you think you see, and what you really see, are different matters in the desert. But whirls of dust like little puffs of smoke rose above the black dot that appeared and then vanished as if it were slowly rising and falling.
It was not a man walking, and anyhow no man alone and on foot had any business coming from that direction. Jimmy felt a touch of fear, but he dug his heels into the burro and moved toward the object that was still for several minutes and then seemed to be floundering toward him again. Once it stood erect and Jimmy gasped. It looked like a man. He was afraid no longer. If it was a man, he was in dreadful distress, and needed help.
At length the object ceased to move. When Jimmy drew near, he saw a man, naked to the waist, lying face down, and it looked as if there was no more life in him. His shoes were gone, lie had no canteen, no hat, and his hands and feet were bleeding where he had been crawling and falling in his last struggle to move on. The boy fell on his knees and tugged at the blistered shoulders with all his might, until he half-turned the helpless man so that his face was clear of the choking sand.
Then Jimmy wet the blackened lips with water from his full canteen, and managed to unlock the clenched teeth, and pour a few drops on the swollen tongue. Finally the man swallowed, once, twice. The effect was magical. His eyes opened, he groaned, and tried to raise himself on his hands and knees. But he lurched forward and fell, and Jimmy wrung his hands, for it seemed impossible that he could raise the dead weight to the back of the burro. He was afraid to leave the man here while he went to camp for help, and the tears rolled down his cheeks in his worry and grief as he shouted in desperation:
"It 's only a little way to camp. It 's only a little way to camp. I 'll help you. Can't you get up?"
Another drink from the canteen, and the man's wits began to clear a little.
"I 'm all in," he muttered. "But I 'm not dead yet. Bring the burro."
For a wonder the burro stood docile in its tracks while the man made one great, despairing effort and, pulling himself up by the stirrup-leather, fell doubled across the saddle like a sack of meal. Jimmy could do no more than hold him there as he struggled along beside the burro and its silent burden. It was a slow and heartbreaking journey for the lad, but long before he drew near the camp, Uncle John had seen that something was amiss, and was running toward them. He read the story in a glance, and when he had dragged the unconscious stranger into the tent and laid him on the blankets, he called to Jimmy:
"You were just in time. He 'll pull through. Open a can of that beef tea and put the kettle on. Another hour and you would n't have been a bit of use."
The pink and azure twilight was falling when the lost prospector sat up on the blankets, his head in his hands, and said brokenly:
"I 'm alive, and I ain't gone plumb crazy. Thank God for His mercies. I wonder where my burros are. Is this here camp in the Death Valley, pardner?"
"You were twenty miles out of the Valley when we found you, and you came that far alone and clean distracted, that 's certain," responded Uncle John.
"What was this kid doin' out where he found me?" feebly asked the prospector.
"I was celebrating Decoration Day," bashfully explained Jimmy. "There is— there is a grave out there."
"There came blame near bein' another one alongside of it," was the reply. "Celebratin' Decoration Day in this God-forsaken hole! Well, you are a lively young patriot! And lucky for me!"
Jimmy did not want to claim too much credit.
"It was all on account of Uncle John— I mean Captain Bright here," said he. "He 's a Grand Army man. you know, and I could n't let the day go by without doing something to let him see that I remembered."
Captain Bright broke in with:
"You 're as gray as me, stranger, and there 's a scar that shows across that bald head of yours. Maybe you were one of the boys in blue."
A smile lit up the cracked and blackened face of the old prospector as he spoke, and he stretched out a bandaged hand: "No, I reckon I was n't. But I wore the old butternut under Jeb Stewart, and one of Phil Sheridan's troopers put that dent in my cabeza. I guess we ain't going to fight it over agin, are we? Here 's how!"
Captain Bright smiled back and took the old Confederate's hand in both of his, as he said:
"Here 's where we celebrate the day together, then. And we 'll thank God that your grave is n't ready to be decorated to-night. You came mighty near giving me an excuse for a parade all by myself."
From outside there came the rattle of trace-chains, and the creaking of wagons, and the noise of a driver's eloquence hurled at weary mules. Captain Bright hurried out and found a freight outfit pulling up to the well. Its crew made camp near the corral, and when the chores were done the "mule-skinner" and the "swamper" strolled over to buy "a bunch of canned goods." They sat by the camp-fire while Captain Bright and Daniel Yake, late of the Army of the Confederacy, swapped stories of the great days when they were foemen in arms. Then one of the freighters, a tall Texan, burst into song when he could hold in no longer, and in full chorus the little company, North and South, the Blue and the Gray, swung from "Dixie" into "The Star Spangled Banner."
But it was the two old men who sang together afterwards, while the others were silent, "We 're Tenting To-night on the Old Camp-ground."
Jimmy murmured, drowsily, as the fire died down and the freighters said good night:
"We certainly did celebrate, after all. You can't lose Old Glory even in the desert."
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