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“Are you going to do what I tell you or not?”

“Not,” said Farallone.

“I’ll”–the groom’s voice loudened–his eye sought an ally in mine. But I turned my face away and pretended that I had not seen or heard. There had been born in my breast suddenly a cold unreasoning fear of Farallone and of what he might do to us weaklings. I heard no more words and, venturing a look, saw that the groom was seating himself once more by the bride.

“If you sit on the other side of her,” said Farallone, “you’ll keep the sun off her head.”

He turned his bold eyes on me and winked one of them. And I was so taken by surprise that I winked back and could have kicked myself for doing so.

II

Farallone helped the bride to her feet. “That’s right,” he said with a kind of nursely playfulness, and he turned to the groom.

“Because I told you to help yourself,” he said, “doesn’t mean that I’m not going to do the lion’s share of everything. I am. I’m fit. You and the writer man aren’t. But you must do just a little more than you’re able, and that’s all we’ll ask of you. Everybody works this voyage except the woman.”

“I can work,” said the bride.

“Rot!” said Farallone. “We’ll ask you to walk ahead, like a kind of north star. Only we’ll tell you which way to turn. Do you see that sugar-loaf? You head for that. Vamoose! We’ll overhaul you.”

The bride moved upon the desert alone, her face toward an easterly hill that had given Farallone his figure of the sugar-loaf. She had no longer the effect of a wilted flower, but walked with quick, considered steps. What the groom carried and what I carried is of little moment. Our packs united would not have made the half of the lumbersome weight that Farallone swung upon his giant shoulders.

“Follow the woman,” said he, and we began to march upon the shoe-and-stocking track of the bride. Farallone, rolling like a ship (I had many a look at him over my shoulder) brought up the rear. From time to time he flung forward a phrase to us in explanation of his rebellious attitude.

“I take command because I’m fit; you’re not. I give the orders because I can get ’em obeyed; you can’t.” And, again: “You don’t know east from west; I do.”

All the morning he kept firing disagreeable and very personal remarks at us. His proposition that we were not in any way fit for anything he enlarged upon and illustrated. He flung the groom’s unemployed ancestry at him; he likened the groom to Rome at the time of the fall, which he attributed to luxury; he informed me that only men who were unable to work, or in any way help themselves, wrote books. “The woman’s worth the two of you,” he said. “Her people were workers. See it in her stride. She could milk a cow if she had one. If anything happens to me she’ll give the orders. Mark my words. She’s got a head on her shoulders, she has.”

The bride halted suddenly in her tracks and, turning, faced the groom.

“Are you going to allow this man’s insolence to run on forever?” she said.

The groom frowned at her and shook his head covertly.

“Pooh,” said the bride, and I think I heard her call him “my champion,” in a bitter whisper. She walked straight back to Farallone and looked him fearlessly in the face.

“The bigger a man is, Mr. Farallone,” she said, “and the stronger, the more he ought to mind his manners. We are grateful to you for all you have done, but if you cannot keep a civil tongue in your head, then the sooner we part company the better.”

For a full minute the fearless eyes snapped at Farallone, then, suddenly abashed, softened, and turned away.

“There mustn’t be any more mutiny,” said Farallone. “But you’ve got sand, you have. I could love a woman like you. How did you come to hitch your wagon to little Nicodemus there? He’s no star. You deserved a man. You’ve got sand, and when your poor feet go back on you, as they will in this swill (here he kicked the burning sand), I’ll carry you. But if you hadn’t spoken up so pert, I wouldn’t. Now you walk ahead and pretend you’re Christopher Columbus De Soto Peary leading a flock of sheep to the Fountain of Eternal Youth…. Bear to the left of the sage-brush, there’s a tarantula under it….”