Erle Gardner - The Case of the Drowsy Mosquito

Salty turned abruptly away, walked over to the blackened stone fireplace, and got a fire going.

Mason turned to Della Street. “Know something?”

“What?”

“I bet the preacher would make a reduced rate on marrying three couples instead of two.”

She looked up at him with wistful tenderness. “Forget it, Chief.”

“Why?”

Her eyes looked out over the long reaches of desert that stretched out far below. “We’re happy now,” she said. “You can’t tell what marriage would do to us. We’d have a home. I’d be a housekeeper. You’d need a new secretary... You don’t want a home. I don’t want you to have a new secretary. Right now you’re tired. You’ve been matching wits with a murderer. You feel as though you’d like to marry and settle down. Day after tomorrow you’ll be looking for a new case where you can go like mad, skin through by a thousandth of an inch. That’s the way you want to be, and that’s the way I want you. You’d never settle down and I don’t want you to. And besides, Salty couldn’t leave the camp all alone tomorrow.”

Mason moved to her side, slipped his arm around her shoulders, held her close to him. “I could argue with you about all that,” he said softly.

She laughed up at him. “You could argue all right, but even if you could convince me, you couldn’t convince you. You know I’m right.”

Mason started to say something, then checked himself, tightened the pressure of his arm. They stood in silence, looking out at the desert where varicolored peaks thrust up into the red sunlight.

“And,” Della said, laughing, “we’re hardened campaigners who can’t waste time with romance when there’s work to be done. Salty needs help with that fire, and perhaps he’ll let me do some of the cooking.”

“Ten to one he won’t,” Mason said.

“What?”

“Let you help with the cooking.”

“No takers. Come on. You don’t see Salty wasting time with desert scenery when there’s work to be done.”

They walked over to where Salty was bending over the fireplace, saw him straighten up, saw him turn toward the boxes of provisions, then pause to stand looking out over the desert.

As they joined him, Salty said almost reverently, “No mat- tsr what I’m doing, I always knock off for a few minutes along about this time of day just to look out over the desert — makes you realize man may be pretty active, but he ain’t so darn big. You know, folks, the desert is the kindest mother a man ever had, because she’s so cruel. Cruelty makes you careful and self-reliant, and that’s what the desert wants. She don’t want any softies hanging around. Sometimes, when she’s blistering hot and the light burns your eyes out, you see only the cruelty. But then, along about this time of day, she smiles back at you and tells you her cruelty is really kindness, and you can see it from her viewpoint — and it’s the right viewpoint.”