A Romance of Arizona
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John Murray and Mills Miller >> A Romance of Arizona
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15 This etext was created by Dianne Bean, Chino Valley, Arizona.
THE ROUND-UP
A Romance of Arizona
Novelized from Edmund Day's Melodrama
by John Murray and Mills Miller
Chapter
I. The Cactus Cross
II. The Heart of a Girl
III. A Woman's Loyalty
IV. The Hold-up
V. Hoover Bows to Hymen
VI. A Tangled Web
VII. Josephine Opens the Sluices
VIII. The Sky Pilot
IX. What God Hath Joined Together
X. The Piano
XI. Accusation and Confession
XII. The Land of Dead Things
XIII. The Atonement
XIV. The Round-up
XV. Peruna Pulls His Freight
XVI. Death of McKee, Disappointed Desperado
XVII. A New Deal
XVIII. Jack!
THE ROUND-UP
CHAPTER I
The Cactus Cross
Down an old trail in the Ghost Range in northwestern Mexico, just
across the Arizona border, a mounted prospector wound his way,
his horse carefully picking its steps among the broken granite
blocks which had tumbled upon the ancient path from the mountain
wall above. A burro followed, laden heavily with pack, bed-roll,
pick, frying-pan, and battered coffee-pot, yet stepping along
sure-footedly as the mountain-sheep that first formed the trail
ages ago, and whose petrified hoof-prints still remain to afford
footing for the scarcely larger hoofs of the pack-animal.
An awful stillness hung over the scene, that was broken only by
the click of hoofs of horse and burro upon the rocks, and the
clatter of the loose stones they dislodged that rolled and
skipped down the side. Not a breath of air was stirring, and the
sun blazed down from the zenith with such fierce and direct
radiation that the wayfarer needed not to observe the shadows to
note its exact position in the heavens. Singly among the broken
blocks, and in banks along the ledges, the cactus had burst under
the heat, as it were, into the spontaneous combustion of flowery
flame. To the traveler passing beside them their red blooms
blazed with the irritating superfluity of a torch-light
procession at noonday.
The trail leads down to a flat ledge which overlooks the desert,
and which is the observatory whither countless generations of
mountain-sheep have been wont to resort to survey the strange
world beneath them--with what purpose and what feelings, it
remains for some imaginative writer of animal-stories to inform
us. From the ledge to the valley below the trail is free from
obstructions, and broader, more beaten, and less devious than
above, indicating that it has been formed by the generations of
men toiling up from the valley to the natural watch-tower on the
heights. Reaching the ledge, the prospector found that what
seemed from the angle above to be an irregular pile of large
boulders was an artificial fortification, the highest wall being
toward the mountains. Entering the enclosure the prospector
dismounted, relieved his horse of its saddle and his burro of its
pack, and proceeded to prepare his midday meal. Looking for the
best place where he might light a fire, he observed, in the most
protected corner, a flat stone, marked by fire, and near it, in
the rocky ground, a pot-hole, evidently formed for grinding
maize. The ashes of ancient fires were scattered about, and in
cleaning them off his new-found hearth the man discovered a
potsherd, apparently of a native olla or water-jar, and a chipped
fragment of flint, too small to indicate whether it had formed
part of an Indian arrowhead or had dropped from an old flintlock
musket.
"Lucky strike!" observed the prospector. "I was down to my last
match." And, gathering some mesquit brush for fuel, and rubbing
a dead branch into tinder, he drew out a knife and, rapidly and
repeatedly striking the back of its blade with the flint,
produced a stream of sparks, which fell on the tinder. Blowing
the while, he started a flame. When the fire was ready the man
shook his canteen. "Precious little drink left," he said. "I
wish that potsherd carried water as the flint-chip does fire.
However, there's lots of cactus around here, and they're natural
water-jars. My knife may get me a drink out of the desert's
thorns, as well as kindle a fire from its stones. And right
here's my watermelon, the bisnaga, the first one I've found in
months," he exclaimed, going over to the edge of the cliff, above
the level of which peered the fat head of a cactus covered with
spines that were barbed like a fish-hook. Its short tap-root was
fixed in a crevice a few feet below the parapet. Lying on the
edge of the cliff, the man sliced off the top of the cactus, and
began jabbing into its interior, breaking down the fibrous walls
of the water-cells, of which the top-heavy plant is almost
entirely composed. In a few moments he arose.
"Now I can empty my canteen in the coffee-pot, sure of a fresh
supply of water by the time I am ready to mosey along."
He filled the pot, set it on the fire, and then pressed the
uncorked and empty canteen down into the macerated interior of
the bisnaga.
While his coffee was boiling, the prospector continued his
examination of the fortification, beginning, in the manner of his
kind, with the more minute "signs," and ending with what, to a
tourist, would have been the first and only subject of
observation--the view. On the inner side of the large boulder in
the wall he discerned, the faint outline of a cross, painted with
red ochre.
Scraping with his pick beneath the rock, to see if the emblem was
the sign of hidden treasure or relic, he unearthed a rattlesnake.
Before it could strike, with a quick fling of his tool he sent
the reptile whirling high in the air toward the precipice. But
from the clump of cactus growth along the parapet arose a
sahuaro, with branching arms, and against this the snake was
flung. Wrapped around the thorny top by the momentum of the
cast, it hung, hissing and rattling with pain and hatred.
The prospector looked up at the impaled rattlesnake with a smile.
Reminiscences of Sunday-school flashed across his mind.
"Gee, I'm a regular Moses," he ejaculated. "First I bring water
from the face of the rock, and then I lift up the serpent in the
wilderness. The year I've spent in the mountains and desert seem
like forty to me, and now, at last, I have a sight of the
Promised Land. God, what a magnificent view!"
Dropping his pick, he stretched out his arms with instinctive
symbolization of the wide prospect, and expression of an exile's
yearning for his native land.
"Over there is God's country, sure enough," he continued, giving
the trite phrase a reverential tone, which he had not used in his
first expression of the name of Deity. "Thank Him, the parallel
with old Moses stops right here. Many a time I thought I would
never get out of the mountains alive, and that my grave would be
unmarked by so much as a boulder with a red cross upon it. But
now, before night, I'll be back in the States, and in three more
days at home on the ranch. I promised to return in a year, and
I'll make good to the hour. I sure did hate to leave that strike,
though, after all the hard luck I had been having. Sixty dollars
a day, and growing richer. But the last horn was blowing. No
tobacco, six matches, and nothing left of the bacon but rinds.
Well, the gold is there and the claim'll bring whatever I choose
to ask for it. And Echo shall have a home as good as Allen
Hacienda, and a ranch as fine as Bar One--yes, by God, it'll be
Bar None, my ranch!"
Out of the sea of molten air that stretched before him, that
nebulous chaos of quivering bars and belts of heated atmosphere
which remains above the desert as a memorial of the first stage
of the entire planet's existence, the imagination of the
prospector created a paradise of his own. There took shape
before his eyes a Mexican hacienda, larger and more beautiful
even than that of Echo's father, the beau-ideal of a home to his
limited fancy. And on the piazza in front, covered with
flowering vines, there stood awaiting him the slender figure of a
woman, with outstretched arms and dark eyes, tender with yearning
love.
"Echo--Echo Allen!" he murmured, fondly repeating the name. "No,
not Echo Allen, but Echo Lane, for Dick Lane has redeemed his
promise, and returns to claim you as his own."
As he gazed upon the shimmering heat waves which distorted and
displaced the objects within and beneath them, a group of
horsemen suddenly appeared to him in the distance, and as
suddenly vanished in thin air.
"Rurales!" ejaculated Lane. "I wonder if they are chasing
Apaches? That infernal mirage gives you no idea of distance or
direction. If the red devils have got away from Crook and
slipped by these Greaser rangers over the border, they'll sure be
making straight for the Ghost Range, and by this very trail. If
so, I'm at the best place on it to meet them, and here I stay
till the coast is clear." Turning to the red cross on the rock,
he reflected: "Perhaps, after all, it's a case of 'Nebo's lonely
mountain.'"
Lane had hardly reached this conclusion before he found it
justified by the sight of a mounted Apache in the regalia of war
emerging from a hidden dip in the trail below the fortification.
Lane dropped behind the parapet, evidently before he was
observed, as the steadily increasing number and loudness of the
hoof-beats on the rocky trail indicated to the listener.
Crawling back to his horse and burro, he made them lie down
against the upper wall, and picketed them with short lengths of
rope to the ground, for he foresaw that danger could come only
from the mountainside. Taking his Winchester, he returned to the
parapet, and, half-seated, half-reclining behind it, opened fire
on the unsuspecting Apaches. The leader, shot through the head,
fell from his horse, which reared and backed wildly down the
trail. Other bullets must have found their billets also, but,
because of the confusion which ensued among the Indians, the
prospector was unable to tell how many of them he had put out of
action. In a flash every rider had leaped off his horse, and,
protecting himself by its body, was scrambling with his mount to
the protecting declivity in the rear. The prospector was sorely
tempted to pump his cartridges into the group as it poured back
over the rim of the hollow, but he desisted from the useless
slaughter of horses alone, knowing that he could be attacked only
on foot, and that every one of his slender store of cartridges
must find a human mark if he would return to the States alive.
"They've got to put me out of business before they can go on," he
ruminated. "An Apache is a good deal of a coward when he's
fighting for pleasure, but just corner him, and, great snakes and
spittin' wildcats, what a game he does put up! I must save my
cartridges; for one thing's sure, they won't waste any of theirs.
They're not as good shots as white men, for ammunition is too
scarce with them for use in gun practise; so they won't fire till
they've got me dead to rights. Let me see; there's about a dozen
left in the party, and I have fifteen cartridges--that's three in
reserve for my own outfit, if some of the others fail to get
their men. Those red devils enjoy skinning an animal alive as
much as torturing a man, and you can bet they won't save me any
bullets by shooting Nance and Jinny."
Reasoning that the Indians would not dare to attack by way of the
open trail in front, and that it would take some time for them to
make the detour necessary to approach him from above, since they
would have to leave their ponies below and climb on hands and
knees over jutting ledges and around broken granite blocks, Lane
coolly proceeded to drink his coffee, and eat his lunch of hard
bread and cold bacon-rind. After he had finished, he gave a lump
of sugar to each of his animals, and pressed his cheek with an
affectionate hug against the side of his horse's head.
"Old girl," he said. "I'm sorry we can't take a parting drink,
for I'm afraid neither of us will reach our next water-hole. But
you can count on me that the red devils won't get you."
Then, going to his pack, he undid it, and took out a double
handful of yellow nuggets and a number of canvas bags. These he
deposited in the pot-hole, and, prying up the flat stone of the
fireplace, laid it over them, and covered the stone with embers.
"It's a ten to one shot that they finish me," he reflected; "but
the wages I've paid for by a year of hard work and absence from
her side, stay just as near Echo Allen as I can bring them alive,
and, if there's any truth in what they say about spirits
disclosing in dreams the place of buried treasure, with the
chance of my getting them to her after I am dead."
Taking the useless boulders from the edge of the cliff, but
carefully, so as not to expose himself to the fire of the
Apaches, he piled them on top of the upper wall in such a fashion
as to form little turrets. He left an opening in each, through
which he could observe, in turn, each point of the compass whence
danger might be expected, and could fire his Winchester without
exposing himself. Then he began going from post to post on a
continuous round of self-imposed sentinel duty. "If I could only
climb the sahuaro," he thought, "and fly my red shirt as a flag,
to let the Rurales know I've flanked the enemy, it might hurry
them along in time to put a crimp in these devils before they get
me. But it'll have to be 'Hold the Fort' without any 'Oh, Say
Can You See?' business. Anyhow, I'm flying the rattlesnake flag
of Bunker Hill, 'Don't Tread on Me!' Whether the Rurales see it
or not, I've saved their hides. If the Apaches had got to this
fort first, gee, how they would have crumpled up the Greasers as
they came along the trail!"
Rendered thirsty by his exertions, Lane remembered the canteen in
the bisnaga, which he had forgotten among his other preparations
for defense. He cautiously reached his hand over the ledge, and
secured the precious vessel, but, as he was withdrawing it, PING!
came a bullet through the canteen, knocking it out of his hand.
As it fell clattering down the side of the ledge, he groaned:
"Damned good shooting! They've probably left their best
marksman below with the ponies. No hope for escape on that side.
Well, there's some consolation in the thought that they'll
undoubtedly finish me before I get too damned thirsty. Glad it
wasn't my hand."
Although the period he spent waiting for the attack was less than
an hour by his watch, it seemed to last so long that he had hopes
that the Rurales would appear in time to rescue him. His spirits
rose with the prospect. Looking about him at the walls, the
fireplace, and the red cross, he reflected: "I am not the first
man, or even the first white man, that has withstood an attack in
this place." In imagination he constructed the history of the
fort. Here, in ages remote, a tribe of Indians, defeated and
driven to the mountains had constructed an outpost against their
enemies of the plain, but these had captured the stronghold, and
fortified it against its former occupants. Later, a band of
Spanish gold-seekers had made a stand here against natives whom
they had roused against them by oppression. Or, perhaps, as
indicated by the cross, it had afforded refuge to the Mission
Fathers, those heroic souls who had faced the horrors of the
infernolike desert in their saintly efforts to convert its
fiendish inhabitants.
With the symbol of Christianity in his mind, Lane turned toward
the giant cactus, which he had heretofore regarded chiefly in the
aspect of a flagpole, and saw in its columnar trunk and opposing
branches a distinct resemblance to a cross. The plant was dead,
and dry as punk. Suddenly there flashed into his mind a hideous
suggestion. More cruel than even the Romans, the inventors of
crucifixion, the Apaches are wont to bind their captives to these
dead cacti, which supply at once scourging thorns, binding stake,
and consuming fuel, and, kindling a fire at the top, leave it to
burn slowly down to the victim, and, long before it despatches
him, to twist his body and limbs into what appear to the Apache
sense of humor to be exquisitely ludicrous contortions.
With his mind occupied by these horrible apprehensions, Lane
looked at the rattlesnake upon the sahuaro whose struggles by
this time had diminished to a movement of the tail.
"Poor old rattler," he thought. "I wish I could spare a
cartridge to put you out of your misery."
At length, as Lane peered up the mountainside, he saw a bush on a
ledge a little to the left of the trail quiver, as if stirred by
a passing breath of wind. He aimed his Winchester through a
crack in the wall at the spot, and when a moment later an Apache
rose up from the ground and leaped toward the shelter of a rock
below, Lane fired, and the savage fell crumpling. Like an echo
of the explosion a rifle on the right spoke, and a bullet struck
the rock by Lane's head. He marked the spot whence the shot
came, and quickly ran to another part of the wall. From here he
saw the edge of an Indian's thigh exposed by the side of the
boulder he had noted. CRACK! went Lane's Winchester; the leg was
suddenly withdrawn, and at the same moment a head appeared on the
other side of the rock, as if the Indian had stretched himself
involuntarily. CRACK! again, and Lane had got his man.
"Two shots to an Indian is expensive," thought the prospector,
"otherwise this game of tip-jack would be very interesting."
There was a cry in the Apache tongue, and suddenly nine
half-naked bodies arose from behind rocks and bushes extending in
an irregular crescent above the fort, and rushed forward ten,
fifteen, and even twenty, yards to the next cover. Lane did not
count number or distance at the time, but he figured these out in
his next period of waiting from the photograph flashed on his
subconscious mind. At the time of the rush he was otherwise
occupied. CRACK! CRACK! and two of the Indians fell dead in
mid-career. CRACK! and a third crawled, wounded, to the cover he
had almost safely attained. CRACK! and an eagle-feather in the
head of the fourth Indian shot at was cut off at the stem, and
fell forward on the rock behind which its wearer had dropped just
in time to save his life. There was an answering volley from the
rifles of the remaining Apaches, which was directed against the
lookout of loose stones from which the prospector's fire had
come. One of the bullets penetrated the opening and plowed a
furrow through Lane's scalp, toppling him to his knees. He
scrambled quickly to his feet, and, hastily pressing his long
hair back from his forehead, to stanch the bleeding wound, sought
the protection the middle lookout. He congratulated himself.
"Lucky for me they didn't follow the first rush immediately with
a second. Now I know to wait for their signal. Six, and
possibly seven of them, are left, and they will storm my works in
two more attempts. Here they come!"
The call again sounded. Six Apaches leaped forward, and from the
rock that concealed the wounded warrior, a shot rang out in
advance of the first discharge from Lane's Winchester. The
Indian's bullet scored the top of the turret, and filled the eyes
of the man behind it with powdered stone. The prospector,
already dazed by his wound, fired wildly, and missed his mark.
Quickly recovering himself, he fired again and again, severely
wounding two Apaches. These lay clawing the ground within twenty
yards of the wall. The four remaining Indians were safely
concealed at the same distance, protected no less by the
fortification than by the loose boulders behind which they
crouched for the final spring. Lane realized the fact that his
next shots, to be effective, must be at a downward angle, and to
fire them he must expose himself.
"This is my finish," he thought to himself. "Better be killed
instantly than tortured. I hope all four will hit me. Good-by,
Jinny"--CRACK! went his rifle. "Good-by, Nance"--CRACK! again.
At the two shots, surmising that the prospector had shot himself
and his horse, the Apaches did not wait for the signal, but
sprang forward and climbed upon the wall before Lane had had time
to mount it. Two of them he shot as they leaped down within the
enclosure. As he reversed his Winchester to kill himself with
the last cartridge, he noted that the two remaining Apaches had
dropped their rifles and were leaping upon him to take him alive.
He brought his clubbed weapon down upon the head of one of them,
crushing his skull. At the same instant Lane was borne to the
ground by the other Apache, who, seizing him by the throat, began
throttling him into insensibility. In desperation, Lane
bethought himself of the cliff, and, by a mighty effort, whirled
over upon his captor toward the precipice. The ground sloped
slightly in that direction, and the combatants rolled over and
over to the very edge of the cliff, where the Indian, for the
first time realizing that the prospector's purpose was to hurl
both of them to destruction, loosened his hold upon the
prospector's throat that he might use his hands to brace himself
against the otherwise inevitable plunge into the valley below. In
an instant Lane's hands were at the Indian's throat, and in
another turn he was uppermost, and kneeling upon his foe at the
very verge of the precipice.
Both combatants were now thoroughly exhausted. Lane concentrated
all his remaining strength in throttling the savage. But, just
as the tense form beneath him grew lax with evident
unconsciousness, and head fell limply back, extending over the
edge of cliff, his own head was jerked violently backward by a
noose cast around his lacerated neck.
When Lane recovered consciousness he found himself lying on his
back, bound hand and foot by a lariat, and looking up into a
grinning face that he recognized.
"Buck McKee!" he gasped. "This is certainly white of you
considering the circumstances of our last meeting. Did you come
with the Rurales?"
"Hell, no! I come ahead of 'em. In fact, Dick Lane, you air jist
a leetle bit off in your idees about which party I belong to.
When you damned me fer a thievin' half-breed, and run me off the
range, an' tole me to go to the Injun's, whar I belonged, I tuk
yer advice. I'm what you might call the rear-guard of the outfit
you've jist been havin' your shootin'-match with. Or I was the
rear-guard, for you've wiped out the whole dam' battalion, so fur
as I can see. Served 'em right fur detailin' me, the only decent
shooter in the bunch, to watch the horses. I got one shot in as
it wuz. Well, as the last of the outfit, I own a string of ten
ponies. All I need now to set up in business is to have some
prospector who hain't long to live, leave me his little pile uv
dust an' nuggets, an' the claims he's located back in the
mountains. You look a leetle mite like the man. It'll save
vallible time if you make yer dear friend, Buck McKee,
administrater uv yer estate without too much persuadin'. You had
some objection oncet to my slittin' a calf's tongue. Well, you
needn't be scared just yet. That's the last thing I'll do to
you. Come, where's your cache? I know you've got one
hereabouts, fer I foun' signs of the dust in your pack."
Lane set his teeth in a firm resolutions not to say a word. The
taunts of his captor were harder to bear in silence than the
prospects of torture.
"Stubborn, hey? Well, we'll try a little 'Pache persuadin'." And
the renegade dragged his helpless captive up to the thorny
sahuaro, and bound his back against it with the dead horse's
bridle. McKee searched through Lane's pockets until he found a
match.
"Last one, hey? Kinder 'propriate. Las' drink from the old
canteen, las' ca'tridge, last look at the scenery, and las' will
an' testyment. Oh, time's precious, but I'll spare you enough to
map out in yer mind jes' where them claims is located. The
Rurales won't be along fer an hour yet, if they hain't turned
back after our other party."
McKee pulled off Lane's boots. "It 'ain't decent fer a man to
die with 'em on," he said. He then kindled a fire on the stone,
beneath which, if he but knew it, lay the treasure he sought. He
returned with a burning brand to the captive. For the first time
he observed the snake impaled on the sahuaro, writhing but
feebly. "Hullo, ole rattler," he exclaimed; "here's somethin' to
stir you up;" and he tossed the brand upon the top of the cactus.
Taking another burning stick from the fire, he applied it to the
soles of his victim's feet. Lane writhed and groaned under the
excruciating torture, but uttered no word or cry. McKee brought
other brands, and began piling them about his captive's feet.
In the meantime the sahuaro had caught fire at the top, and was
burning down through the interior. A thin column of smoke rose
straight above it in the still air. The Rurales in the valley
below, who had reached the beginning of the ascending trail, and
were on the point of giving up the pursuit, saw the smoke, and,
inferred that the Apaches, either through overconfidence or
because of their superstitious fear of the mountains, which they
supposed inhabited by spirits, had camped on the edge of the
valley, and were signaling to their other party. Accordingly the
Mexicans renewed the chase with increased vigor.
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