Arizona Nights

S >> Stewart Edward White >> Arizona Nights

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"Billy Ellis," cried Rich.

"That's me," replied the newcomer.

"Thought you were down to Tucson?"

"I was."

"Thought you wasn't comin' back for a week yet?"

"Tommy," proffered Billy Ellis dreamily, "when you go to Tucson
next you watch out until you sees a little, squint-eyed
Britisher. Take a look at him. Then come away. He says he don't
know nothin' about poker. Mebbe he don't, but he'll outhold a
warehouse."

But here Senor Johnson broke in: "Billy, you're just in time.
Jed has hurt his foot and can't get on for a week yet. I want
you to take charge. I've got a lot to do at the ranch."

"Ain't got my war-bag," objected Billy.

"Take my stuff. I'll send yours on when Parker goes."

"All right."

"Well, so long."

"So long, Senor." They moved. The erratic Arizona breezes
twisted the dust of their going. Senor Johnson watched them
dwindle. With them seemed to go the joy in the old life. No
longer did the long trail possess for him its ancient
fascination. He had become a domestic man.

"And I'm glad of it," commented Senor Johnson.

The dust eddied aside. Plainly could be seen the swaying wagon,
the loose-riding cowboys, the gleaming, naked backs of the herd.
Then the veil closed over them again. But down the wind,
faintly, in snatches, came the words of Jim Lester's song:

"Oh, Sam has a gun
That has gone to the bad,
Which makes poor old Sammy
Feel pretty, damn sad,
For that gain it shoots high,
And that gun it shoots low,
And it wabbles about
Like a bucking bronco!"

Senor Johnson turned and struck spurs to his willing pony.

CHAPTER TEN
THE DISCOVERY

Senor Buck Johnson loped quickly back toward the home ranch, his
heart glad at this fortunate solution of his annoyance. The home
ranch lay in plain sight not ten miles away. As Senor Johnson
idly watched it shimmering in the heat, a tiny figure detached
itself from the mass and launched itself in his direction.

"Wonder what's eating HIM!" marvelled Senor Johnson, "--and who
is it?"

The figure drew steadily nearer. In half an hour it had
approached near enough to be recognised.

"Why, it's Jed!" cried the Senor, and spurred his horse. "What
do you mean, riding out with that foot?" he demanded sternly,
when within hailing distance.

"Foot, hell!" gasped Parker, whirling his horse alongside.
"Your wife's run away with Brent Palmer."

For fully ten seconds not the faintest indication proved that the
husband had heard, except that he lifted his bridle-hand, and the
well-trained pony stopped.

"What did you say?" he asked finally.

"Your wife's run away with Brent Palmer," repeated Jed, almost
with impatience.

Again the long pause.

"How do you know?" asked Senor Johnson, then.

"Know, hell! It's been going on for a month. Sang saw them
drive off. They took the buckboard. He heard 'em planning it.
He was too scairt to tell till they'd gone. I just found it out.
They've been gone two hours. Must be going to make the Limited."
Parker fidgeted, impatient to be off. "You're wasting time," he
snapped at the motionless figure.

Suddenly Johnson's face flamed. He reached from his saddle to
clutch Jed's shoulder, nearly pulling the foreman from his pony.

"You lie!" he cried. "You're lying to me! It ain't SO!"

Parker made no effort to extricate himself from the painful
grasp. His cool eyes met the blazing eyes of his chief.

"I wisht I did lie, Buck," he said sadly. "I wisht it wasn't so.
But it is."

Johnson's head snapped back to the front with a groan. The pony
snorted as the steel bit his flanks, leaped forward, and with
head outstretched, nostrils wide, the wicked white of the bronco
flickering in the corner of his eye, struck the bee line for the
home ranch. Jed followed as fast as he was able.

On his arrival he found his chief raging about the house like a
wild beast. Sang trembled from a quick and stormy interrogatory
in the kitchen. Chairs had been upset and let lie. Estrella's
belongings had been tumbled over. Senor Johnson there found only
too sure proof, in the various lacks, of a premeditated and
permanent flight. Still he hoped; and as long as he hoped, he
doubted, and the demons of doubt tore him to a frenzy. Jed stood
near the door, his arms folded, his weight shifted to his sound
foot, waiting and wondering what the next move was to be.

Finally, Senor Johnson, struck with a new idea, ran to his desk
to rummage in a pigeon-hole. But he found no need to do so, for
lying on the desk was what he sought--the check book from which
Estrella was to draw on Goodrich for the money she might need.
He fairly snatched it open. Two of the checks had been torn out,
stub and all. And then his eye caught a crumpled bit of blue
paper under the edge of the desk.

He smoothed it out. The check was made out to bearer and signed
Estrella Johnson. It called for fifteen thousand dollars.
Across the middle was a great ink blot, reason for its rejection.

At once Senor Johnson became singularly and dangerously cool.

"I reckon you're right, Jed," he cried in his natural voice.
"she's gone with him. She's got all her traps with her, and
she's drawn on Goodrich for fifteen thousand. And SHE never
thought of going just this time of month when the miners are in
with their dust, and Goodrich would be sure to have that much.
That's friend Palmer. Been going on a month, you say?"

"I couldn't say anything, Buck," said Parker anxiously. "A man's
never sure enough about them things till afterwards."

"I know," agreed Buck Johnson; "give me a light for my
cigarette."

He puffed for a moment, then rose, stretching his legs. In a
moment he returned from the other room, the old shiny Colt's
forty-five strapped loosely on his hip. Jed looked him in the
face with some anxiety. The foreman was not deceived by the
man's easy manner; in fact, he knew it to be symptomatic of one
of the dangerous phases of Senor Johnson's character.

"What's up, Buck?" he inquired.

"Just going out for a pasear with the little horse, Jed."

"I suppose I better come along?"

"Not with your lame foot, Jed."

The tone of voice was conclusive. Jed cleared his throat.

"She left this for you," said he, proffering an envelope. "Them
kind always writes."

"Sure," agreed Senor Johnson, stuffing the letter carelessly into
his side pocket. He half drew the Colt's from its holster and
slipped it back again. "Makes you feel plumb like a man to have
one of these things rubbin' against you again," he observed
irrelevantly. Then he went out, leaving the foreman leaning,
chair tilted, against the wall.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE CAPTURE

Although he had left the room so suddenly, Senor Johnson did not
at once open the gate of the adobe wall. His demeanour was gay,
for he was a Westerner, but his heart was black. Hardly did he
see beyond the convexity of his eyeballs.

The pony, warmed up by its little run, pawed the ground,
impatient to be off. It was a fine animal, clean-built,
deep-chested, one of the mustang stock descended from the Arabs
brought over by Pizarro. Sang watched fearfully from the slant
of the kitchen window. Jed Parker, even, listened for the beat
of the horse's hoofs.

But Senor Johnson stood stock-still, his brain absolutely numb
and empty. His hand brushed against something which fell, to the
ground. He brought his dull gaze to bear on it. The object
proved to be a black, wrinkled spheroid, baked hard as iron in
the sunshine of Estrella's toys, a potato squeezed to dryness by
the constricting power of the rawhide. In a row along the fence
were others. To Senor Johnson it seemed that thus his heart was
being squeezed in the fire of suffering.

But the slight movement of the falling object roused him. He
swung open the gate. The pony bowed his head delightedly. He
was not tired, but his reins depended straight to the ground, and
it was a point of honour with him to stand. At the saddle born,
in its sling, hung the riata, the "rope" without which no cowman
ever stirs abroad, but which Senor Johnson had rarely used of
late. Senor Johnson threw the reins over, seized the pony's mane
in his left hand, held the pommel with his right, and so swung
easily aboard, the pony's jump helping him to the saddle. Wheel
tracks led down the trail. He followed them.

Truth to tell, Senor Johnson had very little idea of what he was
going to do. His action was entirely instinctive. The wheel
tracks held to the southwest so he held to the southwest, too.

The pony hit his stride. The miles slipped by. After seven of
them the animal slowed to a walk. Senor Johnson allowed him to
get his wind, then spurred him on again. He did not even take
the ordinary precautions of a pursuer. He did not even glance to
the horizon in search.

About supper-time he came to the first ranch house. There he
took a bite to eat and exchanged his horse for another, a
favourite of his, named Button. The two men asked no questions.

"See Mrs. Johnson go through?" asked the Senor from the saddle.

"Yes, about three o'clock. Brent Palmer driving her. Bound for
Willets to visit the preacher's wife, she said. Ought to catch
up at the Circle I. That's where they'd all spend the night, of
course. So long."

Senor Johnson knew now the couple would follow the straight road.
They would fear no pursuit. He himself was supposed not to
return for a week, and the story of visiting the minister's wife
was not only plausible, it was natural. Jed had upset
calculations, because Jed was shrewd, and had eyes in his head.
Buck Johnson's first mental numbness was wearing away; he was
beginning to think.

The night was very still and very dark, the stars very bright in
their candle-like glow. The man, loping steadily on through the
darkness, recalled that other night, equally still, equally dark,
equally starry, when he had driven out from his accustomed life
into the unknown with a woman by his side, the sight of whom
asleep had made him feel "almost holy." He uttered a short
laugh.

The pony was a good one, well equal to twice the distance he
would be called upon to cover this night. Senor Johnson managed
him well. By long experience and a natural instinct he knew just
how hard to push his mount, just how to keep inside the point
where too rapid exhaustion of vitality begins.

Toward the hour of sunrise he drew rein to look about him. The
desert, till now wrapped in the thousand little noises that make
night silence, drew breath in preparation for the awe of the
daily wonder. It lay across the world heavy as a sea of lead,
and as lifeless; deeply unconscious, like an exhausted sleeper.
The sky bent above, the stars paling. Far away the mountains
seemed to wait. And then, imperceptibly, those in the east
became blacker and sharper, while those in the west became
faintly lucent and lost the distinctness of their outline. The
change was nothing, yet everything. And suddenly a desert bird
sprang into the air and began to sing.

Senor Johnson caught the wonder of it. The wonder of it seemed
to him wasted, useless, cruel in its effect. He sighed
impatiently, and drew his hand across his eyes.

The desert became grey with the first light before the glory. In
the illusory revealment of it Senor Johnson's sharp
frontiersman's eyes made out an object moving away from him in
the middle distance. In a moment the object rose for a second
against the sky line, then disappeared. He knew it to be the
buckboard, and that the vehicle had just plunged into the dry bed
of an arroyo.

Immediately life surged through him like an electric shock. He
unfastened the riata from its sling, shook loose the noose, and
moved forward in the direction in which he had last seen the
buckboard.

At the top of the steep little bank he stopped behind the
mesquite, straining his eyes; luck had been good to him. The
buckboard had pulled up, and Brent Palmer was at the moment
beginning a little fire, evidently to make the morning coffee.

Senor Johnson struck spurs to his horse and half slid, half fell,
clattering, down the steep clay bank almost on top of the couple
below.

Estrella screamed. Brent Palmer jerked out an oath, and reached
for his gun. The loop of the riata fell wide over him,
immediately to be jerked tight, binding his arms tight to his
side.

The bronco-buster, swept from his feet by the pony's rapid turn,
nevertheless struggled desperately to wrench himself loose.
Button, intelligent at all rope work, walked steadily backward,
step by step, taking up the slack, keeping the rope tight as he
had done hundreds of times before when a steer had struggled as
this man was struggling now. His master leaped from the saddle
and ran forward. Button continued to walk slowly back. The
riata remained taut. The noose held.

Brent Palmer fought savagely, even then. He kicked, he rolled
over and over, he wrenched violently at his pinioned arms, he
twisted his powerful young body from Senor Johnson's grasp again
and again. But it was no use. In less than a minute he was
bound hard and fast. Button promptly slackened the rope. The
dust settled. The noise of the combat died. Again could be
heard the single desert bird singing against the dawn.

CHAPTER TWELVE
IN THE ARROYO

Senor Johnson quietly approached Estrella. The girl had, during
the struggle, gone through an aimless but frantic exhibition of
terror. Now she shrank back, her eyes staring wildly, her hands
behind her, ready to flop again over the brink of hysteria.

"What are you going to do?" she demanded, her voice unnatural.

She received no reply. The man reached out and took her by the
arm.

And then at once, as though the personal contact of the touch had
broken through the last crumb of numbness with which shock had
overlaid Buck Johnson's passions, the insanity of his rage broke
out. He twisted her violently on her face, knelt on her back,
and, with the short piece of hard rope the cowboy always carries
to "hog-tie" cattle, he lashed her wrists together. Then he
arose panting, his square black beard rising and falling with the
rise and fall of his great chest.

Estrella had screamed again and again until her face had been
fairly ground into the alkali. There she had choked and
strangled and gasped and sobbed, her mind nearly unhinged with
terror. She kept appealing to him in a hoarse voice, but could
get no reply, no indication that he had even heard. This
terrified her still more. Brent Palmer cursed steadily and
accurately, but the man did not seem to hear him either.

The tempest bad broken in Buck Johnson's soul. When he had
touched Estrella he had, for the first time, realised what he had
lost. It was not the woman--her he despised. But the dreams!
All at once he knew what they had been to him--he understood how
completely the very substance of his life had changed in response
to their slow soul-action. The new world had been blasted--the
old no longer existed to which to return.

Buck Johnson stared at this catastrophe until his sight blurred.
Why, it was atrocious! He had done nothing to deserve it! Why
had they not left him peaceful in his own life of cattle and the
trail? He had been happy. His dull eyes fell on the causes of
the ruin.

And then, finally, in the understanding of how he had been
tricked of his life, his happiness, his right to well-being, the
whole force of the man's anger flared. Brent Palmer lay there
cursing him artistically. That man had done it; that man was in
his power. He would get even. How?

Estrella, too, lay huddled, helpless and defenseless, at his
feet. She had done it. He would get even. How?

He had spoken no word. He spoke none now, either in answer to
Estrella's appeals, becoming piteous in their craving for relief
from suspense, or in response to Brent Palmer's steady stream of
insults and vituperations. Such things were far below. The
bitterness and anger and desolation were squeezing his heart.
He remembered the silly little row of potatoes sewn in the green
hide lying along the top of the adobe fence, some fresh and
round, some dripping as the rawhide contracted, some black and
withered and very small. A fierce and savage light sprang into
his eyes.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE RAWHIDE

First of all he unhitched the horses from the buckboard and
turned them loose. Then, since he was early trained in Indian
warfare, he dragged Palmer to the wagon wheel, and tied him so
closely to it that he could not roll over. For, though the
bronco-buster was already so fettered that his only possible
movement was of the jack-knife variety, nevertheless he might be
able to hitch himself along the ground to a sharp stone, there to
saw through the rope about his wrists. Estrella, her husband
held in contempt. He merely supplemented her wrist bands by one
about the ankles.

Leisurely he mounted Button and turned up the wagon trail,
leaving the two. Estrella had exhausted herself. She was
capable of nothing more in the way of emotion. Her eyes tight
closed, she inhaled in deep, trembling, long-drawn breaths, and
exhaled with the name of her Maker.

Brent Palmer, on the contrary, was by no means subdued. He had
expected to be shot in cold blood. Now he did not know what to
anticipate. His black, level brows drawn straight in defiance,
he threw his curses after Johnson's retreating figure.

The latter, however, paid no attention. He had his purposes.
Once at the top of the arroyo he took a careful survey of the
landscape, now rich with dawn. Each excrescence on the plain his
half-squinted eyes noticed, and with instant skill relegated to
its proper category of soap-weed, mesquite, cactus. At length he
swung Button in an easy lope toward what looked to be a bunch of
soap-weed in the middle distance.

But in a moment the cattle could be seen plainly. Button pricked
up his ears. He knew cattle. Now he proceeded tentatively,
lifting high his little hoofs to avoid the half-seen inequalities
of the ground and the ground's growths, wondering whether he were
to be called on to rope or to drive. When the rider had
approached to within a hundred feet, the cattle started.
Immediately Button understood that he was to pursue. No rope
swung above his head, so he sheered off and ran as fast as he
could to cut ahead of the bunch. But his rider with knee and
rein forced him in. After a moment, to his astonishment, he
found himself running alongside a big steer. Button had never
hunted buffalo--Buck Johnson had.

The Colt's forty-five barked once, and then again. The steer
staggered, fell to his knees, recovered, and finally stopped, the
blood streaming from his nostrils. In a moment he fell heavily
on his side--dead.

Senor Johnson at once dismounted and began methodically to skin
the animal. This was not easy for he had no way of suspending
the carcass nor of rolling it from side to side. However, he was
practised at it and did a neat job. Two or three times he even
caught himself taking extra pains that the thin flesh strips
should not adhere to the inside of the pelt. Then he smiled
grimly, and ripped it loose.

After the hide had been removed he cut from the edge, around and
around, a long, narrow strip. With this he bound the whole into
a compact bundle, strapped it on behind his saddle, and
remounted. He returned to the arroyo.

Estrella still lay with her eyes closed. Brent Palmer looked up
keenly. The bronco-buster saw the green hide. A puzzled
expression crept across his face.

Roughly Johnson loosed his enemy from the wheel and dragged him
to the woman. He passed the free end of the riata about them
both, tying them close together. The girl continued to moan, out
of her wits with terror.

"What are you going to do now, you devil?" demanded Palmer, but
received no reply.

Buck Johnson spread out the rawhide. Putting forth his huge
strength, he carried to it the pair, bound together like a bale
of goods, and laid them on its cool surface. He threw across
them the edges, and then deliberately began to wind around and
around the huge and unwieldy rawhide package the strip he had cut
from the edge of the pelt.

Nor was this altogether easy. At last Brent Palmer understood.
He writhed in the struggle of desperation, foaming blasphemies.
The uncouth bundle rolled here and there. But inexorably the
other, from the advantage of his position, drew the thongs
tighter.

And then, all at once, from vituperation the bronco-buster fell
to pleading, not for life, but for death.

"For God's sake, shoot me!" he cried from within the smothering
folds of the rawhide. "If you ever had a heart in you, shoot me!
Don't leave me here to be crushed in this vise. You wouldn't do
that to a yellow dog. An Injin wouldn't do that, Buck. It's a
joke, isn't it? Don't go away and leave me, Buck. I've done you
dirt. Cut my heart out, if you want to; I won't say a word, but
don't leave me here for the sun--"

His voice was drowned in a piercing scream, as Estrella came to
herself and understood. Always the rawhide had possessed for her
an occult fascination and repulsion. She had never been able to
touch it without a shudder, and yet she had always been drawn to
experiment with it. The terror of her doom had now added to it
for her all the vague and premonitory terrors which heretofore
she had not understood.

The richness of the dawn had flowed to the west. Day was at
hand. Breezes had begun to play across the desert; the wind
devils to raise their straight columns. A first long shaft of
sunlight shot through a pass in the Chiricahuas, trembled in the
dust-moted air, and laid its warmth on the rawhide. Senor
Johnson roused himself from his gloom to speak his first words of
the episode.

"There, damn you!" said he. "I guess you'll be close enough
together now!"

He turned away to look for his horse.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE DESERT

Button was a trusty of Senor Johnson's private animals. He was
never known to leave his master in the lurch, and so was
habitually allowed certain privileges. Now, instead of remaining
exactly on the spot where he was "tied to the ground," he had
wandered out of the dry arroyo bed to the upper level of the
plains, where he knew certain bunch grasses might be found. Buck
Johnson climbed the steep wooded bank in search of him.

The pony stood not ten feet distant. At his master's abrupt
appearance he merely raised his head, a wisp of grass in the
corner of his mouth, without attempting to move away. Buck
Johnson walked confidently to him, fumbling in his side pocket
for the piece of sugar with which he habitually soothed Button's
sophisticated palate. His hand encountered Estrella's letter.
He drew it out and opened it.

"Dear Buck," it read, "I am going away. I tried to be good, but
I can't. It's too lonesome for me. I'm afraid of the horses and
the cattle and the men and the desert. I hate it all. I tried
to make you see how I felt about it, but you couldn't seem to
see. I know you'll never forgive me, but I'd go crazy here. I'm
almost crazy now. I suppose you think I'm a bad woman, but I am
not. You won't believe that. Its' true though. The desert
would make anyone bad. I don't see how you stand it. You've
been good to me, and I've really tried, but it's no use. The
country is awful. I never ought to have come. I'm sorry you are
going to think me a bad woman, for I like you and admire you, but
nothing, NOTHING could make me stay here any longer." She
signed herself simply Estrella Sands, her maiden name.

Buck Johnson stood staring at the paper for a much longer time
than was necessary merely to absorb the meaning of the words.
His senses, sharpened by the stress of the last sixteen hours,
were trying mightily to cut to the mystery of a change going on
within himself. The phrases of the letter were bald enough, yet
they conveyed something vital to his inner being. He could not
understand what it was.

Then abruptly he raised his eyes.

Before him lay the desert, but a desert suddenly and miraculously
changed, a desert he had never seen before. Mile after mile it
swept away before him, hot, dry, suffocating, lifeless. The
sparse vegetation was grey with the alkali dust. The heat hung
choking in the air like a curtain. Lizards sprawled in the sun,
repulsive. A rattlesnake dragged its loathsome length from under
a mesquite. The dried carcass of a steer, whose parchment skin
drew tight across its bones, rattled in the breeze. Here and
there rock ridges showed with the obscenity of so many skeletons,
exposing to the hard, cruel sky the earth's nakedness. Thirst,
delirium, death, hovered palpable in the wind; dreadful,
unconquerable, ghastly.

The desert showed her teeth and lay in wait like a fierce beast.
The little soul of man shrank in terror before it.

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