Desert Gold
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Zane Grey >> Desert Gold
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Thorne gazed eagerly down as he stood beside Mercedes, who
sat motionless facing the slope. Gale looked and looked till he
hurt his eyes. Then he took his glass out of its case on Sol's
saddle.
There appeared to be nothing upon the lava but the innumerable
dots of choya shining in the sun. Gale swept his glass slowly
forward and back. Then into a nearer field of vision crept a
long white-and-black line of horses and men. Without a word
he handed the glass to Ladd. The ranger used it, muttering to
himself.
"They're on the lava fifteen miles down in an air line," he said,
presently. "Jim, shore they're twice that an' more accordin' to
the trail."
Jim had his look and replied: "I reckon we're a day an' a night
in the lead."
"Is it Rojas?" burst out Thorne, with set jaw.
"Yes, Thorne. It's Rojas and a dozen men or more," replied Gale,
and he looked up at Mercedes.
She was transformed. She might have been a medieval princess
embodying all the Spanish power and passion of that time, breathing
revenge, hate, unquenchable spirit of fire. If her beauty had been
wonderful in her helpless and appealing moments, now, when she looked
back white-faced and flame-eyed, it was transcendant.
Gale drew a long, deep breath. The mood which had presaged pursuit,
strife, blood on this somber desert, returned to him tenfold. He
saw Thorne's face corded by black veins, and his teeth exposed like
those of a snarling wolf. These rangers, who had coolly risked
death many times, and had dealt it often, were white as no fear
or pain could have made them. Then, on the moment, Yaqui raised
his hand, not clenched or doubled tight, but curled rigid like an
eagle's claw; and he shook it in a strange, slow gesture which
was menacing and terrible.
It was the woman that called to the depths of these men. And
their passion to kill and to save was surpassed only by the wild
hate which was yet love, the unfathomable emotion of a peon
slave. Gale marveled at it, while he felt his whole being cold
and tense, as he turned once more to follow in the tracks of his
leaders. The fight predicted by Belding was at hand. What a fight
that must be! Rojas was traveling light and fast. He was gaining.
He had bought his men with gold, with extravagant promises,
perhaps with offers of the body and blood of an aristocrat hateful
to their kind. Lastly, there was the wild, desolate environment,
a tortured wilderness of jagged lava and poisoned choya, a lonely,
fierce, and repellant world, a red stage most somberly and fittingly
colored for a supreme struggle between men.
Yaqui looked back no more. Mercedes looked back no more. But
the others looked, and the time came when Gale saw the creeping
line of pursuers with naked eyes.
A level line above marked the rim of the plateau. Sand began to
show in the little lava pits. On and upward toiled the cavalcade,
still very slowly advancing. At last Yaqui reached the rim. He
stood with his hand on Blanco Diablo; and both were silhouetted
against the sky. That was the outlook for a Yaqui. And his great
horse, dazzlingly white in the sunlight, with head wildly and
proudly erect, mane and tail flying in the wind, made a magnificent
picture. The others toiled on and upward, and at last Gale led
Blanco Sol over the rim. Then all looked down the red slope.
But shadows were gathering there and no moving line could be seen.
Yaqui mounted and wheeled Diablo away. The others followed.
Gale saw that the plateau was no more than a vast field of low,
ragged circles, levels, mounds, cones, and whirls of lava. The lava
was of a darker red than that down upon the slope, and it was harder
than flint. In places fine sand and cinders covered the uneven
floor. Strange varieties of cactus vied with the omnipresent choya.
Yaqui, however, found ground that his horse covered at a swift walk.
But there was only an hour, perhaps, of this comparatively easy
going. Then the Yaqui led them into a zone of craters. The top of
the earth seemed to have been blown out in holes from a few rods
in width to large craters, some shallow, others deep, and all red
as fire. Yaqui circled close to abysses which yawned sheer from
a level surface, and he appeared always to be turning upon his
course to avoid them.
The plateau had now a considerable dip to the west. Gale marked
the slow heave and ripple of the ocean of lava to the south, where
high, rounded peaks marked the center of this volcanic region. The
uneven nature of the slope westward prevented any extended view,
until suddenly the fugitives emerged from a rugged break to come
upon a sublime and awe-inspiring spectacle.
They were upon a high point of the western slope of the plateau.
It was a slope, but so many leagues long in its descent that only
from a height could any slant have been perceptible. Yaqui and
his white horse stood upon the brink of a crater miles in
circumference, a thousand feet deep, with its red walls patched
in frost-colored spots by the silvery choya. The giant tracery of
lava streams waved down the slope to disappear in undulating sand dunes.
And these bordered a seemingly endless arm of blue sea. This
was the Gulf of California. Beyond the Gulf rose dim, bold
mountains, and above them hung the setting sun, dusky red, flooding
all that barren empire with a sinister light.
It was strange to Gale then, and perhaps to the others, to see
their guide lead Diablo into a smooth and well-worn trail along
the rim of the awful crater. Gale looked down into that red chasm.
It resembled an inferno. The dark cliffs upon the opposite side
were veiled in blue haze that seemed like smoke. Here Yaqui was
at home. He moved and looked about him as a man coming at last
into his own. Gale saw him stop and gaze out over that red-ribbed
void to the Gulf.
Gale devined that somewhere along this crater of hell the Yaqui
would make his final stand; and one look into his strange,
inscrutable eyes made imagination picture a fitting doom for the
pursuing Rojas.
XII
The Crater of Hell
The trail led along a gigantic fissure in the side of the crater,
and then down and down into a red-walled, blue hazed labyrinth.
Presently Gale, upon turning a sharp corner, was utterly amazed to
see that the split in the lava sloped out and widened into an
arroyo. It was so green and soft and beautiful in all the angry,
contorted red surrounding that Gale could scarcely credit his sight.
Blanco Sol whistled his welcome to the scent of water. Then Gale
saw a great hole, a pit in the shiny lava, a dark, cool, shady well.
There was evidence of the fact that at flood seasons the water
had an outlet into the arroyo. The soil appeared to be a fine sand,
in which a reddish tinge predominated; and it was abundantly
covered with a long grass, still partly green. Mesquites and palo
verdes dotted the arroyo and gradually closed in thickets that
obstructed the view.
"Shore it all beats me," exclaimed Ladd. "What a place to hole-up
in! We could have hid here for a long time. Boys, I saw mountain
sheep, the real old genuine Rocky Mountain bighorn. What do you
think of that?"
"I reckon it's a Yaqui hunting-ground," replied Lash. "That trail
we hit must be hundreds of years old. It's worn deep and smooth
in iron lava."
"Well, all I got to say is--Beldin' was shore right about the
Indian. An' I can see Rojas's finish somewhere up along that
awful hell-hole."
Camp was made on a level spot. Yaqui took the horses to water,
and then turned them loose in the arroyo. It was a tired and
somber group that sat down to eat. The strain of suspense
equaled the wearing effects of the long ride. Mercedes was calm,
but her great dark eyes burned in her white face. Yaqui watched
her. The others looked at her with unspoken pride. Presently
Thorne wrapped her in his blankets, and she seemed to fall asleep
at once. Twilight deepened. The campfire blazed brighter. A
cool wind played with Mercedes's black hair, waving strands across
her brow.
Little of Yaqui's purpose or plan could be elicited from him. But
the look of him was enough to satisfy even Thorne. He leaned
against a pile of wood, which he had collected, and his gloomy
gaze pierced the campfire, and at long intervals strayed over the
motionless form of the Spanish girl.
The rangers and Thorne, however, talked in low tones. It was
absolutely impossible for Rojas and his men to reach the waterhole
before noon of the next day. And long before that time the
fugitives would have decided on a plan of defense. What that
defense would be, and where it would be made, were matters over
which the men considered gravely. Ladd averred the Yaqui would put
them into an impregnable position, that at the same time would prove
a death-trap for their pursuers. They exhausted every possibility,
and then, tired as they were, still kept on talking.
"What stuns me is that Rojas stuck to our trail," said Thorne, his
lined and haggard face expressive of dark passion. "He has followed
us into this fearful desert. He'll lose men, horses, perhaps his
life. He's only a bandit, and he stands to win no gold. If he
ever gets out of here it 'll be by herculean labor and by terrible
hardship. All for a poor little helpless woman--just a woman!
My God, I can't understand it."
"Shore--just a woman," replied Ladd, solemnly nodding his head.
Then there was a long silence during which the men gazed into the
fire. Each, perhaps, had some vague conception of the enormity
of Rojas's love or hate--some faint and amazing glimpse of the
gulf of human passion. Those were cold, hard, grim faces upon
which the light flickered.
"Sleep," said the Yaqui.
Thorne rolled in his blanket close beside Mercedes. Then one by
one the rangers stretched out, feet to the fire. Gale found that
he could not sleep. His eyes were weary, but they would not stay
shut; his body ached for rest, yet he could not lie still. The
night was so somber, so gloomy, and the lava-encompassed arroyo full
of shadows. The dark velvet sky, fretted with white fire, seemed to
be close. There was an absolute silence, as of death. Nothing
moved--nothing outside of Gale's body appeared to live. The
Yaqui sat like an image carved out of lava. The others lay prone
and quiet. Would another night see any of them lie that way,
quiet forever? Gale felt a ripple pass over him that was at once
a shudder and a contraction of muscles. Used as he was to the
desert and its oppression, why should he feel to-night as if the
weight of its lava and the burden of its mystery were bearing
him down?
He sat up after a while and again watched the fire. Nell's sweet
face floated like a wraith in the pale smoke--glowed and flushed
and smiled in the embers. Other faces shone there--his sister's
--that of his mother. Gale shook off the tender memories. This
desolate wilderness with its forbidding silence and its dark
promise of hell on the morrow--this was not the place to unnerve
oneself with thoughts of love and home. But the torturing paradox
of the thing was that this was just the place and just the night
for a man to be haunted.
By and by Gale rose and walked down a shadowy aisle
between the mesquites. On his way back the Yaqui joined him.
Gale was not surprised. He had become used to the Indian's
strange guardianship. But now, perhaps because of Gale's poignancy
of thought, the contending tides of love and regret, the deep,
burning premonition of deadly strife, he was moved to keener
scrutiny of the Yaqui. That, of course, was futile. The Indian
was impenetrable, silent, strange. But suddenly, inexplicably,
Gale felt Yaqui's human quality. It was aloof, as was everything
about this Indian; but it was there. This savage walked silently
beside him, without glance or touch or word. His thought was
as inscrutable as if mind had never awakened in his race. Yet
Gale was conscious of greatness, and, somehow, he was reminded
of the Indian's story. His home had been desolated, his people
carried off to slavery, his wife and children separated from him
to die. What had life meant to the Yaqui? What had been in his
heart? What was now in his mind? Gale could not answer these
questions. But the difference between himself and Yaqui, which
he had vaguely felt as that between savage and civilized men,
faded out of his mind forever. Yaqui might have considered he
owed Gale a debt, and, with a Yaqui's austere and noble fidelity
to honor, he meant to pay it. Nevertheless, this was not the thing
Gale found in the Indian's silent presence. Accepting the desert
with its subtle and inconceivable influence, Gale felt that the
savage and the white man had been bound in a tie which was
no less brotherly because it could not be comprehended.
Toward dawn Gale managed to get some sleep. Then the morning
broke with the sun hidden back of the uplift of the plateau. The
horses trooped up the arroyo and snorted for water. After a hurried
breakfast the packs were hidden in holes in the lava. The saddles
were left where they were, and the horses allowed to graze and
wander at will. Canteens were filled, a small bag of food was
packed, and blankets made into a bundle.
Then Yaqui faced the steep ascent of the lava slope.
The trail he followed led up on the right side of the fissure,
opposite to the one he had come down. It was a steep climb, and
encumbered as the men were they made but slow progress. Mercedes
had to be lifted up smooth steps and across crevices. They passed
places where the rims of the fissure were but a few yards apart.
At length the rims widened out and the red, smoky crater yawned
beneath. Yaqui left the trail and began clambering down over
the rough and twisted convolutions of lava which formed the rim.
Sometimes he hung sheer over the precipice. It was with extreme
difficulty that the party followed him. Mercedes had to be held
on narrow, foot-wide ledges. The choya was there to hinder passage.
Finally the Indian halted upon a narrow bench of flat, smooth lava,
and his followers worked with exceeding care and effort down to
his position.
At the back of this bench, between bunches of choya, was a niche,
a shallow cave with floor lined apparently with mold. Ladd said
the place was a refuge which had been inhabited by mountain sheep
for many years. Yaqui spread blankets inside, left the canteen and
the sack of food, and with a gesture at once humble, yet that of a
chief, he invited Mercedes to enter. A few more gestures and fewer
words disclosed his plan. In this inaccessible nook Mercedes was
to be hidden. The men were to go around upon the opposite rim, and
block the trail leading down to the waterhole.
Gale marked the nature of this eyrie. It was the wildest and most
rugged place he had ever stepped upon. Only a sheep could have
climbed up the wall above or along the slanting shelf of lava
beyond. Below glistened a whole bank of choya, frosty in the
sunlight, and it overhung an apparently bottomless abyss.
Ladd chose the smallest gun in the party and gave it to Mercedes.
"Shore it's best to go the limit on bein' ready," he said, simply.
"The chances are you'll never need it. But if you do--"
He left off there, and his break was significant. Mercedes answered
him with a fearless and indomitable flash of eyes. Thorne was the
only one who showed any shaken nerve. His leave-taking of his wife
was affecting and hurried. Then he and the rangers carefully
stepped in the tracks of the Yaqui.
They climbed up to the level of the rim and went along the edge.
When they reached the fissure and came upon its narrowest point,
Yaqui showed in his actions that he meant to leap it. Ladd
restrained the Indian. They then continued along the rim till they
reached several bridges of lava which crossed it. The fissures
was deep in some parts, choked in others. Evidently the crater had
no direct outlet into the arroyo below. Its bottom, however, must
have been far beneath the level of the waterhole.
After the fissure was crossed the trail was soon found. Here it ran
back from the rim. Yaqui waved his hand to the right, where along
the corrugated slope of the crater there were holes and crevices
and coverts for a hundred men. Yaqui strode on up the trail toward
a higher point, where presently his dark figure stood motionless
against the sky. The rangers and Thorne selected a deep depression,
out of which led several ruts deep enough for cover. According to
Ladd it was as good a place as any, perhaps not so hidden as others,
but freer from the dreaded choya. Here the men laid down rifles
and guns, and, removing their heavy cartridge belts, settled down
to wait.
Their location was close to the rim wall and probably five hundred
yards from the opposite rim, which was now seen to be considerably
below them. The glaring red cliff presented a deceitful and
baffling appearance. It had a thousand ledges and holes in its
surfaces, and one moment it looked perpendicular and the next
there seemed to be a long slant. Thorne pointed out where
he thought Mercedes was hidden; Ladd selected another place,
and Lash still another. Gale searched for the bank of choya
he had seen under the bench where Mercedes's retreat lay,
and when he found it the others disputed his opinion.
Then Gale brought his field glass into requisition, proving that
he was right. Once located and fixed in sight, the white patch
of choya, the bench, and the sheep eyrie stood out from the other
features of that rugged wall. But all the men were agreed that
Yaqui had hidden Mercedes where only the eyes of a vulture could
have found her.
Jim Lash crawled into a little strip of shade and bided the time
tranquilly. Ladd was restless and impatient and watchful, every
little while rising to look up the far-reaching slope, and then to
the right, where Yaqui's dark figure stood out from a high point
of the rim. Thorne grew silent, and seemed consumed by a slow,
sullen rage. Gale was neither calm nor free of a gnawing suspense
nor of a waiting wrath. But as best he could he put the pending
action out of mind.
It came over him all of a sudden that he had not grasped the
stupendous nature of this desert setting. There was the measureless
red slope, its lower ridges finally sinking into white sand dunes
toward the blue sea. The cold, sparkling light, the white sun,
the deep azure of sky, the feeling of boundless expanse all around
him--these meant high altitude. Southward the barren red simply
merged into distance. The field of craters rose in high, dark
wheels toward the dominating peaks. When Gale withdrew his gaze
from the magnitude of these spaces and heights the crater beneath
him seemed dwarfed. Yet while he gazed it spread and deepened
and multiplied its ragged lines. No, he could not grasp the meaning
of size or distance here. There was too much to stun the sight.
But the mood in which nature had created this convulsed world
of lava seized hold upon him.
Meanwhile the hours passed. As the sun climbed the clear, steely
lights vanished, the blue hazes deepened, and slowly the glistening
surfaces of lava turned redder. Ladd was concerned to discover that
Yaqui was missing from his outlook upon the high point. Jim Lash
came out of the shady crevice, and stood up to buckle on his
cartridge belt. His narrow, gray glance slowly roved from the
height of lava down along the slope, paused in doubt, and then
swept on to resurvey the whole vast eastern dip of the plateau.
"I reckon my eyes are pore," he said. "Mebbe it's this damn red
glare. Anyway, what's them creepin' spots up there?"
"Shore I seen them. Mountain sheep," replied Ladd.
"Guess again, Laddy. Dick, I reckon you'd better flash the glass
up the slope."
Gale adjusted the field glass and began to search the lava,
beginning close at hand and working away from him. Presently
the glass became stationary.
"I see half a dozen small animals, brown in color. They look like
sheep. But I couldn't distinguish mountain sheep from antelope."
"Shore they're bighorn," said Laddy.
"I reckon if you'll pull around to the east an' search under that
long wall of lava--there--you'll see what I see," added Jim.
The glass climbed and circled, wavered an instant, then fixed
steady as a rock. There was a breathless silence.
"Fourteen horses--two packed--some mounted--others without
riders, and lame," said Gale, slowly.
Yaqui appeared far up the trail, coming swiftly. Presently he saw
the rangers and halted to wave his arms and point. Then he vanished
as if the lava had opened beneath him.
"Lemme that glass," suddenly said Jim Lash. "I'm seein' red, I tell
you....Well, pore as my eyes are they had it right. Rojas an' his
outfit have left the trail."
"Jim, you ain't meanin' they've taken to that awful slope?" queried Ladd.
"I sure do. There they are--still comin', but goin' down, too."
"Mebbe Rojas is crazy, but it begins to look like he--"
"Laddy, I'll be danged if the Greaser bunch hasn't vamoosed. Gone
out of sight! Right there not a half mile away, the whole
caboodle--gone!"
"Shore they're behind a crust or have gone down into a rut,"
suggested Ladd. "They'll show again in a minute. Look sharp,
boys, for I'm figgerin' Rojas 'll spread his men."
Minutes passed, but nothing moved upon the slope. Each man crawled
up to a vantage point along the crest of rotting lava. The watchers
were careful to peer through little notches or from behind a spur,
and the constricted nature of their hiding-place kept them close
together. Ladd's muttering grew into a growl, then lapsed into the
silence that marked his companions. From time to time the rangers
looked inquiringly at Gale. The field glass, however, like the
naked sight, could not catch the slightest moving object out there
upon the lava. A long hour of slow, mounting suspense wore on.
"Shore it's all goin' to be as queer as the Yaqui," said Ladd.
Indeed, the strange mien, the silent action, the somber character
of the Indian had not been without effect upon the minds of the
men. Then the weird, desolate, tragic scene added to the vague
sense of mystery. And now the disappearance of Rojas's band,
the long wait in the silence, the boding certainty of invisible
foes crawling, circling closer and closer, lent to the situation
a final touch that made it unreal.
"I'm reckonin' there's a mind behind them Greasers," replied Jim.
"Or mebbe we ain't done Rojas credit...If somethin' would only
come off!"
That Lash, the coolest, most provokingly nonchalant
of men in times of peril, should begin to show a nervous strain
was all the more indicative of a suble pervading unreality.
"Boys, look sharp!" suddenly called Lash. "Low down to the left
--mebbe three hundred yards. See, along by them seams of lava
--behind the choyas. First off I thought it was a sheep. But it's
the Yaqui!...Crawlin' swift as a lizard! Can't you see him?"
It was a full moment before Jim's companions could locate the
Indian. Flat as a snake Yaqui wound himself along with incredible
rapidity. His advance was all the more remarkable for the fact that
he appeared to pass directly under the dreaded choyas. Sometimes
he paused to lift his head and look. He was directly in line with a
huge whorl of lava that rose higher than any point on the slope.
This spur was a quarter of a mile from the position of the rangers.
"Shore he's headin' for that high place," said Ladd. "He's goin'
slow now. There, he's stopped behind some choyas. He's gettin'
up--no, he's kneelin'....Now what the hell!"
"Laddy, take a peek at the side of that lava ridge," sharply called
Jim. "I guess mebbe somethin' ain't comin' off. See! There's
Rojas an' his outfit climbin'. Don't make out no hosses....Dick,
use your glass an' tell us what's doin'. I'll watch Yaqui an' tell
you what his move means."
Clearly and distinctly, almost as if he could have touched them,
Gale had Rojas and his followers in sight. They were toiling up
the rough lava on foot. They were heavily armed. Spurs, chaps,
jackets, scarfs were not in evidence. Gale saw the lean, swarthy
faces, the black, straggly hair, the ragged, soiled garments which
had once been white.
"They're almost up now," Gale was saying. "There! They halt on
top. I see Rojas. He looks wild. By----! fellows, an Indian!
...It's a Papago. Belding's old herder!...The Indian points--
this way--then down. He's showing Rojas the lay of the trail."
"Boys, Yaqui's in range of that bunch," said Jim, swiftly. "He's
raisin' his rifle slow--Lord, how slow he is!...He's covered some
one. Which one I can't say. But I think he'll pick Rojas."
"The Yaqui can shoot. He'll pick Rojas," added Gale, grimly.
"Rojas--yes--yes!" cried Thorne, in passion of suspense.
"Not on your life!" Ladd's voice cut in with scorn. "Gentlemen,
you can gamble Yaqui 'll kill the Papago. That traitor Indian
knows these sheep haunts. He's tellin' Rojas--"
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