Desert Gold

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Then Yaqui submitted to examination. A bullet had gone through
the Indian's shoulder. To Gale it appeared serious. Yaqui said it
was a flea bite. But he allowed

Gale to bandage it, and obeyed when he was told to lie quiet in
his blanket beside the fire.

Gale stood guard. He seemed still calm, and wondered at what he
considered a strange absence of poignant feeling. If he had felt
weariness it was now gone. He coaxed the fire with as little wood
as would keep it burning; he sat beside it; he walked to and fro
close by; sometimes he stood over the five sleepers, wondering if
two of them, at least, would ever awaken.

Time had passed swiftly, but as the necessity for immediate action
had gone by, the hours gradually assumed something of their normal
length. The night wore on. The air grew colder, the stars
brighter, the sky bluer, and, if such could be possible, the silence
more intense. The fire burned out, and for lack of wood could not
be rekindled. Gale patrolled his short beat, becoming colder and
damper as dawn approached. The darkness grew so dense that he could
not see the pale faces of the sleepers. He dreaded the gray dawn
and the light. Slowly the heavy black belt close to the lava
changed to a pale gloom, then to gray, and after that morning came
quickly.

The hour had come for Dick Gale to face his great problem. It was
natural that he hung back a little at first; natural that when he
went forward to look at the quiet sleepers he did so with a grim
and stern force urging him. Yaqui stirred, roused, yawned, got up;
and, though he did not smile at Gale, a light shone swiftly across
his dark face. His shoulder drooped and appeared stiff, otherwise
he was himself. Mercedes lay in deep slumber. Thorne had a high
fever, and was beginning to show signs of restlessness. Ladd
seemed just barely alive. Jim Lash slept as if he was not much
the worse for his wound.

Gale rose from his examination with a sharp breaking of his cold
mood. While there was life in Thorne and Ladd there was hope
for them. Then he faced his problem, and his decision was instant.

He awoke Mercedes. How wondering, wistful, beautiful
was that first opening flash of her eyes! Then the dark, troubled
thought came. Swiftly she sat up.

"Mercedes--come. Are you all right? Laddy is alive Thorne's not
--not so bad. But we've got a job on our hands! You must help me."

She bent over Thorne and laid her hands on his hot face. Then she
rose--a woman such as he had imagined she might be in an hour of
trial.

Gale took up Ladd as carefully and gently as possible.

"Mercedes, bring what you can carry and follow me," he said. Then,
motioning for Yaqui to remain there, he turned down the slope with
Ladd in his arms.

Neither pausing nor making a misstep nor conscious of great effort,
Gale carried the wounded man down into the arroyo. Mercedes
kept at his heels, light, supple, lithe as a panther. He left her
with Ladd and went back. When he had started off with Thorne
in his arms he felt the tax on his strength. Surely and swiftly,
however, he bore the cavalryman down the trail to lay him beside
Ladd. Again he started back, and when he began to mount the
steep lava steps he was hot, wet, breathing hard. As he reached
the scene of that night's camp a voice greeted him. Jim Lash was
sitting up.

"Hello, Dick. I woke some late this mornin'. Where's Laddy? Dick,
you ain't a-goin' to say--"

"Laddy's alive--that's about all," replied Dick.

"Where's Thorne an' Mercedes? Look here, man. I reckon you ain't
packin' this crippled outfit down that awful trail?"

"Had to, Jim. An hour's sun--would kill--both Laddy and Thorne.
Come on now."

For once Jim Lash's cool good nature and careless indifference
gave precedence to amaze and concern.

"Always knew you was a husky chap. But, Dick, you're no hoss!
Get me a crutch an' give me a lift on one side."

"Come on," replied Gale. "I've no time to monkey."

He lifted the ranger, called to Yaqui to follow with some of the
camp outfit, and once more essayed the steep descent. Jim Lash
was the heaviest man of the three, and Gale's strength was put
to enormous strain to carry him on that broken trail.
Nevertheless, Gale went down, down, walking swiftly and surely
over the bad places; and at last he staggered into the arroyo with
bursting heart and red-blinded eyes. When he had recovered he
made a final trip up the slope for the camp effects which Yaqui had
been unable to carry.

Then he drew Jim and Mercedes and Yaqui, also, into an earnest
discussion of ways and means whereby to fight for the life of
Thorne. Ladd's case Gale now considered hopeless, though he
meant to fight for him, too, as long as he breathed.

In the labor of watching and nursing it seemed to Gale that two
days and two nights slipped by like a few hours. During that time
the Indian recovered from his injury, and became capable of
performing all except heavy tasks. Then Gale succumbed to
weariness. After his much-needed rest he relieved Mercedes of the
care and watch over Thorne which, up to that time, she had
absolutely refused to relinquish. The cavalryman had high fever,
and Gale feared he had developed blood poisoning. He required
constant attention. His condition slowly grew worse, and there
came a day which Gale thought surely was the end. But that day
passed, and the night, and the next day, and Thorne lived on,
ghastly, stricken, raving. Mercedes hung over him with jealous,
passionate care and did all that could have been humanly done for
a man. She grew wan, absorbed, silent. But suddenly, and to Gale's
amaze and thanksgiving, there came an abatement of Thorne's fever.
With it some of the heat and redness of the inflamed wound
disappeared. Next morning he was conscious, and Gale grasped some
of the hope that Mercedes had never abandoned. He forced her to
rest while he attended to Thorne. That day he saw that the crisis
was past. Recovery for Thorne was now possible, and would perhaps
depend entirely upon the care he received.

Jim Lash's wound healed without any aggravating symptoms. It would
be only a matter of time unti he had the use of his leg again. All
these days, however, there was little apparent change in Ladd's
condition unless it was that he seemed to fade away as he lingered.
At first his wounds remained open; they bled a little all the time
outwardly, perhaps internally also; the blood did not seem to clot,
and so the bullet holes did not close. Then Yaqui asked for the
care of Ladd. Gale yielded it with opposing thoughts--that Ladd
would waste slowly away till life ceased, and that there never was
any telling what might lie in the power of this strange Indian.
Yaqui absented himself from camp for a while, and when he returned
he carried the roots and leaves of desert plants unknown to Gale.
From these the Indian brewed an ointment. Then he stripped the
bandages from Ladd and applied the mixture to his wounds. That
done, he let him lie with the wounds exposed to the air, at night
covering him. Next day he again exposed the wounds to the warm,
dry air. Slowly they closed, and Ladd ceased to bleed externally.

Days passed and grew into what Gale imagined must have been weeks.
Yaqui recovered fully. Jim Lash began to move about on a crutch;
he shared the Indian's watch over Ladd. Thorne lay haggard,
emaciated ghost of his rugged self, but with life in the eyes that
turned always toward Mercedes. Ladd lingered and lingered. The
life seemingly would not leave his bullet-pierced body. He faded,
withered, shrunk till he was almost a skeleton. He knew those who
worked and watched over him, but he had no power of speech. His
eyes and eyelids moved; the rest of him seemed stone. All those
days nothing except water was given him. It was marvelous how
tenaciously, however feebly, he clung to life. Gale imagined it was
the Yaqui's spirit that held back death. That tireless, implacable,
inscrutable savage was ever at the ranger's side. His great somber
eyes burned. At length he went to Gale, and, with that strange light
flitting across the hard bronzed face, he said Ladd would live.

The second day after Ladd had been given such thin nourishment as
he could swallow he recovered the use of his tongue.

"Shore--this's--hell," he whispered.

That was a characteristic speech for the ranger, Gale thought; and
indeed it made all who heard it smile while their eyes were wet.

From that time forward Ladd gained, but he gained so immeasurably
slowly that only the eyes of hope could have seen any improvement.
Jim Lash threw away his crutch, and Thorne was well, if still somewhat
weak, before Ladd could lift his arm or turn his head. A kind of
long, immovable gloom passed, like a shadow, from his face. His
whispers grew stronger. And the day arrived when Gale, who was
perhaps the least optimistic, threw doubt to the winds and knew the
ranger would get well. For Gale that joyous moment of realization
was one in which he seemed to return to a former self long absent.
He experienced an elevation of soul. He was suddenly overwhelmed
with gratefulness, humility, awe. A gloomy black terror had passed
by. He wanted to thank the faithful Mercedes, and Thorne for
getting well, and the cheerful Lash, and Ladd himself, and that
strange and wonderful Yaqui, now such a splendid figure. He thought
of home and Nell. The terrible encompassing red slopes lost something
of their fearsomeness, and there was a good spirit hovering near.

"Boys, come round," called Ladd, in his low voice. "An' you,
Mercedes. An' call the Yaqui."

Ladd lay in the shade of the brush shelter that had been
erected. His head was raised slightly on a pillow. There seemed
little of him but long lean lines, and if it had not been for his
keen, thoughtful, kindly eyes, his face would have resembled a
death mask of a man starved.

"Shore I want to know what day is it an' what month?" asked Ladd.

Nobody could answer him. The question seemed a surprise to Gale,
and evidently was so to the others.

"Look at that cactus," went on Ladd.

Near the wall of lava a stunted saguaro lifted its head. A few
shriveled blossoms that had once been white hung along the fluted
column.

"I reckon according to that giant cactus it's somewheres along the
end of March," said Jim Lash, soberly.

"Shore it's April. Look where the sun is. An' can't you feel
it's gettin' hot?"

"Supposin' it is April?" queried Lash slowly.

"Well, what I'm drivin' at is it's about time you all was hittin'
the trail back to Forlorn River, before the waterholes dry out."

"Laddy, I reckon we'll start soon as you're able to be put on a
hoss."

"Shore that 'll be too late."

A silence ensued, in which those who heard Ladd gazed fixedly at
him and then at one another. Lash uneasily shifted the position
of his lame leg, and Gale saw him moisten his lips with his tongue.

"Charlie Ladd, I ain't reckonin' you mean we're to ride off an'
leave you here?"

"What else is there to do? The hot weather's close. Pretty soon
most of the waterholes will be dry. You can't travel then....I'm
on my back here, an' God only knows when I could be packed out.
Not for weeks, mebbe. I'll never be any good again, even if I was
to get out alive....You see, shore this sort of case comes round
sometimes in the desert. It's common enough. I've heard of several
cases where men had to go an' leave a feller behind. It's reasonable.
If you're fightin' the desert you can't afford to be sentimental...
Now, as I said, I'm all in. So what's the sense of you waitin' here,
when it means the old desert story? By goin' now mebbe you'll get home.
If you wait on a chance of takin' me, you'll be too late. Pretty soon
this lava 'll be one roastin' hell. Shore now, boys, you'll see this
the right way? Jim, old pard?"

"No, Laddy, an' I can't figger how you could ever ask me."

"Shore then leave me here with Yaqui an' a could of the hosses.
We can eat sheep meat. An' if the water holds out--"

"No!" interrupted Lash, violently.

Ladd's eyes sought Gale's face.

"Son, you ain't bull-headed like Jim. You'll see the sense of it.
There's Nell a-waitin' back at Forlorn River. Think what it means
to her! She's a damn fine girl, Dick, an' what right have you to
break her heart for an old worn-out cowpuncher? Think how she's
watchin' for you with that sweet face all sad an' troubled, an'
her eyes turnin' black. You'll go, son, won't you?"

Dick shook his head.

The ranger turned his gaze upon Thorne, and now the keen, glistening
light in his gray eyes had blurred.

"Thorne, it's different with you. Jim's a fool, an' young Gale has
been punctured by choya thorns. He's got the desert poison in his
blood. But you now--you've no call to stick--you can find that
trail out. I'ts easy to follow, made by so many shod hosses. Take
your wife an' go....Shore you'll go, Thorne?"

Deliberately and without an instant's hesitation the calvaryman
replied "No."

Ladd then directed his appeal to Mercedes. His face was now
convulsed, and his voice, though it had sunk to a whisper, was
clear, and beautiful with some rich quality that Gale had never
heard in it.

"Mercedes, you're a woman. You're the woman we fought for. An'
some of us are shore goin' to die for you. Don't make it all for
nothin'. Let us feel we saved the woman. Shore you can make Thorne
go. He'll have to go if you say. They'll all have to go. Think of
the years of love an' happiness in store for you. A week or so
an' it 'll be too late. Can you stand for me seein' you?...Let
me tell you, Mercedes, when the summer heat hits the lava we'll
all wither an' curl up like shavin's near a fire. A wind of hell
will blow up this slope. Look at them mesquites. See the twist
in them. That's the torture of heat an' thirst. Do you want me
or all us men seein'you like that?...Mercedes, don't make it all
for nothin'. Say you'll persuade Thorne, if not the others."

For all the effect his appeal had to move her Mercedes might have
possessed a heart as hard and fixed as the surrounding lava.

"Never!"

White-faced, with great black eyes flashing, the Spanish girl
spoke the word that bound her and her companions in the desert.

The subject was never mentioned again. Gale thought that he read
a sinister purpose in Ladd's mind. To his astonishment, Lash
came to him with the same fancy. After that they made certain
there never was a gun within reach of Ladd's clutching, clawlike
hands.

Gradually a somber spell lifted from the ranger's mind. When he
was entirely free of it he began to gather strength daily. Then
it was as if he had never known patience--he who had shown so well
how to wait. He was in a frenzy to get well. He appetite could
not be satisfied.

The sun climbed higher, whiter, hotter. At midday a wind from
gulfward roared up the arroyo, and now only palos verdes and the
few saguaros were green. Every day the water in the lava hole
sank an inch.

The Yaqui alone spent the waiting time in activity. He made
trips up on the lava slope, and each time he returned with
guns or boots or sombreros, or something belonging to the
bandits that had fallen. He never fetched in a saddle or bridle,
and from that the rangers concluded Rojas's horses had long before
taken their back trail. What speculation, what consternation
those saddled horses would cause if they returned to Forlorn River!

As Ladd improved there was one story he had to hear every day. It
was the one relating to what he had missed--the sight of Rojas
pursued and plunged to his doom. The thing had a morbid fascination
for the sick ranger. He reveled in it. He tortured Mercedes.
His gentleness and consideration, heretofore so marked, were in
abeyance to some sinister, ghastly joy. But to humor him Mercedes
racked her soul with the sensations she had sufferd when Rojas
hounded her out on the ledge; when she shot him; when she sprang
to throw herself over the precipice; when she fought him; when
with half-blinded eyes she looked up to see the merciless Yaqui
reaching for the bandit. Ladd fed his cruel longing with Thorne's
poignant recollections, with the keen, clear, never-to-be-forgotten
shocks to Gale's eye and ear. Jim Lash, for one at least, never
tired of telling how he had seen and heard the tragedy, and every
time in the telling it gathered some more tragic and gruesome
detail. Jim believed in satiating the ranger. Then in the
twilight, when the campfire burned, Ladd would try to get the
Yaqui to tell his side of the story. But this the Indian would
never do. There was only the expression of his fathomless eyes
and the set passion of his massive face.

Those waiting days grew into weeks. Ladd gained very slowly.
Nevertheless, at last he could walk about, and soon he averred
that, strapped to a horse, he could last out the trip to Forlorn
River.

There was rejoicing in camp, and plans were eagerly suggested.
The Yaqui happened to be absent. When he returned the rangers
told him they were now ready to undertake the journey back across
lava and cactus.

Yaqui shook his head. They declared again their intention.

"No!" replied the Indian, and his deep, sonorous voice rolled
out upon the quiet of the arroyo. He spoke briefly then. They
had waited too long. The smaller waterholes back in the trail
were dry. The hot summer was upon them. There could be only
death waiting down in the burning valley. Here was water and
grass and wood and shade from the sun's rays, and sheep to be
killed on the peaks. The water would hold unless the season was
that dreaded ano seco of the Mexicans.

"Wait for rain," concluded Yaqui, and now as never before he
spoke as one with authority. "If no rain--" Silently he lifted
his hand.

XVI

Mountain Sheep

What Gale might have thought an appalling situation, if considered
from a safe and comfortable home away from the desert, became, now
that he was shut in by the red-ribbed lava walls and great dry
wastes, a matter calmly accepted as inevitable. So he imagined it
was accepted by the others. Not even Mercedes uttered a regret.
No word was spoken of home. If there was thought of loved one,
it was locked deep in their minds. In Mercedes there was no change
in womanly quality, perhaps because all she had to love was there
in the desert with her.

Gale had often pondered over this singular change in character.
He had trained himself, in order to fight a paralyzing something
in the desert's influence, to oppose with memory and thought an
insidious primitive retrogression to what was scarcely consciousness
at all, merely a savage's instinct of sight and sound. He felt the
need now of redoubled effort. For there was a sheer happiness in
drifting. Not only was it easy to forget, it was hard to remember.
His idea was that a man laboring under a great wrong, a great crime,
a great passion might find the lonely desert a fitting place for
either remembrance or oblivion, according to the nature of his soul.
But an ordinary, healthy, reasonably happy mortal who loved the open
with its blaze of sun and sweep of wind would have a task to keep
from going backward to the natural man as he was before civilization.

By tacit agreement Ladd again became the leader of the party.
Ladd was a man who would have taken all the responsibility
whether or not it was given him. In moments of hazard, of
uncertainty, Lash and Gale, even Belding, unconsciously looked to the
ranger. He had that kind of power.

The first thing Ladd asked was to have the store of food that
remained spread out upon a tarpaulin. Assuredly, it was a slender
enough supply. The ranger stood for long moments gazing down at
it. He was groping among past experiences, calling back from his
years of life on range and desert that which might be valuable for
the present issue. It was impossible to read the gravity of Ladd's
face, for he still looked like a dead man, but the slow shake of
his head told Gale much. There was a grain of hope, however, in
the significance with which he touched the bags of salt and said,
"Shore it was sense packin' all that salt!"

Then he turned to face his comrades.

"That's little grub for six starvin' people corralled in the desert.
But the grub end ain't worryin' me. Yaqui can get sheep up the
slopes. Water! That's the beginnin' and middle an' end of our
case."

"Laddy, I reckon the waterhole here never goes dry," replied Jim.

"Ask the Indian."

Upon being questioned, Yaqui repeated what he had said about the
dreaded ano seco of the Mexicans. In a dry year this waterhole
failed.

"Dick, take a rope an' see how much water's in the hole."

Gale could not find bottom with a thirty foot lasso. The water
was as cool, clear, sweet as if it had been kept in a shaded
iron receptable.

Ladd welcomed this information with surprise and gladness.

"Let's see. Last year was shore pretty dry. Mebbe this summer
won't be. Mebbe our wonderful good luck'll hld. Ask Yaqui if he
thinks it 'll rain."

Mercedes questioned the Indian.

"He says no man can tell surely. But he thinks the rain will
come," she replied.

"Shore it 'll rain, you can gamble on that now," continued Ladd.
"If there's only grass for the hosses! We can't get out of here
without hosses. Dick, take the Indian an' scout down the arroyo.
To-day I seen the hosses were gettin' fat. Gettin' fat in this
desert! But mebbe they've about grazed up all the grass. Go an'
see, Dick. An' may you come back with more good news!"

Gale, upon the few occasions when he had wandered down the arroyo,
had never gone far. The Yaqui said there was grass for the horses,
and until now no one had given the question more consideration.
Gale found that the arroyo widened as it opened. Near the head,
where it was narrow, the grass lined the course of the dry stream
bed. But farther down this stream bed spread out. There was every
indication that at flood seasons the water covered the floor of the
arroyo. The farther Gale went the thicker and larger grew the
gnarled mesquites and palo verdes, the more cactus and greasewood
there were, and other desert growths. Patches of gray grass grew
everywhere. Gale began to wonder where the horses were. Finally
the trees and brush thinned out, and a mile-wide gray plain
stretched down to reddish sand dunes. Over to one side were the
white horses, and even as Gale saw them both Blanco Diablo and
Sol lifted their heads and, with white manes tossing in the wind,
whistled clarion calls. Here was grass enough for many horses;
the arroyo was indeed an oasis.

Ladd and the others were awaiting Gale's report, and they received
it with calmness, yet with a joy no less evident because it was
restrained. Gale, in his keen observation at the moment, found
that he and his comrades turned with glad eyes to the woman of
the party.

"Senor Laddy, you think--you believe--we shall--" she faltered,
and her voice failed. It was the woman in her, weakening in the
light of real hope, of the happiness now possible beyond that
desert barrier.

"Mercedes, no white man can tell what'll come to pass out here,"
said Ladd, earnestly. "Shore I have hopes now I never dreamed of.
I was pretty near a dead man. The Indian saved me. Queer notions
have come into my head about Yaqui. I don't understand them. He
seems when you look at him only a squalid, sullen, vengeful savage.
But Lord! that's far from the truth. Mebbe Yaqui's different from
most Indians. He looks the same, though. Mebbe the trouble is we
white folks never knew the Indian. Anyway, Beldin' had it right.
Yaqui's our godsend. Now as to the future, I'd like to know mebbe
as well as you if we're ever to get home. Only bein' what I am,
I say, Quien sabe? But somethin' tells me Yaqui knows. Ask him,
Mercedes. Make him tell. We'll all be the better for knowin'.
We'd be stronger for havin' more'n our faith in him. He's silent
Indian, but make him tell."

Mercedes called to Yaqui. At her bidding there was always a suggestion
of hurry, which otherwise was never manifest in his actions. She
put a hand on his bared muscular arm and began to speak in Spanish.
Her voice was low, swift, full of deep emotion, sweet as the sound
of a bell. It thrilled Gale, though he understood scarcely a word
she said. He did not need translation to know that here spoke the
longing of a woman for life, love, home, the heritage of a woman's
heart.

Gale doubted his own divining impression. It was that the Yaqui
understood this woman's longing. In Gale's sight the Indian's
stoicism, his inscrutability, the lavalike hardness of his face,
although they did not change, seemed to give forth light, gentleness,
loyalty. For an instant Gale seemed to have a vision; but it did
not last, and he failed to hold some beautiful illusive thing.

"Si!" rolled out the Indian's reply, full of power and depth.

Mercedes drew a long breath, and her hand sought Thorne's.

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