Desert Gold

Z >> Zane Grey >> Desert Gold

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Cameron felt his heart bulge and contract in his breast; all his
body grew cold; and it took tremendous effort for him to make his
lips form words.

"Warren, I'm the man you're hunting. I'm Burton. I was Nell's
lover!"

The old man rose and towered over Cameron, and then plunged down
upon him, and clutched at his throat with terrible stifling hands.
The harsh contact, the pain awakened Cameron to his peril before
it was too late. Desperate fighting saved him from being hurled
to the ground and stamped and crushed. Warren seemed a maddened
giant. There was a reeling, swaying, wrestling struggle before
the elder man began to weaken. The Cameron, buffeted, bloody,
half-stunned, panted for speech.

"Warren--hold on! Give me--a minute. I married Nell. Didn't you
know that?...I saved the child!

Cameron felt the shock that vibrated through Warren. He repeated
the words again and again. As if compelled by some resistless
power, Warren released Cameron, and, staggering back, stood with uplifted,
shaking hands. In his face was a horrible darkness.

"Warren! Wait--listen!" panted Cameron. "I've got that marriage
certificate--I've had it by me all these years. I kept it--to
prove to myself I did right."

The old man uttered a broken cry.

Cameron stole off among the rocks. How long he absented himself
or what he did he had no idea. When he returned Warren was sitting
before the campfire, and once more he appeared composed. He spoke,
and his voice had a deeper note; but otherwise he seemed as usual.

They packed the burros and faced the north together.

Cameron experienced a singular exaltation. He had lightened his
comrade's burden. Wonderfully it came to him that he had also
lightened his own. From that hour it was not torment to think
of Nell. Walking with his comrade through the silent places, lying
beside him under the serene luminous light of the stars, Cameron
began to feel the haunting presence of invisible things that were
real to him--phantoms whispering peace. In the moan of the cool
wind, in the silken seep of sifting sand, in the distant rumble
of a slipping ledge, in the faint rush of a shooting star he
heard these phantoms of peace coming with whispers of the long
pain of men at the last made endurable. Even in the white noonday,
under the burning sun, these phantoms came to be real to him.
In the dead silence of the midnight hours he heard them breathing
nearer on the desert wind--nature's voices of motherhood, whispers
of God, peace in the solitude.

Chapter IV

There came a morning when the sun shone angry and red through a
dull, smoky haze.

"We're in for sandstorms," said Cameron.

They had scarcely covered a mile when a desert-wide, moaning, yellow
wall of flying sand swooped down upon them. Seeking shelter in
the lee of a rock, they waited, hoping the storm was only a squall,
such as frequently whipped across the open places. The moan
increased to a roar, and the dull red slowly dimmed, to disappear
in the yellow pall, and the air grew thick and dark. Warren slipped
the packs from the burros. Cameron feared the sandstorms had
arrived some weeks ahead of their usual season.

The men covered their heads and patiently waited. The long hours
dragged, and the storm increased in fury. Cameron and Warren wet
scarfs with water from their canteens, and bound them round their
faces, and then covered their heads. The steady, hollow bellow of
flying sand went on. It flew so thickly that enough sifted down
under the shelving rock to weight the blankets and almost bury
the men. They were frequently compelled to shake off the sand
to keep from being borne to the ground. And it was necessary
to keep digging out the packs. The floor of their shelter gradually
rose higher and higher. they tried to eat, and seemed to be grinding
only sand between their teeth. They lost the count of time. They
dared not sleep, for that would have meant being buried alive.
The could only crouch close to the leaning rock, shake off the sand,
blindly dig out their packs, and every moment gasp and cough and
choke to fight suffocation.

The storm finally blew itself out. It let the prospectors heavy
and stupid for want of sleep. Their burros had wandered away, or
had been buried in the sand. Far as eye could reach the desert
had marvelously changed; it was now a rippling sea of sand dunes.
Away to the north rose the peak that was their only guiding mark.
They headed toward it, carrying a shovel and part of their packs.

At noon the peak vanished in the shimmering glare of the desert.
The prospectors pushed on, guided by the sun. In every wash
they tried for water. With the forked peach branch in his
hands Warren always succeeded in locating water. They dug,
but it lay too deep. At length, spent and sore, they fell and
slept through that night and part of the next day. Then they
succeeded in getting water, and quenched their thirst, and filled
the canteens, and cooked a meal.

The burning day found them in an interminably wide plain, where
there was no shelter from the fierce sun. The men were exceedingly
careful with their water, though there was absolute necessity of
drinking a little every hour. Late in the afternoon they came
to a canyon that they believed was the lower end of the one in
which they had last found water. For hours they traveled toward
its head, and, long after night had set, found what they sought.
Yielding to exhaustion, they slept, and next day were loath to
leave the waterhole. Cool night spurred them on with canteens
full and renewed strength.

Morning told Cameron that they had turned back miles into the
desert, and it was desert new to him. The red sun, the increasing
heat, and especially the variety and large size of the cactus plants
warned Cameron that he had descended to a lower level. Mountain
peaks loomed on all sides, some hear, others distant; and one, a
blue spur, splitting the glaring sky far to the north, Cameron
thought he recognized as a landmark. The ascent toward it was
heartbreaking, not in steepness, but in its league-and league-long
monotonous rise. Cameron knew there was only one hope--to make
the water hold out and never stop to rest. Warren began to weaken.
Often he had to halt. The burning white day passed, and likewise
the night, with its white stars shining so pitilessly cold and bright.

Cameron measured the water in his canteen by its weight. Evaporation
by heat consumed as much as he drank. During one of the rests, when
he had wetted his parched mouth and throat, he found opportunity to pour
a little water from his canteen into Warren's.

At first Cameron had curbed his restless activity to accommodate
the pace of his elder comrade. but now he felt that he was losing
something of his instinctive and passionate zeal to get out of
the desert. The thought of water came to occupy his mind. He
began to imagine that his last little store of water did not
appreciably diminish. He knew he was not quite right in his mind
regarding water; nevertheless, he felt this to be more of fact
than fancy, and he began to ponder.

When next they rested he pretended to be in a kind of stupor; but
he covertly watched Warren. The man appeared far gone, yet he had
cunning. He cautiously took up Cameron's canteen and poured water
into it from his own.

This troubled Cameron. The old irritation at not being able to
thwart Warren returned to him. Cameron reflected, and concluded
that he had been unwise not to expect this very thing. Then, as
his comrade dropped into weary rest, he lifted both canteens. If
there were any water in Warren's, it was only very little. Both
men had been enduring the terrible desert thirst, concealing it,
each giving his water to the other, and the sacrifice had been useless.

Instead of ministering to the parched throats of one or both, the
water had evaporated. When Cameron made sure of this, he took one
more drink, the last, and poured the little water left into Warren's
canteen. He threw his own away.

Soon afterward Warren discovered the loss.

"Where's your canteen?" he asked.

"The heat was getting my water, so I drank what was left."

"My son!" said Warren.

The day opened for them in a red and green hell of rock and cactus.
Like a flame the sun scorched and peeled their faces. Warren went
blind from the glare, and Cameron had to lead him. At last Warren
plunged down, exhausted, in the shade of a ledge.

Cameron rested and waited, hopeless, with hot, weary eyes gazing
down from the height where he sat. the ledge was the top step
of a ragged gigantic stairway. Below stretched a sad, austere,
and lonely valley. A dim, wide streak, lighter than the bordering
gray, wound down the valley floor. Once a river had flowed there,
leaving only a forlorn trace down the winding floor of this forlorn valley.

Movement on the part of Warren attracted Cameron's attention.
Evidently the old prospector had recovered his sight and some of
his strength. for he had arisen, and now began to walk along the
arroyo bed with his forked peach branch held before him. He had
clung to the precious bit of wood. Cameron considered the prospect
for water hopeless, because he saw that the arroyo had once been
a canyon, and had been filled with sands by desert winds. Warren,
however, stopped in a deep pit, and, cutting his canteen in half,
began to use one side of it as a scoop. He scooped out a wide
hollow, so wide that Cameron was certain he had gone crazy. Cameron
gently urged him to stop, and then forcibly tried to make him.
But these efforts were futile. Warren worked with slow, ceaseless,
methodical movement. He toiled for what seemed hours. Cameron,
seeing the darkening, dampening sand, realized a wonderful possibility
of water, and he plunged into the pit with the other half of the
canteen. Then both men toiled, round and round the wide hole,
down deeper and deeper. The sand grew moist, then wet. At the
bottom of the deep pit the sand coarsened, gave place to gravel.
Finally water welled in, a stronger volume than Cameron ever
remembered finding on the desert. It would soon fill the hole and
run over. He marveled at the circumstance. The time was near
the end of the dry season. Perhaps an underground stream
flowed from the range behind down to the valley floor, and at
this point came near to the surface. Cameron had heard of such
desert miracles.

The finding of water revived Cameron's flagging hopes. But they
were short-lived. Warren had spend himself utterly.

"I'm done. Don't linger," he whispered. "My son, go--go!"

Then he fell. Cameron dragged him out of the sand pit to a
sheltered place under the ledge. While sitting beside the failing
man Cameron discovered painted images on the wall. Often in the
desert he had found these evidences of a prehistoric people. Then,
from long habit, he picked up a piece of rock and examined it.
Its weight made him closely scrutinize it. The color was a
peculiar black. He scraped through the black rust to find a
piece of gold. Around him lay scattered heaps of black pebbles
and bits of black, weathered rock and pieces of broken ledge, and
they showed gold.

"Warren! Look! See it! Feel it! Gold!"

But Warren had never cared, and now he was too blind to see.

"Go--go!" he whispered.

Cameron gazed down the gray reaches of the forlorn valley, and
something within him that was neither intelligence nor emotion--something
inscrutably strange--impelled him to promise.

The Cameron built up stone monuments to mark his gold strike. That
done, he tarried beside the unconscious Warren. Moments passed--grew
into hours. Cameron still had strength left to make an effort to
get out of the desert. But that same inscrutable something which
had ordered his strange involuntary promise to Warren held him
beside his fallen comrade. He watched the white sun turn to gold,
and then to red and sink behind mountains in the west. Twilight
stole into the arroyo. It lingered, slowly turning to gloom.
The vault of blue black lightened to the blinking of stars.
Then fell the serene, silent, luminous desert night.

Cameron kept his vigil. As the long hours wore on he felt creep
over him the comforting sense that he need not forever fight sleep.
A wan glow flared behind the dark, uneven horizon, and a melancholy
misshapen moon rose to make the white night one of shadows. Absolute
silence claimed the desert. It was mute. Then that inscrutable
something breathed to him, telling him when he was along. He need
not have looked at the dark, still face beside him.

Another face haunted Cameron's--a woman's face. It was there in
the white moonlit shadows; it drifted in the darkness beyond; it
softened, changed to that of a young girl, sweet, with the same
dark, haunting eyes of her mother. Cameron prayed to that nameless
thing within him, the spirit of something deep and mystical as
life. He prayed to that nameless thing outside, of which the rocks
and the sand, the spiked cactus and the ragged lava, the endless
waste, with its vast star-fired mantle, were but atoms. He prayed
for mercy to a woman--for happiness to her child. Both mother and
daughter were close to him then. Time and distance were annihilated.
He had faith--he saw into the future. The fateful threads of the
past, so inextricably woven with his error, wound out their tragic
length here in this forlorn desert.

CAMERON then took a little tin box from his pocket, and, opening
it, removed a folded certificate. He had kept a pen, and now he
wrote something upon the paper, and in lieu of ink he wrote with
blood. The moon afforded him enough light to see; and, having
replaced the paper, he laid the little box upon a shelf of rock.
It would remain there unaffected by dust, moisture, heat, time.
How long had those painted images been there clear and sharp on
the dry stone walls? There were no trails in that desert, and
always there were incalculable changes. Cameron saw this mutable
mood of nature--the sands would fly and seep and carve and bury;
the floods would dig and cut; the ledges would weather in the heat and rain;
the avalanches would slide; the cactus seeds would roll in the wind to
catch in a niche and split the soil with thirsty roots. Years
would pass. Cameron seemed to see them, too; and likewise destiny
leading a child down into this forlorn waste, where she would find
love and fortune, and the grave of her father.

Cameron covered the dark, still face of his comrade from the light
of the waning moon.

That action was the severing of his hold on realities. They fell
away from him in final separation. Vaguely, dreamily he seemed to
behold his soul. Night merged into gray day; and night came again,
weird and dark. Then up out of the vast void of the desert, from
the silence and illimitableness, trooped his phantoms of peace.
Majestically they formed around him, marshalling and mustering in
ceremonious state, and moved to lay upon him their passionless serenity.

Chapter I

Old Friends

Richard Gale reflected that his sojourn in the West had been
what his disgusted father had predicted--idling here and there,
with no objective point or purpose.

It was reflection such as this, only more serious and perhaps
somewhat desperate, that had brought Gale down to the border.
For some time the newspapers had been printing news of Mexican
revolution, guerrilla warfare, United States cavalry patrolling
the international line, American cowboys fighting with the rebels,
and wild stories of bold raiders and bandits. But as opportunity,
and adventure, too, had apparently given him a wide berth in
Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, he had struck southwest for the Arizona
border, where he hoped to see some stirring life. He did not
care very much what happened. Months of futile wandering in the
hope of finding a place where he fitted had inclined Richard to
his father's opinion.

It was after dark one evening in early October when Richard arrived
in Casita. He was surprised to find that it was evidently a town
of importance. There was a jostling, jabbering, sombreroed crowd
of Mexicans around the railroad station. He felt as if he were
in a foreign country. After a while he saw several men of his
nationality, one of whom he engaged to carry his luggage to a
hotel. They walked up a wide, well-lighted street lined with
buildings in which were bright windows. Of the many people
encountered by Gale most were Mexicans. His guide explained that
the smaller half of Casita lay in Arizona, the other half in Mexico,
and of several thousand inhabitants the majority belonged on the
southern side of the street, which was the boundary line. He also
said that rebels had entered the town that day, causing a good
deal of excitement.

Gale was almost at the end of his financial resources, which fact
occasioned him to turn away from a pretentious hotel and to ask
his guide for a cheaper lodging-house. When this was found, a
sight of the loungers in the office, and also a desire for comfort,
persuaded Gale to change his traveling-clothes for rough outing
garb and boots.

"Well, I'm almost broke," he soliloquized, thoughtfully. "The
governor said I wouldn't make any money. He's right--so far.
And he said I'd be coming home beaten. There he's wrong. I've
got a hunch that something 'll happen to me in this Greaser town."

He went out into a wide, whitewashed, high-ceiled corridor, and
from that into an immense room which, but for pool tables, bar,
benches, would have been like a courtyard. The floor was
cobblestoned, the walls were of adobe, and the large windows
opened like doors. A blue cloud of smoke filled the place. Gale
heard the click of pool balls and the clink of glasses along the
crowded bar. Bare-legged, sandal-footed Mexicans in white rubbed
shoulders with Mexicans mantled in black and red. There were
others in tight-fitting blue uniforms with gold fringe or tassels
at the shoulders. These men wore belts with heavy, bone-handled
guns, and evidently were the rurales, or native policemen. There
were black-bearded, coarse-visaged Americans, some gambling round
the little tables, others drinking. The pool tables were the center
of a noisy crowd of younger men, several of whom were unsteady on
their feet. There were khaki-clad cavalrymen strutting in and out.

At one end of the room, somewhat apart from the general meelee,
was a group of six men round a little table, four of whom were
seated, the other two standing. These last two drew a second
glance from Gale. The sharp-featured, bronzed faces and piercing
eyes, the tall, slender, loosely jointed bodies, the quiet, easy,
reckless air that seemed to be a part of the men--these things
would plainly have stamped them as cowboys without the buckled
sombreros, the colored scarfs, the high-topped, high-heeled boots
with great silver-roweled spurs. Gale did not fail to note, also,
that these cowboys wore guns, and this fact was rather a shock to
his idea of the modern West. It caused him to give some credence
to the rumors of fighting along the border, and he felt a thrill.

He satisfied his hunger in a restaurant adjoining, and as he
stepped back into the saloon a man wearing a military cape jostled
him. Apologies from both were instant. Gale was moving on when
the other stopped short as if startled, and, leaning forward,
exclaimed:

"Dick Gale?"

"You've got me," replied Gale, in surprise. "But I don't know you."

He could not see the stranger's face, because it was wholly shaded
by a wide-brimmed hat pulled well down.

"By Jove! It's Dick! If this isn't great! Don't you know me?"

"I've heard your voice somewhere," replied Gale. "Maybe I'll
recognize you if you come out from under that bonnet."

For answer the man, suddenly manifesting thought of himself,
hurriedly drew Gale into the restaurant, where he thrust back his
hat to disclose a handsome, sunburned face.

"George @Thorne! So help me--"

"'S-s-ssh. You needn't yell," interrupted the other, as he met
Gale's outstretched hand. There was a close, hard, straining grip.
"I must not be recognized here.

There are reasons. I'll explain in a minute. Say, but it's fine
to see you! Five years, Dick, five years since I saw you run down
University Field and spread-eagle the whole Wisconsin football team."

"Don't recollect that," replied Dick, laughing. "George, I'll bet
you I'm gladder to see you than you are to see me. It seems to
long. You went into the army, didn't you?"

"I did. I'm here now with the Ninth Cavalry. But--never mind me.
What're you doing way down here? Say, I just noticed your togs.
Dick, you can't be going in for mining or ranching, not in this
God-forsaken desert?"

"On the square, George, I don't know any more why I'm here than--than
you know."

"Well, that beats me!" ejaculated Thorne, sitting back in his chair,
amaze and concern in his expression. "What the devil's wrong?
Your old man's got too much money for you ever to be up against it.
Dick, you couldn't have gone to the bad?"

A tide of emotion surged over Gale. How good it was to meet a
friend--some one to whom to talk! He had never appreciated his
loneliness until that moment.

"George, how I ever drifted down here I don't know. I didn't
exactly quarrel with the governor. But--damn it, Dad hurt
me--shamed me, and I dug out for the West. It was this way.
After leaving college I tried to please him by tackling one thing
after another that he set me to do. On the square, I had no head
for business. I made a mess of everything. The governor got sore.
He kept ramming the harpoon into me till I just couldn't stand it.
What little ability I possessed deserted me when I got my back up,
and there you are. Dad and I had a rather uncomfortable half hour.
When I quit--when I told him straight out that I was going West to
fare for myself, why, it wouldn't have been so tough if he hadn't
laughed at me. He called me a rich man's son--an idle, easy-going
spineless swell. He said I didn't even have character enough to be out
and out bad. He said I didn't have sense enough to marry one of the nice
girls in my sister's crowd. He said I couldn't get back home unless I
sent to him for money. He said he didn't believe I could fight--could
really make a fight for anything under the sun. Oh--he--he shot
it into me, all right."

Dick dropped his head upon his hands, somewhat ashamed of the
smarting dimness in his eyes. He had not meant to say so much.
Yet what a relief to let out that long-congested burden!

"Fight!" cried Thorne, hotly. "What's ailing him? Didn't they
call you Biff Gale in college? Dick, you were one of the best
men Stagg ever developed. I heard him say so--that you were the
fastest, one-hundred-and-seventy-five-pound man he'd ever trained,
the hardest to stop."

"The governor didn't count football," said Dick. "He didn't mean
that kind of fight. When I left home I don't think I had an idea
what was wrong with me. But, George, I think I know now. I was
a rich man's son--spoiled, dependent, absolutely ignorant of the
value of money. I haven't yet discovered any earning capacity in
me. I seem to be unable to do anything with my hands. That's the
trouble. But I'm at the end of my tether now. And I'm going to
punch cattle or be a miner, or do some real stunt--like joining
the rebels."

"Aha! I thought you'd spring that last one on me," declared Thorne,
wagging his head. "Well, you just forget it. Say, old boy, there's
something doing in Mexico. The United States in general doesn't
realize it. But across that line there are crazy revolutionists,
ill-paid soldiers, guerrilla leaders, raiders, robbers, outlaws,
bandits galore, starving peons by the thousand, girls and women
in terror. Mexico is like some of her volcanoes--ready to erupt
fire and hell! Don't make the awful mistake of joining rebel
forces. Americans are hated by Mexicans of the lower class--
the fighting class, both rebel and federal. Half the time
these crazy Greasers are on one side, then on the other.
If you didn't starve or get shot in ambush, or die of thirst,
some Greaser would knife you in the back for you belt buckle
or boots. There are a good many Americans with the rebels
eastward toward Agua, Prieta and Juarez. Orozco is operating in
Chihuahua, and I guess he has some idea of warfare. But this Sonora,
a mountainous desert, the home of the slave and the Yaqui. There's
unorganized revolt everywhere. The American miners and ranchers,
those who could get away, have fled across into the States, leaving
property. Those who couldn't or wouldn't come must fight for their
lives, are fighting now."

"That's bad," said Gale. "It's news to me. Why doesn't the government
take action, do something?"

"Afraid of international complications. Don't want to offend the
Maderists, or be criticized by jealous foreign nations. It's a
delicate situation, Dick. The Washington officials know the gravity
of it, you can bet. But the United States in general is in the dark,
and the army--well, you ought to hear the inside talk back at San
Antonio. We're patrolling the boundary line. We're making a grand
bluff. I could tell you of a dozen instances where cavalry should
have pursued raiders on the other side of the line. But we won't
do it. The officers are a grouchy lot these days. You see, of
course, what significance would attach to United States cavalry
going into Mexican territory. There would simply be hell. My
own colonel is the sorest man on the job. We're all sore. It's
like sitting on a powder magazine. We can't keep the rebels and
raiders from crossing the line. Yet we don't fight. My commission
expires soon. I'll be discharged in three months. You can bet
I'm glad for more reasons than I've mentioned."

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