Desert Gold

Z >> Zane Grey >> Desert Gold

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24

The sun had hidden behind clouds all the latter part of that day,
an unusual occurrence for that region even in winter. And now,
as the light waned suddenly, telling of the hidden sunset, a cold
dry, penetrating wind sprang up and blew in Gale's face. Not at
first, but by imperceptible degrees it chilled him. He untied his
coat from the back of the saddle and put it on. A few cold drops
of rain touched his cheek.

He halted upon the edge of a low escarpment. Below him the
narrowing valley showed bare, black ribs of rock, long, winding
gray lines leading down to a central floor where mesquite and
cactus dotted the barren landscape. Moving objects, diminutive
in size, gray and white in color, arrested Gale's roving sight.
They bobbed away for a while, then stopped. They were antelope,
and they had seen his horse. When he rode on they started once
more, keeping to the lowest level. These wary animals were often
desert watchdogs for the ranger, they would betray the proximity
of horse or man. With them trotting forward, he made better time
for some miles across the valley. When he lost them, caution once
more slowed his advance.

The valley sloped up and narrowed, to head into an arroyo where
grass began to show gray between the clumps of mesquite. Shadows
formed ahead in the hollows, along the walls of the arroyo, under
the trees, and they seemed to creep, to rise, to float into a veil
cast by the background of bold mountains, at last to claim the
skyline. Night was not close at hand, but it was there in the east,
lifting upward, drooping downward, encroaching upon the west.

Gale dismounted to lead his horse, to go forward more slowly. He
had ridden sixty miles since morning, and he was tired, and a not
entirely healed wound in his hip made one leg drag a little. A
mile up the arroyo, near its head, lay the Papago Well. The need
of water for his horse entailed a risk that otherwise he could
have avoided. The well was on Mexican soil. Gale distinguished
a faint light flickering through the thin, sharp foliage. Campers
were at the well, and, whoever they were, no doubt they had
prevented Ladd from meeting Gale. Ladd had gone back to the
next waterhole, or maybe he was hiding in an arroyo to the eastward,
awaiting developments.

Gale turned his horse, not without urge of iron arm and persuasive
speech, for the desert steed scented water, and plodded back to the
edge of the arroyo, where in a secluded circle of mesquite he halted.
The horse snorted his relief at the removal of the heavy, burdened
saddle and accoutrements, and sagging, bent his knees, lowered himself
with slow heave, and plunged down to roll in the sand. Gale poured the
contents of his larger canteen into his hat and held it to the horse's nose.

"Drink, Sol," he said.

It was but a drop for a thirsty horse. However, Blanco Sol rubbed
a west muzzle against Gale's hand in appreciation. Gale loved the
horse, and was loved in return. They had saved each other's lives,
and had spent long days and nights of desert solitude together.
Sol had known other masters, though none so kind as this new one;
but it was certain that Gale had never before known a horse.

The spot of secluded ground was covered with bunches of galleta
grass upon which Sol began to graze. Gale made a long halter of
his lariat to keep the horse from wandering in search of water.
Next Gale kicked off the cumbersome chapparejos, with their flapping,
tripping folds of leather over his feet, and drawing a long rifle
from its leather sheath, he slipped away into the shadows.

The coyotes were howling, not here and there, but in concerted
volume at the head of the arroyo. To Dick this was no more reassuring
than had been the flickering light of the campfire. The wild desert
dogs, with their characteristic insolent curiosity, were baying men
round a campfire. Gale proceeded slowly, halting every few steps,
careful not to brush against the stiff greasewood. In the soft
sand his steps made no sound. The twinkling light vanished
occasionally, like a Jack-o'lantern, and when it did show it seemed
still a long way off. Gale was not seeking trouble or inviting
danger. Water was the thing that drove him. He must see who
these campers were, and then decide how to give Blanco Sol a drink.

A rabbit rustled out of brush at Gale's feet and thumped
away over the sand. The wind pattered among dry, broken stalks
of dead ocatilla. Every little sound brought Gale to a listening
pause. The gloom was thickening fast into darkness. It would be
a night without starlight. He moved forward up the pale, zigzag
aisles between the mesquite. He lost the light for a while, but the
coyotes' chorus told him he was approaching the campfire. Presently
the light danced through the black branches, and soon grew into
a flame. Stooping low, with bushy mesquites between him and the
fire, Gale advanced. The coyotes were in full cry. Gale heard
the tramping, stamping thumps of many hoofs. The sound worried
him. Foot by foot he advanced, and finally began to crawl. The
wind favored his position, so that neither coyotes nor horses could
scent him. The nearer he approached the head of the arroyo, where
the well was located, the thicker grew the desert vegetation. At
length a dead palo verde, with huge black clumps of its parasite
mistletoe thick in the branches, marked a distance from the well
that Gale considered close enough. Noiselessly he crawled here and
there until he secured a favorable position, and then rose to peep
from behind his covert.

He saw a bright fire, not a cooking-fire, for that would have been
low and red, but a crackling blaze of mesquite. Three men were
in sight, all close to the burning sticks. They were Mexicans
and of the coarse type of raiders, rebels, bandits that Gale
expected to see. One stood up, his back to the fire; another sat
with shoulders enveloped in a blanket, and the third lounged in
the sand, his feet almost in the blaze. They had cast off belts
and weapons. A glint of steel caught Gale's eye. Three short,
shiny carbines leaned against a rock. A little to the left, within
the circle of light, stood a square house made of adobe bricks.
Several untrimmed poles upheld a roof of brush, which was partly
fallen in. This house was a Papago Indian habitation, and a month
before had been occupied by a family that had been murdered or
driven off by a roving band of outlaws. A rude corral showed
dimly in the edge of firelight, and from a black mass within came
the snort and stamp and whinney of horses.

Gale took in the scene in one quick glance, then sank down at the
foot of the mesquite. He had naturally expected to see more men.

but the situation was by no means new. This was one, or part of
one, of the raider bands harrying the border. They were stealing
horses, or driving a herd already stolen. These bands were more
numerous than the waterholes of northern Sonora; they never camped
long at one place; like Arabs, they roamed over the desert all the
way from Nogales to Casita. If Gale had gone peaceably up to this
campfire there were a hundred chances that the raiders would kill
and rob him to one chance that they might not. If they recognized
him as a ranger comrade of Ladd and Lash, if they got a glimpse
of Blanco Sol, then Gale would have no chance.

These Mexicans had evidently been at the well some time. Their
horses being in the corral meant that grazing had been done by
day. Gale revolved questions in mind. Had this trio of outlaws
run across Ladd? It was not likely, for in that event they might
not have been so comfortable and care-free in camp. Were they
waiting for more members of their gang? That was very probable.
With Gale, however, the most important consideration was how
to get his horse to water. Sol must have a drink if it cost a fight.
There was stern reason for Gale to hurry eastward along the trail.
He thought it best to go back to where he had left his horse and
not make any decisive move until daylight.

With the same noiseless care he had exercised in the advance, Gale
retreated until it was safe for him to rise and walk on down the
arroyo. He found Blanco Sol contentedly grazing. A heavy dew
was falling, and, as the grass was abundant, the horse did not
show the usual restlessness and distress after a dry and exhausting day.
Gale carried his saddle blankets and bags into the lee of a little
greasewood-covered mound, from around which the wind had
cut the soil, and here, in a wash, he risked building a small fire.
By this time the wind was piercingly cold. Gale's hands were numb
and he moved them to and fro in the little blaze. Then he made
coffee in a cup cooked some slices of bacon on the end of a stick,
and took a couple of hard biscuits from a saddlebag. Of these
his meal consisted. After that he removed the halter from Blanco
Sol, intending to leave him free to graze for a while.

Then Gale returned to his little fire, replenished it with short
sticks of dead greasewood and mesquite, and, wrapping his
blanket round his shoulders he sat down to warm himself and to
wait till it was time to bring in the horse and tie him up.

The fire was inadequate and Gale was cold and wet with dew.
Hunger and thirst were with him. His bones ached, and there was
a dull, deep-seated pain throbbing in his unhealed wound. For days
unshaven, his beard seemed like a million pricking needles in his
blistered skin. He was so tired that once having settled himself,
he did not move hand or foot. The night was dark, dismal, cloudy,
windy, growing colder. A moan of wind in the mesquite was
occasionally pierced by the high-keyed yelp of a coyote. There
were lulls in which the silence seemed to be a thing of stifling.
encroaching substance--a thing that enveloped, buried the desert.

Judged by the great average of ideals and conventional standards
of life, Dick Gale was a starved, lonely, suffering, miserable
wretch. But in his case the judgment would have hit only externals,
would have missed the vital inner truth. For Gale was happy with
a kind of strange, wild glory in the privations, the pains, the perils,
and the silence and solitude to be endured on this desert land.
In the past he had not been of any use to himself or others;
and he had never know what it meant to be hungry, cold, tired,
lonely. He had never worked for anything. The needs of the day
had been provided, and to-morrow and the future looked the same.
Danger, peril, toil--these had been words read in books and papers.

In the present he used his hands, his senses, and his wits. He
had a duty to a man who relied on his services. He was a comrade,
a friend, a valuable ally to riding, fighting rangers. He had spend
endless days, weeks that seemed years, alone with a horse, trailing
over, climbing over, hunting over a desert that was harsh and hostile
by nature, and perilous by the invasion of savage men. That horse
had become human to Gale. And with him Gale had learned to know
the simple needs of existence. Like dead scales the superficialities,
the falsities, the habits that had once meant all of life dropped
off, useless things in this stern waste of rock and sand.

Gale's happiness, as far as it concerned the toil and strife, was
perhaps a grim and stoical one. But love abided with him, and it
had engendered and fostered other undeveloped traits--romance
and a feeling for beauty, and a keen observation of nature. He
felt pain, but he was never miserable. He felt the solitude, but
he was never lonely.

As he rode across the desert, even though keen eyes searched for
the moving black dots, the rising puffs of white dust that were
warnings, he saw Nell's face in every cloud. The clean-cut mesas
took on the shape of her straight profile, with its strong chin and
lips, its fine nose and forehead. There was always a glint of gold
or touch of red or graceful line or gleam of blue to remind him of
her. Then at night her face shone warm and glowing, flushing and
paling, in the campfire.

To-night, as usual, with a keen ear to the wind, Gale listened as
one on guard; yet he watched the changing phantom of a sweet face in
the embers, and as he watched he thought. The desert developed and
multiplied thought. A thousand sweet faces glowed in the pink and white
ashes of his campfire, the faces of other sweethearts or wives that had
gleamed for other men. Gale was happy in his thought of Nell,
for Nell, for something, when he was alone this way in the
wilderness, told him she was near him, she thought of him, she
loved him. But there were many men alone on that vast
southwestern plateau, and when they saw dream faces, surely for
some it was a fleeting flash, a gleam soon gone, like the hope
and the name and the happiness that had been and was now no
more. Often Gale thought of those hundreds of desert travelers,
prospectors, wanderers who had ventured down the Camino del
Diablo, never to be heard of again. Belding had told him of that
most terrible of all desert trails--a trail of shifting sands. Lash
had traversed it, and brought back stories of buried waterholes,
of bones bleaching white in the sun, of gold mines as lost as were
the prospectors who had sought them, of the merciless Yaqui and
his hatred for the Mexican. Gale thought of this trail and the men
who had camped along it. For many there had been one night, one
campfire that had been the last. This idea seemed to creep in
out of the darkness, the loneliness, the silence, and to find a
place in Gale's mind, so that it had strange fascination for him.
He knew now as he had never dreamed before how men drifted into
the desert, leaving behind graves, wrecked homes, ruined lives,
lost wives and sweethearts. And for every wanderer every campfire
had a phantom face. Gale measured the agony of these men at their
last campfire by the joy and promise he traced in the ruddy heart
of his own.

By and by Gale remembered what he was waiting for; and, getting
up, he took the halter and went out to find Blanco Sol. It was
pitch-dark now, and Gale could not see a rod ahead. He felt his
way, and presently as he rounded a mesquite he saw Sol's white
shape outlined against the blackness. The horse jumped and wheeled,
ready to run. It was doubtful if any one unknown to Sol could ever
have caught him. Gale's low call reassured him, and he went on
grazing. Gale haltered him in the likeliest patch of grass and
returned to his camp. There he lifted his saddle into a protected
spot under a low wall of the mound, and, laying one blanket on
the sand, he covered himself with the other and stretched himself
for the night.

Here he was out of reach of the wind; but he heard its melancholy
moan in the mesquite. There was no other sound. The coyotes
had ceased their hungry cries. Gale dropped to sleep, and slept
soundly during the first half of the night; and after that he seemed
always to be partially awake, aware of increasing cold and damp.
The dark mantle turned gray, and then daylight came quickly. The
morning was clear and nipping cold. He threw off the wet blanket
and got up cramped and half frozen. A little brisk action was all
that was necessary to warm his blood and loosen his muscles, and
then he was fresh, tingling, eager. The sun rose in a golden blaze,
and the descending valley took on wondrous changing hues. Then
he fetched up Blanco Sol, saddled him, and tied him to the thickest
clump of mesquite.

"Sol, we'll have a drink pretty soon," he said, patting the splendid
neck.

Gale meant it. He would not eat till he had watered his horse.
Sol had gone nearly forty-eight hours without a sufficient drink,
and that was long enough, even for a desert-bred beast. No three
raiders could keep Gale away from that well. Taking his rifle in
hand, he faced up the arroyo. Rabbits were frisking in the short
willows, and some were so tame he could have kicked them. Gale
walked swiftly for a goodly part of the distance, and then, when he
saw blue smoke curling up above the trees, he proceeded slowly,
with alert eye and ear. From the lay of the land and position of
trees seen by daylight, he found an easier and safer course that
the one he had taken in the dark. And by careful work he was enabled
to get closer to the well, and somewhat above it.

The Mexicans were leisurely cooking their morning meal. They
had two fires, one for warmth, the other to cook over. Gale had
an idea these raiders were familiar to him. It seemed all these
border hawks resembled one another--being mostly small of build,
wiry, angular, swarthy-faced, and black-haired, and they wore
the oddly styled Mexican clothes and sombreros. A slow wrath
stirred in Gale as he watched the trio. They showed not the
slightest indication of breaking camp. One fellow, evidently the
leader, packed a gun at his hip, the only weapon in sight. Gale
noted this with speculative eyes. The raiders had slept inside
the little adobe house, and had not yet brought out the carbines.
Next Gale swept his gaze to the corral, in which he saw more than
a dozen horses, some of them fine animals. They were stamping
and whistling, fighting one another, and pawing the dirt. This
was entirely natural behavior for desert horses penned in when they
wanted to get at water and grass.

But suddenly one of the blacks, a big, shaggy fellow, shot up his
ears and pointed his nose over the top of the fence. He whistled.
Other horses looked in the same direction, and their ears went up,
and they, too, whistled. Gale knew that other horses or men, very
likely both, were approaching. But the Mexicans did not hear the
alarm, or show any interest if they did. These mescal-drinking
raiders were not scouts. It was notorious how easily they could
be surprised or ambushed. Mostly they were ignorant, thick-skulled
peons. They were wonderful horsemen, and could go long without
food or water; but they had not other accomplishments or attributes
calculated to help them in desert warfare. They had poor sight,
poor hearing, poor judgment, and when excited they resembled
crazed ants running wild.

Gale saw two Indians on burros come riding up the other side
of the knoll upon which the adobe house stood; and apparently
they were not aware of the presence of the Mexicans,
for they came on up the path. One Indian was a Papago. The other,
striking in appearance for other reasons than that he seemed to be
about to fall from the burro, Gale took to be a Yaqui. These
travelers had absolutely nothing for an outfit except a blanket
and a half-empty bag. They came over the knoll and down the path
toward the well, turned a corner of the house, and completely
surprised the raiders.

Gale heard a short, shrill cry, strangely high and wild, and this
came from one of the Indians. It was answered by hoarse shouts.
Then the leader of the trio, the Mexican who packed a gun, pulled
it and fired point-blank. He missed once--and again. At the third
shot the Papago shrieked and tumbled off his burro to fall in a
heap. The other Indian swayed, as if the taking away of the
support lent by his comrade had brought collapse, and with the
fourth shot he, too, slipped to the ground.

The reports had frightened the horses in the corral; and the vicious
black, crowding the rickety bars, broke them down. He came plunging
out. Two of the Mexicans ran for him, catching him by nose and
mane, and the third ran to block the gateway.

Then, with a splendid vaulting mount, the Mexican with the gun
leaped to the back of the horse. He yelled and waved his gun, and
urged the black forward. The manner of all three was savagely
jocose. They were having sport. The two on the ground began to
dance and jabber. The mounted leader shot again, and then stuck
like a leech upon the bare back of the rearing black. It was a vain
show of horsemanship. Then this Mexican, by some strange grip,
brought the horse down, plunging almost upon the body of the
Indian that had fallen last.

Gale stood aghast with his rifle clutched tight. He could not
divine the intention of the raider, but suspected something brutal.
The horse answered to that cruel, guiding hand, yet he swerved and bucked.
He reared aloft, pawing the air, wildly snorting, then he plunged down upon
the prostrate Indian. Even in the act the intelligent animal tried to
keep from striking the body with his hoofs. But that was not possible.
A yell, hideous in its passion, signaled this feat of horsemanship.

The Mexican made no move to trample the body of the Papago.
He turned the black to ride again over the other Indian. That
brought into Gale's mind what he had heard of a Mexican's hate
for a Yaqui. It recalled the barbarism of these savage peons,
and the war of extermination being waged upon the Yaquis.

Suddenly Gale was horrified to see the Yaqui writhe and raise a
feeble hand. The action brought renewed and more savage cries
from the Mexicans. The horse snorted in terror.

Gale could bear no more. He took a quick shot at the rider. He
missed the moving figure, but hit the horse. There was a bound,
a horrid scream, a mighty plunge, then the horse went down, giving
the Mexican a stunning fall. Both beast and man lay still.

Gale rushed from his cover to intercept the other raiders before
they could reach the house and their weapons. One fellow yelled
and ran wildly in the opposite direction; the other stood stricken
in his tracks. Gale ran in close and picked up the gun that had
dropped from the raider leader's hand. This fellow had begun to
stir, to come out of his stunned condition. Then the frightened
horses burst the corral bars, and in a thundering, dust-mantled
stream fled up the arroyo.

The fallen raider sat up, mumbling to his saints in one breath,
cursing in his next. The other Mexican kept his stand, intimidated
by the threatening rifle.

"Go, Greasers! Run!" yelled Gale. Then he yelled it in Spanish.
At the point of his rifle he drove the two raiders out of the camp.
His next move was to run into the house and fetch out the carbines.
With a heavy stone he dismantled each weapon. That done, he set out
on a run for his horse. He took the shortest cut down the arroyo,
with no concern as to whether or not he would encounter the raiders.
Probably such a meeting would be all the worse for them, and they
knew it. Blanco Sol heard him coming and whistled a welcome, and
when Gale ran up the horse was snorting war. Mounting, Gale rode
rapidly back to the scene of the action, and his first thought, when
he arrived at the well, was to give Sol a drink and to fill his canteens.

Then Gale led his horse up out of the waterhole, and decided
before remounting to have a look at the Indians. The Papago had
been shot through the heart, but the Yaqui was still alive.
Moreover, he was conscious and staring up at Gale with great,
strange, somber eyes, black as volcanic slag.

"Gringo good--no kill," he said, in husky whisper.

His speech was not affirmative so much as questioning.

"Yaqui, you're done for," said Gale, and his words were positive.
He was simply speaking aloud his mind.

"Yaqui--no hurt--much," replied the Indian, and then he spoke a
strange word--repeated it again and again.

An instinct of Gale's, or perhaps some suggestion in the husky,
thick whisper or dark face, told Gale to reach for his canteen.
He lifted the Indian and gave him a drink, and if ever in all his
life he saw gratitude in human eyes he saw it then. Then he
examined the injured Yaqui, not forgetting for an instant to send
wary, fugitive glances on all sides. Gale was not surprised. The
Indian had three wounds--a bullet hole in his shoulder, a crushed
arm, and a badly lacerated leg. What had been the matter with
him before being set upon by the raider Gale could not be certain.

The ranger thought rapidly. This Yaqui would live unless left there
to die or be murdered by the Mexicans when they found courage to
sneak back to the well. It never occurred to Gale to abandon the
poor fellow. That was where his old training, the higher order of
human feeling, made impossible the following of any elemental instinct
of self-preservation. All the same, Gale knew he multiplied his
perils a hundredfold by burdening himself with a crippled Indian.
Swiftly he set to work, and with rifle ever under his hand, and
shifting glance spared from his task, he bound up the Yaqui's
wounds. At the same time he kept keen watch.

The Indians' burros and the horses of the raiders were all out
of sight. Time was too valuable for Gale to use any in what might
be a vain search. Therefore, he lifted the Yaqui upon Sol's broad
shoulders and climbed into the saddle. At a word Sol dropped
his head and started eastward up the trail, walking swiftly,
without resentment for his double burden.

Far ahead, between two huge mesas where the trail mounted over
a pass, a long line of dust clouds marked the position of the horses
that had escaped from the corral. Those that had been stolen would
travel straight and true for home, and perhaps would lead the others
with them. The raiders were left on the desert without guns or
mounts.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24