The Heritage of the Desert
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Zane Grey >> The Heritage of the Desert
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Mescal's love for the mustang shone in her eyes while she smoothed out
the crumpled mane, and petted the slender neck.
"Bolly, to think you'd do it!" And Bolly dropped her head as though
really ashamed.
When darkness fell they gathered on the rim to watch the signals. A fire
blazed out of the black void below, and as they waited it brightened and
flamed higher.
"Ugh!" said Piute, pointing across to the dark line of cliffs.
"Of course he'd see it first," laughed Naab. "Dave, have you caught it
yet? Jack, see if you can make out a fire over on Echo Cliffs."
"No, I don't see any light, except that white star. Have you seen it?"
"Long ago," replied Naab. "Here, sight along my finger, and narrow your
eyes down."
"I believe I see it--yes, I'm sure."
"Good. How about you, Mescal?"
"Yes," she replied.
Jack was amused, for Dave insisted that he had been next to the Indian,
and Billy claimed priority to all of them. To these men bred on the
desert keen sight was preeminently the chief of gifts.
"Jack, look sharp!" said August. "Peon is blanketing his fire. See the
flicker? One, two--one, two--one. Now for the answer."
Jack peered out into the shadowy space, star-studded above, ebony below.
Far across the depths shone a pinpoint of steady light. The Indian
grunted again, August vented his "ha!" and then Jack saw the light blink
like a star, go out for a second, and blink again.
"That's what I like to see," said August. "We're answered. Now all's
over but the work."
Work it certainly was, as Jack discovered next day. He helped the
brothers cut down cedars while August hauled them into line with his
roan. What with this labor and the necessary camp duties nearly a week
passed, and in the mean time Black Bolly recovered from her lameness.
Twice the workers saw Silvermane standing on open high ridges, restive
and suspicious, with his silver mane flying, and his head turned over his
shoulder, watching, always watching.
"It'd be worth something to find out how long that stallion could go
without water," commented Dave. "But we'll make his tongue hang out
to-morrow. It'd serve him right to break him with Black Bolly."
Daylight came warm and misty; veils unrolled from the desert; a purple
curtain lifted from the eastern crags; then the red sun burned.
Dave and Billy Naab mounted their mustangs, and each led another mount by
a halter.
"We'll go to the ridge, cut Silvermane out of his band and warm him up;
then we'll drive him down to this end."
Hare, in his eagerness, found the time very tedious while August delayed
about camp, punching new holes in his saddle-girth, shortening his
stirrups, and smoothing kinks out of his lasso. At last he saddled the
roan, and also Black Bolly. Mescal came out of her tent ready for the
chase; she wore a short skirt of buckskin, and leggings of the same
material. Her hair, braided, and fastened at the back, was bound by a
double band closely fitting her black head. Hare walked, leading two
mustangs by the halters, and Naab and Mescal rode, each of them followed
by two other spare mounts. August tied three mustangs at one point along
the level stretch, and three at another. Then he led Mescal and Jack to
the top of the stone wall above the corral, where they had good view of a
considerable part of the plateau.
The eastern rise of ground, a sage and juniper slope, was in plain sight.
Hare saw a white flash; then Silvermane broke out of the cedars into the
sage. One of the brothers raced him half the length of the slope, and
then the other coming out headed him off down toward the forest. Soon
the pounding of hoofs sounded through the trees nearer and nearer.
Silvermane came out straight ahead on the open level. He was running
easily.
"He hasn't opened up yet," said August.
Hare watched the stallion with sheer fascination; He ran seemingly
without effort. What a stride he had. how beautifully his silver mane
waved in the wind! He veered off to the left, out of sight in the brush,
while Dave and Billy galloped up to the spot where August had tied the
first three mustangs. Here they dismounted, changed saddles to fresh
horses, and were off again.
The chase now was close and all down-hill for the watchers. Silvermane
twinkled in and out among the cedars, and suddenly stopped short on the
rim. He wheeled and coursed away toward the crags, and vanished. But
soon he reappeared, for Billy had cut across and faced him about. Again
he struck the level stretch. Dave was there in front of him. He shot
away to the left, and flashed through the glades beyond. The brothers
saved their steeds, content to keep him cornered in that end of the
plateau. Then August spurred his roan into the scene of action.
Silvermane came out on the one piece of rising ground beyond the level,
and stood looking backward toward the brothers. When the great roan
crashed through the thickets into his sight he leaped as if he had been
stung, and plunged away.
The Naabs had hemmed him in a triangle, Dave and Billy at the broad end,
August at the apex, and now the real race began. August chased him up
and down, along the rim, across to the long line of cedars, always in the
end heading him for the open stretch. Down this he fled with flying
mane, only to be checked by the relentless brothers. To cover this broad
end of the open required riding the like of which Hare had never dreamed
of. The brothers, taking advantage of the brief periods when the
stallion was going toward August, changed their tired mustangs for fresh
ones.
"Ho! Mescal!" rolled out August's voice. That was the call for Mescal to
put Black Bolly after Silvermane. Her fleetness made the other mustangs
seem slow. All in a flash she was round the corral, with Silvermane
between her and the long fence of cedars. Uttering a piercing snort of
terror the gray stallion lunged out, for the first time panic-stricken,
and lengthened his stride in a wonderful way. He raced down the stretch
with his head over his shoulder watching the little black. Seeing her
gaining, he burst into desperate headlong flight. He saved nothing; he
had found his match; he won that first race down the level but it had
cost him his best. If he had been fresh he might have left Black Bolly
far behind, but now he could not elude her.
August Naab let him run this time, and Silvermane, keeping close to the
fence, passed the gate, ran down to the rim, and wheeled. The black
mustang was on him again, holding him in close to the fence, driving him
back down the stretch.
The brothers remorselessly turned him, and now Mescal, forcing the
running, caught him, lashed his haunches with her whip, and drove him
into the gate of the corral.
August and his two sons were close behind, and blocked the gate.
Silvermane's race was nearly run.
"Hold here, boys," said August. "I'll go in and drive him round and
round till he's done, then, when I yell, you stand aside and rope him as
he comes out."
Silvermane ran round the corral, tore at the steep scaly walls, fell back
and began his weary round again and yet again. Then as sense and courage
yielded gradually to unreasoning terror, he ran blindly; every time he
passed the guarded gateway his eyes were wilder, and his stride more
labored.
"Now!" yelled August Naab.
Mescal drew out of the opening, and Dave and Billy pulled away, one on
each side, their lassoes swinging loosely.
Silvermane sprang for the opening with something of his old speed. As he
went through, yellow loops flashed in the sun, circling, narrowing, and
he seemed to run straight into them. One loop whipped close round his
glossy neck; the other caught his head. Dave's mustang staggered under
the violent shock, went to his knees, struggled up and held firmly.
Bill's mount slid on his haunches and spilled his rider from the saddle.
Silvermane seemed to be climbing into the air. Then August Naab, darting
through the gate in a cloud of dust, shot his lasso, catching the right
foreleg. Silvermane landed hard, his hoofs striking fire from the
stones; and for an instant strained in convulsive struggle; then fell
heaving and groaning. In a twinkling Billy loosened his lasso over a
knot, making of it a halter, and tied the end to a cedar stump.
The Naabs stood back and gazed at their prize.
Silvermane was badly spent; he was wet with foam, but no fleck of blood
marred his mane; his superb coat showed scratches, but none cut into the
flesh. After a while he rose, panting heavily, and trembling in every
muscle. He was a beaten horse; the noble head was bowed; yet he showed
no viciousness, only the fear of a trapped animal. He eyed Black Bolly
and then the halter, as though he had divined the fatal connection
between them.
VIII
THE BREAKER OF WILD MUSTANGS
FOR a few days after the capture of Silvermane, a time full to the brim
of excitement for Hare, he had no word with Mescal, save for morning and
evening greetings. When he did come to seek her, with a purpose which
had grown more impelling since August Naab's arrival, he learned to his
bewilderment that she avoided him. She gave him no chance to speak with
her alone; her accustomed resting-place on the rim at sunset knew her no
more; early after supper she retired to her tent.
Hare nursed a grievance for forty-eight hours, and then, taking advantage
of Piute's absence on an errand down to the farm, and of the Naabs'
strenuous day with four vicious wild horses in the corral at one time, he
walked out to the pasture where Mescal shepherded the flock.
"Mescal, why are you avoiding me?" he asked. "What has happened?"
She looked tired and unhappy, and her gaze, instead of meeting his,
wandered to the crags.
"Nothing," she replied.
"But there must be something. You have given me no chance to talk to
you, and I wanted to know if you'd let me speak to Father Naab."
"To Father Naab? Why--what about?"
"About you, of course--and me--that I love you and want to marry you."
She turned white. "No--no!"
Hare paused blankly, not so much at her refusal as at the unmistakable
fear in her face.
"Why--not?" he asked presently, with an odd sense of trouble. There was
more here than Mescal's habitual shyness.
"Because he'll be terribly angry."
"Angry--I don't understand. Why angry?"
The girl did not answer, and looked so forlorn that Hare attempted to
take her in his arms. She resisted and broke from him.
"You must never--never do that again."
Hare drew back sharply.
"Why not? What's wrong? You must tell me, Mescal."
"I remembered." She hung her head.
"Remembered--what?"
"I am pledged to marry Father Naab's eldest son."
For a moment Hare did not understand. He stared at her unbelievingly.
"What did you say?" he asked, slowly.
Mescal repeated her words in a whisper.
"But--but Mescal--I love you. You let me kiss you," said Hare stupidly,
as if he did not grasp her meaning. "You let me kiss you," he repeated.
"Oh, Jack, I forgot," she wailed. "It was so new, so strange, to have
you up here. It was like a kind of dream. And after--after you kissed
me I--I found out--"
"What, Mescal?"
Her silence answered him.
"But, Mescal, if you really love me you can't marry any one else," said
Hare. It was the simple persistence of a simple swain.
"Oh, you don't know, you don't know. It's impossible!"
"Impossible!" Hare's anger flared up. "You let me believe I had won you.
What kind of a girl are you? You were not true. Your actions were
lies."
"Not lies," she faltered, and turned her face from him.
With no gentle hand he grasped her arm and forced her to look at him.
But the misery in her eyes overcame him, and he roughly threw his arms
around her and held her close.
"It can't be a lie. You do care for me--love me. Look at me." He drew
her head back from his breast. Her face was pale and drawn; her eyes
closed tight, with tears forcing a way out under the long lashes; her
lips were parted. He bowed to their sweet nearness; he kissed them again
and again, while the shade of the cedars seemed to whirl about him. "I
love you, Mescal. You are mine--I will have you--I will keep you--I will
not let him have you!"
She vibrated to that like a keen strung wire under a strong touch. All
in a flash the trembling, shame-stricken girl was transformed. She
leaned back in his arms, supple, pliant with quivering life, and for the
first time gave him wide-open level eyes, in which there were now no
tears, no shyness, no fear, but a dark smouldering fire.
"You do love me, Mescal?"
"I--I couldn't help it."
There was a pause, tense with feeling.
"Mescal, tell me--about your being pledged," he said, at last.
"I gave him my promise because there was nothing else to do. I was
pledged to--to him in the church at White Sage. It can't be changed.
I've got to marry--Father Naab's eldest son."
"Eldest son?" echoed Jack, suddenly mindful of the implication. "Why!
that's Snap Naab. Ah! I begin to see light. That--Mescal--"
"I hate him."
"You hate him and you're pledged to marry him! ... God! Mescal, I'd
utterly forgotten Snap Naab already has a wife."
"You've also forgotten that we're Mormons."
"Are you a Mormon?" he queried bluntly.
"I've been raised as one."
"That's not an answer. Are you one? Do you believe any man under God's
sky ought to have more than one wife at a time?"
"No. But I've been taught that it gave woman greater glory in heaven.
There have been men here before you, men who talked to me, and I doubted
before I ever saw you. And afterward--I knew."
"Would not Father Naab release you?"
"Release me? Why, he would have taken me as a wife for himself but for
Mother Mary. She hates me. So he pledged me to Snap."
"Does August Naab love you?"
"Love me? No. Not in the way you mean--perhaps as a daughter. But
Mormons teach duty to church first, and say such love comes--to the
wives--afterward. But it doesn't--not in the women I've seen. There's
Mother Ruth--her heart is broken. She loves me, and I can tell."
"When was this--this marriage to be?"
"I don't know. Father Naab promised me to his son when he came home from
the Navajo range. It would be soon if they found out that you and I--
Jack, Snap Naab would kill you!"
The sudden thought startled the girl. Her eyes betrayed her terror.
"I mightn't be so easy to kill," said Hare, darkly. The words came
unbidden, his first answer to the wild influences about him. "Mescal,
I'm sorry--maybe I've brought you unhappiness.
"No. No. To be with you has been like sitting there on the rim watching
the desert, the greatest happiness I have ever known. I used to love to
be with the children, but Mother Mary forbade. When I am down there,
which is seldom, I'm not allowed to play with the children any more.'
"What can I do?" asked Hare, passionately.
"Don't speak to Father Naab. Don't let him guess. Don't leave me here
alone," she answered low. It was not the Navajo speaking in her now.
Love had sounded depths hitherto unplumbed; a quick, soft impulsiveness
made the contrast sharp and vivid.
"How can I help but leave you if he wants me on the cattle ranges?"
"I don't know. You must think. He has been so pleased with what you've
done. He's had Mormons up here, and two men not of his Church, and they
did nothing. You've been ill, besides you're different. He will keep me
with the sheep as long as he can, for two reasons--because I drive them
best, he says, and because Snap Naab's wife must be persuaded to welcome
me in her home."
"I'll stay, if I have to get a relapse and go down on my back again,"
declared Jack. "I hate to deceive him, but Mescal, pledged or not--I
love you, and I won't give up hope."
Her hands flew to her face again and tried to hide the dark blush.
"Mescal, there's one question I wish you'd answer. Does August Naab
think he'll make a Mormon of me? Is that the secret of his wonderful
kindness?"
"Of course he believes he'll make a Mormon of you. That's his religion.
He's felt that way over all the strangers who ever came out here. But
he'd be the same to them without his hopes. I don't know the secret of
his kindness, but I think he loves everybody and everything. And Jack,
he's so good. I owe him all my life. He would not let the Navajos take
me; he raised me, kept me, taught me. I can't break my promise to him.
He's been a father to me, and I love him."
"I think I love him, too," replied Hare, simply.
With an effort he left her at last and mounted the grassy slope and
climbed high up among the tottering yellow crags; and there he battled
with himself. Whatever the charm of Mescal's surrender, and the
insistence of his love, stern hammer-strokes of fairness, duty, honor,
beat into his brain his debt to the man who had saved him. It was a
long-drawn-out battle not to be won merely by saying right was right. He
loved Mescal, she loved him; and something born in him with his new
health, with the breath of this sage and juniper forest, with the sight
of purple canyons and silent beckoning desert, made him fiercely tena-
cious of all that life had come to mean for him. He could not give her
up--and yet--
Twilight forced Hare from his lofty retreat, and he trod his way
campward, weary and jaded, but victorious over himself. He thought he
had renounced his hope of Mescal; he returned with a resolve to be true
to August, and to himself; bitterness he would not allow himself to feel.
And yet he feared the rising in him of a new spirit akin to that of the
desert itself, intractable and free.
"Well, Jack, we rode down the last of Silvermane's band," said August, at
supper. "The Navajos came up and helped us out. To-morrow you'll see
some fun, when we start to break Silvermane. As soon as that's done I'll
go, leaving the Indians to bring the horses down when they're broken."
"Are you going to leave Silvermane with me?" asked Jack.
"Surely. Why, in three days, if I don't lose my guess, he'll be like a
lamb. Those desert stallions can be made into the finest kind of
saddle-horses. I've seen one or two. I want you to stay up here with
the sheep. You're getting well, you'll soon be a strapping big fellow.
Then when we drive the sheep down in the fall you can begin life on the
cattle ranges, driving wild steers. There's where you'll grow lean and
hard, like an iron bar. You'll need that horse, too, my lad."
"Why--because he's fast?" queried Jack, quickly answering to the implied
suggestion.
August nodded gloomily. "I haven't the gift of revelation, but I've come
to believe Martin Cole. Holderness is building an outpost for his riders
close to Seeping Springs. He has no water. If he tries to pipe my
wafer--" The pause was not a threat; it implied the Mormon's doubt of
himself. "Then Dene is on the march this way. He's driven some of
Marshall's cattle from the range next to mine. Dene got away with about
a hundred head. The barefaced robber sold them in Lund to a buying
company from Salt Lake."
"Is he openly an outlaw, a rustler?" inquired Hare.
"Everybody knows it, and he's finding White Sage and vicinity warmer than
it was. Every time he comes in he and his band shoot up things pretty
lively. Now the Mormons are slow to wrath. But they are awakening. All
the way from Salt Lake to the border outlaws have come in. They'll never
get the power on this desert that they had in the places from which
they've been driven. Men of the Holderness type are more to be dreaded.
He's a rancher, greedy, unscrupulous, but hard to corner in dishonesty.
Dene is only a bad man, a gun-fighter. He and all his ilk will get run
out of Utah. Did you ever hear of Plummer, John Slade, Boone Helm, any
of those bad men?"
"No."
"Well, they were men to fear. Plummer was a sheriff in Idaho, a man high
in the estimation of his townspeople, but he was the leader of the most
desperate band of criminals ever known in the West; and he instigated the
murder of, or killed outright, more than one hundred men. Slade was a
bad man, fatal on the draw. Helm was a killing machine. These men all
tried Utah, and had to get out. So will Dene have to get out. But I'm
afraid there'll be warm times before that happens. When you get in the
thick of it you'll appreciate Silvermane."
"I surely will. But I can't see that wild stallion with a saddle and a
bridle, eating oats like any common horse, and being led to water."
"Well, he'll come to your whistle, presently, if I'm not greatly
mistaken. You must make him love you, Jack. It can be done with any
wild creature. Be gentle, but firm. Teach him to obey the slightest
touch of rein, to stand when you throw your bridle on the ground, to come
at your whistle. Always remember this. He's a desert-bred horse; he can
live on scant browse and little water. Never break him of those best
virtues in a horse. Never feed him grain if you can find a little patch
of browse; never give him a drink till he needs it. That's one-tenth as
often as a tame horse. Some day you'll be caught in the desert, and with
these qualities of endurance Silvermane will carry you out."
Silvermane snorted defiance from the cedar corral next morning when the
Naabs, and Indians, and Hare appeared. A half-naked sinewy Navajo with a
face as changeless as a bronze mask sat astride August's blindfolded
roan, Charger. He rode bareback except for a blanket strapped upon the
horse; he carried only a long, thick halter, with a loop and a knot.
When August opened the improvised gate, with its sharp bayonet-like
branches of cedar, the Indian rode into the corral. The watchers climbed
to the knoll. Silvermane snorted a blast of fear and anger. August's
huge roan showed uneasiness; he stamped, and shook his head, as if to rid
himself of the blinders.
Into the farthest corner of densely packed cedar boughs Silvermane
pressed himself and watched. The Indian rode around the corral, circling
closer and closer, yet appearing not to see the stallion. Many rounds he
made; closer he got, and always with the same steady gait. Silvermane
left his corner and tried another. The old unwearying round brought
Charger and the Navajo close by him. Silvermane pranced out of his
thicket of boughs; he whistled; he wheeled with his shiny hoofs lifting.
In an hour the Indian was edging the outer circle of the corral, with the
stallion pivoting in the centre, ears laid back, eyes shooting sparks,
fight in every line of him. And the circle narrowed inward.
Suddenly the Navajo sent the roan at Silvermane and threw his halter. It
spread out like a lasso, and the loop went over the head of the stallion,
slipped to the knot and held fast, while the rope tightened. Silvermane
leaped up, forehoofs pawing the air, and his long shrill cry was neither
whistle, snort, nor screech, but all combined. He came down, missing
Charger with his hoofs, sliding off his haunches. The Indian, his bronze
muscles rippling, close-hauled on the rope, making half hitches round his
bony wrist.
In a whirl of dust the roan drew closer to the gray, and Silvermane began
a mad race around the corral. The roan ran with him nose to nose. When
Silvermane saw he could not shake him, he opened his jaws, rolled back
his lip in an ugly snarl, his white teeth glistening, and tried to bite.
But the Indian's moccasined foot shot up under the stallion's ear and
pressed him back. Then the roan hugged Silvermane so close that half the
time the Navajo virtually rode two horses. But for the rigidity of his
arms, and the play and sudden tension of his leg-muscles, the Indian's
work would have appeared commonplace, so dexterous was he, so perfectly
at home in his dangerous seat. Suddenly he whooped and August Naab
hauled back the gate, and the two horses, neck and neck, thundered out
upon the level stretch.
"Good!" cried August. "Let him rip now, Navvy. All over but the work,
Jack. I feared Silvermane would spear himself on some of those dead
cedar spikes in the corral. He's safe now."
Jack watched the horses plunge at breakneck speed down the stretch,
circle at the forest edge, and come tearing back. Silvermane was pulling
the roan faster than he had ever gone in his life, but the dark Indian
kept his graceful seat. The speed slackened on the second turn, and de-
creased as, mile after mile, the imperturbable Indian held roan and gray
side to side and let them run.
The time passed, but Hare's interest in the breaking of the stallion
never flagged. He began to understand the Indian, and to feel what the
restraint and drag must be to the horse. Never for a moment could
Silvermane elude the huge roan, the tight halter, the relentless Navajo.
Gallop fell to trot, and trot to jog, and jog to walk; and hour by hour,
without whip or spur or word, the breaker of desert mustangs drove the
wild stallion. If there were cruelty it was in his implacable slow
patience, his farsighted purpose. Silvermane would have killed himself
in an hour; he would have cut himself to pieces in one headlong dash, but
that steel arm suffered him only to wear himself out. Late that
afternoon the Navajo led a dripping, drooping, foam-lashed stallion into
the corral, tied him with the halter, and left him.
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