filled the toil of climbing up the long gully with a peculiar interest. Fifty
years ago these hills must have looked much the same. Fifty years ago, the
prospect holes they passed occasionally may have been fresh-turned earth and
rocks. Men searching for rich silver and gold might have been seen plodding
along the hillsides; but the hills themselves could not have changed much. His
grandfather had looked upon all this, and had divided his thoughts, perhaps,
between the gold and his latest infatuation, the half-breed girl, Anita. And
suddenly Rawley put a vague speculation into words:
“Hey, Johnny! Here’s a good place to make a smoke, in the shade.” He waited
until the Indian had retraced the dozen steps between them. “Johnny, there was
a beautiful half-breed girl here, when Grandfather made his last trip up the
river. She was half Spanish. My grandfather mentioned her once or twice in his
diary. Do you remember her?”
“There were many beautiful girls in my tribe,” Johnny Buffalo retorted drily.
“What name did he call her?”
“Anita. It’s a pretty name, and it proves the Spanish, I should say.”
The old man stared at the opposite slope. His mouth grew thin-lipped and
stern.
“My uncle, the chief, was betrayed in his old age. His youngest squaw loved a
Spanish man with noble look. I have the tale from my older brothers, who told
me. The child she bore was the child of the Spanish gentleman. My uncle’s
youngest squaw--died.” Johnny Buffalo paused significantly. “The child was
given to my mother to keep. Her name was Anita. She was very beautiful. I
remember. Many visits Anita made with friends near this place. I think she is
the same. It was not good for my sergeant to look upon her with love. I have
heard my brothers whisper that Anita looked with soft eyes upon the white
soldiers.”
Rawley’s young sympathies suffered a definite revulsion. If his grandfather’s
_dulce corazon_ were a coquette, her fruitless waiting for his return was not
so beautifully tragic after all. There were other white soldiers stationed
along the river, Rawley remembered, with a curl of the lip. His romantic
imagination had not balked at the savage blood in her veins, since she was a
beauty of fifty years ago. But he was a sturdy-souled youth with very
old-fashioned notions concerning virtue. He finished his smoke and went on,
feeling cheated by the cold facts he had almost forced from Johnny Buffalo.
They reached the head of that gulch, climbed a steep, high ridge where they
must use hands as well as feet in the climbing, and dug heels into the earth
in a descent even steeper. Rawley told himself once that he would just as soon
start out to follow a crow through this country as to follow Johnny Buffalo.
One word had evidently been omitted from the Indian’s English education by
Grandfather King,--the word “detour.” Rawley thought of the straight-forward
march of locusts he had once read about and wondered if Johnny Buffalo had
taken lessons from them in his youth.
However, he consoled himself with the thought that a straight line to the
mountain would undoubtedly shorten the distance. If the Indian could climb
sneer walls of rock like a lizard, Rawley would attempt to follow. And they
would ultimately arrive at their destination, though the glimpse he had
obtained of the mountain from the ridge they had just crossed failed to
confirm Johnny Buffalo’s assertion that it was one day’s travel. They had been
walking three hours by Rawley’s watch, and the mountain looked even farther
away than from El Dorado. But Johnny Buffalo was so evidently enjoying every
minute of the hike through his native hills that Rawley could not bear to
spoil his pleasure by even hinting that he was blazing a mighty rough trail.
They were working up another tortuous ravine where not even Johnny Buffalo
could always keep a straight line by the sun. In places the walls overhung the
gulch in shelving, weather-worn cliffs of soft limestone. Bowlders washed down
from the heights made slow going, because they were half the time climbing
over or around some huge obstruction; and because of the rattlesnakes they
must look well where a hand or a foot was laid. Johnny Buffalo was still in
the lead; and Rawley, for all his youth and splendid stamina was not finding
the Indian too slow a pacemaker. Indeed, he was perfectly satisfied when the
dozen feet between them did not lengthen to fifteen or twenty.
The mounting sun made the heat in that gully a terrific thing to endure. But
the Indian did not lift the canteen to his mouth; nor did Rawley. Both had
learned the foolishness of drinking too freely at the beginning of a journey.
So, when Johnny Buffalo stopped suddenly in the act of passing around a
jutting ledge, Rawley halted in his tracks and waited to see what was the
reason.
The Indian glanced back at him and crooked a forefinger. Rawley set one foot
carefully between two rocks, planted the other as circumspectly, and so,
without a sound, stole up to Johnny Buffalo’s side. Johnny waited until their
shoulders touched then leaned forward and pointed.
Up on the ridge a couple of hundred yards before them, a man moved crouching
behind a bush, came into the open, bent lower and peered downward. His actions
were stealthy; his whole manner inexpressibly furtive. His back was toward
them, and the ridge itself hid the thing he was stalking.
“He’s after a deer, maybe. Or a mountain sheep,” Rawley whispered, when the
man laid a rifle across a rock and settled lower on his haunches.
“Still, it is well that we see what he sees,” Johnny Buffalo whispered back.
“We will stalk him as he stalks his kill.”
The Indian squirmed his shoulder out of the strap sling that held his rifle in
its case behind him. With seeming deliberation, yet with speed he uncased the
weapon, worked the lever gently to make sure the gun was chamber loaded, and
motioned Rawley to follow him.
In the hills the old man had somehow slipped into the leadership, and now
Rawley obeyed him without a word. They stole up the side of the gulch where
the man on the ridge could not discover them without turning completely
around; which would destroy his position beside the rock and risk the loss of
a shot at his game. He seemed wholly absorbed in watching something on the
farther side of the ridge, and it did not seem likely that he would hear them.
A little farther up, a ledge cutting across the head of the gulch hid him
completely from the two. An impulse seized Rawley to cross the gulch there and
to climb the ridge farther on, nearer the spot which the man had seemed to be
watching. He caught the attention of Johnny Buffalo, whispered to him his
desire, and received a nod of understanding and consent. Johnny would keep
straight on, and so come up behind the fellow.
Unaccountably, Rawley wanted to hurry. He wanted to see the man’s quarry
before a shot was fired. So, when a wrinkle in the ridge made easy climbing
and afforded concealment, he went up a tiny gully, digging in his toes and
trying to keep in the soft ground so that sliding rocks could not betray him.
Unexpectedly the deep wrinkle brought him up to a notch in the ridge, beyond
which another gully led steeply downward. Immediately beneath him a narrow
trail wound sinuously, climbing just beyond around the point of another hill.
He could not see the man up on the ridge, but he could not doubt that the
rifle was aimed at some point along this trail. He was standing on a rock,
reconnoitering and expecting every moment to hear a shot, when the
unmistakable sound of voices came up to him from somewhere below. He listened,
his glance going from the ridge to the bit of trail that showed farther away
on the point of the opposite hill. The thought flashed through his mind that
the man with the rifle could easily have seen persons coming around that
point; that he must be lying in wait. Whoever it was coming, they must pass
along the trail directly beneath the watcher on the ridge. It would be an easy
rifle shot; a matter of no more than a hundred yards downhill.
He stepped down off the rock and started running down the steep gully to the
trail. He was, he judged, fully a hundred yards up the trail from where the
man was watching above. He did not know who was coming; it did not matter. It
was an ambush, and he meant to spoil it. So he came hurtling down the steep
declivity, the lower third of which was steeper than he suspected. Had he made
an appointment with the travelers to meet them at that spot, he could not
possibly have kept it more punctually. For he slid down a ten-foot bank of
loose earth and arrived sitting upright in the trail immediately under the
nose of a bald-faced burro with a distended pack half covering it from sight.
There was no time for ceremony. Rawley flung up his arms and shooed the
astonished animal back against another burro, so precipitately that he crowded
it completely off the trail and down the steep bank. Rawley heard the sullen
thud of the landing as he scrambled to his knees, glancing apprehensively over
his shoulder as he did so. There had been no shot fired, but he could not be
certain that the small flurry in the trail had been unobserved.
“Get back, around the turn!” he commanded guardedly and drove before him the
two women who had been walking behind the burros.
The first, a fat old squaw with gray bangs hanging straight down to her
eyebrows, scuttled for cover, the lead burro crowding past her and neatly
overturning her in the trail. But a slim girl in khaki breeches and high-laced
boots stood her ground, eyeing him with a slight frown from under a light gray
Stetson hat.
“Get back, I say! A man on the ridge is watching this trail with a rifle
across a rock. It may be Queo--get back!” He did not stop with words. He took
the girl by the arm and bustled her forcibly around the sharp kink in the
trail that would, he hoped, effectually hide them from the ridge.
“Are you quite insane?” The girl twitched her arm out of his grasp. “Or is
this a joke you are perpetrating on the natives? I must say I fail to see the
humor of it.”
“Climb that gully to the top and sneak along the ridge a couple of hundred
yards, and you will see the point of the joke,” Rawley retorted with an access
of dignity, perhaps to cover the extreme informality of his arrival.
“And why should any one--even Queo--want to shoot us?” True to her sex, the
girl was refusing to abdicate her first position in the matter.
“How should I know? He may not be watching for you, particularly. From the
ridge he probably saw your pack train around the turn above here, and he may
have thought you were prospectors. I don’t know; I’m only guessing. What I do
know is what I saw: a man with a rifle laid across a rock, up there, watching
this trail. It may not be you he’s after; but I wouldn’t deliberately walk
into range just to find out.”
“What would you do, then? Stay here forever?”
“Until my partner and I eliminate the risk, you’d better stay here.” Rawley’s
tone was masterful. “I only came down to warn whoever was coming--walking into
an ambush.”
The girl eyed him speculatively, with an exasperating little smile. “It all
sounds very thrilling; very tenderfooty indeed. And in the meantime, there’s
poor old Deacon down there on his back in the ditch. Do you always--er--arrive
like that?”
Rawley turned his back on her indignantly and discovered the old squaw sitting
solidly where the lead burro had placed her. She was very fat, and she filled
that portion of the trail which she occupied. The red bandana was pushed back
on her head, and her gray curtain of bangs was parted rakishly on one side.
She was staring at Rawley fixedly, a look of terror in her eyes.
He went to her, meaning to help her up. Now that he recalled that first
panicky moment, he remembered that the burro had deposited her with some force
in her present position. She might be hurt.
But the old squaw put up her hands before her, palms out to ward him off. She
cried out, a shrill expostulation in her own tongue which caused the girl to
swing round quickly and hurry toward her.
“No, no! He isn’t a ghost! Whatever made you think of such a thing? He doesn’t
mean to harm you--no, he is _not_ a spirit. He merely fell down hill, and he
wants to help you up. Are you hurt--Grandmother?” Her clear, gray-brown eyes
went quickly, defiantly to Rawley’s face.
That young man could not repress a startled look, which traveled from the slim
girl, indubitably white, to the squaw whimpering in the trail. She must be
trying her own hand at a joke, he thought, just to break even with his fancied
presumption in halting their leisurely progress down the trail.
From up on the ridge a rifle cracked. The three turned heads toward the thin,
sinister report. They waited motionless for a moment. Then the girl spoke.
“That wasn’t fired in our direction,” she said, and immediately there came the
sound of another shot. “And that’s not the same gun,” she added. “That sounds
like an old-fashioned gun shooting black powder. Didn’t you hear the _pow-w_
of it?”
“That would be Johnny Buffalo--my Indian partner,” said Rawley. “You folks
stay here. I’m going back up there and see what’s doing.”
“Is that necessary?” The girl looked at him quickly. “I think you ought to
help turn Deacon right side up before you go.” She leaned sidewise and peered
down over the bank. “He’s in an awful mess. His pack is wedged between two
bowlders, and his legs are sticking straight up in the air.”
Rawley sent a hasty glance down the bank. “He’s all right--he’s flopping his
ears,” he observed reassuringly. “I’ll be back just as soon as I see how
Johnny Buffalo is making out. That fellow may have got him. You stay back here
out of sight. Promise me.” He looked at her earnestly, as if by the force of
his will he would compel obedience.
Her eyes evaded the meeting. “Pickles will have to be rounded up,” she said.
“He’s probably halfway to Nelson by this time. And there’s Grandmother to
think of.”
“Well, you think of those things until I get back,” he said, with a swift
smile. “I can’t leave my partner to shoot it out alone.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
NEVADA
He ran to the point of rocks, gathered himself together and cleared the trail
and the open space beyond in one leap. How he got up the steep bank he never
remembered afterward. He only knew that he heard the sharp crack of the first
rifle again as he was sprinting up the little gully that had concealed his
descent. He gained the top, stopped to get his bearings more accurately and
made his way toward the spot where he had seen the man with the rifle.
It occurred to him that he had best approach the spot from the shelter of the
ledge where he had separated from Johnny Buffalo. At that point he could pick
up the Indian’s tracks and follow them, so saving time in the long run.
Johnny Buffalo’s moccasins left little trace in the gravelly soil. But here
and there they left a mark, and Rawley got the direction and hurried on. Fifty
yards farther up the ridge he glimpsed something yellowish-brown against a
small juniper. A few feet farther, he saw that it was Johnny Buffalo, lying on
his face, one arm thrown outward with the hand still grasping the stock of his
rifle.
He snatched up the rifle, crouched beside the Indian and searched the
neighborhood with his eyes, trying to get a sight of the killer. In a moment
he spied him, away down the deep ravine up which he and Johnny Buffalo had
toiled not half an hour before. The man was running. Rawley raised the rifle
to his shoulder, took careful aim and fired, but he had small hope of hitting
his target at that distance.
At the sound of the shot so close above him, Johnny Buffalo stirred uneasily,
as if disturbed in his sleep. The man in the distance ducked out of sight
amongst the bowlders; and that was the last Rawley saw of him at that time.
“I must apologize for not taking you more seriously when you warned me,” said
the girl, just behind him. “Is this--?”
“My partner, Johnny Buffalo. He isn’t dead--he moved, just now--but I’m afraid
he’s badly hurt.” Rawley lifted anxious blue eyes to her face.
“We can carry him down to the trail. Then, if Deacon is all right when we get
him up, we can put your partner on him and pack him home. It’s only a mile or
so.”
“It might be better to take him to Nelson,” Rawley amended the suggestion. “I
could get a car there and take him on to Las Vegas, probably. Or some mine
will have a doctor.”
“It’s farther--and the heat, with the long ride, would probably finish him,”
the girl pointed out bluntly. “On the other hand, a mile on the burro will get
him home, where it’s cool and we can see how badly he’s hurt. And then, if he
needs hospital care, Uncle Peter can take him down to Needles in the launch,
this evening when it’s cool. I really don’t mean to be disagreeable and
argumentative, but it seems to me that will be much the more comfortable plan
for him. And I can’t help feeling responsible, in a way. I suppose he was
trying to protect us, when he was shot.”
Rawley looked up from an amateurish examination of the old man. The bullet
wound was in the shoulder, and he was hoping that it was high enough so that
the lung was not injured. His flask of brandy, placed at Johnny’s lips,
brought a gulp and a gasp. The black eyes opened, looked from Rawley to the
girl and closed again.
“There! I believe he’s going to be all right,” the girl declared
optimistically. “I’ll take his feet, and you carry his shoulders. When we get
him down to the trail, I’ll have Grandmother look after him until we get the
burros straightened out. Queo--or whoever it was--did you see him?”
Rawley waved a hand toward the rocky ravine. “You heard me shoot,” he reminded
her. “Missed him--with that heirloom Johnny carries. He was running like a
jackrabbit when I saw him last. Well, I think you’re right--but I hate to
trouble you folks. Though I’d trouble the president himself, for Johnny
Buffalo’s sake.”
“It’s a strange name,” she remarked irrelevantly, stooping and making ready to
lift his knees. “He must be a Northern Indian.”
“Born in this district,” Rawley told her. “Grandfather found him in the desert
when he was a kid. I suppose he gave him the name--regardless.”
Until they reached the trail there was no further talk, their breath being
needed for something more important. They laid the injured man down in the
shade of a greasewood, and the girl immediately left to bring the old squaw.
She was no sooner gone than Johnny Buffalo opened his eyes.
“It was Queo,” he said, huskily whispering. “I thought he was shooting at you.
I tried to kill him. But the damn gun is old--old. It struck me hard. I did
not shoot straight. I did not kill him. Queo looked, he saw me and he shot as
he ran away. The gun has killed many--but I am old--”
“You’re all right,” Rawley interrupted. “Quit blaming yourself. You saved two
women by shooting when you did. Queo was afraid to stay and shoot again when
he knew there was a gun at his back. He has gone down the ravine where we came
up.”
“Who was the white girl?” Even Johnny Buffalo betrayed a very masculine
interest, Rawley observed, grinning inwardly. But he only said:
“I don’t know. She was on the trail, with an old squaw and two burros. It was
they that Queo was laying for, evidently. Don’t try to talk any more, till I
get you where we can look after you properly. Where’s your pack? I didn’t see
it, up there.”
“It is hidden in the juniper. I did not want to fight with a load on my back.”
“All right. Don’t talk any more. We’ll fix you up, all fine as silk.”
The girl was returning, and after her waddled the squaw, reluctant, looking
ready to retreat at the first suspicious move. Rawley stood aside while the
girl gave her brief directions in Indian,--so that Johnny Buffalo could
understand, Rawley shrewdly suspected, and thanked her with his eyes. The
squaw sidled past Rawley and sat down on the bank, still staring at him
fixedly. His abrupt appearance and the consequent stampede of the burros had
evidently impressed her unfavorably. The look she bestowed upon Johnny Buffalo
was more casual. He was an Indian and therefore understandable, it seemed.
The narrow canyon lay sun-baked and peaceful to the hard blue of the sky. With
the lightness which came of removing the pack from his shoulders, Rawley
walked up the trail and around the turn to where the burro called Deacon still
lay patiently on his back in the narrow watercourse below the trail. He slid
down the bank and inspected the lashings of the pack.
“We use what is called the squaw hitch,” the girl informed him from the trail
just above his head. “If you cut that forward rope I think you can loosen the
whole thing. The knot is on top of the pack, and of course Deacon’s lying on
it.” A moment later she added, “I’ll go after Pickles, unless I can be of some
use to you.”
Privately, Rawley thought that she was useful as a relief to the eyes, if
nothing else. But he told her that he could get along all right, and let her
go. The girl piqued his interest; she was undoubtedly beautiful, with her
slim, erect figure, her clear, hazel eyes with straight eyebrows, heavy
lashes, and her lips that were firm for all their soft curves. But Johnny
Buffalo’s life might be hanging on Rawley’s haste. However beautiful, however
much she might attract his interest, no girl could tempt him from the chief
issue.
By the time she returned with Pickles, Rawley had retrieved Deacon and was
gone down the trail with him. She came up in time to help him lift Johnny
Buffalo on the burro and tie him there with the pack rope. She was efficient
as a man, and almost as strong, Rawley observed. And although she treated the
squaw with careful deference, she was plainly the head of their little
expedition,--and the shoulders and the brains.
Only once did the squaw speak on the way to the river. The girl was walking
alongside Deacon, steadying Johnny Buffalo on that side while Rawley held the
other. They were talking easily now, of impersonal things; and when, on a
short climb, the burro stepped sharply to one side and Johnny Buffalo lurched
toward the girl, Rawley slipped his arm farther behind the Indian. His fingers
clasped for an instant the girl’s hand. The squaw, walking heavily behind, saw
the brief contact.
“Nevada! You shall not be so bold,” she cried in Pahute. “Take away your hand
from the white man.”
The girl turned her head and answered sharply in the same tongue and
afterwards smiled across at Rawley, meeting his eyes with perfect frankness.
“Yes, my name is Nevada. I’ll save you the trouble of asking,” she said
calmly. “El Dorado Nevada Macalister, if you want it all at once. Luckily, no
one ever attempts to call me all of it. My parents were loyal, romantic, and
had an ear for euphony.”
“Were?” The small impertinence slipped out in spite of Rawley; but fortunately
she did not seem to mind.
“Yes. My father was caught in a cave-in in the Quartette Mine when I was a
baby. Mother died when I was six. I have a beautiful, impractical name--and
not much else--to remember them by. I’ve lived with Grandfather and
Grandmother; except, of course, what time I have been in school.” She gave him
another quick look behind Johnny Buffalo’s back. “And your autobiography?”
“Mine is more simple and not so interesting. Name, George Rawlins King. Place
of birth, a suburb of St. Louis. Occupation, mining engineer. Present
avocation, prospecting during my vacation. My idea of play, you see, is to get
out here in the heat and snakes and work at my trade--for myself.”
“And Johnny Buffalo?”
“Oh, he just came along. Hadn’t seen this country since he was a kid and
wanted to get back, I suppose, on his old stamping ground. He lived with
Grandfather. But Grandfather died a few weeks ago, and Johnny and I have sort
of thrown in together. Now, I suppose our prospecting trip is all off--for the
present, anyway.”
“This country has been gone over with a microscope, almost,” said Nevada. “I
suppose there is mineral in these hills yet, but it must be pretty well
hidden. The country used to swarm with prospectors, but they seem to have got
disgusted and quit. The war in Europe, of course, has created a market--” She
stopped and laughed with chagrin. “Of course a lady desert rat like me can
give a mining engineer valuable information concerning markets and economic
conditions in general!”
“I’m always glad to talk shop,” Rawley declared tactfully.
But Nevada fell silent and would not talk at all during the remainder of the
journey.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“HIM THAT IS--MINE ENEMY”