TOUCH AND GO
The John DeWitt who helped break camp after finding Rhoda's scarf was a
different man from the half-crazed person of the three days previous.
He had begun to hope. Somehow that white scarf with Rhoda's perfume
clinging to it was a living thing to him, a living, pulsing promise
that Rhoda was helping him to find her. Now, while Jack and Billy were
feverishly eager, he was cool and clear-headed, leaving the leadership
to Billy still, yet doing more than his share of the work in preparing
for the hard night ahead of them. The horses were well watered, their
own canteens were filled and saturated and food so prepared that it
could be eaten from the saddle.
"For," said Porter, "when we do hit the little girl's trail, starvation
or thirst or high hell ain't goin' to stop us!"
It was mid-afternoon when they started down the mountainside. There
was no trail and going was painful but the men moved with the care of
desperation. Once in the cañon they moved slowly along the wall and
some two miles from where the scarf had been found, they discovered a
fault where climbing was possible. It was nearing sundown when they
reached a wide ledge where the way was easy. Porter led the way back
over this to the spot below which fluttered a white paper to mark the
place where the scarf had been found. The ledge deepened here to make
room for a tiny, bubbling spring. Giant boulders were scattered across
the rocky floor.
The three men dismounted. The ledge gave no trace of human occupancy
and yet Porter and Jack nodded at each other.
"Here was his camp, all right. Water, and no one could come within a
mile of him without his being seen."
"He's still covering his traces carefully," said Jack.
"Not so very," answered Porter. "He's banking a whole lot on our
stupidity, but Miss Tuttle beat him to it with her scarf."
The three men treated the ledge to a microscopic examination but they
found no trace of previous occupation until Billy knelt and put his
nose against a black outcropping of stone in the wall. Then he gave a
satisfied grunt.
"Come here, Jack, and take a sniff."
Jack knelt obediently and cried excitedly:
"It smells of smoke, by Jove! Don't it, John, old scout!"
"They knew smoke wouldn't show against a black outcrop, but they didn't
bank on my nose!" said Billy complacently. "Come ahead, boys."
A short distance from the spring they found a trail which led back up
the mountain, and as dusk came on they followed its dizzy turns until
darkness forced them to halt and wait until the moon rose. By its
light they moved up into a piñon forest.
"Let's wait here until daylight," suggested Jack. "It's a good place
for a camp."
"No, it's too near the ledge," objected Billy. "Of course we are
working on faith mostly. I'm no Sherlock Holmes. We'll keep to the
backbone of this range for a while. It's the wildest spot in New
Mexico. Kut-le will avoid the railroad over by the next range."
So Billy led his little band steadfastly southward. At dawn they met a
Mexican shepherd herding his sheep in a grassy cañon. Jack Newman
called to him eagerly and the Mexican as eagerly answered. A visitor
was worth a month's pay to the lonely fellow. The red of dawn was
painting the fleecy backs of his charges as the tired Americans rode
into his little camp.
"Seen anything of an Injun running away with a white girl?" asked Billy
without preliminaries.
The Mexican's jaw dropped.
"_Sacra Maria_!" he gasped. "Not I! Who is she?"
"Listen!" broke in Jack. "You be on the watch. An educated Indian has
stolen a young lady who was visiting my wife. I own the Newman ranch.
That Indian Cartwell it was, three days ago."
John DeWitt interrupted.
"If you can catch that Indian, if you can give us a clue to him, you
needn't herd sheep any more. Lord, man, speak up! Don't stand there
like a chump!"
"But, señors!" stammered the poor fellow to whom this sudden torrent of
conversation was as overwhelming as a cloudburst. "But I have not
seen--"
Billy Porter spoke again.
"Hold up, boys! We are scaring the poor devil to death. Friend
pastor," he said, "we'll have breakfast here with you, if you don't
object, and tell you our troubles."
The shepherd glowed with hospitality.
"Yonder is good water and I have tortillas and frijoles."
Unshaven and dirty, gaunt from lack of sleep, the three men dismounted
wearily and gladly turned their coffee and bacon over to the herder to
whom the mere odor of either was worth any amount of service. As they
ate, Jack and Billy quizzed the Mexican as to the topography of the
surrounding country. The little herder was a canny chap.
"He will not try to cover his trail carefully now," he said, swallowing
huge slabs of bacon. "He has a good start. You will have to fool him.
He sleeps by day and travels by night, you will see. You are working
too hard and your horses will be dead. You should have slept last
night. Now you will lose today because you must rest your horses."
Porter looked at his two companions. Jack was doing fairly well, but
the calm that DeWitt had found with Rhoda's scarf had deserted him. He
was eating scarcely anything and stared impatiently at the fire,
waiting for the start.
"I'm a blamed double-action jackass, with a peanut for a mind!"
exclaimed Porter. "Taking on myself to lead this hunt when I don't
_sabe_ frijoles! We take a sleep now."
DeWitt jumped to his feet, expostulating, but Jack and Billy laid a
hand on either of his shoulders and forced him to lie down on his
blanket. There nature claimed her own and in a short time the poor
fellow was in the slumber of exhaustion.
"Poor old chap!" said Jack as he spread his own blanket. "I can't help
thinking all the time 'What if it were Katherine!' Dear old Rhoda!
Why, Billy, we used to play together as kids! She's slapped my face,
many a time!"
"Probably you deserved it!" answered Billy in an uncertain voice. "By
the limping piper! I'm glad I ain't her financier. I'm most crazy, as
it is!"
The sheep herder woke the sleepers at noon. After a bath at the
spring, and dinner, the trio felt as if reborn. They left the herder
with minute directions as to what he was to do in case he heard of
Rhoda. Then they rode out of the cañon into the burning desert.
And now for several days they lost all clues. They beat up and down
the ranges like tired hunting-dogs, all their efforts fruitless.
Little by little, panic and excitement left them. Even DeWitt realized
that the hunt was to be a long and serious one as Porter told of the
fearful chases the Apaches had led the whites, time and again. He
began to realize that to keep alive in the terrible region through
which the hunt was set he must help the others to conserve their own
and his energies. To this end they ate and slept as regularly as they
could.
Occasionally they met other parties of searchers, but this was only
when they beat to the eastward toward the ranch, for most of the
searchers were now convinced that Kut-le had made toward Mexico and
they were patrolling the border. But Billy insisted that Kut-le was
making for some eerie that he knew and would ensconce himself there for
months, if need be, till the search was given up. Then and then only
would he make for Mexico. And John DeWitt and Jack had come to agree
with Billy.
"He'll keep her up in some haunt of his," said Jack, again and again,
"until he's worn her into consenting to marry him. And before that
happens, if I know old Rhoda, we'll find them."
"He's mine when we do find him, remember that," John DeWitt always said
through his teeth at this point in the discussion.
It was on the twelfth day of the hunt that the sheep-herder found them.
They were cinching up the packs after the noon rest when he rode up on
a burro. He was dust-coated and both he and the burro were panting.
"I've seen her! I've seen the señorita!" he shouted as he clambered
stiffly from the burro.
The three Americans stood rigid.
"Where? How? When?" came from three heat-cracked mouths.
The Mexican started to answer, but his throat was raw with alkali dust
and his voice was scarcely audible. DeWitt impatiently thrust a
canteen into the little fellow's hands.
"Hurry, for heaven's sake!" he urged.
The Mexican took a deep draught.
"The night after you left I moved up into the peaks, intending to cross
the range to lower pastures next day. A big storm came up and I made
camp. Then an Indian in a blanket rode up to me and asked me if I was
alone. I _sabed_ him at once. 'But yes, señor,'" I answered, "'except
for the sheep!'"
"But Miss Tuttle! The señorita!" shouted DeWitt.
The Mexican glanced at the tired blue eyes, the strained face,
pityingly.
"She was well," he answered. "Be patient, señor. Then there rode up
another Indian, two squaws and what looked to be a young boy. The
Indian lifted the boy from the saddle so tenderly, señors. And it was
your señorita! She did not look strong, yet I think the Indian is
taking good care of her. They sat by the fire till the storm was over.
The señorita ignored Kut-le as if he had been a dog."
Porter clinched his teeth at this, while Jack murmured with a gleam of
savage satisfaction in his eyes, "Old Rhoda!" But DeWitt only gnawed
his lip, with his blue eyes on the Mexican.
"The Indian said I was to say nothing, but the señorita made him let me
tell about you after I said I had seen you. She--she cried with
happiness. They rode away in a little while but I followed as long as
I dared to leave my sheep. They were going north. I think they were
in the railroad range the night you were with me, then doubled back. I
left my sheep the next day with the salt-boy who came up. I tramped
twenty miles to the rancho and got a burro and left word about the
señorita. Then I started on your trail. Everyone I met I told. I
thought that my news was not worth much except that the señor there
would be glad to know that the Indian is tender to his señorita."
DeWitt turned to Porter and Newman.
"Friends, perhaps she is being taken care of!" he said. "Perhaps that
devil is trying to keep her health, at least. God! If nothing worse
has befallen her!"
He stopped and drew his wrist across his forehead. Something like
tears shone in Jack's eyes, and Porter coughed. John turned to the
Mexican and grasped the little fellow's hand.
"My boy," he said, "you'll never regret this day's work. If you have a
señorita you know what you have done for me!"
The Mexican looked up into DeWitt's face seriously.
"I have one. She has a dimple in her chin."
John turned abruptly and stood staring into the desert while tears
seared his eyes. Billy hastily unpacked and gave Carlos and his burro
the best that the outfit afforded.
"Can the salt-boy stay on with the sheep while you come with us?" asked
John DeWitt. "I'll pay your boss for the whole flock if anything goes
wrong." He wanted the keen wit of the herder on the hunt.
The Mexican nodded eagerly.
"I'll stay!"
Shortly the four were riding northward across the desert. They were in
fairly good shape for a hard tide. Two days before, they had stopped
at Squaw Spring ranch and re-outfitted. With proper care of the horses
they were good for three weeks away from supplies. And for two weeks
now they scoured the desert, meeting scarcely a human, finding none of
the traces that Rhoda was so painfully dropping along her course. The
hugeness, the cruelty of the region drove the hopelessness of their
mission more and more deeply into DeWitt's brain. It seemed impossible
except by the merest chance to find trace of another human in a waste
so vast. It seemed to him that it was not skill but the gambler's
instinct for luck that guided Carlos and Billy.
They rode through open desert country one afternoon, the only mountains
discernible being a far purple haze along the horizon. For hours the
little cavalcade had moved without speech. Then to the north, Porter
discerned a dot moving toward them. Gradually under their eager eyes
the dot grew into a man who staggered as he walked. When he observed
the horsemen coming toward him he sat down and waited.
"Jim Provenso! By the limping Piper!" cried Billy. "Thought you was
in Silver City."
Jim was beyond useless speech. He caught the canteen which Jack swung
to him and drank deeply. Then he said hoarsely:
"I almost got away with the Tuttle girl last week!"
Every man left his saddle as if at a word of command. Jim took another
drink.
"If I catch that Injun alone I'll cut his throat!"
"Was Miss Tuttle bad off?" gasped Porter.
"She? Naw; she looked fine. He sassed me, though, as I won't take it
from any man!"
"Tell us what happened, for heaven's sake," cried DeWitt, eying
Provenso disgustedly.
Jim told his story in detail.
"That Injun Alkus," he ended, "he tied a rag over my eyes, tied my
hands up and, say, he lost me for fair! He took all day to it. At
night he tied me up to a tree and I stood there all night before I got
my hands loose. I was sure lost, now, I can tell you! I struck a
cowman up on the range the next night. He give me some grub and a
canteen and I made out pretty good till yesterday, working south all
the time. Then I got crazy with thirst and threw my canteen away.
Found a spring last night again, but I'm about all in."
"How did Miss Tuttle seem?" asked John with curious quietness. It
seemed to him the strangest thing of all that first the Mexican, then
this coarse, tramp-like fellow, should have talked to Rhoda while he
could only wander wildly through the Hades of the desert without a
trace of her camp to solace him.
"Say, she was looking good! She thanked me and told me to tell you all
to hurry."
They gave to Provenso a burro whose pack was nearly empty, what food
and water they could spare, and he left them. They started on
dejectedly. Provenso had told them where Kut-le had camped ten days
before.
They could only find that spot and attempt to pick up the trail from
there.
"Just the same," said Billy, "it's just as well he didn't get away with
Miss Rhoda. He's a tough pill, that Provenso. She'd better be with
the Injun than him!"
"Provenso must be a bad lot," said Jack.
"He is!" replied Billy grimly.
The camp was made that night near a smooth-faced mesa. Before dawn
they had eaten breakfast and were mounting, when Carlos gave a low
whistle. Every ear was strained. On the exquisite stillness of the
dawn sounded a woman's voice which a man's voice answered.