TOWARD evening of a lowering December day, some fifty miles west of
Forlorn River, a horseman rode along an old, dimly defined trail. From
time to time he halted to study the lay of the land ahead. It was bare,
somber, ridgy desert, covered with dun-colored greasewood and stunted
prickly pear. Distant mountains hemmed in the valley, raising black
spurs above the round lomas and the square-walled mesas.
This lonely horseman bestrode a steed of magnificent build, perfectly
white except for a dark bar of color running down the noble head from
ears to nose. Sweatcaked dust stained the long flanks. The horse had
been running. His mane and tail were laced and knotted to keep their
length out of reach of grasping cactus and brush. Clumsy home-made
leather shields covered the front of his forelegs and ran up well to
his wide breast. What otherwise would have been muscular symmetry of
limb was marred by many a scar and many a lump. He was lean, gaunt,
worn, a huge machine of muscle and bone, beautiful only in head and
mane, a weight-carrier, a horse strong and fierce like the desert that
had bred him.
The rider fitted the horse as he fitted the saddle. He was a young man
of exceedingly powerful physique, wide-shouldered, long-armed,
big-legged. His lean face, where it was not red, blistered and
peeling, was the hue of bronze. He had a dark eye, a falcon gaze,
roving and keen. His jaw was prominent and set, mastiff-like; his lips
were stern. It was youth with its softness not yet quite burned and
hardened away that kept the whole cast of his face from being ruthless.
This young man was Dick Gale, but not the listless traveler, nor the
lounging wanderer who, two months before, had by chance dropped into
Casita. Friendship, chivalry, love--the deep-seated, unplumbed
emotions that had been stirred into being with all their incalculable
power for spiritual change, had rendered different the meaning of life.
In the moment almost of their realization the desert had claimed Gale,
and had drawn him into its crucible. The desert had multiplied weeks
into years. Heat, thirst, hunger, loneliness, toil, fear, ferocity,
pain--he knew them all. He had felt them all--the white sun, with its
glazed, coalescing, lurid fire; the caked split lips and rasping,
dry-puffed tongue; the sickening ache in the pit of his stomach; the
insupportable silence, the empty space, the utter desolation, the
contempt of life; the weary ride, the long climb, the plod in sand, the
search, search, search for water; the sleepless night alone, the watch
and wait, the dread of ambush, the swift flight; the fierce pursuit of
men wild as Bedouins and as fleet, the willingness to deal sudden
death, the pain of poison thorn, the stinging tear of lead through
flesh; and that strange paradox of the burning desert, the cold at
night, the piercing icy wind, the dew that penetrated to the marrow,
the numbing desert cold of the dawn.
Beyond any dream of adventure he had ever had, beyond any wild story he
had ever read, had been his experience with those hard-riding rangers,
Ladd and Lash. Then he had traveled alone the hundred miles of desert
between Forlorn River and the Sonoyta Oasis. Ladd's prophecy of
trouble on the border had been mild compared to what had become the
actuality. With rebel occupancy of the garrison at Casita, outlaws,
bandits, raiders in rioting bands had spread westward. Like troops of
Arabs, magnificently mounted, they were here, there, everywhere along
the line; and if murder and worse were confined to the Mexican side,
pillage and raiding were perpetrated across the border. Many a
dark-skinned raider bestrode one of Belding's fast horses, and indeed
all except his selected white thoroughbreds had been stolen. So the
job of the rangers had become more than a patrolling of the boundary
line to keep Japanese and Chinese from being smuggled into the United
States. Belding kept close at home to protect his family and to hold
his property. But the three rangers, in fulfilling their duty had
incurred risks on their own side of the line, had been outraged,
robbed, pursued, and injured on the other. Some of the few waterholes
that had to be reached lay far across the border in Mexican territory.
Horses had to drink, men had to drink; and Ladd and Lash were not of
the stripe that forsook a task because of danger. Slow to wrath at
first, as became men who had long lived peaceful lives, they had at
length revolted; and desert vultures could have told a gruesome story.
Made a comrade and ally of these bordermen, Dick Gale had leaped at the
desert action and strife with an intensity of heart and a rare physical
ability which accounted for the remarkable fact that he had not yet
fallen by the way.
On this December afternoon the three rangers, as often, were separated.
Lash was far to the westward of Sonoyta, somewhere along Camino del
Diablo, that terrible Devil's Road, where many desert wayfarers had
perished. Ladd had long been overdue in a prearranged meeting with
Gale. The fact that Ladd had not shown up miles west of the Papago
Well was significant.
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
wet 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 spent 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.
Blanco Sol walked or jog-trotted six miles to the hour. At that gait
fifty miles would not have wet or turned a hair of his dazzling white
coat. Gale, bearing in mind the ever-present possibility of
encountering more raiders and of being pursued, saved the strength of
the horse. Once out of sight of Papago Well, Gale dismounted and
walked beside the horse, steadying with one firm hand the helpless,
dangling Yaqui.
The sun cleared the eastern ramparts, and the coolness of morning fled
as if before a magic foe. The whole desert changed. The grays wore
bright; the mesquites glistened; the cactus took the silver hue of
frost, and the rocks gleamed gold and red. Then, as the heat
increased, a wind rushed up out of the valley behind Gale, and the
hotter the sun blazed down the swifter rushed the wind. The wonderful
transparent haze of distance lost its bluish hue for one with tinge of
yellow. Flying sand made the peaks dimly outlined.
Gale kept pace with his horse. He bore the twinge of pain that darted
through his injured hip at every stride. His eye roved over the wide,
smoky prospect seeking the landmarks he knew. When the wild and bold
spurs of No Name Mountains loomed through a rent in flying clouds of
sand he felt nearer home. Another hour brought him abreast of a dark,
straight shaft rising clear from a beetling escarpment. This was a
monument marking the international boundary line. When he had passed
it he had his own country under foot. In the heat of midday he halted
in the shade of a rock, and, lifting the Yaqui down, gave him a drink.
Then, after a long, sweeping survey of the surrounding desert, he
removed Sol's saddle and let him roll, and took for himself a welcome
rest and a bite to eat.
The Yaqui was tenacious of life. He was still holding his own. For the
first time Gale really looked at the Indian to study him. He had a
large head nobly cast, and a face that resembled a shrunken mask. It
seemed chiseled in the dark-red, volcanic lava of his Sooner
wilderness. The Indian's eyes were always black and mystic, but this
Yaqui's encompassed all the tragic desolation of the desert. They were
fixed on Gale, moved only when he moved. The Indian was short and
broad, and his body showed unusual muscular development, although he
seemed greatly emaciated from starvation or illness.
Gale resumed his homeward journey. When he got through the pass he
faced a great depression, as rough as if millions of gigantic spikes
had been driven by the hammer of Thor into a seamed and cracked floor.
This was Altar Valley. It was a chaos of arroyo's, canyons, rocks, and
ridges all mantled with cactus, and at its eastern end it claimed the
dry bed of Forlorn River and water when there was any.
With a wounded, helpless man across the saddle, this stretch of thorny
and contorted desert was practically impassable. Yet Gale headed into
it unflinchingly. He would carry the Yaqui as far as possible, or
until death make the burden no longer a duty. Blanco Sol plodded on
over the dragging sand, up and down the steep, loose banks of washes,
out on the rocks, and through the rows of white-toothed _choyas_.
The sun sloped westward, bending fiercer heat in vengeful, parting
reluctance. The wind slackened. The dust settled. And the bold,
forbidding front of No Name Mountains changed to red and gold. Gale
held grimly by the side of the tireless, implacable horse, holding the
Yaqui on the saddle, taking the brunt of the merciless thorns. In the
end it became heartrending toil. His heavy chaps dragged him down; but
he dared not go on without them, for, thick and stiff as they were, the
terrible, steel-bayoneted spikes of the choyas pierced through to sting
his legs.
To the last mile Gale held to Blanco Sol's gait and kept ever-watchful
gaze ahead on the trail. Then, with the low, flat houses of Forlorn
River shining red in the sunset, Gale flagged and rapidly weakened.
The Yaqui slipped out of the saddle and dropped limp in the sand. Gale
could not mount his horse. He clutched Sol's long tail and twisted his
hand in it and staggered on.
Blanco Sol whistled a piercing blast. He scented cool water and sweet
alfalfa hay. Twinkling lights ahead meant rest. The melancholy desert
twilight rapidly succeeded the sunset. It accentuated the forlorn
loneliness of the gray, winding river of sand and its grayer shores.
Night shadows trooped down from the black and looming mountains.