RED MESA
Across a bare and sandy divide wallowed and crunched a weary party of
horses, men, and dogs. Bare and desolate mountains surrounded them,
and one rose in sheer gray granite, capped by a black stratum of lava,
apparently two hundred feet thick. Of even desert vegetation there was
not a trace here. The sand buried everything, even the mountain sides.
One could hear the faint lisp-lisp of it, moving stealthily along,
grain by grain, under the flow of the southwesterly winds rolling up
from the Gulf of California.
“Shore this is the country that Gawd jest didn’t know _what_ to do
with!” ejaculated Big John, mopping his sweating forehead and getting
a new bite on the corner of his bandanna with his teeth. “Whar’s yore
desert gyarden, hyarabouts, Sid?”
“We’ll come to it, just over the ridge--according to the map made
by the Hornaday expedition,” replied Sid cheerily. For perhaps the
twentieth time since they had left Represa Tank early that morning,
that little book-page map was taken out and scanned by the whole party.
Big John always liked to convince himself, by standing on the map as
it were, that they were really following it. In these endless dunes it
would be easy to take the wrong gap and miss MacDougal Pass altogether.
“See?” said Sid, pointing out the landmarks, “that range ahead of us
they named the Hornaday mountains. They abut on the Pass in a right
angle. I’d give a lot to know what’s in that angle behind them! _No_
one knows. There’s a little piece of the earth for you, Scotty, as
unexplored as the North Pole!”
Scotty said nothing. He had not yet recovered from the disappointment
of finding Red Mesa apparently a myth. The whole business looked worse
than ever now. Even assuming that the Papagoes might have been confused
in translating east and west and so have given Fra Pedro the wrong
compass bearing, twenty-one miles north_west_ of Pinacate would be
_right here_, where they were now riding--and there was no such thing
as a mesa in sight anywhere! The mountains here were all of rugged gray
granite, tumbled and saw-toothed, with faint tinges of green showing
where some hardy desert vegetation had got a roothold. Mesa! This was
volcanic country, all cones or jagged outcroppings of granite! thought
Scotty, disconsolately.
He rode on dejectedly after Niltci and the dogs, who were scouring the
sand for game tracks. A short way from here the first tracks of sheep
had been seen by the Hornaday party, and further south antelope had
been shot by John Phillips in the craters of the extinct volcanoes
which dotted this country.
“There she is--there’s the Pass!” cried Sid triumphantly, as they
topped the last of the awful sand ridges. His pointing finger showed
them a river of desert vegetation below, a broad and rolling green
river that flowed through the flat sandy plain of the Pass in masses of
rich, living color. Tall green saguarros, like telegraph poles, rose
in monumental spikes along the granite bases of the mountains on both
sides. White fields of Bigelow’s choya barred their way, in big patches
of them flung broadcast across the sands. Here and there the bright
green puffball of a palo verde made a note of vivid color against the
prevailing dark shiny green of the creosotes. At sight of all that
verdure the horses broke into a run, twisting and threading through
the flat bare sand lanes. The dogs, now desert-wise, galloped along
beside them, barking excitedly and hardly noticing the choyas, avoiding
them instinctively.
And then Ruler gave tongue. _Ow-ow-ow!_ he sang, the first blessed
musical notes of the chase that had come from his throat since they had
left the Catalinas! Niltci whooped a shrill challenge and lashed his
mustang to full speed. After him put out Big John, and then Scotty,
glad of any excitement to take his mind off his troubles. Sid rode
leisurely after them, merely glancing down at the tracks the dog had
discovered in the sand.
“Buck mule deer--a small one. Here, Blaze!--Heel!” he called sternly
to the Airedale, who had started bounding after Ruler. Sid halted his
horse and watched the three riders racing down the Pass. The frantic
bellows of Ruler now told him that the deer had been sighted, and
presently Sid got a distant glimpse of him, a tiny gray shape bouncing
stiff-legged as he dodged through the desert cactus garden.
“Mule deer all right! Guess we’ll stay out, Blazie,” he told the dog.
“There are enough after him now to catch him with their bare hands!
Let us try for mountain sheep, meanwhile.”
He turned the pinto toward the base of the Hornaday Mountains which
rose in rugged gray-green masses abruptly from the sand floor of the
Pass. Their summits were ridged with rough pinnacles of gray granite.
What might be on the other side of those ridges at once intrigued the
exploring instincts in the boy. He was rather glad of this chance for a
lone investigating hike--with good old Blaze his sole companion!
At the base of the mountain, where rock sloped up steeply from sand,
he checked his horse and a joyful exclamation burst from him. An eager
whine came from Blaze, as he, too, snuffed in the sand. Here they had
discovered a regular mountain sheep runway! The big cloven tracks, like
pairs of roll biscuit prints, were plentiful and deeply graven in the
sand. They ran both ways, but a vague impulse, coupled with a decided
penchant for climbing up and exploring these mountains, led Sid to halt
at the first lone track that led off upward from the main game trail.
It was now nearly noon, and he knew that the sheep would be high in the
mountains at this time of day.
He picketed Pinto out on a patch of grass and started up on foot.
Helped by Blaze’s nose it would not be very hard to follow that track.
Where a print lacked in the rocky soil, eager barks from the Airedale
now led Sid on. They were climbing fast and furiously before they knew
it, the impetuous dog leading Sid up and up the immense craggy slopes.
Below him the garden of the Pass rolled out in a great gray plain. A
mile down it the faint belling of Ruler told him that the mule deer
was still leading them a busy chase. His own sheep tracks were rising
toward the ridge in a series of steep bounds, climbing with ease where
Sid had to haul himself up or make toilsome detours to avoid formidable
white choya bushes. Sid hoped it was a ram. Since the Montana hunt
for the Ring-Necked Grizzly he had not shot a single specimen of that
king of American game animals, the Big-Horn. A Pinacate head, to match
his Montana one, would look mightly well in the Colvin trophy den now
located at their new ranch up in the Gila Cañon.
Presently Blaze let out a volleying bray and raced on up the rocks
toward the ridge. There came a clatter of rolling stones, and Sid
looked up to see a huge ram, followed by two ewes, silhouetted for an
instant against the blue skyline. Immense curled horns encircled the
big sheep’s head. For a moment he stopped and looked back, his superb
head poised grandly, his horns branching out in regular symmetrical
spirals, his white ears standing out like thumbs in front of the horns
and his white nose, cleft with the black mouth and nostril lines, a
circle of white against his brown neck.
Sid shouted to the dog sharply and raised his rifle, but before he
could steady the sights the ram wheeled and was gone like a silent
shadow. Blaze yelped and roared out his ferocious challenge, then at
Sid’s repeated yells he turned and came back whining with impatience.
The youth began to feel that Blaze would be a mere nuisance in this
sheep hunting because of his lack of experience. Ruler would have
circled craftily to head off the Big-Horn and drive him back on the
hunter, but Blaze was always for the stern chase and the pitched battle!
Sternly ordering the dog to heel, Sid climbed on up cautiously and
reconnoitered through the rocks over the ridge. A shallow arroyo
lay between him and the next ridge, and beyond that he saw over the
mountain back, beyond a void of purple distance, a flat red table
of rock, etched sharply by the ragged saw-tooth of the ridge between
him and it. Sid glanced curiously at that odd rock formation for an
instant, then his eyes swept the hollow below for sight of that band of
sheep. Blaze whined and tugged frantically at his collar. He had seen
them already, long before Sid’s slower eyes could pick them out in that
mass of rocks and sparse vegetation below.
“Gorry!--There they go! Steady, Blaze!” he gritted through his clenched
teeth and then raised the rifle. The army carbine’s sights sought out
the game swiftly. Sid had filed a forty-five degree cut on the front
sight, so that it showed up as a little white mirror over the flat bar
of his rear sight. Cutting the mirror square in two with the rear bar,
he found the galloping ram and raised it up to just under the distant
shoulder of the Big-Horn.
Sid was just on the point of pressing the trigger--indeed had already
felt the first movement of the creep of its bolt action--when a bright,
shiny, horizontal flash,--the flash of an arrow--shot across the
gray slopes of the ridge opposite! The ram staggered, stumbled, and
struggled up a ledge, pawing convulsively with his hoofs. A second and
a third arrow flash swept across the hillside and stopped in the ram’s
flank. Sid gasped with astonishment. Those flashes were _arrows_! Then
he grabbed Blaze’s collar instinctively, put down the rifle hurriedly,
and closed his fingers around the dog’s muzzle so that he could not
bark.
Sid was too nonplussed for a moment to speak. Arrows! It _could_ not
be Niltci, for the Navaho boy had long since abandoned his bow, now
that his white friends kept him in unlimited cartridges. Sid watched
the ram in his death struggles, not daring to move so much as his head.
Those arrows had been shot by some unknown Indian. These mountains were
_inhabited_ then. He could see the two ewes tearing wildly down the
arroyo toward a grim and scowling lava field that lay far below. They
disappeared around a corner of granite, some distance down, but still
the Indian who had fired the arrows did not come out of his hiding
place.
Who could he be? Sid knew that the Papagoes had long since abandoned
this hunting ground. Their tank still remained, filled eternally from
season to season with rainfall, the sole reminder of that time when
the tribe used to gather here to drive the sheep and antelope into the
craters and slaughter them wholesale in the trap thus set. Now the
Papagoes had become a pastoral people, raising corn, selling baskets,
receiving their beef rations from a beneficent government, which,
however, kept them virtually prisoners on two small reservations. This
Indian arrow-shooter _might_ be a wandering Yaqui from Mexico, but that
was hardly possible. It would go hard with him if caught on this side
of the border by any of our rangers!
Why did he not come out? Sid was sure that it was because he had heard
Blaze’s bark coming up the mountain, followed by the appearance of
those hunted sheep. He was lying low.
For what? To shoot down the hunter the same way that he had laid low
the ram? Well, if he had to wait all day, he would not be _that_
victim, Sid decided, then and there!
And meanwhile the ram lay a silent, pathetic heap of horns and hoofs,
lonely under the hot sun, surrounded by the gray crags and green
acacias that had been his home--while the enigma of his death remained
still inscrutable. A stunted green saguarro rose near where he had
fallen, a marking-post of the desert; the approach below him was
guarded by a sturdy choya, to stumble into which would be agony.
For a long time Sid stood watching the place where the arrows had
seemed to come from, undecided what to do next. There was a craggy
boulder over there, jutting out from the hillside, and behind it
strung out cover in the shape of creosote bushes and rocky fastnesses
of jumbled granite. But nothing moved. The unknown Indian still lay
hidden, watching that ram carcass, too, like a trap set ready to
spring. Sid lowered his head slowly, inch by inch, determined to play
this waiting game to a finish himself. His muscles were trembling from
holding his fixed poise so long and the under tendon of his right knee
ached.
It had never occurred to him that he was in any danger himself--when
suddenly a savage growl rumbling in Blaze’s throat caused him to turn
halfway to the right. Instantly came the twang of a bow and the sharp
hiss of an arrow. Blaze bawled out in pain, then sprawled out flat,
with all four of his furry paws spread out like woolly broom handles,
while his pained eyes looked up piteously to Sid. An arrow transfixed
him above his shoulders. The dog seemed paralyzed as Sid dropped beside
him, hot anger welling up in his heart. A hurt to one’s own person does
not cause a whiter rage than one done to a dumb pet! Sid peered about
him, seeking with glittering eye for something to fire at. Beside him
Blaze moaned, sighed deeply, and then fell over stiffly, the arrow
sticking in the rock and partly supporting him. Sid hesitated to pull
it out. To start the blood spurting free now would kill whatever chance
he had yet for life--if he were not already gone.
It seemed a most cruel shot, to Sid. _Why_ had the Indian spared him
and shot his dumb and faithful companion instead? Then he began to
glimpse signs of wily red strategy in all this. The unknown enemy
intended to capture him _alive_ if possible! With Blaze at his side it
could not be done by any creeping attack, for the dog’s keen nose would
immediately detect the near presence of any person whatever.
Sid looked cautiously all about him, finger on trigger and rifle ready.
To the south the saw-tooth ridge rose high above him to yet loftier
levels. All about him were jagged pinnacles, rough and craggy and full
of hollows and rocky points which could not be seen around. To creep
back down the mountains, somehow, and then fire three shots for help
as soon as possible seemed to him the best plan. He hated to abandon
Blaze while there was a spark of life left, but would it not be better
for them to be separated anyhow, now? The dog might get away if he
recovered even if Sid should be captured.
That arrow that had pierced Blaze had come from a rocky lair to the
north of their position, just how far away he could not tell. The hiss
of it had really been Sid’s first warning. Never again could he forget
that sharp, ghostly _whew_! Making for a sheltering hollow which would
be out of sight of the rocky lair, yet be open enough for him to see
around him a short distance, Sid began to crawl down from the ridge. As
yet he had hardly moved, but his heart was beating wildly. It seemed
to him absolutely hopeless to get away from this mountain with he
knew not how many hostile Indians all around him. The very idea that
this desolate land was inhabited by even a small tribe seemed weird,
uncanny. Not a track save their own had they seen so far. Even the old
wagon ruts of the Hornaday expedition had long since been buried in
the sands or washed out by the rains. It had been all new country, all
virgin. If an Indian band lived here they could not be Papagoes, for
the first one missing from the reservation would call out a troop of
soldiers after him. Had Vasquez, then, already gotten up from Mexico
with some Yaquis?
Sid thought of all possible solutions as he crept warily downhill,
pausing before each craggy outcropping in his path before daring to
pass it. Then a glimpse of something red which moved behind a bush
below to the left caused him to stop and raise his rifle, and, while
poised in the tense set of the aim, a sudden, almost noiseless, rush of
feet behind him sent electric shocks all through him! There was no time
to even lower the rifle and turn around. Subconsciously his leg muscles
leapt out wildly. He had an expectant sensation of a knife entering
his back--and then a thin band like a strap swept down and across his
eyes and something tight gripped around his throat. Knees, and the
heavy weight of a man on his back, bore him to earth. His arms sprawled
out, dropping the rifle; his tongue shot out and out, gagging fiercely
against that awful halter grip around his throat. Sid thought of the
Thug strangling cloth in that last instant before an enormous drumming
in his head gave way to blackness clouding over his eyes. Then came the
heavy thump of the ground striking him, and unconsciousness....
It seemed but a very few minutes, the continuation of some terrible
dream, when his eyes opened again. He was lying face downward where
he had fallen, and his lungs were pumping and sucking air in great
draughts, as if recovering from some endless and vague period of
suffocation. Blood was trickling down his face and making a little pool
on the rock, while a cut or a bruise, he could not say which, over his
eyebrows smarted sharply.
Sid made a slight sound and attempted to turn over. Two grunts answered
him. Immediately a strange Indian was at his side helping him turn over
roughly, and he learned for the first time that his arms were pinioned
behind. Sid looked up into the buck’s face. It was round, hawklike and
stern, with narrow black eyes that had no pity. He recognized the type
as Apache instantly. There was none of the stolidity of the Pima and
the Papago in that face, nor of the regular-featured, straight-nosed
Navaho, like Niltci, who resembled a copper-colored Englishman. This
man looked more like some bird of prey, in the Roman hook of his nose
and the craggy sternness of his mouth. The first word he uttered as he
turned to his young companion confirmed Sid’s thought, for it was in
the harsh Athapascan dialect of the Apache.
Between them they yanked the boy to his feet and started up the hill.
Nothing further was said. They passed Blaze’s niche, the dog still
lying on his side, a pathetic furry heap dominated by the arrow, and
one of the Apaches pointed and let out a grunt. The other nodded.
Evidently they considered him dead. They pushed Sid on down into the
arroyo and crossed to where lay the ram. The older man then grunted a
few words and at once set about paunching the game. The younger led on
with Sid.
As they topped the rise of the next ridge, that same flat red rampart
that Sid had noticed while stalking the ram burst on his view. But now
it proved to be a really wonderful natural phenomenon. Fire, lava,
a tremendous outpouring of the bowels of the earth had been at work
here, no doubt during that period when the craters were formed and it
had cast up that mighty red wall. Sid wished that Scotty, with his
knowledge of geology, were with him now to study out the wonder of this
vast red rampart before his eyes. The whole interior angle made by the
bend of the mountains had been blown out here by lava explosion, the
huge granite strata having been forced up on end like a pair of trap
doors, making two enormous red ramparts, vertical-sided and running
out from the rocky angle of the hills until their outer ends rose like
towers. These terminated the red walls, a thousand feet from the ridge
to the end of the lower gap where the lava had burst out. At that lower
end the ramparts rose at least four hundred feet sheer from the granite
slopes, and a great apron of black and scowling lava ran down from
there at a steep slope, to lose itself under the sands far below. But
the walls were of sheer granite, colored red by the fierce heat of that
molten lava of ages ago.
Red Mesa! Red Mesa! Red Mesa!--The certainty of its being the lost
mesa kept singing in Sid’s ears as they descended. No such geologic
formation as this could exist anywhere around Pinacate and not have
been discovered before. Those ancient Papagoes who had reported it
to Fra Pedro of 1680 no doubt had called it a mesa by reason of its
resemblance to the true mesa formation. But, unlike the mesas of the
north which are formed by water scouring and erosion, the walls of this
one had been cast up bodily by the explosive force of pent-up lava.
Still, there was resemblance enough to have given the place its name,
Red Mesa, Sid was certain.
The young Apache kept behind Sid as he prodded him on downward. There
was no trail. His savage guide avoided choyas and chose the best
possible routes for descent, that was all, while steadily the giant
wall of Red Mesa frowned higher and nearer above them. Sid looked up
as they approached the base of the west wall. Flat slabs of bare,
smooth granite went up at a steep slope for perhaps a hundred feet.
Above that the red wall rose sheer to fissured and turreted pinnacles
three hundred feet above the top of that awful slope. Inaccessible from
anywhere below was Red Mesa!
After more rocky descent they came around the great tower at the lower
end. Mighty and majestic, like the belfry of some huge cathedral, it
rose out of the depths of the valley. A great smooth slope of black
lava, shiny and slippery as glass, formed a slanting apron here,
spanning the gap from tower to tower. But what an apron! Like the face
of a dam, it spread across from one wall to the other, closing a gap
three hundred feet wide and itself at least four hundred feet up to its
edge, the towers of the two walls rising for half their height above it
still. Geologically it was an imposing instance of the unlimited power
of Nature. When that mountain side had burst, the whole round world
must have shaken like a leaf and all the marine creatures in the great
seas to the north have been swept over by a tidal wave of unexampled
proportions! The lava had flowed out and downward, cooling slowly until
this dam--for a cataract of fire--had formed and remained as a grim
witness to the stupendous natural event that had once taken place here.
Sid, the educated white boy, had become so interested in reconstructing
the geological aspects of this formation that he almost forgot the
irksome tightness of the thongs that still bound his arms and the
almost certain death to which he was being led. He knew only too well
from border history the ways of the wild Apache! But the Indian guard
behind him had no other thought but his duty as jailer. While Sid’s
wondering eyes were scanning that giant apron of lava that flowed down
out of Red Mesa, the Apache suddenly spun him violently around. Sid
had one whirling glimpse of a small black opening in the lava above,
looking like a ragged mouth, and his curiosity about it had just begun
to leap up overthrowing the greater marvel of the whole cataclysm of
Red Mesa, when his head was forcibly held from turning and his bandanna
was whipped deftly across his eyes. The sandy plain below disappeared
from view, and in its place was now an impenetrable blackness.
Presently he felt the grip of two firm hands on his elbows. A vigorous
push set his feet in motion to hold his balance. By the shortness of
his step and the upward lift of it Sid knew they were climbing again.
Often the Indian stooped down and took hold of his ankles to guide
his footsteps to some secure place. Sid could tell by the opprobrious
epithets in Apache with which the young fellow belabored him that he
scorned Sid’s blind clumsiness and was angry and intolerant, but Sid
made no sign that he understood the language. Once, though, he nearly
gave himself away, when the buck shouted “Right!” sharply in Apache and
Sid instinctively moved his foot over that way, searching for a crevice
in the lava.
After a long and slow climb they stopped, and Sid felt the Indian’s
fingers gripping him strongly around the back of the neck. It was
useless to resist. His head was being forced silently down, and the boy
submitted wonderingly. Then they went forward, bent over again, and
twice he felt the top of his head striking bare and jagged rock above
which cut painfully. Instantly he thought of that little black mouth in
the lava apron that he had caught a mere glimpse of when the Indian was
turning him around. They were in that cave now, whatever it was. It was
hot and suffocating in here. Sid choked for breath and sneezed as faint
sulphur fumes pringled in his nostrils. He had a sense of being urged
slowly upward. Now and again the fingers on his neck would press him
to earth and he would go forward on hands and knees, where the least
attempt to raise his head would result in a painful scratch from the
tunnel roof that was evidently above them.
In time a draught of pure air began coming down from somewhere above.
Sid could see nothing, yet with the buoyancy of youth he was strangely
happy and also consumed with curiosity. They would probably stake him
out and build a slow fire on his stomach when he got up out of this
tunnel, but while it lasted it was all as exciting as exploring it
on his own would have been! More air and purer came to him now. The
sulphur fumes disappeared. Something wooden like an upright log ladder
struck him on his forehead and the Indian raised him up and called out
loudly. Muffled voices answered him from somewhere up above. Then he
felt his guard stoop and lift him by the legs while invisible hands
above reached down and seized him under the armpits. He was hauled
up the ladder and then he sensed being in some sort of a room--being
guided across it.
The indescribable sweetish odor of Indian was strong in here. Sid had
been so often in tepees and hogans as to be able to recognize that
smell instantly. All the races of man have a distinctive smell of their
own, and the aboriginal ones, Malay, black boy, yellow man and red
Indian are all agreed that the white man has a smell, too.
“White man smell like sheep!” as a Piute chief had once truthfully put
it! The odor of corn meal, burnt feathers, paints and greases told Sid,
too, that he was in some sort of medicine lodge. It could not have been
a kiva, for the dank smell of damp stone was wanting.
Then a sudden lightening of all the cracks around that bandanna told
him that he was in bright sunlight once more. There was the perfume of
growing squash and melon and pepper, the faint odor of green beans,
the smell of grass--and of water! Red Mesa was really a valley then,
inclosed by two giant walls and shut off from below by that ancient
lava apron! And it was inhabited by a band of Apache!
That much Sid’s sense of reasoning had told him before the squeals of
children and the cries of squaws and shouts of men came to his ears.
People were all around him now, exclaiming in Apache, every word of
which he understood. Then the deep voice of some one in authority came
toward them and a guttural command to untie him was given. The bandanna
was at once whisked from Sid’s eyes. He stood for a time blinking in
the glare of the sun. High red walls rose up to right and left of him.
A large tank of water, almost a pond, filled much of the basin between
them, but there were strips of cultivated plants along its borders,
too, and here and there he noted a grass Apache hut.
Sid fixed his eyes finally on a tall chief who confronted him.
The man’s features were round, heavy and forceful, such as we are
accustomed to associate with the faces of the captains of industry
among our own people. His long, coarse hair fell around his ears, tied
about the brows with home-woven red bayeta cloth. A single eagle’s
feather sticking up from the back told Sid that this man was a rigid
disciplinarian of the old school and a formalist in the customs of his
tribe, for it signified only one coup, such as a far younger man than
he would have made in the old days. He wore a white buckskin shirt,
with the tails outside coming down nearly to his knees. Long white
buckskin leggins that disappeared under the apron of his breech clout
told Sid, further, that this chief was a primitive red man, or else had
not seen white men for many years.
As Sid’s eyes still blinked, getting accustomed to the strong light, a
coppery grin cracked the chief’s features.
“Well! I’ll be--! What have we here!” he exclaimed in excellent English.
Then he turned angrily to the young buck at Sid’s side and burst into a
storm of guttural Apache invective.