BLAZE
It was perhaps an hour after Sid and his Apache captors had gone by
that Blaze finally came to. The dog moaned feebly; then he tried to
rise to his feet. An aching, burning pain shot through his shoulders
and there came a sharp twinge as the arrow jerked loose from where its
point had stuck in the rock.
It galvanized Blaze to frenzied action. He could not know that that
arrow, passing through just above the spinal vertebræ, had temporarily
paralyzed him with the shock of its blow. All his doggy understanding
realized was that this awful thing burnt like a fire and must be shaken
loose at once. At first he thrashed about recklessly trying to break
it off or get rid of it, somehow, if rolling and plunging could do it.
Then he snapped at the arrow ends savagely, shearing off point and
feathers like the ends of a straw.
This spasm of frenzy ended in a mad bolt down the mountain in search
of Master. Big John was Blaze’s idol; the one human who knew everything
and always gave him the most glorious times of his life. When hurt
before, it had been always Big John, his man-partner of their hunts
who, strong and tender, had somehow made his hurts come well. Sid,
as Little Master was all right, but Blaze hardly gave him a thought
now, for this trouble was too terrible and he _must_ find Big John!
Trembling all over and yelping every time the arrow stub struck
against a passing bush, Blaze struggled on down the hill. The bone
tops of his shoulder blades rubbed against this inexorable Thing that
stuck tenaciously through the flesh above them and at every step they
hurt worse than grinding a raw bone. Again and again he felt himself
growing weak and giddy with the pain of it. Each stumble was to him
an agony of roaring and helpless rage. Heroic, stoical old Blaze, who
had fought bear and mountain lion times innumerable; been bitten,
slashed, mauled with clawed paws; who had lost one ear in a fight with
a timber wolf--he found this thing to be the most maddening of all
his experiences with pain. You could not fight back nor get hold of
it, after that first savage crunch of his jaws had bitten off all the
arrow that could be reached. It rode him thereafter like a spur that
never let up.
Blaze’s progress grew slower and slower. At times he would stop and
howl dismally for some one to come and help him. Then, after a grim and
expectant period of waiting, he would crawl on again, floundering and
tumbling down the steep flanks of the mountain. In time he reached the
plain, where they had started up after the ram. Here was Sid’s pinto,
and the animal whinnied eagerly for he was already thirsty and weary of
waiting for their return. Blaze’s nose led him back to the tracks of
the main party, where the familiar scent of Big John’s white mustang at
last smote his nostrils.
It put new heart into the dog. Master’s horse! Now we were getting
somewhere! He trotted on, enduring the pain in his shoulders stoically
until it faded to a general dull ache. Nothing brushed the arrow stub,
now. You went carefully around bushes and kept to the mustang’s trail,
avoiding all thorns and cats-claws. Several miles further on he came to
where the buck had been shot and butchered. The bones and pieces of raw
meat left behind smelt good, but Blaze was feverish and would not eat.
His doggy instincts told him to starve out that fever. What lashed him
most terribly now was the scourge of thirst. He had lost a good deal of
blood, although the arrow had cut nothing vital. Water! He _must_ have
it!
Big John and Scotty had ridden on toward Papago Tanks with the buck on
saddle after the kill. They had not waited for Sid, for it was their
custom when any one went off lone hunting not to expect him back before
nightfall. Blaze followed on after the white mustang’s tracks, sore and
weary, his tongue hanging out with thirst and a high fever raging in
him. Oh, to find Master! _He_ would know! He would get him a canteen
or something! To drink and drink and drink! To have cool strong hands
draw out this burning pain that seared his shoulders like a hot iron!
Only the indomitable courage of his breed kept him up. Blaze was a
thoroughbred. He did not know what a streak of cur blood was! Kootenai
Firebrand, Culbertson Rex, Champion Swiveller, all famous lion dogs of
the West, were among his forebears and they would not let him give up.
He staggered on, his feet wabbling crazily under him as the trail wound
on southward through a country of black lava cones all around him,
with vitrified and scoriated lava under foot.
Then Blaze stopped, for the horses had halted here. He looked wearily
up toward a huge cone that rose to the east of him. Up that way these
tracks led, and he must follow, too!
He arrived at the top, at last, and then gave a feeble yelp of joy.
Here Master had got down off his horse, and the smell of him was sweet
in Blaze’s nostrils! Below him stretched out a vast amphitheater, the
sandy floor of a deep crater that was half a mile across. Through a
gap in the opposite side the desert vegetation had come marching in,
species by species, saguarro, bisanga, choya, creosote bush, to spread
out on that wide floor three hundred feet below and cover it with green
dots of vegetation. Blaze looked down, his doggy heart sinking with
misgivings, for no one was down there. Could he _ever_ muster up the
strength to climb down into this thing? And where had Master come up
out of it again? Only one set of tracks led down here and the descent
was as steep as a chimney.
A wild, fresh odor decided him to attempt it. At his feet he snuffed
hoof tracks, small, pointed, with musky dew claws--a deer of some
kind, Blaze decided. He did not know that they were antelope, for
the smell was new to him, but at once the old hunting ardor surged up
in his soul, overriding weariness and physical pain. He attempted a
valiant bark, which sounded somehow hoarse and dry in his throat; then
he plunged down the steep declivity after the horses. Around him rose
high rim rock, red and purple and black. These two lava gaps were the
only places where the crater could be entered at all. They all had gone
down here; that was reassuring. Here, too, were Ruler’s tracks, that
four-footed companion whom Blaze secretly envied for his marvelous nose
and openly despised for his absurd caution in attacking bear and lion.
Here also was the smell of Indian, where Niltci had jumped off and led
his mustang down by the bridle. And here Master and the other Young
Master had dismounted and climbed down, side by side, their horses
following most unwillingly as their sliding tracks showed.
On the crater floor the party had separated and there had been
gallopings about in every direction. Blaze followed the white mustang,
for she bore Master, his beloved. Soon he came upon a long smoky
cartridge from the old .35 meat gun, and the mustang’s tracks veered
sharply over to the right. The smell of fresh blood came to Blaze’s
nose and he wabbled slowly out to the center of that vast volcanic pit
following the scent. A pile of entrails, shank bones, blood dried up by
the thirsty sands--that was all, for him, of the antelope that had been
shot here!
Blaze lay down, completely tuckered out. Without at least a drink of
life-giving water he could not go a step further. The assembling and
galloping tracks that led off up to that other gap told which way they
had gone out. He could _never_ make that ascent, now! Instinct told
him to wait until sundown, for it was hot and sultry down here now and
there was not a breath of air. He lay down, panting, consumed with
thirst. When he tried, later, to rise again he found that his wound had
stiffened and the whole top of his shoulders seemed one raw, immovable
lump.
He looked about him piteously, then raised his muzzle to the sky
in a howl of dismay. Silence, of the brooding desert; and then an
answer--the wild howl of a coyote! Blaze’s quick eye singled him out
sitting up there in the gap, watching him wolf-like. His answering howl
had not been of sympathy or anything like that, but to call other
coyotes to help him prepare for this feast of dog flesh!
The danger stiffened Blaze up and strengthened his moral fiber. A
savage challenge rumbled in his throat as he rose stiffly to his feet
and faced the coyote menacingly. Then a whine of pain came from him.
He could not fight, now; but he would not howl again for help, at any
rate! That signal was too well understood by these wild dogs that _had_
no master!
Blaze looked up at the coyote and then around him again. Should he
climb up there and fight this fellow, anyhow, weak as he was, before
any more of them came? He could never do it without, first, water! Then
his eye fell on a small round brown object lying near by on the sand.
He walked stiffly over to it and snuffed it. That thing was what his
men drank water out of! It smelt of the young master, too! Scotty had
forgotten his canteen during the butchering of that antelope and left
it behind, but all Blaze knew about it was that the thing smelt of him
and held water. He rolled it over with his paw. An enticing splash came
from inside. Instantly all that pent-up thirst torture burst out of him
in a frantic effort to get at the water inside. He took the canvas
case in his teeth and worried and shook it savagely. Of no avail! The
cork held tight, and the thing dropped on the sand, the water inside
tinkling maddeningly. Blaze stopped a moment to consider. This thing
was something like a bone, really! It _had_ a bone, of a kind, its
spout, sticking out one side. He lay down, with his paws on the body of
the canteen, and then began to chew and gnaw fiercely at the cork and
tin of the nozzle.
An Airedale’s jaws are the most formidable part of him. Those inch-long
tushes can give a frightful slash, and with them two of the big
60-pound western Airedales can pull down a mountain lion between them.
Blaze’s teeth closed on that canteen nozzle like crushing paper. The
metal gave; the cork squeezed. A savage pull on it, a shake that
would take the ear off another dog, wrenched it loose and broke away
the solder in its joint. A thin stream of water began to trickle out
through this crack as the canteen lay on the sand--and under it ran a
long red tongue, curved like a spoon, lapping up greedily every drop as
it flowed out!
After that Blaze felt better. He lay down awhile. The matted cake of
dried blood and hair around the arrow kept any flow from starting
again, even with fresh water making new blood in his veins. It was
getting cooler now. A huge circle of shadow began rapidly to creep out
from the west toward the center of the crater. The coyote had moved
down a hundred yards nearer. Another was singing his shrill song up on
the rim, and working around stealthily to join the first one in the gap.
Blaze got up, growling. He was very stiff and could only move those
shoulders by enduring intense pain, but immediate attack was his best
defense now, and he knew it. Steadily he climbed up the gap through the
river of desert vegetation that flowed down its slope. The coyote was
waiting for him, silent, crouched for a spring. His green oblique eyes
glared at Blaze menacingly, as he drew near--his teeth were bared in a
wicked snarl.
Blaze increased his speed, heading straight for him, snarling savagely.
The coyote was a little larger than he, but Blaze and Ruler had tackled
the great timber wolf together, and he was not in the least afraid of
him! At ten paces off he suddenly let out a volley of ferocious terrier
barks, vengeful with the fury of the lion, terrifying to the creature
attacked. Then he charged.
That coyote did not wait! That savage attack, even by a wounded dog,
was too much for his cowardly nature! There was a squeal, a yelp, a
bawl of pain as Blaze’s fangs laid open his shoulder to the bone--and
then a gray streak vanished through the creosotes so fast that nothing
but a greyhound could have overtaken him!
Blaze loped on, grim, dogged, determined. The sun was setting now, and
travel would be more endurable. Scotty’s canteen had given him new
life. He was going to win through to camp if he had to bring in every
coyote in the desert after him! The trail wound down around the flanks
of the crater and brought him back to the sands again. From there it
went on, mile after mile, while a grand and beetling mountain range
loomed up nearer and nearer.
Blaze felt himself growing weaker again. The sand had given way to the
most awful of broken black lava under foot, rough and sharp beyond
description. The horses had picked their way over it with difficulty;
to the weak and wounded dog it was a purgatory of toil and it took
every last ounce of strength out of him.
Darkness fell. Blaze could see fairly well in the dark, and he needed
to, here! Thorny ocatillas, devilish choyas and stunted bisangas that
were balls of sharp thorns outside, had to be seen and avoided if
he would save his eyes. Twice he lay down and gave it all up. Only
the steadily freshening scent of the white mustang’s tracks gave him
courage to rise again and keep on.
Then great walls of ragged black rock loomed up, dark and forbidding,
ahead in the gloom. It seemed the end of all things to Blaze. What in
all the world was he coming to! He stopped, shivering all over with the
sharp cold of the desert night. His wound ached unbearably. He lay down
puzzled, wearied at the mere sight of this hideous black rocky mass
ahead. It was perhaps the tenth time since leaving the crater that he
had done so. Blaze groaned and gave up the pursuit of Master in a final
disconsolate howl.
But this time the barking challenge of _another dog_ answered, sounding
faintly in his ears!
Blaze raised his head. Ruler! He knew the hound’s voice well! He got
up, yelped a hoarse, throaty cry and crawled on. Ruler’s challenge grew
more and more menacing and then there came the sound of men’s voices.
And then Master’s voice, ringing out, stern and vibrant: “Halt, thar!
Is that you, Sid?” it asked.
Blaze gave a joyful little moan and crawled feebly into camp, licking
humbly at Big John’s boots. Ruler, puzzled, snuffed over him, after
trying an abortive attempt at a romp. Then the water-hunger became
too strong for Blaze to endure longer and he crept on to where a tank
glimmered under the stars, a rock-bound pool in the lava, and there he
drank and drank and drank until his dry tongue could lap up no more.
* * * * *
“Stand back, fellers! Fotch hyar a light. No, Sid!--and somethin’s
happened to Blazie boy,” called out Big John’s voice in the dark.
Niltci stirred up the camp fire, and presently Scotty came out of the
boys’ green wall tent bearing a candle lantern.
“Well, I’ll be plumb teetotally _hornswoggled_!” roared Big John, as
the light fell on the back of the drinking Blaze. “Shore, he’s all
bloody! An’ he’s got a stick through his neck-- Come hyar, Niltci! We
gotto see about this! Sid’s shore got hisself into trouble--dern his
pesky hide!”
Niltci made his peculiar exclamatory noise and sprang over to where
Blaze still lay drinking.
“Arrow!” he pronounced after a moment’s inspection.
“Well, I’ll be durned!” grunted Big John. “Shore of it, Injun?” he
questioned incredulously.
Niltci nodded. Then, stooping and holding Blaze’s muzzle with his
fingers, he gave a quick yank which drew out the shaft. Blaze groaned
through his set teeth. His blood came in a stream and they were busy
for a short time getting a bandage on it. Then the Indian picked up the
arrow and examined it more closely.
“Apache!” he declared.
“No!” roared Big John. “_Cayn’t_ be, Niltci! They ain’t an Apache
between hyar and the White River country. I’m a gosh-durned fool, I am,
an’ proud of it--I’ve lost one of them ornery boys, an’ some one has
shot my dawg--but ye cayn’t hand me that Apache stuff, nohow!”
“Apache!” reiterated Niltci, with more emphasis. He pointed to the
blood grooves on the shaft in confirmation. All tribes make them in
their own peculiar spiral lines.
“What in the world’s happened to Sid, then, John?” queried Scotty, his
awed, scared face appearing in the circle of light.
“Search me, hombre!” grunted Big John. “You Blaze, ef you could only
talk, now! But fellers, we gotto set down a-piece and figger this
all out the best we kin. Sid ain’t back, but Blaze is; and with an
arrer into him. What does it all mean? I _told_ you I was a fool!” he
vociferated.
“Ruler’s the answer, John,” said Scotty, as they all went back to the
camp fire carrying Blaze between them. “We’ll put him on the back trail
right off and then we’ll know something.”
“Good haid, li’l man!” agreed Big John. “I’d do it, to-night, only we
jist cayn’t work them hosses over that lava in the dark.”
“Well, _I’m_ going to, now!--on foot, too!” said Scotty truculently,
his Scotch dander rising. “It’s only about three miles back to the
crater where we shot the antelope and I left my canteen. We’ll walk.
Suppose Sid followed our trail there and got ambushed by some wandering
Yaquis? You know how they hate the Mexicans. All whites look alike to
them.”
“Apache!” grunted Niltci stolidly.
“All right; Apache, then!” conceded Scotty. “Sid’s in trouble with
Indians somehow, and Blaze managed to get away and get here, with that
arrow in him. Niltci can stay here and look after him and the horses.
As for me, I can’t get back any too quick!” declared Scotty, with the
vibrant sympathy of youth in his tones. “Here, Ruler!”
“Hol’ on thar, Scotty! Yore fixin’ to miss three bull’s-eyes in a
row, thar, son. Of co’se I’m goin’, ef you are; so we’ll sorter git
organized, fust. Whar’s that rucksack? We-all mought be gone three
days, an’ Sid he’ll mebbe want medicines an’ bandages. By rights I
ought to take Niltci and leave you hyar, Scotty, seein’ as this is
Injun doin’s.”
But Scotty was obdurate. Start he would, that night, and, as some one
had to stay with Blaze and the horses, he insisted on it being Niltci.
That didn’t suit Big John, for in a raw iron land like this the Indian
boy was worth a dozen Scottys to him. The row gathered way, but you
might as well argue with one of the lava boulders around Papago Tanks
as try to convince a Scotchman!
“Wall, s’pose you and Niltci do this-yer pasear, then? An’ I’ll stay,”
said Big John, testily, by way of settling it. “Mind you don’t go
further’n that crater, though, an’ then come back an’ report.”
There being no further objections, Niltci and Scotty soon set off into
the night, leading Ruler on a slip leash. Overhead swung the brilliant
stars of an Arizona night, a glory of soft light in which crater cones,
rugged lava pressure ridges and stunted saguarros sticking up out of
the rocks showed dimly. Behind them the grand range of Pinacate rose
gloomy and majestic, the eternal cloud of sulphur vapor around its
summit blotting out a whole section of the star canopy to the south.
Niltci led on noiselessly, picking his way by eyesight that was as
good as a cat’s in the dark. They passed white smoke trees, ghostly as
clouds, in the darkness, growing in company with white brittle bushes
out of dry crannies in the lava that could hardly support a cactus.
An hour later they were toiling up the steeps of the crater once more.
So far, not even a whine of discovery had come from Ruler. Big John had
given them the hobbles of Sid’s pinto, to show the scent to the dog
when the right time came to try to make him understand what was wanted.
But Niltci himself knew the pinto’s tracks by some obscure difference
in the hoof-mark, and he assured Scotty that so far not a sign of Sid’s
horse had they come upon.
“He may have come down into the crater from the other gap, though,”
objected Scotty; “we’ll go down and get my canteen, anyhow.”
They climbed down into the vast coliseum of the crater. It was dark
as a well down there, and Niltci crept along on all fours, following
the pony tracks. He pointed out Blaze’s paw prints as they went. The
dog had been here, too, following their party of the afternoon. After
a time Scotty gave a yelp of discovery and pounced on a round brown
object lying on the sand.
“Here’s my canteen, anyhow!” he crowed. “I left it here after we
butchered the antelope.”
Then a cry of surprise came from him as he stopped dead and held out
the canteen to Niltci to examine. It was empty of water and the crooked
angle of the spout showed that it had been cracked open. “It was more
than half full this afternoon, I’m sure of that!” insisted Scotty,
excitedly. “Some one’s been here beside us--but why did he not uncork
it, then?”
Niltci looked it over keenly.
“Dog! Blaze do it. Him chew canteen. Him have come a long way,” was his
verdict.
He showed Scotty the dog’s tooth-marks and then replaced the canteen
where Scotty had picked it up. There the whole story written in the
sand was clear. Here Blaze, wild with thirst, had lain down with the
canteen under his paws and chewed at it until he had worried the spout
solder loose.
“Dog heap thirsty! Got arrow back in mountains, me think,” declared
Niltci.
“Back in the Pass? You’re right! That’s about five miles from here. I’m
game to walk it and find out something. First, though, Niltci, we’ll
climb up the other gap and trace Blaze out of it. He didn’t come out by
the east gap, that’s sure. Sid may have been hunting in some crater to
the east of us.”
They started up that long slope down which flowed the river of desert
vegetation. Their own tracks of the afternoon were here, and Blaze’s,
too. The certainty that he had simply followed them out that way and
then turned to the south became stronger as they climbed up. It was
settled as sure at the summit of the gap, where Blaze’s paw prints
showed that he had made the turn around the crater just as they had.
Scotty and Niltci stood side by side, holding in Ruler who was whining
eagerly now, crazy to go chasing the coyotes which were howling in the
desert all around them. The blood-and-scent story of that one which
Blaze had routed when he had attempted to bar his path had excited
Ruler, and he had got into his doggy mind the idea that coyote was
to be the night’s game. Otherwise this whole proceeding was still a
mystery to him!
Around them under the stars brooded a black and silent land, dead as
the surface of the moon, the wide, flat and parched plain of the lava
fields stretching away for fifteen miles to the east. Near by rose the
jagged edges of the Rainbow Range, ragged saw-teeth which would be red
and purple in the daytime. Now that range was barely distinguishable
under the faint light of the stars.
But, as they looked, suddenly a tiny point of fire shot up on the far
horizon to the east. It was high enough among the lower stars to surely
be on a mountain or crater of some sort, yet so tiny and far away as to
be almost indistinguishable in the desert haze.
“There’s Sid!” shouted Scotty triumphantly, gripping Niltci’s
buckskin-clad arm. “Now, how in the dickens did he ever get way over
there? And if so, why did not Blaze come in by _this_ gap?”
Niltci stared at the flickering point of light for some time without
replying. At times it died down to a mere red coal, so small as to be
lost to eyesight entirely. Again it would flare up and appear quite
strong.
“Mexicanos!” declared the Navaho boy at length.
“Mexicans!” echoed Scotty amazedly. “Why, that’s Sid’s camp fire,
Niltci. Isn’t it?”
“No. Fire, he was be on Cerro Colorado. Master Sidney, him no have go
_there_!” answered Niltci.
In a flash Scotty saw that he was right. For no conceivable reason
could Sid have gone that far distance to climb Cerro Colorado again.
No; he had gotten into some sort of adventure with some wandering
Indians back near the Hornaday Mountains, that was sure. Blaze’s tracks
all argued that. The dog had got away, wounded, and had followed their
own tracks to camp, step by step.
Meanwhile, what of this Mexican camp fire on Cerro Colorado? It could
only mean one thing: Vasquez had taken the train to Nogales in Mexico;
had assembled a band of guerrillas; and they had ridden west by Sonoyta
and Santo Domingo along the Sonoyta River, and now had climbed Cerro
Colorado--for the same reason that Scotty and Sid had--to find Red Mesa!
And they had been disappointed. What would their next move now be?
Scotty quivered with excitement all over as a possible solution of that
question now came to him. Suppose the Mexicans were to push straight
across this lava field for Papago Tanks! It was only fifteen miles in
an air line. Bad going across the lava, but the Hornaday party had done
it, and these Mexican riders could get across in just three hours after
daylight!
Vasquez was not the man to give up a mine like Red Mesa without
scouring this country for it, and Papago Tanks would be his natural
base for such an expedition, Scotty argued to himself. These guerrillas
would be upon them, then, by noon to-morrow! And meanwhile they
themselves were now on the wrong side of the border. It was a case of
get out, and get out quick! But where to? One thing was certain: Sid
was back somewhere near the Pass. Their whole party must “roll their
freight,” as Big John would say, back there early next day, and leave
no tracks behind them at Papago Tanks.
Tracks! They had left a million of them, written plain in the sands,
and there would be no rain to wash them out for a whole season yet. The
more Scotty thought it over the more certain he was that F-I-G-H-T! was
sure to be the outcome of all this!
“We’ll get back to camp, right sudden pronto, Niltci!” he cried.
“Mexicans is right. That’s Vasquez and Company, you bet! Le’s go!”