mounted so quickly. He sent Silvermane into the willow-skirted trail
close behind the dog, up on the rocky bench, and then under the bulging
wall. Wolf reached the level between the canyon and Echo Cliffs, and
then started straight west toward the Painted Desert. He trotted a few
rods and turned to see if the man was coming.
Doubt, fear, uncertainty ceased for Hare. With the first blast of dust-
scented air in his face he knew Wolf was leading him to Mescal. He knew
that the cry he had heard in his dream was hers, that the old mysterious
promise of the desert had at last begun its fulfilment. He gave one
sharp exultant answer to that call. The horizon, ever-widening, lay
before him, and the treeless plains, the sun-scorched slopes, the sandy
stretches, the massed blocks of black mesas, all seemed to welcome him;
his soul sang within him.
For Mescal was there. Far away she must be, a mere grain of sand in all
that world of drifting sands, perhaps ill, perhaps hurt, but alive,
waiting for him, calling for him, crying out with a voice that no
distance could silence. He did not see the sharp peaks as pitiless
barriers, nor the mesas and domes as black-faced death, nor the
moisture-drinking sands as life-sucking foes to plant and beast and man.
That painted wonderland had sheltered Mescal for a year. He had loved it
for its color, its change, its secrecy; he loved it now because it had
not been a grave for Mescal, but a home. Therefore he laughed at the
deceiving yellow distances in the foreground of glistening mesas, at the
deceiving purple distances of the far-off horizon. The wind blew a song
in his ears; the dry desert odors were fragrance in his nostrils; the
sand tasted sweet between his teeth, and the quivering heat-waves,
veiling the desert in transparent haze, framed beautiful pictures for
his eyes.
Wolf kept to the fore for some thirty paces, and though he had ceased to
stop, he still looked back to see if the horse and man were following.
Hare had noted the dog occasionally in the first hours of travel, but he
had given his eyes mostly to the broken line of sky and desert in the
west, to the receding contour of Echo Cliffs, to the spread and break of
the desert near at hand. Here and there life showed itself in a gaunt
coyote sneaking into the cactus, or a horned toad huddling down in the
dust, or a jewel-eyed lizard sunning himself upon a stone. It was only
when his excited fancy had cooled that Hare came to look closely at
Wolf. But for the dog's color he could not have been distinguished from
a real wolf. His head and ears and tail drooped, and he was lame in his
right front paw.
Hare halted in the shade of a stone, dismounted and called the dog to
him. Wolf returned without quickness, without eagerness, without any of
the old-time friendliness of shepherding days. His eyes were sad and
strange. Hare felt a sudden foreboding, but rejected it with passionate
force. Yet a chill remained. Lifting Wolf's paw he discovered that the
ball of the foot was worn through; whereupon he called into service a
piece of buckskin, and fashioning a rude moccasin he tied it round the
foot. Wolf licked his hand, but there was no change in the sad light of
his eyes. He turned toward the west as if anxious to be off.
“All right, old fellow,” said Hare, “only go slow. From the look of that
foot I think you've turned back on a long trail.”
Again they faced the west, dog leading, man following, and addressed
themselves to a gradual ascent. When it had been surmounted Hare
realized that his ride so far had brought him only through an anteroom;
the real portal now stood open to the Painted Desert. The immensity of
the thing seemed to reach up to him with a thousand lines, ridges,
canyons, all ascending out of a purple gulf. The arms of the desert
enveloped him, a chill beneath their warmth.
As he descended into the valley, keeping close to Wolf, he marked a
straight course in line with a volcanic spur. He was surprised when the
dog, though continually threading jumbles of rock, heading canyons,
crossing deep washes, and going round obstructions, always veered back
to this bearing as true as a compass-needle to its magnet.
Hare felt the air growing warmer and closer as he continued the descent.
By mid-afternoon, when he had travelled perhaps thirty miles, he was
moist from head to foot, and Silvermane's coat was wet. Looking backward
Hare had a blank feeling of loss; the sweeping line of Echo Cliffs had
retreated behind the horizon. There was no familiar landmark left.
Sunset brought him to a standstill, as much from its sudden glorious
gathering of brilliant crimsons splashed with gold, as from its warning
that the day was done. Hare made his camp beside a stone which would
serve as a wind-break. He laid his saddle for a pillow and his blanket
for a bed. He gave Silvermane a nose-bag full of water and then one of
grain; he fed the dog, and afterward attended to his own needs. When his
task was done the desert brightness had faded to gray; the warm air had
blown away on a cool breeze, and night approached. He scooped out a
little hollow in the sand for his hips, took a last look at Silvermane
haltered to the rock, and calling Wolf to his side stretched himself to
rest. He was used to lying on the ground, under the open sky, out where
the wind blew and the sand seeped in, yet all these were different on
this night. He was in the Painted Desert; Wolf crept close to him;
Mescal lay somewhere under the blue-white stars.
He awakened and arose before any color of dawn hinted of the day. While
he fed his four-footed companions the sky warmed and lightened. A tinge
of rose gathered in the east. The air was cool and transparent. He tried
to cheer Wolf out of his sad-eyed forlornness, and failed.
Hare vaulted into the saddle. The day had its possibilities, and while
he had sobered down from his first unthinking exuberance, there was
still a ring in his voice as he called to the dog:
“On, Wolf, on, old boy!”
Out of the east burst the sun, and the gray curtain was lifted by shafts
of pink and white and gold, flashing westward long trails of color.
When they started the actions of the dog showed Hare that Wolf was not
tracking a back-trail, but travelling by instinct. There were draws
which necessitated a search for a crossing, and areas of broken rock
which had to be rounded, and steep flat mesas rising in the path, and
strips of deep sand and canyons impassable for long distances. But the
dog always found a way and always came back to a line with the black
spur that Hare had marked. It still stood in sharp relief, no nearer
than before, receding with every step, an illusive landmark, which Hare
began to distrust.
Then quite suddenly it vanished in the ragged blue mass of the Ghost
Mountains. Hare had seen them several times, though never so distinctly.
The purple tips, the bold rock-ribs, the shadowed canyons, so sharp and
clear in the morning light--how impossible to believe that these were
only the deceit of the desert mirage! Yet so they were; even for the
Navajos they were spirit-mountains.
The splintered desert-floor merged into an area of sand. Wolf slowed his
trot, and Silvermane's hoofs sunk deep. Dismounting Hare labored beside
him, and felt the heat steal through his boots and burn the soles of his
feet. Hare plodded onward, stopping once to tie another moccasin on
Wolf's worn paw, this time the left one; and often he pulled the stopper
from the water-bag and cooled his parching lips and throat. The waves of
the sand-dunes were as the waves of the ocean. He did not look backward,
dreading to see what little progress he had made. Ahead were miles on
miles of graceful heaps, swelling mounds, crested ridges, all different,
yet regular and rhythmical, drift on drift, dune on dune, in endless
waves. Wisps of sand were whipped from their summits in white ribbons
and wreaths, and pale clouds of sand shrouded little hollows. The
morning breeze, rising out of the west, approached in a rippling lines
like the crest of an inflowing tide.
Silvermane snorted, lifted his ears and looked westward toward a yellow
pall which swooped up from the desert.
“Sand-storm,” said Hare, and calling Wolf he made for the nearest rock
that was large enough to shelter them. The whirling sand-cloud
mushroomed into an enormous desert covering, engulfing the dunes,
obscuring the light. The sunlight failed; the day turned to gloom. Then
an eddying fog of sand and dust enveloped Hare. His last glimpse before
he covered his face with a silk handkerchief was of sheets of sand
streaming past his shelter. The storm came with a low, soft, hissing
roar, like the sound in a sea-shell magnified. Breathing through the
handkerchief Hare avoided inhaling the sand which beat against his face,
but the finer dust particles filtered through and stifled him. At first
he felt that he would suffocate, and he coughed and gasped; but
presently, when the thicker sand-clouds had passed, he managed to get
air enough to breathe. Then he waited patiently while the steady seeping
rustle swept by, and the band of his hat sagged heavier, and the load on
his shoulders had to be continually shaken off, and the weighty trap
round his feet crept upward. When the light, fine touch ceased he
removed the covering from his face to see himself standing nearly to his
knees in sand, and Silvermane's back and the saddle burdened with it.
The storm was moving eastward, a dull red now with the sun faintly
showing through it like a ball of fire.
“Well, Wolf, old boy, how many storms like that will we have to
weather?” asked Hare, in a cheery tone which he had to force. He knew
these sand-storms were but vagaries of the desert-wind. Before the hour
closed he had to seek the cover of a stone and wait for another to pass.
Then he was caught in the open, with not a shelter in sight. He was
compelled to turn his back to a third storm, the worst of all, and to
bear as best he could the heavy impact of the first blow, and the
succeeding rush and flow of sand. After that his head drooped and he
wearily trudged beside Silvermane, dreading the interminable distance he
must cover before once more gaining hard ground. But he discovered that
it was useless to try to judge distance on the desert. What had appeared
miles at his last look turned out to be only rods.
It was good to get into the saddle again and face clear air. Far away
the black spur again loomed up, now surrounded by groups of mesas with
sage-slopes tinged with green. That surely meant the end of this long
trail; the faint spots of green lent suggestion of a desert waterhole;
there Mescal must be, hidden in some shady canyon. Hare built his hopes
anew.
So he pressed on down a plain of bare rock dotted by huge bowlders; and
out upon a level floor of scant sage and greasewood where a few living
creatures, a desert-hawk sailing low, lizards darting into holes, and a
swiftly running ground-bird, emphasized the lack of life in the waste.
He entered a zone of clay-dunes of violet and heliotrope hues; and then
a belt of lava and cactus. Reddish points studded the desert, and here
and there were meagre patches of white grass. Far away myriads of cactus
plants showed like a troop of distorted horsemen. As he went on the
grass failed, and streams of jagged lava flowed downward. Beds of
cinders told of the fury of a volcanic fire. Soon Hare had to dismount
to make moccasins for Wolf's hind feet; and to lead Silvermane carefully
over the cracked lava. For a while there were strips of ground bare of
lava and harboring only an occasional bunch of cactus, but soon every
foot free of the reddish iron bore a projecting mass of fierce spikes
and thorns. The huge barrel-shaped cacti, and thickets of slender dark-
green rods with bayonet points, and broad leaves with yellow spines,
drove Hare and his sore-footed fellow-travellers to the lava.
Hare thought there must be an end to it some time, yet it seemed as
though he were never to cross that black forbidding inferno. Blistered
by the heat, pierced by the thorns, lame from long toil on the lava, he
was sorely spent when once more he stepped out upon the bare desert. On
pitching camp he made the grievous discovery that the water-bag had
leaked or the water had evaporated, for there was only enough left for
one more day. He ministered to thirsty dog and horse in silence, his
mind revolving the grim fact of his situation.
His little fire of greasewood threw a wan circle into the surrounding
blackness. Not a sound hinted of life. He longed for even the bark of a
coyote. Silvermane stooped motionless with tired head. Wolf stretched
limply on the sand. Hare rolled into his blanket and stretched out with
slow aching relief.
He dreamed he was a boy roaming over the green hills of the old farm,
wading through dewy clover-fields, and fishing in the Connecticut River.
It was the long vacationtime, an endless freedom. Then he was at the
swimming-hole, and playmates tied his clothes in knots, and with shouts
of glee ran up the bank leaving him there to shiver.
When he awakened the blazing globe of the sun had arisen over the
eastern horizon, and the red of the desert swathed all the reach of
valley.
Hare pondered whether he should use his water at once or dole it out.
That ball of fire in the sky, a glazed circle, like iron at white heat,
decided for him. The sun would be hot and would evaporate such water as
leakage did not claim, and so he shared alike with Wolf, and gave the
rest to Silvermane.
For an hour the mocking lilac mountains hung in the air and then paled
in the intense light. The day was soundless and windless, and the heat-
waves rose from the desert like smoke. For Hare the realities were the
baked clay flats, where Silvermane broke through at every step; the beds
of alkali, which sent aloft clouds of powdered dust; the deep gullies
full of round bowlders; thickets of mesquite and prickly thorn which
tore at his legs; the weary detour to head the canyons; the climb to get
between two bridging mesas; and always the haunting presence of the sad-
eyed dog. His unrealities were the shimmering sheets of water in every
low place; the baseless mountains floating in the air; the green slopes
rising close at hand; beautiful buttes of dark blue riding the open
sand, like monstrous barks at sea; the changing outlines of desert
shapes in pink haze and veils of purple and white lustre--all illusions,
all mysterious tricks of the mirage.
In the heat of midday Hare yielded to its influence and reined in his
horse under a slate-bank where there was shade. His face was swollen and
peeling, and his lips had begun to dry and crack and taste of alkali.
Then Wolf pattered on; Silvermane kept at his heels; Hare dozed in the
saddle. His eyes burned in their sockets from the glare, and it was a
relief to shut out the barren reaches. So the afternoon waned.
Silvermane stumbled, jolting Hare out of his stupid lethargy. Before him
spread a great field of bowlders with not a slope or a ridge or a mesa
or an escarpment. Not even a tip of a spur rose in the background. He
rubbed his sore eyes. Was this another illusion?
When Silvermane started onward Hare thought of the Navajos' custom to
trust horse and dog in such an emergency. They were desert-bred; beyond
human understanding were their sight and scent. He was at the mercy now
of Wolf's instinct and Silvermane's endurance. Resignation brought him a
certain calmness of soul, cold as the touch of an icy hand on fevered
cheek. He remembered the desert secret in Mescal's eyes; he was about to
solve it. He remembered August Naab's words: “It's a man's deed!” If so,
he had achieved the spirit of it, if not the letter. He remembered
Eschtah's tribute to the wilderness of painted wastes: “There is the
grave of the Navajo, and no one knows the trail to the place of his
sleep!” He remembered the something evermore about to be, the unknown
always subtly calling; now it was revealed in the stone-fettering grip
of the desert. It had opened wide to him, bright with its face of
danger, beautiful with its painted windows, inscrutable with its
alluring call. Bidding him enter, it had closed behind him; now he
looked upon it in its iron order, its strange ruins racked by fire, its
inevitable remorselessness.
XV. DESERT NIGHT
THE gray stallion, finding the rein loose on his neck, trotted forward
and overtook the dog, and thereafter followed at his heels. With the
setting of the sun a slight breeze stirred, and freshened as twilight
fell, rolling away the sultry atmosphere. Then the black desert night
mantled the plain.
For a while this blackness soothed the pain of Hare's sun-blinded eyes.
It was a relief to have the unattainable horizon line blotted out. But
by-and-by the opaque gloom brought home to him, as the day had never
done, the reality of his solitude. He was alone in this immense place of
barrenness, and his dumb companions were the world to him. Wolf pattered
onward, a silent guide; and Silvermane followed, never lagging, sure-
footed in the dark, faithful to his master. All the love Hare had borne
the horse was as nothing to that which came to him on this desert night.
In and out, round and round, ever winding, ever zigzagging, Silvermane
hung close to Wolf, and the sandy lanes between the bowlders gave forth
no sound. Dog and horse, free to choose their trail, trotted onward
miles and miles into the night.
A pale light in the east turned to a glow, then to gold, and the round
disc of the moon silhouetted the black bowlders on the horizon. It
cleared the dotted line and rose, an oval orange-hued strange moon, not
mellow nor silvery nor gloriously brilliant as Hare had known it in the
past, but a vast dead-gold melancholy orb, rising sadly over the desert.
To Hare it was the crowning reminder of lifelessness; it fitted this
world of dull gleaming stones.
Silvermane went lame and slackened his trot, causing Hare to rein in and
dismount. He lifted the right forefoot, the one the horse had favored,
and found a stone imbedded tightly in the cloven hoof. He pried it out
with his knife and mounted again. Wolf shone faintly far ahead, and
presently he uttered a mournful cry which sent a chill to the rider's
heart. The silence had been oppressive before; now it was terrible. It
was not a silence of life. It had been broken suddenly by Wolf's howl,
and had closed sharply after it, without echo; it was a silence of
death.
Hare took care not to fall behind Wolf again, he had no wish to hear
that cry repeated. The dog moved onward with silent feet; the horse
wound after him with hoofs padded in the sand; the moon lifted and the
desert gleamed; the bowlders grew larger and the lanes wider. So the
night wore on, and Hare's eyelids grew heavy, and his whole weary body
cried out for rest and forgetfulness. He nodded until he swayed in the
saddle; then righted himself, only to doze again. The east gave birth to
the morning star. The whitening sky was the harbinger of day. Hare could
not bring himself to face the light and heat, and he stopped at a wind-
worn cave under a shelving rock. He was asleep when he rolled out on the
sand-strewn floor. Once he awoke and it was still day, for his eyes
quickly shut upon the glare. He lay sweltering till once more slumber
claimed him. The dog awakened him, with cold nose and low whine. Another
twilight had fallen. Hare crawled out, stiff and sore, hungry and
parching with thirst. He made an attempt to eat, but it was a failure.
There was a dry burning in his throat, a dizzy feeling in his brain, and
there were red flashes before his eyes. Wolf refused meat, and
Silvermane turned from the grain, and lowered his head to munch a few
blades of desert grass.
Then the journey began, and the night fell black. A cool wind blew from
the west, the white stars blinked, the weird moon rose with its ghastly
glow. Huge bowlders rose before him in grotesque shapes, tombs and
pillars and statues of Nature's dead, carved by wind and sand. But some
had life in Hare's disordered fancy. They loomed and towered over him,
and stalked abroad and peered at him with deep-set eyes.
Hare fought with all his force against this mood of gloom. Wolf was not
a phantom; he trotted forward with unerring instinct; and he would find
water, and that meant life. Silvermane, desert-steeled, would travel to
the furthermost corner of this hell of sand-swept stone. Hare tried to
collect all his spirit, all his energies, but the battle seemed to be
going against him. All about him was silence, breathless silence,
insupportable silence of ages. Desert spectres danced in the darkness.
The worn-out moon gleamed golden over the worn-out waste. Desolation
lurked under the sable shadows.
Hare rode on into the night, tumbled from his saddle in the gray of dawn
to sleep, and stumbled in the twilight to his drooping horse. His eyes
were blind now to the desert shapes, his brain burned and his tongue
filled his mouth. Silvermane trod ever upon Wolf's heels; he had come
into the kingdom of his desert-strength; he lifted his drooping head and
lengthened his stride; weariness had gone and he snorted his welcome to
something on the wind. Then he passed the limping dog and led the way.
Hare held to the pommel and bent dizzily forward in the saddle.
Silvermane was going down, step by step, with metallic clicks upon
flinty rock. Whether he went down or up was all the same to Hare; he
held on with closed eyes and whispered to himself. Down and down, step
by step, cracking the stones with iron-shod hoofs, the gray stallion
worked his perilous way, sure-footed as a mountain-sheep. Then he
stopped with a great slow heave and bent his head.
The black bulge of a canyon rim blurred in Hare's hot eyes. A trickling
sound penetrated his tired brain. His ears had grown like his eyes--
false. Only another delusion! As he had been tortured with the sight of
lake and stream now he was to be tortured with the sound of running
water. Yet he listened, for it was sweet even in its mockery. What a
clear musical tinkle, like silver bells tossing on the wind! He
listened. Soft murmuring flow, babble and gurgle, little hollow fall and
splash!
Suddenly Silvermane, lifting his head, broke the silence of the canyon
with a great sigh of content. It pierced the dull fantasy of Hare's
mind; it burst the gloomy spell. The sigh and the snort which followed
were Silvermane's triumphant signals when he had drunk his fill.
Hare fell from the saddle. The gray dog lay stretched low in the
darkness. Hare crawled beside him and reached out with his hot hands.
Smooth cool marble rock, growing slippery, then wet, led into running
water. He slid forward on his face and wonderful cold thrills quivered
over his burning skin. He drank and drank until he could drink no more.
Then he lay back upon the rock; the madness of his brain went out with
the light of the stars, and he slept.
When he awoke red canyon walls leaned far above him to a gap spanned by
blue sky. A song of rushing water murmured near his ears. He looked
down; a spring gushed from a crack in the wall; Silvermane cropped green
bushes, and Wolf sat on his haunches waiting, but no longer with sad
eyes and strange mien. Hare raised himself, looking again and again, and
slowly gathered his wits. The crimson blur had gone from his eyes and
the burning from his skin, and the painful swelling from his tongue.
He drank long and deeply, and rising with clearing thoughts and thankful
heart, he kissed Wolf's white head, and laid his arms round Silvermane's
neck. He fed them, and ate himself, not without difficulty, for his lips
were puffed and his tongue felt like a piece of rope. When he had eaten,
his strength came back.
At a word Wolf, with a wag of his tail, splashed into the gravelly
stream bed. Hare followed on foot, leading Silvermane. There were little
beds of pebbles and beaches of sand and short steps down which the water
babbled. The canyon was narrow and tortuous; Hare could not see ahead or
below, for the projecting red cliffs, growing higher as he descended,
walled out the view. The blue stream of sky above grew bluer and the
light and shade less bright. For an hour he went down steadily without a
check, and the farther down the rougher grew the way. Bowlders wedged in
narrow places made foaming waterfalls. Silvermane clicked down
confidently.