The Desert Supreme
Considerably to his surprise Howard found absolutely no trace of
Courtot in Quigley. He inquired at the pool room, at the restaurant,
at the stable. No one had seen the gambler for several months. It
struck the cattleman as strange that a man should have ridden out of
Las Palmas, taking the Quigley trail, and not have come to Quigley.
Where else could a man go? On the west lay the desert, on the east the
Lava Mountains and beyond the desert again, and it was a far call to
any settlement or habitation. Even the sheepmen did not come up this
way; only the Quigley mines brought men here, and yet Courtot had not
come to Quigley.
'He turned out somewhere,' mused Howard, 'the Lord knows what for or
where. But it's his business, and I'm going home.'
He gave his horse an hour in the stable while he himself made ready for
his short cut across the Bad Lands. The preparations were simple; at
the store he bought a small pack of provisions, enough to last him
three or four days at a pinch and in case of accidents; he filled his
canteen; he spent half an hour with the grizzled old storekeeper, who
in his time had been a prospector and who knew the country hereabouts
as only an old prospector could know it. On a bit of wrapping-paper
the old fellow sketched a trail map that indicated the start through
the Pass, the general direction and the chief landmarks, the
approximate mileage and--here he was very exact and accompanied his
sketch with full verbal instructions--the few water-holes.
'You can make it all right, Al,' he said when Howard slipped the paper
into his vest pocket. 'It's no trick for a man like you. But I
wouldn't send a tenderfoot in there, not unless I wanted to make him
over into a dead tenderfoot. And, mind you, every year some of them
water-holes dries up; the only ones you can count on for sure are the
ones I've marked with a double ring that way. So long.'
'So long,' said Alan, and went for his horse.
The forenoon was well advanced when he rode into the mouth of the
narrow pass which gives access, above the mines, into the Lava
Mountains and through them into the Bad Lands. In twenty minutes he
had entered a country entirely new to him. He looked about him with
interested eyes. Never, he thought as he pushed forward, had he known
until now the look of utter desolation. The mountain flanks were
strewn with black blocks and boulders of broken lava and were already
incredibly hot; underfoot was parched earth upon which it seemed that
not even the hardiest of desert grasses cared to grow; yonder the Bad
Lands stretched endlessly before him, blistering mounds of rock,
wind-drifted stretches of burning sand, dry gulches and gorges which
one's wildest imagining could not fill with rushing waters. Here and
there were growing things, but they were grey with desert dust and
looked dead, greasewood dwarfed and wind-twisted, iron-fanged cacti
snarling at the clear hot sky and casting no more shade than lean poles.
'A man won't find his trail all cluttered up with folks in here,'
thought Howard. 'Wonder who was the last man to poke his fool nose
into this bake-oven. Whew, it's hot.'
Hotter it grew and drier and, though such a thing had not seemed
possible, altogether more repellent and hostile to life. He climbed a
ridge to get his bearings and to locate in the grey distance the black
peak which the storekeeper had indicated on his map as the first
landmark and steering-point. He found it readily enough, a dozen miles
off to the south-west, and jogged down the gentle slope toward it, his
hat drawn low to shield his burning eyes. Within an hour the
impression obtruded itself upon his fancies that about him the world
was dead. He did not see a jack-rabbit or a slinking coyote or a bird;
not even a buzzard, that all but ubiquitous, heat-defying bundle of dry
feathers and bones, hung in the sky. Why should a rabbit come hither
where there was no herbage? Why a coyote when his prey shunned these
wastes? Why even the winged scavenger when all animal life fled the
Bad Lands? The man's spirit was oppressed and drooped under the
weariness of the weary land.
It was a tedious day, and more than once he regretted that he had taken
this trail; for it seemed likely, as is so often the case, that the
long way round was the short way home. But he was in for it, and
plugged ahead, longing for the cool of evening. About noon he found
the first water-hole and, what was more, found water in it. It was
ugly, hot stuff, but his horse trotted to it with ears pricked forward
and nostrils a-twitch and drank long and thirstily. Thereafter, though
they came to other spots where there should be water, they found none
until after sunset. Howard drew off the saddle, gave his horse a
handful of barley and staked it out close to the spring. Then he made
his own dinner, had his smoke and threw himself down for a couple of
hours' rest and dozing. It was his intention to travel on in the night
to the next spring, which was some ten miles farther on and which,
because of its location in the centre of a cluster of hills already
clear against the skyline, he was sure he could not miss. It was one
of the map's double-ringed water-holes.
His horse finished its drink and its barley. He heard it shake itself
as a horse does after its sweaty work is done. Without turning his
head he knew where it was going to lie down for a roll. Now he did
turn a little, seeing through the coming dimness of night the four legs
waving in air as the beast struggled to turn over on its back. It was
a new horse, one he had purchased some weeks ago with a number of
others and had not ridden until now; he recalled how, when a boy, he
had shared other youngsters' superstition in connexion with a horse
rolling. If it went clean over, it was worth a hundred dollars, if it
rolled back, another hundred, and so on.
But this animal did not complete the one effort. Howard heard its
sudden terrified snort, saw it scramble wildly to its feet and go
plunging off to the end of its tether, knew that even the strong rope
had broken and the horse was running wild. And as the man jumped to
his feet he knew why. For before the snort of fear he had heard
another sound, one indescribable to him who has not heard it and
unforgettable and on the instant recognizable to him who has; that
quiet noise resembling as much as anything else the harsh rustling of
dead, bone-dry leaves. As he ran forward, Howard prayed in his heart
that the snake's fangs had not met in horseflesh.
Because the light was not all gone and he knew just where to look, he
saw the rattler slipping away across the sand. He thrust his gun down
as close as he dared and with the first shot blew the sinister, flat
head off the ugly thick body. Then he went forward, calling soothingly
to his horse.
Had it been any one of the horses he rode customarily, his voice might
have carried something of quiet to startled nerves. But as it was the
horse was frightened, it was free, it was running and the broken end of
the tie-rope, whipping at its heels, put fresh terror into it. Howard
saw it dimly as it crested a ridge a few hundred yards off; then its
vague shape was gone, swallowed up in the night. He hurried after it
over the ridge. The stars showed him empty spaces of billowy sand;
there were black spots marking hollows and nowhere his horse. But yet
he went forward hopefully or at least striving to retain his hope. He
had little liking for the plight that would be his were he set afoot
here in the heart of the Bad Lands. But at the end of upwards of an
hour of fruitless search he went back to the water-hole and his traps,
seeing the folly of further seeking now. He would have to camp here
until daybreak. Tomorrow he might find his horse and might or might
not recapture it; to-morrow he might see the poor beast lying dead and
horribly swollen; to-morrow he might find in the empty desert nothing
but emptiness. For to-night there was nothing better to do than make
his bed and go to sleep under the stars and thank God for food and
water.
At the first pale glint of the new day he was astir. With sleep still
heavy in his eyes he hurried back to the ridge over which his horse had
gone. As he was pretty well prepared to expect, there was no horse in
sight. He waited for the light to brighten, probing with eager eyes
into the distances. Swiftly the sky filled to the coming day; the
shadows withdrew from the hollows, the earth stood forth, naked and
clearly revealed. Save for himself, feeling dwarfed in this immensity,
there was no living thing within the scope of his vision. He shook his
head and turned back to camp and breakfast, frowning grimly. He would
have to walk out of this mess, and like any twelve cattlemen out of a
dozen he had little love of walking.
While he ate his morning meal he turned matters over in his mind. He
saw that he could look forward confidently to a couple of unpleasant
days. He did not anticipate any difficulty beyond that of the
irksomeness of being obliged to trudge something like fifty miles in
the sun. He knew that he would waste no end of time trying to track
the vanished horse across such a land as this; he saw only
foolhardiness in leaving the trail he had had picked out for him and,
with little food and no knowledge of water, turning out across an
utterly unknown land of forbidding desolation. He judged roughly that
Desert Valley was as near as Quigley. Hence, having filled his canteen
and tied his provisions into a bundle, he slung the two over his
shoulders, left his saddle where it was and turned his face toward the
home range.
Despite his determination to get an ugly task over and done with, he
was a full four hours making the first ten miles. He walked as swiftly
as he might to take the full advantage of the lesser heat of the
earlier hours, but his way led him through loose sand, down into cuts
and gorges, up their steep sides, across fields of loose stones, which,
shifting underfoot, made his striving for haste a pure work of
Tantalus. At the end of the first hour the heat was already intense;
at the end of the second he felt that his skin was as dry as the desert
sands and that the moisture of his body was being sucked out of it by
the thirsty air and that at every stride the day grew drier and hotter.
Thirst clutched his throat, ached throughout his body, that thirst
which is like no other, desert thirst. Again and again he drank from
his canteen. When he ploughed up the slope of the little hills and
then down into their hollow to the double-ringed spring, his canteen
was half empty. And when at last he came to the spring itself he found
it as dry as a last year's seedpod.
Until this instant the day's adventure had been merely the acme of
unpleasantness. Now something more sinister entered into it. He made
certain that he had found the place where the water-hole should be.
Then he sat down. His eyes were very grave.
'If I don't play this hand right,' he told himself solemnly, 'I'll
never get out of this.'
He found a few breast-high bushes and crawled into their thin shade and
lay down; before him he spread out the Quigley storekeeper's map. This
he studied with thoughtful eyes. The storekeeper had said it would be
no trick at all for a man like Howard to make the trip, but he had
meant Howard on horseback. On foot it became quite another matter.
The next spot where he should find water was some twenty miles ahead of
him; at the rate he had travelled this morning it would take him some
eight hours to come to it. Further, at the rate he had drank from his
canteen this morning, that canteen would be empty when he had gone half
the distance. Clearly, he must drink less water, just half what he had
drank during the last four hours. Clearly also, it would grow hotter
and he would want more instead of less water. Clearly again--and here
was the point of points--when he came to the twenty-mile-distant
water-hole, it too might be dry. And, after that, there was not
another spring for another twelve or fifteen miles. Yes, many things
were clear.
He sat up and rolled a cigarette; he sat still while he smoked it.
Here was plainly a time for cool thinking; he would take all of the
time that he needed to be sure that he had decided correctly. For
later there might be no minute to squander. At present he had both
food and water. At present he could go on or turn back. There was
water where he had left his saddle; he could count on that positively
and could get to it before he had emptied his canteen. But, if instead
he went forward, there could be no turning back. He studied his map
again. So far as he could make out from it, it was as well to go on as
to retreat. So, putting his paper into his pocket he took up his food
and water, made certain of his bearings and went on. It was a gamble,
but a gamble his life had always been, and a fair gamble, an even
break, is all that men like Alan Howard ask. He realized with a full
measure of grimness that never until now had he placed a wager like
this one; he was betting heavily and he knew not against what odds that
at the end of twenty miles he would find water.
Hour after hour he trudged on. His feet burned; they ached; his boots
made blisters and the blisters broke. Always he was thirsty with a
thirst which his whole supply of water could not have slacked and which
grew steadily more acute. Now and then he paused briefly and drank
sparingly. His bundle of food, small as it was, grew heavy; his feet
were heavy; only his canteen seemed to him lighter and lighter. A hot
wind rose, blowing direct into his face, flinging at him fine particles
of burning sand that sifted through his clothing and got into his
boots, torturing further his tortured feet; the wind seared his
eyeballs and threatened to blind him. He lifted his head, selected a
distant landmark, sought to shelter his eyes with the broad brim of his
hat and went on.
Noon found him plunging down the steep bank of a dry gulch, a hideous
gash in the breast of the hideous land. He found a spot where there
was a little shade under a clump of bushes growing upon the bank's
edge. He ate a little of his dried beef; he treated himself to half a
dozen big, slow swallows of water; then he lay and rested for half an
hour. Again he rose; he moistened his mouth and lips, shut his teeth
hard together as he took the first step upon swollen feet; again he
wandered monotonously through a monotonous land. There was no wind now
save, infrequently, frolicsome little whirlwinds which danced about him
and were gone. When he found that their play angered him, that they
seemed to mock at his weariness and dying energies, he frowned. This
was no time and here was no place for nerves.
In the late afternoon, after having laboured all day through a hell of
tedium and distress, he came to the water-hole. He marked it from afar
by its dusty willows; he wondered if this time he would find water. It
struck him that he must. He began to walk faster; he curbed a heady
desire to break into a run. As it was, he came slowly, steadily to the
spot. And there was no water. He would not believe it. He walked
along the line of willows, looking carefully everywhere. And not until
he had looked everywhere did he give up. Oddly, his compelling want at
the moment was less for a drink than for a smoke. He began rolling a
cigarette. Half-way through the brief task he desisted, returning the
thimbleful of tobacco to its sack. For the hot smoke would merely dry
out further his already dry mouth.
He lay down in what shade he could find and estimated very carefully
the amount of water in his canteen. He weighed the vessel in his hand;
he unscrewed the top and held it so as to look into it.
'I've got about three cupfuls,' he told himself.
Again he studied his map. Again he ate sparingly and thereafter took a
sip of water. He screwed the top on quickly and tightly, jealous even
of a drop which might evaporate in this sponge-air. He stood up,
knowing that he must not loiter. For each second his thirst would
increase as the arid air took the moisture forth through the pores of
his body. Before he had moved a step forward he saw a man coming
toward him. He laughed outright, a laugh of suddenly relieved nerves
which had been very tense. That man would have water and would know
where other water was to be found.
The man came neither from the direction of Quigley nor yet of Desert
Valley. Rather he was coming in from the north, would cut Howard's
trail almost at right angles. He was on foot. Howard wondered at
that. Further, the man had a strange way of walking. He was half
naked and about his head a dark cloth was tied. He trotted a few
steps, seemed to hesitate and balance, he came on head down. Something
seemed to get in the way of his feet; he stumbled, caught himself,
stumbled a second time and fell on his face. He got to his hands and
knees, slowly rose to his feet and came on, walking crazily. Then
Howard understood. The man was an Indian or a half-breed and he was
dying of thirst.