Produced by Dianne Bean. HTML version by Al Haines.
THE ROUND-UP
A Romance of Arizona
Novelized from Edmund Day's Melodrama
by
John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
Chapter
I. The Cactus Cross
II. The Heart of a Girl
III. A Woman's Loyalty
IV. The Hold-up
V. Hoover Bows to Hymen
VI. A Tangled Web
VII. Josephine Opens the Sluices
VIII. The Sky Pilot
IX. What God Hath Joined Together
X. The Piano
XI. Accusation and Confession
XII. The Land of Dead Things
XIII. The Atonement
XIV. The Round-up
XV. Peruna Pulls His Freight
XVI. Death of McKee, Disappointed Desperado
XVII. A New Deal
XVIII. Jack!
THE ROUND-UP
CHAPTER I
The Cactus Cross
Down an old trail in the Ghost Range in northwestern Mexico, just
across the Arizona border, a mounted prospector wound his way, his
horse carefully picking its steps among the broken granite blocks which
had tumbled upon the ancient path from the mountain wall above. A
burro followed, laden heavily with pack, bed-roll, pick, frying-pan,
and battered coffee-pot, yet stepping along sure-footedly as the
mountain-sheep that first formed the trail ages ago, and whose
petrified hoof-prints still remain to afford footing for the scarcely
larger hoofs of the pack-animal.
An awful stillness hung over the scene, that was broken only by the
click of hoofs of horse and burro upon the rocks, and the clatter of
the loose stones they dislodged that rolled and skipped down the side.
Not a breath of air was stirring, and the sun blazed down from the
zenith with such fierce and direct radiation that the wayfarer needed
not to observe the shadows to note its exact position in the heavens.
Singly among the broken blocks, and in banks along the ledges, the
cactus had burst under the heat, as it were, into the spontaneous
combustion of flowery flame. To the traveler passing beside them their
red blooms blazed with the irritating superfluity of a torch-light
procession at noonday.
The trail leads down to a flat ledge which overlooks the desert, and
which is the observatory whither countless generations of
mountain-sheep have been wont to resort to survey the strange world
beneath them--with what purpose and what feelings, it remains for some
imaginative writer of animal-stories to inform us. From the ledge to
the valley below the trail is free from obstructions, and broader, more
beaten, and less devious than above, indicating that it has been formed
by the generations of men toiling up from the valley to the natural
watch-tower on the heights. Reaching the ledge, the prospector found
that what seemed from the angle above to be an irregular pile of large
boulders was an artificial fortification, the highest wall being toward
the mountains. Entering the enclosure the prospector dismounted,
relieved his horse of its saddle and his burro of its pack, and
proceeded to prepare his midday meal. Looking for the best place where
he might light a fire, he observed, in the most protected corner, a
flat stone, marked by fire, and near it, in the rocky ground, a
pot-hole, evidently formed for grinding maize. The ashes of ancient
fires were scattered about, and in cleaning them off his new-found
hearth the man discovered a potsherd, apparently of a native olla or
water-jar, and a chipped fragment of flint, too small to indicate
whether it had formed part of an Indian arrowhead or had dropped from
an old flintlock musket.
"Lucky strike!" observed the prospector. "I was down to my last
match." And, gathering some mesquit brush for fuel, and rubbing a dead
branch into tinder, he drew out a knife and, rapidly and repeatedly
striking the back of its blade with the flint, produced a stream of
sparks, which fell on the tinder. Blowing the while, he started a
flame. When the fire was ready the man shook his canteen. "Precious
little drink left," he said. "I wish that potsherd carried water as
the flint-chip does fire. However, there's lots of cactus around here,
and they're natural water-jars. My knife may get me a drink out of the
desert's thorns, as well as kindle a fire from its stones. And right
here's my watermelon, the bisnaga, the first one I've found in months,"
he exclaimed, going over to the edge of the cliff, above the level of
which peered the fat head of a cactus covered with spines that were
barbed like a fish-hook. Its short tap-root was fixed in a crevice a
few feet below the parapet. Lying on the edge of the cliff, the man
sliced off the top of the cactus, and began jabbing into its interior,
breaking down the fibrous walls of the water-cells, of which the
top-heavy plant is almost entirely composed. In a few moments he arose.
"Now I can empty my canteen in the coffee-pot, sure of a fresh supply
of water by the time I am ready to mosey along."
He filled the pot, set it on the fire, and then pressed the uncorked
and empty canteen down into the macerated interior of the bisnaga.
While his coffee was boiling, the prospector continued his examination
of the fortification, beginning, in the manner of his kind, with the
more minute "signs," and ending with what, to a tourist, would have
been the first and only subject of observation--the view. On the inner
side of the large boulder in the wall he discerned, the faint outline
of a cross, painted with red ochre.
Scraping with his pick beneath the rock, to see if the emblem was the
sign of hidden treasure or relic, he unearthed a rattlesnake.
Before it could strike, with a quick fling of his tool he sent the
reptile whirling high in the air toward the precipice. But from the
clump of cactus growth along the parapet arose a sahuaro, with
branching arms, and against this the snake was flung. Wrapped around
the thorny top by the momentum of the cast, it hung, hissing and
rattling with pain and hatred.
The prospector looked up at the impaled rattlesnake with a smile.
Reminiscences of Sunday-school flashed across his mind.
"Gee, I'm a regular Moses," he ejaculated. "First I bring water from
the face of the rock, and then I lift up the serpent in the wilderness.
The year I've spent in the mountains and desert seem like forty to me,
and now, at last, I have a sight of the Promised Land. God, what a
magnificent view!"
Dropping his pick, he stretched out his arms with instinctive
symbolization of the wide prospect, and expression of an exile's
yearning for his native land.
"Over there is God's country, sure enough," he continued, giving the
trite phrase a reverential tone, which he had not used in his first
expression of the name of Deity. "Thank Him, the parallel with old
Moses stops right here. Many a time I thought I would never get out of
the mountains alive, and that my grave would be unmarked by so much as
a boulder with a red cross upon it. But now, before night, I'll be
back in the States, and in three more days at home on the ranch. I
promised to return in a year, and I'll make good to the hour. I sure
did hate to leave that strike, though, after all the hard luck I had
been having. Sixty dollars a day, and growing richer. But the last
horn was blowing. No tobacco, six matches, and nothing left of the
bacon but rinds. Well, the gold is there and the claim'll bring
whatever I choose to ask for it. And Echo shall have a home as good as
Allen Hacienda, and a ranch as fine as Bar One--yes, by God, it'll be
Bar None, my ranch!"
Out of the sea of molten air that stretched before him, that nebulous
chaos of quivering bars and belts of heated atmosphere which remains
above the desert as a memorial of the first stage of the entire
planet's existence, the imagination of the prospector created a
paradise of his own. There took shape before his eyes a Mexican
hacienda, larger and more beautiful even than that of Echo's father,
the beau-ideal of a home to his limited fancy. And on the piazza in
front, covered with flowering vines, there stood awaiting him the
slender figure of a woman, with outstretched arms and dark eyes, tender
with yearning love.
"Echo--Echo Allen!" he murmured, fondly repeating the name. "No, not
Echo Allen, but Echo Lane, for Dick Lane has redeemed his promise, and
returns to claim you as his own."
As he gazed upon the shimmering heat waves which distorted and
displaced the objects within and beneath them, a group of horsemen
suddenly appeared to him in the distance, and as suddenly vanished in
thin air.
"Rurales!" ejaculated Lane. "I wonder if they are chasing Apaches?
That infernal mirage gives you no idea of distance or direction. If
the red devils have got away from Crook and slipped by these Greaser
rangers over the border, they'll sure be making straight for the Ghost
Range, and by this very trail. If so, I'm at the best place on it to
meet them, and here I stay till the coast is clear." Turning to the
red cross on the rock, he reflected: "Perhaps, after all, it's a case
of 'Nebo's lonely mountain.'"
Lane had hardly reached this conclusion before he found it justified by
the sight of a mounted Apache in the regalia of war emerging from a
hidden dip in the trail below the fortification. Lane dropped behind
the parapet, evidently before he was observed, as the steadily
increasing number and loudness of the hoof-beats on the rocky trail
indicated to the listener.
Crawling back to his horse and burro, he made them lie down against the
upper wall, and picketed them with short lengths of rope to the ground,
for he foresaw that danger could come only from the mountainside.
Taking his Winchester, he returned to the parapet, and, half-seated,
half-reclining behind it, opened fire on the unsuspecting Apaches. The
leader, shot through the head, fell from his horse, which reared and
backed wildly down the trail. Other bullets must have found their
billets also, but, because of the confusion which ensued among the
Indians, the prospector was unable to tell how many of them he had put
out of action. In a flash every rider had leaped off his horse, and,
protecting himself by its body, was scrambling with his mount to the
protecting declivity in the rear. The prospector was sorely tempted to
pump his cartridges into the group as it poured back over the rim of
the hollow, but he desisted from the useless slaughter of horses alone,
knowing that he could be attacked only on foot, and that every one of
his slender store of cartridges must find a human mark if he would
return to the States alive. "They've got to put me out of business
before they can go on," he ruminated. "An Apache is a good deal of a
coward when he's fighting for pleasure, but just corner him, and, great
snakes and spittin' wildcats, what a game he does put up! I must save
my cartridges; for one thing's sure, they won't waste any of theirs.
They're not as good shots as white men, for ammunition is too scarce
with them for use in gun practise; so they won't fire till they've got
me dead to rights. Let me see; there's about a dozen left in the
party, and I have fifteen cartridges--that's three in reserve for my
own outfit, if some of the others fail to get their men. Those red
devils enjoy skinning an animal alive as much as torturing a man, and
you can bet they won't save me any bullets by shooting Nance and Jinny."
Reasoning that the Indians would not dare to attack by way of the open
trail in front, and that it would take some time for them to make the
detour necessary to approach him from above, since they would have to
leave their ponies below and climb on hands and knees over jutting
ledges and around broken granite blocks, Lane coolly proceeded to drink
his coffee, and eat his lunch of hard bread and cold bacon-rind. After
he had finished, he gave a lump of sugar to each of his animals, and
pressed his cheek with an affectionate hug against the side of his
horse's head.
"Old girl," he said. "I'm sorry we can't take a parting drink, for I'm
afraid neither of us will reach our next water-hole. But you can count
on me that the red devils won't get you."
Then, going to his pack, he undid it, and took out a double handful of
yellow nuggets and a number of canvas bags. These he deposited in the
pot-hole, and, prying up the flat stone of the fireplace, laid it over
them, and covered the stone with embers.
"It's a ten to one shot that they finish me," he reflected; "but the
wages I've paid for by a year of hard work and absence from her side,
stay just as near Echo Allen as I can bring them alive, and, if there's
any truth in what they say about spirits disclosing in dreams the place
of buried treasure, with the chance of my getting them to her after I
am dead."
Taking the useless boulders from the edge of the cliff, but carefully,
so as not to expose himself to the fire of the Apaches, he piled them
on top of the upper wall in such a fashion as to form little turrets.
He left an opening in each, through which he could observe, in turn,
each point of the compass whence danger might be expected, and could
fire his Winchester without exposing himself. Then he began going from
post to post on a continuous round of self-imposed sentinel duty. "If
I could only climb the sahuaro," he thought, "and fly my red shirt as a
flag, to let the Rurales know I've flanked the enemy, it might hurry
them along in time to put a crimp in these devils before they get me.
But it'll have to be 'Hold the Fort' without any 'Oh, Say Can You See?'
business. Anyhow, I'm flying the rattlesnake flag of Bunker Hill,
'Don't Tread on Me!' Whether the Rurales see it or not, I've saved
their hides. If the Apaches had got to this fort first, gee, how they
would have crumpled up the Greasers as they came along the trail!"
Rendered thirsty by his exertions, Lane remembered the canteen in the
bisnaga, which he had forgotten among his other preparations for
defense. He cautiously reached his hand over the ledge, and secured
the precious vessel, but, as he was withdrawing it, PING! came a bullet
through the canteen, knocking it out of his hand. As it fell clattering
down the side of the ledge, he groaned: "Damned good shooting! They've
probably left their best marksman below with the ponies. No hope for
escape on that side. Well, there's some consolation in the thought that
they'll undoubtedly finish me before I get too damned thirsty. Glad it
wasn't my hand."
Although the period he spent waiting for the attack was less than an
hour by his watch, it seemed to last so long that he had hopes that the
Rurales would appear in time to rescue him. His spirits rose with the
prospect. Looking about him at the walls, the fireplace, and the red
cross, he reflected: "I am not the first man, or even the first white
man, that has withstood an attack in this place." In imagination he
constructed the history of the fort. Here, in ages remote, a tribe of
Indians, defeated and driven to the mountains had constructed an
outpost against their enemies of the plain, but these had captured the
stronghold, and fortified it against its former occupants. Later, a
band of Spanish gold-seekers had made a stand here against natives whom
they had roused against them by oppression. Or, perhaps, as indicated
by the cross, it had afforded refuge to the Mission Fathers, those
heroic souls who had faced the horrors of the infernolike desert in
their saintly efforts to convert its fiendish inhabitants.
With the symbol of Christianity in his mind, Lane turned toward the
giant cactus, which he had heretofore regarded chiefly in the aspect of
a flagpole, and saw in its columnar trunk and opposing branches a
distinct resemblance to a cross. The plant was dead, and dry as punk.
Suddenly there flashed into his mind a hideous suggestion. More cruel
than even the Romans, the inventors of crucifixion, the Apaches are
wont to bind their captives to these dead cacti, which supply at once
scourging thorns, binding stake, and consuming fuel, and, kindling a
fire at the top, leave it to burn slowly down to the victim, and, long
before it despatches him, to twist his body and limbs into what appear
to the Apache sense of humor to be exquisitely ludicrous contortions.
With his mind occupied by these horrible apprehensions, Lane looked at
the rattlesnake upon the sahuaro whose struggles by this time had
diminished to a movement of the tail.
"Poor old rattler," he thought. "I wish I could spare a cartridge to
put you out of your misery."
At length, as Lane peered up the mountainside, he saw a bush on a ledge
a little to the left of the trail quiver, as if stirred by a passing
breath of wind. He aimed his Winchester through a crack in the wall at
the spot, and when a moment later an Apache rose up from the ground and
leaped toward the shelter of a rock below, Lane fired, and the savage
fell crumpling. Like an echo of the explosion a rifle on the right
spoke, and a bullet struck the rock by Lane's head. He marked the spot
whence the shot came, and quickly ran to another part of the wall.
From here he saw the edge of an Indian's thigh exposed by the side of
the boulder he had noted. CRACK! went Lane's Winchester; the leg was
suddenly withdrawn, and at the same moment a head appeared on the other
side of the rock, as if the Indian had stretched himself involuntarily.
CRACK! again, and Lane had got his man.
"Two shots to an Indian is expensive," thought the prospector,
"otherwise this game of tip-jack would be very interesting."
There was a cry in the Apache tongue, and suddenly nine half-naked
bodies arose from behind rocks and bushes extending in an irregular
crescent above the fort, and rushed forward ten, fifteen, and even
twenty, yards to the next cover. Lane did not count number or distance
at the time, but he figured these out in his next period of waiting
from the photograph flashed on his subconscious mind. At the time of
the rush he was otherwise occupied. CRACK! CRACK! and two of the
Indians fell dead in mid-career. CRACK! and a third crawled, wounded,
to the cover he had almost safely attained. CRACK! and an
eagle-feather in the head of the fourth Indian shot at was cut off at
the stem, and fell forward on the rock behind which its wearer had
dropped just in time to save his life. There was an answering volley
from the rifles of the remaining Apaches, which was directed against
the lookout of loose stones from which the prospector's fire had come.
One of the bullets penetrated the opening and plowed a furrow through
Lane's scalp, toppling him to his knees. He scrambled quickly to his
feet, and, hastily pressing his long hair back from his forehead, to
stanch the bleeding wound, sought the protection the middle lookout.
He congratulated himself.
"Lucky for me they didn't follow the first rush immediately with a
second. Now I know to wait for their signal. Six, and possibly seven
of them, are left, and they will storm my works in two more attempts.
Here they come!"
The call again sounded. Six Apaches leaped forward, and from the rock
that concealed the wounded warrior, a shot rang out in advance of the
first discharge from Lane's Winchester. The Indian's bullet scored the
top of the turret, and filled the eyes of the man behind it with
powdered stone. The prospector, already dazed by his wound, fired
wildly, and missed his mark. Quickly recovering himself, he fired again
and again, severely wounding two Apaches. These lay clawing the ground
within twenty yards of the wall. The four remaining Indians were
safely concealed at the same distance, protected no less by the
fortification than by the loose boulders behind which they crouched for
the final spring. Lane realized the fact that his next shots, to be
effective, must be at a downward angle, and to fire them he must expose
himself.
"This is my finish," he thought to himself. "Better be killed
instantly than tortured. I hope all four will hit me. Good-by,
Jinny"--CRACK! went his rifle. "Good-by, Nance"--CRACK! again.
At the two shots, surmising that the prospector had shot himself and
his horse, the Apaches did not wait for the signal, but sprang forward
and climbed upon the wall before Lane had had time to mount it. Two of
them he shot as they leaped down within the enclosure. As he reversed
his Winchester to kill himself with the last cartridge, he noted that
the two remaining Apaches had dropped their rifles and were leaping
upon him to take him alive.
He brought his clubbed weapon down upon the head of one of them,
crushing his skull. At the same instant Lane was borne to the ground
by the other Apache, who, seizing him by the throat, began throttling
him into insensibility. In desperation, Lane bethought himself of the
cliff, and, by a mighty effort, whirled over upon his captor toward the
precipice. The ground sloped slightly in that direction, and the
combatants rolled over and over to the very edge of the cliff, where
the Indian, for the first time realizing that the prospector's purpose
was to hurl both of them to destruction, loosened his hold upon the
prospector's throat that he might use his hands to brace himself
against the otherwise inevitable plunge into the valley below. In an
instant Lane's hands were at the Indian's throat, and in another turn
he was uppermost, and kneeling upon his foe at the very verge of the
precipice.
Both combatants were now thoroughly exhausted. Lane concentrated all
his remaining strength in throttling the savage. But, just as the
tense form beneath him grew lax with evident unconsciousness, and head
fell limply back, extending over the edge of cliff, his own head was
jerked violently backward by a noose cast around his lacerated neck.
When Lane recovered consciousness he found himself lying on his back,
bound hand and foot by a lariat, and looking up into a grinning face
that he recognized.
"Buck McKee!" he gasped. "This is certainly white of you considering
the circumstances of our last meeting. Did you come with the Rurales?"
"Hell, no! I come ahead of 'em. In fact, Dick Lane, you air jist a
leetle bit off in your idees about which party I belong to. When you
damned me fer a thievin' half-breed, and run me off the range, an' tole
me to go to the Injun's, whar I belonged, I tuk yer advice. I'm what
you might call the rear-guard of the outfit you've jist been havin'
your shootin'-match with. Or I was the rear-guard, for you've wiped
out the whole dam' battalion, so fur as I can see. Served 'em right
fur detailin' me, the only decent shooter in the bunch, to watch the
horses. I got one shot in as it wuz. Well, as the last of the outfit,
I own a string of ten ponies. All I need now to set up in business is
to have some prospector who hain't long to live, leave me his little
pile uv dust an' nuggets, an' the claims he's located back in the
mountains. You look a leetle mite like the man. It'll save vallible
time if you make yer dear friend, Buck McKee, administrater uv yer
estate without too much persuadin'. You had some objection oncet to my
slittin' a calf's tongue. Well, you needn't be scared just yet.
That's the last thing I'll do to you. Come, where's your cache? I
know you've got one hereabouts, fer I foun' signs of the dust in your
pack."
Lane set his teeth in a firm resolutions not to say a word. The taunts
of his captor were harder to bear in silence than the prospects of
torture.
"Stubborn, hey? Well, we'll try a little 'Pache persuadin'." And the
renegade dragged his helpless captive up to the thorny sahuaro, and
bound his back against it with the dead horse's bridle. McKee searched
through Lane's pockets until he found a match.
"Last one, hey? Kinder 'propriate. Las' drink from the old canteen,
las' ca'tridge, last look at the scenery, and las' will an' testyment.
Oh, time's precious, but I'll spare you enough to map out in yer mind
jes' where them claims is located. The Rurales won't be along fer an
hour yet, if they hain't turned back after our other party."
McKee pulled off Lane's boots. "It 'ain't decent fer a man to die with
'em on," he said. He then kindled a fire on the stone, beneath which,
if he but knew it, lay the treasure he sought. He returned with a
burning brand to the captive. For the first time he observed the snake
impaled on the sahuaro, writhing but feebly. "Hullo, ole rattler," he
exclaimed; "here's somethin' to stir you up;" and he tossed the brand
upon the top of the cactus.
Taking another burning stick from the fire, he applied it to the soles
of his victim's feet. Lane writhed and groaned under the excruciating
torture, but uttered no word or cry. McKee brought other brands, and
began piling them about his captive's feet.
In the meantime the sahuaro had caught fire at the top, and was burning
down through the interior. A thin column of smoke rose straight above
it in the still air. The Rurales in the valley below, who had reached
the beginning of the ascending trail, and were on the point of giving
up the pursuit, saw the smoke, and, inferred that the Apaches, either
through overconfidence or because of their superstitious fear of the
mountains, which they supposed inhabited by spirits, had camped on the
edge of the valley, and were signaling to their other party.
Accordingly the Mexicans renewed the chase with increased vigor.
As McKee bent over his captive's feet, piling against them the burning
ends of the sticks, the rattlesnake on the sahuaro, incited by the fire
above, struggled free from the impaling thorns by a desperate effort,
and dropped on the back of the half-breed. It struck its fangs into
his neck. McKee, springing up with an energy that scattered the sticks
he was piling, tore the reptile loose, hurled it upon the ground, and
stamped it into the earth. Then he picked up one of the brands and
with it cauterized the wound. All the while he was cursing
volubly--the snake, himself, and even Dick Lane, who was now lying in a
dead faint caused by the torture.
"Damn such a prospector! Not a drop of whisky in his outfit! I'd slit
his tongue fer him if he wasn't already done fer. I must keep
movin'--movin', or I'm a dead man. I must hustle along to the
mountains, leadin' my horse. Up there I'll find yarbs to cure
snake-bite that my Cherokee grandmother showed me. The Rurales will
have to get the other ponies but some day I'll come back after Lane's
cache."
A half-hour later the Mexican guards appeared upon the scene, and
unbound Lane's unconscious form from the sahuaro, which the fire had
consumed to a foot of his bowed head. They deluged his face and back,
and bathed his tortured feet with the contents of their canteens, and
brought him back to life, but, alas! not to reason.
Six months later there limped out of Chihuahua hospital a discharged
patient, wry-necked, crook-backed, with drawn features, and hair and
beard streaked with gray. It was Dick Lane, restored to old physical
strength, so far as the distortion of his spine, caused by his torture,
permitted, and to the full possession of his mental faculties. He
mounted one of the captured ponies, and rode off with the proceeds of
the sales of the others in his pocket, to purchase provisions for a
return to his prospecting.
Before plunging into the wilderness he wrote a letter:
Chihuahua, Mexico
"Mr. John Payson,
"Sweetwater Ranch,
"Florence, Arizona Territory, U.S.A.
"Dear Jack: I have been sick and out of my head in the hospital here
for the last six months. Just about the time you all were expecting me
home, I had a run in with the Apaches. And who do you think was with
them? Buck McKee, the half-breed that I ran off the range two years
ago for tongue-slitting. After I had done for all the rest, he got me,
and--well, the story's too long to write. I rather think McKee has
made off with the gold I had cached just before the fight. I'm going
back to see, and if he did, I'll hustle around to find a buyer for one
of my claims. I don't want to sell my big mine, Jack. I tell you I
struck it rich!--but that story can wait till I get back. Your loan
can't, though, so expect to receive $3,000 by express some time before
I put in an appearance. I hope you got the mortgage renewed at the end
of the year. If my failure to show up then has caused you trouble,
you'll forgive me, old fellow, I know, under the circumstances. I'll
make it up to you. I owe you everything. You're the best friend a man
ever had. That's why I'm writing to you instead of to Uncle Jim, for I
want you to do me another friendly service. Just break it gently to
Echo Allen that I'm alive and well though pretty badly damaged by that
renegade McKee and tell her that it wasn't my fault I wasn't home the
day I promised. She'll forgive me, I know, and be patient a while
longer. It's all for her sake I'm staying away. Give her the letter I
enclose.
"Your old bunkie,
Dick Lane"