PREPARATIONS FOR NOON
A BIG black touring car covered with dust purred into the village of
Opaco. It had come through the pass from the coast side of the range,
braving the rattling sand. Two men rode in the car besides the driver.
All three wore goggles and had otherwise protected themselves from the
fierceness of the sand storm as much as possible.
The disguise, however, failed to hide the ruddy, veined, and rather
heavy face of one of the passengers, a large, portly man in corduroy
and puttees.
“Gone, by thunder!” he ejaculated as the machine came to a stop before
the little depot.
“You’re right,” agreed his fellow passenger.
The large man leaned from the tonneau and aimed a thick white finger
at a passing villager, as if he were a living advertisement for the
automatic pistol which is aimed as easily as leveling the index digit.
“You!” he bawled. “C’m’ ’ere!”
The long, lanky desert rat jumped as if the street had grown suddenly
hot under his big feet, and promptly obeyed the authoritative command.
“Has the Demarest, Spruce & Tillou outfit started over the desert in
this infernal storm?” the commanding person demanded.
“Ye-yes, sir. That is--er--they went before the storm. They’re likely
out there somewheres in ’er now.”
“Oh! They couldn’t have reached their camp site before the cursed thing
slipped up on ’em, then?”
“No, sir. They started day before yistiddy. The storm, she broke last
night. They couldn’t ’a’ made seventy mile before she come.”
“Thunderation! Didn’t any o’ you natives here have sense enough to know
it was comin’ and warn ’em?”
“Oh, they was warned, mister. But the boss he only laughed and said
he’d been in blowin’ countries before now. I’ll say if he ain’t,
he’s----”
“Heavens! How’ll we get out to ’em?”
“Take that road there. Don’t ferget to fill all yer water bags before
ye start.”
“Anybody here in town who can go along and show us the road? They tell
me sand blows over it and hides it sometimes. I can’t be bothered that
way. I want to make speed.”
The native scratched his head, unthinkingly loosening his tightly
crammed-down hat. He sprang into the air and caught it with both hands
as it started for Nevada.
“They was a fella in from the camps last night said he’d like to get
back,” he found voice to say. “But he got in a poker game this mornin’
and was holdin’ three kings when the stage got ready to go. Guess he’d
go along and keep ye straight. That is, if they was anything in it. Ye
see, t’other fella he held three aces.”
“Trot ’im out here! Here’s a dollar for your trouble.”
The villager disappeared with alacrity, and presently the occupants of
the automobile were confronted by a slim man with black hair, a silk
vest, and a black, waxed mustache.
“What’s _your_ name?”
“They call me Blacky Silk.”
“Uh! Thought I remembered that face. They must o’ been watchin’ you
pretty close in that poker game. Twenty-five dollars of any particular
interest to you, Blacky?”
Blacky’s eyes widened. “I could place it maybe,” he evaded.
“Then pile in here and guide us across this infernal desert, if you
know the way. Come on! Come on! Don’t stand there twistin’ that French
chef’s can opener. I’m good for the cash.”
“I’ll say you are, Mr. Demarest,” said Blacky drawlingly, and climbed
in at the driver’s side.
“Bust ’er, Charlie!” ordered the red-faced man. “Beat this wind or I’ll
fire you.”
“Yes, sir, bossman,” said Charlie, throwing in the clutch.
“Shut up! Let your motor talk!”
The powerful machine leaped forward, kicked dust in Opaco’s already
dirty face, rumbled across the bridge, and growled its way through the
defile. Then it raced out on the open desert, and the wind shrieked
with laughter over another victim.
“Great jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!” yelled Demarest into the burning ear of
his partner, Mr. Everett Spruce.
“What d’ye say?” bawled Spruce.
“I said--go to the devil; that’s what I said!” And Demarest spit out a
mouthful of sand and tied his handkerchief over his nose. Spruce cupped
both hands about his mouth and placed his head close to Demarest’s ear.
“I thought you said ‘liver and onions!’” he cried. Viciously, Demarest
dragged his hat down to his ears, then released it, and through his
hands shouted back:
“You--are--an--ass!”
To which Spruce, who had not distinguished a single word, nodded
agreement and smiled complacently.
The wind roared and howled. The motor roared back at it, and the nose
of the steel monster plowed on into the whirling waves of sand.
Toward noon the beleaguered motor party were fighting their way up to
an immense conglomeration of vehicles, teams, and men, the living
components of the mass drawn up in lee of the wagons, wheeled into
position to act as a barricade against the wind. A sorrowful group they
were indeed. Lips were swelled to three times their natural thickness
from the sting of the alkali. Eyes were red and haggard. The teams
stood with their tails between their legs, their rumps toward the wind,
their heads lowered.
Now a second storm swooped down upon the blockaded caravan in the form
of Philip Demarest. When every one was crestfallen and had not a volley
left to shout back at this Sheridan who had raced to their revival, it
was learned by the newcomers that the tank wagons of the caravan were
well-nigh empty and that their commander had been innocently waiting
for the storm to subside before attempting to move on to the next
watering place. To conclude, twenty minutes after Demarest had ridden
in the wagon train was once more fighting its way through the sand
storm toward water; and now every man in the outfit had decided that
it was better to forge on than to be intrenched and parleying with the
relentless wind king.
Ahead of them the big car plowed on to reconnoiter. The water was ten
miles from where the train had been halted, and Philip Demarest knew
that the fight to reach it would be a bitter one. With all that they
could take in the car they drove back to the caravan, and desert bags
were replenished, thus saving what remained in the tank wagons for the
laboring stock. Skinners walked so as to lighten loads to the last
possible ounce. Heads down, whipped nearly off their feet occasionally,
the thin-limbed mules moved slowly along, mile at a time, the wagons
sometimes almost down to their hubs in the shifting sands.
Late in the afternoon the herculean task was accomplished. Worn-out
men and worn-out teams rested once more, but this time at Dead Man’s
Wells, with ample water for all their needs. They were still sixteen or
seventeen miles from Squawtooth, and Demarest decided to drive on there
in the car for the night and be ready to look over the camp site next
morning.
They were just about to start when their guide, the estimable Blacky
Silk, waiting beside the empty car, saw a horseman riding toward him.
He had appeared miraculously, coming suddenly as he had from a heavy
cloud of blowing sand.
He made directly for the camp, and Blacky Silk recognized him.
“Kid!” he called. “What th’ devil!”
The man saw him and swung his horse to the lee side of the machine.
“Say, what you doin’ here?” he demanded.
“What you doin’ here?” retorted Blacky.
“I was tryin’ to get to Opaco to see you,” the man replied. “Lord, I’m
glad I drifted in here and found you! Save me over sixty miles o’
this. Blacky, somethin’s happened.”
“What?”
The man, “Kid” Strickland, from Stlingbloke, was chunky of build
and pockmarked, and showed small evidences of being anything but an
undesirable citizen. He told of the arrest of Halfaman Daisy and of the
escape of Manzanita Canby and the Mangan-Hatton flunky.
“I knew about that bird Halfaman,” said Blacky. “I was at Opaco when
they brought um in. But----”
The other dismounted, and they held close consultation. Presently Kid
Strickland produced a crumpled piece of paper sack, folded carefully.
“It was wrapped right around an inside branch o’ that tumbleweed, I
tell you,” he said forcibly. “It blew right into me, and I was just
gonta throw it away and let the wind take it on when I see the note.
Then I got a horse and started to Opaco to see you.”
“Good work!” was Blacky’s method of praising him. “Noon to-morrow,
eh--or next day, or next,” he mused, after carefully reading the
note again. “There won’t be anybody about Squawtooth then, I guess.
They’ll all be out huntin’. I’ll say those birds’ll get their signal,
Kid--what?”
Kid Strickland grinned understandingly.
“Now here’s what we gotta do, Kid: This note nor no part of it won’t
go to this Winston in Los Angeles, o’ course. Nobody else’ll see any
of it. We’ll just get word to the sheriff that we know for sure these
birds will be comin’ outa their hidin’ place some time after noon
to-morrow. And tell um if he’ll stick around he c’n get ’em. We can
telephone and not let um know who’s talkin’--see? There’s a phone at
Squawtooth. Maybe, while I’m there with the main squeeze, I’ll get a
chance at her. We’ll be there soon; I’ll try it.”
“That’s the dope, Blacky. The wind’s blowin’ straight from the
mountains, so the tumbleweed came from somewhere in that direction.
I was just this side o’ the buttes when she blew into me, goin’ to
Stlingbloke. So when you get to Squawtooth you c’n figger out about
where they was in the mountains when they sent her out. And you c’n
tell the sheriff, and have him be stickin’ around there somewhere.
Savvy the burro?”
“You bet yer sweet life! We’ll pin it on that mysterious bird, all
right. John Law is wise to him, anyway, I guess. Well, here comes the
squeeze and the other two. We’ll be goin’ now. Leave it to me. See you
at Stlingbloke to-morrow maybe.”
Blacky Silk tore the note into tiny bits and consigned them to the
winds, then climbed into the car.
* * * * *
The two lying prone on the ground in the chaparral waited with bated
breath for the verdict of the man who was looking into the arroyo for
their footprints. They had not been down there, of course, so he would
find none. Still, signs of water might lead to a search through the
thicket, in which case the fugitives’ camp surely would be discovered.
“How ’bout it?” finally came the question from the man who was close at
hand.
“It’s moist, all right,” came on the wind. “No tracks, though. Cows’
tracks here and there. Le’s beat it up higher along the arroyo; there’d
be water higher up, I guess. Soaks in here.”
There came faint sounds of a horse moving at a walk toward the last
speaker, then all was still once more but for the bluster of the angry
wind.
Five minutes the hunted pair lay motionless; then, as no more unusual
sounds were heard, Manzanita pulled The Falcon’s sleeve and crawled
ahead of him toward the rendezvous.
“That was a close call,” she said as they seated themselves within the
shelter of the rocks once more. “Half a minute earlier we’d have been
caught in the open forest. They must have caught sight of you on the
rock, Tom, from what they said. Close call, boy!”
She looked about her at the gaunt gray stones.
“The dear old things are like friends now,” and she smiled pensively.
“My, isn’t it good to be here, safe and hidden again!”
For more than an hour she remained apprehensive; then, as nothing
threatening occurred, her heart lightened once more.
“They found no tracks, and have decided it would be a waste of time to
search this supposedly waterless thicket. I guess we’re safe. We won’t
have to go out again, since we can see Squawtooth from the top of this
rock. Unless----”
She stopped and became thoughtful.
“Unless for some reason the signaling is delayed down there and we have
to go out and hunt for something to eat,” he finished for her.
“That’s our difficulty. We couldn’t carry much grub behind the saddles,
and I hadn’t time to make a sensible selection. There isn’t much, as
you’ve noticed. There’s quite a little bacon, but pitifully little to
go with it. There’s a whole pound of coffee, and--and a few crackers,
all chonked up from rubbing against a saddle--part of a loaf of bread;
part of a can of milk; some salt. And I guess we ate about everything
else for breakfast. You ate a terrible lot of bread, Tom.”
“I was hungry as a bear.”
“So was I,” she admitted. “We have plenty of matches.” She brightened.
“Well, we’ll not borrow trouble,” she added after a pause. “If the
wind goes down and we dare sneak out, we can probably pot a jack with
the .25-.35. To get a buck, of course, would take a lot of hunting,
unless we were exceptionally fortunate. We couldn’t risk that. There
are gray squirrels down in the pines, too; but if a fellow’s hungry,
one doesn’t seem overly large. We’ll see what we can do this evening,
though. That’s the time to get a chaparral chicken, otherwise known as
a burro’s cousin, or a jackass rabbit.”
Young love knows not the drag of time. There is so much to be told,
so much to be planned, so many assurances and reassurances of undying
devotion to be made, that the sun’s course from rim to rim is all too
speedily accomplished, and the light of the stars and the smile of the
moon must be requisitioned to render one day long enough.
Almost before they knew it dusk was at hand; then they remembered that
now they were to make an attempt to replenish the larder. Then, too,
they realized that the wind was abating.
Soon it blew only in occasional fierce gusts. The tired trees ceased
their groaning and tossing. With sighs of relief the chaparral grew
still. From a fastness came the cool, sweet call of a mountain quail.
The two slipped once more from the chaparral and cautiously worked
their way down toward the desert. Just before dark they saw a big-eared
jack rabbit nibbling at dry grass behind a bunch of squawtooth. Falcon
the Flunky flattened himself, took slow, careful aim with the .25-.35,
and pressed the trigger.
The larder had been replenished.
“You can shoot,” praised the girl as she picked up the all but beheaded
jack rabbit. “I like to see ’em killed like that--instantly. I can’t
stand it to see anything suffer. I was afraid you’d not have the nerve
to aim at his head.”
With their prize they hurried back to concealment. Falcon the Flunky
dressed the rabbit, and they hung it up for the night.
For supper they ate bacon, and crackers dipped in water and fried in
the bacon grease. Then they sat looking into their tiny camp fire and
took up their planning and assurances once again.
The stars came out, then the moon. All about them the forest was
mysteriously silent, save for the occasional low roar of a bull bat
swooping down upon some luckless insect, or the distant questioning of
an owl.
“To-morrow at noon,” breathed Manzanita, “everything will be cleared
up. Then out we’ll go to dear old Pa Squawtooth and tell him
everything. And then----”
“Then there’s going to be a wedding,” said the man called Tom.
From close at hand came a fiendish laugh--ribald, mocking, insane.
“Only a coyote,” said Manzanita. “But wasn’t it funny that he laughed
just when you said that. Do you believe in omens, Tom? Don’t ever, ever
again become implicated in highway robbery unless you have a safety
razor in your pocket, Tom!”