ON MUSIC MOUNTAIN
De Spain, when he climbed into Sassoon's saddle, was losing sight and
consciousness. He knew he could no longer defend himself, and was so
faint that only the determination of putting distance between him and
any pursuers held him to the horse after he spurred away. With the
instinct of the hunted, he fumbled with his right hand for his means
of defense, and was relieved to find his revolver, after his panicky
dash for safety, safe in its place. He put his hand to his belt for
fresh cartridges. The belt was gone.
The discovery sent a shock through his failing faculties. He could not
recollect why he had no belt. Believing his senses tricked him, he
felt again and again for it before he would believe it was not buckled
somewhere about him. But it was gone, and he stuck back in his
waistband his useless revolver. One hope remained--flight, and he
spurred his horse cruelly.
Blood running continually into his eyes from the wound in his head
made him think his eyes were gone, and direction was a thing quite
beyond his power to compass. He made little effort to guide, and his
infuriated horse flew along as if winged.
A warm, sticky feeling in his right boot warned him, when he tried to
make some mental inventory of his condition, of at least one other
wound. But he found he could inventory nothing, recollect next to
nothing, and all that he wanted to do was to escape. More than once he
tried to look behind, and he dashed his hand across his red forehead.
He could not see twenty feet ahead or behind. Even when he hurriedly
wiped the cloud from his eyes his vision seemed to have failed, and he
could only cling to his horse to put the miles as fast as possible
between himself and more of the Morgans.
A perceptible weakness presently forced him to realize he must look to
his wounded foot. This he did without slackening speed. The sight of
it and the feeling inside his torn and blood-soaked boot was not
reassuring, but he rode on, sparing neither his horse nor his
exhaustion. It was only when spells of dizziness, recurring with
frequency, warned him he could not keep the saddle much longer, that
he attempted to dismount to stanch the drip of blood from his
stirrup.
Before he slackened speed he tried to look behind to reconnoitre.
With relief he perceived his sight to be a trifle better, and in
scanning the horizon he could discover no pursuers. Choosing a
secluded spot, he dismounted, cut open his boot, and found that a
bullet, passing downward, had torn an artery under the arch of the
foot. Making a rude tourniquet, he succeeded in checking pretty well
the spurting flow that was sapping his strength. After he had adjusted
the bandage he stood up and looked at it. Then he drew his revolver
again and broke it. He found five empty shells in the chambers and
threw them away. The last cartridge had not been fired. He could not
even figure out how he had happened to have six cartridges in the
cylinder, for he rarely loaded more than five. Indeed, it was his
fixed habit--to avoid accidents--never to carry a cartridge under the
hammer of his gun--yet now there had been one. Without trying to
explain the circumstance, he took fresh stock of his chances and began
to wonder whether he might yet escape and live.
He climbed again into the saddle, and, riding to a ridge, looked
carefully over the desert. It was with an effort that he could steady
himself, and the extent of his weakness surprised him. What further
perplexed him as he crossed a long divide, got another good view and
saw no pursuit threatening in any direction, was to identify the
country he was in. The only landmark anywhere in sight that he could
recognize was Music Mountain. This now lay to the northwest, and he
knew he must be a long way from any country he was familiar with. But
there was no gainsaying, even in his confused condition, Music
Mountain. After looking at it a long time he headed with some
hesitation cautiously toward it, with intent to intercept the first
trail to the northeast. This would take him toward Sleepy Cat.
As his eyes continued to sweep the horizon he noted that the sun was
down and it was growing dark. This brought a relief and a difficulty.
It left him less in fear of molestation, but made it harder for him to
reach a known trail. The horse, in spite of the long, hard ride seemed
fresh yet, and de Spain, with one cartridge would still have laughed
at his difficulties had he not realized, with uneasiness, that his
head was becoming very light. Recurring intervals of giddiness
foreshadowed a new danger in his uncharted ride. It became again a
problem for him to keep his seat in the saddle. He was aware at
intervals that he was steadying himself like a drunken man. His
efforts to guide the horse only bewildered the beast, and the two
travelled on maudlin curves and doubled back on their track until de
Spain decided that his sole chance of reaching any known trail was to
let go and give the horse his head.
A starless night fell across the desert. With danger of pursuit
practically ended, and only a chance encounter to fear, de Spain tried
to help himself by walking the horse and resting his bleeding foot in
front of the pommel, letting the pony pick his way as he chose. A
period of unconsciousness, a blank in de Spain's mind, soon followed
the slowing up. He came to himself as he was lurching out of the
saddle. Pulling himself together, he put the wet foot in the stirrup
again and clung to the pommel with his hands. How long he rode in this
way, or how far, he never knew. He was roused to consciousness by the
unaccustomed sound of running water underneath his horse's feet.
It was pitch dark everywhere. The horse after the hard experience of
the evening was drinking a welcome draft. De Spain had no conception
of where he could be, but the stream told him he had somehow reached
the range, though Music Mountain itself had been swallowed up in the
night. A sudden and uncontrollable thirst seized the wounded man. He
could hear the water falling over the stones and climbed slowly and
painfully out of the saddle to the ground. With the lines in his left
hand he crawled toward the water and, lying flat on the ground beside
the horse, put his head down to drink. The horse, meantime, satisfied,
lifted his head with a gulp, rinsed his mouth, and pulled backward.
The lines slipped from de Spain's hand. Alarmed, the weakened man
scrambled after them. The horse, startled, shied, and before his rider
could get to his feet scampered off in a trot. While de Spain listened
in consternation, the escaped horse, falling into an easy stride,
galloped away into the night.
Stunned by this new misfortune, and listening gloomily to the
retreating hoof-beats, de Spain pondered the situation in which the
disaster left him. It was the worst possible blow that could have
fallen, but fallen it had, and he turned with such philosophy as he
could to complete the drink of water that had probably cost him his
life. At least, cold water never tasted sweeter, never was so grateful
to his parched tongue, and since the price of the draft might be
measured by life itself, he drank extravagantly, stopping at times to
rest and, after breathing deeply, to drink again.
When he had slaked a seemingly unquenchable craving, he dashed the
running water, first with one hand and then the other, over his face.
He tried feebly to wash away some of the alkali that had crusted over
the wound in the front of his head and was stinging and burning in it.
There was now nothing to do but to secrete himself until daylight and
wait till help should reach him--it was manifestly impossible for him
to seek it.
Meantime, the little stream beside him offered first aid. He tried it
with his foot and found it slight and shallow, albeit with a rocky bed
that made wading in his condition difficult. But he felt so much
better he was able to attempt this, and, keeping near to one side of
the current, he began to follow it slowly up-stream. The ascent was at
times precipitous, which pleased him, though it depleted his new
strength. It was easy in this way to hide his trail, and the higher
and faster the stream took him into the mountains the safer he would
be from any Calabasas pursuers. When he had regained a little strength
and oriented himself, he could quickly get down into the hills.
Animated by these thoughts, he held his way up-stream, hoping at every
step to reach the gorge from which the flow issued. He would have
known this by the sound of the falling water, but, weakening soon, he
found he must abandon hope of getting up to it. However, by resting
and scrambling up the rocks, he kept on longer than he would have
believed possible. Encountering at length, as he struggled upward, a
ledge and a clump of bushes, he crawled weakly on hands and knees into
it, too spent to struggle farther, stretched himself on the flattened
brambles and sank into a heavy sleep.
* * * * *
He woke in broad daylight. Consciousness returned slowly and he raised
himself with pain from his rough couch. His wounds were stiff, and he
lay for a long time on his back looking up at the sky. At length he
dragged himself to an open space near where he had slept and looked
about. He appeared to be near the foot of a mountain quite strange to
him, and in rather an exposed place. The shelter that had served him
for the night proved worthless in daylight and, following his strongly
developed instinct of self-preservation, de Spain started once more up
the rocky path of the stream. He clambered a hundred feet above where
he had slept before he found a hiding-place. It was at the foot of a
tiny waterfall where the brook, striking a ledge of granite, had
patiently hollowed out a shallow pool. Beside this a great mass of
frost-bitten rock had fallen, and one of the bowlders lay tilted in
such a way as to roof in a sort of cave, the entrance to which was
not higher than a man's knee. De Spain crawled into this refuge. He
conceived that from this high, open ledge he could show a small
signal-fire at night, and if it were answered by his enemies he had a
semblance of a retreat under the fallen rock, a hunting-knife, and one
lone cartridge to protect himself with. A mountain-lion might have to
be reckoned with; and if a pursuer should follow him under the rock
his only chance would lie in getting hold, after a fight, of the man's
loaded revolver or ammunition-belt. Such a hope involved a great deal
of confidence, but de Spain was an optimist--most railroad men are.
The outlook was, in truth, not altogether cheerful--some would have
called it, for a wounded man, desperate--but it had some slight
consolations and de Spain was not given to long-range forebodings. The
rising sun shone in a glory of clearness, and the cool night air
rolling up the mountain was grateful and refreshing. Lying flat on the
rock, he stretched his head forward and drank deeply of the ice-cold
pool beside which he lay. The violent exertion of reaching the height
had started the ruptured artery anew, and his first work was crudely
to cleanse the wound and attempt to rebandage it. He was hungry, but
for this there was only one alleviation--sleep--and, carefully
effacing all traces of his presence on the ledge, he crawled into his
rock retreat and fell again into a heavy slumber.
It was this repose that proved his undoing. He woke to consciousness
so weak he could scarcely lift his head. It was still day. A consuming
thirst assailed him, but he lacked the strength to crawl out of his
cave, and, looking toward his bandaged foot, he was shocked at the
sight of how it had bled while he slept. When he could rally from his
discouragement he rewound the bandages and told himself what a fool he
had been to drag his foot up the rocks before the wound had had any
chance to heal. He resolved, despite his thirst, to lie still all day
and give the artery absolute quiet. It required only a little
stoicism; the stake was life.
Toward afternoon his restlessness increased, but he clung to his
resolve to lie still. By evening he was burning with thirst, and when
morning came after a feverish night, with his head on fire and his
mouth crusted dry, he concluded rightly that one or both of his wounds
had become infected.
De Spain understood what it meant. He looked regretfully at the
injured foot. Swollen out of shape and angry-looking, the mere
appearance would have told him, had the confirmation been needed,
that his situation was becoming critical. This did not so much
disconcert him as it surprised him and spurred him mentally to the
necessity of new measures. He lay a long time thinking. Against the
infection he could do little. But the one aid at his hand was
abundance of cold water to drink and bathe his wound in, and to this
he resolved now to drag himself. To crawl across the space that
separated him from the pool required all the strength he could summon.
The sun was already well up and its rays shot like spectrum arrows
through the spray of the dainty cataract, which spurted in a jewelled
sheet over a rocky ledge twenty feet above and poured noisily down
from the broad pool along jagged bowlders below.
Crawling, choking with thirst, slowly forward, he reached the water,
and, reclining on his side and one elbow, he was about to lean down to
drink when he suddenly felt, with some kind of an instinctive shock,
that he was no longer alone on the ledge. He had no interest in
analyzing the conviction; he did not even question it. Not a sound had
reached his ears. Only a moment before he had looked carefully all
around. But the field of his vision was closely circumscribed by the
walls about him. It was easy for an invader to come on his retreat
unawares--at all events, somebody, he was almost sure, stood behind
him. The silence meant an enemy. The first thing to expect was a
bullet. It would probably be aimed at the back of his head. At least
he knew this was the spot to aim for to kill a man instantly and
painlessly--yet he shrank from that anticipated crash.
And it was this thought that cost the defenseless man at the moment
the most pain--that feeling, in advance, of the blow of the bullet
that should snuff out his life. Defense was out of the question; he
was as helpless as a baby. An impulse in his fingers to clutch his
revolver he restrained at once--it could only hasten his death. He
wondered, as the seconds passed, why his executioner hesitated to
shoot, but he could not rid himself of the mental horror of being shot
in the base of the brain. Anywhere else he would have almost welcomed
a bullet; anywhere else it might have given him one chance for life
through rolling over after he was struck in an attempt to kill his
assailant.
His thoughts, working in flashes of lightning, suggested every
possible trick of escape, and as rapidly rejected each. There was
nothing for it but to play the part, to take the blow with no more
than a quiver when it came. He had once seen a man shot in just that
way. Braced to such a determination, de Spain bent slowly downward,
and, with eyes staring into the water for a reflection that might
afford a glimpse of his enemy, he began to drink. A splash above his
head frightened him almost to death. It was a water ousel dashing into
the foaming cataract and out again, and the spray falling from the
sudden bath wrecked the mirror of the pool. De Spain nearly choked.
Each mouthful of water was a struggle. The sense of impending death
had robbed even the life-giving drafts of their tonic; each instant
carried its acute sensation of being the last. At length, his nerves
weakened by hunger and exposure, revolted under the strain. Suppose it
should be, after all, a fantasy of his fever that pictured so vividly
an enemy behind. With an effort that cost more mental torture than he
ever had known, he drew back on his elbow from the pool, steadied
himself, turned his head to face his executioner, and confronted Nan
Morgan.