"There is neither. The horizon is as blue and clear as it is on the
north and east and west. It is a miracle. Let me think a moment."
He sat down and took his head between his hands. After a while he
looked up. "For hours I have been trying to remember something," he
said. "Do you remember what that mayor domo said to us?--Keep straight
on, straight on, never turning to the left, for that way lies the
terrible Mojave desert, I barely heard his last words at the time; that
is the reason I have had such a time remembering. We are in the Mojave
desert, my friend."
Adan, whose mouth was still wide open, sat down and rolled his eyes
from east to west. "Caramba!" he ejaculated finally.
"I could say a good deal more than Caramba. All that I have heard of
this Mojave comes back to me. There is no water on it, no living thing
but half choked cacti and stunted palms. Men who are lost on it go mad
and die of thirst--"
"Ay, yi, yi!"
"Si, senor. However, it might be much worse. It is winter, not
summer,--when the heat kills in a day; we have food and a little wine;
we are young and very strong; we have not come so many leagues that we
cannot walk back. And we have each other. Think, were we alone!"
"Yes, it might be worse," said Adan, "but all the same it might be six
or eight leagues to the northwest better. And that city? What was it?
Where has it gone?"
"I do not know." Privately he believed that it had been a glimpse of
heaven, and was disturbed lest it might have been a portent of death.
But his mind was too active, his nature too independent to sit down
under superstition. If he died on the desert, it would not be through
lack of effort to get out of it.
He stood up, setting his lips. "Come," he said. "We gain nothing by
sitting here, and we are both fresh; we can walk many leagues before
night."
"Do you know which way to go?" asked Adan.
Roldan swept the horizon with his eyes. The buttes they had passed had
displaced the solitary landmark of the morning. There was not a
hoof-beat on the hard split ground. Roldan shrugged his shoulders.
"We can at least follow the sun. Los Angeles must be due west. Come."
The sun was past the zenith and sloping to the west. The boys turned
their backs upon it and trudged on, only pausing once for a half-hour
to divide the meagre remains of their store. Evening came; the sun
leaned his elbows on the horizon in front of them, leered at the
contracted visages and blinking eyes resolutely facing him, then slid
leisurely down; and night came suddenly. The boys flung themselves on
the ground and slept.
They awoke consumed with hunger and thirst. Their mouths and nostrils
were coated with the fine irritating dust of the desert, scarcely
visible but always felt. But their smarting eyes were greeted by a
refreshing sight: not a half-league before them, directly in their
course, was a lake, a lake as blue as the metallic sky above, and
lightly fringed with palms and orange-trees. Beyond was a forest of
silver leaves--an olive orchard.
"A Mission!" exclaimed Roldan, and even Adan sprang to his feet and
marched westward with some enthusiasm. But alas! although they trudged
with dogged persistence for fully a league, striving to forget the
gnawing at their vitals in the exquisite prospect filling the eye, the
lake seemed to march ahead of them, in perfect time with their weary
feet. Suddenly the two boys paused and faced each other.
"This accursed desert is bewitched," said Roldan. His face was white,
but more with anger than fear; for the first time in his life he
realised the helplessness of man when at the mercy of nature, and he
did not like the sensation. He had a strong, and by this time, well
developed instinct to govern, to bend others to his will, and he swore
now that he would walk out of this desert unharmed if only for the
pleasure of cheating a force mightier than himself. He turned and
looked at the sun.
"We have been going in a wrong direction," he said. "That lake has been
shifting gradually toward the southwest, and taken us nearly a league
out of our course. The first thing we know we will be in Baja
California, where there is nothing but deserts, and they are all on
mountain tops. We must strike north again. I am sure that last night we
were due west of Los Angeles."
"But the lake? the Mission?"
"I do not believe there is any lake. There are things you and I do not
understand in this world--although we are learning--and I believe that
this strange desert has the power to make scenes like the theatres they
who have travelled tell us of. Be sure that lake will disappear like
the city."
They turned north in order to get in line with the sun; and out of the
tail of their eyes they saw the lake march with them. When they finally
turned to the west again it faced them once more. They linked arms
suddenly and trudged on, hungry, parched, beset by superstitious fears,
but not forgetting to turn every half hour and glance at the sun until
he passed the meridian and pointed for the west. And suddenly the lake
seemed to slip behind a wall.
"There is really something there this time," said Roldan, closing one
eye and curving his hand about the other. "It is ugly enough to be
real. It is no use to say how far anything is in this place, but I
should think we would reach it before long."
And long before they did reach it they knew what it was--a thicket of
cacti some two miles long and of unknown depth. The plants were eight
or ten feet high, and the broad thick leaves, spiked, as only the
leaves of the cactus are, looked to be welded together. But that was
from a distance. When the boys reached the thicket they saw that the
plants in reality were some feet apart, although there appeared to be
no end to them. The boys sat down suddenly, their strength deserting
them. They threw their arms forward on their knees and dropped their
heads. For a half hour or more they sat motionless, then Roldan looked
up and fixed his glassy eyes on the forbidding wall, which at close
proximity seemed to girt the horizon.
"If we tried to go round it," he said, "there is no knowing where we
should find ourselves. We had better go straight ahead, if possible. If
it is too thick we can turn back."
"At least we could not see this horrible desert for a while," said
Adan. "I am willing."
"And, who knows? Los Angeles may be just on the other side."
Their utterance was thick. Their veins felt as if packed with lead, not
so much from need of food as need of drink. But they stumbled to their
feet and entered the cactus forest. They were obliged to pursue their
way in single file; the spikes were long, and many of the larger leaves
abutted so obstructively that they were obliged to go down on their
hands and knees and crawl. Nor could they maintain a straight course,
but zig-zagged among the great plants as nature permitted. More than
once they heard the rip of silk, more than once blood sprang through
their skin. Their progress was slow and fraught with peril, their only
consolation that the end must come sooner or later.
Night came suddenly. They were near an open a few feet in
circumference. They lay down side by side, knowing that a step at night
might mean instant blindness.
The cactus never moves, not even in a storm. There was not a breath of
wind to-night. The thick dull green plant-trees looked as solid as
stone, a petrified forest. The sky had never seemed so high above, the
stars so hard and bright.
Adan moistened his lips with his tongue. "Do you feel that you can last
another day?" he asked.
"I expect to die of old age."
"Well, if you do, it won't be the fault of the Mojave desert. You have
courage, and so have I; but this is worse than all--Do you feel that?"
"I have felt it many times before, to-day. It is said that parts of the
Mojave shake all the time."
"We can swear to that. Supposing a great shake came, how could we get
out of this?"
"We are as well here as anywhere. Let us sleep, and rise with the sun."
But although he spoke confidently, almost contemptuously, he was
possessed with a wild desire to spring to his feet and fight his way
out of this terrible prison. He had seen a huge fish flounder in a net,
and looked on callously. He should never witness such another sight
without a responsive thrill of horror. Were he paralysed from crown to
heel he could not be more helpless in this thicket of needles. The vast
unpeopled desert had been bad enough, but it had been intoxicating
liberty to this. Tired as he was, he moved his hands and feet
constantly; supineness was impossible. He wondered how men felt when in
prison, and vowed that when he held the law in his hands he would
invent some other way of punishment. For his part he would rather be
shot at once.
Being young and healthy, he fell asleep after a time. When he awoke the
sky was grey, the stars had gone. He shook Adan.
"There is no sunrise to be seen from this place," he said, "but I am
sure of the direction now. I took note of that big cactus ahead, last
night--Hist!"
"Dios de mi alma!" whispered Adan, his tongue rolling out. "In this
place! It is worse than earthquake."
Nothing was to be seen from where they stood, but from no great
distance came the faint hollow rattle which strikes terror to man in
the wilderness. The volume of sound was suddenly augmented: there
appeared to be a duet. Immediately it was supplemented by a loud
furious hissing; a moment later by a whirr and impact.
"There are two, and they are fighting," whispered Adan, his eyes
bulging.
Roldan advanced softly to an aperture between two leaves of a cactus,
then lifted his finger to his shoulder and beckoned. Adan turned
mechanically in the opposite direction; but curiosity overcame him, and
he joined Roldan.
Between two plants not three feet apart two rattlesnakes were engaged
in mortal combat. They coiled with incredible rapidity, flew at each
other with burning eyes and darting tongues, burying a fang somewhere
in the tense bristling armours. The lashing tails struck the spiked
surface of the cactus and augmented their fury; occasionally they
whipped about, hissing deliriously, then returning as swiftly to the
only enemy in sight. They had coiled and struck some four or five
times, whipping all over their narrow arena, when as if by common
consent, they retreated to extreme opposite points, coiled as lightning
strikes, and leapt at each other. Even Roldan gave a hoarse cry of
surprise, and as for Adan, he fell into vocabulary: one serpent had
darted straight down the throat of the other. For a moment there was a
fearful lashing. The choking serpent, with protruding eyes, like small
green coals, and jaws distended in agony, strove to dislodge his
suffocating enemy, and the other humped his back and leapt backward in
frantic efforts to reach the air again. But suddenly their struggles
ceased; they flattened to the ground, only the tails moving
automatically. What was left looked like a monster of some unknown
species; a creature with no head, a huge belly, and two tails.
"Caramba!" exclaimed Adan, "I could not eat that even if we had
anything to cook it with. It looks like a mass of poison."
"I should like to know where that poison was last night. It may be a
good sign, however: as they are the first living things we have seen,
we may be near to the edge of the desert."
Adan crossed himself.
"Come," continued Roldan, "let us move on, before hunger tempts us too
far."
Once more they started on their tortuous way. They walked very slowly,
both from necessity and inclination: the excitement of the fight over,
their physical necessities pressed heavily; they kept as close together
as they could, but rarely spoke: they were too hungry. Both were
oppressed by the fear that at any minute they would come upon a solid
wall of cacti and be obliged to retrace their steps, and both knew that
might mean a stunning blow to courage. At times the constant
zig-zagging, the unalterable, smooth, grey-green surface of the cacti,
made them halt dizzily, for both brain and body were sick for want of
food. But by degrees the wood grew thinner and thinner; and when the
sun was half way between the zenith and the western horizon, they left
behind the last straggling outpost and found themselves on the edge of
a creek, the same doubtless that they had crossed three nights before.
They gave each other a feeble simultaneous slap on the back, gathered
their energies, ran down the bank, and took a long draught of the
running water.
"I feel better," said Roldan, finally, "but hungrier than ever. There
are quail in that chaparral over there. I'll go after them, and do you
hunt for flint and build a fire."
He crossed the creek and entered the brush beyond. Almost
simultaneously there was a loud whirr of wings, and a large flock of
quail rose from the chaparral a few feet ahead of him. He had only his
pistols, but he was a good shot, and he decapitated two of the birds in
rapid succession. Then he reloaded and killed a squirrel. When he
returned, Adan was on his knees, with his large cheeks distended,
coaxing a handful of dried leaves and twigs into flame. It was a half
hour before the pyre was large enough for the sacrifice, but after that
the birds and squirrel, which meanwhile had been skinned and washed in
the creek, were but a short time singeing. It was an ill-cooked meal,
but when it was over Roldan said solemnly,--
"I have eaten of all the delicious dishes of the Californias, including
many dulces, but nothing ever tasted as good as this; no, not even the
first breakfast at Casa Encarnacion."
"Nor to me," said Adan, emphatically, and he crossed himself.