Adam’s return to camp was as vague as one of his desert nightmares.
But as thought gained something of ascendency over agitation he became
aware of blood and dust and sweat caked with his clothes upon his
person, proving the effect of his supreme exertions. He had heaved an
endless number of rocks; he had heaved the mountain-side down upon
Virey, all to no avail. A higher power had claimed him. And the spirit
of Magdalene Virey, like her living presence, had inscrutably come
between Adam and revenge.
* * * * *
When Adam had packed his burros, twilight in the clefts of the hills
had deepened to purple. He filled his canteens, and started the burros
down toward the gateway. The place behind him was as silent as a grave.
Adam did not look back. He felt the gray obscurity close over the scene.
Down at the gateway he saw that the valley was still light with the
afterglow of sunset. Diagonally and far across the ashen waste he
descried the little dark patch which he knew to be an oasis, where the
waters of Furnace Creek sank into the sands.
The intense heat, the vast stillness, the strange radiation from
the sand, the peculiar gray light of the valley, told Adam that
the midnight furnace winds would blow long before he reached his
destination. But he welcomed any physical ordeal. He saw how a great
strife with the elements, a strain to the uttermost of his strength and
his passion to fight, would save his faith, his hope, perhaps his mind.
So gradual was the change from twilight to darkness that he would
scarcely have noted it but for the dimming of the notched peak. Out
there in the open valley it was not dark. It was really the color of
moonlight on marble. Wan, opaque, mystic, it made distance false. The
mountains seemed far away and the stars close. Like the bottom of the
Dead Sea, drained of its bitter waters, was this Death Valley. Action,
strong and steady use of muscle, always had served to drive subjective
broodings and wonderings and imaginings from Adam’s mind. But not here,
in this sink, at night! He seemed continually and immensely confronted
with the unreality of a fact--a live man alone on the salt dead waste
of Death Valley. Measureless and unbreakable solitude! The waste hole
into which drained the bitter dregs of the desert!
He plodded on, driving the burros ahead of him. Jennie was contrary.
Every few steps she edged off a straight line, and the angle of her
ears and head showed that she was watching her master. She did not want
to cross the valley. Instinct taught her the wisdom of opposition. Many
a burro had saved its master’s life by stubborn refusal to travel the
wrong way. Adam was patient, even kind, but he relentlessly drove her
on in the direction he had chosen.
At length the ashen level plain changed its hue and its surface.
The salt crust became hummocky and a dirty gray. The color caused
false steps on his part, and the burros groped at fault, weary and
discouraged. Adam would mount a slow heave, only to find it a hollow
crust that broke with his weight. Some months before--or was it
years?--when he had crossed the valley, far below this line, the layer
of salt crust had been softer and under it ran murky waters, heavy as
vitriol. Dry now as sun-baked clay! It made travel more difficult,
although less dangerous. Adam broke through once. It reminded him that
Dismukes had said the floor of Death Valley was “Forty feet from hell!”
Not for a long while had he thought of Dismukes, yet this hazardous
direction he was taking now appeared to be the outcome of long-made
plans to meet the old prospector.
Long hours and slow miles passed behind him. When the burros broke
through Adam had a task for all his strength. Once he could not pull
Jennie out of a pitfall without unpacking her. And the time came when
he had the added task of leading the way and dragging the burros with
ropes. Burros did not lead well on good ground, let alone over this
scored and burst salt crust.
The heat and oppressiveness and dense silence increased toward
midnight; and then began a soft and steady movement of air down the
valley. Adam felt a prickling of his skin and a drying of the sweat
upon him. An immense and mournful moan breathed over the wasteland,
like that of a mighty soul in travail. Adam got out of the hummocky
zone upon the dry, crisp, white level of salt, soda, borax, alkali,
where thin, pale sheets of powder moved with the silken rustle of
seeping and shifting sands. Most fortunate was the fact that the
rising wind was at his back. He strode on, again driving the burros
ahead, holding straight for the dim notched peak. The rising wind
changed the silence, the night, the stars, the valley--changed all
in some unearthly manner. It seemed to muster all together, to move
all, to insulate even the loneliness, and clothe them in transforming,
drifting, shrouds of white, formless bodies impelled by nameless
domination. Phantasmagoria of white winds, weird and wild! Midnight
furnace blasts of Death Valley! Nature’s equilibrium--nature’s eternal
and perfect balance of the elements!
Out here in the open, the hollow roar that had swelled and lulled
through the canyons was absent. An incessant moaning, now rising, now
falling, attended the winds on their march down the valley. Other
difference there was here, and it was in the more intense heat. And the
blowing of white shrouds into the opaque gloom, the sweeping of sheets
of powdery dust along the level floor, the thick air that bore taste of
bitter salt and odor of poison gas--these indeed seemed not phenomena
of normal earth. The wind increased to a gale. Then suddenly it lulled
and died, leaving the valley to a pale, silent deadness; and again,
preceded by a mournful wail, it rose harder and fiercer till it was
blowing seventy miles an hour. These winds were the blasts of fury.
They held heated substance. The power behind them was the illimitable
upper air, high as the sky and wide as the desert, relentlessly bearing
down to drive way the day’s torrid heat.
The gales accelerated Adam’s progress, so that sometimes he was almost
running. Often he was thrown to his knees. And when the midnight
storm reached its height the light of the stars failed, the outline
of mountains faded in a white, whirling chaos, dim and moaning and
terrible. Adam felt as if blood and flesh were burning up, drying
out, shriveling and cracking. He lost his direction and clung to the
burros, knowing their instinct to be surer guide than his. There came
a time when pain left him, when sense of physical contacts and motions
began to fade, when his brain seemed to reel. The burros dragged him
on, and lower he swayed; oftener he plunged to his knees, plowing his
big hands in the salt and lowering his face into the flying sheets of
powder. He gasped and coughed and choked, and fought to breathe through
his smothering scarf. And at last, as he fell exhausted, blind and
almost asphyxiated, the hot gales died away. The change of air saved
Adam from unconsciousness. He lay there, gradually recovering, until
he gained feeling enough to know the burros were pulling on the rope
which tied them and him together. They were squealing. They were trying
to drag him, to warn him, to frighten him into the action that would
save his life. Thus goaded, Adam essayed to get upon his feet, and the
effort seemed a vague, interminable lifting of colossal weights, and a
climbing up dragging stairs of sand. But for the burros he would have
plunged in a circle.
Then followed a black and horrible interval in which he seemed hauled
across a pale shingle of naked earth, peopled with specters, a
wandering, lost man, still alive but half dead, leashed to the spirits
of burros he had driven to their death. Uphill, always uphill they
pulled him, with his feet clogged by the clutching sands. A gray dawn
broke, and his entrance into the light resembled climbing out of somber
depths to the open world. Another drab wall of iron rock seemed to loom
over him. The valley of the white shadows of death had been crossed.
A green patch of mesquites and cottonwoods gleamed cool and dark out
of the gray sands. The burros ran, with bobbing packs, straight to
the water they had scented. Staggering on after them, Adam managed
to remove their burdens; and that took the remnant of his strength.
Yielding to a dead darkness of sense, he fell under the trees.
When he came to the day had far advanced and the sun, sloping to the
west, was sinking behind the Panamints. Adam stumbled up, his muscles
numb, as if contracted and robbed of their elasticity. His thirst told
the story of that day’s heat, which had parched him, even while he lay
asleep in the shade. Hunger did not trouble him. Either he was weak
from exertion or had suffered from breathing poisoned air or had lost
something of his equilibrium. Whatever was wrong, it surely behooved
him to get out of the lower part of the valley, up above sea level to a
place where he could regain his strength. To that end he hunted for his
burros. They were close by, and he soon packed them, though with much
less than his usual dexterity. Then he started, following the course of
the running water.
This Furnace Creek ran down out of a deep-mouthed canyon, with yellow
walls of gravel. The water looked like vinegar, and it was hot and
had a bad taste. Yet it would sustain life of man and beast. Adam
followed the lines of mesquites that marked its course up the gradually
ascending floor of the canyon. He soon felt a loosening of the weight
upon his lungs, and lessening of air pressure. Twilight caught him a
couple of miles up the canyon, where a wide, long thicket of weeds and
grass and mesquites marked the turning of Furnace Creek into the drab
hills, and where springs and little streams trickled down from the
_arroyos_.
Up one of these _arroyos_, in the midst of some gnarled mesquites, Adam
made camp. Darkness soon set in, and he ate by the light of a camp
fire. After he had partaken of food he discovered that he was hungry.
Also, his eyelids drooped heavily. Despite these healthy reactions and
a deeper interest in his surroundings, Adam knew he was not entirely
well. He endeavored to sit up awhile, and tried to think. There were
intervals when a deadlock occurred between thoughts. The old pleasure,
the old watchful listening, the old intimate sense of loneliness, had
gone from him. His mind did not seem to be on physical things at hand,
or on the present moment. And when he actually discovered that all the
time he looked down toward Death Valley he exclaimed, aghast: “I’m not
here; I’m down there!”
Gloomy and depressed, he rolled in his blankets. And he slept twelve
hours. Next day he felt better in body, but no different in mind.
He set to work making a comfortable camp in spite of the fact that
he did not seem to want to stay there. Hard work and plenty of food
improved his condition. His strength of limb soon rallied to rest and
nourishment. But the strange state of mind persisted, and began to
encroach upon every moment. It took effort of will to attend to any
action. Dismukes must be in this locality somewhere, according to the
little map, but, though Adam remembered this, and reflected how it
accounted for his own presence there, he could not dwell seriously upon
the fact. Dismukes seemed relegated to the vague future. There was an
impondering present imperative something that haunted Adam, yet eluded
his grasp. At night he walked under the stars and could not shake off
the spell; and next day, when in an idle hour he found himself walking
again and again down the gravel-bedded canyon toward Death Valley, then
he divined that what he had attributed to absent-mindedness was a far
more serious aberration.
The discovery brought about a shock that quickened his mental
processes. What ailed him? He was well and strong again. What was
wrong with his mind? Where had gone the old dreaming content, the
self-sufficient communion with all visible forms of nature, and
the half-conscious affinity with all the invisible spirit of the
wilderness? How strangely he had been warped out of his orbit!
Something nameless and dreadful and calling had come between him and
his consciousness. Why did he face the west, at dawn, in the solemn
white-hot noon, at the red sunset hour, and in the silent lonely
watches of the night? Why did not the stars of the east lure his dreamy
gaze as those in the west? He made the astounding discovery that
there were moments, and moments increasing in number, when he did not
feel alone. Some one walked in his shadow at noontide. At twilight a
spirit seemed in keeping with his wandering westward steps. The world
and natural objects and old habits seemed far off. He found himself
whispering vagrant fancies, the substance of which, once realized, was
baffling and disheartening. And at last he divined that a longing to
return to Death Valley consumed him.
“Ah! So that’s it!” he muttered, in consternation. “But why?”
It came to Adam then--the secret of the mystery. Death Valley called
him. All that it was, all that it contained, all he had lived there,
sent out insidious and enchanting voices of terrible silent power.
The long shadow of that valley of purple shadows still enveloped him.
Death, desolation, and decay; the appalling nudity of the racked bowels
of the earth; the abode of solitude and silence, where shrieked the
furies of the midnight winds; the grave of Magdalene Virey--these
haunted Adam and lured him back with resistless and insupportable claim.
“Death Valley again--for me. I shall go mad,” soliloquized Adam.
At last his mind was slowly being unhinged by the forces of the desert.
Some places of the earth were too strong, too inhuman, too old, and too
wasted for any man. Adam realized his peril, and that the worst of
his case consisted in an indifference which he did not want to combat.
Unless something happened--a great, intervening, destructive agent to
counteract the all-enfolding, trancelike spell of Death Valley--Adam
would return to the valley of avalanches and there he would go mad.
And the very instant he resigned himself, a cry pierced his dull ear.
Sharply he sat up. The hour was near the middle of the forenoon. The
day was hot and still. Adam’s pulses slowly quieted down. He had been
mistaken. The water babbled by his camp, bees flew over with droning
hum. Then as he relaxed he was again startled by a cry, faint and far
off. It appeared to come from up the canyon, round the low yellow
corner of wall. He listened intently, but the sound was not repeated.
Was not the desert full of silent voices? About this cry there was a
tangible reality that stirred Adam out of his dreams, his glooms.
Adam went on, and climbed up the gravel bank on the left side, to a
bare slope, and from that to the top of a ridge. His sluggish blood
quickened. The old exploring instinct awoke. He had heard a distant
cry. What next? There was something in the air.
Then Adam gazed around him to a distance. Adam shuddered and thrilled
at the beetling, rugged, broken walls that marked the gateway where so
often he had stood with Magdalene Virey to watch the transformations of
shadowed dawn and sunset in Death Valley.
He descended to a level, and strode on, looking everywhere, halting now
and then to listen, every moment gaining some hold on his old self. He
went on and on, slow and sure, missing not a rod of ground, as if the
very stones might speak to him. He welcomed his growing intensity of
sensation, because it meant that he had either received a premonition
or had reverted to his old self, or perhaps both.
Adam plodded along this wide gravel wash, with the high bronze
saw-toothed peaks of the Funerals on the left, and some yellow-clay
dunes showing their tips over the bank on the right. At length he came
to a place that suggested a possible sloping of these colored clay
dunes down into a basin or canyon. Climbing up the bank, he took a
few steps across the narrow top, there to be halted as if he had been
struck.
He had been confronted by a tremendous amphitheater, a yellow gulf, a
labyrinthine maze so astounding that he discredited his sight.
Before him and on each side the earth was as bare as the bareness of
rock--a mystic region of steps and slopes and slants, of channels and
dunes and mounds, of cone-shaped and fan-shaped ridges, all of denuded
crinkly clay with tiny tracery of erosion as graceful as the veins of
a leaf, all merging their marvelous hues in a mosaic of golden amber,
of cream yellow, of mauve, of bronze cinnamon. How bleak and ghastly,
yet how beautiful in their stark purity of denudation! Endless was the
number of smooth, scalloped, and ribbed surfaces, all curving with
exquisite line and grace down into the dry channels under the dunes. At
the base of the lower circle of the amphitheater the golds and yellows
and russets were strongest, but along the wide wings moving away toward
the abyss below were more vividly wonderful hues--a dark, beautiful
mouse color on the left contrasting with a strange pearly cream on
the other. These were striking bands of color sweeping the eye away
as far as they extended, and jealously drawing it back again. Between
these great corners of the curve climbed ridges of gray and heliotrope
to meet streaks of green--the mineral green of copper, like the color
of the sea in sunlight--and snowy traceries of white that were narrow
veins of outcropping borax. High up above the rim of the amphitheater,
along the battlements of the mountain, stood out a zigzag belt of rusty
red, from which the iron stain had run downward to tinge the lower
hues. Above all this wondrous coloration upheaved the bare breast of
the mountain, growing darker with earthy browns until the bold ramparts
of the peak, gray like rock, gleamed pale against the leaden-blue
sky. Low down through the opening of the amphitheater gleamed a void,
a distant bottom of the bowl, dim and purple and ghastly, with shining
white streaks like silver streams--and this was Death Valley.
And then Adam, with breast oppressed by feelings too deep for
utterance, retracted his far-seeing gaze, once more to look over the
whole amazing spectacle, from the crinkly buff clay under his feet to
the dim white bottom of the valley. And at this keen instant he again
heard a cry. Human it was, or else he had lost his mind, and all which
he saw here was disordered imagination.
Turning back, he ran in the direction whence he believed the sound had
come, passing by some rods the point where he had climbed out of the
wash. And at the apex of the great curve, toward which tended all the
multitude of wrinkles of the denuded slopes, he found a trail coming up
out of the amphitheater and leading down into the wash. The dust bore
unmistakable signs of fresh moccasin tracks, of hobnailed boots, and of
traces where water had been spilled. The boot impressions led down and
the moccasin tracks up; and, as these latter were the fresher, Adam,
after a pause of astonishment and a keen glance all around, began to
follow them.
The trail led across the wash and turned west toward where the walls
commenced to take on the dignity of a canyon. Bunches of sage and
greasewood began to dot the sand, and beyond showed the thickets of
mesquite. Some prospector was packing water from the creek up the
canyon and down into that amphitheater. Suddenly Adam thought of
Dismukes. He examined the next hobnailed boot track he descried in the
dust with minute care. The foot that had made it did not belong to
Dismukes. Adam hurried on.
He came upon a spot where the man he was trailing--surely an
Indian--had fallen in the sand. A dark splotch, sticky and wet, had
never been made by spilled water. Adam recognized blood when he touched
it, but if he had not known it by the feel, he surely would have by
the smell. Probably at that instant Adam became fully himself again. He
was on the track of events, he sensed some human being in trouble; and
the encroaching spell of Death Valley lost its power.
The trail led into the mesquites, to a wet glade rank with sedge and
dank with the damp odor of soapy water.
A few more hurried strides brought Adam upon the body of an Indian,
lying face down at the edge of the trickling little stream. His black
matted hair was bloody. A ragged, torn, and stained shirt bore further
evidence of violence. Adam turned him over, seeing at a glance that he
had been terribly beaten about the head with a blunt instrument. He was
gasping. Swiftly Adam scooped up water in his hat. He had heard that
kind of a gasp before. Lifting the Indian’s head, Adam poured water
into the open mouth. Then he bathed the blood-stained face.
The Indian was of the tribe that had packed supplies for the Vireys. He
was apparently fatally hurt. It was evident that he wanted to speak.
And from the incoherent mixture of language which these Indians used in
conversation with white men Adam gathered significant details of gold,
of robbers, of something being driven round and round, grinding stone
like maize.
“_Arrastra!_” queried Adam.
The Indian nodded and made a weak motion of his hand toward the trail
that led to the yellow wilderness of clay, and then further gestures,
which, with a few more gutturally whispered words, gave Adam the
impression that a man of huge bulk, wide of shoulder, was working the
old Spanish treadmill--_arrastra_--grinding for gold. Then the Indian
uttered, with a last flash of spirit, the warning he could not speak,
and, falling back, he gasped and faded into unconsciousness.
Adam stood up, thinking hard, muttering aloud some of his thoughts.
“_Arrastra!_... That was the way of Dismukes--to grind for gold....
He’s here--somewhere--down in that yellow hole.... Robbers have jumped
his claim--probably are holding him--torturing him to tell of hidden
gold ... and they beat this poor Indian to death.”
There was necessity for quick thought and quick action. The Indian was
not dead, but he soon would be. Adam could do nothing for him. It was
imperative to decide whether to wait here for the return of the water
carrier or at once follow the trail to the yellow clay slopes. Adam
wore a gun, but it held only two unused shells, and there was no more
ammunition in his pack. The Indian had no weapon. Perhaps the water
carrier would be armed. If Dismukes were dead, there need be no rash
hurry to avenge him; if he lived as prisoner a little time more or less
would not greatly matter. Adam speedily decided to wait a reasonable
time for the man who packed water, and, if he came, to kill him and
then hurry up the trail. There was, in this way, less danger of being
discovered, and, besides, one of the robbers dispatched would render
the band just so much weaker. Adam especially favored this course
because of the possibility of getting a weapon.
“And more,” muttered Adam, “if he happens to be a tall man I can
pretend to be him--packing water back.”
Therefore Adam screened himself behind a thick clump of mesquite near
the trail and waited in ambush like a panther ready to spring.
As he crouched there, keen eyes up the canyon, ears like those of a
listening deer, there flashed into Adam’s mind one of Magdalene Virey’s
unforgetable remarks. “The power of the desert over me lies somewhere
in my strange faculty of forgetting self. I watch, I hear, I feel, I
smell, but I don’t think. Just a gleam--a fleeting moment--then the
state of consciousness or lack of consciousness is gone! But in that
moment lies the secret lure of the desert. Its power over men!”
Swiftly as it had come the memory passed, and Adam became for fleeting
moments at a time the embodiment of Magdalene Virey’s philosophy,
all unconscious when thought was absent from feeling. The hour was
approaching midday and the wind began to rustle the mesquites and
seep the sand. Adam smelled a dry dust somewhat tangy, and tasted the
bitterness of it as he licked his lips. Flies had began to buzz around
the dead Indian. Instinctively Adam gazed aloft, and, yes, there far
above him circled a vulture, and above that another, sweeping down from
the invisible depths of blue, magically ringing a flight around the
heavens, with never a movement of wings. They sailed round and round,
always down. Where did they come from? What power poised them so surely
in the air?
Adam waited. All at once his whole body vibrated with the leap of
his heart. A tall, hulking man hove in sight, balancing a bar across
his shoulders, from each end of which hung a large bucket. These
buckets swung to and fro with the fellow’s steps. Like a lazy man, he
advanced leisurely. Adam saw a little puff of smoke lift from the red,
indistinct patch that was this water carrier’s face. He had cigarette
or pipe. As he approached nearer and nearer, Adam received steadily
growing and changing impressions of the man he was about to kill, until
they fixed in the image of a long, loosely jointed body, a soiled shirt
open at the neck, bare brown arms, and cruel red face. Just outside the
mesquites, the robber halted to peer at the spot where the Indian had
fallen, and then ahead as if he expected to see a body lying in the
trail.
“Ho! Ho! if thet durned Injin I beat didn’t crawl way down hyar! An’
his brains oozin’ out!” he ejaculated hoarsely, as he strode between
the scratching mesquites, swinging the crossbar and buckets sidewise.
“Takes a hell of a lot to kill some critters!”
Like a released spring Adam shot up. His big hands flashed to cut off a
startled yell.
“Not so much!” he called, grimly, and next instant his giant frame
strung to the expenditure of mighty effort.
* * * * *
At noon the wind was blowing a gusty gale and the sun shone a deep,
weird, magenta color through the pall of yellow dust. The sky was not
visible. Down on the ridges and in the washes dust sheets were whipped
up at intervals. Clouds of flying sand rustled through the air, and
sometimes the wind had force enough to carry grains of gravel. These
intermittent blasts resembled the midnight furnace winds, except for
the strange fact that they were not so hot, so withering. Every few
minutes the canyon would be obscured in sweeping, curling streaks and
sheets of dust. Then, as the gale roared away, the dust settled and the
air again cleared. But high up, the dull, yellow pall hung, apparently
motionless, with that weird sun, like a red-orange moon seen through
haze, growing darker.
The fury of the elements seemed to favor Adam. Heat and gale and
obscurity could tend only to relax the vigilance of men. Adam counted
upon surprising the gang. To his regret, he had found no weapon on
the robber he had overcome. Wearing the man’s slouch sombrero pulled
down, and carrying the water buckets suspended from the bar across his
shoulders, Adam believed that in the thick of the duststorm he might
approach near the gang, perhaps get right among them.
When he got to the top of the amphitheater and found it a weird and
terrible abyss of flying yellow shadows and full of shriek of wind
and moan and roar, he decided he would go down as far as might seem
advisable, then try to slip up on the robbers, wherever they were, and
get a look at them and their surroundings before rushing to the attack.
Down, and yet farther, Adam plodded, amazed at the depth of the pit,
the bottom of which he had not seen. The plainly defined trail led him
on, and in one place huge boot tracks, familiar to him, acted as a
spur. The tracks were not many days old and had been made by Dismukes.
Adam now expected to find his old friend dead or in some terrible
situation. The place, the day, the heat, the wind--all presaged terror,
violence, gold, and blood. No human beings would endure this nude and
ghastly and burning hell hole of flying dust for anything except gold.
At last Adam got so far down, so deep into the yellow depths, that pall
and roar of duststorm appeared above him. He walked in a strange yellow
twilight. And here the sun showed a darker magenta. Fine siftings of
dust floated and fell all around him, dry, choking, and, when they
touched his face, like invisible sparks of fire.
Interminably the yellow-walled wash wound this way and that, widening
out to the dimensions of a canyon. At length Adam smelled smoke. He was
close to a camp of some kind. Depositing the buckets in the trail, he
sheered off and went up an intersecting wash.
When out of sight of the trail, he climbed up a soft clay slope and,
lying flat at the top, he peeped over. More yellow ridges like the ribs
of a washboard! They seemed to run out on all sides, in a circling
maze, soft and curved and colorful, and shaded by what seemed unnatural
shadows. But they were almost level. Here indeed was the pit of the
amphitheater. With slow, desert-trained gaze Adam swept the graceful
dunes. All bare! The twilight of changing yellow shadow hindered sure
sight at considerable distance, and the sweeping rush of wind above,
and then a low hollow roar, made listening useless.
At length Adam noticed how all the clay ridges or ends of slopes to
his right ran about a hundred yards and then sheered down abruptly.
Here, then, was the main canyon through which the trail ran. The line
of it, a vague break in the yellow color, turned toward Adam’s left.
Adam deliberated a moment. Would he go on or return to the trail? Then
he rose, crossed the top of the clay ridge, plunged down its soft bank,
leaped the sandy and gravelly wash at the bottom, and started up the
next ridge. This was exactly like the one he had surmounted. Adam kept
on, down and up, down and up, until the yellow twilight in front of
him appeared separated by a lazy column of blue. Adam’s nostrils made
sure of that. It was smoke. Cautiously crawling now, down and up, Adam
gained the ridge from behind which rose the smoke. Here he crouched
against the soft clay, breathing hard from his exertions, listening and
peering.
The ridges about him began to show streaks of brown earth and ledges
of rock. As he looked about he was startled by a rumbling, grating
sound. It was continuous, but it had louder rumbles, almost bumps. The
sound was rock grating on rock. Adam thought he knew what made it.
With all his might he listened, pressing his ear down on the clay. The
rumble kept on, but Adam could not hear any other sound until there
came a lull in the wind above. Then he heard a squeaking creak--a
sound of wood moved tight against wood; then sharp cracks, but of soft
substances; then the ring of a shovel on stone; and at last harsh
voices.
So far, so good, thought Adam. Only a few yards of clay separated him
from mining operations, and he must see how many men were there and
what was the lay of the land, and how best he could proceed. The old
animal instinct to rush animated him, requiring severe control. While
waiting for the wind to begin again, Adam wondered if he was to see
Dismukes. He did not expect to.
The elements seemed to await Adam’s wishes. At that very moment the
yellow light shaded a little dimmer and the sinister-hued sun cloaked
its ruddy face. The gale above howled, and the circling winds, lower
down, gathered up sheets of dust and swept them across the shrouded
amphitheater. And a wave of intenser heat moved down into the pit.
Adam sank his fingers into the soft clay and crawled up this last
slope. The rattle of loosened clay and gravel rolling down was
swallowed up in the roar of wind. Reaching the last foot of ascent,
Adam cautiously peeped over. He saw a wider space, a sort of round
pocket between two yellow ridges, that ran out and widened from a
ledge of crumbling rock. He crawled a few inches farther, raised
himself a little higher. Then he saw brush roofs of structures,
evidently erected for shade. The rumble began again. Higher Adam raised
himself. Then he espied a coat hanging on a corner post of one of the
structures. Dismukes’ coat! Adam could have picked it out of a thousand
coats. Excitement now began to encroach upon his cool patience and
determination. The gale seemed howling with rage at the truth here,
still hidden from Adam’s eyes. Higher he raised himself.
The brush-covered structure farther from him was a sun shelter, and
under it lay piles of camp duffle. A camp fire smoked. Adam’s swift
eyes caught the gleam of guns. The day was too torrid for these campers
to pack guns. The nearer structure was large, octagonal shape, built of
mesquite posts and brush. From under it came the rumble of rocks and
the metallic clink of shovels, and then the creak and crack and the
heavy voice.
Still higher Adam pulled himself so that he might see under the brush
shelter. A wide rent in the roof--a huge brown flash across this
space--then lower down a movement of men to and fro--rumble of rocks,
clink of shovel, thud of earth, creak and crack--a red undershirt--blue
jeans--boots, and then passing, bending men nude to the waist--circle
and sweep of long dark streak--then again the huge brown flash; it all
bewildered Adam, so that one of his usually distinguishing glances
failed to convey clear meaning of this scene. Then he looked and
looked, and when he had looked a long, breathless moment he fell flat
on the soft clay, digging his big hands deep, trembling and straining
with the might of his passion to rush like a mad bull down upon the
ruffians. It took another moment, that battling restraint. Then he
raised to look with clearer, more calculating gaze.
The brush roof was a shelter for an _arrastra_. The octagonal shape
of this sun shade filled the pocket that nestled between the slopes.
Its back stood close to the ledge of crumbling rock from which the
gold-bearing ore was being extracted. Its front faced the open gully.
Under it an _arrastra_ was in operation. As many of these Spanish
devices as Adam had seen, no one of them had ever resembled this.
In the center of the octagon a round pit had been dug into the ground,
and lined and floored with flat stones. An upright beam was set in the
middle of this, and was fastened above to the roof. Crossbeams were
attached to the upright, and from these crossbeams dragged huge rocks
held by chains. A long pole, like the tongue of a wagon, extended from
the upright and reached far out, at a height of about four feet from
the ground. The principle of operation was to revolve the crossbeams
and upright post, dragging the heavy rocks around and around the pit,
thus crushing the ore. Adam knew that mercury was then used to absorb
the gold from the crevices.
The motive power sometimes was a horse, and usually it was a mule.
But in this instance the motive power was furnished by a man. A huge,
broad, squat man naked to the waist! He was bound to the end of the
long bar or tongue, and as he pushed it round and round his body was
bent almost double. What wonderful brawny arms on which the muscles
rippled and strung like ropes! The breast of this giant was covered
with grizzled hair. Like a tired ox he bowed his huge head, wagging it
from side to side. As he heaved around he exposed his broad back--the
huge brown flash that had mystified Adam--and this mighty muscled back
showed streaks and spots of blood.
A gaunt man, rawboned and dark, with a face like a ghoul, stood just
outside the circle described by the long bar. He held a mesquite branch
with forked and thorny end, which he used as a goad. Whenever the
hairy, half-naked giant passed around this gaunt man would swing the
whip. It cracked on the brown back--spattered the drops of blood.
There were three other men shoveling, carrying, and dumping ore into
the pit. One was slight of build and hard of face. A red-undershirted
fellow looked tough and wiry, of middle age, a seasoned desert rat,
villainous as a reptile. The third man had a small, closely cropped
head like a bullet, and a jaw that stood out beyond his brow, a hard
visage smeared with sweat and dust. His big, naked shoulders proclaimed
him young.
And the grizzled giant, whom the others were goading and working to
death there in the terrible heat, was Adam’s old savior and friend,
Dismukes.
Cautiously Adam backed and slid down the clay slope, and hurried up and
down another. When he had crossed several he turned to the left and ran
down to the trail, and followed along that until he reached the spot
where he had left the buckets of water.
There he drank deeply, and tried to restrain his hurry. But he was not
tired or out of breath. And his mind seemed at a deadlock. A weapon, a
shovel, a sledge to crush their skulls! To keep between them and their
guns! Thus Adam’s thoughts had riveted themselves on a few actions.
There was, on the surface of his body, a cold, hard, tingling stretch
of skin over rippling muscles; and deep internally, the mysterious and
manifold life of blood and nerve and bone awoke and flamed under the
instinct of the ages. Adam’s body then belonged to the past and to what
the desert had made it.
Swinging the crossbar over his shoulders and lifting the buckets,
he took the trail down toward the camp! He bowed his head and his
shoulders more than the weight of the buckets made necessary. The
perverse gale blew more fiercely than ever, and the hollow roar
resounded louder, and the yellow gloom of dust descended closer, and
a weird, dim light streamed through the pall, down upon the moving
shadows. All was somber, naked, earthy in this thickening, lowering
pall. Odor of smoke and dust! A fiercely burning heat that had the
weight of hotly pressing lead! Bellow and shriek and moan of gale
that died away! It was the portal to an inferno, and Adam was a man
descended in age-long successions from simian beasts, and he strode in
the image of God, with love his motive, rage his passion, and the wild
years of the desert at his back, driving him on.
He rounded the last corner. There was the camp, fifty yards away. He
now could almost straddle the only avenue of escape.
The wind lulled. A yellow shadow drifted away from the sun, and again
it shone with sinister magenta hue. All the air seemed to wait, as if
the appalling forces of nature, aghast at the strange lives of men, had
halted to watch.
“Thar’s Bill with the water!” yelled the red-shirted man.
Work and action ceased. The giant Dismukes looked, then heaved erect
with head poised like that of a hawk.
“Aw, Bill, you son-of-a-gun!” called another robber, in welcome. “We
damn near died, waitin’ fer thet water!”
“Ho! Ho!... Bill, ye musta run ag’in’ another Injun.”
Adam walked on, shortening himself a little more, quickening his
stride. When he reached and passed the shelter under which lay packs
and coats and guns he suddenly quivered, as if released from dragging
restraint.
The robber of slight frame and hard face had walked out from under the
shelter. He alone had been silent. He had peered keenly, bending a
little.
“Hey, is thet you, Bill?” he queried, with hard voice which suited his
face.
The gaunt robber cracked his whip. “Fellars, air we locoed by this hyar
dust? Damn the deceivin’ light!... Too big fer Bill--er I’m blind with
heat!”
“_It ain’t Bill!_” screeched the little man, and he bounded toward
where lay the guns.
Adam dropped the buckets. Down they thudded with a splash. Two of his
great leaps intercepted the little man, who veered aside, dodged, and
then tried to run by. Adam, with a lunge and a swing, hit him squarely
on the side of the head. The blow rang soddenly. Its tremendous power
propelled the man off his feet, turning him sidewise as he went through
the air, and carried him with terrific force against one of the shelter
posts, round which his limp body seemed to wrap itself. Crash! the
post gave way, letting the roof sag. Then the smitten man rolled to
lodge against a pack, and lay inert.
Whirling swiftly, Adam drew his gun, and paused a second, ready to rush.
The robbers stood stock-still.
“My Gawd!” hoarsely yelled the red-shirted one. “Who’s thet?... Did you
see him soak Robbins?”
Dismukes let out a stentorian roar of joy, of hate, of triumph. Like a
chained elephant he plunged to escape. Failing that, he surged down to
yell: “Aha, you bloody claim jumpers! Now you’re done! It’s Wansfell!”
“_Wansfell!_” flashed the gaunt-faced villain, and that gaunt face
turned ashen. “Grab a shovel! Run fer a gun!”
Then the red-shirted robber swung aloft his shovel and rushed at Adam,
bawling fierce curses. Adam shot him through. The man seemed blocked,
as if by heavy impact, then, more fiercely, he rushed again. Adam’s
second and last shot, fired at point-blank, staggered him. But the
shovel descended on Adam’s head, a hard blow, fortunately from the
flat side. Clubbing his gun, Adam beat down the man, who went falling
with his shovel under the shelter. Both of the other men charged Adam
and the three met at the opening. They leaped so swiftly upon him and
were so heavy bodied that they bore him to the ground. Adam’s grim
intention was to hang on to both of them so neither could run to get a
weapon. To that end he locked a hold on each. Then began a whirling,
wrestling, thudding battle. To make sure of them Adam had handicapped
himself. He could not swing his malletlike fists and he had not been
fortunate enough to grip their throats. So, rolling over and over with
them, he took the rain of blows, swinging them back, heaving his weight
upon them. Foot by foot he won his way farther and farther from where
the guns lay. If one yelling robber surged half erect, Adam swung the
other to trip him. And once inside the wide doorway of that octagon
structure, Adam rose with the struggling men, an iron hand clutching
each, and, swinging them wide apart, by giant effort he brought them
back into solid and staggering impact. He had hoped to bring their
heads together. But only their bodies collided and the force of the
collision broke Adam’s hold on one. The young man of hulking frame
went down, right on the shovel, and, quick to grasp it, he bounded up,
fierce and strong. But as he swung aloft the weapon, Adam let go of
the gaunt-faced man and hit him, knocking him against the other. They
staggered back, almost falling.
Swift on that advantage, Adam swung a fist to the bulging jaw of the
man with the shovel. As if struck by a catapult, he went down over the
wooden beam and the shovel flew far. Then Adam blocked the doorway.
The other fellow charged him, only to be knocked back. As he reeled,
his comrade, panting loud, straddled the long beam. Just then Dismukes
with quick wits heaved forward on the beam, to which he was bound, and
the claim jumper went sprawling in the dirt. Dismukes celebrated his
entrance into the fray with another stentorian yell.
Adam awoke now to a different and more intense sense of the fight. He
had his antagonists cornered. They could never get by him to secure a
gun. And the fierce zest of violent strife, the ruthless law of the
desert, the survival of the strongest, the blood lust, would have made
him refuse any weapon save his hands. He stood on his feet and his
hands were enough. Like a wolf he snapped his teeth, then locked his
jaw. As he swung and battled and threw these foes backward a strange,
wild joy accelerated his actions. When he struck, the sodden blow felt
good. He avoided no return blows. He breasted them. The smell of sweat
and blood, the heat of panting breaths in his face, the feel of hot,
rippling muscle, all tended to make him the fiercer. His sight stayed
keen, though tinged with red. He saw the beady, evil eyes of the big
robber, like hot green fire, and the bruised and bleeding face with its
snarling mouth; and as he saw, he struck out hard with savage thrill.
He saw the gaunt and sallow visage of the other, bloody mouthed, with
malignant gaze of frenzied hate, of glinting intent to kill, and as he
saw he beat him down.
Then into his pulsing senses burst a terrible yell from Dismukes. The
gaunt-faced man had fallen into the pit of the _arrastra_, and Dismukes
had suddenly started ahead, shoving the beam over him. The big rocks
dragging by chains from the crossbeam began to pound around on the ore.
Jar and rumble! Then a piercing scream issued from the man who had been
caught under the rocks, who was being dragged around the _arrastra_.
Adam saw, even as he knocked back another rush of the other man.
“GRINDIN’ GOLD, WANSFELL!” roared Dismukes. “MORE ORE, PARD!... WE’RE
GRINDIN’ GOLD!”
The huge prospector bent to his task. Supreme was his tremendous
effort. Strength of ten men! Blood gushed from the cuts on his brawny
back. Faster he shoved until he was running. And as he came around, the
ferocity of his bristling face and the swelling of the great chest with
its mats of hair seemed to prove him half man, half beast, a gorilla in
a death grapple.
Again the big robber lunged up, to lower his head and charge at Adam.
He was past yelling. He did not seek to escape. He would have given his
life to kill.
“MORE ORE, PARD WANSFELL!” yelled Dismukes, as with whistling breath
he shoved round the terrible mill of rumbling rocks. A horrible,
long-drawn cry issued from under them.
Then the sweep of the long beam caught the man who was charging Adam.
Down to his knees it forced him, and, catching under his chin, was
dragging him, when the upright post gave way with a crash. The released
beam, under the tremendous momentum of Dismukes’ massive weight and
strength, seemed to flash across the half circle, lifting and carrying
the man. A low wall of rock caught his body, and the beam, swinging
free from its fastening, cracked his head as if it had been a ripe
melon.