THE WAR EAGLE
Since a bullet from nowhere had shot him through the leg, Wunpost had
learned a new fear of the hills. Before, they had been his
stamping-ground, the "high places" he was so boastful of; but now they
became imbued with a malign personality, all the more fearful because it
was unknown. With painstaking care he had checked up on Pisen-face
Lynch, to determine if it was he who had ambushed him; but Lynch had
established a perfect alibi--in fact, it was almost too good. He had
been right in Blackwater during all the trouble, although now he was out
in the hills; and an Indian whom Wunpost had sent on a scout reported
that the Shoshones had no knowledge of the shooting. They, too, had
become aware of the strange presence in the hills, though none of them
had really seen it, and their women were afraid to go out after the
pinon-nuts for fear of being caught and stolen.
The prowler was no renegade Shoshone, for his kinsmen would know about
him, and yet Wunpost had a feeling it was an Indian. And he had another
hunch--that the Indian was employed by Eels and Pisen-face Lynch. For,
despite Wilhelmina's statement, there was one man in Blackwater who did
not consider him a bag of hot air. Judson Eells took him seriously, so
seriously, in fact, that he was spending thousands of dollars on
detectives; and Wunpost knew for a certainty that there was a party in
the hills, waiting and watching to trail him to his mine. His departure
from Los Angeles had been promptly reported, and Lynch and several
others had left town--which was yet another reason why Wunpost quit the
hills and went north over the Death Valley Trail.
Life had suddenly become a serious affair to the man who had discovered
the Willie Meena, and as he neared that mine he veered off to the right
and took the high ground to Wild Rose. Yet he could not but observe that
the mine was looking dead, and rumor had it that the paystreak had
failed. The low-grade was still there and Eells was still working it;
but out on the desert and sixty miles from the railroad it could hardly
be expected to pay. No, Judson Eells was desperate, for he saw his
treasure slipping as the Wunpost had slipped away before; it was
slipping through his fingers and he grasped at any straw which might
help him to find the Sockdolager. It was the curse of the Panamints that
the veins all pinched out or ran into hungry ore; and for the second
time, when he had esteemed himself rich, he had found the bottom of the
hole. He had built roads and piped water and set up a mill and settled
down to make his pile; and then, with that strange fatality which seemed
to pursue him, he had seen his profits fail. The assays had shown that
his pay-ore was limited and that soon the Willie Meena must close, and
now he was taking the last of his surplus and making a desperate fight
for the Sockdolager.
Half the new mine was his, according to law, and since Wunpost had dared
him to do his worst he was taking him at his word. And Wunpost at last
was getting scared, though not exactly of Eells. For, since he alone
knew the location of his mine, and no one could find it if he were dead,
it stood to reason that Eells would never kill him, or give orders to
his agents to kill. But what those agents were doing while they were out
in the field, and how far they would respect his wishes, was something
about which Eells knew no more than Wunpost, if, in fact, he knew as
much. For Wunpost had a limp in his good right leg which partially
conveyed the answer, and it was his private opinion that Lynch had gone
bad and was out in the hills to kill him. Hence his avoidance of the
peaks, and even the open trail; and the way he rode into water after
dark.
There were Indians at Wild Rose, Shooshon Johnny and his family on their
way to Furnace Creek for the winter; but though they were friendly
Wunpost left in the night and camped far out on the plain. It was the
same sandy plain over which he had fled when he had led Lynch to Poison
Spring, and as he went on at dawn Wunpost felt the first vague
misgivings for his part in that unfortunate affair. It had lost him a
lot of friends and steeled his enemies against him--Lynch no longer was
working by the day--and sooner or later it was likely to cost him dear,
for no man can win all the time. Yet he had thrown down the gauntlet,
and if he weakened now and quit his name would be a byword on the
desert. And besides he had made his boast to Wilhelmina that he would
come back with his assailant's back hair.
It was a matter of pride with John C. Calhoun that, for all his wild
talk, he never made his brag without trying to live up to his word. He
had stated in public that he was going to break Eells, and he fully
intended to do so; and his promise to get Lynch and Phillip F. Lapham
was never out of his mind; but this assassin, this murderer, who had
shot him without cause and then crawled off through the boulders like a
snake--Wunpost had schemed night and day from the moment he was hit to
bring the sneaking miscreant to book. He had some steel-traps in his
packs which might serve to good purpose if he could once get the
man-hunter on his trail; and he still fondly hoped to lure him over into
Death Valley, where he would have to come out of the hills.
No man could cross that Valley without leaving his tracks, for there
were alkali flats for miles; and when, in turn, Wunpost wished to cover
his own trail, there was always the Devil's Playground. There, whenever
the wind blew, the great sandhills were on the move, covering up and at
the same time laying bare; and when a sand storm came on he could lose
his tracks half an hour after they were made. It was a big country, and
wild, no man lived there for sixty miles--they could fight it out,
alone.
From Emigrant Spring, where he camped after dark, Wunpost rode out
before dawn and was well clear of the hills before it was light enough
to shoot. The broad bulwark of Tucki Mountain, rising up on his right,
might give a last shelter to his enemy; but now he was in the open with
Emigrant Wash straight ahead and Death Valley lying white beyond. And
over beyond that, like a wall of layer cake, rose the striated
buttresses of the Grapevines. Wunpost passed down over the road up which
the Nevada rush had come when he had made his great strike at Black
Point; and as he rollicked along on his fast-walking mule, with the two
pack-animals following behind, something rose up within him to tell him
the world was good and that a lucky star was leading him on.
He was heading across the Valley to the Grapevine Range, and the hateful
imp of evil which had dogged him through the Panamints would have to
come down and leave a trail. And once he found his tracks Wunpost would
know who he was fighting, and he could govern himself accordingly. If it
was an Indian, well and good; if it was Lynch, still well and good; but
no man can be brave when he is fighting in the dark or fleeing from an
unseen hand. From their lookouts on the heights his enemies could see
him traveling and trace him with their glasses all day; but when night
fell they would lose him, and then someone would have to descend and
pick up his trail in the sands.
Wunpost camped that evening at Surveyor's Well, a trench-hole dug down
into the Sink, and after his mules had eaten their fill of salt-grass he
packed up again and pushed on to the east. From the stinking alkali flat
with its mesquite clumps and sacaton, he passed on up an interminable
wash; and at daylight he was hidden in the depths of a black canyon
which ended abruptly behind him. There was no way to reach him, or even
see where he was hid, except by following up the canyon; and before he
went to sleep Wunpost got out his two bear-traps and planted them
hurriedly in the trail. Then, retiring into a cave, he left Good Luck on
guard and slept until late in the day. But nothing stirred down the
trail, his watch-dog was silent--he was hidden from all the world.
That evening just at dusk he went back down the trail and set his bear
traps again, but not even a prowling fox came along in the night to
spring their cruel jaws. The canyon was deserted and the water-hole
where he drank was unvisited except by his mules. These he had penned in
above him by a fence of brush and ropes and hobbled them to make doubly
sure; but in the morning they were there, waiting to receive their bait
of grain as if Tank Canyon was their customary home. Another day dragged
by and Wunpost began to fidget and to watch the unscalable peaks, but no
Indian's head appeared to draw a slug from his rifle and again the night
passed uneventfully. He spent the third day in a fury, pacing up and
down his cave, and at nightfall he packed up and was gone.
Three days was enough to wait on the man who had shot him down from the
heights and, now that he thought of it, he was taking a great deal for
granted when he set his big traps in the trail. In the first place, he
was assuming that the man was still there, after a lapse of six weeks
and more; and in the second place that he was bold enough, or so
obsessed by blood-lust, that he would follow him across Death Valley;
whereas as a matter of fact, he knew nothing whatever about him except
that he had shot him in the leg. His aim had been good but a little too
low, which is unusual when shooting down hill, and that might argue him
a white man; but his hiding had been better, and his absolute patience,
and that looked more like an Indian. But whoever he was, it was taking
too much for granted to think that he would walk into a trap. What
Wunpost wanted to know, and what he was about to find out, was whether
his tracks had been followed.
He left Tank Canyon after dark, driving his pack-mules before him to
detect any possible ambush; and in his nest on the front pack Good Luck
stood up like a sentinel, eager to scent out the lurking foe. For the
past day and night Good Luck had been uneasy, snuffing the wind and
growling in his throat, but the actions of his master had been cause
enough for that, for he responded to Wunpost's every mood. And Wunpost
was as jumpy as a cat that has been chased by a dog, he practised for
hours on the draw-and-shoot; and whenever he dismounted he dragged his
rifle with him to make sure he would do it in a pinch. He was worried
but not frightened and when he came free from the canyon he headed for
Surveyor's Well.
Someone had been there before him, perhaps even that very night, for
water had been splashed about the hole; but whoever it was, was gone.
Wunpost studied the unshod horse-track, then he began to cut circles in
the snow-white alkali and at last he sat down to await the dawn. There
was something eerie about this pursuit, if pursuit it was, for while the
horse had been watered from the bucket at the well, its rider had not
left a track. Not a heel-mark, not a nail-point, and the last of the
water had been dropped craftily on the spot where he had mounted. That
was enough--Wunpost knew he had met his match. He watered his mules
again, rode west into the mesquite brush and at sun-up he was hid for
the day.
Where three giant mesquite trees, their tops reared high in the air and
their trunks banked up with sand, sprawled together to make a natural
barricade, Wunpost unpacked his mules and tied them there to browse
while he climbed to the top of a mound. The desert was quite bare as far
as he could see--no horseman came or went, every distant trail was
empty, the way to Tank Canyon was untrod. And yet somewhere there must
be a man and a horse--a very ordinary horse, such as any man might have,
and a man who wiped out his tracks. Wunpost lay there a long time,
sweeping the washes with his glasses, and then a shadow passed over him
and was gone. He jumped and a glossy raven, his head turned to one side,
gave vent to a loud, throaty _quawk_! His mate followed behind him,
her wings rustling noisily, her beady eye fixed on his camp, and Wunpost
looked up and cursed back at them.
If the ravens on the mountain had made out his hiding-place and come
down from their crags to look, what was to prevent this man who smoothed
out his tracks from detecting his hidden retreat? Wunpost knew the
ravens well, for no man ever crossed Death Valley without hearing the
whish of black wings, but he wondered now if this early morning visit
did not presage disaster to come. What the ravens really sought for he
knew all too well, for he had seen their knotted tracks by dead forms;
yet somehow their passage conjured up thoughts in his brain which had
never disturbed him before. They were birds of death, rapacious and
evil-bringing, and they had cast their boding shadows upon him.
The dank coolness of the morning gave place to ardent midday before he
crept down and gave up his watch, but as he crouched beneath the trees
another shadow passed over him and cast a slow circle through the brush.
It was a pair of black eagles, come down from the Panamints to throw a
fateful circle above _him_, and in all his wanderings it had never
happened before that an eagle had circled his camp. A superstitious
chill made Wunpost shudder and draw back, for the Shoshones had told him
that the eagles loved men's battles and came from afar to watch. They
had learned in the old days that when one war-party followed another
there would later be feasting and blood; and now, when one man followed
another across the desert, they came down from their high cliffs to
look. Wunpost scrambled to his hillock and watched their effortless
flight; and they swung to the north, where they circled again, not far
from the spot where he was hid. Here was an omen indeed, a sign without
fail, for below where they circled his enemy was hiding--or slipping up
through the brush to shoot.
We can all stand so much of superstitious fear and then the best nerves
must crack--Wunpost saddled his mules and struck out due south, turning
off into the "self-rising ground." Here in bloated bubbles of salt and
poisonous niter the ground had boiled up and formed a brittle crust,
like dough made of self-rising flour. It was a dangerous place to go,
for at uncertain intervals his mules caved through to their hocks, but
Wunpost did not stop till he had crossed to the other side and put ten
miles of salt-flats behind him. He was haunted by a fear of something he
could not name, of a presence which pursued him like a devil; but as he
stopped and looked back the hot curses rushed to his lips and he headed
boldly for the mouth of Tank Canyon.