THE DEVIL-WIND
As Pete lay planning his departure--he wondered if Boca would think to
find him a canteen and food for his long ride--the stars, hitherto
clear-edged and brilliant, became blurred as though an almost invisible
mist had drifted between them and the earth. He rubbed his eyes. Yes,
there was no mistake about it. He was wide awake, and the sky was
changing. That which had seemed a mist now appeared more like a fine
dust, that swept across the heavens and dimmed the desert sky. It
occurred to him that he was at the bottom of a fairly deep cañon and
that that impalpable dust meant wind, A little later he heard it,--at
first a faint, far-away sound like the whisper of many voices; then a
soft, steady hiss as when wind-driven sand runs over sand. A hot wind
sprang up suddenly and swept with a rush down the night-walled cañon.
It was the devil-wind of the desert, the wind that curls the leaf and
shrivels the vine, even in the hours when there is no sun. When the
devil-wind drives, men lie naked beneath the sky in sleepless misery.
Horses and cattle stand with heads lowered and flanks drawn in,
suffering an invisible torture from which there is no escape. The dawn
brings no relief--no freshening of the air. The heat drives on--three
days--say those who know the southern desert--and no man rides the
trails, but seeks what shade may be, and lies torpid and silent--or if
he speaks, it is to curse the land.
Pete knew that this devil-wind would make old Flores restless. He
stepped round to the doorway and asked for water. From the darkness
within the adobe came Flores's voice and the sound of a match against
wood. The Mexican appeared with a candle.
"My head feels queer," stated Pete, as an excuse for disturbing Flores.
"I can't find the olla--and I'm dead for a drink."
"Then we shall drink this," said Flores, fetching a jug of wine from
beneath the bench.
"Not for mine! I'm dizzy enough, without that."
"It is the devil-wind. One may get drunk and forget. One may then
sleep. And if one sleeps, it is not so bad."
Pete shook his head, but tasted the wine that Flores poured for him.
If the old man would only get drunk enough to go to sleep . . . The
Mexican's oily, pock-marked face glistened in the flickering
candle-light. He drank and smacked his lips. "If one is to die of the
heat--one might as well die drunk," he laughed. "Drink, señor!"
Pete sipped the wine and watched the other as he filled and emptied his
glass again. "It is the good wine," said Flores. The candle-light
cast a huge, distorted shadow of the Mexican's head and shoulders on
the farther wall. The faint drone of the hot wind came to them from
the plains above. The candle-flame fluttered. Flores reached down for
the jug and set it on the table. "All night we shall drink of the good
wine, for no man may sleep.",
"I'm with you," said Pete. "Only I ain't so swift."
"No man may sleep," reiterated Flores, again emptying his tumbler.
"How about the women-folks?" queried Pete.
Flores waved his hand in a gesture indicative of supreme indifference
to what the "women-folks" did. He noticed that Pete was not drinking
and insisted that he drink and refill his glass. Pete downed the raw
red wine and presently complained of feeling sleepy. Flores grinned.
"I do not sleep," he asserted--"not until this is gone"--and he struck
the jug with his knuckles. Pete felt that he was in for a long
session, and inwardly cursed his luck. Flores's eyes brightened and he
grew talkative. He spoke of his youth in Old Mexico; of the cattle and
the women of that land. Pete feigned a heaviness that he did not feel.
Presently Flores's talk grew disconnected; his eye became dull and his
swarthy face was mottled with yellow. The sweat, which had rolled down
his cheeks and dripped from his nose, now seemed to coagulate in tiny,
oily globules. He put down a half-empty tumbler and stared at Pete.
"No man sleeps," he mumbled, as his lids drooped. Slowly his chin sank
to his chest and he slumped forward against the table. Pete started to
get up. Flores raised his head. "Drink--señor!" he murmured, and
slumped forward, knocking the tumbler over. A dark red line streaked
the table and dripped to the floor.
Something moved in the kitchen doorway. Pete glanced up to see Boca
staring at him. He gestured toward her father. She nodded
indifferently and beckoned Pete to follow her.
"I knew that you would think me a lie if I did not come," she told him,
as they stood near the old corral--Pete's impatience to be gone
evident, as he shouldered his saddle. "But you will not ride tonight.
You would die."
"It's some hot--but I aim to go through."
"But no--not to-night! For three days will it be like this! It is
terrible! And you have been ill."
She pressed close to him and touched his arm. "Have I not been your
friend?"
"You sure have! But honest, Boca, I got a hunch that it's time to fan
it. 'T ain't that I'm sore at your old man now--or want to leave
you--but I got a hunch somethin' is goin' to happen."
"You think only of that Malvey. You do not think of me," complained
Boca.
"I'm sure thinkin' of you every minute. It ain't Malvey that's
botherin' me now."
"Then why do you not rest--and wait?"
"Because restin' and waitin' is worse than takin" a chanct. I got to
go."
"You must go?"
Pete nodded.
"But what if I will not find a horse for you?"
"Then I reckon you been foolin' me right along."
"That is not so!" Boca's hand dropped to her side and she turned from
him.
"'Course it ain't! And say, Boca, I'll make it through all right. All
I want is a good hoss--and a canteen and some grub."
"I have made ready the food and have a canteen for you--in my room."
"Then let's go hunt up that cayuse."
"It is that you will die--" she began; but Pete, irritated by argument
and the burning wind that droned through the cañon, put an end to it
all by dropping the saddle and taking her swiftly in his arms. He
kissed her--rather perfunctorily. "My little pardner!" he whispered.
Boca, although sixteen and mature in a sense, was in reality little
more than a child. When Pete chose to assert himself, he had much the
stronger will. She felt that all pleading would be useless. "You have
the reata?" she queried, and turning led him past the corral and along
the fence until they came to the stream. A few hundred yards down the
stream she turned, and cautioning him to follow closely, entered a sort
of lateral cañon--a veritable box at whose farther end was Flores's
cache of horses, kept in this hidden pasture for any immediate need.
Pete heard the quick trampling of hoofs and the snort of startled
horses.
"We will drive them on into the corral," said Boca.
Pete could see but dimly, but he sensed the situation at once. The
cañon was a box, narrowing to a natural enclosure with the open end
fenced. He had seen such places--called "traps" by men who made a
business of catching wild horses.
Several dim shapes bunched in the small enclosure, plunging and
circling as Pete found and closed the bars.
"The yellow horse is of the desert--and very strong," said Boca.
"They all look alike to me," laughed Pete. "It's mighty dark, right
now." He slipped through the bars and shook out his rope. The horses
crowded away from him as he followed. A shape reared and backed. Pete
flipped the noose and set his heels as the rope snapped taut. He held
barely enough slack to make the snubbing-post, but finally took a turn
round it and fought the horse up. "Blamed if he ain't the buckskin,"
panted Pete.
The sweat dripped from his face as he bridled and saddled the half-wild
animal. It was doubly hard work in the dark. Then he came to the
corral bars where Boca stood. "I'm all hooked up, Boca."
"Then I shall go back for the cantina and the food."
"I'll go right along with you. I'll wait at the other corral."
Pete followed her and sat a nervous horse until she reappeared, with
the canteen and package of food. The hot wind purred and whispered
round them. Above, the stars struggled dimly through the haze. Pete
reached down and took her hand. She had barely touched his fingers
when the horse shied and reared.
"If Malvey he kill you--I shall kill him!" she whispered fiercely.
"I'm comin' back," said Pete.
A shadow flung across the night; and Boca. was standing gazing into
the black wall through which the shadow had plunged. Far up the trail
she could hear quick hoofbeats, and presently above the drone of the
wind came a faint musical "Adios! Adios!"
She dared not call back to him for fear of waking her father, in spite
of the fact that she knew he was drugged beyond all feeling and sound.
And she had her own good reason for caution. When Flores discovered
his best horse gone, there would be no evidence that would entangle her
or her mother in wordy argument with him for having helped the young
vaquero to leave--and against the direct commands of The Spider, who
had sent word to Flores through Malvey that Pete was to remain at the
rancho till sent for.
At the top of the cañon trail Pete reined in and tried to get his
bearings. But the horse, fighting the bit, seemed to have a clear idea
of going somewhere and in the general direction of Showdown. "You
ought to know the trail to Showdown," said Pete. "And you ain't tryin'
to git back home, so go to it! I'll be right with you."
The heavy, hot wind seethed round him and he bent his head, tying his
bandanna across his nose and mouth. The buckskin bored into the night,
his unshod hoofs pattering softly on the desert trail. His first "fine
frenzy" done, he settled to a swinging trot that ate into the miles
ceaselessly. Twice during the ride Pete raised the canteen and
moistened his burning throat. Slowly he grew numb to the heat and the
bite of the whipping sand, and rode as one in a horrible dream. He had
been a fool to ride from comparative safety into this blind furnace of
burning wind. Why had he done so? And again and again he asked
himself this question, wondering if he were going mad. It had been
years and years since he had left the Flores rancho. There was a girl
there--Boca Dulzura--or had he dreamed of such a girl? Pete felt the
back of his head. "No, it wa'n't a dream," he told himself.
A ghastly dawn burned into Showdown, baring the town's ugliness as it
crept from 'dobe to 'dobe as though in search of some living thing to
torture with slow fire. The street was a wind-swept emptiness, smooth
with fine sand. Pete rode to the hitching-rail. The Spider's place
was dumb to his knocking. He staggered round to the western side of
the saloon and squatted on his heels. "Water that pony after a while,"
he muttered. Strange flashes of light danced before his eyes. His
head pained dully and he ached all over for lack of sleep. A sudden
trampling brought him to his feet. He turned the corner of the saloon
just in time to see the buckskin lunge back. The reins snapped like a
thread. The pony shook its head and trotted away, circling. Pete
followed, hoping that the tangle of dragging rein might stop him.
Half-dazed, Pete followed doggedly, but the horse started to run. Pete
staggered back to the hitching-rail, untied the end of the broken rein
and tossed it across the street. He did not know why he did this; he
simply did it mechanically.
He was again afoot, weak and exhausted from his night's ride. "I
reckon that ole Mexican woman--was right," he muttered. "But I got one
pardner yet, anyhow," and his hand slid to his holster. "You and me
ag'in' the whole dam' town! God, it's hot."
He slumped to the corner of the saloon and squatted, leaning against
the wall. He thought of Boca. He could hear her speak his name
distinctly. A shadow drifted across his blurred vision. He glanced
up. The Spider, naked to the waist, stood looking down at him, leanly
grotesque in the dawn light.
"You 're going strong!" said The Spider.
"I want Malvey," whispered Pete.
The Spider's lips twitched. "You'll get some coffee and beans first.
Any man that's got enough sand to foot it from Flores here--can camp on
me _any_ time--coming or going."
"I'm workin' this case myself," stated Pete sullenly.
"You play your own hand," said The Spider. And for once he meant it.
He could scarcely believe that Young Pete had made it across the desert
on foot--yet there was no horse in sight. If Young Pete could force
himself to such a pace and survive he would become a mighty useful tool.
"Did Malvey play you?" queried The Spider.
"You ought to know."
"He said you were sick--down at Flores's rancho."
"Then he's here!" And Pete's dulling eyes brightened. "Well, I ain't
as sick as he's goin' to be, Spider."