OFF TRAIL
By the time the two reached the dead burro again the somber mood of the
girl had lightened.
"First thing is to sort over your pack," she said. "We'll cull out
what's not needed."
The girths of the packsaddle were cut loose, and the animal was dragged
clear of the pack. When Lennon's very creditable diamond-hitch had been
thrown off, the girl overhauled the pack and made quick decisions.
"We'll leave most of the flour. You can stock up at the ranch with
cornmeal. Same with your cooking outfit. Throw out all but one drill and
all the giant powder--no, keep half a dozen sticks."
"But, Miss Farley, I can't begin to lug a quarter of----"
"Don't forget my pony," cut in Carmena.
"He can't carry you and all this truck of mine," remonstrated Lennon.
"I'll not permit you to walk. You must have hurt your foot. I saw you
limp."
"I'm not asking your permission, thanks."
As she unbuckled her spurs Lennon noticed that the girl's boots were not
built with the usual cowboy high heels. They would be suitable for
walking.
The pony had wandered some distance down the wash, cunningly twitching
his trailing reins to one side, clear of his hoofs. While Lennon started
to cache his packsaddle and the other discarded articles of his outfit,
Carmena went after her would-be stray, limping and gingerly picking her
steps when she saw that the young man's back was turned. After catching
her pony she crouched down behind a corner of rock to unlace her boots.
They came off with difficulty.
Inside the boots, she had been wearing a pair of curious high-top
boot-moccasins with thick back-doubled toes. In a twinkling she stripped
off the moccasins and thrust them down into the bottom of one of the
saddlebags. With her feet uncramped and easy in her relaced boots, she
sprang into the saddle and loped back up the trail.
Lennon's cache was a cavity under an overhanging ledge. Before he had
blocked the opening to his satisfaction with fragments of rock the rest
of his outfit had been securely packed upon the pony by Carmena. Nothing
was left out except rifles, cartridge-belts and two half-gallon canteens
of water.
"Keep your gun loaded and never put all your water on your horse." The
girl gave her companion the two first maxims of desert travel. "Come
along. No use trying to hide your cache or your trail from Apaches. Only
another Apache can do that. It's high time we hit out, anyhow."
To the surprise of Lennon, she started up the arroyo. When he joined
her, the pony, whose reins had been tied to the pack, snorted and shied.
But at a call from Carmena, the skittish beast followed his mistress up
the arroyo like a dog.
"How about the chance of running into that murderous savage if we go
this way?" Lennon inquired.
"You might be safer if you hurried back to the railroad," replied
Carmena, and she swung the steepening side of the arroyo.
Lennon's lips tightened. He did not again question his guide's choice of
route. But, like her, he held his rifle ready as they came up over the
round of a stony ridge. Though neither could see the slightest sign of
lurking Indians, Carmena hastened to lead her pony across the ridge
crest and down the other side.
When safe below the skyline the girl broke into a dog trot. She held to
the pace, on a long slant along the ridge side, until they came up into
the mouth of a small canon. Between the bald ledges of the dry channel
were bars of sand and gravel. Lennon pointed to the hoofprints of a
horse that had come down the canon at a gallop.
"This must be the trail of our renegade," he said.
Carmena paused to fix him with a somber gaze.
"The whole bunch of bronchos may be up here, but it's the only way into
the Basin; and, once in, they may get behind us. Now's your chance to
quit--your last chance."
This time Lennon was ready for her.
"Lead on, Miss Macduff, and--perhaps you know the rest of the
quotation."
"Yes," gloomily retorted the girl. "Don't blame me if we meet up with
those broncs. The joke will be on you."
"How about your safety? Wouldn't you have a better chance if mounted?"
"Want to back out, do you?"
"By no means. My idea is to dump the pack from your pony. Then, if we
are attacked, I may be able to hold the renegades while you gallop off."
The girl's rich colour deepened into a flush. The thick fringe of her
lashes swept down to hide the glow in her eyes. Without a word she swung
ahead, on up the canon. Though not a little puzzled over her abruptness,
Lennon felt certain that she had been far from displeased by his
matter-of-fact suggestion.
He had no chance to urge the desirability of his plan. At his first
rather loud-spoken remonstrance Carmena flung back at him a curt gesture
for silence and led on at a quickened pace. Her swift ascent slackened
only at the twists of the narrowing canon; at these she would swing in
close to the inner side of the bends and creep around, with her rifle
half raised.
By mid-morning the bed of the canon had become much rougher and steeper.
The pony, for all his goat-like agility and sure-footedness, found
difficulty in scrambling up some of the ledges.
Neither the rapid pace nor the climbing bothered Lennon. But between the
burning heat and his very natural excitement over Carmena's stealthy
bearing at the turns, he became keyed to rather a high pitch.
After a last sharp turn, the canon broadened and flared out in a
trough-like valley at the top of a high, cedar-clad, ridge-rimmed mesa.
"Wait!" Lennon exclaimed. "Look ahead, Miss Farley--all bare and open!
Not a bit of shelter until we cross to the trees!"
The girl faced about, her red lips twisted in a smile of contempt, but
her eyes clouded with disappointment.
"I told you, down at the lower end, it was your last chance to quit."
"Quite true. I've burnt my bridges. The question now is one of advance,
not retreat. What if there are Indian watchers on those ridges? Would it
not be best for me to hold their attention by going straight up the open
valley, while you take the horse around through the cedars?"
Carmena met his proposal with a chuckle that brought a flush into
Lennon's lean face. But her troubled eyes had cleared and there was a
note of relief underlying her mirth.
"What's the matter with you, too, keeping under cover?" she rallied.
"Besides, we don't go to the head of the valley. We slant up to the left
through that notch in the ridge."
This banter, coupled with the assurance that the girl knew exactly what
she was about, cooled Lennon's excitement. His high strung nerves
relaxed.
"No need to remind you I'm a tenderfoot," he jibed at himself. "Coming
up the canon I've been shooting Apaches at every bend."
The mirth left Carmena's face. Her lips straightened in hard lines and
her eyes flashed.
"It's no joke," she said. "I'm right glad you're steadying down. If we
meet that bunch of bronchos, there's just one thing to do--shoot first.
It'll be time enough to ask questions afterward. Is that clear?"
"Perfectly, Miss Farley. I have you to consider, and I presume no
peaceful Indians come into these bad lands."
"Pimas and Moquis cut their hair square across the forehead. If you see
any others, shoot--to kill!"
"I will," said Lennon, certain that he understood the cause of the
girl's almost fierce insistence. He knew that the treatment of captured
women by renegade Indians is a far worse fate than death.
Carmena took note of his set jaw, drew in a deep breath, and swung
around to angle up the slope at the side of the canon head. Half an hour
of winding advance through the midst of the scraggly low-growing trees
brought them to the notch in the rim-ridge. Below this break the mesa
side pitched steeply into a great basin that was blotched with white
alkali flats, wave-marked with sand dunes, and broken with jagged hills
and skeleton-like ridges.
The air was so dry and clear that even far out in the Basin, many miles
away, Lennon could distinguish patches of green. Nearer at hand appeared
blurs of a grayish vegetation. But at his pleased exclamation Carmena
told him that he was looking at no oasis. What he saw was only the green
of mesquite and palo verde, the fluted columns of the giant sahuaro, and
the gray of sagebrush. In all that wide waste of desolation no
trickling rill or even the smallest of pools glinted under the fierce
rays of the mid-day sun.
Over beyond the north side of the Basin, above the lesser peaks and
buttes, appeared a higher mountain. The top, dwarfed by distance but as
clear cut in outline as a cameo, was divided into three thick tower-like
masses.
"There's your Triple Butte," said Carmena.
"What! So near as that? We can make it by mid-afternoon."
The girl smiled. "You might, if you hurried enough. It's only forty
miles away on a beeline."
Lennon stared, openly incredulous: "Forty miles?"
"Near fifty-five by way of the water-holes--forty to the ranch. We'll
strike for the nearest tank. I've noticed your canteen has been empty
some time. Here's mine."
Though Lennon's throat was parched, he sought to refuse the offered
canteen, which was still half full. Carmena dropped it at his feet and
began to zigzag down the mesa side.
Noon had passed before they gained the foot of the steep slope. Carmena
followed out along a ridge of bare rock, past scattered growths of
thornscrub and cactus, to where windblown sand lay in sterile drifts
alongside the ledges. Here she turned up a narrow cleft of the ridge and
entered the mouth of a small cave.
She knelt to dip her hat down a hole in the bottom of the cave. The hat
came up brimful of water. She drank deeply, refilled the hat, and backed
out past Lennon to water the eager pony.
"I'll thank you to fill the canteens and give the bronc as much more as
he can drink," she directed. "There's firewood on around that point of
rocks. Keep your gun handy."
Lennon was already drinking from a refilled canteen. He found the
cliff-shaded water of the spring pure and deliciously cool. The watering
of the pony took no little time and patience. Though the beast was too
thirsty to show any of his former skittishness, Lennon's sombrero was
leaky from the bullet holes.
When at last he drove the pony on along Carmena's trail, he noticed tiny
cloudlets of dark smoke, like the puffs of a giant's pipe, rising
straight up in the still air from behind the point of rocks. By the time
he rounded the corner the smoke had thinned and lightened to an almost
invisible haze.
A bright little fire of dry sticks was blazing in a sandy hollow.
Carmena knelt beside it, leaning on the muzzle of her rifle. Her dark
eyes were gazing off across the desert basin in a look that betrayed
both eagerness and dread.
"Hello. Ready for the frying pan?" sang out Lennon. Then he perceived
the tenseness of the girl's attitude and hastened to swing up his rifle.
"What is it? Sighted another Apache?"
"No. But I put greasewood on the fire. You saw the smoke?"
"A few puffs--yes."
The girl rose and eyed him somberly.
"Few puffs, you say.... If that bunch of bronchos is anywhere within
fifteen miles--with a clear view this way--we can expect a visit."
"Should we not cut and run?"
"Why? We couldn't hide our tracks. Even if the devils aren't mounted,
they'd soon overtake us. An Indian can lope along all day, like a
coyote."
Lennon looked deliberately around at the ridge and sat down to clean and
reload his rifle. Carmena's eyes flashed.
"You've got the idea," she said. "We'll eat and back up to the spring.
The cave is an easy place to hold. You said you can shoot?"
"Rather well. Very long range rifle, too. I've knocked over a caribou
with it at nearly a mile, up on Hudson Bay."
Carmena glanced at the high-power weapon and then raised her flashing
eyes to gaze over the bent head of its owner. Midway out across the
desolate Basin, from the top of a craggy hill to the right of the line
of Triple Butte, puffs of smoke were rising into the cloudless
steel-blue sky.
The girl hastened to loosen her pony's pack and take from her saddlebags
a frying pan, several slices of bacon, and a big chunk of corn pone.