THE FOUNTAIN IN THE DESERT.
On the morning of the second day after Ping and Tah-nu-nu and the
blankets proved to be too much "bad medicine" for one poor cougar, the
sun arose hotly over one of the dreariest bits of scenery in southern
New Mexico. It was the gravel desert described to Cal Evans by Sam
Herrick. No mountains were visible on the south or east, and the ranges
of tall peaks westerly and northerly were a very long day's journey from
the most interesting spot in that entire plain. Everywhere else even the
cactus-plants and scrubby mesquit-trees and stiff-fingered sage-brushes
were scarce, as if they did not care to struggle for a living in so mean
a country. Here, on the contrary, there was a dense chaparral of every
kind of growth, excepting tall trees, that is common to that climate,
and spreading for miles and miles. In many places the chaparral was so
high and so thick that a man on horseback could have been hidden in it
from another man at a short distance.
If any man had ridden into it, however, perhaps his first declaration
might have been, "All this thorn and famine shrubbery was laid out by a
lot of crazy spiders."
Innumerable paths led through it, crossing or running into each other in
a manner to have perplexed a carpet-weaver or a military map-maker, and
everybody knows what tangled patterns they can make. The spiders had not
done it, but the larger kinds of four-footed wild animals. They had
worked at those paths for ages, treading them down all the while, and
preventing any vegetable growth from choking them up.
There was really no tangle, at least none that could perplex the clear
mind of a bison or an antelope, and all the threads of that spider-web
had more or less reference to a common centre towards which the main
lines tended.
The dry and thirsty bushes on the outer circumference of the chaparral
should not have settled where they did. They ought rather to have
learned a lesson from the bisons, and have gone in farther. The wide
main pathways ran into each other, and all the smaller pathways melted
into them, until only twenty or thirty ends of paths led into a great
open space, in the middle of which was the one thing needed by all that
vast plain, with its dreary gravel and sand and alkali.
Water?
Yes, water as clear as crystal, and that seemed to be colder than ice.
The thirsty animals who were from year to year to traverse that plain
had been provided for as if they had been so many sparrows, and the
cactus-plants as if they had been lilies of the field.
The greater part of the open space was occupied by a seamed and broken
face of quartz rock, nowhere rising more than a few feet above the
general level. Scores and scores of miles away, among the unknown
recesses of the Sierra, westward, was a lake, a reservoir, into which
the everlasting snows continually melted. At some point of that
reservoir a channel had been opened through and under the cloven strata
of the rock, making a natural aqueduct. Cold and clear ran the
snow-water, never failing in its wonderful supply, until it burst up
into the burning sunshine in the very middle of the desert, of the
chaparral, and of the spider-web of paths. It danced and gurgled, this
morning, right under the timid noses of a gang of antelopes who had
trotted in there by the shortest lane, not missing their way for a yard.
A motherly old sage-hen watched them from under a bush upon one side of
the open, while in the opposite scrubs a large jackass rabbit sat, with
lifted forefeet and with ears thrust forward, his face wearing such a
look of surprised disapproval as only a rabbit can put on.
One antelope held his head up and listened while the rest were drinking.
He turned his head and looked around him, and in every direction he
could see an extraordinary collection of white or whitening bones, large
and small. Perhaps, year after year, many over-thirsty animals had
rushed hastily in and drank too much of that snow-water. At all events,
they had ended their days there. The antelope, or anybody else, could
also have said to himself, "Tomato-cans? Empty sardine-boxes? Bottles?
Old wheels? I wonder how many and what kind of white men or Indians have
camped around Fonda des Arenas?" If he had been an American antelope,
however, he would have said Cold Spring, and not Fountain of the Sands.
The antelopes were divided as to their nationality, and changed their
citizenship several times, for, right through the middle of the spring
and along the little rill by which it ran across the rock lay the
boundary line between the United States and Mexico. Some curious
chisel-marks in one place had meanings with reference to the boundary,
and so it must have been there; but even the keen eyes of two buzzard
eagles, soaring overhead, could not have seen the line itself.
Suddenly the antelope chief gave a bleat and a bound, and in a twinkling
he and his little band disappeared in the southern chaparral. Every one
of them had fled into Mexico.
Only ears as sensitive as their own could have heard any warning in what
seemed the almost painful silence of that solitude, but they were right
in running away. Not many minutes elapsed before several of the paths
opening towards the spring were occupied by stealthy human forms on
foot, peering around as if to make sure that no other human beings had
arrived before them. They answered one another with low calls which
sounded like suppressed barks of a prairie-wolf, and these were repeated
in the chaparral behind them.
Then a tall, broad, dignified man, in a red flannel waist-cloth and a
gorgeous cocked hat, and with red stocking-legs on his arms, strode out
towards the bubbling fountain with the air of a ruler taking
possession.
"Kah-go-mish is a great chief!" he remarked, emphatically. "Cheat
pale-face a heap. Ugh!"
If other remarks made by himself and by a dusky throng, now pouring out
of the chaparral, could have been interpreted, it would have been
understood that a plan of Kah-go-mish for escaping from some pursuit or
other had thus far worked well, but that the danger was by no means at
an end.
Wah-wah-o-be was one of those who shook their heads about it very
wisely. She said very little, and neither Ping nor Tah-nu-nu was with
her. If she knew where they were she did not even mention that fact.
There was plenty of room for the whole band of Kah-go-mish, horses and
all. They had travelled since the dawn of day, or before, and although
it was still quite early they were hungry and thirsty.
There was the spring for thirst, and fires were kindled. These were as
quickly put out, after breakfast had been cooked and eaten, and when the
sun had dried the waters thrown upon the embers no newcomer could have
guessed how long it might be since the last coal died.
"Leave heap sign," said Kah-go-mish. "Paleface know great chief been
here. Not know where gone. Ugh!"
Sign enough was made, for now the band moved away westerly by a path of
the chaparral. Broad and plain was the trail left behind and it was all
on Mexican sand. It went right along until it reached and crossed
another wide path at right angles. Here most of the band turned to the
left, under orders, but the rest, a lot of warriors, went on, making
false trail as if for a purpose, half a mile farther, to a wide, empty
patch of hard gravel. No two of the warriors left that patch together,
and the trail died there. Of the band which turned to the left, at the
crossing, the squaw part pushed on while some cunning old braves worked
like beavers to scratch out every trace that they or theirs had entered
that left-hand path at all.
It was all a very artistic piece of Indian dodging, and when it was
completed the entire band of Kah-go-mish was encamped in a secluded nook
of the chaparral about a mile and a half from the spring. So far as any
tracks they had made were concerned, they would have been about as hard
to find as the sage-hen, who had now returned to her place under the
bush by the spring, and had distinguished company to help her watch it.
A sage-hen crouching low in sand and shadowed by wait-a-bit thorn twigs
is pretty well hidden. So is a great Apache chief when he has left his
cocked hat and his horse a mile and a half away and is lying at full
length, in a rabbit path, a few yards behind the sage-hen.
Kah-go-mish had his own military reasons for hurrying back to play spy,
and his face wore an expression of mingled cunning, patience, and
self-satisfaction. Something like a crisis had evidently arrived in his
affairs, and he was meeting it as became a Mescalero-Apache statesman of
genius. He and the sage-hen lay still for a while, but it was not long
before there was another arrival at the spring.
No sound escaped the lips of Kah-go-mish, but the expression of his face
changed suddenly.
Perhaps the new arrival had been long in convincing himself that he
could safely venture to the spring, but he now left his pony at the edge
of the quartz level and walked on to the water's edge. He was not a
white man. He was one of the Indians who had said "How" to Vic and Mrs.
Evans, and the sight of him seemed to arouse all the wolf in
Kah-go-mish. The eyes of the Mescalero leader glistened like those of a
serpent as he thrust his rifle forward. There was a sharp report and
Kah-go-mish bounded from his cover, knife in hand, for the Chiricahua
scout lay lifeless upon the rock.
"To-da-te-ca-to-da no more be heap eyes for blue coat," said the
ferociously wrathful chieftain, and a moment later, as he again
disappeared in the chaparral, he added, bitterly: "Heap sign now. Ugh.
Pale-face find him. Bad Indian! Ugh!"