THE DESERT
Four days had passed since they stood on the edge of the snow slide and
gazed across at three outlaws on the far side under the crag waving
frantically where their belated comrades had been buried under the
avalanche. When the outlaw drovers had turned and galloped into the
blue slashed gully of the opposite mountain, the Ranger had observed
that their only remaining pack horse was white, an old dappled white
running with a limp.
It had taken the better part of three days to cross above the wreckage
of snows and forest. They had camped for two nights within a stone's
throw of the upper glaciers. Wayland could see the reflection of the
stars in the ice at night, and count the layers of the century's
snow-fall that harked back, each layer a year's fall, to the eras
before Christ.
"The little snow flake has been on the job a long time," he said to the
old preacher.
Matthews didn't understand. "Can't make out why it's so hot when we're
high up!"
"The wind is off the Desert," said Wayland.
"Mountains in a desert?"
"That's the same as asking if you ever have summer in Saskatchewan."
The frontiersman looked more puzzled than ever.
Wild longings to seize the day's joy came to the Ranger. If the snow
flake typified law sculpturing the centuries, law was a process not of
a life time, not of a century, but aeons of centuries; and flesh,
spirit, humanity's brevity cried out for the trancing joys of the
present. If law took billions of years to sculpture its purpose,
grinding down the transient lives in its way?--When Wayland came to
that _impasse_, he used to get off and walk. He did not know, and it
was well he did not know, she was pacing her room two hundred miles
back on the other side of the Divide, praying that he might succeed in
one breath, that he might come back in another, and praying always that
they might both be strong.
Every mile was a mile deeper into the eternity of her love . . . he
knew that; but he also knew that the fulfilment of duty meant
renunciation. Was it the cry of the flesh? Wayland scoffed the
thought. Flesh in the frontier West doesn't take the trouble to wear
fig-leaf signs. It is blazoning, bold, unashamed, known for what it
is; but there is no confusion of values. He who wills takes what he
wills and wears the mark. Wayland had been long enough away from the
confused values of more civilized lands to know belladonna eyes from
starlight; and he knew what his being craved was not carrion. It was
what harmonizes both flesh and spirit, and lifts the temporal to
eternity. Eternity . . . he laughed again. Eternity was too short;
and that was what renunciation meant, giving up a citadel against all
the harking cares and hells of hate in life.
Where they had picked up the fugitives' trail again on the fourth day
from the snow slide, the Ranger had taken stock of provisions. We none
of us know just how long the Trail is to be when we set out. Flour and
tea enough for a month's travel: of bacon and canned beans, only a
day's supply remained.
"Yes, on your life, forward, long as there's a mouthful left . . . push
on," Matthews had urged.
Wayland expostulated: "Do you know what Desert travel means?"
"No, an' care less! If y' want to get anywhere, ye don't set out to
turn back! Dante's inner circle was ice! A've had that! Now, A'll
take a nip of his outer circle and try your blue blazing Desert."
"It'll be blue all right, sir! You'll know it when you come to it by
the shadows being blue instead of black."
And always, the trail had grown rockier, the forests more scattered,
the trees scantier and dwarfed, till the way led from clump to clump of
scrub pinon amid red buttes and sand hummocks. And always, the valleys
widened and lifted to higher table lands, blasted and shrivelled and
tremulous of heat, till the mountains lay on the far sky-line silver
strips flecked with purple, like shores to an ocean of pure light. And
always, it was the trail of fleeing horsemen they followed, with one
track running aside from the others picking the softest places.
"Only one pack horse and that lame," Wayland pointed to the foot
prints. "That means they must have provisions cached some where on the
way. If we can tire them out before they can reach their cache, we've
got 'em."
Once, where the way led between flanking foot hills, the tracks dipped
into a mountain stream and didn't come up on the other side. "Hoh!"
commented the old man, "that's easy; you'll take the right and A'll
take the left; and where the hills lift up ahead, A'm thinking you'll
find the tracks plain."
All the same, Wayland noticed Matthews frequently moistening his
parched lips; and the lakes of light ahead lay a wavering looming veil.
A mile farther on, the ripped punk of a dead pinon betrayed the passing
of the fugitives. When Wayland dismounted to examine the marks, he
stepped on a small cactus. They picked up a trail that led over rocky
mesas and dipped suddenly into the deep dug-way of a dry gravel bed.
The sand walls of the dead stream afforded shelter from the sun, and
the two riders spurred their bronchos to a canter led by the pack mule.
The sand banks spread, widened, opened; and the mule stopped, both ears
pointing forward like a hunting dog. They rode forward to find
themselves looking down on an ocean of light, shimmering orange colored
light, with the mountains trembling on the far sky line silver strips
necked by purple and opal. The old frontiersman mowed the sweat from
his brows and gazed from under shade of his level hand.
"Sun's like a shower o' red hot arrows," he said.
The sand lay fine as sifted ashes dotted with clumps of bluish-green
sage brush and greasewood. A bleached ox-skull focussed the light with
a glaze that stabbed vision. The ashy earth, the dusty sage brush, the
orange sand hills, the silver strip on the far sky line flecked by the
purple and opal loomed and wavered and writhed in a white flame.
"Do you see the bluish shade to the shadows?" asked Wayland.
The old man was still shading his eyes from the white heat. "Do A see
mountains, Wayland?"
"Certainly, you do! Did you think the Desert flat as the sea?"
"That's just it! If A see mountains, then A see water too! It keeps
wavering."
"By which you may know _it isn't water_," warned Wayland.
"Wayland, A' don't believe you!"
He had dismounted as he spoke and proceeded down the yellow sands to a
pit at the foot of the rolling slope. Wayland saw him halt, again
shade his eyes from the sun glare, and stoop. On his knees, he looked
again and rose. He came up the slope shaking his head. "Y'd swear it
was water at y'r very feet till you bent down."
"Till you changed the angle of reflection . . . eh? and then the water
vanished, sir."
Both men had thrown their coats across the rear of the saddles.
Matthews now knotted a large handkerchief round his neck. There was
not a cloud, nor the shadow of a cloud for shade. It was a wilted,
shrivelled, heat-flayed, fire-blasted world of arid desolation;
trenched by the dry arroyos; sifted by the hot winds fine as flour;
with rings and belts and wavering layers of heat--heat from the orange
sun edged red by the Desert dust of the atmosphere--heat from the wind
off some white flamed furnace--heat from the ochre shifting sands
panting to the loom and writhe of the blue-flamed air, and over all a
veil, was it blue or lilac or lavender? tinted as of rainbow mists.
For a little while, neither spoke. Each knew what the dusty dead
orange earth, the smoking sand hills, the sifted volcanic ash, the
burnt oil smell of shrivelled growth, meant to unprepared travellers.
"I wish, sir," said Wayland, "I wish you would turn back here and let
me go on alone; I really do!"
"What! turn tail like a whipped dog an' scuttle at first danger? Go to
blazes, my boy! Do you think y'r beasts will stand crossing before
sunset?"
"It's about as easy going ahead as standing still. If we only had a
water canteen, it wouldn't be such a fool-thing to risk."
The wind flayed them with hot peppering sand.
"If we took time to go back for one now, this wind would wipe out the
tracks."
"What's yon splash o' dust goin' over the roll o' th' hill?"
Beyond the quiver of the dusky heat, they could see the drift of ash
dust eddying to the wind like dirty snow.
"I wish, sir, you would turn back here," urged Wayland; but Matthews
was not heeding. He had gathered up the broncho's reins.
"Time to be moving," he said. "'Tis my observation, Wayland, that the
devil gets away from the saint because, he'll always ride one faster.
Many's the time when A've been pressed in the old days, when if the man
behind had just ridden the one bit harder that he thought he couldn't,
just not sagged where he nagged, he'd ha' got me, Wayland! When y'
pace two men, one ridin' with the devil behind him, and the other jog
trotting with a dumpy comfortable conscience, 'tis a safe bet which
will win."
There was the clitter clatter of the horses' hoofs over the lava rocks;
the padded beat of the easy plains lope as they left the lava for the
ashy silt; then no sound but the swash of saddle leather along trail
marks that cut the crusted silt like tracks in soft snow. The wind had
been flaring a steady torrid white flame. Now it began to come in
puffs and whirls that beat the air to dust of ashes and sent the sand
foaming in the wave lines of a yellow sea. The mule no longer ambled
ahead with ears pointed. He shuffled through the ash with dragging
steps; and the sage brush crackled brittle where the trail led out from
the silt across the baked earth. The heat waves writhed and throbbed
through the atmosphere, a flame through a sieve, with a scorch of
burning from the ground and clouds of dust like smoke.
"I think I'll get off and walk," said Wayland, suiting the action to
the word. "I hope those blackguards are counting on camping at a
spring to-night."
They plodded on for another half hour before Matthews answered.
"Do you think they did it intentionally? A mean, do y' think they
lured us here to get rid of us?"
Wayland paused and thought.
"It's all the same whether they did or not . . . now! What was it you
said about a man chased by the devil setting a good live pace? They
have to find water. They know where water is. We don't! Only safety
is to follow."
"Queer how y' keep imaginin' ye hear wimplin' brooks! When A let
myself go, A keep hearin' the tinkle o' y'r rills back in the
mountains! A keep seein' the blue false water waverin' up to my feet
an' recedin' again! Isn't there a fellow in mythology, Wayland, died
o' thirst in water because when he reached to drink it, it kept
waverin' away?"
"That fellow had travelled in the Desert," answered Wayland.
He aimed his revolver at a green rattlesnake lying under a sage brush.
The sun glinted from the steel barrel. The snake coiled and raised its
head. "See," said Wayland, "the snake takes aim. The light sort of
hypnotizes it. The greenest tenderfoot couldn't miss it."
"How far d' y' call it across?"
"Two to four days straight: eleven to twenty if you take it diagonally.
As I make it, they are steering due West for one of the deep cut ways
to take 'em South under shade."
"Shade would taste pretty good to me, Wayland."
Wayland looked back at his companion. What he thought, he did not say;
but he mounted at once and hastened pace.
"Once we find a spring, we'll travel at night," he said.
A condor rose from the rocks and circled away with slow lazy sweep of
wings.
"You would wonder what they could find to eat here, if it were not for
the snakes and the lizards."
"Perhaps, we'll _not_ wonder so much before we finish."
Wayland looked at the old frontiersman again. He was riding heavily,
sagged forward, with one hand on the high pommel of the Mexican saddle.
"Talk about the heroes o' cold in the North," he said. "'Tis easy!
Y'r cold buoys a man up! This stews the life out before ye have a
fightin' chance! Y' could light a match on these saddle buckles."
"I think I see sand hills ahead. If there's any shade, we'll rest till
twilight."
The lava rocks rolled to a trough of sand; and the light lay a
shimmering lake in the alkali sink.
"Is that what y' call a false pond?"
"No, I hope you'll not see any false ponds this trip! False pond is in
your head or your eye; and the harder you ride, the faster it runs.
Let's get out of this wind!"
Wayland noticed the horses paw restlessly and nose at the gravel when
they crossed the dry bed of a spring stream.
"Think y' could dig down to water with y'r axe, Wayland?"
The Ranger pointed to the wide cracks in the baked earth, dry as flour
dust deep as they could see. The mule led the way at a run up the next
sand roll.
"Think he smells water, Wayland?"
Another broad mesa rolled away to the silver strip of mountain on the
sky line; but the fore ground broke into slabs and blocks of red stone.
Wayland examined the trail. It twisted in and out among the rocks
towards more broken country.
"There may be a canyon leading South over there," he pointed.
"Y' might try for a spring beneath that big rock. Looks green at the
bottom."
A mist as of primrose or fire tinged the lakes of quivering light lying
on the ochre-colored mesas. The sun hung close to the silver strip of
mountain exaggerated to a huge dull blood-red shield.
"Wayland, is this desert light red or is it that A'm seein' red?"
The Ranger looked a third time at his companion. The old man sat more
erect; but his eyes were blood shot. A puff of wind, a lift and fall
and drift of sand, the wind met them in a peppering shower of hot shot.
"Is that a rain cloud comin' up?"
Wayland glanced back. The heavy dust rose a red-black curtain above
the flame-crested ridges of orange sand.
"You're a churchman, sir! You should know! Ever read in Scripture of
the cloud by day and the pillar by night? Ever think what that might
mean on the scorching Red Sea job when Moses led a personally conducted
tour through the desert?"
"Dust?" queried the preacher.
"By Harry," cried Wayland, "that mule _does_ smell water."
The little beast had set off for the red rock at a canter. Wayland's
horse followed at a long gallop. The broncho of the old clergyman with
the heavier man lurched to a tired lope. They felt the eddies of dust
as they tore ahead, saw the rainless clouds gathering low and gray far
behind, saw the sun lurid through the whirls of red silt, saw the dust
toss up among the lava beds like snow in a blizzard, then the sand
storm broke, the dry storm of rainless clouds and choking dust flaying
the air in rainless lightning. They gave the ponies blind rein and
shot round the sheltered side of the great red rock into one of those
hidden river beds that trench below the surface of the desert in
cutways and canyons. It was dry.
"The shadow of a great rock in a weary land," quoted the old man
sliding from his horse exhausted.
Foot prints of men and horses punctured the moist silt of the river
bottom. The little mule was kicking and squealing where the red rock
came through the clay bank. Down the terra cotta ledge trickled a tiny
rill not so large as a pencil. Wayland was chopping a deep mud hole in
the river-bottom up which slowly oozed a yellow pool.
"Don't drink that, sir," he ordered.
The old frontiersman was stooping to lave up a handful of the muddy
fluid.
"Don't drink that if you want to get out alive! Wait, I have something
in the pack!"
He threw the cinch ropes free from the mule, pulled out the sacks of
flour and bacon and coffee. "Here we are." He drew out the only can
of beans and punctured the end with his knife.
"If you will satisfy your thirst with that juice, I'll catch the
trickle down the rock while we rest; but you must never drink this
alkali sink stuff."
Leaving the horses nuzzling the muddy pool, the Ranger stuck his jack
knife into a crevice of the ledge and hung the small kettle where it
would catch the drip. Matthews was examining the tracks.
"Not more than an hour or two old, an' A'm thinking, Wayland, we've
fooled them out of water!"
"They'll keep to the shelter of the cutway long as this dust storm
lasts."
Wayland was following down the tracks.
The sun had sunk behind the silver strip of mountain reddening the heat
lakes and the Desert air. Across the mesas, the silt dust and sand
drift still whirled in fitful gusts; but the air no longer carried the
scorch of burning oil. The sky that had blazed all day in fiery brass
darkened and closed near to earth, a throbbing thing of the Desert
night brooding over life: a oneness of space rimmed round by the red
sky line.
"Hullo," exclaimed Wayland, pointing to the bank. "We are not so far
behind: there is the freshly opened cache."
Where the cutway caved to a hollow lay a hole littered with empty cans
and canvas bags.
"Not much value left, eh? Hold on, Wayland, this might be useful."
Matthews had picked up a skin water bag. It was full of tepid water.
"They're harder pressed than I thought. They've had water stored here.
They'll rest somewhere in the cutway to-night. We'll likely run them
down before morning if our horses can stand it."
Back at the rock, the Ranger was cooking their supper over a fire of
withered moss and pinon chips, keeping the old man's mind off his
fevered thirst by calling attention to the tricks of Desert growth to
save water.
"You see the cactus turns its leaves into water vats with spikes to
keep intruders off; and the greasewood stops evaporation by a varnish
of gum. I'm sun-veneered all right. I don't sweat all my moisture
out--"
"Better varnish me, then, before ye take me out again."
Less than a pint of water had seeped into the little kettle; and this
they used for their tea, mixing the flour with the stale water from the
mud pool. Then, they lighted pipes and lay back to rest.
Wayland had placed the kettle back under the drip of the ledge.
"A can understand Moses smitin' the rocks for a spring; and such a wind
as we had to-day blowin' the Red Sea dry," observed the old man
dreamily.
"I guess if you get any miracle down to close quarters, you'll sort it
out all right without busting common sense," returned Wayland.
He wasn't thinking of the day's hardships.
The silver strip of the far mountains had faded; first, the purple
base; then, the melting opal summit. At last, the restless wind had
sunk. The red rocks of the mesa darkened to spectral shapes. The
heat, the scorch, the torrid pain of the day had calmed to the soft
velvet caress of the indigo Desert night. Twice, the Ranger dozed off
to wake with a start, with a sense of her hand warning danger. Always
before, the thought of her had come in an involuntary consciousness
whelmed of happiness; but to-night, was it . . . fear?
He rose and looked about. Two of the horses lay at rest. The mule
stood munching near. The old frontiersman slept heavily, his face
troubled and upturned to the sky. Wayland noticed the livid tinge of
the lips, the shadows round the eye sockets, the protuberance of veins
on the backs of the old man's hands. The sky seemed to come down lower
as the red twilight darkened; and he could hear not a sound but the
crunch of the grazing mule and the slow drop, drop, drop of the water
seeping from the terra cotta ledge. The stars were beginning to prick
through the indigo darkness. In another hour, it would be bright
enough to travel by starlight; and the Ranger lay back to rest,
slipping into a dusky realm as of half consciousness and sleep; but for
the nervous ticking of his watch, and the slow drop, drop, drop; then
sleep with a dream face wavering through the dark; then the watch tick
scurrying on again; then a hand touched him! Wayland sprang to his
feet half asleep. He could have sworn she was, standing there; but the
form faded. The pack mule had flounced up with a cough. A white horse
stood between the banks of the arroyo. There was a steel flash in the
dark, the rip of a quick shot, and the kettle bounced from the ledge
with a jangling spill.
"What's that?" yelled the old frontiersman, jumping for the horses.
Wayland was pumping his repeater into the darkness; but the clatter of
hoof beats down the dry gravel bed answered the question.
"It's the signal for us to get up," answered the Ranger. "I don't mind
the blackguard's bad aim so much as I do the upset of that kettle.
Every drop of water is spilled."
"A'm thinkin' 'twas the kettle they aimed at, and not us, my boy!"