and enough heavy sacking for a small sun shelter; the other with the
large, flat-sided water canteens. When the start was made, Polly told
the two men a whispered good-bye from the front porch. And as the
burros were headed northward, Blandy leading one and Patton the other,
she watched the little pack-train leave the town. The light of the
stars, reflected on the grey of the sage and the yellow-grey of the
desert floor, made the departure plain for a long distance, though only
as so many moving black specks. She waited until the specks dropped
from sight into a far-off swale.
Then she ran through the dining-room to her bedroom, struck a match,
dragged a bench under the medicine-shelf, climbed upon it and let her
light shine in turn upon each of the bottles standing in a row.
The match went out. With a murmured exclamation she got down, searched
for her hat in the dark room, found it and put it on, caught up a
yellow sun umbrella, and locked both entrances to the house. A moment
later, she was hurrying across the street, over the track and into the
desert.
She soon came up to the men and the burros, travelling silently
forward. But at first she kept a little way behind, like a scared
child, for she shrank from letting Patton know that she was there.
Presently, however, summoning courage, she went forward to his side.
“H-Harvey,” she stammered. Her face was white in the dimness.
He came short; Blandy, too. Both stared at her in wonderment.
“What do you want?” Patton demanded, resentment in his tone. “It’s too
late for you to be gadding around alone.”
“Harv, I’m going with you. Walking isn’t hard work--not any harder than
the work in the kitchen was. Jeff, you don’t care if I come along, do
you?”
“You bet I don’t,” Blandy answered heartily. “You’ll be fine comp’ny.”
“Nonsense!” scolded Patton.
“Wal, she’s the third pardner,” reminded Blandy. “When you come to
think of it, she’s got a right to look over her claim. If she gits
tired, she can ride a donk. But a-course”--his tone became more
serious--“there’s one thing _agin_ your goin’: We three is the only
people that know where that strike is; if anything was to happen to
the bunch of us, there’d be a lost mine for shore.” He clucked to his
burro and walked on.
His words produced a curious effect upon Patton, who stayed where he
was, silently looking after Blandy until the latter was well beyond
earshot.
“Harvey!” Polly’s voice was tremulous with appeal, “I don’t want to be
left behind alone.”
Patton gave her a quick, sidewise glance. “All right,” he said
brusquely. “You can come.”
To show that she was equal to the journey, Polly kept in the lead all
the remainder of that night, flitting light-footed, like the spirit of
some good guiding angel.
Shortly after dawn, Blandy called a halt and prepared for a rest of
several hours. He fixed the square of sacking to the ground by two of
its corners. The other two corners he fastened to mesquite stakes.
The result was an improvised tent which faced the north. This shelter
was for Patton and Polly. When it was ready, Blandy took the yellow
umbrella, raised it, went aside to where were the canteens, and lay
down.
By noon, it was impossible to sleep because of the heat, which was so
intense that the grey, incrusted ground burned the hand that touched
it. The travellers did not set forth at once. Seated under their
shelters, they looked out upon a round lake that glimmered in a near-by
hollow of the desert--a lake encircled with a beach of amethyst.
With that sheet of water glistening before him, Patton drank often and
deep. And when, at four, he rose with the others to continue on, he
slung one of the large canteens over a shoulder. The glimmering lake
moved as the pack-train moved, occupying one hollow, then dissolving to
appear in another, and still another. Patton lifted his canteen to his
lips every half mile.
Blandy noted it. “Say! You’ll have to learn to be careful about your
drinkin’ if you go out much on the desert,” he warned. “More’n one
tenderfoot has gone luny for water and took to follerin’ them spook
lakes. Chaw on a raisin for a change.”
No halt was made for supper. The three ate as they travelled. The sun
declined. The last shining sheet of water disappeared. Twilight came,
and with twilight, the stars, which burned large and white in the
cloudless expanse of the heavens. Through the starlight, through the
late moonlight, and through the dawn of a second day, they trudged on.
It was shortly after sunrise that a giant yucca came into sight ahead.
It was branched on either side; and from a distance looked like some
huge figure that had been caught in action and suddenly trans-fixed.
“Hello!” cried Blandy. “My friend John Jenkins! We’re half-way.”
“Half-way?” repeated Patton. “Why, that spur doesn’t look twenty miles
off.”
“It just happens that you’re a-rubberin’ in the wrong direction,” said
Blandy. “The spur we’re a-goin’ to ain’t over that way: It’s off where
them little, puffy clouds is. Say, you’d better never try to navigate
this desert alone.”
Arrived at the yucca, Polly was glad enough to pause, and before the
two men had finished erecting the shelter of sacking, she had crawled
under it.
“Tuckered, ain’t you?” questioned Blandy kindly. “Wal, we been makin’
fine time, that’s why. We’ll be drinkin’ outen that bowl in the rock at
sun-up day after to-morrow.”
He made a cache of feed and provisions, and buried two of the large
canteens; then stretched himself with his head in the shade of the
yellow umbrella, and was soon snoring.
Patton did not lie down, but sat, brooding, a canteen in his hand.
And, presently, after making certain that Polly’s breathing was deep
and regular, he rose cautiously. Some distance away were the burros,
standing with lowered heads and long ears flopped to either side.
Patton stole in their direction. And when he reached the animals, set
to packing one. He was soon done. With a last glance toward shelter and
umbrella, he set off northward at a good gait.
The atmosphere was unusually clear. It was this that had made the
mountains seem such a short distance away. Patton had carefully marked
the position of the right spur. He tramped forward determinedly,
though by noon the ground under his feet fairly scorched his shoes.
The afternoon dragged its length in moments that seemed, each more
unendurably hot than the last, and with lakes glimmering from near-by
hollows, he drank at every rod. Sunset came at last, bringing a welcome
coolness. Now half of his journey alone was done. He stopped to feed
the burro and satisfy his own hunger, after which he hurried on.
The sun was standing high over the mountains the next day when, fagged,
but triumphant, Patton began the ascent of the gentle, beach-like
slope that stretched between him and the base of the spur he sought.
The range that rose ahead of him showed not even a growth of stunted
sage upon its ruffled side. For here the massive barrier was like a
burned-out kiln, brick-red, cinder-black and ashen-grey. He skirted it
for an hour or more, the donkey at a trot. Suddenly, ahead of him, a
great, black bird rose from the ground with a harsh cry and an awkward
flapping of its wings. Patton ran forward.
There was the bowl, as round as if it had been fashioned by deft hands,
and nearly full of water. Patton had swallowed the last mouthful of his
canteen supply early that morning. Now, he sank to his knees, bent his
head and almost buried his face in the pool.
His thirst satisfied, he climbed the slope beyond. Ten minutes of
hot toiling, and he came upon Blandy’s location-notice, scrawled on
a soiled scrap of paper, and tacked to a crooked mesquite stake. He
tore up the notice, and jerked the stake loose. Then, white, for all
the effort of climbing, he stooped and pressed both palms against the
outcropping of quartz at his feet, his fingers into its crevices. It
was as if he were clutching prey.
“It’s all here!--all here!” he said aloud, huskily.
Back at the bowl once more, he filled a canteen and hung it to the
pack-saddle, took another long drink himself, and let the donkey have
all that remained. Then, reaching into an inside pocket of his shirt,
he brought out something that was wrapped in a piece of newspaper. He
unwound the paper, disclosing a small bottle, which he uncorked. And
having measured the size of the bowl with his eye, he dropped three
round, white tablets into it. This done, he dampened a handkerchief
from the canteen and laid it, folded, upon his hair. For the long
miles in the sun had told on him, and there was a feeling of heat and
pressure at the top of his skull.
A few minutes later, he set off once more, due west, completely
avoiding the Searles route to the southward.
* * * * *
When Polly awoke, the sun was already down, and twilight was settling.
Fearing that she had delayed the departure, she sprang to her feet. But
Blandy was still snoring. And close at hand was a saddleless burro,
head lowered and fast asleep.
She began to call: “Harvey! Oh, Harv!”
The snoring ceased. The yellow umbrella toppled. Blandy’s tall figure
rose. “Gosh! but ain’t I snoozed!” he exclaimed.
She called again: “Harvey! Where are you? Jeff! One of the burros is
gone!”
“Oh, I guess he’s there, all right,” answered Blandy. “You know, a
donk’s the same colour as the ground.”
“But he _isn’t_ there,” persisted Polly. “Or Harvey, either.” And as
Blandy hastened by, she joined him.
When they halted, each scanned the desert. Then, “You’re right,” Blandy
admitted gravely. “That blamed burro must a-strayed. I never _did_ like
the little cuss. He had a bad look in one eye.”
She raised an anxious face to his. “The donkey isn’t to blame,” she
declared. “Harvey’s left us.”
“No! Why? Sore about your comin’?”
“He _told_ me to come.”
Blandy strode over to the packs. And a first glimpse told him that
Polly was right. Feed and provisions were missing, and all but one of
the uncached canteens.
“Jeff!” Polly had followed him, and she spoke in a frightened whisper.
“Don’t drink any of this water till you’ve given the donkey some.”
Blandy stared down at her. “Why not?” he asked, perplexed.
“Don’t--don’t ask me, Jeff.”
His face went grim with understanding. “I guess I understand,” he said.
The canteen that Patton had left behind him was thoroughly shaken and
the donkey was given a generous drink. Then Blandy left the camp to
gather mesquite roots. When he returned, a half-hour later, the little
animal was resting, head swagged low. But while Blandy was watching
him, the shaggy head came up and the donkey brayed--loud and long,
after which he fell to yawning, ears flopped to either side lazily.
Plainly the water had done him no harm.
Blandy set to work to build a fire. “You see,” he said, “Patton might
change his mind about leavin’ us.”
By now, twilight had merged into night. On every side stretched the
desert, as level, dark and melancholy as a sea. The mountain range to
the northward, with its charred front one great inky shadow, was a
dead island, rising out of a black waste of water. Blandy lighted the
beacon, and it flamed up like the signal of someone shipwrecked.
They kept the fire burning steadily. They listened for far-off cries.
But they heard no cries, only constant movements in the blackness about
the camp. Heretofore, the desert had withheld nearly all evidence of
animate things. Now, sitting and waiting, they caught the soft _pad,
pad_ of dog-like feet, the flutter of small wings.
At dawn, Blandy set off on a hunt for tracks. He first circled the
camp. The only outgoing trail he found ended near by in the dry bed of
a stream. He followed the stream-bed toward Searles. When he had gone
several miles, he retraced his steps and passed the camp on his way
toward the mountains.
It was late afternoon when he returned, tired out. But he came into
sight waving his hat cheerily. “It’s all right,” he announced. “He went
toward the mine.”
While they were preparing to break camp and follow Patton, Polly saw
that Blandy was digging up one of the two canteens he had cached.
“On the way home, Jeff, can we make it from here to Searles on one?”
she asked.
“Easy.”
“And from the mine to here, Jeff?”
“We’ll ketch a canteenful where it drips into that bowl in the rock.”
When they started forward, they were compelled to go slowly, not only
because of Blandy’s weariness, but because Polly was foot-sore, though
at first she strove to conceal the fact by keeping in the rear. At
the end of five or six miles, however, she found herself unable to go
farther.
“Oh, I thought I’d be all right after so much rest,” she declared, out
of patience with her own weakness.
Blandy was all gentle consideration. “I don’t wonder your feet hurt
you,” he answered. “You ain’t used to so much walkin’. Now, just you
wait.”
Off came pack-saddle, load and all. Then the saddle-blanket was
replaced, with the shelter sacking on top of it, folded to make a
comfortable seat. And soon Polly was mounted on the donkey. Behind
her, balanced carefully, were two large canteens, a flour sack of
provisions, and feed for the burro. She held the yellow umbrella over
her head.
They travelled until darkness made it impossible to follow Patton’s
tracks, when camp was made again.
“But if Harvey went straight to the mine,” argued Polly, “What’s the
use of trailing him? Why not just go ahead?”
“For the reason that yesterday Patton had the mine located thirty mile
left of where it is. S’pose he was to git the same idear again?”
Once more Blandy hunted mesquite roots. And far into the night his
signal-fire lit the swells and hollows of the desert.
At break of day they took up their journey once more, with Polly riding
again, and drowsing now and then as the donkey picked his way along.
It was the middle of the morning when a low cry from Blandy suddenly
startled her into wakefulness. He had come short, halting the donkey,
and was examining the ground.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Here’s a man’s tracks and a burro’s, crossin’ this trail at right
angles, and goin’ west. They’re fresher’n the ones we been follerin’.”
“Harvey’s?”
“Shore.”
“What’ll we do, Jeff?”
“Strike out after him. He’s makin’ for that wrong spur!”
They turned aside, and started off in the new direction.
During the remainder of the morning, they were headed almost due west.
But at noon Patton’s footprints led him toward the north-west, then
toward the north--directly away from Searles.
Shortly after noon, they made an alarming discovery. It was Patton’s
donkey, stretched lifeless on the baked ground. Away from the carcass a
grey wolf-form raced, and was lost in the grey of sand and sage.
“Short of water,” said Blandy, and shook his head.
Polly covered her eyes. “Oh, poor little thing!” she whispered. “Jeff,
give mine a good drink.”
He came to stand beside her. “Polly,” he said, “I can’t. And if we’re
goin’ to keep follerin’ this trail and locate Patton, this little
animal”--he laid a hand on the donkey’s neck--“has got to go.”
“Are _we_ short of water?”
“There’s a good deal left. But I ain’t give the donkey a swaller since
yesterday noon. We got to be savin’. It’s likely that Patton’ll need
water bad.”
Soon the tracks they were following turned due east.
“He run outen water,” Blandy explained gravely. “He’s headed back to
the bowl.”
But when they, too, turned about to start back, their burro abruptly
stopped, and refused to be coaxed or urged forward.
“Yas, git down,” said Blandy as Polly prepared to dismount. “And go on
for about a quarter of a mile. I’ll bring the things.”
She obeyed, fairly running to escape the sound of the dreaded
pistol-shot. When he came trudging up to her, carrying a canteen and
the provisions sack, she was seated in a heap, her face hid in her
hands.
“There! There!” he said consolingly. “We _had_ to leave him.”
They hurried forward as fast as they were able, Blandy compelling
Polly to take a swallow of water every little while, but drinking none
himself. Before long Patton’s trail was giving them much concern. It
veered to the right for a few rods, then it veered to the left, winding
crazily.
“’Fraid he was just a little off his head,” said Blandy. “Nothin’ to
worry about, though. We’ll find him.”
But their concern steadily increased as they travelled. For by late
afternoon, with the bowl still at some distance, they found no more
footprints to follow--only two winding marks. Patton was dragging
himself forward on his knees!
They came upon his hat next. An hour later, the sun glittered on
something a short way in advance. It was a canteen. Its woolen
covering had been torn from it in ragged bits that strewed the ground.
And about the round opening were the marks of teeth.
“Hurry!” breathed Blandy.
After that, neither one spoke, but stumbled on, Blandy half-supporting
Polly, both watching eagerly for a moving speck in the narrowing
stretch between them and the base of the spur ahead.
At sundown, they neared the bowl. Blandy began to call: “Patton! Oh,
_Patton_! Are you there?”
A few steps farther, he came short, putting out an arm to stop Polly.
For Patton was there, stretched flat upon his back, his arms thrown
wide to either side. And beside him, with its black wings outspread,
lay a great bird, claws up and feathers ruffled.
BUENAS NOCHES
Scarlet fuchsias on a swaying branch freckled the ’dobe wall behind
Loretta’s perch. The parrot, her claws wide apart, her brilliant
rudder tilting to balance her grey body, industriously snapped at
the blossoms. One secured at last, she turned slowly about and, with
infinite care, let it drop upon the open pages of Padre Alonzo’s book.
The padre brushed the flower away and glanced up. “_Buenos días,
señor!_” clacked Loretta; “_buenos días! buenos días! buenos días!_”
“Good-day to thyself,” retorted the padre. He spoke in Spanish, shaking
a stout finger. “And tear not the flowers again. They be the last of
the kind till after the New Year. So take warning, I say, lest thou
find thyself thrust without the garden.”
Loretta recognised displeasure in his voice. She mumbled an inquiring
“_Ga-a-wk! ga-a-wk!_” and shifted thoughtfully from foot to foot. But,
presently, the padre having resumed his reading, she turned once more
to catch at the swaying branch.
When a second fuchsia came fluttering down to his hand, Padre Alonzo
uncrossed his sandals and rose. “Oh! oh! oh!” he cried, wagging his
close-cropped head so vigorously that the very beads of his rosary
tinkled together. “Thou art the naughtiest bird in all of California!
What if Padre Anzar finds thee despoiling his plant? He will put thee
again where thou must fight to keep thy feathers--in the kitchen with
the cats!”
At the mention of cats a startling change came over the parrot. Her
plumage ruffled, her eyes began to roll, she straightened on the perch,
uttering hoarse cries of fear and defiance.
“Then be good,” he counselled, “be good. Or off thou’lt likely go.
Me-e-ow! me-e-ow!”
And now Loretta moved nearer, anxious for friendly terms. “_Dame la
mano_,” she suggested; “_a-a-aw, dame la mano. A-a-aw! a-a-aw!_” She
balanced tremblingly on one leg, curling the other under her.
Padre Alonzo put the stout finger into the proffered claw. “So, so,”
he said. “And I shall not tattle. But tell me: What wouldst make thee
forget to use thy sharp pruning shears? An apple? or seeds? or one of
Gabrielda’s sweet bis--”
Loretta perked her head to one side. “_To-o-ny, To-o-ny, To-o-ny_,” she
droned coaxingly.
The padre thrust his thumbs under the white cord of his girdle and
broke into a guffaw. “Thou jade!” he teased. “Wilt have Tony, eh? Well,
I go to find him.” He gathered in his brown cassock, preparatory to
stepping over the cacti here bordering the garden path. “But look you,
if he comes scrape not the gilt from the wires of his pretty cage.”
Another threatening shake of the finger, and the padre crossed the low,
spiked hedge and waddled away through the sun.
When he came into sight a moment later round the dun wall of the
mission, he carried a canary at his shoulder. “E-oo, e-oo,” he cooed,
pattering forward. “Loretta wished thy company. Sst! sst! She is bad
after thee, Tony! But be wary, little one, be wary.”
The advice was wholly ignored. For, spying the parrot, Tony was
instantly transformed from a silent, dumpy ball of yellow to a slim,
dapper songster with a swelling throat.
Loretta greeted him with uproarious laughter, and a jargon of Spanish,
patois, but triumphant. She paced the horizontal piece that gave her
perch the form of a cross. She _pur-r-red_ and _gu-r-red_. She swung
by her curved beak and one leathery foot, shrilling her “_Buenos días,
señor!_” Then, as the padre hung the cage to a nail in the trellis
built against the wall, she changed her performance to the clamorous
repeating of a mass.
Padre Alonzo was shocked. “Sst! sst!” he chided; “thou wicked big-ears!”
The noon angelus was ringing. He caught up book and gown. But before
going he pulled at Loretta’s gaudy tail not unkindly, and chuckled as
she edged toward Tony with many a naïve and fetching cock of her grey
head.
* * * * *
High at the garden’s centre, nailed to a massive tree of wood, stood
out the Sacrifice. From behind, fir and pine thrust their long green
boughs, as if eager to screen that torn and unclad shape. From below,
jasmine and geranium, carnation and rose, sent upward an unfailing
incense.
That way, in the heat of mid-afternoon, came Padre Anzar. Thin-lipped,
he was, and hollow-eyed. In one hand he held a trowel, in the other
a knife. Down the front of his brown cassock, mingling at knee height
with red brick stains from the chapel floor, were touches of fresh
earth. Anzar the priest was for the moment Anzar the gardener.
He walked slowly, here stooping to right a stalk or jerk a weed, there
stretching to pick a fading orange leaf from where it marred the
glaucous sheen of its fellows. Fronting the figure, he paused long
enough to whisper a prayer and make the holy sign. Then he rambled on,
busy with trowel and blade.
But presently he came to a full and startled halt. He was beside the
trellis up which climbed his treasured fuchsia. The cross-like perch
of the parrot was beyond the bordering cacti, and unoccupied. Near by,
upon its nail, hung the canary cage, with Tony going upstairs and down
untiringly, eyeing his visitor with no uneasiness, greeting him, on the
contrary, with saucy chirps. While underneath, spotting the ground in
some profusion, and cast as it were at the feet of the garden’s singer,
were scores of scarlet blossoms!
The padre’s look travelled from the scattered flowers to the vacant
perch, from the perch to the naked branches swaying against the
trellis, from the branches to the wide, warm top of the ’dobe wall. And
there was Loretta, patrolling in unconcealed apprehension.
The instant he caught sight of her he knew her guilt. He pursed his
thin lips. Then, letting fall trowel and knife, he straddled the hedge.
“I’ll wring thy neck for thee!” he vowed.
A sandal in the trellis, a light spring, and his head came even with
her. She backed away, raising her wings a little, and _gawking_ in
protest. He took a fresh grip on the wall, reached out and caught her
like a chicken--by both legs.
Wild screeches rang through the garden, screeches that put the sparrows
to flight and set the canary cheeping in fear. These were punctuated
next by raucous appeals for “_Tony_” or gurgley parrot language.
The padre was down now, and standing on the path again. But he was not
fulfilling his threat. Instead, he was viewing his captive angrily, yet
in considerable indecision.
Loretta, on the other hand, was at no loss for a course of action.
Between cries for the canary, demands for a handshake, and reiterated
“_Good-days_,” she was vigorously trying her beak upon the padre’s fist.
But now a new factor upon the scene. Round the mission wall, waddling
fast and propelling himself by his swinging arms, appeared Padre
Alonzo. “Is’t the cats?” he asked as he came on; “oh, la! la! is’t the
cats?”
Padre Anzar half-turned, scowling. For answer, he only pointed to the
severed fuchsias.
The other looked, covering any regret with simulated astonishment.
“These were dropping of themselves yesterday,” he began between
breaths. “They--they fell fast in the night--er?” He came beside the
other now, partly to support the suspended Loretta in his hands. “I saw
them--truly.”