a long table, with benches, at the other. The bar was closed by a
grating. Two men were asleep on the benches with their heads drooped on
their outstretched arms; they were breathing heavily from purple faces:
“Feeling their siesta doing them good,” the train-hand called it. A
third man, powerfully built, with a mottled olive face, brass earrings
and a purple neckerchief, was sitting at the table eating with his
knife. He had a small slab of something pale upon a dish in front of
him. He shovelled flakes of this on to his knife-blade and then
shovelled them into his mouth. He was a noisy as well as an untidy
eater, being still a little in drink. He seemed displeased at the
entrance of Sard: he dug his knife-point twice into the table, as though
into someone’s body, and he said nothing, which was unusual in a land
where all at least offer to share their food and drink with the
newcomer.
The train-hand took Sard to the end of the table away from the other
three and sat him down.
“Say, Kid,” he said, “you wanna beat it right out-a here.”
“How about you?” Sard asked.
“Me?”
“Yes, you. You broke prison. You helped me to escape. You flung a tile
at the officer, and some of those men must have recognised you, since
they came in on the train with you.”
“I’m not lying awake any,” the man said. “I’m one of the boys. But you
ain’t. What in hell you doing here? That’s what gets me.”
Sard told him.
“Where you wanna get to?”
“Las Palomas.”
“How’re you going to get?”
“Could I get a ride on a freight-car?”
“No, sir. The only freight-cars from here is silver cars. There’s not
much these ’Tale guys mind, but they mind their silver. You’d be shot,
sure as hell.”
“Could I get a job on the train, shovelling coal?”
“Nit.”
“Why not?” Sard asked.
“Cut the train right out of your thought,” the man said. “The
freight-cars ain’t going to be healthy to you. My mate Antonio will
remember you.”
“Very well, then; I’ll walk along the line.”
“Hell, Kid,” the man said, “it’s a hundred and seven miles, desert all
the way; and anyone seeing you on the silver line would shoot you sure
as hell.”
“What am I to do then?”
“You could get a job in the Chicuna mine, sinking the new shaft. But I
guess you’d have to stay a fortnight, before you touched your wad: they
always hold back the first week. After that you could go in on the cars
to Las Palomas. No, you couldn’t neither. You’d have to stay another
week, or six days. They ain’t only but one train a week. They call her
the Flying Fornicator or the Hop to Whoredom. I guess she’s about
rightly christened.”
“I can’t wait,” Sard said, “I must start back right away. I’ll walk it.
If I can’t walk along the line, I’ll shape a course of my own across the
desert.”
“Watcha going to eat? Watcha going to drink? Kid, you can’t do it.
Besides there’s snakes in the desert. Even the Jackarillers didn’t cross
the desert from here. No, Kid; cut it right out; and go up to the
Chicuna to-morrow before the whistle. It will be the quickest in the
end. Here’s the boss; he’ll tell you the same.”
The boss came in with a demijohn and funnel; he had been doctoring cider
with red pepper to serve as whisky for the later drinks of the evening.
He was a very tall, fair-haired, sandy-moustached man, with a cold and
evil blue eye. He carried a gun in front as well as one in a hip pocket.
He nodded at the train-hand and cast an eye over Sard. He was in the
business which brings men much into touch with the broken. He summed up
Sard at once as being “on his uppers,” or penniless.
“Pitch,” the train-hand called. “’Low me to introduce my friend. What
did you say your name was, Kid?”
“Harker.”
“Mr. Harker. Mr. Pitch Hanssen.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Pitch said: he did not look it. He put down his
demijohn and funnel upon the bar, and stood there, looking at the
company.
“Pitch,” the train-hand said, “Mr. Harker wants to get to Las Palomas.
He ain’t got too much money; so I say he’d better put in a fortnight at
the Chicuna. What do you say, Pitch?”
“He wants to get to Las Palomas?”
“Yes, or the coast,” Sard said.
“I guess you’d better inform yourself, sir,” Pitch said. “There’s only
two ways of getting to a place; you know that as well as I do.”
“Pitch,” the train-hand said, “this gentleman’s a friend of mine.”
“If he’d like to order anything,” Pitch said, “he’ll be a friend of
mine. But if he ain’t got any dough, or is the dead-broke bum I take him
to be, I’ll ask him to take a walk. This is a place for men who can pay
their way and can afford hats. Are you going to order, Alonzo?”
“Yes,” Sard said. “I am.”
Although his leg was numb from the poison, he could still move like an
athlete. He slid from his bench to the landlord in one motion.
“I’m going to order you to mind how you talk to me.”
“Order me hell,” Pitch said. “You’d best order yourself a hat, you
low-down hobo. Or order yourself a shave, while you’re at it. And now
take a walk to some place where you can buy. Get out of it.”
He did not pull a gun, probably his guns were not loaded, but he poked
up his left at Sard’s face as Sard had expected he would. Sard on the
instant cross-countered with his right to the point. Pitch slithered
sideways along the bar, fell, rolled over on the floor and lay quiet.
“Carai!” screamed the man with brass earrings, “Hijo de la gran puta.
You dog-assassin of English!” He flung his knife at Sard with the
backward flick from the wrist which “takes a year to learn,” so the bad
men say. Had he flung the knife before screaming, Sard would have had
the point through his throat, but the scream warned him; he had time to
dodge. The knife stuck in the bar. Sard pulled it out. The two men at
the table woke up. “Rough house,” one of them said.
“Cut out your dam’ row and let us sleep,” the other said.
“Carai, carai, carai,” cried the man with brass earrings. “I’ll give you
dog-assassin with the bottle.” He came across the table at Sard with a
bottle, knocking over one of the sleepers as well as a bench.
Floundering in this wreck, he himself fell, cursing. There came a scurry
of swift yet heavy steps on the floor above.
“Beat it, Kid,” the train-hand cried to Sard. “Here’s the missus.” He
held the door open for Sard, who slipped through it to the front door,
which was already open. He was moving swiftly, but had a glimpse as he
fled of a monstrous woman, with an inflamed and frowsy face, who was
floundering downstairs to him, calling him to stop. Something cracked
the woodwork of the door to his left and something banged to his right:
the woman was shooting at him.
He reached the street, turned sharply, ran round the house, scrambled
over a low wall into an enclosure, and ran along it, while the pursuit
grew loud behind him. At the end of the enclosure there was a wall,
which he climbed. As he climbed it, there came cries of “There he is!”
and bullets struck the wall and the earth beneath it. He dropped into a
second enclosure. At the end of the enclosure there was a house, at the
door of which a man lay in a chair taking his siesta with a gun upon his
knees. The man woke up as Sard reached him, and at the same instant the
pursuers reached the enclosure wall and opened fire. Sard slipped past
the man in the chair into the house. He said, “Excuse me,” as he passed,
and slammed the door behind him. There was a door on his left; a woman
opened it, asking him, in Spanish, what was the matter. He said, “It is
the washing, Madam,” and slipped past her and up the flight of stairs.
On the upper floor were three children, who screamed when they saw him.
He called out to them, in Spanish, that their mother was bringing them
some sweets.
He tried a door, which was locked, and another door, which opened into a
shuttered room; he then ran up the next floor. There was a door opposite
the top of the stairs. He opened it, and found a young man lying on the
bed, taking his siesta. The young man’s slouch hat was on the floor;
Sard picked it up and put it on. There was no sash to the window of that
room, but closed, green, jalousied shutters. He unhooked them, took a
hurried look out, and found to his great joy that there was a
fire-escape. He went down it, hand over hand, and reached the ground as
the young man looked out, and asked him what in the blazes he was doing.
He did not stop to answer, for he was collared, on the instant, by the
man who had been sleeping in the chair. Sard back-heeled him, sent him
flying and reached the garden gate, just as the woman and the three
children came out of the door with a couple of dogs.
He got out of the garden gate with the dogs at his heels, and ran along
the road, hearing the pursuit increase, as the men from the Palace of
Pleasure joined in. He turned to his right, then sharp to his left, then
again to his right, the dogs following him and joined now by three or
four pariahs, which had been sleeping in the sand. The last turn that he
made was into a blind alley. There was a wall at the end of it, overhung
with trees. He leapt for a branch, but the branch broke in his hand, and
he came down into the midst of the dogs. He sent them flying with a few
blows, scrambled up the wall and down on to the other side. On the other
side there was a woman sitting in a rocking-chair, knitting. “For the
land’s sake,” she said, “for the land’s sake, young man, this ain’t no
right of way. Go back the way you came.”
“I’m going back,” he said, and ran on.
“George! George!” the woman cried, “get your gun quick; there’s a
rough-neck come through the garden.”
Somebody inside the house answered, “What’s that you say, Anna?”
Sard called to the man, “There’s a rough-neck murdered Mr. Davis; I’ve
got to break it to the widow.”
“Stop him, George,” the woman said.
The man tried to stop him, and got one on the jaw which he remembered
for a long time.
Sard got out into a road which led quite clear of the houses into the
wilderness of the foothills. There was a sort of trail leading up the
hill, through a sparsely-grown jungle of brushwood. He took his chance
of snakes and dodged into the brush and zigzagged through it, keeping
uphill all the time. At the top of the cañon, half a mile from the town,
he stopped for a moment, but he heard people as well as dogs, so he set
off downhill into a gully.
At the foot of the gully there were great rocks among which a little
river ran. He ran upstream in the water for about a hundred yards, so as
to puzzle the dogs, and then scrambled out of the water up a great rock.
At the top of the rock there was a recess filled with dry sand and
screened by boulders. In the sand were the fresh footprints of a wild
cat, but Sard judged that wild cats are less dangerous than men, and
flung himself down to get his breath.
In a couple of minutes he heard the dogs at the water, and the voices of
men, encouraging the dogs to hunt. He judged that there were at least
eight men up with the hounds, and others joined them. He could hear
their conversation as they walked up and down, and poked among the
rocks.
“He’s the silver bandit who broke gaol at the barracks this afternoon.”
Another said, “He nearly killed Hanssen at the Palace.”
Another said, “Mother Hanssen reckon she hit him with one of her shots;
leastways there was blood under that wall.”
Another said, “He took to the water all right, but these dogs don’t seem
to get the scent any.”
Another said, “Well, he must have gone upstream, because if he’d gone
downstream, they would have got him.”
Another said, “He can’t have much breath left in him, the clip he has
been going. Like as not he’s got in among these rocks here; maybe he’s
listening all the time we’re talking.”
Another said, “The hell he ain’t got much breath! He goes over the
darned ground like a darned cyclone.”
Another said, “Come, Peppy; come, Toto; I’ll just take this couple of
dogs up along this further bank, and you get on upstream and see if we
can’t pick up where he’s landed.”
A voice came from amongst the bushes: “Say, boys, did you get him yet?”
They said, “No, we ain’t got him yet, but we guess we’re going to get
him.”
“I guess I’m going to get him too,” the voice said. “He come into my
room, when I was having a lay down, and sneaked my hat right off of my
pillow.”
“Well, come on,” said another, “and we’ll get him and the hat.”
They went splashing up the stream, and then presently all the dogs burst
into a frenzy of barking. He heard cries of “They’re on to him! Come on,
boys, they’re on to him; he can’t only be but a little ways ahead.”
Sard heard the hunt pass upstream and gradually grow fainter towards the
head of the gully. He lay still for about half an hour. He heard some
shouts and presently the footsteps of men returning, some distance up
the stream.
“It’s very odd where he’s got away to,” one of them said.
Another said, “It’s my belief he never got away, but just lay quiet
somewheres. Back in town is the place to look for him, if you ask me.”
Another said, “That’s right. You know that time the dogs went on like
they was crazy; it’s my belief they was on a panther, not on a man at
all. It was somewheres around here we lost him, and it’s somewhere
around here we’d find him again.”
“Well, the scent’s cold now,” another said; “and not only that, the dogs
has forgotten what he smelled like. Besides, the trail’s been all
trodden out. We’d best get back to town.”
“Well, I ain’t going back to town,” said the young man, “not without my
hat I ain’t.”
“Well,” another said, “no one seems to me to be able to describe the
fellow. You saw him, kid; what was he like?”
“I wasn’t only half awake,” the boy said. “He was a great big fellow, an
ugly fellow, and Pop says he was a big fellow; and he ain’t got no coat,
only just pants and a shirt.”
A man said, “Well, kid, even if he were to spring up right among us now,
I guess you couldn’t say it was him. Maybe he’s gone downstream after
all.”
“Well, I guess I’m going to get my hat,” the boy said; “no cheap skate
ain’t going to pinch my hat and get away with it.”
“That’s right, kid,” said a man, “you get him, and when you get him,
soak him good.”
They moved away downstream all together, beating with their sticks as
they went, to scare the snakes. Presently they were out of earshot, down
the stream. Sard lay very still, waiting for darkness. He heard the
hooters from the mines blowing for six o’clock. The light by this time
was going from the river-bed, but from where he lay he could see the
brush shining in the sun at the top of the cañon. He was very weary of
lying still. He said to himself, “They’ve gone, it’ll be safe to move, I
might be starting now.”
He was on the very point of rising from where he lay, when a rifle was
suddenly fired, not twenty yards from him, on the other side of the
river. It was a repeating rifle, followed by a second shot an instant
later. He heard something snarl, and a man’s voice cried, “Got you, you
son of a gun!”
Another voice said, “Well, was she a painter?”
The other said, “No, a wild cat, and she’s got her nest hereabouts.
Maybe we could find the kittens. She’s got her nest somewhere among them
rocks, the other side of the water. I see’d her little tracks, where
she’s hopped from stone to stone, so as not to get her feet wet. See
here.”
“What’s she carrying?” said one of the men. “Is it a rabbit?”
“Not it; it’s a woodchuck, I guess.”
“Are you sure she’s dead,” said one man. “I’ve known ’em to play dead,
so as to get a bit of their own back.”
“She’s dead,” said the other. “See here. Pretty poor, too; skin’s no
good, but I guess I’ll take her along. If we’d got dogs, we’d have them
kittens out. See here, the tracks lead this way. Here’s the place she
crossed. My, that’s a pretty good lep! But where did she go, after this?
That darned bunch this afternoon have trodden out all the signs. She’s
gone somewhere up them rocks, and it’s in among there, most likely. If
you’ll give me a leg up, I’ll go up and have a look round.”
“Hold on a minute,” said the other; “it ain’t too light down here. I
guess I’m not going to poke around in any cavern when this cat’s mate
may be about. The toms are as bad as the shes, and if it’s up there
laying for us, I’d guess we should know it. We’ll come around in the
morning and bring a couple of dogs.”
“Now come on, man,” said the other; “the tom’ll have hidden the kittens
to-morrow morning. Finish the job, now we’re at it. Give me a leg up.”
“I guess I won’t,” said the other. “These cats blinded old ’Lije
Goldschmidt. He went after ’em into a place where he couldn’t see, and
they fair tore his face off him.”
“Funk!” said the other man.
“I guess I am a funk,” said his friend; “but I don’t want to sit at any
street corner holding a tin pan for pennies, the way old ’Lije done, for
the rest of my days. But I’ll come along to-morrow morning, and I’ll
bring a shot-gun, which is a sight more use than the thing you’re
using.”
“Well, if you don’t care to come,” said the other man, “I’ll do it
alone. You take my rifle and hand it up to me when I’m up.”
“No,” his friend said, “I ain’t going to be a party to no such
foolishness. If you want to get your eyes clawed out, you can. Even if
you got your rifle up there, you couldn’t see to shoot. It’s just darned
foolishness, and I’m not going to stand for it. We’ve got the she, after
waiting long enough, and the whistle’s been gone this half-hour. Take
what we’ve got and come on, and we’ll come again in the morning.”
The other man growled a little at his friend, but, at last, picked up
the dead cat and turned homewards up the gully. They stopped every now
and then to complain of the steepness of the climb, then their voices
ceased to sound.
It was fast falling dark and the stars were already bright above the
gully. Sard cautiously rose, wondering whether the cat’s mate were
thereabouts. He was very stiff from lying still. It was cold down there
among the rocks and he was faint from want of food. He scrambled down to
the water and drank. After groping about for a little while, he found
the woodchuck, which he brought along.
He scrambled up the cañon on the side away from the town. It was very
steep, the scrub was full of prickles. Presently he reached the top and
saw a wilderness of scrubby foothills stretching away for miles, as it
seemed, into the Sierra. Behind him, whenever he turned, he could see
the lights of the town, and hear the dull thumping of the machinery and
the noise of the band playing in the Plaza. On his right was a vast sea
of ghostly paleness stretching away for hundreds of miles into the sky,
where crimson faded into a kind of green. In the green, here and there,
the tops of mountains made jagged marks. The stars were bright in the
heaven. He looked up to the eastward stars, with the thought that by
rights he should be in his ship, watching these stars, four degrees to
the eastward from where he was. He realised that there was no reaching
the coast by the railway line.
“I’ll go eastwards,” he said. “Among these foothills there must be some
trail by which I can reach the coast.”
He had seven matches remaining to him. By the help of two of these he
contrived a little fire, at which he cooked the woodchuck, by toasting
collops of it upon skewers. It was not as juicy as rabbit, nor so rank
as ferret, but something between the two. He saved some of it for
breakfast next morning. Then taking his bearings from the stars he set
out to walk to the coast. He knew the trend of the coast from the
charts; it was all in his favour. If Las Palomas were one hundred and
seven miles from him, he reckoned that he might reach the port of San
Agostino in ninety miles. He judged that he might do it in four days.
At the end of two hours of walking, he entered a sheltered valley in a
high state of cultivation. He burst through bushes into a track, which
led, presently, to a settlement, where the people were already asleep.
He could see the little grey-tiled houses scattered, at intervals, among
orchards. Dogs barked at his approach. The smell of oranges came to him
on a warm breath of wind. He found himself walking between two orange
fields. He could see great globes of the fruit among the dark and
shining leaves. Some oranges had fallen and lay beneath the trees. He
took some and ate them, skin and all, as he walked. At the end of the
village or community, the fruit was thicker on the trees, and he was
planning to step into one of the orchards to take some oranges when two
men with guns stepped from underneath the trees, and called to him to
stop.
“What are you doing here?” they said. One was a European fruit-farmer,
the other a native servant.
“I’m walking through,” said Sard.
“Walking through? Where to?”
“San Agostino.”
“Where’s that?”
“On the coast,” he said.
“On the coast? How do you expect to make the coast from here?”
“Walk there,” Sard said.
“Walk? Hell!” said the farmer, “you’ve come along orange-pinching. You
walk to hell clean out of here, or you’ll get lead into you so mighty
darned quick, that you’ll think a cyclone’s struck you. Now get out, and
don’t stop to pick no flowers till you’re past the end of my
plantation.”
Sard walked on along the trail; the two men followed him at a distance
of about a dozen yards, until he was clear of the plantation. The trail
led on uphill out of the valley. It seemed to go on interminably,
winding up the foothills, but remaining a track, apparently a good deal
used. At about eleven o’clock that night the track swerved to the left
towards a northern valley, which Sard judged to be useless to him. A
sort of track or trail led on in his direction. Though he did not know
it, the track was one made in the course of centuries by animals going
to drink at the brook below. He followed it for about half an hour and
then came out on a lonely hillside, from which he could see no sign of
human habitation except the glare in the sky above the mining town, now
many miles away. He could see little but mountains, most of them covered
either with scrub or with pine trees. A kind of ghostly glimmer stood
out into the sky in front, from those peaks of the Sierra which ran into
the snow. In the sandy soil among the sage brush all round him there
were little scurryings and squeakings from the gophers. Far away, he
could not tell how far, it might have been miles away, he heard the
howling of solitary wolves, a noise more uncanny than the crying of owls
and more melancholy than lamentation.
High up there, in the foothills, the wind never ceased. It stirred the
sage brush continually so that the whole hillside seemed filled with
footsteps and the noise of people pushing through the brush. He could go
no further for that night, but scooped himself a place in the sand in a
sheltered nook of the hill, out of the wind. There he covered himself up
and slept.
All through the next day he held on across the foothills through the
sparse-growing sage. He was already in the wilderness, for the hills
were waterless even so soon after the rains. He saw no sign of man all
through that day, except once, when he had a view of the desert far
below with a train, trailing under smoke, going to the west. As he was
still fresh, he resolved to march without food this day: this resolve he
kept. He found no water anywhere until towards the evening, when he
struck an animal trail which led him to a dripping rock. In the pan of
water below the rock the carrion of a wolf lay. He stayed at the rock to
catch the drippings till his thirst was assuaged: then feeling like a
new man, he went on till he could go no further. This was a good day
compared with what followed. He made good some twenty miles of his
course. He slept on the ground where he stopped; but slept ill owing to
annoyance from the ticks.
After some hours he rose up as a sailor will, knowing that his watch was
at an end. It was about a quarter to four. He felt uneasy, and sitting
up in his shelter, he heard horsemen close to him. He heard the
muttering of voices and horses wrenching at the brush. After listening
intently, he decided that what he heard was neither men nor horses, but
some other thing, he could not tell what. He remembered now that some
six weeks before, on board the _Pathfinder_, he had talked with an
Occidental, who had come on board on ship’s business, about these very
mountainous tracks in which he was wandering. He remembered that the man
had said, “No one goes there, even to prospect for metals. They are bad
places where bad things happen.” He remembered, too, stray bits of talk
or of reading about these mountains, how nobody really knew them, except
a body of men known as the Jacarillos, a tribe of most savage desert
Indians, to whom all the most savage of the native bandits fled. These
men, alone, were supposed to live in the Sierra, and when Sard sat up in
the cold morning, hearing that muttering all around him in the dark, he
judged that a war-party of the Jacarillos was passing that way.