THE DESERT INTERVENES
That day omniscient will of the desert moved to point a murderer’s
guilt the same inscrutable power flexed a finger to mould events some
seventy miles away from the Garden of Solitude where the worthy doctor
from Arizora and his Papago had been nibbling at a mystery. Though Doc
Stooder moved in a haze of strong waters, though he looked upon the
face of the desert through a golden veil of his own weaving, yet was he
not the least immune from the law of the waste places. The Doc walked
with God, even as did the pioneer fathers of the Church; the fact that
he did not admit the companionship had no influence on the operations
of destiny.
We left Stooder on his knees before the uncovered bell with its
inscription carrying identification. His excitements, his hysterical
grubbings, soundings and prospectings of the ensuing twenty-four hours
were heroic. After the uncovering of the bell he had paced off a
square through the scrub thirty or forty feet each way and with the
corroded cone of metal for a centre; then the Indian and he had gone on
their hands and knees over every inch of this square. Result, a single
stick of hewn timber whose fire-blackened end had projected but an inch
above the sand; digging revealed a twenty-foot beam, dry as a puff-ball
and almost ready to disintegrate.
That was all: the bell and the uncovered beam. But that was enough.
Doc Stooder knew that beneath him lay the mission site; how deeply the
blown sands of more than a century had buried it he could not guess.
But it was here! Here lay the rich core of a legend that had sent
many a man out into the desert to chase rainbow ends. His--Stooder’s!
A’mighty God! how he’d riffle those pearls through his fingers--lay
’em all out on a piece of velvet under some secret lamp and match ’em,
pearl with pearl.
But twenty-four hours in the desert exact their price; and that price
is in measure of water. The Doc did not drink water so long as his
store of contraband liquor held out; but the Papago did. Great was the
Doc’s rage and disgust when his companion called him away from sinking
a prospect shaft to point the single remaining water container, now
much lighter than it should be. He tested the little car’s radiator
to find that evaporation had left almost none of the necessary fluid
therein. No use buckin’ fate; if he wanted to get back to the village
of the Sand People on four wheels he’d have to give the radiator a
drink and that would leave none for himself and the Papago.
It was near noon of their second day at the treasure site when the
Doc whipped his reluctance into acceptance of the inevitable. He made
certain preparations. First he copied into a prescription book the
inscription on the bell; that would do to convince somebody whose
financing of the excavation operations might have to be invoked. Then
he sketched a map of the vicinity with meticulous care, marking in the
jagged spurs of the nearby mountains for bearing points and indicating
the position of the bell in reference to a dry wash which was traced
down from a gash in the mountain wall.
“Guadalupe, old son, your old friend Stooder’s goin’ rustle back here
with an outfit right soon an’ dig himself right down to them pearls. So
he’s just a mite p’ticular about this map.”
Access of caution prompted the Doc to dismount from the car after he’d
set the engine to humming. He ran back with a shovel and covered the
bell with sand; the haggled bush above it would be a sufficient guide
for him and no significant landmark for the possible prying stranger.
The beam he hid in the wash. Then they trundled down their own track
and back to the Road of the Dead Men. Doc Stooder cursed the necessity
of automobiles leaving tracks. Some snoozer amblin’ along the main road
would just’s like as not turn out to follow these two lines out into
nowhere to see what he could see. Then perhaps--
Summer had come miraculously to the desert overnight, as the seasons
in Altar have a way of doing. Yesterday the pink convolvulus of spring
lay in scattered coral patches amid the scrub and the greasewood
was showing its midget spots of yellow. Now every glistening clump
of _cholla_ was aglow with the blood-red flowers of its kind; the
occasional pillars of the giant cactus were wreathed each at its top by
fillets of creamy blossoms--grotesque masquerading of these withered
old men of the wastes. First hint of summer’s heat was abroad. It came
from the west on puffy little winds like the back-draught from an
oil-burning boiler.
The Doc found himself in a frolicsome mood, for his night’s potations,
predicated on a dwindling supply, had recklessly drained that supply
but availed to carry him over to another day with the stars of his
dream world still burning. Hunched low in his seat so that the
tip of his goatee waggled against the rim of the wheel, with his
flopping black hat all grease streaked pulled low against the sun
glare, the tramp physician chewed tobacco with all the unction of a
care-free conscience and indulged himself in wandering monologue.
Guadalupe’s meagre stock of Spanish made him anything but a lively
conversationalist, so the Doc was constrained to carry on a vivid
conversation with himself.
Into what penetralia of reminiscence this auto-dialogue carried him!
Back through the years--through countless dim valleys of a Never-Never
Land of alcoholic fantasies where his spirit had been wont to pitch its
tent. Scraps of jest and shreds of song stirred the ghosts along the
Road of the Dead Men.
No such exuberance from Guadalupe, slave of the desert. They had not
been an hour on the road when the Papago began to feel a crawling
of the nerves along the spine and the pressure of invisible fingers
across the brow--evil signs! No less than the mountain sheep or the
road-runner in the scrub could the Papago interpret the desert’s
forerunners of portent. A feel in the air--hue of the mountain
rims--colour of sunlight against a rock: these things had their meaning.
Away off to the northward where a patch of gypsum showed white as film
ice the Indian’s eye caught the first tangible evidence of trouble
ahead. A dust whirlwind like a gigantic leg in baggy trousers was
wavering across the flats; the thing possessed volition of its own so
surely did it map its course across a five-mile span in less than five
minutes. Guadalupe nudged his companion timidly and pointed to it.
“Uh-huh, old Peg-legged Grandpap,” chuckled the Doc. “Seen him lots
times. Gotta hole in his peg-leg you can drive a car through slick’s a
whistle--allowin’ you can find the hole.”
A half hour later the sun changed colour. Like the passing of a
shutter across a calcium light: now blinding white, now blood-orange.
Instantaneous.
Three gusts of sand-laden wind came sweeping toward them from the west.
A long lull, then the storm.
It pounced upon them with a sibilant whistle growing momentarily to a
roar which was engulfing. The little desert skimmer bucked like a wild
colt against the onslaught of the wind; but when the Doc dropped the
engine into low the car wallowed on in the face of the gale. The air
was thick as flour. Wind-driven sand had the bite of an emery wheel at
high revolution; it rasped the skin and drove eyelids tight shut. The
two in the car buttoned jackets above their noses to breathe.
All the space of the desert was a poisonous yellow glare. Minute by
minute density thickened until the car’s radiator was hardly visible.
Then the sturdy engine quit. First a tortured grinding of clogged
cylinders, puny explosions from the exhaust, a bucking and quivering.
After that sudden stoppage of movement as if the car had plumped into a
stone wall.
The Doc and Guadalupe tumbled out of the seat and crawled beneath
the car for protection. A stab of fear shot down through Stooder’s
disordered thoughts--the water! None in the canteens, for they had
drained the last into the radiator before starting from the treasure
ground. Was there--could the sand have--?
He inched himself through a new sand drift below the front axle to
where the drain cock projected below the radiator base. Like a suckling
kid he lifted his lips to the steel teat and turned the cock. A
trickle of heavy mud filled his mouth with grit, then stopped.
Radiator a mess of mud--cylinders clogged--feed pipes all choked and
water--gone!
Doc Stooder pulled his floppy hat over his face and whimpered the name
of God.
And on the back trail where the bell of the Lost Mission had
been found; over that site which the Doc had so carefully mapped
and measured the wind scoured and builded--scoured and builded.
Obliterating, changing, re-creating.