Book: The Freebooters of the Wilderness

A >> Agnes C. Laut >> The Freebooters of the Wilderness




"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!"




CHAPTER XVI

BITTER WATERS

But for all that the outlaws seemed hard pressed, they succeeded in
keeping ahead. The velvet dark of the night in the arroyo had given
place to a sickly saffron dawn. Where the cut-way widened and lost
itself in an alkali sink, the hoof prints of the fugitives' horses led
out again to the open country of gray torrid earth dotted by sage brush
and greasewood. The yellow sky met the ochre panting earth in a
tremulous heat mist of wavering purple; and against that sky line, a
swirl of dust marked the receding figures of the riders.

"There they go, Wayland! It's a case of who lasts out now! If we can
only keep pushing them ahead, this heat wull do the rest."

The old man shaded his eyes as he gazed across the desert dawn.

"Queer way y'r mountains here keep shiftin' an' mufflin' an' meltin'
their lines! They're here one minute about a mile away, then as you
look, they've a trick of movin' back! That dust against the sky line
is about ten miles off as A make it in this high rare air; an' they're
goin' mighty slow! We've played 'em out."

"Yes; but they have played us out! Let us get off and have breakfast.
If that small wren coming out of the cactus could speak, it might tell
us where to find water."


They had camped one noon hour at a Desert pool beneath a cottonwood,
where the putrid carcass of a dead ox polluted air and water. The
Ranger whittled the cottonwood branches for a small chip fire, and he
boiled enough water to fill the skin bag for the next day's travel; but
a high wind was blowing, restless, nagging, gusty, pelting ash dust in
their eyes, and not to lose the trail, they had pressed on through the
sweltering heat of mid-day. Wayland's muscles had begun to feel
hardened to the dryness of knotted whip cords. His skin had bronzed
swarthy as an Indian's. He was beginning to rejoice in the vast
spacious relentless Desert with its fierce struggle of life against
death; the cactus, the greasewood, the brittle sage brush, all matching
themselves against the heat-death. Was there a thing, beast or bush,
not armed with the fangs of protection and onslaught? Wayland looked
at his leather coat. It had been jagged to tatters by thorn and spine.
Silent, too; the struggle was silent and insidious and crafty as death.
Who could guess where the water-pools lay beneath the dry gravel beds;
or why the cactus fortified its storage of moisture in bristling spear
points; the greasewood and pinon with thorns and resin; the sage brush
with a dull gray varnish that imprisoned evaporation? The very crust
above the earth of ash and silt conspired to hide the trail of wolf and
cougar; and wolf and cougar, wren and condor, masked in colors that hid
their presence. Twice Wayland had almost stumbled on a wolf sitting
motionless, gray as the ash, watching the horsemen pass; pass where?
Was it down the Long Trail where the tracks all point one way? Yet the
fierceness, the craft, the relentless cruelty of the silent struggle
matched his own mood. He felt the stimulus of the high dry sun-fused
tireless air. He began to understand why the Desert prophets of the
East, who camped on sand plains rimmed round and round by an unbroken
sky line, had been the first of the human race to grasp the idea of the
Oneness of God. And was it not the Desert prophets, who had preached a
God relentless as he was merciful; and the retribution that was fire?
Well, Wayland ruminated, who should say that they were wrong? If the
God who created the Desert, was the God of life; but there, his thought
had been broken by coming on the withered carcass beside the yellow
pool.

"They can't keep going on in this heat! We'll run 'em down if we can
only keep going," Wayland had said; as they set out again in the
blistering wind; but to his dying day, he will never forget the
traverse of the Desert in that mid-day sun. To his dying day he will
never see the spectrum colors of white light split by a prism, or the
spectrum colors of a child's soap bubble, without living over the
tortures of that afternoon, for the air, whipped to dust by the
hurricane wind, acted as a prism splitting the white flame of light to
lurid reds and oranges and yellows and violets.


Now, on this second morning before the stars had faded to the orange
sunrise coming up through the lavender air in a half fan, the heat had
thrown riders and horses in a sweltering sweat; and the nagging wind
had begun driving ash dust in eyes and skin like pepper on a raw sore.
Matthews' ruddy face had turned livid; his blood-shot eyes were dark
ringed. The horses travelled with heads hung low. Spite of the sun,
it was a cloudy sky, but whether rain clouds or dust clouds, they could
not tell. Towards noon, they could see against the purple mountains
the red tinged clouds fraying out to a fringe that swept the sky.

"A thought it never rained in the Desert in summer, Wayland?"

"It doesn't."

"What's that ahead?"

"Rain; but if you look again, you'll see it doesn't reach the sky line!
It's sucked up and evaporated before it hits the dust. . . ."

Towards the middle of the afternoon, the horses were resting in the
shade of a reddish butte. Both men had dismounted. Wayland did not
notice what was happening till he glanced where the blue shadow of the
rock met the wavering glare of the sand. The old man had stooped to
one knee and had twice laved his hand down to the wavering margin of
blue light and bluer shadows.

"Fooled you again, did it?' asked the Ranger, throwing the saddle from
his own pony, strapping the cased rifle to his shoulder and carrying
the hatchet in the crook of his elbow.

"Better let me give you a drink from the water bag; it's hot and stale;
but it will keep you from seeing water at your feet till we find
another spring."

The old man drank from the neck of the water bag and wiped his mouth
with his hand.

"Queer effect y'r heat has on a North man, Wayland! D' y' know what
A'd be doing if A let myself?"

"Drinking those blue shadows again?"

"No, sir, A'd be babbling and babbling about the sea! A fall asleep as
we ride; an' when A wake from a doze, 'tisn't the sea of sand, 'tis the
sea o' water that's about me! The yellow sea o' York Fort up Hudson
Bay way where A took the boats from Saskatchewan."

Wayland helped him to mount.

"Aren't y' goin' to ride y'rself?"

"No," answered Wayland. "I'm going to keep one horse fresh. Best this
one to-day: then we'll change off and rest yours to-morrow. Those
fellows can't go any faster than we do. This heat will beat them out
if we can't. I'll make those blackguards glad to drink horse-blood."

Then, they moved forward again, Wayland leading on foot, the little
pack mule to the rear, both horses stumbling clumsily, raising clouds
of dust; breathing hard, with heaving flanks.

That night, they halted in broken country . . . more red buttes;
hummocks of red; silt crust trenched by the crumbly cutways of spring
freshets; sand hills billowing to a brick red sky, where the sun hung a
dull blaze. There were tracks of the fleeing drovers having paused for
a rest in the same place. It was a pebble bottom hot and dry. Wayland
scooped under with his Service axe and an ooze of clay water seeped
slowly up forming a brackish pool. He had to hold the little mule back
from fighting the horses for that water. When the animals had drunk,
he filled the water bag with the settlings. Towards three in the
morning, the soft velvet pansy blue Desert dark broke to a sulphur
mist. Wayland saddled horses and mule and wakened the old frontiersman.

"Eh, where's this?" He came to himself heavily. "Wayland, is this
hell-broth of a sulphur stew doin' me? Has y'r Desert got me, Wayland?"

"No, sir, when the Desert gets you, it gets you raving mad with fever.
Chains won't hold you! This soggy sleep is all right. Long as you
sleep, you'll keep your head!"

All the same, the Ranger noticed that the old man ate scarcely any
breakfast. For those people who think that the Ranger's life consists
of an easy all day jog-trot, it would be well to set down exactly of
what that breakfast consisted. It consisted of slap jacks made with
water sediment. Both men were afraid to draw on the water from the
skin bag for tea.


They passed dead pools that day, places where Desert travellers had
stuck up posts to mark a spring; but where the Service axe failed to
find water below the saline crust. Then, Wayland knew why the sulphur
dust drift moved so slowly against the horizon. The outlaws _had not_
found water. Horses and men were fagging. A velveteen coat had been
thrown aside to lighten weight; from the dust markings one horse seemed
to have fallen; and the load had been lightened still more by casting
off half sacks of flour and some canvas tenting; but the tracks of the
lame horse picking the soft places along the trail showed drops of
blood. Had it cut itself on the glassy lava rocks; or was it the hoof?
A little farther ahead, the same horse had fallen again to its knees,
rolling over headlong; and the other tracks doubled back confusedly
where the riders had come to help.

The Ranger smiled, though the yellow heat danced in blood clots before
his blistered vision. He had had to put the old frontiersman back on
his horse three times. The stirrup was wrong; or the saddle was
slipping; or . . . what alarmed Wayland was each time he had stopped,
the old man was stooping as if to follow the wavering outline of
invisible water. Then, when the Ranger tried to count how many days
they had been out, he found he couldn't. He had lost track: the days
had slipped into nights and the nights into days; and he suddenly
realized that his head pounded like a steel derrick; that the crackling
of the dry sage brush leaves snapped something strung and irritable in
his own nerves. There was no longer a drowsy hum in his ears. It was
a wild rushing.

Once, the horses shuffled to a dead stop. Wayland looked up from the
dancing sand at his feet. He rubbed his eyes and looked again.

"I keep thinking I see a white horse lagging behind that dust drift.
What puzzles me is whether they are trying to _get out_ of the Desert
or _lose_ us in it. While we are seeing them, you can bet they are
seeing us! There hasn't been a yard for a mile back, where the hoof
tracks weren't bloody. They'll lose a horse if they keep on to-day:
then, they'll be without a packer; but if they are plumb up against it,
why don't they face round and fight? They are three to our two? They
could hide behind any of these sand rolls and pot us crossing the
sinks; but if they are not at the end of their tether, why don't they
hustle and get out of sight? If they aren't played out, they could
outride us in half a day."

The old man was shading his eyes and gazing across the sun glare.
Wayland noticed that he was steadying himself in the saddle by the
pummel.

"Is my eye playing me tricks, Wayland; or do A see something stuck on
yon bush along the way? First glance, it looks like the leaf of a note
book. Keep looking, it might be a tent a couple of miles away. That
used to happen when we were buildin' bridges in the Rockies. Surveyors
crossing upper snows would stick up a message in neck of a ginger ale
bottle: then, when we'd come along with the line men after trampin' the
snow for hours, we'd mistake the thing for a man with a white hat till
we almost tumbled over the bottle. Is it the Desert playin' me tricks,
Wayland; or do A see something? Look, . . . where that bit of brush
grows against the lava rock there."

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