Desert Dust

by Edwin L. Sabin

  CHAPTER XVIII

  VOICES IN THE VOID

  The directions had been plain. With the North Star and the moon as ourguides we scarcely could fail to strike the stage road where it bore offfrom the mountains northward into the desert.

  For the first half mile we rode without a word from either of us toviolate the truce that swathed us like the night. What her thoughts were Imight not know, but they sat heavy upon her, closing her throat with thetorture of vain self-reproach. That much I sensed. But I could notreassure her; could not volunteer to her that I welcomed her company, thatshe was blameless, that I had only defended my honor, that affairs wouldhave reduced to pistol work without impulse from her--that, in short, theresponsibility had been wholly Daniel's. My own thoughts were so grievousas to crush me with aching woe that forebade civil utterance.

  This, then, was I: somebody who had just killed a man, had broken from theopen trail and was riding, he knew not where, through darkness worse thannight, himself an outlaw with an outlawed woman--at the best a chancewoman, an adventuring woman, and as everybody could know, a claimedwoman, product of dance hall and gaming resort, wife of a half-breedgambler, and now spoil of fist and revolver.

  But that which burned me almost to madness, like hot lava underneath thedeadening crust, was the thought that I had done a deed and a defensibledeed, and was fleeing from it the same as a criminal. Such a contingencynever had occurred to me or I might have taken a different course, stillwith decency; although what course I could not figure.

  We rode, our mules picking their way, occasionally stumbling on rocks andshrubs. At last she spoke in low, even tones.

  "What do you expect to do with me, please?"

  "We shall have to do whatever is best for yourself," I managed to answer."That will be determined when we reach the stage line, I suppose."

  "Thank you. Once at the stage line and I shall contrive. You must have nothought of me. I understand very well that we should not travel far incompany--and you may not wish to go in my direction. You have plans ofyour own?"

  "None of any great moment. Everything has failed me, to date. There isonly the one place left: New York State, where I came from. I probably canwork my way back--at least, until I can recoup by telegraph message andthe mails."

  "You have one more place than I," she replied. She hesitated. "Will youlet me lend you some money?"

  "I've been paid my wages due," said I. "But," I added, "you have a place,you have a home: Benton."

  "Oh, Benton!" She laughed under breath. "Never Benton. I shall make shiftwithout Benton."

  "You will tell me, though?" I urged. "I must have your address, to knowthat you reach safety."

  "You are strictly business. I believe that I accused you before of being aYankee." And I read sarcasm in her words.

  Her voice had a quality of definite estimation which nettled, humbled, andisolated me, as if I lacked in some essential to a standard set.

  "So you are going home, are you?" she resumed. "With the clothes on yourback, or will you stop at Benton for your trunk?"

  "With the clothes on my back," I asserted bitterly. "I've no desire to seeBenton. The trunk can be shipped to me."

  She said on, in her cool impersonal tone.

  "That is the easiest way. You will live warm and comfortably. You willneed to wear no belt weapon. The police will protect you. If a man injuresyou, you can summon him at law and wash your hands of him. Instead ofstaking on your luck among new people, you can enter into business amongyour friends and win from them. You can marry the girl next door--or eventake the chance of the one across the street, her parentage being comme ilfaut. You can tell stories of your trip into the Far West; your childrenwill love to hear of the rough mule-whacker trail--yes, you will havegreat tales but you will not mention that you killed a man who tried tokill you and then rode for a night with a strange woman alone at yourstirrup. Perhaps you will venture to revisit these parts by steam train,and from the windows of your coach point out the places where you sufferedthose hardships and adventures from which you escaped by leaving themaltogether. Your course is the safe course. By all means take it, Mr.Beeson, and have your trunk follow you."

  "That I shall do, madam," I retorted. "The West and I have not agreed;and, I fear, never shall."

  "By honest confession, it has bested you; and in short order."

  "In short order, since you put it that way. Only a fool doesn't know whento quit."

  "The greatest fool is the one who fools himself, in the quitting as inother matters. But you will have no regrets--except about Daniel,possibly."

  "None whatever, save the regret that I ever tried this country. I wish toGod I had never seen it--I did not conceive that I should have to take ahuman life--should be forced to that--become like an outlaw in the night,riding for refuge----" And I choked passionately.

  "You deserve much sympathy," she remarked, in that even tone.

  I lapsed into a turbulence of voiceless rage at myself, at her, atDaniel's treachery, at all the train, at Benton, and again at this damningpredicament wherein I had landed. When I was bound to wrest free afterhaving done my utmost, she appeared to be twitting me because I would notsubmit to farther use by her. I certainly had the right to extricatemyself in the only way left.

  So I conned over and over, and my heart gnawed, and the acid of vexationboiled in my throat, and despite the axle grease my arm nagged; while werode unspeaking, like some guilty pair through purgatory.

  My lip had subsided; the pistol wound was superficial. Under differentcircumstances the way would have been full of beauty. The high desertstretched vastly, far, far, far before, behind, on either side, theparched gauntness of its daytime aspect assuaged and evanescent. For themoon, now risen, although on the wane, shed a light sufficient, whiteningthe rocks and the scattered low shrubs, painting the land with sharp blackshadows, and enclosing us about with the mystery of great softly illuminedspaces into which silent forms vanished as if tempting us aside. Ofthese--rabbits, wolves, animals only to be guessed--there were many, likepotential phantoms quickened by the touch of the moonbeams. Mule-back, wetwain towered, the sole intruders visible between the two elysians ofglorified earth and beatific sky.

  The course was southward. After a time it seemed to me that we weredescending from the plateau; craunching gradually down a flank until, in amile or so, we were again upon the level, cutting through another basinformed by the dried bed of an ancient lake whose waters had evaporatedinto deposits of salt and soda.

  At first the mules had plodded with ears pricked forward, and with sundrysnorts and stares as if they were seeing portents in the moonshine.Eventually their imaginings dulled, so that they now moved careless ofwhere or why, their heads drooped, their minds devoted to achieving whatrest they might in the merely mechanical setting of hoof before hoof.

  I could not but be aware of my companion. Her hair glinted paly, for sherode bareheaded; her gown, tightened under her as she sat astride,revealed the lines of her boyish limbs. She was a woman, in any guise; andI being a man, protect her I should, as far as necessary. I found myselfwishing that we could upturn something pleasant to talk about; it wasungracious, even wicked, to ride thus side by side through peace andbeauty, with lips closed and war in the heart, and final parting as themain desire.

  But her firm pose and face steadily to the fore invited with no sign; andafter covertly stealing a glance or two at her clear unresponsive profileI still could manage no theme that would loosen my tongue. Thereby lether think me a dolt. Thank Heaven, after another twenty-four hours at mostit might not matter what she thought.

  The drooning round of my own thoughts revolved over and over, and thescuffing gait of the mules upon way interminable began to numb me.Lassitude seemed to be enfolding us both; I observed that she rode laxly,with hand upon the horn and a weary yielding to motion. Words might havestirred us, but no words came. Presently I caught myself dozing in thesaddle, aroused only by the twitching of my wounded arm. Then agai
n Idozed, and kept dozing, fairly dead for sleep, until speak she did, hervoice drifting as from afar but fetching me awake and blinking.

  "Hadn't we better stop?" she repeated.

  That was a curious sensation. When I stared about, uncomprehending, myview was shut off by a whiteness veiling the moon above and the earthbelow except immediately underneath my mule's hoofs. She herself was aspecter; the weeds that we brushed were spectral; every sound that we madewas muffled, and in the intangible, opaquely lucent shroud which hadenveloped us like the spirit of a sea there was no life nor movement.

  "What's the matter?" I propounded.

  "The fog. I don't know where we are."

  "Oh! I hadn't noticed."

  "No," she said calmly. "You've been asleep."

  "Haven't you?"

  "Not lately. But I don't think there's any use in riding on. We've lostour bearings."

  She was ahead; evidently had taken the lead while I slept. Thatrealization straightened me, shamed, in my saddle. The fog, fleecy, not sowet as impenetrable--when had it engulfed us?

  "How long have we been in it?" I asked, thoroughly vexed.

  "An hour, maybe. We rode right into it. I thought we might leave it, butwe don't. It's as thick as ever. We ought to stop."

  "I suppose we ought," said I.

  And at the moment we entered into a sudden clearing amidst the fogenclosure: a tract of a quarter of an acre, like a hollow center, with thewhite walls held apart and the stars and moon faintly glimmering downthrough the mist roof overhead.

  She drew rein and half turned in the saddle. I could see her face. It wasdank and wan and heavy-eyed; her hair, somewhat robbed of its sheen,crowned with a pallid golden aureole.

  "Will this do? If we go on we'll only be riding into the fog again."

  I was conscious of the thin, apparently distant piping of frogs.

  "There seems to be a marsh beyond," she uttered.

  "Yes, we'd better stop where we are," I agreed. "Then in the morning wecan take stock."

  "In the morning, surely. We may not be far astray." She swung off before Ihad awkwardly dismounted to help her. Her limbs failed--my own wereclamped by stiffness--and she staggered and collapsed with a littlelaugh.

  "I'm tired," she confessed. "Wait just a moment."

  "You stay where you are," I ordered, staggering also as I hastily landed."I'll make camp."

  But she would have none of that; pleaded my one-handedness and insistedupon cooperating at the mules. We seemed to be marooned upon a small riseof gravel and coarsely matted dried grasses. The animals were staked out,fell to nibbling. I sought a spot for our beds; laid down a buffalo robefor her and placed her saddle as her pillow. She sank with a sigh, tuckingher skirt under her, and I folded the robe over.

  Her face gazed up at me; she extended her hand.

  "You are very kind, sir," she said, in a smile that pathetically curvedher lips. There, at my knees, she looked so worn, so slight, so childish,so in need of encouragement that all was well and that she had a friend toserve her, that with a rush of sudden sympathy I would--indeed I couldhave kissed her, upon the forehead if not upon the lips themselves. It wasan impulse well-nigh overmastering; an impulse that must have dazed me sothat she saw or felt, for a tinge of pink swept into her skin; shewithdrew her hand and settled composedly.

  "Good-night. Please sleep. In the morning we'll reach the stage road andyour troubles will be near the end."

  Under my own robe I lay for a long time reviewing past and present anddiscussing with myself the future. Strangely enough the present occupiedme the most; it incorporated with that future beyond the fog, and when Iput her out back she came as if she were part and parcel of my life. Therewas a sense of balance; we had been associates, fellow tenants--in fact,she was entwined with the warp and woof of all my memories dating far backto my entrance, fresh and hopeful, into the new West. It ratherflabbergasted me to find myself thinking that the future was going to bevery tame; perhaps, as she had suggested, regretful. I had not apprehendedthat the end should be so drastic.

  And whether the regrets would center upon my slinking home defeated, or inhaving definitely cast her away, puzzled me as sorely as it did todiscover that I was well content to be here, with her, in our littleclearing amidst the desert fog, listening to her soft breathing anddebating over what she might have done had I actually kissed her tocomfort her and assure her that I was not unmindful of her really bravespirit.

  Daniel had been disposed of, Montoyo did not deserve her; I had won her,she could inspire and guide me if I stayed; and I saw myself staying, andI saw myself going home, and I already regretted a host of things, as aman will when at the forking of the trails.

  The fog gently closed in during the night. When I awakened we were againenshrouded by the fleece of it, denser than when we had ridden through it,but now whiter with the dawn. As I gazed sleepily about I could just makeout the forms of the two mules, standing motionless and huddled; I couldsee her more clearly, at shorter distance--her buffalo robe moist with thesemblance of dew that had beaded also upon her massy hair.

  Evidently she had not stirred all night; might be still asleep. No; hereyes were open, and when I stiffly shifted posture she looked across atme.

  "Sh!" she warned, with quick shake of head. The same warning bade melisten. In a moment I heard voices.