by Zane Grey
But not all, for I saw that Jones had, in some inexplicable manner, cut the White Mustang and two of his blacks out of the band. He had turned them back again and was pursuing them. The bay he rode had never before appeared to much advantage, and now, with his long, lean, powerful body in splendid action, imbued with the relentless will of his rider, what a picture he presented! How he did run! With all that, the White Mustang made him look dingy and slow. Nevertheless, it was a critical time in the wild career of that king of horses. He had been penned in a space two hundred by five hundred yards, half of which was separated from him by a wide ditch, a yawning chasm that he had refused, and behind him, always keeping on the inside, wheeled the yelling hunter, who savagely spurred his bay and whirled a deadly lasso. He had been cut off and surrounded; the very nature of the rocks and trails of the canyon threatened to end his freedom or his life. Certain it was he preferred to end the latter, for he risked death from the rocks as he went over them in long leaps.
Jones could have roped either of the two blacks, but he hardly noticed them. Covered with dust and splotches of foam, they took their advantage, turned on the circle toward the passage way and galloped by me out of sight. Again Wallace, Frank and Jim let out strings of yells and volleys. The chase was narrowing down. Trapped, the White Mustang King had no chance. What a grand spirit he showed! Frenzied as I was with excitement, the thought occurred to me that this was an unfair battle, that I ought to stand aside and let him pass. But the blood and lust of primitive instinct held me fast. Jones, keeping back, met his every turn. Yet always with lithe and beautiful stride the stallion kept out of reach of the whirling lariat.
“Close in!” yelled Jones, and his voice, powerful with a note of triumph, bespoke the knell of the king’s freedom.
The trap closed in. Back and forth at the upper end the White Mustang worked; then rendered desperate by the closing in, he circled round nearer to me. Fire shone in his wild eyes. The wily Jones was not to be outwitted; he kept in the middle, always on the move, and he yelled to me to open up.
I lost my voice again, and fired my last shot. Then the White Mustang burst into a dash of daring, despairing speed. It was his last magnificent effort. Straight for the wash at the upper end he pointed his racy, spirited head, and his white legs stretched far apart, twinkled and stretched again. Jones galloped to cut him off, and the yells he emitted were demoniacal. It was a long, straight race for the mustang, a short curve for the bay.
That the white stallion gained was as sure as his resolve to elude capture, and he never swerved a foot from his course. Jones might have headed him, but manifestly he wanted to ride with him, as well as to meet him, so in case the lasso went true, a terrible shock might be averted.
Up went Jones’s arm as the space shortened, and the lasso ringed his head. Out it shot, lengthened like a yellow, striking snake, and fell just short of the flying white tail.
The White Mustang, fulfilling his purpose in a last heroic display of power, sailed into the air, up and up, and over the wide wash like a white streak. Free! the dust rolled in a cloud from under his hoofs, and he vanished.
Jones’s superb horse, crashing down on his haunches, just escaped sliding into the hole.
I awoke to the realization that Satan had carried me, in pursuit of the thrilling chase, all the way across the circle without my knowing it.
Jones calmly wiped the sweat from his face, calmly coiled his lasso, and calmly remarked:
“In trying to capture wild animals a man must never be too sure. Now what I thought my strong point was my weak point — the wash. I made sure no horse could ever jump that hole.”
CHAPTER 7.
SNAKE GULCH
NOT FAR FROM the scene of our adventure with the White Streak as we facetious and appreciatively named the mustang, deep, flat cave indented the canyon wall. By reason of its sandy floor and close proximity to Frank’s trickling spring, we decided to camp in it. About dawn Lawson and Stewart straggled in on spent horse and found awaiting them a bright fire, a hot supper and cheery comrades.
“Did yu fellars git to see him?” was the ranger’s first question.
“Did we get to see him?” echoed five lusty voice as one. “We did!”
It was after Frank, in his plain, blunt speech had told of our experience, that the long Arizonian gazed fixedly at Jones.
“Did yu acktully tech the hair of thet mustang with a rope?”
In all his days Jones never had a greater complement. By way of reply, he moved his big hand to button of his coat, and, fumbling over it, unwound a string of long, white hairs, then said: “I pulled these out of his tail with my lasso; it missed his left hind hoof about six inches.”
There were six of the hairs, pure, glistening white, and over three feet long. Stewart examined then in expressive silence, then passed them along; and when they reached me, they stayed.
The cave, lighted up by a blazing fire, appeared to me a forbidding, uncanny place. Small, peculiar round holes, and dark cracks, suggestive of hidden vermin, gave me a creepy feeling; and although not over-sensitive on the subject of crawling, creeping things, I voiced my disgust.
“Say, I don’t like the idea of sleeping in this hole. I’ll bet it’s full of spiders, snakes and centipedes and other poisonous things.”
Whatever there was in my inoffensive declaration to rouse the usually slumbering humor of the Arizonians, and the thinly veiled ridicule of Colonel Jones, and a mixture of both in my once loyal California friend, I am not prepared to state. Maybe it was the dry, sweet, cool air of Nail Canyon; maybe my suggestion awoke ticklish associations that worked themselves off thus; maybe it was the first instance of my committing myself to a breach of camp etiquette. Be that as it may, my innocently expressed sentiment gave rise to bewildering dissertations on entomology, and most remarkable and startling tales from first-hand experience.
“Like as not,” began Frank in matter-of-fact tone. “Them’s tarantuler holes all right. An’ scorpions, centipedes an’ rattlers always rustle with tarantulers. But we never mind them — not us fellers! We’re used to sleepin’ with them. Why, I often wake up in the night to see a big tarantuler on my chest, an’ see him wink. Ain’t thet so, Jim?”
“Shore as hell,” drawled faithful, slow Jim.
“Reminds me how fatal the bite of a centipede is,” took up Colonel Jones, complacently. “Once I was sitting in camp with a hunter, who suddenly hissed out: ‘Jones, for God’s sake don’t budge! There’s a centipede on your arm!’ He pulled his Colt, and shot the blamed centipede off as clean as a whistle. But the bullet hit a steer in the leg; and would you believe it, the bullet carried so much poison that in less than two hours the steer died of blood poisoning. Centipedes are so poisonous they leave a blue trail on flesh just by crawling over it. Look there!”
He bared his arm, and there on the brown-corded flesh was a blue trail of something, that was certain. It might have been made by a centipede.
“This is a likely place for them,” put in Wallace, emitting a volume of smoke and gazing round the cave walls with the eye of a connoisseur. “My archaeological pursuits have given me great experience with centipedes, as you may imagine, considering how many old tombs, caves and cliff-dwellings I have explored. This Algonkian rock is about the right stratum for centipedes to dig in. They dig somewhat after the manner of the fluviatile long-tailed decapod crustaceans, of the genera Thoracostraca, the common crawfish, you know. From that, of course, you can imagine, if a centipede can bite rock, what a biter he is.”
I began to grow weak, and did not wonder to see Jim’s long pipe fall from his lips. Frank looked queer around the gills, so to speak, but the gaunt Stewart never batted an eye.
“I camped here two years ago,” he said, “An’ the cave was alive with rock-rats, mice, snakes, horned-toads, lizards an’ a big Gila monster, besides bugs, scorpions’ rattlers, an’ as fer tarantulers an’ centipedes — say! I couldn’t sleep fer the noise they made fightin’.”
“I seen the same,” concluded Lawson, as nonchalant as a wild-horse wrangler well could be. “An’ as fer me, now I allus lays perfickly still when the centipedes an’ tarantulers begin to drop from their holes in the roof, same as them holes up there. An’ when they light on me, I never move, nor even breathe fer about five minutes. Then they take a notion I’m dead an’ crawl off. But sure, if I’d breathed I’d been a goner!”
All of this was playfully intended for the extinction of an unoffending and impressionable tenderfoot.
With an admiring glance at my tormentors, I rolled out my sleeping-bag and crawled into it, vowing I would remain there even if devil-fish, armed with pikes, invaded our cave.
Late in the night I awoke. The bottom of the canyon and the outer floor of our cave lay bathed in white, clear moonlight. A dense, gloomy black shadow veiled the opposite canyon wall. High up the pinnacles and turrets pointed toward a resplendent moon. It was a weird, wonderful scene of beauty entrancing, of breathless, dreaming silence that seemed not of life. Then a hoot-owl lamented dismally, his call fitting the scene and the dead stillness; the echoes resounded from cliff to cliff, strangely mocking and hollow, at last reverberating low and mournful in the distance.
How long I lay there enraptured with the beauty of light and mystery of shade, thrilling at the lonesome lament of the owl, I have no means to tell; but I was awakened from my trance by the touch of something crawling over me. Promptly I raised my head. The cave was as light as day. There, sitting sociably on my sleeping-bag was a great black tarantula, as large as my hand.
For one still moment, notwithstanding my contempt for Lawson’s advice, I certainly acted upon it to the letter. If ever I was quiet, and if ever I was cold, the time was then. My companions snored in blissful ignorance of my plight. Slight rustling sounds attracted my wary gaze from the old black sentinel on my knee. I saw other black spiders running to and fro on the silver, sandy floor. A giant, as large as a soft-shell crab, seemed to be meditating an assault upon Jones’s ear. Another, grizzled and shiny with age or moonbeams I could not tell which — pushed long, tentative feelers into Wallace’s cap. I saw black spots darting over the roof. It was not a dream; the cave was alive with tarantulas!
Not improbably my strong impression that the spider on my knee deliberately winked at me was the result of memory, enlivening imagination. But it sufficed to bring to mind, in one rapid, consoling flash, the irrevocable law of destiny — that the deeds of the wicked return unto them again.
I slipped back into my sleeping-bag, with a keen consciousness of its nature, and carefully pulled the flap in place, which almost hermetically sealed me up.
“Hey! Jones! Wallace! Frank! Jim!” I yelled, from the depths of my safe refuge.
Wondering cries gave me glad assurance that they had awakened from their dreams.
“The cave’s alive with tarantulas!” I cried, trying to hide my unholy glee.
“I’ll be durned if it ain’t!” ejaculated Frank.
“Shore it beats hell!” added Jim, with a shake of his blanket.
“Look out, Jones, there’s one on your pillow!” shouted Wallace.
Whack! A sharp blow proclaimed the opening of hostilities.
Memory stamped indelibly every word of that incident; but innate delicacy prevents the repetition of all save the old warrior’s concluding remarks: “! ! ! place I was ever in! Tarantulas by the million — centipedes, scorpions, bats! Rattlesnakes, too, I’ll swear. Look out, Wallace! there, under your blanket!”
From the shuffling sounds which wafted sweetly into my bed, I gathered that my long friend from California must have gone through motions creditable to a contortionist. An ensuing explosion from Jones proclaimed to the listening world that Wallace had thrown a tarantula upon him. Further fearful language suggested the thought that Colonel Jones had passed on the inquisitive spider to Frank. The reception accorded the unfortunate tarantula, no doubt scared out of its wits, began with a wild yell from Frank and ended in pandemonium.
While the confusion kept up, with whacks and blows and threshing about, with language such as never before had disgraced a group of old campers, I choked with rapture, and reveled in the sweetness of revenge.
When quiet reigned once more in the black and white canyon, only one sleeper lay on the moon-silvered sand of the cave.
At dawn, when I opened sleepy eyes, Frank, Slim, Stewart and Lawson had departed, as pre-arranged, with the outfit, leaving the horses belonging to us and rations for the day. Wallace and I wanted to climb the divide at the break, and go home by way of Snake Gulch, and the Colonel acquiesced with the remark that his sixty-three years had taught him there was much to see in the world. Coming to undertake it, we found the climb — except for a slide of weathered rock — no great task, and we accomplished it in half an hour, with breath to spare and no mishap to horses.
But descending into Snake Gulch, which was only a mile across the sparsely cedared ridge, proved to be tedious labor. By virtue of Satan’s patience and skill, I forged ahead; which advantage, however, meant more risk for me because of the stones set in motion above. They rolled and bumped and cut into me, and I sustained many a bruise trying to protect the sinewy slender legs of my horse. The descent ended without serious mishap.
Snake Gulch had a character and sublimity which cast Nail Canyon into the obscurity of forgetfulness. The great contrast lay in the diversity of structure. The rock was bright red, with parapet of yellow, that leaned, heaved, bulged outward. These emblazoned cliff walls, two thousand feet high, were cracked from turret to base; they bowled out at such an angle that we were afraid to ride under them. Mountains of yellow rock hung balanced, ready to tumble down at the first angry breath of the gods. We rode among carved stones, pillars, obelisks and sculptured ruined walls of a fallen Babylon. Slides reaching all the way across and far up the canyon wall obstructed our passage. On every stone silent green lizards sunned themselves, gliding swiftly as we came near to their marble homes.
We came into a region of wind-worn caves, of all sizes and shapes, high and low on the cliffs; but strange to say, only on the north side of the canyon they appeared with dark mouths open and uninviting. One, vast and deep, though far off, menaced us as might the cave of a tawny-maned king of beasts; yet it impelled, fascinated and drew us on.
“It’s a long, hard climb,” said Wallace to the Colonel, as we dismounted.
“Boys, I’m with you,” came the reply. And he was with us all the way, as we clambered over the immense blocks and threaded a passage between them and pulled weary legs up, one after the other. So steep lay the jumble of cliff fragments that we lost sight of the cave long before we got near it. Suddenly we rounded a stone, to halt and gasp at the thing looming before us.
The dark portal of death or hell might have yawned there. A gloomy hole, large enough to admit a church, had been hollowed in the cliff by ages of nature’s chiseling.
“Vast sepulcher of Time’s past, give up thy dead!” cried Wallace, solemnly.
“Oh! dark Stygian cave forlorn!” quoted I, as feelingly as my friend.
Jones hauled us down from the clouds.
“Now, I wonder what kind of a prehistoric animal holed in here?” said he.
Forever the one absorbing interest! If he realized the sublimity of this place, he did not show it.
The floor of the cave ascended from the very threshold. Stony ridges circled from wall to wall. We climbed till we were two hundred feet from the opening, yet we were not half-way to the dome.
Our horses, browsing in the sage far below, looked like ants. So steep did the ascent become that we desisted; for if one of us had slipped on the smooth incline, the result would have been terrible. Our voices rang clear and hollow from the walls. We were so high that the sky was blotted out by the overhanging square, cornice-like top of the door; and the light was weird, dim, shadowy, opaque. It was a gray tomb.
“Waa-hoo!” yelled Jones with all the power of his wid
e, leather lungs.
Thousands of devilish voices rushed at us, seemingly on puffs of wind. Mocking, deep echoes bellowed from the ebon shades at the back of the cave, and the walls, taking them up, hurled them on again in fiendish concatenation.
We did not again break the silence of that tomb, where the spirits of ages lay in dusty shrouds; and we crawled down as if we had invaded a sanctuary and invoked the wrath of the gods.
We all proposed names: Montezuma’s Amphitheater being the only rival of Jones’s selection, Echo cave, which we finally chose.
Mounting our horses again, we made twenty miles of Snake Gulch by noon, when we rested for lunch. All the way up we had played the boy’s game of spying for sights, with the honors about even. It was a question if Snake Gulch ever before had such a raking over. Despite its name, however, we discovered no snakes.
From the sandy niche of a cliff where we lunched Wallace espied a tomb, and heralded his discovery with a victorious whoop. Digging in old ruins roused in him much the same spirit that digging in old books roused in me. Before we reached him, he had a big bowie-knife buried deep in the red, sandy floor of the tomb.
This one-time sealed house of the dead had been constructed of small stones, held together by a cement, the nature of which, Wallace explained, had never become clear to civilization. It was red in color and hard as flint, harder than the rocks it glued together. The tomb was half-round in shape, and its floor was a projecting shelf of cliff rock. Wallace unearthed bits of pottery, bone and finely braided rope, all of which, to our great disappointment, crumbled to dust in our fingers. In the case of the rope, Wallace assured us, this was a sign of remarkable antiquity.