by Zane Grey
“I’m dying for a drink.”
“You look like a right lively corpse.”
“Give it to me.”
“Will you take it now or wait till you get it?”
“My throat’s baked. I want water,” she said hoarsely.
“Most folks want a lot they never get.”
She walked toward him with her hand outstretched.
“I tell you I’ve got to have it.”
He laughed evilly. “Water’s at a premium right now. Likely there ain’t enough here to get us both out of this infernal hole alive. Yes, it’s sure at a premium.”
He let his eye drift insolently over her and take stock of his prey, in the same feline way of a cat with a mouse, gloating over her distress and the details of her young good looks. His tainted gaze got the faint pure touch of color in her face, the reddish tinge of her wavy brown hair, the desirable sweetness of her rounded maidenhood. If her step dragged, if dusky hollows shadowed her lids, if the native courage had been washed from the hopeless eyes, there was no spring of manliness hid deep within him that rose to refresh her exhaustion. No pity or compunction stirred at her sweet helplessness.
“Do you want my money?” she asked wearily.
“I’ll take that to begin with.”
She tossed him her purse. “There should be seventy dollars there. May I have a drink now?”
“Not yet, my dear. First you got to come up to me and put your arms round—”
He broke off with a curse, for she was flying toward the little circle of cottonwoods some forty yards away. She had caught a glimpse of the water-hole and was speeding for it.
“Come back here,” he called, and in a rage let fly a bullet after her.
She paid no heed, did not stop till she reached the spring and threw herself down full length to drink, to lave her burnt face, to drink again of the alkali brackish water that trickled down her throat like nectar incomparably delicious.
She was just rising to her feet when Struve hobbled up.
“Don’t you think you can play with me, missie. When I give the word you stop in your tracks, and when I say ‘Jump!’ step lively.”
She did not answer. Her head was lifted in a listening attitude, as if to catch some sound that came faintly to her from a distance.
“You’re mine, my beauty, to do with as I please, and don’t you forget it.”
She did not hear him. Her ears were attuned to voices floating to her across the desert. Of course she was beginning to wander in her mind. She knew that. There could be no other human beings in this sea of loneliness. They were alone; just they two, the degenerate ruffian and his victim. Still, it was strange. She certainly had imagined the murmur of people talking. It must be the beginning of delirium.
“Do you hear me?” screamed Struve, striking her on the cheek with his fist. “I’m your master and you’re my squaw.”
She did not cringe as he had expected, nor did she show fight. Indeed the knowledge of the blow seemed scarcely to have penetrated her mental penumbra. She still had that strange waiting aspect, but her eyes were beginning to light with new-born hope. Something in her manner shook the man’s confidence; a dawning fear swept away his bluster. He, too, was now listening intently.
Again the low murmur, beyond a possibility of doubt. Both of them caught it. The girl opened her throat in a loud cry for help. An answering shout came back clear and strong. Struve wheeled and started up the arroyo, bending in and out among the cactus till he disappeared over the brow.
Two horsemen burst into sight, galloping down the steep trail at breakneck speed, flinging down a small avalanche of shale with them. One of them caught sight of the girl, drew up so short that his horse slid to its haunches, and leaped from the saddle in a cloud of dust.
He ran toward her, and she to him, hands out to meet her rescuer.
“Why didn’t you come sooner? I’ve waited so long,” she cried pathetically, as his arms went about her.
“You poor lamb! Thank God we’re in time!” was all he could say.
Then for the first time in her life she fainted.
The other rider lounged forward, a hat in his hand that he had just picked up close to the fire.
“We seem to have stampeded part of this camping party. I’ll just take a run up this hill and see if I can’t find the missing section and persuade it to stay a while. I don’t reckon you need me hyer, do you?” he grinned, with a glance at Neill and his burden.
“All right. You’ll find me here when you get back, Fraser,” the other answered.
Larry carried the girl to the water-hole and set her down beside it. He sprinkled her face with water, and presently her lids trembled and fluttered open. She lay there with her head on his arm and looked at him quite without surprise.
“How did you find me?”
“Mainly luck. We followed your trail to where we found the rig. After that it was guessing where the needle was in the haystack It just happened we were cutting across country to water when we heard a shot.”
“That must have been when he fired at me,” she said.
“My God! Did he shoot at you?”
“Yes. Where is he now?” She shuddered.
“Cutting over the hills with Steve after him.”
“Steve?”
“My friend, Lieutenant Fraser. He is an officer in the ranger force.”
“Oh!” She relapsed into a momentary silence before she said: “He isn’t my brother at all. He is a murderer.” She gave a sudden little moan of pain as memory pierced her of what he had said. “He bragged to me that he had killed my brother. He meant to kill me, I think.”
“Sho! It doesn’t matter what the coyote meant. It’s all over now. You’re with friends.”
A warm smile lit his steel-blue eyes, softened the lines of his lean, hard face. Never had shipwrecked mariner come to safer harbor than she. She knew that this slim, sun-bronzed Westerner was a man’s man, that strength and nerve inhabited his sinewy frame. He would fight for her because she was a woman as long as he could stand and see.
A touch of color washed back into her cheeks, a glow of courage into her heart. “Yes, it’s all over. The weary, weary hours—and the fear—and the pain—and the dreadful thirst—and worst of all, him!”
She began to cry softly, hiding her face in his coat-sleeve.
“I’m crying because—it’s all over. I’m a little fool, just as—as you said I was.”
“I didn’t know you then,” he smiled. “I’m right likely to make snap-shot judgments that are ’way off.”
“You knew me well enough to—” She broke off in the middle, bathed in a flush of remembrance that brought her coppery head up from his arm instantly.
“Be careful. You’re dizzy yet.”
“I’m all right now, thank you,” she answered, her embarrassed profile haughtily in the air. “But I’m ravenous for something to eat. It’s been twenty-four hours since I’ve had a bite. That’s why I’m weepy and faint. I should think you might make a snap-shot judgment that breakfast wouldn’t hurt me.”
He jumped up contritely. “That’s right. What a goat I am!”
His long, clean stride carried him over the distance that separated him from his bronco. Out of the saddle-bags he drew some sandwiches wrapped in a newspaper.
“Here, Miss Margaret! You begin on these. I’ll have coffee ready in two shakes of a cow’s tail. And what do you say to bacon?”
He understood her to remark from the depths of a sandwich that she said “Amen!” to it, and that she would take everything he had and as soon as he could get it ready. She was as good as her word. He found no cause to complain of her appetite. Bacon and sandwiches and coffee were all consumed in quantities reasonable for a famished girl who had bee
n tramping actively for a day and a night, and, since she was a child of impulse, she turned more friendly eyes on him who had appeased her appetite.
“I suppose you are a cowboy like everybody else in this country?” she ventured amiably after her hunger had become less sharp.
“No, I belong to the government reclamation service.”
“Oh!” She had a vague idea she had heard of it before. “Who is it you reclaim? Indians, I suppose.”
“We reclaim young ladies when we find them wandering about the desert,” he smiled.
“Is that what the government pays you for?”
“Not entirely. Part of the time I examine irrigation projects and report on their feasibility. I have been known to build dams and bore tunnels.”
“And what of the young ladies you reclaim? Do you bore them?” she asked saucily.
“I understand they have hitherto always found me very entertaining,” he claimed boldly, his smiling eyes on her.
“Indeed!”
“But young ladies are peculiar. Sometimes we think we’re entertaining them when we ain’t.”
“I’m sure you are right.”
“And other times they’re interested when they pretend they’re not.”
“It must be comforting to your vanity to think that,” she said coldly. For his words had recalled similar ones spoken by him twenty-four hours earlier, which in turn had recalled his unpardonable sin.
The lieutenant of rangers appeared over the hill and descended into the draw. Miss Kinney went to meet him.
“He got away?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am. I lost him in some of these hollows, or rather I never found him. I’m going to take my hawss and swing round in a circle.”
“What are you going to do with me?” she smiled.
“I been thinking that the best thing would be for you to go to the Mal Pais mines with Mr. Neill.”
“Who is Mr. Neill?”
“The gentleman over there by the fire.”
“Must I go with him? I should feel safer in your company, lieutenant.”
“You’ll be safe enough in his, Miss Kinney.”
“You know me then?” she asked.
“I’ve seen you at Fort Lincoln. You were pointed out to me once as a new teacher.”
“But I don’t want to go to the Mal Pais mines. I want to go to Fort Lincoln. As to this gentleman, I have no claims on him and shall not trouble him to burden himself with me.”
Steve laughed. “I don’t reckon he would think, it a terrible burden, ma’am. And about the Mal Pais—this is how it is. Fort Lincoln is all of sixty miles from here as the crow flies. The mines are about seventeen. My notion was you could get there and take the stage to-morrow to your town.”
“What shall I do for a horse?”
“I expect Mr. Neill will let you ride his. He can walk beside the hawss.”
“That won’t do at all. Why should I put him to that inconvenience? I’ll walk myself.”
The ranger flashed his friendly smile at her. He had an instinct that served him with women. “Any way that suits you and him suits me. I’m right sorry that I’ve got to leave you and take out after that hound Struve, but you may take my word for it that this gentleman will look after you all right and bring you safe to the Mal Pais.”
“He is a stranger to me. I’ve only met him once and on that occasion not pleasantly. I don’t like to put myself under an obligation to him. But of course if I must I must.”
“That’s the right sensible way to look at it. In this little old world we got to do a heap we don’t want to do. For instance, I’d rather see you to the Mal Pais than hike over the hills after this fellow,” he concluded gallantly.
Neill, who had been packing the coffee-pot and the frying-pan, now sauntered forward with his horse.
“Well, what’s the program?” he wanted to know.
“It’s you and Miss Kinney for the Mal Pais, me for the trail. I ain’t very likely to find Mr. Struve, but you can’t always sometimes tell. Anyhow, I’m going to take a shot at it,” the ranger answered.
“And at him?” his friend suggested.
“Oh, I reckon not. He may be a sure-enough wolf, but I expect this ain’t his day to howl.”
Steve whistled to his pony, swung to the saddle when it trotted up, and waved his hat in farewell.
His “Adios!” drifted back to them from the crown of the hill just before he disappeared over its edge.
CHAPTER VI
SOMEBODY’S ACTING MIGHTY FOOLISH.
Larry Neill watched him vanish and then turned smiling to Miss Kinney.
“All aboard for the Mal Pais,” he sang out cheerfully.
Too cheerfully perhaps. His assurance that all was well between them chilled her manner. He might forgive himself easily if he was that sort of man; she would at least show him she was no party, to it. He had treated her outrageously, had manhandled her with deliberate intent to insult. She would show him no one alive could treat her so and calmly assume to her that it was all right.
Her cool eyes examined the horse, and him.
“I don’t quite see how you expect to arrange it, Mr. Neill. That is your name, isn’t it?” she added indifferently.
“That’s my name—Larry Neill. Easiest thing in the world to arrange. We ride pillion if it suits you; if not, I’ll walk.”
“Neither plan suits me,” she announced curtly, her gaze on the far-away hills.
He glanced at her in quick surprise, then made the mistake of letting himself smile at her frosty aloofness instead of being crestfallen by it. She happened to look round and catch that smile before he could extinguish it. Her petulance hardened instantly to a resolution.
“I don’t quite know what we’re going to do about it—unless you walk,” he proposed, amused at the absurdity of his suggestion.
“That’s just what I’m going to do,” she retorted promptly.
“What!” He wheeled on her with an astonished smile on his face.
This served merely to irritate her.
“I said I was going to walk.”
“Walk seventeen miles?”
“Seventy if I choose.”
“Nonsense! Of course you won’t.”
Her eyebrows lifted in ironic demurrer. “I think you must let me be the judge of that,” she said gently.
“Walk!” he reiterated. “Why, you’re walked out. You couldn’t go a mile. What do you take me for? Think I’m going to let you come that on me.”
“I don’t quite see how you can help it, Mr. Neill,” she answered.
“Help it! Why, it ain’t reasonable. Of course you’ll ride.”
“Of course I won’t.”
She set off briskly, almost jauntily, despite her tired feet and aching limbs.
“Well, if that don’t beat—” He broke off to laugh at the situation. After she had gone twenty steps he called after her in a voice that did not suppress its chuckle: “You ain’t going the right direction, Miss Kinney.”
She whirled round on him in anger. How dared he laugh at her?
“Which is the right way?” she choked.
“North by west is about it.”
She was almost reduced to stamping her foot.
Without condescending to ask more definite instructions she struck off at haphazard, and by chance guessed right. There was nothing for it but to pursue. Wherefore the man pursued. The horse at his heels hampered his stride, but he caught up with her soon.
“Somebody’s acting mighty foolish,” he said.
She said nothing very eloquently.
“If I need punishing, ma’am, don’t punish yourself, but me. You ain’t able to walk and that’s a fact.”
She gave her silent attention strictly to the business of making progress through the cactus and the sand.
“Say I’m all you think I am. You can trample on me proper after we get to the Mal Pais. Don’t have to know me at all if you don’t want to. Won’t you ride, ma’am? Please!”
His distress filled her with a fierce delight. She stumbled defiantly forward.
He pondered a while before he asked quietly:
“Ain’t you going to ride, Miss Kinney?”
“No, I’m not. Better go on. Pray don’t let me detain you.”
“All right. See that peak with the spur to it? Well, you keep that directly in line and make straight for it. I’ll say good-by now, ma’am. I got to hurry to be in time for dinner. I’ll send some one out from the camp to meet you that ain’t such a villain as I am.”
He swung to the saddle, put spurs to his pony, and cantered away. She could scarce believe it, even when he rode straight over the hill without a backward glance. He would never leave her. Surely he would not do that. She could never reach the camp, and he knew it. To be left alone in the desert again; the horror of it broke her down, but not immediately. She went proudly forward with her head in the air at first. He might look round. Perhaps he was peeping at her from behind some cholla. She would not gratify him by showing any interest in his whereabouts. But presently she began to lag, to scan draws and mesas anxiously for him, even to call aloud in an ineffective little voice which the empty hills echoed faintly. But from him there came no answer.
She sat down and wept in self-pity. Of course she had told him to go, but he knew well enough she did not mean it. A magnanimous man would have taken a better revenge on an exhausted girl than to leave her alone in such a spot, and after she had endured such a terrible experience as she had. She had read about the chivalry of Western men. Yet these two had ridden away on their horses and left her to live or die as chance willed it.
“Now, don’t you feel so bad, Miss Margaret. I wasn’t aiming really to leave you, of course,” a voice interrupted her sobs to say.
She looked through the laced fingers that covered her face, mightily relieved, but not yet willing to confess it. The engineer had made a circuit and stolen up quietly behind.