by Zane Grey
A heavy hand was suddenly laid from behind on Bud’s shoulder, and Rogers stood over him, his dark eyes on fire, his lips trembling.
“Boy, can you show me where that was?” he asked, and there was an intensity in his voice that showed Bud that something serious was the matter. Boylike he dropped his eyes indifferently before this great emotion.
“Sure!”
“Best take Long Bill with you, Mr. Rogers,” advised Jasper Kemp, keenly alive to the whole situation. “I reckon we’ll all have to work together. My men ain’t far off,” and he lifted his whistle to his lips and blew the signal blasts. “The Kid here’ll want to ride to Keams to see if the lady is all safe and has met her friends. I reckon mebbe I better go straight to Ganado and find out if them mission folks really got started, and put ’em wise to what’s been going on. They’ll mebbe know who them Injuns was. I have my suspicions they weren’t any friendlies. I didn’t like that Injun the minute I set eyes on him hanging round the school-house, but I wouldn’t have stirred a step toward camp if I’d ’a’ suspected he was come fur the lady. ’Spose you take Bud and Long Bill and go find that camping-place and see if you find any trail showing which way they took. If you do, you fire three shots, and the men ’ll be with you. If you want the Kid, fire four shots. He can’t be so fur away by that time that he can’t hear. He’s got to get provisioned ’fore he starts. Lead him out, Bud. We ain’t got no time to lose.”
Bud gave one despairing look at Gardley and turned to obey.
“That’s all right, Bud,” said Gardley, with an understanding glance. “You tell Mr. Rogers all you know and show him the place, and then when Long Bill comes you can take the cross-cut to the Long Trail and go with me. I’ll just stop at the house as I go by and tell your mother I need you.”
Bud gave one radiant, grateful look and sprang upon his horse, and Rogers had hard work to keep up with him at first, till Bud got interested in giving him a detailed account of Forsythe’s looks and acts.
In less than an hour the relief expedition had started. Before night had fallen Jasper Kemp, riding hard, arrived at the mission, told his story, procured a fresh horse, and after a couple of hours, rest started with Brownleigh and his wife for Keams Cañon.
Gardley and Bud, riding for all they were worth, said little by the way. Now and then the boy stole glances at the man’s face, and the dead weight of sorrow settled like lead, the heavier, upon his heart. Too well he knew the dangers of the desert. He could almost read Gardley’s fears in the white, drawn look about his lips, the ashen circles under his eyes, the tense, strained pose of his whole figure. Gardley’s mind was urging ahead of his steed, and his body could not relax. He was anxious to go a little faster, yet his judgment knew it would not do, for his horse would play out before he could get another. They ate their corn bread in the saddle, and only turned aside from the trail once to drink at a water-hole and fill their cans. They rode late into the night, with only the stars and their wits to guide them. When they stopped to rest they did not wait to make a fire, but hobbled the horses where they might feed, and, rolling quickly in their blankets, lay down upon the ground.
Bud, with the fatigue of healthy youth, would have slept till morning in spite of his fears, but Gardley woke him in a couple of hours, made him drink some water and eat a bite of food, and they went on their way again. When morning broke they were almost to the entrance of Keams Cañon and both looked haggard and worn. Bud seemed to have aged in the night, and Gardley looked at him almost tenderly.
“Are you all in, kid?” he asked.
“Naw!” answered Bud, promptly, with an assumed cheerfulness. “Feeling like a four-year-old. Get on to that sky? Guess we’re going to have some day! Pretty as a red wagon!”
Gardley smiled sadly. What would that day bring forth for the two who went in search of her they loved? His great anxiety was to get to Keams Cañon and inquire. They would surely know at the trading-post whether the missionary and his party had gone that way.
The road was still almost impassable from the flood; the two dauntless riders picked their way slowly down the trail to the post.
But the trader could tell them nothing comforting. The missionary had not been that way in two months, and there had been no party and no lady there that week. A single strange Indian had come down the trail above the day before, stayed awhile, picked a quarrel with some men who were there, and then ridden back up the steep trail again. He might have had a party with him up on the mesa, waiting. He had said something about his squaw. The trader admitted that he might have been drunk, but he frowned as he spoke of him. He called him a “bad Indian.” Something unpleasant had evidently happened.
The trader gave them a good, hot dinner, of which they stood sorely in need, and because they realized that they must keep up their strength they took the time to eat it. Then, procuring fresh horses, they climbed the steep trail in the direction the trader said the Indian had taken. It was a slender clue, but it was all they had, and they must follow it. And now the travelers were very silent, as if they felt they were drawing near to some knowledge that would settle the question for them one way or the other. As they reached the top at last, where they could see out across the plain, each drew a long breath like a gasp and looked about, half fearing what he might see.
Yes, there was the sign of a recent camp-fire, and a few tin cans and bits of refuse, nothing more. Gardley got down and searched carefully. Bud even crept about upon his hands and knees, but a single tiny blue bead like a grain of sand was all that rewarded his efforts. Some Indian had doubtless camped here. That was all the evidence. Standing thus in hopeless uncertainty what to do next, they suddenly heard voices. Something familiar once or twice made Gardley lift his whistle and blow a blast. Instantly a silvery answer came ringing from the mesa a mile or so away and woke the echoes in the cañon. Jasper Kemp and his party had taken the longer way around instead of going down the cañon, and were just arriving at the spot where Margaret and the squaw had waited two days before for their drunken guide. But Jasper Kemp’s whistle rang out again, and he shot three times into the air, their signal to wait for some important news.
Breathlessly and in silence the two waited till the coming of the rest of the party, and cast themselves down on the ground, feeling the sudden need of support. Now that there was a possibility of some news, they felt hardly able to bear it, and the waiting for it was intolerable, to such a point of anxious tension were they strained.
But when the party from Ganado came in sight their faces wore no brightness of good news. Their greetings were quiet, sad, anxious, and Jasper Kemp held out to Gardley an envelope. It was the one from Margaret’s mother‘s letter that she had dropped upon the trail.
“We found it on the way from Ganado, just as we entered Steamboat Cañon,” explained Jasper.
“And didn’t you search for a trail off in any other direction?” asked Gardley, almost sharply. “They have not been here. At least only one Indian has been down to the trader’s.”
“There was no other trail. We looked,” said Jasper, sadly. “There was a camp-fire twice, and signs of a camp. We felt sure they had come this way.”
Gardley shook his head and a look of abject despair came over his face. “There is no sign here,” he said. “They must have gone some other way. Perhaps the Indian has carried her off. Are the other men following?”
“No, Rogers sent them in the other direction after his girl. They found the camp all right. Bud tell you? We made sure we had found our trail and would not need them.”
Gardley dropped his head and almost groaned.
Meanwhile the missionary had been riding around in radiating circles from the dead camp-fire, searching every step of the way; and Bud, taking his cue from him, looked off toward the mesa a minute, then struck out in a straight line for it and rode off like mad. Suddenly there was heard
a shout loud and long, and Bud came riding back, waving something small and white above his head.
They gathered in a little knot, waiting for the boy, not speaking; and when he halted in their midst he fluttered down the handkerchief to Gardley.
“It’s hers, all right. Gotter name all written out on the edge!” he declared, radiantly.
The sky grew brighter to them all now. Eagerly Gardley sprang into his saddle, no longer weary, but alert and eager for the trail.
“You folks better go down to the trader’s and get some dinner. You’ll need it! Bud and I’ll go on. Mrs. Brownleigh looks all in.”
“No,” declared Hazel, decidedly. “We’ll just snatch a bite here and follow you at once. I couldn’t enjoy a dinner till I know she is safe.” And so, though both Jasper Kemp and her husband urged her otherwise, she would take a hasty meal by the way and hurry on.
But Bud and Gardley waited not for others. They plunged wildly ahead.
It seemed a long way to the eager hunters, from the place where Bud had found the handkerchief to the little note twisted around the red chessman. It was perhaps nearly a mile, and both the riders had searched in all directions for some time before Gardley spied it. Eagerly he seized upon the note, recognizing the little red manikin with which he had whiled away an hour with Margaret during one of her visits at the camp.
The note was written large and clear upon a sheet of writing-paper:
“I am Margaret Earle, school-teacher at Ashland. I am supposed to be traveling to Walpi, by way of Keams, to meet Mr. and Mrs. Brownleigh of Ganado. I am with an Indian, his squaw and papoose. The Indian said he was sent to guide me, but he is drunk now and I am frightened. He has acted strangely all the way. I do not know where I am. Please come and help me.”
Bud, sitting anxious like a statue upon his horse, read Gardley’s face as Gardley read the note. Then Gardley read it aloud to Bud, and before the last word was fairly out of his mouth both man and boy started as if they had heard Margaret’s beloved voice calling them. It was not long before Bud found another scrap of paper a half-mile farther on, and then another and another, scattered at great distances along the way. The only way they had of being sure she had dropped them was that they seemed to be the same kind of paper as that upon which the note was written.
How that note with its brave, frightened appeal wrung the heart of Gardley as he thought of Margaret, unprotected, in terror and perhaps in peril, riding on she knew not where. What trials and fears had she not already passed through! What might she not be experiencing even now while he searched for her?
It was perhaps two hours before he found the little white stocking dropped where the trail divided, showing which way she had taken. Gardley folded it reverently and put it in his pocket. An hour later Bud pounced upon the bedroom slipper and carried it gleefully to Gardley; and so by slow degrees, finding here and there a chessman or more paper, they came at last to the camp where the Indians had abandoned their trust and fled, leaving Margaret alone in the wilderness.
It was then that Gardley searched in vain for any further clue, and, riding wide in every direction, stopped and called her name again and again, while the sun grew lower and lower and shadows crept in lurking-places waiting for the swift-coming night. It was then that Bud, flying frantically from one spot to another, got down upon his knees behind a sage-bush when Gardley was not looking and mumbled a rough, hasty prayer for help. He felt like the old woman who, on being told that nothing but God could save the ship, exclaimed, “And has it come to that?” Bud had felt all his life that there was a remote time in every life when one might need to believe in prayer. The time had come for Bud.
Margaret, on her knees in the sand of the desert praying for help, remembered the promise, “Before they call I will answer, and while they are yet speaking I will hear,” and knew not that her deliverers were on the way.
The sun had been hot as it beat down upon the whiteness of the sand, and the girl had crept under a sage-bush for shelter from it. The pain in her ankle was sickening. She had removed her shoe and bound the ankle about with a handkerchief soaked with half of her bottle of witch-hazel, and so, lying quiet, had fallen asleep, too exhausted with pain and anxiety to stay awake any longer.
When she awoke again the softness of evening was hovering over everything, and she started up and listened. Surely, surely, she had heard a voice calling her! She sat up sharply and listened. Ah! There it was again, a faint echo in the distance. Was it a voice, or was it only her dreams mingling with her fancies?
Travelers in deserts, she had read, took all sorts of fancies, saw mirages, heard sounds that were not. But she had not been out long enough to have caught such a desert fever. Perhaps she was going to be sick. Still that faint echo made her heart beat wildly. She dragged herself to her knees, then to her feet, standing painfully with the weight on her well foot.
The suffering horse turned his anguished eyes and whinnied. Her heart ached for him, yet there was no way she could assuage his pain or put him out of his misery. But she must make sure if she had heard a voice. Could she possibly scale that rock down which she and her horse had fallen? For then she might look out farther and see if there were any one in sight.
Painfully she crawled and crept, up and up, inch by inch, until at last she gained the little height and could look afar.
There was no living thing in sight. The air was very clear. The eagle had found his evening rest somewhere in a quiet crag. The long corn waved on the distant plain, and all was deathly still once more. There was a hint of coming sunset in the sky. Her heart sank, and she was about to give up hope entirely, when, rich and clear, there it came again! A voice in the wilderness calling her name: “Margaret! Margaret!”
The tears rushed to her eyes and crowded in her throat. She could not answer, she was so overwhelmed; and though she tried twice to call out, she could make no sound. But the call kept coming again and again: “Margaret! Margaret!” and it was Gardley’s voice. Impossible! For Gardley was far away and could not know her need. Yet it was his voice. Had she died, or was she in delirium that she seemed to hear him calling her name?
But the call came clearer now: “Margaret! Margaret! I am coming!” and like a flash her mind went back to the first night in Arizona when she heard him singing, “From the Desert I Come to Thee!”
Now she struggled to her feet again and shouted, inarticulately and gladly through her tears. She could see him. It was Gardley. He was riding fast toward her, and he shot three shots into the air above him as he rode, and three shrill blasts of his whistle rang out on the still evening air.
She tore the scarf from her neck that she had tied about it to keep the sun from blistering her, and waved it wildly in the air now, shouting in happy, choking sobs.
And so he came to her across the desert!
He sprang down before the horse had fairly reached her side, and, rushing to her, took her in his arms.
“Margaret! My darling! I have found you at last!”
She swayed and would have fallen but for his arms, and then he saw her white face and knew she must be suffering.
“You are hurt!” he cried. “Oh, what have they done to you?” And he laid her gently down upon the sand and dropped on his knees beside her.
“Oh no,” she gasped, joyously, with white lips. “I’m all right now. Only my ankle hurts a little. We had a fall, the horse and I. Oh, go to him at once and put him out of his pain. I’m sure his legs are broken.”
For answer Gardley put the whistle to his lips and blew a blast. He would not leave her for an instant. He was not sure yet that she was not more hurt than she had said. He set about discovering at once, for he had brought with him supplies for all emergencies.
It was Bud who came riding madly across the mesa in answer to the call, reaching Gardley before any one else. Bud with his eyes
shining, his cheeks blazing with excitement, his hair wildly flying in the breeze, his young, boyish face suddenly grown old with lines of anxiety. But you wouldn’t have known from his greeting that it was anything more than a pleasure excursion he had been on the past two days.
“Good work, Kid! Whatcha want me t’ do?”
It was Bud who arranged the camp and went back to tell the other detachments that Margaret was found; Bud who led the pack-horse up, unpacked the provisions, and gathered wood to start a fire. Bud was everywhere, with a smudged face, a weary, gray look around his eyes, and his hair sticking “seven ways for Sunday.” Yet once, when his labors led him near to where Margaret lay weak and happy on a couch of blankets, he gave her an unwonted pat on her shoulder and said in a low tone: “Hello, Gang! See you kept your nerve with you!” and then he gave her a grin all across his dirty, tired face, and moved away as if he were half ashamed of his emotion. But it was Bud again who came and talked with her to divert her so that she wouldn’t notice when they shot her horse. He talked loudly about a coyote they shot the night before, and a cottontail they saw at Keams, and when he saw that she understood what the shot meant, and there were tears in her eyes, he gave her hand a rough, bear squeeze and said, gruffly: “You should worry! He’s better off now!” And when Gardley came back he took himself thoughtfully to a distance and busied himself opening tins of meat and soup.