by Zane Grey
“Señor, you told Bernardo the truth—and I lied to him!” she said.
Stranger than all other sensations of that flight was the thrill in her as she forced herself to speak.
“What do you mean?” demanded Augustine.
“He asked you if you loved me. You told the truth. He asked me if—if I loved you. And—I lied!”
“Santa Maria!” the man cried, starting up impulsively. Then slowly he fell back. “Señora, may the saints reward you for your brave words. I know! You are trying to keep me from going back. We waste precious time—go now!”
“Augustine, wait, wait!” she cried.
Running blindly, she flung herself into his arms. She hid her face in his breast and pressed all her slender, palpitating body close to his. As if he had been turned to stone, he stood motionless. She twined her arms about him, and her disheveled hair brushed his lips. She tried to raise her face—failed—tried again, and raised it all scarlet, with eyes close shut and tears wet on her cheeks. Blindly she sought his mouth with her lips—kissed him timidly—tremulously—and then passionately.
With that, uttering a little gasp, she swayed away and turned from him, her head bowed in shame, one beseeching hand held backward to him.
“Don’t go! Don’t leave me!”
“Dios!” whispered Augustine.
Presently he took the proffered hand, and, leading her, once more plunged into the narrow trail.
V
For hours Muella walked with lowered eyes. She plodded on, bending her head under the branches and constantly using her free hand to fight the pests.
Her consciousness, for the while, was almost wholly absorbed with a feeling of an indefinable difference in herself. She seemed to be in a condition of trembling change, as if the fibers of her soul were being unknit and rewoven. Something illusive and strange and sweet wavered before her—a promise of joy that held vague portent of pain. This inexplicable feeling reminded her of fancies, longings, dreams of her girlhood.
At length sensations from without claimed full share of Muella’s attention. The heat had grown intense. She was becoming exhausted. Her body burned, and about her ankles were bands of red-hot fire. Still she toiled on, because she believed that Micas was close at hand.
The sun went down, and night approached. There was no sign of water. Augustine failed to hide his distress. He was hopelessly lost in the jungle. All the trails appeared to lead into the same place—a changeless yellow and gray jungle.
The flies pursued in humming hordes, and clouds of whining mosquitoes rose from the ground. The under side of every leaf, when brushed upward, showed a red spot which instantly disintegrated, and spilled itself like a bursting splotch of quicksilver upon the travelers. And every infinitesmal red pin-point was a crawling jungle pest. The dead wood and dry branches were black with innumerable garrapatoes.
Muella had been born a hill native, and she was not bred to withstand the savage attack of the jungle vermin. The time came when she fell, and implored Augustine to put her out of her misery with his machete. For answer he lifted her gently and moved on, carrying her in his arms.
* * * *
Night came. Augustine traveled by the stars and tried to find trails that led him in a general direction northward. By and by Muella’s head rolled heavily, and she slept.
At length the blackness and impenetrable thicket hindered his progress. He laid Muella down, covered her with his blanket, and stood over her with drawn machete till the moon rose.
The light aiding him, he found a trail and, taking up his burden, he went on. And that night dragged to dawn.
Muella walked little the next day. She could hardly stand. She had scarcely strength to free her hair from the brush as it caught in passing. The burning pain of her skin had given place to a dull ache. She felt fever stealing into her blood.
Augustine wandered on, over bare rocks and through dense jungles, with Muella in his arms. He was tireless, dauntless, wonderful in his grim determination to save her. Worn as she was, sick and feverish, she yet had moments when she thought of him; and at each succeeding thought he seemed to grow in her impression of strength and courage.
But most of her thoughts centered on the trailing Tigre. The serpents and panthers and peccaries no longer caused Muella concern; she feared only the surely gaining jaguar.
VI
Night closed down on them among tangled mats and labyrinthine webs of heavy underbrush.
“Listen!” whispered Muella suddenly, with great black eyes staring out of her white face.
From far off in the jungle came a sound that was like a cough and growl in one.
“Ah! Augustine, did you hear?”
“Yes.”
“Was it a tigre?”
“Yes.”
“A trailing tigre?”
“Yes, but surely that could not have been Bernardo’s. His tigre would not give cry on a trail.”
“Oh, yes. Tigre is deaf and blind, and he has been trained, but he has all the jungle nature. He has Bernardo’s cruelty, too!”
Again the sound broke on the still night air. Muella slipped to the ground with a little gasp. She heard Augustine cursing against the fate that had driven them for days under trees, trees, trees, and had finally brought them to bay in a corner where there was no tree to climb. She saw him face about to the trail by which they had come; and stand there with his naked blade upraised. He blocked the dim, narrow passageway.
An interminable moment passed. Muella stopped breathing, tried to still the beating of her heart so that she could listen. There was no sound save the low, sad hum of insects and the rustle of wind in leaves. She seemed to feel Tigre’s presence out there in the blackness. Dark as it was, she imagined she saw him stealing closer, his massive head low, his blind eyes flaring, his huge paws reaching out.
A slight rustling checked all motion of her blood. Tigre was there, ready to spring upon Augustine. Muella tried to warn him, but her lips were dry and dumb. Had he lost his own sense of hearing?
Her head reeled and her sight darkened; but she could not swoon. She could only wait, wait, while the slow moments wore on.
Augustine loomed over the trail, a dark, menacing figure. Again there came a rustling and a stealthy step, this time in another direction; and Augustine turned toward it.
Long silence followed; even the humming of insects and the moaning of the wind seemed to grow fainter. Then came more tickings of the brush and a padded footfall. Tigre had found them—was stalking them!
Muella lay there, helplessly waiting. In the poignancy of her fear for Augustine, expecting momentarily to see the huge jaguar leap upon him, she forgot herself. There was more in her agony of dread than the sheer primitive shrinking of the flesh, the woman’s horror of seeing death inflicted. Through that terrible age-long flight through the jungle, Augustine had come to mean more than a protector to her.
She watched him guardedly facing in the direction of every soft rustle in the brush. He was a man at the end of his resources, ready to fight and die for a woman.
The insects hummed on, the wind moaned in the leaves, the rustlings came from one point and another in the brush, but Tigre did not appear. The black night lightened and the moon rose. Muella now distinctly saw Augustine—disheveled and ragged, white and stern and wild, with his curved blade bright in the moonlight.
Then the gray mist crept up to obscure the white stars and the moon, and at last the blue vault. The rustlings ceased to sound in the brush. From far off rasped the cough of a tigre. It appeared to come from the same place as when first heard. Hope had new birth in Muella’s heart.
Moments like hours passed; the insects ceased to hum and the wind to moan. The gray shadows fled before a rosy dawn.
Augustine hewed a lane through the dense thicket that had stopped him, and presently he came upon a trail. He hurried back to Muella with words of cheer. Strength born of hope returned to her, and she essayed to get up.
Helping her to
her feet, he half led and half carried her into the trail. They went on for a hundred paces, to find that the path suddenly opened into a wide clearing. To Muella it had a familiar look, and Augustine’s exclamation assured her that he had seen the place before. Then she recognized a ruined corral, some old palm-thatched huts, and a water-hole as belonging to the clearing through which they had long before passed.
“We’ve traveled back in a circle!” exclaimed Augustine. “We’re near the hacienda—your home!”
Muella leaned against him and wept. First of all was the joy of deliverance.
“Muella, you are saved,” Augustine went on. “The distance is short—I can carry you. Bernardo will forgive—you know how he flies into a passion and then how he repents.”
“Yes, yes. I’ll go back to him—tell him the truth—ask his mercy!”
From the center of the clearing came a rustling of dry leaves, then a loud purr, almost a cough. Augustine stiffened, and Muella clutched frantically at him.
For a long moment they stood, dark eyes staring into dark eyes, waiting, listening. Then Augustine, releasing his hold on the trembling girl, cautiously stepped upon a log and peered over the low palms. Almost instantly he plunged down with arms uplifted.
“Santa Maria! Tigre! He’s there!” he whispered. “He’s there, beside the body of something he’s killed. He’s been there all night. He was there when we first heard him. We thought he was trailing. Muella, I must see closer. Stay back—you must not follow!”
But as he crept under the low palms, she followed him. They came to the open clearing. Tigre lay across the trail, his beautiful yellow and black body stretched in lax grace, his terrible sightless eyes riveted on a dead man beside him.
“Muella—stay back—I fear—I fear!” said Augustine.
He crept yet a little farther, and returned with pale face and quivering jaw.
“Muella, it’s Bernardo! He’s dead—has been dead for days. When you started off that day to warn me, Bernardo must have run round by the old wagon road to head off Tigre. The blind brute killed him!”
“Bernardo repented!” moaned Muella. “He repented!”
FANTOMS OF PEACE (1913)
Dwire judged him to be another of those strange desert prospectors in whom there was some relentless driving power besides the lust for gold. He saw a stalwart man from whose lined face deep luminous eyes looked out with yearning gaze, as if drawn by something far beyond the ranges.
The man had approached Dwire back in the Nevada mining-camp and had followed him down the trail leading into the Mohave. He spoke few words, but his actions indicated that he answered to some subtle influence in seeking to accompany the other.
When Dwire hinted that he did not go down into the desert for gold alone, the only reply he got was a singular flashing of the luminous eyes. Then he explained, more from a sense of duty than from hope of turning the man back, that in the years of his wandering he had met no one who could stand equally with him the blasting heat, the blinding storms, the wilderness of sand and rock and lava and cactus, the terrible silence and desolation of the desert.
“Back there they told me you were Dwire,” replied the man. “I’d heard of you; and if you don’t mind, I’d like to go with you.”
“Stranger, you’re welcome,” replied Dwire. “I’m going inside”—he waved a hand toward the wide, shimmering, shadowy descent of plain and range—“and don’t know where I may cross the Mohave into the Colorado Desert. I may go down into Death Valley.”
The prospector swept his far-reaching gaze over the colored gulf of rock and sand. For moments he seemed to forget himself. Then, with gentle slaps, he drove his burro into the trail behind Dwire’s, and said: “My name’s Hartwell.”
* * * *
They began a slow, silent march down into the desert. At sundown they camped near Red Seeps. Dwire observed that his companion had acquired the habit of silence so characteristic of the lone wanderer in the wilds—a habit not easily broken when two of these men are thrown together.
Next sunset they made camp at Coyote Tanks; the next at Indian Well; the following night at a nameless water-hole. For five more days they plodded down with exchange of few words. When they got deep into the desert, with endless stretches of drifting sand and rugged rock between them and the outside world, there came a breaking of reserve, noticeable in Dwire, almost imperceptibly gradual in his companion. At night, round their meager mesquit campfire, Dwire would remove his black pipe to talk a little. The other man would listen, and would sometimes unlock his lips to speak a word.
And so, as Dwire responded to the influence of his surroundings, he began to notice his companion, and found him different from any man he had encountered in the desert. Hartwell did not grumble at the heat, the glare, the driving sand, the sour water, the scant fare. During the daylight hours he was seldom idle; at night he sat dreaming before the fire, or paced to and fro in the gloom. If he ever slept, it must have been long after Dwire had rolled in his blanket and dropped to rest. He was tireless and patient.
Dwire’s awakened interest in Hartwell brought home to him the realization that for years he had shunned companionship. In those years only three men had wandered into the desert with him, and they had found what he believed they had sought there—graves in the shifting sands. He had not cared to know their secrets; but the more he watched this latest comrade, the more, he began to suspect that he might have missed something in these other men.
In his own driving passion to take his secret into the limitless abode of silence and desolation, where he could be alone with it, he had forgotten that life dealt shocks to other men. Somehow this silent comrade reminded him.
* * * *
Two weeks of steady marching saw the prospectors merging into the Mohave. It was naked, rock-ribbed, sand-sheeted desert. They lost all trails but those of the coyote and wildcat, and these they followed to the water-holes.
At length they got into desert that appeared new to Dwire. He could not recognize landmarks near at hand. Behind them, on the horizon line, stood out a blue peak that marked the plateau from which they had descended. Before them loomed a jagged range of mountains, which were in line with Death Valley.
The prospectors traveled on, halting now and then to dig at the base of a mesa or pick into a ledge. As they progressed over ridges and across plains and through canyons, the general trend was toward the jagged range, and every sunset found them at a lower level. The heat waxed stronger every day, and the water-holes were harder to find.
One afternoon, late, after they had toiled up a white, winding wash of sand and gravel, they came upon a dry water-hole. Dwire dug deep into the sand, but without avail. He was turning to retrace the weary steps to the last water when his comrade asked him to wait.
Dwire watched Hartwell search his pack and bring forth what appeared to be a small forked branch of a peach-tree. He firmly grasped the prongs of the fork, and held them before him, with the end standing straight out. Then he began to walk along the dry stream-bed.
At first amused, then amazed, then pityingly, and at last curiously, Dwire kept pace with Hartwell. He saw a strong tension of his comrade’s wrists, as if he was holding hard against a considerable force. The end of the peach branch began to quiver and turn downward. Dwire reached out a hand to touch it, and was astounded at feeling a powerful vibrant force pulling the branch down. He felt it as a quivering magnetic shock. The branch kept turning, and at length pointed to the ground.
“Dig here,” said Hartwell.
“What?” cried Dwire.
He stood by while Hartwell dug in the sand. Three feet he dug—four—five. The sand grew dark, then moist. At six feet water began to seep through.
“Get the little basket in my pack,” said Hartwell.
Dwire complied, though he scarcely comprehended what was happening. He saw Hartwell drop the basket into the deep hole and carefully pat it down, so that it kept the sides from caving in and allowed the water t
o seep through. While Dwire watched, the basket filled.
Of all the strange incidents of his desert career, this was the strangest. Curiously, he picked up the peach branch and held it as he had seen Hartwell hold it. However, the thing was dead in his hands.
“I see you haven’t got it,” remarked Hartwell. “Few men have.”
“Got what?” demanded Dwire.
“A power to find water that way. I can’t explain it. Back in Illinois, an old German showed me I had it.”
“What a gift for a man in the desert!”
Dwire accepted things there that elsewhere he would have regarded as unbelievable.
Hartwell smiled—the first time in all those days that his face had changed. The light of it struck Dwire.
II
They entered a region where mineral abounded, and their march became slower. Generally they took the course of a wash, one on each side, and let the burros travel leisurely along, nipping at the bleached blades of scant grass, or at sage or cactus, while the prospectors searched in the canyons and under the ledges for signs of gold.
Descending among the splintered rocks, clambering over boulders, climbing up weathered slopes, always picking, always digging—theirs was toilsome labor that wore more and more on them each day. When they found any rock that hinted of gold, they picked off a piece and gave it a chemical test. The search was fascinating.
They interspersed the work with long restful moments when they looked afar, down the vast reaches and smoky shingles, to the line of dim mountains. Some impelling desire, not all the lure of gold, took them to the top of mesas and escarpments; and here, when they dug and picked, they rested and gazed out at the wide prospect.
Then, as the sun lost its heat and sank, lowering, to dent its red disk behind far distant spurs, they halted in a shady canyon, or some likely spot in a dry wash, and tried for water. When they found it, they unpacked, gave drink to the tired burros, and turned them loose. Dead greasewood served for the camp-fire. They made bread and coffee and cooked bacon, and when each simple meal ended they were still hungry. They were careful of their supplies. They even limited themselves to one pipe of tobacco.