CHAPTER XVIII
THE DESERT INTERVENES
That day omniscient will of the desert moved to point a murderer'sguilt the same inscrutable power flexed a finger to mould events someseventy miles away from the Garden of Solitude where the worthy doctorfrom Arizora and his Papago had been nibbling at a mystery. Though DocStooder moved in a haze of strong waters, though he looked upon theface of the desert through a golden veil of his own weaving, yet was henot the least immune from the law of the waste places. The Doc walkedwith God, even as did the pioneer fathers of the Church; the fact thathe did not admit the companionship had no influence on the operationsof destiny.
We left Stooder on his knees before the uncovered bell with itsinscription carrying identification. His excitements, his hystericalgrubbings, soundings and prospectings of the ensuing twenty-four hourswere heroic. After the uncovering of the bell he had paced off asquare through the scrub thirty or forty feet each way and with thecorroded cone of metal for a centre; then the Indian and he had gone ontheir hands and knees over every inch of this square. Result, a singlestick of hewn timber whose fire-blackened end had projected but an inchabove the sand; digging revealed a twenty-foot beam, dry as a puff-balland almost ready to disintegrate.
That was all: the bell and the uncovered beam. But that was enough.Doc Stooder knew that beneath him lay the mission site; how deeply theblown sands of more than a century had buried it he could not guess.But it was here! Here lay the rich core of a legend that had sentmany a man out into the desert to chase rainbow ends. His--Stooder's!A'mighty God! how he'd riffle those pearls through his fingers--lay'em all out on a piece of velvet under some secret lamp and match 'em,pearl with pearl.
But twenty-four hours in the desert exact their price; and that priceis in measure of water. The Doc did not drink water so long as hisstore of contraband liquor held out; but the Papago did. Great was theDoc's rage and disgust when his companion called him away from sinkinga prospect shaft to point the single remaining water container, nowmuch lighter than it should be. He tested the little car's radiatorto find that evaporation had left almost none of the necessary fluidtherein. No use buckin' fate; if he wanted to get back to the villageof the Sand People on four wheels he'd have to give the radiator adrink and that would leave none for himself and the Papago.
It was near noon of their second day at the treasure site when theDoc whipped his reluctance into acceptance of the inevitable. He madecertain preparations. First he copied into a prescription book theinscription on the bell; that would do to convince somebody whosefinancing of the excavation operations might have to be invoked. Thenhe sketched a map of the vicinity with meticulous care, marking in thejagged spurs of the nearby mountains for bearing points and indicatingthe position of the bell in reference to a dry wash which was traceddown from a gash in the mountain wall.
"Guadalupe, old son, your old friend Stooder's goin' rustle back herewith an outfit right soon an' dig himself right down to them pearls. Sohe's just a mite p'ticular about this map."
Access of caution prompted the Doc to dismount from the car after he'dset the engine to humming. He ran back with a shovel and covered thebell with sand; the haggled bush above it would be a sufficient guidefor him and no significant landmark for the possible prying stranger.The beam he hid in the wash. Then they trundled down their own trackand back to the Road of the Dead Men. Doc Stooder cursed the necessityof automobiles leaving tracks. Some snoozer amblin' along the main roadwould just's like as not turn out to follow these two lines out intonowhere to see what he could see. Then perhaps--
Summer had come miraculously to the desert overnight, as the seasonsin Altar have a way of doing. Yesterday the pink convolvulus of springlay in scattered coral patches amid the scrub and the greasewoodwas showing its midget spots of yellow. Now every glistening clumpof _cholla_ was aglow with the blood-red flowers of its kind; theoccasional pillars of the giant cactus were wreathed each at its top byfillets of creamy blossoms--grotesque masquerading of these witheredold men of the wastes. First hint of summer's heat was abroad. It camefrom the west on puffy little winds like the back-draught from anoil-burning boiler.
The Doc found himself in a frolicsome mood, for his night's potations,predicated on a dwindling supply, had recklessly drained that supplybut availed to carry him over to another day with the stars of hisdream world still burning. Hunched low in his seat so that thetip of his goatee waggled against the rim of the wheel, with hisflopping black hat all grease streaked pulled low against the sunglare, the tramp physician chewed tobacco with all the unction of acare-free conscience and indulged himself in wandering monologue.Guadalupe's meagre stock of Spanish made him anything but a livelyconversationalist, so the Doc was constrained to carry on a vividconversation with himself.
Into what penetralia of reminiscence this auto-dialogue carried him!Back through the years--through countless dim valleys of a Never-NeverLand of alcoholic fantasies where his spirit had been wont to pitch itstent. Scraps of jest and shreds of song stirred the ghosts along theRoad of the Dead Men.
No such exuberance from Guadalupe, slave of the desert. They had notbeen an hour on the road when the Papago began to feel a crawlingof the nerves along the spine and the pressure of invisible fingersacross the brow--evil signs! No less than the mountain sheep or theroad-runner in the scrub could the Papago interpret the desert'sforerunners of portent. A feel in the air--hue of the mountainrims--colour of sunlight against a rock: these things had their meaning.
Away off to the northward where a patch of gypsum showed white as filmice the Indian's eye caught the first tangible evidence of troubleahead. A dust whirlwind like a gigantic leg in baggy trousers waswavering across the flats; the thing possessed volition of its own sosurely did it map its course across a five-mile span in less than fiveminutes. Guadalupe nudged his companion timidly and pointed to it.
"Uh-huh, old Peg-legged Grandpap," chuckled the Doc. "Seen him lotstimes. Gotta hole in his peg-leg you can drive a car through slick's awhistle--allowin' you can find the hole."
A half hour later the sun changed colour. Like the passing of ashutter across a calcium light: now blinding white, now blood-orange.Instantaneous.
Three gusts of sand-laden wind came sweeping toward them from the west.A long lull, then the storm.
It pounced upon them with a sibilant whistle growing momentarily to aroar which was engulfing. The little desert skimmer bucked like a wildcolt against the onslaught of the wind; but when the Doc dropped theengine into low the car wallowed on in the face of the gale. The airwas thick as flour. Wind-driven sand had the bite of an emery wheel athigh revolution; it rasped the skin and drove eyelids tight shut. Thetwo in the car buttoned jackets above their noses to breathe.
All the space of the desert was a poisonous yellow glare. Minute byminute density thickened until the car's radiator was hardly visible.
Then the sturdy engine quit. First a tortured grinding of cloggedcylinders, puny explosions from the exhaust, a bucking and quivering.After that sudden stoppage of movement as if the car had plumped into astone wall.
The Doc and Guadalupe tumbled out of the seat and crawled beneaththe car for protection. A stab of fear shot down through Stooder'sdisordered thoughts--the water! None in the canteens, for they haddrained the last into the radiator before starting from the treasureground. Was there--could the sand have--?
He inched himself through a new sand drift below the front axle towhere the drain cock projected below the radiator base. Like a sucklingkid he lifted his lips to the steel teat and turned the cock. Atrickle of heavy mud filled his mouth with grit, then stopped.
Radiator a mess of mud--cylinders clogged--feed pipes all choked andwater--gone!
Doc Stooder pulled his floppy hat over his face and whimpered the nameof God.
And on the back trail where the bell of the Lost Mission hadbeen found; over that site which the Doc had so carefully mappedand measured the wind scoured and builded--scoured and builded.Obliterating, ch
anging, re-creating.
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