So René thought, as the riders vanished in the gloom. But Zion still sat the saddle, motionless as a sculpted figure, until their retreat had beat itself out on the night.
Satisfied, then, that they couldn’t get back in time to be dangerous, he rode back to René, changing as he came. No change he had undergone had ever been half so welcome. Suddenly, he was the old Zion; his face youthful, glowing with eagerness, his eyes reflecting the old worship, as, seizing René’s arms in their galling fetters, lovingly shaking him back and forth, he cried brokenly: “Gee, pard, you look good to me! You’d look good to me any time. But now … now I’m most wild to see someone from home.”
But Zion didn’t look good to René. Seen close, like this, there was a grayness and strain that didn’t come of natural fatigue, a look of physical suffering. His eyes were sunken. His cheeks were sunken. He looked the very ghost of Zion. He looked, René thought, with an awful tension about his heart, as he had looked when Zion carried him into the Picture Rocks.
Now, as the young fellow got down, it wasn’t with his old free, easy spring, but like an old man, carefully easing himself to the ground and doubling up, his face plucked with pain.
“Zion,” René cried anxiously, “you’re hurt!”
Gamely, Zion grinned. “Just so you could notice it.” He laid his hand on his right side. “Just nicked … here.”
But René knew it was more, and he said hoarsely: “Cut these ropes off me, so I can see.”
“It ain’t nothin’,” insisted the boy.
But when René was down and had pulled open Zion’s buckskin shirt, baring the wound, he was appalled by what he saw.
“Zion,” he tried to keep the fear out of his tone, “when did this happen?”
“When?” Zion stared at him, making an obvious effort to think. “Oh, I don’t know. About a week ago … up around Lasco. They were takin’ potshots at me. I felt a sting. Didn’t hurt much then. But”—reeling up to rest against Black Wing—“it does now … some.”
It must hurt a lot. It would have to—a wound like that. It hadn’t been much at the start. The bullet had entered his side and had been deflected by a rib, René found upon examination. It would have given little trouble with proper care. But it was badly infected now, red and ugly, getting in its poisonous work already. For, now that his need for action was over, Zion was so weak he could hardly stand and his mind was hazy.
“Zion.” René bent over him. “We’ve got to get out of here. We’ve got to get to some safe place … so you can rest … give it a chance to heal. You can’t go on like this.”
But Zion wouldn’t hear to anything else. “No place is safe,” he said wistfully, “but the Picture Rocks. An’ I … can’t rest till I get back.”
His head sank to rest on the arm thrown over Black Wing’s neck. With sinking heart, René watched. Presently, Zion looked up. “Dad’s out,” he whispered. “Did you know that, pard? I’m done … out here. I was lookin’ for you, when they nabbed you up there. I knowed you was huntin’ me all along. But I was afraid you’d try to stop me from what I was doin’. Now …”
Too weak to hide the homesick longing it had once shamed him to show Black Wing, he sobbed. “Now … I want to go home. I want to see the folks and the ol’ paint rocks.”
That night, encamped in a safe place, miles from the arroyo—a place as safe as any place could be for a Jore, which wasn’t safe at all—the boy slept fitfully, and René sat beside him; sat, with leaden heart, under the brooding desert stars, his black eyes turned toward the Picture Rocks, hundreds of hostile miles to the north. Over Zion’s heavy breathing, he seemed to hear a distracted mother sobbing that the Book had said to let the dead bury the dead. And, sharp on night’s jet screen, he saw a sister’s face, imploring.
To that face, quiet, reverent, as a votary at the shrine of his saint, René vowed: “I’ll bring him home.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
A RACE WITH DEATH
How did he keep that vow? Only the recording angel and René will ever know. The great saguaros—those grim sentinels that stand, century upon century with gaunt, upflung arms, witness of all the desert’s savagery and tragedy—might have told something of the heroism of René Rand, as he passed beneath them, taking his wounded partner home. Or, beyond the belt of spiny growth, the gray sage might have told, or the pine and juniper that, on the higher levels, gave friendly shelter. But shrub and tree have no tongue.
And old Piney Torm—stirrup brother of Jerico Jore in the old days, and the one human being who saw them—is scarcely less silent. So the story will never be told. For René never spoke of it—never, if he could help, thought of it.
Each time they must have water, they must risk capture, and the necessity increased in degree and frequency, as Zion’s fever mounted. Before food could pass their lips, it must be obtained at awful risk. No longer dared they approach human habitation, but must live off the land—that lifeless land. A jackrabbit, brought down by a shot, at all but as much risk to their own lives, was a feast. A sage hen, killed by a stone, when a shot would have been suicide, was a banquet to be remembered for days. There were days when they did not eat, days when they ate strange, repellent things. What passed for food on that trip, René never dared to think.
All those endless October days they lay in hiding. All those brief, black, chilly nights they were riding, piercing a land up in arms against them. It was, to René, no longer a mystery how Zion had eluded the cleverest traps set for him, no mystery that they were doing it now.
For the wild’s every sound and stir had a meaning for Zion Jore. He could tell by the flight of a desert bird if all was well, or whether its sharper vision saw something inimical to them, but not visible from their earthbound horizon. A fleeing roadrunner or coyote, the distant whir of a disturbed snake, were to Zion warnings as positively as the gong that had aroused Big Sandy. And then they had Black Wing, a guard more alert, with keener sense of hearing and sight than any watchdog. His perceptions seemed to quicken, as Zion’s failed.
René, who had thought he had few tricks of range-craft yet to learn, learned a thousand and one from this young fellow who had lived as wild as any mustang. In those first few days, when the infection from Zion’s wound, although spreading alarmingly, did not hinder their progress, he depended on him to direct their flight, relying on Zion’s uncanny instinct—sharpened by pain and his wild longing to get home—to find hiding places where there were none; to dodge posses and chance travelers; to slip them through dangerous territory, with no more disturbance than the shadow cast by the wings of a bird of passage. Even in those last few days, when delirium made it necessary to tie Zion to the saddle, René listened to his mutterings and was guided by them.
So, steadily, incredibly, by God’s mercy, they passed, invisible to human eyes, through that hostile land, passed, with many a close, close call, many a terrible ordeal that left scars on René’s soul that never healed.
Like this—at the desert water hole, south of Mustang Basin, Zion’s fever was raging. His parched, burned body cried for water, driving them, finally, in broad day to the lonely spring. Here it was that Zion, helped from the saddle by René, first fell and could not rise alone. Here, the first delirium came—in a swift, treacherous onslaught that tore René’s heart.
He had helped Zion to the shallow pool and, supporting him with one arm, filled a cup and held it out to him. But to his dismay, Zion struck it from his hands, staggering back, horror in his fevered eyes, shrilling: “It’s poison! Don’t drink it! Look! Can’t you see them skulls and bones … dead things? Things that died … drinkin’ it!”
“Where?” cried René in amazement.
“Here! All around! You’re steppin’ on some. You must be blind.”
Blind to this—yes, for the white, flat, sun-caked ground about was as bare as a tabletop. Sick with understanding, René said quietly: “
You’re dreamin’, Zion.”
That seemed to anger him. “Think I can’t see? Do you want to poison me?” Suddenly, leaning close, his eyes blazing with hot ferocity: “You ain’t René!” he screamed, his thin form tensing. “You’re Shang! You’re Shang! And I’ve got to kill you!”
He sprang. And René, with tears streaming down his face, struggled with him until he fell back, exhausted.
Fever’s flame subsiding, Zion took the brimming cup and drank it at a gulp, and another, and another. Then, when René advised against more, he lay weakly back, his white face to the north.
Helplessly, René watched him, not knowing which way to turn. Knowing Zion must have medical attention. Yet death, in more horrible guise, might be the penalty for getting it—death on the gallows. The responsibility seemed too much. If only he could talk to Abel or Yance, so far away in the Picture Rocks. Or with Zion’s father, out here somewhere, fighting through the same dangers, to the same refuge of the Jores. But he couldn’t talk to them. He must decide on this alone.
“Zion.” René knelt over the young fellow. “We can’t let this run. I’ve got to get things … medicine, bandages … I’m goin’ to hide you some place and risk ridin’ into the nearest town.”
Zion went wild at the thought. “They’d catch us! I’d never get back to the Picture Rocks!”
“I’ve got to get you well, Zion.”
“Just … get … me … home.”
“I’ve got to fix you up,” René said steadily, “so you can get home.”
Zion’s eyes held René’s face the longest time they had ever held to anything, turning from it, at last, to stare into sunlit space. After a time he said: “Take me to ol’ Piney’s, then. You remember, I told you about Piney. On the Moqui, his place is where the river forks. He’s a friend of the Jores. Dad used to talk a heap about Piney. I hunted him up and rested there, when I come down. He’ll fix us up. But we’ll just get things … and go on. We can’t stop. We ain’t … got time.”
No, there was no time to lose in getting Zion home.
In feverish haste to be going, Zion raised on one arm, whistling Black Wing to him. Taking that velvety muzzle in his hands, looking deeply into those all but human eyes: “Home, boy,” René heard him say. “Home … to the Picture Rocks.”
As eagerly, the small ears shot up. “You’ve got to take me,” Zion charged Black Wing, “you and René. I can’t look out for you no more. You got to look out for me.”
The stallion nickered softly.
A hand twined in the golden mane, Zion tried to rise, but sank down with a groan. Setting his teeth on pain, he put the other hand out to René. “Help me.”
“But we can’t go yet, Zion. You ain’t able. You couldn’t stick to the saddle.”
“Then tie me on.”
It was useless to argue with him. René was helping him on Black Wing, when Zion fell back against him. “Pard,” he faltered, in trembling shame, “I just thought … Something in my head ain’t right. I get notions … like a while ago. I … ain’t safe for you.” Before René could grasp what was in his mind, Zion unfastened his gun belt and handed it to him. Then, steadying himself against Black Wing, he drew the big rifle from its scabbard, and placed it in René’s hands. “Reckon,” he said, his lips quivering, “I won’t ever be usin’ it again.”
On the gray dawn of the second day following, they approached the sequestered cabin of Piney Torm at the forks of the Moqui. The old frontiersman saw them coming, recognized the golden buckskin on whose back was roped the inert figure of Zion Jore, and reached inside the door for his rifle, before stepping out to meet them. But, seeing that the rider with him wasn’t a deputy with Zion captive, guessing who he was, this friend of the Jores, he threw down his gun and wrung René’s hands.
“I’ve heard of you, young man,” he cried huskily. “I’ve heard everything you’ve done, since that day you helped Zion git away in Big Sandy. And I’m almighty proud to shake your hand.” Fearfully, his eyes went back to Zion. “Is he …?”
“No,” said René.
But Zion seemed so near it, when they got him in the cabin and laid him on Piney’s bed, and Piney’s old face assumed such seriousness as he examined Zion’s wound, that René had to strain his voice to ask, “Will he … make it?”
“If he was anybody but a Jore,” Piney made slow reply, “I’d say no.”
“But Jores die.”
Piney nodded. “Hard … though.” And, a busy moment later: “You can’t scarcely kill a Jore. They’re well nigh indestructible. It’s the spirit in ’em. It holds ’em up when the flesh is gone. If this shack was to burn …” He overcame the habit of silence to illustrate the Jore spirit, as he set a pan of hot water by the bed, and ripped up a clean flour sack for bandages. “If this shack was to burn, what would be left? Just a pile of ashes, with that stove stickin’ out, warped some, but there … recognizable. All ash, but the iron. Waal, Zion’s all burned up now but the iron in him. It may break down in time. Inside a week, I’d say, if he was anybody but a Jore. But he’s Jerico’s grandson, so … let’s hope.”
Then, talked-out, he silently did all he could for Zion’s comfort, cooked René a hot breakfast, and abruptly announced his intention of riding to Moqui for medicine for Zion. But René halted him, as he was riding off, to ask if he’d heard anything of Joel.
Piney shook his head. “And no news in this case is best. I hear they’re holdin’ an investigation at the prison. Think some guard helped him.”
“He’ll be apt to stop here, won’t he?”
“I’m hopin’ not,” said Piney gravely. “Possemen’s as thick as fleas. I wouldn’t want you boys to stop a minit, warn’t that you had to.”
Then he was gone, and René sat by Zion, trying to hope. But, looking at that wasted face, now overcast with an unnatural bluish flush, the most he dared to hope was that Zion would live to reach the Picture Rocks. All day he had babbled of the basin, was babbling now.
“It’s dead here, Eden,” René caught. “I’m goin’ out. I can’t stand it … shut up.”
His burning eyes fell upon René beside him, seeming to note for the first time the clothes he was wearing. For joy and wonder illumined his face. “Dave,” he whispered. “Dave”—laying a trembling hand on René’s buckskin—“where did you go, when you left yourself behind? I called and called … but you was gone. Dave, don’t leave me again. We’ll have … big times.”
Happy in the big times he and Dave would have, he lay so quietly, René thought he slept. Weariness closed his own eyes. The next he knew, Zion was struggling up, panting: “Black Wing … hears something.”
René leaped to the window. Stonewall was grazing peacefully in the yard. But Black Wing’s head and ears were up, and he was making that peculiar whistling noise that was his warning.
Running outside, René looked in all directions, but saw nothing. Yes. A half mile to the west, a hawk had started from its nest in the top of a dead pine, screaming—enough for one who had studied wild lore under Zion Jore.
Scrambling to the roof of the cabin, he scanned the country in that direction. Almost instantly, there flashed into his view a band of mounted men, coming at a fast trot through the pines.
“Riders comin’!” he called to Zion, as he leaped down and burst within.
“Then,” said Zion shrilly, “let’s get goin’.”
There was nothing else for it. They couldn’t risk the faint chance that the men—a posse, beyond a doubt—would pass this cabin up or, finding them here, fail to recognize them. They would have to hide out until it was safe for them to come back.
Somehow, René got Zion on Black Wing’s back and roped him there. His own foot was in the stirrup, when it occurred to him they might not come back. Knowing everything Piney had was at their disposal, he raced back and ransacked the cupboard, rolling the food in blankets stri
pped from Piney’s bed and, emerging with the bundle, he tied it behind his saddle.
As he swung on Stonewall’s back, the posse lifted over a rise, saw them, and gave chase. It was the closest call yet. But they shook them off in the rough hills north. In the terrible days that followed, they eluded others. And always, grave as this menace was, René realized that the most dangerous contestant in this race for the Picture Rocks was not the law, but Death.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
THE SACRIFICE
Still victor in that grim race, although often he had to look to make sure of this, René rode out in a gap between two buttes, that bitter dawn that ushered November in. Reining up, hauling on the rope to stop Black Wing, who, instead of being led, was forging eagerly ahead, René cried, in breaking tones: “Look, Zion!”
There was no movement in the still form on Black Wing’s back and, terrified lest the race was lost, René cried again: “Zion, look … the Picture Rocks!”
Ah, that power to force Zion’s eyes apart, giving him strength to turn his head, while silent, happy tears flowed down his wasted cheeks. Zion looked and looked—at the great fluted cup, towering over the black range against the lightening sky but a few miles away. Black Wing stamped impatiently. All night he had sensed the nearness of his home range and towed Stonewall along.
“Home!” René cried though tears of great joy. “We’ll make it, Zion.”
But they couldn’t go farther then. It was getting too light. They would have to find a place and hide till night. The country swarmed with searchers now. He had sighted three posses from their hideout yesterday.
“Tonight,” René promised Zion, praying that he would be in time, “we’ll be home.”
But Zion’s sunken eyes, fixed on the split in the great cup, mirrored such agony as could never have been inflicted by death’s victory. “We can’t … get home,” he moaned.
Outcasts of Picture Rocks Page 18