The Heritage of the Desert: A Novel

by Zane Grey

Naab's voice, and his speech concluded with the click of

  teeth characteristic of him in anger.

  "Stand there!" August Naab exclaimed in wrath. "Listen. You have been

  drinking again or you wouldn't talk of killing a man. I warned you. I

  won't do this thing you ask of me till I have your promise. Why won't

  you leave the bottle alone?"

  "I'll promise," came the sullen reply.

  "Very well. Then pack and go across to Bitter Seeps."

  "That job'll take all summer," growled Snap.

  "So much the better. When you come home I'll keep my promise."

  Hare moved away silently; the shock of Snap's first words had kept him

  fast in his tracks long enough to hear the conversation. Why did Snap

  threaten him? Where was August Naab going to send him? Hare had no means

  of coming to an understanding of either question. He was disturbed in

  mind and resolved to keep out of Snap's way. He went to the orchard, but

  his stay of an hour availed nothing, for on his return, after threading

  the maze of cottonwoods, he came face to face with the man he wanted to

  avoid.

  Snap Naab, at the moment of meeting, had a black bottle tipped high

  above his lips.

  With a curse he threw the bottle at Hare, missing him narrowly. He was

  drunk. His eyes were bloodshot.

  "If you tell father you saw me drinking I'll kill you!" he hissed, and

  rattling his Colt in its holster, he walked away.

  Hare walked back to his bed, where he lay for a long time with his whole

  inner being in a state of strife. It gradually wore off as he strove for

  calm. The playground was deserted; no one had seen Snap's action, and

  for that he was glad. Then his attention was diverted by a clatter of

  ringing hoofs on the road; a mustang and a cloud of dust were

  approaching.

  "Mescal and Black Bolly!" he exclaimed, and sat up quickly. The mustang

  turned in the gate, slid to a stop, and stood quivering, restive,

  tossing its thoroughbred head, black as a coal, with freedom and fire in

  every line. Mescal leaped off lightly. A gray form flashed in at the

  gate, fell at her feet and rose to leap about her. It was a splendid

  dog, huge in frame, almost white, wild as the mustang.

  This was the Mescal whom he remembered, yet somehow different. The

  sombre homespun garments had given place to fringed and beaded buckskin.

  "I've come for you," she said.

  "For me?" he asked, wonderingly, as she approached with the bridle of

  the black over her arm.

  "Down, Wolf!" she cried to the leaping dog. "Yes. Didn't you know?

  Father Naab says you're to help me tend the sheep. Are you better? I

  hope so-- You're quite pale."

  "I--I'm not so well," said Hare.

  He looked up at her, at the black sweep of her hair under the white

  band, at her eyes, like jet; and suddenly realized, with a gladness new

  and strange to him, that he liked to look at her, that she was

  beautiful.

  V. BLACK SAGE AND JUNIPER

  AUGUST NAAB appeared on the path leading from his fields.

  "Mescal, here you are," he greeted. "How about the sheep?"

  "Piute's driving them down to the lower range. There are a thousand

  coyotes hanging about the flock."

  "That's bad," rejoined August. "Jack, there's evidently some real

  shooting in store for you. We'll pack to-day and get an early start to-

  morrow. I'll put you on Noddle; he's slow, but the easiest climber I

  ever owned. He's like riding... What's the matter with you? What's

  happened to make you angry?"

  One of his long strides spanned the distance between them.

  "Oh, nothing," said Hare, flushing.

  "Lad, I know of few circumstances that justify a lie. You've met Snap."

  Hare might still have tried to dissimulate; but one glance at August's

  stern face showed the uselessness of it. He kept silent.

  "Drink makes my son unnatural," said Naab. He breathed heavily as one in

  conflict with wrath. "We'll not wait till to-morrow to go up on the

  plateau; we'll go at once."

  Then quick surprise awakened for Hare in the meaning in Mescal's eyes;

  he caught only a fleeting glimpse, a dark flash, and it left him with a

  glow of an emotion half pleasure, half pain.

  "Mescal," went on August, "go into the house, and keep out of Snap's

  way. Jack, watch me pack. You need to learn these things. I could put

  all this outfit on two burros, but the trail is narrow, and a wide pack

  might bump a burro off. Let's see, I've got all your stuff but the

  saddle; that we'll leave till we get a horse for you. Well, all's

  ready."

  Mescal came at his call and, mounting Black Bolly, rode out toward the

  cliff wall, with Wolf trotting before her. Hare bestrode Noddle. August,

  waving good-bye to his women-folk, started the train of burros after

  Mescal.

  How they would be able to climb the face of that steep cliff puzzled

  Hare. Upon nearer view he discovered the yard-wide trail curving upward

  in cork-screw fashion round a projecting corner of cliff. The stone was

  a soft red shale, and the trail had been cut in it at a steep angle. It

  was so steep that the burros appeared to be climbing straight up. Noddle

  pattered into it, dropped his head and his long ears and slackened his

  pace to patient plodding. August walked in the rear.

  The first thing that struck Hare was the way the burros in front of him

  stopped at the curves in the trail, and turned in a space so small that

  their four feet were close together; yet as they swung their packs they

  scarcely scraped the wall. At every turn they were higher than he was,

  going in the opposite direction, yet he could reach out and touch them.

  He glanced up to see Mescal right above him, leaning forward with her

  brown hands clasping the pommel. Then he looked out and down; already

  the green cluster of cottonwoods lay far below. After that sensations

  pressed upon him. Round and round, up and up, steadily, surely, the

  beautiful mustang led the train; there were sounds of rattling stones,

  and click of hoofs, and scrape of pack. On one side towered the iron-

  stained cliff, not smooth or glistening at close range, but of dull,

  dead, rotting rock. The trail changed to a zigzag along a seamed and

  cracked buttress where ledges leaned outward waiting to fall. Then a

  steeper incline, where the burros crept upward warily, led to a level

  ledge heading to the left.

  Mescal halted on a promontory. She, with her windblown hair, the gleam

  of white band about her head, and a dash of red along the fringed

  leggings, gave inexpressible life and beauty to that wild, jagged point

  of rock, sharp against the glaring sky.

  "This is Lookout Point," said Naab. "I keep an Indian here all the time

  during daylight. He's a peon, a Navajo slave. He can't talk, as he was

  born without a tongue, or it was cut out, but he has the best eyes of

  any Indian I know. You see this point commands the farm, the crossing,

  the Navajo Trail over the river, the Echo Cliffs opposite, where the

  Navajos signal to me, and also the White Sage Trail."

  The oasis shone under the triangular promontory; the river with it
s

  rising roar wound in bold curve from the split in the cliffs. To the

  right white-sloped Coconina breasted the horizon. Forward across the

  Canyon line opened the many-hued desert.

  "With this peon watching here I'm not likely to be surprised," said

  Naab. "That strip of sand protects me at night from approach, and I've

  never had anything to fear from across the river."

  Naab's peon came from a little cave in the wall; and grinned the

  greeting he could not speak. To Hare's uneducated eye all Indians

  resembled each other. Yet this one stood apart from the others, not

  differing in blanketed leanness, or straggling black hair, or