by Zane Grey
mane.
Next morning the Indian rode again into the corral on blindfolded
Charger. Again he dragged Silvermane out on the level and drove him up
and down with remorseless, machine-like persistence. At noon he took him
back, tied him up, and roped him fast. Silvermane tried to rear and
kick, but the saddle went on, strapped with a flash of the dark-skinned
hands. Then again Silvermane ran the level stretch beside the giant
roan, only he carried a saddle now. At the first, he broke out with free
wild stride as if to run forever from under the hateful thing. But as
the afternoon waned he crept weariedly back to the corral.
On the morning of the third day the Navajo went into the corral without
Charger, and roped the gray, tied him fast, and saddled him. Then he
loosed the lassoes except the one around Silvermane's neck, which he
whipped under his foreleg to draw him down. Silvermane heaved a groan
which plainly said he never wanted to rise again. Swiftly the Indian
knelt on the stallion's head; his hands flashed; there was a scream, a
click of steel on bone; and proud Silvermane jumped to his feet with a
bit between his teeth.
The Navajo, firmly in the saddle, rose with him, and Silvermane leaped
through the corral gate, and out upon the stretch, lengthening out with
every stride, and settling into a wild, despairing burst of speed. The
white mane waved in the wind; the half-naked Navajo swayed to the
motion. Horse and rider disappeared in the cedars.
They were gone all day. Toward night they appeared on the stretch. The
Indian rode into camp and, dismounting, handed the bridle-rein to Naab.
He spoke no word; his dark impassiveness invited no comment. Silvermane
was dust-covered and sweat-stained. His silver crest had the same proud
beauty, his neck still the splendid arch, his head the noble outline,
but his was a broken spirit.
"Here, my lad," said August Naab, throwing the bridle-rein over Hare's
arm. "What did I say once about seeing you on a great gray horse? Ah!
Well, take him and know this: you've the swiftest horse in this desert
country."
IX. THE SCENT OF DESERT-WATER
SOON the shepherds were left to a quiet unbroken by the whistle of wild
mustangs, the whoop of hunters, the ring of iron-shod hoofs on the
stones. The scream of an eagle, the bleating of sheep, the bark of a
coyote were once more the only familiar sounds accentuating the silence
of the plateau. For Hare, time seemed to stand still. He thought but
little; his whole life was a matter of feeling from without. He rose at
dawn, never failing to see the red sun tip the eastern crags; he glowed
with the touch of cold spring-water and the morning air; he trailed
Silvermane under the cedars and thrilled when the stallion, answering
his call, thumped the ground with hobbled feet and came his way,
learning day by day to be glad at sight of his master. He rode with
Mescal behind the flock; he hunted hour by hour, crawling over the
fragrant brown mats of cedar, through the sage and juniper, up the
grassy slopes. He rode back to camp beside Mescal, drove the sheep, and
put Silvermane to his fleetest to beat Black Bolly down the level
stretch where once the gray, even with freedom at stake, had lost to the
black. Then back to camp and fire and curling blue smoke, a supper that
testified to busy Piute's farmward trips, sunset on the rim, endless
changing desert, the wind in the cedars, bright stars in the blue, and
sleep--so time stood still.
Mescal and Hare were together, or never far apart, from dawn to night.
Until the sheep were in the corral, every moment had its duty, from
camp-work and care of horses to the many problems of the flock, so that
they earned the rest on the rim-wall at sundown. Only a touch of hands
bridged the chasm between them. They never spoke of their love, of
Mescal's future, of Jack's return to hearth; a glance and a smile,
scarcely sad yet not altogether happy, was the substance of their dream.
Where Jack had once talked about the canyon and desert, he now seldom
spoke at all. From watching Mescal he had learned that to see was
enough. But there were moments when some association recalled the past
and the strangeness of the present faced him. Then he was wont to
question Mescal.
"What are you thinking of?" he asked, curiously, interrupting their
silence. She leaned against the rocks and kept a changeless, tranquil,
unseeing gaze on the desert. The level eyes were full of thought, of
sadness, of mystery; they seemed to look afar.
Then she turned to him with puzzled questioning look and enigmatical
reply. "Thinking?" asked her eyes. "I wasn't thinking," were her words.
"I fancied--I don't know exactly what," he went on. "You looked so
earnest. Do you ever think of going to the Navajos?"
"No."
"Or across that Painted Desert to find some place you seem to know, or
see?"
"No."
"I don't know why, but, Mescal, sometimes I have the queerest ideas when
I catch your eyes watching, watching. You look at once happy and sad.
You see something out there that I can't see. Your eyes are haunted.
I've a feeling that if I'd look into them I'd see the sun setting, the
clouds coloring, the twilight shadows changing; and then back of that
the secret of it all--of you--Oh! I can't explain, but it seems so."
"I never had a secret, except the one you know," she answered. "You ask
me so often what I think about, and you always ask me when we're here."
She was silent for a pause. "I don't think at all till you make me. It's
beautiful out there. But that's not what it is to me. I can't tell you.
When I sit down here all within me is--is somehow stilled. I watch--and
it's different from what it is now, since you've made me think. Then I
watch, and I see, that's all."
It came to Hare afterward with a little start of surprise that Mescal's
purposeless, yet all-satisfying, watchful gaze had come to be part of
his own experience. It was inscrutable to him, but he got from it a
fancy, which he tried in vain to dispel, that something would happen to
them out there on the desert.
And then he realized that when they returned to the camp-fire they
seemed freed from this spell of the desert. The blaze-lit circle was
shut in by the darkness; and the immensity of their wild environment,
because for the hour it could not be seen, lost its paralyzing effect.
Hare fell naturally into a talkative mood. Mescal had developed a
vivacity, an ambition which contrasted strongly with her silent moods;
she became alive and curious, human like the girls he had known in the
East, and she fascinated him the more for this complexity.
The July rains did not come; the mists failed; the dews no longer
freshened the grass, and the hot sun began to tell on shepherds and
sheep. Both sought the shade. The flowers withered first--all the blue-
bells and lavender patches of primrose, and pale-yellow lilies, and
white thistle-blossoms. Only the deep magenta of cactus and vermilion of
Indian paint-brush, flowers of the sun, survived the heat. Day by day
the shepherds scanned the sky for storm-clouds that did not appear. The
spring ran lower and lower. At last the ditch that carried water to the
corral went dry, and the margin of the pool began to retreat. Then
Mescal sent Piute down for August Naab.
He arrived at the plateau the next day with Dave and at once ordered the
breaking up of camp.
"It will rain some time," he said, "but we can't wait any longer. Dave,
when did you last see the Blue Star waterhole?"
"On the trip in from Silver Cup, ten days ago. The waterhole was full
then."
"Will there be water enough now?"
"We've got to chance it. There's no water here, and no springs on the
upper range where we can drive sheep; we've got to go round under the
Star."
"That's so," replied August. His fears needed