The Heritage of the Desert: A Novel

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The Heritage of the Desert: A Novel Page 30

by Zane Grey

its magnet.

  Hare felt the air growing warmer and closer as he continued the descent.

  By mid-afternoon, when he had travelled perhaps thirty miles, he was

  moist from head to foot, and Silvermane's coat was wet. Looking backward

  Hare had a blank feeling of loss; the sweeping line of Echo Cliffs had

  retreated behind the horizon. There was no familiar landmark left.

  Sunset brought him to a standstill, as much from its sudden glorious

  gathering of brilliant crimsons splashed with gold, as from its warning

  that the day was done. Hare made his camp beside a stone which would

  serve as a wind-break. He laid his saddle for a pillow and his blanket

  for a bed. He gave Silvermane a nose-bag full of water and then one of

  grain; he fed the dog, and afterward attended to his own needs. When his

  task was done the desert brightness had faded to gray; the warm air had

  blown away on a cool breeze, and night approached. He scooped out a

  little hollow in the sand for his hips, took a last look at Silvermane

  haltered to the rock, and calling Wolf to his side stretched himself to

  rest. He was used to lying on the ground, under the open sky, out where

  the wind blew and the sand seeped in, yet all these were different on

  this night. He was in the Painted Desert; Wolf crept close to him;

  Mescal lay somewhere under the blue-white stars.

  He awakened and arose before any color of dawn hinted of the day. While

  he fed his four-footed companions the sky warmed and lightened. A tinge

  of rose gathered in the east. The air was cool and transparent. He tried

  to cheer Wolf out of his sad-eyed forlornness, and failed.

  Hare vaulted into the saddle. The day had its possibilities, and while

  he had sobered down from his first unthinking exuberance, there was

  still a ring in his voice as he called to the dog:

  "On, Wolf, on, old boy!"

  Out of the east burst the sun, and the gray curtain was lifted by shafts

  of pink and white and gold, flashing westward long trails of color.

  When they started the actions of the dog showed Hare that Wolf was not

  tracking a back-trail, but travelling by instinct. There were draws

  which necessitated a search for a crossing, and areas of broken rock

  which had to be rounded, and steep flat mesas rising in the path, and

  strips of deep sand and canyons impassable for long distances. But the

  dog always found a way and always came back to a line with the black

  spur that Hare had marked. It still stood in sharp relief, no nearer

  than before, receding with every step, an illusive landmark, which Hare

  began to distrust.

  Then quite suddenly it vanished in the ragged blue mass of the Ghost

  Mountains. Hare had seen them several times, though never so distinctly.

  The purple tips, the bold rock-ribs, the shadowed canyons, so sharp and

  clear in the morning light--how impossible to believe that these were

  only the deceit of the desert mirage! Yet so they were; even for the

  Navajos they were spirit-mountains.

  The splintered desert-floor merged into an area of sand. Wolf slowed his

  trot, and Silvermane's hoofs sunk deep. Dismounting Hare labored beside

  him, and felt the heat steal through his boots and burn the soles of his

  feet. Hare plodded onward, stopping once to tie another moccasin on

  Wolf's worn paw, this time the left one; and often he pulled the stopper

  from the water-bag and cooled his parching lips and throat. The waves of

  the sand-dunes were as the waves of the ocean. He did not look backward,

  dreading to see what little progress he had made. Ahead were miles on

  miles of graceful heaps, swelling mounds, crested ridges, all different,

  yet regular and rhythmical, drift on drift, dune on dune, in endless

  waves. Wisps of sand were whipped from their summits in white ribbons

  and wreaths, and pale clouds of sand shrouded little hollows. The

  morning breeze, rising out of the west, approached in a rippling lines

  like the crest of an inflowing tide.

  Silvermane snorted, lifted his ears and looked westward toward a yellow

  pall which swooped up from the desert.

  "Sand-storm," said Hare, and calling Wolf he made for the nearest rock

  that was large enough to shelter them. The whirling sand-cloud

  mushroomed into an enormous desert covering, engulfing the dunes,

  obscuring the light. The sunlight failed; the day turned to gloom. Then

  an eddying fog of sand and dust enveloped Hare. His last glimpse before

  he covered his face with a silk handkerchief was of sheets of sand

  streaming past his shelter. The storm came with a low, soft, hissing

  roar, like the sound in a sea-shell magnified. Breathing through the

  handkerchief Hare avoided inhaling the sand which beat against his face,

  but the finer dust particles filtered through and stifled him. At first

  he felt that he would suffocate, and he coughed and gasped; but

  presently, when the thicker sand-clouds had passed, he managed to get

  air enough to breathe. Then he waited patiently while the steady seeping

  rustle swept by, and the band of his hat sagged heavier, and the load on

  his shoulders had to be continually shaken off, and the weighty trap

  round his feet crept upward. When the light, fine touch ceased he

  removed the covering from his face to see himself standing nearly to his

  knees in sand, and Silvermane's back and the saddle burdened with it.

  The storm was moving eastward, a dull red now with the sun faintly

  showing through it like a ball of fire.

  "Well, Wolf, old boy, how many storms like that will we have to

  weather?" asked Hare, in a cheery tone which he had to force. He knew

  these sand-storms were but vagaries of the desert-wind. Before the hour

  closed he had to seek the cover of a stone and wait for another to pass.

  Then he was caught in the open, with not a shelter in sight. He was

  compelled to turn his back to a third storm, the worst of all, and to

  bear as best he could the heavy impact of the first blow, and the

  succeeding rush and flow of sand. After that his head drooped and he

  wearily trudged beside Silvermane, dreading the interminable distance he

  must cover before once more gaining hard ground. But he discovered that

  it was useless to try to judge distance on the desert. What had appeared

  miles at his last look turned out to be only rods.

  It was good to get into the saddle again and face clear air. Far away

  the black spur again loomed up, now surrounded by groups of mesas with

  sage-slopes tinged with green. That surely meant the end of this long

  trail; the faint spots of green lent suggestion of a desert waterhole;

  there Mescal must be, hidden in some shady canyon. Hare built his hopes

  anew.

  So he pressed on down a plain of bare rock dotted by huge bowlders; and

  out upon a level floor of scant sage and greasewood where a few living

  creatures, a desert-hawk sailing low, lizards darting into holes, and a

  swiftly running ground-bird, emphasized the lack of life in the waste.

  He entered a zone of clay-dunes of violet and heliotrope hues; and then

  a belt of lava and cactus. Reddish points studded the desert, and here

  and there were meagre patches of w
hite grass. Far away myriads of cactus

  plants showed like a troop of distorted horsemen. As he went on the

  grass failed, and streams of jagged lava flowed downward. Beds of

  cinders told of the fury of a volcanic fire. Soon Hare had to dismount

  to make moccasins for Wolf's hind feet; and to lead Silvermane carefully

  over the cracked lava. For a while there were strips of ground bare of

  lava and harboring only an occasional bunch of cactus, but soon every

  foot free of the reddish iron bore a projecting mass of fierce spikes

  and thorns. The huge barrel-shaped cacti, and thickets of slender dark-

  green rods with bayonet points, and broad leaves with yellow spines,

  drove Hare and his sore-footed fellow-travellers to the lava.

  Hare thought there must be an end to it some time, yet it seemed as

  though he were never to cross that black forbidding inferno. Blistered

  by the heat, pierced by the thorns, lame from long toil on the lava, he

  was sorely spent when once more he stepped out upon the bare desert. On

  pitching camp he made the grievous discovery that the water-bag had

  leaked or the water had evaporated, for there was only enough left for

  one more day. He ministered to thirsty dog and horse in silence, his

  mind revolving the grim fact of his

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