The Heritage of the Desert: A Novel

by Zane Grey

situation.

  His little fire of greasewood threw a wan circle into the surrounding

  blackness. Not a sound hinted of life. He longed for even the bark of a

  coyote. Silvermane stooped motionless with tired head. Wolf stretched

  limply on the sand. Hare rolled into his blanket and stretched out with

  slow aching relief.

  He dreamed he was a boy roaming over the green hills of the old farm,

  wading through dewy clover-fields, and fishing in the Connecticut River.

  It was the long vacationtime, an endless freedom. Then he was at the

  swimming-hole, and playmates tied his clothes in knots, and with shouts

  of glee ran up the bank leaving him there to shiver.

  When he awakened the blazing globe of the sun had arisen over the

  eastern horizon, and the red of the desert swathed all the reach of

  valley.

  Hare pondered whether he should use his water at once or dole it out.

  That ball of fire in the sky, a glazed circle, like iron at white heat,

  decided for him. The sun would be hot and would evaporate such water as

  leakage did not claim, and so he shared alike with Wolf, and gave the

  rest to Silvermane.

  For an hour the mocking lilac mountains hung in the air and then paled

  in the intense light. The day was soundless and windless, and the heat-

  waves rose from the desert like smoke. For Hare the realities were the

  baked clay flats, where Silvermane broke through at every step; the beds

  of alkali, which sent aloft clouds of powdered dust; the deep gullies

  full of round bowlders; thickets of mesquite and prickly thorn which

  tore at his legs; the weary detour to head the canyons; the climb to get

  between two bridging mesas; and always the haunting presence of the sad-

  eyed dog. His unrealities were the shimmering sheets of water in every

  low place; the baseless mountains floating in the air; the green slopes

  rising close at hand; beautiful buttes of dark blue riding the open

  sand, like monstrous barks at sea; the changing outlines of desert

  shapes in pink haze and veils of purple and white lustre--all illusions,

  all mysterious tricks of the mirage.

  In the heat of midday Hare yielded to its influence and reined in his

  horse under a slate-bank where there was shade. His face was swollen and

  peeling, and his lips had begun to dry and crack and taste of alkali.

  Then Wolf pattered on; Silvermane kept at his heels; Hare dozed in the

  saddle. His eyes burned in their sockets from the glare, and it was a

  relief to shut out the barren reaches. So the afternoon waned.

  Silvermane stumbled, jolting Hare out of his stupid lethargy. Before him

  spread a great field of bowlders with not a slope or a ridge or a mesa

  or an escarpment. Not even a tip of a spur rose in the background. He

  rubbed his sore eyes. Was this another illusion?

  When Silvermane started onward Hare thought of the Navajos' custom to

  trust horse and dog in such an emergency. They were desert-bred; beyond

  human understanding were their sight and scent. He was at the mercy now

  of Wolf's instinct and Silvermane's endurance. Resignation brought him a

  certain calmness of soul, cold as the touch of an icy hand on fevered

  cheek. He remembered the desert secret in Mescal's eyes; he was about to

  solve it. He remembered August Naab's words: "It's a man's deed!" If so,

  he had achieved the spirit of it, if not the letter. He remembered

  Eschtah's tribute to the wilderness of painted wastes: "There is the

  grave of the Navajo, and no one knows the trail to the place of his

  sleep!" He remembered the something evermore about to be, the unknown

  always subtly calling; now it was revealed in the stone-fettering grip

  of the desert. It had opened wide to him, bright with its face of

  danger, beautiful with its painted windows, inscrutable with its

  alluring call. Bidding him enter, it had closed behind him; now he

  looked upon it in its iron order, its strange ruins racked by fire, its

  inevitable remorselessness.

  XV. DESERT NIGHT

  THE gray stallion, finding the rein loose on his neck, trotted forward

  and overtook the dog, and thereafter followed at his heels. With the

  setting of the sun a slight breeze stirred, and freshened as twilight

  fell, rolling away the sultry atmosphere. Then the black desert night

  mantled the plain.

  For a while this blackness soothed the pain of Hare's sun-blinded eyes.

  It was a relief to have the unattainable horizon line blotted out. But

  by-and-by the opaque gloom brought home to him, as the day had never

  done, the reality of his solitude. He was alone in this immense place of

  barrenness, and his dumb companions were the world to him. Wolf pattered

  onward, a silent guide; and Silvermane followed, never lagging, sure-

  footed in the dark, faithful to his master. All the love Hare had borne

  the horse was as nothing to that which came to him on this desert night.

  In and out, round and round, ever winding, ever zigzagging, Silvermane

  hung close to Wolf, and the sandy lanes between the bowlders gave forth

  no sound. Dog and horse, free to choose their trail, trotted onward

  miles and miles into the night.

  A pale light in the east turned to a glow, then to gold, and the round

  disc of the moon silhouetted the black bowlders on the horizon. It

  cleared the dotted line and rose, an oval orange-hued strange moon, not

  mellow nor silvery nor gloriously brilliant as Hare had known it in the

  past, but a vast dead-gold melancholy orb, rising sadly over the desert.

  To Hare it was the crowning reminder of lifelessness; it fitted this

  world of dull gleaming stones.

  Silvermane went lame and slackened his trot, causing Hare to rein in and

  dismount. He lifted the right forefoot, the one the horse had favored,

  and found a stone imbedded tightly in the cloven hoof. He pried it out

  with his knife and mounted again. Wolf shone faintly far ahead, and

  presently he uttered a mournful cry which sent a chill to the rider's

  heart. The silence had been oppressive before; now it was terrible. It

  was not a silence of life. It had been broken suddenly by Wolf's howl,

  and had closed sharply after it, without echo; it was a silence of

  death.

  Hare took care not to fall behind Wolf again, he had no wish to hear

  that cry repeated. The dog moved onward with silent feet; the horse

  wound after him with hoofs padded in the sand; the moon lifted and the

  desert gleamed; the bowlders grew larger and the lanes wider. So the

  night wore on, and Hare's eyelids grew heavy, and his whole weary body

  cried out for rest and forgetfulness. He nodded until he swayed in the

  saddle; then righted himself, only to doze again. The east gave birth to

  the morning star. The whitening sky was the harbinger of day. Hare could

  not bring himself to face the light and heat, and he stopped at a wind-

  worn cave under a shelving rock. He was asleep when he rolled out on the

  sand-strewn floor. Once he awoke and it was still day, for his eyes

  quickly shut upon the glare. He lay sweltering till once more slumber

  claimed him. The dog awakened him, with cold nose and low whine. Another

  twilig
ht had fallen. Hare crawled out, stiff and sore, hungry and

  parching with thirst. He made an attempt to eat, but it was a failure.

  There was a dry burning in his throat, a dizzy feeling in his brain, and

  there were red flashes before his eyes. Wolf refused meat, and

  Silvermane turned from the grain, and lowered his head to munch a few

  blades of desert grass.

  Then the journey began, and the night fell black. A cool wind blew from

  the west, the white stars blinked, the weird moon rose with its ghastly

  glow. Huge bowlders rose before him in grotesque shapes, tombs and

  pillars and statues of Nature's dead, carved by wind and sand. But some

  had life in Hare's disordered fancy. They loomed and towered over him,

  and stalked abroad and peered at him with deep-set eyes.

  Hare fought with all his force against this mood of gloom. Wolf was not

  a phantom; he trotted forward with unerring instinct; and he would find

  water, and that meant life. Silvermane, desert-steeled, would travel to

  the furthermost corner of this hell of sand-swept stone. Hare tried to

  collect all his spirit, all his energies, but the battle seemed to be

  going against him. All about him was silence,