by Zane Grey
XIX
THE SECRET OF FORLORN RIVER
IN the early morning Gale, seeking solitude where he could brood overhis trouble, wandered alone. It was not easy for him to elude theYaqui, and just at the moment when he had cast himself down in asecluded shady corner the Indian appeared, noiseless, shadowy,mysterious as always.
"Malo," he said, in his deep voice.
"Yes, Yaqui, it's bad--very bad," replied Gale.
The Indian had been told of the losses sustained by Belding and hisrangers.
"Go--me!" said Yaqui, with an impressive gesture toward the loftylilac-colored steps of No Name Mountains.
He seemed the same as usual, but a glance on Gale's part, a moment'sattention, made him conscious of the old strange force in the Yaqui."Why does my brother want me to climb the nameless mountains with him?"asked Gale.
"Lluvia d'oro," replied Yaqui, and he made motions that Gale founddifficult of interpretation.
"Shower of Gold," translated Gale. That was the Yaqui's name for Nell.What did he mean by using it in connection with a climb into themountains? Were his motions intended to convey an idea of a shower ofgolden blossoms from that rare and beautiful tree, or a golden rain?Gale's listlessness vanished in a flash of thought. The Yaqui meantgold. Gold! He meant he could retrieve the fallen fortunes of thewhite brother who had saved his life that evil day at the Papago Well.Gale thrilled as he gazed piercingly into the wonderful eyes of thisIndian. Would Yaqui never consider his debt paid?
"Go--me?" repeat the Indian, pointing with the singular directness thatalways made this action remarkable in him.
"Yes, Yaqui."
Gale ran to his room, put on hobnailed boots, filled a canteen, andhurried back to the corral. Yaqui awaited him. The Indian carried acoiled lasso and a short stout stick. Without a word he led the waydown the lane, turned up the river toward the mountains. None ofBelding's household saw their departure.
What had once been only a narrow mesquite-bordered trail was now awell-trodden road. A deep irrigation ditch, full of flowing muddywater, ran parallel with the road. Gale had been curious about theoperations of the Chases, but bitterness he could not help had kept himfrom going out to see the work. He was not surprised to find that theengineers who had constructed the ditches and dam had anticipated himin every particular. The dammed-up gulch made a magnificent reservoir,and Gale could not look upon the long narrow lake without a feeling ofgladness. The dreaded ano seco of the Mexicans might come again andwould come, but never to the inhabitants of Forlorn River. Thatstone-walled, stone-floored gulch would never leak, and already itcontained water enough to irrigate the whole Altar Valley for two dryseasons.
Yaqui led swiftly along the lake to the upper end, where the streamroared down over unscalable walls. This point was the farthest Galehad ever penetrated into the rough foothills, and he had Belding's wordfor it that no white man had ever climbed No Name Mountains from thewest.
But a white man was not an Indian. The former might have stolen therange and valley and mountain, even the desert, but his possessionswould ever remain mysteries. Gale had scarcely faced the great grayponderous wall of cliff before the old strange interest in the Yaquiseized him again. It recalled the tie that existed between them, a tiealmost as close as blood. Then he was eager and curious to see how theIndian would conquer those seemingly insurmountable steps of stone.
Yaqui left the gulch and clambered up over a jumble of weathered slidesand traced a slow course along the base of the giant wall. He looked upand seemed to select a point for ascent. It was the last place in thatmountainside where Gale would have thought climbing possible. Beforehim the wall rose, leaning over him, shutting out the light, a darkmighty mountain mass. Innumerable cracks and crevices and cavesroughened the bulging sides of dark rock.
Yaqui tied one end of his lasso to the short, stout stick and,carefully disentangling the coils, he whirled the stick round and roundand threw it almost over the first rim of the shelf, perhaps thirtyfeet up. The stick did not lodge. Yaqui tried again. This time itcaught in a crack. He pulled hard. Then, holding to the lasso, hewalked up the steep slant, hand over hand on the rope. When he reachedthe shelf he motioned for Gale to follow. Gale found that method ofscaling a wall both quick and easy. Yaqui pulled up the lasso, andthrew the stick aloft into another crack. He climbed to another shelf,and Gale followed him. The third effort brought them to a more ruggedbench a hundred feet above the slides. The Yaqui worked round to theleft, and turned into a dark fissure. Gale kept close to his heels.They came out presently into lighter space, yet one that restricted anyextended view. Broken sections of cliff were on all sides.
Here the ascent became toil. Gale could distance Yaqui going downhill;on the climb, however, he was hard put to it to keep the Indian insight. It was not a question of strength or lightness of foot. TheseGale had beyond the share of most men. It was a matter of lung power,and the Yaqui's life had been spent scaling the desert heights.Moreover, the climbing was infinitely slow, tedious, dangerous. On theway up several times Gale imagined he heard a dull roar of fallingwater. The sound seemed to be under him, over him to this side and tothat. When he was certain he could locate the direction from which itcame then he heard it no more until he had gone on. Gradually heforgot it in the physical sensations of the climb. He burned his handsand knees. He grew hot and wet and winded. His heart thumped so thatit hurt, and there were instants when his sight was blurred. When atlast he had toiled to where the Yaqui sat awaiting him upon the rim ofthat great wall, it was none too soon.
Gale lay back and rested for a while without note of anything exceptthe blue sky. Then he sat up. He was amazed to find that after thatwonderful climb he was only a thousand feet or so above the valley.Judged by the nature of his effort, he would have said he had climbed amile. The village lay beneath him, with its new adobe structures andtents and buildings in bright contrast with the older habitations. Hesaw the green alfalfa fields, and Belding's white horses, looking verysmall and motionless. He pleased himself by imagining he could pickout Blanco Sol. Then his gaze swept on to the river.
Indeed, he realized now why some one had named it Forlorn River. Evenat this season when it was full of water it had a forlorn aspect. Itwas doomed to fail out there on the desert--doomed never to mingle withthe waters of the Gulf. It wound away down the valley, growing widerand shallower, encroaching more and more on the gray flats, until itdisappeared on its sad journey toward Sonoyta. That vast shimmering,sun-governed waste recognized its life only at this flood season, andwas already with parched tongue and insatiate fire licking and burningup its futile waters.
Yaqui put a hand on Gale's knee. It was a bronzed, scarred, powerfulhand, always eloquent of meaning. The Indian was listening. His benthead, his strange dilating eyes, his rigid form, and thatclose-pressing hand, how these brought back to Gale the terrible lonelynight hours on the lava!
"What do you hear, Yaqui?" asked Gale. He laughed a little at the moodthat had come over him. But the sound of his voice did not break thespell. He did not want to speak again. He yielded to Yaqui's subtlenameless influence. He listened himself, heard nothing but the screamof an eagle. Often he wondered if the Indian could hear things thatmade no sound. Yaqui was beyond understanding.
Whatever the Indian had listened to or for, presently he satisfiedhimself, and, with a grunt that might mean anything, he rose and turnedaway from the rim. Gale followed, rested now and eager to go on. Hesaw that the great cliff they had climbed was only a stairway up to thehuge looming dark bulk of the plateau above.
Suddenly he again heard the dull roar of falling water. It seemed tohave cleared itself of muffled vibrations. Yaqui mounted a littleridge and halted. The next instant Gale stood above a bottomless cleftinto which a white stream leaped. His astounded gaze swept backwardalong this narrow swift stream to its end in a dark, round, boilingpool. It was a huge spring, a bubbling well, the outcropping of anundergrou
nd river coming down from the vast plateau above.
Yaqui had brought Gale to the source of Forlorn River.
Flashing thoughts in Gale's mind were no swifter than the thrills thatran over him. He would stake out a claim here and never be cheated outof it. Ditches on the benches and troughs on the steep walls wouldcarry water down to the valley. Ben Chase had build a great dam whichwould be useless if Gale chose to turn Forlorn River from its naturalcourse. The fountain head of that mysterious desert river belonged tohim.
His eagerness, his mounting passion, was checked by Yaqui's unusualaction. The Indian showed wonder, hesitation, even reluctance. Hisstrange eyes surveyed this boiling well as if they could not believethe sight they saw. Gale divined instantly that Yaqui had never beforeseen the source of Forlorn River. If he had ever ascended to thisplateau, probably it had been to some other part, for the water was newto him. He stood gazing aloft at peaks, at lower ramparts of themountain, and at nearer landmarks of prominence. Yaqui seemed atfault. He was not sure of his location.
Then he strode past the swirling pool of dark water and began to ascenda little slope that led up to a shelving cliff. Another object haltedthe Indian. It was a pile of stones, weathered, crumbled, fallen intoruin, but still retaining shape enough to prove it had been built thereby the hands of men. Round and round this the Yaqui stalked, and hiscuriosity attested a further uncertainty. It was as if he had comeupon something surprising. Gale wondered about the pile of stones. Hadit once been a prospector's claim?
"Ugh!" grunted the Indian; and, though his exclamation expressed nosatisfaction, it surely put an end to doubt. He pointed up to the roofof the sloping yellow shelf of stone. Faintly outlined there in redwere the imprints of many human hands with fingers spread wide. Galehad often seen such paintings on the walls of the desert caverns.Manifestly these told Yaqui he had come to the spot for which he hadaimed.
Then his actions became swift--and Yaqui seldom moved swiftly. The factimpressed Gale. The Indian searched the level floor under the shelf.He gathered up handfuls of small black stones, and thrust them at Gale.Their weight made Gale start, and then he trembled. The Indian's nextmove was to pick up a piece of weathered rock and throw it against thewall. It broke. He snatched up parts, and showed the broken edges toGale. They contained yellow steaks, dull glints, faint tracings ofgreen. It was gold.
Gale found his legs shaking under him; and he sat down, trying to takeall the bits of stone into his lap. His fingers were all thumbs aswith knife blade he dug into the black pieces of rock. He found gold.Then he stared down the slope, down into the valley with its riverwinding forlornly away into the desert. But he did not see any ofthat. Here was reality as sweet, as wonderful, as saving as a dreamcome true. Yaqui had led him to a ledge of gold. Gale had learnedenough about mineral to know that this was a rich strike. All in asecond he was speechless with the joy of it. But his mind whirled inthought about this strange and noble Indian, who seemed never to beable to pay a debt. Belding and the poverty that had come to him!Nell, who had wept over the loss of a spring! Laddy, who never couldride again! Jim Lash, who swore he would always look after his friend!Thorne and Mercedes! All these people, who had been good to him andwhom he loved, were poor. But now they would be rich. They would oneand all be his partners. He had discovered the source of ForlornRiver, and was rich in water. Yaqui had made him rich in gold. Galewanted to rush down the slope, down into the valley, and tell hiswonderful news.
Suddenly his eyes cleared and he saw the pile of stones. His bloodturned to ice, then to fire. That was the mark of a prospector'sclaim. But it was old, very old. The ledge had never been worked, theslope was wild. There was not another single indication that aprospector had ever been there. Where, then, was he who had firststaked this claim? Gale wondered with growing hope, with the fireeasing, with the cold passing.
The Yaqui uttered the low, strange, involuntary cry so rare with him, acry somehow always associated with death. Gale shuddered.
The Indian was digging in the sand and dust under the shelving wall. Hethrew out an object that rang against the stone. It was a belt buckle.He threw out old shrunken, withered boots. He came upon other things,and then he ceased to dig.
The grave of desert prospectors! Gale had seen more than one. Ladd hadtold him many a story of such gruesome finds. It was grim, hard fact.
Then the keen-eyed Yaqui reached up to a little projecting shelf ofrock and took from it a small object. He showed no curiosity and gavethe thing to Gale.
How strangely Gale felt when he received into his hands a flat oblongbox! Was it only the influence of the Yaqui, or was there a namelessand unseen presence beside that grave? Gale could not be sure. But heknew he had gone back to the old desert mood. He knew something hungin the balance. No accident, no luck, no debt-paying Indian couldaccount wholly for that moment. Gale knew he held in his hands morethan gold.
The box was a tin one, and not all rusty. Gale pried open thereluctant lid. A faint old musty odor penetrated his nostrils. Insidethe box lay a packet wrapped in what once might have been oilskin. Hetook it out and removed this covering. A folded paper remained in hishands.
It was growing yellow with age. But he descried a dim tracery ofwords. A crabbed scrawl, written in blood, hard to read! He held itmore to the light, and slowly he deciphered its content.
"We, Robert Burton and Jonas Warren, give half of this gold claim tothe man who finds it and half to Nell Burton, daughter andgranddaughter."
Gasping, with a bursting heart, overwhelmed by an unutterable joy ofdivination, Gale fumbled with the paper until he got it open.
It was a certificate twenty-one years old, and recorded the marriage ofRobert Burton and Nellie Warren.
XX
DESERT GOLD
A SUMMER day dawned on Forlorn River, a beautiful, still, hot, goldenday with huge sail clouds of white motionless over No Name Peaks andthe purple of clear air in the distance along the desert horizon.
Mrs. Belding returned that day to find her daughter happy and the pastburied forever in two lonely graves. The haunting shadow left hereyes. Gale believed he would never forget the sweetness, the wonder,the passion of her embrace when she called him her boy and gave him herblessing.
The little wrinkled padre who married Gale and Nell performed theceremony as he told his beads, without interest or penetration, andwent his way, leaving happiness behind.
"Shore I was a sick man," Ladd said, "an' darn near a dead one, but I'magoin' to get well. Mebbe I'll be able to ride again someday. Nell, Ilay it to you. An' I'm agoin' to kiss you an' wish you all the joythere is in this world. An', Dick, as Yaqui says, she's shore yourShower of Gold."
He spoke of Gale's finding love--spoke of it with the deep and wistfulfeeling of the lonely ranger who had always yearned for love and hadnever known it. Belding, once more practical, and important as neverbefore with mining projects and water claims to manage, spoke of Gale'sgreat good fortune in finding of gold--he called it desert gold.
"Ah, yes. Desert Gold!" exclaimed Dick's father, softly, with eyes ofpride. Perhaps he was glad Dick had found the rich claim; surely hewas happy that Dick had won the girl he loved. But it seemed to Dickhimself that his father meant something very different from love andfortune in his allusion to desert gold.
That beautiful happy day, like life or love itself, could not be whollyperfect.
Yaqui came to Dick to say good-by. Dick was startled, grieved, and inhis impulsiveness forgot for a moment the nature of the Indian. Yaquiwas not to be changed.
Belding tried to overload him with gifts. The Indian packed a bag offood, a blanket, a gun, a knife, a canteen, and no more. The wholehousehold went out with him to the corrals and fields from whichBelding bade him choose a horse--any horse, even the loved BlancoDiablo. Gale's heart was in his throat for fear the Indian mightchoose Blanco Sol, and Gale hated himself for a selfishness he couldnot help. But without a word
he would have parted with the treasuredSol.
Yaqui whistled the horses up--for the last time. Did he care for them?It would have been hard to say. He never looked at the fierce andhaughty Diablo, nor at Blanco Sol as he raised his noble head and ranghis piercing blast. The Indian did not choose one of Belding's whites.He caught a lean and wiry broncho, strapped a blanket on him, andfastened on the pack.
Then he turned to these friends, the same emotionless, inscrutable darkand silent Indian that he had always been. This parting was nothing tohim. He had stayed to pay a debt, and now he was going home.
He shook hands with the men, swept a dark fleeting glance over Nell,and rested his strange eyes upon Mercedes's beautiful and agitatedface. It must have been a moment of intense feeling for the Spanishgirl. She owed it to him that she had life and love and happiness. Sheheld out those speaking slender hands. But Yaqui did not touch them.Turning away, he mounted the broncho and rode down the trail toward theriver.
"He's going home," said Belding.
"Home!" whispered Ladd; and Dick knew the ranger felt the resurgingtide of memory. Home--across the cactus and lava, through solemnlonely days, the silent, lonely nights, into the vast and red-hazedworld of desolation.
"Thorne, Mercedes, Nell, let's climb the foothill yonder and watch himout of sight," said Dick.
They climbed while the others returned to the house. When they reachedthe summit of the hill Yaqui was riding up the far bank of the river.
"He will turn to look--to wave good-by?" asked Nell.
"Dear he is an Indian," replied Gale.
From that height they watched him ride through the mesquites, up overthe river bank to enter the cactus. His mount showed dark against thegreen and white, and for a long time he was plainly in sight. The sunhung red in a golden sky. The last the watchers saw of Yaqui was whenhe rode across a ridge and stood silhouetted against the gold of desertsky--a wild, lonely, beautiful picture. Then he was gone.
Strangely it came to Gale then that he was glad. Yaqui had returned tohis own--the great spaces, the desolation, the solitude--to the trailshe had trodden when a child, trails haunted now by ghosts of hispeople, and ever by his gods. Gale realized that in the Yaqui he hadknown the spirit of the desert, that this spirit had claimed all whichwas wild and primitive in him.
Tears glistened in Mercedes's magnificent black eyes, and Thorne kissedthem away--kissed the fire back to them and the flame to her cheeks.
That action recalled Gale's earlier mood, the joy of the present, andhe turned to Nell's sweet face. The desert was there, wonderful,constructive, ennobling, beautiful, terrible, but it was not for him asit was for the Indian. In the light of Nell's tremulous returningsmile that strange, deep, clutching shadow faded, lost its holdforever; and he leaned close to her, whispering: "Lluviad'oro"--"Shower of Gold."