Desert Heritage

by Zane Grey

  Silvermane snorted, lifted his ears, and looked westward toward a yellow pall that swooped up from the desert. “Sandstorm,” said Hare, and, calling Wolf, he made for the nearest rock that was large enough to shelter them. The whirling sand cloud spread and bulged and mushroomed into an enormous desert covering, engulfing the dunes, obscuring the light, and approaching with strange muffled roar. 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 level past his shelter. The storm bore a low, soft, hissing roar, like the sound of a seashell. Breathing through the handkerchief, Hare avoided inhaling the sand that beat against his face, however 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. 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 around 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 ruddy red now with the sun faintly showing as a ball of magenta fire.

  “Well, Wolf, old boy, how many storms like that will we have to weather?” asked Hare, in a cheery tone that he had to force. He knew these sandstorms 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. When 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 stand as best he could the fierce 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 had calculated 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.

  How good it was 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 in green. That surely meant the end of this long trail; the faint spots of green lent suggestion of a desert water hole; there Mescal must be, hidden in some deep shady cañon. Hare built his hopes anew.

  So he pressed on down a plain of bare rock dotted by huge boulders, 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 wondrous violet and heliotrope hues, and then a valley of flinty ground and gravel that merged gradually as it fell into black ragged patches.

  Hare had entered the belt of lava and cactus. Reddish conical points studded the desert, and a thin white grass waved in meager stripes. Far off myriads of cactus plants resembled a scattered and distorted army of horses and men. As he proceeded, the grass failed, and long 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 it got to be that 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 travelers to the lava.

  Hare thought there must be an end to it sometime, yet it seemed as though he were never to cross that black fiendish belt. 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. Upon 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 situation.

  A range rider’s knowledge was the one thing here that precluded hope; if he had not possessed it, the outlook would still have been brightened by the spirit of adventure, by the strange fancy that he had heard Mescal’s call. These might be spurs to forward him desperately in his enterprise, yet, looked at through the experience of the ranges, they weighed little balanced against the facts of this trackless, waterless desert. But it had not been with a range rider’s judgment that he had undertaken this journey; it had been because of the insistent, all-impelling power of an inward voice. There could be no turning back because of a ranger’s wisdom.

  His little fire of greasewood threw a wan circle into the surrounding blackness. Not a sound breathed of action or life. He longed for even the bark of a coyote. Silvermane stooped motionlessly with tired head. Wolf stretched limply on the sand. Hare rolled into his blanket and lengthened out with slow aching relief, and sleep, as if by magic, shut his eyelids.

  He did not awake till later than his usual time; the blazing globe of the sun had already risen over the eastern horizon. The desert red swathed all the reach of valley.

  Hare pondered the question of the water. Would he use it all at once or sparingly? The ball of fire, a glazed circle, like iron at white heat, decided for him. The sun would be hot and would evaporate what water did not leak from the bag, so Hare shared alike with Wolf, and gave the rest to Silvermane.

  The dog waited, sad-eyed and gaunt, for Hare to start, and then limped westward. 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 wafted up 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 that sent aloft clouds of powdered dust, the deep gullies full of smooth round boulders, thickets of mesquite and prickly thorn that tore at his legs, and the weary detour to head the deepening cañons, the climb to get between two bridging mesas, and always the haunting presence of the sad 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, the 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 luster—all illusions, all harmonious with fantasy, 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. Silvermane was hot and tired, but showed no distress, and Wolf, refusing the shade, waited, looking backward with the sad eyes that had begun to haunt Hare. He did not stop long. Wolf pattered on; Silvermane kept at his heels, clicking the stones; Hare dozed in the saddle. His eyes burned in their sockets from the glare, and it was easy to shut out the vast barren reaches. So the afternoon waned.

  The tireless and implacable dog minded not the eye of the sun, or the never-ending monotony of slope, or the dreary rise of mesa. He pattered on, at long intervals to turn and look back.

  Silvermane stumbled, jolting Hare out of his stupid lethargy. Before him spread a great field of boulders with not a slope or a ridge or a mesa or an escarpment. Not even a tip of a spur loomed in the background. He rubbed his sore eyes. Was this another illusion? He called Wolf, already threading and winding a tortuous trail among the round stones. The dog stopped and waited. A second call, stern and quick, brought Wolf ’s head around over his shoulder showing the mournful eyes, but after a look he pattered on. Hare’s spirit sickened within him. The dog had turned from the west and the direction of the upland green mesas under the black spur that had kept alive the spark of Hare’s hope.
He was headed south, and the range of the field of broken stone was immeasurable. Had the dog gone mad wandering for his mistress? Was there any water out in that sea of stones? Did the horizon line tell the mocking story of mirage? Was it near or far? What lay beyond this sunset-colored plain where rocks were strewn thick as sage on the range? These questions attended Hare in his vacillation and were unanswerable.

  When Silvermane started onward, Hare thought of the Navajos’ training 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 to Hare 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 Navajo’s grave! Eschtah will lie there, but no Indian will know 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. The gateway of the desert had swung wide to him, bright with its face of danger, beautiful with its painted windows, inscrutable with its alluring call, and, bidding him enter, had closed behind him, then to reveal its unmasked iron order, its inevitable nature, harsh-voiced in travail.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The gray stallion, finding the rein loose on his neck, trotted forward and overtook the dog, and thereafter jogged 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 alleviated the pain of Hare’s sun-blinded eyes, and it was more than relief to have the unattainable horizon line blotted out. But by and by when the impenetrable pitchy darkness had become an opaque gloom to his strengthened eyes, it brought home to him, as the day had never done, the reality of his solitude and loneliness. He was alone in this immense place of barrenness, and his dumb companions were the world to him. Wolf pattered onward, a gray, moving, 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, around and around, ever winding, ever zigzagging, Silvermane hung close to Wolf, and the narrow sandy lanes between the boulders gave forth no sound. Dog and horse, free to choose their trail, trotted onward miles and miles into the black night.

  A pale luminescence in the east lightened to a glow, then to gold, and the round disc of the moon silhouetted the black boulders on the horizon. It cleared the dotted dark line and rose, an oval orangehued strange moon, not mellow nor brightly silver nor gloriously soaring 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; it fixed his mood.

  Silvermane went lame and slowed his trot, causing Hare to rein in and dismount. He lifted the right forehoof, the one the horse had favored, and found a stone imbedded tightly in the cloven hoof. It stuck so tightly and so resisted Hare’s fingers that he had to pry it out with his knife. Then he climbed astride once more. Wolf shone faintly far ahead, and presently he uttered an unearthly mourn that sent cold chills over Hare. The silence had been oppressive before; now it was terrible. It pressed the magnitude of the desert closer about him and the infinitude of the star-studded sky down upon him. It revealed to Hare that he was no more to these than a wisp of cloud or a gain of sand. It was not a silence of life; it had been broken sharply by Wolf ’s mourn, as if rent, and had closed sharply, without echo; it was a silence of death.

  Hare took care not to fall behind Wolf again; he had no wish to hear that dire mourn repeated. Nor did the dog give vent to it again. But its effect persisted and added another touch of gloom to Hare’s mood. 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 boulders grew larger and the lanes wider. So the desert night wore on, and Hare’s eyelids fell weak for sleep, his whole weary body cried out for sleep, his bones ached for sleep. He would doze till he swayed in the saddle, and, righting himself, would fall into another doze. Then a lurch and balk of Silvermane roused him. A rushing meteor had frightened the horse; the radiant ball with its tail of fire hissed by in the heavens, paled in the blue, and died. The east gave birth to the clear morning star. Wolf ’s form, gray in the morning moonlight, passed into the shade of rocks, winding through the labyrinthine lanes, and Silvermane ever stepped in his trail.

  The whitening sky was the harbinger of day. Hare shunned facing the light and heat, and made his stop 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 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 twilight 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 burn in his throat, and a queer dizzy feeling in his brain, and a floating sensation succeeded by hot red flashes before his eyes. Wolf refused meat, and stood waiting, with his eyes green and wild and sad in the waning twilight. 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, and the weird moon rose with its ghastly glow, lifting the huge boulders out of the desert gloom, molding them with magic gleam. They lifted giant shapes out of the desert, carved by wind and sand, and pillars and pedestals of nature’s sepulcher. But some had life in Hare’s disordered fancy. They loomed and towered over him, and stalked abroad with shadows advancing and peered at him with deep dark eyes. Some followed and some strode on before; one ever kept the pace of the gray dog, another ever the pace of the gray horse, and all reared higher as Hare rode around into the night, all lifted their misshapen heads, widened their windworn eyes, and spread longer arms.

  Wolf penetrated this maze of monsters, and Silvermane moved on, his white mane streaming, and Hare fought his last against the mood of gloom. Wolf was not a phantom; he trotted forward with unerring instinct; he would find Mescal, the dark-eyed, the mysticsouled, and he would find water, that meant life before love. Silvermane, desert-steeled, would trace to the furthermost corner of this hell of sand-steeped stone. And Hare thought he himself was strong, enduring. But the battle of hope surrendered to the night of gloom. All about him was silence, great breathless silence, insupportable silence of ages. Desert specters danced in the darkness. The worn-out moon gleamed golden over the worn-out waste. Desolation lurked under the sable shadows. All about him was boundless, fathomless gloom.

  Hare rode on into the night and tumbled from his saddle in the gray of dawn to sleep, and stumbled in the twilight to his drooping horse and followed the gray dog on again into the night. His eyes were blind now to the desert shapes, his brain burned, and his tongue filled his mouth. The gloomy hours passed and the gray dog dragged his weary legs onward. Silvermane trod ever upon Wolf ’s heels; he had come into the kingdom of his desert-strength; he lifted his drooping head and lengthened his stride; weariness had gone and he snorted his welcome to something on the wind. Then he passed the limping dog and led the way.

  Hare held to the pommel and bent dizzily forward in the saddle. Silvermane was going down, step by step, with metallic click on flinty rock. Whether he went down or up was all the same to Hare; he held on with closed eyes and whispered ever in his mind. Down and down, step by step, cracking the stones with iron-shod hoofs, the gray stallion worked his perilous way, sure-footed as a mountain sheep. Then he stopped with a great slow heav
e and bent his head.

  The black bulge of a cañon rim blurred in Hare’s tired hot eyes. A faint trickling sound penetrated his hot, tired brain. His ears had grown like his eyes—false. Only another delusion! As he had been tortured with the sight of lake and stream, now he was to be tortured with the sound of running water. Yet he listened, for it was sweet even in its mockery. What a clear musical tinkle, like silver bells tossing and kissing on the wind! He listened. Soft murmuring flow, babble and gurgle, little hollow fall and splash!

  Suddenly Silvermane heaved with a great sigh and, lifting his head, broke the silence of the cañon with a piercing snort. It pierced the dull fantasy of Hare’s mind; it burst the gloomy spell. That snort was Silvermane’s rattling whistle when he had drunk his fill.

  Hare fell from the saddle. The gray dog lay stretched, bending low in the darkness. Hare crawled beside him and reached out with his hot hands. Smooth cool marble rock, growing slippery, then wet, led into cold running water. He slid forward on his face and wonderful cold thrills quivered over his burning skin. He drank and drank until he could drink no more. Then he lay back upon the rock and the madness of his brain went out with the light of the stars, and he slept.