Desert Heritage

by Zane Grey

  The tall Holderness, face shining, gold-red beard agleam, rounded the cabin, whistling. Hare watched the rustlers sit down to breakfast, and here and there caught a loud-spoken word, and marked their leisurely carefree manner. Snap Naab took up a pan of food and a cup of coffee, and carried them into the cabin, and came out, shutting the door.

  After breakfast most of the rustlers set themselves idly to tasks. Hare watched them with the eyes of a lynx watching deer. Several men were arranging articles for packing, and their actions were slow to the point of laziness; others trooped down toward the corral. Holderness rolled a cigarette and stooped over the campfire to reach a burning stick. Snap Naab stalked to and fro before the door of the cabin. He alone of the rustler’s band showed restlessness, and more than once he glanced up the trail that led over the divide toward his father’s oasis. Holderness sent expectant glances in the other direction toward Seeping Springs. Once, his clear voice rang out.

  “I tell you, Naab, there’s no hurry. We’ll ride in tomorrow.”

  A thousand thoughts flitted through Hare’s mind—a steady stream of questions and answers, speculations, conclusions. Why did Snap look anxiously along the oasis trail? It was not that he feared his father or his brothers alone; there was always the menace of the Navajos. Why was Holderness in no hurry to leave Silver Cup? Why did he lag at the spring when, if he expected riders from his ranch, he could have gone on to meet them, obviously saving time and putting greater distance between him and the men he had wronged? Was it utter fearlessness or only a deep-played game? Holderness and his rustlers, all except the gloomy Naab, were blind to the peril that lay beyond the divide. How soon would August Naab strike out on the White Sage trail? Would he come alone? Whether he came alone or at the head of his hard-riding Navajos, he would arrive too late. Holderness’s life was not worth a pinch of the ashes he flicked so carelessly from his cigarette. Snap Naab’s gloom, his long stride, his nervous hand always on or near the butt of his Colt told of his keenness of desert instinct. For him the red sun had arisen red over the red wall. Had Snap harmed Mescal? Why did he keep the cabin door shut and guard it so closely?

  While Hare watched and thought the hours sped by, while Holderness lounged about and Snap kept silent guard, and the rustlers smoked, slept, and moved about, the day waned, and the shadow of the cliff crept over the cabin. To Hare the time had been as a moment; he was amazed to find the sun had gone down behind Coconina. If August Naab had left the oasis at dawn, he must now be near the divide, unless he had been delayed by a wind storm at the strip of sand. Hare longed to see the roan charger come up over the divide; he longed to see a file of Navajos, plumes waving, dark lean mustangs gleaming in the red light, sweep down the bare stony ridge toward the cedars. If they come, he mused, I’ll kill Holderness and Snap and any man who tries to open that cabin door.

  So he waited in tense watchfulness, his gaze alternating between the wavy line of the divide and the camp glade. Out in the valley it was still clear daylight, but under the cliff twilight had fallen. All day Hare had strained his ears trying to hear the conversation of the rustlers, and it now occurred to him that, if he would climb down through the split in the cliff to the bench where Dave and George had always hidden to watch the spring, he would be just above the camp. This descent involved great risk, but as its accomplishment would enable him to see the cabin door when darkness set in, he decided to venture. The moment was propitious, for the rustlers were bustling around, cooking dinner, unrolling blankets, and moving to and fro from spring and corral. Hare crawled back a few yards, and then along the cliff until he reached the split. It was a narrow steep crack that he well remembered. Going down was attended with two dangers—losing his hold, and rattling stones. Face foremost he slipped downward with the gliding, sinuous movement of a snake, and, reaching the grassy bench, he lay quietly. Jesting voices and loud laughs from below reassured him. He had not been heard. His position now not only afforded every opportunity to see and hear, but also gave him means of rapid, noiseless retreat along the bench to the slope of cedars. Lying flat, he crawled stealthily to the bushy fringe of the bench.

  A bright fire blazed under the cliff. Men were moving and laughing. The cabin door was open. Mescal stood leaning back from Snap Naab, struggling to release her hands.

  “Let me untie them, I say,” growled Snap.

  Mescal tore loose from him and stepped back. Her hands were bound before her, and, twisting them outward, she warded him off. Her disheveled hair almost hid her dark eyes. They burned in a level glance of hate and defiance. She was a little lioness, quivering with fiery life, fight in every line of her form.

  “All right, don’t eat then . . . starve,” said Snap.

  “I’ll starve before I eat what you give me.”

  The rustlers laughed. Holderness blew out a great puff of smoke and smiled. Snap glowered upon Mescal, and then upon his amiable companions. One of them, a ruddy-faced fellow, walked toward Mescal.

  “Cool down, Snap, cool down,” he said. “We’re not goin’ to stand for the girl starvin’. She ain’t et a bite yet. Here, miss, let me untie your hands . . . there . . . . Say, Naab, damn you . . . her wrists are black an’ blue!”

  “Look out! Your gun!” yelled Snap.

  With a swift movement Mescal snatched the man’s Colt from its holster and was raising it when he grasped her arm. She winced and dropped the weapon.

  “You little Indian devil!” exclaimed the rustler in a rapt admiration. “Sorry to hurt you, an’ more’n sorry to spoil your aim. Thet wasn’t kind of you to throw my own gun on me jest after I’d played the gentleman, now, was it?”

  “I didn’t . . . intend . . . to shoot . . . you,” panted Mescal.

  “Naab, if this’s your Mormon kind of wife . . . excuse me. Though I ain’t denyin’ she’s the sassiest an’ sweetest little cat I ever seen.”

  “We Mormons don’t talk about our women or hear any talk,” returned Snap, a dancing fury in his pale eyes. “You’re from Nebraska?”

  “Yep, jest a plain Nebraska rustler, cattle thief, an’ all ’round nogood customer, though I ain’t taken to houndin’ women yet.”

  For answer Snap Naab’s right hand slowly curved upward before him and stopped taut and inflexible, while his strange eyes seemed to shoot sparks.

  “See here, Naab, why do you want to throw a gun on me?” asked the rustler coolly. “Heven’t you shot enough of your friends yet? I reckon I’ve no right to interfere in your affairs. I was only protestin’ friendly like, for the little lady. She’s game, an’ she’s called your hand. An’ it’s not a straight hand. Thet’s all, an’ damn if I care whether you are a Mormon or not. I’ll bet a hoss Holderness will back me up.”

  “Snap, he’s right,” put in Holderness smoothly. “You needn’t be so damn’ touchy about Mescal. She’s showed what little use she’s got for you. If you must rope her around like you do a mustang, be easy about it. Let’s have supper . . . . Now, Mescal, you sit here on the bench and behave yourself. I don’t want you shooting up my camp.”

  Snap turned darkly, sullenly aside while Holderness seated Mescal near the door and fetched her food and drink. The rustlers squatted around the campfire, and conversation ceased in the business of the meal.

  It had been a scene to rake Hare through the fiery coals of commingling emotions. Sudden, strong joy at sight of Mescal, blessed relief and thankful prayer to see her, yet unspoiled, wonderful, sweet, pride in her fighting spirit—these went side-by-side with gratitude to the kind Nebraska rustler, strange deepening insight into Holderness’s game, inextinguishable white-hot hatred of Snap Naab. And binding all was the ever-mounting will to rescue Mescal, held in check by an inexorable judgment to wait. So Hare waited in blind faith of the something to be, keeping ever in mind the last resort—the rifle he clutched with eager, hard hands. While he waited the darkness descended, the fire sent forth a brighter blaze, and the rustlers finished their supper. Mescal arose and stepped across the thresho
ld of the cabin door.

  “Hold on!” ordered Snap as he approached with swift strides. “Stick out your hands!”

  Some of the rustlers grumbled, and one blurted out: “Aw, no, Snap, don’t tie her up . . . no!”

  “Who says so?” hissed the Mormon, with snapping teeth. As he wheeled upon them, his Colt seemed to leap forward, and suddenly quivered at arm’s length, gleaming in the ruddy fire rays.

  Holderness laughed in the muzzle of the weapon. “Go ahead, Snap, tie up your lady love. What a tame little wife she’s going to make you. Tie her up, but do it without hurting her.”

  The rustlers divided their acceptance of their leader’s order between low growls and laughs. Snap turned to his task. Mescal stood in the doorway and shrinkingly extended her clasped hands. In that instant, when her spirit clashed with physical aversion to being rudely handled, she had a subtle, appealing, wild beauty that had its effect on the watching men. Holderness whirled to the fire with a look on his face that betrayed his game. Snap bound Mescal’s hands securely, thrust her inside the cabin, and, hesitating for a long moment, finally shut the door.

  Then the tension, instead of relaxing, stiffened into a tight, silent portent. The men around the campfire waited as if at the heels of some encroaching event. Holderness suddenly showed he was ill at ease; he appeared or pretended to be expecting arrivals from the direction of Seeping Springs. Snap Naab leaned against the side of the door with his narrow gaze cunningly studying the rustlers before him. More than any other, he had caught a foreshadowing; like the desert hawk he typified, he could see afar. Suddenly he pressed back against the door, half opening it while he faced the man.

  “Stop!” commanded Holderness. The change in his voice was as if it had come from another man. “You don’t go in there!”

  “I’m going to take the girl and ride to White Sage,” replied Naab in slow deliberation.

  “Bah! You say that only for the excuse to get into the cabin with her. You tried it last night, and I blocked you. Shut the door! . . . Naab, there’ll be something happen here in a minute.”

  “There’s more going to happen than even you think of, Holderness. I’d warn you if you hadn’t spoken that way to me. Don’t interfere now . . . I’m going.”

  “Well, go ahead . . . but you won’t take the girl!”

  Snap Naab swung off the step, slamming the door behind him.

  “So-ho!” he exclaimed with the accent of certainty. “For that you made me foreman, eh?” His claw-like hand moved almost imperceptibly upward while his pale eyes strove to pierce the strength behind Holderness’s effrontery. The rustler chief had a trump card to play, that showed in his sardonic smile.

  “Naab, you don’t get the girl.”

  “Maybe you’ll get her?” hissed Snap.

  “I always intended to.”

  Surely never before had passion incited Snap Naab’s hand to the speed of a darting bird. His colt gleamed in the campfire light. Click! Click! Click! The hammer fell upon empty chambers.

  “Hell!” he shrieked.

  Holderness laughed sarcastically. “That’s where you’re going!” he cried. “Here’s to Naab’s trick with a gun . . . . Bah!” And he shot his foreman through the heart.

  Snap plunged upon his face. His hands beat the ground like the shuffling wings of a wounded partridge. His fingers gripped the dust, spread convulsively, straightened, and sank limply.

  Holderness called through the door of the cabin. “Mescal, I’ve rid you of your would-be husband. Cheer-up!” Then, pointing to the fallen man, he said to the nearest bystanders: “Some of you drag that out for the coyotes.”

  The first fellow who bent over Snap happened to be the Nebraska rustler, and he curiously opened the breech of the six-shooter he picked up. “No shells,” he said, and pulled Snap’s second Colt from his belt, and unbreeched that. “No shells! Well, damn me!” He surveyed the group of grim men, not one of whom had any reply to his ejaculation.

  Holderness vented again his metallic laugh, and, turning to the cabin, he fastened the door with a lasso.

  Long it was before Hare recovered from the startling revelation of the plot that had put Mescal into Holderness’s power. Bad as Snap Naab had been, he would have married her, and such state was infinitely preferable to the precarious one into which she had fallen. Hare changed his position and settled himself to watch and wait out the night. Every hour Holderness and his men tarried at Silver Cup hastened their approaching doom. Hare’s strange prescience of the fatality that overshadowed these men had received its first verification in the sudden taking off of Snap Naab. The deep-scheming Holderness, confident his strong band was sure protection for him, sat and smoked and smiled beside the campfire. He had not caught even a hint of Snap Naab’s suggested warning. Yet somewhere out on the oasis trail rode a Mormon giant, a priest, who, once turned from the saving of life to the lust to kill, would be as immutable as death itself, a man more to be feared than any other in all that wild desert land. Behind him waited a troop of Navajos, swift as eagles, merciless as wolves, desert warriors with the sun-heated blood of generations in their veins. Upon the cliff above Holderness lay hidden the lover of Mescal, his presence there undreamed of. As Hare waited and watched with all his inner being cold, he felt pity for Holderness. How close was his doom! Twice, as the rustler chief had sauntered nearer to the cabin door, as if to enter, Hare had covered him with the rifle, waiting, waiting for the step upon the threshold that meant doom. But Holderness did not take the final step and Hare’s finger eased its pressure upon the trigger.

  The night closed in black; the clouded sky gave forth no starlight; the wind rose and moaned through the cedars. One by one the rustlers rolled in their blankets and all dropped into slumber while the campfire slowly burned down. The night hours wore on to the soft wail of the breeze and the wild notes of far-off trailing coyotes.

  Hare, watching sleeplessly, saw one of the prone figures stir. The man raised himself very cautiously and glanced about at his companions, and long at Holderness, who lay squarely in the dimming light. Then he softly lowered himself. Hare pondered over this suspicious action. Presently the rustler again lifted his head and turned it as if intently listening. His companions were motionless in deep breathing sleep. Gently he slipped aside his blankets and began to rise. He was slow and guarded of movement; it took him long to stand erect. He stepped between the rustlers with stockinged feet that were as skulking as an Indian’s, and he went toward the cabin door.

  Then he softly edged around the sleeping Holderness, turning to show his right hand low down with a glinting six-shooter. Hare’s quickly formed determination to kill the man before he reached the door sustained a sudden violent check. What a strange circumstance was this rustler’s wonderfully silent movement from among his comrades, his passing by Holderness with his drawn weapon! Again doom hovered over the rustler chief. If he stirred . . .! Hare knew instantly that this softly stepping man was a Mormon; he was true to Snap Naab, to the woman pledged in his creed. He meant to free Mescal.

  If ever Hare breathed a prayer it was then. What if one of the band awakened? As the rustler turned at the door, his dark face gleamed in the flickering light. He unwound the lasso and opened the door without a sound.

  Hare thought: Heavens, if he goes in, she’ll scream . . . that will wake Holderness . . . then I must shoot . . . I must.

  But the Mormon rustler who was not yet dead to honor added wisdom to this cunning and stealth.

  “Hist,” he whispered into the cabin. “Hist.”

  Mescal must have been awake; she must have divined instantly the meaning of that low whisper, for silently she appeared in the doorway, silently she held forth her bound hands. The man untied the bonds and pointed into the cedars toward the corral. Swift and soundless as a flitting shadow, Mescal vanished in the gloom. The Mormon stole with wary, unhurried steps back to his bed and rolled in his blankets.

  Hare rose unsteadily, wavering in the hot grip of a mo
ment that seemed to have but one issue—the killing of Holderness. Mescal would soon be upon Silvermane, far out on the White Sage trail, and this time there would be no sand strip to trap her. But Hare could not kill the rustler while he was sleeping; he could not awaken him without revealing to his men the escape of the girl. Hare stood there on the bench, gazing down on the blanketed Holderness, and his every muscle trembled, his heart quaked in the tremendous struggle it cost him to let this man live longer. It was all but impossible. Holderness would discover Mescal’s absence soon and would pursue her with the relentlessness he had shown in all his deeds. Why not kill him now, ending forever his power, and trust to chance for the rest? No, no! Hare flung the temptation from him. Ward off pursuit as long as possible, aid Mescal in every way to some safe hiding place, and then seek Holderness—that was the stilling pru dence, the foresight of a man who had learned how to wait.

  Under the dark bulge of the upper cliff Hare felt his way, made the cedar slope, and the trail, and then he went swiftly down into the little hollow where he had left Bolly. The pitchy darkness of the forest hindered him, but he came at length to the edge of the aspen thicket, penetrated it, and, guided toward Bolly by a suspicious stamp and whinny, he found her and quieted her with a word. He rode down the hollow, out upon the level valley.

  The clouds had broken somewhat, letting pale light down through rifts. All about him cattle were lying in a thick gloom. It was penetrable for only a few rods. The ground was like a cushion under Bolly’s hoofs, giving forth no sound. The mustang threw up her head, causing Hare to peer into the night fog. Rapid thuds broke the silence; a vague gray shadow moved into the field of his vision. He saw Silvermane and called as loudly as he dared. The stallion melted into the misty curtain; the violent thud of hoofs softened and ceased. Hare spurred Bolly to her fleetest. He had a long, silent chase, but it was futile and unnecessarily hard on the mustang, so he pulled her in to a trot.

  Hare kept Bolly to this gait the remainder of the night, and, when the eastern sky lightened, he found the trail and reached Seeping Springs at dawn. Silvermane’s tracks were deep in the clay at the drinking trough. He rested a few moments, let Bolly have sparingly of grain and water, and once more took to the trail.