“My God! What a place this desert would be for a man to be lost in!”
Then they told him stories of men who had been lost in it, who had wandered for days without water and had been found raving maniacs or bleaching skeletons—the sort of stories that make the blood of any but a plainsman seem to dry in his veins and his tongue to cleave to the roof of his mouth. Told in all their details and surrounded by the very scenes in which their agonies had been suffered, they brought the perspiration to Wellesly’s brow and a look of horror to his eyes. Haney and Jim saw that they made him nervous, and racked their memories and their imaginations for more of the same sort.
They were approaching the mountains and the country around them was broken into barren, rocky hills. The road grew rougher and the mountains towered above them in jagged peaks of seemingly solid rock. The day was nearly ended and Wellesly remembered enough of the distances along the Las Plumas road to be sure that they ought to be approaching Muletown. But in this stern wilderness of rock and sand, human habitation did not seem possible. He looked back across the desert at the Fernandez mountains, standing out sharply against the red sunset clouds, and it suddenly flashed across his mind that if the sun were setting there they must have been traveling in an easterly direction all the afternoon, which meant that they had been getting farther and farther away from Las Plumas. Enlightened by this idea, he sent a quick, seeing glance along the range of mountains standing out boldly and barrenly in front of them, and he knew it was not the Hermosa range. Haney turned with a jovial remark on his lips and met Wellesly’s eyes, two narrow strips of pale gray shining brilliantly from between half-closed lids, and saw that his game had played itself smoothly as far as it would go.
Wellesly disregarded Haney’s jest and looking him squarely in the eyes said: “I suppose, Mr. Mullford, if we keep on in this direction a matter of some twenty-five thousand miles we might reach Muletown. But don’t you think we would save time if we were to turn around and travel the other way?”
Haney laughed good-naturedly and exclaimed: “You’ve not got that notion out of your ’ead yet, ’ave you! Say, pard,” he added to Jim, “Mr. Wellesly is still turned around. ’E thinks we ought to right about face and take the back track to get to Muletown. What can we do to convince ’im’ e’s all right?”
Wellesly was watching the two men narrowly, his suspicions aroused and all his faculties alert. Haney’s calm, solicitous tone for a moment almost made him think he must be mistaken. But another glance at the rocky, precipitous mountains reassured him that they were not the Hermosas and settled the conviction in his mind that he had fallen into the trap of a pair of very smooth rogues. A still, white rage rose in his heart and mettled his nerves to his finger-tips, as he thought of the plausible pretensions of good will with which they had led him into this wilderness. He scarcely heard Jim’s reply:
“I don’t know what else he wants. We’re going to Muletown, and if he don’t want to get lost out on this desert and have the coyotes pickin’ his bones inside of a week he’d better come along with us.”
“My friends,” said Wellesly, in an even tone in which could barely be heard here and there the note of suppressed anger, “if you think you are going to Muletown in this direction, all right, go ahead. That’s your funeral. But it isn’t mine. If anybody in this crowd is turned around I’m not the man. I have been, thanks to your very ingenious efforts, but I’m not now, and I’m not going any farther in this direction. Unless you can get a little more light on which way is west I’m afraid we’ll have to part company. Good-bye, gentlemen. I’m going back.”
He turned his horse squarely around and faced the long, gray levels of the darkening desert. As his eye swept over that forbidding, waterless, almost trackless waste, a sudden fear of its horrors smote through his anger and chilled his resolution. Haney spurred his horse to Wellesly’s side, exclaiming:
“Stop, Mr. Wellesly! You can’t go back over that desert alone in the night! Why, you couldn’t follow the road two miles after dark! You know ’ow uncertain it is by day, and in the dark you simply can’t see it at all. The desert is ’ell ’erself in the daytime, and it’s worse at night.”
Wellesly did not reply, for his resolve was wavering. Jim came beside them, swearing over the delay. “See here,” he said, “we’ve got no time to fool away. If this here tenderfoot thinks he knows better than we do which way we’re going, just let him round-up by himself. I’ve been over this here road dozens of times, I reckon, and I know every inch of it, but I wouldn’t undertake to travel a mile after night and keep to the trail. Maybe he can. If he thinks he’s so darned much smarter than we are let him try it.”
“Can we make Muletown to-night?” asked Haney.
Jim swore a big oath. “Didn’t you hear me say I don’t do no travelin’ on this road at night? No, sir. I know a canyon up in the mountain a ways where there’s sweet water and I’m goin’ to camp there to-night. If you folks want to come with me and eat prospector’s grub, all right, you’re welcome.”
“Thank you, pard,” said Haney. “For my part, I’ll be glad to get it. You’d better come too, Mr. Wellesly. It will be sure death, of the sort we’ve been talking about this afternoon, for you to start back alone.”
“You’re right,” said Wellesly. “I’ll go with you.”
Jim rode into a canyon which led them into the mountains and for a mile or more their horses scrambled and stumbled over boulders and sand heaps. Then they turned into another, opening at right angles into the first, and after a time they could hear the crunching of wet sand under their horses’ feet and finally the tinkle of a little waterfall met their ears.
“Here’s the place,” said Jim, dismounting.
“Sure this isn’t h’alkali?” said Haney.
“You and the tenderfoot needn’t drink it if you don’t want to,” growled Jim. “And you needn’t stay with me if you’re afraid I’m a-going to pizen your coffee.”
“Don’t get angry, my friend,” said Wellesly. “Mr. Mullford didn’t mean anything out of the way. We are both very much obliged to you for allowing us to share your camp.”
“Yes,” assented Haney warmly, “it’s w’ite, that’s what it is, to take in two ’ungry fellows and feed us out of your grub. And we’ll see that you don’t lose by it.”
They watered their horses, which Jim hobbled and left to graze upon the vegetation of the little canyon. All three men hunted about in the dim light for wood with which to make a fire, and they soon had ready a supper of coffee, bacon, and canned baked beans, which Jim produced from his pack. Afterward, he brought out a blanket apiece and each man rolled himself up and lay down on the ground with his saddle for a pillow. Wellesly thought the matter all over as he lay on his back and stared up at the moon-lighted sky. He finally decided there was nothing to do but to wait for the next day and its developments, and in the meantime to get as much sleep as he could.
When he awakened the next morning he found that the others were already up and had prepared breakfast. The blue sky was brilliant with the morning sun, but the little canyon was still damp and cool in the black shadow of its walls and of the beetling mountains that towered beyond. Their camp was at the very head of the canyon. On two sides the walls reached high above them in almost perpendicular cliffs. At the end, the rocky barrier was more broken and was heaped with boulders, through which the clear waters of the streamlet came trickling and gurgling and finally leaped over the wall into a little pool. The floor of the canyon was barely more than two hundred feet across, and twice that distance below the pool the walls drew so near together that they formed a narrow pass. In this little oval enclosure grew several pine trees of fairly good size, some scrub pines and cedars and other bushes, and the ground was well covered with green grass and flowers.
Haney was hearty and jovial in his greeting to Wellesly, solicitous about his physical welfare and genial and talkative all through breakfast. Jim grinned at his jokes and stories and ventured some
facetious remarks of his own, and Wellesly told a story or two that sent the others into peals of laughter. He searched his pockets and found three cigars, and the three men sat down on the rocks and smoked them in silence. Each side was waiting for the other to make a move. At last Wellesly said that he would start back across the plain if the others still wished to continue in the same direction. They expostulated and argued with him and reminded him of the probability that he could not find his way alone, and of the dangers from heat and thirst which he would have to face.
Wellesly guessed that they wanted money and were trying to force him into making an offer. He held to his determination and while they talked he saddled and mounted his horse. Then they tried to beat down his resolution by picturing to him the certain death he would meet on the waterless plain. In his heart he was really very much afraid of that scorching, sandy waste, but he let no sign of his fear show in his face as he curtly replied:
“I’m very much obliged to you for all your concern about my welfare, but I’ll be still more obliged if you won’t worry about me any more. I’m going back and I’m going to start now, and if you are so sure I’ll get lost and die you can come along a week or so later, hunt up my bones and collect the reward that will be offered for news of me.”
At that suggestion Jim glanced hastily at Haney and Wellesly saw the Englishman shake his head in reply.
“We don’t want to be responsible for your death, Mr. Wellesly,” Haney began, but Wellesly cut him off short:
“You won’t be. I release you from all responsibility, after I leave you. Good morning, gentlemen.” And with a cut of the quirt his horse started. They had been standing near the lower end of the head of the canyon, and as he moved forward the two men sprang in front of him, blocking the narrow pass which gave the only outlet.
“Will you let me pass?” demanded Wellesly, his lips white and his voice trembling with anger.
“We’re not ready for you to go yet,” said Haney, all the joviality gone from his face and voice. His look was that of brutal determination and his voice was harsh and guttural. Jim added an oath and both men drew their guns.
“Then, by God, we’ll shoot it out!” cried Wellesly, whipping his revolver from his pocket. The hammer fell with a flat thud, and with an angry exclamation he clicked the trigger again. With furious haste he went the round of the cylinder. Jim and Haney stood grinning at him, their guns in their hands.
“Something the matter with your pop-gun, I reckon,” said Jim.
Wellesly opened it and looked through the empty cylinder. Then he put it carefully in his hip pocket, rested his hands on the pommel of his saddle and looked the two men slowly over, first one and then the other, from head to foot. At last he spoke:
“Well, whenever you are ready to make your proposition I will listen to it.”
“We ’aven’t any proposition to make,” Haney replied. “We’re not ready to leave ’ere yet, and we’re not willing for you to risk your life alone on the desert. That’s all there is about it.”
“Oh, very well! I can stay here as long as you can,” Wellesly replied, dismounting. He unsaddled his horse, hobbled it and turned it loose to graze. Then he sat down in the shade of a tree, while the others still held guard over the narrow pass. He had made up his mind that he would not offer them money. He would watch his chance to outwit them, he would match his intelligence against their cunning, his patience against their brute force. It would be worth a week’s captivity to turn the tables on these two rogues and get back to civilization in time to set at work the police machinery of a hundred cities, so that, whatever way they might turn, there would be no escape for them. He turned several schemes over in his mind as he watched Haney preparing their noon meal of bread, coffee, beans and bacon. Jim was taking a pebble from the shoe of one of the horses. Wellesly sauntered up and watched the operation, asked some questions about the horses and gradually led Jim into conversation. After a time he broke abruptly into the talk with the question:
“What is the name of these mountains?”
“The Oro Fino,” Jim answered promptly. Then he remembered that he and Haney had been insisting that they were the Hermosas ever since the day before and he stammered a little and added:
“That is, that’s what the—the Mexicans call them. The Americans call them the Hermosas.”
“So you told me last night,” Wellesly answered calmly, “but I had forgotten.”
He remembered the name and recalled a topographical map of the region which he had looked at one day in Colonel Whittaker’s office. He remembered how the three ranges looked on the map—the Hermosas, the first range east of Las Plumas, with the wide Fernandez plain lying beyond, then the Fernandez range, more like high, grassy hills than mountains, with only their highest summits barren and rocky, and separated from the Oro Fino—the Fine Gold—mountains, by the desert they had crossed the day before. He recalled the descriptions he had heard of these Oro Fino mountains—high, barren, precipitous cliffs, separated by boulder-strewn canyons and cleft by deep gorges and chasms, a wild and almost impassable region. He remembered, too, that he had been told that these mountains were rich in minerals, that the whole rocky, jumbled, upreared, deep-cleft mass was streaked and striped and crisscrossed with veins of silver and gold, turquoise, marble, coal and iron, but that it was all practically safe from the hand of man because of the lack of wholesome water. Alkali and mineral springs and streams there were, but of so baneful nature that if a thirsty man were to drink his fill but once he would drink to his death. Recalling these things, Wellesly concluded that this trickling spring of sweet, cool water and the little green canyon must be rare exceptions to the general character of the mountains and that this must have been the objective point of his captors from the start.
Along with the awakened memories came also a sudden recollection of a tale once told him in Denver by a prospector, whom he was grubstaking for the San Juan country, of a lost mine in the Oro Fino mountains of New Mexico. He was able to recall the salient points of the story and it occurred to him that it might be useful in the present emergency. While they ate dinner Wellesly spoke again of the dangers of the desert and of the risks he knew he would be taking if he should attempt to cross it alone.
“With my deficient sense of direction,” he said, “I should probably wander all over it a dozen times before I could find my way out.”
“You’d be dead long before that time,” said Jim.
“Yes, it’s very likely I would,” Wellesly calmly assented.
“Of course,” said Haney, “our friend ’ere ’asn’t got much grub and if you and me continue to live off ’im it won’t last long. ’E knows a way to get through these mountains and go down to El Paso, but of course ’e can’t be expected to pilot you down there for nothin’. Now, if you made it worth ’is w’ile, I dare say ’e’d be willin’ to stop ’is prospecting long enough to get you safe into the town. Eh, pard?”
“Yes, I can,” Jim replied, “if the tenderfoot wants to make it enough worth while. I ain’t stuck on the trip and I don’t want to fool any more time away around here. You two have got to decide what you’re a-going to do mighty quick. I want to get to prospectin’, and if I have to tote you-all down to El Paso you’ll have to pay big for the favor.”
Wellesly did not reply and Haney, who was looking critically at a big boulder on the top of the canyon wall, burst into the conversation with an exclamation:
“My stars! Do you see that ’uge boulder up there, just above the narrow place in the canyon? ’Ow easy it would be, now, wouldn’t it, for two men to get up there and pry it loose. It would crash down there and fill up that whole blamed trail, wouldn’t it, Mr. Wellesly?”
“Yes, and effectually wall up anybody who might have had the bad luck to be left in here,” Wellesly dryly replied. “But speaking of the dangers of crossing the desert,” he went on, “I remember a story told me once in Denver by a prospector who had been down in this country. It was about
a lost mine, the Winters mine. Did you ever hear of it?”
“Yes,” said Jim, “I have. I’ve heard about it many a time. It’s in these mountains somewhere.”
“It was so rich,” Wellesly went on, “that Dick Winters knocked the quartz to pieces with a hammer and selected the chunks that were filled with gold. He said the rock was seamed and spotted with yellow and he brought out in his pocket a dozen bits as big as walnuts that were almost solid gold.”
The two men were listening with interested faces. Jim nodded. “Yes, that’s just what I’ve heard about it. But there are so darn many of them lost mines and so many lies told about ’em that you never can believe anything of the sort.”
“What became of this chap and ’is mine?” asked Haney.
“I reckon the mine’s there yet, just where he left it,” Jim answered, “but Dick went luny, crossin’ the desert, and wandered around so long in the heat without water that when he was picked up he was ravin’ crazy and he didn’t get his senses back before he died. All anybody knows about his mine is what he said while he was luny, and you can’t put much stock in that sort of thing.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Wellesly. “I had the story from the man who took care of him before he died, the prospector I spoke of just now—I think his name was Frank, Bill Frank. He said that the old man was conscious part of the time and told him a good deal about the strike—enough, I should think, to make it possible to find the place again.”
Haney and Jim were looking at him with intent faces, their interest thoroughly aroused. Wellesly decided to draw on his imagination for any necessary or interesting details that the prospector had not told him.
With Hoops of Steel Page 10