The Shepherd of Guadaloupe

by Zane Grey

  Every desert day was a whole by itself; and the next was bleak, raw, windy, with flurries of snow. The sheep favored sheltered slopes and banks, and the beds of arroyos and the leeward of rocks. Clifton huddled in sheltered nooks to build little fires of dried sage and warm his numb hands and feet. It was a profitable day for the coyotes. More than once Clifton started up at an uproar from the dogs; and one well-aimed shot laid a coyote low. Julio skinned the dead beast and stretched the skin on a frame.

  As the afternoon waned a lowering black cloud swooped across the desert, trailing a gray whirling pall of snow that whitened sage and ground, and quickly vanished. The squall passed away and the sun burst out, flushing the desert gold and red, with the promise of a better morrow.

  The flock was laggard and difficult to drive back to camp in the face of wind. But for the faithful dogs it never could have been accomplished. Then for the shepherds the blessing of fire and food and rest!

  The following morning while Clifton cooked breakfast Julio brought in the burros. The shepherds ate, packed, and with their flock headed south on the long trail. The morning was glorious. No wind! A bright sun tempered the nipping air. The cool fragrance of dry sage floated over the desert. The ridges were diamond white in frost, that quickly melted on the south slopes. Endless soft gray stretches led down to the purple landmarks above the horizon. Wild mustangs trooped to a rise of ground, there to stand and whistle, and then race away with manes and tails flying.

  They had traveled six miles by sunset, and Clifton was not down at the finish. On warm days he lasted longer. They were now well over a hundred miles south of their own range.

  One forenoon, several days later, the sheep crossed the last road which transversed that section of the desert. Clifton, following slowly, reached the road just as an automobile came by. He would have passed on, but the occupants of the car hailed him and stopped. He guessed the muddy old car belonged to a rancher and that the three were Westerners.

  “Hey, Pedro, come over an’ say hello!” called one. Then as Clifton approached closer he added: “Excuse me. I took you for a greaser.”

  “Howdy!” replied Clifton as he looked to see if he knew one or more of them.

  “Fine bunch of sheep. Whose are they?” queried the eldest of the three.

  “They belong to Don Lopez.”

  “Ahuh. I thought so. Lopez’ last flock workin’ south. You must be young Forrest—Clay Forrest’s son?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  They appeared kindly, curious, and interested. “We heerd you got in a muss at Watrous some while back.”

  “I’m afraid I did,” returned Clifton, reluctantly. “But as I left San Luis next day, I’ve never heard how bad the muss was. . . . I thought you might be a sheriff.”

  “Not much,” laughed one, “we’re glad to say. I reckon, though, you’re worryin’ fer nothin’. Mason wasn’t bad hurt in thet scrap an’ anyways you didn’t shoot him.”

  “Wal, Forrest, there’s not many people who’re against you fer thet little cowhidin’ stunt,” added another of the three.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” rejoined Clifton.

  “Whar you drivin’?”

  “Guadaloupe Springs.”

  “Say, that’s an all-winter job! Shore, you’re goin’ back?”

  “No. I have only a boy with me. Lopez gave me the job and I’ll stick. I’ll drive back in the spring.”

  “Wal, excuse me, Forrest,” said the elder man, feelingly. “It’s shore your own bizness. But I want to give you a hunch. If you’re hidin’ out—it’s all fer nothin’. There ain’t any sheriff lookin’ fer you.”

  “Thank you. That’s a relief.”

  “But if I was you I’d chuck this herdin’ job. Somebody in Watrous told me the other day thet Malpass was tryin’ to buy Lopez out. Reckon it’s only a rumor, but I wouldn’t risk it.”

  “I’ve got to. Work is necessary, and jobs I can fill are few. Lopez trusted me. I’ll trust him. I don’t think he’d sell without sending me word.”

  “Wal, Don Lopez is white, you can lay to thet. But Malpass has a hold over these greasers. Better throw your pack in the car hyar an’ come with us.”

  “No. You’re very good. But I’ll go on.”

  “Are you well, Forrest? You look pretty worked out.”

  “I’m all right. It was hard at first—for a man in my shape. But I’ll pull through.”

  “Ahuh.—Wal, good luck to you. Any message we can take back? We’re goin’ on to Kelsey’s Ranch, then right back to town.”

  “If you meet anyone I know—tell them I’m all right,” replied Clifton, haltingly. This was too sudden for him. He would have liked to be prepared for such a meeting.

  “Shore will, an’ go out of my way. . . . How’re you off fer smokes?”

  “I’ve quit. But my boy Julio—a pack of cigarettes would be most welcome.”

  “Hyar you are. . . . Bill, fork out. An’ you too, Pedlar.”

  Three packages came flipping to Clifton’s feet. “Thanks. But I didn’t mean to hold you up.”

  “So long, Forrest. Don’t forgit. You’re solid back thar.”

  “Wait!” called Clifton, as they were about to start. He stepped closer, suddenly gripped by awakening realization. “What’s the talk—about me?”

  “Not bad at all, Forrest,” heartily returned the one who had been the most loquacious. “Most died out now. But it was some talk, believe me. An’ the sum of it was thet you an’ Miss Lundeen fell in love—which was quite proper—an’ because of your parents hatin’ each other you had to marry secret. Wal, Malpass, who was always sweet on Lundeen’s gal, found it out an’ had Hartwell fire you—insultin’ your wife to boot. You jest beat hell out of Malpass, in accordance with Western ways. An’ the dirty half-breed throwed his gun, near killin’ poor old Jim Mason. Everybody is sorry you didn’t use a gun yourself, instead of a whip. . . . Wal, then your respective fathers, sore as hell because you’d married, throwed you out. . . . I reckon thet’s about all.”

  “Do you know—did you hear what became of—of Miss Lundeen?” queried Clifton, hoarsely.

  “I’m sorry, Forrest, but I never heerd.”

  “Wal, I know,” added the man called Bill, and he grinned happily. “I seen her get on the train thet very night. It was Number Four, goin’ East, an’ I was thar. She was dressed like one of them girls in the pictures, an’ she shore looked white an’ proud.”

  “Thar! She beat it, Forrest,” declared the eldest man, with satisfaction. “Didn’t you worry none about your wife! . . . So long now. Good luck.”

  They left Clifton standing beside the road, staring after the speeding car. It was long before he remembered the sheep, and longer before he could see to follow them.

  Guadaloupe Springs lay four weeks’ sheep travel from Gray Rocks. It was three thousand feet lower, and the winter climate was the perfect one of early autumn in high altitude, marred on rare occasions by a storm.

  A vast bowl of uneven land held Guadaloupe Springs in its center, where many groves of cottonwoods and long wandering lines of willows marked the presence of the water that gave life to the desert. The trees lately touched by frost shone in a wondrous variety of greens and golds, strong contrast to the monotonous gray of wasteland.

  From the height of the bowl, far over the broken red walls that rimmed it, could be seen the beginning of the arid zone of sand and stone and cactus, of that glimmering delusive region of the Journado del Muerte, which led on and on over the bad lands of the south and the border to Mexico.

  From the beautiful valley, like an oasis, where Lopez’ flock was to spend the winter months, no ghastly stretch or black butte of the southern desert could be seen. Only the slow-rising gray slopes, and the mounds of red rock, and the enclosing yellow walls, and the blue phantoms of peaks that resembled inverted cloud mountains in the sky, greeted the keen eyes of the sheep-herders.

  Clifton was nine weeks out of San Luis. It seemed nine years. It was
Julio who kept track of days. For the will that had upheld Clifton, the scorn of weakness and agony and death, the toil which dwarfed the trenches, the effort he owed himself, and the desert with its boundless horizons, its cruelty, its solitude, its lonely nights and solemn days, its piercing wind and cold and storm, its tormenting demand to be conquered—all these had worked upon Clifton’s body and mind, to begin a transformation which, if completed, would be a miracle.

  They pitched camp under a cottonwood that stormed Clifton’s heart, so like was it to the one in the valley at home—the gnarled, low-branched old monarch which Virginia Lundeen had climbed as a bare-legged girl, and under which as a woman she had tempted him to make her his wife. No hope ever to forget her here!

  A little clear stream babbled over rocks and left faint traces of white alkali along the sand. Rabbits and quail darted away into the green brush. Robins and larks and swamp blackbirds, on the way south, still lingered here, and a killdee sounded his piercing melancholy note.

  At the head of the stream was a natural corral in a triangle of the rocks, where the bare ground, packed hard by countless thousands of tiny hoofs, attested to the shepherds’ flocks of the past. Here Clifton and Julio drove their flock, shouting their gladness to be there, answering the barks of the dogs. The down journey was ended. In the spring the sheep would be fat and strong, and the return trip a reward of the months.

  “Julio, your Virgin Saint spoke true. All is well,” said Clifton.

  “Eet es well, señor,” replied the lad.

  Clifton surveyed the fallen cottonwoods and willows, the driftwood that had come down the stream in flood, and smiled at the thought of luxurious camp fires during the winter. What had he ever known of cold? As the worth of a fire! It took the desert to teach a man.

  Then, with trepidation of heart, he swung an ax. It strained him. It made him pant and sweat and labor. But he could swing it! A terrible, incomprehensible ecstasy assailed him. No man could ever tell what might happen. Life was sweet. Just to see and feel and smell! To be able to stand up like a man and work! Love was not necessary. The affection and understanding of a father could be dispensed with. The thought of mother must always be sad. No compensation for her! Friends were nothing. It was just enough to feel life flowing back through the veins, hot, throbbing, thrilling. To conquer physical obstacles—to be able to chop a log! In place of the God he imagined had failed him, he thanked Julio’s Virgin Saint.

  This vast shut-in basin was a desert paradise. There would be Indians and other sheep-herders, but they would not spoil the solitude, the long, long nights with the wind in the cottonwoods, the long, long days, solemn and still, empty of the hate and greed of men.

  Julio came and stood in amaze to see him swing the ax, to watch with his soft dark eyes, and to cry out, “Ah, señor ez grande again!”

  Clifton saw it through, and fell with the ax in his hands. He was weak. But how infinitely stronger than he had ever hoped to be! And as he lay there, panting, there was born in him an unutterable and ineffably passionate love for the raw, ruthless, flinty desert that had saved him.

  Chapter Fourteen

  SUNRISES of pale rose with fan rays, ice on the still pools that soon melted, lonesome full hours with the bleating sheep, sunsets of gold and red over the purple walls—so the days sped.

  In January, one morning, Julio discovered a loss of sheep. At first Clifton believed they had strayed, but Julio shook his head, and soon he pointed to moccasin tracks in the sand. The sheep had been stolen.

  “I will go fetch them back,” said Clifton, with heat.

  “No, señor. Mucho malo,” returned the lad, and with impressive gesture indicated a flight far over the Guadaloupe walls, across the border into Mexico.

  “But the sheep can’t travel fast. I’ll catch up with the thieves,” protested Clifton.

  “Mebbe no. Injuns shoot.” Plain it was that Julio did not think the loss of a few sheep worth the risk. But Clifton did. The Mexican lad seemed to be trying to tell him that little thefts like this one were always happening at Guadaloupe, but he did not implicate the herders and Indians in the valley. The raiders came from far and were never trailed.

  “I’ll go,” decided Clifton, with a zest. “They can’t steal my sheep without a run for it.”

  He must travel light, and he sifted the necessities down to his rifle, with a box of shells, and a bag containing hard biscuits, meat and salt, and some parched corn. It would not be necessary to pack a canteen, because the Indians dared not go far from water on account of the sheep. He took matches, a small hand-ax, which he stuck in his belt, and set out.

  The trail of the sheep was easy to follow, for their sharp little hoofs cut into even the baked adobe soil, but it took discerning eyes to find imprints of moccasins. He had never had experience enough on the range to become an expert tracker, which fortunately was not required in this instance.

  The trail led east, toward the shortest way out of the basin. No doubt the raiders would turn south when they got through the walls. It took Clifton three hours of steady tramping to reach the walls. They loomed like mountains of smooth red walls, straight up, with rims weathered, broken, splintered into crags, turrets, crumbled ruins of rock, where green growths found lodgment in the niches.

  Clifton had seen these irregular escarpments from a distance of twelve or fifteen miles, and therefore had underestimated their size. He passed through the break where the sheep tracks led, and found himself in an astounding world of walls, monuments, shafts, and rocks, all rising sheer out of level red ground, with aisles and lanes between, with hollows, caves, and caverns under the gigantic cliffs, water-worn perhaps, in an age when this region had been inundated. It was the most weird, colorful, and fascinating place he had ever visited. Guadaloupe Springs had not been an unknown name to Clifton, years before, but nothing had ever been told of these marvelous rock formations. They were scarcely three hundred miles from Las Vegas, south by west. It thrilled him to realize that many wonders and beauties of the desert were still unknown to all save a few wanderers.

  A glamour of color and silence seemed to enfold the regions of these upstanding ledges of rock. The sunlight appeared to be a reflection of the dark red, almost purple hue of the walls, and the gold-green of the desert floor. There was no sound except the silken rustle of swallows, so swift in flight that Clifton could not see them until they had darted by.

  He traveled cautiously, expecting to come in sight of the Indians around any corner. Between the great walls he sometimes had a glimpse of the open desert beyond, and the sight made him catch his breath. From the heights the land sloped away into a measureless and ghastly void of white and gray that seemed to have no end, that was lost in sky.

  At last he got through the labyrinthine maze. Then far down the gradual incline he caught sight of moving dots. They were miles away, but he doubted not that they were his quarry. Clifton followed, moving out of a direct line toward a slight eminence, from which he hoped to sight the stolen sheep.

  When he surmounted this vantage-point he made out a line of white specks that he instantly recognized as sheep, perhaps to the number of fifty. Behind moved the larger dots, dark in color. These were the Indians on foot, and they were heading down and toward the west.

  Clifton sat down to eat, and to ponder over the situation. He wanted only to recover the sheep, and that might not be easy unless he surprised the thieves. They were heading surely toward a dark green fringe, which probably marked a waterhole. If he could stalk them into camp, and fire a few shots to frighten them, the recovery of the sheep would present no great difficulty. On the other hand, however, if they sighted him in pursuit they might kill, or surely scatter the sheep, and probably ambush him.

  Therefore he waited until they had passed on out of sight, and then completing his simple repast, he headed to the west, aiming to get back under the protection of the walls. In this manner he lost ground in the pursuit, but still did not sheer far from the general directi
on of the raiders.

  By the middle of the afternoon Clifton had begun to tire. He had traveled far, at a rather brisk walk. Still he kept on, until he arrived at a point opposite the green patch that he believed the Indians were making for. Here he rested again and watched sharply for reappearance of the drivers and the sheep. They did not come in sight. Therefore, much concerned that he might have miscalculated, he pressed on straight down the slope.

  At sundown he was within five miles of the patch of green, that proved to be trees, among which something pale caught the last light of the sun. It was water or sand.

  A bulge of ground to Clifton’s left had long concealed any extensive view of the lay of the desert in that direction. He devoted all his searching gaze there, and as the shadows thickened he grew bolder and trusted more to the sparse growths for cover. Suddenly he heard a sharp sound that brought him startled and crouching to his knees behind a bush. He listened. Presently it rang out again—the bark of a dog.

  The Indians were probably just below the dip of ground ahead. He crawled noiselessly a few yards, then again listened. He thought he heard faint voices, but could not be certain. Presently he stole on farther, soon to attain a position where he could command the level below. And half a mile out he espied four Indians driving two score and more of sheep. He watched them. Just as the dusk was about to swallow them they entered the grove.

  Clifton pressed on then, under cover of the gathering darkness, and in half an hour the line of trees showed black against the horizon, and low down flickered a camp fire. This afforded him much satisfaction, but the further problem was what to do, now that he had caught up with the thieves.

  He had not noticed that they carried guns. But on the other hand this was probably their encampment, and there might be others. He circled, and entered the grove at its upper end, where trees stood far apart, yet the underbrush was thick. He slipped down into a dry wash, with sandy floor, and following it to a point he judged somewhat in proximity to the camp, he crawled up on the bank and under the bushes to reconnoiter.