Wanderer of the Wasteland

by Grey, Zane

  “And more,” muttered Adam, “if he happens to be a tall man I can pretend to be him—packing water back.”

  Therefore Adam screened himself behind a thick clump of mesquite near the trail and waited in ambush like a panther ready to spring.

  As he crouched there, keen eyes up the canyon, ears like those of a listening deer, there flashed into Adam’s mind one of Magdalene Virey’s unforgettable remarks. “The power of the desert over me lies somewhere in my strange faculty of forgetting self. I watch, I hear, I feel, I smell, but I don’t think. Just a gleam—a fleeting moment—then the state of consciousness or lack of consciousness is gone! But in that moment lies the secret lure of the desert. Its power over men!”

  Swiftly as it had come the memory passed, and Adam became for fleeting moments at a time the embodiment of Magdalene Virey’s philosophy, all unconscious when thought was absent from feeling. The hour was approaching midday and the wind began to rustle the mesquites and seep the sand. Adam smelled a dry dust somewhat tangy, and tasted the bitterness of it as he licked his lips. Flies had began to buzz around the dead Indian. Instinctively Adam gazed aloft, and, yes, there far above him circled a vulture, and above that another, sweeping down from the invisible depths of blue, magically ringing a flight around the heav- ens, with never a movement of wings. They sailed round and round, always down. Where did they come from? What power poised them so surely in the air?

  Adam waited. All at once his whole body vibrated with the leap of his heart. A tall, hulking man hove in sight, balancing a bar across his shoulder, from each end of which hung a large bucket. These buckets swung to and fro with the fellow’s steps. Like a lazy man, he advanced leisurely. Adam saw a little puff of smoke lift from the red, indistinct patch that was this water carrier’s face. He had cigarette or pipe. As he approached nearer and nearer, Adam received steadily growing and changing impressions of the man he was about to kill, until they fixed in the image of a long, loosely jointed body, a soiled shirt open at the neck, bare brown arms, and cruel red face. Just outside the mesquites the robber halted to peer at the spot where the Indian had fallen, and then ahead as if he expected to see a body lying in the trail.

  “Ho! Ho! if thet durned Injin I beat didn’t crawl way down hyar! An’ his brains oozin’ out!” he ejaculated, hoarsely, as he strode between the scratching mesquites, swinging the crossbar and buckets sidewise. “Takes a hell of a lot to kill some critters!”

  Like a released spring Adam shot up. His big hands flashed to cut off a startled yell.

  “Not so much!” he called, grimly, and next instant his giant frame sprung to the expenditure of mighty effort.

  At noon the wind was blowing a gusty gale and the sun shone a deep, weird, magenta color through the pall of yellow dust. The sky was not visible. Down on the ridges and in the washes dust sheets were whipped up at intervals. Clouds of flying sand rustled through the air, and sometimes the wind had force enough to carry grains of gravel. These intermittent blasts resembled the midnight furnace winds, except for the strange fact that they were not so hot, so withering. Every few minutes the canyon would be obscured in sweeping, curling streaks and sheets of dust. Then, as the gale roared away, the dust settled and the air again cleared. But high up, the dull, yellow pall hung, apparently motionless, with that weird sun, like a red-orange moon seen through haze, growing darker.

  The fury of the elements seemed to favor Adam. Heat and gale and obscurity could tend only to relax the vigilance of men. Adam counted upon surprising the gang. To his regret, he had found no weapon on the robber he had overcome. Wearing the man’s slouch sombrero pulled down, and carrying the water buckets suspended from the bar across his shoulders, Adam believed that in the thick of the duststorm he might approach near the gang, perhaps get right among them.

  When he got to the top of the amphitheatre, and found it a weird and terrible abyss of flying yellow shadows and full of shriek of wind and moan and roar, he decided he would go down as far as might seem advisable, then try to slip up on the robbers, wherever they were, and get a look at them and their surroundings before rushing to the attack.

  Down, and yet farther, Adam plodded, amazed at the depth of the pit, the bottom of which he had not seen. The plainly defined trail led him on, and in one place huge boot tracks, familiar to him, acted as a spur. The tracks were not many days old and had been made by Dismukes. Adam now expected to find his old friend dead or in some terrible situation. The place, the day, the heat, the wind—all presaged terror, violence, gold, and blood. No human beings would endure this nude and ghastly and burning hellhole of flying dust for anything except gold.

  At last Adam got so far down, so deep into the yellow depths, that pall and roar of duststorm appeared above him. He walked in a strange yellow twilight. And here the sun showed a darker magenta. Fine siftings of dust floated and fell all around him, dry, choking, and, when they touched his face, like invisible sparks of fire.

  Interminably the yellow-walled wash wound this way and that, widening out to the dimensions of a canyon. At length Adam smelled smoke. He was close to a camp of some kind. Depositing the buckets in the trail, he sheered off and went up an intersecting wash.

  When out of sight of the trail, he climbed up a soft clay slope, and, lying flat at the top, he peeped over. More yellow ridges like the ribs of a washboard! They seemed to run out on all sides, in a circling maze, soft and curved and colorful, and shaded by what seemed unnatural shadows. But they were almost level. Here indeed was the pit of the amphitheatre. With slow, desert-trained gaze Adam swept the graceful dunes. All bare! The twilight of changing yellow shadow hindered sure sight at considerable distance, and the sweeping rush of wind above, and then a low hollow roar, made listening useless.

  At length Adam noticed how all the clay ridges or ends of slopes to his right ran about a hundred yards and then sheered down abruptly. Here, then, was the main canyon through which the trail ran. The line of it, a vague break in the yellow color, turned toward Adam’s left. Adam deliberated a moment. Would he go on or return to the trail? Then he arose, crossed the top of the clay ridge, plunged down its soft bank, leaped the sandy and gravelly wash at the bottom, and started up the next ridge. This was exactly like the one he had surmounted. Adam kept on, down and up, down and up, until the yellow twilight in front of him appeared separated by a lazy column of blue. Adam’s nostrils made sure of that. It was smoke. Cautiously crawling now, down and up, Adam gained the ridge from behind which rose the smoke. Here he crouched against the soft clay, breathing hard from his exertions, listening and peering.

  The ridges about him began to show streaks of brown earth and ledges of rock. As he looked about he was startled by a rumbling, grating sound. It was continuous, but it had louder rumbles, almost bumps. The sound was rock grating on rock. Adam thought he knew what made it. With all his might he listened, pressing his ear down on the clay. The rumble kept on, but Adam could not hear any other sound until there came a lull in the wind above. Then he heard a squeaking creak—a sound of wood moved tight against wood; then sharp cracks, but of soft substances; then the ring of a shovel on stone; and at last harsh voices.

  So far, so good, thought Adam. Only a few yards of clay separated him from mining operations, and he must see how many men were there and what was the lay of the land, and how best he could proceed. The old animal instinct to rush animated him, requiring severe control. While waiting for the wind to begin again, Adam wondered if he was to see Dismukes. He did not expect to.

  The elements seemed to await Adam’s wishes. At that very moment the yellow light shaded a little dimmer and the sinister-hued sun cloaked its ruddy face. The gale above howled, and the circling winds, lower down, gathered up sheets of dust and swept them across the shrouded amphitheatre. And a wave of intenser heat moved down into the pit.

  Adam sank his fingers into the soft clay and crawled up this last slope. The rattle of loosened clay and gravel rolling down was swallowed up in the roar of wind. Rea
ching the last foot of ascent, Adam cautiously peeped over. He saw a wider space, a sort of round pocket between two yellow ridges, that ran out and widened from a ledge of crumbling rock. He crawled a few inches farther, raised himself a little higher. Then he saw brush roofs of structures, evidently erected for shade. The rumble began again. Higher Adam raised himself. Then he espied a coat hanging on a corner post of one of the structures. Dismukes’s coat. Adam could have picked it out of a thousand coats. Excitement now began to encroach upon his cool patience and determination. The gale seemed howling with rage at the truth here, still hidden from Adam’s eyes. Higher he raised himself.

  The brush-covered structure farther from him was a sun shelter, and under it lay piles of camp duffel. A campfire smoked. Adam’s swift eyes caught the gleam of guns. The day was too torrid for these campers to pack guns. The nearer structure was large, octagonal shape, built of mesquite posts and brush. From under it came the rumble of rocks and the metallic clink of shovels, and then the creak and crack and the heavy voice.

  Still higher Adam pulled himself so that he might see under the brush shelter. A wide rent in the roof—a huge brown flash across this space—then lower down a movement of men to and fro—rumble of rocks, clink of shovel, thud of earth, creak and crack—a red undershirt—blue jeans— boots, and then passing, bending men nude to the waist— circle and sweep of long dark streak—then again the huge brown flash; it all bewildered Adam, so that one of his usually distinguishing glances failed to convey clear meaning of this scene. Then he looked and looked, and when he had looked a long, breathless moment he fell flat on the soft clay, digging his big hands deep, trembling and straining with the might of his passion to rush like a mad bull down upon the ruffians. It took another moment, that battling restraint. Then he raised to look with clearer, more calculating gaze.

  The brush roof was a shelter for an arrastra. The octagonal shape of this sun shade filled the pocket that nestled between the slopes. Its back stood close to the ledge of crumbling rock from which the gold-bearing ore was being extracted.

  Its front faced the open gully. Under it an arrastra was in operation. As many of these Spanish devices as Adam had seen, no one of them had ever resembled this.

  In the center of the octagon a round pit had been dug into the ground, and lined and floored with flat stories. An upright beam was set in the middle of this, and was fastened above to the roof. Crossbeams were attached to the upright, and from these crossbeams dragged huge rocks held by chains. A long pole, like the tongue of a wagon, extended from the upright and reached far out, at a height of about four feet from the ground. The principle of operation was to revolve the crossbeams and upright post, dragging the heavy rocks around and around the pit, thus crushing the ore. Adam knew that mercury was then used to absorb the gold from the crevices.

  The motive power sometimes was a horse, and usually it was a mule. But in this instance the motive power was furnished by a man. A huge, broad, squat man naked to the waist! He was bound to the end of the long bar or tongue, and as he pushed it round and round his body was bent almost double. What wonderful brawny arms on which the muscles rippled and strung like ropes. The breast of this giant was covered with grizzled hair. Like a tired ox he bowed his huge head, wagging it from side to side. As he heaved around he exposed his broad back—the huge brown flash that had mystified Adam—and this mighty muscled back showed streaks and spots of blood.

  A gaunt man, rawboned and dark, with a face like a ghoul, stood just outside the circle described by the long bar. He held a mesquite branch, with forked and thorny end, which he used as a goad. Whenever the hairy, half-naked giant passed around this gaunt man would swing the whip. It cracked on the brown back—spattered the drops of blood.

  There were three other men shoveling, carrying, and dumping ore into the pit. One was slight of build and hard of face. A red-undershirted fellow looked tough and wiry, of middle age, a seasoned desert rat, villainous as a reptile. The third man had a small, closely cropped head like a bullet, and a jaw that stood out beyond his brow, a hard visage, smeared with sweat and dust. His big, naked shoulders proclaimed him young.

  And the grizzled giant, whom the others were goading and working to death there in the terrible heat, was Adam’s old savior and friend, Dismukes.

  Cautiously Adam backed and slid down the clay slope, and hurried up and down another. When he had crossed several he turned to the left and ran down to the trail, and followed along that until he reached the spot where he had left the buckets of water.

  There he drank deeply, and tried to restrain his hurry. But he was not tired, or out of breath. And his mind seemed at a deadlock. A weapon, a shovel, a sledge to crush their skulls. To keep between them and their guns! Thus Adam’s thoughts had riveted themselves on a few actions. There was, on the surface of his body, a cold, hard, tingling stretch of skin over rippling muscles; and deep internally, the mysterious and manifold life of blood and nerve and bone awoke and flamed under the instinct of the ages. Adam’s body then belonged to the past and to what the desert had made it.

  Swinging the crossbar over his shoulders and lifting the buckets, he took the trail down toward the camp! He bowed his head and his shoulders more than the weight of the buckets made necessary. The perverse gale blew more fiercely than ever, and the hollow roar resounded louder, and the yellow gloom of dust descended closer, and a weird, dim light streamed through the pall, down upon the moving shadows. All was somber, naked, earthy in this thickening, lowering pall. Odor of smoke and dust! A fiercely burning heat that had the weight of hotly pressing lead! Bellow and shriek and moan of gale that died away! It was the portal to an inferno, and Adam was a man descended in age-long successions from simian beasts, and he strode in the image of God, with love his motive, rage his passion, and the wild years of the desert at his back, driving him on.

  He rounded the last corner. There was the camp, fifty yards away. He now could almost straddle the only avenue of escape.

  The wind lulled. A yellow shadow drifted away from the sun, and again it shone with sinister magenta hue. All the air seemed to wait, as if the appalling forces of nature, aghast at the strange lives of men, had halted to watch.

  “Thar’s Bill with the water!” yelled the red-shirted man.

  Work and action ceased. The giant Dismukes looked, then heaved erect with head poised like that of a hawk.

  “Aw, Bill, you son-of-a-gun!” called another robber, in welcome. “We damn near died, waitin’ fer thet water.”

  “Ho! Ho! … Bill, ye musta run ag’in’ another Injun.”

  Adam walked on, shortening himself a little more, quickening his stride. When he reached and passed the shelter under which lay packs and coats and guns he suddenly quivered, as if released from dragging restraint.

  The robber of slight frame and hard face had walked out from under the shelter. He alone had been silent. He had peered keenly, bending a little.

  “Hey, is thet you, Bill?” he queried with hard voice, which suited his face.

  The gaunt robber cracked his whip. “Fellars, air we locoed by this hyar dust? Damn the deceivin’ light! … Too big fer Bill—er I’m blind with heat!”

  “It ain’t Bill!” screeched the little man, and he bounded toward where lay the guns.

  Adam dropped the buckets. Down they thudded with a splash. Two of his great leaps intercepted the little man, who veered aside, dodged, and then tried to run by. Adam, with a lunge and a swing, hit him squarely on the side of the head. The blow rang soddenly. Its tremendous power propelled the man off his feet, turning him sidewise as he went through the air, and carried him with terrific force against one of the shelter posts, around which his limp body seemed to wrap it- self. Crash! the post gave way, letting the roof sag. Then the smitten man rolled to lodge against a pack, and lay inert.

  Whirling swiftly, Adam drew his gun, and paused a second, ready to rush.

  The robbers stood stock-still.

  “My Gawd!” hoarse
ly yelled the red-shirted one. “Who’s thet? … Did you see him soak Robbins?”

  Dismukes let out a stentorian roar of joy, of hate, of triumph. Like a chained elephant he plunged to escape. Failing that, he surged down to yell: “Aha, you bloody claim jumpers! Now you’re done! It’s Wansfell!”

  “Wansfell!” flashed the gaunt-faced villain, and that gaunt face turned ashen. “Grab a shovel! Run fer a gun!”

  Then the red-shirted robber swung aloft his shovel and rushed at Adam, bawling fierce curses. Adam shot him through. The man seemed blocked, as if by heavy impact, then, more fiercely, he rushed again. Adam’s second and last shot, fired at point-blank, staggered him. But the shovel descended on Adam’s head, a hard blow, fortunately from the flat side. Clubbing his gun, Adam beat down the man, who went falling with his shovel under the shelter. Both of the other men charged Adam and the three met at the opening. They leaped so swiftly upon him and were so heavy bodied, that they bore him to the ground. Adam’s grim intention was to hang on to both of them, so neither could run to get a weapon. To that end he locked a hold on each. Then began a whirling, wrestling, thudding battle. To make sure of them Adam had handicapped himself. He could not swing his mallet-like fists and he had not been fortunate enough to grip their throats. So, rolling over and over with them, he took the rain of blows, swinging them back, heaving his weight upon them. Foot by foot he won his way farther and farther from where the guns lay. If one yelling robber surged half erect, Adam swung the other to trip him. And once in- side the wide doorway of that octagon structure, Adam rose with the struggling men, an iron hand clutching each, and, swinging them wide apart, by giant effort he brought them back into solid and staggering impact. He had hoped to bring their heads together. But only their bodies collided, and the force of the collision broke Adam’s hold on one. The young man of hulking frame went down, right on the shovel, and, quick to grasp it, he bounded up, fierce and strong. But as he swung aloft the weapon, Adam let go of the gaunt-faced man and hit him, knocking him against the other. They staggered back, almost falling.