My eyes opened to a gray sky. Clouds….I could not hope for rain, but they might stay. Even an hour or two would help. Slowly, and with difficulty, I sat up.
Sometime during the night I had lost the rags of one moccasin. With my knife I cut off part of the leg of my pants and wrapped it about my foot, tying it with a strip of rawhide left from my buckskin shirt.
For a moment I sat still, gathering my strength; then I rolled over and pushed myself up. By now they would be looking for me.
How far had I come? Three miles? Five? Perhaps even ten. I had walked steadily, although not making much time, but if I had made only two miles an hour, I could be ten miles away now, and they would have to find my trail.
South of me now was a wide, rough stretch of country, a place of great sandstone boulders, heaps of them, and many Joshua trees. It was a place where a man might hide. Somewhere in that vast sweep of country was where Peg-Leg used to hide his stolen horses. I broke into a stumbling run and held it for what must have been a half-mile; then I fell. Pushing myself up, I saw horse tracks.
Several horses had come through here, most of them unshod. They had come through on the run several days back. Pursued by something, man or animal. Yet they might lead me to water.
My canteen was still more than half-full, so I held to my course, following the wash, which led generally east.
The mountains were on my right, but my enemies would be there also. Suddenly on my right I saw an ancient cairn. Just three rocks, one atop the other, slick with desert varnish and almost pushed over by the Joshua tree growing up beside it.
Pausing, I stared at it, my eyes blinking slowly as my fogged brain tried to make sense of it. Old…old it was, older by far than the Joshua, perhaps as old as some of the people who left chipped blades along Pinto wash, made so long ago that rivers had run in the desert.
Yet I was starting on when I saw the other, smaller rock on the side of the cairn. A rock that indicated direction, but direction for what? To what?
Direction…I had no direction. Only a desire to escape, only a longing for the mountains, the cool, cool mountains. I took the direction the rock showed.
A dozen steps, maybe two dozen, and then a dim trail, such a trail as only the desert-skilled could recognize, and only a few feet of it, but a direction. I followed it, found more of the trail, and stupidly happy to have found something familiar, I staggered on.
Pausing near a giant Joshua, I peered around me, blinking. Nothing, nothing yet. But somewhere they were coming, they were looking for me.
Taking a brief swallow of water, I shook my head, trying through the fog of weariness to order some thoughts. Keep to low ground, don’t let even my head show. My pursuers would have the advantage of being on horseback and could see further.
There was a chance that, feeling sure of me, they would not start at once but would breakfast first. I might have an hour, perhaps a little more.
The ancient trail lay before me, no more than six inches wide, often less, but an Indian trail walked by those who put one foot down ahead of the other. Where the trail led, I had no idea, except that the direction was right. I started on, trotting now.
The morning clouds were gone, the sun was hot. Distantly I heard a shot. Had they found my trail, then? It could be, but I had left them little. Slowing to a walk, I turned down through a stand of Joshua trees and boulders, then across a small, shallow valley; then I sat down and rested again, but the rock was almost too hot for sitting, so I got up and went on. Now the old trail was more definite, and looking back, I could see no tracks or evidence of my passing.
A place to hide…anything!
I stumbled on. My improvised moccasin had worn through and the other was falling apart. My mind was hazy with exhaustion. I staggered, fell again, got up again, standing on my feet, staring through the shimmering heat waves.
Who was that?
Somebody…something…in the heat waves. I blinked my eyes and squinted against the glare. Somebody…an Indian?
An old Indian…or was I seeing things? I had stopped. He was an old Indian, very old. He wore a faded red shirt, open to the waist. On his head a sort of cloth band or turban. “Who…?”
There was a flat piece of turquoise on a string around his neck.
He lifted a hand and pointed to the rocks on my right. I looked, then looked back.
He was gone.
Starting forward, I called out, looking around. No one…and no tracks.
Of course, on this ancient trail, so worn, so hard-packed, such tracks would hardly be seen.
Suddenly I heard a distant call, then a shot. The old Indian had pointed….I turned and ran where he had pointed, fell, got up again, and saw a crack between the boulders and went through it, worming my way into the cool darkness of a place heavily shadowed by the rocks.
There was a small tank where rainwater had collected; a few gallons remained. There was a place where ancient fires had burned, blackening the rocks. I crawled back, deeper into the shadows. From my holster I took my gun, and there I lay, waiting for them to come.
There was a rush of horses’ hooves, horses that charged by, scattered among the rocks, some riding on. After a while several riders came back.
One of them said, “Now, where the hell…?”
“Back yonder somewheres,” another said.
“Tonio,” another said, “he loco. Hears nothing! He always hearin’ something! He always claimin’ to hear something, see something! I t’ink he hears nothing!”
“I don’t think he ever got this far,” the first voice said. “I ain’t seen a track in miles, an’ he can’t be that good!”
“Seen some horse tracks back yonder,” another commented.
“Wild stuff. I seen tracks a dozen times. Must be some of that bunch Ventura an’ his crowd was chasin’. He said he ran ’em into the desert.”
“Ain’t more’n five or six head.”
The voices grew fainter and passed out of hearing. I waited, clutching my gun. The place where I lay was hardly wide enough to turn around in, although right where the old fire had been there was room for two or three. It was no kind of a hideout, just a place where some Indians at some time had come to get out of the wind. The entrance crack being narrow, it was an unlikely spot, and there were a thousand like it not too far away in this vast jumble of boulders stacked into amazing piles.
Pillowing my head on my arm, I went to sleep, and it was the cold that awakened me. My arm was stiff and asleep. I shook it, pounded it to get the circulation going again, and sat up, listening.
There was no sound; all was very still. Lying back down, I went to sleep again, and when I awakened it was morning. Drinking a little water, I leaned back against the rock wall and rested, dozing.
They would be out there, waiting and watching. Maybe not within miles of where I was, but watching. This was not very far, I judged, from Stubby Spring…or Lost Horse Wells. At least, somewhere around. When night came, I would crawl out of here and start on my trek to the mountains.
There was a deep canyon west of where I lay, and if there was a trail into it—and there might be a way down from the spring—I could follow the canyon down, cut through the hills beyond by the canyon where the palms were, and then cross the valley to my friends.
Thinking of it made it sound easy; doing it would be something else. It would be a long, tough trip, and they might know about Stubby Spring and have it staked out. By that time I would need water with which to cross the country ahead of me, and I was going to get it.
If one or two men waited at Stubby Spring, we were all in trouble. I had a loaded six-shooter and twenty-four rounds in my cartridge belt, and I was in no mood for playing games. I’d been run over some of the driest, roughest country around. My feet were sore, I was worn down to a frazzle, and I was mad. If they were waiting there, i
t was because they intended to kill me, so they had bought cards in a rough game.
When the shadows started to fall, I edged out of my corner in the rocks and listened before coming clear out. I heard never a sound, but came out and started to walk. Stubby Spring was not far off.
Reaching back, I slipped the loop off my six-shooter and hitched it into position.
My canteen was full from the tank and I took a swallow just as I started. My mouth was dry as the inside of an old packrat’s nest, and my temper was running on mad.
A moment before they saw me, I saw their horses. There were two of them, and they saw me as I saw them, and I shot the one with the rifle.
I staggered but fired as I did so. The man who shot at me swore in Spanish, although he was an Anglo, and then cut loose at me again, but he missed, his shots going wild because he had taken three of mine.
He was settling down to the ground, and their horses were running wild off down the trail. Sitting on the sand, I was thumbing cartridges into my six-shooter, and when I was ready to start shooting, I looked over to where their fire was, and they were both down.
Holding my gun ready, I got to my knees and managed to lunge up to a standing position. Then I walked up to their camp, and there was a coffeepot on the fire and some bacon frying.
One of them had fallen so his pants were beginning to smolder, so I nudged his leg over with my toe and ate the bacon. Then I drank some coffee and went to where the rifle had fallen. My bullet had ruined the action, and the smashed-out-of-shape bullet had ripped off it into that man. He was torn up pretty bad.
CHAPTER 55
Lying near the fire where the two men had taken them from one of the horses was a pair of saddlebags and an old canvas rucksack. Dumping out the contents, which consisted of odds and ends a drifting man carries, I found a needle and thread, both of heavy stuff for mending coarse cloth or other gear, and filling the empty loops of my cartridge belt from theirs, I headed into the broken country near the canyon’s edge.
That canyon looked to be all of two thousand feet deep, but where the runoff from Stubby Spring fell into the canyon it looked like a man might make it. If I could get down there, any pursuers would have to ride a long way around.
Right now I wanted to get away from the spring, so I refilled my canteen, drank from the spring, and carrying the empty saddlebags and the rucksack, I found my way into the broken country near the canyon’s rim.
Sitting down in a hidden spot where I could watch the trail from the spring, I started to build myself a pair of moccasins. It was not a difficult job, and every Indian and most mountain men were doing it constantly, as moccasins had a way of wearing out.
Taking my time and using the material from the saddlebags, I cut out the moccasins and stitched them together, a better pair than I’d had since starting. I put the rest of the leather into the old rucksack and started hunting a way down into the canyon.
Nobody had ever told me climbing down into a canyon like that was going to be easy, so I took my time, easing from ledge to ledge, walking along here, using hands and feet against the rock wall at other places, until I got down.
There might have been easier places, but I’d no time for looking. On the bottom I rested in the shade of the cliff and then started down the canyon.
Maybe I’d walked three miles when I saw the buzzards. There were several of them and they were circling above something down below. Checking my gun to see if it was there, I climbed around some boulders, stepped along on some rocks, and went around a dead Joshua washed down by some flash flood.
Suddenly several buzzards started up from the ground, but they did not fly away. What was down there was dying, not dead.
Now I moved with greater care. My ears told me nothing beyond an occasional squawk from the buzzards. A couple of them had stopped flying and had perched themselves on rocks close above something they were watching. I could see their ugly necks crane to peer closer.
Then I came around a corner of rock and saw three horses. Two of them were down, one struggling to rise. The third horse was standing, legs spraddled, head hanging, obviously all in. Yet when one of the buzzards started down, his head came up and he moved at it.
They heard me scrambling down the rocks. The horse lifted his head and stared.
It was my black stallion.
For a moment I stopped dead still. I never saw a horse that looked worse and was still on his feet. He had fallen or been attacked by something. One shoulder was all torn and bloody, and there was a nasty laceration on one hip.
His head was up and he was staring at me, but he moved a little closer to protect the mare that was down.
“It’s all right, boy,” I said, “I’m coming!”
His ears pricked a little. I think he knew my voice, and he should have. I’d talked to him enough, from time to time.
Then I remembered the tracks I’d seen now and then and the conversation I’d overheard when somebody named Ventura was spoken of as chasing a small bunch of horses—“not more than five or six head.” Well, there were only three of them now, and one was dead. Coming closer, I saw the horse that was down had a shattered leg, one of the worst breaks I ever saw. That down horse was suffering a good bit and needed killing, but I dared not do it until I’d done something for the stallion. A shot now might frighten the stallion into running, and in the desert like this, he would surely die.
Speaking softly, I walked nearer, trying not to frighten him. He was in no shape to run, as whoever had chased them had simply run them ragged, and tough as he was, that big stallion was only hours away from going down himself, and then the buzzards would move in.
Edging closer, I took off my hat, and unstopping my canteen, I poured about half of the water into my hat and held it for the stallion to drink. He shied a mite but was too bad off to run, and when he smelled that water, he moved closer.
He dipped his nose into my hat and drank. He drank it all and wanted more, but what I had must be kept. We had a long way to go. However, in that canyon there was water, the canyon where the palm trees were. Getting there was another thing. It would be tough for me, tougher for that black horse.
With the straps from the rucksack, I made a makeshift bridle. From the beginning I’d had a hunch that horse had been ridden at some time or at least handled by some man or woman. He stood quiet while I slipped the bridle on, and let me lead him off down the canyon a ways. Leaving him standing there, I walked back and put that down horse out of its misery.
Leading the black stallion, I started down the canyon. There was water aplenty at Thousand Palms, but getting there would be a trick. No longer did I have just myself to worry about, but a mighty big horse that would need a lot of water.
The canyon down which we were walking, with the desert opening before us, collected runoff from several intermittent creeks, so when I saw a hollow near a boulder with cracked mud in the bottom, I decided to take a chance. Horses, wild horses at least, were good at finding water and sometimes pawing the dirt out to get at it.
Using my bowie knife, I started digging at the ground to see if there was water. When I’d worked maybe a half-hour I began finding damp earth, and down deeper, water began to come in. Scooping out more dirt, I let the water seep in. It was slow, but it came. That stallion needed no urging. He just put his head down and sucked it all up.
We stayed right there until sundown, and whenever there was water enough seeped in, I let the big black drink. Meanwhile I scouted around and found some jimsonweed growing. That was no great wonder, because it can be found growing most everywhere along roads and up canyons, even sometimes on the bald desert. Crushing up some of the leaves with water, I plastered them on the sores. Then I washed my hands with fresh sand, not trusting the weed too much.
When shadows started to gather, I got up. “All right, boy,” I said, “let’s you and me go home.
”
He came right along after me, and I did not even have to lead him. He knew when he’d found a friend. I would have dearly liked to ride him, but he was in no shape for that.
We started, taking our time, because he was a very tired horse. The water had done wonders for him, and I’d managed a drink for myself before we started out. Most of the way was downhill, a long, gentle slope. It would be that way until we were fairly close to the palm canyon; then we’d have to climb a bit. By that time the stallion would smell the water and would be eager to get to it.
We plodded along past smoke trees and occasional palo verde that grew along the wash, until we found the wide valley scattered with palms—singles, twos, and groves. Some were ragged with thick skirts of palm leaves that had served their time and folded over at the bottoms of the trees, with the leaves of successive years thickening the skirts as the trees grew tall. Some had been burned, leaving the trunks blackened but alive, but here and there the fires had proved too much and the palms had died.
It was a wild, desolate scene of fallen trees and scattered palm leaves, long dead. From among the palms a lonely coyote trotted away with only occasional backward glances at us who disturbed him.
From along the base of one grove there was a trickle of water rimmed with the white of alkali. Bad-tasting though it was, both the stallion and I drank and drank, then drank again.
Climbing a bench away from the small stream, we found a place under some palms where I searched for sidewinders or rattlers and found none. Lying down on some palm fronds, I promptly fell asleep and awakened hours later with the stallion nudging me with his nose. I put my hand on his neck, and he shied unconvincingly. Rising, I checked the sores on his back. They looked better, but I found no jimsonweed to renew the dressing, although the locality was a likely spot for it to grow.
The Lonesome Gods (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures) Page 39