CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE RAWHIDE
First of all he unhitched the horses from the buckboard and turned themloose. Then, since he was early trained in Indian warfare, he draggedPalmer to the wagon wheel, and tied him so closely to it that he couldnot roll over. For, though the bronco-buster was already so fetteredthat his only possible movement was of the jack-knife variety,nevertheless he might be able to hitch himself along the ground to asharp stone, there to saw through the rope about his wrists. Estrella,her husband held in contempt. He merely supplemented her wrist bandsby one about the ankles.
Leisurely he mounted Button and turned up the wagon trail, leaving thetwo. Estrella had exhausted herself. She was capable of nothing morein the way of emotion. Her eyes tight closed, she inhaled in deep,trembling, long-drawn breaths, and exhaled with the name of her Maker.
Brent Palmer, on the contrary, was by no means subdued. He hadexpected to be shot in cold blood. Now he did not know what toanticipate. His black, level brows drawn straight in defiance, hethrew his curses after Johnson's retreating figure.
The latter, however, paid no attention. He had his purposes. Once atthe top of the arroyo he took a careful survey of the landscape, nowrich with dawn. Each excrescence on the plain his half-squinted eyesnoticed, and with instant skill relegated to its proper category ofsoap-weed, mesquite, cactus. At length he swung Button in an easy lopetoward what looked to be a bunch of soap-weed in the middle distance.
But in a moment the cattle could be seen plainly. Button pricked uphis ears. He knew cattle. Now he proceeded tentatively, lifting highhis little hoofs to avoid the half-seen inequalities of the ground andthe ground's growths, wondering whether he were to be called on to ropeor to drive. When the rider had approached to within a hundred feet,the cattle started. Immediately Button understood that he was topursue. No rope swung above his head, so he sheered off and ran asfast as he could to cut ahead of the bunch. But his rider with kneeand rein forced him in. After a moment, to his astonishment, he foundhimself running alongside a big steer. Button had never huntedbuffalo--Buck Johnson had.
The Colt's forty-five barked once, and then again. The steer staggered,fell to his knees, recovered, and finally stopped, the blood streamingfrom his nostrils. In a moment he fell heavily on his side--dead.
Senor Johnson at once dismounted and began methodically to skin theanimal. This was not easy for he had no way of suspending the carcassnor of rolling it from side to side. However, he was practised at itand did a neat job. Two or three times he even caught himself takingextra pains that the thin flesh strips should not adhere to the insideof the pelt. Then he smiled grimly, and ripped it loose.
After the hide had been removed he cut from the edge, around andaround, a long, narrow strip. With this he bound the whole into acompact bundle, strapped it on behind his saddle, and remounted. Hereturned to the arroyo.
Estrella still lay with her eyes closed. Brent Palmer looked upkeenly. The bronco-buster saw the green hide. A puzzled expressioncrept across his face.
Roughly Johnson loosed his enemy from the wheel and dragged him to thewoman. He passed the free end of the riata about them both, tying themclose together. The girl continued to moan, out of her wits withterror.
"What are you going to do now, you devil?" demanded Palmer, butreceived no reply.
Buck Johnson spread out the rawhide. Putting forth his huge strength,he carried to it the pair, bound together like a bale of goods, andlaid them on its cool surface. He threw across them the edges, andthen deliberately began to wind around and around the huge and unwieldyrawhide package the strip he had cut from the edge of the pelt.
Nor was this altogether easy. At last Brent Palmer understood. Hewrithed in the struggle of desperation, foaming blasphemies. Theuncouth bundle rolled here and there. But inexorably the other, fromthe advantage of his position, drew the thongs tighter.
And then, all at once, from vituperation the bronco-buster fell topleading, not for life, but for death.
"For God's sake, shoot me!" he cried from within the smothering foldsof the rawhide. "If you ever had a heart in you, shoot me! Don'tleave me here to be crushed in this vise. You wouldn't do that to ayellow dog. An Injin wouldn't do that, Buck. It's a joke, isn't it?Don't go away and leave me, Buck. I've done you dirt. Cut my heartout, if you want to; I won't say a word, but don't leave me here forthe sun--"
His voice was drowned in a piercing scream, as Estrella came toherself and understood. Always the rawhide had possessed for her anoccult fascination and repulsion. She had never been able to touch itwithout a shudder, and yet she had always been drawn to experiment withit. The terror of her doom had now added to it for her all the vagueand premonitory terrors which heretofore she had not understood.
The richness of the dawn had flowed to the west. Day was at hand.Breezes had begun to play across the desert; the wind devils to raisetheir straight columns. A first long shaft of sunlight shot through apass in the Chiricahuas, trembled in the dust-moted air, and laid itswarmth on the rawhide. Senor Johnson roused himself from his gloom tospeak his first words of the episode.
"There, damn you!" said he. "I guess you'll be close enough togethernow!"
He turned away to look for his horse.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE DESERT
Button was a trusty of Senor Johnson's private animals. He was neverknown to leave his master in the lurch, and so was habitually allowedcertain privileges. Now, instead of remaining exactly on the spotwhere he was "tied to the ground," he had wandered out of the dryarroyo bed to the upper level of the plains, where he knew certainbunch grasses might be found. Buck Johnson climbed the steep woodedbank in search of him.
The pony stood not ten feet distant. At his master's abrupt appearancehe merely raised his head, a wisp of grass in the corner of his mouth,without attempting to move away. Buck Johnson walked confidently tohim, fumbling in his side pocket for the piece of sugar with which hehabitually soothed Button's sophisticated palate. His hand encounteredEstrella's letter. He drew it out and opened it.
"Dear Buck," it read, "I am going away. I tried to be good, but Ican't. It's too lonesome for me. I'm afraid of the horses and thecattle and the men and the desert. I hate it all. I tried to make yousee how I felt about it, but you couldn't seem to see. I know you'llnever forgive me, but I'd go crazy here. I'm almost crazy now. Isuppose you think I'm a bad woman, but I am not. You won't believethat. Its' true though. The desert would make anyone bad. I don'tsee how you stand it. You've been good to me, and I've really tried,but it's no use. The country is awful. I never ought to have come.I'm sorry you are going to think me a bad woman, for I like you andadmire you, but nothing, NOTHING could make me stay here any longer."She signed herself simply Estrella Sands, her maiden name.
Buck Johnson stood staring at the paper for a much longer time than wasnecessary merely to absorb the meaning of the words. His senses,sharpened by the stress of the last sixteen hours, were trying mightilyto cut to the mystery of a change going on within himself. The phrasesof the letter were bald enough, yet they conveyed something vital tohis inner being. He could not understand what it was.
Then abruptly he raised his eyes.
Before him lay the desert, but a desert suddenly and miraculouslychanged, a desert he had never seen before. Mile after mile it sweptaway before him, hot, dry, suffocating, lifeless. The sparsevegetation was grey with the alkali dust. The heat hung choking in theair like a curtain. Lizards sprawled in the sun, repulsive. Arattlesnake dragged its loathsome length from under a mesquite. Thedried carcass of a steer, whose parchment skin drew tight across itsbones, rattled in the breeze. Here and there rock ridges showed withthe obscenity of so many skeletons, exposing to the hard, cruel sky theearth's nakedness. Thirst, delirium, death, hovered palpable in thewind; dreadful, unconquerable, ghastly.
The desert showed her teeth and lay in wait like a fierce beast. The
little soul of man shrank in terror before it.
Buck Johnson stared, recalling the phrases of the letter, recalling thewords of his foreman, Jed Parker. "It's too lonesome for me," "I'mafraid," "I hate it all," "I'd go crazy here," "The desert wouldmake anyone bad," "The country is awful." And the musing voice of theold cattleman, "I wonder if she'll like the country!" They reiteratedthemselves over and over; and always as refrain his own confidentreply, "Like the country? Sure! Why SHOULDN'T she?"
And then he recalled the summer just passing, and the woman who hadmade no fuss. Chance remarks of hers came back to him, remarks whosemeaning he had not at the time grasped, but which now he saw weredesperate appeals to his understanding. He had known his desert. Hehad never known hers.
With an exclamation Buck Johnson turned abruptly back to the arroyo.Button followed him, mildly curious, certain that his master'sreappearance meant a summons for himself.
Down the miniature cliff the man slid, confidently, without hesitation,sure of himself. His shoulders held squarely, his step elastic, hiseye bright, he walked to the fearful, shapeless bundle now lyingmotionless on the flat surface of the alkali.
Brent Palmer had fallen into a grim silence, but Estrella still moaned.The cattleman drew his knife and ripped loose the bonds. Immediatelythe flaps of the wet rawhide fell apart, exposing to the new daylightthe two bound together. Buck Johnson leaned over to touch the woman'sshoulder.
"Estrella," said he gently.
Her eyes came open with a snap, and stared into his, wild with thesurprise of his return.
"Estrella," he repeated, "how old are you?"
She gulped down a sob, unable to comprehend the purport of his question.
"How old are you, Estrella?" he repeated again.
"Twenty-one," she gasped finally.
"Ah!" said he.
He stood for a moment in deep thought, then began methodically, withouthaste, to cut loose the thongs that bound the two together.
When the man and the woman were quite freed, he stood for a moment, theknife in his hand, looking down on them. Then he swung himself intothe saddle and rode away, straight down the narrow arroyo, out beyondits lower widening, into the vast plains the hither side of theChiricahuas. The alkali dust was snatched by the wind from beneath hishorse's feet. Smaller and smaller he dwindled, rising and falling,rising and falling in the monotonous cow-pony's lope. The heat shimmerveiled him for a moment, but he reappeared. A mirage concealed him,but he emerged on the other side of it. Then suddenly he was gone.The desert had swallowed him up.
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