by Jon E. Lewis
“Come, Roseta,” he said. “Up behind me.”
He swung her up and settled her in the saddle.
“There. Put your arms around me. Hold tight, for we’re going to ride.”
When she had complied, he grasped her left arm. At the same moment he heard voices up the trail and the rapid clipclop of hoofs. Roseta heard them, too. Vaughn felt her tremble.
“Don’t fear, Roseta. Just you hang on. Here’s where Star shines,” whispered Vaughn, and guiding the nervous horse into the trail, he let him have a loose rein. Star did not need the shrill cries of the peons to spur him into action.
6
As the fleeing ranger sighted the peons, a babel of shrill voices arose. But no shots! In half a dozen jumps Star was going swift as the wind and in a moment a bend of the trail hid him from any possible marksman. Vaughn’s concern for the girl behind him gradually eased.
At the end of a long straight stretch he looked back again. If vaqueros were riding in pursuit the situation would be serious. Not even Star could run away from a well-mounted cowboy of the Mexican haciendas. To his intense relief there was not one in sight. Nevertheless, he did not check Star.
“False alarm, Roseta,” he said, craning his neck so he could see her face, pressed cheek against his shoulder. He was most marvelously aware of her close presence, but the realization did not impede him or Star in the least. She could ride. She had no stirrups, yet she kept her seat in the saddle.
“Let ’em come,” she said, smiling up at him. Her face was pale, but it was not fear that he read in her eyes. It was fight.
Vaughn laughed in sheer surprise. He had not expected that, and it gave him such a thrill as he had never felt in his life before. He let go of Roseta’s arm and took her hand where it clung to his coat. And he squeezed it with far more than reassurance. The answering pressure was unmistakable. A singular elation mounted in Vaughn’s heart.
It did not, however, quite render him heedless. As Star turned a corner in the trail, Vaughn’s keen glance saw that it was completely blocked by the same motley crew of big-sombreroed Mexicans and horses from which he had been separated not so long before that day.
“Hold tight!” he cried warningly to Roseta, as he swerved Star to the left. He drew his gun and fired two quick shots. He did not need to see that they took effect, for a wild cry rose, followed by angry yells.
Star beat the answering rifle shots into the brush. Vaughn heard the sing and twang of the bullets. Crashings through the mesquites behind, added to the gunshots and lent wings to Star. This was a familiar situation to the great horse. Then for Vaughn it became a strenuous job to ride him, and a doubly fearful one, owing to Roseta. She clung like a broom to the speeding horse. Vaughn, after sheathing his gun, had to let go of her, for he needed one hand for the bridle and the other to ward off the whipping brush. Star made no allowance for that precious part of his burden at Vaughn’s back, and he crashed through every opening between mesquites that presented itself. Vaughn dodged and ducked, but he never bent low enough for a branch to strike Roseta.
At every open spot in the mesquite, or long aisle between the cacti, Vaughn looked back to see if any of his pursuers were in sight. There was none, but he heard a horse pounding not far behind and to the right. And again he heard another on the other side. Holding the reins in his teeth Vaughn reloaded the gun. To be ready for snap shots he took advantage of every opportunity to peer on each side and behind him. But Star appeared gradually to be outdistancing his pursuers. The desert grew more open with a level gravel floor. Here Vaughn urged Star to his limit.
It became a dead run then, with the horse choosing the way. Vaughn risked less now from the stinging mesquite branches. The green wall flashed by on each side. He did not look back. While Star was at his best Vaughn wanted to get far enough ahead to slow down and save the horse. In an hour it would be dusk – too late for even a vaquero to track him until daylight had come again.
Roseta stuck like a leech, and the ranger had to add admiration to his other feelings toward her. Vaughn put his hand back to grasp and steady her. It did not take much time for the powerful strides of the horse to cover the miles. Finally Vaughn pulled him into a gallop and then into a lope.
“Chata, are you all right?” he asked, afraid to look back, after using that romantic epithet.
“Yes. But I can’t – hold on – much longer,” she panted. “If they catch us – shoot me first.”
“Roseta, they will never catch us now,” he promised.
“But – if they do – promise me,” she entreated.
“I promise they’ll never take us alive. But, child, keep up your nerve. It’ll be sunset soon – and then dark. We’ll get away sure.”
“Vaughn, I’m not frightened. Only – I hate those people – and I mustn’t fall – into their hands again. It means worse – than death.”
“Hush! Save your breath,” he replied, and wrapping a long arm backward round her slender waist he held her tight. “Come, Star, cut loose,” he called, and dug the horse’s flank with a heel.
Again they raced across the desert, this time in less of a straight line, though still to the north. The dry wind made tears dim Vaughn’s eyes. He kept to open lanes and patches to avoid being struck by branches. And he spared Star only when he heard the animal’s heaves of distress. Star was not easy to break from that headlong flight, but at length Vaughn got him down to a nervous walk. Then he let Roseta slip back into the saddle. His arm was numb from the long strain.
“We’re – far ahead,” he panted. “They’ll trail – us till dark.” He peered back across the yellow and green desert, slowly darkening in the sunset. “But we’re safe – thank Gawd.”
“Oh, what a glorious ride!” cried Roseta between breaths. “I felt that – even with death so close . . . Vaughn, I’m such a little – fool. I longed – for excitement. Oh, I’m well punished . . . But for you—”
“Save your breath, honey. We may need to run again. After dark you can rest and talk.”
She said no more. Vaughn walked Star until the horse had regained his wind, and then urged him into a lope, which was his easiest gait.
The sun sank red in the west; twilight stole under the mesquite and the pale verde; dusk came upon its heels; the heat tempered and there was a slight breeze. When the stars came out Vaughn took his direction from them, and pushed on for several miles. A crescent moon, silver and slender, came up over the desert.
Young as it was, it helped brighten the open patches and the swales. Vaughn halted the tireless horse in a spot where a patch of grass caught the moonlight.
“We’ll rest a bit,” he said, sliding off, but still holding on to the girl. “Come.”
She just fell off into his arms, and when he let her feet down she leaned against him. “Oh, Vaughn!” He held her a moment, sorely tempted. But he might take her weakness for something else.
“Can you stand? . . . You’d better walk around a little,” he said.
“My legs are dead.”
“I want to go back a few steps and listen. The night is still. I could hear horses at a long distance.”
“Don’t go far,” she entreated him.
Vaughn went back where he could not hear the heaving, blowing horse, and turned his keen ear to the breeze. It blew gently from the south. Only a very faint rustle of leaves disturbed the desert silence. He held his breath and listened intensely. There was no sound! Even if he were trailed by a hound of a vaquero he was still far ahead. All he required now was a little rest for Star. He could carry the girl. On the way back across the open he tried to find the tracks Star had left. A man could trail them, but only on foot. Vaughn’s last stern doubt took wing and vanished. He returned to Roseta.
“No sound. It is as I expected. Night has saved us,” he said.
“Night and canyu. Oh, I watched you, ranger man.”
“You helped, Roseta. That Mexican who led your horse was suspicious. But when you looked at him – he fo
rgot. Small wonder . . . Have you stretched your legs?”
“I tried. I walked some, then flopped here . . . Oh, I want to rest and sleep.”
“I don’t know about your sleeping, but you can rest riding” he replied, and removing his coat folded it around the pommel of his saddle, making a flat seat there. Star was munching the grass. He was already fit for another race. Vaughn saw to the cinches, and then mounted again, and folded the sleeves of his coat up over the pommel. “Give me your hand . . . Put your foot in the stirrup. Now.” He caught her and lifted her in front of him, and settling her comfortably upon the improvised seat, he put his left arm around her. Many a wounded comrade had he packed this way. “How is – that?” he asked unsteadily.
“It’s very nice,” she replied, her dark eyes looking inscrutable in the moonlight. And she relaxed against his arm and shoulder.
Vaughn headed Star north at a brisk walk. He could not be more than six hours from the river in a straight line. Canyons and rough going might deter him. But even so he could make the Rio Grande before dawn. Then and then only did he surrender to the astonishing presence of Roseta Uvaldo, to the indubitable fact that he had saved her, and then to thoughts wild and whirling of the future. He gazed down upon the oval face so balanced in the moonlight, into the staring black eyes whose look might mean anything.
“Vaughn, was it that guard or you – who called me chata?” she asked, dreamily.
“It was I – who dared,” he replied huskily.
“Dared! Then you were not just carried away – for the moment?”
“No, Roseta . . . I confess I was as – as bold as that poor devil.”
“Vaughn, do you know what chata means?” she asked gravely.
“It is the name a vaquero has for his sweetheart.”
“You mean it, señor?” she asked, imperiously.
“Lord help me, Roseta, I did, and I do . . . I’ve loved you long.”
“But you never told me!” she exclaimed, with wonder and reproach. “Why?”
“What hope had I? A poor ranger. Texas Medill! . . . Didn’t you call me ‘killer of Mexicans’?”
“I reckon I did. And it is because you are that I’m alive to thank God for it . . . Vaughn, I always liked you, respected you as one of Texas’ great rangers – feared you, too. I never knew my real feelings . . . But I – I love you now.”
The night wore on, with the moon going down, weird and coldly bright against the dark vaulted sky. Roseta lay asleep in Vaughn’s arm. For hours he had gazed, after peering ahead and behind, always vigilant, always the ranger, on that wan face against his shoulder. The silent moonlit night, the lonely ride, the ghostly forms of cactus were real, though Vaughn never trusted his senses there. This was only the dream of the ranger. Yet the sweet fire of Roseta’s kisses still lingered on his lips.
At length he changed her again from his right arm back to his left. And she awakened, but not fully. In all the years of his ranger service, so much of which he lived over on this ride, there had been nothing to compare with this. For his reward had been exalting. His longings had received magnificent fulfillment. His duty had not been to selfish and unappreciative officials, but to a great state – to its people – to the native soil upon which he had been born. And that hard duty, so poorly recompensed, so bloody and harrowing at times, had by some enchantment bestowed upon one ranger at least a beautiful girl of the border, frankly and honestly Texan, yet part Spanish, retaining something of the fire and spirit of the Dons who had once called Texas their domain.
In the gray of dawn, Vaughn lifted Roseta down from the weary horse upon the south bank of the Rio Grande.
“We are here, Roseta,” he said gladly. “It will soon be light enough to ford the river. Star came out just below Brownsville. There’s a horse, Roseta! He shall never be risked again . . . In an hour you will be home.”
“Home? Oh, how good! . . . But what shall I say, Vaughn?” she replied, evidently awakening to the facts of her predicament.
“Dear, who was the feller you ran – rode off with yesterday mawnin’?” he asked.
“Didn’t I tell you?” And she laughed. “It happened to be Elmer Wade – that morning . . . Oh, he was the unlucky one. The bandits beat him with quirts, dragged him off his horse. Then they led me away and I didn’t see him again.”
Vaughn had no desire to acquaint her then with the tragic fate that had overtaken that young man.
“You were not – elopin’?”
“Vaughn! It was only fun.”
“Uvaldo thinks you eloped. He was wild. He raved.”
“The devil he did!” exclaimed Roseta rebelliously. “Vaughn, what did you think?”
“Dearest, I – I was only concerned with trackin’ you,” he replied, and even in the gray gloom of the dawn those big dark eyes made his heart beat faster.
“Vaughn, I have peon blood in me,” she said, and she might have been a princess for the pride with which she confessed it. “My father always feared I’d run true to the Indian. Are you afraid of your chata?”
“No, darlin’.”
“Then I shall punish Uvaldo . . . I shall elope.” “Roseta!” cried Vaughn.
“Listen.” She put her arms around his neck, and that was a long reach for her. “Will you give up the ranger service? I – I couldn’t bear it, Vaughn. You have earned release from the service all Texans are so proud of.”
“Yes, Roseta. I’ll resign,” he replied with boyish, eager shyness. “I’ve some money – enough to buy a ranch.”
“Far from the border?” she entreated.
“Yes, far. I know just the valley – way north, under the Llano Estacado . . . But, Roseta, I shall have to pack a gun – till I’m forgotten.”
“Very well, I’ll not be afraid – way north,” she replied. Then her sweet gravity changed to mischief. “We will punish Father. Vaughn, we’ll elope right now! We’ll cross the river – get married – and drive out home to breakfast . . . How Dad will rave! But he would have me elope, though he’d never guess I’d choose a ranger.”
Vaughn swung her up on Star, and leaned close to peer up at her, to find one more assurance of the joy that had befallen him. He was not conscious of asking, when she bent her head to bestow kisses upon his lips.
MAX BRAND
Wine on the Desert
FREDERICK SCHILLER FAUST (1892–1944) was born in Seattle, Washington. It was his lifelong ambition to be a poet, but it was as a Western pulp fiction writer under the pseudonym of Max Brand that he became famous. He wrote most often for Western Story Magazine, sometimes contributing as many as a million words per year. Brand’s Western fiction displays little interest in history or geography (he once said that the West was “ disgusting”), but is often extremely readable nonetheless. His personal dictum for the writing of Western stories was “ action, action, action”. Many of Brand’s three hundred novels and countless short stories were turned into films by Hollywood, including his best-known novel, Destry Rides Again (1930). Brand himself worked in Hollywood as a scriptwriter for MGM, Columbia and Warners during the late 1930s, before going to Italy as a war correspondent (despite a serious heart condition), where he died from shrapnel wounds.
“Wine on the Desert” is from 1936. It is easy to dismiss Brand as a writer, but the atmosphere and plot of this story are unforgettable.
THERE WAS NO hurry, except for the thirst, like clotted salt, in the back of his throat, and Durante rode on slowly, rather enjoying the last moments of dryness before he reached the cold water in Tony’s house. There was really no hurry at all. He had almost twenty-four hours’ head start, for they would not find his dead man until this morning. After that, there would be perhaps several hours of delay before the sheriff gathered a sufficient posse and started on his trail. Or perhaps the sheriff would be fool enough to come alone.
Durante had been able to see the wheel and fan of Tony’s windmill for more than an hour, but he could not make out the ten acres of the vineyard unti
l he had topped the last rise, for the vines had been planted in a hollow. The lowness of the ground, Tony used to say, accounted for the water that gathered in the well during the wet season. The rains sank through the desert sand, through the gravels beneath, and gathered in a bowl of clay hardpan far below.
In the middle of the rainless season the well ran dry but, long before that, Tony had every drop of the water pumped up into a score of tanks made of cheap corrugated iron. Slender pipe lines carried the water from the tanks to the vines and from time to time let them sip enough life to keep them until the winter darkened overhead suddenly, one November day, and the rain came down, and all the earth made a great hushing sound as it drank. Durante had heard that whisper of drinking when he was here before; but he never had seen the place in the middle of the long drought.
The windmill looked like a sacred emblem to Durante, and the twenty stodgy, tar-painted tanks blessed his eyes; but a heavy sweat broke out at once from his body. For the air of the hollow, unstirred by wind, was hot and still as a bowl of soup. A reddish soup. The vines were powdered with thin red dust, also. They were wretched, dying things to look at, for the grapes had been gathered, the new wine had been made, and now the leaves hung in ragged tatters.
Durante rode up to the squat adobe house and right through the entrance into the patio. A flowering vine clothed three sides of the little court. Durante did not know the name of the plant, but it had large white blossoms with golden hearts that poured sweetness on the air. Durante hated the sweetness. It made him more thirsty.
He threw the reins off his mule and strode into the house. The water cooler stood in the hall outside the kitchen. There were two jars made of a porous stone, very ancient things, and the liquid which distilled through the pores kept the contents cool. The jar on the left held water; that on the right contained wine. There was a big tin dipper hanging on a peg beside each jar. Durante tossed off the cover of the vase on the left and plunged it in until the delicious coolness closed well above his wrist.
