Dust of the Desert

by Robert Welles Ritchie

  CHAPTER XVII

  THE ORDEAL

  With the lithe spring of a cat Bim put himself between Grant and theadvancing Indian. His face had gone dead white and his eyes were coalsblown upon by the wind of anger.

  "None of that! Get back there--you!" Bim's voice was scarcely audiblebut his pose of furious battling on the hair-trigger of release wassufficiently vocal to awe the Papago giant into a backward stumble.Then to Benicia:

  "Young woman, you're making the mistake of your life. I'm a'mightysorry for you, an' you are going to be right regretful yourself whenyou have time to think." Grant made a step forward to lay a checkinghand on his friend's arm. He would have spoken but the girl interrupted.

  "My father's blood on this man's hands!--the dagger from the wall ofhis chamber--" Of a sudden the last shred of restraint she had battledto impose upon herself gave way and a flood came under propulsion ofhysteria. Out fluttered her hands to point the object of her execration.

  "You--I do not know you! Just a chance meeting between us and we part.Then fate brings you to this house wounded--snatched from death. Anescaped convict from a chain gang--you yourself admitted as much justlast night. With good reason my cousin, Colonel Urgo, must have causedyour arrest. Why should I not believe you capable of killing my father?Why not when the signs of his very blood cry out against you!"

  "Senorita O'Donoju--" Grant's effort to check her was fruitless, forshe had whirled upon Bagley: "And you! Unknown to my father--unknown tome. He brought you here on your own representation. You said you werehunting for your friend to whom we had offered our hospitality. Can youdeny that both of you discovered opportunity here to kill--and then torob?"

  The storm that had swept the girl through this welter of imaginings,illogical, frenetic, took heavy toll of her physical reserves. Nowshe stood trembling, white-faced in the spreading dawn, pitiful. Hersmall hands were clenched into fists across her breast. Flutterings ofuncontrolled nerves made the flesh of her temples pulsate. Grant, forall the crushing horror of these moments, felt pity pushing through thenumbness Benicia's accusation had wrought. Never had he seen a woman sotortured by the devils of hysteria; he was appalled. He spoke to hergently:

  "If you will permit me to go to my room while you make furtherinvestigations I will answer any questions they may suggest. It must beplain to you, Senorita O'Donoju, that I cannot escape from this place."

  The girl gave him a dazed look as if she hardly comprehended what hesaid, then she slowly nodded and, beckoning the Indians to follow, sheturned and disappeared beyond the patio's green. Bim threw an arm overhis pal's shoulder and accompanied him to his room. At the door hewhirled Grant about with a strong grip of both his hands and gave him agrin more eloquent than any sermon on fortitude.

  "When the she-ones get to stampedin', old pal, they sure have ushelpless men winging. Now go in there and get a sleep while I take alook round below your window and elsewheres."

  Bim's easy injunction to sleep was not so easily followed by the manwho was a self-appointed prisoner. On his bed Grant tossed in a feverof mingled blind speculation and outraged pride. Strive though he mightto palliate Benicia's charge against him on the score of the girl'scomplete prostration through the night's tragedy, the quick and fieryblood in her that was inheritance from Spanish forebears, yet always hecame against the same ugly fact: one whom he loved with all the passionin him and whose return of love he had dared hope to win had accusedhim of murder out of hand.

  Yet how could he prove his innocence? Of a sudden that thought plumpeddown on him with the burst of a high explosive shell.

  Benicia's accusation had appeared monstrous, yes. But, look uponthe facts through her eyes--so a curiously impersonal phase of mindprompted; what were those facts as they appeared to the girl? A manwho was first a chance acquaintance in a train and then, by a trickof fate, a guest in the house, rouses the household at three o'clockin the morning by sounding an alarm in the patio. He calls "Murder!"though he does not say who has been murdered, he has not apparentlydiscovered the body of Don Padraic in his chamber.

  This man--this waif brought in from the desert--prevents the daughter'sgoing in to the room of death until first he has entered that roomand locked the door behind him. He leaves the marks of his fingers inblood upon the outside of that door. Then he and his friend--"call himconfederate" was Grant's cynical amendment--organize a hue and cryoutside of the house. While this is in progress a servant finds in theguest's room a dagger; instead of being in its usual place amid therack of weapons on the wall this dagger lies on the floor as if hastilythrown there by one who had no proper time for its concealment. Thedagger is blood stained and on its haft are the same finger prints asthose on the door of the dead don's chamber.

  There was the record. How refute it?

  Say that while lying awake he saw a hand appear at the bars of hiswindow and heard the tinkle of a knife dropped within? Why, if he wasso vigilant at three o'clock in the morning, had he not seen that handof a murderer steal in to abstract the weapon before the deed? Andwhose hand was it? Did not the burden of proof that it was not his ownwhich took the dagger from the wall rest solely upon Grant Hickman?

  Another's finger prints on that bloodied haft besides his own?Perhaps. But it needed the instruments of precision of a detectivecentral office to juggle with such minutiae as the whorls and spiralsin a finger print, and they most certainly were lacking at the CasaO'Donoju. Graver difficulty still, there were a hundred and moreIndians in the oasis; how gather them all together and take the printsof their fingers?

  The more his mind roved amid hypotheses the closer about him seemeddrawn the meshes of circumstance. As the sun of a new day painted aglory beyond the bars of his window Grant Hickman felt himself ashelpless as that Tomlinson of the Kipling story who plunged headlongthrough the space between all the suns of infinity.

  He must have slipped into the sleep of exhaustion, for it was near noonwhen a knock on his door roused him. At his bidding 'Cepcion opened toillustrate a command in Spanish with a backward jerk of her head. Grantarose and followed her through a corridor to the patio. Benicia wasstanding there in an attitude of awaiting him, a little beyond her wasBim, his face wreathed with a heartening smile.

  The girl received him with bleak eyes. "You will please follow me,senor," was all she said. Then she led the way, the two men a stepbehind her, out of the still house and down the avenue of palmstowards the Papago village. From time to time a turn in the path gaveGrant a glimpse of Benicia's face. It was a changed woman he saw.

  Gone was the vital spirit of joy of living which always gave thegirl her character of Eurydice in khaki; gone, too, that softnessof grain born of happiness undisturbed, of life amid the elementalthings of nature. This Benicia was a cold fury moving to judgment.The call of her Spanish blood from centuries past--call for vengeanceand blood-sacrifice--had possessed her. It was as if some mockingcartoonist had run a brush over the features of Innocence inportraiture, giving an upward twist of cruelty to lips, the glint ofblood lust in eyes.

  They came to the Indian village, all hushed in anticipation of someprodigy. Only the frog-croaking of the water drums and the dry clickingof the rasping sticks betokened a continuance of the mourning ritual.All the retainers of the Casa O'Donoju, farmers, cattle handlers, houseservants, men, squaws and half-naked children, were assembled in therudely-defined street that led between rows of reed and mud-cappedhuts. Two only were seated apart: the man who bobbled the drummingsticks over the turtle-back halves of the gourds and an ancient whomanipulated the rasping sticks. On every bronze-black face showed thestrain of awaiting an untoward event.

  When Benicia appeared some elderly squaws started afresh the lugubriousdeath howl, but a gesture from the girl silenced them. She beckonedQuelele to her and spoke some rapid words in the Papago tongue. He inturn passed the orders to two men, who ran into one of the nearby hutsto reappear staggering under the weight of a great metal kettle, suchas might be used for soap boiling, carried between
them. Quelele laidtwo heavy flat stones in the middle of the street; the kettle carriersdeposited their burden, rim down on the rocks. A space of two inches ormore showed between the kettle rim and the hard adobe.

  Still the hollow _bum-bum-bum_ of the water-drum, whisper and cluck ofthe notched sticks. A very old man, the skin of whose naked legs wasgrey and tough as elephant hide, had attached ceremonial circlets ofdried yucca pods about his ankles in a cuff extending almost to theknees. He took his stand by the instrumentalists and his feet moved ina shuffle in time to the drum beats. The pods emitted dry whispers.The rapt look of a seer was on his leathern features.

  The kettle in place, Quelele himself went to a small pen of _ocatilla_sticks on the outskirts of the village and brought therefrom a youngrooster. The fowl's head bobbed nervously and his small eyes glinted ashe was carried on the big Indian's arm through the throng. Two helperslifted the edge of the soap kettle while Quelele thrust the cockunderneath. A faint clucking came muffled from the iron prison. Thebird thrust his head out here and there from beneath the rim, seekingegress.

  Now Benicia took from 'Cepcion something she had carried wrapped aboutin a handkerchief and carried it to the kettle top. She let fall thehandkerchief and with a slight gesture focused the eyes of all upon thestained dagger. A sigh like the swish of a scythe in long grass sweptthrough the crowd as the girl balanced the knife on the exact top ofthe dome of fire-smudged metal. The ancient with the yucca rattles dida sacrificial step which caused a sharp alarm like that of the desertsidewinder's warning.

  Grant and Bim, still unaware of the significance of all thispreparation, sensed the growing tensity of emotions all about them.The Papagoes, like all their kind, more than ready to invest withritual any untoward incident of life, saw in the white girl'spreparations--particularly in the offering of the knife upon thisrude altar--formulae of an appeal to decision of powers beyond humancomprehension. Perhaps the elders, remembering tales of ancientcustom, recognized the preliminaries and welcomed a revival among theunregenerate younger men of a direct appeal to Elder Brother. If bigQuelele knew better he had kept his tongue still.

  Benicia's features had never relaxed their cold intentness duringthe preparations. There was even, to Grant's troubled scrutiny, someelement of the barbaric there. A look like that on the stone visageof an Aztec goddess, implacable, without mortal instincts. She tookher stand by the kettle and spoke rapidly to the Papagoes, pointing tothe knife, then lifting her finger to mark the place of the sun in thewhite sky.

  Abruptly she finished, stooped and touched one finger to the bottom ofthe kettle. It came away blackened by soot. Then she turned to Grant."It is the test of God," she said in a dulled voice. "My people haveused it in times past when they were perplexed as I am. All hereincluding you, Senor Hickman, and you, Senor Bagley, will endure thistest even as I just have done. Put your fingers to the kettle andshow them to all, blackened. God will speak through the mouth of theimprisoned cock when the guilty man touches the iron."

  Grant gave the girl a steady look, then without a word he stepped tothe blackened dome, swept the fingers of his right hand across it andheld them aloft. Benicia was looking away when Grant stepped backbeside her; he saw a convulsive movement of her throat--no other sign.Then big Bim dared the oracle with an easy grace. A shuddering intakeof breath from the Indians as each man underwent trial.

  Quelele now gave an order which brought all the men of the village andgreat-house into line of which he was the head. Even the musicians werereplaced by squaws who did not permit the drubbing and squeaking todiminish. The faces of all wore the set look of hypnosis--eyes whiteand staring, muscles twittering in cheeks, tongues licking out overdried lips.

  _Thrut-t-t-t-t!_ An extra flourish of the rasping sticks and a thunderof the water drums as Quelele started the line forward toward thekettle. The big Indian moved with a mincing sidewise step reminiscentof some deer-dance of his people at the festival of _sahuaro_. Hisarms were held rigidly crooked at elbows and fingers splayed. The greatmoon face was contorted into a lolling mask. He sweat with fear.

  Twice the lightning-like bobbing out and back of the imprisoned cock'shead as Quelele approached. "Ai-ie!" a squaw screamed in a frenzy.

  The leader touched the kettle, held up his blackened finger for thosein line behind him to see, then broke from line and stood at a littledistance from Benicia and the two white men.

  Second in line was the ancient with the yucca rattles on his legs.Coming to the kettle, he stood rigid, tilted his old eyes to theblinding sun. A shiver ran down his body which caused every dry podof his anklets to emit a whisper. He whirled once, dipped and swept afinger through the soot. "_Njo oovik_ (Bird speaking)," he cried, andthere was foam on his lips.

  But the bird did not speak, and the line came slowly on. The spell ofthe weird had Grant bound. The rational in him tried to prompt thatall this was but a shrewd application of the new psychological methodof crime detection as utilized by primitive peoples before ever thescience of the mind was thought of; but his imagination strained tohear the crowing of the cock when the finger of guilt was laid uponthe iron shell. Mutter of the drums, shuffle of dancing feet, gutturalcalls and imprecations: these things had swept away all prim gauds anddressings of a mind counting itself superior and he was swept back tokinship with the wild, its children. Again the desert moved to bringhim under its subjection.

  "Lookit that fellah!" It was Bim who gripped Grant's arm and pointedto the advancing line. One of the younger bucks had dodged out of hisplace and fallen back three numbers.

  On came the men facing trial by ordeal. Now and again the imprisonedcock thrust his head out with snake-like darting, and the individualwho was poised over the kettle hiccoughed fear. The young man who haddodged back tried the trick again when he was near the kettle; but theone behind him held him by the shoulders and forced him on.

  The dodger came to the place of test, hesitated, made a downward sweepof his hand and stumbled past. Big Quelele suddenly leaped at him andgripped his right hand. No smudge of soot on the fingers.

  "Hai--ee!" Quelele called, and the line stood still. He wrenched theyoung man's hand high above his head and showed the fingers clean."Hai--ee!" chorused fifty voices. Quelele started to drag the wretchback to the kettle.

  Then his victim went to his knees--to his face in the dust. He rolledand kicked, screaming. Still Quelele dragged him nearer the kettle,his right hand firmly gripped in the vise of his own two, forefingerextended to take the print of soot and draw the cock's crow.

  "I did it! I did it!" the wretched creature blubbered. Quelele droppedhim as if he were a poisonous lizard. The crowd pushed forwardmenacingly. The murderer fumbled in his trousers pocket and broughtout a shining silver peso, which he threw from him with a gesture ofhorror. Quelele picked it up and turned it over in his palm, his browheavily knotted. He passed it to Benicia.

  The girl turned the coin over to the reverse, whereon the spread eaglegrips a snake and a cactus branch in his talons. A deep knife cut wasscored through the neck of the eagle.

  The wretch in the dust saw she had noted the mutilation and cried outto her in pleading, "The sign, mistress! The sign! The soldier-senorUrgo tells me many months ago when I receive the sign I shall kill ormy brother, who is in his prison, will be shot!"

  "And he gave you this--" the girl began.

  "Yesterday, mistress. He passes me in his thunder-wagon and tosses methis peso. 'Find the knife in the room of the wounded gringo senor,' hecommands. 'Use no other.'"

  Benicia nodded to Quelele, who made a sign to others. They brought ahair rope and trussed the murderer hands to feet. His lips were mute.Stamp of fate was on his grey features. He knew his punishment: to betaken to the burning lava fields of Pinacate, where the dead volcanoesare, there to be left without gun or canteen; no man would see himagain. Such was the Papago custom decreed for murderers from beforetime.

  She who had ordained this trial by ordeal had turned away, once thewretch's confession had bee
n heard. The soul of the girl now stoodits own trial in turn; faced by the guilt of false suspicion, by thewounds wrought of bitter accusation, it must needs purge itself. Yes,even though the spirit of Benicia O'Donoju was not one easily to humbleitself. A long minute she fought with herself and finally turnedgropingly to make her hard penance before Grant.

  Then she saw the figure of the man whose debtor in honour she wasstriding with his companion towards the avenue of palms leading to thehouse. The distance between them seemed suddenly the breadth of theworld.