Dust of the Desert

by Robert Welles Ritchie

  CHAPTER XIX

  THIRST

  The sun went down before the sand storm abated. Two men, the one calledcivilized, the other a savage, crouched like rabbits in a covertbeneath the body of the little car with a high sand drift piled up towindward even over the radiator top. Two mites in the wind-scourgedwilderness of Altar with love o' life the leveller that made them kin.

  When the last vagrant wind fury had passed fell silence almost terrificby contrast with the uproar of the storm. In place of the slitheringand whistling of driven sand an oppressive stillness, which seemeddropped from the void of the stars, now showing. Occasionally the dryrustle of sand dropping in rivulets from some desert bush lifting itshead after the scourging; that was all.

  When the two crawled out from beneath their shelter Guadalupe was foran immediate start afoot in the direction of the faint pencilings ofred marking the west. But Doc Stooder possessed an abiding glimmerof faith in the soundness of the car and insisted on taking stockof its motive possibilities. A cursory examination convinced him ofthe hopelessness of his trust, for the sand was heaped entirely overthe unprotected engine--desert cars dispense with a hood because itblankets the engine's heat--and he knew that even with water in theradiator he couldn't get a kick out of the thing before a thoroughoverhauling. This was out of the question. They must achieve theirescape from the desert's trap afoot.

  The Papago started on a swinging walk a little north of west, the Docfollowing. They had not gone far when the white man discovered theywere not following the road; each step was through loose sand whichreceived the foot with a viscous hold and reluctantly released it. TheDoc snarled a query at his companion: why in the name of deletion hadhe quit the Road of the Dead Men?

  "Not quit--finding him," came Guadalupe's grudging answer. Then Stooderadmitted to himself the possibility that during the time the little carhad pushed on into the storm he had tooled it off the road. How far hehad driven away from the single track which spans Altar he could nothazard a guess. Anyway, he knew one thing: he was dog tired, and ifthis mangy black coyote thought A. Stooder, M.D., was going to wallowthrough sand all night without a sleep he had another think coming.

  Reaction from the excitements of the past two days added extraweight to the Doc's already none-too-light handicap of alcoholicrepercussions. The storm had torn his nerves to tatters; his mouth wasas dry as an old church pew cushion; each of his legs felt as if theywere dragging an Oregon boot. Stooder's mind was too dulled to probedown below these afflictions and read the real seriousness of hissituation; it dealt only with cogent aches and reluctances.

  "Hey, Guadalupe! We take a sleep right here." The Doc halted. Great washis surprise when he saw the Papago striding on. Hot rage bubbled tohis lips in an explosive Mexican oath.

  "Hey, you lizard-eatin' mozo, hear me? We stop here for the bigshut-eye!" The Doc spurred his long legs into a gangling run toovertake the Indian, who had plodded on unheeding. All the arrogance ofthe white man in his fancied superiority fell with the doctor's hand onthe Indian's shoulder. Guadalupe wrenched free and turned to face himsulkily.

  "Sleep here--to-morrow much sun--no water. Maybe to-morrow we die here.Walk!" Guadalupe's sparse vocabulary of Spanish words was drained; butthe manner of his resuming the forward hike was sufficiently eloquent.Guadalupe, born to the desert code and grown to manhood under theinexorable desert law, had in mind but a single impulse--to survive.His mind plumped through the bog of discomforts wherein Stooder'swas mired to read clearly the tablets of the desert's decalogue: tencommandments in one--live! In extremity throw over loyalty, discardobligations of oath or of blood, strip the soul to its elementalselfishness; but live!

  Guadalupe strode on, still bearing to the north and the west, and stillno road. Stooder, growing more weary each step, spent his strength inblind rage at the stubbornness of the Papago. He conned over variouscapital operations he would like to perform with Guadalupe for asubject. His brain tired of that and began to nurture the germ of a newthought. Why strain himself keeping up with that ring-tailed kangaroorat who skipped on and on without rest? Guadalupe left the print ofhis foot every step he took; those footprints would point to whereverGuadalupe might go--and the Papago, of course, knew the shortest wayout of this hellhole--so why break his own neck? The old Doc wouldtake a little snooze and then just follow the footprints when he feltgood and ready to do so.

  The gangling form crumpled up as if cut off at the knees. Guadalupeheard a thud, turned for a half-glance over his shoulder and pushedsteadily on under the stars. It was not in the Papago's code to addone ounce to the weight of circumstance obtruding between himself andwater. In a dozen steps his figure was swallowed up in the dark.

  Stooder may have allotted to himself only that minimum of sleepdesignated as a snooze. But a high sun pried open his reluctanteyelids. He sat up and sent a dazed glance around an unfamiliar world.Mountains tawny and black with knife-edge water scores down theirflanks; a sea of scrub stretching interminably from their bases;patches of gypsum and _salitre_ showing dull white as scars of leprosyhere and there amid the grey-green of the _camisa_. The sky already wastaking on the yellow-white glaze indicative of imminent heat.

  The Doc arose and shook the sand out of the creases of his clothing.First definite impression coming to him was the need of a drink: hisfavourite tequila if might be, water in a pinch. All the nerves inhis body twittered "Hear--hear!" to the first of the alternatives.Then, his mind beginning to function along the line of the night'simpressions, Doc Stooder read the story of the footprints leading offto the north and west. There they were: good li'l signposts; they'dtake him to a drink just as easy!

  Stooder's renewed strength carried him easily along the trail thePapago had left. For an hour, that is; then trouble. For the sanddisappeared under a broad apron of _caliche_--a hardpan of bakedmineral salts and earth almost impervious even to the shod hoof of ahorse. It was like a door swung shut on the trailer--the locked doorto some labyrinth beyond. Here the last firm print of a boot in thesand, there nothingness. The Doc paused, looked back over the cup-likeshadows marking the footprint trail he had been following to take itsline of direction, then he pushed ahead along that line.

  Another hour, and he still was on the _caliche_ outcrop. He stopped toconsider. Where in the name of all the angels was that road--the Roadof the Dead Men? If he'd driven the car a little south of it during thesand storm, surely Guadalupe must have cut tangent to it by this time.And if the road passed over the _caliche_ flat there'd be wheel marks;that was sure. Miss that road and miss the Papago's trail both--whythen old Doc Stooder'd be a goner!

  He tried to follow his own back trail by such small signs as thescratch of a hobnail against an embedded rock and a thin print of asole in a pocket of dust. A while and he had lost even that. He stoppedand swabbed his streaming face with a shirtsleeve--he now was carryinghis coat.

  "By the eternal, Stooder, you gotta do something--and do it dam'dpronto!"

  Once more he turned on his own tracks. Better go back and find thatputrid Papago's trail and let the road go to the devil. Whole half hourwasted a'ready--good half hour, by criminy! with a drink just that muchfarther off.

  It was not so easy finding the scored rocks and the stamp of a heelin pools of dust; not so easy as the first essay. For the sun was atmeridian now and foreshortened little shadows to nothingness. Plump!he came to the edge of the hardpan and into the sandy soil. No tracksthere. Should he bear to right or left in circling the edge of the_caliche_ on his hunt for the footprints? If he guessed wrong where'dhe be? "Oh, dear God!"

  He turned to the left and resumed his tramp. Furnace light refractedfrom the sand seared into his eyes, which must be always kept downwardpeering--spying. His mouth now was dry as rotted wood. Somethingalien there kept bothering him by pressing against the roof of it. Heexplored with his fingers and discovered the alien object to be histongue, which was swelling.

  "But my mind's clear--clear as a bell. Got a steady mind anyway. Gottahold on
to that or I'm a gone coon."

  A slight breeze struck his right arm more penetratingly than it should.Stooder shifted his glance to his arm, held crooked.

  "Good God! Coat's gone!" Dropped somewhere--that coat in whose pocketwas a prescription book; among its pages the map of the treasure site.The precious map showing where lay the bell and the beam! The manwhirled and started on a staggering run along the rim of the _caliche_he had been travelling.

  "Must find that coat! Don't find the coat an' I lose the pearls an' thegold--the pearls an' the gold!"

  He halted as if shot. Down the wind came to him the faint tolling ofa bell. _Dong--dong._ Silvery throb of a swinging bell. Measured,unhurried; like the sounding of a bell for mass of a Sunday morning.The Doc had heard the bell of San Xavier sending its call across thealfalfa fields of a Sunday morning, just like that.

  Even as he strained his ears to drink in the full miracle of it thesound faded, ceased.

  "I heard it! A bell! No illusion. Mind's still clear--still clear!"On he went, his gaunt legs weaving in wide circles. He came to a darkpatch on the hardpan and strided over it, unheeding. It was his missingcoat, in the pocket the precious map of the treasure site. The Doc didnot see the coat because again his ears were drinking in the maddeningtolling of the bell; this time a little clearer down the wind in hisface. An animal cry, half articulate, burst from his swollen lips:

  "The mission bell! Bell of the Four Evangelists which I found t'otherday! Callin' me back!"

  Right over yonder where the mountains cracked apart to let that arroyodown onto the plain: that's where the bell sounded. Yes, sir, nomistake about it. 'Bout four-five mile, judgin' from the sound. Hearwhat that bell's a-callin'? "Gol-l-ld! Gol-l-ld!"

  Doc Stooder, coatless, hatless, the high roach of his streaked hairfanning in the hot winds, was stumbling and falling--stumbling andfalling ever forward toward the crack in the mountains. Light ofmadness flamed in his eyes; his great arms clawed forward as if tocatch invisible supports to pull him the faster. Gol-l-ld--Gol-l-ld!

  "Old mind's still clear, else couldn't hear that mission bell soplain-- Gotta keep old mind clear--"

  * * * * *

  The way of the desert god, always beyond man's comprehending,nevertheless sometimes approaches so close to the human scheme ofthought and motive as to permit of analogy with it. When the directorof destinies in the dry wastes seems to make a travesty of such asacrosanct quality as human justice we may be moved to call the impulsesatiric for want of a better name. Satiric, then, that reversal of thedecree of death passed upon the Papago youth who confessed to murderbefore the overturned kettle at the Casa O'Donoju; more than satiricthe moving finger now directing his path through the dead lands up to aunion with the crazed doctor's.

  According to ancient custom the Indian retainers of the O'Donoju hadtaken the youth--his baptismal name was Ygnacio--down to the craterland of the Pinacate and there turned him loose without water to wanderfor a while and finally to die miserably. Other murderers had been sotreated and never had been seen of men again. But the desert god whoslays so peremptorily knew that Ygnacio had done the bidding to murderto save his brother from death--had killed without malice and only asthe price of redemption for one of his blood. Wherefore the arbiter oflife and death flung life at Ygnacio.

  When he was athirst almost to the point of exhaustion he found aknob-like growth a scant two inches above the surface of the ground,recognized it for a promise of succour and with the last ounce of hisstrength dug the deep sand all about it. The end of his effort gave tohim a strange and rare vegetable reservoir like an elongated radish,which miraculously holds scant moisture of summer rains the year round."Root-of-the-sands" the Sonorans have named it. In the desolationbetween the Pinacate and the Gulf even the coyotes have the wisdom todig for this precious sustainer of life.

  Ygnacio devoured the whole of the root and was revived. He foundothers, which he tied into a bundle to carry over his shoulders. Foodand drink had come to him from the hand of Elder Brother himselfwhen it was decreed by man he should have neither. Wherefore love o'life once more burned strong in the man. He set his course northward,travelling only by night when the heat had given place to the bitingdesert chill, keeping his precious roots buried in the sand while heslept by day so that evaporation would not rob him of the promise ofescape from inferno. Straight as an arrow northward where, beyondthe Line, lay tribes of Papagoes who never had heard of Don PadraicO'Donoju nor of a murderer named Ygnacio.

  So it happened that on the third night of his march, when Ygnacio hadpaused to munch a segment of the sustaining root, came to his earsthe sound of a voice, faintly and from a great distance. It might bea human voice, though there was a burred and thickened quality to italmost like a burro's bray.

  The Indian boldly followed where his ears gave direction."Gol'--gol'--gol'" was the monotonous iteration, sounding almost likethe muffled tapping of a clapper against metal. He walked a mile--soclearly do sounds carry in the desert night--and suddenly came upon thefigure of a white man. Naked above the waist, wisp of a goatee tiltedat the stars, arms rigid at sides and with fingers widespread, thespectre of a white man chanted the single word, "Gold."