Dust of the Desert

by Robert Welles Ritchie

  CHAPTER XXIII

  INTO THE FURNACE

  Meanwhile from another direction adventurers were moving through thenight upon the slag mountains of Pinacate. Empty space of Altar'sultimate sweep was become almost populous. A strange company this,which passed ghostily under the great lights of the near stars withonly the clink of bridle metal and pack mule's canteens to give tempoto the march; Benicia O'Donoju, the desert girl, moved to this riskyhazard by compulsion of an incubus of fate visited upon her throughinheritance down the generations of her people; Grant Hickman, manof cities and crowds, whom destiny had whirled out into a country ofthe world's dawn; Bagley the Arizonan, taker of chances, seeker afterrainbow ends; and the two Papagoes, Quelele and El Doctor Coyote Belly,on whom was spread thin the veneer of so-called civilization.

  It had been Benicia's mastering purpose that had moved the cavalcadeaway from the Casa O'Donoju and out onto the desert immediately uponthe return of Bim and Quelele reporting the leisurely approach ofColonel Urgo and his rurales. This was not flight, she told Bim;they would go in search of the treasure of the Lost Mission whosehiding place the old medicine man was willing to reveal, and if Urgofollowed--well, eventualities could be met as they arose. In thisresolve Grant had strongly seconded her. The girl's slavery under theobsession of the bane of El Rojo, especially following the slaying ofher father, had laid an impenetrable barrier between her and him; hehad seized upon this possibility promising her emancipation from thishorror. This chance failing, he had but the last desperate recourse.

  The first hour of their pilgrimage away from the desert oasis Grantrode by Benicia's side. He essayed to distract her thoughts from thetragedy that lay behind by questioning her on the revelations El Doctorhad made: how had the old Indian come by knowledge of the buried goldand pearls; what impulse had led him to promise their restoration? Butthe girl was not to be drawn. She answered his queries by evasionsor meaningless monosyllables. It was as if Grant were a stranger,impudently prying.

  At first the man was stung by this treatment. His self-pride rebelledagainst so arbitrary a closing of the door of confidence against him.Why should he be treated thus cavalierly when the girl had surely readthe great love he bore her and his single desire to place himselfbetween her and the menace of one who had prompted murder? But thesehurts did not continue long. Riding by Benicia's side in the starshine,the man began to feel the emanations of a mastering will which pouredfrom her as the pungent prickles of ozone surround a high-power dynamo.Her consciousness was frozen into a mould of purpose, locked againstany distractions. Benicia was alive only to the single resolve to freeherself from the curse of the Red One. Man nor spirit could invade thatpreoccupation.

  There under the steady-burning desert lamps the man of the citiesbegan to feel again that spell of the infinite which had chained himthe night of Don Padraic's passing. Here was he, lately denizen of ahive of stone and steel, tiny integer in that man-made machine calleda metropolis, moving through the darkness over a land unsullied byhand of man since the floods of melting glaciers drove a shadowyrace of stone-axe people back to the highlands. The loves and hates,the battles and deaths of these stone-axe folk occurred but yesterdayin the time-sheet of the waste places. The to-morrow of ten thousandyears would find the desert still untouched, supine under the stars.What then of hidden baubles of gold; what then of the love of a GrantHickman for a Benicia O'Donoju? A fossil snail shell by the shore ofthe gulf left a more enduring record.

  "The thing that's sorta got me fussed is how I'm goin' explain allthis to the old Doc." Bim's voice broke through Grant's contemplationof shadowy frontiers; he noted with a start that his horse had droppedbehind Benicia's and was ambling head-and-head with his friend's. Bimdrawled on:

  "It sure will look like a double-cross to Stooder--my sailin' off downinto Sonora on the search for you an' then hooking up with an outfit togo get all the plunder the old Doc thinks he's as good as got his handson. Me, I guess I'm queered all right," was the man's whimsical finishto his lament. Grant, who had been too preoccupied with the sweep ofaffairs to give any thought to his pal's perplexities, could not nowoffer much consolation. A point of honour involving the grotesquecreature who had elected to receive him as a book agent did not greatlymove Grant.

  "A' course," Bim continued his monologue, "the way things lie with thegirl, her bein' hipped on gettin' back this swag somebody in her familylifted from the mission, I'm more'n willing to see her get it. But theold Doc hasn't got a large store of what you might call sentiment, an'I sure got my work cut out for me when I try to show him the light."

  "Too bad I got you into a tangle, old man," Grant heartily commiserated;then with a hopeless little laugh, "My own affairs aren't set on anystraight and beautiful road to happiness either."

  Bim chuckled deep in his throat. "Me, I was all for your first ideato rope the senorita right outa the home corral an' put your brand onher, fighting. But like's not we'll get _mucho_ plenty excitement alongthis trail before we're through." He gave a short laugh. "Say, Cap'nHickman, I brought you out from the East on a whale of a proposition.You're sure getting it. A girl who assays higher'n any pearls an' oldgold junk you could find in a church cellar--the feel and savvy of aman's country--a larrupin' fight with old Urgo and his rurales bunch.That last you can back right down to your last white chip."

  "But how can Urgo follow us from the O'Donoju house?" incredulouslyfrom Grant. "Not one of the servants or other Indians there knows whatour destination is--we don't ourselves except in a general way."

  The man of the big country chuckled at metropolitan innocence. "Horsesdon't leave tracks on your Fifth Avenoo because they's no horses leftthere for one thing, I reckon. But in this country they do. Five horsesmake a trail a blind man could follow. I or anybody else could trackthis outfit of ours in the dark. I look to see our li'l friend Urgodrop in on us some time to-morrow. He'll travel fast with fresh horseshis men round up at the O'Donoju corrals."

  They rode some time in silence, Grant turning over in his mind thisunthought-of possibility. Tenderfoot that he was--so he accusedhimself--he had noted the carbines slung in scabbards at eachsaddlehorn; noted with an unreading eye. So Benicia and all the othershad provided against a contingency he had not even suspected.

  "Only thing I'm figgerin' in this proposition," he heard Bim saying,"is, will the Papagoes stick under fire? Papagoes are not strong forthe knock-down-an'-drag-out stuff. An', besides, you're not a whole manyet."

  "Whole enough to keep my end up," Grant said shortly, knowing not whyhe resented any imputation of disability against him.

  "Oh, sure--sure!" the other hurriedly amended, and the subject died.

  Dawn spread a ghostly panorama before them. In the greeny-white lightthat heralds the sun's first ruddiness the whole western horizon bulkedwith black masses of slag heaped in fantastic shapes. High above thelesser masses towered the two peaks of Pinacate, their summits yawningin wide craters. The horses' hoofs struck sparks from lava aprons; thebeasts had to pick their way carefully over traps and crevices. Everand again grey arms of cactus struck out to rake the riders' legs withclaws of thorns.

  Waxing light filled in details of a phantom land, terrific in starkbrutalities of scarp and battlement--a world just set aside from thebaking-oven of the Potter and unadorned by a single brush stroke. Thelittle company of horsemen threaded single file up a narrow gorgebetween the main peaks of the range. Walls of porphyry and slag thecolour of furnace clinkers leaped to heights on either side whichdwarfed the riders to the stature of weevils. The trail they followedwas the path cut by the rushing waters of summer cloudbursts, whichpack into the downpour of minutes' duration all the water deniedduring months of drought; great blocks of fused glass and conglomeratewrenched from the canyon's eaves by the fingers of these storms chokedthe way. Where capfuls of soil had been caught and held in some pocketthe gaunt sticks of the _ocatilla_ splayed out against raw rock likecat's whiskers. Low-lying _cholla_, that spined and vicious vegetabletarantula of th
e desert, seemed to grow from the very rock; all itsnodules were frosty with close-set thorns. Over all dropped the veil ofmystical morning radiance.

  The horses groaned as they had to choose, minute by minute, betweenbarking their hocks on the knife-like corners of obsidian or takingthe barbs of the _cholla_. The higher the ascent the savager grewthe way. Grant, awed by this penetration into the very laboratory ofearth, almost leaped from his saddle when a sharp clatter of smallpebbles to his right broke the silence. His eyes jumped up the canyonwall to follow three dots of bounding dun-white against its sheerside--bighorn sheep skipping surely along no visible foothold.

  When the sun was well in the sky--though naught but its reflectedradiance penetrated the gorge--El Doctor, in the lead, signalled ahalt. The place was a constricted apron or shelf in the cleft betweenrock walls whereon sparse galetta grass was growing. Reason for thistiny oasis of vegetation lay just beyond in the fact of a water-worncistern in the lava--such a natural reservoir as the desert folkcalled a "tank," a godsend when it still contains the wash from a lastcloudburst. This one was bone-dry.

  The party breakfasted meagrely, wood for their coffee fire beinggrubbed by the Indians painfully and after long search. There waslittle speech between them for they were tired; the night's ride hadbeen wearing. Moreover, even the Indians appeared to feel a malignpresence bearing down upon them and forbidding desecration of thesilence. For them, in especial for Coyote Belly, there was a very realand fear-compelling presence abroad. These mountains of Tjuktoak housedIitoi, Elder Brother himself; the god of all things who, with a coyoteand a black beetle, drifted four times round the earth in the time ofthe Flood and came to anchorage in this place. El Doctor Coyote Belly,driven by a great love to commit sacrilege, might well have heard thevoice of Iitoi in the wind and felt his heart turn to water.

  In truth, the aged Papago was having a battle with himself. Beforehe had gulped his coffee and tortillas the medicine man's eyes wereroaming fearsomely and he whimpered snatches of sacerdotal songs ashe rummaged in the pack for a wicker basket. From it he took a wandstained red and with an eagle's feather bound to one end, an arrow veryhandsomely feathered from the same bird, a string of glass beads and abundle of cigarettes--presents for Elder Brother, who must be beguiledbefore being robbed.

  The old man's hands wavered to return the presents to the basket whenBenicia hurried to him, sat down by his side and earnestly pleaded withhim in his own tongue. Finally his resolution seemed to be brought tothe sticking point. He started up the gorge alone and with his basketof trifles.

  "Coyote Belly says he must go and sing to the god Iitoi before we arepermitted to visit his house," Benicia gravely explained to her whitecompanions. "The poor man is desperately scared because we have cometo rob Elder Brother."

  Seeing the look of puzzlement on the men's faces she continued withthat same grave respect as if speaking of a real presence. "This oldman through the love he bore my father has consented to betray a secretthe medicine men of his people have handed down for more than a hundredyears. The treasure of the Lost Mission, he tells me, was dug up byPapago medicine men not long after the Mission was destroyed by theApaches and brought to these mountains--to the cave of Elder Brother--"

  "And it's all here now?" Bim put in excitedly. The girl nodded.

  "It has been as well hidden from those who sought it as if it wereunder the buried ruins of the mission," she said; then simply: "WhileEl Doctor is gone it is best that we get some sleep."

  Benicia stretched herself under the shade of a rock with a saddleblanket for pillow and slept. But neither of the white men could followher precept; both were too sensible of the prickling of some unnameableessence of the strange and the unworldly--perhaps that very savagery ofatmosphere which had prompted primitive Indians to designate Pinacateas the residence of their god. They were alone; big Quelele had quietlyslipped away shortly after El Doctor without saying where he was going.

  The men sat smoking while their eyes roved the prospect of burnt cliffand ragged parapet. The heat had whips; it drove them to burrow forlessening shade wherever angles of the rocks offered. A curious cast tothe slice of sky visible above the canyon walls first caught Bagley'sattention. He squinted up at it for a long moment of speculation.

  "If it wasn't so early in the summer I'd say a thunderhead was fixin'up to give us a big razoo," he ventured. Grant looked up and noted thatthe blue had turned to a heavy saffron tint as if the sun were shiningthrough a stratum of light sand; such a tint he'd seen before the greatwindstorm on the day of Don Padraic's burial.

  "If I could only look over the top of the wall yonder to west'ard," Bimgrumbled uneasily. "These cloudbursts always come from direction of theGulf. We're not very well put right here in the channel of all the washdown from up top-side. Those horses now--"

  He walked uneasily about the narrow confines of the shelf, scanningthe upshoots of rock for possible ways out. Then he seemed to dismisspossibility of trouble from his mind and returned to where Grant wassitting.

  An hour passed. Perhaps they were dozing when the rattle of a showerof rock down the canyon side galvanized both. Up there they saw thefigure of big Quelele. Like a wild goat he was leaping from foothold tofoothold downward; he was in mad haste.

  The big Indian risked his neck a dozen times before he came panting upto the watchers. He waved to the brink of the cliff.

  "I been on top--watching--I see long way off--Urgo--rurales. Theycome--fast!"