Dust of the Desert

by Robert Welles Ritchie

  CHAPTER XXIV

  STORM

  Bim translated Quelele's intelligence for Grant. "Our li'l friendUrgo's been burnin' the wind," was his dry comment. Grant sent a quickglance around the cul-de-sac of rock which encompassed them.

  "Not the best place in the world to stand off ten men," he gave hisopinion. "We ought to get our backs up against something that can't besurrounded."

  Quelele read the white man's thoughts, for he pointed farther up thecanyon beyond the lava cistern. There the gorge narrowed to a veritabledoorway and the steps thereto were so precipitous that one ascendingwould have to scramble and claw a way on hands and knees; no possiblechance for a rush en masse. Bim surveyed the natural citadel with theeye of a trained Border man who occasionally has to reckon with suchelementals as the killing power of a rifle bullet and the protectivequality of a 'dobe wall. Finally he screwed one eye at the crack ofsky showing between the escarpments and shook his head dubiously atwhat he saw there. Quelele, who had had the superior advantage of awider view from his aerie on the cliff top, bowed his arms in the shapeof a ball and waved a hand to the west.

  "Papago says it's a big storm brewing over yonder," Bim explained."When these thunderheads finally get all boiled into one and comea-runnin' it's a case of take to cover. If this thing is the regulationrim-fire sock-dollager they's goin' be a sight of water pass over wherewe're standin' before long. Me, I'd rather be somewhere else than inthis dry channel."

  Grant did not linger to discuss strategy longer. He went to whereBenicia was sleeping in the shade of a boulder and gently touched heron the shoulder. The girl sat up, startled.

  "We have to be moving," Grant told her. "Quelele has just reported Urgoand his rurales out on the desert and coming our way."

  "And El Doctor?" she quickly interposed. "He has returned from thecave?"

  Grant shook his head. Bitter disappointment flashed into her eyes atthe realization of how fate had played to interpose the grim businessof a fight just on the minute of realization of her great hopes. Grant,stooping beside her and watching the play of emotions on her features,saw quick remorse chase away the frown. Impulsively a brown handreached out to play upon the back of his.

  "Grant, beloved"--how like the overtones from her own golden harpthe contralto richness of her voice!--"I am desperately selfish andyou will not understand.--Thinking only of my own purpose--bringingyou with your wound still unhealed out to this place to face--deathperhaps.--And you do this for me--"

  "'Nicia, little girl--" He could go no farther than those words, forthe song in his heart was overwhelming. At last--at last the trammelsof the girl's heart were shaken off and the call he'd waited for solong had come! Call of the heart of her to his.

  She was on her feet, vibrant with energy, alive to the exigencies ofimpending action. Bim was saddling the horses and Quelele had the packon the mule when they joined them. Bim briefly explained to the girlhis survey of the gorge for strategical strength; at any cost they mustmove up until they could find some sheep trail or other practicableledge giving escape from the flood water channel. "If that dodderingold medicine man would only quit his sing-song business and come backfor a rifle we'd be that much better off," the big fellow grumbled.

  When all was in readiness Quelele led the way up the tortuouswatercourse and through the mighty gates of porphyry nearly blockingthe farther reaches. They were forced to lead the animals, whosesure-footedness was put to the test every yard of the advance. Beyondthe great pillars the gorge opened to a rough amphitheatre with lesssteeply sloping sides. A narrow upward-springing ledge of rock ledaway from the dry watercourse to a rock pulpit some seventy-five or ahundred feet above. This they followed, to discover there was space fortheir horses to stand behind the horn of malapais and still be screenedfrom observation from below. Quelele made some mysterious passes witha tether rope which yoked all the animals to a single line that wasanchored at both ends.

  "Look," Benicia cried as Bim was taking the carbines from the saddlescabbards. They followed her pointing hand and saw a dark spot againstthe opposite wall of the gorge and higher than their level. A midgetfigure was outlined against the opening of a cave. It was El Doctorat his business of propitiating Elder Brother--El Doctor, much neededbehind the stock of a carbine. The men hallooed to him but he did notturn.

  "Go over and get that crazy fool," Bim commanded Quelele. But the bigIndian, instead of obeying immediately, turned up the ledge and madefor a high point on the shoulder of the rock bastion constituting oneof the portals of the upper gorge. They watched him as he scaled thealmost perpendicular face of black lava. From the top Quelele had aview of the canyon's far-away exit onto the desert floor several milesfrom the niche where the treasure seekers had refuge. The watchers sawhim lift himself cautiously over the top of his lookout and peer towestward. Then he came scrambling and sliding down.

  "They come into the valley," the Papago reported. "Too late to get ElDoctor."

  It was Bim with his desert craft who made disposition of the littleforce of defence. Quelele he sent back to the aerie with orders not toshoot until he heard shots from the whites; the Indian's fire from therear, once Urgo and his men had passed the rocky portals, would throwthe rurales into confusion. Grant and Benicia he disposed behind anoutcrop of porphyry a little behind and above the protected animals.

  "Pick 'em off as they come through the Gate," he suggested. "An' don'ttry any fancy shooting; we haven't got any too many cartridges."

  "But you--?" Benicia began. The Arizonan grinned broadly.

  "Me, I always fancy a little solo game in this sort of rukus. I'm goingon t'other side of the gulch. Cross-fire, you sabe?" He left them witha smile on his lips, and they watched him jumping lightly down fromrock to rock. Almost before he had begun to clamber up the oppositewall he was lost to view amid the maze of fissure and castellatedboulder. Grant and the girl were stretched out behind their primitivebreastwork alone in this unfinished world of fire. They could seeneither Quelele nor Bagley. Came to their ears the faint drone ofbarbaric song: El Doctor Coyote Belly at his traitorous devotions.

  The whole gorge was filled with a saffron glare like the reflectionfrom oil fires under a boiler, unworldly, portentous.

  They waited, these two, in the immensity of earth's disgorged bowels.Side by side, elbows touching, they counted the slow drag of minutes asnaught in the balance against the deep joy of love militant.

  A stir in the bed of the dry wash below them. Up went their carbineswith cheeks laid against wood and eyes sighting along the lances oflight. Again the stir down there. A gaunt figure rose from hand andknees to its feet, stood swaying for an instant, then pitched forwardagainst the support of a slab of rock.

  A very leprechaun of the rocks was it: ribs creasing burned skin aboutthe naked torso; whity-grey hair streaming down to mingle with a beard;bare arms like a spider's legs and all cracked by the sun. The husk ofDoc Stooder, plaything of the desert god, was come here, following thestill living spark of instinct prompting a water search in a canyon.Come, too, to the secret hiding place of the treasure whose glitter hadso mercilessly befooled him.

  Grant, stupefied by the apparition of death and failing in anyrecognition of the skeleton thing as the bibulous doctor of Arizora,suspected a trick of Urgo. Again he laid his eye along his rifle sight,vigilant for what might ensue. The creature spread-eagled against therock slowly pushed itself upright with its hands; its shaggy headturned wearily as thirsting eyes scanned the dry chasm.

  Then a shout from across the gorge. Bagley had leaped from his hidingplace and was rushing precariously down to succour the ghost. Just ashe reached Stooder and had thrown an arm about him to heave his wastedform onto a shoulder the crack of a rifle shivered the gorge's silence.Rock dust spurted within a foot of the rescuer.

  The sun went out that second--instantly, like a powerful incandescentswitched off. A yellow penumbra tinged the darkness.

  Almost as one the rifles of Grant and Benicia jetted lead. Two moreshots
from the dry wash. The giant figure of Bagley with Stooder limpover one shoulder never faltered in its leaping and scrambling up thedeclivity to the shelter he had quitted. The two who had been followinghis flight with stilled hearts saw him disappear behind a great rock;an instant and a jet of fire lanced down thence at the attackers by theGate.

  A blob of rain large as a Mexican dollar smacked on Benicia's handas she pumped the ejector--another and a third. Then the gorge wasblasted by a thunder shock amid the peaks, and a stab of lightningpainted the whole pit sulphurous blue. By its flash the defenders sawscurrying figures leaping from rock to rock in the stream bed. Quelele,the quick of eye, fired his first shot by the light of storm fire; oneof the rurales went down like a wet sack.

  A second stunning burst of thunder which knocked out the underpinningof the sky. Then deluge.

  It was not rain that fell; it was solid water in sheets and cones whichhissed with the speed of its descent. Water so compacted that it waslike a river on edge, engulfing. With it the almost continuous quiverand jerk of electrical flame. The gorge was become a watery hell. Morethan that, for Urgo and his men in the wash it threatened momentarilyto be their tomb. Already a white streak of foam in the lightningflashes marked where the once bone-dry watercourse was changingcharacter.

  The rurales and their leader found the odds all of a sudden snatchedfrom their hands by this frenzied ally of the hunted girl and hersupporters. They had come eleven against five, with their quarry caughtin a hole in the Pinacate sierra; before the cloudburst had enduredthree minutes Urgo realized he had let himself and his men into a fataltrap. Their horses, confidently left behind them in the lower reachesof the gorge, must already have stampeded under the lash of the storm.Spiteful rifle flashes from both sides came with each baleful flickerof fire from the sky to deny escape from the rising waters up eitherwall of the chasm.

  Now a dull roaring above the waterfall of the rain began to fill thegash in the sierra. Away back at the head of the gorge and where theslope from the twin volcano peaks shed water as from steep roofsinto this common trough, a solid wall, capped dull white, came withthe speed of a meteor down and down through the channel in theliving rock. It rolled boulders the size of box-cars in its flood; achevaux-de-frise of barbed cactus and scrub trees tumbled at its crest.

  Even above the tumult of the deluge sounded the shrill alarm of therurales as they broke position and turned to flee through the Gate. Butalready the flood was there, choking egress. They must scramble up thesides of the gorge like rats from a flooded hold; they must grope andcling by every illuminating flash of blue fire, waiting to see wherethe next handhold lay, how near the hungry yellow waters rushed.

  With Grant and the girl was nothing but security. Unprotected, theyhad bent their heads to the pounding mallets of water. When the firingabruptly ceased at the rush of their attackers for safety Grant heardthe scream of a horse near at hand and remembered their tetheredanimals. Should they break away in their fright the plight of all fivewould be a desperate one.

  "Stay here!" he shouted in Benicia's ear. "Going to the horses!"

  Grant crawled and groped his way over the slippery rocks, each seemingto be alive with the film of rushing water across it. He clambered downand to the right until he came to the pulpit rock behind which thebeasts had been tethered by Quelele. The mule he found down, hopelesslynoosed in his hobble rope and slowly strangling; the horses werehuddled, tails to the storm, dripping and dejected.

  It took several minutes' precarious work to get the pack-animal tohis feet and freshly tethered. Then Grant began the retreat to thebreastwork where he had left the girl. It was largely a matter ofguesswork. Once he found himself against an unscalable wall and had toretrace his steps. Another time one foot slipped and he caught himselfwith his body halfway over the brink.

  A flash of lightning showed him two rifles lying side by side on aledge below him--his rifle and Benicia's; but the girl was gone. Thefist of fear smote him terrifically.

  He screamed her name above the bellowing of the flood in the wash. Noanswer. He ran along the ledge that had been theirs until he came to adownward terrace; to that he leaped and along its blind way he fumbled.Came the ghost of a scream, thin above the diapason all about. Hisname--"Grant!"

  Then merciful lightning blazed blue and he saw. Below him on a broadshelf which overhung the whiteness of the torrent two figures,glistening like seals, were locked--they swayed.

  The man launched himself blindly out and down. He rolled; he slippedand wallowed against and under great boulders. At the end of secondsseeming aeons he came to the rock apron where he had seen the strugglingshapes. Sound of stertorous breathing guided him. He rose from hisknees before Benicia and another, who was trying to drag her along theledge. A revealing flash of fire gave him just a glimpse of a weaselface--Colonel Urgo.

  Not so much rage as loathly horror of an unclean thing sped furioussummons to every muscle spring in his body. With his shoulder plantedagainst the Spaniard's chest for a leverage Grant tore loose the man'sgrip from Benicia. Before he could whirl to shift his attack Urgohad screamed an oath and was on the American's back, legs twining tocumber Grant's thighs, both hands clamped about his throat. It was thecatamount's attack.

  The first impact of his antagonist's weight nearly over-balanced Grantand precipitated both into the maelstrom of waters not six feet belowtheir ledge. But, steadying himself, the American suddenly launchedbackward, pinning the lighter body on his back against a wall of rock.It was a terrific smash. Urgo's breath came in a whistle from it. Hishands sank deeper into the muscles about Grant's throat, closing hiswindpipe. Deliberately the standing man took a few forward steps,then swiftly back against the wall again. An elbow of rock found theSpaniard's ribs and cracked two. He shrieked.

  Now Grant's hands went up to lock behind the head that sagged over hisright shoulder. Strength of desperation flooded into his arms, for theweaker man had him throttled. Urgo must release his hold on Grant'sthroat or suffer a broken neck. The constricting hands slackened theirgrip ever so little. Grant bowed his shoulders, gave a mighty heaveand swept the Colonel's body over his shoulder in a wide arc. The mansprawled, arms wide, through the air, struck the edge of the rockyapron. He clawed--slipped--clawed again, and disappeared.

  CHAPTER XXV

  TREASURE TROVE

  The storm ceased with the same suddenness as it began. Hardly an hourhad torrential waters lashed the cinder wastes of Pinacate when theblack pall over the heavens broke away and the sun came out to suckhungrily at pools in the rocks. There was a headiness of wine in theair, a smell of wet soil mingled with spicy emanations from greasewoodand _palo verde_. The desert's sparse growing things exulted in thebreaking of long drought.

  For a long time Grant and Benicia on their side of the gorge and Bimin his retreat opposite lay hidden, awaiting possible renewal of theattack which the storm had scattered. But the torrent that still rageddown the bottom of the gorge had washed clean every vestige of anenemy. Quelele on his high post saw four scattered horsemen rushingpell-mell for the gateway onto the desert--last vestige of Urgo'srurales force, each man of which gave thanks to his patron saint thathe had come out of the hell in the mountain cul-de-sac with a wholeskin.

  Quelele also saw several specks dropping earthward from the clearblue; specks which rapidly grew from the size of gnats to the spreadof small aeroplanes. King condors they, who had smelled a feast fromafar--loathsome birds with a wing spread covering the span of thirteenfeet. The coming of one of these foul creatures to his particularbanquet even the sharp eye of a Papago watcher could not discern, forthe scene was hidden from him by a shoulder of the canyon wall.

  A stunted _palo verde_ tree nearly stripped of its verdure by the whipsof the rain hung half-uprooted over the rapidly diminishing stream inthe wash. One branch had caught and held some flotsam from the highflood, now clear of the water. Just a shapeless bundle of clothes,lolling head, arms askew where broken bones had let inert flesh sag tothe current. Just a
grim caricature of something which so recently hadwalked in the pride of his imaginings.

  The condor flopped clumsily to a branch stub six feet distant fromthe bundle of clothes, folded his great wings with a dry rustling offeathers, blinked the red lids of his eyes to focus his vision forexpert inspection and studied the hank of cloth and flesh suspendedin the tree crotch. The thing which flood waters had brought stirredslightly; eyes opened with a flutter. They met the critical gaze of thefeathered pariah on the stub. The condor acknowledged this unexpectedshow of life on his banquet table by disturbed bobbings of the nakedyellow head--the skin on his poll was wrinkled as an old man's--anda bringing of his off eye to bear around his sabre beak with theskew-like movement of a hen sighting a worm.

  The wreck in the bundle of clothes opened his lips to scream but theghost of a groan came instead. It tried to lift a fending arm againstthe abomination so near; the muscles tugged at broken bones.

  The condor appraised these manifestations of life carefully, weighedthem by contrast with his experiences with crippled sheep and helplesscalves. His talons stirred restlessly on the branch. First one, thenthe other lifted from the bark, stretched and flexed. The king of thehigher airs was impatient. He spread his wings to balance him andclumsily hopped a few feet nearer, craning his wattled neck anxiously.

  A shadow passed swiftly over the _palo verde_ tree. A quick upwardtwist of the head gave the condor view of a putative and too-anxiousfellow guest at the bounty spread there. Greediness pushed him. Hespread his wings and hopped again--

  Then the desert exacted with cruelty recompense for the crueltiesof Colonel Hamilcar Urgo. Abomination of his passing was meted himaccording to the abominations of his own devising.

  An hour after the last rain drop the flood waters in the gorge haddropped to permit of reunion between the erstwhile defenders of thepass. Grant waded waist deep with Benicia in his arms; Bim, all smiles,was stretching out a hand from the off-side rocks.

  "Well, folks all, looks like a pleasant time was enjoyed by all andone!" The big Arizonan's spirits would permit of no more concretethanksgiving for a crisis passed. It was his way to find laughterthe only vehicle for suppressed emotions and whimsicalities the bestconveyance for thoughts which might sound "high-falutin'." The threestood mute, their eyes telling one another things which might have comeflattened and blunted in speech.

  "See me welcome an old visitor just before the curtain went up on thefirst act?" Bim turned to Grant, his eyes shining excitement. "Whod'you think? Ole Doc Stooder!" Grant gasped in surprise. His pal's grinfaded as he added seriously:

  "Just about the end of his string, too. The rain sure savedhim--couldn't have lasted another hour--one chance in a thousandbrought him here where they's folks to look out for him--a friend,even, to coddle him back to health."

  "No, not one chance in a thousand," Benicia caught him up with deepseriousness in her voice. "It is the desert way--to play with destiny,I mean, and seem to cause miracles.--But let me go to him if he needsattention." She started forward, but Bim put out a staying hand.

  "I wouldn't, ma'am. The Doc's not a purty sight right now. His body'sjust drinkin' in all the water that landed on him an' he's sortain a daze--doesn't say much of anything that makes sense. A littlefood which I'm goin' to brew if I can find some dry sticks of woodanywhere's round--" Simple charity dictated that Bim say no word ofconjecture as to what brought Stooder to the desert. He guessed fullwell.

  El Doctor Coyote Belly seemed to be materialized from the rocks sonoiselessly had he approached the group. The old man's face was ashen;unguessable terrors he had fought with and hardly conquered since lastthe three had seen him standing in the yellow storm glare before thecave of Elder Brother.

  "If my daughter will come now to the house of Iitoi," he said to thegirl in his native tongue, "she may take what Iitoi gives. The god hasexpressed his displeasure by the storm--but he will give."

  Benicia turned and put a wordless question to Grant. They startedtogether to climb the precipitous rock ladder up the side of the gorgewall, El Doctor leading. Thirty minutes' exhaustive effort brought themto the approach of a high-roofed cavern into which the westering sunlaid a broad carpet of light. There in the shale before the cave mouthwere El Doctor's pitiful presents to the god--the arrow and prayerstick wedged upright, the beads and tobacco in a small basket. Thewhole ground about was littered with the shards of sacrificial potteryand scraps of basketry.

  Benicia motioned to El Doctor to lead the way into the cave, but heshook his head in emphatic negative. Then she gave Grant a strangesmile, almost that of a child who awaits revelation of a mystery. Hesaw in deep pools of her eyes a transcendent joy made almost pain bythis moment of hope achieved. She held out her hand for him to take andthey entered the cave.

  When their eyes had become accustomed to the sudden transition fromglaring sunlight into gloom a faint glimmering at the far end of thesunlight path guided them. Ankle-deep in the dust of ages they groped.The glimmer waxed stronger. Suddenly Benicia stopped with a catchingof the breath. Grant stooped and lifted a heavy object from a niche ofrock, bringing it into the filtered stream of radiance.

  It was a golden monstrance, dust coated. Faint twinkles of light glowedlike firefly lamps from jewels set in the radii of a glory. A greatdiamond above the crystal box caught fire from the sun.

  As Grant hastily bent to replace the sacred vessel his hand tipped theedge of a shallow basket. From it rolled a stream of moonbeam fire outinto the zone of sunshine. Liquid globules of moon-glow, round andpellucid as ice crystals, seductive as the shadowed whiteness of awoman's throat: the green pearls of the Virgin stripped by the impietyof El Rojo from the shrine of the Four Evangelists!

  Benicia slowly sank to her knees, words of prayer whispered from herlips. Prayer of thankfulness and dedication of the lost treasure to thesanctity of the Church.

  Grant felt his presence in this solemn moment was an intrusion. Hetip-toed back to the mouth of the cave and stood looking out. All thewildness and the savagery of Altar's secret fane of the desert god layburning and glistening with wetness in the westering sun. The waningtorrent, sardonic gesture of plenty in this ultimate citadel of thirst,splashed jewels against the lancing light. Here was a world of theprimordial--Creation arrested in its first hour.

  A hand touched his arm lightly. He turned to find Benicia standingbeside him. The sun wove an aura of vivid fire about her head. Her eyesraised to his were swimming.

  "Now, heart of my heart," she whispered. And all the love fire in herflamed from her lips.

  THE END

  Transcriber's Notes:

  --Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).

  --A Table of Contents has been provided for the convenience of the reader.

  --Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.

  --Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.

  --Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.

  --The author's em-dash and punctuation/endquote styles have been retained.