Wanderer Of the Wasteland (1982)

by Grey, Zane

  Adam nodded solemnly as he realised how the mere thought of thirst constricted his throat and revived there a semblance of the pain 1.1 had endured.

  "Go slow. Maybe you'll take two or three days to reach the Indians. By keepin' that ridge in sight you can't miss them."

  The next move of the prospector was to take Adam around on the other side of the tree and wave his hand at the expanse of desert.

  "Now follow me an' get these landmarks in your mind. Behind us lies the Chocolate Range. You see it runs down almost south-east. That shiny black mountain standin' by itself is Pilot Knob. It's near Yuma, as of course you remember. Now straight across from us a few miles lies a line of sand dunes. They run same way as the Chocolates. But they're low----can't be seen far. Do you make out a dim, grey, strange-lookin' range just over the top of them?"

  "Yes, I see that clearly. Looks like clouds," replied Adam.

  "That's the Superstition Mountains. You will hear queer stories about them. Most prospectors are afraid to go there, though it's said Pegleg Smith's lost gold mine is somewhere in there. The Indians think the range is haunted. An' every one who knows this desert will tell you how the Superstition range changes somehow from time to time. It does change. Those mountains are giant sand dunes an' they change their shape with the shiftin' of the winds. That's the fact, but I'm not gainsayin' how strange an' weird they are. An' I, for one, believe Pegleg Smith did find gold there. But there's no water. An how can a man live without water?...Well, to go on, that dim, purple, high range beyond the Superstition lies across the line of Mexico...Now, lookin' round to the right of the Superstitions, to the north west, an' you see how the desert slopes down an' down on all sides to a pale, hazy valley that looks like a lake. It's the Salton Sink--below sea level--an' it's death for a man to try to cross there at this season. It looks obscured an' small, but it's really a whole desert in itself. In times gone by the Colorado River has broken its banks while in flood an' run back in there to fill that sink. Miles an' miles of fresh water which soon evaporated I Well, it's a queer old earth an' this desert teaches much...Now look straight up the valley. The ragged high peak is San Jacinto an' the other high one farther north is San Gorgonio--two hundred miles from here. Prospectors call this one Greyback because it has the shape of a louse. These mountains are white with snow in the winter, Beyond them lies the Mohave Desert, an immense waste, which hides Death Valley in its iron-walled mountains...Now comin' back down the valley on this side you see the Cottonwood range an' it runs down to meet the Chocolates. There's a break in the range. An' still farther down there's a break in the Chocolate range an' there's where your canyon comes out. You'll climb the pass some day, to get on top of the Chuckwalla Mountains, an' from there you will see north to the Mohave an' east to the Colorado--all stark naked desert that seems to hit a man in the face. An', well, I guess I've done my best for you."

  Adam could not for the moment safely trust himself to speak. The expanse of desert shown him, thus magnified into its true perspective, now stretched out with the nature of its distance and nudity strikingly clear. It did seem to glare menace into Adam's face. It made him tremble. Yet there was fascination in the luring, deceitful Superstition range, and a sublimity in the measureless sweep of haze and purple slope leading north to the great peaks, and a compelling beckoning urge in the mystery and unknown that seemed to abide beyond the bronze ridge which marked Adam's objective point.

  "I'll never forget your--your kindness," said Adam, finally turning to Dismukes.

  The prospector shook hands with him, and his grip was something to endure.

  "Kindness is nothin'. I owed you what a man owes to himself. But don't forget anythin' I told you."

  "I never will," replied Adam. "Will you let me pay you for the--the burro and outfit?" Adam made this request hesitatingly, because he did not know the law of the desert, and he did not want to offer what might be an offence.

  "Sure you got plenty of money?" queried Dismukes, gruffly.

  "Indeed I have," rejoined Adam, eagerly.

  "Then I'll take what the burro an' grub cost."

  He named a sum that appeared very small to Adam, and, receiving the money in his horny hands, he carefully deposited it in a greasy buckskin sack.

  "Wansfell, may we meet again," he said in farewell. "Good luck an' good bye...Don't forget."

  "Good-bye," returned Adam, unable to say more.

  With a whoop at the four burros and a slap on the haunch of one of them, Dismukes started them southward. They trotted ahead with packs bobbing and wagging. What giant strides Dismukes took! He seemed the incarnation of dogged strength of manhood, yet something ludicrous clung about him in his powerful action as well as in his immense squat form. He did not look back.

  Adam slapped Jinny on the haunch and started her westward.

  The hour was still early morning. A rosy freshness of the sunrise still slanted along the bronze slopes of the range and here and there blossoms of ocatilla shone red. The desert appeared to be a gently rising floor of gravel, sparsely decked with ironwood and mesquite, and an occasional cactus, that, so far as Adam could see, did not harbour a living creature. The day did not seem to feel hot, but Adam knew from the rising heat veils that it was hot. Excitement governed his feelings. Actually he was on the move, with an outfit and every hope to escape possible pursuers, with the absolute surety of a hard yet wonderful existence staring him in the face.

  Not until he felt a drag in his steps did he think of his weakened condition. Resting awhile in the shade of a tree, he let the burro graze on the scant brush, and then went on again. Thus he travelled on, with frequent rests, until the heat made it imperative for him to halt till afternoon. About the middle of the afternoon he packed and set forth again.

  A direct line westward appeared to be bringing him closer to the slope of the mountains; and it was not long before he saw a thick patch of green brush that surely indicated a water hole. The very sight seemed to invigorate him. Nevertheless, the promised oasis was tar away, and not before he had walked till he was weary and rested many times did he reach it. To find water and grass was like making a thrilling discovery. Adam unpacked Jinny and turned her loose, not, however, without some misgivings as to her staving there.

  Though he suffered from an extreme fatigue and a weakness that seemed to be in both muscle and bone, a kind of cheer came to him with the camp-fire duties. Never had he been so famished! The sun set while he ate, and, despite his hunger, more than once he had to stop to gaze down across the measureless slope, smoky and red, that ended in purple obscurity. It struck him suddenly, as he was putting some sticks of dead ironwood on the fire, how he had ceased to look back over his shoulder toward the south. The fire sputtered, the twilight deepened, the silence grew vast and vague. His eyelids were as heavy as lead, and all the nerves and veins of his body seemed to run together and to sink into an abyss the restfulness of which was unutterably sweet.

  Some time during Adam's slumbers a nightmare possessed him. At the moment he was about to be captured he awakened, cold with clammy sweat and shaking in every limb. With violent start of consciousness, with fearful uncertainty, he raised himself to peer around. The desert night encompassed him. It was late, somewhere near the morning hour. Low down over the dark horizon line hung a wan distorted moon that shone with weird lustre. Adam yaw the black mountain wall above him apparently lifting to the stars, and the thick shadow of gloom filling the mouth of the canyon where he lay. He listened. And then he breathed a long sigh of relief and lay back in his blankets. Die silence was that of a grave. There were no pursuers. He had only dreamed. And he closed his eyes again, feeling some blessed safeguard in the fact of his loneliness.

  Dawn roused him to his tasks, stronger physically, eager and keen, but more watchful than he had been the preceding day and with less thrill than he had felt. He packed in half an hour and was travelling west when the sun rose. Gradually with the return of his habit of watchfulness came his former instin
ctive tendency to look back over his shoulder. He continually drove this away and it continually returned. The only sure banishment of it came through action, with its attendant exercise of his faculties. Therefore he rested less and walked more, taxing his strength to its utmost that morning, until the hot noon hour forced him to halt. Dien while Jinny nibbled at the bitter desert plants Adam dozed in the thin shade of a mesquite. Close by grew a large ocatilla cactus covered with red flowers among which heel hummed. Adam never completely lost sense of this melodious hum, and it seemed to be trying to revive memories that he shunned.

  The sun was still high and hot when Adam resumed travel, but it was westering and the slanting rays were bearable. After he got thoroughly warmed up and sweating freely he did not mind the heat, and was able to drive Jinny and keep up a strong stride for an hour at a time. His course now led along the base of the mountain wall, and that long low edge which marked his destination began to seem less unattainable. The afternoon waned, the sun sank, the heat declined, and Jinny began to show signs of weariness. It bothered Adam to keep her headed straight. He searched the line where the desert slope met the mountain wall for another green thicket of brush marking a water hole, but he could not see one. Darkness overtook him and he was compelled to make dry camp. This occasioned him some uneasiness, not that he did not have plenty of water for himself, but because he worried about the burro and the possibility of not finding water the next day. Nevertheless, he slept soundly.

  On the following morning, when he had been tramping along for an hour or more, he espied far ahead the unmistakable green patch of thicket that heralded the presence of water. The sight stirred him. He walked well that morning, resting only a couple of hours at noon; but the green patch, after the manner of distant objects on the desert seemed just as far away as when he saw it first. The time came, however, when there was no more illusion and he knew he was getting close to the place. At last he reached it, a large green thicket that choked the mouth of a narrow canyon. He found a spring welling from under the mountain base and sending a slender stream out to be swallowed by the sand.

  Adam gave Jinny a drink before he unpacked her. There was a desirable camp site, except that it lacked dead firewood close at hand. Adam removed the pack, being careful to put boxes and bags together and to cover them with the canvas. Then he started out to look for some dead ironwood or mesquite to burn. All the desert growths, mostly greasewood and mesquite, were young and green. Adam searched in one direction and then in another, without so much as finding a stick. Next he walked west along the rocky wall, and had no better success until he came to a deep recession in the wall, full of brush; and here with considerable labour he collected a bundle of dry sticks. With this he trudged back toward camp.

  Before long he imagined he saw smoke. "Queer how those smoke trees fool a fellow," he said. And even after he thought he smelled smoke, he was sure of deception. But upon nearing the green thicket that hid his camp he actually did see thin blue smoke low down against the background of rocky wall. The sight alarmed him. The only explanation which offered itself to his perplexity was the possibility that a prospector had arrived at the spring during his absence and had started a fire. Adam began to hurry. His alarm increased to dread.

  When he ran around the corner of thicket to his campsite he did see a fire. It was about burned out. There was no prospector, no signs of packs or burros. And Jinny was gone!

  "What-what?" stammered Adam, dropping his bundle of sticks. He was bewildered. A sense of calamity beset him. He ran forward.

  "Where--where's my pack?" he cried.

  The dying fire was but the smouldering remains of his pack. It had been burned. Blankets, boxes, bags had been consumed. Some blackened utensils lay on the ground near the charred remains of his canvas. Only then did the truth of this catastrophe burst upon him. All his food had been burned.

  Chapter X

  Some moments elapsed before the stunning effects of this loss had worn off enough to permit Adam's mind to connect the cause of it with the disappearance of Jinny.

  After careful scrutiny of tracks near where the pack had lain, Adam became convinced that Jinny was to blame for his destitution. His proofs cumulated in a handful of unburnt matches that manifestly had been flung and scattered away from the pack. The tricky burro, taking advantage of Adam's absence, had pulled the canvas off the pack, and in tearing around in the boxes for morsels to eat she had bitten into the box of matches and set them on fire.

  "I didn't think--I didn't think!" cried Adam, remembering the advice of Dismukes.

  Overcome by the shock, he sank upon the ground and fell prey to gloomy and hopeless forebodings.

  "I'll lie down and die," he muttered. But he could not so much as lie down. He seemed possessed by a devil who would not permit the idea of surrender or death. And this spirit likewise seemed to take him by the hair of his head and lift him up to scatter the tears from his eyes. "Why can't I cuss the luck like a man--then look around to see what's got to be done?"

  Jinny had made good her escape. When Adam gave up 411 hope of finding the burro the hour was near sunset and it was high time that he should decide what to do.

  "Go on--to the Indian camp," he declared, tersely.

  He decided to start at once and walk in the cool of night, keeping close to the mountain wall so as not to lose his way. His spirits rallied. Going back to the camp scene, he carefully gathered up all the unburnt matches and placed them with others he carried in his pocket. He found his bag of salt only partly consumed, and he made haste to secure it. His canteen lay beside the spring.

  The ruddy sunset and the stealing down of twilight and the encroaching blackness of night had no charms for Adam now. His weariness increased as the hours prolonged themselves. Short, frequent rests were more advisable than long ones. The canopy of stars seemed in procession westward; and many a bright one he watched sink behind the black slope of mountain toward which he was bound. There were times when his eyes closed involuntarily and all his body succumbed to sleep as he toiled on. These drowsy spells always came to a painful end, for he would walk into a thorny mesquite. Adam saw a weird, misshapen moon rise late over a dark range to blanch the desert with wan light. He walked all night, and when dawn showed him landmarks now grown familiar he had a moment of exhilaration. The long, low-reaching ridge of mountain loomed right before him. When he rounded the sharp, blunt corner his eyes were greeted by sight of a deep-mouthed canyon yawning out of the range, and full of palms and other green trees. He saw a white stream bed and the shine of water, and what he took to be the roofs of palm-thatched huts.

  "I've got there. This is the Indian canyon--where Dismukes told me to stay," said Adam, with pride in his achievement. A first sight of what he took to be habitations cheered him. Again that gloomy companion of his mind was put to rout. It looked worth striving and suffering for--this haven. The barrenness of the desert all around made this green canyon mouth an oasis. It appeared well hidden, too. Few travellers passing along the valley would have suspected its presence. The long, low ridge -had to be rounded before the canyon could be detected.

  With steps that no longer dragged Adam began his descent of the canyon slope. It was a long, gradual incline, rough toward the bottom, and the bottom was a good deal farther down than it had seemed. At length he reached the wide bed of white boulders, strewn about in profusion, where some flood had rolled them. In the centre of this bed trickled a tiny stream of water, slightly alkaline, Adam decided, judging from the white stain on the margin of sand. Following the stream bed, he made his way up into the zone of green growths, a most welcome change from the open glare of the desert. He plodded on perhaps a mile, without reaching the yellow thatch of palms.

  "Will I--never--get there?" panted Adam, almost spent.

  Finally Adam reached a well-defined trail leading up out of the stream bed. He followed it to a level flat covered with willows and cottonwoods, all full foliaged and luxuriantly green, and among which sta
tely palms swaddled in huge straw sheaths of their own making, towered with loftily tufted crowns. The dust in the trail showed no imprints of feet. Adam regarded that as strange. Still, he might be far from the camp or village that had looked so close from the slope above. Suddenly he emerged from the green covert into an open glade that contained palm-thatched huts, and he uttered a little cry of joy. But it took only a second glance to convince him that the huts were deserted, and his joy was short lived. Hastily he roamed from one hut to another. He found ollas, great, clay water jars, and pieces of broken pottery, and beds of palm leaves through which the lizards rustled, but no Indians, nor any signs of recent habitation.

  "Gone! Gone!" he whispered, hoarsely. "Now--I'll starve--to death!"

  His accents of despair contained a note of hardness, of indifference born of his extreme fatigue. His eyes refused to stay open, and sleep glued them shut. When he opened them again it was to the light of another day. Stiff and lame, with a gnawing at the pit of his stomach and an oppressed mind, Adam found himself in sad plight. Limping down to the stream, he bathed his face and quenched his thirst, and then, removing his boots, he saw that his feet were badly blistered. He decided to go barefoot, to save his boots as well as to give the raw places a chance to heal.

  Then without any more reflection he wrought himself into a supreme effort of will, and it was so passionate and strong that he believed it would hold as long as intelligence governed his actions.

  "My one chance is to live here until the Indians come back." he decided. "There's water here and green growths. It's an oasis where animals, birds, living creatures come to drink...I must eat."

  His first move was to make slow and careful examination of the trails. One which led toward the mountain bore faint traces of footprints that a recent rain had mostly obliterated. He lost this trail on the smooth rock slope. The others petered out in the stones and sage. Then he searched along the sand bars of the stream for tracks of living creatures; and he found many, from cat tracks to the delicate ones of tiny birds. After all, then, the desert was an abode for livings thing. The fact stimulated Adam, and he returned to the glade to exercise every faculty he possessed in the invention of instruments or traps or snares.