Wanderer Of the Wasteland (1982)

by Grey, Zane

  Adam's weary, hopeless hunting instinct sustained a vivifying, galvanising shock. Like a flash he changed, beginning to tremble. He dropped his sling as an ineffective weapon against so large a snake. His staring eyes quivered like the vibrating point of a compass needle as he tried to keep them on the snake and at the same time sight a stone or club with which to attack his quarry. A bursting gush of blood, hot in its tearing pangs, flooded out all over his skin, starting the sweat. His heart lifted high in his breast, almost choking him. A terrible excitement animated him and it was paralleled by a cold and sickening dread that the snake would escape and pounds of meat be lost to him.

  Never taking eyes off the snake, Adam stooped down to raise a large rock in his hand. He poised it aloft and, aiming with intense keenness, he flung the missile. It struck the rattlesnake a glancing blow, tearing its flesh and bringing blood. With the buzz of a huge bee caught in a trap the snake lunged at Adam, stretching its mutilated length on the sand.

  It was long, thick, fat. Adam smelled the exuding blood and it inflamed him. Almost he became a beast. The savage urge in him then was to fall upon his prey and clutch it with his bare hands and choke and tear and kill. But reason still restrained such limit as that. Stone after stone he flung, missing every time. Then the rattlesnake began to drag itself over the sand. Its injury did not retard a swift progress. Adam tried to bound after it, but he was so weak that swift action seemed beyond him. Still, he headed off the snake and turned it back. Stones were of no avail. He could not hit with them, and every time he bent over to pick one up he got so dizzy that he could scarcely rise.

  "Club! Club! Got--have club!" he panted, hoarsely. And espying one along the edge of the stream, he plunged to secure it. This moment gave the rattlesnake time to get ahead. Wildly Adam rushed back, brandishing the club. His tall gaunt form, bent forward, grew overbalanced as he moved, and he made a long fall, halfway across the stream. He got up and reached the snake in time to prevent it from escaping under some brush.

  Then he swung the club. It was not easy to hit the snake crawling between the stones. And the club was of rotten wood. It broke. With the blunt end Adam managed to give his victim a blow that retarded its progress.

  Adam let out a hoarse yell. Something burst in him--a consummation of the instinct to kill and the instinct to survive. There was no difference between them. Hot, and mad and weak, he staggered after the crippled snake. The chase had transformed the whole internal order of him. He was starving to death, and he smelled the blood of fresh meat. The action infuriated him and the odour maddened him. Not far indeed was he then from the actual seizing of that deadly serpent in his bare hands.

  But he tripped and fell again in a long forward plunge. It brought him to the sand almost on top of the snake. And here the rattlesnake stopped to coil, scarcely two feet from Adam's face.

  Adam tried to rise on his hands. But his strength had left him. And simultaneously there left him the blood madness of that chase to kill and eat. He realised his peril. The rattlesnake would strike him. Adam had one flashing thought of the justice of it--one sight of the strange, cold, deadly jewel eyes, one swift sense of the beauty and magnificent spirit of this reptile of the desert, and then horror possessed him. He froze to his marrow. The icy mace of terror had stunned him. And with it had passed the flashing of his intelligence. He was only a fearful animal, fascinated by another, dreading death by instinct. And as he collapsed, sagging forward, the rattlesnake struck him in the face with the stinging blow of a red-hot iron. Then Adam fainted.

  Chapter XI

  When Adam recovered consciousness he imagined he was in a dream.

  But a dragging, throbbing pain in his face seemed actuality enough to discredit any illusions of slumber. It was shady where he lay or else his eyes were dimmed. Presently he made out that he reclined under one of the palm-thatched roofs.

  "I've been moved!" he cried, with a start. And that start, so full of pain and queer dragging sensations as of a weighted body, brought back memory to him. His mind whirled and darkened. The sickening horror of close proximity to the rattlesnake, its smell and colour and deadly intent, all possessed Adam again. Then it cleared away. What had happened to him? His hand seemed to have no feeling; just barely could he move it to his face, where the touch of wet cloth bandages told a story of his rescue by someone. Probably the Indians had returned. It had been the whistle of a horse that had thrilled him.

  "I've--been--saved!" whispered Adam, and he grew dizzy. His eyes closed. Dim shapes seemed to float over the surface of his mind; and there were other strange answerings of his being to this singular deliverance.

  Then he heard voices--some low, and others deep and guttural. Voices of Indians! How strong the spirit of life in him! "I--I wasn't ready--to die," he whispered. Gleams of sunlight low down, slanting on the palm leaves, turning them to gold, gave him the idea that the time was near sunset. In the corner of the hut stood ollas and bags which had not been there before, and on the ground lay an Indian blanket.

  A shadow crossed the sunlit gleams. An Indian girl entered. She had very dark skin and straight hair as black as night. Upon seeing Adam staring at her with wide-open eyes she uttered a cry and ran out. A hubbub of low voices sounded outside the shack. Then a tall figure entered; it was that of an Indian, dressed in the ragged clothes of a white man. He was old, his dark bronze face like a hard wrinkled mask.

  "How?" he asked, gruffly, as he bent over Adam. He had piercing black eyes.

  "All right--good," replied Adam, trying to smile. He sensed kindliness in this old Indian.

  "White boy want dig gold--get lost--no grub--heap sick belly?" queried the Indian, putting a hand on Adam's flat abdomen.

  "Yes--you bet," replied Adam.

  "Hahh! Me Charley Jim--heap big medicine man. Me fix um. Snake bite no hurt...White boy sick bad--no heap grub--long time."

  "All right--Charley Jim," replied Adam.

  "Hahh!" Evidently this exclamation was Charley Jim's expression for good. He arose and backed away to the opening that appeared blocked by dark-skinned, black-haired Indians. Then he pointed at one of them. Adam saw that he indicated the girl who had first come to him. She appeared very shy. Adam gathered the impression that she had been the one who had saved him.

  "Charley Jim, who found me--who saved me from that rattlesnake?"

  The old Indian understood Adam well enough. He grinned and pointed at the young girl, and pronounced a name that sounded to Adam like "Oella."

  "When? How long ago? How many days?" asked Adam.

  Charley Jim held up three fingers, and with that he waved the other Indians from the opening and went out himself.

  Adam was left to the bewildered thoughts of a tired and hazy mind. He had no strength at all, and the brief interview, with its excitement, and exercise of voice, brought him near the verge of unconsciousness. He wavered amid dim shadows of ideas and thoughts. When that condition passed, he awoke to dull, leaden pain in his head. And his body felt like an empty sack the two sides of which were pasted together flat.

  The sunlit gleams vanished and the shades of evening made gloom around him. He smelled fragrant wood smoke, and some other odour, long unfamiliar, that brought a watery flow to his mouth and a prickling as of many needles. Then in the semi-darkness one of the Indians entered and knelt beside him. Adam distinguished the face of the girl, Oella. She covered him with a blanket. Very gently she lifted his head, and moved her body so that it would support him. The lifting hurt Adam; he seemed to reel and sway, and a blackness covered his sight. The girl held him and put something warm and wet between his lips. She was trying to feed him with a stick or a wooden spoon. The act of swallowing made his throat feel as if it was sore. What a slow process! Adam rather repelled than assisted his nurse, but his antagonism was purely physical and involuntary. Whatever the food was, it had no taste to him. The heat of it, however, and the soft, wet sensation, grew pleasant. He realised when hunger awakened again in him, for it like
a shot through his vitals.

  Then the girl laid him back, spread the blanket high, and left him. The strange sensation of fullness, of movement inside Adam's breast, occupied his mind until drowsiness overcame him.

  Another day awakened Adam to the torture of reviving hunger and its gnawing pains, so severe that life seemed unwelcome. The hours were weary and endless. But next day was not so severe, and thereafter gradually he grew better and was on the road to a slow recovery.

  The Indians that had befriended Adam were of a family belonging to the Coahuila tribe. Charley Jim appeared to be a chief of some degree, friendly toward the whites, and nomadic in spirit, as he wandered from oasis to oasis. He knew Dismukes, and told Adam that the prospector and he had found gold up this canyon. Charley Jim's family consisted of several squaws, some young men, two girls, of whom Oella was the younger, and a troop of children, wild as desert rats.

  Adam learned from Charley Jim that the head of this canyon contained a thicket of mesquite trees, the beans of which the Indians prized as food. Also there were abundant willows and arrow-weeds, with which wood the Indians constructed their huge, round, basket granaries. The women of the family pounded the mesquite beans into meal or flour, which was dampened and put away for use. Good grass and water in this remote canyon were further reasons why Charley Jim frequented it. But he did not appear to be a poor Indian, for he had good horses, a drove of burros, pack outfits that were a mixture of Indian and prospector styles, and numerous tools, utensils, and accoutrements that had been purchased at some freighting post.

  Adam was so long weak, and dependent upon Oella, that when he did grow strong enough to help himself the Indian girl's habit of waiting upon him and caring for him was hard to break. She seemed to take it for granted that she was to go on looking after him; and the fineness and sensitiveness of her, with the strong sense of her delight in serving him, made it impossible for Adam to offend her. She was shy and reserved, seldom spoke, and always maintained before him a simplicity, almost a humility, as of servant to master. With acquaintance, too, the still, dark, impassive face of her had become attractive to look at, especially her large, black, inscrutable eyes, soft as desert midnight. They watched Adam at times when she imagined he was unaware of her scrutiny, and the light of them then pleased Adam, and perturbed him also, reminding him of what an old aunt had told him once, "Adam, my boy, women will always love you!" The prophecy had not been fulfilled, Adam reflected with sadness, and in Oella's case he concluded his fancies were groundless.

  Still, he had to talk to somebody or grow into the desert habit of silence, and so he began to teach Oella his language and to learn hers. The girl was quick to learn and could twist her tongue round his words better than he could round hers. Moreover, she learned quickly anything he cared to teach her; and naturally even in the desert there were customs into which Adam preferred to introduce something of the white man's way. Indians were slovenly and dirty, and Adam changed this in Oella's case. The dusky desert maiden had little instinctive vanities that contact with him developed.

  One day, when the summer was waning and Adam was getting about on his feet, still a gaunt and stalking shadow of his former self, but gaining faster, the old Indian chief said:

  "White man heap strong--ride--go away soon?"

  "No, Charley Jim, I want stay here," replied Adam.

  "Hahh!" replied the Indian, nodding.

  "Me live here--work with Indian. White man no home--no people. He like Indian. He work--hunt meat for Indian:"

  "Heap sheep," replied Charley Jim, with a slow, expressive wave of his hand toward the mountain peaks.

  "Charley Jim take white man's money, send to freight post for gun, shells, clothes, flour, bacon--many things white man need?"

  "Hahh!" The chief held up four fingers and pointed west, indicating what Adam gathered was four days' ride to a freighting post.

  "Charley Jim no tell white men about me."

  The Indian took the money with grave comprehension, and also shook the hand Adam offered.

  The Indian boys who rode away to the freighting post on the river were two weeks in returning. To celebrate the return of the boys Adam suggested a feast and that he would bake the bread and cook the bacon. Oella took as by right the seat of honour next to Adam, and her habitual shyness did not inhibit a rather hearty appetite. On this occasion Adam finally got the wild little half-naked, dusky children to come to him. They could not resist sweets.

  A shining new rifle, a Winchester .44, was the cynosure of all eyes in that Indian encampment. When Adam took it out to practice, the whole family crowded around to watch, with the intense interest of primitive people who marvelled at the white man's weapon. Only the little children ran from the sharp report of the rifle, and they soon lost their fear. Whenever Adam made a good shot it was Oella who showed pride where the others indicated only their wonder.

  Thus the days of simplicity slipped by, every one of which now added to Adam's fast-returning strength. Flour and bacon quickly built up his reduced weight; and as for rice and dried fruits, they were so delicious to Adam that he feared it would not be a great while before he must needs send for more. He remembered the advice of Dismukes anent the value of his money.

  The hot summer became a season of the past. The withering winds ceased to blow. In the early autumn days Adam began his hunting. Charley Jim led the way keeping behind a fringe of mesquite, out to a grey expanse of desert, billowy and beautiful in the ruddy sunlight. They crawled through sage to the height of a low ridge, and from here the chief espied game. He pointed down a long grey slope, but Adam could see only a monotonous beauty, spotted by large tufts of sage, and here and there a cactus. Then the Indian took Adam's sombrero, and the two scarfs he had, one red and one blue, and tied them round the hat, which he elevated upon a stick. After that he bent his falcon gaze on the slope. Adam likewise gazed, with infinite curiosity, thrill, and expectation.

  "Hahh!" grunted Charley Jim presently, and his sinewy dark hand clutched Adam. Far down vague grey spots seemed to move. Adam strained his eyes. It seemed a long time till they approached close enough to distinguish their species.

  "Antelope, by jiminy!" ejaculated Adam, in excitement.

  "Heap jiminy--you bet!" responded Charley Jim.

  Adam was experiencing that thrill to its utmost, and also other sensations of wonder and amaze. Was it possible these wild-looking desert creatures were actually so curious about the brightly decked sombrero that they could not resist approaching it to see what it was? There they came, sleek, tawny-grey, alert, deerlike animals, with fine pointed heads, long ears, and white rumps. The bold leader never stopped at all. But some of his followers hesitated, trotted to and fro, then came on. How graceful they were! How suggestive of speed and wildness! Adam's 6 finger itched to shoot off the gun and scare them to safety. "Fine hunter, I am." he muttered. "This is murder...Why on earth does a man have to eat meat?" The Indian beside him was all keen and strung with his instincts and perhaps they were truer to the needs of human life.

  Soon, however, all of Adam's sensations were blended in a thrilling warmth of excitement. The antelope were already within range, and had it not been for Charley Jim's warning hand Adam would not have been able to resist the temptation to fire. Perhaps he would have missed then, for he certainly shook in every muscle, as a man with the ague. Adam forced himself to get the better of this spell of nerves.

  "Heap soon!" whispered Charley Jim, relaxing the pressure of his hand on Adam. The leader approached to within fifty feet, with several other antelope close behind, when the Indian whistled. Like statues they became. Then Adam fired. The leader fell, and also one of those behind him. The others flashed into grey speeding shapes with rumps darting white; and Adam could only stare in admiring wonder at their incomparable swiftness.

  "Hahh!" ejaculated the chief, in admiration. "White man heap hunter--one shoot--two bucks. Him eye like eagle!"

  Thus did a lucky shot by Adam, killing two
antelope when he aimed at only one, initiate him into his hunting on the desert and win for him the Indian soubriquet of Eagle.

  And so began Adam's desert education. He had keen appreciation of his good fortune in his teacher. The Coahuila chief had been born on that desert and he must have been nearly sixty years old. As a hunter he had the eye of a mountain sheep, the ear of a deer, the nose of a wolf. He had been raised upon meat. He loved the stalking of game. Thus Adam, through this old Indian's senses and long experience and savage skill, began to see the life of the desert. It unfolded before his eyes, manifold in its abundance, infinitely strange and marvellous in its ferocity and ability to survive. Adam learned to see as the Indian, and had his own keen mind to analyse and weigh and ponder. But his knowledge came slowly, painfully, hard earned, in spite of its thrilling time-effacing quality.

  In those wonderful autumn days Adam learned that the antelope could go long without water, that nature had endowed it with great speed to escape the wolves and cats of the desert, that from its prominent eyes it could see in any direction, that its colouring was the protective grey of the sage plains.

  He learned that the lizard could change its colour like the chameleon, adapting itself to the colour of the rock upon which it basked in the sun, that it could dart across the sands almost too swiftly for the eye to follow.

  He learned that the grey desert wolf was a king of wolves, living high in the mountains and coming down to the flats; and there, by reason of his wonderfully developed strength and speed, chasing and killing his prey in the open.

  He learned that the coyote was an eater of carrion, of rabbits and rats, of birds' eggs, of mesquite beans, of anything that happened to come its way--a grey, skulking, cunning beast, cowardly as the wolf was brave, able like the antelope and the jack rabbit, to live without water, and best adapted of all beasts to the desert.