by Zane Grey
XI
ACROSS CACTUS AND LAVA
BLANCO SOL showed no inclination to bend his head to the alfalfa whichswished softly about his legs. Gale felt the horse's sensitive, almosthuman alertness. Sol knew as well as his master the nature of thatflight.
At the far corner of the field Yaqui halted, and slowly the line ofwhite horses merged into a compact mass. There was a trail hereleading down to the river. The campfires were so close that the brightblazes could be seen in movement, and dark forms crossed in front ofthem. Yaqui slipped out of his saddle. He ran his hand over Diablo'snose and spoke low, and repeated this action for each of the otherhorses. Gale had long ceased to question the strange Indian'sbehavior. There was no explaining or understanding many of hismanoeuvers. But the results of them were always thought-provoking.Gale had never seen horse stand so silently as in this instance; nostamp--no champ of bit--no toss of head--no shake of saddle or pack--noheave or snort! It seemed they had become imbued with the spirit ofthe Indian.
Yaqui moved away into the shadows as noiselessly as if he were one ofthem. The darkness swallowed him. He had taken a parallel with thetrail. Gale wondered if Yaqui meant to try to lead his string ofhorses by the rebel sentinels. Ladd had his head bent low, his eartoward the trail. Jim's long neck had the arch of a listening deer.Gale listened, too, and as the slow, silent moments went by his facultyof hearing grew more acute from strain. He heard Blanco Sol breathe;he heard the pound of his own heart; he heard the silken rustle of thealfalfa; he heard a faint, far-off sound of voice, like a lost echo.Then his ear seemed to register a movement of air, a disturbance sosoft as to be nameless. Then followed long, silent moments.
Yaqui appeared as he had vanished. He might have been part of theshadows. But he was there. He started off down the trail leadingDiablo. Again the white line stretched slowly out. Gale fell inbehind. A bench of ground, covered with sparse greasewood, slopedgently down to the deep, wide arroyo of Forlorn River. Blanco Sol shieda few feet out of the trail. Peering low with keen eyes, Gale made outthree objects--a white sombrero, a blanket, and a Mexican lying facedown. The Yaqui had stolen upon this sentinel like a silent wind ofdeath. Just then a desert coyote wailed, and the wild cry fitted thedarkness and the Yaqui's deed.
Once under the dark lee of the river bank Yaqui caused another halt,and he disappeared as before. It seemed to Gale that the Indianstarted to cross the pale level sandbed of the river, where stonesstood out gray, and the darker line of opposite shore was visible. Buthe vanished, and it was impossible to tell whether he went one way oranother. Moments passed. The horses held heads up, looked toward theglimmering campfires and listened. Gale thrilled with the meaning of itall--the night--the silence--the flight--and the wonderful Indianstealing with the slow inevitableness of doom upon another sentinel.An hour passed and Gale seemed to have become deadened to all sense ofhearing. There were no more sounds in the world. The desert was assilent as it was black. Yet again came that strange change in thetensity of Gale's ear-strain, a check, a break, a vibration--and thistime the sound did not go nameless. It might have been moan of wind orwail of far-distant wolf, but Gale imagined it was the stranglingdeath-cry of another guard, or that strange, involuntary utterance ofthe Yaqui. Blanco Sol trembled in all his great frame, and then Galewas certain the sound was not imagination.
That certainty, once for all, fixed in Gale's mind the mood of hisflight. The Yaqui dominated the horses and the rangers. Thorne andMercedes were as persons under a spell. The Indian's strange silence,the feeling of mystery and power he seemed to create, all that wasincomprehensible about him were emphasized in the light of his slow,sure, and ruthless action. If he dominated the others, surely he didmore for Gale--colored his thoughts--presage the wild and terriblefuture of that flight. If Rojas embodied all the hatred and passion ofthe peon--scourged slave for a thousand years--then Yaqui embodied allthe darkness, the cruelty, the white, sun-heated blood, the ferocity,the tragedy of the desert.
Suddenly the Indian stalked out of the gloom. He mounted Diablo andheaded across the river. Once more the line of moving white shadowsstretched out. The soft sand gave forth no sound at all. Theglimmering campfires sank behind the western bank. Yaqui led the wayinto the willows, and there was faint swishing of leaves; then into themesquite, and there was faint rustling of branches. The glimmeringlights appeared again, and grotesque forms of saguaros loomed darkly.Gale peered sharply along the trail, and, presently, on the pale sandunder a cactus, there lay a blanketed form, prone, outstretched, acarbine clutched in one hand, a cigarette, still burning, in the other.
The cavalcade of white horses passed within five hundred yards ofcampfires, around which dark forms moved in plain sight. Soft pads insand, faint metallic tickings of steel on thorns, low, regularbreathing of horses--these were all the sounds the fugitives made, andthey could not have been heard at one-fifth the distance. The lightsdisappeared from time to time, grew dimmer, more flickering, and atlast they vanished altogether. Belding's fleet and tireless steedswere out in front; the desert opened ahead wide, dark, vast. Rojas andhis rebels were behind, eating, drinking, careless. The somber shadowlifted from Gale's heart. He held now an unquenchable faith in theYaqui. Belding would be listening back there along the river. He wouldknow of the escape. He would tell Nell, and then hide her safely. AsGale accepted a strange and fatalistic foreshadowing of toil, blood,and agony in this desert journey, so he believed in Mercedes's ultimatefreedom and happiness, and his own return to the girl who had growndearer than life.
A cold, gray dawn was fleeing before a rosy sun when Yaqui halted themarch at Papago Well. The horses were taken to water, then led downthe arroyo into the grass. Here packs were slipped, saddles removed.Mercedes was cold, lame, tired, but happy. It warmed Gale's blood tolook at her. The shadow of fear still lay in her eyes, but it waspassing. Hope and courage shone there, and affection for her rangerprotectors and the Yaqui, and unutterable love for the cavalryman. JimLash remarked how cleverly they had fooled the rebels.
"Shore they'll be comin' along," replied Ladd.
They built a fire, cooked and ate. The Yaqui spoke only one word:"Sleep." Blankets were spread. Mercedes dropped into a deep slumber,her head on Thorne's shoulder. Excitement kept Thorne awake. The tworangers dozed beside the fire. Gale shared the Yaqui's watch. The sunbegan to climb and the icy edge of dawn to wear away. Rabbits bobbedtheir cotton tails under the mesquite. Gale climbed a rocky wall abovethe arroyo bank, and there, with command over the miles of theback-trail, he watched.
It was a sweeping, rolling, wrinkled, and streaked range of desert thathe saw, ruddy in the morning sunlight, with patches of cactus andmesquite rough-etched in shimmering gloom. No Name Mountains split theeastern sky, towering high, gloomy, grand, with purple veils upon theirslopes. They were forty miles away and looked five. Gale thought ofthe girl who was there under their shadow.
Yaqui kept the horses bunched, and he led them from one little park ofgalleta grass to another. At the end of three hours he took them towater. Upon his return Gale clambered down from his outlook, therangers grew active. Mercedes was awakened; and soon the party facedwestward, their long shadows moving before them. Yaqui led with BlancoDiablo in a long, easy lope. The arroyo washed itself out into flatdesert, and the greens began to shade into gray, and then the gray intored. Only sparse cactus and weathered ledges dotted the great low rollof a rising escarpment. Yaqui suited the gait of his horse to the layof the land, and his followers accepted his pace. There were canterand trot, and swift walk and slow climb, and long swing--miles up anddown and forward. The sun soared hot. The heated air lifted, andincoming currents from the west swept low and hard over the barrenearth. In the distance, all around the horizon, accumulations of dustseemed like ranging, mushrooming yellow clouds.
Yaqui was the only one of the fugitives who never looked back. Mercedesdid it the most. Gale felt what compelled her, he could not resist i
thimself. But it was a vain search. For a thousand puffs of white andyellow dust rose from that backward sweep of desert, and any one ofthem might have been blown from under horses' hoofs. Gale had aconviction that when Yaqui gazed back toward the well and the shiningplain beyond, there would be reason for it. But when the sun lost itsheat and the wind died down Yaqui took long and careful surveyswestward from the high points on the trail. Sunset was not far off,and there in a bare, spotted valley lay Coyote Tanks, the onlywaterhole between Papago Well and the Sonoyta Oasis. Gale used hisglass, told Yaqui there was no smoke, no sign of life; still the Indianfixed his falcon eyes on distant spots looked long. It was as if hisvision could not detect what reason or cunning or intuition, perhaps aninstinct, told him was there. Presently in a sheltered spot, whereblown sand had not obliterated the trail, Yaqui found the tracks ofhorses. The curve of the iron shoes pointed westward. An intersectingtrail from the north came in here. Gale thought the tracks either oneor two days old. Ladd said they were one day. The Indian shook hishead.
No farther advance was undertaken. The Yaqui headed south and traveledslowly, climbing to the brow of a bold height of weathered mesa. Therehe sat his horse and waited. No one questioned him. The rangersdismounted to stretch their legs, and Mercedes was lifted to a rock,where she rested. Thorne had gradually yielded to the desert'sinfluence for silence. He spoke once or twice to Gale, andoccasionally whispered to Mercedes. Gale fancied his friend would soonlearn that necessary speech in desert travel meant a few greetings, afew words to make real the fact of human companionship, a few short,terse terms for the business of day or night, and perhaps a stern orderor a soft call to a horse.
The sun went down, and the golden, rosy veils turned to blue and shadeddarker till twilight was there in the valley. Only the spurs ofmountains, spiring the near and far horizon, retained their clearoutline. Darkness approached, and the clear peaks faded. The horsesstamped to be on the move.
"Malo!" exclaimed the Yaqui.
He did not point with arm, but his falcon head was outstretched, andhis piercing eyes gazed at the blurring spot which marked the locationof Coyote Tanks.
"Jim, can you see anything?" asked Ladd.
"Nope, but I reckon he can."
Darkness increased momentarily till night shaded the deepest part ofthe valley.
Then Ladd suddenly straightened up, turned to his horse, and mutteredlow under his breath.
"I reckon so," said Lash, and for once his easy, good-natured tone wasnot in evidence. His voice was harsh.
Gale's eyes, keen as they were, were last of the rangers to see tiny,needle-points of light just faintly perceptible in the blackness.
"Laddy! Campfires?" he asked, quickly.
"Shore's you're born, my boy."
"How many?"
Ladd did not reply; but Yaqui held up his hand, his fingers wide. Fivecampfires! A strong force of rebels or raiders or some other deserttroop was camping at Coyote Tanks.
Yaqui sat his horse for a moment, motionless as stone, his dark faceimmutable and impassive. Then he stretched wide his right arm in thedirection of No Name Mountains, now losing their last faint traces ofthe afterglow, and he shook his head. He made the same impressivegesture toward the Sonoyta Oasis with the same somber negation.
Thereupon he turned Diablo's head to the south and started down theslope. His manner had been decisive, even stern. Lash did notquestion it, nor did Ladd. Both rangers hesitated, however, and showeda strange, almost sullen reluctance which Gale had never seen in thembefore. Raiders were one thing, Rojas was another; Camino del Diablostill another; but that vast and desolate and unwatered waste of cactusand lava, the Sonora Desert, might appall the stoutest heart. Galefelt his own sink--felt himself flinch.
"Oh, where is he going?" cried Mercedes. Her poignant voice seemed tobreak a spell.
"Shore, lady, Yaqui's goin' home," replied Ladd, gently. "An'considerin' our troubles I reckon we ought to thank God he knows theway."
They mounted and rode down the slope toward the darkening south.
Not until night travel was obstructed by a wall of cactus did theIndian halt to make a dry camp. Water and grass for the horses andfire to cook by were not to be had. Mercedes bore up surprisingly; butshe fell asleep almost the instant her thirst had been allayed. Thornelaid her upon a blanket and covered her. The men ate and drank. Diablowas the only horse that showed impatience; but he was angry, and not indistress. Blanco Sol licked Gale's hand and stood patiently. Many atime had he taken his rest at night without a drink. Yaqui again badethe men sleep. Ladd said he would take the early watch; but from theway the Indian shook his head and settled himself against a stone, itappeared if Ladd remained awake he would have company. Gale lay downweary of limb and eye. He heard the soft thump of hoofs, the sough ofwind in the cactus--then no more.
When he awoke there was bustle and stir about him. Day had not yetdawned, and the air was freezing cold. Yaqui had found a scant bundleof greasewood which served to warm them and to cook breakfast.Mercedes was not aroused till the last moment.
Day dawned with the fugitives in the saddle. A picketed wall of cactushedged them in, yet the Yaqui made a tortuous path, that, zigzag as itmight, in the main always headed south. It was wonderful how heslipped Diablo through the narrow aisles of thorns, saving the horseand saving himself. The others were torn and clutched and held andstung. The way was a flat, sandy pass between low mountain ranges.There were open spots and aisles and squares of sand; and hedging rowsof prickly pear and the huge spider-legged ocatillo and hummocky massesof clustered bisnagi. The day grew dry and hot. A fragrant wind blewthrough the pass. Cactus flowers bloomed, red and yellow and magenta.The sweet, pale Ajo lily gleamed in shady corners.
Ten miles of travel covered the length of the pass. It opened wideupon a wonderful scene, an arboreal desert, dominated by its pure lightgreen, yet lined by many merging colors. And it rose slowly to a lowdim and dark-red zone of lava, spurred, peaked, domed by volcano cones,a wild and ragged region, illimitable as the horizon.
The Yaqui, if not at fault, was yet uncertain. His falcon eyessearched and roved, and became fixed at length at the southwest, andtoward this he turned his horse. The great, fluted saguaros, fifty,sixty feet high, raised columnal forms, and their branching limbs andcurving lines added a grace to the desert. It was the low-bushedcactus that made the toil and pain of travel. Yet these thorny formswere beautiful.
In the basins between the ridges, to right and left along the floor oflow plains the mirage glistened, wavered, faded, vanished--lakes andtrees and clouds. Inverted mountains hung suspended in the lilac airand faint tracery of white-walled cities.
At noon Yaqui halted the cavalcade. He had selected a field of bisnagicactus for the place of rest. Presently his reason became obvious.With long, heavy knife he cut off the tops of these barrel-shapedplants. He scooped out soft pulp, and with stone and hand then beganto pound the deeper pulp into a juicy mass. When he threw this outthere was a little water left, sweet, cool water which man and horseshared eagerly. Thus he made even the desert's fiercest growthsminister to their needs.
But he did not halt long. Miles of gray-green spiked walls lay betweenhim and that line of ragged, red lava which manifestly he must reachbefore dark. The travel became faster, straighter. And the glisteningthorns clutched and clung to leather and cloth and flesh. The horsesreared, snorted, balked, leaped--but they were sent on. Only BlancoSol, the patient, the plodding, the indomitable, needed no goad orspur. Waves and scarfs and wreaths of heat smoked up from the sand.Mercedes reeled in her saddle. Thorne bade her drink, bathed her face,supported her, and then gave way to Ladd, who took the girl with him onTorre's broad back. Yaqui's unflagging purpose and iron arm werebitter and hateful to the proud and haughty spirit of Blanco Diablo.For once Belding's great white devil had met his master. He foughtrider, bit, bridle, cactus, sand--and yet he went on and on,zigzagging, turning, winding, crashing
through the barbed growths. Themiddle of the afternoon saw Thorne reeling in his saddle, and then,wherever possible, Gale's powerful arm lent him strength to hold hisseat.
The giant cactus came to be only so in name. These saguaros werethinning out, growing stunted, and most of them were single columns.Gradually other cactus forms showed a harder struggle for existence,and the spaces of sand between were wider. But now the dreaded,glistening choya began to show pale and gray and white upon the risingslope. Round-topped hills, sunset-colored above, blue-black below,intervened to hide the distant spurs and peaks. Mile and mile longtongues of red lava streamed out between the hills and wound down tostop abruptly upon the slope.
The fugitives were entering a desolate, burned-out world. It roseabove them in limitless, gradual ascent and spread wide to east andwest. Then the waste of sand began to yield to cinders. The horsessank to their fetlocks as they toiled on. A fine, choking dust blewback from the leaders, and men coughed and horses snorted. The huge,round hills rose smooth, symmetrical, colored as if the setting sun wasshining on bare, blue-black surfaces. But the sun was now behind thehills. In between ran the streams of lava. The horsemen skirted theedge between slope of hill and perpendicular ragged wall. This redlava seemed to have flowed and hardened there only yesterday. It wasbroken sharp, dull rust color, full of cracks and caves and crevices,and everywhere upon its jagged surface grew the white-thorned choya.
Again twilight encompassed the travelers. But there was still lightenough for Gale to see the constricted passage open into a wide, deepspace where the dull color was relieved by the gray of gnarled anddwarfed mesquite. Blanco Sol, keenest of scent, whistled his welcomeherald of water. The other horses answered, quickened their gait.Gale smelled it, too, sweet, cool, damp on the dry air.
Yaqui turned the corner of a pocket in the lava wall. The file ofwhite horses rounded the corner after him. And Gale, coming last, sawthe pale, glancing gleam of a pool of water beautiful in the twilight.
Next day the Yaqui's relentless driving demand on the horses was nolonger in evidence. He lost no time, but he did not hasten. Hiscourse wound between low cinder dunes which limited their view of thesurrounding country. These dunes finally sank down to a black floor ashard as flint with tongues of lava to the left, and to the right theslow descent into the cactus plain. Yaqui was now traveling due west.It was Gale's idea that the Indian was skirting the first sharp-toothedslope of a vast volcanic plateau which formed the western half of theSonora Desert and extended to the Gulf of California. Travel was slow,but not exhausting for rider or beast. A little sand and meager grassgave a grayish tinge to the strip of black ground between lava andplain.
That day, as the manner rather than the purpose of the Yaqui changed,so there seemed to be subtle differences in the others of the party.Gale himself lost a certain sickening dread, which had not been forhimself, but for Mercedes and Nell, and Thorne and the rangers. Jim,good-natured again, might have been patrolling the boundary line. Laddlost his taciturnity and his gloom changed to a cool, careless air. Amood that was almost defiance began to be manifested in Thorne. It wasin Mercedes, however, that Gale marked the most significant change.Her collapse the preceding day might never have been. She was lame andsore; she rode her saddle sidewise, and often she had to be rested andhelped; but she had found a reserve fund of strength, and her mentalcondition was not the same that it had been. Her burden of fear hadbeen lifted. Gale saw in her the difference he always felt in himselfafter a few days in the desert. Already Mercedes and he, and all ofthem, had begun to respond to the desert spirit. Moreover, Yaqui'sstrange influence must have been a call to the primitive.
Thirty miles of easy stages brought the fugitives to another waterhole,a little round pocket under the heaved-up edge of lava. There wasspare, short, bleached grass for the horses, but no wood for a fire.This night there was question and reply, conjecture, doubt, opinion,and conviction expressed by the men of the party. But the Indian, whoalone could have told where they were, where they were going, whatchance they had to escape, maintained his stoical silence. Gale tookthe early watch, Ladd the midnight one, and Lash that of the morning.
The day broke rosy, glorious, cold as ice. Action was necessary tomake useful benumbed hands and feet. Mercedes was fed while yetwrapped in blankets. Then, while the packs were being put on andhorses saddled, she walked up and down, slapping her hands, warming herears. The rose color of the dawn was in her cheeks, and the wonderfulclearness of desert light in her eyes. Thorne's eyes sought herconstantly. The rangers watched her. The Yaqui bent his glance uponher only seldom; but when he did look it seemed that his strange,fixed, and inscrutable face was about to break into a smile. Yet thatnever happened. Gale himself was surprised to find how often his ownglance found the slender, dark, beautiful Spaniard. Was this becauseof her beauty? he wondered. He thought not altogether. Mercedes was awoman. She represented something in life that men of all races forthousands of years had loved to see and own, to revere and debase, tofight and die for.
It was a significant index to the day's travel that Yaqui should keep ablanket from the pack and tear it into strips to bind the legs of thehorses. It meant the dreaded choya and the knife-edged lava. ThatYaqui did not mount Diablo was still more significant. Mercedes mustride; but the others must walk.
The Indian led off into one of the gray notches between the tumbledstreams of lava. These streams were about thirty feet high, a rottingmass of splintered lava, rougher than any other kind of roughness inthe world. At the apex of the notch, where two streams met, a narrowgully wound and ascended. Gale caught sight of the dim, pale shadow ofa one-time trail. Near at hand it was invisible; he had to look farahead to catch the faint tracery. Yaqui led Diablo into it, and thenbegan the most laborious and vexatious and painful of all slow travel.
Once up on top of that lava bed, Gale saw stretching away, breakinginto millions of crests and ruts, a vast, red-black field sweepingonward and upward, with ragged, low ridges and mounds and spurs leadinghigher and higher to a great, split escarpment wall, above which dimpeaks shone hazily blue in the distance.
He looked no more in that direction. To keep his foothold, to save hishorse, cost him all energy and attention. The course was marked outfor him in the tracks of the other horses. He had only to follow. Butnothing could have been more difficult. The disintegrating surface ofa lava bed was at once the roughest, the hardest, the meanest, thecruelest, the most deceitful kind of ground to travel.
It was rotten, yet it had corners as hard and sharp as pikes. It wasrough, yet as slippery as ice. If there was a foot of level surface,that space would be one to break through under a horse's hoofs. It wasseamed, lined, cracked, ridged, knotted iron. This lava bed resembleda tremendously magnified clinker. It had been a running sea of moltenflint, boiling, bubbling, spouting, and it had burst its surface into amillion sharp facets as it hardened. The color was dull, dark, angryred, like no other red, inflaming to the eye. The millions of minutecrevices were dominated by deep fissures and holes, ragged and roughbeyond all comparison.
The fugitives made slow progress. They picked a cautious, winding wayto and fro in little steps here and there along the many twists of thetrail, up and down the unavoidable depressions, round and round theholes. At noon, so winding back upon itself had been their course,they appeared to have come only a short distance up the lava slope.
It was rough work for them; it was terrible work for the horses. BlancoDiablo refused to answer to the power of the Yaqui. He balked, heplunged, he bit and kicked. He had to be pulled and beaten over manyplaces. Mercedes's horse almost threw her, and she was put upon BlancoSol. The white charger snorted a protest, then, obedient to Gale'sstern call, patiently lowered his noble head and pawed the lava for afooting that would hold.
The lava caused Gale toil and worry and pain, but he hated the choyas.As the travel progressed this species of cactus increased in number ofplants and in size. Every
where the red lava was spotted with littleround patches of glistening frosty white. And under every bunch ofchoya, along and in the trail, were the discarded joints, like littlefrosty pine cones covered with spines. It was utterly impossible alwaysto be on the lookout for these, and when Gale stepped on one, often asnot the steel-like thorns pierced leather and flesh. Gale came almostto believe what he had heard claimed by desert travelers--that thechoya was alive and leaped at man or beast. Certain it was when Galepassed one, if he did not put all attention to avoiding it, he washooked through his chaps and held by barbed thorns. The pain wasalmost unendurable. It was like no other. It burned, stung,beat--almost seemed to freeze. It made useless arm or leg. It made himbite his tongue to keep from crying out. It made the sweat roll offhim. It made him sick.
Moreover, bad as the choya was for man, it was infinitely worse forbeast. A jagged stab from this poisoned cactus was the only thingBlanco Sol could not stand. Many times that day, before he carriedMercedes, he had wildly snorted, and then stood trembling while Galepicked broken thorns from the muscular legs. But after Mercedes hadbeen put upon Sol Gale made sure no choya touched him.
The afternoon passed like the morning, in ceaseless winding andtwisting and climbing along this abandoned trail. Gale saw manywaterholes, mostly dry, some containing water, all of themcatch-basins, full only after rainy season. Little ugly bunchedbushes, that Gale scarcely recognized as mesquites, grew near theseholes; also stunted greasewood and prickly pear. There was no grass,and the choya alone flourished in that hard soil.
Darkness overtook the party as they unpacked beside a pool of waterdeep under an overhanging shelf of lava. It had been a hard day. Thehorses drank their fill, and then stood patiently with drooping heads.Hunger and thirst appeased, and a warm fire cheered the weary andfoot-sore fugitives. Yaqui said, "Sleep." And so another night passed.
Upon the following morning, ten miles or more up the slow-ascendinglava slope, Gale's attention was called from his somber search for theless rough places in the trail.
"Dick, why does Yaqui look back?" asked Mercedes.
Gale was startled.
"Does he?"
"Every little while," replied Mercedes.
Gale was in the rear of all the other horses, so as to take, forMercedes's sake, the advantage of the broken trail. Yaqui was leadingDiablo, winding around a break. His head was bent as he stepped slowlyand unevenly upon the lava. Gale turned to look back, the first timein several days. The mighty hollow of the desert below seemed widestrip of red--wide strip of green--wide strip of gray--streaking topurple peaks. It was all too vast, too mighty to grasp any littledetails. He thought, of course, of Rojas in certain pursuit; but itseemed absurded to look for him.
Yaqui led on, and Gale often glanced up from his task to watch theIndian. Presently he saw him stop, turn, and look back. Ladd didlikewise, and then Jim and Thorne. Gale found the desire irresistible.Thereafter he often rested Blanco Sol, and looked back the while. Hehad his field-glass, but did not choose to use it.
"Rojas will follow," said Mercedes.
Gale regarded her in amaze. The tone of her voice had beenindefinable. If there were fear then he failed to detect it. She wasgazing back down the colored slope, and something about her, perhapsthe steady, falcon gaze of her magnificent eyes, reminded him of Yaqui.
Many times during the ensuing hour the Indian faced about, and alwayshis followers did likewise. It was high noon, with the sun beating hotand the lava radiating heat, when Yaqui halted for a rest. The placeselected was a ridge of lava, almost a promontory, considering itsoutlook. The horses bunched here and drooped their heads. The rangerswere about to slip the packs and remove saddles when Yaqui restrainedthem.
He fixed a changeless, gleaming gaze on the slow descent; but did notseem to look afar.
Suddenly he uttered his strange cry--the one Gale consideredinvoluntary, or else significant of some tribal trait or feeling. Itwas incomprehensible, but no one could have doubted its potency. Yaquipointed down the lava slope, pointed with finger and arm and neck andhead--his whole body was instinct with direction. His whole beingseemed to have been animated and then frozen. His posture could nothave been misunderstood, yet his expression had not altered. Gale hadnever seen the Indian's face change its hard, red-bronze calm. It wasthe color and the flintiness and the character of the lava at his feet.
"Shore he sees somethin'," said Ladd. "But my eyes are not good."
"I reckon I ain't sure of mine," replied Jim. "I'm bothered by a dimmovin' streak down there."
Thorne gazed eagerly down as he stood beside Mercedes, who satmotionless facing the slope. Gale looked and looked till he hurt hiseyes. Then he took his glass out of its case on Sol's saddle.
There appeared to be nothing upon the lava but the innumerable dots ofchoya shining in the sun. Gale swept his glass slowly forward andback. Then into a nearer field of vision crept a long white-and-blackline of horses and men. Without a word he handed the glass to Ladd.The ranger used it, muttering to himself.
"They're on the lava fifteen miles down in an air line," he said,presently. "Jim, shore they're twice that an' more accordin' to thetrail."
Jim had his look and replied: "I reckon we're a day an' a night in thelead."
"Is it Rojas?" burst out Thorne, with set jaw.
"Yes, Thorne. It's Rojas and a dozen men or more," replied Gale, andhe looked up at Mercedes.
She was transformed. She might have been a medieval princess embodyingall the Spanish power and passion of that time, breathing revenge,hate, unquenchable spirit of fire. If her beauty had been wonderful inher helpless and appealing moments, now, when she looked backwhite-faced and flame-eyed, it was transcendant.
Gale drew a long, deep breath. The mood which had presaged pursuit,strife, blood on this somber desert, returned to him tenfold. He sawThorne's face corded by black veins, and his teeth exposed like thoseof a snarling wolf. These rangers, who had coolly risked death manytimes, and had dealt it often, were white as no fear or pain could havemade them. Then, on the moment, Yaqui raised his hand, not clenched ordoubled tight, but curled rigid like an eagle's claw; and he shook itin a strange, slow gesture which was menacing and terrible.
It was the woman that called to the depths of these men. And theirpassion to kill and to save was surpassed only by the wild hate whichwas yet love, the unfathomable emotion of a peon slave. Gale marveledat it, while he felt his whole being cold and tense, as he turned oncemore to follow in the tracks of his leaders. The fight predicted byBelding was at hand. What a fight that must be! Rojas was travelinglight and fast. He was gaining. He had bought his men with gold, withextravagant promises, perhaps with offers of the body and blood of anaristocrat hateful to their kind. Lastly, there was the wild, desolateenvironment, a tortured wilderness of jagged lava and poisoned choya, alonely, fierce, and repellant world, a red stage most somberly andfittingly colored for a supreme struggle between men.
Yaqui looked back no more. Mercedes looked back no more. But theothers looked, and the time came when Gale saw the creeping line ofpursuers with naked eyes.
A level line above marked the rim of the plateau. Sand began to showin the little lava pits. On and upward toiled the cavalcade, stillvery slowly advancing. At last Yaqui reached the rim. He stood withhis hand on Blanco Diablo; and both were silhouetted against the sky.That was the outlook for a Yaqui. And his great horse, dazzlinglywhite in the sunlight, with head wildly and proudly erect, mane andtail flying in the wind, made a magnificent picture. The others toiledon and upward, and at last Gale led Blanco Sol over the rim. Then alllooked down the red slope.
But shadows were gathering there and no moving line could be seen.
Yaqui mounted and wheeled Diablo away. The others followed. Gale sawthat the plateau was no more than a vast field of low, ragged circles,levels, mounds, cones, and whirls of lava. The lava was of a darkerred than that down upon the slope, and it was ha
rder than flint. Inplaces fine sand and cinders covered the uneven floor. Strangevarieties of cactus vied with the omnipresent choya. Yaqui, however,found ground that his horse covered at a swift walk.
But there was only an hour, perhaps, of this comparatively easy going.Then the Yaqui led them into a zone of craters. The top of the earthseemed to have been blown out in holes from a few rods in width tolarge craters, some shallow, others deep, and all red as fire. Yaquicircled close to abysses which yawned sheer from a level surface, andhe appeared always to be turning upon his course to avoid them.
The plateau had now a considerable dip to the west. Gale marked theslow heave and ripple of the ocean of lava to the south, where high,rounded peaks marked the center of this volcanic region. The unevennature of the slope westward prevented any extended view, untilsuddenly the fugitives emerged from a rugged break to come upon asublime and awe-inspiring spectacle.
They were upon a high point of the western slope of the plateau. It wasa slope, but so many leagues long in its descent that only from aheight could any slant have been perceptible. Yaqui and his whitehorse stood upon the brink of a crater miles in circumference, athousand feet deep, with its red walls patched in frost-colored spotsby the silvery choya. The giant tracery of lava streams waved down theslope to disappear in undulating sand dunes. And these bordered aseemingly endless arm of blue sea. This was the Gulf of California.Beyond the Gulf rose dim, bold mountains, and above them hung thesetting sun, dusky red, flooding all that barren empire with a sinisterlight.
It was strange to Gale then, and perhaps to the others, to see theirguide lead Diablo into a smooth and well-worn trail along the rim ofthe awful crater. Gale looked down into that red chasm. It resembledan inferno. The dark cliffs upon the opposite side were veiled in bluehaze that seemed like smoke. Here Yaqui was at home. He moved andlooked about him as a man coming at last into his own. Gale saw himstop and gaze out over that red-ribbed void to the Gulf.
Gale devined that somewhere along this crater of hell the Yaqui wouldmake his final stand; and one look into his strange, inscrutable eyesmade imagination picture a fitting doom for the pursuing Rojas.
