by Zane Grey
“It’s Billy, up on the home trail,” added George. “Yes, and there’s Father with him. Good Lord, must we tell him about Snap?”
“Someone must tell him,” answered Dave.
“That’ll be you, then. You always do the talking.”
August Naab galloped into the glade, and swung himself out of the saddle. “I heard a shot. What’s this? Who’s hurt? Hare! Why . . . lad . . . how is it with you?”
“Not bad,” rejoined Hare.
“Let me see,” August summarily thrust Zeke aside. “A bullet hole . . . just missed the bone . . . not serious. Tie it up tight. I’ll take him home tomorrow . . . . Hare, who’s been here?”
“Snap rode in and left his respects.”
“Snap! Already? Yet I knew it . . . I saw it. You had Providence with you, lad, for this wound is not bad. Snap surprised you, then?”
“No. I knew it was coming.”
“Jack hung his belt and gun on Silvermane’s saddle,” said Dave. “He didn’t feel as if he could draw on either Snap or Holderness . . . .”
“Holderness!”
“Yes. Snap rode in with Holderness. Hare thought if he was unarmed they wouldn’t draw. But Snap did.”
“Was he drunk?”
“No. They came over to kill Hare.” Dave went on then and recounted the incident. “And . . . and see here, Dad . . . that’s not all. Snap’s gone to the bad.”
Dave Naab shadowed his face while he told of his brother’s perfidy; the others turned away, and Hare closed his eyes.
For long moments there was silence broken only by the tramp of the old man as he strode heavily to and fro, up and down. At last the footsteps ceased, and Hare opened his eyes to see Naab’s tall form erect, arms uplifted, his shaggy head rigid. He resembled a statue of wrath and denunciation.
“Hare,” began August presently, “I’m responsible for this cowardly attack on you. This is the second one. Beware of the third! I see . . . but tell me, do you remember that I said you must meet Snap as man to man?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you want to live?”
“Of course.”
“You hold to no Mormon creed?”
“Why, no,” Hare replied wonderingly.
“What was the reason I taught you my trick with a gun?”
“I suppose it was to help me to defend myself.”
“Then why do you let yourself be shot down in cold blood? Why did you hang up your gun? Why didn’t you draw on Snap? Was it because of his father, his brothers, his family?”
“Partly, but not altogether,” replied Hare slowly. “I didn’t know before what I know now. My flesh sickened at the thought of killing a man, even to save my own life . . . and to kill . . . your son . . . .”
“No son of mine!” thundered Naab. Sternly, stoically he had cast out love of his first-born. “Remember that when next you meet. I want not your blood on my hands. Don’t stand to be killed like a sheep! If you have felt duty to me, I release you.”
Zeke finished bandaging the wound, and, making a bed of blankets near Hare, lifted him into it, and covered him, cautioning him to lie still. Hare had a sensation of extreme lassitude, a deep drowsiness that permeated all through him, even to his bones. There were intervals of oblivion, then a long blank, succeeded by a time when the stars blinked in his eyes; he heard the wind, Silvermane’s bell, the murmur of voices, yet all seemed remote from him, intangible as things in a dream.
He rode home next day, sagging in the saddle and fainting at the end of the trail, with the strong arm of August Naab upholding him. Then his wound was dressed and he was put to bed, where he lay sleeping most of the time, brooding the rest.
In three weeks he was in the saddle again, riding out over the red strip of desert toward the range. During his convalescence he had learned that he had come to the somber line of choice. Either he must deliberately back away, thereby signaling his unfitness to survive in the desert, or he must step across into its dark wilds with deadly intent. The stern question still abided with him. Yet he felt it to be a question waiting only for the moment.
He sought lonely rides more than ever, and, like Silvermane, he was always watching and listening. His duties carried him halfway to Seeping Springs, across the valley to the red wall, up the slope of Coconina far into the forest of stately pines. What with Silvermane’s wonderful scent and sight, and his own constant watchfulness, there were never range riders or wild horses nor even deer near him without his knowledge.
The days flew by; spring had long given place to summer; the hot blaze of sun and blast of flying sand were succeeded by the cooling breezes from the mountain; October brought the flurries of snow and November the dark storm clouds.
Hare was the last of the riders to be driven off the mountain. The brothers were waiting for him at Silver Cup, and at once packed and started for home.
August Naab listened to the details of the range riding since his absence, with a surprise he did not speak. Holderness and Snap had steered clear of Silver Cup after the supposed killing of Hare. Occasionally a group of riders rode across the valley or up a trail within sight of Dave and his followers, yet there was never a meeting. Not a steer had been driven off the range that summer and fall, and except for the menace always hanging in the blue smoke over Seeping Springs the range riding had passed as it used to pass before the coming of rustlers.
So for Hare the months had gone by swiftly, although they seemed years in the looking backward. The winter at the oasis he filled as best he could, with the children playing in the yard, with Silvermane under the sunny lee of the great red wall, and any work that offered itself. It was during the long evenings, when he could not be active, that time oppressed him, and the past grew near. A glimpse of the red sunset through the cliff gate toward the west started the train of thought, and he loved and hated the Painted Desert. Mescal was there in the purple shadows. He dreamed of her in the glowing embers of the log fire. He saw her on Black Bolly with hair flying free to the wind. And he could not shut out the picture of her sitting in the corner of the room, silent, with bowed head, while the man to whom she was pledged hung closely over her. That memory had a sting. It was like a spark of fire dropped on the wound in his breast where the desert hawk had struck him. It was like a light gleaming on the somber line he was waiting to cross.
Chapter Fourteen
On the anniversary of the night Mescal disappeared the mysterious voice that had called to Hare so strangely at long intervals pierced his slumber and started him upright in his bed, shuddering and listening. The dark room was as quiet as a tomb. He fell back into his blankets trembling with emotion. Of all the spiritually wild cries that had ever come whispering to him on the desert wind, or pealing through the vague shadowy mists of a dream, this one was the wildest, the clearest, the most impossible to forget. Sleep did not again close his eyes that night; he lay in a fever waiting for the dawn, and, when the gray gloom lightened, he knew what he must do.
After breakfast he sought August Naab. “May I go across the river?” he asked.
The old man looked up from his carpenter’s task and fastened his glance on Hare. “Mescal?”
“Yes.”
“I saw it long ago.” He shook his head and spread his great hands. “Is there any use for me to say what the desert is? You know. I see darkly here, but if you ever come back, you will bring her. Yes, you may go. It’s a man’s deed. God keep you!”
Hare spoke to no other; he filled one saddlebag with grain, another with meat, bread, and dried fruits, strapped a five-gallon leather water sack back of Silvermane’s saddle, and set out toward the river. Now that the thing was undertaken, and that calm daylight reflection showed him no objective point, nothing but aimless wandering after a gleam, he had the cold practical certainty of a range rider’s judgment opposed to the feverish imaginative unintelligible impelling of will. Even so he was happier than he had been in a year. At the crossing bar he removed Silvermane’s accoutrements an
d placed them in the boat. At that moment a long mourn, as of a dog baying the moon, startled him from his musings, and he surveyed the riverbank, up and down, and then the opposite side. An animal, which at first he took to be a gray timber wolf, was running along the sandbar of the landing.
“Pretty white for a wolf,” he soliloquized. “Might be a Navajo dog.”
The beast sat down on his haunches and, lifting a lean head, sent up a doleful howl. Then he began trotting along the bar, every few paces stepping to the edge of the water. Presently he espied Hare, whereupon he began to bark furiously.
“It’s a dog all right . . . wants to get across,” said Hare. “Where have I seen him?”
Suddenly he sprang to his feet, almost upsetting the boat. “He’s like Mescal’s Wolf ! It might be.” He looked closer, his heart beginning to thump, and then he yelled: “Ki-yi! Wolf ! Hyer! Hyer!”
The dog leaped straight up in the air and, coming down, began to dash back and forth along the sand with piercing yelps.
“God! It’s really Wolf ! Mescal must be near,” cried Hare, a red veil obscuring his sight, and every vein was like a hot cord. “Hi, good old dog! Coming . . . coming.”
With fingers that seemed all thumbs, he tied Silvermane’s bridle to the stern seat of the boat and pushed off. In his eagerness he rowed too hard, dragging Silvermane’s nose under water, and he had to slow up. Time and again he turned to yell to the dog. At length the bow grated on the sand, and Silvermane emerged with a splash and a snort.
“Wolf, Wolf, old fellow!” cried Hare. “Where’s Mescal? Wolf, where is she?” Then he was hugging the dog. Wolf whined, licked Hare’s face, and, breaking away, ran up the sandy trail, and back again. But he barked no more; he waited to see if Hare was following.
“All right, Wolf . . . coming.” Never had Hare saddled so speedily, nor mounted so quickly. He sent Silvermane into the willow-skirted trail close behind the dog, up on the rocky bench, and then under the bulging wall. What to think, to believe, he had no idea; he was all at sea; his blood raced; wonderful hopes succumbed to cold possibilities; he gazed with blurred eyes up the trail, expecting at every turn to see Mescal. Wolf reached the level between the cañon and Echo Cliffs, and then started straight west toward the Painted Desert. He trotted a few rods and turned to see if the man was coming.
Doubt, fear, uncertainty ceased for Hare. With the first blast of dust-scented air in his face he knew Wolf was leading him to Mescal, that the cry he had heard in his dream was hers, that the old mysterious promise of the desert had at last begun its fulfillment. He gave one sharp exultant answer to that call. The horizon, everwidening, lay before him, and the treeless plains, the sun-scorched slopes, the great sandy stretches, the massed blocks of black mesas, all seemed serenely welcoming him, shining in a great white light, like the light that shone in his soul. For Mescal was there. Far away she must be, as a grain of sand in all that world of drifting sands, perhaps ill, perhaps hurt, but alive, waiting for him, calling for him, crying out with a voice that no distance could silence. Wherefore then had this desert anything but welcome for him? He did not see the sharp peaks as pitiless barriers, nor the mesas and domes as black-faced death, nor the moisture-drinking sands as life-sucking foes to plant and beast and man. That marvelously painted wonderland had sheltered Mescal for a year. He had loved it for its color, change, its secrecy; he loved it now because it had not been a grave for Mescal, but a home. Therefore he laughed at the deceiving yellow distances in the foreground of glistening mesas, at the deceiving purple distances of the far-off horizon. The wind blew a song in his ears; the dry desert odors were fragrance in his nostrils; the sand tasted sweet between his teeth, and the dancing, quivering heat waves, veiling the desert in transparent haze, framed beautiful pictures for his eyes.
Wolf kept to the fore for some thirty paces, and, although he had ceased to stop, he still looked back to see if the horse and man were following. Hare had noted the dog occasionally in the first hours of travel, but he had given his eyes mostly to the broken line of sky and desert in the west, to the receding, clear contour of Echo Cliffs, to the spread and break of the desert near at hand. Here and there life manifested itself in a gaunt, lone coyote sneaking into the cactus, or a horned toad huddling down in the dust, or a red-spotted, jewel-eyed lizard sunning himself upon a stone. It was only when his excited fancy had cooled and his interest in the features of the desert had somewhat tired, that Hare came to look closely at Wolf. What a lean wild-appearing dog! But for his color he could not have been distinguished from a real wolf. His head and ears and tail drooped, even his long hair drooped, and he was lame in his right front paw.
Hare halted in the shade of a stone, dismounted, and called the dog to him. Wolf returned without quickness, without eagerness, or any of the old-time frisky friendliness of shepherding days. How sad were his eyes, how strange altogether he seemed! Hare encountered his first disquieting thought, and dispelled it with passionate force. Yet the chill remained. Lifting Wolf ’s paw, he discovered the ball of the foot worn through. Whereupon he called into service a piece of buckskin, and, fashioning a rude moccasin, he tied it around the injured member. Wolf licked his hand, but there was no change in the sad light of his eyes. He turned toward the west as if anxious to be off.
“All right, old fellow,” said Hare. “Only go slow. From the look of that foot I think you’re turned back on a long trail.”
Again they faced the west, dog leading, man following, and addressed themselves to an easy-swelling slope that had hidden all in front except the tips of mesas and escarpments and mountain ranges. When it had been surmounted, Hare realized that his ride so far had brought him only through an anteroom; the portal now stood open to the Painted Desert. The immensity of the thing seemed to reach up to him with a thousand lines, ridges, cañons, all ascending out of a purple gulf, all desert arms that wrapped his soul about and warmed while they chilled it.
As he descended into the valley, keeping close to Wolf, he marked a straight course in line with a volcanic spur, and he had cause to wonder when the dog, though continually threading jumbles of rock, heading cañons, crossing deep washes, and going around obstructions, always veered back to this bearing as true as a compass needle to its magnet.
Hare was not long in discovering that the air had grown warmer and thicker and this fact grew more appreciable as he continued the descent. Toward the middle of the afternoon, when he estimated his travel had exceeded thirty miles since the start, he was perspiring freely, and Silvermane was moist. The time soon came when the clear, cool tang of the upland atmosphere died in the musty, heavy air of the desert valley. Looking backward Hare had a blank feeling of loss; the sweeping line of Echo Cliffs had retreated behind the horizon. There was no familiar landmark left.
Sunset brought him to a standstill, as much from its sudden glorious gathering of brilliant crimsons splashed with gold, as from its herald that the day was done. There was a broken field of clouds in the west, like colored coral reefs pounded by a golden surf. They held the lighter gleams momentarily then, stained in fierce burning red, lost their individuality in a flood of color that streamed over buttes and mesas, sands and cañons in burnished scarlet brilliancy.
Hare pitched camp beside a stone that would serve as a windbreak. He laid his saddle for a pillow and his blanket for a bed. He gave Silvermane a nose bag full of water, and then one of grain; he fed the dog, and afterward attended to his own needs. When his task was done, the desert brightness had faded to gray; the warm air had blown away on a cool breeze, and night approached. He scooped out a little hollow in the sand for his hips, took a last look at Silvermane haltered to the rock, and, calling Wolf to his side, stretched himself to rest. He was used to lying on the ground, under the open sky, out where the wind blew and the sand seeped, yet all these were different on this night. He was in the Painted Desert; Wolf crept close to him; Mescal lay somewhere under the blue-white stars.
He awakened and arose before any
color of dawn hinted of the day. While he fed his four-footed companions, the deep blue sky warmed and lightened. A tinge of rose gathered in the east. The air was cool and transparent. He tried to cheer and caress Wolf out of his sad-eyed forlornness, and failed.
Hare vaulted into the saddle. The day had its possibilities, and, while he had sobered down and lost his exuberance at the press of something grim and hard, he had still the spring in his limbs, and the ring in his voice as he called to the dog: “On, Wolf, on, old fellow!”
Out of the east burst the sun, and the gray curtain was lifted by shafts of pink and white and gold, streaking westward, long trails of color.
With the commencement of the journey, difficulties began to beset the dog, the overcoming of which persuaded Hare that Wolf was not tracking a backtrail, but traveling by instinct. There were draws which necessitated searching on the rim for a place to cross, and areas of broken rock that had to be rounded, and steep flat mesas ever rising in the path, and strips of deep sand and cañons impassable for long distances. But the dog always found a way and always came back to a line with the black spur that Hare had marked. It still stood in sharp relief, no nearer than before, receding with every step, an illusive landmark, which Hare began to distrust.
Then quite suddenly it vanished in the ragged blue mass of the Ghost Mountains. Hare had seen them several times, although never so distinctly as now. The purple tips, the bold rock ribs standing out, the shadowed cañons on the slopes, so sharp and clear in the morning light—how impossible to believe that these were only the deceit of the desert mirage! Yet so they were; even for the Navajos they were spirit mountains.
The rough, splintered desert floor merged into an area of sand, and Wolf slowed his trot, and Silvermane sunk his hoofs and toiled. Dismounting, Hare labored beside him, and felt the heat steal through his boots and burn the soles of his feet. More heat rose from the sand than fell from the sun. Hare plodded onward, stopping once to tie another moccasin on Wolf ’s worn-out paw, this time the left front one, and often he pulled the stopper from the water bag and cooled his parching lips and throat. The waves of the sand dunes were as the waves of the ocean. He did not look backward, dreading to see what little progress he had made. Forward were miles on miles of graceful heaps, swelling mounds, crested ridges, all different, yet regular and rhythmical, drift on drift, dune on dune in endless lines of rolling flow. Wisps of sand whipped from their summits in white, thin ribbons and wreaths, and pale clouds of sand shrouded little hollows. The morning breeze, rising out of the west, approached in a white rippling line, like the crest of an inflowing tide. How beautiful this drifting sea! What merciless change and gather and sweep away on the wind! How flimsy and flying this unstable sand, yet sure in its strength to cover the stones and fill the draws and expose the desert’s bony ribs at its fickle, mutable will!
