Keeping Red Mountain on my right, I started. Had it been left to me, I should have holed up somewhere in the shade and waited until sundown before starting, but the choice was not mine.
Steadily I walked. Sweat trickled down my spine and down the sides of my face. As long as I could sweat, I was not worried. Once, crossing a dry wash, I saw some horse tracks. Most of them were unshod horses, wild stock without a doubt. The desert at this season was an unlikely place for them, so they must have been pursued by somebody or something.
Several times I saw the tracks of bighorn sheep, and the tracks of coyotes were common enough. I walked on into the heat waves, only occasionally looking back. My pursuers were gaining ground. Coming to a stretch of hard-packed ground where the wind had swept away the sand, I started to dog-trot. The hot air seared my lungs; soon I was gasping, and slowed again to a walk.
Glancing back, I saw them stopped. They were grouped together, obviously arguing. If they turned back now, they could make it to water by sundown…with luck.
Stubbornly I pushed on. In places the sand was deep, but whenever possible I moved where the trail was, and there the ground was hard-packed from long years of use. Changing my route slightly, I kept in the shadow of a cloud until there was no more shadow, then sought another, working my way steadily toward Bed Rock Spring. Emerging from the shadow of Red Mountain, I saw Dome Peak ahead of me. The spring was somewhere just beyond it.
Again I glanced back. Two riders still followed; the others had turned back. Undoubtedly these two would try to keep me in sight and the others would return for fresh horses and for water.
The trail, merging with another of later vintage, ran off to the northeast. Only a little of daylight was left, and weary as I was, I knew what had to be done. I turned abruptly into the lava beds near Dome Mountain. Keeping to the rocks to leave no tracks, I worked a careful way eastward toward the spring.
Coming down off the rocks, I studied the area around the spring. There could be one among them who knew the desert better than I, and who might be waiting for me. I had watched for several minutes when I saw three bighorns walk out from where it lay, one of them pausing to lift a hind foot, and bending his neck, scratch behind his ear. Obviously there was nothing to fear. As I came down off the rocks, they moved away, unhurried but watchful.
At the spring, I drank deep. The water was brackish but cool, and anything wet was welcome. Placing my rifle close at hand, I settled down to wait. If they wanted me now, they had only to come, and they would come.
For the last half-mile I had walked on rock, leaving no tracks. For at least a mile before that I had left few, but there were two of them, and casting about, they might find some indication, and their horses would be sure to sense the water.
Again I drank, and rising from the water, I heard them coming. Shadows were gathering, and the sun was going down. Moving into some rocks near the spring, I waited. I was tired, as tired as I had ever been, moving almost continuously over rough terrain since before daylight, and I had come a long, long way.
Yet I had known desert Indians to run a hundred miles in a long day, and there were Indians south of the border, the Tarahumaras, who were not reckoned as men unless they could run a hundred miles in a day. Well, they were better men than I.
A sombrero showed above some rocks, and I put a bullet into it and the hat disappeared.
Moving slightly to a prechosen position, I waited, but nothing happened. All was still. They would want water, but they were having none of it until after dark, if they had the courage to come after it.
All was still. I could hear the horses moving on the rocks, restless for the water they were denied. Night drew its shadowy shroud about us, and I drank again; then I took up my rifle and moved off into the night.
There were low, ragged mountains before me. Well before dark I had chosen a sharp-edged rock for landmark, and now I walked toward it. The night was cool, but every step was an effort, and sometimes I felt like a sleepwalker, yet I pushed on, trying to leave no trail but unable in the darkness to judge how successful I was. When I crossed the low, rocky ridge, I could see Pilot Knob against the sky.
They would not leave the water in the darkness, not knowing where I had gone, and no doubt they would wait until almost morning before they took the chance to approach Bed Rock Spring. Lying down on the sand, I went to sleep.
Night was a time for prowlers, a time for snakes and such, but I was so tired I simply did not care.
An hour or two of sleep, and then I would move on. To travel at night was best when it was cool and pleasant. The sand was soft, and I was very tired. With my rifle cradled in my arms, I fell asleep.
In the distance, a coyote howled. A stone rattled down the rocks and something scurried in the night.
CHAPTER 49
Cold awakened me. My muscles were cramped and stiff. Sodden with sleep and exhaustion, I rolled over and sat up.
The sky was very clear, the stars unbelievably bright. Listening, I heard no sound in the night. Staggering to my feet, I leaned for a moment on my rifle. The sand was very white, and there were dark patches of greasewood. Slowly, for I was still stiff from yesterday’s running, I began to walk toward Pilot Knob.
Careful to leave no tracks, stepping on rocks whenever possible, I pushed on. There were springs up ahead if they knew where to find them, but I did not intend to be their guide.
From my conversations with the Cahuillas I knew that Pilot Knob was something over ten miles, yet exact distances were always hard to get from Indians. Yet with luck I could make Pilot Knob by sunup, and those who pursued me would not start before then. As the sun lifted to the horizon, I was drinking from a small spring near the base of the Knob.
Escape from those who would kill me was first, yet I must conserve my strength. There was no guessing what ordeals might await me, yet I was gambling I knew the desert better than they. One thing worried me: what of those who had turned back? Had they quit? Gone for fresh horses and water? Or to plan some other device, some other way in which to entrap me?
Indian Spring would be my next stop, and it would not be easily found, but now I would begin the destruction of those who followed me. I suspected they had found Bed Rock Spring, but I had traveled by night and left few signs; the slight winds that stirred the sand would remove those.
They had followed me into the desert to kill me; they had tried to trap me, and were themselves trapped. Few in California knew the deserts except for the Indians. The Californios kept to their lands along the seaward side of the mountains, and the interior was as strange to them as the surface of the moon.
I had only myself of whom to think; if the others returned they would have six horses and as many men.
Looking back along my trail, I thought I saw them, but it was likely to be my imagination. “Go back while you can.” I spoke aloud.
My muscles had loosened with movement and heat. I walked easily now, although my moccasins were wearing through. By nightfall they would be gone.
It was very hot. Off to the south where the dry lakes were I saw dust devils dancing. Heat waves shimmered, obscuring the distance and the mountains.
By midday I was at Indian Spring. There were many boulders in the wash where it lay, and high brush hid the spring itself, offering no indication of the presence of water. Indians had placed stones to wall the spring, and the water was about three feet deep. No stream, not so much as a trickle, escaped it. No doubt it was just a seeping to the surface of water running down the wash from Eagle Crags.
Kneeling by the water, I drank. Scooping up handfuls of water, I bathed my neck, face, and chest. Then I drank again. Resting in the shade of the brush, I continued to soak up water. Several times I crawled from my shelter, and keeping under cover, studied my back trail.
At last I saw them. Even at this distance I could see they were walking and
leading their horses. I counted the horses.
Five…Five?
One was gone, then. One horse had gone down. “I am sorry for the horses.” I spoke aloud, as a lonely man often does, hungry for the sound of some voice, even if it is his own.
Reluctantly I yielded my shade to the lizards and went away from the spring, stepping from rock to rock. I doubted they would find it. Without my friends the Indians I would never have imagined water in this place.
The sky was molten brass, the desert a vague, dusty copper where heat waves shimmered. Looking down at my own ragged moccasins, I could scarcely see my own feet, but I went out into the desert, going east now with the knowledge that before me was a long and bitter trek to the next water of which I knew, at what was called Garlic Springs.
My rifle was heavy in my hands, and it was a temptation to discard it, a temptation I resisted. Pausing briefly in the shade of some rocks, I looked off to the east in the direction I must go, squinting my eyes against the glare.
Nothing but bald, open desert. In the distance, far away, some low, ragged mountains if such they could be called.
I sat down, staring again at that awful waste that lay before me. Could I make it? Could anybody make it? Anybody at all?
There might be water closer than Garlic Springs, but I knew of none, and my enemies were coming behind me. I looked back again but could see nothing; then I did. I saw a man leading a horse, enormously tall, an impression of height created by heat waves.
It would be hours before I would have another drink, if I ever did. Yet, before I was halfway across, night would come with its coolness and its dark, so I must think of that. I must endure. I must wait for it.
Yet, if I waited, I might fight them off. I might get all of them.
“Don’t be a fool!” I told myself irritably. “One or two, but not all.”
Standing up, I took a step, and taking it, I gave myself to the desert, to the heat, to the thirst. I walked boldly into the desert and took step after step, my eyes upon those distant mountains, shimmering in heat waves like some weird land beyond imagination. Slowly, steadily, I walked. I chose little goals for myself. That greasewood with the weird shape. If I could get that far…
A white rock as large as my two fists. I made it to the rock, and chose another, and then another. I kept my eyes from the awful distance and chose just the near goals. It was midafternoon before I stumbled, minutes later when I fell.
The heat on the face of the desert was unbearable. Struggling up, I started on again. Once I turned to look back. They were there, they had seen me, and they were coming.
Squinting again, I saw but three. Only three? I was winning, then.
I was winning? Grimly I laughed within. The desert was winning. Whatever killing was done, the desert would do.
How long since I had eaten? I could not remember, but the thought of food nauseated me. I fell again, but I got up.
Glancing back, I could see they were closer now. They had gotten into their saddles. They were riding to catch me, but the horses were walking. I did not think they could run.
Walking on into the heat, I staggered, almost fell, but caught myself on the rifle, using it as a staff. Turning then, I lifted the rifle, holding to the wood, for the barrel was too hot to touch, took careful aim, and fired.
A man lurched in the saddle. I had scarcely hoped to hit him, but then he fell.
Stumbling, staggering, I kept moving. Once more I fell, and from somewhere a thought came to me. “I am Johannes Verne. I am not afraid.”
I got up to my knees, lurched to my feet, and walked on, nor did I fall again. “I am Johannes Verne, and I am not afraid.”
Over and over I said it, and over and over like some weird litany it chanted itself in my brain, and then from somewhere came coolness, and the day was gone. The low, ragged mountains were not that far away.
In the coolness of the early evening when the stars were just appearing, I came to the springs. There were two of them, only a few yards apart, lying at the edge of some low hills near the Tiefort Mountains.
Dropping to my knees, I bathed my face and neck. I swallowed a little water, then a little more. I put my head down into the water, then withdrew it, dripping. I turned around and sat down to face the desert from which my enemies would come. I got out a piece of dried beef and worried a piece from the end with my teeth. Slowly, methodically, I chewed.
My foot moved, and I gasped with sudden agony. I looked again. My moccasins were gone. My feet were raw and bloody, the broken skin cracked and the cracks filled with sand.
Scooping water with my left hand, as my right held the pistol, I bathed my feet. Slowly, for what must have been an hour, I bathed them.
Listening into the night, I heard nothing. Peeling off my buckskin shirt, I got out my knife and cut the shape of my moccasins from it. One, then another. It was something I had done before. Sitting there in the darkness beside the Garlic water, I cut and made myself moccasins, and used the laces of the shirt’s neck and lower sleeves to bind them on.
Again I drank, and drank.
Moving away from the water, I found a place in the sand. Dared I sleep? I slept.
And in the night the stars moved, and a night wind stirred the dried leaves on the scarce brush, and sand sifted, and in the night, something stirred, and my eyes opened.
A man…moving…coming nearer.
I sat up. There was a pale gray light in the eastern sky. I held the gun in my hand, and out of the desert a scarecrow of a man, staggering, with wild, staring eyes. He saw me and stopped.
“Water?” he pleaded. “Water?”
“Drop your gun belt. Your knife.”
“Gone…back…back there.”
“Drink, then, and be damned.”
He drank, drank too much. Taking him by the hair, I dragged him back from the water. “Wait, you fool. You’ll kill yourself.”
Yellow crept into the sky. He was an Anglo, a man burned red by the sun, a man whose boots were leather rags about his feet, an evil man with a knife-scarred face.
“Where are the others?”
“Gone…dead…back there.” He lifted a hand toward the desert. “Gone. All of them.”
“Was Federico among them?”
“He went back. For horses and to come again for you.” The man stared at me. “You are dead, too. He will have men waiting for you when you come from the desert. If you do not die here, they will be waiting at each water hole. He has a man who knows where you must come. They will be waiting.”
Careful not to turn my back on him, I recovered the sleeves of my buckskin coat, and using rawhide threads cut from the remnants of the back after the moccasins were made, I doubled one sleeve over to make a bottom for the other sleeve and threaded it through holes in the sleeve.
He watched me, staring. “If that’s s’posed to be a water bag, it won’t work. It’ll leak.”
“Maybe. Some of it.”
“You’re a fool. They’re goin’ to get you.”
My hand waved toward the desert. “That’s what they thought.”
He started toward the water, and I let him drink. “You’re a fool,” he said.
“A live fool,” I said.
I dipped my water bag into the water and lifted it out, full. Water ran from it, dripped from it.
“See?”
Yet much water remained inside. I lowered it into the water hole again and left it there to soak.
“You…” I lifted my gun. “Get up.”
He stared at me. Slowly he got up.
“There’s another water hole right over there. It’s a part of this spring. You go over there and set. And you stay there. If you stand up again after you get there, I’ll kill you.”
He stumbled over to the other hole and sat down. “You try to walk out of her
e, and you’ll die,” he shouted at me.
It was only about thirty or forty feet away, but it gave me breathing room. After a while he stretched out on the sand to sleep. My back against a bank, I did likewise, dozing, sleeping, waking. He never stirred.
All through the day, I rested, letting my feet heal, saturating myself with water. When the sun went down, I filled my water bag again, and holstering my gun, I turned into the desert.
The man got up and stared after me. “You’ll die!” he shouted. “You’ll die out there!”
There was no need to waste time looking back. I had far to go.
“You’ll die!” he screamed.
He ran a few steps after me. “You’ll die out there!” he screamed hoarsely. “You’ll die!”
My crude water bag slung around my neck and hanging against my chest, I walked on.
“…die!” he screamed.
Far off there were mountains, and where there were mountains there might be hollows where water had been caught. The water in my bag would not last. Now it was saturated; soon the buckskin would dry and shrink. Would it help? At least there would be a few swallows before it was gone.
A few swallows…Then?
I thought of Meghan, and I said aloud what I had never dared say before. “Meghan, I love you.”
My feet were bleeding again. Each step was agony. I chose a distant star above distant mountains.
I walked on, into the night, into the desert.
CHAPTER 50
Miss Nesselrode made coffee in the large pot. Soon the stage would come to the Bella Union and the newspapers would be brought to her. Several of her regulars were sure to drop in. A dozen of the town’s most prominent men had made her reading room a place of meeting, away from the noise of the saloons.
The news of the day was discussed here before it appeared in the columns of the Star. In the beginning she had been merely a young woman who kept a book shop, but more and more she had been accepted into their conversations, although when more than two men were involved she retreated behind her desk.
The Lonesome Gods (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures) Page 35
