The Freebooters of the Wilderness Part 21

"Wayland, A' don't believe you!"

He had dismounted as he spoke and proceeded down the yellow sands to a pit at the foot of the rolling slope. Wayland saw him halt, again shade his eyes from the sun glare, and stoop. On his knees, he looked again and rose. He came up the slope shaking his head. "Y'd swear it was water at y'r very feet till you bent down."

"Till you changed the angle of reflection . . . eh? and then the water vanished, sir."

Both men had thrown their coats across the rear of the saddles.

Matthews now knotted a large handkerchief round his neck. There was not a cloud, nor the shadow of a cloud for shade. It was a wilted, shrivelled, heat-flayed, fire-blasted world of arid desolation; trenched by the dry arroyos; sifted by the hot winds fine as flour; with rings and belts and wavering layers of heat--heat from the orange sun edged red by the Desert dust of the atmosphere--heat from the wind off some white flamed furnace--heat from the ochre s.h.i.+fting sands panting to the loom and writhe of the blue-flamed air, and over all a veil, was it blue or lilac or lavender? tinted as of rainbow mists.

For a little while, neither spoke. Each knew what the dusty dead orange earth, the smoking sand hills, the sifted volcanic ash, the burnt oil smell of shrivelled growth, meant to unprepared travellers.

"I wish, sir," said Wayland, "I wish you would turn back here and let me go on alone; I really do!"

"What! turn tail like a whipped dog an' scuttle at first danger? Go to blazes, my boy! Do you think y'r beasts will stand crossing before sunset?"

"It's about as easy going ahead as standing still. If we only had a water canteen, it wouldn't be such a fool-thing to risk."

The wind flayed them with hot peppering sand.

"If we took time to go back for one now, this wind would wipe out the tracks."

"What's yon splash o' dust goin' over the roll o' th' hill?"

Beyond the quiver of the dusky heat, they could see the drift of ash dust eddying to the wind like dirty snow.

"I wish, sir, you would turn back here," urged Wayland; but Matthews was not heeding. He had gathered up the broncho's reins.

"Time to be moving," he said. "'Tis my observation, Wayland, that the devil gets away from the saint because, he'll always ride one faster.

Many's the time when A've been pressed in the old days, when if the man behind had just ridden the one bit harder that he thought he couldn't, just not sagged where he nagged, he'd ha' got me, Wayland! When y'

pace two men, one ridin' with the devil behind him, and the other jog trotting with a dumpy comfortable conscience, 'tis a safe bet which will win."

There was the c.l.i.tter clatter of the horses' hoofs over the lava rocks; the padded beat of the easy plains lope as they left the lava for the ashy silt; then no sound but the swash of saddle leather along trail marks that cut the crusted silt like tracks in soft snow. The wind had been flaring a steady torrid white flame. Now it began to come in puffs and whirls that beat the air to dust of ashes and sent the sand foaming in the wave lines of a yellow sea. The mule no longer ambled ahead with ears pointed. He shuffled through the ash with dragging steps; and the sage brush crackled brittle where the trail led out from the silt across the baked earth. The heat waves writhed and throbbed through the atmosphere, a flame through a sieve, with a scorch of burning from the ground and clouds of dust like smoke.

"I think I'll get off and walk," said Wayland, suiting the action to the word. "I hope those blackguards are counting on camping at a spring to-night."

They plodded on for another half hour before Matthews answered.

"Do you think they did it intentionally? A mean, do y' think they lured us here to get rid of us?"

Wayland paused and thought.

"It's all the same whether they did or not . . . now! What was it you said about a man chased by the devil setting a good live pace? They have to find water. They know where water is. We don't! Only safety is to follow."

"Queer how y' keep imaginin' ye hear wimplin' brooks! When A let myself go, A keep hearin' the tinkle o' y'r rills back in the mountains! A keep seein' the blue false water waverin' up to my feet an' recedin' again! Isn't there a fellow in mythology, Wayland, died o' thirst in water because when he reached to drink it, it kept waverin' away?"

"That fellow had travelled in the Desert," answered Wayland.

He aimed his revolver at a green rattlesnake lying under a sage brush.

The sun glinted from the steel barrel. The snake coiled and raised its head. "See," said Wayland, "the snake takes aim. The light sort of hypnotizes it. The greenest tenderfoot couldn't miss it."

"How far d' y' call it across?"

"Two to four days straight: eleven to twenty if you take it diagonally.

As I make it, they are steering due West for one of the deep cut ways to take 'em South under shade."

"Shade would taste pretty good to me, Wayland."

Wayland looked back at his companion. What he thought, he did not say; but he mounted at once and hastened pace.

"Once we find a spring, we'll travel at night," he said.

A condor rose from the rocks and circled away with slow lazy sweep of wings.

"You would wonder what they could find to eat here, if it were not for the snakes and the lizards."

"Perhaps, we'll _not_ wonder so much before we finish."

Wayland looked at the old frontiersman again. He was riding heavily, sagged forward, with one hand on the high pommel of the Mexican saddle.

"Talk about the heroes o' cold in the North," he said. "'Tis easy!

Y'r cold buoys a man up! This stews the life out before ye have a fightin' chance! Y' could light a match on these saddle buckles."

"I think I see sand hills ahead. If there's any shade, we'll rest till twilight."

The lava rocks rolled to a trough of sand; and the light lay a s.h.i.+mmering lake in the alkali sink.

"Is that what y' call a false pond?"

"No, I hope you'll not see any false ponds this trip! False pond is in your head or your eye; and the harder you ride, the faster it runs.

Let's get out of this wind!"

Wayland noticed the horses paw restlessly and nose at the gravel when they crossed the dry bed of a spring stream.

"Think y' could dig down to water with y'r axe, Wayland?"

The Ranger pointed to the wide cracks in the baked earth, dry as flour dust deep as they could see. The mule led the way at a run up the next sand roll.

"Think he smells water, Wayland?"

Another broad mesa rolled away to the silver strip of mountain on the sky line; but the fore ground broke into slabs and blocks of red stone.

Wayland examined the trail. It twisted in and out among the rocks towards more broken country.

"There may be a canyon leading South over there," he pointed.

"Y' might try for a spring beneath that big rock. Looks green at the bottom."

A mist as of primrose or fire tinged the lakes of quivering light lying on the ochre-colored mesas. The sun hung close to the silver strip of mountain exaggerated to a huge dull blood-red s.h.i.+eld.

"Wayland, is this desert light red or is it that A'm seein' red?"

The Ranger looked a third time at his companion. The old man sat more erect; but his eyes were blood shot. A puff of wind, a lift and fall and drift of sand, the wind met them in a peppering shower of hot shot.