Mojave Crossing (1964) (3 page)

Sitting under the stars, we ate a quick meal, then finished the coffee I'd made. "There's something about a campfire ..." she said. "I like to look into the coals."

"Take your last look," I said. "I'm putting it out." When I'd kicked sand over the coals I added, "Fool thing, looking into a fire. When you look away you're blind ... and men have been killed thataway."

I saddled up and loaded our packs. She looked like she couldn't believe what I was doing, but I said, "If you're coming with me, get up in the saddle."

"You're going on? Tonight?"

"You want your friends to catch us? You can bet if I knew where this spring was, they'll know. In the desert a man's travelin' is pretty well cut and dried by where he can find water."

Whoever those men were, they must be wanting her pretty bad to follow us as they were. Of course, there was a chance they were following me. They might be the same outfit that had trailed me to Hardyville. There'd been a bunch of renegades drifting through the country raiding ranches or mine prospects for supplies.

Somebody said they were a Frisco outfit that had come down through Nevada.

As for this Robiseau girl, she might be somebody's wife, or she might have been involved in some shady doings out California way.

Anyway, they needed her bad enough to chase her.

Meanwhile, I'd been doing some pondering of the situation, and there was nothing about it to make a man content. According to what I'd been told when preparing to start westward, it was twenty miles to the next water at Marl Spring, almost due west of where we were now. Most of that twenty miles lay out on bare desert, and if we started from here now we could make it by daylight--if we didn't stray from the trail.

If we strayed ... Well, there were bones a-plenty out there on the desert to answer that question.

Moreover, I had me a tired woman, in no shape for such a ride.

In those days every saloon was a clearing house for information. Sitting around in a saloon or standing at a bar, loafing in a cow camp or riding the trail, men just naturally talked about places they'd been. It was likely to be all a body would ever get to know about trails or towns until he traveled them, so men listened and remembered.

Nobody reckoned in miles. Not often, at least. Distance was reckoned in time, and a place was a day's ride, or two days' ride, or whatever.

And many a cowhand who had never left Texas could describe in detail the looks of Hickok, Earp, Tilghman, Masterson, or Mathers. If a body wasn't able to recognize the town marshal, he'd best not try to cut any fancy didoes in western towns.

So I knew a good bit about the Mojave, although I'd not crossed it before. I knew what landmarks to look for, and the trouble to expect. Only nobody had told me I'd be crossing the wide sand with a fine-dressed woman behind me.

Well, it was twenty miles to water if I held to the trail, but there was water south along the Providence Mountains, and if we could locate one of those springs we could hole up for the night, then work our way south. We'd be taking big risks, venturing off into the desert thataway, but there was a good chance we'd leave all pursuit behind.

And so it was that when we left out of Rock Spring, we headed south.

The night, as desert nights are inclined to be, was cool ... almost cold. There were many stars, and around us lifted the jagged shoulders of black, somber-looking mountains. We went at an easy pace, the ground being rough and the country unfamiliar, and we had to pick our way. So it was over an hour of riding before we covered the six miles to Black Canyon.

There was a spring in the canyon, but we took no time to look for it, pushing on toward the south.

Getting through the canyon, which was close to impassable, was a struggle. By daylight it might have been no trouble, but at night it used up time, and by the time we covered the four additional miles to Granite Well, we were tuckered.

We made dry camp a short way from the well, bedding down on a patch of drift sand among the rocks. Rolling out my bed, I pointed at it. "You roll up there. I'll sleep on the sand."

"I've no right to take your bed."

"Don't argue," I said shortly. "I can't have you falling out of the saddle tomorrow, and what we did today will look like one of your pink tea parties to what we got ahead of us."

It was rugged, broken country, mostly rock and drift sand, with some low-growing desert brush, and I lay awake for some time, speculating on our chances of getting through. Mostly, folks went by the northern route, following the old Government Road or Spanish Trail across the desert and over Cajon Pass. But with men following us with no good intent, it seemed best to risk the run to the south.

There was another pass down thataway, or so Joe Walker had told me. The Indians had used it a time or two, and some Spanish man had gone through the pass fifty or sixty years before.

It was a risky trip, but we Sacketts always had an urge to try new country, and the time was right.

As for that black-eyed woman ... she should see some new country, too. Although I wasn't sure she was going to take to it.

A time or two I glanced over at Dorinda Robiseau. She lay quiet, resting easy, as she should have, for that bed of mine was a good one, and the sand I'd spread it on was deep and free of rocks, more comfortable than many a mattress. I could only see the white of her face, the darkness of her loosened hair.

She would be a trial in the days to come, but somehow I felt better just having her there.

It worried me, though ... why were those men chasing her? And were they the law?

Remembering the men at the bar, I doubted it.

They had a bad look about them. One thing was sure: if we faced up to each other out here in this lonely desert I was going to be glad that I was packing a gun.

That big-shouldered man who had stood with his back to me ... he worried me. Why was there something familiar about him?

I awakened with a start, coming from a sound sleep to sharp attention.

Dorinda was sitting up, wide-eyed. "I heard something," she whispered.

"What?"

"I don't know. Something woke me."

My six-shooter was in my hand, and I looked first at the horses. They were standing heads up, looking off across the desert toward the east.

Rolling up, I put my six-shooter down carefully and shook out my boots--scorpions take notions to hide in boots and such like--and tugged them on.

A glance at the stars told me it was shaping up for daybreak. "Get up, and be very quiet," I said. "We're moving out."

She offered me no argument, and I'll give her this: she made herself ready in quicker time than I'd expected from any tenderfoot woman. By the time I'd saddled fresh horses, she had my bed rolled, and rolled good and tight.

Standing close in the dark, I said, "There's another spring not more than a mile over to the east.

Sound carries far through a desert night."

Me, I wasn't alt sure that whoever had made that sound was that far away, but it could be somebody searching for a waterhole.

We stepped into our saddles and I led off, heading due south, and keeping our horses in soft sand wherever I could. The Providence Mountains loomed high on our right, bleak, hard-shouldered mountains.

It was rugged going, but the night was cool and there was enough gray in the sky to enable a man to pick his trail. After riding about eight miles we left the rocks behind and had the Providence Mountains still on our right, with bald and open desert on our left, stretching away for miles toward distant hills.

"We're riding south," she said.

It was a question more than a statement, so I gave her the answer. "You want to get to Los Angeles, don't you? Well, I'm leaving the trail to them. We're going south, and then west through another pass."

What I didn't tell her was that I had only heard of that pass, and had only a rough idea of where it was. I knew that a stage line and a freight road went through that pass to the placer diggings around La Paz, on the Colorado.

The sky turned to lemon over the distant mountains, a warning that the sun would soon be burning over us. Somewhere to the south there were other springs, but I doubted if they would be easily found. The desert has a way of hiding its water in unexpected places, sometimes marked by willows, cottonwood, or palm trees, but often enough right out in a bottom with nothing but low brush around, and not a likely thing to indicate water. And we wouldn't have time to spend looking.

She rode up alongside me. "You're not a very talkative man."

"No, ma'am."

"Are you married?"

"If you're wonderin' about that scar on my cheekbone, I got that in a knife fight in New Orleans."

"You have no family?"

"Me? I got more family than you could shake a stick at. I got family all over the country ... only I am a lonesome kind of man, given to travel and such. I never was one to abide."

She looked at me curiously and, it seemed to me, kind of sharp. Then she said, "Where are you from, Mr. Tell? You hadn't said."

"No, ma'am. I hadn't."

We rode on for a couple of miles after that.

A road runner showed up and raced out ahead of us, seeming glad of the company. Overhead there was nothing but sky, a sky changing from gray to brass with the sun coming up. Those mountains on our right, they were cool now, but within two hours they'd be blasting heat back at us.

"A few miles now, you keep your eyes open. We'll come up to a water hole, and I'd prefer not to miss it."

She offered no comment, and it was just as well. But she was a mighty pretty woman, and I'd have preferred riding easy with her, not worrying about folks coming up on me unexpected.

"You in some kind of trouble, ma'am?"

"I hadn't mentioned it," she said, coolly enough.

Well, that was fair. Only I was taking a risk, helping her this way.

It grew hot ... and hotter. Not a breath of air stirred. The white sands around us turned to fire.

Heat waves shimmered a veil across the distance.

We saw strange pools of water out there on the desert. Sweat trickled into our eyes. Our horses plodded along slowly; sweat streaked the gray film of dust that lay over them, and over us.

Neither of us was of any mind to talk now.

From time to time I turned to look back, for we were out in the open, masked only by the shimmering heat waves and the wall of the mountain along which we rode.

There was nothing behind us but heat waves and the far-off shoulder of mountain.

Cook's Well was some place along here, but we missed it, and I was of no mind to waste time in search. Blind Spring lay somewhere ahead, and if we missed that, there would be no water until Cottonwood, down at the end of the mountain chain.

Had they cut in after us? Or were they, as I hoped, riding west along the Government Road toward Marl Spring?

"It might make a lot of difference," I spoke out suddenly, "if I knew how anxious they were to find you."

She let her horse go on a few steps before she made answer, and then she said, "The man who is after me would kill you or a half dozen others to put his hands on me ... and then he would kill me."

Well, that answered that.

At high noon we drew up and I helped her down. I switched saddles and sponged out the mouths of our horses with water from a canteen.

We each had a drink, and then we mounted up again and started on.

All the long day through we pushed on, and it was coming on to dark when I finally gave up on Blind Spring. We'd been too far out from the mountain or too close in, one or the other. The water in our canteens was low, and I hated to think what would happen if we didn't find water soon. We might make it, but the horses could not; and without the horses we would be helpless.

At dusk we halted and stripped the saddles from our horses and I worked over them, rubbing them down, sponging out their mouths. Whatever Dorinda thought she wasn't inclined to say, nor was I inclined to listen.

The night came on, soft and dark, with the stars hanging easy in the sky. A cool wind blew up from somewhere, just a smidgin of it, but it felt good. When I was finished with the horses I dug into my saddlebags for the last of the bread. It was hard and dry, but when I broke off a chunk and passed it to her, she tied into x like it was cake.

We sat there on a sandbank, chewing away, and finally she said, "We're in trouble, aren't we?"

"It's like this," I said. "According to what I was told, from the point of the mountain we've got a three-cornered chance. Within three or four miles of this place there are three springs, they say, so we've a fair chance of locating one of them."

There was little time for rest, but trusting to the horses to warn us of any trouble coming, she rolled up in my bed and I hunkered down in the sand, working out a hollow for my body that came up on both sides of me, and there we rested.

In the morning, when I was pulling on my boots in the light of the last lone star, I saw Dorinda was awake, lying quiet, looking up at the star. "This country," I commented, "is hell on women and horses."