Norton, Andre - Novel 15 (27 page)

 
          
 
"Don't let go of one hold until you are
sure of the next. Take it slow, and don't look down!"

 
          
 
Ritchie nodded, saving his breath for the
first assault. He watched Herndon's hands and toes search out support and the
Sergeant's slim body spread-eagled against the rock as he went up. Then he,
too, was finding a good grip, and with an odd taste in his mouth and a ripple
of ice down his backbone he began to climb.

 
          
 
There were two bad stretches, one the place
where Tuttle's tired fingers had betrayed him, and another, higher, where
Ritchie clung to what seemed scant inches of slippery rock and prayed aloud to
the rough stone as he hunted another hold. But in the end a hand took firm grip
on his sweaty shoulders, and he was heaved up and over rock which scraped his
skin raw and bloody.

 
          
 
He lay on his back staring up into a sky of
molten blue. Far above, a black dot wheeled and dipped as an eagle surveyed its
own hunting ground. Somewhere near he could hear heavy panting breaths beating
almost in time with the pumping of his own laboring heart. He rolled over on
his side and discovered that he lay on a bed of real grass.

 
          
 
Herndon was stretched out full length in the
cool green stuff, his face buried in his folded arms, his shoulders heaving,
the
pink flesh of one showing through a long ragged tear in
his shirt.

 
          
 
Using his lacerated hands to lever him up,
Ritchie looked around. They had climbed into another world. The trampled
parklike expanse where they now were was covered with grass—green and blowing
as a meadow at home. The ground sloped toward the interior of the mesa, and through
the scrub cedar and pinon he thought he could sight a gleam which was
promising. Hardly daring to hope—telling himself that if it was water it might
be as contaminated with chemicals as the stuff which bubbled so disappointingly
below—he felt for the canteens.

 
          
 
A brown furry shape materialized in front of
him. Ritchie remained on his knees, startled into immobility as a jack rabbit,
which was certainly a giant even among its kind, watched him with all the signs
of unafraid curiosity. If man had ever discovered this sanctuary before, it was
not in the memory of this particular inhabitant. Ritchie moved, and the jack
hopped on a pace or two just to be on the safe side, but it did not go far.

 
          
 
''Trusting beggar, isn't he?" Herndon's
chin still rested on his arms, but he had raised his head to watch the
withdrawal of the jack rabbit.

 
          
 
"Not afraid at all-"

 
          
 
"No. So I don't believe we'll have to
worry about any rivals up here. Shall we go down and see if that really is
water?"

 
          
 
"You see it, too?"

           
 
"Sure. And unless we share a common
delusion, maybe we can hope for the best." Herndon was a little slow in
rising, and involuntarily Ritchie put out a hand which the Sergeant actually
grasped as he got up. Their pace toward the water which might or might not
exist was a slow one.

 
          
 
Around them the grass whispered. Desert quail
scuttled away, and the curious jack rabbit was not the only one of its tribe to
watch them. The metallic blue of the sky arched over them as if it closed them
in captive in this forgotten pocket of the world. There was a buzz of life here
that was not known in the desert below, a happy life that had no part in the
parched canyon country.

 
          
 
And so they walked slowly through the
knee-high grass into the reaches of a stunted little wood and on to the banks
of a pool, a pool almost large enough to be termed lake. The water was dark and
seemed to be very deep, its very darkness giving forth a rich cool promise.
Ritchie pitched down on the verge, rippling his burning hands through it.
Herndon smelled, tasted, and then drank from his cupped hands.

 
          
 
When Ritchie followed that lead, he knew that
never in his life had he known so satisfying a drink. They poured the water
over their heads and shoulders, stopping every few minutes to drink sparingly.
The very trickle of the stuff down the skin was like bathing in something
alive, which both stimulated and renewed.

 
          
 
Ritchie rinsed the canteens twice and filled
each one to the brim. This would be an excellent place to camp until they were
all on their feet again. Maybe if they could figure some way of getting Sturgis
up—

 
          
 
“If we could get Sturgis and Tuttle up
here—" The Sergeant was voicing Ritchie's thoughts. "But neither one
can make it."

 
          
 
Ritchie hated to lose that faint hope.
"Couldn't you and I and Birke and the lariats—"

 
          
 
"Sturgis would be all dead weight. We
couldn't get him up. And Tuttle—" He was frowning again.

 
          
 
"Tuttle-?"

 
          
 
"Jesse's hurt worse than he'll admit.
Broken ribs in this country with hard travel ahead of us—"

 
          
 
"He's tough!" Ritchie gave the
stopper on the last canteen a vicious twist.

 
          
 
"They don't come any tougher. But Jesse's
old. He's been roaming this country thirty years or more—why, he was out with
the Mountain Men back in the Twenties! If he's hurt bad, he won't let us
know—until—until too late." Herndon got to his feet and picked up the
extra canteen he had been holding.

 
          
 
"I'll go down first." He was already
heading for the place where they had entered into this green and smiling
island. "Then you lower the canteens by rope, and I'll send up the one we
left with Tuttle. We'd better get all the water we can; we may not have many
chances to come back here." He uncoiled the lariat and made it fast on a
cedar before slipping over.

 
          
 
Ritchie could not come close enough to the
edge to watch his descent. Instead he played the rope through his hands. It
went easily enough; the Sergeant must be finding the road down smoother than he
had the way up. Then the rope hung free, and there were a couple of quick tugs
on it. He pulled it up to find the empty canteen fastened to its end.

 
          
 
Tying the ones he had filled to it he lowered
away before he doubled back to the pool to fill the last one. Another jack
rabbit,
or perhaps it was the same one, bobbed up at the
edge of the wood and eyed him unafraid. Ritchie stood still. His knife was in
his belt, but he could not throw it as either Tuttle or Herndon might have
done, and his carbine was out of reach below. But that jack was plump, its
haunches smooth and round. And jack was better eating than half-spoiled horse
meat or cactus rat. Ritchie recalled the smooth stones he had seen by the pool.
Maybe one of those, well aimed—
But
water came first.
He filled the canteen and hurried back. He was pulling up the rope when it was
suddenly given a jerk from below that almost tore it out of his hands.
Fastening the canteen to his belt, he went over the edge, one hand on the guide
rope.

 
          
 
Once his feet slipped, and he had only his
frenzied clutch on the rope to save him.
A second later his
bruised toes spun back against the rock and found purchase.
He closed
his dry mouth and merely clung to that frail support for a long moment before
he crawled downward again. Then he was close enough to let go and jump, landing
painfully in the gravel. But he was running in that same instant around the
pinnacle toward the camp. Apaches might have come up—but certainly Tuttle,
armed, could have shot at least once or twice before they jumped him.

 
          
 
Ritchie's knife was in his hand. The camp
looked undisturbed. Sturgis lay as he had the hour before. But there was
another prone man by the spring, and Herndon was working over him.

 
          
 
It was Tuttle who
lay
there, his head resting on the Sergeant's knee. A thin red stream made a
wavering pattern across his forehead, and his eyes were closed.

 
          
 
''What—?" began Ritchie.

           
 
Herndon's lips were curled back in just such a
snarl as Big Gray had shown when they interrupted his nap. And his eyes had
some of the feral anger which had made the big cat such a picture of dangerous
rage.

 
          
 
"Birke's doing!"

 
          
 
Ritchie glanced around. Sturgis' black horse
was gone, and the carbines that had been left to Tuttle's care had vanished.
The saddlebag that held their meager supply of food was missing, and the
blanket that they had raised on small stakes to shelter Sturgis had been torn
away.

 
          
 
Tuttle groaned, and Herndon held a canteen to
his lips again. The scout choked, raised a limp hand uncertainly, and opened
his eyes. For a second or two he seemed dazed, and then he swallowed and spoke.

 
          
 
"Bin a bad guard, son." The words
were a mere whisper of sound. "That polecat crept up on me from behind
when I was seein' to Sturgis. Gave me a good one—"

 
          
 
Herndon put his fingers over those trembling
lips. "I should have foreseen this. The blame's mine, Jesse, for being a
chuckleheaded fool!"

 
          
 
"He didn't git all the guns." Tuttle
twisted his head away from those restraining fingers. "Look in the
pool—"

 
          
 
Ritchie looked. Under the surface of the
tainted water lay the scout's rifle and Ritchie's carbine. He pulled them out
hurriedly.

 
          
 
"Kicked 'em in when I went down."
Tuttle's weak laugh was a ghost of itself. "He didn't wait to fish 'em out
agin.
Must have lit out in a hurry."

 
          
 
Herndon settled the old man back on the folded
blanket Ritchie hunted out of the tangle of gear Birke had kicked into a mess
in his search for supplies.

           
 
"He took the best of the horses,"
the Sergeant observed bleakly.

 
          
 
Tuttle hunched himself up a little on his new
support. "Which ain't sayin' much, son
. '
N we
have water!"

 
          
 
But Ritchie was thinking of Sturgis and
Tuttle. Only he and the Sergeant were on their feet now. And the three horses
unable to graze the forbidding stuff about them were walking skeletons. Had the
odds become so weighted that the answer could only be death?

 
          
 
The Sergeant and Ritchie sorted out the mess
Birke had made and totaled the losses. Most of the ammunition was gone, all of
their food supply, two blankets, and Herndon's gold watch, which he had left
with Tuttle, being afraid of breaking it in the climb. Herndon's face was bleak
when he finished. They still had the carbine and the rifle Tuttle had thrown
into the spring with limited ammunition for both, their knives, two pieces of
flinty hardtack that had spilled from the provision sack, and the no
full canteens.

 
          
 
Sturgis lay unmoving, moaning now and again.
Herndon made a swift examination of the bandaged shoulder. He got up from that
too slowly. Tuttle cleared his throat before he spoke.

 
          
 
"No use tryin' to git on today,
son—"

 
          
 
Herndon was arranging the edge of a blanket to
shade the wounded man from the sun.

 
          
 
"No use," he agreed.

 
          
 
"We could sling a blanket between two of
the horses," ventured Ritchie. The urge to get aAvay from the place was
strong.
If they could only reach the mesa top— but that was
impossible.

 
          
 
"It would kill him within the quarter mile.
Any handling now might end the only chance he has. Listen." The Sergeant
turned to Tuttle. "I took a look-see from up there. Do you know a peak
which looks like this?" With a stick he drew a jagged outline in the dust.

 
          
 
The scout squinted down at the wavery line.
''North, south 'r east?" he wanted to know.

 
          
 
"Northeast."

 
          
 
Tuttle was counting on his fingers, his lips
moving.

 
          
 
''Is a sorta rounded knob to the west of it?
A kinda leanin' knob?"

 
          
 
Herndon thought and then nodded.

 
          
 
"Seems like I saw it oncet then—a long
way off
. '
N it marks the Torreones country, Scott.
Gotta git 'cross thar to reach the Gallina,
then
follow that down to the Chama—"

 
          
 
Herndon's eyes dropped to his empty hands.
"How long will it take us?"

 
          
 
"Wal, now, that'd take a mite of
figgerin'. Velasco, he went through the edge of that thar stretch of land—back
in '55 it
were
. He says it's all breaks, rough stuff
'n hard goin'.
Water mighty scarce.
It'll be a tough
trail—"

 
          
 
Ritchie was watching Sturgis. If they were all
able to walk, or if they had ample supplies and mounts—why, a tough trail was
nothing. But now—

 
          
 
Herndon dug at the soil with the point of his
knife. Suddenly Tuttle laughed.

 
          
 
"Gonna ruin the point, Scott, doin' that
. '
N yo' ain't goin' to dig us outta here neither. We can't
hit back trail, 'cause the Injuns ain't forgot us yet. The Apaches are right
smart at trailin' when their dander's up, 'n Diego's with 'em to keep 'em to
it.
'N ahead, thar's jus' the Gallina country.
We're
between the devil
'n
the desert here, son. Either way
we jump, we've got us jus' one slim chance in a hundred-thousand now—"

 
          
 
"We have water." Ritchie clung to
the one bright spot in their nightmare. “And there're the jacks up there.
Suppose I go back up and do some hunting?"

 
          
 
"Jacks!"
Tuttle pounced on him and demanded details. When Ritchie had done, he began to
give some orders of his own. "Hand me that thar stick of wood, son. Take a
gun up thar 'n bang away, 'n yo'll bust 'em four ways from Sunday! A
club—that's what yo' need." He used his knife swiftly as he talked,
shaving away thin slices of wood until he was able to hand Ritchie a
well-shaped club.

 
          
 
Herndon brushed the sand and gravel from out a
hollow that dented the top of a nearby rock. When he finished, there was a sort
of shallow trough there about a foot across and several inches deep. Into this
he poured—with the care of one mixing rare chemicals—the contents of one of the
canteens. And then he brought up his horse. So they watered all three of the
animals left. Then Ritchie prepared to climb again, Tuttle's club hanging from
a thong about his neck.

 
          
 
Above he hesitated for a moment to try to
locate the mountain peak Herndon had used for a guide. There it was against the
cloudless sky, like a ripple of barren rock. And he was sure he could make out,
just beyond, the knob which Tuttle had mentioned. But there was no time to
waste now.

 
          
 
He jerked up the guide rope and untied the
blanket fastened to it. Inside were the empty canteens, and they were filled
and sent down before he began his second task. When they were safely lowered,
he took his knife and set to harvesting the grass of the pocket meadow, sawing
it off as close to the roots as he could manage. Although the heap on the
blanket grew, he knew that it would hardly more than tantalize the patient and
starving animals below. But it was all they could give them. Perhaps after
drinking, the mounts would be able to eat the prickly shrubs that the camel
appeared to relish.

 
          
 
Salty sweat stung his eyes and trickled down
his back, biting through the kerchief on his head until he went to wet it in
the pool and mop off his face and chest. He had cleared quite a patch of grass
and had been able to lower the filled blanket more than once. But he was still
hard at chopping when a jack popped up to watch him.

 
          
 
Driven by hunger, which had advanced from a
faint ache to the gnawing stage, Ritchie reached for the club. But when the wood
fell true and the bundle of brown fur collapsed kicking, he could not pick up
the body at once. He sent it down by rope as quickly as he could without
looking too closely at it. The second jack that wandered out to watch him
curiously was no easier to kill.

 
          
 
With another blanket full of grass harvested,
he was getting close to the end of the small field. Maybe there might be
another pocket meadow on the other side of the wood. But the heat bit down so
that he had to have water again. As he dragged himself wearily back to the
pool, he started up a cloud of small butterflies, which danced into the air,
sailing up and out over the edge of the parched canyon to mock the life which
could not climb here.

 
          
 
Ritchie splashed water across his head and
shoulders. Maybe he should get back down and give Herndon a chance up here. Or
Tuttle— But he guessed that the old scout could not make that climb now, not
even with the help of the rope. Here was salvation for them, and they could not
take it as long as two of the
company were
disabled.
What a fool Birke had been to go off that way! If he had waited, he would have
had both food and water. He must have been half crazy to do it-He went back to
tie the four corners of the grass-filled blanket and push it over. Then he
followed. The sun had passed over the slit of the canyon, and their camp was
now shadowed. Along the flat rock the horses nosed with pathetic eagerness at
the last of the grass. Tuttle tended a fire on which the bubbling contents of a
pan gave out fragrant odors.

 
          
 
"Rabbit stew. One of the best feeds I
ever had. Oncet in the Mexican War when we
was
mighty
beat out 'n hungry, we came 'crost a stray steer along the road. Took us nigh
four-five minutes to git off its jacket 'n carve it up. We
was
hungry 'nough to eat rattlesnake 'long 'bout then. Yeah, any snake as was
makin' a mouth at us would'a gone right into the pot 'fore he could shake his
rattle—"

 
          
 
"Where's the Sergeant?" Ritchie
squatted down by the fire and inhaled the scent, which brought the juices
swimming between tongue and teeth.

 
          
 
"Gone for some more
wood 'n to do a mite of scoutin'.
Gittin' close to sundown, 'n he's
wantin' to see if we've got us any neighbors—"

 
          
 
Ritchie knew he had lost track of time, but he
had not realized it was so late. It might be well to make one more trip for
water before darkness. But he just had to eat first; his hunger was a harsh
fist squeezing his whole middle.

 
          
 
Herndon was back before Tuttle pronounced the
stew done. He had a brace of cactus rats and a lizard, and he was full of news
as he threw them down. The "mule" camel had not gone away but was
lingering near the camp as they had hoped. There was just a chance that the
beast might become so accustomed to them that it would allow itself to be
caught.

 
          
 
“Jus' what we need for a
jaunt up Gallina ways!"
Tuttle said. ''Camels 'n Apaches, they
don't drink. We 'n bosses do. Better git us the critter if he comes close
'nough. Now sit down 'n git some of this brew under yore belt."

 
          
 
Sturgis did not rouse. With Herndon's help
Ritchie managed to get maybe a teaspoonful of broth between his gray lips, but
the rest dribbled away, and there was no evidence that the wounded man
swallowed. His skin was fiery to the touch, and his half-open eyes were glazed
and set. Ritchie knew now—though they had not said it aloud —that St. George
Sturgis would never move out of that camp. And the best thing for him—as well
as for the rest of them—would be a final stop of that painful gasping breath
which whistled between his shrunken lips. In that gray-white death's-head
pillowed on the folded blanket Ritchie could see hardly any resemblance to the
dashing young dragoon who had swept him out of loneliness in the Santa Fe barracks
and who had welcomed this trip with such gay eagerness.

 
          
 
Slowly Ritchie untied his neckerchief and
spread out the silk, trying to smooth away the wrinkles. Tuttle licked the
small iron spoon with which he had eaten his stew.

 
          
 
"Bin doin' a leetle washin',
son?
This ain't a very good place for that. 'N washin' ain't never so
good out here— mostly yo' jus' chase the dirt from one place to 'nother. That
thar's a right purty scarf though—"

 
          
 
"Yes." Ritchie's roughened fingers
caught on the silk.

           
 
“How about one more trip
topside
, Sergeant? Get another supply of water for tonight?"

 
          
 
Herndon studied the changing color of the sky.
"If you can make it, yes. But don't stop to cut grass or hunt. The horses
will have to do with what they've had until morn-ing."

 
          
 
Ritchie went up, filled the canteens, and
brought them back to lower over the cliff. He looked out over the broken,
saw-toothed ranges. The brilliant colors of late afternoon were on the mountain
that was to be their guide out. Overhead the eagle was long since gone; there
was nothing to break the smooth stretch of the sky. He might have been the only
living thing in a country which even the Apache Spirit Uisin had forsaken. With
a sigh he started to climb down.

 
          
 
They watered the horses sparingly. All the
grass was gone, even most of the single blades had been licked up from the
rock. But the animals did not stand with hanging heads tonight, and Herndon
brought the picket ropes out for the first time. Tuttle had the fire up, and by
common unspoken consent they gathered around it as the shadows grew thicker and
the sky faded into gray.