Zane Grey (23 page)

Silvermane snorted, lifted his ears and looked westward toward a yellow
pall which swooped up from the desert.

"Sand-storm," said Hare, and calling Wolf he made for the nearest rock
that was large enough to shelter them. The whirling sand-cloud
mushroomed into an enormous desert covering, engulfing the dunes,
obscuring the light. The sunlight failed; the day turned to gloom.
Then an eddying fog of sand and dust enveloped Hare. His last glimpse
before he covered his face with a silk handkerchief was of sheets of sand
streaming past his shelter. The storm came with a low, soft, hissing
roar, like the sound in a sea-shell magnified. Breathing through the
handkerchief Hare avoided inhaling the sand which beat against his face,
but the finer dust particles filtered through and stifled him. At first
he felt that he would suffocate, and he coughed and gasped; but
presently, when the thicker sand-clouds had passed, he managed to get air
enough to breathe. Then he waited patiently while the steady seeping
rustle swept by, and the band of his hat sagged heavier, and the load on
his shoulders had to be continually shaken off, and the weighty trap
round his feet crept upward. When the light, fine touch ceased he
removed the covering from his face to see himself standing nearly to his
knees in sand, and Silvermane's back and the saddle burdened with it.
The storm was moving eastward, a dull red now with the sun faintly
showing through it like a ball of fire.

"Well, Wolf, old boy, how many storms like that will we have to weather?"
asked Hare, in a cheery tone which he had to force. He knew these
sand-storms were but vagaries of the desert-wind. Before the hour closed
he had to seek the cover of a stone and wait for another to pass. Then
he was caught in the open, with not a shelter in sight. He was compelled
to turn his back to a third storm, the worst of all, and to bear as best
he could the heavy impact of the first blow, and the succeeding rush and
flow of sand. After that his head drooped and he wearily trudged beside
Silvermane, dreading the interminable distance he must cover before once
more gaining hard ground. But he discovered that it was useless to try
to judge distance on the desert. What had appeared miles at his last
look turned out to be only rods.

It was good to get into the saddle again and face clear air. Far away
the black spur again loomed up, now surrounded by groups of mesas with
sage-slopes tinged with green. That surely meant the end of this long
trail; the faint spots of green lent suggestion of a desert waterhole;
there Mescal must be, hidden in some shady canyon. Hare built his hopes
anew.

So he pressed on down a plain of bare rock dotted by huge bowlders; and
out upon a level floor of scant sage and greasewood where a few living
creatures, a desert-hawk sailing low, lizards darting into holes, and a
swiftly running ground-bird, emphasized the lack of life in the waste.
He entered a zone of clay-dunes of violet and heliotrope hues; and then a
belt of lava and cactus. Reddish points studded the desert, and here and
there were meagre patches of white grass. Far away myriads of cactus
plants showed like a troop of distorted horsemen. As he went on the
grass failed, and streams of jagged lava flowed downward. Beds of
cinders told of the fury of a volcanic fire. Soon Hare had to dismount
to make moccasins for Wolf's hind feet; and to lead Silvermane carefully
over the cracked lava. For a while there were strips of ground bare of
lava and harboring only an occasional bunch of cactus, but soon every
foot free of the reddish iron bore a projecting mass of fierce spikes and
thorns. The huge barrel-shaped cacti, and thickets of slender dark-green
rods with bayonet points, and broad leaves with yellow spines, drove Hare
and his sore-footed fellow-travellers to the lava.

Hare thought there must be an end to it some time, yet it seemed as
though he were never to cross that black forbidding inferno. Blistered
by the heat, pierced by the thorns, lame from long toil on the lava, he
was sorely spent when once more he stepped out upon the bare desert. On
pitching camp he made the grievous discovery that the water-bag had
leaked or the water had evaporated, for there was only enough left for
one more day. He ministered to thirsty dog and horse in silence, his
mind revolving the grim fact of his situation.

His little fire of greasewood threw a wan circle into the surrounding
blackness. Not a sound hinted of life. He longed for even the bark of a
coyote. Silvermane stooped motionless with tired head. Wolf stretched
limply on the sand. Hare rolled into his blanket and stretched out with
slow aching relief.

He dreamed he was a boy roaming over the green hills of the old farm,
wading through dewy clover-fields, and fishing in the Connecticut River.
It was the long vacationtime, an endless freedom. Then he was at the
swimming-hole, and playmates tied his clothes in knots, and with shouts
of glee ran up the bank leaving him there to shiver.

When he awakened the blazing globe of the sun had arisen over the eastern
horizon, and the red of the desert swathed all the reach of valley.

Hare pondered whether he should use his water at once or dole it out.
That ball of fire in the sky, a glazed circle, like iron at white heat,
decided for him. The sun would be hot and would evaporate such water as
leakage did not claim, and so he shared alike with Wolf, and gave the
rest to Silvermane.

For an hour the mocking lilac mountains hung in the air and then paled in
the intense light. The day was soundless and windless, and the
heat-waves rose from the desert like smoke. For Hare the realities were
the baked clay flats, where Silvermane broke through at every step; the
beds of alkali, which sent aloft clouds of powdered dust; the deep
gullies full of round bowlders; thickets of mesquite and prickly thorn
which tore at his legs; the weary detour to head the canyons; the climb
to get between two bridging mesas; and always the haunting presence of
the sad-eyed dog. His unrealities were the shimmering sheets of water in
every low place; the baseless mountains floating in the air; the green
slopes rising close at hand; beautiful buttes of dark blue riding the
open sand, like monstrous barks at sea; the changing outlines of desert
shapes in pink haze and veils of purple and white lustre—all illusions,
all mysterious tricks of the mirage.

In the heat of midday Hare yielded to its influence and reined in his
horse under a slate-bank where there was shade. His face was swollen
and peeling, and his lips had begun to dry and crack and taste of alkali.
Then Wolf pattered on; Silvermane kept at his heels; Hare dozed in the
saddle. His eyes burned in their sockets from the glare, and it was a
relief to shut out the barren reaches. So the afternoon waned.

Silvermane stumbled, jolting Hare out of his stupid lethargy. Before him
spread a great field of bowlders with not a slope or a ridge or a mesa or
an escarpment. Not even a tip of a spur rose in the background. He
rubbed his sore eyes. Was this another illusion?

When Silvermane started onward Hare thought of the Navajos' custom to
trust horse and dog in such an emergency. They were desert-bred; beyond
human understanding were their sight and scent. He was at the mercy now
of Wolf's instinct and Silvermane's endurance. Resignation brought him a
certain calmness of soul, cold as the touch of an icy hand on fevered
cheek. He remembered the desert secret in Mescal's eyes; he was about to
solve it. He remembered August Naab's words: "It's a man's deed!" If so,
he had achieved the spirit of it, if not the letter. He remembered
Eschtah's tribute to the wilderness of painted wastes: "There is the
grave of the Navajo, and no one knows the trail to the place of his
sleep!" He remembered the something evermore about to be, the unknown
always subtly calling; now it was revealed in the stone-fettering grip of
the desert. It had opened wide to him, bright with its face of danger,
beautiful with its painted windows, inscrutable with its alluring call.
Bidding him enter, it had closed behind him; now he looked upon it in its
iron order, its strange ruins racked by fire, its inevitable
remorselessness.

THE gray stallion, finding the rein loose on his neck, trotted forward
and overtook the dog, and thereafter followed at his heels. With the
setting of the sun a slight breeze stirred, and freshened as twilight
fell, rolling away the sultry atmosphere. Then the black desert night
mantled the plain.

For a while this blackness soothed the pain of Hare's sun-blinded eyes.
It was a relief to have the unattainable horizon line blotted out. But
by-and-by the opaque gloom brought home to him, as the day had never
done, the reality of his solitude. He was alone in this immense place of
barrenness, and his dumb companions were the world to him. Wolf pattered
onward, a silent guide; and Silvermane followed, never lagging,
sure-footed in the dark, faithful to his master. All the love Hare had
borne the horse was as nothing to that which came to him on this desert
night. In and out, round and round, ever winding, ever zigzagging,
Silvermane hung close to Wolf, and the sandy lanes between the bowlders
gave forth no sound. Dog and horse, free to choose their trail, trotted
onward miles and miles into the night.

A pale light in the east turned to a glow, then to gold, and the round
disc of the moon silhouetted the black bowlders on the horizon. It
cleared the dotted line and rose, an oval orange-hued strange moon, not
mellow nor silvery nor gloriously brilliant as Hare had known it in the
past, but a vast dead-gold melancholy orb, rising sadly over the desert.
To Hare it was the crowning reminder of lifelessness; it fitted this
world of dull gleaming stones.

Silvermane went lame and slackened his trot, causing Hare to rein in and
dismount. He lifted the right forefoot, the one the horse had favored,
and found a stone imbedded tightly in the cloven hoof. He pried it out
with his knife and mounted again. Wolf shone faintly far ahead, and
presently he uttered a mournful cry which sent a chill to the rider's
heart. The silence had been oppressive before; now it was terrible. It
was not a silence of life. It had been broken suddenly by Wolf's howl,
and had closed sharply after it, without echo; it was a silence of death.

Hare took care not to fall behind Wolf again, he had no wish to hear that
cry repeated. The dog moved onward with silent feet; the horse wound
after him with hoofs padded in the sand; the moon lifted and the desert
gleamed; the bowlders grew larger and the lanes wider. So the night wore
on, and Hare's eyelids grew heavy, and his whole weary body cried out for
rest and forgetfulness. He nodded until he swayed in the saddle; then
righted himself, only to doze again. The east gave birth to the morning
star. The whitening sky was the harbinger of day. Hare could not bring
himself to face the light and heat, and he stopped at a wind-worn cave
under a shelving rock. He was asleep when he rolled out on the
sand-strewn floor. Once he awoke and it was still day, for his eyes
quickly shut upon the glare. He lay sweltering till once more slumber
claimed him. The dog awakened him, with cold nose and low whine. Another
twilight had fallen. Hare crawled out, stiff and sore, hungry and
parching with thirst. He made an attempt to eat, but it was a failure.
There was a dry burning in his throat, a dizzy feeling in his brain, and
there were red flashes before his eyes. Wolf refused meat, and Silvermane
turned from the grain, and lowered his head to munch a few blades of
desert grass.

Then the journey began, and the night fell black. A cool wind blew from
the west, the white stars blinked, the weird moon rose with its ghastly
glow. Huge bowlders rose before him in grotesque shapes, tombs and
pillars and statues of Nature's dead, carved by wind and sand. But some
had life in Hare's disordered fancy. They loomed and towered over him,
and stalked abroad and peered at him with deep-set eyes.

Hare fought with all his force against this mood of gloom. Wolf was not
a phantom; he trotted forward with unerring instinct; and he would find
water, and that meant life. Silvermane, desert-steeled, would travel to
the furthermost corner of this hell of sand-swept stone. Hare tried to
collect all his spirit, all his energies, but the battle seemed to be
going against him. All about him was silence, breathless silence,
insupportable silence of ages. Desert spectres danced in the darkness.
The worn-out moon gleamed golden over the worn-out waste. Desolation
lurked under the sable shadows.

Hare rode on into the night, tumbled from his saddle in the gray of dawn
to sleep, and stumbled in the twilight to his drooping horse. His eyes
were blind now to the desert shapes, his brain burned and his tongue
filled his mouth. Silvermane trod ever upon Wolf's heels; he had come into
the kingdom of his desert-strength; he lifted his drooping head and
lengthened his stride; weariness had gone and he snorted his welcome to
something on the wind. Then he passed the limping dog and led the way.

Hare held to the pommel and bent dizzily forward in the saddle.
Silvermane was going down, step by step, with metallic clicks upon flinty
rock. Whether he went down or up was all the same to Hare; he held on
with closed eyes and whispered to himself. Down and down, step by step,
cracking the stones with iron-shod hoofs, the gray stallion worked his
perilous way, sure-footed as a mountain-sheep. Then he stopped with a
great slow heave and bent his head.

The black bulge of a canyon rim blurred in Hare's hot eyes. A trickling
sound penetrated his tired brain. His ears had grown like his eyes—
false. Only another delusion! As he had been tortured with the sight of
lake and stream now he was to be tortured with the sound of running
water. Yet he listened, for it was sweet even in its mockery. What a
clear musical tinkle, like silver bells tossing on the wind! He listened.
Soft murmuring flow, babble and gurgle, little hollow fall and splash!