Zane Grey (8 page)

Then quick surprise awakened for Hare in the meaning in Mescal's eyes; he
caught only a fleeting glimpse, a dark flash, and it left him with a glow
of an emotion half pleasure, half pain.

"Mescal," went on August, "go into the house, and keep out of Snap's way.
Jack, watch me pack. You need to learn these things. I could put all
this outfit on two burros, but the trail is narrow, and a wide pack might
bump a burro off. Let's see, I've got all your stuff but the saddle;
that we'll leave till we get a horse for you. Well, all's ready."

Mescal came at his call and, mounting Black Bolly, rode out toward the
cliff wall, with Wolf trotting before her. Hare bestrode Noddle.
August, waving good-bye to his women-folk, started the train of burros
after Mescal.

How they would be able to climb the face of that steep cliff puzzled
Hare. Upon nearer view he discovered the yard-wide trail curving upward
in cork-screw fashion round a projecting corner of cliff. The stone was
a soft red shale, and the trail had been cut in it at a steep angle. It
was so steep that the burros appeared to be climbing straight up. Noddle
pattered into it, dropped his head and his long ears and slackened his
pace to patient plodding. August walked in the rear.

The first thing that struck Hare was the way the burros in front of him
stopped at the curves in the trail, and turned in a space so small that
their four feet were close together; yet as they swung their packs they
scarcely scraped the wall. At every turn they were higher than he was,
going in the opposite direction, yet he could reach out and touch them.
He glanced up to see Mescal right above him, leaning forward with her
brown hands clasping the pommel. Then he looked out and down; already
the green cluster of cottonwoods lay far below. After that sensations
pressed upon him. Round and round, up and up, steadily, surely, the
beautiful mustang led the train; there were sounds of rattling stones,
and click of hoofs, and scrape of pack. On one side towered the
iron-stained cliff, not smooth or glistening at close range, but of dull,
dead, rotting rock. The trail changed to a zigzag along a seamed and
cracked buttress where ledges leaned outward waiting to fall. Then a
steeper incline, where the burros crept upward warily, led to a level
ledge heading to the left.

Mescal halted on a promontory. She, with her windblown hair, the gleam
of white band about her head, and a dash of red along the fringed
leggings, gave inexpressible life and beauty to that wild, jagged point
of rock, sharp against the glaring sky.

"This is Lookout Point," said Naab. "I keep an Indian here all the time
during daylight. He's a peon, a Navajo slave. He can't talk, as he was
born without a tongue, or it was cut out, but he has the best eyes of any
Indian I know. You see this point commands the farm, the crossing, the
Navajo Trail over the river, the Echo Cliffs opposite, where the Navajos
signal to me, and also the White Sage Trail."

The oasis shone under the triangular promontory; the river with its
rising roar wound in bold curve from the split in the cliffs. To the
right white-sloped Coconina breasted the horizon. Forward across the
Canyon line opened the many-hued desert.

"With this peon watching here I'm not likely to be surprised," said Naab.
"That strip of sand protects me at night from approach, and I've never
had anything to fear from across the river."

Naab's peon came from a little cave in the wall; and grinned the greeting
he could not speak. To Hare's uneducated eye all Indians resembled each
other. Yet this one stood apart from the others, not differing in
blanketed leanness, or straggling black hair, or bronze skin, but in the
bird-of-prey cast of his features and the wildness of his glittering
eyes. Naab gave him a bag from one of the packs, spoke a few words in
Navajo, and then slapped the burros into the trail.

The climb thenceforth was more rapid because less steep, and the trail
now led among broken fragments of cliff. The color of the stones had
changed from red to yellow, and small cedars grew in protected places.
Hare's judgment of height had such frequent cause for correction that he
gave up trying to estimate the altitude. The ride had begun to tell on
his strength, and toward the end he thought he could not manage to stay
longer upon Noddle. The air had grown thin and cold, and though the sun
was yet an hour high, his fingers were numb.

"Hang on, Jack," cheered August. "We're almost up."

At last Black Bolly disappeared, likewise the bobbing burros, one by one,
then Noddle, wagging his ears, reached a level. Then Hare saw a
gray-green cedar forest, with yellow crags rising in the background, and
a rush of cold wind smote his face. For a moment he choked; he could not
get his breath. The air was thin and rare, and he inhaled deeply trying
to overcome the suffocation. Presently he realized that the trouble was
not with the rarity of the atmosphere, but with the bitter-sweet
penetrating odor it carried. He was almost stifled. It was not like the
smell of pine, though it made him think of pine-trees.

"Ha! that's good!" said Naab, expanding his great chest. "That's air for
you, my lad. Can you taste it? Well, here's camp, your home for many a
day, Jack. There's Piute—how do? how're the sheep?"

A short, squat Indian, good-humored of face, shook his black head till
the silver rings danced in his ears, and replied: "Bad—damn coyotee!"

"Piute—shake with Jack. Him shoot coyote—got big gun," said Naab.

"How-do-Jack?" replied Piute, extending his hand, and then straightway
began examining the new rifle. "Damn—heap big gun!"

"Jack, you'll find this Indian one you can trust, for all he's a Piute
outcast," went on August. "I've had him with me ever since Mescal found
him on the Coconina Trail five years ago. What Piute doesn't know about
this side of Coconina isn't worth learning."

In a depression sheltered from the wind lay the camp. A fire burned in
the centre; a conical tent, like a tepee in shape, hung suspended from a
cedar branch and was staked at its four points; a leaning slab of rock
furnished shelter for camp supplies and for the Indian, and at one end a
spring gushed out. A gray-sheathed cedar-tree marked the entrance to
this hollow glade, and under it August began preparing Hare's bed.

"Here's the place you're to sleep, rain or shine or snow," he said. "Now
I've spent my life sleeping on the ground, and mother earth makes the
best bed. I'll dig out a little pit in this soft mat of needles; that's
for your hips. Then the tarpaulin so; a blanket so. Now the other
blankets. Your feet must be a little higher than your head; you really
sleep down hill, which breaks the wind. So you never catch cold. All
you need do is to change your position according to the direction of the
wind. Pull up the blankets, and then the long end of the tarpaulin. If
it rains or snows cover your head, and sleep, my lad, sleep to the song
of the wind!"

From where Hare lay, resting a weary body, he could see down into the
depression which his position guarded. Naab built up the fire; Piute
peeled potatoes with deliberate care; Mescal, on her knees, her brown
arms bare, kneaded dough in a basin; Wolf crouched on the ground, and
watched his mistress; Black Bolly tossed her head, elevating the bag on
her nose so as to get all the grain.

Naab called him to supper, and when Hare set to with a will on the bacon
and eggs, and hot biscuits, he nodded approvingly. "That's what I want to
see," he said approvingly. "You must eat. Piute will get deer, or you
may shoot them yourself; eat all the venison you can. Remember what
Scarbreast said. Then rest. That's the secret. If you eat and rest you
will gain strength."

The edge of the wall was not a hundred paces from the camp; and when Hare
strolled out to it after supper, the sun had dipped the under side of its
red disc behind the desert. He watched it sink, while the golden-red
flood of light grew darker and darker. Thought seemed remote from him
then; he watched, and watched, until he saw the last spark of fire die
from the snow-slopes of Coconina. The desert became dimmer and dimmer;
the oasis lost its outline in a bottomless purple pit, except for a faint
light, like a star.

The bleating of sheep aroused him and he returned to camp. The fire was
still bright. Wolf slept close to Mescal's tent; Piute was not in sight;
and Naab had rolled himself in blankets. Crawling into his bed, Hare
stretched aching legs and lay still, as if he would never move again.
Tired as he was, the bleating of the sheep, the clear ring of the bell on
Black Bolly, and the faint tinkle of lighter bells on some of the rams,
drove away sleep for a while. Accompanied by the sough of the wind
through the cedars the music of the bells was sweet, and he listened till
he heard no more.

A thin coating of frost crackled on his bed when he awakened; and out
from under the shelter of the cedar all the ground was hoar-white. As he
slipped from his blankets the same strong smell of black sage and juniper
smote him, almost like a blow. His nostrils seemed glued together by
some rich piny pitch; and when he opened his lips to breathe a sudden
pain, as of a knife-thrust, pierced his lungs. The thought following was
as sharp as the pain. Pneumonia! What he had long expected! He sank
against the cedar, overcome by the shock. But he rallied presently, for
with the reestablishment of the old settled bitterness, which had been
forgotten in the interest of his situation, he remembered that he had
given up hope. Still, he could not get back at once to his former
resignation. He hated to acknowledge that the wildness of this desert
canyon country, and the spirit it sought to instil in him, had wakened a
desire to live. For it meant only more to give up. And after one short
instant of battle he was himself again. He put his hand under his
flannel shirt and felt of the soreness of his lungs. He found it not at
the apex of the right lung, always the one sensitive spot, but all
through his breast. Little panting breaths did not hurt; but the deep
inhalation, which alone satisfied him filled his whole chest with
thousands of pricking needles. In the depth of his breast was a hollow
that burned.

When he had pulled on his boots and coat, and had washed himself in the
runway of the spring, his hands were so numb with cold they refused to
hold his comb and brush; and he presented himself at the roaring fire
half-frozen, dishevelled, trembling, but cheerful. He would not tell
Naab. If he had to die to-day, to-morrow or next week, he would lie down
under a cedar and die; he could not whine about it to this man.

"Up with the sun!" was Naab's greeting. His cheerfulness was as
impelling as his splendid virility. Following the wave of his hand Hare
saw the sun, a pale-pink globe through a misty blue, rising between the
golden crags of the eastern wall.

Mescal had a shy "good-morning" for him, and Piute a broad smile, and
familiar "how-do"; the peon slave, who had finished breakfast and was
about to depart, moved his lips in friendly greeting that had no sound.

"Did you hear the coyotes last night?" inquired August. "No! Well, of all
the choruses I ever heard. There must be a thousand on the bench. Jack,
I wish I could spare the time to stay up here with you and shoot some.
You'll have practice with the rifle, but don't neglect the Colt.
Practice particularly the draw I taught you. Piute has a carbine, and he
shoots at the coyotes, but who ever saw an Indian that could hit
anything?"

"Damn—gun no good!" growled Piute, who evidently understood English
pretty well. Naab laughed, and while Hare ate breakfast he talked of the
sheep. The flock he had numbered three thousand. They were a goodly
part of them Navajo stock: small, hardy sheep that could live on anything
but cactus, and needed little water. This flock had grown from a small
number to its present size in a few years. Being remarkably free from
the diseases and pests which retard increase in low countries, the sheep
had multiplied almost one for one for every year. But for the ravages of
wild beasts Naab believed he could raise a flock of many thousands and in
a brief time be rich in sheep alone. In the winter he drove them down
into the oasis; the other seasons he herded them on the high ranges where
the cattle could not climb. There was grass enough on this plateau for a
million sheep. After the spring thaw in early March, occasional snows
fell till the end of May, and frost hung on until early summer; then the
July rains made the plateau a garden.

"Get the forty-four," concluded Naab, "and we'll go out and break it in."

With the long rifle in the hollow of his arm Jack forgot that he was a
sick man. When he came within gunshot of the flock the smell of sheep
effectually smothered the keen, tasty odor of black sage and juniper.
Sheep ranged everywhere under the low cedars. They browsed with noses in
the frost, and from all around came the tinkle of tiny bells on the
curly-horned rams, and an endless variety of bleats.

"They're spread now," said August. "Mescal drives them on every little
while and Piute goes ahead to pick out the best browse. Watch the dog,
Jack; he's all but human. His mother was a big shepherd dog that I got
in Lund. She must have had a strain of wild blood. Once while I was
hunting deer on Coconina she ran off with timber wolves and we thought
she was killed. But she came back, and had a litter of three puppies.
Two were white, the other black. I think she killed the black one. And
she neglected the others. One died, and Mescal raised the other. We
called him Wolf. He loves Mescal, and loves the sheep, and hates a wolf.
Mescal puts a bell on him when she is driving, and the sheep know the
bell. I think it would be a good plan for her to tie something red round
his neck—a scarf, so as to keep you from shooting him for a wolf."