With Hoops of Steel Part 11

"So I have! I'm not accustomed to carrying the thing, and if you had not reminded me I probably wouldn't have thought of it again for a week. I don't believe it is necessary to carry one, anyway, but my friend, Colonel Whittaker, insisted that I should do so."

"You never know when you'll need one down in this country," Haney replied, with a sad shake of the head. "It's pretty tough, I can tell you. There's that Emerson Mead outfit. They're the worst in the southwest. You'd need your gun if you should meet any of them."

"Yes, our company has had very serious and very sad experience with them."

"Ah, yes! Poor young Whittaker! I 'eard about 'is death. That was the wickedest thing they've ever dared to do. Most everybody in this country 'as lost cattle by them and we'd all be glad to see 'em driven out."

"They belong to that cla.s.s of cattlemen," Wellesly replied, "who start in the business with one old steer and a branding iron, and then let nature take its course."

Haney laughed uproariously and when he could speak added: "Yes, and in three years they 'ave bigger 'erds than any of their neighbors.

You're right, sir, and the sooner the country gets rid of such men the better. I don't think, Mr. Wellesly, it's safe for you to ride alone where you are likely to meet any of that outfit. You know the feeling they 'ave for your company, and what they did for young Will, poor boy, they'd do for you if they got the chance. I've got business out your way, over at Muletown, and if you don't mind I'll ride along with you that far. That will put you on the right road and if we should meet any of the Mead outfit they wouldn't be so likely to shoot as if you were alone."

"All right, Mr. Mullford, I'll be very glad of your company. I'm no plainsman, and it is the easiest thing in the world for me to get lost out here among the mesquite and sagebrush, where the country all looks alike. I suppose I have about the least sense of direction of any man who ever tried to find his way across a plain alone."

"You needn't worry about that now. Just leave it to me and I'll get you to Muletown by the shortest route. I know all this country thoroughly, every cow-path and water 'ole in it, and you couldn't lose me if you tried. You needn't think about the road again this afternoon."

Haney buckled on a full cartridge belt and a revolver, put a pair of saddle bags with a big canteen of water in each side over his horse, slung a rifle on one side of his saddle, and they started off along a slightly beaten road straight toward the southeast. Wellesly asked Haney if he were sure they were going in the right direction, and Haney a.s.sured him that it was all right and chaffed him a little that he so easily lost the points of the compa.s.s. In the distance, a mile or so ahead of them, they saw a man on horseback leading another horse which carried a pack. When Wellesly again said that he did not understand how he could be so entirely at sea, Haney suggested that they overtake this traveler and get his a.s.surance in the matter. They galloped up beside him and called out a friendly hail. It was Jim, the _vaquero_ from Mead's ranch, but he and Haney looked at each other as if they had never met before. He a.s.sured Wellesly that they were certainly on the road which led to Las Plumas by the way of Muletown, that he knew it perfectly well, having traveled it many times, and that he himself was going past Muletown to the Hermosa mountains.

"You see," he explained, "Muletown ain't on the straight line between here and Las Plumas. It's away off to one side and you have to go quite a ways around to get there. That's what has mixed you up so, stranger. The road has to go past Muletown, because it's the only place on the plain where there's water."

"Well," said Wellesly, "since you both say so, it must be all right.

The joke is on me, gentlemen." He took a flask from his breast pocket.

"There isn't much left in this bottle, but as far as it will go, I acknowledge the corn."

The men each took a drink, Wellesly finished the liquor and threw the empty flask on a sandheap beside the road. Light clouds had risen, so that the sun and all the western sky were obscured and there were no shadows to suggest to him that they were going east instead of west.

They were nearing a depression in the Fernandez mountains. Haney pointed to it, saying:

"When we get there we can show you just the lay of the land."

They pa.s.sed through the break and a barren plain lay spread out before them bounded by precipitous mountains which swerved on either hand toward the range in which they were riding.

"That," said Haney, "is the Fernandez plain. You remember crossing that, surely?" Wellesly nodded. "And the mountains over there," Haney went on, "are the 'Ermosas."

"The range just this side of Las Plumas," said Wellesly. "Yes, I am getting my bearings now."

"I'm going prospecting in them mountains," said Jim. "I'm satisfied there's heaps of gold there. I'm going up into that canyon you see at the foot of that big peak. I was in there two weeks ago and I found quartz that was just lousy with gold. You fellows better break away and come along with me. I'll bet you can't make more money anywhere else."

"I don't care to go prospecting," said Wellesly, "but if you make a good strike, and develop it enough to show what it is, I'll engage to sell it for you."

"Good enough! It's a bargain!" Jim cried. "Just give me your address, stranger, so I'll know where to dig you up when I need you."

Wellesly handed his card and Jim carefully put it away in his pocketbook.

Haney laughed jovially. "You may count me out, pard, on any of that sort of business. I've blowed all the money into this d.a.m.n country that I want to. You'll never get anything out of it but 'orned toads and rattlesnakes and 'bad men' as long as it lasts. If I can pull out 'alf I've planted 'ere I'll skip, and think I'm lucky to get out with a whole skin."

They trotted across the dry, hot, barren levels of the desert into which they had descended, seeing nowhere the least sign of human life.

The faintly beaten track of the road stretched out in front of them in an almost straight line across the gray sand between interminable clumps of cactus and frowsy, wilted sagebrush. Bunches of yellow, withered gra.s.s cropped out of the earth here and there. But even these forlorn caricatures of vegetation gave up and stayed their feet on the edges of frequent alkali flats, where the white, powdery dust covered the sand and dealt death to any herbage that ventured within its domain. Hot, parched, forbidding, the desert grew more and more desolate as they proceeded. To Wellesly there was an awe-inspiring menace in its dry, bleaching, monotonous levels. He felt more keenly than ever his own helplessness in such a situation and congratulated himself on having fallen in with his two guides. He wondered that the plain had not impressed him more deeply with its desolation and barrenness when he came out to the ranch. But he had no doubt of the ability and good faith of his two companions and he drew his horse a little nearer to them and said:

"My G.o.d! What a place this desert would be for a man to be lost in!"

Then they told him stories of men who had been lost in it, who had wandered for days without water and had been found raving maniacs or bleaching skeletons--the sort of stories that make the blood of any but a plainsman seem to dry in his veins and his tongue to cleave to the roof of his mouth. Told in all their details and surrounded by the very scenes in which their agonies had been suffered, they brought the perspiration to Wellesly's brow and a look of horror to his eyes.

Haney and Jim saw that they made him nervous, and racked their memories and their imaginations for more of the same sort.

They were approaching the mountains and the country around them was broken into barren, rocky hills. The road grew rougher and the mountains towered above them in jagged peaks of seemingly solid rock.

The day was nearly ended and Wellesly remembered enough of the distances along the Las Plumas road to be sure that they ought to be approaching Muletown. But in this stern wilderness of rock and sand, human habitation did not seem possible. He looked back across the desert at the Fernandez mountains, standing out sharply against the red sunset clouds, and it suddenly flashed across his mind that if the sun were setting there they must have been traveling in an easterly direction all the afternoon, which meant that they had been getting farther and farther away from Las Plumas. Enlightened by this idea, he sent a quick, seeing glance along the range of mountains standing out boldly and barrenly in front of them, and he knew it was not the Hermosa range. Haney turned with a jovial remark on his lips and met Wellesly's eyes, two narrow strips of pale gray s.h.i.+ning brilliantly from between half-closed lids, and saw that his game had played itself smoothly as far as it would go.

Wellesly disregarded Haney's jest and looking him squarely in the eyes said: "I suppose, Mr. Mullford, if we keep on in this direction a matter of some twenty-five thousand miles we might reach Muletown. But don't you think we would save time if we were to turn around and travel the other way?"

Haney laughed good-naturedly and exclaimed: "You've not got that notion out of your 'ead yet, 'ave you! Say, pard," he added to Jim, "Mr. Wellesly is still turned around. 'E thinks we ought to right about face and take the back track to get to Muletown. What can we do to convince 'im 'e's all right?"

Wellesly was watching the two men narrowly, his suspicions aroused and all his faculties alert. Haney's calm, solicitous tone for a moment almost made him think he must be mistaken. But another glance at the rocky, precipitous mountains rea.s.sured him that they were not the Hermosas and settled the conviction in his mind that he had fallen into the trap of a pair of very smooth rogues. A still, white rage rose in his heart and mettled his nerves to his finger-tips, as he thought of the plausible pretensions of good will with which they had led him into this wilderness. He scarcely heard Jim's reply:

"I don't know what else he wants. We're going to Muletown, and if he don't want to get lost out on this desert and have the coyotes pickin'

his bones inside of a week he'd better come along with us."

"My friends," said Wellesly, in an even tone in which could barely be heard here and there the note of suppressed anger, "if you think you are going to Muletown in this direction, all right, go ahead. That's your funeral. But it isn't mine. If anybody in this crowd is turned around I'm not the man. I have been, thanks to your very ingenious efforts, but I'm not now, and I'm not going any farther in this direction. Unless you can get a little more light on which way is west I'm afraid we'll have to part company. Good-bye, gentlemen. I'm going back."

He turned his horse squarely around and faced the long, gray levels of the darkening desert. As his eye swept over that forbidding, waterless, almost trackless waste, a sudden fear of its horrors smote through his anger and chilled his resolution. Haney spurred his horse to Wellesly's side, exclaiming:

"Stop, Mr. Wellesly! You can't go back over that desert alone in the night! Why, you couldn't follow the road two miles after dark! You know 'ow uncertain it is by day, and in the dark you simply can't see it at all. The desert is 'ell 'erself in the daytime, and it's worse at night."

Wellesly did not reply, for his resolve was wavering. Jim came beside them, swearing over the delay. "See here," he said, "we've got no time to fool away. If this here tenderfoot thinks he knows better than we do which way we're going, just let him round-up by himself. I've been over this here road dozens of times, I reckon, and I know every inch of it, but I wouldn't undertake to travel a mile after night and keep to the trail. Maybe he can. If he thinks he's so darned much smarter than we are let him try it."

"Can we make Muletown to-night?" asked Haney.

Jim swore a big oath. "Didn't you hear me say I don't do no travelin'

on this road at night? No, sir. I know a canyon up in the mountain a ways where there's sweet water and I'm goin' to camp there to-night.

If you folks want to come with me and eat prospector's grub, all right, you're welcome."

"Thank you, pard," said Haney. "For my part, I'll be glad to get it.

You'd better come too, Mr. Wellesly. It will be sure death, of the sort we've been talking about this afternoon, for you to start back alone."

"You're right," said Wellesly. "I'll go with you."

Jim rode into a canyon which led them into the mountains and for a mile or more their horses scrambled and stumbled over boulders and sand heaps. Then they turned into another, opening at right angles into the first, and after a time they could hear the crunching of wet sand under their horses' feet and finally the tinkle of a little waterfall met their ears.

"Here's the place," said Jim, dismounting.

"Sure this isn't h'alkali?" said Haney.

"You and the tenderfoot needn't drink it if you don't want to,"

growled Jim. "And you needn't stay with me if you're afraid I'm a-going to pizen your coffee."

"Don't get angry, my friend," said Wellesly. "Mr. Mullford didn't mean anything out of the way. We are both very much obliged to you for allowing us to share your camp."

"Yes," a.s.sented Haney warmly, "it's w'ite, that's what it is, to take in two 'ungry fellows and feed us out of your grub. And we'll see that you don't lose by it."

They watered their horses, which Jim hobbled and left to graze upon the vegetation of the little canyon. All three men hunted about in the dim light for wood with which to make a fire, and they soon had ready a supper of coffee, bacon, and canned baked beans, which Jim produced from his pack. Afterward, he brought out a blanket apiece and each man rolled himself up and lay down on the ground with his saddle for a pillow. Wellesly thought the matter all over as he lay on his back and stared up at the moon-lighted sky. He finally decided there was nothing to do but to wait for the next day and its developments, and in the meantime to get as much sleep as he could.