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Bloom of Cactus, a fiction by Robert Ames Bennet |
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Chapter 2. Off Trail |
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_ CHAPTER II. OFF TRAIL By the time the two reached the dead burro again the somber mood of the girl had lightened. "First thing is to sort over your pack," she said. "We'll cull out what's not needed." The girths of the packsaddle were cut loose, and the animal was dragged clear of the pack. When Lennon's very creditable diamond-hitch had been thrown off, the girl overhauled the pack and made quick decisions. "We'll leave most of the flour. You can stock up at the ranch with cornmeal. Same with your cooking outfit. Throw out all but one drill and all the giant powder--no, keep half a dozen sticks." "But, Miss Farley, I can't begin to lug a quarter of----" "Don't forget my pony," cut in Carmena. "He can't carry you and all this truck of mine," remonstrated Lennon. "I'll not permit you to walk. You must have hurt your foot. I saw you limp." "I'm not asking your permission, thanks." As she unbuckled her spurs Lennon noticed that the girl's boots were not built with the usual cowboy high heels. They would be suitable for walking. The pony had wandered some distance down the wash, cunningly twitching his trailing reins to one side, clear of his hoofs. While Lennon started to cache his packsaddle and the other discarded articles of his outfit, Carmena went after her would-be stray, limping and gingerly picking her steps when she saw that the young man's back was turned. After catching her pony she crouched down behind a corner of rock to unlace her boots. They came off with difficulty. Inside the boots, she had been wearing a pair of curious high-top boot-moccasins with thick back-doubled toes. In a twinkling she stripped off the moccasins and thrust them down into the bottom of one of the saddlebags. With her feet uncramped and easy in her relaced boots, she sprang into the saddle and loped back up the trail. Lennon's cache was a cavity under an overhanging ledge. Before he had blocked the opening to his satisfaction with fragments of rock the rest of his outfit had been securely packed upon the pony by Carmena. Nothing was left out except rifles, cartridge-belts and two half-gallon canteens of water. "Keep your gun loaded and never put all your water on your horse." The girl gave her companion the two first maxims of desert travel. "Come along. No use trying to hide your cache or your trail from Apaches. Only another Apache can do that. It's high time we hit out, anyhow." To the surprise of Lennon, she started up the arroyo. When he joined her, the pony, whose reins had been tied to the pack, snorted and shied. But at a call from Carmena, the skittish beast followed his mistress up the arroyo like a dog. "How about the chance of running into that murderous savage if we go this way?" Lennon inquired. "You might be safer if you hurried back to the railroad," replied Carmena, and she swung the steepening side of the arroyo. Lennon's lips tightened. He did not again question his guide's choice of route. But, like her, he held his rifle ready as they came up over the round of a stony ridge. Though neither could see the slightest sign of lurking Indians, Carmena hastened to lead her pony across the ridge crest and down the other side. When safe below the skyline the girl broke into a dog trot. She held to the pace, on a long slant along the ridge side, until they came up into the mouth of a small cañon. Between the bald ledges of the dry channel were bars of sand and gravel. Lennon pointed to the hoofprints of a horse that had come down the cañon at a gallop. "This must be the trail of our renegade," he said. Carmena paused to fix him with a somber gaze. "The whole bunch of bronchos may be up here, but it's the only way into the Basin; and, once in, they may get behind us. Now's your chance to quit--your last chance." This time Lennon was ready for her. "Lead on, Miss Macduff, and--perhaps you know the rest of the quotation." "Yes," gloomily retorted the girl. "Don't blame me if we meet up with those broncs. The joke will be on you." "How about your safety? Wouldn't you have a better chance if mounted?" "Want to back out, do you?" "By no means. My idea is to dump the pack from your pony. Then, if we are attacked, I may be able to hold the renegades while you gallop off." The girl's rich colour deepened into a flush. The thick fringe of her lashes swept down to hide the glow in her eyes. Without a word she swung ahead, on up the cañon. Though not a little puzzled over her abruptness, Lennon felt certain that she had been far from displeased by his matter-of-fact suggestion. He had no chance to urge the desirability of his plan. At his first rather loud-spoken remonstrance Carmena flung back at him a curt gesture for silence and led on at a quickened pace. Her swift ascent slackened only at the twists of the narrowing cañon; at these she would swing in close to the inner side of the bends and creep around, with her rifle half raised. By mid-morning the bed of the cañon had become much rougher and steeper. The pony, for all his goat-like agility and sure-footedness, found difficulty in scrambling up some of the ledges. Neither the rapid pace nor the climbing bothered Lennon. But between the burning heat and his very natural excitement over Carmena's stealthy bearing at the turns, he became keyed to rather a high pitch. After a last sharp turn, the cañon broadened and flared out in a trough-like valley at the top of a high, cedar-clad, ridge-rimmed mesa. "Wait!" Lennon exclaimed. "Look ahead, Miss Farley--all bare and open! Not a bit of shelter until we cross to the trees!" The girl faced about, her red lips twisted in a smile of contempt, but her eyes clouded with disappointment. "I told you, down at the lower end, it was your last chance to quit." "Quite true. I've burnt my bridges. The question now is one of advance, not retreat. What if there are Indian watchers on those ridges? Would it not be best for me to hold their attention by going straight up the open valley, while you take the horse around through the cedars?" Carmena met his proposal with a chuckle that brought a flush into Lennon's lean face. But her troubled eyes had cleared and there was a note of relief underlying her mirth. "What's the matter with you, too, keeping under cover?" she rallied. "Besides, we don't go to the head of the valley. We slant up to the left through that notch in the ridge." This banter, coupled with the assurance that the girl knew exactly what she was about, cooled Lennon's excitement. His high strung nerves relaxed. "No need to remind you I'm a tenderfoot," he jibed at himself. "Coming up the cañon I've been shooting Apaches at every bend." The mirth left Carmena's face. Her lips straightened in hard lines and her eyes flashed. "It's no joke," she said. "I'm right glad you're steadying down. If we meet that bunch of bronchos, there's just one thing to do--shoot first. It'll be time enough to ask questions afterward. Is that clear?" "Perfectly, Miss Farley. I have you to consider, and I presume no peaceful Indians come into these bad lands." "Pimas and Moquis cut their hair square across the forehead. If you see any others, shoot--to kill!" "I will," said Lennon, certain that he understood the cause of the girl's almost fierce insistence. He knew that the treatment of captured women by renegade Indians is a far worse fate than death. Carmena took note of his set jaw, drew in a deep breath, and swung around to angle up the slope at the side of the cañon head. Half an hour of winding advance through the midst of the scraggly low-growing trees brought them to the notch in the rim-ridge. Below this break the mesa side pitched steeply into a great basin that was blotched with white alkali flats, wave-marked with sand dunes, and broken with jagged hills and skeleton-like ridges. The air was so dry and clear that even far out in the Basin, many miles away, Lennon could distinguish patches of green. Nearer at hand appeared blurs of a grayish vegetation. But at his pleased exclamation Carmena told him that he was looking at no oasis. What he saw was only the green of mesquite and palo verde, the fluted columns of the giant sahuaro, and the gray of sagebrush. In all that wide waste of desolation no trickling rill or even the smallest of pools glinted under the fierce rays of the mid-day sun. Over beyond the north side of the Basin, above the lesser peaks and buttes, appeared a higher mountain. The top, dwarfed by distance but as clear cut in outline as a cameo, was divided into three thick tower-like masses. "There's your Triple Butte," said Carmena. "What! So near as that? We can make it by mid-afternoon." The girl smiled. "You might, if you hurried enough. It's only forty miles away on a beeline." Lennon stared, openly incredulous: "Forty miles?" "Near fifty-five by way of the water-holes--forty to the ranch. We'll strike for the nearest tank. I've noticed your canteen has been empty some time. Here's mine." Though Lennon's throat was parched, he sought to refuse the offered canteen, which was still half full. Carmena dropped it at his feet and began to zigzag down the mesa side. Noon had passed before they gained the foot of the steep slope. Carmena followed out along a ridge of bare rock, past scattered growths of thornscrub and cactus, to where windblown sand lay in sterile drifts alongside the ledges. Here she turned up a narrow cleft of the ridge and entered the mouth of a small cave. She knelt to dip her hat down a hole in the bottom of the cave. The hat came up brimful of water. She drank deeply, refilled the hat, and backed out past Lennon to water the eager pony. "I'll thank you to fill the canteens and give the bronc as much more as he can drink," she directed. "There's firewood on around that point of rocks. Keep your gun handy." Lennon was already drinking from a refilled canteen. He found the cliff-shaded water of the spring pure and deliciously cool. The watering of the pony took no little time and patience. Though the beast was too thirsty to show any of his former skittishness, Lennon's sombrero was leaky from the bullet holes. When at last he drove the pony on along Carmena's trail, he noticed tiny cloudlets of dark smoke, like the puffs of a giant's pipe, rising straight up in the still air from behind the point of rocks. By the time he rounded the corner the smoke had thinned and lightened to an almost invisible haze. A bright little fire of dry sticks was blazing in a sandy hollow. Carmena knelt beside it, leaning on the muzzle of her rifle. Her dark eyes were gazing off across the desert basin in a look that betrayed both eagerness and dread. "Hello. Ready for the frying pan?" sang out Lennon. Then he perceived the tenseness of the girl's attitude and hastened to swing up his rifle. "What is it? Sighted another Apache?" "No. But I put greasewood on the fire. You saw the smoke?" "A few puffs--yes." The girl rose and eyed him somberly. "Few puffs, you say.... If that bunch of bronchos is anywhere within fifteen miles--with a clear view this way--we can expect a visit." "Should we not cut and run?" "Why? We couldn't hide our tracks. Even if the devils aren't mounted, they'd soon overtake us. An Indian can lope along all day, like a coyote." Lennon looked deliberately around at the ridge and sat down to clean and reload his rifle. Carmena's eyes flashed. "You've got the idea," she said. "We'll eat and back up to the spring. The cave is an easy place to hold. You said you can shoot?" "Rather well. Very long range rifle, too. I've knocked over a caribou with it at nearly a mile, up on Hudson Bay." Carmena glanced at the high-power weapon and then raised her flashing eyes to gaze over the bent head of its owner. Midway out across the desolate Basin, from the top of a craggy hill to the right of the line of Triple Butte, puffs of smoke were rising into the cloudless steel-blue sky. The girl hastened to loosen her pony's pack and take from her saddlebags a frying pan, several slices of bacon, and a big chunk of corn pone. _ |
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