Bred of the Desert - Charles Marcus Horton (best short novels .TXT) 📗

drew off their boots and rolled up in their blankets. All but Stephen. His arm was throbbing with unusual pain. It was still in splints, and still bandaged in a sling around his neck, and since it always hurt him to change positions, he remained seated beside the fire, wrapped in sober thought. Outside, in the green-white light of the moon, he heard the horses one by one sink to rest. Around him the desert, gripped in death-stillness, pressed close, while overhead the star-sprinkled dome of heaven, unclouded, arched in all its wonted glittering majesty. A long time he sat there, keenly alive to these things, yet thinking strange thoughts, thoughts of his loneliness, and what might have been, and where he might have been, had he never met the girl. These were new thoughts, and he presently arose to rid himself of them and turned in, and soon was in a doze.

Some time later, he did not know how much later, he was aroused by a sound as of distant thunder. But as he lifted his head the sound disappeared. Yet when he dropped his head back again he heard it. He pressed his left ear close to earth. The sound grew louder and seemed to come nearer. Again he lifted his head. As before, he could hear nothing save the snoring of the large man and the dream-twitching of the Professor. He gazed about him. The camp was still. He peered outside in the moonlight. The horses were all down–at rest. At length he dropped back once more, closed his eyes sleepily, and soon dozed a second time.

But again he was aroused. He whipped up his head. The sound was thundering in his ears. He heard trampling hoofs–many hoofs–immediately outside. He leaped to his feet. He saw horsemen–Indians–the renegades–crowding past, riding frantically to the north. He called sharply to the others, who were already waking and leaping to their feet. He turned to the horses. They were all there, standing now, alert and tense. Wheeling, he stared after the Indians. They were speeding away like the wind, close huddled, fleeing in a panic. He watched them, dazed, saw them ascend a rise, become a vacillating speck in the moonlight, and drop from view in a hollow beyond the rise. He turned to the men. All stood in mute helplessness, only half comprehending. He opened his mouth to speak, but as he did so there came a sudden interruption.

It was a bugle-call, rollicking across the desert, crashing into the death-like hush which had settled upon the camp. He turned his eyes toward the sound–to the south. Over a giant sand-dune, riding grouped, with one or two in the lead, swept a company of cavalrymen. Down the slope they galloped, moonlight playing freely upon them, bringing out every detail–the glint of arms, the movement of hat-brims, the lift and fall of elbows–pounding straight for the camp. Another blast of the bugle, crisp and metallic, and they swerved; they drew near, nearer still, came close on the right, and swept past in a whirlwind of sounds, thundering hoofs, cursing men, slamming carbines, creaking saddles, snorting horses. So they swept on into the north, pushing, crowding, jostling, throwing back flying gravel, odors of sweat, swirling dust-clouds. They mounted rapidly over the rise, and became, as the pursued, vacillating specks, and then disappeared in the hollow beyond.

Stephen recovered himself. He swept his eyes again over the horses. He saw a change among them. Three were calm, but not the other two. Both of them were weaving faintly, and, even as he sprang to them, one sank slowly to the ground. Wondering, dazed, gripped in apprehension, he bent over it. The horse was a stranger, and it was gasping its last breath. Dismayed, he turned to the other. This horse also was a strange horse, and it was white with foam and panting, also run to death. Astonished, cold with apprehension, he looked for Pat. But neither Pat nor the sorrel was to be seen. Then the truth overwhelmed him. The renegades, seeing fresh horses here, had made a swift change. Pat was gone!

For one tense moment he stood spellbound. Then he sprang into action. He dressed as best he could, called to the others to bridle and saddle a horse, and leaped into the saddle. His whole body rebelled at the movement. But he set his jaw grimly, and, clutching at his bandaged arm, yet keeping his grip on the reins, he spurred frantically after the cavalry. As he dashed away he shouted back his purpose.

But the men, standing with wide eyes turned after him, heard only the end:

“I’ll get him in spite of hell!”

CHAPTER XX
FIDELITY

Meantime Pat was running at top speed across the desert. Yet he was trying to understand this strange call to duty. Roused from fitful slumber by trampling hoofs, he had felt an excited hand jerking him to his feet, and after that a slender rope looped round his lower jaw. Then he had been urged, with a wriggling form on his bare back, frantic heels drumming his sides, and a strange voice impelling him onward past a surging crowd of horsemen, still only half awake, out into the open. When he was well in the fore, he had found himself crowded to his utmost–over sand-dune, into arroyo, across the level–around him thundering hoofs, panting horses, silent men, all speeding forward in the glorious moonlight. It was a strange awakening, yet he had not entertained thoughts of rebellion, despite the fact that he had not liked the flaying rope, the soft digging heels, the absence of bridle and saddle. It was strange; it was not right. None of it had checked up with any item of his experience. Yet, oddly enough, he had not rebelled.

Nor was he harboring thoughts of rebellion now. Racing onward, smarting with each swing of the lash, he found himself somehow interested solely in holding his own with the other horses. Suddenly, alert to their movements, he saw a cleft open in their surging ranks, made by the fall of an exhausted horse. Yet the others did not stop. They galloped on, unheeding, though he himself was jerked up. Then followed a swift exchange of words, and then the unhorsed man mounted behind Pat’s new master. Carrying a double load now, Pat nevertheless dashed ahead at his former speed, stumbling with his first steps, but soon regaining his stride and overtaking the others. And though it cost him straining effort, he felt rewarded for his pains when one of the men uttered a grunt which he interpreted as approval. But it was all very strange.

A canyon loomed up on his left. He had hardly seen the black opening when he was swung toward it. He plunged forward with the other horses, and was the first to enter the canyon’s yawning mouth. Between its high walls, however, he found himself troubled by black shadows. Many of them reached across his path like projections of rock, and more than once he faltered in his stride. But after passing through two or three in safety he came at length to understand them and so returned to his wonted self-possession.

But he was laboring heavily now. His heart was jumping and pounding, his breath coming in gasps, but he held to the trail, moving ever deeper into the hills, until he burst into a basin out of which to the right led a narrow canyon. Then he slowed down and, turning into the canyon, which wound and twisted due north and south in the bright moonlight, he continued at a slower pace. But his heart no longer was in the task. The weight on his back seemed heavier; there was a painful swelling of his ankles. He knew the reason for this pain. It had come from unwonted contact with hard surfaces and frequent stepping on loose stones in this strange haste with a strange people in the hills. Yet he kept on, growing steadily more weary, yet with pride ever to the fore, until a faint light began to streak the overhead sky, stealing cautiously down the ragged walls of the canyon. Then he found himself pulled into a walk.

He was facing a narrow defile that wound up among the overhanging crags. Glad of the privilege of resting, for a walk was a rest with him now, he set forward into the uninviting pass. Up and up he clambered, crowding narrowly past boulders, rounding on slender ledges, up and ever up. As he ascended he saw gray-white vales below, felt the stimulus of a rarer air, and at last found his heart fluttering unpleasantly in the higher altitude. Yet he held grimly to his task, and, when broad daylight was streaming full upon him, he found himself on a wide shelf of rock, a ledge falling sheer on one side to unseen depths, towering on the other to awe-inspiring heights. Here he came to a halt. And then, so tired was he, so faint with exhaustion, so racked of body and spirit, that he sank upon the cool rock even before the men could clear themselves from him, and lay there on his side, his eyes closed, his lungs greedily sucking air.

The glare of full daylight aroused him. Regaining his feet, he stared about him. He saw many strange-looking men, and near them many dirty and bedraggled horses. He turned his eyes outward from the ledge. He saw around him bristling peaks, and below them, far below, a trailing canyon, winding in and out among hills toward the rising sun, and terminating in a giant V, beyond which, a connecting thread between its sloping sides, lay an expanse of rolling mesa. It was far from him, however–very, very far–and he grew dizzy at the view, finding himself more and more unnerved by the height. At length he turned away and swept his eyes again over the horses, where he was glad to find the rangy sorrel. Then he turned back to the men, some of whom were standing, others squatting, but all in moody silence.

As he looked he grew aware that a pair of dark eyes were fixed upon him. He stared back, noting the man’s long hair and painted features and the familiar glow of admiration in his eyes. Believing him to be his new master, he continued to regard him soberly until the man, with a grunt and a grimace, rose and approached him. Pat stood very still under a rigid examination. The man rubbed his ankles, turned up his hoofs, looked at his teeth; and at the conclusion of all this Pat felt that he had met with approval. Also, he realized that he rather approved of the man. Then came a volley of sounds he did not understand, and he found himself touched with grave apprehension. But not for long. The man led him across the ledge to a tiny stream trickling down the rocks, walking with a quiet dignity he long since had learned to connect with kindliness. This and the fact that he led him to water determined his attitude.

Toward noon, as he was brooding over hunger pangs, he was startled by excited gutturals among the men. Gazing, he saw one of the men standing on the edge of the shelf, pointing out through the long canyon. With the others, Pat turned his eyes that way. Between the distant V dotting the mesa beyond rode a body of horsemen. They were not more than specks to his eyes, proceeding slowly, so slowly, in fact, that while he could see they were moving he yet could not see them move as they crawled across the span between the canyon’s mouth. Interested, gripped in the contagion of the excitement round him,