CHAPTER XVITHE RENDEZVOUS
WHEN, after a long, steady gallop, the fugitives rested their horses again, no unusual sounds broke the eternal quietude of the desert night.
For a time they walked the animals again, and then, at a late hour, the leader of the flight turned sharply toward the mountains and continued in their direction.
Foothills are little more than a figure of speech as regards the mountain ranges of southern California; for the mountains uprear themselves virtually from level land with unexpected abruptness, and there are scarcely any intermediate levels to render an approach gradual. Before very long, then, the night riders had left the desert below them and were in such foothills as the range boasted; and in less time still they were ascending sharply and entering forests of piñon pine and mountain mahogany. Still farther up they came upon a sprinkling of pines and junipers, and before two hours had passed found themselves in a black forest of conifers.
“I can’t imagine how you know where you’re going,” the man muttered to Manzanita.
“I do, though,” she assured him. “There’s an old, old road on our right now, which we have crossed and recrossed several times to give us our bearings. I’m keeping close to it and following its general trend; but it would never do for us to follow it directly. It’s almost overgrown with brush. It ran to a gold mine worked by the Spanish, perhaps fifty years ago.”
Many times they rested their tired horses during the steep ascent. Signs of morning were in air and sky when they topped the summit and crossed a mountain meadow, lush with tall, cool grasses. On the opposite side of the level valley Manzanita plunged into the forest again. They rode for perhaps half a mile, when she reined in and left the saddle.
“This is as far as we go with the caballos,” she announced. “We’ll hide the saddles and bridles here, loose the broncs, and pack in to where we’re going to hide. Two miles farther, perhaps. The horses will head back for the meadow we crossed, and the searchers will find them there, no doubt. But that’ll tell ’em nothing. Whenever our horses get away down at Squawtooth in summer they always drift up here to the meadows. That’s why I had you ride behind me after we left the desert. One wandering horse usually trails another. Even if they should find our horses’ tracks leading to the meadow, they won’t know whether they were carryingriders or not. They’ll have a job to find out just where we got out of the saddles.”
For a time she searched about in the blackness, and presently called to him to bring the saddles to her. When he had obeyed he found her standing over a brush heap of dry black-oak boughs.
“Trimmings from black oaks our outfit cut for fence posts,” she enlightened him. She held a long pole, and now thrust it under the heap. “I’ll pry up the whole pile with this,” she said. “You cache the saddles way under, then I’ll let the pile drop back over them.”
Soon they were away again, with packs on their backs and the rifle, in its scabbard, swinging from The Falcon’s shoulder.
It was growing light now. The eastern sky was shell pink, and clouds were revealed.
“Those look like wind clouds,” said the girl reflectively. “A big blow is about due. You’ve never been in this country when the wind blows. Say, you’ll remember it when it does! I hope one is on the way. I could use a windstorm just now.”
They left little or no trail on the soft, slippery carpet of pine needles. Through an unbroken forest Manzanita led The Falcon, seeming to guide herself by instinct, since to the latter one tree looked as straight and unindividual as thousands of others through which they had passed.
Then they began to ascend again, and the landgrew broken and rocky, with trees scattered about. Soon, except for a sentinel pine here and there on a rugged hillside, there were no trees; the ground was covered by rocks and scattering chaparral. The chaparral, about twelve feet in height and composed of prickly buckthorn and southern manzanita, grew continually denser, till at last they were confronted by a solid wall of it seemingly impregnable.
“Now, if our Bible student, Halfaman Daisy, were here,” said the girl, “the harrowing experience of old Nebuchadnezzar probably would be recalled to his mind. For, like Nebuchadnezzar, we’ve got to crawl now.”
The Falcon watched with interest while she readjusted her improvised pack. She lowered it from between her shoulder blades to the small of her back, then lay down flat on her face.
“‘Follow your leader!’” she quoted from the old game and wriggled into the chaparral and disappeared.
Falcon the Flunky followed her example.
Under the chaparral tops it was black as ink once more. The land was covered with a deep carpet of the bushes’ tiny shattered leaves, and was unobstructed save for the sturdy trunks of the growth. Falcon the Flunky could hear the girl wriggling over the cackling leaves ahead of him, and set his course by the sounds. Now and then he collided with a trunk, and now and then theprickly foliage, three feet above his head, raked off his hat. Birds twittered and fluttered away, disturbed from their nap just before the dawn.
Then of a sudden the crawlers came out in an open space and lay panting. The sky had lighted amazingly during their progress through the dark. Manzanita lay flat, with her arms outstretched and a smile of accomplishment on her young lips.
“Well,” she sighed at last, sitting erect and picking the trash from her hair, “we’re here. And they won’t find us in a thousand years. In these mountains there are hundreds of chaparral patches like this one, and no one ever thinks of crawling into them. No sensible person, that is to say. Mart and I do it, though. We’re always hunting for hidden treasure, you know, old Spanish mines, and skeletons and things like that.”
The Falcon looked about.
Great, gaunt gray rocks upreared themselves in the middle of the opening, which was circular and not over a hundred feet in diameter, with heavy chaparral forming a dense wall on all sides.
“There’s water in those rocks,” she informed him. “That’s how we might stay here forever, if we had enough grub. Down below, on our right as we came up, are a creek and sinegas; and I presume the water here is a part of that same system. But no one would suspect that there is water here, in the heart of this thicket. Chaparralwon’t stand wet feet. Too much water kills it. That accounts for the break here in the heart of the patch. Mart and I are the sole discoverers, of course. Now, any one trying to find us will know that we must be near water in order to live. And as chaparral is invariably on dry, poor soil, they’ll never dream we could be in here, with water right beside us.”
“How long do you propose to stay here, Manzanita?” he asked.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she replied lightly, rising to her feet. “Till we can collect our wits, anyway. I love this sort of thing. Mart and I’ve played fugitive so much, but never before have I had the chance to do anything of the kind for a really truly reason.”
“You’re only an imaginative kid,” he sternly accused. “What will your father think! He’ll be distracted, dear.”
She remained thoughtful and silent for a time.
“He may worry,” she admitted at last. “But, then, he brought it all on himself. The idea of his forcing you with a six to be tied up! I don’t know what’s getting to be the matter with pa here of late—ever since I’ve been eighteen. If it hadn’t been for me—oh, well, let’s not worry. I’ve been thinking up all sorts of plans. If the wind gets up we’ll communicate with pa or somebody before very long. We’ll enter into negotiations with ourenemies. If they’ll do so and so, we’ll do so and so—and they’ll have to agree, ’cause we’ll have the cinch on ’em from the start.
“Now, let’s stir our stumps and fix up our camp over there in the rocks beside the water. Then we’d better get some sleep if we can.”
They went into the outcropping of huge, gray stones, some of them as high as twenty feet above their heads, a grotesque assemblage that formed an admirable shelter. From under one of them water bubbled up, but seemed not to spread far over the surface of the ground before the loose, gravelly soil soaked it down again.
“Artesian,” observed The Falcon.
“I suppose so. It’s a freak outbreak, way up here. Outlaws could hide here and defy a posse for months, if their grub didn’t give out.”
With the small fencing hatchet that the girl carried in a scabbard on her saddle The Falcon cut chaparral limbs for their beds. On one side of a large, pyramidlike rock in the center of the group he made a bed for his companion, and laid down his own on the other side. Then she “went into her room,” as she expressed it, and stretched her tired body on the boughs and a blanket.
Falcon the Flunky did likewise on his side. He was far more tired than the girl, for, though a fairly good rider, he was not hardened to the saddle as was she.
To state that he was worried would be putting it lightly. What a chimerical idea it seemed; and, still, when he reviewed the situation, he was obliged to compliment Manzanita on her swift decision and the practicality of her strategy. He did not worry about his own predicament, but was thinking of the wretched state of mind into which their flight must have plunged Squawtooth Canby.
If he thought Falcon the Flunky to be a scoundrel—and he could think little else from his viewpoint—what tortures he must be suffering, when he knew that his beloved daughter had escaped into the mountains with such a man and was now at that man’s mercy somewhere up there in the illimitable fastness.
He could not sleep. Morning came fast now. The sun was casting its dazzling rays on the tips of the gaunt rocks above his head. Then came a plaintive voice from the other side of the thick partition.
“Falcon, I can’t sleep! My brain’s going like a herd of longhorns milling.”
“Neither can I,” he told her. “Come around and we’ll cook our breakfast; and then we’ll get to our planning.”
“All right; I’m coming.”