But suddenly he was broad awake, his jaded senses all alert.
“What was that?” he muttered. “I thought I heard something—saw something.”
He rose to his feet, reaching for the Winchester. Desolation lay still around him. There was not a sound but his own breathing; on the face of the desert not a grain of sand was in motion. McTeague looked furtively and quickly from side to side, his teeth set, his eyes rolling. Once more the rowel was in his flanks, once more an unseen hand reined him toward the east. After all the miles of that dreadful day's flight he was no better off than when he started. If anything, he was worse, for never had that mysterious instinct in him been more insistent than now; never had the impulse toward precipitate flight been stronger; never had the spur bit deeper. Every nerve of his body cried aloud for rest; yet every instinct seemed aroused and alive, goading him to hurry on, to hurry on.
“What IS it, then? What is it?” he cried, between his teeth. “Can't I ever get rid of you? Ain't I EVER going to shake you off? Don' keep it up this way. Show yourselves. Let's have it out right away. Come on. I ain't afraid if you'll only come on; but don't skulk this way.” Suddenly he cried aloud in a frenzy of exasperation, “Damn you, come on, will you? Come on and have it out.” His rifle was at his shoulder, he was covering bush after bush, rock after rock, aiming at every denser shadow. All at once, and quite involuntarily, his forefinger crooked, and the rifle spoke and flamed. The cañóns roared back the echo, tossing it out far over the desert in a rippling, widening wave of sound.
McTeague lowered the rifle hastily, with an exclamation of dismay.
“You fool,” he said to himself, “you fool. You've done it now. They could hear that miles away. You've done it now.”
He stood listening intently, the rifle smoking in his hands. The last echo died away. The smoke vanished, the vast silence closed upon the passing echoes of the rifle as the ocean closes upon a ship's wake. Nothing moved; yet McTeague bestirred himself sharply, rolling up his blankets, resaddling the mule, getting his outfit together again. From time to time he muttered:
“Hurry now; hurry on. You fool, you've done it now. They could hear that miles away. Hurry now. They ain't far off now.”
As he depressed the lever of the rifle to reload it, he found that the magazine was empty. He clapped his hands to his sides, feeling rapidly first in one pocket, then in another. He had forgotten to take extra cartridges with him. McTeague swore under his breath as he flung the rifle away. Henceforth he must travel unarmed.
A little more water had gathered in the mud hole near which he had camped. He watered the mule for the last time and wet the sacks around the canary's cage. Then once more he set forward.
But there was a change in the direction of McTeague's flight. Hitherto he had held to the south, keeping upon the very edge of the hills; now he turned sharply at right angles. The slope fell away beneath his hurrying feet; the sage-brush dwindled, and at length ceased; the sand gave place to a fine powder, white as snow; and an hour after he had fired the rifle his mule's hoofs were crisping and cracking the sun-baked flakes of alkali on the surface of Death Valley.
Tracked and harried, as he felt himself to be, from one camping place to another, McTeague had suddenly resolved to make one last effort to rid himself of the enemy that seemed to hang upon his heels. He would strike straight out into that horrible wilderness where even the beasts were afraid. He would cross Death Valley at once and put its arid wastes between him and his pursuer.
“You don't dare follow me now,” he muttered, as he hurried on. “Let's see you come out HERE after me.”
He hurried on swiftly, urging the mule to a rapid racking walk. Towards four o'clock the sky in front of him began to flush pink and golden. McTeague halted and breakfasted, pushing on again immediately afterward. The dawn flamed and glowed like a brazier, and the sun rose a vast red-hot coal floating in fire. An hour passed, then another, and another. It was about nine o'clock. Once more the dentist paused, and stood panting and blowing, his arms dangling, his eyes screwed up and blinking as he looked about him.
Far behind him the Panamint hills were already but blue hummocks on the horizon. Before him and upon either side, to the north and to the east and to the south, stretched primordial desolation. League upon league the infinite reaches of dazzling white alkali laid themselves out like an immeasurable scroll unrolled from horizon to horizon; not a bush, not a twig relieved that horrible monotony. Even the sand of the desert would have been a welcome sight; a single clump of sage-brush would have fascinated the eye; but this was worse than the desert. It was abominable, this hideous sink of alkali, this bed of some primeval lake lying so far below the level of the ocean. The great mountains of Placer County had been merely indifferent to man; but this awful sink of alkali was openly and unreservedly iniquitous and malignant.
McTeague had told himself that the heat upon the lower slopes of the Panamint had been dreadful; here in Death Valley it became a thing of terror. There was no longer any shadow but his own. He was scorched and parched from head to heel. It seemed to him that the smart of his tortured body could not have been keener if he had been flayed.
“If it gets much hotter,” he muttered, wringing the sweat from his thick fell of hair and mustache, “if it gets much hotter, I don' know what I'll do.” He was thirsty, and drank a little from his canteen. “I ain't got any too much water,” he murmured, shaking the canteen. “I got to get out of this place in a hurry, sure.”
By eleven o'clock the heat had increased to such an extent that McTeague could feel the burning of the ground come pringling and stinging through the soles of his boots. Every step he took threw up clouds of impalpable alkali dust, salty and choking, so that he strangled and coughed and sneezed with it.
“LORD! what a country!” exclaimed the dentist.
An hour later, the mule stopped and lay down, his jaws wide open, his ears dangling. McTeague washed his mouth with a handful of water and for a second time since sunrise wetted the flour-sacks around the bird cage. The air was quivering and palpitating like that in the stoke-hold of a steamship. The sun, small and contracted, swam molten overhead.
“I can't stand it,” said McTeague at length. “I'll have to stop and make some kinda shade.”
The mule was crouched upon the ground, panting rapidly, with half-closed eyes. The dentist removed the saddle, and unrolling his blanket, propped it up as best he could between him and the sun. As he stooped down to crawl beneath it, his palm touched the ground. He snatched it away with a cry of pain. The surface alkali was oven-hot; he was obliged to scoop out a trench in it before he dared to lie down.
By degrees the dentist began to doze. He had had little or no sleep the night before, and the hurry of his flight under the blazing sun had exhausted him. But his rest was broken; between waking and sleeping, all manner of troublous images galloped through his brain. He thought he was back in the Panamint hills again with Cribbens. They had just discovered the mine and were returning toward camp. McTeague saw himself as another man, striding along over the sand and sagebrush. At once he saw himself stop and wheel sharply about, peering back suspiciously. There was something behind him; something was following him. He looked, as it were, over the shoulder of this other McTeague, and saw down there, in the half light of the cañón, something dark crawling upon the ground, an indistinct gray figure, man or brute, he did not know. Then he saw another, and another; then another. A score of black, crawling objects were following him, crawling from bush to bush, converging upon him. “THEY” were after him, were closing in upon him, were within touch of his hand, were at his feet—WERE AT HIS THROAT.
McTeague jumped up with a shout, oversetting the blanket. There was nothing in sight. For miles around, the alkali was empty, solitary, quivering and shimmering under the pelting fire of the afternoon's sun.
But once more the spur bit into his body, goading him on. There was to be no rest, no going back, no pause, no stop. Hurry, hurry, hurry on. The brute that in him slept so close to the surface was alive and alert, and tugging to be gone. There was no resisting that instinct. The brute felt an enemy, scented the trackers, clamored and struggled and fought, and would not be gainsaid.
“I CAN'T go on,” groaned McTeague, his eyes sweeping the horizon behind him, “I'm beat out. I'm dog tired. I ain't slept any for two nights.” But for all that he roused himself again, saddled the mule, scarcely less exhausted than himself, and pushed on once more over the scorching alkali and under the blazing sun.
From that time on the fear never left him, the spur never ceased to bite, the instinct that goaded him to fight never was dumb; hurry or halt, it was all the same. On he went, straight on, chasing the receding horizon; flagellated with heat; tortured with thirst; crouching over; looking furtively behind, and at times reaching his hand forward, the fingers prehensile, grasping, as it were, toward the horizon, that always fled before him.
The sun set upon the third day of McTeague's flight, night came on, the stars burned slowly into the cool dark purple of the sky. The gigantic sink of white alkali glowed like snow. McTeague, now far into the desert, held steadily on, swinging forward with great strides. His enormous strength held him doggedly to his work. Sullenly, with his huge jaws gripping stolidly together, he pushed on. At midnight he stopped.
“Now,” he growled, with a certain desperate defiance, as though he expected to be heard, “now, I'm going to lay up and get some sleep. You can come or not.”
He cleared away the hot surface alkali, spread out his blanket, and slept until the next day's heat aroused him. His water was so low that he dared not make coffee now, and so breakfasted without it. Until ten o'clock he tramped forward, then camped again in the shade of one of the rare rock ledges, and “lay up” during the heat of the day. By five o'clock he was once more on the march.
He travelled on for the greater part of that night, stopping only once towards three in the morning to water the mule from the canteen. Again the red-hot day burned up over the horizon. Even at six o'clock it was hot.
“It's going to be worse than ever to-day,” he groaned. “I wish I could find another rock to camp by. Ain't I ever going to get out of this place?”
There was no change in the character of the desert. Always the same measureless leagues of white-hot alkali stretched away toward the horizon on every hand. Here and there the flat, dazzling surface of the desert broke and raised into long low mounds, from the summit of which McTeague could look for miles and miles over its horrible desolation. No shade was in sight. Not a rock, not a stone broke the monotony of the ground. Again and again he ascended the low unevennesses, looking and searching for a camping place, shading his eyes from the glitter of sand and sky.
He tramped forward a little farther, then paused at length in a hollow between two breaks, resolving to make camp there.
Suddenly there was a shout.
“Hands up. By damn, I got the drop on you!”
McTeague looked up.
It was Marcus.
Within a month after his departure from San Francisco, Marcus had “gone in on a cattle ranch” in the Panamint Valley with an Englishman, an acquaintance of Mr. Sieppe's. His headquarters were at a place called Modoc, at the lower extremity of the valley, about fifty miles by trail to the south of Keeler.
His life was the life of a cowboy. He realized his former vision of himself, booted, sombreroed, and revolvered, passing his days in the saddle and the better part of his nights around the poker tables in Modoc's one saloon. To his intense satisfaction he even involved himself in a gun fight that arose over a disputed brand, with the result that two fingers of his left hand were shot away.
News from the outside world filtered slowly into the Panamint Valley, and the telegraph had never been built beyond Keeler. At intervals one of the local papers of Independence, the nearest large town, found its way into the cattle camps on the ranges, and occasionally one of the Sunday editions of a Sacramento journal, weeks old, was passed from hand to hand. Marcus ceased to hear from the Sieppes. As for San Francisco, it was as far from him as was London or Vienna.
One day, a fortnight after McTeague's flight from San Francisco, Marcus rode into Modoc, to find a group of men gathered about a notice affixed to the outside of the Wells-Fargo office. It was an offer of reward for the arrest and apprehension of a murderer. The crime had been committed in San Francisco, but the man wanted had been traced as far as the western portion of Inyo County, and was believed at that time to be in hiding in either the Pinto or Panamint hills, in the vicinity of Keeler.
Marcus reached Keeler on the afternoon of that same day. Half a mile from the town his pony fell and died from exhaustion. Marcus did not stop even to remove the saddle. He arrived in the barroom of the hotel in Keeler just after the posse had been made up. The sheriff, who had come down from Independence that morning, at first refused his offer of assistance. He had enough men already—too many, in fact. The country travelled through would be hard, and it would be difficult to find water for so many men and horses.
“But none of you fellers have ever seen um,” vociferated Marcus, quivering with excitement and wrath. “I know um well. I could pick um out in a million. I can identify um, and you fellers can't. And I knew—I knew—good GOD! I knew that girl—his wife—in Frisco. She's a cousin of mine, she is—she was—I thought once of—This thing's a personal matter of mine—an' that money he got away with, that five thousand, belongs to me by rights. Oh, never mind, I'm going along. Do you hear?” he shouted, his fists raised, “I'm going along, I tell you. There ain't a man of you big enough to stop me. Let's see you try and stop me going. Let's see you once, any two of you.” He filled the barroom with his clamor.
“Lord love you, come along, then,” said the sheriff.
The posse rode out of Keeler that same night. The keeper of the general merchandise store, from whom Marcus had borrowed a second pony, had informed them that Cribbens and his partner, whose description tallied exactly with that given in the notice of reward, had outfitted at his place with a view to prospecting in the Panamint hills. The posse trailed them at once to their first camp at the head of the valley. It was an easy matter. It was only necessary to inquire of the cowboys and range riders of the valley if they had seen and noted the passage of two men, one of whom carried a bird cage.
Beyond this first camp the trail was lost, and a week was wasted in a bootless search around the mine at Gold Gulch, whither it seemed probable the partners had gone. Then a travelling peddler, who included Gold Gulch in his route, brought in the news of a wonderful strike of gold-bearing quartz some ten miles to the south on the western slope of the range. Two men from Keeler had made a strike, the peddler had said, and added the curious detail that one of the men had a canary bird in a cage with him.
The posse made Cribbens's camp three days after the unaccountable disappearance of his partner. Their man was gone, but the narrow hoof prints of a mule, mixed with those of huge hob-nailed boots, could be plainly followed in the sand. Here they picked up the trail and held to it steadily till the point was reached where, instead of tending southward it swerved abruptly to the east. The men could hardly believe their eyes.
“It ain't reason,” exclaimed the sheriff. “What in thunder is he up to? This beats me. Cutting out into Death Valley at this time of year.”
“He's heading for Gold Mountain over in the Armagosa, sure.”
The men decided that this conjecture was true. It was the only inhabited locality in that direction. A discussion began as to the further movements of the posse.
“I don't figure on going into that alkali sink with no eight men and horses,” declared the sheriff. “One man can't carry enough water to take him and his mount across, let alone EIGHT. No, sir. Four couldn't do it. No, THREE couldn't. We've got to make a circuit round the valley and come up on the other side and head him off at Gold Mountain. That's what we got to do, and ride like hell to do it, too.”
But Marcus protested with all the strength of his lungs against abandoning the trail now that they had found it. He argued that they were but a day and a half behind their man now. There was no possibility of their missing the trail—as distinct in the white alkali as in snow. They could make a dash into the valley, secure their man, and return long before their water failed them. He, for one, would not give up the pursuit, now that they were so close. In the haste of the departure from Keeler the sheriff had neglected to swear him in. He was under no orders. He would do as he pleased.
“Go on, then, you darn fool,” answered the sheriff. “We'll cut on round the valley, for all that. It's a gamble he'll be at Gold Mountain before you're half way across. But if you catch him, here”—he tossed Marcus a pair of handcuffs—“put 'em on him and bring him back to Keeler.”
Two days after he had left the posse, and when he was already far out in the desert, Marcus's horse gave out. In the fury of his impatience he had spurred mercilessly forward on the trail, and on the morning of the third day found that his horse was unable to move. The joints of his legs seemed locked rigidly. He would go his own length, stumbling and interfering, then collapse helplessly upon the ground with a pitiful groan. He was used up.
Marcus believed himself to be close upon McTeague now. The ashes at his last camp had still been smoldering. Marcus took what supplies of food and water he could carry, and hurried on. But McTeague was farther ahead than he had guessed, and by evening of his third day upon the desert Marcus, raging with thirst, had drunk his last mouthful of water and had flung away the empty canteen.
“If he ain't got water with um,” he said to himself as he pushed on, “If he ain't got water with um, by damn! I'll be in a bad way. I will, for a fact.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
At Marcus's shout McTeague looked up and around him. For the instant he saw no one. The white glare of alkali was still unbroken. Then his swiftly rolling eyes lighted upon a head and shoulder that protruded above the low crest of the break directly in front of him. A man was there, lying at full length upon the ground, covering him with a revolver. For a few seconds McTeague looked at the man stupidly, bewildered, confused, as yet without definite thought. Then he noticed that the man was singularly like Marcus Schouler. It WAS Marcus Schouler. How in the world did Marcus Schouler come to be in that desert? What did he mean by pointing a pistol at him that way? He'd best look out or the pistol would go off. Then his thoughts readjusted themselves with a swiftness born of a vivid sense of danger. Here was the enemy at last, the tracker he had felt upon his footsteps. Now at length he had “come on” and shown himself, after all those days of skulking. McTeague was glad of it. He'd show him now. They two would have it out right then and there. His rifle! He had thrown it away long since. He was helpless. Marcus had ordered him to put up his hands. If he did not, Marcus would kill him. He had the drop on him. McTeague stared, scowling fiercely at the levelled pistol. He did not move.
“Hands up!” shouted Marcus a second time. “I'll give you three to do it in. One, two——”
Instinctively McTeague put his hands above his head.
Marcus rose and came towards him over the break.
“Keep 'em up,” he cried. “If you move 'em once I'll kill you, sure.”
He came up to McTeague and searched him, going through his pockets; but McTeague had no revolver; not even a hunting knife.
“What did you do with that money, with that five thousand dollars?”
“It's on the mule,” answered McTeague, sullenly.
Marcus grunted, and cast a glance at the mule, who was standing some distance away, snorting nervously, and from time to time flattening his long ears.
“Is that it there on the horn of the saddle, there in that canvas sack?” Marcus demanded.
“Yes, that's it.”
A gleam of satisfaction came into Marcus's eyes, and under his breath he muttered:
“Got it at last.”
He was singularly puzzled to know what next to do. He had got McTeague. There he stood at length, with his big hands over his head, scowling at him sullenly. Marcus had caught his enemy, had run down the man for whom every officer in the State had been looking. What should he do with him now? He couldn't keep him standing there forever with his hands over his head.
“Got any water?” he demanded.
“There's a canteen of water on the mule.”
Marcus moved toward the mule and made as if to reach the bridle-rein. The mule squealed, threw up his head, and galloped to a little distance, rolling his eyes and flattening his ears.
Marcus swore wrathfully.
“He acted that way once before,” explained McTeague, his hands still in the air. “He ate some loco-weed back in the hills before I started.”
For a moment Marcus hesitated. While he was catching the mule McTeague might get away. But where to, in heaven's name? A rat could not hide on the surface of that glistening alkali, and besides, all McTeague's store of provisions and his priceless supply of water were on the mule. Marcus ran after the mule, revolver in hand, shouting and cursing. But the mule would not be caught. He acted as if possessed, squealing, lashing out, and galloping in wide circles, his head high in the air.
“Come on,” shouted Marcus, furious, turning back to McTeague. “Come on, help me catch him. We got to catch him. All the water we got is on the saddle.”
McTeague came up.
“He's eatun some loco-weed,” he repeated. “He went kinda crazy once before.”
“If he should take it into his head to bolt and keep on running——”
Marcus did not finish. A sudden great fear seemed to widen around and inclose the two men. Once their water gone, the end would not be long.
“We can catch him all right,” said the dentist. “I caught him once before.”
“Oh, I guess we can catch him,” answered Marcus, reassuringly.
Already the sense of enmity between the two had weakened in the face of a common peril. Marcus let down the hammer of his revolver and slid it back into the holster.
The mule was trotting on ahead, snorting and throwing up great clouds of alkali dust. At every step the canvas sack jingled, and McTeague's bird cage, still wrapped in the flour-bags, bumped against the saddlepads. By and by the mule stopped, blowing out his nostrils excitedly.
“He's clean crazy,” fumed Marcus, panting and swearing.
“We ought to come up on him quiet,” observed McTeague.
“I'll try and sneak up,” said Marcus; “two of us would scare him again. You stay here.”
Marcus went forward a step at a time. He was almost within arm's length of the bridle when the mule shied from him abruptly and galloped away.
Marcus danced with rage, shaking his fists, and swearing horribly. Some hundred yards away the mule paused and began blowing and snuffing in the alkali as though in search of feed. Then, for no reason, he shied again, and started off on a jog trot toward the east.
“We've GOT to follow him,” exclaimed Marcus as McTeague came up. “There's no water within seventy miles of here.”
Then began an interminable pursuit. Mile after mile, under the terrible heat of the desert sun, the two men followed the mule, racked with a thirst that grew fiercer every hour. A dozen times they could almost touch the canteen of water, and as often the distraught animal shied away and fled before them. At length Marcus cried:
“It's no use, we can't catch him, and we're killing ourselves with thirst. We got to take our chances.” He drew his revolver from its holster, cocked it, and crept forward.
“Steady, now,” said McTeague; “it won' do to shoot through the canteen.”
Within twenty yards Marcus paused, made a rest of his left forearm and fired.
“You GOT him,” cried McTeague. “No, he's up again. Shoot him again. He's going to bolt.”
Marcus ran on, firing as he ran. The mule, one foreleg trailing, scrambled along, squealing and snorting. Marcus fired his last shot. The mule pitched forward upon his head, then, rolling sideways, fell upon the canteen, bursting it open and spilling its entire contents into the sand.
Marcus and McTeague ran up, and Marcus snatched the battered canteen from under the reeking, bloody hide. There was no water left. Marcus flung the canteen from him and stood up, facing McTeague. There was a pause.
“We're dead men,” said Marcus.
McTeague looked from him out over the desert. Chaotic desolation stretched from them on either hand, flaming and glaring with the afternoon heat. There was the brazen sky and the leagues upon leagues of alkali, leper white. There was nothing more. They were in the heart of Death Valley.
“Not a drop of water,” muttered McTeague; “not a drop of water.”
“We can drink the mule's blood,” said Marcus. “It's been done before. But—but—” he looked down at the quivering, gory body—“but I ain't thirsty enough for that yet.”
“Where's the nearest water?”
“Well, it's about a hundred miles or more back of us in the Panamint hills,” returned Marcus, doggedly. “We'd be crazy long before we reached it. I tell you, we're done for, by damn, we're DONE for. We ain't ever going to get outa here.”
“Done for?” murmured the other, looking about stupidly. “Done for, that's the word. Done for? Yes, I guess we're done for.”
“What are we going to do NOW?” exclaimed Marcus, sharply, after a while.
“Well, let's—let's be moving along—somewhere.”
“WHERE, I'd like to know? What's the good of moving on?”
“What's the good of stopping here?”
There was a silence.
“Lord, it's hot,” said the dentist, finally, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. Marcus ground his teeth.
“Done for,” he muttered; “done for.”
“I never WAS so thirsty,” continued McTeague. “I'm that dry I can hear my tongue rubbing against the roof of my mouth.”
“Well, we can't stop here,” said Marcus, finally; “we got to go somewhere. We'll try and get back, but it ain't no manner of use. Anything we want to take along with us from the mule? We can——”
Suddenly he paused. In an instant the eyes of the two doomed men had met as the same thought simultaneously rose in their minds. The canvas sack with its five thousand dollars was still tied to the horn of the saddle.
Marcus had emptied his revolver at the mule, and though he still wore his cartridge belt, he was for the moment as unarmed as McTeague.
“I guess,” began McTeague coming forward a step, “I guess, even if we are done for, I'll take—some of my truck along.”
“Hold on,” exclaimed Marcus, with rising aggressiveness. “Let's talk about that. I ain't so sure about who that—who that money belongs to.”
“Well, I AM, you see,” growled the dentist.
The old enmity between the two men, their ancient hate, was flaming up again.
“Don't try an' load that gun either,” cried McTeague, fixing Marcus with his little eyes.
“Then don't lay your finger on that sack,” shouted the other. “You're my prisoner, do you understand? You'll do as I say.” Marcus had drawn the handcuffs from his pocket, and stood ready with his revolver held as a club. “You soldiered me out of that money once, and played me for a sucker, an' it's my turn now. Don't you lay your finger on that sack.”
Marcus barred McTeague's way, white with passion. McTeague did not answer. His eyes drew to two fine, twinkling points, and his enormous hands knotted themselves into fists, hard as wooden mallets. He moved a step nearer to Marcus, then another.
Suddenly the men grappled, and in another instant were rolling and struggling upon the hot white ground. McTeague thrust Marcus backward until he tripped and fell over the body of the dead mule. The little bird cage broke from the saddle with the violence of their fall, and rolled out upon the ground, the flour-bags slipping from it. McTeague tore the revolver from Marcus's grip and struck out with it blindly. Clouds of alkali dust, fine and pungent, enveloped the two fighting men, all but strangling them.
McTeague did not know how he killed his enemy, but all at once Marcus grew still beneath his blows. Then there was a sudden last return of energy. McTeague's right wrist was caught, something clicked upon it, then the struggling body fell limp and motionless with a long breath.
As McTeague rose to his feet, he felt a pull at his right wrist; something held it fast. Looking down, he saw that Marcus in that last struggle had found strength to handcuff their wrists together. Marcus was dead now; McTeague was locked to the body. All about him, vast interminable, stretched the measureless leagues of Death Valley.
McTeague remained stupidly looking around him, now at the distant horizon, now at the ground, now at the half-dead canary chittering feebly in its little gilt prison.