CHAPTER IVPINACATE
IN a lather of foam the four horses raced in to the deserted Papago village. ’Dobe houses with small blunt chimneys dotted the hillside, but there was not so much as a dog in sight. The well was easy to find—a cube of palings built around a curbstone to keep wandering burros from falling in. It topped a low knoll and had a primitive windlass lowering a bucket into its depths.
Ten minutes of sweating activity followed, Sid and Scotty scanning the hills anxiously while each horse drank his fill; the two dogs lapped up a hatful from Big John’s sombrero; then all the canteens were filled.
“Now roll yore tails, boys!” urged Big John, flinging himself up on the white mustang. Sid looked to his stirrups and mounted the pinto in a running jump. Blaze and Ruler barked excitedly as the horses clattered up a steep slope that ledthrough a gap in the hills. Whatmightbe on the other side of that ridge!
From its summit they saw a wide arboreal desert stretching away below, bounded on the west by a red, saw-tooth range of silent mountains. The rays of the setting sun swept across the plain, lighting up each saguarro pole in a spike of vivid green. But over in the hills to the east was coming a long file of riders—the Papagoes! They wound down a defile, galloping at full speed, and a tiny horseman swathed in a flying, striped serapé led them.
“Now, fellers, we shore got a race ahead of us!” declared Big John. “We’ll make for Red Tank, out thar in the middle of this valley. See them two little ’dobe houses? That’s her. Head for them ef any of ye git separated.”
Across the waste of creosote bushes, choyas and giant cactus that was the Baboquivari Desert galloped the whole party, heading due west toward the red water pond which lies about the center of it. Near its borders Sid could see the two ’dobe Papago houses, still ten miles off, yet they showed as tiny landmarks, even more noticeable than the many-branched giant saguarros which dotted the plain. Beyond them rose the Quijotoa mountains, abruptand sheer, bare as the ribbed sides of a cliff. They were twenty miles away, but seemed quite neighborly, a refuge to ride for, a place for a stand-off fight if need be.
“Gee!—regular movie stuff!” chortled Sid to Scotty as he looked back over his shoulder again. Vasquez and his muster of motley Papagoes were crossing from the east but had not gained a yard on them yet. But they surely would, by the time those ’dobe houses were reached! The horses could keep their distance easily—at first. In time these tireless Indian mustangs would ride them down, sure as death!
“We’ll stop and stand ’em off from those ’dobe houses, eh?” answered Scotty. “My old .405 will be the boy then, you bet!”
“Won’t be no movie scrap, nohow!” growled Big John back from where he and Niltci were breaking trail. “The real thing don’t pan out that way. Ride, fellers! All tarnation won’t stop these horses from drinkin’ up the pond when we git thar, an’ we gotto make time so’s to let ’em do it. You, Blaze,” he stormed at the big Airedale loping along beside him, “I gotto turn ye loose, now, spite of thorns ketchin’yore coat. Cayn’t take no more chances with this leader.”
Big John hauled up the huge furry Airedale on his saddle as he rode, unsnapped the leash and let him drop again. Twice before during the race the white mustang and Blaze had run on different sides of the same bush—with almost disastrous results but he had been still more afraid of thorns catching and holding the woolly-coated Airedale. Ruler had no such danger. The big hound loped along easily beside Sid’s pinto and his sleek sides passed the thorns like silk.
In half an hour more of twisting and turning through the arboreal desert seven miles of the distance had been covered. They still maintained perhaps two miles of lead over the Papagoes, in spite of the furious urgings and gesticulations of their leader in the striped serapé.
Big John glanced a sardonic eye back at him occasionally. “Greaser—I’d plumb dote on stoppin’ a leetle lead with ye!” the boys heard him mutter through his clenched teeth, as he galloped along. “But them good old days is gone forever, now. We gotto put up a tin-horn game on ye instead.”
Just what the hoax was going to be neither Sidnor Scotty could conjecture, but they knew Big John’s resourcefulness of old. They rode on silently, wondering, nursing the horses around the surprising twists and turns that Niltci ahead saw fit to make, usually to avoid great beds of bristly choyas. Both the mare and the pinto were breathing heavily now, and snorting in labored wheezes through their foaming nostrils. The pace was beginning to tell! The ’dobe houses loomed up not two miles off, but behind them came that tireless knot of Papago riders, light and lithe, and they could keep this up all day!
Then came a yelp of pain from Blaze. The Airedale, in leaping to avoid a spiky choya, had slammed full into a bushy acacia whose incurved cat claw spines showed no intention of letting go again. Doglike, he stopped still, waiting for his master to extricate him and not trying to tear himself loose. Big John let out a round oath and flung himself from the white horse while the rest all stopped.
“Get out yore .405 and let her talk, Scotty,” he barked, “she can outrange anything they’ve got, an’ this-yer dawg’s goin’ to make us take time out.”
Faint yells from their pursuers and the waving of rifles by upflung arms greeted the stoppage of their party. The cowman cut rapidly at the tufts of kinkyhair that held Blaze fast, while Scotty yanked out his big rifle and ran back a short way to hide behind the cover of a giant saguarro. The distance between the parties closed up rapidly; to one mile, to half a mile, while Blaze whined and groaned, with mute fang laid protestingly on Big John’s bony hands as one by one the cat-claws were cut loose from his coat.
Then the .405 whanged out and its bullets screamed high in the air. A puff of dust flew up in front of the Mexican rider’s mustang and he checked his horse viciously. The Indians around him, looking more like a collection of disreputable tramps than the real thing, reined up and presently puffs of white smoke came from them, followed by the faint pop of their weapons.
At one of the shots Niltci suddenly threw up his arms and tumbled off his horse. Sid gasped with dismay, but to his astonishment the Indian boy was now wriggling off through the sage like a snake! He left his gaudy Navaho blanket behind, though, and Sid caught Big John’s eye winking at him. Evidently this was part of a ruse!
“You, Sid—make believe you was bending over something,” grunted Big John. “Thar, Blaze, yorefree, old-timer! Now bring me that flea-bitten cayuse of Niltci’s, Siddy boy.”
Grinning, the youth held Niltci’s horse for him while Big John flung the blanket over Blaze, lifted him up on the saddle, and sprawled him out with his collar tied fast to the pommel horn. “Come on in, son!” roared Big John to Scotty as he threw a turn of rope around the dog’s back and vaulted up on the white mustang himself. “Now ride for all yore wuth, boys!”
“But Niltci—how come?” gasped Sid. “Are we going to leave him?”
“Never mind Niltci—he’s some busy, ’bout now. Hep, boys!” retorted Big John, putting spurs to the mustang. Indeed, as Sid looked around for him, Niltci had disappeared as if the earth had swallowed him up. He himself rode on lightheartedly. Shots rang out behind them and the puff of sandspurts kicked up the desert floor near by, but the Papagoes’ shooting was wild and the range a good deal too great as yet. The four horses swung down toward the first ’dobe house and Big John quickly led Niltci’s cayuse behind it and stopped them all.
“Them Injunsmayhev taken Blaze under the blanket fer Niltci wounded—an’ again they mayn’t!We’ve got ’em guessin’ anyhow,” he grinned, peering out around the corner. “Sid, you take the hosses to the pawnd, an’ water ’em, while Scotty and I sorter dally with these excited hombres a leetle.” He dragged out his old meat gun, a .35 with a mouth like a young cannon and a knockout punch. “C’mon, Scotty, le’s mosey!”
Around the corner of the house they looked out and back across the plain. The Mexican rider had reined in at long rifle range. His Indians were dismounting and creeping out through the bushes to right and left while one of them held all their horses by a handful of halter ropes. Finally the Mexican also dismounted and joined them in the ambush attack. Their idea was evidently to creep up close and then carry the house by a simultaneous rush.
“Fooled ’em, all right!” grinned Big John. “They shore think that Niltci got hurt in the shootin’ an’ we brought him in hyar lashed to his saddle. Let ’em come! You an’ I mought’s well be a-sprinklin’ the sage, Scotty, so as to make it more excitin’. Don’t shoot nobody—tain’t wuth it.”
He went to the other corner of the house and opened fire with the .35. Nothing loath, Scotty tore loose with the monstrous shout of his big .405. Itmade a fine noise, and its bullets ripped and ricochetted across the sand, throwing up small shell-spouts like a naval gun. Answering shots and the whizz and smash of lead bullets striking the building told the youth that this was not all play. Whatever story Vasquez, if it was he, had told the Papagoes it had evidently aroused them to an unwonted fury. It all seemed incredible, preposterous to Scotty. The Bean-Eaters were the most peaceful of red men. Were it not corn time he could not have believed that they were really fighting in earnest.
“Got them hosses watered, Sid?” called out Big John presently. “Bring ’em hyar; show’s comin’ off, pronto.”
Sid led the horses back under the shelter of the house and ran to help in the defense. Shots rang out in the sage, coming from both sides on their flanks. It was getting high time to move on, before one of the horses should be hit. Sid aimed carefully behind a puff of white smoke that rose from a creosote bush at his right, and let go with his .30 army carbine. Before he could watch the result a yell and a shout of laughter from Scotty spun him around. Out there on the plain a funny thing was happening. The Indian in charge of the Papagoes’horses had now apparently mounted one of them and was riding off with the entire bunch!
It was several seconds before Sid realized the truth—that that white rider with the red bandanna about his foreheadcouldbe none other than Niltci himself! While Sid had been shooting, the Navaho boy had crept up through the sage, knocked down the Papago holding the horses and ridden off with all of them!
At sight of this disaster a chorus of vengeful whoops rose out of the desert all around them and two or three Papagoes leaped from cover in a futile spurt to catch the runaways. Sid could have bowled them over easily but he was instantly recalled by Big John’s shout.
“Mount and ride, boys!” the big cowman was yelling. He himself leaped up on the white mustang and the boys followed hard after, riding along the banks of the red pond. A flock of teal rose in a great flutter of wings and there were yells and imprecations behind them from out in the creosote bushes, but they waited not to hear them. Big John was guffawing so that he could hardly keep his saddle. “Sing, redskins!—Yell, ye pisen horned toads! Ain’t it a grand an’ glorious feelin’ to beset afoot though!” he shouted back at them. “Gosh durn it, boys, I ain’t hed so much fun since we made Apache Sam eat a rattlesnake! Niltci an’ I, we cooked up thet hoss-thievin’ stunt whilst ridin’ out hyar. Blaze, he jest nat’rally helped!”
As for Niltci, he was now making a wide circle around the other side of the pond, leaving behind him the screaming and fist-shaking Vasquez, who stood in the sage searching his soul for Spanish expletives that would relieve his feelings! Niltci rode in to join them shortly after, with all the Papago ponies following him and a broad grin on his face.
“Mucho bueno!” he grunted. “What do with pony?”
“Oh, we’ll pilgrim along a while, an’ then drop ’em after dark somewhar near the Quijotoas,” laughed Big John. “Fine work, Injun! I reckon we’re shut of that outfit for a piece, eh, boys?”
“Not to be a crape-hanger, I’d say that we won’t see another Mexican unless it’s a bunch of guerrillas down near Pinacate,” said Sid.
“Shore! More fun!” grinned Big John. “Them rebel greasers has Mausers—but they cayn’t hit nawthin’ with them. Hope that Vasquez personaims to round ’em up an’ bring ’em along. ’Twell be some fine li’l party, I’m settin’ hyar to tell ye.”
They rode on and dropped the Papago ponies shortly before pushing through the pass in the Quijotoas to Poso Blanco. There they encountered a new village of Papagoes and the inhabitants lined up to watch them go by. Big John, nothing loath, bought oats from them, as friendly as friendly! They, of course, had heard nothing of the row over at Red Tank. Some of them even did their best to sell the party baskets!
“Shore, but a runner from Red Tank will git in hyar late to-night, fellers,” quoth Big John, as they rode out on the desert once more. “This lot of Injuns’ll be some surprised, I’m thinkin’! We’ll water at Poso Blanco an’ pull our freight for ole Montezuma Haid early to-morrow morning, or the hull kadoodle will be on our heels.”
After dark a dry camp was made, in a patch of mesquite and palo verde, a long distance out from Poso Blanco. It had been a hard day of riding! Fifty miles, in all, had they covered, and now the country was changing from gray to red, and lava began to show up, black and glowering under the horses’ hoofs.
It was sharp and chilly in the dark before dawn when Big John roused out the camp next morning. “Now, fellers, we’ll water for the last time at Wall’s Well by sun-up, an’ then make a long pull through the gap in the Growlers, which-same brings us to Represa Tanks on the Camino del Diablo. You-all hev never been thar, an’ hev no idee what it’s like, but the Spaniards told the truth, fer once, when they named it the Road of the Devil. Thar’s always water in Represa, an’ from thare we kin work out to Cerro Colorado, the first of them extinct volcanoes. If Red Mesa’s twenty mile northeast of Pinacate, as that pottery slate says, you’ll see her from thar.”
The horses, freshened and invigorated with grass feed and the cool of night, led off spiritedly, all four riding together in a bunch. In two hours more the sky began to lighten in the east and then a shaft of red sunlight struck into living fire the top of a mountain that rose ahead of them, solitary and shrouded like a monk—Montezuma’s Head. Sid held his breath in wonderment, to see the red bath of color spread down the flanks of that huge and imposing presence, widening and broadening its base with color, bringing out the vivid green posts ofsaguarros, the dark greens of creosote, and the white patches of barrel cactus wrapped in their dense mantles of thorns. They were in the heart of the giant cactus country now. The floor of the desert was dotted all over with them. Everywhere their weird candelabra shapes stood like sentinels, upholding bent and contorted arms, notes of bright green on a gray and pale green waste.
As they rode nearer, Sid raised a shout of discovery. “First organ pipe cactus!” he whooped, pointing excitedly. “See it? Up yonder on the hill!”
Out of a cleft in the rock rose a nest of what seemed to be tall and crooked green horns, bunched together like some coral growth of the depths of the sea. A queer plant, but all this country was filled with these dry-soil and water-storing species, and nature did queer things with them to make them able to survive.
Under the towering ramparts of Montezuma’s Head the horses were watered and canteens were filled. The wide flat stretch of arboreal desert across to the Growlers lay before them. It would be twenty miles of riding in the hot sun. Extra bags of feed were bought and hung over the saddle bowsbefore they started, and from a lone cowman, an old settler who had come here for peace and quiet, Big John borrowed a five-gallon canvas water bag.
That “valley” was a flat stage floor, surrounded by an amphitheater of bare, granite mountains. They rose all about them, interminable distances away. Yet every mile of that crossing proved interesting, for the boys never grew tired of studying this abundant desert plant life. Saguarros in troops and regiments marched up and over the ridges or filled in the foregrounds of mesquite and palo verde at appropriate intervals. Patches of galleta grass that simply could not be ignored invited the horses to a step and a munch of fodder. Gambel’s quail ran through the bushes in droves and caused many a chase and much popping of the small six-shooters that the boys carried. An occasional road runner darted through the creosotes, long-legged and long-tailed. Desert wrens sang from the white choyas where their nests lay adroitly concealed from predatory hawks. It was high noon before the Growler mountains were reached. They rose abruptly out of the plain, so very steep and sudden that Scotty was convinced that the foothills that properly belong to all mountainsmustlayburied in the sand underneath the horses’ hoofs. A minute before, the cavalcade had been trotting easily across a table-land like a hall floor; in the next step the horses were laboring up a steep and rocky trail that raised them higher and higher with each step.
At an elevation of some eight hundred feet they paused in a gap that broke through to the west and the party spied out the land spread out like a map below. Red and jagged mountains rose across the flat valley of a red and scowling land below them. A blue haze enveloped it all, out of which rose dark purple cones of extinct volcanoes, hundreds of them. It all seemed a black and purple mass of peaked hills, devoid of vegetation, sizzling in the sun. “Petrified hell,” Big John had well named it!
As they looked, the haze of vapors shifted slowly, and out of the far distances appeared for a brief while a faint line of higher mountains, culminating in a couple of smooth and wrinkly teeth etched faintly against the blue.
“That’s old Pinacate, boys,” said Big John. “Look hard at her; for you won’t see her again for a long while yet.”
“Pinacate or bust!” said Sid solemnly. “Red Mesa must be somewhere between here and it, then, John, since we are now due northeast of the old boy.”
“Mebbe,” retorted Big John, shaking his head. “Search me! If thar’s a mesa, such as we have up in the Hopi country, anywhere down hyar—I’ll eat it! Hey, Niltci!”
The Navaho youth grunted negatively. He had the keenest eyes of them all. If therewasa mesa, such as he was familiar with in his own country, he would have been the first to spy it out and exclaim over it.
“Welp! Let’s get movin’,” said Big John. “Thar’s a leetle tank somewhere down this trail, ef she ain’t gone dry. She don’t last long after the rains in this country.”
He and Niltci started on down the granite, but Sid and Scotty tarried to look out once more over this lava land, iron-bound and torrid in the heat of midday.
“Lord, what a country!” exclaimed Scotty, dejectedly. He was disturbed to find himself frankly afraid of it. Nothing here to exercise his constructiveengineering instincts upon! Nothing—but Death!
“To me it’s a challenge,” retorted Sid brightly. “It’s still another mood of grand old Dame Nature, of whose wonders there is no end! She cares nothing at all for Man; but each new aspect of her is a challenge to him to stay alive, if he dare. Doctor Hornaday”—Sid pronounced the name with all the fervor of boyish hero-worship—“he dared this country once, and discovered that mountain sheep and antelope had a refuge here. Those granite mountains across from us to the north of Pinacate are named after him. This lava looks good to me, for it makes a game sanctuary of this country forever. Except for your sake, old man, I’d rather there neverwasa Red Mesa mine.”
Scotty shrugged his shoulders impatiently. He was fast falling into a mood that had often been fatal to him before, that of trying to rush a thing through, jumping to a conclusion on presumptive evidence and then acting on that conclusion immediately, without trying out that homely old remedy known as “sticking around a bit.”
“Well, le’s push through to Cerro Colorado and have it over with, Sid,” he urged. “If there’s noRed Mesa, the sooner we find it out and get away the better.”
But by nightfall they had reached only Represa Tank. It was an enormous run that their tired horses had made, for that hot country, had Scotty’s impatience only admitted it. The tank was a muddy little hole with a small oasis of grass and a grove of mesquites surrounding it. Near by was the famous Camino del Diablo, the thirst-haunted road to Yuma, one hundred and thirty miles away to the west—all dry desert travel. Big John and the boys sauntered out to look at it after supper. Up through a gap in two red lava hills led the old trail, a sure-enough road, as good (or bad) as the day it was made. Looking southeast behind them, the thing lost itself in the bushes of the Tule Desert. Why or when it had been built, the boys had no idea.
Big John regarded it solemnly for a while. “Injuns, Greasers, prospectors an’ sodjers—they all had a purple time of it along this trail, boys!” he exclaimed. “More’n four hundred people hev died along this Camino del Diablo, of thirst, exhaustion, an’ jist plumb discouragement.”
Scotty shook his head ruefully. “Let’s make a break for that Cerro Colorado hill to-morrow,John,” he urged. “It’s about twenty miles northeast of Pinacate, so Red Mesacan’tbe more than five miles from it and directly between it and Pinacate. Ought to be a cinch to find it, if that plaque is O. K. And, if we don’t, we’ll clear out, pronto, and waste no more time on it, eh?”
“I’ve never climbed Red Hill myself, son,” said Big John. “But as for clearin’ out—wecayn’t! Not yet awhile.”
Sid grinned delightedly. “How come?” he asked, all interest.
“What think? Ef four men goes to chowin’ man’s food, in alligator-sized doses like you boys hev been doin’ for the last four days, how long d’ye suppose three skins of pemmican will last?” asked Big John sardonically. “We’re almost out of meat, boys. We’ll try Cerro Colorado to-morrow, an’ then, Red Mesa or no Red Mesa, we rolls our freight for them Hornaday mountains whar thar’s mountain sheep an’ antelope. Shoot or starve—that’s us, old-timer!”
“Suits me!” caroled Sid. “We’ve got to stock up before we start back, eh? Well—what did we bring Ruler and Blaze along for, anyhow!” he demanded enthusiastically.
Scotty was silent as they went back to camp. He was silent, too, and anxious all through the ride to Cerro Colorado next morning. Face to face with the reality, with these vast fields of scowling lava, with the dry and level plains of endless creosote bushes, with these parched and stunted bisangas, choyas, and saguarros, his dream shriveled and faded. A mine! Here, in all this five hundred square miles of barren lava! A railroad to it! How cross the grim ranges of Pinacate, looming up now not twenty miles away to the west? It all seemed so hopeless! It would take a far sterner and more determined man than he to push through such a project!
But Sid sang happily as they rode toward Cerro Colorado. This wild, free land struck a response in the deepest notes in his being, the love and enjoyment of that freedom that every explorer, every pioneer, every adventurer feels to be his most precious birthright; for which he will sacrifice ease, comfort, wealth, civilization itself. New species of this marvelous desert life constantly claimed his attention. White trees, fluffy in foliage as cotton, appeared. “Smoke Trees,” Big John named them. A new bush, all frosty white, met them along the march,securing a roothold even in crevices between red and sterile lava chunks as large as a ragged rock boulder. He recognized the species as the Brittle Bush and would have tried breaking its twigs except for the formidable and glistening thorns with which it was armed. Then came a vast carpet of lowly little plants that seemed made of frosted silver and Big John drew rein. He inspected them closely and then scanned the neighboring craters and all the vast plain about him with keen eyes.
“Antelope fodder, fellers!” he announced. “Whar ye see thet leetle plant, thar’ll be pronghorns. They love it better than grass.”
No antelope were in sight, however. Even if so, they would be quite invisible under that burning sun. The horses loped on. Gradually there rose out of the desert a low hill, sheered off flat at its summit and covered with the dense lacery of creosote bushes. Cerro Colorado it was, and they picketed the animals out and began to climb its rocky slopes. Rough, sharp lava, in boulders of all sizes, marked the lava flow of geologic times from this hill; indeed the whole plain below was made entirely of the outpourings of this one crater. Onceon its top they looked out over the country between them and Pinacate, who loomed up grim and imposing in the west and surrounded by his wide and desolate lava fields. Twenty dreary miles away was he!
Sid had carried with him the Red Mesa plaque, bearing its enigmatical message in Latin which Fate had not permitted them yet to have translated and he now produced it for that last reading. The words they knew were still there, staring up at them from its red pottery surface.
“XXI Milia S-O ab Pinacate—Minem aurum et argentum—In Mesam Rubram”—there was no mistakingthat!
But the more they pored over the words the more unbelievable they became! It was surely a cruel joke, a wild tale that the Papagoes had brought to that old priest, Fra Pedro. It must be—now! For, below them stretched a vast plain, stippled all over with creosote bushes, clear to the base of Pinacate itself, twenty miles away! Therewasno Red Mesa, no hill of any sort on that plain! If those bearings on the plaque were true, Red Mesa ought to be in plain sight, right now, and not over five milesaway! But there was nothing of the kind, anywhere in sight!
Scotty finally turned to look at Sid, silent misery in his eyes. His dream had vanished. Already his thoughts were turning to the future. His next letter to his mother wouldnotbe the triumphant announcement of a valuable claim staked out, a triumphant return east to organize a company, but—well, nothing much; nothing but perhaps a brief note, saying that he had got a job somewhere.
Sid gripped his hand sympathetically. There was nothing to say. If Red Mesa existed it certainly was not here.
“Cheer up, old top; le’s forget it and go hunting!” he grinned.
But Scotty’s tenacious persistence now came to his rescue. He turned to Big John. “There’s a mine around Pinacatesomewhere, John, sure as we stand here!” he gritted. “I doubt if the Papagoes of that day knew how to tell that friar east or west in Spanish very clearly. And a mine wouldn’t be found in this lava but in granite outcroppings if I know anything about mining. I’m game to stay here and look for it, boys, while you’re hunting sheep.”
“Yaas, you pore lamb!” said Big John soothingly. “I’ll tell ye: Them Hornaday mountainsisgranite. An’ they’re twenty miles northwestof Pinacate! Put that in yore face an’ chaw it, if it’s any comfort to ye.”