CHAPTER VIIBLAZE
IT was perhaps an hour after Sid and his Apache captors had gone by that Blaze finally came to. The dog moaned feebly; then he tried to rise to his feet. An aching, burning pain shot through his shoulders and there came a sharp twinge as the arrow jerked loose from where its point had stuck in the rock.
It galvanized Blaze to frenzied action. He could not know that that arrow, passing through just above the spinal vertebræ, had temporarily paralyzed him with the shock of its blow. All his doggy understanding realized was that this awful thing burnt like a fire and must be shaken loose at once. At first he thrashed about recklessly trying to break it off or get rid of it, somehow, if rolling and plunging could do it. Then he snapped at the arrow ends savagely, shearing off point and feathers like the ends of a straw.
This spasm of frenzy ended in a mad bolt downthe mountain in search of Master. Big John was Blaze’s idol; the one human who knew everything and always gave him the most glorious times of his life. When hurt before, it had been always Big John, his man-partner of their hunts who, strong and tender, had somehow made his hurts come well. Sid, as Little Master was all right, but Blaze hardly gave him a thought now, for this trouble was too terrible and hemustfind Big John! Trembling all over and yelping every time the arrow stub struck against a passing bush, Blaze struggled on down the hill. The bone tops of his shoulder blades rubbed against this inexorable Thing that stuck tenaciously through the flesh above them and at every step they hurt worse than grinding a raw bone. Again and again he felt himself growing weak and giddy with the pain of it. Each stumble was to him an agony of roaring and helpless rage. Heroic, stoical old Blaze, who had fought bear and mountain lion times innumerable; been bitten, slashed, mauled with clawed paws; who had lost one ear in a fight with a timber wolf—he found this thing to be the most maddening of all his experiences with pain. You could not fight back nor get hold of it, after that first savage crunch of his jaws had bitten off all the arrowthat could be reached. It rode him thereafter like a spur that never let up.
Blaze’s progress grew slower and slower. At times he would stop and howl dismally for some one to come and help him. Then, after a grim and expectant period of waiting, he would crawl on again, floundering and tumbling down the steep flanks of the mountain. In time he reached the plain, where they had started up after the ram. Here was Sid’s pinto, and the animal whinnied eagerly for he was already thirsty and weary of waiting for their return. Blaze’s nose led him back to the tracks of the main party, where the familiar scent of Big John’s white mustang at last smote his nostrils.
It put new heart into the dog. Master’s horse! Now we were getting somewhere! He trotted on, enduring the pain in his shoulders stoically until it faded to a general dull ache. Nothing brushed the arrow stub, now. You went carefully around bushes and kept to the mustang’s trail, avoiding all thorns and cats-claws. Several miles further on he came to where the buck had been shot and butchered. The bones and pieces of raw meat left behind smelt good, but Blaze was feverish and would not eat.His doggy instincts told him to starve out that fever. What lashed him most terribly now was the scourge of thirst. He had lost a good deal of blood, although the arrow had cut nothing vital. Water! Hemusthave it!
Big John and Scotty had ridden on toward Papago Tanks with the buck on saddle after the kill. They had not waited for Sid, for it was their custom when any one went off lone hunting not to expect him back before nightfall. Blaze followed on after the white mustang’s tracks, sore and weary, his tongue hanging out with thirst and a high fever raging in him. Oh, to find Master!Hewould know! He would get him a canteen or something! To drink and drink and drink! To have cool strong hands draw out this burning pain that seared his shoulders like a hot iron! Only the indomitable courage of his breed kept him up. Blaze was a thoroughbred. He did not know what a streak of cur blood was! Kootenai Firebrand, Culbertson Rex, Champion Swiveller, all famous lion dogs of the West, were among his forebears and they would not let him give up. He staggered on, his feet wabbling crazily under him as the trail wound on southward through a country of black lava conesall around him, with vitrified and scoriated lava under foot.
Then Blaze stopped, for the horses had halted here. He looked wearily up toward a huge cone that rose to the east of him. Up that way these tracks led, and he must follow, too!
He arrived at the top, at last, and then gave a feeble yelp of joy. Here Master had got down off his horse, and the smell of him was sweet in Blaze’s nostrils! Below him stretched out a vast amphitheater, the sandy floor of a deep crater that was half a mile across. Through a gap in the opposite side the desert vegetation had come marching in, species by species, saguarro, bisanga, choya, creosote bush, to spread out on that wide floor three hundred feet below and cover it with green dots of vegetation. Blaze looked down, his doggy heart sinking with misgivings, for no one was down there. Could heevermuster up the strength to climb down into this thing? And where had Master come up out of it again? Only one set of tracks led down here and the descent was as steep as a chimney.
A wild, fresh odor decided him to attempt it. At his feet he snuffed hoof tracks, small, pointed, with musky dew claws—a deer of some kind, Blaze decided.He did not know that they were antelope, for the smell was new to him, but at once the old hunting ardor surged up in his soul, overriding weariness and physical pain. He attempted a valiant bark, which sounded somehow hoarse and dry in his throat; then he plunged down the steep declivity after the horses. Around him rose high rim rock, red and purple and black. These two lava gaps were the only places where the crater could be entered at all. They all had gone down here; that was reassuring. Here, too, were Ruler’s tracks, that four-footed companion whom Blaze secretly envied for his marvelous nose and openly despised for his absurd caution in attacking bear and lion. Here also was the smell of Indian, where Niltci had jumped off and led his mustang down by the bridle. And here Master and the other Young Master had dismounted and climbed down, side by side, their horses following most unwillingly as their sliding tracks showed.
On the crater floor the party had separated and there had been gallopings about in every direction. Blaze followed the white mustang, for she bore Master, his beloved. Soon he came upon a long smoky cartridge from the old .35 meat gun, and the mustang’s tracks veered sharply over to the right. Thesmell of fresh blood came to Blaze’s nose and he wabbled slowly out to the center of that vast volcanic pit following the scent. A pile of entrails, shank bones, blood dried up by the thirsty sands—that was all, for him, of the antelope that had been shot here!
Blaze lay down, completely tuckered out. Without at least a drink of life-giving water he could not go a step further. The assembling and galloping tracks that led off up to that other gap told which way they had gone out. He couldnevermake that ascent, now! Instinct told him to wait until sundown, for it was hot and sultry down here now and there was not a breath of air. He lay down, panting, consumed with thirst. When he tried, later, to rise again he found that his wound had stiffened and the whole top of his shoulders seemed one raw, immovable lump.
He looked about him piteously, then raised his muzzle to the sky in a howl of dismay. Silence, of the brooding desert; and then an answer—the wild howl of a coyote! Blaze’s quick eye singled him out sitting up there in the gap, watching him wolf-like. His answering howl had not been of sympathyor anything like that, but to call other coyotes to help him prepare for this feast of dog flesh!
The danger stiffened Blaze up and strengthened his moral fiber. A savage challenge rumbled in his throat as he rose stiffly to his feet and faced the coyote menacingly. Then a whine of pain came from him. He could not fight, now; but he would not howl again for help, at any rate! That signal was too well understood by these wild dogs thathadno master!
Blaze looked up at the coyote and then around him again. Should he climb up there and fight this fellow, anyhow, weak as he was, before any more of them came? He could never do it without, first, water! Then his eye fell on a small round brown object lying near by on the sand. He walked stiffly over to it and snuffed it. That thing was what his men drank water out of! It smelt of the young master, too! Scotty had forgotten his canteen during the butchering of that antelope and left it behind, but all Blaze knew about it was that the thing smelt of him and held water. He rolled it over with his paw. An enticing splash came from inside. Instantly all that pent-up thirst torture burst out of him in a frantic effort to get at thewater inside. He took the canvas case in his teeth and worried and shook it savagely. Of no avail! The cork held tight, and the thing dropped on the sand, the water inside tinkling maddeningly. Blaze stopped a moment to consider. This thing was something like a bone, really! Ithada bone, of a kind, its spout, sticking out one side. He lay down, with his paws on the body of the canteen, and then began to chew and gnaw fiercely at the cork and tin of the nozzle.
An Airedale’s jaws are the most formidable part of him. Those inch-long tushes can give a frightful slash, and with them two of the big 60-pound western Airedales can pull down a mountain lion between them. Blaze’s teeth closed on that canteen nozzle like crushing paper. The metal gave; the cork squeezed. A savage pull on it, a shake that would take the ear off another dog, wrenched it loose and broke away the solder in its joint. A thin stream of water began to trickle out through this crack as the canteen lay on the sand—and under it ran a long red tongue, curved like a spoon, lapping up greedily every drop as it flowed out!
After that Blaze felt better. He lay down awhile. The matted cake of dried blood and hair around thearrow kept any flow from starting again, even with fresh water making new blood in his veins. It was getting cooler now. A huge circle of shadow began rapidly to creep out from the west toward the center of the crater. The coyote had moved down a hundred yards nearer. Another was singing his shrill song up on the rim, and working around stealthily to join the first one in the gap.
Blaze got up, growling. He was very stiff and could only move those shoulders by enduring intense pain, but immediate attack was his best defense now, and he knew it. Steadily he climbed up the gap through the river of desert vegetation that flowed down its slope. The coyote was waiting for him, silent, crouched for a spring. His green oblique eyes glared at Blaze menacingly, as he drew near—his teeth were bared in a wicked snarl.
Blaze increased his speed, heading straight for him, snarling savagely. The coyote was a little larger than he, but Blaze and Ruler had tackled the great timber wolf together, and he was not in the least afraid of him! At ten paces off he suddenly let out a volley of ferocious terrier barks, vengeful with the fury of the lion, terrifying to the creature attacked. Then he charged.
That coyote did not wait! That savage attack, even by a wounded dog, was too much for his cowardly nature! There was a squeal, a yelp, a bawl of pain as Blaze’s fangs laid open his shoulder to the bone—and then a gray streak vanished through the creosotes so fast that nothing but a greyhound could have overtaken him!
Blaze loped on, grim, dogged, determined. The sun was setting now, and travel would be more endurable. Scotty’s canteen had given him new life. He was going to win through to camp if he had to bring in every coyote in the desert after him! The trail wound down around the flanks of the crater and brought him back to the sands again. From there it went on, mile after mile, while a grand and beetling mountain range loomed up nearer and nearer.
Blaze felt himself growing weaker again. The sand had given way to the most awful of broken black lava under foot, rough and sharp beyond description. The horses had picked their way over it with difficulty; to the weak and wounded dog it was a purgatory of toil and it took every last ounce of strength out of him.
Darkness fell. Blaze could see fairly well in thedark, and he needed to, here! Thorny ocatillas, devilish choyas and stunted bisangas that were balls of sharp thorns outside, had to be seen and avoided if he would save his eyes. Twice he lay down and gave it all up. Only the steadily freshening scent of the white mustang’s tracks gave him courage to rise again and keep on.
Then great walls of ragged black rock loomed up, dark and forbidding, ahead in the gloom. It seemed the end of all things to Blaze. What in all the world was he coming to! He stopped, shivering all over with the sharp cold of the desert night. His wound ached unbearably. He lay down puzzled, wearied at the mere sight of this hideous black rocky mass ahead. It was perhaps the tenth time since leaving the crater that he had done so. Blaze groaned and gave up the pursuit of Master in a final disconsolate howl.
But this time the barking challenge ofanother doganswered, sounding faintly in his ears!
Blaze raised his head. Ruler! He knew the hound’s voice well! He got up, yelped a hoarse, throaty cry and crawled on. Ruler’s challenge grew more and more menacing and then there came the sound of men’s voices. And then Master’s voice,ringing out, stern and vibrant: “Halt, thar! Is that you, Sid?” it asked.
Blaze gave a joyful little moan and crawled feebly into camp, licking humbly at Big John’s boots. Ruler, puzzled, snuffed over him, after trying an abortive attempt at a romp. Then the water-hunger became too strong for Blaze to endure longer and he crept on to where a tank glimmered under the stars, a rock-bound pool in the lava, and there he drank and drank and drank until his dry tongue could lap up no more.
“Stand back, fellers! Fotch hyar a light. No, Sid!—and somethin’s happened to Blazie boy,” called out Big John’s voice in the dark. Niltci stirred up the camp fire, and presently Scotty came out of the boys’ green wall tent bearing a candle lantern.
“Well, I’ll be plumb teetotallyhornswoggled!” roared Big John, as the light fell on the back of the drinking Blaze. “Shore, he’s all bloody! An’ he’s got a stick through his neck— Come hyar, Niltci! We gotto see about this! Sid’s shore got hisself into trouble—dern his pesky hide!”
Niltci made his peculiar exclamatory noise and sprang over to where Blaze still lay drinking.
“Arrow!” he pronounced after a moment’s inspection.
“Well, I’ll be durned!” grunted Big John. “Shore of it, Injun?” he questioned incredulously.
Niltci nodded. Then, stooping and holding Blaze’s muzzle with his fingers, he gave a quick yank which drew out the shaft. Blaze groaned through his set teeth. His blood came in a stream and they were busy for a short time getting a bandage on it. Then the Indian picked up the arrow and examined it more closely.
“Apache!” he declared.
“No!” roared Big John. “Cayn’tbe, Niltci! They ain’t an Apache between hyar and the White River country. I’m a gosh-durned fool, I am, an’ proud of it—I’ve lost one of them ornery boys, an’ some one has shot my dawg—but ye cayn’t hand me that Apache stuff, nohow!”
“Apache!” reiterated Niltci, with more emphasis. He pointed to the blood grooves on the shaft in confirmation. All tribes make them in their own peculiar spiral lines.
“What in the world’s happened to Sid, then, John?” queried Scotty, his awed, scared face appearing in the circle of light.
“Search me, hombre!” grunted Big John. “You Blaze, ef you could only talk, now! But fellers, we gotto set down a-piece and figger this all out the best we kin. Sid ain’t back, but Blaze is; and with an arrer into him. What does it all mean? Itoldyou I was a fool!” he vociferated.
“Ruler’s the answer, John,” said Scotty, as they all went back to the camp fire carrying Blaze between them. “We’ll put him on the back trail right off and then we’ll know something.”
“Good haid, li’l man!” agreed Big John. “I’d do it, to-night, only we jist cayn’t work them hosses over that lava in the dark.”
“Well,I’mgoing to, now!—on foot, too!” said Scotty truculently, his Scotch dander rising. “It’s only about three miles back to the crater where we shot the antelope and I left my canteen. We’ll walk. Suppose Sid followed our trail there and got ambushed by some wandering Yaquis? You know how they hate the Mexicans. All whites look alike to them.”
“Apache!” grunted Niltci stolidly.
“All right; Apache, then!” conceded Scotty. “Sid’s in trouble with Indians somehow, and Blaze managed to get away and get here, with that arrowin him. Niltci can stay here and look after him and the horses. As for me, I can’t get back any too quick!” declared Scotty, with the vibrant sympathy of youth in his tones. “Here, Ruler!”
“Hol’ on thar, Scotty! Yore fixin’ to miss three bull’s-eyes in a row, thar, son. Of co’se I’m goin’, ef you are; so we’ll sorter git organized, fust. Whar’s that rucksack? We-all mought be gone three days, an’ Sid he’ll mebbe want medicines an’ bandages. By rights I ought to take Niltci and leave you hyar, Scotty, seein’ as this is Injun doin’s.”
But Scotty was obdurate. Start he would, that night, and, as some one had to stay with Blaze and the horses, he insisted on it being Niltci. That didn’t suit Big John, for in a raw iron land like this the Indian boy was worth a dozen Scottys to him. The row gathered way, but you might as well argue with one of the lava boulders around Papago Tanks as try to convince a Scotchman!
“Wall, s’pose you and Niltci do this-yer pasear, then? An’ I’ll stay,” said Big John, testily, by way of settling it. “Mind you don’t go further’n that crater, though, an’ then come back an’ report.”
There being no further objections, Niltci andScotty soon set off into the night, leading Ruler on a slip leash. Overhead swung the brilliant stars of an Arizona night, a glory of soft light in which crater cones, rugged lava pressure ridges and stunted saguarros sticking up out of the rocks showed dimly. Behind them the grand range of Pinacate rose gloomy and majestic, the eternal cloud of sulphur vapor around its summit blotting out a whole section of the star canopy to the south. Niltci led on noiselessly, picking his way by eyesight that was as good as a cat’s in the dark. They passed white smoke trees, ghostly as clouds, in the darkness, growing in company with white brittle bushes out of dry crannies in the lava that could hardly support a cactus.
An hour later they were toiling up the steeps of the crater once more. So far, not even a whine of discovery had come from Ruler. Big John had given them the hobbles of Sid’s pinto, to show the scent to the dog when the right time came to try to make him understand what was wanted. But Niltci himself knew the pinto’s tracks by some obscure difference in the hoof-mark, and he assured Scotty that so far not a sign of Sid’s horse had they come upon.
“He may have come down into the crater from the other gap, though,” objected Scotty; “we’ll go down and get my canteen, anyhow.”
They climbed down into the vast coliseum of the crater. It was dark as a well down there, and Niltci crept along on all fours, following the pony tracks. He pointed out Blaze’s paw prints as they went. The dog had been here, too, following their party of the afternoon. After a time Scotty gave a yelp of discovery and pounced on a round brown object lying on the sand.
“Here’s my canteen, anyhow!” he crowed. “I left it here after we butchered the antelope.”
Then a cry of surprise came from him as he stopped dead and held out the canteen to Niltci to examine. It was empty of water and the crooked angle of the spout showed that it had been cracked open. “It was more than half full this afternoon, I’m sure of that!” insisted Scotty, excitedly. “Some one’s been here beside us—but why did he not uncork it, then?”
Niltci looked it over keenly.
“Dog! Blaze do it. Him chew canteen. Him have come a long way,” was his verdict.
He showed Scotty the dog’s tooth-marks and thenreplaced the canteen where Scotty had picked it up. There the whole story written in the sand was clear. Here Blaze, wild with thirst, had lain down with the canteen under his paws and chewed at it until he had worried the spout solder loose.
“Dog heap thirsty! Got arrow back in mountains, me think,” declared Niltci.
“Back in the Pass? You’re right! That’s about five miles from here. I’m game to walk it and find out something. First, though, Niltci, we’ll climb up the other gap and trace Blaze out of it. He didn’t come out by the east gap, that’s sure. Sid may have been hunting in some crater to the east of us.”
They started up that long slope down which flowed the river of desert vegetation. Their own tracks of the afternoon were here, and Blaze’s, too. The certainty that he had simply followed them out that way and then turned to the south became stronger as they climbed up. It was settled as sure at the summit of the gap, where Blaze’s paw prints showed that he had made the turn around the crater just as they had.
Scotty and Niltci stood side by side, holding in Ruler who was whining eagerly now, crazy to gochasing the coyotes which were howling in the desert all around them. The blood-and-scent story of that one which Blaze had routed when he had attempted to bar his path had excited Ruler, and he had got into his doggy mind the idea that coyote was to be the night’s game. Otherwise this whole proceeding was still a mystery to him!
Around them under the stars brooded a black and silent land, dead as the surface of the moon, the wide, flat and parched plain of the lava fields stretching away for fifteen miles to the east. Near by rose the jagged edges of the Rainbow Range, ragged saw-teeth which would be red and purple in the daytime. Now that range was barely distinguishable under the faint light of the stars.
But, as they looked, suddenly a tiny point of fire shot up on the far horizon to the east. It was high enough among the lower stars to surely be on a mountain or crater of some sort, yet so tiny and far away as to be almost indistinguishable in the desert haze.
“There’s Sid!” shouted Scotty triumphantly, gripping Niltci’s buckskin-clad arm. “Now, how in the dickens did he ever get way over there? And if so, why did not Blaze come in bythisgap?”
Niltci stared at the flickering point of light for some time without replying. At times it died down to a mere red coal, so small as to be lost to eyesight entirely. Again it would flare up and appear quite strong.
“Mexicanos!” declared the Navaho boy at length.
“Mexicans!” echoed Scotty amazedly. “Why, that’s Sid’s camp fire, Niltci. Isn’t it?”
“No. Fire, he was be on Cerro Colorado. Master Sidney, him no have gothere!” answered Niltci.
In a flash Scotty saw that he was right. For no conceivable reason could Sid have gone that far distance to climb Cerro Colorado again. No; he had gotten into some sort of adventure with some wandering Indians back near the Hornaday Mountains, that was sure. Blaze’s tracks all argued that. The dog had got away, wounded, and had followed their own tracks to camp, step by step.
Meanwhile, what of this Mexican camp fire on Cerro Colorado? It could only mean one thing: Vasquez had taken the train to Nogales in Mexico; had assembled a band of guerrillas; and they had ridden west by Sonoyta and Santo Domingo along the Sonoyta River, and now had climbed CerroColorado—for the same reason that Scotty and Sid had—to find Red Mesa!
And they had been disappointed. What would their next move now be? Scotty quivered with excitement all over as a possible solution of that question now came to him. Suppose the Mexicans were to push straight across this lava field for Papago Tanks! It was only fifteen miles in an air line. Bad going across the lava, but the Hornaday party had done it, and these Mexican riders could get across in just three hours after daylight!
Vasquez was not the man to give up a mine like Red Mesa without scouring this country for it, and Papago Tanks would be his natural base for such an expedition, Scotty argued to himself. These guerrillas would be upon them, then, by noon to-morrow! And meanwhile they themselves were now on the wrong side of the border. It was a case of get out, and get out quick! But where to? One thing was certain: Sid was back somewhere near the Pass. Their whole party must “roll their freight,” as Big John would say, back there early next day, and leave no tracks behind them at Papago Tanks.
Tracks! They had left a million of them, writtenplain in the sands, and there would be no rain to wash them out for a whole season yet. The more Scotty thought it over the more certain he was that F-I-G-H-T! was sure to be the outcome of all this!
“We’ll get back to camp, right sudden pronto, Niltci!” he cried. “Mexicans is right. That’s Vasquez and Company, you bet! Le’s go!”