XXIXHIGH COUNTRY
Theyfound the highway north of the railroad and turned their horses west.
Bart looked a bit white and shaky but made no sign to stop.
‘Don’t you think we’d better lay up for a day or two in one of these towns, so you can rest, Bart?’ Elbert asked.
‘I’m not sleepy,’ said the other. ‘I’m gettin’ what I need outdoors, and aboard old Mallet-head. I always did need the outside of a horse to pull myself together.’
As it began to get hot in the morning, they veered into the hills and found shade, resting several hours.
‘How far west of Nogales do you think we are right now?’ Elbert asked.
‘About a hundred miles, I’d say. You see Fonseca lay a long ways west of the main road south from Nogales, and we’ve kept pushin’ west through the mountains since then. We can find out by askin’ along the railroad—’
‘I’m figurin’ we might not have to go to San Forenso first to get to the cabin,’ Elbert said. ‘You see, San Forenso is still farther west from here than your father’s mine—’
All through the recent weeks in Mexico, Elbert had felt his mission would end when he safely crossed the Border with Bart, but now he knew a secret restless urge actually to reach the cabin, before letting even Mort Cotton know.
‘You see, everything we need is there,’ he added.
‘Lead the way, Doc.’
The second morning afterward, Elbert looked up into a range of hills, remarking that he thought the Dry Cache was up there. ‘San Forenso is twenty miles ahead, and we’d have to circle back, if we went there. The mine must be straight up from here. Yes, I think those are our mountains, all right,’ he added. ‘I remember your father said you could look over into California and back into Sonora from just above the mine—’
‘It’s giddap with me. Persuade yourself—’
But the mountains that had looked so feasible from the railroad turned sinister and rebellious as they climbed. Forty miles around would have been simple to the twenty they had made before sundown that day—a waterless fight all the way. They were in the big timber of the altitudes again in the lengthening shadows, and Elbert looked at the man beside him, riding on hard gray nerve; then at the drooping head of his own mare in front. He had given in to a sort of mania to get into high country. It had been getting clearerfor hours that he should have gone straight to San Forenso, from where he could have been sure of his way to the claim. It might be best to turn back to the railroad now—while there was a bit of light.... Just at this instant Mamie’s ears pricked; her body came to life under the saddle. The sullen eye of the gelding caught a flash of her new fire.
She broke into a trot, starting down-grade. They crossed a sloping bench of big timber and checked down into a valley open to the western light.
‘I don’t see any trail, but she’s sure got an idea!’ Elbert called.
‘She sure has,’ Bart panted, ‘and I’m for it—’
In the open, she veered swiftly to the left, making for a cañon mouth, and then in letters writhing a little before Elbert’s dazed eyes: ‘Are You Doomed?’ on its white rock! The living fact of the Flats broke upon him.
‘Why, we’re home, Bart!’ he gasped. ‘The cabin’s back a ways. She’s makin’ for the last water—’
‘First water I’ve seen in some time,’ came from the other, as Elbert helped him down.
There was dusk and wood-smoke; the grinding of the coffee-mill, the sputter of bacon oil for flapjacks, a deadlock on the matter of whether a canof Michigan pears should be opened or Hawaiian pineapple—finally both, for it was a fiesta night at the Dry Cache mine, and the stores were endless. They had fared slim for some days and ridden hard. Few words, because Elbert felt a bulge in his throat from the pressure of unfamiliar joys. After supper, he left Bart and led the two horses, in their ‘cooling’ blankets, down to the last water to finish their deep drink for the night, also to refill canteens. Bart came out of the cabin, as he returned, and they sat down in the clean straw when grain was fed, leaning their backs against the fence.
That astonishing sense of unity crept over Elbert that he had known once or twice before. He remembered Bob Leadley’s story of when he was a little chap, leaving the supper table where there was a fight on between his father and mother, and going out into the barnyard where the cattle ruminated, and there was peace. Yes, he must have listened deeply to all Bob Leadley’s words. It was almost as if he had been that little boy; almost as familiar to him as that night of tequila in Cienaga, in his own experience, when he had sat with Cal and Slim (Chester and the Indian and Mamie grinding at their sun-parched corn). A warm breeze fanned his face now with a smell of sunlit rocks and pine bark and that carried him back to the night of that warm wind atHeaslep’s ranch, when Cal and Slim asked him to join them in a ride south, where he was going anyway. Exquisite ease in the very fatigue that closed in, delight of relaxation complete for the first time in his life.
The next day they didn’t stir far from the claim, only moving about the different patches of sun and shade to stretch out in the deep languor that followed days of strain.
‘Pretty near everything a man could want here—don’t you think?’ said Bart.
‘Pretty near,’ said Elbert.
‘The old man made it all to suit himself, didn’t he?’ the voice drawled on. ‘Always a great hand for keeping things up, Dad was. Left his mark on everything. I can see it now. A kid wouldn’t—’
‘I think he was making it for you all the time,’ Elbert said, ‘just as if he was writing a letter to you, when he built those cabinets and stored them. I know he was—always thinking you would come back like this.’
‘A lot of work in that tunnel for one man to do alone,’ said Bart. ‘Must have taken him a year—’
‘More,’ said Elbert.
The next morning at breakfast a curious quiet settled between the two men. The spell was breaking, a different gleam in the eyes of the bigfellow across the table. In a wordless fashion, Elbert sat for a time. Another sentence of old Bob Leadley’s cleared with deep meaning. ‘I’d get lonesome for him when he was right in the same room—’
‘We’d better not wait any longer before letting Mort Cotton know,’ Elbert finally said. ‘I’ll ride down to the Slim Stake and get him on the telephone—’
He was back within four hours and Mort reached the claim before sundown. It took two days for everything to be settled, and Elbert was tired in an altogether different way at the end. He had done more talking in those two days than in all the weeks in Sonora.
‘Bart,’ he said, when they were finally alone once more, ‘there’s nothing I’d like better than to work that gold tooth with you, but I’ll have to be away for a few weeks.’
‘Which way you headin’, Doc?’
‘East. Been away from home for a long time. I’ve got to see my father—’ Elbert caught that strange gleam again in the eyes of the other. ‘And my sisters,’ he added.
‘I’m ridin’, too, Mister. For a while—’
‘You’re not going—you’re not going back?’
‘Back into Mexico?’ the other laughed.
‘I thought, perhaps—’
‘Why, you don’t seem to believe I like it here,’Bart chuckled. ‘Pretty near everything a man could want—’
Just words, perhaps, Elbert thought. He didn’t see how Bart could forget. He couldn’t have, if he had been in Bart’s place.
‘Oh, yes, I like to look and listen around here,’ the big fellow went on, ‘and back in that tunnel there’s a message for you and me all right, but no hurry, as you say. We’ll wait a little longer for that. A whole lot of times down in Sonora I’ve wondered just how it would feel to turn loose in an American town—Tucson, for instance.’
‘I’ll be stopping off in Tucson,’ Elbert allowed.
That day they rode down to San Forenso and left the horses at Mort Cotton’s ranch. Elbert planned to take the night train.
‘I’ll stay on with Mort for a day or so,’ Bart said. ‘I might hunt you up in Tucson, if I get there before you leave. They say there’s a hotel there—’
‘The Santa Clara,’ said Elbert.
He looked back toward Mort’s corral, as the old cattleman was bringing the rig to take him to the station. He moved to the gate and let himself in. Mamie walked toward him, but halted with lifted head, in the afternoon light, as he had seen her the first day, only now her coat was faded by many sweats and suns. Her head liftedhigher. She was listening for something no one else could possibly hear—
‘One more listening mare,’ Elbert whispered.
Her forehead presently bumped his shoulder. Farther off the sorrel stake-horse was sniffing at the cracks in Mort’s hay-shed.
‘I’ll be coming back, Mamie. Oh, yes, I’ll be coming back—’