The Zane Grey Megapack, page 222
Dwire experienced a singular exaltation in the effect of his falsehood. He had lightened his comrade’s burden. Wonderfully it came to him that he had also lightened his own. From that moment he never again suffered a pang in his thought of Nell. Subtly and unconsciously his falsehood became truth to him, and he remembered her as he had described her to her father.
He saw that he had uplifted Hartwell, and the knowledge gave him happiness. He had rolled away a comrade’s heavy, somber grief; and, walking with him in the serene, luminous light of the stars, again he began to feel the haunting presence of his fantoms of peace.
In the moan of the cool wind, in the silken seep of sifting sand, in the distant rumble of a slipping ledge, in the faint rush of a shooting star, he heard these fantoms of peace coming, with whispers of the long pain of men at the last made endurable. Even in the white noonday, under the burning sun, these fantoms came to be real to him. And in the dead silence, the insupportable silence of the midnight hours, he heard them breathing nearer on the desert wind—whispers of God’s peace in the solitude.
V
Dwire and Hartwell meandered on down into the desert. There came a morning when the sun shone angry and red through a dull, smoky haze.
“We’re in for sandstorms,” said Dwire. “We’d better turn back. I don’t know where we are, but I think we’re in Death Valley. We’d better get back to the last water.”
But they had scarcely covered a mile on their back trail when a desert-wide, moaning, yellow wall of flying sand swooped down upon them. Seeking shelter in the lee of a rock, they waited, hoping that the storm was only a squall, such as frequently whipped across the open places.
The moan increased to a roar, the dull red slowly dimmed, to disappear in the yellow pall, and the air grew thick and dark. Dwire slipped the packs from the burros. He feared the sandstorms had arrived some weeks ahead of their usual season.
The men covered their heads and patiently waited. The long hours dragged, and the storm increased in fury. Dwire and Hartwell wet scarfs with water from the canteens, bound them round their faces, and then covered their heads.
The steady, hollow bellow of flying sand went on. It flew so thickly that enough sifted down under the shelving rock to weight the blankets and almost bury the men. They were frequently compelled to shake off the sand to keep from being borne to the ground. And it was necessary to keep digging out the packs, for the floor of their shelter rose higher and higher.
They tried to eat, and seemed to be grinding only sand between their teeth. They lost the count of time. They dared not sleep, for that would have meant being buried alive. They could only crouch close to the leaning rock, shake off the sand, blindly dig out their packs, and every moment gasp and cough and choke to fight suffocation.
The storm finally blew itself out. It left the prospectors heavy and stupid for want of sleep. Their burros had wandered away, or had been buried in the sand.
Far as eye could reach, the desert had marvelously changed; it was now a rippling sea of sand-dunes. Away to the north rose the peak that was their only guiding mark. They headed toward it, carrying a shovel and part of their packs.
At noon the peak vanished in the shimmering glare of the desert. Dwire and Hartwell pushed on, guided by the sun. In every wash they tried for water. With the forked branch in his magnetic hands, Hartwell always succeeded in locating water, and always they dug and dug; but the water lay too deep.
Toward sunset, in a pocket under a canyon wall, they dug in the sand and found water; but as fast as they shoveled the sand out, the sides of the hole caved in, and darkness compelled them to give up. Spent and sore, they fell and slept where they lay through that night and part of the next day. Then they succeeded in getting water, quenched their thirst, filled the canteens, and cooked a meal.
Here, abandoning all their outfit except the shovel, the basket with a scant store of food, and the canteens, they set out, both silent and grim in the understanding of what lay before them. They traveled by the sun, and, after dark, by the north star. At dawn they crawled into a shady wash and slept till afternoon. Hours were wasted in vain search for water. Hartwell located it, but again it lay too deep.
That night, deceived by a hazy sky, they toiled on, to find at dawn that they had turned back into Death Valley. Again the lonely desert peak beckoned to them, and again they wearily faced toward it, only to lose it in the glare of the noonday heat.
The burning day found them in an interminably wide plain, where there was no shelter from the fierce sun. They were exceedingly careful with their water, though there was absolute necessity of drinking a little every hour.
Late in the afternoon they came to a canyon which they believed to be the lower end of the one in which they had last found water. For hours they traveled toward its head. After night had set in, they found what they sought. Yielding to exhaustion, they slept, and next day were loath to leave the water-hole. Cool night spurred them on with canteens full and renewed strength.
The day opened for them in a red inferno of ragged, wind-worn stone. Like a flame the sun glanced up from the rock, to scorch and peel their faces. Hartwell went blind from the glare, and Dwire had to lead him.
Once they rested in the shade of a ledge. Dwire, from long habit, picked up a piece of rock and dreamily examined it. Its weight lent him sudden interest. It had a peculiar black color. He scraped through the black rust to find that he held a piece of gold.
Around him lay scattered heaps of black pebbles, bits of black, weathered rock, and pieces of broken ledge. All contained gold.
“Hartwell! See it! Feel it! Gold! Gold everywhere!”
But Hartwell had never cared, and now he was too blind to see.
Dwire was true to such instinct for hunting gold as he possessed. He built up stone monuments to mark his strike. Then he filled his pockets with the black pebbles.
As he was about to turn away, he came suddenly upon a rusty pick. Some prospector had been there before him. Dwire took hold of the pick handle, to feel it crumble in his hand. He searched for further evidence of a prior discoverer of the ledge of gold, but was unsuccessful.
Then Dwire and Hartwell dragged themselves on, resting often, wearing out, and at night they dropped. In the morning, as they pressed on, Dwire caught sight of the bleached bones of a man, half hidden in hard-packed sand. He did not speak of his gruesome find to Hartwell; but after a little he went back and erected a monument of stones near the skeleton. It was not the first pile of white bones that he had found in Death Valley. Then he went forward to catch up with his comrade.
That day Hartwell’s sight cleared, but he began to fail, to show his age. Dwire saw it, and gave both aid and encouragement.
The blue peak once more appeared to haunt them. It loomed high and apparently close. The ascent toward it was heartbreaking, not in steepness, but in its league after league of long, monotonous rise.
Dwire knew now that there was but one hope—to make the water hold out, and never stop to rest; but Hartwell was growing weaker, and had to rest often.
The burning white day passed, and likewise the white night, with its stars shining so pitilessly cold and bright. Dwire measured the water in his canteen by the feel of its weight. Evaporation by heat consumed as much as he drank.
He found opportunity in one of the rests, when he had wetted his parched mouth and throat, to pour a little water from his canteen into Hartwell’s.
VI
When dawn came, the bare peak glistened in the rosy sunlight. Its bare ribs stood out, and its dark lines of canyons. It seemed so close; but in that wonderfully clear atmosphere, before the dust and sand began to blow, Dwire could not be deceived as to distance—and the peak was a hundred miles away!
Muttering low, Dwire shook his head, and again found opportunity to pour a little water from his canteen into Hartwell’s.
The zone of bare, sand-polished rock appeared never to have an end. The rising heat waved up like black steam. It burned through the men’s boots, driving them to seek relief in every bit of shade, and here a drowsiness made Hartwell sleep standing. Dwire ever kept watch over his comrade.
Their marches from place to place became shorter. A belt of cactus blocked their passage. Its hooks and spikes, like poisoned iron fangs, tore grimly at them.
At infrequent intervals, when chance afforded, Dwire continued to pour a little water from his canteen into Hartwell’s.
At first Dwire had curbed his restless activity to accommodate the pace of his elder comrade; but now he felt that he was losing something of his instinctive and passionate zeal to get out of the desert. The thought of water came to occupy his mind. Mirages appeared on all sides. He saw beautiful clear springs and heard the murmur and tinkle of running water.
He looked for water in every hole and crack and canyon; but all were glaring red and white, hot and dry—as dry as if there had been no moisture on that desert since the origin of the world. The white sun, like the surface of a pot of boiling iron, poured down its terrific heat. The men tottered into corners of shade, and rose to move blindly on.
It had become habitual with Dwire to judge his quantity of water by its weight, and by the faint splash it made as his canteen rocked on his shoulder. He began to imagine that his last little store of liquid did not appreciably diminish. He knew he was not quite right in his mind regarding water; nevertheless he felt this to be more of fact than fancy, and he began to ponder.
When next they rested, he pretended to be in a kind of stupor, but he covertly watched Hartwell. The man appeared far gone, yet he had cunning. He cautiously took up Dwire’s canteen, and poured water into it from his own.
Dwire reflected that he had been unwise not to expect this very thing from Hartwell. Then, as his comrade dropped into weary rest, the younger man lifted both canteens. If there were any water in Hartwell’s, it was only very little. Both men had been enduring the terrible desert thirst, concealing it, each giving his water to the other, and the sacrifice had been all for naught. Instead of ministering to either man’s parched throat, the water had evaporated.
When Dwire made sure of this, he took one more drink, the last. Then, pouring the little water left into Hartwell’s canteen, he threw his own away.
Hartwell discovered the loss.
“Where’s your canteen?” he asked.
“The heat was getting my water, so I drank what was left and threw the can away.”
“My son!” said Hartwell gently.
Then he silently compelled Dwire to drink half his water, and drank the other half himself.
They did not speak again. In another hour speaking was impossible. Their lips dried out; their tongues swelled to coarse ropes. Hartwell sagged lower and lower, despite Dwire’s support.
All that night Dwire labored on under a double burden. In the white glare of the succeeding, day Hartwell staggered into a strip of shade, where he fell, wearily lengthened out, and seemed to compose himself to rest.
It was still in Dwire to fight sleep—that last sleep. He had the strength and the will in him to go on a little farther; but now that the moment had come, he found that he could not leave his comrade.
While sitting there, Dwire’s racking pain appeared to pass out in restful ease. He watched the white sun burn to gold, and then to red, and sink behind bold mountains in the west.
Twilight came suddenly. It lingered, slowly turning to gloom. The vast vault of blue-black lightened to the blinking of stars; and then fell the serene, silent, luminous desert night.
Dwire kept his vigil. As the long hours wore on, he felt stealing over him the comforting sense that he need not forever fight sleep.
A wan glow flared behind the dark, uneven horizon, and a melancholy, misshapen moon rose to make the white night one of shadows. Absolute silence claimed the desert. It was mute. But something breathed to Dwire, telling him when he was alone. He covered the dark, still face of his comrade from the light of the stars.
That action was the severing of his hold on realities. They fell away from him in final separation. Vaguely, sweetly, dreamily, he seemed to behold his soul.
Then up out of the vast void of the desert, from the silence and illimitableness, trooped his fantoms of peace. Majestically they formed about him, marshaling and mustering in ceremonious state, and moved to lay upon him their passionless serenity.
DESERT GOLD (1913) [Part 1]
A ROMANCE OF THE BORDER
PROLOGUE
I
A face haunted Cameron—a woman’s face. It was there in the white heart of the dying campfire; it hung in the shadows that hovered over the flickering light; it drifted in the darkness beyond.
This hour, when the day had closed and the lonely desert night set in with its dead silence, was one in which Cameron’s mind was thronged with memories of a time long past—of a home back in Peoria, of a woman he had wronged and lost, and loved too late. He was a prospector for gold, a hunter of solitude, a lover of the drear, rock-ribbed infinitude, because he wanted to be alone to remember.
A sound disturbed Cameron’s reflections. He bent his head listening. A soft wind fanned the paling embers, blew sparks and white ashes and thin smoke away into the enshrouding circle of blackness. His burro did not appear to be moving about. The quiet split to the cry of a coyote. It rose strange, wild, mournful—not the howl of a prowling upland beast baying the campfire or barking at a lonely prospector, but the wail of a wolf, full-voiced, crying out the meaning of the desert and the night. Hunger throbbed in it—hunger for a mate, for offspring, for life. When it ceased, the terrible desert silence smote Cameron, and the cry echoed in his soul. He and that wandering wolf were brothers.
Then a sharp clink of metal on stone and soft pads of hoofs in sand prompted Cameron to reach for his gun, and to move out of the light of the waning campfire. He was somewhere along the wild border line between Sonora and Arizona; and the prospector who dared the heat and barrenness of that region risked other dangers sometimes as menacing.
Figures darker than the gloom approached and took shape, and in the light turned out to be those of a white man and a heavily packed burro.
“Hello there,” the man called, as he came to a halt and gazed about him. “I saw your fire. May I make camp here?”
Cameron came forth out of the shadow and greeted his visitor, whom he took for a prospector like himself. Cameron resented the breaking of his lonely campfire vigil, but he respected the law of the desert.
The stranger thanked him, and then slipped the pack from his burro. Then he rolled out his pack and began preparations for a meal. His movements were slow and methodical.
Cameron watched him, still with resentment, yet with a curious and growing interest. The campfire burst into a bright blaze, and by its light Cameron saw a man whose gray hair somehow did not seem to make him old, and whose stooped shoulders did not detract from an impression of rugged strength.
“Find any mineral?” asked Cameron, presently.
His visitor looked up quickly, as if startled by the sound of a human voice. He replied, and then the two men talked a little. But the stranger evidently preferred silence. Cameron understood that. He laughed grimly and bent a keener gaze upon the furrowed, shadowy face. Another of those strange desert prospectors in whom there was some relentless driving power besides the lust for gold! Cameron felt that between this man and himself there was a subtle affinity, vague and undefined, perhaps born of the divination that here was a desert wanderer like himself, perhaps born of a deeper, an unintelligible relation having its roots back in the past. A long-forgotten sensation stirred in Cameron’s breast, one so long forgotten that he could not recognize it. But it was akin to pain.
CHAPTER II
When he awakened he found, to his surprise, that his companion had departed. A trail in the sand led off to the north. There was no water in that direction. Cameron shrugged his shoulders; it was not his affair; he had his own problems. And straightway he forgot his strange visitor.
Cameron began his day, grateful for the solitude that was now unbroken, for the canyon-furrowed and cactus-spired scene that now showed no sign of life. He traveled southwest, never straying far from the dry stream bed; and in a desultory way, without eagerness, he hunted for signs of gold.
The work was toilsome, yet the periods of rest in which he indulged were not taken because of fatigue. He rested to look, to listen, to feel. What the vast silent world meant to him had always been a mystical thing, which he felt in all its incalculable power, but never understood.
That day, while it was yet light, and he was digging in a moist white-bordered wash for water, he was brought sharply up by hearing the crack of hard hoofs on stone. There down the canyon came a man and a burro. Cameron recognized them.
“Hello, friend,” called the man, halting. “Our trails crossed again. That’s good.”
“Hello,” replied Cameron, slowly. “Any mineral sign today?”
“No.”
They made camp together, ate their frugal meal, smoked a pipe, and rolled in their blankets without exchanging many words. In the morning the same reticence, the same aloofness characterized the manner of both. But Cameron’s companion, when he had packed his burro and was ready to start, faced about and said: “We might stay together, if it’s all right with you.”
“I never take a partner,” replied Cameron.
“You’re alone; I’m alone,” said the other, mildly. “It’s a big place. If we find gold there’ll be enough for two.”
“I don’t go down into the desert for gold alone,” rejoined Cameron, with a chill note in his swift reply.
His companion’s deep-set, luminous eyes emitted a singular flash. It moved Cameron to say that in the years of his wandering he had met no man who could endure equally with him the blasting heat, the blinding dust storms, the wilderness of sand and rock and lava and cactus, the terrible silence and desolation of the desert. Cameron waved a hand toward the wide, shimmering, shadowy descent of plain and range. “I may strike through the Sonora Desert. I may head for Pinacate or north for the Colorado Basin. You are an old man.”
