 | CHAPTER XIX.
FASTER. John Brent |  |
19. CHAPTER XIX.
FASTER.
It came afternoon, as we rode on steadily.
The country grew rougher. The horses never
flinched, but they sweated freely, and foam from
their nostrils flecked their shoulders. By and by,
with little pleasant admonitory puffs, a breeze
drew down from the glimmering frosty edges of
the Sierra and cooled us. Horses and men were
cheered and freshened, and lifted anew to their
work.
We had seen and heard no life on the desert.
Now in the broken country, a cayote or two scuttled
away as we passed. Sometimes a lean gray
wolf would skulk out of a brake, canter after us
a little way, and then squat on his haunches,
staring at our strange speed. Flight and chase
he could understand, but ours was not flight for
safety, or chase for food. Men are queer mysteries
to beasts. So our next companions found.
Over the edge of a slope, bending away to a valley
of dry scanty pasture at the left, a herd of
antelopes appeared. They were close to us,
graceful flight, some score of them, with tails up
and black hoofs glancing. Presently, pausing for
curiosity, they saw that we fled, not followed, and
they in turn became pursuers, careering after us
for a mile or more, until our stern business left
their gambolling play far behind.
We held steadily for that notch in the blue
Sierra. The mountain lines grew sharper; the
country where we travelled, rougher, every stride.
We came upon a wide tract covered with wild-sage
bushes. These delayed and baffled us. It
was a pigmy forest of trees, mature and complete,
but no higher than the knee. Every dwarfed,
stunted, gnarled bush, had the trunk, limbs, twigs,
and gray, withered foliage, all in miniature, of
some tree, hapless but sturdy, that has had a
weatherbeaten struggle for life on a storm-threshed
crag by the shore, or on a granite side of a mountain,
with short allowance of soil to eat and water
to drink. Myriads of square miles of that arid
region have no important vegetation except this
wild-sage, or Artemisia, and a meaner brother, not
even good to burn, the greasewood.
One may ride through the tearing thickets of
a forest primeval, as one may shoulder through
a crowd of civilized barbarians at a spectacle.
Our gallop over the top of this pigmy wood was
as difficult as to find passage over the heads of
with slouched hats, wash-bowls, and stove-pipes.
It was a rough scramble. It checked our speed
and chafed our horses. Sometimes we could
find natural pathways for a few rods. Then
these strayed aside or closed up, and we must
plunge straight on. We lost time; moments
we lost, more precious than if every one were
marked by a drop in a clepsydra, and each drop
as it fell changed itself and tinkled in the basin,
a priceless pearl.
“It worries me, this delay,” I said to Brent.
“They lost as much — more time than we,” he
said.
And he crowded on, more desperately, as a
man rides for dearer than life, — as a lover rides
for love.
We tore along, breaking through and over the
sage-bushes, each man where best he could.
Fulano began to show me what leaps were in
him. I gave him his head. No bridle would
have held him. I kept my mastery by the voice,
or rather by the perfect identification of his
will with mine. Our minds acted together.
“Save strength,” I still warned him, “save
strength, my friend, for the mountains and the
last leaps!”
A little pathway in the sage-bushes suddenly
opened before me, as a lane rifts in the press
I dashed on a hundred yards in advance
of my comrades.
What was this? The bushes trampled and
broken down, just as we in our passage were
trampling and breaking them. What?
Hoof-marks in the dust!
“The trail!” I cried, “the trail!”
They sprang toward me. Brent followed the
line with his eye. He galloped forward, with a
look of triumph.
Suddenly I saw him fling himself half out of
his saddle, and clutch at some object. Still going
at speed, and holding on by one leg alone, after
the Indian fashion for sport or shelter against
an arrow or a shot, he picked up something
from the bushes, regained his seat, and waved
his treasure to us. We ranged up and rode
beside him over a gap in the sage.
A lady's glove! — that was what he had
stooped to recover. An old buckskin riding
gauntlet, neatly stitched about the wrist, and
pinked on the wristlet. A pretty glove, strangely,
almost tragically, feminine in this desolation.
A well-worn glove, that had seen better days,
like its mistress, but never any day so good as
this, when it proved to us that we were on the
sure path of rescue.
“I take up the gauntlet,” said Brent. “Gare
à qui le touche!”
We said nothing more; for this unconscious
token, this silent cry for help, made the danger
seem more closely imminent. We pressed on.
No flinching in any of the horses. Where we
could, we were going at speed. Where they
could, the horses kept side by side, nerving each
other. Companionship sustained them in that
terrible ride.
And now in front the purple Sierra was growing
brown, and rising up a distinct wall, cleft
visibly with dell, gully, ravine, and cañon. The
saw-teeth of the ridge defined themselves sharply
into peak and pinnacle. Broad fields of cool
snow gleamed upon the summits.
We were ascending now all the time into
subalpine regions. We crossed great sloping
savannas, deep in dry, rustling grass, where a
nation of cattle might pasture. We plunged
through broad wastes of hot sand. We flung
ourselves down and up the red sides of water-worn
gullies. We took breakneck leaps across
dry quebradas in the clay. We clattered across
stony arroyos, longing thirstily for the gush of
water that had flowed there not many months
before.
The trail was everywhere plain. No prairie
craft was needed to trace it. Here the chase had
gone, but a few hours ago; here, across grassy
slopes, trampling the grass as if a mower had
the sand; here, treading the red, crumbling clay;
here, breaking down the side of a bank; here,
leaving a sharp hoof-track in the dry mud of a
fled torrent. Everywhere a straight path, pointing
for that deepening gap in the Sierra, Luggernel
Alley, the only gate of escape.
Brent's unerring judgment had divined the
course aright. On he led, charging along the
trail, as if he were trampling already on the carcasses
of the pursued. On he led and we followed,
drawing nearer, nearer to our goal.
Our horses suffered bitterly for water. Some
five hours we had ridden without a pause. Not
one drop or sign of water in all that arid waste.
The torrents had poured along the dry water-courses
too hastily to let the scanty alders and
willows along their line treasure up any sap
of growth. The wild-sage bushes had plainly
never tasted fluid more plenteous than seldom
dewdrops doled out on certain rare festal days,
enough to keep their meagre foliage a dusty
gray. No pleasant streamlet lurked anywhere
under the long dry grass of the savannas.
The arroyos were parched and hot as rifts in
lava.
It became agonizing to listen to the panting
and gasping of our horses. Their eyes grew
staring and bloodshot. We suffered, ourselves,
But we must hinder a crueller cruelty. Love
against Time, — Vengeance against Time! We
must not flinch for any weak humanity to the
noble allies that struggled on with us, without
one token of resistance.
Fulano suffered least. He turned his brave
eye back, and beckoned me with his ear to listen,
while he seemed to say: “See, this is my Endurance!
I hold my Power ready still to show.”
And he curved his proud neck, shook his mane
like a banner, and galloped the grandest of all.
We came to a broad strip of sand, the dry bed
of a mountain-torrent. The trail followed up
this disappointing path. Heavy ploughing for
the tired horses! How would they bear the
rough work down the ravine yet to come?
Suddenly our leader pulled up and sprang
from the saddle.
“Look!” he cried, “how those fellows spent
their time, and saved ours. Thank Heaven for
this! We shall save her, surely, now.”
It was WATER! No need to go back to Pindar
to know that it was “the Best.”
They had dug a pit deep in the thirsty sand,
and found a lurking river buried there. Nature
never questioned what manner of men they were
that sought. Murderers flying from vengeance
and planning now another villain outrage, — still
them. Sunshine, air, water, life, — these boons
of hers, — she gave them freely. That higher
boon of death, if they were to receive, it must
be from some other power, greater than the undiscriminating
force of Nature.
Good luck and good omen, this well of water
in the sand! It proved that our chase had
suffered as we, and had been delayed as we.
Before they had dared to pause and waste priceless
moments here, their horses must have been
drooping terribly. The pit was nearly five feet
deep. A good hour's work, and no less, had
dug it with such tools as they could bring.
I almost laughed to think of the two, slowly
bailing out the sliding sand with a tin plate,
perhaps, and a frying-pan, while a score of miles
away upon the desert we three were riding hard
upon their tracks to follow them the fleeter for
this refreshment they had left. “Sic vos non
vobis!” I was ready to say triumphantly; but
then I remembered the third figure in their
group, — a woman, like a Sibyl, growing calmer
as her peril grew, and succor seemed to withdraw.
And the pang of this picture crushed
back into my heart any thoughts but a mad
anxiety and a frenzy to be driving on.
We drank thankfully of this well by the wayside.
No gentle beauty hereabouts to enchant
the landmark of the fountain, proclaiming an
oasis near. Nothing but bare, hot sand. But
the water was pure, cool, and bright. It had
come underground from the Sierra, and still remembered
its parent snows. We drank and
were grateful, almost to the point of pity. Had
we been but avengers, like Armstrong, my friend
and I could wellnigh have felt mercy here, and
turned back pardoning. But rescue was more
imperative than vengeance. Our business tortured
us, as with the fanged scourge of Tisiphone,
while we dallied. We grudged these
moments of refreshment. Before night fell down
the west, and night was soon to be climbing up
the east, we must overtake, — and then?
I wiped the dust and spume away from Fulano's
nostrils and breathed him a moment. Then
I let him drain deep, delicious draughts from the
stirrup-cup. He whinnied thanks and undying
fealty, — my noble comrade! He drank like a
reveller. When I mounted again, he gave a
jubilant curvet and bound. My weight was a
feather to him. All those leagues of our hard,
hot gallop were nothing.
The brown Sierra here was close at hand.
Its glittering, icy summits, above the dark and
sheeny walls, far above the black phalanxes of
clambering pines, stooped forward and hung over
range, where it dipped suddenly down upon the
plain. The gap, our goal all day, opened before
us, grand and terrible. Some giant force had
clutched the mountains, and riven them narrowly
apart. The wild defile gaped, and then wound
away and closed, lost between its mighty walls,
a thousand feet high, and bearing two brother
pyramids of purple cliffs aloft far above the
snow line. A fearful portal into a scene of the
throes and agonies of earth! and my excited eyes
seemed to read, gilded over its entrance, in the
dead gold of that hazy October sunshine, words
from Dante's inscription, —
Lasciate ogni speranza voi, ch' entrate!”
“Here we are,” said Brent, speaking hardly
above his breath. “This is Luggernel Alley at
last, thank God! In an hour, if the horses hold
out, we shall be at the Springs; that is, if we can
go through this breakneck gorge at the same
pace. My horse began to flinch a little before
the water. Perhaps that will set him up. How
are yours?”
“Fulano asserts that he has not begun to show
himself yet. I may have to carry you en croupe,
before we are done.”
Armstrong said nothing, but pointed impatiently
moved on quicker at this gesture. He seemed a
tireless machine, not flesh and blood, — a being
like his master, living and acting by the force
of a purpose alone.
Our chief led the way into the cañon.
| CHAPTER XIX.
FASTER. John Brent | |