the Burning Hills (1956) Page 8

  In the moonlight even more than by day the desert is a place of weird and strange beauty. One can live in the desert. There are plants that provide food; there are plants and places that provide water. But if one does not conform to the desert's pattern, one can die in the desert

  They did not talk. When the first light of dawn came he saw how her face was bruised and swollen and for the first time Trace Jordan was glad that he had killed a man. Yet she did not complain, she sat her horse well and rode straight on into the awful wilderness to the south. He looked back but saw nothing. No riders, no dust, no movement.

  Sweat trickled down his face and down his body under his shirt. Twice within three hours great canyons split the desert floor. They descended into them and they emerged from them. And when he looked back a second time there was a dust cloud. There were two dust clouds.

  This was wilderness, raw, untamed. There were no villages and no ranches. It was the land of the Apache, the most dreaded guerilla fighter the world has yet known. When it was almost noon he drew up and they dismounted, sponging out the mouths and nostrils of their horses. And then they walked.

  Dust settled on their faces and necks. Jordan felt his neck growing raw from the chafing of his collar, stiffened as it was by sweat and dust. His head ached, his mouth was dry, yet they pushed on and the heat waves moved in closer around them, blotting out the distance, leaving only a vast shimmering waste.

  Twice, for short times, they rested. Each time the dust clouds seemed closer.

  "You know this country?" he asked.

  "Down here? No."

  "There is a place, the Canyon de Los Embudos," he said. "Do you know it?"

  "It is an Apache place."

  "There is water," he said, "and a place to hide."

  The country became increasingly broken and again they mounted. Yet before many miles had passed Sutton's horse began to stumble. The big red horse Jordan rode had rested well and fed well. The distance seemed as nothing to him. They dismounted again and walked on but Sutton's horse fell and lay there in the sun.

  "Take the food and the rifle," Jordan said. "We'll leave him."

  "He will die?"

  "No ... after the sun goes down he'll get up. He will find water then or join them when they come up."

  So they walked on but his strength had not returned and after a while the horizon began to weave and dance before him and the mountains became like liquid and he went to his knees. He got up at once and started on, tearing his collar wider. The gun belts and pistols chafed his thighs.

  They looked back and there were no dust clouds. He looked ahead and three Apaches on ragged ponies stared stone-faced into their eyes. It was too late for the rifle and he did not know if his hand was strong enough to hold a gun.

  From under his black hat brim he looked at them. Three tough men of the desert, their finely muscled bodies shaped like the land itself, of rock and sinew. Being Apaches, they would have seen the dust clouds and they would be wondering about them.

  Jordan gestured at their back trail "Enemy," he said, then indicated Maria Cristina's battered face and touched his gun.

  They were impassive, their black eyes studying him. He was sunburned and as dark as any of them, only his eyes were gray. Maria Cristina looked at them but said nothing. Her man was talking and this was man's business.

  "Indio?"An Apache pointed at her.

  Jordan gave the sign for half, then indicated himself with the same sign. This last was not true but he had the features and could have been and the idea might help.

  The Apache with the red headband turned and pointed. "Embetdos," he said.

  "Si," Jordan replied and when the Apaches drew aside, they went on, walking slowly. Neither of them spoke, neither made a sound until they were hidden in an arroyo. Then he swung quickly to the saddle and with Maria Cristina behind him rode rapidly until several miles were behind them.

  Hours later, his feet aching and his body utterly exhausted, he was still moving. Yet now the terrain had changed. They had entered a weird jungle of Spanish dagger, cholla and Joshua, all broken by the remains of an ancient lava flow. The spaces between the cacti and the fallen black chunks of kva were crowded with brittle bush.

  For what must have been six or seven miles they inched their way through this barrier, at times at a loss as to how to go forward; then, mounting a hill amid a thick forest of cholla, they suddenly looked into a ravine that was startlingly and incredibly lovely.

  Below them was water. Not a little water but a large clear pool surrounded by jutting kva. Shading the pool were sycamore, ash, willow and buckthorn. And down near the edge of the pool were several small open places where they could see the remains of old fires.

  Dismounting, Jordan led the way down the steep path to the water's edge. Following along the shore under an overhang of lava they came to a small clearing among the trees, completely shaded and masked from view by a curtain of willows. Here they stopped. With almost the last of his strength Jordan stripped the saddle from the red horse and put him on a picket rope.

  Then without a word he stretched out and went immediately to sleep, a sleep through which horses raced and guns barked and where he was endlessly falling over blocks of lava into acres of cholla.

  When he awakened it was dark and cold but a blanket had been thrown over him. Faintly he smelled a wood fire. He rolled over and sat up.

  "There is food," Maria Cristina spoke from die shadows. "By the fire."

  He stumbled to the edge of the pool and bathed himself, mopping his face and body dry with his shirt. Wrapping himself in a blanket, he went to the fire.

  There was a pot of stew and he ate hungrily, then ate from a stick of tortillas. Then he sat down, looking at the moonlight's reflection on the dark water, listening to the night sounds and drinking coffee.

  "Suppose Lantz knows this place?" he asked.

  "Who knows?"

  She was silent for a time. "He is a devil ... but not so bad as the rest."

  They needed rest, the horse needed rest. To go on in the night was out of ihe question. They would just take a chance. They must stay.

  "My father ... he knew of this place. It is a place of ihe Indies, of the Apaches. They come here to make talk -- but not often, I think."

  He got up stiffly, every muscle complaining, and going to his saddle he got his bed roll. He spread out his blankets and took off his boots.

  When he had stretched out he said, "I am sorry about your face."

  "It is nothing."

  "The man I killed?"

  "Si ... Jack Sutton."

  He drew the blanket about his shoulders and settled down to rest. Once, lifting his head, he glanced around. She sat unmoved and unmoving, her profile etched sharply against the sky beyond the lake. He started to speak, then changed his mind and lay down. In a moment he was breathing deeply and steadily.

  Maria Cristina hunched the blanket around her shoulders and looked at the water. She said nothing; she thought nothing; she was at this moment an Indian, at one with her world.

  Fifteen miles back, huddled under an escarpment of sandstone, Hindeman and his men made dry camp. It had been a day of defeat, of heat, dust and cacti.

  At dawn they had found Jack Sutton. He had been shot dead and it had been good shooting. His gun, unfired, lay near his hand. Looking down at the body, Buck Bayless felt a moment of shock, of near terror. What kind of a man was Jordan?

  Wounded unto death, he escaped. Days later he came from hiding and left not a ghost of a trail and now he had slain Jack Sutton. Buck Bayless felt his courage draining from him. He felt sick and whipped.

  Wes Parker touched his tongue to his lips and stole a careful look at Hindeman. Yet he knew Hindeman would go on. It was a trait of Hindeman's that he had admired. Now he cursed it

  Ben Hindeman could feel no remorse. Sooner or later he would have had to kill Jack Sutton himself or be killed. Now the man was dead, finished. "Woman crazy" he said aloud. "If he left her alo
ne, he'd be alive."

  "She's a curse," Buck Bayless said resentfully. "Shell be the death of us all. Let her go, I say, and good riddance."

  Ben Hindeman was angrily impatient "We can let her go," he said, "but we can't let him go. If one man can wipe his feet on the Sutton-Bayless outfit, we won't last out the year. We kill him or we all go."

  He swung a wide arm at the country. "There's fifty outfits in Arizona and New Mexico who want our graze. There's two or three mighty near strong enough to do it. Like John Slaughter... that's why I kept Jack and Mort from going that way."

  They were still there when Mort Bayless came in with four men. These were the tough ones, the men with a reason to want Trace Jordan dead. Mort Bayless had used an argument they could understand. "We got him runnin'," he said. "You think he'll let up if we quit? Not by a damn sightl

  "He'll bide his time an' he'll come back. Folks will talk; he'll know who got his horses. He'll hunt down every man-jack of us, you'll see!"

  He knew men-fears because he knew his own. This was a danger they understood. Jordan was a tough man and they had been fools to listen to Jack Sutton. Beside the fire they hunkered down and made war talk.

  "Where'll they go?" Hindeman asked Lantz.

  The old man spat into the fire. "No tellin'. With the Mex gal we could figure some but Jordan's taken the lead now an' he knows where he's goin'. This here desert is out of my knowin'. Might be a sight of places around if a body knew 'em."

  He took a pull at the coffee. "You been thinkin', Ben? This here's Apache country. We get caught down here an' we're in genuine trouble."

  "No matter. We'll find him."

  "Worse'n huntin' a needle in a haystack," Buck Bayless complained. "We'd have to hunt up every canyon. Take us ten year."

  "Hadn't better," Ben Hindeman replied dryly. "Your wife will forget you in that time."

  Wes Parker lifted himself to an elbow. "I'm goin' back. I'm catchin' me that Mex kid. If that gal knows a hideout down here, that kid should know."

  Ben Hindeman considered that. He did not like to have anyone abused but the situation was getting out of hand. They were losing time and the ranch needed them. All had work that needed doing. Moreover, for the first time he was finding an element of doubt. The increased caution of Lantz was part of it.

  "All right, Wes. Take Buck with you. Maybe he'll be better huntin'a Mex than a man."

  "Aw, Ben!" Buck protested plaintively. "That ain't no --"

  "Shut up!" Ben was exasperated. "Jake, you do something about where they might go. Meanwhile we'll get some sleep."

  Lantz spat out his chewing. "Better set guards " he said, "them broncho Apaches might want to collect some horses."

  Buck Bayless retired to his blankets vastly satisfied. What he wanted was less alkali and more beer. To hell with Jordan!

  Before daybreak Trace Jordan crawled from his blankets into the pre-dawn chill. He slung his gun belts across his hips, then pulled on his boots. The fire had died to thin gray ashes, so he gathered a few dried leaves from under the trees and some dried-out branches of the curl-leaf, which makes no smoke.

  Maria Cristina lay huddled in her blankets where he had last seen her, so he broke sticks quietly and fed them into the flames. He dipped water from the lake and placed the coffee pot on a stone by the fire to grow hot.

  This place was well hidden. It was surrounded by a Jungle of cholla, sometimes called jumping cactus, one of the most vicious of all the desert's plants. There were cat-claw, organ pipe and a few barrel cacti.

  Finding a way through the maze would not be easy. He had stumbled upon it himself and even that trail had been difficult to follow.

  When breakfast was ready he went to her and bent over to awaken her, yet even as he stooped, her eyes opened suddenly, dark and beautiful, ringed with black lashes. Her expression was, at that moment, unreadable. He started to reach for her, then drew back. "Got some coffee ready," he said.

  Their eyes held for a long moment and then she said, "All right. I come."

  Birds whistled and talked in the brush and the morning air was fresh and cool. He could smell the faint scent of ironwood in bloom but doubted his senses, for the season was late. Yet many desert plants bloomed according to rainfall and with small regard for seasons.

  Maria Cristina came to the fire and accepted coffee from him. Her face was somber, and she stood, feet apart, holding the cup in both hands. "It is quiet," she said suddenly. "Yes ... I like it here."

  She drank her coffee, then ate. He gathered more firewood and then walked back up the trail to study the approaches by daylight. Only two or three places offered access to the water and all were in full view of their camp site.

  From the top of the knoll he studied the surroundings. There was a nearby mesa that offered danger but few approaches through the cactus barrier. At the top of the knoll in a place he could work without being seen he assembled a few rocks into a low barrier.

  There was grass for the horse and they had food for several days. They could wait

  Maria Cristina had washed their few dishes and had hot water on when he returned. She was putting creosote leaves into the water and when they had steeped for some time she bathed her bruised face in the water.

  All day long they rested, sleeping much of the time. Occasionally, from the top of the knoll, Jordan made a reconnaissance of the country around, always keeping himself under cover. He could see but a short distance and in that distance there was nothing alive but the birds, who seemed very busy among the cacti. Without doubt the Sutton-Bayless riders were somewhere around. By this time they should be closing in. The thought increased his restlessness but there would be nowhere that would offer them more than they had at present.

  Maria Cristina bathed her bruised face several times and in the late afternoon went into the thicket to find herbs that could be eaten to fill out their slender supply of food.

  At dusk Trace Jordan took his Winchester and worked his way to the top of the mesa where he sat for a long time, studying the country. From there he could see for miles in all directions, yet it was not until he started to get up to return that he caught sight of the distant spot of red.

  Far beyond the limits of the cholla forest, it was without doubt a campfire. And it would be ten or twelve miles away. Catching the last of the fading light, he worked his way back down the mesa to the oasis.

  "They're out there," he said.

  "We stay?"

  "If we don't move we won't make tracks."

  They did not have to worry about their own fire. He knew the distance a blaze can be seen at night but their own camp was so deep in the canyon and so well surrounded by trees and brush that it could not be seen fifty yards off. Their best chance was to sit tight

  She sat close by the fire, its light touching her somber face. Some of the swelling had gone and the bruises were changing color. Yet now she looked remote, lonely.

  "What will you do?" he asked suddenly. "You cannot go back."

  She shrugged.

  "Stay with me."

  She looked up, her eyes flashing, almost angry. "With you? For why? Why I go with you?"

  "You're my woman, Maria Cristina."

  "I am nobody's woman."

  "You're my woman. Get used to the idea."

  She glared at him, then said contemptuously, "For why am I your woman? Because I help you? I do it for a dog. All right ... I am in trouble. They hate me. I hate them too."

  "I'm not going to let you go, Maria."

  "You have nothing to say if I go or stay."

  He got his bed roll and opened it out near the fire. He stretched out, leaning on one elbow. He fed small sticks into the fire and tried to find words to say what was in his mind.

  She could never go back now and because of him. Because of him she was lost to her family and yet he knew it was no sense of obligation that made him feel as he did.

  It had been a long time since he had talked to women and words did not come easily to him
and yet he knew, desperately, that he must find words to reach this woman. He must make her realize that he loved her, that he really wanted her. He thought of many things to say but they found no shape on his lips. They all seemed empty and meaningless.

  He was learning that to speak of love is not easy when the feeling is deep and strong.

  She lifted her eyes suddenly and looked across the small fire at him. "You think because I come here with you that I am your woman? Well ... I am not."

  "I need you, Maria,"

  "You need me? You need a woman ... any woman. Then you ride-on. Maybe sometime again you need a woman, you find one again." She looked at him with a taunt in her eyes. "Anyway, I don't think you need a woman very often."

  He ignored the comment and relaxed. "Trouble is," he mused, "I let you ride that horse. I should have made you walk ... all the way."

  He sat up and began to roll a smoke. "And I should have made you carry the pack too."

  She glared at him. He took a stick from the fire and lighted his cigarette. "A good woman needs to work," he said. "They're unhappy if they aren't working. Keep 'em busy, that's what I say."

  "You!" she said witheringly. "What do you know?"

  He drew deep on the cigarette. "I know you're my woman, Maria Cristina. Maybe I'll make you my woman tonight."

  "Maybe you die." She looked at him, her eyes fierce and proud.

  "Sure," he said, "my mistake was letting you ride. If you had followed behind with a pack on your back you'd be happy now. Next time we move, you walk."

  "You think you strong!"

  The moon had risen beyond the mesa and the cholla needles were like white flowers in the strange light, a beautiful white like a garden of flowers ... a garden of death. A bat dipped and darted through the air and out across the pool something splashed in the water.

  He rolled up on his elbow again. "Always figured to get myself a ranch. Just a few cows and some horses. Mostly horses. Nothing real big, just a place that's mine. I want my own home.

  "I always wanted a place with a view. One where I can see all the way into tomorrow ... a place with a long trail leading to it with my house at the end of the road. I want to see my own horses feeding in my own meadow. I want to see some youngsters growing up."