Suddenly something buzzed by me and sang off into the distance.
A bullet? The sound lasted too long.
Struggling on, I paused again, hearing a queer, cricket-like sound. I knew that sound. It was the croaking made by the red-spotted frog.
And I knew something else. The life of that frog was lived in canyons or in places near permanent springs or seeps.
Water was near.
With a lunge, I came to my feet as though pricked with a knife point. Wildly, I stared around, and saw nothing.
And then that sound again ... something buzzed by me that I knew for a bee. Quickly I started after it, taking three faltering steps before realizing that the sound had died away.
Scrambling and falling among the rocks, I came upon it suddenly--a basin in the white granite, filled to the brim with water ... and it was no mirage.
I crawled down to it and splashed water into my face, then scooped a handful into my mouth and held it there, feeling the delicious coolness, and then the actual pain as some trickled slowly down my throat.
It seemed a long time that I lay there, letting that one gulp of water ease down my raw throat. And then after a bit I tried again.
The sun was blistering hot on the granite where I lay, so I crawled into the shade alongside the water. There was room to stretch out there. Several times I drank ... once my stomach tried to retch.
When perhaps an hour had passed, I began to think.
The girl was back there ... Dorinda. She and the horses ...
But there had been a man who shot at me. Or had that been delirium?
Weakly, I struggled to sit up, and then I filled the canteen. I was going back. I had to go back. I had to know.
Chapter Four.
My old tracks were on the sand to guide me, and I found the place where I had fallen in attempting to draw and return the fire of the man with the rifle. There was a rock where such a man might have stood, some distance off, but in plain sight. Around where I had fallen there were no tracks but my own.
More carefully now--for it might not be delirium that the man had shot at me--I moved among the rocks of white granite toward the place. ...
Gone ...
Dorinda was gone, my horses were gone, my packs and my gold were gone. Nothing was left.
There had been four or five riders, and they had approached from the west. They had taken Dorinda, my Winchester, my horses--and they had vanished.
They must have believed me dead. Here I was, alone, on foot, and miles from any possible help.
Standing there in the partial shade of that rock, I knew that I was in more trouble than I had ever been in my life. I had a canteen of water and a pistol with a belt of ammunition. But I had no horse, no food, and no blanket. The nearest settlement of which I knew was maybe a hundred miles away to the west--a Mormon town called San Bernardino.
For the moment my canteen was filled with water, and I had recently drunk. The tank that I had found in the rocks was a half-mile back up the draw; if I retraced my steps and camped there for the night I should have walked a mile to no purpose.
Pa, he always taught us boys to make up our minds, and once made up, to act on what we decided, and not waste time quibbling about. So I taken up my left foot and stepped out toward the west and followed it with my right, and I was on my way.
But I wasn't going far at midday, which it was by now. So I walked on from one of those islands of rock to another, sometimes resting in the shade a mite, then going on to another one, but always holding to the west. And away down inside me I began to get mad.
Until then I hadn't been mad, for we Sacketts, man and boy, are slow to anger, but when we come to it we are a fierce and awful people.
Another thing Pa had taught us boys was that anger is a killing thing: it kills the man who angers, for each rage leaves him less than he had been before--it takes something from him.
When that black-eyed girl back there at Hardyville asked me to help her get on to Los Angeles, I suspicioned trouble, but woman-made trouble, nothing like this. Now those men who chased after her had got her, and they had shot at me, left me for dead. They had taken my outfit and my gold.
Well, now, that was enough to make a body upset.
Seemed to me this was a time for anger, and it came upon me. It was no wild, fly-off-the-handle rage, but a cold, deep-burning anger that pointed me at them like a pistol.
They would have gone to Los Angeles, but no matter. Wherever they had gone, I would find them.
A journey, somebody said, begins with one step, so I taken that step. I was started, and before I set my foot down for the last time on that journey there would be blood on the moon.
At sundown I struck out, headed westward.
My life depended on getting to water before my canteen emptied. By now they had probably left the Palms, but that was away off to the north and beyond my direction now. I was going to hold westward, and hope.
A man afoot can walk a horse down. It has been done many a time, and while I had no idea of walking them down, if I could come up to water and find food I'd not be far behind them when they reached Los Angeles.
Food ...
My stomach was already chafing my backbone from hunger, and my belly sure was thinking my throat must be cut, it had been so long since I'd eaten. Nonetheless, I just kept picking my feet up and putting them down.
We mountain boys were all walkers. Mostly it was the fastest way to get any place back in the hills, for often a boy could cross a mountain afoot where no horse could go ... if he owned a horse, or even a mule.
Westward the mountains lifted up maybe a thousand feet above the desert, but I'd crossed higher mountains, and if I couldn't go through, I'd go over.
Due west I walked, keeping a steady pace for upwards of an hour, then resting a few minutes and going on again. Two, three times I found rough going that held me up, but by moonrise I was close to the mountains and I picked out a narrow Indian trail or sheep trail. It showed white against the desert and between the rocks;
I'd followed many such, and recognized it for what it was.
Most such trails are narrow, maybe four to eight inches wide, and usually easier to see from a distance than close up. I mean, from a cliff or ridge you can pick them out at quite a distance; but on the ground and close up they are hard to find, unless in regular use. But a body gets a knack for seeing them after a bit.
This one went south along the mountains, and I followed it for about a half-mile until it joined up with a westbound trail that cut into the mountains.
Following it over and through the hills I found another spring at the foot of a granite spur that stretched out into a high mountain valley. The spring was marked by two patches of white granite, easy to see against the dark rock of the mountain.
In drift sand close by, I bedded down and made some sleep, after a long pull at the water in my canteen. Come daybreak, I drank from the spring, refilled my canteen, and took off to the westward while the sun was still below the horizon.
It came on me then if I was to eat I'd have to look sharp, or maybe lay out near a water hole of a night and try to kill something that came for water. A sheep would be best, but one more day without grub and I'd tackle a desert wolf or most anything that walked or flew--or crawled, for that matter.
It was about then that I came up to the horse tracks.
There must have been fifty in the lot, maybe more, and they were pretty well strung out. These were not wild stuff, but shod horses, most of them, and they were driven. As near as I could tell, they were driven by two men.
Right away I took to the rocks to study it out.
The way it seemed to me, this was no country for an honest man to be driving horses. There were no ranches anywhere within miles, and no occasion for anybody to be moving a herd through here that I could grasp hold of. Anybody moving horses would be likely to keep to well-traveled trails and known water holes.