“Then Blaine really wasn’t dead?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “I didn’t see Blaine. I just wandered around on the desert, and didn’t see anybody.”
Walker didn’t like it, but there wasn’t very much he could do about it.
By midnight we could travel, and the prospector put us all in his flivver and headed for the main road to the county seat. It wasn’t over five miles from his shack, that main road, and we were at the county seat by daylight.
The sheriff heard the story.
Then he organized a posse and rounded up Blaine.
There was only once when the sheriff threatened to give me away. That was when Walker was telling about how I got lost in the desert and walked in a big circle.
The sheriff was seized with a fit of coughing.
He’d known me for ten years, been in the desert with me. Many’s the night we’d lain and listened to the tale of the whispering sand as it slithered along on the wings of the wind.
Pay Dirt
I. A Dying Man’s Wisdom
I could tell that he was going to die, almost from the first minute I saw him. I’ve lived too long in the desert to be fooled on those things.
He was running, if you could call it that. And that was a bad sign. Then again he had most of his clothes torn off. And he was soft and he had been fat. Those things weigh against a man when the desert has her way with him.
It was along in the afternoon, and the sun was sending out long shadows. The man showed as a speck at first, wobbling in a crazy zigzag. His shadow was jet black, as is the way with desert shadows in the summer.
Old Pete knows the desert even better than I do.
“Get that second burro unpacked,” he told me. “There’s some canned tomatoes in that pack, and we’ll need the canvas, and all the water. Take one of the blankets and soak it in water.”
We weren’t over five miles from Owl Wells, so we had water and to spare. I started throwing off the pack ropes. Pete went out to meet the running man.
I caught a glimpse of Pete trying to flag the man down. He waved his arms, shouted, yelled. It wasn’t any use. The guy was plumb loco. Pete finally had to catch him. Then the guy let out a whoop and started to struggle, as though Pete had been a cannibal. Then he went limp and Pete eased him down to the desert.
“Make it snappy!” he yelled at me.
I started the burro over that way, sopping water on the blankets as I came.
The fellow was an awful sight.
His skin was like a boiled lobster. His lips were cracked until they were taut, drawn back from the teeth. The tongue was black and swollen. Most of the clothes were gone. Pete took off the few rags that remained. We lay him on the wet blanket, put a little tomato juice in his mouth, sprinkled him with water, made a shade with the big bed canvas.
“Any chance?” I asked, knowing that there wasn’t, but just to be sociable.
Pete shook his head.
The man had been too fat. Thirst and heat had sizzled the lard off of him.
And when that happens there’s some sort of an acid poison that gets into the system. It does with every one who gets out in the desert when it’s hot. But a fat man gets it worse. That’s why we always use tomatoes instead of water. It helps to cut that acid.
We worked until sunset with this party. Along about dusk he opened his eyes and was conscious.
We’d been feeding him tomatoes and keeping his skin sopped with water.
As soon as he came to, we gave him some more water. He gulped it down as though he had been a piece of dried blotting paper.
“More,” he said.
Pete shook his head.
“Not yet. Try to sleep.”
The man rolled his head from side to side.
“The judge,” he said.
Pete frowned.
“What about the judge?”
The man tried to talk, but his tongue got in his way and he was awfully weak.
“The automobile — broken axle — tow car — judge—”
He closed his eyes.
Pete looked at me and frowned.
“Say, d’you s’pose there’s another one of ’em out in the desert? They must have come in from the auto road. Tried a short cut, maybe.”
He cocked his eye over toward the east. A full moon was tipping its rim over the hills.
“Say, Bob,” he said, “d’you s’pose you could track this pilgrim by moonlight?”
“Maybe.”
“If you can’t, you can stay with him and I’ll go.”
I reached for my hat.
“I can track him if you could,” I said, which wasn’t exactly true. There’s no man can hold his own with Pete Harder in the desert. But then, I wasn’t going to let Pete get too puffed up.
I waited to see if he was going to make any come-back.
“The quicker you start the sooner you’ll find out,” he said. “This guy’s got about one chance in a hundred. I’ll know by morning. If he can move I’ll make Owl Wells. What I’m afraid of is that there may be a woman—”
I didn’t hear the rest. I was moving away in the desert.
You can track easier when the moon is angling up or down. It makes shadows back of the little ridges of disturbed sand. When it’s straight overhead, it flattens things out too much.
I wanted to cover all the ground I could, so I pushed right along. After five miles I got a hunch my man had been walking in a circle. I cut across at right angles, and picked up his tracks again within half a mile. I backtracked those for a mile, then did the same thing, and made another short cut.
This time the steps were more evenly spaced and were in a straight line. Looked as though he’d been more certain of himself then, and a lot stronger. I pushed right along. The course he was traveling would have been a short cut over the Red Mountains to the automobile road, and I knew a short cut that would take off a whole lot of miles from that. I acted on a hunch and took that short cut.
As soon as I came down out of the mountain pass on the old Indian trail I could see the machine. The moon was pretty much overhead now, but the shadows were black as ink, what there was of them. The road was an old short cut some of the oldtimers used. There wouldn’t be a machine over it in a month.
They’d taken out the rear axle all right. The car was right there and was going to be for some little time. I poked around in it. There were suitcases, a couple of bags of golf sticks, some overcoats, and a lot of junk. The baggage was expensive.
There wasn’t any sign of a canteen. Either they didn’t have any or they’d taken ’em with them. I was inclined to think they hadn’t had any.
There was a little pile of charred embers by the side of the running board, an empty thermos bottle, and some grease-stained papers. I looked around and found some chicken bones and bread crusts.
Looked as though one of the men had gone for help, the other had stayed with the car — for awhile. He’d eaten the lunch. The embers weren’t so awfully old. I looked at the radiator and found it was full of water, looked around the car and found the tracks of two men all milled up. Then one set of tracks headed out over the desert. Those were the tracks of the man we’d found. I poked around and found the other man’s tracks. He’d started back down the road.
He’d started running almost at once. Maybe he’d got thirsty waiting, maybe he’d just got the lost-panic. People get that way when they’re left alone in the universe with themselves. They want to start running. It’s just a panic, fear feeding on fear.
I swung back down the road. Within two miles I found a coat and vest. There were papers in the pocket, a watch in the vest. It had run down. There was a big Masonic emblem on the chain, gold set with diamonds.