I saw Brennan fling back his head, throw the canteen from him. His fingers clawed at his mouth. He looked as though the water from the canteen had been some deadly acid that burned its way into his flesh.
For a second I couldn’t understand, and my eye flashed to the canteen.
Then I understood.
A white stream was slipping silently from the mouth of the canteen, a stream, not of water, but of sand.
V. “Isn’t It Beautiful?”
I thought panic was going to grip the man when he realized that he was in the midst of a hostile desert without water, that there were enemies surrounding him.
He got to his feet, swung around, took a running step or two, and came to a dead stop as he heard my voice raised in a low command.
It took him a little while to locate me, and, in that interval, I knew he was getting himself under control.
“Here I am, up here. That’s it. Now work up here towards me, and take it slow. Keep to the shadows. Don’t get impatient and try to come too fast. Take it easy.”
He came up to me, then, listening for my commands.
I kept him well under cover, as well as I could. The sunlight was beating pitilessly down on the rocky slope of the hill, but that made the darkness of the shadows the more intense, and I hoped there was a chance, perhaps one in ten, that he could make it without betraying himself to watching eyes.
I couldn’t understand why those eyes hadn’t seen him before this, didn’t understand it until the sound of a rifle shot, thin and thready in the hot air, came to my ears. Then there was another shot and another, a rattle of swift fire and then silence.
Then I knew, knew even before I heard words of confirmation from Brennan. He and Karg had separated. Karg had been thinking over the Yaqui trick of putting sand in a canteen and getting a man trapped into going into the desert country. It had been just the sort of scheme he liked. He had tried it on Brennan.
They had separated, Brennan tricked into taking the canteen of sand, and Karg had forged ahead with the water. But his cleverness had been his undoing; the Yaquis had spotted him. They had signaled their discovery, concentrated on Karg, and then — torture.
I greeted Brennan. He was mouthing curses against Karg and his trickery.
I interrupted them.
“We stand a chance,” I told him. “The mountains. The Yaquis have been spread out, doing scout work, searching for us. But when they found Karg they all swung in together for an attack. That leaves us unguarded, and if we can get to the mountains there’s a chance.”
He was interested, looking up at the white-hot slopes of the rocky mountains, then back at the tumbled mass of foothills.
“How about Karg?” he asked.
I shrugged my shoulders.
He sighed, got to his feet. “Let’s go,” he said.
I said nothing about the form of the girl I had seen on his back trail, nor did I say anything about the letter in the bullet-ripped leather packet.
We gained the mountains, kept to the hot rocks, leaving but little trail. From time to time, I paused to search the back trail, but I could see no one. And yet I had the feeling that we were being followed. I wondered if it was the girl, or something more sinister.
The afternoon shadows lengthened. I proposed a rest. We’d have to travel long into the night.
“In which direction?” asked Brennan.
“Back of course.”
He shook his head.
“No; I haven’t got what I came here for, yet.”
I said nothing.
We waited. I watched the back trail. We could hear the distant barking of a dog, an hour or so after sunset.
“How about Karg?” asked Brennan.
“That’s the second time you’ve asked about him,” I said.
“It’s the hundredth time I’ve thought about him.”
“Don’t worry about not being revenged. The Indians will take care of that.”
He shuddered.
“That’s exactly it. Think of the stake in the ground... Ugh!”
I looked at the stars, steady, bright, giving lots of light.
“There’s perhaps a village out where that dog is barking,” I told him.
“They’d take him there?”
“Yes.”
He got to his feet uncertainly.
“Okay. Let’s go back. I’ve got to save him. I hate the sight of him. After I rescue him I’ll beat him to a pulp. But I can’t run away and leave him.”
I warned him.
“You don’t stand any chance. They will hear us. They will simply capture us, too.”
“Us?” he said. “You’re going?”
“Of course, if you go.”
He wet his lips.
“I’m going,” he said, and took a stride forward.
I’ve lived in the desert for a long time. I think I know something about woodcraft and the way men stalk in the open. I’d have sworn no one could have crawled up within listening distance without my hearing. But I’d have been wrong.
A slender shape rose from the rocks like a wraith.
Brennan recoiled.
“Phil!” she said.
“Sally!” was torn from his throat, and the word, as he said it, was an exclamation, a prayer, a benediction, and a great longing.
I dropped back, down behind the rocks.
I heard her voice.
“It’s too late,” she was saying. “He dug his own pitfail. The Yaqui murdered him when he found there was no more of the drug. It was the sound of that shot that brought the others.”
They came to me later on.
The woman had established herself with the natives. They considered her as something of a priestess. The desert had done something to her, brought out something of the lithe grace which is inherent in youth and beauty. She had become as a wild thing, perfect in strength, poise, figure.
The Indians considered her a goddess and the priestess of the godhead. She came and she went as she saw fit. And she was promised to a man she didn’t love; wanted the love of a man who loved her, but who would not speak.
So she had brought them into the crucible of the desert.
“If Harry had come,” she told me privately, “openly and fairly, the Indians would have given him safe passage. But he came by trickery and deception. He tried to enslave to the dope habit the guide I sent, so there could be no question of treachery, and, by that treachery of his own, he brought about his own destruction.”
“If he was to have come in safety,” I asked, “why did you make him come at all? What was to be gained?”
She looked at the stars.
“Perhaps it was just to postpone things,” she said softly; “perhaps it was a woman’s intuition. But I have come to know the desert places. I thought that if I could get those two men together out into the desert...”
And I thought of what the desert had done, of how the man who had thought he was hard had had the surface hardness cut away by the hissing sand and the melting heat, until the craven soul beneath that surface had stood forth for all to see.
And I thought of how the tempering fire of the desert heat had fused the character of the other, melted away the surface weakness, and brought to light the inner strength of character.
And I continued to think, long after the two had left me, long after the desert had begun to talk, a wind hissing the sand against the rocks of the mountainside.
They were off to one side, sitting close, talking in low tones, and the desert whispers were sending an undercurrent of whispering sand against the crooning tones of their voices.
I was lulled into a doze.
I awakened with Phil Brennan’s hand on my shoulder.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” he asked softly.
I looked at the grayish white of the desert sand, at the inverted bowl of golden stars, blazing steadily.