“Quick!” she breathed, and grasping the still smoking torch, led me farther back into the black recesses of the mountain.
There was the sound of feet upon the gravel floor of the cave. Some one stumbled, halted. A match blazed, a torch flared, and I could see Wailo, the magician, peering about the shadows.
His wrinkled skin seemed as coarse as an elephant’s foot-pad. But his eyes glittered with an undying spirit that made the flames of the torch glitter in dancing reflections.
For several minutes he stood, listening, watching. Then he stooped, gathered some of the gold and retraced his steps. The torch was extinguished, and darkness fell upon the cave.
We sat, she in my arms, and waited until an hour had passed. Then we, too, sought the sunlight.
I thought much of that cave during the next two days. But mostly the thoughts came to me at night. I wondered if I had dropped so low as to be unworthy of Auno’s confidence.
That fine, clean girl meant more to me than anything in the world. Beauty, charm, perfect health; and we could live the care-free life of Nature’s children out in the desert, out where the tumbled mountains stretched their glistening sides down toward the Armagosa sink, down toward the bitter waters of the poison river, toward the shimmering heat of Death Valley.
Then I thought of the gold. Try as I would, I couldn’t get the yellow metal out of my mind. I thought of what it would buy.
Then I realized what the Indian girl had done. She had put my soul to the test. If I had greed, she had shown me how to take all the gold I could carry and escape. If I had spoken the truth and cared naught for gold — then the next new moon would see us walking together down from the mountain.
The nights passed. I slept less. The thought of the gold tortured my mind.
Then came the old moon, the last night of the withered moon when there was a mere streak of crescent light riding in the heavens a half hour before dawn.
And then I heard the faint boom-boom-boom of Wailo’s drum as the old man communed with himself. I thought of the shriveled arm, the wrinkled face, thought of how he had been with the tribe when he was a young man and walked on the mountainside in the light of the new moon.
And I remembered what Auno had said, that this was the safe time to steal the treasure. I tried not to think of the cursed stuff, but my thoughts turned to the gold.
A clammy sweat clothed my body. I raised myself on one elbow. The camp was silent.
Faintly, I could hear the chant of Wailo’s song of extreme age, the chant that greets the grave. The drum gave forth hollow boomings, throbbing like a pulse of the night. It seemed to lift me up... to lead me...
Waiter, bring me another bottle; and bring a bottle for my friend here, too.
Take the price from this sack. See, it contains gold. There is lots of gold, pure virgin gold. My friend and I are celebrating — celebrating my return to civilization.
Written in Sand
There are nights when a camp fire seems to profane the desert, and this was one of them. The moon hung low and round in the heavens, and the Colorado Basin was bathed in warm, mellow light like the amber of old wine.
But I wanted fried potatoes for breakfast, and I’d put off cooking them until the night got cooler. Boil potatoes for half an hour, then let them stand overnight, cut them into slices and fry them with onions, add a little bacon and wash down with coffee. That’s a breakfast that’ll stay by you. That’s why my camp fire was crackling away under the desert moon, and the water was bubbling and steaming over the potatoes.
Off to the west, a mile or so, was Signal Butte. To the east, the lights of Calexico and Mexicali twinkled like brazen jewels. To the north, the Superstition Mountains basked in the light of the mellow moon.
The flames of the camp fire died down to a bed of glowing coals. A light breeze came up from out of the night, and the desert commenced to whisper.
Desert whispers are funny things, and they vary just as the desert varies. Up around Death Valley the desert whispers will be hard and hissing, filled with an ominous menace. Down here by the border, they’ll be languid, romantic, dreamy.
But the Colorado Basin’s a funny desert, anyway. Down by the Superstition Mountains, where the whole valley is under sea level, and the soil is composed mostly of silt that’s been washed down by the big river, the whole desert’s entirely different from what it is a hundred miles north. Deserts are like that. At times you’ll have high stretches covered with giant cacti and greasewood. Then you’ll have barren places where even a stray sage can’t get nourishment. But always you will hear whispers. They’re the heritage of the desert.
Of course, those whispers, aren’t really voices. I know as well as you do that they’re the noises made by the sand scurrying along on the wings of the desert winds and rustling against the cacti and the sage. And then, when the wind gets stronger, you can hear the sound of sand rustling against sand, the strangest whisper of all.
But here’s something to think about: Those sand whispers somehow or other color the whole desert country. Meet a man who’s lived a long time in the desert, and there’ll be a husky hiss in his voice, a dry whispering note that brands every word he utters. And the desert teems with other whispers, whispers of lost mines, of fabulous fortunes buried by the Spaniards when the Indians turned hostile.
I was thinking about those whispers when the desert began to whisper to me. The ashes glowed in the breath of the wind. The sand scurried by and made little whispering noises, tantalizing sounds that were almost words. I strained my ears to listen — and while I was listening I heard the other sounds that weren’t whispers.
There was the sound of feet in the dry wash, feet that weren’t accustomed to walking on sand. They shuffled, stumbled, stamped a couple of times as the man lurched forward, then shuffled again. They came nearer. A head and shoulders showed in the moonlight as a man came up out of the wash.
“Howdy,” he said, while he was still thirty yards off, and his voice was anxious.
“Howdy,” I said.
He came toward me then, and the moonlight sent a short black shadow splotching the white floor of the desert until it looked like a moving blot of ink.
“You’re Bob Zane?” he asked.
“Yes,” I told him, and waited.
He sat down by the camp fire and held out his hands to the coals as though it had been cold. But it was a warm night.
“They told me I’d find you out near Signal Butte. I had a hard time trying to locate you. Then I saw your fire.”
I waited until he looked up from the coals. Then I said, “Yes.”
He looked back into the fire right away.
“My name’s Lucas,” he said, “Pete Lucas. They tell me you know the desert from A to Z.”
“Nobody really knows the desert, Lucas,” I said.
He shuffled his weight around as though the sand was uncomfortable. He rubbed his hands, and then held them toward the coals some more. What he wanted to say didn’t come easy. I didn’t give him any encouragement. Talk that’s hard to say out on the desert ain’t the sort of talk that’s easy to listen to.
The red embers caught the front of his face. The moon silvered the silhouette. All in all, I got a good look at him. He was about forty years old, and he had something to conceal.
His head moved in swift jerks on a nervous neck. His mouth was weak and the chin was pointed. The nose spread out into wide nostrils. The eyes were weak and watery. The big sombrero that he’d tilted back was obviously new.
“You could help me,” he said.
I didn’t say anything. Any man that had any proposition to make to me could make it unaided.