“Well?”
“Then the sun came out. The ground dried almost instantly and the sand and silt started to drift, and covered up the tracks so they couldn’t be followed.”
Her voice was impatient as she spat another question at me.
“Well, what’s the answer?”
“But the pressure of the wheels and the feet of the horses pushed the silt into a hard mud. The sun baked it into ’dobe. Then the winds blew for several weeks, and in places all the light stuff was blown away. The tracks that had become invisible became visible again, not as ruts sunk into the ground, but as ridges, high above the loose stuff that had blown away.”
I could see her eyes glitter with black interest under the silvery moonlight.
“These are the tracks of the buggy?”
“These are the tracks of a buggy driven about that time, when the ground was wet, and with two horses.”
She sighed, a peculiar, tremulous sigh.
“Let’s go,” she said.
We rode on, following the tracks as best we could. We could only pick them up in the silty spots where the wind had blown. But the buggy was going straight when those tracks were made, evidently piloted toward some star or natural landmark which had showed in the moonlight.
It was nearly daylight when we came to the place where the buggy had stopped. Here were crisscross ridges of earth, miscellaneous mushrooms of ’dobe.
“The rig stopped here for a long time,” I told her. “Then, when it went away, it took an aimless course as though there was no driver.”
She nodded.
I poked around in a sand drift. A bit of bone caught my eye. I scooped away the sand. The body, what was left of it, was that of Sam Slade. The girl wasted no time in exclamations or hysterics. She joined me in getting the sand away, and in making another search. We found Pete Lucas just as the sun went up.
There was a paper in the sand near where Slade’s hand had been. It was scrawled, blotched with red stains, but it told the story:
Lucas, Carl Flint and me held up John Lorne of a big gold shipment. I sneaked the gold from the other two and buried it here. Peter Lucas found me. I offered to split fifty fifty. He agreed. Lorne’s wife had us spotted and made a gun play. We beat it out here in a rig. Lucas found where the gold was and ambushed me, but I managed to get him even after he shot me in the back. I tried to get into the rig, but the horses got frightened and ran away. The desert is killing me. God, it’s hot! Lorne is innocent. The gold is...
The scrawl became unintelligible.
I looked from the note to the sand hills, red in the rays of the newly risen sun. It took me a few minutes to spot the handle of a shovel. I dug it out of the drifting sand. After that it was easy. The gold was there. I had it uncovered and before her within half an hour.
Tears streamed down her face. The sun had turned from a red ball to a white-hot disk. The heat rays were shimmering over the desert.
“I’m sorry, I—”
There came the sound of something ripping through the air, the plunk of a high-power bullet striking a sand bank. Powdery sand scattered over us both. The bullet had gone directly between us, a space of inches. A second later there came the sound of a thin, spiteful crack. The sort of noise smokeless powder makes in the heat of the desert. I flung her down against the sand. Another bullet zipped past my arm. A third threw sand in my face. I dug a trench, after a fashion, and got out my old shiny forty-five from its shoulder holster. Not much good against a rifle.
He came on then, charging, the windshield of his automobile down, his rifle clattering a volley. Breastworks or trenches were no good now. He was going forty miles an hour toward our flank. I ran to one side so he’d concentrate his fire on me, and give the girl a chance. My old forty-five bellowed an answer.
The automobile gave him the advantage of quick motion. But it’s hard to shoot from a moving car, harder to shoot a rifle than a revolver. And the old forty-five has accounted for many a rabbit on the run.
I saw dust flick from the shoulder of his coat, saw the hand drop, the arm straighten. The gun slid down, hit the windshield support. He grabbed for it with his other hand, and the wheels went into a skid. The rifle struck the ground and went end over end. He slammed on the brakes, but I was running forward.
He took in the situation with a swift glance, and did the only thing available. He stepped on the throttle. I fired twice to stop him, trying to find a rear tire, but he rounded a sand hill and got away.
The girl came to me. We picked up the rifle.
“He must have either followed us, or else had some tip we didn’t know anything about.”
She nodded. “But we have the gold, and Slade’s confession!” Her voice showed how she felt.
I rigged a pack on my saddle and walked, leading the horse, carrying the rifle. The girl rode the other horse. The olive eyes gleamed with a deep light.
“To think that those marks would come to light after weeks!”
I couldn’t resist the opportunity for a crack.
“Desert justice,” I said.
And she nodded, looked out at the shimmering waste of sand, out where the horizons danced in the heat, and the mirages chased each other in a game of ripple-tag.
We got to Holtville, made a report, and organized a posse to track down Carl Flint, the flabby man with the cold eyes. It was two days before they found him. One of my bullets had punctured his gasoline tank. He’d abandoned the automobile and tried to make it for Yuma. His way lay across drifting sand hills. He hadn’t made it.
The girl was to leave that night, to join her husband. The Governor had issued a pardon. The gold had been restored to its owners. There was a matter of a reward, almost five thousand dollars.
“It’s yours, Bob Zane.”
I shook my head. “You stayed with it, did the work. It’s yours.”
“No. We’ll split it.”
I shook my head again. “The desert keeps me supplied. You and your husband will need it.”
We sat around my camp fire. Fifteen minutes and she would go toward town to take her train. The reward was all that remained, and I wouldn’t change my attitude on that.
The wind came up and the sand rustled softly against the sage. She listened to it.
“The desert!” she breathed, and her voice was soft with emotion.
I thought of the three men who had robbed and cheated, and gone to the desert, of the girl who had followed, of the desert justice of the tracks that stuck in the air, the three bodies buried in the sand hills. It was the drifting sand, the whispering sand, the shifting desert that had lured them to their doom, betrayed them at the last, covered their bodies.
It was a pleasant reverie. Was the sand telling the sage about it? Had it whispered its judgment in the ears of the dying men before they had succumbed to the sentence of doom which had been pronounced?
And then, abruptly, two arms were around my neck. My startled lips felt the clinging caress of warm, moist lips.
There was moisture on my cheek where a tear-stained check pressed against it — and she was gone.
I listened to her feet as they crunched into the soft sand as she walked away, toward civilization, toward the train that would take her to her waiting husband — and I knew then that John Lorne was a lucky man.
The sound of the steps died away. The wind freshened, and the desert whispered soothingly to my tired ears, little sand whispers that didn’t make sense, but vaguely stirred and soothed. And then the swirling sand, eddying against a dead sage, seemed to hiss the words “Desert jussssstice,” and I nodded affirmation.