The desert had recorded the tell-tale tracks that had led to the discovery of the real murderer. Every man is entitled to his own thoughts. Mine are that it’s all just two sides of the desert, the grim side that holds justice for murderers, and the happy side that leaves its stamp on men like Pete Ayers.
Pete Ayers clapped me on the back. His bride stared at me with starry eyes.
“We owe it all to you, Bob Zane!” she said, her lips quivering.
But I looked out at the desert. The white heat of an afternoon sun had started the horizons to dancing in the heat waves. Mirages glinted in the distance. A gust of wind whipped up a little desert dust-spout, and it scurried along, the sagebrush bending its head as the dust-spout danced over it.
“No,” I told her, “you owe it to the desert. The desert is kind to those who love it. She held the evidence, carved in sand, for the righting of a wrong and the betrayal of a real culprit to justice.”
Pete Ayers grinned at me and said, “You’re getting so you talk just like that swivel-eyed college professor you guided around last month.”
But his smiling eyes shifted over my shoulder and caught sight of the swirling dust cloud scampering merrily over the desert. I watched his expression soften as his eyes followed the swirling sand. And then I knew that college professor was right.
Fall Guy
Yes, sir, taken any way you’ve a mind to look at it, the desert’s a queer place. And the desert along the Mexican border is in a class by itself. Almost anything can happen down here. Not only can happen, but does. Most of it ain’t believed, though.
Why, just the other day I was mentioning about the wheel ruts sticking up in the air, and some dude pitched in and says, “You mean the ruts are indented in the soil, my good man.” Of course, I told him I wasn’t his good man an’ that I meant the ruts stuck up in the air, like I said.
Finally I’m hanged if I didn’t have to take him out and show him.
There they were, wheel tracks sticking up eight inches above the surface of the desert, and where the horse had walked in between the wheels, there was mushrooms of earth sticking almost a foot up in the air.
The dude rubbed his eyes, and then sat right down on the desert and swore he’d never come west of the Rockies again. He said it was bad enough to have all the people crazy without having the country go crazy, too.
He was so flabbergasted I didn’t tell him how it happened. Simple enough. You know the desert, you’ve probably seen ’em yourself. It happens in the Colorado Basin where the desert soil is mostly a fine silt. They make good ’dobe bricks out of that soil.
A light rain comes along once or twice a year. If somebody drives a wagon over the ground then, the wheels sink down into the soil and so do the horse’s hoofs. But it packs that light silt into a regular ’dobe. Then when the sun does its stuff and the wind blows the powdery silt around this way and that, the ’dobe stays put. After a year or so the tracks’ll be sticking right up in the air. I’ve seen ’em eighteen inches high with regular hills where the horse stepped.
That’s the way with the desert. Strange things happen down there. If you know how they happen they don’t seem so strange. If you just see ’em, and don’t know how they happened, you naturally think the country’s gone crazy.
Take the Desert Queen, for instance. Ever hear of her? No, I don’t mean a mine of that name, I mean a regular woman, the Desert Queen — and she’s a sure enough queen if there ever was one.
I’d heard whispers of her for a couple of years, but I’d never seen her. You know how the desert is, full of whispers. Why, even the sand whispers. You’ll hear it of nights when you’re laid out in your blankets, sand rustling against the cactus stalks and sounding like whispers. Then you’ll hear the sand rustling against the sand, making regular sand whispers. Sometimes it seems as though you can hear what the sand’s saying... just before you drop off to sleep, sort of.
But this here Desert Queen ain’t got nothing to do with sand whispers. She’s a real flesh and blood queen. But I thought for a long while she wasn’t anything but a Sand Whisper.
I heard of her first down in Los Algodones. The roulette table was out four thousand. The proprietor said it was an olive-skinned girl with smoky eyes and a cowboy hat who played a system. I listened to him and grinned. Those gamblers are always inventing stories of people who made big killings. It acts as a come-on for the suckers — their customers.
But six months later I heard of her in Tia Juana. Four thousand again. She seemed to play a system and quit when she got four thousand.
Well, I was sitting right here in this very cantina one night, a year or so later, when I noticed a commotion over at the roulette table. See how this big horseshoe bar winds around? And there’s the house-girls, asking you to dance and buy a drink, over on one side, and the roulette wheel on the other!
I was sitting right about here, and I saw something was happening over at the roulette table. So I got up and strolled over.
She was a slender kid with black hair and smoky eyes, and the eyes were the big part of her face. She was an American, all right, and a beauty. Her skin was a smooth olive, the lips were a dark red, and they weren’t colored up any, either. She was a regular daughter of the desert, the kind that can stay out in the blistering sun and still have a smooth skin and velvet complexion.
She had a cowboy hat and riding boots, a buckskin skirt and a big belt around the waist. There wasn’t any gun in the belt, but you could see where a holster was usually worn. The sun had tanned the rest of the belt a different color. The place where the holster was usually kept was darker.
She was playing a system all right. I don’t know much about roulette systems. Most of ’em are the bunk. But they tell me that if you’ll wait until a certain sequence of colors comes an’ then slide out your bets, you’ve got a better than two-to-one chance.
This girl sure knew her system, and she could control her play. There’s lots of good mathematical systems at roulette. The trouble is most people ain’t got the self-control necessary to stand up an’ play a system. They get to gambling on the side, and then they’re finished.
Personally, I got my own system with roulette. I leave it alone. That keeps me from losing, and that’s more than you can say about most systems.
But this girl was playing as cool and calm as though everybody in the room wasn’t watching her. She’d watch the numbers fall for a few minutes, then make a bet. If she lost she’d double it the next time, and keep doubling. But she didn’t lose. She seemed to know just about where that little ball was goin’ to hop.
I watched her for a while, and then went back and sat down.
Phil Ryan came over and sat down next to me.
“ ’Lo, Sid.”
“ ’Lo, Phil. How’s tricks?”
“So-so.”
“Anything new?”
“I got a job for you, Sid.”
That sounded good to me. Phil and I were buddies for quite a while, and I wanted a chance to get goin’ with him again.
Phil’s another one of those things you wouldn’t believe. He’s a Western gunman. Thought there weren’t any more, didn’t you? Just like those wheel tracks in the desert. You don’t believe ’em until you have ’em explained.
Well, Phil’s like that. He’s what they call a guard. He learned to handle a gun in the Big Scrap. Me, I’m an old-timer, and I’ve packed a Colt over more desert than most people ever see. But Phil was a youngster, one of the new school.
Oh, the gunmen ain’t killers any more. They’re just fellows who can do some fancy shootin’ when the occasion calls for it. There’s lots of capital in the desert country now, and that capital has to keep moving in the form of cash. There’s the out-of-the-way mines with the big payroll, and there’s the tourist resorts on the border with their big stocks of cash, always coming and going.