But now a tenderfoot had gone into the country and had found a golden bullet. He’d found too many of ’em; but then, he was a tenderfoot. If his story was true, there was a society girl in there somewhere, and a nurse who had taken her lover and gone in on a hijacking expedition, and the country would be swarming with Yaquis — perhaps.
There was always the chance the Indians had only stumbled onto the surgeon, shot him up, and figured he was the only miner in the country.
“You will go, señor?” crooned the girl.
I nodded and squeezed her hand.
“If you will show me the way, Tina.”
And then she put her head on my shoulder and cried.
“He wished it so,” she muttered between her sobs.
III
Secret Camps
We started before dawn, trying to get as many miles as possible behind us before it got hot. We had burros, and we were traveling light. The fat Mexican — an aunt or something, I never did get her relationship to Tina straightened out — stood in the doorway of the shack, her head bowed and covered with her skirt, and the sound of her wailing followed us out over the dark grayness that enfolds the desert before dawn.
I’d crossed the Mexican line that night when I came with the girl to see the dying doctor, so I didn’t bother too much about border patrols. We were seven or eight miles south of the border at the start.
The country was rolling, sandy, covered with cactus and some mesquite. The mountains were to the left, blotting out the light that began to ooze through the higher passes as the eastern sky got rosy. We were following a rough trail, and it was hard going.
The girl walked mechanically. Her eyes were filled with grief, but she never complained of fatigue or the cruel rocks that sprinkled the trail as we climbed higher into the mountains.
We stopped about eleven in the shadow of a mesquite and had some cold tortillas and beans. Then I spread the blankets for a pillow, and we got some sleep. It was hot, and the flies were bothersome, but we were tired enough to sleep anywhere.
By two o’clock in the afternoon we were up, and we had a little water from the canteens. Then I tightened the cinches on the pack burros, and we started on again.
We went on until well after dark. It was the sort of travel that took it out of a man, hard, steady, hot, tedious. The girl seemed as fresh as when we had started that morning. Her eyes were a little darker, perhaps. Her lips remained unsmiling, and she seemed in something of a daze, but she traveled at a pace that ate up the miles.
We camped that night. I don’t think she slept much. Once, when the whispers began to drift over the face of the desert, I heard her sobbing to herself. But I didn’t keep awake to listen to her. I was dog tired, and I knew talk would do no good. It was one of those things time alone can heal. She had loved him, and she had loved him with a wealth of passion that only the Latin blood can know.
Perhaps the night wind was stirring the whispering sand until she thought she could hear the sound of his voice. I don’t know. I only know that the Bind sent the whispering sand skidding and whirling through the draw where we had camped, and that the girl sobbed, and that the burros were restless and the stars blazed down steadily.
Early in the morning she was up, and she had the fire going and a little coffee water bubbling by the time I woke up. It was the smell of the coffee that awakened me.
I caught up the burros and saddled the packs. We started as the east was just getting a faint brassy hue that made the stars retire to needle points. It was cold with the dry cold of the desert places. Soon it would be hot. We were rationing ourselves on the water.
Near ten o’clock the girl stopped.
“Can we camp here?” she asked.
I looked at the sun.
“We could make another hour before the siesta,” I said. “Of course, if you are tired—”
She shook her head impatiently.
“We camped here, the second night,” she said, and then I saw the blackened ashes of a little camp fire off to one side.
I nodded and flung the packs off the burros. She crouched down beside the blackened embers and lived with her memories.
The sun was beating down on that little circle of charcoal, but she didn’t seem to mind.
After a while I dozed off.
When the flies woke me up she was still sitting there.
That afternoon we crossed the railroad on an angle and then struck up into the Sierra Madre range. The going got rough, and we ran into some timber. There was more water here, and it was cooler.
After a week we were in a well-watered country, and we began to go pretty careful. I made small fires out of bone-dry wood, and I didn’t make any fire at all at night.
On the tenth day the girl pointed to a little rock-bound depression. From the looks of the trees I figured there was a spring there and some green grass.
“That is where he left me. I camped there and was unmolested. He came back three days later, and — he was as you saw him, shot.”
I nodded.
He’d have stood more chance if she had kept him there and put herbs on the wounds, but there was no use making her feel sorry; and they’d both been pretty well scared. The Yaqui is none too gentle.
“I shall wait there for you,” she said.
I shook my head. “You’ll go back! Now, which way did the señor go from here?”
She shrugged her pretty shoulders.
“I know not the way he went, and I will not go back. I wait. My place is here. You are doing that which he asked. Every night he whispers to me of what I am to do.”
“No, you’ll have to go back. It’ll take me a long time to accomplish what I have in mind. I’ll leave you a burro with plenty of grub.”
She pouted.
“I could be of more use here.”
“No.”
“But we can camp there to-night, in our old camp?”
“To-night only, and there will be no fire.”
She accepted my word as law. We camped there in the dark. There was no sand to whisper now. But the trees rustled in the wind that came up before dawn, and they gave soft whispers, vague promises. It was spooky.
I got her burro packed in the morning. She kissed me good-by. I watched her out of sight and then began to explore the country. I felt certain I could find anything that a tenderfoot had found.
There were jagged mountains, covered with pine, dry air that blew over the ridges, vaulted blue black sky, great cañons that were filled with purple tinged shadows. Everywhere was grim silence, save for the rustle of wind in the tops of the trees.
Somewhere ahead was the place where Indians found gold more plentiful than lead. It was up to me to find that place, and to see that my burros were in condition to bring out much of that treasure.
I found a box cañon with a spring, and I worked all day making a rock enclosure that would keep the burros in the cañon. There was plenty of feed and water.
I camped without a fire.
In the morning I started out, a little parched corn meal tied in a sack at my belt, a little bacon rolled up in a blanket on my back, my rifle and plenty of shells, a six-gun at my hip for work at close quarters.
I went slowly, looking for tracks and hugging the shadows. I saw several deer, and the fresh meat looked tempting, but I wouldn’t risk a shot.
That night I camped high on a ridge by a trickling spring. I made no fire. The single blanket I carried barely served to turn the wind that sprang up about midnight. I lay and shivered, catching a little sleep.