I listened to the wind in the pines, thought of the apartment I had fixed up in Hollywood, my car, the chauffeur — and I was satisfied it was all a mistake, trying to live in civilization. I had gotten soft. The elevation and the wind kept me from being comfortable in a single blanket. That was what beds and mattresses, hot baths, and servants had done for me.
Toward morning I got more sleep.
As I rolled up my blanket and chewed on a little parched corn meal, I got the idea some one was watching me. I got back in the shadow of the pines and waited for more than an hour. But nothing moved that I could see, except some deer that came in to the water hole.
I oozed out of the shadow and slipped down the ridge. Here and there I could see tracks, Indian tracks. Then I came to some softer soil and saw shod tracks, those of a woman and those of a man.
I studied those tracks. They’d been made right after a light rain, and then the sun had baked them in the soil. They were running tracks. The woman went first. Back of her, covering her retreat, the man plodded along.
I could see where he’d fired a gun from time to time, a thirty-thirty. The brass shells were along the side of the trail he’d made. It hadn’t been an Indian filing those shots or he’d have picked up the cartridges.
Then I came to where Indian tracks had intercepted the man tracks. The girl seemed to have gotten away. The Indians and the man milled around in something of a mess, and then there were no more tracks of a man’s shoes.
I crept along cautiously, watching, waiting. It looked like a poor time to be trying to sneak a mine out of the Yaqui country. It has been done, but only when a man could slip into the country, work fast and silently, and slip out again.
Apparently the society girl and the prospector had run into trouble. He’d probably told her the story of the mine, one he’d discovered earlier, only to be shot up and driven out. She’d had the bullet removed for proof, then financed the expedition. And it looked as if the prospector were out of the game.
Twice that afternoon I had the idea I was being followed. So that night I built a little fire, well screened by brush, let it die down to coals. Then I took some brush tips and filled out my blanket so it looked like a sleeper. I placed the dummy right close to the circle of coals and climbed a tree to wait.
Half an hour passed without anything happening. I was getting ready to come down, figuring my ideas of being followed had all been the bunk. Then I saw a shadow cautiously gliding toward the camp. I crouched in the tree, saw that my six-gun was loose in the holster, and waited.
I was unprepared for that which followed.
They shot in a crashing volley without warning. I could see the flashes of their guns, hear the whine of the bullets, see the dummy figure jump and twitch as the bullets crashed into it.
Then everything was silent.
I waited for them to come up to plunder. Then, if there weren’t too many, I’d show them the difference between shooting down a tenderfoot doctor and tackling a fellow that had spent most of his life in the desert.
But they didn’t come in. They were satisfied.
I saw them moving off, a compact little group.
I waited an hour, got down the tree, went to my blanket. There were half a dozen holes in it. I dug into the ground back of the blanket, probing after bullets. I got a couple. They were golden, and they looked as though they’d been but freshly molded.
Usually the Yaquis will give one warning to a white man in their country. That warning takes the shape of an Indian standing with upraised palm, motioning the traveler to go back. When one has that warning, if he’s wise, he goes back. I’d been trying to keep under cover and not get that warning. But they weren’t giving any.
IV
By the Painted Rock
The way this play stacked up, there was just one thing to do, and it was up to me to do that quickly.
Sometimes a fellow can get away with a stake from the Yaqui country. It has been done. Sneak into it along the backbone of the Sierra Madres, keep quiet, find a mine, take what can be taken, and leave. It’s a big country, and if a man keeps well under cover he can stay in it for weeks without any one being the wiser.
Now I was up against it right. Something had riled the boys more than usual. I didn’t know just what, but I wasn’t staying to find out; not after they had me spotted.
I shouldered my pack and started out.
Traveling a rough country in the dead of night isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. In the first place, very few people realize how utterly dead dark the country can get. They’re accustomed to some sort of street light.
But I had the stars, and there’d be a lemon peel of moon sometime before dawn. I did the best I could, watching to see I didn’t sprain an ankle.
After a while I struck easier going. Then the moon came up. Then it got gray dawn, and I slipped along at a half run. By the time the east was turning rosy I’d picked my hiding place, a little patch of scrub brush, way up on a naked shoulder of mountain. The black shadows would contrast with the glitter of sunlight on that bare slope when the day got well started, and I’d be pretty safe from detection. If anybody did start coming my way I’d have lots of open country to scatter lead over.
I dozed off because I was tired. The flies woke me up. I was cramped. My hip was on a rock. I moved, batted at the flies, shifted my weight to the other hip, and dozed off.
I thought I smelled smoke. Then I thought I heard the high notes of a woman’s laugh. I frowned. It was a poor place to get goofy ideas.
Then I heard the bass rumble of a man’s voice.
I sat up, looked around carefully, and then began to bore my eyes into the shadows below me.
There was a little cañon opening up below the bare shoulder of mountain. It ran down in a steep gash of boulder and gravel until it hit a patch of pines. Then there was some brush, and, lower down, dense shade. I thought I could hear the trickle of water. And on the ledge a face had been painted.
Then my eyes caught a flicker of motion, and a girl walked out of the shade.
She must have been four hundred yards away. I wouldn’t see too many details, but she was slender, graceful-limbed, and she was white.
A man called to her, and she stepped back.
It was a bad situation, but my duty was clear. They were whites, and I’d probably drawn the Indians to them. There was an even chance the Yaquis would pick up my trail sometime during the day and follow it up. I’d have to warn those people, get ’em to take cover with me, make a stand during the day, travel at night.
I broke cover and came down the side of the slope, intent only on getting across that patch of sunlit space in the shortest possible time.
I hit the boulders, jumped from rock to rock, clattering my way down to the bottom. Yet they didn’t spot me. They must have been the worst sort of tenderfeet.
I slipped through the shadow and came on them.
It was a pretty scene. She was in his arms, his head bent down over her lips, one arm around her waist, pulling her toward him.
“I hate to interrupt, folks,” I said.
They gave one swift jump. The girl darted to one side. The man swung a hand toward a new, shiny gun that dangled from a leather holster that showed a hardware-store yellow.
“Forget it!” I snapped. “You’re in Yaqui country The Indians are on the warpath over something or other, and I’m afraid they’re trailing me. I stumbled onto your camp and so had to warn you.”
The man’s hand slowly left his hip, but his eyes were hard and watchful.
“Who are you?” he asked.
I let him have it in bunches. There wasn’t much time to waste.
“Zane’s the name, Bob Zane. Came into this country at the request of a dying doctor, looking for a lost patient, Stella McRae... and, maybe, hoping to dig up a little metal for my pains.”
Their eyes flickered from face to face.
“I’m Stella McRae,” said the girl.
“Figured you’d have to be her, or else the nurse, Miss Marian. Who’s the man?”
She sighed.
“That’s Ned Craleigh.” Then, as if feeling more explanation was due me, added: “He was the man whom I hated. Now I love him.”
The man nodded. “Her father interceded to get her to marry me. She thought I’d bought him. She wanted to get money to square the account. She did it. I followed her. She wanted to buy me off, but she came to realize my affection was on the level.”
I let his words seep through my mind, trying to figure everything they meant.
“In other words, you’ve found the mine?”
It was the girl who answered.
“And how!” she said.
I looked her over. She was a dark kid with smoky eyes and red lips. There was a brazen way she had of looking at one. Her clothes were outing stuff, but class from top to bottom. She smiled into my eyes.
“Like my looks?” she asked.
I caught a glimpse of the man’s face. It was twisted into black hatred. Only for an instant did the expression flicker on his features, and then he was smiling again.
“Come on and I’ll show you what we’ve found,” he said.
I followed him. The girl came behind me.
There was a little spring, a stream, some piles of dirt that had evidently been washed, a gold pan. The man tugged at a flour sack, which was doubled back and sewed to reënforce it.
I caught a glimpse of yellow metal.
“Gold?” I asked.
“Gold,” he said, and his lips mouthed the word as though the very thought had started a flow of saliva.
I gave a swift look at the way the place had been worked — amateurish.
“There’s lots more here,” I said
The man nodded. “It goes down from the grass roots.”
“You haven’t any burros. I’ve got some pack stock cached a few miles from here. Maybe we can make a dicker. But we’ve got to get out now. We can’t stay here.”
He looked at the girl. She nodded.
I rubbered around some more. Somehow or other, things didn’t seem just right. Then I caught a glimpse of some clothes, woman’s clothes they were: silk undies, hiking stuff, boots, a jacket.
The girl followed the direction of my glance.
“Sloppy housekeeping,” she said, and moved over to the pile.
She tucked the silk out of sight, threw the other clothes over her arm. Something rolled from the pocket of the trousers, something that glittered. I picked it up. It was a compact.
“How about making a deal on the burro transportation?” I asked.
The man laughed.
“Don’t be foolish. We’ve got burros cached out ourselves. How’d you think we got in here?”
There was a rasping something in his tone I didn’t like. The girl’s hand was stretched out for the compact.
The cover was loose. I had a peep inside, and I saw it was an outfit for a blonde. This girl was a brunette. And I saw the print of a woman’s bare foot in the mud by the stream.
I jumped back.
The man’s hand streaked for his gun. It was the girl that got me, though. She went through the air in a flying tackle. By the time my rifle was halfway around she was clinging to my arm.
“Shoot him, Carl!” she screamed.
And I found the end of Carl’s gun boring into my eyes.
“Drop the rifle,” he ordered.