And we were miles and miles from the nearest succor.
It was mid-afternoon before I gained the place where I wanted to go, and I was burned red, my feet were masses of raw flesh, swollen, tortured. I left bloody prints on the hot ground.
But Carl’s burros were there.
I managed to catch one after an agony that seemed an eternity of suffering, and got on his back. I steered him by pulling his ears, turning his head this way and that, and I prodded him along with the point of a sharp rock.
The couple were still up the cañon above. Once I heard the girl laugh.
It was a care-free, voluptuous laugh. The sound churned up anger in my soul, but I was a sick man. Ten thousand times more foolish to try to sneak up on them and get a weapon by surprise than to do what I had in mind. It was a slim chance, and an only chance.
I prodded the burro along at a snail’s pace. I was afraid I might be discovered at any time. It was ten miles to where I’d cached my own stock, and I was naked, sunburned, wounded by stone bruises, weaponless in the midst of the Yaqui country.
The burro plodded on.
The coolness of dusk was like a benediction to my parched skin, but the fever was commencing, and soon I burned just as though ten thousand suns were beating down upon my skin. The burro wanted to quit for the night, and I had trouble with him.
Then, just as I was figuring it was hopeless, after all, there was a flicker of motion in the dark shadows, and something jumped toward me.
The burro started, shied, and I spilled to the ground.
Tina was on me, muttering soothing words, crooning, patting my hot skin, her fingers at my feet. Then she caught the burro, put me back on, slipped a rope around his neck, and started to lead him.
The next three hours were like a nightmare, but we came to her camp. Tina had herbs — where she’d gotten them, I don’t know. She put them on my skin, making sort of a paste by bruising the leaves between smooth rocks and spreading them over me. There were other herbs she put on my sore feet. I slept.
In the morning Tina was there again, and with her was another girl, a blonde, who was swathed in a light blanket and who limped as she walked.
“You?” I asked.
She nodded.
“I’m Stella McRae.”
“You found the mine?”
“Yes, I kept on after the Indians got the old prospector, and found it. I knew a little something about placer work. I had dabbled around in geology in college, and I washed out quite a bit of gold. Then the girl and the man came... You know what they did.”
“How did you get here?”
“Tina was scouting around. She was worried about you. She found me, put leaves on my skin, and hid me in the shade. She walked here, got a burro, came back to me, carried me in, then started to look for you. You tried to send Tina home, but she doubled back.”
I held out my hand to Tina. There were tears in her dark eyes.
“He whispered to me,” she said.
I didn’t know about that. But I’d left an extra revolver with Tina, and somebody or something was doing a lot more than whisper to me about what I was going to do with it.
I didn’t say anything, though; I let the girls think we were starting back.
Stella McRae never said a word about the lost gold, yet I knew what that gold meant to her.
It was well after midnight of the third day that I felt well enough to try it. I’d manufactured some sandals out of a pack saddle. My clothes were mostly flour sacks.
The girls were sleeping. I took a burro and the gun, left a note scribbled with charcoal, and started.
It was dark, pitch-dark, but I could get the direction from the stars, and the burro could feel out the road to travel. By gray dawn I was near where I wanted to be.
I slipped off the burro and started a stalk, and I’d never stalked a deer with more caution.
I came to the cañon just as the first rays of dawn were making things light, and I hugged the cold shadows, my gun held at ready. Carl Lugger wasn’t going to get any breaks, not if I knew it. My sore feet made walking an agony, but there was that in my soul which transcended any bodily pain.
The sun came up over the top of the ridge, but the rays wouldn’t penetrate into the cañon for a couple of hours yet. A faint wind stirred through the trees. The water rippled and purled over the rocks.
I saw the cold ashes of a dead fire, and then I saw something white, bulky. I bent forward. It looked like a flour sack. I reached for it.
It was the sack of gold, so much of it that it would have torn the double cloth unless handled carefully. That was strange. Why would they leave the gold out in the open in this manner? As a trap?
I looked swiftly about me, and then my eye caught a pile of cloth.
I looked, rubbed my eyes, and looked again.
There were silk undies, well-tailored outing clothes, khaki hiking jacket. And there were a man’s clothes, even down to the underwear.
I looked more closely, saw the barefoot tracks leading up the cañon.
And then I saw the tracks made by Yaqui Indians. The cañon was full of them. I’d been so intent upon detecting the sleepers I hadn’t bothered to peer into the dim light for tracks.
There was no sign of weapons. The Indians had cleaned them out. But they’d not bothered with the gold. That was typical Yaqui psychology. There was plenty of gold in the country. They didn’t do much bartering, and, when they did, they used the gold as sparingly as possible. They knew that gold attracted unwelcome visitors.
I judged the tracks were about two days old.
The girl was a brunette. Her skin would withstand the sunlight better than the man’s. But that blazing sunlight at a high elevation with the actinic rays working overtime... and two days!
I shrugged my shoulders.
Doubtless the Yaquis had been watching the camp for some time. They’d seen the couple send their two victims out into the sunlight, stripped naked, barefooted. And the Yaquis had doubtless chuckled at the performance.
They are cruel, those Yaquis, when the occasion demands, and they are fighting to keep their remaining country free from invaders. But they are also just, with a justice that is not tempered by mercy.
I loaded the gold on the burro and started back, reaching the camp well toward noon. I handed the gold to Stella McRae.
“Yours,” I said.
She asked me questions. I did not answer them then, and I haven’t answered them later. Neither did I try to return to the cañon for more gold, nor to follow the barefoot tracks of the two who had been driven from that shade.
I knew what I would find. First the prints of bare feet. Then a little spot of blood. After that, more blood, until finally the whole imprint of the foot would be found outlined in blood, blood that was baked black beneath the rays of the fierce sun. And if I followed those bloody tracks...
We were unmolested on the return journey.
Stella McRae gave some gold to the fat Mexican, a good deal to Tina. She wanted me to take half. I refused. She would probably need it all. Perhaps, some day when things had blown over, I’d slip back into that Yaqui country, traveling alone and light, and bring out some more gold. I hoped it would not be in the form of a bullet.
We parted at the shack. Stella McRae and I left the others. Tina and the fat Mexican kissed me good-by. Stella and I flivvered off across the desert. We were silent during most of the trip.
She kissed me good-by at Yuma. There were tears in her eyes, and she made me promise to call on her. Me, a sun-browned desert adventurer, calling upon a society girl! And yet—
I didn’t return to Hollywood immediately. I waited a couple of nights on the desert. I wanted to hear the sand whisper again. Finally I loaded up and drove back.