CHAPTER XLII
As in A Glass, Darkly
IT WAS a bad situation.
The chauffeur had been unable to start his engine, once he had stopped it, and reported picturesquely that forcing it through the desert sands at top speed had "just naturally plumb busted its heart." Alan's animosity could not but soften a little to the new Judith who had so evidently thrown in her lot with theirs, and whose well-timed aid that day had certainly saved him from a lingering death in the desert.
He and Judith had actually talked together almost amicably for several minutes. And it was plain to see that the gentle Rose did not relish the sight of this rapprochement.
Now Mr. Barcus was shrewdly observing an interview between Alan and Rose. And—if the evidence of his senses did not mislead him—he was witnessing their first difference of opinion. It was not an argument acute enough to deserve the name of quarrel, but undoubtedly the two were at odds upon some question—Rose insistent, Alan reluctant.
This last gave way in the end, shrugged, and returned to the car.
"I'm going back up the trail," he announced.
"Feeling the need of some little exercise, no doubt," Barcus suggested.
"Rose thinks it's dangerous to stop here," Alan began to explain, ignoring the interruption.
"Miss Rose is right, eh, Miss Judith?" Barcus interpolated.
Judith nodded darkly.
"According to our friend, the chauffeur," Alan resumed, "it's a good twenty-mile ride to the next pass and then back here. But Marrophat is capable of it—presuming his horses are—and even though we needn't look for them before morning, it would be well to put as much distance between us as possible. So I'm going to see if I can't buy burros from the prospector back there. Rose said he had some—doesn't know how many"
"Three will be enough," Judith interposed. "I mean, don't get one for me. I'm stopping here."
"But" Alan started to protest.
"Please! It's no good arguing, Mr. Law, I've made up my mind, I can be most helpful here, by my father's side," she asserted, and nodded at Trine with a significant smile that maddened him. "He needs me, and no harm can come to me, I'm pretty well able to take care of myself!"
At this Barcus breathed an unheard but fervent prayer of thanksgiving, whose spirit he doubted not was shared by Alan. For it stuck in the memory of Barcus that their friend the prospector (whose shack had sheltered Rose and Barcus after their transit of the desert and prior to the man-made avalanche which had afforded this temporary immunity from pursuit) had mentioned in the hearing of Rose the fact that his string of burros was limited to three. And this intelligence Rose had undoubtedly communicated to Alan.
This, then, must have been the nub of the lovers' quarrel: Rose's insistence that Judith be left behind, Alan's reluctance to consent to this lest he convict himself of the charge of ingratitude, remembering the great service his erstwhile antagonist had done him.
If only Judith might not find cause to change her mind!
Thus, the prayer of Thomas Barcus.
But one dared not trust that young woman to demean herself consistently for as long as two consecutive minutes. It would need no more than a sisterly little spat with Rose to waken the perverse demon dormant in Judith, and bring her right-about-face on the question of staying behind with her father.
Now Mr. Barcus earnestly desired that nothing of the sort should happen. In him distaste for the society of Miss Judith amounted to a passion. His belief in the sincerity of the defiance she had thrown in her father's face was slight, his hope that it would endure until the wind changed or the moon set was nil. He set himself sedulously to divert Judith with the magic of his conversational powers, an offering indifferently received. He was still blithely gossiping when Judith flung away to her sister's side.
The ensuing quarrel seemed the more portentous in view of the restraint imposed upon themselves by both parties thereto; they were at pains not to betray the all-too-patient subject of their dispute, so thoughtfully modulating their accents that never a word was audible to Barcus.
He believed, however, that a crisis impended when the tinkle of mule-bells sounded down the cañon road. Judith's ears were as quick as his own, she, too, had caught the sound of bells behind the base of the hill. And of a sudden, without another word, she turned and flung away into the thickets of undergrowth that masked the cañon to either side of the wagon-trail. In a twinkling she had lost herself to view. …
The remainder of that business was transacted rapidly enough. There were no preparations to be made, once Alan had ridden up with his three burros, nothing remained but to mount and make off. Farewells were not for Trine, though Barcus didn't neglect to shake a leg at him before kicking his burro into motion. As for Judith, she kept herself invisible; and though he looked about for her, Alan was sensitive to Rose's tensity of emotion and forebore to aggravate it by open search or calling.
Five minutes after his return the three had ridden out of sight of the motor-car. In as much time more they had found the forking of the trails described by the chauffeur; and by tacit consent, none questioning the move, struck off on what the chauffeur had termed the up-trail—the town of Mesquite, whatever its character and wherever it might be, their goal.
The trail mounted at a sharp grade, seldom wide enough to permit one burro to pass another at need, not seldom skirting the brink of some declivity so sheer that by common instinct the fugitives kept their eyes studiously averted from the abyss.
But the frequency of such passages bred indifference in their sleepy minds. Before morning they were all riding like so many hypnotized subjects, fatigue bearing so heavily on all their senses that none spoke or cared to speak. Broad daylight surprised them in this state, still stubbornly travelling; and shortly afterward showed them one place so perilous that it shocked them temporarily awake.
This was simply a spot where the trail came abruptly to an end on one side of a cleft in the hills quite thirty feet wide and several hundred in depth, and was continued on the farther side, the chasm being spanned by a bridge of the simplest character—no more than a footway of boards bound together with ropes none too substantial in seeming, with another rope, breast-high, to serve as a hand-rail.
Alan tested the bridge cautiously. It bore him. He returned, helped Rose to cross, and, with her once safely on the farther side, took his life in his hands, and, aided by Barcus, unaffectedly afflicted with qualms, somehow or other persuaded the burros to cross.
After that, though the way grew more broad and easy and even showed symptoms of a decline, they had not strength enough left to sustain through another hour.
And what they thought good fortune, opportunely at this pass, brought them to a clearing dotted with the buildings of an abandoned copper mine. Not a soul was in evidence there, but the rude structures offered shelter for beast as well as man; here (so ran their sleepy thoughts) they might hide the burros and themselves for a few hours, and so obtain a little sorely needed sleep. Pursuit, if any, might overlook them, go on in ignorance of their proximity.
None but men fatigued beyond the power of coherent reasoning would have built hopes upon so preposterous a suggestion. But Rose and Barcus had known little rest since the previous dawn, while Alan, though he had slept a few hours on the desert, had endured even heavier drains upon his vitality than either of the others. None but men in such plight could have overlooked the obvious way of making themselves secure by cutting down that sword-wide bridge so short a way behind them.
No less futile was their thought to stand watch and watch about. Barely had they made Rose as comfortable as might be upon the plank flooring of one of the sheds, and tethered the burros out of sight, when Alan collapsed as if drugged, while Barcus, who had elected himself to keep the first watch, felt sleep overcoming him like a cloud of thick darkness.