Top-Notch Magazine/Volume 66/Number 3/East of Sunrise/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII.
IN THE GATHERING GLOOM.
IN all the Seward of Sacatone stories, told and retold between the Mogollon Mesa and the Mexican border, there is none in which the incidents so interlock in drama and tragedy as in this one.
In the early afternoon following the brief sandstorm, Seward, blind, was robbed of his burro, saddlebags, and much of his equipment and left helpless at the spring by the slope of the hogback; Blake and Reeves, with Ethel Norcross, were leaving town in a fast motor car, hoping to rescue Seward and to effect the capture of at least three black conspirators. Lola Sanger and Chombo, the bowman, had hastened southward along the Hermosito Trail late on the preceding afternoon, passing a mile to the east of the hogback where Seward and the rescued La Joya were having their frugal supper in Seward’s camp, had reached the pass east of Sunrise Cañon during the night, had gone into hiding, had weathered the simoon, and were now eagerly awaiting the coming of Seward. The designing La Joya, as it appeared later, had been picked up in the desert, as the sandstorm was blowing itself out, and had returned to Forty-mile with the three riders who had helped her stage the little play of beguiling treachery; and Red Galloway
Every rogue in carrying out his lawless plans is bound to come upon some complication in which he will overreach himself. This lapse in craftiness is not always attended with serious results, but the brutal and treacherous grubber was playing a game the danger of which was beyond his ability to foresee and guard against. Perhaps his wits were still befogged by the tiswin; or perhaps, even without the tiswin, they would not have been keen enough to cope with the situation. Be that as it might, however, he was pushing southward as fast as possible, driving Seward’s burro before him and wearing Seward’s hat and coat.
Behind the bales of hay in Chombo’s shed Galloway and Springer had overheard all the red-handed treachery plotted by the half-breed and the vengeful sister of Dirk Sanger. Galloway knew that the master bowman would be waiting for Seward under cover in the pass; that the way to Los Cerillos and Sonora was through the pass; that Sandy, the burro, was known everywhere to be Seward’s pack animal; and, trifling in itself, but of utmost importance in Fate’s general scheme of reprisal, Galloway was wearing Seward’s hat and coat.
Did Galloway’s thoughts, however, discover anything of personal peril in all this? No; he could not draw out his imagination so fine. As he kicked and pounded the burro along and listened to the occasional chinking in the saddlebags, there was nothing but exultation in his lawless heart. Now and again he would draw from his pocket a twenty-dollar gold piece and stare at it with greedy eyes. There were two hundred and forty-nine more of them in the saddlebags—so ran his speculations—and how he would lord it over the greasers of Sonora with all that wealth!
He would draw about him a gang as ambitious for plunder as himself, and in some fastness of the Sonora mounatins he would take life easy and merely direct the forays of his followers. If Seward came searching for him—as undoubtedly he would if he did not die of hunger there by the hogback—Galloway would have some desperate men for his own protection. It was a most entrancing picture for a desert hobo of Galloway’s type.
The sun was setting as Galloway drove Sandy into the pass. The flaming red hair under the brim of Seward's hat was darkened by the shadows cast by the rocky walls rising on each side of the fleeing grubber.
“And there’s Eph,” Galloway was muttering; “he can wait fer me till the crack o’ doom on Dead Mule Flat. I’m done with him. He’s too slow and too keerful, anyways. I’d 'a' turned on Seward long ago if it hadn’t been fer Eph. I wish to thunder Eph could know how easy Seward was when I finally made a set at him.”
Remembering the blows he had rained on the blind Seward and then how Seward had fought back like a shadow boxer, Galloway gave his throaty chuckle and finished it with a low laugh.
That laugh over his successful treachery was still on his lips when a bowstring twanged a hundred yards on the right. From a brush clump flew a feathered dart, its head gleaming a little in the faint light. Galloway halted in his tracks, an expression of weird astonishment on his heavy face. Gone for him was every hope of an easy, lawless life in Sonora! He crumpled slowly where he stood, both hands clutching at a long, slim shaft clinging to his chest. Dropping forward, he sprawled on his face, his limbs twitched convulsively, a last sibilant whisper escaped his lips, and he lay still.
The brush parted and Chombo, stepping softly in his moccasined feet, emerged into view. Coolly he paused and began unstringing his bow. About his forehead, holding his long, black hair in place, was a red headband. A glimmer of satisfaction shone in his cruel little eyes.
“Despachemonos, señorita!” he called, as calmly as though he had just planted an arrow in the gold of a straw target. “Get the double eagles, and we will be traveling. Your hermano’s score is settled; and me, I have settled mine. Get the double eagles, and we will ride.”
Lola Sanger, her face white as death, led two horses clear of the scrub farther along the pass. She trailed the reins on the ground and wavered a little as she left the horses and approached the burro. Sandy had suffered such brutal treatment during the last few hours that he was restive, suspicious of every one. He tried to break away, but the excited girl overtook him and halted him. With trembling hands she unbuckled one side of the saddlebags, reached into it and drew forth—a handful of iron disks!
A startled cry escaped her lips. Frantically she continued her search. There was no gold—only those big iron washers that had somewhat the shape of the gold pieces and something of their chinking music as they were shaken in the bags.
“Bien, y que?” came a voice behind her.
It was the voice of Chombo, but the tone of it was new to Lola Sanger. The face of Chombo was new to her, too; black and stormy under the red head-band, ominous in the shifting shadows of the pass. He was cleaning an arrowhead on a bit of brush, wiping it carefully, for the bowman counted his arrows among his treasures.
“There is no gold here, Chombo!” cried the girl. “Nothing but these!” and she held up some of the iron disks. “Seward he has fooled us!”
“Oiga, but he is clever!” The words came with a snarl through the half-breed’s thin lips. “I have wasted an arrow, señorita.” His eyes flamed. “That is Seward’s burro; back there”—he motioned behind him—“is Seward’s sombrero, his coat. But not Seward at all; no, not Seward! I have been fooled!”
“What?” whispered the girl.
“Go and look.”
“No!” Lola Sanger shivered. “Who is it, Chombo, if not Seward of Sacatone?”
Chombo reached out his hand, caught her roughly by the arm, dragged her back along the pass. “You not like to look, eh?” he sneered at her. “You not got much courage now, when all is done? You very fine schemer, señorita, but here your scheme go wrong and you make a fool out of me. There!”
They halted beside the still form.
“Red Galloway!” whispered the trembling girl.
“Si! And how he come to have Seward’s burro, his sombrero, his coat?”
“I can’t understand this, Chombo! I tell you I am as amazed at this as you are.”
Chombo shrugged his shoulders. “Seward too much for us,” he growled; “too much for everybody. You stay here; bymby, I come back.”
He hoisted the bulky form in the road to his shoulders and staggered off with it. With horror growing in her eyes, Lola Sanger watched him climb the slope of the pass, a ghoulish figure in the fading daylight. At last he vanished with his gruesome burden, and it was ten minutes before he returned.
“Old prospect hole,” he announced briefly; “Red Galloway heap better off there—heap better for me than out here in the trail. As for you,” and he whirled on the girl like a rabid wolf, “you got me in this trouble! Me, I no sabe what you got at the back of your head. Now you walk back to Forty-mile. Le deseo un buen viaje!”
Chombo whirled away and ran for the horses.
The girl followed him, screaming: “You can’t leave me here! Chombo! You were my brother’s friend! You can’t desert me in these waterless hills like this, with the night coming on!”
He swung to the back of one of the horses, his face set with stony determination, the flash of a relentless purpose in his eyes. He was all Yaqui now, enraged by the thought that somehow he had been double crossed and that the girl must have had a hand in it.
“Chombo!” The cry was a shriek, and two hands clasped convulsively at his stirrup. “Chombo”
He struck his horse with the spurs, and the animal leaped away. The other horse, led by the bridle reins, likewise jumped forward along the trail. The girl was dragged for a few yards and then fell to the ground. Rising to her knees and sobbing hysterically, she watched Chombo fade from sight in the gathering gloom.
She got up and ran after him, calling wildly for him to come back; and then, reaching the spot where Red Galloway had fallen, she halted in a sudden hysterical fear. Turning, she ran southward along the pass until she was breathless and staggered to a boulder. She crouched beside the stone, fighting against her superstitious fears.
By degrees she got her emotions under control. It was necessary, situated as she was, to think and to think to some purpose. She had lost her hat somewhere, and she pulled a shawl that lay across her shoulders over her head. What was she to do?
She thought of the burro. She could ride the burro, if she could find him. Perhaps, if she gave him his head, he would carry her to water—possibly into Los Cerillos. She knew little about that country, but there was a trail to Cerillos, and she could follow it. Anything was better than staying in that pass, spending the night there, and waiting for some traveler to come along who could give her a lift.
She wandered back and forth for nearly an hour, but the burro was nowhere to be found. Even that dumb brute had fled from her, she told herself, as from something evil.
Then, abruptly, two streaming lights blazed through the pass. Her heart leaped as the two red eyes glowed in the dark, halted perhaps a hundred feet away, and remained at rest. A car! She started toward it, keeping to the bushes at the trailside. When she had come close, she heard a voice:
“You look on that side, Joe, and I’ll see what I can find over here on the left. Too bad we had all that engine trouble and couldn’t make the pass before sundown, but we’ll do the best we can.”
Lola Sanger caught her breath. The voice was familiar; she knew that Blake, the sheriff from Tres Alamos, was there, and that he was looking for some one. This was the last straw, the last drop in her cup of misfortune. But she would rather die in the waterless hills than be taken by Blake.
She crept away southward along the pass, skulking through the brush, making as little noise as she could. Looking backward, she saw flash lights twinkling in the chaparral. On and on she hurried until, worn out and exhausted, she crawled up the stony bank to a ledge, crouched behind some stones and waited breathlessly.
Later, in half an hour it may have been, the gleaming headlights swept on down the pass and the car disappeared in the direction of Los Cerillos.