Top-Notch Magazine/Volume 66/Number 3/East of Sunrise/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX.
THE RAY OF HOPE.
ROBBED of his burro, the saddlebags, and some of his supplies, and left by Galloway to get along as best he could, Seward went hunting for the cache where he had concealed the rest of his equipment. He was half an hour finding the pile of stones. He knew that camp and its surroundings as he knew his two hands, but groping his way to any particular point, other than the spring, was a difficult feat.
The drip of water, where it oozed from the rocks and rilled into the little basin below, was the one constant sound by which he guided all his sightless maneuvers. He could always get his bearings when he stopped to listen to that musical drip, drip, drip, at the spring.
In the cache were his first-aid kit, a side of bacon, two or three tins of sardines, his fire jack and cooking utensils, and his short-handled pick, shovel, hammer, and gold pan. It had been necessary to lighten Sandy’s pack in order to make it possible for La Joya to ride the burro with some small degree of comfort. The box of ointment with which he treated his eyes was in the pocket of the coat stolen by Galloway. Seward’s dirk knife was also in the coat.
All he could do for his eyes was to bandage them with gauze; and if he had thought himself equal to starting a fire and frying the bacon, there was no way of slicing it. He crushed one of the tins of sardines between two stones and managed to get at the contents. It was a slim meal, but enough.
His tobacco, cigarette papers, and matches were in the pockets of his khaki shirt. Hunting the shade of the dusty mesquite bushes, he spread out the tarpaulin, rolled himself a smoke, and tried to forget the aches and pains caused by Galloway’s fists and feet.
“I’m tough as a piece of rawhide,” he told himself, “and it’s a mighty good thing. The situation could be a whole lot worse than it is.”
That was always the way in which Seward faced his reverses: There was a satisfaction in knowing that ebbing fortune had stopped short of rock bottom. He was thankful for his strength for his ability to endure.
“And Galloway,” he reasoned grimly, “might have cut short my career with a bullet from my own gun. But I knew he hadn’t the nerve to go that far. I’m sorry for Sandy; that’s all.”
Burros’ ears are said to be long to catch curses, but Sandy’s ears had yet to catch the first curse from Seward. In all his five years of coming and going about the deserts, Sandy had been cared for and treated as a faithful friend. And the burro, in his brute way, showed his gratitude for kindly treatment. A whistle from Seward always brought him. Yes; Seward was deeply sorry for Sandy; in fact, he was fretting more on Sandy’s account than on his own. He could get out of his troubles, but the burro would suffer every kind of brutality if he ever reached Sonora with the hard-hearted Galloway.
“‘East of sunrise falls the night,’” Seward murmured as he smoked. “I’m beginning to understand now what that hunch meant for me. My night is pretty complete, for the present.” He smiled a bit at the fancy. “I’ll be here for two or three days, I suppose, before that black curtain lifts,” he went on musingly, “and I’ll be down to raw bacon before then. Oh, well; even that might be worse.”
Having finished his cigarette he lay back on the tarp and was soon asleep. How long he slept he could not know, but he was aroused suddenly by a thumping of hoofs in the sand. Lifting himself on one elbow, he listened intently. What was this? Was La Joya returning with the “bandidos” to look for the gold?
This thought gave Seward a good deal of concern until at last he had resolved the hoofbeats into those of a single horse. They passed very close to him, so close that a rider could scarcely have failed to see him; but they went on, with a rustle of mesquite branches, until they halted near the drip, drip, drip of the spring. There followed a sound of disturbed water.
“A riderless horse!” Seward reasoned, getting off the tarpaulin with sudden hope rushing through him. “That would be luck, if it were true. But it seems too good to be true!” he finished.
He moved forward toward the spring, guided by the splashing in the pool. At last he put out his hand, and it rested on a bony back. But only for a moment. At the first touch of his fingers the horse snorted, threw up his head, and would have shied off had not Seward made a haphazard grab for the animal’s head. The reins were trailing, and by luck Seward caught one of them.
“Steady, sport, steady!” he coaxed. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
With a tight hold on the rein he proceeded to make further investigations. The horse was lean and shaggy. The empty saddle on his back was a dilapidated affair, with one oxbow stirrup on the right and no stirrup at all on the left. A small canteen hung from the saddle horn, and a little bag was tied at the cantle. Bringing the reins together and tying them, Seward thrust his arm through the loop and removed the canteen. Unscrewing the top, an odor of tiswin was immediately in evidence. He untied the bag and found it to contain about half a pound of bacon—all that remained of the slab.
Then Seward had a most engaging thought: Could this, by some stroke of remarkable luck, be the horse that Red Galloway had lost in the sandstorm? Was this the animal that had been foaled in Los Cerillos, the one that always made for that camp whenever he could break away from his owner?
“Jumping sandhills!” exclaimed Seward. “Just think what that would mean!”
It was a plausible theory. The horse, on his way to Cerillos, would turn aside from his course and hunt for water. It might he that he had been at that spring before and that the remembrance of it was still fresh in his brute mind. If he was really Galloway's horse, he probably knew all the springs and water holes of that desert country.
The idea electrified Seward. He saw an opportunity, blind though he was, for getting on to Los Cerillos.
“Maybe you can turn the trick for me, old top,” he said jovially, stroking the shaggy neck of the animal; “but you’re tired, and we’ll wait till evening; then, in the cool of the night, we’ll try a little experiment. I’ll mount, let you go as you please, and see if we fetch up in Cerillos.”
His pack rope was at the cache; he got it, after a deal of troublesome searching, looped it about the horse’s neck and made the free end fast to a stout paloverde. Then he removed the bridle and saddle and listened to the animal’s contented grunts as he rolled in the sand.
Emptying the canteen of the small amount of liquor that remained in it, he took it to the spring, rinsed it out, and filled it with fresh water. If the horse really belonged to Galloway, then here was something to explain the grubber’s vicious attack.
“Dutch courage,” commented Seward.
When the air began to cool he knew that day was drawing to a close; as the coolness intensified, he knew that the big, clear-cut Arizona stars were spangling the blue-black sky. “I think we can start now,” he decided, and went about his preparations.
First, he got the riding gear back on the horse, but left the animal tethered by the rope while he made a search in the chaparral. He knew what he wanted, but had difficulty in finding it. Half a dozen times he dug with his hands at the roots of as many scraggly ironwoods; and then, at the seventh effort, he found a heavily weighted canvas bag. The contents of it clinked cheerily as he lifted it out of the hole. He laughed softly.
“Anyhow,” he murmured, “this is something that trouble-hunch did for me. The saddlebags were of the same weight, and they rattled almost as musically as this bag does. That gold piece slipping out from under the flap was the only thing that kept Galloway from making a more thorough examination. Even a blind man is able to do a thing or two if he sets his mind to it.”
He hung the canteen around the saddle horn, tied the bag securely to the cantle with a few feet of the pack rope, and left the rest of the rope dangling in a coil. Then he swung into the old saddle.
“Now, sport,” he said to the horse as he dropped the tied reins on the saddle horn, “take your own course and take your own time. The night is cool and pleasant, and we can go far. I’ll stay in the saddle to the end of the ride—and hope for the best.”
He heard galloping hoofs in the trail to the east, but could not determine whether they were going north or south. They faded into silence through a night that was clear as a bell. Chombo was riding for his ranch with the led horse, and it was well for Seward that he did not encounter the half-breed on the Hermosito Trail.
Seward’s mount moved aimlessly about for a few minutes, evidently wondering why his rider gave no hint of the direction to be traveled by a push of the knee or a pull at the bits; then he began an ascent which Seward knew to be the slope of the hogback.
“Good!” he exclaimed. “We’re getting a beautiful start in the right direction.”
The flat crest of the uplift was crossed and the descent made on the other side. By taking an angling course the horse would come into the Hermosito Trail, but whether he was taking that course or not Seward could not know.
It was a long ride and doubly long for a man who was unable to see or to have any definite idea of the course he was traveling. All Seward knew was that they had started right when they crossed the hogback.
He was pinning his hopes on the chance remark of Galloway’s that the horse Galloway had lost was so fond of Los Cerillos that he headed for the camp whenever he got the chance. It was a forlorn hope, but forlorn hopes have often been realized.
Perhaps it was three hours later—three hours according to Seward’s guess at the passing time—when the horse began climbing again.
“This,” reflected Seward, “may be the approach to the pass east of Sunrise Cañon.”
A few minutes more and he was sure of it, for the horse’s hoofs echoed in a way that suggested high banks to left and right. A quarter of an hour later the echoes ceased, and there was another descent. The horse struck into a slow lope, and there was an air of certainty about his movements that was most promising. And then, abruptly, the horse halted, flung backward with a frightened snort and refused to move farther.
“What’s the matter now, sport?” inquired Seward. “A ditch across the road, or some other kind of a barrier?”
The animal dropped his head and began sniffing as at some object in front of him. Seward slid stiffly from the saddle, the looped reins over his arm, and bent down with one groping hand extended. His fingers twined themselves in long, soft tresses.
“Good Lord,” he gasped, “it’s a woman!”
A shawllike garment was about the woman’s shoulders, and her head was bare.
“La Joya!” he muttered, amazed. “Can it be La Joya?” He knelt down and lifted the woman’s head in his arms. “Señorita!” he called.
There was no answer. But the woman was alive, for her flesh was warm, and he could hear a faint, sibilant breathing. He groped for the canteen, uncapped it, and awkwardly pressed it to her lips. Then he poured some of the water over her face. She heaved a long, painful sigh and began to stir.
“Help me!” she begged. “Whoever you are, please help me! I have sprained my ankle and can’t walk a step.”
“Who are you?’ he asked.
There fell a silence; then, “Seward of Sacatone!” the woman cried, and struggled to free herself from his supporting arm.