Norton, Andre - Novel 15 Page 16

  14

  One From Five Leaves—Death

  Ritchie could not sleep. He had passed the point of sheer exhaustion to encounter its worst neighbor, a fatigue so deep that he could not escape it into unconsciousness. Overhead the stars were bright and clear, sharply cut as if he could reach out a grimy finger and touch them. And the bark of a coyote carried like a bugle call across the ranges. Each rock and cliff showed perfect edges, as if they had been cut from paper with a very keen-bladed pair of scissors. Slowly he pulled himself up on his elbows.

  Horse meat, half-seared, half-raw, lay heavy in his stomach along with a few bites of cactus rat. It had gone down hard without water. Maybe tomorrow—he studied that tantalizing mesa top. In the black and white of the night it was startlingly clear.

  Something moved. Birke venturing out of cover? He had sulked just beyond the camp all evening, ostracized by the others. Ritchie's hand swept to his carbine without thought. A hunched shape detached itself from the rocks by the bitter spring. It crawled a little then dropped flat. A faint moan from it brought Ritchie forward.

  "Who's there!" The challenge came out of the dark.

  "Peters." Ritchie had reached the huddled shape." Here's Sturgis, sir. I think he's been drinking the stuff—"

  There was no answer to the soft word Herndon said then.

  "Toss a cactus root on the fire and make sure!" he ordered from his post.

  The flames spread to the stump, and the light touched Sturgis' face. There was a slime of wetness across his chin to make Ritchie's foreboding sure.

  "He did-"

  Someone else sighed. "Wal, that 'bout puts the lid on it, son—"

  The Sergeant's bootheels clicked on the stone as he came into the circle of firelight. He stood looking down at Sturgis' flaccid body. His thin face was a chip of weathered granite.

  "I didn't think he had the strength to reach it," he muttered. "Well, let's get him back—the damage is done now—"

  "Any chance?" Ritchie straightened the blankets from the tangle Sturgis had left behind on his fatal crawl.

  "While a man's still breathin', son," Tuttle returned, "thar's always hope. Only to swill that stuff would rock a well man back on his heels, 'n Sturgis—he's lost a powerful lot of blood. He ain't a well man—"

  Ritchie dropped down beside the Southerner who was moaning again. "I'll stay here. If he tries it again, he'll have to crawl over me—"

  Somehow he actually slept after that. When he awoke, the sky was already light. Sturgis had ceased to moan. His face was a dirty gray against the rough blanket, and he was breathing heavily in a way which seemed to shake his whole body.

  Ritchie, stiff and aching, got clumsily to his feet. Gold was cutting across the green of the mesa. More than ever it seemed an unobtainable paradise.

  "Rise 'n shine, son."

  "Why didn't you call me for guard! My tour must have been hours ago—"

  "Yo' shouldn't deny an ol' man his usefulness." The old humor colored Tuttle's voice, but something else lay beneath that, something which Ritchie could not identify but which made him uneasy.

  "Them thar rats was mighty tasty last night. A leetle better for invalids than hoss meat. Suppose yo' mosey down the canyon a mite 'n look round for 'nother of their hidey holes—"

  Ritchie bent over Sturgis. The Southerner still slept or else lay in a stupor which held him immovable. He took up his carbine and prepared to follow the scout's suggestion.

  Just beyond the fire Herndon lay, as stiff and straight as an engraving which had ornamented one of Ritchie's history books. He was one of the effigies used on the Crusaders' tombs—all he needed was the dog at his feet, the sword hilt between clasped hands. Nothing in that stern face had been relaxed by sleep; the lines of pain and fatigue were as deep as they would be when he awoke. Ritchie stepped over those straight legs and walked along the sandy ground toward the cactus which might or might not hold their breakfasts.

  It was just beyond the plant they had demolished the night before in their hunt that he came across something else, deep and so freshly printed that none of the sand had shifted yet. He awoke very suddenly out of his half-stupid lethargy.

  Yes—and there was a stripped branch with a few chewed leaves clinging to the bough. A second track. His quarry was going at its own deliberate pace then, free. If he could only catch up with it and get control! He hugged that wild hope—it was almost like having a drink of real water! What he did now might mean all their lives.

  Then, beyond the screen of cactus, he saw the big dun-colored body moving with its curious rocking gait. Ritchie's trot became a slow crawl as he edged along. It was the best of the camels—the huge "mule," which both the driver and Captain Sharpe had so praised. No saddle encumbered the rising mound of its back, and the short ends of the halter, which dragged from its lower jaw, were frayed. He squatted down to consider his next move.

  All he knew about camels was what he had picked up during the short time before the stampede. Should he make the wrong move now and frighten off the beast, there would be small chance of catching up with it again. This country, as harsh and horrible as it seemed to him, was the natural land of the slobbering, cud-chewing creature before him.

  He rose to his feet and edged out of the concealing cactus. Rubbing dry lips with a tongue almost as cracked and hard, he tried to shape the call he had heard the camel drivers use. But his imitation was not a good one.

  The "mule's" rubbery neck swung; the flattish head raised. A half-chewed strip of tasteless dry stuff wavered from the working jaws as the creature sighted him. Ritchie stood still. But the camel moved off with the ponderous tread of an animal which did not fear capture.

  That slow step deceived Ritchie. He threw aside his carbine and leaped for that bit of halter rope that bobbed below the clumping jaws. With a swiftness he had not thought possible, the snake head dodged. Then the camel rocked away through the cactus. Ritchie stumbled and fell. He lay flat, his cheek grinding into the gravelly soil while sounds tore out of his throat, dry sounds which could not be muffled by his clawing hands or the dust and sand.

  At last, very slowly, he pulled himself up again. Grimly he crawled back and retrieved his carbine. And, as grimly, he turned away from the trail the camel had left. There was no use in following it now; the creature would be alarmed enough to keep out of reach and none of the horses —even were he able to find one which could still be ridden —would approach close enough to a camel to capture it.

  ''Heee—" The call came up the valley. He guessed it was for him, although it was uncannily close to a coyote's questing bark. Herndon, Woldemar, and Tuttle had adapted that as a signal on their hunting trips. He started back dispiritedly.

  Beside the fire Tuttle was tending, he told of his failure.

  “I’m thinkin' that critter won't be goin' far. Them brutes is more civilized than mule or bosses. They ain't never lived wild out here. Like as not it'll come around agin when it sniffs us out—"

  "A good meat reserve—even if we can't put it to work," Herndon answered almost absently. Most of his attention was given to the mesa wall. "Where did you try climbing yesterday, Jesse?"

  ''Over thar—where that thar prong sticks out a mite-jus' like a yearlin' buck's antler. Goes up nice 'n easy ten feet 'r so, then she busted off right when I was changin' grips 'n down I came!"

  "Hmm." Herndon went back to the work which had held him on Ritchie's return from the hunt. He was braiding into one the two lariats which he and Tuttle had always carried coiled on their saddles.

  “Eat your breakfast, Peters," he said over his shoulder. "We'll try climbing when I get this in shape."

  Sturgis was still in the half stupor, and of Birke there was no sign. Since his disappearance into the brush the night before, he had not shown himself, but there were indications he was still near. Most of the extra weapons of the camp, Ritchie noticed, lay close to Tuttle. The old scout still sat in a curiously cramped position, favoring his side as he had the n
ight before.

  Ritchie choked down the scraps of meat they had left for him and allowed himself one scant swallow from his canteen. Another such and it would be bone-dry.

  After a survey Herndon decided that, in spite of Tuttle's accident, the place the scout had chosen for his ascent the night before was still the best point to attempt.

  "Where's Birke?" Ritchie wanted to know.

  "Up yonder." Tuttle pointed up the valley. "He's after cactus rats. As long as we have his knife 'n guns, I ain't afeared of trouble. Now watch yoreselves, boys—"

  Herndon and Ritchie tied the canteens to their belts, having poured all the water left into the one Tuttle kept.

  "Don't worry." For the first time Herndon's tight lips stretched into a kind of death's-head grin. "We'll grow lizard pads on our fingers and toes and be down again before you know it!"

  "All right, all right." Tuttle chuckled. "Laugh at an old man, will yo' ? I'll sit right here 'n like as not shoot me a bear. 'Member one bear as I shot oncet, weighed nigh six-hundred pounds skinned, he did. Had hisself raking claws 'bout four inches long—"

  "And you killed him with a bowie knife?" asked the Sergeant.

  The lightness of question and tone were so much in contrast to his face that Ritchie almost dropped the canteen he held. But Herndon was already heading for the cliff, and he had to hurry to catch up.

  They rounded the spur Tuttle had pointed out and saw before them an expanse of rough, pitted rock which seemed to offer a maximum of handholds. Following Herndon's example, Ritchie pulled off his boots and threw aside his hat, twisting his neckerchief around his head like an Apache's turban.

  "Don't let go of one hold until you are sure of the next. Take it slow, and don't look down!"

  Ritchie nodded, saving his breath for the first assault. He watched Herndon's hands and toes search out support and the Sergeant's slim body spread-eagled against the rock as he went up. Then he, too, was finding a good grip, and with an odd taste in his mouth and a ripple of ice down his backbone he began to climb.

  There were two bad stretches, one the place where Tuttle's tired fingers had betrayed him, and another, higher, where Ritchie clung to what seemed scant inches of slippery rock and prayed aloud to the rough stone as he hunted another hold. But in the end a hand took firm grip on his sweaty shoulders, and he was heaved up and over rock which scraped his skin raw and bloody.

  He lay on his back staring up into a sky of molten blue. Far above, a black dot wheeled and dipped as an eagle surveyed its own hunting ground. Somewhere near he could hear heavy panting breaths beating almost in time with the pumping of his own laboring heart. He rolled over on his side and discovered that he lay on a bed of real grass.

  Herndon was stretched out full length in the cool green stuff, his face buried in his folded arms, his shoulders heaving, the pink flesh of one showing through a long ragged tear in his shirt.

  Using his lacerated hands to lever him up, Ritchie looked around. They had climbed into another world. The trampled parklike expanse where they now were was covered with grass—green and blowing as a meadow at home. The ground sloped toward the interior of the mesa, and through the scrub cedar and pinon he thought he could sight a gleam which was promising. Hardly daring to hope—telling himself that if it was water it might be as contaminated with chemicals as the stuff which bubbled so disappointingly below—he felt for the canteens.

  A brown furry shape materialized in front of him. Ritchie remained on his knees, startled into immobility as a jack rabbit, which was certainly a giant even among its kind, watched him with all the signs of unafraid curiosity. If man had ever discovered this sanctuary before, it was not in the memory of this particular inhabitant. Ritchie moved, and the jack hopped on a pace or two just to be on the safe side, but it did not go far.

  ''Trusting beggar, isn't he?" Herndon's chin still rested on his arms, but he had raised his head to watch the withdrawal of the jack rabbit.

  "Not afraid at all-"

  "No. So I don't believe we'll have to worry about any rivals up here. Shall we go down and see if that really is water?"

  "You see it, too?"

  "Sure. And unless we share a common delusion, maybe we can hope for the best." Herndon was a little slow in rising, and involuntarily Ritchie put out a hand which the Sergeant actually grasped as he got up. Their pace toward the water which might or might not exist was a slow one.

  Around them the grass whispered. Desert quail scuttled away, and the curious jack rabbit was not the only one of its tribe to watch them. The metallic blue of the sky arched over them as if it closed them in captive in this forgotten pocket of the world. There was a buzz of life here that was not known in the desert below, a happy life that had no part in the parched canyon country.

  And so they walked slowly through the knee-high grass into the reaches of a stunted little wood and on to the banks of a pool, a pool almost large enough to be termed lake. The water was dark and seemed to be very deep, its very darkness giving forth a rich cool promise. Ritchie pitched down on the verge, rippling his burning hands through it. Herndon smelled, tasted, and then drank from his cupped hands.

  When Ritchie followed that lead, he knew that never in his life had he known so satisfying a drink. They poured the water over their heads and shoulders, stopping every few minutes to drink sparingly. The very trickle of the stuff down the skin was like bathing in something alive, which both stimulated and renewed.

  Ritchie rinsed the canteens twice and filled each one to the brim. This would be an excellent place to camp until they were all on their feet again. Maybe if they could figure some way of getting Sturgis up—

  “If we could get Sturgis and Tuttle up here—" The Sergeant was voicing Ritchie's thoughts. "But neither one can make it."

  Ritchie hated to lose that faint hope. "Couldn't you and I and Birke and the lariats—"

  "Sturgis would be all dead weight. We couldn't get him up. And Tuttle—" He was frowning again.

  "Tuttle-?"

  "Jesse's hurt worse than he'll admit. Broken ribs in this country with hard travel ahead of us—"

  "He's tough!" Ritchie gave the stopper on the last canteen a vicious twist.

  "They don't come any tougher. But Jesse's old. He's been roaming this country thirty years or more—why, he was out with the Mountain Men back in the Twenties! If he's hurt bad, he won't let us know—until—until too late." Herndon got to his feet and picked up the extra canteen he had been holding.

  "I'll go down first." He was already heading for the place where they had entered into this green and smiling island. "Then you lower the canteens by rope, and I'll send up the one we left with Tuttle. We'd better get all the water we can; we may not have many chances to come back here." He uncoiled the lariat and made it fast on a cedar before slipping over.

  Ritchie could not come close enough to the edge to watch his descent. Instead he played the rope through his hands. It went easily enough; the Sergeant must be finding the road down smoother than he had the way up. Then the rope hung free, and there were a couple of quick tugs on it. He pulled it up to find the empty canteen fastened to its end.

  Tying the ones he had filled to it he lowered away before he doubled back to the pool to fill the last one. Another jack rabbit, or perhaps it was the same one, bobbed up at the edge of the wood and eyed him unafraid. Ritchie stood still. His knife was in his belt, but he could not throw it as either Tuttle or Herndon might have done, and his carbine was out of reach below. But that jack was plump, its haunches smooth and round. And jack was better eating than half-spoiled horse meat or cactus rat. Ritchie recalled the smooth stones he had seen by the pool. Maybe one of those, well aimed— But water came first. He filled the canteen and hurried back. He was pulling up the rope when it was suddenly given a jerk from below that almost tore it out of his hands. Fastening the canteen to his belt, he went over the edge, one hand on the guide rope.

  Once his feet slipped, and he had only his frenzied clutch on
the rope to save him. A second later his bruised toes spun back against the rock and found purchase. He closed his dry mouth and merely clung to that frail support for a long moment before he crawled downward again. Then he was close enough to let go and jump, landing painfully in the gravel. But he was running in that same instant around the pinnacle toward the camp. Apaches might have come up—but certainly Tuttle, armed, could have shot at least once or twice before they jumped him.

  Ritchie's knife was in his hand. The camp looked undisturbed. Sturgis lay as he had the hour before. But there was another prone man by the spring, and Herndon was working over him.

  It was Tuttle who lay there, his head resting on the Sergeant's knee. A thin red stream made a wavering pattern across his forehead, and his eyes were closed.

  ''What—?" began Ritchie.

  Herndon's lips were curled back in just such a snarl as Big Gray had shown when they interrupted his nap. And his eyes had some of the feral anger which had made the big cat such a picture of dangerous rage.

  "Birke's doing!"

  Ritchie glanced around. Sturgis' black horse was gone, and the carbines that had been left to Tuttle's care had vanished. The saddlebag that held their meager supply of food was missing, and the blanket that they had raised on small stakes to shelter Sturgis had been torn away.

  Tuttle groaned, and Herndon held a canteen to his lips again. The scout choked, raised a limp hand uncertainly, and opened his eyes. For a second or two he seemed dazed, and then he swallowed and spoke.

  "Bin a bad guard, son." The words were a mere whisper of sound. "That polecat crept up on me from behind when I was seein' to Sturgis. Gave me a good one—"

  Herndon put his fingers over those trembling lips. "I should have foreseen this. The blame's mine, Jesse, for being a chuckleheaded fool!"

  "He didn't git all the guns." Tuttle twisted his head away from those restraining fingers. "Look in the pool—"

  Ritchie looked. Under the surface of the tainted water lay the scout's rifle and Ritchie's carbine. He pulled them out hurriedly.