Dust of the Desert Read online

  CHAPTER VII

  THE CHAIN GANG

  "But, Doc, I tell you you're crazy! How could a tenderfoot like Hickmanjust in town from the East breeze across the Line and get into a jamthe first night he's in town--drop out of sight completely?"

  Bim Bagley, back in Arizora and distracted by the unexplained mysteryof his pal's name on the hotel register, his pal's suitcase in a hotelroom but no more material trace of Grant Hickman, was knee to knee withDr. Stooder in the latter's office. The Doc made judicious answer:

  "Well, son, Jed Hawkins' specifications of the gringo he fought withatop the crap table in the Palacio tallies pretty closely with theyoung man as I saw him in my office earlier in the day. But here's thefunny thing: the rurales let Hawkins go even though he laid out two of'em with a chair. Let that fightin' wildcat go and trotted this fellahHickman off to the _carcel_. That's what gets me." Doc Stooder gavehis decision with a wave of the hand. He jack-knifed his bony knees upto his chin and waited the younger man's comment.

  "But what did Hawkins say started the big row?" Bim's long face,all criss-crossed with the wind wrinkles that make desert men lookolder than their years, gave a vivid picture of his distress, of hiseagerness to seize upon any detail that might point a solution of themystery. Doc Stooder recited with picturesque detail Jed Hawkins' storyof the battle in the gambling palace as the redoubtable Jed himself hadnarrated it in the Border Delight pool hall before returning to hisranch at Dos Cabezas.

  "That give me a clue," he concluded, "so I laid my pipe lines an' I'mlooking for to tap a well any time now."

  Doc Stooder's pipe lines--of information, if not of wealth--were themost productive of any along the Border. He was one of those rare whitemen in the Southwestern country who enjoyed the unreserved respect ifnot the love of the Mexican population, among whom nine-tenths of hispractice extended. Though he bawled at his patients, stricken dumb withterror of their ailments, though he cursed the women and manhandled themen, no poor Mexican's hovel of 'dobe was too far out in the desert todiscourage Doc Stooder's night prowling gas-wagon. Through dust stormand withering heat this blasted jack-pine of a man flitted on wings ofgasoline, with his nostrums for dysentery and asthma, his splints forbroken bones and needles for knife thrusts.

  Drunk he might be half the time, an indifferent physician all thetime--for the Doc had not been away from the Border for twenty-fiveyears and never read a medical magazine. But under his hard rind ofbrutalities and cynicisms the Mexicans and Indians had come to discovera deep sympathy with their homely tragedies, their patient sufferings.Sometimes they paid him in coin; more often they paid him in slavishfealty the coin of which was information. Of gold strikes in the farhills; of shrewd business deals to be wrought through connivance ofknavish officials across the Line; even of stolen jewels to be pickedup from a pawnbroker:--these the flow of Doc Stooder's pipe lines. Noman on the Border for a hundred miles each way knew so much of thescrapple of life as A. Stooder, M.D.

  "I'm lookin' to hear of a woman," the Doc drawlingly resumed, a wrysmile greeting Bim's gesture of negation. "Yep, son, when any likelylookin' young fellah along the Border drops outa sight--and thisHickman fellah's got an eye with him for all his Noo Yawk bridletrimmin's--they's a swish of skirts comes to my ears. Or"--he sat upsuddenly and threw a bony finger at Bim--"or he knows somethin' aboutwhy he's come out here an' went an' babbled."

  "Rot!" Bim's grey eyes were clouded with anger. "I told you he doesn'tknow why we got him out here--and he's not the babbling kind if he did."

  "Well, it sizes up thisaway," the Doc continued, ignoring the other'sflash of temper. "They's one man down in Sonora who knows all weknow about the Lost Mission and like's not a dam' sight more. That'sthis proud old don who lives down in the Garden of Solitude with hisred-headed daughter--name's Padraic O'Donoju, if I haven't told youthat before. If he ever got a line on the fact we've asked a Noo Yawkengineer to come out here to Arizora he'd put two an' two together an'figure we're after that Four Evangelists church his ancestors built.You know he's sorta king of all the Papagoes in Altar and--"

  "How about your Papago who's going to lead us to the Mission?" Biminterrupted. "If there's any leak likely as not it's through him."

  Stooder's great head wagged slowly; a grin tilted the rabbit's tailtuft under his lip until it stood out a quizzical interrogation point.

  "No, son; no. I got that Papago brother where he thinks all I got todo is crook my little finger an' his wife passes away with asthmaovernight. We can rely--"

  A timid knock on the office door giving onto the hall. The Doc belloweda command to enter. A wizened Mexican peon whose left arm was a stumpsidled quickly through the doorway and stood bowing, shaggy headuncovered. He cast a quick glance at Bagley, then to the doctor forreassurance.

  "Go ahead, Angel--shoot!" commanded Stooder.

  "Senor, I hear from Jesus Ruiz, 'e's cousin to me an' rurale at the_carcel_; Jesus Ruiz 'e says the gringo arrest' at Palacio goes lastnight in chain gang for Hermosillo--"

  Bim leaped to his feet with an oath. The peon's eyes were on DocStooder in an hypnotic stare.

  "The gringo goes in chain gang for Hermosillo, but my cousin Jesus Ruiz'e says that gringo mos' like never arrive."

  * * * * *

  That hour when Doc Stooder's pipe line began spouting information GrantHickman was discovering deep down within him an unguessed hardiness ofspirit. A trial was on him, a test of his moral fibre no less than ofhis physical powers. At the end of twelve hours' steady plodding acrossthe desert he was coming into his second wind. Every effort a devilishingenuity could contrive had been tried out by the four rurales, hisguards, in their common endeavour to break down this gringo's fightingmorale. The single result was a fixed grin on features smeared withdried blood and sweat--a challenge provoking the Mexicans to freshbarbarities.

  During the first dark hours of the march Grant had nursed the hopethat at some point outside of town he and his fellow prisoners wouldbe brought to a railroad station to await the coming of a train. Hecould not conceive a reason for transferring prisoners afoot when arailroad would serve. But with the coming of the dawn and the liftingof the dark from an empty land not even a telegraph pole raised abovethe scrub to point fulfilment of his hope. Just the dry ribbon of roadstretching ahead and empty speculation as to the number of days orhours which must intervene between present misery and journey's end.Grant never had heard the name Hermosillo until it was spoken by theexamining judge the night before; he did not know whether the town wasjust over the horizon or half way to Panama.

  Morning brought him the chance to study the men chained with him who,during the night hours, had been just so many disembodied shadowsmarching in a nightmare. The one ahead of him was a shrivelled littleChinaman, whose legs were so short he was forced to a skipping step tokeep slack on his segment of the chain; his breath came in asthmaticpipings and wheezes like the noise of a leaky valve in some midgetengine. Behind him was a giant of an Indian, almost the colour of teak.With a timed regularity this Indian spat noisily all through the darkhours and until the sun rose to dry up his throat. The rest were incharacter with Grant's nearer companions--just flotsam.

  The guards were typical of their class; Mexican peons brutalized evenbeyond the inheritance of their mixed bloods by their small taste ofpower. The quarter-blood Indian south of the Line, whose ancestry isdevious as his own starved dog's, knows but a single law of life andthat the law of fear. Lift him by ever so little from the stationof the one who fears to that of the one to be feared and he has nocounterpart for studied cruelty anywhere on earth.

  The one who rode to the right of the line in which Grant's positionwas fourth from the front, had commenced with the dawn a calculatedcampaign of nasty tortures. He would suddenly swerve his horse againstGrant, threatening his feet with trampling hoofs. He held his lightedcigarette low at his side with elaborate air of carelessness, thenpressed in close for the burning tip to eat through the white man'ssh
irt. Once he aimed a vicious backward kick at his victim; his heavyspur left a line of red through the torn sleeve from elbow to shoulder.

  At each of these refinements of humour the rurale's snickering laughterwas met by the American's wordless grin. Just a tense spreading of lipsand baring of teeth, which carried to the guard's savage perception ataunt and a threat. Always in Grant's twisted grin lay the unspokenpromise of retribution once the odds against him were lightened.

  The desert under sun at the meridian flexed its harsh hand to pinch thecrawling caterpillar of chained men. Heat waves made all the raggedsummits of the Sierras pulsate. A dust tasting of desert salts spread alow cloud about the marching column. Thirst that was a poignant agonywas made all the more unendurable by the tactics of the guards. Fromtime to time one of them would unhitch a canteen from the pack mule'sburden and in the sight of the eight helpless sufferers tilt his headand guzzle noisily. Even he would allow some of the water to slop fromhis mouth and be wasted in the sand.

  When the little Chinaman marching before Grant sighed and dropped, theline was halted for half an hour. First the yellow man was revived,then the canteen at which he had sucked so noisily was passed down theline to the rest of the prisoners. It was their first taste of watersince the prison gate was passed. After the canteen circulated, blackstrips of jerked beef, sharp with salt, were distributed. Grant neverhad seen the "jerky" of the Southwest; the leathery stuff would haverevolted him did his body not cry out for food. He tore at the toughsubstance after the manner of his fellows while the guards brewedthemselves some more complicated mess over a fire of greasewood sticks.

  Then the march again. Dragging hour after dragging hour. Clink-clankof the swinging chain. Pad-pad of feet in time. Snuffle andwheeze--snuffle and wheeze of the asthmatic Chinaman's breathing.All in an unvarying synchronism which tore at the nerves. All theworld--Grant's world of a great city--was reduced to this dreadfulmonotony of movement and sound.

  He tried to think. Came to his mind a picture of his office in theManhattan skyscraper--his desk with the mounted bit of shrapnel for apaperweight, its clear greeny-white glass top, the two wire basketswhich held his correspondence. He saw the squash court at the club--menin sleeveless shirts straining after a white ball. Henry's bar in thelittle side street off the Rue D'Anou in Paris; Henry selling stolenAmerican cigarettes for five times their value at the commissary. St.Mihiel and the old woman who knitted lace. Then the girl--BeniciaO'Donoju. Grant called to his mind the vivid glory of her hair, thetrick of her short upper lip in curling outward like the petal of a tearose, a something roguish always lurking deep down in the warm pools ofher eyes.

  "Not Mexican. We are Spanish folk." That was her sharp reproof when he,blundering, had asked her if she was of Mexican blood. That night onthe train--it seemed a year back. "Not Mexican." Now he understood whythe girl had corrected him so pointedly. Thank God she was not of thatbreed!

  Near dusk the line was halted and one of the guards dismounted. Grantsaw him fumble in his shirt and bring out a bright bit of metal, sawhim approach the head of the line and tinker with the first fellow'swrist shackle. He heard a sharp intake of breath behind him and,turning, caught the stamp of terror on the giant Indian's face.Something was going forward which he could not comprehend, something toshake the stoicism of this Indian. Within five minutes the steel bandabout his wrist was unlocked and he stood free of the chain with therest of the prisoners. He saw on the faces of all of them that sameterror mask the Indian wore.

  The freed men cast covert glances at the guards, followed their everymove with cat-like slyness. The little Chinaman began a falsettosing-song under his breath, which might have been a prayer to hisprotecting joss. One of the guards turned in his saddle and called somejocular order to the prisoners. They moved on in the wine-light of thesunset, falling precisely into the line they had held when chained,their eyes vigilant for every move of a hand on the part of the mountedmen.

  The rurales now carried their rifles swung free across the saddles.

  Though he could understand no word of the muttered scraps of speechpassed between man and man behind him, the magnetic fear wavespossessing all the rest began to prompt Grant to some comprehension.The coming night--dropping of the chain--those rifles unslung fromshoulders and carried free across the saddles:--did these thingspresage the near end of this farce of a pilgrimage across the desert toa court?

  Light now was nearly gone from the western sky and the guards wereriding farther away from the trudging line, deliberately inviting someone to offer himself for fair target practice while gunsights stillcould be seen. Grant faced the hazard squarely. Certain he was thatnone of the eight would see another sunrise, that butcher's work wouldcommence the minute sporting chances were definitively ignored by thevictims. He was of no mind to be the passive party to a hog killing.Better a quick dash--a bullet from behind--

  The line of men had just emerged from an arroyo with almost perpendicularsides; the bed of the dry stream was thick with shadow. Grant leaped fromline and ran straight for the guard who rode between himself and thecourse of the stream. Almost at his stirrup he swerved and cut under thehorse's rump.

  Shouts. A shot gone wild. Grant, zigzagging, was at the brink of thearroyo. Two shots almost as one. A lance of fire through his shoulder.Up went his arms and he plunged headlong into the gulf of blackness.