Curly Part 40

"Has the Navajos broke out?"

"No, the pale-face has broke out; it's a hull epidemic, and there's an outfit on the war trail in Utah, another on the San Juan in Colorado--and they're going to eat up Robbers' Roost--and you, Chalkeye, lookin' glum as a new-laid widow! Scat, you!"

"Has they gawn mad?" I asked. "The moment they make a break for Robbers'

Roost, McCalmont will kill this Ryan, scatter his wolves, and vanish.

This must be only the escort for Ryan's ransom."

"It's plumb ridiculous, but--there ain't no ransom."

"Yo're dreaming, Curly. This projeck of troops is sure death to Ryan.

They'd risk the killin' of a common or'nary man--but a millionaire!"

"That's where the joke comes--he ain't a millionaire!"

I saw her quit her breakfast all untasted.

"Cayn't you be serious, child, for once?" I asked, but it made me ache to see her face that way.

"I daren't be serious, I daren't think, I daren't. Just you look at them papers."

I s.n.a.t.c.hed at the nearest paper, opened it, and thought I must have been locoed. There were the headlines:--

"Ryan Combine Smashed. Collapse of the Trust."--"Panic on 'Change. The Kidnapped Millionaire, a Confessed Perjurer and Corrupter of Witnesses, admits that He swore away the Life of an Innocent Man."--"Behold thy Financial G.o.ds, O Israel!"

I read on, dazed with the news. "Public Confidence at an End."--"Investors jump from Under."--"Ryan Debentures a Frost."--"Shares thrown on the Ash-heap."--"Pet.i.tion in Bankruptcy."--"Mrs. Ryan abandons all Hope of a Ransom."--"Federal Government pledged to wipe out the Bandits."--"Movement of Troops."--"Sheriff Joe Beef interviewed on the Situation."--"Forces taking the Field."--"One of the Robbers offers Himself as a Guide."

Curly was pulling my sleeve. "Come here," she said, and there was surely something awful in her voice. "Look, see that dragon-fly," she whispered, "and all them flowers usin' the spring for a mirror, bendin'

low. And hear the bull pines whisper, smell the great strong scent, look thar at the blue sky, and the cloud herds grazin'. That's like my home, ole Chalkeye--sech sounds, sech good smells, sech woods, and sech a heaven overhead. The boys air gentlin' hawsses in the big corral, or ridin' out to get a deer for supper. My fatheh sets in the doorway strummin' hymns on his old guitar, his dawgs around him, his lil' small cat pawin' around to help. And Jim is thar, my Jim--cayn't I be serious?

Don't I think? Ain't I seein' that, all blackened ruins--b.l.o.o.d.y ground--daid corpses rotting down by the corrals--shadows of black wings acrost the yard? Oh, G.o.d of Mercy, spare 'em, spare my wolves, my home, my fatheh! And Jim is thar!"

She turned against me raging. "What air you waiting for? Has you jest got to stand round all day? Yo're scart--that's what's the matter with you-all--afraid to even carry a warning! What d'ye want to pack the kitchen for? I'm shut of you. Stay thar!"

She jumped to her horse, she sprang to the saddle, she lashed her spurs for blood, and whirled away to the northward.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE STRONGHOLD

My words are only crawling for lack of wings; my brain's like ashes when it needs to be live fire. I have no brains or words to talk of what I've seen, and I reckon I'm a lot incompetent. The men who wrote the Bible ought to be turned loose on this earth again to make another book. Then folks who have not seen might understand such places as the Painted Desert, the Rock City, and the Grand Canon of the Colorado.

What with delays in packing and driving I had to track Curly for maybe thirty miles before I caught her up at Clay Flat by the edge of the forest. Her horse was dead, and she sat beside him, her stone-white face set cold, staring straight ahead. Below us lay the Painted Desert, so wide that the further edge was lost in mist. We rode down to the trickle of water at the bottom, then up the further side, and all the rock lay in belts red as flame, yellow as gold, purple as violets, which seemed to s.h.i.+ne of their own light, burning us. The men who stop in that country mostly go mad, the which is natural. Beyond we came out on a mesa of naked rock and sand-drifts, where we found a pool between high cliffs, splashed through it, and maybe a dozen miles beyond found after nightfall a few plants of gra.s.s. We had covered a hundred and ten miles at a tearing pace that day, changing horses, robber fas.h.i.+on, at every halt we made.

Next morning we met up with small bunches of Navajo Indians, a strange breed of people, dressed up in their private brown skins, with great plenty of turquoise necklace, silver harness, and a wisp of breech clout, riding with bows and arrows to hunt rabbits. They handed a few arrows after us; but their ponies could not run, so we quit their company.

Then we came to the City of Rocks, flaming red, and high as mountains; their thousand-foot walls sheer to the desert, all carved in needle spires, towers, castles, palaces. The street was six miles wide, I reckon, and we rode along it maybe fifty miles, like crawling flies in the sand.

Beyond the city we curved around by a gap in the desert, a sort of crack half a mile deep, with a river along the bottom. It swung about like a snake, getting deeper and deeper; but we kept to the level desert, until we reached a little side canon, where there was feed and water. We resaddled there, taking Curly's buckskin and my pet horse Sam. The rest of our bunch we turned down into that pasture, and left them, riding on along the rim rock.

Just after sundown we came abrupt to what looked like the end of the world, a gulf so deep that we couldn't see to the bottom. That mighty gash in the earth is six hundred miles in length, it's usually ten miles wide; it's more than a sheer mile deep, and full of mountain ranges all shaped like gigantic buildings. Dead weary as I was from riding more than two hundred miles in forty-eight hours, I forgot about being tired when I saw that place, the most tremendous thing in the whole earth, the Grand Canon of the Colorado.

There was no rest for us, but seven miles of such a break-neck trail as I'd never imagined possible, for it overhung black death from start to finish, looping round the face of outrageous cliffs which seemed to have no bottom. Midnight was past before we got to camp beside the river, flung off the harness, turned the horses loose, and dropped in our tracks to sleep.

A gunshot roused me, and starting broad awake I heard the echoes cras.h.i.+ng from wall to wall.

"It's only me," said Curly, "signalling."

Dark banks of fog were driving over our heads, and I s.h.i.+vered with the dawn cold. Then I looked up, and more than a mile in the air saw scarlet cliffs ablaze in the sunlight. The river rolled beside our camp, wide as the Thames in London, grey water so thick that splashes of it harden into mud. A gunshot answered from the further bank, then Curly gave the cougar war-howl. The yelp of a wolf came back.

"Both boats," said Curly, "are on this side of the river--something gawn wrong. Cook breakfast while I cross."

She took a little crazy boat and towed it upstream, scrambling over boulders a quarter-mile or so. From there she pulled the boat across the great grey sluice, fetching the other bank after a half-mile drift downstream. There was a strong backwater along that further bank, and she pulled easy, drifting past the camp up to a rocky headland. The man who had answered the signals was waiting there to throw his saddle into the boat, and follow, leading two horses so they could swim behind. By the time they crossed again I had our two horses to camp, and breakfast waiting.

It was not until after he fed, and he laid in provisions generous, that this robber--his name was Pieface--had a word to say. He took no more notice of me than if I was dead, and when he talked with Curly he sat close beside her whispering. I hearing nothing; but allow I thought a heap, for this man's face was bad, the very look of him was poison. My gun was plenty ready while I watched.

"Chalkeye," says Curly out aloud, but her eyes were set on this ladrone all the while. "This Pieface says that ten of our boys were sent down to wait for the ransom. They were camped at Clay Flat, you remember?"

"I ain't much forgetful," says I, for this meant that all the cowards had deserted! We had seen no men at Clay Flat.

"The chief," says Curly, "is right on his ear, and sends this Pieface to find out what's wrong at Clay Flat."

When this Pieface person had hit the trail, we took both boats across the river and swam our horses. From the far bank our way turned sharp to the left into the side Canon of Dirty Devil Creek. There we rode along some miles in the water, so as to leave no trail; then, quitting the bottom, turned sharp back up a ledge, threading the face of the cliffs.

The heat was blinding; it seemed as if we were being baked alive, and even my tanned hide broke out in blisters. Curly allowed this cliff was over six thousand feet high, and the trail kept circling round red b.u.t.tresses, flanks of broken rock, to one sheer cape where nothing lay below us but blue s.p.a.ce. Then we swung into a little arroyo with trickling water, shady trees, and a gentle glade until we reached the summit. At the rim rock a robber halted us, until Curly pushed her hat-brim up, showing her face. She answered for me, and we rode on through level pine woods. I noticed horse tracks scattering everywhere, but no trail whatever; and then even the horse-tracks petered out. I looked back, and there was not a sign to show the way we had come. For the first mile we headed towards where the sun would set, now we swung around on a long curve until we pointed north-east. I might just as well have been blindfold.

"Curly," I asked, "is this Main Street?"

"I reckon," she laughed. "Could you find the way back?"

Once before she had told me that no trails led to the stronghold.

Then away to the left I saw a big corral, with a dust of horses inside, and men sitting round on the top rail, maybe a dozen of them. Beyond it lay a streak of open water, and right in front loomed a house, set in the standing woods, where one could hardly see a hundred paces. It was a ranche house of the usual breed, log-built, low-pitched, banked up around with earth as high as the loopholes, and at each end against the gable stood a dry stone chimney. Two or three men stood in the doorway smoking, and but for the fact that they packed their guns when at home, they looked like the usual cowboys. The dogs were plenty exuberant, but Curly might have been out shooting rabbits for all the fuss that these men made about her coming.

We unsaddled and set our horses loose.

"Wall, Curly," asked one of the robbers, "got any liquor along?"

"Nary a smell."

Then McCalmont came round the end of the house, dusty after some argument with a broncho, trailing his rope while he coiled it.

"So, home at last," says he, shaking a paw with me right hearty. "Wall, I'm sure pleased at you, Curly."

"Come to repawt," says Curly, mighty cool, but I saw that her eyes were ranging around for Jim. An _olla_ of water hung from the eave by the door, and McCalmont pa.s.sed the dipper to me first. Then while Curly drank he introduced me to Crazy Hoss, Black Stanley, and his brother Dave, who made out that they were glad to see me, though their looks said different.

Then the Captain asked me in, and we followed Curly through the mess-house door. The log walls were hung with antlers, skins lay on the floor before the big hearth at the end, and down the middle, with benches on either side, ran the long table with its oilcloth cover, the tinware set out for supper, and netting to keep off flies. That cow camp looked good to me, home-like and soothing. Off to the left of the messroom opened a little lean-to house--McCalmont's den--with a cubby hole beyond it for Curly. We found her sitting on the bunk, gun and spurs unbuckled, and holding her legs out for the old man to pull off her shaps. I unharnessed myself, and he fed me a cigar, bidding me to settle in a cow-hide chair. I felt right to home then.