Silvermane Page 4

  Tappan did not want to cache the gold, for in that case, of course, he would have to return for it. Still he reluctantly admitted to himself that this was the best chance to save it. Probably these robbers were watching him day and night. It would be most unwise to attempt escaping by going up over the Panamints. “Reckon my only chance is goin’ down into Death Valley,” soliloquized Tappan grimly. This alternative was not to his liking. Crossing Death Valley at this season was always perilous and never attempted in the heat of day. At this particular time of intense torridity, when the day heat was unendurable and the midnight furnace gales were blowing, it was an enterprise from which even Tappan shrank. Added to this were the facts that he was too far west of the narrow part of the valley, and, even if he did get across, he would find himself in the most forbidding and desolate region of the Funeral Mountains.

  Thus thinking and planning, Tappan went about his mining and camp tasks, trying his best to act natural. But he did not succeed. It was impossible while expecting a shot at any moment to act as if there was nothing on his mind. His camp lay at the bottom of a rocky slope. A tiny spring of water made verdure of grass and mesquite, welcome green in all that stark iron nakedness. His campsite was out in the open, on the bench near the spring. The gold claim that Tappan was working could not be seen from any vantage point, either below or above. It lay back at the head of a break in the rocky wall. It had two virtues—one that the sun never got to it, and the other that it was well hidden. Once there, Tappan knew he could not be seen. This, however, did not diminish his growing uneasiness. Something sinister hung over him. The solemn stillness was a menace. The heat of the day appeared to be increasing to a degree beyond his experience. Every few moments Tappan would slip back through a narrow defile in the rocks and peep from this covert at the camp. On the last of these occasions, he saw Jenet out in the open. She stood motionlessly. Her long ears were erect. In an instant Tappan became strung with thrilling excitement. His keen eyes searched every approach to his camp, and at last in the gully below to the right he saw two men crawling along from rock to rock. Jenet had seen them enter that gully and was now watching for them to appear.

  Tappan’s excitement succeeded to a grimmer emotion. These stealthy visitors were going to hide in ambush, and kill him as he returned to camp. Jenet, reckon what I owe you is a whole lot, mused Tappan. They’d have got me sure. But now…. Tappan left his tools and crawled out of his covert into the jumble of huge rocks toward the left of the slope. He had a six-shooter. His rifle he had left in camp. Tappan had seen only two men, but he knew there were more than that, if not actually near at the moment, then surely not far away. His only chance was to worm his way like an Indian down to camp. With the rifle in his possession he would make short work of the present difficulty.

  Lucky Jenet’s right in camp, thought Tappan. It beats hell how she does things.

  Tappan was already deciding to pack and hurry away. At this moment, Death Valley did not daunt him. Yet the matter of crawling and gliding along was work unsuited to his great stature. He was too big to hide behind a little shrub or a rock, and he was not used to stepping lightly. His hobnailed boots could not be placed noiselessly upon the stones. Moreover, he could not step without displacing little bits of weathered rock. He was sure that keen ears not too far distant might have heard him, yet he kept on, making good progress around that slope to the far side of the cañon. Fortunately he headed up the gully where his ambushers were stealing forward. On the other hand this far side of the cañon afforded but little cover. The sun had gone down behind a huge red mass of the mountain. It had left the rocks so hot Tappan could not touch them with his bare hands.

  He was about to stride out from his last covert and make a run for it down the rest of the slope, when, surveying the whole amphitheater below him, he espied the two men coming up out of the gully, headed toward his camp. They looked in his direction. Surely they had heard or seen him. But Tappan saw at a glance that he was closer to the camp. Without another moment of hesitation he plunged from his hiding place, down the weathered slope. His giant strides set the loose rocks sliding and rattling. The robbers saw him. The foremost yelled to the one behind him. Then they both broke into a run. Tappan reached the level of the bench and saw he could beat either of the robbers into the camp. Unless he were disabled! He felt the wind of a heavy bullet before he heard it strike the rocks beyond. Then followed the boom of a Colt. One of his enemies had halted to shoot. This spurred Tappan to tremendous exertion. He flew over the rough ground, scarcely hearing the rapid shots. He could no longer see the man who was firing, but the first one was in plain sight, running hard, not yet seeing he was out of the race. When he became aware of that, he halted and, dropping on one knee, leveled his gun at the running Tappan. The distance was scarcely sixty yards. His first shot did not allow for Tappan’s speed. His second kicked up gravel in Tappan’s face. Then followed three more shots in rapid succession. The robber divined that Tappan had a rifle in camp. He steadied himself, waiting for the moment when Tappan had to slow down and halt. As Tappan reached his camp and dived for his rifle, the robber took time for his last aim, evidently hoping to get a stationary target. But Tappan did not get up from behind his camp duffel. It had been a habit of his to pile his boxes of supplies and roll of bedding together and cover them with a canvas. He poked his rifle over the top of this and shot the robber. Then, leaping up, he ran forward to get sight of the second one. This man began to run along the edge of the gully. Tappan fired rapidly at him. The third shot knocked the fellow down. But he got up, and, yelling as if for succor, he ran off. Tappan got another shot off before he disappeared.

  “Ahuh,” grunted Tappan grimly. His keen gaze came back to survey the fallen robber, and then went out over the bench, across the inside mouth of the cañon. Tappan thought he had better utilize time to pack instead of pursuing the second robber. Reloading the rifle, he hurried out to find Jenet. She was coming into camp.

  “Shore you’re a treasure, old girl!” ejaculated Tappan.

  Never in his life had he packed Jenet, or any other burro, so quickly. His last act was to drink all he could hold, fill his tin canteens, and make Jenet drink. Then, rifle in hand, he drove the burro out of camp, around the corner of red wall, to the wide gateway that opened down into Death Valley.

  Tappan looked back more than he looked ahead, and he had traveled down a mile or more before he began to breathe easier. He had escaped the claim-jumpers. Even if they did show up in pursuit now, they could never catch him. Tappan believed he could travel faster and farther than any man of that ilk. But they did not show up. Perhaps the crippled robber had not been able to reach his comrades in time. More likely, however, the gang had no taste for a chase in that torrid heat.

  Tappan slowed his stride. He was almost as wet with sweat as if he had fallen into the spring. The great beads rolled down his face, and there seemed to be little streams of fire trickling down his breast. Despite this, and his labored panting for breath, not until he halted in the shade of a rocky wall did he realize the heat. It was terrific. Instantly, then, he knew he was safe from pursuit, but he knew also that he faced a greater peril than that of robbers. He could fight evil men, but he could not fight this heat.

  So he rested there, regaining his breath. Already thirst was acute. Jenet stood nearby, watching him. Tappan imagined the burro looked serious. A moment’s thought was enough for Tappan to appreciate the gravity of his situation. He was about to go down into the upper end of Death Valley—a part of that country unfamiliar to him. He must cross it, and also the Funeral Mountains, at a season when a prospector who knew the trails and water holes would have to be forced to undertake it, but Tappan had no choice. His rifle was too hot to hold, so he stuck it in Jenet’s pack, and, burdened only by a canteen of water, he set out, driving the burro ahead. Once he looked back up the wide-mouthed cañon. It appeared to smoke with red heat veils. The silence was oppressive.
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br />   Presently he turned the last corner that obstructed sight of Death Valley. Tappan had never been appalled by any aspect of the desert, but here he halted. Back in his mountain-walled camp the sun had passed behind the high domes, but here it still held most of the valley in its blazing grip. Death Valley looked a ghastly glaring level of white over which a strange, dull, leaden haze dropped like a blanket. Ghosts of mountain peaks appeared dim and vague. There was no movement of anything. No wind! The valley was dead. Desolation reigned supreme. Tappan could not see far toward either end of the valley. A few miles of white glare merged at last into a leaden pall. A strong odor, not unlike sulphur, seemed to add weight to the air.

  Tappan strode on, mindful that Jenet had decided opinions of her own. She did not want to go straight ahead or to right or left, but back. That was the one direction impossible for Tappan, and he had to resort to a rare measure—that of beating her—but at last Jenet accepted the inevitable and headed down into the stark and naked plain. Soon Tappan reached the margin of the zone of shade cast by a mountain and was not so exposed to the sun. The difference seemed tremendous. He had been hot, oppressed, weighted. It was now as if he was burned through his clothes and had walked on red-hot sands.

  When Tappan ceased to sweat and his skin became dry, he drank half a canteen of water, and slowed his stride. Inured to the desert hardship as he was, he could not long stand this. Jenet did not show any lessening of vigor. In truth, what she showed now was an increasing nervousness. It was almost as if she scented an enemy. Tappan never before had such faith in her. Jenet was equal to this task.

  With that blazing sun on his back, Tappan felt he was being pursued by a furnace. He was compelled to drink the remaining half of his first canteen of water. Sunset would save him. Two more hours of such insupportable heat would lay him prostrate.

  The ghastly glare of the valley took on a reddish tinge. The heat was blinding Tappan. The time came when he walked beside Jenet with a hand on her pack, for he could no longer endure the furnace glare. Even with closed eyes he knew when the sun sank behind the Panamints. That fire no longer followed him. The red left his eyelids.

  With the sinking of the sun the world of Death Valley changed. It smoked with heat veils, but the intolerable constant burn was gone. The change was so immense that it seemed to have brought coolness.

  In the twilight—strange, ghostly, somber, silent as death—Tappan followed Jenet off the sand, down upon the silt and borax level, to the crusty salt. Before dark, Jenet halted at a sluggish belt of fluid—acid, it appeared to Tappan. It was not deep, and the bottom felt stable, but Jenet refused to cross. Tappan trusted her judgment more than his own. Jenet headed to the left and followed the course of the strange stream.

  Night intervened—a night without stars or sky or sound, hot, breathless, charged with some intangible current. Tappan dreaded the midnight furnace winds of Death Valley. He had never encountered them. He had heard prospectors say that any man caught in Death Valley when these gales blew would never get out to tell the tale, and Jenet seemed to have something on her mind. She was no longer a leisurely complacent burro. Tappan imagined Jenet seemed stern. Most assuredly she knew now which way she wanted to travel. It was not easy for Tappan to keep up with her, and ten paces ahead of him she was out of sight.

  At last Jenet headed the acid wash, and turned across the valley into a field of broken salt crust, like the roughened ice of a river that had broken and jammed, then froze again. Impossible it was to make even a reasonable headway. It was a zone, however, that eventually gave way to Jenet’s instinct for direction. Tappan had long ceased to try to keep his bearings. North, south, east, and west were all the same to him. The night was a blank—the darkness a wall—the silence a terrible menace flung at any living creature. Death Valley had endured them millions of years before living creatures had existed. It was no place for a man.

  Tappan was now three hundred and more feet below sea level, in the aftermath of a day that had registered one hundred and forty-five degrees of heat. He knew when he began to lose thought and balance—when also the primitive directed his bodily machine—and he struggled with all his willpower to keep hold of his sense of sight and feeling. He hoped to cross the lower level before the midnight gales began to blow.

  Tappan’s hope was vain. According to record, once in a long season of intense heat, there came a night when the furnace winds broke their schedule and began early. The misfortune of Tappan was that he had struck this night.

  Suddenly it seemed that the air, sodden with heat, began to move. It had weight. It moved soundlessly and ponderously, but it gathered momentum. Tappan realized what was happening. The blanket of heat generated by the day was yielding to outside pressure. Something had created a movement of the hotter air that must find its way upward to give place to the cooler air that must find its way down. Tappan heard the first low, distant moan of wind, and it struck terror in his heart. It did not have an earthly sound. Was that a knell for him? Nothing was surer than the fact that the desert must sooner or later claim him as a victim. Grim and strong, he rebelled against the conviction.

  That moan was a forerunner of others, growing louder and longer until the weird sound became continuous. Then the movement of wind was accelerated and began to carry a fine dust. Dark as the night was, it did not hide the pale sheets of dust that moved along the level plain. Tappan’s feet felt the slow rise in the floor of the valley. His nose recognized the zone of borax and alkali and niter and sulphur. He had gotten into the pit of the valley at the time of the furnace winds.

  The moan augmented to a roar, coming like a nightly storm through a forest. It was hellish—like the woeful tide of Acheron. It enveloped Tappan, and the gale bore down in thunderous volume, like a furnace blast. Tappan seemed to feel his body penetrated by a million needles of fire. He seemed to dry up. The blackness of night had a spectral whitish cast; the gloom was a whirling medium; the valley floor was lost in a sheeted, fiercely seeping stream of silt. Deadly fumes swept by, not lingering long enough to suffocate Tappan. He would gasp and choke—then the poison gas was gone in the gale. But hardest to endure was the heavy body of moving heat. Tappan grew blind, so that he had to hold to Jenet and stumble along. Every gasping breath was a tortured effort. He could not bear a scarf over his face. His lungs heaved like great leather bellows. His heart pumped like an engine short of fuel. This was the supreme test for his never-proven endurance, and he was all but vanquished.

  Tappan’s senses of sight and smell and hearing failed him. There was left only the sense of touch—a feeling of rope and burro and ground—and an awful insulating pressure upon all his body. His feet marked a change from salty plain to sandy ascent and then to rocky slope. The pressure of wind gradually lessened; the difference in air made life possible; the feeling of being dragged endlessly by Jenet at last ceased. Tappan went his limit and fell into oblivion.

  * * * * *

  When he came to, he was suffering bodily tortures. Sight was dim. But he saw walls of rocks, green growths of mesquite, tamarack, and grass. Jenet was lying down, with her pack flopped to one side. Tappan’s dead ears recovered to a strange murmuring, babbling sound. Then he realized his deliverance. Jenet had led him across Death Valley, up into the mountain ranges, straight to a spring of running water.

  Tappan crawled to the edge of the water and drank guardedly, a little at a time. He had to quell the terrific craving to drink his fill. Then he crawled to Jenet and, loosening the ropes of her pack, freed her from its burden. Jenet got up, apparently none the worse for her ordeal. She gazed mildly at Tappan, as if to say: “Well, I got you out of that hole.”

  Tappan returned her gaze. Were they only man and beast, alone in the desert? She seemed magnified to Tappan, no longer a plodding, stupid burro.

  “Jenet, you…saved my life,” Tappan tried to enunciate. “I’ll never…forget.”

  Tappan was struck then
to a realization of Jenet’s service. He was unutterably grateful. Yet, the time came when he did forget….

  II

  Tappan had a weakness common to all prospectors, but intensified in him. Any tale of a lost gold mine would excite his interest, and well-known legends of lost miners always obsessed him. Peg-Leg Smith’s lost gold mine had lured Tappan to no less than half a dozen trips into the terrible, shifting sand country of southern California. There was no water near the region said to hide this mine of fabulous wealth. Many prospectors had left their bones to bleach white in the sun and at last be buried by the ever-blowing sands. Upon the occasion of Tappan’s last escape from this desolate and forbidding desert he had promised Jenet never to undertake it again. It seemed Tappan promised the faithful burro a good many things. It had become a habit.

  When Tappan had a particularly hard time or perilous adventure, he always took a dislike to the immediate country where it had happened. Jenet had dragged him across Death Valley, through incredible heat and the midnight furnace winds of that strange place, and he had promised her he would never forget how she had saved his live, nor would he ever go back to Death Valley. He crossed the Funeral Mountains, worked down through Nevada, and crossed the Río Colorado above Needles, and entered Arizona. He traveled leisurely, but he kept going, and headed southeast toward Globe. There he cashed one of his six bags of gold and indulged in the luxury of a completely new outfit. Even Jenet appreciated this fact, for the old outfit could scarcely hold together.