The Trey o' Hearts/Chapter 40
CHAPTER XL
The Trail of Flying Hoof-prints
ALAN'S departure from camp had anticipated by a round quarter hour the appearance on the upper trail of friends of the slain bandit, to the number of four or five, who had both discovered and recovered his body, called his death murder, and pledged themselves to its avengement, laying responsibility for the putative crime at the door of the man and woman to be seen in the cañon, immediately below the scene of Hopi Jim's fall.
Between the moment when discovery of the men on the ridge trail interrupted their hurried breakfast and that which found Rose and Barcus mounted on the back of their one horse and making the best of their way down the cañon in pursuit of Alan but little time had lapsed. But for the fact that no one could pass from the upper to the lower trail nothing could have saved them. The party on the heights offered abundant testimony of its intentions by wasting its ammunition in futile attempts at long-range marksmanship.
Even with its double burden, their horse made better time upon the lower level than those on the ridge trail. By mid-morning, when they approached the foothills that ran down to the desert, the pursuit was more than a mile in the rear and shut off to boot by a monolithic hill, while Alan was many a weary mile in advance.
He sat upon his horse, just then, at standstill upon the summit of a rounded knoll, the Painted Hills lifted up behind him, the desert before, unfolding like a map, but blurred by the heat-haze that simmered over it.
Was Judith out there, somewhere, lost, defenceless, impotent to lift a hand to shield her face from the blast of the savage sun?
Was she back there among the Painted Hills, lying still and lifeless, crushed beneath the weight of that fallen horse?
No rest for Alan till he knew. …
Descending the knoll, he reined his lagging mount back into the trail, following its winding course through the foothills and round the base of that monolithic mountain toward the junction with the ridge trail miles away.
It approached the hour of noon before he gained the point where the two trails joined and struck out across the desert. And here he discovered indications that the fright of Judith's horse had persisted (perhaps because of her struggles to free herself) even to the extent of driving it out upon the desert, for the hoof-prints of a galloping horse were plainly marked, evidently fresh, and led from the other trail past its point of contact and out to lose itself in the welter of the heat.
He turned and, at the best pace he could spur from his broncho, rode into the embrace of that implacable wilderness of sun and sand. Within half an hour he had lost touch completely with the hills that crouched behind him—had forgotten them even as he had forgotten Rose and Barcus in the torments he was suffering for the sake of that strange woman who loved him and whom he did not love.
For now he was reminded that he had broken his fast neither by bite nor sup. The heat seemed to tear the very breath from his nostrils, thirst had him by the throat like a mortal enemy, giddiness assailed him intermittently.
At long intervals he would check the broncho and, feeling in the saddle, endeavour to sweep the desert with his binoculars. Ordinarily, they discovered nothing, but ever the trail of hoof-prints lured him on.
And toward the middle of the afternoon he fancied that something rewarded one such effort, something that seemed to move like a weary horse with a human figure bound to its back. He was persuaded he had gained upon the chase. And he pressed on.
But now phenomena were discernible which, had he been more desertwise, would have made him pause before he adventured farther from those hills. The sun had taken on a coppery complexion and swam low. The air was heavy, but seemingly as hot as fire.
All this was strange and terrible to him, but he never dreamed that it foreboded anything more nearly intolerable.
All at once the surface of the desert seemed to lift and shake like the top of a canvas bent in a gale. The dust enveloped man and horse. And then darkness fell, a copper-coloured pall. Nothing remained visible beyond arm's length.
The broncho swung round, back to the blast, and refused to budge another inch.
Alan dismounted and, seizing the bridle, sought to draw the horse on with him. He wasted his strength; the animal balked, stiffened its legs, and resisted with the stubbornness of a rock; then, of a sudden, jerked its head smartly, snapped the bridle from his grasp, and scuttled away before the storm.
The bridle was barely torn from his hand before Alan lost sight of the broncho. For a moment he stood rooted in consternation as in a bog, with an arm up-thrown across his face.
Then the thought of Judith recurred. …
Head bended and shoulders rounded, he began to forge a way into the teeth of the sandstorm, possessed by determination not to desert her in this hour of greatest extremity, though he died of the trying.
In the end he stumbled blindly down a decline, and was conscious that he had in some way found shelter from the full force of the wind. He staggered on another yard or two, and blundered into a rough-ribbed wall of rock, whose lee it was that had created this scanty oasis of shelter from the fury that raged through the world.
He thought to rest there for a time, until the storm had spent its greatest strength; but as he laid his shoulder gratefully against the rock and scrubbed the dust from his smarting eyes, he saw what he at first conceived to bean hallucination—Judith Trine standing within a yard of him, alive, strong, free, completely mistress of herself, in no way needing the help of his generous heart and hand.
He stared incredulously, saw her open her mouth to utter a wondering cry that was nearly inaudible. Her hand fell upon his arm with the weight of unquestionable reality. Then he heard words of understanding and of gratitude:
"Alan! You came to me! You followed me, through all this"
The bitter irony of this outcome to all his labourings and sufferings ate like an acid at his heart.
He threw off her hand with a bitter laugh—that was like the croaking of a raven as it issued from his bone-dry throat—and in a momentary possession of hysteric madness reeled away from the woman and the shelter of the rock and delivered himself anew to the mercy of the duststorm.