Captives of the Desert. Zane Grey

called Cliff Rocks. I had wanted to go for a year. I knew that I would never get there if I didn’t try it alone. It was twelve miles, but I had a good horse. I wasn’t afraid. The Indians, seen and unseen, are a protection to anyone among them. And Wilbur didn’t care much that I went. . . . I made it beautifully. Then something drew me to ride farther, just a mile to investigate a curious boulder. I thought a deep wash lay beyond. As I came near the boulder, I thought I smelled blood. Suddenly my horse reared and snorted, and then, Katharine—oh, I’ll never forget it—I saw a horse, recently shot, not fifty feet away down in the wash, and just beyond, a man, stretched full length, and face down in the sand. He was groaning. He hadn’t heard me. I was petrified. I thought a thousand harrowing things. I think I cried out, ‘Oh, what’s the matter?’ or something like that—some childish, thoughtless words. Anyway, the man looked up. He seemed dazed. I didn’t know at first whether he saw me or not. It was Curry, though I didn’t know him then. I had never seen him before. It seems he’d been on a mad race from Castle Mesa to get the doctor at Taho to save some poor Indian youngster’s life. His horse tried to clear the wash and missed, and broke two legs in the fall, and pitched Curry against the rocks. Curry was bruised and cut, and his ankle was sprained. He had to shoot his horse and that broke his heart. He had ridden him for years.

      “There we were, two people alone on the desert, with one horse. He wouldn’t take my horse and let me walk, and he couldn’t walk, I knew, though he pretended he could. I mounted and told him I was going for help. I’d seen a hogan about a mile from the trail four miles back, and I figured the Navahos would have horses. I met them, a young boy and an older man, mounted and about to leave the place. I had an awful time making them understand that I wanted only one to go along with me, but that I needed an extra horse. The boy luckily understood a little English. He explained and the older man agreed he should go. I told the boy about the sick youngster at Castle Mesa, and when we had reached the trail I managed to coax him to give the extra horse to me, and go on alone, riding fast to Taho to get the doctor. I was so excited that I never thought about sending a message back to Wilbur.”

      Mary paused. Her eyes were soft, dark and eloquent. Her mouth had lost its hard set look. Never had Katharine seen her look so beautiful.

      “I rode back to Curry,” she continued presently, “and he managed to mount somehow, and we rode to Taho together. Katharine, that night the sun set perfectly. I will never forget the desert as it looked to me then. And poor Curry, after he explained who he was, that he was a guide and packer for Mr. Weston and lived at Black Mesa half of the year, was silent all the rest of the way. I knew he was in pain. I don’t mean pain from his injuries—the pain of bereavement. It was dark when we got in. Wilbur, lantern in hand, watched us ride up to the post. He was in an ugly mood—wretchedly ugly—but Curry didn’t know because men who had collected to search for me, surrounded him and rode him off to the government hospital. Two weeks later Curry called, and Wilbur deliberately walked out the back way when he saw him come in. Curry brought his bridle to present to me. He said he could never use it on another horse—wanted me to have it as a token of appreciation for what I had done. Later Wilbur hacked it to pieces with a knife. That is all there was to it.”

      “That is all!” Long after Mary’s recital, Katharine repeated these words to the night. Mary had retired, and the Eastern girl was alone in her restlessness. The Blakely girls had not come in yet. They were still at the remote red dot of fire that marked the Westons’ camp. Gay voices carried through the night from the spot. Mary should have been there with them, happy and giving happiness. Curry, perhaps, would be there, too. Mary and Curry! Why could not it have been such a man as he that Mary had loved and married? How ghastly to have to live one’s life out with a man like Wilbur, and how difficult to keep one’s soul from dry rot under such a bondage!

CHAPTER 3

      It was only at intervals that Katharine slept. She heard the Blakely girls come in about an hour after she had taken to her sleeping bag, and this and successive events interrupted her repose. Once she awoke with a start, cold perspiration breaking out over her at the clammy wet touch of something moving against her hand. It was only a stray dog, inquisitive about her presence and which seemed ashamed that he had wakened her. She had scarcely recovered from her fright when a step outside pulled her back from the fringe of sleep, and she started violently at sight of the somber figure of an Indian peering in through the open doorway. Would he dare to come in, or was he, from some sense of guardianship, making sure that all was well? He could not know that she was observing him; she was in the dark, he in the moonglow of the doorway. After a while he left as quietly as he had come. The illuminated dial of her watch read two-fifteen. Sleep continued to evade her. She reached out for comforting contact with Mary, which action, reassuring in its effect, drew Katharine slowly from consciousness to rest. Later a sudden grasp on her arm threw her once more into a spasm of fear until she discovered that it was Mary, pulling herself out of the horror of a dream. That was too much. Sleep no longer was possible, and Mary, now wide-eyed too, was satisfied to hear Katharine’s whispered account of the night. At a little past four they dressed, donning riding clothes, each taking turns standing guard at the door.

      While Katharine kept post she observed a woman dressed in khaki advancing through the dusk of early dawn from the direction of the camping grounds, where several fires still blazed brightly. Katharine imagined, watching her, that she had come to wake the Blakely girls, and such was the case. The woman was Mrs. Weston. She was a rather short, stout person with a round face, peach-pink, and a brisk bright smile that came freely. She accepted Katharine as she must have accepted everyone, like a mother suddenly recognizing a strayed member of her brood.

      “You must visit me at Black Mesa!” she said with a degree of accusation in her voice which made Katharine feel remiss for not having journeyed to Black Mesa earlier. Mary, who was included in the invitation, assured Mrs. Weston that her several attempts to get there always had been thwarted.

      For the Blakely girls, who had slept in almost full attire, dressing was a simple matter—a comb run through bobbed hair, and boots pulled on over rumpled riding-breeches—and they left with Mrs. Weston before Hanley and Wilbur appeared.

      Stars were paling and the moon was low, and a sweet dry smell, carried on a light breeze, filled the early morning air. More fires were blazing on the campground. Mounted Indians moved like shadows down the road, leading strings of horses. Here and there some on foot slipped in and out of doorways and corrals, behind automobiles and wagons, quiet, purposeful, fleet in action. To observe the scene was more like dreaming the experience than living it. Hanley and Wilbur breaking into the picture made it all too real. Hanley came only part way, then struck off toward the Westons’ camp.

      Whether it was merely because Wilbur had slept well that there was in his manner an unusually gentle deference to Mary, or because, capable of shame, he wished to re-establish himself in a more kindly light in his wife’s regard, Katharine could not decide. But he was proving a most attentive spouse. A campfire and breakfast awaited the girls; and while they partook of the meal, an Indian rode up with their horses. Two of them, like most Indian horses, were small pintos, but the third was a rangy bay.

      “Him bad devil, sometime good,” said the Indian of the sturdier of the two pintos, and with a wave of his hand seemed to relegate that particular mount to Wilbur.

      However, it was Mary, at Wilbur’s suggestion, who rode the “bad devil.” Wilbur expressed preference for the bay, and after adjusting the stirrups of the other pinto for Katharine, Wilbur mounted his own horse.

      One day at Taho Wilbur had expressed great disdain for “the rats of Indian horses that make a man-size hombre look like a fool.” It was evident that under no exigency would he risk such an appearance; rather he would prefer to risk his wife’s safety. There was no doubt the bay became him, added to his pompousness quite as much as he could have desired, and brought out to full advantage his equestrian skill.

      When they set out on the long winding trail up Oraibi Mesa the stars were fast disappearing; the daylight was spreading over the farthermost reaches of the desert. Small parties were assembling from everywhere, both Indians and whites, and riding in slow procession along the trail like silent shadows in a silent world. Below them