Clinging to a rock to steady himself, he edged around a corner and looked upon a wide, shallow pool of water. At one side, where a trail came in, there was a flat surface and a small edge of sand. At the far side of the pool the water became deeper.
He walked back to his horse. “It’s there,” he said, “enough to fill our canteen and water the horses, and drink what we want.”
He motioned them around to the trail so they could bring the horses up. Then he took the olla and went back to the pool. He went to the deepest part, filled the olla, and placed it back in a shadowed corner where a shelf of rock would protect it from the sun. When the others came up, he was drinking deeply at the basin’s edge.
“Hold the horses back,” Harbin said. “Let’s get our water before they stir it up.”
Badger filled the canteen before he drank. While Nora was drinking, Rodelo looked around. This was a sheltered spot, a place that could be guarded, and defended. And there was some shade against the late afternoon sun. “Let’s camp right here,” he said.
Tom Badger glanced over at Joe Harbin before replying. “Might as well,” he agreed. “We ain’t likely to find a better place.”
They brought the horses in and watered them, then led them to the shadows under the basaltic rim that partly enclosed the basin. The horses needed the rest … they all did.
“There’s enough dry wood for a fire. That stuff won’t send up any smoke,” Badger said.
“All right,” Rodelo agreed.
Westward, and within plain view from where they stood, were the dunes, the great wall of dunes at least five miles across that separated them from the somewhat harder surface along the shore of the Gulf of California. Southwest was the short range of jagged mountains, the Sierra Blanca, already partly buried in the drifting sand.
Dan Rodelo looked at those dunes and swore softly to himself. He hated the thought of attempting to cross them tomorrow. All of them were already exhausted, and the horses had given all they could. The heat and the shortage of water had sapped their strength and their powers of endurance to the limit. And somewhere not far off were the Indians.
Somehow, he was sure, they had evaded the Yaquis for the moment. By some accidental twist and turn they had slipped off and left the Indians following along in another direction. Not that it would give them more than a few hours leeway. Without doubt the Indians had scouts out searching for them even now.
There had been no horse tracks or human tracks around this tank, and that meant it was either unknown to the Yaquis or unused by them. Perhaps the tank was normally empty at this season, but even so, had it been used at times the tracks would have been there. And the only ones he had seen were those of bighorn sheep and the odd twisting trail of a sidewinder.
Dan Rodelo stared off toward the dunes, but he was keeping Badger and Harbin within view at all times. From now on he must be wary, for he was sure neither of them had any plan to share the gold with him. As soon as the danger of Indian attack seemed past, they would waste no more time.
Nora moved over to stand beside him. Her lips were cracked, her cheeks burned red along the cheekbones, but nothing could spoil completely the quiet beauty of her face.
“I love the desert at this hour,” she said, as she looked westward. “I like to see the shadows gather, and feel the coolness come.”
“Enjoy it while you can. Tomorrow will be our worst day.”
“I think so too. I can remember the sand dunes.”
“I wonder that you survived. That must have been a tough trek for a youngster.”
“It wasn’t that. It was what I’d left behind. I lost my family in that wreck. At least, I lost all of it I knew.” She looked at him suddenly. “You see, I don’t even know who I am, or where I came from. My father was drowned over there in the Gulf, my mother died in the desert just at the edge of the dunes, only a few miles from here.”
“Dean Stafford brought you across the desert. Five of you started, and three of you made it across. I heard the story.”
Rodelo paused a moment. “What I don’t understand is why you ever wanted to come back.”
“I was alone in the world, and I did not want to be alone. I … I wanted to find something, something we left back there.”
“You left a lot back there, Nora. You left a father and a mother, but you cannot find them now. It is too late for that.”
“Maybe it isn’t.”
He turned to face her questioningly. “Nora …”
“You do not understand. We did leave something back there … a box.”
“A box?”
“Oh, it was nothing much. Just some things my mother loved. Some letters, some pictures … nothing valuable. At least, nothing valuable to anybody but me. But don’t you see? In a way those things are me.
“I was too young to really know either my father or mother, but if I could see their pictures, read some letters they wrote, maybe I could make them seem real to me. I have been thinking of this ever since I was a little girl, because if I have these things that belonged to them, in a certain sense I will have them. They won’t be just shadowy figures I can only vaguely remember, but real people, my people, my family. My own father and mother.”
“You risked this, for that?”
“I know what you’re thinking. It is what everyone thought when I said I wanted to come down here, but don’t you see? I’ve never had anyone who was really my own. I had foster parents and they were good to me; and after they died I finished school on the money they left me, but always I kept thinking of this place. I had to come back. I simply must find that box.”
“I never had any idea what was pushing you.” He hesitated. “Do you really think it is wise? Suppose you found … well, suppose you found they weren’t what you would have wished them to be? Sometimes it is better to have the dream than the reality.”
“I’ve thought of that. No … I must find out. I must know. Why, I don’t even know where they were coming from or where they were going … or why.”
It was a question that had puzzled Rodelo. If Dean Stafford, whom he had known slightly, had any idea who Nora Reilly’s parents were he had never said. Rodelo thought back. Dean had rarely talked about that trek across the Pinacate country … not that Stafford had been a taciturn man, for he was not. There simply had not been much to tell. He had told Rodelo about the water holes … as much as he knew.
Rodelo knew all that anyone had known. The outfit had started for Yuma, on the Colorado River. Stafford knew they were on some sort of a sailing craft. What he knew about ships could have been written on a postage stamp, as he often said. On board ship he had never talked to the child Nora nor to her parents. They had kept to themselves, were well dressed, polite, but somewhat stand-offish.
The boat’s captain was no sailor. He was headed for the goldfields at Ehrenberg, and had bought the boat to get passage to the mouth of the river. Caught in the tidal bore, he had never even known what hit him, nor did Stafford until he reached Yuma. When the child’s mother died she asked Stafford to see that her child was cared for.
Who came to Yuma in those days? Who was headed upriver? Gamblers, honky-tonk girls, miners, adventurers … occasionally soldiers bound for one of the inland forts. Knowing who came up the river then, Rodelo would gamble that the odds were five to one neither of her parents was any good. They were probably people who followed the mining camps for whatever they could get in whatever way was possible in a rough camp among rough men.
Suddenly Harbin was beside them. “What are you two talkin’ about? Rodelo, don’t you forget this here’s my girl.”
“Your girl?” Nora turned on him. “Why, Mr. Harbin! Whatever gave you that idea? I wasn’t aware that I was anybody’s girl.”
He looked hard at her. “Lady, out here you got no choice.”
“I think she has,” Rodelo said.
Harbin ignored Rodelo’s remark. “Look, lady, you better make up your mind. We ain’t got far to go. I can take you on with me, or I can leave you down there on the coast, whichever you like.”