When the shadows started to fall, I edged out of my corner in the rocks and listened before coming clear out. I heard never a sound, but came out and started to walk. Stubby Spring was not far off. Reaching back, I slipped the loop off my six-shooter and hitched it into position. My canteen was full from the tank and I took a swallow just as I started. My mouth was dry as the inside of an old packrat’s nest, and my temper was running on mad.
A moment before they saw me, I saw their horses. There were two of them, and they saw me as I saw them, and I shot the one with the rifle. I staggered but fired as I did so. The man who shot at me swore in Spanish, although he was an Anglo, and then cut loose at me again, but he missed, his shots going wild because he had taken three of mine. He was settling down to the ground, and their horses were running wild off down the trail. Sitting on the sand, I was thumbing cartridges into my six-shooter, and when I was ready to start shooting, I looked over to where their fire was, and they were both down.
Holding my gun ready, I got to my knees and managed to lunge up to a standing position. Then I walked up to their camp, and there was a coffeepot on the fire and some bacon frying.
One of them had fallen so his pants were beginning to smolder, so I nudged his leg over with my toe and ate the bacon. Then I drank some coffee and went to where the rifle had fallen. My bullet had ruined the action, and the smashed-out-of-shape bullet had ripped off it into that man. He was torn up pretty bad.
Fifty-five
Lying near the fire where the two men had taken them from one of the horses was a pair of saddlebags and an old canvas rucksack. Dumping out the contents, which consisted of odds and ends a drifting man carries, I found a needle and thread, both of heavy stuff for mending coarse cloth or other gear, and filling the empty loops of my cartridge belt from theirs, I headed into the broken country near the canyon’s edge.
That canyon looked to be all of two thousand feet deep, but where the runoff from Stubby Spring fell into the canyon it looked like a man might make it. If I could get down there, any pursuers would have to ride a long way around. Right now I wanted to get away from the spring, so I refilled my canteen, drank from the spring, and carrying the empty saddlebags and the rucksack, I found my way into the broken country near the canyon’s rim. Sitting down in a hidden spot where I could watch the trail from the spring, I started to build myself a pair of moccasins. It was not a difficult job, and every Indian and most mountain men were doing it constantly, as moccasins had a way of wearing out.
Taking my time and using the material from the saddlebags, I cut out the moccasins and stitched them together, a better pair than I’d had since starting. I put the rest of the leather into the old rucksack and started hunting a way down into the canyon.
Nobody had ever told me climbing down into a canyon like that was going to be easy, so I took my time, easing from ledge to ledge, walking along here, using hands and feet against the rock wall at other places, until I got down. There might have been easier places, but I’d no time for looking. On the bottom I rested in the shade of the cliff and then started down the canyon. Maybe I’d walked three miles when I saw the buzzards. There were several of them and they were circling above something down below. Checking my gun to see if it was there, I climbed around some boulders, stepped along on some rocks, and went around a dead Joshua washed down by some flash flood. Suddenly several buzzards started up from the ground, but they did not fly away.
What was down there was dying, not dead.
Now I moved with greater care. My ears told me nothing beyond an occasional squawk from the buzzards. A couple of them had stopped flying and had perched themselves on rocks close above something they were watching. I could see their ugly necks crane to peer closer.
Then I came around a corner of rock and saw three horses. Two of them were down, one struggling to rise. The third horse was standing, legs spraddled, head hanging, obviously all in. Yet when one of the buzzards started down, his head came up and he moved at it.
They heard me scrambling down the rocks. The horse lifted his head and stared.
It was my black stallion.
For a moment I stopped dead still. I never saw a horse that looked worse and was still on his feet. He had fallen or been attacked by something. One shoulder was all torn and bloody, and there was a nasty laceration on one hip. His head was up and he was staring at me, but he moved a little closer to protect the mare that was down.
“It’s all right, boy,” I said, “I’m coming!”
His ears pricked a little. I think he knew my voice, and he should have. I’d talked to him enough, from time to time. Then I remembered the tracks I’d seen now and then and the conversation I’d overheard when somebody named Ventura was spoken of as chasing a small bunch of horses-“not more than five or six head.” Well, there were only three of them now, and one was dead. Coming closer, I saw the horse that was down had a shattered leg, one of the worst breaks I ever saw. That down horse was suffering a good bit and needed killing, but I dared not do it until I’d done something for the stallion. A shot now might frighten the stallion into running, and in the desert like this, he would surely die. Speaking softly, I walked nearer, trying not to frighten him. He was in no shape to run, as whoever had chased them had simply run them ragged, and tough as he was, that big stallion was only hours away from going down himself, and then the buzzards would move in.
Edging closer, I took off my hat, and unstopping my canteen, I poured about half of the water into my hat and held it for the stallion to drink. He shied a mite but was too bad off to run, and when he smelled that water, he moved closer. He dipped his nose into my hat and drank. He drank it all and wanted more, but what I had must be kept. We had a long way to go. However, in that canyon there was water, the canyon where the palm trees were. Getting there was another thing. It would be tough for me, tougher for that black horse. With the straps from the rucksack, I made a makeshift bridle. From the beginning I’d had a hunch that horse had been ridden at some time or at least handled by some man or woman. He stood quiet while I slipped the bridle on, and let me lead him off down the canyon a ways. Leaving him standing there, I walked back and put that down horse out of its misery.
Leading the black stallion, I started down the canyon. There was water aplenty at Thousand Palms, but getting there would be a trick. No longer did I have just myself to worry about, but a mighty big horse that would need a lot of water. The canyon down which we were walking, with the desert opening before us, collected runoff from several intermittent creeks, so when I saw a hollow near a boulder with cracked mud in the bottom, I decided to take a chance. Horses, wild horses at least, were good at finding water and sometimes pawing the dirt out to get at it.
Using my bowie knife, I started digging at the ground to see if there was water. When I’d worked maybe a half-hour I began finding damp earth, and down deeper, water began to come in. Scooping out more dirt, I let the water seep in. It was slow, but it came. That stallion needed no urging. He just put his head down and sucked it all up.
We stayed right there until sundown, and whenever there was water enough seeped in, I let the big black drink. Meanwhile I scouted around and found some jimsonweed growing. That was no great wonder, because it can be found growing most everywhere along roads and up canyons, even sometimes on the bald desert. Crushing up some of the leaves with water, I plastered them on the sores. Then I washed my hands with fresh sand, not trusting the weed too much. When shadows started to gather, I got up. “All right, boy,” I said, “let’s you and me go home.”