For the time at least, he must wait. To start in the sun would finish him within a few miles at most.
Sweat trickled down his face, and he fanned himself weakly with his hat. He felt faint and sick now, all his rugged strength seeming to drain away. He tried not to think of the thirst that was already drying his throat and cracking his parched lips. He thought of Marta Malone, and the Hidden Valley Ranch.
It was a small ranch, lonely and yet beautiful, nestling in the shoulder of the mountains that somebody had named Hidden Valley. A pleasant place, a place where he had thought to live out his life with Marta.
That had been his one thought, ever since he drifted into the Valley of the Sun and went to work for her, first as a puncher, and then when they all quit, as foreman of a ranch without hands. But he had worked on. He had dammed the spring and formed a pool, he had repaired the house and built an adobe barn. He had broken fifteen wild horses, branded cattle, and kept at it, doing everything possible without thought of reward.
Hiring some drifting cowhands, he had taken her herd to the stock pens at Horse Springs and sold them to a stock buyer for a good price, the first returns that Marta had won from the ranch since her father died. And then he had been robbed.
The worst of it was, they would probably tell her he had run off with her money, and she would have little choice but to believe them.
His head throbbed with dull pain, and the angry teeth of a more raw and bitter pain gnawed at his wounded side. He knew that his wounds should be washed and cleansed, but he had no water, and there was nothing he could do.
The day drew on and the band of shadow in which he sat narrowed. The stifling heat danced upon the far length of the desert. Dust devils moved in a queer rigadoon across the levels. Heat beat down upon him, but at last his eyes closed and he slept. His face greasy with sweat, his body stiff with the torture from his wounds.
A buzzard circled in the sky, and then another came near, and a long time later Brett opened his eyes. Weakly, he pushed himself erect, staring with dazed eyes over the gathering of shadows around him, and the red-and-gold-tipped peaks of the far-off mountains. It would soon be time to move.
Automatically, he felt for his gun. One shot, and then he would need to worry no more. Just one, and then no more pain, no more trouble. Yet even as he thought of it he remembered the beauty of Marta, awaiting him in the doorway at Hidden Valley, her hand shading her eyes, then a smile, and she would come running down the steps. In these past months they had drawn very close to one another.
He looked down at the gun. They had left him that, never guessing he would have the chance to use it again, and he might not.
Marta needed that money. Her whole existence at Hidden Valley depended on it. Only his efforts had enabled her to gather the cattle and get them on the road to market. Without him and the money she could do nothing. And because he had trusted Gay, she would trust him.
Brett Larane felt with a thick and fumbling tongue for the parched and cracked lips. Then he got a finger hold in a crevice of the rock and looked out at the desert. The sun was gone now, and a vague coolness seemed to drift over the desert. He turned and braced himself, gathering his strength. Then he pushed away from the cliff and began to walk.
He was weak, but he kept his eyes on the mountains and moved along steadily. When he had walked a half mile he paused and seated himself carefully on a rock, resting. Nearby there was a mesquite root that would do for a cane. After ten minutes he got up and started on.
Darkness closed around him and he kept moving. Once, far off over the desert, he heard a coyote howl, and once a rabbit scurried by him, dodging away through the rocks and cholla.
He walked on and on, resting at intervals, but continuing to push on. Once, he stumbled and was too weak to rise for a long time. So he lay sprawled out on the desert, his body deliciously cool and relaxed even while his throat burned with thirst.
When he opened his eyes the sky was faintly gray in the east. He struggled to his feet and started on.
Now he must find shelter from the sun. He must find something, somehow, nearby. He would make no more than a couple of miles at his present pace before the sun was up. Yet there was nothing in sight and he pushed on. Suddenly the face of the desert was broken by the sandy scar of a wash. It came down from low hills, and he followed along the lip, walking away from his trail, for often along a wash one might find water.
The sun was looking over the horizon when he glimpsed the green of a cottonwood. His tongue was swollen, but felt thick and dry. He pushed on, then hearing a noise in the brush close to the base of the slim young cottonwood, he halted and, creeping closer, peered through.
Two porcupines were digging industriously into the sand, and he waited for a minute, watching, and then seeing damp sand being scraped from the hole they were digging, he moved up and drove them away.
Water!
He fell on his knees and dug eagerly into the
damp sand at the bottom of the hole, and soon it grew sloppy and muddy, and then he sat back, letting the water seep through into the hole. It was still muddy when he cupped his hand into it and lifted it to his lips. He managed to get a swallow, then moistened his lips and tongue with his damp hand.
All day he waited beside the hole, drinking from time to time, and resting in the flimsy shade of the cottonwood. Toward dusk he bathed his head and face. Then he bathed the raw wound in his side. Having nothing with which to bandage it, he took some green leaves, dipped them in water, and bound them on, using his handkerchief for a compress and a pigging string from his hip pocket to secure the makeshift dressing.
He was picking up his cane to go when he heard a movement in the brush. He froze, and his gun slid into his hand. There was the sound of a horse’s hoof striking stone, and then the brush was thrust apart and a horse walked through, a horse with an empty saddle!
His heart gave a leap. “Buck!” he gasped joyfully. “Well, I’ll be darned!”
The horse jerked his head up and stopped. He spoke again, and the animal thrust a wary nose out toward him, sniff+ curiously of his hand, but not liking the smell of blood that lingered in the air. Brett got his hand on the bridle and led the horse to the small spring, scarcely more than a bucket of water in sight.
Obviously, the horse had escaped, running away when Brett was fired upon, and then the animal, probably headed toward home and browsing along the way, had smelled water. When the horse had drunk, Brett Larane pulled himself into the saddle and started for the trail.
As he rode he studied his situation. He was very weak, and the distance he had to go was great. Yet by resting from time to time he believed he could make it if the wound in his side did not again begin to bleed.
It was not only essential that he arrive at the ranch but that he reach it in condition to act. He had no doubt that if Gay Tomason and Creet were not already there, they soon would be. There was no aid anywhere near for Marta, even if she wished to protest whatever steps they might take. But the chances were that Tomason would go to her as a friend. And even if she knew much of what Joe Creet and Indian Frank were, she had believed that Tomason was a friend.
Darkness was falling when Brett rode the buckskin off the trail into the pi@nons along the mountainside. Buck pulled against his guiding hand, wanting the home corral and the feed that awaited him there. But Brett rode him up through the trees, skirting along a dim cattle trail until he could come down upon the Hidden Valley Ranch from behind, riding down through the aspens.
A light shone from the window of the small ranch house, and his eyes narrowed with thought as he saw another light come on in his own cabin, which had formerly served as the bunkhouse. They were there, then. Tomason was there, and probably Creet.