Chapter 6

The bay mare turned out to be the most miserable, as well as the ugliest, horse I had ever ridden. She didn't know how to walk. All she did was jig, jig, jig, and that gait got to be mighty tiresome. What was worse, if I squeezed my legs and tugged back easily on the reins, the way a man's supposed to do to make a horse walk or to bring one down to a halt, she'd rear straight up, going almost completely over on her back. The first time she pulled that trick, she almost lost me, I realized that it wasn't altogether her fault. Somebody had taught her to do it, and she expected a reward every time, a nice friendly pat on the neck or a handful of oats. I cursed the cowboy who had taught her to rear, and I cursed her for learning it so well. The third time she tried it on me I dismounted, broke off a thick mesquite branch and, when she reared up the next time, brought the club down on her poll. For the next few miles we had it out; she'd rear up, and I'd club her back down. She began to get the idea that rearing was associated with a sudden whack on the poll, and she quit doing it.

But she still wouldn't walk. She was a jigger, she always had been a jigger, and it was too late now - she was at least eight years old - to make a walker out of her.

I had a long way to go, and I didn't want her to wear out before I got there, so I had to put up with her jigging, even though it felt as if my sore jaw were going to drop clean off.

Nevertheless, she was a good animal, a better animal than Snip. In spite of her hard, punishing gait, she covered a lot of ground with that steady jigging, and she was as sure-footed as a mountain sheep.

I had removed the traces of my stay at the mining camp, taking enough time to be certain there would be no remains of an old camp there for searchers to find; I had to wait for the moon before leaving, anyway. I made a circle to avoid Twenty-Mile, after taking the old mining road almost to the edge of town, and then headed southwest. I didn't intend to ride over those badlands at night again, nor did I want to take a chance by following the stage road back to Clinton. This time, I wasn't in any all-fired hurry. So the best way back to my spread, even though it was maybe seven or eight miles longer, was to make a looping desert detour all the way 'round the bad country between Twenty-Mile and the back outer limits of the Reardon range. There was an old Indian trail through the mountains, if I could find it again after so many years, that would take me through a deserted cliff dwellers' valley, and then up and over the remaining hills behind my own ranch.

I rode all night, heading toward the darker hole in the black mass of mountains that marked the entrance to the cliff dwellers' valley. By taking the longer way around, as I had figured, I had prevented anyone from seeing me between Twenty-Mile and the back limits of the Reardon range. And once through the flat sandy bottom of the cliff valley, I only had to ride up and over two steep rises, and then I would be in my own valley and safe at my own spread. No one would ever figure I'd return to my own place, I thought. It would be the last place the Reardons would ever think to look for me.

As the sky lightened, I began to get sleepy. I would nod in spite of myself and the mare's rough jigging gait. But there were still several miles of desert to cross before we reached the mouth of the valley, where I intended to spend the day in the cool shade. Across the flat desert, things looked much closer than they were. I grew sleepier and sleepier, and every time I looked, the mouth of the valley seemed to be the same distance away. I felt as if I would never get there. To help stay awake, I decided that it might be a good idea to practice my draw as I rode along.

I shifted my reins to my left hand, picked out a barrel cactus up ahead as a target, and swiftly drew my pistol, pointing it at the cactus with my right forefinger along the barrel as Mr. Dover had taught me. But this time it was too late to do much of anything except to kick desperately to get my feet clear of the stirrups before twelve hundred pounds of gun-shy female horse landed on top of me. Because back and over she came, the moment she saw that pistol out of the comer of her rolling right eye. I got clear all right, but my head hit something as I dived backwards into the hard ground. The dull trunk of something hitting my head above my left ear was the last thing I remembered about the fall.

I came to slowly, not wanting to open my eyes, but forced to open them because of the searing white sunlight on my eyelids. For a moment I lay there, getting my bearings, remembering the mare going over backwards in her fright and becoming embittered and angry. Everything, it seemed to me, was conspiring against me. Not only was every man in the Territory after me with a gun, but I was now alone in the desert without a horse or food or water, and a long way from nowhere. So I fought against opening my eyes.

I heard a gurgling sound, and it seemed to be close by, even though I couldn't tell the direction from which the sound was coming. The sound was accompanied by a gentle buzzing, a constant steady buzzing that didn't rise or fall, but belonged to the gurgling noise in the same way as second fiddle belongs to the first fiddle when two men are playing a duet.

Overcome with weariness, and feeling despair over my plight, I didn't want to get up at all. I continued to lie there weakly. About then I realized where the gurgling and buzzing noises were coming from; the noises were inside my own head! A bone or something or other was cracked way inside my head on the left side, near my inner ear. And the gurgling noise was the rushing blood in a vein flowing by my hearing canal like a murmuring underground river. The buzzing, of course, had to be caused by the steady vibration of a cracked bone or a piece of twisted gristle inside my head. I pressed my left hand hard against the side of my head, and the sound was not so loud, but I could still hear it. It was then that I also felt the wet blood coming out of my ear. There wasn't much blood, but there was enough to confirm where the sounds were coming from.

Still pressing hard on the side of my head, I sat up and, despite my dull and throbbing headache, felt better immediately. The bay mare was only a few yards away, nuzzling on a few blades of dry grass at the base of a big redstone boulder. I had thought that she had run off, but I should have known better than that. A horse likes company. When she saw me sitting up, she whinnied a greeting, but she edged away guiltily just the same as I got to my feet. I was looking for my pistol, which had fallen out of my hand when the mare had reared over backward, but she must have thought that I was looking for a club to give her the beating she deserved. I found the pistol right away, with the sun making it glitter. But the mare kept edging away as I approached her, and I had to chase her for at least two hundred yards before she allowed me to catch her.

The saddle had been scuffed and skewed off-center by her backward fall. I had to readjust the saddle and blanket and retie the loosened cinch straps before I could remount. I didn't punish the horse; it wasn't her fault that she was gun-shy. But my resolve to get rid of her and to get another and better horse as soon as possible was strengthened by the knowledge that she was gun-shy in addition to every other bad habit a horse could have. A hunted man couldn't afford to ride a gun-shy horse.

With the sun well up, the long black crack in the flat wall of the red cliffs ahead, which marked the entrance to the valley, seemed much wider than it had in the pre-dawn light, and I rode directly toward it. There were shallow pools of water to be found along the base of the cliff, as I recalled, where seepage from the mountains gathered. And because the pools were always shaded, the water would be nice and cool. I determined to reach the valley and water before making camp, submitting to the rough jigging gait with clenched teeth because of my sore jaw and pressing in on my head with my left hand to hold down the buzzing and gurgling sounds.

I saw the smoke before the fire and brought the mare down to a dancing, shifting halt, because she was unable ever to stand completely still. It was a tiny wisp of smoke, not much bigger than a cotton rope, and it twisted high in the air at the mouth of the valley. Sitting there on my restless animal, I found it hard to trace the source; but I finally spotted the tiny red spark well inside the dark canyon. A squatting shadow was blacker yet against the shaded wall of the cliff. The fire was so tiny that the man was evidently burning a single manzanita root. I only saw the single figure, and there was no sign of a horse, although there could have been a horse tied around the bend out of my sight-and some more men hiding around the bend, too. I wondered about it, and the more I wondered the more enraged I became. As a moving figure on horseback, I could have been seen for miles before I reached the canyon, which would have given them plenty of time to prepare an ambush for me. But on the other hand, why would they take the trouble to warn me of an ambush by leaving one man to tend a tiny fire? To do so would be foolhardy, so I concluded that only one man was there, a prospector or another saddle tramp like myself. I loaded both pistols, however, before spurring the mare forward, and I loosened my Johnson repeater in its leather boot.

At the mouth of the canyon I dismounted and tethered the mare to a rocky outcropping with the halter shank before continuing on foot through the soft sand of the valley. I had my pistol drawn, but the man beside the fire gave no sign that he was aware of my presence as I approached him. I thought for a moment that he might be asleep, so I walked as silently as I could. But he was not asleep. He was an old Indian, with a crinkled face like a baked apple, and naked except for a skimpy deer-leather loin cloth. Being downwind, I smelled that he was an Indian before I proved it beyond a doubt by looking at him. His thin braided hair was snow-white, and so were his thin eyebrows. He even had a few white straggly hairs on his chin, which a man rarely sees on an Indian. His mahogany, nearly black skin was wrinkled all over, as if he were wearing the hide of a man twice his size. His arms and legs were as skinny as those of an Indian child with rickets, and the skin on his face was so loose he couldn't have registered any facial expression if he had wanted to, which he apparently didn't. Only his right eye was fiercely alive and burning; his left eye was covered by a scummy white cataract. But his bright black right eye was moist and fully alert to my presence; it watched every move I made, although his body remained motionless.

It was evident that the old Indian had befouled his breechcloth like a baby, but unlike a baby, there had been nobody around to clean him up afterwards. I circled warily around him, moving up-wind. On the right of the tiny fire were a bow and two arrows, and a small pottery jar holding a handful of parched corn. I made a cautious trip to the first bend in the canyon to see if there was a horse tied there, although I was sure there wouldn't be even before I looked. The old Indian was probably a minor chief, or at least a respected warrior, and he had undoubtedly been brought to the canyon either on a litter or carried there double on horseback by his tribesmen, and left by the wall to die alone. As I came toward him he began to tremble, and I began to laugh. The more I laughed the more his body trembled with fear, and my laughter echoed eerily in the narrow high-walled canyon. Waiting to die, he had taken me for Mr. Death himself, and he was trembling with fear. Inasmuch as he was going to die soon anyway, I decided to practice my draw on him.

I paced off approximately fifteen yards from the old man, standing with my back to the fire, whirled, drew and fanned my pistol, pointing along the barrel at his belly with my forefinger. Counting the echoes, it sounded as if three shots had been fired instead of only one, but the single shot had caught him dead center. As he fell over sideways, the hole in his back was exposed; and it was almost five times as big as the hole in his stomach. His left leg fell into the fire as he rolled over, so I dragged him clear and up the canyon for about thirty yards. His ancient body was as light as a child's. There was a good-sized pile of manzanita roots and dried twigs, and it didn't take me long to build up the little fire and cook breakfast. I looked for the dampest sand I could find along the base of the cliff, dug down about two and a half feet, and ample water welled up for coffee and for watering the n)are. I only had a one-quart feed of oats in the saddlebag, but I fed all of it to the mare, spreading the grain out on a fiat rock so she would have to work to eat it. It was the last of the oats, but she would have plenty of good green grass to crop in the evening when I reached my spread, and she would need the oats for energy to get over the two mountains that afternoon.

After eating, I tried to sleep. But I couldn't get to sleep, tired as I was, because of the buzzing and gurgling sounds inside my head. When I hummed I could drown out most of the noises, but I couldn't sleep while I hummed, either. After a while, I wondered if it was the dead Indian that was bothering me. I didn't really think so, but I got up and buried him anyway, scooping out a shallow hole in the soft dry sand away from the wall, and then covering the grave with loose rock to keep the coyotes from digging him up. Not until he was covered up completely did I remember the bow and two arrows and the small jar of parched corn he would need on his journey. I dug under his right side, curled his stiff fingers around the bow, and then buried the arrows and corn in the same place. Humming as I worked, I had to laugh again when I thought about his tribesmen who would come back eventually to bury the old man's body themselves. To make certain they wouldn't find him, I covered the loose stones on his grave with more loose sand and then rolled a huge boulder on top of the mound. The grave now looked natural as if a landslide had fallen down from the cliffside. No one, not Indians or coyotes, would know that it was a grave.

This mild exertion was apparently all I needed. I washed my perspiring body from the waist up at the little spring I had dug, and this time when I stretched out on my slicker beside the little fire, I fell asleep right away.