A Desert Rider

: 'drag' Harlan

From out of the shimmering haze that veiled the mystic eastern space came

a big black horse bearing a rider. Swinging wide, to avoid the feathery

dust that lay at the base of a huge sand dune, the black horse loped,

making no sound, and seeming to glide forward without effort. Like a

somber, gigantic ghost the animal moved, heroic of mold, embodying the

spirit of the country, seeming to bear the sinister message of the

desert, the whispered promise of death, the lingering threat, the grim

mockery of life, and the conviction of futility.



The black horse had come far. The glossy coat of him was thickly

sprinkled with alkali dust, sifted upon him by the wind of his passage

through the desert; his black muzzle was gray with it; ropes of it matted

his mane, his forelock had become a gray-tinged wisp which he fretfully

tossed; the dust had rimmed his eyes, causing them to loom large and

wild; and as his rider pulled him to a halt on the western side of the

sand dune--where both horse and rider would not be visible on the sky

line--he drew a deep breath, shook his head vigorously, and blew a thin

stream of dust from his nostrils.



With head and ears erect, his eyes flaming his undying courage and his

contempt for distance and the burning heat that the midday sun poured

upon him, he gazed westward, snorting long breaths into his eager lungs.



The rider sat motionless upon him--rigid and alert. His gaze also went

into the west; and he blinked against the white glare of sun and

distance, squinting his eyes and scanning the featureless waste with

appraising glances.



In the breathless, dead calm of the desert there was no sound or

movement. On all sides the vast gray waste stretched, a yawning inferno

of dead, dry sand overhung with a brassy, cloudless sky in which swam the

huge ball of molten silver that for ages had ruled that baked and

shriveled land.



A score of miles westward--twoscore, perhaps--the shadowy peaks of some

mountains loomed upward into the mystic haze, with purple bases melting

into the horizon; southward were other mountains, equally distant and

mysterious; northward--so far away that they blurred in the vision--were

still other mountains. Intervening on all sides was the stretching,

soundless, aching void of desolation, carrying to the rider its lurking

threat of death, the promise of evil to come.



The man, however, seemed unperturbed. In his narrowed, squinting eyes as

he watched the desert was a gleam of comprehension, of knowledge intimate

and sympathetic. They glowed with the serene calm of confidence; and far

back in them lurked a glint of grim mockery. It was as though they

visualized the threatened dangers upon which they looked, answering the

threat with contempt.



The man was tall. His slim waist was girded by a cartridge belt which was

studded with leaden missiles for the rifle that reposed in the saddle

holster, and for the two heavy pistols that sagged at his hips. A gray

woolen shirt adorned his broad shoulders; a scarlet neckerchief at his

throat which had covered his mouth as he rode was now drooping on his

chest; and the big, wide-brimmed felt hat he wore was jammed far down

over his forehead. The well-worn leather chaps that covered his legs

could not conceal their sinewy strength, nor could the gauntleted leather

gloves on his hands hide the capable size of them.



He was a fixture of this great waste of world in whose center he sat. He

belonged to the country; he was as much a part of it as the somber

mountains, the sun-baked sand, the dead lava, and the hardy, evil-looking

cacti growth that raised its spined and mocking green above the arid

stretch. He symbolized the spirit of the country--from the slicker that

bulged at the cantle of the saddle behind him, to the capable gloved

hands that were now resting on the pommel of the saddle--he represented

the force which was destined to conquer the waste places.



For two days he had been fighting the desert; and in the serene calm of

his eyes was the identical indomitability that had been in them when he

had set forth. As he peered westward the strong lines around his mouth

relaxed, his lips opened a trifle, and a mirthless smile wreathed them.

He patted the shoulder of the black horse, and the dead dust ballooned

from the animal's coat and floated heavily downward.



"We're about halfway, Purgatory," he said aloud, his voice coming flat

and expressionless in the dead, vacuum-like silence. He did not cease to

peer westward nor to throw sharp glances north and south. He drew off a

glove and pushed his hat back, using a pocket handkerchief to brush the

dust from his face and running the fingers of the hand through his

hair--thereby producing another ballooning dust cloud which splayed

heavily downward.



"What's botherin' me is that shootin'," he went on, still speaking to the

black horse. "We sure enough heard it--didn't we?" He laughed, again

patting the black's shoulder. "An' you heard it first--as usual--with me

trailin' along about half a second behind. But we sure heard 'em, eh?"



The black horse whinnied lowly, whereupon the rider dismounted, and

stretched himself.



From a water-bag at the cantle of the saddle he poured water into his big

hat, watching sympathetically while the big horse drank. Some few drops

that still remained in the hat after the horse had finished he playfully

shook on the animal's head, smiling widely at the whinny of delight that

greeted the action. He merely wet his own lips from the water-bag. Then

for an instant, after replacing the bag, he stood at the black's

shoulder, his face serious.



"We'll hit the Kelso water-hole about sundown, I reckon, Purgatory," he

said. "That's certain. There's only one thing can stop us--that shootin'.

If it's Apaches, why, I reckon there's a long dry spell ahead of us; but

if it's only Greasers----"



He grinned with grim eloquence, patted the black again, and climbed into

the saddle. Again, as before, he sat silent upon his mount, scanning the

sun-scorched waste; and then he rode forward.



An hour later, during which he loped the black horse slowly, he again

drew the animal to a halt and gazed around him, frowning, his eyes

gleaming with a savage intolerance.



The shooting he had heard some time previous to his appearance at the

base of the big sand dune had not been done by Indians. He was almost

convinced of that now. Or, if Indians had done the shooting, they had not

yet observed him. The fact that he had seen no smoke signals proved that.



Still, there was the deep silence on every hand to bring doubt into his

mind; and he knew that Indians--especially Apaches--were tricky,

sometimes foregoing the smoke signals to lie in ambush. And very

likely--if they had seen him coming--they were doing that very thing:

waiting for him to ride into the trap they had prepared. He had not been

able to locate the point from which the reports had come. It had seemed

to him that they had come from a point directly westward; but he could

not be sure, for he had seen no smoke.



He talked no more to the horse, sitting rigidly in the saddle, erect, his

head bent a little forward, his chin thrusting, his lips curving with a

bitterly savage snarl. He felt the presence of living things with him in

the desert; a presentiment had gripped him--a conviction that living men

were close and hostile.



Reaching downward, he drew the rifle from the saddle holster and examined

its mechanism. Placing it across his knee, he drew out his heavy pistols,

one after another, slowly twirling the cylinders. He replaced the

pistols, making sure that the holster flaps were out of the way so that

they would not catch or drag at the weapons when he wanted to use

them--and with the rifle resting across his legs near the saddle horn, he

rode slowly forward.



He swung wide of even the small sand dunes as he passed them, and he kept

a vigilant eye upon the dead rocks that dotted the level at infrequent

intervals. Even the cactus clumps received flattering attention; and the

little stretches of greasewood that came within range of his vision were

examined closely.



At the end of half an hour he had seen nothing unusual. Here and there he

had noticed a rattler lurking in the shade of a rock or partly concealed

under the thorny blade of a sprawling cactus; and he had seen a sage hen

nestling in the hot sand. But these were fixtures--as was also the

Mexican eagle that winged its slow way in mile-wide circles in the

glaring, heat-pulsing sky.



The rider again halted the black horse. The presentiment of evil had

grown upon him, and he twisted around in the saddle, sweeping the

desolate vast level with cold, alert, puzzled eyes.



There was no object near him behind which an enemy might lie concealed;

the gray floor of the desert within many hundred miles of him was smooth

and flat and obstructionless. Far away, half a mile, perhaps, he saw a

thrusting knob of rock, with some cactus fringing it. From where he sat

in the saddle it seemed that the rock might be the peak of a mountain

reaching upward out of the sea of sand and desert waste--but it was

barren on sides and top, and would afford no concealment for an enemy,

except at its base. And even the base was not large enough to conceal

more than a few men.



The rider gazed long at the rock, but could detect no sign of movement

near it. He had turned from it, to look again into the western distance,

when Purgatory whinnied lowly.



Flashing around in the saddle, the rider again faced the rock. And he saw

movement there now. The distance was great, but the clarity of the

atmosphere brought a moving object distinctly into his vision. The object

was a man, and, like a huge fly, he was crawling rapidly up the sloping

side of the rock, toward its peak, which flattened abruptly at the

summit.



The man bore a rifle. The rider could see it dragging from the man's

hand; and in a flash the rider was out of the saddle, throwing himself

flat behind a low ridge of sand, his own rifle coming to a rest on a

small boulder as he trained its muzzle upon the man, who by this time had

reached the summit of the rocks in the distance. The rider waited,

nursing the stock of the rifle, his eyes blazing, while Purgatory,

seemingly aware of an impending tragedy, moved slowly away as though

understanding that he must not expose himself.



The rider waited, anticipating the bullet that would presently whine

toward him. And then he heard the report of the man's rifle, saw that the

smoke streak had been directed downward, as though the man on the summit

of the rock were shooting at something below him.



The rider had been pressing the trigger of his own weapon when he saw the

smoke streak. He withheld his fire when he divined that the man was not

shooting at him; and when he saw the man on the rock shoot again--downward

once more--the rider frowned with embarrassment.



"Don't even know I'm here!" he mused. "An' me gettin' ready to salivate

him!"



He got to his knees and watched, curiosity gleaming in his eyes. He saw

the man on the rock fire again--downward--and he noted a smoke spurt

answer the shot, coming upward from the base of the rock. The rider got

to his feet and peered intently at the rock. And now he saw another man

crouching near its base. This man, however, was not the one the man on

the summit of the rock was shooting at, for smoke streaks were issuing

from a weapon in that man's hand also, but they were horizontal streaks.



Therefore the rider divined that the two men must be shooting at another

who was on the far side of the rock; and he ran to Purgatory, speaking no

word until he had vaulted into the saddle. Then he spoke shortly.



"They're white men, Purgatory, an' they're havin' a private rukus, looks

like. But we're doin' some investigatin' just to see if the game's on the

level."