Whispering Sands: Stories of Gold Fever and the Western Desert

I Night Summons

Go through the desert in a Pullman car and you’ll be bored. Travel through it in an automobile and you’ll be mildly interested, but disappointed.

“So this is the desert,” you’ll think. “This is the place about which I’ve heard so much! Shucks, it’s nothing much, just sand and mountains, cacti and sunshine; gasoline stations, not quite so handy.”

But get away from the beaten trail in the desert. Get out with your camp equipment loaded on the backs of burros. Or even take a flivver and get off the main roads. See what happens.

The spell of the desert will grip you before you’ve left the main road five miles behind. That night you’ll sleep beneath steady stars and listen to the whispers that are the night noises of the desert.

By morning you’ll either hate and fear it, or you’ll love it. I never knew any middle point, not with any one. The desert engenders either fear or fascination, either love or hate.

And if you’re one of those who love it, you’ll get to the point where the whispers mean much.

You won’t hear ’em until you get in your blankets and the camp fire has died down to a mere blotch of dull red against the gray sand of the desert. Then a wind will stir up from some place. The embers will fan into a golden glow, and you’ll hear the whispers. Of course you’ll know it’s just the sand rattling against the cacti. Maybe, if the wind gets stronger, it’ll be sand rustling against sand.

But those are the desert whispers, and you’ll get so you listen for them. You’ll finally get so you can almost interpret ’em. Sounds funny, but it isn’t. It’ll come just as you’re dropping off to sleep. You’ll hear the sand whisper to the sand, and the sand answer, and you’ll be just drowsy enough so you’ll nod your head in confirmation. But the next morning you can’t tell what it was you were agreeing to.

I’ve made my stake out of the desert, and I feel kindly toward it. I’ve got enough now to wear fine clothes and have a chauffeur to drive me the places I want to go. I’ve struck it rich, and people nudge each other when I go to the theater and point me out — Bob Zane, the man that opened the virgin lode.

At first I thought I’d never go back to the desert. I was tired of living on rationed water. I wanted to be where I could take a bath every day, twice a day if I wanted. I craved fresh linen, vegetables, cream in my coffee, beautiful women, theaters, newspapers.

I thought I was satisfied.

I’d stand on Hollywood Boulevard at the corner of Cahuenga and watch ’em pass, the well-fleshed, firm-skinned beauties with their peach-and-cream throats, their red lips, and their exploring eyes.

But I got sick of it without even knowing I was.

It happened one afternoon. She was a Spanish girl, and she wasn’t of the boulevards. Her skin didn’t have the smooth gloss of city life. It had been baked by sun, caressed by wind, moistened by infrequent rain. She was slender, almost stringy. But she moved with a lithe grace that her city sisters couldn’t ape; she was vital as a panther.

I thought of her often that evening. I couldn’t get her out of my mind.

I drifted into a palatial picture theater. The sound picture wailed through its action. There was a desert scene. I slipped forward to the edge of my chair. And then something happened to the lights. The house was dark. When the picture machine went on the blink you could hardly see your hand in front of your face.

Some one called for patience, that the break was temporary and would be repaired in less than thirty seconds.

The audience sat there in the gloom, and started to whisper. Funny about men, that way. In the dark they seem to lack confidence. They whispered as surreptitiously as though they were afraid of the gloom, afraid a loud noise might bring some night animal pouncing down upon them — instinct, I guess, carry-over memories of past lives when men were food for animals, instead of animals being food for men.

That whisper started in the back of the house. It grew in volume, like a desert wind sweeping down a cañon, sending rustling sand against the cacti. Soon the whisper swept around me, hissing in my very ears, a vast composite of sound — and the lights went on, showing the desert scene on the screen.

I got to my feet as one in a daze.

I tramped on somebody’s feet, and he growled. A woman tittered. I didn’t even notice them. I stumbled to the aisle, walked rapidly toward the door. My chauffeur was coming at ten thirty. I didn’t have time to wait for him, couldn’t even stop to telephone him.

I caught a taxi and went to the Arcade Depot. There was a train for Yuma in twenty minutes. I got a lower. Daylight found me at Yuma. I got a flivver and some blankets, a canteen, some grub. I didn’t get much. I was too impatient, like a man who has been too long separated from a loving mistress.

By ten o’clock I was well out in the desert.

That night I sat by a little camp fire. The stars blazed steadily. The little winds were dancing about, making the embers flare up to gold, then dull to russet red. I stretched in my blankets and listened.

Pretty soon I began to hear them, the whispers of the desert.

All about me was that heavy, oppressive silence that stretches down from the very stars. It was broken only by the whispers. Those whispers were so faint I couldn’t hear ’em at first. Then the wind freshened, and I could hear the sand whispering to the sand.

I thought it was the desert giving me a welcome back to it, and I smiled a sleepy smile. Then I thought I heard the word “Tucson,” and I straightened and snapped my eyes open. The word had sounded awful plain.

But it was just a funny sound the sand had made against the cacti, and I closed my eyes and drowsed again, half listening, half sleeping. I dozed, awoke, sighed and settled to sleep.

And the whispers became plainer. I could hear words, soft, hissing, whispered words.

“The señor will come?” asked a hissing voice. There seemed to be something more to it than a sand whisper.

“But the señor must come! The man dies.”

And there was a warm breath on my cheek. I fancied a soft hand caressed my hair, drew itself along my forehead.

“Softly; to awaken suddenly is bad. The señor must open his eyes—”

I snapped my eyes open to see her.

She was dark-skinned, and her oval face was bent over my own, her lips half parted. The eyes were catching the starlight, sending it back. They seemed limpid pools of dark romance, swimming in reflected starlight.

I straightened, and she drew back.

“It is all right, señor,” she said in the language of Mexico. “I feared to awaken you suddenly. It is bad for you, and you might have reached for your gun and gone ‘boom!’ and it would have been all over for poor little me.”

She laughed, and the stars caught the glint of her pearly teeth and showed them against the warm mystery of her pink mouth.

“You must come,” she said.

I struggled to a sitting posture.

“Why must I come, and where?”

“You must come with me to save one of your race who is dying. We have no automobile, nothing but a burro cart, and the heat of the sun would kill him before he reached the main road. But you have your automobile. We saw the lights of your car, saw your camp fire, and it was decided that I should come. I have walked for more than two hours, señor, and the camp was hard to find. You made a very small fire, and you let it go out early.”

I nodded.

“I wanted to listen to the sand,” I said, before I thought.

She lost her smile as she regarded me.

“The señor, then, knows the desert,” she said. “It is well, otherwise he would not believe.”

“What wouldn’t I believe?”

“That which you are to hear. But come.”

I kicked the blankets off. She sat silent while I dressed. None of the false modesty of city maidens, none of the curiosity of the morbid, none of the brazenness of the hard-faced women of the camps. She was what she was, a child of the desert; and because I also was of the desert, we were in perfect accord.

I knew that I was to go on some errand of mercy, that this young woman had walked miles through soft sand that clung to her ankles, that she was worried about the one I must try to save. I knew that speed counted for something, and I pulled into my clothes, flung the canteen in the car, tossed in the blankets without waiting to roll them, and motioned her to the seat beside me.

“Which way?” I asked.

She pointed to a star.

“That way, señor.”

“There is a road?”

“There is desert. The señor will have to watch and drive with care.”

I put the car in low and swung away from my camp, out toward the star.

Twice we had to make detours of direction to get level ground, swinging around the heads of dry washes. Once we got into such deep sand that I had to let some air out of the tires. Finally we saw a hill blotting out the lower stars, showing as a dim silhouette.

“Señor,” she said, placing her soft hand upon the back of mine, “it is here.”

I saw the rudiments of a road, and floor-boarded the throttle. We crept up the hill, making a terrific noise of snarling motor, grinding transmission, spinning tires.

There was a house at the top. A door flung open into a lighted oblong, and a fat woman stood as a black blotch, framed in gold. She screamed a comment in Spanish. I shut off the motor, and the girl vaulted over the door and ran with flashing ankles. I followed, more slowly. The fat woman showered blessings upon my head, hailed me as one sent from the gods.

The house had that indefinable odor of a place where sickness reigns.

An oil lamp furnished a reddish illumination. There were beds in the single room, a table, a stove, a rude fireplace. A couple of boxes did for chairs. It was a desert home, no better and perhaps a little worse than the average.

On the bed next to the far wall something tossed and turned. Over this bed the girl was stooped, her cool hands soothing in fluttered caresses.

I walked to her.

He was a white man, and he was far gone. His red-rimmed eyes told of wasting fever. The gaunt face seemed but pale skin stretched over white bones. His beard had grown in rough stubble. The hair was matted, the lips tinged with blue.

About the bed was a foul odor, the odor of decomposition.

I knew then that the man was wounded, that it was an old wound, and that he could not be moved. I had seen death before, and I knew the shadow of its fluttering wings.

I wondered how I might break the news to the man on the bed and to the girl. It was hard to say. There was, perhaps, a chance in a million if the man lay there, if he had plenty of water, if his wound were cauterized and treated with proper antiseptics.

To move him over the jolting surface of the desert would mean certain death. Yet the girl had set her heart on his being moved. She recognized the slow march of death in the man’s present surroundings. Had I come there a day sooner it might not have been too late. But his face was already graying.

It was the man who broke the silence. He turned his feverish eyes upon me and smiled. As his lips parted I could smell the fever on his breath.

II Yaqui Bullets

“Tina says she got you, to move me,” he said. “It is too late; but I am glad you have come. Draw up a box and listen — listen carefully, for I cannot repeat. I will tell you everything, and then the tax on my strength will bring about the end. So you must listen, and not interrupt, not argue, not question.”

I grinned reassuringly.

“Oh, it’s not that bad. You can tell me a little, then get some sleep. To-morrow you’ll be better. Maybe you can be moved by to-morrow night.”

He shook his head, rolling it from side to side upon the flour-sacked bundle that served as a pillow.

“Don’t argue! Don’t try to salve me over. I know what I know. I’m a surgeon. I know the symptoms. I’ll be good for twenty-four hours if I conserve my strength. If I talk I’ll go any minute. But I’ve got to talk. The end is the same in any event. Come closer, don’t waste time.”

I knew he spoke the truth. The girl felt it. She gave a choking sob, grabbed his hand in hers, pressed it to her lips. He smiled at her, and the fever-reddened eyes grew tender; then he turned to me.

“Take my wrist in your hand. Hold your middle finger there, on the pulse. As long as it beats firm don’t interrupt me. When you feel it skip a few beats and then race rapidly in little, stringy pulses, that means I am going. Then tell me to be fast. Until then, let me tell it my own way, don’t interrupt.”

I nodded a promise. He was half delirious, fighting for sanity, and his pulse was rapid, bounding, but regular.

I held the fever-parched flesh, felt the throbbing pulse as it pounded away the life stream beneath my fingers, and listened.

“I am a Los Angeles surgeon. I had an office in one of the new buildings on Wilshire. My name doesn’t matter. Civilization had gripped me. I was money mad. I wanted power, and I wanted money.

“I had some measure of success in my profession. I thought I was progressing. I invested and made money. Then came the crash of the stock market. I was wiped out. And I was fighting mad, desperate. I d have robbed a bank if I could have been certain of getting away with it. You know the frame of mind.”

I nodded, because he was half delirious and because I wanted him to get over the preliminaries and get down to business. He went on:

“Then a girl came into my office. She was just a young thing, society stamped all over her, class in every line of her bearing. But she was in some sort of trouble. There were dark circles under her eyes. Her glance was nervous.

“I thought I knew the symptoms, but I didn’t. There was an old man with her, a fellow who was all dried out by desert winds. He must have been about sixty. There was some strange bond between him and the girl, yet she didn’t trust him.

“The girl did the talking: ‘This man wants an X-ray of his shoulder,’ she said.

“I said nothing, but took the X-ray. It would be a cash case and a good fee. I’d see to that, and I knew these cases where they don’t give names and talk as though they’ve carefully rehearsed what they’re going to say — which is the case.

“The X-ray showed a bullet under the right scapula. It was an old wound. The scar was nearly faded to normal color. I showed them the plate.

“ ‘Remove that bullet,’ said the girl.

“I shook my head. ‘It’s not advisable,’ I told her; ‘the wound is an old one, and the bullet has been isolated by the tissues. It’s not interfering with the bone or muscle motion, and there’s always danger of infection from an operation.’

“She scowled at me. ‘We want it removed. If you won’t do it, some one else will. There’s a good fee in it for you if you do it, nothing if you don’t.’

“ ‘Can you go to the hospital this afternoon?’ I asked the man.

“ ‘Hospital — hell!’ blazed the girl. ‘It’s a case for an operation right here and now. You’ve got the equipment.’

“ ‘I’d have to get a nurse.’

“ ‘I’ll be your nurse.’

“ ‘You! You’d get sick at the sight of blood!’

“ ‘Try me.’

“I tried her. I got her to help with the anaesthetic, and I performed the operation there on my office operating table. I dug out the bullet, sewed up the cut, put on bandages, and turned to her. She was white-faced, and her lips were tight, but she was standing it one hundred per cent.

“ ‘It’s all over,’ I told her. ‘It’ll be a couple of hours before he comes out from under. Then he can be taken home in a cab or an ambulance. He’ll be feeling pretty groggy.’

“She nodded, and began fishing among the packings I d used and dumped into the bowl at the foot of the table. I asked what she wanted.

“ ‘The bullet, of course.’

“ ‘I have it here,’ I said, and handed it over.

“And at that time the door opened and Miss Marian, my regular office nurse, came strolling into the room.

“ ‘I’ve missed you,’ I said, and my tone wasn’t too cordial I’d almost lost the operation fee over her absence. She’d been due an hour earlier. She looked like the fag end of a big party. She made some carefully thought up excuse, a lie that I didn’t even bother to listen to.

“ ‘I want this bullet tested,’ said the girl.

“ ‘Tested?’ I wanted to know. ‘What for?’

“ ‘Gold,’ she said.

“ ‘Bullets,’ I explained, speaking as one would speak to a child, ‘are made of lead alloy. This one is discolored from having been embedded in the living tissues.’

“ ‘Will you please test it?’ she stormed.

“To please her I got out some acid, a little graduate, cleaned the bullet under a water faucet, and dropped it into the graduate with the tips of my forceps.

“Then I got the surprise of my life. The bullet was almost pure gold!

“My nurse crowded close, watching the test. I’d as soon Miss Marian hadn’t been there. The girl seemed not the least surprised at what the bullet was. She called for an ambulance, paid my fee for the operation, and had the unconscious man removed.

“When she had gone, Miss Marian, the nurse, looked after her with eyes that were smoky with thought.

“ ‘Know who she was?’ she asked.

“ ‘No,’ I said; ‘do you?’

“The nurse shook her head, but I knew she was lying, and that aroused my curiosity.”

The surgeon quit speaking as a fit of coughing seized him. The Mexican girl flung herself upon him, wiping his forehead with a wet rag. She pressed a little bottle of whisky to his lips. He drank, then resumed his story.

“My nurse, Miss Marian, took occasion to become impertinent a couple of days later, and I discharged her. At the time I thought there was a smirk on her face when I let her go. It seemed to be just what she wanted me to do.

“Then chance gave a clew as to the identity of the girl who had ordered the mysterious operation. She was Stella McRae, daughter of a man who had lost everything in the market. She was engaged to marry a chap named Craleigh, and it was more than rumored that Craleigh was a big creditor of the old man. He had agreed to take the daughter in payment of the debt.

“The girl, Stella, was reported to be visiting friends in the Imperial Valley. I read of that in the society column. But it wasn’t until I learned that my nurse, Miss Marian, and the chap she was going with, a fellow named Lugger, had gone into the desert on a prospecting trip, that I suddenly took a tumble. I got busy and traced them, then.

“The society girl, Stella McRae, had run onto this old prospector, and he’d told her of a secret mine somewhere in Mexico, probably in the Yaqui country. The Indians there are outlaws, and they use gold and silver for bullets. That’s the old story. I’ve heard it since, a dozen times.

“Stella McRae wanted to buy her freedom, so she could marry for love instead of for money. My nurse had doped it out and she’d gone down to hijack the mine when it was located. And I had been partially responsible.

“I went after them. I don’t know why. Perhaps it was the lure of the money. Perhaps it was because I wanted to do the square thing by the girl. Perhaps it was greed, perhaps it was sympathy. Anyway, I went.

“I traced Miss Marlan and Carl Lugger into the desert. They went through here. Tina knows the way. She acted as guide until I sent her back. That was when the country got dangerous. I was a fool not to have some one who knew the desert with me. I was just a tenderfoot. But I found them; and I was the one who blundered. It was too much smoke from a camp fire, I guess. At any rate, I got the Indians into the country, and then the trouble started.”

The dying doctor got that far and then there was another spell of coughing. I felt the form writhing and twisting beneath my hand, felt the pulse grow weak and stringy. I bent forward.

“Be calm,” I told him.

He knew it was the end. His eyes grew glassy with effort, but the coughing twisted his system, and then, when he got over the coughing, he was so weak he could hardly speak.

I figured he’d opened up bleeding in the wounds again, and told the girl to bring me some hot water and rags.

The doctor rolled his head in a half circle on the dirty pillow, gasped, and whispered to me in a husky voice.

“You’ll go... This is important — bend closer — got to tell you this or they’ll trap you... When you see a painted face on the rock, watch out for—”

And that was as far as he got.

The threadlike pulse stopped. The eyes snapped into some peculiar expression, the iris expanding, then contracting. The head ceased to roll. The whisper died into a rattle and then was silent.

It was a wail from the fat woman that conveyed the news to the girl.

“He is dead,” she wailed.

The girl fell forward, her shoulders heaving in sobs, and I comforted them as best I could.

I stayed the night there, and we buried him the next day. He’d been badly shot up, and there had been infection. Why a city physician should have been possessed of the wild urge to go after a secret mine in the Yaqui country was more than I knew.

As for the golden bullets — well, I’d heard whispers of golden bullets, but, then, one hears all sorts of whispers in the desert. It doesn’t do to take ’em too seriously.

But I got to wondering if what he said was true, and before we buried him I explored around a bit in the infected wounds, and I finally carved out a bullet.

The girl came in the room just then, and I dropped the bullet into my pocket. I didn’t want her to know. She seemed to be taking it awfully hard as it was.

We buried him in a sandy grave with a little ceremony that wasn’t orthodox, but it sounded solemn, and the Mexicans cried and covered their heads with their skirts as I filled in the dirt.

Then we erected a cross, and put a monument of stones on the grave.

After that I got a chance to examine the bullet. I whistled when I’d made a few tests. The bullet was almost pure gold.

That night the girl came to me as I sat by the fire, and slipped her hand in mine.

“He wanted you to go,” she said.

I nodded.

“I will go with you part of the way, to show you where the trail is.”

The old Mexican wailed a protest, but the girl turned flashing eyes upon her and spat forth sentences that sounded as the rattle of gunfire. The old woman dried up.

It was a strange thing: golden bullets, Yaqui country, a girl for a guide. Would the Indians be expecting some one to come in, following the wounded man’s outbound trail?

The Yaquis are queer chaps. They respect a white man as long as a white man respects them. They’re fiendishly cruel when the occasion warrants. The Mexicans persecute them, and they torture the Mexicans when they get a chance. They’re proud, and they’re independent, and they live in one of the richest mineral countries in the world.

They tell stories of the Yaquis following up the main ridge of the Sierra Madre range, and coming in to trade for rifles with certain tight-lipped traders who slink down from Arizona. It’s a grim business, and the story goes that a rifle brings its weight in gold.

I’d heard whispers of the rifle traffic, as has every one who has lived in the desert. And I’d heard of the reloading tools the Yaquis buy; and I’d heard of golden bullets.

The story goes that they won’t bother to pack lead back to their homes because gold and silver make good bullets, and they have all they want of them and more. But I’d never seen any golden bullets, nothing but whispers which had been through the desert, just like the whispers of the lost mines.

But now a tenderfoot had gone into the country and had found a golden bullet. He’d found too many of ’em; but then, he was a tenderfoot. If his story was true, there was a society girl in there somewhere, and a nurse who had taken her lover and gone in on a hijacking expedition, and the country would be swarming with Yaquis — perhaps.

There was always the chance the Indians had only stumbled onto the surgeon, shot him up, and figured he was the only miner in the country.

“You will go, señor?” crooned the girl.

I nodded and squeezed her hand.

“If you will show me the way, Tina.”

And then she put her head on my shoulder and cried.

“He wished it so,” she muttered between her sobs.

III Secret Camps

We started before dawn, trying to get as many miles as possible behind us before it got hot. We had burros, and we were traveling light. The fat Mexican — an aunt or something, I never did get her relationship to Tina straightened out — stood in the doorway of the shack, her head bowed and covered with her skirt, and the sound of her wailing followed us out over the dark grayness that enfolds the desert before dawn.

I’d crossed the Mexican line that night when I came with the girl to see the dying doctor, so I didn’t bother too much about border patrols. We were seven or eight miles south of the border at the start.

The country was rolling, sandy, covered with cactus and some mesquite. The mountains were to the left, blotting out the light that began to ooze through the higher passes as the eastern sky got rosy. We were following a rough trail, and it was hard going.

The girl walked mechanically. Her eyes were filled with grief, but she never complained of fatigue or the cruel rocks that sprinkled the trail as we climbed higher into the mountains.

We stopped about eleven in the shadow of a mesquite and had some cold tortillas and beans. Then I spread the blankets for a pillow, and we got some sleep. It was hot, and the flies were bothersome, but we were tired enough to sleep anywhere.

By two o’clock in the afternoon we were up, and we had a little water from the canteens. Then I tightened the cinches on the pack burros, and we started on again.

We went on until well after dark. It was the sort of travel that took it out of a man, hard, steady, hot, tedious. The girl seemed as fresh as when we had started that morning. Her eyes were a little darker, perhaps. Her lips remained unsmiling, and she seemed in something of a daze, but she traveled at a pace that ate up the miles.

We camped that night. I don’t think she slept much. Once, when the whispers began to drift over the face of the desert, I heard her sobbing to herself. But I didn’t keep awake to listen to her. I was dog tired, and I knew talk would do no good. It was one of those things time alone can heal. She had loved him, and she had loved him with a wealth of passion that only the Latin blood can know.

Perhaps the night wind was stirring the whispering sand until she thought she could hear the sound of his voice. I don’t know. I only know that the Bind sent the whispering sand skidding and whirling through the draw where we had camped, and that the girl sobbed, and that the burros were restless and the stars blazed down steadily.

Early in the morning she was up, and she had the fire going and a little coffee water bubbling by the time I woke up. It was the smell of the coffee that awakened me.

I caught up the burros and saddled the packs. We started as the east was just getting a faint brassy hue that made the stars retire to needle points. It was cold with the dry cold of the desert places. Soon it would be hot. We were rationing ourselves on the water.

Near ten o’clock the girl stopped.

“Can we camp here?” she asked.

I looked at the sun.

“We could make another hour before the siesta,” I said. “Of course, if you are tired—”

She shook her head impatiently.

“We camped here, the second night,” she said, and then I saw the blackened ashes of a little camp fire off to one side.

I nodded and flung the packs off the burros. She crouched down beside the blackened embers and lived with her memories.

The sun was beating down on that little circle of charcoal, but she didn’t seem to mind.

After a while I dozed off.

When the flies woke me up she was still sitting there.

That afternoon we crossed the railroad on an angle and then struck up into the Sierra Madre range. The going got rough, and we ran into some timber. There was more water here, and it was cooler.

After a week we were in a well-watered country, and we began to go pretty careful. I made small fires out of bone-dry wood, and I didn’t make any fire at all at night.

On the tenth day the girl pointed to a little rock-bound depression. From the looks of the trees I figured there was a spring there and some green grass.

“That is where he left me. I camped there and was unmolested. He came back three days later, and — he was as you saw him, shot.”

I nodded.

He’d have stood more chance if she had kept him there and put herbs on the wounds, but there was no use making her feel sorry; and they’d both been pretty well scared. The Yaqui is none too gentle.

“I shall wait there for you,” she said.

I shook my head. “You’ll go back! Now, which way did the señor go from here?”

She shrugged her pretty shoulders.

“I know not the way he went, and I will not go back. I wait. My place is here. You are doing that which he asked. Every night he whispers to me of what I am to do.”

“No, you’ll have to go back. It’ll take me a long time to accomplish what I have in mind. I’ll leave you a burro with plenty of grub.”

She pouted.

“I could be of more use here.”

“No.”

“But we can camp there to-night, in our old camp?”

“To-night only, and there will be no fire.”

She accepted my word as law. We camped there in the dark. There was no sand to whisper now. But the trees rustled in the wind that came up before dawn, and they gave soft whispers, vague promises. It was spooky.

I got her burro packed in the morning. She kissed me good-by. I watched her out of sight and then began to explore the country. I felt certain I could find anything that a tenderfoot had found.

There were jagged mountains, covered with pine, dry air that blew over the ridges, vaulted blue black sky, great cañons that were filled with purple tinged shadows. Everywhere was grim silence, save for the rustle of wind in the tops of the trees.

Somewhere ahead was the place where Indians found gold more plentiful than lead. It was up to me to find that place, and to see that my burros were in condition to bring out much of that treasure.

I found a box cañon with a spring, and I worked all day making a rock enclosure that would keep the burros in the cañon. There was plenty of feed and water.

I camped without a fire.

In the morning I started out, a little parched corn meal tied in a sack at my belt, a little bacon rolled up in a blanket on my back, my rifle and plenty of shells, a six-gun at my hip for work at close quarters.

I went slowly, looking for tracks and hugging the shadows. I saw several deer, and the fresh meat looked tempting, but I wouldn’t risk a shot.

That night I camped high on a ridge by a trickling spring. I made no fire. The single blanket I carried barely served to turn the wind that sprang up about midnight. I lay and shivered, catching a little sleep.

I listened to the wind in the pines, thought of the apartment I had fixed up in Hollywood, my car, the chauffeur — and I was satisfied it was all a mistake, trying to live in civilization. I had gotten soft. The elevation and the wind kept me from being comfortable in a single blanket. That was what beds and mattresses, hot baths, and servants had done for me.

Toward morning I got more sleep.

As I rolled up my blanket and chewed on a little parched corn meal, I got the idea some one was watching me. I got back in the shadow of the pines and waited for more than an hour. But nothing moved that I could see, except some deer that came in to the water hole.

I oozed out of the shadow and slipped down the ridge. Here and there I could see tracks, Indian tracks. Then I came to some softer soil and saw shod tracks, those of a woman and those of a man.

I studied those tracks. They’d been made right after a light rain, and then the sun had baked them in the soil. They were running tracks. The woman went first. Back of her, covering her retreat, the man plodded along.

I could see where he’d fired a gun from time to time, a thirty-thirty. The brass shells were along the side of the trail he’d made. It hadn’t been an Indian filing those shots or he’d have picked up the cartridges.

Then I came to where Indian tracks had intercepted the man tracks. The girl seemed to have gotten away. The Indians and the man milled around in something of a mess, and then there were no more tracks of a man’s shoes.

I crept along cautiously, watching, waiting. It looked like a poor time to be trying to sneak a mine out of the Yaqui country. It has been done, but only when a man could slip into the country, work fast and silently, and slip out again.

Apparently the society girl and the prospector had run into trouble. He’d probably told her the story of the mine, one he’d discovered earlier, only to be shot up and driven out. She’d had the bullet removed for proof, then financed the expedition. And it looked as if the prospector were out of the game.

Twice that afternoon I had the idea I was being followed. So that night I built a little fire, well screened by brush, let it die down to coals. Then I took some brush tips and filled out my blanket so it looked like a sleeper. I placed the dummy right close to the circle of coals and climbed a tree to wait.

Half an hour passed without anything happening. I was getting ready to come down, figuring my ideas of being followed had all been the bunk. Then I saw a shadow cautiously gliding toward the camp. I crouched in the tree, saw that my six-gun was loose in the holster, and waited.

I was unprepared for that which followed.

They shot in a crashing volley without warning. I could see the flashes of their guns, hear the whine of the bullets, see the dummy figure jump and twitch as the bullets crashed into it.

Then everything was silent.

I waited for them to come up to plunder. Then, if there weren’t too many, I’d show them the difference between shooting down a tenderfoot doctor and tackling a fellow that had spent most of his life in the desert.

But they didn’t come in. They were satisfied.

I saw them moving off, a compact little group.

I waited an hour, got down the tree, went to my blanket. There were half a dozen holes in it. I dug into the ground back of the blanket, probing after bullets. I got a couple. They were golden, and they looked as though they’d been but freshly molded.

Usually the Yaquis will give one warning to a white man in their country. That warning takes the shape of an Indian standing with upraised palm, motioning the traveler to go back. When one has that warning, if he’s wise, he goes back. I’d been trying to keep under cover and not get that warning. But they weren’t giving any.

IV By the Painted Rock

The way this play stacked up, there was just one thing to do, and it was up to me to do that quickly.

Sometimes a fellow can get away with a stake from the Yaqui country. It has been done. Sneak into it along the backbone of the Sierra Madres, keep quiet, find a mine, take what can be taken, and leave. It’s a big country, and if a man keeps well under cover he can stay in it for weeks without any one being the wiser.

Now I was up against it right. Something had riled the boys more than usual. I didn’t know just what, but I wasn’t staying to find out; not after they had me spotted.

I shouldered my pack and started out.

Traveling a rough country in the dead of night isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. In the first place, very few people realize how utterly dead dark the country can get. They’re accustomed to some sort of street light.

But I had the stars, and there’d be a lemon peel of moon sometime before dawn. I did the best I could, watching to see I didn’t sprain an ankle.

After a while I struck easier going. Then the moon came up. Then it got gray dawn, and I slipped along at a half run. By the time the east was turning rosy I’d picked my hiding place, a little patch of scrub brush, way up on a naked shoulder of mountain. The black shadows would contrast with the glitter of sunlight on that bare slope when the day got well started, and I’d be pretty safe from detection. If anybody did start coming my way I’d have lots of open country to scatter lead over.

I dozed off because I was tired. The flies woke me up. I was cramped. My hip was on a rock. I moved, batted at the flies, shifted my weight to the other hip, and dozed off.

I thought I smelled smoke. Then I thought I heard the high notes of a woman’s laugh. I frowned. It was a poor place to get goofy ideas.

Then I heard the bass rumble of a man’s voice.

I sat up, looked around carefully, and then began to bore my eyes into the shadows below me.

There was a little cañon opening up below the bare shoulder of mountain. It ran down in a steep gash of boulder and gravel until it hit a patch of pines. Then there was some brush, and, lower down, dense shade. I thought I could hear the trickle of water. And on the ledge a face had been painted.

Then my eyes caught a flicker of motion, and a girl walked out of the shade.

She must have been four hundred yards away. I wouldn’t see too many details, but she was slender, graceful-limbed, and she was white.

A man called to her, and she stepped back.

It was a bad situation, but my duty was clear. They were whites, and I’d probably drawn the Indians to them. There was an even chance the Yaquis would pick up my trail sometime during the day and follow it up. I’d have to warn those people, get ’em to take cover with me, make a stand during the day, travel at night.

I broke cover and came down the side of the slope, intent only on getting across that patch of sunlit space in the shortest possible time.

I hit the boulders, jumped from rock to rock, clattering my way down to the bottom. Yet they didn’t spot me. They must have been the worst sort of tenderfeet.

I slipped through the shadow and came on them.

It was a pretty scene. She was in his arms, his head bent down over her lips, one arm around her waist, pulling her toward him.

“I hate to interrupt, folks,” I said.

They gave one swift jump. The girl darted to one side. The man swung a hand toward a new, shiny gun that dangled from a leather holster that showed a hardware-store yellow.

“Forget it!” I snapped. “You’re in Yaqui country The Indians are on the warpath over something or other, and I’m afraid they’re trailing me. I stumbled onto your camp and so had to warn you.”

The man’s hand slowly left his hip, but his eyes were hard and watchful.

“Who are you?” he asked.

I let him have it in bunches. There wasn’t much time to waste.

“Zane’s the name, Bob Zane. Came into this country at the request of a dying doctor, looking for a lost patient, Stella McRae... and, maybe, hoping to dig up a little metal for my pains.”

Their eyes flickered from face to face.

“I’m Stella McRae,” said the girl.

“Figured you’d have to be her, or else the nurse, Miss Marian. Who’s the man?”

She sighed.

“That’s Ned Craleigh.” Then, as if feeling more explanation was due me, added: “He was the man whom I hated. Now I love him.”

The man nodded. “Her father interceded to get her to marry me. She thought I’d bought him. She wanted to get money to square the account. She did it. I followed her. She wanted to buy me off, but she came to realize my affection was on the level.”

I let his words seep through my mind, trying to figure everything they meant.

“In other words, you’ve found the mine?”

It was the girl who answered.

“And how!” she said.

I looked her over. She was a dark kid with smoky eyes and red lips. There was a brazen way she had of looking at one. Her clothes were outing stuff, but class from top to bottom. She smiled into my eyes.

“Like my looks?” she asked.

I caught a glimpse of the man’s face. It was twisted into black hatred. Only for an instant did the expression flicker on his features, and then he was smiling again.

“Come on and I’ll show you what we’ve found,” he said.

I followed him. The girl came behind me.

There was a little spring, a stream, some piles of dirt that had evidently been washed, a gold pan. The man tugged at a flour sack, which was doubled back and sewed to reënforce it.

I caught a glimpse of yellow metal.

“Gold?” I asked.

“Gold,” he said, and his lips mouthed the word as though the very thought had started a flow of saliva.

I gave a swift look at the way the place had been worked — amateurish.

“There’s lots more here,” I said

The man nodded. “It goes down from the grass roots.”

“You haven’t any burros. I’ve got some pack stock cached a few miles from here. Maybe we can make a dicker. But we’ve got to get out now. We can’t stay here.”

He looked at the girl. She nodded.

I rubbered around some more. Somehow or other, things didn’t seem just right. Then I caught a glimpse of some clothes, woman’s clothes they were: silk undies, hiking stuff, boots, a jacket.

The girl followed the direction of my glance.

“Sloppy housekeeping,” she said, and moved over to the pile.

She tucked the silk out of sight, threw the other clothes over her arm. Something rolled from the pocket of the trousers, something that glittered. I picked it up. It was a compact.

“How about making a deal on the burro transportation?” I asked.

The man laughed.

“Don’t be foolish. We’ve got burros cached out ourselves. How’d you think we got in here?”

There was a rasping something in his tone I didn’t like. The girl’s hand was stretched out for the compact.

The cover was loose. I had a peep inside, and I saw it was an outfit for a blonde. This girl was a brunette. And I saw the print of a woman’s bare foot in the mud by the stream.

I jumped back.

The man’s hand streaked for his gun. It was the girl that got me, though. She went through the air in a flying tackle. By the time my rifle was halfway around she was clinging to my arm.

“Shoot him, Carl!” she screamed.

And I found the end of Carl’s gun boring into my eyes.

“Drop the rifle,” he ordered.

V Desert Torture

I hesitated until I saw something in Carl’s eyes that glittered, and the girl’s teeth sank into my arm. Then I dropped the gun. The girl unbuckled my belt, and the six-gun and cartridges dropped to the ground.

“You’re a damn fool,” said the man.

I said nothing. I could only agree with him. The girl laughed, just the sort of a laugh I’d expect from her.

“We’ve got to beat it, Carl. Kill him.”

He shook his head.

“We’ll treat him the same way we did the girl. It’s a Yaqui trick. I’ve read of it. If any one finds him they’ll never believe but what the Indians did it.”

I knew then what he meant, and what they’d done with the girl who had found the mine.

The Yaquis have done it. They’ve done lots of things.

It’s simple. Simply strip the victim stark naked and turn him loose. There is lots of cactus in the country. There’s lots of blistering sunlight, and there are lots of sharp rocks. The ground gets so hot under that light that you can cook an egg by simply leaving it out in the sun for fifteen minutes. And civilized feet don’t go well over sharp rocks, not with a few hundred miles of travel over an arid country staring one in the face.

As a matter of fact, about all one would have to do in that country would be to take a man’s canteen away from him.

He’d have a hard time getting out. It’s sixty miles between water holes in places.

The girl prodded me in the ribs.

“Strip,” she said.

The man nodded and backed up his nod with a gesture of the weapon he held.

I had one chance of outwitting them. It was a poor chance, but I took it rather than jump at sure death from the gun. I stripped off my clothes. They left me nothing, not even a scrap of covering.

“March,” said the man, “and march up the cañon. I want to see you well over the top of the hill.”

I marched.

My feet struck the sharp rocks, and I lurched forward to lessen the pain. The girl laughed, a cruel, cutting laugh.

“Faster,” said the man. “We can’t wait here all day. We’ve got work to do.”

I made some progress. The sharp rocks cut my feet. Then I staggered out of the shadow into the blinding sunlight. It fastened on my skin at once, a blistering blanket. The rocks under my feet became burning coals. I tried standing on one foot for a while, then the other. It was no good. The torture on the one foot more than made up for the temporary relief the other got.

I knew that by standing in one place until I had drawn the heat out of the stones I could get some relief. But the man was yelling at me to get started, and there was a tone in his voice I didn’t like.

I went on as best I could. The tortured skin, hot and puffed, offered no resistance to the sharp edges of the rocks. The soles were cut in half a dozen places by the time I’d gained the top of the ridge.

I went over and looked for shelter, but I didn’t dare to stay too close — not with what I had in mind.

Finally, when I was satisfied they’d lost me, I ducked into some shade.

The punishment a mile of travel had inflicted on my feet had made them a mass of sores. The sun had burned into my skin, and the flies followed me in droves. It was simply plain hell.

Civilized man is pretty much a creature of environment.

But the man Carl had mentioned his burros. There was one place where he’d be almost certain to leave them. After half an hour’s rest I set about cutting branches with sharp rocks, stripping off the bark, and trying to tie the sticks onto my feet with it.

It was only a partial success. My feet were already swollen, bleeding, and hot dirt was ground into the cuts. There were blisters forming under the skin. Every step was like ten thousand hot knives working up into my agonized feet.

The bark wasn’t strong enough to hold the “sandals” together, and it wore through after a few steps, but I made progress, and I kept to the shadows. All the time I had the feeling that Yaqui eyes were watching me. It was not a comfortable feeling.

I thought of the girl who had preceded me — a blonde, with the skin of a blonde. I thought of what the sun would do to that skin.

And we were miles and miles from the nearest succor.

It was mid-afternoon before I gained the place where I wanted to go, and I was burned red, my feet were masses of raw flesh, swollen, tortured. I left bloody prints on the hot ground.

But Carl’s burros were there.

I managed to catch one after an agony that seemed an eternity of suffering, and got on his back. I steered him by pulling his ears, turning his head this way and that, and I prodded him along with the point of a sharp rock.

The couple were still up the cañon above. Once I heard the girl laugh.

It was a care-free, voluptuous laugh. The sound churned up anger in my soul, but I was a sick man. Ten thousand times more foolish to try to sneak up on them and get a weapon by surprise than to do what I had in mind. It was a slim chance, and an only chance.

I prodded the burro along at a snail’s pace. I was afraid I might be discovered at any time. It was ten miles to where I’d cached my own stock, and I was naked, sunburned, wounded by stone bruises, weaponless in the midst of the Yaqui country.

The burro plodded on.

The coolness of dusk was like a benediction to my parched skin, but the fever was commencing, and soon I burned just as though ten thousand suns were beating down upon my skin. The burro wanted to quit for the night, and I had trouble with him.

Then, just as I was figuring it was hopeless, after all, there was a flicker of motion in the dark shadows, and something jumped toward me.

The burro started, shied, and I spilled to the ground.

Tina was on me, muttering soothing words, crooning, patting my hot skin, her fingers at my feet. Then she caught the burro, put me back on, slipped a rope around his neck, and started to lead him.

The next three hours were like a nightmare, but we came to her camp. Tina had herbs — where she’d gotten them, I don’t know. She put them on my skin, making sort of a paste by bruising the leaves between smooth rocks and spreading them over me. There were other herbs she put on my sore feet. I slept.

In the morning Tina was there again, and with her was another girl, a blonde, who was swathed in a light blanket and who limped as she walked.

“You?” I asked.

She nodded.

“I’m Stella McRae.”

“You found the mine?”

“Yes, I kept on after the Indians got the old prospector, and found it. I knew a little something about placer work. I had dabbled around in geology in college, and I washed out quite a bit of gold. Then the girl and the man came... You know what they did.”

“How did you get here?”

“Tina was scouting around. She was worried about you. She found me, put leaves on my skin, and hid me in the shade. She walked here, got a burro, came back to me, carried me in, then started to look for you. You tried to send Tina home, but she doubled back.”

I held out my hand to Tina. There were tears in her dark eyes.

“He whispered to me,” she said.

I didn’t know about that. But I’d left an extra revolver with Tina, and somebody or something was doing a lot more than whisper to me about what I was going to do with it.

I didn’t say anything, though; I let the girls think we were starting back.

Stella McRae never said a word about the lost gold, yet I knew what that gold meant to her.

It was well after midnight of the third day that I felt well enough to try it. I’d manufactured some sandals out of a pack saddle. My clothes were mostly flour sacks.

The girls were sleeping. I took a burro and the gun, left a note scribbled with charcoal, and started.

It was dark, pitch-dark, but I could get the direction from the stars, and the burro could feel out the road to travel. By gray dawn I was near where I wanted to be.

I slipped off the burro and started a stalk, and I’d never stalked a deer with more caution.

I came to the cañon just as the first rays of dawn were making things light, and I hugged the cold shadows, my gun held at ready. Carl Lugger wasn’t going to get any breaks, not if I knew it. My sore feet made walking an agony, but there was that in my soul which transcended any bodily pain.

The sun came up over the top of the ridge, but the rays wouldn’t penetrate into the cañon for a couple of hours yet. A faint wind stirred through the trees. The water rippled and purled over the rocks.

I saw the cold ashes of a dead fire, and then I saw something white, bulky. I bent forward. It looked like a flour sack. I reached for it.

It was the sack of gold, so much of it that it would have torn the double cloth unless handled carefully. That was strange. Why would they leave the gold out in the open in this manner? As a trap?

I looked swiftly about me, and then my eye caught a pile of cloth.

I looked, rubbed my eyes, and looked again.

There were silk undies, well-tailored outing clothes, khaki hiking jacket. And there were a man’s clothes, even down to the underwear.

I looked more closely, saw the barefoot tracks leading up the cañon.

And then I saw the tracks made by Yaqui Indians. The cañon was full of them. I’d been so intent upon detecting the sleepers I hadn’t bothered to peer into the dim light for tracks.

There was no sign of weapons. The Indians had cleaned them out. But they’d not bothered with the gold. That was typical Yaqui psychology. There was plenty of gold in the country. They didn’t do much bartering, and, when they did, they used the gold as sparingly as possible. They knew that gold attracted unwelcome visitors.

I judged the tracks were about two days old.

The girl was a brunette. Her skin would withstand the sunlight better than the man’s. But that blazing sunlight at a high elevation with the actinic rays working overtime... and two days!

I shrugged my shoulders.

Doubtless the Yaquis had been watching the camp for some time. They’d seen the couple send their two victims out into the sunlight, stripped naked, barefooted. And the Yaquis had doubtless chuckled at the performance.

They are cruel, those Yaquis, when the occasion demands, and they are fighting to keep their remaining country free from invaders. But they are also just, with a justice that is not tempered by mercy.

I loaded the gold on the burro and started back, reaching the camp well toward noon. I handed the gold to Stella McRae.

“Yours,” I said.

She asked me questions. I did not answer them then, and I haven’t answered them later. Neither did I try to return to the cañon for more gold, nor to follow the barefoot tracks of the two who had been driven from that shade.

I knew what I would find. First the prints of bare feet. Then a little spot of blood. After that, more blood, until finally the whole imprint of the foot would be found outlined in blood, blood that was baked black beneath the rays of the fierce sun. And if I followed those bloody tracks...

We were unmolested on the return journey.

Stella McRae gave some gold to the fat Mexican, a good deal to Tina. She wanted me to take half. I refused. She would probably need it all. Perhaps, some day when things had blown over, I’d slip back into that Yaqui country, traveling alone and light, and bring out some more gold. I hoped it would not be in the form of a bullet.

We parted at the shack. Stella McRae and I left the others. Tina and the fat Mexican kissed me good-by. Stella and I flivvered off across the desert. We were silent during most of the trip.

She kissed me good-by at Yuma. There were tears in her eyes, and she made me promise to call on her. Me, a sun-browned desert adventurer, calling upon a society girl! And yet—

I didn’t return to Hollywood immediately. I waited a couple of nights on the desert. I wanted to hear the sand whisper again. Finally I loaded up and drove back.

My chauffeur looked as though he was seeing a ghost.

“We thought you’d been kidnaped, sir — taken for a ride.”

“Nothing as exciting as that.”

He looked at me with something of wistfulness in his tired eyes.

“Gosh, it must be great to be able to duck out whenever you feel like an adventure. But they tell me there ain’t any real adventures left in the desert any more... Say, what’s that new stickpin you’ve got?”

He came closer.

“Looks like it was a gold bullet mounted on a pin!”

I shrugged my shoulders and turned to the papers.

I was reading of the breaking off of the engagement between Stella McRae, the leader of the younger set, and the wealthy broker, Ned Craleigh, when the chauffeur interrupted me again.

“By gosh, I’ll bet you’ve been places in the last three or four weeks.”

“And done things,” I echoed.