Crossroads (7 page)

I
n Double Bend Marshal Phil Glasgow at length heard of a group of six Yaquis and their questions. He sought them out and led them in person up the ravine to the black embers of the camp fire beside which Dix Van Dyck and Jack Boone had sat. Then he turned his horse and rode back to the town. He asked no questions, and he offered no advice. Plainly they were on a blood trail, and in such affairs, as Phil Glasgow well knew, a Yaqui needs little help.

When he left them, they were sitting in a contented semicircle in the shade of the cottonwoods, but the moment he disappeared down the valley, El Tigre rose and moved in a wide circle about the remains of the old camp. The trails were days and days old, but there had been no heavy wind or rain to obscure them. A white man might have followed the trail. To the Yaquis it was an open book in which they read. They followed El Tigre up the ravine closely, and they talked as they went, grumbling over the significant marks.

“It is a trail of two, not one,” said Alvarado.

“My brother is a fool!” said El Tigre, pausing to scan a mark on the ground with an eye that would distinguish between the tracks of a bobcat and a lynx at a dozen feet. “There are two, but one leads and the other follows. The first is a woman. She came here, leading her horse. A woman, for the marks are as deep at the toe as at the
heel. Such is the gait of a woman. Here is the man…all heel and no toe. She came here first…led out her horse…mounted at this place…and went off softly…in the night. The man followed afterward and went by the trail of the woman. Here he spurred his horse…see where the dents of the rear hoofs are deep?…here he pulled his rein and came to a quick stop, for the four marks grind into the rock. Here he picked up the trail again.”

“And here,” cried another, taking up the tale at a point higher on the slope of the ravine, “he trotted a few hours after she had passed.”

They followed at the dog-trot that eats up the miles ceaselessly, perhaps from morning to night—or even for twenty-four hours at a stretch—a tireless shamble that pays no heed to the ups and downs of the road.

“The woman is in fear,” said Alvarado, “and rides from the man, Don Dix.”

“She is not in fear,” called El Tigre from the top of the cañon wall, “for here she waited until she saw that he was coming, and then she rose again hastily. The man followed to this place, saw her marks, and went galloping down the hill after her. Alvarado, we shall find them together at the end of this trail. She flees, but she leads him on, the way of woman with man. El Tigre knows. She hates him, but she would rather die than let him know. These two trails shall be one before we finish. One day…two days…they shall ride together.”

After that they spoke little. The trail was clear as day before them. Now and then they were delayed, once where a drove of sheep had blotted out all signs for the distance of two miles, but on the other side of that tract Alvarado caught the sign again. They kept at their work all day and most of the night and found that the trail ran in a loose semicircle, heading finally into the open country to the
west. They were putting eighty miles behind them every day, and yet they were only warming up to their work. Over a long march a walking man will beat the man who runs, but for a spurt of a few days there is hardly a human being who can keep pace with the Indian runner.

Then, at a cross-trail, El Tigre found a sign, bearing the picture of a man. It was written upon in both English and Spanish. The English was Greek to him, but the Spanish, being a Yaqui of much education, he managed to decipher plainly enough to put together the meaning. It announced that a reward of one thousand dollars would be paid for the capture of Dix Van Dyck, dead or alive. As if the sign had scared the girl, her trail diverged sharply to the right, and the tracks of the man followed as the course led straight toward the heart of the higher mountains.

“She fears,” said El Tigre, “for the man from whom she flees. Now she will run fast to take him from the danger of men.”

In this plan, indeed, she apparently persisted for some time, but at length her trail diverged sharply to the left and went straight to a town.

“She has gone,” said Alvarado, “to betray him and take the price of his head. I also had a woman. She sent word of me to the
Rurales
. But I learned in time. I went in the hills and waited. After a while I came down by night and took her in the hut of another man. I cut her throat while she slept, and in the morning the man found her that way. It is so with this woman. She has gone to warn the town of the coming of Dix Van Dyck.”

“I will bet the tallest sombrero in Juarez,” answered El Tigre, “that she has not gone to betray him. She feared that two could be followed more quickly than one. She has gone to the town so that the man would leave her and go on alone. See, here his trail turns off from hers.
But he has the heart of a mountain lion. Look! How close he came to the town!”

His trail, indeed, ran back into the hills, and there they found the trace of his fire.

“See!” grunted El Tigre in his triumph. “He would not leave the woman. He has waited here for her to come.”

They made a circle about the town, and to bear out his words they found her trail again on the further side. It was very fresh, not more than a day old. Also, before they had gone ten miles, the trail of Dix Van Dyck, heavy and plain, cut in on the lighter trail of the girl.

“Now she sees,” explained El Tigre, “that he will not leave her track, and she rides hard to carry him quickly away from the danger of other men. It is well done! She is sharp-witted as a she-lynx with young. She rides very hard. She gallops. See, the strides are long and the forefeet strike hard, the way of a racing horse.”

They had mounted, by degrees, a height of land. From this low summit they looked across a gully and up toward a loftier, more impassable range of mountains.

“She is going for rough ground,” said El Tigre to his followers, “she will follow the bend of the valley…she will travel by the smoother ground. We will go straight across and climb where a horse could not go. We shall come before her in the valley, and then we shall take her, and afterward the man will come to us of his own will.”

The mountains, in fact, were pierced by a deep gorge that wound into their depths, rising with a gradual curve. By cutting straight toward the crest of the range, climbing up the sides of almost perpendicular cliffs, a man on foot could reach the upper part of the valley by a rough journey of a few miles, whereas the horses, taking a gentler route, would travel many times that distance. Accordingly, the six Yaquis pulled their belts tighter and started across the gullies and up the ascent beyond. It took the
better part of ten hours of bitter labor, but at the end of that time they had surmounted the crest of the big range. Below them, dropping down in declivities almost as sharp as those over which they had just climbed, the ground fell to the floor of a ravine, up which, according to El Tigre, the fugitives were sure to come.

It was the first light of dawn when they started their climb. It was late afternoon when they settled down to the vigil of watching. Even their iron endurance had been taxed by this trail, and now they stretched out in the shade of a bank and slept. El Tigre, gaunter but not less bright of eye than when he started on the journey, sat in a position nearby. From his place he could scan the heart of the ravine for miles.

It was a wild place without the wildness of the northern mountains where great trees and the noise of rivers are the soul of the wilderness and its voice. This was a region of perpetual silence. The river, that had once cloven its way down through the rocks, had long since been drunk to the last drop by the sun. It left behind a boulder-strewn channel above which walls of rock rose on each side, jagged, as if they had been hacked out by a monstrous saw in the hands of a giant—a giant, but a child who could not cut to a line. They were mottled in many colors, like the clouds over a lurid sunset, dull red and purple, and yellow with streaks of orange, and the polished brown taking on various tints from the slanting rays of the sun.

A valley of naked death. The rock-walls chiseled their way across the sky in bold, rough lines. Here the hand of creation had worked, but the mind of the worker had slept, it seemed. Here there was form, but here there had never been life. Never life during all the millions of years when the river cut its way, an inch to an age, through these hundreds of feet of massy rock. Never life since the
futile river had been dried up, thousands of years before. A valley of death, indeed. Nothing lived here except the shadows which commenced to swing down the face of the cliffs, sweeping suddenly from crag to crag, and blotting out the raw coloring. Nothing except the shadows lived, the shadows and the patient eye of El Tigre.

D
own the long stretch of cañon that they commanded he saw at length a glimmer of white, lost now and again among the boulders and reappearing, each time more vividly. A rider on a white horse. El Tigre awakened his companions and pointed out the approaching figure.

“The woman,” he said. “We are the trap. She will be the bait. We shall catch
Señor
Dix Van Dyck.”

The others, following his motions, unslung their short-barreled carbines and trotted in single file behind him down the slope. The bottom of the ravine could not have been better made to order for an ambush. Every rod of its length there lay a dozen boulders behind which a score of men could have lain in wait.

El Tigre chose a place where the path must of necessity pass between two great masses of stone, each of them as large as a small house. Here, a group behind each stone, he ensconced his men, and they waited until stone rattled not far away under the hoof of a trotting horse. The sound came closer. It clanged in their ears. Then El Tigre slipped from behind the rock with his carbine at his shoulder. The others swarmed out, from behind and in front, each with leveled gun.

As for the girl, she drew rein without a cry and sat her saddle, looking calmly, contemptuously down at them. Even under the steady muzzles of their guns she seemed
to debate whether or not she should draw her revolvers and attempt a fight for life. She had been too long on the fighting border, however, to attempt such folly, and her hands rose slowly, reluctantly above her head.

After that El Tigre worked rapidly. First he possessed himself of her weapons. Then he tied her hands behind her back with cord. Finally he removed the lariat that was curled beside her saddle. This done, he stood back, like a painter staring critically at an unfinished piece of his work. No one on either side had spoken during all this time.

At length the girl said: “If it’s money you want, I haven’t a cent on me. If you want my guns, take ’em. They’re good ones. If you want my horse, I’ll tell you before you start that there’s not one of you could stay on his back for five minutes. If you want the saddle, take it, and I’ll do with a blanket.”

To this the others responded with blank stares except El Tigre, who shook his head. Then, reaching up to her shoulder, he tore a long, jagged-edged strip from the cloth, running clear to her wrist. Following his directions, Alvarado led the white horse back and forth and in a circle until the place was covered with a multitude of hoof marks. In the meantime El Tigre unsheathed his long hunting-knife and with the keen point pricked his forearm until there was a little flow of blood. With this he smeared the strip of cloth with a blotch at the top and with drops further down. From one of Jacqueline’s revolvers he fired two shots and then tossed the weapon upon the ground in the middle of the pass.

“It is done,” said El Tigre. “Lead the horse on again.”

The mute procession continued up the ravine until they reached a pair of boulders situated in a manner almost identical with the pair they had just left. Here El Tigre gave the signal to halt, and in obedience to his
gesture the girl dismounted. With her own bandanna he gagged her effectually. Then he fastened one end of the lariat around a projection at the base of one of the great rocks. The other end he held on the opposite side, noosing it loosely over a similar projection.

Now that his trap was laid, it was not in the Indian nature of El Tigre to continue the mystery. Under the questioning eyes of Alvarado he remained silent for a time, swelling with importance and exultation, then at length he said: “A white man and a bull, they are one. When the bull sees the red rag, he closes his eyes and charges. It is easy to dodge him then or to rope him. A white man, when he sees one of his women hurt, goes mad like a bull. He closes his eyes and charges. You shall see. This
Señor
Van Dyck, he shall come to the place where he finds the many tracks of the white horse. He shall find the gun on the ground and the barrel black with smoke. He shall find the cloth with the red stain. He shall say: ‘She is taken by men and killed or hurt.’ Then he will close his eyes like a bull and gallop up the valley hunting for death. So!”

El Tigre grunted and squinted his eyes. Only by great effort could he keep from laughing aloud in his triumph.

“The other white men, they hunt him with many guns. But El Tigre needs only a little rope.
Señor
Van Dyck comes like a mad bull with his eyes closed. He rides like thunder through the ravine. He comes here. Just before he comes, I pull the rope a little tighter. It rises from the ground. It strikes the legs of his horse. He falls, and the neck of
Señor
Van Dyck is broken. So!”

He grunted again and was answered by an admiring chorus from his companions. To kill was no novelty with them, but the manner of it was a constant delight. As for the girl, she had started and strained at her bonds for an instant when she understood from the swift Spanish of El
Tigre what he intended. But a moment later, recognizing her helplessness, she sank back against the rock, and her head fell on her breast to remain there motionless.

The Indians kept a sharp look-out, and in time there came through the gathering gloom of the evening the dull beating of heavy hoofs far away, rising to a clatter and ring as the horse man approached. Straight through the pass between the first pair of boulders he rode, his horse trotting hard.

He had scarcely passed through, however, when he drew rein with a force that jerked the big mount back on his haunches. In an instant he was on the ground and raised the fallen revolver of Jacqueline. With that in his hand he stood a moment as though stupefied. The sight of the torn cloth next caught his eye apparently, for he bent again and straightened with a bit of color in his hand. This time there was no delay. He vaulted with a single leap into the saddle, and, with his head lowered and his quirt flogging, he rode his horse at a full gallop up the cañon. A charge, as El Tigre had predicted, furious as that of a maddened and unrestrained bull—and as blind.

The rush of the pounding hoofs swept upon them. El Tigre tightened the rope, and the great horse, striking it with his flying forehoofs, lunged with a crash to the earth. No horsemanship in the world could have averted a fall under those conditions, and Dix Van Dyck, riding with his weight thrown forward in the saddle and far over the withers of the horse, was hurled like a ball from the sling out of the saddle and the length of a horse away. That fall should have broken his neck, but here and there on the floor of the cañon,—the last silt of a vanished river—there lay drifts of soft sand. It was on one of these that Dix Van Dyck fell, and the shock was broken.

While he lay there, Alvarado leaped forward and dove
on the prostrate body. He had better have plunged onto the prostrate body of a mountain lion. Van Dyck was breathless but not stunned. As the weight of the man struck him, he whirled to his back and grappled with the strength of a bear. One arm crushed the slenderer body of the Indian against him and locked his arms against his sides. The other hand caught Alvarado at the throat. One full grip and he would breathe no more. He strove to scream out, but only a hoarse, horrible whisper issued from his mouth.

El Tigre saw and understood. His carbine was leveled, but he dared not fire, for the shot might strike Alvarado who lay on top of the white man. Instead, he cried in a shrill voice in Spanish: “Give him life,
Señor
Van Dyck, and we will spare the life of the girl!”

It was not until then that Dix Van Dyck saw the figure of Jacqueline huddled against the rock, saw the leveled carbines of the Indians, and knew that he had come to the end of his trail. He rose, flinging the senseless body of Alvarado to the ground, and held out his hand to El Tigre. An Indian is true to his promises.

“It is a bargain,” he said. “I give you your friend. Let the girl go free. There is no price on her head. Let the girl go free and I will go willingly with you. But”—and his revolvers being in the saddle holsters he could only draw his hunting-knife—“if you will not, you’ll have to buy me for a price yet. Answer me,
señor!
”

The dignity of his ancestors, who had been chiefs of note, fell like a robe around El Tigre. “The heart of El Tigre is heavy,” he said, “that he must take this white man against his will, but the girl shall go free.”

His hand slipped with some caution into the grip of Dix Van Dyck.

“She is hurt,” said the big white man. “Let me see to her wound.”

“She is not harmed,” answered El Tigre. “It was my blood that you saw on the cloth. It was I who fired the two shots from her gun and left it there.” The gleam of his triumph came in his eyes.

“The cross!” muttered Van Dyck.