Daughter of the Sun
CHAPTER XVIII
OF FLIGHT, PURSUIT, AND A LAIR IN THE CLIFFS
Straightway Jim Kendric began to understand the real Betty. He broke away through the bushes for her, confident that the noise of theirprogress was lost in the increasing beat of hoofs and rattle of loosestones. They stumbled into a rocky trail in the bottom of the canonand made what haste they could, climbing higher into the mountainsolitudes. The pursuit had swept by them; they could hear occasionalshouts and twice gunshots. They came to a pile of tumbled bouldersacross their path and crawled up. There was a flattish place at thetop in which stunted plants were growing. Here they sat for a littlewhile, hiding and resting and listening. Hardly had they settledthemselves here when they heard again the clear tones of Zoraida'swhistle. Not more than fifty yards away they made out the form ofZoraida's white horse.
There was a little sound from where Betty sat, and Jim thought that shewas sobbing. "Poor little kid," he had it on his lips to mutter whenthe sound repeated itself and, amazed, he recognized it for a giggle ofpure delight. This from Betty, sitting on a rock in the mountains witha crowd of outlaws riding up and down seeking her!
"You're about as logical an individual as I ever knew," was what hesaid. And with a grunt, at that.
"I never claimed to be logical," retorted Betty. "I'm just a girl."
Even then, while they whispered and fell silent and watched andlistened, he began to understand the girl whom he was to come to knowvery well before many days. She did not pretend at high fearlessness;when she was afraid she was very much afraid, and had no thought tohide the fact. Tonight her fright had come as near killing as frightcan. But then she was alone and there was no one but herself to makethe fight for her. Now it was different. Since Jim had come she hadallowed her own responsibility to shift to his shoulders. It wasinstinctive in her to turn to some man, to have some man to trust andto depend upon. Jim was looking out for her and right now, whileZoraida and her men searched up and down, Betty clasped her arms abouther gathered-up knees and sat cozily at the side of the man whose soleduty, as she saw it, was to guard her with his life. So Betty, closeenough to touch the rifle across Jim's arm, could giggle as shepictured Zoraida rushing by the very spot where they hid.
"You're not afraid, then?" asked Jim.
"Not now," whispered Betty.
They did not budge for half an hour. During that time Kendric did adeal of hard thinking. Their plight was still far from satisfactory.No food, no water, no horses, and in the heart of a land of which theyknow nothing except that it was hard and bleak and closely patrolled byZoraida's riders. That they could succeed now in eluding pursuit forthe rest of the night seemed assured. But tomorrow? Where there wasone man looking for them now there would be ten tomorrow. And therewere the questions of food and water. Above all else, water.
At last, when it was very still all about them, they moved on again.They climbed over the rocks and further up the canon. Here there weremore trees and thicker darkness, and their progress was painfully slow.They skirted patches of thorny bushes; they went on hands and knees upsharp inclines. They stopped frequently, panting and straining theirears for some sound to tell them of a pursuer; they went on again, sideby side or with Kendric ahead, breaking trail.
"We'll have to dig in somewhere before dawn," said Jim once while theyrested. "Where we can stick close during daylight tomorrow."
Betty merely nodded; all such details were to be left to him. It washis clear-cut task to take care of her; just how he did it was notBetty's concern. So they went on, left the canon where there was a wayout, made their toilsome way over a low ridge and slid and rolled downinto the next ravine. And here, at the bottom, they found water. Athin trickle from a spring, wending its way down to the larger streamin the valley. They lay down, side by side, and drank. Then they satback and looked at each other in the starlight.
"Betty," said Jim impulsively, "you're a brick!"
"Am I?" said Betty. And by her voice he knew that she was pleased.
"We're not as far from the house as I'd like," he said presently. "Butit will take time to locate a decent hiding place, and we've got tostick within reach of water."
To all of this Betty agreed; personally she'd like to be a thousandmiles away from this hideous place, but they would have to make thebest of things. That willingness of hers to accept conditions withoutbemoaning her fate was what had drawn from him his impulsive epithet.
"The thing to do, then," said Kendric, getting up "is to look for alikely place to spend a long day. And it may be more than one day."
Then Betty made her suggestion, offering it timidly, as though she wereentering a discussion in which, rightly, she had no part:
"Up yonder," and she pointed to the abrupt ridge cutting black acrossthe stars, "are cliffy places. It's not too far from water. Thereought to be hiding places among the broken boulders. And," sheconcluded, "we might be able to peek out and look down and see what washappening."
No; he had not done her justice. He looked toward her, wondering for amoment. Then he said briefly: "Right," and they drank again and beganclimbing.
It was Betty who, fully an hour later, found the retreat which theyagreed to utilize. Kendric was somewhere above her, making a hazardousway up a steep bit of cliff, when Betty's voice floated up to him.
"I think I've got it," were her words, guarded but athrill with hertriumph. "Come see. It's a great hole, hid by bushes. I don't liketo go poking into it alone. You can't tell, there might be a bear or asnake or something inside."
He climbed down to where she stood at the edge of a little level space,her gown gathered in a hand at each side, her pretty face thrustforward as she sought to peer into the dark before her. He saw theclump of bushes but not immediately the hole of which she spoke, so wasit covered and hidden. But at length he made out the irregular openingand, thrusting the bushes aside with his rifle barrel, judged thatBetty had done well. Here was a perpendicular cleft in the rock, oneof those cracks which not infrequently result from the splitting ofgigantic masses of rock along a well-defined flaw. In some ancientconvulsion this fissure had developed, the two monster fragments of themountain had been divided, one had slipped a little, and thereafterthrough the ages they had stood face to face, close together. Kendriccould barely squeeze his body through; he found the space slanting offto the side; he groped forward half a dozen steps, encountered anoutjutting knob of stone, slipped by it, and found that the split inthe cliff now slanted off the other way and widened so that there was aspace five or six feet across. How far ahead the fissure extended hecould form no idea yet. He turned back for Betty and bumped into herjust inside the entrance.
"It's just the place for us tonight," he said. "Though how in theworld you stumbled onto it gets me."
"The bushes grew close to the rocks," Betty explained. "I was thinkingthat we could creep back of them and find a little space where, withthe brush on one side and the cliff on the other, we'd be hidden. AndI found this hole."
"The air gets in and it's clean and fresh," he went on. "We couldn'thope for better."
"The walls are so close," whispered Betty, with a little shudder."They give one the feeling they're going to press in and crush you."
"They widen a bit in a minute." He groped on ahead, came again to theoutthrust knob and pressed by. "Here we turn a little to the right andhere's room for a dozen people."
Betty hurried and stood close to him. In vain her eyes sought topenetrate the absolute dark; no slightest detail of floor or wall wasoffered save vaguely through the sense of touch.
"It's dark enough to smother you," she whispered. "I wonder what'sahead of us? I wish we dared have a light!"
He was silent a moment.
"Maybe we do dare," he said thoughtfully. "The crookedness of thisplace ought to shut off any glow from the outside. Let's go on alittle further and we'll try."
He went on slowly, feeling a cautious way with hi
s feet, his hand onthe wall of rock at his side, Betty pressing on close behind him. Thusthey continued another dozen paces or so. Then they stopped becausethey could find no means of continuing; so far as they could tell bygroping with their hands the fissure narrowed again until it was nowider than the original entrance, and its irregularities presenteddifficulties to blind progress.
"Stand here," said Kendric. "Close to the rock. Here's a match. I'llslip back to the mouth of the place and we'll see if there's any glowgets that far."
"Hurry, then," said Betty, with a little shiver, fingers finding hisand taking the match.
Appreciating her sensations he hurried off through the dark. Herounded the turn, called softly to her to strike the match and went onagain until he was near the entrance. So still was it that he heardthe scratching of the match against the sole of her sandal. But noflare of light came out to him.
"Did you light it?" he asked.
"Yes. Couldn't you see it?"
"Not a glimmer. Wait a minute and I'll bring in some stuff for a fire."
The match burned down until it warmed her fingers and went out. In thedark she waited breathlessly. A sigh of relief escaped her when sheheard him coming.
He went down on his knees and made a very small heap of the dry leavesand twigs he had scraped up. When he set fire to it and straightenedup they watched the flames eagerly. There was scarcely more light thana candle casts but even that faint illumination brought something ofcheeriness with it. They looked about them curiously. They could seedimly the passageway along which they had come; they could make out itsnarrowing continuation on into the mass of the mountain. They lookedup and saw an ever dwindling space merging with darkness and finallylost in utter obscurity. Underfoot was debris, rocky soil worn awayfrom the cliffs throughout the ages, here and there fallen slivers andscale of rock. Shadows moved somberly, misshapen and grotesque, likebrooding spirits of evil stirring in nightmare.
Kendric threw on a little more fuel and, to make doubly sure, wentoutside again, standing in the open beyond the fringe of bushes.
"Never a flicker gets through," he announced when he returned. "A manwould have to come close enough to hear the wood crackle or smell thesmoke to ever guess we had a fire going. And even the smoke is takencare of." They tilted back their heads to see how it crept lazing upand up until it was dissipated among the lofty shadows. "If we canmanage water and food," he went on, "I think we would be safe here ayear. The lazy devils taking Zoraida's pay can't make it up this wayon horseback, and they're not going to climb on foot up every steep bitof mountainside hereabouts, looking for us."
"A year?" gasped Betty.
"I hope not." He became conscious of a sudden sense of relief afterall that the night had offered and his old joyous laughter shone in hiseyes. "But there may be wisdom in sticking close for a few days.Until they decide we've gone clear."
It was the time, inevitable though it may be long delayed, of relaxingnerves and muscles. Betty sat down limply, her hands loose in her tap,her eyes drawn to their fire, looking tired and wistful. Kendric,looking at her, felt a hot rush of anger at Zoraida for being the causeof their present condition. Betty lifted her head and caught theexpression molding his face. She was wrapped about with her red gownand Zoraida's cloak; her ankles were bare; then were scratches on them;her sandals looked already worn out; her hair was tumbled and snarled.She shook it loose and began combing it through with her fingers, thentwisting it up into two loose brown braids.
"If we do have to stay a while," said Betty, gathering her courage inboth hands, looking up at him an managing a smile, "I'll show you how Ican cozy the place up. Tomorrow, while you're doing the man's part andfinding us something to eat, I'll show you what a housekeeper I can be.Why, I can make this just like home; you'll see."
While he was doing the man's part! In her mind, then, it was allsimplified and reduced to that. His, naturally, was to be the task offurnishing food, for nothing was clearer than that they must eat andthat filling the larder was Jim's affair and not Betty's. Where he wasto get food and how and what kind of food it might be was to be left tohim. There was Betty for you, quite content to leave such matterswhere they properly belonged--in a man's hands. But he might restassured that whatever he brought in, be it a handful of acorns or pinenuts or the carcass of a lean ground squirrel, would be, in Betty'seye, splendid!
"Somehow," he burst out, "in spite of Zoraida and all the bandits inMexico, we'll carry on!"
"Of course," said Betty.
He saw that she was leaning back against the rocks, that her whole bodydrooped, that she looked wearied out.
"I'm going out for some boughs, the softest I can find handy," he said."We'll have to sleep on them. And while I'm doing that I've got tofigure out a way to bring some water up here. We don't know what'sahead and we'd be in hard luck bottled up here all day tomorrow withnothing to drink. Lord, I'd give a lot for a tin bucket!"
He made a little heap of dead wood close to her hand so that she couldkeep her fire going, and put down on the other side of her his rifleand the long obsidian knife, planning to use his pocket knife for thework at hand.
"You won't go far?" asked Betty.
"Only a few steps," he assured her. "I'll hear if you call. And youhave the rifle handy."
He was going out when Betty's voice arrested him.
"It's the housekeeper's place to have the buckets ready," was what shesaid.
"What do you mean by that?" he asked.
"I'll show you when you come back. You'll hurry, won't you?"
"Sure thing," he answered. And went about his task.
Now Jim Kendric knew as well as any man that there is no bed to comparewith the bed a man may make for himself in the forestlands. But herewas no forest, no thicket of young firs aromatic and springy, nothingbut the harsher vegetation of a hard land where agaves, the _maguey_ ofMexico, and their kin thrive, where the cactus is the characteristicgrowth. He'd be in luck to find some small pines or even thedry-looking sparse cedars of the locality. These with handfuls of dryleaves and grass, perhaps some tenderer shoots from the hillside sage,with Zoraida's cloak spread over them, might make for Betty a couch onwhich she could manage to sleep. It was too dark for picking andchoosing and his range was limited to what scant growth found root onthese uplands close by.
When he returned with the first armful of branches he informed Bettycheerily that outside her fire was hidden as though a sturdy oak panelshut their door for them. Betty was bending busily over her cloak andstill thus occupied when he brought in the second and third trailingarmful of boughs. He stood with his hands on his hips, looking down ather curiously. And as at last Betty glanced up brightly there was anair of triumph about her.
"The bucket is ready for the water," she said.
He came closer and she held out something toward him, and again headjusted his views to fit the companion whom he was growing to know.She had spoiled a very beautiful and expensive cloak, but of it she hadimprovised something intended to hold water. Not for very long,perhaps; but long enough for the journey here from the creek, if a mandid not loiter on the way. With the ancient sacrificial knife she hadhacked at a stringy, fibrous bit of vegetation growing near the mouthof their den; she had managed a tough loop some eight or ten inches indiameter. Then she had ripped a square of silk from the cloak whichshe had shaped cunningly like a deep pocket, binding it securely intothe fiber rim by thrusting holes through the silk and running bits ofthe green fiber through like pack thread. The final result lookedsomething less like a bucket than some strange oriole's hanging nest.
"It _will_ hold water," vowed Betty, ready for argument. "I've wornbathing caps of a lot poorer grade of silk and never a drop gotthrough. Besides I put a thickness of silk, then a layer of thesebroad leaves, then another piece of silk, to make sure."
"Fine," he said. "Yes, it will hold water for a while. But it's along time from daylight until dark, and I'm afraid---
-"
"As if I hadn't thought of that!" said Betty. "I knew that if I lookedaround I'd find something. I thought of your boots, of course; and Ithought of your rifle barrel. But you'll need the boots and may needthe gun. Come and I'll show you our reservoir."
She put a handful of leaves and twigs on the fire for the sake of morelight, and led the way toward the narrowing fissure further back intheir retreat. Here she stopped before a great rudely egg-shapedboulder five or six feet through that lay in a shallow depression inthe ground.
"Our water bottle," said Betty.
He supposed that she referred to the depression in the rock floor,since the boulder did not fit in it so exactly as to preclude thepossibility of the big rude basin holding water. The word"evaporation" was on his lips when Betty explained. She had hoped tofind somewhere a cavity in a rock that would hold their water supply;she had noted this boulder and a flattish place at its top. There herquesting fingers had discovered what Kendric's, at her direction, wereexploring now. There was a fairly round hole, a couple of inchesacross. The edges were surprisingly smooth; Kendric could not guesshow deep the hole was.
"Poke a stick into it," Betty commanded.
Obeying, he learned that the hole extended eighteen inches or more.Here was a fairly regular cylinder let into a block of hard rock thatwould contain something like two quarts of water--certainly enough tokeep the life in two people for twenty-four hours.
"We'll make a plug to fit into the mouth of it," he said, catching heridea and immediately was as enthusiastic over it as Betty. "And whilewe're out getting the water we'll find something for straws. There arewild grasses, oats or something that looks like oats, in the canon."
The night was well spent; dawn would come early. And with the dawn,they had no doubt, the mountain trails would fill with Zoraida's men,questing like hounds. Hence Betty and Jim lost no more time in makingtheir trip down the steep slope to the trickle of water. They drankagain, lying side by side at a pool. Then Jim filled Betty's "bucket"and they returned to their place of refuge. Kendric arranged theboughs for Betty and made her lie down. By the time he had carved andfitted a plug into their "water bottle" Betty was asleep.