CHAPTER XIX
HOW ONE WHO HIDES AND WATCHES MAY BE WATCHED BY ONE HIDDEN
But Kendric himself did not sleep. He sat by their dead fire andwatched the gradual thinning of the darkness about him as the vaguelight filtered in from the awakening outside world. He looked at Bettysleeping, only to look away with a frown darkening his eyes. She wouldsleep heavily and long; she would awake refreshed and--hungry. He washungry already.
"It's open and shut," he told himself. "It's up to me to forage."
And it was as clear that there was always a risk of being seen as heleft their hiding place. That risk would increase as the daybrightened. Hence, since he must go, it were best not to tarry. Hefound in his pocket a stub of pencil and an old envelope. On it hewrote a brief message, placing it on the ground near her outflung hand,laying Bruce's pistol upon it.
"I'm off to fill the larder. Stick close until I come back. If I'mlong gone it will be because I can't help it. But be sure I'll be backall right and bring something to eat. Jim."
He left her, not without uneasiness, but eager to hurry away so that,if all went well, his return might be hastened. He took the rifle andslipped cautiously through the bushes, stopping to make what assurancehe could that he was not being seen, crawling for the most part acrossthe open places, keeping as much as possible where boulders or treeshid him. He had already made his tentative plans; he made his way downinto the bed of the ravine and thence upstream. Swiftly the lightincreased over the still solitudes. The sun was up on the highlands,the canons only were still dusky.
He found a place where he could stand hidden and see the cliff-brokenslope where Betty was. Here he stood motionless for a long time,watching. For he knew that if by chance someone had seen him and hadnot followed it was because that someone had elected rather to seek thegirl. At last, when the stillness remained unbroken and he saw nostirring thing, he expressed his relief in a deep sigh and went on.
His plan was to work his way up the ravine until at last he topped theridge and went down on the further side. From his starting place hehad roughly picked out his way, shaping his trail to conform to thosebits of timber which would aid in his concealment. Once over the ridgehe would press on until several miles lay between him and Betty. Then,if he saw game of any sort or a straying calf or sheep, he would haveto take the chance that a rifle shot entailed. If his shot broughtZoraida's men down on him, he would have to fight for it or run for itas circumstances directed.
He was an hour in cresting the first ridge. Before him lay a wildcountry, broken and barren in places where there were wildernesses ofrock and thorny bush; in other places scantily timbered and grown up intough grasses. A more unlikely game country he thought that he hadnever seen. But the land hereabouts was not utterly devoid of waterand always, as he went on, he sought those canons where from a distancehe judged that he might come to a spring. Even so he was parched withthirst before he found the first mudhole. And before he drew nearenough to drink he sat many minutes screened by some dusty willows, hiseye keen either for watering game or for Zoraida's hirelings who wouldbe watching the waterholes.
But, when at last he came on, he found nothing but a jumble of tracks.Ponies had watered here and had trampled the spring into its presentresemblance to a mudhole. He found a place to drink, and drankthirstily, finding no fault with the alkali water or the sediment init. He washed his hands and face in it, wet his hair and went on.
There came three more spurs of mountain to cross, all unlikely forgame, each one hotter and dryer than the others. Twice he had seen acoyote; he had seen two or three gaunt, hungry-looking jackrabbits.They had been too far away to draw a shot, gray glimmers throughpatches of sage. He had seen never a hoof of wandering cattle. And herealized that during the heat of the day there was small hope of hissighting any browsing animal. He would probably have to wait until thecool of evening and then, if he made his kill, return to Betty in thedark. And, though he keenly kept his bearings, he knew that if hemistook a landmark somewhere and got into a wrong canon, he'd have hiswork cut out for him finding her at night. Well, that was only a pieceof the whole pattern and he kept his mind on the immediate present.
He estimated that he was ten miles from camp. Ahead of him stretchedstill another ridge, a little higher than the others but a shade lessbarren; there were scattered pines and oaks and open grassy places.From the top of this ridge, half an hour later, he glimpsed a haze ofsmoke rising from the little valley just beyond. And when he came to aplace whence he could have an unobstructed view he saw a scatteringflock of sheep, a tiny stream of water and a rickety board shack. Itwas from this shelter that the smoke rose. It was high noon and downthere the midday meal was cooking.
Food being cooked right under his nose! All day he had been hungry;now he was ravenous. So strong was the impulse upon him that hestarted down the slope in a direct line to the house, bent uponflinging open a door and demanding to be fed. But he caught himself upand sat down in the shade, hidden behind some bushes, and pondered thesituation. The sheep straggled everywhere; he might wait for one ofthem to wander off into the bushes and then slip around upon it andmake it his own with a clubbed rifle. Or he might go to the house,taking his chance.
While he was waiting and watching he saw a man come out of the cabin.The fellow lounged down to the spring for a pan of water and loungedback to the house; the eternal Mexican cigaret in his lips sent itsfloating ribbon of smoke behind him. Ten minutes later the same mancame out, this time to lie down on the ground under a tree.
"Just one _hombre_," decided Kendric. "A lazy devil of a sheepherder.There's more than a fair chance that his _siesta_ will last allafternoon."
At any rate, here appeared his even break. He sprang up, went withswinging strides down the slope, taking the shortest cut, and reachedthe cabin by the back door. The Mexican still lay under his tree.Kendric looked in at the door. No one there, just a bare, empty untidyroom. It was bedroom, kitchen and dining-room. In the latter capacityit appealed strongly to Kendric. He went in, set his rifle down, andrummaged.
There was, of course, a big pot of red beans. And there were_tortillas_, a great heap of them. Kendric took half a dozen of them,moistened them in the half pan of water and poured a high heap of beanson them. Then he rolled the tortillas up, making a monster cylindricalbean sandwich. A soiled newspaper, with a look almost of antiquity toit, he found on a shelf and wrapped about his sandwich which he thrustinto the bosom of his shirt. All of this had required about twominutes and in the meantime his eyes had been busy, still rummaging.
There was a box nailed to the wall with a cloth over it. In it hefound what he expected; a lot of jerked beef, dry and hard. He filledhis pockets, his mouth already full. On a table was a flour sack; heput into it the bulk of the remaining beef, some coffee and sugar, acouple of cans of milk. Then he looked out at the Mexican. The manstill lay in the gorged torpor of the afternoon _siesta_.
"What will he think?" chuckled Kendric, "when he finds his larderraided and this on the table?"
_This_ was a twenty dollar gold piece, enough to pay many times overthe amount of the commandeered victuals. Kendric took up sack andrifle, had another mouthful of _frijoles_ and beef, and went out theway he had come. And, all the way up the slope, he chuckled to himself.
"Enough to last Betty and me a week," he estimated. "And a place toget more if need be. That hombre will pray the rest of his life to beraided again.--And never a shot fired!"
He ate as he went, enough to keep life and strength in him but not allthat his hunger craved. For he thought of Betty hungering and waitingin that hideous loneliness of uncertainty, and had no heart for asolitary meal. But in fancy, over and over, he feasted with her, andbeans and jerked beef and coffee boiled in a milk-can made a banquet.
He hastened all that he could to return to her, though he knew thatspeeding along the trail could hardly bring him to her a secondearlier. For he would, in the end,
be constrained to wait for thecoming of night before he climbed again to their camp. He realizedsoberly that Betty must not again fall into Zoraida's hands; that theresult, inevitably, would be her death. Were Zoraida mad or sane, shewas filled with a frenzy of blood lust. There was danger enoughwithout his increasing it for the sake of coming an hour sooner withfood. In one day Betty would not starve and fast she must.
But there was satisfaction in drawing steadily closer to her. Hetraveled as cautiously as he had come, he stopped in many places ofconcealment whence he could overlook miles of country, he followed notthe shortest paths but the safest. And the sun was still high when hecame to the last ridge and looked down the canon and across and saw thecliffs of home. In his thoughts it was home.
All day long, save for the herder, he had seen not a single soul. Nowhe saw someone, a man at a distance and upon the side of the canonopposite the spot he and Betty had chosen. Kendric had been for tenminutes lying under a tree on the ridge, his body concealed by anoutcropping ledge of rock over which he had been looking. The man,like himself, was playing a waiting game. But just now he had stirred,moving swiftly from behind a tree to a nearby boulder. Thus he hadcaught Kendric's eye. And thus Kendric was reassured, confident afterthe first quick sinking of his heart, that the other had not seen him.
The man, too far away for Kendric to distinguish detail of eithercostume or features, was hardly more than a slinking shadow. Butalmost with the first glimpse there came the quick suspicion that itwas Ruiz Rios. He saw something white in the man's hand; ahandkerchief since the gesture was one of wiping a wet forehead. Andon that slender evidence Kendric's belief established itself.Zoraida's vacqueros would not carry white handkerchiefs; if theycarried any sort at all they would probably be red or yellow or blue;or, if white originally, they would not be kept so snowy as to flashlike that one. And the gesture itself, once the thought had come tohim, was vaguely suggestive of that slow grace in every movement thatwas Rios's. The man might be anyone, conceivably even Barlow or Brace;but in his heart Kendric knew it was Rios.
Lower than ever Kendric crouched in the shelter of the rock; steady andunwinking and watchful did his eyes cling to the distant figure. Hemade out after a long period of motionlessness another gesture; theman's hands were up to his face; he was shading his eyes or studyingthe mountainside with field glasses.
The latter probably.
The afternoon dragged on and for a long time neither man moved. Atlast Rios, if Rios it was, withdrew a little, slipped behind a tree,passed to another and disappeared. Kendric did not see him againthough he kept alert every instant. At last came the time when the sunslipped down behind the ridge and the dusk thickened and the stars cameout. Kendric rose, stiff and weary, and began his slow, tedious waydown into the canon. His long enforced stillness during which he hadnot dared doze a second, had served to bring a full realization ofbodily fatigue and need of sleep. No rest last night; today many hardmiles and little nourishment; now every nerve yearned for a safe returnto camp for a sight of Betty, for the opportunity to throw himself downon a bed of boughs and rest.
Though it was dark when he started to climb the steep toward camp herelaxed nothing of his guarded precautions. Urged by impatience as hewas, eager to know if all was well with Betty, his uneasiness for hergrowing with every step toward her, he crawled slowly and silentlythrough bushes and among boulders, he stopped frequently and listened,he forced himself to a round about way rather than take the direct.All this in spite of his keen realization that for Betty the time mustbe dragging even as it dragged for him. Betty hungry, frightened andlonely was, above all, uncertain.
But at last he came to the opening in the rocks. He squeezed through,his heart suddenly heavy within him as the stillness of the place smotehim like a positive assurance that Betty was gone. He went on, histeeth set hard. If Betty were gone, by high heaven, there would be arendering of accounts! And then, even before the first glimmer of herlittle fire reached him, he heard her glad cry. She came running tomeet him, her two hands out, groping for his. And he dropped rifle andprovision bag and in the half dark his hands found hers and grippedhard in mighty rejoicing.
"Thank God!" said Betty.
And Jim Kendric's words were like a deep, fervent echo: "Thank God."