Top-Notch Magazine/Volume 66/Number 3/East of Sunrise/Chapter 4

N the early morning of the day preceding his unusual experience at the hogback, Seward had trailed his burro out of Tres Alamos. A foreboding of the kind which he humorously referred to as a “trouble-hunch” accompanied him as he left the town. It was with him there in his camp by the hogback; furthermore, it was taking a clearer and more disturbing form with his recent experiences.

It seemed to him that he had a vague, indefinite sixth sense, a mentor which on occasion rose up out of his subconsciousness to warn him of misfortunes ahead. Two days before setting out on this particular prospecting trip he had arrived in Tres Alamos from the old Esmeralda Mine with Dirk Sanger and Three Card Churchill neatly roped astride a led horse. He had turned his prisoners over to Jerry Blake, the sheriff, and Blake had agreed to take him in the official buckboard out to Pete Doble’s Ten-strike property where Sandy was being cared for pending Seward’s return from his bandit hunting.

The sheriff had told the prospector that Ethel Norcross wanted to see him, and that as soon as the buckboard was ready it would pick him up at Simms & Norcross’ General Store. So Seward had gone to the store and had been requested by Norcross to climb the outside stairs to the living rooms where he would find Ethel waiting with a very important message for him.

Having ascended the stairs, Seward waited at the open door at the top. Ethel was playing a melodeon, and singing as she played:

In that moment, as he listened to the soft voice lifted in song, the still, small voice of Seward’s mentor spoke to him: “That song has a meaning for you, Walt; pay attention!”

Ethel’s important message had to do with five thousand dollars in gold double eagles in the safe of Simms & Norcross. It appeared that an Easterner named Sparling, who had taken over the Pelican Mine near Los Cerillos, wanted just five thousand dollars in cash for a deal in which checks, or any other sort of negotiable paper, would not serve. There was no bank in Cerillos, and none in Tres Alamos; and Simms & McCann, later Simms & Norcross, had found it good business to carry a fairly large amount of money in their safe for the cashing of checks, thus accommodating some of their customers who would otherwise have been obliged to go to Quinlan, the nearest railroad town, to realize on their "paper.”

Simms & Norcross, it seemed, had received a letter from one of their Eastern correspondents testifying to the financial responsibility of Mr. Victor Sparling and requesting them to help him in his venture in Los Cerillos in any way possible. So, when Sparling sent them a letter, inclosing his New York check for five thousand dollars and asking them to send him the cash any time within a month, Simms & Norcross wanted to oblige him.

Ethel Norcross was willing to take the money to Los Cerillos, but in view of certain robberies that had recently been committed in that section, both members of the firm thought this proceeding altogether too risky for a woman. It had occurred to Simms that Seward might be prospecting to the south and west; and, if he were, would he take the five thousand dollars in his pack, drop in at Los Cerillos any time within a month, and deliver the money to Mr. Sparling at the Pelican Mine?

Seward was known to be an accommodating person, and he was really planning his next prospecting trip in the direction indicated. Therefore, inasmuch as time did not appear to be an important matter in the delivery of the money, he was glad to oblige the firm—and save Ethel Norcross a venturesome trip—by accepting the commission. A little later he boarded the buckboard for the ride to the Ten-strike Mine with the first vague premonition of trouble taking shape in his mind.

Deferring to his premonition—for he had never found his mentor to be unreliable—he had secured from Pete Doble about thirteen pounds of iron washers. Doble had kept them on hand for years, part of a supply of old junk which he had picked up at an auction. Doble was a great hand for buying stuff at auctions. He was curious to know what Seward wanted of the iron washers, which were too large for ordinary bolts and used largely in bridge building. But Seward did not feel inclined to explain; he merely grinned at his friend and kept his own counsel.

In the early morning, when he had trailed Sandy out of Tres Alamos, he had the five thousand dollars in gold safely stowed in the burro’s pack in a pair of saddlebags. In transporting the gold he considered himself under a double obligation. Norcross and his daughter, especially the daughter, were his very good friends; and he had known Mr. and Mrs. Victor Sparling in the East, long years before, and he was eager to serve them in any way in his power.

In a day and a half he had reached the hogback and pitched his camp; for he had for some time wanted to investigate the float, to discover whether it was really float from the mountains above or merely a blow-out. And all the time he was making his journey to the hogback, and after he had settled down there for a few days’ investigating, his sixth sense was continually dinning in his ears: “Look out! Trouble ahead!”

His meeting with La Joya was the first bolt from the blue. Her almost tragic experience with the "bandidos,” did not ring true; and recognizing her as a faro dealer from one of the worst gambling hells in those parts did not serve to reassure him.

“I think,” he told her, after they had finished their supper, and the sun had set and the embers of the camp fire were dying, “I think, señorita, that we had better start for the pass east of Sunrise Cañon to-night. There will be a moon, you can ride the burro, and it will be pleasanter traveling by night than by day. By to-morrow forenoon, before the sun gets too warm for comfort, you ought to be with your uncle and aunt.”

The señorita, however, was against that. She was tired, oh, so tired! Really, she must rest. She knew that she was a great bother to señor Seward, and she was sorry; but it was absolutely impossible for her to go on that night She was used to the deserts, and if he would only give her a blanket she would roll up in it and look out for herself.

Seward was annoyed by this refusal; but he was, as Lola Sanger had told Chombo, a chivalrous knight of the desert. He bowed to the señorita’s wishes, cut some soft brushtops, covered them with a blanket, and left the girl the run of the camp. With a sawbuck saddle for a pillow, and a canvas “tarp” for covering, he went off into the chaparral and tried to get his night’s rest.

Then something else occurred to oppress him. There was a stinging sensation in his eyes; not painful, exactly, but a burning that suggested dire things. He had experienced it before—three times only in all his desert experience of five years. It was a premonitory warning that the glare of the sun on the sand was affecting his sight very much as the sun’s glare on white snow. Sun-blindness was indicated. If he had been by himself he would have passed the next day in idleness, his eyes bandaged to keep out the glare. But with the señorita on his hands, and refusing to cross the deserts by night, it was impossible for him to take the usual precautions which were necessary in the circumstances.

A doctor had given him an ointment for use in such cases, and he got the tin out of his first-aid kit, applied some of the ointment to his eyelids, and covered his eyes with a gauze bandage. He hoped that would prevent the blindness, at least until he had conducted the señorita to the pass east of Sunrise Cañon and had gone on to Cerillos and delivered the money to Sparling.

Next morning his eyes were better, and in the gray dawn he set about building a fire and preparing breakfast. He did not call the señorita until the meal was ready; then, at the first word from him, the girl appeared from the blanket roll bright and smiling.

She had enjoyed a wonderful night’s rest she declared in response to Seward’s greeting. Such a wonderful air as there was in the deserts! Like wine, was it not? She prattled on, shook the sand out of her rebozo, dusted her clothing, and went to the spring to bathe her face in the cool water. She came to breakfast with every strand of her glossy black hair in place, as fresh as the morning itself.

She found Seward looking at the sun. The orb of day was not as bright as usual, but had a faint, foggy look, as though a veil had been dropped before it.

“Why do you examine the sky, señor?” she inquired.

"The day,” answered Seward, weatherwise, “is going to be very warm and still; and it opens with promise of a sandstorm, señorita.”

“Then we must not venture across the deserts!” she exclaimed. “I know these storms. We must stay in camp.”

“Pardon me,” returned Seward, “but I think it will be noon or later before the dust storm comes. We can reach a place I know where there is water and rough country for a refuge. Of course the storm may not come; it doesn’t always come when the morning sun is like that. It is best, I think,” he added gravely, “to be on our way.”

La Joya pouted and tossed her head. “I shall not stir!” she declared. “Por Dios! If we were caught in a sandstorm I should perish! I do not choose to be suffocated with heat and strangled with the whirling sand.”

She was a like a spoiled child. Seward could have insisted, but it occurred to him that with another day in the camp he could look after his eyes. He brought Sandy closer to the spring and picketed him; then, with a fresh bandage on his eyes, he sought a scrap of shade and composed himself for a day of enforced idleness. The señorita was very curious about the bandage.

“Occasionally,” he explained, “not often, but occasionally, my eyes warn me that the sun is affecting them. I feel that warning now, and the bandage is just a precaution. What,” he inquired, “does your uncle do in the pass east of the Sunrise Cañon, señorita?”

“He is a hauler of wood, señor,” was the answer, “for the Pelican Mine, near Los Cerillos. Tia Bianca stays in the adobe in the pass while Tio Juan is away with his wagons.”

“The adobe is in the pass?” Seward asked.

“By the spring, si; exactly in the pass.”

Of his own knowledge Seward knew that there was no spring in the pass and no adobe. Why was the girl lying to him? But he was a patient man, held his peace, and was eager only to be quit of the obligation he considered himself under to the señorita.

Perhaps it was ten o’clock when the temperamental señorita changed her mind about proceeding to the pass. “I don’t believe there will be any sandstorm, señor,” she said; “perhaps, after all, we had better be traveling.”

Seward’s judgment was now all against the traveling, with such a late start. The fog about the sun was thickening, and the air was like the breath of a furnace.

“No, señorita,” he told her; “with such a late start it is not wise.”

“Very well,” answered the señorita; “then I will walk.”

She would have persisted in that madness and even made a start in spite of Seward’s protests.

“All right,” said the patient Seward; “if we hurry a bit we may get to the water hole.”

He removed the bandage from his eyes and began making Sandy ready for the trip.