Top-Notch Magazine/Volume 66/Number 3/East of Sunrise/Chapter 5

N dealing with this capricious young woman, Seward was of a mind to use his best judgment and make her abide by it; but the moment he had removed the bandage the swirling black specks that interfered with his vision convinced him that the calamity he had sought to guard against was inevitable. In a few hours the black curtain would fall, and he would be blinded; not for long—a day at the least, a few days at the most. But if he lost his sight even for an hour, with the gold in his charge and a woman under his protection whom he had good reason to distrust, such a sightless hour might easily result in unhappy complications.

With the señorita lying to him about her uncle and her aunt, he was minded to push on to Los Cerillos. If the Mexicana insisted on stopping at the pass, he would leave her to take her own course. Either she must listen to reason or suffer the consequences of her own folly. With luck on his side he might be able to reach Los Cerillos before his eyes failed him completely.

If blindness overtook him while he was in the camp by the hogback, the three horsemen whom the girl called “bandidos”—and who might be her confederates and not her enemies—would find him an easy prey. So the señorita’s desire to be traveling was assented to as the best move possible in the circumstances.

He cached some of his equipment; and he did this secretly, while the girl went to pull the picket pin and lead Sandy to the spring. With the blanket, he cushioned a seat for her on the burro’s back; and then, with his revolver thrust into a breast holster, and the holster belted against his chest to hold it flat, they got under way.

Crossing the hogback was a trying performance for Sandy in the sweltering heat, but he was a plucky little brute and tireless. Descending the opposite slope, they laid their course toward the distant hills, the pass, and Sunrise Canon. The water hole Seward had in mind was several miles north of the pass, just where the low foothills began to lift themselves above the flat desert.

There were moments when Seward could not see at all, moments when a rolling, inky cloud obscured his vision entirely, then burst into fragments like an exploding rocket, spangling earth and sky with spots as black as midnight. Then for a time his sight would clear and be almost normal. He closed his eyes as he tramped beside the burro, holding to the rope that secured the blanket to Sandy’s back.

At last a sudden hot blast of air struck the back of his neck. It was the first stir of wind and seemed to come over a bed of blazing coals. He opened his eyes to see the desert dust lifting like smoke and rolling knee-deep across the flats. He knew then that they could go no farther. He halted the burro and faced him around.

“What are you going to do, señor?” asked the señorita.

“Get back to the lee of the hogback,” he told her; “going on like this is out of the question.” -

“We can’t make it!” she cried shrilly.

“We can try, at any rate.”

They were not halfway on the back trail when a dull roaring sound came out of the north. The sky in that direction was filled with a rolling fog of dust; it was the simoon bearing down upon them.

“Get down, señorita!” ordered Seward.

“Why? What for?”

“If you know these deserts then you have asked a foolish question. We must do what we can to weather this storm.”

He helped the girl to alight and forced the burro to lie down; then, removing the blanket, he made his companion kneel close to the burro and draped the blanket over her head.

“Madre mia!” the señorita gasped. “I shall smother!”

“It is the best we can do,” answered Seward, dropping down and pulling the tarpaulin over his head and shoulders.

The next moment they were in the thick of it. The roaring wind drove the sand against the glazed “tarp” and began piling drifts about the girl, Seward, and the burro. It was difficult to breathe, and what air they did take into their lungs was gritty with sand particles and hot as fire. The señorita began to moan and to huddle closer to the burro; the burro snorted and struggled, and Seward reached out a hand to stroke his furry neck and quiet him.

The tarp, one corner released, was torn out of Seward’s grasp. He arose and plunged after it, regaining it again after a wild race of some fifty feet. He found it lodged against a greasewood bush, seeing it plainly for a moment as he gathered it up in his arms. Then, as he turned to face the blast and make his way to the burro and the girl, the black curtain dropped, and he knew it would be hours before he could see again—hours, and perhaps days.

With the wind in his face and the flying sand biting into his skin, he grimly fought his way in the teeth of it. That was his course. He called aloud, shouted at the top of his lungs, and then fell silent as he listened for some answering call to guide him. None came.

Seward groped about in the turmoil, fighting against the blast for every step. Again and again he lifted his voice in a call to the girl. Only the roaring whisper of the sand filled his ears, and there was no other response. He sank down where he was, resolved to wait until the storm had spent its fury and then to continue his searching.

He could not be far from Sandy and the girl. His plunge after the tarp was only fifty feet; and yet, in retracing his course, he had lost his bearings. If he continued his efforts to reach the burro and the girl he might only succeed in getting farther and farther away from them. Had the use of his eyes been allowed him he could have done no better, for the curtain of sand closed him in completely and to see more than a few feet in any direction was an impossibility.

With his back to the wind he crouched low in a growing drift of sand. Minutes dragged like hours as he panted for air under the suffocating tarp. And then, by degrees, the roar began to die down. The peak of the storm had passed. With the dying whisper of the wind in his ears, Seward arose and threw aside the tarp.

Although it could not have been more than high noon, the blackness of midnight was all around him. “Señorita!” he called, trumpeting through his hands.

Still there was no answer. He kicked himself clear of the sand drift, fumbled until he had recovered the tarpaulin, and began an aimless wandering. The slight breath of wind was from the north, so he faced it confident that he was proceeding in the direction of the hogback. But where was the girl? What had become of her?

He thought of the gold. Had she taken Sandy and made off with him and the weighted saddlebags? Had that been her purpose, all along? Had she fooled him with her “bandidos” her talk of the little inheritance for Tia Bianca, her request that he should help her on to the pass? Had she dared the sandstorm in the hope that it might offer an opportunity for her to escape with the burro and the gold?

He could ask himself numberless questions, but the answers to them were all beyond him. Suppose, on the other hand, he was doing the girl an injustice by his suspicions? There was always that possibility. The faro dealer at the posada might have forgotten his visit at Forty-mile. That had happened long ago. And the wood hauler and his family might have moved into the pass since Seward was through it last. If the señorita was sincere, if she was really in distress, then it was Seward’s duty to find her.

He struggled about in the desert, stumbling against the fishhook thorns of cholla clumps, falling over greasewood brush, trumpeting his calls for the señorita through his hands, intent only on covering as much ground as he could in his blind search for the girl.

After an hour of useless effort he began to take a more reasonable view of the situation. The girl, if her intentions were honest, should have been looking for him. She had her sight and finding him would not have been difficult. With the air cleared of flying dust one could see for miles on the desert.

Used to that country, as she professed to be, it was not possible that she had got up and wandered away in the storm. It was not as severe a sandstorm as others Seward had experienced. People had died in sandstorms, but not in one that had worn itself out so quickly. The señorita must have escaped and have taken the burro with her.

It was now high time for Seward to think of himself. He was perishing for water; and if he could not find Sandy and the canteens he must somehow manage to return to the spring by the hogback. The slight ruffle of air from the north still served him as a guide. Moistening his fingers on his hot tongue, he lifted a hand to catch the direction of the moving air. Then he proceeded on his course.

He was staggering before he had gone far. He dropped to the ground and groped about until he had found a small pebble and placed the stone under his tongue. That was something of a help to a man far gone with thirst, but it was not much. Lifting himself, he continued to stagger onward.

He blundered into a stroke of luck when he bumped into some object and, putting out a hand, he encountered a furry neck. A nose was pushed against his arm, nuzzling him companionably.

“Sandy!” he gasped; and then, out of pure relief, he gave vent to a husky laugh. “You’re sandy, all right; sandy from nose to heels, old top!”

He groped for the canteen of water, but it was gone; and then for the saddlebags and found them. They chinked as he struck them with the flat of his hand.

What did this mean? Had the señorita taken the canteen and started alone across the desert? Why had she left the saddlebags? Were they too heavy for her to carry?

“For a blind man,” Seward muttered, “all that is past finding out. Agua, Sandy!” he called hoarsely to the burro. “Back to the camp, Sandy! If you are as dry as I am, you will make for the nearest water, and that’s the spring by the hogback.”

He started the burro, letting him take his own course, and followed at his side clinging to the packsaddle. Presently he climbed to the burro’s neck and dismounted only when he sensed that they had reached a rise and were ascending a slope.

The hogback! “Good boy, Sandy!” he croaked. “Before many minutes, now, we’ll have water.”

Having gained the top they crossed the flat crest and began a descent of the opposite bank. Sandy was making straight for water; and presently, at the foot of the incline, the burro quickened his pace for a dozen yards, halted abruptly and lowered his head. Seward could hear him splashing his nose in the pool below the spring.

“At last!” Seward muttered and, guided by the drip of water, made his way to the spring, threw himself down at full length and drank.

He was back at his camp again. Blind though he was, he was safe for the present. He could use food from his cache; and that, with the water, would keep life in him. Staying there until his sight was restored would not be a difficult matter; awkward, it was true, but he had passed through more difficult experience? and had survived. “I’m lucky, after all,” he thought.