Chapter 9

TOUCH AND GO

The John DeWitt who helped break camp after finding Rhoda's scarf was a different man from the half-crazed person of the three days previous. He had begun to hope. Somehow that white scarf with Rhoda's perfume clinging to it was a living thing to him, a living, pulsing promise that Rhoda was helping him to find her. Now, while Jack and Billy were feverishly eager, he was cool and clear-headed, leaving the leadership to Billy still, yet doing more than his share of the work in preparing for the hard night ahead of them. The horses were well watered, their own canteens were filled and saturated and food so prepared that it could be eaten from the saddle.

"For," said Porter, "when we do hit the little girl's trail, starvation or thirst or high hell ain't goin' to stop us!"

It was mid-afternoon when they started down the mountainside. There was no trail and going was painful but the men moved with the care of desperation. Once in the cañon they moved slowly along the wall and some two miles from where the scarf had been found, they discovered a fault where climbing was possible. It was nearing sundown when they reached a wide ledge where the way was easy. Porter led the way back over this to the spot below which fluttered a white paper to mark the place where the scarf had been found. The ledge deepened here to make room for a tiny, bubbling spring. Giant boulders were scattered across the rocky floor.

The three men dismounted. The ledge gave no trace of human occupancy and yet Porter and Jack nodded at each other.

"Here was his camp, all right. Water, and no one could come within a mile of him without his being seen."

"He's still covering his traces carefully," said Jack.

"Not so very," answered Porter. "He's banking a whole lot on our stupidity, but Miss Tuttle beat him to it with her scarf."

The three men treated the ledge to a microscopic examination but they found no trace of previous occupation until Billy knelt and put his nose against a black outcropping of stone in the wall. Then he gave a satisfied grunt.

"Come here, Jack, and take a sniff."

Jack knelt obediently and cried excitedly:

"It smells of smoke, by Jove! Don't it, John, old scout!"

"They knew smoke wouldn't show against a black outcrop, but they didn't bank on my nose!" said Billy complacently. "Come ahead, boys."

A short distance from the spring they found a trail which led back up the mountain, and as dusk came on they followed its dizzy turns until darkness forced them to halt and wait until the moon rose. By its light they moved up into a piñon forest.

"Let's wait here until daylight," suggested Jack. "It's a good place for a camp."

"No, it's too near the ledge," objected Billy. "Of course we are working on faith mostly. I'm no Sherlock Holmes. We'll keep to the backbone of this range for a while. It's the wildest spot in New Mexico. Kut-le will avoid the railroad over by the next range."

So Billy led his little band steadfastly southward. At dawn they met a Mexican shepherd herding his sheep in a grassy cañon. Jack Newman called to him eagerly and the Mexican as eagerly answered. A visitor was worth a month's pay to the lonely fellow. The red of dawn was painting the fleecy backs of his charges as the tired Americans rode into his little camp.

"Seen anything of an Injun running away with a white girl?" asked Billy without preliminaries.

The Mexican's jaw dropped.

"_Sacra Maria_!" he gasped. "Not I! Who is she?"

"Listen!" broke in Jack. "You be on the watch. An educated Indian has stolen a young lady who was visiting my wife. I own the Newman ranch. That Indian Cartwell it was, three days ago."

John DeWitt interrupted.

"If you can catch that Indian, if you can give us a clue to him, you needn't herd sheep any more. Lord, man, speak up! Don't stand there like a chump!"

"But, señors!" stammered the poor fellow to whom this sudden torrent of conversation was as overwhelming as a cloudburst. "But I have not seen--"

Billy Porter spoke again.

"Hold up, boys! We are scaring the poor devil to death. Friend pastor," he said, "we'll have breakfast here with you, if you don't object, and tell you our troubles."

The shepherd glowed with hospitality.

"Yonder is good water and I have tortillas and frijoles."

Unshaven and dirty, gaunt from lack of sleep, the three men dismounted wearily and gladly turned their coffee and bacon over to the herder to whom the mere odor of either was worth any amount of service. As they ate, Jack and Billy quizzed the Mexican as to the topography of the surrounding country. The little herder was a canny chap.

"He will not try to cover his trail carefully now," he said, swallowing huge slabs of bacon. "He has a good start. You will have to fool him. He sleeps by day and travels by night, you will see. You are working too hard and your horses will be dead. You should have slept last night. Now you will lose today because you must rest your horses."

Porter looked at his two companions. Jack was doing fairly well, but the calm that DeWitt had found with Rhoda's scarf had deserted him. He was eating scarcely anything and stared impatiently at the fire, waiting for the start.

"I'm a blamed double-action jackass, with a peanut for a mind!" exclaimed Porter. "Taking on myself to lead this hunt when I don't _sabe_ frijoles! We take a sleep now."

DeWitt jumped to his feet, expostulating, but Jack and Billy laid a hand on either of his shoulders and forced him to lie down on his blanket. There nature claimed her own and in a short time the poor fellow was in the slumber of exhaustion.

"Poor old chap!" said Jack as he spread his own blanket. "I can't help thinking all the time 'What if it were Katherine!' Dear old Rhoda! Why, Billy, we used to play together as kids! She's slapped my face, many a time!"

"Probably you deserved it!" answered Billy in an uncertain voice. "By the limping piper! I'm glad I ain't her financier. I'm most crazy, as it is!"

The sheep herder woke the sleepers at noon. After a bath at the spring, and dinner, the trio felt as if reborn. They left the herder with minute directions as to what he was to do in case he heard of Rhoda. Then they rode out of the cañon into the burning desert.

And now for several days they lost all clues. They beat up and down the ranges like tired hunting-dogs, all their efforts fruitless. Little by little, panic and excitement left them. Even DeWitt realized that the hunt was to be a long and serious one as Porter told of the fearful chases the Apaches had led the whites, time and again. He began to realize that to keep alive in the terrible region through which the hunt was set he must help the others to conserve their own and his energies. To this end they ate and slept as regularly as they could.

Occasionally they met other parties of searchers, but this was only when they beat to the eastward toward the ranch, for most of the searchers were now convinced that Kut-le had made toward Mexico and they were patrolling the border. But Billy insisted that Kut-le was making for some eerie that he knew and would ensconce himself there for months, if need be, till the search was given up. Then and then only would he make for Mexico. And John DeWitt and Jack had come to agree with Billy.

"He'll keep her up in some haunt of his," said Jack, again and again, "until he's worn her into consenting to marry him. And before that happens, if I know old Rhoda, we'll find them."

"He's mine when we do find him, remember that," John DeWitt always said through his teeth at this point in the discussion.

It was on the twelfth day of the hunt that the sheep-herder found them. They were cinching up the packs after the noon rest when he rode up on a burro. He was dust-coated and both he and the burro were panting.

"I've seen her! I've seen the señorita!" he shouted as he clambered stiffly from the burro.

The three Americans stood rigid.

"Where? How? When?" came from three heat-cracked mouths.

The Mexican started to answer, but his throat was raw with alkali dust and his voice was scarcely audible. DeWitt impatiently thrust a canteen into the little fellow's hands.

"Hurry, for heaven's sake!" he urged.

The Mexican took a deep draught.

"The night after you left I moved up into the peaks, intending to cross the range to lower pastures next day. A big storm came up and I made camp. Then an Indian in a blanket rode up to me and asked me if I was alone. I _sabed_ him at once. 'But yes, señor,'" I answered, "'except for the sheep!'"

"But Miss Tuttle! The señorita!" shouted DeWitt.

The Mexican glanced at the tired blue eyes, the strained face, pityingly.

"She was well," he answered. "Be patient, señor. Then there rode up another Indian, two squaws and what looked to be a young boy. The Indian lifted the boy from the saddle so tenderly, señors. And it was your señorita! She did not look strong, yet I think the Indian is taking good care of her. They sat by the fire till the storm was over. The señorita ignored Kut-le as if he had been a dog."

Porter clinched his teeth at this, while Jack murmured with a gleam of savage satisfaction in his eyes, "Old Rhoda!" But DeWitt only gnawed his lip, with his blue eyes on the Mexican.

"The Indian said I was to say nothing, but the señorita made him let me tell about you after I said I had seen you. She--she cried with happiness. They rode away in a little while but I followed as long as I dared to leave my sheep. They were going north. I think they were in the railroad range the night you were with me, then doubled back. I left my sheep the next day with the salt-boy who came up. I tramped twenty miles to the rancho and got a burro and left word about the señorita. Then I started on your trail. Everyone I met I told. I thought that my news was not worth much except that the señor there would be glad to know that the Indian is tender to his señorita."

DeWitt turned to Porter and Newman.

"Friends, perhaps she is being taken care of!" he said. "Perhaps that devil is trying to keep her health, at least. God! If nothing worse has befallen her!"

He stopped and drew his wrist across his forehead. Something like tears shone in Jack's eyes, and Porter coughed. John turned to the Mexican and grasped the little fellow's hand.

"My boy," he said, "you'll never regret this day's work. If you have a señorita you know what you have done for me!"

The Mexican looked up into DeWitt's face seriously.

"I have one. She has a dimple in her chin."

John turned abruptly and stood staring into the desert while tears seared his eyes. Billy hastily unpacked and gave Carlos and his burro the best that the outfit afforded.

"Can the salt-boy stay on with the sheep while you come with us?" asked John DeWitt. "I'll pay your boss for the whole flock if anything goes wrong." He wanted the keen wit of the herder on the hunt.

The Mexican nodded eagerly.

"I'll stay!"

Shortly the four were riding northward across the desert. They were in fairly good shape for a hard tide. Two days before, they had stopped at Squaw Spring ranch and re-outfitted. With proper care of the horses they were good for three weeks away from supplies. And for two weeks now they scoured the desert, meeting scarcely a human, finding none of the traces that Rhoda was so painfully dropping along her course. The hugeness, the cruelty of the region drove the hopelessness of their mission more and more deeply into DeWitt's brain. It seemed impossible except by the merest chance to find trace of another human in a waste so vast. It seemed to him that it was not skill but the gambler's instinct for luck that guided Carlos and Billy.

They rode through open desert country one afternoon, the only mountains discernible being a far purple haze along the horizon. For hours the little cavalcade had moved without speech. Then to the north, Porter discerned a dot moving toward them. Gradually under their eager eyes the dot grew into a man who staggered as he walked. When he observed the horsemen coming toward him he sat down and waited.

"Jim Provenso! By the limping Piper!" cried Billy. "Thought you was in Silver City."

Jim was beyond useless speech. He caught the canteen which Jack swung to him and drank deeply. Then he said hoarsely:

"I almost got away with the Tuttle girl last week!"

Every man left his saddle as if at a word of command. Jim took another drink.

"If I catch that Injun alone I'll cut his throat!"

"Was Miss Tuttle bad off?" gasped Porter.

"She? Naw; she looked fine. He sassed me, though, as I won't take it from any man!"

"Tell us what happened, for heaven's sake," cried DeWitt, eying Provenso disgustedly.

Jim told his story in detail.

"That Injun Alkus," he ended, "he tied a rag over my eyes, tied my hands up and, say, he lost me for fair! He took all day to it. At night he tied me up to a tree and I stood there all night before I got my hands loose. I was sure lost, now, I can tell you! I struck a cowman up on the range the next night. He give me some grub and a canteen and I made out pretty good till yesterday, working south all the time. Then I got crazy with thirst and threw my canteen away. Found a spring last night again, but I'm about all in."

"How did Miss Tuttle seem?" asked John with curious quietness. It seemed to him the strangest thing of all that first the Mexican, then this coarse, tramp-like fellow, should have talked to Rhoda while he could only wander wildly through the Hades of the desert without a trace of her camp to solace him.

"Say, she was looking good! She thanked me and told me to tell you all to hurry."

They gave to Provenso a burro whose pack was nearly empty, what food and water they could spare, and he left them. They started on dejectedly. Provenso had told them where Kut-le had camped ten days before.

They could only find that spot and attempt to pick up the trail from there.

"Just the same," said Billy, "it's just as well he didn't get away with Miss Rhoda. He's a tough pill, that Provenso. She'd better be with the Injun than him!"

"Provenso must be a bad lot," said Jack.

"He is!" replied Billy grimly.

The camp was made that night near a smooth-faced mesa. Before dawn they had eaten breakfast and were mounting, when Carlos gave a low whistle. Every ear was strained. On the exquisite stillness of the dawn sounded a woman's voice which a man's voice answered.