I could tell from the noise and the flicker of the red torchlight that I was off to the left of the trail the others had left.
I didn’t have any burros, and I was taking time, so I wasn’t leaving any trail. On the other hand, I only had a light canteen of water, a little salt, and a small packet of flour.
I got up on a rocky pinnacle, saw the east beginning to turn color, found a place where I could burrow in out of the heat of the sun, and decided to hole up a while.
After this, it would be a case of travel at night.
I was tired, and my side was sore and bruised. I dropped off to sleep.
When I woke up the sun was up.
I was careful to keep from getting so much as the tip of my head against the sky line. I made a survey of the country. It was rocky, a tumbled mass of blistering hot rocks piled in twisted confusion, and stretching from foothills up to high mountains that had timber.
I knew the general run of the country.
There’d be water in those mountains.
But I couldn’t see a sign of life, either Indian or white.
I knew the Indians would be perched up on the rocky crests, waiting and watching. And I hoped Murietta would be true enough to keep the others from moving around in daylight. To move was to invite sure death.
I made sure my hiding place was pretty safe, and crawled back in the shade of the overhanging rock. The sun crept up, and the heat began to turn my little hiding place into an oven.
I thought of the leather packet that had saved my life.
I took it out from underneath my shirt. The bullet was of the type I knew it would be, almost pure silver. It had ripped into the leather and smashed some bottles, and it was the liquid from those bottles that I had felt trickling down my side.
I looked at the bottles, and then I knew the truth — knew the reason the Yaqui had been such a slave to Harry Karg. Karg had made him a dope fiend, and the leather case contained lots of little vials of dope, ready mixed for hypodermic use. And then, in case that wasn’t enough, there were some bottles of morphia, heroin, cocaine, all in little powders and tablets.
Most of the mixed stuff had broken under the impact of the bullet and had soaked through the case, but the upper end of the case that had the tablets in it was uninjured.
There was a letter wadded in there, a letter written in a feminine hand.
I saw Brennan’s name scrawled on a margin.
Some people may be hesitant about reading letters that are written to other people. I’m not — not when the other person has got me out in the Yaqui country with an Indian that he’s made a dope fiend out of, and it’s beginning to look as though he lied to get me there.
I spread out the letter.
The bullet had torn off one corner, but the writing was intact. It started out: “Harry,” not “Dear Harry” or “Friend Harry” or any of that mushy stuff, just “Harry.”
The message was the kind that showed just how the woman felt. She didn’t mince words.
Harry:
I know now that you tricked father into coming here. You knew he would. You didn’t count on his taking me with him.
I know now that you tricked me, through father, into promising that I would marry you. You knew I loved Phil Brennan, and I think he loves me. But he’s too retiring to fight.
I give you the credit of really loving me, and think that my money doesn’t enter into it. But, as you said, so frequently, “a Kettler never goes back on a promise.” And you got my promise, both to you and to father.
Father came here after specimens, and the Indians killed him. I’m inclosing a bit of map torn from his atlas which shows where I am. I won’t tell you how I’m managing to keep from being killed, whether or not I’m a prisoner.
I’ve promised I’d marry you, but you’ve got to come for your bride. If you want me badly enough to come and get me, and bring Phil Brennan with you to see fair play, I’ll remember the promise I made father. If you don’t come within three months after this message is delivered I’ll consider you don’t want your bride badly enough to come for her.
I’m sending this by a Yaqui I can trust. You remember telling me a hundred times that you liked me well enough to come to the ends of the earth for me. Well, this isn’t exactly the end of the earth, but it will be a good test of whether or not I’m to be released from my promise.
I read the note and knew a lot more than I had before.
Evidently Harry Karg had used some sort of pressure to get a promise from the woman, but he had to come to her to get her to keep that promise. He was now at almost the exact spot on the map the woman had marked, the spot from which the mark she had made had been obliterated by the oil of many fingers smearing over the colored surface of the paper as they pressed down on it. I wondered how many guides Karg had tried to engage before he had hit on me, had thought of making a dope fiend out of the Indian messenger.
I wondered what the Indian would do when he realized Karg had no more dope for him. Apparently he had been a slave to Karg until he got within striking distance of an Indian doctor. Then he had gone to the Indian medicine man, told the story, been treated.
But the herbs of the Yaquis had been of no avail against the gnawing of the drug hunger. And the Yaqui had realized, too late, that he had only one chance for satisfying that terrible craving — to find the man he had betrayed.
But now...
It was just the faintest suggestion of sound, the bare hint of a pebble rattling down a rock, but I grasped my weapon and rolled swiftly to the little rim of rock.
I determined I was going to make them buy my life at a dear price.
But it wasn’t an Indian.
Down below me, toiling along, carrying a rifle and a heavy canteen, was Phil Brennan, working his way with what he thought was great caution.
I couldn’t imagine how the Indians could have passed him up. He hadn’t even figured out the advantage of areas of low visibility sufficiently to keep in the patches of shade. He was trying to walk quietly, but the keen senses of the Yaquis would hear sounds that I couldn’t, and I had heard him from seventy yards up the slope.
I was afraid to signal to him, afraid he would give a shout or betray himself still further through a scramble up the slope. I slid the rifle forward and concentrated on his back trail, ready to pick off any one who followed.
But no one seemed to be following, which was a mystery to me.
Then I caught a flicker of motion and the sights of my rifle snapped into line. I had the hot stock pressed to my cheek, and was ready to squeeze the trigger, when the person stepped out from between two bowlders, and I got a brief glimpse.
It was a woman, slender, graceful as a deer, clad in a garment made out of tanned skins, and the flesh which was disclosed over the top of the skins, and down below the hem of the short skirt, was as sun-tanned and bronzed as old ivory.
She was following him, and she was moving with the lithe grace of a wild animal.
Phil Brennan sat down on a hot rock. He mopped his forehead, gazed apprehensively about him. But he didn’t see the girl. For that matter, I couldn’t see her any longer. There had been just that one brief, flashing glimpse. She was as intangible as a deer slipping up a brush-covered slope.
Brennan unscrewed the cap of the canteen, raised it.
I frowned, considered flinging him a low word of caution. This was no time to be wasting water.
But I held my speech. After all, there were more important things than water.