Life at High Tide Part 18

She came toward them almost fiercely. Her face was white. She too had detected the change come upon the tiny Indian captive. All night she had accused herself of neglect and heartlessness.

"Where's Barney? Where's the baby?" she demanded.

"Barney's maybe striking off for Thimbleberry Cove," answered Slivers, smilingly. "He was running a bluff on taking the kid to its mother."

"But Tuttle told me the mother's up at Red Shirt Canyon," said the girl.

"Of course," agreed Slivers, uneasily. "We--told him about the Cove to test his sand."

Sally gazed at him wildly. "Then--it must have been a man--Barney!--I saw--on the desert!" she cried, disjointedly. "They'll die! Oh no, he wouldn't--" She ran outside to scan the fearful expanse of alkali, with its gathering blizzard of dust.

The men, suddenly grown nervous, followed her out of the house.

Apparently there was nothing, far or wide, on the desert, save the sweeping clouds of white, like drifting snow.

"My G.o.d! he wouldn't tackle that!" said Slivers.

"I hear some one out in the kitchen now," said Tate. "It must be him."

Sally ran to see. It was only the dog. She darted forth once more.

"Not there!" she said. "But surely Barney wouldn't--There! There!"

Her cry rang out so shrilly that even Slivers started. She was pointing stiffly. The men all stared at the storm of dust. For one brief second the swirling clouds were reft, revealing, far out eastward, in the dead-land of white, a small dark object--the form of a man.

One poignant sob was the only sound that Sally made, as she ran toward the stable.

"Good Lord! it's him!" said Adams. "Was he heading back this way?"

"I think he was," answered Catherwood.

"He couldn't--do anything--else," stammered Slivers.

For a moment no one spoke.

"I reckon I'll just mosey over to the desert," drawled the fidgety man. "I'd hate to have anything go wrong with Barney."

"Guess I'll go along myself," said Adams.

"Boys!" said Slivers, hoa.r.s.ely, "I'm going to saddle up and git him back! I didn't mean no harm when I told him wrong. I didn't think he'd go. I'd ride through h.e.l.l for Barney--or the little Injun, either. You fellers know I didn't mean no harm."

He started at once to get his horse. Before he had covered half the distance to the stable, Sally suddenly rode forth, bareback, on a buckskin pony, and heading for the desert, spurred her bronco to a gallop, crying to him wildly as she went.

"Sally!--Sally--I'll go!" yelled Slivers.

She seemed not to hear, but ran her pony out upon the white expanse, where the wreathing dust seemed to swallow both herself and the animal immediately.

Her horse, fleeing swiftly before the wind, carried Sally a mile or two out from the camp before she reined him in. Believing Barney could have come no farther than this, she began to search and to call.

At every turn of her head her eyes were blinded by the acrid dust. The stuff choked her breathing; already her throat was dry. Dust and powder and snow-of-alkali came from everywhere. It was blowing up her sleeves. It filtered into and through her clothing. Her ears were quickly coated; her hair was heavy.

She turned her head from side to side for a breath. The air was thicker than smoke with dust as heavy as flour.

"Barney!" she called, from time to time, but the alkali coated her tongue. On either side she could see for a distance of twenty feet, or less. It seemed far less, in all that terrible drift of white.

She rode across the wind, doggedly, crying Barney's name. A nameless hopelessness began to grow upon her. Now this way, now that, she urged her horse. How far could Barney hear her calling? How far could he wander? How far would she ride? There were forty miles in length and fifteen in width of this reek of wind-driven alkali. G.o.d keep them if ever they got more than two miles away from the Hole!

It was aimless riding, presently, but she still persisted. A sickening conviction that Barney and the little captive would both be dead before she could find them made her desperation unendurable. With eyes starting hotly, with every breath seeming like a struggle for existence, in the dust, she galloped, calling, calling, till at last she could call no more.

Dazed, she halted her horse at last, and sat staring blindly at nothing. The pony turned about, unheeded, and began to fight his way against the storm, his head down between his legs.

Sally's head also came down, by instinct more than by design. She felt past thinking. For a time she rode thus, heedlessly. Then abruptly she clutched at the reins and drew the horse to a halt. The animal p.r.i.c.ked up his ears peculiarly.

Weirdly out of the wind and dust came a sound--not a moan, not a croon, but like them both, yet a song, uncertain, apparently coming from no definitive point. She even caught the words:

"All on some lonesome bill-din The swallow makes her nest;

All on some--lonesome bill-din The--swallow makes--her nest."

Sally tried to call out. She made but a croaking noise. Slipping from her horse's back, she groped her way forward, leading the pony, and trying to shout.

For a rod or more she battled against the driving dust, then halted as before. Not another sound would the desert render up--only the strange dry swishing by of the particles of stuff rasping the desert's surface as they pa.s.sed and rose.

"Barney!" she called, by a mighty effort. There was no response.

Crying now, in her anguish and plight, she led the pony this way and that, up and down, listening, trying to force a shout through her swollen lips. At length, in despair, she knew she could search no more. A lifelessness of feeling was creeping upon her. Mechanically she walked beside her pony, and it was the animal that was leading.

It seemed as if she had plodded onward thus for hours, when at length she stumbled upon a gray little mound in the drifting alkali.

"Barney!" she said, in a voice scarcely more than a whisper. Crooning and sobbing, she lifted him up--unconscious, but clinging to the still, little form that was hugged to the shelter of his breast.

"Hang on--oh, hang on to the horse, dear, please," she coaxed, in all the tender strength of a new-born love. "Barney--try--try, dear, please. I'll be your wife--I'll do anything--if only you'll try."

She had raised him bodily to the pony's back. Stiffly as a man that freezes he straddled the animal. He made no answer, no movement.

She feared he must be dead. She dared not look at the little papoose.

Barney's weight rested partially upon her shoulder. She tossed away the reins.

"Go on, Sancho--go on home," she croaked to the horse, pa.s.sionately.

The pony seemed to comprehend. With some faint fragrance of the waters of Bitter Hole in his nostrils, the willing creature fought slowly, steadily forward, against the terrible drift.

John Tuttle and Henry Wooster descried a group, like a sculpture in whitened stone endowed with life, creep strangely out from the blizzard of alkali. A blinded horse, with head bent low, bearing on its back a motionless man, and led by a stumbling, blinded girl, against whose shoulder the helpless rider leaned, came with ghostlike slowness and silence toward them.

And all day long, one by one, more men came forth, like ghosts, from the dead-land. But the twilight had come and the wind had died away before teamster Slivers limped from the desert. He came afoot. He had ridden his horse to death, in his desperate quest. He could barely see--and his hair was white, even below the coating of the dust.

Moody ran to meet him.