Would they follow us? Or, wiser than we were, mightn't they turn and ride right to Los Angeles, knowing we would come there?
Only, of course, they did not know. We might go to San Diego, or we might ride back north and go to San Francisco along the coast road.
They had to follow, and before they caught up with us I figured to lead them a chase. If they wanted tracks to follow, I aimed to show them a-plenty, and across some wild country. Only thing was, this black-eyed woman wasn't going to like it. In fact, I figured she regretted her bargain already. What waited her when those men caught up with us, I couldn't say, but it would have to be amighty bad to equal what lay ahead of us now.
Joe Walker and Old Bill Williams, mountain men both of them, had told me a good deal about the Mojave, but I'd learned of it from others as well, including a couple of Hualapai Indians I'd met in Prescott, both of whom had raided the ranchos for horses. It had been these Indians who told me most of what I knew of San Gorgonio Pass.
Desert travel was not new to me, for I'd crossed the cap rock of west Texas by the Goodnight-Loving Trail, and I'd been across the White Sands of New Mexico, as well as made a trip up the Journada del Muerto, the 'journey of death,' so I was no tenderfoot when it came to deserts.
The desert can be a friendly place to a man on the dodge, but it is always better to hole up some place and wait for sundown. We were doing the worst thing a body could do in traveling by day, under a hot sun. The trouble was, those men back there behind us weren't about to give us any time.
Nobody knew better than me how lucky I'd been in that shindig back there, and it wasn't likely to happen that way again.
We pushed on, sagging in the saddle, the horses plodding steadily. Only me, I taken a look, time to time, to see if anything was gaining on us. Twice we stopped and I sponged out the horses' mouths and gave that Dorinda girl a mouthful of water to drink.
At sundown we could see mountains close ahead of us, and I began searching for the pass. One long arm of mountain had showed up to the east of us, and soon there was another on our right. A notch showed itself and I headed for that, glancing back one last time. There was a thin trail of something that might be dust, hanging against the sky.
In the cool dark, with a kit fox yapping somewhere up in the rocks, we rode through the Sheep Hole Mountains and made dry camp in a tiny cove.
Me, I was dead beat, and when I took that black-eyed Dorinda from her horse she could scarce stand, so I helped her to a place on the sand and kindled ourselves a hatful of fire and made coffee. Nobody needed to tell me how much she needed a hot drink, and I wasn't against the idea myself. Meanwhile, I checked out my Winchester, then my pistol. Rummaging around in my bedroll, I dug out a spare Colt, and made sure it was loaded, too.
'You killed a man back there,' she said suddenly.
'Yes, ma'am. Maybe two or three.'
'You don't seem bothered by it.'
'They were comin' at me.'
I poured out a cup of coffee for her and sat back on my heels, far enough from the fire not to be easily seen, and far enough from the crackle of the flames to hear if anything came upon us.
'I never had it in mind to shoot at any man, ma'am, but when somebody takes up a gun and comes for you in anger, he borrows grief. He was fetching trouble, so I gave him what he asked for.'
She was half asleep already, and I passed her over a piece of jerked beef to chew on. 'Go ahead,' I told her, 'it doesn't look like much, but there's a lot of stayin' quality in it.'
After chewing a while myself, I said, 'Carryin' a gun is a chancy thing. Sooner or later a man is put in position to use it. And a body has to figure that if somebody packs iron he plans to use it when the time comes; and if he draws it out, he plans to shoot.'
I saw that she was fast asleep, so I covered her with a blanket and killed the fire. Then I went out and rubbed my horses down and gave them water, just a mite squeezed into theirthe mouths. It wasn't much, and they wished for more; but it was all I had to offer, and it's likely they understood.
Taking my Winchester, I prowled around, and stood off under the stars, listening. This was spooky country, with big Joshua trees hither and yon, any one of which might be a man standing there. But the desert night was cool, and mean-tired though I was, it felt likely to my spirit.
Work and war never gave me much time for poetry, but there was a man in my outfit during the fighting near Shiloh who fancied it, and a time or two he'd quoted things at me from a book he carried in his shirt. I thought of it now, wishing I had some of those words he used to speak of the desert night.
Sitting down on a rock, I sort of listened and waited, studying the night with my ears, and each sound held meaning for me. Sometimes I had to sort the sounds a mite, but I knew what each one was ... and I heard no sound of man nor horse, no creak of saddle, clink of metal, or brush of garment upon stone.
That woman back there was done in. Like it or not, we had to hole up somewhere and give her time to rest, but the worst of it was, one of those men in that outfit trailing us was a tracker and a hunter, and a sight better than most. It was that man who worried me, for if he continued to be as good as he'd been so far, we would be facing a showdown a lot sooner than I hoped.
More and more I wondered what I'd got myself into, and what Dorinda Robiseau had done to make them want her so much.
Not that she wasn't a beautiful woman, and the kind of woman any man would want. Even now, tired out as she was, she was lovely. But there was more to it than that. And the chances were good that I'd gotten myself on the wrong side of the law. Still, none of those men back at Hardyville had been wearing a badge ... nor did they look likely to.
Though all the men who wore badges through the western lands could not be said to measure up to a proper standard.
After a while I went back to our corner, checked the horses again, and burrowed into the sand to sleep.
But sleep did not come, dead tired though I was, for it came upon me that I knew mighty little about Dorinda Robiseau--not where she came from, who she was, nor where she planned to go. There was no telling about her, and all I had was my first suspicions that she was a witch woman.
Not that I place much stock in witches. All my life I'd heard tell of them, but I had never seen one, nor anything of their doings that I could swear to. ...
Somewhere along in there, I sort of dropped off, and the next thing I knew it was daylight.
Broad, bright daylight ...
The sun on my face awakened me, and I sat up fast and looked about.
A moment there, I couldn't place where I was, and then I saw the girl and she was a-settin' up, too.
'We slept over,' I said, 'and I was a fool to chance it.'
About us the mountain walls lifted up steeply, In jagged, broken slopes. Up these a man on foot could climb, with some struggle and skill.
Before us, and to the south, the desert lay open, masked only by a drift of sand, a pair of crowded Joshuas, and some small brush. On the horizon to the south, maybe twelve to fourteen miles off, were the Pinto Mountains.
The cove in which we were hidden comprised maybe an acre of flat ground and banked sand. There were some good graze plants in the bottom, and I had the five horses pegged out among them. Sand had heaped across the opening of the cove so that with the brush and all it was mighty near invisible from the outside, without a man riding up to the top of the sand hill.
It was that which saved us, that and the wind being so that none of the horses caught scent of one another. For when I went up to the top of the sand I could see those riders out there, not fifty yards away, and all bunched together, talking.
During the night there had been a wind stirring, not much, but enough to drift sand in this locality where it was loose, and our trail had drifted over.
Evidently they had lost track of us and were talking it over to decide which was the most likely route for us.
The side of the mountain was drifted deep with that loose white sand. In some places it looked fit to bury whole sections of the range. So anybody taking a quick look our way would think there was nothing anywhere
