CHAPTER V
WHAT THEY FOUND AT THE WATER-HOLE
Half an hour later Scribner, who was frequently back on the firstdivision during these dragging days, was informed that Mr. Carhartwished to see him at once. Walking back to the engineers' tent hefound the chief at his table.
"You wanted me, Mr. Carhart?"
"Oh,"--the chief looked up--"Yes, Harry, we've got to get away fromthis absolute dependence on that man Peet. I want you to ride up aheadand bore for water. You can probably start inside of an hour. I'mputting it in your hands. Take what men, tools, and wagons youneed--but find water."
With a brief "All right, Mr. Carhart," Scribner left the tent and setabout the necessary arrangements. Carhart, this matter disposed of,called a passing laborer, and asked him to tell Charlie that he waswanted at headquarters.
The assistant cook--huge, raw-boned, with a good-natured and notunintelligent face--lounged before the tent for some moments before hewas observed. Then, in the crisp way he had with the men, Carhart toldhim to step in.
"Well," began the boss, looking him over, "what kind of a cook areyou?"
A slow blush spread over the broad features.
"Speak up. What were you doing when I sent for you?"
"I--I--you see, sir, Jack Flagg was gone, and there wasn't anythingbeing done about dinner, and I--"
"And you took charge of things, eh?"
"Well--sort of, sir. You see--"
"That's the way to do business. Go back and stick at it. Wait aminute, though. Has Flagg been hanging around any?"
"'Well,' began the boss, looking him over, 'what kindof a cook are you?'"]
"I guess he has. All his things was took off, and some of mine."
"Take any money?"
"All I had."
"I'm not surprised. Money was what he was here for. He would havecleaned you out, anyway, before long."
"I'm not so sure of that, sir. We cleaned him out last time."
"And you weren't smart enough to see into that?"
"Well--no, I--"
"Take my advice and quit gambling. It isn't what you were built for.What did you say your name was?"
"Charlie."
"Well, Charlie, you go back and get up your dinner. See that it is agood one."
Charlie backed out of the tent and returned to his kettles and pansand his boy assistants. He was won, completely.
Late on Thursday evening that mythical train really rolled in, andhalf the night was spent in preparations for the next day. Fridaymorning tracklaying began again. In the afternoon a second trainarrived, and the air of movement and accomplishment became as keen ason the first day of the work. Paul Carhart, in a flannel shirt, which,whatever color it may once have been, was now as near green asanything, a wide straw hat, airy yellow linen trousers, and lacedboots, appeared and reappeared on both divisions--alert, good-natured,radiating health and energy. The sun blazed endlessly down, but whatlaborer could complain with the example of the boss before him! Themules toiled and plunged, and balked and sulked, and toiled again, asmules will. The drivers--boys, for the most part--carried pails ofwater on their wagons, and from time to time wet the sponges whichmany of the men wore in their hats. And over the grunts and heaves ofthe tie squad, over the rattling and groaning of the wagon, over theexhausts of the locomotives, sounded the ringing clang of steel, asthe rails were shifted from flat-car to truck, from truck to ties. Itwas music to Carhart,--deep, significant, nineteenth-century music.The line was creeping on again--on, on through the desert.
"What do you think of this!" had been Young Van's exclamation when thesecond train appeared.
"It's too good to be true," was the reply of his grizzled brother.
Old Vandervelt was right: it was too good to be true. Soon the dayswere getting away from them again; provisions and water were runningshort, and Peet was sending on the most skilful lot of excuses he hadyet offered. For the second time the tracklaying had to stop; andCarhart, slipping a revolver into his holster, rode forward alone tofind Scribner.
He found him in a patch of sage-brush not far from a hill. The heatwas blistering, the ground baked to a powder. There had been no rainfor five months. Scribner, stripped to undershirt and trousers, wasstanding over his men.
"Glad to see you, Mr. Carhart!" he cried. "You are just in time. Ithink I've struck it."
"That's good news," the chief replied, dismounting.
They stepped aside while Scribner gave an account of himself. "I firstdrove a small bore down about three hundred feet, and got this." Heproduced a tin pail from his tent, which contained a dark, odorousliquid. Carhart sniffed, and said:--
"Sulphur water, eh!"
"Yes, and very bad. It wouldn't do at all. But before moving on, Ithought I'd better look around a little. That hill over there issandstone, and a superficial examination led me to think that thesandstone dips under this spot."
"That might mean a very fair quality of water."
"That's what I think. So I inserted a larger casing, to shut out thissulphur water, and went on down."
"How far?"
"A thousand feet. I'm expecting to strike it any moment now."
"Your men seem to think they have struck something. They're callingyou."
The engineers returned to the well in time to see the water gushing tothe surface.
"There's enough of it," muttered Scribner.
The chief bent over it and shook his head. "Smell it, Harry," he said.
Scribner threw himself on the ground and drank up a mouthful from thestream. But he promptly spit it out.
"It's worse than the other!" he cried.
They were silent a moment. Then Carhart said, "Well--keep at it,Harry. I may look you up again after a little."
He walked over to his horse, mounted, nodded a good-by, and canteredback toward the camp. Scribner watched him ride off, then soberlyturned and prepared to pack up and move on westward. He was thinking,as he gave the necessary orders, how much this little visit meant. Thechief would have come only with matters at a bad pass.
* * * * *
Over a range of low waste hills, through a village ofprairie-dogs,--and he fired humorously at them with his revolver asthey sat on their mounds, and chuckled when they popped down out ofsight,--across a plain studded from horizon to horizon with thebleached bones and skulls of thousands of buffaloes, past the camp andthe grade where the men of the first division were at work, PaulCarhart rode, until, finally, the main camp and the trains and wagonscame into view.
It was supper-time. The red, spent sun hung low in the west; theparched earth was awaiting the night breeze. Cantering easily on,Carhart soon reached the grade, and turned in toward the tents. Theendless quiet of the desert gave place to an odd, tense quiet in thecamp. The groups of laborers, standing or lying motionless, ceasingtheir low, excited talk as he passed; the lowered eyes, the circle ofMexicans standing about the mules, the want of the relaxation andanimal good-nature that should follow the night whistle: these signswere plain as print to his eyes and his senses.
He dismounted, walked rapidly to the headquarters tent, and found thetwo Vandervelts in anxious conversation. He had never observed sosharply the contrast between the brothers. The younger was smoothshaven, slender, with brown hair, and frank blue eyes that were dreamyat times; he would have looked the poet were it not for a squareforehead, a straight, incisive mouth, and a chin as uncompromising asthe forehead. There was in his face the promise of great capacity forwork, dominated by a sympathetic imagination. The face of his brotherwas another story; some of the stronger qualities were there, but theywere not tempered with the gentler. His stocky frame, his strong neck,the deep lines about his mouth, even the set of his cropped graymustache, spoke of dogged, unimaginative persistence.
Evidently they were not in agreement. Both started at the sight oftheir chief--the younger brother with a frank expression of relief.
Carhart threw off his hat and gauntlet gl
oves, took his seat at thetable, and looked from one to the other.
The elder brother nodded curtly. "Go ahead, Gus," he said. "Give Paulyour view of it."
Thus granted the floor, Young Van briefly laid out the situation. "Weput your orders into effect this morning, Mr. Carhart, and shortenedthe allowance of drinking water. In an hour the men began to getsurly--just as they did the other time. But we kept them under untilan hour or so ago. Then the sheriff of Clark County--a man named Lane,Bow-legged Bill Lane,"--Young Van smiled slightly as he pronounced thename,--"rode in with a large posse. It seems he is on the trail of agang of thieves, greasers, army deserters, and renegades generally. Hehad one brush with them some miles below here,--I think I had bettertell you about this before I go on,--but they broke up into smallparties and got away from him. He had some reason to think that theywould work up this way, and try to stampede our horses and mules somenight. He advises arming our men, and keeping up more of a guard atnight. Another thing; he says that a good many Apaches are hangingaround us,--he has seen signs of them over there in the hills,--andwhile they would never bother such a large party as this of ours,Bow-legged Bill"--he smiled again--"thinks it would be best to arm anysmall parties we may send out. If the Indians thought Harry Scribner,for instance, had anything worth stealing they might give him sometrouble."
"Send half-a-dozen wagons forward to him to-morrow, under Dimond,"said Carhart, briefly. "See that they carry rifles and cartridgesenough for Scribner's whole party. And wire Tiffany to send on threehundred more rifles."
"All right; I will attend to it. I told the sheriff we came down hereas peaceful railroad builders, not as border fighters; but he saidwhat we came for hasn't much to do with it,--I couldn't repeat hislanguage if I tried,--it's how we're going back that counts; whetherit's to be on a 'red plush seat, or up in the baggage car on ice.' Butso much for that. It seems that his men, mixing in with ours, foundout that we are short of water. They promptly said that there is afirst-rate pool, with all the water we could use, only aboutthirty-five miles southwest of here." He was coming now, havingpurposely brought up the minor matters first, to the real business.Carhart heard him out. "It didn't take long to see that something wasthe matter with the men. Before the posse rode off the sheriff spoketo me about it, and offered to let us have a man to guide us to thepool if we wanted him. I am in favor of accepting. The men aretrembling on the edge of an outbreak. If there was a Jack Flagg hereto organize them, they would have taken the mules and started beforeyou got back; and if they once got started, I'm not sure that evenshooting would stop them. They are beyond all reason. It's nothing butluck that has kept them quiet up to now,--nobody has happened to saythe word that would set them off. I think we ought to reassurethem,--tell the sheriff we'll take the guide, and let the men knowthat a wagon train will start the first thing in the morning."
"That's it! That's it!" Old Van broke out angrily. "Always give in tothose d--n rascals! There's just one thing to do, I tell you. Orderthem to their quarters and stand a guard over them from the ironsquad."
"But you forget," Young Van replied hotly, "that they are not toblame."
"Not to blame! What the--!"
"Wait a minute!--They are actually suffering now. We are not dealingwith malicious men--they are not even on strike for more pay. We're onthe edge of a panic, that's what's the matter. And the question is,What is the best way to control that panic?"
"Wait, boys," said Carhart. "Gus is right. This trouble has its rootsaway down in human nature. If water is to be had, those men have aright to it. If we should put them under guard, and they should gocrazy and make a break for it, what then? What if they call our bluff?We must either let them go--or shoot."
"Then I say shoot," cried Old Vandervelt.
"No, Van," Carhart replied, "you're wrong. As Gus says, we areuncomfortably close to a panic. Well, let them have their panic. Putthem on the wagons and let them run off their heat. Organize thispanic with ourselves at the head of it." His voice took on a crisperquality. "Van, you stay here in charge of the camp. Pick out a dozenof the iron squad, give them rifles, and keep three at a time on extrawatch all night."
"Hold on," said the veteran, bewildered, "when are you going to starton this--?"
"Now."
"Now? To-night?"
"To-night. Gus, you find your sheriff. He can't be far off."
"No; half a mile down the line."
"You find him, explain the situation, and tell him we want that man inhalf an hour."
The conference broke up sharply. Gus Vandervelt hurried out, saddledhis horse, and rode off into the thickening dusk. Old Van went toselect his guards. Carhart saw them go; then, pausing to note withsatisfaction the prospect of only moderate darkness, he set aboutorganizing his force. All the empty casks and barrels were loaded onwagons. Mules were hitched four and six in hand. Water, beyond acanteen for each man, could not be spared; but Charlie packedprovisions enough--so he thought--for twenty-four hours.
The tremulous, brilliant afterglow faded away. The stars peeped out,one by one, and twinkled faintly. The dead plain--alive only withscorpions, horned frogs, tarantulas, striped lizards, centipedes, andthe stunted sage-brush--stretched silently away to the dim mountainson the horizon. The bleaching bones--ghostly white out there in thesand--began to slip off into the distance and the dark. All about wasrest, patience, eternity. Here in camp were feverish laborers withshattered nerves; men who started at the swish of a mule's tail--andswore, no matter what their native tongue, in English, that famousvehicle for profane thoughts. The mules, full of life after theirenforced rest, took advantage of the dark and confusion to tangletheir harness wofully. Leaders swung around and mingled fraternallywith wheelers, whereupon boy drivers swore horrible oaths in voicesthat wavered between treble and bass. Lanterns waved and bobbed about.Men shouted aimlessly.
Suddenly the babel quieted--the laborers were bolting a belatedsupper. Then, after a moment of confusion, three men rode out of thecircle of lanterns, put their horses at the grade, stood out for avivid moment in the path of light thrown by the nearest engine,--PaulCarhart, Young Vandervelt, and the easy-riding guide,--plunged downthe farther side of the grade, and blended into the night. One afteranother the long line of wagons followed after, whips cracking, mulesbalking and breaking, men tugging at the spokes of the wheels. Then,at last, they were all over; the shouts had softened into silence. AndOld Van stood alone on the grade and looked after them with eyes thatwere dogged and gloomy.
* * * * *
Paul Carhart had organized the panic; now he was resolved to "work itout of them," as he explained aside to Young Van. He estimated thatthey should reach the pool before eight o'clock in the morning. Thatwould mean continuous driving, but the endurance of mules is awonderfully elastic thing; and as for the men, the sooner they weretired, the less danger would there be of a panic. Accordingly, thethree leaders set off at a canter. The drivers caught the pace,lashing out with their whips and shouting in a frenzied waste ofstrength. The mules galloped angrily; the wagons rattled and bumpedand leaped the mounds, for there was not the semblance of road ortrail. Now and again a barrel was jolted off, and it lay thereunheeded by the madmen who came swaying and cursing by. Here and thereone calmer than his fellows climbed back from a seat by his driver andkept the kegs and barrels in place.
Wonderfully they held the pace, over mile after mile of rough plain.Then, after a time, came the hills,--low at first, but rising steadilyhigher.
In the faint light the sage-brush slipped by like the ghosts of deadvegetation. The rocks and the heaps of bones gave the wheels many awrench. The steady climb was telling on the mules. They hung back,slowed to a walk all along the line, and under the whip merely plungedor kicked. Up and up they climbed, winding through the low range by apass known only to the guide. One mule, a leader in a team of six,stumbled among the rocks, fell to his knees, and was dragged andpushed along in a tangle of harness before his fellows came to a stop
.In a moment a score of men were crowding around. Up ahead the wagonswere winding on out of sight; behind, the line was blocked.
"Wonderfully they held the pace."]
"Vat you waiting for?" cried a New Orleans man, feverishly. He hadbeen drinking, and had lost his way among the languages. "_Laissezpasser! Laissez passer!_"
The boys were cooler than the men--not knowing so well what it allmeant. "Hi there, _Oui-Oui_, gimme a knife!" cried the youthfuldriver, shrilly.
He slashed at the harness, cut the mule loose, and drove on. And oneby one the wagons circled by the struggling beast and pushed ahead toclose up the gap in the line.
Eight hours were got through. It was four in the morning. The hillslay behind, an alkaline waste before. The mules were tugging heavilyand dejectedly through the sand. Certain of the drivers sat uprightwith lined faces and ringed eyes, others lay sleeping on the seatswith the reins tied. All were subdued. The penetrating dust aggravatedtheir thirst.
Carhart pricked forward beside the guide.
"How much farther?" he asked.
"Well, it ain't easy to say. We might be halfway there."
"Halfway! Do you mean to say we've done only fifteen or eighteen milesin eight hours?"
"No, I didn't say that."
"Look here. How far is it to this pool!"
"Well, it's hard to say."
Carhart frowned and gave it up. The "thirty or thirty-five miles" hadapparently been the roughest sort of an estimate.
Then the sun came up and beat upon them, and the sand began to radiateheat by way of an earnest of the day to follow; and then the wheelssank so deeply that the chief and Young Van tossed their reins to theguide and walked by the wagons to lend a hand now and then at thespokes. All the crazy energy of the evening was gone; men and muleswere alike sullen and dispirited. Of the latter, many gave out andfell, and these were cut out and left there to die. So it went allthrough that blazing forenoon. They halted at twelve for lunch; butthe dry bread and salt pork were hardly stimulating.
Carhart again sought the guide. "Do you know yourself where the poolis?"
The guide shaded his eyes and searched the horizon. "It was in a spotthat looked something like this here," he said in a weak, confidentialsort of way.
Carhart answered sharply, "Why don't you say you are lost, and be donewith it!"
"Well, I ain't lost exactly. I wouldn't like to say that."
"But you haven't the least idea where the pool is."
"Well, now, you see--"
"Is there any other water on ahead?"
"Oh, yes."
"Where?"
"The Palos River can't be more than a dozen miles beyond the placewhere we found the pool."
He had unconsciously raised his voice. A laborer overheard the remark,whipped out his knife, hacked at the harness of the nearest mule,--itwould have been simpler to loosen the braces, but he was past allthinking,--threw himself on the animal's back, and rode off, lashingbehind him with the end of the reins. The panic broke loose again. Manafter man, the guide among them, followed after, until only the wagonsand about half the animals remained.
"Come, Gus," called the chief, "let them go."
Young Van turned wearily, mounted his panting horse, and the twofollowed the men. But Carhart turned in his saddle to look back at theproperty abandoned there in the sand.
Half an hour later, Young Van's horse stumbled and fell, barely givinghis rider time to spring clear.
"Is he done for?" asked Carhart, reining up.
"It looks like it."
"What's the matter--done up yourself?"
"A little. I'll sit here a minute. You go ahead. I'll follow on foot."
"Not a bit of it. Here--can you swing up behind me?"
"That won't do. Texas can't carry double. Go ahead; I'm all right."
But Carhart dismounted, lifted his assistant, protesting, into thesaddle, and pushed on, himself on foot, leading the horse.
They went on in this way for nearly an hour. Young Van found it all hecould do to hold himself in the saddle. Then the horse took tostaggering, and finally came to his knees.
Carhart helped his assistant to the ground, pulled his hat brim downto shade his eyes, and looked ahead. A cloud of dust on the horizon, abeaten trail through the sand, here and there a gray-brown heap wherea mule had fallen,--these marked the flight of his drivers andlaborers.
His eyes came back to the fainting man at his feet. Young Van had lostall sense of the world about him. Carhart saw that his lips weremoving, and knelt beside him. Then he smiled, a curious, unhumoroussmile; for the young engineer was muttering those words which had oflate been his brother's favorites among all the words in our richlanguage: "D--n Peet!"
The chief stood up again to think. And as he gazed off eastward in thegeneral direction of Sherman, toward the place where the arch enemy ofthe Sherman and Western sat in his office, perhaps devising newexcuses to send to the front, those same two expressive words mighthave been used to sum up his own thoughts. What could the man bethinking of, who had brought the work practically to a stop, who wasnow in the coolest imaginable fashion leaving a thousand men to mingletheir bones with the bones of the buffalo--that grim, broadcastexpression of the spirit of the desert.
"They went on in this way for nearly an hour."]
But these were unsafe thoughts. His own head was none too clear. Itwas reeling with heat and thirst and with the monotony of thisdesolate land. He drew a flask from his pocket,--an almost emptyflask,--and placed it against Young Van's hand. With their two hatspropped together he shaded his face. Then, a canteen slung over eachshoulder, he pushed ahead, on foot.
* * * * *
"The Palos River can't be more than a dozen miles--" had said theguide, pointing southward. That was all. Somewhere off there in thedesert it lay, flowing yellow and aimless. Perhaps it was a lie.Perhaps the guide was mistaken, as he had been in the search for thepool. But the last feeble tie that bound these outcasts to reason hadsnapped at the sight of that unsteady, pointing finger, and only theoriginal sin in them was left. The words of the guide had been heardby one man, and he was off at the instant, his only remark a curse ashe knocked a boy out of his way. But others had seen the pointingfinger. And still others were moved by the impulse which spurs men, infrantic moments, to any sort of action.
In the rush for mounts two men, a half-breed from the Territory and aMexican, plunged at the same animal. The half-breed was hacking at thenigh trace and the Mexican at the off rein when their eyes met. Themule both had chosen was the nigh leader in a double team. But insteadof turning to one of the other three, the men, each with a knife inhis hand, fell to fighting; and while they struggled and fell androlled over and over in the sand, a third man mounted their prize andgalloped away.
But it was the boys who suffered most. None but hardy youngsters hadbeen chosen for the drive, but their young endurance could not helpthem in personal combat with these grown men; and personal combat waswhat it came to wherever a boy stood or sat near a desirable mule. Theodd thing was that every man and boy succeeded in getting away. Hatswere lost. Shirts were torn to shreds, exposing skins, white andbrown, to the merciless sun. Even the half-breed and the Mexican,dropping their quarrel as unreasonably as they had begun it, eachbleeding from half-a-dozen small wounds, finally galloped off afterthe others. And when these last were gone, and the dust was billowingup behind them, something less than two minutes had passed since theguide had pointed southward.
The Palos River is probably the most uninviting stream in theSouthwest. It was at this time sluggish and shallow. The water was sorich with silt that a pailful of it, after standing an hour, woulddeposit three inches of mud. The banks were low and of the same graysand as the desert, excepting that a narrow fringe of green announcedthe river to the eye. It was into and through this fringe that thefirst rider plunged. It had been a long two-hour ride, and the linestraggled out for more than a mile behind him. But he was notin
terested in his companions. His eyes were fixed on the broad yellowriver-bed with the narrow yellow current winding through it. Drinkingcould not satisfy him. He wanted to get into the water, and feel hiswet clothes clinging about him, and duck his face and head under, andsplash it about with his hands. His mount needed no lash to slip andscramble down the bank and spurt over the sand. The animal was socrazily eager that he stumbled in the soft footing and went to hisknees. But the rider sailed on over his head, and with a great shout,arms and legs spread wide, he fell with a splash and a gurgle into thewater. The mule regained his feet and staggered after him, and thenthe two of them, man and beast, rolled and wallowed and splashed, anddrank copiously.
The second man reached the bank on foot, for his mule had fallenwithin sight of the promised land. He paused there, apparentlybewildered, watching his fortunate comrade in the water. Then, withdazed deliberation, he removed his clothes, piled them neatly under abush, and walked out naked, stepping gingerly on the heated sand. Buthalfway to the channel a glimmer of intelligence sparkled in his eyes,and he suddenly dashed forward and threw himself into the water.
One by one the others came crashing through the bushes, and rode orran down the bank, swearing, laughing, shouting, sobbing. And not oneof them could have told afterward whether he drank on the upstream orthe downstream side of the mules.
When Paul Carhart, a long while later, parted the bushes and stood outin relief on the bank, leaning on a shrub for support, he saw astrange spectacle. For a quarter of a mile, up and down the channel,were mules, some drinking, some rolling and kicking some lying outflat and motionless. Near at hand, hanging from every bush, wereshirts and trousers and stockings; at the edge of the bank was a long,irregular line of boots and shoes. And below, on the broad reach ofsand, laughing, and bantering, and screaming like schoolboys, half ahundred naked men stood in a row, stooping with hands on knees, whilea dozen others went dancing and high-stepping and vaulting over them.
They were playing leap-frog.
Carhart walked across to the upstream side of the mules and drank.Then, after filling two canteens, he returned to the bank and sat downin such small shade as he could find. It was at this moment that themen caught sight of him. The game stopped abruptly, and for a momentthe players stood awkwardly about, as schoolboys would at theappearance of the teacher. Then, first one, and another, and a groupof two or three more, and finally, all of them, resumed their simpleclothing, and sat down along the bank to await orders. The panic wasover.
Now the chief roused himself. "Here, you two!" he cried. "Take thesecanteens and the freshest mules you can find, and go back to Mr.Vandervelt. Ride hard."
And almost at the word, eager, responsive, the men he had addressedwere off.
* * * * *
As soon as the worst of the shakiness passed out of his legs, Carhartrose. His next task was to get the mules back to the wagons, and bringthem on to the river in order to fill the barrels, and this promised agreater expenditure of time and strength than he liked to face. Butthere was no alternative, it seemed, so he caught a mule, mounted it,and rode back. And the men trailed after him, riding and walking, in aline half a mile long.
Carhart found Young Van sitting up, too weak to talk, supported by thetwo men whom he had sent back.
"How is he?" asked the chief.
"It's hard to say, Mr. Carhart," replied one of the men. "He don'tseem quite himself."
Carhart dismounted, felt the pulse of the young man, and then bathedhis temples with the warmish water. "Carry him over into the shade ofthat wagon, boys," he said. "Here, I'll give you a hand."
The earth, even beneath the wagon, was warm, and Carhart and the twolaborers spread out their coats before they laid him down. The chiefpoured a little water on his handkerchief, and laid it on Young Van'sforehead.
And then, when Carhart had got to his feet and was looking about,holding down his hat-brim to shade his eyes, an expression of inquiry,which had come into his face some little time before, slowly deepened.
"Boys," he said, "what's become of the mules that were left here?"
The men looked up. "Don't know, Mr. Carhart," replied the moretalkative one. "I ain't seen 'em."
Carhart turned away, and again his eyes roved about over the beatenground. Very slowly and thoughtfully he began walking around thedeserted wagons in widening circles. Those of the men who were backfrom the river watched him curiously. After a time he stopped andlooked at some tracks in the sand, and then, still walking slowly,followed them off to the right. A few of the men, the more observantones, fell in behind him, but he did not glance around.
The foremost laborer stopped a moment and waited for the man nextbehind.
"The boss is done up," he said in a low voice.
The other man nodded. "Unsteady in the legs," he replied. "And he'sgone white. I see it when we was at the river."
The tracks were distinct enough, but Carhart did not quicken his pace.He was talking to himself, half aloud: "It'll go on until it'ssettled,--those things have to, out here. He's a coward, but he'lldrink it down every day until the idea gets to running loose in hishead."--He staggered a little, then pulled himself up short.
"What's the matter with me, anyway!" he muttered. "This is a prettyspectacle!" And he walked deliberately on.
The trail led him, and the quiet little file of men behind him, overand around a low ridge and a chain of knolls. "This heat keeps a deadrein on you," he said, again speaking half aloud. "Let's see, what wasI thinking,--oh, the boys at the camp, they needed water too; I wasgoing to load up and hurry back to help them out."
And then, as he walked on with a solemn precision not unlike that of adrunken man, the scene shifted, and another scene--one which had longago slipped out of his waking thoughts,--took its place. He wasfishing a trout stream in the Adirondacks. He had found a series ofpools in a narrow gorge where the brook came leaping merrily down fromone low ledge to another. The underbrush on the steep banks was darkand impenetrable. The pine and hemlock and beech and maple andchestnut trees grew thick on either hand, and so matted their branchesoverhead that only a little checkered light could sift through. Therocks were dark with moss; the stream was choked at certain pointswith the debris of the last flood. He was tired after the day'sfishing. A storm came up. It grew very black and ugly in that littleravine. And then, for no reason, a thing happened which had nothappened in his steady mind before or since. He fell into a curioushorror, in which the tangled wilderness and the gloom and the rushingrain and the creaking trees and the noise of the falling water andthat of the thunder all played some part. He recalled that he hadfound a hollow in the bank, where a large tree had been uprooted, andhad taken shivering refuge there.
The wilderness had always before seemed man's playground. It suddenlybecame a savage living and breathing thing to which a man wasnothing.
And now the desert was showing its teeth, and Carhart knew that he wastrembling again on the brink of the horrors. He understood the sort ofthing very well. He had seen men grow crafty and cowardly or ugly andmurderous out there on the frontier. He had been in Death Valley. Andas he had seen the symptoms in other men's faces, so he now felt themcoming into his own. He knew how a man's sense of proportion can goawry,--how a mere railroad, with its very important banker-officialsin top hats and its very elaborate and impressive organization, couldseem a child's toy here in the desert where the wonderful spaces andthe unearthly atmosphere and the morning and evening colors lie veryclose to the borders of another realm, and where the eye of God blazesforever down on the just and the unjust.
None of the little devices of a sophisticated world pass current inthe desert. Carhart knew all this, as I have said, very well. He knewthat a man's mind is searched to the bottom out here, that the morbidtone and the yellow streak are inevitably dragged to the surface anddisplayed to the gaze of all men. But he also knew that where the mindis sound, the trouble may arise from physical exhaustion, and thisknowledge s
aved him. He deliberately recalled the fact that forthirty-six hours he had not slept and that the work he had done andthe strain he had been under would have sent many men to the nearesthospital, or, in the desert, to the nearest shallow excavation in theground. And he walked slowly and steadily on, in that same shaky,determined manner.
On the summit of a knoll he stopped short, and looked down atsomething on the farther side. The men came up, one by one, and joinedhim; and they, too, stopped short and looked. And then Carhart raisedhis eyes and watched their faces steadily, eagerly wondering if theysaw what he saw,--a water-hole, fringed with green, and a mule lyingat the water's edge and a number of other mules quietly grazing. Itwas his test of himself. For a full half minute he gazed into thosesweaty, drink-bleared faces. And then, at what he saw there, his owntense expression gave way to one of overwhelming relief. The men ranpell-mell down the slope, shouting with delight. And Carhart sat downthere on the knoll, and his head fell a little forward over his knees.
"Will you have a little of this, Mr. Carhart?"
A big renegade with the face of a criminal was holding out a flask.The chief took it, and gulped down a few swallows. "Thank you," hesaid quietly.
"One of the boys found this here, down among them tin cans, Mr.Carhart."
It was the crumpled first page of the _Pierrepont Enterprise_. Carhartstiffened up, spread it out on his knees, and read the date line. Thepaper was only two days old.
"Where's Pierrepont?" he asked.
"About a day's journey down the river, sir."
Again the chief's eyes ran over the sheet. Suddenly they lighted up.Here is what he saw:--
GOSSIP OF THE RAILROADS
Commodore Durfee Gets the"Shaky & Windy"
Mr. De Reamer and Mr.Chambers in contempt ofCourt--Durfee and Carringtondirectors allied atlast against De Reamer--Itis said that Durfee alreadyhas a majority--Meetingto be held nexwill be decidDe Rea
The rest of it was torn off, but he read these headings three times.Then he lowered his knees, with the paper still lying across them, andlooked over it at the little group of men and mules about thewater-hole. "Can that be true, or can't it?" he asked himself. "Andwhat am I going to do about it? I don't believe it; it's another warof injunctions, that's what it is, and it isn't likely to be settledshort of the Supreme Court. We can start back in an hour or so, and assoon as we reach camp I'll take the five-spot"--Carhart's two engineshappened to bear the numbers five and six--"the five-spot and theprivate car and see if Bill Cunningham can't make a record run towardSherman. It's a little puzzling, but I'm inclined to think it's amighty good thing that I found this paper."
He tossed it away, and then, catching sight for the first time of theother side, he took it up again. The second page was nearly coveredwith crude designs, made with a blue pencil. There were long rows ofscallops, and others of those aimless markings a man will make whenpencil and paper are before him. And in the middle, surrounded by asort of decorative border, was printed out "MR. CARHART," then a blankspace and the name "JACK FLAGG."
Carhart rose to his feet, folded the paper, put it in his hip pocket,and looked cheerfully around. "So, Mr. Flagg, it's you I'm indebted tofor this information. I'm sure I'm greatly obliged." Then he waved tothe men. "Come on, boys," he shouted. "Bring those animals back to thewagons. We'll fill the barrels here."
Slowly and not without difficulty he walked back. But the unsteadinessin his legs no longer disturbed him. The panic was over,--andsomething else was over too.