Law Of the Desert Born (Ss) (1984) Read Free Page A

so the Navajo had told him.
    When he was halfway up the trail, he turned and looked back over the Sink. Far away, he could see the dust clouds. Four of them. One larger than the others. Probably there were two men together.
    -Still coming, he muttered grimly, and Lopez leading them!"
    Lopez, damn his soul!
    The little devil had guts, though; you had to give him that. Suddenly, Marone found himself almost wishing Lopez would win through. The man was like a wolf. A killer wolf. But he had guts. And it wasn't just the honest men who had built up this country to what it was today.
    Maybe, without the killers and rustlers and badmen, the West would never have been won so soon. Shad Marone remembered some of them: wild, dangerous men, who went into country where nobody else dare d venture. They killed and robbed to live, but they stayed there.
    It took iron men for that: men like Lopez, who was a mongrel of the Santa Fe Trail. Lopez had drunk water from a buffalo track many a time. Well, so have I, Shad told himself.
    Shad Marone took out his six-shooter and wiped it free of dust. Only then did he start up the trail.
    He found the Nest, a hollow among the rocks, sheltered from the wind. The Window loomed above him now, immense, gigantic. Shad stumbled, running, into the Nest. He dropped his rifle and lunged for the water hole, throwing himself on the ground to drink. Then he stared, unbelieving.
    Empty!
    The earth was dry and parched where the water had been, but only cracked earth remained.
    He couldn't believe it. It couldn't be! It couldn't . . . ! Marone came to his feet, glaring wildly about. His eyes were red rimmed, his face heat flushed above the black whiskers, now filmed with gray dust.
    He tried to laugh. Lopez dying down belo . W there, he dying up here! The hard men of the West, the tough men! He sneered at himself. Both of them now would die, he at the water hole, Lopez down there in the cloying, clogging dust!
    He shook his head. Through the flame-sheathed torment of his brain, there came a cool ray of sanity. There had been water here. The Indian had been right. The cracked earth showed that. But where? Perhaps a dry season. . . . But no; it had not been a dry season. Certainly no dryer than any other year at this time.
    He stared across the place where the pool had been. Rocks and a few rock cedar and some heaped-up rocks from a small slide. He stumbled across and began clawing at the rocks, pulling, tearing. Suddenly, a trickle of water burst through!" He got hold of one big rock and in a mad frenzy, tore it from its place. The water shot through then, so suddenly he was knocked to his knees.
    He scrambled out of the depression, splashing in the water. Then, lying on his face, he drank, long and greedily.
    Finally, he rolled away and lay still, panting. Dimly, he was conscious of the wind blowing. He crawled to the water again and bathed his face, washing away the dirt and grime. Then, careful as always, he filled his canteen from the fresh water bubbling up from the spring.
    If he only had some coffee. . . . But he'd left his food in his saddlebags.
    Well, Madge would be all right now. He could go back to her. After this, they wouldn't bother him. He would take her away. They would go to the Blue Mountains in Oregon. He had always liked that country. The wind was blowing more heavily now, and he could smell the dust. That Navajo hadn't lied. It would be hell down in the Sink. He was above it now and almost a mile away.
    He stared down into the darkness, wondering how far Lopez had been able to get. The others didn't matter; they were weak sisters who lived on the strength of better men. If they didn't die there, they would die elsewhere, and the West could spare them. He got to his feet.
    Lopez would hate to die. The ranch he had built so carefully in a piece of the wildest, roughest country was going good. It took a man with guts to settle where he had and make it pay. Shad Marone rubbed the stubble on his jaw.