Desert Gold

  Gale had no answer to make.  Mercedes stood as if stricken.  The bugle call ended.  From a distance another faintly pealed.  There were other sounds too remote to recognize.  Then scattering shots rattled out.

  "Dick, the rebels are fighting somebody," burst out

  Thorne, excitedly.  "The little federal garrison still holds its stand.  Perhaps it is attacked again.  Anyway, there's something doing over the line.  Maybe the crazy Greasers are firing on our camp.  We've feared it–in the dark....And here I am, away without leave–practically a deserter!"

  "Go back!  Go back, before you're too late!" cried Mercedes.

  "Better make tracks, Thorne," added Gale.  "It can't help our predicament for you to be arrested.  I'll take care of Mercedes."

  "No, no, no," replied Thorne.  "I can get away–avoid arrest."

  "That'd be all right for the immediate present.  But it's not best for the future.  George, a deserter is a deserter!...Better hurry. Leave the girl to me till tomorrow."

  Mercedes embraced her lover, begged him to go.  Thorne wavered.

  "Dick, I'm up against it," he said.  "You're right.  If only I can get back in time.  but, oh, I hate to leave her!  Old fellow, you've saved her!  I already owe you everlasting gratitude.  Keep out of Casita, Dick.  The U.S. side might be safe, but I'm afraid to trust it at night.  Go out in the desert, up in the mountains, in some safe place.  Then come to me in camp.  We'll plan.  I'll have to confide in Colonel Weede.  Maybe he'll help us.  Hide her from the rebels–that's all."

  He wrung Dick's hand, clasped Mercedes tightly in his arms, kissed her, and murmured low over her, then released her to rush off into the darkness.  He disappeared in the gloom.  The sound of his dull footfalls gradually died away.

  For a moment the desert silence oppressed Gale.  He was unaccustomed to such strange stillness.  There was a low stir of sand, a rustle of stiff leaves in the wind.  How white the stars burned!  Then a coyote barked, to be bayed by a dog.  Gale realized that he was between the edge of an unknown desert and the edge of a hostile town. He had to choose the desert, because, though he had no doubt that in Casita there were many Americans who might befriend him, he could not chance the risks of seeking them at night.

  He felt a slight touch on his arm, felt it move down, felt Mercedes slip a trembling cold little hand into his.  Dick looked at her. She seemed a white-faced girl now, with staring, frightened black eyes that flashed up at him.  If the loneliness, the silence, the desert, the unknown dangers of the night affected him, what must they be to this hunted, driven girl?  Gale's heart swelled.  He was alone with her.  He had no weapon, no money, no food, no drink, no covering, nothing except his two hands.  He had absolutely no knowledge of the desert, of the direction or whereabouts of the boundary line between the republics; he did not know where to find the railroad, or any road or trail, or whether or not there were towns near or far.  It was a critical, desperate situation.  He thought first of the girl, and groaned in spirit, prayed that it would be given him to save her.  When he remembered himself it was with the stunning consciousness that he could conceive of no situation which he would have exchanged for this one–where fortune had set him a perilous task of loyalty to a friend, to a helpless girl.

  "Senor, senor!" suddenly whispered Mercedes, clinging to him. "Listen!  I hear horses coming!"Chapter III - A Flight Into The Desert

  Uneasy and startled, Gale listened and, hearing nothing, wondered if Mercedes's fears had not worked upon her imagination.  He felt a trembling seize her, and he held her hands tightly.

  "You were mistaken, I guess," he whispered.

  "No, no, senor."

  Dick turned his ear to the soft wind.  Presently he heard, or imagined he heard, low beats.  Like the first faint, far-off beats of a drumming grouse, they recalled to him the Illinois forests of his boyhood.  In a moment he was certain the sounds were the padlike steps of hoofs in yielding sand.  The regular tramp was not that of grazing horses.

  On the instant, made cautious and stealthy by alarm, Gale drew Mercedes deeper into the gloom of the shrubbery.  Sharp pricks from thorns warned him that he was pressing into a cactus growth, and he protected Mercedes as best he could.  She was shaking as one with a sever chill.  She breathed with little hurried pants and leaned upon him almost in collapse.  Gale ground his teeth in helpless rage at the girl's fate.  If she had not been beautiful she might still have been free and happy in her home.  What a strange world to live in–how unfair was fate!