Desert Gold

  The desert began to lighten.  Gray openings in the border of shrubby growths changed to paler hue.  The road could be seen some rods ahead, and it had become a stony descent down, steadily down. Dark, ridged backs of mountains bounded the horizon, and all seemed near at hand, hemming in the plain.  In the east a white glow grew brighter and brighter, reaching up to a line of cloud, defined sharply below by a rugged notched range.  Presently a silver circle rose behind the black mountain, and the gloom of the desert underwent a transformation. From a gray mantle it changed to a transparent haze.  The moon was rising.

  "Senor I am cold," said Mercedes.

  Dick had been carrying his coat upon his arm.  He had felt warm, even hot, and had imagined that the steady walk had occasioned it.  But his skin was cool.  The heat came from an inward burning. He stopped the horse and raised the coat up, and helped Mercedes put it on.

  "I should have thought of you," he said.  "But I seemed to feel warm ... The coat's a little large; we might wrap it round you twice."

  Mercedes smiled and lightly thanked him in Spanish.  The flash of mood was in direct contrast to the appealing, passionate, and tragic states in which he had successively viewed her; and it gave him a vivid impression of what vivacity and charm she might possess under happy conditions.  He was about to start when he observed that Ladd had halted and was peering ahead in evident caution.  Mercedes' horse began to stamp impatiently, raised his hears and head, and acted as if he was about to neigh.

  A warning "hist!" from Ladd bade Dick to put a quieting hand on the horse.  Lash came noiselessly forward to join his companion. The two then listened and watched.

  An uneasy yet thrilling stir ran through Gale's veins.  This scene was not fancy.  These men of the ranges had heard or seen or scented danger.  It was all real, as tangible and sure as the touch of Mercedes's hand upon his arm.  Probably for her the night had terrors beyond Gale's power to comprehend.  He looked down into the desert, and would have felt no surprise at anything hidden away among the bristling cactus, the dark, winding arroyos, the shadowed rocks with their moonlit tips, the ragged plain leading to the black bold mountains.  The wind appeared to blow softly, with an almost imperceptible moan, over the desert.  That was a new sound to Gale. But he heard nothing more.

  Presently Lash went to the rear and Ladd started ahead.  The progress now, however, was considerably slower, not owing to a road–for that became better–but probably owing to caution exercised by the cowboy guide.  At the end of a half hour this marked deliberation changed, and the horses followed Ladd's at a gait that put Gale to his best walking-paces.

  Meanwhile the moon soared high above the black corrugated peaks. The gray, the gloom, the shadow whitened.  The clearing of the dark foreground appeared to lift a distant veil and show endless aisles of desert reaching down between dim horizon-bounding ranges.

  Gale gazed abroad, knowing that as this night was the first time for him to awake to consciousness of a vague, wonderful other self, so it was one wherein he began to be aware of an encroaching presence of physical things–the immensity of the star-studded sky, the soaring moon, the bleak, mysterious mountains, and limitless slope, and plain, and ridge, and valley.  These things in all their magnificence had not been unnoticed by him before; only now they spoke a different meaning.  A voice that he had never heard called him to see, to fee the vast hard externals of heaven and earth, all that represented the open, the free, silence and solitude and space.

  Once more his thoughts, like his steps, were halted by Ladd's actions. The cowboy reined in his horse, listened a moment, then swung down out of the saddle.  He raised a cautioning hand to the others, then slipped into the gloom and disappeared.  Gale marked that the halt had been made in a ridged and cut-up pass between low mesas. He could see the columns of cactus standing out black against the moon-white sky.  The horses were evidently tiring, for the showed no impatience.  Gale heard their panting breaths, and also the bark of some animal–a dog or a coyote.  It sounded like a dog, and this led Gale to wonder if there was any house near at hand.  To the right, up under the ledges some distance away, stood two square black objects, too uniform, he thought, to be rocks.  While he was peering at them, uncertain what to think, the shrill whistle of a horse pealed out, to be followed by the rattling of hoofs on hard stone.  Then a dog barked.  At the same moment that Ladd hurriedly appeared in the road a light shone out and danced before one of the square black objects.

  "Keep close an' don't make no noise," he whispered, and led his horse at right angles off the road.

  Gale followed, leading Mercedes's horse.  As he turned he observed that Lash also had dismounted.