Desert Gold

  Gale heard a short, shrill cry, strangely high and wild, and this came from one of the Indians.  It was answered by hoarse shouts. Then the leader of the trio, the Mexican who packed a gun, pulled it and fired point-blank.  He missed once–and again.  At the third shot the Papago shrieked and tumbled off his burro to fall in a heap.  The other Indian swayed, as if the taking away of the support lent by his comrade had brought collapse, and with the fourth shot he, too, slipped to the ground.

  The reports had frightened the horses in the corral; and the vicious black, crowding the rickety bars, broke them down.  He came plunging out.  Two of the Mexicans ran for him, catching him by nose and mane, and the third ran to block the gateway.

  Then, with a splendid vaulting mount, the Mexican with the gun leaped to the back of the horse.  He yelled and waved his gun, and urged the black forward.  The manner of all three was savagely jocose.  They were having sport.  The two on the ground began to dance and jabber.  The mounted leader shot again, and then stuck like a leech upon the bare back of the rearing black.  It was a vain show of horsemanship.  Then this Mexican, by some strange grip, brought the horse down, plunging almost upon the body of the Indian that had fallen last.

  Gale stood aghast with his rifle clutched tight.  He could not divine the intention of the raider, but suspected something brutal. The horse answered to that cruel, guiding hand, yet he swerved and bucked. He reared aloft, pawing the air, wildly snorting, then he plunged down upon the prostrate Indian.  Even in the act the intelligent animal tried to keep from striking the body with his hoofs.  But that was not possible. A yell, hideous in its passion, signaled this feat of horsemanship.

  The Mexican made no move to trample the body of the Papago. He turned the black to ride again over the other Indian.  That brought into Gale's mind what he had heard of a Mexican's hate for a Yaqui.  It recalled the barbarism of these savage peons, and the war of extermination being waged upon the Yaquis.

  Suddenly Gale was horrified to see the Yaqui writhe and raise a feeble hand.  The action brought renewed and more savage cries from the Mexicans.  The horse snorted in terror.

  Gale could bear no more.  He took a quick shot at the rider.  He missed the moving figure, but hit the horse.  There was a bound, a horrid scream, a mighty plunge, then the horse went down, giving the Mexican a stunning fall.  Both beast and man lay still.

  Gale rushed from his cover to intercept the other raiders before they could reach the house and their weapons.  One fellow yelled and ran wildly in the opposite direction; the other stood stricken in his tracks.  Gale ran in close and picked up the gun that had dropped from the raider leader's hand.  This fellow had begun to stir, to come out of his stunned condition.  Then the frightened horses burst the corral bars, and in a thundering, dust-mantled stream fled up the arroyo.

  The fallen raider sat up, mumbling to his saints in one breath, cursing in his next.  The other Mexican kept his stand, intimidated by the threatening rifle.

  "Go, Greasers!  Run!" yelled Gale.  Then he yelled it in Spanish. At the point of his rifle he drove the two raiders out of the camp. His next move was to run into the house and fetch out the carbines. With a heavy stone he dismantled each weapon.  That done, he set out on a run for his horse.  He took the shortest cut down the arroyo, with no concern as to whether or not he would encounter the raiders. Probably such a meeting would be all the worse for them, and they knew it.  Blanco Sol heard him coming and whistled a welcome, and when Gale ran up the horse was snorting war.  Mounting, Gale rode rapidly back to the scene of the action, and his first thought, when he arrived at the well, was to give Sol a drink and to fill his canteens.

  Then Gale led his horse up out of the waterhole, and decided before remounting to have a look at the Indians.  The Papago had been shot through the heart, but the Yaqui was still alive. Moreover, he was conscious and staring up at Gale with great, strange, somber eyes, black as volcanic slag.

  "Gringo good–no kill," he said, in husky whisper.

  His speech was not affirmative so much as questioning.

  "Yaqui, you're done for," said Gale, and his words were positive. He was simply speaking aloud his mind.

  "Yaqui–no hurt–much," replied the Indian, and then he spoke a strange word–repeated it again and again.