the Strong Shall Live (Ss) (1980) (2 page)

The shadows grew long and only a faint afterglow remained in the sky. On his right and before him lay the valley dividing the dunes from the Chocolate Mountains. Now the air was cool and here and there a star appeared. Desert air is thin and does not retain the heat, hence it soon becomes cool, and in the middle of the night, actually cold. These were the hours Cavagan must use.

If he could not find the tanks, or if there was no water in them, he would die. Cavagan was a man without illusion. His great strength had been sapped by brutal treatment, and he must conserve what strength remained. Locating his peak and a star above it, he walked on. A long time later, descending from the last of the dunes, he took a diagonal course across the valley. Twice he paused to rest, soaking up the coolness. He put a small pebble in his mouth to start the saliva flowing. For a time it helped.

Walking in heavy sand he had made but twomiles an hour, but on the valley floor he moved faster. If he reached the tinajas and they held water he would have achieved one goal. However, he had no way of carrying water and the next water hole was far. Not that one can place reliance on any desert water hole. Often they were used up or had gone dry.

His battered face throbbed with every step and his head ached. The pinnacles of the Chocolates loomed nearer, but he was not deceived. They were miles away.

An hour before dawn he entered a wash that came down from the Chocolates. He was dead tired, and his feet moved awkwardly. In eleven hours he had probably traveled no more than twenty-three or -four miles and should be near the tanks. He found a ledge that offered shade and stretched out. He was soon asleep.

The heat awakened him. His mouth was dry as parchment and he had difficulty in moving his tongue, which seemed awkward and swollen. A glance at the sun told him it was noon or nearly so. According to the Cahuilla he should be within a few yards of water, certainly within a mile or so. In that maze of cliffs, boulders, rock slabs, and arroyos, cluttered with canelike clumps of ocotillo, he would be fortunate to find anything.

Animals would come to water but many desert creatures lived without it, getting what moisture they needed from succulent plants or cacti. Some insects sought water, and he had noticed bees flying past taking the straight line that usually led to hive or water.

His throat was raw and his mind wandered. Far off, over the desert he had recently crossed, lay a lovely blue lake, shimmering among the heat waves ... a mirage.

Lying down again he waited for dusk. He was sweating no longer and movement was an effort. He had been almost thirty hours without water and in intense heat.

It was almost dark when he awakened again. Staggering to his feet he started to climb. The coolness refreshed him and gave him new strength. He pushed on, climbing higher. His vision was uncertain and his skull throbbed painfully, but at times he felt an almost delirious gaiety, and then he would scramble up rocks with zest and abandon. Suddenly he sat down. With a shock of piercing clarity he realized he could die.

He rarely thought of dying, although he knew it was expected of him as of all men, yet it was always somebody else who was dying. Suddenly he realized he had no special dispensation against death and he could die now, within the hour.

It was faintly gray in the east when he started again. Amazingly, he found the tanks.

A sheep track directed him. It was a half-sheltered rock tank, but it was dry. Only a faint dusting of sand lay in the bottom.

A few minutes later, and a little higher up, he found a second tank. It was bone-dry.

Soon the sun would rise and the heat would return. Cavagan stared at the empty tanks and tried to swallow, but could not. His throat was raw, and where it was not raw it felt like old rubber. His legs started to tremble, but he refused to sit down. He knew if he sat now he might never

get up. There was a queerness in him, a strange lightness as if he no longer possessed weight. Through the semi-delirium induced by heat, thirst, and exhaustion there remained a hard core of resolution, the firmness of a course resolved upon and incomplete. If he quit now John Sutton would have won. If he quit now the desert would have defeated him, and the desert was a friendly place to those who knew how to live with it.

Cunning came to him. To those who knew how to live with it, not against it. No man could fight the desert and live. A man must move with it, give with it, live by its rules. He had done that, so what remained?

His eyes peered into the growing light, refusing to focus properly, his thoughts prowling the foggy lowlands of his mind, seeking some forgotten thing.

Think back ... the rock tanks of the Chocolates. The Chocolates. The Chocolates were a range running parallel to the dunes which the Mexicans called the algodones. Bit by bit his thoughts tried to sort out something he knew, but something was missing. Something else the Cahuilla had said. It came to him then like the Indian's voice in his ears. "If there is no water in the tanks, there is a seep in the canyon."

Almost due west was the canyon through which ran the old Indian trail. . . maybe five miles.

It was too far. And then he got up without decision and walked away. He walked with his head up, his mind gone off somewhere, walking with a quick, lively step. When he had walked for some distance he fell flat on his face.

A lizard on a rock stared at him, throat throbbing. Something stirred Cavagan's muscles, and he got his hands under him and pushed himself to his knees. Then he got up, weaving a little. It was daylight.

A bee flew past.

He swayed a little, brow puckered, a bee flying straight . . . hive or water or a hive near water? He took a few hesitant steps in the direction the bee had flown, then stopped. After a bit another droned past and he followed, taking a sight on a clump of ocotillo some distance off. He stumbled and fell, scarcely conscious of it until he arose and stared at his palms, lacerated by the sharp gravel.

When he fell again he lay still for what must have been a considerable time, finally becoming aware of a whistling sound. He pushed himself up, listening. The sound reminded him of a cricket, yet was not a cricket. He listened, puzzled yet alerted for some reason he did not understandHe moved then, and under a clump of grease-wood something stirred. He froze, thinking first of a rattler, although the heat was too great for one to be out unless in a well-shaded position. And then his eye caught a movement, and he knew why the sound had alerted him. It was a tiny red-spotted toad.

Long ago he had learned that the red-spotted toad always lived within the vicinity of water and never got far from it.

Awkwardly he got to his feet and looked carefully around. His eyes could not seem to focus properly, yet down the canyon he glimpsed some galleta grass and walked toward it, coming upon the seep quite suddenly.

Dropping to his knees he scooped water in his palm and drank it. A cold trickle down his throat was painful on the raw flesh. With gentle fingers he put water on his lips, bathed his cheeks and face with it, then drank a little more.

Something inside was crying out that he was safe, but he knew he was not. He drank a little more, then crawled into the shade of a rock and lay on his back and slept.

When he awakened he crawled out and drank more and more, his water-starved body soaking up the moisture. He had found water but had no means of carrying it with him, and the canyon of the seep might well become his tomb, his open tomb.

Cavagan got out the rawhide with which his wrists had been bound and rigged a snare for small game. In placing the snare he found some seeds, which he ate. He drank again, then sat down to think his way forward.

From where he now sat there were two possible routes. Northeast toward the Colorado was Red Butte Spring, but it was at least twenty-five miles away and in the wrong direction.

The twelve miles to Chuckawalla Spring began to loom very large, and leaving the water he hadfound worried him. The Chuckawalla Mountains were a thin blue line on the northern horizon, and even if he reached them the next spring beyond was Corn Springs, just as far away. Yet the longer he waited the more his strength would be drained by lack of food. He had never known *such exhaustion, yet he dare not wait.

On the second morning his snare caught a kangaroo rat, which he broiled over a small fire. When he had eaten he got up abruptly, drank some more, glanced at the notch in the Chuckawallas and started walking.

At the end of an hour he rested, then went on at a slower pace. The heat was increasing. In mid-afternoon he fell on his face and did not get up.

More than an hour must have passed before he became aware of the intense heat and began to crawl like a blind mole, seeking shade. The plants about him were less than a foot high, and he found nothing, finally losing consciousness.

He awakened, shaking with chill. The moon cast a ghostly radiance over the desert, the clustered canes of the ocotillo looking like the headdresses of gigantic Indians. He got to his feet, aware of a stirring in the night. He waited, listening. A faint click of a hoof on stone and then he saw a desert bighorn sheep walk into the wash and then he heard a faint splash. Rising, he walked down to the wash and heard a scurry of movement as the sheep fled. He almost walked into the spring before he saw it. He drank, then drank again.

Late the next afternoon he killed a Chuckawalla with a well-thrown stone. He cooked the big lizard and found the meat tender and appetizing. At dusk he started again, crossing a small saddle to the north side of the mountains. It was twelve miles this time, and it was daybreak before he reached Corn Springs. He recognized it by the clump of palms and mesquite in the wash beforereaching the spring, some clumps of baccharis, clusters of small twigs rising two to three feet. And then he found the spring itself. After drinking he crawled into the shade and was asleep almost at once.

He opened his eyes, aware of wood-smoke. Rolling over quickly, he sat up.

An old man squatted near a kettle at a fire near the spring, and on the slope a couple of burros browsed.

"Looks to me like you've had a time of it," the old man commented. "You et anything?"

"Chuckawalla . . . had a kangaroo rat a couple of days ago."

The old man nodded. "Et chuck a time or two ... ain't as bad as some folks might figger."

Cavagan accepted a bowl of stew and ate slowly, savoring every bite. Finally, placing the half-empty bowl on the ground he sat back. "Don't suppose a man with a pipe would have a cigarette paper?"

"You started that Mex way of smokin'? Ain't for it, m'self. Give me a pipe ever' time." The old man handed him his tobacco pouch and dug into his duffle for a rolled up newspaper. "Don't tear the readin' if you can he'p. A body don't find much readin' in the desert and sometimes I read through a newspaper five or six times."

Cavagan wiped his fingers on his pants and rolled a smoke with trembling fingers. Then he put the cigarette down and ate a few more bites before lighting up.

"Come far?" "Fifty-five, sixty miles."

"An' no canteen? You had yourself a time." The old man said his name was Pearson. He volunteered no more than that. Nor did he ask questions. There were not four white men between the San Jacintos and the Colorado River.

"I've got to get to that hot spring this side ofthe pass, up there by the San Jacintos," Cavagan said. "I can get a horse from the Cahuillas."

The old man stirred his fire and moved the coffeepot closer. "You listen to me you won't go back."

"You know who I am?"

"Got no idea. Figgered you didn't get where you was by chance. Six years I been prospectin' hereabouts an' I ain't seen nobody but a Chemehuevi or a Cahuilla in this here country. A man would have himself an outfit, gun, knife, canteen. Strikes me somebody left you out here apurpose."

"If you could let me have a canteen or a water sack. Maybe a knife."

"How d' you figger to get out of here?"

"West to the Hayfields, then Shaver's Well and the Yuma stage road."

Pearson studied him out of shrewd old eyes. "You ain't no pilgrim. You made it this faron nerve an' savvy, so mayhap you'll go all the way."

He tamped his pipe. "Tell you something. You fight shy of them Hayfields. Seen a couple of gents settin' on that water with rifles. A body could figger they was waitin' for somebody."

The old man helped Cavagan to more stew. He rarely looked directly at Cavagan.

"Are they on the Hayfields or back up the draw?"

Pearson chuckled. "You do know this country. They're on the Hayfields, an' could be they don't know the source of that water. Could be you're figurin' a man might slip around them, get water, and nobody the wiser."

"If a man had a water sack he might get as far as Hidden Spring."

The old man looked up sharply. "Hidden Spring? Never heard of it."

"Southwest of Shaver's . . . maybe three miles. Better water than Shaver's."

"You must be Cavagan."

Cavagan did not reply. He finished the stew, rinsed the bowl, then filled his coffee cup.

"Nobody knows this country like Cavagan. That's what they say. Nobody can ride as far or shoot as straight as Cavagan. They say that, too. They also say Cavagan is dead, left in the algodones with his hands tied. Lots of folks set store by Cavagan. Them Californios, they like him."