Captives of the Desert. Zane Grey

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ Curry was alongside the minute the panting horses came to a stop. He helped the girls to descend. Newton swore again, but this time it was just a breath between closed teeth.

      * * * *

      As Curry had predicted, it was late afternoon when the cars reached the foot of Oraibi Mesa. For miles Katharine had seen the great promontory take form and color, growing higher, bolder, more sweeping in length, coming out of its lavender haze, warmly red and shimmering. A jagged cliff lifted itself high above the desert, and atop it, on a perch lofty as an eagle’s, rose the red walls of the old Indian village of Oraibi.

      While Wilbur dozed, Mary told Katharine the traditions of the place toward which they were climbing. In the ancient village, life was going on much as it had a hundred years ago; old Indians, and the young who adhered to the faith of their fathers, frowned upon the automobiles of the white man, on the encroachment of a modern civilization, hating the recently erected Hopi dwellings at the foot of their noble mesa. The Indians who lived in the despised places had a smattering of education and enough knowledge of the white man’s trade and traffic to copy his commercialism. It was they who encouraged the white man to appear at the Snake Dance ceremonies, so they might rent their houses and horses and sell their handiwork.

      The houses at the foot of the mesa were boxlike, one-story structures, some square, some rectangular, all built of adobe pink-red in color. The dwellings were few and widely scattered. Some of the surrounding terrain was under cultivation.

      The driver, looking back to see that Curry was close behind, picked a house with a central location and stopped. Curry drew up alongside. Other cars were parked near by on the open desert. A dozen white people were in evidence. Several, not ten yards away, were bargaining with an Indian for a gay-looking basket. A party of six, gathered round a campfire preparing their evening meal, shouted a cheerful welcome to Curry.

      “That’s Mr. and Mrs. Weston and guests from the trading post at Black Mesa. Fine people, the Westons,” said Mary.

      “Mebbe it would be better to rustle right now, and take stock of folks later,” Wilbur suggested.

      Mary opened the car door for him, then she and Katharine stepped out.

      Curry, busy with his own party, called over, “See you later, friends! Mosey over to the Westons’ fire for a while this evening.”

      “Like hell we will,” muttered Wilbur to himself.

      Meanwhile two young women and a man appeared from the doorway of the adobe house. The girls were dressed in riding habits of the latest cut. Their faces beneath small tailored hats were comely. The man was brutish in build, tall, thick-bodied, shoulders heavy and broad, and his legs were bowed, a condition that intensified his likeness to a bulldog. Under a large sombrero which might have been twin to Wilbur’s bulged a wide-jowled, square-cut face. The man was laughing at something one of the girls said, and Katharine beheld a perfect though unconscious imitation of a ventriloquist’s yapping doll.

      “There’s Hanley now,” said Wilbur. “Hello, pard,” he called.

      That name struck association in Katharine’s mind—Hanley! The man Mary spoke of yesterday!

      He looked up and saluted. “Be right over, Newton.”

      After a word to the girls he doffed his sombrero and came to join Wilbur. Katharine and Mary forthwith retreated a few yards to where the baggage lay.

      “There go two thoroughbred fillies!” Hanley greeted Wilbur, indicating the girls he had just left. His gaze swept down the trim figures of the women, audaciously, speculatively.

      Katharine shrank from the prospect of meeting this man, but it could not be avoided for at once Hanley abandoned Wilbur for them, and Mary was forced to perform the amenities.

      “Folks come a long way to see them Indians cut up,” he said. “An’ it sure is interestin’. Never seen it before, either of you, I reckon.”

      Mary said they had not.

      “Don’t miss none of it,” Hanley continued. “Make the old man take you up to the race tomorrow mornin’.” He turned to Wilbur. “You’re takin’ ’em, ain’t you?”

      “Race? I haven’t heard anything about a race.”

      “Sure! Most everybody goes. You got to get up about four-thirty to make it. It’s on top of the mesy, at sunrise. The Indians will bring your horses in time if you tell ’em.”

      “That lets us out. We’re not getting up at four-thirty to see a fool Indian race!” declared Wilbur.

      As far as he was concerned, the matter was settled. Mary looked before her, not daring to express an opinion.

      “You lazy son-of-a-gun,” Hanley exclaimed, his small eyes snapping. “You might ask the ladies what they’d like to do.”

      Katharine felt indebted to him for his remark. She would have said as much to Wilbur, though not quite so forcibly. Hanley was not wholly abominable.

      Wilbur scowled, but made no comment.

      “I’ll take the ladies, if they’d like to go,” Hanley went on. “I’m goin’ up with the Weston outfit, and likely some other folks’ll join us.”

      “That’s very kind of you,” Katharine hurried to say. “I’d love to go, and I’m sure Mrs. Newton would too.”

      She had not the slightest desire to encourage companionship with Hanley. She knew what Wilbur’s reaction would be, so she purposely compromised him, enjoying her duplicity.

      “If Mrs. Newton goes, I go!” declared Wilbur, a thin cutting edge to his words.

      Katharine smiled inwardly.

      “Of course, we’ll all go, and gladly,” said Mary quietly. “I appreciate your suggestion, Mr. Hanley. Mr. Newton never did have much zest in anticipation, but he is always glad afterward that someone has dragged him into a thing.”

      Hanley declared he could arrange quarters for them easily. The girls he had just left—the Blakely girls, he called them—would share with Miss Winfield and Mrs. Newton the adobe house across the road which they had just bargained for. Wilbur could make camp with him, and the driver would shift for himself.

      From Katharine’s point of view, any place was perfect that gave Mary to her for a while without Wilbur’s presence added.

      “The Blakelys are kind of society,” said Hanley. “Don’t like campin’ much an’ don’t want to be alone. I promised I’d look ’em up some nice companions.”

      Hanley transferred their baggage and bed-rolls at once. That done, he and Wilbur left the girls and went to search for some Indians from whom they could rent horses.

      The adobe house was a barren place, just the four pink-red walls and roof, and a doorway with no door—not a stick of furniture, not a single decoration. Whoever lived there must have taken his few possessions with him before he vacated it. Hard clay hut, clean and cool, was the way Katharine described it to herself. It was at most a shelter, if shelter were necessary, though why, Katharine could not imagine, she herself preferring the stars.

      “There’s nothing to do here but sit on our bed-rolls СКАЧАТЬ