Beyond the sunset

by Arthur D. Howden Smith

"We have walked for three months with our backs to the westering sun," I cried. "We could not have circled."

"It is another sea," said Tawannears.

"Ja," agreed Corlaer, "der Spanish Sea, eh?"

But I was sure it could not be. I had studied the southern section of the continent fairly drawn upon Master Golden's maps, and I was convinced we could not possibly have reached the coast of the Mexican Gulf of the Main. We were thousands of miles North and West of it. There was also the thought that we had seen no signs of Spanish influence, had not even seen savages for months. And finally, the water was salter than the spray of the Western Ocean.

I suggested, then, that we follow the salt water southward, and this proved me right, for three days' journey disclosed it to be no more than a great lake. We struck off to the southeast where mountains loomed across the sky, and were overjoyed at last to find a sufficiency of water. But we saw smoke-signals on the horizon, and deemed it wisest to continue into the mountains in case the Indians were watching us. Our ammunition was very low, and we could not afford to fight unless we must.

It is strange by what trivial incidents men's lives are influenced. Instead of turning south along the shores of the Salt Lake we might equally as well have turned north. And but for the smoke-signals I have referred to we should certainly have plunged on eastward. In either event the issue of this story would have been different. Strange, indeed! But if we speak of strangeness in our own petty affairs, how much more strange that that Salt Lake should be isolated a thousand miles from the salt sea which doubtless mothered it. After all, what is strange?

In these mountains we discovered the easiest progress was gained by following the channels of the streams that flowed through them, and they carried us south of east into a country more terrifying than the nightmare ranges of mountains and deserts we had recently traversed. It was a country of monstrous plateaus intersected by abysmal ravines, ay, sometimes many thousands of feet in depth, so buried in the bowels of the earth that we, in pursuing the course of a river, could scarce see the daylight overhead. And the rocks were most astonishingly colored, almost as though it had been done by painters' brushes, in lurid streaks, chromatic, dazzling. And there was never a tree or blade of true grass, only occasionally a few stunted bushes, rooted in a sediment of pulverized rock.

Did I say the other was a nightmare country? This was far worse! So empty, so appallingly desolate!

We were picking our way amidst the bowlders in the bottom of one of these ravines when an arrow shattered against a rock under Tawannears' arm. In the same breath Peter leveled his gun and fired, and a squat savage came twirling down through the air and landed almost at our feet. Such of him as was left showed him to have been naked, with long, lank hair and primitive weapons; and whilst we viewed him his comrades assailed us with a continued patter of arrows. We hurried on, thinking to placate them by retreat. But we were mistaken.

They harried us all that day, and we remained awake most of the night in fear of a surprise-attack. In the morning they were at our heels again. Day succeeded day, and they clung to us. After their first experience they never tried to rush us, but they were numerous and persistent and uncannily skillful in utilizing the cover of the rocks; and we were obliged to fire at them every so often, in order to hold them off. And this meant a steady drain upon our ammunition, which compelled us to cut bullets in half and reduce the powder-charge.