The Indian rode on, leaving the white man to his fate and heading for Furnace Creek Ranch; and Wunpost, sweating streams and cursing to himself, flogged on toward Poison Spring. It was a hideous 142thing to do, but Lynch had chosen to follow him and his blood would be upon his own head. Wunpost had given him the trail, to go on to the ranch while he turned back the way they had come; but no, Lynch was bull-headed, or perhaps the heat had warped his judgment–in any case he had elected to follow. The last courtesies were past, Wunpost had given him his chance, and Lynch had taken his trail like a bloodhound; he could not claim now that he was going in the same direction–he was following along after him like a murderer. Perhaps the slow fever of the terrible heat had turned his anger into an obsession to kill, for Wunpost himself was beginning to feel the desert madness and he set out deliberately to lure him.
Where the black and frowning ramparts of Tucki Mountain thrust out towards the edge of the Sink a spring of stinking water rises up from the ground and runs off into the marsh. From the peaks above, it is a bright strip of green at which the wary mountain sheep gaze longingly; but down in that rank grass there are bones and curling horns that have taught the survivors to beware. It is Poison Spring, thePoison Spring in a land where all water is bad; and in many a long day Wunpost was the only human being who had gazed into its crystal depths. For the water was clear, too clear to be good, without even a green scum along its edge; and the rank, deceiving grass which grew up below could not tempt him to more than taste it. But, being trailed at the time by some men from Nevada who had seen 143 the Sockdolager ore, he had conceived a possible use for the spring; and, coming back later, he had buried two cans of good water where he could find them when occasion demanded. This was the trap, in fact, toward which for four days he had been leading his vindictive pursuers; it was poisoned bait, laid out by Nature herself, to strike down such coyotes as Lynch.
Wunpost arrived at Poison Spring well along in the evening, the desert night being almost turned to day by the splendor of a waning moon. He rode in across the flat and down the salt-encrusted bank, still sweltering in the smothering heat; and the pounding blood in his brain had brought on a kind of fury–a death-anger at Pisen-face Lynch. He dug into the sand and drew out the cans of water, holding his mules away from the spring; and then, from a bucket, he gave each a small drink after taking a large one himself. There were two five-gallon cans, and after he had finished he lashed the full one on the pack; the other one, which sloshed faintly if one shook it up and down, he tossed mockingly down by the spring. And then he rode on, wiping the sweat from his brow and gazing back grimly into the night.
144CHAPTER XV
WUNPOST TAKES THEM ALL ON
The morning found Wunpost at Salt Creek Crossing, where the bones of a hundred emigrants lie buried in the sand without even a cross to mark their resting place. It was a place well calculated to bring up thoughts of death, but Wunpost faced the coming day calmly. At the first flush of dawn the sand was still hot from the sun of the evening before; the low air seemed to suffocate him with its below-sea-level pressure, and the salt marshes to give off stinking gases; it was a hell-hole, even then, and the day was yet to come, when the Valley would make life a torment.
The white borax-flats would reflect a blinding light, the briny marshes would seethe in the sun; and every rock, every sand-dune, would radiate more heat to add to the flame in the sky. Wunpost knew it well, the long-enduring agony which would be his lot that day; but he moved about briskly, bailing the slime from the well and sinking it deeper into the sand. He doused his body into the water and let his pores drink, and threw buckets of it on his beseeching mules; but only after the well-hole had been scraped and bailed twice would he permit them 145to drink the brackish water. Then he tied them in the shade of the wilting mesquite trees and strode to the top of the hill.
A man, perforce, takes on the color of his surroundings, and Wunpost was coated white from the crystallized salt and baked black underneath by the glare; but the look in his eyes was as savage and implacable as that of a devil from hell. He sat down on the point and focussed his glasses on Poison Spring, and then on the trail beyond; and at last, out on the marshes, he saw an object that moved–it was Pisen-face Lynch and his horse. The horse was in the lead, picking his way along a trail which led across the Sink towards the Ranch; and Lynch was behind, following feebly and sinking down, then springing up again and struggling on. His way led over hummocks of solid salt, across mud-holes and borax-encrusted flats; and far to the south another form moved towards him–it was the Indian, riding out to bring him in.
The sun swung up high, striking through Wunpost’s thin shirt like the blast from a furnace door; sweat rolled down his face, to be sopped up by the bath-towel which he wore draped about his neck; but he sat on his hilltop, grim as a gargoyle on Notre Dame, gloating down on the suffering man. This was Pisen-face Lynch, the bad man from Bodie, who was going to trail him to his mine; this was Eells’ hired man-killer and professional claim-jumper who had robbed him of the Wunpost and Willie Meena–and now he was a derelict, lost on the desert he 146claimed to know, following along behind his half-dead horse; and but for the Indian who was coming out to meet him he would go to his just reward. Wunpost put up his glasses and turned back with a grin–it was hell, but he was getting his revenge.
Wunpost spent the heat of the day in the bottom of the well, floating about like a frog in the brine, but as evening came on he crawled out dripping and saddled up and packed in haste. Every cinch-ring was searing hot, even the wood and leather burned him, and as he threw on the packs he lifted one foot after the other in a devil’s dance over the hot sands. It was hot even for Death Valley, the hottest place in North America, but there was no use in waiting for it to cool. Wunpost soused himself and mounted, and the next morning at dawn he looked down from the rim of the Panamints.