He fell silent again, thinking of the Delafield matter and Jenkins’s assertion that Bancroft was Delafield. “He sure knows who Delafield is,” was his conclusion, announced aloud, “but he’s not going to tell. He’s probably blackmailing the man, whoever he is, and he won’t take any chances that would be likely to spoil his income. Well, that proves that Delafield is somebody in New Mexico rich enough and prominent enough to make it worth while for Jenkins to keep his knowledge to himself. I’ve got that much for my five hundred, anyway. Lord, Betty, wasn’t I a tenderfoot!” and he swore under his breath, half angrily, half amusedly, as he turned again to study the road and the plain. The heat haze was rising, and the clear white sunlight was master of earth and sky. Far to one side he noted the silvery lake of a mirage. But the red line had mounted higher, and become a low, dirty-red wall that seemed to fence the western expanse from north to south. “It sure looks like a bad one, Betty, and I’m afraid we shan’t be able to get home to-night after all. But we’ll make Adobe Springs anyway, if it doesn’t catch us too soon.”
The pain in his shoulder brought his mind back to the conviction that Baxter had instigated the assault upon him, and he began searching for the motive. Did the Congressman think his political opposition important enough to make his taking off desirable? Suddenly he slapped his thigh and broke out aloud: “Lord! what if Baxter should be Delafield! He sure ought to be if there’s anything in the eternal fitness of things. If he should be—ah-h,” and he broke off with a hard, unmirthful laugh. Ransacking his memory for all he knew of Baxter’s life he presently shook his head regretfully. “No; the facts are against it. There’s nothing in that lead. It’s a pity, though, for it would be a satisfaction—to say nothing of the public benefit—to knock ’em both off the roost at one pop.” His mind busied itself with conjectures about Delafield’s identity, as he considered first one and then another of the more prominent men in the Territory. He was silent so long that the mare tossed her head impatiently and whinnied. Curtis smiled and stroked her mane.
“Hello, old girl!” he said aloud, “getting lonesome, are you, and you want to be talked to. Oh, you’re spoiled, Betty B., that’s what you are. We’ll go up the hill and see Miss Bancroft, won’t we, Betty, while we’re in Golden; and we’ll take that cactus to her, and help her plant it. And she’ll come out to the fence to see you, Betty; and she’ll give you a lump of sugar, and pat your nose, and look as sweet as a pink rose with brown velvet eyes. She’s a bully fine girl and we like her, don’t we, Betty Brown? The way she sticks by her father is great; he couldn’t help being a first-class fellow, could he, B. B., with such a daughter as that?”
The red wall was rising in the sky, devouring its sunlit blue and spreading out into smoky-red, angry-looking clouds. A high wind, hot and dry, swept across the plain from the west. All the cattle within Conrad’s range of vision had turned their heads to the east and, although they were still grazing, moved only in that direction. Seeing a herd of antelope headed the same way, Curtis took the red bandanna from his neck and waved it toward them. As the bright signal floated in the wind their leader turned, stared, and began to walk back, the whole herd following with raised heads and gaze fixed in fascinated interest. He flaunted the red square and they came steadily on, until presently the warning of danger in the hot wind and the odor of the approaching storm overcame the compulsion of curiosity, and they wheeled again, away from the threatened peril.
The small life of the plain was fleeing before the furnace-like breath of those red, surging clouds. Jackrabbits leaped across the road on fleet legs, and occasionally Conrad saw coyotes, singly or in packs, running eastward as for their lives. Fat carrion crows hurried their unwieldy flight and, higher in the air, a frequent lone hawk sailed out of the west, while now and then a road-runner cut across his path with hasting feet.
“It’s going to be a bad one, I guess,” Curtis muttered, jamming his soft hat down closer on his head. The mare seemed to be trying of her own accord to escape the storm, and her swinging lope was steadily leaving the miles behind. “Keep it up, Betty, keep it up,” he said encouragingly. “I want to reach Adobe Springs and get this message to Baxter off my mind. My shoulder’s aching, old girl, but it ain’t aching a bit more than I am to tell him what I think of him.”
Soon the sand-storm was upon them, concealing the landscape and covering the sky with its clouds. Upon man and beast it beat as bitterly as a sand-blast. It pelted and stung Conrad’s face and neck, and filled his eyes and ears and nostrils until he was forced now and again to pull his hat over his face for a moment’s respite in which to draw a less choking breath. “It looks as if all Arizona had got up and dusted, and was hell-bent to get out of here,” he jested grimly, as he bent over the mare’s neck and encouraged her with voice and gentle stroke. “That shows good sense, Betty, though it’s mighty hard on us. Come right along, old girl; we must get to Adobe Springs.”
“Upon man and beast the sand-storm beat bitterly”