With Hoops of Steel

by Florence Finch Kelly

Carefully he began picking the rope with the pin, fiber by fiber, and slowly, strand by strand, the hard, twisted, weather-beaten cords gave way and stood out on each side in stubby, frazzled ends. The pin bent and turned in his fingers, and the blood oozed from their raw ends. But he held a tight grip upon his one hope of freedom, and finally the rope was so nearly separated that a sudden wrench of his body broke the last strands. He put the bent, twisted, bloody pin carefully away in his pocket and, stooping over, found that he could barely reach the match on the ground. He was able to grasp also two or three dry twigs and sticks that lay near it. On the bark of the pine tree to which he was tied were many little balls and drops of pitch. He felt over the surface of the tree as far as he could reach and pulled off all that he could get of this. Then he found that the only part of the rope that he could at once reach and see was that directly in front of his body. He turned and twisted, but there was no other way. If he attempted to burn it anywhere else he would have to guess at the best way to hold the match, and he might waste the precious heat in which lay his only hope.

He stuck the pitch in a ring around the rope where it circled his body just below the stomach. Then he set his teeth together, and with his face gone all white and sick-looking, lighted the match and held it under the pitch. Eagerly he watched the little flames dart upward over the rope. He flattened his body against the tree as the scorching heat reached his skin. The match burned low, and by its dying flame he lighted one of the dry twigs. It was full of pitch and burned up brightly. The flame leaped up and caught his shirt. Holding the burning stick in his mouth he slapped the fire with the palm of his one free hand and soon smothered it, before it had done more than scorch the skin of his chest. The cloth of his trousers charred under the fire and held a constant heat against his body, and the pain from the blistering wound almost made him forget his desperation. Twice he started impulsively to fling away the tiny brand, but quick remembrance of his desperate situation stopped the instinctive movement, and, with grinding teeth, he held it again under the rope. The smell of the burning flesh rose to his nostrils and sickened him. He felt himself turning faint. “I can not stand it!” he groaned and flung away the burning twig. In an instant he realized what he had done, and stooping over he tried to reach it where it blazed upon the ground. But it was too far away. In an agony of hopelessness he seized the rope with his one free hand and jerked it with all his strength. It broke at the burned place and left him free as far as the hips, although the left arm was still bound to his body.

An empty tin can caught his eye in the grass a little way off. It was out of his reach, but he saw a stick on the ground part way around the tree. By twisting and stretching his body to the utmost he could reach the stick, and by its aid he soon had the can in his hand. The top had been almost cut out, and holding the can in his hand and the flying leaf of tin in his teeth he worked and twisted and pulled until he tore it out. Its edge was sharp and jagged, and sawing and cutting with it he soon freed himself from the remaining bonds of rope. As the last one dropped away and he stood up and stretched himself in the shade of the pine tree he found that he was trembling like a leaf and that a cold sweat covered him from head to foot. Shivering, he stepped out into the hot sunshine.

But he had no time to waste on a nervous collapse. He found some tea in the pack, and hastily stirring up the embers of the breakfast fire, he made the coffee pot full of a brew as strong as he could drink. There was also part of a small sack of flour, and he quickly mixed a paste of flour and water and spread it over the deep, blistered burn on his abdomen. Then, with a can of baked beans in one hand and the coffee pot of tea in the other, he started down the canyon.

The tiny stream from the spring grew smaller and smaller and finally lost itself in the thirsty earth. For a little way farther the straggling vegetation and the moist sand showed its course, but long before he reached the mouth of the canyon all sign of water disappeared and nothing remained but hot sand and barren rocks. When he reached the larger canyon through which they had come up from the plain two days before, he hid behind some huge boulders and watched and listened for sign of his captors. He thought he heard the faint sound of a horse’s hoofs far in the distance. He started from his hiding-place and ran down the canyon, hoping to get out of sight, if it should be his two enemies returning, before they could reach the place. He was still trembling with the exhaustion of the forenoon’s long nervous strain, and when his foot slipped upon a stone he could not save himself from a fall. He went down full length upon the sand, and half his precious store of tea was spilled. He dared not take the time to go back and make more. There was still left nearly a quart of the strong liquid, and he thought that if he would be very careful and remember to swallow only a little each time it might take him safely across the desert. He hurried on, running where the way was smooth and hard enough, and again clambering over boulders or ploughing heavily through the sand.

When he came to the mouth of the canyon and looked out over the low, rocky hills and the sandy, white waste beyond, the sun was already in its downward course. He was red and panting with the heat, which had been well nigh intolerable between the high, narrow walls of the canyon, and his whole body smarted and glowed as if it had been encased in some stinging hot metal. He carefully studied the sky line of the Fernandez mountains, which rimmed the desert on the west, and marked the pass through which he and his companions had come, impressing it upon his mind that he must keep that constantly before his eyes. It seemed easy enough, and he said to himself that if he just kept his face toward that pass he would have no trouble and that he would certainly reach it before noon the next day. He listened intently for sounds from the canyon, but could hear nothing, and with much relief he decided that he must have been mistaken and that he would be safe from immediate pursuit.

“I’m lucky so far,” he said to himself as he started on the faintly marked trail across the barren foothills, “even if I did spill my tea. If they should follow me, it would be my last day on earth. That damned Jim would shoot me down as soon as he could get near enough.” Then he remembered that this was Thursday, and that Colonel Whittaker would expect him in Las Plumas that afternoon. “He’ll send to the ranch to inquire about me when I don’t show up to-morrow,” Wellesly thought, “and then everybody will turn out to search for me. But, Good Lord! I needn’t pin any hopes to that! I’d be dead and my bones picked and bleached long before anybody would think of looking in this hell hole for me. There would be absolutely no way of tracing me. My only hope is to—now, where is that pass! Yes, there it is. I’m headed all right.”

He walked rapidly over the low, rocky hills, still fearing possible pursuit and frequently looking back, until he reached the sandy levels of the desert. There the trail was so faint that he could scarcely follow it with his eye. He stopped, perplexed and doubtful, for he could not remember that it seemed so blind when he traveled it before. “But there is the pass,” he thought. “I’m headed all right, and this must be the road. It is just another indication of my general stupidity about everything out of doors. I never look at a road, or think about directions, or notice the lay of the land, as long as there is anybody with me upon whom I can depend. I might as well pay no more attention to this trail and strike straight across the desert. If I keep my face toward the pass I’m all right.”

As long as the road kept a straight course across the sand and alkali wastes he followed it. But when it bent away in a detour he chose the air line which he constantly drew from his objective point, and congratulated himself that he would thus save a little space. He tramped along, in and out among the cactus and greasewood, and finally, near sunset, he came upon a great, field-like growth of prickly-pear cactus. The big, bespined joints spread themselves in a thick carpet over the sand and climbed over one another in great hummocks and stuck out their millions upon millions of needles in every direction. The growth looked as if it might cover hundreds of acres.

“So that’s the reason the trail bent like a bow,” thought Wellesly as he looked at the field of cactus in dismay. “I ought to have known there was some good reason for it. If I’m lucky enough to find it again I’ll know enough to stick to it. Well, I must skirt along this field of devil’s fingers till I find the road again. I wonder if I’ll know it when I see it.”