It was a different matter about that grain-sack, however. The horses would need that, and another drink from the creek to-night, before facing to-morrow in the brown and sultry hills. He made the big circle to the Fonseca road and the alders, but was back in a star-rimmed mountain wilderness two hours before daybreak, the big gelding taking an occasional nip at the grain-bag as he trotted along.
XXV
ELBERT LEARNS TO WAIT
Next day Elbert climbed the foothills and explored the mountains eastward. He found many tracks of water, stream-beds of the rainy season, but it was now autumn, the dryest time of the year, and hours passed before he followed a trickle up a dim ravine to its first pool. He had to grant that it was the horses that helped him locate the water in the first place, but there was queer satisfaction about the experience, as if he had been marooned on an island and his life depended. No water ever tasted just like that. He watched the horses drink and graze, and made them stand for a half hour at a time in the sludgy grass at the side of the stream, while he stared up from the shadowed cañon to where the sunlight burned on the ridges. ‘Only one thing better than water for a horse’s hoofs,’ old Bob Leadley had said, ‘and that’s more water.’
No further need to cross the Fonseca road night and morning to reach the creek. He would risk a night-call at El Relicario once in a while—grub for himself and forage for the horses, but the old ruin was now fifteen, possibly eighteen miles, and Bart was in good hands.... One by one, Elbert beat back the days, though he actually lost count, even before it became apparent that Bart Leadley was going to live. During his first two or three calls at the ranch house, there was a good deal of doubt on this main point. From the very beginning, the big fellow weakly pressed him not to stay.
‘No use of you hangin’ up all these days in the mountains, Doc,’ he said. ‘I’ll follow north across the Border, as soon as I can make a break.’
‘But I’m getting to like it out there,’ Elbert would tell him. ‘Only lonesome a little at first. Why, there’s no place I could leave the sorrel for you, if I went. The rurales would know that horse anywhere.’
‘Take him along. I’ll get a cayuse, somewhere—’
‘No, Bart, I came down here for you. That’s what your father wanted—for me to bring you back—’
The other’s eyes held the low ceiling. ‘I’d hate to have you after me,’ he laughed. ‘I mean like a sheriff—’
Elbert conned this all next day in his high solitude. He couldn’t get it quite clear. Surely, no sheriff would ever suffer from hopeless spells of faint-heartedness such as he was given to.... They were oddly embarrassed with each other in those first talks, but when silence became oppressive, Bart would enquire regarding some detail concerning the horses. On this one subject alone, Elbert expatiated.