Argosy All-Story Weekly, December 4, 1926 — page 19: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

SILENT slouching westward toward the mountains. Their strides were similar, loose-jointed, un- tiring. Over their heads a white cloud of alkali dust gathered, whiter, even, than the calcium glare of the sun. Man and beast. coughed, choked, licked their bitter lips, but plunged steadily ahead. As usual, Jerome Starley began to talk in- termittently to his burro. “Funny place, the desert, Tin Can,” he soliloquized. ‘I don’t know anywhere else that a man would traipse sixteen miles through sunburned hell to get water for a puny, loafing, worthless murderer.” CHAPTER III. BLACKIE’S GANG. HEN Jerome Starley reached his camp again Joe Budhouser was waiting anxiously for him. The day had passed. Already the purple-black shadows of the western mountains had swept over the tented tarpaulin, on across the desert to the base of the distant Slate Range, whose rocks glowed a vivid pink in the last rays of the setting sun. ‘“* Hello,” greeted Starley. ‘ Feeling bet- ter?” He was white with dust; perspiration had streaked its way through the mask over his face; the “ squint furrows ” around his eyes and across his forehead had deepened. Yet, he seemed untired, ready to travel an- other twenty miles if necessary. Tin Can, on the other hand, shambled woodenly; his big eyes turned pathetically toward the food pack, his comic. head drooped to his knees. “ Fine,” answered Budhouser. “ But I thought you were never comin’ back.” ‘“ Almost didn’t,” agreed the desert man cheerfully. ‘‘ Tin Can made a pig of him- self when he reached water. It gave him the colly-wobbles. He laid down, and I had to lift him to his feet. Fact is, I had to carry him in my arms out of the bar- ranca at Willow Seep. Plain water-logged, he was. Had anything to eat?” “T didn’t know how—” ‘“T haven’t eaten either. Hop to it, bud- dy, and get wood for a camp fire. Flap- jacks and coffee won’t go bad, eh? And JERRY. 329 keep your eye peeled on that ornery burro. He’ll steal us blind if he gets the chance.” Both men ate their suppers with relish, and tossed the remains to the expectant Tin Can. Then Starley pulled out his pipe. ‘‘ Always smoke after breakfast, and after supper,” he explained. “ Say, during the day a pipe doesn’t taste like anything. Too hot and dusty, I guess. But at night—” He puffed deeply in contentment. “Any extra tobacco?” asked Budhouser eagerly. ‘I need a cigarette awful bad.”’ “Then you are well,” Starley asserted. “That’s the final proof. When a man is ready for a smoke again he’s on his feet. We'll be moving to-morrow.” (<4 Where?” ~ “That’s up to you; Joe. Look around you while I talk. Up there,” he pointed with his pipe stem, “‘ that’s northeast, those blunt mountains are the Slate Range. Be- yond them is the Panamints—you can see the peaks. Over them lies Death Valley, which is one place we aren’t going, not in June. We aren’t contemplating suicide. ‘““ This other way, south, is where the rail- road cuts across the desert. There’s where you came from, Pokato is maybe twenty- eight or thirty miles due south, and that’s one place you want to miss. ‘Straight ahead of us lies the desert, cut with mountains here and there, and a lot of dry lakes. Back of us is the main Sierra range. There’s a road along the base of the mountains there, running from Mojave up through Owens Valley. <A few settle- ments along the way, too. Not enough to matter, you understand, but plenty of water. “Right here we’re eight miles from the nearest water, Willow Seep, and unless we turn back west we’ll get farther away every step we take. “But the whole desert is ours, Joe. We can move any way we want to. I reckon, though, you’re anxious to get back to the railroad and people and civilization?” Budhouser hesitated. ‘The desert. darned near killed me that day an’ night [ was runnin’ away,” he said. ‘ Hot dig- gity dog! I had a belly full of it then. But now I kinda like it. An’ I guess I’m safer from—from the rope out here, too.” The desert man waved his pipe noncom- JOO com <S (C (E()