Chapter 5

FANTASY, DREAMS, VISIONS, NIGHTMARES in a mad succession of unreality floated though my comatose mind. I was soaking on a cloud, in the arms of a beautiful woman; then the stab of a snake, and the fevered terror that followed. Over and over again a montage of madness, and none of it in focus sharp enough to register.

But above all there was something else: the intense heat of the desert sun burning down on me, dehydrating my brain.

At last the unreal fused into reality and I opened my eyes, squinting into the brightness of day. I lay for long minutes, trying to orient myself to my surroundings. Oh yes, the vicious dog, his fangs bared, ready to attack us. The club bearing down, Geri's scream. It all came back in a rush of coherency now.

I raised one hand to my head. There was a nice egg-shaped lump there, above my left ear. It was tender to the touch. I decided that I must have a very thick skull to withstand the blow of that club. Or perhaps my assailant had nearly missed, struck a glancing blow.

I pulled myself up to a sitting position, and the landscape turned into weaving rubber. It quieted down, and I knew the guy hadn't struck quite hard enough.

But what about Geri? He had Geri!

That was positive fact. It had to be the other Collins brother, Zack. Evidently he had come back to the shack after a fruitless search of the canyon. He found Zeke and the woman missing from the cabin. He had a dog. Of course the dog immediately smelled bound-up Zeke at the old mine tipple, and alerted his boss.

Zack untied him, heard his story and started out after us. The fact that he was alone told me that Zeke wasn't feeling too well at the moment.

Another doubt asserted itself. I hadn't even seen the man, just the dog. How did I know that Zack was alone at the time of the attack? Perhaps both of them were there. But the feeling persisted that the man was alone.

What would be Geri's fate? That was the question that tore at me. Could she still sell them on the idea that she possessed some secret knowledge of the missing plane which they didn't? It was a long shot, any way you looked at it. But the fact remained that Geri was back in their clutches.

By the looks of the sun, it was past noon. I had been comatose for long, inactive hours.

Where had the brothers-and Geri-vanished in the meantime?

I got to my. feet at last, started out. I circled the spot, trying to pick up their trail.

I found it at last, in sandy shale. Evidently they weren't particular about concealing it. And thinking about it, why should they?

There were two of them, plus the vicious dog. Evidently Zeke had gotten over the rock sock. There were the tracks of two men and a woman. I even found the imprint of the dog's pads, and they looked big as a wolf's tracks. It could be that they had trained a wolf cub, that the beast was a lobo instead of a dog.

The trail headed for the rim. That at least gave me a bit of hope. Evidently they were still after the plane, checking on Geri's story.

The sun seemed hotter than usual today-or maybe it was my aching head that gave that illusion.

I kept stumbling on. The desert turned into a sea of rubber, I had difficulty following the trail.

I knew then that I wasn't going to make it.

Physical stamina is one thing. If it's virgorous, the body can take a lot-of punishment. But on the low side, energy is quickly snapped and expended. First it had been the snake bite, then the blow on the head. Add the desert's midday heat, and you have exhaustion.

Not only exhaustion-fear!

This was nothingness, just barren land. Not a drop of water, not a human habitation in sight. Just the sandy soil, powder-dry, the greasewood and goat bushes.

I could hear Ben's lament: "You crazy goon! Do you think you're a one-man dynamo with transistors instead of a run-down battery? You're no tougher than any human-and this is past human endurance. Crawl into the shade and cool your brains before they ridge and fry in your skull. Or they'll find what's left of you some day-possibly in the year 1980-a chalky skeleton of white bones."

I rubbed my eyes. Double vision now, and crazy whirling shapes.

Geri, with that provocative body, her need of protection! And now, when she needed me most, I wasn't there to help her.

That thought drove me on. All I could see was Zeke, with the point of his knife circling the dark aureole on her breast tip, ogling her, waiting like a rattler. Just waiting; plenty of time to make the strike.

"Geri!" It was a sob. Somehow I had no knowledge that I had uttered the word. Just a sob. Funny, there was sand in my mouth.

I tried to spit it out, found that I was on the ground.

That seemed quite natural. Perhaps it was the same sensation a man had, dying in a snow-bank. This was the finest bed I'd had in days. I reached out. She would be there, right at my side, that soft golden flesh and those protrusive breasts, awaiting my caresses....

But she wasn't.

Water, cool, precious water! It was there, against my lips. My hands came up, searching. And suddenly there were other hands, holding a canteen, the precious fluid trickling between my parched lips.

"Thank heaven you 're coming out of it!"

Geri? It was a woman's voice, a young vibrant voice edged with anxiety. But not Geri.

I squeezed open my eyes. Just a blur at first. A cool hand on my head, or was it a dampened cloth? Movement, sponging my brow, wiping my sandencrusted face. Then the blur dissolved into a human form.

I closed my eyes. I knew the face would be gone when I reopened them. I never did believe in miracles, they were merely images of the mind.

But the face was still there, smiling slightly now, in apparent relief that I had regained consciousness.

"Go easy on the water!" the voice cautioned.

The hands were exploring now, and finally the fingers touched the sore spot where the club had connected. They probed, not too hard.

Then the smile deepened. "Welcome to the VV Club!" the voice said.

That didn't exactly make any sense to my dulled brain. I lay there, stared at the face.

"The Vicious Viper Club," the voice explained. "Just a private group of desert folks who know what it means to tangle with a rattler."

"You're-very observing," I said, my words thick. "I didn't think you would notice."

"Not only have you tangled with a rattler, you've been conked on the head."

"A man with a vicious dog that looked like a lobo wolf."

"That sounds like Zack Collins."

I was feeling better by the moment. I sat up and stared at this Samaritan who had evolved out of thin air.

"Don't look so startled," the girl said. "I'm real. My name's Jane Trovillion. We've got a sheep ranch" on the far side of the basin."

"I'm Steve Hille," I grinned, "and you're an angel."

She didn't look like an angel. She looked like a ranch girl, tall and slim in hip-hugging levis and a blue shirt open at the throat. She wore a black stetson, pushed back on her head now, and I saw that her hair was black as the felt on the hat. The rest of her was tanned so coppery that she easily could have passed for a Maricopa.

"How in the world did you find me?" I asked, still amazed.

She nodded to the right. I saw the cow pony standing patiently, nibbling at some kind of thorny bush.

"Suzy nearly unseated me," she grinned. "She's spirited, and she didn't like it a bit when she saw you sprawled in the trail-"

"Trail?"

"Of course! I've been following this trail for miles, trying to figure out who had made it. Two men and a woman. The dog's pads told me it had to be the Collins'. But who was the woman? "

I took another swig from the canteen.

"The woman is Geri Lopez," I explained. "I'm her guide, and I'm afraid she's in big trouble with the Collins'."

"That figures," she said. "I'm in trouble, too. They're stealing my sheep."

I got to my feet. The terrain turned in rubber again, then it quieted down. I grinned at her.

"Thanks for saving my life, Jane!"

"Don't mention it!" she quipped. "But just where do you think you 're going? "

"After them," I said. "I've got to-for Geri."

"You have a point. But at the moment you wouldn't last two miles."

"I feel much better."

"I dare you to walk a dozen steps without weaving.

That would be easy. I started counting. The darned sand just wouldn't lie still under my feet.

"See what I mean?" she asked, with a tight smile. "I've lived here all of my life. I've been bitten twice by a rattler. You don' recover overnight. On top of that, you've had a bad thump on the head. Not to mention that fact that you're starved for good nourishing food."

"But Jane, this woman-"

"I know. I won't kid you, either. I would hate to be Geri Lopez. But it changes nothing!"

Good, practical girl, this Jane Trovillion. A single glance at the determined young face told me that. Still in her twenties, but determined-and efficient.

Of course she would be practical and determined! This was hard land. The sissies, the suckers, didn't make it.

"Suzy can carry both of us," she said tightly. "Think you can swing up? "

There was no use arguing. She was so correct in her judgment, I didn't offer a single objection. She swung up to the saddle first. Her agility told me that she knew all there was to know about a horse. I got my foot in one stirrup, with her aid swung up behind her. Brother, that took energy.

She tugged at the reins, and the cow pony headed West at a slow easy trot that featherbedded the ride.

"Where are we headed?" I asked at last.

"We're herding to a new range," she explained. "Shortage of water. Right now we've got about three thousand woolies on Pinto Creek. There's still a bit of feed and water there. The Mex herders can take care of the flock, while I deposit you at the line shack for some needed rest."

I didn't argue. That cow pony knew its business better than some humans. Jane half-turned in the saddle, grinned at me.

"Feeling any better?"

"A lot better."

There was a question in her eyes. "Whatever in the wide world sent you to the canyon, then the Collins' shack?"

I told her, in snatches, as the pony picked its way over the desert. I even told her about the lost airplane, and Geri Lopez' compulsion to come back here to locate the old Indian couple with whom she had left the baby. I didn't, however, tell her that the baby had been kidnapped.

"Now that's about the strangest story I've heard in many a moon," she said. "And I've heard some good ones. Every prospector who works this desert has a dozen pet yarns up his sleeve."

"This isn't a yarn," I persisted. "It happens to be the truth."

"I'm not doubting you," she said. "I remember the plane crash. The radio was full of it, all the area newspapers gave it a big play."

"If Geri Lopez can sell the Collins' on the fact that she knows something about the crash that might lead them to the boodle, it could save her life."

She nodded. "Don't discount the brothers Collins," she said. "I wouldn't face them, day or night, unless I had a rifle pointed at them."

"But you were headed there."

"They stole some of my sheep," she insisted. "I'm a better shot than either of them, and they know it."

Rather remarkable girl, this Jane Trovillion. Riding back of her, I realized she sat tall in the saddle. She had long, slim legs as well; that told me she was nearly as tall as me. Nice, capable shoulders too. When she half-turned in the saddle, there was a very apparent jiggle, an obvious sign that she had plenty of femininity to augment her other capabilities.

"Just where is Cougar Canyon?" she asked at last.

"I'd say fifty-odd miles to the East of here."

"Television, you say?"

Don't put an aura about my head, I say to myself. It's a stinkin' competitive rat-race without one fleck of glamor.

The terrain changed, we worked down into a draw. She pulled up the pony in the shade of a ledge, to give it a breathing spell.

"I've been thinking," she said tightly. "And my thoughts aren't good."

"Geri Lopez?"

She nodded. "She really has two stories up her sleeve, used the airplane dodge to conceal the real reason for her visit to the canyon."

"That's right."

"I know the Collins brothers. They might look like desert hermits, but they're sharp. And I'm wondering what will happen to the Lopez woman when they find they've been on a wild goose chase."

I was thinking the same thing, and it wasn't a pleasant thought.

"Zach Collins will figure out finally that they've been the victims of a lie. Then they'll put on the heat to find out the real truth-the real reason she was in the Pothole country."

"They wouldn't-"

"What makes you think that they won't?"

I shrugged. "They might be heels, small time crooks; but surely they wouldn't physically harm a woman."

A hardness crept into her eyes. She half-turned on the saddle. The top button of her shirt was open. She unbuttoned the next button as well and pulled back the shirt just far enough to expose about three inches of golden flesh. There was nothing immodest about it. Her breasts were low on her rib cage. She wasn't even showing me a suggestion of cleavage.

But I saw something else. A scar ran from her throat down across her chest, presumably to her left breast. It could have been the mark of a knife blade, or the vicious swipe of a man's nails.

"I got careless on the range one night," she said tightly. "Zack caught me asleep. Luckily I had 'Poleon, one of the sheep dogs-"

"You mean he attacked you, while you slept?"

"Let's just say that they take what they want."

I suddenly thought of what Nan Goodwin had said, how they had ravished some of the Maricopa girls. Very earthy studs, the Collins brothers!

I turned to her, and I suppose she saw the anxiety filming my eyes.

"Jane, that's why I've got to go help her, right now!"

Her eyes searched mine. "Be reasonable. You're only a shadow of your usual self. Admit that. Even if I loaned you a rifle, you couldn't make it. You're not following two goonybirds. They're desert foxes, they know every trick in the book."

"I still have a duty to perform!"

"Yes, you have!" she admitted. "I like your attitude. If I were Geri Lopez, I'd like it even better. But even so-"

"You can't talk me out of it, Jane!" I said doggedly.

Her smile was tight. "I know I can't. And I won't try. Something else will do it for me."

That sounded enigmatic, and I suppose I showed it in my stars.

"Look out there!" she said, nodding her head to the Northwest. "What do you see?"

"Desert."

"What do you see in the sky?"

"Merely a cloud bank. It could even be a rain cloud, and that would be to my advantage."

"It isn't a rain cloud," she said firmly.

I couldn't argue with her over a point of weather; she lived here. Obviously she knew the vagaries of the local weather much better than I did.

"We had a sheep herder last year who originally came up from the lower Louisiana country," she explained. "A cajon. When he saw a cloud like this, he called it a chubasco. "

"What is a chubasco?"

"A lot of wind, a great deal of wind. We don't call it a chubasco here on the desert, but a fantail."

"Okay, so we're in for some wind and dust."

Her smile was patient. "Steve, about fifteen miles deeper in the badlands is an area of eroded pipes called chalk cliffs by the natives for want of a better name."

Chalk cliffs!

The very mention of the name rang a bell deep in my mind. But at the moment I could not bring it into focus.

"This wind starts in these organ-pipe cliffs," she went on. "The erosion there is terrific. The cliffs themselves are rotten and cored. The wind picks up tons of this white, chalky dust which is heavy with some kind of alkali. It roars down from the potholes, and when it does you'd better hunt cover."

I looked at her young face. She wasn't kidding; neither was she trying to dramatize a situation for my benefit. She wasn't that kind of person, I was positive of that.

"What about the sheep? " I asked.

"Sheep have an instinctive sense of survival," she explained. "I'll venture to say that even now the flock is headed pell-mell for a gorge that is part of the Pinto Creek range, where there'll be some protection. "

I had seen desert dust storms before. They were nothing to laugh at. This might be even worse.

"Why don't you ask where you and I will seek cover?" she asked.

"It's a good question."

"There's an old line-shack, just a hovel, further up this draw. And there's a lean-to large enough for Suzy."

We were facing a problem, of that I was quite well aware. Still I had another problem equally as important. Geri Lopez.

Jane shook her head, her smile tight. She seemed instinctively to sense what I was thinking.

"Don't torture yourself, Steve!" she said. "You wouldn't make it out in the open."

"How long do these storms usually last?"

She shrugged. "Three or four hours, six at the most."

"In six hours-"

"I know. But there is nothing you can do about it."

I nodded in defeat. I never did accept the fact that a man can turn into a hero simply by pressing a button. Heroes usually are the product of some TV dramatist, or fantasy writer. But I couldn't get Geri Lopez out of my mind.

She spoke to the pony and we got into motion, heading up the draw.

My gaze centered on the cloud. It didn't look very dangerous, as clouds go. But it did have a sort of puff-ball appearance and that meant wind.

We got the first touch of it within minutes. The pony didn't like it, kept tossing its head.

Up ahead huge monolith shafts pushed upward from the desert floor, grim sentinels that surely had guided wagon trains in the grim past. I saw the sheep camp presently, near one of these grotesque-looking rocks. A weathered hovel was built against the wall, and a chuck wagon stood nearby.

We pulled up, and suddenly she was shouting orders to an aged Mexican.

"Take the team and the dogs into the gorge, Juan," she bid, pointing to the sky.

"Si, senorita!"

The herder seemed to pay no attention to the fact that I was a newcomer. There was urgency in his step. I saw the small Indian fence corral then, and two work horses inside. Already the aged Mexican had a rope on the horses, was leading them out. Dogs were barking.

"Herd Suzy into the lean-to!" Jane said to me. "I'll need your help lacing down the canvas on the wagon."

"Yes, boss!"

She grinned, and I liked it. I had sudden thought: what a capable wife she would be for someone.

For Ben? Well, we'd see. Right now, first things first.

The cow pony seemed to realize that the lean-to was the best place in the world at the moment. I slipped off the bridle and saddle, got back to the wagon to help her lace down the canvas. She handed me a corrugated box filled with assorted packages, tugged at a wooden water cask that no doubt held water.

"Inside!" she bid, "Or you'll be picking sand out of your eyes for a week!"

She knew the fury of that approaching cloud. Now it comes on, a solid front, something like a breaker at sea. Before it the desert was calm. But the wave itself was a rolling mass of air, dust-laden, pushing over the sand like a giant rotary boom.

Then it struck, and the shack quivered under the impact. In the lean-to, the cow pony whistled its protest.

"See what I mean?" Jane said. It was unbelievable. But I was a witness to it, and that made the truth even more vivid. One mo merit the sun shone; the next there was a half-light, visibility dimmed to zero. The door raided, the window shook.

There was an old cook stove, and Jane motioned to it. "Stir up the fire, add some greasewood and we'll get chow going before we find ourselves eating grit."

I had a sudden feeling of claustrophobia, as if the tiny room were walled by an immense sea, dark and impenetrable, closing in upon us. Jane at the stove seemed a lone figure in the dim void.

Then I thought of something else. Out there, somewhere in this raging dust storm, was Geri Lopez.

Jane grinned tightly. "If you're thinking of the woman, forget it. If she's in the canyon, she'll be safer than we are."

"How did you know I was thinking of her?"

She shrugged. "You have a very readable face."

That was news. But she had a point, come to think of it. I never did win at poker, for one thing.

We ate bacon and eggs, washed it down with black coffee. It wasn't a banquet at the Conrad Hilton, but it was good nourishing food. I ate like the proverbial horse. I knew it, and my only alibi was physical need.

The meal over, she approached me with a wry smile on her face.

"Let doctor examine die wound."

Her fingers probed at the welt on my skull very efficient fingers, long, graceful, strong. She was very close. I encircled her waist with my arms, pulled her down to my lap, and kissed her on the lips.

She didn't try to break away; neither did she respond to the kiss. She merely looked at me. I decided her eyes were green, flecked with gray.

"Why did you do that?"

I countered with an evasive: "Did you mind?" I m not sure.

"I have no excuse to offer," I said, "outside the fact that I had a compulsion to kiss you, and I simply followed through."

"What prompted the kiss in the first place-some action of mine?"

"No. You're a very attractive girl, for one thing."

Her smile was tight. "Now you're going to tell me that it was a mood. Two of us alone in this shack, the storm raging outside-"

"You don't like moods?"

"I didn't say that."

I let my fingers caress her face. "Know something? I do like moods."

"Enough to kiss me?" j I pulled back, searched her eyes. "Perhaps it was more than a mood, Jane."

"Now you're trying to be evasive," she said at last.

Then she did a very wonderful thing. She bent her head and kissed me. It was a warm, womanly kiss of promise.

"Now I've taken the initiative," she said. "Call me a tramp."

I pulled her closer, rubbing my hand up her back, into the edge of her hair, feeling the softness of her.

"Honey," I said softly, "you could never be a tramp. You've got the wrong label."

She gave me another little peck of a kiss. "That was sweet, Steve."

I cuddled her head against my shoulder. "Why don't we talk about you? "

"About me?" She laughed, but I imagined that there was a tinge of bitterness in. it. "Why me, Steve?"

"Oh, I don't know. Somehow you intrigue me. The mere fact that a girl like you is out here on the desert, husbanding a flock of sheep-"

"I'll make it more factual-more brutal," she said. "I'll take the glamor out of it, the romance, and paint it as it is."

She pulled herself up so she could look into my eyes. "My grandfather came out here in a covered wagon," she said. "He found this valley on the Pinto and homesteaded it. He died, giving the ranch to my father. He died, giving it to me. Each of them added his sweat and tears and dreams-very futile, I would say. Now they're gone, and I'm the next in line."

"Rather romantic-"

"Is it, Steve? Have you ever lived on a sheep ranch, an isolated spread such as this? Do you know what it means? I haven't found any romance."

"You're an attractive girl, and dreams come true for all of us sooner or later."

"Do they?" Her young face was sober now. "I thought a dream was coming true. He was a poor boy, just like me. We fell in love. He went to Korea, and he didn't come back."

The loneliness was there in her voice. There was something else, too-physical need. She was a human being. The frustration was there in her voice. Her only associates were Mexican sheep herders, and a barren desert.

She was a young girl, healthy, demanding. Right at the moment she was in my arms, wondering if a mere kiss put a label on her.

Outside the storm continued. The light was entirely gone now and she was a vague profle, inches from my face.

Call it mood, whatever you will. I call it, simply need-one person for another.

I pulled her tighter and kissed her hard. The kiss held. At first she was lax. Then I felt her arms tighten about my shoulders. And in seconds, a complete physical metamorphasis took place, from lax to compulsive response.

I knew something then. And knowing it was in itself a thrill. She needed me. She was afraid she would be called a tramp, but the need was there nonetheless.

"Honey," I said at last, "don't hold back "

"Steve, I've never loved a man-like this."

"There is always a first time."

"Yes, I suppose there is."

Her lips were back on mine. I felt her tongue, exploring. When I met its challenge with my own, her body quivered and her hands dug into my back in a gesture that verged on the sadistic.

There was a bunk of sorts built against one wall. I picked her up bodily and carried her there. Her arms still encircled my neck.

"Steve, I'm frightened," she whispered.

"What are you frightened of?"

"Me!" she said.

That one word told me a vivid truth that was thrilling. The same old word again: need.

Her hands worked upward to the back of my head. She pulled my face down, fingers caressing.

Suddenly the shirt was open, I felt the soft warmness of her. She wasn't heavy-breasted like Geri.

Her breasts were quite small, but very pointed. It was too dark to see the scar, but I knew it was there. And that brought into focus the Collins', and what I must do sooner or later.

I touched her with my lips, her hands tightened and pulled my face closer.

I kissed her, felt the tautness grow with each caress. Her nipples were rock hard now and I teased them with my teeth, nibbling just hard enough to make it felt.

The fire burned high in her, and I fanned it even higher. A moan started in her throat, she arched upward as if to drive herself deeper into my mouth cavity. Her heart was hammering wildly, in cadence with the wildness of the storm outside.

Finally she pushed back, her eyes staring at me in the gloom."

"Steve, don't you understand?"

"I understand-"

"No, no! I'm a virgin, Steve!"

It was rather a surprising statement, but I didn't question its veracity.

"THEN I feel honored, Jane."

"It isn't that. I-I'm afraid-"

"What are you afraid of, Jane? The actual physical union?"

"I-I suppose that's it."

"Jane, it's a very wonderful experience."

"But afterward-tomorrow morning?"

"Tomorrow will be a wonderful day, Jane, with the memory of a moment so dominating it will forever be part of your secret thoughts."

"Steve, you make it sound so-so proper!"

"Let's just say, so necessary."

She thought that over. I was caressing her and the desire was there, hot under my hand.

"Is it necessary, Steve?"

"You answer that, honey."

She pulled my head down and suddenly her lips were smashing into mine, her tongue lashing out with a fury that equalled the storm.

Words were unnecessary. Perhaps the storm itself gave us the impetus to satiate the desire that lashed us. It seemed very necessary now.

"Steve, I'm still frightened," she whispered.

"You be the protagonist, Jane."

"I couldn't."

I pulled her down, waited. The fear was there, as I knew only too well. But the desire won.

She arched downward and we were together. I knew by the grip of her hands that the pain was real, but insignificant by comparison with the ecstasy that followed.

I loved her and she returned each caress with one of her own, even more violent. Outside the storm beat with increased fury. In the lean-to the cow pony bugled in fear.

But there was no fear in my heart, just compassion for this girl.

At last it was over and we drifted off to sleep, tight in each other's arms, oblivious to anything but our own exhaustion.

We awoke, and it started all over again.

I realized dully that the storm was still a part of the mad night.