LITERATURE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7029, 6 December 1890, Page 1

LITERATURE.

TWO AFTERNOONS. San Francisco Chroni c'« A hot day. The sun directly overhead, glowing with a fire thai) made the air in the Bhadelesß canyon quiver 38 if heated in an oven. Not a tree in Bight, not a bush — brown and barren. Everywhere boulders of lava immense in size and sometimes split in twain, as if in rapid cooling from the intense heat which gave them birth. Here and there between the graygreen of the giant cacti, raising their thorny forms fifty and sixty feet in the air, assuming with their strangely formed limbs the shapes of immense crosses or trunks of trees from which all leaves and smaller branches have been torn. Between the black and brown of the sunburnt lava an occasional tuft of tall, almost colourless grass. Over all a stillness that to one unaccustomed to the land would seem strange and oppressive. Not a bird to break it with its song. Even the lizards sought out what shade they could, making, with their green, red and variegated coats, almost the only dash of colour to relieve the monotony of the all-prevailing brown and black lava that each moment grew more oppressive to look at or touch under the glow of the fierce heat. Save these not a living thing was in sight except where off to the West a buzzard floated high in the air, and two men, with a burro lazily following, passing down the canyon. Prospectors and their outfit. Opened shirts, showing red, hairy breasts, while their loosely buckled belts, heavy with long bright cartridges, whose tarnished surfaces, made doubly bright from the rays of the hot sun, seemed strangely out of place in such quietude. Neither spoke. Each walked along aB if alone, looking for the " float " that might indicate the presence of some mineral ledge higher up, more from habit than from hope, as the -" formation" gave but little indication of any hidden treasure. How hot the sun. The burro, patient-eyed, forgot his old trick of nipping the tops of the long gaete graßß, and contented himself with keeping closely in the trial of the two men, whose worldly possessions of blankets, cooking utensils and tools; capped with an enormous canteen of water, he so patiently bore. Not a breath of air stirring. Only the quivering heat that made the eyes bnrn and ache. The men shifted their rifles constantly from one hand to another, as if to avoid receiving blisters from the places where they touched the highly heated metallic parts of their guns. Crack, crack, crack, and not fifty yards ahead from behind a dozen boulders leap out aa many jets of fire, while the snowy white puffa of smoke float up a few feet and disappear in the quivering air. One of the men stops for an almost imperceptible instant, as if to brace himself. His hands rise to the level of his chest as if to bring his rifle to his shoulder and then— down he falls headlong to the ground in a limp mass. Dead ! Shot through, the head. Not a quiver ; not a motion. Without a sound, were it not for that made by his falling rifle. 'As he falls his companion staggers back a pace or two, catches himself, and then,, half crouching, half falling, drops behind one of the many boulders. " Hit !" he thinks to himself, "but. thank God! not fatally; only a scratch." Life seems a new thing; to live, a new joy. Only a scratch. " Where ?" He hardly has time to think as he places his gun across the boulder and fires at a figure, naked, dark, clothed only in a breech clout and with a red scarf wound around the hoad. He notes almostunconaciously how pronounced its colour is against the dark face and darker hair of its wearer. "A miss !" he mentally remarks, a3 the figure disappears. " But better luck next time," he thinks, as he pushes down the lever of his gun and throws out the empty shell, replacing it with s cartridge. " Short range ;he should have hit. It can't be that he is losing his old cunning ; that his aim was bad." "No;" he fired in haste and was "rattled." "Another shot and he will show them " are the thoughts that iflash through his mind as he peers cautiously ahead to discover his enemies. None in sight. For the first time be feels pain. Half numbness, half fire; how it teara as he raises his shirt and looks at a little blue hole hardly larger than a pea near the right side in the short ribs. " Only a scratch or it would bleed worse. Did it go through ?" he asks himself, as he passes his hand up his back to find if there be an orifice of exit. "No." '"That ia bad, for there is no surgeon to be had to cnt the missile out. Pshaw ! what matters it ? Other men have lived with bullets in them— why could not he ? Night would aooa come, and then with darkness he would go, He was not losing blood sufficient to Treakea him much, and by morning he would be far away. After all, it would only be a close call, something to tell about. But poor Tom ! he was gone," and as he looked at the lifeless form of his partner he could hardly keep back the tears. Crack ! crack ! go a couple of shots off to his left, and he sees the dust flying up from near his feet. He tries to draw his limb3 up to get them in a safer position. Tries again, and the cold sweat breaks from him. He cannot move them! they are dead — paralysed! Something like a sob breaks from him. It is all over. In the first flush of possible escape he had not thought of the spine being injured. He knew it now. The game was played. A few houre longer at the best. To-morrow and the next day, and the days and the yearß to come would find him there. The end was only a question of a Bhort time. Yet he had only thought it a scratch. With his arms he drags himself into a safer position. This done, he unbuckles hia belt, and as he lays it before him to have it handier he thinks of the time away back on the Platte when he had first put one on. How proud he then felt, as a stripling boy, of the outfit. How bright the future had looked, and now it was all to end. After all, life with him had been a hard one. It had brought to him few of the treasures for which he had longed. For an inßtant he thought " why not take the sixshooter and end it all P" Instead, he takes it from the holster and places it where his hand can more readily reach it, " Suicide ?" " No," he would die fightipg. He would take some of them with him. Yet, why kill at all ? They were but savages — Apaches. Their deaths would jnean nothing, would gain nothing. Better to kill himself and keep from them the satisfaction of doing it. No ; relief might come. Some of the many scouting parties of cavalry always in the field, or, perhaps, a party of prospector might hear the firing, and then with a good doctor all would yet be well. He could find such a one easily at any of the military posts. All these thoughts and a thousand others crowded through his brain while he was placing himself in a better position for defence. Cautiously raising himself he glanced over the boulder in the direction from which the last shots came. Crack ! crack ! crack ! and the bullets whiz surlily around him or flatten themEelves against the boulders. Bang! bang! bang! goes his rifle. A new" feeling takes possession of him. His nerves tighten like steel and he pump3 empty shells out of the line's chamber and cartridges in with a fierce speed. Kill ! kill ! let him take one of those howling murderers with him, and he doesn't care how boou after death conjpf. But what JB the matter with his aim ? He has not yet killed one, not even wounded one that he knows of. He refills the magazine of his rifle in nervo.uß, feverish haste, and then peops through the crevices

of the boulders to see if there is an enemy in sight. None. They are there, though. They are waiting, and he is dying. How hot it is! He is burning up with thirst and heat. How "it" hurts. He has got so that he thinks of his wound only as " it," as it it were some terrible monster that he could not escape. The blood— small as tae quantity is — that flows from his wound has formed a pool, clotted and coagulated. It adds to his discomfort by its stickiness. He thinks, how strange that one's own blood should annoy one so, and then wonders where so many flie3 could have come from, as he raises a swarm by the movement of his body. He looks across to where the burro has fallen with, the canteen and sees tbat the vessel has been broken by coming in contact with a boulder, and that the precious fluid has nearly all run out. How much he would give to have what little water remains ! He feels almost tempted to try to reach it, but no ; that would mean throwing his life away without a chance for revenge. Eevenge. He will have it. Thirst is nothing, death is nothing now if he can only kill, kill. One would be enough, two better. Heavens, if he could only kill them all, how happy he would die ! He looks - over the boulder. Nothing in sight but boulders, lava, cacti, sand and gaete grass. "They are there, though." He almost laughs in sarcasm as be catches himself scanning the horizon to see if any relief were in sight. Eelief ? For days he and the man that lay dead there had travelled without finding a trail made by a shod horse — without finding a trail of any kind. How childish to expect any help. Better brace up and die like a man. He looked at the body of the dead man. How hideous the face looked with its swollen lips, open mouth, staring eyes. How black ic had grown. What a vast quantity of blood had come from the wound in the head. His eye catches a movement in a tnft of grass to his left. Bang ! bang ! goes his rifle. "Nothing there," he thinks, as he crouches closer to the ground to escape the shots that cams in return. So the hours go, but he hardly marks their flight. The sun is getting lower in the West, and the white heat of day gives way to the yellowish-purple haze that in Apache land is always the forerunner of night. How when he was first hit he had longed for night, how little he cared for .it now. He could feel himself growing weaker. His Winchester wa3 heavier than any he had ever before lifted. Even "it," that terrible thing that chained him there, pained him leas, but the thirat grew horrible. Anyhow night would give him a chance to reach the canteen. At times he felt almost drowsy, but fought off the feeling. He was merely waiting for the end. He thought it strange that he could face it so complacently. He hardly cared now how soon it came. Would he shoot all his cartridges away before it reached him ? He could not waste them though. If he could only reach Tom's gun and revolver and destroy them it would make those who bad killed him angry. It was for these things, worth perhaps 50dol, that he and Tom had been murdered. He was beginning to think of himself as already dead. At least how easy to ruin Tom's rifle. It was only two or three paces away. He took his revolver and fired at it, aiming to hit it just in front and below the hammer, its most vulnerable part. Instead, the bullet hits the ground and richocheting enters the breast of the dead man. He shudders as the body stirs from the force of the Bhot, although he knows that life has been gone for houra. Everything is plain to him now why his other shots had not taken effect. He was unnerved. How could a man with a hole through his body hope to hit anything. He had beard of men shot through the heart killing their assailants, and had often wondered if he could do it. Could Tom have done it ? How far off and yet how short seemed the years that he and Tom had been together. How little there had been in them that seemed worth now recalling. Crack ! a single shot off to the right, and he fires where he sees the smoke curling upward. Fires again and again. Nothing. He counts his cartridges, and is astonished that he has fired so many. He mußt have lost some. No ; there arc the empty shells. Another shot off to the right. One to the front. He fires at both. He feels tbat he is growing nervous, and brings all his remaining powers into play to secure better control of himself. He will put away the idea of death, of his wound, of everything but revengd. Only one and he will be satisfied, and for the first time in yea-3 he prays, prays without words though, that he may kill but one. The Bun ia sinking lower, it has almost reached tLe far off western mountain tops. It would soon be night, and then what would "they" do. Steal up under cover of the darkness and shoot him from behind some boulder before he would be aware of it. He would keep a close lookout, and perhaps he might after all " get " one of them. Crack ! crack ! to the right and left, and he glances in both directions, firing at each, and then right over him takes place a terrible explosion, and he feels as if something heavy and blunt had struck him in the back. Ho half raises himself, just enough to tarn his face upwards. Another explosion, another heavy, blunt blow, and through the smoke from a revolver he sees a dark, young face, with black glittering eye?, white teeth across which, the lipß are tightly drawn. The face and the form of one almost a boy, and then he falls back while a dark hand and arm snatches his gun from his half - clinging clasp. He hears wild shouting, and through his glazing eyes sees dark forms scrambling for|his arms, for Tom's. They are even quarreling in their eagerness to tear the pack from the dead burro, and then instinctively he sees one raise something in the air, and when it falls there is no longer anything human in the face or the head of the man, who has spent the afternoon in fight. Nothing but a bloody m-iBS of skull, of hair, of brains, of broken teeth, crushed into a misshapen mass by the boulder cast on it by an Apache. Another 'afternoon, years after, a tall sergeant and his detail of cavalry escorting through the canyon a party locating a road, look3 down on the whitened bones of two men and a burro scattered by coyotes and bleached by the wind and rains, and as he, with the top of his boot, pushesto one side the rib3 and shoulder bone3 of' one of the skeletons his eyes, mark the many empty cartridge shells. He looks up and sees that his comrades have already noted them, while some one remarks : — "By ,he stayed with them while he lasted."