the basket woman was washing for the homesteader's wife at the spring, and alan, by this time very good friends with her, was pulling up sagebrush for the fire, when the coyote came by. it was a clear, wide morning, warm and sweet, with gusty flaws of cooler air moving down from pine mountain. there was a lake of purple lupins in the swale, and the last faint flush of wild almonds burning on the slope. the grapevines at the spring were full of bloom and tender leaf. eastward, above the high tilted mesa under the open sky, the buzzards were making a merry-go-round. that was the way alan always thought of their performance when he saw them circling slantwise under the sun. round and round they went, now so low that he could see how the shabby wing feathers frayed out at the edges, now so high that they became mere specks against the sky.
"what makes them go round and round?" asked alan of the mahala.
"they go about to wait for their dinner, but the table is not yet spread," said she. the basket woman did not use quite such good english; but though alan understood her broken talk, you probably would not. the little boy could not imagine, though he tried, what a buzzard's dinner might be like. the high mesa, with the water of mirage rolling over it, was a kind of enchanted land to him where almost anything might happen. he would lie contentedly for hours with his head pillowed on the hillocks of blown sand about the roots of the sage, and look up at the merry-go-round. he noticed that, although others joined them from the invisible upper sky, none ever seemed to go away, but hung and circled and faded into the thin blue deeps of air. often he saw them settle flockwise below the rim of the mesa and beyond his sight, wondering greatly what they might be about.
the morning at the spring he watched them in the intervals of tending the sagebrush fire, and then it was that the coyote came by, going in that direction. his head was cocked to one side, and he seemed to watch the merry-go-round out of the corner of his eye as he went.
alan thought the little gray beast had not seen them at the spring, but in that he was mistaken. a quarter of an hour before, as he came up out of the gully that hid his lair, the coyote had sighted the boy and the basket woman and made sure in his own mind that they had no gun. so, as it lay in his way, he came quite close to them; opposite the spring he paused a moment with one foot lifted, and eyed them with a wise and secret look. he went on toward the mesa, stopped again, looked back and then up at the whirling buzzards, and went on again.
"where does that one go?" asked alan.
"eh," said the basket woman, "he goes also to the dinner. it is good eating they have out there on the mesa together."
alan looked after him, and the coyote paused and looked back over his shoulder as one who expects to be followed, and quite suddenly it came into the boy's mind to go up on the mesa and see what it was all about. the basket woman was bent above her tubs and did not see him go; when she missed him she supposed he had gone back to the house. alan trotted on after the coyote until he lost him in a sunken place full of boulders and black sage; but he had been headed still toward that spot above which the black wings beat dizzily, and that way alan went, climbing by the help of stout shrubs to the mesa, which here fell off steeply to the valley, and then on until he saw his coyote or another one, going steadily toward the merry-go-round.
the mesa was very warm, and swam in misty blueness although the day was clear. dim shapes of mountains stood up on the far edge, and near by a procession of lonely, low hills rounded like the backs of dolphins appearing out of the sea. stubby shrubs as tall as alan's shoulder covered the mesa sparingly, and in wide spaces there were beds of yellow-flowered prickly-pear; singly and far stood up tall stems of white-belled yucca, called in that country candles of our lord. alan could not follow the coyote close among the scrub, but dropped presently into a cattle trail that ran toward the place where he supposed the coyote's dinner must be, and so trudged on in it while the sun wheeled high in the heavens and the whole air of the mesa quivered with the heat.
it is certain that in his wanderings alan must have traveled that day and the next as much as twenty miles from the spring, though he might easily have been lost in less time, for his head hardly came above the tops of the scrub, and there were no landmarks to guide by, other than the low hills which seemed to alter nothing whichever way one looked at them. as for the buzzards, they rose higher and higher into the dim, quivering air. alan began to be thirsty, next tired, and then hungry. he tried to turn toward home, but got no nearer, and finally understood that he might be lost, so he ran about wildly for a time, which made matters no better. he began to cry and to run eagerly at the same time until, blind and breathless, he would fall and lie sobbing, and wish that he might see his mother or the basket woman come walking across the mesa with her basket on her back. by this time it was hot and close and he had come where the scant-leaved shrubs were far between, and with heat and running the tears were dried out of him. he sobbed in his breath and his lips were cracked and dry. it fell cooler as night drew on, but he grew sick with hunger, and shuddered with the fear of darkness. far off across the mesa the coyotes began to howl.
down in the homesteader's cabin nobody slept that night. when they first missed alan, which was at noon, no one had the least idea where he was. his mother had supposed him at the spring, and the basket woman thought he had gone to his mother. it was all open ground about the cabin from the mesa and the foot of the hills, and below it toward the valley bare stretches of moon-white sands.
the homesteader thought that the boy might have gone to the campoodie; but there they found he had not been, and none of the indians had seen him; but by three of the clock they were all out beating about the spring to pick up the light trail of his feet, and there they were when the quick dark came on and stopped them.
by the earliest light of the next morning the basket woman, who was really very fond of him, had come out of her hut to ask for news, but when she had looked up to the sky for a token of what the day was to be, she saw the buzzards come slantwise out of space and begin the merry-go-round. all at once she remembered alan's question of the day before, and though she could not reasonably expect any one to take any notice of it, an idea came into her head and a gleam into her beady eyes. she caught her pony from the corral, riding him astride as indian women ride, with the wicker water bottle slung across her shoulder and a parcel of food hid in her bosom. she went up the mesa rim toward the spot where the buzzards swung circling in the sky.
when alan awoke that morning under the creosote bush, he thought he must have come nearly to the place he had meant to find the day before. there was the coyote skulking out in the cactus scrub, and the buzzards wheeling low and large. it was a hot, smoky morning, the soil was all of coarse gravel, loose and white. over to the right of him lay a still blue pool, and a broad river flowed into it in soft billows without sound. the coyote went toward it, looking back over his shoulder, and allan followed, for his tongue was swollen in his mouth with thirst. the little boy was quite clear in his mind; he knew that he was lost, that he was very hungry, and that it was necessary to find his father and mother very soon. as he had come toward the mountains the day before, he thought that he should start directly away from them. he thought he could not be far from the campoodie, for it came to him dimly that he had heard the indians singing the coyote song in the night, but he meant to have a drink in the soft still billows of the stream. a little ahead of him the coyote seemed to have gone into it, his head just cleared the surface, and the water heaved to the movements of his shoulders. but somehow alan got no nearer to it. the stream seemed to loop and curve away from him, and presently he saw the lake behind him and could not think how that could be, for he did not understand that it was a lake and river of mirage. he saw the trees stand up on its borders, and fancied that the air which came from it was moist and cool. always the coyote went before and showed him the way, and at last he lifted up his long thin muzzle and made a doleful cry. mostly it seemed to alan that the coyotes howled like dogs, but a little crazily; now it appeared that this one spoke in words that he could understand. when he told his mother of it afterwards, she said it was only the fever of his thirst and fatigue, but the basket woman believed him.
"ho, ho!" cried the coyote, "come, come, my brothers, to the hunting! come!"
a great black shadow of wings fell over them and a voice cried huskily, "what of the quarry?"
"the quarry is close at hand," said the coyote, and alan wondered dizzily what they might be talking about. he could not look up, for his eyes were nearly blinded by the light that beat up from the sand, but he saw wing shadows thickening on the ground.
"where do you go now?" cried the voice in the upper air.
"round and about to the false water until he is very weary," said the coyote; and it seemed to alan that he must follow where the gray dog went in a maze of moving shadows. he trembled and fell from weakness a great many times and lay with his face in the shelter of the prickle bushes, but always he got up and went on again.
"have a care," cried the voice in the air, "here comes one of his own kind."
"what and where?" said the coyote.
"it is a brown one riding on a horse; she comes up from the gully of big rocks."
"does she follow a trail?" panted the coyote.
"she follows no trail, but rides fast in this direction," croaked the voice, but alan took no interest in it. he did not know that it was the basket woman coming to rescue him. he thought of the merry-go-round, for he saw that he had come back to the creosote bush where he had spent the night, and he thought the earth had come round with him, for it rocked and reeled as he went. his tongue hung out of his mouth and his lips cracked and bled, his feet were blistered and aching from the sharp rocks, the hot sands, and cactus thorns. round and round with him went scrub and sand, on one side the shadow of black wings, and on the other the smooth flow of mirage water which he might never reach. through it all he could hear the soft biff, biff of the broad wings and the long, hungry, whining howl that seemed to detach itself from any throat and come upon him from all quarters of the quivering air. dizzily went the merry-go-round, and now it seemed that the false water swung nearer, that it went around with him, that it bore him up, for he no longer felt the earth under him, that it buoyed and floated him far out from the place where he had been, that it grew deliciously cool at last, that it laved his face and flowed in his parched throat; and at last he opened his eyes and found the basket woman trickling water in his mouth from her wicker water bottle. it was noon of his second day from home when she found him on cactus flat, by going straight to the point where she saw the black wings hanging in the air. she laid him on the horse before her and dripped water in his mouth and coaxed and called to him, but never left off riding nor halted until she came up with others of the search party who had followed up by the place where alan had climbed to the mesa, and followed slowly by a faint trail. but to alan it was all as if he had dreamed that the basket woman had brought him as before from the valley of corn water. the first that he realized was that his father had him, and that his mother was crying and kissing the basket woman. it was several days before he was able to be about again, and then only under promise that he would go no farther than the spring. the first thing he saw when he looked up was the buzzards high up over the mesa making a merry-go-round in the clear blue, and it was then he remembered that he had not yet found out what it was all about.
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