Mojave Crossing (1964) by Louis - Sackett's L'amour Read Free Book Online Page A

like before, I taken up a canteen and slung it around my neck where it couldn't slip off.
    We'd slumped down at the foot of a great chunk of white granite, off by itself from the foot of the mountain. Others like it were around, and, starved for water though I was, I had sense enough to fix the shape of it in my mind ... else I might never find my way back. Not that it was going to matter, if I didn't find water.
    "I'll find water," I said out loud.
    If she heard me at all, she gave no sign of it, but just lay there on the sand. So I turned and walked off.
    The desert sand was white and hot, and the sunlight blazed back from the sand into my face and there was no shielding myself from it. After I had taken only a few steps I began to stagger. Once I fell against a rock and stood there for several minutes, I guess, before I got started again.
    My eyes were on the sand, for I was hunting tracks. But something buzzed in my brain--something like an alarm bell of some kind--and then it was gone.
    Pausing, I felt my eyes blinking and I made my head turn, and there was a man standing on a rock some distance off.
    As my eyes focused on him he lifted a rifle, sunlight glinted on the barrel, and he fired. Instinct made me grab for my gun, but the movement overbalanced me and I fell. That much I remember ... and then nothing else for a long time.
    Cold ... I was cold.
    Feebly, I tried to burrow into the sand for warmth, but warmth would not come. My eyes opened, and I tried to swallow. My throat was raw, and the membranes of it chafed and tightened with the attempt.
    Somehow I got my hands under me and lifted myself up. It was night, it was cold, and it was very dark. Stars were out, a chill wind was blowing but I was alive.
    Alive ...
    I started to crawl.
    Suddenly a coyote yapped weirdly, not very far off, somewhere among the rocks, and I stopped.
    When I started to crawl again something moved near me and something clicked on stone.
    I knew that sound. A hoof ... but not a horse.
    Forcing my stiff neck to bend, I looked up and saw it there, black against the sky for an instant. A bighorn sheep. ...
    In the half-delirium that clouded my brain I felt irritation at the thought of the name. The bighorn was no more a sheep than I was. It was a deer. It had a body like a deer, hair like a deer ... even the same color. Only the horns were different.
    I crawled on, and the blood started moving within me. Pain awakened, I felt raw and torn inside, my body ached.
    The bighorn would have to have water, so there must be water near. Forcing my muddled thoughts into line, I struggled to think more clearly. The bighorn had gone into the canyon, so the water must be there ... at this hour he would be joining others of his kind at water, or would be leaving it.
    Somehow I moved on, and then all movement ceased. Something stirred in me and I tried to move on, but I could not.
    And then I felt the sun upon my back, and it was hot, terribly hot. My eyes opened and I struggled. In my mind was terror--terror of death, terror of dying here, like this. ... And there was memory of the sheep. Pulling myself to hands and knees, I stared blearily around for tracks, and found none, for I had crawled upon the rock, bare rock where I saw not even the scars from hoofs.
    Suddenly something buzzed by me and sang off into the distance.
    A bullet? The sound lasted too long.
    Struggling on, I paused again, hearing a queer, cricket-like sound. I knew that sound. It was the croaking made by the red-spotted frog.
    And I knew something else. The life of that frog was lived in canyons or in places near permanent springs or seeps.
    Water was near.
    With a lunge, I came to my feet as though pricked with a knife point. Wildly, I stared around, and saw nothing.
    And then that sound again ... something buzzed by me that I knew for a bee. Quickly I started after it, taking three faltering steps before realizing that the sound had died away.
    Scrambling and falling among the rocks, I