April arrived and with it the clans, coming at my
bidding. Soon there would be little danger of heavy
rains in the coast valleys. To have been caught
there in a week of rain with an army would have been
fatal, for the mud is deep and sticky and our horses would
have mired and the Kalkars fallen upon us and destroyed
us. They greatly outnumber us, and so our only hope must
lie in our mobility. We realize that we are reducing this
by taking along our women and our flocks, but we believe
that so desperate will be our straits that we must conquer,
since the only alternative to victory must be death—death
for us and worse for our women and children.
The clans have been gathering for two days and all are
here—some fifty thousand souls, and of horses, cattle and
sheep there must be a thousand thousand, for we are rich
in live stock. In the past two months, at my orders, all
our swine have been slaughtered and smoked, for we could
not be hampered by them on the long desert march, even
if they could have survived it.
There is water in the desert this time of year and some
feed, but it will be a hard, a terrible march. We shall lose
a great deal of our stock, one in ten, perhaps; The Wolf
thinks it may be as high as five in ten. We shall start tomorrow
an hour before sunset, making a short march of
about ten miles to a place where there is a spring along the
trail the ancients used. It is strange to see all across the
desert evidence of the great work they accomplished. After
five hundred years the location of their well graded trail, with
its wide, sweeping curves, is plainly discernible. It is a
narrow trail, but there are signs of another, much wider,
that we discover occasionally. It follows the general line
of the other, crossing it and recrossing it, without any apparent
reason, time and time again. It is almost obliterated
by drifting sand, or washed away by the rains of ages. Only
where it is of a material like stone has it endured. The
pains those ancients took with things! The time and men
and effort they expended! And for what? They have disappeared
and their works with them.
As we rode that first night Rain Cloud rode often at my
side and, as usual, he was gazing at the stars.
“There is so much that we do not know,” sighed Rain
Cloud; “yet all that we can spare the time for is thoughts
of fighting. I shall be glad when we have chased the last
of the Kalkars into the sea, so that some of us may sit
down in peace and think.”
“It is handed down to us that the ancients prided themselves
upon their knowledge, but what did it profit them?
I think we are happier. They must have had to work all
their lives to do the things they did and to know all the
things they knew, yet they could eat no more, or sleep no
more, or drink no more in a lifetime than can we. And
now they are gone forever from the Earth and all their
works with them and all their knowledge is lost.”
“And presently we will be gone,” said Rain Cloud.
“And we will have left as much as they to benefit those
who follow,” I replied.
“Perhaps you are right, Red Hawk,” said Rain Cloud;
“yet I cannot help wanting to know more than I do know.”
The second march was also made at night and was a
little longer than the first. We had a good moon and the
desert night was bright. The third march was about twenty-five
miles and the fourth a short one, only ten miles; and
there we left the trail of the ancients and continued in a
southwesterly direction to a trail that followed a series of
springs that gave us short marches the balance of the way
to a lake called Bear by our slaves. The way, of course,
was all well known to us, and so we knew just what was
ahead and dreaded the fifth march, which was a terrible
one, by far the worst of them all. It lay across a rough and
broken area of desert and crossed a range of barren mountains—for
forty-five miles it wound its parched way from
water hole to water hole. For horsemen alone it would have
been but a hard march, but with cattle and sheep to herd
across that waterless waste, it became a terrific undertaking.
Every beast that was strong enough carried hay, oats
or barley in sacks, for we could not depend entirely upon
the sparse feed of the desert for so huge a caravan; but
water we could not carry in sufficient quantities for the
stock, transporting enough, however, on the longer marches
to insure a supply for the women and all children under
sixteen, and on the short marches enough for nursing
mothers and children under ten.
We rested all day before the fifth march began, setting
forth about three hours before sundown. From fifty camps
in fifty parallel lines we started. Every man, woman and
child was mounted. The women carried all children under
five, usually seated astride a blanket on the horse’s rump
behind the mother. The rest rode alone. The bulk of the
warriors and all the women and children set out ahead of
the herds, which followed slowly behind, each bunch securely
hemmed in by outriders and followed by a rearguard
of warriors.
A hundred men on swift horses rode at the head of the
column, and as the night wore on, gradually increased their
lead until they were out of sight of the remainder of the
caravan. Their duty was to reach the camp site ahead of
the others and fill the water tanks that slaves had been
preparing for the past two months. We took but few slaves
with us, only a few personal attendants for the women and
such others as did not wish to be separated from their masters
and had chosen to accompany us. For the most part
the slaves preferred to remain in their own country and
we were willing to let them, since it made fewer mouths
to feed upon the long journey and we knew that in the
Kalkar country we should find plenty to take their places,
as we would take those from the Kalkars we defeated.
The long, tiresome march was over at last. The years of
thought that I had given it, the two months of preparation
that had immediately preceded it, the splendid condition of
all our stock, the training and the temper of my people bore
profitable fruit and we came through without the loss of a
man, woman or child, and with the loss of less than two in
a hundred of our herds and flocks. The mountain crossing
on that memorable fifth march took the heaviest toll, fully ten
thousand head, mostly lambs and calves, falling by the trail
side.
With two days out for rest, we came, at the end of the
tenth march and the twelfth day, to the lake called Bear
and into a rich mountain country, lush with feed and game.
Here deer and wild goats and wild sheep abounded, with
rabbit and quail and wild chicken and the beautiful wild
cattle that the legends of our slaves say are descended from
the domestic stock of the ancients.
It was not my plan to rest here longer than was necessary
to fully restore the strength and spirits of the stock.
Our horses were not jaded as we had had sufficient to
change often. In fact we warriors had not ridden our war-horses
once upon the journey. Red Lightning had trotted
into the last camp fat and sleek.
To have remained here long would have been to have
apprised the enemy of our plans, for the Kalkars and their
slaves hunt in these mountains which adjoin their land,
and should a single hunter see this vast concourse of Julians,
our coming would have been known throughout the valleys
in a single day and our purpose guessed by all.
So, after a day of rest, I sent The Wolf and a thousand
warriors westward to the main pass of the ancients with
orders to make it appear that we were attempting to enter
the valley there in force. For three days he would persist
in this false advance and in that time I felt that I should
have drawn all the Kalkar fighting men from the valley
lying southwest of the lake of the Bear. My lookouts were
posted upon every eminence that gave view of the valleys
and the trails between the main pass of the ancients and
that through which we should pour down from the Bear
out into the fields and groves of the Kalkars.
The third day was spent in preparation. The last of the
arrows were finished and distributed. We looked to our
saddle leathers and our bridles. We sharpened our swords
and knives once more and put keener points upon our lances.
Our women mixed the war paint and packed our belongings
again for another march. The herds were gathered in and
held in close, compact bunches. Riders reported to me at
intervals from the various lookouts and from down the trail
to the edge of the Kalkar farms. No enemy had seen us,
but that they had seen The Wolf and his warriors we had
the most reassuring evidence in the reports from our outposts
that every trail from south and west was streaming
with Kalkar warriors converging upon the pass of the ancients.[1]
[1]
Probably Cajon Pass.
During the third day we moved leisurely down the mountain
trails and as night fell our vanguard of a thousand
warriors debouched into the groves of the Kalkars. Leaving
four thousand warriors, mostly youths, to guard the
women, the children, the flocks and the herds I set out
rapidly in a northwesterly direction toward the pass of the
ancients at the head of full twenty thousand warriors.
Our war-horses we had led all day as we came slowly
out of the mountains riding other animals, and not until we
were ready to start upon the twenty-five mile march to the
pass of the ancients did we saddle and mount the fleet
beasts upon which the fate of the Julians might rest this
night. In consequence our horses were fresh from a two
weeks’ rest. Three hours of comparatively easy riding
should see us upon the flanks of the enemy.
The Rock, a brave and seasoned warrior, I had left behind
to guard the women, the children and the stock. The
Rattlesnake, with five thousand warriors, bore along a more
westerly trail, after fifteen miles had been covered, that he
might fall upon the rear of the enemy from one point while
I fell upon them from another, and at the same time place
himself between their main body, lying at the foot of the
pass, and the source of their supplies and reinforcements.
With The Wolf, the mountains and the desert upon one
side and The Rattlesnake and I blocking them upon the
south and the southeast, the position of the Kalkars appeared
to me to be hopeless.
Toward midnight I called a halt to await the report of
scouts who had preceded us and it was not long before they
commenced to come in. From them I learned that the camp
fires of the Kalkars were visible from an eminence less than
a mile ahead. I gave the signal to advance. Slowly the
great mass of warriors moved forward. The trail dipped
down into a little valley and then wound upward to the
crest of a low ridge, where a few minutes later I brought
Red Lightning to a halt. Before me spread a broad valley
bathed in the soft light of moon and stars. Dark masses
in the nearer foreground I recognized as orange groves
even without the added evidence of the sweet aroma of
their blossoms that was heavy on the still night air. Beyond,
to the northwest, a great area was dotted with the
glowing embers of a thousand dying camp fires. I filled
my lungs with the cool, sweet air; I felt my nerves tingle;
a wave of exaltation surged through me; Red Lightning
trembled beneath me. After nearly four hundred years a
Julian stood at last, upon the threshold of complete revenge!
