Heart of the Sunset

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Heart of the Sunset

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Heart of the Sunset, by Rex Beach (#4 in our series by Rex Beach)
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Title: Heart of the Sunset
Author: Rex Beach
Release Date: February, 2004 [EBook #5099] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on April 25, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, HEART OF THE SUNSET ***

Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

HEART OF THE SUNSET
By Rex Beach
Author of "THE SILVER HORDE" "THE SPOILERS" "THE IRON TRAIL" Etc.

CONTENTS
I. THE WATER-HOLE
II. THE AMBUSH
III. WHAT HAPPENED AT THE WATER-HOLE
IV. AN EVENING AT LAS PALMAS
V. SOMETHING ABOUT HEREDITY
VI. A JOURNEY, AND A DARK MAN
VII. LUIS LONGORIO
VIII. BLAZE JONES'S NEMESIS
IX. A SCOUTING TRIP
X. A RANGER'S HORSE
XI. JUDGE ELLSWORTH EXACTS A PROMISE
XII. LONGORIO MAKES BOLD
XIII. DAVE LAW BECOMES JEALOUS
XIV. JOSE SANCHEZ SWEARS AN OATH
XV. THE TRUTH ABOUT PANFILO
XVI. THE RODEO
XVII. THE GUZMAN INCIDENT
XVIII. ED AUSTIN TURNS AT BAY
XIX. RANGERS
XX. SUPERSTITIONS AND CERTAINTIES
XXI. AN AWAKENING
XXII. WHAT ELLSWORTH HAD TO SAY
XXIII. THE CRASH
XXIV. DAVE LAW COMES HOME
XXV. A WARNING AND A SURPRISE
XXVI. THE WATER-CURE
XXVII. LA FERIA
XXVIII. THE DOORS OF PARADISE
XXIX. THE PRIEST FROM MONCLOVA
XXX. THE MAN OF DESTINY
XXXI. A SPANISH WILL
XXXII. THE DAWN

HEART OF THE SUNSET
I
THE WATER-HOLE
A fitful breeze played among the mesquite bushes. The naked earth, where it showed between the clumps of grass, was baked plaster hard. It burned like hot slag, and except for a panting lizard here and there, or a dust-gray jack-rabbit, startled from its covert, nothing animate stirred upon its face. High and motionless in the blinding sky a buzzard poised; long-tailed Mexican crows among the thorny branches creaked and whistled, choked and rattled, snored and grunted; a dove mourned inconsolably, and out of the air issued metallic insect cries--the direction whence they came as unascertainable as their source was hidden.
Although the sun was half-way down the west, its glare remained untempered, and the tantalizing shade of the sparse mesquite was more of a trial than a comfort to the lone woman who, refusing its deceitful invitation, plodded steadily over the waste. Stop, indeed, she dared not. In spite of her fatigue, regardless of the torture from feet and limbs unused to walking, she must, as she constantly assured herself, keep going until strength failed. So far, fortunately, she had kept her head, and she retained sufficient reason to deny the fanciful apprehensions which clamored for audience. If she once allowed herself to become panicky, she knew, she would fare worse--far worse--and now, if ever, she needed all her faculties. Somewhere to the northward, perhaps a mile, perhaps a league distant, lay the water-hole.
But the country was of a deadly and a deceitful sameness, devoid of landmarks and lacking well-defined water-courses. The unending mesquite with its first spring foliage resembled a limitless peach-orchard sown by some careless and unbelievably prodigal hand. Out of these false acres occasional knolls and low stony hills lifted themselves so that one came, now and then, to vantage-points where the eye leaped for great distances across imperceptible valleys to horizons so far away that the scattered tree-clumps were blended into an unbroken carpet of green. To the woman these outlooks were unutterably depressing, merely serving to reveal the vastness of the desolation about her.
At the crest of such a rise she paused and studied the country carefully, but without avail. She felt dizzily for the desert bag swung from her shoulder, only to find it flat and dry; the galvanized mouthpiece burned her fingers. With a little shock she remembered that she had done this very thing several times before, and her repeated forgetting frightened her, since it seemed to show that her mind had been slightly unbalanced by the heat. That perhaps explained why the distant horizon swam and wavered so.
In all probability a man situated as she was would have spoken aloud, in an endeavor to steady himself; but this woman did nothing of the sort. Seating herself in the densest shade she could find--it