Citadel of Fear | Page 2

became set with a million flashing jewels.
And under the stars cool night-winds roved, like stealthy, invisible
prowlers. Up among the rocks they came, stirring the hair of two
escaped prisoners of the sun as if with curious fingers.
As their chill, stealthy breath struck through to his heated body the
smaller man shivered in his sleep. His companion rolled over and took
the unblanketed form in his arms; to share with it his own warmth and

unconquerable vitality.
Dawn came, a hint of dun light. The stars faded and fled in a moment,
and saffron glory smote the desert into transitory gold. One man had
slept little and the other much, but it was the first who rose strongly
from the bare rock and roused the second to action.
"We're our own men again," he asserted with confident optimism. "'Tis
time we were proving it, and though cold water's a poor breakfast, that's
but encouragement to find a better. Come, now. Stand up on your own
two feet, Mr. Kennedy, the way we may be seeking it."
Unwillingly the other raised himself. His face, save for the dark stubble
of a three days' divorce from the razor, was clean-shaven, and his black
hair, dark, alert eyes, and the tan inflicted by a Mexican sun, gave him
almost the look of an Indian.
His companion, on the other hand, was of that blond, freckled type
which burns, but hardly tans at all, and his young, homely face flamed
red beneath a thatch of hair nearly as ruddy.
Well over six fit in height, lean, tough, with great loose-moving
shoulders and slim waist, Colin O'Hara looked what he was, a stalwart
young Irishman whose full power was yet to come with years, but who
even at twenty excelled most men in strength and stamina. Under his
worn flannel shirt the muscles played, not in lumpy hillocks, but in
those long, easy curves that promise endless endurance.
"Come along," he repeated. "They'll be waiting breakfast for us up the
arroyo."
"Who will? Oh--just some more of your nonsense, eh? Can't we even
starve to death without your joking over it?"
"And for why should we starve; little man? Take the edge off your
temper with this, then."
He tossed over something which Kennedy caught with eager hands, and

bit through its gray-green skin almost before looking at it.
"A lechera pear, eh?" He gulped and bit again. "Where did you get it?"
The other pointed at the rushing stream. "It came floating down last
night and I saved it, thinking you might need a bit of encouragement
the morn."
"Only one?" demanded Kennedy with a quick, greedily suspicious
glance.
"Only one."
Finishing the milky pulp hurriedly, the dark man washed its sticky juice
from face and hands and turned with a grin.
"You're a fool to have given it all away then--too big a fool for me to
believe in. How many did you eat, really?"
The Irishman's red brows drew together. He turned away.
"I gave you it all that I might be saved the carrying of you," he flung
back. "I'd enough o' that yesterday."
He was striding upstream now, and Kennedy followed, scowling at his
swinging back.
"I say, Boots," he called in a moment. "You know I meant nothing.
You saved my life, I admit, and--thanks for the pear."
"Boots" (the nickname being probably derived from the enormous pair
of cowhides in which the young Irishman had essayed desert travel)
flung back a brief: "It's all right," and tramped steadily on. He was not
the man to quarrel over so trifling a matter.
As for their present goal, the best that even optimistic Boots hoped for
was some uncultivated valley where they might precariously sustain
life on wild fruit and such game as they could take without weapons.
Barren, unpopulated, forsaken even of the Indians, this region had an

evil reputation. "Collados del Demonio," Hills of the Fiend, the
Mexicans called it. So far as Cuachictin at the desert's rim the
prospectors had come without trouble. Those were the days when
Porfirio Diaz still kept his iron grip on the throat of Mexico, and by
consequence even a "puerco gringo" might travel through it in safety.
But Cuachictin offered them no encouragement to further progress.
Kennedy had tried in vain to persuade some native of that Indian
settlement to accompany them as a guide. Gold? Ah, yes, there was
gold in the hills. Gold in nuggets as big as your closed fist--so. But also
devils.
Was it not known that in ancient days all Anahuac was inhabited by
giants? Even now, in turning new fields, a man was likely to uncover
their enormous bones. Their terrible white ghosts overran the hills.
They hunted the hills with the ghosts of white cougars