The Forbidden Trail

"Come, Peter," he said gently. "I'll swim beside you so you needn't be afraid."

Peter moved his long ears back and forth.

"Come! Come! Don't make me beat you. Come, Peter."

Peter did not stir. Roger picked up a bit of driftwood and belaboured Peter's gray sides, but the beating might have been a sand flea hopping on him for all it appeared to move Peter.

"Darn you, Peter!" shouted Roger. "Have you quit me too? I tell you, you shall not! Come now, I'm too tired to argue."

He plunged once more into the water, once more swam into the current, whistling Peter's call as he did so. But to no avail. When he reached the bank this time he was angry. He roared at Peter and kicked at him with his bare toes. But he kicked him only once. Peter's ribs were strong and none too well covered.

Peter looked at Roger's thin white body and his brown angry face, moved his ears, breathed hard and snorted.

Roger roared again. "All right, sir! All right, sir! If you won't come with me, neither shall you go back to the Germans and their sympathizers. I'll fix you, young fellow!"

He led Peter up to a mesquite tree and with trembling fingers tied the little gray head as high as he could pull it.

"There," he said, "you can stay there till the buzzards get you" and without a backward glance he swam once more across to the island.

Here he dressed and lay for a time resting in the sand. The sun had sunk behind the ranges. The night shadows in the valley were cool. Partly because of this, partly from sheer nervous and physical exhaustion, Roger shivered. Finally when twilight had settled in the valley, he sat up and gazed across the river. It was too dark to see Peter. There was only the murmur of the river in all that barren solitude. Then suddenly Peter brayed. It was not the usual ridiculous hee haw of the burro but a strange blending of whinny and scream. Roger shuddered and told himself that he would keep Peter company just a little longer, then move on.

The desert night came on quickly and completely. The great desert stars had pricked out before the last light had left the mountain tops. An hour passed, then two. Roger was too weary to build a fire, too wretched to sleep. He sat huddled in the sand, his head against a great cottonwood log, his face toward the river. A dim red edge began to show over the ranges. It lifted into a crescent, then into a half circle. Suddenly the little valley was flooded with white light and the moon sailed free over the sliding river.