"'The human polyp incessantly builds upon a coral reef. They become lithified as it were and constitute the strata of the psychozoic stage'—I told you the butter's at the spring. Will you leave me alone? That's the third page I've spoiled over psycho-what-you-call-it. Go on back and herd your goats, and for gracious sake, can that tulip-and-rose song! I hate it." Helen May ripped a page with two carbon copies out of the machine, pulled out the carbons and crumpled three sheets of paper into a ball which she threw into a far corner.
"Gee, but you're pecky to-day! You act like an extra slammed into a sob lead and gettin' up stage about it. I wish that long-worded hide had never showed up with his soiled package of nut science. A feller can'tlivewith you, by gosh, since you—"
"Well, listen to this, Vic! 'There is a radical difference between organic and social evolution, the formula most easily expressing this distinction being that environment transforms the animal, while man transforms the environment. This transformation—'"
"Hel-up! Hel-up!" Vic went staggering out of the door with his palm pressed against his forehead in the gesture meant to register great mental agony, while his face was split with that nearly famous comedy grin of his. "Serves you right," he flung hack at her in his normal tone of brotherly condescension. "The way you fell for that nut, like you was a starved squirrel shut up in a peanut wagon, by gosh! Hope you're bogged down in jawbreakers the rest of the summer. Serves yuh right, but you needn't think you can take it out on me. And," he draped himself around the door jamb to add pointedly, "you should worry about the tulip song. If I'm willing to stand for you yawping day and night about the sun growin' co-old, and all that bunk—"
"Oh, beat it, and shut up!" Helen May looked up from evening the edges of fresh paper and carbon to say sharply: "You better take a look and see where Billy is. And I'll tell you one thing: If you go and lose any more goats, you needn't think for a minute that I'll walk my head off getting them for you."
"Aw, where do you get that line—walk your head off? I seem to remember a close-up of you riding home on horseback with moonlight atmosphere and a fellow to drive your goats. And you giving him the baby-eyed stare like he was a screen idol and you was an extra that was strong for him. Bu-lieve me, Helen Blazes, I'm wise. You're wishing a goat would get lost—now, while the moon's workin' steady!"
"Oh, beat it, Vic! I've got work to do, if you haven't." And to prove it,Helen May began to type at her best speed.
Vic languidly removed himself from the door jamb and with a parting "I should bibble," started back to his goats, which he had refused to graze outside the Basin as Holman Sommers advised. Helen May began valiantly to struggle with the fine, symmetrical, but almost unreadable chirography of the man of many words. She succeeded in transcribing the human polyp properly lithified and correctly constituting the strata of the psychozoic age, when Vic stuck his head in at the door again.
"From the des-urt he comes to thee-ee-ee,And he's got a dog for thee to see-ee."
He paraphrased mockingly, going down to that terrifically deep-sea bass note of a boy whose voice is changing.
Helen May threw her eraser at him and missed. It went hurtling out into the yard and struck Starr on the point of the jaw, as he was riding up to the cabin.
Whereat Vic gave a brazenly exultant whoop and rushed off to his goats, bellowing raucously:
"When you wore a too-lup, a sweet yellow too-lup'N I wore a big red ro-o-ose—"
and looking back frequently in a half curious, half wistful way. Vic, if you will stop to think of it, had been transplanted rather suddenly from the midst of many happy-go-lucky companions to an isolation lightened only by a mere sister's vicarious comradeship. If he yearned secretly for a share of Starr's interest, surely no one can blame him; but that he should voluntarily remove himself from Starr's presence in the belief that he had come to see Helen May exclusively, proves that Vic had the makings of a hero.
Starr dismounted and picked up the eraser from under the investigative nose of a coarse-haired, ugly, brown and black dog that had been following Rabbit's heels. He took the eraser to Helen May, standing embarrassed in the doorway, and the dog followed and sniffed first her slipper toes and then her hands, which she held out to it ingratiatingly; after which appraisement the dog waggled its stub of a tail in token of his friendliness.
"If you was a Mexican he'd a showed you his teeth," Starr observed pridefully. "How are you, after your jaunt the other night?"
"Just fine," Helen May testified graciously. It just happened (or had it just happened?) that she was dressed that day in a white crêpe de chine blouse and a white corduroy skirt, and had on white slippers and white stockings. At the top button of her blouse (she could not have touched that button with her chin if she had tried) was a brown velvet bow the exact shade of her eyes. Her hair was done low and loose with a negligent wave where it turned back from her left eyebrow. Peter had worshipped dumbly his Babe in that particular dress, and had considered her beautiful. One cannot wonder then that Starr's eyes paid tribute with a second long glance.
Starr had ridden a good many miles out of his way and had argued for a good while, and had finally paid a good many dollars to get the dog that sniffed and wagged at Helen May. The dog was a thoroughbred Airedale and had been taught from its puppyhood to herd goats and fight all intruders upon his flock and to hate Mexicans wherever he met them. He had learned to do both very thoroughly, hence the argument and the dollars necessary before Starr could gain possession of him.
Starr did not need a dog; certainly not that dog. He had no goats to herd, and he could hate Mexicana without any help or encouragement when they needed hating. But he had not grudged the trouble and expense, because Helen May needed it. He might have earned more gratitude had he told her the truth instead of hiding it like guilt. This was his way of going at the subject, and he waited, mind you, until he had announced nonchalantly that he must be getting along, and that he had just stopped to get a drink and to see how they were making out!
"Blame dog's taken a notion to you. Followed me out from town. I throwed rocks at him till my arm ached—"
"Why, you mean thing! You might have hit him and hurt him, and he's a nice dog. Poor old purp! Did he throw rocks, honest? Hedid? Well, just for that, I've got a nice ham bone that you can have to gnaw on, and he can't have a snippy bit of it. All he can do is eat a piece of lemon pie that will probably make him sick. We hope so, don't we? Throwing rocks at a nice, ugly, stubby dog that wanted to follow!"
Starr accepted the pie gratefully and looked properly ashamed of himself. The dog accepted the ham bone and immediately stretched himself out with his nose and front paws hugging it close, and growling threats at imaginary vandals. Now and then he glanced up gratefully at Helen May, who continued to speak of him in a commiserating tone.
"He sure has taken a notion to you," Starr persisted between mouthfuls. "You can have him, for all of me. I don't want the blame cur tagging me around. I'm liable to take a shot at him if I get peeved over something—"
"You dare!" Helen May regarded him sternly from under her lashes, her chin tilted downward. "Do you always take a shot at something when you get peeved?"
"Well, I'm liable to," Starr admitted darkly. "A dog especially. You better keep him if you don't want him hurt or anything." He took a bite of pie. (It was not very good pie. The crust was soggy because Johnny Calvert's cook stove was not a good baker, and the frosting had gone watery, because the eggs were stale, and Helen May had made a mistake and used too much sugar in the filling; but Starr liked it, anyway, just because she had made it.) "Maybe you can learn him to herd goats," he suggested, as though the idea had just occurred to him.
"Oh, I wonder if he would! Would you, doggums?"
"We'll try him a whirl and see," Starr offered cheerfully. He finished the pie in one more swallow, handed back the plate, and wiped his fingers, man-fashion, on his trousers.
"Come on, Pat. He likes Pat for a name," he explained carefully to Helen May. "I called him about every name I could think of, and that's the one he seems to sabe most."
"I should say he does! Why, he left his bone when you called Pat. Now that's a shame, doggums!"
"Oh, well, we'll let him polish off his bone first." Starr made the offer with praiseworthy cheerfulness, and sat down on his heels with his back against the adobe wall to wait the dog's pleasure.
"Well, that makes up for some of the rocks," Helen May approved generously, "and for some of the names you say you called him. And that reminds me, Man of the Desert, I suppose you have a name of some sort. I never heard what it was. Is it—Smith, perhaps?"
"My name's Starr," he told her, with a little glow under the tan of his cheeks. "S, t, a, double r, Starr. I forgot I never told you. I've got a couple of given names, but I'd want to shoot a man that called me by 'em. Folks always call me just Starr, and maybe a few other things behind my back."
Helen May dropped her chin and looked at him steadily from under her eyebrows. "If there's anything that drives me perfectly wild," she said finally, "it's a mystery. I've just simply got to know what those names are. I'll never mention them, honest. But—"
"Chauncy DeWitt," Starr confessed. "Forget 'em. They was wished onto me when I wasn't able to defend myself."
"Given names are horrid things, aren't they?" Helen May sympathized. "I think mine is perfectly imbecile. Fathers and mothers shouldn't be allowed to choose names for their children. They ought to wait till the kids are big enough to choose for themselves. If I ever have any, I'll call them It. When they grow up they can name themselves anything they like."
"You've got no right to kick," Starr declared bluntly. "Your name suits you fine."
His eyes said more than that, so that Helen May gave her attention to the dog. "There, now, you've licked it and polished it and left teeth marks all over it," she said, meaning the bone. "Come on, Pat, and let's see if you're a trained doggums." She looked up at Starr and smiled. "Suppose he starts running after them; he might chase them clear off the ranch, and then what?"
"I guess the supply of rocks'll hold out," Starr hinted, and snapped his fingers at the dog, which went to heel as a matter of course.
"If you throw rocks at that dog, I'll throw rocks at you," Helen May threatened viciously.
"And I'll hit, and you'll miss," Starr added placidly. "Come on, let's get busy and see if you deserved that bone."
Helen May had learned from uncomfortable experience that high-heeled slippers are not made for tramping over rocks and sand. She said that she would come as soon as she put on some shoes; but Starr chose to wait for her, though he pretended, to himself as much as to her, that he must take the bridle off Rabbit and let him pick a few mouthfuls of grass while he had the chance. Also he loosened the cinch and killed a fly or two on Rabbit's neck, and so managed to put in the time until Helen May appeared in her khaki skirt and her high boots.
"That's the sensible outfit for this work," Starr plucked up courage to comment as they started off. "That kid brother of yours must get pretty lonesome too, out here," he added. "If you had some one to stay with you, I'd take him out on a trip with me once in a while and show him the country and let him learn to handle himself with a horse and gun. A fellow's got to learn, in this country. So have you. How about it? Ever shoot a gun, either of you?"
"Vic used to keep me broke, begging money for the shooting gallery down near our place," said Helen May. "I used to shoot there a little."
"Popgun stuff, but good practice," said Starr succinctly. "Got a gun on the ranch?"
"No, only Vic's little single-shot twenty-two. That's good enough for jack rabbits. What would we want a gun for?"
Starr laughed. "Season's always open for coyotes, and you could pick up a little money in bounties now and then, if you had a gun," he said. "That would keep you out in the open, too. I dunno but what I've got a rifle I could let you have. I did have one, a little too light a calibre for me, but it would be just about right for you. It's a 25-35 carbine. I'm right sure I've got that gun on hand yet. I'll bring it over to you. You sure ought to have a gun."
They were nearing the goats scattered over the slope that was shadiest, chosen for Vic's comfort and not because of any thought for his charges. Vic himself was sprawled in the shade of a huge rock, and for pastime he was throwing rocks at every ground squirrel that poked its nose out of a hole. The two hundred goats were scattered far and wide, but as long as Billy was nibbling a bush within sight, Vic did not worry about the rest. He lifted himself to a sitting posture and grinned when the two came up.
"Didn't think to bring any pie, I s'pose?" he hinted broadly, and grinned companionably at Starr.
"You've had two handouts since lunch. I guess you'll last another hour," Helen May retorted unfeelingly. "See the dog that followed Mr. Starr out from town, Vic! We're going to see if he can herd goats."
"Well, if he can, he's got my permission, that's a cinch."
"I do believe he can; see him look at them! His name's Pat, and he likes me awfully well."
"Now, where does he get that idea?" taunted Vic, and winked openly at Starr, who was good enough to smile over what he considered a very poor joke.
"Well, let's see you bunch 'em, Pat." Starr made a wide, sweeping gesture with his left arm, his eyes darting a quick look at the girl.
Pat looked up at him, waggled his stub of a tail, and darted down the slope to the left, now and then uttering a yelp. Scattered goats lifted heads to look, their jaws working comically sidewise as though they felt they must dispose of that particular mouthful before something happened to prevent. As Pat neared them, they scrambled away from him, running to the right, which was toward the bulk of the band.
Down into the Basin itself the dog ran, after a couple of goats that had strayed out into the level. These he drove back in a panic of haste, dodging this way and that, nipping, yelping now and then, until they had joined the others. Then he went on to the further fringes of the hand, which evened like the edge of a pie crust under the practised fingers of a good cook.
"Well, would you look at that!" Helen May never having watched a good sheep-dog at work, spoke in an awed tone. "Vic, please write!"
Vic, watching open-mouthed, actually forgot to resent the implication that Pat had left him hopelessly behind in the art of handling goats.
"Seems to have the savvy, all right," Starr observed, just as though he had not paid all those dollars for the "savvy" that made Pat one of the best goat dogs in the State.
"Savvy? Why, that dog's human. Now, I suppose he's stopping over there to see what he must do next, is he?"
"Wants to know whether I want 'em all rounded up, or just edged up outa the Basin. G' round 'em, Pat," he called, and made a wide, circular sweep with his right arm.
Pat gave a yelp, dropped his head, and scurried up the ridge, driving all stragglers back toward the center of the flock. He went to every crest and sniffed into the wind to satisfy himself that none had strayed beyond his sight; returned and evened up the ragged edges of the hand, and then came trotting back to Starr with six inches of pink tongue draped over his lower jaw and a smile in his eyes and a waggle of satisfaction at loved work well done. The goats, with a meek Billy in the foreground, huddled in a compact mass on the slope and eyed the dog as they had never eyed Vic, for all his hoe-handle and his accuracy with rocks.
Helen May dropped her hand on Pat's head and looked soberly into his upturned eyes. "You're a perfect miracle of a dog, so you can't be my dog, after all," she said. "Your owner will be riding day and night to find you. I know I should, if you got lost from me." Then she looked at Starr. "Don't you think you really ought to take him back with you? It—somehow it doesn't seem quite right to keep a dog that knows so much. Why, the man I bought the goats from had a dog that could herd them, and he wanted twenty-five dollars for it, and at that, he claimed he was putting the price awfully low for me, just because I was a lady, you know."
Starr, was (as he put it) kicking himself for having lied himself into this dilemma. Also he was wondering how best he might lie himself out of it.
"You want to look out for these marks that say they're giving you the big end of a bargain just because you're a lady," he said. "Chances are they're figuring right then on doing you. If that fellow had got twenty-five dollars for his dog, take it from me, he wouldn't have lost anything."
"Well, but do you think it would he right to keep this dog?"
Since she put it that way, Starr felt better. "I sure do. Keep him anyway till he's called for. When I go back, I'll find out where he comes from; and when I've located the owner, maybe I'll be able to fix it up with him somehow. You sure ought to have a dog. So let it stand that way. I'll tell yuh when to give him up."
Helen May opened her lips, and Starr, to forestall argument and to save his soul from further sin, turned toward the dog. "Bring 'em home, Pat," he said, and then started toward the corral, which was down below the spring. "Watch him drive," he said to Helen May and so managed to distract her attention from the ethics of the case.
Without any assistance, Pat drove the goats to the corral. More than that, at Starr's command, he split the band and held half of them aloof while the rest went in. He sent these straight down the Basin until Starr recalled him, when he swung back and corralled them with the others. He came then toward the three for further orders, whereupon Vic, who had been silent from sheer amazement, gave a sudden whoop.
"Hey, Pat! You forgot something. Go back and put up the bars!" he yelled. Then he heaved his hoe-handle far from him and stretched his arms high over his head like one released from an onerous task. "I'll walk out and let Pat have my job," he said. "Herding goats is dog's work anyhow, and I told you so the first day, Helen Blazes. Hadn't herded 'em five minutes before I knew I wasn't cut out for a farmer."
"Go on, Pat; you stay with your goats," Starr commanded gently. And Pat, because he had suckled a nanny goat when he was a pup, and had grown up with her kid, and had lived with goats all his life, trotted into the corral, found himself a likeable spot near the gate, snuffed it all over, turned around twice, and curled himself down upon it in perfect content.
"He'll stay there all night," Starr told them, laying the bars in their sockets. "It's a little early to corral 'em, sundown is about the regular time, but it's a good scheme to give him plenty of time to get acquainted with the layout. You get up early, Vic, and let 'em out on the far side of the ridge. Pat'll do the rest. I'll have to jog along now."
"Well, say," Vic objected, rubbing his tousled blond hair into a distracted, upstanding condition, "I wish you'd show me just how you shift his gears. How the dickens do you do it? He don't know what you say."
Before he left, Starr showed him the gestures, and Vic that evening practised them so enthusiastically that he nearly drove Helen May wild. Perhaps that is why, when she was copying a sentence where Holman Sommers had mentioned the stars of the universe, Helen May spelled stars, "Starr's" and did not notice the mistake at all.
Having wasted a couple of hours more than he intended to spend in delivering the dog, Starr called upon Rabbit to make up those two hours for him. And, being an extremely misleading little gray horse, with a surprising amount of speed and endurance stored away under his hide, Rabbit did not fall far short of doing so.
Starr had planned an unexpected visit to the Medina ranch. In the guise of stock-buyer his unexpectedness would be perfectly plausible, and he would be well pleased to arrive there late, so long as he did not arrive after dark. Just before sundown would do very well, he decided. He would catch Estan Medina off his guard, and he would have the evening before him, in case he wanted to scout amongst the arroyos on the way home.
Starr very much wanted to know who drove an automobile without lights into isolated arroyos and over the desert trails at night. He had not, strange to say, seen any machine with Silvertown cord tires in San Bonito or in Malpais, though he had given every car he saw the second glance to make sure. He knew that such tires were something new and expensive, so much so that they were not in general use in that locality. Even in El Paso they were rarely seen at that time, and only the fact that the great man who gave him his orders had happened to be using them on his machine, and had mentioned the fact to Starr, who was honored with his friendship, had caused Starr to be familiar with them and to recognize instantly the impress they left in soft soil. It was a clue, and that was the best he could say for it. It was just a little better than nothing, he decided. What he wanted most was to see the machine itself at close range, and to see the men who rode in it—and I am going to tell you why.
There was a secret political movement afoot in the Southwest; a movement hidden so far underground as to be practically unnoticed on the surface; but a movement, nevertheless, that had been felt and recorded by that political seismograph, the Secret Service of our Government. It had been learned, no mere citizen may know just how, that the movement was called the Mexican Alliance. It was suspected that the object was the restoration of three of our States to Mexico, their original owner. Suspected, mind you; and when even the Secret Service can do no more than suspect, you will see how well hidden was the plot. Its extent and its ramifications they could only guess at. Its leaders no man could name, nor even those who might be suspected more than others.
But a general uprising in three States, in conjunction with, and under the control of, a concerted, far-sweeping revolution across the border, would not be a thing to laugh over. Uncle Sam smiled tolerantly when some would have had him chastise. Uncle Sam smiled, and watched, and waited and drummed his fingers while he read secret reports from men away out somewhere in Arizona, and New Mexico, and Texas, and urged them to burrow deeper and deeper underground, and to follow at any cost the molelike twistings and blind turnings of this plot to steal away three whole States in a lump.
Now you see, perhaps, why Starr was so curious about that automobile, and why he was interested in Estancio Medina, Mexican-American rancher who owned much land and many herds, and who was counted a power among his countrymen; who spoke English with what passed for fluency, and who had very decided and intelligent opinions upon political matters, and who boldly proclaimed his enthusiasm for the advancement of his own race.
But he did not go to the Medina ranch that evening, for the very good reason that he met his man fair in the trail as it looped around the head of the draw where he had heard the automobile running without lights. As on that other evening, Starr had cut straight across the loop, going east instead of west. And where the trail forked on the farther side he met Estan Medina driving a big, lathery bay horse hitched to a shiny, new covered buggy. He seemed in a hurry, but he pulled up nevertheless to have a word with Starr. And Starr, always observant of details, saw that he had three or four packages in the bottom of the buggy, which seemed to bear out Estan's statement that he had been to town, meaning San Bonito.
Starr rolled a cigarette, and smoked it while he gossiped with Estan of politics, pretty girls, and the price of mutton. He had been eyeing the new buggy speculatively, and at last he spoke of it in that admiring tone which warms the heart of the listener.
"Some turnout, Estan," he summed up. "But you ought to be driving an automobile. All your friends are getting them."
Estan lifted his shoulders in true Spanish fashion and smiled. "No, amigo. Me, I can take pleasure yet from horses. And the madre, she's so 'fraid of them automobiles. She cries yet when she knows I ride in one a little bit. Now she's so proud, when I drive the new buggy home! She folds so pretty her best mantilla over her head and rides with me to church, and she bows so polite—to all the señoras from the new buggy! And her face shines with the happiness in her heart. Oh, no, not me for the big automobile!" He smiled and shrugged and threw out his hands. "I like best to see my money walking around with wool on the back! Excuse, señor. I go now to bring the new buggy home and to see the smile of my mother." Then he bethought him of the tradition of his house. "You come and have a soft bed and the comfort of my house," he urged. "It is far to San Bonito, and it is not so far to my house."
Starr explained plausibly his haste, sent a friendly message to the mother and Luis, and rode on thoughtfully. Now and then he turned to glance behind him at the dust cloud rolling rapidly around the head of the draw.
Since Estan had been to town himself that day, Starr reasoned that there would not be much gained by scouting through the arroyos that led near the Medina ranch. Estan would have seen in town the men he wanted to see. He could do so easily enough and without exciting the least suspicion; for San Bonito had plenty of saloons that were popular, and yet unobtrusive, meeting places. No need for the mysterious automobile to make the long journey through the sand to-day, if Estan Medina were the object of the visit, and Starr knew of no other Mexican out that way who would be important enough to have a hand in the mixing of political intrigue.
He rode on, letting Rabbit drop into his poco-poco trail trot. He carried his head bent forward a little, and his eyebrows were pulled into a scowl of concentrated thought. It was all very well to suspect Estan Medina and to keep an eye upon him, but there were others who came nearer to the heart of the plot. He wanted to know who these were, and he believed that if he could once identify the four Mexicans whom Helen May had seen, he would be a long step ahead. He considered the simple expedient of asking her to describe them as closely as she could. But since secrecy was the keynote of his quest, he did not want to rouse her curiosity, and for purely personal reasons he did want to shield her as far as possible from any uneasiness or any entanglement in the affair.
Thinking of Helen May in that light forced him to consider what would be her plight if he and his co-workers failed, if the plan went on to actual fulfillment, and the Mexican element actually did revolt. Babes, they were, those two alone there in Sunlight Basin, with a single-shot "twenty-two" for defense, when every American rancher in three States considered high-power rifles and plenty of ammunition as necessary in his home as flour and bacon!
Starr shivered a little and tried to pull his mind away from Helen May and her helplessness. At any rate, he comforted himself, they had the dog for protection, the dog who had been trained to jump the corral fence at any hour of the night if a stranger, and especially a Mexican came prowling near.
But he and his co-workers must not fail. If intrigue burrowed deep, then they must burrow deeper.
So thinking, he came just after sundown to where the trail branched in three directions. One was the direct road to San Bonito, another took a roundabout way through a Mexican settlement on the river and so came to the town from another angle, and the third branch wound over the granite ridge to Malpais. Studying the problem as a whole, picturing the havoc which an uprising would wreak upon those vast grazing grounds of the southwest, and how two nations would be embroiled in spite of themselves, he was hoping that his collaborators, scattered here and there through the country, men whose names even he did not know, were making more headway than he seemed to be making here.
He would not know, of course, unless he were needed to assist or to supplement their work in some way. But he hoped they had found out something definite, something which the War Department could take hold of; a lever, as it were, to pry up the whole scheme. He was thinking of these things, but his mind was nevertheless alert to the little trail signs which it had become second nature to read. So he saw, there in the dust of the trail, where a buggy had turned around and gone back whence it had come. He saw that it had been traveling toward town but had turned and come back. And looking more closely, he saw that one horse had pulled the buggy.
He stopped to make sure of that and to search for footprints. But those he found were indistinct, blurred partly by the looseness of the sand and partly by the sparse grass that grew along the trail there, because the buggy had turned in a hollow. He went on a couple of rods, and he saw where an automobile had also come to this point and had turned and gone back toward town, or rather, it had swung sharply around and taken the trail which led through the Mexican settlement; but he guessed that it had gone back to town, for all that. And the tire marks were made by Silvertown cords.
Starr stopped and looked back to where the buggy tracks were faintly outlined in the dust of the hollow, and he spoke aloud his thought: "You'd think, just to see him and talk to him, that Estan Medina assays one hundred per cent, satisfied farmer. He's sure some fox—that same greaser!" After that he shook Rabbit into a long, distance-eating lope for town.
Night came with its flaring forerunners of purple and crimson and all the gorgeous blendings of the two. By the time he reached San Bonito, the stars were out, and the electric lights were sputtering on certain street corners. Starr had rented a small adobe cabin and a corral with a shed on the outskirts of town where his movements might be unobserved. He did not always use these, but stopped frequently at a hotel with a garrulous landlord, and stabled his horse at a certain livery which he knew to be a hotbed of the town's gossip. In both places he was a privileged patron and was the recipient of many choice bits of scandal whispered behind a prudent palm, with a wink now and then to supply the finer shades of meaning. But to-night he chose the cabin and the corral sandwiched between a transfer company's warehouse and a steam laundry that had been closed by the sheriff. The cabin fronted on a street that was seldom used, and the corral ran back to a dry arroyo that was used mainly as a dump for the town's tin cans and dead cats and such; not a particularly attractive place but secluded.
He turned Rabbit into the corral and fed him, went in and cooked himself some supper, and afterwards, in a different suit and shoes and a hat that spoke loudly of the latest El Paso fad in men's headgear, he strolled down to the corner and up the next street to the nearest garage. Ostensibly he was looking for one Pedro Miera, who had a large sheep ranch out east of San Bonito, and who always had fat sheep for sale. Starr considered it safe to look for Miera, whom he had seen two or three days before in El Paso just nicely started on a ten-day spree that never stopped short of the city jail.
Since it was the dull hour between the day's business and the evening's pleasure, Starr strolled the full length of the garage and back again before any man spoke to him. He made sure that no car there had the kind of tires he sought, so he asked if Miera and his machine had showed up there that day, and left as soon as the man said no.
San Bonito was no city and it did not take long to make the round of the garages. No one had seen Miera that day, and Starr's disappointment was quite noticeable, though misunderstood. Not a car in any of the four garages sported Silvertown cords.
At the last garage an arc light flared over the wide doorway. Starr, feeling pretty well disgusted, was leaving when he saw a tire track alongside the red, gasoline filling-pump. He stopped and, under cover of lighting his cigarette, he studied the tread. Beyond all doubt the car he wanted had stopped there for gas. But the garage man was a Mexican, so Starr dared not risk a question or show any interest whatever in the car whose tires left those long-lined imprints to tell of its passing. He puffed at his cigarette until he had studied the angle of the front-wheel track and decided that the car must have been headed south, and that it had made a rather short turn away from the pump.
This was puzzling for a while. The driver might have been turning around to go back the way he had come. But it was more likely that he had driven into the cross street to the west. He strolled over that way, but the light was too dim to trace automobile tracks in the dust of the street so he went back to the adobe cabin and put in the next hour oiling and cleaning and polishing a 25-35 carbine which he meant to give Helen May, and in filling a cartridge belt with shells.
He sat for some time turning two six-shooters over in his hands, trying to decide which would please her most. One was lighter than the other, with an easier trigger action; almost too easy for a novice, he told himself. But it had a pearl handle with a bulldog carved on the side that would show when the gun was in its holster. She'd like that fancy stuff, he supposed. Also he could teach her to shoot straighter with that light "pull." But the other was what Starr called a sure-enough go-getter.
He finally decided, of course, to give her the fancy one. For Vic he would have to buy a gun; an automatic, maybe. He'd have to talk coyotes pretty strong, in order to impress it upon them that they must never go away anywhere without a gun. Good thing there was a bounty on coyotes; the money would look big to the kid, anyway. It occurred to him further that he could tell them there was danger of running into a rabid coyote. Rabies had caused a good deal of trouble in the State, so he could make the danger plausible enough.
He did not worry much over frightening the girl. She had nerve enough. Think of her tackling that ranch proposition, with just that cub brother to help! When Starr thought of that slim, big-eyed, smiling girl in white fighting poverty and the white plague together out there on the rim of the desert, a lump came up in his throat. She had nerve enough—that plucky little lady with the dull-gold hair, and the brown velvet eyes!—more nerve than he had where she was concerned.
He went to bed and lay for a long time thinking of Helen May out there in that two-roomed adobe cabin, with a fifteen-year-old boy for protection and miles of wilderness between her and any other human habitation. It was small comfort then to Starr that she had the dog. One bullet can settle a dog, and then—Starr could not look calmly at the possibility of what might happen then.
"They've no business out there like that, alone!" he muttered, rising to an elbow and thumping his hard pillow viciously. "Good Lord! Haven't they got any folks?"
Soon after daylight, Rabbit snorted and ran a little way down the corral toward the cabin. Starr, trained to light sleeping and instant waking, was up and standing back from the little window with his six-shooter in his hand before Rabbit had stopped to whirl and look for what had scared him. So Starr was in time to see a "big four" Stetson hat with a horsehair hatband sink from sight behind the high board fence at the rear of the corral.
Starr waited. Rabbit shook his head as though he were disgusted with himself, and began nosing the ground for the wisps of hay which a high wind had blown there. Starr retreated to a point in the room where he could see without risk of being seen, and watched. In a few minutes, when the horse had forgotten all about the incident and was feeding again, the Stetson hat very cautiously rose once more. Under its gray brim Starr saw a pair of black eyes peer over the fence. He watched them glancing here and there, coming finally to rest upon the cabin itself. They watched Rabbit, and Starr knew that they watched for some sign of alarm rather than from any great interest in the horse: Rabbit lifted his head and looked that way boredly for a moment before he went back to his feeding, and the eyes lifted a little, so that the upper part of the owner's face came into view. A young Mexican, Starr judged him, because of his smooth skin around the eyes. He waited. The fellow rose now so that the fence came just below his lips, which were full and curved in the pleasant lines of youth. His eyes kept moving this way and that, so that the whites showed with each turn of the eyeball. Starr studied what he could see of the face. Thick eyebrows well formed except that the left one took a whimsical turn upward; heavy lashes, the high, thin nose of the Mexican who is part Indian—as are practically all of the lower, or peon class—that much he had plenty of time to note. Then there was the mouth, which Starr knew might be utterly changed in appearance when one saw the chin that went with it.
A hundred young fellows in San Bonito might answer equally well a description of those features. And the full-crowned gray Stetson may be seen by the thousand in at least four States; and horsehair hatbands may be bought in any saddlery for two or three dollars—perhaps for less, if one does not demand too long a pair of tassels—and are loved by Indians and those who think they are thus living up to the picturesque Old West. So far as he could see, there was nothing much to identify the fellow, unless he could get a better look at him.
The Mexican gave another long look at the cabin, studying every point, even to the roof. Then he tried to see into the shed where Starr kept his saddle and where Rabbit could shelter himself from the cold winds. There was no door, no front, even, on the side toward the house. But the end of the shed was built out into the corral so that the fellow could not see around its corner.
He moved along the fence, which gave Starr a very good idea of his height, and down to the very corner of the vacant laundry building. There he stopped and looked again. He was eyeing Starr's saddle, apparently taking in every detail of its workmanship. He looked again at Rabbit, who was turned then so that his brand, the double Turkey-track, stood out plainly on both thighs. Then, with another slant-eyed inspection of the cabin, he ducked down behind the fence and disappeared, his going betrayed by his hat crown which was taller than he imagined and showed a good four inches above the fence.
Starr had edged along the dark wall of the room so that he had kept the man in sight. Now, when the hat crown moved away down the trail that skirted the garbage-filled arroyo, he snorted, threw his gun down on the bed, and began to dress himself, rummaging in his "warbag" for a gray checked cap and taking down from the wall a gray suit that he had never liked and had never worn since the day it came from the mail, looking altogether different from the four-inch square he had chosen from a tailor agent's sample book. He snorted again when he had the suit on, and surveyed it with a dissatisfied, downward glance. In his opinion he looked like a preacher trying to disguise himself as a sport, but to complete the combination he unearthed a pair of tan shoes and put them on. After that he stood for a minute staring down the fresh-creased gray trousers to his toes.
"Looks like the very devil!" he snorted again. "But anyway, it's different." He dusted the cap by the simple expedient of slapping it several times against his leg. When he had hung it on the back of his head and pulled it well down in front—as nine out of ten men always put on a cap—he did indeed look different, though he did not look at all like the demon he named. Helen May, for instance, would have needed a second close glance before she recognized him, but that glance would probably have carried with it a smile for his improved appearance.
He surveyed as much of the neighborhood as he could see through the windows, looked at his watch, and saw that it was late enough for him to appear down town without exciting comment from the early birds, and went out into the corral and fed Rabbit. He looked over the fence where the Mexican had stood, but the faint imprints of the man's boots were not definite enough to tell him anything. He surveyed the neighborhood from different angles and could see no trace of any one watching the place, so he felt fairly satisfied that the fellow had gone for the present, though he believed it very likely that he might return later.
As he saw the incident, he was not yet considered worth shadowing, but had in some way excited a certain degree of curiosity about himself. Starr did not like that at all. He had hoped to impress every one with his perfect harmlessness, and to pass for a stock buyer and nothing else.
He could not imagine how he had possibly excited suspicion, and he wanted to lull it immediately and permanently. The obvious way to do that would be to rise late, saddle Rabbit and ride around town a little—to the post office and a saloon, for instance—get his breakfast at the best-patronized place in town, and then go about his legitimate business. On the other hand, he wanted to try and trace those cord tires down the cross street, if he could, and he could not well do that on horseback without betraying himself.
The shed was built out flush with the arroyo edge, so that at the rear of the corral one could only go as far as the gate, which closed against the end of the shed. It occurred to Starr that if the young Mexican had been looking for something to steal, he would probably have come in at the gate, which was fastened only with a stout hook on the inside. The arroyo bank had caved under the farther corner of the shed, so that a hole the size of a large barrel showed at that end of the manger. Cats and dogs, and perhaps boys, had gone in and out there until a crude kind of trail was worn down the bank to the arroyo bottom. At some risk to his tan shoes and his new gray suit, Starr climbed into the manger and let himself down that hole. The trail was firm and dry and so steep he had to dig his heels in to keep from tobogganing to the bottom, but once down he had only to follow the arroyo bottom to a place where he could climb out. Before he found such a place he came to a deep, dry gully that angled back toward the business part of town. A footpath in the bottom of it encouraged him to follow it, and a couple of hundred yards farther along he emerged upon the level end of a street given over to secondhand stores, junk shops and a plumber's establishment. From there to the main street was easy enough.
As he had expected, only a few citizens were abroad and Starr strolled over to the cross street he wanted to inspect. He found the long-lined tread of the tires he sought plainly marked where they had turned into this street. After that he lost them where they had been blotted out by the broad tires of a truck. When he was sure that he could trace them no farther, he turned back, meaning to have breakfast at his favorite restaurant. And as he turned, he met face to face a tall young Mexican in a full-crowned Stetson banded with horsehair.
Now, as I have said before, San Bonito was full of young Mexicans who wore Stetson hats and favored horsehair bands around them. Starr glanced at the fellow sharply, got the uninterested, impersonal look of the perfect stranger who neither knows nor cares who you are, and who has troubles of his own to occupy his mind; the look which nineteen persons out of twenty give to a stranger on the street. Starr went on unconcernedly whistling under his breath, but at the corner he turned sharply to the left, and in turning he flicked a glance back at the fellow. The Mexican was not giving him any attention whatever, as far as he could see; on the contrary, he was staring down at the ground as though he, too, were looking for something. Starr gave him another stealthy look, gained nothing from it, and shrugged his shoulders and went on.
He ate his breakfast while he turned the matter over in his mind. What had he done to rouse suspicion against himself? He could not remember anything, for he had not yet found anything much to work on; nothing, in fact, except that slight clue of the automobile, and he did not even know who had been in it. He suspected that they had gone to meet Estan Medina, but as long as that suspicion was tucked away in the back of his mind, how was any one going to know that he suspected Estan? He had not been near the chief of police or the sheriff or any other officer. He had not talked with any man about the Mexican Alliance, nor had he asked any man about it. Instead, he had bought sheep and cattle and goats and hogs from the ranchers, and he had paid a fair price for them and had shipped them openly, under the eye of the stock inspector, to the El Paso Meat Company. So far he had kept his eyes open and his mouth shut, and had waited until some ripple on the surface betrayed the disturbance underneath.
He was not sure that the young man he met on the street was the one who had been spying over the fence, but he did not mean to take it for granted that he was not the same, and perhaps be sorry afterwards for his carelessness. He strolled around town, bought an automatic gun and a lot of cartridges for Vic, went into a barber shop on a corner and had a shave and a haircut, and kept his eyes open for a tall young Mexican who might be unduly interested in his movements.
He met various acquaintances who expressed surprise at not having seen him around the hotel. To these he explained that he had rented a corral for his horse, where he could be sure of the feed Rabbit was getting, and to save the expense of a livery stable. Rabbit had been kinda off his feed, he said, and he wanted to look after him himself. So he had been sleeping in the cabin that went with the corral.
His friends thought that was a sensible move, and praised his judgment, and Starr felt better. He did not, however, tell them just where the corral was located. He had some notion of moving to another place, so he considered that it would be just as well not to go into details.
So thinking, he took his packages and started across to the gully which led into the arroyo that let him into his place by the back way. He meant to return as he had come; and if any one happened to be spying, he would think Starr had chosen that route as a short cut to town, which it was.
A block away from the little side street that opened to the gully, Starr stopped short, shocked into a keener attention to his surroundings. He had just stepped over an automobile track on the walk, where a machine had crossed it to enter a gateway which was now closed. And the track had been made by a cord tire. He looked up at the gate of unpainted planks, heavy-hinged and set into a high adobe wall such as one sees so often in New Mexico. The gate was locked, as he speedily discovered; locked on the inside, he guessed, with bars or great hooks or something.
He went on to the building that seemed to belong to the place; a long two-story adobe building with the conventional two-story gallery running along the entire front, and with the deep-set, barred windows that are also typically Mexican. Every town in the adobe section of the southwest has a dozen or so buildings almost exactly like this one. The door was blue-painted, with the paint scaling off. Over it was a plain lettered sign: LAS NUEVAS.
Starr had seen copies of that paper at the Mexican ranches he visited, and as far as he knew, it was an ordinary newspaper of the country-town style, printed in Mexican for the benefit of a large percentage of Mexican-Americans whose knowledge of English print is extremely hazy.
He walked on slowly to the corner, puzzling over this new twist in the faint clue he followed. It had not occurred to him that so innocuous a sheet asLas Nuevasshould be implicated, and yet, why not? He turned at the corner and went back to the nearest newstand, where he bought an El Paso paper for a blind and laid it down on a pile ofLas Nuevaswhile he lighted his cigarette. He talked with the little, pock-marked Mexican who kept the shop, and when the fellow's back was turned toward him for a minute, he stole a copy ofLas Nuevasoff the pile and strolled out of the shop with it wrapped in his El Paso paper.
He stole it because he knew that not many Americans ever bought the paper, and he feared that the hombre in charge might wonder why an American should pay a nickel for a copy ofLas Nuevas. As it happened, the hombre in charge was looking into a mirror cunningly placed for the guarding of stock from pilferers, and he saw Starr steal the paper. Also he saw Starr slip a dime under a stack of magazines where it would be found later on. So he wondered a great deal more than he would have done if Starr had bought the paper, but Starr did not know that.
Starr went back to his cabin by way of the arroyo and the hole in the manger. When he unlocked the door and went in, he had an odd feeling that some one had been there in his absence. He stood still just inside the door and inspected everything, trying to remember just where his clothes had been scattered, where he had left his hat, just how his blankets had been flung back on the bed when he jumped up to see what had startled Rabbit; every detail, in fact, that helps to make up the general look of a room left in disorder.
He did remember, for his memory had been well trained for details. He knew that his hat had been on the table with the front toward the wall. It was there now, just as he had flung it down. He knew that his pillow had been dented with the shape of his head, and that it had lain askew on the bed; it was just as it had been. Everything—his boots, his dark coat spread over the back of the chair, his trousers across the foot of the bed—everything was the same, yet the feeling persisted.
Starr was no more imaginative than he needed to be for the work he had to do. He was not in the least degree nervous over that work. Yet he was sure some one had been in the room during his absence, and he could not tell why he was sure. At least, for ten minutes and more he could not tell why. Then his eyes lighted upon a cigarette stub lying on the hearth of the little cookstove in one corner of the room. Starr always used "wheat straw" papers, which were brown. This cigarette had been rolled in white paper. He picked it up and discovered that one end was still moist from the lips of the smoker, and the other end was still warm from the fire that had half consumed it. Starr gave an enlightened sniff and knew it was his olfactory nerves that had warned him of an alien presence there; for the tobacco in this cigarette was not the brand he smoked.
He stood thinking it over; puzzling again over the mystery of their suspicion of him. He tried to recall some careless act, some imprudent question, an ill-considered remark. He was giving up the riddle again when that trained memory of his flashed before him a picture that, trivial as it was in itself, yet was as enlightening as the white paper of the cigarette on the stove hearth.
Two days before, just after his last arrival in San Bonito, he had sent a wire to a certain man in El Paso. The message itself had not been of very great importance, but the man to whom he had sent it had no connection whatever with the Meat Company. He was, in fact, the go-between in the investigation of the Secret Service. Through him the War Department issued commands to Starr and his fellows, and through him it kept in touch with the situation. Starr had used two code words and a number in that message.
And, he now distinctly remembered, the girl who had waited upon him was dark, with a Spanish cast of features. When she had counted the words and checked the charge and pushed his change across to him, she had given him a keen, appraising look from under her lashes, though the smile she sent with it had given the glance a feminine and wholly flattering interpretation. Starr remembered that look now and saw in it something more than coquetry. He remembered, too, that he had glanced back from the doorway and caught her still looking after him; and that he had smiled, and she had smiled swiftly in return and had then turned away abruptly to her work. To her work? Starr remembered now that she had turned and spoken to a sulky-faced messenger boy who was sitting slumped down on the curve of his back with his tightly buttoned tunic folded up to his armpits so that his hands could burrow to the very bottom of his pockets. He had looked up, muttered something, reluctantly removed himself from the chair, and started away. The boy, too, had the Mexican look.
Well, at any rate, he knew now how the thing had started. He heaved a sigh of relief and threw himself down on the bed, wadding the pillow into a hard ball under the nape of his neck and unfolding the Mexican newspaper. He had intended to move camp; but now that they had begun to trail him, he decided to stay where he was and give them a run for their money, as he put it.
Starr could read Spanish well enough for ordinary purposes. He went carefully throughLas Nuevas, from war news to the local advertisements. There was nothing that could even be twisted into a message of hidden meaning to the initiated.Las Nuevaswas what it called itself:The News. It was exactly as innocuous as he had believed it to be. Its editorial page, even, was absolutely banal in its servility to the city, county, state and national policy.
"That's a hell of a thing to steal!" grumbled Starr, and threw the paper disgustedly from him.
That day Starr rode out into the country and looked at a few head of cows and steers that a sickly American wanted to sell so he could go East for his health (there being in most of us some peculiar psychological leaning toward seeking health afar). Starr went back to town afterwards and made Rabbit comfortable in the corral, reasoning that if he were going to be watched, he would be watched no matter where he went; but he ate his supper in the dining room of the Plaza Hotel, and sat in the lobby talking with a couple of facetious drummers until the mechanical piano in the movie show across the street began to play.
He went to the show, sat through it patiently, strolled out when it was over, and visited a saloon or two. Then, when he thought his evening might be considered well rounded out with harmless diversions, he went out to his cabin, following the main street but keeping well in the shadow as though he wished to avoid observation.
He had reason to believe that some one followed him out there, which did not displease him much. He lighted his lamp and fussed around for half an hour or so before he blew out the light and went to bed.
At three o'clock in the morning, with a wind howling in from the mountains, Starr got up and dressed in the dark, fumbling for a pair of "sneakers" he had placed beside his bed. He let himself out into the corral, being careful to keep close to the wall of the house until he reached the high board fence. Here, too, he had to feel his way because of the pitchy blackness of the night; and if the rattling wind prevented him from hearing any footsteps that might be behind him, it also covered the slight sound of his own progress down the fence to the shed. But he did not think he would be seen or followed, for he had been careful to oil the latch and hinges of his door before he went to bed; and he would be a faithful spy indeed who shivered through the whole night, watching a man who apparently slept unsuspectingly and at peace.
Down the hole from the manger Starr slid, and into the arroyo bottom. He stumbled over a can of some sort, but the wind was rattling everything movable, so he merely swore under his breath and went on. He was not a range man for nothing, and he found his way easily to the adobe house with LAS NUEVAS over the door, and the adobe wall with the plank gate that had been closed.
It was closed now, and the house itself was black and silent. Starr stooped and gave a jump, caught the top of the wall with his hooked fingers, went up and straddled the top where it was pitch black against the building. For that matter, it was nearly pitch black whichever way one looked, that night. He sat there for five minutes, listening and straining his eyes into the enclosure. Somewhere a piece of corrugated iron banged against a board. Once he heard a cat meow, away back at the rear of the lot. He waited through a comparative lull, and when the wind whooped again and struck the building with a fresh blast, Starr jumped to the ground within the yard.
He crouched for a minute, a shot-loaded quirt held butt forward in his hand. He did not want to use a gun unless he had to, and the loaded end of a good quirt makes a very efficient substitute for a blackjack. But there was no movement save the wind, so presently he followed the wall of the house down to the corner, stood there listening for awhile and went on, feeling his way rapidly around the entire yard as a blind man feels out a room that is strange to him.
He found the garage, with a door that kept swinging to and fro in the wind, banging shut with a slam and then squealing the hinges as it opened again with the suction. He drew a breath of relief when he came to that door, for he knew that any man who happened to be on guard would have fastened it for the sake of his nerves if for nothing else.
When he was sure that the place was deserted for the night, Starr went back to the garage and went inside. He fastened the door shut behind him and switched on his pocket searchlight to examine the place. If he had expected to see the mysterious black car there he was disappointed, for the garage was empty—which perhaps explained the swinging door, that had been left open in the evening when there was no wind. Small comfort in that for Starr, for it immediately occurred to him that the car would probably return before daylight if it had gone after dark.
He turned his hand slowly, painting the walls with a brush of brilliant light. "Huh!" he grunted under his breath. For there in a far corner were four Silvertown cord tires with the dust of the desert still clinging to the creases of the lined tread. Near-by, where they had been torn off in haste and flung aside, were the paper wrappings of four other tires, supposedly new.
So they—he had no more definite term by which to call them—they had sensed the risk of those unusual tires, and had changed for others of a more commonly-used brand! Starr wondered if some one had seen him looking at tire-tracks, the young Mexican he had met on the side street, perhaps. Or the Mexican garage man may have caught him studying that track by the filling-pump.
"Well," Starr summed up the significance of the discovery, "the game's open; now we'll get action."
He glanced down to make sure that he had not left any tracks on the floor and was glad he had not worn his boots. Then he snapped off the light, went out, and left the door swinging and banging as it had been before. If he learned no more, at least he was paid for the trip.
He went straight to the rear door of the building, taking no pains to conceal his footsteps. The wind, he knew, would brush them out completely with the sand and dust it sent swirling around the yard with every gust. As he had hoped, the door was not bolted but locked with a key, so he let himself in with one of the pass keys he carried for just such work as this. He felt at the windows and saw that the blinds were down, and turned on his light.
The place had all the greasy dinginess of the ordinary print shop. The presses were here, and the motor that operated them. Being a bi-weekly and not having much job printing to do, it was evident thatLas Nuevasdid not work overtime. Things were cleaned up for the night and ready for the next day's work. It all looked very commonplace and as innocent as the paper it produced.
Starr went on slowly, examining the forms, the imperfect first proofs of circulars and placards that had been placed on hook files. AVISO! stared up at him in big, black type from the top of many small sheets, with the following notices of sales, penalties attached for violations of certain ordinances, and what not. But there was nothing that should not be there, nothing that could be construed as seditionary in any sense of the word.
Still, some person or persons connected with this place had found it expedient to change four perfectly good and quite expensive tires for four new and perfectly commonplace ones, and the only explanation possible was that the distinctive tread of the expensive ones had been observed. There must, Starr reasoned, be something else in this place which it would be worth his while to discover. He therefore went carefully up the grimy stairway to the rooms above.
These were offices of the comfortless type to be found in small towns. Bare floors, stained with tobacco juice and the dust of the street. Bare desks and tables, some of them unpainted, homemade affairs, all of them cheap and old. A stove in the larger office, a few wooden-seated armchairs. Starr took in the details with a flick here and there of his flashlight that he kept carefully turned away from the green-shaded windows.
News items, used and unused, he found impaled on desk files. Bills paid and unpaid he found also. But in the first search he found nothing else, nothing that might not be found in any third-rate newspaper establishment. He stood in the middle room—there were three in a row, with an empty, loft-like room behind—and considered where else he could search.
He went again to a closet that had been built in with boards behind the chimney. At first glance this held nothing but decrepit brooms, a battered spittoon, and a small pile of greasewood cut to fit the heater in the larger room; but Starr went in and flashed his light around the wall. He found a door at the farther end, and he knew it for a door only when he passed his hands over the wall and felt it yield. He pushed it open and went into another room evidently built across one end of the loft, a room cunningly concealed and therefore a room likely to hold secrets.
He hitched his gun forward a little, pushed the door shut behind him, and began to search that room. Here, as in the outer offices, the first superficial examination revealed nothing out of the way. But Starr did not go at things superficially. First the desk came under close scrutiny. There were no letters; they were too cautious for that, evidently. He looked in the little stove that stood near the wall where the chimney went up in the closet, and saw that the ashes consisted mostly of charred paper. But the last ones deposited therein had not yet been lighted, or, more exactly, they had been lighted hastily and had not burned except around the edges. He lifted out the one on top and the one beneath it. They were two sheets of copy paper scribbled closely in pencil. The first was entitled, with heavy underscoring that signified capitals, "Souls in Bondage." This sounded interesting, and Starr put the papers in his pocket. The others were envelopes addressed toLas Nuevas; there was no more than a handful of papers in all.
In a drawer of the desk, which he opened with a skeleton key, he found many small leaflets printed in Mexican. Since they were headed ALMAS DE CAUTIVERO, he took one and hoped that it would not be missed. There were other piles of leaflets in other drawers, and he helped himself to a sample of each, and relocked the drawers carefully. But search as he might, he could find nothing that identified any individual, or even pointed to any individual as being concerned in this propaganda work; nor could he find any mention of the Mexican Alliance.
He went out finally, let the door swing behind him as it seemed accustomed to do, climbed through a window to the veranda that bordered all these rooms like a jutting eyebrow, and slid down a corner post to the street. It was close to dawn, and Starr had no wish to be found near the place; indeed, he had no wish to be found away from his cabin if any one came there with the breaking of day to watch him.
As he had left the cabin, so he returned to it. He went back to bed and lay there until sunrise, piecing together the scraps of information he had gleaned. So far, he felt that he was ahead of the game; that he had learned more about the Alliance than the Alliance had learned about him.
As soon as the light was strong enough for him to read without a lamp, he took from his pocket the papers he had gleaned from the stove, spread out the first and began to decipher the handwriting. And this is what he finally made out:
"Souls in Bondage:
"The plundering plutocrats who suck the very life blood of your mother country under the guise of the development of her resources, are working in harmony with the rich brigands north of the border to plunder you further, and to despoil the fair land you have helped to win from the wilderness.
"Shall strong men be content in their slavery to the greed of others? Rise up and help us show the plunderers that we are men, not slaves. Let this shameless persecution of your mother country cease!
"American bandits would subjugate and annex the richest portion of Mexico. Why should not Mexico therefore reclaim her own? Why not turn the tables and annex a part of the vast territory stolen from her by the octopus arms of our capitalist class?
"We are a proud people and we never forget. Are we a cowardly people who would cringe and yield when submission means infamy?
"Awake! Strike one swift, successful blow for freedom and your bleeding mother land.
"Texas, New Mexico, California and Arizona were stolen from Mexico, just as the riches of her mines are being stolen from her to-day. Sons of Mexico, you can help her reclaim her own. Will you stand by and see her further despoiled? Let your voices rise in a mighty cry for justice! Let your arms be strong to strike a blow for the right!
"Souls in bondage, wake up and strike off your shackles! Be not slaves but free men!
"Texas, New Mexico and Arizona for Mexico, to whom they rightfully belong!"
"They sure do make it strong enough," Starr commented, feeling for a match with which to relight his cigarette that had gone out. He laid down the written pages and took up the leaflet entitled, "ALMAS DE CAUTIVERO." The text that followed was like the heading, simply a translation into Spanish of the exhortation he had just read in English. But he read it through and noted the places where the Spanish version was even more inflammatory than the English—which, in Starr's opinion, was going some. The other pamphlets were much the same, citing well-known instances of the revolution across the border which seemed to prove conclusively that justice was no more than a jest, and that the proletariat of Mexico was getting the worst of the bargain, no matter who happened to be in power.
Starr frowned thoughtfully over the reading. To him the thing was treason, and it was his business to help stamp it out. For the powers that be cannot afford to tolerate the planting of such seeds of dissatisfaction amongst the untrained minds of the masses.
But, and Starr admitted it to himself with his mouth pulled down at the corners, the worst of it was that under the bombast, under the vituperative utterances, the catch phrases of radicalism, there remained the grains of truth. Starr knew that the masses of Mexicoweresuffering, broken under the tramplings of revolution and counter-revolution that swept back and forth from gulf to gulf. Still, it was not his business to sift out the plump grains of truth and justice, but to keep the chaff from lighting and spreading a wildfire of sedition through three States.
"'Souls in bondage' is right," he said, setting his feet to the floor and reaching for his boots. "In bondage to their own helplessness, and helpless because they're so damned ignorant. But," he added grimly while he stamped his right foot into its boot, "they ain't going at it the right way. They're tryin' to tear down, when they ain't ready to build anything on the wreck. They're right about the wrong; but they're wrong as the devil about the way to mend it. Them pamphlets will sure raise hell amongst the Mexicans, if the thing ain't stopped pronto."
He dressed for riding, and went out and fed Rabbit before he went thoughtfully up to the hotel for his breakfast.