Helen May was toiling over the ridgy upland which in New Mexico is called a mesa, when it is not a desert—and sometimes when it is one—taking her turn with the goats while Vic nursed a strained ankle and a grouch under the mesquite tree by the house. With Pat to help, the herding resolved itself into the exercise of human intelligence over the dog's skill. Pat, for instance, would not of his own accord choose the best grazing for his band, but he could drive them to good grazing once it was chosen for him. So, theoretically, Helen May was exercising her human intelligence; actually she was exercising her muscles mostly. And having an abundance of brain energy that refused to lie dormant, she had plenty of time to think her own thoughts while Pat carried out her occasional orders.
For one thing, Helen May was undergoing the transition from a mild satisfaction with her education and mentality, to a shamed consciousness of an appalling ignorance and mental crudity. Holman Sommers was unwittingly the cause of that. There was nothing patronizing or condescending in the attitude of Holman Sommers, even if he did run to long words and scientifically accurate descriptions of the smallest subjects. It was the work he placed before her that held Helen May abashed before his vast knowledge. She could not understand half of what she deciphered and typed for him, and because she could not understand she realized the depth of her benightedness.
She was awed by the breadth and the scope which she sensed more or less vaguely inThe Evolution of Sociology. Holman Sommers quoted freely, and discussed boldly and frankly, such abstruse authors as Descartes, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Comte, Gumplowicz, some of them names she had never heard of and could not even spell without following her copy letter by letter. Holman Sommers seemed to have read all of them and to have weighed all of them and to be able to quote all of them offhand; whereas Schopenhauer was the only name in the lot that sounded in the least familiar to Helen May, and she had a guilty feeling that she had always connected the name with music instead of the sort of things Holman Sommers quoted him as having said or written, she could not make out which.
Helen May, therefore, was suffering from mental growing pains. She struggled with new ideas which she had swallowed whole, without any previous elementary knowledge of the subject. Her brain was hungry, her life was stagnant, and she seized upon these sociological problems which Holman Sommers had placed before her, and worried over them, and wondered where Holman Sommers had learned so much about things she had never heard of. Save his vocabulary, which wearied her, he was the simplest, the kindest of men, though not kind as her Man of the Desert was kind.
Just here in her thoughts Holman Sommers faded, and Starr's lean, whimsical face came out sharply defined before her mental vision. Starr certainly was different! Ordinary, and not educated much beyond the three Rs, she suspected. Just a desert man with a nice voice and a gift for provocative little silences. Two men could not well be farther apart in personality, she thought, and she amused herself by comparing them.
For instance, take the case of Pat. Sommers had told her just why and just how desperately she needed a dog for the goats, and had urged her by all means to get one at the first opportunity. Starr had not said anything about it; he had simply brought the dog. Helen May appreciated the different quality of the kindness that does things.
Privately, she suspected that Starr had stolen that dog, he had seemed so embarrassed while he explained how he came by Pat; especially, she remembered, when she had urged him to take the dog back. She would not, of course, dare hint it even to Vic; and theoretically she was of course shocked at the possibility. But, oh, she was human! That a nice man should swipe a dog for her secretly touched a little, responsive tenderness in Helen May. (She used the word "swipe," which somehow made the suspected deed sound less a crime and more an amusing peccadillo than the word "steal" would have done. Have you ever noticed how adroitly we tone down or magnify certain misdeeds simply by using slang or dictionary words as the case may be?)
Oh, she saw it quite plainly, as she trudged over to the shady side of a rock ridge and sat down where she could keep an eye on Pat and the goats. She told herself that she would ask her Man of the Desert, the next time he happened along, whether he had found out who the dog belonged to. If he acted confused and dodged the issue, then she would know for sure. Just what she would do when she knew for sure, Helen May had not decided.
The goats were browsing docilely upon the slope, eating stuff which only a goat would attempt to eat. Helen May was not afraid of Billy since Pat had taken charge. Pat had a way of keeping Billy cowed and as harmless as the nannies themselves. Just now Pat was standing at a little distance with his tongue slavering down over his white teeth, gazing over the band as a general looks at his army drawn up in review.
He turned his head and glanced at Helen May inquiringly, then trotted over to where she sat in the shade. His tongue still drooped quiveringly over his lower jaw; and now and then he drew it back and licked his lips as though they were dry. Helen May found a rock that was hollowed like a crude saucer, and poured water into the hollow from her canteen. Pat lapped it up thirstily, gave his stubby tail a wag of gratitude, lay down with his front paws on the edge of her skirt with his head dropped down upon them, and took a nap—with one eye opening now and then to see that the goats were all right, and with his ears lifting to catch the meaning of every stray bleat from a garrulous nanny.
Helen May had changed a good deal in the past two or three weeks. Now when she stared away and away over the desert and barren slope and ridges and mountain, she did not feel that she hated them. Instead, she saw that the yellow of the desert, the brown of the slopes, and the black of the distant granite ledges basseting from bleak hills were more beautiful than the tidy little plots of tilled ground she used to think so lovely. There was something hypnotic in these bald distances. She could not read, when she was out like this; she could only look and think and dream.
She wished that she might ride out over it sometime, away over to the mountains, perhaps, as far as she could see. She fell to dreaming of the old days when this was Spanish territory, and the king gave royal grants of land to his favorites: for instance, all the country lying between two mountain ranges, to where a river cut across and formed a natural boundary. Holman Sommers had told her about the old Spanish grants, and how many of the vast estates of Mexican "cattle kings" and "sheep kings" were still preserved almost intact, just as they had been when this was a part of Mexico.
She wished that she might have lived here then, when the dons held sway and when señoritas were all beautiful and when señoras were every one of them imposing in many jewels and in rich mantillas, and when vaqueros wore red sashes and beautiful serapes and big, gold-laced sombreros, and rode prancing steeds that curveted away from jingling, silver-rowelled spurs. Helen May, you must remember, knew her moving-picture romance. She could easily vision these things exactly as they had been presented to her on the screen. That is why she peopled this empty land so gorgeously.
It was different now, of course. All the Mexicans she had seen were like the Mexicans around the old Plaza in Los Angeles. All the señoritas she had met—they had not been many—powdered and painted abominably to the point of their jaws and left their necks dirty. And their petticoats were draggled and their hats looked as though they had been trimmed from the ten-cent counter of a cheap store. All the señoras were smoky looking with snakish eyes, and the dresses under their heavy-fringed black mantillas were more frowsy than those of their daughters. They certainly were not imposing; and if they wore jewelry at all it looked brassy and cheap.
There was no romance, nothing like adventure here nowadays, said Helen May to herself, while she watched the little geysers of dust go dancing like whirling dervishes across the sand. A person lived on canned stuff and kept goats and was abjectly pleased to see any kind of human being. There certainly was no romance left in the country, though it had seemed almost as though there might be, when her Man of the Desert sang and all the little night-sounds hushed to listen, and the moon-trail across the sand of the desert lay like a ribbon of silver. It had seemed then as though there might be romance yet alive in the wide spaces.
So she had swung back again to Starr, just as she was always doing lately. She began to wonder when he would come again, and what he would have to say next time, and whether he had really annexed some poor sheep man's perfectly good dog, just because he knew she needed one. It would never do to let on that she guessed; but all the same, it was mighty nice of him to think of her, even if he did go about it in a queer way. And when Pat, who had seemed to be asleep, lifted his head and looked up into her eyes adoringly, Helen May laid her hand upon his smooth skull and smiled oddly.
No more romance, said Helen May—and here was Starr, a man of mystery, a man feared and distrusted by the sons of those passionate dons of whom she dreamed! Here was Starr, Secret Service man (there is ever a glamor in the very name of it), the very essence and forefront of such romance and such adventure as she had gasped over, when she had seen it pictured on the screen! She was living right in the middle of intrigue that was stirring the rulers of two nations; she was coming close to real adventure, and there she sat, with Pat lying on the hem of her skirt, and mourned that she was fifty or a hundred years too late for even a glimpse at romance! And fretted because she was helping Pat herd goats, and because life was dull and commonplace.
"Honestly," she told Pat, "I've got to the point where I catch myself, looking forward to the chance visits of a wandering cowboy who is perfectly commonplace. Why, he'd be absolutely lost on the screen; you wouldn't know he was in the picture unless his horse bucked or fell down or something! And I don't suppose he ever has a thought beyond his work and his little five-cent celebrations in San Bonito, maybe. Most likely he flirts with those grimy-necked Mexican girls, too. You can't tell—
"And think of me being so hard up for excitement that I've got to play he's some mysterious creature of the desert! Honest to goodness, Pat, it's got so bad that the mere sight of a real, live man is thrilling. When Holman Sommers comes and lifts that old Panama like a crown prince, and smiles at me and talks about all the different periods of the human race, and gems and tribal laws and all that highbrow dope, I just sit and drink it in and wish he'd keep on for hours! Can you beat that? And if by any chance a common, ordinary specimen of desert man should ride by, I might be desperate enough—"
Her gaze, wandering always out over the tremendous sweep of plateau which from that point looked illimitable as the ocean, settled upon a whirlwind that displayed method and a slow sedateness not at all in keeping with the erratic gyrations of those gone before. Watching it wistfully with a half-formed hope that it might not be just a dry-weather whirlwind, her droning voice trailed off into silence. A faint beating in her throat betrayed what it was she half hoped. She was so desperately lonesome!
Pat tilted his head and looked up at her and licked her hand until she drew it away impatiently.
"Good gracious, Pat! Do you want to plaster me with germs?" she reproved. And Pat dropped his head down upon his paws and eyed her furtively from under his brown lids, waiting for her to repent her harshness and smooth his head caressingly, as was her wont.
But Helen May was watching that slow-moving column of dust, just as she had watched the cloud which had heralded the coming into her life of Holman Sommers. It might be—but it couldn't, for this was away off the road. No one would be cutting straight across that hummocky flat, unless—
From the desert I come to thee,On my Arab shod with fire—
"Oh, I'm getting absolutely mushy!" she muttered angrily. "If I've reached the point where I can't see a spot of dust without getting heart-failure over it, why it's time I was shut up somewhere. What are you lolling around me for, Pat? Go on and tend to your goats, why don't you? And do get off my skirt!"
Pat sprang up as though she had struck him; gave her an injured glance that was perfectly maddening to Helen May, whose conscience was sufficient punishment, and went slinking off down the slope. Half-way to the band he stopped and sat down on his haunches in the hot sun, as dejected a dog as ever was made to suffer because his mistress was displeased with herself.
Helen May sat there scowling out across the wide spaces, while romance and adventure, and something more, rode steadily nearer, heralded by the small gray cloud. When she was sure that a horseman was coming, she perversely removed herself to another spot where she would not be seen. And there she sat, out of sight from below and thus fancying herself undiscovered, refusing so much as a sly glance around her granite shield.
For if there was anything which Helen May hated more than another it was the possibility of being thought cheaply sentimental, mushy, as the present generation vividly puts it. Also she was trying to break herself of humming that old desert love-song all the while. Vic was beginning to "kid" her unmercifully about it, for one thing. To think that she should sing it without thinking a word about it, just because she happened to see a little dust! She would not look. She would not!
Starr might have passed her by and gone on to the cabin if he had not, through a pair of powerful binoculars, been observing her when she sent Pat off, and when she got up and went over to the other ledge and sat down. Through the glasses he had seen her feet crossed, toes up, just past the nose of the rock, and he could see the spread of her skirt. Luckily, he could not read her mind. He therefore gave a yank at the lead-rope in his hand and addressed a few biting remarks to a white-lashed, blue-eyed pinto trailing reluctantly behind Rabbit; and rode forward with some eagerness toward the ridge.
"'Sleep?" he greeted cheerfully, when he had forced the two horses to scramble up to the shade of the ledge, and had received no attention whatever from the person just beyond. The tan boots were still crossed, and not so much as a toe of them moved to show that the owner heard him. Starr knew that he had made noise enough, so far as that went.
"Why, no, I'm not asleep. What is it?" came crisply, after a perceptible pause.
"It ain't anything at all," Starr retorted, and swung Rabbit into the shade which Helen May had left. He dismounted, sat himself down with his back against a rock, and proceeded to roll a cigarette. By no means would he intrude upon the privacy of a lady, though the quiet, crossed feet and the placid folds of the khaki skirt told him that she was sitting there quietly—pouting about something, most likely, he diagnosed her silence shrewdly. Well, it was early, and so long as he reached a certain point by full dark, he was not neglecting anything. As a matter of fact, he told himself philosophically, he really wanted to kill half a day in a perfectly plausible manner. There was no hurry, no hurry at all.
Pat looked back at him ingratiatingly, and Starr called. Pat came running in long leaps, nearly wagging himself in two because someone he liked was going to be nice to him. Starr petted him and talked to him and pulled his ears and slapped him on the ribs, and Pat in his joy persisted in trying to lick Starr's cheek.
"Quit it! Lay down and be a doormat, then. You've got welcome wrote all over you. And much as I like welcome, I hate to be licked."
Pat lay down, and Starr eyed the tan boot toes. They moved impatiently, but they did not uncross. Starr smiled to himself and proceeded to carry on a one-sided conversation with Pat, and to smoke his cigarette.
"Sick, over there?" he inquired casually after perhaps five minutes; either of them would have sworn it ten or fifteen.
"Why, no," chirped the crisp voice. "Why?"
"Seemed polite to ask, is all," Starr confessed. "I didn't think you was." He finished his smoke in the silence that followed. Then, because he himself owned a perverse streak, he took his binoculars from their case and began to study the low-lying ridge in the distance, in a pocket of which nestled the Medina ranch buildings. He was glad this ridge commanded all but the "draws" and hollows lying transversely between here and Medina's place. It was Medina whom he had been advised by his chief to watch particularly, when Starr had found a means of laying his clues before that astute gentleman. If he could sit within ten feet of Helen May while he kept an eye on that country over there, all the better.
He saw a horseman ride up out of a hollow and disappear almost immediately into another. The man seemed to be coming over in this direction, though Starr could not be sure. He watched for a reappearance of the rider on high ground, but he saw no more of the fellow. So after a little he took down the glasses to scan the country as a whole.
It was then that he glanced toward the other rock and saw that the tan boots had moved out of sight. He believed that he would have heard her if she moved away, and so he kept his eyes turned upon the corner of the rock where her feet had shown a few minutes before.
"Why—did some one come with you, Mr. Starr? I thought you were alone."
Starr turned his head and saw Helen May standing quite close, on the other side of him. She was glancing inquiringly from him to the pinto pony, and she was smiling the least little bit, though her eyes had a shamed, self-conscious look. Starr eyed her keenly, a bit reproachfully, and she blushed.
"I thought maybe you'd come around where I was," she defended herself lamely. "It—seemed cooler there—"
"Yes, I noticed it was pretty cool, from the tone of your voice."
"Well—oh, I was just nursing a grouch, and I couldn't stop all at once," Helen May surrendered suddenly, sitting down beside him and crossing her feet. "I've read in stories how sheepherders go crazy, and I know now just why that is. They see so few people that they don't know how to act when some one does come along. They get so they hate themselves and everybody else. I had just finished abusing poor old Pat till he went off and sulked too."
"I thought probably you and Pat had just had a run-in, the way he acted." Starr went back to scanning that part of the mesa where he had glimpsed the rider. He could not afford to forget business in the pleasure of talking aimless, trivial things with Helen May.
"What are you looking for?"
"Stock," said Starr, falling back on the standard excuse of the range man.
"Andwhat'sthe idea of two saddle-horses and two saddles and two bridles?" Helen May's voice was as simply curious as a child's.
"The idea is that you're going to ride instead of walk from now on. It's an outfit I got from a fellow that was leaving. He borrowed money from me and left his horse and saddle, for a kind of security. I didn't want it, but he had to leave 'em somewhere. So I thought you might as well keep the horse and use it till he comes back, or something." Starr did very well with this explanation; much better than he had done in explaining Pat. The truth was that he had bought the horse for the express purpose of giving it to Helen May; just as he had bought the dog.
Helen May studied his face while he studied the distant plain. She thought he acted as though he didn't care much whether she kept the horse or not, and for that reason, and because his explanation had sounded like truth, she hesitated over refusing the offer, though she felt that she ought to refuse.
"It ain't right for you to be out here afoot," said Starr, as though he had read her thoughts. "It's bad enough for you to be here at all. What ever possessed you to do such a crazy thing, anyhow?"
"Well, sometimes people can't choose. Dad got the notion first. And then—when he died—Vic and I just went ahead with it."
"Did he know anything about this country? Did he know—what chances you'd be taking?" Starr was trying to choose his words so that they would impress her without alarming her. It angered him to have to worry over the girl's welfare and to keep that worry to himself.
"What chances, for gracious sake? I never saw such a mild, perfectly monotonous life. Why, there are more chances in Los Angeles every time a person goes down town. It's deadly dull here, and it's too lonesome for words, and I hate it. But as for taking chances—" Her voice was frankly contemptuous of the idea.
"Chances of going broke. It takes experience—"
"Oh, as to that, it's partly a matter of health," said Helen May lightly. "I have to live where the climate—"
"You could live in Albuquerque, or some other live town; close to it, anyway. You don't have to stick away down here, where—"
"I don't see as it matters. So long as it isn't Los Angeles, no place appeals to me. And dad had bought the improvements here, so—"
"I'll pay you for the improvements, if that's all," Starr said shortly.
Helen May laughed. "That sounds exactly as though you want to get me out of the country," she challenged.
Starr did not rise to the bait. He took another long look for the horseman, saw not so much as a flurry of dust, and slid the glasses into their case.
"I brought out that carbine I was speaking about. And the shells that go with it. I'm kind of a gun fiend, I guess. I'm always accumulating a lot of shooting irons I never use. I run across a six-shooter and belt, too. Come here, Rabbit!"
Rabbit came, and Starr untied the weapons, smiling boyishly. "You may as well be using 'em; they'll only rust, kicking around in the shack. Buckle this around you. I punched another hole or two, so the belt would come within a mile or so of fitting. You want to wear that every time you go out on the range. The time you leave it home is the very time when you'll see a coyote or something.
"And if you expect to get rich in the goat business, you never want to pass up a coyote. There's a bounty on 'em, for one thing, because they do lots of damage among sheep and goats. And for another," he added impressively, "the rabies that's been epidemic on the Coast is spreading. You've maybe read about it. A rabid coyote would come right at you, and you know the consequences. Or it would bite Pat, and then Pat would tackle you."
"Oh!" Helen May had turned a sickly shade. Her eyes went anxiously over the slope as though she half expected something of the sort to happen then and there.
"That's why," said Starr solemnly, looking down into her face, "I'm kinda worried about you ranging around afoot and without a gun—"
"But nobody else has even mentioned—"
"Everybody else goes prepared, and they're inclined to take chances as a matter of course. I reckon they think you know all about rabies being in the country. This has always been a scrappy kinda place, remember, and folks are used to packing guns and using 'em when the case demands it. You wear this six-gun, lady, and keep your eyes open from now on. I've got another one for Vic; an automatic. Now we'll go down here in the shade and practice shooting. I brought plenty of shells, and I want to learn you how to handle a gun."
Silently she followed him down the slope on the side toward the Basin. He stopped beside the pinto, took it by the bridle-reins and, whipping out his gun, fired it once to test the horse. The pinto twitched its ears at the sound and looked at Starr. Starr laughed.
"I'll learn you to shoot from horseback," he called back to Helen May."He's broke to it, I can see now."
"Oh, I wonder if I could! Don't tell Vic, will you? I'd like to take him by surprise. Boys are so conceited and self-sufficient! You'd think Vic was my grandfather, the way he lords it over me. First of all, what is the right way to get on a horse? I wish you'd teach me about riding, too."
This sort of instruction grew absorbing to both. Before either guessed how the time had flown, the sun stood straight overhead; and Pat, standing in front of her with an expectant look in his eyes and an occasional wag of his stubby tail, reminded Helen May that it was time for lunch. They had used almost a full box of shells, and Helen May had succeeded in shooting from the back of the pinto and in hitting a certain small hummock of pure sand twice in six shots. She was tremendously proud of the feat, and she took no pains to conceal her pride. She wanted to start in on another box of shells, but Pat's eyes were so reproachful, and her sense of hospitality was so urgent that she decided to wait until they had eaten the lunch she had brought with her.
The rocks which had cast a shadow were now baking in the glare, and the sand where Helen May and Starr had sat was radiating heat waves. Starr took another long look down toward Medina's ranch through his field glasses, while Helen May went to find a comfortable bit of shade.
"If you'll come over this way, Mr. Starr," she called abruptly, "I'll give you a sandwich. It's hot everywhere to-day, but this is a little better than out in the sun."
Starr took the glasses down from his eyes and let them dangle by their cord while he walked over the nose of the ridge to where she was waiting for him.
Half-way there, a streak of fire seemed to sear his arm near his shoulder. Starr knew the feeling well enough. He staggered and went down headlong in a clump of greasewood, and at the same instant the report of a rifle came clearly from the high pinnacle at the head of Sunlight Basin.
Helen May came running, her face white with horror, for she had seen Starr fall just as the sound of the shot came to tell her why. She did not cry out, but she rushed to where he lay half concealed in the bushes. When she came near him, she stopped short. For Starr was lying on his stomach with his head up and elbows in the sand, steadying the glasses to his eyes that he might search that pinnacle.
"W-what made you fall down like that?" Helen May cried exasperatedly."I—I thought you were shot!"
"I am, to a certain extent," Starr told her unconcernedly. "Kneel down here beside me and act scared, will you? And in a minute I want you to climb on the pinto and ride around behind them rocks and wait for me. Take Rabbit with you. Act like you was going for help, or was scared and running away from a corpse. You get me? I'll crawl over there after a little."
"W-why? Are you hurt so you can't walk?"
Helen May did not have to act; she was scared quite enough forStarr's purpose.
"Oh, I could walk, but walking ain't healthy right now. Jump up now and climb your horse like you was expecting to ride him down to a whisper. Go on—beat it. And when you get outa sight of the pinnacle, stay outa sight. Run!"
There were several questions which Helen May wanted to ask, but she only gave him a hasty, imploring glance which Starr did not see at all, since his eyes were focussed on the pinnacle. She ran to the pinto and scared him so that he jumped away from her. Starr heard and glanced impatiently back at her. He saw that she had managed to get the reins and was mounting with all the haste and all the awkwardness he could possibly expect of her, and he grinned and returned to his scrutiny of the peak.
Whatever he saw he kept to himself; but presently he began to wriggle backward, keeping the greasewood clump, and afterwards certain rocks and little ridges, between himself and a view of the point he had fixed upon as the spot where the shooter had stood.
When he had rounded the first rock ledge he got up and looked for HelenMay, and found her standing a couple of rods off, watching him anxiously.He smiled reassuringly at her while he dusted his trousers with the flatof his hands.
"Fine and dandy," he said. "Whoever took a pot-shot at me thinks he got me first crack. See? Now listen, lady. That maybe was some herder out gunning for coyotes, and maybe he was gunning for me. I licked a herder that ranges over that way, and he maybe thought he'd play even. But anyway, don't say anything about it to anybody, will you. I kinda—"
"Why not? If he shot at you, he wanted to kill you. And that's murder; he ought to be—"
"Now, you know you said yourself that herders go crazy. I don't want to get the poor boob into trouble. Let's not say anything about it. I've got to go now; I've stayed longer than I meant to, as it is. Have Vic put that halter that's on the saddle on the pinto, and tie the rope to it and let it drag. He won't go away, and you can catch him without any bother. If Vic don't know how to set the saddle, you take notice just how it's fixed when you take it off. I meant to show you how, but I can't stop now. And don't go anywhere, not even to the mail box, without Pat or your six-gun, or both. Come here, Rabbit, you old scoundrel!
"I wish I could stay," he added, swinging up to the saddle and looking down at her anxiously. "Don't let Vic monkey with that automatic till I come and show him how to use it. I—"
"You said you were shot," said Helen May, staring at him enigmatically from under her lashes. "Are you?"
"Not much; burnt a streak on my arm, nothing to bother about. Now remember and don't leave your gun—"
"I don't believe it was because you licked a herder. What made somebody shoot at you? Was it—on account of Pat?"
"Pat? No, I don't see what the dog would have to do with it. It was some half-baked herder, shooting maybe because he heard us shoot and thought we was using him for a target. You can't," Starr declared firmly, "tell what fool idea they'll get into their heads. It was our shooting, most likely. Now I must go. Adios, I'll see yuh before long."
"Well, but what—"
Helen May found herself speaking to the scenery. Starr was gone with Rabbit at a sliding trot down the slope that kept the ridge between him and the pinnacle. She stood staring after him blankly, her hat askew on the back of her head, and her lips parted in futile astonishment. She did not in the least realize just what Starr's extreme caution had meant. She had no inkling of the real gravity of the situation, for her ignorance of the lawless possibilities of that big, bare country insulated her against understanding.
What struck her most forcibly was the cool manner in which he had ordered her to act a part, and the unhesitating manner in which she had obeyed him. He ordered her about, she thought, as though he had a right; and she obeyed as though she recognized that right.
She watched him as long as he was in sight, and tried to guess where he was going and what he meant to do, and what was his business—what he did for a living. He must be a rancher, since he had said he was looking for stock; but it was queer he had never told her where his ranch lay, or how far off it was, or anything about it.
After a little it occurred to her that Starr would want the man who had shot at him to think she had left that neighborhood, so she called to Pat and had him drive the goats around where they could not be seen from the pinnacle.
Then she sat down and ate her sandwiches thoughtfully, with long, meditative intervals between bites. She regarded the pinto curiously, wondering if Starr had really taken him as security for a debt, and wishing that she had asked him what its name was. It was queer, the way he rode up unexpectedly every few days, always bringing something he thought she needed, and seeming to take it for granted that she would accept everything he offered. It was much queerer that she did accept everything without argument or hesitation. For that matter, everything that concerned Starr was queer, from Helen May's point of view.
Pat, lying at her feet and licking his lips contentedly after his bone and the crusts of her sandwich, raised his head suddenly and rumbled a growl somewhere deep in his chest. His upper lip lifted and showed his teeth wickedly, and the hair on the back of his neck stood out in a ruff that made him look a different dog.
Helen May felt a cold shiver all up and down her spine. She had never seen Pat, nor any other dog for that matter, look like that. It was much more terrifying than that mysterious shot which had effected Starr so strangely. Pat was staring directly behind her, and his eyes had a greenish tinge in the iris, and the white part was all pink and bloodshot. Helen May thought he must have rabies or something; or else a rabid coyote was up on the ridge behind her. She wanted to scream, but she was afraid; she was afraid to look behind her, even.
Pat got up and stood digging his toe nails into the earth in the most horribly suggestive way imaginable. The green light in his eyes terrified her. His ruff bristled bigger on his neck. He looked ready to spring at something. Helen May was too scared to move so much as a finger. She waited, and her heart began beating so hard in her throat that it nearly suffocated her. She never once thought of the six-shooter which Starr had given her. She did not think of anything, except that a rabid coyote was right behind her, and in a minute Pat would jump at it, if it did not first jump at her! And then Pat would be bitten, and would go mad and bite her and Vic, and they'd all die horribly of hydrophobia.
"Ah—is this a modern, dramatic version of Beauty and the Beast? If so, it is a masterpiece in depicting perfect repose on the part of Beauty, while the Beast vivifies the protective instinct of the stronger toward the weaker. Speaking in the common parlance, if you will call off your dog, Miss Stevenson, I might be persuaded to venture within hand-shaking distance." A little laugh, that was much more humorous than the words, followed the speech.
Helen May felt as though she were going to faint. "Pat!" she tried to say admonishingly; but her voice was a weak whisper that did not carry ten feet. She pulled herself together and tried again. "Pat, lie down!"
Pat turned his bead a trifle and sent her a tolerant glance, but the hair did not lie down on his neck, and the growl did not cease to rumble in his throat.
"Pat!" Helen May began to recover a little from the reaction. "Come here to me! I—don't think he'll bite you, Mr. Sommers. It's—it's only Mexicans that he's supposed to hate. I—I didn't know it was you."
Holman Sommers, being careful to keep a safe distance between himself and Pat, came around to where he could see her face. "As a matter of fact," he began, "it's really my sister who came to visit you. Your brother informed us that you were out here, and I came to tell you. Why, did I frighten you so badly, Miss Stevenson? Your face is absolutely colorless. What did I do to so terrify you? I surely never intended—" His eyes were remorseful as he stood and looked at her.
"It was just the way Pat acted. I—I'd been hearing about rabid coyotes, and I thought one was behind me, Pat acted so queer. Lie down, Pat!"
Holman Sommers spoke to the dog ingratiatingly, but Pat did not exhibit any tail-wagging desire for friendly acquaintance. He slunk over to Helen May and flattened himself on his belly with his nose on his paws, and his eyes, that still showed greenish lights and bloodshot whites, fixed on the man.
"It may be," said Sommers judgmatically, "that he has been taught to resent strangers coming in close proximity to the animals he has in charge. A great many dogs are so trained, and are therefore in no wise to blame for exhibiting a certain degree of ferocity. The canine mind is wholly lacking in the power of deduction, its intelligence consisting rather of a highly developed instinctive faculty for retaining impressions which invariably express themselves in some concrete form such as hate, fear, joy, affection and like primitive emotions. Pat, for instance, has been taught to regard strangers as interlopers. He therefore resents the presence of all strangers, and has no mental faculty for distinguishing between strangers, as such, and actual intruders whose presence is essentially undesirable."
Helen May gave a little, half-hysterical laugh, and Holman Sommers looked at her keenly, as a doctor sometimes looks at a patient.
"I am intensely sorry that my coming frightened you," he said gently. Then he laughed. "I am also deeply humiliated at the idea of being mistaken, in the broad light of midday, for a rabid coyote. May I ask just wherein lies the resemblance?"
Helen May looked at him, saw the dancing light in his eyes and a mirthful quirk of his lips, and blushed while she smiled.
"It's just that I happened to be thinking about them," she said, instinctively belittling her fear. "And then I never saw Pat act the way he's acting now."
Holman Sommers regarded the dog with the same keen, studying look he had given Helen May. Pat did not take it as calmly, however, as Helen May had done. Pat lifted his upper lip again and snarled with an extremely concrete depiction of the primitive emotion, hate.
"Therearesuch things as rabid coyotes, aren't there? Just—do you know how they act, and how a person could tell when something has caught the disease from them?"
"I think I may safely assert that there undoubtedly are rabid coyotes in the country. As a matter of fact, and speaking relatively, they have been, and probably still are, somewhat of a menace to stock running abroad without a herder amply provided with the means of protecting his charge. At the same time I may point with pardonable pride to the concerted action of both State and Stock Association to rid the country of these pests. So far we feel highly gratified at the success which has attended our efforts. I gravely doubt whether you would now find, in this whole county, a single case of infection. But on the other hand, I could not, of course, venture to state unqualifiedly that there may not be certain isolated cases—"
"Pat! Do stop that growling! What ails you, anyway? I never saw him act that way before. I wonder if he could possibly be—" She looked at Sommers questioningly.
"Infected?" he finished for her understandingly. "As a matter of fact, that may be possible, though I should not consider it altogether probable. Since the period of incubation varies from three weeks to six months, as in man, the dog may possibly have been infected before coming into your possession. If that were true, you would have no means of discovering the fact until he exhibits certain premonitory symptoms, which may or may not form in themselves conclusive evidence of the presence of the disease."
Helen May got up from the rock and moved away, eyeing Pat suspiciously.Pat got up and followed her, keeping a watchful eye on Sommers.
"What are the symptoms, for gracious sake?" she demanded fretfully, worried beyond caring how she chose her words for Holman Sommers. "His eyes look queer, don't you think?"
"Since you ask me, and since the subject is not one to be dismissed lightly, I will say that I have been studying the dog's attitude with some slight measure of concern," Holman Sommers admitted guardedly. "The suffused eyeball is sometimes found in the premonitory stage of the disease, after incubation has progressed to a certain degree. Also irritability, nervousness, and depression are apt to be present. Has the dog exhibited any tendency toward sluggishness, Miss Stevenson?"
"Well, he's been lying around most of the time to-day," Helen May confessed, staring at Pat apprehensively. "Of course, there hasn't been anything much for him to do. But he certainly does act queer, just since you came."
Holman Sommers spoke with the prim decision of a teacher instructing a class, but that seemed to be only his way, and Helen May was growing used to it. "His evidencing a tendency toward sluggishness to-day, and his subsequent irritability, may or may not be significant of an abnormality. If, however, the dog progresses to the stage of hyperaesthesia, and the muscles of deglutition become extremely rigid, so that he cannot swallow, convulsions will certainly follow. There will also appear in the mouth and throat a secretion of thick, viscid mucus, with thickened saliva, which will be an undubitable proof of rabies."
Having thus innocently damned poor Pat with the suspicion of a dreadful malady, Sommers made a scientific attempt to soothe Helen May's fears. He advised, with many words and much kind intent, that Pat be muzzled until the "hyperaesthesia" did or did not develop. Helen May thought that the terribly-termed symptoms might develop before they could get a muzzle from town, but she did not like to say so.
Partly to be hospitable, and partly to get away from Pat, she mounted the pinto, told Pat to watch the goats, and rode down to the house to see Martha Sommers. She did not anticipate any pleasure in the visit, much as she had longed for the sound of a woman's voice. She was really worried half to death over Starr, and the rabies, and Pat, and the nagging consciousness that she had not accomplished as much copying of manuscript as Holman Sommers probably expected.
She did not hear half of what Sommers was saying on the way to the cabin. His very amiability jarred upon her nervous depression. She had always liked him, and respected his vast learning, but to-day she certainly did not get much comfort out of his converse. She wondered why she had been so light-hearted while Starr was with her showing her how to shoot, and lecturing her about the danger of going gunless abroad; and why she was so perfectly dejected when Holman Sommers talked to her about the very same thing. Starr had certainly painted things blacker than Holman had done, but it did not seem to have the same effect.
"I don't see what we're going to do for a muzzle," she launched suddenly into the middle of Holman Sommers' scientific explanation of mirages.
"Vic can undoubtedly construct one out of an old strap," Holman Sommers retorted impatiently, and went on discoursing about refraction and reflection and the like.
Helen May tried to follow him, and gave it up. When they were almost to the spring she again unwittingly jarred Holman Sommers out of his subject.
"Did all those words you used mean that Pat will foam at the mouth like mad dogs you read about?" she asked abruptly.
Holman Sommers, tramping along beside the pinto, looked at her queerly. "If Pat does not, I strongly suspect that I shall," he told her weightily, but with a twinkle in his eyes. "I have been endeavoring, Miss Stevenson, to wean your thoughts away from so unhappy a subject. Why permit yourself to be worried? The thing will happen, or it will not happen. If it does happen, you will be powerless to prevent. If it does not, you will have been anxious over a chimera of the imagination."
"Chimera of the imagination is a good line," laughed Helen May flippantly. "All the same, if Pat is going to gallop all over the scenery, foaming at the mouth and throwing fits at the sight of water—"
"As a matter of fact," Holman Sommers was beginning again in his most instructive tone, when a whoop from the spring interrupted him.
Vic had hobbled obligingly down there to get cool water for the plump lady who was Holman Sommers' sister, and he had nearly stepped on a sleepy rattler stretched out in the sun. Vic was making a collection of rattles. He had one set, so far, of five rattles and a "button." He wanted to get these which were buzzing stridently enough for three snakes, it seemed to Vic. He was hopping around on his good foot and throwing rocks; and the snake, having retreated to a small heap of loose cobblestones, was thrusting his head out in vicious little striking gestures, and keeping the scaly length of him bidden.
"Wait a minute, I'll get him, Vic," called Helen May, suddenly anxious to show off her newly acquired skill with firearms. Starr had told her that lots of people killed rattlesnakes by shooting their heads off. She wanted to try it, anyway, and show Vic a thing or two. So she rode up as close as she dared, though the pinto shied away from the ominous sound; pulled her pearl-handled six-shooter from its holster, aimed, and fired at the snake's head.
You have heard, no doubt, of "fool's luck." Helen May actually tore the whole top off that rattlesnake's head (though I may as well say right here that she never succeeded in shooting another snake) and rode nonchalantly on to the cabin as though she had done nothing at all unusual, but smiling to herself at Vic's slack-jawed amazement at seeing her on horseback, with a gun and such uncanny skill in the use of it.
She felt better after that, and she rather enjoyed the plump sister of Holman Sommers. The plump sister called him Holly, and seemed to be inordinately proud of his learning and inordinately fond of nagging at him over little things. She was what Helen May called a vegetable type of woman. She did not seem to have any great emotions in her make-up. She sat in the one rocking-chair under the mesquite tree and crocheted lace and talked comfortably about Holly and her chickens in the same breath, and frankly admired Helen May's "spunk" in living out alone like that.
"Don't overlook Vic, though," Helen May put in generously. "I honestly don't believe I could stand it without Vic."
The plump sister seemed unimpressed. "In this country," she said with a certain snug positiveness that was the keynote of her personality, "it's the women that have the courage. They wouldn't be here if they didn't have. Think how close we are to the Mexican border, for instance. Anything that is horrible to woman can come out of Mexico. Not that I look down on them over there," she added, with a complacent tolerance in her tone. "They are victims of the System that has kept them degraded and ignorant. But until they are lifted up and educated and raised to our standards they are bad.
"You can't get around it, Holly, those ignorant Mexicans arebad!" She had lifted her eyes accusingly to where Holman Sommers sat on the ground with his knees drawn up and his old Panama hat hung upon them. He was smoking a pipe, and he did not remove it from his mouth; but Helen May saw that amused quirk of the lips just the same.
"You can't get around it. You know it as well as I do," she reiterated. "Cannibals are worth saving, but before they are saved they are liable to eat the missionary. And it's the same thing with your Mexicans. You want to educate them and raise them to your standards, and that's all right as far as it goes. But in the meantime they're bad. And if Miss Stevenson wasn't such a good shot, I wouldn't be able to sleep nights, thinking of her living up here alone, with just a boy for protection."
"Why, I never heard of such a thing as any danger from Mexicans!" HelenMay looked inquiringly from plump sister to cynical brother.
"Well, you needn't wonder at Holly not telling you," said the plump sister,—her name was Maggie. "Holly's a fool about some things. Holly is trying the Uplift, and he shuts his eyes to things that don't fit in with his theories. If you've copied much of that stuff he's been writing, you ought to know how impractical he is. Holly's got his head in the clouds, and he won't look at what's right under his feet." Again she looked reproof at Holly, and again Holly's lips quirked around the stem end of his pipe.
"You just keep your eyes open, Miss Stevenson," she admonished, in a purring, comfortable voice. "I ain't afraid, myself, because I've got Holly and my cousin Todd, when he's at home. And besides, Holly's always doing missionary stunts, and the Mexicans like him because he'll let them rob him right and left and come back and take what they forgot the first time, and Holly won't do a thing to them. But you don't want to take any chances, away off here like you are. You lock your door good at night, and you sleep with a gun under your pillow. And don't go off anywhere alone. My, even with a gun you ain't any too safe!"
Helen May gave a gasp. But Holman Sommers laughed outright—an easy, chuckling laugh that partly reassured her. "Danger is Maggie's favorite joke," he said tolerantly. "As a matter of fact, and speaking from a close, personal knowledge of the people hereabouts, I can assure you, Miss Stevenson, that you are in no danger whatever from the source my sister indicates."
"Well, but Holly, I've said it, and I'll say it again; you can't tellwhatmay come up out of Mexico." Plump Maggie rolled up her lace and jabbed the ball decisively with the crochet hook, "We'll have to go now, or the chickens will be wondering where their supper is coming from. You do what I say, and lock your doors at night, and have your gun handy, Miss Stevenson. Things may look calm enough on the surface, but they ain't, I can tell you that!"
"Woman, cease!" cried Holly banteringly, while he dusted his baggy trousers with his palms. "Miss Stevenson will be haunted by nightmares if you keep on."
Once they were gone, Helen May surrendered weakly to one fear, to the extent that she let Vic take the carbine and the pinto and ride over to where she had left Pat and the goats, for the simple reason that she dreaded to face alone that much maligned dog. Vic, to be sure, would have quarreled with her if necessary, to get a ride on the pinto, and he was a good deal astonished at Helen May's sweet consideration of a boy's hunger for a horse. But she tempered his joy a bit by urging him to keep an eye on Pat, who had been acting very queer.
"He kept ruining up his back and showing his teeth at Mr. Sommers," she explained nervously. "If he does it when you go, Vic, and if he foams at the mouth, you'd better shoot him before he bites something. If a mad dog bites you, you'll get hydrophobia, and bark and growl like a dog, and have fits and die."
"G-oo-dnight!" Vic ejaculated fervently, and went loping awkwardly down the trail past the spring.
That left Helen May alone and free to think about the horrors that might come up out of Mexico, and about the ignorant Mexicans who, until they are uplifted, are bad. It seemed strange that, if this were true, Starr had never mentioned the danger. And yet—
"I'll bet anything that's just what Starr-of-the-Desert did mean!" she exclaimed aloud, her eyes fixed intently on the toes of her scuffed boots. "He just didn't want to scare me too much and make me suspicious of everybody that came along, and so he talked mad coyotes at me. But it was Mexicans he meant; I'll bet anything it was!"
If that was what Starr meant, then the shot from the pinnacle, and Starr's crafty, Indian-like method of getting away unseen, took on a new and sinister meaning. Helen May shivered at the thought of Starr riding away in search of the man who had tried to kill him, and of the risk he must be taking. And what if the fellow came back, sneaking back in the dark, and tried to get in the house, or something? It surely was lucky that Starr-of-the-Desert had just happened to bring those guns.
But had he justhappenedto bring them? Helen May was not stupid, even if she were ignorant of certain things she ought to know, living out alone in the wild. She began to see very clearly just what Starr had meant; just how far he hadhappenedto have extra guns in his shack, and had justhappenedto get hold of a horse that she and Vic could use; and the dog, too, that hated Mexicans!
"That's why he hates to have me stay on the claim!" she deduced at last. "Only he just wouldn't tell me right out that it isn't safe. That's what he meant by asking if dad knew the chances I'd have to take. Well, dad didn't know, but after the price dad paid, why—I've got to stay, and make good. There's no sense in being a coward about it. Starr wouldn't want me to be a coward. He's just scheming around to make it as safe as he can, without making me cowardly."
A slow, half-tender smile lit her chestnut-tinted eyes, and tilted her lips at the corners. "Oh, you desert man o' mine, I see through you now!" she said under her breath, and kept on smiling afterwards, since there was not a soul near to guess her thoughts. "Desert man o' mine" was going pretty strong, if you stop to think of it; but Helen May would have died—would have lied—would have gone to any lengths to keep Starr from guessing she had ever thought such a thing about him. That was the woman of her.
The woman of her it was too that kept her dwelling pleasedly on Starr's shy, protective regard for her, instead of watching the peaks in fear and trembling lest another bad, un-uplifted Mexican should be watching a chance to send another bullet zipping down into the Basin on its mission of wanton wickedness.
Carefully skirting the ridge where Helen May had her goats; keeping always in the gulches and never once showing himself on high ground, Starr came after a while to a point where he could look up to the pinnacle behind Sunlight Basin, from the side opposite the point where he had wriggled away behind a bush. He left Rabbit hidden in a brush-choked arroyo that meandered away to the southwest, and began cautiously to climb.
Starr did not expect to come upon his man on the peak; indeed he would have been surprised to find the fellow still there. But that peak was as good as any for reconnoitering the surrounding country, was higher than any other within several miles, in fact. What he did hope was to pick up with his glasses the man's line of retreat after a deed he must believe successfully accomplished. And there might be some betraying sign there that would give him a clue.
There was always the possibility, however, that the fellow had lingered to see what took place after the supposed killing. He must believe that the girl who had been with Starr would take some action, and he might want to know to a certainty what that action was. So Starr went carefully, keeping behind boulders and rugged outcroppings and in the bottom of deep, water-worn washes when nothing else served. He did not think the fellow, even if he stayed on the peak, would be watching behind him, but Starr did not take any chances, and climbed rather slowly.
He reached the summit at the left of where the man had stood when he shot; very close to the spot where Helen May had stood and looked upon Vic and the goats and the country she abhorred. Starr saw her tracks there in a sheltered place beside a rock and knew that she had been up there, though in that dry soil he could not, of course, tell when. When that baked soil takes an imprint, it is apt to hold it for a long while unless rain or a real sand-storm blots it out.
He hid there for a few minutes, craning as much as he dared to see if there were any sign of the man he wanted. In a little he left that spot and crept, foot by foot, over to the cairn, the "sheepherder's monument," behind which the fellow had stood. There again he found the prints of Helen May's small, mountain boots, prints which he had come to know very well. And close to them, looking as though the two had stood together, were the larger, deeper tracks of a man.
Starr dared not rise and stand upright. He must keep always under cover from any chance spying from below. He could not, therefore, trace the footprints down the peak. But he got some idea of the man's direction when he left, and he knew, of course, where to find Helen May. He did not connect the two in his mind, beyond registering clearly in his memory the two sets of tracks.
He crept closer to the Basin side of the peak and looked down, following an impulse he did not try to analyze. Certainly he did not expect to see any one, unless it were Vic, so he had a little shock of surprise when he saw Helen May riding the pinto up past the spring, with a man walking beside her and glancing up frequently into her face. Starr was human; I have reminded you several times how perfectly human he was. He immediately disliked that man. When he heard faintly the tones of Helen May's laugh, he disliked the man more.
He got down, with his head and his arms—the left one was lame in the biceps—above a rock. He made sure that the sun had swung around so it would not shine on the lenses and betray him by any heliographic reflection, and focussed his glasses upon the two. He saw as well as heard Helen May laugh, and he scowled over it. But mostly he studied the man.
"All right for you, old boy," he muttered. "I don't know who the devil you are, but I don't like your looks." Which shows how human jealousy will prejudice a man.
He saw Vic throwing rocks at something which he judged was a snake, and he saw Helen May rein the pinto awkwardly around, "square herself for action," as Starr would have styled it, and fire. By her elation; artfully suppressed, by the very carelessness with which she shoved the gun in its holster, he knew that she had hit whatever she shot at. He caught the tones of Holman Sommers' voice praising her, and he hated the tones. He watched them come on up to the little house, where they disappeared at the end where the mesquite tree grew. Sitting in the shade there, talking, he guessed they were doing, and for some reason he resented it. He saw Vic lift a rattlesnake up by its tail, and heard him yell that it had six rattles, and the button was missing.
After that Starr turned his hack on the Basin and began to search scowlingly the plain. He tried to pull his mind away from Helen May and her visitor and to fix it upon the would-be assassin. He believed that the horseman he had seen earlier in the day might be the one, and he looked for him painstakingly, picking out all the draws, all the dry washes and arroyos of that vicinity. The man would keep under cover, of course, in making his getaway. He would not ride across a ridge if he could help it, any more than would Starr.
Even so, from that height Starr could look down into many of the deep places. In one of them he caught sight of a horseman picking his way carefully along the boulder-strewn bottom. The man's back was toward him, but the general look of him was Mexican. The horse was bay with a rusty black tail, but there were in New Mexico thousands of bay horses with black tails, so there was nothing gained there. The rider seemed to be making toward Medina's ranch, though that was only a guess, since the arroyo he was following led in that direction at that particular place. Later it took a sharp turn to the south, and the rider went out of sight before Starr got so much as a glimpse at his features.
He watched for a few minutes longer, sweeping his glasses slowly to right and left. He took another look down into the Basin and saw no one stirring, that being about the time when the plump sister was rolling up her fancy work and tapering off her conversation to the point of making her adieu. Starr did not watch long enough for his own peace of mind. Five more minutes would have brought the plump one into plain view with her brother and Helen May, and would have identified Holman Sommers as the escort of a lady caller. But those five minutes Starr spent in crawling back down the peak on the side farthest from the Basin, leaving Holman Sommers sticking in his mind with the unpleasant flavor of mystery.
He mounted Rabbit again and made a detour of several miles so that he might come up on the ridge behind Medina's without running any risk of crossing the trail of the men he wanted to watch. About two o'clock he stopped at a shallow, brackish stream and let Rabbit rest and feed for an hour while Starr himself climbed another rocky pinnacle and scanned the country between there and Medina's.
The gate that let one off the main road and into the winding trail which led to the house stood out in plain view at the mouth of a shallow draw. This was not the trail which led out from the home ranch toward San Bonito, where Starr had been going when he saw the track of the mysterious automobile, but the trail one would take in going from Medina's to Malpais. The ranch house itself stood back where the draw narrowed, but the yellow-brown trail ribboned back from the gate in plain view.
Here again Starr was fated to get a glimpse and no more. He focussed his glasses on the main road first; picked up the Medina branch to the gate, followed the trail on up the draw, and again he picked up a man riding a bay horse. And just as he was adjusting his lenses for a sharper clarity of vision, the horse trotted around a bend and disappeared from sight.
Starr swore, but that did not bring the man back down the trail. Starr was not at all sure that this was the same man he had seen in the draw, and he was not sure that either was the man who had shot at him. But roosting on that heat-blistered pinnacle swearing about the things he didn't know struck him as a profitless performance, so he climbed down, got into the saddle again, and rode on.
He reached the granite ridge back of Medina's about four o'clock in the afternoon. He was tired, for he had been going since daylight, and for a part of the time at least he had been going on foot, climbing the steep, rocky sides of peaks for the sake of what he might see from the top, and then climbing down again for sake of what some one else might see if he stayed too long. His high-heeled riding boots that Helen May so greatly admired were very good-looking and very comfortable when he had them stuck into stirrups to the heel. But they had never been built for walking. Therefore his feet ached abominably. And there was the heat, the searing, dry heat of midsummer in the desert country. He was dog tired, and he was depressed because he had not seemed able to accomplish anything with all his riding and all his scanning of the country.
He climbed slowly the last, brown granite ridge, the ridge behind Estan Medina's house. He would watch the place and see what was going on there. Then, he supposed he should go back and watchLas Nuevas, though his chief seemed to think that he had discovered enough there for their purposes. He had sent on the pamphlets, and he knew that when the time was right,Las Nuevaswould be muzzled with a postal law and, he hazarded, a seizure of their mail.
What he had to do now was to find the men who were working in conjunction withLas Nuevas; who were taking the active part in organizing and in controlling the Mexican Alliance. So far he had not hit upon the real leaders, and he knew it, and in his weariness was oppressed with a sense of failure. They might better have left him in Texas, he told himself glumly. They sure had drawn a blank when they drew him into the Secret Service, because he had accomplished about as much as a pup trying to run down a coyote.
A lizard scuttled out of his way, when he crawled between two boulders that would shield him from sight unless a man walked right up on him where he lay—and Starr did not fear that, because there were too many loose cobbles to roll and rattle; he knew, because he had been twice as long as he liked in getting to this point quietly. He took off his hat, telling himself morosely that you couldn't tell his head from a lump of granite anyway, when he had his hat off, and lifted his glasses to his aching eyes.
The Medina ranch was just showing signs of awakening after a siesta. Estan himself was pottering about the corral, and Luis, a boy about eighteen years old, was fooling with a colt in a small enclosure that had evidently been intended for a garden and had been permitted to grow up in weeds and grass instead.
After a while a peona came out and fed the chickens, and hunted through the sheds for eggs, which she carried in her apron. She stopped to watch Luis and the colt, and Luis coaxed her to give him an egg, which he was feeding to the colt when his mother saw and called to him shrilly from the house. The peona ducked guiltily and ran, stooping, beside a stone wall that hid her from sight until she had slipped into the kitchen. The señora searched for her, scolding volubly in high-keyed Mexican, so that Estan came lounging up to see what was the matter.
Afterwards they all went to the house, and Starr knew that there would be real, Mexican tortillas crisp and hot from the baking, and chili con carne and beans, and perhaps another savory dish or two which the señora herself had prepared for her sons.
Starr was hungry. He imagined that he could smell those tortillas from where he lay. He could have gone down, and the Medinas would have greeted him with lavish welcome and would have urged him to eat his fill. They would not question him, he knew. If they suspected his mission, they would cover their suspicion with much amiable talk, and their protestations of welcome would be the greater because of their insincerity. But he did not go down. He made himself more comfortable between the boulders and settled himself to wait and see what the night would bring.
First it brought the gorgeous sunset, that made him think of Helen May just because it was beautiful and because she would probably be gazing up at the crimson and gold and all the other elusive, swift-changing shades that go to make a barbaric sunset. Sure, she would be looking at it, unless she was still talking to that man, he thought jealously. It fretted him that he did not know who the fellow was. So he turned his thoughts away from the two of them.
Next came the dusk, and after that the stars. There was no moon to taunt him with memories, or more practically, to light for him the near country. With the stars came voices from the porch of the adobe house below him. Estan's voice he made out easily, calling out to Luis inside, to ask if he had shut the colt in the corral. The señora's high voice spoke swiftly, admonishing Luis. And presently Luis could be seen dimly as he moved down toward the corrals.
Starr hated this spying upon a home, but he held himself doggedly to the task. Too many homes were involved, too many sons were in danger, too many mothers would mourn if he did not play the spy to some purpose now. This very home he was watching would be the happier when he and his fellows had completed their work and the snake of intrigue was beheaded just as Helen May had beheaded the rattler that afternoon. This home was happy now, under the very conditions that were being deplored so bombastically in the circulars he had read. Why, then, should its peace be despoiled because of political agitators?
Luis put the colt up for the night and returned, whistling, to the house. The tune he whistled was one he had learned at some movie show, and in a minute he broke into singing, "Hearts seem light, and life seems bright in dreamy Chinatown." Starr, brooding up there above the boy, wished that Luis might never be heavier of heart than now, when he went singing up the path to the thick-walled adobe. He liked Luis.
The murmur of voices continued, and after awhile there came plaintively up to Starr the sound of a guitar, and mingling with it the voice of Luis singing a Spanish song.La Golondrina, it was, that melancholy song of exile which Mexicans so love. Starr listened gloomily, following the words easily enough in that still night air.
Away to the northwest there gleamed a brighter, more intimate star than the constellation above. While Luis sang, the watcher in the rocks fixed his eyes wistfully on that gleaming pin point of light, and wondered what Helen May was doing. Her lighted window it was; her window that looked down through the mouth of the Basin and out over the broken mesa land that was half desert. Until then he had not known that her window saw so far; though it was not strange that he could see her light, since he was on the crest of a ridge higher than any other until one reached the bluff that held Sunlight Basin like a pocket within its folds.
Luis finished the song, strummed a while, sang a popular rag-time, strummed again and, so Starr explained his silence, went to bed. Estan began again to talk, now and then lifting his voice, speaking earnestly, as though he was arguing or protesting, or perhaps expounding a theory of some sort. Starr could not catch the words, though he knew in a general way the meaning of the tones Estan was using.
A new sound brought him to his knees, listening: the sound of a high-powered engine being thrown into low gear and buzzing like angry hornets because the wheels did not at once grip and thrust the car forward. Sand would do that. While Starr listened, he heard the chuckle of the car getting under way, and a subdued purring so faint that, had there not been a slow, quiet breeze from that direction, the sound would never have reached his ears at all. Even so, he had no more than identified it when the silence flowed in and covered it as a lazy tide covers a pebble in the moist sand.
Starr glanced down at the house, heard Estan still talking, and got carefully to his feet. He thought he knew where the car had slipped in the sand, and he made toward the place as quickly as he could go in the dark and still keep his movements quiet. It was back in that arroyo where he had first discovered traces of the car he now felt sure had come from the yard ofLas Nuevas.