Starr was sitting on the side of his bed with one boot off and dangling in his hand, and with his thoughts gone journeying out over the mesa and the desert and the granite ridge beyond, to a squatty, two-room adobe shack at the head of Sunlight Basin. During the days he had been too fully occupied with the work he had to do to dwell much on the miserable fact of Helen May's duplicity, her guilt of the crime of treason against her native country. But at night the thought of her haunted him like the fevered ache of a wound too deep to heal quickly.
He swore an abrupt oath as a concrete expression of his mood, and dropped the boot with a thump to the floor. The word and the action served to swing his thoughts into another channel not much more pleasant, but a great deal more impersonal.
"He's shore foxy—that hombre!" he said, thinking of Elfigo Apodaca.
As matters stood that evening, Starr felt that Elfigo had the right to laugh at him and the whole Secret Service. Elfigo was in jail, yes. Only that day he had been given his preliminary hearing on the charge of murdering Estan Medina, and he had been remanded without bail to await trial.
On the face of it, that looked as though Starr had gained a point. In reality he felt that he had in some manner played into Elfigo's hands. Certainly he had not gained anything in the way of producing any buzzing of the Alliance leaders. Not a Mexican had shown his face at the hearing, save Luis Medina and his mother, who had been called as witnesses.
Luis had been badly scared but stubborn, insisting that he had heard Elfigo call Estan from the house just before the shot was fired. The mother also had been badly frightened, but not at all stubborn. Indeed, she was not even certain of anything beyond the drear fact that her son was dead, and that he had fallen with the lamp in his hand, unarmed and unsuspecting. She was frightened at the unknown, terrible Law that had brought her there before the judge, and not at anything tangible.
But Luis knew exactly what it was he feared. Starr read that in his eyes whenever they turned toward the calm, inscrutably smiling Elfigo. Hate was in the eyes of Luis, but the hate was almost submerged by the terror that filled him. He shook when he stood up to take the oath. His voice trembled in spite of him when he spoke; but he spoke boldly for all that—falsely, too. He had lied when he told of the quarrel over the old water right. It was not a water right which the two had discussed, and Starr knew it.
But it was Elfigo that puzzled Starr most. Elfigo had smiled, as though the whole thing amused him even though it annoyed him to be under arrest. He denied, of course, that he had known anything at all about the murder until it was common news about town. He had been somewhere else at the time Estan was shot, and he could and would prove, when the time came, that it would have been physically impossible for him to have shot Estan Medina. He preferred not to produce any witnesses now, however. Let it go to a jury trial, and then he would clear himself of the charge. All through his lawyer, of course, while Elfigo sat back with his hands in his pockets and his feet thrust out before him, whimsically contemplating his tan shoes.
He had seemed confident that bail would be accepted, and he was unmistakably crestfallen when the judge, who acted under certain instructions from those above him, refused to accept bail. But Elfigo had scored, nevertheless; he had not permitted any of his friends to become identified in any manner whatsoever with his movements, and he had withheld his side of the case altogether.
So Starr was left in the dark where he had expected to find the light he needed to direct him. He had also permitted Luis to mark himself for another murder in the Medina family. Well, Luis was a conspirator, for that matter; but he was a boy, and his judgment had not ripened. It seemed a shame that a youngster like that should be drawn into such a mess. Starr, determined to do what he could to protect Luis, had seen to it that Luis was locked up, for the purely technical reason that he was an important witness and they wanted to be sure of him; but really to protect him from the wrath of Elfigo.
"And now," Starr's thoughts ran on, "I stand just where I stood before, except that I know a whole heap more than I wish I knew. And if the thing breaks loose before the trial, Elfigo will be in jail where he's got a cast-iron alibi. The rest of the bunch must be strong enough to go on without him, but I shore did hope they'd be stirred up some over this shooting. They'll likely get together right away, hold a meeting and make arrangements to do without Elfigo. If I knew where…"
He lifted the other foot to remove its boot, hesitated, and set it down again. Surely the Alliance would have to adjust itself to the loss of Elfigo. They would get together, and what buzzing they did would be behind barred doors, since they had been too cunning to show themselves at the hearing; that night, probably, since they knew now that Elfigo had been bound over to the grand jury, and that he was held without bail. Where would they meet? That was what Starr wished he knew.
He sat there rumpling his hair and studying the question. He could not fix upon any particular place, unless it was the Sommers ranch; and that was too far from town for any urgent business, and travelers to and from the place would be taking too great a risk. For he was sure there would be a dozen or more who would make up the Junta, and for so many men to be traveling in one direction would excite curiosity from any one who saw them leave town or return.
There was another possible meeting place—the office ofLas Nuevas. Starr thought of that rather hopelessly. Just as a common precaution, they would guard the doors if the Junta met there, or they would have men stationed on the stairs; that he would not be able to get up without giving the alarm he knew as well as though he had tried and failed.
His thoughts went to that hidden, inner office where he had found the pamphlets and the writing that pointed to Helen May as one of the band. There, where there were no outside windows to betray a midnight conference by any showing of light within; where eavesdropping was absolutely impossible; where the men who met there might gain the yard by various means, since it faced on three streets, and be practically safe from observation, he became convinced would be the logical meeting place.
To be sure, he was only guessing. He had no evidence whatever save his own reason that there would be a meeting, much less that it would be held in the secret office room ofLas Nuevas. But he put on the boot he had taken off and reached for his coat. A half hour or so ought to prove him right or wrong in his deductions, and Starr would not have grudged a full night to satisfy himself on that point.
It was late, nearly midnight, to be exact, when he slipped out to the shed, and watched from its shadow until he was sure that no one had seen him, before he let himself down through the hole in the manger to the arroyo bottom. He went hurriedly, but he was very careful not to show himself without first making sure that the way was clear.
For that reason he escaped being seen by a tall young Mexican whom he caught sight of lounging at the corner opposite the building that heldLas Nuevas. Ostensibly the fellow had merely stopped to light a cigarette, but while Starr watched him he struck three matches in succession, and immediately afterwards a shadow glided from the shelter of a plumber's shop opposite, slipped down to the gate that was always barred, and disappeared.
Starr circled warily to the rear of the yard to see what chance there might be of getting over the wall unseen. He did not know what good it would do him to get into the yard, but he hoped that he might be lucky enough to see any one who entered the back door, which would be the logical means of ingress.
He was standing back of the garage where he had found the cord tires, when the quiet of the night was split with the shrill, nerve-racking shriek of the fire whistle, four or five blocks away. In spite of himself, he was startled with its suddenness, and he stood tensed and waiting for the dismal hoots that would tell what ward the fire was in. One—two—three, croaked the siren like a giant hoot-owl calling in the night.
"Third ward—down around the depot, probably," he heard a voice say guardedly on the other side of the fence. Another voice, more guarded even than the first, muttered a reply which Starr could not catch. Neither voice was recognizable, and the sentence he heard was so obvious a remark as to be practically meaningless; probably a hundred persons in town had said "Third ward," when the siren had tooted the number.
At any rate some one was there in the yard ofLas Nuevas, and it would not be wise for Starr to attempt getting over the wall. He waited therefore until he heard careful footsteps moving away; whereupon he himself stole quietly to the corner, thence down the side wall to the front of the building, so that he could look across the street to where the Mexican had revealed himself for a moment in the light of a distant street lamp.
If the Mexican had been on watch there, he had left his post. In a minute Starr saw him hurrying down the unused side street, toward the angry glow that told where the fire had started. Too much temptation, Starr interpreted the fellow's desertion of his post; or else no more men were expected atLas Nuevas, and the outpost was no longer needed. Taking it for granted that a meeting had been called here, Starr reasoned from that assumption.
He waited another minute or two, watching and listening. There was nothing at the front to break the quiet or spoil the air of desertion that surrounds an empty office building at midnight. He went cautiously to the rear corner and turned there to look back at the building, watchful for any stray beam of light or any movement.
The upper story was dark as the rest of the yard and building, and Starr could almost believe that he was on the wrong track entirely, and that nothing was going on here. But he continued to stand there, loath to give up and go home with nothing accomplished.
Close beside the building and back perhaps twenty feet from the front corner, a telephone and electric light pole stood with outstretched arms, holding aloft its faintly humming wires. Starr stood looking that way for some time before it occurred to him that there was no street light near enough to send that warm, yellow glow across the second bar from the bottom. The rest of the pole was vague and shadowy, like everything else in the immediate neighborhood. The bottom of the pole he could not see at all from where he stood, it was so dark alongside the building. But that second cross-arm was lighted as from a near-by window. Yet there was no lighted window anywhere in the place.
Starr was puzzled. Being puzzled, he went slowly toward the pole, his face turned upward. The nearest street lamp was a full block away, and it would have lighted up the whole top of the pole evenly, if at all. At the foot of the pole Starr stood for a minute, still staring upward. Then he reached up, gripped the metal steps and began carefully to climb.
Before he had reached the lighted cross-arm he knew that the glow must come from a skylight; and that the skylight must be the one that had saved that hidden little office room from being dark. He was no lineman, but he knew enough to be careful about the wires, so it took him several minutes to work his way to where he could straddle a crosstree that had few wires.
Just below him and no more than twelve or fifteen feet distant was the skylight he had suspected, but before he gave that much attention, he looked across to where the fire was sending up a column of crimson smoke and bright, eddying sparks, four blocks or so away. The man left on guard would find it difficult to tear himself away from all that excitement, Starr thought satisfiedly; though if he came back he could scarcely help seeing Starr on that lighted perch, and he would undoubtedly take a shot at him if he were any man at all and had a spark of loyalty to his fellows. For Starr's business up there could not be mistaken by the stupidest greaser in the town.
With the fire to help his cause, Starr craned toward the building and looked down through the skylight. It had been partly raised for ventilation, which was needed in that little, inside room, especially since twelve men were foregathered there, and since every man in the lot was burning tobacco in some form.
Sommers was there, seated at the end of a table that had been moved into the center of the room, which brought it directly under the skylight. He sat facing Starr, and he was reading something to himself while the others waited in silence until he had finished. His strong, dark face was grave, his high forehead creased with the wrinkles of deep thinking. He had a cigar in one corner of his mouth, and he was absentmindedly chewing it rather than smoking. He looked the leader, though his clothes were inclined to shabbiness and he sat slouched forward in his chair. He looked the leader, and their leader those others proclaimed him by their very silence, and by the way their faces turned toward him while they waited.
Sommers took his cigar from his mouth and laid it carefully down upon the edge of the table, although he was plainly unconscious of the movement. He lifted his head with a little toss that threw back a heavy lock of his jet-black hair. He glanced around the table, and his eyes dominated those others hypnotically.
"I have here," he began in the sonorous voice and the measured enunciation of the trained orator, "a letter from our esteemed—and unfortunate—comrade and fellow worker, Elfigo Apodaca. Without taking your valuable time by reading the letter through from salutation to signature, I may say briefly that its context is devoted to our cause and to the inconvenience which may be entailed because of our comrade's present incarceration, the duration of which is as yet undetermined.
"Comrade Apodaca expresses great confidence in his ultimate release. He maintains that young Medina is essentially a traitor, and that his evidence at the preliminary hearing was given purely in the spirit of revenge. That Comrade Apodaca will be exonerated fully of the charge of murder, I myself can entertain no scintilla of doubt. We may therefore dismiss from our minds any uneasiness we may, some of us, have entertained on that score.
"The question we are foregathered here to decide to-night is whether the date set for our public demonstration shall remain as it stands; whether we shall seek permission to postpone that date, or whether it shall be deemed expedient to set it forward to the earliest possible moment. As you all are doubtless aware, our esteemed compatriots in Mexico are ready and waiting our pleasure, like hounds straining at the leash. The work of organization on this side of the line has of necessity been slow, because of various adverse influences and a slothful desire for present ease and safety, which we have been constrained to combat. Also the accumulation of arms and ammunition in a sufficient quantity for our purpose without exciting suspicion has required much tactful manipulation.
"But we have here assembled the trusted representatives from our twelve districts in the State, and I trust that each one of you has come prepared to furnish this Junta with the data necessary for an intelligent action upon the question we have to decide to-night. Am I right, gentlemen, in that assumption?"
Eleven men nodded assent and looked down at the slips of paper they had produced from inner pockets and held ready in their hands.
"Then I shall ask you, compadres, to listen carefully to the report from each district, so that you may judge the wisdom of foreshortening the interval between to-night and the date set for the uprising.
"Each representative will give the number, in his district, of armed members of the Alliance; the amount of ammunition at hand; the number of agents secretly occupying positions of trust where they can give the most aid to the movement; the number of Spanish-Americans who, like our unfortunate neighbor, Estancio Medina, have refused thus far to come into the Alliance; the number, in his district, who may be counted upon to come in, once they see that the cause is not hopeless; who may be expected to take the purely American side, and who may be safely depended upon to remain neutral. I shall ask each of you to tell us also the extent and nature of such opposition as your district must be prepared to meet. There has been a rumor of some preparation for resistance to our movement, and we shall want to know all that you can tell us of that phase of the situation as observed in your district.
"These seemingly unimportant details are absolutely essential, gentlemen of the Junta. For in this revolutionary movement you must bear in mind that brother will rise up against brother, as it were. You will be called upon, perchance, to slay the dearest friend of your school days; your neighbor, if so be he is allied against you when the great day comes. We must not weaken; we must keep our eyes fixed upon the ultimate good that will come out of the turmoil. But we must know! We must not make the irretrievable error of taking anything for granted. Keeping that in mind, gentlemen, we will hear first the report from Bernalillo district."
A man at the right of Sommers unfolded his little slip of paper, cleared his throat and began, in strongly accented English, to read. The eleven who listened leaned forward, elbows on the table, and drank in the terrible figures avidly. Sommers set down the figures in columns and made notes on the pad before him, his lips pressed together in a straight line that twisted now and then with a sinister kind of satisfaction.
"That, gentlemen, is how the Cause stands in the county that has the largest population and approximately the smallest area of any county in the State. While this report is not altogether new to me, yet I am struck anew with the great showing that has been made in that county. With the extensive yards and shops of the Santa Fe at Albuquerque seized and held by our forces, together with the junction points and—"
Starr did not wait to hear any more, but edged hastily back to the pole and began to climb down as though a disturbed hornets' nest hung above him. The report that had so elated Sommers sent a chill down Starr's back. If one county could show so appalling an insurrectory force, what of the whole State? Yes, and the other States involved! And the thing might be turned loose at any time!
He dropped to the ground, sending a scared glance for the watchman who had gone to the fire. He was nowhere to be seen, and Starr, running to the rear of the lot, skirted the high wall at a trot; crossed a narrow, black alley, hurried down behind the next lots to the cross street, walked as fast as he dared to the next corner, turned into the main street, and made for the nearest public telephone booth.
He sweated there in the glass cage for a long ten minutes before he had managed to get in touch with Sheriff O'Malley and the chief of police, and to tell each in turn what he wanted and where they must meet him, and how many minutes they might have to do it in. He came out feeling as though he had been in there an hour, and went straight to the rendezvous he had named, which was a shed near the building ofLas Nuevas, only on another street.
They came, puffing a little and a good deal mystified. Starr, not daring to state his real business with them, had asked for men to surround and take a holdup gang. All told, there were six of them when all had arrived, and they must have been astounded at what Starr told them in a prudent undertone and speaking swiftly. They did not say anything much, but slipped away after him and came to the high wall that hid so much menace.
"There was a hombre on guard across the street," Starr told the sheriff. "He went off to the fire, but he's liable to come back. Put a man over there in the shade of that junk shop to watch out for him and nab him before he can give the alarm. This is ticklish work, remember. Any Mexican in town would knife you if he knew what you're up to.
"Johnson, you can climb the pole and pull down on 'em through the skylight, but wait till you see by their actions that they've got the tip something's wrong, and don't shoot if you can help it. Remember this is Secret Service work, and the quieter it's done, the better pleased they'll be in Washington. There can't be any hullabaloo at all. You two fellows watch the front and back gates, and the no-shooting rule goes with you, too. If there's anything else you can do, don't shoot. But it's better to fire a cannon than let a man get away. Sabe? Now, Chief, you and the sheriff can come with me, and we'll bust up the meetin' for 'em."
He went up on the shoulder of the man who was to watch outside the rear wall, and straddled the wall for a brief reconnoiter. Evidently the Junta felt safe in their hidden little room, for no guard had been left in the yard. The back door was locked, and Starr opened it as silently as he could with his pass key. Close behind him came Sheriff O'Malley and the chief of police, whose name was Whittier. They had left their shoes beside the doorstep and walked in their socks, making no noise at all.
Starr did not dare use his searchlight, but felt his way down past the press and the forms, to where the stairs went up to the second floor. On the third step from the bottom, Starr, feeling his way with his hands, touched a dozing watchman and choked him into submission before the fellow had emitted more than a sleepy grunt of surprise. They left him gagged and tied to the iron leg of some heavy piece of machinery, and went on up the stairs, treading as stealthily as a prowling cat.
Starr turned to the right, found the door locked, and patiently turned his key a hair's breadth at a time in the lock, until he slid the bolt back. Behind him the repressed breathing of O'Malley fanned warmly the back of his neck. He pushed the door open a half inch at a time, found the outer office dark and silent, and crossed it stealthily to the closet behind the stove. O'Malley and Whittier were so close behind that he could feel them as they entered the closet and crept along its length.
Starr was reaching out before him with his hands, feeling for the door into the secret office, when Sheriff O'Malley struck his foot against the old tin spittoon, tried to cover the sound, and ran afoul of the brooms, which tripped him and sent him lurching against Starr. There in that small space where everything had been so deathly still the racket was appalling. O'Malley was not much given to secret work; he forgot himself now and swore just as full-toned and just as fluently as though be had tripped in the dark over his own wheelbarrow in his own back yard.
Starr threw himself against the end of the closet where he knew the door was hidden in the wall, felt the yielding of a board, and heaved against it with his shoulder. He landed almost on top of a fat-jowled representative from Santa Fé, but he landed muzzle foremost, as it were, and he was telling the twelve to put up their hands even before he had his feet solidly planted on the floor.
Holman Sommers sat facing him. He had been writing, and he still held his pencil in his hand. He slowly crumpled the sheet of paper, his vivid eyes lifted to Starr's face. Tragic eyes they were then, for beyond Starr they looked into the stern face of the government he would have defied. They looked upon the wreck of his dearest dream; upon the tightening chains of the wage slaves he would have freed—or so he dreamed.
Starr stared back, his own mind visioning swiftly the havoc he had wrought in the dream of this leader of men. He saw, not a political outlaw caught before he could do harm to his country, but a man fated to bear in his great brain an idea born generations too soon into a brawling world of ideas that warred always with sordid circumstance. A hundred years hence this man might be called great. Now he was nothing more than a political outlaw chief, trapped with his band of lesser outlaws.
Sommers' eyes lightened impishly. His thin lips twisted in a smile at the damnable joke which Life was playing there in that room.
"Gentlemen of the Junta," he said in his sonorous, public-platform voice, "I find it expedient, because of untoward circumstances, to advise that you make no resistance. From the unceremonious and unheralded entry of our esteemed opponents, these political prostitutes who have had the effrontery to come here in the employ of a damnable system of political tyranny and frustrate our plans for the liberation of our comrades in slavery, I apprehend the fact that we have been basely betrayed by some foul Judas among us. I am left with no alternative but to advise that you surrender your bodies to these minions of what they please to call the law.
"Whether we part now, to spend the remaining years of our life in some foul dungeon; whether to die a martyr's death on the scaffold, or whether the workers of the land awake to their power and, under some wiser, stronger leadership, liberate us to enjoy the fruits of the harvest we have but sown, I cannot attempt to prophesy. We have done what we could for our fellowmen. We have not failed, for though we perish, yet our blood shall fructify what we have sown, that our sons and our sons' sons may reap the garnered grain. Gentlemen, of the Junta, I declare our meeting adjourned!"
Starr's eyes were troubled, but his gun did not waver. It pointed straight at the breast of Holman Sommers, who looked at him measuringly when he had finished speaking.
"I can't argue about the idea back of this business," Starr said gravely. "All I can do is my duty. Put on these handcuffs, Mr. Sommers. They stand for something you ain't big enough to lick—yet."
"Certainly," said Holman Sommers composedly. "You put the case like a philosopher. Like a philosopher I yield to the power which, I grant you, we are not big enough to lick—yet. In behalf of our Cause, however, permit me to call your attention to the fact that we might have come nearer to victory, had you not discovered and interrupted this meeting to-night." Though his face was paler than was natural, he slipped on the manacles as matter-of-factly as he would have put on clean cuffs, and rose from his chair prepared to go where Starr directed.
"No, sit down again," said Starr brusquely. "Sheriff, gather up all those pieces of paper for evidence against these men, and give them to me. Give me a receipt for the men—I'll wait for it. I want you and Chief Whittier to hold them here in this room till I come back. I won't be long—half an hour, maybe." He took the slips of paper which the sheriff folded and handed to him, and slipped them into his pocket.
He was gone a little longer than he said, for he had some trouble in locating the railroad official he wanted, and in convincing that sleepy official that he was speaking for the government when he demanded an engine and day coach to be placed on a certain dark siding he mentioned, ready for a swift night run to El Paso and a little beyond—to Fort Bliss, in fact.
He got it, trust Starr for that! And he was only twenty minutes behind the time he had named, though the sheriff and the chief of police betrayed a nervous relief when he walked in upon them and announced that he was ready now to move the prisoners.
They untied the terrified watchman and added him to the group. In the dark, and by way of vacant lots and unlighted streets, he took them to a certain point where an engine had just backed a single, unlighted day coach on to a siding and stood there with air-pump wheezing and the engineer crawling around beneath with his oil can. By the rear steps of the coach a mystified conductor stood waiting with his lantern hidden under his coat. A big man was the conductor; once a policeman and therefore with a keen nose—don't laugh!—for mysteries.
He wore a satisfied look when he saw the men that were being hustled into the car. His uniform tightened as he swelled with the importance of his mission. He nodded to Sheriff O'Malley and the chief of police, cast an obliquely curious glance at Starr, who stayed on the ground, and when Starr gave the word he swung his lantern to the watching fireman, and caught the handrail beside the steps.
"Fort Bliss it is; and there won't nothing stop us, buh-lieve me!" he muttered confidentially to Starr, whom he recognized only as the man who stood behind the mystery. The engine began to creep forward, and he swung up to the lower step. "We may go in the ditch or something; but we'll get there, you listen to me!"
"Go to it, and good luck," said Starr, but there was no heartiness in his voice. He stood with his thumbs hooked inside his gun-belt and watched the coach that held the peace of the country within its varnished walls go sliding out of the yard, its green tail lights the only illumination anywhere behind the engine. When it had clicked over the switch and was picking up speed for its careening flight south through the cool hours of early morning, he gave a sigh that had no triumph in it, and turned away toward his cabin.
"Well, there goes the revolution," he said somberly to himself. "And here I go to do the rest of the job; and alongside what I've got to do, hell would be a picnic!"
With a slip of paper in his pocket that would have gone a long way toward clearing Helen May, had he only taken the trouble to look at it, Starr rode out in the cool early morning to Sunlight Basin. He looked white and worn, and his eyes were sunken and circled with the purple of too little sleep and too much worry, for in the three days since he had seen her, Starr had not been able to forget his misery once in merciful sleep. Only when he was busy with capturing the Junta had he lost for a time the keen pain of his hurt.
Now it was back like an aching tooth set going again with cold water or sweets. He tried to make himself think that he hated Helen May, and that a girl of that type—a girl who could lend herself to such treachery—could not possibly win from him anything but a pitying contempt. He told himself over and over again that he was merely sore because a girl had "put something over on him"; that a man hated to have a woman make a fool of him.
He tried to gloat over the fact that he had found her out before she had any inkling of how he felt toward her; he actually believed that! He tried not to wince at the thought of her at Fort Bliss, a Federal prisoner, charged with conspiring against the government. She must have known the risk she took, he kept telling himself. The girl was no fool, was way above the average in intelligence. That was why she had appealed to him; he had felt the force of her personality, the underlying strength of her character that had not harshened her outward charm, as strength so often does for a woman.
That was the worst of it. Had she been weak she would never have mixed with any political conspiracy; they would not have wanted her, for intrigue has no place for weaklings. But had she been weak she would never have attracted Starr so deeply, however innocent she might have been. So his reasoning went round and round in a circle, until he was utterly heartsick with no hope of finding peace.
There was one thing he could do: it would be tightening the screws of his torture, but he meant to do it for her sake. He would take her to Fort Bliss himself, shielding her from publicity and humiliation; and he would take charge of Vic, and see that the kid did not suffer too much on account of his sister.
He would make a man of Vic; he never guessed that he was taking up mentally the burden which Peter had laid upon Helen May. He believed there was good stuff in that kid, and with the right handling he would come out all right. He would put in a plea to his chief for leniency toward the girl too. He would say that she was young and inexperienced and that Holman Sommers had probably drawn her into his scheme—Starr could see how that might easily be—and that her health was absolutely dependent upon open air. They couldn't keep her shut up long; a girl could not do much harm, if the rest of the bunch was convicted. Maybe the lesson and the scare would be all she needed to pull her back into lawful living. She was not a hardened adventuress; why, she couldn't be much over twenty-one or two! After a while, when she had straightened up, maybe …
So Starr thought and thought, fighting to keep a little hope alive, to see a little gleam of light in the blackness of his soul. His head bent, his eyes staring unseeingly at the yellow-brown dust of the trail, he rode along unconscious of everything save the battle raging fiercely within. He did not know what pace Rabbit was taking; he even forgot that he was on Rabbit's back. He did not know that his duty as a man and his man's love were fighting the fiercest battle of his life, or if he did, he never thought to call it a battle.
There had been one black night in the cabin—the night before this last one, it was—when he had considered for a while how he might smuggle Helen May out of the country, suppressing the fact of her complicity. He planned just how he could put her on a train and "shoot her to Los Angeles," as he worded it to himself. How she could take a boat there for Vancouver, and how he could hold back developments here until he knew she was safe. He figured the approximate cost and the hole it would make in his little savings account. He thought of everything, even to marrying her before she left, so that he could not be compelled to testify against her, in case she was caught.
He had dozed afterwards, and had dreamed that he put his plan to the test of reality. He had married Helen May and taken her himself to Los Angeles. But there had not been money enough for him to go any farther, and his chief had wired him peremptorily to return and arrest the leaders of the Alliance and all connected with it. So he had bought a steerage ticket for Helen May and put her aboard the boat, where she must herd with a lot of leering Chinamen. He had stood on the pier and watched the boat swing out and nose its way to the open sea, and a submarine had torpedoed it when it had sailed beyond the three-mile limit off the coast, so he could not go after her. He was just taking off his coat to try it, anyway, when he awoke.
That was all the good his sleep had done him: set him upright in bed with a cold sweat on his face and his hands shaking. But the reaction from that nightmare had been complete, and Starr had not again planned how he might dodge his plain duty. But he kept thinking around and around the subject for all that, as though he could not give up entirely the hope of being able to save her somehow.
He did not know, until he passed the corral, that he was already in Sunlight Basin, and that the house stood just up the slope before him. Rabbit must have taken it for granted that Starr was bound for this place and so had kept the trail of his own accord, for Starr could not remember turning from the main road. He did not even know that he had passed not more than a hundred yards from Vic and the goats, and that Vic had shouted "hello" to him.
He took a long breath when he glanced up and saw the house so close, but he did not attempt to dodge or even delay the final tragedy of his mission. He let Rabbit keep straight on. And when the horse stopped before the closed front door, Starr slid off and walked, like a tired old man, to the door and knocked.
Helen May had been washing the breakfast dishes, and Starr heard the muffled sound of her high-heeled slippers clicking over the bare floor for a minute before she came into the front room and opened the door. She had a dish towel over her right arm, opening the door with her left. Starr knew that the dish towel was merely a covering for her six-shooter, and his heart hardened a little at that fresh reminder of her preparedness and her guile.
"Why, good morning, desert man," she said brightly, after the first little start of surprise. "Come on in. The coffee's fine this morning; and I just had a hunch I'd better not throw it out for a while yet. There's a little waffle batter left, too."
Starr had choked down a cup of coffee and a sandwich at the station lunch counter before he left San Bonito, and he was glad now that he was not hungry. He stepped inside, but he did not smile back at Helen May; nor could he have accepted her hospitality to save himself from starvation. He felt enough like Judas as it was.
"Don't put down your gun yet," he said abruptly, standing beside the door with his hat in his hand, as though his visit would be very short. "You can shoot me if you want to, but that's about all the leeway I can give you. I rounded up the revolution leaders last night. They're likely at Fort Bliss by now, so you can take your choice between handing me a bullet, or going along with me to Fort Bliss. Because if I live, that's where I'll have to take you. And," he added as an afterthought, "I don't care much which it is."
Helen May stood with her chin tilted down, and stared at him from under her eyebrows. She did not speak for a minute, and Starr leaned back against the closed door with his arms folded negligently and his hat dangling from one hand, waiting her decision. He stared back at her, somberly apathetic. He had spoken the simple truth when he said he did not care which she decided to do. He had come to the limit of suffering, it seemed to him. He could look into her tawny brown eyes now without any emotion whatever.
"You don't smell drunk," said Helen May suddenly and very bluntly, "and you don't look crazy. What is the matter with you, Starr of the desert? Is this a joke, or what?"
"It didn't strike me as any joke," Starr told her passionlessly. "Thirteen of them I rounded up. Holman Sommers was the head of the whole thing. Elfigo Apodaca is in jail, held for the shooting of Estan Medina. Luis Medina is in jail too, held as a witness and to keep Apodaca's men from killing him before he can testify in court. I hated to see the kid tangled up with it—and I hate to see you in it. But that don't give me any license to let you off. You're under arrest. I'm a Secret Service man, sent here to prevent the revolution that's been brewing all spring and summer. I guess I've done it, all right." He stared at her with growing bitterness in his eyes. His hurt began dully to ache again. "Helen May, what in God's name did you tangle up with 'em for?" he flashed in a sudden passion of grief and reproach.
Helen May's chin squared a little; but she who had not screamed when she found her father dead in his bed; she who had read his letter without whimpering held her voice quiet now, though womanlike she answered Starr's question with another.
"What makes you think I am tangled up with it? What reason have you got for connecting me with such a thing?"
A stain of anger reddened Starr's cheek bones, that had been pale. "What reason? Well, I'll tell you. In the office ofLas Nuevas, in that little, inside room with the door opening out of a closet to hide it, where I got my first real clue, I found two sheets of paper with some strong revolutionary stuff written in English. Also I found a pamphlet where the same stuff had been printed in Spanish. I kept that writing, and I kept the pamphlet. I've got it now. I'd know the writing anywhere I saw it, and I saw a sample of it here in this very room, when the wind blew those papers off your desk."
"You—in this room!" Helen May caught her breath. "Why—why, you couldn't have! I never wrote any revolution stuff in my life! Why—I don't know the first thing aboutLas Nuevas, as you call it. How could my writing—?" She caught her breath again, for she remembered.
"Why, Starr of the desert, that was Holman Sommers' writing you saw! I remember now. Some pages of his manuscript blew off the desk when you were here. See, I can show you a whole pile of it!" She ran to the desk, Starr following her mechanically. "See? All kinds of scientific junk that he wanted typed. Isn't that the writing you meant? Isn't it?" Her hands trembled so that the papers she held close to Starr's face shook, but Starr recognized the same symmetrical, hard-to-read chirography.
"Yes, that's it." His voice was so husky that she could hardly hear him. He moistened his lips, that had gone dry. Was it possible? His mind kept asking over and over.
"And here! I don't ask you to take my word for it—I know that just those pages don't prove anything, because I might have written that stuff myself—if I knew enough! But here's a lot that he sent over by the stage driver yesterday. I haven't even opened it yet. You can see the same handwriting in the address, can't you? And if he has written a note—he does sometimes—and signed it—he always signs his name in full—why, that will be proof, won't it?" Her eyes burned into his and steadied a little his whirling thoughts.
"Open it, desert man! Open it, and see if there's a note! And you can ask the stage driver, if you don't believe me; here, break the string!"
She was now more eager than he to see what was inside the wrapping of newspaper. "See? That's an El Paso paper—and I don't take anything but theTimesfrom Los Angeles! Oh, goody! There is a note! You read it, Starr. Read it out loud. If that doesn't convince you, why—why I can prove by Vic—"
Starr had unfolded the sheet of tablet paper, and Helen May interrupted herself to listen. Starr's voice was uneven, husky when he tried to control the quiver in it. And this he read, in the handwriting of which he had such bitter knowledge:
"My Dear Miss Stevenson:
"I am enclosing herewith a part of Chapter Two, which I have revised considerably and beg you to retype for me. If you have no asterisk sign upon your machine, will you be so kind as to make use of the period sign to indicate a break in the context of the quotations from the various authors whom I have cited?
"I wish to inform you that I am deeply sorry to place this extra burden of work upon you, and also assure you that I am more than delighted with the care you have exercised in deciphering correctly my most abominable chirography.
"May I also suggest, with all due respect to your intelligence and with a keen appreciation of the potent influences of youth and romance upon even the drudgery of an amanuensis, that in writing "stars of the universe" in a scientific document, the connotation is marred somewhat when stars is spelled "Starr's."
"Very apologetically your friend,
It took several seconds for the full significance of that last paragraph to sink into minds so absorbed with another matter. But when it did sink in—
"Oh-h!" gasped Helen May, and backed a step, her face the color of a red hollyhock.
Starr looked up from reading those pregnant words a second time to himself. He reached out and caught Helen May by her two shoulders.
"Did you do that?" he whispered impellingly. "Did you spell my name into that man's manuscript?"
"No, I didn't! I don't believe I did—I never noticed—well, even if I did, that doesn't mean—anything." I hope the printers will set thatanythingin their very smallest type, just to show you how weak and futile and scarcely audible and absolutely unconvincing the word sounded. For one reason, Helen May did not have much breath to say it with; and for another reason, she knew there was not much use in saying it.
* * * * *
Helen May, sitting unabashed on Starr's lap, with an arm around his neck and her head on his shoulder, with her dish towel and gun lying just where she had dropped them on the floor some time before, took Peter's last letter from Starr's fingers and drew it tenderly down along her cheek.
"I only wish you could have known dad," she said with a gentle melancholy that was a great deal lightened by her present happiness. "He wasn't at all striking on the surface; he was so quiet and so unassuming. But he was just the dearest and the bravest man—and when I think what he did for me…"
"I know he was dear and brave; I can judge by his daughter." Starr reached up and prisoned hand and letter together and held them against his lips. "Seems like a nightmare now that I ever thought—And to think I headed out here to…"
"Well, Iamyour prisoner." Helen May answered that part of the sentence which Starr had left unspoken. "Listen, desert man o' mine. I—I want to be your prisoner forever and ever and ever!"
"You won't get anything less than a life sentence, lady! And—"
"Hully gosh!" Vic, bursting open the door just in the middle of a kiss, skidded precipitately through to the kitchen. "Fade out!" he advised himself as he went. "But say! When you get around to it, I'd like something to eat, Helen Blazes!"