CHAPTER VIIIN THE PROVINCE OF ALTAR
There was a frog who lived in the spring:Sing-song Kitty, can’t yo’ carry me, oh?And it was so cold that he could not sing,Sing-song Kitty, can’t yo’ carry me, oh?Ke-mo! Ki-mo! Dear––oh my!To my hi’––to my ho––to my–––
“Oh! For the love of Mike! Bub, can’t you give a man a rest instead of piling up the agony? These old joints of mine are creakin’ with every move from desert rust and dry camps, and you with no more heart in you than to sing of springs,––cold springs!”
“They do exist, Cap.”
“Uh––huh, they are as real to us this minute as the red gold that we’ve trailed until we’re at the tag end of our grub stake. I tell you, Bub, they stacked the cards on us with that door of the old Soledad Mission, and the view of the gold cañon from there! Why, Whitely showed us that the mission door never did face the hills, but looked right down the valley towards the Rio del Altar just as the Soledad plaza does today; all the old Mexicans and Indians tell us that.”
“Well, we’ve combed over most of the arroyas leading into the Altar from Rancho Soledad, and all we’ve found is placer gravel; yet the placers are facts, and the mother lode is somewhere, Cap.”
“Worn down to pan dirt, that’s what!” grunted Pike. “I tell you these heathen sit around and dream lost mission tales and lost mine lies; dream them by the dozen to delude just such innocent yaps as you and me. They’ve nothing else to do between crops. We should have stuck to a white man’s land, north into Arizona where the Three Hills of Gold are waiting, to say nothing of the Lost Stone Cabin mine, lost not twenty miles from Quartzite, and in plain sight of Castle Dome. Now there is nothing visionary aboutthat, Kit! Why, I knew an old-timer who freighted rich ore out of that mine thirty years ago, and even the road to it has been lost for years! We know things once did exist up in that country, Kit, and down here we are all tangled up with Mexican-Indian stories of ghosts and enchantments, and such vagaries. I’m fed up with them to the limit, for everyone of them we listen to is different from the last. We’ll head up into the Castle Dome country next time, hear me?”
“Sure, I hear,” agreed Kit cheerfully. “Perhaps we do lose, but it’s not so bad. Since Whitely sent his family north, he has intimated that Mesa Blanca is a single man’s job, and I reckon I can have it when he goes––as he will. Then in the month we have scouted free of Whitelys, we have dry washed enough dust to put you on velvet till things come our way. Say, what will you bet that a month of comfort around Nogales won’t make you hungry for the trail again?”
“A gold trail?” queried the weary and dejected Pike.
“Any old trail to any old place just so we keep ambling on. You can’t live contented under cover, and you know it.”
“Well,” decided Pike after a rod or two of tramping along the shaly, hot bed of a dry arroya. “I won’t bet, for you may be among the prophets. But while you are about it, I’d be thankful if you’d prophesy me a wet trail next time instead of skimpy mud holes where springs ought to be. I’m sick of dry camps, and so is Baby Buntin’.”
“‘Oh, there was a frog lived in the spring!’” chanted Kit derisively. “Cheer up, Cap, the worst is yet to come, for I’ve an idea that the gang of Mexican vaqueros we glimpsed from the butte at noon will just about muss up the water hole in Yaqui cañon until it will be us for a sleep there before the fluid is fit for a water bottle.‘Oh, there was a frog lived in the spring!’Buntin’ Baby, we’ll fish the frog out, and let you wallow in it instead, you game little dusty rat! Say, Pike, when we load up with grub again we’ll keep further west to the Cerrado Pintado. I’ll follow a hunch of my own next trip.”
The older man grunted disdain for the hunches of Kit, even while his eyes smiled response to the ever-living call of youth. To Rhodes there was ever a “next time.” He was young enough to deal in futures, and had a way with him by which friends were to be found for even unstable venturings with no backing more substantial than a “hunch.”
Not that Kit was gifted with any great degree of fatal beauty––men are not often pretty on the trail, unwashed, unshaven, and unshorn––added to which their equipment had reached the point where his most pretentious garment was a square of an Indianserapewith a hole in the middle worn as a poncho, and adopted to save his coat and other shirt on the hard trail.
Cap Pike growled that he looked like a Mexican peon in that raiment, which troubled Kit not at all. He was red bronze from the desert days, and his blue eyes, with the long black lashes of some Celtic ancestor, looked out on the world with direct mild approval. They matched the boyish voice much given to trolling old-time ditties and sentimental foolishness.
He led the dappled roan over the wild dry “wash” where the sand was deep and slippery, and the white crust of alkali over all. Before him swayed the pack mules, and back of him Captain Pike sagged on the little gray burro, named in derision and affection, the Baby Bunting of the outfit.
The jauntiness was temporarily eliminated from the old prospector. Two months of fruitless scratching gravel when he had expected to walk without special delay to the great legendary deposit, had taken the sparkle of hope from the blue eyes, and he glanced perfunctorily at the walls of that which had once been a river bed.
“What in time do you reckon became of all the water that used to fill these dry gullies?” he asked querulously. “Why, it took a thousand years of floods to wash these boulders round, and then leave them high and dry when nicely polished. That’s a waste in nature I can’t figure out, and this godforsaken territory is full of them.”
“Well, you grouch, if we didn’t have this dry bed to skip along, we would be bucking the greasewood and cactus on the mesa above. So we get some favors coming our way.”
“Skip along,––me eye!” grunted Pike, as the burro toiled laboriously through the sand, and Kit shifted and stumbled over treacherous, half-buried boulders. “Say, Kit, don’t you reckon it’s time for Billie to answer my letter? It’s over eight weeks now, and mail ought to get in once a month.”
Rhodes grunted something about “mail in normal times, but these times were not normal,” and did not seem much interested in word from Granados.
He had not the heart, or else had too much, to tell the old man that the letter to Billie never reached her. When Whitely went north he put it in his coat pocket, and then changed his coat! Kit found it a month later and held it, waiting to find someone going out. He had not even mentioned it to Whitely on his return, for Whitely was having his own troubles, and could not spare a man for a four day trip to mail.
Whitely’s folks lived north of Naco, and he had gone there direct and returned without touching at Nogales, or hearing of the tragedy at Granados. The latest news of the Mexican revolutions, and the all-absorbing question as to whether the United States would or would not intervene, seemed all the news the worried Whitely had brought back. Even the slaughter of a dozen nations of Europe had no new features to a ranchman of Sonora,––it remained just slaughter. And one did not need to cross boundaries to learn of killings, for all the world seemed aflame, and every state in Mexico had its own wars,––little or big.
Then, in the records of the tumultuous days, there was scarce space for the press or people to give thought after the first day or two, to the colorless life going out in mystery under the cottonwoods of Granados, and no word came to tell Rhodes of the suspicion, only half veiled, against himself.
The ranch house of Mesa Blanca was twenty miles from the hacienda of Soledad, and a sharp spur of the Carrizal range divided their grazing lands. Soledad reached a hundred miles south and Mesa Blanca claimed fifty miles to the west, so that the herds seldom mingled, but word filtered to and from between the vaqueros, and Rhodes heard that Perez had come north from Hermosillo and that El Aleman, (the German) had made the two day trip in from the railroad, and had gone on a littlepasearto the small rancherias with Juan Gonsalvo, the half-breed overseer. The vaqueros talked with each other about that, for there were no more young men among them for soldiers, only boys and old men to tend the cattle, and what did it mean?
The name of Rhodes was not easy for the Mexican tongue, and at Mesa Blanca his identity was promptly lost in the gift of a name with a meaning to them, El Pajarito, (the singer). Capitan Viajo, (the old captain), was accepted by Pike with equal serenity, as both men were only too well pleased to humor the Indian ranch people in any friendly concessions, for back of some of those alert black eyes there were surely inherited records of old pagan days, and old legends of golden veins in the hills.
The fact that they were left practically nameless in a strange territory did not occur to either of them, and would not have disturbed them if it had. They had met no American but Whitely since they first struck Mesa Blanca. One month Kit had conscientiously stuck to the ranch cares while Whitely took his family out, and Pike had made little sallies into the hills alone.
On Whitely’s return he had made an errand to Soledad and taken Rhodes and Pike along that they might view the crumbled walls of old Soledad Mission, back of the ranch house. The ancient rooms of the mission padres were now used principally as corrals, harness shop, and storage rooms.
The situation in itself was one of rare beauty;––those old padres knew!
It was set on a high plain or mesa, facing a wide valley spreading miles away to the south where mother-of-pearl mountains were ranged like strung jewels far against the Mexican sky. At the north, slate-blue foothills lifted their sharp-edged shoulders three miles away, but only blank walls of Soledad faced the hills, all portals of the old mission appeared to have faced south, as did Soledad. The door facing the hills was a myth. And as Rhodes stood north of the old wall, and searched its thirty-mile circle, he could understand how four generations of gold seekers had failed to find even a clue to the wealth those unknown padres had looked on, and sent joyous evidence of to the viceroy of the south. It would take years of systematic search to cover even half the visible range. A man could devote a long lifetime to a fruitless search there, and then some straying burro might uncover it for an Indian herder who would fill his poncho, and make a sensation for a week or two, and never find the trail again!
“It’s just luck!” said Kit thinking it all over as he tramped along the arroya bed, “it either belongs to you, or it doesn’t. No man on earth can buy it and make it stay, but if it is yours, no man can keep you from it entirely.”
“What the devil are you yammering about?” asked Pike grumpily.
“Oh, I was just thinking of how Whitely exploded our little balloon of hopes when he took us over to size up the prospects at Soledad. I wonder if Perez has no white help at all around that place. We did not even see the foreman.”
“He’s a half-breed, that Juan Gonsalvo. The Indians don’t like him. He’s from down Hermosillo way, and not like these Piman children of nature. He and Conrad are up to some devilment, but Whitely thinks Juan took the job, deluded as we are, with the notion that a gold mine was sticking up out of the ground at the Soledad corrals, and it was to be his find. You see, Bub, that story has gone the length of Mexico, and even over to Spain. Oh, we are not the only trailers of ghost gold; there are others!”
The slanting sun was sending shadows long on the levels, and the hills were looming to the east in softest tones of gray and amethyst; the whitish green of desert growths lay between, and much of brown desert yet to cross.
“We can’t make the foothills tonight even though there is an early moon,” decided Kit. “But we can break camp at dawn and make it before the sun is high, and the water will hold out that long.”
“It will hold for Buntin’ and the mules, but what of Pardner?” asked the older man. “He’s not used to this hard pan gravel scratching.”
“But he’s thoroughbred, and he can stand it twelve hours more if I can, can’t you, old pal?” The tall roan with the dot of black between the eyes returned his owner’s caress by nosing his bare neck, and the hand held up to smooth the black mane.
“I’ll be glad enough to see him safe across the border in old Arizona,” observed Pike. “I can’t see how the herders saved him for you at Mesa Blanca when their own stock was picked of its best for the various patriots charging through the settlements.”
“Some way, Miguel, the Indian vaquero, managed it, or got his girl to hide it out. Whitely confessed that his Indian cattlemen are the most loyal he can find down here.”
“But it’s not a white man’s land––yet, and I’m downright glad he’s shipped his family north. There’s always hell enough in Sonora, but it’s a dovecote to what it’s bound to be before the end comes, and so, it’s no place for white men’s wives.”
“Right you are! Say, what was it Whitely heard down in Sinaloa concerning the Enchanted Cañon mine?”
“Oh, some old priest’s tale––the same dope we got with a different slant to it. The gold nuggets from some shrine place where the water gushedmuy fuerte, by a sycamore tree. Same old nuggets sent out with the message, and after that the insurrection of the Indians, and the priests who found it never lived to get out. Why, Bub, that is nearly two hundred years ago! Stop and think of the noble Castilians going over Sonora with a fine tooth comb for that trail ever since and then think of the nerve of us!”
“Well, I’m nearer to it anyway than the Dutchman who trekked in from the south last year with copies of the old mission reports as guide, for the Yaquis killed him, and took his records, while they hide my horse for me.”
“Huh! yes, and warn you to ride him north!”
“Correct;––but Pike, it was a warning, not a threat! Oh, I’m coming back all right, all right! That gold by the hidden stream sure has got me roped and hog tied for keeps.”
Pike growled good-natured disdain of his confidence, and suggested that the stream, which was probably only a measly mud hole, could have dropped to purgatory in an earthquake tremor since those first old mission days, or filled up with quicksand.
“Right you are, Cap. That’s a first-rate idea,” agreed Kit the irrepressible. “Next trip we’ll start looking for streams that were and are not; we’re in the bed of one now for that matter!”
“Somewhere ahead we should come into the trail south from Carracita,” observed Pike, “but I reckon you’d just as soon camp with Pard out of sight of the trail.”
There was silence for a bit as they plodded on up the wide dry bed of the river, and then Kit turned, glancing at the old man keenly.
“I didn’t fool you much when I called that gang ‘vaqueros,’ did I?” he observed. “Well, they didn’t look good to me, and I decided I’d have to fight for my horse if we crossed trails, and––it wastes a lot of time, fighting does.”
“No, you didn’t fool me. You’d be seven kinds of an idiot to walk in this gully of purgatory when you could ride safely on the mesa above, so I guessed you had a hunch it was the friendly and acquisitive patriots.”
“Pike, they were between us and the Palomitas rancherias of Mesa Blanca or I’d have made a try to get through and warn the Indians there. Those men had no camp women with them, so they were not a detachment of the irregular cavalry,––that’s what puzzles me. And their horses were fresh. It’s some new devilment.”
“There’s nothing new in Sonora, son. Things happen over and over the same.”
The shadows lengthened, and the blue range to the east had sharp, black edges against the saffron sky, and the men plodding along over sand and between boulders, fell silent after the little exchange of confidence as to choice of trail. Once Kit left the gully and climbed the steep grade to the mesa alone to view the landscape over, but slid and scrambled down,––hot, dusty, and vituperative.
“Not a sign of life but some carrion crows moving around in the blue without flop of a wing,” he grumbled. “Who started the dope that mankind is the chosen of the Lord? Huh! we have to scratch gravel for all we rake in but the birds of the air have us beat for desert travel all right, all right!”
“Well, Bub, if you saw no one’s dust it must be that gang were not headed for Palomitas or Whitely’s.”
“They could strike Palomitas, and circle over to the east road without striking Whitely’s home corrals,” said Kit thoughtfully.
“Sure they could, but what’s the object? If it’s cattle or horses they’re after the bigger ranch is the bigger haul?”
“Yes,––if it’s stock they’re after,” agreed Kit somberly.
“Why, lad, what––what’s got you now?”
“I reckon it’s the damned buzzards,” acknowledged the younger man. “I don’t know what struck me as I sat up there watching them. Maybe it’s their blackness, maybe it’s their provender, maybe it was just the loco of their endless drifting shadows, but for a minute up there I had an infernal sick feeling. It’s a new one on me, and there was nothing I could blame it on but disgust of the buzzards.”
“You’re goin’ too shy on the water, and never knew before that you had nerves,” stated Pike sagely. “I’ve been there; fought with a pardner once,––Jimmy Dean, till he had to rope me. You take a pull at the water bottle, and take it now.”
Kit did so, but shook his head.
“It touches the right spot, but it was not a thirst fancy. It was another thought and––O Bells of Pluto! Pike, let’s talk of something else! What was that you said about the Sinaloa priest story of the red gold? You said something about a new slant on the old dope.”
“Uh-huh!” grunted Pike. “At least it was a new slant to me. I’ve heard over and over about uprising of Indians, and death of the two priests who found their mine, but this Sinaloa legend has it that the Indians did not kill the priests, but that their gods did!”
“Their gods?”
“Yeh, the special gods of that region rose up and smote them. That’s why the Indians barred out other mission priests for so long a spell that no white man remembered just where the lost shrine of the red gold was. Of course it’s all punk, Bub, just some story of the heathen sheep to hide the barbecuing of their shepherds.”
“Maybe so, but I’ve as much curiosity as a pet coon. What special process did their gods use to put the friars out of commission?”
“Oh, lightning. The original priests’ report had it that the red gold was at some holy place of the tribes, a shrine of some sort. Well, you know the usual mission rule––if they can’t wean the Indian from his shrine, they promptly dig foundations and build a church there under heavenly instructions. That’s the story of this shrine of El Alisal where the priests started to build a little branch chapel orvisita, for pious political reasons––and built it at the gold shrine. It went down in the priests’ letter or record as gold of rose, a deep red gold. Well, under protest, the Indians helped build a shack for a church altar under a great aliso tree there, but when lightning struck the priests, killed both and burned the shack, you can see what that manifestation would do to the Indian mind.”
Kit halted, panting from the heart-wearying trail, and looked Pike over disgustedly.
“Holy mackerel! Pike, haven’t youanyimagination? You’ve had this new side to the story for over a month and never even cheeped about it! I heard you and Whitely talking out on the porch, but I didn’t hear this!”
“Why, Bub, it’s just the same old story, everyone of them have half a dozen different sides to it.”
“But this one explains things, this one has logic, this one blazes a trail!” declared the enthusiast. “This one explains good and plenty why no Indian has ever cheeped about it, no money could bribe him to it. Can’t you see? Of course that lightning was sent by their wrathy gods, of course it was! But do you note that place of the gold, and place of the shrine where the water rises, is also some point where there is a dyke of iron ore near, a magnet for the lightning? And that is not here in those sandy mesas and rocky barrancas––it’s to the west in the hills, Pike. Can’t you see that?”
“Too far from the old north and south trail, Bub. There was nothing to take padres so far west to the hills. The Indians didn’t even live there; only strayed up for nuts and hunting in the season.”
“Save your breath!” jeered Kit. “It’s me to hike back to Mesa Blanca and offer service at fifty dollars per, and live like a miser until we can hit the trail again. I may find a tenderfoot to buy that valley tract of mine up in Yuma, and get cash out of that. Oh, we will get the finances somehow! I’ll write a lawyer soon as we get back to Whitely’s––God! what’s that?”
They halted, holding breath to listen.
“A coyote,” said Pike.
“No, only one animal screams like that––a wildcat in the timber. But it’s no wildcat.”
Again the sound came. It was either from a distance or else muffled by the barrier of the hill, a blood-curdling scream of sickening terror.
A cold chill struck the men as they looked at each other.
“The carrion crows knew!” said Kit. “You hold the stock, Pike.”
He quickly slipped his rifle from its case, and started up the knoll.
“The stock will stand,” said Pike. “I’m with you.”
As the two men ran upward to the summit and away from the crunching of their own little outfit in the bed of the dry river, they were struck by the sound of clatter of hoofs and voices.
“Bub, do you know where we are?” asked Pike––“this draw slants south and has brought us fair into the Palomitas trail where it comes into the old Yaqui trail, and on south to hell.”
“To hell it is, if it’s the slavers again after women,” said Kit. “Come quiet.”
They reached the summit where cacti and greasewood served as shield, and slightly below them they saw, against the low purple hills, clouds of dust making the picture like a vision and not a real thing, a line of armed horsemen as outpost guards, and men with roped arms stumbling along on foot slashed at occasionally with areatato hasten their pace. Women and girls were there, cowed and drooping, with torn garments and bare feet. Forty prisoners in all Kit counted of those within range, ere the trail curved around the bend of a hill.
“But that scream?” muttered Kit. “All those women are silent as death, but that scream?” Then he saw.
One girl was in the rear, apart from the rest of the group. A blond-bearded man spurred his horse against her, and a guard lashed at her to keep her behind. Her scream of terror was lest she be separated from that most woeful group of miserables. The horse was across the road, blocking it, as the man with the light beard slid from the saddle and caught her.
Kit’s gun was thrown into position as Pike caught his hand.
“No!” he said. “Look at her!”
For the Indian girl was quicker far. From the belt of her assailant she grasped a knife and lunged at his face as he held her. His one hand went to his cheek where the blood streamed, and his other to his revolver.
But even there she was before him, for she held the knife in both hands against her breast, and threw herself forward in the haze of dust.
The other guard dismounted and stared at the still figure on the trail, then kicked her over until he could see her face. One look was enough. He jerked the knife from the dead body, wiped it on hermanta, and turned to tie a handkerchief over the cheek of the wounded horseman.
Kit muttered an oath of horror, and hastily drew the field glass from its case to stare at the man whose beard, a false one, had been torn off in the struggle. It was not easy to re-adjust it so that it would not interfere with the bandage, and thus he had a very fair view of the man’s features, and his thoughts were of Billie’s words to Conrad concerning slave raids in Sonora. Had Billie really suspected, or had she merely connected his Mexican friends with reports of raids for girls in the little Indian pueblos?
Pike reached for the glass, but by the time he could focus it to fit his eyes, the man had re-mounted, riding south, and there was only the dead girl left there where she fell, an Indian girl they both knew, Anita, daughter of Miguel, the major-domo of Mesa Blanca, whose own little rancheria was with the Pimans at Palomitas.
“Look above, Cap,” said Kit.
Above two pair of black wings swept in graceful curves against the saffron sky––waiting!
Rhodes went back to the outfit for pick and shovel, and when twilight fell they made a grave there in the dusky cañon of the desert.
CHAPTER VIIITHE SLAVE TRAIL
They camped that night in the barranca, and next morning a thin blue smoke a mile away drew Kit out on the roan even in the face of the heat to be, and the water yet to find. He hoped to discover someone who had been more fortunate in escape.
He found instead an Indian he knew, one whose gray hair was matted with blood and who stood as if dazed by terror at sound of hoofs. It was Miguel, the Pima head man of Mesa Blanca.
“Why, Miguel, don’t you know me?” asked Kit.
The eyes of the man had a strange look, and he did not answer. But he did move hesitatingly to the horse and stroked it.
“Caballo,” he said. “Muy bueno, caballo.”
“Yes,” agreed Pardner’s rider, “very good always.”
“Siseñor, always.”
Kit swung from the saddle, and patted the old man’s shoulder. He was plainly dazed from either a hurt, or shock, and would without doubt die if left alone.
“Come, you ride, and we’ll go to camp, then find water,” suggested Kit. “Camp here no good. Come help me find water.”
That appeal penetrated the man’s mind more clearly. Miguel had been the well-trusted one of the Indian vaqueros, used to a certain dependence put upon him, and he straightened his shoulders for a task.
“Siseñor, a good padrone are you, and water it will be found for you.” He was about to mount when he halted, bewildered, and looked about him as if in search.
“All––my people––” he said brokenly. “My children of me––my child!”
Kit knew that his most winning child lay newly covered under the sand and stones he had gathered by moonlight to protect the grave from coyotes.
But there was a rustle back of him and a black-eyed elf, little more than a child, was standing close, shaking the sand from her hair.
“I am hearing you speak. I know it is you, and I come,” she said.
It was Tula, the younger daughter of Miguel,––one who had carried them water from the well on her steady head, and played with the babies on the earthen floors at the pueblo of Palomitas.
But the childish humors were gone, and her face wore the Indian mask of any age.
“Tell me,” said Kit.
“It is at Palomitas. I was in the willows by the well when they came, Juan Gonsalvo and El Aleman, and strange soldiers. All the women scream and make battle, also the men, and that is when my father is hurt in the head, that is when they are taking my mother, and Anita, my sister. Some are hiding. And El Aleman and Juan Gonsalvo make the count, and sent the men for search. That is how it was.”
“Why do you say El Aleman?” asked Rhodes.
“I seeing him other time with Don José, and hearing how he talk. Also Anita knowing him, and scream his name––‘Don Adolf!’––when he catch her. Juan Gonsalvo has a scarf tied over the face––all but the eyes, but the Don Adolf has the face now covered with hairs and I seeing him. They take all the people. My father is hurt, but lives. He tries to follow and is much sick. My mother is there, and Anita, my sister, is there. He thinks it better to find them––it is his head is sick. He walks far beside me, and does not know me.”
“You are hungry?”
She showed him a few grains of parched corn tied up in the corner of hermanta. “Water I have, and roots of the sand.”
“Water,” repeated Miguel mechanically. “Yes, I am the one who knows where it comes. I am the one to show you.”
The eyes of the girl met Kit’s gaze of understanding.
“The hurt is of his head,” she stated again. “In the night he made speech of strange old-time things, secret things, and of fear.”
“So? Well, it was a bad night for old men and Indian girls in the desert. Let’s be moving.”
Tula picked up her hidden wicker water bottle and trudged on sandaled feet beside Kit. Miguel went into a heap in the saddle, dazed, muttering disjointed Indian words, only one was repeated often enough to make an impression,––it was Cajame.
“What is Cajame?” he asked the girl, and she gave him a look of tolerance.
“He was of chiefs the most great. He was killed for his people. He was the father of my father.”
Kit tried to recall where he had heard the name, but failed. No one had chanced to mention that Miguel, the peaceful Piman, had any claims on famous antecedents. He had always seemed a grave, silent man, intent only on herding the stock and caring for the family, at the little cluster of adobes by the well of Palomitas. It was about two miles from the ranch house, but out of sight. An ancient river hill terminated in a tall white butte at the junction of two arroyas, and the springs feeding them were the deciding influence regarding location of dwellings. Rhodes could quickly perceive how a raid could be made on Palomitas and, if no shots were fired, not be suspected at the ranch house of Mesa Blanca.
The vague sentences of Miguel were becoming more connected, and Kit, holding him in the saddle, was much puzzled by some of them.
“It is so, and we are yet dying,” he muttered as he swayed in the saddle. “We, the Yaqui, are yet dumb as our fathers bade. But it is the end, señor, and the red gold of Alisal is our own, and–––”
Then his voice dwindled away in mutterings and Rhodes saw that the Indian girl was very alert, but watching him rather than her father as she padded along beside him.
“Where is it––Alisal?” he asked carelessly, and her velvet-black eyes narrowed.
“I think not anyone is knowing. It is also evil to speak of that place,” she said.
“What makes the evil?”
“Maybe so the padres. I no knowing, what you think?”
But they had reached the place of camp where Cap Pike had the packs on the animals, waiting and restless.
“Well, you’re a great little collector, Bub,” he observed. “You start out on the bare sand and gravel and raise a right pert family. Who’s your friend?”
Despite his cynical comment, he was brisk enough with help when Miguel slid to the ground, ashen gray, and senseless.
“Now we are up against trouble, with an old cripple and a petticoat to tote, and water the other side of the range.”
But he poured a little of the precious fluid down the throat of the Indian, who recovered, but stared about vacantly.
“Yes, señor,” he said nodding his head when his eyes rested on Rhodes, “as you say––it is for the water––as you say––it is the end––for the Yaqui. Dead is Cajame––die all we by the Mexican! To you, señor, my child, and El Alisal of the gold of the rose. So it will be, señor. It is the end––the water is there, señor. It is to you.”
“That’s funny,” remarked Pike, “he’s gone loony and talking of old chief Cajame of the Yaquis. He was hanged by the Mexican government for protesting against loot by the officials. A big man he was, nothing trifling about Cajame! That old Indian had eighty thousand in gold in a government bank. Naturally the Christian rulers couldn’t stand for that sort of shiftlessness in a heathen! Years ago it was they burned him out, destroyed his house and family;––the whole thing was hellish.”
The girl squatting in the sand, never took her eyes off Pike’s face. It was not so much the words, but the tone and expression she gave note to, and then she arose and moved over beside her father.
“No,” she said stolidly, “it is his families here, Yaqui me––no Pima! Hiding he was when young, hiding with Pima men all safe. The padre of me is son to Cajame,––only to you it is told, you Americano!”
Her eyes were pitiful in their strained eagerness, striving with all her shocked troubled soul to read the faces of the two men, and staking all her hopes of safety in her trust.
“You bet we’re Americano, Tula, and so will you be when we get you over the border,” stated Rhodes recklessly. “I don’t know how we are going to do it, Cap, but I swear I’m not going to let a plucky little girl like that go adrift to be lifted by the next gang of raiders. We need a mascot anyway, and she is going to be it.”
“You’re a nice sort of seasoned veteran, Bub,” admitted Pike dryly, “but in adopting a family it might be as well to begin with a he mascot instead of what you’ve picked. A young filly like that might turn hoodoo.”
“I reckon I’d have halted for a sober second thought if it hadn’t been for that other girl under the stones down there,” agreed Rhodes. “But shucks!––with all the refugees we’re feeding across the line where’s the obstacle to this one?”
The old prospector was busy with the wounded head for the Indian and had no reply ready, but shook his head ominously. Rhodes scowled and began uncoiling areatain case it would be needed to tie Miguel in the saddle.
“We’ve got to get some hustle to this outfit,” he observed glancing at the sun. “It’s too far to take them back to Whitely’s, and water has to be had. We are really nearer to Soledad!”
The Indian girl came closer to him, speaking in a low, level manner, strange and secretive, yet not a whisper.
“He does know––and water is there at that place,” she said. “In the night I am hearing him speak all what the ancients hide. He no can walk to that place, maybe I no can walk, but go you for the gold in the hidden cañon. You are Americano,––strong,––is it not? A brave heart and much of gold of rose would bring safe again the mother of me and my sister! All this I listen to in the night. For them the gold of rose by the hidden water is to be uncovered again. But see, his hands are weak, his head is like theniñoin the reed basket. A stronger heart must find the way––it is you.”
Lowly, haltingly, she kept on that level-voiced decision. It was evident that the ravings of her father through the long hours of the dreadful night had filled her mind with his one desire: to dare the very gods that the red gold might be uncovered again, and purchase freedom for the Indians on the exile road to the coast.
So low were her words that even Cap Pike, a rod away, only heard the voice, but not the subject. It was further evident that she meant but the one man to hear. Pike had white hair and to her mind was, like her father, to be protected from responsibilities, but Rhodes loomed strong and kind, and braced by youth for any task.
Rhodes looked at her pityingly, and patted her head.
“I reckon we’re all a little loco, kid,” he observed. “You’re so paralyzed with the hell you saw, and his ravings that you think his dope of the gold is all gospel, but it’s only a dream, sister,––a sick man’s fancy, though you sure had me going for a minute, plum hypnotized by the picture.”
“It is to hide always,” she said. “No man must know. No other eyes must see, only you!”
“Sure,” he agreed.
“You promising all?”
“Sure again! Just to comfort you I promise that when I find the gold of El Alisal I will use it to help get your people.”
“Half,” she decided. “Half to you.”
“Half it is! You’re a great little planner for your size, kid. Too bad it’s only a dream.”
Cap Pike rose to his feet, and gave a hand to Miguel, who reeled, and then steadied himself gradually.
“Most thanks, señor,” he whispered, “and when we reach the water–––”
They helped him into the saddle, and Rhodes walked beside, holding him as he swayed.
They passed the new-made grave in the sand, and Rhodes turned to the girl. “Sister,” he said, “lift two stones and add to that pile there, one for you and one for your father. Also look around and remember this place.”
“I am no forgetting it,” she said as she lifted a stone and placed it as he told her. “It is here the exile trail. I mark the place where you take for me the Americano road, and not the south road of the lost. So it is,––these stone make witness.”
“I’ll be shot if I don’t believe youareold Cajames stock,” said Cap Pike staring at her, and then meeting the gaze of Rhodes in wonder at her clear-cut summing up of the situation. “But he was a handful for the government in his day, Bub, and I’m hornswaggled if I’d pick out his breed for a kindergarten.”
The girl heard and understood at least the jocular tenor of his meaning, but no glance in his direction indicated it. She placed the second stone, and then in obedience to Rhodes she looked back the way she had come where the desert growth crisped in the waves of heat. On one side lay the low, cactus-dotted hillocks, and on the other the sage green and dull yellow faded into the blue mists of the eastern range.
“I am no forgetting it, this place ever,” she said and then lifted her water bottle and trudged on beside Rhodes. “It is where my trail begins, with you.”
Cape Pike grinned at the joke on the boy, for it looked as if the Yaqui girl were adoptinghim!
CHAPTER IXA MEETING AT YAQUI WELL
Good luck was with them, for the water hole in Yaqui cañon had not been either muddied or exhausted, evidence that the raiders had not ranged that way. The sorry looking quartette fairly staggered into the little cañon, and the animals were frantic with desire to drink their fill.
“I was so near fried that the first gallon fairly sizzled down my gullet,” confessed Cap Pike after a long glorious hour of rest under the alamos with saturated handkerchief over his burning eyes. “That last three mile stretch was hell’s back yard for me. How you reckon the little trick over there ever stood it?”
The Indian girl was resting near her father, and every little while putting water on his face and hands. When she heard the voice of Pike she sat up, and then started quietly to pick up dry yucca stalks and bits of brushwood for a fire.
“Look at that, would you, Bub,” commented Pike, “the minute she sees you commence to open the cook kit she is rustling for firewood. That little devil is made of whalebone for toughness. Why, even the burros are played out, but she is fresh as a daisy after a half hour’s rest!”
Rhodes noted that the excitement by which she had been swayed to confidence in the morning had apparently burned out on the trail, for she spoke no more, only served silently as generations of her mothers of the desert had done, and waited, crouched back of her father, while the men ate the slender meal ofcarne seco,atole, and coffee.
Cap Pike suggested that she join them, but it was her adopted guardian who protested.
“We won’t change their ways of women,” he decided. “I notice that when white folks try to they are seldom understood. How do we know whether that attitude is an humble effacement, or whether the rank of that martyred ancester exalts her too greatly to allow equality with white stragglers of the range?”
Cap Pike snorted disdain.
“You’ll be making a Pocahontas of her if you keep on that ‘noble Injun’ strain,” he remarked.
“Far be it from me! Pocahontas was a gay little hanger-on of the camps,––not like this silent owl! Her mind seems older than her years, and just notice her care of him, will you? I reckon he’d have wandered away and died but for her grip on him through the night.”
Miguel sank into sleep almost at once after eating, and the girl waved over him an alamo branch as a fan with one hand, and ate with the other, while Rhodes looked over the scant commissary outfit, reckoning mouths to feed and distance to supplies. The moon was at full, and night travel would save the stock considerably. By the following noon they could reach ranches either west or north. He was conscious of the eyes of the girl ever on his face in mute question, and while Pike bathed the backs of the animals, and led each to stand in the oozy drainage of the meager well, she came close to Kit and spoke.
“You say it is a dream, señor, and you laugh, but the red gold of El Alisal is no dream. He, my father has said it, and after that, I, Tula, may show it to you. Even my mother does not know, but I know. I am of the blood to know. You will take him there, for it is a medicine place, much medicine! He has said it to you, señor, and that gift is great. You will come, alone,––with us, señor?”
Kit smiled at her entreaty, patted her hair, and dug out a worn deck of cards and shuffled them, slowly regarding the sleeping Indian the while.
“What’s on your mind?” demanded Cap Pike, returning with his white locks dripping from a skimpy bath. “Our grub stake is about gone, and you’ve doubled the outfit. What’s the next move?”
“I’m playing a game in futures with Miguel,” stated Kit, shuffling the cards industriously.
“Sounds loco to me, Bub,” observed the veteran. “Present indications are not encouraging as to futures there. Can’t you see that he’s got a jar from which his mind isn’t likely to recover? Not crazy, you know, not a lunatic or dangerous, but just jarred from Pima man back to Yaqui child. That’s about the way I reckon it.”
“You reckon right, and it’s the Yaqui child mind I’m throwing the cards for. Best two out of three wins.”
“What the–––”
“Highest cards for K. Rhodes, and I hike across the border with our outfit; highest cards for Miguel and my trail is blazed for the red gold of Alisal. This is Miguel’s hand––ace high for Miguel!”
Again he shuffled and cut.
“A saucy queen, and red at that! Oh, you charmer!”
“You got to hustle to beat that, Bub. Go on, don’t be stingy.”
Rhodes cut the third time, then stared and whistled.
“The cards are stacked by the Indian! All three covered with war paint. What’s the use in a poor stray white bucking against that?”
He picked out the cards and placed them side by side, ace, king and queen of hearts.
“Three aces could beat them,” suggested Pike. “Go on Bub, shuffle them up, don’t be a piker.”
Rhodes did, and cut ten of clubs.
“Not even the right color,” he lamented. “Nothing less than two aces for salvation, and I––don’t––get––them!”
A lonely deuce fell on the sand, and Rhodes eyed it sulkily as he rolled a cigarette.
“You poor little runt,” he apostrophized the harmless two-spot. “You’ve kicked me out of the frying pan into the fire, and a good likely blaze at that!”
“Don’t reckon I care to go any deeper into trouble than what we’ve found,” decided Pike. “Ordinary Indian scraps are all in the day’s work––same with a Mexican outfit––but, Bub, this slave-hunting graft game with the state soldiery doing the raiding is too strong a combine for two lone rangers to buck against. Me for the old U. S. border, and get some of this devilish word to the peace advocates at home.”
“They wouldn’t believe you, and only about two papers along the border would dare print it,” observed Rhodes. “Every time a band of sunny Mexicans loot a ranch or steal women, the word goes north that again the bloodthirsty Yaquis are on the warpath! Those poor devils never leave their fields of their own will, and don’t know why the Americans have a holy dread of them. Yet the Yaqui is the best worker south of the line.”
“If he wasn’t the price wouldn’t be worth the slave trader’s valuable time,” commented Pike.
The Indian girl made a quick gesture of warning, just a sweep outward of her hand along the ground. She didn’t even look at them, but down the arroya, the trail they had come.
“Caballos, hombres!” she muttered in her throat.
“The kid’s right,––hear them!” said Rhodes, and then he looked at him, and made a strange movement of eyes and head to direct the attention back of her in the thicket of cactus and squat greasewood. He did not look at once, but finally with a circular sweep of the locality, he saw the light glint on a gun barrel along the edge of a little mesa above them.
“Nice friendly attention,” he observed. “Someone sizing us up. Time to hit the trail anyway, Cap;––to get through on the grub we have to travel tonight.”
He rose and handed the water bottles to the girl to fill, while he tightened cinches.
“It’s a long day’s trip, Cap,” he stated thoughtfully, “a long day out to Carrizal, and a long one back to Mesa Blanca. I’ll divide the dust and the grub fifty-fifty, and you get out to some base of supplies. I’d rather you’d take Pardner, and keep on going across the line. The trail is clear from here for you, and enough water holes and settlements for you to get through. I don’t think Pardner would last for the back trip, but you can save him by riding at night; the burro and mule are best for us. Here’s the dust.”
While Pike had been talking of crossing the border, Kit had been rapidly readjusting the provision so that the old chap had enough to carry him to the first settlement, and the gold dust would more than pay for provision the rest of the way.
“Why––say, Bub!” remonstrated Pike. “You’re so sudden! I don’t allow to leave you by your lonesomes like this. Why, I had planned–––”
“There’s nothing else to do,” decided Rhodes crisply. “If you don’t beat it with Pardner, we’ll lose him, sure! I’m going to take these Indians back, and you can help most by waiting north of the line till you hear from me. I’ll get word to you at Granados. So, if there should be any trouble with these visitors of ours, your trail is clear;––savvy?”
Two men rode into view in the bend of the arroya. A cartridge belt across each shoulder, and one around each waist, was the most important part of their equipment.
“Buenos dias, señors,” said one politely, while his little black eyes roved quickly over the group. “Is there still water to be found in the well here?Dios!it is the heat of hell down there in the valley.”
“At your service, señor, is water fresh drawn,” said Rhodes, and turned to the girl, “Oija, Tulita!––water for the gentlemen. You ride far, señor?”
“From Soledad wells.”
“Yes, I know the brand,” remarked Rhodes.
“This is a good season in which to avoid too much knowledge, or too good a memory, señor,” observed the man who had not spoken. “Many herds will change hands without markets before tranquility is over in Mexico.”
“I believe you, señor, and we who have nothing will be the lucky ones,” agreed Rhodes, regarding the man with a new interest. He was not handsome, but there was a something quick and untamed in his keen, black eyes, and though the mouth had cruel hard lines, his tone was certainly friendly, yet dominating.
“What have you here?” he asked with a gesture toward Miguel.
“My Indian who tried to save his women from slavers, and was left for dead,” stated Rhodes frankly.
“And this?”
He pointed to the girl filling again the water bottles.
“She is mine, señor. We go to our own homes.”
“Hum! you should be enlisted in the fights and become capitan, but these would drop by the trail if you left them. Well, another time perhaps, señor! For the water many thanks.Adios!” and with wave of the hand they clattered down the arroya.
“Queer,” muttered Rhodes, “did you catch that second chap signal to the gun man in the cactus? He craw-fished back over the mesa and faded away.”
“They didn’t come for water alone––some scouten’ party trailin’ every sign found,” decided Pike. “I’ll bet they had us circled before the two showed themselves. Wonder who they are after?”
“Anyway they didn’t think us worth while gathering in, which is a comfort. That second fellow looks like someone I’ve crossed trails with, but I can’t place him.”
“They’ll place you all right, all right!” prophesied Pike darkly, “you and your interesting family won’t need a brand.”
Rhodes stared at him a moment and then grinned.
“Right you are, Cap. Wouldn’t it be pie for the gossips to slice up for home consumption?”
He kept on grinning as he looked at the poor bit of human flotsam whom he had dubbed “the owl” because of her silence and her eyes. She aroused Miguel without words, watching him keenly for faintest sign of recovery. The food and sleep had refreshed him in body, but the mind was far away. To the girl he gave no notice, and after a long bewildered stare at Rhodes he smiled in a deprecating way.
“Your pardon, Don José, that I outsleep the camp,” he muttered haltingly. “It is a much sickness of the head to me.”
“For that reason must you ride slowly today,” stated Rhodes with quick comprehension of the groping mind, though the “Don José” puzzled him, and at first chance he loitered behind with the girl and questioned her.
“How makes itself that I must know all the people in the world before I was here on earth?” she asked morosely? “Me he does not know, Don José is of Soledad and is of your tallness, so–––”
“Know you the man who came for water at the cañon well?” he asked, and she looked at him quickly and away.
“The name of the man was not spoke by him, also he said a true word of brands on herds––these days.”
“In these days?” reflected Rhodes, amazed at the ungirlish logic. “You know what he meant when he said that?”
“We try that we know––all we, for the Deliverer is he named, and by that name only he is spoke in the prayers we make.”
Rhodes stared at her, incredulous, yet wondering if the dusty vaquero looking rider of brief words could be the man who was called outlaw, heathen, and bandit by Calendria, and “Deliverer” by these people of bondage.
“You think that is true;––he will be the deliverer?”
“I not so much think, I am only remembering what the fathers say and the mothers. Their word is that he will be the man, if––if–––”
“Well, if what?” he asked as she crossed herself, and dropped her head.
“I am not wanting to say that thing. It is a scare on the heart when it is said.”
“I’d rather be prepared for the scare if it strikes me,” he announced, and after a thoughtful silence while she padded along beside him, she lowered her voice as though to hide her words from the evil fates.
“Then will I tell it you:––a knife in the back is what they fear for him, or poison in his cup. He is hated by strong haters, also he makes them know fear. I hearing all that in the patio at Palomitas, and old Tio Polonio is often saying all saviors are crucified. How you think?”
Rhodes replied vaguely as to the wisdom of Tio Polonio, for the girl was giving him the point of view of the peon, longing for freedom, yet fatalistic as the desert born ever are. And she had known the rebel leader, Ramon Rotil, all the time!
He had no doubt but that she was right. Her statement explained the familiar appearance of the man he had not met before, though he had seen pictures in newspapers or magazines. Then he fell to wondering what Ramon Rotil was doing in a territory so far from the troops, and–––
“Don José is one of the strong men who are hating him much,” confided the child. “Also Don José comes not north alone ever anymore, always the soldiers are his guard. Tio Polonio tells things of these soldiers.”
“What kind of things?”
“They are killing boys like rabbits in Canannea,––pacifico boys who could grow to Calendrista soldiers. Such is done by the guard of Don José and all the friends of the Deliverer are killed with a quickness. That is how the men of Don José Perez please him most, and in the south there are great generals who work also with him, and his hand is made strong, also heavy, and that is what Tio Polonio is telling us often.”
When they reached the mouth of the little cañon of the Yaqui well where the trails divide, Pike shook hands and climbed into the saddle of Pardner.
“It’s the first time I ever took the easy way out, and left the fight alone to a chum,––but I’ll do it, Bub, because you could not make a quick get-away with me tagging along. Things look murkier in this territory every minute. You’ll either have the time of your life, or a headstone early in the game. Billie and I will put it up though we won’t know where you’re planted. I don’t like it, but the minutes and water for the trail are both precious. Come out quick as you can. So long!”
Pardner, refreshed by cooling drink and an hour’s standing in wet mud of the well drainage, stepped off briskly toward the north, while Rhodes lifted Tula to the back of the pack mule, and Miguel unheeding all plans or changes, drooped with closed eyes on the back of the little burro. The manager of the reorganized gold-search syndicate strode along in the blinding glare of the high sun, herding them ahead of him, and as Pike turned for a last look backward at a bend of the trail, the words of the old darkey chant came to him on the desert air:
Oh, there was a frog lived in the spring!