“I don’t, it’s too new,” confessed Pike. “Who says this?”
“The Señor Henderson. I hear him talk with Señor Conrad, who has much sorrow because the Don Filipe made bad contracts and losing the money little and little, and then the counting comes, and it is big, very big!”
“Ah! the Señor Conrad has much sorrow, has he?” queried Pike, “and Billie is getting her face to the wall and crying? That’s queer. Billie always unloaded her troubles on me, and you say there was none of this weeping till I came back?”
“That is so, señor.”
“Cause why?”
“Quien sabe? She was making a long letter to Señor Rhodes in Sonora,––that I know. He sends no word, so––I leave it to you, señor, it takes faith and more faith when a man is silent, and the word of a killing is against him.”
“Great Godfrey, woman! He never got a letter, he knows nothing of a killing. How in hell––” Then the captain checked himself as he saw the uselessness of protesting to Doña Luz. “Where’s Billie?”
Billie was perched on a window seat in the sala, her eyes were more than a trifle red, and she appeared deeply engrossed in the pages of a week-old country paper.
“I see here that Don José Perez of Hermosillo is to marry Doña Dolores Terain, the daughter of the general,” she observed impersonally. “He owns Rancho Soledad, and promises the Sonora people he will drive the rebel Rotil into the sea, and it was but yesterday Tia Luz was telling me of his beautiful wife, Jocasta, who was only a little mountain girl when he rode through her village and saw her first. She is still alive, and it looks to me as if all men are alike!”
“More or less,” agreed Pike amicably, “some of us more, some of us less. Doña Dolores probably spells politics, but Doña Jocasta is a wildcat of the sierras, and I can’t figure out any harmonious days for a man who picks two like that.”
“He doesn’t deserve harmony; no man does who isn’t true––isn’t true,” finished Billie rather lamely.
“Look here, honey child,” observed Pike, “you’ll turn man hater if you keep on working your imagination. Luz tells me you are cranky against Kit, and that the ranches are tied up in business knots tighter than I had any notion of, so you had better unload the worst you can think of on me; that’s what I’m here for. What difference do the Perez favorites make to our young lives? Neither Dolores nor Jocasta will help play the cards in our fortunes.”
Wherein Captain Pike was not of the prophets. The wells of Sonora are not so many but that he who pitches his tent near one has a view and greetings of all drifting things of the desert, and the shadowed star of Doña Jocasta of the south was leading her into the Soledad wilderness forsaken of all white men but one.
Chapter 12
COVERING THE TRAIL
Each minute of the long days, Rhodes worked steadily and gaily, picking out the high grade ore from the old Indian mine, and every possible night he and the burro and Tula made a trip out to the foot of the range, where they buried their treasure against the happy day when they could go out of the silent desert content for the time with what gold they could carry in secret to the border.
For two days he had watched the Soledad ranch house rather closely through the field glass, for there was more activity there than before; men in groups rode in who were not herding. He wondered if it meant a military occupation, in which case he would need to be doubly cautious when emerging from the hidden trail.
The girl worked as he worked. Twice he had made new sandals for her, and also for himself in order to save his boots so that they might at least be wearable when he got among people. All plans had been thought out and discussed until no words would be needed between them when they separated. She was to appear alone at Palomitas with a tale of escape from the slavers, and he was carefully crushing and mashing enough color to partly fill a buckskin bag to show as the usual fruits of a prospect trip from which he was returning to Mesa Blanca after exhausting grub stake and shoe leather.
The things of the world had stood still for him during that hidden time of feverish work. He scarcely dared try to estimate the value of the ore he had dug as honey from a hollow tree, but it was rich––rich! There were nuggets of pure gold, assorted as to their various sizes, while he milled and ground the quartz roughly, and cradled it in the water of the brook.
By the innocent aid of Baby Bunting, two wild burros of the sierra had been enticed within reach for slaughter, and, aside from the food values, they furnished green hide which under Kit’s direction, Tula deftly made into bags for carrying the gold.
All activities during the day were carefully confined within a certain radius, low enough in the little cañon to run no risk in case any inquisitive resident of Soledad should study the ranges with a field glass, though Kit had not seen one aside from his own since he entered Sonora. And he used his own very carefully every morning and evening on the wide valley of Soledad.
“Something doing down there, sister,” he decided, as they were preparing for the last trail out. “Riders who look like cavalry, mules, and some wagons––mighty queer!”
Tula came over and stood beside him expectantly. He had learned that a look through the magic glasses was the most coveted gift the camp could grant to her, and it had become part of the regular routine that she stood waiting her turn for the wide look, the “enchant look,” as she had called it that first morning. It had become a game to try to see more than he, and this time she mentioned as he had, the wagons, and mules, and riders. And then she looked long and uttered a brief Indian word of surprise.
“Beat me again, have you?” queried Kit good humoredly. “What do you find?”
“A woman is there, in that wagon,––sick maybe. Also one man is a padre; see you!”
Kit took the glasses and saw she was right. A man who looked like a priest was helping a woman from a wagon, she stumbled forward and then was half carried by two men towards the house.
“Not an Indian woman?” asked Kit, and again her unchildlike mind worked quickly.
“A padre does not bow his head to help Indian woman. Caballeros do not lift them up.”
“Well I reckon Don José Perez is home on a visit, and brought his family. A queer time! Other ranch folks are getting their women north over the border for safety.”
“Don José not bring woman to Soledad––ever. He take them away. His men take them away.”
It was the first reference she had made to the slavers since they had entered the cañon, though she knew that each pile of nuggets was part of the redemption money for those exiles of whom she did not speak.
But she worked tirelessly until Kit would stop her, or suggest some restful task to vary the steady grind of carrying, pounding, or washing the quartz. He had ordered her to make two belts, that each of them might carry some of the gold hidden under their garments. She had a nugget tied in a corner of her manta, and other small ones fastened in her girdle, while in the belt next her body she carried all he deemed safe to weight her with, probably five pounds. At any hint of danger she would hide the belt and walk free.
His own belt would carry ten pounds without undue bulkiness. And over three hundred pounds of high grade gold was already safely hidden near the great rock with the symbols of sun and rain marking its weathered surface.
“A fair hundred thousand, and the vein only scratched!” he exulted. “I was sore over losing the job on Billie’s ranch,––but gee! this looks as if I was knocked out in the cold world to reach my good luck!”
In a blue dusk of evening they left the camp behind and started over the trail, after Tula had carefully left fragments of food on the tomb of Miguel, placed there for the ghosts who are drawn to a comrade.
Kit asked no questions concerning any of her tribal customs, since to do so would emphasize the fact that they were peculiar and strange to him, and the Indian mind, wistfully alert, would sense that strangeness and lose its unconsciousness in the presence of an alien. So, when she went, aft
er meals, to offer dregs of the soup kettle or bones of the burro, she often found a bunch of desert blossoms wilting there in the heat, and these tributes left by Kit went far to strengthen her confidence. It was as if Miguel was a live partner in their activities, never forgotten by either. So they left him on guard, and turned their faces toward the outer world of people.
Knowing more than he dare tell the girl his mind was considerably occupied with that woman at Soledad, for military control changed over night in many a province of Mexico in revolutionary days, and the time at the hidden mine might have served for many changes.
Starlight and good luck was on the trail for them, and at earliest streak of dawn they buried their treasure, divided their dried burro meat, and with every precaution to hide the trail where they emerged from the gray sierra, they struck the road to Mesa Blanca.
Until full day came Tula rode the burro, and slipped off at a ravine where she could walk hidden, on the way to Palomitas.
“Buntin’,” said Kit, watching her go, “we’ll have pardners and pardners in our time, but we’ll never find one more of a thoroughbred than that raggedy Indian witch-child of ours.”
He took the slanting cattle trail up over the mesa, avoiding the wagon road below, and at the far edge of it halted to look down over the wide spreading leagues of the Mesa Blanca ranch.
It looked very sleepy, drowsing in the silence of the noon sun. An old Indian limped slowly from the corral over to the ranch house, and a child tumbled in the dust with a puppy, but there was no other sign of ranch activity. As he descended the mesa and drew nearer the corrals they had a deserted look, not merely empty but deserted.
The puppy barked him a welcome, but the child gave one frightened look at Kit, and with a howl of fear, raced to the shelter of the portal where he disappeared in the shadows.
“I had a hunch, Babe, that we needed smoothing down with a currycomb before we made social calls,” confessed Kit to the burro, “but I didn’t reckon on scaring the natives in any such fashion as this.”
He was conscious of peering eyes at a barred window, and then the old Indian appeared.
“Hello, Isidro!”
“At your service, señor,” mumbled the old man, and then he stared at the burro, and at the bearded and rather desert-worn stranger, and uttered a cry of glad recognition.
“Ai-ji! It is El Pajarito coming again to Mesa Blanca, but coming with dust in your mouth and no song! Enter, señor, and take your rest in your own house. None are left to do you honor but me,––all gone like that!” and his skinny black hands made a gesture as if wafting the personnel of Mesa Blanca on its way. “The General Rotil has need the cattle, and makes a divide with Señor Whitely and all go,––all the herds,” and he pointed east.
Kit bathed his face in the cool water brought out by Valencia, Isidro’s wife, then unloaded the burro of the outfit, and stretched himself in the shade while the women busied themselves preparing food.
“So General Rotil makes a divide of the cattle,––of Whitely’s cattle? How is that?” he asked.
And the old Indian proceeded to tell him that it was true. The Deliverer must feed his army. He needed half, and promised Whitely to furnish a guard for the rest of the herd and help Whitely save them by driving them to Imuris, where the railroad is.
“He said enemy troops would come from the south and take them all in one week or one month. He, Rotil, would pay a price. Thus it was, and Señor Whitely, and enough vaqueros, rode with the herds, and General Rotil took the rest of the ranchmen to be his soldiers. Of course it might be Señor Whitely would some day return, who knows? And he left a letter for the señor of the songs.”
The letter corroborated Isidro’s statements––it was the only way to save any of the stock. Whitely thought there was a hundred or two still ranging in the far corners, but time was short, and he was saving what he could. The men were joining the revolutionists and he would be left without help anyway. If Rhodes came back he was to use the place as his own. If he could round up any more horses or cattle on the range and get them to safety Isidro would find some Indians to help him, and Whitely would divide the profits with him.
“Fine!––divides first with the Deliverer, and next with me! Can’t see where that hombre gets off when it comes to staking his own family to a living. But it’s a bargain, and this is my headquarters until I can get out. How long has Whitely and his new friends been gone?”
“Four days, señor.”
“Seen any stragglers of cattle left behind?”
Isidro’s grandson, Clodomiro, had found both horses and cattle and herded them into far cañons; a man might ride in a circle for five miles around the ranch house and see never a fresh track. Clodomiro was a good boy, and of much craft.
Dinner was announced for the señor, and the women showed him welcome by placing before him the most beautiful repast they could arrange quickly, chile con carne, frijoles, tortillas, and a decanter of Sonora wine––a feast for a king!
After he had eaten, tobacco was brought him from some little hidden store, and Isidro gave him the details of the slave raid of Palomitas, and Sonora affairs in general. Kit was careful to state that he has been prospecting in the mountains and out of touch with ranch people, and it must be understood that all Isidro could tell would be news to a miner from the desert mountains. And he asked if General Rotil also collected stock from the ranch of Soledad.
Whereupon Isidro told him many things, and among them the wonder that Soledad had been left alone––the saints only knew why! And Juan Gonsalvo, the foreman at Soledad, had helped with the slave raid, and was known in Palomitas where they took girls and women and men as well, even men not young! Miguel, the major-domo, was taken with his wife and two daughters, the other men were young. The curse of God seemed striking Sonora. A new foreman was now at Soledad, Marto Cavayso, a hard man and,––it was said, a soldier, but he evidently got tired of fighting and was taking his rest by managing the horse herds of Soledad.
“Doesn’t look like rest to me,” observed Kit. “The Soledad trail looks pretty well kicked into holes, with wagons, mules, and horsemen.”
Isidro volunteered his opinion that work of the devil was going forward over there.
“Juan Gonsalvo and El Aleman were stealing women in Sonora, and driving them the south trail for a price,” he stated. “But what think you would be the price for a woman of emerald eyes and white skin carried up from the south under chains, and a lock to the chain?”
“I reckon you are dreaming the lock and chain part of it, Isidro,” returned Kit. “Only murderers travel like that.”
“Si, it is so. There at Soledad it is heard. A killing was done in the south and Soledad is her prison. But she is beautiful, and the men are casting lots as to whose she shall be when the guard is gone south again to Don José Perez.”
“Ah! they are Don José’s men, are they? Then the prisoner is guarded by his orders?”
“Who knows? They tell that she is a lost soul, and fought for a knife to kill herself, and the padre makes prayers and says hell will be hers if she does. Elena, who is cook, heard him say that word, and Elena was once wife to my brother, and she is telling that to Clodomiro who makes an errand to take her deer meat, and hear of the strangers. He saw the woman, her bracelets are gold, and her eyes are green. The padre calls her Doña Jocasta. I go now and give drink to that burro and make him happy.”
“Jocasta, eh? Doña Jocasta!” repeated Kit in wondering meditation. “Doesn’t seem possible––but reckon it is, and there are no real surprises in Sonora. Anything could, and does happen here.”
He remembered Pike telling the story of Jocasta one morning by their camp fire in the desert. She was called by courtesy Señora Perez. He had not heard her father’s name, but he was a Spanish priest and her mother an Indian half-breed girl––some little village in the sierras. There were two daughters, and the younger was blond as a child of Old Spain, Jocasta was the elder and raven dark of hair
, a skin of deep cream, and jewel-green eyes. Kit had heard three men, including Isidro, speak of Doña Jocasta, and each had mentioned the wonderful green eyes––no one ever seemed to forget them!
Their magnetism had caught the attention of Don José,––a distinguished and illustrious person in the eyes of the barefoot mountaineers. No one knew what Jocasta thought of the exalted padrone of the wide lands, whose very spurs were of gold, but she knew there was scarce wealth enough in all the village to keep a candle burning on the Virgin’s shrine, and her feet had never known a shoe. The padre died suddenly just as Don José was making a bargain with him for the girl, so he swept Jocasta to his saddle with no bargain whatever except that she might send back for Lucita, her little sister, and other men envied Perez his good luck when they looked at Jocasta. For three years she had been mistress of his house in Hermosillo, but never had he taken her into the wilderness of Soledad,––it was a crude casket for so rich a treasure.
Kit steeped in the luxury of a square meal, fell asleep, thinking of the green-eyed Doña Jocasta whom no man forgot. He would not connect a brilliant bird of the mountain with that drooping figure he and Tula had seen stumbling towards the portal of Soledad. And the statement of Isidro that there had been a killing, and Doña Jocasta was a lost soul, was most puzzling of all. In a queer confused dream the killing was done by Tula, and Billie wore the belt of gold, and had green eyes. And he wakened himself with the apparently hopeless effort of convincing Billie he had never forgotten her despite the feminine witcheries of Sonora.
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