“There, beyond!” said Chappo, “two looks on the trail,” and he pointed west. “Two looks and one water hole, and if wind moves the sand no one can find the way where we go. It is not a trail for boys.”
“I am not now a boy,” said Clodomiro, “and when the safety trail of the señora is over–––”
But Chappo waved him onward, for the wagon and the pack mules, and even little gray Bunting had turned reluctant feet north.
Clodomiro had come from Soledad because Elena,––who never had been out of sight of the old adobe walls,––sat on the ground wailing at thought of leaving her old sick father and going to war, for despite all the persuasions of Doña Jocasta, Elena knew what she knew, and did not at all believe that any of them would see the lands of the Americano,––not with pack mules of Ramon Rotil laden with guns!
“If Tula had lived, no other would have been asked,” Rhodes had stated. “But one is needed to make camp for the señora on the trail,––and to me the work of the packs and the animals.”
“That I can do,” Clodomiro offered. “My thought was to go where Tula said lovers of hers must go, and that was to El Gavilan. But this different thing can also be my work to the safe wells of the American. That far I go.”
Thus the three turned north from the war trail, and Clodomiro followed, after making a prayer that the desert wind would hear, and be very still, and fill no track made by the mules with the ammunition.
This slight discussion at the parting of the ways concerning two definite things,––need of haste, and conserving of water,––left no moment for thought or query of the packs of furnishings deemed of use to Señora Perez in her removal to the north.
Doña Jocasta herself had asked no question and taken no interest in them. Stripped of all sign of wealth and in chains, she had ridden into Soledad, and in comfort and much courtesy she was being conducted elsewhere. How long it might endure she did not know, and no power of hers could change the fact that she had been made wife of José Perez;––and at any turn of any road luck might again be with his wishes, and her estate fall to any level he choose to enforce.
At dusk they reached the Little Coyote well, and had joy to find water for night and morning, and greasewood and dead mesquite wood for a fire. The night had turned chill and Clodomiro spread the serape of Doña Jocasta over a heap of flowering greasewood branches. It was very quiet compared with the other camps on the trail, and had a restful air of comfort, and of that Jocasta spoke.
“Always the fear is here, señor,” she said touching her breast. “All the men and guns of Ramon Rotil did not make that fear go quiet. Every cañon we crossed I was holding my breath for fear of hidden men of José Perez! You did not see him in the land where he is strong; but men of power are bound to him there in the south, and––against one woman–––”
“Señora, I do not think you have read the papers given to you by Padre Andreas to put with the others given by General Rotil,” was Kit’s quiet comment. He glanced toward the well where the boy was dipping water into a wicker bottle. “Have you?”
“No, señor, it is my permit to be passed safely by all the men of Ramon Rotil,” she said. “That I have not had need of. Also there is the record that the American murder at Granados was the crime of Conrad.”
“But, señora, there is one other paper among them.––I would have told you yesterday if I had known your fear. I meant to wait until the trail was ended, but–––”
“Señor!” she breathed leaning toward him, her great eyes glowing with dreadful question, “Señor!”
“I know the paper, for I signed it,” said Kit staring in the leaping blaze. “So did the padre. It is the certificate of the burial of José Perez.”
“Señor! Madre de Dios!” she whispered.
“Death reached him on his own land, señora. We passed the grave the first day of the trail.”
Her face went very white as she made the sign of the cross.
“Then he––Ramon–––?”
“No,––the general did not see Perez on the trail. He tried to escape from Cavayso and the man sent a bullet to stop him. It was the end.”
She shuddered and covered her eyes.
Kit got up and walked away. He looked back from where he tethered the mules for the night, but she had not moved. The little crucifix was in her hand, he thought she was praying. There were no more words to be said, and he did not go near her again that night. He sent Clodomiro with her serape and pillow, and when the fire died down to glowing ash, she arose and went to the couch prepared. She went without glance to right or left––the great fear had taken itself away!
Clodomiro rolled himself in a serape not far from her place of rest, but Kit Rhodes slept with the packs and with two guns beside him. From the start on the trail no man had touched his outfit but himself. He grinned sometimes at thought of the favorable report the men of Rotil would deliver to their chief,––for the Americano had taken all personal care of the packs and chests of Doña Jocasta! He was as an owl and had no human need of sleep, and let no man help him.
The trail to the cañon of the Rio Seco was a hard trail, and a long day, and night caught them ere they reached the rim of the dry wash where, at long intervals, rain from the hills swept down its age-old channel for a brief hour.
Doña Jocasta, for the first time, had left the saddle and crept to the rude couch afforded by the piled-up blankets in the wagon; Clodomiro drove; and Kit, with the mules, led the way.
A little water still swished about in their water bottles, but not enough for the mules. He was more anxious than he dared betray, for it was twenty miles to the lower well of La Partida, and if by any stroke of fortune Cap Pike had failed to make good––Cap was old, and liable to–––
Then through the dusk of night he heard, quite near in the trail ahead, a curious thing, the call of a bird––and not a night bird!
It was a tremulous little call, and sent a thrill of such wild joy through his heart that he drew back the mule with a sharp cruel jerk, and held his breath to listen. Was he going loco from lack of sleep,––lack of water,––and dreams of–––
It came again, and he answered it as he plunged forward down a barranca and up the other side where a girl sat on a roan horse under the stars:––his horse! also his girl!
If he had entertained any doubts concerning the last––but he knew now he never had; a rather surprising fact considering that no word had ever been spoken of such ownership!––they would have been dispelled by the way she slipped from the saddle into his arms.
“Oh, and you didn’t forget! you didn’t forget!” she whimpered with her head hidden against his breast. “I––I’m mighty glad of that. Neither did I!”
“Why, Lark-child, you’ve been right alongside wherever I heard that call ever since I rode away,” he said patting her head and holding her close. He had a horrible suspicion that she was crying,––girls were mysterious! “Now, now, now,” he went on with a comforting pat to each word, “don’t worry about anything. I’m back safe, though in big need of a drink,––and luck will come your way, and–––”
She tilted her cantin to him, and began to laugh.
“But it has come my way!” she exulted. “O Kit, I can’t keep it a minute, Kit––we did find that sheepskin!”
“What? A sheepskin?” He had no recollection of a lost sheepskin.
“Yes, Cap Pike and I! In the bottom of an old chest of daddy’s! We’re all but crazy because it came just when we were planning to give up the ranch if we had to, and now that you are here––!” her sentence ended in a happy sigh of utter content.
“Sure, now that I’m here,” he assented amicably, “we’ll stop all that moving business––pronto. That is if we live to get to water. What do you know about any?”
“Two barrels waiting for you, and Cap rustling firewood, but I heard the wagon, and–––”
“Sure,” he assented again. “Into the saddle with you and we�
��ll get there. The folks are all right, but the cayuses–––”
A light began to blaze on the level above, and the mules, smelling water, broke into a momentary trot and were herded ahead of the two who followed more slowly, and very close together.
Cap Pike left the fire to stand guard over the water barrels and shoo the mules away.
“Look who’s here?” he called waving his hat in salute. “The patriots of Sonora have nothing on you when it comes to making collections on their native heath! I left you a poor devil with a runt of a burro, a cripple, and an Indian kid, and you’ve bloomed out into a bloated aristocrat with a batch of high-class army mules. And say, you’re just in time, and you don’t know it! We’re in at last, by Je-rusalem, we’re in!”
Kit grinned at him appreciatively, but was too busy getting water to ask questions. The wagon was rattling through the dry river bed and would arrive in a few minutes, and the first mules had to be got out of the way.
“You don’t get it,” said Billie alongside of him. “He means war. We’re in!”
“With Mexico? Again?” smiled Kit skeptically.
“No––something real––helping France!”
“No!” he protested with radiant eyes. “Me for it! Say, children, this is some homecoming!”
The three shook hands, all talking at once, and Kit and Billie forgot to let go.
“Of course you know Cap swore an alibi for you against that suspicion Conrad tried to head your way,” she stated a bit anxiously. “You stayed away so long!”
“Yes, yes, Lark-child,” he said reassuringly, “I know all that, and a lot more. I’ve brought letters of introduction for the government to some of Conrad’s useful pacifist friends along the border. Don’t you fret, Billie boy; the spoke we put in their wheel will overturn their applecart! The only thing worrying me just now,––beautifullest!––is whether you’ll wait for me till I enlist, get to France, do my stunt to help clean out the brown rats of the world, and come back home to marry you.”
“Yip-pee!” shrilled Pike who was slicing bacon into a skillet. “I’m getting a line now on how you made your other collections!”
Billie laughed and looked up at him a bit shyly.
“I waited for you before without asking, and I reckon I can do it again! I’m––I’m wonderfully happy––for I didn’t want you to worry over coming home broke––and–––”
“Whisper, Lark-child. I’m not!”
“What?”
“Whisper, I said,” and he put one hand over her mouth and led her over to the little gray burro. “Now, not even to Pike until we get home, Billie,––but I’ve come out alive with the goods, while every other soul who knew went ‘over the range’! Buntin’ carries your share. I knew you were sure to find the sheepskin map sooner or later,” he lied glibly, “but luck didn’t favor me hanging around for it. I had to get it while the getting was good, but we three are partners for keeps, Buntin’ is yours, and I’ll divide with Pike out of the rest.”
Billie touched the pack, tried to lift it, and stared.
“You’re crazy, Kit Rhodes!”
“Too bad you’ve picked a crazy man to marry!” he laughed, and took off the pack. “Seventy-five pounds in that. I’ve over three hundred. Lark-child, if you remember the worth of gold per ounce, I reckon you’ll see that there won’t need to be any delay in clearing off the ranch debts,––not such as you would notice! and maybe I might qualify as a ranch hand when I come back,––even if I couldn’t hold the job the first time.”
“O Kit! O Cap! O me!” she whispered chantingly. “Don’t you dare wake me up, for I’m having the dream of my life!”
But he caught her, drew her close and kissed her hair rumpled in the desert wind.
And as the wagon drew into the circle of light, that was the picture Doña Jocasta saw from the shadows of the covered wagon:––young love, radiant and unashamed!
She stared at them a moment strangely in a sudden mist of tears, as Clodomiro jumped down and arranged for her to alight. Cap Pike looking up, all but dropped the coffeepot.
“Some little collector––that boy!” he muttered, and then aloud, “You Kit!”
Kit turned and came forward leading Billie, who suddenly developed panic at vision of the most beautiful, tragic face she had ever seen.
“Some collector!” murmured Cap Pike forgetting culinary operations to stare. “Shades of Sheba’s queen!”
But Kit, whose days and nights of Mesa Blanca and Soledad had rather unfitted him for hasty adjustments to conventions, or standardized suspicion regarding the predatory male, held the little hand of Billie very tightly, and did not notice her gasp of amazement. He went forward to assist Doña Jocasta, whose hesitating half glance about her only enhanced the wonder of jewel-green eyes whose beauty had been theme of many a Mexic ballad.
For these were the first Americanos she had ever met, and it was said in the south that Americanos might be wild barbaros,––though the señor of the songs–––
The señor of the songs reached his hand and made his best bow as he noted her sudden shrinking.
“Here, Doña Jocasta, are friends of good heart. We are now on the edge of the lands of La Partida, and this little lady is its padrona waiting to give you welcome at the border. Folks, this is Señora Perez who has escaped from hell by help of the guns of El Gavilan.”
“Doña Jocasta!” repeated Cap Pike standing in amazed incredulity with the forgotten skillet at an awkward angle dripping grease into the camp fire, but his amazement regarding personality did not at all change his mental attitude as to the probable social situation. “Some collector, Brother, but hell in Sonora isn’t the only hell you can blaze the trail to with the wrong combination!”
Kit turned a silencing frown on the philosopher of the skillet, but Billie went toward the guest with outstretching hands.
“Doña Jocasta, oh!” she breathed as if one of her fairy tales of beauty had come true, and then in Spanish she added the sweet gracious old Castillian welcome, “Be at home with us on your own estate, Señora Perez.”
Jocasta laid her hands on the shoulder of the girl, and looked in the clear gray eyes.
“You are Spanish, Señorita?”
“My grandmother was.”
“Thanks to the Mother of God that you are not a strange Americana!” sighed Jocasta in sudden relief. Then she turned to her American courier and guard and salvation over the desert trails.
“I saw,” she said briefly. “She is as the young sister of me who––who is gone to God! Make yourself her guard forever, Don Pajarito. May you sing many songs together, and have no sorrows.”
After the substantial supper, Kit heard at first hand all the veiled suspicion against himself as voiced in the fragment of old newspaper wrapped around Fidelio’s tobacco, and he and Doña Jocasta spread out the records written by the padre, and signed by Jocasta and the others, as witness of how Philip Singleton met death in the arroya of the cottonwoods.
“It is all here in this paper,” said Jocasta, “and that is best. I can tell the alcalde, yes, but if an––an accident had come to me on the trail, the words on the paper would be the safer thing.”
“But fear on the trail is gone for you now,” said Kit smiling at her across the camp fire. Neither of them had said any word of life at Mesa Blanca or Soledad, or of the work of Tula at the death.
The German had strangled a priest, and escaped, and in ignorance of trails had ridden into a quicksand, and that was all the outer world need know of his end!
The fascinated eyes of Billie dwelt on Jocasta with endless wonder.
“And you came north with the guns and soldiers of Ramon Rotil,––how wonderful!” she breathed. “And if the newspapers tell the truth I reckon he needs the guns all right! Cap dear, where is that one José Ortego rode in with from the railroad as we were leaving La Partida?”
“In my coat, Honey. You go get it––you are younger than this old-timer.”
&
nbsp; Jocasta followed Billie with her eyes, though she had not understood the English words between them. It was not until the paper was unfolded with an old and very bad photograph of Ramon Rotil staring from the front page that she whispered a prayer and reached out her hand. The headline to the article was only three words in heavy type across the page: “Trapped at last!”
But the words escaped her, and that picture of him in the old days with the sombrero of a peon on his head and his audacious eyes smiling at the world held her. No picture of him had ever before come her way; strange that it should be waiting for her there at the border!
The Indian boy at sight of it, stepped nearer, and stood a few paces from her, looking down.
“It calls,” he said.
It was the first time he had spoken except to make reply since entering the American camp. Doña Jocasta frowned at him and he moved a little apart, leaning,––a slender dark, semi-nude figure, against the green and yellow mist of a palo verde tree,––listening with downcast eyes.
Doña Jocasta looked from the pictured face to the big black letters above.
“Is it a victorious battle, for him?” she asked and Kit hesitated to make reply, but Billie, not knowing reason for silence, blurted out the truth even while her eyes were occupied by another column.
“Not exactly, señora. But here is something of real interest to you, something of Soledad––oh, I am sorry!”
“What does it say,––Soledad?”
“See!––I forgot you don’t know the English!”
Troops from the south to rescue Don José Perez from El Gavilan at Soledad turn guns on that survival of old mission days, and level it to the ground. Soledad was suspected as an ammunition magazine for the bandit chief, and it is feared Señor Perez is held in the mountains for ransom, as no trace of him has been found.
“Now you’ve done it,” remarked Kit, and Billie turned beseeching eyes on the owner of Soledad, and repeated miserably––“I am so sorry!”
But Doña Jocasta only lifted her head with a certain disdain, and veiled the emerald eyes slightly.
The Treasure Trail Page 30