slippers are not made for tramping over rocks and sand. She said that she
would come as soon as she put on some shoes; but Starr chose to wait for
her, though he pretended, to himself as much as to her, that he must take
the bridle off Rabbit and let him pick a few mouthfuls of grass while he
had the chance. Also he loosened the cinch and killed a fly or two on
Rabbit's neck, and so managed to put in the time until Helen May appeared
in her khaki skirt and her high boots.
"That's the sensible outfit for this work," Starr plucked up courage to
comment as they started off. "That kid brother of yours must get pretty
lonesome too, out here," he added. "If you had some one to stay with you,
I'd take him out on a trip with me once in a while and show him the
country and let him learn to handle himself with a horse and gun. A
fellow's got to learn, in this country. So have you. How about it? Ever
shoot a gun, either of you?"
"Vic used to keep me broke, begging money for the shooting gallery down
near our place," said Helen May. "I used to shoot there a little."
"Popgun stuff, but good practice," said Starr succinctly. "Got a gun on
the ranch?"
"No, only Vic's little single-shot twenty-two. That's good enough for
jack rabbits. What would we want a gun for?"
Starr laughed. "Season's always open for coyotes, and you could pick up a
little money in bounties now and then, if you had a gun," he said. "That
would keep you out in the open, too. I dunno but what I've got a rifle I
could let you have. I did have one, a little too light a calibre for me,
but it would be just about right for you. It's a 25-35 carbine. I'm right
sure I've got that gun on hand yet. I'll bring it over to you. You sure
ought to have a gun."
They were nearing the goats scattered over the slope that was shadiest,
chosen for Vic's comfort and not because of any thought for his charges.
Vic himself was sprawled in the shade of a huge rock, and for pastime he
was throwing rocks at every ground squirrel that poked its nose out of a
hole. The two hundred goats were scattered far and wide, but as long as
Billy was nibbling a bush within sight, Vic did not worry about the rest.
He lifted himself to a sitting posture and grinned when the two came up.
"Didn't think to bring any pie, I s'pose?" he hinted broadly, and grinned
companionably at Starr.
"You've had two handouts since lunch. I guess you'll last another hour,"
Helen May retorted unfeelingly. "See the dog that followed Mr. Starr out
from town, Vic! We're going to see if he can herd goats."
"Well, if he can, he's got my permission, that's a cinch."
"I do believe he can; see him look at them! His name's Pat, and he likes
me awfully well."
"Now, where does he get that idea?" taunted Vic, and winked openly at
Starr, who was good enough to smile over what he considered a very
poor joke.
"Well, let's see you bunch 'em, Pat." Starr made a wide, sweeping gesture
with his left arm, his eyes darting a quick look at the girl.
Pat looked up at him, waggled his stub of a tail, and darted down the
slope to the left, now and then uttering a yelp. Scattered goats lifted
heads to look, their jaws working comically sidewise as though they felt
they must dispose of that particular mouthful before something happened
to prevent. As Pat neared them, they scrambled away from him, running to
the right, which was toward the bulk of the band.
Down into the Basin itself the dog ran, after a couple of goats that had
strayed out into the level. These he drove back in a panic of haste,
dodging this way and that, nipping, yelping now and then, until they had
joined the others. Then he went on to the further fringes of the hand,
which evened like the edge of a pie crust under the practised fingers of
a good cook.
"Well, would you look at that!" Helen May never having watched a good
sheep-dog at work, spoke in an awed tone. "Vic, please write!"
Vic, watching open-mouthed, actually forgot to resent the implication
that Pat had left him hopelessly behind in the art of handling goats.
"Seems to have the savvy, all right," Starr observed, just as though he
had not paid all those dollars for the "savvy" that made Pat one of the
best goat dogs in the State.
"Savvy? Why, that dog's human. Now, I suppose he's stopping over there to
see what he must do next, is he?"
"Wants to know whether I want 'em all rounded up, or just edged up outa
the Basin. G' round 'em, Pat," he called, and made a wide, circular sweep
with his right arm.
Pat gave a yelp, dropped his head, and scurried up the ridge, driving all
stragglers back toward the center of the flock. He went to every crest
and sniffed into the wind to satisfy himself that none had strayed beyond
his sight; returned and evened up the ragged edges of the hand, and then
came trotting back to Starr with six inches of pink tongue draped over
his lower jaw and a smile in his eyes and a waggle of satisfaction at
loved work well done. The goats, with a meek Billy in the foreground,
huddled in a compact mass on the slope and eyed the dog as they had never
eyed Vic, for all his hoe-handle and his accuracy with rocks.
Helen May dropped her hand on Pat's head and looked soberly into his
upturned eyes. "You're a perfect miracle of a dog, so you can't be my
dog, after all," she said. "Your owner will be riding day and night to
find you. I know I should, if you got lost from me." Then she looked at
Starr. "Don't you think you really ought to take him back with you?
It--somehow it doesn't seem quite right to keep a dog that knows so
much. Why, the man I bought the goats from had a dog that could herd
them, and he wanted twenty-five dollars for it, and at that, he claimed
he was putting the price awfully low for me, just because I was a lady,
you know."
Starr, was (as he put it) kicking himself for having lied himself
into this dilemma. Also he was wondering how best he might lie
himself out of it.
"You want to look out for these marks that say they're giving you the big
end of a bargain just because you're a lady," he said. "Chances are
they're figuring right then on doing you. If that fellow had got
twenty-five dollars for his dog, take it from me, he wouldn't have lost
anything."
"Well, but do you think it would he right to keep this dog?"
Since she put it that way, Starr felt better. "I sure do. Keep him anyway
till he's called for. When I go back, I'll find out where he comes from;
and when I've located the owner, maybe I'll be able to fix it up with him
somehow. You sure ought to have a dog. So let it stand that way. I'll
tell yuh when to give him up."
Helen May opened her lips, and Starr, to forestall argument and to save
his soul from further sin, turned toward the dog. "Bring 'em home, Pat,"
he said, and then started toward the corral, which was down below the
spring. "Watch him drive," he said to Helen May and so managed to
distract her attention from the ethics of the case.
Without any assistance, Pat drove the goats to the corral. More than
that, at Starr's command, he split the band and held half of them aloof
while the rest went in. He sent these straight down the Basin until Starr
recalled him, when he swung back and corralled them with the others. He
came then toward the three for further orders, whereupon Vic, who had
been silent from sheer amazement, gave a sudden whoop.
"Hey, Pat! You forgot something. Go back and put up the bars!" he
yelled. Then he heaved his hoe-handle far from him and stretched his arms
high over his head like one released from an onerous task. "I'll walk out
and let Pat have my job," he said. "Herding goats is dog's work anyhow,
and I told you so the first day, Helen Blazes. Hadn't herded 'em five
minutes before I knew I wasn't cut out for a farmer."
"Go on, Pat; you stay with your goats," Starr commanded gently. And Pat,
because he had suckled a nanny goat when he was a pup, and had grown up
with her kid, and had lived with goats all his life, trotted into the
corral, found himself a likeable spot near the gate, snuffed it all over,
turned around twice, and curled himself down upon it in perfect content.
"He'll stay there all night," Starr told them, laying the bars in their
sockets. "It's a little early to corral 'em, sundown is about the regular
time, but it's a good scheme to give him plenty of time to get acquainted
with the layout. You get up early, Vic, and let 'em out on the far side
of the ridge. Pat'll do the rest. I'll have to jog along now."
"Well, say," Vic objected, rubbing his tousled blond hair into a
distracted, upstanding condition, "I wish you'd show me just how
you shift his gears. How the dickens do you do it? He don't know
what you say."
Before he left, Starr showed him the gestures, and Vic that evening
practised them so enthusiastically that he nearly drove Helen May wild.
Perhaps that is why, when she was copying a sentence where Holman Sommers
had mentioned the stars of the universe, Helen May spelled stars,
"Starr's" and did not notice the mistake at all.
CHAPTER TEN
THE TRAIL OF SILVERTOWN CORDS
Having wasted a couple of hours more than he intended to spend in
delivering the dog, Starr called upon Rabbit to make up those two hours
for him. And, being an extremely misleading little gray horse, with a
surprising amount of speed and endurance stored away under his hide,
Rabbit did not fall far short of doing so.
Starr had planned an unexpected visit to the Medina ranch. In the guise
of stock-buyer his unexpectedness would be perfectly plausible, and he
would be well pleased to arrive there late, so long as he did not arrive
after dark. Just before sundown would do very well, he decided. He would
catch Estan Medina off his guard, and he would have the evening before
him, in case he wanted to scout amongst the arroyos on the way home.
Starr very much wanted to know who drove an automobile without lights
into isolated arroyos and over the desert trails at night. He had not,
strange to say, seen any machine with Silvertown cord tires in San Bonito
or in Malpais, though he had given every car he saw the second glance to
make sure. He knew that such tires were something new and expensive, so
much so that they were not in general use in that locality. Even in El
Paso they were rarely seen at that time, and only the fact that the great
man who gave him his orders had happened to be using them on his machine,
and had mentioned the fact to Starr, who was honored with his friendship,
had caused Starr to be familiar with them and to recognize instantly the
impress they left in soft soil. It was a clue, and that was the best he
could say for it. It was just a little better than nothing, he decided.
What he wanted most was to see the machine itself at close range, and to
see the men who rode in it--and I am going to tell you why.
There was a secret political movement afoot in the Southwest; a movement
hidden so far underground as to be practically unnoticed on the surface;
but a movement, nevertheless, that had been felt and recorded by that
political seismograph, the Secret Service of our Government. It had been
learned, no mere citizen may know just how, that the movement was called
the Mexican Alliance. It was suspected that the object was the
restoration of three of our States to Mexico, their original owner.
Suspected, mind you; and when even the Secret Service can do no more than
suspect, you will see how well hidden was the plot. Its extent and its
ramifications they could only guess at. Its leaders no man could name,
nor even those who might be suspected more than others.
But a general uprising in three States, in conjunction with, and under
the control of, a concerted, far-sweeping revolution across the border,
would not be a thing to laugh over. Uncle Sam smiled tolerantly when some
would have had him chastise. Uncle Sam smiled, and watched, and waited
and drummed his fingers while he read secret reports from men away out
somewhere in Arizona, and New Mexico, and Texas, and urged them to burrow
deeper and deeper underground, and to follow at any cost the molelike
twistings and blind turnings of this plot to steal away three whole
States in a lump.
Now you see, perhaps, why Starr was so curious about that automobile, and
why he was interested in Estancio Medina, Mexican-American rancher who
owned much land and many herds, and who was counted a power among his
countrymen; who spoke English with what passed for fluency, and who had
very decided and intelligent opinions upon political matters, and who
boldly proclaimed his enthusiasm for the advancement of his own race.
But he did not go to the Medina ranch that evening, for the very good
reason that he met his man fair in the trail as it looped around the head
of the draw where he had heard the automobile running without lights. As
on that other evening, Starr had cut straight across the loop, going east
instead of west. And where the trail forked on the farther side he met
Estan Medina driving a big, lathery bay horse hitched to a shiny, new
covered buggy. He seemed in a hurry, but he pulled up nevertheless to
have a word with Starr. And Starr, always observant of details, saw that
he had three or four packages in the bottom of the buggy, which seemed to
bear out Estan's statement that he had been to town, meaning San Bonito.
Starr rolled a cigarette, and smoked it while he gossiped with Estan of
politics, pretty girls, and the price of mutton. He had been eyeing the
new buggy speculatively, and at last he spoke of it in that admiring tone
which warms the heart of the listener.
"Some turnout, Estan," he summed up. "But you ought to be driving an
automobile. All your friends are getting them."
Estan lifted his shoulders in true Spanish fashion and smiled. "No,
amigo. Me, I can take pleasure yet from horses. And the madre, she's so
'fraid of them automobiles. She cries yet when she knows I ride in one a
little bit. Now she's so proud, when I drive the new buggy home! She
folds so pretty her best mantilla over her head and rides with me to
church, and she bows so polite--to all the señoras from the new buggy!
And her face shines with the happiness in her heart. Oh, no, not me for
the big automobile!" He smiled and shrugged and threw out his hands. "I
like best to see my money walking around with wool on the back! Excuse,
señor. I go now to bring the new buggy home and to see the smile of my
mother." Then he bethought him of the tradition of his house. "You come
and have a soft bed and the comfort of my house," he urged. "It is far to
San Bonito, and it is not so far to my house."
Starr explained plausibly his haste, sent a friendly message to the
mother and Luis, and rode on thoughtfully. Now and then he turned to
glance behind him at the dust cloud rolling rapidly around the head
of the draw.
Since Estan had been to town himself that day, Starr reasoned that
there would not be much gained by scouting through the arroyos that led
near the Medina ranch. Estan would have seen in town the men he wanted
to see. He could do so easily enough and without exciting the least
suspicion; for San Bonito had plenty of saloons that were popular, and
yet unobtrusive, meeting places. No need for the mysterious automobile
to make the long journey through the sand to-day, if Estan Medina were
the object of the visit, and Starr knew of no other Mexican out that
way who would be important enough to have a hand in the mixing of
political intrigue.
He rode on, letting Rabbit drop into his poco-poco trail trot. He carried
his head bent forward a little, and his eyebrows were pulled into a scowl
of concentrated thought. It was all very well to suspect Estan Medina and
to keep an eye upon him, but there were others who came nearer to the
heart of the plot. He wanted to know who these were, and he believed that
if he could once identify the four Mexicans whom Helen May had seen, he
would be a long step ahead. He considered the simple expedient of asking
her to describe them as closely as she could. But since secrecy was the
keynote of his quest, he did not want to rouse her curiosity, and for
purely personal reasons he did want to shield her as far as possible from
any uneasiness or any entanglement in the affair.
Thinking of Helen May in that light forced him to consider what would be
her plight if he and his co-workers failed, if the plan went on to actual
fulfillment, and the Mexican element actually did revolt. Babes, they
were, those two alone there in Sunlight Basin, with a single-shot
"twenty-two" for defense, when every American rancher in three States
considered high-power rifles and plenty of ammunition as necessary in his
home as flour and bacon!
Starr shivered a little and tried to pull his mind away from Helen May
and her helplessness. At any rate, he comforted himself, they had the dog
for protection, the dog who had been trained to jump the corral fence at
any hour of the night if a stranger, and especially a Mexican came
prowling near.
But he and his co-workers must not fail. If intrigue burrowed deep, then
they must burrow deeper.
So thinking, he came just after sundown to where the trail branched in
three directions. One was the direct road to San Bonito, another took a
roundabout way through a Mexican settlement on the river and so came to
the town from another angle, and the third branch wound over the granite
ridge to Malpais. Studying the problem as a whole, picturing the havoc
which an uprising would wreak upon those vast grazing grounds of the
southwest, and how two nations would be embroiled in spite of themselves,
he was hoping that his collaborators, scattered here and there through
the country, men whose names even he did not know, were making more
headway than he seemed to be making here.
He would not know, of course, unless he were needed to assist or to
supplement their work in some way. But he hoped they had found out
something definite, something which the War Department could take hold
of; a lever, as it were, to pry up the whole scheme. He was thinking of
these things, but his mind was nevertheless alert to the little trail
signs which it had become second nature to read. So he saw, there in the
dust of the trail, where a buggy had turned around and gone back whence
it had come. He saw that it had been traveling toward town but had turned
and come back. And looking more closely, he saw that one horse had pulled
the buggy.
He stopped to make sure of that and to search for footprints. But those
he found were indistinct, blurred partly by the looseness of the sand and
partly by the sparse grass that grew along the trail there, because the
buggy had turned in a hollow. He went on a couple of rods, and he saw
where an automobile had also come to this point and had turned and gone
back toward town, or rather, it had swung sharply around and taken the
trail which led through the Mexican settlement; but he guessed that it
had gone back to town, for all that. And the tire marks were made by
Silvertown cords.
Starr stopped and looked back to where the buggy tracks were faintly
outlined in the dust of the hollow, and he spoke aloud his thought:
"You'd think, just to see him and talk to him, that Estan Medina
assays one hundred per cent, satisfied farmer. He's sure some
fox--that same greaser!" After that he shook Rabbit into a long,
distance-eating lope for town.
Night came with its flaring forerunners of purple and crimson and all the
gorgeous blendings of the two. By the time he reached San Bonito, the
stars were out, and the electric lights were sputtering on certain street
corners. Starr had rented a small adobe cabin and a corral with a shed on
the outskirts of town where his movements might be unobserved. He did not
always use these, but stopped frequently at a hotel with a garrulous
landlord, and stabled his horse at a certain livery which he knew to be a
hotbed of the town's gossip. In both places he was a privileged patron
and was the recipient of many choice bits of scandal whispered behind a
prudent palm, with a wink now and then to supply the finer shades of
meaning. But to-night he chose the cabin and the corral sandwiched
between
a transfer company's warehouse and a steam laundry that had been closed
by the sheriff. The cabin fronted on a street that was seldom used, and
the corral ran back to a dry arroyo that was used mainly as a dump for
the town's tin cans and dead cats and such; not a particularly attractive
place but secluded.
He turned Rabbit into the corral and fed him, went in and cooked himself
some supper, and afterwards, in a different suit and shoes and a hat that
spoke loudly of the latest El Paso fad in men's headgear, he strolled
down to the corner and up the next street to the nearest garage.
Ostensibly he was looking for one Pedro Miera, who had a large sheep
ranch out east of San Bonito, and who always had fat sheep for sale.
Starr considered it safe to look for Miera, whom he had seen two or three
days before in El Paso just nicely started on a ten-day spree that never
stopped short of the city jail.
Since it was the dull hour between the day's business and the evening's
pleasure, Starr strolled the full length of the garage and back again
before any man spoke to him. He made sure that no car there had the kind
of tires he sought, so he asked if Miera and his machine had showed up
there that day, and left as soon as the man said no.
San Bonito was no city and it did not take long to make the round of the
garages. No one had seen Miera that day, and Starr's disappointment was
quite noticeable, though misunderstood. Not a car in any of the four
garages sported Silvertown cords.
At the last garage an arc light flared over the wide doorway. Starr,
feeling pretty well disgusted, was leaving when he saw a tire track
alongside the red, gasoline filling-pump. He stopped and, under cover of
lighting his cigarette, he studied the tread. Beyond all doubt the car he
wanted had stopped there for gas. But the garage man was a Mexican, so
Starr dared not risk a question or show any interest whatever in the car
whose tires left those long-lined imprints to tell of its passing. He
puffed at his cigarette until he had studied the angle of the front-wheel
track and decided that the car must have been headed south, and that it
had made a rather short turn away from the pump.
This was puzzling for a while. The driver might have been turning around
to go back the way he had come. But it was more likely that he had driven
into the cross street to the west. He strolled over that way, but the
light was too dim to trace automobile tracks in the dust of the street so
he went back to the adobe cabin and put in the next hour oiling and
cleaning and polishing a 25-35 carbine which he meant to give Helen May,
and in filling a cartridge belt with shells.
He sat for some time turning two six-shooters over in his hands, trying
to decide which would please her most. One was lighter than the other,
with an easier trigger action; almost too easy for a novice, he told
himself. But it had a pearl handle with a bulldog carved on the side that
would show when the gun was in its holster. She'd like that fancy stuff,
he supposed. Also he could teach her to shoot straighter with that light
"pull." But the other was what Starr called a sure-enough go-getter.
He finally decided, of course, to give her the fancy one. For Vic he
would have to buy a gun; an automatic, maybe. He'd have to talk coyotes
pretty strong, in order to impress it upon them that they must never go
away anywhere without a gun. Good thing there was a bounty on coyotes;
the money would look big to the kid, anyway. It occurred to him further
that he could tell them there was danger of running into a rabid coyote.
Rabies had caused a good deal of trouble in the State, so he could make
the danger plausible enough.
He did not worry much over frightening the girl. She had nerve enough.
Think of her tackling that ranch proposition, with just that cub brother
to help! When Starr thought of that slim, big-eyed, smiling girl in white
fighting poverty and the white plague together out there on the rim of
the desert, a lump came up in his throat. She had nerve enough--that
plucky little lady with the dull-gold hair, and the brown velvet
eyes!--more nerve than he had where she was concerned.