in that two-roomed adobe cabin, with a fifteen-year-old boy for
protection and miles of wilderness between her and any other human
habitation. It was small comfort then to Starr that she had the dog. One
bullet can settle a dog, and then--Starr could not look calmly at the
possibility of what might happen then.
"They've no business out there like that, alone!" he muttered, rising to
an elbow and thumping his hard pillow viciously. "Good Lord! Haven't they
got any folks?"
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE WIND BLOWS MANY STRAWS
Soon after daylight, Rabbit snorted and ran a little way down the corral
toward the cabin. Starr, trained to light sleeping and instant waking,
was up and standing back from the little window with his six-shooter in
his hand before Rabbit had stopped to whirl and look for what had scared
him. So Starr was in time to see a "big four" Stetson hat with a
horsehair hatband sink from sight behind the high board fence at the rear
of the corral.
Starr waited. Rabbit shook his head as though he were disgusted with
himself, and began nosing the ground for the wisps of hay which a high
wind had blown there. Starr retreated to a point in the room where he
could see without risk of being seen, and watched. In a few minutes, when
the horse had forgotten all about the incident and was feeding again, the
Stetson hat very cautiously rose once more. Under its gray brim Starr saw
a pair of black eyes peer over the fence. He watched them glancing here
and there, coming finally to rest upon the cabin itself. They watched
Rabbit, and Starr knew that they watched for some sign of alarm rather
than from any great interest in the horse: Rabbit lifted his head and
looked that way boredly for a moment before he went back to his feeding,
and the eyes lifted a little, so that the upper part of the owner's face
came into view. A young Mexican, Starr judged him, because of his smooth
skin around the eyes. He waited. The fellow rose now so that the fence
came just below his lips, which were full and curved in the pleasant
lines of youth. His eyes kept moving this way and that, so that the
whites showed with each turn of the eyeball. Starr studied what he could
see of the face. Thick eyebrows well formed except that the left one took
a whimsical turn upward; heavy lashes, the high, thin nose of the Mexican
who is part Indian--as are practically all of the lower, or peon
class--that much he had plenty of time to note. Then there was the mouth,
which Starr knew might be utterly changed in appearance when one saw the
chin that went with it.
A hundred young fellows in San Bonito might answer equally well a
description of those features. And the full-crowned gray Stetson may be
seen by the thousand in at least four States; and horsehair hatbands may
be bought in any saddlery for two or three dollars--perhaps for less, if
one does not demand too long a pair of tassels--and are loved by Indians
and those who think they are thus living up to the picturesque Old West.
So far as he could see, there was nothing much to identify the fellow,
unless he could get a better look at him.
The Mexican gave another long look at the cabin, studying every point,
even to the roof. Then he tried to see into the shed where Starr kept his
saddle and where Rabbit could shelter himself from the cold winds. There
was no door, no front, even, on the side toward the house. But the end of
the shed was built out into the corral so that the fellow could not see
around its corner.
He moved along the fence, which gave Starr a very good idea of his
height, and down to the very corner of the vacant laundry building. There
he stopped and looked again. He was eyeing Starr's saddle, apparently
taking in every detail of its workmanship. He looked again at Rabbit, who
was turned then so that his brand, the double Turkey-track, stood out
plainly on both thighs. Then, with another slant-eyed inspection of the
cabin, he ducked down behind the fence and disappeared, his going
betrayed by his hat crown which was taller than he imagined and showed a
good four inches above the fence.
Starr had edged along the dark wall of the room so that he had kept the
man in sight. Now, when the hat crown moved away down the trail that
skirted the garbage-filled arroyo, he snorted, threw his gun down on the
bed, and began to dress himself, rummaging in his "warbag" for a gray
checked cap and taking down from the wall a gray suit that he had never
liked and had never worn since the day it came from the mail, looking
altogether different from the four-inch square he had chosen from a
tailor agent's sample book. He snorted again when he had the suit on, and
surveyed it with a dissatisfied, downward glance. In his opinion he
looked like a preacher trying to disguise himself as a sport, but to
complete the combination he unearthed a pair of tan shoes and put them
on. After that he stood for a minute staring down the fresh-creased gray
trousers to his toes.
"Looks like the very devil!" he snorted again. "But anyway, it's
different." He dusted the cap by the simple expedient of slapping it
several times against his leg. When he had hung it on the back of his
head and pulled it well down in front--as nine out of ten men always put
on a cap--he did indeed look different, though he did not look at all
like the demon he named. Helen May, for instance, would have needed a
second close glance before she recognized him, but that glance would
probably have carried with it a smile for his improved appearance.
He surveyed as much of the neighborhood as he could see through the
windows, looked at his watch, and saw that it was late enough for him to
appear down town without exciting comment from the early birds, and went
out into the corral and fed Rabbit. He looked over the fence where the
Mexican had stood, but the faint imprints of the man's boots were not
definite enough to tell him anything. He surveyed the neighborhood from
different angles and could see no trace of any one watching the place, so
he felt fairly satisfied that the fellow had gone for the present, though
he believed it very likely that he might return later.
As he saw the incident, he was not yet considered worth shadowing, but
had in some way excited a certain degree of curiosity about himself.
Starr did not like that at all. He had hoped to impress every one with
his perfect harmlessness, and to pass for a stock buyer and nothing else.
He could not imagine how he had possibly excited suspicion, and he wanted
to lull it immediately and permanently. The obvious way to do that would
be to rise late, saddle Rabbit and ride around town a little--to the post
office and a saloon, for instance--get his breakfast at the
best-patronized place in town, and then go about his legitimate
business. On the other hand, he wanted to try and trace those cord tires
down the cross street, if he could, and he could not well do that on
horseback without betraying himself.
The shed was built out flush with the arroyo edge, so that at the rear of
the corral one could only go as far as the gate, which closed against the
end of the shed. It occurred to Starr that if the young Mexican had been
looking for something to steal, he would probably have come in at the
gate, which was fastened only with a stout hook on the inside. The arroyo
bank had caved under the farther corner of the shed, so that a hole the
size of a large barrel showed at that end of the manger. Cats and dogs,
and perhaps boys, had gone in and out there until a crude kind of trail
was worn down the bank to the arroyo bottom. At some risk to his tan
shoes and his new gray suit, Starr climbed into the manger and let
himself down that hole. The trail was firm and dry and so steep he had to
dig his heels in to keep from tobogganing to the bottom, but once down he
had only to follow the arroyo bottom to a place where he could climb out.
Before he found such a place he came to a deep, dry gully that angled
back toward the business part of town. A footpath in the bottom of it
encouraged him to follow it, and a couple of hundred yards farther along
he emerged upon the level end of a street given over to secondhand
stores, junk shops and a plumber's establishment. From there to the main
street was easy enough.
As he had expected, only a few citizens were abroad and Starr strolled
over to the cross street he wanted to inspect. He found the long-lined
tread of the tires he sought plainly marked where they had turned into
this street. After that he lost them where they had been blotted out by
the broad tires of a truck. When he was sure that he could trace them no
farther, he turned back, meaning to have breakfast at his favorite
restaurant. And as he turned, he met face to face a tall young Mexican in
a full-crowned Stetson banded with horsehair.
Now, as I have said before, San Bonito was full of young Mexicans who
wore Stetson hats and favored horsehair bands around them. Starr
glanced at the fellow sharply, got the uninterested, impersonal look
of the perfect stranger who neither knows nor cares who you are, and
who has troubles of his own to occupy his mind; the look which
nineteen persons out of twenty give to a stranger on the street. Starr
went on unconcernedly whistling under his breath, but at the corner he
turned sharply to the left, and in turning he flicked a glance back at
the fellow. The Mexican was not giving him any attention whatever, as
far as he could see; on the contrary, he was staring down at the
ground as though he, too, were looking for something. Starr gave him
another stealthy look, gained nothing from it, and shrugged his
shoulders and went on.
He ate his breakfast while he turned the matter over in his mind. What
had he done to rouse suspicion against himself? He could not remember
anything, for he had not yet found anything much to work on; nothing, in
fact, except that slight clue of the automobile, and he did not even know
who had been in it. He suspected that they had gone to meet Estan Medina,
but as long as that suspicion was tucked away in the back of his mind,
how was any one going to know that he suspected Estan? He had not been
near the chief of police or the sheriff or any other officer. He had not
talked with any man about the Mexican Alliance, nor had he asked any man
about it. Instead, he had bought sheep and cattle and goats and hogs from
the ranchers, and he had paid a fair price for them and had shipped them
openly, under the eye of the stock inspector, to the El Paso Meat
Company. So far he had kept his eyes open and his mouth shut, and had
waited until some ripple on the surface betrayed the disturbance
underneath.
He was not sure that the young man he met on the street was the one who
had been spying over the fence, but he did not mean to take it for
granted that he was not the same, and perhaps be sorry afterwards for his
carelessness. He strolled around town, bought an automatic gun and a lot
of cartridges for Vic, went into a barber shop on a corner and had a
shave and a haircut, and kept his eyes open for a tall young Mexican who
might be unduly interested in his movements.
He met various acquaintances who expressed surprise at not having seen
him around the hotel. To these he explained that he had rented a corral
for his horse, where he could be sure of the feed Rabbit was getting, and
to save the expense of a livery stable. Rabbit had been kinda off his
feed, he said, and he wanted to look after him himself. So he had been
sleeping in the cabin that went with the corral.
His friends thought that was a sensible move, and praised his judgment,
and Starr felt better. He did not, however, tell them just where the
corral was located. He had some notion of moving to another place, so he
considered that it would be just as well not to go into details.
So thinking, he took his packages and started across to the gully which
led into the arroyo that let him into his place by the back way. He meant
to return as he had come; and if any one happened to be spying, he would
think Starr had chosen that route as a short cut to town, which it was.
A block away from the little side street that opened to the gully, Starr
stopped short, shocked into a keener attention to his surroundings. He
had just stepped over an automobile track on the walk, where a machine
had crossed it to enter a gateway which was now closed. And the track had
been made by a cord tire. He looked up at the gate of unpainted planks,
heavy-hinged and set into a high adobe wall such as one sees so often in
New Mexico. The gate was locked, as he speedily discovered; locked on the
inside, he guessed, with bars or great hooks or something.
He went on to the building that seemed to belong to the place; a long
two-story adobe building with the conventional two-story gallery running
along the entire front, and with the deep-set, barred windows that are
also typically Mexican. Every town in the adobe section of the southwest
has a dozen or so buildings almost exactly like this one. The door was
blue-painted, with the paint scaling off. Over it was a plain lettered
sign: LAS NUEVAS.
Starr had seen copies of that paper at the Mexican ranches he visited,
and as far as he knew, it was an ordinary newspaper of the country-town
style, printed in Mexican for the benefit of a large percentage of
Mexican-Americans whose knowledge of English print is extremely hazy.
He walked on slowly to the corner, puzzling over this new twist in the
faint clue he followed. It had not occurred to him that so innocuous a
sheet as _Las Nuevas_ should be implicated, and yet, why not? He turned
at the corner and went back to the nearest newstand, where he bought an
El Paso paper for a blind and laid it down on a pile of _Las Nuevas_
while he lighted his cigarette. He talked with the little, pock-marked
Mexican who kept the shop, and when the fellow's back was turned toward
him for a minute, he stole a copy of _Las Nuevas_ off the pile and
strolled out of the shop with it wrapped in his El Paso paper.
He stole it because he knew that not many Americans ever bought the
paper, and he feared that the hombre in charge might wonder why an
American should pay a nickel for a copy of _Las Nuevas_. As it happened,
the hombre in charge was looking into a mirror cunningly placed for the
guarding of stock from pilferers, and he saw Starr steal the paper. Also
he saw Starr slip a dime under a stack of magazines where it would be
found later on. So he wondered a great deal more than he would have done
if Starr had bought the paper, but Starr did not know that.
Starr went back to his cabin by way of the arroyo and the hole in the
manger. When he unlocked the door and went in, he had an odd feeling that
some one had been there in his absence. He stood still just inside the
door and inspected everything, trying to remember just where his clothes
had been scattered, where he had left his hat, just how his blankets had
been flung back on the bed when he jumped up to see what had startled
Rabbit; every detail, in fact, that helps to make up the general look of
a room left in disorder.
He did remember, for his memory had been well trained for details. He
knew that his hat had been on the table with the front toward the wall.
It was there now, just as he had flung it down. He knew that his pillow
had been dented with the shape of his head, and that it had lain askew on
the bed; it was just as it had been. Everything--his boots, his dark coat
spread over the back of the chair, his trousers across the foot of the
bed--everything was the same, yet the feeling persisted.
Starr was no more imaginative than he needed to be for the work he had
to do. He was not in the least degree nervous over that work. Yet he was
sure some one had been in the room during his absence, and he could not
tell why he was sure. At least, for ten minutes and more he could not
tell why. Then his eyes lighted upon a cigarette stub lying on the
hearth of the little cookstove in one corner of the room. Starr always
used "wheat straw" papers, which were brown. This cigarette had been
rolled in white paper. He picked it up and discovered that one end was
still moist from the lips of the smoker, and the other end was still
warm from the fire that had half consumed it. Starr gave an enlightened
sniff and knew it was his olfactory nerves that had warned him of an
alien presence there; for the tobacco in this cigarette was not the
brand he smoked.
He stood thinking it over; puzzling again over the mystery of their
suspicion of him. He tried to recall some careless act, some imprudent
question, an ill-considered remark. He was giving up the riddle again
when that trained memory of his flashed before him a picture that,
trivial as it was in itself, yet was as enlightening as the white paper
of the cigarette on the stove hearth.
Two days before, just after his last arrival in San Bonito, he had sent a
wire to a certain man in El Paso. The message itself had not been of very
great importance, but the man to whom he had sent it had no connection
whatever with the Meat Company. He was, in fact, the go-between in the
investigation of the Secret Service. Through him the War Department
issued commands to Starr and his fellows, and through him it kept in
touch with the situation. Starr had used two code words and a number in
that message.
And, he now distinctly remembered, the girl who had waited upon him was
dark, with a Spanish cast of features. When she had counted the words and
checked the charge and pushed his change across to him, she had given him
a keen, appraising look from under her lashes, though the smile she sent
with it had given the glance a feminine and wholly flattering
interpretation. Starr remembered that look now and saw in it something
more than coquetry. He remembered, too, that he had glanced back from the
doorway and caught her still looking after him; and that he had smiled,
and she had smiled swiftly in return and had then turned away abruptly to
her work. To her work? Starr remembered now that she had turned and
spoken to a sulky-faced messenger boy who was sitting slumped down on the
curve of his back with his tightly buttoned tunic folded up to his
armpits so that his hands could burrow to the very bottom of his pockets.
He had looked up, muttered something, reluctantly removed himself from
the chair, and started away. The boy, too, had the Mexican look.
Well, at any rate, he knew now how the thing had started. He heaved a
sigh of relief and threw himself down on the bed, wadding the pillow
into a hard ball under the nape of his neck and unfolding the Mexican
newspaper. He had intended to move camp; but now that they had begun to
trail him, he decided to stay where he was and give them a run for their
money, as he put it.
Starr could read Spanish well enough for ordinary purposes. He went
carefully through _Las Nuevas_, from war news to the local
advertisements. There was nothing that could even be twisted into a
message of hidden meaning to the initiated. _Las Nuevas_ was what it
called itself: _The News_. It was exactly as innocuous as he had believed
it to be. Its editorial page, even, was absolutely banal in its servility
to the city, county, state and national policy.
"That's a hell of a thing to steal!" grumbled Starr, and threw the paper
disgustedly from him.
CHAPTER TWELVE
STARR FINDS SOMETHING IN A SECRET ROOM
That day Starr rode out into the country and looked at a few head of cows
and steers that a sickly American wanted to sell so he could go East for
his health (there being in most of us some peculiar psychological leaning
toward seeking health afar). Starr went back to town afterwards and made
Rabbit comfortable in the corral, reasoning that if he were going to be
watched, he would be watched no matter where he went; but he ate his
supper in the dining room of the Plaza Hotel, and sat in the lobby
talking with a couple of facetious drummers until the mechanical piano in
the movie show across the street began to play.
He went to the show, sat through it patiently, strolled out when it was
over, and visited a saloon or two. Then, when he thought his evening
might be considered well rounded out with harmless diversions, he went
out to his cabin, following the main street but keeping well in the
shadow as though he wished to avoid observation.
He had reason to believe that some one followed him out there, which did
not displease him much. He lighted his lamp and fussed around for half an
hour or so before he blew out the light and went to bed.
At three o'clock in the morning, with a wind howling in from the
mountains, Starr got up and dressed in the dark, fumbling for a pair of
"sneakers" he had placed beside his bed. He let himself out into the
corral, being careful to keep close to the wall of the house until he
reached the high board fence. Here, too, he had to feel his way because
of the pitchy blackness of the night; and if the rattling wind prevented
him from hearing any footsteps that might be behind him, it also covered
the slight sound of his own progress down the fence to the shed. But he
did not think he would be seen or followed, for he had been careful to
oil the latch and hinges of his door before he went to bed; and he would
be a faithful spy indeed who shivered through the whole night, watching a
man who apparently slept unsuspectingly and at peace.
Down the hole from the manger Starr slid, and into the arroyo bottom. He
stumbled over a can of some sort, but the wind was rattling everything
movable, so he merely swore under his breath and went on. He was not a
range man for nothing, and he found his way easily to the adobe house
with LAS NUEVAS over the door, and the adobe wall with the plank gate
that had been closed.
It was closed now, and the house itself was black and silent. Starr
stooped and gave a jump, caught the top of the wall with his hooked
fingers, went up and straddled the top where it was pitch black against
the building. For that matter, it was nearly pitch black whichever way
one looked, that night. He sat there for five minutes, listening and
straining his eyes into the enclosure. Somewhere a piece of corrugated
iron banged against a board. Once he heard a cat meow, away back at the
rear of the lot. He waited through a comparative lull, and when the wind
whooped again and struck the building with a fresh blast, Starr jumped to
the ground within the yard.
He crouched for a minute, a shot-loaded quirt held butt forward in his
hand. He did not want to use a gun unless he had to, and the loaded end
of a good quirt makes a very efficient substitute for a blackjack. But
there was no movement save the wind, so presently he followed the wall of
the house down to the corner, stood there listening for awhile and went
on, feeling his way rapidly around the entire yard as a blind man feels
out a room that is strange to him.
He found the garage, with a door that kept swinging to and fro in the
wind, banging shut with a slam and then squealing the hinges as it
opened again with the suction. He drew a breath of relief when he came to
that door, for he knew that any man who happened to be on guard would
have fastened it for the sake of his nerves if for nothing else.
When he was sure that the place was deserted for the night, Starr went
back to the garage and went inside. He fastened the door shut behind him
and switched on his pocket searchlight to examine the place. If he had
expected to see the mysterious black car there he was disappointed, for
the garage was empty--which perhaps explained the swinging door, that had
been left open in the evening when there was no wind. Small comfort in
that for Starr, for it immediately occurred to him that the car would
probably return before daylight if it had gone after dark.
He turned his hand slowly, painting the walls with a brush of brilliant
light. "Huh!" he grunted under his breath. For there in a far corner were
four Silvertown cord tires with the dust of the desert still clinging to
the creases of the lined tread. Near-by, where they had been torn off in
haste and flung aside, were the paper wrappings of four other tires,
supposedly new.
So they--he had no more definite term by which to call them--they had
sensed the risk of those unusual tires, and had changed for others of a
more commonly-used brand! Starr wondered if some one had seen him looking
at tire-tracks, the young Mexican he had met on the side street, perhaps.
Or the Mexican garage man may have caught him studying that track by the
filling-pump.
"Well," Starr summed up the significance of the discovery, "the game's
open; now we'll get action."