and was glad he had not worn his boots. Then he snapped off the light,
went out, and left the door swinging and banging as it had been before.
If he learned no more, at least he was paid for the trip.
He went straight to the rear door of the building, taking no pains to
conceal his footsteps. The wind, he knew, would brush them out completely
with the sand and dust it sent swirling around the yard with every gust.
As he had hoped, the door was not bolted but locked with a key, so he let
himself in with one of the pass keys he carried for just such work as
this. He felt at the windows and saw that the blinds were down, and
turned on his light.
The place had all the greasy dinginess of the ordinary print shop. The
presses were here, and the motor that operated them. Being a bi-weekly
and not having much job printing to do, it was evident that _Las Nuevas_
did not work overtime. Things were cleaned up for the night and ready for
the next day's work. It all looked very commonplace and as innocent as
the paper it produced.
Starr went on slowly, examining the forms, the imperfect first proofs of
circulars and placards that had been placed on hook files. AVISO! stared
up at him in big, black type from the top of many small sheets, with the
following notices of sales, penalties attached for violations of certain
ordinances, and what not. But there was nothing that should not be there,
nothing that could be construed as seditionary in any sense of the word.
Still, some person or persons connected with this place had found it
expedient to change four perfectly good and quite expensive tires for
four new and perfectly commonplace ones, and the only explanation
possible was that the distinctive tread of the expensive ones had been
observed. There must, Starr reasoned, be something else in this place
which it would be worth his while to discover. He therefore went
carefully up the grimy stairway to the rooms above.
These were offices of the comfortless type to be found in small towns.
Bare floors, stained with tobacco juice and the dust of the street.
Bare desks and tables, some of them unpainted, homemade affairs, all
of them cheap and old. A stove in the larger office, a few
wooden-seated armchairs. Starr took in the details with a flick here
and there of his flashlight that he kept carefully turned away from the
green-shaded windows.
News items, used and unused, he found impaled on desk files. Bills paid
and unpaid he found also. But in the first search he found nothing
else, nothing that might not be found in any third-rate newspaper
establishment. He stood in the middle room--there were three in a row,
with an empty, loft-like room behind--and considered where else he
could search.
He went again to a closet that had been built in with boards behind the
chimney. At first glance this held nothing but decrepit brooms, a
battered spittoon, and a small pile of greasewood cut to fit the heater
in the larger room; but Starr went in and flashed his light around the
wall. He found a door at the farther end, and he knew it for a door
only when he passed his hands over the wall and felt it yield. He
pushed it open and went into another room evidently built across one
end of the loft, a room cunningly concealed and therefore a room likely
to hold secrets.
He hitched his gun forward a little, pushed the door shut behind him, and
began to search that room. Here, as in the outer offices, the first
superficial examination revealed nothing out of the way. But Starr did
not go at things superficially. First the desk came under close scrutiny.
There were no letters; they were too cautious for that, evidently. He
looked in the little stove that stood near the wall where the chimney
went up in the closet, and saw that the ashes consisted mostly of charred
paper. But the last ones deposited therein had not yet been lighted, or,
more exactly, they had been lighted hastily and had not burned except
around the edges. He lifted out the one on top and the one beneath it.
They were two sheets of copy paper scribbled closely in pencil. The first
was entitled, with heavy underscoring that signified capitals, "Souls in
Bondage." This sounded interesting, and Starr put the papers in his
pocket. The others were envelopes addressed to _Las Nuevas_; there was no
more than a handful of papers in all.
In a drawer of the desk, which he opened with a skeleton key, he found
many small leaflets printed in Mexican. Since they were headed ALMAS DE
CAUTIVERO, he took one and hoped that it would not be missed. There were
other piles of leaflets in other drawers, and he helped himself to a
sample of each, and relocked the drawers carefully. But search as he
might, he could find nothing that identified any individual, or even
pointed to any individual as being concerned in this propaganda work; nor
could he find any mention of the Mexican Alliance.
He went out finally, let the door swing behind him as it seemed
accustomed to do, climbed through a window to the veranda that bordered
all these rooms like a jutting eyebrow, and slid down a corner post to
the street. It was close to dawn, and Starr had no wish to be found near
the place; indeed, he had no wish to be found away from his cabin if any
one came there with the breaking of day to watch him.
As he had left the cabin, so he returned to it. He went back to bed and
lay there until sunrise, piecing together the scraps of information he
had gleaned. So far, he felt that he was ahead of the game; that he had
learned more about the Alliance than the Alliance had learned about him.
As soon as the light was strong enough for him to read without a lamp, he
took from his pocket the papers he had gleaned from the stove, spread out
the first and began to decipher the handwriting. And this is what he
finally made out:
"Souls in Bondage:
"The plundering plutocrats who suck the very life blood of your mother
country under the guise of the development of her resources, are working
in harmony with the rich brigands north of the border to plunder you
further, and to despoil the fair land you have helped to win from the
wilderness.
"Shall strong men be content in their slavery to the greed of others?
Rise up and help us show the plunderers that we are men, not slaves. Let
this shameless persecution of your mother country cease!
"American bandits would subjugate and annex the richest portion of
Mexico. Why should not Mexico therefore reclaim her own? Why not turn the
tables and annex a part of the vast territory stolen from her by the
octopus arms of our capitalist class?
"We are a proud people and we never forget. Are we a cowardly people who
would cringe and yield when submission means infamy?
"Awake! Strike one swift, successful blow for freedom and your bleeding
mother land.
"Texas, New Mexico, California and Arizona were stolen from Mexico, just
as the riches of her mines are being stolen from her to-day. Sons of
Mexico, you can help her reclaim her own. Will you stand by and see her
further despoiled? Let your voices rise in a mighty cry for justice! Let
your arms be strong to strike a blow for the right!
"Souls in bondage, wake up and strike off your shackles! Be not slaves
but free men!
"Texas, New Mexico and Arizona for Mexico, to whom they rightfully
belong!"
"They sure do make it strong enough," Starr commented, feeling for a
match with which to relight his cigarette that had gone out. He laid down
the written pages and took up the leaflet entitled, "ALMAS DE CAUTIVERO."
The text that followed was like the heading, simply a translation into
Spanish of the exhortation he had just read in English. But he read it
through and noted the places where the Spanish version was even more
inflammatory than the English--which, in Starr's opinion, was going some.
The other pamphlets were much the same, citing well-known instances of
the revolution across the border which seemed to prove conclusively that
justice was no more than a jest, and that the proletariat of Mexico was
getting the worst of the bargain, no matter who happened to be in power.
Starr frowned thoughtfully over the reading. To him the thing was
treason, and it was his business to help stamp it out. For the powers
that be cannot afford to tolerate the planting of such seeds of
dissatisfaction amongst the untrained minds of the masses.
But, and Starr admitted it to himself with his mouth pulled down at the
corners, the worst of it was that under the bombast, under the
vituperative utterances, the catch phrases of radicalism, there remained
the grains of truth. Starr knew that the masses of Mexico _were_
suffering, broken under the tramplings of revolution and
counter-revolution that swept back and forth from gulf to gulf. Still, it
was not his business to sift out the plump grains of truth and justice,
but to keep the chaff from lighting and spreading a wildfire of sedition
through three States.
"'Souls in bondage' is right," he said, setting his feet to the floor
and reaching for his boots. "In bondage to their own helplessness, and
helpless because they're so damned ignorant. But," he added grimly while
he stamped his right foot into its boot, "they ain't going at it the
right way. They're tryin' to tear down, when they ain't ready to build
anything on the wreck. They're right about the wrong; but they're wrong
as the devil about the way to mend it. Them pamphlets will sure raise
hell amongst the Mexicans, if the thing ain't stopped pronto."
He dressed for riding, and went out and fed Rabbit before he went
thoughtfully up to the hotel for his breakfast.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
HELEN MAY SIGHS FOR ROMANCE
Helen May was toiling over the ridgy upland which in New Mexico is called
a mesa, when it is not a desert--and sometimes when it is one--taking her
turn with the goats while Vic nursed a strained ankle and a grouch under
the mesquite tree by the house. With Pat to help, the herding resolved
itself into the exercise of human intelligence over the dog's skill. Pat,
for instance, would not of his own accord choose the best grazing for his
band, but he could drive them to good grazing once it was chosen for him.
So, theoretically, Helen May was exercising her human intelligence;
actually she was exercising her muscles mostly. And having an abundance
of brain energy that refused to lie dormant, she had plenty of time to
think her own thoughts while Pat carried out her occasional orders.
For one thing, Helen May was undergoing the transition from a mild
satisfaction with her education and mentality, to a shamed consciousness
of an appalling ignorance and mental crudity. Holman Sommers was
unwittingly the cause of that. There was nothing patronizing or
condescending in the attitude of Holman Sommers, even if he did run to
long words and scientifically accurate descriptions of the smallest
subjects. It was the work he placed before her that held Helen May
abashed before his vast knowledge. She could not understand half of what
she deciphered and typed for him, and because she could not understand
she realized the depth of her benightedness.
She was awed by the breadth and the scope which she sensed more or less
vaguely in _The Evolution of Sociology_. Holman Sommers quoted freely,
and discussed boldly and frankly, such abstruse authors as Descartes,
Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Comte, Gumplowicz, some of them names she had
never heard of and could not even spell without following her copy
letter by letter. Holman Sommers seemed to have read all of them and to
have weighed all of them and to be able to quote all of them offhand;
whereas Schopenhauer was the only name in the lot that sounded in the
least familiar to Helen May, and she had a guilty feeling that she had
always connected the name with music instead of the sort of things
Holman Sommers quoted him as having said or written, she could not make
out which.
Helen May, therefore, was suffering from mental growing pains. She
struggled with new ideas which she had swallowed whole, without any
previous elementary knowledge of the subject. Her brain was hungry, her
life was stagnant, and she seized upon these sociological problems which
Holman Sommers had placed before her, and worried over them, and wondered
where Holman Sommers had learned so much about things she had never heard
of. Save his vocabulary, which wearied her, he was the simplest, the
kindest of men, though not kind as her Man of the Desert was kind.
Just here in her thoughts Holman Sommers faded, and Starr's lean,
whimsical face came out sharply defined before her mental vision. Starr
certainly was different! Ordinary, and not educated much beyond the three
Rs, she suspected. Just a desert man with a nice voice and a gift for
provocative little silences. Two men could not well be farther apart in
personality, she thought, and she amused herself by comparing them.
For instance, take the case of Pat. Sommers had told her just why and
just how desperately she needed a dog for the goats, and had urged her by
all means to get one at the first opportunity. Starr had not said
anything about it; he had simply brought the dog. Helen May appreciated
the different quality of the kindness that does things.
Privately, she suspected that Starr had stolen that dog, he had seemed so
embarrassed while he explained how he came by Pat; especially, she
remembered, when she had urged him to take the dog back. She would not,
of course, dare hint it even to Vic; and theoretically she was of course
shocked at the possibility. But, oh, she was human! That a nice man
should swipe a dog for her secretly touched a little, responsive
tenderness in Helen May. (She used the word "swipe," which somehow made
the suspected deed sound less a crime and more an amusing peccadillo than
the word "steal" would have done. Have you ever noticed how adroitly we
tone down or magnify certain misdeeds simply by using slang or dictionary
words as the case may be?)
Oh, she saw it quite plainly, as she trudged over to the shady side of a
rock ridge and sat down where she could keep an eye on Pat and the goats.
She told herself that she would ask her Man of the Desert, the next time
he happened along, whether he had found out who the dog belonged to. If
he acted confused and dodged the issue, then she would know for sure.
Just what she would do when she knew for sure, Helen May had not decided.
The goats were browsing docilely upon the slope, eating stuff which only
a goat would attempt to eat. Helen May was not afraid of Billy since Pat
had taken charge. Pat had a way of keeping Billy cowed and as harmless
as the nannies themselves. Just now Pat was standing at a little distance
with his tongue slavering down over his white teeth, gazing over the band
as a general looks at his army drawn up in review.
He turned his head and glanced at Helen May inquiringly, then trotted
over to where she sat in the shade. His tongue still drooped quiveringly
over his lower jaw; and now and then he drew it back and licked his lips
as though they were dry. Helen May found a rock that was hollowed like a
crude saucer, and poured water into the hollow from her canteen. Pat
lapped it up thirstily, gave his stubby tail a wag of gratitude, lay down
with his front paws on the edge of her skirt with his head dropped down
upon them, and took a nap--with one eye opening now and then to see that
the goats were all right, and with his ears lifting to catch the meaning
of every stray bleat from a garrulous nanny.
Helen May had changed a good deal in the past two or three weeks. Now
when she stared away and away over the desert and barren slope and ridges
and mountain, she did not feel that she hated them. Instead, she saw that
the yellow of the desert, the brown of the slopes, and the black of the
distant granite ledges basseting from bleak hills were more beautiful
than the tidy little plots of tilled ground she used to think so lovely.
There was something hypnotic in these bald distances. She could not read,
when she was out like this; she could only look and think and dream.
She wished that she might ride out over it sometime, away over to the
mountains, perhaps, as far as she could see. She fell to dreaming of the
old days when this was Spanish territory, and the king gave royal grants
of land to his favorites: for instance, all the country lying between two
mountain ranges, to where a river cut across and formed a natural
boundary. Holman Sommers had told her about the old Spanish grants, and
how many of the vast estates of Mexican "cattle kings" and "sheep kings"
were still preserved almost intact, just as they had been when this was a
part of Mexico.
She wished that she might have lived here then, when the dons held sway
and when señoritas were all beautiful and when señoras were every one of
them imposing in many jewels and in rich mantillas, and when vaqueros
wore red sashes and beautiful serapes and big, gold-laced sombreros, and
rode prancing steeds that curveted away from jingling, silver-rowelled
spurs. Helen May, you must remember, knew her moving-picture romance. She
could easily vision these things exactly as they had been presented to
her on the screen. That is why she peopled this empty land so gorgeously.
It was different now, of course. All the Mexicans she had seen were
like the Mexicans around the old Plaza in Los Angeles. All the señoritas
she had met--they had not been many--powdered and painted abominably to
the point of their jaws and left their necks dirty. And their petticoats
were draggled and their hats looked as though they had been trimmed from
the ten-cent counter of a cheap store. All the señoras were smoky
looking with snakish eyes, and the dresses under their heavy-fringed
black mantillas were more frowsy than those of their daughters. They
certainly were not imposing; and if they wore jewelry at all it looked
brassy and cheap.
There was no romance, nothing like adventure here nowadays, said Helen
May to herself, while she watched the little geysers of dust go dancing
like whirling dervishes across the sand. A person lived on canned stuff
and kept goats and was abjectly pleased to see any kind of human being.
There certainly was no romance left in the country, though it had seemed
almost as though there might be, when her Man of the Desert sang and all
the little night-sounds hushed to listen, and the moon-trail across the
sand of the desert lay like a ribbon of silver. It had seemed then as
though there might be romance yet alive in the wide spaces.
So she had swung back again to Starr, just as she was always doing
lately. She began to wonder when he would come again, and what he would
have to say next time, and whether he had really annexed some poor sheep
man's perfectly good dog, just because he knew she needed one. It would
never do to let on that she guessed; but all the same, it was mighty nice
of him to think of her, even if he did go about it in a queer way. And
when Pat, who had seemed to be asleep, lifted his head and looked up into
her eyes adoringly, Helen May laid her hand upon his smooth skull and
smiled oddly.
No more romance, said Helen May--and here was Starr, a man of mystery, a
man feared and distrusted by the sons of those passionate dons of whom
she dreamed! Here was Starr, Secret Service man (there is ever a glamor
in the very name of it), the very essence and forefront of such romance
and such adventure as she had gasped over, when she had seen it pictured
on the screen! She was living right in the middle of intrigue that was
stirring the rulers of two nations; she was coming close to real
adventure, and there she sat, with Pat lying on the hem of her skirt, and
mourned that she was fifty or a hundred years too late for even a glimpse
at romance! And fretted because she was helping Pat herd goats, and
because life was dull and commonplace.
"Honestly," she told Pat, "I've got to the point where I catch myself,
looking forward to the chance visits of a wandering cowboy who is
perfectly commonplace. Why, he'd be absolutely lost on the screen; you
wouldn't know he was in the picture unless his horse bucked or fell down
or something! And I don't suppose he ever has a thought beyond his work
and his little five-cent celebrations in San Bonito, maybe. Most likely
he flirts with those grimy-necked Mexican girls, too. You can't tell--
"And think of me being so hard up for excitement that I've got to play
he's some mysterious creature of the desert! Honest to goodness, Pat,
it's got so bad that the mere sight of a real, live man is thrilling.
When Holman Sommers comes and lifts that old Panama like a crown prince,
and smiles at me and talks about all the different periods of the human
race, and gems and tribal laws and all that highbrow dope, I just sit and
drink it in and wish he'd keep on for hours! Can you beat that? And if by
any chance a common, ordinary specimen of desert man should ride by, I
might be desperate enough--"
Her gaze, wandering always out over the tremendous sweep of plateau which
from that point looked illimitable as the ocean, settled upon a whirlwind
that displayed method and a slow sedateness not at all in keeping with
the erratic gyrations of those gone before. Watching it wistfully with a
half-formed hope that it might not be just a dry-weather whirlwind, her
droning voice trailed off into silence. A faint beating in her throat
betrayed what it was she half hoped. She was so desperately lonesome!
Pat tilted his head and looked up at her and licked her hand until she
drew it away impatiently.
"Good gracious, Pat! Do you want to plaster me with germs?" she reproved.
And Pat dropped his head down upon his paws and eyed her furtively from
under his brown lids, waiting for her to repent her harshness and smooth
his head caressingly, as was her wont.
But Helen May was watching that slow-moving column of dust, just as
she had watched the cloud which had heralded the coming into her life
of Holman Sommers. It might be--but it couldn't, for this was away
off the road. No one would be cutting straight across that hummocky
flat, unless--
From the desert I come to thee,
On my Arab shod with fire--
"Oh, I'm getting absolutely mushy!" she muttered angrily. "If I've
reached the point where I can't see a spot of dust without getting
heart-failure over it, why it's time I was shut up somewhere. What are
you lolling around me for, Pat? Go on and tend to your goats, why don't
you? And do get off my skirt!"
Pat sprang up as though she had struck him; gave her an injured glance
that was perfectly maddening to Helen May, whose conscience was
sufficient punishment, and went slinking off down the slope. Half-way to
the band he stopped and sat down on his haunches in the hot sun, as
dejected a dog as ever was made to suffer because his mistress was
displeased with herself.
Helen May sat there scowling out across the wide spaces, while romance
and adventure, and something more, rode steadily nearer, heralded by the
small gray cloud. When she was sure that a horseman was coming, she
perversely removed herself to another spot where she would not be seen.
And there she sat, out of sight from below and thus fancying herself
undiscovered, refusing so much as a sly glance around her granite shield.
For if there was anything which Helen May hated more than another it was
the possibility of being thought cheaply sentimental, mushy, as the
present generation vividly puts it. Also she was trying to break herself
of humming that old desert love-song all the while. Vic was beginning to
"kid" her unmercifully about it, for one thing. To think that she should
sing it without thinking a word about it, just because she happened to
see a little dust! She would not look. She would not!
Starr might have passed her by and gone on to the cabin if he had not,
through a pair of powerful binoculars, been observing her when she sent
Pat off, and when she got up and went over to the other ledge and sat
down. Through the glasses he had seen her feet crossed, toes up, just
past the nose of the rock, and he could see the spread of her skirt.
Luckily, he could not read her mind. He therefore gave a yank at the
lead-rope in his hand and addressed a few biting remarks to a
white-lashed, blue-eyed pinto trailing reluctantly behind Rabbit; and
rode forward with some eagerness toward the ridge.