worried beyond caring how she chose her words for Holman Sommers. "His
eyes look queer, don't you think?"
"Since you ask me, and since the subject is not one to be dismissed
lightly, I will say that I have been studying the dog's attitude with
some slight measure of concern," Holman Sommers admitted guardedly. "The
suffused eyeball is sometimes found in the premonitory stage of the
disease, after incubation has progressed to a certain degree. Also
irritability, nervousness, and depression are apt to be present. Has the
dog exhibited any tendency toward sluggishness, Miss Stevenson?"
"Well, he's been lying around most of the time to-day," Helen May
confessed, staring at Pat apprehensively. "Of course, there hasn't been
anything much for him to do. But he certainly does act queer, just since
you came."
Holman Sommers spoke with the prim decision of a teacher instructing a
class, but that seemed to be only his way, and Helen May was growing used
to it. "His evidencing a tendency toward sluggishness to-day, and his
subsequent irritability, may or may not be significant of an abnormality.
If, however, the dog progresses to the stage of hyperaesthesia, and the
muscles of deglutition become extremely rigid, so that he cannot swallow,
convulsions will certainly follow. There will also appear in the mouth
and throat a secretion of thick, viscid mucus, with thickened saliva,
which will be an undubitable proof of rabies."
Having thus innocently damned poor Pat with the suspicion of a dreadful
malady, Sommers made a scientific attempt to soothe Helen May's fears.
He advised, with many words and much kind intent, that Pat be muzzled
until the "hyperaesthesia" did or did not develop. Helen May thought that
the terribly-termed symptoms might develop before they could get a muzzle
from town, but she did not like to say so.
Partly to be hospitable, and partly to get away from Pat, she mounted the
pinto, told Pat to watch the goats, and rode down to the house to see
Martha Sommers. She did not anticipate any pleasure in the visit, much as
she had longed for the sound of a woman's voice. She was really worried
half to death over Starr, and the rabies, and Pat, and the nagging
consciousness that she had not accomplished as much copying of manuscript
as Holman Sommers probably expected.
She did not hear half of what Sommers was saying on the way to the cabin.
His very amiability jarred upon her nervous depression. She had always
liked him, and respected his vast learning, but to-day she certainly did
not get much comfort out of his converse. She wondered why she had been
so light-hearted while Starr was with her showing her how to shoot, and
lecturing her about the danger of going gunless abroad; and why she was
so perfectly dejected when Holman Sommers talked to her about the very
same thing. Starr had certainly painted things blacker than Holman had
done, but it did not seem to have the same effect.
"I don't see what we're going to do for a muzzle," she launched suddenly
into the middle of Holman Sommers' scientific explanation of mirages.
"Vic can undoubtedly construct one out of an old strap," Holman Sommers
retorted impatiently, and went on discoursing about refraction and
reflection and the like.
Helen May tried to follow him, and gave it up. When they were
almost to the spring she again unwittingly jarred Holman Sommers
out of his subject.
"Did all those words you used mean that Pat will foam at the mouth like
mad dogs you read about?" she asked abruptly.
Holman Sommers, tramping along beside the pinto, looked at her queerly.
"If Pat does not, I strongly suspect that I shall," he told her
weightily, but with a twinkle in his eyes. "I have been endeavoring, Miss
Stevenson, to wean your thoughts away from so unhappy a subject. Why
permit yourself to be worried? The thing will happen, or it will not
happen. If it does happen, you will be powerless to prevent. If it does
not, you will have been anxious over a chimera of the imagination."
"Chimera of the imagination is a good line," laughed Helen May
flippantly. "All the same, if Pat is going to gallop all over the
scenery, foaming at the mouth and throwing fits at the sight of water--"
"As a matter of fact," Holman Sommers was beginning again in his most
instructive tone, when a whoop from the spring interrupted him.
Vic had hobbled obligingly down there to get cool water for the plump
lady who was Holman Sommers' sister, and he had nearly stepped on a
sleepy rattler stretched out in the sun. Vic was making a collection of
rattles. He had one set, so far, of five rattles and a "button." He
wanted to get these which were buzzing stridently enough for three
snakes, it seemed to Vic. He was hopping around on his good foot and
throwing rocks; and the snake, having retreated to a small heap of loose
cobblestones, was thrusting his head out in vicious little striking
gestures, and keeping the scaly length of him bidden.
"Wait a minute, I'll get him, Vic," called Helen May, suddenly anxious to
show off her newly acquired skill with firearms. Starr had told her that
lots of people killed rattlesnakes by shooting their heads off. She
wanted to try it, anyway, and show Vic a thing or two. So she rode up as
close as she dared, though the pinto shied away from the ominous sound;
pulled her pearl-handled six-shooter from its holster, aimed, and fired
at the snake's head.
You have heard, no doubt, of "fool's luck." Helen May actually tore the
whole top off that rattlesnake's head (though I may as well say right
here that she never succeeded in shooting another snake) and rode
nonchalantly on to the cabin as though she had done nothing at all
unusual, but smiling to herself at Vic's slack-jawed amazement at seeing
her on horseback, with a gun and such uncanny skill in the use of it.
She felt better after that, and she rather enjoyed the plump sister of
Holman Sommers. The plump sister called him Holly, and seemed to be
inordinately proud of his learning and inordinately fond of nagging at
him over little things. She was what Helen May called a vegetable type of
woman. She did not seem to have any great emotions in her make-up. She
sat in the one rocking-chair under the mesquite tree and crocheted lace
and talked comfortably about Holly and her chickens in the same breath,
and frankly admired Helen May's "spunk" in living out alone like that.
"Don't overlook Vic, though," Helen May put in generously. "I honestly
don't believe I could stand it without Vic."
The plump sister seemed unimpressed. "In this country," she said with a
certain snug positiveness that was the keynote of her personality, "it's
the women that have the courage. They wouldn't be here if they didn't
have. Think how close we are to the Mexican border, for instance.
Anything that is horrible to woman can come out of Mexico. Not that I
look down on them over there," she added, with a complacent tolerance in
her tone. "They are victims of the System that has kept them degraded and
ignorant. But until they are lifted up and educated and raised to our
standards they are bad.
"You can't get around it, Holly, those ignorant Mexicans are _bad_!" She
had lifted her eyes accusingly to where Holman Sommers sat on the ground
with his knees drawn up and his old Panama hat hung upon them. He was
smoking a pipe, and he did not remove it from his mouth; but Helen May
saw that amused quirk of the lips just the same.
"You can't get around it. You know it as well as I do," she reiterated.
"Cannibals are worth saving, but before they are saved they are liable to
eat the missionary. And it's the same thing with your Mexicans. You want
to educate them and raise them to your standards, and that's all right as
far as it goes. But in the meantime they're bad. And if Miss Stevenson
wasn't such a good shot, I wouldn't be able to sleep nights, thinking of
her living up here alone, with just a boy for protection."
"Why, I never heard of such a thing as any danger from Mexicans!" Helen
May looked inquiringly from plump sister to cynical brother.
"Well, you needn't wonder at Holly not telling you," said the plump
sister,--her name was Maggie. "Holly's a fool about some things. Holly
is trying the Uplift, and he shuts his eyes to things that don't fit in
with his theories. If you've copied much of that stuff he's been
writing, you ought to know how impractical he is. Holly's got his head
in the clouds, and he won't look at what's right under his feet." Again
she looked reproof at Holly, and again Holly's lips quirked around the
stem end of his pipe.
"You just keep your eyes open, Miss Stevenson," she admonished, in a
purring, comfortable voice. "I ain't afraid, myself, because I've got
Holly and my cousin Todd, when he's at home. And besides, Holly's always
doing missionary stunts, and the Mexicans like him because he'll let them
rob him right and left and come back and take what they forgot the first
time, and Holly won't do a thing to them. But you don't want to take any
chances, away off here like you are. You lock your door good at night,
and you sleep with a gun under your pillow. And don't go off anywhere
alone. My, even with a gun you ain't any too safe!"
Helen May gave a gasp. But Holman Sommers laughed outright--an easy,
chuckling laugh that partly reassured her. "Danger is Maggie's favorite
joke," he said tolerantly. "As a matter of fact, and speaking from a
close, personal knowledge of the people hereabouts, I can assure you,
Miss Stevenson, that you are in no danger whatever from the source my
sister indicates."
"Well, but Holly, I've said it, and I'll say it again; you can't tell
_what_ may come up out of Mexico." Plump Maggie rolled up her lace and
jabbed the ball decisively with the crochet hook, "We'll have to go now,
or the chickens will be wondering where their supper is coming from. You
do what I say, and lock your doors at night, and have your gun handy,
Miss Stevenson. Things may look calm enough on the surface, but they
ain't, I can tell you that!"
"Woman, cease!" cried Holly banteringly, while he dusted his baggy
trousers with his palms. "Miss Stevenson will be haunted by nightmares if
you keep on."
Once they were gone, Helen May surrendered weakly to one fear, to the
extent that she let Vic take the carbine and the pinto and ride over to
where she had left Pat and the goats, for the simple reason that she
dreaded to face alone that much maligned dog. Vic, to be sure, would have
quarreled with her if necessary, to get a ride on the pinto, and he was a
good deal astonished at Helen May's sweet consideration of a boy's
hunger for a horse. But she tempered his joy a bit by urging him to keep
an eye on Pat, who had been acting very queer.
"He kept ruining up his back and showing his teeth at Mr. Sommers," she
explained nervously. "If he does it when you go, Vic, and if he foams at
the mouth, you'd better shoot him before he bites something. If a mad dog
bites you, you'll get hydrophobia, and bark and growl like a dog, and
have fits and die."
"G-oo-d _night_!" Vic ejaculated fervently, and went loping awkwardly
down the trail past the spring.
That left Helen May alone and free to think about the horrors that might
come up out of Mexico, and about the ignorant Mexicans who, until they
are uplifted, are bad. It seemed strange that, if this were true, Starr
had never mentioned the danger. And yet--
"I'll bet anything that's just what Starr-of-the-Desert did mean!" she
exclaimed aloud, her eyes fixed intently on the toes of her scuffed
boots. "He just didn't want to scare me too much and make me suspicious
of everybody that came along, and so he talked mad coyotes at me. But it
was Mexicans he meant; I'll bet anything it was!"
If that was what Starr meant, then the shot from the pinnacle, and
Starr's crafty, Indian-like method of getting away unseen, took on a
new and sinister meaning. Helen May shivered at the thought of Starr
riding away in search of the man who had tried to kill him, and of the
risk he must be taking. And what if the fellow came back, sneaking back
in the dark, and tried to get in the house, or something? It surely was
lucky that Starr-of-the-Desert had just happened to bring those guns.
But had he just _happened_ to bring them? Helen May was not stupid, even
if she were ignorant of certain things she ought to know, living out
alone in the wild. She began to see very clearly just what Starr had
meant; just how far he had _happened_ to have extra guns in his shack,
and had just _happened_ to get hold of a horse that she and Vic could
use; and the dog, too, that hated Mexicans!
"That's why he hates to have me stay on the claim!" she deduced at last.
"Only he just wouldn't tell me right out that it isn't safe. That's what
he meant by asking if dad knew the chances I'd have to take. Well, dad
didn't know, but after the price dad paid, why--I've got to stay, and
make good. There's no sense in being a coward about it. Starr wouldn't
want me to be a coward. He's just scheming around to make it as safe as
he can, without making me cowardly."
A slow, half-tender smile lit her chestnut-tinted eyes, and tilted her
lips at the corners. "Oh, you desert man o' mine, I see through you
now!" she said under her breath, and kept on smiling afterwards, since
there was not a soul near to guess her thoughts. "Desert man o' mine"
was going pretty strong, if you stop to think of it; but Helen May would
have died--would have lied--would have gone to any lengths to keep Starr
from guessing she had ever thought such a thing about him. That was the
woman of her.
The woman of her it was too that kept her dwelling pleasedly on Starr's
shy, protective regard for her, instead of watching the peaks in fear and
trembling lest another bad, un-uplifted Mexican should be watching a
chance to send another bullet zipping down into the Basin on its mission
of wanton wickedness.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
STARR SEES TOO LITTLE OR TOO MUCH
Carefully skirting the ridge where Helen May had her goats; keeping
always in the gulches and never once showing himself on high ground,
Starr came after a while to a point where he could look up to the
pinnacle behind Sunlight Basin, from the side opposite the point where
he had wriggled away behind a bush. He left Rabbit hidden in a
brush-choked arroyo that meandered away to the southwest, and began
cautiously to climb.
Starr did not expect to come upon his man on the peak; indeed he would
have been surprised to find the fellow still there. But that peak was as
good as any for reconnoitering the surrounding country, was higher than
any other within several miles, in fact. What he did hope was to pick up
with his glasses the man's line of retreat after a deed he must believe
successfully accomplished. And there might be some betraying sign there
that would give him a clue.
There was always the possibility, however, that the fellow had lingered
to see what took place after the supposed killing. He must believe that
the girl who had been with Starr would take some action, and he might
want to know to a certainty what that action was. So Starr went
carefully, keeping behind boulders and rugged outcroppings and in the
bottom of deep, water-worn washes when nothing else served. He did not
think the fellow, even if he stayed on the peak, would be watching behind
him, but Starr did not take any chances, and climbed rather slowly.
He reached the summit at the left of where the man had stood when he
shot; very close to the spot where Helen May had stood and looked upon
Vic and the goats and the country she abhorred. Starr saw her tracks
there in a sheltered place beside a rock and knew that she had been up
there, though in that dry soil he could not, of course, tell when. When
that baked soil takes an imprint, it is apt to hold it for a long while
unless rain or a real sand-storm blots it out.
He hid there for a few minutes, craning as much as he dared to see if
there were any sign of the man he wanted. In a little he left that spot
and crept, foot by foot, over to the cairn, the "sheepherder's monument,"
behind which the fellow had stood. There again he found the prints of
Helen May's small, mountain boots, prints which he had come to know very
well. And close to them, looking as though the two had stood together,
were the larger, deeper tracks of a man.
Starr dared not rise and stand upright. He must keep always under cover
from any chance spying from below. He could not, therefore, trace the
footprints down the peak. But he got some idea of the man's direction
when he left, and he knew, of course, where to find Helen May. He did not
connect the two in his mind, beyond registering clearly in his memory the
two sets of tracks.
He crept closer to the Basin side of the peak and looked down, following
an impulse he did not try to analyze. Certainly he did not expect to see
any one, unless it were Vic, so he had a little shock of surprise when he
saw Helen May riding the pinto up past the spring, with a man walking
beside her and glancing up frequently into her face. Starr was human; I
have reminded you several times how perfectly human he was. He
immediately disliked that man. When he heard faintly the tones of Helen
May's laugh, he disliked the man more.
He got down, with his head and his arms--the left one was lame in
the biceps--above a rock. He made sure that the sun had swung around
so it would not shine on the lenses and betray him by any
heliographic reflection, and focussed his glasses upon the two. He
saw as well as heard Helen May laugh, and he scowled over it. But
mostly he studied the man.
"All right for you, old boy," he muttered. "I don't know who the devil
you are, but I don't like your looks." Which shows how human jealousy
will prejudice a man.
He saw Vic throwing rocks at something which he judged was a snake, and
he saw Helen May rein the pinto awkwardly around, "square herself for
action," as Starr would have styled it, and fire. By her elation;
artfully suppressed, by the very carelessness with which she shoved the
gun in its holster, he knew that she had hit whatever she shot at. He
caught the tones of Holman Sommers' voice praising her, and he hated the
tones. He watched them come on up to the little house, where they
disappeared at the end where the mesquite tree grew. Sitting in the shade
there, talking, he guessed they were doing, and for some reason he
resented it. He saw Vic lift a rattlesnake up by its tail, and heard him
yell that it had six rattles, and the button was missing.
After that Starr turned his hack on the Basin and began to search
scowlingly the plain. He tried to pull his mind away from Helen May and
her visitor and to fix it upon the would-be assassin. He believed that
the horseman he had seen earlier in the day might be the one, and he
looked for him painstakingly, picking out all the draws, all the dry
washes and arroyos of that vicinity. The man would keep under cover, of
course, in making his getaway. He would not ride across a ridge if he
could help it, any more than would Starr.
Even so, from that height Starr could look down into many of the deep
places. In one of them he caught sight of a horseman picking his way
carefully along the boulder-strewn bottom. The man's back was toward him,
but the general look of him was Mexican. The horse was bay with a rusty
black tail, but there were in New Mexico thousands of bay horses with
black tails, so there was nothing gained there. The rider seemed to be
making toward Medina's ranch, though that was only a guess, since the
arroyo he was following led in that direction at that particular place.
Later it took a sharp turn to the south, and the rider went out of sight
before Starr got so much as a glimpse at his features.
He watched for a few minutes longer, sweeping his glasses slowly to
right and left. He took another look down into the Basin and saw no one
stirring, that being about the time when the plump sister was rolling
up her fancy work and tapering off her conversation to the point of
making her adieu. Starr did not watch long enough for his own peace of
mind. Five more minutes would have brought the plump one into plain
view with her brother and Helen May, and would have identified Holman
Sommers as the escort of a lady caller. But those five minutes Starr
spent in crawling back down the peak on the side farthest from the
Basin, leaving Holman Sommers sticking in his mind with the unpleasant
flavor of mystery.
He mounted Rabbit again and made a detour of several miles so that he
might come up on the ridge behind Medina's without running any risk of
crossing the trail of the men he wanted to watch. About two o'clock he
stopped at a shallow, brackish stream and let Rabbit rest and feed for an
hour while Starr himself climbed another rocky pinnacle and scanned the
country between there and Medina's.
The gate that let one off the main road and into the winding trail which
led to the house stood out in plain view at the mouth of a shallow draw.
This was not the trail which led out from the home ranch toward San
Bonito, where Starr had been going when he saw the track of the
mysterious automobile, but the trail one would take in going from
Medina's to Malpais. The ranch house itself stood back where the draw
narrowed, but the yellow-brown trail ribboned back from the gate in
plain view.
Here again Starr was fated to get a glimpse and no more. He focussed his
glasses on the main road first; picked up the Medina branch to the gate,
followed the trail on up the draw, and again he picked up a man riding a
bay horse. And just as he was adjusting his lenses for a sharper clarity
of vision, the horse trotted around a bend and disappeared from sight.
Starr swore, but that did not bring the man back down the trail. Starr
was not at all sure that this was the same man he had seen in the draw,
and he was not sure that either was the man who had shot at him. But
roosting on that heat-blistered pinnacle swearing about the things he
didn't know struck him as a profitless performance, so he climbed down,
got into the saddle again, and rode on.
He reached the granite ridge back of Medina's about four o'clock in the
afternoon. He was tired, for he had been going since daylight, and for a
part of the time at least he had been going on foot, climbing the steep,
rocky sides of peaks for the sake of what he might see from the top, and
then climbing down again for sake of what some one else might see if he
stayed too long. His high-heeled riding boots that Helen May so greatly
admired were very good-looking and very comfortable when he had them
stuck into stirrups to the heel. But they had never been built for
walking. Therefore his feet ached abominably. And there was the heat, the
searing, dry heat of midsummer in the desert country. He was dog tired,
and he was depressed because he had not seemed able to accomplish
anything with all his riding and all his scanning of the country.
He climbed slowly the last, brown granite ridge, the ridge behind Estan
Medina's house. He would watch the place and see what was going on there.
Then, he supposed he should go back and watch _Las Nuevas_, though his
chief seemed to think that he had discovered enough there for their
purposes. He had sent on the pamphlets, and he knew that when the time
was right, _Las Nuevas_ would be muzzled with a postal law and, he
hazarded, a seizure of their mail.
What he had to do now was to find the men who were working in conjunction
with _Las Nuevas_; who were taking the active part in organizing and in
controlling the Mexican Alliance. So far he had not hit upon the real
leaders, and he knew it, and in his weariness was oppressed with a sense
of failure. They might better have left him in Texas, he told himself
glumly. They sure had drawn a blank when they drew him into the Secret
Service, because he had accomplished about as much as a pup trying to run
down a coyote.
A lizard scuttled out of his way, when he crawled between two boulders
that would shield him from sight unless a man walked right up on him
where he lay--and Starr did not fear that, because there were too many
loose cobbles to roll and rattle; he knew, because he had been twice as
long as he liked in getting to this point quietly. He took off his hat,
telling himself morosely that you couldn't tell his head from a lump of
granite anyway, when he had his hat off, and lifted his glasses to his
aching eyes.