At their camp by the Eagle Tail mine, even though they held it still
and were heirs to half its gold, the two pardners were glum and
sorrowful. The treacheries which Bud had forgiven in a moment of
exaltation came back to him now as he brooded; and he eyed his friend
askance, as if wondering what he would do next.
He recalled all the circumstances of their quest--the meeting with
Kruger, Phil's insistence on the adventure, the oath of loyalty which
they had sworn; and then the gradual breaking down of their brotherly
devotion until now they were strangers at heart. Phil sat by himself,
keeping his thoughts to himself, and he stood aloof while he waited for
the worst to happen.
From the first day of their undertaking Hooker had felt that it was
unlucky, and now he knew that the end was coming. His friend was lost
to him, lost alike to a sense of loyalty and honor; he gloomed by
himself and thought only of Gracia Aragon.
The oath which Phil himself had forced upon Bud was broken and
forgotten; but Bud, by a sterner standard, felt bound to keep his part.
One thing alone could make him break it--his word to Henry Kruger. The
Eagle Tail mine he held in trust, and half of it was Kruger's.
"Phil," he said at last, when his mind was weary of the ceaseless grind
of thoughts, "I believe that mineral agent is holding back our papers.
I believe old Aragon has passed him a hundred or so and they're in
cahoots to rob us. But I'll tell you what I'll do--you give me a power
of attorney to receive those papers for you, and I'll go in and talk
Dutch to the whole outfit."
"What do you want to do that for?" demanded De Lancey querulously.
"Why can't you wait a while? Those papers have to go to Moctezuma and
Hermosillo and all over the City of Mexico and back, and it takes time.
What do you want to make trouble for?"
"Well, I'll tell you, Phil," answered Bud honestly. "I've got a hunch
if we don't grab them papers soon we won't get 'em at all. Here these
rebels are working closer all the time, and Aragon is crowding us.
I want to get title and turn it over to Kruger, before we lose out
somewhere."
"What's the matter with me going in and talking to the agent?"
suggested Phil. Then, as he saw his pardner's face, he paused and
laughed bitterly.
"You don't trust me any more, do you, Bud?" he said.
"Well, it ain't that so much," evaded Hooker; "but I sure don't trust
that Manuel del Rey. The first time you go into town he's going to
pinch you, and I know it."
"I'm going to go in all the same," declared De Lancey, "and if the
little squirt tries to stop me--"
"Aw, Phil," entreated Bud, "be reasonable, can't ye? You got no call
to go up against that little feller. He's a bad actor, I can see that,
and I believe he'd kill you if he got the chance. But wait a little
while--maybe he'll get took off in the fights this summer!"
"No, he's too cursed mean for that!" muttered De Lancey, but he seemed
to take some comfort in the thought.
As for Bud, he loafed around for a while, cleaning up camp, making
smoke for the absent Yaqui, and looking over the deserted mine, but
something in the changed atmosphere made him restless and uneasy.
"I wonder where that dogged Indian went to?" he said for the hundredth
time, as the deep shadows gathered in the valley. "By Joe, Phil, if
Amigo comes back I'm going to go ahead on that mine! I want to keep
him around here, and we might as well get out some ore, if it's only
for a grub-stake. Come on--what do you say? We'll open her up--there's
nothing to hide now. Well, I'll do it myself, then--this setting around
is getting on my nerves."
His far-seeing eyes, trained from his boyhood to search the hills for
cattle, scanned the tops of the ridges as he spoke; and while he sat
and pondered they noted every rock.
Then at last he rose up slowly and gazed at a certain spot. He waved
his arm, beckoning the distant point of blackness to come in, and soon
from around a point in the cañon the Yaqui appeared, bearing a heavy
Mauser rifle on his arm.
Across his broad breast hung the same familiar cartridge-belt, two
more encircled his hips, and he walked with his head held high, like
the warrior that he was.
Evidently his flight had led to the place where his arms had been hid,
for he wore the regulation knife bayonet at his hip and around his hat
was the red ribbon of his people, but Bud was too polite to ask him
about his journey. Since his coming the Yaqui had always maintained a
certain mystery, and now, though his eyes were big with portent and
he smiled at the jests about his gun, he simply waved his hand to the
south and east and murmured:
"_Muchos revoltosos!_"
"_Seguro!_" answered Bud jokingly. "But have you killed any?"
"Not yet!" returned the Indian, and he did not smile at that.
"I wonder what that Indian is waiting around here for?" remarked Phil
in English. "He must have his eye on somebody."
"Yeah, I bet," agreed Bud, regarding his savage friend with a
speculative interest. "Most of them Yaqui soldiers was farm-hands in
this country before they rounded them up. I reckon he's looking for the
man that had him deported.
"Tired, Amigo?" he inquired in Spanish, and Ignacio gravely
acknowledged that he was, a little.
"Then drink plenty coffee," went on Hooker. "Eat lots--to-morrow we go
to work in the mine."
"Tomorrow?" repeated the Indian, as if considering his other
engagements. "Good!" He nodded a smiling assent.
After a month and more of idleness Bud and Amigo performed prodigies of
labor in the cut, rolling down boulders, lifting them up on the tram,
and clearing away the face of the cliff. Their tram was ramshackle,
their track the abandoned rails from older workings, and their tools
little more than their hands, but by noon the last broken fragments
were heaved aside and the shattered ledge revealed.
A low cry of wonder escaped the Yaqui as he gazed at the rich vein of
ore, and as he saw the grim smile on Bud's rugged countenance he showed
his white teeth in sympathy.
"_Que bueno!_" he murmured. "How good!" gathering the precious
fragments in his handkerchief.
At the camp they crushed the picked ore in a mortar and panned it in
the creek, and for the moment De Lancey dropped his air of preoccupancy
as he stared at the streak of pure gold. Like a yellow film it lay
along the edge of the last fine tailings, and when skilful washing had
left it bare, it gleamed like a jewel in the pan.
"By Jove, Bud!" he cried, "that's the real stuff--and it goes a dollar
to the pan easy!"
"Sure thing!" assented Bud. "Let's pound a lot of it and wash it as we
go--then we'll have some getaway money when things break loose here!"
"I'll go you!" answered Phil, and Bud's heart warmed toward him as he
watched him pound up a piece of ore and go to swirling the dirt in the
pan.
But alas for the fond hopes he cherished! Even as he washed out the
gold Phil's mind wandered far away, back to the hotel where Gracia
Aragon sat watching by the window.
Her hair was the color of gold, spun fine and refined again; yes, it
was worth more than this golden dross that he caught in the bottom of
his pan. And what was gold if he could not have her?
He paused in his labor and a dreamy smile parted his lips--then he
broke into a song:
"Sweet honey-bee, be sweet to me,
My heart is free, but here's the key;
Lock up the garden gate; honey, you know I'll wait,
Under the rambler rose tree-ee."
Once more he returned to his work, humming now the dulcet strains of
"The Merry Widow," and when Bud came back from the cut it was to hear a
coon song:
"'Cos I want yer, ma honey, yes, I want yer, want yer, want yer;
'Cos I want yer, ma honey, yes, I do!"
So he labored and sang, until finally the labor ceased, and then the
song. He went about other things, and other thoughts, not so cheerful,
filled his mind.
Bud returned sadly to the company of the Yaqui and gave it up. Perhaps
his pardner had been right when, riding out of Agua Negra, he had
enlarged upon the dangers of Old Mexico, "the land of _mañana_ and
broken promises." Certainly his speech had been prophetic in regard to
dark-eyed women; for, even as he had said, nothing seemed to please
them better than to come between man and man.
It was a madness, he felt sure--the spell of the hot country, where the
women look out from behind barred windows and men sing beneath their
balconies at midnight. Already it had cost him his pardner--would it
conquer _his_ will as well and make him forget his trust?
In his impotence the idea of some perverse fate--some malign influence
over which he had no control--was strong with Hooker; yet when the blow
fell he was not prepared for it. It was the third day of their mining
and, with Amigo, he had been driving into the face of the cliff.
Already their round of holes was drilled, the fuses cut, the charges
set, and as he retreated before the blast he noticed absently that
Cruz Mendez was in camp. The shots followed one after another, and he
counted them to make sure there was no miss-fire--then he looked around
and discovered that Phil was gone.
"Where is Don Felipe?" he inquired of Mendez, and that low-browed
brother of the burro bowed fawningly before he replied.
"He has gone to Fortuna," he said, wiping his face with the bath-towel
which he wore about his neck.
"And what for?" demanded Bud imperatively.
"I don't know, _señor_," writhed Mendez. "I brought him a letter."
"From whom?"
"I don't know--it was given to me by Juana, the servant of the Señorita
Aragon."
"Ah!" breathed Bud, and pretended not to be surprised.
"Well, let 'im go!" he said to himself, and went back into the mine. It
was what he had expected in a way, and his code bade him keep his hands
off. But the next morning, when the evil was either avoided or done,
he thrust his rifle into its sling and started for the town. At the
jail he halted and gazed in through the windows--then he rode up to the
hotel and asked for Phil.
"What? Have you not heard?" clamored Don Juan. "Ah, it is most
unfortunate--I would not have had it happen for the world!"
"What?" inquired Bud succinctly.
"Why, the quarrel--the encounter with Capitan del Rey! I did my best, I
assure you, to prevent it, for the town has been put under martial law
and the captain is in full charge. They quarreled over the favor of a
lady, and now your friend is in jail."
"I didn't see him when I come by," observed Hooker.
"Ah, no--not in the _cárcel_--in the _cuartel_, the guard-house of the
_rurales_!"
"Much obliged!" nodded Bud, and rode on through the town. The street of
the Mexican quarter was filled with strange people hurrying to and fro;
long pack-trains loaded with trunks and curious bundles came swinging
up from below; and a pair of _rurales_, looking fierce under their huge
sombreros stood guard by the _cuartel_ door.
"Where is the _capitan_?" demanded Hooker. After requesting him to hang
his pistol-belt on his saddle-horn, a sergeant showed him in to the
chief.
Manuel del Rey was very busy with papers and orders, but as the
American appeared in the doorway he rose and greeted him with a bow.
"Ah, good morning, _señor_," he said, with one swift glance to read his
mood. "You are in search of your friend--no?"
"Sí, _señor_," answered Hooker, but with none of the animosity which
the captain had expected. "Where is he?"
"I regret very much," began the officer, speaking with military
formality, "but it is my duty to inform you that the Señor De Lancey
has left Fortuna. Last night he did me the honor to enlist in my
company of _rurales_--he is now on his way to the north to assist in
guarding the railroad."
"What?" shouted Bud, hardly able to believe his ears. But when the
captain repeated it he no longer doubted his Spanish.
"But why?" he cried. "Why did he join the _rurales_?"
"Ah, _señor_," shrugged Del Rey, "was he not a Mexican citizen?
Very well, then; he could be summoned for military service. But the
circumstances were these: Your friend came yesterday to this town,
where I am at present military commander, and made an unprovoked
assault upon my person. For this, according to law, he should have been
shot at sunrise. But, not wishing to occasion unpleasantness with the
Americans now residing here, I offered him the alternative of military
service. He is now enlisted as a _rural_ for a term of five years."
"Five years!" exclaimed Hooker; and then, instead of starting the
expected rough-house--upon which the _rural_ guards were prepared to
jump on his back--he simply threw down his hat and cursed--not anyone
in particular, but everything in general; and at the end of it he
turned once more upon the watchful captain.
"_Dispenseme, señor_," he said, "this is the truth, is it?"
"_Sí, señor_," returned Captain Del Rey. "But before leaving with his
detachment your friend wrote this letter, which he requested me to
deliver to you."
He offered with a flourish a sealed envelope, from which Bud extracted
a short note.