In the chill darkness that precedes the early dawn Thady Shea alighted
from Bill Murray's car. Before him, a few miles distant, were Old Fort
Tularosa and Aragon; many miles behind was the highway. Down to the
southeast--somewhere--was his destination.
"Mind, now," cautioned Murray, "you take this here trail and it'll lead
up through them hills into Beaver Canon. Follow Beaver Crick all the
rest o' the way. Near as I can judge, your place is somewhere down
beyond Eagle Peak. If you get clear lost, send up a smoke and a ranger
will be dead sure to trail you down. G'bye and good luck!"
"Good-bye, and many thanks for the lift!" responded Shea, his sonorous
voice pierced with the chill of the early morning. Murray went buzzing
away on the back trail.
Carrying his battered little suitcase, Thady Shea started off, gradually
accustoming his eyes to picking out the rough trail. It mattered nothing
to him that he might be days upon this road; it mattered nothing that he
was about to negotiate the continental divide afoot. Time and space did
not concern him, nor bodily discomfort. His was the supremely ignorant
confidence of a child as he headed into the mountains to find a mine
whose entire location, going at it from this direction, was a matter of
guesswork.
To be more accurate and practical, Thady Shea, having slept lightly
while riding, was weary. He was also cold and confused. Now that he had
reached a decision and was really on his way to Number Sixteen, he felt
unaccountably homesick. Not that Number Sixteen meant home, but Mrs.
Crump would be there. As usual, Thady Shea was a bit vague in analyzing
his feelings; but he had a solid and definite purpose in view, at least.
He was going to rejoin Mrs. Crump. He was going to learn mining work.
He went on, trudging bravely under his burden, until the cold had
pierced and chilled and numbed him. At last he could endure the cold no
longer. Ignorant of forest rangers or forest law, he had quite missed
the point of Miller's parting joke about sending up a smoke. He
contrived to build himself a fire; a fine roaring fire, a ruddy, leaping
fire that warmed him. It was a fire that blazed forth patent defiance of
all law. Its darting glow was caught by a forest ranger in a lookout on
Indian Peaks fifteen miles away.
With the first gleam of the rising sun Thady Shea abandoned his blazing
fire and took up his journey again, following the winding trail without
trouble. A little later he halted and made a cold breakfast from some of
the food that filled his pockets. Then he decided to open the suitcase
and see if it were worth carrying farther, or if it held tokens of
ownership. By this time, he was sorry that he had dragged the thing
along.
He smashed open the suitcase. Within it he found wads of crumpled
newspapers, and among the newspapers seven stones. At first he thought
they were nothing but stones. Gradually he realized that they were
carven images of some sort. Except for these, there was nothing in the
suitcase. There was nothing to denote its ownership--not a mark, not a
line, not a card nor a word.
Thady Shea set out the seven stone gods on the ground, and regarded
them. The more he looked at them, the more he saw in them. Each one was
somewhat different in shape, but all were of a size. They were smooth
and rounded, as if from much handling, or as if worn sleek by many
centuries. They were crude, uncouth little figures, those gods; they
were fashioned rudely in the semblance of man, with every angle and
sharp line worn down, obliterated, rounded.
"They look as if some kid had been making mud dolls, and the mud had
hardened," observed Shea in some wonder. The description was accurate
and perfect.
Thady Shea knew nothing about Indians or their gods. He had not the
slightest idea what these things really were; but he was a member of The
Profession, an actor of the old school. All his life he had been
surrounded by the superstitions of the old school. As everyone knows,
there are no stronger, firmer, and more absolute superstitions than
those of The Profession.
As Thady Shea gazed upon those seven stone gods which sat in the dust
and grinned stonily back at him, various things suggested themselves to
his fertile brain. Seven of them--and seven was beyond question a lucky
number! Then, fate had undoubtedly placed them in his hand and had
removed any clew to their former owners. Luck had come to him, and if he
threw the luck away because of a little bother involved in carrying
it--well, that would be an ill thing to do!
Out of his subconscious self evolved a curious idea, a remembrance. What
did these things represent? He dimly remembered something about the
seven heavenly virtues and the seven deadly sins. The vague thought
stirred him. These images were ugly enough to represent the seven
sins--or the seven virtues. He must keep them at all costs; in the
manner of their coming was something fated, something that appealed to
all the latent superstition within him. He dared not refuse these
talismen!
So he replaced them in the suitcase and took up his road anew.
It was a rough road that called to him. It was a long and lonely road, a
road that took him out of human ken and into the heart of the high
hills.
He swung along at a good four-mile clip, his long legs fast covering the
ground. He had never before this day been actually among the mountains,
and he liked their friendly, forested faces. The rough trail denoted
very little usage, yet this absence of all humanity did not oppress
Thady Shea. He felt gloriously independent, free!
About noon he was following Beaver Creek through a rough and rugged
canon. Here he lunched, with a silver-black pool of water foaming and
bubbling fifty feet below him; a pool that foamed green and silver with
sunlight and bubbled with black shadows. Over on the opposite wall of
the canon was a broken line of masonry, half hiding a niche in the rock
where once had lived and died the cliff dwellers. It was a spot to
remember. It was a place that stirred the deep things in a man's soul,
that caused him to think upon the mysteries, the flashing glimpses of
occult things. About that place there lingered a sense of the futility
of man, a sense of the gorgeously foaming and bubbling eternity of the
Creator. Thady Shea was glad that he had seen that place.
Afterward, he halted for a smoke, this time beside the stream itself,
farther along the canon. Thady Shea had never been a boy--until to-day.
At ten years he had been an accomplished actor, a child marvel, drunken
and drugged with the unhealthy atmosphere of the stage. But now--now!
The altitude was high, and he was drunk as with fine wine. He waded in
the stony creek, he even thought of fishing with a bent pin on a string;
but he had neither pin nor string. He enjoyed a truant hour. Then he
went on his way anew, vowing inwardly that some day he would return to
this little bubbling creek and the winding canon amid the mountains.
Despite the altitude, weariness had left him, and he carried the seven
stone gods without feeling their weight. Deeper and lonelier grew his
trail, the mountains folding him in upon every side. He began to feel
the infinity of distance. He was a mere tiny atom here among these great
solitudes. His insignificance was borne home upon him, mellowing all his
spirit.
In this chastened mood he came, suddenly and without warning, upon the
tragic shack of the sheep-herder.
It was a shack of logs and hewn timbers, a rough little shack, a tragic
little shack. Upon one wall was fastened a faded paper, a permit issued
by the forest ranger to cut these same timbers. In the sun by the
doorway sat a little brown, half-naked baby, perhaps a year of age,
whimpering and chewing upon a strip of raw white bacon. There was no one
else visible. Over the place, tainting the clear high air, hung a
fearful odour of mortality; an odour of tragic suggestion, an odour of
blood and liquor.
Seeing no one about except the baby, who stopped whimpering at sight of
him, Thady Shea advanced to the doorway. He glanced inside. As he did
so, cold and awful horror stiffened upon him. Even to his tyro's eye the
story was plain to read.
Upon the bare earthen floor, just inside the door, sat the sheep-herder.
The effluvia of his garments told eloquently his profession. Between his
outstretched feet lay a cheap revolver. His swarthy, brutal face, the
face of a Mexican, the face of a barbarian drawn from mingled Indian and
bastard Spanish blood, was sunken upon his chest. He was breathing
stertorously, horribly. He was drunk, stupefied with liquor. Upon the
floor beneath his hand had fallen an empty bottle which stank of the
vilest mescal.
Only a few feet distant, sprawled under one wall of the room, was the
body of a woman, a brown native woman. She had been upon her knees
beneath a little crucifix. She had fallen partly forward, partly
sideways; a cotton garment had been torn from her left shoulder and
breast, as though in some last agony. Beneath the left breast, black
with flies, a pool of black blood was coagulating. She had not been dead
a long time; an hour or two, no more.
Thady Shea took a step backward. He put one hand to his eyes, as if to
shut from his vision that sordid and horrible scene. For a moment he
stood thus, his brain in riotous turmoil; then he started violently as a
hand touched his arm.
"Hello, stranger! I been looking for you!"
Shea stared at the man who had just dismounted from a pony; a white man,
grave and steady of eye. Something in the horror-smitten face of Shea
drew an exclamation from this other man.
"Here--what's the matter?"
"In there. Look!" Thady Shea motioned to the doorway.
The other man, the forest ranger who had come from the lookout station
on Indian Peaks, quickly strode forward. His figure filled the doorway
for a long moment. He stood there silently, gazing in upon that tragic
shack, reading every detail with skilled eyes. At last he turned and
rejoined Thady Shea, who was staring down at the baby.
"You built a fire early this morning on the old trail up from the
Tularosa Road?" The ranger gave his name and office. "H'm-m. Know
anything about the fire laws?"
"Fire laws? No," Shea was disturbed and wondering. "Why? Shouldn't I
have built any fire?"
"Not that kind--not a big hell-roarer. No harm done, I reckon; I stamped
out your fire. But see to it that you don't do it again. Here's a copy
of the laws."
He extended a card. Shea pocketed it with a helpless gesture, and looked
again at the doorway of the shack. The ranger caught his look, and
nodded.
"I guess you'd just found 'em, eh? It's a hell of a note. This fellow
Garcia, with his wife and kid, came up from Mexico; refugees. He's been
herding some sheep; some that the Y Ranch got a permit to run in a big
box canon last winter--and he's not a bad sort when he's sober. But
now--well, there's no doubt about him now. He'll be a good greaser in
two-three weeks, when the drop's sprung. Suppose I got to take him in;
hell of a note! You ain't been inside?"
Thady Shea shuddered. "No," he answered. He looked down at the baby. The
baby looked up at him, removed the strip of white bacon from her mouth,
and smiled.
"It's a girl!" said Thady Shea in surprise and awe.
The ranger gave him a curious look, then took out his notebook and
pencil.
"Name and where from, if you please," he said. "We'll likely have to
come and take down your testimony later on."
Thady Shea gave his name, and gave as well as he was able the location
of Mrs. Crump's mine. The ranger once more eyed him, but this time with
a new air.
"Hell! I've heard o' you, Shea. Partners with Mrs. Crump, eh? That's a
pretty good recommend. Where you goin' from here?"
"To the mine. I believe that by following this creek I'll get into the
right territory sooner or later. I know how to reach the mine from
Zacaton City, but from this direction I'm not so sure."
Thady Shea was badly off. He was thoroughly shaken by the fearful scene
within the tragic shack. It had unnerved him, and he wanted a drink with
avid and terrible longing. The ranger observed it.
"I ain't offering you any drinks, Shea," he said, drily. "Heard a few
things about what happens to folks that offer you drinks. Still, I
always do carry a drop for emergencies, and I have a notion that you
need a sip mighty bad."
Thady Shea forced a grim smile. "Thanks. But--the need will have to be
greater than it is now, my friend. You think I can reach the mine
to-night?"
"No. Some time to-morrow, most likely. Now listen close and I'll give
you directions where to leave this canon, or else you'll come out clear
down on the Gila!"
Having gleaned a fairly precise knowledge of the location of Number
Sixteen, the ranger proceeded to give Thady Shea an accurate mental map
of the trails, backed up by a rough drawing. Then he entered the shack,
carried out the murderer, and bound the man on his pony like a sack of
flour.
"What the devil will become o' the kid?" he queried. "Come on, Shea,
let's get the poor woman buried. That baby, now--d'you suppose you could
wait here until I send back for her? I can't handle the greaser and the
baby, too."
Thady Shea did not respond at once. He seemed oblivious of the question;
but as a matter of fact, he was deep in thought.
The two men together dug a grave and decently interred the poor murdered
woman. Over the mound Thady Shea intoned a fragmentary burial service.
What he lacked in words he made up in rolling phrases culled from other
sources than the prayer book, and in a deeply sincere manner which sat
upon him with stately dignity.
They returned to the front of the shack, where the ranger rolled a
cigarette with studied care, and returned to his perplexity.
"What about this here kid, now? These folks haven't any kin this side
the border, and these greasers don't give a whoop for babies anyhow; too
common. This Garcia is the one that deserves my close and personal
attention until he gets shoved into the kind o' hell he's bound
for--which won't be very long. Of course, the kid can go to some
orphanage or the State will take care of her. She's a smilin' little
cuss!"
Thady Shea fingered his shaggy, gray-black beard.
"If there's a razor around the place, I think I'll shave," he uttered,
thoughtfully. His words drew a look of frowning surprise from the
ranger, so utterly at variance with the subject did they seem. "Yes, I
think I'll shave."
"Why, friend, I've been thinking about that infant," pursued Shea. "You
know Mrs. Crump, I gather? I think she would care for the little one.
I'll take care of the child on the journey there; I imagine we can get
along. I--er--I don't mind saying that--er--there is a whimsey born of
infancy's fond smiles which warms the kindlier soul within a man."
He broke off, quite at a loss for further words. But the ranger
understood, and smiled to himself.
"That suits me, Shea. You'll be at the mine, eh? May call on you later
in regard to the evidence here. Yes, that's a good plan. Let's see if we
can chase up a razor, now."
The ranger disappeared inside the tragic shack.
Upward of two hours later a new Thady Shea was continuing his journey;
the tragic shack was far lost to view in the wilderness behind him.
His upper lip, his long under jaw, were shaven and in white contrast
with the bronzed skin of cheeks and brow. His wide, mobile mouth and
chin differed from those of the wastrel Thaddeus Roscius who had lain in
the road above the Bajada hill. They were firmer, more virile of set,
stronger of muscle.
In one hand he carried the battered little yellow suitcase. Upon the
other arm was perched the half-naked brown baby, for whose benefit Shea
also carried a blanket tied to his shoulders. This was not the ideal
trim for a walking tour across the Continental Divide, but Thady Shea
had no complaints to make.
Never before had Thady Shea communed alone with a baby, particularly
with a baby quite dependent upon him. This baby could not talk but she
could coo, and she did coo. She could laugh, and she did laugh. She
seemed to find a kinship within the deep, sadly earnest eyes of Thady
Shea. She made it evident that she liked his eyes, and whenever they
were turned upon her, she giggled with self-conscious and adorable
delight.
The day wore on. When darkness descended, Thady Shea camped at the brink
of the canon, at the edge of a deep and stony gully which ran down into
the canon below. He built a fire, this time in accord with the laws of
the land, and produced his scant store of food. Fortunately, the baby
was used to living by rough ways and pastures sere.
In this one day Thady Shea lived long years. He realized it himself. He
realized the change within him; he perceived it at once, without any
vagueness or obscurity. He was filled with wonder and awe. He felt
clearly that the manifest friendship and love of this brown baby had
loosened something far inside of him. Within a few hours she had
loosened something which had been hard and clenched and bitter inside of
him these twenty years--something like a knot gripped about a part of
his soul, stifling it. But now, at last, the knot was loosened, was
gone.
Once again he fell asleep under the stars with glinting tears bedewing
his brown cheeks; they were tears of joy and thankfulness. He knew that
he was no longer to drift upon the earth. From depending upon the
applause of others for happiness, others were now depending upon him. He
had someone for whom to live. Vanity was gone from him, and the worth of
life was come in unto him. He now had a purpose, a real purpose, to
drive him.
That this purpose was very definite and earnest, he had realized with
the unloosing of that knot about his soul. He knew whither he was going,
and why--why he wanted to find Mrs. Crump. He fell asleep with tears
upon his cheeks and in his heart a dumbly vibrant song.
Some time during the night he was awakened; the baby was whimpering, was
cold. The fire was dying down. He had been awakened by a queer noise, a
noise like the clank of a shod hoof against a stone. He rose and kicked
the ember ends into the fire. He removed his coat and laid it over the
baby, then he stood looking down at the bundle. The fire flickered up
until its glowing flare lighted his tall figure redly and distinctly.
From somewhere in the darkness came a slight sound. Thady Shea lifted up
his head and peered about, the vague thought of wild animals disturbing
him. From the darkness echoed a faint laugh--a thin, ironic laugh, a
laugh that thrilled Thady Shea with evil memories and swift
apprehension. He seemed to recognize it as the laugh of Abel Dorales.
Before he could do more than lift his head and peer into the darkness,
that darkness was suddenly split and rended by a red flash. The crack of
a weapon lifted and lessened among the hills; as it died away, the baby
cried out, whimpering. Across the face of Thady Shea flickered a look of
dismay, of surprise, of utmost horror. Thady Shea took a step backward,
as though something had lifted him off his balance, as though something
unseen had impacted against him with terrific force. He staggered and
lifted both hands to his head. Then his knees seemed to loosen, and he
pitched downward, at the very brink of the gully.
From the stony ravine below came a heavy sound, as of a body pitching
and dragging downward. It ceased, and there was abrupt silence. In that
silence, the baby cried out, whimpering thinly.
Into the circle of light cast by the tiny fire came a man leading a
pony. The man was Abel Dorales and he was smiling.