THE RED GOLD LEGEND
It took less than a week for Kit Rhodes to conclude that the girl
behind the bars had a true inspiration regarding his own position on
her ranches. There was no open hostility to him, yet it was evident
that difficulties were cleverly put in his way.
Not by Philip Singleton, the colorless, kindly disposed gentleman of
Pike's description. But by various intangible methods, he was made to
feel an outsider by the manager, Conrad, and his more confidential
Mexican assistants. They were punctiliously polite, too polite for a
horse-ranch outfit. Yet again and again a group of them fell silent
when he joined them, and as his work was with the horse herds of La
Partida, that part of the great grant which spread over the border
into Sonora, he was often camped fifty miles south of the hacienda of
Granados, and saw no more of either the old prospector, or the
tantalizing girl of the voice and the whistle.
Conrad, however, motored down two or three times concerning horses for
eastern shipment, but Rhodes, the new range capitan, puzzled
considerably over those flying visits, for, after the long drive
through sand and alkali, the attention he gave either herds or outfit
was negligible. In fact he scarcely touched at the camp, yet always
did some trifling official act coming or going to make record that he
had been there.
The Mexicans called him El Aoura, the buzzard, because no man could
tell when he would swoop over even the farthest range of La Partida to
catch them napping. Yet there was some sort of curious bond between
them for there were times when Conrad came north as from a long
southern trail, yet the Mexicans were as dumb men if it was referred
to.
He was a compactly built, fair man of less than forty, with thin
reddish brown hair, brows slanting downward from the base of the
nose, and a profile of that curious Teuton type reminiscent of a
supercilious hound if one could imagine such an animal with milk-blue
eyes and a yellow mustache with spiky turned-up ends.
But Rhodes did not permit any antipathy he might feel towards the man
to interfere with his own duties, and he went stolidly about the range
work as if in utter forgetfulness of the dark prophecy of the girl.
If he was to lose his new job he did not mean that it should be from
inattention, and nothing was too trifling for his notice. He would do
the work of a range boss twelve hours out of the day, and then put in
extra time on a night ride to the _cantina_ at the south wells of La
Partida.
But as the work moved north and the consignment of horses for France
made practically complete, old Cap Pike rode down to Granados corrals,
and after contemplation of the various activities of Rhodes, climbed
up on the corral fence beside him, where the latter was checking off
the accepted animals.
"You're a cheerful idiot for work, Bub," agreed the old man, "but what
the devil do you gain by doing so much of the other fellow's job?
Pancho Martinez wasn't sick as he played off on you; you're green to
these Mexican tricks."
"Sure, I'm the original Green from Greenburg," assented his new
_companero_. "Pancho was only more than usually drunk last night,
while I was fresh as a daisy and eager to enlarge my geographic
knowledge, also my linguistics, Hi! Pedro! not the sorrel mare! Cut
her out!"
"Linguistics?" repeated Pike impatiently.
"Yeh, nice little woman in the cantina at La Partida wells. I am a
willing pupil at Spanish love songs, and we get along fine. I am
already a howling success at _La Paloma_, _La Golondrina_, and a few
other sentimental birds."
"Oh, you are, are you?" queried Pike. "Well, take a warning. You'll
get a knife in your back from her man one of these fine nights, and
the song will be _Adios, adios amores_ for you!"
"Nothing doing, Cap! We play _malilla_ for the drinks, and I work it
so that he beats me two out of three. I'm so easy I'm not worth
watching. Women don't fancy fools, so I'm safe."
"Well, I'll be 'strafed' by the Dutch!" Pike stared at the young
fellow, frowning in perplexity. "You sure have me puzzled, Bub. Are
you a hopeless dunce by training or nature?"
"Natural product," grinned K. Rhodes cheerfully. "Beauty unadorned.
Say Cap, tell me something. What is the attraction for friend Conrad
south of La Partida? I seem to run against a stone wall when I try to
feel out the natives on that point. Now just what lies south, and
whose territory?"
The old man looked at him with a new keenness.
"For your sort of an idiot you've blundered on a big interrogation
point," he observed. "Did you meet him down there?"
"No, only heard his voice in the night. It's not very easy to mistake
that velvety blood-puddin' voice of his, and a team went down to meet
him. He seems to go down by another route, railroad I reckon, and
comes in by the south ranch. Now just what is south?"
"The ranches of Soledad grant join La Partida, or aim to. There are no
maps, and no one here knows how far down over the border the Partida
leagues do reach. Soledad was an old mission site, and a fortified
hacienda back in the days of Juarez. Its owner was convicted of
treason during Diaz' reign, executed, and the ranches confiscated. It
is now in the hands of a Federal politician who is safer in
Hermosillo. The revolutionists are thick even among the pacificos up
here, but the Federals have the most ammunition, and the gods of war
are with the guns."
"Sure; and who is the Federal politician? No, not that colt,
Marcito!"
"Perez, Don Jose Perez," stated Pike, giving no heed to corral
interpolations. "He claims more leagues than have ever been reckoned
or surveyed, took in several Indian rancherias last year when the
natives were rounded up and shipped to Yucatan."
"What?"
"Oh, he is in that slave trade good and plenty! They say he is sore on
the Yaquis because he lost a lot of money on a boat load that
committed suicide as they were sailing from Guaymas."
"A boat load of suicides! Now a couple of dozen would sound
reasonable, but a boat load----"
"But it happened to every Indian on the boat, and the boat was full!
No one knows how the poor devils decided it, but it was their only
escape from slavery, and they went over the side like a school of
fish. Men, women, and children from the desert who couldn't swim a
stroke! Talk about nerve--there wasn't one weakling in that whole
outfit, not one! Perez was wild. It lost him sixty dollars a head,
American."
"And that's the neighbor friend Conrad takes a run down south to see
occasionally?"
"Who says so, Bub?"
The two looked at each other, eyes questioning.
"Look here, son," said Pike, after a little, "I'll hit any trail with
you barring Mexican politics. They all sell each other out as regular
as the seasons swing around, and the man north of the line who gets
tangled is sure to be victim if he stays in long enough."
"Oh, I don't know! We have a statesman or two who flirted with Sonora
and came out ahead."
"I said if he stayed in," reminded Pike. "Sure we have crooks galore
who drift across, play a cut-throat game and skip back to cover. The
border is lined with them on both sides. And Conrad----"
"But Conrad isn't in politics."
"N-no. There's no evidence that he is, but his Mexican friends are.
There are men on the Granados now who used to be down on Soledad, and
they are the men who make the trips with him to the lower ranch."
"Tomas Herrara and Chico Domingo?"
"I reckon you've sized them up, but remember, Kit, I don't cross over
with you for any political game, and I don't know a thing!"
"All right, Captain, but don't raise too loud a howl if I fancy a
_pasear_ occasionally to improve my Spanish."
The old man grumbled direful and profane prophecies as to things
likely to happen to students of Spanish love songs in Sonora, and then
sat with his head on one side studying Kit ruminatively as he made his
notes of the selected stock.
"Ye know Bub, it mightn't be so bad at that, if you called a halt in
time, for one of the lost mine trails calls for Spanish and plenty of
it. I've got a working knowledge, but the farther you travel into
Sonora the less American you will hear, and that lost mine of the old
padres is down there along the ranges of Soledad somewhere."
"Which one of the fifty-seven varieties have you elected to uncover
first?" queried Rhodes. "The last time you were confidential about
mines I thought the 'Three Hills of Gold' were mentioned by you."
"Sure it was, but since you are on the Sonora end of the ranch, and
since you are picking up your ears to learn Sonoran trails, it might
be a good time to follow your luck. Say, I'll bet that every herder
who drifts into the _cantina_ at La Partida has heard of the red gold
of El Alisal. The Yaquis used to know where it was before so many of
them were killed off; reckon it's lost good and plenty now, but
nothing is hid forever and it's waiting there for some man with the
luck."
"We're willing," grinned Kit. "You are a great little old dreamer,
Captain. And there is a fair chance I may range down there. I met a
chap named Whitely from over toward the Painted Hills north of Altar.
Ranch manager, sort of friendly."
"Sure, Tom Whitely has some stock in a ranch over there--the Mesa
Blanca ranch--it joins Soledad on the west. I've always aimed to range
that way, but the lost mine is closer than the eastern sierras--must
be! The trail of the early padres was farther east, and the mine could
not well be far from the trail, not more than a day's journey by mule
or burro, and that's about twenty miles. You see Bub, it was found by
a padre who wandered off the trail on the way to a little branch
mission, or _visita_, as they call it, and it was where trees grew,
for a big alisal tree--sycamore you know--was near the outcrop of that
red gold. Well, that _visita_ was where the padres only visited the
heathen for baptism and such things; no church was built there! That's
what tangles the trail for anyone trying to find traces after a
hundred years."
"I reckon it would," agreed Rhodes. "Think what a hundred years of
cactus, sand, and occasional _temblors_ can do to a desert, to say
nothing of the playful zephyrs. Why, Cap, the winds could lift a
good-sized range of hills and fill the baby rivers with it in that
time, for the winds of the desert have a way with them!"
A boy rode out of the whirls of dust, and climbed up on the corral
fence where Rhodes was finishing tally of the horses selected for
shipment. He was the slender, handsome son of Tomas Herrara of whom
they had been speaking.
"It is a letter," he said, taking a folded paper from his hat. "The
Senor Conrad is having the telegraph, and the cars are to be ready for
Granados."
"Right you are, Juanito," agreed Rhodes. "Tell Senor Conrad I will
reach Granados for supper, and that all the stock is in."
The lad whirled away again, riding joyously north, and Rhodes, after
giving final directions to the vaqueros, turned his roan in the same
direction.
"Can't ride back with you, Cap, for I'm taking a little _pasear_
around past Herrara's rancheria. I want to take a look at that bunch
of colts and size up the water there. I've a hunch they had better be
headed up the other valley to the Green Springs tank till rains
come."
Captain Pike jogged off alone after some audible and highly colored
remarks concerning range bosses who assumed the power of the Almighty
to be everywhere the same day. Yet as he watched the younger man
disappear over the gray-green range he smiled tolerantly for, after
all, that sort of a hustler was the right sort of partner for a
prospecting trip.
The late afternoon was a golden haze under a metal blue sky; afar to
the east, sharp edges of the mountains cut purple zig-zags into the
salmon pink of the horizon. The rolling waves of the ranges were
bathed in a sea of rest, and now and then a bird on the mesquite along
an arroya, or resting on branch of flaring occotilla would give out
the foreboding call of the long shadows, for the heart of the day had
come and gone, and the cooler air was waking the hidden things from
siesta.
Kit Rhodes kept the roan at a steady lope along the cattle trail,
drinking in the refreshing sweetness of the lonely ranges after hours
of dust and heat and the trampling horse herds of the corrals.
Occasionally he broke into songs of the ranges, love songs, death
laments, and curious sentimental ditties of love and wars of old
England as still crooned in the cabins of southern mountains.
_I had not long been married,
A happy, happy bride!
When a handsome trooper captain
Stepped up to our bedside,
"Rise up! rise up! young man," he said,
"And go along with me,
In the low, low lands of Holland
To fight for liberty._"
The ancient song of the sad bride whose lover proved false in the
"low, low lands of Holland" trailed lugubriously along the arroya in a
totally irrelevant way, for the singer was not at all sad. He was
gaily alert, keen-eyed and watchful, keeping time to the long lope
with that dubious versification.
"And they're at it again pretty close to the 'low, low lands of
Holland,' Pardner," he confided to the horse. "And when you and I make
a stake you'll go on pasture, I'll hit the breeze for Canada or some
other seaport, and get one whack at the Boche brown rat on my own if
official America is too proud to fight, for
_Oh-h! oh-h! Oh-h!
In the low, low lands of Holland,
My love was false to me!_"
Then, after long stretches of sand dunes, mesquite thickets,
occasional wide canons where _zacatan_ meadows rippled like waves of
the sea in the desert air, he swung his horse around a low hill and
came in sight of the little adobe of Herrara, a place of straggly
enclosures of stakes and wattles, with the corral at the back.
Another rider came over the hill beyond the corral, on a black horse
skimming the earth. Rhodes stared and whistled softly as the black
without swerving planted its feet and slid down the declivity by the
water tank, and then, jumping the fence below, sped to the little
_ramada_ before the adobe where its rider slid to the ground amid a
deal of barking of dogs and scattering of children.
And although Kit had never seen the rider before, he had no difficulty
as to recognition, and on a sudden impulse he whistled the meadow-lark
call loudly enough to reach her ears.
She halted at the door, a bundle in her hand, and surveyed the
landscape, but failed to see him because he at that moment was back of
a clump of towering prickly pear. And she passed on into the shadows
of the adobe.
"That's the disadvantage of being too perfect, Pardner," he confided
to the roan, "she thinks we are a pair of birds."
He turned at the corner of the corral and rode around it which took
him back of the house and out of range from the door, but the dogs set
up a ki-yi-ing, and a flock of youngsters scuttled to the corner of
the adobe, and stared as children of the far ranges are prone to stare
at the passing of a traveler from the longed-for highways of the
world.
The barking of the dogs and scampering of the children evidently got
on the nerves of the black horse left standing at the vine-covered
_ramada_, for after a puppy had barked joyously at his heels he leaped
aside, and once turned around kept on going, trotting around the
corral after the roan.
Rhodes saw it but continued on his way, knowing he could pick it up on
his return, as the Ojo Verde tank was less than a mile away. A boy
under the _ramada_ gave one quick look and then fled, a flash of brown
and a red flapping end of a sash, up the canoncita where the home
spring was shadowed by a large mesquite tree.
At first Rhodes turned in the saddle with the idea of assisting in the
catching of the black if that was the thing desired, but it evidently
was not.
"Now what has that _muchacho_ on his mind that he makes that sort of
get-away after nothing and no pursuer in sight? Pardner, I reckon
we'll squander a valuable minute or two and gather in that black."
He galloped back, caught the wanderer but kept right on without pause
to the trickle of water under the flat wide-spreading tree--it was a
solitaire, being king of its own domain and the only shade, except the
vine-covered _ramada_, for a mile.
The startled boy made a movement as if to run again as Kit rode up,
then halted, fear and fateful resignation changing the childish face
to sullenness.
"_Buenas tardes_, Narcisco."
"_Buenas tardes_, senor," gulped the boy.
"I turned back to catch the horse of the senorita for you," observed
Rhodes. "It is best you tie him when you lead him back, but first give
him water. Thirst is perhaps the cause he is restless."
"Yes senor," agreed the lad. "At once I will do that." But he held the
horse and did not move from his tracks, and then Rhodes noticed that
on the flat rock behind him was a grain sack thrown over something, a
brown bottle had rolled a little below it, and the end of a hammer
protruded from under the sacking.
Ordinarily Rhodes would have given no heed to any simple ranch
utensils gathered under the shadow where work was more endurable, but
the fear in the face of the boy fascinated him.
"Think I'll give Pardner a drink while I am about it," he decided, and
dismounted carelessly. "Got a cup that I can take my share first?"
Narcisco had no cup, only shook his head and swallowed as if the
attempt at words was beyond him.
"Well, there is a bottle if it is clean," and Rhodes strode awkwardly
towards it, but his spur caught in the loose mesh of the sacking, and
in loosening it he twisted it off the rock.
Narcisco gasped audibly, and Rhodes laughed. He had uncovered a couple
of dozen empty whiskey bottles, and a tin pan with some broken glass.
"What you trying to start up here in the canon, Buddy?" he asked.
"Playing saloon-keeper with only the gophers for customers?"
He selected a corked bottle evidently clean, rinsed and drank from
it.
"Yes--senor--I am here playing--that is all," affirmed Narcisco. "At
the house Tia Mariana puts us out because there is a new _nino_--my
mother and the new one sleep--and there is no place to make a noise."
"Oh," commented Rhodes, "well, let the black have a little water, and
lead him out of the way of mine. This gully isn't wide enough to turn
around in."
Obediently the boy led the black to the sunken barrel catching seepage
from the barrel under the drip. Rhodes tossed the sack back to the
flat rock and noted an old canvas water bottle beside the heap, it was
half full of something--not water, for it was uncorked and the mouth
of it a-glitter with shimmering particles like diamond dust, and the
same powder was over a white spot on the rock--the lad evidently was
playing miller and pounding broken glass into a semblance of meal.
"Funny stunt, that!" he pondered, and, smiling, watched the frightened
boy. "Herrara certainly is doing a bit of collecting _vino_ to have a
stock of bottles that size, and the poor kid's nothing else to play
with."
He mounted and rode on, leaving Narcisco to lead the black to his
mistress. He could not get out of his mind the fright in the eyes of
the boy. Was Herrara a brute to his family, and had Narcisco taken to
flight to hide his simple playthings under the mistaken idea that the
horseman was his father returned early from the ranges?
That was the only solution Rhodes could find to the problem, though he
milled it around in his mind quite a bit. Unless the boy was curiously
weak-minded and frightened at the face of a stranger it was the only
explanation he could find, yet the boys of Herrara had always struck
him as rather bright. In fact Conrad had promoted Juanito to the
position of special messenger; he could ride like the wind and never
forget a word.
The shadows lengthened as he circled the little canon of the Ojo Verde
and noted the water dripping from the full tanks, ideal for the colt
range for three months. He took note that Herrara was not neglecting
anything, despite that collection of bottles. There was no wastage and
the pipes connecting the tanks were in good condition.
He rode back, care free and content, through the fragrant valley. The
cool air was following the lowering sun, and a thin mauve veil was
drifting along the hills of mystery in the south; he sang as he rode
and then checked the song to listen to the flutelike call of a lark.
His lips curved in a smile as he heard it, and with it came the
thought of the girl and the barred window of Vijil's adobe.
She permeated the life of Granados just as the soft veil enwrapped the
far hills, and she had seemed almost as far away if not so mysterious.
Not once had he crossed her trail, and he heard she was no longer
permitted to ride south of the line. The vaqueros commented on this
variously according to their own point of view. Some of the Mexicans
resented it, and in one way or another her name was mentioned whenever
problems of the future were discussed. Singleton was regarded as
temporary, and Conrad was a salaried business manager. But on a day
to come, the senorita, as her mother's daughter, would be their
mistress, and the older men with families showed content at the
thought.
Rhodes never could think of her as the chatelaine of those wide
ranges. She was to him the "meadow-lark child" of jests and laughter,
heard and remembered but not seen. She was the haunting music of youth
meeting him at the gateway of a new land which is yet so old!
Some such vagrant thought drifted through his mind as the sweet calls
of the drowsy birds cut the warm silence, now from some graceful palo
verde along a barranca and again from the slender pedestal of an
occotilla.
"Lucky you, for you get an answer!" he thought whimsically. "Amble
along, Pardner, or the night witches get us!"
And then he circled a little at the north of the canon, and the black
horse, champing and fidgeting, was held there across the trail by its
rider.
"We are seeing things in broad daylight, Pardner, and there ain't no
such animal," decided Rhodes, but Pardner whinnied, and the girl threw
up her hand.
"This time I am a highwayman, the far-famed terror of the ranges!" she
called.
"Sure!" he conceded. "I've been thinking quite a while that your term
must be about up."
She laughed at that, and came alongside.
"Didn't you suppose I might have my time shortened for good behavior?"
she asked. "You never even ride our way to see."
"Me? Why, child, I'm so busy absorbing _kultur_ from your scientific
manager that my spare moments for damsels in distress are none too
plenty. You sent out nary a call, and how expect the lowest of your
serfs to hang around?"
"Serf? That's good!" she said skeptically. "And say, you must love
Conrad about as much as Cap Pike does."
"And that?"
"Is like a rattlesnake."
"Don't know that rattlesnake would be my first choice of comparison,"
remarked Rhodes. "Back in Tennessee we have a variety beside which the
rattlesnake is a gentleman; a rattlesnake does his best to give
warning of intention, but the copperhead never does."
"Copperhead! that's funny, for you know Conrad's hair is just about
the color of copper, dusty copper, faded copper--copper with tin
filings sifted through."
"Don't strain yourself," laughed Rhodes. "That beautiful blondness
makes him mighty attractive to our Mexican cousins."
"They can have my share," decided the girl. "I could worry along
without him quite awhile. He manages to get rid of all the likeable
range men _muy pronto_."
Rhodes laughed until she stared at him frowningly, and then the
delicious color swept over her face.
"Oh, _you_!" she said, and Rhodes thought of sweet peas, and pink
roses in old southern gardens as her lips strove to be straight, yet
curved deliciously. No one had mentioned to him how pretty she was; he
had thought of her as a browned tom-boy, but instead she was a
shell-pink bud on a slender stem, and wonder of wonders--she rode a
side-saddle in Arizona!
She noticed him looking at it.
"Are you going to laugh at that, too?" she demanded.
"Why no, it hadn't occurred to me. It sort of looks like home to
me--our southern girls use them."
She turned to him with a quick birdlike movement, her gray eyes
softened and trusting.
"It was my mother's saddle, a wedding present from the vaqueros of our
ranches when she married my father. I am only beginning to use it, and
not so sure of myself as with the one I learned on."
"Oh, I don't know," he observed. "You certainly looked sure when you
jumped that fence at Herrara's."
She glanced at him quickly, curious, and then smiling.
"And it was you, not the meadow lark! You are too clever!"
"And you didn't answer, just turned your back on the lonely ranger,"
he stated dolefully, but she laughed.
"This doesn't look it, waiting to go home with you," she retorted.
"Cap Pike has been telling me about you until I feel as if I had known
you forever. He says you are his family now, so of course that makes
Granados different for you."
"Why, yes. I've been in sight of Granados as much as twice since I
struck this neck of the woods. Your manager seems to think my valuable
services are indispensable at the southern side of this little
world."
"So that's the reason? I didn't know," she said slowly. "One would
have to be a seventh son of a seventh son to understand his queer
ways. But you are going along home today, for I am a damsel in
distress and need to be escorted."
"You don't look distressed, and I've an idea you could run away from
your escort if you took a notion," he returned. "But it is my lucky
day that I had a hunch for this canon trail and the Green Springs, and
I am happy to tag along."
They had reached Herrara's corral and Rhodes glanced up the little
gulch to the well. The flat rock there was stripped of the odd
collection, and Narcisco stood at the corner of the adobe watching
them somberly.
"_Buenos tardes!_" called the girl. "Take care of the _nino_ as the
very treasure of your heart!"
"Sure!" agreed the lad, "_Adios_, senorita."
"Why the special guard over the treasure?" asked Rhodes as their
horses fell into the long easy lope side by side. "The house seems
full and running over, and _ninitas_ to spare."
"There are never any to spare," she reminded him, "and this one is
doubly precious for it is named for me--together its saint and its two
grandmothers! Benicia promised me long ago that whether it was a boy
or a girl it would be Billie Bernard Herrara. I was just taking the
extra clothes I had Tia Luz make for him--and he is a little
black-eyed darling! Soon as he is weaned I'm going to adopt him; I
always did want a piccaninny for my own."
Rhodes guided his horse carefully around a barranca edge, honeycombed
by gophers, and then let his eyes rest again on the lustrous confiding
eyes, and the rose-leaf lips.
Afterward he told himself that was the moment he began to be bewitched
by Billie Bernard.
But what he really said was--"Shoo, child, you're only a piccaninny
yourself!" and they both laughed.
It was quite wonderful how old Captain Pike had managed to serve as a
family foundation for their knowledge of each other. There was not a
doubt or a barrier between them, they were "home folks" riding from
different ways and meeting in the desert, and silently claiming
kindred.
The shadows grew long and long under the sun of the old Mexic land,
and the high heavens blazed above in yellows and pinks fading into
veiled blues and far misty lavenders in the hollows of the hills.
The girl drew a great breath of sheer delight as she waved her hands
towards the fire flame in the west where the desert was a trail of
golden glory.
"Oh, I am glad--glad I got away!" she said in a hushed half-awed
voice. "It never--never could be like this twice and we are seeing it!
Look at the moon!"
The white circle in the east was showing through a net of softest
purple and the beauty of it caused them to halt.
"Oh, it makes me want to sing, or to say my prayers, or--to cry!" she
said, and she blinked tears from her eyes and smiled at him. "I reckon
the colors would look the same from the veranda, but all this makes it
seem different," and her gesture took in the wide ranges.
"Sure it does," he agreed. "One wants to yell, 'Hurrah for God!' when
a combination like this is spread before the poor meek and lowly of
the earth. It is a great stage setting, and makes us humans seem
rather inadequate. Why, we can't even find the right words for it."
"It makes me feel that I just want to ride on and on, and on through
it, no matter which way I was headed."
"Well, take it from me, senorita, you are headed the right way," he
observed. "Going north is safe, but the blue ranges of the south are
walls of danger. The old border line is a good landmark to tie to."
"Um!" she agreed, "but all the fascinating things and the witchy
things, and the mysterious things are down there over the border. I
never get real joy riding north."
"Perhaps because it is not forbidden, Miss Eve."
Then they laughed again and lifted the bridles, and the horses broke
into a steady lope, neck and neck, as the afterglow made the earth
radiant and the young faces reflected the glory of it.
"What was that you said about getting away?" he queried. "Did you
break jail?"
"Just about. Papa Singleton hid my cross-saddle thinking I would not
go far on this one. They have put a ban on my riding south, but I just
had to see my Billie Bernard Herrara."
"And you ran away?"
"N-no. We sneaked away mighty slow and still till we got a mile or two
out, and then we certainly burned the wind. Didn't we, Pat?"
"Well, as range boss of this end of the ranch I reckon I have to herd
you home, and tell them to put up the fences," said Rhodes.
"Yes, you will!" she retorted in derision of this highly improbable
suggestion.
"Surest thing you know! Singleton has good reasons for restricting
your little pleasure rides to Granados. Just suppose El Gavilan, the
Hawk, should cross your trail in Sonora, take a fancy to Pat--for Pat
is some _caballo_!--and gather you in as camp cook?"
"Camp cook?"
"Why, yes; you can cook, can't you? All girls should know how to
cook."
"What if I do? I have cooked on the camp trips with Cap Pike, but that
doesn't say I'll ever cook for that wild rebel, Ramon Rotil. Are you
trying to frighten me off the ranges?"
"No, only stating the case," replied Rhodes lighting a cigarette and
observing her while appearing not to. "Quite a few of the girls in the
revolution camps are as young as you, and many of them are not doing
camp work by their own choice."
"But I--" she began indignantly.
"Oh yes, in time you would be ransomed, and for a few minutes you
might think it romantic--the 'Bandit Bride,' the 'Rebel Queen,' the
'Girl Guerrilla,' and all that sort of dope,--but believe me, child,
by the time the ransom was paid you would be sure that north of the
line was the garden spot of the earth and heaven enough for you, if
you could only see it again!"
She gave him one sulky resentful look and dug her heel into Pat. He
leaped a length ahead of the roan and started running.
"You can pretend you are El Gavilan after a lark, and see how near you
will get!" she called derisively and leaned forward urging the black
to his best.
"You glorified gray-eyed lark!" he cried. "Gather her in, Pardner!"
But he rode wide to the side instead of at the heels of Pat and thus
they rode neck and neck joyously while he laughed at her intent to
leave him behind.
The corrals and long hay ricks of Granados were now in sight, backed
by the avenue of palms and streaks of green where the irrigation
ditches led water to the outlying fields and orchards.
"El Gavilan!" she called laughingly. "Beat him, Pat,--beat him to the
home gate!"
Then out of a fork of the road to the left, an automobile swept to
them from a little valley, one man was driving like the wind and
another waved and shouted. Rhodes' eyes assured him that the shouting
man was Philip Singleton, and he rode closer to the girl, grasped her
bridle, and slowed down his own horse as well as hers.
"You'll hate me some more for this," he stated as she tried to jerk
loose and failed, "but that yelping windmill is your fond guardian,
and he probably thinks I am trying to kidnap you."
She halted at that, laughing and breathless, and waved her hand to the
occupants of the car.
"I can be good as an angel now that I have had my day!" she said.
"Hello folks! What's the excitement?"
The slender man whom Rhodes had termed the yelping windmill, removed
his goggles, and glared, hopelessly distressed at the flushed,
half-laughing girl.
"Billie--Wilfreda!"
"Now, now, Papa Singleton! Don't swear, and don't ever get frightened
because I am out of sight." Then she cast one withering glance at
Rhodes, adding,--"and if you engage range bosses like this one no one
on Granados will ever get out of sight!"
"The entire house force has been searching for you over two hours.
Where have you been?"
"Oh, come along home to supper, and don't fuss," she suggested. "Just
because you hid my other saddle I went on a little _pasear_ of my own,
and I met up with this roan on my way home."
Rhodes grinned at the way she eliminated the rider of the roan horse,
but the driver of the machine was not deceived by the apparent slight.
He had seen that half defiant smile of comradeship, and his tone was
not nice.
"It is not good business to waste time and men in this way," he stated
flatly. "It would be better that word is left with the right ones when
you go over the border to amuse yourself in Sonora."
The smile went out of the eyes of the girl, and she held her head very
erect.
"You and Mr. Rhodes appear to agree perfectly, Mr. Conrad," she
remarked. "He was trying to show me how little chance I would stand
against El Gavilan or even the Yaqui slave traders if they ranged up
towards the border."
"Slave traders?" repeated Conrad. "You are making your jokes about
that, of course, but the camp followers of the revolution is a
different thing;--everywhere they are ranging."
The girl did not answer, and the car sped on to the ranch house while
the two horses cantered along after them, but the joyous freedom of
the ride had vanished, lost back there on the ranges when the other
minds met them in a clash.
"Say," observed Rhodes, "I said nothing about Yaqui slave traders.
Where did you get that?"
"I heard Conrad and his man Brehman talking of the profits,--sixty
pesos a head I think it was. I wonder how they knew?"
Singleton was waiting for them at the entrance to the ranch house,
great adobe with a patio eighty feet square in the center. In the old
old days it had housed all the vaqueros, but now the ranchmen were
divided up on different outlying rancherias and the many rooms of
Granados were mostly empty. Conrad, his secretary Brehman, and their
cook occupied one corner, while Singleton and Billie and Tia Luz with
her brood of helpers occupied the other.
Singleton was not equal to the large hospitality of the old days when
the owner of a hacienda was a sort of king, dispensing favors and
duties to a small army of retainers. A companionable individual he was
glad to meet and chat or smoke with, but if the property had been his
own he would have sold every acre and spent the proceeds in some city
of the East where a gentleman could get something for his money.
Conrad had halted a moment after Singleton climbed out of the car.
"I sent word to Rhodes to come up from La Partida because of the horse
shipment," he said looking across the level where the two riders were
just entering the palm avenue. "Because of that it would seem he is to
be my guest, and I have room."
"Oh, we all have room, more room than anything else," answered
Singleton drearily, "but it will be as Billie says. I see Pike's nag
here, and she always wants Pike."
The milky blue eyes of Conrad slanted towards Singleton in discreet
contempt of the man who allowed a wayward girl to decide the guests or
the housing of them. But he turned away.
"The telephone will reach me if there is anything I can do," he said.
Singleton did not reply. He knew Conrad absolutely disapproved of the
range boss being accepted as a family guest. Between Billie and
Captain Pike, who was a privileged character, he did not quite see how
he could prevent it in the case of Rhodes, although he was honestly so
glad to see the girl ride home safe that he would have accepted any
guest of the range she suggested.
"Papa Phil," she said smiling up into his face teasingly, "I'm on my
native heath again, so don't be sulky. And I have a darling new
namesake I've been making clothes for for a month, and I'll tell you
all about him if you'll give Mr. Rhodes and me a good supper. He is
Cap Pike's family, and will have the south corner room; please tell
Tia Luz."
And when Billie was like that, and called him "Papa Phil," and looked
up at him with limpid childish eyes, there was never much else to be
said.
"I'll show Rhodes his quarters myself, and you make haste and get your
habit off. Luz has been waiting supper an hour. Today's paper reports
a band of bandits running off stock on the Alton ranch, and it is on
the Arizona side of the border. That should show you it is no time to
ride out of sight of the corrals."
"Now, now! you know the paper raids aren't real raids. They'll have a
new one to get excited over tomorrow."
She ran away to be petted and scolded and prayed for by Tia Luz, who
had been her nurse, and was now housekeeper and the privileged one to
whom Billie turned for help and sympathy.
"You laugh! but the heart was melting in me with the fear," she
grumbled as she fastened the yellow sash over the white lawn into
which Billie had dashed hurriedly. "It is not a joke to be caught in
the raiding of Ramon Rotil, or any of the other accursed! Who could
think it was south you were riding? I was the one to send them north
in the search, every man of them, and Senor Conrad looks knives at me.
That man thinks I am a liar, sure he does! and the saints know I was
honest and knew nothing."
"Sure you know nothing, never could and never did, you dear old bag of
cotton," and Billie pinched affectionately the fat arm of Tia Luz and
tickled her under her fat chin. "Quick Luzita, and fasten me up.
Supper waits, and men are always raving wolves."
She caught up a string of amber beads and clasped it about her throat
as she ran across the patio, and Kit Rhodes halted a moment in the
corridor to watch her.
"White and gold and heavenly lovely," he thought as he rumpled his
crisp brown curls meditatively, all forgetful of the earnest attempts
he had just made to smooth them decorously with the aid of a damp
towel and a pocket comb. "White and gold and a silver spoon, and a
back seat for you, Kittie boy!"
Captain Pike emerged from a door at the corner of the patio. He also
had damp hair, a shiny face, and a brand-new neckerchief with indigo
circles on a white ground.
"Look at this, will you?" he piped gleefully. "Billie's the greatest
child ever! Always something stuck under the pillow like you'd hide
candy for a kid, and say,--if any of the outfit would chuck another
hombre in my bunk the little lady would raise hell from here to
Pinecate, and worse than that there ain't any this side of the
European centers of civilization. Come on in, supper's ready."
Rhodes hesitated at the door of the dining room, suddenly conscious of
a dusty blouse and a much faded shirt. His spurs clink-clanked as he
strode along the tiling of the patio, and in the semi-twilight he felt
at home in the ranch house, but one look at the soft glow of the
shaded lamps, and the foot deep of Mexican needlework on the table
cover, gave him a picture of home such as he had not seen on the
ranges.
Singleton was in spotless white linen, the ideal southern ranchman's
home garb, while the mistress of all the enticing picture was in white
and gold, and flushing pink as she met the grave appreciative gaze of
Rhodes.
"H'lo little Santa Claus," chirruped Pike. "It's just the proper caper
to set off my manly beauty, so I'm one ahead of Kit who has no one to
garnish him for the feast--and it sure smells like some feast!"
"Venison perhaps a trifle overdone, but we hope it won't disappoint
you," remarked Singleton. "Have this seat, Mr. Rhodes. Captain Pike
and Miss Bernard always chum together, and have their own side."
"Rather," decided Pike, "and that arrangement reaches back beyond the
memory of mere man in this outfit."
"I should say," agreed the girl. "Why, he used to have to toss me over
his head a certain number of times before I would agree to be strapped
in my high chair."
"Yep, and I carpentered the first one, and it wasn't so bad at that!
Now child, if you will pass the lemons, and Kit will pass the decanter
of amber, and someone else will rustle some water, I'll manufacture a
tonic to take the dust out of your throats."
"Everybody works but father," laughed Billie as the Chinaman sliced
and served the venison, and Tia Luz helped supply all plates, and then
took her place quietly at the lower end of the table and poured the
strong fragrant coffee.
Rhodes spoke to her in Spanish, and her eyes lit up with kindly
appreciation.
"Ah, very good!" she commented amicably. "You are not then too much
Americano?"
"Well, yes, I'm about as American as you find them aside from the
Apache and Pima and the rest of the tribes."
"Maybe so, but not gringo," she persisted. "I am scared of the Apache
the same as of El Gavilan, and today my heart was near to stop going
at all when we lose senorita and that black horse--and I say a prayer
for you to San Antonio when I see you come fetch her home again."
"Yes, the black horse is valuable," remarked Billie. "Huh! I might as
well be in a convent for all I get to see of the ranges these late
days. If anyone would grubstake me, I'd break loose with Cap here and
go prospecting for adventures into some of the unnamed ranges."
"You see!" said Tia Luz. "Is it a wonder I am cold with the fear when
she is away from my eyes? I have lived to see the people who go into
the desert for adventure, and whose bare bones are all any man looks
on again! Beside the mountain wells of Carrizal my own cousin's
husband died; he could not climb to the tank in the hill. There they
found him in the moon of Kumaki, which is gray and nothing growing
yet."
"Yes, many's the salt outfit in the West played out before they
reached Tinajas Altas," said Pike. "I've heard curious tales about
that place, and the Carrizals as well. Billie's father nearly cashed
in down in the Carrizals, and one of his men did."
"But that is what I am saying. It was Dario Ruiz," stated Tia Luz.
"Yes, senor, that was the time, and it was for the nameless ranges
they went seeking, and for adventures, treasure too; but--his soul to
God! it was death Dario was finding on that trail. Your father never
would speak one word again of the treasure of that old fable, for
Dario found death instead of the red gold, and Dario was _compadre_ to
him."
"The red gold?" and Cap Pike's eyes were alight with interest. "Why, I
was telling Kit about that today, the red gold of El Alisal."
"Yes, Senor Capitan, once so rich and so red it was a wonder in Spain
when the padres are sending it there from the mission of Soledad, and
then witches craft, like a cloud, come down and cover that mountain.
So is the vein lost again, and it is nearly one hundred years. So how
could Dario think to find it when the padres, with all their prayer,
never once found the trail?"
"I never heard it was near a mission," remarked Pike. "Why, if it had
a landmark like that there should be no trouble."
"Yet it is so, and much trouble, also deaths," stated Tia Luz. "That
is how the saying is that the red gold of El Alisal is gold bewitched,
for of Soledad not one adobe is now above ground unless it be in the
old walls of the hacienda. All is melted into earth again or covered
by the ranch house, and it is said the ranch house is also neglected
now, and many of its old walls are going."
"There are still enough left to serve as a very fair fortress,"
remarked Singleton. "I was down there two years ago when we bought
some herds from Perez, and lost quite a number from lack of water
before the vaqueros got them to La Partida wells. It is a long way
between water holes over in Altar."
"Sure," agreed Pike, "but if the old mine was near a mission, and the
mission was near the ranch of Soledad it should not be a great stunt
to find it, and there must be water and plenty of it if they do much
in cattle."
"They don't these days," said Singleton. "Perez sold a lot rather than
risk confiscation, and I heard they did have some raids down there. I
thought I had heard most of the lost mine legends of western Sonora,
but I never heard of that one, and I never heard that Fred Bernard
went looking for it."
The old woman lifted her brows and shrugged her shoulders with the
suggestion that Sonora might hold many secrets from the amicable
gentleman. But a little later, in an inquiry from Rhodes she
explained.
"See you, senor, Dario Ruiz was _compadre_ of Senor Alfredo Bernard,
Americanos not understanding all in that word, and the grandfather of
Dario was major-domo of the rancho of Soledad at that time the Apaches
are going down and killing the people there. That is when the mine was
lost. On the skin of a sheep it was told in writing all about it, and
Dario had that skin. Sure he had! It was old and had been buried in
the sand, and holes were eaten in it by wild things, but Don Alfredo
did read it, and I was hearing the reading of it to Dario Ruiz, but of
what use the reading when that mine bewitched itself into hiding?"
"But the writing? Did that bewitch itself away also?" demanded
Billie.
"How could I be asking of that when Dario was dead down there in the
desert, and his wife, that was my cousin Anita, was crazy wild against
Don Alfredo the father of you! Ai, that was a bad time, and Don
Alfredo with black silence on him for very sorrow. And never again in
his life did he take the Sonora trail for adventures or old treasure.
And it is best that you keep to a mind like his mind, senorita. He
grew wise, but Dario died for that wisdom, and in Sonora someone
always dies before wisdom is found. First it was two priests went to
death for that gold, and since that old day many have been going. It
is a witchcraft, and no blessing on it!"
"Well, I reckon I'd be willing to cross my fingers, and take the
trail if I could get started right," decided Rhodes. "It certainly
sounds alluring."
"I did go in once," confessed Pike, "but we had no luck, struck a
_temporale_ where a Papago had smallpox, and two dry wells where there
should have been water. My working pardner weakened at Paradones and
we made tracks for the good old border. That is no trail for a lone
white man."
"But the writing, the writing!" persisted Billie. "Tia Luz, you are a
gold mine yourself of stories, but this one you never told, and I am
crazy about it! You never forget anything, and the writing you _could_
not,--so we know you have the very words of that writing!"
"Yes, that is true too, for the words were not so many, and where some
words had been the wild things had eaten holes. The words said that
from the mine of El Alisal the mission of Soledad could be seen. And
from the door of Soledad it was one look, one only, to the blue
canoncita where the alisal tree was growing, and water from the gold
of the rose washed the roots of that tree."
"Good God!" muttered Rhodes staring at the old lady who sat nodding
her head in emphasis until her jet and gold earrings were all
a-twinkle. "It was as easy as _that_,--yet no one found it?"
"But senor,"--and it was plain to be seen that Dona Luz was enjoying
herself hugely as the center of all attention, "the two padres who
made that writing met their death at that place--and it was said the
_barbaros_ at last killed also the grandfather of Dario, anyway he did
die, and the women were afraid to tell even a new padre of that
buried writing for the cause that it must have been accursed when it
killed all people. That is how it was, and that mission was forsaken
after that time. A Spaniard came up from Sinaloa and hunted gold and
built Soledad hacienda where that mission had been in that old time,
but no one ever found any more of gold than the chickens always are
picking, a little here, a little there with a gravel in the craw. No
senor, only once the red gold--red as flame--went out of Altar on a
mule to the viceroy in Mexico, and the padres never lived to send any
more, or see their brothers again. The men who dug that gold dug also
their grave. Death goes with it."
"Ugh!" and Billie shivered slightly, and looked at Rhodes, "don't you
go digging it!"
His eyes met hers across the table. It was only for an instant, and
then Billie got very busy with her coffee which she had forgotten.
"Oh, I'd travel with a mascot to ward off evil," he said. "Would you
give me a bead from your string?"
She nodded her head, but did not speak. No one noticed them, for Cap
Pike was telling of the old native superstition that the man who first
found an ore bed found no good luck for himself, though the next man
might make a fortune from it.
"Why," he continued in evidence, "an Indian who finds even a vein of
special clay for pottery doesn't blaze a trail to it for anyone else.
He uses it if he wants it, because his own special guardian god
uncovered it for him, but if it is meant for any other man, that other
man's god will lead him to it when the time comes. That is how they
reason it out for all the things covered by old Mother Earth. And I
reckon the redder the gold the more secret the old _barbaros_ would be
about it, for gold is their sun-god medicine, or symbol, or
something."
"With white priests scattered through Sonora for two centuries
one would suppose those old superstitions would be pretty well
eradicated," remarked Singleton.
Dona Luz glanced at him as at a child who must be let have his own
ideas so long as they were harmless, but Pike laughed.
"Lord love you, Singleton, nothing eradicates superstition from
the Indian mind, or any other mind! All the creeds of the earth are
built on it, and a lot of the white ones are still alive and going
strong! And as for priests, why man, the Indian priests are bred of
those tribes, and were here before the white men came from Spain. It's
just about like this: If 'Me und Gott' and the U-boats took a notion
to come over and put a ball and chain on all of so-called free
America, there might be some pacifist mongrels pretend to like it,
and just dote on putting gilt on the chain, and kow-towing to that
blood-puddin' gang who are raising hell in Belgium. But would the
thoroughbreds like it? Not on your life! Well, don't you forget
there were a lot of thoroughbreds in the Indian clans even if some
of their slaves did breed mongrels! And don't forget that the ships
from overseas are dumping more scrub stock on the eastern shores right
now than you'll find in any Indian rancheria either here in Pima or
over in Sonora. The American isn't to blame for all the seventeen
dozen creeds they bring over,--whether political or religious, and I
reckon that's about the way the heads of the red clans feel. They are
more polite than we are about it, but don't you think for a moment
that the European invasion ever changed religion for the Indian
thoroughbred. No sir! He is still close to the earth and the
stars, and if he thinks they talk to him--well, they just _talk to
him_, and what they tell him isn't for you or me to hear,--or to sit
in judgment on either, if it comes to that! We are the outsiders."
"Now, Cap," said Billie, "I'm going to take it away. It's too near
your elbow, and you have had a double dose for every single one you've
been handing out! You can take a rest until the others catch up. Tia
Luz, give him a cup of coffee good and strong to help get his politics
and religion straightened out."
Pike laughed heartily with the rest of them, and took the coffee.
"All right, dear little Buttercup. Any medicine you hand out is good
to me. But say, that dope about hidden ores may not be all Indian at
that, for I recollect that mountaineers of Tennessee had the same
hunch about coal veins, and an old lead vein where one family went for
their ammunition. They could use it and they did, but were mighty sure
they'd all be hoodooed if they uncovered it for anyone else, so I
reckon that primitive dope does go pretty far back. I'll bet it was
old when Tubal Cain first began scratching around the outcroppings by
his lonesomes."
Conrad sauntered along the corridor and seated himself, flicking idly
some leather thongs he had cut out from a green hide with a curved
sheath knife rather fine and foreign looking. Singleton called him to
come in and have coffee, but he would not enter, pleading his
evil-smelling pipe as a reason.
"It can't beat mine for a downright bachelor equipment," affirmed
Pike, "but I've scandalized this outfit enough, or thereabout, and
that venison has killed all our appetites until breakfast, so why hang
around where ungrateful children swat a man's dearest hobbies?"
"If you think you'll get rid of me that way you had better think
again," said Billie. "I don't mind your old smokes, or any other of
your evil ways, so long as you and Tia Luz tell us more bewitched mine
stories. Say, Cap, wouldn't it be great if that old sheepskin was
found again, and we'd all outfit for a Sonora _pasear_, and----"
"We would not!" decided the old man patting her hair. "You, my lady,
will take a _pasear_ to some highbrow finishing school beyond the
ranges, and I'll hit the trail for Yuma in a day or two, but at the
present moment you can wind up the music box and start it warbling.
That supper sure was so perfect nothing but music will do for a
finish!"
The men drifted out in the corridor and settled into the built-in
seats of the plazita, though Rhodes remained standing in the portal
facing inward to the patio where the girl's shimmering white dress
fluttered in the moonlight beside the shadowy bulk of Tia Luz.
He lit a cigarette and listened for the music box Pike had suggested,
but instead he heard guitar strings, and the little ripple of
introduction to the old Spanish serenade _Vengo a tu ventana_, "I come
to your window."
He turned and glanced towards the men who were discussing horse
shipments, and possibilities of the Prussian sea raiders sinking
transports on the way to France, but decided his part of that
discussion could wait until morning.
Tia Luz had lit the lamp in the _sala_, and the light streamed across
the patio where the night moths fluttered about the white oleanders.
He smiled in comical self-derision as he noticed the moths, but tossed
away the cigarette and followed the light.
When Captain Pike indulged the following morning in sarcastic comment
over Kit's defection, the latter only laughed at him.
"Shirk business? Nothing doing. I was strictly on the job listening to
local items on treasure trails instead of powwowing with you all over
the latest news reports from the Balkans. Soon as my pocket has a
jingle again, I am to get to the French front if little old U. S.
won't give me a home uniform, but in the meantime Dona Luz Moreno is
some reporter if she is humored, and I mean to camp alongside every
chance I get. She has the woman at the _cantina_ backed off the map,
and my future Spanish lessons will be under the wing of Dona Luz. Me
for her!"
"Avaricious young scalawag!" grunted Pike. "You'd study African
whistles and clicks and clacks if it blazed trail to that lost gold
deposit! Say, I sort of held the others out there in front thinking I
would let you get acquainted with little Billie, and you waste the
time chinning about death in the desert, and dry camps to that
black-and-tan talking machine."
Kit only laughed at him.
"A record breaker of a moon too!" grumbled the old man. "Lord!--lord!
at your age I'd crawled over hell on a rotten rail to just sit
alongside a girl like Billie--and you pass her up for an old hen with
a mustache, and a gold trail!"
Kit Rhodes laughed some more as he got into the saddle and headed for
the Granados corral, singing:
_Oh--I'll cut off my long yellow hair
To dress in men's array,
And go along with you, my dear
Your waiting man to be!_
He droned out the doleful and incongruous love ballad of old lands,
and old days, for the absurd reason that the youth of the world in his
own land beat in his blood, and because in the night time one of the
twinkling stars of heaven had dropped down the sky and become a girl
of earth who touched a guitar and taught him the words of a Spanish
serenade,--in case he should find a Mexican sweetheart along the
border!
For to neither of the young, care-free things, had come a glimmer of
fore-vision of the long tragic days, treasure trails and desert
deaths, primitive devotions and ungodly vengeance, in which the
threads of their own lives would be entangled before those two ever
heard the music of the patio again--together.
_If in Holland fields I met a maid
All handsome fond and gay,
And I should chance to love her
What would my Mary say?_
_What would I say, dear Willie?
That I would love her too,
And I would step to the one side
That she might speak with you!_
"Yes, you would--not!" he stated in practical prose to no one in
particular. "Not if you were our girl, would she, Pardner?"
Pardner tossed up his head in recognition of the comradeship in the
tone, and Kit Rhodes became silent, and rode on to the corrals,
happily smiling at some new thoughts.