IN THE PROVINCE OF ALTAR
_There was a frog who lived in the spring:
Sing-song Kitty, can't yo' carry me, oh?
And it was so cold that he could not sing,
Sing-song Kitty, can't yo' carry me, oh?
Ke-mo! Ki-mo! Dear--oh my!
To my hi'--to my ho--to my----_
"Oh! For the love of Mike! Bub, can't you give a man a rest instead of
piling up the agony? These old joints of mine are creakin' with every
move from desert rust and dry camps, and you with no more heart in you
than to sing of springs,--cold springs!"
"They do exist, Cap."
"Uh--huh, they are as real to us this minute as the red gold that
we've trailed until we're at the tag end of our grub stake. I tell
you, Bub, they stacked the cards on us with that door of the old
Soledad Mission, and the view of the gold canon from there! Why,
Whitely showed us that the mission door never did face the hills, but
looked right down the valley towards the Rio del Altar just as the
Soledad plaza does today; all the old Mexicans and Indians tell us
that."
"Well, we've combed over most of the arroyas leading into the Altar
from Rancho Soledad, and all we've found is placer gravel; yet the
placers are facts, and the mother lode is somewhere, Cap."
"Worn down to pan dirt, that's what!" grunted Pike. "I tell you these
heathen sit around and dream lost mission tales and lost mine lies;
dream them by the dozen to delude just such innocent yaps as you and
me. They've nothing else to do between crops. We should have stuck to
a white man's land, north into Arizona where the Three Hills of Gold
are waiting, to say nothing of the Lost Stone Cabin mine, lost not
twenty miles from Quartzite, and in plain sight of Castle Dome. Now
there is nothing visionary about _that_, Kit! Why, I knew an old-timer
who freighted rich ore out of that mine thirty years ago, and even the
road to it has been lost for years! We know things once did exist up
in that country, Kit, and down here we are all tangled up with
Mexican-Indian stories of ghosts and enchantments, and such vagaries.
I'm fed up with them to the limit, for everyone of them we listen to
is different from the last. We'll head up into the Castle Dome country
next time, hear me?"
"Sure, I hear," agreed Kit cheerfully. "Perhaps we do lose, but it's
not so bad. Since Whitely sent his family north, he has intimated that
Mesa Blanca is a single man's job, and I reckon I can have it when he
goes--as he will. Then in the month we have scouted free of Whitelys,
we have dry washed enough dust to put you on velvet till things come
our way. Say, what will you bet that a month of comfort around Nogales
won't make you hungry for the trail again?"
"A gold trail?" queried the weary and dejected Pike.
"Any old trail to any old place just so we keep ambling on. You can't
live contented under cover, and you know it."
"Well," decided Pike after a rod or two of tramping along the shaly,
hot bed of a dry arroya. "I won't bet, for you may be among the
prophets. But while you are about it, I'd be thankful if you'd
prophesy me a wet trail next time instead of skimpy mud holes where
springs ought to be. I'm sick of dry camps, and so is Baby Buntin'."
"_'Oh, there was a frog lived in the spring!'_" chanted Kit
derisively. "Cheer up, Cap, the worst is yet to come, for I've an idea
that the gang of Mexican vaqueros we glimpsed from the butte at noon
will just about muss up the water hole in Yaqui canon until it will be
us for a sleep there before the fluid is fit for a water bottle. _'Oh,
there was a frog lived in the spring!'_ Buntin' Baby, we'll fish the
frog out, and let you wallow in it instead, you game little dusty rat!
Say, Pike, when we load up with grub again we'll keep further west to
the Cerrado Pintado. I'll follow a hunch of my own next trip."
The older man grunted disdain for the hunches of Kit, even while his
eyes smiled response to the ever-living call of youth. To Rhodes there
was ever a "next time." He was young enough to deal in futures, and
had a way with him by which friends were to be found for even unstable
venturings with no backing more substantial than a "hunch."
Not that Kit was gifted with any great degree of fatal beauty--men are
not often pretty on the trail, unwashed, unshaven, and unshorn--added
to which their equipment had reached the point where his most
pretentious garment was a square of an Indian _serape_ with a hole in
the middle worn as a poncho, and adopted to save his coat and other
shirt on the hard trail.
Cap Pike growled that he looked like a Mexican peon in that raiment,
which troubled Kit not at all. He was red bronze from the desert days,
and his blue eyes, with the long black lashes of some Celtic ancestor,
looked out on the world with direct mild approval. They matched the
boyish voice much given to trolling old-time ditties and sentimental
foolishness.
He led the dappled roan over the wild dry "wash" where the sand was
deep and slippery, and the white crust of alkali over all. Before him
swayed the pack mules, and back of him Captain Pike sagged on the
little gray burro, named in derision and affection, the Baby Bunting
of the outfit.
The jauntiness was temporarily eliminated from the old prospector. Two
months of fruitless scratching gravel when he had expected to walk
without special delay to the great legendary deposit, had taken the
sparkle of hope from the blue eyes, and he glanced perfunctorily at
the walls of that which had once been a river bed.
"What in time do you reckon became of all the water that used to fill
these dry gullies?" he asked querulously. "Why, it took a thousand
years of floods to wash these boulders round, and then leave them high
and dry when nicely polished. That's a waste in nature I can't figure
out, and this godforsaken territory is full of them."
"Well, you grouch, if we didn't have this dry bed to skip along, we
would be bucking the greasewood and cactus on the mesa above. So we
get some favors coming our way."
"Skip along,--me eye!" grunted Pike, as the burro toiled laboriously
through the sand, and Kit shifted and stumbled over treacherous,
half-buried boulders. "Say, Kit, don't you reckon it's time for Billie
to answer my letter? It's over eight weeks now, and mail ought to get
in once a month."
Rhodes grunted something about "mail in normal times, but these times
were not normal," and did not seem much interested in word from
Granados.
He had not the heart, or else had too much, to tell the old man that
the letter to Billie never reached her. When Whitely went north he put
it in his coat pocket, and then changed his coat! Kit found it a month
later and held it, waiting to find someone going out. He had not even
mentioned it to Whitely on his return, for Whitely was having his own
troubles, and could not spare a man for a four day trip to mail.
Whitely's folks lived north of Naco, and he had gone there direct
and returned without touching at Nogales, or hearing of the tragedy
at Granados. The latest news of the Mexican revolutions, and the
all-absorbing question as to whether the United States would or
would not intervene, seemed all the news the worried Whitely had
brought back. Even the slaughter of a dozen nations of Europe had
no new features to a ranchman of Sonora,--it remained just slaughter.
And one did not need to cross boundaries to learn of killings, for
all the world seemed aflame, and every state in Mexico had its own
wars,--little or big.
Then, in the records of the tumultuous days, there was scarce space
for the press or people to give thought after the first day or two, to
the colorless life going out in mystery under the cottonwoods of
Granados, and no word came to tell Rhodes of the suspicion, only half
veiled, against himself.
The ranch house of Mesa Blanca was twenty miles from the hacienda of
Soledad, and a sharp spur of the Carrizal range divided their grazing
lands. Soledad reached a hundred miles south and Mesa Blanca claimed
fifty miles to the west, so that the herds seldom mingled, but word
filtered to and from between the vaqueros, and Rhodes heard that Perez
had come north from Hermosillo and that El Aleman, (the German) had
made the two day trip in from the railroad, and had gone on a little
_pasear_ to the small rancherias with Juan Gonsalvo, the half-breed
overseer. The vaqueros talked with each other about that, for there
were no more young men among them for soldiers, only boys and old men
to tend the cattle, and what did it mean?
The name of Rhodes was not easy for the Mexican tongue, and at Mesa
Blanca his identity was promptly lost in the gift of a name with a
meaning to them, El Pajarito, (the singer). Capitan Viajo, (the old
captain), was accepted by Pike with equal serenity, as both men were
only too well pleased to humor the Indian ranch people in any friendly
concessions, for back of some of those alert black eyes there were
surely inherited records of old pagan days, and old legends of golden
veins in the hills.
The fact that they were left practically nameless in a strange
territory did not occur to either of them, and would not have
disturbed them if it had. They had met no American but Whitely since
they first struck Mesa Blanca. One month Kit had conscientiously stuck
to the ranch cares while Whitely took his family out, and Pike had
made little sallies into the hills alone.
On Whitely's return he had made an errand to Soledad and taken Rhodes
and Pike along that they might view the crumbled walls of old Soledad
Mission, back of the ranch house. The ancient rooms of the mission
padres were now used principally as corrals, harness shop, and storage
rooms.
The situation in itself was one of rare beauty;--those old padres
knew!
It was set on a high plain or mesa, facing a wide valley spreading
miles away to the south where mother-of-pearl mountains were ranged
like strung jewels far against the Mexican sky. At the north,
slate-blue foothills lifted their sharp-edged shoulders three miles
away, but only blank walls of Soledad faced the hills, all portals of
the old mission appeared to have faced south, as did Soledad. The door
facing the hills was a myth. And as Rhodes stood north of the old
wall, and searched its thirty-mile circle, he could understand how
four generations of gold seekers had failed to find even a clue to the
wealth those unknown padres had looked on, and sent joyous evidence of
to the viceroy of the south. It would take years of systematic search
to cover even half the visible range. A man could devote a long
lifetime to a fruitless search there, and then some straying burro
might uncover it for an Indian herder who would fill his poncho, and
make a sensation for a week or two, and never find the trail again!
"It's just luck!" said Kit thinking it all over as he tramped along
the arroya bed, "it either belongs to you, or it doesn't. No man on
earth can buy it and make it stay, but if it is yours, no man can keep
you from it entirely."
"What the devil are you yammering about?" asked Pike grumpily.
"Oh, I was just thinking of how Whitely exploded our little balloon of
hopes when he took us over to size up the prospects at Soledad. I
wonder if Perez has no white help at all around that place. We did not
even see the foreman."
"He's a half-breed, that Juan Gonsalvo. The Indians don't like him.
He's from down Hermosillo way, and not like these Piman children of
nature. He and Conrad are up to some devilment, but Whitely thinks
Juan took the job, deluded as we are, with the notion that a gold mine
was sticking up out of the ground at the Soledad corrals, and it was
to be his find. You see, Bub, that story has gone the length of
Mexico, and even over to Spain. Oh, we are not the only trailers of
ghost gold; there are others!"
The slanting sun was sending shadows long on the levels, and the hills
were looming to the east in softest tones of gray and amethyst; the
whitish green of desert growths lay between, and much of brown desert
yet to cross.
"We can't make the foothills tonight even though there is an early
moon," decided Kit. "But we can break camp at dawn and make it before
the sun is high, and the water will hold out that long."
"It will hold for Buntin' and the mules, but what of Pardner?" asked
the older man. "He's not used to this hard pan gravel scratching."
"But he's thoroughbred, and he can stand it twelve hours more if I
can, can't you, old pal?" The tall roan with the dot of black between
the eyes returned his owner's caress by nosing his bare neck, and the
hand held up to smooth the black mane.
"I'll be glad enough to see him safe across the border in old
Arizona," observed Pike. "I can't see how the herders saved him for
you at Mesa Blanca when their own stock was picked of its best for the
various patriots charging through the settlements."
"Some way, Miguel, the Indian vaquero, managed it, or got his girl to
hide it out. Whitely confessed that his Indian cattlemen are the most
loyal he can find down here."
"But it's not a white man's land--yet, and I'm downright glad he's
shipped his family north. There's always hell enough in Sonora, but
it's a dovecote to what it's bound to be before the end comes, and so,
it's no place for white men's wives."
"Right you are! Say, what was it Whitely heard down in Sinaloa
concerning the Enchanted Canon mine?"
"Oh, some old priest's tale--the same dope we got with a different
slant to it. The gold nuggets from some shrine place where the water
gushed _muy fuerte_, by a sycamore tree. Same old nuggets sent out
with the message, and after that the insurrection of the Indians, and
the priests who found it never lived to get out. Why, Bub, that is
nearly two hundred years ago! Stop and think of the noble Castilians
going over Sonora with a fine tooth comb for that trail ever since and
then think of the nerve of us!"
"Well, I'm nearer to it anyway than the Dutchman who trekked in from
the south last year with copies of the old mission reports as guide,
for the Yaquis killed him, and took his records, while they hide my
horse for me."
"Huh! yes, and warn you to ride him north!"
"Correct;--but Pike, it was a warning, not a threat! Oh, I'm coming
back all right, all right! That gold by the hidden stream sure has got
me roped and hog tied for keeps."
Pike growled good-natured disdain of his confidence, and suggested
that the stream, which was probably only a measly mud hole, could have
dropped to purgatory in an earthquake tremor since those first old
mission days, or filled up with quicksand.
"Right you are, Cap. That's a first-rate idea," agreed Kit the
irrepressible. "Next trip we'll start looking for streams that were
and are not; we're in the bed of one now for that matter!"
"Somewhere ahead we should come into the trail south from Carracita,"
observed Pike, "but I reckon you'd just as soon camp with Pard out of
sight of the trail."
There was silence for a bit as they plodded on up the wide dry bed of
the river, and then Kit turned, glancing at the old man keenly.
"I didn't fool you much when I called that gang 'vaqueros,' did I?"
he observed. "Well, they didn't look good to me, and I decided I'd
have to fight for my horse if we crossed trails, and--it wastes a lot
of time, fighting does."
"No, you didn't fool me. You'd be seven kinds of an idiot to walk in
this gully of purgatory when you could ride safely on the mesa above,
so I guessed you had a hunch it was the friendly and acquisitive
patriots."
"Pike, they were between us and the Palomitas rancherias of Mesa
Blanca or I'd have made a try to get through and warn the Indians
there. Those men had no camp women with them, so they were not a
detachment of the irregular cavalry,--that's what puzzles me. And
their horses were fresh. It's some new devilment."
"There's nothing new in Sonora, son. Things happen over and over the
same."
The shadows lengthened, and the blue range to the east had sharp,
black edges against the saffron sky, and the men plodding along over
sand and between boulders, fell silent after the little exchange of
confidence as to choice of trail. Once Kit left the gully and climbed
the steep grade to the mesa alone to view the landscape over, but slid
and scrambled down,--hot, dusty, and vituperative.
"Not a sign of life but some carrion crows moving around in the blue
without flop of a wing," he grumbled. "Who started the dope that
mankind is the chosen of the Lord? Huh! we have to scratch gravel for
all we rake in but the birds of the air have us beat for desert travel
all right, all right!"
"Well, Bub, if you saw no one's dust it must be that gang were not
headed for Palomitas or Whitely's."
"They could strike Palomitas, and circle over to the east road without
striking Whitely's home corrals," said Kit thoughtfully.
"Sure they could, but what's the object? If it's cattle or horses
they're after the bigger ranch is the bigger haul?"
"Yes,--if it's stock they're after," agreed Kit somberly.
"Why, lad, what--what's got you now?"
"I reckon it's the damned buzzards," acknowledged the younger man. "I
don't know what struck me as I sat up there watching them. Maybe it's
their blackness, maybe it's their provender, maybe it was just the
loco of their endless drifting shadows, but for a minute up there I
had an infernal sick feeling. It's a new one on me, and there was
nothing I could blame it on but disgust of the buzzards."
"You're goin' too shy on the water, and never knew before that you had
nerves," stated Pike sagely. "I've been there; fought with a pardner
once,--Jimmy Dean, till he had to rope me. You take a pull at the
water bottle, and take it now."
Kit did so, but shook his head.
"It touches the right spot, but it was not a thirst fancy. It was
another thought and--O Bells of Pluto! Pike, let's talk of something
else! What was that you said about the Sinaloa priest story of the red
gold? You said something about a new slant on the old dope."
"Uh-huh!" grunted Pike. "At least it was a new slant to me. I've heard
over and over about uprising of Indians, and death of the two priests
who found their mine, but this Sinaloa legend has it that the Indians
did not kill the priests, but that their gods did!"
"Their gods?"
"Yeh, the special gods of that region rose up and smote them. That's
why the Indians barred out other mission priests for so long a spell
that no white man remembered just where the lost shrine of the red
gold was. Of course it's all punk, Bub, just some story of the heathen
sheep to hide the barbecuing of their shepherds."
"Maybe so, but I've as much curiosity as a pet coon. What special
process did their gods use to put the friars out of commission?"
"Oh, lightning. The original priests' report had it that the red gold
was at some holy place of the tribes, a shrine of some sort. Well, you
know the usual mission rule--if they can't wean the Indian from his
shrine, they promptly dig foundations and build a church there under
heavenly instructions. That's the story of this shrine of El Alisal
where the priests started to build a little branch chapel or _visita_,
for pious political reasons--and built it at the gold shrine. It went
down in the priests' letter or record as gold of rose, a deep red
gold. Well, under protest, the Indians helped build a shack for a
church altar under a great aliso tree there, but when lightning struck
the priests, killed both and burned the shack, you can see what that
manifestation would do to the Indian mind."
Kit halted, panting from the heart-wearying trail, and looked Pike
over disgustedly.
"Holy mackerel! Pike, haven't you _any_ imagination? You've had this
new side to the story for over a month and never even cheeped about
it! I heard you and Whitely talking out on the porch, but I didn't
hear this!"
"Why, Bub, it's just the same old story, everyone of them have half a
dozen different sides to it."
"But this one explains things, this one has logic, this one blazes a
trail!" declared the enthusiast. "This one explains good and plenty
why no Indian has ever cheeped about it, no money could bribe him to
it. Can't you see? Of course that lightning was sent by their wrathy
gods, of course it was! But do you note that place of the gold, and
place of the shrine where the water rises, is also some point where
there is a dyke of iron ore near, a magnet for the lightning? And that
is not here in those sandy mesas and rocky barrancas--it's to the west
in the hills, Pike. Can't you see that?"
"Too far from the old north and south trail, Bub. There was nothing to
take padres so far west to the hills. The Indians didn't even live
there; only strayed up for nuts and hunting in the season."
"Save your breath!" jeered Kit. "It's me to hike back to Mesa Blanca
and offer service at fifty dollars per, and live like a miser until we
can hit the trail again. I may find a tenderfoot to buy that valley
tract of mine up in Yuma, and get cash out of that. Oh, we will get
the finances somehow! I'll write a lawyer soon as we get back to
Whitely's--God! what's that?"
They halted, holding breath to listen.
"A coyote," said Pike.
"No, only one animal screams like that--a wildcat in the timber. But
it's no wildcat."
Again the sound came. It was either from a distance or else muffled
by the barrier of the hill, a blood-curdling scream of sickening
terror.
A cold chill struck the men as they looked at each other.
"The carrion crows knew!" said Kit. "You hold the stock, Pike."
He quickly slipped his rifle from its case, and started up the knoll.
"The stock will stand," said Pike. "I'm with you."
As the two men ran upward to the summit and away from the crunching of
their own little outfit in the bed of the dry river, they were struck
by the sound of clatter of hoofs and voices.
"Bub, do you know where we are?" asked Pike--"this draw slants south
and has brought us fair into the Palomitas trail where it comes into
the old Yaqui trail, and on south to hell."
"To hell it is, if it's the slavers again after women," said Kit.
"Come quiet."
They reached the summit where cacti and greasewood served as shield,
and slightly below them they saw, against the low purple hills, clouds
of dust making the picture like a vision and not a real thing, a line
of armed horsemen as outpost guards, and men with roped arms stumbling
along on foot slashed at occasionally with a _reata_ to hasten their
pace. Women and girls were there, cowed and drooping, with torn
garments and bare feet. Forty prisoners in all Kit counted of those
within range, ere the trail curved around the bend of a hill.
"But that scream?" muttered Kit. "All those women are silent as death,
but that scream?" Then he saw.
One girl was in the rear, apart from the rest of the group. A
blond-bearded man spurred his horse against her, and a guard lashed at
her to keep her behind. Her scream of terror was lest she be separated
from that most woeful group of miserables. The horse was across the
road, blocking it, as the man with the light beard slid from the
saddle and caught her.
Kit's gun was thrown into position as Pike caught his hand.
"_No!_" he said. "Look at her!"
For the Indian girl was quicker far. From the belt of her assailant
she grasped a knife and lunged at his face as he held her. His one
hand went to his cheek where the blood streamed, and his other to his
revolver.
But even there she was before him, for she held the knife in both
hands against her breast, and threw herself forward in the haze of
dust.
The other guard dismounted and stared at the still figure on the
trail, then kicked her over until he could see her face. One look was
enough. He jerked the knife from the dead body, wiped it on her
_manta_, and turned to tie a handkerchief over the cheek of the
wounded horseman.
Kit muttered an oath of horror, and hastily drew the field glass from
its case to stare at the man whose beard, a false one, had been torn
off in the struggle. It was not easy to re-adjust it so that it would
not interfere with the bandage, and thus he had a very fair view of
the man's features, and his thoughts were of Billie's words to Conrad
concerning slave raids in Sonora. Had Billie really suspected, or had
she merely connected his Mexican friends with reports of raids for
girls in the little Indian pueblos?
Pike reached for the glass, but by the time he could focus it to fit
his eyes, the man had re-mounted, riding south, and there was only the
dead girl left there where she fell, an Indian girl they both knew,
Anita, daughter of Miguel, the major-domo of Mesa Blanca, whose own
little rancheria was with the Pimans at Palomitas.
"Look above, Cap," said Kit.
Above two pair of black wings swept in graceful curves against the
saffron sky--waiting!
Rhodes went back to the outfit for pick and shovel, and when twilight
fell they made a grave there in the dusky canon of the desert.