and sprung into a long gallop when they heard loud shouts from the top of
the mesa.
"Hurry, hurry!" exclaimed Barbara. "They have found me out and they will
follow us!"
Scarcely had she spoken when the sound of a rifle report came from the
top of the cliff, and Wemple's left arm dropped helpless beside him.
"They dare not shoot to kill," she said, "but they think they can
frighten you, and they may cripple the horse. My darling, you will not
let them have me again?" The terror in her voice told how intense was
her fear of capture.
"Sweetheart, they shall not have you again unless they kill me first!"
A dozen Indians were galloping recklessly down the steep trail. "Promise
me," Barbara, pleaded, "if it comes to that, if you must die, you will
kill me first! For it would be hell--it would be worse than hell--to go
back there now!"
Wemple did not answer. "Promise me that you will," she begged. "You do
not know what you would save me from; but believe me, and promise me that
you will not send me back to it!"
"I promise!" he answered as another shot whistled in front of them and
clipped the top of the horse's ear. Wemple dug his spurs into its
sweating side and the beast sprang forward at a faster gallop. The
Indians, shouting loudly, were urging their ponies across the plain at
breakneck speed. Lieutenant Wemple glanced back again and a frown
wrinkled his forehead, as he said, "If our horse does not break down we
may keep ahead of them until we reach Laguna."
[Illustration: Wemple dug his spurs into its sweating side and the beast
sprang forward at a faster gallop.]
Barbara patted the horse and whispered soft words of encouragement and
then under her breath she sent up a fervent petition to the Virgin Mary
to protect them. Looking back, she recognized their pursuers, and told
Wemple that one of them was her brother, and another was a young man whom
her parents wished her to marry. This one had a faster horse than the
others and perceptibly gained upon the fugitives. He left the road where
a turn in it seemed to offer an advantage and, galloping across the
plain, was presently parallel with them and not more than two hundred
yards away. He raised his gun and Wemple, with quick perception noting
that his aim was toward their horse's neck, gave the bridle a jerk that
brought the animal to its hind feet as the bullet whistled barely in
front of them. It would have been quickly followed by another, but the
Indian's pony stumbled, went down on its knees, and horse and rider
rolled over together.
The other Indians came trooping on in a cloud of dust, yelling and
shouting, and now and then firing a shot, apparently aimed at the good
horse that so steadily kept his pace.
"They only want me," said Barbara. "If they can overtake us there are
enough of them to overpower you. They will not try to do much harm to
you, for they would not dare. But they will take me and carry me back
with them--if you let them."
"I will not let them," he replied between set teeth.
At last Wemple saw that their pursuers were slowly but surely gaining on
them. Barbara saw it too, and she redoubled her prayers to the Virgin,
and both she and her lover with words and caresses strove to keep up the
courage in their horse's heart. The good steed was of the sort whose
spirit does not falter until strength is gone, and he seemed to
understand that these people on his back were under some mighty need.
For with unwavering pace he kept up his long, swift gallop,
notwithstanding his double burden and the distance he had travelled
before the race began.
So they kept on, mile after mile, with their pursuers gaining, little by
little, upon them, and when at last they neared Laguna the Indians were
within a hundred yards. A banner of smoke across the plain told them
that the east-bound train was approaching.
"I believe we can make it!" exclaimed Wemple, as they heard the engine's
announcing scream. Apparently their pursuers guessed what the fugitives
would try to do, for as they saw the train they shouted and yelled louder
than before and urged their ponies to a still higher speed. They gained
rapidly for a little while, for the Lieutenant's horse was beginning to
flag, and Wemple, leaning to one side, gave the bridle into Barbara's
hands and, with left arm dangling useless, reached for his revolver. He
began to fear that they might yet head him off and surround him. They
outnumbered him hopelessly, but he would try to fight his way through
them. If worst came to worst,--he would save two shots out of the
six,--Barbara should not fall into their hands.
The train drew into the station and the Indians were not more than a
hundred feet behind him. The horse's faltering gait and heaving sides
showed that he had reached almost his limit of strength. Some dogs ran
out from a house, barking furiously. But being in his rear they only
made Wemple's horse quicken his pace. They darted at the heads of the
ponies, which shied and pranced about, and so lost to their riders some
valuable seconds.
The train was already moving as Wemple dashed up to its hindmost car, his
horse staggering and their pursuers almost upon them.
"Jump for the car-steps!" he shouted to Barbara. She had not leaped and
clambered up and down the stair in the Acoma cliff all her life for
nothing, and her strength and agility stood her in good stead in this
moment of supreme necessity. She leaped from the horse's back, landed
upon the upper step, and whirled about to assist her lover.
The train was moving faster, the Indians, with shouts and yells and
curses, were grasping at his bridle, and Wemple felt his horse giving way
beneath him. With a last encouraging call to the poor beast he urged it
to one more leap, and as it brought him again even with the end of the
car he threw his leg over its neck and jumped. The horse staggered and
fell as he left the saddle and caused him to lose his balance. He went
down upon the car-steps, his wounded left arm beside him and his right
doubled beneath his body. In another instant he would have rolled back
to the ground beneath the hoofs of the Indian ponies, but Barbara seized
him by the shoulders, and held him until he recovered his footing.
The Indians, seeing his predicament, whipped up their horses and galloped
beside the platform, reviling and jeering at him. Wemple scrambled to
his feet and put his arm about Barbara, as though fearful they might yet
try to take her from him. She leaned over the rail, laughed in their
faces, and called out, in the Indian tongue:
"Good-bye! Good-bye, forever! Now I shall be a white woman!"
THE KID OF APACHE TEJU
Baby, my babe,
What waits you yonder,
Out in the world?
Dear little feet,
There must they wander,
Out in the world?
Soft little hands,
What shall they do there,
Out in the world?
Baby, my babe,
What fate must you dare,
Out in the world?
All around Apache Teju for miles and miles lies the gray,
cactus-dotted, heat-devoured plain, weird and fascinating, with its
placid, tree-fringed lakes, that are not; its barren, jagged,
turquoise-tinted mountain-peaks, born here and there of the horizon and
the desert; its whirling, dancing columns of sand, which mount to
mid-sky; its lying distances and deceiving levels; its silence and its
fierce, white, unclouded sunshine.
And when you draw rein under the cottonwoods at Apache Teju, uncurl the
wrinkles of your eyelids in the welcome shade, and cool your eyes in
the vivid green of the alfalfa field, it suddenly comes to you that
never before did you understand what blessedness there is in a bit of
shadow and a patch of green things growing.
From the spring at the top of the slope behind the house a line of
noble old cottonwoods files along the _acequia_ halfway down the hill,
and there, where the ditch divides, forks into a spreading double row,
which incloses the house and stables and comes together again in a
little grove beyond the road, where the two ditches empty into a pond.
The house lies there in this circlet of trees, a low, whitewashed,
flat-roofed adobe, rambling along in apparent aimlessness from cosey
rooms through sheds and stables, until the whole connecting structure
incloses a large corral.
In front of the house is a tiny square of blue-grass, bordered by beds
of geraniums and larkspurs and hollyhocks, inclosed by a low adobe
wall, and shaded by a young cottonwood growing in the centre. Beyond,
on the slope of the hill below the ditch, where its waters can be
spread over all the surface, is the rich, velvety emerald of the
alfalfa field. And the fame of that little square of grass and of that
little field of alfalfa fills all the land from Deming to Silver City,
and from Separ to the Mimbres.
And that is Apache Teju, headquarters for the northern half of a ranch
that spreads over seven thousand square miles of the arid hills and
plains of southern New Mexico, where for hours and hours you may travel
toward a horizon swimming in heat, across the gray, hot, quivering
levels, broken only by clumps of gay-flowered cactus and the blanching
bones and sun-dried hides of cattle, dead of starvation and thirst.
The superintendent's wife and I sat in the tiny grass plat enjoying the
balmy breath that in the late afternoon steals over and cools this
strange, hot land. Texas Bill had just galloped home from the nearest
railroad station with a big package of Eastern mail; and the combined
attractions of letters, late magazines, and a box of New York candy so
engrossed us that we did not see the Kid until the gate clicked and he
stood before us, asking,
"Is this the double A, quart circ., bar H outfit?"
"The what?" I gasped, looking at the queer little figure in
astonishment. He was perhaps a dozen years old, though the slender,
childish figure and the experienced face belied each other and made
guessing difficult. He wore a man's sombrero, old and dirty, which
came down to his ears and flopped a wide, unstiffened brim around his
face. With tardy recollection of his manners,--learned who knows
where,--he doffed his head-gear after he had spoken, and stood with
serious face, but unable to repress a smile that twinkled in his great
blue child's eyes at my astonishment. A big rent across one shoulder
of his shirt showed a strip of sunburned flesh beneath and sent one
sleeve dangling over his hand. His baggy trousers--no, that is not the
word, they were "pants"--were held in place by a halter strap buckled
tightly about his waist, and his feet were concealed in shoes so much
too large for him that his toes were not visible in the mouths gaping
at their front ends. And on one foot clanked and jingled the pride and
glory of his attire--a huge spur, three inches long, silver-plated and
highly polished, and so heavy that that foot dragged as he walked.
He repeated his question, and the superintendent's wife leaned forward,
with a laughing aside to me:
"You tenderfoot! Haven't you learned our brand yet?" And to the boy:
"Yes, this is Apache Teju. Do you want to see any one?"
"Boss home yet from Deming?"
"Mr. Williams? I expect him this evening."
The boy threw himself down full length upon the grass and pressed his
face against the cool, green blades.
"Well," he exclaimed, "it's pretty fine here, ain't it? That green
down there is just out of sight. I heard there was blue-grass and
alfalfa here, but who 'd have thought it would look so nice?"
"Do you want to see Mr. Williams?"
"I guess it ain't necessary," and he sat up again, pressing a handful
of grass upon each glowing cheek.
I handed him the candy box and he helped himself daintily with the
tongs, saying, "Thank you, ma'am," with a sidelong glance which let me
know that his heart was won to my service from that moment. He put a
piece in his mouth, and his face beamed with pleasure.
"This just strikes my gait! 'T ain't much like Deming candy, is it? I
saw the boss last night in Deming," he added, turning to Mrs. Williams.
"You're his wife, ain't you? I thought so, soon as I saw you. He was
kidding me about coming out here to be a cowboy, and I told him all
right, if he wasn't running a blaze, I 'd go him on that. I was to
have rode out with him in his buggy, but I was up pretty late last
night with the boys, doing the town, and when I got up this morning he
was gone. I was n't going to have him think I 'd backed out of the
bargain, so I says to the conductor, 'I got a job out at
Apache--cowboy--gimme a ride to Whitewater.' And he says, 'All right,
jump on. You 're welcome to a ride on my train whenever you want it.'
So I walked over from Whitewater, and I 'm ready to go to work to-night
if the boss says so. He won't find me no tenderfoot, you hear me."
The naive bravado of the child's speech was irresistible. It won my
heart as completely as I had won his, and I straightway emptied my
candy box into his hands. "Oh!" he breathed, looking at the heap of
dainties with infantile delight. And then he fell upon them with
avidity and did not speak another word until the last one had
disappeared down his throat.
So that was how the Kid came to live at Apache Teju. He said his name
was Guy Silvestre Raymond. But whether a mother's lips had really
bestowed that name upon him, or he had appropriated it to himself out
of some blood-and-thunder romance, whose hero he had decided to
imitate, name and all, is one of the things that nobody but the Kid
will ever know. But it did n't matter much anyway, for he had always
been called Kid, and that name followed him to the ranch, much to his
disgust. For he had decided, as he told me one day, that the ladies of
the household should call him Guy, and that among the men his name
should be "Broncho Bob."
He was a waif of the railroad. All his life had been spent along its
line, blacking boots, selling nuts, candy, papers, on the trains or
around the depots of the frontier cities and towns. And he had taken
care of himself ever since he could remember. He had reached Deming a
few days before in a worse but less picturesque state of dilapidation
than that in which he presented himself at Apache Teju. After deciding
that he would leave the railroad and become a cowboy, he had scraped
together, in Heaven knows what devious ways and by what lucky chances,
the apparel of state in which he set forth on his new life.
The next morning there was trouble in the corral. Kid had been
directed to mount an old and gentle pony whose meek and humble
appearance did not at all agree with his ideas of the sort of steed
Broncho Bob should bestride. There was in the corral a black horse
called Dynamite, a mettlesome young thing whose one specialty was
bucking. And of this it never failed to give a continuous performance
from the time a rider mounted its back until he was dislodged. Kid was
determined to ride Dynamite. Texas Bill and Red Jack were trying to
persuade him out of his notion by telling him how dangerous the horse
was, and how he once landed Mr. Williams, the best rider on the whole
ranch, on top of the house.
"Suppose he did," blustered the Kid. "He won't land me on top of the
house, nor on top of the ground, neither. I tell you, I ain't afraid
to fork any horse that ever bucked! I can ride anything that wears
hair! You hear me shout? Anything that wears hair!"
"See here, youngster," said Texas Bill, in his longest and most
indifferent drawl, "I 've been ridin' horses more years than you 've
been born, an' I 've tamed more pitchin' horses than you ever saw any
other kind, an' I ain't a little bit afraid of a pitchin' horse. I 'm
a whole, big, blazin' lot afraid!"
"What if you are?" retorted Kid. "I don't have to be a coward 'cause
you 're one!"
Texas Bill's eye glared, and his hand jerked toward his hip pocket.
Then he grunted and walked over to where I was feeding the two Angora
goats out of my hands.
"If he was a man--" he began in an angry voice, and then broke off.
"But I 'm not fightin' babies. I thought I 'd keep him from breakin'
his durn fool neck, but he can go it now as fast as he wants to."
The superintendent came out and told Kid he would have to obey orders
or go back to Deming at once. So he sullenly mounted the meek and
humble pony and cantered off.
About mid-forenoon, when there was no one at home but little Madge, the
ten-year-old daughter of the house, the cook, and myself, Kid galloped
back alone. Madge came dancing from the corral to where I sat in the
front yard, her eyes blazing and her hands quivering with excitement.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, "He's going to ride Dynamite! He 's run off from
them and come back to ride Dynamite!"
"He must not do it! I must not let him!" And I started for the
corral. Madge grasped my skirt with both hands.
"Dynamite won't hurt him! I know he won't!"
"What do you know about it?"
"I know he won't because--don't you tell mamma--I was on him myself one
day, and he never bucked a bit!"
"You! How did you dare?"
"I wanted to see if I could, and there was nobody in the corral, and I
climbed on his back, and he was just lovely!"
And just then, with Kid astride him, Dynamite pranced and curveted down
the road. With a beaming face Kid waved his hat at us and galloped
off. Dynamite making not even the sign of a desire to buck. After
that the boy could not be persuaded to ride any other horse. And as
long as Kid bestrode him, or Madge, with Kid's connivance and help,
surreptitiously mounted him, Dynamite's behavior was perfect. But he
worked woe upon any grown person that made the attempt.
The black horse's life was not an easy one under Kid's mastership. The
boy never rode at a less pace than a gallop, and even in that dry, hot
air Dynamite was always reeking with sweat when they came home.
Just how the Kid put in his time out on the plains was a mystery. The
cowboys with whom and for whose assistance he was sent out
good-naturedly swore that he was "not worth a whoop in h--l." If they
needed him, he was nowhere in sight, and if they particularly did not
want him he was sure to come charging over the plain, straight upon the
cattle they had bunched, and scatter the frightened creatures to the
four winds. But mostly they said he managed to get lost; which was
only their kindly way of putting the fact that he slipped away from
them and pursued his own amusements at a sufficient distance not to be
disturbed by their need of him.
What he did with himself all day long Mrs. Williams and I discovered
one day when driving to Whitewater. Out on the plain we saw the Kid
yelling like a wild man, with Dynamite at his highest speed, chasing a
jack-rabbit. That evening I heard him giving Madge a thrilling account
of how he had chased a gray wolf, which, after running many miles, had
turned on him and viciously sprung at his throat, and how he had made
Dynamite jump on the beast and trample its life out. And I recognized
in the tale merely Kid's version for Madge's ears of his chase of the
jackrabbit.
[Illustration: Out on the plain we saw the Kid yelling like a wild man,
with Dynamite at his highest speed, chasing a jackrabbit.]
For by that time he had become, in her eyes, the exemplar of all that
is inspiringly bold and daring, and he felt it necessary to keep up his
reputation. For her he was a knight of prowess who could do anything
he wished and against whom nothing could prevail. So he told her
wonderful tales of what he had seen and done and been through, and of
his daily adventures, and brought to her the occasional results of his
single-handed combats with birds and beasts. He offered to dig up a
tarantula's nest for her and to catch and tame for her pleasure a
side-winder rattlesnake, or, if she preferred, a golden oriole or a
mocking-bird. It did n't make any difference to him whether she chose
a rattlesnake or an oriole; whatever she wanted him to do, he was ready
to attempt. And Madge looked and listened and worshipped; and Kid,
basking in the warmth of her adoration, swaggered about in ever
increasing pride and importance.
One day, just after he had returned from a two days' trip out on the
range, I heard him telling her a blood-curdling tale of an adventure
with a mysterious and villainous looking Mexican, who, he said, had
shot off the end of one of his fingers. Then, the Kid declared, he had
made Dynamite rear and strike the Mexican to the ground with his
forefeet and then trample him until he was so dead that he 'd never
shoot anybody else's finger off.
Madge was filled with horror and admiration and pity, and begged to be
allowed to see and bind up the mutilated finger. But he refused with
superior indifference, clinched his bleeding finger in his fist and
said it was n't anything and did n't hurt, anyway. Madge's mother
called her away, and straightway there appeared at my door a boy with
pale face, quivering lips, and tear-filled eyes, holding up a bloody
hand. I bound up the wound, which was a clean cut chipping off the end
of one finger, and he buried his face in my lap and cried. Soothing
and cuddling him, for somehow I felt that was what the child needed, I
asked:
"How did you hurt yourself, Kid?"
"I was making a peg to hang my saddle on, and I chopped my finger with
the hatchet."
I said nothing, but soothed and cuddled him the more, and he sobbed at
my knee in sheer enjoyment of the luxury of being babied. After that I
think he took occasion to hurt himself upon every possible opportunity
in order that he might come to my room to be taken care of and petted
and comforted. He left all his swagger and bluster and bravado
outside, and I babied him to his heart's content, feeling sure that it
was the first time in all his dozen years that this child's right had
come to him. But he did not allow these private seasons of relaxation,
which he trusted me not to betray, to interfere with his double
character of knight of prowess with Madge, and of Broncho Bob with the
men.
Excitement did not lack at the ranch-house whenever Kid was at home.
If he was sent to help with the milking, one of the cows was sure to
kick over a full milk-pail, knock him over with her hoof, or break
loose from her restraining ropes, charge around the corral like a wild
beast, and crash through one of the house windows or plunge in at an
open door. If he was told to house the geese and chickens for the
night, such a commotion ensued as brought the whole household to see if
coyotes had broken into the chicken yard. At sight of him the pet
Angora goats fled on their swiftest legs, with a running leap mounted
one of the corral sheds, and then sped to what they had learned was the
only place of safety, the roof of the house. And when he was not
stirring up the animals, he was playing jokes on the cowboys. Holy
John, a middle-aged, thick-witted fellow, who never knew what had
happened to him until the rest were roaring with laughter, was the
special butt of his tricks.
One evening the boys were sitting around the kitchen door talking
quietly, for Kid was off with Madge, helping her to bury a dead kitten.
Holy John sat in a slouching attitude on the doorsteps, his new
sombrero, with a stiff, curled brim, tipped far back on his head. Kid
came in through the corral and stood in the kitchen for a few minutes.
Then he seized the molasses jug and, tiptoeing very softly behind Holy
John, filled the brim of his brand-new sombrero with the sticky liquid.
It flowed out over his back and down into his trousers, and Holy John
lifted a wondering and bewildered face to see his companions breaking
into uproarious mirth. Then his long-enduring patience was smothered
in wrath, and he laid violent hands upon Kid and spanked him before
Madge's eyes.
This was too much for a knight of prowess tamely to endure, and the boy
blustered around in his most vigorous impersonation of the character of
Broncho Bob.
"This ranch ain't big enough to hold Holy John and me too. Him or me,
one or the other, has sure got to ask for his time, and it won't be me
either, you hear me shout. I 'll get him sure buffaloed, and if he
don't pull his freight before he 's a day older, there 'll be the
biggest killing here that Apache Teju ever heard of."
It was very quiet the next day at the ranch. Mr. and Mrs. Williams and
Madge had driven to Silver City, the cowboys were all on the range, and
I kept in my room with some work. After a time I heard a noise at the
end of the house, just outside my room, and I went to see what it was.
Kid was there with a pick and shovel, toilsomely digging a hole in the
hard adobe soil.
"What are you doing, Kid?"
"Nothing much. Just digging a hole."
"Isn't that where the old Apache chief is buried?"