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[Illustration: (page 123) OVERLAND LIMITED!]
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OVERLAND RED
A ROMANCE OF THE MOONSTONE CAÑON TRAIL
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY ANTON FISCHER
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS
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COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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To I. J. K.
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CONTENTS
THE ROAD xi
I. THE PROSPECTOR 3
II. WATER 10
III. RAGGED ROMANCE 14
IV. "ANY ROAD, AT ANY TIME, FOR ANYWHERE" 25
V. "CAN HE RIDE?" 39
VI. ADVOCATE EXTRAORDINARY 48
VII. THE GIRL WHO GLANCED BACK 60
VIII. THE TEST 72
IX. A CELESTIAL ENTERPRISE 88
X. "PERFECTLY HARMLESS LITTLE OLE TENDERFOOT" 98
XI. DESERT LAW 110
XII. "FOOL'S LUCK" 125
XIII. THE RETURN 132
XIV. "CALL IT THE 'ROSE GIRL'" 141
XV. SILENT SAUNDERS 157
XVI. BLUNDER 163
XVII. GUESTS 177
XVIII. A RED EPISODE 185
XIX. "TO CUT MY TRAIL LIKE THAT" 202
XX. THE LED HORSE 211
XXI. BORROWED PLUMES 223
XXII. THE YUMA COLT 231
XXIII. SILENT SAUNDERS SPEAKS 247
XXIV. "LIKE SUNSHINE" 254
XXV. IN THE SHADOW OF THE HILLS 262
XXVI. SPECIAL 273
XXVII. THE RIDERS 278
XXVIII. GOPHERTOWN 288
XXIX. TOLL 299
XXX. TWO ROSES 305
XXXI. NIGHT 320
XXXII. MORNING 332
XXXIII. A SPEECH 345
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ILLUSTRATIONS
OVERLAND LIMITED! (page 123) Frontispiece
THE GIRL'S LEVEL GRAY EYES STUDIED THE TRAMP'S FACE 16
"IT'S A CLEAN-UP" 296
"CAN'T I HAVE ANOTHER ONE, ROSE GIRL?" 340
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The Road
Through the San Fernando Valley, toward the hills of Calabasas runs that
old road, El Camino Real of the early Mission days.
And now replicas of old Mission bells, each suspended in solitary
dignity from a rusted iron rod, mark intervals along the dusty way, once
a narrow trail worn by the patient feet of that gentle and great padre,
Junípero Serra,--a trail from the San Gabriel Valley to the shores of
Monterey. A narrow trail then, but, even then, to him it was broad in
its potential significance of the dawn of Grace upon the mountain shores
of Heaven's lost garden, California.
Not far from one iron-posted bell in the valley, El Camino Real falters,
to find, eventually, a lazy way round the low foothills, as though
reluctant to lift its winding length over the sharp pitch of the Canajo
Pass, beyond.
Near this lone bell another road, an offspring of old El Camino Real,
runs quickly from its gray and patient sire. Branching south in hurried
turns and multiple windings it climbs the rolling hills, ever dodging
the rude-piled masses of rock, with scattered brush between, but forever
aspiring courageously through the mountain sage and sunshine toward its
ultimate green rest in the shadowy hills.
In the sweet sage is the drone of bees, like the hum of a far city. The
thinning, acrid air is tinged with the faint fragrance of sunburnt
shrubs and grasses.
With the sinuous avoidings of a baffled snake the road turns and turns
upon itself until its earlier promise of high adventuring seems
doubtful. As often as not it climbs a semi-barren dun stretch of
sunbaked earth dotted with stubby cacti--passes these dwarfed
grotesques, and attempts the narrowing crest of the cañon-wall, to swing
abruptly back to the cacti again, gaining but little in its upward
trend.
Impatient, it finally plunges dizzily round a sharp, outstanding angle
of rock and down into the unexpected enchantment of Moonstone Cañon.
Here the gaunt cliffs rise to great wild gardens, draped with soft rose
and poignant red amid drowsy undertones of gray and green and gold. Dots
of vivid colors flame and fade and pass to ledges of dank, vineclad rock
and drifts of shale, as the road climbs again.
At the next turn are the indistinct voices of water, commingling in a
monotone--and the road ceases to be, as the cool silver of a mountain
stream cuts through it, with seemingly inconsequential meanderings, but
with the soft arrogance of a power too great to be denied. And the
indistinct voices, left behind, fade to unimaginable sounds as the
stream patters down its gravelly course, contented beyond measure with
its own adventuring.
Patiently the road takes up its way, moving in easier sweeps through a
widening valley, but forever climbing.
Again and again, fetlock deep across it runs the stream, gently
persistent and forever murmuring its happy soliloquies.
Here and there the road passes quickly through a blot of shade,--a group
of wide-spreading live-oaks,--and reappears, gray-white and hot in the
sun.
And then, its high ambition fulfilled, the road recovers from its last
climbing sweep round the base of a shouldering hill and runs straight
and smooth to its ultimate green rest in the shade of the sycamores.
Beyond these two huge-limbed warders of the mountain ranch gate, there
is a flower-bordered _way_, but it is the road no longer.
The mountain ranch takes its name from the cañon below. It is the
Moonstone Ranch, the home of Louise, whose ancestors, the Lacharmes,
grew roses in old France.
Among the many riders to and from the ranch, there is one, a great,
two-fisted, high-complexioned man, whose genial presence is ever
welcome. He answers to many names. To the youngsters he is "Uncle
Jack,"--usually with an exclamation. To some of the older folk he is
"Mr. Summers," or "Jack." Again, the foreman of the Moonstone Ranch
seldom calls him anything more dignified than "Red." Louise does
sometimes call him--quite affectionately--"Overland."
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OVERLAND RED
CHAPTER I
THE PROSPECTOR
For five years he had journeyed back and forth between the little desert
station on the Mojave and the range to the north. The townspeople paid
scant attention to him. He was simply another "desert rat" obsessed with
the idea that gold was to be found in those northern hills. He bought
supplies and paid grudgingly. No one knew his name.
The prospector was much younger than he appeared to be. The desert sun
had dried his sinews and warped his shoulders. The desert wind had
scrawled thin lines of age upon his face. The desert solitude had
stooped him with its awesome burden of brooding silence.
Slowly his mind had been squeezed dry of all human interest save the
recurrent memory of a child's face--that, and the poignant memory of the
child's mother. For ten years he had been trying to forget. The last
five years on the desert had dimmed the woman's visioned face as the
child came more often between him and the memory of the mother, in his
dreams.
Then there were voices, the voices of strange spirits that winged
through the dusk of the outlands and hovered round his fire at night.
One voice, soft, insistent, ravished his imagination with visions of
illimitable power and peace and rest. "Gold! Lost gold!" it would
whisper as he sat by the meager flame. Then he would tremble and draw
nearer the warmth. "Where?" he would ask, tempting the darkness as a
child, fearfully certain of a reply.
Then another voice, cadenced like the soft rush of waves up the sand,
would murmur, "Somewhere away! Somewhere away! Somewhere away!" And in
the indefiniteness of that answer he found an inexplicable joy. The
vagueness of "Somewhere away" was as vast with pregnant possibilities as
his desert. His was the eternity of hope, boundless and splendid in its
extravagant promises. Drunk with the wine of dreams, he knew himself to
be a monarch, a monarch uncrowned and unattended, yet always with his
feet upon the wide threshold of his kingdom.
Then would come the biting chill of night, the manifold rays of stars
and silence, silence reft of winds, yet alive with the tense immobility
of the crouching beast, waiting ... waiting....
The desert, impassively withering him to the shell of a man, or wracking
him terribly in heat or in storm and cold, still cajoled him day and
night with promises, whispered, vague and intoxicating as the perfume of
a woman's hair.
Finally the desert flung wide the secret portals of her treasure-house
and gave royally like a courtesan of kings.
The man, his dream all but fulfilled, found the taste of awakening
bitter on his lips. He counted his years of toil and cursed as he viewed
his shrunken hands, claw-like, scarred, crippled.
He felt the weight of his years and dreaded their accumulated burdens.
He realized that the dream was all--its fulfillment nothing. He knew
himself to be a thing to be pointed at; yet he longed for the sound of
human voices, for the touch of human hands, for the living sweetness of
his child's face. The sirens of the invisible night no longer whispered
to him. He was utterly alone. He had entered his kingdom. Viewed from
afar it had seemed a vast pleasure-dome of infinite enchantment. He
found Success, as it ever shall be, a veritable desert, grudging man
foothold, yet luring him from one aspiration to another, only to consume
his years in dust.
A narrow cañon held his secret. He had wandered into it, panned a little
black sand, and found color. Finally he discovered the fountainhead of
the hoarded yellow particles that spell Power. There in the fastness of
those steep, purgatorial walls was the hermitage of the two
voices--voices that no longer whispered of hope, but left him in the
utter loneliness of possession and its birthright, Fear.
He cried aloud for the companionship of men--and glanced fearfully round
lest man had heard him call.
He again journeyed to the town beside the railroad, bought supplies and
vanished, a ragged wraith, on the horizon.
Back in the cañon he set about his labors, finding a numbing solace in
toil.
But at night he would think of the child's face. He had said to those
with whom he had left the child that he would return with a fortune.
They knew he went away to forget. They did not expect him to return.
That had been ten years ago. He had written twice. Then he had drifted,
always promising the inner voice that urged him that he would find gold
for her, his child, that she might ever think kindly of him. So he tried
to buy himself--with promises. Once he had been a man of his hands, a
man who stood straight and faced the sun. Now the people of the desert
town eyed him askance. He heard them say he was mad--that the desert had
"got him." They were wrong. The desert and its secret was his--a sullen
paramour, but _his_ nevertheless. Had she not given him of her very
heart?
He viewed his shrunken body, knew that he stooped and shuffled, realized
that he had paid the inevitable, the inexorable price for the secret.
His wine of dreams had evaporated.... He sifted the coarse gold between
his fingers, letting it fall back into the pan. Was it for _this_ that
he had wasted his soul?
* * * * *
In the desert town men began to notice the regularity of his comings and
goings. Two or three of them foregathered in the saloon and commented on
it.
"He packed some dynamite last trip," asserted one.
There was a silence. The round clock behind the bar ticked loudly,
ominously.
"Then he's struck it at last," said another.
"Mebby," commented the first speaker.
The third man nodded. Then came silence again and the absolute ticking
of the clock. Presently from outside in the white heat of the road came
the rush of hoofs and an abrupt stop. A spurred and booted rider, his
swarthy face gray with dust, strode in, nodded to the group and called
for whiskey.
"Which way did he go, Saunders?" asked one.
"North, as usual," said the rider.
"Let's set down," suggested the third man.
They shuffled to a table. The bartender brought glasses and a bottle.
Then, uninvited, he pulled up a chair and sat with them. The rider
looked at him pointedly.
"Oh, I'm in on this," asserted the bartender. "Daugherty is the
Wells-Fargo man here. He won't talk to nobody but me--about _business_."
"What's that got to do with it?" queried the rider.
"Just what you'd notice, Saunders. Listen! The rat left a bag of dust in
the Company's safe last trip. Daugherty says its worth mebby five
hundred. He says the rat's goin' to bring in some more. Do I come in?"
"You're on," said the rider. "Now, see here, boys, we got to find out if
he's filed on it yet, and what his name is, and then--"
"Mebby we'd better find out _where_ it is first," suggested one.
"And then jump him?" queried the rider over his glass.
"And then jump him," chorused the group. "He's out there alone. It's
easy." And each poured himself a drink, for which, strangely enough, no
one offered to pay, and for which the bartender evidently forgot to
collect.
Meanwhile the prospector toiled through the drought of that summer
hoarding the little yellow flakes that he washed from the gravel in the
cañon.