IX

When Brainard awoke the next morning the train was moving through the

Mojave desert. He lay for some time in his berth trying to collect

himself and realize all that had brought him thither. It was intensely

hot in the narrow compartment that he had taken, and when he raised the

window curtains the sunlight reflected from the desert was blinding. As

he drew down the curtain, his eyes fell upon the large bag beside him,

and with a start the adventure of the previous day came over him. He

laughed aloud as he recalled the different scenes in Krutzmacht’s

office,—the stenographer’s suspicious reception, the endless bumping down

the circular iron stairs with the bag and the valise, old Peters’s

horrified face when he learned that the woman had been shut in the safe.

Indeed, the entire week since he ran across the dying stranger at the

door of his lodging seemed like a dream, peopled with faces and scenes

that were extraordinarily vivid and of a kind he had never known in his

narrow, sordid life. With a luxurious sense of new possession he went

over all the little details of his journey across the continent. The

week, he recognized, had been a liberal education to his mentally starved

self. But what was he going to do now?

Hitherto he had been carried along easily on a wave of events that

demanded instant action, and he had not worried about the future. Even

when the reporter had given him the news of Krutzmacht’s death in the

hospital he was already too deep in the affair to stop, although he

realized that the crude power of attorney, which had been his sole legal

protection in looting the safe, had lost all its force the instant its

maker ceased to breathe. After that, he was, as the stenographer had

said,—merely a burglar. Yet he had not hesitated to obey the dead man’s

will rather than the law. But now?

Thus far he had been executing Krutzmacht’s direct orders, with an

unconscious sense of a living personality guiding him, taking the real

responsibility for his deeds. The stranger who had been stricken near

his door had seized upon him as the nearest available tool, had imposed

on him his will, and had sent him hurrying across the continent on an

errand the full nature of which was even yet a mystery to Brainard. And

he had obeyed the dying stranger with a curious faith in his

reasonableness,—had responded to him pliantly as to the command of a

natural master. But now that this master was dead, the situation was

altogether different. Should he still attempt to execute his scarcely

intelligible wishes?

He had learned enough about Krutzmacht these last few days to understand

that the old man had been engaged in a life-and-death struggle for the

control of large properties,—one of those peculiarly modern duels fought

with bankers’ credits and court decrees. Apparently his enemies, more

powerful than he—at least with larger resources at their command—had been

closing in on him for the final grapple, which threatened utterly to ruin

him. He had gone to New York to raise the funds with which to evade

impending bankruptcy and loss of control of the properties which he had

created. Brainard now fully believed that Krutzmacht had succeeded in

this, and that he had been stricken at last by the hand of a hired thug

and thrown on the street to die. But even in the torture of his final

convulsions the old man had exerted his powerful will to defeat these

cowardly foes, and had lingered on in life just long enough to enable his

agent to snatch the prey from their jaws.

What now was he to do with this bag of documents and securities that lay

there, its fat sides bulging in proof of his deed? The obvious thing

would be to seek the nearest federal authority, deposit his plunder, and

allow an impartial court to settle the dispute between the dead man and

his enemies. A week before, such a timid and safe course of conduct

would have seemed to Brainard the only possible action to take. Now he

found it not in the least to his taste, and dismissed it without further

consideration. He had become an altogether different person, even in

this week, from that beaten man who had stumbled homeward from a petty

defeat through the New York streets in the gloom of an April day. For

this one brief week in all the years he could remember he had been

alive—fully alive—and with his hand now in the thick of this vital web he

was not willing to withdraw. The one who had used him as a tool was

dead, but his strong will lived on in him, not yet fulfilled, and to that

strong will whose only hope of fulfillment lay in him—the chance

stranger—a new sense of loyalty responded. He would not desert the old

man in the present crisis, no matter what the merely legal aspects of his

situation were. Already the stranger’s will like fertile seed was

germinating within this fresh soil.

“Take everything,” Krutzmacht said. “Take it all to Berlin.” That he

would do if he could.

But then what?

There was a strange name—Mell or Melody—that the dying man had been at

such pains to enunciate. What had Melody to do with the matter? Was it

the name of a person? Or an institution? He exercised all his ingenuity

in trying to invent a reasonable explanation of this one word. Possibly

Krutzmacht had tried to pronounce Mendel or Mendelssohn. Brainard

thought there was a firm of German bankers with some such name. Light on

the puzzle might be found in the contents of his bag, but at present he

did not like to open it. At any rate Berlin must be his next

destination.

He pondered all these things at his late breakfast, where in the

close-shaded car electric fans buzzed to make a semblance of moving air.

The fellow travelers on this train—returning tourists from Southern

California resorts—did not interest him as had the varied company on the

Overland, and he shut himself up in his compartment with his secret, not

even leaving it for luncheon. It seemed that already the cares of

property—even of another, unknown person’s property—were beginning to

separate him from his fellows, rendering him less eager to make

acquaintances, more suspicious than he was by nature. In the present

circumstances he preferred to keep to himself. So all that long day,

alone in his hot room, he thought, while the train slowly traversed the

mighty Arizona plains, arid, limitless, austere, broken here and there by

solitary rocky peaks that rose majestically out of the desert into the

still, clear atmosphere. It was a stranger land than he had ever

dreamed, outside all the world that he knew, remote, mysterious, calm.

He did not open the bag for fear of possible interruption. He thought,

and as the hot day wore on into the afternoon he began to lose that sense

of security he had had when he caught the train in San Francisco. The

burden of the bag became heavier. If he were any judge of newspaper men,

that reporter Farson had by this time spread the story of his deeds

broadcast over the civilized world. Messages might be speeding past him

even now on the wires, directions to intercept his flight at some

convenient point farther to the east. He first planned to make for New

Orleans as a port of departure for Europe, having altogether abandoned

the idea of returning to New York, which probably was the one most

dangerous spot for him on the globe. Even New Orleans seemed a

desperately long way off. The sooner, he reasoned, he could put an

international boundary between himself and Krutzmacht’s enemies, the

better would be his chance of reaching Berlin with his plunder.

He examined the crude map in the railroad folder and made out that by the

next noon, if the train were on time, he could make connections at

Albuquerque in New Mexico with a train for El Paso. To-morrow noon

seemed far off, but he concluded that it was the best he could do. Until

then he should have to run his chances, and possess himself with

patience. The day drew slowly to its conclusion. The sun streamed more

horizontally across the arid plain, touching the distant mountains with

blood-red tints. A desolate, man-forsaken country! For miles and miles

there was not a living being, not a habitation in sight from the

railroad. Somewhere far off beyond those purpling mountains lay the

romantic land of Mexico, which seemed the proper haven for any kind of

lawlessness. Fortunately he was abundantly supplied with ready money.

In addition to the large sum he had found in the old wallet he had come

across in one of the inner drawers of the safe a canvas bag of gold coin,

placed there no doubt by the thrifty German for some emergency such as

this when it might not be convenient to get money from a bank. So he had

on his person very nearly ten thousand dollars in gold and bills, which

ought to suffice for an extended journey. Ready money gave the young man

a comfortable sense of security that he had never hitherto experienced

for any length of time. . . .

At a division headquarters where the train was changing engines, Brainard

with his head out of the window was gazing interestedly at the motley

crowd of plainsmen, greasers, and blanketed Indians. The door of his

compartment was brusquely thrown open and one of the trainmen demanded:

“What’s your name?”

Brainard jumped back from the window, replying mechanically, “Edgar

Brainard—why?”

“Don’t be scared, stranger!” the official replied with a chuckle at

Brainard’s startled look. He glanced through his spectacles at a yellow

envelope. “I’m lookin’ for a party named Wilky or Wilkins. You ain’t

the feller.”

Brainard stepped forward to take the telegram, but the man had already

turned away. It flashed over Brainard at once that probably Farson was

trying to communicate with him, using the foolish name he had given the

reporter half in jest. The friendly newspaper man, grateful for the

liberal gift he had received, was perhaps trying to warn him of some

possible danger. It was too late now to get possession of the telegram.

The conductor was passing through the car, asking the passengers their

names and exhibiting the yellow envelope.

For the next hour Brainard sat with his nerves on edge, his mind keenly

alert to some impending danger. Suddenly the train drew up with a

forcible application of the emergency brakes that brought the passengers

to their feet. All the men in the car streamed out to the vestibules,

and Brainard among them, to see what had happened.

X

“Only a bridge gone,” was the word disgustedly handed back from mouth to

mouth. There had been an unusual fall of rain in the arid country to the

north, and for a few hours one of the _arroyos_ had become a boiling

flood, which had swept away a substantial new bridge. The passengers

straggled forward to the scene of trouble.

In the curious half light of the sun sinking into the desert behind and

illuminating all the vast high plain with a brilliant reddish light, the

huddle of passengers along the right of way and the stalled cars seemed

singularly out of place, accentuating the desolate loneliness of the

country, where for miles and miles as far as the eye could reach nothing

was to be seen rising above the sagebrush and cactus except a range of

misty, purple mountains a few miles to the south and a huge water tank a

mile or two in the rear. On either side of the petty stream that had

already subsided to its normal shallow condition several trains had been

caught and held by the loss of the bridge, the Eastern Limited being the

last to join the confusion. The passengers on these various trains had

mingled along the right of way and were watching the efforts of a large

gang of laborers to build a temporary track across the gully, which was

almost completed. Some of the passengers had been there since early

morning, and these greeted the newcomers from the Limited with joking

inquiries about the state of the larder on their train. It was a good

hundred miles in either direction to any station possessing a lunch

counter, and the question of supper was becoming of serious importance to

the less fortunate travelers. As Brainard talked with some of these

passengers from the East, he was given a newspaper brought on the last

train. It was the Sunday morning _Albuquerque Star_. Brainard drew to

one side and scanned its pages by the fading light. It did not take long

for him to find what he was seeking. On the front page of the first

section, in the place of honor, there was an associated press dispatch

from San Francisco, describing the sensational robbery in the office of a

prominent business man. It told without material exaggeration the events

of the afternoon before; there was no hint that the affair was more than

a daring, but common burglary by a reckless and experienced hand.

Brainard rather resented this aspect of the story. In conclusion it said

that the authorities had strong clews and expected to lay their hands on

the robber before he would have any chance to dispose of the more

valuable part of his haul. Brainard handed the paper back to its owner,

chatted for a few moments longer about their common predicament, then

strolled thoughtfully back the way he had come.

His was almost the last car of the three trains on the westerly side of

the _arroyo_, and as he picked his way beside the track he could hear the

few elderly ladies that had not left their seats talking about the delay.

It amused him to think what they would say, if they knew that their

quiet, well-dressed fellow traveler was the hero of the tale he had just

read in the _Albuquerque Star_. There was a peaceful calm here in the

rear, for even the porters and the train hands had gone forward to watch

the operations of the laborers. The engines puffed slumberously; there

was an intense stillness in the air; the sun had just disappeared,

leaving a dull red glow in its place.

It was perfectly evident to Brainard that he could not hope to reach

Albuquerque without arrest; he must leave the train at the next station

of any size, but even that was extremely risky. With searching eyes he

examined the country, which was now sinking imperceptibly into the

vagueness of dusk. There was nothing for miles in any direction for the

eye to rest upon but cactus and forlorn sagebrush, except that lonely

water tank in the rear. There were the mountains, to be sure, but they

were many miles away, and he knew that he could never reach them alone

with his bag, even if he were sure that he could find a refuge in them.

No, it would be suicidal to attempt an escape in this desert! Whatever

came, he must run the risk of waiting until the train stopped at some

more favorable place. He had come to this conclusion, standing beside

the rear platform of the last car, where he could get an uninterrupted

view of the vast landscape and was about to seek the seclusion of his own

little room, when his eye caught sight of an object in the cactus not far

from the track. He soon made out the moving figure of a small horse and

a rider, and waited with curiosity to see what sort of person would

appear in this desolate country.

The horse dropped to a walk, then halted altogether, as if timid, but

soon approached at a slow walk. As far as Brainard could see, the figure

was that of a young girl, riding astride a rough yellow pony. The pony

crawled within a few yards of the cars, then refused to go farther in

spite of its rider’s efforts with a quirt to overcome his fear. Brainard

walked down the track nearer them.

“Good evenin’, stranger,” the girl called out. “What’s all the trouble

he-ar?”

“Bridge gone,” Brainard replied succinctly. “Live around here?”

“A ways back, up yonder!” The girl hitched a shoulder in the direction

of the south.

“Live in the water tank?” he queried.

“I reckon I don’t, stranger,” came back in the severe tones of a child

whose dignity has been ruffled.

“Then where can you live on this desert—is there a town concealed

anywhere abouts?”

The answer from the figure on the pony was a pleasant girlish laugh, and

then in the soft, southern tones:

“I reckon, stranger, you won’t find much of a to-own this side of

Phoenix—and that’s a mighty long ways from he-ar!”

By this time Brainard and the pony had come sufficiently near together so

that he could make out the small straight figure. The girl could not be

over fourteen, he judged; she was thin and slight, with dark skin and

small features concealed beneath the flap of an old felt hat. She wore a

faded khaki skirt and leather leggings. In her small bony hand dangled a

heavy man’s quirt with which she swished the ground, and at times she

looked up shyly at the “stranger.”

“Where you from?” she inquired.

“New York,” Brainard replied.

“New York!” she repeated with an accent of wonder and surprise. “That

must be a mighty big ta-own.”

“Rather more populous than this—what do you call it?”

“They call the siding back there by the tank Phantom.”

“Phantom—is that because it’s only a mirage?”

“I can’t say. . . . Where be you going?”

“Mexico!” Brainard hazarded at a venture.

“Mexico!” the girl drawled. “That must be a sight farther off than

Phoenix.”

“I guess it is.”

“What are you going to Mexico for, stranger?” the girl persisted.

“Mining business,” Brainard fabricated glibly.

“Copper or gold?”

“All kinds, my child,” Brainard replied flippantly.

The girl drew herself up with considerable dignity, and remarking,—“I’m

agoin’ to see what they all be doin’ down yonder,” stirred up the yellow

pony and rode off in the direction of the _arroyo_. She drew up a few

rods from the center of activity and stood there in the twilight.

Brainard was sorry for his foolish answer that had apparently frightened

her away. He went back to his compartment, and after a few moments’

thought grasped his valise and got off the car.

“If she can live in this country, I guess I can,” he muttered to himself.

He flung his bag down in the sagebrush and sat on it, waiting until the

girl came back. Presently there was a series of jubilant toots from the

engine of the first train as a signal of the successful reopening of

traffic; then the east-bound trains began slowly to move one by one down

into the gully over the temporary track. When the last train had crept

by him Brainard rose and sauntered in the direction of the girl. She was

still sitting motionless on her pony, absorbed in the spectacle of all

these moving trains,—a peculiarly lonely little figure, there in the

gathering dusk of the desert, watching as it were the procession of

civilization pass by her. . . . After the eastbound trains had got away

and were steaming off towards the horizon, the west-bound trains began to

file across the break, having picked up the wrecking crew and their

equipment. The girl did not move. Evidently in her life this was a rare

treat, and she did not mean to lose any part of it. So Brainard waited

until the red rear lamps of the last train shone out by the water tank,

and then as the girl slowly turned her pony back he rose from the ground

and hailed her. “Hello!”

The pony shied at Brainard, but the girl easily reined it in. She did

not seem much discomposed by the sight of him.

“Lost your train, stranger?” she observed with admirable equanimity.

“There won’t be no more along ’fore to-morrow morning, I reckon,” she

added.

“I don’t believe I want a train,” he replied.

“Goin’ to Mexico on foot with that trunk?” she asked. He detected a

mirthful note in her voice. Evidently she took neither him nor his

pretended mining business with great seriousness.

“That’s just what I’m going to try to do!”

“Well, you won’t get there to-night, I reckon.”

“I suppose not. Can you tell me some place where I could spend the

night?”

“There’s the water tank,” she suggested, with a little laugh.

“Isn’t there somebody where you come from?”

The girl shook her head quite positively.

“There must be some one in this God-forsaken country who would take a

stranger in! I don’t care about spending the night out here.”

The girl laughed as if it were all a great joke. “There won’t be nobody

to hurt you, stranger.”

“Thanks!”

She started on her road. Brainard thought he was in for a night in the

open and cursed his folly in jumping off into the desert. But the girl

pulled up after a few steps, and he could hear her gay chuckle as she

called out:

“You sure did want to stay in Arizona bad—you lost six trains!”

“I meant to!”

“That mining business must be very important.”

“Something else is,” he said boldly.

“Was it very bad, what made you want to get to Mexico—a killing?”

“Not as bad as that.”

“What was it?”

“You wouldn’t understand, I am afraid.”

“You might try tellin’ of me, all the same.”

“It isn’t anything bad.”

“They all say that,” she suggested mockingly.

“I’m merely trying to carry out some one’s orders.”

The girl looked mystified, and after a moment’s further thought remarked:

“There’s old man Gunnison. He might take you in for the night.”

“Where does he live?”

“Back a ways up the trail.”

“Won’t you show me the way?”

“I might,” she admitted. “Better give me that trunk,” she said, pointing

to the bag. “You would sure be tired if you toted that all the way to

Gunnison’s.”

The girl slipped from the pony and expertly made the bag fast to the

saddle with the thongs. Then taking the reins, which she drew over the

animal’s head, she strode out into the darkness. Brainard stumbled on

after his guide as best he could. Presently when he became more

accustomed to the dark and to progress over the uneven ground he joined

the girl and tried to make her talk. She developed shyness, however, and

replied only briefly to his questions. She lived somewhere up in the

mountains towards which they were traveling and which could be dimly

perceived ahead, a soft, dark barrier rising in the night. But what she

did there, who her people were, she would not say. In spite of her youth

and her inexperience she had a shrewd child’s wit that could turn off

inconvenient curiosity. Although she drawled and spoke the slovenly

language of uneducated people, there was something about her, perhaps her

instinctive reserve, that bespoke a better breeding than her clothes and

her speech indicated. She did not make further inquiries about

Brainard’s business; he surmised that she refrained because she thought

him to be some kind of a wrongdoer. He wanted to explain to her his

erratic conduct, but he realized that it would be not only foolish but

almost impossible to make clear to her limited mind just what the

situation with him was. So for minutes there was silence between them

while they plodded on.

Brainard liked the girl, felt a strange sort of pity for her, an

unreasoned pity for a forlorn and lonely child, who he instinctively

divined was sensitive and perhaps unhappy in spite of her flippant

speech.

“What were you doing down there at the railroad?” he asked in another

attempt to start conversation.

“Oh,” she replied vaguely, “nothin’.”

“Nothing! It must be a long way from your home to the railroad?”

“It takes three hours to ride it,” she replied.

“And do you ride down there often just to look at the trains go by?”

“’Most every week, stranger,” she said softly.

Brainard whistled.

“What makes you do that?”

He could feel her toss her head. Her answer was vague.

“They’re goin’ somewheres.”

“And you want to go on them?”

“Perhaps. . . . I expect I shall some day.”

“Where?”

“Oh,” she sighed, “anywheres—California, maybe,—New York—somewheres I can

live!”

The energy with which she uttered these last words had something pathetic

in it. As if to avoid further confession, she urged the tired pony to a

shambling trot and Brainard again found difficulty in keeping the pace.

After another half hour of this blind progress behind his taciturn guide,

the girl stopped before what seemed to be a mound of dirt and remarked:

“Here’s Gunnison’s. Maybe the old man is abed—I’ll raise him for you.”

She proceeded to pound vigorously with the butt of her quirt on the door

of the dugout. Presently there was a sound within, and a human head

appeared at the door.

“Here’s a gentleman who wants to go to some place in Mexico,” the girl

said in her gentle Southern voice. “I told him it was pretty fur from

these parts, but I reckon you know how to git there, if any one does.”

“Will you put me up for the night, anyway?” Brainard asked. “That’s the

first thing.”

“I can do that,” the sleepy Mr. Gunnison replied after a time, coming out

of the door. “But if you be in a hurry to reach Mexico, stranger, you’d

better go back to the railroad you come from, and take the next train.”

“We’ll see about that in the morning,” Brainard replied.

The girl had already unfastened the bag and mounted her pony.

“Much obliged to you, miss, for all your help!”

“That’s all right, stranger,” she said cheerily, starting the pony.

“Going home now?” Brainard asked.

“Yes!”

This childish figure, astride the tired pony, riding back into the lonely

mountains, seemed to him extremely pathetic.

“Good-by!” he called after her. “Hope we shall meet again some day!”

“Reckon we might, stranger!” came back to him in the soft voice.

“Perhaps in New York?”

“Ye-as—or in Mexico.”

Then the pony’s feet padded rapidly off into the darkness, and the girl

was gone.

“Who is she—do you know?” he asked the man.

“Belongs over in Moniment, in one of them mining camps, I expect,” the

old man replied indifferently. “I seen her riding past this afternoon.”

“Where is she going alone at night?”

“I dunno—guess she knows her own business.”

“Such a small girl!”

“They know how to look after themselves, in these parts, as soon as they

can creep,” the old man remarked calmly. “They have to!”

“Monument!” Brainard repeated to himself, wondering where he had heard

that name before.

“That’s what they call it. It ain’t much of a place now. There used to

be a big mine near there, but it ain’t been worked in years. . . . You

can come right in and bunk alongside of me, stranger.”