As before said, the last piece of machinery and the first rain arrived
simultaneously at Santa Gertrudis. The break in the summer heat came
with a south wind which herded mountainous vapors in from the warm
Pacific. All night the rain fell in sheets that set the thirsty arroyos
running bank-high and raised the river ten feet. Then, after the
pleasant tropical fashion, the downpour ceased, and day broke with a
blaze of sunlight over the Barranca.
"Sinbad's valley of diamonds!"
It was Billy's metaphor when he came out with Seyd from breakfast, and,
trite as the comparison might be, nothing else could better describe the
millions of wet jewels that flashed in the dark mantle of pine above and
embroidered the green cloak of the jungle beneath. Yesterday had seen
the last touches put on the aerial cable which would be soon dropping
buckets of ore into the red jaws of the furnace two thousand feet below.
From the edge of the plateau it ran, a streak of silver fringed with
glittering rain drops, down and out to the smelter; and when, in the
pride of his heart, Billy loosed the brakes the first vibration threw
off a cloud of prismatic spray.
"Balanced to a hair! You see, the weight of one full bucket is
sufficient to start the chain."
"Fine!" Seyd echoed. "Runs like a clock. Another week and we'll be
running steady."
Standing there, watching the buckets sail up and down like great
iron birds, they gave themselves up to the joy of accomplishment;
as once before, permitted fancy to run amuck through the golden
future. And after their hard labors and prolonged anxieties a little
self-congratulation was quite in order. If, one way or another, they
succeeded in meeting their first note they really could be counted in
splendid shape, for their shipments of copper matte would be on the
market before the second fell due.
Billy nodded assent when Seyd spoke. "Francesca said they would be home
to-day. I think I'll run down there and tackle Don Luis."
Between them were no secrets, and when Seyd rode away an hour later with
Caliban at his heels Billy called after him: "And say, old man, have it
out with the girl. If she has half the brains I have always allowed her
she'll easily see the accidental way in which it all came about."
Though the advice merely restated his own intention, Seyd found it
inspiring. Riding down the Barranca staircases, he whistled and sang.
While following the trail through the long succession of ranchos,
jungle, hamlets, he lived over again that first ride with Francesca.
Very plainly he now perceived that it dated his love, that in the
pauses of his stealthy study she had ensnared him with her rich
personality.
"She got you then," he mused, adding, with a burst of feeling that
astonished himself, "And now I'll get her--if I have to take her by
force."
Planning and dreaming, he rode along until the sight of the river,
flowing swiftly and deep over the San Nicolas ford, broke up his
reverie. Only a mile away, on the other side, the hacienda lay in full
view, yet it appeared at first as if they would have to turn back. But
after nosing up and down the banks Caliban presently flushed a peon and
a dugout. With the horses swimming behind, they were ferried over, and
rode across the tree-studded pastures, which were still clad in summer
brown.
At the sight of the amber walls in their setting of low brown hills
Seyd's pulses had quickened, and, interpreting everything by his own
feeling, it seemed to him that the dark women who peeped from their
doorways, the swart vaqueros, and the slender girls that passed to and
fro with _ollas_ balanced ahead, all turned faces of welcome. But when
at last he reined in before the shut gates of the _casa_ he experienced
a sudden, cold revulsion. Like so many eyes, the iron studs stared from
the oaken face of the door, until the sudden sliding of a hatch revealed
the wrinkled visage of Paulo, the Spanish administrador.
With his employer's toleration of the gringo the administrador had no
sympathy. Malice sparkled in his small brown eyes while he answered
Seyd's question. "As you see, senor, the _casa_ is empty. The senora and
the _nina_"--he used the family diminutive for Francesca--"are still at
hacienda El Quiss. Don Luis? He has gone again to Ciudad, Mexico, to
talk with Porfirio Diaz himself about the gringo dam. I do not know when
he will return," he replied, further, "nor the senora."
His high spirits dashed to the ground, Seyd sat his horse, oppressed
with heavy forebodings, for the disappointment raised vivid memories
of the suddenness with which the girl had been snatched out of his life
on two other occasions. Sick at heart, he refused for himself the
refreshment that the house's tradition compelled Paulo to offer, and
spent the hour required for the beasts' feeding in heavy brooding.
From this, however, he roused himself presently to a lighter mood.
"After all, the week is only up to-day," he urged. "She might easily
be detained beyond her expectations."
At first he thought of leaving a note. But, realizing the formal terms
in which it would have to be couched might make an unfavorable
impression, he left, instead, verbal regrets. That settled, he had time
to think of Don Luis, and, being now on practical ground, came to a
quick conclusion. Forgetting all about his promise not to travel alone,
he sent Caliban back to the mine while he went himself straight out to
the station.
On his arrival there, however--so late that he had to call Peters out
of his bed--he was not a little surprised to find that nothing had been
seen of Don Luis. It was, of course, easily possible that he had boarded
the train at a flag station ten miles up the line that was nearer to El
Quiss. But when, next evening, a thorough search of his usual haunts in
Mexico City failed to yield sight or sign of Don Luis, Seyd began to
grow suspicious. Suspicion developed into a certainty when on his return
two days later Peters informed him that Don Luis had taken the up train
that very morning.
"He came from San Nicolas, too," Peters added. "I shouldn't wonder if he
was there all the time. Looks to me like he's trying to dodge you."
Intentional or not, it left Seyd in a serious plight. A second trip to
Mexico City would take three days. Adding two more to get Billy away in
the event of Don Luis's refusal of further time, less than three weeks
would be left of their month of grace. It was not to be thought of; and,
though the afternoon rains were draping the mountains with heavy gray
sheets, he rode out to the inn that night. Crossing the river early next
morning, he sent Billy away at once.
"You'll have to spend twelve hours in Mexico City anyway," he instructed
him, concerning Don Luis, "so you might as well try to find him. If you
succeed, no trifling! Get his fist on a written extension. If he
doesn't come through--and I have my doubts--chase right on home to
California. With the photos of the prospect and plant you ought not to
have much trouble in raising enough to cover the note. And the minute
you get it wire me credits on Mexico City."
Hardly expecting it, he was not surprised when Billy wired, two days
later, that he was leaving that evening for the States. Under the
message Peters had scribbled, "Don Luis came in to-day on Number Nine.
Go right down and see him."
Half an hour after receipt of the message Seyd and Caliban were again on
their way.
For nearly a week now it had rained heavily night and day, and here and
there on the bottoms small inundations gave early warning of coming
floods. Though the river still ran in its banks opposite San Nicolas,
the dugout in which they crossed was swept with the swimming horses half
a mile downstream before they made a landing, and it was easily to be
seen that another week's rain would cut off travel on that side of the
stream.
Riding in to the great square, Seyd's pulses beat a lively accompaniment
to the thought: "It is now the end of the second week. She is sure to be
home." Yet in the moment of its riotous birth the hope gave place to
black misgivings at the sight of the shut house.
His spirits touched zero when the sliding hatch left Paulo's wrinkled
visage framed again in the blank oaken face of the door. "Don Luis is
still in Mexico, senor." He anticipated Seyd's question.
"But he returned--was seen the day before yesterday at the station."
"At the station, senor? How could that be?" His brown beads of eyes
blinked in uneasy surprise; then in an instant the wrinkled mask fell
into an expression of simple cunning. "Or, if so, then it must be that
he has gone to join the senora and the _nina_, who are still at El
Quiss."
She was not there! For the third time he found himself confronted by
silence, mysterious and complete as that which had attended her previous
disappearances. But, though oppressed by a weight of care, he tried to
hide his bitter disappointment from the administrador's inquisition.
Once again he spent a black hour while the beasts were feeding. His
broodings, riding homeward, shed no light on the enigma. A night of dark
thought left him baffled, furious, in good fettle for the news that
Caliban gleaned from a passing charcoal-burner.
"Don Luis must have been there, senor, for Benito saw him ride forth
this morning. He has gone north to see for himself the gringo dam."
"Oh, he has, has he!" Seyd ground the words out between his teeth. "The
old fox! But now I'll chase him into his earth."
In this, however, he had forgotten to allow for the rains which, driving
down the Barranca in great wet sheets, caused Don Luis to put in at El
Quiss, there to wait in the leisurely fashion of the country until the
weather should break and Sebastien have time to accompany him. Arriving
at the power plant after two days' wallowing on jungle trails, Seyd
found himself foiled once more in their little game of hide and seek.
The trip, however, was not altogether wasted, for the pert young
Chicagoan in charge gave him uproarious welcome. "So you're the fellow
that has been bucking the whole state of Guerrero! I'm awfully glad to
know you, Mr. Seyd, though I'm puzzled yet as to how you managed to hold
out. It took a whole regiment of Diaz's _rurales_ to establish us here,
and if they were withdrawn even now we wouldn't last long."
Also it was worth the labor to see the dam. A huge earthen structure,
nearly a hundred feet high, it spanned the Barranca just where the
valley nipped in from a wide angle to a passage a quarter mile wide.
Behind it a muddy lake stretched as far as the eye could reach, and
while standing in the center Seyd recalled and quoted Peters's
prediction.
"'Boulders big as churches were piled up in the bed of the stream like
pebbles, and if that dam was built of solid concrete instead of clay
they'd go through it like it was dough.'"
The Chicagoan, however, laughed at the quotation. "If the devil himself
was bowling them I'd defy him to knock off a single chip. She's solid,
and the sluiceways allow ample flood escape. Nothing but an earthquake
could touch it--a jim dandy, at that."
Nevertheless, while that enormous volume of water hung suspended, as it
were, over the valley, Seyd felt nervous. Traveling homeward the next
day, he measured with a careful eye the valley floor, and, using last
year's high-water mark as a base for his calculations, concluded that
only San Nicolas, the smelter, and one or two haciendas that stood on
higher ground would escape destruction if the dam should happen to
burst. Approaching El Quiss, he noted, in particular, that, standing on
level ground, it would surely be inundated.
For some fifteen miles his trail ran through Sebastien's lands, and,
climbing in one place over a knoll, it afforded a view of the hacienda
buildings across the rain-swept pastures. As, reining in, Seyd watched
the faint pink of the walls flash out and fade in the shifting vapors he
was seized with a mad impulse to ride in. But his native good sense
quickly reasserted itself, for a moment's reflection showed that the
intrusion could only result in humiliation for Francesca and himself.
The knowledge, however, did not render her proximity less maddening. He
was sitting there restlessly chafing when Caliban's voice suddenly rose
behind.
"If it were desired to leave a message there is one I know that could
place it in her own hands."
Startled, Seyd swung in the saddle. He had known long ago that kindly
usage had transformed the hunchback into a faithful friend, but he was
not prepared either for the sympathy that softened his glittering beads
of eyes or his uncanny divination.
"_Si._" The hunchback nodded. "A cousin of my woman is in Don
Sebastien's household service. 'Twould be easy to pass a paper by the
little maid you picked out of the river. The senorita keeps her always
close to her own body."
Before he finished Seyd had cut a pencil and was writing on the back of
an envelope under cover of his raincoat. At first he gave free vent to
his feelings, but, remembering the danger of interception, he tore it
up and wrote instead a humorous protest against her continued absence.
Then, after instructing Caliban to take all the time necessary to
procure an answer, he journeyed on alone.
It was well, too, that he gave the hunchback free rein, for three days
elapsed before he returned to the mine soaked to the marrow by the
continuous rains that had raised the floods almost to last year's mark.
"With Don Sebastien one goes slowly," he explained. "If the sharp eye
of him had once touched me 'twould have been a short shrift under the
nearest tree. For two days I lay close in the _jacal_ of my woman's
cousin before she brought me this."
It was a considerable package, and Seyd rather wondered at its size
while tearing away the dried corn leaves in which Caliban had wrapped
it. When the last leaf fell off he stared at first in surprise, then,
as his eye fell on the ink scores, in utter consternation at the
Albuquerque _Times_. Minutes passed before he could command words to
send the hunchback away, then, sitting down by the table, he leaned his
head on his hand and remained for some time plunged in black reflection.
From a long distance in time and space his first insincerity had come
home to roost. But, while he saw himself as the designer of his own
undoing, he was by no means resigned. Presently hard, mutinous lights
broke in his gloomy eyes. The stubborn fighter awoke. Throwing the
traitorous sheet across the room, he picked up a pen and began to write.
Wasting no time in wonder at the fortuitous chance that had placed the
paper in Francesca's hands, he wrote steadily on the story of his love
from the first doubtful beginnings to its actual consummation. Very
clearly he explained his first natural dislike to intrude his personal
affairs upon people for whom he had no reason to suppose they would have
the slightest interest, the later honorable intention that had always
been frustrated by unfavorable circumstances. And he finished with a
statement that is never unwelcome in a woman's ear:
"No matter what comes I shall always love you."
Steady rain all that day and night had given the floods another lift and
sent the river roaming wide through the jungle. Once again the valley
opposite the mine was converted into a great lake dotted with wooded
islands between which swift currents hurtled floating debris. Profiting
by last year's lesson, Seyd had had two roomy dugouts fitted with oars
and rowlocks, and early the next morning he rowed Caliban across
himself. Returning, he was to send a smoke signal to call the boat, and
when, on the afternoon of the fourth day, Seyd spied the thin blue
spiral through a break in the drifting rain he almost cracked his back
rowing across the flood.
But his glowing hope died at the shake of the hunchback's head. "The
senorita is gone with her mother and Don Luis to San Nicolas, senor. But
she is to return to El Quiss in a few days. The cousin of my woman had
it from Roberta, the little maid. She is still there, and will deliver
the letter when the senorita returns."
The news was not altogether bad, for Francesca, at least, was now at San
Nicolas. Within the hour Seyd crossed the river to the inn--where a
horse was to be had for hire--and his purpose gained strength from a
wire that he found waiting there from Billy.
"San Francisco burned to the ground. Not a cent to be raised in
California. Am going east."
In view of the aforesaid game of hide and seek he had been playing with
Don Luis the situation looked very dark. But, serious as it was, when,
halfway to San Nicolas, he met Paulo riding at the head of a mule train
loaded with fagots it was wiped altogether out of his mind.
"We go to build beacons along the rim of the Barranca to give warning
against the bursting of the gringo dam," he answered Seyd. "_Si_, Don
Luis and the senora are at the _casa_. The senorita?" His creases drew
into a malevolent grin. "The senora, you mean. She was married two hours
ago to Don Sebastien."