AT WALLACE'S RANCH
The efficient Sucatash reported back to Solange the details of De
Launay's escape, making them characteristically brief and colorful.
Then, with the effective aid of MacKay, he set out to prepare for the
expedition in search of the mine.
Neither Sucatash nor Dave actually had any real conviction that
Solange would venture into the Esmeraldas at this time of year to look
for a mine whose very existence they doubted as being legendary. Yet
neither tried to dissuade her from the rash adventure--as yet. In this
attitude they were each governed by like feelings. Both of them were
curious and sentimental. Each secretly wondered what the slender,
rather silent young woman looked like, and each was beginning to
imagine that the veil hid some extreme loveliness. Each felt himself
handicapped in the unwonted atmosphere of the town and each imagined
that, once he got on his own preserves, he would show to much better
advantage in her eyes.
Sucatash was quite confident that, once they got Solange at his
father's ranch, they would be able to persuade her to stay there for
the winter. Dave also had about the same idea. Each reasoned that, in
an indeterminate stay at the ranch, she would certainly, in time, show
her countenance. Neither of them figured De Launay as anything but
some assistant, more or less familiar with the West, whom she had
engaged and who had been automatically eliminated by virtue of his
latest escapade.
Solange, however, developed a disposition to arrange her own fate. She
smiled politely when the young men gave awkward advice as to her
costuming and equipment, but paid little heed to it. She allowed them
to select the small portion of her camping outfit that they thought
necessary at this stage, and to arrange for a car to take it and them
to Wallace's ranch. They took their saddles in the car and sent their
horses out by such chance riders as happened to be going that way.
The journey to Wallace's ranch was uneventful except for a stop at the
former Brandon ranch at Twin Forks, where Solange met the Basco
proprietors, and gave her cow-puncher henchmen further cause for
wonder by conversing fluently with them in a language which bore no
resemblance to any they had ever heard before. They noted an unusual
deference which the shy mountaineers extended toward her.
There was a pause of some time while Solange visited the almost
obliterated mound marking the grave of her father. But she did not
pray over it or manifest any great emotion. She simply stood there
for some time, lost in thought, or else mentally renewing her vow of
vengeance on his murderer. Then, after discovering that the sheepmen
knew nothing of consequence concerning these long-past events, she
came quietly back to the car and they resumed the journey.
Finally they passed a camp fire set back from the road at some
distance and the cow-punchers pointed out the figure of Banker
crouched above it, apparently oblivious of them.
"What you all reckon that old horned toad is a-doin' here?" queried
Dave, from the front seat. "Dry camp, and him only three mile from the
house and not more'n five from the Spring."
"Dunno," replied Sucatash. "Him bein' a prospector, that a way, most
likely he ain't got the necessary sense to camp where a white man
naturally would bog down."
"But any one would know enough to camp near water," said Solange,
surprised.
"Yes'm," agreed Sucatash, solemnly. "Any one would! But them
prospectors ain't human, that a way. They lives in the deserts so much
they gets kind of wild and flighty, ma'am. Water is so scarce that
they gets to regardin' it as somethin' onnatural and dangerous. More'n
enough of it to give 'em a drink or two and water the Jennies acts on
'em all same like it does on a hydrophoby skunk. They foams at the
mouth and goes mad."
"With hydrophobia?" exclaimed the unsophisticated Solange.
"Yes'm," said Sucatash. "Especially if it's deep enough to cover their
feet. Yuh see, ma'am, they gets in mortal terror that, if they nears
enough water to wet 'em all over, some one will rack in and just
forcibly afflict 'em with a bath--which 'ud sure drive one of 'em
plumb loco."
"I knows one o' them desert rats," said Dave, reminiscently, "what
boasts a plenty about the health he enjoys. Which he sure allows he's
lived to a ripe old age--and he _was_ ripe, all right. This here
venerableness, he declares a whole lot, is solely and absolutely due
to the ondisputable fact that he ain't never bathed in forty-two
years. And we proves him right, at that."
"What!" cried the horrified Solange. "That his health was due to his
uncleanliness? But that is absurd!"
"Which it would seem so, ma'am, but there ain't no gettin' round the
proof. We all doubts it, just like you do. So we ups and hog ties the
old natural, picks him up with a pair of tongs and dips him in the
crick. Which he simply lets out one bloodcurdlin' yell of despair and
passes out immediate."
"_Mon Dieu!_" said Solange, fervently. "_Quels farceurs!_"
"Yes'm," they agreed, politely.
Then Solange laughed and they broke into sympathetic grins, even the
solemn Sucatash showing his teeth in enjoyment as he heard her
tinkling mirth with its bell-like note.
Then they forgot the squatting figure by its camp fire and drove on to
the ranch.
This turned out to be a straggling adobe house, shaded by cottonwoods
and built around three sides of a square. It was roomy, cool, and
comfortable, with a picturesqueness all its own. To Solange, it was
inviting and homelike, much more so than the rather cold luxury of
hotels and Pullman staterooms. And this feeling of homeliness was
enhanced when she was smilingly and cordially welcomed by a big,
gray-bearded, bronzed man and a white-haired, motherly woman, the
parents of young Sucatash.
The self-contained, self-reliant young woman almost broke down when
Mrs. Wallace took her in charge and hurried her to her room. They
seemed to know all about her and to take her arrival as an ordinary
occurrence and a very welcome one. Sucatash, of course, was
responsible for their knowledge, having telephoned them before they
had started.
Before Solange reappeared ready for supper, Sucatash and Dave had
explained all that they knew of the affair to Wallace. He was much
interested but very dubious about it all.
"Of course, she'll not be going into the mountains at this time o'
year," he declared. "It ain't more than a week before the snow's bound
to fly, and the Esmeraldas ain't no place for girls in the winter
time. I reckon that feller you-all helped get out o' jail and that I
planted hosses for won't more than make it across the range before the
road's closed. I hope it wasn't nothin' serious he was in for, son."
"Nothin' but too much hooch an' rumplin' up a couple of cops," said
his son, casually. "Not that I wouldn't have helped so long as he was
in fer anything less than murder. The mad'mo'selle wanted him out, yuh
see."
"S'pose she naturally felt responsible fer him, that a way," agreed
Wallace. "Reckon she's well rid o' him, though. Don't sound like the
sort o' man yuh'd want a young girl travelin round with. What was he
like?"
"Tall, good-lookin', foreign-appearin' hombre. Talked pretty good
range language though, and he sure could fork a hoss. Seemed to have a
gnawin' ambition to coil around all the bootleg liquor there is,
though. Outside o' that, he was all right."
"De Launay? French name, I reckon."
"Yeah, I reckon he'd been a soldier in the French army. Got the idea,
somehow."
"Well, he's gone--and I reckon it's as well. He won't be botherin' the
little lady no more. What does she wear a veil for? Been marked any?"
Sucatash was troubled. "Don't know, pop. Never seen her face. Ought
to be a sure-enough chiquita, if it's up to the rest of her. D'jever
hear a purtier voice?"
The old man caught the note of enthusiasm. "Yuh better go slow, son,"
he said, dryly. "I reckon she's all right--but yuh don't really know
nothin'."
"Shucks!" retorted his son, calmly. "I don't have to know nothin'. She
can run an iron on me any time she wants to. I'm lassoed, thrown an'
tied, a'ready."
"Which yuh finds me hornin' in before she makes any selection, yuh
mottled-topped son of a gun!" Dave warmly put in. "I let's that lady
from France conceal her face, her past and any crimes she may have
committed, is committin' or be goin' to commit, and I hereby declares
myself for her forty ways from the Jack, fer anything from matrimony
to murder."
"Shucks," said the old man, "you-all are mighty young."
"Pop," declared the Wallace heir, solemnly, "this here French lady is
clean strain and grades high. Me and Dave may be young, but we ain't
making no mistake about her. She has hired herself a couple of hands,
I'm telling you."
Solange appeared at this moment, coming in with Mrs. Wallace, who was
smiling in an evident agreement with her son. Mr. Wallace, while
inclined to reserve judgment, had all the chivalry of his kind and
stepped forward to greet her. But he paused a little uncertainly as
he noticed that she had removed her veil. For a moment he looked at
her in some astonishment, her unusual coloring affecting him as it did
all those who observed it for the first time. The first glance
resulted in startlement and the feeling that there was something
uncanny about her, but as the deep eyes met his own and the pretty
mouth smiled at him from beneath the glinting pale halo of her hair,
he drew his breath in a long sigh of appreciation and admiration. His
wife, looking at him with some deprecation, as though fearing an
adverse judgment, smiled as his evident conquest became apparent.
Standing near him the two boys stared and stared, something like awe
in their ingenuous faces.
"Ma'am," said Wallace, in his courtly manner, "we're sure proud to
welcome you. Which there ain't many flowers out hereaways, and if
there was there wouldn't be none to touch you. It sure beats me why
you ever wear a veil at all."
Solange laughed and blushed. "_Merci, monsieur!_ But that is
exquisite! Still, it is not all that flatter me in that way. There are
many who stare and point and even some who make the sign of the evil
eye when they see this impossible ensemble. And the women! _Mon Dieu!_
They ask me continually what chemist I patronize for the purpose of
bleaching my hair."
"Cats!" said Mrs. Wallace, with a sniff.