THE DISCOVERY
Marc Scott was slow in falling asleep on the night of Pachuca's escape. He
was in the habit of rolling over a few times and losing himself; but on
this particular night he was tormented by half a dozen ugly little
worries. He was worried about Adams, whose leg had a nasty look to the
unprofessional eye; he was worried about Pachuca, whose case was going to
require a good deal of finesse; and he was worried about Polly Street, who
had to be conveyed to the border, revolution or no revolution.
The most pressing danger on his horizon, Scott did not worry about because
he did not recognize it. He was like one of those patients in whose system
a deadly disease has started, but who remains in perfect health to all
outward appearances. He was in happy ignorance of his feelings for Polly
Street. He had been in love times enough, he would have told you, to know
the symptoms; all of which was quite true, but the fact remained that this
time he did not know them.
Polly Street was so exactly the sort of girl that Marc Scott had not the
faintest idea of falling in love with, much less marrying, that he would
have dismissed the possibility with a shrug. He, who valued his freedom
above everything, to throw it away for exactly the kind of woman who would
take the greatest pleasure in trampling on it? As for his jealousy of Juan
Pachuca, which should have opened his eyes, he put it aside easily. He
didn't like the fellow--never had--and it annoyed him to see a decent girl
allowing herself to be humbugged by his good looks and oily tongue.
It was a pity, for she was a plucky young thing. She had done well to
bring back the prisoner and his car; mighty few girls would have had the
courage to try it. It was foolish, of course, a regular kid
trick--wouldn't have succeeded once in a dozen times, but nevertheless,
she had shown pluck. It was at this stage in his reflections that he had
been disturbed by Yellow's barking and had gone out to investigate. The
air and the action had changed his circulation and his thought and when he
went to bed the second time he dropped off easily.
This time he was aroused by the noise of the engine started by Pachuca on
his escape. At first he hardly realized what it was that had wakened him,
but as it dawned on his consciousness, he jumped to his feet and rushed to
the window in time to see the car tear down the road. With a muttered
exclamation, Scott seized his gun and sent a bullet wildly in the
direction of the escaping prisoner. Then he drew on his trousers, calling
to Hard at the same time.
"What's wrong? Another raid?" growled the sleepy Bostonian, who had dozed
peacefully through Pachuca's first attempt.
"No. The guy's got away," snapped Scott, angrily.
"Well, we didn't particularly need him, did we?" observed Hard, sitting up
reluctantly.
"We needed his car and needed it bad," said Scott, viciously. He tramped
out of the room, while Hard reached drowsily for his clothes.
"By George, he must have made it through the window!" he muttered as he
crossed the street, then as he came upon the body of the dog, thrown aside
behind the open door, "The dirty butcher!" he growled, furiously. "And I
didn't have sense enough to search him for a knife!"
Outside, he met O'Grady and Johnson, sketchily dressed and wrathful.
"You heard him, too, did you?" he growled. "He got out by the window. This
is some of his work," he continued, pointing to Yellow.
"He did not," said O'Grady, promptly. "Did you ever hear of a guy jumping
out of a second-story winder and shutting it after him?"
"What?"
"Sure--it's shut," grinned Johnson. "He come out of the door all right.
It's wide open, and not hurt, either."
"Who let him out? Where's the key? You had it, O'Grady."
"I did not--you handed it to the girl, yourself. She locked him in all
right; I heard her do it," replied O'Grady quickly.
"That explains it," said Scott, shortly. "She came over here and let him
out. Might have expected it, I suppose, with a flighty youngster and a
smooth talker like Pachuca." He turned away in the direction of the
house.
"He's mad!" murmured Johnson, admiringly. He liked a little excitement
himself.
"Mad? He's jealous, the fool!" Matt offered, disgustedly.
"Jealous? Who of? The greaser?"
"Sure. Good-looking, Juan is, and a winner with the dames."
"Scott's one of them woman haters. What d'ye mean--jealous?"
"Woman haters?" Matt spat disdainfully. "There ain't no such thing as a
woman hater, Tommy, in the whole animal kingdom. Don't you fall for none
of that stuff. But, believe me, that girl never opened that door. She's a
straight, honest, smart girl, if she is flighty."
"Well, if she didn't, who did?"
"I don't know. I ain't sleuthed around enough yet to find out. Hullo,
here's Boston--half asleep, too."
Scott was angry clear through. He did not stop to analyze his emotions--he
was not of an analytical mind--and he did not care why he was angry. He
felt that Polly Street, a girl of whom he was beginning to think rather
highly, had done an unsportsmanlike thing; a thing that Bob's sister ought
to have been ashamed to do; had disgraced the family, so to speak, and had
seriously inconvenienced him into the bargain.
Scott had depended on that automobile for various things. He wanted it to
fetch a doctor for Jimmy, and to take Polly, herself, to the border in
comfort. Both these important things she had jeopardized because she had
been coaxed into it by a soft-spoken young man with dark eyes. The
treasure story he put aside. Even a girl from the East would hardly have
taken that stuff seriously, he thought.
He would have felt just the same, he reasoned, had the culprit been Bob
instead of Bob's sister. There was, thank Heaven, nothing soft about him!
He could see and hear and even enjoy a good-looking girl without making a
fool of himself. That was the beauty of being on the way to forty--one saw
things in their right light--and did not make a fool of one's self over
girls.
"Marc Scott, are we being raided again or what? Did I hear a shot and a
machine going by or was I dreaming?" demanded Mrs. Van, who, clad in a
blanket kimono, her feet thrust into moccasins, and a gay-looking pink
boudoir cap on her head, came to the door before Scott reached it. In her
rear could be dimly seen another figure, wrapped in a gray blanket.
"You ought to know," said Scott, rudely; focussing his attention on the
pink cap and ignoring the blanketed figure in the rear.
"What do you mean--I ought to know?" indignantly.
"Somebody has unlocked the office door and let that half-breed get away
and he's taken his car with him," said Scott. "The key's in your
house--that's all."
"Of course it's in this house. It's in the pocket of my sweater," answered
Polly, indignantly. "If you think I let him out----" She was too angry to
continue.
"Well, he didn't get out by the window because it's shut, and there's no
chimney for him to melt out of."
"Look here, Marc Scott, ain't you ashamed of yourself? Coming here and
talking to ladies like that--and in the middle of the night, too." Mrs.
Van Zandt was as angry as the other two. "That key couldn't get out of
this house to-night without my knowing it. He's brainy enough to get out
without help, that fellow."
"He may be brainy, but he's hardly brilliant enough to go through a locked
door," said Scott, obstinately. "Somebody let him out, that's all. If
you'll be kind enough to look for the key, Miss Street, and see if it's
been taken away----"
"How could it be? From my room?" demanded Polly, angrily.
"Are you going to hold an inquest over it?" asked Mrs. Van, cuttingly. "I
see the jury coming along."
Johnson, O'Grady and Hard were coming across the street. Polly drew her
blanket closely around her and tucked one bare foot behind the other. Her
reddish colored braids gave her a squaw-like appearance in the darkness.
"It's all right, Scotty, don't stir up the community," called Hard,
cheerfully. "I'm the guilty party."
"You!"
"It never dawned on me till I saw the unlocked door," confessed Hard, with
a chuckle. "The chap must have found that old bunch of keys that's been
knocking around in the pocket of my old office coat. I'm afraid that's
where he got the knife that did for poor Yellow, too."
"Do you mean there was a duplicate key?" demanded Scott.
"There must have been. Clever chap to ferret it out," replied Hard,
breezily.
"Mighty clever. I could open a door myself with a key in my hand,"
muttered Scott, as he turned away. "Well, he's gone and the car's gone and
we might as well go back to bed."
"Just one moment." Polly's voice was clear and firm. "I think you owe me
an apology, Mr. Scott."
There was a suppressed chuckle from the rear where the train gang still
lingered. Scott stiffened and cleared his throat consciously.
"I apologize," he said; then, as he saw the others disappear down the
street, "Will you shake hands?"
"Not right now; I'm going to think it over," said the girl, coolly. "I
think you should have known that I wouldn't do a thing like that."
"Well, I did know it, of course," confessed Scott, helplessly. "But----"
"But you didn't believe it." Polly's voice was cutting. "Well, next time
have a little more faith in your friends, Mr. Scott," and the blanketed
figure disappeared into the house.
"She had you there," observed Mrs. Van. "Well, go home to bed before you
wake up Jimmy--it's a wonder he's slept through this all right."
She went into the house and knocked softly at the girl's door--after
listening a moment and assuring herself that Adams had not wakened.
Polly's room was dark and she was standing, still wrapped in the blanket,
by the window in the moonlight.
"Well?" she said, rather curtly.
"Nothing--only----" Mrs. Van's usually glib tongue faltered. "I was just
going to say that you mustn't take Marc Scott too--too--I mean, you
mustn't be too hard on him."
"Hard!"
"Yes. It's just his way; he don't mean to be ugly. He's queer, Scotty is,
kind of--oh, I don't know how to put it, but he didn't mean to be rude to
you."
"He was, though, very rude."
"Yes, that's what I mean. It sort of shocked him to think you'd do a thing
like that and he didn't stop to think."
"Maybe he'll stop to think next time."
"Maybe, but I don't reckon so. Folks like that you can't change much; you
have to take 'em or leave 'em as they are. He's awful square, though. I'd
trust him with anything; money, liquor, or women. When you've been around
as much as I have, you'll know that means something."
In the meantime, Scott, Hard, and the train gang, going down to the corral
to investigate, found Miller lying as Pachuca had left him, in the middle
of the road. He was regaining consciousness as they came along, and did
not seem to be badly hurt, the knife having entered the fleshy part of the
arm near the shoulder.
"Serves me damn right, bein' so slow with my gun," he said. "I suppose the
guy got away?"
"Oh, yes, he got away!" muttered Scott, as they helped Miller to bed.
"That's the kind of luck we're playing in just now around here."
Breakfast next morning was not a particularly cheerful meal. Adams was
still in bed, and Williams was feverish and cross. Miller seemed little
the worse for his accident, but he was blue; he had been particularly
attached to the dog and felt its death more than his own misadventure.
"Blankets, canned goods, saddles--everything they could grab," muttered
Williams, resentfully. "Nice condition to be in with a revolution
looming."
"Not looming, loomed," said O'Grady, cheerfully.
"Wish I could get hold of an _Omaha Bee_," murmured Johnson. "I never
somehow feel like I had a grip on a situation till I've seen my home
paper."
"I think I'll ride over to Casa Grande this morning and get the doctor,"
said Hard. "That leg of Jimmy's needs advice."
"I'll go with you." Scott looked at Polly. "Want to go?" he said; then as
she hesitated, he looked at her penitently, smiling as Scott did not often
smile, and whispered: "Please do!"
"How mean of him! He knows I'm dying to. How's anybody going to stay mad
when they want to do things?" said the girl to herself.
"It's too far for her," objected Mrs. Van.
"We'll send the Chink back," said Scott, persuasively, "and we'll stay all
night with Herrick. We'll make him play for you," he added, as Polly
smiled in spite of herself. "Will you go?"
"She must," said Hard. "It's her last chance to see the country." And so
the matter was settled.
"That Chink'll ride the whole twenty miles on a dead run--he'll be here to
dinner," said Matt. "Ever see a Chinaman ride?"
"He'll ride his own horse, then," replied Scott, as he left the room.
"Perhaps we'll bring Herrick back with us, Mrs. Van."
"He won't leave that piano of his," prophesied Mrs. Van Zandt. "No more
than a mother'd leave her baby when there was danger around."
It was ten o'clock when the three riders started on their trip, Scott
preserving a reasonably cheerful face, in spite of the fact that he hated
late starts. It was a beautiful morning; the sky, blue and cloudless, the
air fresh and invigorating with the crispness of early spring, the radiant
clearness of the atmosphere making neighbors of the mountains, all
combined to make a tonic which showed signs of going to Polly's head.
After all, there are few sensations like the starting out upon a horseback
trip; the mare's springy trot, the freshness of her own healthy body, even
the feel of the bridle reins brought her joy.
"You look mighty happy," commented Hard. "It must be pleasant to be
twenty-three."
Polly laughed. "It is," she admitted. "But I'm going to be just as happy
at forty-three. I've found the recipe."
"Will you sell it to me? My next one happens to be my forty-second. I'll
be needing it soon."
"I'll make you a present of it. Stay out-of-doors and keep on doing
things. Of course, I haven't tried it for forty-three years, but I feel in
my bones that it will work."
"I never could see, myself, how people could spend twenty-two out of their
twenty-four hours under a roof, the way most of them do," said Scott,
thoughtfully. "Here, we turn now into the trail."
"That's where Pachuca's men went yesterday," said Polly. "I hope we don't
meet them."
"No danger of that. Those fly-by-nights are a long way from here by this
time."
"They told me yesterday in Conejo that Obregon had been put under arrest
in Mexico City. If that's true it may put a cog in the revolutionary
machinery," said Hard.
"I wish we'd managed to keep our hands on that automobile," remarked
Scott, wistfully. "I don't half fancy trying to make the border in a
wagon, and no one knows how the railroads will be."
The trail debouched from the road, running over ground very slightly
elevated. There was for some distance no particular reason as far as Polly
could see for its being a trail at all except that it hadn't been
sufficiently traveled to make it a road. It was merely a narrow little
path leading over some very barren-looking country, but leading ever
upward, gradually but surely, toward the hills.
"You see, the regular road runs fairly straight along toward Conejo for
maybe twenty miles, and then meets a crossroad which runs past Casa
Grande," explained Scott. "Now, with this trail, we cut directly across
those foothills, over a couple of ranges of mountains, across a big mesa
and down. Casa Grande is almost in a straight line from here and we cut
off a lot."
"Casa Grande is an awfully fancy sort of name. Is it a wonderful place?"
"Just a good little ranch. These Latins like big sounding names," replied
Scott. "Casa Grande is very common down here."
A dip in the trail took them into an arroyo and out the other side, where
they lost sight entirely of Athens. A few moments later, they wound their
way through some brush into a narrow canyon, walled on one side by hills
and with a drop of some fifteen feet on the other side into a ravine. Out
of the ravine grew more brush so densely that it almost crowded the little
trail out of existence.
Here it was necessary to go single file and Polly noticed how naturally
Scott took the lead, leaving her to follow and Hard to bring up the rear.
She noted with some amusement that it seemed characteristic of him to take
the lead everywhere, just as it seemed quite in keeping with Hard's
easy-going nature to fall into the rear.
"And yet of the two Mr. Hard has the education and the brains," thought
the girl. "No, that's not fair. I believe you can have just as good a
brain without education--only you're hampered in the use of it. Marc Scott
has what the psychologists call 'initiative.' Oh, look!"
High up in the air a bird had flown out from among the tree-tops on the
other side of the canyon--a big bird with wide spreading wings.
"It's an eagle."
"An eagle!" Polly was awed.
"There's a nest up there somewhere," said Scott, shading his eyes with his
hand and peering upward. "Last year I was riding over this trail with
Gomez, an Indian we had working for us. We were just about here when an
eagle, a young one, flew out from the trees. Before I could speak, Gomez
up with his gun and shot it."
"Oh!"
"I wanted to kill the geezer--but Lord, what can you expect of an
Indian?"
As they proceeded, Polly found herself riding closer to Scott, while Hard
lagged behind. She was not displeased. Scott on horseback and in the woods
was Scott at his best as she was beginning to know.
"I'm wondering," she said, as the mare pushed her nose along the big bay's
flank, "how you know so much about the country. You aren't a Westerner,
are you?"
"Me? No, indeed. Born in New York State and raised in Michigan. Never laid
eyes on anything west of the Mississippi until I came out to Colorado to
work in the mines. Then I drifted into New Mexico and down here." Scott
was riding with his knee around the pommel and talking meditatively over
his shoulder.
"You see, I've got mining in my blood. My grandfather was a Forty-Niner."
"Did he get rich?" asked Polly, interestedly.
"Not so's you'd notice it. Spent all he had and died trying to get home."
"Oh!"
"Hard luck, wasn't it? My folks went to Detroit when I was a little codger
and they both died there. I was adopted by an uncle--an uncle who was the
whitest man God ever made," declared Scott, solemnly.
"Why was he--I mean, how was he?" Polly had by nature that healthy
capacity for asking questions, which is one of the most flattering
characteristics that a woman can have or assume.
"He was always doing decent things. Didn't have much money, either, but
somehow he always made it do for a lot of folks who didn't have any. He
adopted a girl that wasn't any kin to him, had her educated and then
married her. She made him a fine wife, too, thought the world of him.
Well, he adopted me and sent me to school and when he saw I had the roving
instinct and couldn't stick to the books, he gave me a lift to go West to
the mines. He knew that there was no use arguing.
"He was queer, too. Didn't like city folks nor their ways. He owned one of
those big farms out near what's now Grosse Pointe--ran down to the
river--and when the town began to grow out toward them, instead of holding
on to his land as it began to get valuable, he'd sell out and go further
away. Died, leaving Aunt Mary just enough to live comfortably on--might
have been a millionaire. But Uncle Silas was a wise man.
"Sometimes when I look at these tight-fisted old guys who make their
millions and tie 'em up into estates to hand down, and then remember Uncle
Silas--not giving a hoot for money and always pulling along a dozen or two
poor relations and setting 'em on their feet, living comfortable and
happy, leaving a wife that's as fond of him to-day as she was the day he
died--well, I sort of wonder if money and success mean as much as folks
think they do."
Scott's autobiography was halted by the view which met their eyes as they
rounded the turn at the top of the canyon. Turning, the narrow trail wound
its way around the mountainside until one looked down upon the tops of
foothills, green with scrubby vegetation. Then it stretched in an
irregular line down the mountainside, to disappear in their midst. Beyond
lay another range of mountains.
"Back of that range and across the mesa is where Herrick's place is," said
Scott, as they drew rein and waited for Hard to come along. Polly gazed in
silence. It was the first view she had had of the wilder part of the
country and it thrilled her.
Hard came up with them. "Don't you think we'd better make a little speed
when we hit the level?" he said.
"We've only crossed one stream since we started," observed Polly.
"We cross another just before we get to Herrick's," said Hard, "but it
never has much water in it except in the rainy season."
"I've seen plenty in it then," said Scott, laughing. "I was caught on the
wrong side once when they'd had a cloudburst in the mountains. Oh boy, you
should have seen her come down! Swept away a wagon with two horses and the
Mexican who was driving it in just two minutes."
"Oh, how could it--in two minutes?"
"Well, it could and did. Before that there wasn't a foot of water in the
river bed. When the water came thundering down there was eight or ten.
Picked up trees, bushes, chicken coops, greasers--anything in its way, and
whirled 'em down the canyon."
It was the middle of the afternoon when they crossed the second range,
which they did by means of a trail which went through a gap, thus cutting
off the worst of the ascent. Once through the gap, they came out upon a
huge mesa from which they looked down upon the valley in which Casa Grande
was located. On the mesa, the tired horses broke into the little
easy-going jog which mountain ponies love.
Scott watched Polly's sparkling eyes with real gratification. He had
chosen to go by trail rather than by road very largely that she might have
this experience. He wanted her to see more of the country before she went
back to the city and its ways.
"She's a natural out-of-doors woman, and she's never had the chance to
find it out," he mused. "Better than a golf course?" he asked, as they
trotted across the broad mesa.
"Oh!" she cried, reproachfully. "It's like the happy hunting grounds! I
never understood before why the Indians called their Heaven that. It was
because they were thinking of space and openness and freedom. I think it
beats our kind of Heaven all hollow," finished the cheerful product of
1920.
Finally they came out on the other side of the little river bed, which lay
below the mesa and was entered by means of a rocky staircase, crossed a
round-topped hill, and there, in a flat little valley surrounded by hills,
the rear view of the Casa Grande ranch-house became visible. Two or three
smaller buildings stood near it and a fence marked the corral.