In the shade of Pedro Vijil’s little brown adobe on the Granados rancho, a horseman squatted to repair a broken cinch with strips of rawhide, while his horse –– a strong dappled roan with a smutty face –– stood near, the rawhide bridle over his head and the quirt trailing the ground.
The horseman’s frame of mind was evidently not of the sweetest, for to Vijil he had expressed himself in forcible Mexican –– which is supposed to be Spanish and often isn’t –– condemning the luck by which the cinch had gone bad at the wrong time, and as he tinkered he sang softly an old southern ditty:
Oh –– oh! I’m a good old rebel,
Now that’s just what I am!
For I won’t be reconstructed
And I don’t care a damn!
He varied this musical gem occasionally by whistling the air as he punched holes and wove the rawhide thongs in and out through the spliced leather.
Once he halted in the midst of a strain and lifted his head, listening. Something like an echo of his own notes sounded very close, a mere shadow of a whistle.
Directly over his head was a window, unglazed and wooden barred. A fat brown olla, dripping moisture, almost filled the deep window sill, but the interior was all in shadow. Its one door was closed. The Vijil family was scattered around in the open, most of them under the ramada, and after a frowning moment of mystification the young fellow resumed his task, but in silence.
Then, after a still minute, more than the whisper of a whistle came to him –– the subdued sweet call of a meadow lark. It was so sweet it might have been mate to any he had heard on the range that morning.
Only an instant he hesitated, then with equal care he gave the duplicate call, and held his breath to listen –– not a sound came back.
“We’ve gone loco, Pardner,” he observed to the smutty-faced roan moving near him. “That jolt from the bay outlaw this morning has jingled my brain pans –– we don’t hear birds call us –– we only think we do.”
If he had even looked at Pardner he might have been given a sign, for the roan had lifted its head and was staring into the shadows back of the sweating olla.
“Hi, you caballero!”
The words were too clear to be mistaken, the “caballero” stared across to the only people in sight. There was Pedro Vijil sharpening an axe, while Merced, his wife, turned the creaking grindstone for him. The young olive branches of the Vijil family were having fun with a horned toad under the ramada where gourd vines twisted about an ancient grape, and red peppers hung in a gorgeous splash of color. Between that and the blue haze of the far mountains there was no sign of humanity to account for such cheery youthful Americanism as the tone suggested.
“Hi, yourself!” he retorted, “whose ghost are you?”
There was a giggle from the barred window of the adobe.
“I don’t dare say because I am not respectable just now,” replied the voice. “I fell in the ditch and have nothing on but the Sunday shirt of Pedro. I am the funniest looking thing! wish I dared ride home in it to shock them all silly.”
“Why not?” he asked, and again the girlish laugh gave him an odd thrill of comradeship.
“A good enough reason; they’d take Pat from me, and say he wasn’t safe to ride –– but he is! My tumble was my own fault for letting them put on that fool English saddle. Never again for me!”
“They are all right for old folks and a pacing pony,” he observed, and again he heard the bubbling laugh.
“Well, Pat is not a pacing pony, not by a long shot; and I’m not old folks –– yet!” Then after a little silence, “Haven’t you any curiosity?”
“I reckon there’s none allowed me on this count,” he replied without lifting his head, “between the wooden bars and Pedro’s shirt you certainly put the fences up on me.”
“I’m a damsel in distress waiting for a rescuing knight with a white banner and a milk-white steed –– ” went on the laughing voice in stilted declamation.
“Sorry, friend, but my cayuse is a roan, and I never carried a white flag yet. You pick the wrong colors.”
Whereupon he began the chanting of a war song, with an eye stealthily on the barred window.
Hurrah! Hurrah! For southern rights, hurrah!
Hurrah for the bonnie blue flag
That bears the single star!
“Oh! I know that!” the voice was now a hail of recognition. “Cap Pike always sings that when he’s a little ‘how-came-ye-so’ –– and you’re a Johnny Reb!”
“Um! twice removed,” assented the man by the wall, “and you are a raiding Yank who has been landed in one of our fortresses with only one shirt to her back, and that one borrowed.”
He had a momentary vision of two laughing gray eyes beside the olla, and the girl behind the bars laughed until Merced let the grindstone halt while she cast a glance towards the house as if in doubt as to whether three feet of adobe wall and stout bars could serve instead of a dueña to foolish young Americans who chattered according to their foolishness.
There was an interval of silence, and then the girlish voice called again.
“Hi, Johnny Reb!”
“Same to you, Miss Yank.”
“Aren’t you the new Americano from California, for the La Partida rancho?”
“Even so, O wise one of the borrowed garment.” The laugh came to him again.
“Why don’t you ask how I know?” she demanded.
“It is borne in upon me that you are a witch of the desert, or the ghost of a dream, that you see through the adobe wall, and my equally thick skull. Far be it for me to doubt that the gift of second sight is yours, O seventh daughter of a seventh daughter!”
“No such thing! I’m the only one!” came the quick retort, and the young chap in the shade of the adobe shook with silent mirth.
“I see you laughing, Mr. Johnny Reb, you think you caught me that time. But you just halt and listen to me, I’ve a hunch and I’m going to prophesy.”
“I knew you had the gift of second sight!”
“Maybe you won’t believe me, but the hunch is that you –– won’t –– hold –– the job on these ranches!”
“What!” and he turned square around facing the window, then laughed. “That’s the way you mean to get even for the ‘seventh daughter’ guess is it? You think I can’t handle horses?”
“Nix,” was the inelegant reply, “I know you can, for I saw you handle that bay outlaw they ran in on you this morning: seven years old and no wrangler in Pima could ride him. Old Cap Pike said it was a damn shame to put you up against that sun-fisher as an introduction to Granados.”
“Oh! Pike did, did he? Nice and sympathetic of Pike. I reckon he’s the old-time ranger I heard about out at the Junction, reading a red-fire riot to some native sons who were not keen for the cactus trail of the Villistas. That old captain must be a live wire, but he thinks I can’t stick?”
“No-o, that wasn’t Cap Pike, that was my own hunch. Say, are you married?”
“O señorita! this is so sudden!” he spoke in shy reproof, twisting his neckerchief in mock embarrassment, and again Merced looked toward the house because of peals of laughter there.
“You are certainly funny when you do that,” she said after her laughter had quieted down to giggles, “but I wasn’t joking, honest Indian I wasn’t! But how did you come to strike Granados?”
“Me? Well, I ranged over from California to sell a patch of ground I owned in Yuma. Then I hiked over to Nogales on a little pasear and offered to pack a gun and wear a uniform for this Mexican squabble, and the powers that be turned me down because one of my eyes could see farther than the other –– that’s no joke –– it’s a calamity! I spent all the dinero I had recovering from the shock, and about the time I was getting my sympathetic friends sobered up, Singleton, of Granados, saw us trying out some raw cavalry stock, and bid for my valuable services and I rode over. Any other little detail you’d like to know?”
“N-no, only needed to know it wasn’t Conrad the manager hired you, and I asked if you were married because married men need the work more than single strays. Adolf Conrad got rid of two good American men lately, and fetches over Mexicans from away down Hermosillo way.”
“’Cause why?” asked the man who had ceased pretense of mending the saddle, and was standing with back against the adobe.
“’Cause I don’t know,” came petulant response. “I only had the hunch when I saw you tame that outlaw in the corral. If he pulls wires to lose you, I’ll stop guessing; I’ll know!”
“Very interesting, señorita,” agreed the stranger reflectively. “But if I have a good job, I can’t see how it will give me aid or comfort to know that you’ve acquired knowledge, and stopped guessing. When’s your time up behind the bars?”
“Whenever my clothes get dry enough to fool the dear home folks.”
“You must be a joy to the bosom of your family,” he observed, “also a blessing.”
He heard again the girlish laughter and concluded she could not be over sixteen. There was silence for a space while only the creak of the grindstone cut the stillness. Whoever she was, she had given him a brief illuminating vision of the tactics of Conrad, the manager for the ranches of Granados and La Partida, the latter being the Sonora end of the old Spanish land grant. Even a girl had noted that the rough work had been turned over to a new American from the first circle of the rodeo. He stood there staring out across the sage green to the far purple hills of the Green Springs range.
“You’ve fixed that cinch, what you waiting for?” asked the voice at last, and the young fellow straightened up and lifted the saddle.
“That’s so,” he acknowledged. “But as you whistled to me and the call seemed friendly, it was up to me to halt for orders –– from the lady in distress.”
Again he heard the soft laughter and the voice.
“Glad you liked the friendly call, Johnny Reb,” she confessed. “That’s my call. If ever you hear it where there are no larks, you’ll know who it is.”
“Sure,” he agreed, yanking at the cinch, “and I’ll come a lopin’ with the bonnie blue flag, to give aid and succor to the enemy.”
“You will not!” she retorted. “You’ll just whistle back friendly, and be chums. I think my clothes are dry now, and you’d better travel. If you meet anyone looking for a stray maverick, you haven’t seen me.”
“Just as you say. Adios!”
After he had mounted and passed along the corral to the road, he turned in the saddle and looked back. He could see no one in the window of the bars, but there came to him clear and sweet the field bugle of the meadow lark.
He answered it, lifted his sombrero and rode soberly towards the Granados corrals, three miles across the valley. Queer little trick she must be. American girls did not usually ride abroad alone along the border, and certainly did not chum with the Mexicans to the extent of borrowing shirts. Then as he lifted the bridle and Pardner broke into a lope, he noted an elderly horseman jogging along across trail on a little mule. Each eyed the other appraisingly.
“Hello, Bub!” hailed the older man. “My name’s Pike, and you’re the new man from California, hey? Glad to meet you. Hear your name’s Rhodes.”
“I reckon you heard right,” agreed the young chap. “K. Rhodes at your service, sir.”
“Hello! K? K? Does that K stand for Kit?”
“Center shot for you,” assented the other.
“From Tennessee?”
“Now you’re a sort of family historian, I reckon, Mr. Pike,” suggested K. Rhodes. “What’s the excitement?”
“Why you young plantation stray!” and the older man reached for his hand and made use of it pump-handle fashion with a sort of sputtering glee. “Great guns, boy! there was just one K. Rhodes a-top of God’s green earth and we were pardners here in Crook’s day. Hurrah for us! Are you cousin, son, or nephew?”
“My grandfather was with Crook.”
“Sure! I knew it soon as I laid eyes on you and heard your name; that was in the corral with the outlaw Conrad had driven in for you to work, it wa’n’t a square deal to a white man. I was cussin’ mad.”
“So I heard,” and the blue eyes of the other smiled at the memory of the girl’s glib repetition of his discourse. “What’s the great idea? Aside from the fact that he belongs to the white dove, anti-military bunch of sisters, Singleton seems quite white, a nice chap.”
“Yeh, but he’s noways wise at that. He sort of married into the horse game here, wasn’t bred to it. Just knows enough to not try to run it solo. Now this Dolf Conrad does know horses and the horse market, and Granados rancho. He’s shipped more cavalry stock to France than any other outfit in this region. Yes, Conrad knows the business end of the game, but even at that he might not assay as high grade ore. He is mixed up with them too-proud-to-fight clique organized by old maids of both sexes, and to show that he is above all prejudice, political or otherwise, he sure is corraling an extra lot of Mex help this year. I’ve companeros I’d go through hell for, but Conrad’s breed –– well, enough said, Bub, but they’re different!” Mr. Pike bit off a chew of black plug, and shook his head ruminatively.
Rhodes looked the old man over as they rode along side by side. He was lean, wiry and probably sixty-five. His hair, worn long, gave him the look of the old-time ranger. He carried no reata and did not look like a ranchman. He had the southern intonation, and his eyes were wonderfully young for the almost snowy hair.
“Belong in the valley, Captain?”
“Belong? Me belong anywhere? Not yet, son,” and he smiled at his own fancy. “Not but what it’s a good enough corner when a man reaches the settlin’ down age. I drift back every so often. This ranch was Fred Bernard’s, and him and me flocked together for quite a spell. Singleton married Bernard’s widow –– she’s dead now these seven years. I just drift back every so often to keep track of Bernard’s kid, Billie.”
“I see. Glad to have met you, Captain. Hope we can ride together often enough for me to hear about the old Apache days. This land has fetched out three generations of us, so it surely has some pull! My father came at the end of his race, but I’ve come in time to grow up with the country.”
Captain Pike looked at him and chuckled. K. Rhodes was about twenty-three, tall, almost boyish in figure, but his shoulders and hands suggested strength, and his mouth had little dents of humor at the corners to mitigate the squareness of jaw and the heavy dark brows. His black lashes made the deep blue of his eyes look purple. Young he was, but with a stature and self-reliant manner as witness of the fact that he was fairly grown up already.
“Where’d you learn horses, Bub?”
“Tennessee stock farm, and southern California ranges. Then this neck of the woods seemed calling me, and I trailed over to look after a bit of land in Yuma. I wasted some time trying to break into the army, but they found some eye defect that I don’t know anything about –– and don’t more than half believe! I had some dandy prospecting plans after that, but there was no jingling in my pockets –– no outfit money, so I hailed Singleton as an angel monoplaned down with the ducats. Yes sir, I had all the dream survey made for a try at some gold trails down here, going to take it up where the rest of the family quit.”
“You mean that, boy?” The old man halted his mule, and spat out the tobacco, staring at Rhodes in eager anticipation.
“I sure do. Reckon I’ve inherited the fever, and can’t settle down to any other thing until I’ve had one try at it. Did do a little placer working in the San Jacinto.”
“And you’re broke?” Mr. Pike’s voice betrayed a keen joy in the prospect.
“Flat,” stated K. Rhodes, eyeing the old gentleman suspiciously, “my horse, saddle, field glass, and gun are the only belongings in sight.”
“Ki-yi!” chirruped his new acquaintance gleefully, “I knew when I got out of the blankets this morning I was to have good luck of some sort, had a ‘hunch.’ You can bet on me, Bub; you’ve struck the right rail, and I’m your friend, your desert companero!”
“Yes, you sound real nice and friendly,” agreed K. Rhodes. “So glad I’m flat broke that you’re having hysterics over it. Typical southern hospitality. Hearty welcome to our city, and so forth, and so forth!”
The old man grinned at him appreciatively. “Lord boy! –– I reckon I’ve been waiting around for you about ten year, though I didn’t know what your name would be when you come, and it couldn’t be a better one! We’ll outfit first for the Three Hills of Gold in the desert, and if luck is against us there we’ll strike down into Sonora to have a try after the red gold of El Alisal. I’ve covered some of that ground, but never had a pardner who would stick. They’d beat it because of either the Mexicans or the Indians, but you –– say boy! It’s the greatest game in the world and we’ll go to it!”
His young eyes sparkled in his weathered desert face, and more than ten years were cast aside in his enthusiasm. K. Rhodes looked at him askance.
“If I did not have a key to your sane and calm outlining of prospects for the future, I might suspect loco weed or some other dope,” he observed. “But the fact is you must have known that my grandfather in his day went on the trail of the Three Hills of Gold, and left about a dozen different plans on paper for future trips.”
“Know it? Why boy, I went in with him!” shrilled Captain Pike. “Know it? Why, we crawled out half starved, and dried out as a couple of last year’s gourds. We dug roots and were chewing our own boot tops when the Indians found us. Sure, I know it. He went East to raise money for a bigger outfit, but never got back –– died there.”
“Yes, then my father gathered up all the plans and specifications and came out with a friend about fifteen years ago,” added Rhodes. “They never got anywhere, but he sort of worked the fever off, bought some land and hit the trail back home. So I’ve been fairly well fed up on your sort of dope, Captain, and when I’ve mended that gone feeling in my pocketbook I may ‘call’ you on the gold trail proposition. Even if you’re bluffing there’ll be no come back; I can listen to a lot of ‘lost mine’ vagaries. It sounds like home sweet home to me!”
“Bluff nothing! we’ll start next week.”
“No we won’t, I’ve got a job and made a promise, got to help clean up the work here for the winter. Promised to take the next load of horses East.”
“That’s a new one,” observed his new friend. “Conrad himself has always gone East with the horses, or sent Brehmen, his secretary. But never mind, Bub, the eastern trip won’t take long. I’ll be devilin’ around getting our outfit and when the chance comes –– us for the Three Hills of Gold!”
“It listens well,” agreed K. Rhodes, “cheeriest little pasear I’ve struck in the county. We’ll have some great old powwows, even if we don’t make a cent, and some day you’ll tell me about the mental kinks in the makeup of our Prussian friend, Conrad. He sounds interesting to me.”
Captain Pike uttered a profane and lurid word or two concerning Mr. Conrad, and stated he’d be glad when Billie was of age. Singleton, and therefore Conrad, would only have the management up to that time. Billie would know horses if nothing else, and –– Then he interrupted himself and stared back the way he had come.
“I’m a forgetful old fool!” he stated with conviction. “I meandered out to take a look around for her, and I didn’t like the looks of that little dab of a saddle Conrad had put on Pat. You didn’t see anything of her, did you?”
“What does she look like?”
“A slip of a girl who rides like an Indian, rides a black horse.”
“No, I’ve seen no one,” said the young chap truthfully enough. “But who did you say your girl was?”
“You’ll find out if you hold your job long enough for her to be of age,” said Pike darkly. “She’ll be your boss instead of Conrad. It’s Billie Bernard, the owner of Granados and La Partida.”
“Billie?”
“Miss Wilfreda, if you like it better.”
But K. Rhodes said he didn’t. Billie seemed to fit the sort of girl who would garb herself in Pedro’s shirt and whistle at him through the bars of the little window.
It took less than a week for Kit Rhodes to conclude that the girl behind the bars had a true inspiration regarding his own position on her ranches. There was no open hostility to him, yet it was evident that difficulties were cleverly put in his way.
Not by Philip Singleton, the colorless, kindly disposed gentleman of Pike’s description. But by various intangible methods, he was made to feel an outsider by the manager, Conrad, and his more confidential Mexican assistants. They were punctiliously polite, too polite for a horse-ranch outfit. Yet again and again a group of them fell silent when he joined them, and as his work was with the horse herds of La Partida, that part of the great grant which spread over the border into Sonora, he was often camped fifty miles south of the hacienda of Granados, and saw no more of either the old prospector, or the tantalizing girl of the voice and the whistle.
Conrad, however, motored down two or three times concerning horses for eastern shipment, but Rhodes, the new range capitan, puzzled considerably over those flying visits, for, after the long drive through sand and alkali, the attention he gave either herds or outfit was negligible. In fact he scarcely touched at the camp, yet always did some trifling official act coming or going to make record that he had been there.
The Mexicans called him El Aoura, the buzzard, because no man could tell when he would swoop over even the farthest range of La Partida to catch them napping. Yet there was some sort of curious bond between them for there were times when Conrad came north as from a long southern trail, yet the Mexicans were as dumb men if it was referred to.
He was a compactly built, fair man of less than forty, with thin reddish brown hair, brows slanting downward from the base of the nose, and a profile of that curious Teuton type reminiscent of a supercilious hound if one could imagine such an animal with milk-blue eyes and a yellow mustache with spiky turned-up ends.
But Rhodes did not permit any antipathy he might feel towards the man to interfere with his own duties, and he went stolidly about the range work as if in utter forgetfulness of the dark prophecy of the girl.
If he was to lose his new job he did not mean that it should be from inattention, and nothing was too trifling for his notice. He would do the work of a range boss twelve hours out of the day, and then put in extra time on a night ride to the cantina at the south wells of La Partida.
But as the work moved north and the consignment of horses for France made practically complete, old Cap Pike rode down to Granados corrals, and after contemplation of the various activities of Rhodes, climbed up on the corral fence beside him, where the latter was checking off the accepted animals.
“You’re a cheerful idiot for work, Bub,” agreed the old man, “but what the devil do you gain by doing so much of the other fellow’s job? Pancho Martinez wasn’t sick as he played off on you; you’re green to these Mexican tricks.”
“Sure, I’m the original Green from Greenburg,” assented his new companero. “Pancho was only more than usually drunk last night, while I was fresh as a daisy and eager to enlarge my geographic knowledge, also my linguistics, Hi! Pedro! not the sorrel mare! Cut her out!”
“Linguistics?” repeated Pike impatiently.
“Yeh, nice little woman in the cantina at La Partida wells. I am a willing pupil at Spanish love songs, and we get along fine. I am already a howling success at La Paloma, La Golondrina, and a few other sentimental birds.”
“Oh, you are, are you?” queried Pike. “Well, take a warning. You’ll get a knife in your back from her man one of these fine nights, and the song will be Adios, adios amores for you!”
“Nothing doing, Cap! We play malilla for the drinks, and I work it so that he beats me two out of three. I’m so easy I’m not worth watching. Women don’t fancy fools, so I’m safe.”
“Well, I’ll be ‘strafed’ by the Dutch!” Pike stared at the young fellow, frowning in perplexity. “You sure have me puzzled, Bub. Are you a hopeless dunce by training or nature?”
“Natural product,” grinned K. Rhodes cheerfully. “Beauty unadorned. Say Cap, tell me something. What is the attraction for friend Conrad south of La Partida? I seem to run against a stone wall when I try to feel out the natives on that point. Now just what lies south, and whose territory?”
The old man looked at him with a new keenness.
“For your sort of an idiot you’ve blundered on a big interrogation point,” he observed. “Did you meet him down there?”
“No, only heard his voice in the night. It’s not very easy to mistake that velvety blood-puddin’ voice of his, and a team went down to meet him. He seems to go down by another route, railroad I reckon, and comes in by the south ranch. Now just what is south?”
“The ranches of Soledad grant join La Partida, or aim to. There are no maps, and no one here knows how far down over the border the Partida leagues do reach. Soledad was an old mission site, and a fortified hacienda back in the days of Juarez. Its owner was convicted of treason during Diaz’ reign, executed, and the ranches confiscated. It is now in the hands of a Federal politician who is safer in Hermosillo. The revolutionists are thick even among the pacificos up here, but the Federals have the most ammunition, and the gods of war are with the guns.”
“Sure; and who is the Federal politician? No, not that colt, Marcito!”
“Perez, Don José Perez,” stated Pike, giving no heed to corral interpolations. “He claims more leagues than have ever been reckoned or surveyed, took in several Indian rancherias last year when the natives were rounded up and shipped to Yucatan.”
“What?”
“Oh, he is in that slave trade good and plenty! They say he is sore on the Yaquis because he lost a lot of money on a boat load that committed suicide as they were sailing from Guaymas.”
“A boat load of suicides! Now a couple of dozen would sound reasonable, but a boat load –– –”
“But it happened to every Indian on the boat, and the boat was full! No one knows how the poor devils decided it, but it was their only escape from slavery, and they went over the side like a school of fish. Men, women, and children from the desert who couldn’t swim a stroke! Talk about nerve –– there wasn’t one weakling in that whole outfit, not one! Perez was wild. It lost him sixty dollars a head, American.”
“And that’s the neighbor friend Conrad takes a run down south to see occasionally?”
“Who says so, Bub?”
The two looked at each other, eyes questioning.
“Look here, son,” said Pike, after a little, “I’ll hit any trail with you barring Mexican politics. They all sell each other out as regular as the seasons swing around, and the man north of the line who gets tangled is sure to be victim if he stays in long enough.”
“Oh, I don’t know! We have a statesman or two who flirted with Sonora and came out ahead.”
“I said if he stayed in,” reminded Pike. “Sure we have crooks galore who drift across, play a cut-throat game and skip back to cover. The border is lined with them on both sides. And Conrad –– –”
“But Conrad isn’t in politics.”
“N-no. There’s no evidence that he is, but his Mexican friends are. There are men on the Granados now who used to be down on Soledad, and they are the men who make the trips with him to the lower ranch.”
“Tomas Herrara and Chico Domingo?”
“I reckon you’ve sized them up, but remember, Kit, I don’t cross over with you for any political game, and I don’t know a thing!”
“All right, Captain, but don’t raise too loud a howl if I fancy a pasear occasionally to improve my Spanish.”
The old man grumbled direful and profane prophecies as to things likely to happen to students of Spanish love songs in Sonora, and then sat with his head on one side studying Kit ruminatively as he made his notes of the selected stock.
“Ye know Bub, it mightn’t be so bad at that, if you called a halt in time, for one of the lost mine trails calls for Spanish and plenty of it. I’ve got a working knowledge, but the farther you travel into Sonora the less American you will hear, and that lost mine of the old padres is down there along the ranges of Soledad somewhere.”
“Which one of the fifty-seven varieties have you elected to uncover first?” queried Rhodes. “The last time you were confidential about mines I thought the ‘Three Hills of Gold’ were mentioned by you.”
“Sure it was, but since you are on the Sonora end of the ranch, and since you are picking up your ears to learn Sonoran trails, it might be a good time to follow your luck. Say, I’ll bet that every herder who drifts into the cantina at La Partida has heard of the red gold of El Alisal. The Yaquis used to know where it was before so many of them were killed off; reckon it’s lost good and plenty now, but nothing is hid forever and it’s waiting there for some man with the luck.”
“We’re willing,” grinned Kit. “You are a great little old dreamer, Captain. And there is a fair chance I may range down there. I met a chap named Whitely from over toward the Painted Hills north of Altar. Ranch manager, sort of friendly.”
“Sure, Tom Whitely has some stock in a ranch over there –– the Mesa Blanca ranch –– it joins Soledad on the west. I’ve always aimed to range that way, but the lost mine is closer than the eastern sierras –– must be! The trail of the early padres was farther east, and the mine could not well be far from the trail, not more than a day’s journey by mule or burro, and that’s about twenty miles. You see Bub, it was found by a padre who wandered off the trail on the way to a little branch mission, or visita, as they call it, and it was where trees grew, for a big alisal tree –– sycamore you know –– was near the outcrop of that red gold. Well, that visita was where the padres only visited the heathen for baptism and such things; no church was built there! That’s what tangles the trail for anyone trying to find traces after a hundred years.”
“I reckon it would,” agreed Rhodes. “Think what a hundred years of cactus, sand, and occasional temblors can do to a desert, to say nothing of the playful zephyrs. Why, Cap, the winds could lift a good-sized range of hills and fill the baby rivers with it in that time, for the winds of the desert have a way with them!”
A boy rode out of the whirls of dust, and climbed up on the corral fence where Rhodes was finishing tally of the horses selected for shipment. He was the slender, handsome son of Tomas Herrara of whom they had been speaking.
“It is a letter,” he said, taking a folded paper from his hat. “The Señor Conrad is having the telegraph, and the cars are to be ready for Granados.”
“Right you are, Juanito,” agreed Rhodes. “Tell Señor Conrad I will reach Granados for supper, and that all the stock is in.”
The lad whirled away again, riding joyously north, and Rhodes, after giving final directions to the vaqueros, turned his roan in the same direction.
“Can’t ride back with you, Cap, for I’m taking a little pasear around past Herrara’s rancheria. I want to take a look at that bunch of colts and size up the water there. I’ve a hunch they had better be headed up the other valley to the Green Springs tank till rains come.”
Captain Pike jogged off alone after some audible and highly colored remarks concerning range bosses who assumed the power of the Almighty to be everywhere the same day. Yet as he watched the younger man disappear over the gray-green range he smiled tolerantly for, after all, that sort of a hustler was the right sort of partner for a prospecting trip.
The late afternoon was a golden haze under a metal blue sky; afar to the east, sharp edges of the mountains cut purple zig-zags into the salmon pink of the horizon. The rolling waves of the ranges were bathed in a sea of rest, and now and then a bird on the mesquite along an arroya, or resting on branch of flaring occotilla would give out the foreboding call of the long shadows, for the heart of the day had come and gone, and the cooler air was waking the hidden things from siesta.
Kit Rhodes kept the roan at a steady lope along the cattle trail, drinking in the refreshing sweetness of the lonely ranges after hours of dust and heat and the trampling horse herds of the corrals. Occasionally he broke into songs of the ranges, love songs, death laments, and curious sentimental ditties of love and wars of old England as still crooned in the cabins of southern mountains.
I had not long been married,
A happy, happy bride!
When a handsome trooper captain
Stepped up to our bedside,
“Rise up! rise up! young man,” he said,
“And go along with me,
In the low, low lands of Holland
To fight for liberty.”
The ancient song of the sad bride whose lover proved false in the “low, low lands of Holland” trailed lugubriously along the arroya in a totally irrelevant way, for the singer was not at all sad. He was gaily alert, keen-eyed and watchful, keeping time to the long lope with that dubious versification.
“And they’re at it again pretty close to the ‘low, low lands of Holland,’ Pardner,” he confided to the horse. “And when you and I make a stake you’ll go on pasture, I’ll hit the breeze for Canada or some other seaport, and get one whack at the Boche brown rat on my own if official America is too proud to fight, for
Oh-h! oh-h! Oh-h!
In the low, low lands of Holland,
My love was false to me!”
Then, after long stretches of sand dunes, mesquite thickets, occasional wide cañons where zacatan meadows rippled like waves of the sea in the desert air, he swung his horse around a low hill and came in sight of the little adobe of Herrara, a place of straggly enclosures of stakes and wattles, with the corral at the back.
Another rider came over the hill beyond the corral, on a black horse skimming the earth. Rhodes stared and whistled softly as the black without swerving planted its feet and slid down the declivity by the water tank, and then, jumping the fence below, sped to the little ramada before the adobe where its rider slid to the ground amid a deal of barking of dogs and scattering of children.
And although Kit had never seen the rider before, he had no difficulty as to recognition, and on a sudden impulse he whistled the meadow-lark call loudly enough to reach her ears.
She halted at the door, a bundle in her hand, and surveyed the landscape, but failed to see him because he at that moment was back of a clump of towering prickly pear. And she passed on into the shadows of the adobe.
“That’s the disadvantage of being too perfect, Pardner,” he confided to the roan, “she thinks we are a pair of birds.”
He turned at the corner of the corral and rode around it which took him back of the house and out of range from the door, but the dogs set up a ki-yi-ing, and a flock of youngsters scuttled to the corner of the adobe, and stared as children of the far ranges are prone to stare at the passing of a traveler from the longed-for highways of the world.
The barking of the dogs and scampering of the children evidently got on the nerves of the black horse left standing at the vine-covered ramada, for after a puppy had barked joyously at his heels he leaped aside, and once turned around kept on going, trotting around the corral after the roan.
Rhodes saw it but continued on his way, knowing he could pick it up on his return, as the Ojo Verde tank was less than a mile away. A boy under the ramada gave one quick look and then fled, a flash of brown and a red flapping end of a sash, up the cañoncita where the home spring was shadowed by a large mesquite tree.
At first Rhodes turned in the saddle with the idea of assisting in the catching of the black if that was the thing desired, but it evidently was not.
“Now what has that muchacho on his mind that he makes that sort of get-away after nothing and no pursuer in sight? Pardner, I reckon we’ll squander a valuable minute or two and gather in that black.”
He galloped back, caught the wanderer but kept right on without pause to the trickle of water under the flat wide-spreading tree –– it was a solitaire, being king of its own domain and the only shade, except the vine-covered ramada, for a mile.
The startled boy made a movement as if to run again as Kit rode up, then halted, fear and fateful resignation changing the childish face to sullenness.
“Buenas tardes, Narcisco.”
“Buenas tardes, señor,” gulped the boy.
“I turned back to catch the horse of the señorita for you,” observed Rhodes. “It is best you tie him when you lead him back, but first give him water. Thirst is perhaps the cause he is restless.”
“Yes señor,” agreed the lad. “At once I will do that.” But he held the horse and did not move from his tracks, and then Rhodes noticed that on the flat rock behind him was a grain sack thrown over something, a brown bottle had rolled a little below it, and the end of a hammer protruded from under the sacking.
Ordinarily Rhodes would have given no heed to any simple ranch utensils gathered under the shadow where work was more endurable, but the fear in the face of the boy fascinated him.
“Think I’ll give Pardner a drink while I am about it,” he decided, and dismounted carelessly. “Got a cup that I can take my share first?”
Narcisco had no cup, only shook his head and swallowed as if the attempt at words was beyond him.
“Well, there is a bottle if it is clean,” and Rhodes strode awkwardly towards it, but his spur caught in the loose mesh of the sacking, and in loosening it he twisted it off the rock.
Narcisco gasped audibly, and Rhodes laughed. He had uncovered a couple of dozen empty whiskey bottles, and a tin pan with some broken glass.
“What you trying to start up here in the cañon, Buddy?” he asked. “Playing saloon-keeper with only the gophers for customers?”
He selected a corked bottle evidently clean, rinsed and drank from it.
“Yes –– señor –– I am here playing –– that is all,” affirmed Narcisco. “At the house Tia Mariana puts us out because there is a new niño –– my mother and the new one sleep –– and there is no place to make a noise.”
“Oh,” commented Rhodes, “well, let the black have a little water, and lead him out of the way of mine. This gully isn’t wide enough to turn around in.”
Obediently the boy led the black to the sunken barrel catching seepage from the barrel under the drip. Rhodes tossed the sack back to the flat rock and noted an old canvas water bottle beside the heap, it was half full of something –– not water, for it was uncorked and the mouth of it a-glitter with shimmering particles like diamond dust, and the same powder was over a white spot on the rock –– the lad evidently was playing miller and pounding broken glass into a semblance of meal.
“Funny stunt, that!” he pondered, and, smiling, watched the frightened boy. “Herrara certainly is doing a bit of collecting vino to have a stock of bottles that size, and the poor kid’s nothing else to play with.”
He mounted and rode on, leaving Narcisco to lead the black to his mistress. He could not get out of his mind the fright in the eyes of the boy. Was Herrara a brute to his family, and had Narcisco taken to flight to hide his simple playthings under the mistaken idea that the horseman was his father returned early from the ranges?
That was the only solution Rhodes could find to the problem, though he milled it around in his mind quite a bit. Unless the boy was curiously weak-minded and frightened at the face of a stranger it was the only explanation he could find, yet the boys of Herrara had always struck him as rather bright. In fact Conrad had promoted Juanito to the position of special messenger; he could ride like the wind and never forget a word.
The shadows lengthened as he circled the little cañon of the Ojo Verde and noted the water dripping from the full tanks, ideal for the colt range for three months. He took note that Herrara was not neglecting anything, despite that collection of bottles. There was no wastage and the pipes connecting the tanks were in good condition.
He rode back, care free and content, through the fragrant valley. The cool air was following the lowering sun, and a thin mauve veil was drifting along the hills of mystery in the south; he sang as he rode and then checked the song to listen to the flutelike call of a lark. His lips curved in a smile as he heard it, and with it came the thought of the girl and the barred window of Vijil’s adobe.
She permeated the life of Granados just as the soft veil enwrapped the far hills, and she had seemed almost as far away if not so mysterious. Not once had he crossed her trail, and he heard she was no longer permitted to ride south of the line. The vaqueros commented on this variously according to their own point of view. Some of the Mexicans resented it, and in one way or another her name was mentioned whenever problems of the future were discussed. Singleton was regarded as temporary, and Conrad was a salaried business manager. But on a day to come, the señorita, as her mother’s daughter, would be their mistress, and the older men with families showed content at the thought.
Rhodes never could think of her as the chatelaine of those wide ranges. She was to him the “meadow-lark child” of jests and laughter, heard and remembered but not seen. She was the haunting music of youth meeting him at the gateway of a new land which is yet so old!
Some such vagrant thought drifted through his mind as the sweet calls of the drowsy birds cut the warm silence, now from some graceful palo verde along a barranca and again from the slender pedestal of an occotilla.
“Lucky you, for you get an answer!” he thought whimsically. “Amble along, Pardner, or the night witches get us!”
And then he circled a little at the north of the cañon, and the black horse, champing and fidgeting, was held there across the trail by its rider.
“We are seeing things in broad daylight, Pardner, and there ain’t no such animal,” decided Rhodes, but Pardner whinnied, and the girl threw up her hand.
“This time I am a highwayman, the far-famed terror of the ranges!” she called.
“Sure!” he conceded. “I’ve been thinking quite a while that your term must be about up.”
She laughed at that, and came alongside.
“Didn’t you suppose I might have my time shortened for good behavior?” she asked. “You never even ride our way to see.”
“Me? Why, child, I’m so busy absorbing kultur from your scientific manager that my spare moments for damsels in distress are none too plenty. You sent out nary a call, and how expect the lowest of your serfs to hang around?”
“Serf? That’s good!” she said skeptically. “And say, you must love Conrad about as much as Cap Pike does.”
“And that?”
“Is like a rattlesnake.”
“Don’t know that rattlesnake would be my first choice of comparison,” remarked Rhodes. “Back in Tennessee we have a variety beside which the rattlesnake is a gentleman; a rattlesnake does his best to give warning of intention, but the copperhead never does.”
“Copperhead! that’s funny, for you know Conrad’s hair is just about the color of copper, dusty copper, faded copper –– copper with tin filings sifted through.”
“Don’t strain yourself,” laughed Rhodes. “That beautiful blondness makes him mighty attractive to our Mexican cousins.”
“They can have my share,” decided the girl. “I could worry along without him quite awhile. He manages to get rid of all the likeable range men muy pronto.”
Rhodes laughed until she stared at him frowningly, and then the delicious color swept over her face.
“Oh, you!” she said, and Rhodes thought of sweet peas, and pink roses in old southern gardens as her lips strove to be straight, yet curved deliciously. No one had mentioned to him how pretty she was; he had thought of her as a browned tom-boy, but instead she was a shell-pink bud on a slender stem, and wonder of wonders –– she rode a side-saddle in Arizona!
She noticed him looking at it.
“Are you going to laugh at that, too?” she demanded.
“Why no, it hadn’t occurred to me. It sort of looks like home to me –– our southern girls use them.”
She turned to him with a quick birdlike movement, her gray eyes softened and trusting.
“It was my mother’s saddle, a wedding present from the vaqueros of our ranches when she married my father. I am only beginning to use it, and not so sure of myself as with the one I learned on.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he observed. “You certainly looked sure when you jumped that fence at Herrara’s.”
She glanced at him quickly, curious, and then smiling.
“And it was you, not the meadow lark! You are too clever!”
“And you didn’t answer, just turned your back on the lonely ranger,” he stated dolefully, but she laughed.
“This doesn’t look it, waiting to go home with you,” she retorted. “Cap Pike has been telling me about you until I feel as if I had known you forever. He says you are his family now, so of course that makes Granados different for you.”
“Why, yes. I’ve been in sight of Granados as much as twice since I struck this neck of the woods. Your manager seems to think my valuable services are indispensable at the southern side of this little world.”
“So that’s the reason? I didn’t know,” she said slowly. “One would have to be a seventh son of a seventh son to understand his queer ways. But you are going along home today, for I am a damsel in distress and need to be escorted.”
“You don’t look distressed, and I’ve an idea you could run away from your escort if you took a notion,” he returned. “But it is my lucky day that I had a hunch for this cañon trail and the Green Springs, and I am happy to tag along.”
They had reached Herrara’s corral and Rhodes glanced up the little gulch to the well. The flat rock there was stripped of the odd collection, and Narcisco stood at the corner of the adobe watching them somberly.
“Buenos tardes!” called the girl. “Take care of the niño as the very treasure of your heart!”
“Sure!” agreed the lad, “Adios, señorita.”
“Why the special guard over the treasure?” asked Rhodes as their horses fell into the long easy lope side by side. “The house seems full and running over, and niñitas to spare.”
“There are never any to spare,” she reminded him, “and this one is doubly precious for it is named for me –– together its saint and its two grandmothers! Benicia promised me long ago that whether it was a boy or a girl it would be Billie Bernard Herrara. I was just taking the extra clothes I had Tia Luz make for him –– and he is a little black-eyed darling! Soon as he is weaned I’m going to adopt him; I always did want a piccaninny for my own.”