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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/44691-0.txt b/44691-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..125f252 --- /dev/null +++ b/44691-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6492 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44691 *** + +DUST OF THE DESERT + + + + +Dust of the Desert + +BY ROBERT WELLES RITCHIE + + +[Illustration] + + + A. L. BURT COMPANY + Publishers New York + + +Published by arrangement with Dodd, Mead & Company + +Printed in U. S. A. + + + + + COPYRIGHT, 1922, + BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC. + + PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY + [Transcriber’s Note: printer’s information was not supplied in the + source text.] + + + + +CONTENTS + + + CHAPTER PAGE + PROLOGUE 1 + I WHAT HAPPENED ON THE LIMITED 17 + II A GIRL NAMED BENICIA 25 + III DOC STOODER 36 + IV COLONEL URGO REPAYS 51 + V THE GARDEN OF SOLITUDE 65 + VI JUSTICE 76 + VII THE CHAIN GANG 85 + VIII THE HEART OF BENICIA 98 + IX GOLD AND PEARLS 108 + X AT THE CASA O’DONOJU 112 + XI THE MARK OF EL ROJO 129 + XII DESERT SECRETS 145 + XIII CROSSCURRENTS 159 + XIV REVELATION 168 + XV WHAT HAPPENED IN THE NIGHT 178 + XVI ACCUSATION 184 + XVII THE ORDEAL 195 + XVIII THE DESERT INTERVENES 211 + XIX THIRST 219 + XX THE COMING OF EL DOCTOR 232 + XXI TREASURE QUEST 247 + XXII ALTAR TAKES ITS TOLL 257 + XXIII INTO THE FURNACE 266 + XXIV STORM 279 + XXV TREASURE TROVE 293 + + + + +DUST OF THE DESERT + + + + +PROLOGUE + + +Roads of men thread the world. They thunder with a life flood. They +are vibrant with a pulse of affairs. By land and water and air they +link to-day to to-morrow. But El Camino de los Muertos (the Road of +the Dead Men) is a dim highway leading nowhere but back and back to +forgotten yesterdays. Its faint sign-posts once were vivid in lettering +of tears and blood. Its stages were measured by the sum of all human +hardihood. Faith, valour, reckless adventuring, thirst for gold, love +o’ women--these the links in the measuring chain that marked its course +through a dead land. And black crosses formed of lava stones laid down +in the sand; these abide over all the length of the Road of the Dead +Men from Caborca to Yuma to cry to the white-hot sky of slain hopes and +faith betrayed in those buried years gone. + +The priest-adventurers of New Spain first blazed this trail through +an unknown wilderness. Restless pioneers of the Society of Jesus and +the Order of St. Francis, men with the zeal to dare, pushed out from +the northernmost limits of the Spanish settlements in a new world with +their soldier guards and their Indian guides. They fought death in +a land of thirst northward, ever northward. The cross fell from the +hands of spent zealots at some waterhole where water was not, and other +hands followed to snatch up the sacred emblem and push it deeper into +Papagueria. North and west through El Infiernillo to the red waters of +the Colorado where the Yumas had their reed huts. Thence on to the west +through a land that stank of death until at last the end of the trail +was smothered in the soft green of Californian valleys--good ground for +the seed of Faith. + +The overland trail of the padres became the single trail from Mexico +to gold when the madness of ’49 called to all peoples. Then the Road +of the Dead Men took its toll by the score and doublescore. Then men +fought for precious water at Tinajas Altas; many crosses of malapais +mark the sands there. Bandits lurked at Tule Wells, ninety miles over +blistering desert from the nearest water, to shoot men for the gold +they were bringing back from California. The Pock-Marked Woman, mad +with thirst--so runs the legend--walked at nights with the Virgin in +the flats beyond Pitiquito and found water with celestial candles +burning all about the pool. + +So passed the wraiths of the gold madness. A railroad was laid down +from the Pacific eastward across the desert. What once was called +Papagueria had come to be known as Sonora, in Mexico, and Arizona in +the Republic of the North. The Road of the Dead Men at its California +end became a way through green and watered valleys where bungalows +mushroom overnight; along its course in southwestern Arizona and +northern Sonora it lapsed to a faint trail from waterhole to waterhole +of a heat scourged desert. To-day this forgotten remnant of a high +road of adventure and hot romance exists a streak in an incandescent +inferno of sand and lava slag, wherein death is the omnipresent fact. +Occasionally a prospector putters along its dreary stretches, chipping +at ledge and rimrock. A Papago or a Cocopa creeps over caliche-stained +flats with baskets of salt from the Pinacate marshes near the Gulf. + +That is all. The Dead Men hold their road inviolable. It is dust of the +desert. + +That is all, did I say? No, the spirit of romance and the shape of +illusion have not completely passed from El Camino de los Muertos. +Remains that tale which carries itself over a span of a century and +a half, linking lives of the present to lives of men and women whose +very graves long since have passed from sight of folk. A tale strangely +like the desert trail along whose course its episodes of hot passion +and swift action befell; for its beginnings are laid in a mirage of an +elder day which we of the present can see but dimly, and its ending +is beyond the horizon of to-day. Would you know the full story of the +Lost Mission de los Cuatros Evangelistas: how the baleful spell of its +green pearls of the Virgin worked upon the fortunes of the House of +O’Donoju and how the last of that house wrought expiation for the sin +of a forbear through heroism and the fire of a great love--would you +know the full story, I say, you must see with me the substance of a +beginning. + +No more can one plump into the middle of this the last of the romance +tales of the Road of the Dead Men than could one drop onto the Road +itself midway of its length. + + * * * * * + +A King in Spain once followed a practice of careless munificence. +Whenever one of his generals in the great wars appeared worthy of +reward His Majesty used to ink the ball of his thumb and with a grand +and free gesture he would make a print somewhere on the map of Mexico, +then called New Spain. Then the lucky general, taking this patent of +royal favor across the seas with him, would hire surveyors to translate +the print of Philip’s thumb into terms of square miles of domain. These +square miles were his and his heirs’ to govern like little kings, with +justice in their hands, the Church to give them countenance and Indians +by the hundreds to serve them under a modified code of slavery. No +man has lived since as did those magnificent possessors of Philip’s +thumbprints. + +The Rancho del Refugio in the little known reaches of Papagueria was +one of these fiefs of the king. Michael O’Donohue, a wild man of the +red Irish who had fought English kings and queens under the banner of +Spain, had come by the grant originally and had taken a lady of Granada +to the new world to bear him heirs worthy of their inheritance. Michael +O’Donohue became Don Miguel O’Donoju, lord of a desert principality and +a power at the Viceroy’s court in the City of Mexico. He established +two rigid precedents to be followed by the house of O’Donoju: pride of +race and jealous conservation of the family principality. It became +a rule of the O’Donoju that none of the clan marry outside the pure +Castilian blood--Irish excepted if Irish could be found; and a rule +that, come what might, no O’Donoju pass title to so much as a foot of +the Rancho del Refugio. + +It was a day in April, the year 1780, that the clan O’Donoju came +to the Mission of the Four Evangelists to lend the dignity of their +presence to the solemn service of re-dedication. More than that, Don +Padraic O’Donoju, venerable head of the house and master of the Casa +O’Donoju in the oasis named the Garden of Solitude, was come to witness +a personal triumph. For it had been his money that had gone to the +Franciscan College to be used in the rebuilding of the frontier post of +God after the Apaches had raided and burned it fifty years before. And +one of his own sons, Padre Felice, had been the architect and builder +of the restored mission and was to continue the priest in charge. Padre +Felice was fourth in a line of O’Donojus to take orders, one from each +generation since the establishment of the grant. + +The O’Donojus--grandchildren, cousins and kin by marriage--had ridden +five days and upwards from various sections of the Rancho del Refugio, +up and out through the Altar desert to this remote sanctuary of God in +the country of the Sand People. They came by the way called the Road of +the Dead Men. Its asperities were softened by the quick desert spring +which tipped each thorny cactus cone with candelabra tufts of golden +and carmine flowers. The desert’s usual heat was tempered by the snows +that lay in unnamed mountains to the north. + +They came in a lengthy caravan of horses and burros, with half naked +Indians to herd the goats and the yearling steers that were to be +barbecued for the secular feast to follow the religious rites; with a +half-company of foot soldiers from the Presidio del Refugio to guard +the company against roving Apaches; Indian maids on mule back to serve +the needs of their mistresses, regally mounted on ponies of the Cortez +strain; baggage porters, cooks, roustabouts. Fully a hundred of the +clan O’Donoju and satellites on pilgrimage over the Road of the Dead +Men. + +All of the O’Donoju were there but one, El Rojo--the Red One. The “Red +One” was he because of the throw-back to the red Irish strain of his +fighting ancestor Don Miguel. Red with the pugnacious red of Donegal +was his hair; his cheeks had none of the sallow tan of the Spanish +but were dyed with the stain of Irish bog winds; his eyes were blue +lamps of the devil. A fatherless grandson of old Don Padraic, El Rojo +had played the wild youth in the City of Mexico with only occasional +visits of penance to the Casa O’Donoju in the desert country of the +north until, when the tang of youth still was his, he had tainted his +name with scandal. Followed his formal expulsion from the clan at the +hands of the old aristocrat, his grandfather, and the closing of all +doors of his kindred in Papagueria against him. El Rojo had ridden out +to the wide world of sand and mountains an outcast but with a laugh on +his lips; this a full year before the gathering of the family at the +Mission of the Four Evangelists. + +When El Rojo had turned lone wolf, a sadness that was not the sadness +of shame settled upon the heart of one of the O’Donoju. Frecia +Mayortorena, a cousin, one of the flowers of girlhood that caused old +Hermosillo to be named the Little Garden, sat behind her barred windows +on many a night with heart wild to hear once more the love song only +El Rojo knew how to sing. Frecia Mayortorena, all fire under the cold +ice of her schooled and decorous features, knew that the reckless devil +with the flame-blue eyes had but to come and strum a love call on his +guitar; she would go with him into banishment and worse. So on this +pilgrimage to the shrine of the four holy men the girl, who rode with +her father and brothers, allowed her imagination to frame the figure +of a phantom horseman on every ragged mountain top. At each camp fire +along the Road of the Dead Men, when the vast sea of desert round about +was stilled under the stars, Frecia Mayortorena sat with tiny pointed +chin cupped in a propping palm and seemed to hear in the clink of a +mule’s hobble chain the opening chord of that song of songs, + + Red as the pomegranate flower, my love, + The heart of him who sings. + +The cavalcade came to the mission with the firing of guns and with +shouts. The reed-and-mud huts of the Sand People beyond the cloisters +disgorged their shouting savages to welcome the travellers. Padre +Felice, a gaunt man with the face of an ascetic above the folds of his +rough brown cowl, hurried out from the doors of the new sanctuary to +meet and give embrace to his father, Don Padraic, and then in turn to +all his next of kin; behind him followed his two novitiate priests +who were, with Padre Felice, the only white men in all the stretch of +Papagueria from the Rancho del Refugio westward to the Sea of Cortez. +Five days’ travel were they from the nearest of their kind, and to west +and north stretched unguessed leagues of the desert. Only the Road of +the Dead Men linked them with the first of the Californian missions +thirty days over the western horizon. + +Missionary to the Sand People was Padre Felice--to that branch of the +Papago tribe of tractable Indians who lived about the east shore of +the Sea of Cortez and on eastward throughout the desert of Altar. The +rebuilt mission stood in the middle of a small oasis which was fed by a +stream down out of the burnt mountains not a mile behind; one of those +rare and furtive desert trickles of water which hides in the sand most +months of the year. The diminutive mission building, with its rounded +dome of sun-burned brick, lifted in sharp outlines above the vivid and +water-fed greenery of the oasis mesquite and _palo verde_; but the +whole--oasis and house of God--was dwarfed by the bleak immensity +of the flanking mountains leaping sheer from the plain to push their +fire-scarred summits against the sky. + +Before the choir of Indian voices intoned the opening prayer of the +dedication service the packs of the O’Donoju caravan yielded precious +things. There was a monstrance of heavy gold studded at its tips with +precious gems; this was the personal offering of old Don Padraic to +the shrine of the Four Evangelists. A chalice of gold, a great altar +crucifix of gold inlaid with mother-of-pearl, a pair of candelabra +wrought of chased silver and a communion service of the same metal +represented the pious contributions of the rest of the clan O’Donoju. + +But most precious of all the altar treasures was that double string +of the pearls of the Virgin which by a miracle had been saved from +plunder of the Apaches when the savages from the north had come burning +and murdering fifty years before. For a half-century the lucent rope +of moonbeam green had lain in the treasure vaults of the Franciscan +College in the City of Mexico awaiting this hour of restoration. Green +pearls fetched from the shell beads of the Sea of Cortez by Indian +converts. Pearls hinting of caves of ocean by their shimmering, +changeful lustre. Pearls to fire the lust of covetousness even from +their hallowed place about the throat of the Virgin. + +Padre Felice held the glinting rope of lights high in dedication, and +as reverently he draped them upon the bosom of the sacred effigy the +clan O’Donoju and all the dark-skinned children of the mission sang a +gloria. + +An untoward incident jarred the merriment of the feasting that followed +the re-dedication of the mission. When whole beeves were being lifted +from the roasting pits and the skins of wine and tequila were passing +from table to table beneath the flowering mesquite trees a column of +dust strode across the desert from the east and spawned two horsemen +upon the oasis. One, a naked Indian of the stature of a giant, reined +in his horse at the far fringe of the mesquite as befitting a servant. +The second rode boldly into the circle of the tables. Silver clinked +from bridle and stirrup leathers of his magnificent white thoroughbred. +The rider’s silver-trimmed hat came off with a sweeping bow to include +all there, and the red of his hair was like molten copper in the sun. + +“El Rojo!” was the startled cry on every lip. Men scrambled to their +feet as if to combat some overt move of an enemy. + +“God be with you all,” came the Red One’s speech of polite greeting, +made all the more ironical by the reckless upturn of his lips in a grin +and the steely lights that flashed from his blue eyes. + +“--And God, or his gentle vicar, Padre Felice, give me place at table +with my noble kin,” El Rojo added lightly. “I have travelled far to +have my cup here on this day of celebration.” + +The laughing horseman let his eyes dance over the circle of faces until +they came to rest for just an instant upon one. He saw cheeks flaming, +eyes filled with wonder and full lips parted to give a heart its song. +Frecia Mayortorena was seeing a vision in the life. Quickly El Rojo’s +glance leaped on as if to shield the girl from contamination. The +venerable Don Padraic, head of the clan O’Donoju, was on his feet now +and trembling. + +“We know you not, sir! We must ask you to begone!” + +El Rojo caused his horse to rear perilously. Before hoofs touched the +ground hardly two paces from the old man the rider again had made his +full-armed bow. He spoke with mock respect. + +“Sanctuary, my grandsire! I and my servant claim sanctuary of Holy +Church. We have ridden far, and good Uncle Felice can not deny us the +charity of his order.” + +Don Padraic was being swiftly mastered by his rage when the friar to +whom the unwelcome horseman had appealed pushed his way to the side of +the older man. + +“He speaks the truth, sire,” urged the man in the brown habit. “Here on +God’s ground we can not be guilty of uncharity.” Then, looking up into +the laughing blue eyes of his nephew, “I ask you to descend, sir, and +refresh yourself and your servant until such time as you take the road.” + +So all merriment in the oasis of the Four Evangelists was stilled. +There in the single green spot on all the leagues of the Road of the +Dead Men was wrought a comedy; a prelude it was to swift tragedy. The +clan O’Donoju, its satellites and retainers ate and drank in silence, +and apart from this company sat El Rojo and his naked copper giant +alone. From time to time El Rojo lifted his cup as if in ceremonious +health to his kin. Only Frecia Mayortorena read the glint in the blue +eyes which told that the toast was to her--and to what would eventuate. + +Near sundown El Rojo and his Indian rode off to the west, but not +until the outlaw had spent a few minutes alone in the mission. Padre +Felice saw him at prayer before the altar of the Virgin and was deeply +touched that the spirit of religion had not altogether departed from +the family’s scapegrace. + +In the dark of midnight Frecia Mayortorena, who had cried herself to +sleep, was awakened by the touch of a hand stretched under the side +of the tent where she slept with the women of the party. A silver +embroidered hat was slipped under the tent to rest on her arm. The +girl dressed herself in a folly of love and terror and stole outside. +The waiting figure of El Rojo’s giant Indian detached itself from +the shadow of the mesquite, motioning her to a tethered horse. Blind +infatuation for a hero lover brooked no questioning on the girl’s part. +She mounted and followed her guide through the alleys of heavy shade. + +A single dreadful cry sounded from out the opened door of the mission. +A minute later a vague horseman spurred to her side and stopped the +beating of her heart with flaming kisses. The silent desert swallowed +three phantom shapes on horseback. + +Dawn brought revelation and the beginning of that cycle of tragedy and +dreadful pursuit of Nemesis which was to overwhelm the clan O’Donoju. +Padre Felice murdered at the altar of the Virgin, where he had tried +to stay the hand of impiety. The green pearls of the Virgin gone. A +daughter of the house of O’Donoju flown with a thief and a murderer. + +One word more and this mirage of years long dead fades. The curse that +all Papagueria saw descend on the clan O’Donoju spared not even the +sanctuary of the Four Evangelists. A year to the night of the Virgin’s +despoliation the Apaches came again to this frontier post of the +Church, and after a spiteful siege they slew the white priests, burned +the mission and carried the Indian converts over the mountains into +slavery. The Franciscans dared not rebuild on such accursed ground. +Winds of the desert, which move sand mountains in their eternal sweep, +played upon the ruined mission year on year to blot even a vestige +of it from the eyes of man. God’s hand--so the Indians had it--shook +the mountains behind the little oasis so that the source of the tiny +life-giving stream was blocked. The green vanished like a mist, and +scabrous desert cacti crept in on prickly feet. + +The Mission de los Cuatros Evangelistas became legend. + + + + +CHAPTER I + +WHAT HAPPENED ON THE LIMITED + + +The Golden Sunset Limited, Pacific Coast bound, snaked its way through +a cleft in mountains and came sighing to a stop at the man’s town, +El Paso. A patchwork crowd spilled out from the station platform to +push around the ladders of the car icers to the train steps. Swarthy +Mexicans under sombreros, with their black-shawled women and their +little tin trunks, scrambled and clogged at the approaches to the +oven-like day coaches forward. Pullman passengers sauntered over frogs +and switches to plush and rosewood at the train’s end. + +Among these was Grant Hickman, civil engineer, New York, lately captain +in the First Division overseas. Arizona bound and west of the Ohio +River for the first time in his thirty years, Hickman had broken his +journey by a day’s stopover in El Paso. He had given Juarez a whirl, +decided the kind of life he saw across the International Bridge was +spurious and of little worth, and now was entraining again for his +destination some four hundred miles to the westward. He gave the porter +his bags to stow for him according to the directions scribbled on his +Pullman ticket and began a lazy pacing of the platform, his eye alert +for the colour and the bustle of it all. The blending of two races, of +widely differing civilizations, here in this sturdy city gave Hickman’s +restless imagination a smart fillip. He saw men with gaily coloured +blankets worn as cloaks over their shoulders like prayer shawls in a +synagogue; Indians with ornaments of beaten silver and raw turquoise +hasps on their belts had their shoulders planted against solid +brick walls with a grace born only of perfect indolence. All great +stuff--regular musical show background. + +On his first lap down the platform the New York man’s eyes rested +momentarily on two figures standing in the drip of one of the car +icers’ laden pushcarts. A girl and a man; she hatless as she had left +the car for a stroll, the man all gesticulating hands and eloquently +moving shoulders. Hickman caught a scrap of the man’s fervid speech +as he strolled past; it was in a foreign tongue, liquid--almost +lisping--with its softly rolled r’s and a peculiar singing intonation +at the upward lift of each period. Spanish undoubtedly. Just an +over-shoulder glimpse of a thin, dark face in sharp profile confirmed +Grant in his guess at the speaker’s nationality. The girl’s bared head +attracted his appreciative eye; it bore a glory of wondrously burning +red hair, coiled in great masses, vividly alive. + +Grant turned his corner at the platform’s end and began to retrace his +steps, consciously bearing in the direction of the beacon hair. When he +was still twenty paces off he saw that the swarthy man had gripped one +of the girl’s wrists and that his hawk face was pushed close to hers in +what might have been an access of fury or of pleading. Grant quickened +his pace instinctively; he did not like the looks of that man’s talon +grip on a girl’s wrist. He paused a decent distance from the twain and +made a pretence of lighting a cigarette while his eyes glanced steadily +over his cupped palms. + +Then a surprising thing. The girl launched some verbal javelin at the +man who gripped her wrist, at the same instant looking down at the +clamping fingers as if to emphasize what must have been a command +to release her. No answer but a flash of white teeth beneath a toy +moustache. The girl’s free hand shot to a great coil of hair over the +nape of her neck, came away with twin prongs of thin steel--anchorage +of some hair ornament--showing below her clenched fingers. A lightning +jab downward, and the Spanish-speaking man dropped the imprisoned hand +to whip his own to his mouth. He snarled something in sharp falsetto. +The girl with the red hair tilted her chin at him, and the laugh that +slipped between her grudging little teeth was thin and sharp as the +double dagger points she had used. + +She turned, took three steps to a stool below the Pullman’s steps, +mounted with a quick swirl of skirts and was gone. Grant thought he saw +a half-formed determination to follow flash into the Spaniard’s eyes. +Without knowing why he did it, the New Yorker hastily put one foot upon +the lower Pullman step and bent his body so as to block access to it. +Very painstakingly he unloosed the knot on his low shoe, straightened +the tongue in place and began taking in slack on every loop of the +strings. + +A grunt of exasperation from behind Grant. When at last he straightened +himself and looked around the Spanish gentleman was gone. He chuckled. + +“Now that, señor, should teach you not to play rough with a red-head.” + +He walked down to the Pullman his ticket called for and climbed aboard. +Just as the conductor’s bellow, “Bo-oa-rd,” sounded, Grant, looking +through the glass of the vestibule, saw the Spanish gentleman with a +grip flying for the train out of the baggage room of the station. + +Passing into the body of the car he found his bags piled upon a seat +midway of its length. As he seated himself he was the least bit +startled to see flaming coils of hair above the top of the seat across +the aisle and one beyond his. Grant was not displeased. Girls with +spirit always walked straight into his somewhat susceptible affections; +and a girl who carried a home-made fish spear in her coiffure-- + +“’Scuse me, Cap’n; ef I could jes’ have a look at youah berth ticket. +This gentmum says he reckons you-all’s settin’ in his seat.” Grant +looked up to see the porter shifting uneasily before him and with +a deprecatory grin on his face. By him stood the waspish Spanish +gentleman; the latter inclined himself in a stiff bow as Grant’s gaze +met his. Out of the tail of his eye Grant thought he saw a slow turning +of the sunset cloud against the high seat-back ahead. + +“This is my section,” Grant drawled with no show of inclination to +arbitrate the matter. “I always buy a section when I travel.” + +“But, pardon, sir--” The Spanish gentleman extended a pink slip. “The +agent at the station has but now sold me this lower berth.” + +“Indeed?” A slow ache of perversity began to travel along Grant’s +spine. He had no love for a man who will manhandle women. “Indeed. The +agent at El Paso sold me mine yesterday.” + +“Ef I could see youah ticket,” the porter began feebly. + +“You couldn’t,” Grant snapped. “Perhaps the Pullman conductor may.” + +A cloud began gathering over the finely chiselled features of the +Spaniard. His toy moustache went up. He spoke to the porter: + +“The señor is not what we call _sympatico_. Have the kindness to fetch +the conductor.” + +The darkey disappeared. Grant turned to look out of the window, +ignoring completely the standing figure in the aisle. But he did not +ignore the reflection a trick of the sun cast on the double glass of +the window. He saw there just the faint aura of a fiery head which +refused to turn, though the compelling gaze of the standing man strove +mightily to command it. Faintly in the magic of the dusty glass was +carried to this bystander, whose neutrality already was considerably +strained, the silent battle of wills. + +The Pullman conductor bustled up to Grant’s seat. To him the Spaniard +appealed, offering the evidence of the berth check. Grant vouchsafed +no comment when he passed his own up for inspection. The man in blue +compared them. + +“Some ball-up somewhere,” he grunted. Then to Grant: “When was this +ticket sold to you?” + +“Yesterday morning at ten-fifteen o’clock,” came the prompt answer. +The waspish Spanish person admitted he had purchased his only a minute +before the train started. The conductor waved at Grant. + +“Then I guess the seat belongs to this gentleman. I’ll have to find you +one in another car.” + +“But, señor, I have special reason for remaining in this car.” The +Spaniard’s carefully restrained wrath began to bubble over. Grant +looked up at him and smiled frankly. + +“So have I,” he declared levelly. The other’s eyes snapped and his lips +lifted over small white teeth in what was meant to be a smile. + +“Señor,” he began with a shaking voice, “your courtesy deserves +remembrance. I hope some day it may be my pleasure to show you equal +consideration.” + +“Until then--_au revoir_,” Grant caught him up. With the porter +preceding him, the loser walked down the aisle to the far door of the +car. As he passed the seat where the girl was he half turned with a +sulky smile. But it was lost. She was looking out at the procession of +the telegraph poles. Grant, catching this final passage in the little +comedy, grinned. + +“There’s going to be lots of paprika in this Western hike,” joyfully he +assured himself--“or do we call it chili?” + + + + +CHAPTER II + +A GIRL NAMED BENICIA + + +Grant Hickman was not one of that tribe dignified by the name of +he-flirts. He abominated the whole slimy clan with the loathing of a +clean man. When he had seized upon the part of studied rudeness toward +the Spaniard it was not with the ulterior purpose of winning a smile +or paving the way for acquaintance with a pretty woman; Grant’s vivid +recollection of the sidewalk cafés of Paris in war time and their +hunting women left him cold toward the type that is careless of men’s +approaches. In flouting the foreigner and preventing his scheme to gain +a place in the car with the girl he had bullied on the station platform +the New York man had acted merely on instinct; he had protected a +girl from annoyance. Yet now that he had won through by dint of crass +boorishness--and the young man’s conscience gave him a twinge over the +substance of his discourtesy--he suffered a not unreasonable curiosity +regarding the possessor of that glorious beacon in the seat across the +aisle. + +Who was she? What circumstances had led to that scene on the platform +which had ended with the unexpected dagger thrust of the steel hair +ornament? Was this little black-and-tan whipper-snapper a lover--a +brother--blackmailer? Grant’s galloping imagination built up flimsy +hypotheses only to rip them apart. And his eyes dwelt upon the soft +involutions of flame coloured hair, which were the only physical +indices of personality granted him thus far. + +Once the object of his conjectures shifted her seat so that a profile +peeped out from behind the wide seat arm. Grant’s eyes hungrily conned +delectable details: one broad wing of hair sweeping down in a line of +studied carelessness over a forehead somewhat low and rounded; fine +line of nose with the hint of a passionate spirit in the modelling; +mouth that was all girlish, mobile, ready to reflect whims or laughter. +The sort of mouth, Grant reflected, that could load a laugh with +poison--even as he had seen it done that tense instant on the platform +at El Paso--or freight it with sweetness for a favoured one. A world +of fire and seduction untried lay in the full round lips, yet a chin +with the thrust of will in it warned that the promise of those lips was +jealously guarded. + +A broad sheaf of sunlight lay across her cheek. Grant saw that hers +was not the usual apple tint of the red-haired, the characteristic +skin so delicate as to suggest translucence. Rather a touch of the sun +had spread an impalpable film of tan, warm as the colour of old ivory, +over cheek and throat. Duskiness of a southland dyed cheek and throat +despite the anomaly of the burning hair, quite Celtic. + +The afternoon waned with no favouring fortune throwing Grant’s way +opportunity to study the girl closer. When the sunset was in the sky he +walked through the train to the observation platform. As he drew near +the glassed-in end of the observation car he noted with a little leap +of elation that the girl was sitting under the awning beyond the screen +door. He saw, too, the objectionable Spanish gentleman. His midget body +was packed into a chair, one neatly booted foot under him; like some +hunting cat he sat in watchful patience inside the body of the car, his +eyes never leaving the figure of the girl beyond the screen door. + +Grant passed through to the platform, not giving the Spaniard so much +as a glance. As the door slammed behind him the girl looked up quickly. +Grant saw her eyes were blue, saw, too, a fighting gleam quickly pass +from them. Evidently he was not the one they expected to fall upon. +A pretty confusion which tried to deny recognition swiftly replaced +the strained look. Grant allowed himself to be bold to the extent of +tip-tilting his cap. The girl evidently decided that to overlook a +service done would be pushing decorum too far; she gave Grant a quick, +shy smile which might have carried a hint of gratitude mingled with +naïve humour. + +“You were very kind,” she said as Grant took the camp-stool next to +her, “and very amusing. The high hand--you possess the art of using it, +sir.” + +“I should be ashamed of my rudeness,” he answered with a quick smile. +“But somehow I am not. Your way of repelling attack has its advantages, +too--” His eyes strayed to the silver comb, whose concealed steel had +been so efficacious on the El Paso platform. The girl reddened prettily. + +“Always one must be--prepared against--persuasion,” was the answer +that put a period to all reference which might be distasteful. Grant +would have liked to know more of circumstances that had pushed this +radiant young person into the grip of a bullying little civet cat of a +Spaniard, but he dared not risk rudeness by further questioning. Reward +enough was his already; he had it in the swift play of laughter across +delicate features, in the sweetly resonant quality of her voice, all of +a part with the engaging exotic character of the girl. For American she +assuredly was not, though her trim tailoring was impeccably the mode of +the moment. Her speech had a rippling musical lilt to it suggestive of +a mother tongue less harsh than Anglo-Saxon; her enunciation was too +perfect to be American. There was a trick of the eyes, something almost +vocal, which was an inheritance from mothers whose speech is sternly +hedged about by conventions but who find subtler ways of expression. + +What could her nationality be? Assuredly not Irish, though eyes and +hair were exactly what Grant had seen in the green island during a +furlough spent in jaunting cars and peaty inns. Mexican? The flame hair +denied that. Here was another mystery to be set aside with that of the +encounter at the station. With two avenues of conversation closed Grant +plunged blindly along one strictly innocuous. + +“We seem to be getting rather deep into the desert.” He waved out at a +hundred mile vista of sunset painted waste, all purple and hot gold in +the glory from the west--a new picture for the eastern man. The girl +made an unconscious movement of half-stretched arms as if to free her +soul for wandering in limitless spaces. + +“Yes, the desert,” she breathed. “How wonderful! And for me, returning +to it after two years in cities--in cities where one chokes from walls +all about--you see how the desert welcomes with all its glory.” Grant +looked at her curiously; he saw a vision in her eyes. + +“Then you like this--this dry and barren land? Why, I thought +nobody lived out here unless he had to. No trees, no water--” The +girl’s wondering eyes upon him checked his summary of the desert’s +shortcomings. + +“You do not know the desert then,” she reproved. “You have never seen +the _palo verde_ tree when every branch is heavy with gold. You do not +know how the _sahuaro_ wreathes itself a crown of blossoms--the tough +old _sahuaro_, a giant with flowers on his head ready to play with +spring fairies. Water!”--a crescendo gust of laughter--“You think water +only comes from a faucet. If you dug for it with your bare hands--dug +and dug in hot sands while death moved closer to you each hour, then +you would come to see a real beauty in water.” + +“You know something of the desert,” Grant conceded. + +“Something! Señor”--the alien word slipped from her in her flurry of +devotion--“señor, my home is there and my father’s home has been there +more than a hundred and fifty years. I have been away from it in the +slavery of the cities--two years at music in New Orleans and Baltimore. +Now I return. To-morrow morning at Arizora big Quelele, my father’s +Indian servant, meets me to take me a hundred miles--a hundred miles +off the railroad and away from the nearest city to my home.” + +“But Arizora is where I am bound,” Grant eagerly caught her up. “That’s +on the Line, isn’t it? A hundred miles--why, then you must live in +Mexico.” She nodded. His curiosity would not down: + +“Then you are Mexican?” + +An instant her blue eyes sparkled resentment. Grant sensed he had made +some blunder, though he could not for the life of him guess how his +innocent question could have offended. The girl, on her part, quickly +regretted her show of displeasure; one new to the Southwest naturally +could not know much about its social distinctions. + +“Not Mexican,” she amended gently. “We are Spanish folk living in +Mexico. We have always been Spanish since the time one of my ancestors +got his grant from the king of Spain. Never Mexican. That sounds like +silly boasting to you. When you have lived in this country for a little +while you will understand why we have pride in our blood. Just as you +have pride, señor, in your American blood when all the cities of your +country are choked with mongrels.” + +Hoping to hear her name, Grant gave her his own. She repeated it as +if to fix it in memory; then she told him hers. Benicia O’Donoju it +is written, but in her mouth the two words had a quality like a muted +violin note, too fugitive to be imprisoned in letters. She spoke the +surname without accent on any syllable--“Odonohoo.” The man grasped at +something evanescent in the sound: + +“Why, I’d pronounce that ‘O’Donohue.’” + +“My great-great-grandfather did.” Once more Grant’s ears drank in that +velvety contralto laughter which bubbled to her lips so easily. “You +would pronounce his first name ‘Mike,’ and so did he.” + +“Then your first name should be Peg or Molly-o,” Grant rallied. She +shook her head in gay denial. + +“Señorita Peg--impossible! Benicia is much better. It means ‘Blessed’ +in our tongue. ‘Blessed are the pure in heart,’ Señor Hickman; or +‘Blessed are the meek.’ I might be either if I could forget I am an +O’Donoju.” + +“Benicia.” Grant tried to copy the slurring softness she gave to the +word.--“B’nishia: that sounds like little bells. I like it.” + +“You are gracious, señor. I thought Americans were too busy with +skyscrapers and wheat markets to learn the art of paying compliments +gracefully.” + +“Compliments are born, not paid,” he joked. Conversation limped no +longer. Youth has a way of opening little windows in the souls of two +brought together under its wizardry and giving each elusive peeps +into secret chambers. It was Benicia who first became conscious of +the lateness of the hour and the strain on strict canons of propriety +her presence alone with a stranger on the observation platform had +entailed. She arose with a little laugh. + +“My guardian”--a roguish glance toward the tiny figure of the Spaniard +still on the watch beyond the platform’s glass--“I fear he does not +approve. And so--_adios_.” She gave Grant the tips of her fingers and +was gone. + +He watched her pass where the sentinel was sitting. The little man +uncurled himself from his hump-shouldered crouch and scrambled to his +feet as if he would speak to her. But Benicia, bowing sweetly, passed +on up the aisle and into the alley of rosewood and glass beyond. After +a moment’s hesitation the Spaniard came to the screen door giving onto +the platform, where Grant now stood alone, and opened it. He scratched +a match and put it to his cigarette. Grant saw the flare illumine +a cruel hawk’s nose and thin, saturnine lips. The Spaniard inhaled +deeply, then let thin streams of smoke seep from his nostrils. + +“Señor”--his voice was cold as a lizard’s foot--“perhaps you do not +know that Señorita O’Donoju is travelling under my protection.” + +Grant took time to tap a cigarette on the heel of his palm and light it +before he answered. His eyes were brimming with laughter. + +“Perhaps not,” he said. “I congratulate the lady on her protector.” +Again blue smoke played over the toy moustache; little eyes were +snapping like a badger’s. + +“I have the honour to inform you, señor, that your attentions to the +lady do her no credit and that they must cease.” + +“Really!” Grant’s settled good humour received a jar. He felt a +tingling of fighting nerves down his back. “Really? And who constituted +you judge of the value of my attentions?” + +“Very naturally I have appointed that position to myself, señor, since +Señorita O’Donoju is to become my wife.” + +“Ah!” Grant’s interjection did not carry all the irony he would have +wished. His assurance was a trifle shaken. + +“And so,” the little man continued, “it is understood. You will not +address the lady further.” Grant laughed. + +“My understanding is very weak and not at all reliable. I promise you +that unless the lady objects I shall continue to address her whenever +opportunity presents.” + +The little figure in the doorway straightened itself in an access of +dignity. He snapped his cigarette over the car rail. + +“Señor, let us have no misunderstanding. We approach the Border, +where every man works justice according to the dictates of his own +conscience. To-morrow we touch Mexico, where it is known that Colonel +Hamilcar Urgo is a law unto himself. I am that Colonel Hamilcar Urgo. +Need I go farther?” + +“And I am Captain Grant Hickman, formerly of the First Division, +Expeditionary Forces. Go as far as you like!” + + + + +CHAPTER III + +DOC STOODER + + +With evenly divided cause and equal cheerfulness Grant could have +kicked the porter and himself when he awoke tardily next morning +and found his car at a standstill. He raised the berth curtain and +looked out. On the eaves of a station he saw a white board with the +name “Arizora” painted upon it and certain irrelevant advice as to +the distance to New Orleans and to Culiacan. Out through the curtains +popped his head and he whistled the porter. + +“Why didn’t you give me a call?” was his angry demand. + +“Yassuh, yassuh, ev’body in this kyar gets out here. Mos’ have gone an’ +done it a’ready. You see, Cap’n, this kyar’s been switched off here at +the Line two hours ago; train’s kep’ right on goin’ into Sonora.” + +Grant, cursing his luck, boiled into his clothes and made a race for +the washroom. He was hoping against luck that Benicia O’Donoju had not +been an earlier riser than himself. With his face puffy with lather, +he stopped from minute to minute to peep through the window giving onto +the station platform. A decrepit autobus was backed up against the curb +with a few passengers sitting patiently on its frayed seats; loungers +were dangling their legs from baggage trucks; under wooden awnings of a +business block across from the station a Mexican was languidly sweeping +out a store. Arizora had not yet come to life. + +Just as Grant was towelling the last remnants of shaving lather from +his cheeks he made another quick survey of the platform and his +heart dropped into his shoes. Benicia walked into the field of the +washroom window; with her the unspeakable Spaniard, who carried her +neat travelling satchel as well as his own bag. The girl was fresh +as the dawn in a suit of khaki, short-skirted over high laced boots +of russet leather. Rebellious hair strayed from beneath the brim of +a soft-crowned Stetson, saucily noosed to her head by a fillet of +leather under her chin. Soft green of a scarf lightly drew together at +her throat the wings of her khaki collar. Nothing of the theatrical +or self-consciousness of tailoring in the picture the desert girl +made; she was the spirit of the Southwest, unsophisticated and without +pretence. By her side the little Spaniard with his knife-edged +trousers and thin-waisted coat appeared comic. + +As Grant, towel in hand, lingered by the window feeding his soul with +vain regrets, a crazy thing on wheels swung around the station and came +to a stop by the girl’s side. It might have been called an automobile +by courtesy, though there was little to identify it as a member of +the gas family save that it went of its own traction. Engine naked, +dash gone, two high-backed seats of unpainted tin like the wing of +an old-fashioned sitz-bath and unprotected by a top; behind these a +home-built box body wherein a trunk and a suitcase were lashed. Grant +was seeing his first desert speeder, rebuilt for service of a highly +specialized kind. The man at the wheel was no less in character--an +Indian in overalls and high peaked sombrero; a giant of a man with +shoulders of a wrestler and dull bronze features of a Roman bust. + +What ensued upon the arrival of the auto nearly drove the watcher, +shirtless as he was, out to two-fisted intervention. Urgo, the +salamander, evidently was of a mind to make a third in the car. Grant +saw his humped shoulders and expostulating hands, saw Benicia tilt +her chin as she gave him some cold refusal. But the colonel calmly +stowed his suitcase by the side of the trunk in the box body, evidently +planning to use it as a seat. Again Benicia, now in her place by the +side of the Indian giant, turned to give him peremptory refusal. The +Indian at the wheel had his engine going and was sitting statue-like, +utterly detached from the quarrel. + +Urgo stepped on the rear wheel’s hub and had one hand on the floor of +the box body when one of the Indian’s hands flashed up the spark even +as his foot went down on the gear pedal. The crazy little car leaped +like a singed cat. Colonel Urgo cut a neat arc, hit the road on his +back and rolled over just in time to escape receiving amidships his +suitcase, which the Indian driver had dropped from the car without +turning his head. + +In the Pullman washroom Grant collapsed to the seat and smeared soap +into his eyes while he tried to check tears of laughter. The fall of +the peppery little Spaniard had been colossal, and he guessed it had +been wrought at the quick prompting of the spirited girl in khaki. What +a wonder she was! All laughter and bubbling spirits one minute; quick +as a leopard to strike the next. + +“Man”--Grant addressed a beaming face in the glass--“man, always lay +your bets on a red-headed girl!” + +That minute of communion with a smiling confidant was an important +one in the life of Grant Hickman, cautious bachelor. For it came to +him with the force of a hammer blow that he wanted and must have this +vivid creature of the desert named Benicia O’Donoju. Girl of fire and +sparkle--of a spirit free and piquant as the winds that blow across the +wastes--unspoiled of cities and the stale conventions of drawing rooms. +Oh, he would have her! Gone she might be, out into a land beyond his +ken. Unguessed barriers of circumstance, of others’ intervention, might +have to be scaled; but somehow, somewhere, Grant Hickman was going to +find and win Benicia O’Donoju. + +Love at first sight--old-fashioned, mid-Victorian stuff, says the +cynical débutante over her cigarette and outlaw cocktail. In New York +tearooms and Washington ballrooms, quite so. Where girls of twenty must +know the sum that stands in bank to Clarence’s credit, before Clarence +is marked down as eligible, love at first sight is, in truth, dead as +the dodo bird. Even so, spirit still calls to spirit and like leaps to +like most all the world over. It is only where fungus spots stain the +garden that love will not bloom. + +When Grant quit the Pullman Colonel Urgo was nowhere to be seen. Grant +idly wondered as he walked to the hotel, directly across a plaza +from the station, how long it would be before he encountered this +half-portion rival of his and what would be the Spaniard’s first move +in his frank threat of reprisals of the night before. But when he was +shown to his room--and the New York man whimsically reflected he had +seen better ones at the Admiral on Madison Avenue--events of recent +hours were pushed back from his attention by the more immediate demands +of his presence in Arizora. He took from his suitcase the letter that +had brought him sky-hooting across the continent to this back-water of +life on the Mexican Line and skimmed it through: + + “... I know just how hard it is for you to settle down to + office routine after the Big Show. All of us are in the same + fix, Old-timer, but I have the edge on you because out here in + this man’s country there’s something breaking every minute. + That’s the reason I’m writing you this mysterious letter.... + Old Doc Stooder is counted the prime nut of Southern Arizona, + but I believe he’s got a whale of a proposition and that’s why + I’m counting myself--and you--in on the deal. + + “I’ve sewed myself up with him--promised not to peep a word of + the real dope to you in this letter. The old Doc says, ‘We’ll + need a good engineer and if your buddy in France has a head on + him and knows how to keep his mouth shut tell him to come out + here.’ ... So if you still have that old take-a-chance spirit + that hopped you through the Big Mill from Cantigny to Sedan + I’ll see you in Arizora. If I’m not in town when you arrive dig + up Doc Stooder--everybody knows him. + + “Yours for the big chance, + + “BIM.” + +Grant folded the letter with a smile. Good old Bim with his “whale of +a proposition.” Running true to form was Bim in this characteristic +letter. Just as Grant had come to know and love him in training area +and dugout: Bim Bagley, six-feet-one of tough Arizona bone and muscle +and brimful of wild optimism. Always ready to take a chance, whether +at the enemy on all fours through midnight mud or at fortune in the +wild lands of the Border: that was Bim Bagley of Arizona, “the finest +country in the Southwest.” + +And Bim had shot truer than he could know when he sent this hint of big +things in the offing back to a man two years out of uniform and moping +for excitement on the sixteenth floor of a skyscraper in Manhattan. +Two years of civilian’s life had been just that span of slow moral +suffocation for Grant. For all his thirty years, for all his better +than moderate success in a profession of sharp competition, Grant +Hickman still could hear the call to the swimmin’ hole of adventure. +How he had yearned to hear it these past two years when the springs of +his soul still tingled with the high tension of battle lines! Then this +letter from a pal, promising all the substance of his dreams. It had +not been a week in the engineer’s pocket before he was on the train for +Arizora. + +Grant went out to find Bagley. He located his office--“Insurance, +Bonds, Investments” was the sign on the glass of the door; but the lock +was turned and no one opened at his knock. His eye caught a corner of +white paper projecting through the letter slot. + +“Grant:--Called out of town--back Friday. B. B.” was the scrawl across +the face of it. A stab of disappointment was his; he had builded +heavily on that moment of meeting when Bim’s big hand would have his +own in a vise. Nothing to do now but see the town and amuse himself as +he might, or call on that mysterious Doc Stooder and discover why Grant +Hickman had come racing out to this Arizora. He decided to do both. + +The Arizora Grant saw in an hour’s swinging round the circle was +something different from the “hick town” his New York smugness had +pictured in anticipation. It was a condensed El Paso, jammed in the +narrow compass of a mountain gorge, with railroad yards monopolizing +the whole of the flat space between crowding hills. A man could go from +his home to business by the simple trick of leaping off the front porch +of his bungalow with an opened umbrella. Arizora’s streets were jammed +with cars--fantastic desert coursers stripped to the nines and with +canteens strapped to the running board. Sidewalks swarmed with men--big +men with steady eyes looking out from beneath sombreros the size of a +woman’s garden hat; men with high-heeled boots and the pins of many +lodges stuck on their unbuttoned vests; lantern-jawed, hollow-templed +men of the sun, whose bodies were indurated by the desert law of +struggle and whose souls were simple as a fairy book. + +Across Main Street stretched a fence of rabbit-proof wire with three +strands of barbed wire topping that; a fence with something like a +pasture gate swung back for traffic. This was the Line. On the hither +side of that rabbit-proof wire web the authority of a President and his +Congress stopped; on the far side the authority of quite a different +president and his peculiar congress began. Over yonder, where stood a +man under a straw sombrero and with a rifle hung on one shoulder, lay +Sonora and the beginning of a thousand mile stretch of fantastic land +called Mexico. A cart with solid wooden wheels and drawn by oxen under +a ponderous yoke blocked the way of a twelve-cylinder auto seeking +clearance at the international gate. + +When he had tired of sight seeing Grant inquired at a cigar counter +where Dr. Stooder could be found. The breezy man in shirtsleeves +grinned and glanced at the clock on the wall behind him. + +“Well, sir, usually mornings he’s over across the Line getting +organized for the day on tequila. Mostly he comes back to his office +round noon time, steppin’ wide and handsome. Office’s over yonder, +top-side of the Bon Ton barber shop. You might give it a look.” + +Grant acted on the cigar clerk’s advice. He located a dingy door +at the end of a dark upper hallway with the lettering, “A. Stooder, +M.D.,” on a tin sign over the transom. Entering, he found himself in a +sad company. Three Mexican women and a man of the same race sat like +mourners on chairs about the wall; a big-eyed child squatted in the +middle of the floor and listlessly pulled a magazine to bits. The stamp +of woe and of infinite patience was set on all the dark faces. Mephitic +smell of iodoform was in the air. Grant hastily withdrew. After an +hour’s walking and when the whistles were blowing noon he returned. A +different collection of patient waiters occupied the chairs; evidently +the doctor was in and at work. + +He took a chair by the window where he could look down into the street +and so keep the set masks of misery out of his eyes. After fifteen +minutes the door to the inner office was violently opened and a Mexican +woman shot out of it as if propelled by a kick. Thundering Spanish +pursued her. Grant saw a scarecrow figure framed in the doorway. + +Tall beyond the average and gaunt almost to the point of emaciation; +frock coated like a senator of the Eighties; thin shoulders seeming +bowed by the weight of the garments hung thereon; enormous, heavily +veined hands carried as if hooked onto invisible hinges behind the +stained white cuffs:--this the superficial aspect of Dr. Stooder. Vital +character of the man was all summed up in his face: skin like wrinkled +vellum stretched on a rack; eyes glinting from deep caves on either +side of a veritable crag of a nose which had been broken and skewed off +the true. A great mane of grey hair reared up and back from his high +forehead; tufts of the same colour on lip and chin in the ancient mode +of the “Imperial” added the last daguerreotype touch to his features. + +Black eyes roved the room and fell on Grant, who had risen. The doctor +crooked a bony finger at him and he passed through into the private +office, taking the seat indicated. Without paying his visitor the least +heed, Dr. Stooder went to a closet, poured two fingers of some white +liquid into a graduating glass and drank it. His lips smacked like a +pistol shot. Then he returned and took a swivel chair before a very +shabby and littered desk. + +“I never seen you before, sah”--the man’s accent reeked of Texas, the +old Texas before the oil invasions. “So I’ll answer the question every +stranger’s just mortal dying to ask and don’t dare. How’d I come to +get this scar?” The surprising doctor tilted his great head back and +traced with his fore-finger an angry weal which encircled his throat +like a collar gall. “Well, sah, I was informally hanged once--and cut +down. Now we can get down to business. What’s your symptoms?” + +Grant, caught off balance by so unconventional a reception, stammered +that he had no symptoms. + +“My friend, Bim Bagley, who is out of town for a few days, told me to +look you up. My name is Grant Hickman. I’m from New York.” The black +eyes, never deviating from their disconcerting stare, showed no flicker +of recognition at the name. + +“What you want of me if you have no symptoms?” abruptly in the doctor’s +nasal bray. “I’m not in the market for the World’s Library of Wit and +Humour. I’ll cut you for a tumour or dose you for dyspepsia; but I +won’t buy a book.” + +“I have no books to sell.” Grant found his temperature rising. “I have +come out from New York because you told my friend Bagley to send for +me.” + +Doc Stooder suddenly snapped out of his chair like a yard rule +unfolding and strode to the closet. With bottle and graduating glass +poised he bent a severe eye upon his visitor. + +“You say you don’t drink. Highly commendable. I do.” Again the pistol +shot from satisfied lips. He replaced the bottle and tucked his hands +under the tails of his coat where they flapped the sleazy garment +restlessly. + +“You call yourself an engineer. How do I know you are?” + +Grant had said nothing about being an engineer. Doc Stooder had +identified him right enough. What reason for his bluff, then? + +“My dear sir, graduates of Boston Tech. do not carry their diplomas +round with them on their key rings. You’ll have to take Bagley’s word +for it that I’m an engineer if my own is not convincing.” + +The gangling doctor took two turns of the office with enormous strides; +one hand tugged at his straggling goatee. Abruptly he stopped by +Grant’s chair. + +“Young man, what need do you figure a doctor in Arizora would have of +an engineer--more especial an engineer from New York? Why should I tell +this Bagley, who’s as crazy as a June-bug, to fetch a graduate engineer +out to Arizora? Engineers are a drug on the market here--and every one +of ’em a crook.” + +Grant’s patience snapped. He rose and strode to the door. + +“Dr. Stooder, I didn’t come away out here to your town to have +somebody play horse with me. When you are sober you can find me at the +International Hotel.” + +A grin started under Doc Stooder’s moustache and travelled swiftly to +his ears. + +“God bless my soul, boy! When I’m sober, you say. I’m never sober and I +hope I never will be--” + +Grant slammed the door behind him. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +COLONEL URGO REPAYS + + +Before he had descended to the street Grant began to regret his flash +of anger which had launched him out of Doc Stooder’s office. To be +sure, the unconventional doctor had been insulting; his was hardly the +orthodox reception to be expected by one who had crossed the continent +to become his partner in some hidden enterprise. Equally certain it was +that, to apply the cigar clerk’s pat phrase, Stooder was “organized +for the day”; the finishing touches to that organization had been made +in two trips to the closet in Grant’s presence. Need one have been so +touchy under these alcoholic circumstances? + +Strive as he would to put the best face on the matter, the man from +New York could not escape a lowering of the spiritual barometer. Here +he was, a stranger in an outlandish desert town with none to give him +so much as a friendly glance. Glances enough came his way, but they +were inspired by his clothes, the cut of which seemed to put them +beyond the pale. Grant pleasured himself by reviewing his case in the +most pessimistic light. He had been but a fortnight ago a sober and +industrious citizen. Came to him a wild letter hinting darkly of some +shadowy enterprise in a bleak land. Instantly he had quit his work and +galloped across two thousand miles to encounter a scarecrow cynic who +greeted him as a book agent. + +He wandered aimlessly beyond the town and out onto a road which +wound up to the edge of one of the mesas which were the eaves of +Arizora. Well might drivers of passing cars stare at the figure of a +broad-shouldered young man in a black derby and double-breasted coat, +who was afoot in a country where no man walks unless he carries a +blanket on his shoulders--unless he is a “stiff,” in the phrase of the +Southwest. Even though February was but on the wane, already the sun +was guarantor of a promise to pay with heat interest in sixty days. + +He came to the top of the rise and halted under the psychic compulsion +of boundless space. For space, crystalline and ethereal as the gulf +between stars, flowed from him as an ocean. The air that filled this +space was so thin, so impalpable as to seem no air at all, and it was +tinted faint gold by reflection from the desert below. Mountains near +and far were so many detached reefs taking the silent surf of the ocean +of space; they were tawny where shadows did not smear purple-black +down their sides. Near at hand showed the grim desert growths: prickly +clumps of _cholla_, whose new daggers sparkled like frosted glass; +fluted columns of _sahuaro_, or giant cactus, lifting their fat arms +twenty and thirty feet above the ground; vivid green of cottonwoods +laid in a streak to mark a secret watercourse. + +To the man just come from the softness and languor of Eastern +landscapes, where lakes lie in the laps of green hillocks, this first +intimate view of the desert carried some subtle terror prick. The iron +savagery of it! What right had man or beast to venture here? + +Then flashed to his mind the picture of Benicia O’Donoju, the girl who +loved the desert, who felt she was prisoner only when hedged about by +the walls of cities in the East. Somewhere to the south where a higher +raft of peaks marked Sonora’s mystery land--somewhere in country like +this she was speeding to her home. What kind of a home might that be? +How could a girl with the bounding vitality that was hers find life +worth living in a land enslaved by thirst? A hundred miles from town +or railroad, she had said:--a hundred miles deep in such a wilderness +her home! Heavens, how he pitied her! + +Grant turned back to the town, revolving over and over in his mind +the first steps he would have to take to learn where Benicia O’Donoju +lived; and, haply discovering the place of her abode, how to get there. + +By the time night fell the restless visitor to Arizora had exhausted +the town’s opportunities for amusement. He crossed the Line into the +companion Mexican community, Sonizona. Here was beguilement enough. +The rabbit-proof fence which converted Main Street into a Calle +Benito Juarez also marked a frontier no less obvious. North of the +fence was aridity to rejoice the conscience of the most enthusiastic +prohibitionist; south of it the frail goddess Virtue tottered in her +step. In Arizona a man sought traps and deadfalls consciously and +with a secret thrill of bravado; in Sonora he avoided them only by +the most circumspect watching of his step. Dark streets winding along +the contours of the crowding mountains were raucous with the bray of +phonographs and the tin-panning of pianos. Lattices over darkened +windows trembled as one passed and the ghosts of whispers fluttered +through them. Where an occasional arc lamp threw a spot of radiance +across the ’dobe road lurked shadowy creatures who whined in an +American dialect for money to buy drugs. + +Grant did not realize that when he passed through the rabbit-proof +fence he left behind him everything for which he paid income tax and +other doles--protection, due processes of law, all the checks and +balances on society and the individual painstakingly built up under +the Anglo-Saxon scheme of things. He did not conceive himself in the +light of an alien--of a not-too-popular nation--gratuitously placing +himself under the protection of laws quite the opposite in terms of +interpretation. Nor did he appreciate that, save for his suitcase and +a signature on a hotel register, he had left behind him nothing to +bear testimony to the fact that a man named Grant Hickman had come +to Arizora and had left the United States to enter Mexico. All these +inattentions he recalled later when opportunity for correction had +passed. + +Grant was circling the plaza, where the municipal band was giving a +concert, when amid the strollers he thought he saw a familiar face. He +looked again and was sure. Little Colonel Urgo, in a snappy uniform of +dark blue with back-turned cape, was walking with a woman whose beauty +was that of the blown peony. Chance brought Urgo’s eyes Grant’s way. +They lighted with sudden surprise, then the colonel brought up his hand +in a salute. A flash of teeth was cut by the travelling hand; it was +like a too quick shutter on the villain’s smile in Way Down East. + +Grant doffed his hat and passed on. Half an hour later a particularly +glittering sheaf of lights he had noted in earlier saunterings pricked +his curiosity and he turned into a low building just off the plaza. A +bare front room easily visible from the street was a too obvious blind +for complacent police inspection; through an open arch in its rear wall +a crowded gambling room was given false length by wall mirrors in dingy +frames. Fifty or more men and women were clustered about roulette, +faro and crap tables. A fat Chinaman with a face expressionless as a +bowl of jelly sat on a dais behind a little desk stacked high with +silver and with deft movement of his fingers achieved nice problems in +international exchange. Pursuit of the goddess Luck was being engaged +in with a frankness and business-like absorption quite different from +furtive evasions of hidden attic and camouflaged club across the Line. + +Grant exchanged a ten-dollar note for a heavy stack of Mexican silver +and moved over to a table where two ivory cubes were dancing to the +droning incantations of a big negro game keeper. He was curious to see +whether Big Dick and Lady Natural were as temperamental a couple in +Mexico as he had discovered them to be in many a front-line dugout in +France. + +“Come to papa!” A raw-boned Arizonan across the table was singing to +the dice held in his cupped palms, huge as waffle irons; a humorous imp +of strong liquor danced in his eyes. “Cap’n come down the gangplank and +says, ‘Good mawnin’, Seven!’” + +The ring of dark faces about the green cloth stirred and white teeth +flashed unlovely smiles when a six and a one winked up from the dice. A +chinking of silver dollars as a red paw gathered them in. + +“Baby! Now meet you’ grandpaw, Ole Man E-oleven. Wham! Lookit! Five an’ +a six makes e’oleven! How’s that for nussin’ ’em along, white man?” +The crap wizard looked across to Grant and grinned in amity. Mexican +scowls accompanied the covering of the winner’s pile left temptingly +untouched. Grant felt an undefined tugging of race bonds here in this +ring of alien faces, and he backed the Arizonan against the field. On +his third throw the big fellow made his point. + +“That’s harvestin’! That’s bringin’ in the sheaves! Now here’s my stack +of ’dobe dollars for any Mex to cop if he thinks the copping’s good.” + +When it came Grant’s turn to throw his new-found friend played him +vociferously against the Mexican field, calling upon all present to +witness that a white man sure could skin anything under a sombrero, +from craps to parchesi. For the first time since he had left the train +that morning the New Yorker felt the warming tingle of fellowship; the +gaunt, sunburned face of the desert man with the dancing imps of humour +in the eyes was a jovial hailing sign of fraternity. + +“Shoot ’em, Mister Man! You’re rigged for Broadway, Noo Yawk, but I can +see from here that you has the lovin’ touch.” + +Grant rolled and won, rolled and won again. Carelessly he dropped the +heavy fistfuls of dollars into the side pocket of his coat. Even when +he lost his point, he had a bulging weight of silver there. Grant was +enjoying the game itself not nearly so keenly as he did the Arizonan +across the table, his Homeric humour and the bewildering wonder of his +vocabulary. So intent was he that he did not see Colonel Urgo enter, +nor did he catch the almost imperceptible nod toward him that the +little officer passed to a furtive-eyed tatterdemalion who accompanied +him. The latter by a devious course of idling finally came to a stand +behind Grant and appeared to be a keen spectator of the game. + +“Ole Man Jed Hawkins’ son is a-goin’ splatter out a natch’ral. Ole Man +Hawkins’ son is a-goin’ turn loose the hay cutter an’ mow him a mess of +greens. Comes Little Joe! Dip in, Mexes, an’ takes yo’ fodder! Now the +man from Dos Cabezas starts a-runnin’--” + +A hand was busy at Grant’s pocket--a slick, suave hand which replaced +weight for weight what it subtracted. Just three quick passes and +the tatterdemalion who had been so intent on the prancing dice lost +interest and moved away. + +It came Grant’s turn to roll the dice. He dipped into his pocket and +carelessly dropped a stack of eight silver dollars on the table. One +of them rolled a little way and flopped in front of a Mexican player. +The latter started to pass the dollar back to Grant when he hesitated, +gave the coin a sharp scrutiny, then balanced it on a finger tip and +struck its edge with one from his own pile. + +“Señor!” An ugly droop to his smiling lips. “Ah, no, señor!” + +He passed the dollar over to Grant with exaggerated courtesy. Eyes all +about the table, which had followed the pantomime with avid interest, +now centred on the American’s face. As if on a signal the fat Chinaman +at the exchange desk waddled over to shoulder his way officiously to +Grant’s side. He growled something in Spanish and held out his hand. +Dazedly Grant laid the suspected dollar in a creasy palm. The Chinaman +flung it on the green felt with a contemptuous “Faugh!” and he pointed +imperiously at Grant’s bulging pocket. + +“It’s a frame, pardner,” called the Arizonan. “If your money’s bogus +it’s what the Chink himself handed you.” + +“I came in here with American money and changed it at your desk,” +Grant quietly addressed the Chinaman. “See here; this is the money I +either got from you or won at this table.” He brought from his pocket a +brimming handful of Mexican dollars and dumped them on the cloth. Two +or three of the heavy discs shone true silver; the others were clumsy +counterfeits, dull and leaden. + +A cry, half snarling laughter, from the crowd about the table, now +grown to a score: “Aha--gr-ringo!” + +A movement of the crowd forward to rush Grant against the wall. Then +with a cougar’s spring the big Arizonan was on the solid table, feet +spread wide apart, head towering above the tin light shade. He balanced +a chair in one hand as the conductor of an orchestra might lift his +baton. His gaunt features were split in a wide grin. Before Grant could +gather his senses a big paw had him by the shoulder and was dragging +him up onto the green island of refuge. + +“They don’t saw no whizzer off on a white man wiles ole Jed Hawkins’ +boy got his health,” Grant’s companion bellowed a welcome. “I got these +greasers’ number, brother!” + +Grant’s gaze as he rose to his feet over the heads all about +encountered two interesting objects. One was Colonel Urgo, who stood +alone in a far corner of the room; the colonel was smiling with rare +good humour. A second was a man wrapped about with a blanket, over +whose shoulder appeared the tip of a rifle; he was just coming through +from the front room on a run and there were three like him following. +Rurales, the somewhat informal bandit-policemen of Mexico. + +Just what ensued Grant never could quite piece together. He remembered +seeing Hawkins wrench off a leg from his chair and send it whizzing at +a central cluster of light globes in mid-ceiling. They snuffed out with +a thin tinkling of glass. Then the rush. + +Out of the dark swirl of figures about the table’s edge a vivid spit +of flame--roar of a pistol shot. Hands grappling for braced legs on +the table top. “Huh” of breath expelled as Hawkins swung his chair in +a wide sweep downward. A cry, “Hesus!” Oaths chirped in the voice of +songbirds. A knife missing its objective and trembling rigid in the +midst of the baize. + +The table collapsed with dull creakings, and then the affair of mauling +and writhing became a bear pit. Grant fought with steady, measured +short-arm jabs delivered at whatever object lay nearest. When one arm +was pinioned he swung the other against the restraining body until it +was freed. Some one sank teeth in his shoulder. + +“Ride ’em, Noo Yawker!” came the shrill cry of battle from somewhere in +the mill. Then a blow at the base of the brain which meant lights out +for Grant. + +When consciousness came halting back he found himself standing +half-supported by two of the rurales in a dark street and before a +high gate in unbroken masonry. The gate swung inward. He was propelled +violently through the dark arch and into a small room, where sat a man +in uniform under a dusty electric globe. He did not look up from the +scratching of his pen on the desk before him. + +A door behind the writing man opened and Colonel Urgo entered. His +start at seeing the bloodied and half-clothed figure which the rurales +supported was well acted. A hand came to the vizor of his cap in +mocking salute. Then he turned to the man at the desk and exchanged low +words with him. + +“Ah, Señor ’Ickman”--Colonel Urgo’s voice was tender as the dove’s--“I +regret to learn you are here in the _carcel_ on serious charges. The +one, counterfeiting the coin of Mexico; the other, resisting officers +of the law. Very regrettable, Señor ’Ickman. But, remembering your +courtesies toward me on the train yesterday, let me assure you of my +willingness to serve you in any way. You will command me, señor.” + +A sudden lightning flash of comprehension shot through the clouds that +pressed down on the prisoner’s mind. He saw the whole trick of the +counterfeit dollars in his pocket and remembered the little Spaniard’s +threat on the observation platform of the train the night before: +“To-morrow we touch Mexico, where it is known that Colonel Hamilcar +Urgo is a law unto himself.” Grant strained forward and his mouth +opened to incoherent speech. + +“And now, señor,” Colonel Urgo continued blandly, “unfortunately you +will be locked up incommunicado.” + +Five minutes later Grant Hickman, behind a steel-studded door in a +Mexican jail, was as wholly out of the world as a man in a sunken +submarine. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE GARDEN OF SOLITUDE + + +Benicia O’Donoju by the side of the big Papago Quelele and with the +twin towns on the Line behind her--ahead the unlimned immensity of +the wilderness--gave herself to the exhilaration of flight. For the +skimming and dipping of the little car over the wave crests of the +desert was like the flight of the desert quail, who rarely lifts +himself above the height of the mesquite in his unerring dartings from +bush to bush. On its partially deflated tires, provision against sand +traps and the expansion of imprisoned air under heat, the skeleton +thing reeled off its twenty miles an hour with snortings. + +The final incident at the Arizora station--little Colonel Urgo and +his unceremonious jettisoning--left no abiding impression with the +spirited desert girl. His struttings and posings, his humorously +impetuous wooing, resumed at the El Paso station after the two years’ +interruption of her stay in the States, were for her no more than +the high stepping of some barnyard Lothario. Benicia, little given to +the morbid business of self-analysis, was not sensible of how exactly +the dual strain of blood in her had reacted to Urgo’s advances; how +it had been the swift thrust of Spanish temper which had prompted her +to resort to the pronged weapon from her hair at El Paso even as the +persistent Irish humour tang inherent in the O’Donoju name had flashed +out in the dumping of the suitor at Arizora. + +No, Hamilcar Urgo’s dapper figure was as evanescent as the mirage, but +there was another which appeared to replace it. A man with the figure +of an athlete and a forthright way of looking at one--perhaps the least +bit too self-assured, perhaps inviting rebuke did one but feel in the +humour of rebuking. One of those quick-witted Americans, ever ready +on a hair trigger of resourcefulness yet seeming to carry a situation +as if no situation existed. Nice eyes, yes. A pleasant laugh, rich in +humour. But so New Yorkish! He thought the desert a place where no +one lived willingly. Amusing conceit! And his name was--? Ah, yes, +Hickman--Grant Hickman. One would try to remember that name. + +Retrospect could not long hold Benicia’s mind against the joy of the +homing journey. For the desert she loved spoke to her a welcome long +dreamed in the stifling precincts of cities. There was the sky she +had yearned for, something of infinite depths which did not shut down +over the earth like an inverted cup; rather an impalpable sea wherein +the earth swam free. Morning gold still tinted it. And the mountains +that rose sheer from the desert floor with no lesser foothill heights: +under the sun they were blue in the east and where slant rays fell upon +western barriers a tawny strength of naked rock clothed them. Between +the feet of the mountain stretched the level desert plain far and far +beyond the power of eye to compass; grey with the grey of saltbush and +greasewood, overtones of green where the first leaves of the mesquite +and ironwood answered the call of the spring sun. + +Quelele had turned the machine onto a westward wending road once the +Line was crossed at Sonizona. A few straggling ranches near the border +town, then the unsullied desert. Westward and southward sped the +machine, deep into the greatest stretch of unpeopled wilderness between +the Barren Grounds of the Dominion and Panama. + +The Desert of Altar lies there. From the Line south to the Yaqui +River and from the Gulf of California, once called the Sea of Cortez, +eastward to the Sierra Madre:--here is the terra incognita of Sonora; +here is the dominion of thirst. A territory large as New England and +with a population smaller than the average New England mill town. A +vast graveyard of vanished peoples, who left behind them mountains +terraced with fortifications laid in unbroken breastworks of porphyry +and rocks pictured with their annals of life and death. Rain comes only +with occasional summer thunder storms up from the Gulf, storms which +wake dead rivers into furious flood. So precious is this water from the +sky that the primitive peoples weave mystic rain symbols into their +basketry for a fetish, and their songs are all of thunderheads and +croaking frogs. + +Here in the Desert of Altar the impossible becomes commonplace. A man +caught in a river bed by the spearhead of a freshet drowns in sand made +mud and irresistibly rushing. Cattle drink no water for months on end +but are sustained by munching cactus whose spines can penetrate sole +leather. In the furnace heat of summer furious rain storms occur in the +higher air but the moisture is sucked up by the sun before it touches +earth. Gold lies scattered on the surface of the desert and water must +be mined. The desert kind slay after the manner of the ages but declare +a truce at the waterhole. Death of all life is ever-present, yet grant +so much as a permanent trickle of the life-giving fluid and the dust is +covered with a glory of green. + +For its devotees the desert holds mysteries potent beyond comprehension +of folk in a softer land. The venturing padres of an elder day called +it the Hand of God; they walked in the hand of God and were not afraid. +Divinity, force, original cause--whatever may be your term for that +power which jewels the grass with dew and swings the suns in their +courses--this is very close in the desert. In great cities man has +driven the Presence far from him by his silly rackets of steam and +electricity, by his farcical reproductions of cliffs and pinnacles. In +the Desert of Altar he walks in silence and with God. The very air is +kinetic with the energy that brought forth life on a cooled planet. + +The desert had been Benicia’s teacher; had moulded her spirit to its +own pattern of elemental strength. Born the last of the O’Donojus in +the desert oasis that was the ultimate remnant of the once kingly +Rancho del Refugio--grant of a Spanish Philip to her ancestor--she +had been reared in the asperities of the land, had absorbed into her +bone and tissue the rigours and simple verities of a wilderness. +Because there was no son in the Casa O’Donoju and because, too, this +only daughter came into the world with the inheritance of a spirit +impetuous and errant as a desert bird, Don Padraic, her father, gave +over all attempts at imposing on her the straight decorum that shackles +the Spanish maiden of gentle blood. With the death of her mother when +Benicia was still in short skirts came this loosening of the bonds. +Instead of growing to maturity a shy creature who must never quit the +sight of a duenna and whose eyes shall tell no secrets, the girl warmed +to a wonderful companionship with her father, lived the life of a boy. + +Her flaming red hair bobbed about the fringe of milling cores of wild +cattle at the round-up. At _Sahuaro_ feasts of the Papagoes, Mo Vopoki +(Lightning Hair) added her shrill soprano to the chorus of the Frog +Doctor Song. She learned where gold lay in shallow pockets and winnowed +it from the sands in the Indian fashion. She brought home a mewing, +spitting kitten she had taken from a bobcat’s litter. Her doll was +discarded for a rifle before her strength could shoulder it. + +Schooling came in her father’s library, filled with books in three +languages. English and music, the music of the great harp, became her +passions. The harp had been her great-grandmother’s; Don Padraic could +make the mesh of strings sing with the sound of rain on flowers. He was +her first teacher. Then, when twenty years were hers and Don Padraic +realized something besides the wild desert life was needed to round out +the full beauty of his daughter’s soul, he had urged further studies +on the harp as the excuse for Benicia’s two years in the cities of the +States. Those two years had served well to overlay upon the rugged +handiwork of the wild the softness and subtleties of culture. + +Benicia believed she possessed all her father’s confidences. So she +did--all but one. She did not know that when she came into the world +with tiny head furry in burning red Donna Francisca, her mother, had +cried herself into hysteria and Don Padraic’s heart had gone cold. Nor +was she ever told that her flaming hair marked her with the finger of +Nemesis. + +This day of the return from exile no premonition of the inheritance +of fate arose to disturb the singing heart of the girl. She rattled +on to the stoical Papago at the wheel unending questions concerning +her father and the most humble of the Indian retainers living on the +rancherias about the oasis, Don Padraic’s fief in the waste lands. +She told the credulous Quelele stories of the cities she had seen; of +white men’s wickiups climbing as high as the hill of La Nariz; of water +so plentiful that it was launched at a burning house out of a long +serpent’s mouth; how men lifted themselves above the earth in machines +like the king condor and flew hundreds of miles between sun and sun. +To all of which big Quelele, never lifting his eyes from the thin rut +lines in the sand, answered with a single monosyllable “Hi,” wherein +was compounded all his capacity for wonder. + +South and west about the skirts of the Pajarito they went, and then +into the old road up from Caborca, the ancient highway called the Road +of the Dead Men which swings north parallel with the Line, cutting the +tails of numerous ranges that are great in Arizona. And so, when the +day was hardly more than half spent, the little car crawled to the +height called the Nose of the Devil, and Benicia saw below her land of +desire. + +Fists of the mountains grudgingly opened out to permit a broad basin +running from east to west, and there against the savage baldness of +sentinel ranges showed a ribbon of green. Green of precious gems it +was. So vivid in the setting of the drought land. So cyclonic its +assault of colour against the eye inured to the duns and greys of a +hundred miles of parched terrain. And in the midst of the oasis the +shining white dot, which was the house of the O’Donoju; of Benicia’s +father and his fathers before him back to the day of a royal favourite +baptized Michael O’Donohue. The Casa O’Donoju in El Jardin de +Soledad--the Garden of Solitude. + +Indian women, in skirts of orange and cerise and with gay mantles over +their sleek hair, lined the way to the avenue of royal date palms +which led from the bridge over the Rio Dulce straight to the white +single-story house of ’dobe, heavy walled and loopholed like a fort. +They waved and sent shouts of welcome to the mistress of the casa as +she passed. + +Benicia knew her father would not be outside the house to greet her; +their love was not for the servants to see. Rather he would be waiting +in their own trysting place, the place where he had given her farewell +two years before. The girl leaped from the car before the heavy +studded oak door breaking the solid white front of the house at its +centre. It was opened to her by old ’Cepcion, feminine major domo of +the household servants. Benicia paused to give the parchment cheeks a +kiss, then she danced down a flagged hall to the flare of green marking +the patio garden in the centre of the house. + +Here was a place of beauty and a fragrant cave of coolness--the very +secret heart of the Garden of Solitude. Open to the sky and with +cloistered dimness of the four sides of the house all about, the patio +was a tiny jungle of climbing things, all green and riotous blossoms. +A stately date palm reigned in the centre behind the little basin of +the fountain; curtains of purple bougainvillea draped themselves down +its shaggy ribs; lavender water-hyacinths sailed their little barques +in the pool; geraniums flamed in living fire against the pillars of the +arcades. + +There in the garden waited a man all in white. Snow white his heavy +hair and beard, though the life in his deep-set eyes and the vigorous +set of his shoulders belied age; white were his thin garments of silk +and flannel. + +He caught the flash of a red head through the greenery, saw an eager, +breathless face turned questioningly. + +“’Nicia, heart of my heart--!” + +Then she ran to him, paused just an instant to lift swift fingers +under his chin and tilt his head. Their eyes measured each the love +that welled brimming in the soul’s windows. Then the father drew his +daughter close to his heart and his lips brushed her forehead. + +“’Nicia, my strong one, your father has great need of you.” + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +JUSTICE + + +The Mexican theory of the treatment of prisoners, their status before +the law and the responsibilities of government toward them has few +complexities and knows no interference on the part of prisoners’ +welfare leagues or humanitarian congresses. When a man is arrested +south of the Line he straightway ceases to be enumerated among the +living; if, haply, he reappears in the course of weeks or years his +family looks upon the prodigy in the light of a resurrection. Such +resurrections do not occur often enough to dull the edge of the popular +interest attending them. There are several dim roads, peculiarly +Mexican, down which a prisoner may march to oblivion, with no record of +his expunction left behind. Officials with easy consciences find these +extralegal methods of clearing the docket handy and expeditious. + +Grant Hickman, new to the Border and utterly ignorant of customs and +manners in the republic of _poco tiempo_, necessarily could not +possess a background of sinister knowledge against which to build +doubts of his immediate future when he found himself locked in a cell. +He was in darkness deep as Jonah’s. He ached from his scalp to his +toes. A gingerly groping hand applied to various parts of his body +took stock of the exterior costs of that healthy fight in the gambling +palace. The heat of battle was still on him. He recalled how nobly the +big Arizonan swung his chair from the vantage of the crap table; what a +virile call to battle was the stranger’s “Ride ’em, Noo Yawker!” + +As for Colonel Urgo’s clumsy frame-up--the handful of lead dollars in +his pocket to prompt arrest for counterfeiting--Grant dismissed the +trick as childish spite. When he appeared before a judge in the morning +he could easily prove that the only Mexican money he possessed was +that given him in change by the fat Chinaman and what he had taken in +across the baize. Some tool of the vengeful little wooer of Benicia had +“salted” him during the progress of the game. + +But when morning light through a four-inch slit in the wall roused +him from a restless sleep long hours of doubt were ushered in. Came +a jailer with dry tortillas and water but no summons to appear +before a magistrate. Three tortillas--clammy rolled cakes of meal +tasting strongly of a cook’s carelessness in matters of excluding the +unessential--were the sum of his receipts from the outside world that +day. The jailer, who had the features of a bandit, merely grunted a “no +sabe” at the volley of questions the prisoner launched at him during +the minute he was in the cell. + +Those hours of solitude in the six-by-ten box of stone gave opportunity +for much thinking. Little by little it was borne in on Grant how +completely he was a victim of whatever spite Colonel Urgo might care +to devise; and recollection of his smiling face seen in the prison +office the night before--thin lips parted over teeth in a ferret’s +grin--confirmed the assumption that at devising mischief Colonel Urgo +would be hampered by no lack of ingenuity. + +Grant weighed the hope of aid from the other end of the town across the +Border fence. Bim Bagley, the only friend he had in all the Southwest, +was still out of town and would not be back until the morrow. Doc +Stooder--small chance! The worthy doctor was velvet drunk when he +received Grant in his office; for reasons which only his satiric humour +could explain he had elected to consider his visitor an impostor. +Little chance that Doc Stooder would pay him a thought until Bagley +returned and inquired of his whereabouts. Remained just the cobweb +contingency that the Arizonan who had fought beside him had escaped +the clutches of the rurales; Grant was certain the big fellow’s simple +loyalty to a fellow countryman would prompt him to set going some kind +of inquiry from across the Line. + +Night came, with it three more tortillas and a bowl of _carne_ seasoned +with chili sufficient to burn the gullet of a bronze image. Then, +several hours after the scant meal had been shoved in to him, the +bandit jailer opened his cell door and motioned him to step into the +corridor. Two men with rifles were waiting there; they stepped to his +side and marched him off between them. + +Down a flight of steps, through a courtyard heavy with shadows, then +up tortuous stairs to a door beneath a dim electric globe. The door +opened from within, and Grant found himself in a chamber which might +have passed as a courtroom. At its far end on a raised dais was a long +desk lighted from above, three men sitting behind it. A sort of wooden +cage stood apart on a platform by itself. Six men with serapes over +their shoulders and rifles hanging by straps across the blanket stripes +were slouching before the judges’ dais. A black headed peon crouched +timorously on a seat to the left and behind the guards. + +Grant’s escort halted him before the judges. He kept silence, studying +the faces of the three. Not pleasant faces. A hardness of eye and +cat-like bristle of moustachios over thin line of lips was common to +the trio. + +“Grant ’Ickman?” challenged the man in the middle. + +Grant nodded. His interrogator gave a sign to one of the rurales. The +latter turned to the peon on the bench, dragged him to his feet and +hustled him to the cage-like affair to the left of the dais, evidently +a witness box. The little fellow’s head hardly showed above the top +rail that fenced him in; his eyes were all whites. + +The examining judge jerked a thumb toward Grant as he shaped a question +in Spanish for the witness. The peon bobbed his head emphatically. +Another question and, “_Si_,” chirped the witness. Then a lengthy flow +of interrogation prompted by reference to some dossier in hand. + +“_Si! Si!_” The witness hurried to oblige. Cat whiskers lifted in a +smile as the judge turned back to Grant. + +“You unnerstan’?” + +“I don’t,” bluntly. More twitching of the spiked moustachios. + +“Zeese man, ’oo’s make confession of counterfeiting and ’oo ees +to be shot to-day, says ’e sells you thirty pesos made with bad +metal--counterfeit. An’--” + +“He lies!” Grant interrupted. + +“_Quieto!_” The judge banged his fist on the desk and fixed the +prisoner with a savage glare. “’E says, zeese man, ’e meets with you +las’ night on Calle San Lazar outside Crystal Palacio gambling ’ouse +an’ for ten veritable pesos ’e gives to you thirty pesos of bad metal. +Then zeese man ’e says ’e sees you enter Crystal Palacio. What remark +you make for zeese?” + +The monstrous farce of this accusation numbed Grant. Judicial +subornation fabricated to give colour to what was already determined in +the minds of these three puppets. As clearly as if they were bearing +on him he could see the cold, mocking eyes of Colonel Urgo behind the +shoulders of his pawns on the bench. Perception of his peril steadied +him. + +“I demand a lawyer if I am to be tried on this outrageous charge. And I +demand that the American consul in this town be told of the accusation +against me.” + +The interrogating judge turned to his confreres with a bland +outspreading of the palms. Then to Grant: + +“American consul ’as no business with crime against state of Mehico. +You will ’ave lawyer when you are tried before court at Hermosillo. +Zeese court ees not court of condemnation. Court of condemnation ees at +Hermosillo. W’en you arrive there, w’ere you make for a start to-night, +Señor ’Ickman, you ask for American consul if you desire.” + +“But you cannot send me to this Hermosillo place without trial.” Grant +took a step toward the bench in his vehemence. He was roughly jerked +back by his guards. The interrogating judge beamed on him. + +“In Mehico, Señor ’Ickman, it ees folly to say ‘you cannot.’ Much ees +possible in Mehico. To-night prisoners make start for Hermosillo. You +go weeth them.” + +He nodded to Grant’s guards and they closed in on him. He heard a +farewell, “Adios, Señor ’Ickman,” from the bench as he was rudely +hustled out of the courtroom. + +An hour later he stood with seven other shadows in the _carcel_ +courtyard. About them were the rurales with their rifles; four were +mounted on horseback and a pack mule, lightly laden, slept on three +legs behind the horsemen. Men came with lanterns and heavy loops of +something which chinked metallically when it was dropped. They fixed a +broad steel shackle on the left wrist of each prisoner and linked them +all to a bull chain. Then the door of a courtyard swung inward, the +mounted rurales closed in and the eight chained men went clinking out +to the dark street. + +A few midnight dawdlers paused to watch the shadowy procession +stumbling over the cobbles. No word was spoken. The clink of the +horses’ hoofs, the patter-patter of the short-legged pack mule and +the metallic whisperings of the chain fitted into a measured cadence. +Despite the presence of the pack mule, Grant first had thought the +journey would be a short one, ending at the railroad station. But +after fifteen minutes’ marching no railroad line was in sight and the +houses began to be scattered. Suddenly houses ceased; nothing but the +hump-shouldered shapes of mountains about; clear burning stars and +ahead a dim ribbon of road leading out into the desert. + +To Hermosillo, a town unheard of and at a distance unknown--across the +desert to Hermosillo afoot and chained in line with seven men. In the +slim rifle barrels so carelessly slung under shadows of sombreros was +the sullen emblem of that unwritten law of Mexico which stills so many +accusing mouths: _ley de fuga_--law of flight. + +Out into the desert of Altar marched the American, whose name appeared +only upon a secret cachet in the hands of the puppet judges--a man +gone, as a German once put it, “without trace.” + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE CHAIN GANG + + +“But, Doc, I tell you you’re crazy! How could a tenderfoot like Hickman +just in town from the East breeze across the Line and get into a jam +the first night he’s in town--drop out of sight completely?” + +Bim Bagley, back in Arizora and distracted by the unexplained mystery +of his pal’s name on the hotel register, his pal’s suitcase in a hotel +room but no more material trace of Grant Hickman, was knee to knee with +Dr. Stooder in the latter’s office. The Doc made judicious answer: + +“Well, son, Jed Hawkins’ specifications of the gringo he fought with +atop the crap table in the Palacio tallies pretty closely with the +young man as I saw him in my office earlier in the day. But here’s the +funny thing: the rurales let Hawkins go even though he laid out two of +’em with a chair. Let that fightin’ wildcat go and trotted this fellah +Hickman off to the _carcel_. That’s what gets me.” Doc Stooder gave +his decision with a wave of the hand. He jack-knifed his bony knees up +to his chin and waited the younger man’s comment. + +“But what did Hawkins say started the big row?” Bim’s long face, +all criss-crossed with the wind wrinkles that make desert men look +older than their years, gave a vivid picture of his distress, of his +eagerness to seize upon any detail that might point a solution of the +mystery. Doc Stooder recited with picturesque detail Jed Hawkins’ story +of the battle in the gambling palace as the redoubtable Jed himself had +narrated it in the Border Delight pool hall before returning to his +ranch at Dos Cabezas. + +“That give me a clue,” he concluded, “so I laid my pipe lines an’ I’m +looking for to tap a well any time now.” + +Doc Stooder’s pipe lines--of information, if not of wealth--were the +most productive of any along the Border. He was one of those rare white +men in the Southwestern country who enjoyed the unreserved respect if +not the love of the Mexican population, among whom nine-tenths of his +practice extended. Though he bawled at his patients, stricken dumb with +terror of their ailments, though he cursed the women and manhandled the +men, no poor Mexican’s hovel of ’dobe was too far out in the desert to +discourage Doc Stooder’s night prowling gas-wagon. Through dust storm +and withering heat this blasted jack-pine of a man flitted on wings of +gasoline, with his nostrums for dysentery and asthma, his splints for +broken bones and needles for knife thrusts. + +Drunk he might be half the time, an indifferent physician all the +time--for the Doc had not been away from the Border for twenty-five +years and never read a medical magazine. But under his hard rind of +brutalities and cynicisms the Mexicans and Indians had come to discover +a deep sympathy with their homely tragedies, their patient sufferings. +Sometimes they paid him in coin; more often they paid him in slavish +fealty the coin of which was information. Of gold strikes in the far +hills; of shrewd business deals to be wrought through connivance of +knavish officials across the Line; even of stolen jewels to be picked +up from a pawnbroker:--these the flow of Doc Stooder’s pipe lines. No +man on the Border for a hundred miles each way knew so much of the +scrapple of life as A. Stooder, M.D. + +“I’m lookin’ to hear of a woman,” the Doc drawlingly resumed, a wry +smile greeting Bim’s gesture of negation. “Yep, son, when any likely +lookin’ young fellah along the Border drops outa sight--and this +Hickman fellah’s got an eye with him for all his Noo Yawk bridle +trimmin’s--they’s a swish of skirts comes to my ears. Or”--he sat up +suddenly and threw a bony finger at Bim--“or he knows somethin’ about +why he’s come out here an’ went an’ babbled.” + +“Rot!” Bim’s grey eyes were clouded with anger. “I told you he doesn’t +know why we got him out here--and he’s not the babbling kind if he did.” + +“Well, it sizes up thisaway,” the Doc continued, ignoring the other’s +flash of temper. “They’s one man down in Sonora who knows all we +know about the Lost Mission and like’s not a dam’ sight more. That’s +this proud old don who lives down in the Garden of Solitude with his +red-headed daughter--name’s Padraic O’Donoju, if I haven’t told you +that before. If he ever got a line on the fact we’ve asked a Noo Yawk +engineer to come out here to Arizora he’d put two an’ two together an’ +figure we’re after that Four Evangelists church his ancestors built. +You know he’s sorta king of all the Papagoes in Altar and--” + +“How about your Papago who’s going to lead us to the Mission?” Bim +interrupted. “If there’s any leak likely as not it’s through him.” + +Stooder’s great head wagged slowly; a grin tilted the rabbit’s tail +tuft under his lip until it stood out a quizzical interrogation point. + +“No, son; no. I got that Papago brother where he thinks all I got to +do is crook my little finger an’ his wife passes away with asthma +overnight. We can rely--” + +A timid knock on the office door giving onto the hall. The Doc bellowed +a command to enter. A wizened Mexican peon whose left arm was a stump +sidled quickly through the doorway and stood bowing, shaggy head +uncovered. He cast a quick glance at Bagley, then to the doctor for +reassurance. + +“Go ahead, Angel--shoot!” commanded Stooder. + +“Señor, I hear from Jesus Ruiz, ’e’s cousin to me an’ rurale at the +_carcel_; Jesus Ruiz ’e says the gringo arrest’ at Palacio goes last +night in chain gang for Hermosillo--” + +Bim leaped to his feet with an oath. The peon’s eyes were on Doc +Stooder in an hypnotic stare. + +“The gringo goes in chain gang for Hermosillo, but my cousin Jesus Ruiz +’e says that gringo mos’ like never arrive.” + + * * * * * + +That hour when Doc Stooder’s pipe line began spouting information Grant +Hickman was discovering deep down within him an unguessed hardiness of +spirit. A trial was on him, a test of his moral fibre no less than of +his physical powers. At the end of twelve hours’ steady plodding across +the desert he was coming into his second wind. Every effort a devilish +ingenuity could contrive had been tried out by the four rurales, his +guards, in their common endeavour to break down this gringo’s fighting +morale. The single result was a fixed grin on features smeared with +dried blood and sweat--a challenge provoking the Mexicans to fresh +barbarities. + +During the first dark hours of the march Grant had nursed the hope +that at some point outside of town he and his fellow prisoners would +be brought to a railroad station to await the coming of a train. He +could not conceive a reason for transferring prisoners afoot when a +railroad would serve. But with the coming of the dawn and the lifting +of the dark from an empty land not even a telegraph pole raised above +the scrub to point fulfilment of his hope. Just the dry ribbon of road +stretching ahead and empty speculation as to the number of days or +hours which must intervene between present misery and journey’s end. +Grant never had heard the name Hermosillo until it was spoken by the +examining judge the night before; he did not know whether the town was +just over the horizon or half way to Panama. + +Morning brought him the chance to study the men chained with him who, +during the night hours, had been just so many disembodied shadows +marching in a nightmare. The one ahead of him was a shrivelled little +Chinaman, whose legs were so short he was forced to a skipping step to +keep slack on his segment of the chain; his breath came in asthmatic +pipings and wheezes like the noise of a leaky valve in some midget +engine. Behind him was a giant of an Indian, almost the colour of teak. +With a timed regularity this Indian spat noisily all through the dark +hours and until the sun rose to dry up his throat. The rest were in +character with Grant’s nearer companions--just flotsam. + +The guards were typical of their class; Mexican peons brutalized even +beyond the inheritance of their mixed bloods by their small taste of +power. The quarter-blood Indian south of the Line, whose ancestry is +devious as his own starved dog’s, knows but a single law of life and +that the law of fear. Lift him by ever so little from the station +of the one who fears to that of the one to be feared and he has no +counterpart for studied cruelty anywhere on earth. + +The one who rode to the right of the line in which Grant’s position +was fourth from the front, had commenced with the dawn a calculated +campaign of nasty tortures. He would suddenly swerve his horse against +Grant, threatening his feet with trampling hoofs. He held his lighted +cigarette low at his side with elaborate air of carelessness, then +pressed in close for the burning tip to eat through the white man’s +shirt. Once he aimed a vicious backward kick at his victim; his heavy +spur left a line of red through the torn sleeve from elbow to shoulder. + +At each of these refinements of humour the rurale’s snickering laughter +was met by the American’s wordless grin. Just a tense spreading of lips +and baring of teeth, which carried to the guard’s savage perception a +taunt and a threat. Always in Grant’s twisted grin lay the unspoken +promise of retribution once the odds against him were lightened. + +The desert under sun at the meridian flexed its harsh hand to pinch the +crawling caterpillar of chained men. Heat waves made all the ragged +summits of the Sierras pulsate. A dust tasting of desert salts spread a +low cloud about the marching column. Thirst that was a poignant agony +was made all the more unendurable by the tactics of the guards. From +time to time one of them would unhitch a canteen from the pack mule’s +burden and in the sight of the eight helpless sufferers tilt his head +and guzzle noisily. Even he would allow some of the water to slop from +his mouth and be wasted in the sand. + +When the little Chinaman marching before Grant sighed and dropped, the +line was halted for half an hour. First the yellow man was revived, +then the canteen at which he had sucked so noisily was passed down the +line to the rest of the prisoners. It was their first taste of water +since the prison gate was passed. After the canteen circulated, black +strips of jerked beef, sharp with salt, were distributed. Grant never +had seen the “jerky” of the Southwest; the leathery stuff would have +revolted him did his body not cry out for food. He tore at the tough +substance after the manner of his fellows while the guards brewed +themselves some more complicated mess over a fire of greasewood sticks. + +Then the march again. Dragging hour after dragging hour. Clink-clank +of the swinging chain. Pad-pad of feet in time. Snuffle and +wheeze--snuffle and wheeze of the asthmatic Chinaman’s breathing. +All in an unvarying synchronism which tore at the nerves. All the +world--Grant’s world of a great city--was reduced to this dreadful +monotony of movement and sound. + +He tried to think. Came to his mind a picture of his office in the +Manhattan skyscraper--his desk with the mounted bit of shrapnel for a +paperweight, its clear greeny-white glass top, the two wire baskets +which held his correspondence. He saw the squash court at the club--men +in sleeveless shirts straining after a white ball. Henry’s bar in the +little side street off the Rue D’Anou in Paris; Henry selling stolen +American cigarettes for five times their value at the commissary. St. +Mihiel and the old woman who knitted lace. Then the girl--Benicia +O’Donoju. Grant called to his mind the vivid glory of her hair, the +trick of her short upper lip in curling outward like the petal of a tea +rose, a something roguish always lurking deep down in the warm pools of +her eyes. + +“Not Mexican. We are Spanish folk.” That was her sharp reproof when he, +blundering, had asked her if she was of Mexican blood. That night on +the train--it seemed a year back. “Not Mexican.” Now he understood why +the girl had corrected him so pointedly. Thank God she was not of that +breed! + +Near dusk the line was halted and one of the guards dismounted. Grant +saw him fumble in his shirt and bring out a bright bit of metal, saw +him approach the head of the line and tinker with the first fellow’s +wrist shackle. He heard a sharp intake of breath behind him and, +turning, caught the stamp of terror on the giant Indian’s face. +Something was going forward which he could not comprehend, something to +shake the stoicism of this Indian. Within five minutes the steel band +about his wrist was unlocked and he stood free of the chain with the +rest of the prisoners. He saw on the faces of all of them that same +terror mask the Indian wore. + +The freed men cast covert glances at the guards, followed their every +move with cat-like slyness. The little Chinaman began a falsetto +sing-song under his breath, which might have been a prayer to his +protecting joss. One of the guards turned in his saddle and called some +jocular order to the prisoners. They moved on in the wine-light of the +sunset, falling precisely into the line they had held when chained, +their eyes vigilant for every move of a hand on the part of the mounted +men. + +The rurales now carried their rifles swung free across the saddles. + +Though he could understand no word of the muttered scraps of speech +passed between man and man behind him, the magnetic fear waves +possessing all the rest began to prompt Grant to some comprehension. +The coming night--dropping of the chain--those rifles unslung from +shoulders and carried free across the saddles:--did these things +presage the near end of this farce of a pilgrimage across the desert to +a court? + +Light now was nearly gone from the western sky and the guards were +riding farther away from the trudging line, deliberately inviting some +one to offer himself for fair target practice while gunsights still +could be seen. Grant faced the hazard squarely. Certain he was that +none of the eight would see another sunrise, that butcher’s work would +commence the minute sporting chances were definitively ignored by the +victims. He was of no mind to be the passive party to a hog killing. +Better a quick dash--a bullet from behind-- + +The line of men had just emerged from an arroyo with almost perpendicular +sides; the bed of the dry stream was thick with shadow. Grant leaped from +line and ran straight for the guard who rode between himself and the +course of the stream. Almost at his stirrup he swerved and cut under the +horse’s rump. + +Shouts. A shot gone wild. Grant, zigzagging, was at the brink of the +arroyo. Two shots almost as one. A lance of fire through his shoulder. +Up went his arms and he plunged headlong into the gulf of blackness. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE HEART OF BENICIA + + +The Desert of Altar is transcendence of silence. From the savage +Growler range in Arizona south to the obsidian bastions of Pinacate, by +the dead Gulf, is space to crowd five million people with their tumult +of cities, their crash of machines, hoot of locomotives and shriek of +steel under stress. Yet in all this blank waste not a sound. + +The chirp of the wren from her hole in the _sahuaro_ carries not even +so far as the watching hawk on nearby skeleton _ocatilla_ stalk. The +meat cry of the prowling cat in the mountains where the wild sheep +range is swallowed in the muffling depths of the canyon under her feet. +Thin air seems too tenuous to conduct sound waves. Creatures of the +wild lands move mute under the oppression of unbounded space. + +Yet nowhere does rumour fly swifter than here in this vacant land. +Comes a strange prowler to the waterholes of Tinajas Altas, and the +antelope fifty miles away know the news and seek the hidden springs at +Bates’ Wells. A Papago three days’ journey from the nearest rancheria +stumbles onto hoofprints of six horses away over where tidewater climbs +into the delta of the Colorado, and he turns back to carry report of +revolution in Baja California. Strange signs tell their tales from +the sands; the arrangement of little sticks conveys whole chapters of +information to the wayfarer. When man meets man, be he white, brown or +copper coloured, news is a torch to be passed on to a new hand. Nothing +can be long a secret. The latent must out. + +Even as the worthy Doc Stooder in his shabby office at Arizora had +a never-ending messenger service from all the Border and the lands +beyond, carrying scraps of oblique news, another far distant in the +Garden of Solitude enjoyed the same intelligence. This was Don Padraic +O’Donoju, last of the line of masters over the once-great principality +of El Rancho del Refugio. Though a hundred years of revolution, of +uproar and the teetering of political balances in the more populous +Mexico to south and east of him had left to the last don of the +O’Donojus little more territory than that comprised in the oasis of +the Garden, still he had cattle enough to be counted a rich man and +six generations of custom gave him unbroken sway over the Papagoes. +From the Sand People of the Gulf away up to the San Xavier rancheria +at Tucson extended the secret kingdom of Don Padraic’s influence. His +only tithes were those of loyalty and the bringing of report. What the +Papagoes thought Don Padraic should know, that he knew as speedily as +word could be passed. + +So, a week after Benicia had returned to the Casa O’Donoju, came a +runner from the eastward--one sent by El Doctor Coyote Belly, whose +winter house was at Babinioqui near the railroad. The runner had big +news. El Doctor, known all over the Desert of Altar because of his +reputed skill at curing hydrophobia and the bite of the sidewinder, +had a sick white man--a seriously wounded white man who might be an +American--in his house at Babinioqui and he asked Don Padraic what he +should do with this man. + +El Doctor was returning from the Medicine Cave of Pinacate--this +was the runner’s tale--when on the road that runs from Sonizona to +Hermosillo he found seven dead men; dead men with the marks of fetters +on their left wrists. A little beyond he found still another; this one, +lying in an arroyo, had been shot through the shoulder from behind +and he still lived. El Doctor had tied the living man to his burro and +taken him to his winter house at Babinioqui, where he had treated him +with the most powerful herbs and had massaged the wound with the lizard +image. The wounded white man would live. Coyote Belly did not wish to +turn him over to the Mexicans, for he was a victim of _ley de fuga_ and +the Mexicans undoubtedly would shoot him again. + +Don Padraic, whose charity was wider than his acres, made his decision +instantly. He ordered Quelele to go, with the runner to guide him to El +Doctor’s house, in the little desert car and to fetch the white man to +the Garden of Solitude as soon as he was able to be moved. It was best, +the master instructed, that Quelele travel in the night, returning with +the wounded man, and tell no one of the object of his mission. + +The big Indian stocked the car with gasoline from the tank behind +the master’s house--a reservoir filled monthly from drums brought by +ox cart from the distant railroad point--strapped canteens and oil +containers on his running boards and was off. Don Padraic said nothing +of the incident to his daughter. + +That night Don Padraic and Benicia sat in the candlelight of the big +salon or living room which filled the space of one quadrangle off +the patio. In all Sonora there was no counterpart of this chamber of +mellowed antiquities, the collection of generations of the O’Donoju. +Low ceiled and with crossing beams of oak, whereon the marks of the +hewer’s adze showed like waves; walls hung with tapestries between the +heavy frames of portraits of grandees and their ladies of forgotten +days; a great fireplace wherein a man could stand upright, with its +hand-wrought andirons and heavy crane shank; floor almost black from +a hundred years of polishing and with the skins of animals floating +there like so many islands:--here was a magic bit of old Spain lifted +overseas to find root in the heart of the desert. + +Benicia, in a gown of rippling lines which left her strong young arms +bare to the shoulder, was seated behind the great golden span of her +harp. Candlelight falling across her shoulders made ivory the flesh +of her bare arms as they moved rhythmically back and forth over the +wilderness of strings. She was playing the Volga Boatsong, a peasant +melody whose minors rose and fell to the sweep of oars. As the girl +gave her heart to the music, the thrumming strings wove a picture of +some barbaric steppe coming down to a sluggish river; boatmen chanting +at the sweeps. The ancient room was a-thrill with resonance. + +She finished with just a breath of melody, the song of the boatmen +dying in the distance. Her eyes fell on the face of her father; it +was deeply etched by the play of flames from the mesquite logs in the +fireplace. Always he sat this way, moveless before the fire, when +she played on the great harp o’ nights, freeing his soul to drink in +the melodies; but to Benicia’s understanding eyes appeared now the +semblance of a deeper shadow not of the firelight. She softly left the +instrument and stole over to nestle herself on the broad chair wing, +with her coppery head laid against the snow white one. + +“_Pobrecito_”--this was her pet word carried through the years from +childhood--“_Pobrecito_, thy face is as grave as the owl’s. Some +secret? Remember, there are no secrets between us two--no worry which +the other does not share.” + +Her coaxing hand played through the heavy mane of hair; her cheek was +against his. Don Padraic slowly turned his head with denial in his +eyes; but that denial could not sustain the accusation in the steady +blue eyes of the daughter. During the week Benicia had been home a +secret doubt had steadily pressed upon the father; he had been waiting +some word from her which did not come. Now one of his hands stole up to +tweak her ear--signal of surrender. + +“’Nicia, great-heart, you have told me all about your two years in the +cities--your two years of life in the great world outside? There is +something you have withheld?” + +“Nothing, little father.” She gave him a peck on the forehead. Don +Padraic appeared to be groping for his words. + +“You met--many American men--young men who--ah--might have been +attracted by the beauty of my desert flower?” + +A ripple of soft laughter and the girl pressed closer to him. + +“Ah, _Pobrecito_, you forget that your desert flower carries thorns. +Ask that ridiculous Hamilcar Urgo; he has felt the thorns.” + +“But”--Don Padraic was not to be put off by evasions--“was there not +one whose heart was conquered by a girl of such fire, such beauty? +Come--come! These Americans are not men of ice.” + +For a minute Benicia was silent. She was weighing in all sincerity the +only shred of a secret she had in her heart; testing it for genuineness +as fairly as she might. + +“Yes, daddy, there were many with bold eyes and ready tongues; but +hardly had they begun to speak as friends or companions when their talk +was all of money--how much they were planning to make that year; the +‘big deal’ they were going to put through. All were like this--but one.” + +“Ah,” breathed Don Padraic. + +“That one I have told you of,” she continued. “The man on the train +who was so masterful with little Hamilcar. He was not like the others. +A man of wit--of sympathies; one who seemed to have understanding of +life--” + +“And he--?” the father prompted. + +“We said ‘_adios_’ the night before we came to Arizora. I did not see +him in the morning, though he said that was his destination.” + +They were silent once more. Finally from Benicia a wraith of laughter +on fluttering wings of a sigh: + +“But, my grave old owl, why these questions? Never before have I seen +my daddy play the prying duenna.” + +“Heart of mine, thou canst not be blind”--the father’s voice trembled +over the intimate pronoun. “I have been thy father, mother, elder +brother, all in one. And selfish--selfish beyond measure! Keeping thee +chained here to an old man in the wilderness when all the world of love +and life lies beyond--” + +“No--no, daddy mine!” Tears dewed blue eyes as yearning arm strained +him to her. + +“--My ’Nicia has her years ahead of her. Her love life must be awakened +and given freedom to unfold like a flower in a garden. Yet I have +permitted her to come back to me here in the Garden of Solitude because +I was lonely. Better far that I sell what we have here and take you +back to the world. In these evil days there is no fit mate to be found +for you in all Sonora. Hamilcar Urgo has threatened me if I do not give +you to him; he is of our blood, but he is abominable. I--” + +A soft hand clapped over his lips. He heard passionate words: + +“Father mine, stop! Never--never whisper again that you will sell our +Garden. For I love it, next to you, above all the world. We are desert +people, little father. We live in God’s hand and are happy. The cities +crush me with their noise, their confusion.” + +“But, ’Nicia--” + +“And, dearest of daddies”--her lips against his ear were giving kisses +light as thistledown--“I want no lover but you--no happiness but what +I have returned to here in the Garden. Now, not a word more!” + +She was on her feet and with the skirts of her gown caught in her +fingers was making him an old-fashioned curtsy. Then she slipped into +the shadows where the great golden harp stood, and in an instant the +ancient room began to hum with spirited arpeggios--rush of many waters +over a fall. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +GOLD AND PEARLS + + +Bim Bagley, on the trail of the information brought by Doc Stooder’s +pipe line, found himself against a blank wall the instant he passed +through the barrier of the Line into Sonizona. He was too conversant +with the ways of Mexican officialdom to make any inquiry in high +places, knowing that to do so would be but to jeopardize Grant Hickman, +however he might be placed, and win for himself naught but suave +denials. Nor did he even go to the American consul, who, in the usual +course of things, would be the last man in Sonizona to hear of the +disappearance of an American citizen there. + +Rather, with Doc Stooder’s counsel, Bim circulated warily among the +gambling halls and in the _cantinas_ where the rurales were wont to go +for their salt and mescal. Here ten pesos slipped into a complacent +palm; there twenty. Then weary waiting for results. + +Bit by bit the story came to him, and behind the fragments was always +the dim figure of Colonel Hamilcar Urgo. Bagley knew Urgo for the +tyrant politician that he was: how he used his position in the garrison +as a cloak to cover his manipulations of government all along the +Sonora border. No man was stronger, not even the governor of Sonora +himself; and the central regime in Mexico City was forced to wink at +Colonel Urgo’s obliquities else run the risk of his firing the train to +revolution. + +But why this little sand viper in uniform should have conceived a +desire to be rid of Grant Hickman, a total stranger to the country, not +even the most astute of Bagley’s informers could guess. “’E’s not like +theese gringo” appeared to cover the whole case. + +The saturnine doctor, repenting him of his brusque reception of the +New York man--prompted, after all, by his superlative caution in the +presence of a possible impostor--sent the tip to the farthermost +ganglions of his news system: “Fifty gold dollars to the man bringing +information of the missing American’s whereabouts.” + +Doc Stooder’s proffer of that amount of money was not all humanitarian. +Below his surface show of concern, designed for the benefit of Bim +Bagley, good Dr. Stooder did not care a plugged nickel what might +be the fate of the Eastern man. He was not one to lose sleep over +the misfortunes of others if those misfortunes were not attributable +to strictly physical causes and under materia medica. Then only they +interested him. + +No, Doc Stooder’s real concern was the delay caused by the disappearance +of this third party to his scheme for a “great killing.” The killing in +question was one he could not make single-handed. Circumstances which +have no place in this tale had forced him to share the secret of it with +Bagley, and the latter had refused to move a step in the enterprise until +he had his pal from overseas in on the game. The Doc fretted aloud one +day, which was the tenth after Grant had dropped from sight. + +“Son, I’m tellin’ you ’less we make tracks for that Four Evangelists +mission purty pronto this here O’Donoju Spaniard down in the Garden’s +goin’ to get what’s in the wind and shove in on us. He’s got every +Papago from here to the Gulf runnin’ to him with every whisper a little +bird lets spill. He gets wind you an’ me are raising sand to lay hands +on an engineer out from Noo Yawk an’ he smells a mice.” + +“You go dig alone for your dam’d mission.” Bim Bagley’s temper had been +ground fine by days of restless anxiety. “Me, I roost right here till +I get the lay where my buddy is.” + +Next day all the silver of subsidy Bim had distributed bore fruit an +hundred-fold. There came to the office of Doc Stooder unquestioned +report that the missing American was alive, though shot through the +body, and under the care of El Doctor Coyote Belly at a speck in the +desert called Babinioqui away down beyond the Line. + +Bagley was off in his car that night. Doc Stooder, alone in his office +and with a graduating glass and bottle of fiery tequila at his elbow, +dreamed of gold plate brought to light from caverns of sand, of altar +jewels and hoards of nuggets--riches of crafty priests--salvaged from +the crypt of a holy place lost to sight of man a century and a quarter. + +“Gold all hammered into crosses an’ such!” The Doc tipped his brimming +graduating glass against the electric bulb and studied with fond eye +the liquor made golden by the light. + +“--Pearls, my Papago says. Pearls big as _bisnaga_ fruit an’ +greeny-white like a high moon. Gold an’ pearls! Pearls an’ gold! +Stooder, you’re goin’ be a prancin’, r’arin’ aristocrat!” + + + + +CHAPTER X + +AT THE CASA O’DONOJU + + +Six days after Quelele the Papago set out on his mission of mercy +from the Casa O’Donoju he returned to the oasis. It was in the first +flush of dawn that the _shuf-shuf_ of the little car roused master +and servants; Quelele had travelled all night and at a pace to +conserve the strength of the wounded man, who lay on thick straw in +the box body. All night without lights save the thickly strewn lamps +in the firmament, wending hither and thither through the scrub where +half-guessed lines in the sand marked the Road of the Dead Men--a +journey weird enough. + +For Grant Hickman it was but part of the moving drama of a dream. That +instant of flight from the chain gang, when a bullet tore through his +shoulder and sent him toppling into the arroyo, was the visitation +of death; in his flickering perceptions all else following was but +adventuring in the country beyond death--incidents to paint impressions +on a consciousness otherwise wiped clean of otherworld recollections. +First of these exposures on the cloudy plate of his mind came many days +after the rurales had left him for dead in the desert: a face deep-dyed +as mahogany and with white bristles of a beard about chin and lips, +a face kindly withal, which bent near his as a hand lifted his head +to bring his lips to a vessel of pungent brew. Then another age of +drifting and swimming through soft clouds. + +Grant had just come to accept the grey-thatched face of El Doctor +Coyote Belly as part of a permanent picture when another Indian +appeared between himself and the bundles of sticks making a roof over +his head. This second personage in the world of the unreal, a giant +with the features of a boy, had spelled El Doctor in ministering herb +brews and keeping the wet cloths under the burning wound in his back +for what seemed many years. Then Grant had felt himself lifted, carried +from the hut with the bundles of sticks for a roof and laid on sweet +smelling straw. In the starshine he felt the hand of El Doctor close +over his own with a heartening squeeze. + +Then--wonder of wonders!--the racking cough of a gas engine, and Grant +was soaring back to that familiar earth which had been lost to him so +long. + +Upon the arrival of the car bringing Grant to the Casa O’Donoju Don +Padraic, hastily dressed, superintended the moving of his guest to +a small, clean room, candle lit. The wounded man felt the gracious +softness of feathers under him, the suave clinging of sheets. An aged +Indian woman, working under the white man’s direction, divested him of +his tattered clothes and patted everything comfortable. Drowsy luxury +stole across his consciousness to cloud it and bring sleep. + +Sunlight flooded the room when Grant awoke. He was alone. His mind was +clearer than it had been since he was shot. Only the steady burning +in his vitals linked this moment of comfort with the tortured past. +His eyes roved about the room to take in its appointments. White walls +devoid of ornamentation; by the heavy door with its curiously wrought +iron latch a single chest of drawers of some antique pattern; the bed +he lay upon massive as a galleon of old days and with a canopy of +carved wood and tapestry for a sail: here was a room from the period +department of the Metropolitan Museum. + +Grant was patiently trying to fit together the jig-saw scraps of his +memory when the door opened and the white man he had seen the night +before entered. Seeing the light of reason in the patient’s eyes, Don +Padraic smiled and bowed. Something mighty heartening lay in that +welcome and the warm cordiality of Don Padraic’s features. + +“I am rejoiced to find you better to-day,” he said as he drew a chair +to the side of the bed. “Yours was a hard journey last night.” + +“I am still a little uncertain up here”--Grant tapped his forehead with +an attempt at a laugh. “For instance, I was just thinking I had been +lifted straight into a room of the Metropolitan in New York.” + +The host’s brows were knitted an instant, then he caught the allusion +and smiled. + +“Ah, yes; we have rather ancient furnishings here. But you are quite a +distance from New York, señor. This is the Casa O’Donoju in the Garden +of Solitude, and I am Don Padraic O’Donoju.” + +The name crashed into Grant’s consciousness like the clang of iron. His +heart gave a great leap. Could it be possible--? No, this must be but +part of the aurora dreams of the vague eternity still just behind his +back. Grant wished to make no blunder which might belie the present +soundness of his mind, so he held his tongue over the question burning +to be asked. Instead: + +“My name is Grant Hickman, sir. I am deeply obliged to you for your +charity in bringing me here. Of course, I do not know quite how it +all happened--my coming here from some place else, where an Indian, +or two of them--seemed to be caring for me. And I fear I am hardly a +presentable guest.” The sick man’s hand passed ruefully over his stubby +chin. + +Don Padraic made a gesture dismissing Grant’s fastidiousness. “Señor, a +gentleman should not consider the state of his beard and the state of +his health with equal seriousness. The one may be repaired at once even +if our wishes cannot immediately effect a cure of the other. Permit +me to retire, señor, and not tax you with questions until you are +stronger.” + +Shortly after the gentle host had bowed himself out an Indian servant +entered with basin and razor and effected an agreeable change in the +patient’s appearance. Then Grant was left alone with the tab to a +wonderful possibility to turn over and over in his mind. + +He was in the house of the O’Donoju. Could there be more than one +family of that unusual name in the desert country; or had fate thrown +him a recompense for all he’d suffered by lifting him from a line of +chained convicts to carry him through a nightmare straight to the one +spot in all the world he most desired to be in? Perhaps under the same +roof, near enough to him to permit the carrying of her laughter, was +Benicia, the vivid creature who had won his heart into captivity. + +He was not kept long in suspense. The door opened and Don Padraic’s +white clad figure appeared, behind it Benicia. She was in khaki, as +Grant had last seen her at the Arizora station, wide-brimmed hat noosed +under her chin just as she had come in from a ride through the oasis. +All the wild, free spaces of the wilderness seemed compacted in the +girl’s trim figure, in the flush of her browned cheeks touched by the +sun. + +“Señor Hickman--” Don Padraic began introduction, but Benicia was at +the bedside; her cool hand was given to Grant’s clasp with a gesture of +boyish comradeship. + +“We need not be introduced, father,” Benicia laughed, and there was +a queer catch in her throat. “Señor Hickman did me a service on the +train which served as the best introduction in the world.” Turning back +to Grant--“I did not know, señor, you were the wounded man Quelele +brought into our home so early this morning--did not even know we had +a guest until my father told me when I returned from my ride a few +minutes ago.” + +Grant strove to put all his heart prompted in words that were mete: +“And I did not dare hope that this house to which a miracle has brought +me was the desert home you described on the train.” + +Benicia’s eyes read surely what his lips would not frame. She saw in +the white face of the wounded man a touch of that old hardihood and +forthright spirit of address which had commended this American to her +at first meeting--commended him even against her own impulse to resent +his self-assurance. But she saw, too, how suffering battled to dim the +valiant spirit, and something deeper than abstract sympathy stirred in +her heart. + +“But, señor, to meet you again this way! Father has told me the message +brought from El Doctor: how you were found among dead men on the +Hermosillo road and brought back to life by that old Papago. You, a +stranger and unknown here in the desert country--how could this happen +to you, señor?” + +Don Padraic interposed: + +“Perhaps, ’Nicia, when Señor Hickman is stronger he will answer +questions. Would it not be better--?” + +The girl was quick to appreciate her father’s considerate thought. +Again she laid her hand in Grant’s. + +“If you will permit me to play the doctor--at least to see to it that +lazy old ’Cepcion, your nurse, does not neglect you?” The smile that +went with this promise was tonic for the sick man. It remained like +an afterglow when the door was closed behind the girl. And when the +wrinkled Indian woman came an hour later with broth on a silver tray +that smile reappeared, translated into the fragrant beauty of rose +petals laid by the side of the bowl. + +Five luxurious days passed--days each with a wonderful spot of sunshine +in them--that when Benicia accompanied the aged ’Cepcion to his +chamber. On these daily visits she would draw her chair to the side of +the great bed--she looked very small below the high buttress of the +mattress--and while he quaffed his chicken broth and nibbled his flaky +tortillas Benicia would talk. ’Cepcion, like some mahogany coloured +manikin in her flaring skirts and winged bodice, always stood, arms +akimbo and features passive as a graven image, behind her mistress’ +chair. + +The girl’s talk was directed away from the personal; with an art +concealing art she evaded Grant’s frequent endeavours to swing +conversation into more intimate channels. She brought the world of +the desert into the sick room, unconsciously revealing herself as +a flashing, restless creature of the wastes: now on horseback and +threading dim trails over the Line to carry quinine to a family +of Papagoes down with the fever; now beside Quelele in the little +gas-beetle and skimming to Caborca, the southern town, to buy a wedding +dress for an Indian belle. + +Not once did she touch again upon the subject of Grant’s misadventures +and how he came to be found on the road to Hermosillo. A delicate +sense of the fitness of things prompted her to await the moment when +he himself should volunteer explanations. Grant, on his part, felt an +impelling reluctance to give details, for to do so would necessitate +his revealing his conviction that little Colonel Urgo’s was the hand +that had pushed him so near death. A delicate--perhaps quixotic--sense +of personal honour prompted that he keep his enemy’s name out of +any explanations. He could not know how close might be the little +Spaniard’s relations with Benicia and her father--even discounting +Urgo’s boast that he expected to make the girl his wife--and, besides, +he felt the score between himself and Urgo must be evened before he +linked the Colonel’s name with his experiences. + +With Benicia’s father Grant modified his resolution to a certain +degree. It was no more than proper, he argued with himself, that the +master of the Casa O’Donoju have some explanation for the presence in +his house of a man from a Mexican chain gang. + +“Señor O’Donoju,” Grant addressed his host when the latter was come on +one of his daily visits, “you have been more than kind to me, but I +fear I may be an embarrassment to you--a fugitive, you know, if that is +my status before the law.” + +“My dear sir”--the courtly Spaniard waved away Grant’s scruples with +a smile--“you forget that the evidence El Doctor Coyote Belly found +on the Hermosillo Road--you the only survivor among eight men who had +been murdered, eight men with marks of fetters on their wrists; that +this evidence, I say, clearly indicates you now have no status whatever +before what the Mexicans call their law.” + +Grant looked his surprise. Don Padraic continued easily: + +“You are officially dead, Señor Hickman. It is the _ley de fuga_--the +law of flight. You were shot trying to escape while being transferred +from one prison to another. Monstrous barbarism! So the president, +Francisco Madero, met his end; so, perhaps, Carranza. When you were +chained to other convicts and sent afoot out into the desert you were +doomed; the men responsible for that act counted you as dead the minute +they ordered you overland to Hermosillo.” + +Grant recalled the mask of fear he’d seen settle over the features of +the big Indian, his chain mate, when the rurales began to loose the +fetters in the sunset hour of that fateful night on the desert; how the +asthmatic little Chinaman had commenced his chant to the joss--men who +had known every weary hour of that march brought them nearer to the +stroke of doom. + +“I have no direct evidence to explain why I was in that chain gang,” +Grant began, honestly enough; then he told the story of the fight in +the gambling palace after the discovery of the counterfeit dollars in +his pocket, reserving only all reference to Colonel Urgo. His host +heard him through with a grave face. + +“Perhaps,” he ventured, “you were on some mission to the Border which +ran counter to the interests of a scheming official on the Mexican +side.” + +“To be honest, I do not know yet on what mission I came to Arizora,” +Grant conceded with a laugh. “A friend of mine wrote me in New York +he wanted me to join him in ’a whale of a proposition’ out here along +the Border. I was fool enough to come just on that, and when I had an +interview with a Dr. Stooder--” + +“Ah!” The interjection escaped Don Padraic against instant reflex of +judgment, as his hand part way raised to his lips betrayed. Grant +caught the other’s quickly covered confusion and suddenly was sensible +of his careless garrulity. Here he was bandying names in a matter his +friend Bagley had surrounded with unexplained secrecy. He finished +lamely: + +“And so on my first night in Arizora I fell into a trap.” + +When Don Padraic left the chamber Grant still was dwelling upon his +host’s involuntary exclamation at the name of Doc Stooder. What was +there about the saturnine physician, what notorious reputation which +could lead a hermit such as Don Padraic away off in this desert oasis +to evince surprise that one under his roof had had dealings with him? +More and more an undefined regret for his mention of the name of +Stooder plagued him. + +In truth, the whole reason for his coming to Arizora and whatever +fantastic project might be at the bottom of it appeared now strangely +linked with this latest turn of fate, his coming to the Casa O’Donoju. +Grant became aware of a duty long overlooked and wrote a brief and +non-committal note to Bim Bagley, in Arizora, saying only he had +suffered an accident and would return to the Border town as soon as he +was able. This Benicia took from him to give to Quelele when he should +go to the nearest railroad town. + +Two days thereafter befell a boon the wounded man had dreamed of during +many yearning hours. Two male servants of the household came to dress +him in one of Don Padraic’s white suits--his own clothes were rags--and +assisted him down a long hall which turned into the green paradise +of the patio. There under the royal date palm they sat him, with the +fountain pool and its magic purple sails of the hyacinth at his feet, +behind and on either hand the green and crimson glory of the geraniums. + +Benicia was awaiting him there alone. The girl, in a simple green frock +which revealed bare arms and the warm round of her shoulders, was the +embodiment of the garden’s fairy essence. She was a sprite of this +green and glowing place. Hot sunlight falling upon her head made it a +great exotic flower. + +“Now both of us can revel in being lawbreakers,” she exclaimed when the +Indians had bowed themselves out. She was hovering about Grant, patting +into place the gay serape which covered his knees. + +“Lawbreakers!” Grant’s glowing eyes bespoke the intoxication of +pleasure. “I feel, rather, like a prisoner whose sentence is commuted.” + +The girl’s rippling laughter ended with, “Oh, but my father said you +should not be moved for three days yet. Now he has gone into town with +Quelele and you and I are breaking the law--with you equally guilty.” + +“What man would not rush into crime with you to lead?” he rallied, +and the little game of give and take in joke and repartee which had +been of their devising these last few days of Grant’s convalescence, +when Benicia made her daily visits at his bedside, was resumed. It was +in this course their friendship had grown: on a basis of comradeship +and with healthy minds in apposition, giving and finding something of +humour, of rollicking fun. No angling for sickly sentimentalism on the +part of this unspoiled girl of the waste places--so Grant during hours +of staring at the ceiling had appraised the heart of Benicia O’Donoju; +no place in their communion for any of the trite nothings a man burbles +into concealed ear of a flapper over tea or whatever else comes from +the sophisticated city teapot. + +During these delicious hours in the shadow-dappled patio, as +heretofore, Benicia continued a tantalizing enigma to the man of +cities. While seeming to give so freely of herself in laughing quip +and quick answer to his sallies, never was there that least suspicion +of some overtone to her buoyancy the man yearned to catch; not the +quick revealing of secret depths in the eyes which would betray a +heart responsive to the waves of the man’s love enveloping her. Yet +the lips of the girl, full, soft, trembling with unconcealed promise +of richness to the one conquering them: these were not the lips of one +devoid of love’s alluring tyrannies. Nor was the rounded body of her, +fully ripened to share in the law of life giving, one to wither outside +love’s garden. + +Grant could not speculate, with tremors of eagerness, on the flood of +passion that was dammed behind the girl’s sure mastery of herself. Dare +he believe that he might be the one to loose that flood? As he sat +there in the odorous garden the nimble, superficial part of his brain +was playing with bubbles while the deeper fibre of him resolved that +nothing in the world mattered beyond possessing Benicia’s love. + +When luncheon was cleared away--it had been a veritable feast of +laughter--Benicia clapped her hands and gave some direction to the +servant answering. The Indian woman disappeared in the body of the +house, soon to come waddling out under the weight of the great harp. +Grant gasped his surprise; he never had associated harps with any +surroundings other than the orchestra pit. + +“My Irish ancestors, who were kings in Donegal, always called for their +harp after a feast,” Benicia declared with laughter in her eyes. “That +is the reason we Irish are such dreamers. The harp is the stairs to +dreams. Listen, señor, and hear if I tell the truth.” + +Grant watched her, fascinated. Her slender body was in the shade of +a great palm frond, but when she leaned her head forward against the +carved sounding board a narrow lance of sunshine shot down to kindle +her hair to flame there against the gold. As her bare arms passed +in swift flight of swallows across the field of strings shadows and +sunlight played upon them in gules and chevrons of black and ivory. + +First she gave the solo, _Depuis le Jour_, from some opera Grant +vaguely recalled; it was a mad thing, wherein the great instrument +thundered to the far recesses of the patio garden. Then the girl’s mood +changed and was interpreted in the sighing motif of _In the Garden_. +It was all bird song and lisping fountains. Grant allowed his eyes to +close so his soul could take flight with the music. + +Slowly, reluctantly, Benicia’s fingers swept the final chords. The +great harp was still. + +Out from the shadow of a flanking archway stepped a dapper little +figure in a cloak. Heels clicked sharply and the marionette bowed low. +It was Colonel Hamilcar Urgo. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE MARK OF EL ROJO + + +Colonel Urgo straightened himself, and the smile that had twisted his +little waxed moustache awry suddenly was smudged out. For his eyes +encountered what they were hardly prepared to see--a living dead man. +His face went sickly white; one hand arrested itself in the motion of +making the sign of the cross. He stared at Grant, fascinated. + +Grant himself was little less shaken at the appearance of his enemy. +It was as if a cobra suddenly had lifted its head from the patio’s +flowering jungle. In a moment of dreamy ecstasy, when he had felt his +heart yearning toward the girl’s over a bridge of music, came this +sinister apparition of evil. It was not fear of the man that caused +Grant’s heart to pound--the waspish little Spaniard possessed no +essence of malignity sufficient to terrify one of the American’s fibre; +rather a loathing and instinctive reflex of anger gorged his combative +nerves with blood. Grant read surely enough the shock of surprise in +his enemy’s eyes and cannily laid this revelation away as a weapon to +hand should necessity demand its use. + +As for Benicia, she made no pretence of concealing her annoyance. +Quick perception seized upon the coincidence of her father’s absence +and Colonel Urgo’s coming; she knew the wily little suitor had somehow +managed to time his visit to that circumstance. In the first flush of +her surprise Benicia caught herself feeling a great thankfulness that +Grant Hickman was in the house. + +“If you have come to see my father”--Benicia did not rise to greet Urgo +when he took a tentative step toward her--“he is absent at the moment. +I am sorry you have not found him at home.” + +Urgo’s lynx eyes darted from the girl’s face to Grant’s and back again. +Plainly he was in a quandary, not knowing how much--if anything--this +American had told his hosts of the circumstances of a night in Sonizona +and its consequences. Benicia, misreading his perturbation, was quick +to interpose with a smile all irony: + +“This is Señor Hickman, whom you may remember having seen on the +train. Señor Hickman, this is a distant cousin of mine, Colonel +Hamilcar Urgo, of the garrison at Sonizona. He is the gentleman who +believed you occupied his berth out of El Paso, if you recall. There +was some slight misunderstanding--” + +Grant flashed a glance at the girl, read the mockery in her eyes and +took his cue from her: + +“I believe I have seen the Colonel subsequently,” this in heavy +seriousness. “Was it not somewhere in Sonizona?” + +“I do not recall having had that honour.” Teeth flashed in a nervous +smile and the man’s eyes veiled themselves furtively. He caught the +challenge to battle of wits with the American and entrenched himself +accordingly. Colonel Urgo found himself at a momentary disadvantage, +however; he did not know what ammunition his rival would choose. +Essaying a diversion, he addressed the girl in rapid Spanish. + +“Our guest, Señor Hickman, does not understand Spanish,” Benicia +insinuated reproof. “Yes, it is quite true, as you have judged, that +he is recovering from a wound--a slight misadventure on the road to +Hermosillo. But pray be seated, my cousin, and let me order wine and a +light luncheon. You are visibly fatigued.” With a slight bow to Urgo +Benicia arose and crossed the patio to disappear in the shadows of the +arcade. + +Urgo, surprised into an unpleasant situation by being left alone with +the man he had sent to death, fidgeted with the hasp of his cigarette +case. He made great difficulty of scratching a match. Grant, watching +his every move, decided to play some of the cards fate had dealt him. + +“I guessed you were inquiring of Señorita O’Donoju about my condition, +Colonel. You are charmingly solicitous. I was shot in the back--bullet +through my shoulder. Left for dead with the other convicts.” + +The little Spaniard let smoke seep through his nostrils and spread out +his hands to say, “So much for that!” Grant was not to be denied his +advantage: + +“Of course, Colonel Urgo, I remember you were good enough to be present +when I was arraigned at the jail on a false charge of counterfeiting; +I shall not soon forget the promise you made then to do what you could +for me. You did--all you possibly could!” Grant’s smile had become set +and one hand resting on his blanketed knees flexed into a fist, white +across the knuckles. + +Urgo expelled a cloud of smoke from his lungs and showed his teeth in a +wolf’s smile. + +“You remember much, señor. Do not fail to remember, too, you are +a criminal under the laws of Mexico, to be tried on charge of +counterfeiting at the court of Hermosillo.” + +“Yes?” Grant was cool under the other’s counter. “And will you move +to take me to Hermosillo after what happened--out yonder on that road +through the desert?” + +“I?” Urgo’s shoulders lifted. “I am a soldier, señor. I have nothing +to do with justice and the courts. But assuredly you will be taken to +Hermosillo and put on trial.” + +The little Spaniard had fully recovered his poise by now. The uneasy +light in his eyes had yielded to a dangerous flicker of craft. Suavity +of a tiger’s purr lurked in his voice. Grant mastered the rage which +ridged all his fighting muscles despite the weakness of his body; this +was no moment to be betrayed into throwing away a trick. + +“But before I go to Hermosillo, Colonel, of course I shall take +precautions to insure that I get there--that there will be no more _ley +de fuga_ in my case. Don Padraic O’Donoju, who is an honest man; I +shall take him more fully into my confidence and--” + +“Then you have told--?” Urgo bit his lip in mortification over having +fallen into a trap. Grant’s answering smile was innocent as a babe’s. + +“I might prefer, Colonel Urgo, to confine our affair--call it a +misunderstanding between two gentlemen--strictly to yourself and +myself, trusting to take care of myself when I have recovered my +strength. But should I be driven to seek the assistance of an honest +man--” + +Benicia appeared that instant; behind her was ’Cepcion with a silver +tray. Before Colonel Urgo bobbed to his feet Grant caught a shaft of +cold fury from his eyes which said that if the girl’s presence forced +an armistice no promise of peace lay at its termination. + +Followed an interlude of quiet comedy. Grant, content to leave the +first move in the hands of his enemy, eased his shoulder lazily against +the chair back and let his eyes play over the Spaniard’s face and +diminutive figure. There was an indolent suggestion of probing, of +detached appraisal in the steady scrutiny which bit into Urgo’s pride. +That and dull rage over the unexplained presence of his rival here in +Benicia’s home kept the little whippet fidgeting. + +He essayed addressing the girl in her own tongue, but again and more +pointedly Benicia reminded him of this breach of courtesy. She made +no effort to conceal the imp of humour that tugged at the corners of +her mouth; this flickering of a smile and the dancing of her eyes +made farcical the sober decorum of her speech. Urgo, no fool, was not +long realizing he was being made the butt of his cousin’s sport. Thin +lines of strain began to appear about the mouth that smiled so smugly; +just below his temples irritated nerves commenced setting the muscles +a-twitching. Grant, who did not fail to note these reflexes, saw in the +figure opposite a preying animal setting himself for a spring. + +Urgo and Benicia had been exchanging commonplaces. Suddenly the man +leaned forward tensely and returned to the forbidden Spanish in a +hurried burst: “For your own good, my cousin, I must have a few minutes +with you alone. Arrange it, I command you.” + +“You are hardly the one, sweetest cousin, to be the judge of my good. +Nor the one to command me.” Benicia retorted in the same tongue. Then, +turning with a smile of mock apology to Grant: “You will excuse Colonel +Urgo his occasional lapse from a tongue that is difficult for him.” + +The Spaniard took a final draught of wine and pushed back from the +table where his luncheon had been spread. As he idly tapped the corn +husk of one of his cigarettes Grant thought he saw resolution shape +itself in the narrowed eyes. There was a moment’s silence, then Urgo +addressed himself graciously to Grant: + +“Señor Hickman, perhaps my adorable cousin here has not found +opportunity to tell you anything of the history of this remarkable +house in the desert where you have found such agreeable convalescence.” + +“I believe not.” Grant spoke warily, his senses alert for some pitfall. +He shot a warning glance at Benicia; but the girl, ignorant of the grim +feud between the two, could not read it understandingly. Colonel Urgo +surrounded his head with a blue cloud and continued: + +“An engaging history, señor. Not a house in all Sonora with such +romance behind it, such--how do you say it?--such legend, eh? Though +I am distantly of the same family, our branch cannot claim the +distinction that falls to my cousin, who is the last of the veritable +O’Donoju. + +“Behold her glorious head, Señor Hickman!” Urgo waved his cigarette +to point the burning of sunlight above Benicia’s brow; his own +head inclined as if in reverence. “There in my fairest cousin’s +so-marvellous hair lies all the legend and the history of the great +family O’Donoju.” + +The girl, frankly amused at what appeared a turgid compliment, tossed +back her head in a gust of laughter. But Grant could not join with +her. As from some iceberg veiled in fog came to him the cold feel of +malignity moving to some unguessed purpose. Was Urgo planning to strike +at him through the girl he adored? Yet what possible obloquy could he +call up against Benicia, whose soul was unsullied as the winds of the +wastes? Urgo spoke on: + +“Undoubtedly, my cousin, Señor Hickman has felt his heart snared by +those burning meshes of yours or he is not a judge of beauty”--gesture +of impatience from Benicia. “So it is for the benefit of the señor as +well as for your own, fairest cousin, that I recite this legend of the +red hair of the O’Donoju. Strange, is it not, that all Sonora knows it +and has told the story to its children for a hundred years, yet you, +_chiquita_”--a wave of the cigarette toward the girl--“who should be +most interested are the only ignorant one. + +“There was in the long ago, señor, a Michael O’Donohue--what you call +of the wild Irish, who had flaming hair and an untamed spirit. A king +in Spain gave him the whole district of Altar for his estate, and he +came here to the Garden of Solitude with his Spanish lady and built +him this house where we sit. He was a man who considered the safety of +his soul, so he built a mission to the glory of the four evangelists +out yonder by the Gulf where the Sand People needed the comfort of the +Mother Church and--” + +“He lived a life any one of his descendants might pattern after,” +Benicia put in with a smile carrying a sting. Urgo touched his breast +with delicate fingers and bowed. Then turning again to Grant: + +“When the Apaches burned that mission, señor, a pious O’Donoju restored +it and the family, then numerous, endowed that mission altar with much +gold and silver. There was, too, a great string of pearls--pearls with +a green light, legend says, which the Sand People brought from the +shell beds of the Gulf to show their piety. You are following me, Señor +Hickman, eh?” + +Grant made no sign. His eyes were upon Benicia’s face, reading there +a slow change. Now she, too, had begun to feel a nameless portent +stealing over her like the chill from hidden ice. The wells of her +eyes were deeper; faint colour came and went in her cheeks and throat. +Grant, certain that Urgo was preparing torture for her under the +innocent mask of narrative, was helpless to intervene; no diversion +short of the work of fists was possible, and that his weakness denied +him. + +“There was of that generation which restored the mission, señor, a +wild youth, true descendant of the original O’Donoju. He was known +from Mexico City to Tucson as El Rojo--the Red One--for his hair was +the veritable colour of that which our cousin possesses. And the devil +rode his heart with spurs of fire. You have never been told of El Rojo, +Benicia?” + +The girl made no answer. Her level gaze was a mute challenge. The +little colonel rerolled one of his eternal cigarettes, lighted it and +drank smoke with a sensuous inhalation. + +“At the feast of the re-dedication El Rojo, banished from the family, +appeared out of nowhere. Conceive the consternation, señor! The red +head of the devil’s own come to sanctified ground. This fiery head, so +like our Benicia’s, swooping as a comet into the feasting place of the +family; well might the pious O’Donojus be fearful. + +“And their fears were not without grounds. Before El Rojo quit the +Mission of the Four Evangelists he had murdered the priest, his own +uncle, and stolen the rope of pearls from the sacred image of the +Virgin. He rode away with one of his cousins, a foolish girl of the +Mayortorenas, who was wife to him in the desert without priest or book.” + +Urgo let his voice trail away as with a tale finished. His teasing +glance lingered on the faces of his two auditors. Benicia drew a +tremulous breath and forced a smile, as though she were relaxing from +strain. On this cue the story teller unexpectedly continued: + +“But I hear Señor Hickman ask, ‘What part has all this ancient legend +with Señorita Benicia’s red hair?’ Patience, señor. We approach that. + +“Legend says that though El Rojo’s wife worked upon his heart and +brought repentance, it was too late. He returned to the mission a year +after his double crime to restore the Virgin’s pearls to the sanctuary. +The Apaches had been there just before him. The priests were slain and +the mission burned. El Rojo buried the pearls within the stark walls, +hoping the good God would accept this his acknowledgment of sin. There +the pearls lie to-day beyond sight of man, for the desert has blotted +out the last remnants of ruins. + +“But the sin of El Rojo was not so easily to be forgotten in sight +of the good God, sweetest cousin.” Urgo suddenly turned away from +Grant, to whom he had been addressing his story, and fixed his eyes on +Benicia; almost there was the click of snapping fetters in his glance. +“You bear the mark of it above your brow like the mark of Cain--his +fire-red hair!” + +“Stop!” The girl leaped from her chair, blazing wrath in every line of +her face. “I shall not listen--” + +“The grandson of El Rojo and his grandson,” Urgo purred on with his +smile of a hunting cat, “every second generation of the O’Donoju has +one born with the curse of the red hair to tell all Sonora God does not +forget. And now you, the last of an accursed family, its great estates +gone--its power gone--your own grandfather with his red hair shot with +Maximilian!--You with the red head--daughter of a murderer--” + +A hand closed over the collar of the colonel’s military jacket, gave +it a twist, throttling his speech. Grant had leaped from his seat--a +pain like a bayonet point shot through his shoulder at the sudden +movement--and come upon the spiteful little slanderer from behind. + +“Gringo assassin!” whistled the little Spaniard, and his right hand +groped backward to a concealed holster. It fell into a grip too strong +to be broken. Grant was bearing all his weight on the other’s back, +for the instant he was on his feet he discovered a weakness of his +knees which would not support him. The impulse to shut off Urgo’s +venomous tongue had been acted upon without calculation; now that he +had committed himself to action the American realized how heavy was the +hazard against him. One arm useless, all the other muscles once ready +to respond instantly to call for action now seeming to be palsied. A +paralytic boldly attempting to bell a wildcat; this was the situation. + +Benicia saw the American’s face over the squirming Urgo’s shoulder; +it wore a strained grin which hardly served to mask the toll taken of +weakened muscles. She whirled and ran out of the patio to call aid in +the servants’ quarters. + +Now the hot fire from his wound was spreading across Grant’s back and +down his fighting arm as he swayed across the patio half supported +on the Spaniard’s back. The frantic jerkings of Urgo’s pistol arm in +Grant’s grip threatened momentarily to loosen the restraining fingers; +that done, the American’s end would be speedy. + +Grant found himself near a wall, braced one foot against it and lunged +outward. Down went both men. Urgo twisted out from under the heavier +body, pinning him, and raised himself to one knee. Grant saw a tigerish +gleam of triumph in the other’s eyes as his right hand whipped back to +the holster on his hip. + +Some power more rapid than thought moved the American’s sound arm +outward in a wild sweep which encompassed a giant fuchsia bush growing +in a Chinese tea tub. Over went the bush just as Urgo fired from the +hip, its branches swishing down over the latter’s head. + +The bullet went wild. Grant, near swooning from the consuming pain of +his wound, scrambled for his enemy--went up with him when he found his +feet. The revolver had been knocked from Urgo’s hand by the avalanche +of greenery; a sideways kick of Grant’s foot sent it spinning into the +fountain. + +Now the wounded man sent a final summons to his last reservoir of +strength. Slowly--slowly he forced the little Spaniard out of the +patio and down the long corridor toward the front door of the house. +When Benicia came running with two husky Indians they found Grant with +his man waiting before the heavy oaken portal. One of the Indians +swung back the door. Grant gave a supreme heave and the colonel went +sprawling like a straddle bug out onto the gravel. + +The great door slammed behind him. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +DESERT SECRETS + + +Consider now the interesting activities of Doc Stooder, fallen angel of +Æsculapius: + +On a March evening of sunset splendour the worthy doctor descended +from the single combination coach and baggage car which a +suffering locomotive drags once daily from a junction point on the +transcontinental line south through naked battalions of mountains to +the ghost town of Cuprico. Once Cuprico was famous; once when primitive +steam shovels nibbled at solid mountains of copper up back of Main +Street Cuprico roared with a life that was dizzy and vaunted itself the +rip-roarin’est copper camp in all the Southwest. But the glory that was +Cuprico passed, even as that of Rome; to-day they tell of the town that +when its mayor fell dead on the post office steps his body remained +undiscovered for three days. + +No romantic craving for revisiting scenes of his youth had prompted +the Doc to his journey Cupricoward--he had been its premier stud +player in a day of glory fifteen years before. No, a far more material +urge had ended a period of fretting in Arizora by shunting him on a +westward-wending train. For a week Bim Bagley, his partner in a secret +enterprise, had been absent on his quest of El Doctor Coyote Belly and +the New York engineer, Bim’s friend, who was reported to be wounded +and under the care of the Papago medicine man. Ten days prior to +Bagley’s excursion into Sonora had been frittered away in groping for +information concerning this vanished engineer. All precious time wasted! + +It has, perhaps, become apparent that Doc Stooder was not enthusiastic +over the inclusion of Grant Hickman, the Easterner, in his golden +scheme of treasure trove in desert sands. The stubborn refusal of +Bim Bagley to move without this fellow Hickman’s being party to the +enterprise had prevented a start on the expedition for the Mission of +the Four Evangelists six weeks before. The canny physician--whose share +in the joint endeavour was to be his exclusive information concerning +the whereabouts of the Lost Mission--possessed in large degree that +sense of divination bestowed upon folk of the desert which gives their +imagination wings over the horizon of time. Each day of delay he read +a day to the advantage of Don Padraic O’Donoju, certain sure as he was +that the master of the desert oasis had come by knowledge of his own +treasure hunt intent through mysterious desert channels. + +The vision of gold and pearls Doc Stooder had seen in the depths of +raw alcohol on a night of dreaming in his office had become a goad. +So he came to Cuprico, the ghost town not seventy miles away from the +supposed site of the buried mission; his intent was to pick up his +Papago informant, who lived midway between Cuprico and the Border, and, +as Stooder happily phrased his purpose, “give things a look-see.” If +his luck was with him and he should stumble onto the mission during +this solo game so much the better. Conscience nor maxims of fair play +were any part of the doctor’s moral anatomy. + +The Doc upon his arrival did not pervade Cuprico’s centres of evening +society--the Golden Star pool hall and soft drinks emporium and the +back room of Garcia’s drug store--for reasons sufficiently potent to +merit a paragraph of explanation. + +Years before, when he was a resident of the mining camp and had money, +Doc Stooder took unto himself a Mexican wife who had a passion for +diamonds. Mrs. Apolinaria Stooder had a way with her which seemed +to win deep into the atrophied heart of her spouse, and he showered +her with the stones of her choice. No woman from Yuma to Tucson--so +legend still recites--“packed so much ice” as Doc Stooder’s. Then in +an epidemic of typhoid, which the Doc combated with the heroism of a +saint, Apolinaria died. + +Alone and with his own hands her sorrowing widower gave her sepulchre +somewhere amid the gaunt hills surrounding the town. He let it become +known after the interment that since Apolinaria loved her diamonds so +he had buried them with her, adding for good measure of gossip that he +figured their total value at round $5000. Immediately and for several +years thereafter all the prospectors for fifty miles about gave up +their search for dip and strike and prospected for Mrs. Apolinaria +Stooder. Failing to find so much as a “colour” of her diamonds, the +profession drew the conclusion that Doc Stooder was a monumental liar. +His popularity waned accordingly. + +Shadows were lengthening when Stooder tooled a rented desert skimmer +out of Cuprico’s single garage and brought it to a stop before the +general store. Into the wagon box behind the seat went his bed roll, +brought from Arizora and containing certain glassware whose contents +were more precious to their owner than life itself; boxes of grocery +staples; extra cans of oil and gasoline. Two big canteens on the +running board were filled. Plugs of chewing tobacco heavy and broad as +slate shingles were stowed in the tool box. In all this preparation +the doctor’s long legs calipered themselves from counter to car with +remarkable efficiency. + +“Goin’ on a little prospecting trip?” the storekeeper had volunteered +when the Doc first commenced his stowing. No answer. + +“Figgerin’ on a little _pasear_ down ’crost the Line?” hopefully from +that worthy as he helped noose the tarpaulin over the dunnage. The +Doc’s head was buried above the ears among the engine’s naked cylinders +and he professed not to hear. When Stooder was seated at the wheel +and the storekeeper had the edge of the final pail of water over the +radiator vent he feebly flung out his last grappling hook: + +“Reckon you might be selling Bibles to the Papagoes.” + +“Come here, friend,” sternly from the doctor. “Now I give you the way +inside if you’ll promise to keep it mum.” The storekeeper hopped +around to lean his ear over the wheel in gleeful anticipation. + +“I’m a-goin’ south from here to give a Chinese lady a lesson on the +ocarina. So long!” + +When the Doc skittered down the brief Main Street and out onto the +thread of grey caliche that was the road to the mysterious south +all of the west was a-roil with the final palette scrapings of the +sunset--umber, pale lemon and, high above the mountains standing black +as obsidian, cirrus clouds dyed a fugitive cherry. Ahead showed the +ragged gate into the valley of El Infiernillo--the Little Hell--place +of bleak distances between mountain ranges bare as sheet iron; place +of unimaginable thirst when summer sun hurls reflected heat back from +burning walls. Beyond El Infiernillo just a hint of peaks like fretwork +spires marked destination for the doctor; there at the foot of the +Growler range and where the Desert of Altar washes across the imaginary +line between two nations, lay the land of his desire. Somewhere on +the Road of the Dead Men passing through that savage waste perchance +a nubbin of weathered ’dobe wall lifted a few inches above the sand +to mark treasure of gold and pearls below; maybe naught but a charred +timber end concealed by a patch of greasewood and crying a secret to +the ears of the searcher. + +Gold and pearls--pearls and gold! The Doc’s rapt eye caught the colours +of sacred treasure in the dyes of the sunset and read them for a +portent of success. + +“Me, I’m a-goin’ just slosh around in wealth! Doc Stooder, the man with +the _dinero_--that’s me!” The gaunt head behind the wheel of the desert +skimmer was tilted back and A. Stooder, M.D., carolled his expectations +at the new stars. Then he reined in his gas snorter long enough to +fumble with his bed roll in the wagon box. Out came a square bottle of +fluid fire, such as passes currency with the international bootleggers +in the Southwest. The Doc drank heartily to the promise spread across +the western heavens. The bottle was tucked in a handy coat pocket for +future reference. + +Nights in the desert along the Line are psychic. They are not of the +world of arc lights, elevated trains and the winking jewels of white +ways. In that world man has so completely surrounded himself with the +tinsels of his own making, the noise of his own multiplied squeakings +and chatterings, that he comes to accept the vault above him as under +the care of the city parks department. His little tent of night is +no higher than the towers of his skyscrapers. But in the desert it is +different. + +Emptiness of day is increased an hundred fold at dark because it +leaps up to lose its frontiers behind the stars. Silence of the day +is intensified to such a degree that the inner ear catches a humming +of supernal machinery in the heavens. The eye measures perspectives +between the near and far planets. And the soul of man hearkens to +strange voices; sighings from the pale mouths of the desert scrubs, +born to a servitude of thirst; whisperings passed from mountain top to +mountain top; faint stirrings of the earth relaxed from the torsion of +the sun. + +Doc Stooder, desert familiar as he was, never could blunt his senses +to this emptiness of night in the wastes. It awed him, left him +itching under half-perceived conceptions of the infinite. Hence the +bottle carried handily in his pocket. From time to time as he careered +over the road faintly marked by the feeble sparks of his headlights +he braked down to have a swig. The more he felt lifted above sombre +unrealities about him the greater his impulse to break into song. The +iron gate of El Infiernillo heard his roundelay. + +Miles unreeled behind him. Dim shapes of mountains dissolved to new +contours and were left behind. The Doc came to a sharp eastward turning +of the road but kept straight ahead out over the untracked flats to +southward. He knew his way; the packed sand gave him as good traction +as the road. Down and down into the unpeopled wilderness of sandhills +and buttes bored the twin sparks of the little car. + +Another shift of direction and the Doc was teetering up a narrow cañon +between high mountain walls. His course was a dry wash, boulder strewn. +Only instinct of a desert driver saved him from piling up on some rough +block of detritus. Sand traps forced him to shove the engine into low, +and the snarling of the exhaust was multiplied from the cañon walls. + +A light flickered far ahead. A dog barked. The car wallowed and +snuffled out of the wash to come to a halt before several silhouettes +of huts. People, roused from sleep by the car’s clamour, stood ringed +about in curiosity; one held a torch of reeds. + +“Ho, Guadalupe!” Doc Stooder bellowed. A solid looking Indian with a +mat of tousled iron-grey hair stood out under the torch light, grinning +a welcome to “El Doctor.” + +“Show me a place to sleep,” commanded the visitor, and the one called +Guadalupe carried the doctor’s bed-roll to his own hut, of which +squaw and children were speedily dispossessed. So the good doctor +from Arizora slept the rest of the night in the rancheria of the Sand +People, last remnant of that Papago family for which the Mission of +the Four Evangelists was reared to save souls. In five hours the Doc +had covered by gasoline what it would have cost Guadalupe of the Sand +People as many days in painful plodding. + +Morning saw the rancheria in a ferment of excitement and Doc Stooder +viciously tyrannical in reaction from his accustomed alcoholic night. +Guadalupe found himself in a difficult position. Once in a moment +of gratitude when the white doctor had snatched his squaw from the +tortures of asthma--the miracle had occurred in Guadalupe’s summer +camp near Arizora--the Indian had babbled his knowledge of the buried +mission, its treasure. But he had not counted upon this unexpected +appearance of the white doctor, demanding to be led to the place of +wealth. It is common with all the Southwestern Indians to believe +naught but ill luck can follow any revelation to a white man of the +desert’s hidden gold; some say the early padres, themselves consistent +hoarders, inculcated this lesson. With the eyes of his fellow villagers +disapprovingly upon him, Guadalupe first attempted evasion. + +Stooder in an ominous quiet heard him through. Then without a word +he opened a small medicine chest he carried in his bed-roll and took +therefrom two tightly folded pieces of paper--blue and white. While +Guadalupe and the rest watched, round-eyed, the doctor made quick +passes with each bit of paper over the mouth of a small water _olla_. +The surface of the water sizzed and boiled. + +Guadalupe, two shades whiter, babbled his willingness to go at once to +the place where the mission lay hidden. + +“Prime cathartic for the mind,” grunted the Doc, and he tuned his +engine for the trip. + +They were off down the cañon and into the yellow basin of El +Infiernillo. Guadalupe, riding for the first time in the white man’s +smell-wagon, gripped his seat with the delicious fear of a child on +a merry-go-round. He watched the movements of the doctor’s foot on +the gear-shift, marvelling that the beast concealed in pipes and rods +answered each downward thrust with a roar. Earth spun under him as if +Elder Brother himself, master of all created things, had a hold on it +and were pulling it all one way. + +Down and down into the untracked miles of Altar. A single iron post on +a hill marking the Line. The sierra of Pinacate cinder-red in the south +for a beacon. Right and left sheet iron ranges with stipples of rust +where the _camisa_ grew. Mirage quivering into nothingness just as its +false waters were ready to be parted by the car’s wheels. + +They came upon an east-and-west track in the sand--the Road of the +Dead Men--and turned westward upon it. Away off to the north and east +a spiral dust cloud walked across the wastes along the skirts of the +mountains. Guadalupe pointed to it with an ejaculation in his own +tongue. A sign--a sign! There was the place of the mission! + +The Doc felt his internals quiver in expectation. Prickles of +excitement played in fingers that gripped the wheel. Automatically he +began to hum an ancient bar-room ditty. + +The Papago indicated where he should turn off the road in the direction +of a great gap in the mountains, into which the desert flowed as a sea. +Here the mesquite lifted from its crouch and flourished in a five-foot +growth--true index of hidden waters. The car made hard going, what +with brittle twigs that caught at its tires and the _cholla_ creeping +like a spined snake to threaten punctures. At his guide’s word Doc +Stooder stopped. Both scrambled out. + +Before moving a step the Doc must have a ceremonial drink, a +preliminary he did not deem necessary to share with Guadalupe. The +man’s big hands trembled as he raised the bottle to his lips; his eyes +were shining with gold lust. + +Guadalupe stood for several minutes slowly swinging his head from +landmark to landmark, his eyes following calculated lines through the +scrub. Then he commenced a slow pacing through the close-set aisles of +the greasewood and cactus, bearing in a wide circle. He peered into +the core of each shrub, kicked at every naked stub of root and branch +appearing above the surface. The Doc, cursing and humming alternately, +was right at his shoulder. + +An hour passed--two. The sun, now high, burned mercilessly. Still +Guadalupe pursued a narrowing circle through the scrub. Of a sudden the +Indian gurgled and dropped to his knees beside a salt-bush. He whipped +out his knife and began hacking at the tough stubs of branches near +the soil. The Doc, slavering in his excitement, dropped beside him and +looked into the heart of the salt-bush. He saw nothing but a rounded +slab of rock. + +Guadalupe finished his knife work and started to dig with his hands. +Terrier-like he pawed a hole away from what Stooder had taken for a +rock. The smooth black surface began to curve outward in a form too +symmetrical for nature’s work; it was rounded and gradually flaring. + +Guadalupe dug on. Blood pounded in the Doc’s ears. Snatches of song +trickled from his lips. + +Suddenly patience exploded. Stooder pushed the Papago to his haunches +and threw his own body full length into the hole dug. His arms embraced +a flaring shape of metal. His eyes fell upon faint ridges and lines, +like lettering. He spat upon the spot and rubbed it clean of clinging +soil. + + GLORIA DEI ET MUND---- + PHILLIPUS REX + ANNO DOM.----XXIV + +“The bell! The mission bell!” screamed the Doc. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +CROSSCURRENTS + + +An hour after the sun had set on the day of Colonel Urgo’s humiliation +at the Casa O’Donoju, Quelele tooled his car into the avenue of palms +at the end of the long return journey from Magdalena, on the railroad. +With him were his master, Don Padraic, and an American stranger, Bim +Bagley of Arizora. + +Fate had played capriciously with Bim. When he set out from Arizora on +the quest of his pal Grant Hickman it was only on the bare report that +the man was seriously wounded and under the care of El Doctor Coyote +Belly at Babinioqui, south of the Line. Near the end of his journey +his car had wrecked itself beyond repair hard by Magdalena; a mule had +been requisitioned to carry him over the mountains to the home of the +medicine man; once there he was as far from the end of his quest as +ever. + +For grey old Coyote Belly lied unblinkingly. He knew nothing of a +wounded man. Persuasion of words nor the chink of silver dollars +availed to budge him from a trust he conceived to be joined between +himself and the master of the Casa O’Donoju. + +The hours following the scene in the patio and the sudden gust of +action concluding the visit of Hamilcar Urgo had been trying ones +for Grant. Spent as he was by the struggle with the Spaniard, he had +suffered himself to be half-carried to his room by the Indian servants. +Benicia, accompanying him to the door, had permitted her hand to rest +in his at farewell; a clasp tried to tell what the storm in her soul +denied speech. The girl’s face was etched by suffering; sacrificed +pride and a shadow of some deep fear lay heavy in her eyes and the +drawn lines about her mouth. The wound made by her spiteful suitor was +deeper than Grant could conceive. + +Alone on his bed he conned over the tale Urgo had told. Unfamiliar as +he was with the Latin temperament, the belief of the romance peoples +in the very reality of inherited curse and whips of Nemesis pursuing +innocent generations, yet the raw tragedy of the story fired his +imagination. He tried to put himself in the place of the girl he loved +with all her pride of race and family; to feel with her the stripes +of scorn the despicable Urgo had laid on. El Rojo’s desecration of +the mission sanctuary by an act of blood; his flight into the desert +with the pearls of the Virgin and a girl, “who was wife to him without +priest or book”; the blotting of the mission from sight of man; all +this cycle of tragedy of the dim past linked to a gloriously vital +creature of the present by the chance colour of her hair. The thing was +monstrously absurd! And yet-- + +A knock at the door and Don Padraic entered. He turned to beckon some +one behind him. In the candlelight Grant saw the head of a giant stoop +to avoid the lintel. + +“Bim Bagley!” + +The desert man crossed to the bed by a single wide step and threw both +arms about Grant in a bear hug. + +“You dam’d old snoozer. You dam’d old snoozer!” was all Bim could give +in greeting. Don Padraic stepped outside and closed the door on the +reunion. Bim let his friend’s body lightly down on the pillows and sat +back to grin into Grant’s eyes. + +“I sure been burnin’ the ground all over North Sonora on your trail,” +he rumbled. “You’re the original little Mexican jumping bean.” + +“Jumped right into a flock of trouble, old side partner, with more +right beyond the front line waiting for me. The reserves seem to have +come up just the right time.” Grant gave his pal’s great paw a squeeze. +Bim roared assurance: + +“Reserves got all bogged down through failure in liaison--just like the +days of the Big Show. But they’re with you now from hell to breakfast, +young fellah; an’ I think I know the name of the outfit we got to trim. +Name’s Hamilcar Urgo, huh?” His buoyant spirit was wine to Grant; the +very animal force of him seemed to fill the old room. + +“Ran acrost that li’l sidewinder this afternoon when the old Don was +bringing me up here from Magdalena. Just our two cars on the road. He +pulls up when we’re makin’ to pass him--face on him just as pleasant as +a polecat’s. Your friend the Don passes the time of day courteous as +you please. + +“‘I had the honour to visit your daughter this day,’ whinnies this Urgo +gazabo; of course he speaks in Spanish, which is nuts for me. ‘And I +discover she is entertaining a convict who escaped from a chain gang.’” +Bim grinned. “I take it that convict is my li’l friend from Noo Yawk.” + +Grant nodded. The other wagged his head in a grotesque mockery of grief. + +“‘My daughter and I are entertaining an American gentleman who was +wounded on the Hermosillo road,’ your Don answers, civil enough. ‘While +he is a guest in our house we naturally ask no questions.’ + +“‘Then,’ snaps this Urgo boy, ‘I must inform you that for harbouring an +escaped criminal you are responsible before the law. The rurales will +visit your house and it is for me to say whether they take you as well +as the gringo convict.’” + +Grant started. Here was a phase of the situation he had not guessed: +that his courteous host might be made to suffer for Urgo’s rage and +jealousy. + +Eagerly, “What did Don Padraic say to that?” + +“He says something to the effect that the laws of hospitality were +above any this-here Urgo might care to dig up, the same I call being +mighty white of your Don Whosis with the Irish twist to his name.” +Bim broke off to shoot a quizzical look into his friend’s eyes. “Say, +brother, what you been doin’ to this little black-an’-tan stingin’ +lizard to make him ride your trail so hard? You a tenderfoot an’ +riding your herd across the fence line of the biggest little man in the +whole Sonora government!” + +Grant grinned childishly. “Well, I threw him out of the front door here +this afternoon for one thing and--” + +Admiration beamed from every wind wrinkle about the Arizonan’s eyes. +“Sho! You did that? Now I call that steppin’ some for a man with a +bullet through him. I thought from the gen’ral slant to Señor Urgo’s +manner when he met up with us some one’d been working on his frame +somewhere. He just sweat T.N.T. But why did you crawl him?” + +“He insulted Señorita O’Donoju,” was Grant’s answer. Bim lowered the +lid of one eye owlishly and his gaunt face was pulled down to a comic +aspect of concern. + +“Uh-huh; now I begin to get the drift. Old Doc Stooder was right +when he says there’s the shoo-shoo of a skirt somewheres in your big +disappearing act. Boy--boy! I had you figgered for the orig’nal old +hermit coyote who travels the meat trail alone. No wonder li’l Urgo’s +all coiled up for the strike, you aimin’ to run him out on his girl.” + +Before Grant could head off his friend on a topic that brought sudden +embarrassment to him ’Cepcion and a second servant entered with a +spread table. Bim tucked pillows under his friend’s shoulders with +clumsy tenderness, then in mellow candlelight they ate and talked. Both +were bursting with questions to be asked, but Bim claimed the right of +priority by virtue of his ten days’ blind search through the country +south of the Line. At his demand Grant gave him the whole story of +his feud with Colonel Urgo, from the meeting at El Paso down to the +afternoon’s events in the patio. Lively play of sympathies about the +Arizonan’s features followed the narrative of the dreadful march in +the chain gang and Grant’s burst for freedom under the rifles of the +rurales. The little his friend left unsaid Bim was shrewd enough to +supply; he guessed the story of Grant’s thraldom under the witchery of +the desert girl and found it good. + +When the man on the pillows began recital of what had occurred just +a few hours before--Urgo’s savage assault on a girl’s pride through +the story of El Rojo’s impiety--the big man by the bed stiffened in +intensified interest. He heard Grant through with scarce concealed +impatience. + +“But, man, that was the Mission of the Four Evangelists Urgo was +telling of!” explosively from Bim. Grant nodded confirmation. + +“Why, that’s the Doc’s big proposition--our proposition!” + +Grant looked his puzzlement. The other’s excitement swirled him on: + +“That proves what the Doc’s Papago told him. Pearls buried there. An’ +gold--lots of gold, the Papago says. I had a sneaking hunch all the +time it might be one of Stooder’s wild dreams, but this story proves +we’re on the right track.” + +“Do you mean--?” + +“Sure! That’s what I brought you out from the East for--to help us +uncover this Lost Mission, as folks in Arizona call it. Doc Stooder’s +such a cagey old monkey he wouldn’t let me put on paper just what I +wanted you to whack in on. Now you got it all--the pure quill. Isn’t it +a whale of a proposition!” + +Though Grant’s surface perception had grasped the full import of his +friend’s words some sub-strata of mind, or of heart, stubbornly refused +to be convinced that he had heard aright. He groped for words: + +“You say you brought me out here to help you uncover pearls and gold +that belong to the Church?” + +“Why not?” A subtle note of pugnacity in the other’s speech. “The +stuff’s been lyin’ buried for a hundred an’ fifty years more or less. +The priests’ve never lifted a finger to find it, though slews of +prospectors have rooted round trying to uncover this cache.” + +“But the old O’Donojus built this church and endowed it with that very +treasure you want to dig for,” Grant persisted. “What about their +rights?” + +He did not hear Bim’s arguments. Instead he was conning over the story +of the bane of the house of O’Donoju. Before his eyes was the face of +the girl he loved, as he had last seen it, deeply graven with tragedy. + +Grant’s hand went out in a comrade’s clasp. “Bim, old man, count me out +on this thing. I couldn’t consider it for a minute.” + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +REVELATION + + +“Don Padraic’s compliments, and he awaits the pleasure of his guests’ +company in the music room if the sick señor feels able.” It was +’Cepcion’s soft patois that interrupted Bim Bagley’s explosion of +pained surprise in mid-flight. Grant gave him a smile which interpreted +the diversion as something to his friend’s advantage and, leaning on +Bim’s shoulder, followed the servant to the great room in the centre of +the house. + +A fire burned in the cavernous fireplace, for spring nights in Altar +have a chill; candles in dull silver wall sconces tempered the red +light. The vast room was so peopled with dancing shadows from the +antique furnishings that the tall man in white and the girl who +advanced to greet the guests appeared to be moving in a company of +hooded monks. + +“’Nicia, Señor Bagley, the friend of our friend.” Don Padraic bowed to +Bim, who crooked his lank body with surprising grace. + +“And I am a friend of you two,” came Bim’s forthright answer, “since +you have treated Grant Hickman so kindly. He is the salt of the earth.” + +Don Padraic indicated seats before the andirons. Benicia chose a low +settle by the side of the great winged chair where her father seated +himself. Grant saw shadows beneath her eyes where the firelight played +upon her features, almost waxen in uncertain light. The glint of copper +in the piled-up mass of her hair was like summer lightning in clouds. +Their eyes met, and Grant was disappointed in the hope he might still +find the soul of the girl revealed there as it had been that afternoon +in the unguarded moment when Benicia gave him wordless thanks. He +guessed she had told Don Padraic of the incident in the patio and that +what had passed between father and daughter thereafter had been a drain +on the emotions of both. + +Don Padraic turned to Grant with more than perfunctory concern in +speech and glance. “Your health, señor? I fear that certain events of +the day, of which my daughter has told me--” + +“Please!” Grant was quick to interrupt. “I am feeling fit as I could +be, thanks to the careful nursing I have had in your house.” + +The thing that had been left unspoken by both weighed like an unlaid +spirit on the silence that followed. Each of the four before the +fire had little thought save for the chapter of circumstance left +unconcluded by one who had departed the Garden a few hours before, +swollen with the venom of outraged pride. It was Don Padraic who +brushed aside reserve: + +“Señor Hickman, I may speak before your friend, who must share your +confidence. He will pardon my bringing personal affairs before him. I +can not postpone my thanks--my very sincere thanks--for what you did +this afternoon. My daughter was defenceless.” + +“And I--” Benicia began, but Grant quickly put in: + +“Will you not consider that I was really serving my own private ends--a +score to be evened between Colonel Urgo and myself?” + +Bim covered a reminiscent grin with a broad palm as Grant hurried on, +eager to withhold from the girl opportunity to speak her thanks. + +“When I was brought here I thought it best to keep silent on the matter +of my own private grudge against this man. But now that it appears we +all have common cause against him I think I may speak. Urgo himself was +responsible for my being shot.” + +He saw Benicia’s eyes grow wide, read the surprise that parted her +lips in a breathed exclamation. He thought he saw, too, just the flash +of something no eyes but his own could understand, and he was glad. +Briefly he sketched the incident of the gambling palace in Sonizona, +his encounter with Urgo in the office of the jail, the march with the +chain gang. + +“And so,” Grant concluded, “Colonel Urgo found a dead man come to life +when he saw me in the patio to-day. When Señorita O’Donoju was out of +hearing for a moment I could not resist a shot which left our friend +guessing whether or not I had told you, señor, how I came by my wound.” + +“Ah, yes,” from Benicia in a hushed voice. “I knew the minute I +returned there had been something between you. Urgo was like a cornered +animal.” + +“And so he turned on you,” Grant could not help saying. “If only I +could have guessed beforehand his attack--” + +Again silence fell. Grant was alive to the play of unspoken thought +between father and daughter; these two alone in the immensity of the +desert and facing unsupported the craft of an implacable enemy. He +sensed the battle between their pride and their desperate need for +an ally: the one impulse dictating that what was the secret affair of +the House of O’Donoju must remain strictly its own secret, the other +moving them to confide in him, who unwittingly had been drawn into the +struggle. Gladly would he have offered himself as a champion; but he +must await their initiative. Suddenly Grant recalled what Bim had told +him of Urgo’s threat at the meeting with Don Padraic on the desert +road: how the head of the Casa O’Donoju would be held responsible for +harbouring an escaped convict. There was no blinking his duty in this +direction. + +“My friend tells me, Don Padraic, that Colonel Urgo threatens your +arrest as well as my own; that you will be held responsible for +concealing a fugitive from justice. That cannot be, of course. +To-morrow, if Quelele can take Bagley and myself in the car--” + +“No!” Benicia’s denial came peremptorily and with a hint of passion +which gave Grant a sting of surprise. “No, señor, we do not turn +wounded men into the desert--particularly a friend who has served us as +you have done.” + +Again Grant saw in the firelit pools of her eyes just an instant’s +revelation of depths he yearned to plumb--the aspect of a beginning +love hardly knowing itself as such. He scarcely heard the voice of Don +Padraic seconding his daughter’s protest. + +“The hospitality of the Casa O’Donoju,” he was saying, “can hardly +recognize such silly threats. Colonel Urgo’s hope was that we would +send you back over the Road of the Dead Men to Caborca or Magdalena +where, naturally, you would be made a prisoner. Please dismiss from +your mind any idea of our permitting ourselves to play into this man’s +hands.” + +Bim Bagley ventured to break his silence: “Grant here and I have +important business together up over the Line. We ought to be moving +soon’s we can.” The white-haired don turned to Bim with a gracious +spreading of the hands. + +“When Señor Hickman feels able to make the journey Quelele will take +him and yourself, Señor Bagley, to westward. There is a way through El +Infiernillo up to the Arizona town of Cuprico. By so going you will +avoid any trap Urgo might lay. But you will not hurry Señor Hickman’s +going”--Don Padraic interjected reservation--“and you, Señor Bagley, +surely can remain with us until then.” + +The direct Bagley, finding himself thwarted by the don’s suavity, sent +a sheepish grin Grant’s way in token of his defeat and maintained +silence. Don Padraic, to dismiss the subject his reticence had +reluctantly introduced, struck a gong to summon a servant. Soon a +decanter of sherry was glowing golden in the firelight and cigarettes +were burning. The master of the Casa O’Donoju artfully led Bim into +talk of cattle, always currency of conversation in the Southwest. Grant +drew his chair closer to Benicia’s. + +“You startled me with that ‘No’ of yours to my proposal to leave the +Garden of Solitude at once,” he said with a boldness he did not wholly +feel. “Being a little deaf, I am not sure I heard all the reasons you +gave why I should not go.” + +“What you failed to hear me say my father supplied,” the girl quickly +parried, giving him her steady gaze. He was not to be so easily +side-tracked. What had begun in boldness swept him on in passionate +sincerity: + +“There are many excellent reasons why I should be somewhere else than +here this time to-morrow night; but there is one very compelling reason +why I welcome every added hour here in the Garden. May I tell you that +reason?” + +“If you think I should know.” The words came simply. He, looking down +into the hint of features the firelight grudgingly gave him, saw there +the frank camaraderie of a candid spirit: the soul that was Benicia +O’Donoju, unsullied of artifice or the vain trickeries of the woman +desired. “If you think I should know”--call of comrade to comrade. The +desert girl scorning subtleties and inventions; knowing what her words +would prompt yet wishing them to be said. + +“It is that I love you, Benicia, and that I cannot leave you, loving +you so, when I know you are in danger.” Grant gave her his heart’s +pledge in simple directness. Though the girl was not unprepared for +his avowal, the call in his words, elemental as the sweep of precious +rain over the thirsting desert, set quivering chords of her being never +before stirred. He saw the trembling of her lips; her curving lashes +trembled and were jewelled with little drops. She turned her gaze into +the fire for a long minute. Grant heard vaguely the voice of Bim Bagley +expounding some theme of cattle ticks. His heart was on the rack. + +“Grant--good friend--” Her voice broke, then valiantly found itself. +“You heard from Urgo the story of our house--of the Red One and his +crime against God--” + +“The hound!” he muttered. Benicia groped on: + +“My father--no one ever told me that story because--because--” Grant +saw one hand steal up to touch with a gesture almost abhorrent the low +wave of red over her brow--“I bear the sign, you see.” + +He put out his hand to stay her, for the dregs of suffering were +working a slow torture upon her; the face of the girl he loved had +become like some sculptor’s study of the spirit of fatalism. He could +not check her. + +“My father when he returned to-day and I told him--my father said the +story was true as Urgo told it. Once in every second generation--this +sign of El Rojo, murderer and violator of the sanctuary--” + +“But, Benicia, surely you don’t believe this fairy story!” Grant packed +into his low words all the willing of a spirit fighting for precious +possession. He felt that every word the girl spoke was pushing her +farther from him. + +“Ah, Grant, we desert people believe easily because the truth is not +hidden. It _is_ true; my good grey father knew that I knew it to be +true and did not seek to deceive me when I asked him. The O’Donoju with +this”--again the shrinking touch of fingers to the dull-burning stripe +on her forehead--“cannot give love, for with love goes unhappiness--and +death.” + +She broke off suddenly, rose and hurried into the shadows beyond the +range of firelight. Grant heard a door latch at the far end of the room +click to. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +WHAT HAPPENED IN THE NIGHT + + +Somewhere in the darkness of the ancient house a deep-toned bell tolled +the hour of two. The sound came to Grant, broad awake in his room, as +if from a great distance--tocsin strokes against the bowl of the desert +sky. Four times in his sleepless vigil he had heard that bell measuring +night watches, and each successive hour struck seemed the period to a +century. + +He had gone to bed with a heavy ache following his words with Benicia +and her abrupt termination of his pleading. On his first review of the +girl’s abnegation of the love she could not conceal the whole thing +had seemed fantastic, almost childish in its essence of witch-bane and +belief in blighting curse. How could this virile creature of a fine and +cultured mind conceive herself the heritor of a weight of guilt carried +down from some ancestor in the dim past? There was the superstition +of the evil eye among ignorant peasants of the Latin countries, to be +sure; but for a girl of Benicia’s intelligence to be enslaved by such +mumbo-jumbo as Urgo had voiced--ridiculous! + +Such was Grant’s first review. Weighed from every angle and conceding +the girl he loved every mitigation of jangled nerves, nevertheless the +man of the cities could find naught but lamentable folly in it all. The +first striking of the distant bell found him rebellious. + +From where he lay he could look through a grated window up to the +heavens: a square of dappled infinity. Insensibly his eyes began +singling out the stars, measuring the gulf between this and that +steady-burning point of light. Somewhere outside a desert owl timed +the pulse of the night with an insistent call, unvarying, unwearying. +The man on the bed found himself tallying the blood beats to his +brain by this ghostly metronome. Beat--beat!--passing seconds of +mortality for the man Grant Hickman. Beat--beat!--How puny a thing, how +inconsequential the life of a man when calipered by the time measure of +those burning suns up yonder! + +He rallied himself, for such drifting into the subjective was a new +and puzzling experience for a practical man. But minute by minute the +spirit of the desert, which is the spirit of chaos become ponderable, +stole over him, chaining his imagination to things felt but not +seen of men. A chill of the untoward and the unreal swept over him. +He seemed to be braced nervously for some blow out of the void. His +imagination played with a dim figure, the shape of El Rojo of the +red hair riding--riding through the dark on his eternal mission of +damnation. + +The clock struck three and at the instant of the third stroke a shadow +like a bat’s wing flitted across the bars of the window through which +the eyes of the wakeful man had been roaming. A sharp tinkle of steel +on stone split the silence of the chamber. Grant was galvanized into a +leap from the bed. He stood shaking. Silence. Silence absolute as the +grave after that single sharp ring of steel on stone. + +He looked up at the window where the flitting passage of the bat’s +wing had showed. Just the clear-burning stars there. The dim recesses +of the room revealed no bulk of an intruder. Was this but the trick of +overwrought nerves? + +Grant fumbled for his matches and brought a light to the candle wick. +By the waxing yellow glow he peered round the chamber. A flicker of +white reflection caught his eye and he almost leaped to a spot on the +floor directly beneath the window. + +A dagger lay there. It was that curiously wrought affair of dulled +silver haft and double-edged blade which he had noted before as part of +the rosette of ancient knives and short swords clamped against the high +wainscoting above the window for a wall decoration--the weapons Don +Padraic had pointed to with the pride of a collector that first day the +wounded guest was brought in from the desert. + +But how could this dagger have slipped from its sheath with no hand to +disturb it? Grant stooped to pick it up. + +He had the haft in his grip for a quarter-second, then dropped the +thing and leaped back as if from an asp. Something gummed the palm of +his hand. Something showed dull black against the dim flicker of the +blade. With a gasp he knelt and brought the candle closer. + +Blood there on the blade! Blood on his hand! + +He stood frozen while the pumping of his heart volleyed thunder against +his ear drums. Murder cried aloud from that stained thing of silver and +steel on the floor. Somewhere in this rambling old pile--somewhere in +the silence a swift stroke that had snuffed out a life, and then the +murderer, fleeing, had flung this weapon through the window. He had +flung it almost at the feet of the only one in the whole house who was +not sleeping. + +Alarm! He must give the alarm while yet the murderer was near the +scene! Spur to action followed swiftly upon Grant’s momentary numbness. +He threw a dressing robe over him and ran through the door of his +chamber giving onto the arcade about the patio. Just over the low +balustrade lay the little jungle of flowering things, and on the +opposite side, he remembered, hung the great Javanese gong Benicia used +to summon the servants to the patio. Grant leaped the low balustrade +and stumbled crashing through the geraniums and giant fuchsias toward +the dim moon of metal he saw in the shadows of an arch. + +He came to the gong, groped for the padded mace hanging over it. The +patio roared with its released thunders. + +Muffled shouts. Banging of doors. Lights. A white figure came +blundering through the arcade; it was Bim Bagley. + +“Some one’s been murdered!” Grant greeted him. “A dagger--through my +window!” + +Came others--servants with blankets clutched around them. Bim directed +them to run to the great door in the outer wall and catch any skulker +they might find in the gardens beyond the house. Only dimly aware +himself of something untoward, the big man could give no more specific +directions. + +Then Benicia, bare-footed, her hair fallen down over a blue robe she +drew together across her breast. Grant started towards her. + +“Where is father?” she cried in a woman’s divination, and Grant noted +Don Padraic’s absence. He saw the girl make a quick step for a closed +door behind her. Unreasoned instinct prompted him to put himself before +the door, denying her. + +“No; let me,” he commanded. She made a swaying step towards Grant but +was met by the door swiftly closing in her face. Inside the chamber, +he turned the key in the lock and struck a match to grope for a candle +wick. + +In the pallid flicker he saw the figure of Don Padraic on his high bed. +A dagger wound was in his breast. + +And the girl outside the locked door stood very still. Her eyes, wide +with horror, were fixed upon the spot where she had seen Grant put his +hand in pushing open the door. + +Three small smears of blood there. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +ACCUSATION + + +Grant was stunned. The vision of the figure with the fine patrician face +there on the bed--in the breast the savage mark of violence--seemed but +a part with the disordered fancies of recent hours. Beating of Benicia’s +hands on the locked door and the faint sound of her calls aroused him. +He stepped to the bedside and felt for a pulse, listened for a breath. +There was none. + +Murder had been done swiftly and surely--and done with the ancient +dagger from the weapon cluster on the wall of his own room. In the +stunning discovery he had just made Grant did not find any grim +correlation between these two circumstances. He pulled up a coverlet to +conceal ugly stains, then stepped to the door and unlocked it. + +Benicia was waiting there. The eyes meeting his were blazing horror. +Almost Grant read in them unthinkable accusation. He put out his hands +to support her, for she was swaying in her effort over the doorstep. + +“No--no!” Benicia shuddered and drew away from him as though he were +a man unclean. Mystified, Grant stepped aside to let her pass. He saw +her run to the side of the high bed and kneel there. Her hands went +out blindly to grope for the still features on the pillow. They played +uncertainly over them, then rested on the heavy mane of hair. Her +fingers repeated little smoothing gestures. A breathless faltering of +love phrases in the Spanish came from her lips. Grant, seeing that the +girl retained mastery over herself, tiptoed from the chamber; it was +not meet that he should be witness to a soul’s acceptance of the bitter +fact of death. + +He blundered into Bim coming back to the patio from his excursion at +the head of servants beyond the great front door and told him what had +happened; of the dagger dropped through the window and the murder. The +big Arizonan reared back as if roweled. + +“My God, man, that leaves the girl alone here in this jumping-off +place!--With that snake Urgo in the offing. Boy, it’s up to us to help +her out!” + +Grant gripped his pal’s hand with a low, “I knew I could count on you, +old scout.” + +The dry patter of sandals came down the arcade from a knot of lights +where some of the servants had gathered in indecision waiting to be +given orders. Grant recognized ’Cepcion in the mountainous figure +approaching and was recalled to the necessities of the moment. + +“Tell her, Bim, what has happened and send her to her mistress. Then we +must get out men to circle the Garden and prevent any person’s getting +away.” + +Bagley strode to meet the major domo and rattled swift Spanish at her. +The waddling Indian woman quivered and lifted her fat arms above her +head. A dreadful wavering cry came from her lips. Instantly the cry was +taken up by the servants at the far end of the patio--a bone-chilling, +animal noise which climbed slowly to the highest register and ended +in a yelp. At the sound Grant’s blood went cold. This Indian death +howl was the cry of the desert kind, calling the despair of creatures +chained to a land of drought and ever-present death. + +To escape it he went with Bim out of the great door to the unwalled +spaces where the avenue of palms stood sentinels against the night. +Beyond the bridge over the oasis stream lay the clutter of huts that +was the Papago village, a fief under the overlordship of the manor +house. Not a light showed among the thirty or forty beehive shapes when +the two men started to walk under the palms; but suddenly a cry arose +from the midst of the village answering that coming down the night wind +from the mourners in the great house. Rumour of death had outstripped +the two who walked. + +The single cry from the village instantly grew in volume. Treble voices +of squaws lifted the abomination of noise to the saw edge of a screech; +men’s harsher notes rumbled and boomed intolerably. All the night was +made bedlam. + +Lights were winking through the chinks of the jacals when Grant and +Bim came to the outskirts of the village. There was confusion of +forms skittering about from hut to hut. Bim seized upon one man and +demanded to know the whereabouts of Quelele, head man of the village. +The big Indian soon stood before them with a gesture of hand to breast +indicating they were to command him. + +“Somebody has killed your master,” Bim told him. “Get out men on horses +to circle the Garden and go out along the road both ways. Cover every +foot and bring in anybody you may find.” + +Quelele sped with hoarse shouts down the village’s single street; a +dozen men joined him in a race for the corrals. + +“There’s no way for the murderer to get out and live except along the +road,” was Bim’s comment as they turned to retrace their steps to the +house. “If he took to the mountains even with a horse he couldn’t last +a day; they’re straight up and down.” + +They had not gone fifty yards from the Papago village when a new sound +punctuated the death cry, now settled to a monotonous chant promising +hours’ duration. It was the _bum-bum-bum_ of the water-drum--gigantic +gourds floated, cut side down, in a tub of water and drubbed with +sticks. That noise was accompanied by the locust-like slither and +rattle of the rasping sticks, another primitive tempo-setting +instrument of the Southwestern natives. + +The death howl began to catch its measure by the boom and screak of +these two instruments. A noise to beat against the inside of men’s +skulls and set the bone of them in rhythm. Savage as the peaks of +Altar, unremitting as the drive of wind-blown sand against granite. + +_Bum-chut-chut-chut!_ Sob of a land in chains. + +“Oh, tell them to cut it!” Grant’s frayed nerves cried out protest. The +other merely gave a wave of his hand comprehending resignation. + +“Might as well tell the wind to stop. This’ll keep up for three +days--this ding-dong business. It’s custom, old son.” + +As they drew near to the house of death again Grant caught his mind +harking back to that moment when he had come from Don Padraic’s chamber +to confront the girl’s wild eyes--eyes with almost the unthinkable look +of accusation in them. That aspect of her eyes dumbfounded him, left +him groping for an explanation. + +Once at the house, Grant took his friend to his chamber and showed +him the knife where it lay on the floor as he had dropped it. The big +Arizonan stooped over with the candle near the grisly thing--his hawk’s +nose and salient cheekbones were outlined against the candle flame like +the raised head of some emperor on a Roman coin--and very gingerly he +turned the dagger over. + +“Finger prints here on the haft,” he grunted. + +“Yes, mine,” Grant put in. “I picked it up at first without +knowing--without reckoning there might be--” He broke off to pour +water into the quaint old willow-ware bowl which stood with its ewer +on a stand in a corner, then he scrubbed his hands vigorously. A great +relief came to him with this act of purification. + +“Yours--yes, and probably somebody else’s,” Bim was mumbling his +thoughts aloud. He stood erect once more and measured the height of the +barred window over the lintel of which was fixed the rosette of arms. +“Hum. I simply don’t figger why the man who wanted to kill the old +don came to the outside of this room, clum up the wall an’ reached in +through those bars there to take one of these old knives. Can’t see why +all that fuss--more particular, why he snuck back here an’ tossed the +knife through the bars after his bloody work.” + +“Perhaps he wanted it to appear I am the murderer,” Grant hazarded +doubtfully. + +“You!” Bim looked up with a wry smile. “Why should you want to kill off +that fine old man?--What motive?” + +“What motive for anybody here in the house or in the Papago village +outside for that matter?” Grant voiced his perplexity. “Don Padraic was +the _padrone_ of every Indian from the Gulf to Arizora. From what his +daughter tells me there’s not a Papago on the place here who wouldn’t +gladly have died in his place. The whole thing’s too deep for me.” + +They left the dim chamber with its relic of violence still lying on +the floor and walked out into the perfumed patio. It was the hour when +first heralds of dawn were coursing across the sky. Grant looked up +to the dimming stars and read there the same message that had come to +him the hours before swift stroke of tragedy: the fragility of that +spider web man spins into the gulf of infinite time. And the oneness of +this unlimned stretch of vacancy called the Desert of Altar with that +ethereal desert of stars. How infinitesimal in the face of either the +soul of man, its hopes! + +A great sense of impotence weighed down on Grant. His thoughts dwelt +with the girl he loved, sore stricken by this cowardly blow in the +dark, bereft of one who had been soul of her soul. Now, the last of her +name, alone in this bleak wilderness with none to fend for her against +the wiles of Urgo except the child-like Indians: what a situation for +Benicia to face! The man yearned to go to where she knelt alone with +her dead, to take her in his arms and give her pledge of his love and +protection. Yet that was not meet. The gulf of Benicia’s grief denied +him. + +Bim brought Grant out of his reverie with, “It’s my hunch we won’t have +to look far to find the man behind this bad business.” + +“You mean--?” + +“That same--Hamilcar Urgo,” was Bim’s positive assertion. Grant +objected: + +“But you passed him well on the way to Magdalena this afternoon. It’s +not likely he’d risk coming back in his car to attempt porch-climbing +and murder. That’s not in his line.” + +“Sure not! But one of these Indians around here who knows the lay of +the house--somebody who savvyed, for instance, about those old knives +on your wall--a hundred silver pesos from Urgo’s pocket--” + +Grant’s mind was in no state to analyze subtleties of villainy. “I +can’t see what Urgo could possibly gain by killing Don Padraic unless +there’s a great deal behind his relations with Benicia’s father you and +I don’t know.” + +The fat shape of ’Cepcion waddled down the nearby arcade in the +direction of the room wherein Benicia had locked herself. Bim’s eyes +idly followed her as he pressed his argument: + +“Maybe so--maybe not. But figger the thing thisaway: Urgo’s dead set on +marryin’ this high-spirited señorita--if you’ll excuse me trompin’ on +a tender subject, old hoss--an’ he reckons they’s two folks who don’t +encourage those ideas to the limit--her father and yourself. Yourself +he tries to get on suspicion and because you riled him on the train +like you say. Now he does for the father an’ counts he has the girl for +the taking, she having no kith or kin to come up in support, as you +might say.” + +The dawn reddened and still the two men in the patio fruitlessly +pursued speculation. A sudden step crunched the gravel behind them. +Both leaped at the sound, so taut were their nerves. They turned to see +Benicia standing in the half light with the misty banks of geraniums +for a background. With her were the giant Papago Quelele and two other +Indians. They carried loops of hair ropes. + +“Señor Hickman”--the girl’s voice was deadly cold--“Señor Hickman, my +servant ’Cepcion has just brought to me the dagger she found in your +room. The dagger is stained with my father’s blood, señor. There are +prints of fingers on the haft of that dagger, Señor Hickman.” + +Grant caught the poisonous edge of hatred in the voice, read the bitter +accusation in her eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, but Benicia +checked him. + +“I saw you leave those prints of my father’s blood on the door of his +chamber, señor. Before my very eyes, señor! Just now when ’Cepcion +brings me the dagger she finds in your room I compare the print of +fingers on its haft with the print on the door. They are the same. What +have you to say, Señor Hickman?” + +“Say!” Bim Bagley’s voice snapped like a whip lash. “Are you accusing +Grant Hickman here of murder?” Benicia never even cast a glance at him. +She repeated: + +“What have you to say to this, Señor Hickman?” Grant answered levelly, +“Enough already has been said, Señorita O’Donoju.” Benicia signalled to +Quelele and he advanced with the ropes. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +THE ORDEAL + + +With the lithe spring of a cat Bim put himself between Grant and the +advancing Indian. His face had gone dead white and his eyes were coals +blown upon by the wind of anger. + +“None of that! Get back there--you!” Bim’s voice was scarcely audible +but his pose of furious battling on the hair-trigger of release was +sufficiently vocal to awe the Papago giant into a backward stumble. +Then to Benicia: + +“Young woman, you’re making the mistake of your life. I’m a’mighty +sorry for you, an’ you are going to be right regretful yourself when +you have time to think.” Grant made a step forward to lay a checking +hand on his friend’s arm. He would have spoken but the girl interrupted. + +“My father’s blood on this man’s hands!--the dagger from the wall of +his chamber--” Of a sudden the last shred of restraint she had battled +to impose upon herself gave way and a flood came under propulsion of +hysteria. Out fluttered her hands to point the object of her execration. + +“You--I do not know you! Just a chance meeting between us and we part. +Then fate brings you to this house wounded--snatched from death. An +escaped convict from a chain gang--you yourself admitted as much just +last night. With good reason my cousin, Colonel Urgo, must have caused +your arrest. Why should I not believe you capable of killing my father? +Why not when the signs of his very blood cry out against you!” + +“Señorita O’Donoju--” Grant’s effort to check her was fruitless, for +she had whirled upon Bagley: “And you! Unknown to my father--unknown to +me. He brought you here on your own representation. You said you were +hunting for your friend to whom we had offered our hospitality. Can you +deny that both of you discovered opportunity here to kill--and then to +rob?” + +The storm that had swept the girl through this welter of imaginings, +illogical, frenetic, took heavy toll of her physical reserves. Now +she stood trembling, white-faced in the spreading dawn, pitiful. Her +small hands were clenched into fists across her breast. Flutterings of +uncontrolled nerves made the flesh of her temples pulsate. Grant, for +all the crushing horror of these moments, felt pity pushing through the +numbness Benicia’s accusation had wrought. Never had he seen a woman so +tortured by the devils of hysteria; he was appalled. He spoke to her +gently: + +“If you will permit me to go to my room while you make further +investigations I will answer any questions they may suggest. It must be +plain to you, Señorita O’Donoju, that I cannot escape from this place.” + +The girl gave him a dazed look as if she hardly comprehended what he +said, then she slowly nodded and, beckoning the Indians to follow, she +turned and disappeared beyond the patio’s green. Bim threw an arm over +his pal’s shoulder and accompanied him to his room. At the door he +whirled Grant about with a strong grip of both his hands and gave him a +grin more eloquent than any sermon on fortitude. + +“When the she-ones get to stampedin’, old pal, they sure have us +helpless men winging. Now go in there and get a sleep while I take a +look round below your window and elsewheres.” + +Bim’s easy injunction to sleep was not so easily followed by the man +who was a self-appointed prisoner. On his bed Grant tossed in a fever +of mingled blind speculation and outraged pride. Strive though he might +to palliate Benicia’s charge against him on the score of the girl’s +complete prostration through the night’s tragedy, the quick and fiery +blood in her that was inheritance from Spanish forebears, yet always he +came against the same ugly fact: one whom he loved with all the passion +in him and whose return of love he had dared hope to win had accused +him of murder out of hand. + +Yet how could he prove his innocence? Of a sudden that thought plumped +down on him with the burst of a high explosive shell. + +Benicia’s accusation had appeared monstrous, yes. But, look upon +the facts through her eyes--so a curiously impersonal phase of mind +prompted; what were those facts as they appeared to the girl? A man +who was first a chance acquaintance in a train and then, by a trick +of fate, a guest in the house, rouses the household at three o’clock +in the morning by sounding an alarm in the patio. He calls “Murder!” +though he does not say who has been murdered, he has not apparently +discovered the body of Don Padraic in his chamber. + +This man--this waif brought in from the desert--prevents the daughter’s +going in to the room of death until first he has entered that room +and locked the door behind him. He leaves the marks of his fingers in +blood upon the outside of that door. Then he and his friend--“call him +confederate” was Grant’s cynical amendment--organize a hue and cry +outside of the house. While this is in progress a servant finds in the +guest’s room a dagger; instead of being in its usual place amid the +rack of weapons on the wall this dagger lies on the floor as if hastily +thrown there by one who had no proper time for its concealment. The +dagger is blood stained and on its haft are the same finger prints as +those on the door of the dead don’s chamber. + +There was the record. How refute it? + +Say that while lying awake he saw a hand appear at the bars of his +window and heard the tinkle of a knife dropped within? Why, if he was +so vigilant at three o’clock in the morning, had he not seen that hand +of a murderer steal in to abstract the weapon before the deed? And +whose hand was it? Did not the burden of proof that it was not his own +which took the dagger from the wall rest solely upon Grant Hickman? + +Another’s finger prints on that bloodied haft besides his own? +Perhaps. But it needed the instruments of precision of a detective +central office to juggle with such minutiæ as the whorls and spirals +in a finger print, and they most certainly were lacking at the Casa +O’Donoju. Graver difficulty still, there were a hundred and more +Indians in the oasis; how gather them all together and take the prints +of their fingers? + +The more his mind roved amid hypotheses the closer about him seemed +drawn the meshes of circumstance. As the sun of a new day painted a +glory beyond the bars of his window Grant Hickman felt himself as +helpless as that Tomlinson of the Kipling story who plunged headlong +through the space between all the suns of infinity. + +He must have slipped into the sleep of exhaustion, for it was near noon +when a knock on his door roused him. At his bidding ’Cepcion opened to +illustrate a command in Spanish with a backward jerk of her head. Grant +arose and followed her through a corridor to the patio. Benicia was +standing there in an attitude of awaiting him, a little beyond her was +Bim, his face wreathed with a heartening smile. + +The girl received him with bleak eyes. “You will please follow me, +señor,” was all she said. Then she led the way, the two men a step +behind her, out of the still house and down the avenue of palms +towards the Papago village. From time to time a turn in the path gave +Grant a glimpse of Benicia’s face. It was a changed woman he saw. + +Gone was the vital spirit of joy of living which always gave the +girl her character of Eurydice in khaki; gone, too, that softness +of grain born of happiness undisturbed, of life amid the elemental +things of nature. This Benicia was a cold fury moving to judgment. +The call of her Spanish blood from centuries past--call for vengeance +and blood-sacrifice--had possessed her. It was as if some mocking +cartoonist had run a brush over the features of Innocence in +portraiture, giving an upward twist of cruelty to lips, the glint of +blood lust in eyes. + +They came to the Indian village, all hushed in anticipation of some +prodigy. Only the frog-croaking of the water drums and the dry clicking +of the rasping sticks betokened a continuance of the mourning ritual. +All the retainers of the Casa O’Donoju, farmers, cattle handlers, house +servants, men, squaws and half-naked children, were assembled in the +rudely-defined street that led between rows of reed and mud-capped +huts. Two only were seated apart: the man who bobbled the drumming +sticks over the turtle-back halves of the gourds and an ancient who +manipulated the rasping sticks. On every bronze-black face showed the +strain of awaiting an untoward event. + +When Benicia appeared some elderly squaws started afresh the lugubrious +death howl, but a gesture from the girl silenced them. She beckoned +Quelele to her and spoke some rapid words in the Papago tongue. He in +turn passed the orders to two men, who ran into one of the nearby huts +to reappear staggering under the weight of a great metal kettle, such +as might be used for soap boiling, carried between them. Quelele laid +two heavy flat stones in the middle of the street; the kettle carriers +deposited their burden, rim down on the rocks. A space of two inches or +more showed between the kettle rim and the hard adobe. + +Still the hollow _bum-bum-bum_ of the water-drum, whisper and cluck of +the notched sticks. A very old man, the skin of whose naked legs was +grey and tough as elephant hide, had attached ceremonial circlets of +dried yucca pods about his ankles in a cuff extending almost to the +knees. He took his stand by the instrumentalists and his feet moved in +a shuffle in time to the drum beats. The pods emitted dry whispers. +The rapt look of a seer was on his leathern features. + +The kettle in place, Quelele himself went to a small pen of _ocatilla_ +sticks on the outskirts of the village and brought therefrom a young +rooster. The fowl’s head bobbed nervously and his small eyes glinted as +he was carried on the big Indian’s arm through the throng. Two helpers +lifted the edge of the soap kettle while Quelele thrust the cock +underneath. A faint clucking came muffled from the iron prison. The +bird thrust his head out here and there from beneath the rim, seeking +egress. + +Now Benicia took from ’Cepcion something she had carried wrapped about +in a handkerchief and carried it to the kettle top. She let fall the +handkerchief and with a slight gesture focused the eyes of all upon the +stained dagger. A sigh like the swish of a scythe in long grass swept +through the crowd as the girl balanced the knife on the exact top of +the dome of fire-smudged metal. The ancient with the yucca rattles did +a sacrificial step which caused a sharp alarm like that of the desert +sidewinder’s warning. + +Grant and Bim, still unaware of the significance of all this +preparation, sensed the growing tensity of emotions all about them. +The Papagoes, like all their kind, more than ready to invest with +ritual any untoward incident of life, saw in the white girl’s +preparations--particularly in the offering of the knife upon this +rude altar--formulæ of an appeal to decision of powers beyond human +comprehension. Perhaps the elders, remembering tales of ancient +custom, recognized the preliminaries and welcomed a revival among the +unregenerate younger men of a direct appeal to Elder Brother. If big +Quelele knew better he had kept his tongue still. + +Benicia’s features had never relaxed their cold intentness during +the preparations. There was even, to Grant’s troubled scrutiny, some +element of the barbaric there. A look like that on the stone visage +of an Aztec goddess, implacable, without mortal instincts. She took +her stand by the kettle and spoke rapidly to the Papagoes, pointing to +the knife, then lifting her finger to mark the place of the sun in the +white sky. + +Abruptly she finished, stooped and touched one finger to the bottom of +the kettle. It came away blackened by soot. Then she turned to Grant. +“It is the test of God,” she said in a dulled voice. “My people have +used it in times past when they were perplexed as I am. All here +including you, Señor Hickman, and you, Señor Bagley, will endure this +test even as I just have done. Put your fingers to the kettle and +show them to all, blackened. God will speak through the mouth of the +imprisoned cock when the guilty man touches the iron.” + +Grant gave the girl a steady look, then without a word he stepped to +the blackened dome, swept the fingers of his right hand across it and +held them aloft. Benicia was looking away when Grant stepped back +beside her; he saw a convulsive movement of her throat--no other sign. +Then big Bim dared the oracle with an easy grace. A shuddering intake +of breath from the Indians as each man underwent trial. + +Quelele now gave an order which brought all the men of the village and +great-house into line of which he was the head. Even the musicians were +replaced by squaws who did not permit the drubbing and squeaking to +diminish. The faces of all wore the set look of hypnosis--eyes white +and staring, muscles twittering in cheeks, tongues licking out over +dried lips. + +_Thrut-t-t-t-t!_ An extra flourish of the rasping sticks and a thunder +of the water drums as Quelele started the line forward toward the +kettle. The big Indian moved with a mincing sidewise step reminiscent +of some deer-dance of his people at the festival of _sahuaro_. His +arms were held rigidly crooked at elbows and fingers splayed. The great +moon face was contorted into a lolling mask. He sweat with fear. + +Twice the lightning-like bobbing out and back of the imprisoned cock’s +head as Quelele approached. “Ai-ie!” a squaw screamed in a frenzy. + +The leader touched the kettle, held up his blackened finger for those +in line behind him to see, then broke from line and stood at a little +distance from Benicia and the two white men. + +Second in line was the ancient with the yucca rattles on his legs. +Coming to the kettle, he stood rigid, tilted his old eyes to the +blinding sun. A shiver ran down his body which caused every dry pod +of his anklets to emit a whisper. He whirled once, dipped and swept a +finger through the soot. “_Njo oovik_ (Bird speaking),” he cried, and +there was foam on his lips. + +But the bird did not speak, and the line came slowly on. The spell of +the weird had Grant bound. The rational in him tried to prompt that +all this was but a shrewd application of the new psychological method +of crime detection as utilized by primitive peoples before ever the +science of the mind was thought of; but his imagination strained to +hear the crowing of the cock when the finger of guilt was laid upon +the iron shell. Mutter of the drums, shuffle of dancing feet, guttural +calls and imprecations: these things had swept away all prim gauds and +dressings of a mind counting itself superior and he was swept back to +kinship with the wild, its children. Again the desert moved to bring +him under its subjection. + +“Lookit that fellah!” It was Bim who gripped Grant’s arm and pointed +to the advancing line. One of the younger bucks had dodged out of his +place and fallen back three numbers. + +On came the men facing trial by ordeal. Now and again the imprisoned +cock thrust his head out with snake-like darting, and the individual +who was poised over the kettle hiccoughed fear. The young man who had +dodged back tried the trick again when he was near the kettle; but the +one behind him held him by the shoulders and forced him on. + +The dodger came to the place of test, hesitated, made a downward sweep +of his hand and stumbled past. Big Quelele suddenly leaped at him and +gripped his right hand. No smudge of soot on the fingers. + +“Hai--ee!” Quelele called, and the line stood still. He wrenched the +young man’s hand high above his head and showed the fingers clean. +“Hai--ee!” chorused fifty voices. Quelele started to drag the wretch +back to the kettle. + +Then his victim went to his knees--to his face in the dust. He rolled +and kicked, screaming. Still Quelele dragged him nearer the kettle, +his right hand firmly gripped in the vise of his own two, forefinger +extended to take the print of soot and draw the cock’s crow. + +“I did it! I did it!” the wretched creature blubbered. Quelele dropped +him as if he were a poisonous lizard. The crowd pushed forward +menacingly. The murderer fumbled in his trousers pocket and brought +out a shining silver peso, which he threw from him with a gesture of +horror. Quelele picked it up and turned it over in his palm, his brow +heavily knotted. He passed it to Benicia. + +The girl turned the coin over to the reverse, whereon the spread eagle +grips a snake and a cactus branch in his talons. A deep knife cut was +scored through the neck of the eagle. + +The wretch in the dust saw she had noted the mutilation and cried out +to her in pleading, “The sign, mistress! The sign! The soldier-señor +Urgo tells me many months ago when I receive the sign I shall kill or +my brother, who is in his prison, will be shot!” + +“And he gave you this--” the girl began. + +“Yesterday, mistress. He passes me in his thunder-wagon and tosses me +this peso. ‘Find the knife in the room of the wounded gringo señor,’ he +commands. ‘Use no other.’” + +Benicia nodded to Quelele, who made a sign to others. They brought a +hair rope and trussed the murderer hands to feet. His lips were mute. +Stamp of fate was on his grey features. He knew his punishment: to be +taken to the burning lava fields of Pinacate, where the dead volcanoes +are, there to be left without gun or canteen; no man would see him +again. Such was the Papago custom decreed for murderers from beforetime. + +She who had ordained this trial by ordeal had turned away, once the +wretch’s confession had been heard. The soul of the girl now stood +its own trial in turn; faced by the guilt of false suspicion, by the +wounds wrought of bitter accusation, it must needs purge itself. Yes, +even though the spirit of Benicia O’Donoju was not one easily to humble +itself. A long minute she fought with herself and finally turned +gropingly to make her hard penance before Grant. + +Then she saw the figure of the man whose debtor in honour she was +striding with his companion towards the avenue of palms leading to the +house. The distance between them seemed suddenly the breadth of the +world. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +THE DESERT INTERVENES + + +That day omniscient will of the desert moved to point a murderer’s +guilt the same inscrutable power flexed a finger to mould events some +seventy miles away from the Garden of Solitude where the worthy doctor +from Arizora and his Papago had been nibbling at a mystery. Though Doc +Stooder moved in a haze of strong waters, though he looked upon the +face of the desert through a golden veil of his own weaving, yet was he +not the least immune from the law of the waste places. The Doc walked +with God, even as did the pioneer fathers of the Church; the fact that +he did not admit the companionship had no influence on the operations +of destiny. + +We left Stooder on his knees before the uncovered bell with its +inscription carrying identification. His excitements, his hysterical +grubbings, soundings and prospectings of the ensuing twenty-four hours +were heroic. After the uncovering of the bell he had paced off a +square through the scrub thirty or forty feet each way and with the +corroded cone of metal for a centre; then the Indian and he had gone on +their hands and knees over every inch of this square. Result, a single +stick of hewn timber whose fire-blackened end had projected but an inch +above the sand; digging revealed a twenty-foot beam, dry as a puff-ball +and almost ready to disintegrate. + +That was all: the bell and the uncovered beam. But that was enough. +Doc Stooder knew that beneath him lay the mission site; how deeply the +blown sands of more than a century had buried it he could not guess. +But it was here! Here lay the rich core of a legend that had sent +many a man out into the desert to chase rainbow ends. His--Stooder’s! +A’mighty God! how he’d riffle those pearls through his fingers--lay +’em all out on a piece of velvet under some secret lamp and match ’em, +pearl with pearl. + +But twenty-four hours in the desert exact their price; and that price +is in measure of water. The Doc did not drink water so long as his +store of contraband liquor held out; but the Papago did. Great was the +Doc’s rage and disgust when his companion called him away from sinking +a prospect shaft to point the single remaining water container, now +much lighter than it should be. He tested the little car’s radiator +to find that evaporation had left almost none of the necessary fluid +therein. No use buckin’ fate; if he wanted to get back to the village +of the Sand People on four wheels he’d have to give the radiator a +drink and that would leave none for himself and the Papago. + +It was near noon of their second day at the treasure site when the +Doc whipped his reluctance into acceptance of the inevitable. He made +certain preparations. First he copied into a prescription book the +inscription on the bell; that would do to convince somebody whose +financing of the excavation operations might have to be invoked. Then +he sketched a map of the vicinity with meticulous care, marking in the +jagged spurs of the nearby mountains for bearing points and indicating +the position of the bell in reference to a dry wash which was traced +down from a gash in the mountain wall. + +“Guadalupe, old son, your old friend Stooder’s goin’ rustle back here +with an outfit right soon an’ dig himself right down to them pearls. So +he’s just a mite p’ticular about this map.” + +Access of caution prompted the Doc to dismount from the car after he’d +set the engine to humming. He ran back with a shovel and covered the +bell with sand; the haggled bush above it would be a sufficient guide +for him and no significant landmark for the possible prying stranger. +The beam he hid in the wash. Then they trundled down their own track +and back to the Road of the Dead Men. Doc Stooder cursed the necessity +of automobiles leaving tracks. Some snoozer amblin’ along the main road +would just’s like as not turn out to follow these two lines out into +nowhere to see what he could see. Then perhaps-- + +Summer had come miraculously to the desert overnight, as the seasons +in Altar have a way of doing. Yesterday the pink convolvulus of spring +lay in scattered coral patches amid the scrub and the greasewood +was showing its midget spots of yellow. Now every glistening clump +of _cholla_ was aglow with the blood-red flowers of its kind; the +occasional pillars of the giant cactus were wreathed each at its top by +fillets of creamy blossoms--grotesque masquerading of these withered +old men of the wastes. First hint of summer’s heat was abroad. It came +from the west on puffy little winds like the back-draught from an +oil-burning boiler. + +The Doc found himself in a frolicsome mood, for his night’s potations, +predicated on a dwindling supply, had recklessly drained that supply +but availed to carry him over to another day with the stars of his +dream world still burning. Hunched low in his seat so that the +tip of his goatee waggled against the rim of the wheel, with his +flopping black hat all grease streaked pulled low against the sun +glare, the tramp physician chewed tobacco with all the unction of a +care-free conscience and indulged himself in wandering monologue. +Guadalupe’s meagre stock of Spanish made him anything but a lively +conversationalist, so the Doc was constrained to carry on a vivid +conversation with himself. + +Into what penetralia of reminiscence this auto-dialogue carried him! +Back through the years--through countless dim valleys of a Never-Never +Land of alcoholic fantasies where his spirit had been wont to pitch its +tent. Scraps of jest and shreds of song stirred the ghosts along the +Road of the Dead Men. + +No such exuberance from Guadalupe, slave of the desert. They had not +been an hour on the road when the Papago began to feel a crawling +of the nerves along the spine and the pressure of invisible fingers +across the brow--evil signs! No less than the mountain sheep or the +road-runner in the scrub could the Papago interpret the desert’s +forerunners of portent. A feel in the air--hue of the mountain +rims--colour of sunlight against a rock: these things had their meaning. + +Away off to the northward where a patch of gypsum showed white as film +ice the Indian’s eye caught the first tangible evidence of trouble +ahead. A dust whirlwind like a gigantic leg in baggy trousers was +wavering across the flats; the thing possessed volition of its own so +surely did it map its course across a five-mile span in less than five +minutes. Guadalupe nudged his companion timidly and pointed to it. + +“Uh-huh, old Peg-legged Grandpap,” chuckled the Doc. “Seen him lots +times. Gotta hole in his peg-leg you can drive a car through slick’s a +whistle--allowin’ you can find the hole.” + +A half hour later the sun changed colour. Like the passing of a +shutter across a calcium light: now blinding white, now blood-orange. +Instantaneous. + +Three gusts of sand-laden wind came sweeping toward them from the west. +A long lull, then the storm. + +It pounced upon them with a sibilant whistle growing momentarily to a +roar which was engulfing. The little desert skimmer bucked like a wild +colt against the onslaught of the wind; but when the Doc dropped the +engine into low the car wallowed on in the face of the gale. The air +was thick as flour. Wind-driven sand had the bite of an emery wheel at +high revolution; it rasped the skin and drove eyelids tight shut. The +two in the car buttoned jackets above their noses to breathe. + +All the space of the desert was a poisonous yellow glare. Minute by +minute density thickened until the car’s radiator was hardly visible. + +Then the sturdy engine quit. First a tortured grinding of clogged +cylinders, puny explosions from the exhaust, a bucking and quivering. +After that sudden stoppage of movement as if the car had plumped into a +stone wall. + +The Doc and Guadalupe tumbled out of the seat and crawled beneath +the car for protection. A stab of fear shot down through Stooder’s +disordered thoughts--the water! None in the canteens, for they had +drained the last into the radiator before starting from the treasure +ground. Was there--could the sand have--? + +He inched himself through a new sand drift below the front axle to +where the drain cock projected below the radiator base. Like a suckling +kid he lifted his lips to the steel teat and turned the cock. A +trickle of heavy mud filled his mouth with grit, then stopped. + +Radiator a mess of mud--cylinders clogged--feed pipes all choked and +water--gone! + +Doc Stooder pulled his floppy hat over his face and whimpered the name +of God. + +And on the back trail where the bell of the Lost Mission had +been found; over that site which the Doc had so carefully mapped +and measured the wind scoured and builded--scoured and builded. +Obliterating, changing, re-creating. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +THIRST + + +The sun went down before the sand storm abated. Two men, the one called +civilized, the other a savage, crouched like rabbits in a covert +beneath the body of the little car with a high sand drift piled up to +windward even over the radiator top. Two mites in the wind-scourged +wilderness of Altar with love o’ life the leveller that made them kin. + +When the last vagrant wind fury had passed fell silence almost terrific +by contrast with the uproar of the storm. In place of the slithering +and whistling of driven sand an oppressive stillness, which seemed +dropped from the void of the stars, now showing. Occasionally the dry +rustle of sand dropping in rivulets from some desert bush lifting its +head after the scourging; that was all. + +When the two crawled out from beneath their shelter Guadalupe was for +an immediate start afoot in the direction of the faint pencilings of +red marking the west. But Doc Stooder possessed an abiding glimmer +of faith in the soundness of the car and insisted on taking stock +of its motive possibilities. A cursory examination convinced him of +the hopelessness of his trust, for the sand was heaped entirely over +the unprotected engine--desert cars dispense with a hood because it +blankets the engine’s heat--and he knew that even with water in the +radiator he couldn’t get a kick out of the thing before a thorough +overhauling. This was out of the question. They must achieve their +escape from the desert’s trap afoot. + +The Papago started on a swinging walk a little north of west, the Doc +following. They had not gone far when the white man discovered they +were not following the road; each step was through loose sand which +received the foot with a viscous hold and reluctantly released it. The +Doc snarled a query at his companion: why in the name of deletion had +he quit the Road of the Dead Men? + +“Not quit--finding him,” came Guadalupe’s grudging answer. Then Stooder +admitted to himself the possibility that during the time the little car +had pushed on into the storm he had tooled it off the road. How far he +had driven away from the single track which spans Altar he could not +hazard a guess. Anyway, he knew one thing: he was dog tired, and if +this mangy black coyote thought A. Stooder, M.D., was going to wallow +through sand all night without a sleep he had another think coming. + +Reaction from the excitements of the past two days added extra +weight to the Doc’s already none-too-light handicap of alcoholic +repercussions. The storm had torn his nerves to tatters; his mouth was +as dry as an old church pew cushion; each of his legs felt as if they +were dragging an Oregon boot. Stooder’s mind was too dulled to probe +down below these afflictions and read the real seriousness of his +situation; it dealt only with cogent aches and reluctances. + +“Hey, Guadalupe! We take a sleep right here.” The Doc halted. Great was +his surprise when he saw the Papago striding on. Hot rage bubbled to +his lips in an explosive Mexican oath. + +“Hey, you lizard-eatin’ mozo, hear me? We stop here for the big +shut-eye!” The Doc spurred his long legs into a gangling run to +overtake the Indian, who had plodded on unheeding. All the arrogance of +the white man in his fancied superiority fell with the doctor’s hand on +the Indian’s shoulder. Guadalupe wrenched free and turned to face him +sulkily. + +“Sleep here--to-morrow much sun--no water. Maybe to-morrow we die here. +Walk!” Guadalupe’s sparse vocabulary of Spanish words was drained; but +the manner of his resuming the forward hike was sufficiently eloquent. +Guadalupe, born to the desert code and grown to manhood under the +inexorable desert law, had in mind but a single impulse--to survive. +His mind plumped through the bog of discomforts wherein Stooder’s +was mired to read clearly the tablets of the desert’s decalogue: ten +commandments in one--live! In extremity throw over loyalty, discard +obligations of oath or of blood, strip the soul to its elemental +selfishness; but live! + +Guadalupe strode on, still bearing to the north and the west, and still +no road. Stooder, growing more weary each step, spent his strength in +blind rage at the stubbornness of the Papago. He conned over various +capital operations he would like to perform with Guadalupe for a +subject. His brain tired of that and began to nurture the germ of a new +thought. Why strain himself keeping up with that ring-tailed kangaroo +rat who skipped on and on without rest? Guadalupe left the print of +his foot every step he took; those footprints would point to wherever +Guadalupe might go--and the Papago, of course, knew the shortest way +out of this hellhole--so why break his own neck? The old Doc would +take a little snooze and then just follow the footprints when he felt +good and ready to do so. + +The gangling form crumpled up as if cut off at the knees. Guadalupe +heard a thud, turned for a half-glance over his shoulder and pushed +steadily on under the stars. It was not in the Papago’s code to add +one ounce to the weight of circumstance obtruding between himself and +water. In a dozen steps his figure was swallowed up in the dark. + +Stooder may have allotted to himself only that minimum of sleep +designated as a snooze. But a high sun pried open his reluctant +eyelids. He sat up and sent a dazed glance around an unfamiliar world. +Mountains tawny and black with knife-edge water scores down their +flanks; a sea of scrub stretching interminably from their bases; +patches of gypsum and _salitre_ showing dull white as scars of leprosy +here and there amid the grey-green of the _camisa_. The sky already was +taking on the yellow-white glaze indicative of imminent heat. + +The Doc arose and shook the sand out of the creases of his clothing. +First definite impression coming to him was the need of a drink: his +favourite tequila if might be, water in a pinch. All the nerves in +his body twittered “Hear--hear!” to the first of the alternatives. +Then, his mind beginning to function along the line of the night’s +impressions, Doc Stooder read the story of the footprints leading off +to the north and west. There they were: good li’l signposts; they’d +take him to a drink just as easy! + +Stooder’s renewed strength carried him easily along the trail the +Papago had left. For an hour, that is; then trouble. For the sand +disappeared under a broad apron of _caliche_--a hardpan of baked +mineral salts and earth almost impervious even to the shod hoof of a +horse. It was like a door swung shut on the trailer--the locked door +to some labyrinth beyond. Here the last firm print of a boot in the +sand, there nothingness. The Doc paused, looked back over the cup-like +shadows marking the footprint trail he had been following to take its +line of direction, then he pushed ahead along that line. + +Another hour, and he still was on the _caliche_ outcrop. He stopped to +consider. Where in the name of all the angels was that road--the Road +of the Dead Men? If he’d driven the car a little south of it during the +sand storm, surely Guadalupe must have cut tangent to it by this time. +And if the road passed over the _caliche_ flat there’d be wheel marks; +that was sure. Miss that road and miss the Papago’s trail both--why +then old Doc Stooder’d be a goner! + +He tried to follow his own back trail by such small signs as the +scratch of a hobnail against an embedded rock and a thin print of a +sole in a pocket of dust. A while and he had lost even that. He stopped +and swabbed his streaming face with a shirtsleeve--he now was carrying +his coat. + +“By the eternal, Stooder, you gotta do something--and do it dam’d +pronto!” + +Once more he turned on his own tracks. Better go back and find that +putrid Papago’s trail and let the road go to the devil. Whole half hour +wasted a’ready--good half hour, by criminy! with a drink just that much +farther off. + +It was not so easy finding the scored rocks and the stamp of a heel +in pools of dust; not so easy as the first essay. For the sun was at +meridian now and foreshortened little shadows to nothingness. Plump! +he came to the edge of the hardpan and into the sandy soil. No tracks +there. Should he bear to right or left in circling the edge of the +_caliche_ on his hunt for the footprints? If he guessed wrong where’d +he be? “Oh, dear God!” + +He turned to the left and resumed his tramp. Furnace light refracted +from the sand seared into his eyes, which must be always kept downward +peering--spying. His mouth now was dry as rotted wood. Something +alien there kept bothering him by pressing against the roof of it. He +explored with his fingers and discovered the alien object to be his +tongue, which was swelling. + +“But my mind’s clear--clear as a bell. Got a steady mind anyway. Gotta +hold onto that or I’m a gone coon.” + +A slight breeze struck his right arm more penetratingly than it should. +Stooder shifted his glance to his arm, held crooked. + +“Good God! Coat’s gone!” Dropped somewhere--that coat in whose pocket +was a prescription book; among its pages the map of the treasure site. +The precious map showing where lay the bell and the beam! The man +whirled and started on a staggering run along the rim of the _caliche_ +he had been travelling. + +“Must find that coat! Don’t find the coat an’ I lose the pearls an’ the +gold--the pearls an’ the gold!” + +He halted as if shot. Down the wind came to him the faint tolling of +a bell. _Dong--dong._ Silvery throb of a swinging bell. Measured, +unhurried; like the sounding of a bell for mass of a Sunday morning. +The Doc had heard the bell of San Xavier sending its call across the +alfalfa fields of a Sunday morning, just like that. + +Even as he strained his ears to drink in the full miracle of it the +sound faded, ceased. + +“I heard it! A bell! No illusion. Mind’s still clear--still clear!” +On he went, his gaunt legs weaving in wide circles. He came to a dark +patch on the hardpan and strided over it, unheeding. It was his missing +coat, in the pocket the precious map of the treasure site. The Doc did +not see the coat because again his ears were drinking in the maddening +tolling of the bell; this time a little clearer down the wind in his +face. An animal cry, half articulate, burst from his swollen lips: + +“The mission bell! Bell of the Four Evangelists which I found t’other +day! Callin’ me back!” + +Right over yonder where the mountains cracked apart to let that arroyo +down onto the plain: that’s where the bell sounded. Yes, sir, no +mistake about it. ’Bout four-five mile, judgin’ from the sound. Hear +what that bell’s a-callin’? “Gol-l-ld! Gol-l-ld!” + +Doc Stooder, coatless, hatless, the high roach of his streaked hair +fanning in the hot winds, was stumbling and falling--stumbling and +falling ever forward toward the crack in the mountains. Light of +madness flamed in his eyes; his great arms clawed forward as if to +catch invisible supports to pull him the faster. Gol-l-ld--Gol-l-ld! + +“Old mind’s still clear, else couldn’t hear that mission bell so +plain-- Gotta keep old mind clear--” + + * * * * * + +The way of the desert god, always beyond man’s comprehending, +nevertheless sometimes approaches so close to the human scheme of +thought and motive as to permit of analogy with it. When the director +of destinies in the dry wastes seems to make a travesty of such a +sacrosanct quality as human justice we may be moved to call the impulse +satiric for want of a better name. Satiric, then, that reversal of the +decree of death passed upon the Papago youth who confessed to murder +before the overturned kettle at the Casa O’Donoju; more than satiric +the moving finger now directing his path through the dead lands up to a +union with the crazed doctor’s. + +According to ancient custom the Indian retainers of the O’Donoju had +taken the youth--his baptismal name was Ygnacio--down to the crater +land of the Pinacate and there turned him loose without water to wander +for a while and finally to die miserably. Other murderers had been so +treated and never had been seen of men again. But the desert god who +slays so peremptorily knew that Ygnacio had done the bidding to murder +to save his brother from death--had killed without malice and only as +the price of redemption for one of his blood. Wherefore the arbiter of +life and death flung life at Ygnacio. + +When he was athirst almost to the point of exhaustion he found a +knob-like growth a scant two inches above the surface of the ground, +recognized it for a promise of succour and with the last ounce of his +strength dug the deep sand all about it. The end of his effort gave to +him a strange and rare vegetable reservoir like an elongated radish, +which miraculously holds scant moisture of summer rains the year round. +“Root-of-the-sands” the Sonorans have named it. In the desolation +between the Pinacate and the Gulf even the coyotes have the wisdom to +dig for this precious sustainer of life. + +Ygnacio devoured the whole of the root and was revived. He found +others, which he tied into a bundle to carry over his shoulders. Food +and drink had come to him from the hand of Elder Brother himself +when it was decreed by man he should have neither. Wherefore love o’ +life once more burned strong in the man. He set his course northward, +travelling only by night when the heat had given place to the biting +desert chill, keeping his precious roots buried in the sand while he +slept by day so that evaporation would not rob him of the promise of +escape from inferno. Straight as an arrow northward where, beyond +the Line, lay tribes of Papagoes who never had heard of Don Padraic +O’Donoju nor of a murderer named Ygnacio. + +So it happened that on the third night of his march, when Ygnacio had +paused to munch a segment of the sustaining root, came to his ears +the sound of a voice, faintly and from a great distance. It might be +a human voice, though there was a burred and thickened quality to it +almost like a burro’s bray. + +The Indian boldly followed where his ears gave direction. +“Gol’--gol’--gol’” was the monotonous iteration, sounding almost like +the muffled tapping of a clapper against metal. He walked a mile--so +clearly do sounds carry in the desert night--and suddenly came upon the +figure of a white man. Naked above the waist, wisp of a goatee tilted +at the stars, arms rigid at sides and with fingers widespread, the +spectre of a white man chanted the single word, “Gold.” + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +THE COMING OF EL DOCTOR + + +The sandstorm that overwhelmed Stooder and his guide on the Road of +the Dead Men brought the mighty voice of the desert to the Garden of +Solitude in requiem for the soul of Don Padraic O’Donoju. Savage elegy +of a life lived in communion with the spirit of the wild. + +There was no priest to order the funeral rites of the Church. Though a +day’s journey in Quelele’s car to Caborca and back would have fetched +a minister of religion, Benicia was determined word of her father’s +death should not reach the man who provoked it sooner than the courses +of rumour allowed. The Caborca priest posting out to the Casa O’Donoju +would set tongues wagging instantly and the seal of silence imposed by +miles of unpeopled space between the casa and the nearest community +would be broken. “The service of the heart will be just as acceptable +to my father’s spirit,” was Benicia’s simple justification to herself +of breach of custom. + +So in the heat haze preceding the storm six Indians bore the body of +their master through fields of alfalfa behind the white house down to a +grove of shimmering alamo trees which fringed a reservoir of the oasis’ +precious water. Here beneath the white and silver-green tent of the +trees was sanctified ground. Here lay the dust of lords and ladies of a +desert principality who, for their spans of years, had been inheritors +of the desert’s cruelties and benefices. + +Grant fell in with the file of dark-skinned mourners that followed +behind the body of Don Padraic, with him Bagley. They did this unbidden +of Benicia. Neither had seen her since the dramatic climax of the +ordeal of the kettle the day before; no word had come from her. Yet +each had felt the need to succour the bereaved girl in her great +loneliness, forgetting unhappy events of the dawn in the patio. + +For Grant there had been a brief struggle with pride and outraged +sensibilities--blessedly brief because a broader tolerance and finer +manhood had rallied to overthrow the narrower view of selfishness. +In the light of the terrific blow that had been dealt the girl he +loved--all the more crushing because of its suddenness--the savage +reaction of a high spirit seemed to him not so to be wondered at. Nor +Benicia’s silence since. In these dark hours there was no place in her +heart for aught but unassuaged grief. + +Arrived at the alamo grove, all the Indians of the village and +household massed themselves a little way apart from freshly turned sod, +their glistening black heads dappled by the silhouettes of the leaves, +their eyes restless and awestruck. Benicia, garbed in dull black which +made the whiteness of her face and uncovered glory of her hair the +more striking, stood at the head of the rude housing fashioned by the +Papagoes for her beloved clay; her calm was absolute as that of the +iron peaks beyond the oasis green. In her hand was a wreath the Indian +women had woven--scarlet flowers of the cactus with feathery acacia +intertwined. + +In a steady voice the girl read a Latin prayer while the Indians knelt. +Then with a lingering touch she laid the scarlet and olive-green wreath +upon the pall and watched the glowing spot of colour slowly sink from +sight. + +Suddenly the recessional: the sand storm with its clamour of incoherent +desert tongues crying hidden tragedies, its blinding sheets of sand. +When the first blast struck the group turning away from the grave +Grant stepped quickly to Benicia’s side, drew her arm protectingly +through his and bent his body to shield her from the myriad chisels of +the driven sand. He fought for footing for them both. + +At his touch Benicia turned dry eyes to his. Swiftly she read the love +there--love triumphing over the hurt she had so lately given him. On +the instant tears filmed the hard brightness of the orbs Grant looked +down upon. Her lips moved in some halting speech of contrition, but the +savage blast snatched away the sound of her words. In the softening +of those eyes and the weight of her body clinging nervelessly to him +the man was told the whole story of a girl’s amends for hasty and +unconsidered action. All her iron will which had carried her head high +through hours of grief suddenly had sped from her, leaving her groping +and dependent. + +An exalted sense of guardianship came to Grant--swept over him like a +cool breeze to a fever patient. Almost it was a feeling of holy trust +bestowed. At last--at last the woman he loved had battled against +bitter fate beyond the limit of her endurance and was turning to him to +fend for her. Unheeding the twinges his wound gave him, he bent to the +blast with his precious burden. Oh, if only he could be given liberty +to sweep her into his arms, to call her name in the piety of supreme +love, snatch her away from the incubus of dread which had settled upon +her so relentlessly. + +He would not wait for such opportunity--so the thought came lancing at +him in a lightning flash of resolution; he would create it! No longer +stand idly by with footless compassion while the girl of his heart +remained in chains of a fixed idea too strong for her to break. He +himself would free her of those shackles even if he had to fight her +fiery will to do it! + +While the storm furiously grappled with the palms outside, Bim and +Grant sat in the dark music room of the great-house. With hushed voices +the two friends conned over the situation facing them and the girl now +left alone in the immensity of Altar. Not a simple exigency. On the one +hand promptings of delicacy and the dictates of custom ruled against +their remaining longer in the Casa O’Donoju. Opposed to this was the +alternative of leaving Benicia to become a prey to the schemes of +Colonel Urgo--a girl fighting single-handed the craft of an implacable +enemy. Without a protector other than the Indians of the oasis--and +they had the minds of children--the girl could not combat this +unscrupulous wooer for long. What then? + +Bim finally summed the situation: “It comes down to this, old +side-pardner; either you’ve got to persuade her to come back to Arizona +with us mighty pronto or to marry you, putting it bald-headed like.” + +Grant’s mind leaped to grapple with the flash of an idea--the one that +had come to him when he and the girl breasted the sandstorm. Resolution +crystallized on the instant. He silently quizzed his friend with an +appraising eye. + +“And if I can’t persuade her?” he queried softly. + +“Then you simply trundle yourself away from here and up across the +Line, knowing that, sure as shootin’, this wolf Urgo’ll be down on +her just as soon as he makes up his mind to move.” The big fellow in +the firelight stressed inevitability in his dictum. Grant gave him a +cryptic smile. + +“Suppose I take her anyway if she will not be persuaded?” Bim jerked +back his head and surveyed his friend with startlement which speedily +softened to a wide grin. Out went his hand to clap Grant’s knee. + +“Now you’re tootin’!” + +Once he had put his resolution into words, the idea back-fired to +scorch Grant with sudden comprehension of what would be involved in +such a cavalierly course of action. Actually to steal Benicia O’Donoju! +Take her by force from the home which now was hers to rule. Play the +very part which he feared Colonel Urgo would pursue if left alone. He +scarcely heard Bim rumbling his enthusiasms. + +“That’s the pure quill!” the desert man was saying. “That’s the Grant +Hickman who brought me in on his back from a section of Heinie’s first +line trench with H.E.’s droppin’ round like gumdrops from a baby’s torn +candy bag.” He checked himself to launch the question, “Have you got a +line on the girl yet? I mean, do you think she fancies you enough to be +glad--after you’ve run away with her?” + +“I think so,” was Grant’s simple answer. + +“Fine business! The sooner the quicker, young fellah. You an’ her +an’ me in the li’l old desert skimmer. ’Cause I gotta get back to +Arizora. The old Doc’ll think I’ve thrown him down an’, besides, my own +business--” + +“You mean you’ll go ahead with Stooder on his scheme for finding the +Lost Mission?” Grant cut in impetuously. The big love he bore Bagley +jealously demanded an answer. The other reached over to lay a hand on +Grant’s shoulder. + +“No. That’s all off, old son. I couldn’t go prying around after lost +treasure that belongs to the girl’s family--more particular not after +what you’ve told me I couldn’t. I promise you I’ll head off the Doc if +I have to get him thrown in the _carcel_ for boot-legging.” + +The storm wore itself to a final sibilant whisper among the tortured +palms and the two continued to sit in the room of shadows with the +complexities of the daring plan of kidnapping still bulking large. +’Cepcion tip-toed in to announce to Bim in an awed whisper, “El Doctor +Coyote Belly from Babinioqui has come through the storm. Shall I +disturb the mistress?” + +Bim translated to Grant with a questioning tilt of the eyebrows. Grant +started at the name of the medicine man who had been his rescuer and +to whom he owed his life. What could have brought this old Indian away +across the expanse of Altar to drop out of the storm upon the house of +mourning? + +“Tell her we will see him first,” Grant directed, moved as he was by +some half-sensed instinct of protection for Benicia; evil tidings--if +such the Indian bore--must be kept from her. The two rose and followed +the waddling Indian woman through the halls to the servants’ quarters +in the rear. Under a pepper tree in the fading dusk they found the +squat figure of Coyote Belly. The Indian doffed his hat at the approach +of the white men and stood smiling; there was in his pose something of +quiet dignity which bent little before the centuries-old convention +of the white man’s superiority. His beady eyes, well larded in creasy +folds, possessed intelligence beyond the ordinary. + +Grant impulsively took El Doctor’s hand in a strong grip carrying the +thanks he could not speak. El Doctor’s eyes mirrored recognition and he +bobbed his head with a broadening smile. + +“Tell him, Bim, I could not thank him for all he did for me. He is the +chap that found me on the Hermosillo road, you know, and pulled me +through.” Bim put the words in Spanish and El Doctor bobbed his head +again. Then the Indian began haltingly in the same tongue. Bim’s eyes +narrowed to a quizzical pucker as he progressed. Grant could read a +spreading wonder in his friend’s features. + +“The old bird says he came here because he knew Don Padraic had been +killed,” Bim repeated. “Says he knew it the night of the murder because +a star fell in the west and he saw the picture of the old Don with a +knife in his heart--saw it in the water of his medicine _olla_. So he’s +been on the trail ever since because he’s got to tell Señorita Benicia +something.” + +“But,” Grant began incredulously. Bim caught him up with, “Sure, I know +it sounds phoney. But I know, too, the old boy’s telling the truth. +These desert people have a way of seeing across space--reading signs +and such--which leaves us white folks gasping-- How’s that?” He turned +an ear to El Doctor, who had begun to speak again. + +“Standing-White-in-the-Sun was my father and my brother,” the medicine +man gravely intoned. “He gave me _pinole_ when I was starving. He came +to my house at the festival of the _sahuaro_ wine and drank with me as +a brother. His child, Lightning Hair, is as my own child.” + +Depth of feeling was sweeping El Doctor like a storm. His grey head +trembled and drops of moisture stood in his eyes. Bim gently checked +him with, “The señorita is oppressed with grief. If we could take your +message to her--” But El Doctor shook his head. + +“She will see me. She will hear what El Doctor Coyote Belly has come +through the storm to tell.” + +“Yes, she will hear,” came an unexpected voice from the direction of +the doorway, and Benicia walked up to the Indian. El Doctor made a +step forward to meet her; with a gesture of reverence he took the hand +stretched out to him and placed it first on his brow then over his +heart. His old eyes shone. The two white men turned and walked beyond +earshot. From a distance Grant saw the girl lead the medicine man to +a rustic seat beneath the pepper tree; snatches of barbarous Papago +speech came to his ears. + +The glory of sunset, more glorious because of the dust held in +suspension in the air, came and passed and still Benicia and the +medicine man talked beneath the pepper tree. The evening meal was a +mournful affair, with only Grant and Bim at the candle-lit table. +Grant, unable to contain his restlessness, quit the house alone +when supper was finished; he walked down the avenue of palms in the +direction of the red fires marking the Indian village. The night was +luminous with that sheen which covers the desert heavens like a bloom. +Thin rind of a moon hung low in the west, a cold glow of nacre. + +He had crossed the bridge and was about to turn off into an adjacent +field when he heard a footstep in the shadowed aisle below palm tops +ahead of him. A figure scarce discernible in its black garb came upon +him. + +“Benicia!” + +She stopped, startled. “Ah, it is you,” was her murmured greeting as +Grant stepped to her side. + +“Alone and in the dark,” he chided, but the girl tossed off his fears +with a gesture of the hands. “I have been with El Doctor down to the +village to find a place for him to lodge.” Grant imprisoned her arm +and gently persuaded her steps back down the aisle of darkness toward +the village. For a minute they walked in silence. Each knew there +were things to be spoken, yet each was reluctant to break the silent +communion their nearness wrought. + +“And El Doctor gave you the message he came to bring?” finally from +Grant. Her head nodded assent. + +“Not bad news, I hope,” he hazarded. A tightening of fingers on his arm +as she answered, “The best--and the worst.” Grant drew a long breath. + +“And may I share with you--the worst?” he managed to murmur. Now once +more that dragging weight on his arm as when he guided Benicia through +the storm--mute signal of surrender from one spent in the fight. + +“El Doctor says--oh, my friend, you must not stay here in the Garden +longer. The rurales are gathering at Babinioqui, El Doctor tells +me--with Urgo. That means but one thing: Urgo is bringing them here, +and you--” + +“But you!” Grant interrupted almost fiercely. “What of you? Must I run +away and leave you unprotected from that man?” The girl drew away from +him as if in very defiance of some mastering impulse which would push +her into his arms. + +“I--my people will fight for me if need be. Urgo comes for you this +time, and I cannot be sure these children”--a vague sweep of her hand +toward the winking village fires--“that these children would fight +for you, whom they scarcely know.” There was that brave yet pitiful +resolution in her tone when she spoke of the hazard of Urgo’s probable +sally upon her own person which crashed through all a lover’s carefully +built barriers of restraint. Unmindful of the events of recent hours, +of the girl’s fresh bereavement, Grant crushed her to him hotly. + +“Oh, ’Nicia--’Nicia, can’t you understand! I must go--yes, to-morrow! +Not because Urgo is coming to get me but because your being here alone +forces me away from you. Yet I cannot think of leaving you to fight +that man single-handed. ’Nicia--precious!--you will come--you must come +with me up over the Line where--” + +“Oh, please--please stop!” Hands were feebly pressing him away. Glint +of starlight revealed tears a-tremble on her lashes. “Grant--great +heart--I understand. I cry for you. See! My eyes tell you what is in my +heart. But I cannot give myself to you when that--that terrible thing +of misfortune and death goes with me. I--the mark I bear brought death +to my dear father!” + +He looked down into her eyes, appalled at this last speech. Before he +could hush her she faltered on: + +“But El Doctor brought me also good news--wonderful news! It is that +I can lift this evil from me if--if”--she seemed to falter before a +possibility scarce credible--“if the finding of the gold and jewels El +Rojo stained with his sacrilege and their restoration to a sanctuary of +the Church will be acceptable in God’s sight.” + +The hint of purpose in Benicia’s voice revealed the edge of the truth. +“Do you mean El Doctor knows where the Lost Mission lies and that you +intend to find it?” Grant pressed her. The girl gave answer: + +“He knows where the gold and pearls of the Lost Mission are. He knows, +too, the story of El Rojo and how I bear the weight of his guilt. +Because he loved my father he says he loves me too much to have me go +on and on under an evil spell. Father’s death opens his lips and--” + +“You are going with El Doctor to find those things?” breathlessly from +Grant. She nodded. “Then I will go with you. At once! To-morrow!” + +Decision came on the wings of inspiration. Better this flight into +the desert on treasure quest, with its promise of exorcism of all the +devils that plagued the girl--better this venture than that other he +had determined: to play the strong hand willy-nilly. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +TREASURE QUEST + + +Colonel Hamilcar Urgo was not addicted to introspection. He took +himself as he found himself and as a rule was well pleased with the +find. Had any non-partisan voice of conscience told him cruelty played +a large part in his make-up undoubtedly the little Colonel would +have denied the charge with hot indignation. Cruelty, to his way of +thinking, was exclusively a feminine defect; a woman was guilty of +cruelty, for example, when she spurned the honourable advances of so +honourable a suitor as Hamilcar Urgo. Benicia O’Donoju was the cruelest +creature he knew; wherefore like a fractious horse she must be broken. + +No, Señor Urgo found nothing reprehensible in his orders to Ygnacio, +the Papago, that Don Padraic must be put out of the way. The same +impulse had prompted him to strip the bandage of ignorance from +Benicia’s eyes during that interview in the patio without the least +compunction. These headstrong women! There was a way to handle them +just as there was a way to break the heart of a high-spirited mount: +curb bits that tear and spurs that gouge. Let him have possession of a +spirit-broken woman for a little while, to play with and then discard; +possession was not nearly so diverting as the game of spirit breaking. +At that Urgo considered himself rather a master hand. + +He had not hated the master of the Casa O’Donoju. Aside from the +necessity of clearing the field of a possible objector to his suit and +bringing pain to the haughty desert girl, Urgo’s murder impulse was +prompted by no personal bias. But with all the deadly spleen compacted +into his wispy body the little man hated the gringo Grant Hickman. +Hated him because the American was in the lists against him; hated him, +especially, because twice Hickman had humiliated him before the eyes of +Benicia: once in the Pullman out of El Paso and a second time--searing +scar in memory--when the man, though weakened by a bullet wound, had +hustled him out the door of the desert manor. + +If whole-heartedness gives any palliation to hatred then was Hamilcar +Urgo’s passion almost to be forgiven him. For very dynamic force no +impulse in his twisted career matched it. The vision of this gringo’s +impudently smiling face went to bed with him at night and abided with +him all day--a veritable ache. Come what might, he would destroy Grant +Hickman and in a manner such as to entail the most refined tortures. + +So this was his single purpose--possession of the girl would be a mere +by-product--when he used his power with the police arm of the Sonora +state government to assemble ten ruffians of the rurales force at a +point on the railroad within striking distance of the Road of the +Dead Men. Desert cars were at his disposal but he preferred to head a +mounted force because his plans looked to an excursion into country +where autos could not go, once Hickman was his prisoner. A complaisant +spirit of justice at Hermosillo would accept in lieu of the escaped +convict’s person some token symbolical of a justice already wrought +through the instrument of the state’s worthy servant, Urgo. + +The day after the sand storm Urgo and his rurales set out from the +railroad for the west and the Garden of Solitude at the end of a long +road. They were superbly mounted; two pack animals trotted behind the +file of horsemen. Revolutions had been squelched by a less imposing +force. + +After the cleansing storm the desert was bland and tolerant. Air clear +as quartz, sun tempered by fresh winds from the west, on every club and +spike of cactus fresh flowers born overnight to replace those destroyed +by the driving sands. One of the rurales unslung a guitar from a mule’s +pack and strummed minor chords to the accompaniment of a song in which +the rest joined. The ballad was gentle as a butterfly’s wing, telling +of roses over a lady-love’s window. + +Urgo, lulled by the immensity of the desert peace, perhaps even by +the tenderness of the song his murderers sang, pleasured himself by +building pictures in prospect. He saw himself riding alone up to +the door of the Casa O’Donoju--the rurales would be disposed beyond +sight of the door but within call; saw the courteous bow he would +make to Señorita Benicia; heard himself inquiring in polite phrase +concerning her health and that of her respected father. Ah, Don Padraic +dead--murdered! Grace of God, but that was sad news. But the American +gentleman who was a guest at the Casa O’Donoju; did his unfortunate +wound still keep him under the beneficence of the casa’s hospitality--? + +Five hours of the second day out on the Road of the Dead Men the rurale +who was riding at the head of the file reined in with a shout. His +arm stretched to point a tiny black beetle away off to the westward: +a beetle skittering down the long slope of a divide and in their +direction. In ten minutes the beetle showed again, but it had grown to +the dimensions of an auto. It was upon them almost before the horsemen +had spread themselves in a fan across the road. Quelele, whom Urgo +instantly recognized, accepted the implied hint to halt; in the seat +beside him was a strange white man--a gringo by his looks. This man +let a bland, incurious eye range over the band of horsemen until it +settled upon Urgo; there it rested with a dispassionate stare somehow +affronting to the Spaniard’s dignity. + +Urgo stiffly bowed and waited for the gringo to speak. Instead of +returning his salutation the white man searched the pockets of his vest +for tobacco bag and papers and bent all his attention upon rolling a +cigarette. + +“You have come from the Casa O’Donoju, señor?” Urgo asked in English. +Bim Bagley gave the clipped Spanish “Si” of assent and drew his rolled +cigarette across his lips with a languid air. Urgo in a growing rage +wondered if this boorishness were the stranger’s typically American +manner or assumed to provoke hostility. His voice was silken as he put +his next question in Spanish: + +“The Señorita O’Donoju and Don Padraic, her father, they enjoy the best +health, I hope.” + +“I hope so, too,” was Bim’s short reply as he put a match to his smoke. +Urgo’s brows knitted. Here was no boor but a wise gringo with a chuckle +behind every word. + +“I am doing myself the honour to call upon Don Padraic and his charming +daughter,” his temper pushed him to volunteer. Bim swept the company of +horsemen with a lack-lustre eye and then let his glance return to the +dapper figure of the Colonel. + +“Do tell,” he drawled in broadest Border dialect. “See you brought all +the boys with you. Well, so long!” He nudged the Indian a signal to +go ahead. Urgo would have liked to detain this impudent gringo for a +lesson in manners did not more pressing pleasure lie ahead. He gave an +imperceptible nod and the horsemen who blocked the road moved aside. +The little car shot back a pungent cloud of smoke for a parting insult +as it took the road in high. Urgo watched it rise to the low crest of +a divide and disappear. Insufferable gringo! What had he been doing at +Casa O’Donoju? What did he know of recent events there? + +A shrug dismissed Bagley, and the file of horsemen resumed leisurely +progress along the desert road. A night’s dry camp, and early morning +would see them in the oasis green at journey’s end. + +Colonel Urgo miscalculated when he dismissed Bim Bagley with a shrug. +Did the little Spaniard but know it, this meeting in the wastes was +the objective point in the gringo’s strategy. Even under certain heavy +handicaps ten gallons of gasoline in the desert can achieve more than +ten horses with rurales on their backs. It all depends upon the hand +that nurses precious jets of this gasoline across the path of the +spark. And Quelele’s was a master hand. Wherefore the second phase in +Bim’s strategy was entered upon. + +Bim and the Indian had made perhaps five miles along the +eastward-bearing road beyond the point of the meeting with Urgo’s +ruffians when the Papago turned off the single wheel track and into +the sparse scrub. A low range separated them from the rurales; the +crumbling of that range into desert flatness lay a good ten miles to +southward. Once around that, the little car could be tooled behind a +screen of hillocks back onto the Road of the Dead Men and ahead of the +rurales, but only by exercise of the most delicate driving judgment. +“Smack through the country--without roads?” whiffles the incredulous +driver of limousines along sedate highways in Pennsylvania and New +York. Exactly that. It is done in Arizona and Sonora--thirty or fifty +miles of unfenced desert; compass to pick up direction and shovel to +dig out of arroyos. Johnny Cameron, of Ajo, even herds wild horses on a +motorcycle. + +Quelele stopped to let air out of his tires that they might better +grip the sand and pad through soft places. Then began a jackrabbit +skittering and twisting ’cross country, with every hundred yards +offering the hazard of a broken axle and the little desert skimmer +standing on its nose at the brink of a dry wash while its passengers +flattened the descent by hasty shovel work. Like a rowboat in +mid-Atlantic the puny contraption of tin and steel took the long waves, +snarling and grumbling over sand-traps, boggling through thickets +of _cholla_ which rigged its tires with festoons of prickly stubs. +Quelele’s hands possessed magic. They knew just when to give a twist to +the wheel, when to shoot the spark ahead. Every hummock and pitfall was +read by them surely and swiftly. + +The little car rounded the end of the mountain range and shot back on a +tangent for the road where Urgo and his rurales were travelling. With +a grunt Quelele suddenly let the car trundle to a halt; he clambered +out and knelt by the radiator. Drip-drip of precious water from some +stab of brush through the honeycomb of cells there. Bim sacrificed +his tobacco in the emergency. The flaky mass was poured into the +radiator with fresh water from a canteen; the stuff found the leak and, +swelling, stopped it. + +Then on and on, around the flanks of the little hills and across wide +flats where the brush was scattered. Always Quelele was sure to keep +a height of land between the car and the Road of the Dead Men until +finally he brought his gas mustang to a stop on the crest of a lava +ridge and pointed back. Against the eastern horizon showed a crawling +inch-worm in the desert’s immensity--Urgo and the rurales. Below the +lava crest and near at hand was the objective of their detour, the +road that led to the Casa O’Donoju and those who must be warned. + +It was after sunset when the little car hiccoughed up under the avenue +of palms. An hour later in the first dark of night a file of horsemen +quit the perfumed precincts of alfalfa fields behind the Casa O’Donoju. +At the head, driving a pack-mule, was El Doctor Coyote Belly, big +Quelele riding beside him. Behind were Benicia and Grant. Bim Bagley +was file closer. In scabbards at the saddle of each hung carbines. + +El Doctor, the guide, set the course away from the Road of the Dead Men +which, passing through the Garden of Solitude, buries itself in the +Yuma Desert. His direction was south and west toward the Gulf and the +labyrinth of volcano craters on its hither shore called Pinacate. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +ALTAR TAKES ITS TOLL + + +Dawn marched over the mountains like a phalanx of Alexander: spear +points of light on long hafts, which drove at the zenith in solid +bundles. Then the mercenaries of the sun trooped across the vacant +desert floor wave on wave and strength following strength. All the dead +world of Altar stirred and set itself for the ordeal of a new day. + +The figure of a man that had been Doc Stooder, cynical tinker of life’s +rusts and corrodings, stirred under the trampling of the light--stirred +and stretched its members in dull protest of unconsciousness. Finally +when the arrows of the new day drove at his eyelids the man opened them +and lay staring up into the sky’s opalescence. For a long minute they +probed the marbled colour depths uncomprehendingly, then turned to find +the rim of the iron mountains to the east. Comprehension came at last; +with it a distorted memory image of hours of madness and wandering, +agony of thirst, despair pressing upon footsteps that carried nowhere. +Sleep which had put a period to all this nightmare had also mercifully +rallied the man’s nervous forces to a new effort of self-saving. Men +die hard because the instinct locked up in their sub-conscious minds +always prevails over surrender of the conscious will. + +The Doc lifted an arm to shield his eyes and felt something sinuous +slide off his body. An instant his heart was chilled, for the feeling +was of a desert serpent trailing over his form. He dared lift his head +ever so little and let his eyes rove down his body. A queer something, +not snake, lay in a curve by his side; a pallid, root-like thing the +size of a man’s wrist at one end and tapering to a stringy point. He +raised himself on his elbow and drew the vegetable serpent to him. Just +as he did so his eyes discovered the prints of a man’s feet in the sand +by where he lay. + +“Glory be!” came the croak from stiffened lips, and the Doc +concentrated all his scattered wits on an examination of the prodigy. +Yes, footprints. They came from behind him; they were printed in a +semi-circle about him to mark where one had stood hesitantly looking +down at him while he slept; they marched off in line with their +approach straight toward the tawny mountains ringing the northern +horizon. + +Guadalupe’s footprints--the trail he had followed and lost the day +before! So Stooder thought. + +A great sense of security pushed through the daze in his brain. Here, +at last, lay the way to salvation. That thought having been duly +relished, he turned his attention once more to the mysterious vegetable +whip by his side. He never had seen its like. How it came to be there +he had no notion. The thing was unlike any desert growth in his +experienced observation, wherefore it seemed to represent some prodigy +of the desert god dropped by him for a purpose. + +He gripped the heavier end of the root between his hands and gave it +a twist. The thing broke like an over-ripe radish and a thin spurt of +water shot from the severed ends. Greedily he thrust one stump into +his mouth and clamped his jaws upon it. Gracious fluid, mildly acrid, +drenched the parchment-like membranes of his throat. The Doc sighed +once, then wolfed the whole stub of the root he had broken off. As the +pulp was swallowed he felt immediate access of strength and sanity. + +From somewhere deep in the corroded heart of him welled an emotion +whose like he had not known during all the years of his warped and +weathered manhood. As if a child prompted him the gaunt, half-naked +creature on the sands lifted his eyes to the glowing blue. + +“Thanks, dear God!” + +So the sardonic genius of the waste places permitted the cloak of +divinity to fall upon Ygnacio, fugitive and murderer, for that a +surprising charity had prompted him to pause in the night by a raving +man, divide with him his slender store of insurance against death, then +pass on. + +The root-of-the-sands which Stooder half devoured quickly restored him +to something like the normal. Gone were the deliriums that had dogged +him those hours of horror. He heard no longer the ghost bells of the +Lost Mission summoning him to treasure buried in the bleak mountains +yonder. Rational thought was his after all the wanderings in Bedlam. He +mapped his strategy against the ever-present menace of the desert. + +Here were Guadalupe’s tracks--the Papago hound; wait till he could get +hands on the devil! Of course they would lead to the village of the +Sand People on the edge of El Infiernillo. Well and good; but that +might still be a long way ahead. Could he make it just on what was +left of this mysterious root? About one chance in ten; and the old Doc +wasn’t taking any more chances. What then? + +Why, follow the tracks back to the stalled auto. Water might be there. +Surely were cans of tomatoes--about a dozen of ’em. A dozen tomato cans +would carry him a hundred miles on foot; he knew because he’d drunk +uncooked canned tomatoes many a time--food and drink in small compass. +All right; follow the tracks back to the auto, rest up a bit and then +get a fresh start back over those same tracks and straight into the +Sand People’s rancheria. + +Stooder wrapped the precious remains of his giant radish in a strip of +his shirt and started back over the line of blue shadow cups in the +sand. As he laboured through the heavy going he reviewed all he could +remember of yesterday’s terrors, and a great fear began to build in +the back of his mind. Fear of the leagues upon leagues of blank space +about him--land unchanged by time since the waters of a great sea were +withdrawn into a shallow cup now called the Gulf. Fear of latent forces +which lurked in the naked mountains all about, in the ghostly mirage +which stretched vain beauties before his eyes. Over-mastering all was a +corroding fear of his own body. + +The Doc’s trained intelligence was functioning with deadly precision. +It separated his mind from the rest of his being, counting the mind as +a rider and the body the beast it rode. The rider willed that the beast +carry it to a certain destination; did that beast stumble and fall the +rider could cry out never so furiously but it would be lost. And that +burden-bearer of the mind was capable of just so much. Its tissues +and sinews were kept functioning by water and food. So much water and +so much food gave so many foot-pounds of energy; no more. Inexorable +mathematics! + +When sweat began to trickle down into his eyes Stooder could not +repress a shudder. Lost! Water lost from his body. The desert +greasewood is wise enough to coat all its leaves and little stems with +creosote to trick evaporation; the big _sahuaro_ shows only the edges +of its accordion flutings to the sun and greases them with paraffin; +man yields water like a stranded jellyfish. + +Better take another chew on that water-root dingus to make up for sweat +lost. Better give the old pulse a feel to see how it’s runnin’. + +The sun swam dizzily at meridian so that the footprints the Doc +followed were hard to see--mere shallow spoon marks. On and on towards +the south! + +What was that thing moving over yonder in that bunch of saltbush? Yes, +sir, moving!--A coyote, by th’ eternal!--Naw, coyotes weren’t white +like this animal; coyotes were a mangy yellow.--But, by criminy! this +thing had the looks of a coyote--sharp nose and baggy tail half way +’tween its hind legs, skulkin’ like.--An albino coyote! Lookit! Eyes +pinky like a white rabbit.--Whoever heard of an albino coyote? + +No phantom of the imagination that slinking, dirty-white creature which +matched its pace to the Doc’s on parallel course through the low lying +scrub. The desert Ishmael trotted along with a foolish air of being +strictly about its own business, as if no other creature were in sight. +When Stooder stopped to bawl curses at it the albino thing halted and +made a great pretence of snouting at a flea bite, utterly oblivious +to his presence. A fragment of dead bush-stock was hurled at it; the +coyote lifted a corner of his lip in a deprecatory smile but did not +abate his casual trot. + +“Huh, you mangy bag o’ bones! Think you’re goin’ have a feed off’n me, +do you? Well, I’m tellin’ you, you got a mighty long tromp ahead!” + +On through the desert slogged the man and on trotted the freaky animal +whose colour made him outcast even from his own kind. These twain alone +under the hot sky: two mites of life in a land of death, each blindly +following the call of every life cell in him to live--live! + +What had been a piled-up cloud of blue and faint rose to the south +when the Doc started his hike had unfolded hour by hour into definite +form. Little by little pinnacles sharp as ice splinters lifted from a +mountain mass and detached mountains with their tops blown off stood +against the horizon like truncated columns of an acropolis. Here were +the mazes of the Pinacate, raw shards of volcanoes and wilderness of +lava flows down by the Gulf sandhills; country so fire-scarred and +forbidding that even the Indian nomads give it wide berth. Only the +big-horn sheep possess it, living no man knows how. + +The undeviating trend of the trail southward towards this ragged mass +had perplexed Stooder when first he became conscious of it. The auto +should be lying somewhere off to eastward if he didn’t miss his guess; +those mountains ahead were strange to him. But he could not know how +far nor where he had wandered the day before; even though he thought +long since he should have come upon a second line of footprints--his +own--running along with those of the Papago, yet there was no denying +he was following the right trail back to the auto and the cached +tomatoes. There sure could not be two lines of footprints here in this +least-travelled part of Altar. + +So ran the mind of him whom the mocking Gog and Magog of the desert’s +diarchy had put on a false trail to desolation. Deeper and deeper into +a waterless scrap-heap of forgotten ages his steps took him. And the +albino coyote was his aloof companion. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +INTO THE FURNACE + + +Meanwhile from another direction adventurers were moving through the +night upon the slag mountains of Pinacate. Empty space of Altar’s +ultimate sweep was become almost populous. A strange company this, +which passed ghostily under the great lights of the near stars with +only the clink of bridle metal and pack mule’s canteens to give tempo +to the march; Benicia O’Donoju, the desert girl, moved to this risky +hazard by compulsion of an incubus of fate visited upon her through +inheritance down the generations of her people; Grant Hickman, man +of cities and crowds, whom destiny had whirled out into a country of +the world’s dawn; Bagley the Arizonan, taker of chances, seeker after +rainbow ends; and the two Papagoes, Quelele and El Doctor Coyote Belly, +on whom was spread thin the veneer of so-called civilization. + +It had been Benicia’s mastering purpose that had moved the cavalcade +away from the Casa O’Donoju and out onto the desert immediately upon +the return of Bim and Quelele reporting the leisurely approach of +Colonel Urgo and his rurales. This was not flight, she told Bim; +they would go in search of the treasure of the Lost Mission whose +hiding place the old medicine man was willing to reveal, and if Urgo +followed--well, eventualities could be met as they arose. In this +resolve Grant had strongly seconded her. The girl’s slavery under the +obsession of the bane of El Rojo, especially following the slaying of +her father, had laid an impenetrable barrier between her and him; he +had seized upon this possibility promising her emancipation from this +horror. This chance failing, he had but the last desperate recourse. + +The first hour of their pilgrimage away from the desert oasis Grant +rode by Benicia’s side. He essayed to distract her thoughts from the +tragedy that lay behind by questioning her on the revelations El Doctor +had made: how had the old Indian come by knowledge of the buried gold +and pearls; what impulse had led him to promise their restoration? But +the girl was not to be drawn. She answered his queries by evasions +or meaningless monosyllables. It was as if Grant were a stranger, +impudently prying. + +At first the man was stung by this treatment. His self-pride rebelled +against so arbitrary a closing of the door of confidence against him. +Why should he be treated thus cavalierly when the girl had surely read +the great love he bore her and his single desire to place himself +between her and the menace of one who had prompted murder? But these +hurts did not continue long. Riding by Benicia’s side in the starshine, +the man began to feel the emanations of a mastering will which poured +from her as the pungent prickles of ozone surround a high-power dynamo. +Her consciousness was frozen into a mould of purpose, locked against +any distractions. Benicia was alive only to the single resolve to free +herself from the curse of the Red One. Man nor spirit could invade that +preoccupation. + +There under the steady-burning desert lamps the man of the cities +began to feel again that spell of the infinite which had chained him +the night of Don Padraic’s passing. Here was he, lately denizen of a +hive of stone and steel, tiny integer in that man-made machine called +a metropolis, moving through the darkness over a land unsullied by +hand of man since the floods of melting glaciers drove a shadowy +race of stone-axe people back to the highlands. The loves and hates, +the battles and deaths of these stone-axe folk occurred but yesterday +in the time-sheet of the waste places. The to-morrow of ten thousand +years would find the desert still untouched, supine under the stars. +What then of hidden baubles of gold; what then of the love of a Grant +Hickman for a Benicia O’Donoju? A fossil snail shell by the shore of +the gulf left a more enduring record. + +“The thing that’s sorta got me fussed is how I’m goin’ explain all +this to the old Doc.” Bim’s voice broke through Grant’s contemplation +of shadowy frontiers; he noted with a start that his horse had dropped +behind Benicia’s and was ambling head-and-head with his friend’s. Bim +drawled on: + +“It sure will look like a double-cross to Stooder--my sailin’ off down +into Sonora on the search for you an’ then hooking up with an outfit to +go get all the plunder the old Doc thinks he’s as good as got his hands +on. Me, I guess I’m queered all right,” was the man’s whimsical finish +to his lament. Grant, who had been too preoccupied with the sweep of +affairs to give any thought to his pal’s perplexities, could not now +offer much consolation. A point of honour involving the grotesque +creature who had elected to receive him as a book agent did not greatly +move Grant. + +“A’ course,” Bim continued his monologue, “the way things lie with the +girl, her bein’ hipped on gettin’ back this swag somebody in her family +lifted from the mission, I’m more’n willing to see her get it. But the +old Doc hasn’t got a large store of what you might call sentiment, an’ +I sure got my work cut out for me when I try to show him the light.” + +“Too bad I got you into a tangle, old man,” Grant heartily commiserated; +then with a hopeless little laugh, “My own affairs aren’t set on any +straight and beautiful road to happiness either.” + +Bim chuckled deep in his throat. “Me, I was all for your first idea +to rope the señorita right outa the home corral an’ put your brand on +her, fighting. But like’s not we’ll get _mucho_ plenty excitement along +this trail before we’re through.” He gave a short laugh. “Say, Cap’n +Hickman, I brought you out from the East on a whale of a proposition. +You’re sure getting it. A girl who assays higher’n any pearls an’ old +gold junk you could find in a church cellar--the feel and savvy of a +man’s country--a larrupin’ fight with old Urgo and his rurales bunch. +That last you can back right down to your last white chip.” + +“But how can Urgo follow us from the O’Donoju house?” incredulously +from Grant. “Not one of the servants or other Indians there knows what +our destination is--we don’t ourselves except in a general way.” + +The man of the big country chuckled at metropolitan innocence. “Horses +don’t leave tracks on your Fifth Avenoo because they’s no horses left +there for one thing, I reckon. But in this country they do. Five horses +make a trail a blind man could follow. I or anybody else could track +this outfit of ours in the dark. I look to see our li’l friend Urgo +drop in on us some time to-morrow. He’ll travel fast with fresh horses +his men round up at the O’Donoju corrals.” + +They rode some time in silence, Grant turning over in his mind this +unthought-of possibility. Tenderfoot that he was--so he accused +himself--he had noted the carbines slung in scabbards at each +saddlehorn; noted with an unreading eye. So Benicia and all the others +had provided against a contingency he had not even suspected. + +“Only thing I’m figgerin’ in this proposition,” he heard Bim saying, +“is, will the Papagoes stick under fire? Papagoes are not strong for +the knock-down-an’-drag-out stuff. An’, besides, you’re not a whole man +yet.” + +“Whole enough to keep my end up,” Grant said shortly, knowing not why +he resented any imputation of disability against him. + +“Oh, sure--sure!” the other hurriedly amended, and the subject died. + +Dawn spread a ghostly panorama before them. In the greeny-white light +that heralds the sun’s first ruddiness the whole western horizon bulked +with black masses of slag heaped in fantastic shapes. High above the +lesser masses towered the two peaks of Pinacate, their summits yawning +in wide craters. The horses’ hoofs struck sparks from lava aprons; the +beasts had to pick their way carefully over traps and crevices. Ever +and again grey arms of cactus struck out to rake the riders’ legs with +claws of thorns. + +Waxing light filled in details of a phantom land, terrific in stark +brutalities of scarp and battlement--a world just set aside from the +baking-oven of the Potter and unadorned by a single brush stroke. The +little company of horsemen threaded single file up a narrow gorge +between the main peaks of the range. Walls of porphyry and slag the +colour of furnace clinkers leaped to heights on either side which +dwarfed the riders to the stature of weevils. The trail they followed +was the path cut by the rushing waters of summer cloudbursts, which +pack into the downpour of minutes’ duration all the water denied +during months of drought; great blocks of fused glass and conglomerate +wrenched from the canyon’s eaves by the fingers of these storms choked +the way. Where capfuls of soil had been caught and held in some pocket +the gaunt sticks of the _ocatilla_ splayed out against raw rock like +cat’s whiskers. Low-lying _cholla_, that spined and vicious vegetable +tarantula of the desert, seemed to grow from the very rock; all its +nodules were frosty with close-set thorns. Over all dropped the veil of +mystical morning radiance. + +The horses groaned as they had to choose, minute by minute, between +barking their hocks on the knife-like corners of obsidian or taking +the barbs of the _cholla_. The higher the ascent the savager grew +the way. Grant, awed by this penetration into the very laboratory of +earth, almost leaped from his saddle when a sharp clatter of small +pebbles to his right broke the silence. His eyes jumped up the canyon +wall to follow three dots of bounding dun-white against its sheer +side--bighorn sheep skipping surely along no visible foothold. + +When the sun was well in the sky--though naught but its reflected +radiance penetrated the gorge--El Doctor, in the lead, signalled a +halt. The place was a constricted apron or shelf in the cleft between +rock walls whereon sparse galetta grass was growing. Reason for this +tiny oasis of vegetation lay just beyond in the fact of a water-worn +cistern in the lava--such a natural reservoir as the desert folk +called a “tank,” a godsend when it still contains the wash from a last +cloudburst. This one was bone-dry. + +The party breakfasted meagrely, wood for their coffee fire being +grubbed by the Indians painfully and after long search. There was +little speech between them for they were tired; the night’s ride had +been wearing. Moreover, even the Indians appeared to feel a malign +presence bearing down upon them and forbidding desecration of the +silence. For them, in especial for Coyote Belly, there was a very real +and fear-compelling presence abroad. These mountains of Tjuktoak housed +Iitoi, Elder Brother himself; the god of all things who, with a coyote +and a black beetle, drifted four times round the earth in the time of +the Flood and came to anchorage in this place. El Doctor Coyote Belly, +driven by a great love to commit sacrilege, might well have heard the +voice of Iitoi in the wind and felt his heart turn to water. + +In truth, the aged Papago was having a battle with himself. Before +he had gulped his coffee and tortillas the medicine man’s eyes were +roaming fearsomely and he whimpered snatches of sacerdotal songs as +he rummaged in the pack for a wicker basket. From it he took a wand +stained red and with an eagle’s feather bound to one end, an arrow very +handsomely feathered from the same bird, a string of glass beads and a +bundle of cigarettes--presents for Elder Brother, who must be beguiled +before being robbed. + +The old man’s hands wavered to return the presents to the basket when +Benicia hurried to him, sat down by his side and earnestly pleaded with +him in his own tongue. Finally his resolution seemed to be brought to +the sticking point. He started up the gorge alone and with his basket +of trifles. + +“Coyote Belly says he must go and sing to the god Iitoi before we are +permitted to visit his house,” Benicia gravely explained to her white +companions. “The poor man is desperately scared because we have come +to rob Elder Brother.” + +Seeing the look of puzzlement on the men’s faces she continued with +that same grave respect as if speaking of a real presence. “This old +man through the love he bore my father has consented to betray a secret +the medicine men of his people have handed down for more than a hundred +years. The treasure of the Lost Mission, he tells me, was dug up by +Papago medicine men not long after the Mission was destroyed by the +Apaches and brought to these mountains--to the cave of Elder Brother--” + +“And it’s all here now?” Bim put in excitedly. The girl nodded. + +“It has been as well hidden from those who sought it as if it were +under the buried ruins of the mission,” she said; then simply: “While +El Doctor is gone it is best that we get some sleep.” + +Benicia stretched herself under the shade of a rock with a saddle +blanket for pillow and slept. But neither of the white men could follow +her precept; both were too sensible of the prickling of some unnameable +essence of the strange and the unworldly--perhaps that very savagery of +atmosphere which had prompted primitive Indians to designate Pinacate +as the residence of their god. They were alone; big Quelele had quietly +slipped away shortly after El Doctor without saying where he was going. + +The men sat smoking while their eyes roved the prospect of burnt cliff +and ragged parapet. The heat had whips; it drove them to burrow for +lessening shade wherever angles of the rocks offered. A curious cast to +the slice of sky visible above the cañon walls first caught Bagley’s +attention. He squinted up at it for a long moment of speculation. + +“If it wasn’t so early in the summer I’d say a thunderhead was fixin’ +up to give us a big razoo,” he ventured. Grant looked up and noted that +the blue had turned to a heavy saffron tint as if the sun were shining +through a stratum of light sand; such a tint he’d seen before the great +windstorm on the day of Don Padraic’s burial. + +“If I could only look over the top of the wall yonder to west’ard,” Bim +grumbled uneasily. “These cloudbursts always come from direction of the +Gulf. We’re not very well put right here in the channel of all the wash +down from up top-side. Those horses now--” + +He walked uneasily about the narrow confines of the shelf, scanning +the upshoots of rock for possible ways out. Then he seemed to dismiss +possibility of trouble from his mind and returned to where Grant was +sitting. + +An hour passed. Perhaps they were dozing when the rattle of a shower +of rock down the cañon side galvanized both. Up there they saw the +figure of big Quelele. Like a wild goat he was leaping from foothold to +foothold downward; he was in mad haste. + +The big Indian risked his neck a dozen times before he came panting up +to the watchers. He waved to the brink of the cliff. + +“I been on top--watching--I see long way off--Urgo--rurales. They +come--fast!” + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +STORM + + +Bim translated Quelele’s intelligence for Grant. “Our li’l friend +Urgo’s been burnin’ the wind,” was his dry comment. Grant sent a quick +glance around the cul-de-sac of rock which encompassed them. + +“Not the best place in the world to stand off ten men,” he gave his +opinion. “We ought to get our backs up against something that can’t be +surrounded.” + +Quelele read the white man’s thoughts, for he pointed farther up the +cañon beyond the lava cistern. There the gorge narrowed to a veritable +doorway and the steps thereto were so precipitous that one ascending +would have to scramble and claw a way on hands and knees; no possible +chance for a rush en masse. Bim surveyed the natural citadel with the +eye of a trained Border man who occasionally has to reckon with such +elementals as the killing power of a rifle bullet and the protective +quality of a ’dobe wall. Finally he screwed one eye at the crack of +sky showing between the escarpments and shook his head dubiously at +what he saw there. Quelele, who had had the superior advantage of a +wider view from his aerie on the cliff top, bowed his arms in the shape +of a ball and waved a hand to the west. + +“Papago says it’s a big storm brewing over yonder,” Bim explained. +“When these thunderheads finally get all boiled into one and come +a-runnin’ it’s a case of take to cover. If this thing is the regulation +rim-fire sock-dollager they’s goin’ be a sight of water pass over where +we’re standin’ before long. Me, I’d rather be somewhere else than in +this dry channel.” + +Grant did not linger to discuss strategy longer. He went to where +Benicia was sleeping in the shade of a boulder and gently touched her +on the shoulder. The girl sat up, startled. + +“We have to be moving,” Grant told her. “Quelele has just reported Urgo +and his rurales out on the desert and coming our way.” + +“And El Doctor?” she quickly interposed. “He has returned from the +cave?” + +Grant shook his head. Bitter disappointment flashed into her eyes at +the realization of how fate had played to interpose the grim business +of a fight just on the minute of realization of her great hopes. Grant, +stooping beside her and watching the play of emotions on her features, +saw quick remorse chase away the frown. Impulsively a brown hand +reached out to play upon the back of his. + +“Grant, beloved”--how like the overtones from her own golden harp +the contralto richness of her voice!--“I am desperately selfish and +you will not understand.--Thinking only of my own purpose--bringing +you with your wound still unhealed out to this place to face--death +perhaps.--And you do this for me--” + +“’Nicia, little girl--” He could go no farther than those words, for +the song in his heart was overwhelming. At last--at last the trammels +of the girl’s heart were shaken off and the call he’d waited for so +long had come! Call of the heart of her to his. + +She was on her feet, vibrant with energy, alive to the exigencies of +impending action. Bim was saddling the horses and Quelele had the pack +on the mule when they joined them. Bim briefly explained to the girl +his survey of the gorge for strategical strength; at any cost they must +move up until they could find some sheep trail or other practicable +ledge giving escape from the flood water channel. “If that doddering +old medicine man would only quit his sing-song business and come back +for a rifle we’d be that much better off,” the big fellow grumbled. + +When all was in readiness Quelele led the way up the tortuous +watercourse and through the mighty gates of porphyry nearly blocking +the farther reaches. They were forced to lead the animals, whose +sure-footedness was put to the test every yard of the advance. Beyond +the great pillars the gorge opened to a rough amphitheatre with less +steeply sloping sides. A narrow upward-springing ledge of rock led +away from the dry watercourse to a rock pulpit some seventy-five or a +hundred feet above. This they followed, to discover there was space for +their horses to stand behind the horn of malapais and still be screened +from observation from below. Quelele made some mysterious passes with +a tether rope which yoked all the animals to a single line that was +anchored at both ends. + +“Look,” Benicia cried as Bim was taking the carbines from the saddle +scabbards. They followed her pointing hand and saw a dark spot against +the opposite wall of the gorge and higher than their level. A midget +figure was outlined against the opening of a cave. It was El Doctor +at his business of propitiating Elder Brother--El Doctor, much needed +behind the stock of a carbine. The men hallooed to him but he did not +turn. + +“Go over and get that crazy fool,” Bim commanded Quelele. But the big +Indian, instead of obeying immediately, turned up the ledge and made +for a high point on the shoulder of the rock bastion constituting one +of the portals of the upper gorge. They watched him as he scaled the +almost perpendicular face of black lava. From the top Quelele had a +view of the cañon’s far-away exit onto the desert floor several miles +from the niche where the treasure seekers had refuge. The watchers saw +him lift himself cautiously over the top of his lookout and peer to +westward. Then he came scrambling and sliding down. + +“They come into the valley,” the Papago reported. “Too late to get El +Doctor.” + +It was Bim with his desert craft who made disposition of the little +force of defence. Quelele he sent back to the aerie with orders not to +shoot until he heard shots from the whites; the Indian’s fire from the +rear, once Urgo and his men had passed the rocky portals, would throw +the rurales into confusion. Grant and Benicia he disposed behind an +outcrop of porphyry a little behind and above the protected animals. + +“Pick ’em off as they come through the Gate,” he suggested. “An’ don’t +try any fancy shooting; we haven’t got any too many cartridges.” + +“But you--?” Benicia began. The Arizonan grinned broadly. + +“Me, I always fancy a little solo game in this sort of rukus. I’m going +on t’other side of the gulch. Cross-fire, you sabe?” He left them with +a smile on his lips, and they watched him jumping lightly down from +rock to rock. Almost before he had begun to clamber up the opposite +wall he was lost to view amid the maze of fissure and castellated +boulder. Grant and the girl were stretched out behind their primitive +breastwork alone in this unfinished world of fire. They could see +neither Quelele nor Bagley. Came to their ears the faint drone of +barbaric song: El Doctor Coyote Belly at his traitorous devotions. + +The whole gorge was filled with a saffron glare like the reflection +from oil fires under a boiler, unworldly, portentous. + +They waited, these two, in the immensity of earth’s disgorged bowels. +Side by side, elbows touching, they counted the slow drag of minutes as +naught in the balance against the deep joy of love militant. + +A stir in the bed of the dry wash below them. Up went their carbines +with cheeks laid against wood and eyes sighting along the lances of +light. Again the stir down there. A gaunt figure rose from hand and +knees to its feet, stood swaying for an instant, then pitched forward +against the support of a slab of rock. + +A very leprechaun of the rocks was it: ribs creasing burned skin about +the naked torso; whity-grey hair streaming down to mingle with a beard; +bare arms like a spider’s legs and all cracked by the sun. The husk of +Doc Stooder, plaything of the desert god, was come here, following the +still living spark of instinct prompting a water search in a canyon. +Come, too, to the secret hiding place of the treasure whose glitter had +so mercilessly befooled him. + +Grant, stupefied by the apparition of death and failing in any +recognition of the skeleton thing as the bibulous doctor of Arizora, +suspected a trick of Urgo. Again he laid his eye along his rifle sight, +vigilant for what might ensue. The creature spread-eagled against the +rock slowly pushed itself upright with its hands; its shaggy head +turned wearily as thirsting eyes scanned the dry chasm. + +Then a shout from across the gorge. Bagley had leaped from his hiding +place and was rushing precariously down to succour the ghost. Just as +he reached Stooder and had thrown an arm about him to heave his wasted +form onto a shoulder the crack of a rifle shivered the gorge’s silence. +Rock dust spurted within a foot of the rescuer. + +The sun went out that second--instantly, like a powerful incandescent +switched off. A yellow penumbra tinged the darkness. + +Almost as one the rifles of Grant and Benicia jetted lead. Two more +shots from the dry wash. The giant figure of Bagley with Stooder limp +over one shoulder never faltered in its leaping and scrambling up the +declivity to the shelter he had quitted. The two who had been following +his flight with stilled hearts saw him disappear behind a great rock; +an instant and a jet of fire lanced down thence at the attackers by the +Gate. + +A blob of rain large as a Mexican dollar smacked on Benicia’s hand +as she pumped the ejector--another and a third. Then the gorge was +blasted by a thunder shock amid the peaks, and a stab of lightning +painted the whole pit sulphurous blue. By its flash the defenders saw +scurrying figures leaping from rock to rock in the stream bed. Quelele, +the quick of eye, fired his first shot by the light of storm fire; one +of the rurales went down like a wet sack. + +A second stunning burst of thunder which knocked out the underpinning +of the sky. Then deluge. + +It was not rain that fell; it was solid water in sheets and cones which +hissed with the speed of its descent. Water so compacted that it was +like a river on edge, engulfing. With it the almost continuous quiver +and jerk of electrical flame. The gorge was become a watery hell. More +than that, for Urgo and his men in the wash it threatened momentarily +to be their tomb. Already a white streak of foam in the lightning +flashes marked where the once bone-dry watercourse was changing +character. + +The rurales and their leader found the odds all of a sudden snatched +from their hands by this frenzied ally of the hunted girl and her +supporters. They had come eleven against five, with their quarry caught +in a hole in the Pinacate sierra; before the cloudburst had endured +three minutes Urgo realized he had let himself and his men into a fatal +trap. Their horses, confidently left behind them in the lower reaches +of the gorge, must already have stampeded under the lash of the storm. +Spiteful rifle flashes from both sides came with each baleful flicker +of fire from the sky to deny escape from the rising waters up either +wall of the chasm. + +Now a dull roaring above the waterfall of the rain began to fill the +gash in the sierra. Away back at the head of the gorge and where the +slope from the twin volcano peaks shed water as from steep roofs +into this common trough, a solid wall, capped dull white, came with +the speed of a meteor down and down through the channel in the +living rock. It rolled boulders the size of box-cars in its flood; a +chevaux-de-frise of barbed cactus and scrub trees tumbled at its crest. + +Even above the tumult of the deluge sounded the shrill alarm of the +rurales as they broke position and turned to flee through the Gate. But +already the flood was there, choking egress. They must scramble up the +sides of the gorge like rats from a flooded hold; they must grope and +cling by every illuminating flash of blue fire, waiting to see where +the next handhold lay, how near the hungry yellow waters rushed. + +With Grant and the girl was nothing but security. Unprotected, they +had bent their heads to the pounding mallets of water. When the firing +abruptly ceased at the rush of their attackers for safety Grant heard +the scream of a horse near at hand and remembered their tethered +animals. Should they break away in their fright the plight of all five +would be a desperate one. + +“Stay here!” he shouted in Benicia’s ear. “Going to the horses!” + +Grant crawled and groped his way over the slippery rocks, each seeming +to be alive with the film of rushing water across it. He clambered down +and to the right until he came to the pulpit rock behind which the +beasts had been tethered by Quelele. The mule he found down, hopelessly +noosed in his hobble rope and slowly strangling; the horses were +huddled, tails to the storm, dripping and dejected. + +It took several minutes’ precarious work to get the pack-animal to +his feet and freshly tethered. Then Grant began the retreat to the +breastwork where he had left the girl. It was largely a matter of +guesswork. Once he found himself against an unscalable wall and had to +retrace his steps. Another time one foot slipped and he caught himself +with his body halfway over the brink. + +A flash of lightning showed him two rifles lying side by side on a +ledge below him--his rifle and Benicia’s; but the girl was gone. The +fist of fear smote him terrifically. + +He screamed her name above the bellowing of the flood in the wash. No +answer. He ran along the ledge that had been theirs until he came to a +downward terrace; to that he leaped and along its blind way he fumbled. +Came the ghost of a scream, thin above the diapason all about. His +name--“Grant!” + +Then merciful lightning blazed blue and he saw. Below him on a broad +shelf which overhung the whiteness of the torrent two figures, +glistening like seals, were locked--they swayed. + +The man launched himself blindly out and down. He rolled; he slipped +and wallowed against and under great boulders. At the end of seconds +seeming æons he came to the rock apron where he had seen the struggling +shapes. Sound of stertorous breathing guided him. He rose from his +knees before Benicia and another, who was trying to drag her along the +ledge. A revealing flash of fire gave him just a glimpse of a weasel +face--Colonel Urgo. + +Not so much rage as loathly horror of an unclean thing sped furious +summons to every muscle spring in his body. With his shoulder planted +against the Spaniard’s chest for a leverage Grant tore loose the man’s +grip from Benicia. Before he could whirl to shift his attack Urgo +had screamed an oath and was on the American’s back, legs twining to +cumber Grant’s thighs, both hands clamped about his throat. It was the +catamount’s attack. + +The first impact of his antagonist’s weight nearly over-balanced Grant +and precipitated both into the maelstrom of waters not six feet below +their ledge. But, steadying himself, the American suddenly launched +backward, pinning the lighter body on his back against a wall of rock. +It was a terrific smash. Urgo’s breath came in a whistle from it. His +hands sank deeper into the muscles about Grant’s throat, closing his +windpipe. Deliberately the standing man took a few forward steps, +then swiftly back against the wall again. An elbow of rock found the +Spaniard’s ribs and cracked two. He shrieked. + +Now Grant’s hands went up to lock behind the head that sagged over his +right shoulder. Strength of desperation flooded into his arms, for the +weaker man had him throttled. Urgo must release his hold on Grant’s +throat or suffer a broken neck. The constricting hands slackened their +grip ever so little. Grant bowed his shoulders, gave a mighty heave +and swept the Colonel’s body over his shoulder in a wide arc. The man +sprawled, arms wide, through the air, struck the edge of the rocky +apron. He clawed--slipped--clawed again, and disappeared. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + +TREASURE TROVE + + +The storm ceased with the same suddenness as it began. Hardly an hour +had torrential waters lashed the cinder wastes of Pinacate when the +black pall over the heavens broke away and the sun came out to suck +hungrily at pools in the rocks. There was a headiness of wine in the +air, a smell of wet soil mingled with spicy emanations from greasewood +and _palo verde_. The desert’s sparse growing things exulted in the +breaking of long drought. + +For a long time Grant and Benicia on their side of the gorge and Bim +in his retreat opposite lay hidden, awaiting possible renewal of the +attack which the storm had scattered. But the torrent that still raged +down the bottom of the gorge had washed clean every vestige of an +enemy. Quelele on his high post saw four scattered horsemen rushing +pell-mell for the gateway onto the desert--last vestige of Urgo’s +rurales force, each man of which gave thanks to his patron saint that +he had come out of the hell in the mountain cul-de-sac with a whole +skin. + +Quelele also saw several specks dropping earthward from the clear +blue; specks which rapidly grew from the size of gnats to the spread +of small aeroplanes. King condors they, who had smelled a feast from +afar--loathsome birds with a wing spread covering the span of thirteen +feet. The coming of one of these foul creatures to his particular +banquet even the sharp eye of a Papago watcher could not discern, for +the scene was hidden from him by a shoulder of the cañon wall. + +A stunted _palo verde_ tree nearly stripped of its verdure by the whips +of the rain hung half-uprooted over the rapidly diminishing stream in +the wash. One branch had caught and held some flotsam from the high +flood, now clear of the water. Just a shapeless bundle of clothes, +lolling head, arms askew where broken bones had let inert flesh sag to +the current. Just a grim caricature of something which so recently had +walked in the pride of his imaginings. + +The condor flopped clumsily to a branch stub six feet distant from +the bundle of clothes, folded his great wings with a dry rustling of +feathers, blinked the red lids of his eyes to focus his vision for +expert inspection and studied the hank of cloth and flesh suspended +in the tree crotch. The thing which flood waters had brought stirred +slightly; eyes opened with a flutter. They met the critical gaze of the +feathered pariah on the stub. The condor acknowledged this unexpected +show of life on his banquet table by disturbed bobbings of the naked +yellow head--the skin on his poll was wrinkled as an old man’s--and +a bringing of his off eye to bear around his sabre beak with the +skew-like movement of a hen sighting a worm. + +The wreck in the bundle of clothes opened his lips to scream but the +ghost of a groan came instead. It tried to lift a fending arm against +the abomination so near; the muscles tugged at broken bones. + +The condor appraised these manifestations of life carefully, weighed +them by contrast with his experiences with crippled sheep and helpless +calves. His talons stirred restlessly on the branch. First one, then +the other lifted from the bark, stretched and flexed. The king of the +higher airs was impatient. He spread his wings to balance him and +clumsily hopped a few feet nearer, craning his wattled neck anxiously. + +A shadow passed swiftly over the _palo verde_ tree. A quick upward +twist of the head gave the condor view of a putative and too-anxious +fellow guest at the bounty spread there. Greediness pushed him. He +spread his wings and hopped again-- + +Then the desert exacted with cruelty recompense for the cruelties +of Colonel Hamilcar Urgo. Abomination of his passing was meted him +according to the abominations of his own devising. + +An hour after the last rain drop the flood waters in the gorge had +dropped to permit of reunion between the erstwhile defenders of the +pass. Grant waded waist deep with Benicia in his arms; Bim, all smiles, +was stretching out a hand from the off-side rocks. + +“Well, folks all, looks like a pleasant time was enjoyed by all and +one!” The big Arizonan’s spirits would permit of no more concrete +thanksgiving for a crisis passed. It was his way to find laughter +the only vehicle for suppressed emotions and whimsicalities the best +conveyance for thoughts which might sound “high-falutin’.” The three +stood mute, their eyes telling one another things which might have come +flattened and blunted in speech. + +“See me welcome an old visitor just before the curtain went up on the +first act?” Bim turned to Grant, his eyes shining excitement. “Who +d’you think? Ole Doc Stooder!” Grant gasped in surprise. His pal’s grin +faded as he added seriously: + +“Just about the end of his string, too. The rain sure saved +him--couldn’t have lasted another hour--one chance in a thousand +brought him here where they’s folks to look out for him--a friend, +even, to coddle him back to health.” + +“No, not one chance in a thousand,” Benicia caught him up with deep +seriousness in her voice. “It is the desert way--to play with destiny, +I mean, and seem to cause miracles.--But let me go to him if he needs +attention.” She started forward, but Bim put out a staying hand. + +“I wouldn’t, ma’am. The Doc’s not a purty sight right now. His body’s +just drinkin’ in all the water that landed on him an’ he’s sorta +in a daze--doesn’t say much of anything that makes sense. A little +food which I’m goin’ to brew if I can find some dry sticks of wood +anywhere’s round--” Simple charity dictated that Bim say no word of +conjecture as to what brought Stooder to the desert. He guessed full +well. + +El Doctor Coyote Belly seemed to be materialized from the rocks so +noiselessly had he approached the group. The old man’s face was ashen; +unguessable terrors he had fought with and hardly conquered since last +the three had seen him standing in the yellow storm glare before the +cave of Elder Brother. + +“If my daughter will come now to the house of Iitoi,” he said to the +girl in his native tongue, “she may take what Iitoi gives. The god has +expressed his displeasure by the storm--but he will give.” + +Benicia turned and put a wordless question to Grant. They started +together to climb the precipitous rock ladder up the side of the gorge +wall, El Doctor leading. Thirty minutes’ exhaustive effort brought them +to the approach of a high-roofed cavern into which the westering sun +laid a broad carpet of light. There in the shale before the cave mouth +were El Doctor’s pitiful presents to the god--the arrow and prayer +stick wedged upright, the beads and tobacco in a small basket. The +whole ground about was littered with the shards of sacrificial pottery +and scraps of basketry. + +Benicia motioned to El Doctor to lead the way into the cave, but he +shook his head in emphatic negative. Then she gave Grant a strange +smile, almost that of a child who awaits revelation of a mystery. He +saw in deep pools of her eyes a transcendent joy made almost pain by +this moment of hope achieved. She held out her hand for him to take and +they entered the cave. + +When their eyes had become accustomed to the sudden transition from +glaring sunlight into gloom a faint glimmering at the far end of the +sunlight path guided them. Ankle-deep in the dust of ages they groped. +The glimmer waxed stronger. Suddenly Benicia stopped with a catching +of the breath. Grant stooped and lifted a heavy object from a niche of +rock, bringing it into the filtered stream of radiance. + +It was a golden monstrance, dust coated. Faint twinkles of light glowed +like firefly lamps from jewels set in the radii of a glory. A great +diamond above the crystal box caught fire from the sun. + +As Grant hastily bent to replace the sacred vessel his hand tipped the +edge of a shallow basket. From it rolled a stream of moonbeam fire out +into the zone of sunshine. Liquid globules of moon-glow, round and +pellucid as ice crystals, seductive as the shadowed whiteness of a +woman’s throat: the green pearls of the Virgin stripped by the impiety +of El Rojo from the shrine of the Four Evangelists! + +Benicia slowly sank to her knees, words of prayer whispered from her +lips. Prayer of thankfulness and dedication of the lost treasure to the +sanctity of the Church. + +Grant felt his presence in this solemn moment was an intrusion. He +tip-toed back to the mouth of the cave and stood looking out. All the +wildness and the savagery of Altar’s secret fane of the desert god lay +burning and glistening with wetness in the westering sun. The waning +torrent, sardonic gesture of plenty in this ultimate citadel of thirst, +splashed jewels against the lancing light. Here was a world of the +primordial--Creation arrested in its first hour. + +A hand touched his arm lightly. He turned to find Benicia standing +beside him. The sun wove an aura of vivid fire about her head. Her eyes +raised to his were swimming. + +“Now, heart of my heart,” she whispered. And all the love fire in her +flamed from her lips. + + +THE END + + + + + Transcriber’s Notes: + + --Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). + + --A Table of Contents has been provided for the convenience of the + reader. + + --Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected. + + --Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved. + + --Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved. + + --The author’s em-dash and punctuation/endquote styles have been + retained. + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Dust of the Desert, by Robert Welles Ritchie + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44691 *** diff --git a/44691-h/44691-h.htm b/44691-h/44691-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..18497f7 --- /dev/null +++ b/44691-h/44691-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,9616 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" /> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> + <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> + <title> + Dust of the Desert, by Robert Welles Ritchie, a Project Gutenberg eBook. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> + + +/* DACSoft custom styles */ + +body { + margin-left: 10%; 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+ text-align: right; +} + + </style> + </head> +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44691 ***</div> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="600" height="743" + alt="cover" title="cover" /> +</div> + + + + +<hr class="chap" /> +<p class="subtitle">DUST OF THE DESERT</p> + + + + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<div class="tp1"> +<div class="dbb"> +<h1>Dust of the Desert</h1> +</div> + +<div class="bb"> +<p class="noi author"><span class="smcap">By ROBERT WELLES RITCHIE</span></p> +</div> + +<div class="pad6"> +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 150px;"> +<img src="images/logo.jpg" width="150" height="147" + alt="decoration" title="decoration" /> +</div> +</div> + +<div class="dbt"> +<p class="noi author">A. L. BURT COMPANY<br /> +Publishers New York</p> + +<p class="noi works">Published by arrangement with Dodd, Mead & Company<br /> +Printed in U. S. A.</p> +</div> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap" /> +<p class="noic"><span class="smcap">Copyright, 1922,<br /> +By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc.</span></p> + +<p class="p6 noic">PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY<a href="#TNOTE" class="tnanchor">[Transcriber's Notes]</a></p> + + + + +<hr class="chap" /> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + + +<table border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents"> +<col style="width: 20%;" /> +<col style="width: 70%;" /> +<col style="width: 10%;" /> +<tr> + <th class="tdrt smfontr">CHAPTER</th> + <th class="tdl"></th> + <th class="smfontr">PAGE</th> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt"> </td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#PROLOGUE">PROLOGUE</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">1</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">I</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">WHAT HAPPENED ON THE LIMITED</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">17</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">II</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">A GIRL NAMED BENICIA</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">25</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">III</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">DOC STOODER</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">36</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">IV</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">COLONEL URGO REPAYS</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">51</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">V</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">THE GARDEN OF SOLITUDE</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">65</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">VI</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">JUSTICE</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">76</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">VII</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">THE CHAIN GANG</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">85</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">VIII</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">THE HEART OF BENICIA</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">98</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">IX</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">GOLD AND PEARLS</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">108</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">X</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">AT THE CASA O’DONOJU</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">112</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">XI</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">THE MARK OF EL ROJO</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">129</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">XII</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">DESERT SECRETS</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">145</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">XIII</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CROSSCURRENTS</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">159</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">XIV</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">REVELATION</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">168</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">XV</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">WHAT HAPPENED IN THE NIGHT</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">178</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">XVI</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">ACCUSATION</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">184</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">XVII</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">THE ORDEAL</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">195</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">XVIII</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">THE DESERT INTERVENES</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">211</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">XIX</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">THIRST</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">219</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">XX</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XX">THE COMING OF EL DOCTOR</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">232</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">XXI</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">TREASURE QUEST</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">247</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">XXII</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">ALTAR TAKES ITS TOLL</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">257</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">XXIII</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">INTO THE FURNACE</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">266</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">XXIV</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">STORM</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">279</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">XXV</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">TREASURE TROVE</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">293</td> +</tr> +</table> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p> + + + + +<p class="title">DUST OF THE DESERT</p> + + + + +<h2><a name="PROLOGUE" id="PROLOGUE"><small>PROLOGUE</small></a></h2> + + +<p class="cap">Roads of men thread the world. They +thunder with a life flood. They are vibrant +with a pulse of affairs. By land and +water and air they link to-day to to-morrow. +But El Camino de los Muertos (the Road of +the Dead Men) is a dim highway leading nowhere +but back and back to forgotten yesterdays. +Its faint sign-posts once were vivid in +lettering of tears and blood. Its stages were +measured by the sum of all human hardihood. +Faith, valour, reckless adventuring, thirst for +gold, love o’ women—these the links in the +measuring chain that marked its course through +a dead land. And black crosses formed of lava +stones laid down in the sand; these abide over +all the length of the Road of the Dead Men from +Caborca to Yuma to cry to the white-hot sky +of slain hopes and faith betrayed in those +buried years gone.</p> + +<p>The priest-adventurers of New Spain first<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span> +blazed this trail through an unknown wilderness. +Restless pioneers of the Society of Jesus +and the Order of St. Francis, men with the zeal +to dare, pushed out from the northernmost +limits of the Spanish settlements in a new +world with their soldier guards and their Indian +guides. They fought death in a land of thirst +northward, ever northward. The cross fell +from the hands of spent zealots at some waterhole +where water was not, and other hands followed +to snatch up the sacred emblem and push +it deeper into Papagueria. North and west +through El Infiernillo to the red waters of the +Colorado where the Yumas had their reed huts. +Thence on to the west through a land that stank +of death until at last the end of the trail was +smothered in the soft green of Californian +valleys—good ground for the seed of Faith.</p> + +<p>The overland trail of the padres became the +single trail from Mexico to gold when the madness +of ’49 called to all peoples. Then the Road +of the Dead Men took its toll by the score and +doublescore. Then men fought for precious +water at Tinajas Altas; many crosses of +malapais mark the sands there. Bandits lurked +at Tule Wells, ninety miles over blistering +desert from the nearest water, to shoot men for +the gold they were bringing back from California.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span> +The Pock-Marked Woman, mad with +thirst—so runs the legend—walked at nights +with the Virgin in the flats beyond Pitiquito +and found water with celestial candles burning +all about the pool.</p> + +<p>So passed the wraiths of the gold madness. +A railroad was laid down from the Pacific eastward +across the desert. What once was called +Papagueria had come to be known as Sonora, +in Mexico, and Arizona in the Republic of the +North. The Road of the Dead Men at its California +end became a way through green and +watered valleys where bungalows mushroom +overnight; along its course in southwestern +Arizona and northern Sonora it lapsed to a +faint trail from waterhole to waterhole of a +heat scourged desert. To-day this forgotten +remnant of a high road of adventure and hot +romance exists a streak in an incandescent +inferno of sand and lava slag, wherein death +is the omnipresent fact. Occasionally a prospector +putters along its dreary stretches, chipping +at ledge and rimrock. A Papago or a +Cocopa creeps over caliche-stained flats with +baskets of salt from the Pinacate marshes near +the Gulf.</p> + +<p>That is all. The Dead Men hold their road +inviolable. It is dust of the desert.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span></p> + +<p>That is all, did I say? No, the spirit of +romance and the shape of illusion have not +completely passed from El Camino de los +Muertos. Remains that tale which carries itself +over a span of a century and a half, linking +lives of the present to lives of men and women +whose very graves long since have passed from +sight of folk. A tale strangely like the desert +trail along whose course its episodes of hot +passion and swift action befell; for its beginnings +are laid in a mirage of an elder day +which we of the present can see but dimly, and +its ending is beyond the horizon of to-day. +Would you know the full story of the Lost +Mission de los Cuatros Evangelistas: how the +baleful spell of its green pearls of the Virgin +worked upon the fortunes of the House of +O’Donoju and how the last of that house +wrought expiation for the sin of a forbear +through heroism and the fire of a great love—would +you know the full story, I say, you must +see with me the substance of a beginning.</p> + +<p>No more can one plump into the middle of +this the last of the romance tales of the Road +of the Dead Men than could one drop onto the +Road itself midway of its length.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>A King in Spain once followed a practice of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span> +careless munificence. Whenever one of his +generals in the great wars appeared worthy of +reward His Majesty used to ink the ball of his +thumb and with a grand and free gesture he +would make a print somewhere on the map of +Mexico, then called New Spain. Then the +lucky general, taking this patent of royal favor +across the seas with him, would hire surveyors +to translate the print of Philip’s thumb into +terms of square miles of domain. These square +miles were his and his heirs’ to govern like +little kings, with justice in their hands, the +Church to give them countenance and Indians +by the hundreds to serve them under a modified +code of slavery. No man has lived since +as did those magnificent possessors of Philip’s +thumbprints.</p> + +<p>The Rancho del Refugio in the little known +reaches of Papagueria was one of these fiefs +of the king. Michael O’Donohue, a wild man +of the red Irish who had fought English kings +and queens under the banner of Spain, had +come by the grant originally and had taken a +lady of Granada to the new world to bear him +heirs worthy of their inheritance. Michael +O’Donohue became Don Miguel O’Donoju, lord +of a desert principality and a power at the +Viceroy’s court in the City of Mexico. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> +established two rigid precedents to be followed +by the house of O’Donoju: pride of race and +jealous conservation of the family principality. +It became a rule of the O’Donoju that none of +the clan marry outside the pure Castilian blood—Irish +excepted if Irish could be found; and +a rule that, come what might, no O’Donoju +pass title to so much as a foot of the Rancho +del Refugio.</p> + +<p>It was a day in April, the year 1780, that +the clan O’Donoju came to the Mission of the +Four Evangelists to lend the dignity of their +presence to the solemn service of re-dedication. +More than that, Don Padraic O’Donoju, venerable +head of the house and master of the Casa +O’Donoju in the oasis named the Garden of +Solitude, was come to witness a personal +triumph. For it had been his money that had +gone to the Franciscan College to be used in +the rebuilding of the frontier post of God after +the Apaches had raided and burned it fifty +years before. And one of his own sons, Padre +Felice, had been the architect and builder of +the restored mission and was to continue the +priest in charge. Padre Felice was fourth in +a line of O’Donojus to take orders, one from +each generation since the establishment of the +grant.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span></p> + +<p>The O’Donojus—grandchildren, cousins and +kin by marriage—had ridden five days and upwards +from various sections of the Rancho del +Refugio, up and out through the Altar desert +to this remote sanctuary of God in the country +of the Sand People. They came by the way +called the Road of the Dead Men. Its asperities +were softened by the quick desert spring +which tipped each thorny cactus cone with +candelabra tufts of golden and carmine flowers. +The desert’s usual heat was tempered by the +snows that lay in unnamed mountains to the +north.</p> + +<p>They came in a lengthy caravan of horses +and burros, with half naked Indians to herd +the goats and the yearling steers that were to +be barbecued for the secular feast to follow the +religious rites; with a half-company of foot +soldiers from the Presidio del Refugio to guard +the company against roving Apaches; Indian +maids on mule back to serve the needs of their +mistresses, regally mounted on ponies of the +Cortez strain; baggage porters, cooks, roustabouts. +Fully a hundred of the clan O’Donoju +and satellites on pilgrimage over the Road of +the Dead Men.</p> + +<p>All of the O’Donoju were there but one, El +Rojo—the Red One. The “Red One” was he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span> +because of the throw-back to the red Irish +strain of his fighting ancestor Don Miguel. +Red with the pugnacious red of Donegal was +his hair; his cheeks had none of the sallow tan +of the Spanish but were dyed with the stain of +Irish bog winds; his eyes were blue lamps of +the devil. A fatherless grandson of old Don +Padraic, El Rojo had played the wild youth in +the City of Mexico with only occasional visits +of penance to the Casa O’Donoju in the desert +country of the north until, when the tang of +youth still was his, he had tainted his name with +scandal. Followed his formal expulsion from +the clan at the hands of the old aristocrat, his +grandfather, and the closing of all doors of his +kindred in Papagueria against him. El Rojo +had ridden out to the wide world of sand and +mountains an outcast but with a laugh on his +lips; this a full year before the gathering of +the family at the Mission of the Four Evangelists.</p> + +<p>When El Rojo had turned lone wolf, a sadness +that was not the sadness of shame settled +upon the heart of one of the O’Donoju. Frecia +Mayortorena, a cousin, one of the flowers of +girlhood that caused old Hermosillo to be +named the Little Garden, sat behind her barred +windows on many a night with heart wild to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span> +hear once more the love song only El Rojo +knew how to sing. Frecia Mayortorena, all fire +under the cold ice of her schooled and decorous +features, knew that the reckless devil with the +flame-blue eyes had but to come and strum a +love call on his guitar; she would go with him +into banishment and worse. So on this pilgrimage +to the shrine of the four holy men the +girl, who rode with her father and brothers, +allowed her imagination to frame the figure of +a phantom horseman on every ragged mountain +top. At each camp fire along the Road of the +Dead Men, when the vast sea of desert round +about was stilled under the stars, Frecia +Mayortorena sat with tiny pointed chin cupped +in a propping palm and seemed to hear in the +clink of a mule’s hobble chain the opening +chord of that song of songs,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Red as the pomegranate flower, my love,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The heart of him who sings.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The cavalcade came to the mission with the +firing of guns and with shouts. The reed-and-mud +huts of the Sand People beyond the +cloisters disgorged their shouting savages to +welcome the travellers. Padre Felice, a gaunt +man with the face of an ascetic above the folds +of his rough brown cowl, hurried out from the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span> +doors of the new sanctuary to meet and give +embrace to his father, Don Padraic, and then +in turn to all his next of kin; behind him followed +his two novitiate priests who were, with +Padre Felice, the only white men in all the +stretch of Papagueria from the Rancho del +Refugio westward to the Sea of Cortez. Five +days’ travel were they from the nearest of their +kind, and to west and north stretched unguessed +leagues of the desert. Only the Road +of the Dead Men linked them with the first of +the Californian missions thirty days over the +western horizon.</p> + +<p>Missionary to the Sand People was Padre +Felice—to that branch of the Papago tribe of +tractable Indians who lived about the east +shore of the Sea of Cortez and on eastward +throughout the desert of Altar. The rebuilt +mission stood in the middle of a small oasis +which was fed by a stream down out of the +burnt mountains not a mile behind; one of those +rare and furtive desert trickles of water which +hides in the sand most months of the year. +The diminutive mission building, with its +rounded dome of sun-burned brick, lifted in +sharp outlines above the vivid and water-fed +greenery of the oasis mesquite and <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">palo verde</i>; +but the whole—oasis and house of God—was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span> +dwarfed by the bleak immensity of the flanking +mountains leaping sheer from the plain to push +their fire-scarred summits against the sky.</p> + +<p>Before the choir of Indian voices intoned the +opening prayer of the dedication service the +packs of the O’Donoju caravan yielded precious +things. There was a monstrance of heavy gold +studded at its tips with precious gems; this +was the personal offering of old Don Padraic +to the shrine of the Four Evangelists. A +chalice of gold, a great altar crucifix of gold +inlaid with mother-of-pearl, a pair of candelabra +wrought of chased silver and a communion +service of the same metal represented +the pious contributions of the rest of the clan +O’Donoju.</p> + +<p>But most precious of all the altar treasures +was that double string of the pearls of the +Virgin which by a miracle had been saved from +plunder of the Apaches when the savages from +the north had come burning and murdering +fifty years before. For a half-century the +lucent rope of moonbeam green had lain in the +treasure vaults of the Franciscan College in the +City of Mexico awaiting this hour of restoration. +Green pearls fetched from the shell +beads of the Sea of Cortez by Indian converts. +Pearls hinting of caves of ocean by their shimmering,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span> +changeful lustre. Pearls to fire the +lust of covetousness even from their hallowed +place about the throat of the Virgin.</p> + +<p>Padre Felice held the glinting rope of lights +high in dedication, and as reverently he draped +them upon the bosom of the sacred effigy the +clan O’Donoju and all the dark-skinned children +of the mission sang a gloria.</p> + +<p>An untoward incident jarred the merriment +of the feasting that followed the re-dedication +of the mission. When whole beeves were being +lifted from the roasting pits and the skins of +wine and tequila were passing from table to +table beneath the flowering mesquite trees a +column of dust strode across the desert from +the east and spawned two horsemen upon the +oasis. One, a naked Indian of the stature of a +giant, reined in his horse at the far fringe of +the mesquite as befitting a servant. The second +rode boldly into the circle of the tables. +Silver clinked from bridle and stirrup leathers +of his magnificent white thoroughbred. The +rider’s silver-trimmed hat came off with a +sweeping bow to include all there, and the red +of his hair was like molten copper in the sun.</p> + +<p>“El Rojo!” was the startled cry on every +lip. Men scrambled to their feet as if to combat +some overt move of an enemy.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span></p> + +<p>“God be with you all,” came the Red One’s +speech of polite greeting, made all the more +ironical by the reckless upturn of his lips in a +grin and the steely lights that flashed from his +blue eyes.</p> + +<p>“—And God, or his gentle vicar, Padre +Felice, give me place at table with my noble +kin,” El Rojo added lightly. “I have travelled +far to have my cup here on this day of celebration.”</p> + +<p>The laughing horseman let his eyes dance +over the circle of faces until they came to rest +for just an instant upon one. He saw cheeks +flaming, eyes filled with wonder and full lips +parted to give a heart its song. Frecia +Mayortorena was seeing a vision in the life. +Quickly El Rojo’s glance leaped on as if to +shield the girl from contamination. The venerable +Don Padraic, head of the clan O’Donoju, +was on his feet now and trembling.</p> + +<p>“We know you not, sir! We must ask you +to begone!”</p> + +<p>El Rojo caused his horse to rear perilously. +Before hoofs touched the ground hardly two +paces from the old man the rider again had +made his full-armed bow. He spoke with mock +respect.</p> + +<p>“Sanctuary, my grandsire! I and my servant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> +claim sanctuary of Holy Church. We have ridden +far, and good Uncle Felice can not deny us +the charity of his order.”</p> + +<p>Don Padraic was being swiftly mastered by +his rage when the friar to whom the unwelcome +horseman had appealed pushed his way +to the side of the older man.</p> + +<p>“He speaks the truth, sire,” urged the man +in the brown habit. “Here on God’s ground +we can not be guilty of uncharity.” Then, looking +up into the laughing blue eyes of his nephew, +“I ask you to descend, sir, and refresh yourself +and your servant until such time as you +take the road.”</p> + +<p>So all merriment in the oasis of the Four +Evangelists was stilled. There in the single +green spot on all the leagues of the Road of +the Dead Men was wrought a comedy; a prelude +it was to swift tragedy. The clan O’Donoju, +its satellites and retainers ate and drank in +silence, and apart from this company sat El +Rojo and his naked copper giant alone. From +time to time El Rojo lifted his cup as if in ceremonious +health to his kin. Only Frecia Mayortorena +read the glint in the blue eyes which told +that the toast was to her—and to what would +eventuate.</p> + +<p>Near sundown El Rojo and his Indian rode<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> +off to the west, but not until the outlaw had +spent a few minutes alone in the mission. +Padre Felice saw him at prayer before the altar +of the Virgin and was deeply touched that the +spirit of religion had not altogether departed +from the family’s scapegrace.</p> + +<p>In the dark of midnight Frecia Mayortorena, +who had cried herself to sleep, was awakened +by the touch of a hand stretched under the side +of the tent where she slept with the women of +the party. A silver embroidered hat was +slipped under the tent to rest on her arm. The +girl dressed herself in a folly of love and terror +and stole outside. The waiting figure of +El Rojo’s giant Indian detached itself from +the shadow of the mesquite, motioning her to +a tethered horse. Blind infatuation for a hero +lover brooked no questioning on the girl’s part. +She mounted and followed her guide through +the alleys of heavy shade.</p> + +<p>A single dreadful cry sounded from out the +opened door of the mission. A minute later +a vague horseman spurred to her side and +stopped the beating of her heart with flaming +kisses. The silent desert swallowed three phantom +shapes on horseback.</p> + +<p>Dawn brought revelation and the beginning +of that cycle of tragedy and dreadful pursuit<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> +of Nemesis which was to overwhelm the clan +O’Donoju. Padre Felice murdered at the altar +of the Virgin, where he had tried to stay the +hand of impiety. The green pearls of the Virgin +gone. A daughter of the house of O’Donoju +flown with a thief and a murderer.</p> + +<p>One word more and this mirage of years +long dead fades. The curse that all Papagueria +saw descend on the clan O’Donoju spared not +even the sanctuary of the Four Evangelists. A +year to the night of the Virgin’s despoliation +the Apaches came again to this frontier post +of the Church, and after a spiteful siege they +slew the white priests, burned the mission and +carried the Indian converts over the mountains +into slavery. The Franciscans dared not rebuild +on such accursed ground. Winds of the +desert, which move sand mountains in their +eternal sweep, played upon the ruined mission +year on year to blot even a vestige of it from +the eyes of man. God’s hand—so the Indians +had it—shook the mountains behind the little +oasis so that the source of the tiny life-giving +stream was blocked. The green vanished like +a mist, and scabrous desert cacti crept in on +prickly feet.</p> + +<p>The Mission de los Cuatros Evangelistas became +legend.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</a><br /> +<small>WHAT HAPPENED ON THE LIMITED</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">The Golden Sunset Limited, Pacific Coast +bound, snaked its way through a cleft +in mountains and came sighing to a stop +at the man’s town, El Paso. A patchwork +crowd spilled out from the station platform to +push around the ladders of the car icers to the +train steps. Swarthy Mexicans under sombreros, +with their black-shawled women and +their little tin trunks, scrambled and clogged +at the approaches to the oven-like day coaches +forward. Pullman passengers sauntered over +frogs and switches to plush and rosewood at +the train’s end.</p> + +<p>Among these was Grant Hickman, civil engineer, +New York, lately captain in the First +Division overseas. Arizona bound and west of +the Ohio River for the first time in his thirty +years, Hickman had broken his journey by a +day’s stopover in El Paso. He had given Juarez +a whirl, decided the kind of life he saw +across the International Bridge was spurious<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> +and of little worth, and now was entraining +again for his destination some four hundred +miles to the westward. He gave the porter his +bags to stow for him according to the directions +scribbled on his Pullman ticket and began a +lazy pacing of the platform, his eye alert for +the colour and the bustle of it all. The blending +of two races, of widely differing civilizations, +here in this sturdy city gave Hickman’s restless +imagination a smart fillip. He saw men +with gaily coloured blankets worn as cloaks +over their shoulders like prayer shawls in a +synagogue; Indians with ornaments of beaten +silver and raw turquoise hasps on their belts +had their shoulders planted against solid brick +walls with a grace born only of perfect indolence. +All great stuff—regular musical show +background.</p> + +<p>On his first lap down the platform the New +York man’s eyes rested momentarily on two +figures standing in the drip of one of the car +icers’ laden pushcarts. A girl and a man; she +hatless as she had left the car for a stroll, the +man all gesticulating hands and eloquently +moving shoulders. Hickman caught a scrap of +the man’s fervid speech as he strolled past; it +was in a foreign tongue, liquid—almost lisping—with +its softly rolled r’s and a peculiar<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> +singing intonation at the upward lift of each +period. Spanish undoubtedly. Just an over-shoulder +glimpse of a thin, dark face in sharp +profile confirmed Grant in his guess at the +speaker’s nationality. The girl’s bared head attracted +his appreciative eye; it bore a glory +of wondrously burning red hair, coiled in great +masses, vividly alive.</p> + +<p>Grant turned his corner at the platform’s end +and began to retrace his steps, consciously bearing +in the direction of the beacon hair. When +he was still twenty paces off he saw that the +swarthy man had gripped one of the girl’s +wrists and that his hawk face was pushed close +to hers in what might have been an access of +fury or of pleading. Grant quickened his pace +instinctively; he did not like the looks of that +man’s talon grip on a girl’s wrist. He paused +a decent distance from the twain and made a +pretence of lighting a cigarette while his eyes +glanced steadily over his cupped palms.</p> + +<p>Then a surprising thing. The girl launched +some verbal javelin at the man who gripped +her wrist, at the same instant looking down at +the clamping fingers as if to emphasize what +must have been a command to release her. No +answer but a flash of white teeth beneath a toy +moustache. The girl’s free hand shot to a great<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> +coil of hair over the nape of her neck, came +away with twin prongs of thin steel—anchorage +of some hair ornament—showing below her +clenched fingers. A lightning jab downward, +and the Spanish-speaking man dropped the imprisoned +hand to whip his own to his mouth. +He snarled something in sharp falsetto. The +girl with the red hair tilted her chin at him, +and the laugh that slipped between her +grudging little teeth was thin and sharp as +the double dagger points she had used.</p> + +<p>She turned, took three steps to a stool below +the Pullman’s steps, mounted with a quick +swirl of skirts and was gone. Grant thought +he saw a half-formed determination to follow +flash into the Spaniard’s eyes. Without knowing +why he did it, the New Yorker hastily put +one foot upon the lower Pullman step and bent +his body so as to block access to it. Very painstakingly +he unloosed the knot on his low shoe, +straightened the tongue in place and began taking +in slack on every loop of the strings.</p> + +<p>A grunt of exasperation from behind Grant. +When at last he straightened himself and +looked around the Spanish gentleman was gone. +He chuckled.</p> + +<p>“Now that, señor, should teach you not to +play rough with a red-head.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span></p> + +<p>He walked down to the Pullman his ticket +called for and climbed aboard. Just as the +conductor’s bellow, “Bo-oa-rd,” sounded, Grant, +looking through the glass of the vestibule, saw +the Spanish gentleman with a grip flying for +the train out of the baggage room of the station.</p> + +<p>Passing into the body of the car he found his +bags piled upon a seat midway of its length. +As he seated himself he was the least bit startled +to see flaming coils of hair above the top +of the seat across the aisle and one beyond his. +Grant was not displeased. Girls with spirit +always walked straight into his somewhat susceptible +affections; and a girl who carried a +home-made fish spear in her coiffure—</p> + +<p>“’Scuse me, Cap’n; ef I could jes’ have a +look at youah berth ticket. This gentmum says +he reckons you-all’s settin’ in his seat.” Grant +looked up to see the porter shifting uneasily +before him and with a deprecatory grin on his +face. By him stood the waspish Spanish gentleman; +the latter inclined himself in a stiff bow +as Grant’s gaze met his. Out of the tail of +his eye Grant thought he saw a slow turning +of the sunset cloud against the high seat-back +ahead.</p> + +<p>“This is my section,” Grant drawled with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> +no show of inclination to arbitrate the matter. +“I always buy a section when I travel.”</p> + +<p>“But, pardon, sir—” The Spanish gentleman +extended a pink slip. “The agent at the +station has but now sold me this lower berth.”</p> + +<p>“Indeed?” A slow ache of perversity began +to travel along Grant’s spine. He had no love +for a man who will manhandle women. “Indeed. +The agent at El Paso sold me mine yesterday.”</p> + +<p>“Ef I could see youah ticket,” the porter began +feebly.</p> + +<p>“You couldn’t,” Grant snapped. “Perhaps +the Pullman conductor may.”</p> + +<p>A cloud began gathering over the finely chiselled +features of the Spaniard. His toy moustache +went up. He spoke to the porter:</p> + +<p>“The señor is not what we call <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">sympatico</i>. +Have the kindness to fetch the conductor.”</p> + +<p>The darkey disappeared. Grant turned to +look out of the window, ignoring completely the +standing figure in the aisle. But he did not ignore +the reflection a trick of the sun cast on the +double glass of the window. He saw there just +the faint aura of a fiery head which refused +to turn, though the compelling gaze of the +standing man strove mightily to command it. +Faintly in the magic of the dusty glass was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> +carried to this bystander, whose neutrality already +was considerably strained, the silent battle +of wills.</p> + +<p>The Pullman conductor bustled up to Grant’s +seat. To him the Spaniard appealed, offering +the evidence of the berth check. Grant vouchsafed +no comment when he passed his own up +for inspection. The man in blue compared +them.</p> + +<p>“Some ball-up somewhere,” he grunted. +Then to Grant: “When was this ticket sold +to you?”</p> + +<p>“Yesterday morning at ten-fifteen o’clock,” +came the prompt answer. The waspish Spanish +person admitted he had purchased his only +a minute before the train started. The conductor +waved at Grant.</p> + +<p>“Then I guess the seat belongs to this gentleman. +I’ll have to find you one in another +car.”</p> + +<p>“But, señor, I have special reason for remaining +in this car.” The Spaniard’s carefully +restrained wrath began to bubble over. Grant +looked up at him and smiled frankly.</p> + +<p>“So have I,” he declared levelly. The other’s +eyes snapped and his lips lifted over small +white teeth in what was meant to be a smile.</p> + +<p>“Señor,” he began with a shaking voice,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> +“your courtesy deserves remembrance. I hope +some day it may be my pleasure to show you +equal consideration.”</p> + +<p>“Until then—<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">au revoir</i>,” Grant caught him +up. With the porter preceding him, the loser +walked down the aisle to the far door of the +car. As he passed the seat where the girl was +he half turned with a sulky smile. But it was +lost. She was looking out at the procession of +the telegraph poles. Grant, catching this final +passage in the little comedy, grinned.</p> + +<p>“There’s going to be lots of paprika in this +Western hike,” joyfully he assured himself—“or +do we call it chili?”</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</a><br /> +<small>A GIRL NAMED BENICIA</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">Grant Hickman was not one of that +tribe dignified by the name of he-flirts. +He abominated the whole slimy clan with the +loathing of a clean man. When he had seized +upon the part of studied rudeness toward the +Spaniard it was not with the ulterior purpose +of winning a smile or paving the way for acquaintance +with a pretty woman; Grant’s vivid +recollection of the sidewalk cafés of Paris in +war time and their hunting women left him cold +toward the type that is careless of men’s approaches. +In flouting the foreigner and preventing +his scheme to gain a place in the car +with the girl he had bullied on the station platform +the New York man had acted merely on +instinct; he had protected a girl from annoyance. +Yet now that he had won through by +dint of crass boorishness—and the young man’s +conscience gave him a twinge over the substance +of his discourtesy—he suffered a not unreasonable +curiosity regarding the possessor of that +glorious beacon in the seat across the aisle.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span></p> + +<p>Who was she? What circumstances had led +to that scene on the platform which had ended +with the unexpected dagger thrust of the steel +hair ornament? Was this little black-and-tan +whipper-snapper a lover—a brother—blackmailer? +Grant’s galloping imagination built +up flimsy hypotheses only to rip them apart. +And his eyes dwelt upon the soft involutions of +flame coloured hair, which were the only physical +indices of personality granted him thus far.</p> + +<p>Once the object of his conjectures shifted her +seat so that a profile peeped out from behind +the wide seat arm. Grant’s eyes hungrily +conned delectable details: one broad wing of +hair sweeping down in a line of studied carelessness +over a forehead somewhat low and +rounded; fine line of nose with the hint of a +passionate spirit in the modelling; mouth that +was all girlish, mobile, ready to reflect whims +or laughter. The sort of mouth, Grant reflected, +that could load a laugh with poison—even as +he had seen it done that tense instant on the +platform at El Paso—or freight it with sweetness +for a favoured one. A world of fire and +seduction untried lay in the full round lips, +yet a chin with the thrust of will in it warned +that the promise of those lips was jealously +guarded.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span></p> + +<p>A broad sheaf of sunlight lay across her +cheek. Grant saw that hers was not the usual +apple tint of the red-haired, the characteristic +skin so delicate as to suggest translucence. +Rather a touch of the sun had spread an impalpable +film of tan, warm as the colour of old +ivory, over cheek and throat. Duskiness of a +southland dyed cheek and throat despite the +anomaly of the burning hair, quite Celtic.</p> + +<p>The afternoon waned with no favouring fortune +throwing Grant’s way opportunity to study +the girl closer. When the sunset was in the sky +he walked through the train to the observation +platform. As he drew near the glassed-in end +of the observation car he noted with a little +leap of elation that the girl was sitting under +the awning beyond the screen door. He saw, +too, the objectionable Spanish gentleman. His +midget body was packed into a chair, one neatly +booted foot under him; like some hunting cat +he sat in watchful patience inside the body of +the car, his eyes never leaving the figure of the +girl beyond the screen door.</p> + +<p>Grant passed through to the platform, not +giving the Spaniard so much as a glance. As +the door slammed behind him the girl looked up +quickly. Grant saw her eyes were blue, saw, +too, a fighting gleam quickly pass from them.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> +Evidently he was not the one they expected to +fall upon. A pretty confusion which tried to +deny recognition swiftly replaced the strained +look. Grant allowed himself to be bold to the +extent of tip-tilting his cap. The girl evidently +decided that to overlook a service done would +be pushing decorum too far; she gave Grant a +quick, shy smile which might have carried a +hint of gratitude mingled with naïve humour.</p> + +<p>“You were very kind,” she said as Grant took +the camp-stool next to her, “and very amusing. +The high hand—you possess the art of +using it, sir.”</p> + +<p>“I should be ashamed of my rudeness,” he +answered with a quick smile. “But somehow +I am not. Your way of repelling attack has its +advantages, too—” His eyes strayed to the +silver comb, whose concealed steel had been so +efficacious on the El Paso platform. The girl +reddened prettily.</p> + +<p>“Always one must be—prepared against—persuasion,” +was the answer that put a period +to all reference which might be distasteful. +Grant would have liked to know more of circumstances +that had pushed this radiant young +person into the grip of a bullying little civet +cat of a Spaniard, but he dared not risk rudeness +by further questioning. Reward enough<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> +was his already; he had it in the swift play of +laughter across delicate features, in the sweetly +resonant quality of her voice, all of a part with +the engaging exotic character of the girl. For +American she assuredly was not, though her +trim tailoring was impeccably the mode of the +moment. Her speech had a rippling musical +lilt to it suggestive of a mother tongue less +harsh than Anglo-Saxon; her enunciation was +too perfect to be American. There was a trick +of the eyes, something almost vocal, which was +an inheritance from mothers whose speech is +sternly hedged about by conventions but who +find subtler ways of expression.</p> + +<p>What could her nationality be? Assuredly +not Irish, though eyes and hair were exactly +what Grant had seen in the green island during +a furlough spent in jaunting cars and peaty +inns. Mexican? The flame hair denied that. +Here was another mystery to be set aside with +that of the encounter at the station. With two +avenues of conversation closed Grant plunged +blindly along one strictly innocuous.</p> + +<p>“We seem to be getting rather deep into the +desert.” He waved out at a hundred mile vista +of sunset painted waste, all purple and hot gold +in the glory from the west—a new picture for +the eastern man. The girl made an unconscious<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span> +movement of half-stretched arms as if to free +her soul for wandering in limitless spaces.</p> + +<p>“Yes, the desert,” she breathed. “How wonderful! +And for me, returning to it after two +years in cities—in cities where one chokes from +walls all about—you see how the desert welcomes +with all its glory.” Grant looked at +her curiously; he saw a vision in her eyes.</p> + +<p>“Then you like this—this dry and barren +land? Why, I thought nobody lived out here +unless he had to. No trees, no water—” The +girl’s wondering eyes upon him checked his +summary of the desert’s shortcomings.</p> + +<p>“You do not know the desert then,” she reproved. +“You have never seen the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">palo verde</i> +tree when every branch is heavy with gold. You +do not know how the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">sahuaro</i> wreathes itself +a crown of blossoms—the tough old <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">sahuaro</i>, +a giant with flowers on his head ready to play +with spring fairies. Water!”—a crescendo +gust of laughter—“You think water only comes +from a faucet. If you dug for it with your bare +hands—dug and dug in hot sands while death +moved closer to you each hour, then you would +come to see a real beauty in water.”</p> + +<p>“You know something of the desert,” Grant +conceded.</p> + +<p>“Something! Señor”—the alien word<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> +slipped from her in her flurry of devotion—“señor, +my home is there and my father’s home +has been there more than a hundred and fifty +years. I have been away from it in the slavery +of the cities—two years at music in New Orleans +and Baltimore. Now I return. To-morrow +morning at Arizora big Quelele, my father’s +Indian servant, meets me to take me a hundred +miles—a hundred miles off the railroad and +away from the nearest city to my home.”</p> + +<p>“But Arizora is where I am bound,” Grant +eagerly caught her up. “That’s on the Line, +isn’t it? A hundred miles—why, then you must +live in Mexico.” She nodded. His curiosity +would not down:</p> + +<p>“Then you are Mexican?”</p> + +<p>An instant her blue eyes sparkled resentment. +Grant sensed he had made some blunder, though +he could not for the life of him guess how his +innocent question could have offended. The +girl, on her part, quickly regretted her show of +displeasure; one new to the Southwest naturally +could not know much about its social distinctions.</p> + +<p>“Not Mexican,” she amended gently. “We +are Spanish folk living in Mexico. We have +always been Spanish since the time one of my +ancestors got his grant from the king of Spain.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> +Never Mexican. That sounds like silly boasting +to you. When you have lived in this country +for a little while you will understand why +we have pride in our blood. Just as you have +pride, señor, in your American blood when all +the cities of your country are choked with mongrels.”</p> + +<p>Hoping to hear her name, Grant gave her his +own. She repeated it as if to fix it in memory; +then she told him hers. Benicia O’Donoju it +is written, but in her mouth the two words had +a quality like a muted violin note, too fugitive +to be imprisoned in letters. She spoke the surname +without accent on any syllable—“Odonohoo.” +The man grasped at something evanescent +in the sound:</p> + +<p>“Why, I’d pronounce that ‘O’Donohue.’”</p> + +<p>“My great-great-grandfather did.” Once +more Grant’s ears drank in that velvety contralto +laughter which bubbled to her lips so +easily. “You would pronounce his first name +‘Mike,’ and so did he.”</p> + +<p>“Then your first name should be Peg or +Molly-o,” Grant rallied. She shook her head +in gay denial.</p> + +<p>“Señorita Peg—impossible! Benicia is much +better. It means ‘Blessed’ in our tongue. +‘Blessed are the pure in heart,’ Señor Hickman;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span> +or ‘Blessed are the meek.’ I might be either +if I could forget I am an O’Donoju.”</p> + +<p>“Benicia.” Grant tried to copy the slurring +softness she gave to the word.—“B’nishia: +that sounds like little bells. I like it.”</p> + +<p>“You are gracious, señor. I thought Americans +were too busy with skyscrapers and wheat +markets to learn the art of paying compliments +gracefully.”</p> + +<p>“Compliments are born, not paid,” he joked. +Conversation limped no longer. Youth has a +way of opening little windows in the souls of +two brought together under its wizardry and +giving each elusive peeps into secret chambers. +It was Benicia who first became conscious of +the lateness of the hour and the strain on strict +canons of propriety her presence alone with +a stranger on the observation platform had entailed. +She arose with a little laugh.</p> + +<p>“My guardian”—a roguish glance toward the +tiny figure of the Spaniard still on the watch +beyond the platform’s glass—“I fear he does +not approve. And so—<i lang="es" xml:lang="es">adios</i>.” She gave Grant +the tips of her fingers and was gone.</p> + +<p>He watched her pass where the sentinel was +sitting. The little man uncurled himself from +his hump-shouldered crouch and scrambled to +his feet as if he would speak to her. But Benicia,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> +bowing sweetly, passed on up the aisle and +into the alley of rosewood and glass beyond. +After a moment’s hesitation the Spaniard came +to the screen door giving onto the platform, +where Grant now stood alone, and opened it. +He scratched a match and put it to his cigarette. +Grant saw the flare illumine a cruel hawk’s +nose and thin, saturnine lips. The Spaniard +inhaled deeply, then let thin streams of smoke +seep from his nostrils.</p> + +<p>“Señor”—his voice was cold as a lizard’s +foot—“perhaps you do not know that Señorita +O’Donoju is travelling under my protection.”</p> + +<p>Grant took time to tap a cigarette on the heel +of his palm and light it before he answered. +His eyes were brimming with laughter.</p> + +<p>“Perhaps not,” he said. “I congratulate +the lady on her protector.” Again blue smoke +played over the toy moustache; little eyes were +snapping like a badger’s.</p> + +<p>“I have the honour to inform you, señor, that +your attentions to the lady do her no credit +and that they must cease.”</p> + +<p>“Really!” Grant’s settled good humour received +a jar. He felt a tingling of fighting +nerves down his back. “Really? And who +constituted you judge of the value of my attentions?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span></p> + +<p>“Very naturally I have appointed that position +to myself, señor, since Señorita O’Donoju +is to become my wife.”</p> + +<p>“Ah!” Grant’s interjection did not carry +all the irony he would have wished. His +assurance was a trifle shaken.</p> + +<p>“And so,” the little man continued, “it is +understood. You will not address the lady +further.” Grant laughed.</p> + +<p>“My understanding is very weak and not +at all reliable. I promise you that unless the +lady objects I shall continue to address her +whenever opportunity presents.”</p> + +<p>The little figure in the doorway straightened +itself in an access of dignity. He snapped his +cigarette over the car rail.</p> + +<p>“Señor, let us have no misunderstanding. +We approach the Border, where every man +works justice according to the dictates of his +own conscience. To-morrow we touch Mexico, +where it is known that Colonel Hamilcar Urgo +is a law unto himself. I am that Colonel Hamilcar +Urgo. Need I go farther?”</p> + +<p>“And I am Captain Grant Hickman, formerly +of the First Division, Expeditionary Forces. +Go as far as you like!”</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a><br /> +<small>DOC STOODER</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">With evenly divided cause and equal +cheerfulness Grant could have kicked the +porter and himself when he awoke tardily next +morning and found his car at a standstill. He +raised the berth curtain and looked out. On +the eaves of a station he saw a white board with +the name “Arizora” painted upon it and certain +irrelevant advice as to the distance to New Orleans +and to Culiacan. Out through the curtains +popped his head and he whistled the porter.</p> + +<p>“Why didn’t you give me a call?” was his +angry demand.</p> + +<p>“Yassuh, yassuh, ev’body in this kyar gets +out here. Mos’ have gone an’ done it a’ready. +You see, Cap’n, this kyar’s been switched off +here at the Line two hours ago; train’s kep’ +right on goin’ into Sonora.”</p> + +<p>Grant, cursing his luck, boiled into his clothes +and made a race for the washroom. He was +hoping against luck that Benicia O’Donoju had +not been an earlier riser than himself. With<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span> +his face puffy with lather, he stopped from +minute to minute to peep through the window +giving onto the station platform. A decrepit +autobus was backed up against the curb with a +few passengers sitting patiently on its frayed +seats; loungers were dangling their legs from +baggage trucks; under wooden awnings of a +business block across from the station a Mexican +was languidly sweeping out a store. Arizora +had not yet come to life.</p> + +<p>Just as Grant was towelling the last remnants +of shaving lather from his cheeks he made +another quick survey of the platform and his +heart dropped into his shoes. Benicia walked +into the field of the washroom window; with +her the unspeakable Spaniard, who carried her +neat travelling satchel as well as his own bag. +The girl was fresh as the dawn in a suit of +khaki, short-skirted over high laced boots of +russet leather. Rebellious hair strayed from +beneath the brim of a soft-crowned Stetson, +saucily noosed to her head by a fillet of leather +under her chin. Soft green of a scarf lightly +drew together at her throat the wings of her +khaki collar. Nothing of the theatrical or +self-consciousness of tailoring in the picture +the desert girl made; she was the spirit of the +Southwest, unsophisticated and without pretence.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> +By her side the little Spaniard with his +knife-edged trousers and thin-waisted coat appeared +comic.</p> + +<p>As Grant, towel in hand, lingered by the window +feeding his soul with vain regrets, a crazy +thing on wheels swung around the station and +came to a stop by the girl’s side. It might have +been called an automobile by courtesy, though +there was little to identify it as a member of +the gas family save that it went of its own traction. +Engine naked, dash gone, two high-backed +seats of unpainted tin like the wing of an old-fashioned +sitz-bath and unprotected by a top; +behind these a home-built box body wherein a +trunk and a suitcase were lashed. Grant was +seeing his first desert speeder, rebuilt for +service of a highly specialized kind. The man +at the wheel was no less in character—an Indian +in overalls and high peaked sombrero; a +giant of a man with shoulders of a wrestler +and dull bronze features of a Roman bust.</p> + +<p>What ensued upon the arrival of the auto +nearly drove the watcher, shirtless as he was, +out to two-fisted intervention. Urgo, the salamander, +evidently was of a mind to make a +third in the car. Grant saw his humped shoulders +and expostulating hands, saw Benicia tilt +her chin as she gave him some cold refusal.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> +But the colonel calmly stowed his suitcase by +the side of the trunk in the box body, evidently +planning to use it as a seat. Again Benicia, +now in her place by the side of the Indian giant, +turned to give him peremptory refusal. The +Indian at the wheel had his engine going and +was sitting statue-like, utterly detached from +the quarrel.</p> + +<p>Urgo stepped on the rear wheel’s hub and +had one hand on the floor of the box body when +one of the Indian’s hands flashed up the spark +even as his foot went down on the gear pedal. +The crazy little car leaped like a singed cat. +Colonel Urgo cut a neat arc, hit the road on +his back and rolled over just in time to escape +receiving amidships his suitcase, which the Indian +driver had dropped from the car without +turning his head.</p> + +<p>In the Pullman washroom Grant collapsed to +the seat and smeared soap into his eyes while +he tried to check tears of laughter. The fall +of the peppery little Spaniard had been colossal, +and he guessed it had been wrought at the +quick prompting of the spirited girl in khaki. +What a wonder she was! All laughter and bubbling +spirits one minute; quick as a leopard to +strike the next.</p> + +<p>“Man”—Grant addressed a beaming face in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> +the glass—“man, always lay your bets on a red-headed +girl!”</p> + +<p>That minute of communion with a smiling +confidant was an important one in the life of +Grant Hickman, cautious bachelor. For it came +to him with the force of a hammer blow that he +wanted and must have this vivid creature of the +desert named Benicia O’Donoju. Girl of fire +and sparkle—of a spirit free and piquant as +the winds that blow across the wastes—unspoiled +of cities and the stale conventions of +drawing rooms. Oh, he would have her! Gone +she might be, out into a land beyond his ken. +Unguessed barriers of circumstance, of others’ +intervention, might have to be scaled; but somehow, +somewhere, Grant Hickman was going to +find and win Benicia O’Donoju.</p> + +<p>Love at first sight—old-fashioned, mid-Victorian +stuff, says the cynical débutante over her +cigarette and outlaw cocktail. In New York +tearooms and Washington ballrooms, quite so. +Where girls of twenty must know the sum that +stands in bank to Clarence’s credit, before +Clarence is marked down as eligible, love at +first sight is, in truth, dead as the dodo bird. +Even so, spirit still calls to spirit and like leaps +to like most all the world over. It is only where<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span> +fungus spots stain the garden that love will +not bloom.</p> + +<p>When Grant quit the Pullman Colonel Urgo +was nowhere to be seen. Grant idly wondered +as he walked to the hotel, directly across a plaza +from the station, how long it would be before +he encountered this half-portion rival of his +and what would be the Spaniard’s first move +in his frank threat of reprisals of the night before. +But when he was shown to his room—and +the New York man whimsically reflected he +had seen better ones at the Admiral on Madison +Avenue—events of recent hours were +pushed back from his attention by the more +immediate demands of his presence in Arizora. +He took from his suitcase the letter that had +brought him sky-hooting across the continent +to this back-water of life on the Mexican Line +and skimmed it through:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>“... I know just how hard it is for you +to settle down to office routine after the Big +Show. All of us are in the same fix, Old-timer, +but I have the edge on you because out here in +this man’s country there’s something breaking +every minute. That’s the reason I’m writing +you this mysterious letter.... Old Doc Stooder<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span> +is counted the prime nut of Southern Arizona, +but I believe he’s got a whale of a proposition +and that’s why I’m counting myself—and you—in +on the deal.</p> + +<p>“I’ve sewed myself up with him—promised +not to peep a word of the real dope to you in +this letter. The old Doc says, ‘We’ll need a +good engineer and if your buddy in France has +a head on him and knows how to keep his mouth +shut tell him to come out here.’ ... So if you +still have that old take-a-chance spirit that +hopped you through the Big Mill from Cantigny +to Sedan I’ll see you in Arizora. If I’m not +in town when you arrive dig up Doc Stooder—everybody +knows him.</p> + +<p class="noic">“Yours for the big chance,</p> + +<p class="right">“<span class="smcap">Bim</span>.”</p> +</div> + +<p>Grant folded the letter with a smile. Good +old Bim with his “whale of a proposition.” +Running true to form was Bim in this characteristic +letter. Just as Grant had come to know +and love him in training area and dugout: Bim +Bagley, six-feet-one of tough Arizona bone and +muscle and brimful of wild optimism. Always +ready to take a chance, whether at the enemy +on all fours through midnight mud or at fortune +in the wild lands of the Border: that was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span> +Bim Bagley of Arizona, “the finest country in +the Southwest.”</p> + +<p>And Bim had shot truer than he could know +when he sent this hint of big things in the offing +back to a man two years out of uniform and +moping for excitement on the sixteenth floor of +a skyscraper in Manhattan. Two years of +civilian’s life had been just that span of slow +moral suffocation for Grant. For all his thirty +years, for all his better than moderate success +in a profession of sharp competition, Grant +Hickman still could hear the call to the swimmin’ +hole of adventure. How he had yearned +to hear it these past two years when the springs +of his soul still tingled with the high tension +of battle lines! Then this letter from a pal, +promising all the substance of his dreams. It +had not been a week in the engineer’s pocket +before he was on the train for Arizora.</p> + +<p>Grant went out to find Bagley. He located +his office—“Insurance, Bonds, Investments” +was the sign on the glass of the door; but the +lock was turned and no one opened at his knock. +His eye caught a corner of white paper projecting +through the letter slot.</p> + +<p>“Grant:—Called out of town—back Friday. +B. B.” was the scrawl across the face of it. A +stab of disappointment was his; he had builded<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> +heavily on that moment of meeting when Bim’s +big hand would have his own in a vise. Nothing +to do now but see the town and amuse himself +as he might, or call on that mysterious Doc +Stooder and discover why Grant Hickman had +come racing out to this Arizora. He decided +to do both.</p> + +<p>The Arizora Grant saw in an hour’s swinging +round the circle was something different from +the “hick town” his New York smugness had +pictured in anticipation. It was a condensed +El Paso, jammed in the narrow compass of a +mountain gorge, with railroad yards monopolizing +the whole of the flat space between crowding +hills. A man could go from his home to business +by the simple trick of leaping off the front porch +of his bungalow with an opened umbrella. Arizora’s +streets were jammed with cars—fantastic +desert coursers stripped to the nines and with +canteens strapped to the running board. Sidewalks +swarmed with men—big men with steady +eyes looking out from beneath sombreros the +size of a woman’s garden hat; men with high-heeled +boots and the pins of many lodges stuck +on their unbuttoned vests; lantern-jawed, hollow-templed +men of the sun, whose bodies were +indurated by the desert law of struggle and +whose souls were simple as a fairy book.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span></p> + +<p>Across Main Street stretched a fence of rabbit-proof +wire with three strands of barbed +wire topping that; a fence with something like +a pasture gate swung back for traffic. This was +the Line. On the hither side of that rabbit-proof +wire web the authority of a President and +his Congress stopped; on the far side the authority +of quite a different president and his peculiar +congress began. Over yonder, where +stood a man under a straw sombrero and with +a rifle hung on one shoulder, lay Sonora and the +beginning of a thousand mile stretch of fantastic +land called Mexico. A cart with solid +wooden wheels and drawn by oxen under a ponderous +yoke blocked the way of a twelve-cylinder +auto seeking clearance at the international gate.</p> + +<p>When he had tired of sight seeing Grant inquired +at a cigar counter where Dr. Stooder +could be found. The breezy man in shirtsleeves +grinned and glanced at the clock on the +wall behind him.</p> + +<p>“Well, sir, usually mornings he’s over across +the Line getting organized for the day on tequila. +Mostly he comes back to his office round +noon time, steppin’ wide and handsome. Office’s +over yonder, top-side of the Bon Ton barber +shop. You might give it a look.”</p> + +<p>Grant acted on the cigar clerk’s advice. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> +located a dingy door at the end of a dark upper +hallway with the lettering, “A. Stooder, M.D.,” +on a tin sign over the transom. Entering, he +found himself in a sad company. Three Mexican +women and a man of the same race sat like +mourners on chairs about the wall; a big-eyed +child squatted in the middle of the floor and +listlessly pulled a magazine to bits. The stamp +of woe and of infinite patience was set on all +the dark faces. Mephitic smell of iodoform was +in the air. Grant hastily withdrew. After an +hour’s walking and when the whistles were blowing +noon he returned. A different collection +of patient waiters occupied the chairs; evidently +the doctor was in and at work.</p> + +<p>He took a chair by the window where he +could look down into the street and so keep the +set masks of misery out of his eyes. After +fifteen minutes the door to the inner office was +violently opened and a Mexican woman shot +out of it as if propelled by a kick. Thundering +Spanish pursued her. Grant saw a scarecrow +figure framed in the doorway.</p> + +<p>Tall beyond the average and gaunt almost to +the point of emaciation; frock coated like a +senator of the Eighties; thin shoulders seeming +bowed by the weight of the garments hung +thereon; enormous, heavily veined hands carried<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span> +as if hooked onto invisible hinges behind +the stained white cuffs:—this the superficial +aspect of Dr. Stooder. Vital character of the +man was all summed up in his face: skin like +wrinkled vellum stretched on a rack; eyes glinting +from deep caves on either side of a veritable +crag of a nose which had been broken and +skewed off the true. A great mane of grey hair +reared up and back from his high forehead; +tufts of the same colour on lip and chin in the +ancient mode of the “Imperial” added the last +daguerreotype touch to his features.</p> + +<p>Black eyes roved the room and fell on Grant, +who had risen. The doctor crooked a bony finger +at him and he passed through into the private +office, taking the seat indicated. Without +paying his visitor the least heed, Dr. Stooder +went to a closet, poured two fingers of some +white liquid into a graduating glass and drank +it. His lips smacked like a pistol shot. Then +he returned and took a swivel chair before a +very shabby and littered desk.</p> + +<p>“I never seen you before, sah”—the man’s +accent reeked of Texas, the old Texas before +the oil invasions. “So I’ll answer the question +every stranger’s just mortal dying to ask and +don’t dare. How’d I come to get this scar?” +The surprising doctor tilted his great head back<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> +and traced with his fore-finger an angry weal +which encircled his throat like a collar gall. +“Well, sah, I was informally hanged once—and +cut down. Now we can get down to business. +What’s your symptoms?”</p> + +<p>Grant, caught off balance by so unconventional +a reception, stammered that he had no +symptoms.</p> + +<p>“My friend, Bim Bagley, who is out of town +for a few days, told me to look you up. My +name is Grant Hickman. I’m from New York.” +The black eyes, never deviating from their disconcerting +stare, showed no flicker of recognition +at the name.</p> + +<p>“What you want of me if you have no symptoms?” +abruptly in the doctor’s nasal bray. +“I’m not in the market for the World’s Library +of Wit and Humour. I’ll cut you for a tumour +or dose you for dyspepsia; but I won’t buy a +book.”</p> + +<p>“I have no books to sell.” Grant found his +temperature rising. “I have come out from +New York because you told my friend Bagley to +send for me.”</p> + +<p>Doc Stooder suddenly snapped out of his chair +like a yard rule unfolding and strode to the +closet. With bottle and graduating glass poised +he bent a severe eye upon his visitor.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span></p> + +<p>“You say you don’t drink. Highly commendable. +I do.” Again the pistol shot from satisfied +lips. He replaced the bottle and tucked +his hands under the tails of his coat where they +flapped the sleazy garment restlessly.</p> + +<p>“You call yourself an engineer. How do I +know you are?”</p> + +<p>Grant had said nothing about being an engineer. +Doc Stooder had identified him right +enough. What reason for his bluff, then?</p> + +<p>“My dear sir, graduates of Boston Tech. do +not carry their diplomas round with them on +their key rings. You’ll have to take Bagley’s +word for it that I’m an engineer if my own is +not convincing.”</p> + +<p>The gangling doctor took two turns of the +office with enormous strides; one hand tugged +at his straggling goatee. Abruptly he stopped +by Grant’s chair.</p> + +<p>“Young man, what need do you figure a doctor +in Arizora would have of an engineer—more +especial an engineer from New York? Why +should I tell this Bagley, who’s as crazy as a +June-bug, to fetch a graduate engineer out to +Arizora? Engineers are a drug on the market +here—and every one of ’em a crook.”</p> + +<p>Grant’s patience snapped. He rose and strode +to the door.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span></p> + +<p>“Dr. Stooder, I didn’t come away out here +to your town to have somebody play horse with +me. When you are sober you can find me at +the International Hotel.”</p> + +<p>A grin started under Doc Stooder’s moustache +and travelled swiftly to his ears.</p> + +<p>“God bless my soul, boy! When I’m sober, +you say. I’m never sober and I hope I never +will be—”</p> + +<p>Grant slammed the door behind him.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV</a><br /> +<small>COLONEL URGO REPAYS</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">Before he had descended to the street +Grant began to regret his flash of anger +which had launched him out of Doc Stooder’s +office. To be sure, the unconventional doctor +had been insulting; his was hardly the orthodox +reception to be expected by one who had crossed +the continent to become his partner in some hidden +enterprise. Equally certain it was that, to +apply the cigar clerk’s pat phrase, Stooder was +“organized for the day”; the finishing touches +to that organization had been made in two trips +to the closet in Grant’s presence. Need one +have been so touchy under these alcoholic circumstances?</p> + +<p>Strive as he would to put the best face on the +matter, the man from New York could not escape +a lowering of the spiritual barometer. Here +he was, a stranger in an outlandish desert town +with none to give him so much as a friendly +glance. Glances enough came his way, but they +were inspired by his clothes, the cut of which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> +seemed to put them beyond the pale. Grant +pleasured himself by reviewing his case in the +most pessimistic light. He had been but a fortnight +ago a sober and industrious citizen. Came +to him a wild letter hinting darkly of some +shadowy enterprise in a bleak land. Instantly +he had quit his work and galloped across two +thousand miles to encounter a scarecrow cynic +who greeted him as a book agent.</p> + +<p>He wandered aimlessly beyond the town and +out onto a road which wound up to the edge +of one of the mesas which were the eaves of +Arizora. Well might drivers of passing cars +stare at the figure of a broad-shouldered young +man in a black derby and double-breasted coat, +who was afoot in a country where no man walks +unless he carries a blanket on his shoulders—unless +he is a “stiff,” in the phrase of the +Southwest. Even though February was but +on the wane, already the sun was guarantor of +a promise to pay with heat interest in sixty +days.</p> + +<p>He came to the top of the rise and halted under +the psychic compulsion of boundless space. +For space, crystalline and ethereal as the gulf +between stars, flowed from him as an ocean. +The air that filled this space was so thin, so +impalpable as to seem no air at all, and it was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span> +tinted faint gold by reflection from the desert +below. Mountains near and far were so many +detached reefs taking the silent surf of the ocean +of space; they were tawny where shadows did +not smear purple-black down their sides. Near +at hand showed the grim desert growths: prickly +clumps of <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">cholla</i>, whose new daggers sparkled +like frosted glass; fluted columns of <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">sahuaro</i>, +or giant cactus, lifting their fat arms twenty +and thirty feet above the ground; vivid green +of cottonwoods laid in a streak to mark a secret +watercourse.</p> + +<p>To the man just come from the softness and +languor of Eastern landscapes, where lakes lie +in the laps of green hillocks, this first intimate +view of the desert carried some subtle terror +prick. The iron savagery of it! What right +had man or beast to venture here?</p> + +<p>Then flashed to his mind the picture of Benicia +O’Donoju, the girl who loved the desert, +who felt she was prisoner only when hedged +about by the walls of cities in the East. Somewhere +to the south where a higher raft of peaks +marked Sonora’s mystery land—somewhere in +country like this she was speeding to her home. +What kind of a home might that be? How could +a girl with the bounding vitality that was hers +find life worth living in a land enslaved by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span> +thirst? A hundred miles from town or railroad, +she had said:—a hundred miles deep in such +a wilderness her home! Heavens, how he pitied +her!</p> + +<p>Grant turned back to the town, revolving over +and over in his mind the first steps he would +have to take to learn where Benicia O’Donoju +lived; and, haply discovering the place of her +abode, how to get there.</p> + +<p>By the time night fell the restless visitor to +Arizora had exhausted the town’s opportunities +for amusement. He crossed the Line into the +companion Mexican community, Sonizona. Here +was beguilement enough. The rabbit-proof +fence which converted Main Street into a Calle +Benito Juarez also marked a frontier no less +obvious. North of the fence was aridity to rejoice +the conscience of the most enthusiastic +prohibitionist; south of it the frail goddess Virtue +tottered in her step. In Arizona a man +sought traps and deadfalls consciously and with +a secret thrill of bravado; in Sonora he avoided +them only by the most circumspect watching +of his step. Dark streets winding along the +contours of the crowding mountains were raucous +with the bray of phonographs and the tin-panning +of pianos. Lattices over darkened windows<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> +trembled as one passed and the ghosts of +whispers fluttered through them. Where an +occasional arc lamp threw a spot of radiance +across the ’dobe road lurked shadowy creatures +who whined in an American dialect for money +to buy drugs.</p> + +<p>Grant did not realize that when he passed +through the rabbit-proof fence he left behind +him everything for which he paid income tax and +other doles—protection, due processes of law, +all the checks and balances on society and the +individual painstakingly built up under the +Anglo-Saxon scheme of things. He did not conceive +himself in the light of an alien—of a not-too-popular +nation—gratuitously placing himself +under the protection of laws quite the opposite +in terms of interpretation. Nor did he appreciate +that, save for his suitcase and a signature +on a hotel register, he had left behind him +nothing to bear testimony to the fact that a +man named Grant Hickman had come to Arizora +and had left the United States to enter +Mexico. All these inattentions he recalled later +when opportunity for correction had passed.</p> + +<p>Grant was circling the plaza, where the municipal +band was giving a concert, when amid +the strollers he thought he saw a familiar face.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> +He looked again and was sure. Little Colonel +Urgo, in a snappy uniform of dark blue with +back-turned cape, was walking with a woman +whose beauty was that of the blown peony. +Chance brought Urgo’s eyes Grant’s way. They +lighted with sudden surprise, then the colonel +brought up his hand in a salute. A flash of +teeth was cut by the travelling hand; it was +like a too quick shutter on the villain’s smile +in Way Down East.</p> + +<p>Grant doffed his hat and passed on. Half +an hour later a particularly glittering sheaf of +lights he had noted in earlier saunterings +pricked his curiosity and he turned into a low +building just off the plaza. A bare front room +easily visible from the street was a too obvious +blind for complacent police inspection; +through an open arch in its rear wall a crowded +gambling room was given false length by wall +mirrors in dingy frames. Fifty or more men +and women were clustered about roulette, faro +and crap tables. A fat Chinaman with a face +expressionless as a bowl of jelly sat on a dais +behind a little desk stacked high with silver +and with deft movement of his fingers achieved +nice problems in international exchange. Pursuit +of the goddess Luck was being engaged in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> +with a frankness and business-like absorption +quite different from furtive evasions of hidden +attic and camouflaged club across the Line.</p> + +<p>Grant exchanged a ten-dollar note for a heavy +stack of Mexican silver and moved over to a +table where two ivory cubes were dancing to +the droning incantations of a big negro game +keeper. He was curious to see whether Big +Dick and Lady Natural were as temperamental +a couple in Mexico as he had discovered them to +be in many a front-line dugout in France.</p> + +<p>“Come to papa!” A raw-boned Arizonan +across the table was singing to the dice held +in his cupped palms, huge as waffle irons; a +humorous imp of strong liquor danced in his +eyes. “Cap’n come down the gangplank and +says, ‘Good mawnin’, Seven!’”</p> + +<p>The ring of dark faces about the green cloth +stirred and white teeth flashed unlovely smiles +when a six and a one winked up from the dice. +A chinking of silver dollars as a red paw gathered +them in.</p> + +<p>“Baby! Now meet you’ grandpaw, Ole Man +E-oleven. Wham! Lookit! Five an’ a six +makes e’oleven! How’s that for nussin’ ’em +along, white man?” The crap wizard looked +across to Grant and grinned in amity. Mexican<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span> +scowls accompanied the covering of the winner’s +pile left temptingly untouched. Grant felt an +undefined tugging of race bonds here in this +ring of alien faces, and he backed the Arizonan +against the field. On his third throw the big +fellow made his point.</p> + +<p>“That’s harvestin’! That’s bringin’ in the +sheaves! Now here’s my stack of ’dobe dollars +for any Mex to cop if he thinks the copping’s +good.”</p> + +<p>When it came Grant’s turn to throw his new-found +friend played him vociferously against +the Mexican field, calling upon all present to +witness that a white man sure could skin anything +under a sombrero, from craps to parchesi. +For the first time since he had left the train that +morning the New Yorker felt the warming tingle +of fellowship; the gaunt, sunburned face of the +desert man with the dancing imps of humour in +the eyes was a jovial hailing sign of fraternity.</p> + +<p>“Shoot ’em, Mister Man! You’re rigged for +Broadway, Noo Yawk, but I can see from here +that you has the lovin’ touch.”</p> + +<p>Grant rolled and won, rolled and won again. +Carelessly he dropped the heavy fistfuls of dollars +into the side pocket of his coat. Even when +he lost his point, he had a bulging weight of +silver there. Grant was enjoying the game itself<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span> +not nearly so keenly as he did the Arizonan +across the table, his Homeric humour and the +bewildering wonder of his vocabulary. So intent +was he that he did not see Colonel Urgo +enter, nor did he catch the almost imperceptible +nod toward him that the little officer passed to +a furtive-eyed tatterdemalion who accompanied +him. The latter by a devious course of idling +finally came to a stand behind Grant and appeared +to be a keen spectator of the game.</p> + +<p>“Ole Man Jed Hawkins’ son is a-goin’ splatter +out a natch’ral. Ole Man Hawkins’ son is +a-goin’ turn loose the hay cutter an’ mow him +a mess of greens. Comes Little Joe! Dip in, +Mexes, an’ takes yo’ fodder! Now the man +from Dos Cabezas starts a-runnin’—”</p> + +<p>A hand was busy at Grant’s pocket—a slick, +suave hand which replaced weight for weight +what it subtracted. Just three quick passes +and the tatterdemalion who had been so intent +on the prancing dice lost interest and moved +away.</p> + +<p>It came Grant’s turn to roll the dice. He +dipped into his pocket and carelessly dropped +a stack of eight silver dollars on the table. One +of them rolled a little way and flopped in front +of a Mexican player. The latter started to pass +the dollar back to Grant when he hesitated, gave<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> +the coin a sharp scrutiny, then balanced it on a +finger tip and struck its edge with one from his +own pile.</p> + +<p>“Señor!” An ugly droop to his smiling lips. +“Ah, no, señor!”</p> + +<p>He passed the dollar over to Grant with exaggerated +courtesy. Eyes all about the table, +which had followed the pantomime with avid +interest, now centred on the American’s face. +As if on a signal the fat Chinaman at the exchange +desk waddled over to shoulder his way +officiously to Grant’s side. He growled something +in Spanish and held out his hand. Dazedly +Grant laid the suspected dollar in a creasy palm. +The Chinaman flung it on the green felt with a +contemptuous “Faugh!” and he pointed imperiously +at Grant’s bulging pocket.</p> + +<p>“It’s a frame, pardner,” called the Arizonan. +“If your money’s bogus it’s what the Chink +himself handed you.”</p> + +<p>“I came in here with American money and +changed it at your desk,” Grant quietly addressed +the Chinaman. “See here; this is the +money I either got from you or won at this +table.” He brought from his pocket a brimming +handful of Mexican dollars and dumped them +on the cloth. Two or three of the heavy discs<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> +shone true silver; the others were clumsy counterfeits, +dull and leaden.</p> + +<p>A cry, half snarling laughter, from the crowd +about the table, now grown to a score: “Aha—gr-ringo!”</p> + +<p>A movement of the crowd forward to rush +Grant against the wall. Then with a cougar’s +spring the big Arizonan was on the solid table, +feet spread wide apart, head towering above +the tin light shade. He balanced a chair in one +hand as the conductor of an orchestra might lift +his baton. His gaunt features were split in a +wide grin. Before Grant could gather his senses +a big paw had him by the shoulder and was +dragging him up onto the green island of refuge.</p> + +<p>“They don’t saw no whizzer off on a white +man wiles ole Jed Hawkins’ boy got his health,” +Grant’s companion bellowed a welcome. “I +got these greasers’ number, brother!”</p> + +<p>Grant’s gaze as he rose to his feet over the +heads all about encountered two interesting objects. +One was Colonel Urgo, who stood alone +in a far corner of the room; the colonel was +smiling with rare good humour. A second was +a man wrapped about with a blanket, over whose +shoulder appeared the tip of a rifle; he was +just coming through from the front room on a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span> +run and there were three like him following. +Rurales, the somewhat informal bandit-policemen +of Mexico.</p> + +<p>Just what ensued Grant never could quite +piece together. He remembered seeing Hawkins +wrench off a leg from his chair and send +it whizzing at a central cluster of light globes +in mid-ceiling. They snuffed out with a thin +tinkling of glass. Then the rush.</p> + +<p>Out of the dark swirl of figures about the +table’s edge a vivid spit of flame—roar of a +pistol shot. Hands grappling for braced legs +on the table top. “Huh” of breath expelled +as Hawkins swung his chair in a wide sweep +downward. A cry, “Hesus!” Oaths chirped +in the voice of songbirds. A knife missing its +objective and trembling rigid in the midst of +the baize.</p> + +<p>The table collapsed with dull creakings, and +then the affair of mauling and writhing became +a bear pit. Grant fought with steady, measured +short-arm jabs delivered at whatever object +lay nearest. When one arm was pinioned +he swung the other against the restraining body +until it was freed. Some one sank teeth in his +shoulder.</p> + +<p>“Ride ’em, Noo Yawker!” came the shrill cry +of battle from somewhere in the mill. Then a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span> +blow at the base of the brain which meant lights +out for Grant.</p> + +<p>When consciousness came halting back he +found himself standing half-supported by two +of the rurales in a dark street and before a high +gate in unbroken masonry. The gate swung inward. +He was propelled violently through the +dark arch and into a small room, where sat a +man in uniform under a dusty electric globe. +He did not look up from the scratching of his +pen on the desk before him.</p> + +<p>A door behind the writing man opened and +Colonel Urgo entered. His start at seeing the +bloodied and half-clothed figure which the rurales +supported was well acted. A hand came +to the vizor of his cap in mocking salute. Then +he turned to the man at the desk and exchanged +low words with him.</p> + +<p>“Ah, Señor ’Ickman”—Colonel Urgo’s voice +was tender as the dove’s—“I regret to learn you +are here in the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">carcel</i> on serious charges. The +one, counterfeiting the coin of Mexico; the other, +resisting officers of the law. Very regrettable, +Señor ’Ickman. But, remembering your courtesies +toward me on the train yesterday, let +me assure you of my willingness to serve you +in any way. You will command me, señor.”</p> + +<p>A sudden lightning flash of comprehension<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span> +shot through the clouds that pressed down on +the prisoner’s mind. He saw the whole trick +of the counterfeit dollars in his pocket and remembered +the little Spaniard’s threat on the +observation platform of the train the night before: +“To-morrow we touch Mexico, where it +is known that Colonel Hamilcar Urgo is a law +unto himself.” Grant strained forward and his +mouth opened to incoherent speech.</p> + +<p>“And now, señor,” Colonel Urgo continued +blandly, “unfortunately you will be locked up +incommunicado.”</p> + +<p>Five minutes later Grant Hickman, behind a +steel-studded door in a Mexican jail, was as +wholly out of the world as a man in a sunken +submarine.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V</a><br /> +<small>THE GARDEN OF SOLITUDE</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">Benicia O’Donoju by the side of the big +Papago Quelele and with the twin towns +on the Line behind her—ahead the unlimned +immensity of the wilderness—gave herself to +the exhilaration of flight. For the skimming +and dipping of the little car over the wave +crests of the desert was like the flight of the +desert quail, who rarely lifts himself above the +height of the mesquite in his unerring dartings +from bush to bush. On its partially deflated +tires, provision against sand traps and the expansion +of imprisoned air under heat, the skeleton +thing reeled off its twenty miles an hour +with snortings.</p> + +<p>The final incident at the Arizora station—little +Colonel Urgo and his unceremonious jettisoning—left +no abiding impression with the +spirited desert girl. His struttings and posings, +his humorously impetuous wooing, resumed at +the El Paso station after the two years’ interruption +of her stay in the States, were for her no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> +more than the high stepping of some barnyard +Lothario. Benicia, little given to the morbid +business of self-analysis, was not sensible of +how exactly the dual strain of blood in her had +reacted to Urgo’s advances; how it had been +the swift thrust of Spanish temper which had +prompted her to resort to the pronged weapon +from her hair at El Paso even as the persistent +Irish humour tang inherent in the O’Donoju +name had flashed out in the dumping of the +suitor at Arizora.</p> + +<p>No, Hamilcar Urgo’s dapper figure was as +evanescent as the mirage, but there was another +which appeared to replace it. A man with the +figure of an athlete and a forthright way of +looking at one—perhaps the least bit too self-assured, +perhaps inviting rebuke did one but +feel in the humour of rebuking. One of those +quick-witted Americans, ever ready on a hair +trigger of resourcefulness yet seeming to carry +a situation as if no situation existed. Nice eyes, +yes. A pleasant laugh, rich in humour. But +so New Yorkish! He thought the desert a place +where no one lived willingly. Amusing conceit! +And his name was—? Ah, yes, Hickman—Grant +Hickman. One would try to remember +that name.</p> + +<p>Retrospect could not long hold Benicia’s mind<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span> +against the joy of the homing journey. For the +desert she loved spoke to her a welcome long +dreamed in the stifling precincts of cities. There +was the sky she had yearned for, something of +infinite depths which did not shut down over +the earth like an inverted cup; rather an impalpable +sea wherein the earth swam free. Morning +gold still tinted it. And the mountains that +rose sheer from the desert floor with no lesser +foothill heights: under the sun they were blue +in the east and where slant rays fell upon western +barriers a tawny strength of naked rock +clothed them. Between the feet of the mountain +stretched the level desert plain far and far beyond +the power of eye to compass; grey with +the grey of saltbush and greasewood, overtones +of green where the first leaves of the mesquite +and ironwood answered the call of the spring +sun.</p> + +<p>Quelele had turned the machine onto a westward +wending road once the Line was crossed +at Sonizona. A few straggling ranches near +the border town, then the unsullied desert. +Westward and southward sped the machine, +deep into the greatest stretch of unpeopled wilderness +between the Barren Grounds of the Dominion +and Panama.</p> + +<p>The Desert of Altar lies there. From the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span> +Line south to the Yaqui River and from the Gulf +of California, once called the Sea of Cortez, +eastward to the Sierra Madre:—here is the +terra incognita of Sonora; here is the dominion +of thirst. A territory large as New England +and with a population smaller than the average +New England mill town. A vast graveyard of +vanished peoples, who left behind them mountains +terraced with fortifications laid in unbroken +breastworks of porphyry and rocks pictured +with their annals of life and death. Rain +comes only with occasional summer thunder +storms up from the Gulf, storms which wake +dead rivers into furious flood. So precious is +this water from the sky that the primitive peoples +weave mystic rain symbols into their basketry +for a fetish, and their songs are all of +thunderheads and croaking frogs.</p> + +<p>Here in the Desert of Altar the impossible +becomes commonplace. A man caught in a river +bed by the spearhead of a freshet drowns in +sand made mud and irresistibly rushing. Cattle +drink no water for months on end but are +sustained by munching cactus whose spines can +penetrate sole leather. In the furnace heat of +summer furious rain storms occur in the higher +air but the moisture is sucked up by the sun before +it touches earth. Gold lies scattered on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span> +the surface of the desert and water must be +mined. The desert kind slay after the manner +of the ages but declare a truce at the waterhole. +Death of all life is ever-present, yet grant so +much as a permanent trickle of the life-giving +fluid and the dust is covered with a glory of +green.</p> + +<p>For its devotees the desert holds mysteries +potent beyond comprehension of folk in a softer +land. The venturing padres of an elder day +called it the Hand of God; they walked in the +hand of God and were not afraid. Divinity, +force, original cause—whatever may be your +term for that power which jewels the grass with +dew and swings the suns in their courses—this +is very close in the desert. In great cities man +has driven the Presence far from him by his +silly rackets of steam and electricity, by his +farcical reproductions of cliffs and pinnacles. +In the Desert of Altar he walks in silence and +with God. The very air is kinetic with the +energy that brought forth life on a cooled +planet.</p> + +<p>The desert had been Benicia’s teacher; had +moulded her spirit to its own pattern of elemental +strength. Born the last of the +O’Donojus in the desert oasis that was the +ultimate remnant of the once kingly Rancho<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span> +del Refugio—grant of a Spanish Philip to her +ancestor—she had been reared in the asperities +of the land, had absorbed into her bone and +tissue the rigours and simple verities of a +wilderness. Because there was no son in the +Casa O’Donoju and because, too, this only +daughter came into the world with the inheritance +of a spirit impetuous and errant as a +desert bird, Don Padraic, her father, gave over +all attempts at imposing on her the straight +decorum that shackles the Spanish maiden of +gentle blood. With the death of her mother +when Benicia was still in short skirts came this +loosening of the bonds. Instead of growing to +maturity a shy creature who must never quit +the sight of a duenna and whose eyes shall tell +no secrets, the girl warmed to a wonderful +companionship with her father, lived the life +of a boy.</p> + +<p>Her flaming red hair bobbed about the fringe +of milling cores of wild cattle at the round-up. +At <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">Sahuaro</i> feasts of the Papagoes, Mo Vopoki +(Lightning Hair) added her shrill soprano to +the chorus of the Frog Doctor Song. She +learned where gold lay in shallow pockets and +winnowed it from the sands in the Indian +fashion. She brought home a mewing, spitting +kitten she had taken from a bobcat’s litter.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> +Her doll was discarded for a rifle before her +strength could shoulder it.</p> + +<p>Schooling came in her father’s library, filled +with books in three languages. English and +music, the music of the great harp, became her +passions. The harp had been her great-grandmother’s; +Don Padraic could make the mesh +of strings sing with the sound of rain on +flowers. He was her first teacher. Then, when +twenty years were hers and Don Padraic +realized something besides the wild desert life +was needed to round out the full beauty of his +daughter’s soul, he had urged further studies +on the harp as the excuse for Benicia’s two +years in the cities of the States. Those two +years had served well to overlay upon the +rugged handiwork of the wild the softness and +subtleties of culture.</p> + +<p>Benicia believed she possessed all her father’s +confidences. So she did—all but one. She did +not know that when she came into the world +with tiny head furry in burning red Donna +Francisca, her mother, had cried herself into +hysteria and Don Padraic’s heart had gone +cold. Nor was she ever told that her flaming +hair marked her with the finger of Nemesis.</p> + +<p>This day of the return from exile no premonition +of the inheritance of fate arose to disturb<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span> +the singing heart of the girl. She rattled on +to the stoical Papago at the wheel unending +questions concerning her father and the most +humble of the Indian retainers living on the +rancherias about the oasis, Don Padraic’s fief +in the waste lands. She told the credulous +Quelele stories of the cities she had seen; of +white men’s wickiups climbing as high as the +hill of La Nariz; of water so plentiful that it +was launched at a burning house out of a long +serpent’s mouth; how men lifted themselves +above the earth in machines like the king condor +and flew hundreds of miles between sun and +sun. To all of which big Quelele, never lifting +his eyes from the thin rut lines in the sand, +answered with a single monosyllable “Hi,” +wherein was compounded all his capacity for +wonder.</p> + +<p>South and west about the skirts of the +Pajarito they went, and then into the old road +up from Caborca, the ancient highway called +the Road of the Dead Men which swings north +parallel with the Line, cutting the tails of +numerous ranges that are great in Arizona. +And so, when the day was hardly more than +half spent, the little car crawled to the height +called the Nose of the Devil, and Benicia saw +below her land of desire.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span></p> + +<p>Fists of the mountains grudgingly opened out +to permit a broad basin running from east to +west, and there against the savage baldness of +sentinel ranges showed a ribbon of green. +Green of precious gems it was. So vivid in the +setting of the drought land. So cyclonic its +assault of colour against the eye inured to the +duns and greys of a hundred miles of parched +terrain. And in the midst of the oasis the +shining white dot, which was the house of the +O’Donoju; of Benicia’s father and his fathers +before him back to the day of a royal favourite +baptized Michael O’Donohue. The Casa +O’Donoju in El Jardin de Soledad—the Garden +of Solitude.</p> + +<p>Indian women, in skirts of orange and cerise +and with gay mantles over their sleek hair, +lined the way to the avenue of royal date palms +which led from the bridge over the Rio Dulce +straight to the white single-story house of +’dobe, heavy walled and loopholed like a fort. +They waved and sent shouts of welcome to the +mistress of the casa as she passed.</p> + +<p>Benicia knew her father would not be outside +the house to greet her; their love was not for +the servants to see. Rather he would be waiting +in their own trysting place, the place where +he had given her farewell two years before. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> +girl leaped from the car before the heavy +studded oak door breaking the solid white front +of the house at its centre. It was opened to +her by old ’Cepcion, feminine major domo of +the household servants. Benicia paused to give +the parchment cheeks a kiss, then she danced +down a flagged hall to the flare of green marking +the patio garden in the centre of the house.</p> + +<p>Here was a place of beauty and a fragrant +cave of coolness—the very secret heart of the +Garden of Solitude. Open to the sky and with +cloistered dimness of the four sides of the house +all about, the patio was a tiny jungle of climbing +things, all green and riotous blossoms. A +stately date palm reigned in the centre behind +the little basin of the fountain; curtains of +purple bougainvillea draped themselves down +its shaggy ribs; lavender water-hyacinths +sailed their little barques in the pool; geraniums +flamed in living fire against the pillars of +the arcades.</p> + +<p>There in the garden waited a man all in +white. Snow white his heavy hair and beard, +though the life in his deep-set eyes and the +vigorous set of his shoulders belied age; white +were his thin garments of silk and flannel.</p> + +<p>He caught the flash of a red head through<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span> +the greenery, saw an eager, breathless face +turned questioningly.</p> + +<p>“’Nicia, heart of my heart—!”</p> + +<p>Then she ran to him, paused just an instant +to lift swift fingers under his chin and tilt his +head. Their eyes measured each the love that +welled brimming in the soul’s windows. Then +the father drew his daughter close to his heart +and his lips brushed her forehead.</p> + +<p>“’Nicia, my strong one, your father has +great need of you.”</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI</a><br /> +<small>JUSTICE</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">The Mexican theory of the treatment of +prisoners, their status before the law and +the responsibilities of government toward them +has few complexities and knows no interference +on the part of prisoners’ welfare leagues or +humanitarian congresses. When a man is arrested +south of the Line he straightway ceases +to be enumerated among the living; if, haply, +he reappears in the course of weeks or years +his family looks upon the prodigy in the light +of a resurrection. Such resurrections do not +occur often enough to dull the edge of the +popular interest attending them. There are +several dim roads, peculiarly Mexican, down +which a prisoner may march to oblivion, with +no record of his expunction left behind. Officials +with easy consciences find these extralegal +methods of clearing the docket handy and +expeditious.</p> + +<p>Grant Hickman, new to the Border and utterly +ignorant of customs and manners in the +republic of <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">poco tiempo</i>, necessarily could not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span> +possess a background of sinister knowledge +against which to build doubts of his immediate +future when he found himself locked in a cell. +He was in darkness deep as Jonah’s. He ached +from his scalp to his toes. A gingerly groping +hand applied to various parts of his body took +stock of the exterior costs of that healthy fight +in the gambling palace. The heat of battle was +still on him. He recalled how nobly the big +Arizonan swung his chair from the vantage of +the crap table; what a virile call to battle was +the stranger’s “Ride ’em, Noo Yawker!”</p> + +<p>As for Colonel Urgo’s clumsy frame-up—the +handful of lead dollars in his pocket to prompt +arrest for counterfeiting—Grant dismissed the +trick as childish spite. When he appeared before +a judge in the morning he could easily +prove that the only Mexican money he possessed +was that given him in change by the +fat Chinaman and what he had taken in across +the baize. Some tool of the vengeful little +wooer of Benicia had “salted” him during the +progress of the game.</p> + +<p>But when morning light through a four-inch +slit in the wall roused him from a restless +sleep long hours of doubt were ushered in. +Came a jailer with dry tortillas and water but +no summons to appear before a magistrate.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span> +Three tortillas—clammy rolled cakes of meal +tasting strongly of a cook’s carelessness in +matters of excluding the unessential—were the +sum of his receipts from the outside world that +day. The jailer, who had the features of a +bandit, merely grunted a “no sabe” at the volley +of questions the prisoner launched at him +during the minute he was in the cell.</p> + +<p>Those hours of solitude in the six-by-ten box +of stone gave opportunity for much thinking. +Little by little it was borne in on Grant how +completely he was a victim of whatever spite +Colonel Urgo might care to devise; and recollection +of his smiling face seen in the prison +office the night before—thin lips parted over +teeth in a ferret’s grin—confirmed the assumption +that at devising mischief Colonel Urgo +would be hampered by no lack of ingenuity.</p> + +<p>Grant weighed the hope of aid from the other +end of the town across the Border fence. Bim +Bagley, the only friend he had in all the Southwest, +was still out of town and would not be +back until the morrow. Doc Stooder—small +chance! The worthy doctor was velvet drunk +when he received Grant in his office; for reasons +which only his satiric humour could explain +he had elected to consider his visitor an +impostor. Little chance that Doc Stooder would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> +pay him a thought until Bagley returned and +inquired of his whereabouts. Remained just +the cobweb contingency that the Arizonan who +had fought beside him had escaped the clutches +of the rurales; Grant was certain the big fellow’s +simple loyalty to a fellow countryman +would prompt him to set going some kind of +inquiry from across the Line.</p> + +<p>Night came, with it three more tortillas and +a bowl of <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">carne</i> seasoned with chili sufficient +to burn the gullet of a bronze image. Then, +several hours after the scant meal had been +shoved in to him, the bandit jailer opened his +cell door and motioned him to step into the +corridor. Two men with rifles were waiting +there; they stepped to his side and marched +him off between them.</p> + +<p>Down a flight of steps, through a courtyard +heavy with shadows, then up tortuous stairs to +a door beneath a dim electric globe. The door +opened from within, and Grant found himself +in a chamber which might have passed as a +courtroom. At its far end on a raised dais was +a long desk lighted from above, three men sitting +behind it. A sort of wooden cage stood +apart on a platform by itself. Six men with +serapes over their shoulders and rifles hanging +by straps across the blanket stripes were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span> +slouching before the judges’ dais. A black +headed peon crouched timorously on a seat to +the left and behind the guards.</p> + +<p>Grant’s escort halted him before the judges. +He kept silence, studying the faces of the three. +Not pleasant faces. A hardness of eye and cat-like +bristle of moustachios over thin line of +lips was common to the trio.</p> + +<p>“Grant ’Ickman?” challenged the man in the +middle.</p> + +<p>Grant nodded. His interrogator gave a sign +to one of the rurales. The latter turned to the +peon on the bench, dragged him to his feet and +hustled him to the cage-like affair to the left +of the dais, evidently a witness box. The little +fellow’s head hardly showed above the top rail +that fenced him in; his eyes were all whites.</p> + +<p>The examining judge jerked a thumb toward +Grant as he shaped a question in Spanish +for the witness. The peon bobbed his head +emphatically. Another question and, “<i lang="es" xml:lang="es">Si</i>,” +chirped the witness. Then a lengthy flow of +interrogation prompted by reference to some +dossier in hand.</p> + +<p>“<i lang="es" xml:lang="es">Si! Si!</i>” The witness hurried to oblige. +Cat whiskers lifted in a smile as the judge +turned back to Grant.</p> + +<p>“You unnerstan’?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span></p> + +<p>“I don’t,” bluntly. More twitching of the +spiked moustachios.</p> + +<p>“Zeese man, ’oo’s make confession of counterfeiting +and ’oo ees to be shot to-day, says +’e sells you thirty pesos made with bad metal—counterfeit. +An’—”</p> + +<p>“He lies!” Grant interrupted.</p> + +<p>“<i lang="es" xml:lang="es">Quieto!</i>” The judge banged his fist on the +desk and fixed the prisoner with a savage +glare. “’E says, zeese man, ’e meets with you +las’ night on Calle San Lazar outside Crystal +Palacio gambling ’ouse an’ for ten veritable +pesos ’e gives to you thirty pesos of bad metal. +Then zeese man ’e says ’e sees you enter +Crystal Palacio. What remark you make for +zeese?”</p> + +<p>The monstrous farce of this accusation +numbed Grant. Judicial subornation fabricated +to give colour to what was already determined +in the minds of these three puppets. +As clearly as if they were bearing on him he +could see the cold, mocking eyes of Colonel +Urgo behind the shoulders of his pawns on the +bench. Perception of his peril steadied him.</p> + +<p>“I demand a lawyer if I am to be tried on +this outrageous charge. And I demand that +the American consul in this town be told of +the accusation against me.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span></p> + +<p>The interrogating judge turned to his confreres +with a bland outspreading of the palms. +Then to Grant:</p> + +<p>“American consul ’as no business with crime +against state of Mehico. You will ’ave lawyer +when you are tried before court at Hermosillo. +Zeese court ees not court of condemnation. +Court of condemnation ees at Hermosillo. +W’en you arrive there, w’ere you make for a +start to-night, Señor ’Ickman, you ask for +American consul if you desire.”</p> + +<p>“But you cannot send me to this Hermosillo +place without trial.” Grant took a step toward +the bench in his vehemence. He was +roughly jerked back by his guards. The interrogating +judge beamed on him.</p> + +<p>“In Mehico, Señor ’Ickman, it ees folly to +say ‘you cannot.’ Much ees possible in Mehico. +To-night prisoners make start for Hermosillo. +You go weeth them.”</p> + +<p>He nodded to Grant’s guards and they closed +in on him. He heard a farewell, “Adios, +Señor ’Ickman,” from the bench as he was +rudely hustled out of the courtroom.</p> + +<p>An hour later he stood with seven other +shadows in the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">carcel</i> courtyard. About them +were the rurales with their rifles; four were +mounted on horseback and a pack mule, lightly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span> +laden, slept on three legs behind the horsemen. +Men came with lanterns and heavy loops of +something which chinked metallically when it +was dropped. They fixed a broad steel shackle +on the left wrist of each prisoner and linked +them all to a bull chain. Then the door of a +courtyard swung inward, the mounted rurales +closed in and the eight chained men went clinking +out to the dark street.</p> + +<p>A few midnight dawdlers paused to watch the +shadowy procession stumbling over the cobbles. +No word was spoken. The clink of the horses’ +hoofs, the patter-patter of the short-legged +pack mule and the metallic whisperings of the +chain fitted into a measured cadence. Despite +the presence of the pack mule, Grant first had +thought the journey would be a short one, ending +at the railroad station. But after fifteen +minutes’ marching no railroad line was in sight +and the houses began to be scattered. Suddenly +houses ceased; nothing but the hump-shouldered +shapes of mountains about; clear burning stars +and ahead a dim ribbon of road leading out +into the desert.</p> + +<p>To Hermosillo, a town unheard of and at a +distance unknown—across the desert to Hermosillo +afoot and chained in line with seven +men. In the slim rifle barrels so carelessly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span> +slung under shadows of sombreros was the +sullen emblem of that unwritten law of Mexico +which stills so many accusing mouths: <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">ley de +fuga</i>—law of flight.</p> + +<p>Out into the desert of Altar marched the +American, whose name appeared only upon a +secret cachet in the hands of the puppet judges—a +man gone, as a German once put it, “without +trace.”</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</a><br /> +<small>THE CHAIN GANG</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">“But, Doc, I tell you you’re crazy! How +could a tenderfoot like Hickman just in +town from the East breeze across the Line and +get into a jam the first night he’s in town—drop +out of sight completely?”</p> + +<p>Bim Bagley, back in Arizora and distracted +by the unexplained mystery of his pal’s name +on the hotel register, his pal’s suitcase in a +hotel room but no more material trace of Grant +Hickman, was knee to knee with Dr. Stooder +in the latter’s office. The Doc made judicious +answer:</p> + +<p>“Well, son, Jed Hawkins’ specifications of +the gringo he fought with atop the crap table +in the Palacio tallies pretty closely with the +young man as I saw him in my office earlier in +the day. But here’s the funny thing: the +rurales let Hawkins go even though he laid out +two of ’em with a chair. Let that fightin’ wildcat +go and trotted this fellah Hickman off to +the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">carcel</i>. That’s what gets me.” Doc Stooder<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span> +gave his decision with a wave of the hand. He +jack-knifed his bony knees up to his chin and +waited the younger man’s comment.</p> + +<p>“But what did Hawkins say started the big +row?” Bim’s long face, all criss-crossed with +the wind wrinkles that make desert men look +older than their years, gave a vivid picture of +his distress, of his eagerness to seize upon any +detail that might point a solution of the mystery. +Doc Stooder recited with picturesque detail +Jed Hawkins’ story of the battle in the +gambling palace as the redoubtable Jed himself +had narrated it in the Border Delight pool +hall before returning to his ranch at Dos +Cabezas.</p> + +<p>“That give me a clue,” he concluded, “so I +laid my pipe lines an’ I’m looking for to tap +a well any time now.”</p> + +<p>Doc Stooder’s pipe lines—of information, if +not of wealth—were the most productive of any +along the Border. He was one of those rare +white men in the Southwestern country who +enjoyed the unreserved respect if not the love +of the Mexican population, among whom nine-tenths +of his practice extended. Though he +bawled at his patients, stricken dumb with +terror of their ailments, though he cursed the +women and manhandled the men, no poor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span> +Mexican’s hovel of ’dobe was too far out in +the desert to discourage Doc Stooder’s night +prowling gas-wagon. Through dust storm and +withering heat this blasted jack-pine of a man +flitted on wings of gasoline, with his nostrums +for dysentery and asthma, his splints for +broken bones and needles for knife thrusts.</p> + +<p>Drunk he might be half the time, an indifferent +physician all the time—for the Doc had +not been away from the Border for twenty-five +years and never read a medical magazine. But +under his hard rind of brutalities and cynicisms +the Mexicans and Indians had come to discover +a deep sympathy with their homely tragedies, +their patient sufferings. Sometimes they paid +him in coin; more often they paid him in slavish +fealty the coin of which was information. Of +gold strikes in the far hills; of shrewd business +deals to be wrought through connivance of +knavish officials across the Line; even of stolen +jewels to be picked up from a pawnbroker:—these +the flow of Doc Stooder’s pipe lines. No +man on the Border for a hundred miles each +way knew so much of the scrapple of life as +A. Stooder, M.D.</p> + +<p>“I’m lookin’ to hear of a woman,” the Doc +drawlingly resumed, a wry smile greeting +Bim’s gesture of negation. “Yep, son, when<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> +any likely lookin’ young fellah along the +Border drops outa sight—and this Hickman +fellah’s got an eye with him for all his Noo +Yawk bridle trimmin’s—they’s a swish of +skirts comes to my ears. Or”—he sat up suddenly +and threw a bony finger at Bim—“or he +knows somethin’ about why he’s come out here +an’ went an’ babbled.”</p> + +<p>“Rot!” Bim’s grey eyes were clouded with +anger. “I told you he doesn’t know why we +got him out here—and he’s not the babbling +kind if he did.”</p> + +<p>“Well, it sizes up thisaway,” the Doc continued, +ignoring the other’s flash of temper. +“They’s one man down in Sonora who knows +all we know about the Lost Mission and like’s +not a dam’ sight more. That’s this proud old +don who lives down in the Garden of Solitude +with his red-headed daughter—name’s Padraic +O’Donoju, if I haven’t told you that before. +If he ever got a line on the fact we’ve asked a +Noo Yawk engineer to come out here to Arizora +he’d put two an’ two together an’ figure we’re +after that Four Evangelists church his ancestors +built. You know he’s sorta king of all the +Papagoes in Altar and—”</p> + +<p>“How about your Papago who’s going to +lead us to the Mission?” Bim interrupted. “If<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> +there’s any leak likely as not it’s through him.”</p> + +<p>Stooder’s great head wagged slowly; a grin +tilted the rabbit’s tail tuft under his lip until +it stood out a quizzical interrogation point.</p> + +<p>“No, son; no. I got that Papago brother +where he thinks all I got to do is crook my little +finger an’ his wife passes away with asthma +overnight. We can rely—”</p> + +<p>A timid knock on the office door giving onto +the hall. The Doc bellowed a command to +enter. A wizened Mexican peon whose left arm +was a stump sidled quickly through the doorway +and stood bowing, shaggy head uncovered. +He cast a quick glance at Bagley, then to the +doctor for reassurance.</p> + +<p>“Go ahead, Angel—shoot!” commanded +Stooder.</p> + +<p>“Señor, I hear from Jesus Ruiz, ’e’s cousin +to me an’ rurale at the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">carcel</i>; Jesus Ruiz ’e +says the gringo arrest’ at Palacio goes last +night in chain gang for Hermosillo—”</p> + +<p>Bim leaped to his feet with an oath. The +peon’s eyes were on Doc Stooder in an hypnotic +stare.</p> + +<p>“The gringo goes in chain gang for Hermosillo, +but my cousin Jesus Ruiz ’e says that +gringo mos’ like never arrive.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span></p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>That hour when Doc Stooder’s pipe line began +spouting information Grant Hickman was +discovering deep down within him an unguessed +hardiness of spirit. A trial was on him, a test +of his moral fibre no less than of his physical +powers. At the end of twelve hours’ steady +plodding across the desert he was coming into +his second wind. Every effort a devilish ingenuity +could contrive had been tried out by +the four rurales, his guards, in their common +endeavour to break down this gringo’s fighting +morale. The single result was a fixed grin on +features smeared with dried blood and sweat—a +challenge provoking the Mexicans to fresh +barbarities.</p> + +<p>During the first dark hours of the march +Grant had nursed the hope that at some point +outside of town he and his fellow prisoners +would be brought to a railroad station to await +the coming of a train. He could not conceive a +reason for transferring prisoners afoot when a +railroad would serve. But with the coming of +the dawn and the lifting of the dark from an +empty land not even a telegraph pole raised +above the scrub to point fulfilment of his hope. +Just the dry ribbon of road stretching ahead +and empty speculation as to the number of +days or hours which must intervene between<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span> +present misery and journey’s end. Grant never +had heard the name Hermosillo until it was +spoken by the examining judge the night before; +he did not know whether the town was +just over the horizon or half way to Panama.</p> + +<p>Morning brought him the chance to study the +men chained with him who, during the night +hours, had been just so many disembodied +shadows marching in a nightmare. The one +ahead of him was a shrivelled little Chinaman, +whose legs were so short he was forced to a +skipping step to keep slack on his segment of +the chain; his breath came in asthmatic pipings +and wheezes like the noise of a leaky valve in +some midget engine. Behind him was a giant +of an Indian, almost the colour of teak. With +a timed regularity this Indian spat noisily all +through the dark hours and until the sun rose +to dry up his throat. The rest were in character +with Grant’s nearer companions—just +flotsam.</p> + +<p>The guards were typical of their class; +Mexican peons brutalized even beyond the inheritance +of their mixed bloods by their small +taste of power. The quarter-blood Indian +south of the Line, whose ancestry is devious +as his own starved dog’s, knows but a single +law of life and that the law of fear. Lift him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span> +by ever so little from the station of the one +who fears to that of the one to be feared and +he has no counterpart for studied cruelty anywhere +on earth.</p> + +<p>The one who rode to the right of the line in +which Grant’s position was fourth from the +front, had commenced with the dawn a calculated +campaign of nasty tortures. He would +suddenly swerve his horse against Grant, +threatening his feet with trampling hoofs. He +held his lighted cigarette low at his side with +elaborate air of carelessness, then pressed in +close for the burning tip to eat through the +white man’s shirt. Once he aimed a vicious +backward kick at his victim; his heavy spur +left a line of red through the torn sleeve from +elbow to shoulder.</p> + +<p>At each of these refinements of humour the +rurale’s snickering laughter was met by the +American’s wordless grin. Just a tense spreading +of lips and baring of teeth, which carried +to the guard’s savage perception a taunt and +a threat. Always in Grant’s twisted grin lay +the unspoken promise of retribution once the +odds against him were lightened.</p> + +<p>The desert under sun at the meridian flexed +its harsh hand to pinch the crawling caterpillar +of chained men. Heat waves made all the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span> +ragged summits of the Sierras pulsate. A dust +tasting of desert salts spread a low cloud about +the marching column. Thirst that was a poignant +agony was made all the more unendurable +by the tactics of the guards. From time to +time one of them would unhitch a canteen from +the pack mule’s burden and in the sight of the +eight helpless sufferers tilt his head and guzzle +noisily. Even he would allow some of the +water to slop from his mouth and be wasted +in the sand.</p> + +<p>When the little Chinaman marching before +Grant sighed and dropped, the line was halted +for half an hour. First the yellow man was +revived, then the canteen at which he had +sucked so noisily was passed down the line to +the rest of the prisoners. It was their first +taste of water since the prison gate was passed. +After the canteen circulated, black strips of +jerked beef, sharp with salt, were distributed. +Grant never had seen the “jerky” of the Southwest; +the leathery stuff would have revolted +him did his body not cry out for food. He tore +at the tough substance after the manner of his +fellows while the guards brewed themselves +some more complicated mess over a fire of +greasewood sticks.</p> + +<p>Then the march again. Dragging hour after<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> +dragging hour. Clink-clank of the swinging +chain. Pad-pad of feet in time. Snuffle and +wheeze—snuffle and wheeze of the asthmatic +Chinaman’s breathing. All in an unvarying +synchronism which tore at the nerves. All the +world—Grant’s world of a great city—was reduced +to this dreadful monotony of movement +and sound.</p> + +<p>He tried to think. Came to his mind a picture +of his office in the Manhattan skyscraper—his +desk with the mounted bit of shrapnel +for a paperweight, its clear greeny-white glass +top, the two wire baskets which held his correspondence. +He saw the squash court at the +club—men in sleeveless shirts straining after +a white ball. Henry’s bar in the little side +street off the Rue D’Anou in Paris; Henry +selling stolen American cigarettes for five +times their value at the commissary. St. +Mihiel and the old woman who knitted lace. +Then the girl—Benicia O’Donoju. Grant called +to his mind the vivid glory of her hair, the +trick of her short upper lip in curling outward +like the petal of a tea rose, a something roguish +always lurking deep down in the warm pools +of her eyes.</p> + +<p>“Not Mexican. We are Spanish folk.” That +was her sharp reproof when he, blundering, had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span> +asked her if she was of Mexican blood. That +night on the train—it seemed a year back. +“Not Mexican.” Now he understood why the +girl had corrected him so pointedly. Thank +God she was not of that breed!</p> + +<p>Near dusk the line was halted and one of +the guards dismounted. Grant saw him fumble +in his shirt and bring out a bright bit of metal, +saw him approach the head of the line and +tinker with the first fellow’s wrist shackle. +He heard a sharp intake of breath behind him +and, turning, caught the stamp of terror on the +giant Indian’s face. Something was going forward +which he could not comprehend, something +to shake the stoicism of this Indian. Within +five minutes the steel band about his wrist was +unlocked and he stood free of the chain with +the rest of the prisoners. He saw on the faces +of all of them that same terror mask the Indian +wore.</p> + +<p>The freed men cast covert glances at the +guards, followed their every move with cat-like +slyness. The little Chinaman began a falsetto +sing-song under his breath, which might have +been a prayer to his protecting joss. One of +the guards turned in his saddle and called some +jocular order to the prisoners. They moved on +in the wine-light of the sunset, falling precisely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span> +into the line they had held when chained, their +eyes vigilant for every move of a hand on the +part of the mounted men.</p> + +<p>The rurales now carried their rifles swung +free across the saddles.</p> + +<p>Though he could understand no word of the +muttered scraps of speech passed between man +and man behind him, the magnetic fear waves +possessing all the rest began to prompt Grant +to some comprehension. The coming night—dropping +of the chain—those rifles unslung +from shoulders and carried free across the saddles:—did +these things presage the near end +of this farce of a pilgrimage across the desert +to a court?</p> + +<p>Light now was nearly gone from the western +sky and the guards were riding farther away +from the trudging line, deliberately inviting +some one to offer himself for fair target practice +while gunsights still could be seen. Grant +faced the hazard squarely. Certain he was that +none of the eight would see another sunrise, +that butcher’s work would commence the minute +sporting chances were definitively ignored by +the victims. He was of no mind to be the passive +party to a hog killing. Better a quick +dash—a bullet from behind—</p> + +<p>The line of men had just emerged from an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span> +arroyo with almost perpendicular sides; the +bed of the dry stream was thick with shadow. +Grant leaped from line and ran straight for +the guard who rode between himself and the +course of the stream. Almost at his stirrup +he swerved and cut under the horse’s rump.</p> + +<p>Shouts. A shot gone wild. Grant, zigzagging, +was at the brink of the arroyo. Two shots +almost as one. A lance of fire through his +shoulder. Up went his arms and he plunged +headlong into the gulf of blackness.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII</a><br /> +<small>THE HEART OF BENICIA</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">The Desert of Altar is transcendence of +silence. From the savage Growler range +in Arizona south to the obsidian bastions of +Pinacate, by the dead Gulf, is space to crowd +five million people with their tumult of cities, +their crash of machines, hoot of locomotives +and shriek of steel under stress. Yet in all this +blank waste not a sound.</p> + +<p>The chirp of the wren from her hole in the +<i lang="es" xml:lang="es">sahuaro</i> carries not even so far as the watching +hawk on nearby skeleton <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">ocatilla</i> stalk. +The meat cry of the prowling cat in the mountains +where the wild sheep range is swallowed +in the muffling depths of the canyon under her +feet. Thin air seems too tenuous to conduct +sound waves. Creatures of the wild lands move +mute under the oppression of unbounded space.</p> + +<p>Yet nowhere does rumour fly swifter than +here in this vacant land. Comes a strange +prowler to the waterholes of Tinajas Altas, +and the antelope fifty miles away know the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span> +news and seek the hidden springs at Bates’ +Wells. A Papago three days’ journey from +the nearest rancheria stumbles onto hoofprints +of six horses away over where tidewater +climbs into the delta of the Colorado, and he +turns back to carry report of revolution in +Baja California. Strange signs tell their tales +from the sands; the arrangement of little sticks +conveys whole chapters of information to the +wayfarer. When man meets man, be he white, +brown or copper coloured, news is a torch to +be passed on to a new hand. Nothing can be +long a secret. The latent must out.</p> + +<p>Even as the worthy Doc Stooder in his +shabby office at Arizora had a never-ending +messenger service from all the Border and the +lands beyond, carrying scraps of oblique news, +another far distant in the Garden of Solitude +enjoyed the same intelligence. This was Don +Padraic O’Donoju, last of the line of masters +over the once-great principality of El Rancho +del Refugio. Though a hundred years of revolution, +of uproar and the teetering of political +balances in the more populous Mexico to south +and east of him had left to the last don of the +O’Donojus little more territory than that comprised +in the oasis of the Garden, still he had +cattle enough to be counted a rich man and six<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span> +generations of custom gave him unbroken sway +over the Papagoes. From the Sand People of +the Gulf away up to the San Xavier rancheria +at Tucson extended the secret kingdom of Don +Padraic’s influence. His only tithes were those +of loyalty and the bringing of report. What +the Papagoes thought Don Padraic should +know, that he knew as speedily as word could +be passed.</p> + +<p>So, a week after Benicia had returned to the +Casa O’Donoju, came a runner from the eastward—one +sent by El Doctor Coyote Belly, +whose winter house was at Babinioqui near the +railroad. The runner had big news. El Doctor, +known all over the Desert of Altar because of +his reputed skill at curing hydrophobia and the +bite of the sidewinder, had a sick white man—a +seriously wounded white man who might be +an American—in his house at Babinioqui and +he asked Don Padraic what he should do with +this man.</p> + +<p>El Doctor was returning from the Medicine +Cave of Pinacate—this was the runner’s tale—when +on the road that runs from Sonizona to +Hermosillo he found seven dead men; dead +men with the marks of fetters on their left +wrists. A little beyond he found still another; +this one, lying in an arroyo, had been shot<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span> +through the shoulder from behind and he still +lived. El Doctor had tied the living man to his +burro and taken him to his winter house at +Babinioqui, where he had treated him with the +most powerful herbs and had massaged the +wound with the lizard image. The wounded +white man would live. Coyote Belly did not +wish to turn him over to the Mexicans, for he +was a victim of <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">ley de fuga</i> and the Mexicans +undoubtedly would shoot him again.</p> + +<p>Don Padraic, whose charity was wider than +his acres, made his decision instantly. He +ordered Quelele to go, with the runner to guide +him to El Doctor’s house, in the little desert +car and to fetch the white man to the Garden +of Solitude as soon as he was able to be +moved. It was best, the master instructed, +that Quelele travel in the night, returning with +the wounded man, and tell no one of the object +of his mission.</p> + +<p>The big Indian stocked the car with gasoline +from the tank behind the master’s house—a +reservoir filled monthly from drums brought +by ox cart from the distant railroad point—strapped +canteens and oil containers on his +running boards and was off. Don Padraic said +nothing of the incident to his daughter.</p> + +<p>That night Don Padraic and Benicia sat in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> +the candlelight of the big salon or living room +which filled the space of one quadrangle off the +patio. In all Sonora there was no counterpart +of this chamber of mellowed antiquities, the +collection of generations of the O’Donoju. Low +ceiled and with crossing beams of oak, whereon +the marks of the hewer’s adze showed like +waves; walls hung with tapestries between the +heavy frames of portraits of grandees and +their ladies of forgotten days; a great fireplace +wherein a man could stand upright, with its +hand-wrought andirons and heavy crane shank; +floor almost black from a hundred years of +polishing and with the skins of animals floating +there like so many islands:—here was a magic +bit of old Spain lifted overseas to find root in +the heart of the desert.</p> + +<p>Benicia, in a gown of rippling lines which left +her strong young arms bare to the shoulder, +was seated behind the great golden span of her +harp. Candlelight falling across her shoulders +made ivory the flesh of her bare arms as they +moved rhythmically back and forth over the +wilderness of strings. She was playing the +Volga Boatsong, a peasant melody whose +minors rose and fell to the sweep of oars. As +the girl gave her heart to the music, the thrumming +strings wove a picture of some barbaric<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span> +steppe coming down to a sluggish river; boatmen +chanting at the sweeps. The ancient room +was a-thrill with resonance.</p> + +<p>She finished with just a breath of melody, the +song of the boatmen dying in the distance. Her +eyes fell on the face of her father; it was deeply +etched by the play of flames from the mesquite +logs in the fireplace. Always he sat this way, +moveless before the fire, when she played on +the great harp o’ nights, freeing his soul to +drink in the melodies; but to Benicia’s understanding +eyes appeared now the semblance of +a deeper shadow not of the firelight. She +softly left the instrument and stole over to +nestle herself on the broad chair wing, with her +coppery head laid against the snow white one.</p> + +<p>“<i lang="es" xml:lang="es">Pobrecito</i>”—this was her pet word carried +through the years from childhood—“<i lang="es" xml:lang="es">Pobrecito</i>, +thy face is as grave as the owl’s. Some secret? +Remember, there are no secrets between us two—no +worry which the other does not share.”</p> + +<p>Her coaxing hand played through the heavy +mane of hair; her cheek was against his. Don +Padraic slowly turned his head with denial in +his eyes; but that denial could not sustain the +accusation in the steady blue eyes of the daughter. +During the week Benicia had been home a +secret doubt had steadily pressed upon the father;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> +he had been waiting some word from her +which did not come. Now one of his hands +stole up to tweak her ear—signal of surrender.</p> + +<p>“’Nicia, great-heart, you have told me all +about your two years in the cities—your two +years of life in the great world outside? There +is something you have withheld?”</p> + +<p>“Nothing, little father.” She gave him a +peck on the forehead. Don Padraic appeared +to be groping for his words.</p> + +<p>“You met—many American men—young men +who—ah—might have been attracted by the +beauty of my desert flower?”</p> + +<p>A ripple of soft laughter and the girl pressed +closer to him.</p> + +<p>“Ah, <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">Pobrecito</i>, you forget that your desert +flower carries thorns. Ask that ridiculous +Hamilcar Urgo; he has felt the thorns.”</p> + +<p>“But”—Don Padraic was not to be put off +by evasions—“was there not one whose heart +was conquered by a girl of such fire, such +beauty? Come—come! These Americans are +not men of ice.”</p> + +<p>For a minute Benicia was silent. She was +weighing in all sincerity the only shred of a +secret she had in her heart; testing it for genuineness +as fairly as she might.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span></p> + +<p>“Yes, daddy, there were many with bold +eyes and ready tongues; but hardly had they +begun to speak as friends or companions when +their talk was all of money—how much they +were planning to make that year; the ‘big deal’ +they were going to put through. All were like +this—but one.”</p> + +<p>“Ah,” breathed Don Padraic.</p> + +<p>“That one I have told you of,” she continued. +“The man on the train who was so masterful +with little Hamilcar. He was not like the +others. A man of wit—of sympathies; one who +seemed to have understanding of life—”</p> + +<p>“And he—?” the father prompted.</p> + +<p>“We said ‘<i lang="es" xml:lang="es">adios</i>’ the night before we came +to Arizora. I did not see him in the morning, +though he said that was his destination.”</p> + +<p>They were silent once more. Finally from +Benicia a wraith of laughter on fluttering wings +of a sigh:</p> + +<p>“But, my grave old owl, why these questions? +Never before have I seen my daddy +play the prying duenna.”</p> + +<p>“Heart of mine, thou canst not be blind”—the +father’s voice trembled over the intimate +pronoun. “I have been thy father, mother, +elder brother, all in one. And selfish—selfish<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span> +beyond measure! Keeping thee chained here +to an old man in the wilderness when all the +world of love and life lies beyond—”</p> + +<p>“No—no, daddy mine!” Tears dewed blue +eyes as yearning arm strained him to her.</p> + +<p>“—My ’Nicia has her years ahead of her. +Her love life must be awakened and given freedom +to unfold like a flower in a garden. Yet I +have permitted her to come back to me here +in the Garden of Solitude because I was lonely. +Better far that I sell what we have here and +take you back to the world. In these evil days +there is no fit mate to be found for you in all +Sonora. Hamilcar Urgo has threatened me if +I do not give you to him; he is of our blood, +but he is abominable. I—”</p> + +<p>A soft hand clapped over his lips. He heard +passionate words:</p> + +<p>“Father mine, stop! Never—never whisper +again that you will sell our Garden. For I love +it, next to you, above all the world. We are +desert people, little father. We live in God’s +hand and are happy. The cities crush me with +their noise, their confusion.”</p> + +<p>“But, ’Nicia—”</p> + +<p>“And, dearest of daddies”—her lips against +his ear were giving kisses light as thistledown—“I +want no lover but you—no happiness but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span> +what I have returned to here in the Garden. +Now, not a word more!”</p> + +<p>She was on her feet and with the skirts of +her gown caught in her fingers was making him +an old-fashioned curtsy. Then she slipped +into the shadows where the great golden harp +stood, and in an instant the ancient room began +to hum with spirited arpeggios—rush of many +waters over a fall.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX</a><br /> +<small>GOLD AND PEARLS</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">Bim Bagley, on the trail of the information +brought by Doc Stooder’s pipe line, +found himself against a blank wall the instant +he passed through the barrier of the Line into +Sonizona. He was too conversant with the +ways of Mexican officialdom to make any inquiry +in high places, knowing that to do so +would be but to jeopardize Grant Hickman, +however he might be placed, and win for himself +naught but suave denials. Nor did he even +go to the American consul, who, in the usual +course of things, would be the last man in +Sonizona to hear of the disappearance of an +American citizen there.</p> + +<p>Rather, with Doc Stooder’s counsel, Bim circulated +warily among the gambling halls and +in the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">cantinas</i> where the rurales were wont +to go for their salt and mescal. Here ten pesos +slipped into a complacent palm; there twenty. +Then weary waiting for results.</p> + +<p>Bit by bit the story came to him, and behind<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span> +the fragments was always the dim figure of +Colonel Hamilcar Urgo. Bagley knew Urgo +for the tyrant politician that he was: how he +used his position in the garrison as a cloak to +cover his manipulations of government all +along the Sonora border. No man was stronger, +not even the governor of Sonora himself; and +the central regime in Mexico City was forced +to wink at Colonel Urgo’s obliquities else run +the risk of his firing the train to revolution.</p> + +<p>But why this little sand viper in uniform +should have conceived a desire to be rid of +Grant Hickman, a total stranger to the country, +not even the most astute of Bagley’s informers +could guess. “’E’s not like theese +gringo” appeared to cover the whole case.</p> + +<p>The saturnine doctor, repenting him of his +brusque reception of the New York man—prompted, +after all, by his superlative caution +in the presence of a possible impostor—sent +the tip to the farthermost ganglions of his news +system: “Fifty gold dollars to the man bringing +information of the missing American’s +whereabouts.”</p> + +<p>Doc Stooder’s proffer of that amount of +money was not all humanitarian. Below his +surface show of concern, designed for the +benefit of Bim Bagley, good Dr. Stooder did<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span> +not care a plugged nickel what might be the +fate of the Eastern man. He was not one to +lose sleep over the misfortunes of others if +those misfortunes were not attributable to +strictly physical causes and under materia +medica. Then only they interested him.</p> + +<p>No, Doc Stooder’s real concern was the delay +caused by the disappearance of this third party +to his scheme for a “great killing.” The killing +in question was one he could not make +single-handed. Circumstances which have no +place in this tale had forced him to share the +secret of it with Bagley, and the latter had +refused to move a step in the enterprise until +he had his pal from overseas in on the game. +The Doc fretted aloud one day, which was the +tenth after Grant had dropped from sight.</p> + +<p>“Son, I’m tellin’ you ’less we make tracks +for that Four Evangelists mission purty pronto +this here O’Donoju Spaniard down in the Garden’s +goin’ to get what’s in the wind and shove +in on us. He’s got every Papago from here to +the Gulf runnin’ to him with every whisper a +little bird lets spill. He gets wind you an’ me +are raising sand to lay hands on an engineer +out from Noo Yawk an’ he smells a mice.”</p> + +<p>“You go dig alone for your dam’d mission.” +Bim Bagley’s temper had been ground fine by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span> +days of restless anxiety. “Me, I roost right +here till I get the lay where my buddy is.”</p> + +<p>Next day all the silver of subsidy Bim had +distributed bore fruit an hundred-fold. There +came to the office of Doc Stooder unquestioned +report that the missing American was alive, +though shot through the body, and under the +care of El Doctor Coyote Belly at a speck in +the desert called Babinioqui away down beyond +the Line.</p> + +<p>Bagley was off in his car that night. Doc +Stooder, alone in his office and with a graduating +glass and bottle of fiery tequila at his elbow, +dreamed of gold plate brought to light from +caverns of sand, of altar jewels and hoards of +nuggets—riches of crafty priests—salvaged +from the crypt of a holy place lost to sight of +man a century and a quarter.</p> + +<p>“Gold all hammered into crosses an’ such!” +The Doc tipped his brimming graduating glass +against the electric bulb and studied with fond +eye the liquor made golden by the light.</p> + +<p>“—Pearls, my Papago says. Pearls big as +<i lang="es" xml:lang="es">bisnaga</i> fruit an’ greeny-white like a high +moon. Gold an’ pearls! Pearls an’ gold! +Stooder, you’re goin’ be a prancin’, r’arin’ +aristocrat!”</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X</a><br /> +<small>AT THE CASA O’DONOJU</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">Six days after Quelele the Papago set out +on his mission of mercy from the Casa +O’Donoju he returned to the oasis. It was in +the first flush of dawn that the <i>shuf-shuf</i> of the +little car roused master and servants; Quelele +had travelled all night and at a pace to conserve +the strength of the wounded man, who +lay on thick straw in the box body. All night +without lights save the thickly strewn lamps in +the firmament, wending hither and thither +through the scrub where half-guessed lines in +the sand marked the Road of the Dead Men—a +journey weird enough.</p> + +<p>For Grant Hickman it was but part of the +moving drama of a dream. That instant of +flight from the chain gang, when a bullet tore +through his shoulder and sent him toppling +into the arroyo, was the visitation of death; +in his flickering perceptions all else following +was but adventuring in the country beyond +death—incidents to paint impressions on a consciousness +otherwise wiped clean of otherworld<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span> +recollections. First of these exposures +on the cloudy plate of his mind came many +days after the rurales had left him for dead in +the desert: a face deep-dyed as mahogany and +with white bristles of a beard about chin and +lips, a face kindly withal, which bent near his +as a hand lifted his head to bring his lips to a +vessel of pungent brew. Then another age of +drifting and swimming through soft clouds.</p> + +<p>Grant had just come to accept the grey-thatched +face of El Doctor Coyote Belly as +part of a permanent picture when another +Indian appeared between himself and the +bundles of sticks making a roof over his head. +This second personage in the world of the unreal, +a giant with the features of a boy, had +spelled El Doctor in ministering herb brews +and keeping the wet cloths under the burning +wound in his back for what seemed many +years. Then Grant had felt himself lifted, +carried from the hut with the bundles of sticks +for a roof and laid on sweet smelling straw. +In the starshine he felt the hand of El Doctor +close over his own with a heartening squeeze.</p> + +<p>Then—wonder of wonders!—the racking +cough of a gas engine, and Grant was soaring +back to that familiar earth which had been +lost to him so long.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span></p> + +<p>Upon the arrival of the car bringing Grant +to the Casa O’Donoju Don Padraic, hastily +dressed, superintended the moving of his guest +to a small, clean room, candle lit. The wounded +man felt the gracious softness of feathers +under him, the suave clinging of sheets. An +aged Indian woman, working under the white +man’s direction, divested him of his tattered +clothes and patted everything comfortable. +Drowsy luxury stole across his consciousness +to cloud it and bring sleep.</p> + +<p>Sunlight flooded the room when Grant awoke. +He was alone. His mind was clearer than it +had been since he was shot. Only the steady +burning in his vitals linked this moment of comfort +with the tortured past. His eyes roved +about the room to take in its appointments. +White walls devoid of ornamentation; by the +heavy door with its curiously wrought iron +latch a single chest of drawers of some antique +pattern; the bed he lay upon massive as a +galleon of old days and with a canopy of carved +wood and tapestry for a sail: here was a room +from the period department of the Metropolitan +Museum.</p> + +<p>Grant was patiently trying to fit together the +jig-saw scraps of his memory when the door<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span> +opened and the white man he had seen the +night before entered. Seeing the light of reason +in the patient’s eyes, Don Padraic smiled +and bowed. Something mighty heartening lay +in that welcome and the warm cordiality of +Don Padraic’s features.</p> + +<p>“I am rejoiced to find you better to-day,” he +said as he drew a chair to the side of the bed. +“Yours was a hard journey last night.”</p> + +<p>“I am still a little uncertain up here”—Grant +tapped his forehead with an attempt at +a laugh. “For instance, I was just thinking +I had been lifted straight into a room of the +Metropolitan in New York.”</p> + +<p>The host’s brows were knitted an instant, +then he caught the allusion and smiled.</p> + +<p>“Ah, yes; we have rather ancient furnishings +here. But you are quite a distance from +New York, señor. This is the Casa O’Donoju +in the Garden of Solitude, and I am Don Padraic +O’Donoju.”</p> + +<p>The name crashed into Grant’s consciousness +like the clang of iron. His heart gave a great +leap. Could it be possible—? No, this must +be but part of the aurora dreams of the vague +eternity still just behind his back. Grant +wished to make no blunder which might belie<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span> +the present soundness of his mind, so he held +his tongue over the question burning to be +asked. Instead:</p> + +<p>“My name is Grant Hickman, sir. I am +deeply obliged to you for your charity in bringing +me here. Of course, I do not know quite +how it all happened—my coming here from +some place else, where an Indian, or two of +them—seemed to be caring for me. And I +fear I am hardly a presentable guest.” The +sick man’s hand passed ruefully over his +stubby chin.</p> + +<p>Don Padraic made a gesture dismissing +Grant’s fastidiousness. “Señor, a gentleman +should not consider the state of his beard and +the state of his health with equal seriousness. +The one may be repaired at once even if our +wishes cannot immediately effect a cure of the +other. Permit me to retire, señor, and not +tax you with questions until you are stronger.”</p> + +<p>Shortly after the gentle host had bowed himself +out an Indian servant entered with basin +and razor and effected an agreeable change in +the patient’s appearance. Then Grant was +left alone with the tab to a wonderful possibility +to turn over and over in his mind.</p> + +<p>He was in the house of the O’Donoju. Could<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> +there be more than one family of that unusual +name in the desert country; or had fate thrown +him a recompense for all he’d suffered by lifting +him from a line of chained convicts to carry +him through a nightmare straight to the one +spot in all the world he most desired to be in? +Perhaps under the same roof, near enough to +him to permit the carrying of her laughter, +was Benicia, the vivid creature who had won +his heart into captivity.</p> + +<p>He was not kept long in suspense. The door +opened and Don Padraic’s white clad figure +appeared, behind it Benicia. She was in khaki, +as Grant had last seen her at the Arizora +station, wide-brimmed hat noosed under her +chin just as she had come in from a ride +through the oasis. All the wild, free spaces of +the wilderness seemed compacted in the girl’s +trim figure, in the flush of her browned cheeks +touched by the sun.</p> + +<p>“Señor Hickman—” Don Padraic began introduction, +but Benicia was at the bedside; her +cool hand was given to Grant’s clasp with a +gesture of boyish comradeship.</p> + +<p>“We need not be introduced, father,” Benicia +laughed, and there was a queer catch in her +throat. “Señor Hickman did me a service on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span> +the train which served as the best introduction +in the world.” Turning back to Grant—“I did +not know, señor, you were the wounded man +Quelele brought into our home so early this +morning—did not even know we had a guest +until my father told me when I returned from +my ride a few minutes ago.”</p> + +<p>Grant strove to put all his heart prompted in +words that were mete: “And I did not dare +hope that this house to which a miracle has +brought me was the desert home you described +on the train.”</p> + +<p>Benicia’s eyes read surely what his lips +would not frame. She saw in the white face +of the wounded man a touch of that old hardihood +and forthright spirit of address which +had commended this American to her at first +meeting—commended him even against her +own impulse to resent his self-assurance. But +she saw, too, how suffering battled to dim the +valiant spirit, and something deeper than abstract +sympathy stirred in her heart.</p> + +<p>“But, señor, to meet you again this way! +Father has told me the message brought from +El Doctor: how you were found among dead +men on the Hermosillo road and brought back +to life by that old Papago. You, a stranger<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span> +and unknown here in the desert country—how +could this happen to you, señor?”</p> + +<p>Don Padraic interposed:</p> + +<p>“Perhaps, ’Nicia, when Señor Hickman is +stronger he will answer questions. Would it +not be better—?”</p> + +<p>The girl was quick to appreciate her father’s +considerate thought. Again she laid her hand +in Grant’s.</p> + +<p>“If you will permit me to play the doctor—at +least to see to it that lazy old ’Cepcion, +your nurse, does not neglect you?” The smile +that went with this promise was tonic for the +sick man. It remained like an afterglow when +the door was closed behind the girl. And +when the wrinkled Indian woman came an hour +later with broth on a silver tray that smile +reappeared, translated into the fragrant beauty +of rose petals laid by the side of the bowl.</p> + +<p>Five luxurious days passed—days each with +a wonderful spot of sunshine in them—that +when Benicia accompanied the aged ’Cepcion +to his chamber. On these daily visits she would +draw her chair to the side of the great bed—she +looked very small below the high buttress of the +mattress—and while he quaffed his chicken +broth and nibbled his flaky tortillas Benicia<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span> +would talk. ’Cepcion, like some mahogany coloured +manikin in her flaring skirts and winged +bodice, always stood, arms akimbo and features +passive as a graven image, behind her mistress’ +chair.</p> + +<p>The girl’s talk was directed away from the +personal; with an art concealing art she evaded +Grant’s frequent endeavours to swing conversation +into more intimate channels. She brought +the world of the desert into the sick room, unconsciously +revealing herself as a flashing, restless +creature of the wastes: now on horseback +and threading dim trails over the Line to carry +quinine to a family of Papagoes down with the +fever; now beside Quelele in the little gas-beetle +and skimming to Caborca, the southern town, +to buy a wedding dress for an Indian belle.</p> + +<p>Not once did she touch again upon the subject +of Grant’s misadventures and how he came +to be found on the road to Hermosillo. A delicate +sense of the fitness of things prompted her +to await the moment when he himself should +volunteer explanations. Grant, on his part, +felt an impelling reluctance to give details, for +to do so would necessitate his revealing his conviction +that little Colonel Urgo’s was the hand +that had pushed him so near death. A delicate—perhaps<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span> +quixotic—sense of personal honour +prompted that he keep his enemy’s name out +of any explanations. He could not know how +close might be the little Spaniard’s relations +with Benicia and her father—even discounting +Urgo’s boast that he expected to make the girl +his wife—and, besides, he felt the score between +himself and Urgo must be evened before he +linked the Colonel’s name with his experiences.</p> + +<p>With Benicia’s father Grant modified his +resolution to a certain degree. It was no more +than proper, he argued with himself, that the +master of the Casa O’Donoju have some explanation +for the presence in his house of a man +from a Mexican chain gang.</p> + +<p>“Señor O’Donoju,” Grant addressed his +host when the latter was come on one of his +daily visits, “you have been more than kind +to me, but I fear I may be an embarrassment +to you—a fugitive, you know, if that is my +status before the law.”</p> + +<p>“My dear sir”—the courtly Spaniard waved +away Grant’s scruples with a smile—“you +forget that the evidence El Doctor Coyote +Belly found on the Hermosillo Road—you the +only survivor among eight men who had been +murdered, eight men with marks of fetters on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span> +their wrists; that this evidence, I say, clearly +indicates you now have no status whatever before +what the Mexicans call their law.”</p> + +<p>Grant looked his surprise. Don Padraic continued +easily:</p> + +<p>“You are officially dead, Señor Hickman. It +is the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">ley de fuga</i>—the law of flight. You were +shot trying to escape while being transferred +from one prison to another. Monstrous barbarism! +So the president, Francisco Madero, +met his end; so, perhaps, Carranza. When +you were chained to other convicts and sent +afoot out into the desert you were doomed; the +men responsible for that act counted you as +dead the minute they ordered you overland to +Hermosillo.”</p> + +<p>Grant recalled the mask of fear he’d seen +settle over the features of the big Indian, his +chain mate, when the rurales began to loose +the fetters in the sunset hour of that fateful +night on the desert; how the asthmatic little +Chinaman had commenced his chant to the joss—men +who had known every weary hour of that +march brought them nearer to the stroke of +doom.</p> + +<p>“I have no direct evidence to explain why I +was in that chain gang,” Grant began, honestly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span> +enough; then he told the story of the fight in +the gambling palace after the discovery of the +counterfeit dollars in his pocket, reserving only +all reference to Colonel Urgo. His host heard +him through with a grave face.</p> + +<p>“Perhaps,” he ventured, “you were on some +mission to the Border which ran counter to +the interests of a scheming official on the Mexican +side.”</p> + +<p>“To be honest, I do not know yet on what +mission I came to Arizora,” Grant conceded +with a laugh. “A friend of mine wrote me in +New York he wanted me to join him in ’a +whale of a proposition’ out here along the +Border. I was fool enough to come just on +that, and when I had an interview with a +Dr. Stooder—”</p> + +<p>“Ah!” The interjection escaped Don Padraic +against instant reflex of judgment, as +his hand part way raised to his lips betrayed. +Grant caught the other’s quickly covered confusion +and suddenly was sensible of his careless +garrulity. Here he was bandying names +in a matter his friend Bagley had surrounded +with unexplained secrecy. He finished lamely:</p> + +<p>“And so on my first night in Arizora I fell +into a trap.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span></p> + +<p>When Don Padraic left the chamber Grant +still was dwelling upon his host’s involuntary +exclamation at the name of Doc Stooder. +What was there about the saturnine physician, +what notorious reputation which could lead a +hermit such as Don Padraic away off in this +desert oasis to evince surprise that one under +his roof had had dealings with him? More and +more an undefined regret for his mention of the +name of Stooder plagued him.</p> + +<p>In truth, the whole reason for his coming to +Arizora and whatever fantastic project might +be at the bottom of it appeared now strangely +linked with this latest turn of fate, his coming +to the Casa O’Donoju. Grant became aware +of a duty long overlooked and wrote a brief +and non-committal note to Bim Bagley, in Arizora, +saying only he had suffered an accident +and would return to the Border town as soon +as he was able. This Benicia took from him +to give to Quelele when he should go to the +nearest railroad town.</p> + +<p>Two days thereafter befell a boon the +wounded man had dreamed of during many +yearning hours. Two male servants of the +household came to dress him in one of Don +Padraic’s white suits—his own clothes were +rags—and assisted him down a long hall which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span> +turned into the green paradise of the patio. +There under the royal date palm they sat him, +with the fountain pool and its magic purple +sails of the hyacinth at his feet, behind and on +either hand the green and crimson glory of +the geraniums.</p> + +<p>Benicia was awaiting him there alone. The +girl, in a simple green frock which revealed +bare arms and the warm round of her shoulders, +was the embodiment of the garden’s fairy +essence. She was a sprite of this green and +glowing place. Hot sunlight falling upon her +head made it a great exotic flower.</p> + +<p>“Now both of us can revel in being lawbreakers,” +she exclaimed when the Indians had +bowed themselves out. She was hovering +about Grant, patting into place the gay serape +which covered his knees.</p> + +<p>“Lawbreakers!” Grant’s glowing eyes bespoke +the intoxication of pleasure. “I feel, +rather, like a prisoner whose sentence is commuted.”</p> + +<p>The girl’s rippling laughter ended with, “Oh, +but my father said you should not be moved +for three days yet. Now he has gone into +town with Quelele and you and I are breaking +the law—with you equally guilty.”</p> + +<p>“What man would not rush into crime with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span> +you to lead?” he rallied, and the little game +of give and take in joke and repartee which +had been of their devising these last few days +of Grant’s convalescence, when Benicia made +her daily visits at his bedside, was resumed. +It was in this course their friendship had +grown: on a basis of comradeship and with +healthy minds in apposition, giving and finding +something of humour, of rollicking fun. No +angling for sickly sentimentalism on the part +of this unspoiled girl of the waste places—so +Grant during hours of staring at the ceiling +had appraised the heart of Benicia O’Donoju; +no place in their communion for any of the +trite nothings a man burbles into concealed ear +of a flapper over tea or whatever else comes +from the sophisticated city teapot.</p> + +<p>During these delicious hours in the shadow-dappled +patio, as heretofore, Benicia continued +a tantalizing enigma to the man of cities. +While seeming to give so freely of herself in +laughing quip and quick answer to his sallies, +never was there that least suspicion of some +overtone to her buoyancy the man yearned to +catch; not the quick revealing of secret depths +in the eyes which would betray a heart responsive +to the waves of the man’s love enveloping +her. Yet the lips of the girl, full, soft,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span> +trembling with unconcealed promise of richness +to the one conquering them: these were not +the lips of one devoid of love’s alluring tyrannies. +Nor was the rounded body of her, fully +ripened to share in the law of life giving, one +to wither outside love’s garden.</p> + +<p>Grant could not speculate, with tremors of +eagerness, on the flood of passion that was +dammed behind the girl’s sure mastery of herself. +Dare he believe that he might be the one +to loose that flood? As he sat there in the odorous +garden the nimble, superficial part of his +brain was playing with bubbles while the deeper +fibre of him resolved that nothing in the world +mattered beyond possessing Benicia’s love.</p> + +<p>When luncheon was cleared away—it had +been a veritable feast of laughter—Benicia +clapped her hands and gave some direction to +the servant answering. The Indian woman disappeared +in the body of the house, soon to +come waddling out under the weight of the +great harp. Grant gasped his surprise; he +never had associated harps with any surroundings +other than the orchestra pit.</p> + +<p>“My Irish ancestors, who were kings in +Donegal, always called for their harp after a +feast,” Benicia declared with laughter in her +eyes. “That is the reason we Irish are such<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span> +dreamers. The harp is the stairs to dreams. +Listen, señor, and hear if I tell the truth.”</p> + +<p>Grant watched her, fascinated. Her slender +body was in the shade of a great palm frond, +but when she leaned her head forward against +the carved sounding board a narrow lance of +sunshine shot down to kindle her hair to flame +there against the gold. As her bare arms +passed in swift flight of swallows across the +field of strings shadows and sunlight played +upon them in gules and chevrons of black and +ivory.</p> + +<p>First she gave the solo, <i>Depuis le Jour</i>, +from some opera Grant vaguely recalled; it +was a mad thing, wherein the great instrument +thundered to the far recesses of the patio garden. +Then the girl’s mood changed and was +interpreted in the sighing motif of <i>In the Garden</i>. +It was all bird song and lisping fountains. +Grant allowed his eyes to close so his soul could +take flight with the music.</p> + +<p>Slowly, reluctantly, Benicia’s fingers swept +the final chords. The great harp was still.</p> + +<p>Out from the shadow of a flanking archway +stepped a dapper little figure in a cloak. Heels +clicked sharply and the marionette bowed low. +It was Colonel Hamilcar Urgo.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI</a><br /> +<small>THE MARK OF EL ROJO</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">Colonel Urgo straightened himself, +and the smile that had twisted his little +waxed moustache awry suddenly was smudged +out. For his eyes encountered what they were +hardly prepared to see—a living dead man. +His face went sickly white; one hand arrested +itself in the motion of making the sign of the +cross. He stared at Grant, fascinated.</p> + +<p>Grant himself was little less shaken at the +appearance of his enemy. It was as if a cobra +suddenly had lifted its head from the patio’s +flowering jungle. In a moment of dreamy +ecstasy, when he had felt his heart yearning +toward the girl’s over a bridge of music, came +this sinister apparition of evil. It was not +fear of the man that caused Grant’s heart to +pound—the waspish little Spaniard possessed +no essence of malignity sufficient to terrify +one of the American’s fibre; rather a loathing +and instinctive reflex of anger gorged his combative +nerves with blood. Grant read surely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span> +enough the shock of surprise in his enemy’s +eyes and cannily laid this revelation away as +a weapon to hand should necessity demand its +use.</p> + +<p>As for Benicia, she made no pretence of concealing +her annoyance. Quick perception +seized upon the coincidence of her father’s +absence and Colonel Urgo’s coming; she knew +the wily little suitor had somehow managed to +time his visit to that circumstance. In the +first flush of her surprise Benicia caught herself +feeling a great thankfulness that Grant +Hickman was in the house.</p> + +<p>“If you have come to see my father”—Benicia +did not rise to greet Urgo when he +took a tentative step toward her—“he is +absent at the moment. I am sorry you have +not found him at home.”</p> + +<p>Urgo’s lynx eyes darted from the girl’s face +to Grant’s and back again. Plainly he was in +a quandary, not knowing how much—if anything—this +American had told his hosts of +the circumstances of a night in Sonizona and +its consequences. Benicia, misreading his perturbation, +was quick to interpose with a smile +all irony:</p> + +<p>“This is Señor Hickman, whom you may<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span> +remember having seen on the train. Señor +Hickman, this is a distant cousin of mine, Colonel +Hamilcar Urgo, of the garrison at Sonizona. +He is the gentleman who believed you occupied +his berth out of El Paso, if you recall. There +was some slight misunderstanding—”</p> + +<p>Grant flashed a glance at the girl, read the +mockery in her eyes and took his cue from her:</p> + +<p>“I believe I have seen the Colonel subsequently,” +this in heavy seriousness. “Was it +not somewhere in Sonizona?”</p> + +<p>“I do not recall having had that honour.” +Teeth flashed in a nervous smile and the man’s +eyes veiled themselves furtively. He caught the +challenge to battle of wits with the American +and entrenched himself accordingly. Colonel +Urgo found himself at a momentary disadvantage, +however; he did not know what ammunition +his rival would choose. Essaying a diversion, +he addressed the girl in rapid Spanish.</p> + +<p>“Our guest, Señor Hickman, does not understand +Spanish,” Benicia insinuated reproof. +“Yes, it is quite true, as you have judged, that +he is recovering from a wound—a slight misadventure +on the road to Hermosillo. But +pray be seated, my cousin, and let me order +wine and a light luncheon. You are visibly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span> +fatigued.” With a slight bow to Urgo Benicia +arose and crossed the patio to disappear in the +shadows of the arcade.</p> + +<p>Urgo, surprised into an unpleasant situation +by being left alone with the man he had sent +to death, fidgeted with the hasp of his cigarette +case. He made great difficulty of scratching +a match. Grant, watching his every move, +decided to play some of the cards fate had +dealt him.</p> + +<p>“I guessed you were inquiring of Señorita +O’Donoju about my condition, Colonel. You +are charmingly solicitous. I was shot in the +back—bullet through my shoulder. Left for +dead with the other convicts.”</p> + +<p>The little Spaniard let smoke seep through +his nostrils and spread out his hands to say, +“So much for that!” Grant was not to be +denied his advantage:</p> + +<p>“Of course, Colonel Urgo, I remember you +were good enough to be present when I was +arraigned at the jail on a false charge of counterfeiting; +I shall not soon forget the promise +you made then to do what you could for me. +You did—all you possibly could!” Grant’s +smile had become set and one hand resting on +his blanketed knees flexed into a fist, white +across the knuckles.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span></p> + +<p>Urgo expelled a cloud of smoke from his +lungs and showed his teeth in a wolf’s smile.</p> + +<p>“You remember much, señor. Do not fail +to remember, too, you are a criminal under the +laws of Mexico, to be tried on charge of counterfeiting +at the court of Hermosillo.”</p> + +<p>“Yes?” Grant was cool under the other’s +counter. “And will you move to take me to +Hermosillo after what happened—out yonder +on that road through the desert?”</p> + +<p>“I?” Urgo’s shoulders lifted. “I am a +soldier, señor. I have nothing to do with +justice and the courts. But assuredly you will +be taken to Hermosillo and put on trial.”</p> + +<p>The little Spaniard had fully recovered his +poise by now. The uneasy light in his eyes +had yielded to a dangerous flicker of craft. +Suavity of a tiger’s purr lurked in his voice. +Grant mastered the rage which ridged all his +fighting muscles despite the weakness of his +body; this was no moment to be betrayed into +throwing away a trick.</p> + +<p>“But before I go to Hermosillo, Colonel, of +course I shall take precautions to insure that +I get there—that there will be no more <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">ley de +fuga</i> in my case. Don Padraic O’Donoju, who +is an honest man; I shall take him more fully +into my confidence and—”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span></p> + +<p>“Then you have told—?” Urgo bit his lip +in mortification over having fallen into a trap. +Grant’s answering smile was innocent as a +babe’s.</p> + +<p>“I might prefer, Colonel Urgo, to confine +our affair—call it a misunderstanding between +two gentlemen—strictly to yourself and myself, +trusting to take care of myself when I have +recovered my strength. But should I be driven +to seek the assistance of an honest man—”</p> + +<p>Benicia appeared that instant; behind her +was ’Cepcion with a silver tray. Before Colonel +Urgo bobbed to his feet Grant caught a +shaft of cold fury from his eyes which said +that if the girl’s presence forced an armistice +no promise of peace lay at its termination.</p> + +<p>Followed an interlude of quiet comedy. +Grant, content to leave the first move in the +hands of his enemy, eased his shoulder lazily +against the chair back and let his eyes play +over the Spaniard’s face and diminutive figure. +There was an indolent suggestion of probing, +of detached appraisal in the steady scrutiny +which bit into Urgo’s pride. That and dull +rage over the unexplained presence of his rival +here in Benicia’s home kept the little whippet +fidgeting.</p> + +<p>He essayed addressing the girl in her own<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span> +tongue, but again and more pointedly Benicia +reminded him of this breach of courtesy. She +made no effort to conceal the imp of humour +that tugged at the corners of her mouth; this +flickering of a smile and the dancing of her eyes +made farcical the sober decorum of her speech. +Urgo, no fool, was not long realizing he was +being made the butt of his cousin’s sport. +Thin lines of strain began to appear about the +mouth that smiled so smugly; just below his +temples irritated nerves commenced setting +the muscles a-twitching. Grant, who did not +fail to note these reflexes, saw in the figure +opposite a preying animal setting himself for +a spring.</p> + +<p>Urgo and Benicia had been exchanging commonplaces. +Suddenly the man leaned forward +tensely and returned to the forbidden Spanish +in a hurried burst: “For your own good, my +cousin, I must have a few minutes with you +alone. Arrange it, I command you.”</p> + +<p>“You are hardly the one, sweetest cousin, +to be the judge of my good. Nor the one to +command me.” Benicia retorted in the same +tongue. Then, turning with a smile of mock +apology to Grant: “You will excuse Colonel +Urgo his occasional lapse from a tongue that +is difficult for him.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span></p> + +<p>The Spaniard took a final draught of wine +and pushed back from the table where his +luncheon had been spread. As he idly tapped +the corn husk of one of his cigarettes Grant +thought he saw resolution shape itself in the +narrowed eyes. There was a moment’s silence, +then Urgo addressed himself graciously to +Grant:</p> + +<p>“Señor Hickman, perhaps my adorable cousin +here has not found opportunity to tell you +anything of the history of this remarkable +house in the desert where you have found such +agreeable convalescence.”</p> + +<p>“I believe not.” Grant spoke warily, his +senses alert for some pitfall. He shot a warning +glance at Benicia; but the girl, ignorant of +the grim feud between the two, could not read +it understandingly. Colonel Urgo surrounded +his head with a blue cloud and continued:</p> + +<p>“An engaging history, señor. Not a house in +all Sonora with such romance behind it, such—how +do you say it?—such legend, eh? +Though I am distantly of the same family, our +branch cannot claim the distinction that falls +to my cousin, who is the last of the veritable +O’Donoju.</p> + +<p>“Behold her glorious head, Señor Hickman!” +Urgo waved his cigarette to point the burning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span> +of sunlight above Benicia’s brow; his own head +inclined as if in reverence. “There in my fairest +cousin’s so-marvellous hair lies all the legend +and the history of the great family +O’Donoju.”</p> + +<p>The girl, frankly amused at what appeared +a turgid compliment, tossed back her head in +a gust of laughter. But Grant could not join +with her. As from some iceberg veiled in fog +came to him the cold feel of malignity moving +to some unguessed purpose. Was Urgo planning +to strike at him through the girl he +adored? Yet what possible obloquy could he +call up against Benicia, whose soul was unsullied +as the winds of the wastes? Urgo +spoke on:</p> + +<p>“Undoubtedly, my cousin, Señor Hickman +has felt his heart snared by those burning +meshes of yours or he is not a judge of beauty”—gesture +of impatience from Benicia. “So it +is for the benefit of the señor as well as for +your own, fairest cousin, that I recite this legend +of the red hair of the O’Donoju. Strange, +is it not, that all Sonora knows it and has told +the story to its children for a hundred years, +yet you, <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">chiquita</i>”—a wave of the cigarette +toward the girl—“who should be most interested +are the only ignorant one.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span></p> + +<p>“There was in the long ago, señor, a Michael +O’Donohue—what you call of the wild Irish, +who had flaming hair and an untamed spirit. +A king in Spain gave him the whole district of +Altar for his estate, and he came here to the +Garden of Solitude with his Spanish lady and +built him this house where we sit. He was a +man who considered the safety of his soul, so he +built a mission to the glory of the four evangelists +out yonder by the Gulf where the Sand +People needed the comfort of the Mother +Church and—”</p> + +<p>“He lived a life any one of his descendants +might pattern after,” Benicia put in with a +smile carrying a sting. Urgo touched his +breast with delicate fingers and bowed. Then +turning again to Grant:</p> + +<p>“When the Apaches burned that mission, +señor, a pious O’Donoju restored it and the +family, then numerous, endowed that mission +altar with much gold and silver. There was, +too, a great string of pearls—pearls with a +green light, legend says, which the Sand People +brought from the shell beds of the Gulf to show +their piety. You are following me, Señor +Hickman, eh?”</p> + +<p>Grant made no sign. His eyes were upon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span> +Benicia’s face, reading there a slow change. +Now she, too, had begun to feel a nameless +portent stealing over her like the chill from +hidden ice. The wells of her eyes were deeper; +faint colour came and went in her cheeks and +throat. Grant, certain that Urgo was preparing +torture for her under the innocent mask of +narrative, was helpless to intervene; no diversion +short of the work of fists was possible, +and that his weakness denied him.</p> + +<p>“There was of that generation which restored +the mission, señor, a wild youth, true +descendant of the original O’Donoju. He was +known from Mexico City to Tucson as El Rojo—the +Red One—for his hair was the veritable +colour of that which our cousin possesses. And +the devil rode his heart with spurs of fire. +You have never been told of El Rojo, Benicia?”</p> + +<p>The girl made no answer. Her level gaze +was a mute challenge. The little colonel rerolled +one of his eternal cigarettes, lighted it +and drank smoke with a sensuous inhalation.</p> + +<p>“At the feast of the re-dedication El Rojo, +banished from the family, appeared out of +nowhere. Conceive the consternation, señor! +The red head of the devil’s own come to sanctified +ground. This fiery head, so like our Benicia’s,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span> +swooping as a comet into the feasting +place of the family; well might the pious +O’Donojus be fearful.</p> + +<p>“And their fears were not without grounds. +Before El Rojo quit the Mission of the Four +Evangelists he had murdered the priest, his +own uncle, and stolen the rope of pearls from +the sacred image of the Virgin. He rode away +with one of his cousins, a foolish girl of the +Mayortorenas, who was wife to him in the +desert without priest or book.”</p> + +<p>Urgo let his voice trail away as with a tale +finished. His teasing glance lingered on the +faces of his two auditors. Benicia drew a +tremulous breath and forced a smile, as though +she were relaxing from strain. On this cue the +story teller unexpectedly continued:</p> + +<p>“But I hear Señor Hickman ask, ‘What part +has all this ancient legend with Señorita Benicia’s +red hair?’ Patience, señor. We approach +that.</p> + +<p>“Legend says that though El Rojo’s wife +worked upon his heart and brought repentance, +it was too late. He returned to the mission +a year after his double crime to restore the +Virgin’s pearls to the sanctuary. The Apaches +had been there just before him. The priests +were slain and the mission burned. El Rojo<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span> +buried the pearls within the stark walls, hoping +the good God would accept this his acknowledgment +of sin. There the pearls lie to-day +beyond sight of man, for the desert has blotted +out the last remnants of ruins.</p> + +<p>“But the sin of El Rojo was not so easily to +be forgotten in sight of the good God, sweetest +cousin.” Urgo suddenly turned away from +Grant, to whom he had been addressing his +story, and fixed his eyes on Benicia; almost +there was the click of snapping fetters in his +glance. “You bear the mark of it above your +brow like the mark of Cain—his fire-red hair!”</p> + +<p>“Stop!” The girl leaped from her chair, +blazing wrath in every line of her face. “I +shall not listen—”</p> + +<p>“The grandson of El Rojo and his grandson,” +Urgo purred on with his smile of a hunting +cat, “every second generation of the +O’Donoju has one born with the curse of the +red hair to tell all Sonora God does not forget. +And now you, the last of an accursed family, +its great estates gone—its power gone—your +own grandfather with his red hair shot with +Maximilian!—You with the red head—daughter +of a murderer—”</p> + +<p>A hand closed over the collar of the colonel’s +military jacket, gave it a twist, throttling his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span> +speech. Grant had leaped from his seat—a +pain like a bayonet point shot through his +shoulder at the sudden movement—and come +upon the spiteful little slanderer from behind.</p> + +<p>“Gringo assassin!” whistled the little Spaniard, +and his right hand groped backward to a +concealed holster. It fell into a grip too strong +to be broken. Grant was bearing all his weight +on the other’s back, for the instant he was on +his feet he discovered a weakness of his knees +which would not support him. The impulse to +shut off Urgo’s venomous tongue had been +acted upon without calculation; now that he +had committed himself to action the American +realized how heavy was the hazard against +him. One arm useless, all the other muscles +once ready to respond instantly to call for +action now seeming to be palsied. A paralytic +boldly attempting to bell a wildcat; this was +the situation.</p> + +<p>Benicia saw the American’s face over the +squirming Urgo’s shoulder; it wore a strained +grin which hardly served to mask the toll +taken of weakened muscles. She whirled and +ran out of the patio to call aid in the servants’ +quarters.</p> + +<p>Now the hot fire from his wound was spreading +across Grant’s back and down his fighting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span> +arm as he swayed across the patio half supported +on the Spaniard’s back. The frantic +jerkings of Urgo’s pistol arm in Grant’s grip +threatened momentarily to loosen the restraining +fingers; that done, the American’s end +would be speedy.</p> + +<p>Grant found himself near a wall, braced one +foot against it and lunged outward. Down +went both men. Urgo twisted out from under +the heavier body, pinning him, and raised himself +to one knee. Grant saw a tigerish gleam +of triumph in the other’s eyes as his right +hand whipped back to the holster on his hip.</p> + +<p>Some power more rapid than thought moved +the American’s sound arm outward in a wild +sweep which encompassed a giant fuchsia bush +growing in a Chinese tea tub. Over went the +bush just as Urgo fired from the hip, its +branches swishing down over the latter’s head.</p> + +<p>The bullet went wild. Grant, near swooning +from the consuming pain of his wound, scrambled +for his enemy—went up with him when +he found his feet. The revolver had been +knocked from Urgo’s hand by the avalanche +of greenery; a sideways kick of Grant’s foot +sent it spinning into the fountain.</p> + +<p>Now the wounded man sent a final summons +to his last reservoir of strength. Slowly—slowly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span> +he forced the little Spaniard out of +the patio and down the long corridor toward +the front door of the house. When Benicia +came running with two husky Indians they +found Grant with his man waiting before +the heavy oaken portal. One of the Indians +swung back the door. Grant gave a supreme +heave and the colonel went sprawling like a +straddle bug out onto the gravel.</p> + +<p>The great door slammed behind him.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII</a><br /> +<small>DESERT SECRETS</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">Consider now the interesting activities +of Doc Stooder, fallen angel of Æsculapius:</p> + +<p>On a March evening of sunset splendour the +worthy doctor descended from the single combination +coach and baggage car which a suffering +locomotive drags once daily from a junction +point on the transcontinental line south +through naked battalions of mountains to the +ghost town of Cuprico. Once Cuprico was +famous; once when primitive steam shovels +nibbled at solid mountains of copper up back +of Main Street Cuprico roared with a life that +was dizzy and vaunted itself the rip-roarin’est +copper camp in all the Southwest. But the +glory that was Cuprico passed, even as that +of Rome; to-day they tell of the town that +when its mayor fell dead on the post office steps +his body remained undiscovered for three days.</p> + +<p>No romantic craving for revisiting scenes of +his youth had prompted the Doc to his journey +Cupricoward—he had been its premier stud<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span> +player in a day of glory fifteen years before. +No, a far more material urge had ended a period +of fretting in Arizora by shunting him on +a westward-wending train. For a week Bim +Bagley, his partner in a secret enterprise, had +been absent on his quest of El Doctor Coyote +Belly and the New York engineer, Bim’s +friend, who was reported to be wounded and +under the care of the Papago medicine man. +Ten days prior to Bagley’s excursion into +Sonora had been frittered away in groping for +information concerning this vanished engineer. +All precious time wasted!</p> + +<p>It has, perhaps, become apparent that Doc +Stooder was not enthusiastic over the inclusion +of Grant Hickman, the Easterner, in his golden +scheme of treasure trove in desert sands. The +stubborn refusal of Bim Bagley to move without +this fellow Hickman’s being party to the +enterprise had prevented a start on the expedition +for the Mission of the Four Evangelists +six weeks before. The canny physician—whose +share in the joint endeavour was to be his exclusive +information concerning the whereabouts +of the Lost Mission—possessed in large degree +that sense of divination bestowed upon folk of +the desert which gives their imagination wings +over the horizon of time. Each day of delay<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span> +he read a day to the advantage of Don Padraic +O’Donoju, certain sure as he was that the +master of the desert oasis had come by knowledge +of his own treasure hunt intent through +mysterious desert channels.</p> + +<p>The vision of gold and pearls Doc Stooder +had seen in the depths of raw alcohol on a +night of dreaming in his office had become a +goad. So he came to Cuprico, the ghost town +not seventy miles away from the supposed site +of the buried mission; his intent was to pick +up his Papago informant, who lived midway +between Cuprico and the Border, and, as +Stooder happily phrased his purpose, “give +things a look-see.” If his luck was with him +and he should stumble onto the mission during +this solo game so much the better. Conscience +nor maxims of fair play were any part of the +doctor’s moral anatomy.</p> + +<p>The Doc upon his arrival did not pervade +Cuprico’s centres of evening society—the +Golden Star pool hall and soft drinks emporium +and the back room of Garcia’s drug store—for +reasons sufficiently potent to merit a paragraph +of explanation.</p> + +<p>Years before, when he was a resident of the +mining camp and had money, Doc Stooder took +unto himself a Mexican wife who had a passion<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span> +for diamonds. Mrs. Apolinaria Stooder had +a way with her which seemed to win deep into +the atrophied heart of her spouse, and he +showered her with the stones of her choice. +No woman from Yuma to Tucson—so legend +still recites—“packed so much ice” as Doc +Stooder’s. Then in an epidemic of typhoid, +which the Doc combated with the heroism of +a saint, Apolinaria died.</p> + +<p>Alone and with his own hands her sorrowing +widower gave her sepulchre somewhere +amid the gaunt hills surrounding the town. +He let it become known after the interment +that since Apolinaria loved her diamonds so +he had buried them with her, adding for good +measure of gossip that he figured their total +value at round $5000. Immediately and for +several years thereafter all the prospectors +for fifty miles about gave up their search for +dip and strike and prospected for Mrs. Apolinaria +Stooder. Failing to find so much as a +“colour” of her diamonds, the profession drew +the conclusion that Doc Stooder was a monumental +liar. His popularity waned accordingly.</p> + +<p>Shadows were lengthening when Stooder +tooled a rented desert skimmer out of Cuprico’s +single garage and brought it to a stop +before the general store. Into the wagon box<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span> +behind the seat went his bed roll, brought from +Arizora and containing certain glassware +whose contents were more precious to their +owner than life itself; boxes of grocery staples; +extra cans of oil and gasoline. Two big canteens +on the running board were filled. Plugs +of chewing tobacco heavy and broad as slate +shingles were stowed in the tool box. In all +this preparation the doctor’s long legs calipered +themselves from counter to car with +remarkable efficiency.</p> + +<p>“Goin’ on a little prospecting trip?” the +storekeeper had volunteered when the Doc first +commenced his stowing. No answer.</p> + +<p>“Figgerin’ on a little <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">pasear</i> down ’crost the +Line?” hopefully from that worthy as he +helped noose the tarpaulin over the dunnage. +The Doc’s head was buried above the ears +among the engine’s naked cylinders and he professed +not to hear. When Stooder was seated +at the wheel and the storekeeper had the edge +of the final pail of water over the radiator vent +he feebly flung out his last grappling hook:</p> + +<p>“Reckon you might be selling Bibles to the +Papagoes.”</p> + +<p>“Come here, friend,” sternly from the +doctor. “Now I give you the way inside if +you’ll promise to keep it mum.” The storekeeper<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span> +hopped around to lean his ear over the +wheel in gleeful anticipation.</p> + +<p>“I’m a-goin’ south from here to give a Chinese +lady a lesson on the ocarina. So long!”</p> + +<p>When the Doc skittered down the brief +Main Street and out onto the thread of grey +caliche that was the road to the mysterious +south all of the west was a-roil with the final +palette scrapings of the sunset—umber, pale +lemon and, high above the mountains standing +black as obsidian, cirrus clouds dyed a fugitive +cherry. Ahead showed the ragged gate into +the valley of El Infiernillo—the Little Hell—place +of bleak distances between mountain +ranges bare as sheet iron; place of unimaginable +thirst when summer sun hurls reflected +heat back from burning walls. Beyond El +Infiernillo just a hint of peaks like fretwork +spires marked destination for the doctor; there +at the foot of the Growler range and where +the Desert of Altar washes across the imaginary +line between two nations, lay the land of +his desire. Somewhere on the Road of the +Dead Men passing through that savage waste +perchance a nubbin of weathered ’dobe wall +lifted a few inches above the sand to mark +treasure of gold and pearls below; maybe +naught but a charred timber end concealed by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span> +a patch of greasewood and crying a secret to +the ears of the searcher.</p> + +<p>Gold and pearls—pearls and gold! The +Doc’s rapt eye caught the colours of sacred +treasure in the dyes of the sunset and read +them for a portent of success.</p> + +<p>“Me, I’m a-goin’ just slosh around in +wealth! Doc Stooder, the man with the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">dinero</i>—that’s +me!” The gaunt head behind the +wheel of the desert skimmer was tilted back +and A. Stooder, M.D., carolled his expectations +at the new stars. Then he reined in his gas +snorter long enough to fumble with his bed +roll in the wagon box. Out came a square +bottle of fluid fire, such as passes currency with +the international bootleggers in the Southwest. +The Doc drank heartily to the promise spread +across the western heavens. The bottle was +tucked in a handy coat pocket for future +reference.</p> + +<p>Nights in the desert along the Line are +psychic. They are not of the world of arc +lights, elevated trains and the winking jewels of +white ways. In that world man has so completely +surrounded himself with the tinsels of +his own making, the noise of his own multiplied +squeakings and chatterings, that he comes to accept +the vault above him as under the care of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span> +the city parks department. His little tent of +night is no higher than the towers of his skyscrapers. +But in the desert it is different.</p> + +<p>Emptiness of day is increased an hundred +fold at dark because it leaps up to lose its +frontiers behind the stars. Silence of the day +is intensified to such a degree that the inner +ear catches a humming of supernal machinery +in the heavens. The eye measures perspectives +between the near and far planets. And the +soul of man hearkens to strange voices; sighings +from the pale mouths of the desert scrubs, +born to a servitude of thirst; whisperings +passed from mountain top to mountain top; +faint stirrings of the earth relaxed from the +torsion of the sun.</p> + +<p>Doc Stooder, desert familiar as he was, +never could blunt his senses to this emptiness of +night in the wastes. It awed him, left him +itching under half-perceived conceptions of the +infinite. Hence the bottle carried handily in +his pocket. From time to time as he careered +over the road faintly marked by the feeble +sparks of his headlights he braked down to +have a swig. The more he felt lifted above +sombre unrealities about him the greater his +impulse to break into song. The iron gate of +El Infiernillo heard his roundelay.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span></p> + +<p>Miles unreeled behind him. Dim shapes of +mountains dissolved to new contours and were +left behind. The Doc came to a sharp eastward +turning of the road but kept straight +ahead out over the untracked flats to southward. +He knew his way; the packed sand gave +him as good traction as the road. Down and +down into the unpeopled wilderness of sandhills +and buttes bored the twin sparks of the +little car.</p> + +<p>Another shift of direction and the Doc was +teetering up a narrow cañon between high +mountain walls. His course was a dry wash, +boulder strewn. Only instinct of a desert driver +saved him from piling up on some rough block +of detritus. Sand traps forced him to shove +the engine into low, and the snarling of the +exhaust was multiplied from the cañon walls.</p> + +<p>A light flickered far ahead. A dog barked. +The car wallowed and snuffled out of the wash +to come to a halt before several silhouettes of +huts. People, roused from sleep by the car’s +clamour, stood ringed about in curiosity; one +held a torch of reeds.</p> + +<p>“Ho, Guadalupe!” Doc Stooder bellowed. +A solid looking Indian with a mat of tousled +iron-grey hair stood out under the torch light, +grinning a welcome to “El Doctor.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span></p> + +<p>“Show me a place to sleep,” commanded the +visitor, and the one called Guadalupe carried +the doctor’s bed-roll to his own hut, of which +squaw and children were speedily dispossessed. +So the good doctor from Arizora slept the rest +of the night in the rancheria of the Sand +People, last remnant of that Papago family +for which the Mission of the Four Evangelists +was reared to save souls. In five hours the +Doc had covered by gasoline what it would +have cost Guadalupe of the Sand People as +many days in painful plodding.</p> + +<p>Morning saw the rancheria in a ferment of +excitement and Doc Stooder viciously tyrannical +in reaction from his accustomed alcoholic +night. Guadalupe found himself in a difficult +position. Once in a moment of gratitude when +the white doctor had snatched his squaw from +the tortures of asthma—the miracle had +occurred in Guadalupe’s summer camp near +Arizora—the Indian had babbled his knowledge +of the buried mission, its treasure. But he +had not counted upon this unexpected appearance +of the white doctor, demanding to be led +to the place of wealth. It is common with all +the Southwestern Indians to believe naught +but ill luck can follow any revelation to a white +man of the desert’s hidden gold; some say the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span> +early padres, themselves consistent hoarders, +inculcated this lesson. With the eyes of his +fellow villagers disapprovingly upon him, +Guadalupe first attempted evasion.</p> + +<p>Stooder in an ominous quiet heard him +through. Then without a word he opened a +small medicine chest he carried in his bed-roll +and took therefrom two tightly folded pieces +of paper—blue and white. While Guadalupe +and the rest watched, round-eyed, the doctor +made quick passes with each bit of paper over +the mouth of a small water <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">olla</i>. The surface +of the water sizzed and boiled.</p> + +<p>Guadalupe, two shades whiter, babbled his +willingness to go at once to the place where the +mission lay hidden.</p> + +<p>“Prime cathartic for the mind,” grunted +the Doc, and he tuned his engine for the trip.</p> + +<p>They were off down the cañon and into the +yellow basin of El Infiernillo. Guadalupe, riding +for the first time in the white man’s smell-wagon, +gripped his seat with the delicious fear +of a child on a merry-go-round. He watched +the movements of the doctor’s foot on the +gear-shift, marvelling that the beast concealed +in pipes and rods answered each downward +thrust with a roar. Earth spun under him as +if Elder Brother himself, master of all created<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span> +things, had a hold on it and were pulling it all +one way.</p> + +<p>Down and down into the untracked miles of +Altar. A single iron post on a hill marking +the Line. The sierra of Pinacate cinder-red +in the south for a beacon. Right and left sheet +iron ranges with stipples of rust where the +<i lang="es" xml:lang="es">camisa</i> grew. Mirage quivering into nothingness +just as its false waters were ready to be +parted by the car’s wheels.</p> + +<p>They came upon an east-and-west track in +the sand—the Road of the Dead Men—and +turned westward upon it. Away off to the +north and east a spiral dust cloud walked +across the wastes along the skirts of the mountains. +Guadalupe pointed to it with an ejaculation +in his own tongue. A sign—a sign! +There was the place of the mission!</p> + +<p>The Doc felt his internals quiver in expectation. +Prickles of excitement played in fingers +that gripped the wheel. Automatically +he began to hum an ancient bar-room ditty.</p> + +<p>The Papago indicated where he should turn +off the road in the direction of a great gap +in the mountains, into which the desert flowed +as a sea. Here the mesquite lifted from its +crouch and flourished in a five-foot growth—true +index of hidden waters. The car made<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span> +hard going, what with brittle twigs that caught +at its tires and the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">cholla</i> creeping like a spined +snake to threaten punctures. At his guide’s +word Doc Stooder stopped. Both scrambled +out.</p> + +<p>Before moving a step the Doc must have a +ceremonial drink, a preliminary he did not deem +necessary to share with Guadalupe. The man’s +big hands trembled as he raised the bottle to +his lips; his eyes were shining with gold lust.</p> + +<p>Guadalupe stood for several minutes slowly +swinging his head from landmark to landmark, +his eyes following calculated lines through the +scrub. Then he commenced a slow pacing +through the close-set aisles of the greasewood +and cactus, bearing in a wide circle. He peered +into the core of each shrub, kicked at every +naked stub of root and branch appearing above +the surface. The Doc, cursing and humming +alternately, was right at his shoulder.</p> + +<p>An hour passed—two. The sun, now high, +burned mercilessly. Still Guadalupe pursued +a narrowing circle through the scrub. Of a +sudden the Indian gurgled and dropped to his +knees beside a salt-bush. He whipped out his +knife and began hacking at the tough stubs of +branches near the soil. The Doc, slavering in +his excitement, dropped beside him and looked<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span> +into the heart of the salt-bush. He saw nothing +but a rounded slab of rock.</p> + +<p>Guadalupe finished his knife work and started +to dig with his hands. Terrier-like he pawed a +hole away from what Stooder had taken for a +rock. The smooth black surface began to curve +outward in a form too symmetrical for nature’s +work; it was rounded and gradually flaring.</p> + +<p>Guadalupe dug on. Blood pounded in the +Doc’s ears. Snatches of song trickled from +his lips.</p> + +<p>Suddenly patience exploded. Stooder pushed +the Papago to his haunches and threw his own +body full length into the hole dug. His arms +embraced a flaring shape of metal. His eyes +fell upon faint ridges and lines, like lettering. +He spat upon the spot and rubbed it clean of +clinging soil.</p> + +<p class="noic"><span class="smcap">Gloria Dei et Mund——<br /> +Phillipus Rex<br /> +Anno Dom.——XXIV</span></p> + +<p>“The bell! The mission bell!” screamed +the Doc.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII</a><br /> +<small>CROSSCURRENTS</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">An hour after the sun had set on the day of +Colonel Urgo’s humiliation at the Casa +O’Donoju, Quelele tooled his car into the avenue +of palms at the end of the long return journey +from Magdalena, on the railroad. With him +were his master, Don Padraic, and an American +stranger, Bim Bagley of Arizora.</p> + +<p>Fate had played capriciously with Bim. +When he set out from Arizora on the quest of +his pal Grant Hickman it was only on the bare +report that the man was seriously wounded and +under the care of El Doctor Coyote Belly at +Babinioqui, south of the Line. Near the end +of his journey his car had wrecked itself beyond +repair hard by Magdalena; a mule had been +requisitioned to carry him over the mountains +to the home of the medicine man; once there he +was as far from the end of his quest as ever.</p> + +<p>For grey old Coyote Belly lied unblinkingly. +He knew nothing of a wounded man. Persuasion +of words nor the chink of silver dollars<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span> +availed to budge him from a trust he conceived +to be joined between himself and the +master of the Casa O’Donoju.</p> + +<p>The hours following the scene in the patio +and the sudden gust of action concluding the +visit of Hamilcar Urgo had been trying ones +for Grant. Spent as he was by the struggle with +the Spaniard, he had suffered himself to be +half-carried to his room by the Indian servants. +Benicia, accompanying him to the door, had +permitted her hand to rest in his at farewell; +a clasp tried to tell what the storm in her soul +denied speech. The girl’s face was etched by +suffering; sacrificed pride and a shadow of +some deep fear lay heavy in her eyes and the +drawn lines about her mouth. The wound made +by her spiteful suitor was deeper than Grant +could conceive.</p> + +<p>Alone on his bed he conned over the tale +Urgo had told. Unfamiliar as he was with the +Latin temperament, the belief of the romance +peoples in the very reality of inherited curse +and whips of Nemesis pursuing innocent generations, +yet the raw tragedy of the story fired +his imagination. He tried to put himself in +the place of the girl he loved with all her pride +of race and family; to feel with her the stripes +of scorn the despicable Urgo had laid on. El<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span> +Rojo’s desecration of the mission sanctuary by +an act of blood; his flight into the desert with +the pearls of the Virgin and a girl, “who was +wife to him without priest or book”; the blotting +of the mission from sight of man; all this +cycle of tragedy of the dim past linked to a +gloriously vital creature of the present by the +chance colour of her hair. The thing was monstrously +absurd! And yet—</p> + +<p>A knock at the door and Don Padraic entered. +He turned to beckon some one behind him. In +the candlelight Grant saw the head of a giant +stoop to avoid the lintel.</p> + +<p>“Bim Bagley!”</p> + +<p>The desert man crossed to the bed by a single +wide step and threw both arms about Grant +in a bear hug.</p> + +<p>“You dam’d old snoozer. You dam’d old +snoozer!” was all Bim could give in greeting. +Don Padraic stepped outside and closed the +door on the reunion. Bim let his friend’s body +lightly down on the pillows and sat back to +grin into Grant’s eyes.</p> + +<p>“I sure been burnin’ the ground all over +North Sonora on your trail,” he rumbled. +“You’re the original little Mexican jumping +bean.”</p> + +<p>“Jumped right into a flock of trouble, old<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span> +side partner, with more right beyond the front +line waiting for me. The reserves seem to have +come up just the right time.” Grant gave his +pal’s great paw a squeeze. Bim roared assurance:</p> + +<p>“Reserves got all bogged down through failure +in liaison—just like the days of the Big +Show. But they’re with you now from hell to +breakfast, young fellah; an’ I think I know the +name of the outfit we got to trim. Name’s +Hamilcar Urgo, huh?” His buoyant spirit was +wine to Grant; the very animal force of him +seemed to fill the old room.</p> + +<p>“Ran acrost that li’l sidewinder this afternoon +when the old Don was bringing me up here +from Magdalena. Just our two cars on the +road. He pulls up when we’re makin’ to pass +him—face on him just as pleasant as a polecat’s. +Your friend the Don passes the time of +day courteous as you please.</p> + +<p>“‘I had the honour to visit your daughter +this day,’ whinnies this Urgo gazabo; of course +he speaks in Spanish, which is nuts for me. +‘And I discover she is entertaining a convict +who escaped from a chain gang.’” Bim +grinned. “I take it that convict is my li’l +friend from Noo Yawk.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span></p> + +<p>Grant nodded. The other wagged his head +in a grotesque mockery of grief.</p> + +<p>“‘My daughter and I are entertaining an +American gentleman who was wounded on the +Hermosillo road,’ your Don answers, civil +enough. ‘While he is a guest in our house we +naturally ask no questions.’</p> + +<p>“‘Then,’ snaps this Urgo boy, ‘I must inform +you that for harbouring an escaped criminal +you are responsible before the law. The +rurales will visit your house and it is for me +to say whether they take you as well as the +gringo convict.’”</p> + +<p>Grant started. Here was a phase of the situation +he had not guessed: that his courteous +host might be made to suffer for Urgo’s rage +and jealousy.</p> + +<p>Eagerly, “What did Don Padraic say to +that?”</p> + +<p>“He says something to the effect that the +laws of hospitality were above any this-here +Urgo might care to dig up, the same I call +being mighty white of your Don Whosis with +the Irish twist to his name.” Bim broke off +to shoot a quizzical look into his friend’s eyes. +“Say, brother, what you been doin’ to this +little black-an’-tan stingin’ lizard to make him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span> +ride your trail so hard? You a tenderfoot an’ +riding your herd across the fence line of the +biggest little man in the whole Sonora government!”</p> + +<p>Grant grinned childishly. “Well, I threw +him out of the front door here this afternoon +for one thing and—”</p> + +<p>Admiration beamed from every wind wrinkle +about the Arizonan’s eyes. “Sho! You did +that? Now I call that steppin’ some for a man +with a bullet through him. I thought from the +gen’ral slant to Señor Urgo’s manner when he +met up with us some one’d been working on his +frame somewhere. He just sweat T.N.T. But +why did you crawl him?”</p> + +<p>“He insulted Señorita O’Donoju,” was +Grant’s answer. Bim lowered the lid of one +eye owlishly and his gaunt face was pulled +down to a comic aspect of concern.</p> + +<p>“Uh-huh; now I begin to get the drift. Old +Doc Stooder was right when he says there’s +the shoo-shoo of a skirt somewheres in your +big disappearing act. Boy—boy! I had you +figgered for the orig’nal old hermit coyote who +travels the meat trail alone. No wonder li’l +Urgo’s all coiled up for the strike, you aimin’ +to run him out on his girl.”</p> + +<p>Before Grant could head off his friend on a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span> +topic that brought sudden embarrassment to +him ’Cepcion and a second servant entered with +a spread table. Bim tucked pillows under his +friend’s shoulders with clumsy tenderness, +then in mellow candlelight they ate and talked. +Both were bursting with questions to be +asked, but Bim claimed the right of priority +by virtue of his ten days’ blind search through +the country south of the Line. At his demand +Grant gave him the whole story of his feud +with Colonel Urgo, from the meeting at El +Paso down to the afternoon’s events in the +patio. Lively play of sympathies about the +Arizonan’s features followed the narrative of +the dreadful march in the chain gang and +Grant’s burst for freedom under the rifles of +the rurales. The little his friend left unsaid +Bim was shrewd enough to supply; he guessed +the story of Grant’s thraldom under the witchery +of the desert girl and found it good.</p> + +<p>When the man on the pillows began recital +of what had occurred just a few hours before—Urgo’s +savage assault on a girl’s pride through +the story of El Rojo’s impiety—the big man +by the bed stiffened in intensified interest. He +heard Grant through with scarce concealed impatience.</p> + +<p>“But, man, that was the Mission of the Four<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span> +Evangelists Urgo was telling of!” explosively +from Bim. Grant nodded confirmation.</p> + +<p>“Why, that’s the Doc’s big proposition—our +proposition!”</p> + +<p>Grant looked his puzzlement. The other’s +excitement swirled him on:</p> + +<p>“That proves what the Doc’s Papago told +him. Pearls buried there. An’ gold—lots of +gold, the Papago says. I had a sneaking hunch +all the time it might be one of Stooder’s wild +dreams, but this story proves we’re on the +right track.”</p> + +<p>“Do you mean—?”</p> + +<p>“Sure! That’s what I brought you out from +the East for—to help us uncover this Lost +Mission, as folks in Arizona call it. Doc Stooder’s +such a cagey old monkey he wouldn’t let +me put on paper just what I wanted you to +whack in on. Now you got it all—the pure +quill. Isn’t it a whale of a proposition!”</p> + +<p>Though Grant’s surface perception had +grasped the full import of his friend’s words +some sub-strata of mind, or of heart, stubbornly +refused to be convinced that he had +heard aright. He groped for words:</p> + +<p>“You say you brought me out here to help +you uncover pearls and gold that belong to the +Church?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span></p> + +<p>“Why not?” A subtle note of pugnacity in +the other’s speech. “The stuff’s been lyin’ +buried for a hundred an’ fifty years more or +less. The priests’ve never lifted a finger to +find it, though slews of prospectors have rooted +round trying to uncover this cache.”</p> + +<p>“But the old O’Donojus built this church and +endowed it with that very treasure you want +to dig for,” Grant persisted. “What about +their rights?”</p> + +<p>He did not hear Bim’s arguments. Instead +he was conning over the story of the bane of +the house of O’Donoju. Before his eyes was +the face of the girl he loved, as he had last +seen it, deeply graven with tragedy.</p> + +<p>Grant’s hand went out in a comrade’s clasp. +“Bim, old man, count me out on this thing. I +couldn’t consider it for a minute.”</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV</a><br /> +<small>REVELATION</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">“Don Padraic’s compliments, and he +awaits the pleasure of his guests’ company +in the music room if the sick señor feels +able.” It was ’Cepcion’s soft patois that interrupted +Bim Bagley’s explosion of pained surprise +in mid-flight. Grant gave him a smile +which interpreted the diversion as something to +his friend’s advantage and, leaning on Bim’s +shoulder, followed the servant to the great +room in the centre of the house.</p> + +<p>A fire burned in the cavernous fireplace, for +spring nights in Altar have a chill; candles in +dull silver wall sconces tempered the red light. +The vast room was so peopled with dancing +shadows from the antique furnishings that the +tall man in white and the girl who advanced +to greet the guests appeared to be moving in +a company of hooded monks.</p> + +<p>“’Nicia, Señor Bagley, the friend of our +friend.” Don Padraic bowed to Bim, who +crooked his lank body with surprising grace.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span></p> + +<p>“And I am a friend of you two,” came Bim’s +forthright answer, “since you have treated +Grant Hickman so kindly. He is the salt of the +earth.”</p> + +<p>Don Padraic indicated seats before the andirons. +Benicia chose a low settle by the side +of the great winged chair where her father +seated himself. Grant saw shadows beneath +her eyes where the firelight played upon her +features, almost waxen in uncertain light. The +glint of copper in the piled-up mass of her hair +was like summer lightning in clouds. Their +eyes met, and Grant was disappointed in the +hope he might still find the soul of the girl revealed +there as it had been that afternoon in the +unguarded moment when Benicia gave him +wordless thanks. He guessed she had told +Don Padraic of the incident in the patio and +that what had passed between father and daughter +thereafter had been a drain on the emotions +of both.</p> + +<p>Don Padraic turned to Grant with more than +perfunctory concern in speech and glance. +“Your health, señor? I fear that certain events +of the day, of which my daughter has told me—”</p> + +<p>“Please!” Grant was quick to interrupt. “I +am feeling fit as I could be, thanks to the careful +nursing I have had in your house.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span></p> + +<p>The thing that had been left unspoken by +both weighed like an unlaid spirit on the silence +that followed. Each of the four before the fire +had little thought save for the chapter of circumstance +left unconcluded by one who had +departed the Garden a few hours before, swollen +with the venom of outraged pride. It was +Don Padraic who brushed aside reserve:</p> + +<p>“Señor Hickman, I may speak before your +friend, who must share your confidence. He +will pardon my bringing personal affairs before +him. I can not postpone my thanks—my +very sincere thanks—for what you did this afternoon. +My daughter was defenceless.”</p> + +<p>“And I—” Benicia began, but Grant quickly +put in:</p> + +<p>“Will you not consider that I was really +serving my own private ends—a score to be +evened between Colonel Urgo and myself?”</p> + +<p>Bim covered a reminiscent grin with a broad +palm as Grant hurried on, eager to withhold +from the girl opportunity to speak her thanks.</p> + +<p>“When I was brought here I thought it best +to keep silent on the matter of my own private +grudge against this man. But now that it appears +we all have common cause against him +I think I may speak. Urgo himself was responsible +for my being shot.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span></p> + +<p>He saw Benicia’s eyes grow wide, read the +surprise that parted her lips in a breathed exclamation. +He thought he saw, too, just the +flash of something no eyes but his own could +understand, and he was glad. Briefly he +sketched the incident of the gambling palace +in Sonizona, his encounter with Urgo in the +office of the jail, the march with the chain +gang.</p> + +<p>“And so,” Grant concluded, “Colonel Urgo +found a dead man come to life when he saw +me in the patio to-day. When Señorita O’Donoju +was out of hearing for a moment I could +not resist a shot which left our friend guessing +whether or not I had told you, señor, how I +came by my wound.”</p> + +<p>“Ah, yes,” from Benicia in a hushed voice. +“I knew the minute I returned there had been +something between you. Urgo was like a cornered +animal.”</p> + +<p>“And so he turned on you,” Grant could +not help saying. “If only I could have guessed +beforehand his attack—”</p> + +<p>Again silence fell. Grant was alive to the +play of unspoken thought between father and +daughter; these two alone in the immensity of +the desert and facing unsupported the craft +of an implacable enemy. He sensed the battle<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span> +between their pride and their desperate need +for an ally: the one impulse dictating that what +was the secret affair of the House of O’Donoju +must remain strictly its own secret, the other +moving them to confide in him, who unwittingly +had been drawn into the struggle. Gladly +would he have offered himself as a champion; +but he must await their initiative. Suddenly +Grant recalled what Bim had told him of Urgo’s +threat at the meeting with Don Padraic on the +desert road: how the head of the Casa O’Donoju +would be held responsible for harbouring +an escaped convict. There was no blinking his +duty in this direction.</p> + +<p>“My friend tells me, Don Padraic, that Colonel +Urgo threatens your arrest as well as my +own; that you will be held responsible for concealing +a fugitive from justice. That cannot +be, of course. To-morrow, if Quelele can take +Bagley and myself in the car—”</p> + +<p>“No!” Benicia’s denial came peremptorily +and with a hint of passion which gave Grant a +sting of surprise. “No, señor, we do not turn +wounded men into the desert—particularly a +friend who has served us as you have done.”</p> + +<p>Again Grant saw in the firelit pools of her +eyes just an instant’s revelation of depths he +yearned to plumb—the aspect of a beginning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span> +love hardly knowing itself as such. He scarcely +heard the voice of Don Padraic seconding his +daughter’s protest.</p> + +<p>“The hospitality of the Casa O’Donoju,” he +was saying, “can hardly recognize such silly +threats. Colonel Urgo’s hope was that we +would send you back over the Road of the Dead +Men to Caborca or Magdalena where, naturally, +you would be made a prisoner. Please dismiss +from your mind any idea of our permitting ourselves +to play into this man’s hands.”</p> + +<p>Bim Bagley ventured to break his silence: +“Grant here and I have important business together +up over the Line. We ought to be moving +soon’s we can.” The white-haired don +turned to Bim with a gracious spreading of the +hands.</p> + +<p>“When Señor Hickman feels able to make +the journey Quelele will take him and yourself, +Señor Bagley, to westward. There is a way +through El Infiernillo up to the Arizona town +of Cuprico. By so going you will avoid any +trap Urgo might lay. But you will not hurry +Señor Hickman’s going”—Don Padraic interjected +reservation—“and you, Señor Bagley, +surely can remain with us until then.”</p> + +<p>The direct Bagley, finding himself thwarted +by the don’s suavity, sent a sheepish grin<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span> +Grant’s way in token of his defeat and maintained +silence. Don Padraic, to dismiss the subject +his reticence had reluctantly introduced, +struck a gong to summon a servant. Soon a +decanter of sherry was glowing golden in the +firelight and cigarettes were burning. The +master of the Casa O’Donoju artfully led Bim +into talk of cattle, always currency of conversation +in the Southwest. Grant drew his chair +closer to Benicia’s.</p> + +<p>“You startled me with that ‘No’ of yours to +my proposal to leave the Garden of Solitude at +once,” he said with a boldness he did not wholly +feel. “Being a little deaf, I am not sure I +heard all the reasons you gave why I should +not go.”</p> + +<p>“What you failed to hear me say my father +supplied,” the girl quickly parried, giving him +her steady gaze. He was not to be so easily +side-tracked. What had begun in boldness +swept him on in passionate sincerity:</p> + +<p>“There are many excellent reasons why I +should be somewhere else than here this time +to-morrow night; but there is one very compelling +reason why I welcome every added hour +here in the Garden. May I tell you that reason?”</p> + +<p>“If you think I should know.” The words<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span> +came simply. He, looking down into the hint +of features the firelight grudgingly gave him, +saw there the frank camaraderie of a candid +spirit: the soul that was Benicia O’Donoju, unsullied +of artifice or the vain trickeries of the +woman desired. “If you think I should know”—call +of comrade to comrade. The desert girl +scorning subtleties and inventions; knowing +what her words would prompt yet wishing them +to be said.</p> + +<p>“It is that I love you, Benicia, and that I +cannot leave you, loving you so, when I know +you are in danger.” Grant gave her his heart’s +pledge in simple directness. Though the girl +was not unprepared for his avowal, the call in +his words, elemental as the sweep of precious +rain over the thirsting desert, set quivering +chords of her being never before stirred. He +saw the trembling of her lips; her curving +lashes trembled and were jewelled with little +drops. She turned her gaze into the fire for a +long minute. Grant heard vaguely the voice of +Bim Bagley expounding some theme of cattle +ticks. His heart was on the rack.</p> + +<p>“Grant—good friend—” Her voice broke, +then valiantly found itself. “You heard from +Urgo the story of our house—of the Red One +and his crime against God—”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span></p> + +<p>“The hound!” he muttered. Benicia groped +on:</p> + +<p>“My father—no one ever told me that story +because—because—” Grant saw one hand +steal up to touch with a gesture almost abhorrent +the low wave of red over her brow—“I bear +the sign, you see.”</p> + +<p>He put out his hand to stay her, for the +dregs of suffering were working a slow torture +upon her; the face of the girl he loved had become +like some sculptor’s study of the spirit of +fatalism. He could not check her.</p> + +<p>“My father when he returned to-day and I +told him—my father said the story was true +as Urgo told it. Once in every second generation—this +sign of El Rojo, murderer and violator +of the sanctuary—”</p> + +<p>“But, Benicia, surely you don’t believe this +fairy story!” Grant packed into his low words +all the willing of a spirit fighting for precious +possession. He felt that every word the girl +spoke was pushing her farther from him.</p> + +<p>“Ah, Grant, we desert people believe easily +because the truth is not hidden. It <em>is</em> true; my +good grey father knew that I knew it to be true +and did not seek to deceive me when I asked +him. The O’Donoju with this”—again the +shrinking touch of fingers to the dull-burning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span> +stripe on her forehead—“cannot give love, for +with love goes unhappiness—and death.”</p> + +<p>She broke off suddenly, rose and hurried into +the shadows beyond the range of firelight. +Grant heard a door latch at the far end of the +room click to.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV</a><br /> +<small>WHAT HAPPENED IN THE NIGHT</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">Somewhere in the darkness of the ancient +house a deep-toned bell tolled the hour +of two. The sound came to Grant, broad awake +in his room, as if from a great distance—tocsin +strokes against the bowl of the desert sky. +Four times in his sleepless vigil he had heard +that bell measuring night watches, and each +successive hour struck seemed the period to a +century.</p> + +<p>He had gone to bed with a heavy ache following +his words with Benicia and her abrupt termination +of his pleading. On his first review +of the girl’s abnegation of the love she could +not conceal the whole thing had seemed fantastic, +almost childish in its essence of witch-bane +and belief in blighting curse. How could this +virile creature of a fine and cultured mind conceive +herself the heritor of a weight of guilt +carried down from some ancestor in the dim +past? There was the superstition of the evil +eye among ignorant peasants of the Latin countries, +to be sure; but for a girl of Benicia’s intelligence<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span> +to be enslaved by such mumbo-jumbo +as Urgo had voiced—ridiculous!</p> + +<p>Such was Grant’s first review. Weighed +from every angle and conceding the girl he +loved every mitigation of jangled nerves, nevertheless +the man of the cities could find naught +but lamentable folly in it all. The first striking +of the distant bell found him rebellious.</p> + +<p>From where he lay he could look through a +grated window up to the heavens: a square of +dappled infinity. Insensibly his eyes began +singling out the stars, measuring the gulf between +this and that steady-burning point of +light. Somewhere outside a desert owl timed +the pulse of the night with an insistent call, +unvarying, unwearying. The man on the bed +found himself tallying the blood beats to his +brain by this ghostly metronome. Beat—beat!—passing +seconds of mortality for the man +Grant Hickman. Beat—beat!—How puny a +thing, how inconsequential the life of a man +when calipered by the time measure of those +burning suns up yonder!</p> + +<p>He rallied himself, for such drifting into the +subjective was a new and puzzling experience +for a practical man. But minute by minute the +spirit of the desert, which is the spirit of chaos +become ponderable, stole over him, chaining his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span> +imagination to things felt but not seen of men. +A chill of the untoward and the unreal swept +over him. He seemed to be braced nervously +for some blow out of the void. His imagination +played with a dim figure, the shape of El Rojo +of the red hair riding—riding through the dark +on his eternal mission of damnation.</p> + +<p>The clock struck three and at the instant of +the third stroke a shadow like a bat’s wing flitted +across the bars of the window through +which the eyes of the wakeful man had been +roaming. A sharp tinkle of steel on stone split +the silence of the chamber. Grant was galvanized +into a leap from the bed. He stood +shaking. Silence. Silence absolute as the +grave after that single sharp ring of steel on +stone.</p> + +<p>He looked up at the window where the flitting +passage of the bat’s wing had showed. Just +the clear-burning stars there. The dim recesses +of the room revealed no bulk of an intruder. +Was this but the trick of overwrought nerves?</p> + +<p>Grant fumbled for his matches and brought +a light to the candle wick. By the waxing yellow +glow he peered round the chamber. A +flicker of white reflection caught his eye and +he almost leaped to a spot on the floor directly +beneath the window.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span></p> + +<p>A dagger lay there. It was that curiously +wrought affair of dulled silver haft and double-edged +blade which he had noted before as part +of the rosette of ancient knives and short +swords clamped against the high wainscoting +above the window for a wall decoration—the +weapons Don Padraic had pointed to with the +pride of a collector that first day the wounded +guest was brought in from the desert.</p> + +<p>But how could this dagger have slipped from +its sheath with no hand to disturb it? Grant +stooped to pick it up.</p> + +<p>He had the haft in his grip for a quarter-second, +then dropped the thing and leaped back +as if from an asp. Something gummed the +palm of his hand. Something showed dull +black against the dim flicker of the blade. With +a gasp he knelt and brought the candle closer.</p> + +<p>Blood there on the blade! Blood on his +hand!</p> + +<p>He stood frozen while the pumping of his +heart volleyed thunder against his ear drums. +Murder cried aloud from that stained thing of +silver and steel on the floor. Somewhere in this +rambling old pile—somewhere in the silence a +swift stroke that had snuffed out a life, and then +the murderer, fleeing, had flung this weapon +through the window. He had flung it almost<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span> +at the feet of the only one in the whole house +who was not sleeping.</p> + +<p>Alarm! He must give the alarm while yet +the murderer was near the scene! Spur to action +followed swiftly upon Grant’s momentary +numbness. He threw a dressing robe over him +and ran through the door of his chamber giving +onto the arcade about the patio. Just over the +low balustrade lay the little jungle of flowering +things, and on the opposite side, he remembered, +hung the great Javanese gong Benicia used to +summon the servants to the patio. Grant +leaped the low balustrade and stumbled crashing +through the geraniums and giant fuchsias +toward the dim moon of metal he saw in the +shadows of an arch.</p> + +<p>He came to the gong, groped for the padded +mace hanging over it. The patio roared with +its released thunders.</p> + +<p>Muffled shouts. Banging of doors. Lights. +A white figure came blundering through the arcade; +it was Bim Bagley.</p> + +<p>“Some one’s been murdered!” Grant greeted +him. “A dagger—through my window!”</p> + +<p>Came others—servants with blankets clutched +around them. Bim directed them to run to the +great door in the outer wall and catch any +skulker they might find in the gardens beyond<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span> +the house. Only dimly aware himself of something +untoward, the big man could give no more +specific directions.</p> + +<p>Then Benicia, bare-footed, her hair fallen +down over a blue robe she drew together across +her breast. Grant started towards her.</p> + +<p>“Where is father?” she cried in a woman’s +divination, and Grant noted Don Padraic’s absence. +He saw the girl make a quick step for +a closed door behind her. Unreasoned instinct +prompted him to put himself before the door, +denying her.</p> + +<p>“No; let me,” he commanded. She made a +swaying step towards Grant but was met by +the door swiftly closing in her face. Inside the +chamber, he turned the key in the lock and +struck a match to grope for a candle wick.</p> + +<p>In the pallid flicker he saw the figure of Don +Padraic on his high bed. A dagger wound was +in his breast.</p> + +<p>And the girl outside the locked door stood +very still. Her eyes, wide with horror, were +fixed upon the spot where she had seen Grant +put his hand in pushing open the door.</p> + +<p>Three small smears of blood there.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI</a><br /> +<small>ACCUSATION</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">Grant was stunned. The vision of the figure +with the fine patrician face there on +the bed—in the breast the savage mark of violence—seemed +but a part with the disordered +fancies of recent hours. Beating of Benicia’s +hands on the locked door and the faint sound +of her calls aroused him. He stepped to the +bedside and felt for a pulse, listened for a +breath. There was none.</p> + +<p>Murder had been done swiftly and surely—and +done with the ancient dagger from the +weapon cluster on the wall of his own room. In +the stunning discovery he had just made Grant +did not find any grim correlation between these +two circumstances. He pulled up a coverlet to +conceal ugly stains, then stepped to the door +and unlocked it.</p> + +<p>Benicia was waiting there. The eyes meeting +his were blazing horror. Almost Grant read in +them unthinkable accusation. He put out his +hands to support her, for she was swaying in +her effort over the doorstep.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span></p> + +<p>“No—no!” Benicia shuddered and drew +away from him as though he were a man +unclean. Mystified, Grant stepped aside to +let her pass. He saw her run to the side of the +high bed and kneel there. Her hands went out +blindly to grope for the still features on the +pillow. They played uncertainly over them, +then rested on the heavy mane of hair. Her +fingers repeated little smoothing gestures. A +breathless faltering of love phrases in the Spanish +came from her lips. Grant, seeing that the +girl retained mastery over herself, tiptoed from +the chamber; it was not meet that he should +be witness to a soul’s acceptance of the bitter +fact of death.</p> + +<p>He blundered into Bim coming back to the +patio from his excursion at the head of servants +beyond the great front door and told him what +had happened; of the dagger dropped through +the window and the murder. The big Arizonan +reared back as if roweled.</p> + +<p>“My God, man, that leaves the girl alone +here in this jumping-off place!—With that +snake Urgo in the offing. Boy, it’s up to us to +help her out!”</p> + +<p>Grant gripped his pal’s hand with a low, “I +knew I could count on you, old scout.”</p> + +<p>The dry patter of sandals came down the arcade<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span> +from a knot of lights where some of the +servants had gathered in indecision waiting to +be given orders. Grant recognized ’Cepcion in +the mountainous figure approaching and was recalled +to the necessities of the moment.</p> + +<p>“Tell her, Bim, what has happened and send +her to her mistress. Then we must get out men +to circle the Garden and prevent any person’s +getting away.”</p> + +<p>Bagley strode to meet the major domo and +rattled swift Spanish at her. The waddling Indian +woman quivered and lifted her fat arms +above her head. A dreadful wavering cry +came from her lips. Instantly the cry was +taken up by the servants at the far end of the +patio—a bone-chilling, animal noise which +climbed slowly to the highest register and ended +in a yelp. At the sound Grant’s blood went +cold. This Indian death howl was the cry of +the desert kind, calling the despair of creatures +chained to a land of drought and ever-present +death.</p> + +<p>To escape it he went with Bim out of the +great door to the unwalled spaces where the +avenue of palms stood sentinels against the +night. Beyond the bridge over the oasis stream +lay the clutter of huts that was the Papago village, +a fief under the overlordship of the manor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span> +house. Not a light showed among the thirty +or forty beehive shapes when the two men +started to walk under the palms; but suddenly +a cry arose from the midst of the village answering +that coming down the night wind from +the mourners in the great house. Rumour of +death had outstripped the two who walked.</p> + +<p>The single cry from the village instantly +grew in volume. Treble voices of squaws lifted +the abomination of noise to the saw edge of a +screech; men’s harsher notes rumbled and +boomed intolerably. All the night was made +bedlam.</p> + +<p>Lights were winking through the chinks of +the jacals when Grant and Bim came to the +outskirts of the village. There was confusion +of forms skittering about from hut to hut. Bim +seized upon one man and demanded to know the +whereabouts of Quelele, head man of the village. +The big Indian soon stood before them +with a gesture of hand to breast indicating they +were to command him.</p> + +<p>“Somebody has killed your master,” Bim +told him. “Get out men on horses to circle the +Garden and go out along the road both ways. +Cover every foot and bring in anybody you +may find.”</p> + +<p>Quelele sped with hoarse shouts down the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span> +village’s single street; a dozen men joined him +in a race for the corrals.</p> + +<p>“There’s no way for the murderer to get +out and live except along the road,” was Bim’s +comment as they turned to retrace their steps +to the house. “If he took to the mountains +even with a horse he couldn’t last a day; they’re +straight up and down.”</p> + +<p>They had not gone fifty yards from the Papago +village when a new sound punctuated the +death cry, now settled to a monotonous chant +promising hours’ duration. It was the <i>bum-bum-bum</i> +of the water-drum—gigantic gourds +floated, cut side down, in a tub of water and +drubbed with sticks. That noise was accompanied +by the locust-like slither and rattle of +the rasping sticks, another primitive tempo-setting +instrument of the Southwestern natives.</p> + +<p>The death howl began to catch its measure by +the boom and screak of these two instruments. +A noise to beat against the inside of men’s +skulls and set the bone of them in rhythm. +Savage as the peaks of Altar, unremitting as +the drive of wind-blown sand against granite.</p> + +<p><em>Bum-chut-chut-chut!</em> Sob of a land in chains.</p> + +<p>“Oh, tell them to cut it!” Grant’s frayed +nerves cried out protest. The other merely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span> +gave a wave of his hand comprehending resignation.</p> + +<p>“Might as well tell the wind to stop. This’ll +keep up for three days—this ding-dong business. +It’s custom, old son.”</p> + +<p>As they drew near to the house of death +again Grant caught his mind harking back to +that moment when he had come from Don Padraic’s +chamber to confront the girl’s wild eyes—eyes +with almost the unthinkable look of accusation +in them. That aspect of her eyes +dumbfounded him, left him groping for an explanation.</p> + +<p>Once at the house, Grant took his friend to +his chamber and showed him the knife where +it lay on the floor as he had dropped it. The +big Arizonan stooped over with the candle near +the grisly thing—his hawk’s nose and salient +cheekbones were outlined against the candle +flame like the raised head of some emperor on +a Roman coin—and very gingerly he turned the +dagger over.</p> + +<p>“Finger prints here on the haft,” he +grunted.</p> + +<p>“Yes, mine,” Grant put in. “I picked it up +at first without knowing—without reckoning +there might be—” He broke off to pour water<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span> +into the quaint old willow-ware bowl which +stood with its ewer on a stand in a corner, then +he scrubbed his hands vigorously. A great +relief came to him with this act of purification.</p> + +<p>“Yours—yes, and probably somebody +else’s,” Bim was mumbling his thoughts aloud. +He stood erect once more and measured the +height of the barred window over the lintel of +which was fixed the rosette of arms. “Hum. I +simply don’t figger why the man who wanted +to kill the old don came to the outside of this +room, clum up the wall an’ reached in through +those bars there to take one of these old knives. +Can’t see why all that fuss—more particular, +why he snuck back here an’ tossed the knife +through the bars after his bloody work.”</p> + +<p>“Perhaps he wanted it to appear I am the +murderer,” Grant hazarded doubtfully.</p> + +<p>“You!” Bim looked up with a wry smile. +“Why should you want to kill off that fine old +man?—What motive?”</p> + +<p>“What motive for anybody here in the house +or in the Papago village outside for that matter?” +Grant voiced his perplexity. “Don Padraic +was the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">padrone</i> of every Indian from the +Gulf to Arizora. From what his daughter tells +me there’s not a Papago on the place here who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span> +wouldn’t gladly have died in his place. The +whole thing’s too deep for me.”</p> + +<p>They left the dim chamber with its relic of +violence still lying on the floor and walked out +into the perfumed patio. It was the hour when +first heralds of dawn were coursing across the +sky. Grant looked up to the dimming stars and +read there the same message that had come to +him the hours before swift stroke of tragedy: +the fragility of that spider web man spins into +the gulf of infinite time. And the oneness of +this unlimned stretch of vacancy called the +Desert of Altar with that ethereal desert of +stars. How infinitesimal in the face of either +the soul of man, its hopes!</p> + +<p>A great sense of impotence weighed down on +Grant. His thoughts dwelt with the girl he +loved, sore stricken by this cowardly blow in the +dark, bereft of one who had been soul of her +soul. Now, the last of her name, alone in this +bleak wilderness with none to fend for her +against the wiles of Urgo except the child-like +Indians: what a situation for Benicia to face! +The man yearned to go to where she knelt alone +with her dead, to take her in his arms and give +her pledge of his love and protection. Yet +that was not meet. The gulf of Benicia’s grief +denied him.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span></p> + +<p>Bim brought Grant out of his reverie with, +“It’s my hunch we won’t have to look far to +find the man behind this bad business.”</p> + +<p>“You mean—?”</p> + +<p>“That same—Hamilcar Urgo,” was Bim’s +positive assertion. Grant objected:</p> + +<p>“But you passed him well on the way to Magdalena +this afternoon. It’s not likely he’d risk +coming back in his car to attempt porch-climbing +and murder. That’s not in his line.”</p> + +<p>“Sure not! But one of these Indians around +here who knows the lay of the house—somebody +who savvyed, for instance, about those old +knives on your wall—a hundred silver pesos +from Urgo’s pocket—”</p> + +<p>Grant’s mind was in no state to analyze subtleties +of villainy. “I can’t see what Urgo +could possibly gain by killing Don Padraic unless +there’s a great deal behind his relations +with Benicia’s father you and I don’t know.”</p> + +<p>The fat shape of ’Cepcion waddled down the +nearby arcade in the direction of the room +wherein Benicia had locked herself. Bim’s +eyes idly followed her as he pressed his argument:</p> + +<p>“Maybe so—maybe not. But figger the thing +thisaway: Urgo’s dead set on marryin’ this +high-spirited señorita—if you’ll excuse me<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span> +trompin’ on a tender subject, old hoss—an’ he +reckons they’s two folks who don’t encourage +those ideas to the limit—her father and yourself. +Yourself he tries to get on suspicion and +because you riled him on the train like you say. +Now he does for the father an’ counts he has +the girl for the taking, she having no kith or +kin to come up in support, as you might say.”</p> + +<p>The dawn reddened and still the two men in +the patio fruitlessly pursued speculation. A +sudden step crunched the gravel behind them. +Both leaped at the sound, so taut were their +nerves. They turned to see Benicia standing +in the half light with the misty banks of geraniums +for a background. With her were the +giant Papago Quelele and two other Indians. +They carried loops of hair ropes.</p> + +<p>“Señor Hickman”—the girl’s voice was +deadly cold—“Señor Hickman, my servant +’Cepcion has just brought to me the dagger she +found in your room. The dagger is stained +with my father’s blood, señor. There are prints +of fingers on the haft of that dagger, Señor +Hickman.”</p> + +<p>Grant caught the poisonous edge of hatred +in the voice, read the bitter accusation in her +eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, but Benicia +checked him.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span></p> + +<p>“I saw you leave those prints of my father’s +blood on the door of his chamber, señor. Before +my very eyes, señor! Just now when +’Cepcion brings me the dagger she finds in +your room I compare the print of fingers on +its haft with the print on the door. They are +the same. What have you to say, Señor Hickman?”</p> + +<p>“Say!” Bim Bagley’s voice snapped like a +whip lash. “Are you accusing Grant Hickman +here of murder?” Benicia never even cast a +glance at him. She repeated:</p> + +<p>“What have you to say to this, Señor Hickman?” +Grant answered levelly, “Enough already +has been said, Señorita O’Donoju.” Benicia +signalled to Quelele and he advanced with +the ropes.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII</a><br /> +<small>THE ORDEAL</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">With the lithe spring of a cat Bim put himself +between Grant and the advancing Indian. +His face had gone dead white and his +eyes were coals blown upon by the wind of +anger.</p> + +<p>“None of that! Get back there—you!” +Bim’s voice was scarcely audible but his pose +of furious battling on the hair-trigger of +release was sufficiently vocal to awe the Papago +giant into a backward stumble. Then to +Benicia:</p> + +<p>“Young woman, you’re making the mistake +of your life. I’m a’mighty sorry for you, an’ +you are going to be right regretful yourself +when you have time to think.” Grant made a +step forward to lay a checking hand on his +friend’s arm. He would have spoken but the +girl interrupted.</p> + +<p>“My father’s blood on this man’s hands!—the +dagger from the wall of his chamber—” +Of a sudden the last shred of restraint she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span> +had battled to impose upon herself gave way +and a flood came under propulsion of hysteria. +Out fluttered her hands to point the object of +her execration.</p> + +<p>“You—I do not know you! Just a chance +meeting between us and we part. Then fate +brings you to this house wounded—snatched +from death. An escaped convict from a chain +gang—you yourself admitted as much just last +night. With good reason my cousin, Colonel +Urgo, must have caused your arrest. Why +should I not believe you capable of killing my +father? Why not when the signs of his very +blood cry out against you!”</p> + +<p>“Señorita O’Donoju—” Grant’s effort to +check her was fruitless, for she had whirled +upon Bagley: “And you! Unknown to my +father—unknown to me. He brought you here +on your own representation. You said you +were hunting for your friend to whom we had +offered our hospitality. Can you deny that +both of you discovered opportunity here to +kill—and then to rob?”</p> + +<p>The storm that had swept the girl through +this welter of imaginings, illogical, frenetic, +took heavy toll of her physical reserves. Now +she stood trembling, white-faced in the spreading +dawn, pitiful. Her small hands were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span> +clenched into fists across her breast. Flutterings +of uncontrolled nerves made the flesh of +her temples pulsate. Grant, for all the crushing +horror of these moments, felt pity pushing +through the numbness Benicia’s accusation had +wrought. Never had he seen a woman so tortured +by the devils of hysteria; he was appalled. +He spoke to her gently:</p> + +<p>“If you will permit me to go to my room +while you make further investigations I will +answer any questions they may suggest. It +must be plain to you, Señorita O’Donoju, that +I cannot escape from this place.”</p> + +<p>The girl gave him a dazed look as if she +hardly comprehended what he said, then she +slowly nodded and, beckoning the Indians to +follow, she turned and disappeared beyond the +patio’s green. Bim threw an arm over his pal’s +shoulder and accompanied him to his room. At +the door he whirled Grant about with a strong +grip of both his hands and gave him a grin more +eloquent than any sermon on fortitude.</p> + +<p>“When the she-ones get to stampedin’, old +pal, they sure have us helpless men winging. +Now go in there and get a sleep while I take a +look round below your window and elsewheres.”</p> + +<p>Bim’s easy injunction to sleep was not so +easily followed by the man who was a self-appointed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span> +prisoner. On his bed Grant tossed in +a fever of mingled blind speculation and outraged +pride. Strive though he might to palliate +Benicia’s charge against him on the score of +the girl’s complete prostration through the +night’s tragedy, the quick and fiery blood in her +that was inheritance from Spanish forebears, +yet always he came against the same ugly fact: +one whom he loved with all the passion in him +and whose return of love he had dared hope to +win had accused him of murder out of hand.</p> + +<p>Yet how could he prove his innocence? Of a +sudden that thought plumped down on him with +the burst of a high explosive shell.</p> + +<p>Benicia’s accusation had appeared monstrous, +yes. But, look upon the facts through +her eyes—so a curiously impersonal phase of +mind prompted; what were those facts as they +appeared to the girl? A man who was first +a chance acquaintance in a train and then, by +a trick of fate, a guest in the house, rouses the +household at three o’clock in the morning by +sounding an alarm in the patio. He calls +“Murder!” though he does not say who has +been murdered, he has not apparently discovered +the body of Don Padraic in his chamber.</p> + +<p>This man—this waif brought in from the desert—prevents +the daughter’s going in to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span> +room of death until first he has entered that +room and locked the door behind him. He +leaves the marks of his fingers in blood upon +the outside of that door. Then he and his +friend—“call him confederate” was Grant’s +cynical amendment—organize a hue and cry +outside of the house. While this is in progress +a servant finds in the guest’s room a dagger; +instead of being in its usual place amid the +rack of weapons on the wall this dagger lies +on the floor as if hastily thrown there by one +who had no proper time for its concealment. +The dagger is blood stained and on its haft +are the same finger prints as those on the door +of the dead don’s chamber.</p> + +<p>There was the record. How refute it?</p> + +<p>Say that while lying awake he saw a hand +appear at the bars of his window and heard +the tinkle of a knife dropped within? Why, if +he was so vigilant at three o’clock in the morning, +had he not seen that hand of a murderer +steal in to abstract the weapon before the deed? +And whose hand was it? Did not the burden +of proof that it was not his own which took +the dagger from the wall rest solely upon Grant +Hickman?</p> + +<p>Another’s finger prints on that bloodied haft +besides his own? Perhaps. But it needed the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span> +instruments of precision of a detective central +office to juggle with such minutiæ as the whorls +and spirals in a finger print, and they most certainly +were lacking at the Casa O’Donoju. +Graver difficulty still, there were a hundred and +more Indians in the oasis; how gather them all +together and take the prints of their fingers?</p> + +<p>The more his mind roved amid hypotheses +the closer about him seemed drawn the meshes +of circumstance. As the sun of a new day +painted a glory beyond the bars of his window +Grant Hickman felt himself as helpless as that +Tomlinson of the Kipling story who plunged +headlong through the space between all the +suns of infinity.</p> + +<p>He must have slipped into the sleep of exhaustion, +for it was near noon when a knock on +his door roused him. At his bidding ’Cepcion +opened to illustrate a command in Spanish +with a backward jerk of her head. Grant arose +and followed her through a corridor to the patio. +Benicia was standing there in an attitude +of awaiting him, a little beyond her was Bim, +his face wreathed with a heartening smile.</p> + +<p>The girl received him with bleak eyes. “You +will please follow me, señor,” was all she said. +Then she led the way, the two men a step behind +her, out of the still house and down the avenue<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span> +of palms towards the Papago village. From +time to time a turn in the path gave Grant a +glimpse of Benicia’s face. It was a changed +woman he saw.</p> + +<p>Gone was the vital spirit of joy of living +which always gave the girl her character of +Eurydice in khaki; gone, too, that softness of +grain born of happiness undisturbed, of life +amid the elemental things of nature. This +Benicia was a cold fury moving to judgment. +The call of her Spanish blood from centuries +past—call for vengeance and blood-sacrifice—had +possessed her. It was as if some mocking +cartoonist had run a brush over the features +of Innocence in portraiture, giving an upward +twist of cruelty to lips, the glint of blood lust +in eyes.</p> + +<p>They came to the Indian village, all hushed +in anticipation of some prodigy. Only the +frog-croaking of the water drums and the dry +clicking of the rasping sticks betokened a continuance +of the mourning ritual. All the retainers +of the Casa O’Donoju, farmers, cattle +handlers, house servants, men, squaws and +half-naked children, were assembled in the +rudely-defined street that led between rows of +reed and mud-capped huts. Two only were +seated apart: the man who bobbled the drumming<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span> +sticks over the turtle-back halves of the +gourds and an ancient who manipulated the +rasping sticks. On every bronze-black face +showed the strain of awaiting an untoward +event.</p> + +<p>When Benicia appeared some elderly squaws +started afresh the lugubrious death howl, but a +gesture from the girl silenced them. She beckoned +Quelele to her and spoke some rapid words +in the Papago tongue. He in turn passed the +orders to two men, who ran into one of the +nearby huts to reappear staggering under the +weight of a great metal kettle, such as might +be used for soap boiling, carried between them. +Quelele laid two heavy flat stones in the middle +of the street; the kettle carriers deposited their +burden, rim down on the rocks. A space of +two inches or more showed between the kettle +rim and the hard adobe.</p> + +<p>Still the hollow <i>bum-bum-bum</i> of the water-drum, +whisper and cluck of the notched sticks. +A very old man, the skin of whose naked legs +was grey and tough as elephant hide, had attached +ceremonial circlets of dried yucca pods +about his ankles in a cuff extending almost to +the knees. He took his stand by the instrumentalists +and his feet moved in a shuffle in +time to the drum beats. The pods emitted dry<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span> +whispers. The rapt look of a seer was on his +leathern features.</p> + +<p>The kettle in place, Quelele himself went to +a small pen of <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">ocatilla</i> sticks on the outskirts of +the village and brought therefrom a young +rooster. The fowl’s head bobbed nervously and +his small eyes glinted as he was carried on the +big Indian’s arm through the throng. Two +helpers lifted the edge of the soap kettle while +Quelele thrust the cock underneath. A faint +clucking came muffled from the iron prison. +The bird thrust his head out here and there +from beneath the rim, seeking egress.</p> + +<p>Now Benicia took from ’Cepcion something +she had carried wrapped about in a handkerchief +and carried it to the kettle top. She let +fall the handkerchief and with a slight gesture +focused the eyes of all upon the stained dagger. +A sigh like the swish of a scythe in long grass +swept through the crowd as the girl balanced +the knife on the exact top of the dome of fire-smudged +metal. The ancient with the yucca +rattles did a sacrificial step which caused a +sharp alarm like that of the desert sidewinder’s +warning.</p> + +<p>Grant and Bim, still unaware of the significance +of all this preparation, sensed the growing +tensity of emotions all about them. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span> +Papagoes, like all their kind, more than ready +to invest with ritual any untoward incident of +life, saw in the white girl’s preparations—particularly +in the offering of the knife upon this +rude altar—formulæ of an appeal to decision +of powers beyond human comprehension. Perhaps +the elders, remembering tales of ancient +custom, recognized the preliminaries and welcomed +a revival among the unregenerate +younger men of a direct appeal to Elder +Brother. If big Quelele knew better he had kept +his tongue still.</p> + +<p>Benicia’s features had never relaxed their +cold intentness during the preparations. There +was even, to Grant’s troubled scrutiny, some +element of the barbaric there. A look like that +on the stone visage of an Aztec goddess, implacable, +without mortal instincts. She took +her stand by the kettle and spoke rapidly to +the Papagoes, pointing to the knife, then lifting +her finger to mark the place of the sun in the +white sky.</p> + +<p>Abruptly she finished, stooped and touched +one finger to the bottom of the kettle. It came +away blackened by soot. Then she turned to +Grant. “It is the test of God,” she said in a +dulled voice. “My people have used it in times +past when they were perplexed as I am. All<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span> +here including you, Señor Hickman, and you, +Señor Bagley, will endure this test even as I +just have done. Put your fingers to the kettle +and show them to all, blackened. God will speak +through the mouth of the imprisoned cock when +the guilty man touches the iron.”</p> + +<p>Grant gave the girl a steady look, then without +a word he stepped to the blackened dome, +swept the fingers of his right hand across it +and held them aloft. Benicia was looking away +when Grant stepped back beside her; he saw a +convulsive movement of her throat—no other +sign. Then big Bim dared the oracle with an +easy grace. A shuddering intake of breath +from the Indians as each man underwent trial.</p> + +<p>Quelele now gave an order which brought all +the men of the village and great-house into line +of which he was the head. Even the musicians +were replaced by squaws who did not permit +the drubbing and squeaking to diminish. The +faces of all wore the set look of hypnosis—eyes +white and staring, muscles twittering in cheeks, +tongues licking out over dried lips.</p> + +<p><em>Thrut-t-t-t-t!</em> An extra flourish of the rasping +sticks and a thunder of the water drums +as Quelele started the line forward toward the +kettle. The big Indian moved with a mincing +sidewise step reminiscent of some deer-dance of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span> +his people at the festival of <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">sahuaro</i>. His arms +were held rigidly crooked at elbows and fingers +splayed. The great moon face was contorted +into a lolling mask. He sweat with fear.</p> + +<p>Twice the lightning-like bobbing out and back +of the imprisoned cock’s head as Quelele approached. +“Ai-ie!” a squaw screamed in a +frenzy.</p> + +<p>The leader touched the kettle, held up his +blackened finger for those in line behind him to +see, then broke from line and stood at a little +distance from Benicia and the two white men.</p> + +<p>Second in line was the ancient with the yucca +rattles on his legs. Coming to the kettle, he +stood rigid, tilted his old eyes to the blinding +sun. A shiver ran down his body which caused +every dry pod of his anklets to emit a whisper. +He whirled once, dipped and swept a finger +through the soot. “<i lang="es" xml:lang="es">Njo oovik</i> (Bird speaking),” +he cried, and there was foam on his lips.</p> + +<p>But the bird did not speak, and the line came +slowly on. The spell of the weird had Grant +bound. The rational in him tried to prompt +that all this was but a shrewd application of +the new psychological method of crime detection +as utilized by primitive peoples before +ever the science of the mind was thought of;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span> +but his imagination strained to hear the crowing +of the cock when the finger of guilt was +laid upon the iron shell. Mutter of the drums, +shuffle of dancing feet, guttural calls and imprecations: +these things had swept away all +prim gauds and dressings of a mind counting +itself superior and he was swept back to kinship +with the wild, its children. Again the desert +moved to bring him under its subjection.</p> + +<p>“Lookit that fellah!” It was Bim who +gripped Grant’s arm and pointed to the advancing +line. One of the younger bucks had +dodged out of his place and fallen back three +numbers.</p> + +<p>On came the men facing trial by ordeal. +Now and again the imprisoned cock thrust his +head out with snake-like darting, and the individual +who was poised over the kettle hiccoughed +fear. The young man who had dodged +back tried the trick again when he was near +the kettle; but the one behind him held him by +the shoulders and forced him on.</p> + +<p>The dodger came to the place of test, hesitated, +made a downward sweep of his hand +and stumbled past. Big Quelele suddenly +leaped at him and gripped his right hand. No +smudge of soot on the fingers.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span></p> + +<p>“Hai—ee!” Quelele called, and the line stood +still. He wrenched the young man’s hand high +above his head and showed the fingers clean. +“Hai—ee!” chorused fifty voices. Quelele +started to drag the wretch back to the kettle.</p> + +<p>Then his victim went to his knees—to his +face in the dust. He rolled and kicked, screaming. +Still Quelele dragged him nearer the +kettle, his right hand firmly gripped in the vise +of his own two, forefinger extended to take the +print of soot and draw the cock’s crow.</p> + +<p>“I did it! I did it!” the wretched creature +blubbered. Quelele dropped him as if he were +a poisonous lizard. The crowd pushed forward +menacingly. The murderer fumbled in his +trousers pocket and brought out a shining silver +peso, which he threw from him with a gesture +of horror. Quelele picked it up and turned +it over in his palm, his brow heavily knotted. +He passed it to Benicia.</p> + +<p>The girl turned the coin over to the reverse, +whereon the spread eagle grips a snake and a +cactus branch in his talons. A deep knife cut +was scored through the neck of the eagle.</p> + +<p>The wretch in the dust saw she had noted the +mutilation and cried out to her in pleading, +“The sign, mistress! The sign! The soldier-señor +Urgo tells me many months ago when I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span> +receive the sign I shall kill or my brother, who +is in his prison, will be shot!”</p> + +<p>“And he gave you this—” the girl began.</p> + +<p>“Yesterday, mistress. He passes me in his +thunder-wagon and tosses me this peso. ‘Find +the knife in the room of the wounded gringo +señor,’ he commands. ‘Use no other.’”</p> + +<p>Benicia nodded to Quelele, who made a sign +to others. They brought a hair rope and +trussed the murderer hands to feet. His lips +were mute. Stamp of fate was on his grey +features. He knew his punishment: to be taken +to the burning lava fields of Pinacate, where +the dead volcanoes are, there to be left without +gun or canteen; no man would see him again. +Such was the Papago custom decreed for murderers +from beforetime.</p> + +<p>She who had ordained this trial by ordeal +had turned away, once the wretch’s confession +had been heard. The soul of the girl now +stood its own trial in turn; faced by the guilt +of false suspicion, by the wounds wrought of +bitter accusation, it must needs purge itself. +Yes, even though the spirit of Benicia O’Donoju +was not one easily to humble itself. A long +minute she fought with herself and finally +turned gropingly to make her hard penance before +Grant.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span></p> + +<p>Then she saw the figure of the man whose +debtor in honour she was striding with his companion +towards the avenue of palms leading +to the house. The distance between them +seemed suddenly the breadth of the world.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII</a><br /> +<small>THE DESERT INTERVENES</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">That day omniscient will of the desert +moved to point a murderer’s guilt the +same inscrutable power flexed a finger to mould +events some seventy miles away from the Garden +of Solitude where the worthy doctor from +Arizora and his Papago had been nibbling at +a mystery. Though Doc Stooder moved in a +haze of strong waters, though he looked upon +the face of the desert through a golden veil +of his own weaving, yet was he not the least +immune from the law of the waste places. The +Doc walked with God, even as did the pioneer +fathers of the Church; the fact that he did not +admit the companionship had no influence on +the operations of destiny.</p> + +<p>We left Stooder on his knees before the uncovered +bell with its inscription carrying identification. +His excitements, his hysterical grubbings, +soundings and prospectings of the ensuing +twenty-four hours were heroic. After the +uncovering of the bell he had paced off a square<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span> +through the scrub thirty or forty feet each way +and with the corroded cone of metal for a centre; +then the Indian and he had gone on their +hands and knees over every inch of this square. +Result, a single stick of hewn timber whose +fire-blackened end had projected but an inch +above the sand; digging revealed a twenty-foot +beam, dry as a puff-ball and almost ready to +disintegrate.</p> + +<p>That was all: the bell and the uncovered +beam. But that was enough. Doc Stooder +knew that beneath him lay the mission site; +how deeply the blown sands of more than a +century had buried it he could not guess. But +it was here! Here lay the rich core of a legend +that had sent many a man out into the desert +to chase rainbow ends. His—Stooder’s! +A’mighty God! how he’d riffle those pearls +through his fingers—lay ’em all out on a piece +of velvet under some secret lamp and match +’em, pearl with pearl.</p> + +<p>But twenty-four hours in the desert exact +their price; and that price is in measure of +water. The Doc did not drink water so long +as his store of contraband liquor held out; but +the Papago did. Great was the Doc’s rage +and disgust when his companion called him +away from sinking a prospect shaft to point<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span> +the single remaining water container, now much +lighter than it should be. He tested the little +car’s radiator to find that evaporation had left +almost none of the necessary fluid therein. No +use buckin’ fate; if he wanted to get back to +the village of the Sand People on four wheels +he’d have to give the radiator a drink and that +would leave none for himself and the Papago.</p> + +<p>It was near noon of their second day at the +treasure site when the Doc whipped his reluctance +into acceptance of the inevitable. He +made certain preparations. First he copied +into a prescription book the inscription on the +bell; that would do to convince somebody +whose financing of the excavation operations +might have to be invoked. Then he sketched a +map of the vicinity with meticulous care, marking +in the jagged spurs of the nearby mountains +for bearing points and indicating the position +of the bell in reference to a dry wash +which was traced down from a gash in the +mountain wall.</p> + +<p>“Guadalupe, old son, your old friend +Stooder’s goin’ rustle back here with an outfit +right soon an’ dig himself right down to them +pearls. So he’s just a mite p’ticular about this +map.”</p> + +<p>Access of caution prompted the Doc to dismount<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span> +from the car after he’d set the engine +to humming. He ran back with a shovel and +covered the bell with sand; the haggled bush +above it would be a sufficient guide for him and +no significant landmark for the possible prying +stranger. The beam he hid in the wash. +Then they trundled down their own track and +back to the Road of the Dead Men. Doc +Stooder cursed the necessity of automobiles +leaving tracks. Some snoozer amblin’ along +the main road would just’s like as not turn out +to follow these two lines out into nowhere to +see what he could see. Then perhaps—</p> + +<p>Summer had come miraculously to the desert +overnight, as the seasons in Altar have a way +of doing. Yesterday the pink convolvulus of +spring lay in scattered coral patches amid the +scrub and the greasewood was showing its midget +spots of yellow. Now every glistening +clump of <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">cholla</i> was aglow with the blood-red +flowers of its kind; the occasional pillars of +the giant cactus were wreathed each at its top +by fillets of creamy blossoms—grotesque masquerading +of these withered old men of the +wastes. First hint of summer’s heat was +abroad. It came from the west on puffy little +winds like the back-draught from an oil-burning +boiler.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span></p> + +<p>The Doc found himself in a frolicsome mood, +for his night’s potations, predicated on a +dwindling supply, had recklessly drained that +supply but availed to carry him over to another +day with the stars of his dream world still burning. +Hunched low in his seat so that the tip of +his goatee waggled against the rim of the wheel, +with his flopping black hat all grease streaked +pulled low against the sun glare, the tramp physician +chewed tobacco with all the unction of a +care-free conscience and indulged himself in +wandering monologue. Guadalupe’s meagre +stock of Spanish made him anything but a lively +conversationalist, so the Doc was constrained +to carry on a vivid conversation with himself.</p> + +<p>Into what penetralia of reminiscence this +auto-dialogue carried him! Back through the +years—through countless dim valleys of a +Never-Never Land of alcoholic fantasies where +his spirit had been wont to pitch its tent. +Scraps of jest and shreds of song stirred the +ghosts along the Road of the Dead Men.</p> + +<p>No such exuberance from Guadalupe, slave +of the desert. They had not been an hour on +the road when the Papago began to feel a crawling +of the nerves along the spine and the pressure +of invisible fingers across the brow—evil +signs! No less than the mountain sheep or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span> +the road-runner in the scrub could the Papago +interpret the desert’s forerunners of portent. +A feel in the air—hue of the mountain rims—colour +of sunlight against a rock: these things +had their meaning.</p> + +<p>Away off to the northward where a patch of +gypsum showed white as film ice the Indian’s +eye caught the first tangible evidence of trouble +ahead. A dust whirlwind like a gigantic leg in +baggy trousers was wavering across the flats; +the thing possessed volition of its own so surely +did it map its course across a five-mile span in +less than five minutes. Guadalupe nudged his +companion timidly and pointed to it.</p> + +<p>“Uh-huh, old Peg-legged Grandpap,” +chuckled the Doc. “Seen him lots times. Gotta +hole in his peg-leg you can drive a car through +slick’s a whistle—allowin’ you can find the +hole.”</p> + +<p>A half hour later the sun changed colour. +Like the passing of a shutter across a calcium +light: now blinding white, now blood-orange. +Instantaneous.</p> + +<p>Three gusts of sand-laden wind came sweeping +toward them from the west. A long lull, +then the storm.</p> + +<p>It pounced upon them with a sibilant whistle +growing momentarily to a roar which was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span> +engulfing. The little desert skimmer bucked +like a wild colt against the onslaught of the +wind; but when the Doc dropped the engine into +low the car wallowed on in the face of the gale. +The air was thick as flour. Wind-driven sand +had the bite of an emery wheel at high revolution; +it rasped the skin and drove eyelids tight +shut. The two in the car buttoned jackets above +their noses to breathe.</p> + +<p>All the space of the desert was a poisonous +yellow glare. Minute by minute density thickened +until the car’s radiator was hardly visible.</p> + +<p>Then the sturdy engine quit. First a tortured +grinding of clogged cylinders, puny explosions +from the exhaust, a bucking and quivering. +After that sudden stoppage of movement as if +the car had plumped into a stone wall.</p> + +<p>The Doc and Guadalupe tumbled out of the +seat and crawled beneath the car for protection. +A stab of fear shot down through Stooder’s disordered +thoughts—the water! None in the canteens, +for they had drained the last into the +radiator before starting from the treasure +ground. Was there—could the sand have—?</p> + +<p>He inched himself through a new sand drift +below the front axle to where the drain cock +projected below the radiator base. Like a suckling +kid he lifted his lips to the steel teat and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span> +turned the cock. A trickle of heavy mud filled +his mouth with grit, then stopped.</p> + +<p>Radiator a mess of mud—cylinders clogged—feed +pipes all choked and water—gone!</p> + +<p>Doc Stooder pulled his floppy hat over his +face and whimpered the name of God.</p> + +<p>And on the back trail where the bell of the +Lost Mission had been found; over that site +which the Doc had so carefully mapped and +measured the wind scoured and builded—scoured +and builded. Obliterating, changing, +re-creating.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX</a><br /> +<small>THIRST</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">The sun went down before the sand storm +abated. Two men, the one called civilized, +the other a savage, crouched like rabbits in a +covert beneath the body of the little car with a +high sand drift piled up to windward even over +the radiator top. Two mites in the wind-scourged +wilderness of Altar with love o’ life +the leveller that made them kin.</p> + +<p>When the last vagrant wind fury had passed +fell silence almost terrific by contrast with the +uproar of the storm. In place of the slithering +and whistling of driven sand an oppressive stillness, +which seemed dropped from the void of +the stars, now showing. Occasionally the dry +rustle of sand dropping in rivulets from some +desert bush lifting its head after the scourging; +that was all.</p> + +<p>When the two crawled out from beneath their +shelter Guadalupe was for an immediate start +afoot in the direction of the faint pencilings of +red marking the west. But Doc Stooder possessed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span> +an abiding glimmer of faith in the soundness +of the car and insisted on taking stock of +its motive possibilities. A cursory examination +convinced him of the hopelessness of his trust, +for the sand was heaped entirely over the unprotected +engine—desert cars dispense with a +hood because it blankets the engine’s heat—and +he knew that even with water in the radiator +he couldn’t get a kick out of the thing before a +thorough overhauling. This was out of the +question. They must achieve their escape from +the desert’s trap afoot.</p> + +<p>The Papago started on a swinging walk a +little north of west, the Doc following. They +had not gone far when the white man discovered +they were not following the road; each step was +through loose sand which received the foot with +a viscous hold and reluctantly released it. The +Doc snarled a query at his companion: why in +the name of deletion had he quit the Road of the +Dead Men?</p> + +<p>“Not quit—finding him,” came Guadalupe’s +grudging answer. Then Stooder admitted to +himself the possibility that during the time the +little car had pushed on into the storm he had +tooled it off the road. How far he had driven +away from the single track which spans Altar +he could not hazard a guess. Anyway, he knew<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span> +one thing: he was dog tired, and if this mangy +black coyote thought A. Stooder, M.D., was going +to wallow through sand all night without a +sleep he had another think coming.</p> + +<p>Reaction from the excitements of the past two +days added extra weight to the Doc’s already +none-too-light handicap of alcoholic repercussions. +The storm had torn his nerves to tatters; +his mouth was as dry as an old church pew +cushion; each of his legs felt as if they were +dragging an Oregon boot. Stooder’s mind was +too dulled to probe down below these afflictions +and read the real seriousness of his situation; +it dealt only with cogent aches and reluctances.</p> + +<p>“Hey, Guadalupe! We take a sleep right +here.” The Doc halted. Great was his surprise +when he saw the Papago striding on. Hot rage +bubbled to his lips in an explosive Mexican oath.</p> + +<p>“Hey, you lizard-eatin’ mozo, hear me? We +stop here for the big shut-eye!” The Doc +spurred his long legs into a gangling run to +overtake the Indian, who had plodded on unheeding. +All the arrogance of the white man +in his fancied superiority fell with the doctor’s +hand on the Indian’s shoulder. Guadalupe +wrenched free and turned to face him sulkily.</p> + +<p>“Sleep here—to-morrow much sun—no +water. Maybe to-morrow we die here. Walk!”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span> +Guadalupe’s sparse vocabulary of Spanish +words was drained; but the manner of his resuming +the forward hike was sufficiently eloquent. +Guadalupe, born to the desert code and +grown to manhood under the inexorable desert +law, had in mind but a single impulse—to survive. +His mind plumped through the bog of discomforts +wherein Stooder’s was mired to read +clearly the tablets of the desert’s decalogue: ten +commandments in one—live! In extremity +throw over loyalty, discard obligations of oath +or of blood, strip the soul to its elemental selfishness; +but live!</p> + +<p>Guadalupe strode on, still bearing to the north +and the west, and still no road. Stooder, growing +more weary each step, spent his strength +in blind rage at the stubbornness of the Papago. +He conned over various capital operations he +would like to perform with Guadalupe for a +subject. His brain tired of that and began to +nurture the germ of a new thought. Why strain +himself keeping up with that ring-tailed kangaroo +rat who skipped on and on without rest? +Guadalupe left the print of his foot every step +he took; those footprints would point to wherever +Guadalupe might go—and the Papago, of +course, knew the shortest way out of this hellhole—so +why break his own neck? The old Doc<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span> +would take a little snooze and then just follow +the footprints when he felt good and ready to +do so.</p> + +<p>The gangling form crumpled up as if cut off +at the knees. Guadalupe heard a thud, turned +for a half-glance over his shoulder and pushed +steadily on under the stars. It was not in the +Papago’s code to add one ounce to the weight +of circumstance obtruding between himself and +water. In a dozen steps his figure was swallowed +up in the dark.</p> + +<p>Stooder may have allotted to himself only +that minimum of sleep designated as a snooze. +But a high sun pried open his reluctant eyelids. +He sat up and sent a dazed glance around an +unfamiliar world. Mountains tawny and black +with knife-edge water scores down their flanks; +a sea of scrub stretching interminably from +their bases; patches of gypsum and <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">salitre</i> showing +dull white as scars of leprosy here and there +amid the grey-green of the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">camisa</i>. The sky +already was taking on the yellow-white glaze indicative +of imminent heat.</p> + +<p>The Doc arose and shook the sand out of the +creases of his clothing. First definite impression +coming to him was the need of a drink: +his favourite tequila if might be, water in a +pinch. All the nerves in his body twittered<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span> +“Hear—hear!” to the first of the alternatives. +Then, his mind beginning to function along the +line of the night’s impressions, Doc Stooder +read the story of the footprints leading off to +the north and west. There they were: good li’l +signposts; they’d take him to a drink just as +easy!</p> + +<p>Stooder’s renewed strength carried him easily +along the trail the Papago had left. For +an hour, that is; then trouble. For the sand +disappeared under a broad apron of <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">caliche</i>—a +hardpan of baked mineral salts and earth almost +impervious even to the shod hoof of a +horse. It was like a door swung shut on the +trailer—the locked door to some labyrinth beyond. +Here the last firm print of a boot in +the sand, there nothingness. The Doc paused, +looked back over the cup-like shadows marking +the footprint trail he had been following to +take its line of direction, then he pushed ahead +along that line.</p> + +<p>Another hour, and he still was on the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">caliche</i> +outcrop. He stopped to consider. Where in +the name of all the angels was that road—the +Road of the Dead Men? If he’d driven the car +a little south of it during the sand storm, surely +Guadalupe must have cut tangent to it by this +time. And if the road passed over the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">caliche</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span> +flat there’d be wheel marks; that was sure. +Miss that road and miss the Papago’s trail both—why +then old Doc Stooder’d be a goner!</p> + +<p>He tried to follow his own back trail by such +small signs as the scratch of a hobnail against +an embedded rock and a thin print of a sole in +a pocket of dust. A while and he had lost even +that. He stopped and swabbed his streaming +face with a shirtsleeve—he now was carrying +his coat.</p> + +<p>“By the eternal, Stooder, you gotta do something—and +do it dam’d pronto!”</p> + +<p>Once more he turned on his own tracks. Better +go back and find that putrid Papago’s trail +and let the road go to the devil. Whole half +hour wasted a’ready—good half hour, by criminy! +with a drink just that much farther off.</p> + +<p>It was not so easy finding the scored rocks +and the stamp of a heel in pools of dust; not so +easy as the first essay. For the sun was at +meridian now and foreshortened little shadows +to nothingness. Plump! he came to the edge of +the hardpan and into the sandy soil. No tracks +there. Should he bear to right or left in circling +the edge of the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">caliche</i> on his hunt for the +footprints? If he guessed wrong where’d he +be? “Oh, dear God!”</p> + +<p>He turned to the left and resumed his tramp.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span> +Furnace light refracted from the sand seared +into his eyes, which must be always kept downward +peering—spying. His mouth now was dry +as rotted wood. Something alien there kept +bothering him by pressing against the roof of +it. He explored with his fingers and discovered +the alien object to be his tongue, which was +swelling.</p> + +<p>“But my mind’s clear—clear as a bell. Got +a steady mind anyway. Gotta hold onto that +or I’m a gone coon.”</p> + +<p>A slight breeze struck his right arm more +penetratingly than it should. Stooder shifted +his glance to his arm, held crooked.</p> + +<p>“Good God! Coat’s gone!” Dropped somewhere—that +coat in whose pocket was a prescription +book; among its pages the map of the +treasure site. The precious map showing where +lay the bell and the beam! The man whirled +and started on a staggering run along the rim +of the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">caliche</i> he had been travelling.</p> + +<p>“Must find that coat! Don’t find the coat an’ +I lose the pearls an’ the gold—the pearls an’ the +gold!”</p> + +<p>He halted as if shot. Down the wind came to +him the faint tolling of a bell. <i>Dong—dong.</i> +Silvery throb of a swinging bell. Measured, +unhurried; like the sounding of a bell for mass<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span> +of a Sunday morning. The Doc had heard the +bell of San Xavier sending its call across the +alfalfa fields of a Sunday morning, just like +that.</p> + +<p>Even as he strained his ears to drink in the +full miracle of it the sound faded, ceased.</p> + +<p>“I heard it! A bell! No illusion. Mind’s +still clear—still clear!” On he went, his gaunt +legs weaving in wide circles. He came to a +dark patch on the hardpan and strided over it, +unheeding. It was his missing coat, in the +pocket the precious map of the treasure site. +The Doc did not see the coat because again his +ears were drinking in the maddening tolling of +the bell; this time a little clearer down the +wind in his face. An animal cry, half articulate, +burst from his swollen lips:</p> + +<p>“The mission bell! Bell of the Four Evangelists +which I found t’other day! Callin’ me +back!”</p> + +<p>Right over yonder where the mountains +cracked apart to let that arroyo down onto +the plain: that’s where the bell sounded. Yes, +sir, no mistake about it. ’Bout four-five mile, +judgin’ from the sound. Hear what that bell’s +a-callin’? “Gol-l-ld! Gol-l-ld!”</p> + +<p>Doc Stooder, coatless, hatless, the high roach +of his streaked hair fanning in the hot winds,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span> +was stumbling and falling—stumbling and falling +ever forward toward the crack in the mountains. +Light of madness flamed in his eyes; his +great arms clawed forward as if to catch invisible +supports to pull him the faster. Gol-l-ld—Gol-l-ld!</p> + +<p>“Old mind’s still clear, else couldn’t hear that +mission bell so plain— Gotta keep old mind +clear—”</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>The way of the desert god, always beyond +man’s comprehending, nevertheless sometimes +approaches so close to the human scheme of +thought and motive as to permit of analogy with +it. When the director of destinies in the dry +wastes seems to make a travesty of such a sacrosanct +quality as human justice we may be moved +to call the impulse satiric for want of a better +name. Satiric, then, that reversal of the decree +of death passed upon the Papago youth who +confessed to murder before the overturned +kettle at the Casa O’Donoju; more than satiric +the moving finger now directing his path +through the dead lands up to a union with the +crazed doctor’s.</p> + +<p>According to ancient custom the Indian retainers +of the O’Donoju had taken the youth—his +baptismal name was Ygnacio—down to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span> +crater land of the Pinacate and there turned +him loose without water to wander for a while +and finally to die miserably. Other murderers +had been so treated and never had been seen +of men again. But the desert god who slays +so peremptorily knew that Ygnacio had done the +bidding to murder to save his brother from +death—had killed without malice and only as +the price of redemption for one of his blood. +Wherefore the arbiter of life and death flung +life at Ygnacio.</p> + +<p>When he was athirst almost to the point of +exhaustion he found a knob-like growth a scant +two inches above the surface of the ground, recognized +it for a promise of succour and with the +last ounce of his strength dug the deep sand all +about it. The end of his effort gave to him a +strange and rare vegetable reservoir like an +elongated radish, which miraculously holds +scant moisture of summer rains the year round. +“Root-of-the-sands” the Sonorans have named +it. In the desolation between the Pinacate and +the Gulf even the coyotes have the wisdom to +dig for this precious sustainer of life.</p> + +<p>Ygnacio devoured the whole of the root and +was revived. He found others, which he tied +into a bundle to carry over his shoulders. Food +and drink had come to him from the hand of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span> +Elder Brother himself when it was decreed by +man he should have neither. Wherefore love +o’ life once more burned strong in the man. He +set his course northward, travelling only by +night when the heat had given place to the +biting desert chill, keeping his precious roots +buried in the sand while he slept by day so that +evaporation would not rob him of the promise +of escape from inferno. Straight as an arrow +northward where, beyond the Line, lay tribes +of Papagoes who never had heard of Don +Padraic O’Donoju nor of a murderer named +Ygnacio.</p> + +<p>So it happened that on the third night of his +march, when Ygnacio had paused to munch a +segment of the sustaining root, came to his ears +the sound of a voice, faintly and from a great +distance. It might be a human voice, though +there was a burred and thickened quality to it +almost like a burro’s bray.</p> + +<p>The Indian boldly followed where his ears +gave direction. “Gol’—gol’—gol’” was the +monotonous iteration, sounding almost like the +muffled tapping of a clapper against metal. He +walked a mile—so clearly do sounds carry in +the desert night—and suddenly came upon the +figure of a white man. Naked above the waist,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span> +wisp of a goatee tilted at the stars, arms rigid +at sides and with fingers widespread, the spectre +of a white man chanted the single word, +“Gold.”</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX</a><br /> +<small>THE COMING OF EL DOCTOR</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">The sandstorm that overwhelmed Stooder +and his guide on the Road of the Dead +Men brought the mighty voice of the desert to +the Garden of Solitude in requiem for the soul +of Don Padraic O’Donoju. Savage elegy of a +life lived in communion with the spirit of the +wild.</p> + +<p>There was no priest to order the funeral rites +of the Church. Though a day’s journey in +Quelele’s car to Caborca and back would have +fetched a minister of religion, Benicia was determined +word of her father’s death should not +reach the man who provoked it sooner than the +courses of rumour allowed. The Caborca priest +posting out to the Casa O’Donoju would set +tongues wagging instantly and the seal of silence +imposed by miles of unpeopled space between +the casa and the nearest community +would be broken. “The service of the heart will +be just as acceptable to my father’s spirit,” was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span> +Benicia’s simple justification to herself of +breach of custom.</p> + +<p>So in the heat haze preceding the storm six +Indians bore the body of their master through +fields of alfalfa behind the white house down to +a grove of shimmering alamo trees which +fringed a reservoir of the oasis’ precious water. +Here beneath the white and silver-green tent of +the trees was sanctified ground. Here lay the +dust of lords and ladies of a desert principality +who, for their spans of years, had been inheritors +of the desert’s cruelties and benefices.</p> + +<p>Grant fell in with the file of dark-skinned +mourners that followed behind the body of Don +Padraic, with him Bagley. They did this unbidden +of Benicia. Neither had seen her since +the dramatic climax of the ordeal of the kettle +the day before; no word had come from her. +Yet each had felt the need to succour the bereaved +girl in her great loneliness, forgetting +unhappy events of the dawn in the patio.</p> + +<p>For Grant there had been a brief struggle +with pride and outraged sensibilities—blessedly +brief because a broader tolerance and finer manhood +had rallied to overthrow the narrower +view of selfishness. In the light of the terrific +blow that had been dealt the girl he loved—all +the more crushing because of its suddenness—the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span> +savage reaction of a high spirit +seemed to him not so to be wondered at. Nor +Benicia’s silence since. In these dark hours +there was no place in her heart for aught but +unassuaged grief.</p> + +<p>Arrived at the alamo grove, all the Indians +of the village and household massed themselves +a little way apart from freshly turned sod, their +glistening black heads dappled by the silhouettes +of the leaves, their eyes restless and awestruck. +Benicia, garbed in dull black which +made the whiteness of her face and uncovered +glory of her hair the more striking, stood at +the head of the rude housing fashioned by the +Papagoes for her beloved clay; her calm was +absolute as that of the iron peaks beyond the +oasis green. In her hand was a wreath the +Indian women had woven—scarlet flowers of +the cactus with feathery acacia intertwined.</p> + +<p>In a steady voice the girl read a Latin prayer +while the Indians knelt. Then with a lingering +touch she laid the scarlet and olive-green wreath +upon the pall and watched the glowing spot of +colour slowly sink from sight.</p> + +<p>Suddenly the recessional: the sand storm with +its clamour of incoherent desert tongues crying +hidden tragedies, its blinding sheets of sand. +When the first blast struck the group turning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span> +away from the grave Grant stepped quickly to +Benicia’s side, drew her arm protectingly +through his and bent his body to shield her +from the myriad chisels of the driven sand. +He fought for footing for them both.</p> + +<p>At his touch Benicia turned dry eyes to his. +Swiftly she read the love there—love triumphing +over the hurt she had so lately given him. +On the instant tears filmed the hard brightness +of the orbs Grant looked down upon. Her lips +moved in some halting speech of contrition, but +the savage blast snatched away the sound of +her words. In the softening of those eyes and +the weight of her body clinging nervelessly to +him the man was told the whole story of a +girl’s amends for hasty and unconsidered action. +All her iron will which had carried her +head high through hours of grief suddenly had +sped from her, leaving her groping and dependent.</p> + +<p>An exalted sense of guardianship came to +Grant—swept over him like a cool breeze to a +fever patient. Almost it was a feeling of holy +trust bestowed. At last—at last the woman he +loved had battled against bitter fate beyond the +limit of her endurance and was turning to him +to fend for her. Unheeding the twinges his +wound gave him, he bent to the blast with his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span> +precious burden. Oh, if only he could be given +liberty to sweep her into his arms, to call her +name in the piety of supreme love, snatch her +away from the incubus of dread which had settled +upon her so relentlessly.</p> + +<p>He would not wait for such opportunity—so +the thought came lancing at him in a lightning +flash of resolution; he would create it! No +longer stand idly by with footless compassion +while the girl of his heart remained in chains +of a fixed idea too strong for her to break. He +himself would free her of those shackles even +if he had to fight her fiery will to do it!</p> + +<p>While the storm furiously grappled with the +palms outside, Bim and Grant sat in the dark +music room of the great-house. With hushed +voices the two friends conned over the situation +facing them and the girl now left alone +in the immensity of Altar. Not a simple exigency. +On the one hand promptings of delicacy +and the dictates of custom ruled against their +remaining longer in the Casa O’Donoju. Opposed +to this was the alternative of leaving +Benicia to become a prey to the schemes of +Colonel Urgo—a girl fighting single-handed the +craft of an implacable enemy. Without a protector +other than the Indians of the oasis—and +they had the minds of children—the girl<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span> +could not combat this unscrupulous wooer for +long. What then?</p> + +<p>Bim finally summed the situation: “It comes +down to this, old side-pardner; either you’ve +got to persuade her to come back to Arizona +with us mighty pronto or to marry you, putting +it bald-headed like.”</p> + +<p>Grant’s mind leaped to grapple with the flash +of an idea—the one that had come to him when +he and the girl breasted the sandstorm. Resolution +crystallized on the instant. He silently +quizzed his friend with an appraising eye.</p> + +<p>“And if I can’t persuade her?” he queried +softly.</p> + +<p>“Then you simply trundle yourself away +from here and up across the Line, knowing that, +sure as shootin’, this wolf Urgo’ll be down on +her just as soon as he makes up his mind to +move.” The big fellow in the firelight stressed +inevitability in his dictum. Grant gave him a +cryptic smile.</p> + +<p>“Suppose I take her anyway if she will not +be persuaded?” Bim jerked back his head and +surveyed his friend with startlement which +speedily softened to a wide grin. Out went his +hand to clap Grant’s knee.</p> + +<p>“Now you’re tootin’!”</p> + +<p>Once he had put his resolution into words, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span> +idea back-fired to scorch Grant with sudden comprehension +of what would be involved in such a +cavalierly course of action. Actually to steal +Benicia O’Donoju! Take her by force from the +home which now was hers to rule. Play the +very part which he feared Colonel Urgo would +pursue if left alone. He scarcely heard Bim +rumbling his enthusiasms.</p> + +<p>“That’s the pure quill!” the desert man was +saying. “That’s the Grant Hickman who +brought me in on his back from a section of +Heinie’s first line trench with H.E.’s droppin’ +round like gumdrops from a baby’s torn candy +bag.” He checked himself to launch the question, +“Have you got a line on the girl yet? I +mean, do you think she fancies you enough to +be glad—after you’ve run away with her?”</p> + +<p>“I think so,” was Grant’s simple answer.</p> + +<p>“Fine business! The sooner the quicker, +young fellah. You an’ her an’ me in the li’l old +desert skimmer. ’Cause I gotta get back to +Arizora. The old Doc’ll think I’ve thrown him +down an’, besides, my own business—”</p> + +<p>“You mean you’ll go ahead with Stooder on +his scheme for finding the Lost Mission?” Grant +cut in impetuously. The big love he bore Bagley +jealously demanded an answer. The other +reached over to lay a hand on Grant’s shoulder.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span></p> + +<p>“No. That’s all off, old son. I couldn’t go +prying around after lost treasure that belongs +to the girl’s family—more particular not after +what you’ve told me I couldn’t. I promise you +I’ll head off the Doc if I have to get him thrown +in the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">carcel</i> for boot-legging.”</p> + +<p>The storm wore itself to a final sibilant whisper +among the tortured palms and the two continued +to sit in the room of shadows with the +complexities of the daring plan of kidnapping +still bulking large. ’Cepcion tip-toed in to announce +to Bim in an awed whisper, “El Doctor +Coyote Belly from Babinioqui has come through +the storm. Shall I disturb the mistress?”</p> + +<p>Bim translated to Grant with a questioning +tilt of the eyebrows. Grant started at the name +of the medicine man who had been his rescuer +and to whom he owed his life. What could have +brought this old Indian away across the expanse +of Altar to drop out of the storm upon the house +of mourning?</p> + +<p>“Tell her we will see him first,” Grant directed, +moved as he was by some half-sensed instinct +of protection for Benicia; evil tidings—if +such the Indian bore—must be kept from her. +The two rose and followed the waddling Indian +woman through the halls to the servants’ quarters +in the rear. Under a pepper tree in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span> +fading dusk they found the squat figure of Coyote +Belly. The Indian doffed his hat at the +approach of the white men and stood smiling; +there was in his pose something of quiet dignity +which bent little before the centuries-old +convention of the white man’s superiority. His +beady eyes, well larded in creasy folds, possessed +intelligence beyond the ordinary.</p> + +<p>Grant impulsively took El Doctor’s hand in +a strong grip carrying the thanks he could not +speak. El Doctor’s eyes mirrored recognition +and he bobbed his head with a broadening smile.</p> + +<p>“Tell him, Bim, I could not thank him for +all he did for me. He is the chap that found +me on the Hermosillo road, you know, and pulled +me through.” Bim put the words in Spanish +and El Doctor bobbed his head again. Then the +Indian began haltingly in the same tongue. +Bim’s eyes narrowed to a quizzical pucker as he +progressed. Grant could read a spreading wonder +in his friend’s features.</p> + +<p>“The old bird says he came here because he +knew Don Padraic had been killed,” Bim repeated. +“Says he knew it the night of the +murder because a star fell in the west and he +saw the picture of the old Don with a knife in +his heart—saw it in the water of his medicine +<i lang="es" xml:lang="es">olla</i>. So he’s been on the trail ever since because<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span> +he’s got to tell Señorita Benicia something.”</p> + +<p>“But,” Grant began incredulously. Bim +caught him up with, “Sure, I know it sounds +phoney. But I know, too, the old boy’s telling +the truth. These desert people have a way of +seeing across space—reading signs and such—which +leaves us white folks gasping— How’s +that?” He turned an ear to El Doctor, who +had begun to speak again.</p> + +<p>“Standing-White-in-the-Sun was my father +and my brother,” the medicine man gravely intoned. +“He gave me <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">pinole</i> when I was starving. +He came to my house at the festival of the +<i lang="es" xml:lang="es">sahuaro</i> wine and drank with me as a brother. +His child, Lightning Hair, is as my own child.”</p> + +<p>Depth of feeling was sweeping El Doctor like +a storm. His grey head trembled and drops of +moisture stood in his eyes. Bim gently checked +him with, “The señorita is oppressed with grief. +If we could take your message to her—” But +El Doctor shook his head.</p> + +<p>“She will see me. She will hear what El +Doctor Coyote Belly has come through the +storm to tell.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, she will hear,” came an unexpected +voice from the direction of the doorway, and +Benicia walked up to the Indian. El Doctor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span> +made a step forward to meet her; with a gesture +of reverence he took the hand stretched +out to him and placed it first on his brow then +over his heart. His old eyes shone. The two +white men turned and walked beyond earshot. +From a distance Grant saw the girl lead the +medicine man to a rustic seat beneath the +pepper tree; snatches of barbarous Papago +speech came to his ears.</p> + +<p>The glory of sunset, more glorious because of +the dust held in suspension in the air, came and +passed and still Benicia and the medicine man +talked beneath the pepper tree. The evening +meal was a mournful affair, with only Grant +and Bim at the candle-lit table. Grant, unable +to contain his restlessness, quit the house alone +when supper was finished; he walked down the +avenue of palms in the direction of the red fires +marking the Indian village. The night was +luminous with that sheen which covers the desert +heavens like a bloom. Thin rind of a moon +hung low in the west, a cold glow of nacre.</p> + +<p>He had crossed the bridge and was about to +turn off into an adjacent field when he heard a +footstep in the shadowed aisle below palm tops +ahead of him. A figure scarce discernible in its +black garb came upon him.</p> + +<p>“Benicia!”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span></p> + +<p>She stopped, startled. “Ah, it is you,” was +her murmured greeting as Grant stepped to her +side.</p> + +<p>“Alone and in the dark,” he chided, but the +girl tossed off his fears with a gesture of the +hands. “I have been with El Doctor down to +the village to find a place for him to lodge.” +Grant imprisoned her arm and gently persuaded +her steps back down the aisle of darkness +toward the village. For a minute they walked +in silence. Each knew there were things to be +spoken, yet each was reluctant to break the silent +communion their nearness wrought.</p> + +<p>“And El Doctor gave you the message he +came to bring?” finally from Grant. Her head +nodded assent.</p> + +<p>“Not bad news, I hope,” he hazarded. A +tightening of fingers on his arm as she answered, +“The best—and the worst.” Grant +drew a long breath.</p> + +<p>“And may I share with you—the worst?” he +managed to murmur. Now once more that dragging +weight on his arm as when he guided +Benicia through the storm—mute signal of surrender +from one spent in the fight.</p> + +<p>“El Doctor says—oh, my friend, you must not +stay here in the Garden longer. The rurales +are gathering at Babinioqui, El Doctor tells me—with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span> +Urgo. That means but one thing: Urgo +is bringing them here, and you—”</p> + +<p>“But you!” Grant interrupted almost +fiercely. “What of you? Must I run away and +leave you unprotected from that man?” The +girl drew away from him as if in very defiance +of some mastering impulse which would push +her into his arms.</p> + +<p>“I—my people will fight for me if need be. +Urgo comes for you this time, and I cannot be +sure these children”—a vague sweep of her +hand toward the winking village fires—“that +these children would fight for you, whom they +scarcely know.” There was that brave yet pitiful +resolution in her tone when she spoke of the +hazard of Urgo’s probable sally upon her own +person which crashed through all a lover’s carefully +built barriers of restraint. Unmindful of +the events of recent hours, of the girl’s fresh +bereavement, Grant crushed her to him hotly.</p> + +<p>“Oh, ’Nicia—’Nicia, can’t you understand! +I must go—yes, to-morrow! Not because Urgo +is coming to get me but because your being here +alone forces me away from you. Yet I cannot +think of leaving you to fight that man single-handed. +’Nicia—precious!—you will come—you +must come with me up over the Line +where—”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span></p> + +<p>“Oh, please—please stop!” Hands were +feebly pressing him away. Glint of starlight +revealed tears a-tremble on her lashes. +“Grant—great heart—I understand. I cry for +you. See! My eyes tell you what is in my +heart. But I cannot give myself to you when +that—that terrible thing of misfortune and +death goes with me. I—the mark I bear brought +death to my dear father!”</p> + +<p>He looked down into her eyes, appalled at this +last speech. Before he could hush her she faltered +on:</p> + +<p>“But El Doctor brought me also good news—wonderful +news! It is that I can lift this evil +from me if—if”—she seemed to falter before a +possibility scarce credible—“if the finding of +the gold and jewels El Rojo stained with his +sacrilege and their restoration to a sanctuary +of the Church will be acceptable in God’s +sight.”</p> + +<p>The hint of purpose in Benicia’s voice revealed +the edge of the truth. “Do you mean +El Doctor knows where the Lost Mission lies +and that you intend to find it?” Grant pressed +her. The girl gave answer:</p> + +<p>“He knows where the gold and pearls of the +Lost Mission are. He knows, too, the story of +El Rojo and how I bear the weight of his guilt.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span> +Because he loved my father he says he loves me +too much to have me go on and on under an evil +spell. Father’s death opens his lips and—”</p> + +<p>“You are going with El Doctor to find those +things?” breathlessly from Grant. She nodded. +“Then I will go with you. At once! To-morrow!”</p> + +<p>Decision came on the wings of inspiration. +Better this flight into the desert on treasure +quest, with its promise of exorcism of all the +devils that plagued the girl—better this venture +than that other he had determined: to play the +strong hand willy-nilly.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI">CHAPTER XXI</a><br /> +<small>TREASURE QUEST</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">Colonel Hamilcar Urgo was not +addicted to introspection. He took himself +as he found himself and as a rule was +well pleased with the find. Had any non-partisan +voice of conscience told him cruelty +played a large part in his make-up undoubtedly +the little Colonel would have denied the +charge with hot indignation. Cruelty, to his +way of thinking, was exclusively a feminine +defect; a woman was guilty of cruelty, for +example, when she spurned the honourable advances +of so honourable a suitor as Hamilcar +Urgo. Benicia O’Donoju was the cruelest +creature he knew; wherefore like a fractious +horse she must be broken.</p> + +<p>No, Señor Urgo found nothing reprehensible +in his orders to Ygnacio, the Papago, that Don +Padraic must be put out of the way. The same +impulse had prompted him to strip the bandage +of ignorance from Benicia’s eyes during that +interview in the patio without the least compunction.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span> +These headstrong women! There +was a way to handle them just as there was +a way to break the heart of a high-spirited +mount: curb bits that tear and spurs that +gouge. Let him have possession of a spirit-broken +woman for a little while, to play with +and then discard; possession was not nearly +so diverting as the game of spirit breaking. +At that Urgo considered himself rather a master +hand.</p> + +<p>He had not hated the master of the Casa +O’Donoju. Aside from the necessity of clearing +the field of a possible objector to his suit +and bringing pain to the haughty desert girl, +Urgo’s murder impulse was prompted by no +personal bias. But with all the deadly spleen +compacted into his wispy body the little man +hated the gringo Grant Hickman. Hated him +because the American was in the lists against +him; hated him, especially, because twice Hickman +had humiliated him before the eyes of Benicia: +once in the Pullman out of El Paso and +a second time—searing scar in memory—when +the man, though weakened by a bullet wound, +had hustled him out the door of the desert +manor.</p> + +<p>If whole-heartedness gives any palliation to +hatred then was Hamilcar Urgo’s passion<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span> +almost to be forgiven him. For very dynamic +force no impulse in his twisted career matched +it. The vision of this gringo’s impudently +smiling face went to bed with him at night +and abided with him all day—a veritable ache. +Come what might, he would destroy Grant +Hickman and in a manner such as to entail +the most refined tortures.</p> + +<p>So this was his single purpose—possession +of the girl would be a mere by-product—when +he used his power with the police arm of the +Sonora state government to assemble ten ruffians +of the rurales force at a point on the railroad +within striking distance of the Road of +the Dead Men. Desert cars were at his disposal +but he preferred to head a mounted +force because his plans looked to an excursion +into country where autos could not go, once +Hickman was his prisoner. A complaisant +spirit of justice at Hermosillo would accept +in lieu of the escaped convict’s person some +token symbolical of a justice already wrought +through the instrument of the state’s worthy +servant, Urgo.</p> + +<p>The day after the sand storm Urgo and his +rurales set out from the railroad for the west +and the Garden of Solitude at the end of a +long road. They were superbly mounted; two<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span> +pack animals trotted behind the file of horsemen. +Revolutions had been squelched by a +less imposing force.</p> + +<p>After the cleansing storm the desert was +bland and tolerant. Air clear as quartz, sun +tempered by fresh winds from the west, on +every club and spike of cactus fresh flowers +born overnight to replace those destroyed by +the driving sands. One of the rurales unslung +a guitar from a mule’s pack and strummed +minor chords to the accompaniment of a song +in which the rest joined. The ballad was gentle +as a butterfly’s wing, telling of roses over a +lady-love’s window.</p> + +<p>Urgo, lulled by the immensity of the desert +peace, perhaps even by the tenderness of the +song his murderers sang, pleasured himself +by building pictures in prospect. He saw +himself riding alone up to the door of the +Casa O’Donoju—the rurales would be disposed +beyond sight of the door but within call; saw +the courteous bow he would make to Señorita +Benicia; heard himself inquiring in polite +phrase concerning her health and that of her +respected father. Ah, Don Padraic dead—murdered! +Grace of God, but that was sad +news. But the American gentleman who was +a guest at the Casa O’Donoju; did his unfortunate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span> +wound still keep him under the beneficence +of the casa’s hospitality—?</p> + +<p>Five hours of the second day out on the +Road of the Dead Men the rurale who was +riding at the head of the file reined in with +a shout. His arm stretched to point a tiny +black beetle away off to the westward: a +beetle skittering down the long slope of a +divide and in their direction. In ten minutes +the beetle showed again, but it had grown to +the dimensions of an auto. It was upon them +almost before the horsemen had spread themselves +in a fan across the road. Quelele, whom +Urgo instantly recognized, accepted the implied +hint to halt; in the seat beside him was +a strange white man—a gringo by his looks. +This man let a bland, incurious eye range over +the band of horsemen until it settled upon +Urgo; there it rested with a dispassionate +stare somehow affronting to the Spaniard’s +dignity.</p> + +<p>Urgo stiffly bowed and waited for the gringo +to speak. Instead of returning his salutation +the white man searched the pockets of his vest +for tobacco bag and papers and bent all his +attention upon rolling a cigarette.</p> + +<p>“You have come from the Casa O’Donoju, +señor?” Urgo asked in English. Bim Bagley<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span> +gave the clipped Spanish “Si” of assent and +drew his rolled cigarette across his lips with a +languid air. Urgo in a growing rage wondered +if this boorishness were the stranger’s typically +American manner or assumed to provoke +hostility. His voice was silken as he put his +next question in Spanish:</p> + +<p>“The Señorita O’Donoju and Don Padraic, +her father, they enjoy the best health, I hope.”</p> + +<p>“I hope so, too,” was Bim’s short reply as +he put a match to his smoke. Urgo’s brows +knitted. Here was no boor but a wise gringo +with a chuckle behind every word.</p> + +<p>“I am doing myself the honour to call upon +Don Padraic and his charming daughter,” his +temper pushed him to volunteer. Bim swept +the company of horsemen with a lack-lustre +eye and then let his glance return to the +dapper figure of the Colonel.</p> + +<p>“Do tell,” he drawled in broadest Border +dialect. “See you brought all the boys with +you. Well, so long!” He nudged the Indian +a signal to go ahead. Urgo would have liked +to detain this impudent gringo for a lesson in +manners did not more pressing pleasure lie +ahead. He gave an imperceptible nod and the +horsemen who blocked the road moved aside. +The little car shot back a pungent cloud of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span> +smoke for a parting insult as it took the road +in high. Urgo watched it rise to the low crest +of a divide and disappear. Insufferable +gringo! What had he been doing at Casa +O’Donoju? What did he know of recent events +there?</p> + +<p>A shrug dismissed Bagley, and the file of +horsemen resumed leisurely progress along the +desert road. A night’s dry camp, and early +morning would see them in the oasis green at +journey’s end.</p> + +<p>Colonel Urgo miscalculated when he dismissed +Bim Bagley with a shrug. Did the +little Spaniard but know it, this meeting in +the wastes was the objective point in the +gringo’s strategy. Even under certain heavy +handicaps ten gallons of gasoline in the desert +can achieve more than ten horses with rurales +on their backs. It all depends upon the hand +that nurses precious jets of this gasoline across +the path of the spark. And Quelele’s was a +master hand. Wherefore the second phase in +Bim’s strategy was entered upon.</p> + +<p>Bim and the Indian had made perhaps five +miles along the eastward-bearing road beyond +the point of the meeting with Urgo’s ruffians +when the Papago turned off the single wheel +track and into the sparse scrub. A low range<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span> +separated them from the rurales; the crumbling +of that range into desert flatness lay a good +ten miles to southward. Once around that, +the little car could be tooled behind a screen +of hillocks back onto the Road of the Dead +Men and ahead of the rurales, but only by +exercise of the most delicate driving judgment. +“Smack through the country—without roads?” +whiffles the incredulous driver of limousines +along sedate highways in Pennsylvania and +New York. Exactly that. It is done in Arizona +and Sonora—thirty or fifty miles of unfenced +desert; compass to pick up direction and shovel +to dig out of arroyos. Johnny Cameron, of Ajo, +even herds wild horses on a motorcycle.</p> + +<p>Quelele stopped to let air out of his tires +that they might better grip the sand and pad +through soft places. Then began a jackrabbit +skittering and twisting ’cross country, with +every hundred yards offering the hazard of a +broken axle and the little desert skimmer +standing on its nose at the brink of a dry +wash while its passengers flattened the descent +by hasty shovel work. Like a rowboat in mid-Atlantic +the puny contraption of tin and steel +took the long waves, snarling and grumbling +over sand-traps, boggling through thickets of +<i lang="es" xml:lang="es">cholla</i> which rigged its tires with festoons of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span> +prickly stubs. Quelele’s hands possessed +magic. They knew just when to give a twist +to the wheel, when to shoot the spark ahead. +Every hummock and pitfall was read by them +surely and swiftly.</p> + +<p>The little car rounded the end of the mountain +range and shot back on a tangent for +the road where Urgo and his rurales were +travelling. With a grunt Quelele suddenly let +the car trundle to a halt; he clambered out +and knelt by the radiator. Drip-drip of precious +water from some stab of brush through +the honeycomb of cells there. Bim sacrificed +his tobacco in the emergency. The flaky mass +was poured into the radiator with fresh water +from a canteen; the stuff found the leak and, +swelling, stopped it.</p> + +<p>Then on and on, around the flanks of the +little hills and across wide flats where the +brush was scattered. Always Quelele was sure +to keep a height of land between the car and +the Road of the Dead Men until finally he +brought his gas mustang to a stop on the crest +of a lava ridge and pointed back. Against the +eastern horizon showed a crawling inch-worm +in the desert’s immensity—Urgo and the +rurales. Below the lava crest and near at +hand was the objective of their detour, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span> +road that led to the Casa O’Donoju and those +who must be warned.</p> + +<p>It was after sunset when the little car hiccoughed +up under the avenue of palms. An +hour later in the first dark of night a file of +horsemen quit the perfumed precincts of +alfalfa fields behind the Casa O’Donoju. At +the head, driving a pack-mule, was El Doctor +Coyote Belly, big Quelele riding beside him. +Behind were Benicia and Grant. Bim Bagley +was file closer. In scabbards at the saddle of +each hung carbines.</p> + +<p>El Doctor, the guide, set the course away +from the Road of the Dead Men which, passing +through the Garden of Solitude, buries itself +in the Yuma Desert. His direction was +south and west toward the Gulf and the labyrinth +of volcano craters on its hither shore +called Pinacate.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII</a><br /> +<small>ALTAR TAKES ITS TOLL</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">Dawn marched over the mountains like a +phalanx of Alexander: spear points of +light on long hafts, which drove at the zenith in +solid bundles. Then the mercenaries of the +sun trooped across the vacant desert floor wave +on wave and strength following strength. All +the dead world of Altar stirred and set itself +for the ordeal of a new day.</p> + +<p>The figure of a man that had been Doc +Stooder, cynical tinker of life’s rusts and corrodings, +stirred under the trampling of the +light—stirred and stretched its members in +dull protest of unconsciousness. Finally when +the arrows of the new day drove at his eyelids +the man opened them and lay staring up into +the sky’s opalescence. For a long minute they +probed the marbled colour depths uncomprehendingly, +then turned to find the rim of the +iron mountains to the east. Comprehension +came at last; with it a distorted memory image +of hours of madness and wandering, agony of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span> +thirst, despair pressing upon footsteps that +carried nowhere. Sleep which had put a +period to all this nightmare had also mercifully +rallied the man’s nervous forces to a new +effort of self-saving. Men die hard because +the instinct locked up in their sub-conscious +minds always prevails over surrender of the +conscious will.</p> + +<p>The Doc lifted an arm to shield his eyes and +felt something sinuous slide off his body. An +instant his heart was chilled, for the feeling +was of a desert serpent trailing over his form. +He dared lift his head ever so little and let +his eyes rove down his body. A queer something, +not snake, lay in a curve by his side; a +pallid, root-like thing the size of a man’s wrist +at one end and tapering to a stringy point. +He raised himself on his elbow and drew the +vegetable serpent to him. Just as he did so +his eyes discovered the prints of a man’s feet +in the sand by where he lay.</p> + +<p>“Glory be!” came the croak from stiffened +lips, and the Doc concentrated all his scattered +wits on an examination of the prodigy. Yes, +footprints. They came from behind him; +they were printed in a semi-circle about him +to mark where one had stood hesitantly looking +down at him while he slept; they marched<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span> +off in line with their approach straight toward +the tawny mountains ringing the northern +horizon.</p> + +<p>Guadalupe’s footprints—the trail he had +followed and lost the day before! So Stooder +thought.</p> + +<p>A great sense of security pushed through +the daze in his brain. Here, at last, lay the +way to salvation. That thought having been +duly relished, he turned his attention once +more to the mysterious vegetable whip by his +side. He never had seen its like. How it +came to be there he had no notion. The thing +was unlike any desert growth in his experienced +observation, wherefore it seemed to represent +some prodigy of the desert god dropped +by him for a purpose.</p> + +<p>He gripped the heavier end of the root between +his hands and gave it a twist. The +thing broke like an over-ripe radish and a thin +spurt of water shot from the severed ends. +Greedily he thrust one stump into his mouth +and clamped his jaws upon it. Gracious fluid, +mildly acrid, drenched the parchment-like membranes +of his throat. The Doc sighed once, +then wolfed the whole stub of the root he had +broken off. As the pulp was swallowed he +felt immediate access of strength and sanity.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span></p> + +<p>From somewhere deep in the corroded heart +of him welled an emotion whose like he had +not known during all the years of his warped +and weathered manhood. As if a child +prompted him the gaunt, half-naked creature +on the sands lifted his eyes to the glowing +blue.</p> + +<p>“Thanks, dear God!”</p> + +<p>So the sardonic genius of the waste places +permitted the cloak of divinity to fall upon +Ygnacio, fugitive and murderer, for that a surprising +charity had prompted him to pause in +the night by a raving man, divide with him his +slender store of insurance against death, then +pass on.</p> + +<p>The root-of-the-sands which Stooder half +devoured quickly restored him to something +like the normal. Gone were the deliriums +that had dogged him those hours of horror. +He heard no longer the ghost bells of the Lost +Mission summoning him to treasure buried in +the bleak mountains yonder. Rational thought +was his after all the wanderings in Bedlam. +He mapped his strategy against the ever-present +menace of the desert.</p> + +<p>Here were Guadalupe’s tracks—the Papago +hound; wait till he could get hands on the +devil! Of course they would lead to the village<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span> +of the Sand People on the edge of El Infiernillo. +Well and good; but that might still +be a long way ahead. Could he make it just on +what was left of this mysterious root? About +one chance in ten; and the old Doc wasn’t +taking any more chances. What then?</p> + +<p>Why, follow the tracks back to the stalled +auto. Water might be there. Surely were +cans of tomatoes—about a dozen of ’em. A +dozen tomato cans would carry him a hundred +miles on foot; he knew because he’d drunk uncooked +canned tomatoes many a time—food and +drink in small compass. All right; follow the +tracks back to the auto, rest up a bit and then +get a fresh start back over those same tracks +and straight into the Sand People’s rancheria.</p> + +<p>Stooder wrapped the precious remains of his +giant radish in a strip of his shirt and started +back over the line of blue shadow cups in the +sand. As he laboured through the heavy going +he reviewed all he could remember of yesterday’s +terrors, and a great fear began to build +in the back of his mind. Fear of the leagues +upon leagues of blank space about him—land +unchanged by time since the waters of a great +sea were withdrawn into a shallow cup now +called the Gulf. Fear of latent forces which +lurked in the naked mountains all about, in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span> +the ghostly mirage which stretched vain beauties +before his eyes. Over-mastering all was +a corroding fear of his own body.</p> + +<p>The Doc’s trained intelligence was functioning +with deadly precision. It separated his +mind from the rest of his being, counting the +mind as a rider and the body the beast it rode. +The rider willed that the beast carry it to a +certain destination; did that beast stumble and +fall the rider could cry out never so furiously +but it would be lost. And that burden-bearer +of the mind was capable of just so much. Its +tissues and sinews were kept functioning by +water and food. So much water and so much +food gave so many foot-pounds of energy; no +more. Inexorable mathematics!</p> + +<p>When sweat began to trickle down into his +eyes Stooder could not repress a shudder. +Lost! Water lost from his body. The desert +greasewood is wise enough to coat all its +leaves and little stems with creosote to trick +evaporation; the big <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">sahuaro</i> shows only the +edges of its accordion flutings to the sun and +greases them with paraffin; man yields water +like a stranded jellyfish.</p> + +<p>Better take another chew on that water-root +dingus to make up for sweat lost. Better give +the old pulse a feel to see how it’s runnin’.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span></p> + +<p>The sun swam dizzily at meridian so that +the footprints the Doc followed were hard to +see—mere shallow spoon marks. On and on +towards the south!</p> + +<p>What was that thing moving over yonder in +that bunch of saltbush? Yes, sir, moving!—A +coyote, by th’ eternal!—Naw, coyotes weren’t +white like this animal; coyotes were a mangy +yellow.—But, by criminy! this thing had the +looks of a coyote—sharp nose and baggy tail +half way ’tween its hind legs, skulkin’ like.—An +albino coyote! Lookit! Eyes pinky like +a white rabbit.—Whoever heard of an albino +coyote?</p> + +<p>No phantom of the imagination that slinking, +dirty-white creature which matched its pace +to the Doc’s on parallel course through the low +lying scrub. The desert Ishmael trotted along +with a foolish air of being strictly about its +own business, as if no other creature were in +sight. When Stooder stopped to bawl curses +at it the albino thing halted and made a great +pretence of snouting at a flea bite, utterly +oblivious to his presence. A fragment of dead +bush-stock was hurled at it; the coyote lifted +a corner of his lip in a deprecatory smile but +did not abate his casual trot.</p> + +<p>“Huh, you mangy bag o’ bones! Think<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span> +you’re goin’ have a feed off’n me, do you? +Well, I’m tellin’ you, you got a mighty long +tromp ahead!”</p> + +<p>On through the desert slogged the man and +on trotted the freaky animal whose colour made +him outcast even from his own kind. These +twain alone under the hot sky: two mites of +life in a land of death, each blindly following +the call of every life cell in him to live—live!</p> + +<p>What had been a piled-up cloud of blue and +faint rose to the south when the Doc started +his hike had unfolded hour by hour into definite +form. Little by little pinnacles sharp as ice +splinters lifted from a mountain mass and +detached mountains with their tops blown off +stood against the horizon like truncated columns +of an acropolis. Here were the mazes +of the Pinacate, raw shards of volcanoes and +wilderness of lava flows down by the Gulf +sandhills; country so fire-scarred and forbidding +that even the Indian nomads give it wide +berth. Only the big-horn sheep possess it, +living no man knows how.</p> + +<p>The undeviating trend of the trail southward +towards this ragged mass had perplexed +Stooder when first he became conscious of it. +The auto should be lying somewhere off to +eastward if he didn’t miss his guess; those<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span> +mountains ahead were strange to him. But +he could not know how far nor where he had +wandered the day before; even though he +thought long since he should have come upon +a second line of footprints—his own—running +along with those of the Papago, yet there was +no denying he was following the right trail +back to the auto and the cached tomatoes. +There sure could not be two lines of footprints +here in this least-travelled part of Altar.</p> + +<p>So ran the mind of him whom the mocking +Gog and Magog of the desert’s diarchy had +put on a false trail to desolation. Deeper and +deeper into a waterless scrap-heap of forgotten +ages his steps took him. And the albino coyote +was his aloof companion.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII">CHAPTER XXIII</a><br /> +<small>INTO THE FURNACE</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">Meanwhile from another direction adventurers +were moving through the night +upon the slag mountains of Pinacate. Empty +space of Altar’s ultimate sweep was become almost +populous. A strange company this, which +passed ghostily under the great lights of the +near stars with only the clink of bridle metal +and pack mule’s canteens to give tempo to +the march; Benicia O’Donoju, the desert girl, +moved to this risky hazard by compulsion of +an incubus of fate visited upon her through +inheritance down the generations of her +people; Grant Hickman, man of cities and +crowds, whom destiny had whirled out into a +country of the world’s dawn; Bagley the Arizonan, +taker of chances, seeker after rainbow +ends; and the two Papagoes, Quelele and El +Doctor Coyote Belly, on whom was spread thin +the veneer of so-called civilization.</p> + +<p>It had been Benicia’s mastering purpose<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span> +that had moved the cavalcade away from the +Casa O’Donoju and out onto the desert immediately +upon the return of Bim and Quelele +reporting the leisurely approach of Colonel +Urgo and his rurales. This was not flight, she +told Bim; they would go in search of the +treasure of the Lost Mission whose hiding +place the old medicine man was willing to reveal, +and if Urgo followed—well, eventualities +could be met as they arose. In this resolve +Grant had strongly seconded her. The girl’s +slavery under the obsession of the bane of El +Rojo, especially following the slaying of her +father, had laid an impenetrable barrier between +her and him; he had seized upon this +possibility promising her emancipation from +this horror. This chance failing, he had but +the last desperate recourse.</p> + +<p>The first hour of their pilgrimage away +from the desert oasis Grant rode by Benicia’s +side. He essayed to distract her thoughts +from the tragedy that lay behind by questioning +her on the revelations El Doctor had made: +how had the old Indian come by knowledge of +the buried gold and pearls; what impulse had +led him to promise their restoration? But the +girl was not to be drawn. She answered his +queries by evasions or meaningless monosyllables.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span> +It was as if Grant were a stranger, impudently +prying.</p> + +<p>At first the man was stung by this treatment. +His self-pride rebelled against so arbitrary +a closing of the door of confidence +against him. Why should he be treated thus +cavalierly when the girl had surely read the +great love he bore her and his single desire +to place himself between her and the menace +of one who had prompted murder? But these +hurts did not continue long. Riding by Benicia’s +side in the starshine, the man began to +feel the emanations of a mastering will which +poured from her as the pungent prickles of +ozone surround a high-power dynamo. Her +consciousness was frozen into a mould of purpose, +locked against any distractions. Benicia +was alive only to the single resolve to free herself +from the curse of the Red One. Man nor +spirit could invade that preoccupation.</p> + +<p>There under the steady-burning desert lamps +the man of the cities began to feel again that +spell of the infinite which had chained him the +night of Don Padraic’s passing. Here was he, +lately denizen of a hive of stone and steel, tiny +integer in that man-made machine called a +metropolis, moving through the darkness over +a land unsullied by hand of man since the floods<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span> +of melting glaciers drove a shadowy race of +stone-axe people back to the highlands. The +loves and hates, the battles and deaths of these +stone-axe folk occurred but yesterday in the +time-sheet of the waste places. The to-morrow +of ten thousand years would find the desert still +untouched, supine under the stars. What then +of hidden baubles of gold; what then of the +love of a Grant Hickman for a Benicia +O’Donoju? A fossil snail shell by the shore +of the gulf left a more enduring record.</p> + +<p>“The thing that’s sorta got me fussed is +how I’m goin’ explain all this to the old Doc.” +Bim’s voice broke through Grant’s contemplation +of shadowy frontiers; he noted with a +start that his horse had dropped behind Benicia’s +and was ambling head-and-head with +his friend’s. Bim drawled on:</p> + +<p>“It sure will look like a double-cross to +Stooder—my sailin’ off down into Sonora on +the search for you an’ then hooking up with +an outfit to go get all the plunder the old Doc +thinks he’s as good as got his hands on. Me, +I guess I’m queered all right,” was the man’s +whimsical finish to his lament. Grant, who +had been too preoccupied with the sweep of +affairs to give any thought to his pal’s perplexities, +could not now offer much consolation.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span> +A point of honour involving the grotesque +creature who had elected to receive him as a +book agent did not greatly move Grant.</p> + +<p>“A’ course,” Bim continued his monologue, +“the way things lie with the girl, her bein’ +hipped on gettin’ back this swag somebody in +her family lifted from the mission, I’m more’n +willing to see her get it. But the old Doc +hasn’t got a large store of what you might +call sentiment, an’ I sure got my work cut out +for me when I try to show him the light.”</p> + +<p>“Too bad I got you into a tangle, old man,” +Grant heartily commiserated; then with a +hopeless little laugh, “My own affairs aren’t +set on any straight and beautiful road to happiness +either.”</p> + +<p>Bim chuckled deep in his throat. “Me, I +was all for your first idea to rope the señorita +right outa the home corral an’ put your brand +on her, fighting. But like’s not we’ll get <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">mucho</i> +plenty excitement along this trail before we’re +through.” He gave a short laugh. “Say, +Cap’n Hickman, I brought you out from the +East on a whale of a proposition. You’re sure +getting it. A girl who assays higher’n any +pearls an’ old gold junk you could find in a +church cellar—the feel and savvy of a man’s +country—a larrupin’ fight with old Urgo and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span> +his rurales bunch. That last you can back right +down to your last white chip.”</p> + +<p>“But how can Urgo follow us from the +O’Donoju house?” incredulously from Grant. +“Not one of the servants or other Indians +there knows what our destination is—we don’t +ourselves except in a general way.”</p> + +<p>The man of the big country chuckled at +metropolitan innocence. “Horses don’t leave +tracks on your Fifth Avenoo because they’s no +horses left there for one thing, I reckon. But +in this country they do. Five horses make a +trail a blind man could follow. I or anybody +else could track this outfit of ours in the dark. +I look to see our li’l friend Urgo drop in on +us some time to-morrow. He’ll travel fast +with fresh horses his men round up at the +O’Donoju corrals.”</p> + +<p>They rode some time in silence, Grant turning +over in his mind this unthought-of possibility. +Tenderfoot that he was—so he accused +himself—he had noted the carbines slung in +scabbards at each saddlehorn; noted with an +unreading eye. So Benicia and all the others +had provided against a contingency he had not +even suspected.</p> + +<p>“Only thing I’m figgerin’ in this proposition,” +he heard Bim saying, “is, will the Papagoes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span> +stick under fire? Papagoes are not +strong for the knock-down-an’-drag-out stuff. +An’, besides, you’re not a whole man yet.”</p> + +<p>“Whole enough to keep my end up,” Grant +said shortly, knowing not why he resented any +imputation of disability against him.</p> + +<p>“Oh, sure—sure!” the other hurriedly +amended, and the subject died.</p> + +<p>Dawn spread a ghostly panorama before +them. In the greeny-white light that heralds +the sun’s first ruddiness the whole western +horizon bulked with black masses of slag +heaped in fantastic shapes. High above the +lesser masses towered the two peaks of Pinacate, +their summits yawning in wide craters. +The horses’ hoofs struck sparks from lava +aprons; the beasts had to pick their way carefully +over traps and crevices. Ever and again +grey arms of cactus struck out to rake the +riders’ legs with claws of thorns.</p> + +<p>Waxing light filled in details of a phantom +land, terrific in stark brutalities of scarp and +battlement—a world just set aside from the +baking-oven of the Potter and unadorned by +a single brush stroke. The little company of +horsemen threaded single file up a narrow +gorge between the main peaks of the range. +Walls of porphyry and slag the colour of furnace<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span> +clinkers leaped to heights on either side +which dwarfed the riders to the stature of +weevils. The trail they followed was the path +cut by the rushing waters of summer cloudbursts, +which pack into the downpour of +minutes’ duration all the water denied during +months of drought; great blocks of fused glass +and conglomerate wrenched from the canyon’s +eaves by the fingers of these storms choked +the way. Where capfuls of soil had been +caught and held in some pocket the gaunt +sticks of the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">ocatilla</i> splayed out against raw +rock like cat’s whiskers. Low-lying <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">cholla</i>, +that spined and vicious vegetable tarantula +of the desert, seemed to grow from the very +rock; all its nodules were frosty with close-set +thorns. Over all dropped the veil of mystical +morning radiance.</p> + +<p>The horses groaned as they had to choose, +minute by minute, between barking their hocks +on the knife-like corners of obsidian or taking +the barbs of the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">cholla</i>. The higher the ascent +the savager grew the way. Grant, awed by +this penetration into the very laboratory of +earth, almost leaped from his saddle when a +sharp clatter of small pebbles to his right broke +the silence. His eyes jumped up the canyon +wall to follow three dots of bounding dun-white<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span> +against its sheer side—bighorn sheep skipping +surely along no visible foothold.</p> + +<p>When the sun was well in the sky—though +naught but its reflected radiance penetrated +the gorge—El Doctor, in the lead, signalled a +halt. The place was a constricted apron or +shelf in the cleft between rock walls whereon +sparse galetta grass was growing. Reason for +this tiny oasis of vegetation lay just beyond +in the fact of a water-worn cistern in the lava—such +a natural reservoir as the desert folk +called a “tank,” a godsend when it still contains +the wash from a last cloudburst. This +one was bone-dry.</p> + +<p>The party breakfasted meagrely, wood for +their coffee fire being grubbed by the Indians +painfully and after long search. There was +little speech between them for they were tired; +the night’s ride had been wearing. Moreover, +even the Indians appeared to feel a malign +presence bearing down upon them and forbidding +desecration of the silence. For them, in +especial for Coyote Belly, there was a very +real and fear-compelling presence abroad. +These mountains of Tjuktoak housed Iitoi, +Elder Brother himself; the god of all things +who, with a coyote and a black beetle, drifted +four times round the earth in the time of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span> +Flood and came to anchorage in this place. +El Doctor Coyote Belly, driven by a great love +to commit sacrilege, might well have heard the +voice of Iitoi in the wind and felt his heart +turn to water.</p> + +<p>In truth, the aged Papago was having a +battle with himself. Before he had gulped his +coffee and tortillas the medicine man’s eyes +were roaming fearsomely and he whimpered +snatches of sacerdotal songs as he rummaged +in the pack for a wicker basket. From it he +took a wand stained red and with an eagle’s +feather bound to one end, an arrow very handsomely +feathered from the same bird, a string +of glass beads and a bundle of cigarettes—presents +for Elder Brother, who must be beguiled +before being robbed.</p> + +<p>The old man’s hands wavered to return the +presents to the basket when Benicia hurried +to him, sat down by his side and earnestly +pleaded with him in his own tongue. Finally +his resolution seemed to be brought to the +sticking point. He started up the gorge alone +and with his basket of trifles.</p> + +<p>“Coyote Belly says he must go and sing to +the god Iitoi before we are permitted to visit +his house,” Benicia gravely explained to her +white companions. “The poor man is desperately<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span> +scared because we have come to rob Elder +Brother.”</p> + +<p>Seeing the look of puzzlement on the men’s +faces she continued with that same grave +respect as if speaking of a real presence. +“This old man through the love he bore my +father has consented to betray a secret the +medicine men of his people have handed down +for more than a hundred years. The treasure +of the Lost Mission, he tells me, was dug up +by Papago medicine men not long after the +Mission was destroyed by the Apaches and +brought to these mountains—to the cave of +Elder Brother—”</p> + +<p>“And it’s all here now?” Bim put in excitedly. +The girl nodded.</p> + +<p>“It has been as well hidden from those who +sought it as if it were under the buried ruins +of the mission,” she said; then simply: “While +El Doctor is gone it is best that we get some +sleep.”</p> + +<p>Benicia stretched herself under the shade of +a rock with a saddle blanket for pillow and +slept. But neither of the white men could follow +her precept; both were too sensible of the +prickling of some unnameable essence of the +strange and the unworldly—perhaps that very +savagery of atmosphere which had prompted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span> +primitive Indians to designate Pinacate as the +residence of their god. They were alone; big +Quelele had quietly slipped away shortly after +El Doctor without saying where he was going.</p> + +<p>The men sat smoking while their eyes roved +the prospect of burnt cliff and ragged parapet. +The heat had whips; it drove them to burrow +for lessening shade wherever angles of the +rocks offered. A curious cast to the slice of +sky visible above the cañon walls first caught +Bagley’s attention. He squinted up at it for +a long moment of speculation.</p> + +<p>“If it wasn’t so early in the summer I’d +say a thunderhead was fixin’ up to give us a +big razoo,” he ventured. Grant looked up and +noted that the blue had turned to a heavy +saffron tint as if the sun were shining through +a stratum of light sand; such a tint he’d seen +before the great windstorm on the day of Don +Padraic’s burial.</p> + +<p>“If I could only look over the top of the +wall yonder to west’ard,” Bim grumbled uneasily. +“These cloudbursts always come from +direction of the Gulf. We’re not very well put +right here in the channel of all the wash down +from up top-side. Those horses now—”</p> + +<p>He walked uneasily about the narrow confines +of the shelf, scanning the upshoots of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span> +rock for possible ways out. Then he seemed +to dismiss possibility of trouble from his mind +and returned to where Grant was sitting.</p> + +<p>An hour passed. Perhaps they were dozing +when the rattle of a shower of rock down the +cañon side galvanized both. Up there they +saw the figure of big Quelele. Like a wild goat +he was leaping from foothold to foothold +downward; he was in mad haste.</p> + +<p>The big Indian risked his neck a dozen times +before he came panting up to the watchers. +He waved to the brink of the cliff.</p> + +<p>“I been on top—watching—I see long way +off—Urgo—rurales. They come—fast!”</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV">CHAPTER XXIV</a><br /> +<small>STORM</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">Bim translated Quelele’s intelligence for +Grant. “Our li’l friend Urgo’s been +burnin’ the wind,” was his dry comment. +Grant sent a quick glance around the cul-de-sac +of rock which encompassed them.</p> + +<p>“Not the best place in the world to stand +off ten men,” he gave his opinion. “We ought +to get our backs up against something that +can’t be surrounded.”</p> + +<p>Quelele read the white man’s thoughts, for +he pointed farther up the cañon beyond the +lava cistern. There the gorge narrowed to a +veritable doorway and the steps thereto were +so precipitous that one ascending would have +to scramble and claw a way on hands and +knees; no possible chance for a rush en masse. +Bim surveyed the natural citadel with the eye +of a trained Border man who occasionally has +to reckon with such elementals as the killing +power of a rifle bullet and the protective +quality of a ’dobe wall. Finally he screwed one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span> +eye at the crack of sky showing between the +escarpments and shook his head dubiously at +what he saw there. Quelele, who had had the +superior advantage of a wider view from his +aerie on the cliff top, bowed his arms in the +shape of a ball and waved a hand to the west.</p> + +<p>“Papago says it’s a big storm brewing over +yonder,” Bim explained. “When these thunderheads +finally get all boiled into one and +come a-runnin’ it’s a case of take to cover. +If this thing is the regulation rim-fire sock-dollager +they’s goin’ be a sight of water pass +over where we’re standin’ before long. Me, +I’d rather be somewhere else than in this dry +channel.”</p> + +<p>Grant did not linger to discuss strategy +longer. He went to where Benicia was sleeping +in the shade of a boulder and gently touched +her on the shoulder. The girl sat up, startled.</p> + +<p>“We have to be moving,” Grant told her. +“Quelele has just reported Urgo and his +rurales out on the desert and coming our way.”</p> + +<p>“And El Doctor?” she quickly interposed. +“He has returned from the cave?”</p> + +<p>Grant shook his head. Bitter disappointment +flashed into her eyes at the realization of +how fate had played to interpose the grim business<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span> +of a fight just on the minute of realization +of her great hopes. Grant, stooping beside +her and watching the play of emotions on her +features, saw quick remorse chase away the +frown. Impulsively a brown hand reached out +to play upon the back of his.</p> + +<p>“Grant, beloved”—how like the overtones +from her own golden harp the contralto richness +of her voice!—“I am desperately selfish +and you will not understand.—Thinking only +of my own purpose—bringing you with your +wound still unhealed out to this place to face—death +perhaps.—And you do this for me—”</p> + +<p>“’Nicia, little girl—” He could go no +farther than those words, for the song in his +heart was overwhelming. At last—at last the +trammels of the girl’s heart were shaken off +and the call he’d waited for so long had come! +Call of the heart of her to his.</p> + +<p>She was on her feet, vibrant with energy, +alive to the exigencies of impending action. +Bim was saddling the horses and Quelele had +the pack on the mule when they joined them. +Bim briefly explained to the girl his survey of +the gorge for strategical strength; at any cost +they must move up until they could find some +sheep trail or other practicable ledge giving<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span> +escape from the flood water channel. “If that +doddering old medicine man would only quit +his sing-song business and come back for a +rifle we’d be that much better off,” the big +fellow grumbled.</p> + +<p>When all was in readiness Quelele led the +way up the tortuous watercourse and through +the mighty gates of porphyry nearly blocking +the farther reaches. They were forced to lead +the animals, whose sure-footedness was put to +the test every yard of the advance. Beyond +the great pillars the gorge opened to a rough +amphitheatre with less steeply sloping sides. +A narrow upward-springing ledge of rock led +away from the dry watercourse to a rock pulpit +some seventy-five or a hundred feet above. +This they followed, to discover there was +space for their horses to stand behind the horn +of malapais and still be screened from observation +from below. Quelele made some mysterious +passes with a tether rope which yoked +all the animals to a single line that was +anchored at both ends.</p> + +<p>“Look,” Benicia cried as Bim was taking +the carbines from the saddle scabbards. They +followed her pointing hand and saw a dark +spot against the opposite wall of the gorge and +higher than their level. A midget figure was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span> +outlined against the opening of a cave. It +was El Doctor at his business of propitiating +Elder Brother—El Doctor, much needed behind +the stock of a carbine. The men hallooed to +him but he did not turn.</p> + +<p>“Go over and get that crazy fool,” Bim +commanded Quelele. But the big Indian, instead +of obeying immediately, turned up the +ledge and made for a high point on the shoulder +of the rock bastion constituting one of the +portals of the upper gorge. They watched him +as he scaled the almost perpendicular face of +black lava. From the top Quelele had a view +of the cañon’s far-away exit onto the desert +floor several miles from the niche where the +treasure seekers had refuge. The watchers +saw him lift himself cautiously over the top +of his lookout and peer to westward. Then he +came scrambling and sliding down.</p> + +<p>“They come into the valley,” the Papago +reported. “Too late to get El Doctor.”</p> + +<p>It was Bim with his desert craft who made +disposition of the little force of defence. +Quelele he sent back to the aerie with orders +not to shoot until he heard shots from the +whites; the Indian’s fire from the rear, once +Urgo and his men had passed the rocky +portals, would throw the rurales into confusion.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span> +Grant and Benicia he disposed behind +an outcrop of porphyry a little behind and +above the protected animals.</p> + +<p>“Pick ’em off as they come through the +Gate,” he suggested. “An’ don’t try any +fancy shooting; we haven’t got any too many +cartridges.”</p> + +<p>“But you—?” Benicia began. The Arizonan +grinned broadly.</p> + +<p>“Me, I always fancy a little solo game in +this sort of rukus. I’m going on t’other side +of the gulch. Cross-fire, you sabe?” He left +them with a smile on his lips, and they watched +him jumping lightly down from rock to rock. +Almost before he had begun to clamber up the +opposite wall he was lost to view amid the maze +of fissure and castellated boulder. Grant and +the girl were stretched out behind their primitive +breastwork alone in this unfinished world +of fire. They could see neither Quelele nor Bagley. +Came to their ears the faint drone of barbaric +song: El Doctor Coyote Belly at his traitorous +devotions.</p> + +<p>The whole gorge was filled with a saffron +glare like the reflection from oil fires under +a boiler, unworldly, portentous.</p> + +<p>They waited, these two, in the immensity of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span> +earth’s disgorged bowels. Side by side, elbows +touching, they counted the slow drag of minutes +as naught in the balance against the deep joy +of love militant.</p> + +<p>A stir in the bed of the dry wash below +them. Up went their carbines with cheeks laid +against wood and eyes sighting along the +lances of light. Again the stir down there. A +gaunt figure rose from hand and knees to its +feet, stood swaying for an instant, then pitched +forward against the support of a slab of rock.</p> + +<p>A very leprechaun of the rocks was it: ribs +creasing burned skin about the naked torso; +whity-grey hair streaming down to mingle +with a beard; bare arms like a spider’s legs +and all cracked by the sun. The husk of Doc +Stooder, plaything of the desert god, was come +here, following the still living spark of instinct +prompting a water search in a canyon. Come, +too, to the secret hiding place of the treasure +whose glitter had so mercilessly befooled him.</p> + +<p>Grant, stupefied by the apparition of death +and failing in any recognition of the skeleton +thing as the bibulous doctor of Arizora, suspected +a trick of Urgo. Again he laid his eye +along his rifle sight, vigilant for what might +ensue. The creature spread-eagled against the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span> +rock slowly pushed itself upright with its +hands; its shaggy head turned wearily as +thirsting eyes scanned the dry chasm.</p> + +<p>Then a shout from across the gorge. Bagley +had leaped from his hiding place and was rushing +precariously down to succour the ghost. +Just as he reached Stooder and had thrown +an arm about him to heave his wasted form +onto a shoulder the crack of a rifle shivered the +gorge’s silence. Rock dust spurted within a +foot of the rescuer.</p> + +<p>The sun went out that second—instantly, +like a powerful incandescent switched off. A +yellow penumbra tinged the darkness.</p> + +<p>Almost as one the rifles of Grant and Benicia +jetted lead. Two more shots from the dry +wash. The giant figure of Bagley with +Stooder limp over one shoulder never faltered +in its leaping and scrambling up the declivity +to the shelter he had quitted. The two who +had been following his flight with stilled hearts +saw him disappear behind a great rock; an +instant and a jet of fire lanced down thence +at the attackers by the Gate.</p> + +<p>A blob of rain large as a Mexican dollar +smacked on Benicia’s hand as she pumped the +ejector—another and a third. Then the gorge<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span> +was blasted by a thunder shock amid the peaks, +and a stab of lightning painted the whole pit +sulphurous blue. By its flash the defenders +saw scurrying figures leaping from rock to +rock in the stream bed. Quelele, the quick of +eye, fired his first shot by the light of storm +fire; one of the rurales went down like a wet +sack.</p> + +<p>A second stunning burst of thunder which +knocked out the underpinning of the sky. Then +deluge.</p> + +<p>It was not rain that fell; it was solid water +in sheets and cones which hissed with the speed +of its descent. Water so compacted that it +was like a river on edge, engulfing. With it +the almost continuous quiver and jerk of electrical +flame. The gorge was become a watery +hell. More than that, for Urgo and his men +in the wash it threatened momentarily to be +their tomb. Already a white streak of foam +in the lightning flashes marked where the once +bone-dry watercourse was changing character.</p> + +<p>The rurales and their leader found the odds +all of a sudden snatched from their hands by +this frenzied ally of the hunted girl and her +supporters. They had come eleven against +five, with their quarry caught in a hole in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span> +Pinacate sierra; before the cloudburst had +endured three minutes Urgo realized he had +let himself and his men into a fatal trap. +Their horses, confidently left behind them in +the lower reaches of the gorge, must already +have stampeded under the lash of the storm. +Spiteful rifle flashes from both sides came with +each baleful flicker of fire from the sky to deny +escape from the rising waters up either wall +of the chasm.</p> + +<p>Now a dull roaring above the waterfall of +the rain began to fill the gash in the sierra. +Away back at the head of the gorge and where +the slope from the twin volcano peaks shed +water as from steep roofs into this common +trough, a solid wall, capped dull white, came +with the speed of a meteor down and down +through the channel in the living rock. It rolled +boulders the size of box-cars in its flood; a +chevaux-de-frise of barbed cactus and scrub +trees tumbled at its crest.</p> + +<p>Even above the tumult of the deluge sounded +the shrill alarm of the rurales as they broke +position and turned to flee through the Gate. +But already the flood was there, choking egress. +They must scramble up the sides of the gorge +like rats from a flooded hold; they must grope +and cling by every illuminating flash of blue<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span> +fire, waiting to see where the next handhold +lay, how near the hungry yellow waters rushed.</p> + +<p>With Grant and the girl was nothing but +security. Unprotected, they had bent their +heads to the pounding mallets of water. When +the firing abruptly ceased at the rush of their +attackers for safety Grant heard the scream +of a horse near at hand and remembered their +tethered animals. Should they break away in +their fright the plight of all five would be a +desperate one.</p> + +<p>“Stay here!” he shouted in Benicia’s ear. +“Going to the horses!”</p> + +<p>Grant crawled and groped his way over the +slippery rocks, each seeming to be alive with +the film of rushing water across it. He clambered +down and to the right until he came to +the pulpit rock behind which the beasts had +been tethered by Quelele. The mule he found +down, hopelessly noosed in his hobble rope and +slowly strangling; the horses were huddled, +tails to the storm, dripping and dejected.</p> + +<p>It took several minutes’ precarious work to +get the pack-animal to his feet and freshly +tethered. Then Grant began the retreat to the +breastwork where he had left the girl. It was +largely a matter of guesswork. Once he found +himself against an unscalable wall and had to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span> +retrace his steps. Another time one foot +slipped and he caught himself with his body +halfway over the brink.</p> + +<p>A flash of lightning showed him two rifles +lying side by side on a ledge below him—his +rifle and Benicia’s; but the girl was gone. The +fist of fear smote him terrifically.</p> + +<p>He screamed her name above the bellowing +of the flood in the wash. No answer. He ran +along the ledge that had been theirs until he +came to a downward terrace; to that he leaped +and along its blind way he fumbled. Came the +ghost of a scream, thin above the diapason all +about. His name—“Grant!”</p> + +<p>Then merciful lightning blazed blue and he +saw. Below him on a broad shelf which overhung +the whiteness of the torrent two figures, +glistening like seals, were locked—they swayed.</p> + +<p>The man launched himself blindly out and +down. He rolled; he slipped and wallowed +against and under great boulders. At the end +of seconds seeming æons he came to the rock +apron where he had seen the struggling shapes. +Sound of stertorous breathing guided him. He +rose from his knees before Benicia and another, +who was trying to drag her along the +ledge. A revealing flash of fire gave him just +a glimpse of a weasel face—Colonel Urgo.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span></p> + +<p>Not so much rage as loathly horror of an +unclean thing sped furious summons to every +muscle spring in his body. With his shoulder +planted against the Spaniard’s chest for a +leverage Grant tore loose the man’s grip from +Benicia. Before he could whirl to shift his +attack Urgo had screamed an oath and was on +the American’s back, legs twining to cumber +Grant’s thighs, both hands clamped about his +throat. It was the catamount’s attack.</p> + +<p>The first impact of his antagonist’s weight +nearly over-balanced Grant and precipitated +both into the maelstrom of waters not six feet +below their ledge. But, steadying himself, the +American suddenly launched backward, pinning +the lighter body on his back against a wall of +rock. It was a terrific smash. Urgo’s breath +came in a whistle from it. His hands sank +deeper into the muscles about Grant’s throat, +closing his windpipe. Deliberately the standing +man took a few forward steps, then swiftly +back against the wall again. An elbow of rock +found the Spaniard’s ribs and cracked two. He +shrieked.</p> + +<p>Now Grant’s hands went up to lock behind +the head that sagged over his right shoulder. +Strength of desperation flooded into his arms, +for the weaker man had him throttled. Urgo<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span> +must release his hold on Grant’s throat or suffer +a broken neck. The constricting hands +slackened their grip ever so little. Grant bowed +his shoulders, gave a mighty heave and swept +the Colonel’s body over his shoulder in a wide +arc. The man sprawled, arms wide, through the +air, struck the edge of the rocky apron. He +clawed—slipped—clawed again, and disappeared.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV">CHAPTER XXV</a><br /> +<small>TREASURE TROVE</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">The storm ceased with the same suddenness +as it began. Hardly an hour had torrential +waters lashed the cinder wastes of Pinacate +when the black pall over the heavens broke +away and the sun came out to suck hungrily +at pools in the rocks. There was a headiness +of wine in the air, a smell of wet soil mingled +with spicy emanations from greasewood and +<i lang="es" xml:lang="es">palo verde</i>. The desert’s sparse growing +things exulted in the breaking of long drought.</p> + +<p>For a long time Grant and Benicia on their +side of the gorge and Bim in his retreat opposite +lay hidden, awaiting possible renewal of +the attack which the storm had scattered. But +the torrent that still raged down the bottom +of the gorge had washed clean every vestige +of an enemy. Quelele on his high post saw +four scattered horsemen rushing pell-mell for +the gateway onto the desert—last vestige of +Urgo’s rurales force, each man of which gave +thanks to his patron saint that he had come<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span> +out of the hell in the mountain cul-de-sac with +a whole skin.</p> + +<p>Quelele also saw several specks dropping +earthward from the clear blue; specks which +rapidly grew from the size of gnats to the +spread of small aeroplanes. King condors +they, who had smelled a feast from afar—loathsome +birds with a wing spread covering +the span of thirteen feet. The coming of one +of these foul creatures to his particular banquet +even the sharp eye of a Papago watcher +could not discern, for the scene was hidden +from him by a shoulder of the cañon wall.</p> + +<p>A stunted <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">palo verde</i> tree nearly stripped of +its verdure by the whips of the rain hung half-uprooted +over the rapidly diminishing stream +in the wash. One branch had caught and held +some flotsam from the high flood, now clear +of the water. Just a shapeless bundle of +clothes, lolling head, arms askew where broken +bones had let inert flesh sag to the current. +Just a grim caricature of something which so +recently had walked in the pride of his imaginings.</p> + +<p>The condor flopped clumsily to a branch +stub six feet distant from the bundle of +clothes, folded his great wings with a dry +rustling of feathers, blinked the red lids of his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span> +eyes to focus his vision for expert inspection +and studied the hank of cloth and flesh suspended +in the tree crotch. The thing which +flood waters had brought stirred slightly; eyes +opened with a flutter. They met the critical +gaze of the feathered pariah on the stub. +The condor acknowledged this unexpected show +of life on his banquet table by disturbed bobbings +of the naked yellow head—the skin on +his poll was wrinkled as an old man’s—and a +bringing of his off eye to bear around his sabre +beak with the skew-like movement of a hen +sighting a worm.</p> + +<p>The wreck in the bundle of clothes opened +his lips to scream but the ghost of a groan +came instead. It tried to lift a fending arm +against the abomination so near; the muscles +tugged at broken bones.</p> + +<p>The condor appraised these manifestations +of life carefully, weighed them by contrast +with his experiences with crippled sheep and +helpless calves. His talons stirred restlessly +on the branch. First one, then the other lifted +from the bark, stretched and flexed. The king +of the higher airs was impatient. He spread +his wings to balance him and clumsily hopped a +few feet nearer, craning his wattled neck +anxiously.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span></p> + +<p>A shadow passed swiftly over the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">palo verde</i> +tree. A quick upward twist of the head gave the +condor view of a putative and too-anxious fellow +guest at the bounty spread there. Greediness +pushed him. He spread his wings and +hopped again—</p> + +<p>Then the desert exacted with cruelty recompense +for the cruelties of Colonel Hamilcar +Urgo. Abomination of his passing was meted +him according to the abominations of his own +devising.</p> + +<p>An hour after the last rain drop the flood +waters in the gorge had dropped to permit +of reunion between the erstwhile defenders +of the pass. Grant waded waist deep with +Benicia in his arms; Bim, all smiles, was +stretching out a hand from the off-side rocks.</p> + +<p>“Well, folks all, looks like a pleasant time +was enjoyed by all and one!” The big Arizonan’s +spirits would permit of no more concrete +thanksgiving for a crisis passed. It was +his way to find laughter the only vehicle for +suppressed emotions and whimsicalities the +best conveyance for thoughts which might +sound “high-falutin’.” The three stood mute, +their eyes telling one another things which +might have come flattened and blunted in +speech.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span></p> + +<p>“See me welcome an old visitor just before +the curtain went up on the first act?” Bim +turned to Grant, his eyes shining excitement. +“Who d’you think? Ole Doc Stooder!” +Grant gasped in surprise. His pal’s grin +faded as he added seriously:</p> + +<p>“Just about the end of his string, too. The +rain sure saved him—couldn’t have lasted another +hour—one chance in a thousand brought +him here where they’s folks to look out for him—a +friend, even, to coddle him back to health.”</p> + +<p>“No, not one chance in a thousand,” Benicia +caught him up with deep seriousness in her +voice. “It is the desert way—to play with +destiny, I mean, and seem to cause miracles.—But +let me go to him if he needs attention.” +She started forward, but Bim put out a staying +hand.</p> + +<p>“I wouldn’t, ma’am. The Doc’s not a purty +sight right now. His body’s just drinkin’ in +all the water that landed on him an’ he’s sorta +in a daze—doesn’t say much of anything that +makes sense. A little food which I’m goin’ to +brew if I can find some dry sticks of wood anywhere’s +round—” Simple charity dictated +that Bim say no word of conjecture as to what +brought Stooder to the desert. He guessed +full well.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span></p> + +<p>El Doctor Coyote Belly seemed to be materialized +from the rocks so noiselessly had he +approached the group. The old man’s face +was ashen; unguessable terrors he had fought +with and hardly conquered since last the three +had seen him standing in the yellow storm glare +before the cave of Elder Brother.</p> + +<p>“If my daughter will come now to the house +of Iitoi,” he said to the girl in his native +tongue, “she may take what Iitoi gives. The +god has expressed his displeasure by the storm—but +he will give.”</p> + +<p>Benicia turned and put a wordless question +to Grant. They started together to climb the +precipitous rock ladder up the side of the +gorge wall, El Doctor leading. Thirty minutes’ +exhaustive effort brought them to the approach +of a high-roofed cavern into which the westering +sun laid a broad carpet of light. There in +the shale before the cave mouth were El Doctor’s +pitiful presents to the god—the arrow +and prayer stick wedged upright, the beads +and tobacco in a small basket. The whole +ground about was littered with the shards of +sacrificial pottery and scraps of basketry.</p> + +<p>Benicia motioned to El Doctor to lead the +way into the cave, but he shook his head in +emphatic negative. Then she gave Grant a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span> +strange smile, almost that of a child who awaits +revelation of a mystery. He saw in deep pools +of her eyes a transcendent joy made almost +pain by this moment of hope achieved. She +held out her hand for him to take and they +entered the cave.</p> + +<p>When their eyes had become accustomed to +the sudden transition from glaring sunlight +into gloom a faint glimmering at the far end +of the sunlight path guided them. Ankle-deep +in the dust of ages they groped. The glimmer +waxed stronger. Suddenly Benicia stopped +with a catching of the breath. Grant stooped +and lifted a heavy object from a niche of rock, +bringing it into the filtered stream of radiance.</p> + +<p>It was a golden monstrance, dust coated. +Faint twinkles of light glowed like firefly lamps +from jewels set in the radii of a glory. A great +diamond above the crystal box caught fire from +the sun.</p> + +<p>As Grant hastily bent to replace the sacred +vessel his hand tipped the edge of a shallow +basket. From it rolled a stream of moonbeam +fire out into the zone of sunshine. Liquid +globules of moon-glow, round and pellucid as +ice crystals, seductive as the shadowed whiteness +of a woman’s throat: the green pearls of +the Virgin stripped by the impiety of El Rojo<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span> +from the shrine of the Four Evangelists!</p> + +<p>Benicia slowly sank to her knees, words of +prayer whispered from her lips. Prayer of +thankfulness and dedication of the lost treasure +to the sanctity of the Church.</p> + +<p>Grant felt his presence in this solemn +moment was an intrusion. He tip-toed back +to the mouth of the cave and stood looking +out. All the wildness and the savagery of +Altar’s secret fane of the desert god lay burning +and glistening with wetness in the westering +sun. The waning torrent, sardonic gesture +of plenty in this ultimate citadel of thirst, +splashed jewels against the lancing light. Here +was a world of the primordial—Creation arrested +in its first hour.</p> + +<p>A hand touched his arm lightly. He turned +to find Benicia standing beside him. The sun +wove an aura of vivid fire about her head. +Her eyes raised to his were swimming.</p> + +<p>“Now, heart of my heart,” she whispered. +And all the love fire in her flamed from her +lips.</p> + + +<p class="p2 noic">THE END</p> + + + + +<hr class="chap" /> +<div class="tnote"> +<p class="noi tntitle"><a name="TNOTE" id="TNOTE">Transcriber’s Notes:</a></p> + +<p>Title page verso: printer’s information was not supplied in the + source text.</p> + +<p>A Table of Contents has been provided for the convenience of the + reader.</p> + +<p>Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.</p> + +<p>Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.</p> + +<p>Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.</p> + +<p>The author’s em-dash and punctuation/endquote styles have been + retained.</p> +</div> + +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44691 ***</div> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/44691-h/images/cover.jpg b/44691-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..d2c387e --- /dev/null +++ b/44691-h/images/cover.jpg diff --git a/44691-h/images/logo.jpg b/44691-h/images/logo.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..3517001 --- /dev/null +++ b/44691-h/images/logo.jpg diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fc0fc46 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #44691 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44691) diff --git a/old/44691-0.txt b/old/44691-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..eaeef0f --- /dev/null +++ b/old/44691-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6879 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Dust of the Desert, by Robert Welles Ritchie + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Dust of the Desert + +Author: Robert Welles Ritchie + +Release Date: January 17, 2014 [EBook #44691] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DUST OF THE DESERT *** + + + + +Produced by Donald Cummings and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + +DUST OF THE DESERT + + + + +Dust of the Desert + +BY ROBERT WELLES RITCHIE + + +[Illustration] + + + A. L. BURT COMPANY + Publishers New York + + +Published by arrangement with Dodd, Mead & Company + +Printed in U. S. A. + + + + + COPYRIGHT, 1922, + BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC. + + PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY + [Transcriber’s Note: printer’s information was not supplied in the + source text.] + + + + +CONTENTS + + + CHAPTER PAGE + PROLOGUE 1 + I WHAT HAPPENED ON THE LIMITED 17 + II A GIRL NAMED BENICIA 25 + III DOC STOODER 36 + IV COLONEL URGO REPAYS 51 + V THE GARDEN OF SOLITUDE 65 + VI JUSTICE 76 + VII THE CHAIN GANG 85 + VIII THE HEART OF BENICIA 98 + IX GOLD AND PEARLS 108 + X AT THE CASA O’DONOJU 112 + XI THE MARK OF EL ROJO 129 + XII DESERT SECRETS 145 + XIII CROSSCURRENTS 159 + XIV REVELATION 168 + XV WHAT HAPPENED IN THE NIGHT 178 + XVI ACCUSATION 184 + XVII THE ORDEAL 195 + XVIII THE DESERT INTERVENES 211 + XIX THIRST 219 + XX THE COMING OF EL DOCTOR 232 + XXI TREASURE QUEST 247 + XXII ALTAR TAKES ITS TOLL 257 + XXIII INTO THE FURNACE 266 + XXIV STORM 279 + XXV TREASURE TROVE 293 + + + + +DUST OF THE DESERT + + + + +PROLOGUE + + +Roads of men thread the world. They thunder with a life flood. They +are vibrant with a pulse of affairs. By land and water and air they +link to-day to to-morrow. But El Camino de los Muertos (the Road of +the Dead Men) is a dim highway leading nowhere but back and back to +forgotten yesterdays. Its faint sign-posts once were vivid in lettering +of tears and blood. Its stages were measured by the sum of all human +hardihood. Faith, valour, reckless adventuring, thirst for gold, love +o’ women--these the links in the measuring chain that marked its course +through a dead land. And black crosses formed of lava stones laid down +in the sand; these abide over all the length of the Road of the Dead +Men from Caborca to Yuma to cry to the white-hot sky of slain hopes and +faith betrayed in those buried years gone. + +The priest-adventurers of New Spain first blazed this trail through +an unknown wilderness. Restless pioneers of the Society of Jesus and +the Order of St. Francis, men with the zeal to dare, pushed out from +the northernmost limits of the Spanish settlements in a new world with +their soldier guards and their Indian guides. They fought death in +a land of thirst northward, ever northward. The cross fell from the +hands of spent zealots at some waterhole where water was not, and other +hands followed to snatch up the sacred emblem and push it deeper into +Papagueria. North and west through El Infiernillo to the red waters of +the Colorado where the Yumas had their reed huts. Thence on to the west +through a land that stank of death until at last the end of the trail +was smothered in the soft green of Californian valleys--good ground for +the seed of Faith. + +The overland trail of the padres became the single trail from Mexico +to gold when the madness of ’49 called to all peoples. Then the Road +of the Dead Men took its toll by the score and doublescore. Then men +fought for precious water at Tinajas Altas; many crosses of malapais +mark the sands there. Bandits lurked at Tule Wells, ninety miles over +blistering desert from the nearest water, to shoot men for the gold +they were bringing back from California. The Pock-Marked Woman, mad +with thirst--so runs the legend--walked at nights with the Virgin in +the flats beyond Pitiquito and found water with celestial candles +burning all about the pool. + +So passed the wraiths of the gold madness. A railroad was laid down +from the Pacific eastward across the desert. What once was called +Papagueria had come to be known as Sonora, in Mexico, and Arizona in +the Republic of the North. The Road of the Dead Men at its California +end became a way through green and watered valleys where bungalows +mushroom overnight; along its course in southwestern Arizona and +northern Sonora it lapsed to a faint trail from waterhole to waterhole +of a heat scourged desert. To-day this forgotten remnant of a high +road of adventure and hot romance exists a streak in an incandescent +inferno of sand and lava slag, wherein death is the omnipresent fact. +Occasionally a prospector putters along its dreary stretches, chipping +at ledge and rimrock. A Papago or a Cocopa creeps over caliche-stained +flats with baskets of salt from the Pinacate marshes near the Gulf. + +That is all. The Dead Men hold their road inviolable. It is dust of the +desert. + +That is all, did I say? No, the spirit of romance and the shape of +illusion have not completely passed from El Camino de los Muertos. +Remains that tale which carries itself over a span of a century and +a half, linking lives of the present to lives of men and women whose +very graves long since have passed from sight of folk. A tale strangely +like the desert trail along whose course its episodes of hot passion +and swift action befell; for its beginnings are laid in a mirage of an +elder day which we of the present can see but dimly, and its ending +is beyond the horizon of to-day. Would you know the full story of the +Lost Mission de los Cuatros Evangelistas: how the baleful spell of its +green pearls of the Virgin worked upon the fortunes of the House of +O’Donoju and how the last of that house wrought expiation for the sin +of a forbear through heroism and the fire of a great love--would you +know the full story, I say, you must see with me the substance of a +beginning. + +No more can one plump into the middle of this the last of the romance +tales of the Road of the Dead Men than could one drop onto the Road +itself midway of its length. + + * * * * * + +A King in Spain once followed a practice of careless munificence. +Whenever one of his generals in the great wars appeared worthy of +reward His Majesty used to ink the ball of his thumb and with a grand +and free gesture he would make a print somewhere on the map of Mexico, +then called New Spain. Then the lucky general, taking this patent of +royal favor across the seas with him, would hire surveyors to translate +the print of Philip’s thumb into terms of square miles of domain. These +square miles were his and his heirs’ to govern like little kings, with +justice in their hands, the Church to give them countenance and Indians +by the hundreds to serve them under a modified code of slavery. No +man has lived since as did those magnificent possessors of Philip’s +thumbprints. + +The Rancho del Refugio in the little known reaches of Papagueria was +one of these fiefs of the king. Michael O’Donohue, a wild man of the +red Irish who had fought English kings and queens under the banner of +Spain, had come by the grant originally and had taken a lady of Granada +to the new world to bear him heirs worthy of their inheritance. Michael +O’Donohue became Don Miguel O’Donoju, lord of a desert principality and +a power at the Viceroy’s court in the City of Mexico. He established +two rigid precedents to be followed by the house of O’Donoju: pride of +race and jealous conservation of the family principality. It became +a rule of the O’Donoju that none of the clan marry outside the pure +Castilian blood--Irish excepted if Irish could be found; and a rule +that, come what might, no O’Donoju pass title to so much as a foot of +the Rancho del Refugio. + +It was a day in April, the year 1780, that the clan O’Donoju came +to the Mission of the Four Evangelists to lend the dignity of their +presence to the solemn service of re-dedication. More than that, Don +Padraic O’Donoju, venerable head of the house and master of the Casa +O’Donoju in the oasis named the Garden of Solitude, was come to witness +a personal triumph. For it had been his money that had gone to the +Franciscan College to be used in the rebuilding of the frontier post of +God after the Apaches had raided and burned it fifty years before. And +one of his own sons, Padre Felice, had been the architect and builder +of the restored mission and was to continue the priest in charge. Padre +Felice was fourth in a line of O’Donojus to take orders, one from each +generation since the establishment of the grant. + +The O’Donojus--grandchildren, cousins and kin by marriage--had ridden +five days and upwards from various sections of the Rancho del Refugio, +up and out through the Altar desert to this remote sanctuary of God in +the country of the Sand People. They came by the way called the Road of +the Dead Men. Its asperities were softened by the quick desert spring +which tipped each thorny cactus cone with candelabra tufts of golden +and carmine flowers. The desert’s usual heat was tempered by the snows +that lay in unnamed mountains to the north. + +They came in a lengthy caravan of horses and burros, with half naked +Indians to herd the goats and the yearling steers that were to be +barbecued for the secular feast to follow the religious rites; with a +half-company of foot soldiers from the Presidio del Refugio to guard +the company against roving Apaches; Indian maids on mule back to serve +the needs of their mistresses, regally mounted on ponies of the Cortez +strain; baggage porters, cooks, roustabouts. Fully a hundred of the +clan O’Donoju and satellites on pilgrimage over the Road of the Dead +Men. + +All of the O’Donoju were there but one, El Rojo--the Red One. The “Red +One” was he because of the throw-back to the red Irish strain of his +fighting ancestor Don Miguel. Red with the pugnacious red of Donegal +was his hair; his cheeks had none of the sallow tan of the Spanish +but were dyed with the stain of Irish bog winds; his eyes were blue +lamps of the devil. A fatherless grandson of old Don Padraic, El Rojo +had played the wild youth in the City of Mexico with only occasional +visits of penance to the Casa O’Donoju in the desert country of the +north until, when the tang of youth still was his, he had tainted his +name with scandal. Followed his formal expulsion from the clan at the +hands of the old aristocrat, his grandfather, and the closing of all +doors of his kindred in Papagueria against him. El Rojo had ridden out +to the wide world of sand and mountains an outcast but with a laugh on +his lips; this a full year before the gathering of the family at the +Mission of the Four Evangelists. + +When El Rojo had turned lone wolf, a sadness that was not the sadness +of shame settled upon the heart of one of the O’Donoju. Frecia +Mayortorena, a cousin, one of the flowers of girlhood that caused old +Hermosillo to be named the Little Garden, sat behind her barred windows +on many a night with heart wild to hear once more the love song only +El Rojo knew how to sing. Frecia Mayortorena, all fire under the cold +ice of her schooled and decorous features, knew that the reckless devil +with the flame-blue eyes had but to come and strum a love call on his +guitar; she would go with him into banishment and worse. So on this +pilgrimage to the shrine of the four holy men the girl, who rode with +her father and brothers, allowed her imagination to frame the figure +of a phantom horseman on every ragged mountain top. At each camp fire +along the Road of the Dead Men, when the vast sea of desert round about +was stilled under the stars, Frecia Mayortorena sat with tiny pointed +chin cupped in a propping palm and seemed to hear in the clink of a +mule’s hobble chain the opening chord of that song of songs, + + Red as the pomegranate flower, my love, + The heart of him who sings. + +The cavalcade came to the mission with the firing of guns and with +shouts. The reed-and-mud huts of the Sand People beyond the cloisters +disgorged their shouting savages to welcome the travellers. Padre +Felice, a gaunt man with the face of an ascetic above the folds of his +rough brown cowl, hurried out from the doors of the new sanctuary to +meet and give embrace to his father, Don Padraic, and then in turn to +all his next of kin; behind him followed his two novitiate priests +who were, with Padre Felice, the only white men in all the stretch of +Papagueria from the Rancho del Refugio westward to the Sea of Cortez. +Five days’ travel were they from the nearest of their kind, and to west +and north stretched unguessed leagues of the desert. Only the Road of +the Dead Men linked them with the first of the Californian missions +thirty days over the western horizon. + +Missionary to the Sand People was Padre Felice--to that branch of the +Papago tribe of tractable Indians who lived about the east shore of +the Sea of Cortez and on eastward throughout the desert of Altar. The +rebuilt mission stood in the middle of a small oasis which was fed by a +stream down out of the burnt mountains not a mile behind; one of those +rare and furtive desert trickles of water which hides in the sand most +months of the year. The diminutive mission building, with its rounded +dome of sun-burned brick, lifted in sharp outlines above the vivid and +water-fed greenery of the oasis mesquite and _palo verde_; but the +whole--oasis and house of God--was dwarfed by the bleak immensity +of the flanking mountains leaping sheer from the plain to push their +fire-scarred summits against the sky. + +Before the choir of Indian voices intoned the opening prayer of the +dedication service the packs of the O’Donoju caravan yielded precious +things. There was a monstrance of heavy gold studded at its tips with +precious gems; this was the personal offering of old Don Padraic to +the shrine of the Four Evangelists. A chalice of gold, a great altar +crucifix of gold inlaid with mother-of-pearl, a pair of candelabra +wrought of chased silver and a communion service of the same metal +represented the pious contributions of the rest of the clan O’Donoju. + +But most precious of all the altar treasures was that double string +of the pearls of the Virgin which by a miracle had been saved from +plunder of the Apaches when the savages from the north had come burning +and murdering fifty years before. For a half-century the lucent rope +of moonbeam green had lain in the treasure vaults of the Franciscan +College in the City of Mexico awaiting this hour of restoration. Green +pearls fetched from the shell beads of the Sea of Cortez by Indian +converts. Pearls hinting of caves of ocean by their shimmering, +changeful lustre. Pearls to fire the lust of covetousness even from +their hallowed place about the throat of the Virgin. + +Padre Felice held the glinting rope of lights high in dedication, and +as reverently he draped them upon the bosom of the sacred effigy the +clan O’Donoju and all the dark-skinned children of the mission sang a +gloria. + +An untoward incident jarred the merriment of the feasting that followed +the re-dedication of the mission. When whole beeves were being lifted +from the roasting pits and the skins of wine and tequila were passing +from table to table beneath the flowering mesquite trees a column of +dust strode across the desert from the east and spawned two horsemen +upon the oasis. One, a naked Indian of the stature of a giant, reined +in his horse at the far fringe of the mesquite as befitting a servant. +The second rode boldly into the circle of the tables. Silver clinked +from bridle and stirrup leathers of his magnificent white thoroughbred. +The rider’s silver-trimmed hat came off with a sweeping bow to include +all there, and the red of his hair was like molten copper in the sun. + +“El Rojo!” was the startled cry on every lip. Men scrambled to their +feet as if to combat some overt move of an enemy. + +“God be with you all,” came the Red One’s speech of polite greeting, +made all the more ironical by the reckless upturn of his lips in a grin +and the steely lights that flashed from his blue eyes. + +“--And God, or his gentle vicar, Padre Felice, give me place at table +with my noble kin,” El Rojo added lightly. “I have travelled far to +have my cup here on this day of celebration.” + +The laughing horseman let his eyes dance over the circle of faces until +they came to rest for just an instant upon one. He saw cheeks flaming, +eyes filled with wonder and full lips parted to give a heart its song. +Frecia Mayortorena was seeing a vision in the life. Quickly El Rojo’s +glance leaped on as if to shield the girl from contamination. The +venerable Don Padraic, head of the clan O’Donoju, was on his feet now +and trembling. + +“We know you not, sir! We must ask you to begone!” + +El Rojo caused his horse to rear perilously. Before hoofs touched the +ground hardly two paces from the old man the rider again had made his +full-armed bow. He spoke with mock respect. + +“Sanctuary, my grandsire! I and my servant claim sanctuary of Holy +Church. We have ridden far, and good Uncle Felice can not deny us the +charity of his order.” + +Don Padraic was being swiftly mastered by his rage when the friar to +whom the unwelcome horseman had appealed pushed his way to the side of +the older man. + +“He speaks the truth, sire,” urged the man in the brown habit. “Here on +God’s ground we can not be guilty of uncharity.” Then, looking up into +the laughing blue eyes of his nephew, “I ask you to descend, sir, and +refresh yourself and your servant until such time as you take the road.” + +So all merriment in the oasis of the Four Evangelists was stilled. +There in the single green spot on all the leagues of the Road of the +Dead Men was wrought a comedy; a prelude it was to swift tragedy. The +clan O’Donoju, its satellites and retainers ate and drank in silence, +and apart from this company sat El Rojo and his naked copper giant +alone. From time to time El Rojo lifted his cup as if in ceremonious +health to his kin. Only Frecia Mayortorena read the glint in the blue +eyes which told that the toast was to her--and to what would eventuate. + +Near sundown El Rojo and his Indian rode off to the west, but not +until the outlaw had spent a few minutes alone in the mission. Padre +Felice saw him at prayer before the altar of the Virgin and was deeply +touched that the spirit of religion had not altogether departed from +the family’s scapegrace. + +In the dark of midnight Frecia Mayortorena, who had cried herself to +sleep, was awakened by the touch of a hand stretched under the side +of the tent where she slept with the women of the party. A silver +embroidered hat was slipped under the tent to rest on her arm. The +girl dressed herself in a folly of love and terror and stole outside. +The waiting figure of El Rojo’s giant Indian detached itself from +the shadow of the mesquite, motioning her to a tethered horse. Blind +infatuation for a hero lover brooked no questioning on the girl’s part. +She mounted and followed her guide through the alleys of heavy shade. + +A single dreadful cry sounded from out the opened door of the mission. +A minute later a vague horseman spurred to her side and stopped the +beating of her heart with flaming kisses. The silent desert swallowed +three phantom shapes on horseback. + +Dawn brought revelation and the beginning of that cycle of tragedy and +dreadful pursuit of Nemesis which was to overwhelm the clan O’Donoju. +Padre Felice murdered at the altar of the Virgin, where he had tried +to stay the hand of impiety. The green pearls of the Virgin gone. A +daughter of the house of O’Donoju flown with a thief and a murderer. + +One word more and this mirage of years long dead fades. The curse that +all Papagueria saw descend on the clan O’Donoju spared not even the +sanctuary of the Four Evangelists. A year to the night of the Virgin’s +despoliation the Apaches came again to this frontier post of the +Church, and after a spiteful siege they slew the white priests, burned +the mission and carried the Indian converts over the mountains into +slavery. The Franciscans dared not rebuild on such accursed ground. +Winds of the desert, which move sand mountains in their eternal sweep, +played upon the ruined mission year on year to blot even a vestige +of it from the eyes of man. God’s hand--so the Indians had it--shook +the mountains behind the little oasis so that the source of the tiny +life-giving stream was blocked. The green vanished like a mist, and +scabrous desert cacti crept in on prickly feet. + +The Mission de los Cuatros Evangelistas became legend. + + + + +CHAPTER I + +WHAT HAPPENED ON THE LIMITED + + +The Golden Sunset Limited, Pacific Coast bound, snaked its way through +a cleft in mountains and came sighing to a stop at the man’s town, +El Paso. A patchwork crowd spilled out from the station platform to +push around the ladders of the car icers to the train steps. Swarthy +Mexicans under sombreros, with their black-shawled women and their +little tin trunks, scrambled and clogged at the approaches to the +oven-like day coaches forward. Pullman passengers sauntered over frogs +and switches to plush and rosewood at the train’s end. + +Among these was Grant Hickman, civil engineer, New York, lately captain +in the First Division overseas. Arizona bound and west of the Ohio +River for the first time in his thirty years, Hickman had broken his +journey by a day’s stopover in El Paso. He had given Juarez a whirl, +decided the kind of life he saw across the International Bridge was +spurious and of little worth, and now was entraining again for his +destination some four hundred miles to the westward. He gave the porter +his bags to stow for him according to the directions scribbled on his +Pullman ticket and began a lazy pacing of the platform, his eye alert +for the colour and the bustle of it all. The blending of two races, of +widely differing civilizations, here in this sturdy city gave Hickman’s +restless imagination a smart fillip. He saw men with gaily coloured +blankets worn as cloaks over their shoulders like prayer shawls in a +synagogue; Indians with ornaments of beaten silver and raw turquoise +hasps on their belts had their shoulders planted against solid +brick walls with a grace born only of perfect indolence. All great +stuff--regular musical show background. + +On his first lap down the platform the New York man’s eyes rested +momentarily on two figures standing in the drip of one of the car +icers’ laden pushcarts. A girl and a man; she hatless as she had left +the car for a stroll, the man all gesticulating hands and eloquently +moving shoulders. Hickman caught a scrap of the man’s fervid speech +as he strolled past; it was in a foreign tongue, liquid--almost +lisping--with its softly rolled r’s and a peculiar singing intonation +at the upward lift of each period. Spanish undoubtedly. Just an +over-shoulder glimpse of a thin, dark face in sharp profile confirmed +Grant in his guess at the speaker’s nationality. The girl’s bared head +attracted his appreciative eye; it bore a glory of wondrously burning +red hair, coiled in great masses, vividly alive. + +Grant turned his corner at the platform’s end and began to retrace his +steps, consciously bearing in the direction of the beacon hair. When he +was still twenty paces off he saw that the swarthy man had gripped one +of the girl’s wrists and that his hawk face was pushed close to hers in +what might have been an access of fury or of pleading. Grant quickened +his pace instinctively; he did not like the looks of that man’s talon +grip on a girl’s wrist. He paused a decent distance from the twain and +made a pretence of lighting a cigarette while his eyes glanced steadily +over his cupped palms. + +Then a surprising thing. The girl launched some verbal javelin at the +man who gripped her wrist, at the same instant looking down at the +clamping fingers as if to emphasize what must have been a command +to release her. No answer but a flash of white teeth beneath a toy +moustache. The girl’s free hand shot to a great coil of hair over the +nape of her neck, came away with twin prongs of thin steel--anchorage +of some hair ornament--showing below her clenched fingers. A lightning +jab downward, and the Spanish-speaking man dropped the imprisoned hand +to whip his own to his mouth. He snarled something in sharp falsetto. +The girl with the red hair tilted her chin at him, and the laugh that +slipped between her grudging little teeth was thin and sharp as the +double dagger points she had used. + +She turned, took three steps to a stool below the Pullman’s steps, +mounted with a quick swirl of skirts and was gone. Grant thought he saw +a half-formed determination to follow flash into the Spaniard’s eyes. +Without knowing why he did it, the New Yorker hastily put one foot upon +the lower Pullman step and bent his body so as to block access to it. +Very painstakingly he unloosed the knot on his low shoe, straightened +the tongue in place and began taking in slack on every loop of the +strings. + +A grunt of exasperation from behind Grant. When at last he straightened +himself and looked around the Spanish gentleman was gone. He chuckled. + +“Now that, señor, should teach you not to play rough with a red-head.” + +He walked down to the Pullman his ticket called for and climbed aboard. +Just as the conductor’s bellow, “Bo-oa-rd,” sounded, Grant, looking +through the glass of the vestibule, saw the Spanish gentleman with a +grip flying for the train out of the baggage room of the station. + +Passing into the body of the car he found his bags piled upon a seat +midway of its length. As he seated himself he was the least bit +startled to see flaming coils of hair above the top of the seat across +the aisle and one beyond his. Grant was not displeased. Girls with +spirit always walked straight into his somewhat susceptible affections; +and a girl who carried a home-made fish spear in her coiffure-- + +“’Scuse me, Cap’n; ef I could jes’ have a look at youah berth ticket. +This gentmum says he reckons you-all’s settin’ in his seat.” Grant +looked up to see the porter shifting uneasily before him and with +a deprecatory grin on his face. By him stood the waspish Spanish +gentleman; the latter inclined himself in a stiff bow as Grant’s gaze +met his. Out of the tail of his eye Grant thought he saw a slow turning +of the sunset cloud against the high seat-back ahead. + +“This is my section,” Grant drawled with no show of inclination to +arbitrate the matter. “I always buy a section when I travel.” + +“But, pardon, sir--” The Spanish gentleman extended a pink slip. “The +agent at the station has but now sold me this lower berth.” + +“Indeed?” A slow ache of perversity began to travel along Grant’s +spine. He had no love for a man who will manhandle women. “Indeed. The +agent at El Paso sold me mine yesterday.” + +“Ef I could see youah ticket,” the porter began feebly. + +“You couldn’t,” Grant snapped. “Perhaps the Pullman conductor may.” + +A cloud began gathering over the finely chiselled features of the +Spaniard. His toy moustache went up. He spoke to the porter: + +“The señor is not what we call _sympatico_. Have the kindness to fetch +the conductor.” + +The darkey disappeared. Grant turned to look out of the window, +ignoring completely the standing figure in the aisle. But he did not +ignore the reflection a trick of the sun cast on the double glass of +the window. He saw there just the faint aura of a fiery head which +refused to turn, though the compelling gaze of the standing man strove +mightily to command it. Faintly in the magic of the dusty glass was +carried to this bystander, whose neutrality already was considerably +strained, the silent battle of wills. + +The Pullman conductor bustled up to Grant’s seat. To him the Spaniard +appealed, offering the evidence of the berth check. Grant vouchsafed +no comment when he passed his own up for inspection. The man in blue +compared them. + +“Some ball-up somewhere,” he grunted. Then to Grant: “When was this +ticket sold to you?” + +“Yesterday morning at ten-fifteen o’clock,” came the prompt answer. +The waspish Spanish person admitted he had purchased his only a minute +before the train started. The conductor waved at Grant. + +“Then I guess the seat belongs to this gentleman. I’ll have to find you +one in another car.” + +“But, señor, I have special reason for remaining in this car.” The +Spaniard’s carefully restrained wrath began to bubble over. Grant +looked up at him and smiled frankly. + +“So have I,” he declared levelly. The other’s eyes snapped and his lips +lifted over small white teeth in what was meant to be a smile. + +“Señor,” he began with a shaking voice, “your courtesy deserves +remembrance. I hope some day it may be my pleasure to show you equal +consideration.” + +“Until then--_au revoir_,” Grant caught him up. With the porter +preceding him, the loser walked down the aisle to the far door of the +car. As he passed the seat where the girl was he half turned with a +sulky smile. But it was lost. She was looking out at the procession of +the telegraph poles. Grant, catching this final passage in the little +comedy, grinned. + +“There’s going to be lots of paprika in this Western hike,” joyfully he +assured himself--“or do we call it chili?” + + + + +CHAPTER II + +A GIRL NAMED BENICIA + + +Grant Hickman was not one of that tribe dignified by the name of +he-flirts. He abominated the whole slimy clan with the loathing of a +clean man. When he had seized upon the part of studied rudeness toward +the Spaniard it was not with the ulterior purpose of winning a smile +or paving the way for acquaintance with a pretty woman; Grant’s vivid +recollection of the sidewalk cafés of Paris in war time and their +hunting women left him cold toward the type that is careless of men’s +approaches. In flouting the foreigner and preventing his scheme to gain +a place in the car with the girl he had bullied on the station platform +the New York man had acted merely on instinct; he had protected a +girl from annoyance. Yet now that he had won through by dint of crass +boorishness--and the young man’s conscience gave him a twinge over the +substance of his discourtesy--he suffered a not unreasonable curiosity +regarding the possessor of that glorious beacon in the seat across the +aisle. + +Who was she? What circumstances had led to that scene on the platform +which had ended with the unexpected dagger thrust of the steel hair +ornament? Was this little black-and-tan whipper-snapper a lover--a +brother--blackmailer? Grant’s galloping imagination built up flimsy +hypotheses only to rip them apart. And his eyes dwelt upon the soft +involutions of flame coloured hair, which were the only physical +indices of personality granted him thus far. + +Once the object of his conjectures shifted her seat so that a profile +peeped out from behind the wide seat arm. Grant’s eyes hungrily conned +delectable details: one broad wing of hair sweeping down in a line of +studied carelessness over a forehead somewhat low and rounded; fine +line of nose with the hint of a passionate spirit in the modelling; +mouth that was all girlish, mobile, ready to reflect whims or laughter. +The sort of mouth, Grant reflected, that could load a laugh with +poison--even as he had seen it done that tense instant on the platform +at El Paso--or freight it with sweetness for a favoured one. A world +of fire and seduction untried lay in the full round lips, yet a chin +with the thrust of will in it warned that the promise of those lips was +jealously guarded. + +A broad sheaf of sunlight lay across her cheek. Grant saw that hers +was not the usual apple tint of the red-haired, the characteristic +skin so delicate as to suggest translucence. Rather a touch of the sun +had spread an impalpable film of tan, warm as the colour of old ivory, +over cheek and throat. Duskiness of a southland dyed cheek and throat +despite the anomaly of the burning hair, quite Celtic. + +The afternoon waned with no favouring fortune throwing Grant’s way +opportunity to study the girl closer. When the sunset was in the sky he +walked through the train to the observation platform. As he drew near +the glassed-in end of the observation car he noted with a little leap +of elation that the girl was sitting under the awning beyond the screen +door. He saw, too, the objectionable Spanish gentleman. His midget body +was packed into a chair, one neatly booted foot under him; like some +hunting cat he sat in watchful patience inside the body of the car, his +eyes never leaving the figure of the girl beyond the screen door. + +Grant passed through to the platform, not giving the Spaniard so much +as a glance. As the door slammed behind him the girl looked up quickly. +Grant saw her eyes were blue, saw, too, a fighting gleam quickly pass +from them. Evidently he was not the one they expected to fall upon. +A pretty confusion which tried to deny recognition swiftly replaced +the strained look. Grant allowed himself to be bold to the extent of +tip-tilting his cap. The girl evidently decided that to overlook a +service done would be pushing decorum too far; she gave Grant a quick, +shy smile which might have carried a hint of gratitude mingled with +naïve humour. + +“You were very kind,” she said as Grant took the camp-stool next to +her, “and very amusing. The high hand--you possess the art of using it, +sir.” + +“I should be ashamed of my rudeness,” he answered with a quick smile. +“But somehow I am not. Your way of repelling attack has its advantages, +too--” His eyes strayed to the silver comb, whose concealed steel had +been so efficacious on the El Paso platform. The girl reddened prettily. + +“Always one must be--prepared against--persuasion,” was the answer +that put a period to all reference which might be distasteful. Grant +would have liked to know more of circumstances that had pushed this +radiant young person into the grip of a bullying little civet cat of a +Spaniard, but he dared not risk rudeness by further questioning. Reward +enough was his already; he had it in the swift play of laughter across +delicate features, in the sweetly resonant quality of her voice, all of +a part with the engaging exotic character of the girl. For American she +assuredly was not, though her trim tailoring was impeccably the mode of +the moment. Her speech had a rippling musical lilt to it suggestive of +a mother tongue less harsh than Anglo-Saxon; her enunciation was too +perfect to be American. There was a trick of the eyes, something almost +vocal, which was an inheritance from mothers whose speech is sternly +hedged about by conventions but who find subtler ways of expression. + +What could her nationality be? Assuredly not Irish, though eyes and +hair were exactly what Grant had seen in the green island during a +furlough spent in jaunting cars and peaty inns. Mexican? The flame hair +denied that. Here was another mystery to be set aside with that of the +encounter at the station. With two avenues of conversation closed Grant +plunged blindly along one strictly innocuous. + +“We seem to be getting rather deep into the desert.” He waved out at a +hundred mile vista of sunset painted waste, all purple and hot gold in +the glory from the west--a new picture for the eastern man. The girl +made an unconscious movement of half-stretched arms as if to free her +soul for wandering in limitless spaces. + +“Yes, the desert,” she breathed. “How wonderful! And for me, returning +to it after two years in cities--in cities where one chokes from walls +all about--you see how the desert welcomes with all its glory.” Grant +looked at her curiously; he saw a vision in her eyes. + +“Then you like this--this dry and barren land? Why, I thought +nobody lived out here unless he had to. No trees, no water--” The +girl’s wondering eyes upon him checked his summary of the desert’s +shortcomings. + +“You do not know the desert then,” she reproved. “You have never seen +the _palo verde_ tree when every branch is heavy with gold. You do not +know how the _sahuaro_ wreathes itself a crown of blossoms--the tough +old _sahuaro_, a giant with flowers on his head ready to play with +spring fairies. Water!”--a crescendo gust of laughter--“You think water +only comes from a faucet. If you dug for it with your bare hands--dug +and dug in hot sands while death moved closer to you each hour, then +you would come to see a real beauty in water.” + +“You know something of the desert,” Grant conceded. + +“Something! Señor”--the alien word slipped from her in her flurry of +devotion--“señor, my home is there and my father’s home has been there +more than a hundred and fifty years. I have been away from it in the +slavery of the cities--two years at music in New Orleans and Baltimore. +Now I return. To-morrow morning at Arizora big Quelele, my father’s +Indian servant, meets me to take me a hundred miles--a hundred miles +off the railroad and away from the nearest city to my home.” + +“But Arizora is where I am bound,” Grant eagerly caught her up. “That’s +on the Line, isn’t it? A hundred miles--why, then you must live in +Mexico.” She nodded. His curiosity would not down: + +“Then you are Mexican?” + +An instant her blue eyes sparkled resentment. Grant sensed he had made +some blunder, though he could not for the life of him guess how his +innocent question could have offended. The girl, on her part, quickly +regretted her show of displeasure; one new to the Southwest naturally +could not know much about its social distinctions. + +“Not Mexican,” she amended gently. “We are Spanish folk living in +Mexico. We have always been Spanish since the time one of my ancestors +got his grant from the king of Spain. Never Mexican. That sounds like +silly boasting to you. When you have lived in this country for a little +while you will understand why we have pride in our blood. Just as you +have pride, señor, in your American blood when all the cities of your +country are choked with mongrels.” + +Hoping to hear her name, Grant gave her his own. She repeated it as +if to fix it in memory; then she told him hers. Benicia O’Donoju it +is written, but in her mouth the two words had a quality like a muted +violin note, too fugitive to be imprisoned in letters. She spoke the +surname without accent on any syllable--“Odonohoo.” The man grasped at +something evanescent in the sound: + +“Why, I’d pronounce that ‘O’Donohue.’” + +“My great-great-grandfather did.” Once more Grant’s ears drank in that +velvety contralto laughter which bubbled to her lips so easily. “You +would pronounce his first name ‘Mike,’ and so did he.” + +“Then your first name should be Peg or Molly-o,” Grant rallied. She +shook her head in gay denial. + +“Señorita Peg--impossible! Benicia is much better. It means ‘Blessed’ +in our tongue. ‘Blessed are the pure in heart,’ Señor Hickman; or +‘Blessed are the meek.’ I might be either if I could forget I am an +O’Donoju.” + +“Benicia.” Grant tried to copy the slurring softness she gave to the +word.--“B’nishia: that sounds like little bells. I like it.” + +“You are gracious, señor. I thought Americans were too busy with +skyscrapers and wheat markets to learn the art of paying compliments +gracefully.” + +“Compliments are born, not paid,” he joked. Conversation limped no +longer. Youth has a way of opening little windows in the souls of two +brought together under its wizardry and giving each elusive peeps +into secret chambers. It was Benicia who first became conscious of +the lateness of the hour and the strain on strict canons of propriety +her presence alone with a stranger on the observation platform had +entailed. She arose with a little laugh. + +“My guardian”--a roguish glance toward the tiny figure of the Spaniard +still on the watch beyond the platform’s glass--“I fear he does not +approve. And so--_adios_.” She gave Grant the tips of her fingers and +was gone. + +He watched her pass where the sentinel was sitting. The little man +uncurled himself from his hump-shouldered crouch and scrambled to his +feet as if he would speak to her. But Benicia, bowing sweetly, passed +on up the aisle and into the alley of rosewood and glass beyond. After +a moment’s hesitation the Spaniard came to the screen door giving onto +the platform, where Grant now stood alone, and opened it. He scratched +a match and put it to his cigarette. Grant saw the flare illumine +a cruel hawk’s nose and thin, saturnine lips. The Spaniard inhaled +deeply, then let thin streams of smoke seep from his nostrils. + +“Señor”--his voice was cold as a lizard’s foot--“perhaps you do not +know that Señorita O’Donoju is travelling under my protection.” + +Grant took time to tap a cigarette on the heel of his palm and light it +before he answered. His eyes were brimming with laughter. + +“Perhaps not,” he said. “I congratulate the lady on her protector.” +Again blue smoke played over the toy moustache; little eyes were +snapping like a badger’s. + +“I have the honour to inform you, señor, that your attentions to the +lady do her no credit and that they must cease.” + +“Really!” Grant’s settled good humour received a jar. He felt a +tingling of fighting nerves down his back. “Really? And who constituted +you judge of the value of my attentions?” + +“Very naturally I have appointed that position to myself, señor, since +Señorita O’Donoju is to become my wife.” + +“Ah!” Grant’s interjection did not carry all the irony he would have +wished. His assurance was a trifle shaken. + +“And so,” the little man continued, “it is understood. You will not +address the lady further.” Grant laughed. + +“My understanding is very weak and not at all reliable. I promise you +that unless the lady objects I shall continue to address her whenever +opportunity presents.” + +The little figure in the doorway straightened itself in an access of +dignity. He snapped his cigarette over the car rail. + +“Señor, let us have no misunderstanding. We approach the Border, +where every man works justice according to the dictates of his own +conscience. To-morrow we touch Mexico, where it is known that Colonel +Hamilcar Urgo is a law unto himself. I am that Colonel Hamilcar Urgo. +Need I go farther?” + +“And I am Captain Grant Hickman, formerly of the First Division, +Expeditionary Forces. Go as far as you like!” + + + + +CHAPTER III + +DOC STOODER + + +With evenly divided cause and equal cheerfulness Grant could have +kicked the porter and himself when he awoke tardily next morning +and found his car at a standstill. He raised the berth curtain and +looked out. On the eaves of a station he saw a white board with the +name “Arizora” painted upon it and certain irrelevant advice as to +the distance to New Orleans and to Culiacan. Out through the curtains +popped his head and he whistled the porter. + +“Why didn’t you give me a call?” was his angry demand. + +“Yassuh, yassuh, ev’body in this kyar gets out here. Mos’ have gone an’ +done it a’ready. You see, Cap’n, this kyar’s been switched off here at +the Line two hours ago; train’s kep’ right on goin’ into Sonora.” + +Grant, cursing his luck, boiled into his clothes and made a race for +the washroom. He was hoping against luck that Benicia O’Donoju had not +been an earlier riser than himself. With his face puffy with lather, +he stopped from minute to minute to peep through the window giving onto +the station platform. A decrepit autobus was backed up against the curb +with a few passengers sitting patiently on its frayed seats; loungers +were dangling their legs from baggage trucks; under wooden awnings of a +business block across from the station a Mexican was languidly sweeping +out a store. Arizora had not yet come to life. + +Just as Grant was towelling the last remnants of shaving lather from +his cheeks he made another quick survey of the platform and his +heart dropped into his shoes. Benicia walked into the field of the +washroom window; with her the unspeakable Spaniard, who carried her +neat travelling satchel as well as his own bag. The girl was fresh +as the dawn in a suit of khaki, short-skirted over high laced boots +of russet leather. Rebellious hair strayed from beneath the brim of +a soft-crowned Stetson, saucily noosed to her head by a fillet of +leather under her chin. Soft green of a scarf lightly drew together at +her throat the wings of her khaki collar. Nothing of the theatrical +or self-consciousness of tailoring in the picture the desert girl +made; she was the spirit of the Southwest, unsophisticated and without +pretence. By her side the little Spaniard with his knife-edged +trousers and thin-waisted coat appeared comic. + +As Grant, towel in hand, lingered by the window feeding his soul with +vain regrets, a crazy thing on wheels swung around the station and came +to a stop by the girl’s side. It might have been called an automobile +by courtesy, though there was little to identify it as a member of +the gas family save that it went of its own traction. Engine naked, +dash gone, two high-backed seats of unpainted tin like the wing of +an old-fashioned sitz-bath and unprotected by a top; behind these a +home-built box body wherein a trunk and a suitcase were lashed. Grant +was seeing his first desert speeder, rebuilt for service of a highly +specialized kind. The man at the wheel was no less in character--an +Indian in overalls and high peaked sombrero; a giant of a man with +shoulders of a wrestler and dull bronze features of a Roman bust. + +What ensued upon the arrival of the auto nearly drove the watcher, +shirtless as he was, out to two-fisted intervention. Urgo, the +salamander, evidently was of a mind to make a third in the car. Grant +saw his humped shoulders and expostulating hands, saw Benicia tilt +her chin as she gave him some cold refusal. But the colonel calmly +stowed his suitcase by the side of the trunk in the box body, evidently +planning to use it as a seat. Again Benicia, now in her place by the +side of the Indian giant, turned to give him peremptory refusal. The +Indian at the wheel had his engine going and was sitting statue-like, +utterly detached from the quarrel. + +Urgo stepped on the rear wheel’s hub and had one hand on the floor of +the box body when one of the Indian’s hands flashed up the spark even +as his foot went down on the gear pedal. The crazy little car leaped +like a singed cat. Colonel Urgo cut a neat arc, hit the road on his +back and rolled over just in time to escape receiving amidships his +suitcase, which the Indian driver had dropped from the car without +turning his head. + +In the Pullman washroom Grant collapsed to the seat and smeared soap +into his eyes while he tried to check tears of laughter. The fall of +the peppery little Spaniard had been colossal, and he guessed it had +been wrought at the quick prompting of the spirited girl in khaki. What +a wonder she was! All laughter and bubbling spirits one minute; quick +as a leopard to strike the next. + +“Man”--Grant addressed a beaming face in the glass--“man, always lay +your bets on a red-headed girl!” + +That minute of communion with a smiling confidant was an important +one in the life of Grant Hickman, cautious bachelor. For it came to +him with the force of a hammer blow that he wanted and must have this +vivid creature of the desert named Benicia O’Donoju. Girl of fire and +sparkle--of a spirit free and piquant as the winds that blow across the +wastes--unspoiled of cities and the stale conventions of drawing rooms. +Oh, he would have her! Gone she might be, out into a land beyond his +ken. Unguessed barriers of circumstance, of others’ intervention, might +have to be scaled; but somehow, somewhere, Grant Hickman was going to +find and win Benicia O’Donoju. + +Love at first sight--old-fashioned, mid-Victorian stuff, says the +cynical débutante over her cigarette and outlaw cocktail. In New York +tearooms and Washington ballrooms, quite so. Where girls of twenty must +know the sum that stands in bank to Clarence’s credit, before Clarence +is marked down as eligible, love at first sight is, in truth, dead as +the dodo bird. Even so, spirit still calls to spirit and like leaps to +like most all the world over. It is only where fungus spots stain the +garden that love will not bloom. + +When Grant quit the Pullman Colonel Urgo was nowhere to be seen. Grant +idly wondered as he walked to the hotel, directly across a plaza +from the station, how long it would be before he encountered this +half-portion rival of his and what would be the Spaniard’s first move +in his frank threat of reprisals of the night before. But when he was +shown to his room--and the New York man whimsically reflected he had +seen better ones at the Admiral on Madison Avenue--events of recent +hours were pushed back from his attention by the more immediate demands +of his presence in Arizora. He took from his suitcase the letter that +had brought him sky-hooting across the continent to this back-water of +life on the Mexican Line and skimmed it through: + + “... I know just how hard it is for you to settle down to + office routine after the Big Show. All of us are in the same + fix, Old-timer, but I have the edge on you because out here in + this man’s country there’s something breaking every minute. + That’s the reason I’m writing you this mysterious letter.... + Old Doc Stooder is counted the prime nut of Southern Arizona, + but I believe he’s got a whale of a proposition and that’s why + I’m counting myself--and you--in on the deal. + + “I’ve sewed myself up with him--promised not to peep a word of + the real dope to you in this letter. The old Doc says, ‘We’ll + need a good engineer and if your buddy in France has a head on + him and knows how to keep his mouth shut tell him to come out + here.’ ... So if you still have that old take-a-chance spirit + that hopped you through the Big Mill from Cantigny to Sedan + I’ll see you in Arizora. If I’m not in town when you arrive dig + up Doc Stooder--everybody knows him. + + “Yours for the big chance, + + “BIM.” + +Grant folded the letter with a smile. Good old Bim with his “whale of +a proposition.” Running true to form was Bim in this characteristic +letter. Just as Grant had come to know and love him in training area +and dugout: Bim Bagley, six-feet-one of tough Arizona bone and muscle +and brimful of wild optimism. Always ready to take a chance, whether +at the enemy on all fours through midnight mud or at fortune in the +wild lands of the Border: that was Bim Bagley of Arizona, “the finest +country in the Southwest.” + +And Bim had shot truer than he could know when he sent this hint of big +things in the offing back to a man two years out of uniform and moping +for excitement on the sixteenth floor of a skyscraper in Manhattan. +Two years of civilian’s life had been just that span of slow moral +suffocation for Grant. For all his thirty years, for all his better +than moderate success in a profession of sharp competition, Grant +Hickman still could hear the call to the swimmin’ hole of adventure. +How he had yearned to hear it these past two years when the springs of +his soul still tingled with the high tension of battle lines! Then this +letter from a pal, promising all the substance of his dreams. It had +not been a week in the engineer’s pocket before he was on the train for +Arizora. + +Grant went out to find Bagley. He located his office--“Insurance, +Bonds, Investments” was the sign on the glass of the door; but the lock +was turned and no one opened at his knock. His eye caught a corner of +white paper projecting through the letter slot. + +“Grant:--Called out of town--back Friday. B. B.” was the scrawl across +the face of it. A stab of disappointment was his; he had builded +heavily on that moment of meeting when Bim’s big hand would have his +own in a vise. Nothing to do now but see the town and amuse himself as +he might, or call on that mysterious Doc Stooder and discover why Grant +Hickman had come racing out to this Arizora. He decided to do both. + +The Arizora Grant saw in an hour’s swinging round the circle was +something different from the “hick town” his New York smugness had +pictured in anticipation. It was a condensed El Paso, jammed in the +narrow compass of a mountain gorge, with railroad yards monopolizing +the whole of the flat space between crowding hills. A man could go from +his home to business by the simple trick of leaping off the front porch +of his bungalow with an opened umbrella. Arizora’s streets were jammed +with cars--fantastic desert coursers stripped to the nines and with +canteens strapped to the running board. Sidewalks swarmed with men--big +men with steady eyes looking out from beneath sombreros the size of a +woman’s garden hat; men with high-heeled boots and the pins of many +lodges stuck on their unbuttoned vests; lantern-jawed, hollow-templed +men of the sun, whose bodies were indurated by the desert law of +struggle and whose souls were simple as a fairy book. + +Across Main Street stretched a fence of rabbit-proof wire with three +strands of barbed wire topping that; a fence with something like a +pasture gate swung back for traffic. This was the Line. On the hither +side of that rabbit-proof wire web the authority of a President and his +Congress stopped; on the far side the authority of quite a different +president and his peculiar congress began. Over yonder, where stood a +man under a straw sombrero and with a rifle hung on one shoulder, lay +Sonora and the beginning of a thousand mile stretch of fantastic land +called Mexico. A cart with solid wooden wheels and drawn by oxen under +a ponderous yoke blocked the way of a twelve-cylinder auto seeking +clearance at the international gate. + +When he had tired of sight seeing Grant inquired at a cigar counter +where Dr. Stooder could be found. The breezy man in shirtsleeves +grinned and glanced at the clock on the wall behind him. + +“Well, sir, usually mornings he’s over across the Line getting +organized for the day on tequila. Mostly he comes back to his office +round noon time, steppin’ wide and handsome. Office’s over yonder, +top-side of the Bon Ton barber shop. You might give it a look.” + +Grant acted on the cigar clerk’s advice. He located a dingy door +at the end of a dark upper hallway with the lettering, “A. Stooder, +M.D.,” on a tin sign over the transom. Entering, he found himself in a +sad company. Three Mexican women and a man of the same race sat like +mourners on chairs about the wall; a big-eyed child squatted in the +middle of the floor and listlessly pulled a magazine to bits. The stamp +of woe and of infinite patience was set on all the dark faces. Mephitic +smell of iodoform was in the air. Grant hastily withdrew. After an +hour’s walking and when the whistles were blowing noon he returned. A +different collection of patient waiters occupied the chairs; evidently +the doctor was in and at work. + +He took a chair by the window where he could look down into the street +and so keep the set masks of misery out of his eyes. After fifteen +minutes the door to the inner office was violently opened and a Mexican +woman shot out of it as if propelled by a kick. Thundering Spanish +pursued her. Grant saw a scarecrow figure framed in the doorway. + +Tall beyond the average and gaunt almost to the point of emaciation; +frock coated like a senator of the Eighties; thin shoulders seeming +bowed by the weight of the garments hung thereon; enormous, heavily +veined hands carried as if hooked onto invisible hinges behind the +stained white cuffs:--this the superficial aspect of Dr. Stooder. Vital +character of the man was all summed up in his face: skin like wrinkled +vellum stretched on a rack; eyes glinting from deep caves on either +side of a veritable crag of a nose which had been broken and skewed off +the true. A great mane of grey hair reared up and back from his high +forehead; tufts of the same colour on lip and chin in the ancient mode +of the “Imperial” added the last daguerreotype touch to his features. + +Black eyes roved the room and fell on Grant, who had risen. The doctor +crooked a bony finger at him and he passed through into the private +office, taking the seat indicated. Without paying his visitor the least +heed, Dr. Stooder went to a closet, poured two fingers of some white +liquid into a graduating glass and drank it. His lips smacked like a +pistol shot. Then he returned and took a swivel chair before a very +shabby and littered desk. + +“I never seen you before, sah”--the man’s accent reeked of Texas, the +old Texas before the oil invasions. “So I’ll answer the question every +stranger’s just mortal dying to ask and don’t dare. How’d I come to +get this scar?” The surprising doctor tilted his great head back and +traced with his fore-finger an angry weal which encircled his throat +like a collar gall. “Well, sah, I was informally hanged once--and cut +down. Now we can get down to business. What’s your symptoms?” + +Grant, caught off balance by so unconventional a reception, stammered +that he had no symptoms. + +“My friend, Bim Bagley, who is out of town for a few days, told me to +look you up. My name is Grant Hickman. I’m from New York.” The black +eyes, never deviating from their disconcerting stare, showed no flicker +of recognition at the name. + +“What you want of me if you have no symptoms?” abruptly in the doctor’s +nasal bray. “I’m not in the market for the World’s Library of Wit and +Humour. I’ll cut you for a tumour or dose you for dyspepsia; but I +won’t buy a book.” + +“I have no books to sell.” Grant found his temperature rising. “I have +come out from New York because you told my friend Bagley to send for +me.” + +Doc Stooder suddenly snapped out of his chair like a yard rule +unfolding and strode to the closet. With bottle and graduating glass +poised he bent a severe eye upon his visitor. + +“You say you don’t drink. Highly commendable. I do.” Again the pistol +shot from satisfied lips. He replaced the bottle and tucked his hands +under the tails of his coat where they flapped the sleazy garment +restlessly. + +“You call yourself an engineer. How do I know you are?” + +Grant had said nothing about being an engineer. Doc Stooder had +identified him right enough. What reason for his bluff, then? + +“My dear sir, graduates of Boston Tech. do not carry their diplomas +round with them on their key rings. You’ll have to take Bagley’s word +for it that I’m an engineer if my own is not convincing.” + +The gangling doctor took two turns of the office with enormous strides; +one hand tugged at his straggling goatee. Abruptly he stopped by +Grant’s chair. + +“Young man, what need do you figure a doctor in Arizora would have of +an engineer--more especial an engineer from New York? Why should I tell +this Bagley, who’s as crazy as a June-bug, to fetch a graduate engineer +out to Arizora? Engineers are a drug on the market here--and every one +of ’em a crook.” + +Grant’s patience snapped. He rose and strode to the door. + +“Dr. Stooder, I didn’t come away out here to your town to have +somebody play horse with me. When you are sober you can find me at the +International Hotel.” + +A grin started under Doc Stooder’s moustache and travelled swiftly to +his ears. + +“God bless my soul, boy! When I’m sober, you say. I’m never sober and I +hope I never will be--” + +Grant slammed the door behind him. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +COLONEL URGO REPAYS + + +Before he had descended to the street Grant began to regret his flash +of anger which had launched him out of Doc Stooder’s office. To be +sure, the unconventional doctor had been insulting; his was hardly the +orthodox reception to be expected by one who had crossed the continent +to become his partner in some hidden enterprise. Equally certain it was +that, to apply the cigar clerk’s pat phrase, Stooder was “organized +for the day”; the finishing touches to that organization had been made +in two trips to the closet in Grant’s presence. Need one have been so +touchy under these alcoholic circumstances? + +Strive as he would to put the best face on the matter, the man from +New York could not escape a lowering of the spiritual barometer. Here +he was, a stranger in an outlandish desert town with none to give him +so much as a friendly glance. Glances enough came his way, but they +were inspired by his clothes, the cut of which seemed to put them +beyond the pale. Grant pleasured himself by reviewing his case in the +most pessimistic light. He had been but a fortnight ago a sober and +industrious citizen. Came to him a wild letter hinting darkly of some +shadowy enterprise in a bleak land. Instantly he had quit his work and +galloped across two thousand miles to encounter a scarecrow cynic who +greeted him as a book agent. + +He wandered aimlessly beyond the town and out onto a road which +wound up to the edge of one of the mesas which were the eaves of +Arizora. Well might drivers of passing cars stare at the figure of a +broad-shouldered young man in a black derby and double-breasted coat, +who was afoot in a country where no man walks unless he carries a +blanket on his shoulders--unless he is a “stiff,” in the phrase of the +Southwest. Even though February was but on the wane, already the sun +was guarantor of a promise to pay with heat interest in sixty days. + +He came to the top of the rise and halted under the psychic compulsion +of boundless space. For space, crystalline and ethereal as the gulf +between stars, flowed from him as an ocean. The air that filled this +space was so thin, so impalpable as to seem no air at all, and it was +tinted faint gold by reflection from the desert below. Mountains near +and far were so many detached reefs taking the silent surf of the ocean +of space; they were tawny where shadows did not smear purple-black +down their sides. Near at hand showed the grim desert growths: prickly +clumps of _cholla_, whose new daggers sparkled like frosted glass; +fluted columns of _sahuaro_, or giant cactus, lifting their fat arms +twenty and thirty feet above the ground; vivid green of cottonwoods +laid in a streak to mark a secret watercourse. + +To the man just come from the softness and languor of Eastern +landscapes, where lakes lie in the laps of green hillocks, this first +intimate view of the desert carried some subtle terror prick. The iron +savagery of it! What right had man or beast to venture here? + +Then flashed to his mind the picture of Benicia O’Donoju, the girl who +loved the desert, who felt she was prisoner only when hedged about by +the walls of cities in the East. Somewhere to the south where a higher +raft of peaks marked Sonora’s mystery land--somewhere in country like +this she was speeding to her home. What kind of a home might that be? +How could a girl with the bounding vitality that was hers find life +worth living in a land enslaved by thirst? A hundred miles from town +or railroad, she had said:--a hundred miles deep in such a wilderness +her home! Heavens, how he pitied her! + +Grant turned back to the town, revolving over and over in his mind +the first steps he would have to take to learn where Benicia O’Donoju +lived; and, haply discovering the place of her abode, how to get there. + +By the time night fell the restless visitor to Arizora had exhausted +the town’s opportunities for amusement. He crossed the Line into the +companion Mexican community, Sonizona. Here was beguilement enough. +The rabbit-proof fence which converted Main Street into a Calle +Benito Juarez also marked a frontier no less obvious. North of the +fence was aridity to rejoice the conscience of the most enthusiastic +prohibitionist; south of it the frail goddess Virtue tottered in her +step. In Arizona a man sought traps and deadfalls consciously and +with a secret thrill of bravado; in Sonora he avoided them only by +the most circumspect watching of his step. Dark streets winding along +the contours of the crowding mountains were raucous with the bray of +phonographs and the tin-panning of pianos. Lattices over darkened +windows trembled as one passed and the ghosts of whispers fluttered +through them. Where an occasional arc lamp threw a spot of radiance +across the ’dobe road lurked shadowy creatures who whined in an +American dialect for money to buy drugs. + +Grant did not realize that when he passed through the rabbit-proof +fence he left behind him everything for which he paid income tax and +other doles--protection, due processes of law, all the checks and +balances on society and the individual painstakingly built up under +the Anglo-Saxon scheme of things. He did not conceive himself in the +light of an alien--of a not-too-popular nation--gratuitously placing +himself under the protection of laws quite the opposite in terms of +interpretation. Nor did he appreciate that, save for his suitcase and +a signature on a hotel register, he had left behind him nothing to +bear testimony to the fact that a man named Grant Hickman had come +to Arizora and had left the United States to enter Mexico. All these +inattentions he recalled later when opportunity for correction had +passed. + +Grant was circling the plaza, where the municipal band was giving a +concert, when amid the strollers he thought he saw a familiar face. He +looked again and was sure. Little Colonel Urgo, in a snappy uniform of +dark blue with back-turned cape, was walking with a woman whose beauty +was that of the blown peony. Chance brought Urgo’s eyes Grant’s way. +They lighted with sudden surprise, then the colonel brought up his hand +in a salute. A flash of teeth was cut by the travelling hand; it was +like a too quick shutter on the villain’s smile in Way Down East. + +Grant doffed his hat and passed on. Half an hour later a particularly +glittering sheaf of lights he had noted in earlier saunterings pricked +his curiosity and he turned into a low building just off the plaza. A +bare front room easily visible from the street was a too obvious blind +for complacent police inspection; through an open arch in its rear wall +a crowded gambling room was given false length by wall mirrors in dingy +frames. Fifty or more men and women were clustered about roulette, +faro and crap tables. A fat Chinaman with a face expressionless as a +bowl of jelly sat on a dais behind a little desk stacked high with +silver and with deft movement of his fingers achieved nice problems in +international exchange. Pursuit of the goddess Luck was being engaged +in with a frankness and business-like absorption quite different from +furtive evasions of hidden attic and camouflaged club across the Line. + +Grant exchanged a ten-dollar note for a heavy stack of Mexican silver +and moved over to a table where two ivory cubes were dancing to the +droning incantations of a big negro game keeper. He was curious to see +whether Big Dick and Lady Natural were as temperamental a couple in +Mexico as he had discovered them to be in many a front-line dugout in +France. + +“Come to papa!” A raw-boned Arizonan across the table was singing to +the dice held in his cupped palms, huge as waffle irons; a humorous imp +of strong liquor danced in his eyes. “Cap’n come down the gangplank and +says, ‘Good mawnin’, Seven!’” + +The ring of dark faces about the green cloth stirred and white teeth +flashed unlovely smiles when a six and a one winked up from the dice. A +chinking of silver dollars as a red paw gathered them in. + +“Baby! Now meet you’ grandpaw, Ole Man E-oleven. Wham! Lookit! Five an’ +a six makes e’oleven! How’s that for nussin’ ’em along, white man?” +The crap wizard looked across to Grant and grinned in amity. Mexican +scowls accompanied the covering of the winner’s pile left temptingly +untouched. Grant felt an undefined tugging of race bonds here in this +ring of alien faces, and he backed the Arizonan against the field. On +his third throw the big fellow made his point. + +“That’s harvestin’! That’s bringin’ in the sheaves! Now here’s my stack +of ’dobe dollars for any Mex to cop if he thinks the copping’s good.” + +When it came Grant’s turn to throw his new-found friend played him +vociferously against the Mexican field, calling upon all present to +witness that a white man sure could skin anything under a sombrero, +from craps to parchesi. For the first time since he had left the train +that morning the New Yorker felt the warming tingle of fellowship; the +gaunt, sunburned face of the desert man with the dancing imps of humour +in the eyes was a jovial hailing sign of fraternity. + +“Shoot ’em, Mister Man! You’re rigged for Broadway, Noo Yawk, but I can +see from here that you has the lovin’ touch.” + +Grant rolled and won, rolled and won again. Carelessly he dropped the +heavy fistfuls of dollars into the side pocket of his coat. Even when +he lost his point, he had a bulging weight of silver there. Grant was +enjoying the game itself not nearly so keenly as he did the Arizonan +across the table, his Homeric humour and the bewildering wonder of his +vocabulary. So intent was he that he did not see Colonel Urgo enter, +nor did he catch the almost imperceptible nod toward him that the +little officer passed to a furtive-eyed tatterdemalion who accompanied +him. The latter by a devious course of idling finally came to a stand +behind Grant and appeared to be a keen spectator of the game. + +“Ole Man Jed Hawkins’ son is a-goin’ splatter out a natch’ral. Ole Man +Hawkins’ son is a-goin’ turn loose the hay cutter an’ mow him a mess of +greens. Comes Little Joe! Dip in, Mexes, an’ takes yo’ fodder! Now the +man from Dos Cabezas starts a-runnin’--” + +A hand was busy at Grant’s pocket--a slick, suave hand which replaced +weight for weight what it subtracted. Just three quick passes and +the tatterdemalion who had been so intent on the prancing dice lost +interest and moved away. + +It came Grant’s turn to roll the dice. He dipped into his pocket and +carelessly dropped a stack of eight silver dollars on the table. One +of them rolled a little way and flopped in front of a Mexican player. +The latter started to pass the dollar back to Grant when he hesitated, +gave the coin a sharp scrutiny, then balanced it on a finger tip and +struck its edge with one from his own pile. + +“Señor!” An ugly droop to his smiling lips. “Ah, no, señor!” + +He passed the dollar over to Grant with exaggerated courtesy. Eyes all +about the table, which had followed the pantomime with avid interest, +now centred on the American’s face. As if on a signal the fat Chinaman +at the exchange desk waddled over to shoulder his way officiously to +Grant’s side. He growled something in Spanish and held out his hand. +Dazedly Grant laid the suspected dollar in a creasy palm. The Chinaman +flung it on the green felt with a contemptuous “Faugh!” and he pointed +imperiously at Grant’s bulging pocket. + +“It’s a frame, pardner,” called the Arizonan. “If your money’s bogus +it’s what the Chink himself handed you.” + +“I came in here with American money and changed it at your desk,” +Grant quietly addressed the Chinaman. “See here; this is the money I +either got from you or won at this table.” He brought from his pocket a +brimming handful of Mexican dollars and dumped them on the cloth. Two +or three of the heavy discs shone true silver; the others were clumsy +counterfeits, dull and leaden. + +A cry, half snarling laughter, from the crowd about the table, now +grown to a score: “Aha--gr-ringo!” + +A movement of the crowd forward to rush Grant against the wall. Then +with a cougar’s spring the big Arizonan was on the solid table, feet +spread wide apart, head towering above the tin light shade. He balanced +a chair in one hand as the conductor of an orchestra might lift his +baton. His gaunt features were split in a wide grin. Before Grant could +gather his senses a big paw had him by the shoulder and was dragging +him up onto the green island of refuge. + +“They don’t saw no whizzer off on a white man wiles ole Jed Hawkins’ +boy got his health,” Grant’s companion bellowed a welcome. “I got these +greasers’ number, brother!” + +Grant’s gaze as he rose to his feet over the heads all about +encountered two interesting objects. One was Colonel Urgo, who stood +alone in a far corner of the room; the colonel was smiling with rare +good humour. A second was a man wrapped about with a blanket, over +whose shoulder appeared the tip of a rifle; he was just coming through +from the front room on a run and there were three like him following. +Rurales, the somewhat informal bandit-policemen of Mexico. + +Just what ensued Grant never could quite piece together. He remembered +seeing Hawkins wrench off a leg from his chair and send it whizzing at +a central cluster of light globes in mid-ceiling. They snuffed out with +a thin tinkling of glass. Then the rush. + +Out of the dark swirl of figures about the table’s edge a vivid spit +of flame--roar of a pistol shot. Hands grappling for braced legs on +the table top. “Huh” of breath expelled as Hawkins swung his chair in +a wide sweep downward. A cry, “Hesus!” Oaths chirped in the voice of +songbirds. A knife missing its objective and trembling rigid in the +midst of the baize. + +The table collapsed with dull creakings, and then the affair of mauling +and writhing became a bear pit. Grant fought with steady, measured +short-arm jabs delivered at whatever object lay nearest. When one arm +was pinioned he swung the other against the restraining body until it +was freed. Some one sank teeth in his shoulder. + +“Ride ’em, Noo Yawker!” came the shrill cry of battle from somewhere in +the mill. Then a blow at the base of the brain which meant lights out +for Grant. + +When consciousness came halting back he found himself standing +half-supported by two of the rurales in a dark street and before a +high gate in unbroken masonry. The gate swung inward. He was propelled +violently through the dark arch and into a small room, where sat a man +in uniform under a dusty electric globe. He did not look up from the +scratching of his pen on the desk before him. + +A door behind the writing man opened and Colonel Urgo entered. His +start at seeing the bloodied and half-clothed figure which the rurales +supported was well acted. A hand came to the vizor of his cap in +mocking salute. Then he turned to the man at the desk and exchanged low +words with him. + +“Ah, Señor ’Ickman”--Colonel Urgo’s voice was tender as the dove’s--“I +regret to learn you are here in the _carcel_ on serious charges. The +one, counterfeiting the coin of Mexico; the other, resisting officers +of the law. Very regrettable, Señor ’Ickman. But, remembering your +courtesies toward me on the train yesterday, let me assure you of my +willingness to serve you in any way. You will command me, señor.” + +A sudden lightning flash of comprehension shot through the clouds that +pressed down on the prisoner’s mind. He saw the whole trick of the +counterfeit dollars in his pocket and remembered the little Spaniard’s +threat on the observation platform of the train the night before: +“To-morrow we touch Mexico, where it is known that Colonel Hamilcar +Urgo is a law unto himself.” Grant strained forward and his mouth +opened to incoherent speech. + +“And now, señor,” Colonel Urgo continued blandly, “unfortunately you +will be locked up incommunicado.” + +Five minutes later Grant Hickman, behind a steel-studded door in a +Mexican jail, was as wholly out of the world as a man in a sunken +submarine. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE GARDEN OF SOLITUDE + + +Benicia O’Donoju by the side of the big Papago Quelele and with the +twin towns on the Line behind her--ahead the unlimned immensity of +the wilderness--gave herself to the exhilaration of flight. For the +skimming and dipping of the little car over the wave crests of the +desert was like the flight of the desert quail, who rarely lifts +himself above the height of the mesquite in his unerring dartings from +bush to bush. On its partially deflated tires, provision against sand +traps and the expansion of imprisoned air under heat, the skeleton +thing reeled off its twenty miles an hour with snortings. + +The final incident at the Arizora station--little Colonel Urgo and +his unceremonious jettisoning--left no abiding impression with the +spirited desert girl. His struttings and posings, his humorously +impetuous wooing, resumed at the El Paso station after the two years’ +interruption of her stay in the States, were for her no more than +the high stepping of some barnyard Lothario. Benicia, little given to +the morbid business of self-analysis, was not sensible of how exactly +the dual strain of blood in her had reacted to Urgo’s advances; how +it had been the swift thrust of Spanish temper which had prompted her +to resort to the pronged weapon from her hair at El Paso even as the +persistent Irish humour tang inherent in the O’Donoju name had flashed +out in the dumping of the suitor at Arizora. + +No, Hamilcar Urgo’s dapper figure was as evanescent as the mirage, but +there was another which appeared to replace it. A man with the figure +of an athlete and a forthright way of looking at one--perhaps the least +bit too self-assured, perhaps inviting rebuke did one but feel in the +humour of rebuking. One of those quick-witted Americans, ever ready +on a hair trigger of resourcefulness yet seeming to carry a situation +as if no situation existed. Nice eyes, yes. A pleasant laugh, rich in +humour. But so New Yorkish! He thought the desert a place where no +one lived willingly. Amusing conceit! And his name was--? Ah, yes, +Hickman--Grant Hickman. One would try to remember that name. + +Retrospect could not long hold Benicia’s mind against the joy of the +homing journey. For the desert she loved spoke to her a welcome long +dreamed in the stifling precincts of cities. There was the sky she +had yearned for, something of infinite depths which did not shut down +over the earth like an inverted cup; rather an impalpable sea wherein +the earth swam free. Morning gold still tinted it. And the mountains +that rose sheer from the desert floor with no lesser foothill heights: +under the sun they were blue in the east and where slant rays fell upon +western barriers a tawny strength of naked rock clothed them. Between +the feet of the mountain stretched the level desert plain far and far +beyond the power of eye to compass; grey with the grey of saltbush and +greasewood, overtones of green where the first leaves of the mesquite +and ironwood answered the call of the spring sun. + +Quelele had turned the machine onto a westward wending road once the +Line was crossed at Sonizona. A few straggling ranches near the border +town, then the unsullied desert. Westward and southward sped the +machine, deep into the greatest stretch of unpeopled wilderness between +the Barren Grounds of the Dominion and Panama. + +The Desert of Altar lies there. From the Line south to the Yaqui +River and from the Gulf of California, once called the Sea of Cortez, +eastward to the Sierra Madre:--here is the terra incognita of Sonora; +here is the dominion of thirst. A territory large as New England and +with a population smaller than the average New England mill town. A +vast graveyard of vanished peoples, who left behind them mountains +terraced with fortifications laid in unbroken breastworks of porphyry +and rocks pictured with their annals of life and death. Rain comes only +with occasional summer thunder storms up from the Gulf, storms which +wake dead rivers into furious flood. So precious is this water from the +sky that the primitive peoples weave mystic rain symbols into their +basketry for a fetish, and their songs are all of thunderheads and +croaking frogs. + +Here in the Desert of Altar the impossible becomes commonplace. A man +caught in a river bed by the spearhead of a freshet drowns in sand made +mud and irresistibly rushing. Cattle drink no water for months on end +but are sustained by munching cactus whose spines can penetrate sole +leather. In the furnace heat of summer furious rain storms occur in the +higher air but the moisture is sucked up by the sun before it touches +earth. Gold lies scattered on the surface of the desert and water must +be mined. The desert kind slay after the manner of the ages but declare +a truce at the waterhole. Death of all life is ever-present, yet grant +so much as a permanent trickle of the life-giving fluid and the dust is +covered with a glory of green. + +For its devotees the desert holds mysteries potent beyond comprehension +of folk in a softer land. The venturing padres of an elder day called +it the Hand of God; they walked in the hand of God and were not afraid. +Divinity, force, original cause--whatever may be your term for that +power which jewels the grass with dew and swings the suns in their +courses--this is very close in the desert. In great cities man has +driven the Presence far from him by his silly rackets of steam and +electricity, by his farcical reproductions of cliffs and pinnacles. In +the Desert of Altar he walks in silence and with God. The very air is +kinetic with the energy that brought forth life on a cooled planet. + +The desert had been Benicia’s teacher; had moulded her spirit to its +own pattern of elemental strength. Born the last of the O’Donojus in +the desert oasis that was the ultimate remnant of the once kingly +Rancho del Refugio--grant of a Spanish Philip to her ancestor--she +had been reared in the asperities of the land, had absorbed into her +bone and tissue the rigours and simple verities of a wilderness. +Because there was no son in the Casa O’Donoju and because, too, this +only daughter came into the world with the inheritance of a spirit +impetuous and errant as a desert bird, Don Padraic, her father, gave +over all attempts at imposing on her the straight decorum that shackles +the Spanish maiden of gentle blood. With the death of her mother when +Benicia was still in short skirts came this loosening of the bonds. +Instead of growing to maturity a shy creature who must never quit the +sight of a duenna and whose eyes shall tell no secrets, the girl warmed +to a wonderful companionship with her father, lived the life of a boy. + +Her flaming red hair bobbed about the fringe of milling cores of wild +cattle at the round-up. At _Sahuaro_ feasts of the Papagoes, Mo Vopoki +(Lightning Hair) added her shrill soprano to the chorus of the Frog +Doctor Song. She learned where gold lay in shallow pockets and winnowed +it from the sands in the Indian fashion. She brought home a mewing, +spitting kitten she had taken from a bobcat’s litter. Her doll was +discarded for a rifle before her strength could shoulder it. + +Schooling came in her father’s library, filled with books in three +languages. English and music, the music of the great harp, became her +passions. The harp had been her great-grandmother’s; Don Padraic could +make the mesh of strings sing with the sound of rain on flowers. He was +her first teacher. Then, when twenty years were hers and Don Padraic +realized something besides the wild desert life was needed to round out +the full beauty of his daughter’s soul, he had urged further studies +on the harp as the excuse for Benicia’s two years in the cities of the +States. Those two years had served well to overlay upon the rugged +handiwork of the wild the softness and subtleties of culture. + +Benicia believed she possessed all her father’s confidences. So she +did--all but one. She did not know that when she came into the world +with tiny head furry in burning red Donna Francisca, her mother, had +cried herself into hysteria and Don Padraic’s heart had gone cold. Nor +was she ever told that her flaming hair marked her with the finger of +Nemesis. + +This day of the return from exile no premonition of the inheritance +of fate arose to disturb the singing heart of the girl. She rattled +on to the stoical Papago at the wheel unending questions concerning +her father and the most humble of the Indian retainers living on the +rancherias about the oasis, Don Padraic’s fief in the waste lands. +She told the credulous Quelele stories of the cities she had seen; of +white men’s wickiups climbing as high as the hill of La Nariz; of water +so plentiful that it was launched at a burning house out of a long +serpent’s mouth; how men lifted themselves above the earth in machines +like the king condor and flew hundreds of miles between sun and sun. +To all of which big Quelele, never lifting his eyes from the thin rut +lines in the sand, answered with a single monosyllable “Hi,” wherein +was compounded all his capacity for wonder. + +South and west about the skirts of the Pajarito they went, and then +into the old road up from Caborca, the ancient highway called the Road +of the Dead Men which swings north parallel with the Line, cutting the +tails of numerous ranges that are great in Arizona. And so, when the +day was hardly more than half spent, the little car crawled to the +height called the Nose of the Devil, and Benicia saw below her land of +desire. + +Fists of the mountains grudgingly opened out to permit a broad basin +running from east to west, and there against the savage baldness of +sentinel ranges showed a ribbon of green. Green of precious gems it +was. So vivid in the setting of the drought land. So cyclonic its +assault of colour against the eye inured to the duns and greys of a +hundred miles of parched terrain. And in the midst of the oasis the +shining white dot, which was the house of the O’Donoju; of Benicia’s +father and his fathers before him back to the day of a royal favourite +baptized Michael O’Donohue. The Casa O’Donoju in El Jardin de +Soledad--the Garden of Solitude. + +Indian women, in skirts of orange and cerise and with gay mantles over +their sleek hair, lined the way to the avenue of royal date palms +which led from the bridge over the Rio Dulce straight to the white +single-story house of ’dobe, heavy walled and loopholed like a fort. +They waved and sent shouts of welcome to the mistress of the casa as +she passed. + +Benicia knew her father would not be outside the house to greet her; +their love was not for the servants to see. Rather he would be waiting +in their own trysting place, the place where he had given her farewell +two years before. The girl leaped from the car before the heavy +studded oak door breaking the solid white front of the house at its +centre. It was opened to her by old ’Cepcion, feminine major domo of +the household servants. Benicia paused to give the parchment cheeks a +kiss, then she danced down a flagged hall to the flare of green marking +the patio garden in the centre of the house. + +Here was a place of beauty and a fragrant cave of coolness--the very +secret heart of the Garden of Solitude. Open to the sky and with +cloistered dimness of the four sides of the house all about, the patio +was a tiny jungle of climbing things, all green and riotous blossoms. +A stately date palm reigned in the centre behind the little basin of +the fountain; curtains of purple bougainvillea draped themselves down +its shaggy ribs; lavender water-hyacinths sailed their little barques +in the pool; geraniums flamed in living fire against the pillars of the +arcades. + +There in the garden waited a man all in white. Snow white his heavy +hair and beard, though the life in his deep-set eyes and the vigorous +set of his shoulders belied age; white were his thin garments of silk +and flannel. + +He caught the flash of a red head through the greenery, saw an eager, +breathless face turned questioningly. + +“’Nicia, heart of my heart--!” + +Then she ran to him, paused just an instant to lift swift fingers +under his chin and tilt his head. Their eyes measured each the love +that welled brimming in the soul’s windows. Then the father drew his +daughter close to his heart and his lips brushed her forehead. + +“’Nicia, my strong one, your father has great need of you.” + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +JUSTICE + + +The Mexican theory of the treatment of prisoners, their status before +the law and the responsibilities of government toward them has few +complexities and knows no interference on the part of prisoners’ +welfare leagues or humanitarian congresses. When a man is arrested +south of the Line he straightway ceases to be enumerated among the +living; if, haply, he reappears in the course of weeks or years his +family looks upon the prodigy in the light of a resurrection. Such +resurrections do not occur often enough to dull the edge of the popular +interest attending them. There are several dim roads, peculiarly +Mexican, down which a prisoner may march to oblivion, with no record of +his expunction left behind. Officials with easy consciences find these +extralegal methods of clearing the docket handy and expeditious. + +Grant Hickman, new to the Border and utterly ignorant of customs and +manners in the republic of _poco tiempo_, necessarily could not +possess a background of sinister knowledge against which to build +doubts of his immediate future when he found himself locked in a cell. +He was in darkness deep as Jonah’s. He ached from his scalp to his +toes. A gingerly groping hand applied to various parts of his body +took stock of the exterior costs of that healthy fight in the gambling +palace. The heat of battle was still on him. He recalled how nobly the +big Arizonan swung his chair from the vantage of the crap table; what a +virile call to battle was the stranger’s “Ride ’em, Noo Yawker!” + +As for Colonel Urgo’s clumsy frame-up--the handful of lead dollars in +his pocket to prompt arrest for counterfeiting--Grant dismissed the +trick as childish spite. When he appeared before a judge in the morning +he could easily prove that the only Mexican money he possessed was +that given him in change by the fat Chinaman and what he had taken in +across the baize. Some tool of the vengeful little wooer of Benicia had +“salted” him during the progress of the game. + +But when morning light through a four-inch slit in the wall roused +him from a restless sleep long hours of doubt were ushered in. Came +a jailer with dry tortillas and water but no summons to appear +before a magistrate. Three tortillas--clammy rolled cakes of meal +tasting strongly of a cook’s carelessness in matters of excluding the +unessential--were the sum of his receipts from the outside world that +day. The jailer, who had the features of a bandit, merely grunted a “no +sabe” at the volley of questions the prisoner launched at him during +the minute he was in the cell. + +Those hours of solitude in the six-by-ten box of stone gave opportunity +for much thinking. Little by little it was borne in on Grant how +completely he was a victim of whatever spite Colonel Urgo might care +to devise; and recollection of his smiling face seen in the prison +office the night before--thin lips parted over teeth in a ferret’s +grin--confirmed the assumption that at devising mischief Colonel Urgo +would be hampered by no lack of ingenuity. + +Grant weighed the hope of aid from the other end of the town across the +Border fence. Bim Bagley, the only friend he had in all the Southwest, +was still out of town and would not be back until the morrow. Doc +Stooder--small chance! The worthy doctor was velvet drunk when he +received Grant in his office; for reasons which only his satiric humour +could explain he had elected to consider his visitor an impostor. +Little chance that Doc Stooder would pay him a thought until Bagley +returned and inquired of his whereabouts. Remained just the cobweb +contingency that the Arizonan who had fought beside him had escaped +the clutches of the rurales; Grant was certain the big fellow’s simple +loyalty to a fellow countryman would prompt him to set going some kind +of inquiry from across the Line. + +Night came, with it three more tortillas and a bowl of _carne_ seasoned +with chili sufficient to burn the gullet of a bronze image. Then, +several hours after the scant meal had been shoved in to him, the +bandit jailer opened his cell door and motioned him to step into the +corridor. Two men with rifles were waiting there; they stepped to his +side and marched him off between them. + +Down a flight of steps, through a courtyard heavy with shadows, then +up tortuous stairs to a door beneath a dim electric globe. The door +opened from within, and Grant found himself in a chamber which might +have passed as a courtroom. At its far end on a raised dais was a long +desk lighted from above, three men sitting behind it. A sort of wooden +cage stood apart on a platform by itself. Six men with serapes over +their shoulders and rifles hanging by straps across the blanket stripes +were slouching before the judges’ dais. A black headed peon crouched +timorously on a seat to the left and behind the guards. + +Grant’s escort halted him before the judges. He kept silence, studying +the faces of the three. Not pleasant faces. A hardness of eye and +cat-like bristle of moustachios over thin line of lips was common to +the trio. + +“Grant ’Ickman?” challenged the man in the middle. + +Grant nodded. His interrogator gave a sign to one of the rurales. The +latter turned to the peon on the bench, dragged him to his feet and +hustled him to the cage-like affair to the left of the dais, evidently +a witness box. The little fellow’s head hardly showed above the top +rail that fenced him in; his eyes were all whites. + +The examining judge jerked a thumb toward Grant as he shaped a question +in Spanish for the witness. The peon bobbed his head emphatically. +Another question and, “_Si_,” chirped the witness. Then a lengthy flow +of interrogation prompted by reference to some dossier in hand. + +“_Si! Si!_” The witness hurried to oblige. Cat whiskers lifted in a +smile as the judge turned back to Grant. + +“You unnerstan’?” + +“I don’t,” bluntly. More twitching of the spiked moustachios. + +“Zeese man, ’oo’s make confession of counterfeiting and ’oo ees +to be shot to-day, says ’e sells you thirty pesos made with bad +metal--counterfeit. An’--” + +“He lies!” Grant interrupted. + +“_Quieto!_” The judge banged his fist on the desk and fixed the +prisoner with a savage glare. “’E says, zeese man, ’e meets with you +las’ night on Calle San Lazar outside Crystal Palacio gambling ’ouse +an’ for ten veritable pesos ’e gives to you thirty pesos of bad metal. +Then zeese man ’e says ’e sees you enter Crystal Palacio. What remark +you make for zeese?” + +The monstrous farce of this accusation numbed Grant. Judicial +subornation fabricated to give colour to what was already determined in +the minds of these three puppets. As clearly as if they were bearing +on him he could see the cold, mocking eyes of Colonel Urgo behind the +shoulders of his pawns on the bench. Perception of his peril steadied +him. + +“I demand a lawyer if I am to be tried on this outrageous charge. And I +demand that the American consul in this town be told of the accusation +against me.” + +The interrogating judge turned to his confreres with a bland +outspreading of the palms. Then to Grant: + +“American consul ’as no business with crime against state of Mehico. +You will ’ave lawyer when you are tried before court at Hermosillo. +Zeese court ees not court of condemnation. Court of condemnation ees at +Hermosillo. W’en you arrive there, w’ere you make for a start to-night, +Señor ’Ickman, you ask for American consul if you desire.” + +“But you cannot send me to this Hermosillo place without trial.” Grant +took a step toward the bench in his vehemence. He was roughly jerked +back by his guards. The interrogating judge beamed on him. + +“In Mehico, Señor ’Ickman, it ees folly to say ‘you cannot.’ Much ees +possible in Mehico. To-night prisoners make start for Hermosillo. You +go weeth them.” + +He nodded to Grant’s guards and they closed in on him. He heard a +farewell, “Adios, Señor ’Ickman,” from the bench as he was rudely +hustled out of the courtroom. + +An hour later he stood with seven other shadows in the _carcel_ +courtyard. About them were the rurales with their rifles; four were +mounted on horseback and a pack mule, lightly laden, slept on three +legs behind the horsemen. Men came with lanterns and heavy loops of +something which chinked metallically when it was dropped. They fixed a +broad steel shackle on the left wrist of each prisoner and linked them +all to a bull chain. Then the door of a courtyard swung inward, the +mounted rurales closed in and the eight chained men went clinking out +to the dark street. + +A few midnight dawdlers paused to watch the shadowy procession +stumbling over the cobbles. No word was spoken. The clink of the +horses’ hoofs, the patter-patter of the short-legged pack mule and +the metallic whisperings of the chain fitted into a measured cadence. +Despite the presence of the pack mule, Grant first had thought the +journey would be a short one, ending at the railroad station. But +after fifteen minutes’ marching no railroad line was in sight and the +houses began to be scattered. Suddenly houses ceased; nothing but the +hump-shouldered shapes of mountains about; clear burning stars and +ahead a dim ribbon of road leading out into the desert. + +To Hermosillo, a town unheard of and at a distance unknown--across the +desert to Hermosillo afoot and chained in line with seven men. In the +slim rifle barrels so carelessly slung under shadows of sombreros was +the sullen emblem of that unwritten law of Mexico which stills so many +accusing mouths: _ley de fuga_--law of flight. + +Out into the desert of Altar marched the American, whose name appeared +only upon a secret cachet in the hands of the puppet judges--a man +gone, as a German once put it, “without trace.” + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE CHAIN GANG + + +“But, Doc, I tell you you’re crazy! How could a tenderfoot like Hickman +just in town from the East breeze across the Line and get into a jam +the first night he’s in town--drop out of sight completely?” + +Bim Bagley, back in Arizora and distracted by the unexplained mystery +of his pal’s name on the hotel register, his pal’s suitcase in a hotel +room but no more material trace of Grant Hickman, was knee to knee with +Dr. Stooder in the latter’s office. The Doc made judicious answer: + +“Well, son, Jed Hawkins’ specifications of the gringo he fought with +atop the crap table in the Palacio tallies pretty closely with the +young man as I saw him in my office earlier in the day. But here’s the +funny thing: the rurales let Hawkins go even though he laid out two of +’em with a chair. Let that fightin’ wildcat go and trotted this fellah +Hickman off to the _carcel_. That’s what gets me.” Doc Stooder gave +his decision with a wave of the hand. He jack-knifed his bony knees up +to his chin and waited the younger man’s comment. + +“But what did Hawkins say started the big row?” Bim’s long face, +all criss-crossed with the wind wrinkles that make desert men look +older than their years, gave a vivid picture of his distress, of his +eagerness to seize upon any detail that might point a solution of the +mystery. Doc Stooder recited with picturesque detail Jed Hawkins’ story +of the battle in the gambling palace as the redoubtable Jed himself had +narrated it in the Border Delight pool hall before returning to his +ranch at Dos Cabezas. + +“That give me a clue,” he concluded, “so I laid my pipe lines an’ I’m +looking for to tap a well any time now.” + +Doc Stooder’s pipe lines--of information, if not of wealth--were the +most productive of any along the Border. He was one of those rare white +men in the Southwestern country who enjoyed the unreserved respect if +not the love of the Mexican population, among whom nine-tenths of his +practice extended. Though he bawled at his patients, stricken dumb with +terror of their ailments, though he cursed the women and manhandled the +men, no poor Mexican’s hovel of ’dobe was too far out in the desert to +discourage Doc Stooder’s night prowling gas-wagon. Through dust storm +and withering heat this blasted jack-pine of a man flitted on wings of +gasoline, with his nostrums for dysentery and asthma, his splints for +broken bones and needles for knife thrusts. + +Drunk he might be half the time, an indifferent physician all the +time--for the Doc had not been away from the Border for twenty-five +years and never read a medical magazine. But under his hard rind of +brutalities and cynicisms the Mexicans and Indians had come to discover +a deep sympathy with their homely tragedies, their patient sufferings. +Sometimes they paid him in coin; more often they paid him in slavish +fealty the coin of which was information. Of gold strikes in the far +hills; of shrewd business deals to be wrought through connivance of +knavish officials across the Line; even of stolen jewels to be picked +up from a pawnbroker:--these the flow of Doc Stooder’s pipe lines. No +man on the Border for a hundred miles each way knew so much of the +scrapple of life as A. Stooder, M.D. + +“I’m lookin’ to hear of a woman,” the Doc drawlingly resumed, a wry +smile greeting Bim’s gesture of negation. “Yep, son, when any likely +lookin’ young fellah along the Border drops outa sight--and this +Hickman fellah’s got an eye with him for all his Noo Yawk bridle +trimmin’s--they’s a swish of skirts comes to my ears. Or”--he sat up +suddenly and threw a bony finger at Bim--“or he knows somethin’ about +why he’s come out here an’ went an’ babbled.” + +“Rot!” Bim’s grey eyes were clouded with anger. “I told you he doesn’t +know why we got him out here--and he’s not the babbling kind if he did.” + +“Well, it sizes up thisaway,” the Doc continued, ignoring the other’s +flash of temper. “They’s one man down in Sonora who knows all we +know about the Lost Mission and like’s not a dam’ sight more. That’s +this proud old don who lives down in the Garden of Solitude with his +red-headed daughter--name’s Padraic O’Donoju, if I haven’t told you +that before. If he ever got a line on the fact we’ve asked a Noo Yawk +engineer to come out here to Arizora he’d put two an’ two together an’ +figure we’re after that Four Evangelists church his ancestors built. +You know he’s sorta king of all the Papagoes in Altar and--” + +“How about your Papago who’s going to lead us to the Mission?” Bim +interrupted. “If there’s any leak likely as not it’s through him.” + +Stooder’s great head wagged slowly; a grin tilted the rabbit’s tail +tuft under his lip until it stood out a quizzical interrogation point. + +“No, son; no. I got that Papago brother where he thinks all I got to +do is crook my little finger an’ his wife passes away with asthma +overnight. We can rely--” + +A timid knock on the office door giving onto the hall. The Doc bellowed +a command to enter. A wizened Mexican peon whose left arm was a stump +sidled quickly through the doorway and stood bowing, shaggy head +uncovered. He cast a quick glance at Bagley, then to the doctor for +reassurance. + +“Go ahead, Angel--shoot!” commanded Stooder. + +“Señor, I hear from Jesus Ruiz, ’e’s cousin to me an’ rurale at the +_carcel_; Jesus Ruiz ’e says the gringo arrest’ at Palacio goes last +night in chain gang for Hermosillo--” + +Bim leaped to his feet with an oath. The peon’s eyes were on Doc +Stooder in an hypnotic stare. + +“The gringo goes in chain gang for Hermosillo, but my cousin Jesus Ruiz +’e says that gringo mos’ like never arrive.” + + * * * * * + +That hour when Doc Stooder’s pipe line began spouting information Grant +Hickman was discovering deep down within him an unguessed hardiness of +spirit. A trial was on him, a test of his moral fibre no less than of +his physical powers. At the end of twelve hours’ steady plodding across +the desert he was coming into his second wind. Every effort a devilish +ingenuity could contrive had been tried out by the four rurales, his +guards, in their common endeavour to break down this gringo’s fighting +morale. The single result was a fixed grin on features smeared with +dried blood and sweat--a challenge provoking the Mexicans to fresh +barbarities. + +During the first dark hours of the march Grant had nursed the hope +that at some point outside of town he and his fellow prisoners would +be brought to a railroad station to await the coming of a train. He +could not conceive a reason for transferring prisoners afoot when a +railroad would serve. But with the coming of the dawn and the lifting +of the dark from an empty land not even a telegraph pole raised above +the scrub to point fulfilment of his hope. Just the dry ribbon of road +stretching ahead and empty speculation as to the number of days or +hours which must intervene between present misery and journey’s end. +Grant never had heard the name Hermosillo until it was spoken by the +examining judge the night before; he did not know whether the town was +just over the horizon or half way to Panama. + +Morning brought him the chance to study the men chained with him who, +during the night hours, had been just so many disembodied shadows +marching in a nightmare. The one ahead of him was a shrivelled little +Chinaman, whose legs were so short he was forced to a skipping step to +keep slack on his segment of the chain; his breath came in asthmatic +pipings and wheezes like the noise of a leaky valve in some midget +engine. Behind him was a giant of an Indian, almost the colour of teak. +With a timed regularity this Indian spat noisily all through the dark +hours and until the sun rose to dry up his throat. The rest were in +character with Grant’s nearer companions--just flotsam. + +The guards were typical of their class; Mexican peons brutalized even +beyond the inheritance of their mixed bloods by their small taste of +power. The quarter-blood Indian south of the Line, whose ancestry is +devious as his own starved dog’s, knows but a single law of life and +that the law of fear. Lift him by ever so little from the station +of the one who fears to that of the one to be feared and he has no +counterpart for studied cruelty anywhere on earth. + +The one who rode to the right of the line in which Grant’s position +was fourth from the front, had commenced with the dawn a calculated +campaign of nasty tortures. He would suddenly swerve his horse against +Grant, threatening his feet with trampling hoofs. He held his lighted +cigarette low at his side with elaborate air of carelessness, then +pressed in close for the burning tip to eat through the white man’s +shirt. Once he aimed a vicious backward kick at his victim; his heavy +spur left a line of red through the torn sleeve from elbow to shoulder. + +At each of these refinements of humour the rurale’s snickering laughter +was met by the American’s wordless grin. Just a tense spreading of lips +and baring of teeth, which carried to the guard’s savage perception a +taunt and a threat. Always in Grant’s twisted grin lay the unspoken +promise of retribution once the odds against him were lightened. + +The desert under sun at the meridian flexed its harsh hand to pinch the +crawling caterpillar of chained men. Heat waves made all the ragged +summits of the Sierras pulsate. A dust tasting of desert salts spread a +low cloud about the marching column. Thirst that was a poignant agony +was made all the more unendurable by the tactics of the guards. From +time to time one of them would unhitch a canteen from the pack mule’s +burden and in the sight of the eight helpless sufferers tilt his head +and guzzle noisily. Even he would allow some of the water to slop from +his mouth and be wasted in the sand. + +When the little Chinaman marching before Grant sighed and dropped, the +line was halted for half an hour. First the yellow man was revived, +then the canteen at which he had sucked so noisily was passed down the +line to the rest of the prisoners. It was their first taste of water +since the prison gate was passed. After the canteen circulated, black +strips of jerked beef, sharp with salt, were distributed. Grant never +had seen the “jerky” of the Southwest; the leathery stuff would have +revolted him did his body not cry out for food. He tore at the tough +substance after the manner of his fellows while the guards brewed +themselves some more complicated mess over a fire of greasewood sticks. + +Then the march again. Dragging hour after dragging hour. Clink-clank +of the swinging chain. Pad-pad of feet in time. Snuffle and +wheeze--snuffle and wheeze of the asthmatic Chinaman’s breathing. +All in an unvarying synchronism which tore at the nerves. All the +world--Grant’s world of a great city--was reduced to this dreadful +monotony of movement and sound. + +He tried to think. Came to his mind a picture of his office in the +Manhattan skyscraper--his desk with the mounted bit of shrapnel for a +paperweight, its clear greeny-white glass top, the two wire baskets +which held his correspondence. He saw the squash court at the club--men +in sleeveless shirts straining after a white ball. Henry’s bar in the +little side street off the Rue D’Anou in Paris; Henry selling stolen +American cigarettes for five times their value at the commissary. St. +Mihiel and the old woman who knitted lace. Then the girl--Benicia +O’Donoju. Grant called to his mind the vivid glory of her hair, the +trick of her short upper lip in curling outward like the petal of a tea +rose, a something roguish always lurking deep down in the warm pools of +her eyes. + +“Not Mexican. We are Spanish folk.” That was her sharp reproof when he, +blundering, had asked her if she was of Mexican blood. That night on +the train--it seemed a year back. “Not Mexican.” Now he understood why +the girl had corrected him so pointedly. Thank God she was not of that +breed! + +Near dusk the line was halted and one of the guards dismounted. Grant +saw him fumble in his shirt and bring out a bright bit of metal, saw +him approach the head of the line and tinker with the first fellow’s +wrist shackle. He heard a sharp intake of breath behind him and, +turning, caught the stamp of terror on the giant Indian’s face. +Something was going forward which he could not comprehend, something to +shake the stoicism of this Indian. Within five minutes the steel band +about his wrist was unlocked and he stood free of the chain with the +rest of the prisoners. He saw on the faces of all of them that same +terror mask the Indian wore. + +The freed men cast covert glances at the guards, followed their every +move with cat-like slyness. The little Chinaman began a falsetto +sing-song under his breath, which might have been a prayer to his +protecting joss. One of the guards turned in his saddle and called some +jocular order to the prisoners. They moved on in the wine-light of the +sunset, falling precisely into the line they had held when chained, +their eyes vigilant for every move of a hand on the part of the mounted +men. + +The rurales now carried their rifles swung free across the saddles. + +Though he could understand no word of the muttered scraps of speech +passed between man and man behind him, the magnetic fear waves +possessing all the rest began to prompt Grant to some comprehension. +The coming night--dropping of the chain--those rifles unslung from +shoulders and carried free across the saddles:--did these things +presage the near end of this farce of a pilgrimage across the desert to +a court? + +Light now was nearly gone from the western sky and the guards were +riding farther away from the trudging line, deliberately inviting some +one to offer himself for fair target practice while gunsights still +could be seen. Grant faced the hazard squarely. Certain he was that +none of the eight would see another sunrise, that butcher’s work would +commence the minute sporting chances were definitively ignored by the +victims. He was of no mind to be the passive party to a hog killing. +Better a quick dash--a bullet from behind-- + +The line of men had just emerged from an arroyo with almost perpendicular +sides; the bed of the dry stream was thick with shadow. Grant leaped from +line and ran straight for the guard who rode between himself and the +course of the stream. Almost at his stirrup he swerved and cut under the +horse’s rump. + +Shouts. A shot gone wild. Grant, zigzagging, was at the brink of the +arroyo. Two shots almost as one. A lance of fire through his shoulder. +Up went his arms and he plunged headlong into the gulf of blackness. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE HEART OF BENICIA + + +The Desert of Altar is transcendence of silence. From the savage +Growler range in Arizona south to the obsidian bastions of Pinacate, by +the dead Gulf, is space to crowd five million people with their tumult +of cities, their crash of machines, hoot of locomotives and shriek of +steel under stress. Yet in all this blank waste not a sound. + +The chirp of the wren from her hole in the _sahuaro_ carries not even +so far as the watching hawk on nearby skeleton _ocatilla_ stalk. The +meat cry of the prowling cat in the mountains where the wild sheep +range is swallowed in the muffling depths of the canyon under her feet. +Thin air seems too tenuous to conduct sound waves. Creatures of the +wild lands move mute under the oppression of unbounded space. + +Yet nowhere does rumour fly swifter than here in this vacant land. +Comes a strange prowler to the waterholes of Tinajas Altas, and the +antelope fifty miles away know the news and seek the hidden springs at +Bates’ Wells. A Papago three days’ journey from the nearest rancheria +stumbles onto hoofprints of six horses away over where tidewater climbs +into the delta of the Colorado, and he turns back to carry report of +revolution in Baja California. Strange signs tell their tales from +the sands; the arrangement of little sticks conveys whole chapters of +information to the wayfarer. When man meets man, be he white, brown or +copper coloured, news is a torch to be passed on to a new hand. Nothing +can be long a secret. The latent must out. + +Even as the worthy Doc Stooder in his shabby office at Arizora had +a never-ending messenger service from all the Border and the lands +beyond, carrying scraps of oblique news, another far distant in the +Garden of Solitude enjoyed the same intelligence. This was Don Padraic +O’Donoju, last of the line of masters over the once-great principality +of El Rancho del Refugio. Though a hundred years of revolution, of +uproar and the teetering of political balances in the more populous +Mexico to south and east of him had left to the last don of the +O’Donojus little more territory than that comprised in the oasis of +the Garden, still he had cattle enough to be counted a rich man and +six generations of custom gave him unbroken sway over the Papagoes. +From the Sand People of the Gulf away up to the San Xavier rancheria +at Tucson extended the secret kingdom of Don Padraic’s influence. His +only tithes were those of loyalty and the bringing of report. What the +Papagoes thought Don Padraic should know, that he knew as speedily as +word could be passed. + +So, a week after Benicia had returned to the Casa O’Donoju, came a +runner from the eastward--one sent by El Doctor Coyote Belly, whose +winter house was at Babinioqui near the railroad. The runner had big +news. El Doctor, known all over the Desert of Altar because of his +reputed skill at curing hydrophobia and the bite of the sidewinder, +had a sick white man--a seriously wounded white man who might be an +American--in his house at Babinioqui and he asked Don Padraic what he +should do with this man. + +El Doctor was returning from the Medicine Cave of Pinacate--this +was the runner’s tale--when on the road that runs from Sonizona to +Hermosillo he found seven dead men; dead men with the marks of fetters +on their left wrists. A little beyond he found still another; this one, +lying in an arroyo, had been shot through the shoulder from behind +and he still lived. El Doctor had tied the living man to his burro and +taken him to his winter house at Babinioqui, where he had treated him +with the most powerful herbs and had massaged the wound with the lizard +image. The wounded white man would live. Coyote Belly did not wish to +turn him over to the Mexicans, for he was a victim of _ley de fuga_ and +the Mexicans undoubtedly would shoot him again. + +Don Padraic, whose charity was wider than his acres, made his decision +instantly. He ordered Quelele to go, with the runner to guide him to El +Doctor’s house, in the little desert car and to fetch the white man to +the Garden of Solitude as soon as he was able to be moved. It was best, +the master instructed, that Quelele travel in the night, returning with +the wounded man, and tell no one of the object of his mission. + +The big Indian stocked the car with gasoline from the tank behind +the master’s house--a reservoir filled monthly from drums brought by +ox cart from the distant railroad point--strapped canteens and oil +containers on his running boards and was off. Don Padraic said nothing +of the incident to his daughter. + +That night Don Padraic and Benicia sat in the candlelight of the big +salon or living room which filled the space of one quadrangle off +the patio. In all Sonora there was no counterpart of this chamber of +mellowed antiquities, the collection of generations of the O’Donoju. +Low ceiled and with crossing beams of oak, whereon the marks of the +hewer’s adze showed like waves; walls hung with tapestries between the +heavy frames of portraits of grandees and their ladies of forgotten +days; a great fireplace wherein a man could stand upright, with its +hand-wrought andirons and heavy crane shank; floor almost black from +a hundred years of polishing and with the skins of animals floating +there like so many islands:--here was a magic bit of old Spain lifted +overseas to find root in the heart of the desert. + +Benicia, in a gown of rippling lines which left her strong young arms +bare to the shoulder, was seated behind the great golden span of her +harp. Candlelight falling across her shoulders made ivory the flesh +of her bare arms as they moved rhythmically back and forth over the +wilderness of strings. She was playing the Volga Boatsong, a peasant +melody whose minors rose and fell to the sweep of oars. As the girl +gave her heart to the music, the thrumming strings wove a picture of +some barbaric steppe coming down to a sluggish river; boatmen chanting +at the sweeps. The ancient room was a-thrill with resonance. + +She finished with just a breath of melody, the song of the boatmen +dying in the distance. Her eyes fell on the face of her father; it +was deeply etched by the play of flames from the mesquite logs in the +fireplace. Always he sat this way, moveless before the fire, when +she played on the great harp o’ nights, freeing his soul to drink in +the melodies; but to Benicia’s understanding eyes appeared now the +semblance of a deeper shadow not of the firelight. She softly left the +instrument and stole over to nestle herself on the broad chair wing, +with her coppery head laid against the snow white one. + +“_Pobrecito_”--this was her pet word carried through the years from +childhood--“_Pobrecito_, thy face is as grave as the owl’s. Some +secret? Remember, there are no secrets between us two--no worry which +the other does not share.” + +Her coaxing hand played through the heavy mane of hair; her cheek was +against his. Don Padraic slowly turned his head with denial in his +eyes; but that denial could not sustain the accusation in the steady +blue eyes of the daughter. During the week Benicia had been home a +secret doubt had steadily pressed upon the father; he had been waiting +some word from her which did not come. Now one of his hands stole up to +tweak her ear--signal of surrender. + +“’Nicia, great-heart, you have told me all about your two years in the +cities--your two years of life in the great world outside? There is +something you have withheld?” + +“Nothing, little father.” She gave him a peck on the forehead. Don +Padraic appeared to be groping for his words. + +“You met--many American men--young men who--ah--might have been +attracted by the beauty of my desert flower?” + +A ripple of soft laughter and the girl pressed closer to him. + +“Ah, _Pobrecito_, you forget that your desert flower carries thorns. +Ask that ridiculous Hamilcar Urgo; he has felt the thorns.” + +“But”--Don Padraic was not to be put off by evasions--“was there not +one whose heart was conquered by a girl of such fire, such beauty? +Come--come! These Americans are not men of ice.” + +For a minute Benicia was silent. She was weighing in all sincerity the +only shred of a secret she had in her heart; testing it for genuineness +as fairly as she might. + +“Yes, daddy, there were many with bold eyes and ready tongues; but +hardly had they begun to speak as friends or companions when their talk +was all of money--how much they were planning to make that year; the +‘big deal’ they were going to put through. All were like this--but one.” + +“Ah,” breathed Don Padraic. + +“That one I have told you of,” she continued. “The man on the train +who was so masterful with little Hamilcar. He was not like the others. +A man of wit--of sympathies; one who seemed to have understanding of +life--” + +“And he--?” the father prompted. + +“We said ‘_adios_’ the night before we came to Arizora. I did not see +him in the morning, though he said that was his destination.” + +They were silent once more. Finally from Benicia a wraith of laughter +on fluttering wings of a sigh: + +“But, my grave old owl, why these questions? Never before have I seen +my daddy play the prying duenna.” + +“Heart of mine, thou canst not be blind”--the father’s voice trembled +over the intimate pronoun. “I have been thy father, mother, elder +brother, all in one. And selfish--selfish beyond measure! Keeping thee +chained here to an old man in the wilderness when all the world of love +and life lies beyond--” + +“No--no, daddy mine!” Tears dewed blue eyes as yearning arm strained +him to her. + +“--My ’Nicia has her years ahead of her. Her love life must be awakened +and given freedom to unfold like a flower in a garden. Yet I have +permitted her to come back to me here in the Garden of Solitude because +I was lonely. Better far that I sell what we have here and take you +back to the world. In these evil days there is no fit mate to be found +for you in all Sonora. Hamilcar Urgo has threatened me if I do not give +you to him; he is of our blood, but he is abominable. I--” + +A soft hand clapped over his lips. He heard passionate words: + +“Father mine, stop! Never--never whisper again that you will sell our +Garden. For I love it, next to you, above all the world. We are desert +people, little father. We live in God’s hand and are happy. The cities +crush me with their noise, their confusion.” + +“But, ’Nicia--” + +“And, dearest of daddies”--her lips against his ear were giving kisses +light as thistledown--“I want no lover but you--no happiness but what +I have returned to here in the Garden. Now, not a word more!” + +She was on her feet and with the skirts of her gown caught in her +fingers was making him an old-fashioned curtsy. Then she slipped into +the shadows where the great golden harp stood, and in an instant the +ancient room began to hum with spirited arpeggios--rush of many waters +over a fall. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +GOLD AND PEARLS + + +Bim Bagley, on the trail of the information brought by Doc Stooder’s +pipe line, found himself against a blank wall the instant he passed +through the barrier of the Line into Sonizona. He was too conversant +with the ways of Mexican officialdom to make any inquiry in high +places, knowing that to do so would be but to jeopardize Grant Hickman, +however he might be placed, and win for himself naught but suave +denials. Nor did he even go to the American consul, who, in the usual +course of things, would be the last man in Sonizona to hear of the +disappearance of an American citizen there. + +Rather, with Doc Stooder’s counsel, Bim circulated warily among the +gambling halls and in the _cantinas_ where the rurales were wont to go +for their salt and mescal. Here ten pesos slipped into a complacent +palm; there twenty. Then weary waiting for results. + +Bit by bit the story came to him, and behind the fragments was always +the dim figure of Colonel Hamilcar Urgo. Bagley knew Urgo for the +tyrant politician that he was: how he used his position in the garrison +as a cloak to cover his manipulations of government all along the +Sonora border. No man was stronger, not even the governor of Sonora +himself; and the central regime in Mexico City was forced to wink at +Colonel Urgo’s obliquities else run the risk of his firing the train to +revolution. + +But why this little sand viper in uniform should have conceived a +desire to be rid of Grant Hickman, a total stranger to the country, not +even the most astute of Bagley’s informers could guess. “’E’s not like +theese gringo” appeared to cover the whole case. + +The saturnine doctor, repenting him of his brusque reception of the +New York man--prompted, after all, by his superlative caution in the +presence of a possible impostor--sent the tip to the farthermost +ganglions of his news system: “Fifty gold dollars to the man bringing +information of the missing American’s whereabouts.” + +Doc Stooder’s proffer of that amount of money was not all humanitarian. +Below his surface show of concern, designed for the benefit of Bim +Bagley, good Dr. Stooder did not care a plugged nickel what might +be the fate of the Eastern man. He was not one to lose sleep over +the misfortunes of others if those misfortunes were not attributable +to strictly physical causes and under materia medica. Then only they +interested him. + +No, Doc Stooder’s real concern was the delay caused by the disappearance +of this third party to his scheme for a “great killing.” The killing in +question was one he could not make single-handed. Circumstances which +have no place in this tale had forced him to share the secret of it with +Bagley, and the latter had refused to move a step in the enterprise until +he had his pal from overseas in on the game. The Doc fretted aloud one +day, which was the tenth after Grant had dropped from sight. + +“Son, I’m tellin’ you ’less we make tracks for that Four Evangelists +mission purty pronto this here O’Donoju Spaniard down in the Garden’s +goin’ to get what’s in the wind and shove in on us. He’s got every +Papago from here to the Gulf runnin’ to him with every whisper a little +bird lets spill. He gets wind you an’ me are raising sand to lay hands +on an engineer out from Noo Yawk an’ he smells a mice.” + +“You go dig alone for your dam’d mission.” Bim Bagley’s temper had been +ground fine by days of restless anxiety. “Me, I roost right here till +I get the lay where my buddy is.” + +Next day all the silver of subsidy Bim had distributed bore fruit an +hundred-fold. There came to the office of Doc Stooder unquestioned +report that the missing American was alive, though shot through the +body, and under the care of El Doctor Coyote Belly at a speck in the +desert called Babinioqui away down beyond the Line. + +Bagley was off in his car that night. Doc Stooder, alone in his office +and with a graduating glass and bottle of fiery tequila at his elbow, +dreamed of gold plate brought to light from caverns of sand, of altar +jewels and hoards of nuggets--riches of crafty priests--salvaged from +the crypt of a holy place lost to sight of man a century and a quarter. + +“Gold all hammered into crosses an’ such!” The Doc tipped his brimming +graduating glass against the electric bulb and studied with fond eye +the liquor made golden by the light. + +“--Pearls, my Papago says. Pearls big as _bisnaga_ fruit an’ +greeny-white like a high moon. Gold an’ pearls! Pearls an’ gold! +Stooder, you’re goin’ be a prancin’, r’arin’ aristocrat!” + + + + +CHAPTER X + +AT THE CASA O’DONOJU + + +Six days after Quelele the Papago set out on his mission of mercy +from the Casa O’Donoju he returned to the oasis. It was in the first +flush of dawn that the _shuf-shuf_ of the little car roused master +and servants; Quelele had travelled all night and at a pace to +conserve the strength of the wounded man, who lay on thick straw in +the box body. All night without lights save the thickly strewn lamps +in the firmament, wending hither and thither through the scrub where +half-guessed lines in the sand marked the Road of the Dead Men--a +journey weird enough. + +For Grant Hickman it was but part of the moving drama of a dream. That +instant of flight from the chain gang, when a bullet tore through his +shoulder and sent him toppling into the arroyo, was the visitation +of death; in his flickering perceptions all else following was but +adventuring in the country beyond death--incidents to paint impressions +on a consciousness otherwise wiped clean of otherworld recollections. +First of these exposures on the cloudy plate of his mind came many days +after the rurales had left him for dead in the desert: a face deep-dyed +as mahogany and with white bristles of a beard about chin and lips, +a face kindly withal, which bent near his as a hand lifted his head +to bring his lips to a vessel of pungent brew. Then another age of +drifting and swimming through soft clouds. + +Grant had just come to accept the grey-thatched face of El Doctor +Coyote Belly as part of a permanent picture when another Indian +appeared between himself and the bundles of sticks making a roof over +his head. This second personage in the world of the unreal, a giant +with the features of a boy, had spelled El Doctor in ministering herb +brews and keeping the wet cloths under the burning wound in his back +for what seemed many years. Then Grant had felt himself lifted, carried +from the hut with the bundles of sticks for a roof and laid on sweet +smelling straw. In the starshine he felt the hand of El Doctor close +over his own with a heartening squeeze. + +Then--wonder of wonders!--the racking cough of a gas engine, and Grant +was soaring back to that familiar earth which had been lost to him so +long. + +Upon the arrival of the car bringing Grant to the Casa O’Donoju Don +Padraic, hastily dressed, superintended the moving of his guest to +a small, clean room, candle lit. The wounded man felt the gracious +softness of feathers under him, the suave clinging of sheets. An aged +Indian woman, working under the white man’s direction, divested him of +his tattered clothes and patted everything comfortable. Drowsy luxury +stole across his consciousness to cloud it and bring sleep. + +Sunlight flooded the room when Grant awoke. He was alone. His mind was +clearer than it had been since he was shot. Only the steady burning +in his vitals linked this moment of comfort with the tortured past. +His eyes roved about the room to take in its appointments. White walls +devoid of ornamentation; by the heavy door with its curiously wrought +iron latch a single chest of drawers of some antique pattern; the bed +he lay upon massive as a galleon of old days and with a canopy of +carved wood and tapestry for a sail: here was a room from the period +department of the Metropolitan Museum. + +Grant was patiently trying to fit together the jig-saw scraps of his +memory when the door opened and the white man he had seen the night +before entered. Seeing the light of reason in the patient’s eyes, Don +Padraic smiled and bowed. Something mighty heartening lay in that +welcome and the warm cordiality of Don Padraic’s features. + +“I am rejoiced to find you better to-day,” he said as he drew a chair +to the side of the bed. “Yours was a hard journey last night.” + +“I am still a little uncertain up here”--Grant tapped his forehead with +an attempt at a laugh. “For instance, I was just thinking I had been +lifted straight into a room of the Metropolitan in New York.” + +The host’s brows were knitted an instant, then he caught the allusion +and smiled. + +“Ah, yes; we have rather ancient furnishings here. But you are quite a +distance from New York, señor. This is the Casa O’Donoju in the Garden +of Solitude, and I am Don Padraic O’Donoju.” + +The name crashed into Grant’s consciousness like the clang of iron. His +heart gave a great leap. Could it be possible--? No, this must be but +part of the aurora dreams of the vague eternity still just behind his +back. Grant wished to make no blunder which might belie the present +soundness of his mind, so he held his tongue over the question burning +to be asked. Instead: + +“My name is Grant Hickman, sir. I am deeply obliged to you for your +charity in bringing me here. Of course, I do not know quite how it +all happened--my coming here from some place else, where an Indian, +or two of them--seemed to be caring for me. And I fear I am hardly a +presentable guest.” The sick man’s hand passed ruefully over his stubby +chin. + +Don Padraic made a gesture dismissing Grant’s fastidiousness. “Señor, a +gentleman should not consider the state of his beard and the state of +his health with equal seriousness. The one may be repaired at once even +if our wishes cannot immediately effect a cure of the other. Permit +me to retire, señor, and not tax you with questions until you are +stronger.” + +Shortly after the gentle host had bowed himself out an Indian servant +entered with basin and razor and effected an agreeable change in the +patient’s appearance. Then Grant was left alone with the tab to a +wonderful possibility to turn over and over in his mind. + +He was in the house of the O’Donoju. Could there be more than one +family of that unusual name in the desert country; or had fate thrown +him a recompense for all he’d suffered by lifting him from a line of +chained convicts to carry him through a nightmare straight to the one +spot in all the world he most desired to be in? Perhaps under the same +roof, near enough to him to permit the carrying of her laughter, was +Benicia, the vivid creature who had won his heart into captivity. + +He was not kept long in suspense. The door opened and Don Padraic’s +white clad figure appeared, behind it Benicia. She was in khaki, as +Grant had last seen her at the Arizora station, wide-brimmed hat noosed +under her chin just as she had come in from a ride through the oasis. +All the wild, free spaces of the wilderness seemed compacted in the +girl’s trim figure, in the flush of her browned cheeks touched by the +sun. + +“Señor Hickman--” Don Padraic began introduction, but Benicia was at +the bedside; her cool hand was given to Grant’s clasp with a gesture of +boyish comradeship. + +“We need not be introduced, father,” Benicia laughed, and there was +a queer catch in her throat. “Señor Hickman did me a service on the +train which served as the best introduction in the world.” Turning back +to Grant--“I did not know, señor, you were the wounded man Quelele +brought into our home so early this morning--did not even know we had +a guest until my father told me when I returned from my ride a few +minutes ago.” + +Grant strove to put all his heart prompted in words that were mete: +“And I did not dare hope that this house to which a miracle has brought +me was the desert home you described on the train.” + +Benicia’s eyes read surely what his lips would not frame. She saw in +the white face of the wounded man a touch of that old hardihood and +forthright spirit of address which had commended this American to her +at first meeting--commended him even against her own impulse to resent +his self-assurance. But she saw, too, how suffering battled to dim the +valiant spirit, and something deeper than abstract sympathy stirred in +her heart. + +“But, señor, to meet you again this way! Father has told me the message +brought from El Doctor: how you were found among dead men on the +Hermosillo road and brought back to life by that old Papago. You, a +stranger and unknown here in the desert country--how could this happen +to you, señor?” + +Don Padraic interposed: + +“Perhaps, ’Nicia, when Señor Hickman is stronger he will answer +questions. Would it not be better--?” + +The girl was quick to appreciate her father’s considerate thought. +Again she laid her hand in Grant’s. + +“If you will permit me to play the doctor--at least to see to it that +lazy old ’Cepcion, your nurse, does not neglect you?” The smile that +went with this promise was tonic for the sick man. It remained like +an afterglow when the door was closed behind the girl. And when the +wrinkled Indian woman came an hour later with broth on a silver tray +that smile reappeared, translated into the fragrant beauty of rose +petals laid by the side of the bowl. + +Five luxurious days passed--days each with a wonderful spot of sunshine +in them--that when Benicia accompanied the aged ’Cepcion to his +chamber. On these daily visits she would draw her chair to the side of +the great bed--she looked very small below the high buttress of the +mattress--and while he quaffed his chicken broth and nibbled his flaky +tortillas Benicia would talk. ’Cepcion, like some mahogany coloured +manikin in her flaring skirts and winged bodice, always stood, arms +akimbo and features passive as a graven image, behind her mistress’ +chair. + +The girl’s talk was directed away from the personal; with an art +concealing art she evaded Grant’s frequent endeavours to swing +conversation into more intimate channels. She brought the world of +the desert into the sick room, unconsciously revealing herself as +a flashing, restless creature of the wastes: now on horseback and +threading dim trails over the Line to carry quinine to a family +of Papagoes down with the fever; now beside Quelele in the little +gas-beetle and skimming to Caborca, the southern town, to buy a wedding +dress for an Indian belle. + +Not once did she touch again upon the subject of Grant’s misadventures +and how he came to be found on the road to Hermosillo. A delicate +sense of the fitness of things prompted her to await the moment when +he himself should volunteer explanations. Grant, on his part, felt an +impelling reluctance to give details, for to do so would necessitate +his revealing his conviction that little Colonel Urgo’s was the hand +that had pushed him so near death. A delicate--perhaps quixotic--sense +of personal honour prompted that he keep his enemy’s name out of +any explanations. He could not know how close might be the little +Spaniard’s relations with Benicia and her father--even discounting +Urgo’s boast that he expected to make the girl his wife--and, besides, +he felt the score between himself and Urgo must be evened before he +linked the Colonel’s name with his experiences. + +With Benicia’s father Grant modified his resolution to a certain +degree. It was no more than proper, he argued with himself, that the +master of the Casa O’Donoju have some explanation for the presence in +his house of a man from a Mexican chain gang. + +“Señor O’Donoju,” Grant addressed his host when the latter was come on +one of his daily visits, “you have been more than kind to me, but I +fear I may be an embarrassment to you--a fugitive, you know, if that is +my status before the law.” + +“My dear sir”--the courtly Spaniard waved away Grant’s scruples with +a smile--“you forget that the evidence El Doctor Coyote Belly found +on the Hermosillo Road--you the only survivor among eight men who had +been murdered, eight men with marks of fetters on their wrists; that +this evidence, I say, clearly indicates you now have no status whatever +before what the Mexicans call their law.” + +Grant looked his surprise. Don Padraic continued easily: + +“You are officially dead, Señor Hickman. It is the _ley de fuga_--the +law of flight. You were shot trying to escape while being transferred +from one prison to another. Monstrous barbarism! So the president, +Francisco Madero, met his end; so, perhaps, Carranza. When you were +chained to other convicts and sent afoot out into the desert you were +doomed; the men responsible for that act counted you as dead the minute +they ordered you overland to Hermosillo.” + +Grant recalled the mask of fear he’d seen settle over the features of +the big Indian, his chain mate, when the rurales began to loose the +fetters in the sunset hour of that fateful night on the desert; how the +asthmatic little Chinaman had commenced his chant to the joss--men who +had known every weary hour of that march brought them nearer to the +stroke of doom. + +“I have no direct evidence to explain why I was in that chain gang,” +Grant began, honestly enough; then he told the story of the fight in +the gambling palace after the discovery of the counterfeit dollars in +his pocket, reserving only all reference to Colonel Urgo. His host +heard him through with a grave face. + +“Perhaps,” he ventured, “you were on some mission to the Border which +ran counter to the interests of a scheming official on the Mexican +side.” + +“To be honest, I do not know yet on what mission I came to Arizora,” +Grant conceded with a laugh. “A friend of mine wrote me in New York +he wanted me to join him in ’a whale of a proposition’ out here along +the Border. I was fool enough to come just on that, and when I had an +interview with a Dr. Stooder--” + +“Ah!” The interjection escaped Don Padraic against instant reflex of +judgment, as his hand part way raised to his lips betrayed. Grant +caught the other’s quickly covered confusion and suddenly was sensible +of his careless garrulity. Here he was bandying names in a matter his +friend Bagley had surrounded with unexplained secrecy. He finished +lamely: + +“And so on my first night in Arizora I fell into a trap.” + +When Don Padraic left the chamber Grant still was dwelling upon his +host’s involuntary exclamation at the name of Doc Stooder. What was +there about the saturnine physician, what notorious reputation which +could lead a hermit such as Don Padraic away off in this desert oasis +to evince surprise that one under his roof had had dealings with him? +More and more an undefined regret for his mention of the name of +Stooder plagued him. + +In truth, the whole reason for his coming to Arizora and whatever +fantastic project might be at the bottom of it appeared now strangely +linked with this latest turn of fate, his coming to the Casa O’Donoju. +Grant became aware of a duty long overlooked and wrote a brief and +non-committal note to Bim Bagley, in Arizora, saying only he had +suffered an accident and would return to the Border town as soon as he +was able. This Benicia took from him to give to Quelele when he should +go to the nearest railroad town. + +Two days thereafter befell a boon the wounded man had dreamed of during +many yearning hours. Two male servants of the household came to dress +him in one of Don Padraic’s white suits--his own clothes were rags--and +assisted him down a long hall which turned into the green paradise +of the patio. There under the royal date palm they sat him, with the +fountain pool and its magic purple sails of the hyacinth at his feet, +behind and on either hand the green and crimson glory of the geraniums. + +Benicia was awaiting him there alone. The girl, in a simple green frock +which revealed bare arms and the warm round of her shoulders, was the +embodiment of the garden’s fairy essence. She was a sprite of this +green and glowing place. Hot sunlight falling upon her head made it a +great exotic flower. + +“Now both of us can revel in being lawbreakers,” she exclaimed when the +Indians had bowed themselves out. She was hovering about Grant, patting +into place the gay serape which covered his knees. + +“Lawbreakers!” Grant’s glowing eyes bespoke the intoxication of +pleasure. “I feel, rather, like a prisoner whose sentence is commuted.” + +The girl’s rippling laughter ended with, “Oh, but my father said you +should not be moved for three days yet. Now he has gone into town with +Quelele and you and I are breaking the law--with you equally guilty.” + +“What man would not rush into crime with you to lead?” he rallied, +and the little game of give and take in joke and repartee which had +been of their devising these last few days of Grant’s convalescence, +when Benicia made her daily visits at his bedside, was resumed. It was +in this course their friendship had grown: on a basis of comradeship +and with healthy minds in apposition, giving and finding something of +humour, of rollicking fun. No angling for sickly sentimentalism on the +part of this unspoiled girl of the waste places--so Grant during hours +of staring at the ceiling had appraised the heart of Benicia O’Donoju; +no place in their communion for any of the trite nothings a man burbles +into concealed ear of a flapper over tea or whatever else comes from +the sophisticated city teapot. + +During these delicious hours in the shadow-dappled patio, as +heretofore, Benicia continued a tantalizing enigma to the man of +cities. While seeming to give so freely of herself in laughing quip +and quick answer to his sallies, never was there that least suspicion +of some overtone to her buoyancy the man yearned to catch; not the +quick revealing of secret depths in the eyes which would betray a +heart responsive to the waves of the man’s love enveloping her. Yet +the lips of the girl, full, soft, trembling with unconcealed promise +of richness to the one conquering them: these were not the lips of one +devoid of love’s alluring tyrannies. Nor was the rounded body of her, +fully ripened to share in the law of life giving, one to wither outside +love’s garden. + +Grant could not speculate, with tremors of eagerness, on the flood of +passion that was dammed behind the girl’s sure mastery of herself. Dare +he believe that he might be the one to loose that flood? As he sat +there in the odorous garden the nimble, superficial part of his brain +was playing with bubbles while the deeper fibre of him resolved that +nothing in the world mattered beyond possessing Benicia’s love. + +When luncheon was cleared away--it had been a veritable feast of +laughter--Benicia clapped her hands and gave some direction to the +servant answering. The Indian woman disappeared in the body of the +house, soon to come waddling out under the weight of the great harp. +Grant gasped his surprise; he never had associated harps with any +surroundings other than the orchestra pit. + +“My Irish ancestors, who were kings in Donegal, always called for their +harp after a feast,” Benicia declared with laughter in her eyes. “That +is the reason we Irish are such dreamers. The harp is the stairs to +dreams. Listen, señor, and hear if I tell the truth.” + +Grant watched her, fascinated. Her slender body was in the shade of +a great palm frond, but when she leaned her head forward against the +carved sounding board a narrow lance of sunshine shot down to kindle +her hair to flame there against the gold. As her bare arms passed +in swift flight of swallows across the field of strings shadows and +sunlight played upon them in gules and chevrons of black and ivory. + +First she gave the solo, _Depuis le Jour_, from some opera Grant +vaguely recalled; it was a mad thing, wherein the great instrument +thundered to the far recesses of the patio garden. Then the girl’s mood +changed and was interpreted in the sighing motif of _In the Garden_. +It was all bird song and lisping fountains. Grant allowed his eyes to +close so his soul could take flight with the music. + +Slowly, reluctantly, Benicia’s fingers swept the final chords. The +great harp was still. + +Out from the shadow of a flanking archway stepped a dapper little +figure in a cloak. Heels clicked sharply and the marionette bowed low. +It was Colonel Hamilcar Urgo. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE MARK OF EL ROJO + + +Colonel Urgo straightened himself, and the smile that had twisted his +little waxed moustache awry suddenly was smudged out. For his eyes +encountered what they were hardly prepared to see--a living dead man. +His face went sickly white; one hand arrested itself in the motion of +making the sign of the cross. He stared at Grant, fascinated. + +Grant himself was little less shaken at the appearance of his enemy. +It was as if a cobra suddenly had lifted its head from the patio’s +flowering jungle. In a moment of dreamy ecstasy, when he had felt his +heart yearning toward the girl’s over a bridge of music, came this +sinister apparition of evil. It was not fear of the man that caused +Grant’s heart to pound--the waspish little Spaniard possessed no +essence of malignity sufficient to terrify one of the American’s fibre; +rather a loathing and instinctive reflex of anger gorged his combative +nerves with blood. Grant read surely enough the shock of surprise in +his enemy’s eyes and cannily laid this revelation away as a weapon to +hand should necessity demand its use. + +As for Benicia, she made no pretence of concealing her annoyance. +Quick perception seized upon the coincidence of her father’s absence +and Colonel Urgo’s coming; she knew the wily little suitor had somehow +managed to time his visit to that circumstance. In the first flush of +her surprise Benicia caught herself feeling a great thankfulness that +Grant Hickman was in the house. + +“If you have come to see my father”--Benicia did not rise to greet Urgo +when he took a tentative step toward her--“he is absent at the moment. +I am sorry you have not found him at home.” + +Urgo’s lynx eyes darted from the girl’s face to Grant’s and back again. +Plainly he was in a quandary, not knowing how much--if anything--this +American had told his hosts of the circumstances of a night in Sonizona +and its consequences. Benicia, misreading his perturbation, was quick +to interpose with a smile all irony: + +“This is Señor Hickman, whom you may remember having seen on the +train. Señor Hickman, this is a distant cousin of mine, Colonel +Hamilcar Urgo, of the garrison at Sonizona. He is the gentleman who +believed you occupied his berth out of El Paso, if you recall. There +was some slight misunderstanding--” + +Grant flashed a glance at the girl, read the mockery in her eyes and +took his cue from her: + +“I believe I have seen the Colonel subsequently,” this in heavy +seriousness. “Was it not somewhere in Sonizona?” + +“I do not recall having had that honour.” Teeth flashed in a nervous +smile and the man’s eyes veiled themselves furtively. He caught the +challenge to battle of wits with the American and entrenched himself +accordingly. Colonel Urgo found himself at a momentary disadvantage, +however; he did not know what ammunition his rival would choose. +Essaying a diversion, he addressed the girl in rapid Spanish. + +“Our guest, Señor Hickman, does not understand Spanish,” Benicia +insinuated reproof. “Yes, it is quite true, as you have judged, that +he is recovering from a wound--a slight misadventure on the road to +Hermosillo. But pray be seated, my cousin, and let me order wine and a +light luncheon. You are visibly fatigued.” With a slight bow to Urgo +Benicia arose and crossed the patio to disappear in the shadows of the +arcade. + +Urgo, surprised into an unpleasant situation by being left alone with +the man he had sent to death, fidgeted with the hasp of his cigarette +case. He made great difficulty of scratching a match. Grant, watching +his every move, decided to play some of the cards fate had dealt him. + +“I guessed you were inquiring of Señorita O’Donoju about my condition, +Colonel. You are charmingly solicitous. I was shot in the back--bullet +through my shoulder. Left for dead with the other convicts.” + +The little Spaniard let smoke seep through his nostrils and spread out +his hands to say, “So much for that!” Grant was not to be denied his +advantage: + +“Of course, Colonel Urgo, I remember you were good enough to be present +when I was arraigned at the jail on a false charge of counterfeiting; +I shall not soon forget the promise you made then to do what you could +for me. You did--all you possibly could!” Grant’s smile had become set +and one hand resting on his blanketed knees flexed into a fist, white +across the knuckles. + +Urgo expelled a cloud of smoke from his lungs and showed his teeth in a +wolf’s smile. + +“You remember much, señor. Do not fail to remember, too, you are +a criminal under the laws of Mexico, to be tried on charge of +counterfeiting at the court of Hermosillo.” + +“Yes?” Grant was cool under the other’s counter. “And will you move +to take me to Hermosillo after what happened--out yonder on that road +through the desert?” + +“I?” Urgo’s shoulders lifted. “I am a soldier, señor. I have nothing +to do with justice and the courts. But assuredly you will be taken to +Hermosillo and put on trial.” + +The little Spaniard had fully recovered his poise by now. The uneasy +light in his eyes had yielded to a dangerous flicker of craft. Suavity +of a tiger’s purr lurked in his voice. Grant mastered the rage which +ridged all his fighting muscles despite the weakness of his body; this +was no moment to be betrayed into throwing away a trick. + +“But before I go to Hermosillo, Colonel, of course I shall take +precautions to insure that I get there--that there will be no more _ley +de fuga_ in my case. Don Padraic O’Donoju, who is an honest man; I +shall take him more fully into my confidence and--” + +“Then you have told--?” Urgo bit his lip in mortification over having +fallen into a trap. Grant’s answering smile was innocent as a babe’s. + +“I might prefer, Colonel Urgo, to confine our affair--call it a +misunderstanding between two gentlemen--strictly to yourself and +myself, trusting to take care of myself when I have recovered my +strength. But should I be driven to seek the assistance of an honest +man--” + +Benicia appeared that instant; behind her was ’Cepcion with a silver +tray. Before Colonel Urgo bobbed to his feet Grant caught a shaft of +cold fury from his eyes which said that if the girl’s presence forced +an armistice no promise of peace lay at its termination. + +Followed an interlude of quiet comedy. Grant, content to leave the +first move in the hands of his enemy, eased his shoulder lazily against +the chair back and let his eyes play over the Spaniard’s face and +diminutive figure. There was an indolent suggestion of probing, of +detached appraisal in the steady scrutiny which bit into Urgo’s pride. +That and dull rage over the unexplained presence of his rival here in +Benicia’s home kept the little whippet fidgeting. + +He essayed addressing the girl in her own tongue, but again and more +pointedly Benicia reminded him of this breach of courtesy. She made +no effort to conceal the imp of humour that tugged at the corners of +her mouth; this flickering of a smile and the dancing of her eyes +made farcical the sober decorum of her speech. Urgo, no fool, was not +long realizing he was being made the butt of his cousin’s sport. Thin +lines of strain began to appear about the mouth that smiled so smugly; +just below his temples irritated nerves commenced setting the muscles +a-twitching. Grant, who did not fail to note these reflexes, saw in the +figure opposite a preying animal setting himself for a spring. + +Urgo and Benicia had been exchanging commonplaces. Suddenly the man +leaned forward tensely and returned to the forbidden Spanish in a +hurried burst: “For your own good, my cousin, I must have a few minutes +with you alone. Arrange it, I command you.” + +“You are hardly the one, sweetest cousin, to be the judge of my good. +Nor the one to command me.” Benicia retorted in the same tongue. Then, +turning with a smile of mock apology to Grant: “You will excuse Colonel +Urgo his occasional lapse from a tongue that is difficult for him.” + +The Spaniard took a final draught of wine and pushed back from the +table where his luncheon had been spread. As he idly tapped the corn +husk of one of his cigarettes Grant thought he saw resolution shape +itself in the narrowed eyes. There was a moment’s silence, then Urgo +addressed himself graciously to Grant: + +“Señor Hickman, perhaps my adorable cousin here has not found +opportunity to tell you anything of the history of this remarkable +house in the desert where you have found such agreeable convalescence.” + +“I believe not.” Grant spoke warily, his senses alert for some pitfall. +He shot a warning glance at Benicia; but the girl, ignorant of the grim +feud between the two, could not read it understandingly. Colonel Urgo +surrounded his head with a blue cloud and continued: + +“An engaging history, señor. Not a house in all Sonora with such +romance behind it, such--how do you say it?--such legend, eh? Though +I am distantly of the same family, our branch cannot claim the +distinction that falls to my cousin, who is the last of the veritable +O’Donoju. + +“Behold her glorious head, Señor Hickman!” Urgo waved his cigarette +to point the burning of sunlight above Benicia’s brow; his own +head inclined as if in reverence. “There in my fairest cousin’s +so-marvellous hair lies all the legend and the history of the great +family O’Donoju.” + +The girl, frankly amused at what appeared a turgid compliment, tossed +back her head in a gust of laughter. But Grant could not join with +her. As from some iceberg veiled in fog came to him the cold feel of +malignity moving to some unguessed purpose. Was Urgo planning to strike +at him through the girl he adored? Yet what possible obloquy could he +call up against Benicia, whose soul was unsullied as the winds of the +wastes? Urgo spoke on: + +“Undoubtedly, my cousin, Señor Hickman has felt his heart snared by +those burning meshes of yours or he is not a judge of beauty”--gesture +of impatience from Benicia. “So it is for the benefit of the señor as +well as for your own, fairest cousin, that I recite this legend of the +red hair of the O’Donoju. Strange, is it not, that all Sonora knows it +and has told the story to its children for a hundred years, yet you, +_chiquita_”--a wave of the cigarette toward the girl--“who should be +most interested are the only ignorant one. + +“There was in the long ago, señor, a Michael O’Donohue--what you call +of the wild Irish, who had flaming hair and an untamed spirit. A king +in Spain gave him the whole district of Altar for his estate, and he +came here to the Garden of Solitude with his Spanish lady and built +him this house where we sit. He was a man who considered the safety of +his soul, so he built a mission to the glory of the four evangelists +out yonder by the Gulf where the Sand People needed the comfort of the +Mother Church and--” + +“He lived a life any one of his descendants might pattern after,” +Benicia put in with a smile carrying a sting. Urgo touched his breast +with delicate fingers and bowed. Then turning again to Grant: + +“When the Apaches burned that mission, señor, a pious O’Donoju restored +it and the family, then numerous, endowed that mission altar with much +gold and silver. There was, too, a great string of pearls--pearls with +a green light, legend says, which the Sand People brought from the +shell beds of the Gulf to show their piety. You are following me, Señor +Hickman, eh?” + +Grant made no sign. His eyes were upon Benicia’s face, reading there +a slow change. Now she, too, had begun to feel a nameless portent +stealing over her like the chill from hidden ice. The wells of her +eyes were deeper; faint colour came and went in her cheeks and throat. +Grant, certain that Urgo was preparing torture for her under the +innocent mask of narrative, was helpless to intervene; no diversion +short of the work of fists was possible, and that his weakness denied +him. + +“There was of that generation which restored the mission, señor, a +wild youth, true descendant of the original O’Donoju. He was known +from Mexico City to Tucson as El Rojo--the Red One--for his hair was +the veritable colour of that which our cousin possesses. And the devil +rode his heart with spurs of fire. You have never been told of El Rojo, +Benicia?” + +The girl made no answer. Her level gaze was a mute challenge. The +little colonel rerolled one of his eternal cigarettes, lighted it and +drank smoke with a sensuous inhalation. + +“At the feast of the re-dedication El Rojo, banished from the family, +appeared out of nowhere. Conceive the consternation, señor! The red +head of the devil’s own come to sanctified ground. This fiery head, so +like our Benicia’s, swooping as a comet into the feasting place of the +family; well might the pious O’Donojus be fearful. + +“And their fears were not without grounds. Before El Rojo quit the +Mission of the Four Evangelists he had murdered the priest, his own +uncle, and stolen the rope of pearls from the sacred image of the +Virgin. He rode away with one of his cousins, a foolish girl of the +Mayortorenas, who was wife to him in the desert without priest or book.” + +Urgo let his voice trail away as with a tale finished. His teasing +glance lingered on the faces of his two auditors. Benicia drew a +tremulous breath and forced a smile, as though she were relaxing from +strain. On this cue the story teller unexpectedly continued: + +“But I hear Señor Hickman ask, ‘What part has all this ancient legend +with Señorita Benicia’s red hair?’ Patience, señor. We approach that. + +“Legend says that though El Rojo’s wife worked upon his heart and +brought repentance, it was too late. He returned to the mission a year +after his double crime to restore the Virgin’s pearls to the sanctuary. +The Apaches had been there just before him. The priests were slain and +the mission burned. El Rojo buried the pearls within the stark walls, +hoping the good God would accept this his acknowledgment of sin. There +the pearls lie to-day beyond sight of man, for the desert has blotted +out the last remnants of ruins. + +“But the sin of El Rojo was not so easily to be forgotten in sight +of the good God, sweetest cousin.” Urgo suddenly turned away from +Grant, to whom he had been addressing his story, and fixed his eyes on +Benicia; almost there was the click of snapping fetters in his glance. +“You bear the mark of it above your brow like the mark of Cain--his +fire-red hair!” + +“Stop!” The girl leaped from her chair, blazing wrath in every line of +her face. “I shall not listen--” + +“The grandson of El Rojo and his grandson,” Urgo purred on with his +smile of a hunting cat, “every second generation of the O’Donoju has +one born with the curse of the red hair to tell all Sonora God does not +forget. And now you, the last of an accursed family, its great estates +gone--its power gone--your own grandfather with his red hair shot with +Maximilian!--You with the red head--daughter of a murderer--” + +A hand closed over the collar of the colonel’s military jacket, gave +it a twist, throttling his speech. Grant had leaped from his seat--a +pain like a bayonet point shot through his shoulder at the sudden +movement--and come upon the spiteful little slanderer from behind. + +“Gringo assassin!” whistled the little Spaniard, and his right hand +groped backward to a concealed holster. It fell into a grip too strong +to be broken. Grant was bearing all his weight on the other’s back, +for the instant he was on his feet he discovered a weakness of his +knees which would not support him. The impulse to shut off Urgo’s +venomous tongue had been acted upon without calculation; now that he +had committed himself to action the American realized how heavy was the +hazard against him. One arm useless, all the other muscles once ready +to respond instantly to call for action now seeming to be palsied. A +paralytic boldly attempting to bell a wildcat; this was the situation. + +Benicia saw the American’s face over the squirming Urgo’s shoulder; +it wore a strained grin which hardly served to mask the toll taken of +weakened muscles. She whirled and ran out of the patio to call aid in +the servants’ quarters. + +Now the hot fire from his wound was spreading across Grant’s back and +down his fighting arm as he swayed across the patio half supported +on the Spaniard’s back. The frantic jerkings of Urgo’s pistol arm in +Grant’s grip threatened momentarily to loosen the restraining fingers; +that done, the American’s end would be speedy. + +Grant found himself near a wall, braced one foot against it and lunged +outward. Down went both men. Urgo twisted out from under the heavier +body, pinning him, and raised himself to one knee. Grant saw a tigerish +gleam of triumph in the other’s eyes as his right hand whipped back to +the holster on his hip. + +Some power more rapid than thought moved the American’s sound arm +outward in a wild sweep which encompassed a giant fuchsia bush growing +in a Chinese tea tub. Over went the bush just as Urgo fired from the +hip, its branches swishing down over the latter’s head. + +The bullet went wild. Grant, near swooning from the consuming pain of +his wound, scrambled for his enemy--went up with him when he found his +feet. The revolver had been knocked from Urgo’s hand by the avalanche +of greenery; a sideways kick of Grant’s foot sent it spinning into the +fountain. + +Now the wounded man sent a final summons to his last reservoir of +strength. Slowly--slowly he forced the little Spaniard out of the +patio and down the long corridor toward the front door of the house. +When Benicia came running with two husky Indians they found Grant with +his man waiting before the heavy oaken portal. One of the Indians +swung back the door. Grant gave a supreme heave and the colonel went +sprawling like a straddle bug out onto the gravel. + +The great door slammed behind him. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +DESERT SECRETS + + +Consider now the interesting activities of Doc Stooder, fallen angel of +Æsculapius: + +On a March evening of sunset splendour the worthy doctor descended +from the single combination coach and baggage car which a +suffering locomotive drags once daily from a junction point on the +transcontinental line south through naked battalions of mountains to +the ghost town of Cuprico. Once Cuprico was famous; once when primitive +steam shovels nibbled at solid mountains of copper up back of Main +Street Cuprico roared with a life that was dizzy and vaunted itself the +rip-roarin’est copper camp in all the Southwest. But the glory that was +Cuprico passed, even as that of Rome; to-day they tell of the town that +when its mayor fell dead on the post office steps his body remained +undiscovered for three days. + +No romantic craving for revisiting scenes of his youth had prompted +the Doc to his journey Cupricoward--he had been its premier stud +player in a day of glory fifteen years before. No, a far more material +urge had ended a period of fretting in Arizora by shunting him on a +westward-wending train. For a week Bim Bagley, his partner in a secret +enterprise, had been absent on his quest of El Doctor Coyote Belly and +the New York engineer, Bim’s friend, who was reported to be wounded +and under the care of the Papago medicine man. Ten days prior to +Bagley’s excursion into Sonora had been frittered away in groping for +information concerning this vanished engineer. All precious time wasted! + +It has, perhaps, become apparent that Doc Stooder was not enthusiastic +over the inclusion of Grant Hickman, the Easterner, in his golden +scheme of treasure trove in desert sands. The stubborn refusal of +Bim Bagley to move without this fellow Hickman’s being party to the +enterprise had prevented a start on the expedition for the Mission of +the Four Evangelists six weeks before. The canny physician--whose share +in the joint endeavour was to be his exclusive information concerning +the whereabouts of the Lost Mission--possessed in large degree that +sense of divination bestowed upon folk of the desert which gives their +imagination wings over the horizon of time. Each day of delay he read +a day to the advantage of Don Padraic O’Donoju, certain sure as he was +that the master of the desert oasis had come by knowledge of his own +treasure hunt intent through mysterious desert channels. + +The vision of gold and pearls Doc Stooder had seen in the depths of +raw alcohol on a night of dreaming in his office had become a goad. +So he came to Cuprico, the ghost town not seventy miles away from the +supposed site of the buried mission; his intent was to pick up his +Papago informant, who lived midway between Cuprico and the Border, and, +as Stooder happily phrased his purpose, “give things a look-see.” If +his luck was with him and he should stumble onto the mission during +this solo game so much the better. Conscience nor maxims of fair play +were any part of the doctor’s moral anatomy. + +The Doc upon his arrival did not pervade Cuprico’s centres of evening +society--the Golden Star pool hall and soft drinks emporium and the +back room of Garcia’s drug store--for reasons sufficiently potent to +merit a paragraph of explanation. + +Years before, when he was a resident of the mining camp and had money, +Doc Stooder took unto himself a Mexican wife who had a passion for +diamonds. Mrs. Apolinaria Stooder had a way with her which seemed +to win deep into the atrophied heart of her spouse, and he showered +her with the stones of her choice. No woman from Yuma to Tucson--so +legend still recites--“packed so much ice” as Doc Stooder’s. Then in +an epidemic of typhoid, which the Doc combated with the heroism of a +saint, Apolinaria died. + +Alone and with his own hands her sorrowing widower gave her sepulchre +somewhere amid the gaunt hills surrounding the town. He let it become +known after the interment that since Apolinaria loved her diamonds so +he had buried them with her, adding for good measure of gossip that he +figured their total value at round $5000. Immediately and for several +years thereafter all the prospectors for fifty miles about gave up +their search for dip and strike and prospected for Mrs. Apolinaria +Stooder. Failing to find so much as a “colour” of her diamonds, the +profession drew the conclusion that Doc Stooder was a monumental liar. +His popularity waned accordingly. + +Shadows were lengthening when Stooder tooled a rented desert skimmer +out of Cuprico’s single garage and brought it to a stop before the +general store. Into the wagon box behind the seat went his bed roll, +brought from Arizora and containing certain glassware whose contents +were more precious to their owner than life itself; boxes of grocery +staples; extra cans of oil and gasoline. Two big canteens on the +running board were filled. Plugs of chewing tobacco heavy and broad as +slate shingles were stowed in the tool box. In all this preparation +the doctor’s long legs calipered themselves from counter to car with +remarkable efficiency. + +“Goin’ on a little prospecting trip?” the storekeeper had volunteered +when the Doc first commenced his stowing. No answer. + +“Figgerin’ on a little _pasear_ down ’crost the Line?” hopefully from +that worthy as he helped noose the tarpaulin over the dunnage. The +Doc’s head was buried above the ears among the engine’s naked cylinders +and he professed not to hear. When Stooder was seated at the wheel +and the storekeeper had the edge of the final pail of water over the +radiator vent he feebly flung out his last grappling hook: + +“Reckon you might be selling Bibles to the Papagoes.” + +“Come here, friend,” sternly from the doctor. “Now I give you the way +inside if you’ll promise to keep it mum.” The storekeeper hopped +around to lean his ear over the wheel in gleeful anticipation. + +“I’m a-goin’ south from here to give a Chinese lady a lesson on the +ocarina. So long!” + +When the Doc skittered down the brief Main Street and out onto the +thread of grey caliche that was the road to the mysterious south +all of the west was a-roil with the final palette scrapings of the +sunset--umber, pale lemon and, high above the mountains standing black +as obsidian, cirrus clouds dyed a fugitive cherry. Ahead showed the +ragged gate into the valley of El Infiernillo--the Little Hell--place +of bleak distances between mountain ranges bare as sheet iron; place +of unimaginable thirst when summer sun hurls reflected heat back from +burning walls. Beyond El Infiernillo just a hint of peaks like fretwork +spires marked destination for the doctor; there at the foot of the +Growler range and where the Desert of Altar washes across the imaginary +line between two nations, lay the land of his desire. Somewhere on +the Road of the Dead Men passing through that savage waste perchance +a nubbin of weathered ’dobe wall lifted a few inches above the sand +to mark treasure of gold and pearls below; maybe naught but a charred +timber end concealed by a patch of greasewood and crying a secret to +the ears of the searcher. + +Gold and pearls--pearls and gold! The Doc’s rapt eye caught the colours +of sacred treasure in the dyes of the sunset and read them for a +portent of success. + +“Me, I’m a-goin’ just slosh around in wealth! Doc Stooder, the man with +the _dinero_--that’s me!” The gaunt head behind the wheel of the desert +skimmer was tilted back and A. Stooder, M.D., carolled his expectations +at the new stars. Then he reined in his gas snorter long enough to +fumble with his bed roll in the wagon box. Out came a square bottle of +fluid fire, such as passes currency with the international bootleggers +in the Southwest. The Doc drank heartily to the promise spread across +the western heavens. The bottle was tucked in a handy coat pocket for +future reference. + +Nights in the desert along the Line are psychic. They are not of the +world of arc lights, elevated trains and the winking jewels of white +ways. In that world man has so completely surrounded himself with the +tinsels of his own making, the noise of his own multiplied squeakings +and chatterings, that he comes to accept the vault above him as under +the care of the city parks department. His little tent of night is +no higher than the towers of his skyscrapers. But in the desert it is +different. + +Emptiness of day is increased an hundred fold at dark because it +leaps up to lose its frontiers behind the stars. Silence of the day +is intensified to such a degree that the inner ear catches a humming +of supernal machinery in the heavens. The eye measures perspectives +between the near and far planets. And the soul of man hearkens to +strange voices; sighings from the pale mouths of the desert scrubs, +born to a servitude of thirst; whisperings passed from mountain top to +mountain top; faint stirrings of the earth relaxed from the torsion of +the sun. + +Doc Stooder, desert familiar as he was, never could blunt his senses +to this emptiness of night in the wastes. It awed him, left him +itching under half-perceived conceptions of the infinite. Hence the +bottle carried handily in his pocket. From time to time as he careered +over the road faintly marked by the feeble sparks of his headlights +he braked down to have a swig. The more he felt lifted above sombre +unrealities about him the greater his impulse to break into song. The +iron gate of El Infiernillo heard his roundelay. + +Miles unreeled behind him. Dim shapes of mountains dissolved to new +contours and were left behind. The Doc came to a sharp eastward turning +of the road but kept straight ahead out over the untracked flats to +southward. He knew his way; the packed sand gave him as good traction +as the road. Down and down into the unpeopled wilderness of sandhills +and buttes bored the twin sparks of the little car. + +Another shift of direction and the Doc was teetering up a narrow cañon +between high mountain walls. His course was a dry wash, boulder strewn. +Only instinct of a desert driver saved him from piling up on some rough +block of detritus. Sand traps forced him to shove the engine into low, +and the snarling of the exhaust was multiplied from the cañon walls. + +A light flickered far ahead. A dog barked. The car wallowed and +snuffled out of the wash to come to a halt before several silhouettes +of huts. People, roused from sleep by the car’s clamour, stood ringed +about in curiosity; one held a torch of reeds. + +“Ho, Guadalupe!” Doc Stooder bellowed. A solid looking Indian with a +mat of tousled iron-grey hair stood out under the torch light, grinning +a welcome to “El Doctor.” + +“Show me a place to sleep,” commanded the visitor, and the one called +Guadalupe carried the doctor’s bed-roll to his own hut, of which +squaw and children were speedily dispossessed. So the good doctor +from Arizora slept the rest of the night in the rancheria of the Sand +People, last remnant of that Papago family for which the Mission of +the Four Evangelists was reared to save souls. In five hours the Doc +had covered by gasoline what it would have cost Guadalupe of the Sand +People as many days in painful plodding. + +Morning saw the rancheria in a ferment of excitement and Doc Stooder +viciously tyrannical in reaction from his accustomed alcoholic night. +Guadalupe found himself in a difficult position. Once in a moment +of gratitude when the white doctor had snatched his squaw from the +tortures of asthma--the miracle had occurred in Guadalupe’s summer +camp near Arizora--the Indian had babbled his knowledge of the buried +mission, its treasure. But he had not counted upon this unexpected +appearance of the white doctor, demanding to be led to the place of +wealth. It is common with all the Southwestern Indians to believe +naught but ill luck can follow any revelation to a white man of the +desert’s hidden gold; some say the early padres, themselves consistent +hoarders, inculcated this lesson. With the eyes of his fellow villagers +disapprovingly upon him, Guadalupe first attempted evasion. + +Stooder in an ominous quiet heard him through. Then without a word +he opened a small medicine chest he carried in his bed-roll and took +therefrom two tightly folded pieces of paper--blue and white. While +Guadalupe and the rest watched, round-eyed, the doctor made quick +passes with each bit of paper over the mouth of a small water _olla_. +The surface of the water sizzed and boiled. + +Guadalupe, two shades whiter, babbled his willingness to go at once to +the place where the mission lay hidden. + +“Prime cathartic for the mind,” grunted the Doc, and he tuned his +engine for the trip. + +They were off down the cañon and into the yellow basin of El +Infiernillo. Guadalupe, riding for the first time in the white man’s +smell-wagon, gripped his seat with the delicious fear of a child on +a merry-go-round. He watched the movements of the doctor’s foot on +the gear-shift, marvelling that the beast concealed in pipes and rods +answered each downward thrust with a roar. Earth spun under him as if +Elder Brother himself, master of all created things, had a hold on it +and were pulling it all one way. + +Down and down into the untracked miles of Altar. A single iron post on +a hill marking the Line. The sierra of Pinacate cinder-red in the south +for a beacon. Right and left sheet iron ranges with stipples of rust +where the _camisa_ grew. Mirage quivering into nothingness just as its +false waters were ready to be parted by the car’s wheels. + +They came upon an east-and-west track in the sand--the Road of the +Dead Men--and turned westward upon it. Away off to the north and east +a spiral dust cloud walked across the wastes along the skirts of the +mountains. Guadalupe pointed to it with an ejaculation in his own +tongue. A sign--a sign! There was the place of the mission! + +The Doc felt his internals quiver in expectation. Prickles of +excitement played in fingers that gripped the wheel. Automatically he +began to hum an ancient bar-room ditty. + +The Papago indicated where he should turn off the road in the direction +of a great gap in the mountains, into which the desert flowed as a sea. +Here the mesquite lifted from its crouch and flourished in a five-foot +growth--true index of hidden waters. The car made hard going, what +with brittle twigs that caught at its tires and the _cholla_ creeping +like a spined snake to threaten punctures. At his guide’s word Doc +Stooder stopped. Both scrambled out. + +Before moving a step the Doc must have a ceremonial drink, a +preliminary he did not deem necessary to share with Guadalupe. The +man’s big hands trembled as he raised the bottle to his lips; his eyes +were shining with gold lust. + +Guadalupe stood for several minutes slowly swinging his head from +landmark to landmark, his eyes following calculated lines through the +scrub. Then he commenced a slow pacing through the close-set aisles of +the greasewood and cactus, bearing in a wide circle. He peered into +the core of each shrub, kicked at every naked stub of root and branch +appearing above the surface. The Doc, cursing and humming alternately, +was right at his shoulder. + +An hour passed--two. The sun, now high, burned mercilessly. Still +Guadalupe pursued a narrowing circle through the scrub. Of a sudden the +Indian gurgled and dropped to his knees beside a salt-bush. He whipped +out his knife and began hacking at the tough stubs of branches near +the soil. The Doc, slavering in his excitement, dropped beside him and +looked into the heart of the salt-bush. He saw nothing but a rounded +slab of rock. + +Guadalupe finished his knife work and started to dig with his hands. +Terrier-like he pawed a hole away from what Stooder had taken for a +rock. The smooth black surface began to curve outward in a form too +symmetrical for nature’s work; it was rounded and gradually flaring. + +Guadalupe dug on. Blood pounded in the Doc’s ears. Snatches of song +trickled from his lips. + +Suddenly patience exploded. Stooder pushed the Papago to his haunches +and threw his own body full length into the hole dug. His arms embraced +a flaring shape of metal. His eyes fell upon faint ridges and lines, +like lettering. He spat upon the spot and rubbed it clean of clinging +soil. + + GLORIA DEI ET MUND---- + PHILLIPUS REX + ANNO DOM.----XXIV + +“The bell! The mission bell!” screamed the Doc. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +CROSSCURRENTS + + +An hour after the sun had set on the day of Colonel Urgo’s humiliation +at the Casa O’Donoju, Quelele tooled his car into the avenue of palms +at the end of the long return journey from Magdalena, on the railroad. +With him were his master, Don Padraic, and an American stranger, Bim +Bagley of Arizora. + +Fate had played capriciously with Bim. When he set out from Arizora on +the quest of his pal Grant Hickman it was only on the bare report that +the man was seriously wounded and under the care of El Doctor Coyote +Belly at Babinioqui, south of the Line. Near the end of his journey +his car had wrecked itself beyond repair hard by Magdalena; a mule had +been requisitioned to carry him over the mountains to the home of the +medicine man; once there he was as far from the end of his quest as +ever. + +For grey old Coyote Belly lied unblinkingly. He knew nothing of a +wounded man. Persuasion of words nor the chink of silver dollars +availed to budge him from a trust he conceived to be joined between +himself and the master of the Casa O’Donoju. + +The hours following the scene in the patio and the sudden gust of +action concluding the visit of Hamilcar Urgo had been trying ones +for Grant. Spent as he was by the struggle with the Spaniard, he had +suffered himself to be half-carried to his room by the Indian servants. +Benicia, accompanying him to the door, had permitted her hand to rest +in his at farewell; a clasp tried to tell what the storm in her soul +denied speech. The girl’s face was etched by suffering; sacrificed +pride and a shadow of some deep fear lay heavy in her eyes and the +drawn lines about her mouth. The wound made by her spiteful suitor was +deeper than Grant could conceive. + +Alone on his bed he conned over the tale Urgo had told. Unfamiliar as +he was with the Latin temperament, the belief of the romance peoples +in the very reality of inherited curse and whips of Nemesis pursuing +innocent generations, yet the raw tragedy of the story fired his +imagination. He tried to put himself in the place of the girl he loved +with all her pride of race and family; to feel with her the stripes +of scorn the despicable Urgo had laid on. El Rojo’s desecration of +the mission sanctuary by an act of blood; his flight into the desert +with the pearls of the Virgin and a girl, “who was wife to him without +priest or book”; the blotting of the mission from sight of man; all +this cycle of tragedy of the dim past linked to a gloriously vital +creature of the present by the chance colour of her hair. The thing was +monstrously absurd! And yet-- + +A knock at the door and Don Padraic entered. He turned to beckon some +one behind him. In the candlelight Grant saw the head of a giant stoop +to avoid the lintel. + +“Bim Bagley!” + +The desert man crossed to the bed by a single wide step and threw both +arms about Grant in a bear hug. + +“You dam’d old snoozer. You dam’d old snoozer!” was all Bim could give +in greeting. Don Padraic stepped outside and closed the door on the +reunion. Bim let his friend’s body lightly down on the pillows and sat +back to grin into Grant’s eyes. + +“I sure been burnin’ the ground all over North Sonora on your trail,” +he rumbled. “You’re the original little Mexican jumping bean.” + +“Jumped right into a flock of trouble, old side partner, with more +right beyond the front line waiting for me. The reserves seem to have +come up just the right time.” Grant gave his pal’s great paw a squeeze. +Bim roared assurance: + +“Reserves got all bogged down through failure in liaison--just like the +days of the Big Show. But they’re with you now from hell to breakfast, +young fellah; an’ I think I know the name of the outfit we got to trim. +Name’s Hamilcar Urgo, huh?” His buoyant spirit was wine to Grant; the +very animal force of him seemed to fill the old room. + +“Ran acrost that li’l sidewinder this afternoon when the old Don was +bringing me up here from Magdalena. Just our two cars on the road. He +pulls up when we’re makin’ to pass him--face on him just as pleasant as +a polecat’s. Your friend the Don passes the time of day courteous as +you please. + +“‘I had the honour to visit your daughter this day,’ whinnies this Urgo +gazabo; of course he speaks in Spanish, which is nuts for me. ‘And I +discover she is entertaining a convict who escaped from a chain gang.’” +Bim grinned. “I take it that convict is my li’l friend from Noo Yawk.” + +Grant nodded. The other wagged his head in a grotesque mockery of grief. + +“‘My daughter and I are entertaining an American gentleman who was +wounded on the Hermosillo road,’ your Don answers, civil enough. ‘While +he is a guest in our house we naturally ask no questions.’ + +“‘Then,’ snaps this Urgo boy, ‘I must inform you that for harbouring an +escaped criminal you are responsible before the law. The rurales will +visit your house and it is for me to say whether they take you as well +as the gringo convict.’” + +Grant started. Here was a phase of the situation he had not guessed: +that his courteous host might be made to suffer for Urgo’s rage and +jealousy. + +Eagerly, “What did Don Padraic say to that?” + +“He says something to the effect that the laws of hospitality were +above any this-here Urgo might care to dig up, the same I call being +mighty white of your Don Whosis with the Irish twist to his name.” +Bim broke off to shoot a quizzical look into his friend’s eyes. “Say, +brother, what you been doin’ to this little black-an’-tan stingin’ +lizard to make him ride your trail so hard? You a tenderfoot an’ +riding your herd across the fence line of the biggest little man in the +whole Sonora government!” + +Grant grinned childishly. “Well, I threw him out of the front door here +this afternoon for one thing and--” + +Admiration beamed from every wind wrinkle about the Arizonan’s eyes. +“Sho! You did that? Now I call that steppin’ some for a man with a +bullet through him. I thought from the gen’ral slant to Señor Urgo’s +manner when he met up with us some one’d been working on his frame +somewhere. He just sweat T.N.T. But why did you crawl him?” + +“He insulted Señorita O’Donoju,” was Grant’s answer. Bim lowered the +lid of one eye owlishly and his gaunt face was pulled down to a comic +aspect of concern. + +“Uh-huh; now I begin to get the drift. Old Doc Stooder was right +when he says there’s the shoo-shoo of a skirt somewheres in your big +disappearing act. Boy--boy! I had you figgered for the orig’nal old +hermit coyote who travels the meat trail alone. No wonder li’l Urgo’s +all coiled up for the strike, you aimin’ to run him out on his girl.” + +Before Grant could head off his friend on a topic that brought sudden +embarrassment to him ’Cepcion and a second servant entered with a +spread table. Bim tucked pillows under his friend’s shoulders with +clumsy tenderness, then in mellow candlelight they ate and talked. Both +were bursting with questions to be asked, but Bim claimed the right of +priority by virtue of his ten days’ blind search through the country +south of the Line. At his demand Grant gave him the whole story of +his feud with Colonel Urgo, from the meeting at El Paso down to the +afternoon’s events in the patio. Lively play of sympathies about the +Arizonan’s features followed the narrative of the dreadful march in +the chain gang and Grant’s burst for freedom under the rifles of the +rurales. The little his friend left unsaid Bim was shrewd enough to +supply; he guessed the story of Grant’s thraldom under the witchery of +the desert girl and found it good. + +When the man on the pillows began recital of what had occurred just +a few hours before--Urgo’s savage assault on a girl’s pride through +the story of El Rojo’s impiety--the big man by the bed stiffened in +intensified interest. He heard Grant through with scarce concealed +impatience. + +“But, man, that was the Mission of the Four Evangelists Urgo was +telling of!” explosively from Bim. Grant nodded confirmation. + +“Why, that’s the Doc’s big proposition--our proposition!” + +Grant looked his puzzlement. The other’s excitement swirled him on: + +“That proves what the Doc’s Papago told him. Pearls buried there. An’ +gold--lots of gold, the Papago says. I had a sneaking hunch all the +time it might be one of Stooder’s wild dreams, but this story proves +we’re on the right track.” + +“Do you mean--?” + +“Sure! That’s what I brought you out from the East for--to help us +uncover this Lost Mission, as folks in Arizona call it. Doc Stooder’s +such a cagey old monkey he wouldn’t let me put on paper just what I +wanted you to whack in on. Now you got it all--the pure quill. Isn’t it +a whale of a proposition!” + +Though Grant’s surface perception had grasped the full import of his +friend’s words some sub-strata of mind, or of heart, stubbornly refused +to be convinced that he had heard aright. He groped for words: + +“You say you brought me out here to help you uncover pearls and gold +that belong to the Church?” + +“Why not?” A subtle note of pugnacity in the other’s speech. “The +stuff’s been lyin’ buried for a hundred an’ fifty years more or less. +The priests’ve never lifted a finger to find it, though slews of +prospectors have rooted round trying to uncover this cache.” + +“But the old O’Donojus built this church and endowed it with that very +treasure you want to dig for,” Grant persisted. “What about their +rights?” + +He did not hear Bim’s arguments. Instead he was conning over the story +of the bane of the house of O’Donoju. Before his eyes was the face of +the girl he loved, as he had last seen it, deeply graven with tragedy. + +Grant’s hand went out in a comrade’s clasp. “Bim, old man, count me out +on this thing. I couldn’t consider it for a minute.” + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +REVELATION + + +“Don Padraic’s compliments, and he awaits the pleasure of his guests’ +company in the music room if the sick señor feels able.” It was +’Cepcion’s soft patois that interrupted Bim Bagley’s explosion of +pained surprise in mid-flight. Grant gave him a smile which interpreted +the diversion as something to his friend’s advantage and, leaning on +Bim’s shoulder, followed the servant to the great room in the centre of +the house. + +A fire burned in the cavernous fireplace, for spring nights in Altar +have a chill; candles in dull silver wall sconces tempered the red +light. The vast room was so peopled with dancing shadows from the +antique furnishings that the tall man in white and the girl who +advanced to greet the guests appeared to be moving in a company of +hooded monks. + +“’Nicia, Señor Bagley, the friend of our friend.” Don Padraic bowed to +Bim, who crooked his lank body with surprising grace. + +“And I am a friend of you two,” came Bim’s forthright answer, “since +you have treated Grant Hickman so kindly. He is the salt of the earth.” + +Don Padraic indicated seats before the andirons. Benicia chose a low +settle by the side of the great winged chair where her father seated +himself. Grant saw shadows beneath her eyes where the firelight played +upon her features, almost waxen in uncertain light. The glint of copper +in the piled-up mass of her hair was like summer lightning in clouds. +Their eyes met, and Grant was disappointed in the hope he might still +find the soul of the girl revealed there as it had been that afternoon +in the unguarded moment when Benicia gave him wordless thanks. He +guessed she had told Don Padraic of the incident in the patio and that +what had passed between father and daughter thereafter had been a drain +on the emotions of both. + +Don Padraic turned to Grant with more than perfunctory concern in +speech and glance. “Your health, señor? I fear that certain events of +the day, of which my daughter has told me--” + +“Please!” Grant was quick to interrupt. “I am feeling fit as I could +be, thanks to the careful nursing I have had in your house.” + +The thing that had been left unspoken by both weighed like an unlaid +spirit on the silence that followed. Each of the four before the +fire had little thought save for the chapter of circumstance left +unconcluded by one who had departed the Garden a few hours before, +swollen with the venom of outraged pride. It was Don Padraic who +brushed aside reserve: + +“Señor Hickman, I may speak before your friend, who must share your +confidence. He will pardon my bringing personal affairs before him. I +can not postpone my thanks--my very sincere thanks--for what you did +this afternoon. My daughter was defenceless.” + +“And I--” Benicia began, but Grant quickly put in: + +“Will you not consider that I was really serving my own private ends--a +score to be evened between Colonel Urgo and myself?” + +Bim covered a reminiscent grin with a broad palm as Grant hurried on, +eager to withhold from the girl opportunity to speak her thanks. + +“When I was brought here I thought it best to keep silent on the matter +of my own private grudge against this man. But now that it appears we +all have common cause against him I think I may speak. Urgo himself was +responsible for my being shot.” + +He saw Benicia’s eyes grow wide, read the surprise that parted her +lips in a breathed exclamation. He thought he saw, too, just the flash +of something no eyes but his own could understand, and he was glad. +Briefly he sketched the incident of the gambling palace in Sonizona, +his encounter with Urgo in the office of the jail, the march with the +chain gang. + +“And so,” Grant concluded, “Colonel Urgo found a dead man come to life +when he saw me in the patio to-day. When Señorita O’Donoju was out of +hearing for a moment I could not resist a shot which left our friend +guessing whether or not I had told you, señor, how I came by my wound.” + +“Ah, yes,” from Benicia in a hushed voice. “I knew the minute I +returned there had been something between you. Urgo was like a cornered +animal.” + +“And so he turned on you,” Grant could not help saying. “If only I +could have guessed beforehand his attack--” + +Again silence fell. Grant was alive to the play of unspoken thought +between father and daughter; these two alone in the immensity of the +desert and facing unsupported the craft of an implacable enemy. He +sensed the battle between their pride and their desperate need for +an ally: the one impulse dictating that what was the secret affair of +the House of O’Donoju must remain strictly its own secret, the other +moving them to confide in him, who unwittingly had been drawn into the +struggle. Gladly would he have offered himself as a champion; but he +must await their initiative. Suddenly Grant recalled what Bim had told +him of Urgo’s threat at the meeting with Don Padraic on the desert +road: how the head of the Casa O’Donoju would be held responsible for +harbouring an escaped convict. There was no blinking his duty in this +direction. + +“My friend tells me, Don Padraic, that Colonel Urgo threatens your +arrest as well as my own; that you will be held responsible for +concealing a fugitive from justice. That cannot be, of course. +To-morrow, if Quelele can take Bagley and myself in the car--” + +“No!” Benicia’s denial came peremptorily and with a hint of passion +which gave Grant a sting of surprise. “No, señor, we do not turn +wounded men into the desert--particularly a friend who has served us as +you have done.” + +Again Grant saw in the firelit pools of her eyes just an instant’s +revelation of depths he yearned to plumb--the aspect of a beginning +love hardly knowing itself as such. He scarcely heard the voice of Don +Padraic seconding his daughter’s protest. + +“The hospitality of the Casa O’Donoju,” he was saying, “can hardly +recognize such silly threats. Colonel Urgo’s hope was that we would +send you back over the Road of the Dead Men to Caborca or Magdalena +where, naturally, you would be made a prisoner. Please dismiss from +your mind any idea of our permitting ourselves to play into this man’s +hands.” + +Bim Bagley ventured to break his silence: “Grant here and I have +important business together up over the Line. We ought to be moving +soon’s we can.” The white-haired don turned to Bim with a gracious +spreading of the hands. + +“When Señor Hickman feels able to make the journey Quelele will take +him and yourself, Señor Bagley, to westward. There is a way through El +Infiernillo up to the Arizona town of Cuprico. By so going you will +avoid any trap Urgo might lay. But you will not hurry Señor Hickman’s +going”--Don Padraic interjected reservation--“and you, Señor Bagley, +surely can remain with us until then.” + +The direct Bagley, finding himself thwarted by the don’s suavity, sent +a sheepish grin Grant’s way in token of his defeat and maintained +silence. Don Padraic, to dismiss the subject his reticence had +reluctantly introduced, struck a gong to summon a servant. Soon a +decanter of sherry was glowing golden in the firelight and cigarettes +were burning. The master of the Casa O’Donoju artfully led Bim into +talk of cattle, always currency of conversation in the Southwest. Grant +drew his chair closer to Benicia’s. + +“You startled me with that ‘No’ of yours to my proposal to leave the +Garden of Solitude at once,” he said with a boldness he did not wholly +feel. “Being a little deaf, I am not sure I heard all the reasons you +gave why I should not go.” + +“What you failed to hear me say my father supplied,” the girl quickly +parried, giving him her steady gaze. He was not to be so easily +side-tracked. What had begun in boldness swept him on in passionate +sincerity: + +“There are many excellent reasons why I should be somewhere else than +here this time to-morrow night; but there is one very compelling reason +why I welcome every added hour here in the Garden. May I tell you that +reason?” + +“If you think I should know.” The words came simply. He, looking down +into the hint of features the firelight grudgingly gave him, saw there +the frank camaraderie of a candid spirit: the soul that was Benicia +O’Donoju, unsullied of artifice or the vain trickeries of the woman +desired. “If you think I should know”--call of comrade to comrade. The +desert girl scorning subtleties and inventions; knowing what her words +would prompt yet wishing them to be said. + +“It is that I love you, Benicia, and that I cannot leave you, loving +you so, when I know you are in danger.” Grant gave her his heart’s +pledge in simple directness. Though the girl was not unprepared for +his avowal, the call in his words, elemental as the sweep of precious +rain over the thirsting desert, set quivering chords of her being never +before stirred. He saw the trembling of her lips; her curving lashes +trembled and were jewelled with little drops. She turned her gaze into +the fire for a long minute. Grant heard vaguely the voice of Bim Bagley +expounding some theme of cattle ticks. His heart was on the rack. + +“Grant--good friend--” Her voice broke, then valiantly found itself. +“You heard from Urgo the story of our house--of the Red One and his +crime against God--” + +“The hound!” he muttered. Benicia groped on: + +“My father--no one ever told me that story because--because--” Grant +saw one hand steal up to touch with a gesture almost abhorrent the low +wave of red over her brow--“I bear the sign, you see.” + +He put out his hand to stay her, for the dregs of suffering were +working a slow torture upon her; the face of the girl he loved had +become like some sculptor’s study of the spirit of fatalism. He could +not check her. + +“My father when he returned to-day and I told him--my father said the +story was true as Urgo told it. Once in every second generation--this +sign of El Rojo, murderer and violator of the sanctuary--” + +“But, Benicia, surely you don’t believe this fairy story!” Grant packed +into his low words all the willing of a spirit fighting for precious +possession. He felt that every word the girl spoke was pushing her +farther from him. + +“Ah, Grant, we desert people believe easily because the truth is not +hidden. It _is_ true; my good grey father knew that I knew it to be +true and did not seek to deceive me when I asked him. The O’Donoju with +this”--again the shrinking touch of fingers to the dull-burning stripe +on her forehead--“cannot give love, for with love goes unhappiness--and +death.” + +She broke off suddenly, rose and hurried into the shadows beyond the +range of firelight. Grant heard a door latch at the far end of the room +click to. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +WHAT HAPPENED IN THE NIGHT + + +Somewhere in the darkness of the ancient house a deep-toned bell tolled +the hour of two. The sound came to Grant, broad awake in his room, as +if from a great distance--tocsin strokes against the bowl of the desert +sky. Four times in his sleepless vigil he had heard that bell measuring +night watches, and each successive hour struck seemed the period to a +century. + +He had gone to bed with a heavy ache following his words with Benicia +and her abrupt termination of his pleading. On his first review of the +girl’s abnegation of the love she could not conceal the whole thing +had seemed fantastic, almost childish in its essence of witch-bane and +belief in blighting curse. How could this virile creature of a fine and +cultured mind conceive herself the heritor of a weight of guilt carried +down from some ancestor in the dim past? There was the superstition +of the evil eye among ignorant peasants of the Latin countries, to be +sure; but for a girl of Benicia’s intelligence to be enslaved by such +mumbo-jumbo as Urgo had voiced--ridiculous! + +Such was Grant’s first review. Weighed from every angle and conceding +the girl he loved every mitigation of jangled nerves, nevertheless the +man of the cities could find naught but lamentable folly in it all. The +first striking of the distant bell found him rebellious. + +From where he lay he could look through a grated window up to the +heavens: a square of dappled infinity. Insensibly his eyes began +singling out the stars, measuring the gulf between this and that +steady-burning point of light. Somewhere outside a desert owl timed +the pulse of the night with an insistent call, unvarying, unwearying. +The man on the bed found himself tallying the blood beats to his +brain by this ghostly metronome. Beat--beat!--passing seconds of +mortality for the man Grant Hickman. Beat--beat!--How puny a thing, how +inconsequential the life of a man when calipered by the time measure of +those burning suns up yonder! + +He rallied himself, for such drifting into the subjective was a new +and puzzling experience for a practical man. But minute by minute the +spirit of the desert, which is the spirit of chaos become ponderable, +stole over him, chaining his imagination to things felt but not +seen of men. A chill of the untoward and the unreal swept over him. +He seemed to be braced nervously for some blow out of the void. His +imagination played with a dim figure, the shape of El Rojo of the +red hair riding--riding through the dark on his eternal mission of +damnation. + +The clock struck three and at the instant of the third stroke a shadow +like a bat’s wing flitted across the bars of the window through which +the eyes of the wakeful man had been roaming. A sharp tinkle of steel +on stone split the silence of the chamber. Grant was galvanized into a +leap from the bed. He stood shaking. Silence. Silence absolute as the +grave after that single sharp ring of steel on stone. + +He looked up at the window where the flitting passage of the bat’s +wing had showed. Just the clear-burning stars there. The dim recesses +of the room revealed no bulk of an intruder. Was this but the trick of +overwrought nerves? + +Grant fumbled for his matches and brought a light to the candle wick. +By the waxing yellow glow he peered round the chamber. A flicker of +white reflection caught his eye and he almost leaped to a spot on the +floor directly beneath the window. + +A dagger lay there. It was that curiously wrought affair of dulled +silver haft and double-edged blade which he had noted before as part of +the rosette of ancient knives and short swords clamped against the high +wainscoting above the window for a wall decoration--the weapons Don +Padraic had pointed to with the pride of a collector that first day the +wounded guest was brought in from the desert. + +But how could this dagger have slipped from its sheath with no hand to +disturb it? Grant stooped to pick it up. + +He had the haft in his grip for a quarter-second, then dropped the +thing and leaped back as if from an asp. Something gummed the palm of +his hand. Something showed dull black against the dim flicker of the +blade. With a gasp he knelt and brought the candle closer. + +Blood there on the blade! Blood on his hand! + +He stood frozen while the pumping of his heart volleyed thunder against +his ear drums. Murder cried aloud from that stained thing of silver and +steel on the floor. Somewhere in this rambling old pile--somewhere in +the silence a swift stroke that had snuffed out a life, and then the +murderer, fleeing, had flung this weapon through the window. He had +flung it almost at the feet of the only one in the whole house who was +not sleeping. + +Alarm! He must give the alarm while yet the murderer was near the +scene! Spur to action followed swiftly upon Grant’s momentary numbness. +He threw a dressing robe over him and ran through the door of his +chamber giving onto the arcade about the patio. Just over the low +balustrade lay the little jungle of flowering things, and on the +opposite side, he remembered, hung the great Javanese gong Benicia used +to summon the servants to the patio. Grant leaped the low balustrade +and stumbled crashing through the geraniums and giant fuchsias toward +the dim moon of metal he saw in the shadows of an arch. + +He came to the gong, groped for the padded mace hanging over it. The +patio roared with its released thunders. + +Muffled shouts. Banging of doors. Lights. A white figure came +blundering through the arcade; it was Bim Bagley. + +“Some one’s been murdered!” Grant greeted him. “A dagger--through my +window!” + +Came others--servants with blankets clutched around them. Bim directed +them to run to the great door in the outer wall and catch any skulker +they might find in the gardens beyond the house. Only dimly aware +himself of something untoward, the big man could give no more specific +directions. + +Then Benicia, bare-footed, her hair fallen down over a blue robe she +drew together across her breast. Grant started towards her. + +“Where is father?” she cried in a woman’s divination, and Grant noted +Don Padraic’s absence. He saw the girl make a quick step for a closed +door behind her. Unreasoned instinct prompted him to put himself before +the door, denying her. + +“No; let me,” he commanded. She made a swaying step towards Grant but +was met by the door swiftly closing in her face. Inside the chamber, +he turned the key in the lock and struck a match to grope for a candle +wick. + +In the pallid flicker he saw the figure of Don Padraic on his high bed. +A dagger wound was in his breast. + +And the girl outside the locked door stood very still. Her eyes, wide +with horror, were fixed upon the spot where she had seen Grant put his +hand in pushing open the door. + +Three small smears of blood there. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +ACCUSATION + + +Grant was stunned. The vision of the figure with the fine patrician face +there on the bed--in the breast the savage mark of violence--seemed but +a part with the disordered fancies of recent hours. Beating of Benicia’s +hands on the locked door and the faint sound of her calls aroused him. +He stepped to the bedside and felt for a pulse, listened for a breath. +There was none. + +Murder had been done swiftly and surely--and done with the ancient +dagger from the weapon cluster on the wall of his own room. In the +stunning discovery he had just made Grant did not find any grim +correlation between these two circumstances. He pulled up a coverlet to +conceal ugly stains, then stepped to the door and unlocked it. + +Benicia was waiting there. The eyes meeting his were blazing horror. +Almost Grant read in them unthinkable accusation. He put out his hands +to support her, for she was swaying in her effort over the doorstep. + +“No--no!” Benicia shuddered and drew away from him as though he were +a man unclean. Mystified, Grant stepped aside to let her pass. He saw +her run to the side of the high bed and kneel there. Her hands went +out blindly to grope for the still features on the pillow. They played +uncertainly over them, then rested on the heavy mane of hair. Her +fingers repeated little smoothing gestures. A breathless faltering of +love phrases in the Spanish came from her lips. Grant, seeing that the +girl retained mastery over herself, tiptoed from the chamber; it was +not meet that he should be witness to a soul’s acceptance of the bitter +fact of death. + +He blundered into Bim coming back to the patio from his excursion at +the head of servants beyond the great front door and told him what had +happened; of the dagger dropped through the window and the murder. The +big Arizonan reared back as if roweled. + +“My God, man, that leaves the girl alone here in this jumping-off +place!--With that snake Urgo in the offing. Boy, it’s up to us to help +her out!” + +Grant gripped his pal’s hand with a low, “I knew I could count on you, +old scout.” + +The dry patter of sandals came down the arcade from a knot of lights +where some of the servants had gathered in indecision waiting to be +given orders. Grant recognized ’Cepcion in the mountainous figure +approaching and was recalled to the necessities of the moment. + +“Tell her, Bim, what has happened and send her to her mistress. Then we +must get out men to circle the Garden and prevent any person’s getting +away.” + +Bagley strode to meet the major domo and rattled swift Spanish at her. +The waddling Indian woman quivered and lifted her fat arms above her +head. A dreadful wavering cry came from her lips. Instantly the cry was +taken up by the servants at the far end of the patio--a bone-chilling, +animal noise which climbed slowly to the highest register and ended +in a yelp. At the sound Grant’s blood went cold. This Indian death +howl was the cry of the desert kind, calling the despair of creatures +chained to a land of drought and ever-present death. + +To escape it he went with Bim out of the great door to the unwalled +spaces where the avenue of palms stood sentinels against the night. +Beyond the bridge over the oasis stream lay the clutter of huts that +was the Papago village, a fief under the overlordship of the manor +house. Not a light showed among the thirty or forty beehive shapes when +the two men started to walk under the palms; but suddenly a cry arose +from the midst of the village answering that coming down the night wind +from the mourners in the great house. Rumour of death had outstripped +the two who walked. + +The single cry from the village instantly grew in volume. Treble voices +of squaws lifted the abomination of noise to the saw edge of a screech; +men’s harsher notes rumbled and boomed intolerably. All the night was +made bedlam. + +Lights were winking through the chinks of the jacals when Grant and +Bim came to the outskirts of the village. There was confusion of +forms skittering about from hut to hut. Bim seized upon one man and +demanded to know the whereabouts of Quelele, head man of the village. +The big Indian soon stood before them with a gesture of hand to breast +indicating they were to command him. + +“Somebody has killed your master,” Bim told him. “Get out men on horses +to circle the Garden and go out along the road both ways. Cover every +foot and bring in anybody you may find.” + +Quelele sped with hoarse shouts down the village’s single street; a +dozen men joined him in a race for the corrals. + +“There’s no way for the murderer to get out and live except along the +road,” was Bim’s comment as they turned to retrace their steps to the +house. “If he took to the mountains even with a horse he couldn’t last +a day; they’re straight up and down.” + +They had not gone fifty yards from the Papago village when a new sound +punctuated the death cry, now settled to a monotonous chant promising +hours’ duration. It was the _bum-bum-bum_ of the water-drum--gigantic +gourds floated, cut side down, in a tub of water and drubbed with +sticks. That noise was accompanied by the locust-like slither and +rattle of the rasping sticks, another primitive tempo-setting +instrument of the Southwestern natives. + +The death howl began to catch its measure by the boom and screak of +these two instruments. A noise to beat against the inside of men’s +skulls and set the bone of them in rhythm. Savage as the peaks of +Altar, unremitting as the drive of wind-blown sand against granite. + +_Bum-chut-chut-chut!_ Sob of a land in chains. + +“Oh, tell them to cut it!” Grant’s frayed nerves cried out protest. The +other merely gave a wave of his hand comprehending resignation. + +“Might as well tell the wind to stop. This’ll keep up for three +days--this ding-dong business. It’s custom, old son.” + +As they drew near to the house of death again Grant caught his mind +harking back to that moment when he had come from Don Padraic’s chamber +to confront the girl’s wild eyes--eyes with almost the unthinkable look +of accusation in them. That aspect of her eyes dumbfounded him, left +him groping for an explanation. + +Once at the house, Grant took his friend to his chamber and showed +him the knife where it lay on the floor as he had dropped it. The big +Arizonan stooped over with the candle near the grisly thing--his hawk’s +nose and salient cheekbones were outlined against the candle flame like +the raised head of some emperor on a Roman coin--and very gingerly he +turned the dagger over. + +“Finger prints here on the haft,” he grunted. + +“Yes, mine,” Grant put in. “I picked it up at first without +knowing--without reckoning there might be--” He broke off to pour +water into the quaint old willow-ware bowl which stood with its ewer +on a stand in a corner, then he scrubbed his hands vigorously. A great +relief came to him with this act of purification. + +“Yours--yes, and probably somebody else’s,” Bim was mumbling his +thoughts aloud. He stood erect once more and measured the height of the +barred window over the lintel of which was fixed the rosette of arms. +“Hum. I simply don’t figger why the man who wanted to kill the old +don came to the outside of this room, clum up the wall an’ reached in +through those bars there to take one of these old knives. Can’t see why +all that fuss--more particular, why he snuck back here an’ tossed the +knife through the bars after his bloody work.” + +“Perhaps he wanted it to appear I am the murderer,” Grant hazarded +doubtfully. + +“You!” Bim looked up with a wry smile. “Why should you want to kill off +that fine old man?--What motive?” + +“What motive for anybody here in the house or in the Papago village +outside for that matter?” Grant voiced his perplexity. “Don Padraic was +the _padrone_ of every Indian from the Gulf to Arizora. From what his +daughter tells me there’s not a Papago on the place here who wouldn’t +gladly have died in his place. The whole thing’s too deep for me.” + +They left the dim chamber with its relic of violence still lying on +the floor and walked out into the perfumed patio. It was the hour when +first heralds of dawn were coursing across the sky. Grant looked up +to the dimming stars and read there the same message that had come to +him the hours before swift stroke of tragedy: the fragility of that +spider web man spins into the gulf of infinite time. And the oneness of +this unlimned stretch of vacancy called the Desert of Altar with that +ethereal desert of stars. How infinitesimal in the face of either the +soul of man, its hopes! + +A great sense of impotence weighed down on Grant. His thoughts dwelt +with the girl he loved, sore stricken by this cowardly blow in the +dark, bereft of one who had been soul of her soul. Now, the last of her +name, alone in this bleak wilderness with none to fend for her against +the wiles of Urgo except the child-like Indians: what a situation for +Benicia to face! The man yearned to go to where she knelt alone with +her dead, to take her in his arms and give her pledge of his love and +protection. Yet that was not meet. The gulf of Benicia’s grief denied +him. + +Bim brought Grant out of his reverie with, “It’s my hunch we won’t have +to look far to find the man behind this bad business.” + +“You mean--?” + +“That same--Hamilcar Urgo,” was Bim’s positive assertion. Grant +objected: + +“But you passed him well on the way to Magdalena this afternoon. It’s +not likely he’d risk coming back in his car to attempt porch-climbing +and murder. That’s not in his line.” + +“Sure not! But one of these Indians around here who knows the lay of +the house--somebody who savvyed, for instance, about those old knives +on your wall--a hundred silver pesos from Urgo’s pocket--” + +Grant’s mind was in no state to analyze subtleties of villainy. “I +can’t see what Urgo could possibly gain by killing Don Padraic unless +there’s a great deal behind his relations with Benicia’s father you and +I don’t know.” + +The fat shape of ’Cepcion waddled down the nearby arcade in the +direction of the room wherein Benicia had locked herself. Bim’s eyes +idly followed her as he pressed his argument: + +“Maybe so--maybe not. But figger the thing thisaway: Urgo’s dead set on +marryin’ this high-spirited señorita--if you’ll excuse me trompin’ on +a tender subject, old hoss--an’ he reckons they’s two folks who don’t +encourage those ideas to the limit--her father and yourself. Yourself +he tries to get on suspicion and because you riled him on the train +like you say. Now he does for the father an’ counts he has the girl for +the taking, she having no kith or kin to come up in support, as you +might say.” + +The dawn reddened and still the two men in the patio fruitlessly +pursued speculation. A sudden step crunched the gravel behind them. +Both leaped at the sound, so taut were their nerves. They turned to see +Benicia standing in the half light with the misty banks of geraniums +for a background. With her were the giant Papago Quelele and two other +Indians. They carried loops of hair ropes. + +“Señor Hickman”--the girl’s voice was deadly cold--“Señor Hickman, my +servant ’Cepcion has just brought to me the dagger she found in your +room. The dagger is stained with my father’s blood, señor. There are +prints of fingers on the haft of that dagger, Señor Hickman.” + +Grant caught the poisonous edge of hatred in the voice, read the bitter +accusation in her eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, but Benicia +checked him. + +“I saw you leave those prints of my father’s blood on the door of his +chamber, señor. Before my very eyes, señor! Just now when ’Cepcion +brings me the dagger she finds in your room I compare the print of +fingers on its haft with the print on the door. They are the same. What +have you to say, Señor Hickman?” + +“Say!” Bim Bagley’s voice snapped like a whip lash. “Are you accusing +Grant Hickman here of murder?” Benicia never even cast a glance at him. +She repeated: + +“What have you to say to this, Señor Hickman?” Grant answered levelly, +“Enough already has been said, Señorita O’Donoju.” Benicia signalled to +Quelele and he advanced with the ropes. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +THE ORDEAL + + +With the lithe spring of a cat Bim put himself between Grant and the +advancing Indian. His face had gone dead white and his eyes were coals +blown upon by the wind of anger. + +“None of that! Get back there--you!” Bim’s voice was scarcely audible +but his pose of furious battling on the hair-trigger of release was +sufficiently vocal to awe the Papago giant into a backward stumble. +Then to Benicia: + +“Young woman, you’re making the mistake of your life. I’m a’mighty +sorry for you, an’ you are going to be right regretful yourself when +you have time to think.” Grant made a step forward to lay a checking +hand on his friend’s arm. He would have spoken but the girl interrupted. + +“My father’s blood on this man’s hands!--the dagger from the wall of +his chamber--” Of a sudden the last shred of restraint she had battled +to impose upon herself gave way and a flood came under propulsion of +hysteria. Out fluttered her hands to point the object of her execration. + +“You--I do not know you! Just a chance meeting between us and we part. +Then fate brings you to this house wounded--snatched from death. An +escaped convict from a chain gang--you yourself admitted as much just +last night. With good reason my cousin, Colonel Urgo, must have caused +your arrest. Why should I not believe you capable of killing my father? +Why not when the signs of his very blood cry out against you!” + +“Señorita O’Donoju--” Grant’s effort to check her was fruitless, for +she had whirled upon Bagley: “And you! Unknown to my father--unknown to +me. He brought you here on your own representation. You said you were +hunting for your friend to whom we had offered our hospitality. Can you +deny that both of you discovered opportunity here to kill--and then to +rob?” + +The storm that had swept the girl through this welter of imaginings, +illogical, frenetic, took heavy toll of her physical reserves. Now +she stood trembling, white-faced in the spreading dawn, pitiful. Her +small hands were clenched into fists across her breast. Flutterings of +uncontrolled nerves made the flesh of her temples pulsate. Grant, for +all the crushing horror of these moments, felt pity pushing through the +numbness Benicia’s accusation had wrought. Never had he seen a woman so +tortured by the devils of hysteria; he was appalled. He spoke to her +gently: + +“If you will permit me to go to my room while you make further +investigations I will answer any questions they may suggest. It must be +plain to you, Señorita O’Donoju, that I cannot escape from this place.” + +The girl gave him a dazed look as if she hardly comprehended what he +said, then she slowly nodded and, beckoning the Indians to follow, she +turned and disappeared beyond the patio’s green. Bim threw an arm over +his pal’s shoulder and accompanied him to his room. At the door he +whirled Grant about with a strong grip of both his hands and gave him a +grin more eloquent than any sermon on fortitude. + +“When the she-ones get to stampedin’, old pal, they sure have us +helpless men winging. Now go in there and get a sleep while I take a +look round below your window and elsewheres.” + +Bim’s easy injunction to sleep was not so easily followed by the man +who was a self-appointed prisoner. On his bed Grant tossed in a fever +of mingled blind speculation and outraged pride. Strive though he might +to palliate Benicia’s charge against him on the score of the girl’s +complete prostration through the night’s tragedy, the quick and fiery +blood in her that was inheritance from Spanish forebears, yet always he +came against the same ugly fact: one whom he loved with all the passion +in him and whose return of love he had dared hope to win had accused +him of murder out of hand. + +Yet how could he prove his innocence? Of a sudden that thought plumped +down on him with the burst of a high explosive shell. + +Benicia’s accusation had appeared monstrous, yes. But, look upon +the facts through her eyes--so a curiously impersonal phase of mind +prompted; what were those facts as they appeared to the girl? A man +who was first a chance acquaintance in a train and then, by a trick +of fate, a guest in the house, rouses the household at three o’clock +in the morning by sounding an alarm in the patio. He calls “Murder!” +though he does not say who has been murdered, he has not apparently +discovered the body of Don Padraic in his chamber. + +This man--this waif brought in from the desert--prevents the daughter’s +going in to the room of death until first he has entered that room +and locked the door behind him. He leaves the marks of his fingers in +blood upon the outside of that door. Then he and his friend--“call him +confederate” was Grant’s cynical amendment--organize a hue and cry +outside of the house. While this is in progress a servant finds in the +guest’s room a dagger; instead of being in its usual place amid the +rack of weapons on the wall this dagger lies on the floor as if hastily +thrown there by one who had no proper time for its concealment. The +dagger is blood stained and on its haft are the same finger prints as +those on the door of the dead don’s chamber. + +There was the record. How refute it? + +Say that while lying awake he saw a hand appear at the bars of his +window and heard the tinkle of a knife dropped within? Why, if he was +so vigilant at three o’clock in the morning, had he not seen that hand +of a murderer steal in to abstract the weapon before the deed? And +whose hand was it? Did not the burden of proof that it was not his own +which took the dagger from the wall rest solely upon Grant Hickman? + +Another’s finger prints on that bloodied haft besides his own? +Perhaps. But it needed the instruments of precision of a detective +central office to juggle with such minutiæ as the whorls and spirals +in a finger print, and they most certainly were lacking at the Casa +O’Donoju. Graver difficulty still, there were a hundred and more +Indians in the oasis; how gather them all together and take the prints +of their fingers? + +The more his mind roved amid hypotheses the closer about him seemed +drawn the meshes of circumstance. As the sun of a new day painted a +glory beyond the bars of his window Grant Hickman felt himself as +helpless as that Tomlinson of the Kipling story who plunged headlong +through the space between all the suns of infinity. + +He must have slipped into the sleep of exhaustion, for it was near noon +when a knock on his door roused him. At his bidding ’Cepcion opened to +illustrate a command in Spanish with a backward jerk of her head. Grant +arose and followed her through a corridor to the patio. Benicia was +standing there in an attitude of awaiting him, a little beyond her was +Bim, his face wreathed with a heartening smile. + +The girl received him with bleak eyes. “You will please follow me, +señor,” was all she said. Then she led the way, the two men a step +behind her, out of the still house and down the avenue of palms +towards the Papago village. From time to time a turn in the path gave +Grant a glimpse of Benicia’s face. It was a changed woman he saw. + +Gone was the vital spirit of joy of living which always gave the +girl her character of Eurydice in khaki; gone, too, that softness +of grain born of happiness undisturbed, of life amid the elemental +things of nature. This Benicia was a cold fury moving to judgment. +The call of her Spanish blood from centuries past--call for vengeance +and blood-sacrifice--had possessed her. It was as if some mocking +cartoonist had run a brush over the features of Innocence in +portraiture, giving an upward twist of cruelty to lips, the glint of +blood lust in eyes. + +They came to the Indian village, all hushed in anticipation of some +prodigy. Only the frog-croaking of the water drums and the dry clicking +of the rasping sticks betokened a continuance of the mourning ritual. +All the retainers of the Casa O’Donoju, farmers, cattle handlers, house +servants, men, squaws and half-naked children, were assembled in the +rudely-defined street that led between rows of reed and mud-capped +huts. Two only were seated apart: the man who bobbled the drumming +sticks over the turtle-back halves of the gourds and an ancient who +manipulated the rasping sticks. On every bronze-black face showed the +strain of awaiting an untoward event. + +When Benicia appeared some elderly squaws started afresh the lugubrious +death howl, but a gesture from the girl silenced them. She beckoned +Quelele to her and spoke some rapid words in the Papago tongue. He in +turn passed the orders to two men, who ran into one of the nearby huts +to reappear staggering under the weight of a great metal kettle, such +as might be used for soap boiling, carried between them. Quelele laid +two heavy flat stones in the middle of the street; the kettle carriers +deposited their burden, rim down on the rocks. A space of two inches or +more showed between the kettle rim and the hard adobe. + +Still the hollow _bum-bum-bum_ of the water-drum, whisper and cluck of +the notched sticks. A very old man, the skin of whose naked legs was +grey and tough as elephant hide, had attached ceremonial circlets of +dried yucca pods about his ankles in a cuff extending almost to the +knees. He took his stand by the instrumentalists and his feet moved in +a shuffle in time to the drum beats. The pods emitted dry whispers. +The rapt look of a seer was on his leathern features. + +The kettle in place, Quelele himself went to a small pen of _ocatilla_ +sticks on the outskirts of the village and brought therefrom a young +rooster. The fowl’s head bobbed nervously and his small eyes glinted as +he was carried on the big Indian’s arm through the throng. Two helpers +lifted the edge of the soap kettle while Quelele thrust the cock +underneath. A faint clucking came muffled from the iron prison. The +bird thrust his head out here and there from beneath the rim, seeking +egress. + +Now Benicia took from ’Cepcion something she had carried wrapped about +in a handkerchief and carried it to the kettle top. She let fall the +handkerchief and with a slight gesture focused the eyes of all upon the +stained dagger. A sigh like the swish of a scythe in long grass swept +through the crowd as the girl balanced the knife on the exact top of +the dome of fire-smudged metal. The ancient with the yucca rattles did +a sacrificial step which caused a sharp alarm like that of the desert +sidewinder’s warning. + +Grant and Bim, still unaware of the significance of all this +preparation, sensed the growing tensity of emotions all about them. +The Papagoes, like all their kind, more than ready to invest with +ritual any untoward incident of life, saw in the white girl’s +preparations--particularly in the offering of the knife upon this +rude altar--formulæ of an appeal to decision of powers beyond human +comprehension. Perhaps the elders, remembering tales of ancient +custom, recognized the preliminaries and welcomed a revival among the +unregenerate younger men of a direct appeal to Elder Brother. If big +Quelele knew better he had kept his tongue still. + +Benicia’s features had never relaxed their cold intentness during +the preparations. There was even, to Grant’s troubled scrutiny, some +element of the barbaric there. A look like that on the stone visage +of an Aztec goddess, implacable, without mortal instincts. She took +her stand by the kettle and spoke rapidly to the Papagoes, pointing to +the knife, then lifting her finger to mark the place of the sun in the +white sky. + +Abruptly she finished, stooped and touched one finger to the bottom of +the kettle. It came away blackened by soot. Then she turned to Grant. +“It is the test of God,” she said in a dulled voice. “My people have +used it in times past when they were perplexed as I am. All here +including you, Señor Hickman, and you, Señor Bagley, will endure this +test even as I just have done. Put your fingers to the kettle and +show them to all, blackened. God will speak through the mouth of the +imprisoned cock when the guilty man touches the iron.” + +Grant gave the girl a steady look, then without a word he stepped to +the blackened dome, swept the fingers of his right hand across it and +held them aloft. Benicia was looking away when Grant stepped back +beside her; he saw a convulsive movement of her throat--no other sign. +Then big Bim dared the oracle with an easy grace. A shuddering intake +of breath from the Indians as each man underwent trial. + +Quelele now gave an order which brought all the men of the village and +great-house into line of which he was the head. Even the musicians were +replaced by squaws who did not permit the drubbing and squeaking to +diminish. The faces of all wore the set look of hypnosis--eyes white +and staring, muscles twittering in cheeks, tongues licking out over +dried lips. + +_Thrut-t-t-t-t!_ An extra flourish of the rasping sticks and a thunder +of the water drums as Quelele started the line forward toward the +kettle. The big Indian moved with a mincing sidewise step reminiscent +of some deer-dance of his people at the festival of _sahuaro_. His +arms were held rigidly crooked at elbows and fingers splayed. The great +moon face was contorted into a lolling mask. He sweat with fear. + +Twice the lightning-like bobbing out and back of the imprisoned cock’s +head as Quelele approached. “Ai-ie!” a squaw screamed in a frenzy. + +The leader touched the kettle, held up his blackened finger for those +in line behind him to see, then broke from line and stood at a little +distance from Benicia and the two white men. + +Second in line was the ancient with the yucca rattles on his legs. +Coming to the kettle, he stood rigid, tilted his old eyes to the +blinding sun. A shiver ran down his body which caused every dry pod +of his anklets to emit a whisper. He whirled once, dipped and swept a +finger through the soot. “_Njo oovik_ (Bird speaking),” he cried, and +there was foam on his lips. + +But the bird did not speak, and the line came slowly on. The spell of +the weird had Grant bound. The rational in him tried to prompt that +all this was but a shrewd application of the new psychological method +of crime detection as utilized by primitive peoples before ever the +science of the mind was thought of; but his imagination strained to +hear the crowing of the cock when the finger of guilt was laid upon +the iron shell. Mutter of the drums, shuffle of dancing feet, guttural +calls and imprecations: these things had swept away all prim gauds and +dressings of a mind counting itself superior and he was swept back to +kinship with the wild, its children. Again the desert moved to bring +him under its subjection. + +“Lookit that fellah!” It was Bim who gripped Grant’s arm and pointed +to the advancing line. One of the younger bucks had dodged out of his +place and fallen back three numbers. + +On came the men facing trial by ordeal. Now and again the imprisoned +cock thrust his head out with snake-like darting, and the individual +who was poised over the kettle hiccoughed fear. The young man who had +dodged back tried the trick again when he was near the kettle; but the +one behind him held him by the shoulders and forced him on. + +The dodger came to the place of test, hesitated, made a downward sweep +of his hand and stumbled past. Big Quelele suddenly leaped at him and +gripped his right hand. No smudge of soot on the fingers. + +“Hai--ee!” Quelele called, and the line stood still. He wrenched the +young man’s hand high above his head and showed the fingers clean. +“Hai--ee!” chorused fifty voices. Quelele started to drag the wretch +back to the kettle. + +Then his victim went to his knees--to his face in the dust. He rolled +and kicked, screaming. Still Quelele dragged him nearer the kettle, +his right hand firmly gripped in the vise of his own two, forefinger +extended to take the print of soot and draw the cock’s crow. + +“I did it! I did it!” the wretched creature blubbered. Quelele dropped +him as if he were a poisonous lizard. The crowd pushed forward +menacingly. The murderer fumbled in his trousers pocket and brought +out a shining silver peso, which he threw from him with a gesture of +horror. Quelele picked it up and turned it over in his palm, his brow +heavily knotted. He passed it to Benicia. + +The girl turned the coin over to the reverse, whereon the spread eagle +grips a snake and a cactus branch in his talons. A deep knife cut was +scored through the neck of the eagle. + +The wretch in the dust saw she had noted the mutilation and cried out +to her in pleading, “The sign, mistress! The sign! The soldier-señor +Urgo tells me many months ago when I receive the sign I shall kill or +my brother, who is in his prison, will be shot!” + +“And he gave you this--” the girl began. + +“Yesterday, mistress. He passes me in his thunder-wagon and tosses me +this peso. ‘Find the knife in the room of the wounded gringo señor,’ he +commands. ‘Use no other.’” + +Benicia nodded to Quelele, who made a sign to others. They brought a +hair rope and trussed the murderer hands to feet. His lips were mute. +Stamp of fate was on his grey features. He knew his punishment: to be +taken to the burning lava fields of Pinacate, where the dead volcanoes +are, there to be left without gun or canteen; no man would see him +again. Such was the Papago custom decreed for murderers from beforetime. + +She who had ordained this trial by ordeal had turned away, once the +wretch’s confession had been heard. The soul of the girl now stood +its own trial in turn; faced by the guilt of false suspicion, by the +wounds wrought of bitter accusation, it must needs purge itself. Yes, +even though the spirit of Benicia O’Donoju was not one easily to humble +itself. A long minute she fought with herself and finally turned +gropingly to make her hard penance before Grant. + +Then she saw the figure of the man whose debtor in honour she was +striding with his companion towards the avenue of palms leading to the +house. The distance between them seemed suddenly the breadth of the +world. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +THE DESERT INTERVENES + + +That day omniscient will of the desert moved to point a murderer’s +guilt the same inscrutable power flexed a finger to mould events some +seventy miles away from the Garden of Solitude where the worthy doctor +from Arizora and his Papago had been nibbling at a mystery. Though Doc +Stooder moved in a haze of strong waters, though he looked upon the +face of the desert through a golden veil of his own weaving, yet was he +not the least immune from the law of the waste places. The Doc walked +with God, even as did the pioneer fathers of the Church; the fact that +he did not admit the companionship had no influence on the operations +of destiny. + +We left Stooder on his knees before the uncovered bell with its +inscription carrying identification. His excitements, his hysterical +grubbings, soundings and prospectings of the ensuing twenty-four hours +were heroic. After the uncovering of the bell he had paced off a +square through the scrub thirty or forty feet each way and with the +corroded cone of metal for a centre; then the Indian and he had gone on +their hands and knees over every inch of this square. Result, a single +stick of hewn timber whose fire-blackened end had projected but an inch +above the sand; digging revealed a twenty-foot beam, dry as a puff-ball +and almost ready to disintegrate. + +That was all: the bell and the uncovered beam. But that was enough. +Doc Stooder knew that beneath him lay the mission site; how deeply the +blown sands of more than a century had buried it he could not guess. +But it was here! Here lay the rich core of a legend that had sent +many a man out into the desert to chase rainbow ends. His--Stooder’s! +A’mighty God! how he’d riffle those pearls through his fingers--lay +’em all out on a piece of velvet under some secret lamp and match ’em, +pearl with pearl. + +But twenty-four hours in the desert exact their price; and that price +is in measure of water. The Doc did not drink water so long as his +store of contraband liquor held out; but the Papago did. Great was the +Doc’s rage and disgust when his companion called him away from sinking +a prospect shaft to point the single remaining water container, now +much lighter than it should be. He tested the little car’s radiator +to find that evaporation had left almost none of the necessary fluid +therein. No use buckin’ fate; if he wanted to get back to the village +of the Sand People on four wheels he’d have to give the radiator a +drink and that would leave none for himself and the Papago. + +It was near noon of their second day at the treasure site when the +Doc whipped his reluctance into acceptance of the inevitable. He made +certain preparations. First he copied into a prescription book the +inscription on the bell; that would do to convince somebody whose +financing of the excavation operations might have to be invoked. Then +he sketched a map of the vicinity with meticulous care, marking in the +jagged spurs of the nearby mountains for bearing points and indicating +the position of the bell in reference to a dry wash which was traced +down from a gash in the mountain wall. + +“Guadalupe, old son, your old friend Stooder’s goin’ rustle back here +with an outfit right soon an’ dig himself right down to them pearls. So +he’s just a mite p’ticular about this map.” + +Access of caution prompted the Doc to dismount from the car after he’d +set the engine to humming. He ran back with a shovel and covered the +bell with sand; the haggled bush above it would be a sufficient guide +for him and no significant landmark for the possible prying stranger. +The beam he hid in the wash. Then they trundled down their own track +and back to the Road of the Dead Men. Doc Stooder cursed the necessity +of automobiles leaving tracks. Some snoozer amblin’ along the main road +would just’s like as not turn out to follow these two lines out into +nowhere to see what he could see. Then perhaps-- + +Summer had come miraculously to the desert overnight, as the seasons +in Altar have a way of doing. Yesterday the pink convolvulus of spring +lay in scattered coral patches amid the scrub and the greasewood +was showing its midget spots of yellow. Now every glistening clump +of _cholla_ was aglow with the blood-red flowers of its kind; the +occasional pillars of the giant cactus were wreathed each at its top by +fillets of creamy blossoms--grotesque masquerading of these withered +old men of the wastes. First hint of summer’s heat was abroad. It came +from the west on puffy little winds like the back-draught from an +oil-burning boiler. + +The Doc found himself in a frolicsome mood, for his night’s potations, +predicated on a dwindling supply, had recklessly drained that supply +but availed to carry him over to another day with the stars of his +dream world still burning. Hunched low in his seat so that the +tip of his goatee waggled against the rim of the wheel, with his +flopping black hat all grease streaked pulled low against the sun +glare, the tramp physician chewed tobacco with all the unction of a +care-free conscience and indulged himself in wandering monologue. +Guadalupe’s meagre stock of Spanish made him anything but a lively +conversationalist, so the Doc was constrained to carry on a vivid +conversation with himself. + +Into what penetralia of reminiscence this auto-dialogue carried him! +Back through the years--through countless dim valleys of a Never-Never +Land of alcoholic fantasies where his spirit had been wont to pitch its +tent. Scraps of jest and shreds of song stirred the ghosts along the +Road of the Dead Men. + +No such exuberance from Guadalupe, slave of the desert. They had not +been an hour on the road when the Papago began to feel a crawling +of the nerves along the spine and the pressure of invisible fingers +across the brow--evil signs! No less than the mountain sheep or the +road-runner in the scrub could the Papago interpret the desert’s +forerunners of portent. A feel in the air--hue of the mountain +rims--colour of sunlight against a rock: these things had their meaning. + +Away off to the northward where a patch of gypsum showed white as film +ice the Indian’s eye caught the first tangible evidence of trouble +ahead. A dust whirlwind like a gigantic leg in baggy trousers was +wavering across the flats; the thing possessed volition of its own so +surely did it map its course across a five-mile span in less than five +minutes. Guadalupe nudged his companion timidly and pointed to it. + +“Uh-huh, old Peg-legged Grandpap,” chuckled the Doc. “Seen him lots +times. Gotta hole in his peg-leg you can drive a car through slick’s a +whistle--allowin’ you can find the hole.” + +A half hour later the sun changed colour. Like the passing of a +shutter across a calcium light: now blinding white, now blood-orange. +Instantaneous. + +Three gusts of sand-laden wind came sweeping toward them from the west. +A long lull, then the storm. + +It pounced upon them with a sibilant whistle growing momentarily to a +roar which was engulfing. The little desert skimmer bucked like a wild +colt against the onslaught of the wind; but when the Doc dropped the +engine into low the car wallowed on in the face of the gale. The air +was thick as flour. Wind-driven sand had the bite of an emery wheel at +high revolution; it rasped the skin and drove eyelids tight shut. The +two in the car buttoned jackets above their noses to breathe. + +All the space of the desert was a poisonous yellow glare. Minute by +minute density thickened until the car’s radiator was hardly visible. + +Then the sturdy engine quit. First a tortured grinding of clogged +cylinders, puny explosions from the exhaust, a bucking and quivering. +After that sudden stoppage of movement as if the car had plumped into a +stone wall. + +The Doc and Guadalupe tumbled out of the seat and crawled beneath +the car for protection. A stab of fear shot down through Stooder’s +disordered thoughts--the water! None in the canteens, for they had +drained the last into the radiator before starting from the treasure +ground. Was there--could the sand have--? + +He inched himself through a new sand drift below the front axle to +where the drain cock projected below the radiator base. Like a suckling +kid he lifted his lips to the steel teat and turned the cock. A +trickle of heavy mud filled his mouth with grit, then stopped. + +Radiator a mess of mud--cylinders clogged--feed pipes all choked and +water--gone! + +Doc Stooder pulled his floppy hat over his face and whimpered the name +of God. + +And on the back trail where the bell of the Lost Mission had +been found; over that site which the Doc had so carefully mapped +and measured the wind scoured and builded--scoured and builded. +Obliterating, changing, re-creating. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +THIRST + + +The sun went down before the sand storm abated. Two men, the one called +civilized, the other a savage, crouched like rabbits in a covert +beneath the body of the little car with a high sand drift piled up to +windward even over the radiator top. Two mites in the wind-scourged +wilderness of Altar with love o’ life the leveller that made them kin. + +When the last vagrant wind fury had passed fell silence almost terrific +by contrast with the uproar of the storm. In place of the slithering +and whistling of driven sand an oppressive stillness, which seemed +dropped from the void of the stars, now showing. Occasionally the dry +rustle of sand dropping in rivulets from some desert bush lifting its +head after the scourging; that was all. + +When the two crawled out from beneath their shelter Guadalupe was for +an immediate start afoot in the direction of the faint pencilings of +red marking the west. But Doc Stooder possessed an abiding glimmer +of faith in the soundness of the car and insisted on taking stock +of its motive possibilities. A cursory examination convinced him of +the hopelessness of his trust, for the sand was heaped entirely over +the unprotected engine--desert cars dispense with a hood because it +blankets the engine’s heat--and he knew that even with water in the +radiator he couldn’t get a kick out of the thing before a thorough +overhauling. This was out of the question. They must achieve their +escape from the desert’s trap afoot. + +The Papago started on a swinging walk a little north of west, the Doc +following. They had not gone far when the white man discovered they +were not following the road; each step was through loose sand which +received the foot with a viscous hold and reluctantly released it. The +Doc snarled a query at his companion: why in the name of deletion had +he quit the Road of the Dead Men? + +“Not quit--finding him,” came Guadalupe’s grudging answer. Then Stooder +admitted to himself the possibility that during the time the little car +had pushed on into the storm he had tooled it off the road. How far he +had driven away from the single track which spans Altar he could not +hazard a guess. Anyway, he knew one thing: he was dog tired, and if +this mangy black coyote thought A. Stooder, M.D., was going to wallow +through sand all night without a sleep he had another think coming. + +Reaction from the excitements of the past two days added extra +weight to the Doc’s already none-too-light handicap of alcoholic +repercussions. The storm had torn his nerves to tatters; his mouth was +as dry as an old church pew cushion; each of his legs felt as if they +were dragging an Oregon boot. Stooder’s mind was too dulled to probe +down below these afflictions and read the real seriousness of his +situation; it dealt only with cogent aches and reluctances. + +“Hey, Guadalupe! We take a sleep right here.” The Doc halted. Great was +his surprise when he saw the Papago striding on. Hot rage bubbled to +his lips in an explosive Mexican oath. + +“Hey, you lizard-eatin’ mozo, hear me? We stop here for the big +shut-eye!” The Doc spurred his long legs into a gangling run to +overtake the Indian, who had plodded on unheeding. All the arrogance of +the white man in his fancied superiority fell with the doctor’s hand on +the Indian’s shoulder. Guadalupe wrenched free and turned to face him +sulkily. + +“Sleep here--to-morrow much sun--no water. Maybe to-morrow we die here. +Walk!” Guadalupe’s sparse vocabulary of Spanish words was drained; but +the manner of his resuming the forward hike was sufficiently eloquent. +Guadalupe, born to the desert code and grown to manhood under the +inexorable desert law, had in mind but a single impulse--to survive. +His mind plumped through the bog of discomforts wherein Stooder’s +was mired to read clearly the tablets of the desert’s decalogue: ten +commandments in one--live! In extremity throw over loyalty, discard +obligations of oath or of blood, strip the soul to its elemental +selfishness; but live! + +Guadalupe strode on, still bearing to the north and the west, and still +no road. Stooder, growing more weary each step, spent his strength in +blind rage at the stubbornness of the Papago. He conned over various +capital operations he would like to perform with Guadalupe for a +subject. His brain tired of that and began to nurture the germ of a new +thought. Why strain himself keeping up with that ring-tailed kangaroo +rat who skipped on and on without rest? Guadalupe left the print of +his foot every step he took; those footprints would point to wherever +Guadalupe might go--and the Papago, of course, knew the shortest way +out of this hellhole--so why break his own neck? The old Doc would +take a little snooze and then just follow the footprints when he felt +good and ready to do so. + +The gangling form crumpled up as if cut off at the knees. Guadalupe +heard a thud, turned for a half-glance over his shoulder and pushed +steadily on under the stars. It was not in the Papago’s code to add +one ounce to the weight of circumstance obtruding between himself and +water. In a dozen steps his figure was swallowed up in the dark. + +Stooder may have allotted to himself only that minimum of sleep +designated as a snooze. But a high sun pried open his reluctant +eyelids. He sat up and sent a dazed glance around an unfamiliar world. +Mountains tawny and black with knife-edge water scores down their +flanks; a sea of scrub stretching interminably from their bases; +patches of gypsum and _salitre_ showing dull white as scars of leprosy +here and there amid the grey-green of the _camisa_. The sky already was +taking on the yellow-white glaze indicative of imminent heat. + +The Doc arose and shook the sand out of the creases of his clothing. +First definite impression coming to him was the need of a drink: his +favourite tequila if might be, water in a pinch. All the nerves in +his body twittered “Hear--hear!” to the first of the alternatives. +Then, his mind beginning to function along the line of the night’s +impressions, Doc Stooder read the story of the footprints leading off +to the north and west. There they were: good li’l signposts; they’d +take him to a drink just as easy! + +Stooder’s renewed strength carried him easily along the trail the +Papago had left. For an hour, that is; then trouble. For the sand +disappeared under a broad apron of _caliche_--a hardpan of baked +mineral salts and earth almost impervious even to the shod hoof of a +horse. It was like a door swung shut on the trailer--the locked door +to some labyrinth beyond. Here the last firm print of a boot in the +sand, there nothingness. The Doc paused, looked back over the cup-like +shadows marking the footprint trail he had been following to take its +line of direction, then he pushed ahead along that line. + +Another hour, and he still was on the _caliche_ outcrop. He stopped to +consider. Where in the name of all the angels was that road--the Road +of the Dead Men? If he’d driven the car a little south of it during the +sand storm, surely Guadalupe must have cut tangent to it by this time. +And if the road passed over the _caliche_ flat there’d be wheel marks; +that was sure. Miss that road and miss the Papago’s trail both--why +then old Doc Stooder’d be a goner! + +He tried to follow his own back trail by such small signs as the +scratch of a hobnail against an embedded rock and a thin print of a +sole in a pocket of dust. A while and he had lost even that. He stopped +and swabbed his streaming face with a shirtsleeve--he now was carrying +his coat. + +“By the eternal, Stooder, you gotta do something--and do it dam’d +pronto!” + +Once more he turned on his own tracks. Better go back and find that +putrid Papago’s trail and let the road go to the devil. Whole half hour +wasted a’ready--good half hour, by criminy! with a drink just that much +farther off. + +It was not so easy finding the scored rocks and the stamp of a heel +in pools of dust; not so easy as the first essay. For the sun was at +meridian now and foreshortened little shadows to nothingness. Plump! +he came to the edge of the hardpan and into the sandy soil. No tracks +there. Should he bear to right or left in circling the edge of the +_caliche_ on his hunt for the footprints? If he guessed wrong where’d +he be? “Oh, dear God!” + +He turned to the left and resumed his tramp. Furnace light refracted +from the sand seared into his eyes, which must be always kept downward +peering--spying. His mouth now was dry as rotted wood. Something +alien there kept bothering him by pressing against the roof of it. He +explored with his fingers and discovered the alien object to be his +tongue, which was swelling. + +“But my mind’s clear--clear as a bell. Got a steady mind anyway. Gotta +hold onto that or I’m a gone coon.” + +A slight breeze struck his right arm more penetratingly than it should. +Stooder shifted his glance to his arm, held crooked. + +“Good God! Coat’s gone!” Dropped somewhere--that coat in whose pocket +was a prescription book; among its pages the map of the treasure site. +The precious map showing where lay the bell and the beam! The man +whirled and started on a staggering run along the rim of the _caliche_ +he had been travelling. + +“Must find that coat! Don’t find the coat an’ I lose the pearls an’ the +gold--the pearls an’ the gold!” + +He halted as if shot. Down the wind came to him the faint tolling of +a bell. _Dong--dong._ Silvery throb of a swinging bell. Measured, +unhurried; like the sounding of a bell for mass of a Sunday morning. +The Doc had heard the bell of San Xavier sending its call across the +alfalfa fields of a Sunday morning, just like that. + +Even as he strained his ears to drink in the full miracle of it the +sound faded, ceased. + +“I heard it! A bell! No illusion. Mind’s still clear--still clear!” +On he went, his gaunt legs weaving in wide circles. He came to a dark +patch on the hardpan and strided over it, unheeding. It was his missing +coat, in the pocket the precious map of the treasure site. The Doc did +not see the coat because again his ears were drinking in the maddening +tolling of the bell; this time a little clearer down the wind in his +face. An animal cry, half articulate, burst from his swollen lips: + +“The mission bell! Bell of the Four Evangelists which I found t’other +day! Callin’ me back!” + +Right over yonder where the mountains cracked apart to let that arroyo +down onto the plain: that’s where the bell sounded. Yes, sir, no +mistake about it. ’Bout four-five mile, judgin’ from the sound. Hear +what that bell’s a-callin’? “Gol-l-ld! Gol-l-ld!” + +Doc Stooder, coatless, hatless, the high roach of his streaked hair +fanning in the hot winds, was stumbling and falling--stumbling and +falling ever forward toward the crack in the mountains. Light of +madness flamed in his eyes; his great arms clawed forward as if to +catch invisible supports to pull him the faster. Gol-l-ld--Gol-l-ld! + +“Old mind’s still clear, else couldn’t hear that mission bell so +plain-- Gotta keep old mind clear--” + + * * * * * + +The way of the desert god, always beyond man’s comprehending, +nevertheless sometimes approaches so close to the human scheme of +thought and motive as to permit of analogy with it. When the director +of destinies in the dry wastes seems to make a travesty of such a +sacrosanct quality as human justice we may be moved to call the impulse +satiric for want of a better name. Satiric, then, that reversal of the +decree of death passed upon the Papago youth who confessed to murder +before the overturned kettle at the Casa O’Donoju; more than satiric +the moving finger now directing his path through the dead lands up to a +union with the crazed doctor’s. + +According to ancient custom the Indian retainers of the O’Donoju had +taken the youth--his baptismal name was Ygnacio--down to the crater +land of the Pinacate and there turned him loose without water to wander +for a while and finally to die miserably. Other murderers had been so +treated and never had been seen of men again. But the desert god who +slays so peremptorily knew that Ygnacio had done the bidding to murder +to save his brother from death--had killed without malice and only as +the price of redemption for one of his blood. Wherefore the arbiter of +life and death flung life at Ygnacio. + +When he was athirst almost to the point of exhaustion he found a +knob-like growth a scant two inches above the surface of the ground, +recognized it for a promise of succour and with the last ounce of his +strength dug the deep sand all about it. The end of his effort gave to +him a strange and rare vegetable reservoir like an elongated radish, +which miraculously holds scant moisture of summer rains the year round. +“Root-of-the-sands” the Sonorans have named it. In the desolation +between the Pinacate and the Gulf even the coyotes have the wisdom to +dig for this precious sustainer of life. + +Ygnacio devoured the whole of the root and was revived. He found +others, which he tied into a bundle to carry over his shoulders. Food +and drink had come to him from the hand of Elder Brother himself +when it was decreed by man he should have neither. Wherefore love o’ +life once more burned strong in the man. He set his course northward, +travelling only by night when the heat had given place to the biting +desert chill, keeping his precious roots buried in the sand while he +slept by day so that evaporation would not rob him of the promise of +escape from inferno. Straight as an arrow northward where, beyond +the Line, lay tribes of Papagoes who never had heard of Don Padraic +O’Donoju nor of a murderer named Ygnacio. + +So it happened that on the third night of his march, when Ygnacio had +paused to munch a segment of the sustaining root, came to his ears +the sound of a voice, faintly and from a great distance. It might be +a human voice, though there was a burred and thickened quality to it +almost like a burro’s bray. + +The Indian boldly followed where his ears gave direction. +“Gol’--gol’--gol’” was the monotonous iteration, sounding almost like +the muffled tapping of a clapper against metal. He walked a mile--so +clearly do sounds carry in the desert night--and suddenly came upon the +figure of a white man. Naked above the waist, wisp of a goatee tilted +at the stars, arms rigid at sides and with fingers widespread, the +spectre of a white man chanted the single word, “Gold.” + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +THE COMING OF EL DOCTOR + + +The sandstorm that overwhelmed Stooder and his guide on the Road of +the Dead Men brought the mighty voice of the desert to the Garden of +Solitude in requiem for the soul of Don Padraic O’Donoju. Savage elegy +of a life lived in communion with the spirit of the wild. + +There was no priest to order the funeral rites of the Church. Though a +day’s journey in Quelele’s car to Caborca and back would have fetched +a minister of religion, Benicia was determined word of her father’s +death should not reach the man who provoked it sooner than the courses +of rumour allowed. The Caborca priest posting out to the Casa O’Donoju +would set tongues wagging instantly and the seal of silence imposed by +miles of unpeopled space between the casa and the nearest community +would be broken. “The service of the heart will be just as acceptable +to my father’s spirit,” was Benicia’s simple justification to herself +of breach of custom. + +So in the heat haze preceding the storm six Indians bore the body of +their master through fields of alfalfa behind the white house down to a +grove of shimmering alamo trees which fringed a reservoir of the oasis’ +precious water. Here beneath the white and silver-green tent of the +trees was sanctified ground. Here lay the dust of lords and ladies of a +desert principality who, for their spans of years, had been inheritors +of the desert’s cruelties and benefices. + +Grant fell in with the file of dark-skinned mourners that followed +behind the body of Don Padraic, with him Bagley. They did this unbidden +of Benicia. Neither had seen her since the dramatic climax of the +ordeal of the kettle the day before; no word had come from her. Yet +each had felt the need to succour the bereaved girl in her great +loneliness, forgetting unhappy events of the dawn in the patio. + +For Grant there had been a brief struggle with pride and outraged +sensibilities--blessedly brief because a broader tolerance and finer +manhood had rallied to overthrow the narrower view of selfishness. +In the light of the terrific blow that had been dealt the girl he +loved--all the more crushing because of its suddenness--the savage +reaction of a high spirit seemed to him not so to be wondered at. Nor +Benicia’s silence since. In these dark hours there was no place in her +heart for aught but unassuaged grief. + +Arrived at the alamo grove, all the Indians of the village and +household massed themselves a little way apart from freshly turned sod, +their glistening black heads dappled by the silhouettes of the leaves, +their eyes restless and awestruck. Benicia, garbed in dull black which +made the whiteness of her face and uncovered glory of her hair the +more striking, stood at the head of the rude housing fashioned by the +Papagoes for her beloved clay; her calm was absolute as that of the +iron peaks beyond the oasis green. In her hand was a wreath the Indian +women had woven--scarlet flowers of the cactus with feathery acacia +intertwined. + +In a steady voice the girl read a Latin prayer while the Indians knelt. +Then with a lingering touch she laid the scarlet and olive-green wreath +upon the pall and watched the glowing spot of colour slowly sink from +sight. + +Suddenly the recessional: the sand storm with its clamour of incoherent +desert tongues crying hidden tragedies, its blinding sheets of sand. +When the first blast struck the group turning away from the grave +Grant stepped quickly to Benicia’s side, drew her arm protectingly +through his and bent his body to shield her from the myriad chisels of +the driven sand. He fought for footing for them both. + +At his touch Benicia turned dry eyes to his. Swiftly she read the love +there--love triumphing over the hurt she had so lately given him. On +the instant tears filmed the hard brightness of the orbs Grant looked +down upon. Her lips moved in some halting speech of contrition, but the +savage blast snatched away the sound of her words. In the softening +of those eyes and the weight of her body clinging nervelessly to him +the man was told the whole story of a girl’s amends for hasty and +unconsidered action. All her iron will which had carried her head high +through hours of grief suddenly had sped from her, leaving her groping +and dependent. + +An exalted sense of guardianship came to Grant--swept over him like a +cool breeze to a fever patient. Almost it was a feeling of holy trust +bestowed. At last--at last the woman he loved had battled against +bitter fate beyond the limit of her endurance and was turning to him to +fend for her. Unheeding the twinges his wound gave him, he bent to the +blast with his precious burden. Oh, if only he could be given liberty +to sweep her into his arms, to call her name in the piety of supreme +love, snatch her away from the incubus of dread which had settled upon +her so relentlessly. + +He would not wait for such opportunity--so the thought came lancing at +him in a lightning flash of resolution; he would create it! No longer +stand idly by with footless compassion while the girl of his heart +remained in chains of a fixed idea too strong for her to break. He +himself would free her of those shackles even if he had to fight her +fiery will to do it! + +While the storm furiously grappled with the palms outside, Bim and +Grant sat in the dark music room of the great-house. With hushed voices +the two friends conned over the situation facing them and the girl now +left alone in the immensity of Altar. Not a simple exigency. On the one +hand promptings of delicacy and the dictates of custom ruled against +their remaining longer in the Casa O’Donoju. Opposed to this was the +alternative of leaving Benicia to become a prey to the schemes of +Colonel Urgo--a girl fighting single-handed the craft of an implacable +enemy. Without a protector other than the Indians of the oasis--and +they had the minds of children--the girl could not combat this +unscrupulous wooer for long. What then? + +Bim finally summed the situation: “It comes down to this, old +side-pardner; either you’ve got to persuade her to come back to Arizona +with us mighty pronto or to marry you, putting it bald-headed like.” + +Grant’s mind leaped to grapple with the flash of an idea--the one that +had come to him when he and the girl breasted the sandstorm. Resolution +crystallized on the instant. He silently quizzed his friend with an +appraising eye. + +“And if I can’t persuade her?” he queried softly. + +“Then you simply trundle yourself away from here and up across the +Line, knowing that, sure as shootin’, this wolf Urgo’ll be down on +her just as soon as he makes up his mind to move.” The big fellow in +the firelight stressed inevitability in his dictum. Grant gave him a +cryptic smile. + +“Suppose I take her anyway if she will not be persuaded?” Bim jerked +back his head and surveyed his friend with startlement which speedily +softened to a wide grin. Out went his hand to clap Grant’s knee. + +“Now you’re tootin’!” + +Once he had put his resolution into words, the idea back-fired to +scorch Grant with sudden comprehension of what would be involved in +such a cavalierly course of action. Actually to steal Benicia O’Donoju! +Take her by force from the home which now was hers to rule. Play the +very part which he feared Colonel Urgo would pursue if left alone. He +scarcely heard Bim rumbling his enthusiasms. + +“That’s the pure quill!” the desert man was saying. “That’s the Grant +Hickman who brought me in on his back from a section of Heinie’s first +line trench with H.E.’s droppin’ round like gumdrops from a baby’s torn +candy bag.” He checked himself to launch the question, “Have you got a +line on the girl yet? I mean, do you think she fancies you enough to be +glad--after you’ve run away with her?” + +“I think so,” was Grant’s simple answer. + +“Fine business! The sooner the quicker, young fellah. You an’ her +an’ me in the li’l old desert skimmer. ’Cause I gotta get back to +Arizora. The old Doc’ll think I’ve thrown him down an’, besides, my own +business--” + +“You mean you’ll go ahead with Stooder on his scheme for finding the +Lost Mission?” Grant cut in impetuously. The big love he bore Bagley +jealously demanded an answer. The other reached over to lay a hand on +Grant’s shoulder. + +“No. That’s all off, old son. I couldn’t go prying around after lost +treasure that belongs to the girl’s family--more particular not after +what you’ve told me I couldn’t. I promise you I’ll head off the Doc if +I have to get him thrown in the _carcel_ for boot-legging.” + +The storm wore itself to a final sibilant whisper among the tortured +palms and the two continued to sit in the room of shadows with the +complexities of the daring plan of kidnapping still bulking large. +’Cepcion tip-toed in to announce to Bim in an awed whisper, “El Doctor +Coyote Belly from Babinioqui has come through the storm. Shall I +disturb the mistress?” + +Bim translated to Grant with a questioning tilt of the eyebrows. Grant +started at the name of the medicine man who had been his rescuer and +to whom he owed his life. What could have brought this old Indian away +across the expanse of Altar to drop out of the storm upon the house of +mourning? + +“Tell her we will see him first,” Grant directed, moved as he was by +some half-sensed instinct of protection for Benicia; evil tidings--if +such the Indian bore--must be kept from her. The two rose and followed +the waddling Indian woman through the halls to the servants’ quarters +in the rear. Under a pepper tree in the fading dusk they found the +squat figure of Coyote Belly. The Indian doffed his hat at the approach +of the white men and stood smiling; there was in his pose something of +quiet dignity which bent little before the centuries-old convention +of the white man’s superiority. His beady eyes, well larded in creasy +folds, possessed intelligence beyond the ordinary. + +Grant impulsively took El Doctor’s hand in a strong grip carrying the +thanks he could not speak. El Doctor’s eyes mirrored recognition and he +bobbed his head with a broadening smile. + +“Tell him, Bim, I could not thank him for all he did for me. He is the +chap that found me on the Hermosillo road, you know, and pulled me +through.” Bim put the words in Spanish and El Doctor bobbed his head +again. Then the Indian began haltingly in the same tongue. Bim’s eyes +narrowed to a quizzical pucker as he progressed. Grant could read a +spreading wonder in his friend’s features. + +“The old bird says he came here because he knew Don Padraic had been +killed,” Bim repeated. “Says he knew it the night of the murder because +a star fell in the west and he saw the picture of the old Don with a +knife in his heart--saw it in the water of his medicine _olla_. So he’s +been on the trail ever since because he’s got to tell Señorita Benicia +something.” + +“But,” Grant began incredulously. Bim caught him up with, “Sure, I know +it sounds phoney. But I know, too, the old boy’s telling the truth. +These desert people have a way of seeing across space--reading signs +and such--which leaves us white folks gasping-- How’s that?” He turned +an ear to El Doctor, who had begun to speak again. + +“Standing-White-in-the-Sun was my father and my brother,” the medicine +man gravely intoned. “He gave me _pinole_ when I was starving. He came +to my house at the festival of the _sahuaro_ wine and drank with me as +a brother. His child, Lightning Hair, is as my own child.” + +Depth of feeling was sweeping El Doctor like a storm. His grey head +trembled and drops of moisture stood in his eyes. Bim gently checked +him with, “The señorita is oppressed with grief. If we could take your +message to her--” But El Doctor shook his head. + +“She will see me. She will hear what El Doctor Coyote Belly has come +through the storm to tell.” + +“Yes, she will hear,” came an unexpected voice from the direction of +the doorway, and Benicia walked up to the Indian. El Doctor made a +step forward to meet her; with a gesture of reverence he took the hand +stretched out to him and placed it first on his brow then over his +heart. His old eyes shone. The two white men turned and walked beyond +earshot. From a distance Grant saw the girl lead the medicine man to +a rustic seat beneath the pepper tree; snatches of barbarous Papago +speech came to his ears. + +The glory of sunset, more glorious because of the dust held in +suspension in the air, came and passed and still Benicia and the +medicine man talked beneath the pepper tree. The evening meal was a +mournful affair, with only Grant and Bim at the candle-lit table. +Grant, unable to contain his restlessness, quit the house alone +when supper was finished; he walked down the avenue of palms in the +direction of the red fires marking the Indian village. The night was +luminous with that sheen which covers the desert heavens like a bloom. +Thin rind of a moon hung low in the west, a cold glow of nacre. + +He had crossed the bridge and was about to turn off into an adjacent +field when he heard a footstep in the shadowed aisle below palm tops +ahead of him. A figure scarce discernible in its black garb came upon +him. + +“Benicia!” + +She stopped, startled. “Ah, it is you,” was her murmured greeting as +Grant stepped to her side. + +“Alone and in the dark,” he chided, but the girl tossed off his fears +with a gesture of the hands. “I have been with El Doctor down to the +village to find a place for him to lodge.” Grant imprisoned her arm +and gently persuaded her steps back down the aisle of darkness toward +the village. For a minute they walked in silence. Each knew there +were things to be spoken, yet each was reluctant to break the silent +communion their nearness wrought. + +“And El Doctor gave you the message he came to bring?” finally from +Grant. Her head nodded assent. + +“Not bad news, I hope,” he hazarded. A tightening of fingers on his arm +as she answered, “The best--and the worst.” Grant drew a long breath. + +“And may I share with you--the worst?” he managed to murmur. Now once +more that dragging weight on his arm as when he guided Benicia through +the storm--mute signal of surrender from one spent in the fight. + +“El Doctor says--oh, my friend, you must not stay here in the Garden +longer. The rurales are gathering at Babinioqui, El Doctor tells +me--with Urgo. That means but one thing: Urgo is bringing them here, +and you--” + +“But you!” Grant interrupted almost fiercely. “What of you? Must I run +away and leave you unprotected from that man?” The girl drew away from +him as if in very defiance of some mastering impulse which would push +her into his arms. + +“I--my people will fight for me if need be. Urgo comes for you this +time, and I cannot be sure these children”--a vague sweep of her hand +toward the winking village fires--“that these children would fight +for you, whom they scarcely know.” There was that brave yet pitiful +resolution in her tone when she spoke of the hazard of Urgo’s probable +sally upon her own person which crashed through all a lover’s carefully +built barriers of restraint. Unmindful of the events of recent hours, +of the girl’s fresh bereavement, Grant crushed her to him hotly. + +“Oh, ’Nicia--’Nicia, can’t you understand! I must go--yes, to-morrow! +Not because Urgo is coming to get me but because your being here alone +forces me away from you. Yet I cannot think of leaving you to fight +that man single-handed. ’Nicia--precious!--you will come--you must come +with me up over the Line where--” + +“Oh, please--please stop!” Hands were feebly pressing him away. Glint +of starlight revealed tears a-tremble on her lashes. “Grant--great +heart--I understand. I cry for you. See! My eyes tell you what is in my +heart. But I cannot give myself to you when that--that terrible thing +of misfortune and death goes with me. I--the mark I bear brought death +to my dear father!” + +He looked down into her eyes, appalled at this last speech. Before he +could hush her she faltered on: + +“But El Doctor brought me also good news--wonderful news! It is that +I can lift this evil from me if--if”--she seemed to falter before a +possibility scarce credible--“if the finding of the gold and jewels El +Rojo stained with his sacrilege and their restoration to a sanctuary of +the Church will be acceptable in God’s sight.” + +The hint of purpose in Benicia’s voice revealed the edge of the truth. +“Do you mean El Doctor knows where the Lost Mission lies and that you +intend to find it?” Grant pressed her. The girl gave answer: + +“He knows where the gold and pearls of the Lost Mission are. He knows, +too, the story of El Rojo and how I bear the weight of his guilt. +Because he loved my father he says he loves me too much to have me go +on and on under an evil spell. Father’s death opens his lips and--” + +“You are going with El Doctor to find those things?” breathlessly from +Grant. She nodded. “Then I will go with you. At once! To-morrow!” + +Decision came on the wings of inspiration. Better this flight into +the desert on treasure quest, with its promise of exorcism of all the +devils that plagued the girl--better this venture than that other he +had determined: to play the strong hand willy-nilly. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +TREASURE QUEST + + +Colonel Hamilcar Urgo was not addicted to introspection. He took +himself as he found himself and as a rule was well pleased with the +find. Had any non-partisan voice of conscience told him cruelty played +a large part in his make-up undoubtedly the little Colonel would +have denied the charge with hot indignation. Cruelty, to his way of +thinking, was exclusively a feminine defect; a woman was guilty of +cruelty, for example, when she spurned the honourable advances of so +honourable a suitor as Hamilcar Urgo. Benicia O’Donoju was the cruelest +creature he knew; wherefore like a fractious horse she must be broken. + +No, Señor Urgo found nothing reprehensible in his orders to Ygnacio, +the Papago, that Don Padraic must be put out of the way. The same +impulse had prompted him to strip the bandage of ignorance from +Benicia’s eyes during that interview in the patio without the least +compunction. These headstrong women! There was a way to handle them +just as there was a way to break the heart of a high-spirited mount: +curb bits that tear and spurs that gouge. Let him have possession of a +spirit-broken woman for a little while, to play with and then discard; +possession was not nearly so diverting as the game of spirit breaking. +At that Urgo considered himself rather a master hand. + +He had not hated the master of the Casa O’Donoju. Aside from the +necessity of clearing the field of a possible objector to his suit and +bringing pain to the haughty desert girl, Urgo’s murder impulse was +prompted by no personal bias. But with all the deadly spleen compacted +into his wispy body the little man hated the gringo Grant Hickman. +Hated him because the American was in the lists against him; hated him, +especially, because twice Hickman had humiliated him before the eyes of +Benicia: once in the Pullman out of El Paso and a second time--searing +scar in memory--when the man, though weakened by a bullet wound, had +hustled him out the door of the desert manor. + +If whole-heartedness gives any palliation to hatred then was Hamilcar +Urgo’s passion almost to be forgiven him. For very dynamic force no +impulse in his twisted career matched it. The vision of this gringo’s +impudently smiling face went to bed with him at night and abided with +him all day--a veritable ache. Come what might, he would destroy Grant +Hickman and in a manner such as to entail the most refined tortures. + +So this was his single purpose--possession of the girl would be a mere +by-product--when he used his power with the police arm of the Sonora +state government to assemble ten ruffians of the rurales force at a +point on the railroad within striking distance of the Road of the +Dead Men. Desert cars were at his disposal but he preferred to head a +mounted force because his plans looked to an excursion into country +where autos could not go, once Hickman was his prisoner. A complaisant +spirit of justice at Hermosillo would accept in lieu of the escaped +convict’s person some token symbolical of a justice already wrought +through the instrument of the state’s worthy servant, Urgo. + +The day after the sand storm Urgo and his rurales set out from the +railroad for the west and the Garden of Solitude at the end of a long +road. They were superbly mounted; two pack animals trotted behind the +file of horsemen. Revolutions had been squelched by a less imposing +force. + +After the cleansing storm the desert was bland and tolerant. Air clear +as quartz, sun tempered by fresh winds from the west, on every club and +spike of cactus fresh flowers born overnight to replace those destroyed +by the driving sands. One of the rurales unslung a guitar from a mule’s +pack and strummed minor chords to the accompaniment of a song in which +the rest joined. The ballad was gentle as a butterfly’s wing, telling +of roses over a lady-love’s window. + +Urgo, lulled by the immensity of the desert peace, perhaps even by +the tenderness of the song his murderers sang, pleasured himself by +building pictures in prospect. He saw himself riding alone up to +the door of the Casa O’Donoju--the rurales would be disposed beyond +sight of the door but within call; saw the courteous bow he would +make to Señorita Benicia; heard himself inquiring in polite phrase +concerning her health and that of her respected father. Ah, Don Padraic +dead--murdered! Grace of God, but that was sad news. But the American +gentleman who was a guest at the Casa O’Donoju; did his unfortunate +wound still keep him under the beneficence of the casa’s hospitality--? + +Five hours of the second day out on the Road of the Dead Men the rurale +who was riding at the head of the file reined in with a shout. His +arm stretched to point a tiny black beetle away off to the westward: +a beetle skittering down the long slope of a divide and in their +direction. In ten minutes the beetle showed again, but it had grown to +the dimensions of an auto. It was upon them almost before the horsemen +had spread themselves in a fan across the road. Quelele, whom Urgo +instantly recognized, accepted the implied hint to halt; in the seat +beside him was a strange white man--a gringo by his looks. This man +let a bland, incurious eye range over the band of horsemen until it +settled upon Urgo; there it rested with a dispassionate stare somehow +affronting to the Spaniard’s dignity. + +Urgo stiffly bowed and waited for the gringo to speak. Instead of +returning his salutation the white man searched the pockets of his vest +for tobacco bag and papers and bent all his attention upon rolling a +cigarette. + +“You have come from the Casa O’Donoju, señor?” Urgo asked in English. +Bim Bagley gave the clipped Spanish “Si” of assent and drew his rolled +cigarette across his lips with a languid air. Urgo in a growing rage +wondered if this boorishness were the stranger’s typically American +manner or assumed to provoke hostility. His voice was silken as he put +his next question in Spanish: + +“The Señorita O’Donoju and Don Padraic, her father, they enjoy the best +health, I hope.” + +“I hope so, too,” was Bim’s short reply as he put a match to his smoke. +Urgo’s brows knitted. Here was no boor but a wise gringo with a chuckle +behind every word. + +“I am doing myself the honour to call upon Don Padraic and his charming +daughter,” his temper pushed him to volunteer. Bim swept the company of +horsemen with a lack-lustre eye and then let his glance return to the +dapper figure of the Colonel. + +“Do tell,” he drawled in broadest Border dialect. “See you brought all +the boys with you. Well, so long!” He nudged the Indian a signal to +go ahead. Urgo would have liked to detain this impudent gringo for a +lesson in manners did not more pressing pleasure lie ahead. He gave an +imperceptible nod and the horsemen who blocked the road moved aside. +The little car shot back a pungent cloud of smoke for a parting insult +as it took the road in high. Urgo watched it rise to the low crest of +a divide and disappear. Insufferable gringo! What had he been doing at +Casa O’Donoju? What did he know of recent events there? + +A shrug dismissed Bagley, and the file of horsemen resumed leisurely +progress along the desert road. A night’s dry camp, and early morning +would see them in the oasis green at journey’s end. + +Colonel Urgo miscalculated when he dismissed Bim Bagley with a shrug. +Did the little Spaniard but know it, this meeting in the wastes was +the objective point in the gringo’s strategy. Even under certain heavy +handicaps ten gallons of gasoline in the desert can achieve more than +ten horses with rurales on their backs. It all depends upon the hand +that nurses precious jets of this gasoline across the path of the +spark. And Quelele’s was a master hand. Wherefore the second phase in +Bim’s strategy was entered upon. + +Bim and the Indian had made perhaps five miles along the +eastward-bearing road beyond the point of the meeting with Urgo’s +ruffians when the Papago turned off the single wheel track and into +the sparse scrub. A low range separated them from the rurales; the +crumbling of that range into desert flatness lay a good ten miles to +southward. Once around that, the little car could be tooled behind a +screen of hillocks back onto the Road of the Dead Men and ahead of the +rurales, but only by exercise of the most delicate driving judgment. +“Smack through the country--without roads?” whiffles the incredulous +driver of limousines along sedate highways in Pennsylvania and New +York. Exactly that. It is done in Arizona and Sonora--thirty or fifty +miles of unfenced desert; compass to pick up direction and shovel to +dig out of arroyos. Johnny Cameron, of Ajo, even herds wild horses on a +motorcycle. + +Quelele stopped to let air out of his tires that they might better +grip the sand and pad through soft places. Then began a jackrabbit +skittering and twisting ’cross country, with every hundred yards +offering the hazard of a broken axle and the little desert skimmer +standing on its nose at the brink of a dry wash while its passengers +flattened the descent by hasty shovel work. Like a rowboat in +mid-Atlantic the puny contraption of tin and steel took the long waves, +snarling and grumbling over sand-traps, boggling through thickets +of _cholla_ which rigged its tires with festoons of prickly stubs. +Quelele’s hands possessed magic. They knew just when to give a twist to +the wheel, when to shoot the spark ahead. Every hummock and pitfall was +read by them surely and swiftly. + +The little car rounded the end of the mountain range and shot back on a +tangent for the road where Urgo and his rurales were travelling. With +a grunt Quelele suddenly let the car trundle to a halt; he clambered +out and knelt by the radiator. Drip-drip of precious water from some +stab of brush through the honeycomb of cells there. Bim sacrificed +his tobacco in the emergency. The flaky mass was poured into the +radiator with fresh water from a canteen; the stuff found the leak and, +swelling, stopped it. + +Then on and on, around the flanks of the little hills and across wide +flats where the brush was scattered. Always Quelele was sure to keep +a height of land between the car and the Road of the Dead Men until +finally he brought his gas mustang to a stop on the crest of a lava +ridge and pointed back. Against the eastern horizon showed a crawling +inch-worm in the desert’s immensity--Urgo and the rurales. Below the +lava crest and near at hand was the objective of their detour, the +road that led to the Casa O’Donoju and those who must be warned. + +It was after sunset when the little car hiccoughed up under the avenue +of palms. An hour later in the first dark of night a file of horsemen +quit the perfumed precincts of alfalfa fields behind the Casa O’Donoju. +At the head, driving a pack-mule, was El Doctor Coyote Belly, big +Quelele riding beside him. Behind were Benicia and Grant. Bim Bagley +was file closer. In scabbards at the saddle of each hung carbines. + +El Doctor, the guide, set the course away from the Road of the Dead Men +which, passing through the Garden of Solitude, buries itself in the +Yuma Desert. His direction was south and west toward the Gulf and the +labyrinth of volcano craters on its hither shore called Pinacate. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +ALTAR TAKES ITS TOLL + + +Dawn marched over the mountains like a phalanx of Alexander: spear +points of light on long hafts, which drove at the zenith in solid +bundles. Then the mercenaries of the sun trooped across the vacant +desert floor wave on wave and strength following strength. All the dead +world of Altar stirred and set itself for the ordeal of a new day. + +The figure of a man that had been Doc Stooder, cynical tinker of life’s +rusts and corrodings, stirred under the trampling of the light--stirred +and stretched its members in dull protest of unconsciousness. Finally +when the arrows of the new day drove at his eyelids the man opened them +and lay staring up into the sky’s opalescence. For a long minute they +probed the marbled colour depths uncomprehendingly, then turned to find +the rim of the iron mountains to the east. Comprehension came at last; +with it a distorted memory image of hours of madness and wandering, +agony of thirst, despair pressing upon footsteps that carried nowhere. +Sleep which had put a period to all this nightmare had also mercifully +rallied the man’s nervous forces to a new effort of self-saving. Men +die hard because the instinct locked up in their sub-conscious minds +always prevails over surrender of the conscious will. + +The Doc lifted an arm to shield his eyes and felt something sinuous +slide off his body. An instant his heart was chilled, for the feeling +was of a desert serpent trailing over his form. He dared lift his head +ever so little and let his eyes rove down his body. A queer something, +not snake, lay in a curve by his side; a pallid, root-like thing the +size of a man’s wrist at one end and tapering to a stringy point. He +raised himself on his elbow and drew the vegetable serpent to him. Just +as he did so his eyes discovered the prints of a man’s feet in the sand +by where he lay. + +“Glory be!” came the croak from stiffened lips, and the Doc +concentrated all his scattered wits on an examination of the prodigy. +Yes, footprints. They came from behind him; they were printed in a +semi-circle about him to mark where one had stood hesitantly looking +down at him while he slept; they marched off in line with their +approach straight toward the tawny mountains ringing the northern +horizon. + +Guadalupe’s footprints--the trail he had followed and lost the day +before! So Stooder thought. + +A great sense of security pushed through the daze in his brain. Here, +at last, lay the way to salvation. That thought having been duly +relished, he turned his attention once more to the mysterious vegetable +whip by his side. He never had seen its like. How it came to be there +he had no notion. The thing was unlike any desert growth in his +experienced observation, wherefore it seemed to represent some prodigy +of the desert god dropped by him for a purpose. + +He gripped the heavier end of the root between his hands and gave it +a twist. The thing broke like an over-ripe radish and a thin spurt of +water shot from the severed ends. Greedily he thrust one stump into +his mouth and clamped his jaws upon it. Gracious fluid, mildly acrid, +drenched the parchment-like membranes of his throat. The Doc sighed +once, then wolfed the whole stub of the root he had broken off. As the +pulp was swallowed he felt immediate access of strength and sanity. + +From somewhere deep in the corroded heart of him welled an emotion +whose like he had not known during all the years of his warped and +weathered manhood. As if a child prompted him the gaunt, half-naked +creature on the sands lifted his eyes to the glowing blue. + +“Thanks, dear God!” + +So the sardonic genius of the waste places permitted the cloak of +divinity to fall upon Ygnacio, fugitive and murderer, for that a +surprising charity had prompted him to pause in the night by a raving +man, divide with him his slender store of insurance against death, then +pass on. + +The root-of-the-sands which Stooder half devoured quickly restored him +to something like the normal. Gone were the deliriums that had dogged +him those hours of horror. He heard no longer the ghost bells of the +Lost Mission summoning him to treasure buried in the bleak mountains +yonder. Rational thought was his after all the wanderings in Bedlam. He +mapped his strategy against the ever-present menace of the desert. + +Here were Guadalupe’s tracks--the Papago hound; wait till he could get +hands on the devil! Of course they would lead to the village of the +Sand People on the edge of El Infiernillo. Well and good; but that +might still be a long way ahead. Could he make it just on what was +left of this mysterious root? About one chance in ten; and the old Doc +wasn’t taking any more chances. What then? + +Why, follow the tracks back to the stalled auto. Water might be there. +Surely were cans of tomatoes--about a dozen of ’em. A dozen tomato cans +would carry him a hundred miles on foot; he knew because he’d drunk +uncooked canned tomatoes many a time--food and drink in small compass. +All right; follow the tracks back to the auto, rest up a bit and then +get a fresh start back over those same tracks and straight into the +Sand People’s rancheria. + +Stooder wrapped the precious remains of his giant radish in a strip of +his shirt and started back over the line of blue shadow cups in the +sand. As he laboured through the heavy going he reviewed all he could +remember of yesterday’s terrors, and a great fear began to build in +the back of his mind. Fear of the leagues upon leagues of blank space +about him--land unchanged by time since the waters of a great sea were +withdrawn into a shallow cup now called the Gulf. Fear of latent forces +which lurked in the naked mountains all about, in the ghostly mirage +which stretched vain beauties before his eyes. Over-mastering all was a +corroding fear of his own body. + +The Doc’s trained intelligence was functioning with deadly precision. +It separated his mind from the rest of his being, counting the mind as +a rider and the body the beast it rode. The rider willed that the beast +carry it to a certain destination; did that beast stumble and fall the +rider could cry out never so furiously but it would be lost. And that +burden-bearer of the mind was capable of just so much. Its tissues +and sinews were kept functioning by water and food. So much water and +so much food gave so many foot-pounds of energy; no more. Inexorable +mathematics! + +When sweat began to trickle down into his eyes Stooder could not +repress a shudder. Lost! Water lost from his body. The desert +greasewood is wise enough to coat all its leaves and little stems with +creosote to trick evaporation; the big _sahuaro_ shows only the edges +of its accordion flutings to the sun and greases them with paraffin; +man yields water like a stranded jellyfish. + +Better take another chew on that water-root dingus to make up for sweat +lost. Better give the old pulse a feel to see how it’s runnin’. + +The sun swam dizzily at meridian so that the footprints the Doc +followed were hard to see--mere shallow spoon marks. On and on towards +the south! + +What was that thing moving over yonder in that bunch of saltbush? Yes, +sir, moving!--A coyote, by th’ eternal!--Naw, coyotes weren’t white +like this animal; coyotes were a mangy yellow.--But, by criminy! this +thing had the looks of a coyote--sharp nose and baggy tail half way +’tween its hind legs, skulkin’ like.--An albino coyote! Lookit! Eyes +pinky like a white rabbit.--Whoever heard of an albino coyote? + +No phantom of the imagination that slinking, dirty-white creature which +matched its pace to the Doc’s on parallel course through the low lying +scrub. The desert Ishmael trotted along with a foolish air of being +strictly about its own business, as if no other creature were in sight. +When Stooder stopped to bawl curses at it the albino thing halted and +made a great pretence of snouting at a flea bite, utterly oblivious +to his presence. A fragment of dead bush-stock was hurled at it; the +coyote lifted a corner of his lip in a deprecatory smile but did not +abate his casual trot. + +“Huh, you mangy bag o’ bones! Think you’re goin’ have a feed off’n me, +do you? Well, I’m tellin’ you, you got a mighty long tromp ahead!” + +On through the desert slogged the man and on trotted the freaky animal +whose colour made him outcast even from his own kind. These twain alone +under the hot sky: two mites of life in a land of death, each blindly +following the call of every life cell in him to live--live! + +What had been a piled-up cloud of blue and faint rose to the south +when the Doc started his hike had unfolded hour by hour into definite +form. Little by little pinnacles sharp as ice splinters lifted from a +mountain mass and detached mountains with their tops blown off stood +against the horizon like truncated columns of an acropolis. Here were +the mazes of the Pinacate, raw shards of volcanoes and wilderness of +lava flows down by the Gulf sandhills; country so fire-scarred and +forbidding that even the Indian nomads give it wide berth. Only the +big-horn sheep possess it, living no man knows how. + +The undeviating trend of the trail southward towards this ragged mass +had perplexed Stooder when first he became conscious of it. The auto +should be lying somewhere off to eastward if he didn’t miss his guess; +those mountains ahead were strange to him. But he could not know how +far nor where he had wandered the day before; even though he thought +long since he should have come upon a second line of footprints--his +own--running along with those of the Papago, yet there was no denying +he was following the right trail back to the auto and the cached +tomatoes. There sure could not be two lines of footprints here in this +least-travelled part of Altar. + +So ran the mind of him whom the mocking Gog and Magog of the desert’s +diarchy had put on a false trail to desolation. Deeper and deeper into +a waterless scrap-heap of forgotten ages his steps took him. And the +albino coyote was his aloof companion. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +INTO THE FURNACE + + +Meanwhile from another direction adventurers were moving through the +night upon the slag mountains of Pinacate. Empty space of Altar’s +ultimate sweep was become almost populous. A strange company this, +which passed ghostily under the great lights of the near stars with +only the clink of bridle metal and pack mule’s canteens to give tempo +to the march; Benicia O’Donoju, the desert girl, moved to this risky +hazard by compulsion of an incubus of fate visited upon her through +inheritance down the generations of her people; Grant Hickman, man +of cities and crowds, whom destiny had whirled out into a country of +the world’s dawn; Bagley the Arizonan, taker of chances, seeker after +rainbow ends; and the two Papagoes, Quelele and El Doctor Coyote Belly, +on whom was spread thin the veneer of so-called civilization. + +It had been Benicia’s mastering purpose that had moved the cavalcade +away from the Casa O’Donoju and out onto the desert immediately upon +the return of Bim and Quelele reporting the leisurely approach of +Colonel Urgo and his rurales. This was not flight, she told Bim; +they would go in search of the treasure of the Lost Mission whose +hiding place the old medicine man was willing to reveal, and if Urgo +followed--well, eventualities could be met as they arose. In this +resolve Grant had strongly seconded her. The girl’s slavery under the +obsession of the bane of El Rojo, especially following the slaying of +her father, had laid an impenetrable barrier between her and him; he +had seized upon this possibility promising her emancipation from this +horror. This chance failing, he had but the last desperate recourse. + +The first hour of their pilgrimage away from the desert oasis Grant +rode by Benicia’s side. He essayed to distract her thoughts from the +tragedy that lay behind by questioning her on the revelations El Doctor +had made: how had the old Indian come by knowledge of the buried gold +and pearls; what impulse had led him to promise their restoration? But +the girl was not to be drawn. She answered his queries by evasions +or meaningless monosyllables. It was as if Grant were a stranger, +impudently prying. + +At first the man was stung by this treatment. His self-pride rebelled +against so arbitrary a closing of the door of confidence against him. +Why should he be treated thus cavalierly when the girl had surely read +the great love he bore her and his single desire to place himself +between her and the menace of one who had prompted murder? But these +hurts did not continue long. Riding by Benicia’s side in the starshine, +the man began to feel the emanations of a mastering will which poured +from her as the pungent prickles of ozone surround a high-power dynamo. +Her consciousness was frozen into a mould of purpose, locked against +any distractions. Benicia was alive only to the single resolve to free +herself from the curse of the Red One. Man nor spirit could invade that +preoccupation. + +There under the steady-burning desert lamps the man of the cities +began to feel again that spell of the infinite which had chained him +the night of Don Padraic’s passing. Here was he, lately denizen of a +hive of stone and steel, tiny integer in that man-made machine called +a metropolis, moving through the darkness over a land unsullied by +hand of man since the floods of melting glaciers drove a shadowy +race of stone-axe people back to the highlands. The loves and hates, +the battles and deaths of these stone-axe folk occurred but yesterday +in the time-sheet of the waste places. The to-morrow of ten thousand +years would find the desert still untouched, supine under the stars. +What then of hidden baubles of gold; what then of the love of a Grant +Hickman for a Benicia O’Donoju? A fossil snail shell by the shore of +the gulf left a more enduring record. + +“The thing that’s sorta got me fussed is how I’m goin’ explain all +this to the old Doc.” Bim’s voice broke through Grant’s contemplation +of shadowy frontiers; he noted with a start that his horse had dropped +behind Benicia’s and was ambling head-and-head with his friend’s. Bim +drawled on: + +“It sure will look like a double-cross to Stooder--my sailin’ off down +into Sonora on the search for you an’ then hooking up with an outfit to +go get all the plunder the old Doc thinks he’s as good as got his hands +on. Me, I guess I’m queered all right,” was the man’s whimsical finish +to his lament. Grant, who had been too preoccupied with the sweep of +affairs to give any thought to his pal’s perplexities, could not now +offer much consolation. A point of honour involving the grotesque +creature who had elected to receive him as a book agent did not greatly +move Grant. + +“A’ course,” Bim continued his monologue, “the way things lie with the +girl, her bein’ hipped on gettin’ back this swag somebody in her family +lifted from the mission, I’m more’n willing to see her get it. But the +old Doc hasn’t got a large store of what you might call sentiment, an’ +I sure got my work cut out for me when I try to show him the light.” + +“Too bad I got you into a tangle, old man,” Grant heartily commiserated; +then with a hopeless little laugh, “My own affairs aren’t set on any +straight and beautiful road to happiness either.” + +Bim chuckled deep in his throat. “Me, I was all for your first idea +to rope the señorita right outa the home corral an’ put your brand on +her, fighting. But like’s not we’ll get _mucho_ plenty excitement along +this trail before we’re through.” He gave a short laugh. “Say, Cap’n +Hickman, I brought you out from the East on a whale of a proposition. +You’re sure getting it. A girl who assays higher’n any pearls an’ old +gold junk you could find in a church cellar--the feel and savvy of a +man’s country--a larrupin’ fight with old Urgo and his rurales bunch. +That last you can back right down to your last white chip.” + +“But how can Urgo follow us from the O’Donoju house?” incredulously +from Grant. “Not one of the servants or other Indians there knows what +our destination is--we don’t ourselves except in a general way.” + +The man of the big country chuckled at metropolitan innocence. “Horses +don’t leave tracks on your Fifth Avenoo because they’s no horses left +there for one thing, I reckon. But in this country they do. Five horses +make a trail a blind man could follow. I or anybody else could track +this outfit of ours in the dark. I look to see our li’l friend Urgo +drop in on us some time to-morrow. He’ll travel fast with fresh horses +his men round up at the O’Donoju corrals.” + +They rode some time in silence, Grant turning over in his mind this +unthought-of possibility. Tenderfoot that he was--so he accused +himself--he had noted the carbines slung in scabbards at each +saddlehorn; noted with an unreading eye. So Benicia and all the others +had provided against a contingency he had not even suspected. + +“Only thing I’m figgerin’ in this proposition,” he heard Bim saying, +“is, will the Papagoes stick under fire? Papagoes are not strong for +the knock-down-an’-drag-out stuff. An’, besides, you’re not a whole man +yet.” + +“Whole enough to keep my end up,” Grant said shortly, knowing not why +he resented any imputation of disability against him. + +“Oh, sure--sure!” the other hurriedly amended, and the subject died. + +Dawn spread a ghostly panorama before them. In the greeny-white light +that heralds the sun’s first ruddiness the whole western horizon bulked +with black masses of slag heaped in fantastic shapes. High above the +lesser masses towered the two peaks of Pinacate, their summits yawning +in wide craters. The horses’ hoofs struck sparks from lava aprons; the +beasts had to pick their way carefully over traps and crevices. Ever +and again grey arms of cactus struck out to rake the riders’ legs with +claws of thorns. + +Waxing light filled in details of a phantom land, terrific in stark +brutalities of scarp and battlement--a world just set aside from the +baking-oven of the Potter and unadorned by a single brush stroke. The +little company of horsemen threaded single file up a narrow gorge +between the main peaks of the range. Walls of porphyry and slag the +colour of furnace clinkers leaped to heights on either side which +dwarfed the riders to the stature of weevils. The trail they followed +was the path cut by the rushing waters of summer cloudbursts, which +pack into the downpour of minutes’ duration all the water denied +during months of drought; great blocks of fused glass and conglomerate +wrenched from the canyon’s eaves by the fingers of these storms choked +the way. Where capfuls of soil had been caught and held in some pocket +the gaunt sticks of the _ocatilla_ splayed out against raw rock like +cat’s whiskers. Low-lying _cholla_, that spined and vicious vegetable +tarantula of the desert, seemed to grow from the very rock; all its +nodules were frosty with close-set thorns. Over all dropped the veil of +mystical morning radiance. + +The horses groaned as they had to choose, minute by minute, between +barking their hocks on the knife-like corners of obsidian or taking +the barbs of the _cholla_. The higher the ascent the savager grew +the way. Grant, awed by this penetration into the very laboratory of +earth, almost leaped from his saddle when a sharp clatter of small +pebbles to his right broke the silence. His eyes jumped up the canyon +wall to follow three dots of bounding dun-white against its sheer +side--bighorn sheep skipping surely along no visible foothold. + +When the sun was well in the sky--though naught but its reflected +radiance penetrated the gorge--El Doctor, in the lead, signalled a +halt. The place was a constricted apron or shelf in the cleft between +rock walls whereon sparse galetta grass was growing. Reason for this +tiny oasis of vegetation lay just beyond in the fact of a water-worn +cistern in the lava--such a natural reservoir as the desert folk +called a “tank,” a godsend when it still contains the wash from a last +cloudburst. This one was bone-dry. + +The party breakfasted meagrely, wood for their coffee fire being +grubbed by the Indians painfully and after long search. There was +little speech between them for they were tired; the night’s ride had +been wearing. Moreover, even the Indians appeared to feel a malign +presence bearing down upon them and forbidding desecration of the +silence. For them, in especial for Coyote Belly, there was a very real +and fear-compelling presence abroad. These mountains of Tjuktoak housed +Iitoi, Elder Brother himself; the god of all things who, with a coyote +and a black beetle, drifted four times round the earth in the time of +the Flood and came to anchorage in this place. El Doctor Coyote Belly, +driven by a great love to commit sacrilege, might well have heard the +voice of Iitoi in the wind and felt his heart turn to water. + +In truth, the aged Papago was having a battle with himself. Before +he had gulped his coffee and tortillas the medicine man’s eyes were +roaming fearsomely and he whimpered snatches of sacerdotal songs as +he rummaged in the pack for a wicker basket. From it he took a wand +stained red and with an eagle’s feather bound to one end, an arrow very +handsomely feathered from the same bird, a string of glass beads and a +bundle of cigarettes--presents for Elder Brother, who must be beguiled +before being robbed. + +The old man’s hands wavered to return the presents to the basket when +Benicia hurried to him, sat down by his side and earnestly pleaded with +him in his own tongue. Finally his resolution seemed to be brought to +the sticking point. He started up the gorge alone and with his basket +of trifles. + +“Coyote Belly says he must go and sing to the god Iitoi before we are +permitted to visit his house,” Benicia gravely explained to her white +companions. “The poor man is desperately scared because we have come +to rob Elder Brother.” + +Seeing the look of puzzlement on the men’s faces she continued with +that same grave respect as if speaking of a real presence. “This old +man through the love he bore my father has consented to betray a secret +the medicine men of his people have handed down for more than a hundred +years. The treasure of the Lost Mission, he tells me, was dug up by +Papago medicine men not long after the Mission was destroyed by the +Apaches and brought to these mountains--to the cave of Elder Brother--” + +“And it’s all here now?” Bim put in excitedly. The girl nodded. + +“It has been as well hidden from those who sought it as if it were +under the buried ruins of the mission,” she said; then simply: “While +El Doctor is gone it is best that we get some sleep.” + +Benicia stretched herself under the shade of a rock with a saddle +blanket for pillow and slept. But neither of the white men could follow +her precept; both were too sensible of the prickling of some unnameable +essence of the strange and the unworldly--perhaps that very savagery of +atmosphere which had prompted primitive Indians to designate Pinacate +as the residence of their god. They were alone; big Quelele had quietly +slipped away shortly after El Doctor without saying where he was going. + +The men sat smoking while their eyes roved the prospect of burnt cliff +and ragged parapet. The heat had whips; it drove them to burrow for +lessening shade wherever angles of the rocks offered. A curious cast to +the slice of sky visible above the cañon walls first caught Bagley’s +attention. He squinted up at it for a long moment of speculation. + +“If it wasn’t so early in the summer I’d say a thunderhead was fixin’ +up to give us a big razoo,” he ventured. Grant looked up and noted that +the blue had turned to a heavy saffron tint as if the sun were shining +through a stratum of light sand; such a tint he’d seen before the great +windstorm on the day of Don Padraic’s burial. + +“If I could only look over the top of the wall yonder to west’ard,” Bim +grumbled uneasily. “These cloudbursts always come from direction of the +Gulf. We’re not very well put right here in the channel of all the wash +down from up top-side. Those horses now--” + +He walked uneasily about the narrow confines of the shelf, scanning +the upshoots of rock for possible ways out. Then he seemed to dismiss +possibility of trouble from his mind and returned to where Grant was +sitting. + +An hour passed. Perhaps they were dozing when the rattle of a shower +of rock down the cañon side galvanized both. Up there they saw the +figure of big Quelele. Like a wild goat he was leaping from foothold to +foothold downward; he was in mad haste. + +The big Indian risked his neck a dozen times before he came panting up +to the watchers. He waved to the brink of the cliff. + +“I been on top--watching--I see long way off--Urgo--rurales. They +come--fast!” + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +STORM + + +Bim translated Quelele’s intelligence for Grant. “Our li’l friend +Urgo’s been burnin’ the wind,” was his dry comment. Grant sent a quick +glance around the cul-de-sac of rock which encompassed them. + +“Not the best place in the world to stand off ten men,” he gave his +opinion. “We ought to get our backs up against something that can’t be +surrounded.” + +Quelele read the white man’s thoughts, for he pointed farther up the +cañon beyond the lava cistern. There the gorge narrowed to a veritable +doorway and the steps thereto were so precipitous that one ascending +would have to scramble and claw a way on hands and knees; no possible +chance for a rush en masse. Bim surveyed the natural citadel with the +eye of a trained Border man who occasionally has to reckon with such +elementals as the killing power of a rifle bullet and the protective +quality of a ’dobe wall. Finally he screwed one eye at the crack of +sky showing between the escarpments and shook his head dubiously at +what he saw there. Quelele, who had had the superior advantage of a +wider view from his aerie on the cliff top, bowed his arms in the shape +of a ball and waved a hand to the west. + +“Papago says it’s a big storm brewing over yonder,” Bim explained. +“When these thunderheads finally get all boiled into one and come +a-runnin’ it’s a case of take to cover. If this thing is the regulation +rim-fire sock-dollager they’s goin’ be a sight of water pass over where +we’re standin’ before long. Me, I’d rather be somewhere else than in +this dry channel.” + +Grant did not linger to discuss strategy longer. He went to where +Benicia was sleeping in the shade of a boulder and gently touched her +on the shoulder. The girl sat up, startled. + +“We have to be moving,” Grant told her. “Quelele has just reported Urgo +and his rurales out on the desert and coming our way.” + +“And El Doctor?” she quickly interposed. “He has returned from the +cave?” + +Grant shook his head. Bitter disappointment flashed into her eyes at +the realization of how fate had played to interpose the grim business +of a fight just on the minute of realization of her great hopes. Grant, +stooping beside her and watching the play of emotions on her features, +saw quick remorse chase away the frown. Impulsively a brown hand +reached out to play upon the back of his. + +“Grant, beloved”--how like the overtones from her own golden harp +the contralto richness of her voice!--“I am desperately selfish and +you will not understand.--Thinking only of my own purpose--bringing +you with your wound still unhealed out to this place to face--death +perhaps.--And you do this for me--” + +“’Nicia, little girl--” He could go no farther than those words, for +the song in his heart was overwhelming. At last--at last the trammels +of the girl’s heart were shaken off and the call he’d waited for so +long had come! Call of the heart of her to his. + +She was on her feet, vibrant with energy, alive to the exigencies of +impending action. Bim was saddling the horses and Quelele had the pack +on the mule when they joined them. Bim briefly explained to the girl +his survey of the gorge for strategical strength; at any cost they must +move up until they could find some sheep trail or other practicable +ledge giving escape from the flood water channel. “If that doddering +old medicine man would only quit his sing-song business and come back +for a rifle we’d be that much better off,” the big fellow grumbled. + +When all was in readiness Quelele led the way up the tortuous +watercourse and through the mighty gates of porphyry nearly blocking +the farther reaches. They were forced to lead the animals, whose +sure-footedness was put to the test every yard of the advance. Beyond +the great pillars the gorge opened to a rough amphitheatre with less +steeply sloping sides. A narrow upward-springing ledge of rock led +away from the dry watercourse to a rock pulpit some seventy-five or a +hundred feet above. This they followed, to discover there was space for +their horses to stand behind the horn of malapais and still be screened +from observation from below. Quelele made some mysterious passes with +a tether rope which yoked all the animals to a single line that was +anchored at both ends. + +“Look,” Benicia cried as Bim was taking the carbines from the saddle +scabbards. They followed her pointing hand and saw a dark spot against +the opposite wall of the gorge and higher than their level. A midget +figure was outlined against the opening of a cave. It was El Doctor +at his business of propitiating Elder Brother--El Doctor, much needed +behind the stock of a carbine. The men hallooed to him but he did not +turn. + +“Go over and get that crazy fool,” Bim commanded Quelele. But the big +Indian, instead of obeying immediately, turned up the ledge and made +for a high point on the shoulder of the rock bastion constituting one +of the portals of the upper gorge. They watched him as he scaled the +almost perpendicular face of black lava. From the top Quelele had a +view of the cañon’s far-away exit onto the desert floor several miles +from the niche where the treasure seekers had refuge. The watchers saw +him lift himself cautiously over the top of his lookout and peer to +westward. Then he came scrambling and sliding down. + +“They come into the valley,” the Papago reported. “Too late to get El +Doctor.” + +It was Bim with his desert craft who made disposition of the little +force of defence. Quelele he sent back to the aerie with orders not to +shoot until he heard shots from the whites; the Indian’s fire from the +rear, once Urgo and his men had passed the rocky portals, would throw +the rurales into confusion. Grant and Benicia he disposed behind an +outcrop of porphyry a little behind and above the protected animals. + +“Pick ’em off as they come through the Gate,” he suggested. “An’ don’t +try any fancy shooting; we haven’t got any too many cartridges.” + +“But you--?” Benicia began. The Arizonan grinned broadly. + +“Me, I always fancy a little solo game in this sort of rukus. I’m going +on t’other side of the gulch. Cross-fire, you sabe?” He left them with +a smile on his lips, and they watched him jumping lightly down from +rock to rock. Almost before he had begun to clamber up the opposite +wall he was lost to view amid the maze of fissure and castellated +boulder. Grant and the girl were stretched out behind their primitive +breastwork alone in this unfinished world of fire. They could see +neither Quelele nor Bagley. Came to their ears the faint drone of +barbaric song: El Doctor Coyote Belly at his traitorous devotions. + +The whole gorge was filled with a saffron glare like the reflection +from oil fires under a boiler, unworldly, portentous. + +They waited, these two, in the immensity of earth’s disgorged bowels. +Side by side, elbows touching, they counted the slow drag of minutes as +naught in the balance against the deep joy of love militant. + +A stir in the bed of the dry wash below them. Up went their carbines +with cheeks laid against wood and eyes sighting along the lances of +light. Again the stir down there. A gaunt figure rose from hand and +knees to its feet, stood swaying for an instant, then pitched forward +against the support of a slab of rock. + +A very leprechaun of the rocks was it: ribs creasing burned skin about +the naked torso; whity-grey hair streaming down to mingle with a beard; +bare arms like a spider’s legs and all cracked by the sun. The husk of +Doc Stooder, plaything of the desert god, was come here, following the +still living spark of instinct prompting a water search in a canyon. +Come, too, to the secret hiding place of the treasure whose glitter had +so mercilessly befooled him. + +Grant, stupefied by the apparition of death and failing in any +recognition of the skeleton thing as the bibulous doctor of Arizora, +suspected a trick of Urgo. Again he laid his eye along his rifle sight, +vigilant for what might ensue. The creature spread-eagled against the +rock slowly pushed itself upright with its hands; its shaggy head +turned wearily as thirsting eyes scanned the dry chasm. + +Then a shout from across the gorge. Bagley had leaped from his hiding +place and was rushing precariously down to succour the ghost. Just as +he reached Stooder and had thrown an arm about him to heave his wasted +form onto a shoulder the crack of a rifle shivered the gorge’s silence. +Rock dust spurted within a foot of the rescuer. + +The sun went out that second--instantly, like a powerful incandescent +switched off. A yellow penumbra tinged the darkness. + +Almost as one the rifles of Grant and Benicia jetted lead. Two more +shots from the dry wash. The giant figure of Bagley with Stooder limp +over one shoulder never faltered in its leaping and scrambling up the +declivity to the shelter he had quitted. The two who had been following +his flight with stilled hearts saw him disappear behind a great rock; +an instant and a jet of fire lanced down thence at the attackers by the +Gate. + +A blob of rain large as a Mexican dollar smacked on Benicia’s hand +as she pumped the ejector--another and a third. Then the gorge was +blasted by a thunder shock amid the peaks, and a stab of lightning +painted the whole pit sulphurous blue. By its flash the defenders saw +scurrying figures leaping from rock to rock in the stream bed. Quelele, +the quick of eye, fired his first shot by the light of storm fire; one +of the rurales went down like a wet sack. + +A second stunning burst of thunder which knocked out the underpinning +of the sky. Then deluge. + +It was not rain that fell; it was solid water in sheets and cones which +hissed with the speed of its descent. Water so compacted that it was +like a river on edge, engulfing. With it the almost continuous quiver +and jerk of electrical flame. The gorge was become a watery hell. More +than that, for Urgo and his men in the wash it threatened momentarily +to be their tomb. Already a white streak of foam in the lightning +flashes marked where the once bone-dry watercourse was changing +character. + +The rurales and their leader found the odds all of a sudden snatched +from their hands by this frenzied ally of the hunted girl and her +supporters. They had come eleven against five, with their quarry caught +in a hole in the Pinacate sierra; before the cloudburst had endured +three minutes Urgo realized he had let himself and his men into a fatal +trap. Their horses, confidently left behind them in the lower reaches +of the gorge, must already have stampeded under the lash of the storm. +Spiteful rifle flashes from both sides came with each baleful flicker +of fire from the sky to deny escape from the rising waters up either +wall of the chasm. + +Now a dull roaring above the waterfall of the rain began to fill the +gash in the sierra. Away back at the head of the gorge and where the +slope from the twin volcano peaks shed water as from steep roofs +into this common trough, a solid wall, capped dull white, came with +the speed of a meteor down and down through the channel in the +living rock. It rolled boulders the size of box-cars in its flood; a +chevaux-de-frise of barbed cactus and scrub trees tumbled at its crest. + +Even above the tumult of the deluge sounded the shrill alarm of the +rurales as they broke position and turned to flee through the Gate. But +already the flood was there, choking egress. They must scramble up the +sides of the gorge like rats from a flooded hold; they must grope and +cling by every illuminating flash of blue fire, waiting to see where +the next handhold lay, how near the hungry yellow waters rushed. + +With Grant and the girl was nothing but security. Unprotected, they +had bent their heads to the pounding mallets of water. When the firing +abruptly ceased at the rush of their attackers for safety Grant heard +the scream of a horse near at hand and remembered their tethered +animals. Should they break away in their fright the plight of all five +would be a desperate one. + +“Stay here!” he shouted in Benicia’s ear. “Going to the horses!” + +Grant crawled and groped his way over the slippery rocks, each seeming +to be alive with the film of rushing water across it. He clambered down +and to the right until he came to the pulpit rock behind which the +beasts had been tethered by Quelele. The mule he found down, hopelessly +noosed in his hobble rope and slowly strangling; the horses were +huddled, tails to the storm, dripping and dejected. + +It took several minutes’ precarious work to get the pack-animal to +his feet and freshly tethered. Then Grant began the retreat to the +breastwork where he had left the girl. It was largely a matter of +guesswork. Once he found himself against an unscalable wall and had to +retrace his steps. Another time one foot slipped and he caught himself +with his body halfway over the brink. + +A flash of lightning showed him two rifles lying side by side on a +ledge below him--his rifle and Benicia’s; but the girl was gone. The +fist of fear smote him terrifically. + +He screamed her name above the bellowing of the flood in the wash. No +answer. He ran along the ledge that had been theirs until he came to a +downward terrace; to that he leaped and along its blind way he fumbled. +Came the ghost of a scream, thin above the diapason all about. His +name--“Grant!” + +Then merciful lightning blazed blue and he saw. Below him on a broad +shelf which overhung the whiteness of the torrent two figures, +glistening like seals, were locked--they swayed. + +The man launched himself blindly out and down. He rolled; he slipped +and wallowed against and under great boulders. At the end of seconds +seeming æons he came to the rock apron where he had seen the struggling +shapes. Sound of stertorous breathing guided him. He rose from his +knees before Benicia and another, who was trying to drag her along the +ledge. A revealing flash of fire gave him just a glimpse of a weasel +face--Colonel Urgo. + +Not so much rage as loathly horror of an unclean thing sped furious +summons to every muscle spring in his body. With his shoulder planted +against the Spaniard’s chest for a leverage Grant tore loose the man’s +grip from Benicia. Before he could whirl to shift his attack Urgo +had screamed an oath and was on the American’s back, legs twining to +cumber Grant’s thighs, both hands clamped about his throat. It was the +catamount’s attack. + +The first impact of his antagonist’s weight nearly over-balanced Grant +and precipitated both into the maelstrom of waters not six feet below +their ledge. But, steadying himself, the American suddenly launched +backward, pinning the lighter body on his back against a wall of rock. +It was a terrific smash. Urgo’s breath came in a whistle from it. His +hands sank deeper into the muscles about Grant’s throat, closing his +windpipe. Deliberately the standing man took a few forward steps, +then swiftly back against the wall again. An elbow of rock found the +Spaniard’s ribs and cracked two. He shrieked. + +Now Grant’s hands went up to lock behind the head that sagged over his +right shoulder. Strength of desperation flooded into his arms, for the +weaker man had him throttled. Urgo must release his hold on Grant’s +throat or suffer a broken neck. The constricting hands slackened their +grip ever so little. Grant bowed his shoulders, gave a mighty heave +and swept the Colonel’s body over his shoulder in a wide arc. The man +sprawled, arms wide, through the air, struck the edge of the rocky +apron. He clawed--slipped--clawed again, and disappeared. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + +TREASURE TROVE + + +The storm ceased with the same suddenness as it began. Hardly an hour +had torrential waters lashed the cinder wastes of Pinacate when the +black pall over the heavens broke away and the sun came out to suck +hungrily at pools in the rocks. There was a headiness of wine in the +air, a smell of wet soil mingled with spicy emanations from greasewood +and _palo verde_. The desert’s sparse growing things exulted in the +breaking of long drought. + +For a long time Grant and Benicia on their side of the gorge and Bim +in his retreat opposite lay hidden, awaiting possible renewal of the +attack which the storm had scattered. But the torrent that still raged +down the bottom of the gorge had washed clean every vestige of an +enemy. Quelele on his high post saw four scattered horsemen rushing +pell-mell for the gateway onto the desert--last vestige of Urgo’s +rurales force, each man of which gave thanks to his patron saint that +he had come out of the hell in the mountain cul-de-sac with a whole +skin. + +Quelele also saw several specks dropping earthward from the clear +blue; specks which rapidly grew from the size of gnats to the spread +of small aeroplanes. King condors they, who had smelled a feast from +afar--loathsome birds with a wing spread covering the span of thirteen +feet. The coming of one of these foul creatures to his particular +banquet even the sharp eye of a Papago watcher could not discern, for +the scene was hidden from him by a shoulder of the cañon wall. + +A stunted _palo verde_ tree nearly stripped of its verdure by the whips +of the rain hung half-uprooted over the rapidly diminishing stream in +the wash. One branch had caught and held some flotsam from the high +flood, now clear of the water. Just a shapeless bundle of clothes, +lolling head, arms askew where broken bones had let inert flesh sag to +the current. Just a grim caricature of something which so recently had +walked in the pride of his imaginings. + +The condor flopped clumsily to a branch stub six feet distant from +the bundle of clothes, folded his great wings with a dry rustling of +feathers, blinked the red lids of his eyes to focus his vision for +expert inspection and studied the hank of cloth and flesh suspended +in the tree crotch. The thing which flood waters had brought stirred +slightly; eyes opened with a flutter. They met the critical gaze of the +feathered pariah on the stub. The condor acknowledged this unexpected +show of life on his banquet table by disturbed bobbings of the naked +yellow head--the skin on his poll was wrinkled as an old man’s--and +a bringing of his off eye to bear around his sabre beak with the +skew-like movement of a hen sighting a worm. + +The wreck in the bundle of clothes opened his lips to scream but the +ghost of a groan came instead. It tried to lift a fending arm against +the abomination so near; the muscles tugged at broken bones. + +The condor appraised these manifestations of life carefully, weighed +them by contrast with his experiences with crippled sheep and helpless +calves. His talons stirred restlessly on the branch. First one, then +the other lifted from the bark, stretched and flexed. The king of the +higher airs was impatient. He spread his wings to balance him and +clumsily hopped a few feet nearer, craning his wattled neck anxiously. + +A shadow passed swiftly over the _palo verde_ tree. A quick upward +twist of the head gave the condor view of a putative and too-anxious +fellow guest at the bounty spread there. Greediness pushed him. He +spread his wings and hopped again-- + +Then the desert exacted with cruelty recompense for the cruelties +of Colonel Hamilcar Urgo. Abomination of his passing was meted him +according to the abominations of his own devising. + +An hour after the last rain drop the flood waters in the gorge had +dropped to permit of reunion between the erstwhile defenders of the +pass. Grant waded waist deep with Benicia in his arms; Bim, all smiles, +was stretching out a hand from the off-side rocks. + +“Well, folks all, looks like a pleasant time was enjoyed by all and +one!” The big Arizonan’s spirits would permit of no more concrete +thanksgiving for a crisis passed. It was his way to find laughter +the only vehicle for suppressed emotions and whimsicalities the best +conveyance for thoughts which might sound “high-falutin’.” The three +stood mute, their eyes telling one another things which might have come +flattened and blunted in speech. + +“See me welcome an old visitor just before the curtain went up on the +first act?” Bim turned to Grant, his eyes shining excitement. “Who +d’you think? Ole Doc Stooder!” Grant gasped in surprise. His pal’s grin +faded as he added seriously: + +“Just about the end of his string, too. The rain sure saved +him--couldn’t have lasted another hour--one chance in a thousand +brought him here where they’s folks to look out for him--a friend, +even, to coddle him back to health.” + +“No, not one chance in a thousand,” Benicia caught him up with deep +seriousness in her voice. “It is the desert way--to play with destiny, +I mean, and seem to cause miracles.--But let me go to him if he needs +attention.” She started forward, but Bim put out a staying hand. + +“I wouldn’t, ma’am. The Doc’s not a purty sight right now. His body’s +just drinkin’ in all the water that landed on him an’ he’s sorta +in a daze--doesn’t say much of anything that makes sense. A little +food which I’m goin’ to brew if I can find some dry sticks of wood +anywhere’s round--” Simple charity dictated that Bim say no word of +conjecture as to what brought Stooder to the desert. He guessed full +well. + +El Doctor Coyote Belly seemed to be materialized from the rocks so +noiselessly had he approached the group. The old man’s face was ashen; +unguessable terrors he had fought with and hardly conquered since last +the three had seen him standing in the yellow storm glare before the +cave of Elder Brother. + +“If my daughter will come now to the house of Iitoi,” he said to the +girl in his native tongue, “she may take what Iitoi gives. The god has +expressed his displeasure by the storm--but he will give.” + +Benicia turned and put a wordless question to Grant. They started +together to climb the precipitous rock ladder up the side of the gorge +wall, El Doctor leading. Thirty minutes’ exhaustive effort brought them +to the approach of a high-roofed cavern into which the westering sun +laid a broad carpet of light. There in the shale before the cave mouth +were El Doctor’s pitiful presents to the god--the arrow and prayer +stick wedged upright, the beads and tobacco in a small basket. The +whole ground about was littered with the shards of sacrificial pottery +and scraps of basketry. + +Benicia motioned to El Doctor to lead the way into the cave, but he +shook his head in emphatic negative. Then she gave Grant a strange +smile, almost that of a child who awaits revelation of a mystery. He +saw in deep pools of her eyes a transcendent joy made almost pain by +this moment of hope achieved. She held out her hand for him to take and +they entered the cave. + +When their eyes had become accustomed to the sudden transition from +glaring sunlight into gloom a faint glimmering at the far end of the +sunlight path guided them. Ankle-deep in the dust of ages they groped. +The glimmer waxed stronger. Suddenly Benicia stopped with a catching +of the breath. Grant stooped and lifted a heavy object from a niche of +rock, bringing it into the filtered stream of radiance. + +It was a golden monstrance, dust coated. Faint twinkles of light glowed +like firefly lamps from jewels set in the radii of a glory. A great +diamond above the crystal box caught fire from the sun. + +As Grant hastily bent to replace the sacred vessel his hand tipped the +edge of a shallow basket. From it rolled a stream of moonbeam fire out +into the zone of sunshine. Liquid globules of moon-glow, round and +pellucid as ice crystals, seductive as the shadowed whiteness of a +woman’s throat: the green pearls of the Virgin stripped by the impiety +of El Rojo from the shrine of the Four Evangelists! + +Benicia slowly sank to her knees, words of prayer whispered from her +lips. Prayer of thankfulness and dedication of the lost treasure to the +sanctity of the Church. + +Grant felt his presence in this solemn moment was an intrusion. He +tip-toed back to the mouth of the cave and stood looking out. All the +wildness and the savagery of Altar’s secret fane of the desert god lay +burning and glistening with wetness in the westering sun. The waning +torrent, sardonic gesture of plenty in this ultimate citadel of thirst, +splashed jewels against the lancing light. Here was a world of the +primordial--Creation arrested in its first hour. + +A hand touched his arm lightly. He turned to find Benicia standing +beside him. The sun wove an aura of vivid fire about her head. Her eyes +raised to his were swimming. + +“Now, heart of my heart,” she whispered. And all the love fire in her +flamed from her lips. + + +THE END + + + + + Transcriber’s Notes: + + --Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). + + --A Table of Contents has been provided for the convenience of the + reader. + + --Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected. + + --Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved. + + --Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved. + + --The author’s em-dash and punctuation/endquote styles have been + retained. + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Dust of the Desert, by Robert Welles Ritchie + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DUST OF THE DESERT *** + +***** This file should be named 44691-0.txt or 44691-0.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/4/4/6/9/44691/ + +Produced by Donald Cummings and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/old/44691-0.zip b/old/44691-0.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..1eb390a --- /dev/null +++ b/old/44691-0.zip diff --git a/old/44691-8.txt b/old/44691-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a570080 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/44691-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6879 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Dust of the Desert, by Robert Welles Ritchie + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Dust of the Desert + +Author: Robert Welles Ritchie + +Release Date: January 17, 2014 [EBook #44691] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DUST OF THE DESERT *** + + + + +Produced by Donald Cummings and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + +DUST OF THE DESERT + + + + +Dust of the Desert + +BY ROBERT WELLES RITCHIE + + +[Illustration] + + + A. L. BURT COMPANY + Publishers New York + + +Published by arrangement with Dodd, Mead & Company + +Printed in U. S. A. + + + + + COPYRIGHT, 1922, + BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC. + + PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY + [Transcriber's Note: printer's information was not supplied in the + source text.] + + + + +CONTENTS + + + CHAPTER PAGE + PROLOGUE 1 + I WHAT HAPPENED ON THE LIMITED 17 + II A GIRL NAMED BENICIA 25 + III DOC STOODER 36 + IV COLONEL URGO REPAYS 51 + V THE GARDEN OF SOLITUDE 65 + VI JUSTICE 76 + VII THE CHAIN GANG 85 + VIII THE HEART OF BENICIA 98 + IX GOLD AND PEARLS 108 + X AT THE CASA O'DONOJU 112 + XI THE MARK OF EL ROJO 129 + XII DESERT SECRETS 145 + XIII CROSSCURRENTS 159 + XIV REVELATION 168 + XV WHAT HAPPENED IN THE NIGHT 178 + XVI ACCUSATION 184 + XVII THE ORDEAL 195 + XVIII THE DESERT INTERVENES 211 + XIX THIRST 219 + XX THE COMING OF EL DOCTOR 232 + XXI TREASURE QUEST 247 + XXII ALTAR TAKES ITS TOLL 257 + XXIII INTO THE FURNACE 266 + XXIV STORM 279 + XXV TREASURE TROVE 293 + + + + +DUST OF THE DESERT + + + + +PROLOGUE + + +Roads of men thread the world. They thunder with a life flood. They +are vibrant with a pulse of affairs. By land and water and air they +link to-day to to-morrow. But El Camino de los Muertos (the Road of +the Dead Men) is a dim highway leading nowhere but back and back to +forgotten yesterdays. Its faint sign-posts once were vivid in lettering +of tears and blood. Its stages were measured by the sum of all human +hardihood. Faith, valour, reckless adventuring, thirst for gold, love +o' women--these the links in the measuring chain that marked its course +through a dead land. And black crosses formed of lava stones laid down +in the sand; these abide over all the length of the Road of the Dead +Men from Caborca to Yuma to cry to the white-hot sky of slain hopes and +faith betrayed in those buried years gone. + +The priest-adventurers of New Spain first blazed this trail through +an unknown wilderness. Restless pioneers of the Society of Jesus and +the Order of St. Francis, men with the zeal to dare, pushed out from +the northernmost limits of the Spanish settlements in a new world with +their soldier guards and their Indian guides. They fought death in +a land of thirst northward, ever northward. The cross fell from the +hands of spent zealots at some waterhole where water was not, and other +hands followed to snatch up the sacred emblem and push it deeper into +Papagueria. North and west through El Infiernillo to the red waters of +the Colorado where the Yumas had their reed huts. Thence on to the west +through a land that stank of death until at last the end of the trail +was smothered in the soft green of Californian valleys--good ground for +the seed of Faith. + +The overland trail of the padres became the single trail from Mexico +to gold when the madness of '49 called to all peoples. Then the Road +of the Dead Men took its toll by the score and doublescore. Then men +fought for precious water at Tinajas Altas; many crosses of malapais +mark the sands there. Bandits lurked at Tule Wells, ninety miles over +blistering desert from the nearest water, to shoot men for the gold +they were bringing back from California. The Pock-Marked Woman, mad +with thirst--so runs the legend--walked at nights with the Virgin in +the flats beyond Pitiquito and found water with celestial candles +burning all about the pool. + +So passed the wraiths of the gold madness. A railroad was laid down +from the Pacific eastward across the desert. What once was called +Papagueria had come to be known as Sonora, in Mexico, and Arizona in +the Republic of the North. The Road of the Dead Men at its California +end became a way through green and watered valleys where bungalows +mushroom overnight; along its course in southwestern Arizona and +northern Sonora it lapsed to a faint trail from waterhole to waterhole +of a heat scourged desert. To-day this forgotten remnant of a high +road of adventure and hot romance exists a streak in an incandescent +inferno of sand and lava slag, wherein death is the omnipresent fact. +Occasionally a prospector putters along its dreary stretches, chipping +at ledge and rimrock. A Papago or a Cocopa creeps over caliche-stained +flats with baskets of salt from the Pinacate marshes near the Gulf. + +That is all. The Dead Men hold their road inviolable. It is dust of the +desert. + +That is all, did I say? No, the spirit of romance and the shape of +illusion have not completely passed from El Camino de los Muertos. +Remains that tale which carries itself over a span of a century and +a half, linking lives of the present to lives of men and women whose +very graves long since have passed from sight of folk. A tale strangely +like the desert trail along whose course its episodes of hot passion +and swift action befell; for its beginnings are laid in a mirage of an +elder day which we of the present can see but dimly, and its ending +is beyond the horizon of to-day. Would you know the full story of the +Lost Mission de los Cuatros Evangelistas: how the baleful spell of its +green pearls of the Virgin worked upon the fortunes of the House of +O'Donoju and how the last of that house wrought expiation for the sin +of a forbear through heroism and the fire of a great love--would you +know the full story, I say, you must see with me the substance of a +beginning. + +No more can one plump into the middle of this the last of the romance +tales of the Road of the Dead Men than could one drop onto the Road +itself midway of its length. + + * * * * * + +A King in Spain once followed a practice of careless munificence. +Whenever one of his generals in the great wars appeared worthy of +reward His Majesty used to ink the ball of his thumb and with a grand +and free gesture he would make a print somewhere on the map of Mexico, +then called New Spain. Then the lucky general, taking this patent of +royal favor across the seas with him, would hire surveyors to translate +the print of Philip's thumb into terms of square miles of domain. These +square miles were his and his heirs' to govern like little kings, with +justice in their hands, the Church to give them countenance and Indians +by the hundreds to serve them under a modified code of slavery. No +man has lived since as did those magnificent possessors of Philip's +thumbprints. + +The Rancho del Refugio in the little known reaches of Papagueria was +one of these fiefs of the king. Michael O'Donohue, a wild man of the +red Irish who had fought English kings and queens under the banner of +Spain, had come by the grant originally and had taken a lady of Granada +to the new world to bear him heirs worthy of their inheritance. Michael +O'Donohue became Don Miguel O'Donoju, lord of a desert principality and +a power at the Viceroy's court in the City of Mexico. He established +two rigid precedents to be followed by the house of O'Donoju: pride of +race and jealous conservation of the family principality. It became +a rule of the O'Donoju that none of the clan marry outside the pure +Castilian blood--Irish excepted if Irish could be found; and a rule +that, come what might, no O'Donoju pass title to so much as a foot of +the Rancho del Refugio. + +It was a day in April, the year 1780, that the clan O'Donoju came +to the Mission of the Four Evangelists to lend the dignity of their +presence to the solemn service of re-dedication. More than that, Don +Padraic O'Donoju, venerable head of the house and master of the Casa +O'Donoju in the oasis named the Garden of Solitude, was come to witness +a personal triumph. For it had been his money that had gone to the +Franciscan College to be used in the rebuilding of the frontier post of +God after the Apaches had raided and burned it fifty years before. And +one of his own sons, Padre Felice, had been the architect and builder +of the restored mission and was to continue the priest in charge. Padre +Felice was fourth in a line of O'Donojus to take orders, one from each +generation since the establishment of the grant. + +The O'Donojus--grandchildren, cousins and kin by marriage--had ridden +five days and upwards from various sections of the Rancho del Refugio, +up and out through the Altar desert to this remote sanctuary of God in +the country of the Sand People. They came by the way called the Road of +the Dead Men. Its asperities were softened by the quick desert spring +which tipped each thorny cactus cone with candelabra tufts of golden +and carmine flowers. The desert's usual heat was tempered by the snows +that lay in unnamed mountains to the north. + +They came in a lengthy caravan of horses and burros, with half naked +Indians to herd the goats and the yearling steers that were to be +barbecued for the secular feast to follow the religious rites; with a +half-company of foot soldiers from the Presidio del Refugio to guard +the company against roving Apaches; Indian maids on mule back to serve +the needs of their mistresses, regally mounted on ponies of the Cortez +strain; baggage porters, cooks, roustabouts. Fully a hundred of the +clan O'Donoju and satellites on pilgrimage over the Road of the Dead +Men. + +All of the O'Donoju were there but one, El Rojo--the Red One. The "Red +One" was he because of the throw-back to the red Irish strain of his +fighting ancestor Don Miguel. Red with the pugnacious red of Donegal +was his hair; his cheeks had none of the sallow tan of the Spanish +but were dyed with the stain of Irish bog winds; his eyes were blue +lamps of the devil. A fatherless grandson of old Don Padraic, El Rojo +had played the wild youth in the City of Mexico with only occasional +visits of penance to the Casa O'Donoju in the desert country of the +north until, when the tang of youth still was his, he had tainted his +name with scandal. Followed his formal expulsion from the clan at the +hands of the old aristocrat, his grandfather, and the closing of all +doors of his kindred in Papagueria against him. El Rojo had ridden out +to the wide world of sand and mountains an outcast but with a laugh on +his lips; this a full year before the gathering of the family at the +Mission of the Four Evangelists. + +When El Rojo had turned lone wolf, a sadness that was not the sadness +of shame settled upon the heart of one of the O'Donoju. Frecia +Mayortorena, a cousin, one of the flowers of girlhood that caused old +Hermosillo to be named the Little Garden, sat behind her barred windows +on many a night with heart wild to hear once more the love song only +El Rojo knew how to sing. Frecia Mayortorena, all fire under the cold +ice of her schooled and decorous features, knew that the reckless devil +with the flame-blue eyes had but to come and strum a love call on his +guitar; she would go with him into banishment and worse. So on this +pilgrimage to the shrine of the four holy men the girl, who rode with +her father and brothers, allowed her imagination to frame the figure +of a phantom horseman on every ragged mountain top. At each camp fire +along the Road of the Dead Men, when the vast sea of desert round about +was stilled under the stars, Frecia Mayortorena sat with tiny pointed +chin cupped in a propping palm and seemed to hear in the clink of a +mule's hobble chain the opening chord of that song of songs, + + Red as the pomegranate flower, my love, + The heart of him who sings. + +The cavalcade came to the mission with the firing of guns and with +shouts. The reed-and-mud huts of the Sand People beyond the cloisters +disgorged their shouting savages to welcome the travellers. Padre +Felice, a gaunt man with the face of an ascetic above the folds of his +rough brown cowl, hurried out from the doors of the new sanctuary to +meet and give embrace to his father, Don Padraic, and then in turn to +all his next of kin; behind him followed his two novitiate priests +who were, with Padre Felice, the only white men in all the stretch of +Papagueria from the Rancho del Refugio westward to the Sea of Cortez. +Five days' travel were they from the nearest of their kind, and to west +and north stretched unguessed leagues of the desert. Only the Road of +the Dead Men linked them with the first of the Californian missions +thirty days over the western horizon. + +Missionary to the Sand People was Padre Felice--to that branch of the +Papago tribe of tractable Indians who lived about the east shore of +the Sea of Cortez and on eastward throughout the desert of Altar. The +rebuilt mission stood in the middle of a small oasis which was fed by a +stream down out of the burnt mountains not a mile behind; one of those +rare and furtive desert trickles of water which hides in the sand most +months of the year. The diminutive mission building, with its rounded +dome of sun-burned brick, lifted in sharp outlines above the vivid and +water-fed greenery of the oasis mesquite and _palo verde_; but the +whole--oasis and house of God--was dwarfed by the bleak immensity +of the flanking mountains leaping sheer from the plain to push their +fire-scarred summits against the sky. + +Before the choir of Indian voices intoned the opening prayer of the +dedication service the packs of the O'Donoju caravan yielded precious +things. There was a monstrance of heavy gold studded at its tips with +precious gems; this was the personal offering of old Don Padraic to +the shrine of the Four Evangelists. A chalice of gold, a great altar +crucifix of gold inlaid with mother-of-pearl, a pair of candelabra +wrought of chased silver and a communion service of the same metal +represented the pious contributions of the rest of the clan O'Donoju. + +But most precious of all the altar treasures was that double string +of the pearls of the Virgin which by a miracle had been saved from +plunder of the Apaches when the savages from the north had come burning +and murdering fifty years before. For a half-century the lucent rope +of moonbeam green had lain in the treasure vaults of the Franciscan +College in the City of Mexico awaiting this hour of restoration. Green +pearls fetched from the shell beads of the Sea of Cortez by Indian +converts. Pearls hinting of caves of ocean by their shimmering, +changeful lustre. Pearls to fire the lust of covetousness even from +their hallowed place about the throat of the Virgin. + +Padre Felice held the glinting rope of lights high in dedication, and +as reverently he draped them upon the bosom of the sacred effigy the +clan O'Donoju and all the dark-skinned children of the mission sang a +gloria. + +An untoward incident jarred the merriment of the feasting that followed +the re-dedication of the mission. When whole beeves were being lifted +from the roasting pits and the skins of wine and tequila were passing +from table to table beneath the flowering mesquite trees a column of +dust strode across the desert from the east and spawned two horsemen +upon the oasis. One, a naked Indian of the stature of a giant, reined +in his horse at the far fringe of the mesquite as befitting a servant. +The second rode boldly into the circle of the tables. Silver clinked +from bridle and stirrup leathers of his magnificent white thoroughbred. +The rider's silver-trimmed hat came off with a sweeping bow to include +all there, and the red of his hair was like molten copper in the sun. + +"El Rojo!" was the startled cry on every lip. Men scrambled to their +feet as if to combat some overt move of an enemy. + +"God be with you all," came the Red One's speech of polite greeting, +made all the more ironical by the reckless upturn of his lips in a grin +and the steely lights that flashed from his blue eyes. + +"--And God, or his gentle vicar, Padre Felice, give me place at table +with my noble kin," El Rojo added lightly. "I have travelled far to +have my cup here on this day of celebration." + +The laughing horseman let his eyes dance over the circle of faces until +they came to rest for just an instant upon one. He saw cheeks flaming, +eyes filled with wonder and full lips parted to give a heart its song. +Frecia Mayortorena was seeing a vision in the life. Quickly El Rojo's +glance leaped on as if to shield the girl from contamination. The +venerable Don Padraic, head of the clan O'Donoju, was on his feet now +and trembling. + +"We know you not, sir! We must ask you to begone!" + +El Rojo caused his horse to rear perilously. Before hoofs touched the +ground hardly two paces from the old man the rider again had made his +full-armed bow. He spoke with mock respect. + +"Sanctuary, my grandsire! I and my servant claim sanctuary of Holy +Church. We have ridden far, and good Uncle Felice can not deny us the +charity of his order." + +Don Padraic was being swiftly mastered by his rage when the friar to +whom the unwelcome horseman had appealed pushed his way to the side of +the older man. + +"He speaks the truth, sire," urged the man in the brown habit. "Here on +God's ground we can not be guilty of uncharity." Then, looking up into +the laughing blue eyes of his nephew, "I ask you to descend, sir, and +refresh yourself and your servant until such time as you take the road." + +So all merriment in the oasis of the Four Evangelists was stilled. +There in the single green spot on all the leagues of the Road of the +Dead Men was wrought a comedy; a prelude it was to swift tragedy. The +clan O'Donoju, its satellites and retainers ate and drank in silence, +and apart from this company sat El Rojo and his naked copper giant +alone. From time to time El Rojo lifted his cup as if in ceremonious +health to his kin. Only Frecia Mayortorena read the glint in the blue +eyes which told that the toast was to her--and to what would eventuate. + +Near sundown El Rojo and his Indian rode off to the west, but not +until the outlaw had spent a few minutes alone in the mission. Padre +Felice saw him at prayer before the altar of the Virgin and was deeply +touched that the spirit of religion had not altogether departed from +the family's scapegrace. + +In the dark of midnight Frecia Mayortorena, who had cried herself to +sleep, was awakened by the touch of a hand stretched under the side +of the tent where she slept with the women of the party. A silver +embroidered hat was slipped under the tent to rest on her arm. The +girl dressed herself in a folly of love and terror and stole outside. +The waiting figure of El Rojo's giant Indian detached itself from +the shadow of the mesquite, motioning her to a tethered horse. Blind +infatuation for a hero lover brooked no questioning on the girl's part. +She mounted and followed her guide through the alleys of heavy shade. + +A single dreadful cry sounded from out the opened door of the mission. +A minute later a vague horseman spurred to her side and stopped the +beating of her heart with flaming kisses. The silent desert swallowed +three phantom shapes on horseback. + +Dawn brought revelation and the beginning of that cycle of tragedy and +dreadful pursuit of Nemesis which was to overwhelm the clan O'Donoju. +Padre Felice murdered at the altar of the Virgin, where he had tried +to stay the hand of impiety. The green pearls of the Virgin gone. A +daughter of the house of O'Donoju flown with a thief and a murderer. + +One word more and this mirage of years long dead fades. The curse that +all Papagueria saw descend on the clan O'Donoju spared not even the +sanctuary of the Four Evangelists. A year to the night of the Virgin's +despoliation the Apaches came again to this frontier post of the +Church, and after a spiteful siege they slew the white priests, burned +the mission and carried the Indian converts over the mountains into +slavery. The Franciscans dared not rebuild on such accursed ground. +Winds of the desert, which move sand mountains in their eternal sweep, +played upon the ruined mission year on year to blot even a vestige +of it from the eyes of man. God's hand--so the Indians had it--shook +the mountains behind the little oasis so that the source of the tiny +life-giving stream was blocked. The green vanished like a mist, and +scabrous desert cacti crept in on prickly feet. + +The Mission de los Cuatros Evangelistas became legend. + + + + +CHAPTER I + +WHAT HAPPENED ON THE LIMITED + + +The Golden Sunset Limited, Pacific Coast bound, snaked its way through +a cleft in mountains and came sighing to a stop at the man's town, +El Paso. A patchwork crowd spilled out from the station platform to +push around the ladders of the car icers to the train steps. Swarthy +Mexicans under sombreros, with their black-shawled women and their +little tin trunks, scrambled and clogged at the approaches to the +oven-like day coaches forward. Pullman passengers sauntered over frogs +and switches to plush and rosewood at the train's end. + +Among these was Grant Hickman, civil engineer, New York, lately captain +in the First Division overseas. Arizona bound and west of the Ohio +River for the first time in his thirty years, Hickman had broken his +journey by a day's stopover in El Paso. He had given Juarez a whirl, +decided the kind of life he saw across the International Bridge was +spurious and of little worth, and now was entraining again for his +destination some four hundred miles to the westward. He gave the porter +his bags to stow for him according to the directions scribbled on his +Pullman ticket and began a lazy pacing of the platform, his eye alert +for the colour and the bustle of it all. The blending of two races, of +widely differing civilizations, here in this sturdy city gave Hickman's +restless imagination a smart fillip. He saw men with gaily coloured +blankets worn as cloaks over their shoulders like prayer shawls in a +synagogue; Indians with ornaments of beaten silver and raw turquoise +hasps on their belts had their shoulders planted against solid +brick walls with a grace born only of perfect indolence. All great +stuff--regular musical show background. + +On his first lap down the platform the New York man's eyes rested +momentarily on two figures standing in the drip of one of the car +icers' laden pushcarts. A girl and a man; she hatless as she had left +the car for a stroll, the man all gesticulating hands and eloquently +moving shoulders. Hickman caught a scrap of the man's fervid speech +as he strolled past; it was in a foreign tongue, liquid--almost +lisping--with its softly rolled r's and a peculiar singing intonation +at the upward lift of each period. Spanish undoubtedly. Just an +over-shoulder glimpse of a thin, dark face in sharp profile confirmed +Grant in his guess at the speaker's nationality. The girl's bared head +attracted his appreciative eye; it bore a glory of wondrously burning +red hair, coiled in great masses, vividly alive. + +Grant turned his corner at the platform's end and began to retrace his +steps, consciously bearing in the direction of the beacon hair. When he +was still twenty paces off he saw that the swarthy man had gripped one +of the girl's wrists and that his hawk face was pushed close to hers in +what might have been an access of fury or of pleading. Grant quickened +his pace instinctively; he did not like the looks of that man's talon +grip on a girl's wrist. He paused a decent distance from the twain and +made a pretence of lighting a cigarette while his eyes glanced steadily +over his cupped palms. + +Then a surprising thing. The girl launched some verbal javelin at the +man who gripped her wrist, at the same instant looking down at the +clamping fingers as if to emphasize what must have been a command +to release her. No answer but a flash of white teeth beneath a toy +moustache. The girl's free hand shot to a great coil of hair over the +nape of her neck, came away with twin prongs of thin steel--anchorage +of some hair ornament--showing below her clenched fingers. A lightning +jab downward, and the Spanish-speaking man dropped the imprisoned hand +to whip his own to his mouth. He snarled something in sharp falsetto. +The girl with the red hair tilted her chin at him, and the laugh that +slipped between her grudging little teeth was thin and sharp as the +double dagger points she had used. + +She turned, took three steps to a stool below the Pullman's steps, +mounted with a quick swirl of skirts and was gone. Grant thought he saw +a half-formed determination to follow flash into the Spaniard's eyes. +Without knowing why he did it, the New Yorker hastily put one foot upon +the lower Pullman step and bent his body so as to block access to it. +Very painstakingly he unloosed the knot on his low shoe, straightened +the tongue in place and began taking in slack on every loop of the +strings. + +A grunt of exasperation from behind Grant. When at last he straightened +himself and looked around the Spanish gentleman was gone. He chuckled. + +"Now that, seor, should teach you not to play rough with a red-head." + +He walked down to the Pullman his ticket called for and climbed aboard. +Just as the conductor's bellow, "Bo-oa-rd," sounded, Grant, looking +through the glass of the vestibule, saw the Spanish gentleman with a +grip flying for the train out of the baggage room of the station. + +Passing into the body of the car he found his bags piled upon a seat +midway of its length. As he seated himself he was the least bit +startled to see flaming coils of hair above the top of the seat across +the aisle and one beyond his. Grant was not displeased. Girls with +spirit always walked straight into his somewhat susceptible affections; +and a girl who carried a home-made fish spear in her coiffure-- + +"'Scuse me, Cap'n; ef I could jes' have a look at youah berth ticket. +This gentmum says he reckons you-all's settin' in his seat." Grant +looked up to see the porter shifting uneasily before him and with +a deprecatory grin on his face. By him stood the waspish Spanish +gentleman; the latter inclined himself in a stiff bow as Grant's gaze +met his. Out of the tail of his eye Grant thought he saw a slow turning +of the sunset cloud against the high seat-back ahead. + +"This is my section," Grant drawled with no show of inclination to +arbitrate the matter. "I always buy a section when I travel." + +"But, pardon, sir--" The Spanish gentleman extended a pink slip. "The +agent at the station has but now sold me this lower berth." + +"Indeed?" A slow ache of perversity began to travel along Grant's +spine. He had no love for a man who will manhandle women. "Indeed. The +agent at El Paso sold me mine yesterday." + +"Ef I could see youah ticket," the porter began feebly. + +"You couldn't," Grant snapped. "Perhaps the Pullman conductor may." + +A cloud began gathering over the finely chiselled features of the +Spaniard. His toy moustache went up. He spoke to the porter: + +"The seor is not what we call _sympatico_. Have the kindness to fetch +the conductor." + +The darkey disappeared. Grant turned to look out of the window, +ignoring completely the standing figure in the aisle. But he did not +ignore the reflection a trick of the sun cast on the double glass of +the window. He saw there just the faint aura of a fiery head which +refused to turn, though the compelling gaze of the standing man strove +mightily to command it. Faintly in the magic of the dusty glass was +carried to this bystander, whose neutrality already was considerably +strained, the silent battle of wills. + +The Pullman conductor bustled up to Grant's seat. To him the Spaniard +appealed, offering the evidence of the berth check. Grant vouchsafed +no comment when he passed his own up for inspection. The man in blue +compared them. + +"Some ball-up somewhere," he grunted. Then to Grant: "When was this +ticket sold to you?" + +"Yesterday morning at ten-fifteen o'clock," came the prompt answer. +The waspish Spanish person admitted he had purchased his only a minute +before the train started. The conductor waved at Grant. + +"Then I guess the seat belongs to this gentleman. I'll have to find you +one in another car." + +"But, seor, I have special reason for remaining in this car." The +Spaniard's carefully restrained wrath began to bubble over. Grant +looked up at him and smiled frankly. + +"So have I," he declared levelly. The other's eyes snapped and his lips +lifted over small white teeth in what was meant to be a smile. + +"Seor," he began with a shaking voice, "your courtesy deserves +remembrance. I hope some day it may be my pleasure to show you equal +consideration." + +"Until then--_au revoir_," Grant caught him up. With the porter +preceding him, the loser walked down the aisle to the far door of the +car. As he passed the seat where the girl was he half turned with a +sulky smile. But it was lost. She was looking out at the procession of +the telegraph poles. Grant, catching this final passage in the little +comedy, grinned. + +"There's going to be lots of paprika in this Western hike," joyfully he +assured himself--"or do we call it chili?" + + + + +CHAPTER II + +A GIRL NAMED BENICIA + + +Grant Hickman was not one of that tribe dignified by the name of +he-flirts. He abominated the whole slimy clan with the loathing of a +clean man. When he had seized upon the part of studied rudeness toward +the Spaniard it was not with the ulterior purpose of winning a smile +or paving the way for acquaintance with a pretty woman; Grant's vivid +recollection of the sidewalk cafs of Paris in war time and their +hunting women left him cold toward the type that is careless of men's +approaches. In flouting the foreigner and preventing his scheme to gain +a place in the car with the girl he had bullied on the station platform +the New York man had acted merely on instinct; he had protected a +girl from annoyance. Yet now that he had won through by dint of crass +boorishness--and the young man's conscience gave him a twinge over the +substance of his discourtesy--he suffered a not unreasonable curiosity +regarding the possessor of that glorious beacon in the seat across the +aisle. + +Who was she? What circumstances had led to that scene on the platform +which had ended with the unexpected dagger thrust of the steel hair +ornament? Was this little black-and-tan whipper-snapper a lover--a +brother--blackmailer? Grant's galloping imagination built up flimsy +hypotheses only to rip them apart. And his eyes dwelt upon the soft +involutions of flame coloured hair, which were the only physical +indices of personality granted him thus far. + +Once the object of his conjectures shifted her seat so that a profile +peeped out from behind the wide seat arm. Grant's eyes hungrily conned +delectable details: one broad wing of hair sweeping down in a line of +studied carelessness over a forehead somewhat low and rounded; fine +line of nose with the hint of a passionate spirit in the modelling; +mouth that was all girlish, mobile, ready to reflect whims or laughter. +The sort of mouth, Grant reflected, that could load a laugh with +poison--even as he had seen it done that tense instant on the platform +at El Paso--or freight it with sweetness for a favoured one. A world +of fire and seduction untried lay in the full round lips, yet a chin +with the thrust of will in it warned that the promise of those lips was +jealously guarded. + +A broad sheaf of sunlight lay across her cheek. Grant saw that hers +was not the usual apple tint of the red-haired, the characteristic +skin so delicate as to suggest translucence. Rather a touch of the sun +had spread an impalpable film of tan, warm as the colour of old ivory, +over cheek and throat. Duskiness of a southland dyed cheek and throat +despite the anomaly of the burning hair, quite Celtic. + +The afternoon waned with no favouring fortune throwing Grant's way +opportunity to study the girl closer. When the sunset was in the sky he +walked through the train to the observation platform. As he drew near +the glassed-in end of the observation car he noted with a little leap +of elation that the girl was sitting under the awning beyond the screen +door. He saw, too, the objectionable Spanish gentleman. His midget body +was packed into a chair, one neatly booted foot under him; like some +hunting cat he sat in watchful patience inside the body of the car, his +eyes never leaving the figure of the girl beyond the screen door. + +Grant passed through to the platform, not giving the Spaniard so much +as a glance. As the door slammed behind him the girl looked up quickly. +Grant saw her eyes were blue, saw, too, a fighting gleam quickly pass +from them. Evidently he was not the one they expected to fall upon. +A pretty confusion which tried to deny recognition swiftly replaced +the strained look. Grant allowed himself to be bold to the extent of +tip-tilting his cap. The girl evidently decided that to overlook a +service done would be pushing decorum too far; she gave Grant a quick, +shy smile which might have carried a hint of gratitude mingled with +nave humour. + +"You were very kind," she said as Grant took the camp-stool next to +her, "and very amusing. The high hand--you possess the art of using it, +sir." + +"I should be ashamed of my rudeness," he answered with a quick smile. +"But somehow I am not. Your way of repelling attack has its advantages, +too--" His eyes strayed to the silver comb, whose concealed steel had +been so efficacious on the El Paso platform. The girl reddened prettily. + +"Always one must be--prepared against--persuasion," was the answer +that put a period to all reference which might be distasteful. Grant +would have liked to know more of circumstances that had pushed this +radiant young person into the grip of a bullying little civet cat of a +Spaniard, but he dared not risk rudeness by further questioning. Reward +enough was his already; he had it in the swift play of laughter across +delicate features, in the sweetly resonant quality of her voice, all of +a part with the engaging exotic character of the girl. For American she +assuredly was not, though her trim tailoring was impeccably the mode of +the moment. Her speech had a rippling musical lilt to it suggestive of +a mother tongue less harsh than Anglo-Saxon; her enunciation was too +perfect to be American. There was a trick of the eyes, something almost +vocal, which was an inheritance from mothers whose speech is sternly +hedged about by conventions but who find subtler ways of expression. + +What could her nationality be? Assuredly not Irish, though eyes and +hair were exactly what Grant had seen in the green island during a +furlough spent in jaunting cars and peaty inns. Mexican? The flame hair +denied that. Here was another mystery to be set aside with that of the +encounter at the station. With two avenues of conversation closed Grant +plunged blindly along one strictly innocuous. + +"We seem to be getting rather deep into the desert." He waved out at a +hundred mile vista of sunset painted waste, all purple and hot gold in +the glory from the west--a new picture for the eastern man. The girl +made an unconscious movement of half-stretched arms as if to free her +soul for wandering in limitless spaces. + +"Yes, the desert," she breathed. "How wonderful! And for me, returning +to it after two years in cities--in cities where one chokes from walls +all about--you see how the desert welcomes with all its glory." Grant +looked at her curiously; he saw a vision in her eyes. + +"Then you like this--this dry and barren land? Why, I thought +nobody lived out here unless he had to. No trees, no water--" The +girl's wondering eyes upon him checked his summary of the desert's +shortcomings. + +"You do not know the desert then," she reproved. "You have never seen +the _palo verde_ tree when every branch is heavy with gold. You do not +know how the _sahuaro_ wreathes itself a crown of blossoms--the tough +old _sahuaro_, a giant with flowers on his head ready to play with +spring fairies. Water!"--a crescendo gust of laughter--"You think water +only comes from a faucet. If you dug for it with your bare hands--dug +and dug in hot sands while death moved closer to you each hour, then +you would come to see a real beauty in water." + +"You know something of the desert," Grant conceded. + +"Something! Seor"--the alien word slipped from her in her flurry of +devotion--"seor, my home is there and my father's home has been there +more than a hundred and fifty years. I have been away from it in the +slavery of the cities--two years at music in New Orleans and Baltimore. +Now I return. To-morrow morning at Arizora big Quelele, my father's +Indian servant, meets me to take me a hundred miles--a hundred miles +off the railroad and away from the nearest city to my home." + +"But Arizora is where I am bound," Grant eagerly caught her up. "That's +on the Line, isn't it? A hundred miles--why, then you must live in +Mexico." She nodded. His curiosity would not down: + +"Then you are Mexican?" + +An instant her blue eyes sparkled resentment. Grant sensed he had made +some blunder, though he could not for the life of him guess how his +innocent question could have offended. The girl, on her part, quickly +regretted her show of displeasure; one new to the Southwest naturally +could not know much about its social distinctions. + +"Not Mexican," she amended gently. "We are Spanish folk living in +Mexico. We have always been Spanish since the time one of my ancestors +got his grant from the king of Spain. Never Mexican. That sounds like +silly boasting to you. When you have lived in this country for a little +while you will understand why we have pride in our blood. Just as you +have pride, seor, in your American blood when all the cities of your +country are choked with mongrels." + +Hoping to hear her name, Grant gave her his own. She repeated it as +if to fix it in memory; then she told him hers. Benicia O'Donoju it +is written, but in her mouth the two words had a quality like a muted +violin note, too fugitive to be imprisoned in letters. She spoke the +surname without accent on any syllable--"Odonohoo." The man grasped at +something evanescent in the sound: + +"Why, I'd pronounce that 'O'Donohue.'" + +"My great-great-grandfather did." Once more Grant's ears drank in that +velvety contralto laughter which bubbled to her lips so easily. "You +would pronounce his first name 'Mike,' and so did he." + +"Then your first name should be Peg or Molly-o," Grant rallied. She +shook her head in gay denial. + +"Seorita Peg--impossible! Benicia is much better. It means 'Blessed' +in our tongue. 'Blessed are the pure in heart,' Seor Hickman; or +'Blessed are the meek.' I might be either if I could forget I am an +O'Donoju." + +"Benicia." Grant tried to copy the slurring softness she gave to the +word.--"B'nishia: that sounds like little bells. I like it." + +"You are gracious, seor. I thought Americans were too busy with +skyscrapers and wheat markets to learn the art of paying compliments +gracefully." + +"Compliments are born, not paid," he joked. Conversation limped no +longer. Youth has a way of opening little windows in the souls of two +brought together under its wizardry and giving each elusive peeps +into secret chambers. It was Benicia who first became conscious of +the lateness of the hour and the strain on strict canons of propriety +her presence alone with a stranger on the observation platform had +entailed. She arose with a little laugh. + +"My guardian"--a roguish glance toward the tiny figure of the Spaniard +still on the watch beyond the platform's glass--"I fear he does not +approve. And so--_adios_." She gave Grant the tips of her fingers and +was gone. + +He watched her pass where the sentinel was sitting. The little man +uncurled himself from his hump-shouldered crouch and scrambled to his +feet as if he would speak to her. But Benicia, bowing sweetly, passed +on up the aisle and into the alley of rosewood and glass beyond. After +a moment's hesitation the Spaniard came to the screen door giving onto +the platform, where Grant now stood alone, and opened it. He scratched +a match and put it to his cigarette. Grant saw the flare illumine +a cruel hawk's nose and thin, saturnine lips. The Spaniard inhaled +deeply, then let thin streams of smoke seep from his nostrils. + +"Seor"--his voice was cold as a lizard's foot--"perhaps you do not +know that Seorita O'Donoju is travelling under my protection." + +Grant took time to tap a cigarette on the heel of his palm and light it +before he answered. His eyes were brimming with laughter. + +"Perhaps not," he said. "I congratulate the lady on her protector." +Again blue smoke played over the toy moustache; little eyes were +snapping like a badger's. + +"I have the honour to inform you, seor, that your attentions to the +lady do her no credit and that they must cease." + +"Really!" Grant's settled good humour received a jar. He felt a +tingling of fighting nerves down his back. "Really? And who constituted +you judge of the value of my attentions?" + +"Very naturally I have appointed that position to myself, seor, since +Seorita O'Donoju is to become my wife." + +"Ah!" Grant's interjection did not carry all the irony he would have +wished. His assurance was a trifle shaken. + +"And so," the little man continued, "it is understood. You will not +address the lady further." Grant laughed. + +"My understanding is very weak and not at all reliable. I promise you +that unless the lady objects I shall continue to address her whenever +opportunity presents." + +The little figure in the doorway straightened itself in an access of +dignity. He snapped his cigarette over the car rail. + +"Seor, let us have no misunderstanding. We approach the Border, +where every man works justice according to the dictates of his own +conscience. To-morrow we touch Mexico, where it is known that Colonel +Hamilcar Urgo is a law unto himself. I am that Colonel Hamilcar Urgo. +Need I go farther?" + +"And I am Captain Grant Hickman, formerly of the First Division, +Expeditionary Forces. Go as far as you like!" + + + + +CHAPTER III + +DOC STOODER + + +With evenly divided cause and equal cheerfulness Grant could have +kicked the porter and himself when he awoke tardily next morning +and found his car at a standstill. He raised the berth curtain and +looked out. On the eaves of a station he saw a white board with the +name "Arizora" painted upon it and certain irrelevant advice as to +the distance to New Orleans and to Culiacan. Out through the curtains +popped his head and he whistled the porter. + +"Why didn't you give me a call?" was his angry demand. + +"Yassuh, yassuh, ev'body in this kyar gets out here. Mos' have gone an' +done it a'ready. You see, Cap'n, this kyar's been switched off here at +the Line two hours ago; train's kep' right on goin' into Sonora." + +Grant, cursing his luck, boiled into his clothes and made a race for +the washroom. He was hoping against luck that Benicia O'Donoju had not +been an earlier riser than himself. With his face puffy with lather, +he stopped from minute to minute to peep through the window giving onto +the station platform. A decrepit autobus was backed up against the curb +with a few passengers sitting patiently on its frayed seats; loungers +were dangling their legs from baggage trucks; under wooden awnings of a +business block across from the station a Mexican was languidly sweeping +out a store. Arizora had not yet come to life. + +Just as Grant was towelling the last remnants of shaving lather from +his cheeks he made another quick survey of the platform and his +heart dropped into his shoes. Benicia walked into the field of the +washroom window; with her the unspeakable Spaniard, who carried her +neat travelling satchel as well as his own bag. The girl was fresh +as the dawn in a suit of khaki, short-skirted over high laced boots +of russet leather. Rebellious hair strayed from beneath the brim of +a soft-crowned Stetson, saucily noosed to her head by a fillet of +leather under her chin. Soft green of a scarf lightly drew together at +her throat the wings of her khaki collar. Nothing of the theatrical +or self-consciousness of tailoring in the picture the desert girl +made; she was the spirit of the Southwest, unsophisticated and without +pretence. By her side the little Spaniard with his knife-edged +trousers and thin-waisted coat appeared comic. + +As Grant, towel in hand, lingered by the window feeding his soul with +vain regrets, a crazy thing on wheels swung around the station and came +to a stop by the girl's side. It might have been called an automobile +by courtesy, though there was little to identify it as a member of +the gas family save that it went of its own traction. Engine naked, +dash gone, two high-backed seats of unpainted tin like the wing of +an old-fashioned sitz-bath and unprotected by a top; behind these a +home-built box body wherein a trunk and a suitcase were lashed. Grant +was seeing his first desert speeder, rebuilt for service of a highly +specialized kind. The man at the wheel was no less in character--an +Indian in overalls and high peaked sombrero; a giant of a man with +shoulders of a wrestler and dull bronze features of a Roman bust. + +What ensued upon the arrival of the auto nearly drove the watcher, +shirtless as he was, out to two-fisted intervention. Urgo, the +salamander, evidently was of a mind to make a third in the car. Grant +saw his humped shoulders and expostulating hands, saw Benicia tilt +her chin as she gave him some cold refusal. But the colonel calmly +stowed his suitcase by the side of the trunk in the box body, evidently +planning to use it as a seat. Again Benicia, now in her place by the +side of the Indian giant, turned to give him peremptory refusal. The +Indian at the wheel had his engine going and was sitting statue-like, +utterly detached from the quarrel. + +Urgo stepped on the rear wheel's hub and had one hand on the floor of +the box body when one of the Indian's hands flashed up the spark even +as his foot went down on the gear pedal. The crazy little car leaped +like a singed cat. Colonel Urgo cut a neat arc, hit the road on his +back and rolled over just in time to escape receiving amidships his +suitcase, which the Indian driver had dropped from the car without +turning his head. + +In the Pullman washroom Grant collapsed to the seat and smeared soap +into his eyes while he tried to check tears of laughter. The fall of +the peppery little Spaniard had been colossal, and he guessed it had +been wrought at the quick prompting of the spirited girl in khaki. What +a wonder she was! All laughter and bubbling spirits one minute; quick +as a leopard to strike the next. + +"Man"--Grant addressed a beaming face in the glass--"man, always lay +your bets on a red-headed girl!" + +That minute of communion with a smiling confidant was an important +one in the life of Grant Hickman, cautious bachelor. For it came to +him with the force of a hammer blow that he wanted and must have this +vivid creature of the desert named Benicia O'Donoju. Girl of fire and +sparkle--of a spirit free and piquant as the winds that blow across the +wastes--unspoiled of cities and the stale conventions of drawing rooms. +Oh, he would have her! Gone she might be, out into a land beyond his +ken. Unguessed barriers of circumstance, of others' intervention, might +have to be scaled; but somehow, somewhere, Grant Hickman was going to +find and win Benicia O'Donoju. + +Love at first sight--old-fashioned, mid-Victorian stuff, says the +cynical dbutante over her cigarette and outlaw cocktail. In New York +tearooms and Washington ballrooms, quite so. Where girls of twenty must +know the sum that stands in bank to Clarence's credit, before Clarence +is marked down as eligible, love at first sight is, in truth, dead as +the dodo bird. Even so, spirit still calls to spirit and like leaps to +like most all the world over. It is only where fungus spots stain the +garden that love will not bloom. + +When Grant quit the Pullman Colonel Urgo was nowhere to be seen. Grant +idly wondered as he walked to the hotel, directly across a plaza +from the station, how long it would be before he encountered this +half-portion rival of his and what would be the Spaniard's first move +in his frank threat of reprisals of the night before. But when he was +shown to his room--and the New York man whimsically reflected he had +seen better ones at the Admiral on Madison Avenue--events of recent +hours were pushed back from his attention by the more immediate demands +of his presence in Arizora. He took from his suitcase the letter that +had brought him sky-hooting across the continent to this back-water of +life on the Mexican Line and skimmed it through: + + "... I know just how hard it is for you to settle down to + office routine after the Big Show. All of us are in the same + fix, Old-timer, but I have the edge on you because out here in + this man's country there's something breaking every minute. + That's the reason I'm writing you this mysterious letter.... + Old Doc Stooder is counted the prime nut of Southern Arizona, + but I believe he's got a whale of a proposition and that's why + I'm counting myself--and you--in on the deal. + + "I've sewed myself up with him--promised not to peep a word of + the real dope to you in this letter. The old Doc says, 'We'll + need a good engineer and if your buddy in France has a head on + him and knows how to keep his mouth shut tell him to come out + here.' ... So if you still have that old take-a-chance spirit + that hopped you through the Big Mill from Cantigny to Sedan + I'll see you in Arizora. If I'm not in town when you arrive dig + up Doc Stooder--everybody knows him. + + "Yours for the big chance, + + "BIM." + +Grant folded the letter with a smile. Good old Bim with his "whale of +a proposition." Running true to form was Bim in this characteristic +letter. Just as Grant had come to know and love him in training area +and dugout: Bim Bagley, six-feet-one of tough Arizona bone and muscle +and brimful of wild optimism. Always ready to take a chance, whether +at the enemy on all fours through midnight mud or at fortune in the +wild lands of the Border: that was Bim Bagley of Arizona, "the finest +country in the Southwest." + +And Bim had shot truer than he could know when he sent this hint of big +things in the offing back to a man two years out of uniform and moping +for excitement on the sixteenth floor of a skyscraper in Manhattan. +Two years of civilian's life had been just that span of slow moral +suffocation for Grant. For all his thirty years, for all his better +than moderate success in a profession of sharp competition, Grant +Hickman still could hear the call to the swimmin' hole of adventure. +How he had yearned to hear it these past two years when the springs of +his soul still tingled with the high tension of battle lines! Then this +letter from a pal, promising all the substance of his dreams. It had +not been a week in the engineer's pocket before he was on the train for +Arizora. + +Grant went out to find Bagley. He located his office--"Insurance, +Bonds, Investments" was the sign on the glass of the door; but the lock +was turned and no one opened at his knock. His eye caught a corner of +white paper projecting through the letter slot. + +"Grant:--Called out of town--back Friday. B. B." was the scrawl across +the face of it. A stab of disappointment was his; he had builded +heavily on that moment of meeting when Bim's big hand would have his +own in a vise. Nothing to do now but see the town and amuse himself as +he might, or call on that mysterious Doc Stooder and discover why Grant +Hickman had come racing out to this Arizora. He decided to do both. + +The Arizora Grant saw in an hour's swinging round the circle was +something different from the "hick town" his New York smugness had +pictured in anticipation. It was a condensed El Paso, jammed in the +narrow compass of a mountain gorge, with railroad yards monopolizing +the whole of the flat space between crowding hills. A man could go from +his home to business by the simple trick of leaping off the front porch +of his bungalow with an opened umbrella. Arizora's streets were jammed +with cars--fantastic desert coursers stripped to the nines and with +canteens strapped to the running board. Sidewalks swarmed with men--big +men with steady eyes looking out from beneath sombreros the size of a +woman's garden hat; men with high-heeled boots and the pins of many +lodges stuck on their unbuttoned vests; lantern-jawed, hollow-templed +men of the sun, whose bodies were indurated by the desert law of +struggle and whose souls were simple as a fairy book. + +Across Main Street stretched a fence of rabbit-proof wire with three +strands of barbed wire topping that; a fence with something like a +pasture gate swung back for traffic. This was the Line. On the hither +side of that rabbit-proof wire web the authority of a President and his +Congress stopped; on the far side the authority of quite a different +president and his peculiar congress began. Over yonder, where stood a +man under a straw sombrero and with a rifle hung on one shoulder, lay +Sonora and the beginning of a thousand mile stretch of fantastic land +called Mexico. A cart with solid wooden wheels and drawn by oxen under +a ponderous yoke blocked the way of a twelve-cylinder auto seeking +clearance at the international gate. + +When he had tired of sight seeing Grant inquired at a cigar counter +where Dr. Stooder could be found. The breezy man in shirtsleeves +grinned and glanced at the clock on the wall behind him. + +"Well, sir, usually mornings he's over across the Line getting +organized for the day on tequila. Mostly he comes back to his office +round noon time, steppin' wide and handsome. Office's over yonder, +top-side of the Bon Ton barber shop. You might give it a look." + +Grant acted on the cigar clerk's advice. He located a dingy door +at the end of a dark upper hallway with the lettering, "A. Stooder, +M.D.," on a tin sign over the transom. Entering, he found himself in a +sad company. Three Mexican women and a man of the same race sat like +mourners on chairs about the wall; a big-eyed child squatted in the +middle of the floor and listlessly pulled a magazine to bits. The stamp +of woe and of infinite patience was set on all the dark faces. Mephitic +smell of iodoform was in the air. Grant hastily withdrew. After an +hour's walking and when the whistles were blowing noon he returned. A +different collection of patient waiters occupied the chairs; evidently +the doctor was in and at work. + +He took a chair by the window where he could look down into the street +and so keep the set masks of misery out of his eyes. After fifteen +minutes the door to the inner office was violently opened and a Mexican +woman shot out of it as if propelled by a kick. Thundering Spanish +pursued her. Grant saw a scarecrow figure framed in the doorway. + +Tall beyond the average and gaunt almost to the point of emaciation; +frock coated like a senator of the Eighties; thin shoulders seeming +bowed by the weight of the garments hung thereon; enormous, heavily +veined hands carried as if hooked onto invisible hinges behind the +stained white cuffs:--this the superficial aspect of Dr. Stooder. Vital +character of the man was all summed up in his face: skin like wrinkled +vellum stretched on a rack; eyes glinting from deep caves on either +side of a veritable crag of a nose which had been broken and skewed off +the true. A great mane of grey hair reared up and back from his high +forehead; tufts of the same colour on lip and chin in the ancient mode +of the "Imperial" added the last daguerreotype touch to his features. + +Black eyes roved the room and fell on Grant, who had risen. The doctor +crooked a bony finger at him and he passed through into the private +office, taking the seat indicated. Without paying his visitor the least +heed, Dr. Stooder went to a closet, poured two fingers of some white +liquid into a graduating glass and drank it. His lips smacked like a +pistol shot. Then he returned and took a swivel chair before a very +shabby and littered desk. + +"I never seen you before, sah"--the man's accent reeked of Texas, the +old Texas before the oil invasions. "So I'll answer the question every +stranger's just mortal dying to ask and don't dare. How'd I come to +get this scar?" The surprising doctor tilted his great head back and +traced with his fore-finger an angry weal which encircled his throat +like a collar gall. "Well, sah, I was informally hanged once--and cut +down. Now we can get down to business. What's your symptoms?" + +Grant, caught off balance by so unconventional a reception, stammered +that he had no symptoms. + +"My friend, Bim Bagley, who is out of town for a few days, told me to +look you up. My name is Grant Hickman. I'm from New York." The black +eyes, never deviating from their disconcerting stare, showed no flicker +of recognition at the name. + +"What you want of me if you have no symptoms?" abruptly in the doctor's +nasal bray. "I'm not in the market for the World's Library of Wit and +Humour. I'll cut you for a tumour or dose you for dyspepsia; but I +won't buy a book." + +"I have no books to sell." Grant found his temperature rising. "I have +come out from New York because you told my friend Bagley to send for +me." + +Doc Stooder suddenly snapped out of his chair like a yard rule +unfolding and strode to the closet. With bottle and graduating glass +poised he bent a severe eye upon his visitor. + +"You say you don't drink. Highly commendable. I do." Again the pistol +shot from satisfied lips. He replaced the bottle and tucked his hands +under the tails of his coat where they flapped the sleazy garment +restlessly. + +"You call yourself an engineer. How do I know you are?" + +Grant had said nothing about being an engineer. Doc Stooder had +identified him right enough. What reason for his bluff, then? + +"My dear sir, graduates of Boston Tech. do not carry their diplomas +round with them on their key rings. You'll have to take Bagley's word +for it that I'm an engineer if my own is not convincing." + +The gangling doctor took two turns of the office with enormous strides; +one hand tugged at his straggling goatee. Abruptly he stopped by +Grant's chair. + +"Young man, what need do you figure a doctor in Arizora would have of +an engineer--more especial an engineer from New York? Why should I tell +this Bagley, who's as crazy as a June-bug, to fetch a graduate engineer +out to Arizora? Engineers are a drug on the market here--and every one +of 'em a crook." + +Grant's patience snapped. He rose and strode to the door. + +"Dr. Stooder, I didn't come away out here to your town to have +somebody play horse with me. When you are sober you can find me at the +International Hotel." + +A grin started under Doc Stooder's moustache and travelled swiftly to +his ears. + +"God bless my soul, boy! When I'm sober, you say. I'm never sober and I +hope I never will be--" + +Grant slammed the door behind him. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +COLONEL URGO REPAYS + + +Before he had descended to the street Grant began to regret his flash +of anger which had launched him out of Doc Stooder's office. To be +sure, the unconventional doctor had been insulting; his was hardly the +orthodox reception to be expected by one who had crossed the continent +to become his partner in some hidden enterprise. Equally certain it was +that, to apply the cigar clerk's pat phrase, Stooder was "organized +for the day"; the finishing touches to that organization had been made +in two trips to the closet in Grant's presence. Need one have been so +touchy under these alcoholic circumstances? + +Strive as he would to put the best face on the matter, the man from +New York could not escape a lowering of the spiritual barometer. Here +he was, a stranger in an outlandish desert town with none to give him +so much as a friendly glance. Glances enough came his way, but they +were inspired by his clothes, the cut of which seemed to put them +beyond the pale. Grant pleasured himself by reviewing his case in the +most pessimistic light. He had been but a fortnight ago a sober and +industrious citizen. Came to him a wild letter hinting darkly of some +shadowy enterprise in a bleak land. Instantly he had quit his work and +galloped across two thousand miles to encounter a scarecrow cynic who +greeted him as a book agent. + +He wandered aimlessly beyond the town and out onto a road which +wound up to the edge of one of the mesas which were the eaves of +Arizora. Well might drivers of passing cars stare at the figure of a +broad-shouldered young man in a black derby and double-breasted coat, +who was afoot in a country where no man walks unless he carries a +blanket on his shoulders--unless he is a "stiff," in the phrase of the +Southwest. Even though February was but on the wane, already the sun +was guarantor of a promise to pay with heat interest in sixty days. + +He came to the top of the rise and halted under the psychic compulsion +of boundless space. For space, crystalline and ethereal as the gulf +between stars, flowed from him as an ocean. The air that filled this +space was so thin, so impalpable as to seem no air at all, and it was +tinted faint gold by reflection from the desert below. Mountains near +and far were so many detached reefs taking the silent surf of the ocean +of space; they were tawny where shadows did not smear purple-black +down their sides. Near at hand showed the grim desert growths: prickly +clumps of _cholla_, whose new daggers sparkled like frosted glass; +fluted columns of _sahuaro_, or giant cactus, lifting their fat arms +twenty and thirty feet above the ground; vivid green of cottonwoods +laid in a streak to mark a secret watercourse. + +To the man just come from the softness and languor of Eastern +landscapes, where lakes lie in the laps of green hillocks, this first +intimate view of the desert carried some subtle terror prick. The iron +savagery of it! What right had man or beast to venture here? + +Then flashed to his mind the picture of Benicia O'Donoju, the girl who +loved the desert, who felt she was prisoner only when hedged about by +the walls of cities in the East. Somewhere to the south where a higher +raft of peaks marked Sonora's mystery land--somewhere in country like +this she was speeding to her home. What kind of a home might that be? +How could a girl with the bounding vitality that was hers find life +worth living in a land enslaved by thirst? A hundred miles from town +or railroad, she had said:--a hundred miles deep in such a wilderness +her home! Heavens, how he pitied her! + +Grant turned back to the town, revolving over and over in his mind +the first steps he would have to take to learn where Benicia O'Donoju +lived; and, haply discovering the place of her abode, how to get there. + +By the time night fell the restless visitor to Arizora had exhausted +the town's opportunities for amusement. He crossed the Line into the +companion Mexican community, Sonizona. Here was beguilement enough. +The rabbit-proof fence which converted Main Street into a Calle +Benito Juarez also marked a frontier no less obvious. North of the +fence was aridity to rejoice the conscience of the most enthusiastic +prohibitionist; south of it the frail goddess Virtue tottered in her +step. In Arizona a man sought traps and deadfalls consciously and +with a secret thrill of bravado; in Sonora he avoided them only by +the most circumspect watching of his step. Dark streets winding along +the contours of the crowding mountains were raucous with the bray of +phonographs and the tin-panning of pianos. Lattices over darkened +windows trembled as one passed and the ghosts of whispers fluttered +through them. Where an occasional arc lamp threw a spot of radiance +across the 'dobe road lurked shadowy creatures who whined in an +American dialect for money to buy drugs. + +Grant did not realize that when he passed through the rabbit-proof +fence he left behind him everything for which he paid income tax and +other doles--protection, due processes of law, all the checks and +balances on society and the individual painstakingly built up under +the Anglo-Saxon scheme of things. He did not conceive himself in the +light of an alien--of a not-too-popular nation--gratuitously placing +himself under the protection of laws quite the opposite in terms of +interpretation. Nor did he appreciate that, save for his suitcase and +a signature on a hotel register, he had left behind him nothing to +bear testimony to the fact that a man named Grant Hickman had come +to Arizora and had left the United States to enter Mexico. All these +inattentions he recalled later when opportunity for correction had +passed. + +Grant was circling the plaza, where the municipal band was giving a +concert, when amid the strollers he thought he saw a familiar face. He +looked again and was sure. Little Colonel Urgo, in a snappy uniform of +dark blue with back-turned cape, was walking with a woman whose beauty +was that of the blown peony. Chance brought Urgo's eyes Grant's way. +They lighted with sudden surprise, then the colonel brought up his hand +in a salute. A flash of teeth was cut by the travelling hand; it was +like a too quick shutter on the villain's smile in Way Down East. + +Grant doffed his hat and passed on. Half an hour later a particularly +glittering sheaf of lights he had noted in earlier saunterings pricked +his curiosity and he turned into a low building just off the plaza. A +bare front room easily visible from the street was a too obvious blind +for complacent police inspection; through an open arch in its rear wall +a crowded gambling room was given false length by wall mirrors in dingy +frames. Fifty or more men and women were clustered about roulette, +faro and crap tables. A fat Chinaman with a face expressionless as a +bowl of jelly sat on a dais behind a little desk stacked high with +silver and with deft movement of his fingers achieved nice problems in +international exchange. Pursuit of the goddess Luck was being engaged +in with a frankness and business-like absorption quite different from +furtive evasions of hidden attic and camouflaged club across the Line. + +Grant exchanged a ten-dollar note for a heavy stack of Mexican silver +and moved over to a table where two ivory cubes were dancing to the +droning incantations of a big negro game keeper. He was curious to see +whether Big Dick and Lady Natural were as temperamental a couple in +Mexico as he had discovered them to be in many a front-line dugout in +France. + +"Come to papa!" A raw-boned Arizonan across the table was singing to +the dice held in his cupped palms, huge as waffle irons; a humorous imp +of strong liquor danced in his eyes. "Cap'n come down the gangplank and +says, 'Good mawnin', Seven!'" + +The ring of dark faces about the green cloth stirred and white teeth +flashed unlovely smiles when a six and a one winked up from the dice. A +chinking of silver dollars as a red paw gathered them in. + +"Baby! Now meet you' grandpaw, Ole Man E-oleven. Wham! Lookit! Five an' +a six makes e'oleven! How's that for nussin' 'em along, white man?" +The crap wizard looked across to Grant and grinned in amity. Mexican +scowls accompanied the covering of the winner's pile left temptingly +untouched. Grant felt an undefined tugging of race bonds here in this +ring of alien faces, and he backed the Arizonan against the field. On +his third throw the big fellow made his point. + +"That's harvestin'! That's bringin' in the sheaves! Now here's my stack +of 'dobe dollars for any Mex to cop if he thinks the copping's good." + +When it came Grant's turn to throw his new-found friend played him +vociferously against the Mexican field, calling upon all present to +witness that a white man sure could skin anything under a sombrero, +from craps to parchesi. For the first time since he had left the train +that morning the New Yorker felt the warming tingle of fellowship; the +gaunt, sunburned face of the desert man with the dancing imps of humour +in the eyes was a jovial hailing sign of fraternity. + +"Shoot 'em, Mister Man! You're rigged for Broadway, Noo Yawk, but I can +see from here that you has the lovin' touch." + +Grant rolled and won, rolled and won again. Carelessly he dropped the +heavy fistfuls of dollars into the side pocket of his coat. Even when +he lost his point, he had a bulging weight of silver there. Grant was +enjoying the game itself not nearly so keenly as he did the Arizonan +across the table, his Homeric humour and the bewildering wonder of his +vocabulary. So intent was he that he did not see Colonel Urgo enter, +nor did he catch the almost imperceptible nod toward him that the +little officer passed to a furtive-eyed tatterdemalion who accompanied +him. The latter by a devious course of idling finally came to a stand +behind Grant and appeared to be a keen spectator of the game. + +"Ole Man Jed Hawkins' son is a-goin' splatter out a natch'ral. Ole Man +Hawkins' son is a-goin' turn loose the hay cutter an' mow him a mess of +greens. Comes Little Joe! Dip in, Mexes, an' takes yo' fodder! Now the +man from Dos Cabezas starts a-runnin'--" + +A hand was busy at Grant's pocket--a slick, suave hand which replaced +weight for weight what it subtracted. Just three quick passes and +the tatterdemalion who had been so intent on the prancing dice lost +interest and moved away. + +It came Grant's turn to roll the dice. He dipped into his pocket and +carelessly dropped a stack of eight silver dollars on the table. One +of them rolled a little way and flopped in front of a Mexican player. +The latter started to pass the dollar back to Grant when he hesitated, +gave the coin a sharp scrutiny, then balanced it on a finger tip and +struck its edge with one from his own pile. + +"Seor!" An ugly droop to his smiling lips. "Ah, no, seor!" + +He passed the dollar over to Grant with exaggerated courtesy. Eyes all +about the table, which had followed the pantomime with avid interest, +now centred on the American's face. As if on a signal the fat Chinaman +at the exchange desk waddled over to shoulder his way officiously to +Grant's side. He growled something in Spanish and held out his hand. +Dazedly Grant laid the suspected dollar in a creasy palm. The Chinaman +flung it on the green felt with a contemptuous "Faugh!" and he pointed +imperiously at Grant's bulging pocket. + +"It's a frame, pardner," called the Arizonan. "If your money's bogus +it's what the Chink himself handed you." + +"I came in here with American money and changed it at your desk," +Grant quietly addressed the Chinaman. "See here; this is the money I +either got from you or won at this table." He brought from his pocket a +brimming handful of Mexican dollars and dumped them on the cloth. Two +or three of the heavy discs shone true silver; the others were clumsy +counterfeits, dull and leaden. + +A cry, half snarling laughter, from the crowd about the table, now +grown to a score: "Aha--gr-ringo!" + +A movement of the crowd forward to rush Grant against the wall. Then +with a cougar's spring the big Arizonan was on the solid table, feet +spread wide apart, head towering above the tin light shade. He balanced +a chair in one hand as the conductor of an orchestra might lift his +baton. His gaunt features were split in a wide grin. Before Grant could +gather his senses a big paw had him by the shoulder and was dragging +him up onto the green island of refuge. + +"They don't saw no whizzer off on a white man wiles ole Jed Hawkins' +boy got his health," Grant's companion bellowed a welcome. "I got these +greasers' number, brother!" + +Grant's gaze as he rose to his feet over the heads all about +encountered two interesting objects. One was Colonel Urgo, who stood +alone in a far corner of the room; the colonel was smiling with rare +good humour. A second was a man wrapped about with a blanket, over +whose shoulder appeared the tip of a rifle; he was just coming through +from the front room on a run and there were three like him following. +Rurales, the somewhat informal bandit-policemen of Mexico. + +Just what ensued Grant never could quite piece together. He remembered +seeing Hawkins wrench off a leg from his chair and send it whizzing at +a central cluster of light globes in mid-ceiling. They snuffed out with +a thin tinkling of glass. Then the rush. + +Out of the dark swirl of figures about the table's edge a vivid spit +of flame--roar of a pistol shot. Hands grappling for braced legs on +the table top. "Huh" of breath expelled as Hawkins swung his chair in +a wide sweep downward. A cry, "Hesus!" Oaths chirped in the voice of +songbirds. A knife missing its objective and trembling rigid in the +midst of the baize. + +The table collapsed with dull creakings, and then the affair of mauling +and writhing became a bear pit. Grant fought with steady, measured +short-arm jabs delivered at whatever object lay nearest. When one arm +was pinioned he swung the other against the restraining body until it +was freed. Some one sank teeth in his shoulder. + +"Ride 'em, Noo Yawker!" came the shrill cry of battle from somewhere in +the mill. Then a blow at the base of the brain which meant lights out +for Grant. + +When consciousness came halting back he found himself standing +half-supported by two of the rurales in a dark street and before a +high gate in unbroken masonry. The gate swung inward. He was propelled +violently through the dark arch and into a small room, where sat a man +in uniform under a dusty electric globe. He did not look up from the +scratching of his pen on the desk before him. + +A door behind the writing man opened and Colonel Urgo entered. His +start at seeing the bloodied and half-clothed figure which the rurales +supported was well acted. A hand came to the vizor of his cap in +mocking salute. Then he turned to the man at the desk and exchanged low +words with him. + +"Ah, Seor 'Ickman"--Colonel Urgo's voice was tender as the dove's--"I +regret to learn you are here in the _carcel_ on serious charges. The +one, counterfeiting the coin of Mexico; the other, resisting officers +of the law. Very regrettable, Seor 'Ickman. But, remembering your +courtesies toward me on the train yesterday, let me assure you of my +willingness to serve you in any way. You will command me, seor." + +A sudden lightning flash of comprehension shot through the clouds that +pressed down on the prisoner's mind. He saw the whole trick of the +counterfeit dollars in his pocket and remembered the little Spaniard's +threat on the observation platform of the train the night before: +"To-morrow we touch Mexico, where it is known that Colonel Hamilcar +Urgo is a law unto himself." Grant strained forward and his mouth +opened to incoherent speech. + +"And now, seor," Colonel Urgo continued blandly, "unfortunately you +will be locked up incommunicado." + +Five minutes later Grant Hickman, behind a steel-studded door in a +Mexican jail, was as wholly out of the world as a man in a sunken +submarine. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE GARDEN OF SOLITUDE + + +Benicia O'Donoju by the side of the big Papago Quelele and with the +twin towns on the Line behind her--ahead the unlimned immensity of +the wilderness--gave herself to the exhilaration of flight. For the +skimming and dipping of the little car over the wave crests of the +desert was like the flight of the desert quail, who rarely lifts +himself above the height of the mesquite in his unerring dartings from +bush to bush. On its partially deflated tires, provision against sand +traps and the expansion of imprisoned air under heat, the skeleton +thing reeled off its twenty miles an hour with snortings. + +The final incident at the Arizora station--little Colonel Urgo and +his unceremonious jettisoning--left no abiding impression with the +spirited desert girl. His struttings and posings, his humorously +impetuous wooing, resumed at the El Paso station after the two years' +interruption of her stay in the States, were for her no more than +the high stepping of some barnyard Lothario. Benicia, little given to +the morbid business of self-analysis, was not sensible of how exactly +the dual strain of blood in her had reacted to Urgo's advances; how +it had been the swift thrust of Spanish temper which had prompted her +to resort to the pronged weapon from her hair at El Paso even as the +persistent Irish humour tang inherent in the O'Donoju name had flashed +out in the dumping of the suitor at Arizora. + +No, Hamilcar Urgo's dapper figure was as evanescent as the mirage, but +there was another which appeared to replace it. A man with the figure +of an athlete and a forthright way of looking at one--perhaps the least +bit too self-assured, perhaps inviting rebuke did one but feel in the +humour of rebuking. One of those quick-witted Americans, ever ready +on a hair trigger of resourcefulness yet seeming to carry a situation +as if no situation existed. Nice eyes, yes. A pleasant laugh, rich in +humour. But so New Yorkish! He thought the desert a place where no +one lived willingly. Amusing conceit! And his name was--? Ah, yes, +Hickman--Grant Hickman. One would try to remember that name. + +Retrospect could not long hold Benicia's mind against the joy of the +homing journey. For the desert she loved spoke to her a welcome long +dreamed in the stifling precincts of cities. There was the sky she +had yearned for, something of infinite depths which did not shut down +over the earth like an inverted cup; rather an impalpable sea wherein +the earth swam free. Morning gold still tinted it. And the mountains +that rose sheer from the desert floor with no lesser foothill heights: +under the sun they were blue in the east and where slant rays fell upon +western barriers a tawny strength of naked rock clothed them. Between +the feet of the mountain stretched the level desert plain far and far +beyond the power of eye to compass; grey with the grey of saltbush and +greasewood, overtones of green where the first leaves of the mesquite +and ironwood answered the call of the spring sun. + +Quelele had turned the machine onto a westward wending road once the +Line was crossed at Sonizona. A few straggling ranches near the border +town, then the unsullied desert. Westward and southward sped the +machine, deep into the greatest stretch of unpeopled wilderness between +the Barren Grounds of the Dominion and Panama. + +The Desert of Altar lies there. From the Line south to the Yaqui +River and from the Gulf of California, once called the Sea of Cortez, +eastward to the Sierra Madre:--here is the terra incognita of Sonora; +here is the dominion of thirst. A territory large as New England and +with a population smaller than the average New England mill town. A +vast graveyard of vanished peoples, who left behind them mountains +terraced with fortifications laid in unbroken breastworks of porphyry +and rocks pictured with their annals of life and death. Rain comes only +with occasional summer thunder storms up from the Gulf, storms which +wake dead rivers into furious flood. So precious is this water from the +sky that the primitive peoples weave mystic rain symbols into their +basketry for a fetish, and their songs are all of thunderheads and +croaking frogs. + +Here in the Desert of Altar the impossible becomes commonplace. A man +caught in a river bed by the spearhead of a freshet drowns in sand made +mud and irresistibly rushing. Cattle drink no water for months on end +but are sustained by munching cactus whose spines can penetrate sole +leather. In the furnace heat of summer furious rain storms occur in the +higher air but the moisture is sucked up by the sun before it touches +earth. Gold lies scattered on the surface of the desert and water must +be mined. The desert kind slay after the manner of the ages but declare +a truce at the waterhole. Death of all life is ever-present, yet grant +so much as a permanent trickle of the life-giving fluid and the dust is +covered with a glory of green. + +For its devotees the desert holds mysteries potent beyond comprehension +of folk in a softer land. The venturing padres of an elder day called +it the Hand of God; they walked in the hand of God and were not afraid. +Divinity, force, original cause--whatever may be your term for that +power which jewels the grass with dew and swings the suns in their +courses--this is very close in the desert. In great cities man has +driven the Presence far from him by his silly rackets of steam and +electricity, by his farcical reproductions of cliffs and pinnacles. In +the Desert of Altar he walks in silence and with God. The very air is +kinetic with the energy that brought forth life on a cooled planet. + +The desert had been Benicia's teacher; had moulded her spirit to its +own pattern of elemental strength. Born the last of the O'Donojus in +the desert oasis that was the ultimate remnant of the once kingly +Rancho del Refugio--grant of a Spanish Philip to her ancestor--she +had been reared in the asperities of the land, had absorbed into her +bone and tissue the rigours and simple verities of a wilderness. +Because there was no son in the Casa O'Donoju and because, too, this +only daughter came into the world with the inheritance of a spirit +impetuous and errant as a desert bird, Don Padraic, her father, gave +over all attempts at imposing on her the straight decorum that shackles +the Spanish maiden of gentle blood. With the death of her mother when +Benicia was still in short skirts came this loosening of the bonds. +Instead of growing to maturity a shy creature who must never quit the +sight of a duenna and whose eyes shall tell no secrets, the girl warmed +to a wonderful companionship with her father, lived the life of a boy. + +Her flaming red hair bobbed about the fringe of milling cores of wild +cattle at the round-up. At _Sahuaro_ feasts of the Papagoes, Mo Vopoki +(Lightning Hair) added her shrill soprano to the chorus of the Frog +Doctor Song. She learned where gold lay in shallow pockets and winnowed +it from the sands in the Indian fashion. She brought home a mewing, +spitting kitten she had taken from a bobcat's litter. Her doll was +discarded for a rifle before her strength could shoulder it. + +Schooling came in her father's library, filled with books in three +languages. English and music, the music of the great harp, became her +passions. The harp had been her great-grandmother's; Don Padraic could +make the mesh of strings sing with the sound of rain on flowers. He was +her first teacher. Then, when twenty years were hers and Don Padraic +realized something besides the wild desert life was needed to round out +the full beauty of his daughter's soul, he had urged further studies +on the harp as the excuse for Benicia's two years in the cities of the +States. Those two years had served well to overlay upon the rugged +handiwork of the wild the softness and subtleties of culture. + +Benicia believed she possessed all her father's confidences. So she +did--all but one. She did not know that when she came into the world +with tiny head furry in burning red Donna Francisca, her mother, had +cried herself into hysteria and Don Padraic's heart had gone cold. Nor +was she ever told that her flaming hair marked her with the finger of +Nemesis. + +This day of the return from exile no premonition of the inheritance +of fate arose to disturb the singing heart of the girl. She rattled +on to the stoical Papago at the wheel unending questions concerning +her father and the most humble of the Indian retainers living on the +rancherias about the oasis, Don Padraic's fief in the waste lands. +She told the credulous Quelele stories of the cities she had seen; of +white men's wickiups climbing as high as the hill of La Nariz; of water +so plentiful that it was launched at a burning house out of a long +serpent's mouth; how men lifted themselves above the earth in machines +like the king condor and flew hundreds of miles between sun and sun. +To all of which big Quelele, never lifting his eyes from the thin rut +lines in the sand, answered with a single monosyllable "Hi," wherein +was compounded all his capacity for wonder. + +South and west about the skirts of the Pajarito they went, and then +into the old road up from Caborca, the ancient highway called the Road +of the Dead Men which swings north parallel with the Line, cutting the +tails of numerous ranges that are great in Arizona. And so, when the +day was hardly more than half spent, the little car crawled to the +height called the Nose of the Devil, and Benicia saw below her land of +desire. + +Fists of the mountains grudgingly opened out to permit a broad basin +running from east to west, and there against the savage baldness of +sentinel ranges showed a ribbon of green. Green of precious gems it +was. So vivid in the setting of the drought land. So cyclonic its +assault of colour against the eye inured to the duns and greys of a +hundred miles of parched terrain. And in the midst of the oasis the +shining white dot, which was the house of the O'Donoju; of Benicia's +father and his fathers before him back to the day of a royal favourite +baptized Michael O'Donohue. The Casa O'Donoju in El Jardin de +Soledad--the Garden of Solitude. + +Indian women, in skirts of orange and cerise and with gay mantles over +their sleek hair, lined the way to the avenue of royal date palms +which led from the bridge over the Rio Dulce straight to the white +single-story house of 'dobe, heavy walled and loopholed like a fort. +They waved and sent shouts of welcome to the mistress of the casa as +she passed. + +Benicia knew her father would not be outside the house to greet her; +their love was not for the servants to see. Rather he would be waiting +in their own trysting place, the place where he had given her farewell +two years before. The girl leaped from the car before the heavy +studded oak door breaking the solid white front of the house at its +centre. It was opened to her by old 'Cepcion, feminine major domo of +the household servants. Benicia paused to give the parchment cheeks a +kiss, then she danced down a flagged hall to the flare of green marking +the patio garden in the centre of the house. + +Here was a place of beauty and a fragrant cave of coolness--the very +secret heart of the Garden of Solitude. Open to the sky and with +cloistered dimness of the four sides of the house all about, the patio +was a tiny jungle of climbing things, all green and riotous blossoms. +A stately date palm reigned in the centre behind the little basin of +the fountain; curtains of purple bougainvillea draped themselves down +its shaggy ribs; lavender water-hyacinths sailed their little barques +in the pool; geraniums flamed in living fire against the pillars of the +arcades. + +There in the garden waited a man all in white. Snow white his heavy +hair and beard, though the life in his deep-set eyes and the vigorous +set of his shoulders belied age; white were his thin garments of silk +and flannel. + +He caught the flash of a red head through the greenery, saw an eager, +breathless face turned questioningly. + +"'Nicia, heart of my heart--!" + +Then she ran to him, paused just an instant to lift swift fingers +under his chin and tilt his head. Their eyes measured each the love +that welled brimming in the soul's windows. Then the father drew his +daughter close to his heart and his lips brushed her forehead. + +"'Nicia, my strong one, your father has great need of you." + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +JUSTICE + + +The Mexican theory of the treatment of prisoners, their status before +the law and the responsibilities of government toward them has few +complexities and knows no interference on the part of prisoners' +welfare leagues or humanitarian congresses. When a man is arrested +south of the Line he straightway ceases to be enumerated among the +living; if, haply, he reappears in the course of weeks or years his +family looks upon the prodigy in the light of a resurrection. Such +resurrections do not occur often enough to dull the edge of the popular +interest attending them. There are several dim roads, peculiarly +Mexican, down which a prisoner may march to oblivion, with no record of +his expunction left behind. Officials with easy consciences find these +extralegal methods of clearing the docket handy and expeditious. + +Grant Hickman, new to the Border and utterly ignorant of customs and +manners in the republic of _poco tiempo_, necessarily could not +possess a background of sinister knowledge against which to build +doubts of his immediate future when he found himself locked in a cell. +He was in darkness deep as Jonah's. He ached from his scalp to his +toes. A gingerly groping hand applied to various parts of his body +took stock of the exterior costs of that healthy fight in the gambling +palace. The heat of battle was still on him. He recalled how nobly the +big Arizonan swung his chair from the vantage of the crap table; what a +virile call to battle was the stranger's "Ride 'em, Noo Yawker!" + +As for Colonel Urgo's clumsy frame-up--the handful of lead dollars in +his pocket to prompt arrest for counterfeiting--Grant dismissed the +trick as childish spite. When he appeared before a judge in the morning +he could easily prove that the only Mexican money he possessed was +that given him in change by the fat Chinaman and what he had taken in +across the baize. Some tool of the vengeful little wooer of Benicia had +"salted" him during the progress of the game. + +But when morning light through a four-inch slit in the wall roused +him from a restless sleep long hours of doubt were ushered in. Came +a jailer with dry tortillas and water but no summons to appear +before a magistrate. Three tortillas--clammy rolled cakes of meal +tasting strongly of a cook's carelessness in matters of excluding the +unessential--were the sum of his receipts from the outside world that +day. The jailer, who had the features of a bandit, merely grunted a "no +sabe" at the volley of questions the prisoner launched at him during +the minute he was in the cell. + +Those hours of solitude in the six-by-ten box of stone gave opportunity +for much thinking. Little by little it was borne in on Grant how +completely he was a victim of whatever spite Colonel Urgo might care +to devise; and recollection of his smiling face seen in the prison +office the night before--thin lips parted over teeth in a ferret's +grin--confirmed the assumption that at devising mischief Colonel Urgo +would be hampered by no lack of ingenuity. + +Grant weighed the hope of aid from the other end of the town across the +Border fence. Bim Bagley, the only friend he had in all the Southwest, +was still out of town and would not be back until the morrow. Doc +Stooder--small chance! The worthy doctor was velvet drunk when he +received Grant in his office; for reasons which only his satiric humour +could explain he had elected to consider his visitor an impostor. +Little chance that Doc Stooder would pay him a thought until Bagley +returned and inquired of his whereabouts. Remained just the cobweb +contingency that the Arizonan who had fought beside him had escaped +the clutches of the rurales; Grant was certain the big fellow's simple +loyalty to a fellow countryman would prompt him to set going some kind +of inquiry from across the Line. + +Night came, with it three more tortillas and a bowl of _carne_ seasoned +with chili sufficient to burn the gullet of a bronze image. Then, +several hours after the scant meal had been shoved in to him, the +bandit jailer opened his cell door and motioned him to step into the +corridor. Two men with rifles were waiting there; they stepped to his +side and marched him off between them. + +Down a flight of steps, through a courtyard heavy with shadows, then +up tortuous stairs to a door beneath a dim electric globe. The door +opened from within, and Grant found himself in a chamber which might +have passed as a courtroom. At its far end on a raised dais was a long +desk lighted from above, three men sitting behind it. A sort of wooden +cage stood apart on a platform by itself. Six men with serapes over +their shoulders and rifles hanging by straps across the blanket stripes +were slouching before the judges' dais. A black headed peon crouched +timorously on a seat to the left and behind the guards. + +Grant's escort halted him before the judges. He kept silence, studying +the faces of the three. Not pleasant faces. A hardness of eye and +cat-like bristle of moustachios over thin line of lips was common to +the trio. + +"Grant 'Ickman?" challenged the man in the middle. + +Grant nodded. His interrogator gave a sign to one of the rurales. The +latter turned to the peon on the bench, dragged him to his feet and +hustled him to the cage-like affair to the left of the dais, evidently +a witness box. The little fellow's head hardly showed above the top +rail that fenced him in; his eyes were all whites. + +The examining judge jerked a thumb toward Grant as he shaped a question +in Spanish for the witness. The peon bobbed his head emphatically. +Another question and, "_Si_," chirped the witness. Then a lengthy flow +of interrogation prompted by reference to some dossier in hand. + +"_Si! Si!_" The witness hurried to oblige. Cat whiskers lifted in a +smile as the judge turned back to Grant. + +"You unnerstan'?" + +"I don't," bluntly. More twitching of the spiked moustachios. + +"Zeese man, 'oo's make confession of counterfeiting and 'oo ees +to be shot to-day, says 'e sells you thirty pesos made with bad +metal--counterfeit. An'--" + +"He lies!" Grant interrupted. + +"_Quieto!_" The judge banged his fist on the desk and fixed the +prisoner with a savage glare. "'E says, zeese man, 'e meets with you +las' night on Calle San Lazar outside Crystal Palacio gambling 'ouse +an' for ten veritable pesos 'e gives to you thirty pesos of bad metal. +Then zeese man 'e says 'e sees you enter Crystal Palacio. What remark +you make for zeese?" + +The monstrous farce of this accusation numbed Grant. Judicial +subornation fabricated to give colour to what was already determined in +the minds of these three puppets. As clearly as if they were bearing +on him he could see the cold, mocking eyes of Colonel Urgo behind the +shoulders of his pawns on the bench. Perception of his peril steadied +him. + +"I demand a lawyer if I am to be tried on this outrageous charge. And I +demand that the American consul in this town be told of the accusation +against me." + +The interrogating judge turned to his confreres with a bland +outspreading of the palms. Then to Grant: + +"American consul 'as no business with crime against state of Mehico. +You will 'ave lawyer when you are tried before court at Hermosillo. +Zeese court ees not court of condemnation. Court of condemnation ees at +Hermosillo. W'en you arrive there, w'ere you make for a start to-night, +Seor 'Ickman, you ask for American consul if you desire." + +"But you cannot send me to this Hermosillo place without trial." Grant +took a step toward the bench in his vehemence. He was roughly jerked +back by his guards. The interrogating judge beamed on him. + +"In Mehico, Seor 'Ickman, it ees folly to say 'you cannot.' Much ees +possible in Mehico. To-night prisoners make start for Hermosillo. You +go weeth them." + +He nodded to Grant's guards and they closed in on him. He heard a +farewell, "Adios, Seor 'Ickman," from the bench as he was rudely +hustled out of the courtroom. + +An hour later he stood with seven other shadows in the _carcel_ +courtyard. About them were the rurales with their rifles; four were +mounted on horseback and a pack mule, lightly laden, slept on three +legs behind the horsemen. Men came with lanterns and heavy loops of +something which chinked metallically when it was dropped. They fixed a +broad steel shackle on the left wrist of each prisoner and linked them +all to a bull chain. Then the door of a courtyard swung inward, the +mounted rurales closed in and the eight chained men went clinking out +to the dark street. + +A few midnight dawdlers paused to watch the shadowy procession +stumbling over the cobbles. No word was spoken. The clink of the +horses' hoofs, the patter-patter of the short-legged pack mule and +the metallic whisperings of the chain fitted into a measured cadence. +Despite the presence of the pack mule, Grant first had thought the +journey would be a short one, ending at the railroad station. But +after fifteen minutes' marching no railroad line was in sight and the +houses began to be scattered. Suddenly houses ceased; nothing but the +hump-shouldered shapes of mountains about; clear burning stars and +ahead a dim ribbon of road leading out into the desert. + +To Hermosillo, a town unheard of and at a distance unknown--across the +desert to Hermosillo afoot and chained in line with seven men. In the +slim rifle barrels so carelessly slung under shadows of sombreros was +the sullen emblem of that unwritten law of Mexico which stills so many +accusing mouths: _ley de fuga_--law of flight. + +Out into the desert of Altar marched the American, whose name appeared +only upon a secret cachet in the hands of the puppet judges--a man +gone, as a German once put it, "without trace." + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE CHAIN GANG + + +"But, Doc, I tell you you're crazy! How could a tenderfoot like Hickman +just in town from the East breeze across the Line and get into a jam +the first night he's in town--drop out of sight completely?" + +Bim Bagley, back in Arizora and distracted by the unexplained mystery +of his pal's name on the hotel register, his pal's suitcase in a hotel +room but no more material trace of Grant Hickman, was knee to knee with +Dr. Stooder in the latter's office. The Doc made judicious answer: + +"Well, son, Jed Hawkins' specifications of the gringo he fought with +atop the crap table in the Palacio tallies pretty closely with the +young man as I saw him in my office earlier in the day. But here's the +funny thing: the rurales let Hawkins go even though he laid out two of +'em with a chair. Let that fightin' wildcat go and trotted this fellah +Hickman off to the _carcel_. That's what gets me." Doc Stooder gave +his decision with a wave of the hand. He jack-knifed his bony knees up +to his chin and waited the younger man's comment. + +"But what did Hawkins say started the big row?" Bim's long face, +all criss-crossed with the wind wrinkles that make desert men look +older than their years, gave a vivid picture of his distress, of his +eagerness to seize upon any detail that might point a solution of the +mystery. Doc Stooder recited with picturesque detail Jed Hawkins' story +of the battle in the gambling palace as the redoubtable Jed himself had +narrated it in the Border Delight pool hall before returning to his +ranch at Dos Cabezas. + +"That give me a clue," he concluded, "so I laid my pipe lines an' I'm +looking for to tap a well any time now." + +Doc Stooder's pipe lines--of information, if not of wealth--were the +most productive of any along the Border. He was one of those rare white +men in the Southwestern country who enjoyed the unreserved respect if +not the love of the Mexican population, among whom nine-tenths of his +practice extended. Though he bawled at his patients, stricken dumb with +terror of their ailments, though he cursed the women and manhandled the +men, no poor Mexican's hovel of 'dobe was too far out in the desert to +discourage Doc Stooder's night prowling gas-wagon. Through dust storm +and withering heat this blasted jack-pine of a man flitted on wings of +gasoline, with his nostrums for dysentery and asthma, his splints for +broken bones and needles for knife thrusts. + +Drunk he might be half the time, an indifferent physician all the +time--for the Doc had not been away from the Border for twenty-five +years and never read a medical magazine. But under his hard rind of +brutalities and cynicisms the Mexicans and Indians had come to discover +a deep sympathy with their homely tragedies, their patient sufferings. +Sometimes they paid him in coin; more often they paid him in slavish +fealty the coin of which was information. Of gold strikes in the far +hills; of shrewd business deals to be wrought through connivance of +knavish officials across the Line; even of stolen jewels to be picked +up from a pawnbroker:--these the flow of Doc Stooder's pipe lines. No +man on the Border for a hundred miles each way knew so much of the +scrapple of life as A. Stooder, M.D. + +"I'm lookin' to hear of a woman," the Doc drawlingly resumed, a wry +smile greeting Bim's gesture of negation. "Yep, son, when any likely +lookin' young fellah along the Border drops outa sight--and this +Hickman fellah's got an eye with him for all his Noo Yawk bridle +trimmin's--they's a swish of skirts comes to my ears. Or"--he sat up +suddenly and threw a bony finger at Bim--"or he knows somethin' about +why he's come out here an' went an' babbled." + +"Rot!" Bim's grey eyes were clouded with anger. "I told you he doesn't +know why we got him out here--and he's not the babbling kind if he did." + +"Well, it sizes up thisaway," the Doc continued, ignoring the other's +flash of temper. "They's one man down in Sonora who knows all we +know about the Lost Mission and like's not a dam' sight more. That's +this proud old don who lives down in the Garden of Solitude with his +red-headed daughter--name's Padraic O'Donoju, if I haven't told you +that before. If he ever got a line on the fact we've asked a Noo Yawk +engineer to come out here to Arizora he'd put two an' two together an' +figure we're after that Four Evangelists church his ancestors built. +You know he's sorta king of all the Papagoes in Altar and--" + +"How about your Papago who's going to lead us to the Mission?" Bim +interrupted. "If there's any leak likely as not it's through him." + +Stooder's great head wagged slowly; a grin tilted the rabbit's tail +tuft under his lip until it stood out a quizzical interrogation point. + +"No, son; no. I got that Papago brother where he thinks all I got to +do is crook my little finger an' his wife passes away with asthma +overnight. We can rely--" + +A timid knock on the office door giving onto the hall. The Doc bellowed +a command to enter. A wizened Mexican peon whose left arm was a stump +sidled quickly through the doorway and stood bowing, shaggy head +uncovered. He cast a quick glance at Bagley, then to the doctor for +reassurance. + +"Go ahead, Angel--shoot!" commanded Stooder. + +"Seor, I hear from Jesus Ruiz, 'e's cousin to me an' rurale at the +_carcel_; Jesus Ruiz 'e says the gringo arrest' at Palacio goes last +night in chain gang for Hermosillo--" + +Bim leaped to his feet with an oath. The peon's eyes were on Doc +Stooder in an hypnotic stare. + +"The gringo goes in chain gang for Hermosillo, but my cousin Jesus Ruiz +'e says that gringo mos' like never arrive." + + * * * * * + +That hour when Doc Stooder's pipe line began spouting information Grant +Hickman was discovering deep down within him an unguessed hardiness of +spirit. A trial was on him, a test of his moral fibre no less than of +his physical powers. At the end of twelve hours' steady plodding across +the desert he was coming into his second wind. Every effort a devilish +ingenuity could contrive had been tried out by the four rurales, his +guards, in their common endeavour to break down this gringo's fighting +morale. The single result was a fixed grin on features smeared with +dried blood and sweat--a challenge provoking the Mexicans to fresh +barbarities. + +During the first dark hours of the march Grant had nursed the hope +that at some point outside of town he and his fellow prisoners would +be brought to a railroad station to await the coming of a train. He +could not conceive a reason for transferring prisoners afoot when a +railroad would serve. But with the coming of the dawn and the lifting +of the dark from an empty land not even a telegraph pole raised above +the scrub to point fulfilment of his hope. Just the dry ribbon of road +stretching ahead and empty speculation as to the number of days or +hours which must intervene between present misery and journey's end. +Grant never had heard the name Hermosillo until it was spoken by the +examining judge the night before; he did not know whether the town was +just over the horizon or half way to Panama. + +Morning brought him the chance to study the men chained with him who, +during the night hours, had been just so many disembodied shadows +marching in a nightmare. The one ahead of him was a shrivelled little +Chinaman, whose legs were so short he was forced to a skipping step to +keep slack on his segment of the chain; his breath came in asthmatic +pipings and wheezes like the noise of a leaky valve in some midget +engine. Behind him was a giant of an Indian, almost the colour of teak. +With a timed regularity this Indian spat noisily all through the dark +hours and until the sun rose to dry up his throat. The rest were in +character with Grant's nearer companions--just flotsam. + +The guards were typical of their class; Mexican peons brutalized even +beyond the inheritance of their mixed bloods by their small taste of +power. The quarter-blood Indian south of the Line, whose ancestry is +devious as his own starved dog's, knows but a single law of life and +that the law of fear. Lift him by ever so little from the station +of the one who fears to that of the one to be feared and he has no +counterpart for studied cruelty anywhere on earth. + +The one who rode to the right of the line in which Grant's position +was fourth from the front, had commenced with the dawn a calculated +campaign of nasty tortures. He would suddenly swerve his horse against +Grant, threatening his feet with trampling hoofs. He held his lighted +cigarette low at his side with elaborate air of carelessness, then +pressed in close for the burning tip to eat through the white man's +shirt. Once he aimed a vicious backward kick at his victim; his heavy +spur left a line of red through the torn sleeve from elbow to shoulder. + +At each of these refinements of humour the rurale's snickering laughter +was met by the American's wordless grin. Just a tense spreading of lips +and baring of teeth, which carried to the guard's savage perception a +taunt and a threat. Always in Grant's twisted grin lay the unspoken +promise of retribution once the odds against him were lightened. + +The desert under sun at the meridian flexed its harsh hand to pinch the +crawling caterpillar of chained men. Heat waves made all the ragged +summits of the Sierras pulsate. A dust tasting of desert salts spread a +low cloud about the marching column. Thirst that was a poignant agony +was made all the more unendurable by the tactics of the guards. From +time to time one of them would unhitch a canteen from the pack mule's +burden and in the sight of the eight helpless sufferers tilt his head +and guzzle noisily. Even he would allow some of the water to slop from +his mouth and be wasted in the sand. + +When the little Chinaman marching before Grant sighed and dropped, the +line was halted for half an hour. First the yellow man was revived, +then the canteen at which he had sucked so noisily was passed down the +line to the rest of the prisoners. It was their first taste of water +since the prison gate was passed. After the canteen circulated, black +strips of jerked beef, sharp with salt, were distributed. Grant never +had seen the "jerky" of the Southwest; the leathery stuff would have +revolted him did his body not cry out for food. He tore at the tough +substance after the manner of his fellows while the guards brewed +themselves some more complicated mess over a fire of greasewood sticks. + +Then the march again. Dragging hour after dragging hour. Clink-clank +of the swinging chain. Pad-pad of feet in time. Snuffle and +wheeze--snuffle and wheeze of the asthmatic Chinaman's breathing. +All in an unvarying synchronism which tore at the nerves. All the +world--Grant's world of a great city--was reduced to this dreadful +monotony of movement and sound. + +He tried to think. Came to his mind a picture of his office in the +Manhattan skyscraper--his desk with the mounted bit of shrapnel for a +paperweight, its clear greeny-white glass top, the two wire baskets +which held his correspondence. He saw the squash court at the club--men +in sleeveless shirts straining after a white ball. Henry's bar in the +little side street off the Rue D'Anou in Paris; Henry selling stolen +American cigarettes for five times their value at the commissary. St. +Mihiel and the old woman who knitted lace. Then the girl--Benicia +O'Donoju. Grant called to his mind the vivid glory of her hair, the +trick of her short upper lip in curling outward like the petal of a tea +rose, a something roguish always lurking deep down in the warm pools of +her eyes. + +"Not Mexican. We are Spanish folk." That was her sharp reproof when he, +blundering, had asked her if she was of Mexican blood. That night on +the train--it seemed a year back. "Not Mexican." Now he understood why +the girl had corrected him so pointedly. Thank God she was not of that +breed! + +Near dusk the line was halted and one of the guards dismounted. Grant +saw him fumble in his shirt and bring out a bright bit of metal, saw +him approach the head of the line and tinker with the first fellow's +wrist shackle. He heard a sharp intake of breath behind him and, +turning, caught the stamp of terror on the giant Indian's face. +Something was going forward which he could not comprehend, something to +shake the stoicism of this Indian. Within five minutes the steel band +about his wrist was unlocked and he stood free of the chain with the +rest of the prisoners. He saw on the faces of all of them that same +terror mask the Indian wore. + +The freed men cast covert glances at the guards, followed their every +move with cat-like slyness. The little Chinaman began a falsetto +sing-song under his breath, which might have been a prayer to his +protecting joss. One of the guards turned in his saddle and called some +jocular order to the prisoners. They moved on in the wine-light of the +sunset, falling precisely into the line they had held when chained, +their eyes vigilant for every move of a hand on the part of the mounted +men. + +The rurales now carried their rifles swung free across the saddles. + +Though he could understand no word of the muttered scraps of speech +passed between man and man behind him, the magnetic fear waves +possessing all the rest began to prompt Grant to some comprehension. +The coming night--dropping of the chain--those rifles unslung from +shoulders and carried free across the saddles:--did these things +presage the near end of this farce of a pilgrimage across the desert to +a court? + +Light now was nearly gone from the western sky and the guards were +riding farther away from the trudging line, deliberately inviting some +one to offer himself for fair target practice while gunsights still +could be seen. Grant faced the hazard squarely. Certain he was that +none of the eight would see another sunrise, that butcher's work would +commence the minute sporting chances were definitively ignored by the +victims. He was of no mind to be the passive party to a hog killing. +Better a quick dash--a bullet from behind-- + +The line of men had just emerged from an arroyo with almost perpendicular +sides; the bed of the dry stream was thick with shadow. Grant leaped from +line and ran straight for the guard who rode between himself and the +course of the stream. Almost at his stirrup he swerved and cut under the +horse's rump. + +Shouts. A shot gone wild. Grant, zigzagging, was at the brink of the +arroyo. Two shots almost as one. A lance of fire through his shoulder. +Up went his arms and he plunged headlong into the gulf of blackness. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE HEART OF BENICIA + + +The Desert of Altar is transcendence of silence. From the savage +Growler range in Arizona south to the obsidian bastions of Pinacate, by +the dead Gulf, is space to crowd five million people with their tumult +of cities, their crash of machines, hoot of locomotives and shriek of +steel under stress. Yet in all this blank waste not a sound. + +The chirp of the wren from her hole in the _sahuaro_ carries not even +so far as the watching hawk on nearby skeleton _ocatilla_ stalk. The +meat cry of the prowling cat in the mountains where the wild sheep +range is swallowed in the muffling depths of the canyon under her feet. +Thin air seems too tenuous to conduct sound waves. Creatures of the +wild lands move mute under the oppression of unbounded space. + +Yet nowhere does rumour fly swifter than here in this vacant land. +Comes a strange prowler to the waterholes of Tinajas Altas, and the +antelope fifty miles away know the news and seek the hidden springs at +Bates' Wells. A Papago three days' journey from the nearest rancheria +stumbles onto hoofprints of six horses away over where tidewater climbs +into the delta of the Colorado, and he turns back to carry report of +revolution in Baja California. Strange signs tell their tales from +the sands; the arrangement of little sticks conveys whole chapters of +information to the wayfarer. When man meets man, be he white, brown or +copper coloured, news is a torch to be passed on to a new hand. Nothing +can be long a secret. The latent must out. + +Even as the worthy Doc Stooder in his shabby office at Arizora had +a never-ending messenger service from all the Border and the lands +beyond, carrying scraps of oblique news, another far distant in the +Garden of Solitude enjoyed the same intelligence. This was Don Padraic +O'Donoju, last of the line of masters over the once-great principality +of El Rancho del Refugio. Though a hundred years of revolution, of +uproar and the teetering of political balances in the more populous +Mexico to south and east of him had left to the last don of the +O'Donojus little more territory than that comprised in the oasis of +the Garden, still he had cattle enough to be counted a rich man and +six generations of custom gave him unbroken sway over the Papagoes. +From the Sand People of the Gulf away up to the San Xavier rancheria +at Tucson extended the secret kingdom of Don Padraic's influence. His +only tithes were those of loyalty and the bringing of report. What the +Papagoes thought Don Padraic should know, that he knew as speedily as +word could be passed. + +So, a week after Benicia had returned to the Casa O'Donoju, came a +runner from the eastward--one sent by El Doctor Coyote Belly, whose +winter house was at Babinioqui near the railroad. The runner had big +news. El Doctor, known all over the Desert of Altar because of his +reputed skill at curing hydrophobia and the bite of the sidewinder, +had a sick white man--a seriously wounded white man who might be an +American--in his house at Babinioqui and he asked Don Padraic what he +should do with this man. + +El Doctor was returning from the Medicine Cave of Pinacate--this +was the runner's tale--when on the road that runs from Sonizona to +Hermosillo he found seven dead men; dead men with the marks of fetters +on their left wrists. A little beyond he found still another; this one, +lying in an arroyo, had been shot through the shoulder from behind +and he still lived. El Doctor had tied the living man to his burro and +taken him to his winter house at Babinioqui, where he had treated him +with the most powerful herbs and had massaged the wound with the lizard +image. The wounded white man would live. Coyote Belly did not wish to +turn him over to the Mexicans, for he was a victim of _ley de fuga_ and +the Mexicans undoubtedly would shoot him again. + +Don Padraic, whose charity was wider than his acres, made his decision +instantly. He ordered Quelele to go, with the runner to guide him to El +Doctor's house, in the little desert car and to fetch the white man to +the Garden of Solitude as soon as he was able to be moved. It was best, +the master instructed, that Quelele travel in the night, returning with +the wounded man, and tell no one of the object of his mission. + +The big Indian stocked the car with gasoline from the tank behind +the master's house--a reservoir filled monthly from drums brought by +ox cart from the distant railroad point--strapped canteens and oil +containers on his running boards and was off. Don Padraic said nothing +of the incident to his daughter. + +That night Don Padraic and Benicia sat in the candlelight of the big +salon or living room which filled the space of one quadrangle off +the patio. In all Sonora there was no counterpart of this chamber of +mellowed antiquities, the collection of generations of the O'Donoju. +Low ceiled and with crossing beams of oak, whereon the marks of the +hewer's adze showed like waves; walls hung with tapestries between the +heavy frames of portraits of grandees and their ladies of forgotten +days; a great fireplace wherein a man could stand upright, with its +hand-wrought andirons and heavy crane shank; floor almost black from +a hundred years of polishing and with the skins of animals floating +there like so many islands:--here was a magic bit of old Spain lifted +overseas to find root in the heart of the desert. + +Benicia, in a gown of rippling lines which left her strong young arms +bare to the shoulder, was seated behind the great golden span of her +harp. Candlelight falling across her shoulders made ivory the flesh +of her bare arms as they moved rhythmically back and forth over the +wilderness of strings. She was playing the Volga Boatsong, a peasant +melody whose minors rose and fell to the sweep of oars. As the girl +gave her heart to the music, the thrumming strings wove a picture of +some barbaric steppe coming down to a sluggish river; boatmen chanting +at the sweeps. The ancient room was a-thrill with resonance. + +She finished with just a breath of melody, the song of the boatmen +dying in the distance. Her eyes fell on the face of her father; it +was deeply etched by the play of flames from the mesquite logs in the +fireplace. Always he sat this way, moveless before the fire, when +she played on the great harp o' nights, freeing his soul to drink in +the melodies; but to Benicia's understanding eyes appeared now the +semblance of a deeper shadow not of the firelight. She softly left the +instrument and stole over to nestle herself on the broad chair wing, +with her coppery head laid against the snow white one. + +"_Pobrecito_"--this was her pet word carried through the years from +childhood--"_Pobrecito_, thy face is as grave as the owl's. Some +secret? Remember, there are no secrets between us two--no worry which +the other does not share." + +Her coaxing hand played through the heavy mane of hair; her cheek was +against his. Don Padraic slowly turned his head with denial in his +eyes; but that denial could not sustain the accusation in the steady +blue eyes of the daughter. During the week Benicia had been home a +secret doubt had steadily pressed upon the father; he had been waiting +some word from her which did not come. Now one of his hands stole up to +tweak her ear--signal of surrender. + +"'Nicia, great-heart, you have told me all about your two years in the +cities--your two years of life in the great world outside? There is +something you have withheld?" + +"Nothing, little father." She gave him a peck on the forehead. Don +Padraic appeared to be groping for his words. + +"You met--many American men--young men who--ah--might have been +attracted by the beauty of my desert flower?" + +A ripple of soft laughter and the girl pressed closer to him. + +"Ah, _Pobrecito_, you forget that your desert flower carries thorns. +Ask that ridiculous Hamilcar Urgo; he has felt the thorns." + +"But"--Don Padraic was not to be put off by evasions--"was there not +one whose heart was conquered by a girl of such fire, such beauty? +Come--come! These Americans are not men of ice." + +For a minute Benicia was silent. She was weighing in all sincerity the +only shred of a secret she had in her heart; testing it for genuineness +as fairly as she might. + +"Yes, daddy, there were many with bold eyes and ready tongues; but +hardly had they begun to speak as friends or companions when their talk +was all of money--how much they were planning to make that year; the +'big deal' they were going to put through. All were like this--but one." + +"Ah," breathed Don Padraic. + +"That one I have told you of," she continued. "The man on the train +who was so masterful with little Hamilcar. He was not like the others. +A man of wit--of sympathies; one who seemed to have understanding of +life--" + +"And he--?" the father prompted. + +"We said '_adios_' the night before we came to Arizora. I did not see +him in the morning, though he said that was his destination." + +They were silent once more. Finally from Benicia a wraith of laughter +on fluttering wings of a sigh: + +"But, my grave old owl, why these questions? Never before have I seen +my daddy play the prying duenna." + +"Heart of mine, thou canst not be blind"--the father's voice trembled +over the intimate pronoun. "I have been thy father, mother, elder +brother, all in one. And selfish--selfish beyond measure! Keeping thee +chained here to an old man in the wilderness when all the world of love +and life lies beyond--" + +"No--no, daddy mine!" Tears dewed blue eyes as yearning arm strained +him to her. + +"--My 'Nicia has her years ahead of her. Her love life must be awakened +and given freedom to unfold like a flower in a garden. Yet I have +permitted her to come back to me here in the Garden of Solitude because +I was lonely. Better far that I sell what we have here and take you +back to the world. In these evil days there is no fit mate to be found +for you in all Sonora. Hamilcar Urgo has threatened me if I do not give +you to him; he is of our blood, but he is abominable. I--" + +A soft hand clapped over his lips. He heard passionate words: + +"Father mine, stop! Never--never whisper again that you will sell our +Garden. For I love it, next to you, above all the world. We are desert +people, little father. We live in God's hand and are happy. The cities +crush me with their noise, their confusion." + +"But, 'Nicia--" + +"And, dearest of daddies"--her lips against his ear were giving kisses +light as thistledown--"I want no lover but you--no happiness but what +I have returned to here in the Garden. Now, not a word more!" + +She was on her feet and with the skirts of her gown caught in her +fingers was making him an old-fashioned curtsy. Then she slipped into +the shadows where the great golden harp stood, and in an instant the +ancient room began to hum with spirited arpeggios--rush of many waters +over a fall. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +GOLD AND PEARLS + + +Bim Bagley, on the trail of the information brought by Doc Stooder's +pipe line, found himself against a blank wall the instant he passed +through the barrier of the Line into Sonizona. He was too conversant +with the ways of Mexican officialdom to make any inquiry in high +places, knowing that to do so would be but to jeopardize Grant Hickman, +however he might be placed, and win for himself naught but suave +denials. Nor did he even go to the American consul, who, in the usual +course of things, would be the last man in Sonizona to hear of the +disappearance of an American citizen there. + +Rather, with Doc Stooder's counsel, Bim circulated warily among the +gambling halls and in the _cantinas_ where the rurales were wont to go +for their salt and mescal. Here ten pesos slipped into a complacent +palm; there twenty. Then weary waiting for results. + +Bit by bit the story came to him, and behind the fragments was always +the dim figure of Colonel Hamilcar Urgo. Bagley knew Urgo for the +tyrant politician that he was: how he used his position in the garrison +as a cloak to cover his manipulations of government all along the +Sonora border. No man was stronger, not even the governor of Sonora +himself; and the central regime in Mexico City was forced to wink at +Colonel Urgo's obliquities else run the risk of his firing the train to +revolution. + +But why this little sand viper in uniform should have conceived a +desire to be rid of Grant Hickman, a total stranger to the country, not +even the most astute of Bagley's informers could guess. "'E's not like +theese gringo" appeared to cover the whole case. + +The saturnine doctor, repenting him of his brusque reception of the +New York man--prompted, after all, by his superlative caution in the +presence of a possible impostor--sent the tip to the farthermost +ganglions of his news system: "Fifty gold dollars to the man bringing +information of the missing American's whereabouts." + +Doc Stooder's proffer of that amount of money was not all humanitarian. +Below his surface show of concern, designed for the benefit of Bim +Bagley, good Dr. Stooder did not care a plugged nickel what might +be the fate of the Eastern man. He was not one to lose sleep over +the misfortunes of others if those misfortunes were not attributable +to strictly physical causes and under materia medica. Then only they +interested him. + +No, Doc Stooder's real concern was the delay caused by the disappearance +of this third party to his scheme for a "great killing." The killing in +question was one he could not make single-handed. Circumstances which +have no place in this tale had forced him to share the secret of it with +Bagley, and the latter had refused to move a step in the enterprise until +he had his pal from overseas in on the game. The Doc fretted aloud one +day, which was the tenth after Grant had dropped from sight. + +"Son, I'm tellin' you 'less we make tracks for that Four Evangelists +mission purty pronto this here O'Donoju Spaniard down in the Garden's +goin' to get what's in the wind and shove in on us. He's got every +Papago from here to the Gulf runnin' to him with every whisper a little +bird lets spill. He gets wind you an' me are raising sand to lay hands +on an engineer out from Noo Yawk an' he smells a mice." + +"You go dig alone for your dam'd mission." Bim Bagley's temper had been +ground fine by days of restless anxiety. "Me, I roost right here till +I get the lay where my buddy is." + +Next day all the silver of subsidy Bim had distributed bore fruit an +hundred-fold. There came to the office of Doc Stooder unquestioned +report that the missing American was alive, though shot through the +body, and under the care of El Doctor Coyote Belly at a speck in the +desert called Babinioqui away down beyond the Line. + +Bagley was off in his car that night. Doc Stooder, alone in his office +and with a graduating glass and bottle of fiery tequila at his elbow, +dreamed of gold plate brought to light from caverns of sand, of altar +jewels and hoards of nuggets--riches of crafty priests--salvaged from +the crypt of a holy place lost to sight of man a century and a quarter. + +"Gold all hammered into crosses an' such!" The Doc tipped his brimming +graduating glass against the electric bulb and studied with fond eye +the liquor made golden by the light. + +"--Pearls, my Papago says. Pearls big as _bisnaga_ fruit an' +greeny-white like a high moon. Gold an' pearls! Pearls an' gold! +Stooder, you're goin' be a prancin', r'arin' aristocrat!" + + + + +CHAPTER X + +AT THE CASA O'DONOJU + + +Six days after Quelele the Papago set out on his mission of mercy +from the Casa O'Donoju he returned to the oasis. It was in the first +flush of dawn that the _shuf-shuf_ of the little car roused master +and servants; Quelele had travelled all night and at a pace to +conserve the strength of the wounded man, who lay on thick straw in +the box body. All night without lights save the thickly strewn lamps +in the firmament, wending hither and thither through the scrub where +half-guessed lines in the sand marked the Road of the Dead Men--a +journey weird enough. + +For Grant Hickman it was but part of the moving drama of a dream. That +instant of flight from the chain gang, when a bullet tore through his +shoulder and sent him toppling into the arroyo, was the visitation +of death; in his flickering perceptions all else following was but +adventuring in the country beyond death--incidents to paint impressions +on a consciousness otherwise wiped clean of otherworld recollections. +First of these exposures on the cloudy plate of his mind came many days +after the rurales had left him for dead in the desert: a face deep-dyed +as mahogany and with white bristles of a beard about chin and lips, +a face kindly withal, which bent near his as a hand lifted his head +to bring his lips to a vessel of pungent brew. Then another age of +drifting and swimming through soft clouds. + +Grant had just come to accept the grey-thatched face of El Doctor +Coyote Belly as part of a permanent picture when another Indian +appeared between himself and the bundles of sticks making a roof over +his head. This second personage in the world of the unreal, a giant +with the features of a boy, had spelled El Doctor in ministering herb +brews and keeping the wet cloths under the burning wound in his back +for what seemed many years. Then Grant had felt himself lifted, carried +from the hut with the bundles of sticks for a roof and laid on sweet +smelling straw. In the starshine he felt the hand of El Doctor close +over his own with a heartening squeeze. + +Then--wonder of wonders!--the racking cough of a gas engine, and Grant +was soaring back to that familiar earth which had been lost to him so +long. + +Upon the arrival of the car bringing Grant to the Casa O'Donoju Don +Padraic, hastily dressed, superintended the moving of his guest to +a small, clean room, candle lit. The wounded man felt the gracious +softness of feathers under him, the suave clinging of sheets. An aged +Indian woman, working under the white man's direction, divested him of +his tattered clothes and patted everything comfortable. Drowsy luxury +stole across his consciousness to cloud it and bring sleep. + +Sunlight flooded the room when Grant awoke. He was alone. His mind was +clearer than it had been since he was shot. Only the steady burning +in his vitals linked this moment of comfort with the tortured past. +His eyes roved about the room to take in its appointments. White walls +devoid of ornamentation; by the heavy door with its curiously wrought +iron latch a single chest of drawers of some antique pattern; the bed +he lay upon massive as a galleon of old days and with a canopy of +carved wood and tapestry for a sail: here was a room from the period +department of the Metropolitan Museum. + +Grant was patiently trying to fit together the jig-saw scraps of his +memory when the door opened and the white man he had seen the night +before entered. Seeing the light of reason in the patient's eyes, Don +Padraic smiled and bowed. Something mighty heartening lay in that +welcome and the warm cordiality of Don Padraic's features. + +"I am rejoiced to find you better to-day," he said as he drew a chair +to the side of the bed. "Yours was a hard journey last night." + +"I am still a little uncertain up here"--Grant tapped his forehead with +an attempt at a laugh. "For instance, I was just thinking I had been +lifted straight into a room of the Metropolitan in New York." + +The host's brows were knitted an instant, then he caught the allusion +and smiled. + +"Ah, yes; we have rather ancient furnishings here. But you are quite a +distance from New York, seor. This is the Casa O'Donoju in the Garden +of Solitude, and I am Don Padraic O'Donoju." + +The name crashed into Grant's consciousness like the clang of iron. His +heart gave a great leap. Could it be possible--? No, this must be but +part of the aurora dreams of the vague eternity still just behind his +back. Grant wished to make no blunder which might belie the present +soundness of his mind, so he held his tongue over the question burning +to be asked. Instead: + +"My name is Grant Hickman, sir. I am deeply obliged to you for your +charity in bringing me here. Of course, I do not know quite how it +all happened--my coming here from some place else, where an Indian, +or two of them--seemed to be caring for me. And I fear I am hardly a +presentable guest." The sick man's hand passed ruefully over his stubby +chin. + +Don Padraic made a gesture dismissing Grant's fastidiousness. "Seor, a +gentleman should not consider the state of his beard and the state of +his health with equal seriousness. The one may be repaired at once even +if our wishes cannot immediately effect a cure of the other. Permit +me to retire, seor, and not tax you with questions until you are +stronger." + +Shortly after the gentle host had bowed himself out an Indian servant +entered with basin and razor and effected an agreeable change in the +patient's appearance. Then Grant was left alone with the tab to a +wonderful possibility to turn over and over in his mind. + +He was in the house of the O'Donoju. Could there be more than one +family of that unusual name in the desert country; or had fate thrown +him a recompense for all he'd suffered by lifting him from a line of +chained convicts to carry him through a nightmare straight to the one +spot in all the world he most desired to be in? Perhaps under the same +roof, near enough to him to permit the carrying of her laughter, was +Benicia, the vivid creature who had won his heart into captivity. + +He was not kept long in suspense. The door opened and Don Padraic's +white clad figure appeared, behind it Benicia. She was in khaki, as +Grant had last seen her at the Arizora station, wide-brimmed hat noosed +under her chin just as she had come in from a ride through the oasis. +All the wild, free spaces of the wilderness seemed compacted in the +girl's trim figure, in the flush of her browned cheeks touched by the +sun. + +"Seor Hickman--" Don Padraic began introduction, but Benicia was at +the bedside; her cool hand was given to Grant's clasp with a gesture of +boyish comradeship. + +"We need not be introduced, father," Benicia laughed, and there was +a queer catch in her throat. "Seor Hickman did me a service on the +train which served as the best introduction in the world." Turning back +to Grant--"I did not know, seor, you were the wounded man Quelele +brought into our home so early this morning--did not even know we had +a guest until my father told me when I returned from my ride a few +minutes ago." + +Grant strove to put all his heart prompted in words that were mete: +"And I did not dare hope that this house to which a miracle has brought +me was the desert home you described on the train." + +Benicia's eyes read surely what his lips would not frame. She saw in +the white face of the wounded man a touch of that old hardihood and +forthright spirit of address which had commended this American to her +at first meeting--commended him even against her own impulse to resent +his self-assurance. But she saw, too, how suffering battled to dim the +valiant spirit, and something deeper than abstract sympathy stirred in +her heart. + +"But, seor, to meet you again this way! Father has told me the message +brought from El Doctor: how you were found among dead men on the +Hermosillo road and brought back to life by that old Papago. You, a +stranger and unknown here in the desert country--how could this happen +to you, seor?" + +Don Padraic interposed: + +"Perhaps, 'Nicia, when Seor Hickman is stronger he will answer +questions. Would it not be better--?" + +The girl was quick to appreciate her father's considerate thought. +Again she laid her hand in Grant's. + +"If you will permit me to play the doctor--at least to see to it that +lazy old 'Cepcion, your nurse, does not neglect you?" The smile that +went with this promise was tonic for the sick man. It remained like +an afterglow when the door was closed behind the girl. And when the +wrinkled Indian woman came an hour later with broth on a silver tray +that smile reappeared, translated into the fragrant beauty of rose +petals laid by the side of the bowl. + +Five luxurious days passed--days each with a wonderful spot of sunshine +in them--that when Benicia accompanied the aged 'Cepcion to his +chamber. On these daily visits she would draw her chair to the side of +the great bed--she looked very small below the high buttress of the +mattress--and while he quaffed his chicken broth and nibbled his flaky +tortillas Benicia would talk. 'Cepcion, like some mahogany coloured +manikin in her flaring skirts and winged bodice, always stood, arms +akimbo and features passive as a graven image, behind her mistress' +chair. + +The girl's talk was directed away from the personal; with an art +concealing art she evaded Grant's frequent endeavours to swing +conversation into more intimate channels. She brought the world of +the desert into the sick room, unconsciously revealing herself as +a flashing, restless creature of the wastes: now on horseback and +threading dim trails over the Line to carry quinine to a family +of Papagoes down with the fever; now beside Quelele in the little +gas-beetle and skimming to Caborca, the southern town, to buy a wedding +dress for an Indian belle. + +Not once did she touch again upon the subject of Grant's misadventures +and how he came to be found on the road to Hermosillo. A delicate +sense of the fitness of things prompted her to await the moment when +he himself should volunteer explanations. Grant, on his part, felt an +impelling reluctance to give details, for to do so would necessitate +his revealing his conviction that little Colonel Urgo's was the hand +that had pushed him so near death. A delicate--perhaps quixotic--sense +of personal honour prompted that he keep his enemy's name out of +any explanations. He could not know how close might be the little +Spaniard's relations with Benicia and her father--even discounting +Urgo's boast that he expected to make the girl his wife--and, besides, +he felt the score between himself and Urgo must be evened before he +linked the Colonel's name with his experiences. + +With Benicia's father Grant modified his resolution to a certain +degree. It was no more than proper, he argued with himself, that the +master of the Casa O'Donoju have some explanation for the presence in +his house of a man from a Mexican chain gang. + +"Seor O'Donoju," Grant addressed his host when the latter was come on +one of his daily visits, "you have been more than kind to me, but I +fear I may be an embarrassment to you--a fugitive, you know, if that is +my status before the law." + +"My dear sir"--the courtly Spaniard waved away Grant's scruples with +a smile--"you forget that the evidence El Doctor Coyote Belly found +on the Hermosillo Road--you the only survivor among eight men who had +been murdered, eight men with marks of fetters on their wrists; that +this evidence, I say, clearly indicates you now have no status whatever +before what the Mexicans call their law." + +Grant looked his surprise. Don Padraic continued easily: + +"You are officially dead, Seor Hickman. It is the _ley de fuga_--the +law of flight. You were shot trying to escape while being transferred +from one prison to another. Monstrous barbarism! So the president, +Francisco Madero, met his end; so, perhaps, Carranza. When you were +chained to other convicts and sent afoot out into the desert you were +doomed; the men responsible for that act counted you as dead the minute +they ordered you overland to Hermosillo." + +Grant recalled the mask of fear he'd seen settle over the features of +the big Indian, his chain mate, when the rurales began to loose the +fetters in the sunset hour of that fateful night on the desert; how the +asthmatic little Chinaman had commenced his chant to the joss--men who +had known every weary hour of that march brought them nearer to the +stroke of doom. + +"I have no direct evidence to explain why I was in that chain gang," +Grant began, honestly enough; then he told the story of the fight in +the gambling palace after the discovery of the counterfeit dollars in +his pocket, reserving only all reference to Colonel Urgo. His host +heard him through with a grave face. + +"Perhaps," he ventured, "you were on some mission to the Border which +ran counter to the interests of a scheming official on the Mexican +side." + +"To be honest, I do not know yet on what mission I came to Arizora," +Grant conceded with a laugh. "A friend of mine wrote me in New York +he wanted me to join him in 'a whale of a proposition' out here along +the Border. I was fool enough to come just on that, and when I had an +interview with a Dr. Stooder--" + +"Ah!" The interjection escaped Don Padraic against instant reflex of +judgment, as his hand part way raised to his lips betrayed. Grant +caught the other's quickly covered confusion and suddenly was sensible +of his careless garrulity. Here he was bandying names in a matter his +friend Bagley had surrounded with unexplained secrecy. He finished +lamely: + +"And so on my first night in Arizora I fell into a trap." + +When Don Padraic left the chamber Grant still was dwelling upon his +host's involuntary exclamation at the name of Doc Stooder. What was +there about the saturnine physician, what notorious reputation which +could lead a hermit such as Don Padraic away off in this desert oasis +to evince surprise that one under his roof had had dealings with him? +More and more an undefined regret for his mention of the name of +Stooder plagued him. + +In truth, the whole reason for his coming to Arizora and whatever +fantastic project might be at the bottom of it appeared now strangely +linked with this latest turn of fate, his coming to the Casa O'Donoju. +Grant became aware of a duty long overlooked and wrote a brief and +non-committal note to Bim Bagley, in Arizora, saying only he had +suffered an accident and would return to the Border town as soon as he +was able. This Benicia took from him to give to Quelele when he should +go to the nearest railroad town. + +Two days thereafter befell a boon the wounded man had dreamed of during +many yearning hours. Two male servants of the household came to dress +him in one of Don Padraic's white suits--his own clothes were rags--and +assisted him down a long hall which turned into the green paradise +of the patio. There under the royal date palm they sat him, with the +fountain pool and its magic purple sails of the hyacinth at his feet, +behind and on either hand the green and crimson glory of the geraniums. + +Benicia was awaiting him there alone. The girl, in a simple green frock +which revealed bare arms and the warm round of her shoulders, was the +embodiment of the garden's fairy essence. She was a sprite of this +green and glowing place. Hot sunlight falling upon her head made it a +great exotic flower. + +"Now both of us can revel in being lawbreakers," she exclaimed when the +Indians had bowed themselves out. She was hovering about Grant, patting +into place the gay serape which covered his knees. + +"Lawbreakers!" Grant's glowing eyes bespoke the intoxication of +pleasure. "I feel, rather, like a prisoner whose sentence is commuted." + +The girl's rippling laughter ended with, "Oh, but my father said you +should not be moved for three days yet. Now he has gone into town with +Quelele and you and I are breaking the law--with you equally guilty." + +"What man would not rush into crime with you to lead?" he rallied, +and the little game of give and take in joke and repartee which had +been of their devising these last few days of Grant's convalescence, +when Benicia made her daily visits at his bedside, was resumed. It was +in this course their friendship had grown: on a basis of comradeship +and with healthy minds in apposition, giving and finding something of +humour, of rollicking fun. No angling for sickly sentimentalism on the +part of this unspoiled girl of the waste places--so Grant during hours +of staring at the ceiling had appraised the heart of Benicia O'Donoju; +no place in their communion for any of the trite nothings a man burbles +into concealed ear of a flapper over tea or whatever else comes from +the sophisticated city teapot. + +During these delicious hours in the shadow-dappled patio, as +heretofore, Benicia continued a tantalizing enigma to the man of +cities. While seeming to give so freely of herself in laughing quip +and quick answer to his sallies, never was there that least suspicion +of some overtone to her buoyancy the man yearned to catch; not the +quick revealing of secret depths in the eyes which would betray a +heart responsive to the waves of the man's love enveloping her. Yet +the lips of the girl, full, soft, trembling with unconcealed promise +of richness to the one conquering them: these were not the lips of one +devoid of love's alluring tyrannies. Nor was the rounded body of her, +fully ripened to share in the law of life giving, one to wither outside +love's garden. + +Grant could not speculate, with tremors of eagerness, on the flood of +passion that was dammed behind the girl's sure mastery of herself. Dare +he believe that he might be the one to loose that flood? As he sat +there in the odorous garden the nimble, superficial part of his brain +was playing with bubbles while the deeper fibre of him resolved that +nothing in the world mattered beyond possessing Benicia's love. + +When luncheon was cleared away--it had been a veritable feast of +laughter--Benicia clapped her hands and gave some direction to the +servant answering. The Indian woman disappeared in the body of the +house, soon to come waddling out under the weight of the great harp. +Grant gasped his surprise; he never had associated harps with any +surroundings other than the orchestra pit. + +"My Irish ancestors, who were kings in Donegal, always called for their +harp after a feast," Benicia declared with laughter in her eyes. "That +is the reason we Irish are such dreamers. The harp is the stairs to +dreams. Listen, seor, and hear if I tell the truth." + +Grant watched her, fascinated. Her slender body was in the shade of +a great palm frond, but when she leaned her head forward against the +carved sounding board a narrow lance of sunshine shot down to kindle +her hair to flame there against the gold. As her bare arms passed +in swift flight of swallows across the field of strings shadows and +sunlight played upon them in gules and chevrons of black and ivory. + +First she gave the solo, _Depuis le Jour_, from some opera Grant +vaguely recalled; it was a mad thing, wherein the great instrument +thundered to the far recesses of the patio garden. Then the girl's mood +changed and was interpreted in the sighing motif of _In the Garden_. +It was all bird song and lisping fountains. Grant allowed his eyes to +close so his soul could take flight with the music. + +Slowly, reluctantly, Benicia's fingers swept the final chords. The +great harp was still. + +Out from the shadow of a flanking archway stepped a dapper little +figure in a cloak. Heels clicked sharply and the marionette bowed low. +It was Colonel Hamilcar Urgo. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE MARK OF EL ROJO + + +Colonel Urgo straightened himself, and the smile that had twisted his +little waxed moustache awry suddenly was smudged out. For his eyes +encountered what they were hardly prepared to see--a living dead man. +His face went sickly white; one hand arrested itself in the motion of +making the sign of the cross. He stared at Grant, fascinated. + +Grant himself was little less shaken at the appearance of his enemy. +It was as if a cobra suddenly had lifted its head from the patio's +flowering jungle. In a moment of dreamy ecstasy, when he had felt his +heart yearning toward the girl's over a bridge of music, came this +sinister apparition of evil. It was not fear of the man that caused +Grant's heart to pound--the waspish little Spaniard possessed no +essence of malignity sufficient to terrify one of the American's fibre; +rather a loathing and instinctive reflex of anger gorged his combative +nerves with blood. Grant read surely enough the shock of surprise in +his enemy's eyes and cannily laid this revelation away as a weapon to +hand should necessity demand its use. + +As for Benicia, she made no pretence of concealing her annoyance. +Quick perception seized upon the coincidence of her father's absence +and Colonel Urgo's coming; she knew the wily little suitor had somehow +managed to time his visit to that circumstance. In the first flush of +her surprise Benicia caught herself feeling a great thankfulness that +Grant Hickman was in the house. + +"If you have come to see my father"--Benicia did not rise to greet Urgo +when he took a tentative step toward her--"he is absent at the moment. +I am sorry you have not found him at home." + +Urgo's lynx eyes darted from the girl's face to Grant's and back again. +Plainly he was in a quandary, not knowing how much--if anything--this +American had told his hosts of the circumstances of a night in Sonizona +and its consequences. Benicia, misreading his perturbation, was quick +to interpose with a smile all irony: + +"This is Seor Hickman, whom you may remember having seen on the +train. Seor Hickman, this is a distant cousin of mine, Colonel +Hamilcar Urgo, of the garrison at Sonizona. He is the gentleman who +believed you occupied his berth out of El Paso, if you recall. There +was some slight misunderstanding--" + +Grant flashed a glance at the girl, read the mockery in her eyes and +took his cue from her: + +"I believe I have seen the Colonel subsequently," this in heavy +seriousness. "Was it not somewhere in Sonizona?" + +"I do not recall having had that honour." Teeth flashed in a nervous +smile and the man's eyes veiled themselves furtively. He caught the +challenge to battle of wits with the American and entrenched himself +accordingly. Colonel Urgo found himself at a momentary disadvantage, +however; he did not know what ammunition his rival would choose. +Essaying a diversion, he addressed the girl in rapid Spanish. + +"Our guest, Seor Hickman, does not understand Spanish," Benicia +insinuated reproof. "Yes, it is quite true, as you have judged, that +he is recovering from a wound--a slight misadventure on the road to +Hermosillo. But pray be seated, my cousin, and let me order wine and a +light luncheon. You are visibly fatigued." With a slight bow to Urgo +Benicia arose and crossed the patio to disappear in the shadows of the +arcade. + +Urgo, surprised into an unpleasant situation by being left alone with +the man he had sent to death, fidgeted with the hasp of his cigarette +case. He made great difficulty of scratching a match. Grant, watching +his every move, decided to play some of the cards fate had dealt him. + +"I guessed you were inquiring of Seorita O'Donoju about my condition, +Colonel. You are charmingly solicitous. I was shot in the back--bullet +through my shoulder. Left for dead with the other convicts." + +The little Spaniard let smoke seep through his nostrils and spread out +his hands to say, "So much for that!" Grant was not to be denied his +advantage: + +"Of course, Colonel Urgo, I remember you were good enough to be present +when I was arraigned at the jail on a false charge of counterfeiting; +I shall not soon forget the promise you made then to do what you could +for me. You did--all you possibly could!" Grant's smile had become set +and one hand resting on his blanketed knees flexed into a fist, white +across the knuckles. + +Urgo expelled a cloud of smoke from his lungs and showed his teeth in a +wolf's smile. + +"You remember much, seor. Do not fail to remember, too, you are +a criminal under the laws of Mexico, to be tried on charge of +counterfeiting at the court of Hermosillo." + +"Yes?" Grant was cool under the other's counter. "And will you move +to take me to Hermosillo after what happened--out yonder on that road +through the desert?" + +"I?" Urgo's shoulders lifted. "I am a soldier, seor. I have nothing +to do with justice and the courts. But assuredly you will be taken to +Hermosillo and put on trial." + +The little Spaniard had fully recovered his poise by now. The uneasy +light in his eyes had yielded to a dangerous flicker of craft. Suavity +of a tiger's purr lurked in his voice. Grant mastered the rage which +ridged all his fighting muscles despite the weakness of his body; this +was no moment to be betrayed into throwing away a trick. + +"But before I go to Hermosillo, Colonel, of course I shall take +precautions to insure that I get there--that there will be no more _ley +de fuga_ in my case. Don Padraic O'Donoju, who is an honest man; I +shall take him more fully into my confidence and--" + +"Then you have told--?" Urgo bit his lip in mortification over having +fallen into a trap. Grant's answering smile was innocent as a babe's. + +"I might prefer, Colonel Urgo, to confine our affair--call it a +misunderstanding between two gentlemen--strictly to yourself and +myself, trusting to take care of myself when I have recovered my +strength. But should I be driven to seek the assistance of an honest +man--" + +Benicia appeared that instant; behind her was 'Cepcion with a silver +tray. Before Colonel Urgo bobbed to his feet Grant caught a shaft of +cold fury from his eyes which said that if the girl's presence forced +an armistice no promise of peace lay at its termination. + +Followed an interlude of quiet comedy. Grant, content to leave the +first move in the hands of his enemy, eased his shoulder lazily against +the chair back and let his eyes play over the Spaniard's face and +diminutive figure. There was an indolent suggestion of probing, of +detached appraisal in the steady scrutiny which bit into Urgo's pride. +That and dull rage over the unexplained presence of his rival here in +Benicia's home kept the little whippet fidgeting. + +He essayed addressing the girl in her own tongue, but again and more +pointedly Benicia reminded him of this breach of courtesy. She made +no effort to conceal the imp of humour that tugged at the corners of +her mouth; this flickering of a smile and the dancing of her eyes +made farcical the sober decorum of her speech. Urgo, no fool, was not +long realizing he was being made the butt of his cousin's sport. Thin +lines of strain began to appear about the mouth that smiled so smugly; +just below his temples irritated nerves commenced setting the muscles +a-twitching. Grant, who did not fail to note these reflexes, saw in the +figure opposite a preying animal setting himself for a spring. + +Urgo and Benicia had been exchanging commonplaces. Suddenly the man +leaned forward tensely and returned to the forbidden Spanish in a +hurried burst: "For your own good, my cousin, I must have a few minutes +with you alone. Arrange it, I command you." + +"You are hardly the one, sweetest cousin, to be the judge of my good. +Nor the one to command me." Benicia retorted in the same tongue. Then, +turning with a smile of mock apology to Grant: "You will excuse Colonel +Urgo his occasional lapse from a tongue that is difficult for him." + +The Spaniard took a final draught of wine and pushed back from the +table where his luncheon had been spread. As he idly tapped the corn +husk of one of his cigarettes Grant thought he saw resolution shape +itself in the narrowed eyes. There was a moment's silence, then Urgo +addressed himself graciously to Grant: + +"Seor Hickman, perhaps my adorable cousin here has not found +opportunity to tell you anything of the history of this remarkable +house in the desert where you have found such agreeable convalescence." + +"I believe not." Grant spoke warily, his senses alert for some pitfall. +He shot a warning glance at Benicia; but the girl, ignorant of the grim +feud between the two, could not read it understandingly. Colonel Urgo +surrounded his head with a blue cloud and continued: + +"An engaging history, seor. Not a house in all Sonora with such +romance behind it, such--how do you say it?--such legend, eh? Though +I am distantly of the same family, our branch cannot claim the +distinction that falls to my cousin, who is the last of the veritable +O'Donoju. + +"Behold her glorious head, Seor Hickman!" Urgo waved his cigarette +to point the burning of sunlight above Benicia's brow; his own +head inclined as if in reverence. "There in my fairest cousin's +so-marvellous hair lies all the legend and the history of the great +family O'Donoju." + +The girl, frankly amused at what appeared a turgid compliment, tossed +back her head in a gust of laughter. But Grant could not join with +her. As from some iceberg veiled in fog came to him the cold feel of +malignity moving to some unguessed purpose. Was Urgo planning to strike +at him through the girl he adored? Yet what possible obloquy could he +call up against Benicia, whose soul was unsullied as the winds of the +wastes? Urgo spoke on: + +"Undoubtedly, my cousin, Seor Hickman has felt his heart snared by +those burning meshes of yours or he is not a judge of beauty"--gesture +of impatience from Benicia. "So it is for the benefit of the seor as +well as for your own, fairest cousin, that I recite this legend of the +red hair of the O'Donoju. Strange, is it not, that all Sonora knows it +and has told the story to its children for a hundred years, yet you, +_chiquita_"--a wave of the cigarette toward the girl--"who should be +most interested are the only ignorant one. + +"There was in the long ago, seor, a Michael O'Donohue--what you call +of the wild Irish, who had flaming hair and an untamed spirit. A king +in Spain gave him the whole district of Altar for his estate, and he +came here to the Garden of Solitude with his Spanish lady and built +him this house where we sit. He was a man who considered the safety of +his soul, so he built a mission to the glory of the four evangelists +out yonder by the Gulf where the Sand People needed the comfort of the +Mother Church and--" + +"He lived a life any one of his descendants might pattern after," +Benicia put in with a smile carrying a sting. Urgo touched his breast +with delicate fingers and bowed. Then turning again to Grant: + +"When the Apaches burned that mission, seor, a pious O'Donoju restored +it and the family, then numerous, endowed that mission altar with much +gold and silver. There was, too, a great string of pearls--pearls with +a green light, legend says, which the Sand People brought from the +shell beds of the Gulf to show their piety. You are following me, Seor +Hickman, eh?" + +Grant made no sign. His eyes were upon Benicia's face, reading there +a slow change. Now she, too, had begun to feel a nameless portent +stealing over her like the chill from hidden ice. The wells of her +eyes were deeper; faint colour came and went in her cheeks and throat. +Grant, certain that Urgo was preparing torture for her under the +innocent mask of narrative, was helpless to intervene; no diversion +short of the work of fists was possible, and that his weakness denied +him. + +"There was of that generation which restored the mission, seor, a +wild youth, true descendant of the original O'Donoju. He was known +from Mexico City to Tucson as El Rojo--the Red One--for his hair was +the veritable colour of that which our cousin possesses. And the devil +rode his heart with spurs of fire. You have never been told of El Rojo, +Benicia?" + +The girl made no answer. Her level gaze was a mute challenge. The +little colonel rerolled one of his eternal cigarettes, lighted it and +drank smoke with a sensuous inhalation. + +"At the feast of the re-dedication El Rojo, banished from the family, +appeared out of nowhere. Conceive the consternation, seor! The red +head of the devil's own come to sanctified ground. This fiery head, so +like our Benicia's, swooping as a comet into the feasting place of the +family; well might the pious O'Donojus be fearful. + +"And their fears were not without grounds. Before El Rojo quit the +Mission of the Four Evangelists he had murdered the priest, his own +uncle, and stolen the rope of pearls from the sacred image of the +Virgin. He rode away with one of his cousins, a foolish girl of the +Mayortorenas, who was wife to him in the desert without priest or book." + +Urgo let his voice trail away as with a tale finished. His teasing +glance lingered on the faces of his two auditors. Benicia drew a +tremulous breath and forced a smile, as though she were relaxing from +strain. On this cue the story teller unexpectedly continued: + +"But I hear Seor Hickman ask, 'What part has all this ancient legend +with Seorita Benicia's red hair?' Patience, seor. We approach that. + +"Legend says that though El Rojo's wife worked upon his heart and +brought repentance, it was too late. He returned to the mission a year +after his double crime to restore the Virgin's pearls to the sanctuary. +The Apaches had been there just before him. The priests were slain and +the mission burned. El Rojo buried the pearls within the stark walls, +hoping the good God would accept this his acknowledgment of sin. There +the pearls lie to-day beyond sight of man, for the desert has blotted +out the last remnants of ruins. + +"But the sin of El Rojo was not so easily to be forgotten in sight +of the good God, sweetest cousin." Urgo suddenly turned away from +Grant, to whom he had been addressing his story, and fixed his eyes on +Benicia; almost there was the click of snapping fetters in his glance. +"You bear the mark of it above your brow like the mark of Cain--his +fire-red hair!" + +"Stop!" The girl leaped from her chair, blazing wrath in every line of +her face. "I shall not listen--" + +"The grandson of El Rojo and his grandson," Urgo purred on with his +smile of a hunting cat, "every second generation of the O'Donoju has +one born with the curse of the red hair to tell all Sonora God does not +forget. And now you, the last of an accursed family, its great estates +gone--its power gone--your own grandfather with his red hair shot with +Maximilian!--You with the red head--daughter of a murderer--" + +A hand closed over the collar of the colonel's military jacket, gave +it a twist, throttling his speech. Grant had leaped from his seat--a +pain like a bayonet point shot through his shoulder at the sudden +movement--and come upon the spiteful little slanderer from behind. + +"Gringo assassin!" whistled the little Spaniard, and his right hand +groped backward to a concealed holster. It fell into a grip too strong +to be broken. Grant was bearing all his weight on the other's back, +for the instant he was on his feet he discovered a weakness of his +knees which would not support him. The impulse to shut off Urgo's +venomous tongue had been acted upon without calculation; now that he +had committed himself to action the American realized how heavy was the +hazard against him. One arm useless, all the other muscles once ready +to respond instantly to call for action now seeming to be palsied. A +paralytic boldly attempting to bell a wildcat; this was the situation. + +Benicia saw the American's face over the squirming Urgo's shoulder; +it wore a strained grin which hardly served to mask the toll taken of +weakened muscles. She whirled and ran out of the patio to call aid in +the servants' quarters. + +Now the hot fire from his wound was spreading across Grant's back and +down his fighting arm as he swayed across the patio half supported +on the Spaniard's back. The frantic jerkings of Urgo's pistol arm in +Grant's grip threatened momentarily to loosen the restraining fingers; +that done, the American's end would be speedy. + +Grant found himself near a wall, braced one foot against it and lunged +outward. Down went both men. Urgo twisted out from under the heavier +body, pinning him, and raised himself to one knee. Grant saw a tigerish +gleam of triumph in the other's eyes as his right hand whipped back to +the holster on his hip. + +Some power more rapid than thought moved the American's sound arm +outward in a wild sweep which encompassed a giant fuchsia bush growing +in a Chinese tea tub. Over went the bush just as Urgo fired from the +hip, its branches swishing down over the latter's head. + +The bullet went wild. Grant, near swooning from the consuming pain of +his wound, scrambled for his enemy--went up with him when he found his +feet. The revolver had been knocked from Urgo's hand by the avalanche +of greenery; a sideways kick of Grant's foot sent it spinning into the +fountain. + +Now the wounded man sent a final summons to his last reservoir of +strength. Slowly--slowly he forced the little Spaniard out of the +patio and down the long corridor toward the front door of the house. +When Benicia came running with two husky Indians they found Grant with +his man waiting before the heavy oaken portal. One of the Indians +swung back the door. Grant gave a supreme heave and the colonel went +sprawling like a straddle bug out onto the gravel. + +The great door slammed behind him. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +DESERT SECRETS + + +Consider now the interesting activities of Doc Stooder, fallen angel of +sculapius: + +On a March evening of sunset splendour the worthy doctor descended +from the single combination coach and baggage car which a +suffering locomotive drags once daily from a junction point on the +transcontinental line south through naked battalions of mountains to +the ghost town of Cuprico. Once Cuprico was famous; once when primitive +steam shovels nibbled at solid mountains of copper up back of Main +Street Cuprico roared with a life that was dizzy and vaunted itself the +rip-roarin'est copper camp in all the Southwest. But the glory that was +Cuprico passed, even as that of Rome; to-day they tell of the town that +when its mayor fell dead on the post office steps his body remained +undiscovered for three days. + +No romantic craving for revisiting scenes of his youth had prompted +the Doc to his journey Cupricoward--he had been its premier stud +player in a day of glory fifteen years before. No, a far more material +urge had ended a period of fretting in Arizora by shunting him on a +westward-wending train. For a week Bim Bagley, his partner in a secret +enterprise, had been absent on his quest of El Doctor Coyote Belly and +the New York engineer, Bim's friend, who was reported to be wounded +and under the care of the Papago medicine man. Ten days prior to +Bagley's excursion into Sonora had been frittered away in groping for +information concerning this vanished engineer. All precious time wasted! + +It has, perhaps, become apparent that Doc Stooder was not enthusiastic +over the inclusion of Grant Hickman, the Easterner, in his golden +scheme of treasure trove in desert sands. The stubborn refusal of +Bim Bagley to move without this fellow Hickman's being party to the +enterprise had prevented a start on the expedition for the Mission of +the Four Evangelists six weeks before. The canny physician--whose share +in the joint endeavour was to be his exclusive information concerning +the whereabouts of the Lost Mission--possessed in large degree that +sense of divination bestowed upon folk of the desert which gives their +imagination wings over the horizon of time. Each day of delay he read +a day to the advantage of Don Padraic O'Donoju, certain sure as he was +that the master of the desert oasis had come by knowledge of his own +treasure hunt intent through mysterious desert channels. + +The vision of gold and pearls Doc Stooder had seen in the depths of +raw alcohol on a night of dreaming in his office had become a goad. +So he came to Cuprico, the ghost town not seventy miles away from the +supposed site of the buried mission; his intent was to pick up his +Papago informant, who lived midway between Cuprico and the Border, and, +as Stooder happily phrased his purpose, "give things a look-see." If +his luck was with him and he should stumble onto the mission during +this solo game so much the better. Conscience nor maxims of fair play +were any part of the doctor's moral anatomy. + +The Doc upon his arrival did not pervade Cuprico's centres of evening +society--the Golden Star pool hall and soft drinks emporium and the +back room of Garcia's drug store--for reasons sufficiently potent to +merit a paragraph of explanation. + +Years before, when he was a resident of the mining camp and had money, +Doc Stooder took unto himself a Mexican wife who had a passion for +diamonds. Mrs. Apolinaria Stooder had a way with her which seemed +to win deep into the atrophied heart of her spouse, and he showered +her with the stones of her choice. No woman from Yuma to Tucson--so +legend still recites--"packed so much ice" as Doc Stooder's. Then in +an epidemic of typhoid, which the Doc combated with the heroism of a +saint, Apolinaria died. + +Alone and with his own hands her sorrowing widower gave her sepulchre +somewhere amid the gaunt hills surrounding the town. He let it become +known after the interment that since Apolinaria loved her diamonds so +he had buried them with her, adding for good measure of gossip that he +figured their total value at round $5000. Immediately and for several +years thereafter all the prospectors for fifty miles about gave up +their search for dip and strike and prospected for Mrs. Apolinaria +Stooder. Failing to find so much as a "colour" of her diamonds, the +profession drew the conclusion that Doc Stooder was a monumental liar. +His popularity waned accordingly. + +Shadows were lengthening when Stooder tooled a rented desert skimmer +out of Cuprico's single garage and brought it to a stop before the +general store. Into the wagon box behind the seat went his bed roll, +brought from Arizora and containing certain glassware whose contents +were more precious to their owner than life itself; boxes of grocery +staples; extra cans of oil and gasoline. Two big canteens on the +running board were filled. Plugs of chewing tobacco heavy and broad as +slate shingles were stowed in the tool box. In all this preparation +the doctor's long legs calipered themselves from counter to car with +remarkable efficiency. + +"Goin' on a little prospecting trip?" the storekeeper had volunteered +when the Doc first commenced his stowing. No answer. + +"Figgerin' on a little _pasear_ down 'crost the Line?" hopefully from +that worthy as he helped noose the tarpaulin over the dunnage. The +Doc's head was buried above the ears among the engine's naked cylinders +and he professed not to hear. When Stooder was seated at the wheel +and the storekeeper had the edge of the final pail of water over the +radiator vent he feebly flung out his last grappling hook: + +"Reckon you might be selling Bibles to the Papagoes." + +"Come here, friend," sternly from the doctor. "Now I give you the way +inside if you'll promise to keep it mum." The storekeeper hopped +around to lean his ear over the wheel in gleeful anticipation. + +"I'm a-goin' south from here to give a Chinese lady a lesson on the +ocarina. So long!" + +When the Doc skittered down the brief Main Street and out onto the +thread of grey caliche that was the road to the mysterious south +all of the west was a-roil with the final palette scrapings of the +sunset--umber, pale lemon and, high above the mountains standing black +as obsidian, cirrus clouds dyed a fugitive cherry. Ahead showed the +ragged gate into the valley of El Infiernillo--the Little Hell--place +of bleak distances between mountain ranges bare as sheet iron; place +of unimaginable thirst when summer sun hurls reflected heat back from +burning walls. Beyond El Infiernillo just a hint of peaks like fretwork +spires marked destination for the doctor; there at the foot of the +Growler range and where the Desert of Altar washes across the imaginary +line between two nations, lay the land of his desire. Somewhere on +the Road of the Dead Men passing through that savage waste perchance +a nubbin of weathered 'dobe wall lifted a few inches above the sand +to mark treasure of gold and pearls below; maybe naught but a charred +timber end concealed by a patch of greasewood and crying a secret to +the ears of the searcher. + +Gold and pearls--pearls and gold! The Doc's rapt eye caught the colours +of sacred treasure in the dyes of the sunset and read them for a +portent of success. + +"Me, I'm a-goin' just slosh around in wealth! Doc Stooder, the man with +the _dinero_--that's me!" The gaunt head behind the wheel of the desert +skimmer was tilted back and A. Stooder, M.D., carolled his expectations +at the new stars. Then he reined in his gas snorter long enough to +fumble with his bed roll in the wagon box. Out came a square bottle of +fluid fire, such as passes currency with the international bootleggers +in the Southwest. The Doc drank heartily to the promise spread across +the western heavens. The bottle was tucked in a handy coat pocket for +future reference. + +Nights in the desert along the Line are psychic. They are not of the +world of arc lights, elevated trains and the winking jewels of white +ways. In that world man has so completely surrounded himself with the +tinsels of his own making, the noise of his own multiplied squeakings +and chatterings, that he comes to accept the vault above him as under +the care of the city parks department. His little tent of night is +no higher than the towers of his skyscrapers. But in the desert it is +different. + +Emptiness of day is increased an hundred fold at dark because it +leaps up to lose its frontiers behind the stars. Silence of the day +is intensified to such a degree that the inner ear catches a humming +of supernal machinery in the heavens. The eye measures perspectives +between the near and far planets. And the soul of man hearkens to +strange voices; sighings from the pale mouths of the desert scrubs, +born to a servitude of thirst; whisperings passed from mountain top to +mountain top; faint stirrings of the earth relaxed from the torsion of +the sun. + +Doc Stooder, desert familiar as he was, never could blunt his senses +to this emptiness of night in the wastes. It awed him, left him +itching under half-perceived conceptions of the infinite. Hence the +bottle carried handily in his pocket. From time to time as he careered +over the road faintly marked by the feeble sparks of his headlights +he braked down to have a swig. The more he felt lifted above sombre +unrealities about him the greater his impulse to break into song. The +iron gate of El Infiernillo heard his roundelay. + +Miles unreeled behind him. Dim shapes of mountains dissolved to new +contours and were left behind. The Doc came to a sharp eastward turning +of the road but kept straight ahead out over the untracked flats to +southward. He knew his way; the packed sand gave him as good traction +as the road. Down and down into the unpeopled wilderness of sandhills +and buttes bored the twin sparks of the little car. + +Another shift of direction and the Doc was teetering up a narrow caon +between high mountain walls. His course was a dry wash, boulder strewn. +Only instinct of a desert driver saved him from piling up on some rough +block of detritus. Sand traps forced him to shove the engine into low, +and the snarling of the exhaust was multiplied from the caon walls. + +A light flickered far ahead. A dog barked. The car wallowed and +snuffled out of the wash to come to a halt before several silhouettes +of huts. People, roused from sleep by the car's clamour, stood ringed +about in curiosity; one held a torch of reeds. + +"Ho, Guadalupe!" Doc Stooder bellowed. A solid looking Indian with a +mat of tousled iron-grey hair stood out under the torch light, grinning +a welcome to "El Doctor." + +"Show me a place to sleep," commanded the visitor, and the one called +Guadalupe carried the doctor's bed-roll to his own hut, of which +squaw and children were speedily dispossessed. So the good doctor +from Arizora slept the rest of the night in the rancheria of the Sand +People, last remnant of that Papago family for which the Mission of +the Four Evangelists was reared to save souls. In five hours the Doc +had covered by gasoline what it would have cost Guadalupe of the Sand +People as many days in painful plodding. + +Morning saw the rancheria in a ferment of excitement and Doc Stooder +viciously tyrannical in reaction from his accustomed alcoholic night. +Guadalupe found himself in a difficult position. Once in a moment +of gratitude when the white doctor had snatched his squaw from the +tortures of asthma--the miracle had occurred in Guadalupe's summer +camp near Arizora--the Indian had babbled his knowledge of the buried +mission, its treasure. But he had not counted upon this unexpected +appearance of the white doctor, demanding to be led to the place of +wealth. It is common with all the Southwestern Indians to believe +naught but ill luck can follow any revelation to a white man of the +desert's hidden gold; some say the early padres, themselves consistent +hoarders, inculcated this lesson. With the eyes of his fellow villagers +disapprovingly upon him, Guadalupe first attempted evasion. + +Stooder in an ominous quiet heard him through. Then without a word +he opened a small medicine chest he carried in his bed-roll and took +therefrom two tightly folded pieces of paper--blue and white. While +Guadalupe and the rest watched, round-eyed, the doctor made quick +passes with each bit of paper over the mouth of a small water _olla_. +The surface of the water sizzed and boiled. + +Guadalupe, two shades whiter, babbled his willingness to go at once to +the place where the mission lay hidden. + +"Prime cathartic for the mind," grunted the Doc, and he tuned his +engine for the trip. + +They were off down the caon and into the yellow basin of El +Infiernillo. Guadalupe, riding for the first time in the white man's +smell-wagon, gripped his seat with the delicious fear of a child on +a merry-go-round. He watched the movements of the doctor's foot on +the gear-shift, marvelling that the beast concealed in pipes and rods +answered each downward thrust with a roar. Earth spun under him as if +Elder Brother himself, master of all created things, had a hold on it +and were pulling it all one way. + +Down and down into the untracked miles of Altar. A single iron post on +a hill marking the Line. The sierra of Pinacate cinder-red in the south +for a beacon. Right and left sheet iron ranges with stipples of rust +where the _camisa_ grew. Mirage quivering into nothingness just as its +false waters were ready to be parted by the car's wheels. + +They came upon an east-and-west track in the sand--the Road of the +Dead Men--and turned westward upon it. Away off to the north and east +a spiral dust cloud walked across the wastes along the skirts of the +mountains. Guadalupe pointed to it with an ejaculation in his own +tongue. A sign--a sign! There was the place of the mission! + +The Doc felt his internals quiver in expectation. Prickles of +excitement played in fingers that gripped the wheel. Automatically he +began to hum an ancient bar-room ditty. + +The Papago indicated where he should turn off the road in the direction +of a great gap in the mountains, into which the desert flowed as a sea. +Here the mesquite lifted from its crouch and flourished in a five-foot +growth--true index of hidden waters. The car made hard going, what +with brittle twigs that caught at its tires and the _cholla_ creeping +like a spined snake to threaten punctures. At his guide's word Doc +Stooder stopped. Both scrambled out. + +Before moving a step the Doc must have a ceremonial drink, a +preliminary he did not deem necessary to share with Guadalupe. The +man's big hands trembled as he raised the bottle to his lips; his eyes +were shining with gold lust. + +Guadalupe stood for several minutes slowly swinging his head from +landmark to landmark, his eyes following calculated lines through the +scrub. Then he commenced a slow pacing through the close-set aisles of +the greasewood and cactus, bearing in a wide circle. He peered into +the core of each shrub, kicked at every naked stub of root and branch +appearing above the surface. The Doc, cursing and humming alternately, +was right at his shoulder. + +An hour passed--two. The sun, now high, burned mercilessly. Still +Guadalupe pursued a narrowing circle through the scrub. Of a sudden the +Indian gurgled and dropped to his knees beside a salt-bush. He whipped +out his knife and began hacking at the tough stubs of branches near +the soil. The Doc, slavering in his excitement, dropped beside him and +looked into the heart of the salt-bush. He saw nothing but a rounded +slab of rock. + +Guadalupe finished his knife work and started to dig with his hands. +Terrier-like he pawed a hole away from what Stooder had taken for a +rock. The smooth black surface began to curve outward in a form too +symmetrical for nature's work; it was rounded and gradually flaring. + +Guadalupe dug on. Blood pounded in the Doc's ears. Snatches of song +trickled from his lips. + +Suddenly patience exploded. Stooder pushed the Papago to his haunches +and threw his own body full length into the hole dug. His arms embraced +a flaring shape of metal. His eyes fell upon faint ridges and lines, +like lettering. He spat upon the spot and rubbed it clean of clinging +soil. + + GLORIA DEI ET MUND---- + PHILLIPUS REX + ANNO DOM.----XXIV + +"The bell! The mission bell!" screamed the Doc. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +CROSSCURRENTS + + +An hour after the sun had set on the day of Colonel Urgo's humiliation +at the Casa O'Donoju, Quelele tooled his car into the avenue of palms +at the end of the long return journey from Magdalena, on the railroad. +With him were his master, Don Padraic, and an American stranger, Bim +Bagley of Arizora. + +Fate had played capriciously with Bim. When he set out from Arizora on +the quest of his pal Grant Hickman it was only on the bare report that +the man was seriously wounded and under the care of El Doctor Coyote +Belly at Babinioqui, south of the Line. Near the end of his journey +his car had wrecked itself beyond repair hard by Magdalena; a mule had +been requisitioned to carry him over the mountains to the home of the +medicine man; once there he was as far from the end of his quest as +ever. + +For grey old Coyote Belly lied unblinkingly. He knew nothing of a +wounded man. Persuasion of words nor the chink of silver dollars +availed to budge him from a trust he conceived to be joined between +himself and the master of the Casa O'Donoju. + +The hours following the scene in the patio and the sudden gust of +action concluding the visit of Hamilcar Urgo had been trying ones +for Grant. Spent as he was by the struggle with the Spaniard, he had +suffered himself to be half-carried to his room by the Indian servants. +Benicia, accompanying him to the door, had permitted her hand to rest +in his at farewell; a clasp tried to tell what the storm in her soul +denied speech. The girl's face was etched by suffering; sacrificed +pride and a shadow of some deep fear lay heavy in her eyes and the +drawn lines about her mouth. The wound made by her spiteful suitor was +deeper than Grant could conceive. + +Alone on his bed he conned over the tale Urgo had told. Unfamiliar as +he was with the Latin temperament, the belief of the romance peoples +in the very reality of inherited curse and whips of Nemesis pursuing +innocent generations, yet the raw tragedy of the story fired his +imagination. He tried to put himself in the place of the girl he loved +with all her pride of race and family; to feel with her the stripes +of scorn the despicable Urgo had laid on. El Rojo's desecration of +the mission sanctuary by an act of blood; his flight into the desert +with the pearls of the Virgin and a girl, "who was wife to him without +priest or book"; the blotting of the mission from sight of man; all +this cycle of tragedy of the dim past linked to a gloriously vital +creature of the present by the chance colour of her hair. The thing was +monstrously absurd! And yet-- + +A knock at the door and Don Padraic entered. He turned to beckon some +one behind him. In the candlelight Grant saw the head of a giant stoop +to avoid the lintel. + +"Bim Bagley!" + +The desert man crossed to the bed by a single wide step and threw both +arms about Grant in a bear hug. + +"You dam'd old snoozer. You dam'd old snoozer!" was all Bim could give +in greeting. Don Padraic stepped outside and closed the door on the +reunion. Bim let his friend's body lightly down on the pillows and sat +back to grin into Grant's eyes. + +"I sure been burnin' the ground all over North Sonora on your trail," +he rumbled. "You're the original little Mexican jumping bean." + +"Jumped right into a flock of trouble, old side partner, with more +right beyond the front line waiting for me. The reserves seem to have +come up just the right time." Grant gave his pal's great paw a squeeze. +Bim roared assurance: + +"Reserves got all bogged down through failure in liaison--just like the +days of the Big Show. But they're with you now from hell to breakfast, +young fellah; an' I think I know the name of the outfit we got to trim. +Name's Hamilcar Urgo, huh?" His buoyant spirit was wine to Grant; the +very animal force of him seemed to fill the old room. + +"Ran acrost that li'l sidewinder this afternoon when the old Don was +bringing me up here from Magdalena. Just our two cars on the road. He +pulls up when we're makin' to pass him--face on him just as pleasant as +a polecat's. Your friend the Don passes the time of day courteous as +you please. + +"'I had the honour to visit your daughter this day,' whinnies this Urgo +gazabo; of course he speaks in Spanish, which is nuts for me. 'And I +discover she is entertaining a convict who escaped from a chain gang.'" +Bim grinned. "I take it that convict is my li'l friend from Noo Yawk." + +Grant nodded. The other wagged his head in a grotesque mockery of grief. + +"'My daughter and I are entertaining an American gentleman who was +wounded on the Hermosillo road,' your Don answers, civil enough. 'While +he is a guest in our house we naturally ask no questions.' + +"'Then,' snaps this Urgo boy, 'I must inform you that for harbouring an +escaped criminal you are responsible before the law. The rurales will +visit your house and it is for me to say whether they take you as well +as the gringo convict.'" + +Grant started. Here was a phase of the situation he had not guessed: +that his courteous host might be made to suffer for Urgo's rage and +jealousy. + +Eagerly, "What did Don Padraic say to that?" + +"He says something to the effect that the laws of hospitality were +above any this-here Urgo might care to dig up, the same I call being +mighty white of your Don Whosis with the Irish twist to his name." +Bim broke off to shoot a quizzical look into his friend's eyes. "Say, +brother, what you been doin' to this little black-an'-tan stingin' +lizard to make him ride your trail so hard? You a tenderfoot an' +riding your herd across the fence line of the biggest little man in the +whole Sonora government!" + +Grant grinned childishly. "Well, I threw him out of the front door here +this afternoon for one thing and--" + +Admiration beamed from every wind wrinkle about the Arizonan's eyes. +"Sho! You did that? Now I call that steppin' some for a man with a +bullet through him. I thought from the gen'ral slant to Seor Urgo's +manner when he met up with us some one'd been working on his frame +somewhere. He just sweat T.N.T. But why did you crawl him?" + +"He insulted Seorita O'Donoju," was Grant's answer. Bim lowered the +lid of one eye owlishly and his gaunt face was pulled down to a comic +aspect of concern. + +"Uh-huh; now I begin to get the drift. Old Doc Stooder was right +when he says there's the shoo-shoo of a skirt somewheres in your big +disappearing act. Boy--boy! I had you figgered for the orig'nal old +hermit coyote who travels the meat trail alone. No wonder li'l Urgo's +all coiled up for the strike, you aimin' to run him out on his girl." + +Before Grant could head off his friend on a topic that brought sudden +embarrassment to him 'Cepcion and a second servant entered with a +spread table. Bim tucked pillows under his friend's shoulders with +clumsy tenderness, then in mellow candlelight they ate and talked. Both +were bursting with questions to be asked, but Bim claimed the right of +priority by virtue of his ten days' blind search through the country +south of the Line. At his demand Grant gave him the whole story of +his feud with Colonel Urgo, from the meeting at El Paso down to the +afternoon's events in the patio. Lively play of sympathies about the +Arizonan's features followed the narrative of the dreadful march in +the chain gang and Grant's burst for freedom under the rifles of the +rurales. The little his friend left unsaid Bim was shrewd enough to +supply; he guessed the story of Grant's thraldom under the witchery of +the desert girl and found it good. + +When the man on the pillows began recital of what had occurred just +a few hours before--Urgo's savage assault on a girl's pride through +the story of El Rojo's impiety--the big man by the bed stiffened in +intensified interest. He heard Grant through with scarce concealed +impatience. + +"But, man, that was the Mission of the Four Evangelists Urgo was +telling of!" explosively from Bim. Grant nodded confirmation. + +"Why, that's the Doc's big proposition--our proposition!" + +Grant looked his puzzlement. The other's excitement swirled him on: + +"That proves what the Doc's Papago told him. Pearls buried there. An' +gold--lots of gold, the Papago says. I had a sneaking hunch all the +time it might be one of Stooder's wild dreams, but this story proves +we're on the right track." + +"Do you mean--?" + +"Sure! That's what I brought you out from the East for--to help us +uncover this Lost Mission, as folks in Arizona call it. Doc Stooder's +such a cagey old monkey he wouldn't let me put on paper just what I +wanted you to whack in on. Now you got it all--the pure quill. Isn't it +a whale of a proposition!" + +Though Grant's surface perception had grasped the full import of his +friend's words some sub-strata of mind, or of heart, stubbornly refused +to be convinced that he had heard aright. He groped for words: + +"You say you brought me out here to help you uncover pearls and gold +that belong to the Church?" + +"Why not?" A subtle note of pugnacity in the other's speech. "The +stuff's been lyin' buried for a hundred an' fifty years more or less. +The priests've never lifted a finger to find it, though slews of +prospectors have rooted round trying to uncover this cache." + +"But the old O'Donojus built this church and endowed it with that very +treasure you want to dig for," Grant persisted. "What about their +rights?" + +He did not hear Bim's arguments. Instead he was conning over the story +of the bane of the house of O'Donoju. Before his eyes was the face of +the girl he loved, as he had last seen it, deeply graven with tragedy. + +Grant's hand went out in a comrade's clasp. "Bim, old man, count me out +on this thing. I couldn't consider it for a minute." + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +REVELATION + + +"Don Padraic's compliments, and he awaits the pleasure of his guests' +company in the music room if the sick seor feels able." It was +'Cepcion's soft patois that interrupted Bim Bagley's explosion of +pained surprise in mid-flight. Grant gave him a smile which interpreted +the diversion as something to his friend's advantage and, leaning on +Bim's shoulder, followed the servant to the great room in the centre of +the house. + +A fire burned in the cavernous fireplace, for spring nights in Altar +have a chill; candles in dull silver wall sconces tempered the red +light. The vast room was so peopled with dancing shadows from the +antique furnishings that the tall man in white and the girl who +advanced to greet the guests appeared to be moving in a company of +hooded monks. + +"'Nicia, Seor Bagley, the friend of our friend." Don Padraic bowed to +Bim, who crooked his lank body with surprising grace. + +"And I am a friend of you two," came Bim's forthright answer, "since +you have treated Grant Hickman so kindly. He is the salt of the earth." + +Don Padraic indicated seats before the andirons. Benicia chose a low +settle by the side of the great winged chair where her father seated +himself. Grant saw shadows beneath her eyes where the firelight played +upon her features, almost waxen in uncertain light. The glint of copper +in the piled-up mass of her hair was like summer lightning in clouds. +Their eyes met, and Grant was disappointed in the hope he might still +find the soul of the girl revealed there as it had been that afternoon +in the unguarded moment when Benicia gave him wordless thanks. He +guessed she had told Don Padraic of the incident in the patio and that +what had passed between father and daughter thereafter had been a drain +on the emotions of both. + +Don Padraic turned to Grant with more than perfunctory concern in +speech and glance. "Your health, seor? I fear that certain events of +the day, of which my daughter has told me--" + +"Please!" Grant was quick to interrupt. "I am feeling fit as I could +be, thanks to the careful nursing I have had in your house." + +The thing that had been left unspoken by both weighed like an unlaid +spirit on the silence that followed. Each of the four before the +fire had little thought save for the chapter of circumstance left +unconcluded by one who had departed the Garden a few hours before, +swollen with the venom of outraged pride. It was Don Padraic who +brushed aside reserve: + +"Seor Hickman, I may speak before your friend, who must share your +confidence. He will pardon my bringing personal affairs before him. I +can not postpone my thanks--my very sincere thanks--for what you did +this afternoon. My daughter was defenceless." + +"And I--" Benicia began, but Grant quickly put in: + +"Will you not consider that I was really serving my own private ends--a +score to be evened between Colonel Urgo and myself?" + +Bim covered a reminiscent grin with a broad palm as Grant hurried on, +eager to withhold from the girl opportunity to speak her thanks. + +"When I was brought here I thought it best to keep silent on the matter +of my own private grudge against this man. But now that it appears we +all have common cause against him I think I may speak. Urgo himself was +responsible for my being shot." + +He saw Benicia's eyes grow wide, read the surprise that parted her +lips in a breathed exclamation. He thought he saw, too, just the flash +of something no eyes but his own could understand, and he was glad. +Briefly he sketched the incident of the gambling palace in Sonizona, +his encounter with Urgo in the office of the jail, the march with the +chain gang. + +"And so," Grant concluded, "Colonel Urgo found a dead man come to life +when he saw me in the patio to-day. When Seorita O'Donoju was out of +hearing for a moment I could not resist a shot which left our friend +guessing whether or not I had told you, seor, how I came by my wound." + +"Ah, yes," from Benicia in a hushed voice. "I knew the minute I +returned there had been something between you. Urgo was like a cornered +animal." + +"And so he turned on you," Grant could not help saying. "If only I +could have guessed beforehand his attack--" + +Again silence fell. Grant was alive to the play of unspoken thought +between father and daughter; these two alone in the immensity of the +desert and facing unsupported the craft of an implacable enemy. He +sensed the battle between their pride and their desperate need for +an ally: the one impulse dictating that what was the secret affair of +the House of O'Donoju must remain strictly its own secret, the other +moving them to confide in him, who unwittingly had been drawn into the +struggle. Gladly would he have offered himself as a champion; but he +must await their initiative. Suddenly Grant recalled what Bim had told +him of Urgo's threat at the meeting with Don Padraic on the desert +road: how the head of the Casa O'Donoju would be held responsible for +harbouring an escaped convict. There was no blinking his duty in this +direction. + +"My friend tells me, Don Padraic, that Colonel Urgo threatens your +arrest as well as my own; that you will be held responsible for +concealing a fugitive from justice. That cannot be, of course. +To-morrow, if Quelele can take Bagley and myself in the car--" + +"No!" Benicia's denial came peremptorily and with a hint of passion +which gave Grant a sting of surprise. "No, seor, we do not turn +wounded men into the desert--particularly a friend who has served us as +you have done." + +Again Grant saw in the firelit pools of her eyes just an instant's +revelation of depths he yearned to plumb--the aspect of a beginning +love hardly knowing itself as such. He scarcely heard the voice of Don +Padraic seconding his daughter's protest. + +"The hospitality of the Casa O'Donoju," he was saying, "can hardly +recognize such silly threats. Colonel Urgo's hope was that we would +send you back over the Road of the Dead Men to Caborca or Magdalena +where, naturally, you would be made a prisoner. Please dismiss from +your mind any idea of our permitting ourselves to play into this man's +hands." + +Bim Bagley ventured to break his silence: "Grant here and I have +important business together up over the Line. We ought to be moving +soon's we can." The white-haired don turned to Bim with a gracious +spreading of the hands. + +"When Seor Hickman feels able to make the journey Quelele will take +him and yourself, Seor Bagley, to westward. There is a way through El +Infiernillo up to the Arizona town of Cuprico. By so going you will +avoid any trap Urgo might lay. But you will not hurry Seor Hickman's +going"--Don Padraic interjected reservation--"and you, Seor Bagley, +surely can remain with us until then." + +The direct Bagley, finding himself thwarted by the don's suavity, sent +a sheepish grin Grant's way in token of his defeat and maintained +silence. Don Padraic, to dismiss the subject his reticence had +reluctantly introduced, struck a gong to summon a servant. Soon a +decanter of sherry was glowing golden in the firelight and cigarettes +were burning. The master of the Casa O'Donoju artfully led Bim into +talk of cattle, always currency of conversation in the Southwest. Grant +drew his chair closer to Benicia's. + +"You startled me with that 'No' of yours to my proposal to leave the +Garden of Solitude at once," he said with a boldness he did not wholly +feel. "Being a little deaf, I am not sure I heard all the reasons you +gave why I should not go." + +"What you failed to hear me say my father supplied," the girl quickly +parried, giving him her steady gaze. He was not to be so easily +side-tracked. What had begun in boldness swept him on in passionate +sincerity: + +"There are many excellent reasons why I should be somewhere else than +here this time to-morrow night; but there is one very compelling reason +why I welcome every added hour here in the Garden. May I tell you that +reason?" + +"If you think I should know." The words came simply. He, looking down +into the hint of features the firelight grudgingly gave him, saw there +the frank camaraderie of a candid spirit: the soul that was Benicia +O'Donoju, unsullied of artifice or the vain trickeries of the woman +desired. "If you think I should know"--call of comrade to comrade. The +desert girl scorning subtleties and inventions; knowing what her words +would prompt yet wishing them to be said. + +"It is that I love you, Benicia, and that I cannot leave you, loving +you so, when I know you are in danger." Grant gave her his heart's +pledge in simple directness. Though the girl was not unprepared for +his avowal, the call in his words, elemental as the sweep of precious +rain over the thirsting desert, set quivering chords of her being never +before stirred. He saw the trembling of her lips; her curving lashes +trembled and were jewelled with little drops. She turned her gaze into +the fire for a long minute. Grant heard vaguely the voice of Bim Bagley +expounding some theme of cattle ticks. His heart was on the rack. + +"Grant--good friend--" Her voice broke, then valiantly found itself. +"You heard from Urgo the story of our house--of the Red One and his +crime against God--" + +"The hound!" he muttered. Benicia groped on: + +"My father--no one ever told me that story because--because--" Grant +saw one hand steal up to touch with a gesture almost abhorrent the low +wave of red over her brow--"I bear the sign, you see." + +He put out his hand to stay her, for the dregs of suffering were +working a slow torture upon her; the face of the girl he loved had +become like some sculptor's study of the spirit of fatalism. He could +not check her. + +"My father when he returned to-day and I told him--my father said the +story was true as Urgo told it. Once in every second generation--this +sign of El Rojo, murderer and violator of the sanctuary--" + +"But, Benicia, surely you don't believe this fairy story!" Grant packed +into his low words all the willing of a spirit fighting for precious +possession. He felt that every word the girl spoke was pushing her +farther from him. + +"Ah, Grant, we desert people believe easily because the truth is not +hidden. It _is_ true; my good grey father knew that I knew it to be +true and did not seek to deceive me when I asked him. The O'Donoju with +this"--again the shrinking touch of fingers to the dull-burning stripe +on her forehead--"cannot give love, for with love goes unhappiness--and +death." + +She broke off suddenly, rose and hurried into the shadows beyond the +range of firelight. Grant heard a door latch at the far end of the room +click to. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +WHAT HAPPENED IN THE NIGHT + + +Somewhere in the darkness of the ancient house a deep-toned bell tolled +the hour of two. The sound came to Grant, broad awake in his room, as +if from a great distance--tocsin strokes against the bowl of the desert +sky. Four times in his sleepless vigil he had heard that bell measuring +night watches, and each successive hour struck seemed the period to a +century. + +He had gone to bed with a heavy ache following his words with Benicia +and her abrupt termination of his pleading. On his first review of the +girl's abnegation of the love she could not conceal the whole thing +had seemed fantastic, almost childish in its essence of witch-bane and +belief in blighting curse. How could this virile creature of a fine and +cultured mind conceive herself the heritor of a weight of guilt carried +down from some ancestor in the dim past? There was the superstition +of the evil eye among ignorant peasants of the Latin countries, to be +sure; but for a girl of Benicia's intelligence to be enslaved by such +mumbo-jumbo as Urgo had voiced--ridiculous! + +Such was Grant's first review. Weighed from every angle and conceding +the girl he loved every mitigation of jangled nerves, nevertheless the +man of the cities could find naught but lamentable folly in it all. The +first striking of the distant bell found him rebellious. + +From where he lay he could look through a grated window up to the +heavens: a square of dappled infinity. Insensibly his eyes began +singling out the stars, measuring the gulf between this and that +steady-burning point of light. Somewhere outside a desert owl timed +the pulse of the night with an insistent call, unvarying, unwearying. +The man on the bed found himself tallying the blood beats to his +brain by this ghostly metronome. Beat--beat!--passing seconds of +mortality for the man Grant Hickman. Beat--beat!--How puny a thing, how +inconsequential the life of a man when calipered by the time measure of +those burning suns up yonder! + +He rallied himself, for such drifting into the subjective was a new +and puzzling experience for a practical man. But minute by minute the +spirit of the desert, which is the spirit of chaos become ponderable, +stole over him, chaining his imagination to things felt but not +seen of men. A chill of the untoward and the unreal swept over him. +He seemed to be braced nervously for some blow out of the void. His +imagination played with a dim figure, the shape of El Rojo of the +red hair riding--riding through the dark on his eternal mission of +damnation. + +The clock struck three and at the instant of the third stroke a shadow +like a bat's wing flitted across the bars of the window through which +the eyes of the wakeful man had been roaming. A sharp tinkle of steel +on stone split the silence of the chamber. Grant was galvanized into a +leap from the bed. He stood shaking. Silence. Silence absolute as the +grave after that single sharp ring of steel on stone. + +He looked up at the window where the flitting passage of the bat's +wing had showed. Just the clear-burning stars there. The dim recesses +of the room revealed no bulk of an intruder. Was this but the trick of +overwrought nerves? + +Grant fumbled for his matches and brought a light to the candle wick. +By the waxing yellow glow he peered round the chamber. A flicker of +white reflection caught his eye and he almost leaped to a spot on the +floor directly beneath the window. + +A dagger lay there. It was that curiously wrought affair of dulled +silver haft and double-edged blade which he had noted before as part of +the rosette of ancient knives and short swords clamped against the high +wainscoting above the window for a wall decoration--the weapons Don +Padraic had pointed to with the pride of a collector that first day the +wounded guest was brought in from the desert. + +But how could this dagger have slipped from its sheath with no hand to +disturb it? Grant stooped to pick it up. + +He had the haft in his grip for a quarter-second, then dropped the +thing and leaped back as if from an asp. Something gummed the palm of +his hand. Something showed dull black against the dim flicker of the +blade. With a gasp he knelt and brought the candle closer. + +Blood there on the blade! Blood on his hand! + +He stood frozen while the pumping of his heart volleyed thunder against +his ear drums. Murder cried aloud from that stained thing of silver and +steel on the floor. Somewhere in this rambling old pile--somewhere in +the silence a swift stroke that had snuffed out a life, and then the +murderer, fleeing, had flung this weapon through the window. He had +flung it almost at the feet of the only one in the whole house who was +not sleeping. + +Alarm! He must give the alarm while yet the murderer was near the +scene! Spur to action followed swiftly upon Grant's momentary numbness. +He threw a dressing robe over him and ran through the door of his +chamber giving onto the arcade about the patio. Just over the low +balustrade lay the little jungle of flowering things, and on the +opposite side, he remembered, hung the great Javanese gong Benicia used +to summon the servants to the patio. Grant leaped the low balustrade +and stumbled crashing through the geraniums and giant fuchsias toward +the dim moon of metal he saw in the shadows of an arch. + +He came to the gong, groped for the padded mace hanging over it. The +patio roared with its released thunders. + +Muffled shouts. Banging of doors. Lights. A white figure came +blundering through the arcade; it was Bim Bagley. + +"Some one's been murdered!" Grant greeted him. "A dagger--through my +window!" + +Came others--servants with blankets clutched around them. Bim directed +them to run to the great door in the outer wall and catch any skulker +they might find in the gardens beyond the house. Only dimly aware +himself of something untoward, the big man could give no more specific +directions. + +Then Benicia, bare-footed, her hair fallen down over a blue robe she +drew together across her breast. Grant started towards her. + +"Where is father?" she cried in a woman's divination, and Grant noted +Don Padraic's absence. He saw the girl make a quick step for a closed +door behind her. Unreasoned instinct prompted him to put himself before +the door, denying her. + +"No; let me," he commanded. She made a swaying step towards Grant but +was met by the door swiftly closing in her face. Inside the chamber, +he turned the key in the lock and struck a match to grope for a candle +wick. + +In the pallid flicker he saw the figure of Don Padraic on his high bed. +A dagger wound was in his breast. + +And the girl outside the locked door stood very still. Her eyes, wide +with horror, were fixed upon the spot where she had seen Grant put his +hand in pushing open the door. + +Three small smears of blood there. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +ACCUSATION + + +Grant was stunned. The vision of the figure with the fine patrician face +there on the bed--in the breast the savage mark of violence--seemed but +a part with the disordered fancies of recent hours. Beating of Benicia's +hands on the locked door and the faint sound of her calls aroused him. +He stepped to the bedside and felt for a pulse, listened for a breath. +There was none. + +Murder had been done swiftly and surely--and done with the ancient +dagger from the weapon cluster on the wall of his own room. In the +stunning discovery he had just made Grant did not find any grim +correlation between these two circumstances. He pulled up a coverlet to +conceal ugly stains, then stepped to the door and unlocked it. + +Benicia was waiting there. The eyes meeting his were blazing horror. +Almost Grant read in them unthinkable accusation. He put out his hands +to support her, for she was swaying in her effort over the doorstep. + +"No--no!" Benicia shuddered and drew away from him as though he were +a man unclean. Mystified, Grant stepped aside to let her pass. He saw +her run to the side of the high bed and kneel there. Her hands went +out blindly to grope for the still features on the pillow. They played +uncertainly over them, then rested on the heavy mane of hair. Her +fingers repeated little smoothing gestures. A breathless faltering of +love phrases in the Spanish came from her lips. Grant, seeing that the +girl retained mastery over herself, tiptoed from the chamber; it was +not meet that he should be witness to a soul's acceptance of the bitter +fact of death. + +He blundered into Bim coming back to the patio from his excursion at +the head of servants beyond the great front door and told him what had +happened; of the dagger dropped through the window and the murder. The +big Arizonan reared back as if roweled. + +"My God, man, that leaves the girl alone here in this jumping-off +place!--With that snake Urgo in the offing. Boy, it's up to us to help +her out!" + +Grant gripped his pal's hand with a low, "I knew I could count on you, +old scout." + +The dry patter of sandals came down the arcade from a knot of lights +where some of the servants had gathered in indecision waiting to be +given orders. Grant recognized 'Cepcion in the mountainous figure +approaching and was recalled to the necessities of the moment. + +"Tell her, Bim, what has happened and send her to her mistress. Then we +must get out men to circle the Garden and prevent any person's getting +away." + +Bagley strode to meet the major domo and rattled swift Spanish at her. +The waddling Indian woman quivered and lifted her fat arms above her +head. A dreadful wavering cry came from her lips. Instantly the cry was +taken up by the servants at the far end of the patio--a bone-chilling, +animal noise which climbed slowly to the highest register and ended +in a yelp. At the sound Grant's blood went cold. This Indian death +howl was the cry of the desert kind, calling the despair of creatures +chained to a land of drought and ever-present death. + +To escape it he went with Bim out of the great door to the unwalled +spaces where the avenue of palms stood sentinels against the night. +Beyond the bridge over the oasis stream lay the clutter of huts that +was the Papago village, a fief under the overlordship of the manor +house. Not a light showed among the thirty or forty beehive shapes when +the two men started to walk under the palms; but suddenly a cry arose +from the midst of the village answering that coming down the night wind +from the mourners in the great house. Rumour of death had outstripped +the two who walked. + +The single cry from the village instantly grew in volume. Treble voices +of squaws lifted the abomination of noise to the saw edge of a screech; +men's harsher notes rumbled and boomed intolerably. All the night was +made bedlam. + +Lights were winking through the chinks of the jacals when Grant and +Bim came to the outskirts of the village. There was confusion of +forms skittering about from hut to hut. Bim seized upon one man and +demanded to know the whereabouts of Quelele, head man of the village. +The big Indian soon stood before them with a gesture of hand to breast +indicating they were to command him. + +"Somebody has killed your master," Bim told him. "Get out men on horses +to circle the Garden and go out along the road both ways. Cover every +foot and bring in anybody you may find." + +Quelele sped with hoarse shouts down the village's single street; a +dozen men joined him in a race for the corrals. + +"There's no way for the murderer to get out and live except along the +road," was Bim's comment as they turned to retrace their steps to the +house. "If he took to the mountains even with a horse he couldn't last +a day; they're straight up and down." + +They had not gone fifty yards from the Papago village when a new sound +punctuated the death cry, now settled to a monotonous chant promising +hours' duration. It was the _bum-bum-bum_ of the water-drum--gigantic +gourds floated, cut side down, in a tub of water and drubbed with +sticks. That noise was accompanied by the locust-like slither and +rattle of the rasping sticks, another primitive tempo-setting +instrument of the Southwestern natives. + +The death howl began to catch its measure by the boom and screak of +these two instruments. A noise to beat against the inside of men's +skulls and set the bone of them in rhythm. Savage as the peaks of +Altar, unremitting as the drive of wind-blown sand against granite. + +_Bum-chut-chut-chut!_ Sob of a land in chains. + +"Oh, tell them to cut it!" Grant's frayed nerves cried out protest. The +other merely gave a wave of his hand comprehending resignation. + +"Might as well tell the wind to stop. This'll keep up for three +days--this ding-dong business. It's custom, old son." + +As they drew near to the house of death again Grant caught his mind +harking back to that moment when he had come from Don Padraic's chamber +to confront the girl's wild eyes--eyes with almost the unthinkable look +of accusation in them. That aspect of her eyes dumbfounded him, left +him groping for an explanation. + +Once at the house, Grant took his friend to his chamber and showed +him the knife where it lay on the floor as he had dropped it. The big +Arizonan stooped over with the candle near the grisly thing--his hawk's +nose and salient cheekbones were outlined against the candle flame like +the raised head of some emperor on a Roman coin--and very gingerly he +turned the dagger over. + +"Finger prints here on the haft," he grunted. + +"Yes, mine," Grant put in. "I picked it up at first without +knowing--without reckoning there might be--" He broke off to pour +water into the quaint old willow-ware bowl which stood with its ewer +on a stand in a corner, then he scrubbed his hands vigorously. A great +relief came to him with this act of purification. + +"Yours--yes, and probably somebody else's," Bim was mumbling his +thoughts aloud. He stood erect once more and measured the height of the +barred window over the lintel of which was fixed the rosette of arms. +"Hum. I simply don't figger why the man who wanted to kill the old +don came to the outside of this room, clum up the wall an' reached in +through those bars there to take one of these old knives. Can't see why +all that fuss--more particular, why he snuck back here an' tossed the +knife through the bars after his bloody work." + +"Perhaps he wanted it to appear I am the murderer," Grant hazarded +doubtfully. + +"You!" Bim looked up with a wry smile. "Why should you want to kill off +that fine old man?--What motive?" + +"What motive for anybody here in the house or in the Papago village +outside for that matter?" Grant voiced his perplexity. "Don Padraic was +the _padrone_ of every Indian from the Gulf to Arizora. From what his +daughter tells me there's not a Papago on the place here who wouldn't +gladly have died in his place. The whole thing's too deep for me." + +They left the dim chamber with its relic of violence still lying on +the floor and walked out into the perfumed patio. It was the hour when +first heralds of dawn were coursing across the sky. Grant looked up +to the dimming stars and read there the same message that had come to +him the hours before swift stroke of tragedy: the fragility of that +spider web man spins into the gulf of infinite time. And the oneness of +this unlimned stretch of vacancy called the Desert of Altar with that +ethereal desert of stars. How infinitesimal in the face of either the +soul of man, its hopes! + +A great sense of impotence weighed down on Grant. His thoughts dwelt +with the girl he loved, sore stricken by this cowardly blow in the +dark, bereft of one who had been soul of her soul. Now, the last of her +name, alone in this bleak wilderness with none to fend for her against +the wiles of Urgo except the child-like Indians: what a situation for +Benicia to face! The man yearned to go to where she knelt alone with +her dead, to take her in his arms and give her pledge of his love and +protection. Yet that was not meet. The gulf of Benicia's grief denied +him. + +Bim brought Grant out of his reverie with, "It's my hunch we won't have +to look far to find the man behind this bad business." + +"You mean--?" + +"That same--Hamilcar Urgo," was Bim's positive assertion. Grant +objected: + +"But you passed him well on the way to Magdalena this afternoon. It's +not likely he'd risk coming back in his car to attempt porch-climbing +and murder. That's not in his line." + +"Sure not! But one of these Indians around here who knows the lay of +the house--somebody who savvyed, for instance, about those old knives +on your wall--a hundred silver pesos from Urgo's pocket--" + +Grant's mind was in no state to analyze subtleties of villainy. "I +can't see what Urgo could possibly gain by killing Don Padraic unless +there's a great deal behind his relations with Benicia's father you and +I don't know." + +The fat shape of 'Cepcion waddled down the nearby arcade in the +direction of the room wherein Benicia had locked herself. Bim's eyes +idly followed her as he pressed his argument: + +"Maybe so--maybe not. But figger the thing thisaway: Urgo's dead set on +marryin' this high-spirited seorita--if you'll excuse me trompin' on +a tender subject, old hoss--an' he reckons they's two folks who don't +encourage those ideas to the limit--her father and yourself. Yourself +he tries to get on suspicion and because you riled him on the train +like you say. Now he does for the father an' counts he has the girl for +the taking, she having no kith or kin to come up in support, as you +might say." + +The dawn reddened and still the two men in the patio fruitlessly +pursued speculation. A sudden step crunched the gravel behind them. +Both leaped at the sound, so taut were their nerves. They turned to see +Benicia standing in the half light with the misty banks of geraniums +for a background. With her were the giant Papago Quelele and two other +Indians. They carried loops of hair ropes. + +"Seor Hickman"--the girl's voice was deadly cold--"Seor Hickman, my +servant 'Cepcion has just brought to me the dagger she found in your +room. The dagger is stained with my father's blood, seor. There are +prints of fingers on the haft of that dagger, Seor Hickman." + +Grant caught the poisonous edge of hatred in the voice, read the bitter +accusation in her eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, but Benicia +checked him. + +"I saw you leave those prints of my father's blood on the door of his +chamber, seor. Before my very eyes, seor! Just now when 'Cepcion +brings me the dagger she finds in your room I compare the print of +fingers on its haft with the print on the door. They are the same. What +have you to say, Seor Hickman?" + +"Say!" Bim Bagley's voice snapped like a whip lash. "Are you accusing +Grant Hickman here of murder?" Benicia never even cast a glance at him. +She repeated: + +"What have you to say to this, Seor Hickman?" Grant answered levelly, +"Enough already has been said, Seorita O'Donoju." Benicia signalled to +Quelele and he advanced with the ropes. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +THE ORDEAL + + +With the lithe spring of a cat Bim put himself between Grant and the +advancing Indian. His face had gone dead white and his eyes were coals +blown upon by the wind of anger. + +"None of that! Get back there--you!" Bim's voice was scarcely audible +but his pose of furious battling on the hair-trigger of release was +sufficiently vocal to awe the Papago giant into a backward stumble. +Then to Benicia: + +"Young woman, you're making the mistake of your life. I'm a'mighty +sorry for you, an' you are going to be right regretful yourself when +you have time to think." Grant made a step forward to lay a checking +hand on his friend's arm. He would have spoken but the girl interrupted. + +"My father's blood on this man's hands!--the dagger from the wall of +his chamber--" Of a sudden the last shred of restraint she had battled +to impose upon herself gave way and a flood came under propulsion of +hysteria. Out fluttered her hands to point the object of her execration. + +"You--I do not know you! Just a chance meeting between us and we part. +Then fate brings you to this house wounded--snatched from death. An +escaped convict from a chain gang--you yourself admitted as much just +last night. With good reason my cousin, Colonel Urgo, must have caused +your arrest. Why should I not believe you capable of killing my father? +Why not when the signs of his very blood cry out against you!" + +"Seorita O'Donoju--" Grant's effort to check her was fruitless, for +she had whirled upon Bagley: "And you! Unknown to my father--unknown to +me. He brought you here on your own representation. You said you were +hunting for your friend to whom we had offered our hospitality. Can you +deny that both of you discovered opportunity here to kill--and then to +rob?" + +The storm that had swept the girl through this welter of imaginings, +illogical, frenetic, took heavy toll of her physical reserves. Now +she stood trembling, white-faced in the spreading dawn, pitiful. Her +small hands were clenched into fists across her breast. Flutterings of +uncontrolled nerves made the flesh of her temples pulsate. Grant, for +all the crushing horror of these moments, felt pity pushing through the +numbness Benicia's accusation had wrought. Never had he seen a woman so +tortured by the devils of hysteria; he was appalled. He spoke to her +gently: + +"If you will permit me to go to my room while you make further +investigations I will answer any questions they may suggest. It must be +plain to you, Seorita O'Donoju, that I cannot escape from this place." + +The girl gave him a dazed look as if she hardly comprehended what he +said, then she slowly nodded and, beckoning the Indians to follow, she +turned and disappeared beyond the patio's green. Bim threw an arm over +his pal's shoulder and accompanied him to his room. At the door he +whirled Grant about with a strong grip of both his hands and gave him a +grin more eloquent than any sermon on fortitude. + +"When the she-ones get to stampedin', old pal, they sure have us +helpless men winging. Now go in there and get a sleep while I take a +look round below your window and elsewheres." + +Bim's easy injunction to sleep was not so easily followed by the man +who was a self-appointed prisoner. On his bed Grant tossed in a fever +of mingled blind speculation and outraged pride. Strive though he might +to palliate Benicia's charge against him on the score of the girl's +complete prostration through the night's tragedy, the quick and fiery +blood in her that was inheritance from Spanish forebears, yet always he +came against the same ugly fact: one whom he loved with all the passion +in him and whose return of love he had dared hope to win had accused +him of murder out of hand. + +Yet how could he prove his innocence? Of a sudden that thought plumped +down on him with the burst of a high explosive shell. + +Benicia's accusation had appeared monstrous, yes. But, look upon +the facts through her eyes--so a curiously impersonal phase of mind +prompted; what were those facts as they appeared to the girl? A man +who was first a chance acquaintance in a train and then, by a trick +of fate, a guest in the house, rouses the household at three o'clock +in the morning by sounding an alarm in the patio. He calls "Murder!" +though he does not say who has been murdered, he has not apparently +discovered the body of Don Padraic in his chamber. + +This man--this waif brought in from the desert--prevents the daughter's +going in to the room of death until first he has entered that room +and locked the door behind him. He leaves the marks of his fingers in +blood upon the outside of that door. Then he and his friend--"call him +confederate" was Grant's cynical amendment--organize a hue and cry +outside of the house. While this is in progress a servant finds in the +guest's room a dagger; instead of being in its usual place amid the +rack of weapons on the wall this dagger lies on the floor as if hastily +thrown there by one who had no proper time for its concealment. The +dagger is blood stained and on its haft are the same finger prints as +those on the door of the dead don's chamber. + +There was the record. How refute it? + +Say that while lying awake he saw a hand appear at the bars of his +window and heard the tinkle of a knife dropped within? Why, if he was +so vigilant at three o'clock in the morning, had he not seen that hand +of a murderer steal in to abstract the weapon before the deed? And +whose hand was it? Did not the burden of proof that it was not his own +which took the dagger from the wall rest solely upon Grant Hickman? + +Another's finger prints on that bloodied haft besides his own? +Perhaps. But it needed the instruments of precision of a detective +central office to juggle with such minuti as the whorls and spirals +in a finger print, and they most certainly were lacking at the Casa +O'Donoju. Graver difficulty still, there were a hundred and more +Indians in the oasis; how gather them all together and take the prints +of their fingers? + +The more his mind roved amid hypotheses the closer about him seemed +drawn the meshes of circumstance. As the sun of a new day painted a +glory beyond the bars of his window Grant Hickman felt himself as +helpless as that Tomlinson of the Kipling story who plunged headlong +through the space between all the suns of infinity. + +He must have slipped into the sleep of exhaustion, for it was near noon +when a knock on his door roused him. At his bidding 'Cepcion opened to +illustrate a command in Spanish with a backward jerk of her head. Grant +arose and followed her through a corridor to the patio. Benicia was +standing there in an attitude of awaiting him, a little beyond her was +Bim, his face wreathed with a heartening smile. + +The girl received him with bleak eyes. "You will please follow me, +seor," was all she said. Then she led the way, the two men a step +behind her, out of the still house and down the avenue of palms +towards the Papago village. From time to time a turn in the path gave +Grant a glimpse of Benicia's face. It was a changed woman he saw. + +Gone was the vital spirit of joy of living which always gave the +girl her character of Eurydice in khaki; gone, too, that softness +of grain born of happiness undisturbed, of life amid the elemental +things of nature. This Benicia was a cold fury moving to judgment. +The call of her Spanish blood from centuries past--call for vengeance +and blood-sacrifice--had possessed her. It was as if some mocking +cartoonist had run a brush over the features of Innocence in +portraiture, giving an upward twist of cruelty to lips, the glint of +blood lust in eyes. + +They came to the Indian village, all hushed in anticipation of some +prodigy. Only the frog-croaking of the water drums and the dry clicking +of the rasping sticks betokened a continuance of the mourning ritual. +All the retainers of the Casa O'Donoju, farmers, cattle handlers, house +servants, men, squaws and half-naked children, were assembled in the +rudely-defined street that led between rows of reed and mud-capped +huts. Two only were seated apart: the man who bobbled the drumming +sticks over the turtle-back halves of the gourds and an ancient who +manipulated the rasping sticks. On every bronze-black face showed the +strain of awaiting an untoward event. + +When Benicia appeared some elderly squaws started afresh the lugubrious +death howl, but a gesture from the girl silenced them. She beckoned +Quelele to her and spoke some rapid words in the Papago tongue. He in +turn passed the orders to two men, who ran into one of the nearby huts +to reappear staggering under the weight of a great metal kettle, such +as might be used for soap boiling, carried between them. Quelele laid +two heavy flat stones in the middle of the street; the kettle carriers +deposited their burden, rim down on the rocks. A space of two inches or +more showed between the kettle rim and the hard adobe. + +Still the hollow _bum-bum-bum_ of the water-drum, whisper and cluck of +the notched sticks. A very old man, the skin of whose naked legs was +grey and tough as elephant hide, had attached ceremonial circlets of +dried yucca pods about his ankles in a cuff extending almost to the +knees. He took his stand by the instrumentalists and his feet moved in +a shuffle in time to the drum beats. The pods emitted dry whispers. +The rapt look of a seer was on his leathern features. + +The kettle in place, Quelele himself went to a small pen of _ocatilla_ +sticks on the outskirts of the village and brought therefrom a young +rooster. The fowl's head bobbed nervously and his small eyes glinted as +he was carried on the big Indian's arm through the throng. Two helpers +lifted the edge of the soap kettle while Quelele thrust the cock +underneath. A faint clucking came muffled from the iron prison. The +bird thrust his head out here and there from beneath the rim, seeking +egress. + +Now Benicia took from 'Cepcion something she had carried wrapped about +in a handkerchief and carried it to the kettle top. She let fall the +handkerchief and with a slight gesture focused the eyes of all upon the +stained dagger. A sigh like the swish of a scythe in long grass swept +through the crowd as the girl balanced the knife on the exact top of +the dome of fire-smudged metal. The ancient with the yucca rattles did +a sacrificial step which caused a sharp alarm like that of the desert +sidewinder's warning. + +Grant and Bim, still unaware of the significance of all this +preparation, sensed the growing tensity of emotions all about them. +The Papagoes, like all their kind, more than ready to invest with +ritual any untoward incident of life, saw in the white girl's +preparations--particularly in the offering of the knife upon this +rude altar--formul of an appeal to decision of powers beyond human +comprehension. Perhaps the elders, remembering tales of ancient +custom, recognized the preliminaries and welcomed a revival among the +unregenerate younger men of a direct appeal to Elder Brother. If big +Quelele knew better he had kept his tongue still. + +Benicia's features had never relaxed their cold intentness during +the preparations. There was even, to Grant's troubled scrutiny, some +element of the barbaric there. A look like that on the stone visage +of an Aztec goddess, implacable, without mortal instincts. She took +her stand by the kettle and spoke rapidly to the Papagoes, pointing to +the knife, then lifting her finger to mark the place of the sun in the +white sky. + +Abruptly she finished, stooped and touched one finger to the bottom of +the kettle. It came away blackened by soot. Then she turned to Grant. +"It is the test of God," she said in a dulled voice. "My people have +used it in times past when they were perplexed as I am. All here +including you, Seor Hickman, and you, Seor Bagley, will endure this +test even as I just have done. Put your fingers to the kettle and +show them to all, blackened. God will speak through the mouth of the +imprisoned cock when the guilty man touches the iron." + +Grant gave the girl a steady look, then without a word he stepped to +the blackened dome, swept the fingers of his right hand across it and +held them aloft. Benicia was looking away when Grant stepped back +beside her; he saw a convulsive movement of her throat--no other sign. +Then big Bim dared the oracle with an easy grace. A shuddering intake +of breath from the Indians as each man underwent trial. + +Quelele now gave an order which brought all the men of the village and +great-house into line of which he was the head. Even the musicians were +replaced by squaws who did not permit the drubbing and squeaking to +diminish. The faces of all wore the set look of hypnosis--eyes white +and staring, muscles twittering in cheeks, tongues licking out over +dried lips. + +_Thrut-t-t-t-t!_ An extra flourish of the rasping sticks and a thunder +of the water drums as Quelele started the line forward toward the +kettle. The big Indian moved with a mincing sidewise step reminiscent +of some deer-dance of his people at the festival of _sahuaro_. His +arms were held rigidly crooked at elbows and fingers splayed. The great +moon face was contorted into a lolling mask. He sweat with fear. + +Twice the lightning-like bobbing out and back of the imprisoned cock's +head as Quelele approached. "Ai-ie!" a squaw screamed in a frenzy. + +The leader touched the kettle, held up his blackened finger for those +in line behind him to see, then broke from line and stood at a little +distance from Benicia and the two white men. + +Second in line was the ancient with the yucca rattles on his legs. +Coming to the kettle, he stood rigid, tilted his old eyes to the +blinding sun. A shiver ran down his body which caused every dry pod +of his anklets to emit a whisper. He whirled once, dipped and swept a +finger through the soot. "_Njo oovik_ (Bird speaking)," he cried, and +there was foam on his lips. + +But the bird did not speak, and the line came slowly on. The spell of +the weird had Grant bound. The rational in him tried to prompt that +all this was but a shrewd application of the new psychological method +of crime detection as utilized by primitive peoples before ever the +science of the mind was thought of; but his imagination strained to +hear the crowing of the cock when the finger of guilt was laid upon +the iron shell. Mutter of the drums, shuffle of dancing feet, guttural +calls and imprecations: these things had swept away all prim gauds and +dressings of a mind counting itself superior and he was swept back to +kinship with the wild, its children. Again the desert moved to bring +him under its subjection. + +"Lookit that fellah!" It was Bim who gripped Grant's arm and pointed +to the advancing line. One of the younger bucks had dodged out of his +place and fallen back three numbers. + +On came the men facing trial by ordeal. Now and again the imprisoned +cock thrust his head out with snake-like darting, and the individual +who was poised over the kettle hiccoughed fear. The young man who had +dodged back tried the trick again when he was near the kettle; but the +one behind him held him by the shoulders and forced him on. + +The dodger came to the place of test, hesitated, made a downward sweep +of his hand and stumbled past. Big Quelele suddenly leaped at him and +gripped his right hand. No smudge of soot on the fingers. + +"Hai--ee!" Quelele called, and the line stood still. He wrenched the +young man's hand high above his head and showed the fingers clean. +"Hai--ee!" chorused fifty voices. Quelele started to drag the wretch +back to the kettle. + +Then his victim went to his knees--to his face in the dust. He rolled +and kicked, screaming. Still Quelele dragged him nearer the kettle, +his right hand firmly gripped in the vise of his own two, forefinger +extended to take the print of soot and draw the cock's crow. + +"I did it! I did it!" the wretched creature blubbered. Quelele dropped +him as if he were a poisonous lizard. The crowd pushed forward +menacingly. The murderer fumbled in his trousers pocket and brought +out a shining silver peso, which he threw from him with a gesture of +horror. Quelele picked it up and turned it over in his palm, his brow +heavily knotted. He passed it to Benicia. + +The girl turned the coin over to the reverse, whereon the spread eagle +grips a snake and a cactus branch in his talons. A deep knife cut was +scored through the neck of the eagle. + +The wretch in the dust saw she had noted the mutilation and cried out +to her in pleading, "The sign, mistress! The sign! The soldier-seor +Urgo tells me many months ago when I receive the sign I shall kill or +my brother, who is in his prison, will be shot!" + +"And he gave you this--" the girl began. + +"Yesterday, mistress. He passes me in his thunder-wagon and tosses me +this peso. 'Find the knife in the room of the wounded gringo seor,' he +commands. 'Use no other.'" + +Benicia nodded to Quelele, who made a sign to others. They brought a +hair rope and trussed the murderer hands to feet. His lips were mute. +Stamp of fate was on his grey features. He knew his punishment: to be +taken to the burning lava fields of Pinacate, where the dead volcanoes +are, there to be left without gun or canteen; no man would see him +again. Such was the Papago custom decreed for murderers from beforetime. + +She who had ordained this trial by ordeal had turned away, once the +wretch's confession had been heard. The soul of the girl now stood +its own trial in turn; faced by the guilt of false suspicion, by the +wounds wrought of bitter accusation, it must needs purge itself. Yes, +even though the spirit of Benicia O'Donoju was not one easily to humble +itself. A long minute she fought with herself and finally turned +gropingly to make her hard penance before Grant. + +Then she saw the figure of the man whose debtor in honour she was +striding with his companion towards the avenue of palms leading to the +house. The distance between them seemed suddenly the breadth of the +world. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +THE DESERT INTERVENES + + +That day omniscient will of the desert moved to point a murderer's +guilt the same inscrutable power flexed a finger to mould events some +seventy miles away from the Garden of Solitude where the worthy doctor +from Arizora and his Papago had been nibbling at a mystery. Though Doc +Stooder moved in a haze of strong waters, though he looked upon the +face of the desert through a golden veil of his own weaving, yet was he +not the least immune from the law of the waste places. The Doc walked +with God, even as did the pioneer fathers of the Church; the fact that +he did not admit the companionship had no influence on the operations +of destiny. + +We left Stooder on his knees before the uncovered bell with its +inscription carrying identification. His excitements, his hysterical +grubbings, soundings and prospectings of the ensuing twenty-four hours +were heroic. After the uncovering of the bell he had paced off a +square through the scrub thirty or forty feet each way and with the +corroded cone of metal for a centre; then the Indian and he had gone on +their hands and knees over every inch of this square. Result, a single +stick of hewn timber whose fire-blackened end had projected but an inch +above the sand; digging revealed a twenty-foot beam, dry as a puff-ball +and almost ready to disintegrate. + +That was all: the bell and the uncovered beam. But that was enough. +Doc Stooder knew that beneath him lay the mission site; how deeply the +blown sands of more than a century had buried it he could not guess. +But it was here! Here lay the rich core of a legend that had sent +many a man out into the desert to chase rainbow ends. His--Stooder's! +A'mighty God! how he'd riffle those pearls through his fingers--lay +'em all out on a piece of velvet under some secret lamp and match 'em, +pearl with pearl. + +But twenty-four hours in the desert exact their price; and that price +is in measure of water. The Doc did not drink water so long as his +store of contraband liquor held out; but the Papago did. Great was the +Doc's rage and disgust when his companion called him away from sinking +a prospect shaft to point the single remaining water container, now +much lighter than it should be. He tested the little car's radiator +to find that evaporation had left almost none of the necessary fluid +therein. No use buckin' fate; if he wanted to get back to the village +of the Sand People on four wheels he'd have to give the radiator a +drink and that would leave none for himself and the Papago. + +It was near noon of their second day at the treasure site when the +Doc whipped his reluctance into acceptance of the inevitable. He made +certain preparations. First he copied into a prescription book the +inscription on the bell; that would do to convince somebody whose +financing of the excavation operations might have to be invoked. Then +he sketched a map of the vicinity with meticulous care, marking in the +jagged spurs of the nearby mountains for bearing points and indicating +the position of the bell in reference to a dry wash which was traced +down from a gash in the mountain wall. + +"Guadalupe, old son, your old friend Stooder's goin' rustle back here +with an outfit right soon an' dig himself right down to them pearls. So +he's just a mite p'ticular about this map." + +Access of caution prompted the Doc to dismount from the car after he'd +set the engine to humming. He ran back with a shovel and covered the +bell with sand; the haggled bush above it would be a sufficient guide +for him and no significant landmark for the possible prying stranger. +The beam he hid in the wash. Then they trundled down their own track +and back to the Road of the Dead Men. Doc Stooder cursed the necessity +of automobiles leaving tracks. Some snoozer amblin' along the main road +would just's like as not turn out to follow these two lines out into +nowhere to see what he could see. Then perhaps-- + +Summer had come miraculously to the desert overnight, as the seasons +in Altar have a way of doing. Yesterday the pink convolvulus of spring +lay in scattered coral patches amid the scrub and the greasewood +was showing its midget spots of yellow. Now every glistening clump +of _cholla_ was aglow with the blood-red flowers of its kind; the +occasional pillars of the giant cactus were wreathed each at its top by +fillets of creamy blossoms--grotesque masquerading of these withered +old men of the wastes. First hint of summer's heat was abroad. It came +from the west on puffy little winds like the back-draught from an +oil-burning boiler. + +The Doc found himself in a frolicsome mood, for his night's potations, +predicated on a dwindling supply, had recklessly drained that supply +but availed to carry him over to another day with the stars of his +dream world still burning. Hunched low in his seat so that the +tip of his goatee waggled against the rim of the wheel, with his +flopping black hat all grease streaked pulled low against the sun +glare, the tramp physician chewed tobacco with all the unction of a +care-free conscience and indulged himself in wandering monologue. +Guadalupe's meagre stock of Spanish made him anything but a lively +conversationalist, so the Doc was constrained to carry on a vivid +conversation with himself. + +Into what penetralia of reminiscence this auto-dialogue carried him! +Back through the years--through countless dim valleys of a Never-Never +Land of alcoholic fantasies where his spirit had been wont to pitch its +tent. Scraps of jest and shreds of song stirred the ghosts along the +Road of the Dead Men. + +No such exuberance from Guadalupe, slave of the desert. They had not +been an hour on the road when the Papago began to feel a crawling +of the nerves along the spine and the pressure of invisible fingers +across the brow--evil signs! No less than the mountain sheep or the +road-runner in the scrub could the Papago interpret the desert's +forerunners of portent. A feel in the air--hue of the mountain +rims--colour of sunlight against a rock: these things had their meaning. + +Away off to the northward where a patch of gypsum showed white as film +ice the Indian's eye caught the first tangible evidence of trouble +ahead. A dust whirlwind like a gigantic leg in baggy trousers was +wavering across the flats; the thing possessed volition of its own so +surely did it map its course across a five-mile span in less than five +minutes. Guadalupe nudged his companion timidly and pointed to it. + +"Uh-huh, old Peg-legged Grandpap," chuckled the Doc. "Seen him lots +times. Gotta hole in his peg-leg you can drive a car through slick's a +whistle--allowin' you can find the hole." + +A half hour later the sun changed colour. Like the passing of a +shutter across a calcium light: now blinding white, now blood-orange. +Instantaneous. + +Three gusts of sand-laden wind came sweeping toward them from the west. +A long lull, then the storm. + +It pounced upon them with a sibilant whistle growing momentarily to a +roar which was engulfing. The little desert skimmer bucked like a wild +colt against the onslaught of the wind; but when the Doc dropped the +engine into low the car wallowed on in the face of the gale. The air +was thick as flour. Wind-driven sand had the bite of an emery wheel at +high revolution; it rasped the skin and drove eyelids tight shut. The +two in the car buttoned jackets above their noses to breathe. + +All the space of the desert was a poisonous yellow glare. Minute by +minute density thickened until the car's radiator was hardly visible. + +Then the sturdy engine quit. First a tortured grinding of clogged +cylinders, puny explosions from the exhaust, a bucking and quivering. +After that sudden stoppage of movement as if the car had plumped into a +stone wall. + +The Doc and Guadalupe tumbled out of the seat and crawled beneath +the car for protection. A stab of fear shot down through Stooder's +disordered thoughts--the water! None in the canteens, for they had +drained the last into the radiator before starting from the treasure +ground. Was there--could the sand have--? + +He inched himself through a new sand drift below the front axle to +where the drain cock projected below the radiator base. Like a suckling +kid he lifted his lips to the steel teat and turned the cock. A +trickle of heavy mud filled his mouth with grit, then stopped. + +Radiator a mess of mud--cylinders clogged--feed pipes all choked and +water--gone! + +Doc Stooder pulled his floppy hat over his face and whimpered the name +of God. + +And on the back trail where the bell of the Lost Mission had +been found; over that site which the Doc had so carefully mapped +and measured the wind scoured and builded--scoured and builded. +Obliterating, changing, re-creating. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +THIRST + + +The sun went down before the sand storm abated. Two men, the one called +civilized, the other a savage, crouched like rabbits in a covert +beneath the body of the little car with a high sand drift piled up to +windward even over the radiator top. Two mites in the wind-scourged +wilderness of Altar with love o' life the leveller that made them kin. + +When the last vagrant wind fury had passed fell silence almost terrific +by contrast with the uproar of the storm. In place of the slithering +and whistling of driven sand an oppressive stillness, which seemed +dropped from the void of the stars, now showing. Occasionally the dry +rustle of sand dropping in rivulets from some desert bush lifting its +head after the scourging; that was all. + +When the two crawled out from beneath their shelter Guadalupe was for +an immediate start afoot in the direction of the faint pencilings of +red marking the west. But Doc Stooder possessed an abiding glimmer +of faith in the soundness of the car and insisted on taking stock +of its motive possibilities. A cursory examination convinced him of +the hopelessness of his trust, for the sand was heaped entirely over +the unprotected engine--desert cars dispense with a hood because it +blankets the engine's heat--and he knew that even with water in the +radiator he couldn't get a kick out of the thing before a thorough +overhauling. This was out of the question. They must achieve their +escape from the desert's trap afoot. + +The Papago started on a swinging walk a little north of west, the Doc +following. They had not gone far when the white man discovered they +were not following the road; each step was through loose sand which +received the foot with a viscous hold and reluctantly released it. The +Doc snarled a query at his companion: why in the name of deletion had +he quit the Road of the Dead Men? + +"Not quit--finding him," came Guadalupe's grudging answer. Then Stooder +admitted to himself the possibility that during the time the little car +had pushed on into the storm he had tooled it off the road. How far he +had driven away from the single track which spans Altar he could not +hazard a guess. Anyway, he knew one thing: he was dog tired, and if +this mangy black coyote thought A. Stooder, M.D., was going to wallow +through sand all night without a sleep he had another think coming. + +Reaction from the excitements of the past two days added extra +weight to the Doc's already none-too-light handicap of alcoholic +repercussions. The storm had torn his nerves to tatters; his mouth was +as dry as an old church pew cushion; each of his legs felt as if they +were dragging an Oregon boot. Stooder's mind was too dulled to probe +down below these afflictions and read the real seriousness of his +situation; it dealt only with cogent aches and reluctances. + +"Hey, Guadalupe! We take a sleep right here." The Doc halted. Great was +his surprise when he saw the Papago striding on. Hot rage bubbled to +his lips in an explosive Mexican oath. + +"Hey, you lizard-eatin' mozo, hear me? We stop here for the big +shut-eye!" The Doc spurred his long legs into a gangling run to +overtake the Indian, who had plodded on unheeding. All the arrogance of +the white man in his fancied superiority fell with the doctor's hand on +the Indian's shoulder. Guadalupe wrenched free and turned to face him +sulkily. + +"Sleep here--to-morrow much sun--no water. Maybe to-morrow we die here. +Walk!" Guadalupe's sparse vocabulary of Spanish words was drained; but +the manner of his resuming the forward hike was sufficiently eloquent. +Guadalupe, born to the desert code and grown to manhood under the +inexorable desert law, had in mind but a single impulse--to survive. +His mind plumped through the bog of discomforts wherein Stooder's +was mired to read clearly the tablets of the desert's decalogue: ten +commandments in one--live! In extremity throw over loyalty, discard +obligations of oath or of blood, strip the soul to its elemental +selfishness; but live! + +Guadalupe strode on, still bearing to the north and the west, and still +no road. Stooder, growing more weary each step, spent his strength in +blind rage at the stubbornness of the Papago. He conned over various +capital operations he would like to perform with Guadalupe for a +subject. His brain tired of that and began to nurture the germ of a new +thought. Why strain himself keeping up with that ring-tailed kangaroo +rat who skipped on and on without rest? Guadalupe left the print of +his foot every step he took; those footprints would point to wherever +Guadalupe might go--and the Papago, of course, knew the shortest way +out of this hellhole--so why break his own neck? The old Doc would +take a little snooze and then just follow the footprints when he felt +good and ready to do so. + +The gangling form crumpled up as if cut off at the knees. Guadalupe +heard a thud, turned for a half-glance over his shoulder and pushed +steadily on under the stars. It was not in the Papago's code to add +one ounce to the weight of circumstance obtruding between himself and +water. In a dozen steps his figure was swallowed up in the dark. + +Stooder may have allotted to himself only that minimum of sleep +designated as a snooze. But a high sun pried open his reluctant +eyelids. He sat up and sent a dazed glance around an unfamiliar world. +Mountains tawny and black with knife-edge water scores down their +flanks; a sea of scrub stretching interminably from their bases; +patches of gypsum and _salitre_ showing dull white as scars of leprosy +here and there amid the grey-green of the _camisa_. The sky already was +taking on the yellow-white glaze indicative of imminent heat. + +The Doc arose and shook the sand out of the creases of his clothing. +First definite impression coming to him was the need of a drink: his +favourite tequila if might be, water in a pinch. All the nerves in +his body twittered "Hear--hear!" to the first of the alternatives. +Then, his mind beginning to function along the line of the night's +impressions, Doc Stooder read the story of the footprints leading off +to the north and west. There they were: good li'l signposts; they'd +take him to a drink just as easy! + +Stooder's renewed strength carried him easily along the trail the +Papago had left. For an hour, that is; then trouble. For the sand +disappeared under a broad apron of _caliche_--a hardpan of baked +mineral salts and earth almost impervious even to the shod hoof of a +horse. It was like a door swung shut on the trailer--the locked door +to some labyrinth beyond. Here the last firm print of a boot in the +sand, there nothingness. The Doc paused, looked back over the cup-like +shadows marking the footprint trail he had been following to take its +line of direction, then he pushed ahead along that line. + +Another hour, and he still was on the _caliche_ outcrop. He stopped to +consider. Where in the name of all the angels was that road--the Road +of the Dead Men? If he'd driven the car a little south of it during the +sand storm, surely Guadalupe must have cut tangent to it by this time. +And if the road passed over the _caliche_ flat there'd be wheel marks; +that was sure. Miss that road and miss the Papago's trail both--why +then old Doc Stooder'd be a goner! + +He tried to follow his own back trail by such small signs as the +scratch of a hobnail against an embedded rock and a thin print of a +sole in a pocket of dust. A while and he had lost even that. He stopped +and swabbed his streaming face with a shirtsleeve--he now was carrying +his coat. + +"By the eternal, Stooder, you gotta do something--and do it dam'd +pronto!" + +Once more he turned on his own tracks. Better go back and find that +putrid Papago's trail and let the road go to the devil. Whole half hour +wasted a'ready--good half hour, by criminy! with a drink just that much +farther off. + +It was not so easy finding the scored rocks and the stamp of a heel +in pools of dust; not so easy as the first essay. For the sun was at +meridian now and foreshortened little shadows to nothingness. Plump! +he came to the edge of the hardpan and into the sandy soil. No tracks +there. Should he bear to right or left in circling the edge of the +_caliche_ on his hunt for the footprints? If he guessed wrong where'd +he be? "Oh, dear God!" + +He turned to the left and resumed his tramp. Furnace light refracted +from the sand seared into his eyes, which must be always kept downward +peering--spying. His mouth now was dry as rotted wood. Something +alien there kept bothering him by pressing against the roof of it. He +explored with his fingers and discovered the alien object to be his +tongue, which was swelling. + +"But my mind's clear--clear as a bell. Got a steady mind anyway. Gotta +hold onto that or I'm a gone coon." + +A slight breeze struck his right arm more penetratingly than it should. +Stooder shifted his glance to his arm, held crooked. + +"Good God! Coat's gone!" Dropped somewhere--that coat in whose pocket +was a prescription book; among its pages the map of the treasure site. +The precious map showing where lay the bell and the beam! The man +whirled and started on a staggering run along the rim of the _caliche_ +he had been travelling. + +"Must find that coat! Don't find the coat an' I lose the pearls an' the +gold--the pearls an' the gold!" + +He halted as if shot. Down the wind came to him the faint tolling of +a bell. _Dong--dong._ Silvery throb of a swinging bell. Measured, +unhurried; like the sounding of a bell for mass of a Sunday morning. +The Doc had heard the bell of San Xavier sending its call across the +alfalfa fields of a Sunday morning, just like that. + +Even as he strained his ears to drink in the full miracle of it the +sound faded, ceased. + +"I heard it! A bell! No illusion. Mind's still clear--still clear!" +On he went, his gaunt legs weaving in wide circles. He came to a dark +patch on the hardpan and strided over it, unheeding. It was his missing +coat, in the pocket the precious map of the treasure site. The Doc did +not see the coat because again his ears were drinking in the maddening +tolling of the bell; this time a little clearer down the wind in his +face. An animal cry, half articulate, burst from his swollen lips: + +"The mission bell! Bell of the Four Evangelists which I found t'other +day! Callin' me back!" + +Right over yonder where the mountains cracked apart to let that arroyo +down onto the plain: that's where the bell sounded. Yes, sir, no +mistake about it. 'Bout four-five mile, judgin' from the sound. Hear +what that bell's a-callin'? "Gol-l-ld! Gol-l-ld!" + +Doc Stooder, coatless, hatless, the high roach of his streaked hair +fanning in the hot winds, was stumbling and falling--stumbling and +falling ever forward toward the crack in the mountains. Light of +madness flamed in his eyes; his great arms clawed forward as if to +catch invisible supports to pull him the faster. Gol-l-ld--Gol-l-ld! + +"Old mind's still clear, else couldn't hear that mission bell so +plain-- Gotta keep old mind clear--" + + * * * * * + +The way of the desert god, always beyond man's comprehending, +nevertheless sometimes approaches so close to the human scheme of +thought and motive as to permit of analogy with it. When the director +of destinies in the dry wastes seems to make a travesty of such a +sacrosanct quality as human justice we may be moved to call the impulse +satiric for want of a better name. Satiric, then, that reversal of the +decree of death passed upon the Papago youth who confessed to murder +before the overturned kettle at the Casa O'Donoju; more than satiric +the moving finger now directing his path through the dead lands up to a +union with the crazed doctor's. + +According to ancient custom the Indian retainers of the O'Donoju had +taken the youth--his baptismal name was Ygnacio--down to the crater +land of the Pinacate and there turned him loose without water to wander +for a while and finally to die miserably. Other murderers had been so +treated and never had been seen of men again. But the desert god who +slays so peremptorily knew that Ygnacio had done the bidding to murder +to save his brother from death--had killed without malice and only as +the price of redemption for one of his blood. Wherefore the arbiter of +life and death flung life at Ygnacio. + +When he was athirst almost to the point of exhaustion he found a +knob-like growth a scant two inches above the surface of the ground, +recognized it for a promise of succour and with the last ounce of his +strength dug the deep sand all about it. The end of his effort gave to +him a strange and rare vegetable reservoir like an elongated radish, +which miraculously holds scant moisture of summer rains the year round. +"Root-of-the-sands" the Sonorans have named it. In the desolation +between the Pinacate and the Gulf even the coyotes have the wisdom to +dig for this precious sustainer of life. + +Ygnacio devoured the whole of the root and was revived. He found +others, which he tied into a bundle to carry over his shoulders. Food +and drink had come to him from the hand of Elder Brother himself +when it was decreed by man he should have neither. Wherefore love o' +life once more burned strong in the man. He set his course northward, +travelling only by night when the heat had given place to the biting +desert chill, keeping his precious roots buried in the sand while he +slept by day so that evaporation would not rob him of the promise of +escape from inferno. Straight as an arrow northward where, beyond +the Line, lay tribes of Papagoes who never had heard of Don Padraic +O'Donoju nor of a murderer named Ygnacio. + +So it happened that on the third night of his march, when Ygnacio had +paused to munch a segment of the sustaining root, came to his ears +the sound of a voice, faintly and from a great distance. It might be +a human voice, though there was a burred and thickened quality to it +almost like a burro's bray. + +The Indian boldly followed where his ears gave direction. +"Gol'--gol'--gol'" was the monotonous iteration, sounding almost like +the muffled tapping of a clapper against metal. He walked a mile--so +clearly do sounds carry in the desert night--and suddenly came upon the +figure of a white man. Naked above the waist, wisp of a goatee tilted +at the stars, arms rigid at sides and with fingers widespread, the +spectre of a white man chanted the single word, "Gold." + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +THE COMING OF EL DOCTOR + + +The sandstorm that overwhelmed Stooder and his guide on the Road of +the Dead Men brought the mighty voice of the desert to the Garden of +Solitude in requiem for the soul of Don Padraic O'Donoju. Savage elegy +of a life lived in communion with the spirit of the wild. + +There was no priest to order the funeral rites of the Church. Though a +day's journey in Quelele's car to Caborca and back would have fetched +a minister of religion, Benicia was determined word of her father's +death should not reach the man who provoked it sooner than the courses +of rumour allowed. The Caborca priest posting out to the Casa O'Donoju +would set tongues wagging instantly and the seal of silence imposed by +miles of unpeopled space between the casa and the nearest community +would be broken. "The service of the heart will be just as acceptable +to my father's spirit," was Benicia's simple justification to herself +of breach of custom. + +So in the heat haze preceding the storm six Indians bore the body of +their master through fields of alfalfa behind the white house down to a +grove of shimmering alamo trees which fringed a reservoir of the oasis' +precious water. Here beneath the white and silver-green tent of the +trees was sanctified ground. Here lay the dust of lords and ladies of a +desert principality who, for their spans of years, had been inheritors +of the desert's cruelties and benefices. + +Grant fell in with the file of dark-skinned mourners that followed +behind the body of Don Padraic, with him Bagley. They did this unbidden +of Benicia. Neither had seen her since the dramatic climax of the +ordeal of the kettle the day before; no word had come from her. Yet +each had felt the need to succour the bereaved girl in her great +loneliness, forgetting unhappy events of the dawn in the patio. + +For Grant there had been a brief struggle with pride and outraged +sensibilities--blessedly brief because a broader tolerance and finer +manhood had rallied to overthrow the narrower view of selfishness. +In the light of the terrific blow that had been dealt the girl he +loved--all the more crushing because of its suddenness--the savage +reaction of a high spirit seemed to him not so to be wondered at. Nor +Benicia's silence since. In these dark hours there was no place in her +heart for aught but unassuaged grief. + +Arrived at the alamo grove, all the Indians of the village and +household massed themselves a little way apart from freshly turned sod, +their glistening black heads dappled by the silhouettes of the leaves, +their eyes restless and awestruck. Benicia, garbed in dull black which +made the whiteness of her face and uncovered glory of her hair the +more striking, stood at the head of the rude housing fashioned by the +Papagoes for her beloved clay; her calm was absolute as that of the +iron peaks beyond the oasis green. In her hand was a wreath the Indian +women had woven--scarlet flowers of the cactus with feathery acacia +intertwined. + +In a steady voice the girl read a Latin prayer while the Indians knelt. +Then with a lingering touch she laid the scarlet and olive-green wreath +upon the pall and watched the glowing spot of colour slowly sink from +sight. + +Suddenly the recessional: the sand storm with its clamour of incoherent +desert tongues crying hidden tragedies, its blinding sheets of sand. +When the first blast struck the group turning away from the grave +Grant stepped quickly to Benicia's side, drew her arm protectingly +through his and bent his body to shield her from the myriad chisels of +the driven sand. He fought for footing for them both. + +At his touch Benicia turned dry eyes to his. Swiftly she read the love +there--love triumphing over the hurt she had so lately given him. On +the instant tears filmed the hard brightness of the orbs Grant looked +down upon. Her lips moved in some halting speech of contrition, but the +savage blast snatched away the sound of her words. In the softening +of those eyes and the weight of her body clinging nervelessly to him +the man was told the whole story of a girl's amends for hasty and +unconsidered action. All her iron will which had carried her head high +through hours of grief suddenly had sped from her, leaving her groping +and dependent. + +An exalted sense of guardianship came to Grant--swept over him like a +cool breeze to a fever patient. Almost it was a feeling of holy trust +bestowed. At last--at last the woman he loved had battled against +bitter fate beyond the limit of her endurance and was turning to him to +fend for her. Unheeding the twinges his wound gave him, he bent to the +blast with his precious burden. Oh, if only he could be given liberty +to sweep her into his arms, to call her name in the piety of supreme +love, snatch her away from the incubus of dread which had settled upon +her so relentlessly. + +He would not wait for such opportunity--so the thought came lancing at +him in a lightning flash of resolution; he would create it! No longer +stand idly by with footless compassion while the girl of his heart +remained in chains of a fixed idea too strong for her to break. He +himself would free her of those shackles even if he had to fight her +fiery will to do it! + +While the storm furiously grappled with the palms outside, Bim and +Grant sat in the dark music room of the great-house. With hushed voices +the two friends conned over the situation facing them and the girl now +left alone in the immensity of Altar. Not a simple exigency. On the one +hand promptings of delicacy and the dictates of custom ruled against +their remaining longer in the Casa O'Donoju. Opposed to this was the +alternative of leaving Benicia to become a prey to the schemes of +Colonel Urgo--a girl fighting single-handed the craft of an implacable +enemy. Without a protector other than the Indians of the oasis--and +they had the minds of children--the girl could not combat this +unscrupulous wooer for long. What then? + +Bim finally summed the situation: "It comes down to this, old +side-pardner; either you've got to persuade her to come back to Arizona +with us mighty pronto or to marry you, putting it bald-headed like." + +Grant's mind leaped to grapple with the flash of an idea--the one that +had come to him when he and the girl breasted the sandstorm. Resolution +crystallized on the instant. He silently quizzed his friend with an +appraising eye. + +"And if I can't persuade her?" he queried softly. + +"Then you simply trundle yourself away from here and up across the +Line, knowing that, sure as shootin', this wolf Urgo'll be down on +her just as soon as he makes up his mind to move." The big fellow in +the firelight stressed inevitability in his dictum. Grant gave him a +cryptic smile. + +"Suppose I take her anyway if she will not be persuaded?" Bim jerked +back his head and surveyed his friend with startlement which speedily +softened to a wide grin. Out went his hand to clap Grant's knee. + +"Now you're tootin'!" + +Once he had put his resolution into words, the idea back-fired to +scorch Grant with sudden comprehension of what would be involved in +such a cavalierly course of action. Actually to steal Benicia O'Donoju! +Take her by force from the home which now was hers to rule. Play the +very part which he feared Colonel Urgo would pursue if left alone. He +scarcely heard Bim rumbling his enthusiasms. + +"That's the pure quill!" the desert man was saying. "That's the Grant +Hickman who brought me in on his back from a section of Heinie's first +line trench with H.E.'s droppin' round like gumdrops from a baby's torn +candy bag." He checked himself to launch the question, "Have you got a +line on the girl yet? I mean, do you think she fancies you enough to be +glad--after you've run away with her?" + +"I think so," was Grant's simple answer. + +"Fine business! The sooner the quicker, young fellah. You an' her +an' me in the li'l old desert skimmer. 'Cause I gotta get back to +Arizora. The old Doc'll think I've thrown him down an', besides, my own +business--" + +"You mean you'll go ahead with Stooder on his scheme for finding the +Lost Mission?" Grant cut in impetuously. The big love he bore Bagley +jealously demanded an answer. The other reached over to lay a hand on +Grant's shoulder. + +"No. That's all off, old son. I couldn't go prying around after lost +treasure that belongs to the girl's family--more particular not after +what you've told me I couldn't. I promise you I'll head off the Doc if +I have to get him thrown in the _carcel_ for boot-legging." + +The storm wore itself to a final sibilant whisper among the tortured +palms and the two continued to sit in the room of shadows with the +complexities of the daring plan of kidnapping still bulking large. +'Cepcion tip-toed in to announce to Bim in an awed whisper, "El Doctor +Coyote Belly from Babinioqui has come through the storm. Shall I +disturb the mistress?" + +Bim translated to Grant with a questioning tilt of the eyebrows. Grant +started at the name of the medicine man who had been his rescuer and +to whom he owed his life. What could have brought this old Indian away +across the expanse of Altar to drop out of the storm upon the house of +mourning? + +"Tell her we will see him first," Grant directed, moved as he was by +some half-sensed instinct of protection for Benicia; evil tidings--if +such the Indian bore--must be kept from her. The two rose and followed +the waddling Indian woman through the halls to the servants' quarters +in the rear. Under a pepper tree in the fading dusk they found the +squat figure of Coyote Belly. The Indian doffed his hat at the approach +of the white men and stood smiling; there was in his pose something of +quiet dignity which bent little before the centuries-old convention +of the white man's superiority. His beady eyes, well larded in creasy +folds, possessed intelligence beyond the ordinary. + +Grant impulsively took El Doctor's hand in a strong grip carrying the +thanks he could not speak. El Doctor's eyes mirrored recognition and he +bobbed his head with a broadening smile. + +"Tell him, Bim, I could not thank him for all he did for me. He is the +chap that found me on the Hermosillo road, you know, and pulled me +through." Bim put the words in Spanish and El Doctor bobbed his head +again. Then the Indian began haltingly in the same tongue. Bim's eyes +narrowed to a quizzical pucker as he progressed. Grant could read a +spreading wonder in his friend's features. + +"The old bird says he came here because he knew Don Padraic had been +killed," Bim repeated. "Says he knew it the night of the murder because +a star fell in the west and he saw the picture of the old Don with a +knife in his heart--saw it in the water of his medicine _olla_. So he's +been on the trail ever since because he's got to tell Seorita Benicia +something." + +"But," Grant began incredulously. Bim caught him up with, "Sure, I know +it sounds phoney. But I know, too, the old boy's telling the truth. +These desert people have a way of seeing across space--reading signs +and such--which leaves us white folks gasping-- How's that?" He turned +an ear to El Doctor, who had begun to speak again. + +"Standing-White-in-the-Sun was my father and my brother," the medicine +man gravely intoned. "He gave me _pinole_ when I was starving. He came +to my house at the festival of the _sahuaro_ wine and drank with me as +a brother. His child, Lightning Hair, is as my own child." + +Depth of feeling was sweeping El Doctor like a storm. His grey head +trembled and drops of moisture stood in his eyes. Bim gently checked +him with, "The seorita is oppressed with grief. If we could take your +message to her--" But El Doctor shook his head. + +"She will see me. She will hear what El Doctor Coyote Belly has come +through the storm to tell." + +"Yes, she will hear," came an unexpected voice from the direction of +the doorway, and Benicia walked up to the Indian. El Doctor made a +step forward to meet her; with a gesture of reverence he took the hand +stretched out to him and placed it first on his brow then over his +heart. His old eyes shone. The two white men turned and walked beyond +earshot. From a distance Grant saw the girl lead the medicine man to +a rustic seat beneath the pepper tree; snatches of barbarous Papago +speech came to his ears. + +The glory of sunset, more glorious because of the dust held in +suspension in the air, came and passed and still Benicia and the +medicine man talked beneath the pepper tree. The evening meal was a +mournful affair, with only Grant and Bim at the candle-lit table. +Grant, unable to contain his restlessness, quit the house alone +when supper was finished; he walked down the avenue of palms in the +direction of the red fires marking the Indian village. The night was +luminous with that sheen which covers the desert heavens like a bloom. +Thin rind of a moon hung low in the west, a cold glow of nacre. + +He had crossed the bridge and was about to turn off into an adjacent +field when he heard a footstep in the shadowed aisle below palm tops +ahead of him. A figure scarce discernible in its black garb came upon +him. + +"Benicia!" + +She stopped, startled. "Ah, it is you," was her murmured greeting as +Grant stepped to her side. + +"Alone and in the dark," he chided, but the girl tossed off his fears +with a gesture of the hands. "I have been with El Doctor down to the +village to find a place for him to lodge." Grant imprisoned her arm +and gently persuaded her steps back down the aisle of darkness toward +the village. For a minute they walked in silence. Each knew there +were things to be spoken, yet each was reluctant to break the silent +communion their nearness wrought. + +"And El Doctor gave you the message he came to bring?" finally from +Grant. Her head nodded assent. + +"Not bad news, I hope," he hazarded. A tightening of fingers on his arm +as she answered, "The best--and the worst." Grant drew a long breath. + +"And may I share with you--the worst?" he managed to murmur. Now once +more that dragging weight on his arm as when he guided Benicia through +the storm--mute signal of surrender from one spent in the fight. + +"El Doctor says--oh, my friend, you must not stay here in the Garden +longer. The rurales are gathering at Babinioqui, El Doctor tells +me--with Urgo. That means but one thing: Urgo is bringing them here, +and you--" + +"But you!" Grant interrupted almost fiercely. "What of you? Must I run +away and leave you unprotected from that man?" The girl drew away from +him as if in very defiance of some mastering impulse which would push +her into his arms. + +"I--my people will fight for me if need be. Urgo comes for you this +time, and I cannot be sure these children"--a vague sweep of her hand +toward the winking village fires--"that these children would fight +for you, whom they scarcely know." There was that brave yet pitiful +resolution in her tone when she spoke of the hazard of Urgo's probable +sally upon her own person which crashed through all a lover's carefully +built barriers of restraint. Unmindful of the events of recent hours, +of the girl's fresh bereavement, Grant crushed her to him hotly. + +"Oh, 'Nicia--'Nicia, can't you understand! I must go--yes, to-morrow! +Not because Urgo is coming to get me but because your being here alone +forces me away from you. Yet I cannot think of leaving you to fight +that man single-handed. 'Nicia--precious!--you will come--you must come +with me up over the Line where--" + +"Oh, please--please stop!" Hands were feebly pressing him away. Glint +of starlight revealed tears a-tremble on her lashes. "Grant--great +heart--I understand. I cry for you. See! My eyes tell you what is in my +heart. But I cannot give myself to you when that--that terrible thing +of misfortune and death goes with me. I--the mark I bear brought death +to my dear father!" + +He looked down into her eyes, appalled at this last speech. Before he +could hush her she faltered on: + +"But El Doctor brought me also good news--wonderful news! It is that +I can lift this evil from me if--if"--she seemed to falter before a +possibility scarce credible--"if the finding of the gold and jewels El +Rojo stained with his sacrilege and their restoration to a sanctuary of +the Church will be acceptable in God's sight." + +The hint of purpose in Benicia's voice revealed the edge of the truth. +"Do you mean El Doctor knows where the Lost Mission lies and that you +intend to find it?" Grant pressed her. The girl gave answer: + +"He knows where the gold and pearls of the Lost Mission are. He knows, +too, the story of El Rojo and how I bear the weight of his guilt. +Because he loved my father he says he loves me too much to have me go +on and on under an evil spell. Father's death opens his lips and--" + +"You are going with El Doctor to find those things?" breathlessly from +Grant. She nodded. "Then I will go with you. At once! To-morrow!" + +Decision came on the wings of inspiration. Better this flight into +the desert on treasure quest, with its promise of exorcism of all the +devils that plagued the girl--better this venture than that other he +had determined: to play the strong hand willy-nilly. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +TREASURE QUEST + + +Colonel Hamilcar Urgo was not addicted to introspection. He took +himself as he found himself and as a rule was well pleased with the +find. Had any non-partisan voice of conscience told him cruelty played +a large part in his make-up undoubtedly the little Colonel would +have denied the charge with hot indignation. Cruelty, to his way of +thinking, was exclusively a feminine defect; a woman was guilty of +cruelty, for example, when she spurned the honourable advances of so +honourable a suitor as Hamilcar Urgo. Benicia O'Donoju was the cruelest +creature he knew; wherefore like a fractious horse she must be broken. + +No, Seor Urgo found nothing reprehensible in his orders to Ygnacio, +the Papago, that Don Padraic must be put out of the way. The same +impulse had prompted him to strip the bandage of ignorance from +Benicia's eyes during that interview in the patio without the least +compunction. These headstrong women! There was a way to handle them +just as there was a way to break the heart of a high-spirited mount: +curb bits that tear and spurs that gouge. Let him have possession of a +spirit-broken woman for a little while, to play with and then discard; +possession was not nearly so diverting as the game of spirit breaking. +At that Urgo considered himself rather a master hand. + +He had not hated the master of the Casa O'Donoju. Aside from the +necessity of clearing the field of a possible objector to his suit and +bringing pain to the haughty desert girl, Urgo's murder impulse was +prompted by no personal bias. But with all the deadly spleen compacted +into his wispy body the little man hated the gringo Grant Hickman. +Hated him because the American was in the lists against him; hated him, +especially, because twice Hickman had humiliated him before the eyes of +Benicia: once in the Pullman out of El Paso and a second time--searing +scar in memory--when the man, though weakened by a bullet wound, had +hustled him out the door of the desert manor. + +If whole-heartedness gives any palliation to hatred then was Hamilcar +Urgo's passion almost to be forgiven him. For very dynamic force no +impulse in his twisted career matched it. The vision of this gringo's +impudently smiling face went to bed with him at night and abided with +him all day--a veritable ache. Come what might, he would destroy Grant +Hickman and in a manner such as to entail the most refined tortures. + +So this was his single purpose--possession of the girl would be a mere +by-product--when he used his power with the police arm of the Sonora +state government to assemble ten ruffians of the rurales force at a +point on the railroad within striking distance of the Road of the +Dead Men. Desert cars were at his disposal but he preferred to head a +mounted force because his plans looked to an excursion into country +where autos could not go, once Hickman was his prisoner. A complaisant +spirit of justice at Hermosillo would accept in lieu of the escaped +convict's person some token symbolical of a justice already wrought +through the instrument of the state's worthy servant, Urgo. + +The day after the sand storm Urgo and his rurales set out from the +railroad for the west and the Garden of Solitude at the end of a long +road. They were superbly mounted; two pack animals trotted behind the +file of horsemen. Revolutions had been squelched by a less imposing +force. + +After the cleansing storm the desert was bland and tolerant. Air clear +as quartz, sun tempered by fresh winds from the west, on every club and +spike of cactus fresh flowers born overnight to replace those destroyed +by the driving sands. One of the rurales unslung a guitar from a mule's +pack and strummed minor chords to the accompaniment of a song in which +the rest joined. The ballad was gentle as a butterfly's wing, telling +of roses over a lady-love's window. + +Urgo, lulled by the immensity of the desert peace, perhaps even by +the tenderness of the song his murderers sang, pleasured himself by +building pictures in prospect. He saw himself riding alone up to +the door of the Casa O'Donoju--the rurales would be disposed beyond +sight of the door but within call; saw the courteous bow he would +make to Seorita Benicia; heard himself inquiring in polite phrase +concerning her health and that of her respected father. Ah, Don Padraic +dead--murdered! Grace of God, but that was sad news. But the American +gentleman who was a guest at the Casa O'Donoju; did his unfortunate +wound still keep him under the beneficence of the casa's hospitality--? + +Five hours of the second day out on the Road of the Dead Men the rurale +who was riding at the head of the file reined in with a shout. His +arm stretched to point a tiny black beetle away off to the westward: +a beetle skittering down the long slope of a divide and in their +direction. In ten minutes the beetle showed again, but it had grown to +the dimensions of an auto. It was upon them almost before the horsemen +had spread themselves in a fan across the road. Quelele, whom Urgo +instantly recognized, accepted the implied hint to halt; in the seat +beside him was a strange white man--a gringo by his looks. This man +let a bland, incurious eye range over the band of horsemen until it +settled upon Urgo; there it rested with a dispassionate stare somehow +affronting to the Spaniard's dignity. + +Urgo stiffly bowed and waited for the gringo to speak. Instead of +returning his salutation the white man searched the pockets of his vest +for tobacco bag and papers and bent all his attention upon rolling a +cigarette. + +"You have come from the Casa O'Donoju, seor?" Urgo asked in English. +Bim Bagley gave the clipped Spanish "Si" of assent and drew his rolled +cigarette across his lips with a languid air. Urgo in a growing rage +wondered if this boorishness were the stranger's typically American +manner or assumed to provoke hostility. His voice was silken as he put +his next question in Spanish: + +"The Seorita O'Donoju and Don Padraic, her father, they enjoy the best +health, I hope." + +"I hope so, too," was Bim's short reply as he put a match to his smoke. +Urgo's brows knitted. Here was no boor but a wise gringo with a chuckle +behind every word. + +"I am doing myself the honour to call upon Don Padraic and his charming +daughter," his temper pushed him to volunteer. Bim swept the company of +horsemen with a lack-lustre eye and then let his glance return to the +dapper figure of the Colonel. + +"Do tell," he drawled in broadest Border dialect. "See you brought all +the boys with you. Well, so long!" He nudged the Indian a signal to +go ahead. Urgo would have liked to detain this impudent gringo for a +lesson in manners did not more pressing pleasure lie ahead. He gave an +imperceptible nod and the horsemen who blocked the road moved aside. +The little car shot back a pungent cloud of smoke for a parting insult +as it took the road in high. Urgo watched it rise to the low crest of +a divide and disappear. Insufferable gringo! What had he been doing at +Casa O'Donoju? What did he know of recent events there? + +A shrug dismissed Bagley, and the file of horsemen resumed leisurely +progress along the desert road. A night's dry camp, and early morning +would see them in the oasis green at journey's end. + +Colonel Urgo miscalculated when he dismissed Bim Bagley with a shrug. +Did the little Spaniard but know it, this meeting in the wastes was +the objective point in the gringo's strategy. Even under certain heavy +handicaps ten gallons of gasoline in the desert can achieve more than +ten horses with rurales on their backs. It all depends upon the hand +that nurses precious jets of this gasoline across the path of the +spark. And Quelele's was a master hand. Wherefore the second phase in +Bim's strategy was entered upon. + +Bim and the Indian had made perhaps five miles along the +eastward-bearing road beyond the point of the meeting with Urgo's +ruffians when the Papago turned off the single wheel track and into +the sparse scrub. A low range separated them from the rurales; the +crumbling of that range into desert flatness lay a good ten miles to +southward. Once around that, the little car could be tooled behind a +screen of hillocks back onto the Road of the Dead Men and ahead of the +rurales, but only by exercise of the most delicate driving judgment. +"Smack through the country--without roads?" whiffles the incredulous +driver of limousines along sedate highways in Pennsylvania and New +York. Exactly that. It is done in Arizona and Sonora--thirty or fifty +miles of unfenced desert; compass to pick up direction and shovel to +dig out of arroyos. Johnny Cameron, of Ajo, even herds wild horses on a +motorcycle. + +Quelele stopped to let air out of his tires that they might better +grip the sand and pad through soft places. Then began a jackrabbit +skittering and twisting 'cross country, with every hundred yards +offering the hazard of a broken axle and the little desert skimmer +standing on its nose at the brink of a dry wash while its passengers +flattened the descent by hasty shovel work. Like a rowboat in +mid-Atlantic the puny contraption of tin and steel took the long waves, +snarling and grumbling over sand-traps, boggling through thickets +of _cholla_ which rigged its tires with festoons of prickly stubs. +Quelele's hands possessed magic. They knew just when to give a twist to +the wheel, when to shoot the spark ahead. Every hummock and pitfall was +read by them surely and swiftly. + +The little car rounded the end of the mountain range and shot back on a +tangent for the road where Urgo and his rurales were travelling. With +a grunt Quelele suddenly let the car trundle to a halt; he clambered +out and knelt by the radiator. Drip-drip of precious water from some +stab of brush through the honeycomb of cells there. Bim sacrificed +his tobacco in the emergency. The flaky mass was poured into the +radiator with fresh water from a canteen; the stuff found the leak and, +swelling, stopped it. + +Then on and on, around the flanks of the little hills and across wide +flats where the brush was scattered. Always Quelele was sure to keep +a height of land between the car and the Road of the Dead Men until +finally he brought his gas mustang to a stop on the crest of a lava +ridge and pointed back. Against the eastern horizon showed a crawling +inch-worm in the desert's immensity--Urgo and the rurales. Below the +lava crest and near at hand was the objective of their detour, the +road that led to the Casa O'Donoju and those who must be warned. + +It was after sunset when the little car hiccoughed up under the avenue +of palms. An hour later in the first dark of night a file of horsemen +quit the perfumed precincts of alfalfa fields behind the Casa O'Donoju. +At the head, driving a pack-mule, was El Doctor Coyote Belly, big +Quelele riding beside him. Behind were Benicia and Grant. Bim Bagley +was file closer. In scabbards at the saddle of each hung carbines. + +El Doctor, the guide, set the course away from the Road of the Dead Men +which, passing through the Garden of Solitude, buries itself in the +Yuma Desert. His direction was south and west toward the Gulf and the +labyrinth of volcano craters on its hither shore called Pinacate. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +ALTAR TAKES ITS TOLL + + +Dawn marched over the mountains like a phalanx of Alexander: spear +points of light on long hafts, which drove at the zenith in solid +bundles. Then the mercenaries of the sun trooped across the vacant +desert floor wave on wave and strength following strength. All the dead +world of Altar stirred and set itself for the ordeal of a new day. + +The figure of a man that had been Doc Stooder, cynical tinker of life's +rusts and corrodings, stirred under the trampling of the light--stirred +and stretched its members in dull protest of unconsciousness. Finally +when the arrows of the new day drove at his eyelids the man opened them +and lay staring up into the sky's opalescence. For a long minute they +probed the marbled colour depths uncomprehendingly, then turned to find +the rim of the iron mountains to the east. Comprehension came at last; +with it a distorted memory image of hours of madness and wandering, +agony of thirst, despair pressing upon footsteps that carried nowhere. +Sleep which had put a period to all this nightmare had also mercifully +rallied the man's nervous forces to a new effort of self-saving. Men +die hard because the instinct locked up in their sub-conscious minds +always prevails over surrender of the conscious will. + +The Doc lifted an arm to shield his eyes and felt something sinuous +slide off his body. An instant his heart was chilled, for the feeling +was of a desert serpent trailing over his form. He dared lift his head +ever so little and let his eyes rove down his body. A queer something, +not snake, lay in a curve by his side; a pallid, root-like thing the +size of a man's wrist at one end and tapering to a stringy point. He +raised himself on his elbow and drew the vegetable serpent to him. Just +as he did so his eyes discovered the prints of a man's feet in the sand +by where he lay. + +"Glory be!" came the croak from stiffened lips, and the Doc +concentrated all his scattered wits on an examination of the prodigy. +Yes, footprints. They came from behind him; they were printed in a +semi-circle about him to mark where one had stood hesitantly looking +down at him while he slept; they marched off in line with their +approach straight toward the tawny mountains ringing the northern +horizon. + +Guadalupe's footprints--the trail he had followed and lost the day +before! So Stooder thought. + +A great sense of security pushed through the daze in his brain. Here, +at last, lay the way to salvation. That thought having been duly +relished, he turned his attention once more to the mysterious vegetable +whip by his side. He never had seen its like. How it came to be there +he had no notion. The thing was unlike any desert growth in his +experienced observation, wherefore it seemed to represent some prodigy +of the desert god dropped by him for a purpose. + +He gripped the heavier end of the root between his hands and gave it +a twist. The thing broke like an over-ripe radish and a thin spurt of +water shot from the severed ends. Greedily he thrust one stump into +his mouth and clamped his jaws upon it. Gracious fluid, mildly acrid, +drenched the parchment-like membranes of his throat. The Doc sighed +once, then wolfed the whole stub of the root he had broken off. As the +pulp was swallowed he felt immediate access of strength and sanity. + +From somewhere deep in the corroded heart of him welled an emotion +whose like he had not known during all the years of his warped and +weathered manhood. As if a child prompted him the gaunt, half-naked +creature on the sands lifted his eyes to the glowing blue. + +"Thanks, dear God!" + +So the sardonic genius of the waste places permitted the cloak of +divinity to fall upon Ygnacio, fugitive and murderer, for that a +surprising charity had prompted him to pause in the night by a raving +man, divide with him his slender store of insurance against death, then +pass on. + +The root-of-the-sands which Stooder half devoured quickly restored him +to something like the normal. Gone were the deliriums that had dogged +him those hours of horror. He heard no longer the ghost bells of the +Lost Mission summoning him to treasure buried in the bleak mountains +yonder. Rational thought was his after all the wanderings in Bedlam. He +mapped his strategy against the ever-present menace of the desert. + +Here were Guadalupe's tracks--the Papago hound; wait till he could get +hands on the devil! Of course they would lead to the village of the +Sand People on the edge of El Infiernillo. Well and good; but that +might still be a long way ahead. Could he make it just on what was +left of this mysterious root? About one chance in ten; and the old Doc +wasn't taking any more chances. What then? + +Why, follow the tracks back to the stalled auto. Water might be there. +Surely were cans of tomatoes--about a dozen of 'em. A dozen tomato cans +would carry him a hundred miles on foot; he knew because he'd drunk +uncooked canned tomatoes many a time--food and drink in small compass. +All right; follow the tracks back to the auto, rest up a bit and then +get a fresh start back over those same tracks and straight into the +Sand People's rancheria. + +Stooder wrapped the precious remains of his giant radish in a strip of +his shirt and started back over the line of blue shadow cups in the +sand. As he laboured through the heavy going he reviewed all he could +remember of yesterday's terrors, and a great fear began to build in +the back of his mind. Fear of the leagues upon leagues of blank space +about him--land unchanged by time since the waters of a great sea were +withdrawn into a shallow cup now called the Gulf. Fear of latent forces +which lurked in the naked mountains all about, in the ghostly mirage +which stretched vain beauties before his eyes. Over-mastering all was a +corroding fear of his own body. + +The Doc's trained intelligence was functioning with deadly precision. +It separated his mind from the rest of his being, counting the mind as +a rider and the body the beast it rode. The rider willed that the beast +carry it to a certain destination; did that beast stumble and fall the +rider could cry out never so furiously but it would be lost. And that +burden-bearer of the mind was capable of just so much. Its tissues +and sinews were kept functioning by water and food. So much water and +so much food gave so many foot-pounds of energy; no more. Inexorable +mathematics! + +When sweat began to trickle down into his eyes Stooder could not +repress a shudder. Lost! Water lost from his body. The desert +greasewood is wise enough to coat all its leaves and little stems with +creosote to trick evaporation; the big _sahuaro_ shows only the edges +of its accordion flutings to the sun and greases them with paraffin; +man yields water like a stranded jellyfish. + +Better take another chew on that water-root dingus to make up for sweat +lost. Better give the old pulse a feel to see how it's runnin'. + +The sun swam dizzily at meridian so that the footprints the Doc +followed were hard to see--mere shallow spoon marks. On and on towards +the south! + +What was that thing moving over yonder in that bunch of saltbush? Yes, +sir, moving!--A coyote, by th' eternal!--Naw, coyotes weren't white +like this animal; coyotes were a mangy yellow.--But, by criminy! this +thing had the looks of a coyote--sharp nose and baggy tail half way +'tween its hind legs, skulkin' like.--An albino coyote! Lookit! Eyes +pinky like a white rabbit.--Whoever heard of an albino coyote? + +No phantom of the imagination that slinking, dirty-white creature which +matched its pace to the Doc's on parallel course through the low lying +scrub. The desert Ishmael trotted along with a foolish air of being +strictly about its own business, as if no other creature were in sight. +When Stooder stopped to bawl curses at it the albino thing halted and +made a great pretence of snouting at a flea bite, utterly oblivious +to his presence. A fragment of dead bush-stock was hurled at it; the +coyote lifted a corner of his lip in a deprecatory smile but did not +abate his casual trot. + +"Huh, you mangy bag o' bones! Think you're goin' have a feed off'n me, +do you? Well, I'm tellin' you, you got a mighty long tromp ahead!" + +On through the desert slogged the man and on trotted the freaky animal +whose colour made him outcast even from his own kind. These twain alone +under the hot sky: two mites of life in a land of death, each blindly +following the call of every life cell in him to live--live! + +What had been a piled-up cloud of blue and faint rose to the south +when the Doc started his hike had unfolded hour by hour into definite +form. Little by little pinnacles sharp as ice splinters lifted from a +mountain mass and detached mountains with their tops blown off stood +against the horizon like truncated columns of an acropolis. Here were +the mazes of the Pinacate, raw shards of volcanoes and wilderness of +lava flows down by the Gulf sandhills; country so fire-scarred and +forbidding that even the Indian nomads give it wide berth. Only the +big-horn sheep possess it, living no man knows how. + +The undeviating trend of the trail southward towards this ragged mass +had perplexed Stooder when first he became conscious of it. The auto +should be lying somewhere off to eastward if he didn't miss his guess; +those mountains ahead were strange to him. But he could not know how +far nor where he had wandered the day before; even though he thought +long since he should have come upon a second line of footprints--his +own--running along with those of the Papago, yet there was no denying +he was following the right trail back to the auto and the cached +tomatoes. There sure could not be two lines of footprints here in this +least-travelled part of Altar. + +So ran the mind of him whom the mocking Gog and Magog of the desert's +diarchy had put on a false trail to desolation. Deeper and deeper into +a waterless scrap-heap of forgotten ages his steps took him. And the +albino coyote was his aloof companion. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +INTO THE FURNACE + + +Meanwhile from another direction adventurers were moving through the +night upon the slag mountains of Pinacate. Empty space of Altar's +ultimate sweep was become almost populous. A strange company this, +which passed ghostily under the great lights of the near stars with +only the clink of bridle metal and pack mule's canteens to give tempo +to the march; Benicia O'Donoju, the desert girl, moved to this risky +hazard by compulsion of an incubus of fate visited upon her through +inheritance down the generations of her people; Grant Hickman, man +of cities and crowds, whom destiny had whirled out into a country of +the world's dawn; Bagley the Arizonan, taker of chances, seeker after +rainbow ends; and the two Papagoes, Quelele and El Doctor Coyote Belly, +on whom was spread thin the veneer of so-called civilization. + +It had been Benicia's mastering purpose that had moved the cavalcade +away from the Casa O'Donoju and out onto the desert immediately upon +the return of Bim and Quelele reporting the leisurely approach of +Colonel Urgo and his rurales. This was not flight, she told Bim; +they would go in search of the treasure of the Lost Mission whose +hiding place the old medicine man was willing to reveal, and if Urgo +followed--well, eventualities could be met as they arose. In this +resolve Grant had strongly seconded her. The girl's slavery under the +obsession of the bane of El Rojo, especially following the slaying of +her father, had laid an impenetrable barrier between her and him; he +had seized upon this possibility promising her emancipation from this +horror. This chance failing, he had but the last desperate recourse. + +The first hour of their pilgrimage away from the desert oasis Grant +rode by Benicia's side. He essayed to distract her thoughts from the +tragedy that lay behind by questioning her on the revelations El Doctor +had made: how had the old Indian come by knowledge of the buried gold +and pearls; what impulse had led him to promise their restoration? But +the girl was not to be drawn. She answered his queries by evasions +or meaningless monosyllables. It was as if Grant were a stranger, +impudently prying. + +At first the man was stung by this treatment. His self-pride rebelled +against so arbitrary a closing of the door of confidence against him. +Why should he be treated thus cavalierly when the girl had surely read +the great love he bore her and his single desire to place himself +between her and the menace of one who had prompted murder? But these +hurts did not continue long. Riding by Benicia's side in the starshine, +the man began to feel the emanations of a mastering will which poured +from her as the pungent prickles of ozone surround a high-power dynamo. +Her consciousness was frozen into a mould of purpose, locked against +any distractions. Benicia was alive only to the single resolve to free +herself from the curse of the Red One. Man nor spirit could invade that +preoccupation. + +There under the steady-burning desert lamps the man of the cities +began to feel again that spell of the infinite which had chained him +the night of Don Padraic's passing. Here was he, lately denizen of a +hive of stone and steel, tiny integer in that man-made machine called +a metropolis, moving through the darkness over a land unsullied by +hand of man since the floods of melting glaciers drove a shadowy +race of stone-axe people back to the highlands. The loves and hates, +the battles and deaths of these stone-axe folk occurred but yesterday +in the time-sheet of the waste places. The to-morrow of ten thousand +years would find the desert still untouched, supine under the stars. +What then of hidden baubles of gold; what then of the love of a Grant +Hickman for a Benicia O'Donoju? A fossil snail shell by the shore of +the gulf left a more enduring record. + +"The thing that's sorta got me fussed is how I'm goin' explain all +this to the old Doc." Bim's voice broke through Grant's contemplation +of shadowy frontiers; he noted with a start that his horse had dropped +behind Benicia's and was ambling head-and-head with his friend's. Bim +drawled on: + +"It sure will look like a double-cross to Stooder--my sailin' off down +into Sonora on the search for you an' then hooking up with an outfit to +go get all the plunder the old Doc thinks he's as good as got his hands +on. Me, I guess I'm queered all right," was the man's whimsical finish +to his lament. Grant, who had been too preoccupied with the sweep of +affairs to give any thought to his pal's perplexities, could not now +offer much consolation. A point of honour involving the grotesque +creature who had elected to receive him as a book agent did not greatly +move Grant. + +"A' course," Bim continued his monologue, "the way things lie with the +girl, her bein' hipped on gettin' back this swag somebody in her family +lifted from the mission, I'm more'n willing to see her get it. But the +old Doc hasn't got a large store of what you might call sentiment, an' +I sure got my work cut out for me when I try to show him the light." + +"Too bad I got you into a tangle, old man," Grant heartily commiserated; +then with a hopeless little laugh, "My own affairs aren't set on any +straight and beautiful road to happiness either." + +Bim chuckled deep in his throat. "Me, I was all for your first idea +to rope the seorita right outa the home corral an' put your brand on +her, fighting. But like's not we'll get _mucho_ plenty excitement along +this trail before we're through." He gave a short laugh. "Say, Cap'n +Hickman, I brought you out from the East on a whale of a proposition. +You're sure getting it. A girl who assays higher'n any pearls an' old +gold junk you could find in a church cellar--the feel and savvy of a +man's country--a larrupin' fight with old Urgo and his rurales bunch. +That last you can back right down to your last white chip." + +"But how can Urgo follow us from the O'Donoju house?" incredulously +from Grant. "Not one of the servants or other Indians there knows what +our destination is--we don't ourselves except in a general way." + +The man of the big country chuckled at metropolitan innocence. "Horses +don't leave tracks on your Fifth Avenoo because they's no horses left +there for one thing, I reckon. But in this country they do. Five horses +make a trail a blind man could follow. I or anybody else could track +this outfit of ours in the dark. I look to see our li'l friend Urgo +drop in on us some time to-morrow. He'll travel fast with fresh horses +his men round up at the O'Donoju corrals." + +They rode some time in silence, Grant turning over in his mind this +unthought-of possibility. Tenderfoot that he was--so he accused +himself--he had noted the carbines slung in scabbards at each +saddlehorn; noted with an unreading eye. So Benicia and all the others +had provided against a contingency he had not even suspected. + +"Only thing I'm figgerin' in this proposition," he heard Bim saying, +"is, will the Papagoes stick under fire? Papagoes are not strong for +the knock-down-an'-drag-out stuff. An', besides, you're not a whole man +yet." + +"Whole enough to keep my end up," Grant said shortly, knowing not why +he resented any imputation of disability against him. + +"Oh, sure--sure!" the other hurriedly amended, and the subject died. + +Dawn spread a ghostly panorama before them. In the greeny-white light +that heralds the sun's first ruddiness the whole western horizon bulked +with black masses of slag heaped in fantastic shapes. High above the +lesser masses towered the two peaks of Pinacate, their summits yawning +in wide craters. The horses' hoofs struck sparks from lava aprons; the +beasts had to pick their way carefully over traps and crevices. Ever +and again grey arms of cactus struck out to rake the riders' legs with +claws of thorns. + +Waxing light filled in details of a phantom land, terrific in stark +brutalities of scarp and battlement--a world just set aside from the +baking-oven of the Potter and unadorned by a single brush stroke. The +little company of horsemen threaded single file up a narrow gorge +between the main peaks of the range. Walls of porphyry and slag the +colour of furnace clinkers leaped to heights on either side which +dwarfed the riders to the stature of weevils. The trail they followed +was the path cut by the rushing waters of summer cloudbursts, which +pack into the downpour of minutes' duration all the water denied +during months of drought; great blocks of fused glass and conglomerate +wrenched from the canyon's eaves by the fingers of these storms choked +the way. Where capfuls of soil had been caught and held in some pocket +the gaunt sticks of the _ocatilla_ splayed out against raw rock like +cat's whiskers. Low-lying _cholla_, that spined and vicious vegetable +tarantula of the desert, seemed to grow from the very rock; all its +nodules were frosty with close-set thorns. Over all dropped the veil of +mystical morning radiance. + +The horses groaned as they had to choose, minute by minute, between +barking their hocks on the knife-like corners of obsidian or taking +the barbs of the _cholla_. The higher the ascent the savager grew +the way. Grant, awed by this penetration into the very laboratory of +earth, almost leaped from his saddle when a sharp clatter of small +pebbles to his right broke the silence. His eyes jumped up the canyon +wall to follow three dots of bounding dun-white against its sheer +side--bighorn sheep skipping surely along no visible foothold. + +When the sun was well in the sky--though naught but its reflected +radiance penetrated the gorge--El Doctor, in the lead, signalled a +halt. The place was a constricted apron or shelf in the cleft between +rock walls whereon sparse galetta grass was growing. Reason for this +tiny oasis of vegetation lay just beyond in the fact of a water-worn +cistern in the lava--such a natural reservoir as the desert folk +called a "tank," a godsend when it still contains the wash from a last +cloudburst. This one was bone-dry. + +The party breakfasted meagrely, wood for their coffee fire being +grubbed by the Indians painfully and after long search. There was +little speech between them for they were tired; the night's ride had +been wearing. Moreover, even the Indians appeared to feel a malign +presence bearing down upon them and forbidding desecration of the +silence. For them, in especial for Coyote Belly, there was a very real +and fear-compelling presence abroad. These mountains of Tjuktoak housed +Iitoi, Elder Brother himself; the god of all things who, with a coyote +and a black beetle, drifted four times round the earth in the time of +the Flood and came to anchorage in this place. El Doctor Coyote Belly, +driven by a great love to commit sacrilege, might well have heard the +voice of Iitoi in the wind and felt his heart turn to water. + +In truth, the aged Papago was having a battle with himself. Before +he had gulped his coffee and tortillas the medicine man's eyes were +roaming fearsomely and he whimpered snatches of sacerdotal songs as +he rummaged in the pack for a wicker basket. From it he took a wand +stained red and with an eagle's feather bound to one end, an arrow very +handsomely feathered from the same bird, a string of glass beads and a +bundle of cigarettes--presents for Elder Brother, who must be beguiled +before being robbed. + +The old man's hands wavered to return the presents to the basket when +Benicia hurried to him, sat down by his side and earnestly pleaded with +him in his own tongue. Finally his resolution seemed to be brought to +the sticking point. He started up the gorge alone and with his basket +of trifles. + +"Coyote Belly says he must go and sing to the god Iitoi before we are +permitted to visit his house," Benicia gravely explained to her white +companions. "The poor man is desperately scared because we have come +to rob Elder Brother." + +Seeing the look of puzzlement on the men's faces she continued with +that same grave respect as if speaking of a real presence. "This old +man through the love he bore my father has consented to betray a secret +the medicine men of his people have handed down for more than a hundred +years. The treasure of the Lost Mission, he tells me, was dug up by +Papago medicine men not long after the Mission was destroyed by the +Apaches and brought to these mountains--to the cave of Elder Brother--" + +"And it's all here now?" Bim put in excitedly. The girl nodded. + +"It has been as well hidden from those who sought it as if it were +under the buried ruins of the mission," she said; then simply: "While +El Doctor is gone it is best that we get some sleep." + +Benicia stretched herself under the shade of a rock with a saddle +blanket for pillow and slept. But neither of the white men could follow +her precept; both were too sensible of the prickling of some unnameable +essence of the strange and the unworldly--perhaps that very savagery of +atmosphere which had prompted primitive Indians to designate Pinacate +as the residence of their god. They were alone; big Quelele had quietly +slipped away shortly after El Doctor without saying where he was going. + +The men sat smoking while their eyes roved the prospect of burnt cliff +and ragged parapet. The heat had whips; it drove them to burrow for +lessening shade wherever angles of the rocks offered. A curious cast to +the slice of sky visible above the caon walls first caught Bagley's +attention. He squinted up at it for a long moment of speculation. + +"If it wasn't so early in the summer I'd say a thunderhead was fixin' +up to give us a big razoo," he ventured. Grant looked up and noted that +the blue had turned to a heavy saffron tint as if the sun were shining +through a stratum of light sand; such a tint he'd seen before the great +windstorm on the day of Don Padraic's burial. + +"If I could only look over the top of the wall yonder to west'ard," Bim +grumbled uneasily. "These cloudbursts always come from direction of the +Gulf. We're not very well put right here in the channel of all the wash +down from up top-side. Those horses now--" + +He walked uneasily about the narrow confines of the shelf, scanning +the upshoots of rock for possible ways out. Then he seemed to dismiss +possibility of trouble from his mind and returned to where Grant was +sitting. + +An hour passed. Perhaps they were dozing when the rattle of a shower +of rock down the caon side galvanized both. Up there they saw the +figure of big Quelele. Like a wild goat he was leaping from foothold to +foothold downward; he was in mad haste. + +The big Indian risked his neck a dozen times before he came panting up +to the watchers. He waved to the brink of the cliff. + +"I been on top--watching--I see long way off--Urgo--rurales. They +come--fast!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +STORM + + +Bim translated Quelele's intelligence for Grant. "Our li'l friend +Urgo's been burnin' the wind," was his dry comment. Grant sent a quick +glance around the cul-de-sac of rock which encompassed them. + +"Not the best place in the world to stand off ten men," he gave his +opinion. "We ought to get our backs up against something that can't be +surrounded." + +Quelele read the white man's thoughts, for he pointed farther up the +caon beyond the lava cistern. There the gorge narrowed to a veritable +doorway and the steps thereto were so precipitous that one ascending +would have to scramble and claw a way on hands and knees; no possible +chance for a rush en masse. Bim surveyed the natural citadel with the +eye of a trained Border man who occasionally has to reckon with such +elementals as the killing power of a rifle bullet and the protective +quality of a 'dobe wall. Finally he screwed one eye at the crack of +sky showing between the escarpments and shook his head dubiously at +what he saw there. Quelele, who had had the superior advantage of a +wider view from his aerie on the cliff top, bowed his arms in the shape +of a ball and waved a hand to the west. + +"Papago says it's a big storm brewing over yonder," Bim explained. +"When these thunderheads finally get all boiled into one and come +a-runnin' it's a case of take to cover. If this thing is the regulation +rim-fire sock-dollager they's goin' be a sight of water pass over where +we're standin' before long. Me, I'd rather be somewhere else than in +this dry channel." + +Grant did not linger to discuss strategy longer. He went to where +Benicia was sleeping in the shade of a boulder and gently touched her +on the shoulder. The girl sat up, startled. + +"We have to be moving," Grant told her. "Quelele has just reported Urgo +and his rurales out on the desert and coming our way." + +"And El Doctor?" she quickly interposed. "He has returned from the +cave?" + +Grant shook his head. Bitter disappointment flashed into her eyes at +the realization of how fate had played to interpose the grim business +of a fight just on the minute of realization of her great hopes. Grant, +stooping beside her and watching the play of emotions on her features, +saw quick remorse chase away the frown. Impulsively a brown hand +reached out to play upon the back of his. + +"Grant, beloved"--how like the overtones from her own golden harp +the contralto richness of her voice!--"I am desperately selfish and +you will not understand.--Thinking only of my own purpose--bringing +you with your wound still unhealed out to this place to face--death +perhaps.--And you do this for me--" + +"'Nicia, little girl--" He could go no farther than those words, for +the song in his heart was overwhelming. At last--at last the trammels +of the girl's heart were shaken off and the call he'd waited for so +long had come! Call of the heart of her to his. + +She was on her feet, vibrant with energy, alive to the exigencies of +impending action. Bim was saddling the horses and Quelele had the pack +on the mule when they joined them. Bim briefly explained to the girl +his survey of the gorge for strategical strength; at any cost they must +move up until they could find some sheep trail or other practicable +ledge giving escape from the flood water channel. "If that doddering +old medicine man would only quit his sing-song business and come back +for a rifle we'd be that much better off," the big fellow grumbled. + +When all was in readiness Quelele led the way up the tortuous +watercourse and through the mighty gates of porphyry nearly blocking +the farther reaches. They were forced to lead the animals, whose +sure-footedness was put to the test every yard of the advance. Beyond +the great pillars the gorge opened to a rough amphitheatre with less +steeply sloping sides. A narrow upward-springing ledge of rock led +away from the dry watercourse to a rock pulpit some seventy-five or a +hundred feet above. This they followed, to discover there was space for +their horses to stand behind the horn of malapais and still be screened +from observation from below. Quelele made some mysterious passes with +a tether rope which yoked all the animals to a single line that was +anchored at both ends. + +"Look," Benicia cried as Bim was taking the carbines from the saddle +scabbards. They followed her pointing hand and saw a dark spot against +the opposite wall of the gorge and higher than their level. A midget +figure was outlined against the opening of a cave. It was El Doctor +at his business of propitiating Elder Brother--El Doctor, much needed +behind the stock of a carbine. The men hallooed to him but he did not +turn. + +"Go over and get that crazy fool," Bim commanded Quelele. But the big +Indian, instead of obeying immediately, turned up the ledge and made +for a high point on the shoulder of the rock bastion constituting one +of the portals of the upper gorge. They watched him as he scaled the +almost perpendicular face of black lava. From the top Quelele had a +view of the caon's far-away exit onto the desert floor several miles +from the niche where the treasure seekers had refuge. The watchers saw +him lift himself cautiously over the top of his lookout and peer to +westward. Then he came scrambling and sliding down. + +"They come into the valley," the Papago reported. "Too late to get El +Doctor." + +It was Bim with his desert craft who made disposition of the little +force of defence. Quelele he sent back to the aerie with orders not to +shoot until he heard shots from the whites; the Indian's fire from the +rear, once Urgo and his men had passed the rocky portals, would throw +the rurales into confusion. Grant and Benicia he disposed behind an +outcrop of porphyry a little behind and above the protected animals. + +"Pick 'em off as they come through the Gate," he suggested. "An' don't +try any fancy shooting; we haven't got any too many cartridges." + +"But you--?" Benicia began. The Arizonan grinned broadly. + +"Me, I always fancy a little solo game in this sort of rukus. I'm going +on t'other side of the gulch. Cross-fire, you sabe?" He left them with +a smile on his lips, and they watched him jumping lightly down from +rock to rock. Almost before he had begun to clamber up the opposite +wall he was lost to view amid the maze of fissure and castellated +boulder. Grant and the girl were stretched out behind their primitive +breastwork alone in this unfinished world of fire. They could see +neither Quelele nor Bagley. Came to their ears the faint drone of +barbaric song: El Doctor Coyote Belly at his traitorous devotions. + +The whole gorge was filled with a saffron glare like the reflection +from oil fires under a boiler, unworldly, portentous. + +They waited, these two, in the immensity of earth's disgorged bowels. +Side by side, elbows touching, they counted the slow drag of minutes as +naught in the balance against the deep joy of love militant. + +A stir in the bed of the dry wash below them. Up went their carbines +with cheeks laid against wood and eyes sighting along the lances of +light. Again the stir down there. A gaunt figure rose from hand and +knees to its feet, stood swaying for an instant, then pitched forward +against the support of a slab of rock. + +A very leprechaun of the rocks was it: ribs creasing burned skin about +the naked torso; whity-grey hair streaming down to mingle with a beard; +bare arms like a spider's legs and all cracked by the sun. The husk of +Doc Stooder, plaything of the desert god, was come here, following the +still living spark of instinct prompting a water search in a canyon. +Come, too, to the secret hiding place of the treasure whose glitter had +so mercilessly befooled him. + +Grant, stupefied by the apparition of death and failing in any +recognition of the skeleton thing as the bibulous doctor of Arizora, +suspected a trick of Urgo. Again he laid his eye along his rifle sight, +vigilant for what might ensue. The creature spread-eagled against the +rock slowly pushed itself upright with its hands; its shaggy head +turned wearily as thirsting eyes scanned the dry chasm. + +Then a shout from across the gorge. Bagley had leaped from his hiding +place and was rushing precariously down to succour the ghost. Just as +he reached Stooder and had thrown an arm about him to heave his wasted +form onto a shoulder the crack of a rifle shivered the gorge's silence. +Rock dust spurted within a foot of the rescuer. + +The sun went out that second--instantly, like a powerful incandescent +switched off. A yellow penumbra tinged the darkness. + +Almost as one the rifles of Grant and Benicia jetted lead. Two more +shots from the dry wash. The giant figure of Bagley with Stooder limp +over one shoulder never faltered in its leaping and scrambling up the +declivity to the shelter he had quitted. The two who had been following +his flight with stilled hearts saw him disappear behind a great rock; +an instant and a jet of fire lanced down thence at the attackers by the +Gate. + +A blob of rain large as a Mexican dollar smacked on Benicia's hand +as she pumped the ejector--another and a third. Then the gorge was +blasted by a thunder shock amid the peaks, and a stab of lightning +painted the whole pit sulphurous blue. By its flash the defenders saw +scurrying figures leaping from rock to rock in the stream bed. Quelele, +the quick of eye, fired his first shot by the light of storm fire; one +of the rurales went down like a wet sack. + +A second stunning burst of thunder which knocked out the underpinning +of the sky. Then deluge. + +It was not rain that fell; it was solid water in sheets and cones which +hissed with the speed of its descent. Water so compacted that it was +like a river on edge, engulfing. With it the almost continuous quiver +and jerk of electrical flame. The gorge was become a watery hell. More +than that, for Urgo and his men in the wash it threatened momentarily +to be their tomb. Already a white streak of foam in the lightning +flashes marked where the once bone-dry watercourse was changing +character. + +The rurales and their leader found the odds all of a sudden snatched +from their hands by this frenzied ally of the hunted girl and her +supporters. They had come eleven against five, with their quarry caught +in a hole in the Pinacate sierra; before the cloudburst had endured +three minutes Urgo realized he had let himself and his men into a fatal +trap. Their horses, confidently left behind them in the lower reaches +of the gorge, must already have stampeded under the lash of the storm. +Spiteful rifle flashes from both sides came with each baleful flicker +of fire from the sky to deny escape from the rising waters up either +wall of the chasm. + +Now a dull roaring above the waterfall of the rain began to fill the +gash in the sierra. Away back at the head of the gorge and where the +slope from the twin volcano peaks shed water as from steep roofs +into this common trough, a solid wall, capped dull white, came with +the speed of a meteor down and down through the channel in the +living rock. It rolled boulders the size of box-cars in its flood; a +chevaux-de-frise of barbed cactus and scrub trees tumbled at its crest. + +Even above the tumult of the deluge sounded the shrill alarm of the +rurales as they broke position and turned to flee through the Gate. But +already the flood was there, choking egress. They must scramble up the +sides of the gorge like rats from a flooded hold; they must grope and +cling by every illuminating flash of blue fire, waiting to see where +the next handhold lay, how near the hungry yellow waters rushed. + +With Grant and the girl was nothing but security. Unprotected, they +had bent their heads to the pounding mallets of water. When the firing +abruptly ceased at the rush of their attackers for safety Grant heard +the scream of a horse near at hand and remembered their tethered +animals. Should they break away in their fright the plight of all five +would be a desperate one. + +"Stay here!" he shouted in Benicia's ear. "Going to the horses!" + +Grant crawled and groped his way over the slippery rocks, each seeming +to be alive with the film of rushing water across it. He clambered down +and to the right until he came to the pulpit rock behind which the +beasts had been tethered by Quelele. The mule he found down, hopelessly +noosed in his hobble rope and slowly strangling; the horses were +huddled, tails to the storm, dripping and dejected. + +It took several minutes' precarious work to get the pack-animal to +his feet and freshly tethered. Then Grant began the retreat to the +breastwork where he had left the girl. It was largely a matter of +guesswork. Once he found himself against an unscalable wall and had to +retrace his steps. Another time one foot slipped and he caught himself +with his body halfway over the brink. + +A flash of lightning showed him two rifles lying side by side on a +ledge below him--his rifle and Benicia's; but the girl was gone. The +fist of fear smote him terrifically. + +He screamed her name above the bellowing of the flood in the wash. No +answer. He ran along the ledge that had been theirs until he came to a +downward terrace; to that he leaped and along its blind way he fumbled. +Came the ghost of a scream, thin above the diapason all about. His +name--"Grant!" + +Then merciful lightning blazed blue and he saw. Below him on a broad +shelf which overhung the whiteness of the torrent two figures, +glistening like seals, were locked--they swayed. + +The man launched himself blindly out and down. He rolled; he slipped +and wallowed against and under great boulders. At the end of seconds +seeming ons he came to the rock apron where he had seen the struggling +shapes. Sound of stertorous breathing guided him. He rose from his +knees before Benicia and another, who was trying to drag her along the +ledge. A revealing flash of fire gave him just a glimpse of a weasel +face--Colonel Urgo. + +Not so much rage as loathly horror of an unclean thing sped furious +summons to every muscle spring in his body. With his shoulder planted +against the Spaniard's chest for a leverage Grant tore loose the man's +grip from Benicia. Before he could whirl to shift his attack Urgo +had screamed an oath and was on the American's back, legs twining to +cumber Grant's thighs, both hands clamped about his throat. It was the +catamount's attack. + +The first impact of his antagonist's weight nearly over-balanced Grant +and precipitated both into the maelstrom of waters not six feet below +their ledge. But, steadying himself, the American suddenly launched +backward, pinning the lighter body on his back against a wall of rock. +It was a terrific smash. Urgo's breath came in a whistle from it. His +hands sank deeper into the muscles about Grant's throat, closing his +windpipe. Deliberately the standing man took a few forward steps, +then swiftly back against the wall again. An elbow of rock found the +Spaniard's ribs and cracked two. He shrieked. + +Now Grant's hands went up to lock behind the head that sagged over his +right shoulder. Strength of desperation flooded into his arms, for the +weaker man had him throttled. Urgo must release his hold on Grant's +throat or suffer a broken neck. The constricting hands slackened their +grip ever so little. Grant bowed his shoulders, gave a mighty heave +and swept the Colonel's body over his shoulder in a wide arc. The man +sprawled, arms wide, through the air, struck the edge of the rocky +apron. He clawed--slipped--clawed again, and disappeared. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + +TREASURE TROVE + + +The storm ceased with the same suddenness as it began. Hardly an hour +had torrential waters lashed the cinder wastes of Pinacate when the +black pall over the heavens broke away and the sun came out to suck +hungrily at pools in the rocks. There was a headiness of wine in the +air, a smell of wet soil mingled with spicy emanations from greasewood +and _palo verde_. The desert's sparse growing things exulted in the +breaking of long drought. + +For a long time Grant and Benicia on their side of the gorge and Bim +in his retreat opposite lay hidden, awaiting possible renewal of the +attack which the storm had scattered. But the torrent that still raged +down the bottom of the gorge had washed clean every vestige of an +enemy. Quelele on his high post saw four scattered horsemen rushing +pell-mell for the gateway onto the desert--last vestige of Urgo's +rurales force, each man of which gave thanks to his patron saint that +he had come out of the hell in the mountain cul-de-sac with a whole +skin. + +Quelele also saw several specks dropping earthward from the clear +blue; specks which rapidly grew from the size of gnats to the spread +of small aeroplanes. King condors they, who had smelled a feast from +afar--loathsome birds with a wing spread covering the span of thirteen +feet. The coming of one of these foul creatures to his particular +banquet even the sharp eye of a Papago watcher could not discern, for +the scene was hidden from him by a shoulder of the caon wall. + +A stunted _palo verde_ tree nearly stripped of its verdure by the whips +of the rain hung half-uprooted over the rapidly diminishing stream in +the wash. One branch had caught and held some flotsam from the high +flood, now clear of the water. Just a shapeless bundle of clothes, +lolling head, arms askew where broken bones had let inert flesh sag to +the current. Just a grim caricature of something which so recently had +walked in the pride of his imaginings. + +The condor flopped clumsily to a branch stub six feet distant from +the bundle of clothes, folded his great wings with a dry rustling of +feathers, blinked the red lids of his eyes to focus his vision for +expert inspection and studied the hank of cloth and flesh suspended +in the tree crotch. The thing which flood waters had brought stirred +slightly; eyes opened with a flutter. They met the critical gaze of the +feathered pariah on the stub. The condor acknowledged this unexpected +show of life on his banquet table by disturbed bobbings of the naked +yellow head--the skin on his poll was wrinkled as an old man's--and +a bringing of his off eye to bear around his sabre beak with the +skew-like movement of a hen sighting a worm. + +The wreck in the bundle of clothes opened his lips to scream but the +ghost of a groan came instead. It tried to lift a fending arm against +the abomination so near; the muscles tugged at broken bones. + +The condor appraised these manifestations of life carefully, weighed +them by contrast with his experiences with crippled sheep and helpless +calves. His talons stirred restlessly on the branch. First one, then +the other lifted from the bark, stretched and flexed. The king of the +higher airs was impatient. He spread his wings to balance him and +clumsily hopped a few feet nearer, craning his wattled neck anxiously. + +A shadow passed swiftly over the _palo verde_ tree. A quick upward +twist of the head gave the condor view of a putative and too-anxious +fellow guest at the bounty spread there. Greediness pushed him. He +spread his wings and hopped again-- + +Then the desert exacted with cruelty recompense for the cruelties +of Colonel Hamilcar Urgo. Abomination of his passing was meted him +according to the abominations of his own devising. + +An hour after the last rain drop the flood waters in the gorge had +dropped to permit of reunion between the erstwhile defenders of the +pass. Grant waded waist deep with Benicia in his arms; Bim, all smiles, +was stretching out a hand from the off-side rocks. + +"Well, folks all, looks like a pleasant time was enjoyed by all and +one!" The big Arizonan's spirits would permit of no more concrete +thanksgiving for a crisis passed. It was his way to find laughter +the only vehicle for suppressed emotions and whimsicalities the best +conveyance for thoughts which might sound "high-falutin'." The three +stood mute, their eyes telling one another things which might have come +flattened and blunted in speech. + +"See me welcome an old visitor just before the curtain went up on the +first act?" Bim turned to Grant, his eyes shining excitement. "Who +d'you think? Ole Doc Stooder!" Grant gasped in surprise. His pal's grin +faded as he added seriously: + +"Just about the end of his string, too. The rain sure saved +him--couldn't have lasted another hour--one chance in a thousand +brought him here where they's folks to look out for him--a friend, +even, to coddle him back to health." + +"No, not one chance in a thousand," Benicia caught him up with deep +seriousness in her voice. "It is the desert way--to play with destiny, +I mean, and seem to cause miracles.--But let me go to him if he needs +attention." She started forward, but Bim put out a staying hand. + +"I wouldn't, ma'am. The Doc's not a purty sight right now. His body's +just drinkin' in all the water that landed on him an' he's sorta +in a daze--doesn't say much of anything that makes sense. A little +food which I'm goin' to brew if I can find some dry sticks of wood +anywhere's round--" Simple charity dictated that Bim say no word of +conjecture as to what brought Stooder to the desert. He guessed full +well. + +El Doctor Coyote Belly seemed to be materialized from the rocks so +noiselessly had he approached the group. The old man's face was ashen; +unguessable terrors he had fought with and hardly conquered since last +the three had seen him standing in the yellow storm glare before the +cave of Elder Brother. + +"If my daughter will come now to the house of Iitoi," he said to the +girl in his native tongue, "she may take what Iitoi gives. The god has +expressed his displeasure by the storm--but he will give." + +Benicia turned and put a wordless question to Grant. They started +together to climb the precipitous rock ladder up the side of the gorge +wall, El Doctor leading. Thirty minutes' exhaustive effort brought them +to the approach of a high-roofed cavern into which the westering sun +laid a broad carpet of light. There in the shale before the cave mouth +were El Doctor's pitiful presents to the god--the arrow and prayer +stick wedged upright, the beads and tobacco in a small basket. The +whole ground about was littered with the shards of sacrificial pottery +and scraps of basketry. + +Benicia motioned to El Doctor to lead the way into the cave, but he +shook his head in emphatic negative. Then she gave Grant a strange +smile, almost that of a child who awaits revelation of a mystery. He +saw in deep pools of her eyes a transcendent joy made almost pain by +this moment of hope achieved. She held out her hand for him to take and +they entered the cave. + +When their eyes had become accustomed to the sudden transition from +glaring sunlight into gloom a faint glimmering at the far end of the +sunlight path guided them. Ankle-deep in the dust of ages they groped. +The glimmer waxed stronger. Suddenly Benicia stopped with a catching +of the breath. Grant stooped and lifted a heavy object from a niche of +rock, bringing it into the filtered stream of radiance. + +It was a golden monstrance, dust coated. Faint twinkles of light glowed +like firefly lamps from jewels set in the radii of a glory. A great +diamond above the crystal box caught fire from the sun. + +As Grant hastily bent to replace the sacred vessel his hand tipped the +edge of a shallow basket. From it rolled a stream of moonbeam fire out +into the zone of sunshine. Liquid globules of moon-glow, round and +pellucid as ice crystals, seductive as the shadowed whiteness of a +woman's throat: the green pearls of the Virgin stripped by the impiety +of El Rojo from the shrine of the Four Evangelists! + +Benicia slowly sank to her knees, words of prayer whispered from her +lips. Prayer of thankfulness and dedication of the lost treasure to the +sanctity of the Church. + +Grant felt his presence in this solemn moment was an intrusion. He +tip-toed back to the mouth of the cave and stood looking out. All the +wildness and the savagery of Altar's secret fane of the desert god lay +burning and glistening with wetness in the westering sun. The waning +torrent, sardonic gesture of plenty in this ultimate citadel of thirst, +splashed jewels against the lancing light. Here was a world of the +primordial--Creation arrested in its first hour. + +A hand touched his arm lightly. He turned to find Benicia standing +beside him. The sun wove an aura of vivid fire about her head. Her eyes +raised to his were swimming. + +"Now, heart of my heart," she whispered. And all the love fire in her +flamed from her lips. + + +THE END + + + + + Transcriber's Notes: + + --Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). + + --A Table of Contents has been provided for the convenience of the + reader. + + --Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected. + + --Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved. + + --Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved. + + --The author's em-dash and punctuation/endquote styles have been + retained. + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Dust of the Desert, by Robert Welles Ritchie + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DUST OF THE DESERT *** + +***** This file should be named 44691-8.txt or 44691-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/4/4/6/9/44691/ + +Produced by Donald Cummings and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Dust of the Desert + +Author: Robert Welles Ritchie + +Release Date: January 17, 2014 [EBook #44691] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DUST OF THE DESERT *** + + + + +Produced by Donald Cummings and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="600" height="743" + alt="cover" title="cover" /> +</div> + + + + +<hr class="chap" /> +<p class="subtitle">DUST OF THE DESERT</p> + + + + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<div class="tp1"> +<div class="dbb"> +<h1>Dust of the Desert</h1> +</div> + +<div class="bb"> +<p class="noi author"><span class="smcap">By ROBERT WELLES RITCHIE</span></p> +</div> + +<div class="pad6"> +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 150px;"> +<img src="images/logo.jpg" width="150" height="147" + alt="decoration" title="decoration" /> +</div> +</div> + +<div class="dbt"> +<p class="noi author">A. L. BURT COMPANY<br /> +Publishers New York</p> + +<p class="noi works">Published by arrangement with Dodd, Mead & Company<br /> +Printed in U. S. A.</p> +</div> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap" /> +<p class="noic"><span class="smcap">Copyright, 1922,<br /> +By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc.</span></p> + +<p class="p6 noic">PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY<a href="#TNOTE" class="tnanchor">[Transcriber's Notes]</a></p> + + + + +<hr class="chap" /> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + + +<table border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents"> +<col style="width: 20%;" /> +<col style="width: 70%;" /> +<col style="width: 10%;" /> +<tr> + <th class="tdrt smfontr">CHAPTER</th> + <th class="tdl"></th> + <th class="smfontr">PAGE</th> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt"> </td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#PROLOGUE">PROLOGUE</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">1</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">I</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">WHAT HAPPENED ON THE LIMITED</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">17</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">II</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">A GIRL NAMED BENICIA</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">25</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">III</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">DOC STOODER</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">36</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">IV</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">COLONEL URGO REPAYS</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">51</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">V</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">THE GARDEN OF SOLITUDE</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">65</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">VI</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">JUSTICE</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">76</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">VII</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">THE CHAIN GANG</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">85</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">VIII</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">THE HEART OF BENICIA</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">98</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">IX</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">GOLD AND PEARLS</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">108</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">X</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">AT THE CASA O’DONOJU</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">112</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">XI</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">THE MARK OF EL ROJO</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">129</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">XII</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">DESERT SECRETS</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">145</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">XIII</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CROSSCURRENTS</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">159</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">XIV</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">REVELATION</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">168</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">XV</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">WHAT HAPPENED IN THE NIGHT</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">178</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">XVI</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">ACCUSATION</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">184</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">XVII</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">THE ORDEAL</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">195</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">XVIII</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">THE DESERT INTERVENES</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">211</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">XIX</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">THIRST</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">219</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">XX</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XX">THE COMING OF EL DOCTOR</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">232</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">XXI</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">TREASURE QUEST</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">247</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">XXII</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">ALTAR TAKES ITS TOLL</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">257</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">XXIII</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">INTO THE FURNACE</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">266</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">XXIV</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">STORM</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">279</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdrt">XXV</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">TREASURE TROVE</a></td> + <td class="tdrb">293</td> +</tr> +</table> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p> + + + + +<p class="title">DUST OF THE DESERT</p> + + + + +<h2><a name="PROLOGUE" id="PROLOGUE"><small>PROLOGUE</small></a></h2> + + +<p class="cap">Roads of men thread the world. They +thunder with a life flood. They are vibrant +with a pulse of affairs. By land and +water and air they link to-day to to-morrow. +But El Camino de los Muertos (the Road of +the Dead Men) is a dim highway leading nowhere +but back and back to forgotten yesterdays. +Its faint sign-posts once were vivid in +lettering of tears and blood. Its stages were +measured by the sum of all human hardihood. +Faith, valour, reckless adventuring, thirst for +gold, love o’ women—these the links in the +measuring chain that marked its course through +a dead land. And black crosses formed of lava +stones laid down in the sand; these abide over +all the length of the Road of the Dead Men from +Caborca to Yuma to cry to the white-hot sky +of slain hopes and faith betrayed in those +buried years gone.</p> + +<p>The priest-adventurers of New Spain first<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span> +blazed this trail through an unknown wilderness. +Restless pioneers of the Society of Jesus +and the Order of St. Francis, men with the zeal +to dare, pushed out from the northernmost +limits of the Spanish settlements in a new +world with their soldier guards and their Indian +guides. They fought death in a land of thirst +northward, ever northward. The cross fell +from the hands of spent zealots at some waterhole +where water was not, and other hands followed +to snatch up the sacred emblem and push +it deeper into Papagueria. North and west +through El Infiernillo to the red waters of the +Colorado where the Yumas had their reed huts. +Thence on to the west through a land that stank +of death until at last the end of the trail was +smothered in the soft green of Californian +valleys—good ground for the seed of Faith.</p> + +<p>The overland trail of the padres became the +single trail from Mexico to gold when the madness +of ’49 called to all peoples. Then the Road +of the Dead Men took its toll by the score and +doublescore. Then men fought for precious +water at Tinajas Altas; many crosses of +malapais mark the sands there. Bandits lurked +at Tule Wells, ninety miles over blistering +desert from the nearest water, to shoot men for +the gold they were bringing back from California.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span> +The Pock-Marked Woman, mad with +thirst—so runs the legend—walked at nights +with the Virgin in the flats beyond Pitiquito +and found water with celestial candles burning +all about the pool.</p> + +<p>So passed the wraiths of the gold madness. +A railroad was laid down from the Pacific eastward +across the desert. What once was called +Papagueria had come to be known as Sonora, +in Mexico, and Arizona in the Republic of the +North. The Road of the Dead Men at its California +end became a way through green and +watered valleys where bungalows mushroom +overnight; along its course in southwestern +Arizona and northern Sonora it lapsed to a +faint trail from waterhole to waterhole of a +heat scourged desert. To-day this forgotten +remnant of a high road of adventure and hot +romance exists a streak in an incandescent +inferno of sand and lava slag, wherein death +is the omnipresent fact. Occasionally a prospector +putters along its dreary stretches, chipping +at ledge and rimrock. A Papago or a +Cocopa creeps over caliche-stained flats with +baskets of salt from the Pinacate marshes near +the Gulf.</p> + +<p>That is all. The Dead Men hold their road +inviolable. It is dust of the desert.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span></p> + +<p>That is all, did I say? No, the spirit of +romance and the shape of illusion have not +completely passed from El Camino de los +Muertos. Remains that tale which carries itself +over a span of a century and a half, linking +lives of the present to lives of men and women +whose very graves long since have passed from +sight of folk. A tale strangely like the desert +trail along whose course its episodes of hot +passion and swift action befell; for its beginnings +are laid in a mirage of an elder day +which we of the present can see but dimly, and +its ending is beyond the horizon of to-day. +Would you know the full story of the Lost +Mission de los Cuatros Evangelistas: how the +baleful spell of its green pearls of the Virgin +worked upon the fortunes of the House of +O’Donoju and how the last of that house +wrought expiation for the sin of a forbear +through heroism and the fire of a great love—would +you know the full story, I say, you must +see with me the substance of a beginning.</p> + +<p>No more can one plump into the middle of +this the last of the romance tales of the Road +of the Dead Men than could one drop onto the +Road itself midway of its length.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>A King in Spain once followed a practice of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span> +careless munificence. Whenever one of his +generals in the great wars appeared worthy of +reward His Majesty used to ink the ball of his +thumb and with a grand and free gesture he +would make a print somewhere on the map of +Mexico, then called New Spain. Then the +lucky general, taking this patent of royal favor +across the seas with him, would hire surveyors +to translate the print of Philip’s thumb into +terms of square miles of domain. These square +miles were his and his heirs’ to govern like +little kings, with justice in their hands, the +Church to give them countenance and Indians +by the hundreds to serve them under a modified +code of slavery. No man has lived since +as did those magnificent possessors of Philip’s +thumbprints.</p> + +<p>The Rancho del Refugio in the little known +reaches of Papagueria was one of these fiefs +of the king. Michael O’Donohue, a wild man +of the red Irish who had fought English kings +and queens under the banner of Spain, had +come by the grant originally and had taken a +lady of Granada to the new world to bear him +heirs worthy of their inheritance. Michael +O’Donohue became Don Miguel O’Donoju, lord +of a desert principality and a power at the +Viceroy’s court in the City of Mexico. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> +established two rigid precedents to be followed +by the house of O’Donoju: pride of race and +jealous conservation of the family principality. +It became a rule of the O’Donoju that none of +the clan marry outside the pure Castilian blood—Irish +excepted if Irish could be found; and +a rule that, come what might, no O’Donoju +pass title to so much as a foot of the Rancho +del Refugio.</p> + +<p>It was a day in April, the year 1780, that +the clan O’Donoju came to the Mission of the +Four Evangelists to lend the dignity of their +presence to the solemn service of re-dedication. +More than that, Don Padraic O’Donoju, venerable +head of the house and master of the Casa +O’Donoju in the oasis named the Garden of +Solitude, was come to witness a personal +triumph. For it had been his money that had +gone to the Franciscan College to be used in +the rebuilding of the frontier post of God after +the Apaches had raided and burned it fifty +years before. And one of his own sons, Padre +Felice, had been the architect and builder of +the restored mission and was to continue the +priest in charge. Padre Felice was fourth in +a line of O’Donojus to take orders, one from +each generation since the establishment of the +grant.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span></p> + +<p>The O’Donojus—grandchildren, cousins and +kin by marriage—had ridden five days and upwards +from various sections of the Rancho del +Refugio, up and out through the Altar desert +to this remote sanctuary of God in the country +of the Sand People. They came by the way +called the Road of the Dead Men. Its asperities +were softened by the quick desert spring +which tipped each thorny cactus cone with +candelabra tufts of golden and carmine flowers. +The desert’s usual heat was tempered by the +snows that lay in unnamed mountains to the +north.</p> + +<p>They came in a lengthy caravan of horses +and burros, with half naked Indians to herd +the goats and the yearling steers that were to +be barbecued for the secular feast to follow the +religious rites; with a half-company of foot +soldiers from the Presidio del Refugio to guard +the company against roving Apaches; Indian +maids on mule back to serve the needs of their +mistresses, regally mounted on ponies of the +Cortez strain; baggage porters, cooks, roustabouts. +Fully a hundred of the clan O’Donoju +and satellites on pilgrimage over the Road of +the Dead Men.</p> + +<p>All of the O’Donoju were there but one, El +Rojo—the Red One. The “Red One” was he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span> +because of the throw-back to the red Irish +strain of his fighting ancestor Don Miguel. +Red with the pugnacious red of Donegal was +his hair; his cheeks had none of the sallow tan +of the Spanish but were dyed with the stain of +Irish bog winds; his eyes were blue lamps of +the devil. A fatherless grandson of old Don +Padraic, El Rojo had played the wild youth in +the City of Mexico with only occasional visits +of penance to the Casa O’Donoju in the desert +country of the north until, when the tang of +youth still was his, he had tainted his name with +scandal. Followed his formal expulsion from +the clan at the hands of the old aristocrat, his +grandfather, and the closing of all doors of his +kindred in Papagueria against him. El Rojo +had ridden out to the wide world of sand and +mountains an outcast but with a laugh on his +lips; this a full year before the gathering of +the family at the Mission of the Four Evangelists.</p> + +<p>When El Rojo had turned lone wolf, a sadness +that was not the sadness of shame settled +upon the heart of one of the O’Donoju. Frecia +Mayortorena, a cousin, one of the flowers of +girlhood that caused old Hermosillo to be +named the Little Garden, sat behind her barred +windows on many a night with heart wild to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span> +hear once more the love song only El Rojo +knew how to sing. Frecia Mayortorena, all fire +under the cold ice of her schooled and decorous +features, knew that the reckless devil with the +flame-blue eyes had but to come and strum a +love call on his guitar; she would go with him +into banishment and worse. So on this pilgrimage +to the shrine of the four holy men the +girl, who rode with her father and brothers, +allowed her imagination to frame the figure of +a phantom horseman on every ragged mountain +top. At each camp fire along the Road of the +Dead Men, when the vast sea of desert round +about was stilled under the stars, Frecia +Mayortorena sat with tiny pointed chin cupped +in a propping palm and seemed to hear in the +clink of a mule’s hobble chain the opening +chord of that song of songs,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Red as the pomegranate flower, my love,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The heart of him who sings.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The cavalcade came to the mission with the +firing of guns and with shouts. The reed-and-mud +huts of the Sand People beyond the +cloisters disgorged their shouting savages to +welcome the travellers. Padre Felice, a gaunt +man with the face of an ascetic above the folds +of his rough brown cowl, hurried out from the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span> +doors of the new sanctuary to meet and give +embrace to his father, Don Padraic, and then +in turn to all his next of kin; behind him followed +his two novitiate priests who were, with +Padre Felice, the only white men in all the +stretch of Papagueria from the Rancho del +Refugio westward to the Sea of Cortez. Five +days’ travel were they from the nearest of their +kind, and to west and north stretched unguessed +leagues of the desert. Only the Road +of the Dead Men linked them with the first of +the Californian missions thirty days over the +western horizon.</p> + +<p>Missionary to the Sand People was Padre +Felice—to that branch of the Papago tribe of +tractable Indians who lived about the east +shore of the Sea of Cortez and on eastward +throughout the desert of Altar. The rebuilt +mission stood in the middle of a small oasis +which was fed by a stream down out of the +burnt mountains not a mile behind; one of those +rare and furtive desert trickles of water which +hides in the sand most months of the year. +The diminutive mission building, with its +rounded dome of sun-burned brick, lifted in +sharp outlines above the vivid and water-fed +greenery of the oasis mesquite and <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">palo verde</i>; +but the whole—oasis and house of God—was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span> +dwarfed by the bleak immensity of the flanking +mountains leaping sheer from the plain to push +their fire-scarred summits against the sky.</p> + +<p>Before the choir of Indian voices intoned the +opening prayer of the dedication service the +packs of the O’Donoju caravan yielded precious +things. There was a monstrance of heavy gold +studded at its tips with precious gems; this +was the personal offering of old Don Padraic +to the shrine of the Four Evangelists. A +chalice of gold, a great altar crucifix of gold +inlaid with mother-of-pearl, a pair of candelabra +wrought of chased silver and a communion +service of the same metal represented +the pious contributions of the rest of the clan +O’Donoju.</p> + +<p>But most precious of all the altar treasures +was that double string of the pearls of the +Virgin which by a miracle had been saved from +plunder of the Apaches when the savages from +the north had come burning and murdering +fifty years before. For a half-century the +lucent rope of moonbeam green had lain in the +treasure vaults of the Franciscan College in the +City of Mexico awaiting this hour of restoration. +Green pearls fetched from the shell +beads of the Sea of Cortez by Indian converts. +Pearls hinting of caves of ocean by their shimmering,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span> +changeful lustre. Pearls to fire the +lust of covetousness even from their hallowed +place about the throat of the Virgin.</p> + +<p>Padre Felice held the glinting rope of lights +high in dedication, and as reverently he draped +them upon the bosom of the sacred effigy the +clan O’Donoju and all the dark-skinned children +of the mission sang a gloria.</p> + +<p>An untoward incident jarred the merriment +of the feasting that followed the re-dedication +of the mission. When whole beeves were being +lifted from the roasting pits and the skins of +wine and tequila were passing from table to +table beneath the flowering mesquite trees a +column of dust strode across the desert from +the east and spawned two horsemen upon the +oasis. One, a naked Indian of the stature of a +giant, reined in his horse at the far fringe of +the mesquite as befitting a servant. The second +rode boldly into the circle of the tables. +Silver clinked from bridle and stirrup leathers +of his magnificent white thoroughbred. The +rider’s silver-trimmed hat came off with a +sweeping bow to include all there, and the red +of his hair was like molten copper in the sun.</p> + +<p>“El Rojo!” was the startled cry on every +lip. Men scrambled to their feet as if to combat +some overt move of an enemy.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span></p> + +<p>“God be with you all,” came the Red One’s +speech of polite greeting, made all the more +ironical by the reckless upturn of his lips in a +grin and the steely lights that flashed from his +blue eyes.</p> + +<p>“—And God, or his gentle vicar, Padre +Felice, give me place at table with my noble +kin,” El Rojo added lightly. “I have travelled +far to have my cup here on this day of celebration.”</p> + +<p>The laughing horseman let his eyes dance +over the circle of faces until they came to rest +for just an instant upon one. He saw cheeks +flaming, eyes filled with wonder and full lips +parted to give a heart its song. Frecia +Mayortorena was seeing a vision in the life. +Quickly El Rojo’s glance leaped on as if to +shield the girl from contamination. The venerable +Don Padraic, head of the clan O’Donoju, +was on his feet now and trembling.</p> + +<p>“We know you not, sir! We must ask you +to begone!”</p> + +<p>El Rojo caused his horse to rear perilously. +Before hoofs touched the ground hardly two +paces from the old man the rider again had +made his full-armed bow. He spoke with mock +respect.</p> + +<p>“Sanctuary, my grandsire! I and my servant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> +claim sanctuary of Holy Church. We have ridden +far, and good Uncle Felice can not deny us +the charity of his order.”</p> + +<p>Don Padraic was being swiftly mastered by +his rage when the friar to whom the unwelcome +horseman had appealed pushed his way +to the side of the older man.</p> + +<p>“He speaks the truth, sire,” urged the man +in the brown habit. “Here on God’s ground +we can not be guilty of uncharity.” Then, looking +up into the laughing blue eyes of his nephew, +“I ask you to descend, sir, and refresh yourself +and your servant until such time as you +take the road.”</p> + +<p>So all merriment in the oasis of the Four +Evangelists was stilled. There in the single +green spot on all the leagues of the Road of +the Dead Men was wrought a comedy; a prelude +it was to swift tragedy. The clan O’Donoju, +its satellites and retainers ate and drank in +silence, and apart from this company sat El +Rojo and his naked copper giant alone. From +time to time El Rojo lifted his cup as if in ceremonious +health to his kin. Only Frecia Mayortorena +read the glint in the blue eyes which told +that the toast was to her—and to what would +eventuate.</p> + +<p>Near sundown El Rojo and his Indian rode<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> +off to the west, but not until the outlaw had +spent a few minutes alone in the mission. +Padre Felice saw him at prayer before the altar +of the Virgin and was deeply touched that the +spirit of religion had not altogether departed +from the family’s scapegrace.</p> + +<p>In the dark of midnight Frecia Mayortorena, +who had cried herself to sleep, was awakened +by the touch of a hand stretched under the side +of the tent where she slept with the women of +the party. A silver embroidered hat was +slipped under the tent to rest on her arm. The +girl dressed herself in a folly of love and terror +and stole outside. The waiting figure of +El Rojo’s giant Indian detached itself from +the shadow of the mesquite, motioning her to +a tethered horse. Blind infatuation for a hero +lover brooked no questioning on the girl’s part. +She mounted and followed her guide through +the alleys of heavy shade.</p> + +<p>A single dreadful cry sounded from out the +opened door of the mission. A minute later +a vague horseman spurred to her side and +stopped the beating of her heart with flaming +kisses. The silent desert swallowed three phantom +shapes on horseback.</p> + +<p>Dawn brought revelation and the beginning +of that cycle of tragedy and dreadful pursuit<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> +of Nemesis which was to overwhelm the clan +O’Donoju. Padre Felice murdered at the altar +of the Virgin, where he had tried to stay the +hand of impiety. The green pearls of the Virgin +gone. A daughter of the house of O’Donoju +flown with a thief and a murderer.</p> + +<p>One word more and this mirage of years +long dead fades. The curse that all Papagueria +saw descend on the clan O’Donoju spared not +even the sanctuary of the Four Evangelists. A +year to the night of the Virgin’s despoliation +the Apaches came again to this frontier post +of the Church, and after a spiteful siege they +slew the white priests, burned the mission and +carried the Indian converts over the mountains +into slavery. The Franciscans dared not rebuild +on such accursed ground. Winds of the +desert, which move sand mountains in their +eternal sweep, played upon the ruined mission +year on year to blot even a vestige of it from +the eyes of man. God’s hand—so the Indians +had it—shook the mountains behind the little +oasis so that the source of the tiny life-giving +stream was blocked. The green vanished like +a mist, and scabrous desert cacti crept in on +prickly feet.</p> + +<p>The Mission de los Cuatros Evangelistas became +legend.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</a><br /> +<small>WHAT HAPPENED ON THE LIMITED</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">The Golden Sunset Limited, Pacific Coast +bound, snaked its way through a cleft +in mountains and came sighing to a stop +at the man’s town, El Paso. A patchwork +crowd spilled out from the station platform to +push around the ladders of the car icers to the +train steps. Swarthy Mexicans under sombreros, +with their black-shawled women and +their little tin trunks, scrambled and clogged +at the approaches to the oven-like day coaches +forward. Pullman passengers sauntered over +frogs and switches to plush and rosewood at +the train’s end.</p> + +<p>Among these was Grant Hickman, civil engineer, +New York, lately captain in the First +Division overseas. Arizona bound and west of +the Ohio River for the first time in his thirty +years, Hickman had broken his journey by a +day’s stopover in El Paso. He had given Juarez +a whirl, decided the kind of life he saw +across the International Bridge was spurious<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> +and of little worth, and now was entraining +again for his destination some four hundred +miles to the westward. He gave the porter his +bags to stow for him according to the directions +scribbled on his Pullman ticket and began a +lazy pacing of the platform, his eye alert for +the colour and the bustle of it all. The blending +of two races, of widely differing civilizations, +here in this sturdy city gave Hickman’s restless +imagination a smart fillip. He saw men +with gaily coloured blankets worn as cloaks +over their shoulders like prayer shawls in a +synagogue; Indians with ornaments of beaten +silver and raw turquoise hasps on their belts +had their shoulders planted against solid brick +walls with a grace born only of perfect indolence. +All great stuff—regular musical show +background.</p> + +<p>On his first lap down the platform the New +York man’s eyes rested momentarily on two +figures standing in the drip of one of the car +icers’ laden pushcarts. A girl and a man; she +hatless as she had left the car for a stroll, the +man all gesticulating hands and eloquently +moving shoulders. Hickman caught a scrap of +the man’s fervid speech as he strolled past; it +was in a foreign tongue, liquid—almost lisping—with +its softly rolled r’s and a peculiar<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> +singing intonation at the upward lift of each +period. Spanish undoubtedly. Just an over-shoulder +glimpse of a thin, dark face in sharp +profile confirmed Grant in his guess at the +speaker’s nationality. The girl’s bared head attracted +his appreciative eye; it bore a glory +of wondrously burning red hair, coiled in great +masses, vividly alive.</p> + +<p>Grant turned his corner at the platform’s end +and began to retrace his steps, consciously bearing +in the direction of the beacon hair. When +he was still twenty paces off he saw that the +swarthy man had gripped one of the girl’s +wrists and that his hawk face was pushed close +to hers in what might have been an access of +fury or of pleading. Grant quickened his pace +instinctively; he did not like the looks of that +man’s talon grip on a girl’s wrist. He paused +a decent distance from the twain and made a +pretence of lighting a cigarette while his eyes +glanced steadily over his cupped palms.</p> + +<p>Then a surprising thing. The girl launched +some verbal javelin at the man who gripped +her wrist, at the same instant looking down at +the clamping fingers as if to emphasize what +must have been a command to release her. No +answer but a flash of white teeth beneath a toy +moustache. The girl’s free hand shot to a great<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> +coil of hair over the nape of her neck, came +away with twin prongs of thin steel—anchorage +of some hair ornament—showing below her +clenched fingers. A lightning jab downward, +and the Spanish-speaking man dropped the imprisoned +hand to whip his own to his mouth. +He snarled something in sharp falsetto. The +girl with the red hair tilted her chin at him, +and the laugh that slipped between her +grudging little teeth was thin and sharp as +the double dagger points she had used.</p> + +<p>She turned, took three steps to a stool below +the Pullman’s steps, mounted with a quick +swirl of skirts and was gone. Grant thought +he saw a half-formed determination to follow +flash into the Spaniard’s eyes. Without knowing +why he did it, the New Yorker hastily put +one foot upon the lower Pullman step and bent +his body so as to block access to it. Very painstakingly +he unloosed the knot on his low shoe, +straightened the tongue in place and began taking +in slack on every loop of the strings.</p> + +<p>A grunt of exasperation from behind Grant. +When at last he straightened himself and +looked around the Spanish gentleman was gone. +He chuckled.</p> + +<p>“Now that, señor, should teach you not to +play rough with a red-head.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span></p> + +<p>He walked down to the Pullman his ticket +called for and climbed aboard. Just as the +conductor’s bellow, “Bo-oa-rd,” sounded, Grant, +looking through the glass of the vestibule, saw +the Spanish gentleman with a grip flying for +the train out of the baggage room of the station.</p> + +<p>Passing into the body of the car he found his +bags piled upon a seat midway of its length. +As he seated himself he was the least bit startled +to see flaming coils of hair above the top +of the seat across the aisle and one beyond his. +Grant was not displeased. Girls with spirit +always walked straight into his somewhat susceptible +affections; and a girl who carried a +home-made fish spear in her coiffure—</p> + +<p>“’Scuse me, Cap’n; ef I could jes’ have a +look at youah berth ticket. This gentmum says +he reckons you-all’s settin’ in his seat.” Grant +looked up to see the porter shifting uneasily +before him and with a deprecatory grin on his +face. By him stood the waspish Spanish gentleman; +the latter inclined himself in a stiff bow +as Grant’s gaze met his. Out of the tail of +his eye Grant thought he saw a slow turning +of the sunset cloud against the high seat-back +ahead.</p> + +<p>“This is my section,” Grant drawled with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> +no show of inclination to arbitrate the matter. +“I always buy a section when I travel.”</p> + +<p>“But, pardon, sir—” The Spanish gentleman +extended a pink slip. “The agent at the +station has but now sold me this lower berth.”</p> + +<p>“Indeed?” A slow ache of perversity began +to travel along Grant’s spine. He had no love +for a man who will manhandle women. “Indeed. +The agent at El Paso sold me mine yesterday.”</p> + +<p>“Ef I could see youah ticket,” the porter began +feebly.</p> + +<p>“You couldn’t,” Grant snapped. “Perhaps +the Pullman conductor may.”</p> + +<p>A cloud began gathering over the finely chiselled +features of the Spaniard. His toy moustache +went up. He spoke to the porter:</p> + +<p>“The señor is not what we call <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">sympatico</i>. +Have the kindness to fetch the conductor.”</p> + +<p>The darkey disappeared. Grant turned to +look out of the window, ignoring completely the +standing figure in the aisle. But he did not ignore +the reflection a trick of the sun cast on the +double glass of the window. He saw there just +the faint aura of a fiery head which refused +to turn, though the compelling gaze of the +standing man strove mightily to command it. +Faintly in the magic of the dusty glass was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> +carried to this bystander, whose neutrality already +was considerably strained, the silent battle +of wills.</p> + +<p>The Pullman conductor bustled up to Grant’s +seat. To him the Spaniard appealed, offering +the evidence of the berth check. Grant vouchsafed +no comment when he passed his own up +for inspection. The man in blue compared +them.</p> + +<p>“Some ball-up somewhere,” he grunted. +Then to Grant: “When was this ticket sold +to you?”</p> + +<p>“Yesterday morning at ten-fifteen o’clock,” +came the prompt answer. The waspish Spanish +person admitted he had purchased his only +a minute before the train started. The conductor +waved at Grant.</p> + +<p>“Then I guess the seat belongs to this gentleman. +I’ll have to find you one in another +car.”</p> + +<p>“But, señor, I have special reason for remaining +in this car.” The Spaniard’s carefully +restrained wrath began to bubble over. Grant +looked up at him and smiled frankly.</p> + +<p>“So have I,” he declared levelly. The other’s +eyes snapped and his lips lifted over small +white teeth in what was meant to be a smile.</p> + +<p>“Señor,” he began with a shaking voice,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> +“your courtesy deserves remembrance. I hope +some day it may be my pleasure to show you +equal consideration.”</p> + +<p>“Until then—<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">au revoir</i>,” Grant caught him +up. With the porter preceding him, the loser +walked down the aisle to the far door of the +car. As he passed the seat where the girl was +he half turned with a sulky smile. But it was +lost. She was looking out at the procession of +the telegraph poles. Grant, catching this final +passage in the little comedy, grinned.</p> + +<p>“There’s going to be lots of paprika in this +Western hike,” joyfully he assured himself—“or +do we call it chili?”</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</a><br /> +<small>A GIRL NAMED BENICIA</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">Grant Hickman was not one of that +tribe dignified by the name of he-flirts. +He abominated the whole slimy clan with the +loathing of a clean man. When he had seized +upon the part of studied rudeness toward the +Spaniard it was not with the ulterior purpose +of winning a smile or paving the way for acquaintance +with a pretty woman; Grant’s vivid +recollection of the sidewalk cafés of Paris in +war time and their hunting women left him cold +toward the type that is careless of men’s approaches. +In flouting the foreigner and preventing +his scheme to gain a place in the car +with the girl he had bullied on the station platform +the New York man had acted merely on +instinct; he had protected a girl from annoyance. +Yet now that he had won through by +dint of crass boorishness—and the young man’s +conscience gave him a twinge over the substance +of his discourtesy—he suffered a not unreasonable +curiosity regarding the possessor of that +glorious beacon in the seat across the aisle.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span></p> + +<p>Who was she? What circumstances had led +to that scene on the platform which had ended +with the unexpected dagger thrust of the steel +hair ornament? Was this little black-and-tan +whipper-snapper a lover—a brother—blackmailer? +Grant’s galloping imagination built +up flimsy hypotheses only to rip them apart. +And his eyes dwelt upon the soft involutions of +flame coloured hair, which were the only physical +indices of personality granted him thus far.</p> + +<p>Once the object of his conjectures shifted her +seat so that a profile peeped out from behind +the wide seat arm. Grant’s eyes hungrily +conned delectable details: one broad wing of +hair sweeping down in a line of studied carelessness +over a forehead somewhat low and +rounded; fine line of nose with the hint of a +passionate spirit in the modelling; mouth that +was all girlish, mobile, ready to reflect whims +or laughter. The sort of mouth, Grant reflected, +that could load a laugh with poison—even as +he had seen it done that tense instant on the +platform at El Paso—or freight it with sweetness +for a favoured one. A world of fire and +seduction untried lay in the full round lips, +yet a chin with the thrust of will in it warned +that the promise of those lips was jealously +guarded.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span></p> + +<p>A broad sheaf of sunlight lay across her +cheek. Grant saw that hers was not the usual +apple tint of the red-haired, the characteristic +skin so delicate as to suggest translucence. +Rather a touch of the sun had spread an impalpable +film of tan, warm as the colour of old +ivory, over cheek and throat. Duskiness of a +southland dyed cheek and throat despite the +anomaly of the burning hair, quite Celtic.</p> + +<p>The afternoon waned with no favouring fortune +throwing Grant’s way opportunity to study +the girl closer. When the sunset was in the sky +he walked through the train to the observation +platform. As he drew near the glassed-in end +of the observation car he noted with a little +leap of elation that the girl was sitting under +the awning beyond the screen door. He saw, +too, the objectionable Spanish gentleman. His +midget body was packed into a chair, one neatly +booted foot under him; like some hunting cat +he sat in watchful patience inside the body of +the car, his eyes never leaving the figure of the +girl beyond the screen door.</p> + +<p>Grant passed through to the platform, not +giving the Spaniard so much as a glance. As +the door slammed behind him the girl looked up +quickly. Grant saw her eyes were blue, saw, +too, a fighting gleam quickly pass from them.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> +Evidently he was not the one they expected to +fall upon. A pretty confusion which tried to +deny recognition swiftly replaced the strained +look. Grant allowed himself to be bold to the +extent of tip-tilting his cap. The girl evidently +decided that to overlook a service done would +be pushing decorum too far; she gave Grant a +quick, shy smile which might have carried a +hint of gratitude mingled with naïve humour.</p> + +<p>“You were very kind,” she said as Grant took +the camp-stool next to her, “and very amusing. +The high hand—you possess the art of +using it, sir.”</p> + +<p>“I should be ashamed of my rudeness,” he +answered with a quick smile. “But somehow +I am not. Your way of repelling attack has its +advantages, too—” His eyes strayed to the +silver comb, whose concealed steel had been so +efficacious on the El Paso platform. The girl +reddened prettily.</p> + +<p>“Always one must be—prepared against—persuasion,” +was the answer that put a period +to all reference which might be distasteful. +Grant would have liked to know more of circumstances +that had pushed this radiant young +person into the grip of a bullying little civet +cat of a Spaniard, but he dared not risk rudeness +by further questioning. Reward enough<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> +was his already; he had it in the swift play of +laughter across delicate features, in the sweetly +resonant quality of her voice, all of a part with +the engaging exotic character of the girl. For +American she assuredly was not, though her +trim tailoring was impeccably the mode of the +moment. Her speech had a rippling musical +lilt to it suggestive of a mother tongue less +harsh than Anglo-Saxon; her enunciation was +too perfect to be American. There was a trick +of the eyes, something almost vocal, which was +an inheritance from mothers whose speech is +sternly hedged about by conventions but who +find subtler ways of expression.</p> + +<p>What could her nationality be? Assuredly +not Irish, though eyes and hair were exactly +what Grant had seen in the green island during +a furlough spent in jaunting cars and peaty +inns. Mexican? The flame hair denied that. +Here was another mystery to be set aside with +that of the encounter at the station. With two +avenues of conversation closed Grant plunged +blindly along one strictly innocuous.</p> + +<p>“We seem to be getting rather deep into the +desert.” He waved out at a hundred mile vista +of sunset painted waste, all purple and hot gold +in the glory from the west—a new picture for +the eastern man. The girl made an unconscious<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span> +movement of half-stretched arms as if to free +her soul for wandering in limitless spaces.</p> + +<p>“Yes, the desert,” she breathed. “How wonderful! +And for me, returning to it after two +years in cities—in cities where one chokes from +walls all about—you see how the desert welcomes +with all its glory.” Grant looked at +her curiously; he saw a vision in her eyes.</p> + +<p>“Then you like this—this dry and barren +land? Why, I thought nobody lived out here +unless he had to. No trees, no water—” The +girl’s wondering eyes upon him checked his +summary of the desert’s shortcomings.</p> + +<p>“You do not know the desert then,” she reproved. +“You have never seen the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">palo verde</i> +tree when every branch is heavy with gold. You +do not know how the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">sahuaro</i> wreathes itself +a crown of blossoms—the tough old <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">sahuaro</i>, +a giant with flowers on his head ready to play +with spring fairies. Water!”—a crescendo +gust of laughter—“You think water only comes +from a faucet. If you dug for it with your bare +hands—dug and dug in hot sands while death +moved closer to you each hour, then you would +come to see a real beauty in water.”</p> + +<p>“You know something of the desert,” Grant +conceded.</p> + +<p>“Something! Señor”—the alien word<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> +slipped from her in her flurry of devotion—“señor, +my home is there and my father’s home +has been there more than a hundred and fifty +years. I have been away from it in the slavery +of the cities—two years at music in New Orleans +and Baltimore. Now I return. To-morrow +morning at Arizora big Quelele, my father’s +Indian servant, meets me to take me a hundred +miles—a hundred miles off the railroad and +away from the nearest city to my home.”</p> + +<p>“But Arizora is where I am bound,” Grant +eagerly caught her up. “That’s on the Line, +isn’t it? A hundred miles—why, then you must +live in Mexico.” She nodded. His curiosity +would not down:</p> + +<p>“Then you are Mexican?”</p> + +<p>An instant her blue eyes sparkled resentment. +Grant sensed he had made some blunder, though +he could not for the life of him guess how his +innocent question could have offended. The +girl, on her part, quickly regretted her show of +displeasure; one new to the Southwest naturally +could not know much about its social distinctions.</p> + +<p>“Not Mexican,” she amended gently. “We +are Spanish folk living in Mexico. We have +always been Spanish since the time one of my +ancestors got his grant from the king of Spain.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> +Never Mexican. That sounds like silly boasting +to you. When you have lived in this country +for a little while you will understand why +we have pride in our blood. Just as you have +pride, señor, in your American blood when all +the cities of your country are choked with mongrels.”</p> + +<p>Hoping to hear her name, Grant gave her his +own. She repeated it as if to fix it in memory; +then she told him hers. Benicia O’Donoju it +is written, but in her mouth the two words had +a quality like a muted violin note, too fugitive +to be imprisoned in letters. She spoke the surname +without accent on any syllable—“Odonohoo.” +The man grasped at something evanescent +in the sound:</p> + +<p>“Why, I’d pronounce that ‘O’Donohue.’”</p> + +<p>“My great-great-grandfather did.” Once +more Grant’s ears drank in that velvety contralto +laughter which bubbled to her lips so +easily. “You would pronounce his first name +‘Mike,’ and so did he.”</p> + +<p>“Then your first name should be Peg or +Molly-o,” Grant rallied. She shook her head +in gay denial.</p> + +<p>“Señorita Peg—impossible! Benicia is much +better. It means ‘Blessed’ in our tongue. +‘Blessed are the pure in heart,’ Señor Hickman;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span> +or ‘Blessed are the meek.’ I might be either +if I could forget I am an O’Donoju.”</p> + +<p>“Benicia.” Grant tried to copy the slurring +softness she gave to the word.—“B’nishia: +that sounds like little bells. I like it.”</p> + +<p>“You are gracious, señor. I thought Americans +were too busy with skyscrapers and wheat +markets to learn the art of paying compliments +gracefully.”</p> + +<p>“Compliments are born, not paid,” he joked. +Conversation limped no longer. Youth has a +way of opening little windows in the souls of +two brought together under its wizardry and +giving each elusive peeps into secret chambers. +It was Benicia who first became conscious of +the lateness of the hour and the strain on strict +canons of propriety her presence alone with +a stranger on the observation platform had entailed. +She arose with a little laugh.</p> + +<p>“My guardian”—a roguish glance toward the +tiny figure of the Spaniard still on the watch +beyond the platform’s glass—“I fear he does +not approve. And so—<i lang="es" xml:lang="es">adios</i>.” She gave Grant +the tips of her fingers and was gone.</p> + +<p>He watched her pass where the sentinel was +sitting. The little man uncurled himself from +his hump-shouldered crouch and scrambled to +his feet as if he would speak to her. But Benicia,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> +bowing sweetly, passed on up the aisle and +into the alley of rosewood and glass beyond. +After a moment’s hesitation the Spaniard came +to the screen door giving onto the platform, +where Grant now stood alone, and opened it. +He scratched a match and put it to his cigarette. +Grant saw the flare illumine a cruel hawk’s +nose and thin, saturnine lips. The Spaniard +inhaled deeply, then let thin streams of smoke +seep from his nostrils.</p> + +<p>“Señor”—his voice was cold as a lizard’s +foot—“perhaps you do not know that Señorita +O’Donoju is travelling under my protection.”</p> + +<p>Grant took time to tap a cigarette on the heel +of his palm and light it before he answered. +His eyes were brimming with laughter.</p> + +<p>“Perhaps not,” he said. “I congratulate +the lady on her protector.” Again blue smoke +played over the toy moustache; little eyes were +snapping like a badger’s.</p> + +<p>“I have the honour to inform you, señor, that +your attentions to the lady do her no credit +and that they must cease.”</p> + +<p>“Really!” Grant’s settled good humour received +a jar. He felt a tingling of fighting +nerves down his back. “Really? And who +constituted you judge of the value of my attentions?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span></p> + +<p>“Very naturally I have appointed that position +to myself, señor, since Señorita O’Donoju +is to become my wife.”</p> + +<p>“Ah!” Grant’s interjection did not carry +all the irony he would have wished. His +assurance was a trifle shaken.</p> + +<p>“And so,” the little man continued, “it is +understood. You will not address the lady +further.” Grant laughed.</p> + +<p>“My understanding is very weak and not +at all reliable. I promise you that unless the +lady objects I shall continue to address her +whenever opportunity presents.”</p> + +<p>The little figure in the doorway straightened +itself in an access of dignity. He snapped his +cigarette over the car rail.</p> + +<p>“Señor, let us have no misunderstanding. +We approach the Border, where every man +works justice according to the dictates of his +own conscience. To-morrow we touch Mexico, +where it is known that Colonel Hamilcar Urgo +is a law unto himself. I am that Colonel Hamilcar +Urgo. Need I go farther?”</p> + +<p>“And I am Captain Grant Hickman, formerly +of the First Division, Expeditionary Forces. +Go as far as you like!”</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a><br /> +<small>DOC STOODER</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">With evenly divided cause and equal +cheerfulness Grant could have kicked the +porter and himself when he awoke tardily next +morning and found his car at a standstill. He +raised the berth curtain and looked out. On +the eaves of a station he saw a white board with +the name “Arizora” painted upon it and certain +irrelevant advice as to the distance to New Orleans +and to Culiacan. Out through the curtains +popped his head and he whistled the porter.</p> + +<p>“Why didn’t you give me a call?” was his +angry demand.</p> + +<p>“Yassuh, yassuh, ev’body in this kyar gets +out here. Mos’ have gone an’ done it a’ready. +You see, Cap’n, this kyar’s been switched off +here at the Line two hours ago; train’s kep’ +right on goin’ into Sonora.”</p> + +<p>Grant, cursing his luck, boiled into his clothes +and made a race for the washroom. He was +hoping against luck that Benicia O’Donoju had +not been an earlier riser than himself. With<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span> +his face puffy with lather, he stopped from +minute to minute to peep through the window +giving onto the station platform. A decrepit +autobus was backed up against the curb with a +few passengers sitting patiently on its frayed +seats; loungers were dangling their legs from +baggage trucks; under wooden awnings of a +business block across from the station a Mexican +was languidly sweeping out a store. Arizora +had not yet come to life.</p> + +<p>Just as Grant was towelling the last remnants +of shaving lather from his cheeks he made +another quick survey of the platform and his +heart dropped into his shoes. Benicia walked +into the field of the washroom window; with +her the unspeakable Spaniard, who carried her +neat travelling satchel as well as his own bag. +The girl was fresh as the dawn in a suit of +khaki, short-skirted over high laced boots of +russet leather. Rebellious hair strayed from +beneath the brim of a soft-crowned Stetson, +saucily noosed to her head by a fillet of leather +under her chin. Soft green of a scarf lightly +drew together at her throat the wings of her +khaki collar. Nothing of the theatrical or +self-consciousness of tailoring in the picture +the desert girl made; she was the spirit of the +Southwest, unsophisticated and without pretence.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> +By her side the little Spaniard with his +knife-edged trousers and thin-waisted coat appeared +comic.</p> + +<p>As Grant, towel in hand, lingered by the window +feeding his soul with vain regrets, a crazy +thing on wheels swung around the station and +came to a stop by the girl’s side. It might have +been called an automobile by courtesy, though +there was little to identify it as a member of +the gas family save that it went of its own traction. +Engine naked, dash gone, two high-backed +seats of unpainted tin like the wing of an old-fashioned +sitz-bath and unprotected by a top; +behind these a home-built box body wherein a +trunk and a suitcase were lashed. Grant was +seeing his first desert speeder, rebuilt for +service of a highly specialized kind. The man +at the wheel was no less in character—an Indian +in overalls and high peaked sombrero; a +giant of a man with shoulders of a wrestler +and dull bronze features of a Roman bust.</p> + +<p>What ensued upon the arrival of the auto +nearly drove the watcher, shirtless as he was, +out to two-fisted intervention. Urgo, the salamander, +evidently was of a mind to make a +third in the car. Grant saw his humped shoulders +and expostulating hands, saw Benicia tilt +her chin as she gave him some cold refusal.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> +But the colonel calmly stowed his suitcase by +the side of the trunk in the box body, evidently +planning to use it as a seat. Again Benicia, +now in her place by the side of the Indian giant, +turned to give him peremptory refusal. The +Indian at the wheel had his engine going and +was sitting statue-like, utterly detached from +the quarrel.</p> + +<p>Urgo stepped on the rear wheel’s hub and +had one hand on the floor of the box body when +one of the Indian’s hands flashed up the spark +even as his foot went down on the gear pedal. +The crazy little car leaped like a singed cat. +Colonel Urgo cut a neat arc, hit the road on +his back and rolled over just in time to escape +receiving amidships his suitcase, which the Indian +driver had dropped from the car without +turning his head.</p> + +<p>In the Pullman washroom Grant collapsed to +the seat and smeared soap into his eyes while +he tried to check tears of laughter. The fall +of the peppery little Spaniard had been colossal, +and he guessed it had been wrought at the +quick prompting of the spirited girl in khaki. +What a wonder she was! All laughter and bubbling +spirits one minute; quick as a leopard to +strike the next.</p> + +<p>“Man”—Grant addressed a beaming face in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> +the glass—“man, always lay your bets on a red-headed +girl!”</p> + +<p>That minute of communion with a smiling +confidant was an important one in the life of +Grant Hickman, cautious bachelor. For it came +to him with the force of a hammer blow that he +wanted and must have this vivid creature of the +desert named Benicia O’Donoju. Girl of fire +and sparkle—of a spirit free and piquant as +the winds that blow across the wastes—unspoiled +of cities and the stale conventions of +drawing rooms. Oh, he would have her! Gone +she might be, out into a land beyond his ken. +Unguessed barriers of circumstance, of others’ +intervention, might have to be scaled; but somehow, +somewhere, Grant Hickman was going to +find and win Benicia O’Donoju.</p> + +<p>Love at first sight—old-fashioned, mid-Victorian +stuff, says the cynical débutante over her +cigarette and outlaw cocktail. In New York +tearooms and Washington ballrooms, quite so. +Where girls of twenty must know the sum that +stands in bank to Clarence’s credit, before +Clarence is marked down as eligible, love at +first sight is, in truth, dead as the dodo bird. +Even so, spirit still calls to spirit and like leaps +to like most all the world over. It is only where<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span> +fungus spots stain the garden that love will +not bloom.</p> + +<p>When Grant quit the Pullman Colonel Urgo +was nowhere to be seen. Grant idly wondered +as he walked to the hotel, directly across a plaza +from the station, how long it would be before +he encountered this half-portion rival of his +and what would be the Spaniard’s first move +in his frank threat of reprisals of the night before. +But when he was shown to his room—and +the New York man whimsically reflected he +had seen better ones at the Admiral on Madison +Avenue—events of recent hours were +pushed back from his attention by the more +immediate demands of his presence in Arizora. +He took from his suitcase the letter that had +brought him sky-hooting across the continent +to this back-water of life on the Mexican Line +and skimmed it through:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>“... I know just how hard it is for you +to settle down to office routine after the Big +Show. All of us are in the same fix, Old-timer, +but I have the edge on you because out here in +this man’s country there’s something breaking +every minute. That’s the reason I’m writing +you this mysterious letter.... Old Doc Stooder<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span> +is counted the prime nut of Southern Arizona, +but I believe he’s got a whale of a proposition +and that’s why I’m counting myself—and you—in +on the deal.</p> + +<p>“I’ve sewed myself up with him—promised +not to peep a word of the real dope to you in +this letter. The old Doc says, ‘We’ll need a +good engineer and if your buddy in France has +a head on him and knows how to keep his mouth +shut tell him to come out here.’ ... So if you +still have that old take-a-chance spirit that +hopped you through the Big Mill from Cantigny +to Sedan I’ll see you in Arizora. If I’m not +in town when you arrive dig up Doc Stooder—everybody +knows him.</p> + +<p class="noic">“Yours for the big chance,</p> + +<p class="right">“<span class="smcap">Bim</span>.”</p> +</div> + +<p>Grant folded the letter with a smile. Good +old Bim with his “whale of a proposition.” +Running true to form was Bim in this characteristic +letter. Just as Grant had come to know +and love him in training area and dugout: Bim +Bagley, six-feet-one of tough Arizona bone and +muscle and brimful of wild optimism. Always +ready to take a chance, whether at the enemy +on all fours through midnight mud or at fortune +in the wild lands of the Border: that was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span> +Bim Bagley of Arizona, “the finest country in +the Southwest.”</p> + +<p>And Bim had shot truer than he could know +when he sent this hint of big things in the offing +back to a man two years out of uniform and +moping for excitement on the sixteenth floor of +a skyscraper in Manhattan. Two years of +civilian’s life had been just that span of slow +moral suffocation for Grant. For all his thirty +years, for all his better than moderate success +in a profession of sharp competition, Grant +Hickman still could hear the call to the swimmin’ +hole of adventure. How he had yearned +to hear it these past two years when the springs +of his soul still tingled with the high tension +of battle lines! Then this letter from a pal, +promising all the substance of his dreams. It +had not been a week in the engineer’s pocket +before he was on the train for Arizora.</p> + +<p>Grant went out to find Bagley. He located +his office—“Insurance, Bonds, Investments” +was the sign on the glass of the door; but the +lock was turned and no one opened at his knock. +His eye caught a corner of white paper projecting +through the letter slot.</p> + +<p>“Grant:—Called out of town—back Friday. +B. B.” was the scrawl across the face of it. A +stab of disappointment was his; he had builded<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> +heavily on that moment of meeting when Bim’s +big hand would have his own in a vise. Nothing +to do now but see the town and amuse himself +as he might, or call on that mysterious Doc +Stooder and discover why Grant Hickman had +come racing out to this Arizora. He decided +to do both.</p> + +<p>The Arizora Grant saw in an hour’s swinging +round the circle was something different from +the “hick town” his New York smugness had +pictured in anticipation. It was a condensed +El Paso, jammed in the narrow compass of a +mountain gorge, with railroad yards monopolizing +the whole of the flat space between crowding +hills. A man could go from his home to business +by the simple trick of leaping off the front porch +of his bungalow with an opened umbrella. Arizora’s +streets were jammed with cars—fantastic +desert coursers stripped to the nines and with +canteens strapped to the running board. Sidewalks +swarmed with men—big men with steady +eyes looking out from beneath sombreros the +size of a woman’s garden hat; men with high-heeled +boots and the pins of many lodges stuck +on their unbuttoned vests; lantern-jawed, hollow-templed +men of the sun, whose bodies were +indurated by the desert law of struggle and +whose souls were simple as a fairy book.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span></p> + +<p>Across Main Street stretched a fence of rabbit-proof +wire with three strands of barbed +wire topping that; a fence with something like +a pasture gate swung back for traffic. This was +the Line. On the hither side of that rabbit-proof +wire web the authority of a President and +his Congress stopped; on the far side the authority +of quite a different president and his peculiar +congress began. Over yonder, where +stood a man under a straw sombrero and with +a rifle hung on one shoulder, lay Sonora and the +beginning of a thousand mile stretch of fantastic +land called Mexico. A cart with solid +wooden wheels and drawn by oxen under a ponderous +yoke blocked the way of a twelve-cylinder +auto seeking clearance at the international gate.</p> + +<p>When he had tired of sight seeing Grant inquired +at a cigar counter where Dr. Stooder +could be found. The breezy man in shirtsleeves +grinned and glanced at the clock on the +wall behind him.</p> + +<p>“Well, sir, usually mornings he’s over across +the Line getting organized for the day on tequila. +Mostly he comes back to his office round +noon time, steppin’ wide and handsome. Office’s +over yonder, top-side of the Bon Ton barber +shop. You might give it a look.”</p> + +<p>Grant acted on the cigar clerk’s advice. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> +located a dingy door at the end of a dark upper +hallway with the lettering, “A. Stooder, M.D.,” +on a tin sign over the transom. Entering, he +found himself in a sad company. Three Mexican +women and a man of the same race sat like +mourners on chairs about the wall; a big-eyed +child squatted in the middle of the floor and +listlessly pulled a magazine to bits. The stamp +of woe and of infinite patience was set on all +the dark faces. Mephitic smell of iodoform was +in the air. Grant hastily withdrew. After an +hour’s walking and when the whistles were blowing +noon he returned. A different collection +of patient waiters occupied the chairs; evidently +the doctor was in and at work.</p> + +<p>He took a chair by the window where he +could look down into the street and so keep the +set masks of misery out of his eyes. After +fifteen minutes the door to the inner office was +violently opened and a Mexican woman shot +out of it as if propelled by a kick. Thundering +Spanish pursued her. Grant saw a scarecrow +figure framed in the doorway.</p> + +<p>Tall beyond the average and gaunt almost to +the point of emaciation; frock coated like a +senator of the Eighties; thin shoulders seeming +bowed by the weight of the garments hung +thereon; enormous, heavily veined hands carried<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span> +as if hooked onto invisible hinges behind +the stained white cuffs:—this the superficial +aspect of Dr. Stooder. Vital character of the +man was all summed up in his face: skin like +wrinkled vellum stretched on a rack; eyes glinting +from deep caves on either side of a veritable +crag of a nose which had been broken and +skewed off the true. A great mane of grey hair +reared up and back from his high forehead; +tufts of the same colour on lip and chin in the +ancient mode of the “Imperial” added the last +daguerreotype touch to his features.</p> + +<p>Black eyes roved the room and fell on Grant, +who had risen. The doctor crooked a bony finger +at him and he passed through into the private +office, taking the seat indicated. Without +paying his visitor the least heed, Dr. Stooder +went to a closet, poured two fingers of some +white liquid into a graduating glass and drank +it. His lips smacked like a pistol shot. Then +he returned and took a swivel chair before a +very shabby and littered desk.</p> + +<p>“I never seen you before, sah”—the man’s +accent reeked of Texas, the old Texas before +the oil invasions. “So I’ll answer the question +every stranger’s just mortal dying to ask and +don’t dare. How’d I come to get this scar?” +The surprising doctor tilted his great head back<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> +and traced with his fore-finger an angry weal +which encircled his throat like a collar gall. +“Well, sah, I was informally hanged once—and +cut down. Now we can get down to business. +What’s your symptoms?”</p> + +<p>Grant, caught off balance by so unconventional +a reception, stammered that he had no +symptoms.</p> + +<p>“My friend, Bim Bagley, who is out of town +for a few days, told me to look you up. My +name is Grant Hickman. I’m from New York.” +The black eyes, never deviating from their disconcerting +stare, showed no flicker of recognition +at the name.</p> + +<p>“What you want of me if you have no symptoms?” +abruptly in the doctor’s nasal bray. +“I’m not in the market for the World’s Library +of Wit and Humour. I’ll cut you for a tumour +or dose you for dyspepsia; but I won’t buy a +book.”</p> + +<p>“I have no books to sell.” Grant found his +temperature rising. “I have come out from +New York because you told my friend Bagley to +send for me.”</p> + +<p>Doc Stooder suddenly snapped out of his chair +like a yard rule unfolding and strode to the +closet. With bottle and graduating glass poised +he bent a severe eye upon his visitor.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span></p> + +<p>“You say you don’t drink. Highly commendable. +I do.” Again the pistol shot from satisfied +lips. He replaced the bottle and tucked +his hands under the tails of his coat where they +flapped the sleazy garment restlessly.</p> + +<p>“You call yourself an engineer. How do I +know you are?”</p> + +<p>Grant had said nothing about being an engineer. +Doc Stooder had identified him right +enough. What reason for his bluff, then?</p> + +<p>“My dear sir, graduates of Boston Tech. do +not carry their diplomas round with them on +their key rings. You’ll have to take Bagley’s +word for it that I’m an engineer if my own is +not convincing.”</p> + +<p>The gangling doctor took two turns of the +office with enormous strides; one hand tugged +at his straggling goatee. Abruptly he stopped +by Grant’s chair.</p> + +<p>“Young man, what need do you figure a doctor +in Arizora would have of an engineer—more +especial an engineer from New York? Why +should I tell this Bagley, who’s as crazy as a +June-bug, to fetch a graduate engineer out to +Arizora? Engineers are a drug on the market +here—and every one of ’em a crook.”</p> + +<p>Grant’s patience snapped. He rose and strode +to the door.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span></p> + +<p>“Dr. Stooder, I didn’t come away out here +to your town to have somebody play horse with +me. When you are sober you can find me at +the International Hotel.”</p> + +<p>A grin started under Doc Stooder’s moustache +and travelled swiftly to his ears.</p> + +<p>“God bless my soul, boy! When I’m sober, +you say. I’m never sober and I hope I never +will be—”</p> + +<p>Grant slammed the door behind him.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV</a><br /> +<small>COLONEL URGO REPAYS</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">Before he had descended to the street +Grant began to regret his flash of anger +which had launched him out of Doc Stooder’s +office. To be sure, the unconventional doctor +had been insulting; his was hardly the orthodox +reception to be expected by one who had crossed +the continent to become his partner in some hidden +enterprise. Equally certain it was that, to +apply the cigar clerk’s pat phrase, Stooder was +“organized for the day”; the finishing touches +to that organization had been made in two trips +to the closet in Grant’s presence. Need one +have been so touchy under these alcoholic circumstances?</p> + +<p>Strive as he would to put the best face on the +matter, the man from New York could not escape +a lowering of the spiritual barometer. Here +he was, a stranger in an outlandish desert town +with none to give him so much as a friendly +glance. Glances enough came his way, but they +were inspired by his clothes, the cut of which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> +seemed to put them beyond the pale. Grant +pleasured himself by reviewing his case in the +most pessimistic light. He had been but a fortnight +ago a sober and industrious citizen. Came +to him a wild letter hinting darkly of some +shadowy enterprise in a bleak land. Instantly +he had quit his work and galloped across two +thousand miles to encounter a scarecrow cynic +who greeted him as a book agent.</p> + +<p>He wandered aimlessly beyond the town and +out onto a road which wound up to the edge +of one of the mesas which were the eaves of +Arizora. Well might drivers of passing cars +stare at the figure of a broad-shouldered young +man in a black derby and double-breasted coat, +who was afoot in a country where no man walks +unless he carries a blanket on his shoulders—unless +he is a “stiff,” in the phrase of the +Southwest. Even though February was but +on the wane, already the sun was guarantor of +a promise to pay with heat interest in sixty +days.</p> + +<p>He came to the top of the rise and halted under +the psychic compulsion of boundless space. +For space, crystalline and ethereal as the gulf +between stars, flowed from him as an ocean. +The air that filled this space was so thin, so +impalpable as to seem no air at all, and it was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span> +tinted faint gold by reflection from the desert +below. Mountains near and far were so many +detached reefs taking the silent surf of the ocean +of space; they were tawny where shadows did +not smear purple-black down their sides. Near +at hand showed the grim desert growths: prickly +clumps of <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">cholla</i>, whose new daggers sparkled +like frosted glass; fluted columns of <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">sahuaro</i>, +or giant cactus, lifting their fat arms twenty +and thirty feet above the ground; vivid green +of cottonwoods laid in a streak to mark a secret +watercourse.</p> + +<p>To the man just come from the softness and +languor of Eastern landscapes, where lakes lie +in the laps of green hillocks, this first intimate +view of the desert carried some subtle terror +prick. The iron savagery of it! What right +had man or beast to venture here?</p> + +<p>Then flashed to his mind the picture of Benicia +O’Donoju, the girl who loved the desert, +who felt she was prisoner only when hedged +about by the walls of cities in the East. Somewhere +to the south where a higher raft of peaks +marked Sonora’s mystery land—somewhere in +country like this she was speeding to her home. +What kind of a home might that be? How could +a girl with the bounding vitality that was hers +find life worth living in a land enslaved by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span> +thirst? A hundred miles from town or railroad, +she had said:—a hundred miles deep in such +a wilderness her home! Heavens, how he pitied +her!</p> + +<p>Grant turned back to the town, revolving over +and over in his mind the first steps he would +have to take to learn where Benicia O’Donoju +lived; and, haply discovering the place of her +abode, how to get there.</p> + +<p>By the time night fell the restless visitor to +Arizora had exhausted the town’s opportunities +for amusement. He crossed the Line into the +companion Mexican community, Sonizona. Here +was beguilement enough. The rabbit-proof +fence which converted Main Street into a Calle +Benito Juarez also marked a frontier no less +obvious. North of the fence was aridity to rejoice +the conscience of the most enthusiastic +prohibitionist; south of it the frail goddess Virtue +tottered in her step. In Arizona a man +sought traps and deadfalls consciously and with +a secret thrill of bravado; in Sonora he avoided +them only by the most circumspect watching +of his step. Dark streets winding along the +contours of the crowding mountains were raucous +with the bray of phonographs and the tin-panning +of pianos. Lattices over darkened windows<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> +trembled as one passed and the ghosts of +whispers fluttered through them. Where an +occasional arc lamp threw a spot of radiance +across the ’dobe road lurked shadowy creatures +who whined in an American dialect for money +to buy drugs.</p> + +<p>Grant did not realize that when he passed +through the rabbit-proof fence he left behind +him everything for which he paid income tax and +other doles—protection, due processes of law, +all the checks and balances on society and the +individual painstakingly built up under the +Anglo-Saxon scheme of things. He did not conceive +himself in the light of an alien—of a not-too-popular +nation—gratuitously placing himself +under the protection of laws quite the opposite +in terms of interpretation. Nor did he appreciate +that, save for his suitcase and a signature +on a hotel register, he had left behind him +nothing to bear testimony to the fact that a +man named Grant Hickman had come to Arizora +and had left the United States to enter +Mexico. All these inattentions he recalled later +when opportunity for correction had passed.</p> + +<p>Grant was circling the plaza, where the municipal +band was giving a concert, when amid +the strollers he thought he saw a familiar face.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> +He looked again and was sure. Little Colonel +Urgo, in a snappy uniform of dark blue with +back-turned cape, was walking with a woman +whose beauty was that of the blown peony. +Chance brought Urgo’s eyes Grant’s way. They +lighted with sudden surprise, then the colonel +brought up his hand in a salute. A flash of +teeth was cut by the travelling hand; it was +like a too quick shutter on the villain’s smile +in Way Down East.</p> + +<p>Grant doffed his hat and passed on. Half +an hour later a particularly glittering sheaf of +lights he had noted in earlier saunterings +pricked his curiosity and he turned into a low +building just off the plaza. A bare front room +easily visible from the street was a too obvious +blind for complacent police inspection; +through an open arch in its rear wall a crowded +gambling room was given false length by wall +mirrors in dingy frames. Fifty or more men +and women were clustered about roulette, faro +and crap tables. A fat Chinaman with a face +expressionless as a bowl of jelly sat on a dais +behind a little desk stacked high with silver +and with deft movement of his fingers achieved +nice problems in international exchange. Pursuit +of the goddess Luck was being engaged in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> +with a frankness and business-like absorption +quite different from furtive evasions of hidden +attic and camouflaged club across the Line.</p> + +<p>Grant exchanged a ten-dollar note for a heavy +stack of Mexican silver and moved over to a +table where two ivory cubes were dancing to +the droning incantations of a big negro game +keeper. He was curious to see whether Big +Dick and Lady Natural were as temperamental +a couple in Mexico as he had discovered them to +be in many a front-line dugout in France.</p> + +<p>“Come to papa!” A raw-boned Arizonan +across the table was singing to the dice held +in his cupped palms, huge as waffle irons; a +humorous imp of strong liquor danced in his +eyes. “Cap’n come down the gangplank and +says, ‘Good mawnin’, Seven!’”</p> + +<p>The ring of dark faces about the green cloth +stirred and white teeth flashed unlovely smiles +when a six and a one winked up from the dice. +A chinking of silver dollars as a red paw gathered +them in.</p> + +<p>“Baby! Now meet you’ grandpaw, Ole Man +E-oleven. Wham! Lookit! Five an’ a six +makes e’oleven! How’s that for nussin’ ’em +along, white man?” The crap wizard looked +across to Grant and grinned in amity. Mexican<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span> +scowls accompanied the covering of the winner’s +pile left temptingly untouched. Grant felt an +undefined tugging of race bonds here in this +ring of alien faces, and he backed the Arizonan +against the field. On his third throw the big +fellow made his point.</p> + +<p>“That’s harvestin’! That’s bringin’ in the +sheaves! Now here’s my stack of ’dobe dollars +for any Mex to cop if he thinks the copping’s +good.”</p> + +<p>When it came Grant’s turn to throw his new-found +friend played him vociferously against +the Mexican field, calling upon all present to +witness that a white man sure could skin anything +under a sombrero, from craps to parchesi. +For the first time since he had left the train that +morning the New Yorker felt the warming tingle +of fellowship; the gaunt, sunburned face of the +desert man with the dancing imps of humour in +the eyes was a jovial hailing sign of fraternity.</p> + +<p>“Shoot ’em, Mister Man! You’re rigged for +Broadway, Noo Yawk, but I can see from here +that you has the lovin’ touch.”</p> + +<p>Grant rolled and won, rolled and won again. +Carelessly he dropped the heavy fistfuls of dollars +into the side pocket of his coat. Even when +he lost his point, he had a bulging weight of +silver there. Grant was enjoying the game itself<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span> +not nearly so keenly as he did the Arizonan +across the table, his Homeric humour and the +bewildering wonder of his vocabulary. So intent +was he that he did not see Colonel Urgo +enter, nor did he catch the almost imperceptible +nod toward him that the little officer passed to +a furtive-eyed tatterdemalion who accompanied +him. The latter by a devious course of idling +finally came to a stand behind Grant and appeared +to be a keen spectator of the game.</p> + +<p>“Ole Man Jed Hawkins’ son is a-goin’ splatter +out a natch’ral. Ole Man Hawkins’ son is +a-goin’ turn loose the hay cutter an’ mow him +a mess of greens. Comes Little Joe! Dip in, +Mexes, an’ takes yo’ fodder! Now the man +from Dos Cabezas starts a-runnin’—”</p> + +<p>A hand was busy at Grant’s pocket—a slick, +suave hand which replaced weight for weight +what it subtracted. Just three quick passes +and the tatterdemalion who had been so intent +on the prancing dice lost interest and moved +away.</p> + +<p>It came Grant’s turn to roll the dice. He +dipped into his pocket and carelessly dropped +a stack of eight silver dollars on the table. One +of them rolled a little way and flopped in front +of a Mexican player. The latter started to pass +the dollar back to Grant when he hesitated, gave<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> +the coin a sharp scrutiny, then balanced it on a +finger tip and struck its edge with one from his +own pile.</p> + +<p>“Señor!” An ugly droop to his smiling lips. +“Ah, no, señor!”</p> + +<p>He passed the dollar over to Grant with exaggerated +courtesy. Eyes all about the table, +which had followed the pantomime with avid +interest, now centred on the American’s face. +As if on a signal the fat Chinaman at the exchange +desk waddled over to shoulder his way +officiously to Grant’s side. He growled something +in Spanish and held out his hand. Dazedly +Grant laid the suspected dollar in a creasy palm. +The Chinaman flung it on the green felt with a +contemptuous “Faugh!” and he pointed imperiously +at Grant’s bulging pocket.</p> + +<p>“It’s a frame, pardner,” called the Arizonan. +“If your money’s bogus it’s what the Chink +himself handed you.”</p> + +<p>“I came in here with American money and +changed it at your desk,” Grant quietly addressed +the Chinaman. “See here; this is the +money I either got from you or won at this +table.” He brought from his pocket a brimming +handful of Mexican dollars and dumped them +on the cloth. Two or three of the heavy discs<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> +shone true silver; the others were clumsy counterfeits, +dull and leaden.</p> + +<p>A cry, half snarling laughter, from the crowd +about the table, now grown to a score: “Aha—gr-ringo!”</p> + +<p>A movement of the crowd forward to rush +Grant against the wall. Then with a cougar’s +spring the big Arizonan was on the solid table, +feet spread wide apart, head towering above +the tin light shade. He balanced a chair in one +hand as the conductor of an orchestra might lift +his baton. His gaunt features were split in a +wide grin. Before Grant could gather his senses +a big paw had him by the shoulder and was +dragging him up onto the green island of refuge.</p> + +<p>“They don’t saw no whizzer off on a white +man wiles ole Jed Hawkins’ boy got his health,” +Grant’s companion bellowed a welcome. “I +got these greasers’ number, brother!”</p> + +<p>Grant’s gaze as he rose to his feet over the +heads all about encountered two interesting objects. +One was Colonel Urgo, who stood alone +in a far corner of the room; the colonel was +smiling with rare good humour. A second was +a man wrapped about with a blanket, over whose +shoulder appeared the tip of a rifle; he was +just coming through from the front room on a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span> +run and there were three like him following. +Rurales, the somewhat informal bandit-policemen +of Mexico.</p> + +<p>Just what ensued Grant never could quite +piece together. He remembered seeing Hawkins +wrench off a leg from his chair and send +it whizzing at a central cluster of light globes +in mid-ceiling. They snuffed out with a thin +tinkling of glass. Then the rush.</p> + +<p>Out of the dark swirl of figures about the +table’s edge a vivid spit of flame—roar of a +pistol shot. Hands grappling for braced legs +on the table top. “Huh” of breath expelled +as Hawkins swung his chair in a wide sweep +downward. A cry, “Hesus!” Oaths chirped +in the voice of songbirds. A knife missing its +objective and trembling rigid in the midst of +the baize.</p> + +<p>The table collapsed with dull creakings, and +then the affair of mauling and writhing became +a bear pit. Grant fought with steady, measured +short-arm jabs delivered at whatever object +lay nearest. When one arm was pinioned +he swung the other against the restraining body +until it was freed. Some one sank teeth in his +shoulder.</p> + +<p>“Ride ’em, Noo Yawker!” came the shrill cry +of battle from somewhere in the mill. Then a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span> +blow at the base of the brain which meant lights +out for Grant.</p> + +<p>When consciousness came halting back he +found himself standing half-supported by two +of the rurales in a dark street and before a high +gate in unbroken masonry. The gate swung inward. +He was propelled violently through the +dark arch and into a small room, where sat a +man in uniform under a dusty electric globe. +He did not look up from the scratching of his +pen on the desk before him.</p> + +<p>A door behind the writing man opened and +Colonel Urgo entered. His start at seeing the +bloodied and half-clothed figure which the rurales +supported was well acted. A hand came +to the vizor of his cap in mocking salute. Then +he turned to the man at the desk and exchanged +low words with him.</p> + +<p>“Ah, Señor ’Ickman”—Colonel Urgo’s voice +was tender as the dove’s—“I regret to learn you +are here in the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">carcel</i> on serious charges. The +one, counterfeiting the coin of Mexico; the other, +resisting officers of the law. Very regrettable, +Señor ’Ickman. But, remembering your courtesies +toward me on the train yesterday, let +me assure you of my willingness to serve you +in any way. You will command me, señor.”</p> + +<p>A sudden lightning flash of comprehension<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span> +shot through the clouds that pressed down on +the prisoner’s mind. He saw the whole trick +of the counterfeit dollars in his pocket and remembered +the little Spaniard’s threat on the +observation platform of the train the night before: +“To-morrow we touch Mexico, where it +is known that Colonel Hamilcar Urgo is a law +unto himself.” Grant strained forward and his +mouth opened to incoherent speech.</p> + +<p>“And now, señor,” Colonel Urgo continued +blandly, “unfortunately you will be locked up +incommunicado.”</p> + +<p>Five minutes later Grant Hickman, behind a +steel-studded door in a Mexican jail, was as +wholly out of the world as a man in a sunken +submarine.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V</a><br /> +<small>THE GARDEN OF SOLITUDE</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">Benicia O’Donoju by the side of the big +Papago Quelele and with the twin towns +on the Line behind her—ahead the unlimned +immensity of the wilderness—gave herself to +the exhilaration of flight. For the skimming +and dipping of the little car over the wave +crests of the desert was like the flight of the +desert quail, who rarely lifts himself above the +height of the mesquite in his unerring dartings +from bush to bush. On its partially deflated +tires, provision against sand traps and the expansion +of imprisoned air under heat, the skeleton +thing reeled off its twenty miles an hour +with snortings.</p> + +<p>The final incident at the Arizora station—little +Colonel Urgo and his unceremonious jettisoning—left +no abiding impression with the +spirited desert girl. His struttings and posings, +his humorously impetuous wooing, resumed at +the El Paso station after the two years’ interruption +of her stay in the States, were for her no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> +more than the high stepping of some barnyard +Lothario. Benicia, little given to the morbid +business of self-analysis, was not sensible of +how exactly the dual strain of blood in her had +reacted to Urgo’s advances; how it had been +the swift thrust of Spanish temper which had +prompted her to resort to the pronged weapon +from her hair at El Paso even as the persistent +Irish humour tang inherent in the O’Donoju +name had flashed out in the dumping of the +suitor at Arizora.</p> + +<p>No, Hamilcar Urgo’s dapper figure was as +evanescent as the mirage, but there was another +which appeared to replace it. A man with the +figure of an athlete and a forthright way of +looking at one—perhaps the least bit too self-assured, +perhaps inviting rebuke did one but +feel in the humour of rebuking. One of those +quick-witted Americans, ever ready on a hair +trigger of resourcefulness yet seeming to carry +a situation as if no situation existed. Nice eyes, +yes. A pleasant laugh, rich in humour. But +so New Yorkish! He thought the desert a place +where no one lived willingly. Amusing conceit! +And his name was—? Ah, yes, Hickman—Grant +Hickman. One would try to remember +that name.</p> + +<p>Retrospect could not long hold Benicia’s mind<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span> +against the joy of the homing journey. For the +desert she loved spoke to her a welcome long +dreamed in the stifling precincts of cities. There +was the sky she had yearned for, something of +infinite depths which did not shut down over +the earth like an inverted cup; rather an impalpable +sea wherein the earth swam free. Morning +gold still tinted it. And the mountains that +rose sheer from the desert floor with no lesser +foothill heights: under the sun they were blue +in the east and where slant rays fell upon western +barriers a tawny strength of naked rock +clothed them. Between the feet of the mountain +stretched the level desert plain far and far beyond +the power of eye to compass; grey with +the grey of saltbush and greasewood, overtones +of green where the first leaves of the mesquite +and ironwood answered the call of the spring +sun.</p> + +<p>Quelele had turned the machine onto a westward +wending road once the Line was crossed +at Sonizona. A few straggling ranches near +the border town, then the unsullied desert. +Westward and southward sped the machine, +deep into the greatest stretch of unpeopled wilderness +between the Barren Grounds of the Dominion +and Panama.</p> + +<p>The Desert of Altar lies there. From the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span> +Line south to the Yaqui River and from the Gulf +of California, once called the Sea of Cortez, +eastward to the Sierra Madre:—here is the +terra incognita of Sonora; here is the dominion +of thirst. A territory large as New England +and with a population smaller than the average +New England mill town. A vast graveyard of +vanished peoples, who left behind them mountains +terraced with fortifications laid in unbroken +breastworks of porphyry and rocks pictured +with their annals of life and death. Rain +comes only with occasional summer thunder +storms up from the Gulf, storms which wake +dead rivers into furious flood. So precious is +this water from the sky that the primitive peoples +weave mystic rain symbols into their basketry +for a fetish, and their songs are all of +thunderheads and croaking frogs.</p> + +<p>Here in the Desert of Altar the impossible +becomes commonplace. A man caught in a river +bed by the spearhead of a freshet drowns in +sand made mud and irresistibly rushing. Cattle +drink no water for months on end but are +sustained by munching cactus whose spines can +penetrate sole leather. In the furnace heat of +summer furious rain storms occur in the higher +air but the moisture is sucked up by the sun before +it touches earth. Gold lies scattered on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span> +the surface of the desert and water must be +mined. The desert kind slay after the manner +of the ages but declare a truce at the waterhole. +Death of all life is ever-present, yet grant so +much as a permanent trickle of the life-giving +fluid and the dust is covered with a glory of +green.</p> + +<p>For its devotees the desert holds mysteries +potent beyond comprehension of folk in a softer +land. The venturing padres of an elder day +called it the Hand of God; they walked in the +hand of God and were not afraid. Divinity, +force, original cause—whatever may be your +term for that power which jewels the grass with +dew and swings the suns in their courses—this +is very close in the desert. In great cities man +has driven the Presence far from him by his +silly rackets of steam and electricity, by his +farcical reproductions of cliffs and pinnacles. +In the Desert of Altar he walks in silence and +with God. The very air is kinetic with the +energy that brought forth life on a cooled +planet.</p> + +<p>The desert had been Benicia’s teacher; had +moulded her spirit to its own pattern of elemental +strength. Born the last of the +O’Donojus in the desert oasis that was the +ultimate remnant of the once kingly Rancho<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span> +del Refugio—grant of a Spanish Philip to her +ancestor—she had been reared in the asperities +of the land, had absorbed into her bone and +tissue the rigours and simple verities of a +wilderness. Because there was no son in the +Casa O’Donoju and because, too, this only +daughter came into the world with the inheritance +of a spirit impetuous and errant as a +desert bird, Don Padraic, her father, gave over +all attempts at imposing on her the straight +decorum that shackles the Spanish maiden of +gentle blood. With the death of her mother +when Benicia was still in short skirts came this +loosening of the bonds. Instead of growing to +maturity a shy creature who must never quit +the sight of a duenna and whose eyes shall tell +no secrets, the girl warmed to a wonderful +companionship with her father, lived the life +of a boy.</p> + +<p>Her flaming red hair bobbed about the fringe +of milling cores of wild cattle at the round-up. +At <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">Sahuaro</i> feasts of the Papagoes, Mo Vopoki +(Lightning Hair) added her shrill soprano to +the chorus of the Frog Doctor Song. She +learned where gold lay in shallow pockets and +winnowed it from the sands in the Indian +fashion. She brought home a mewing, spitting +kitten she had taken from a bobcat’s litter.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> +Her doll was discarded for a rifle before her +strength could shoulder it.</p> + +<p>Schooling came in her father’s library, filled +with books in three languages. English and +music, the music of the great harp, became her +passions. The harp had been her great-grandmother’s; +Don Padraic could make the mesh +of strings sing with the sound of rain on +flowers. He was her first teacher. Then, when +twenty years were hers and Don Padraic +realized something besides the wild desert life +was needed to round out the full beauty of his +daughter’s soul, he had urged further studies +on the harp as the excuse for Benicia’s two +years in the cities of the States. Those two +years had served well to overlay upon the +rugged handiwork of the wild the softness and +subtleties of culture.</p> + +<p>Benicia believed she possessed all her father’s +confidences. So she did—all but one. She did +not know that when she came into the world +with tiny head furry in burning red Donna +Francisca, her mother, had cried herself into +hysteria and Don Padraic’s heart had gone +cold. Nor was she ever told that her flaming +hair marked her with the finger of Nemesis.</p> + +<p>This day of the return from exile no premonition +of the inheritance of fate arose to disturb<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span> +the singing heart of the girl. She rattled on +to the stoical Papago at the wheel unending +questions concerning her father and the most +humble of the Indian retainers living on the +rancherias about the oasis, Don Padraic’s fief +in the waste lands. She told the credulous +Quelele stories of the cities she had seen; of +white men’s wickiups climbing as high as the +hill of La Nariz; of water so plentiful that it +was launched at a burning house out of a long +serpent’s mouth; how men lifted themselves +above the earth in machines like the king condor +and flew hundreds of miles between sun and +sun. To all of which big Quelele, never lifting +his eyes from the thin rut lines in the sand, +answered with a single monosyllable “Hi,” +wherein was compounded all his capacity for +wonder.</p> + +<p>South and west about the skirts of the +Pajarito they went, and then into the old road +up from Caborca, the ancient highway called +the Road of the Dead Men which swings north +parallel with the Line, cutting the tails of +numerous ranges that are great in Arizona. +And so, when the day was hardly more than +half spent, the little car crawled to the height +called the Nose of the Devil, and Benicia saw +below her land of desire.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span></p> + +<p>Fists of the mountains grudgingly opened out +to permit a broad basin running from east to +west, and there against the savage baldness of +sentinel ranges showed a ribbon of green. +Green of precious gems it was. So vivid in the +setting of the drought land. So cyclonic its +assault of colour against the eye inured to the +duns and greys of a hundred miles of parched +terrain. And in the midst of the oasis the +shining white dot, which was the house of the +O’Donoju; of Benicia’s father and his fathers +before him back to the day of a royal favourite +baptized Michael O’Donohue. The Casa +O’Donoju in El Jardin de Soledad—the Garden +of Solitude.</p> + +<p>Indian women, in skirts of orange and cerise +and with gay mantles over their sleek hair, +lined the way to the avenue of royal date palms +which led from the bridge over the Rio Dulce +straight to the white single-story house of +’dobe, heavy walled and loopholed like a fort. +They waved and sent shouts of welcome to the +mistress of the casa as she passed.</p> + +<p>Benicia knew her father would not be outside +the house to greet her; their love was not for +the servants to see. Rather he would be waiting +in their own trysting place, the place where +he had given her farewell two years before. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> +girl leaped from the car before the heavy +studded oak door breaking the solid white front +of the house at its centre. It was opened to +her by old ’Cepcion, feminine major domo of +the household servants. Benicia paused to give +the parchment cheeks a kiss, then she danced +down a flagged hall to the flare of green marking +the patio garden in the centre of the house.</p> + +<p>Here was a place of beauty and a fragrant +cave of coolness—the very secret heart of the +Garden of Solitude. Open to the sky and with +cloistered dimness of the four sides of the house +all about, the patio was a tiny jungle of climbing +things, all green and riotous blossoms. A +stately date palm reigned in the centre behind +the little basin of the fountain; curtains of +purple bougainvillea draped themselves down +its shaggy ribs; lavender water-hyacinths +sailed their little barques in the pool; geraniums +flamed in living fire against the pillars of +the arcades.</p> + +<p>There in the garden waited a man all in +white. Snow white his heavy hair and beard, +though the life in his deep-set eyes and the +vigorous set of his shoulders belied age; white +were his thin garments of silk and flannel.</p> + +<p>He caught the flash of a red head through<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span> +the greenery, saw an eager, breathless face +turned questioningly.</p> + +<p>“’Nicia, heart of my heart—!”</p> + +<p>Then she ran to him, paused just an instant +to lift swift fingers under his chin and tilt his +head. Their eyes measured each the love that +welled brimming in the soul’s windows. Then +the father drew his daughter close to his heart +and his lips brushed her forehead.</p> + +<p>“’Nicia, my strong one, your father has +great need of you.”</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI</a><br /> +<small>JUSTICE</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">The Mexican theory of the treatment of +prisoners, their status before the law and +the responsibilities of government toward them +has few complexities and knows no interference +on the part of prisoners’ welfare leagues or +humanitarian congresses. When a man is arrested +south of the Line he straightway ceases +to be enumerated among the living; if, haply, +he reappears in the course of weeks or years +his family looks upon the prodigy in the light +of a resurrection. Such resurrections do not +occur often enough to dull the edge of the +popular interest attending them. There are +several dim roads, peculiarly Mexican, down +which a prisoner may march to oblivion, with +no record of his expunction left behind. Officials +with easy consciences find these extralegal +methods of clearing the docket handy and +expeditious.</p> + +<p>Grant Hickman, new to the Border and utterly +ignorant of customs and manners in the +republic of <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">poco tiempo</i>, necessarily could not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span> +possess a background of sinister knowledge +against which to build doubts of his immediate +future when he found himself locked in a cell. +He was in darkness deep as Jonah’s. He ached +from his scalp to his toes. A gingerly groping +hand applied to various parts of his body took +stock of the exterior costs of that healthy fight +in the gambling palace. The heat of battle was +still on him. He recalled how nobly the big +Arizonan swung his chair from the vantage of +the crap table; what a virile call to battle was +the stranger’s “Ride ’em, Noo Yawker!”</p> + +<p>As for Colonel Urgo’s clumsy frame-up—the +handful of lead dollars in his pocket to prompt +arrest for counterfeiting—Grant dismissed the +trick as childish spite. When he appeared before +a judge in the morning he could easily +prove that the only Mexican money he possessed +was that given him in change by the +fat Chinaman and what he had taken in across +the baize. Some tool of the vengeful little +wooer of Benicia had “salted” him during the +progress of the game.</p> + +<p>But when morning light through a four-inch +slit in the wall roused him from a restless +sleep long hours of doubt were ushered in. +Came a jailer with dry tortillas and water but +no summons to appear before a magistrate.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span> +Three tortillas—clammy rolled cakes of meal +tasting strongly of a cook’s carelessness in +matters of excluding the unessential—were the +sum of his receipts from the outside world that +day. The jailer, who had the features of a +bandit, merely grunted a “no sabe” at the volley +of questions the prisoner launched at him +during the minute he was in the cell.</p> + +<p>Those hours of solitude in the six-by-ten box +of stone gave opportunity for much thinking. +Little by little it was borne in on Grant how +completely he was a victim of whatever spite +Colonel Urgo might care to devise; and recollection +of his smiling face seen in the prison +office the night before—thin lips parted over +teeth in a ferret’s grin—confirmed the assumption +that at devising mischief Colonel Urgo +would be hampered by no lack of ingenuity.</p> + +<p>Grant weighed the hope of aid from the other +end of the town across the Border fence. Bim +Bagley, the only friend he had in all the Southwest, +was still out of town and would not be +back until the morrow. Doc Stooder—small +chance! The worthy doctor was velvet drunk +when he received Grant in his office; for reasons +which only his satiric humour could explain +he had elected to consider his visitor an +impostor. Little chance that Doc Stooder would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> +pay him a thought until Bagley returned and +inquired of his whereabouts. Remained just +the cobweb contingency that the Arizonan who +had fought beside him had escaped the clutches +of the rurales; Grant was certain the big fellow’s +simple loyalty to a fellow countryman +would prompt him to set going some kind of +inquiry from across the Line.</p> + +<p>Night came, with it three more tortillas and +a bowl of <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">carne</i> seasoned with chili sufficient +to burn the gullet of a bronze image. Then, +several hours after the scant meal had been +shoved in to him, the bandit jailer opened his +cell door and motioned him to step into the +corridor. Two men with rifles were waiting +there; they stepped to his side and marched +him off between them.</p> + +<p>Down a flight of steps, through a courtyard +heavy with shadows, then up tortuous stairs to +a door beneath a dim electric globe. The door +opened from within, and Grant found himself +in a chamber which might have passed as a +courtroom. At its far end on a raised dais was +a long desk lighted from above, three men sitting +behind it. A sort of wooden cage stood +apart on a platform by itself. Six men with +serapes over their shoulders and rifles hanging +by straps across the blanket stripes were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span> +slouching before the judges’ dais. A black +headed peon crouched timorously on a seat to +the left and behind the guards.</p> + +<p>Grant’s escort halted him before the judges. +He kept silence, studying the faces of the three. +Not pleasant faces. A hardness of eye and cat-like +bristle of moustachios over thin line of +lips was common to the trio.</p> + +<p>“Grant ’Ickman?” challenged the man in the +middle.</p> + +<p>Grant nodded. His interrogator gave a sign +to one of the rurales. The latter turned to the +peon on the bench, dragged him to his feet and +hustled him to the cage-like affair to the left +of the dais, evidently a witness box. The little +fellow’s head hardly showed above the top rail +that fenced him in; his eyes were all whites.</p> + +<p>The examining judge jerked a thumb toward +Grant as he shaped a question in Spanish +for the witness. The peon bobbed his head +emphatically. Another question and, “<i lang="es" xml:lang="es">Si</i>,” +chirped the witness. Then a lengthy flow of +interrogation prompted by reference to some +dossier in hand.</p> + +<p>“<i lang="es" xml:lang="es">Si! Si!</i>” The witness hurried to oblige. +Cat whiskers lifted in a smile as the judge +turned back to Grant.</p> + +<p>“You unnerstan’?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span></p> + +<p>“I don’t,” bluntly. More twitching of the +spiked moustachios.</p> + +<p>“Zeese man, ’oo’s make confession of counterfeiting +and ’oo ees to be shot to-day, says +’e sells you thirty pesos made with bad metal—counterfeit. +An’—”</p> + +<p>“He lies!” Grant interrupted.</p> + +<p>“<i lang="es" xml:lang="es">Quieto!</i>” The judge banged his fist on the +desk and fixed the prisoner with a savage +glare. “’E says, zeese man, ’e meets with you +las’ night on Calle San Lazar outside Crystal +Palacio gambling ’ouse an’ for ten veritable +pesos ’e gives to you thirty pesos of bad metal. +Then zeese man ’e says ’e sees you enter +Crystal Palacio. What remark you make for +zeese?”</p> + +<p>The monstrous farce of this accusation +numbed Grant. Judicial subornation fabricated +to give colour to what was already determined +in the minds of these three puppets. +As clearly as if they were bearing on him he +could see the cold, mocking eyes of Colonel +Urgo behind the shoulders of his pawns on the +bench. Perception of his peril steadied him.</p> + +<p>“I demand a lawyer if I am to be tried on +this outrageous charge. And I demand that +the American consul in this town be told of +the accusation against me.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span></p> + +<p>The interrogating judge turned to his confreres +with a bland outspreading of the palms. +Then to Grant:</p> + +<p>“American consul ’as no business with crime +against state of Mehico. You will ’ave lawyer +when you are tried before court at Hermosillo. +Zeese court ees not court of condemnation. +Court of condemnation ees at Hermosillo. +W’en you arrive there, w’ere you make for a +start to-night, Señor ’Ickman, you ask for +American consul if you desire.”</p> + +<p>“But you cannot send me to this Hermosillo +place without trial.” Grant took a step toward +the bench in his vehemence. He was +roughly jerked back by his guards. The interrogating +judge beamed on him.</p> + +<p>“In Mehico, Señor ’Ickman, it ees folly to +say ‘you cannot.’ Much ees possible in Mehico. +To-night prisoners make start for Hermosillo. +You go weeth them.”</p> + +<p>He nodded to Grant’s guards and they closed +in on him. He heard a farewell, “Adios, +Señor ’Ickman,” from the bench as he was +rudely hustled out of the courtroom.</p> + +<p>An hour later he stood with seven other +shadows in the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">carcel</i> courtyard. About them +were the rurales with their rifles; four were +mounted on horseback and a pack mule, lightly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span> +laden, slept on three legs behind the horsemen. +Men came with lanterns and heavy loops of +something which chinked metallically when it +was dropped. They fixed a broad steel shackle +on the left wrist of each prisoner and linked +them all to a bull chain. Then the door of a +courtyard swung inward, the mounted rurales +closed in and the eight chained men went clinking +out to the dark street.</p> + +<p>A few midnight dawdlers paused to watch the +shadowy procession stumbling over the cobbles. +No word was spoken. The clink of the horses’ +hoofs, the patter-patter of the short-legged +pack mule and the metallic whisperings of the +chain fitted into a measured cadence. Despite +the presence of the pack mule, Grant first had +thought the journey would be a short one, ending +at the railroad station. But after fifteen +minutes’ marching no railroad line was in sight +and the houses began to be scattered. Suddenly +houses ceased; nothing but the hump-shouldered +shapes of mountains about; clear burning stars +and ahead a dim ribbon of road leading out +into the desert.</p> + +<p>To Hermosillo, a town unheard of and at a +distance unknown—across the desert to Hermosillo +afoot and chained in line with seven +men. In the slim rifle barrels so carelessly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span> +slung under shadows of sombreros was the +sullen emblem of that unwritten law of Mexico +which stills so many accusing mouths: <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">ley de +fuga</i>—law of flight.</p> + +<p>Out into the desert of Altar marched the +American, whose name appeared only upon a +secret cachet in the hands of the puppet judges—a +man gone, as a German once put it, “without +trace.”</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</a><br /> +<small>THE CHAIN GANG</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">“But, Doc, I tell you you’re crazy! How +could a tenderfoot like Hickman just in +town from the East breeze across the Line and +get into a jam the first night he’s in town—drop +out of sight completely?”</p> + +<p>Bim Bagley, back in Arizora and distracted +by the unexplained mystery of his pal’s name +on the hotel register, his pal’s suitcase in a +hotel room but no more material trace of Grant +Hickman, was knee to knee with Dr. Stooder +in the latter’s office. The Doc made judicious +answer:</p> + +<p>“Well, son, Jed Hawkins’ specifications of +the gringo he fought with atop the crap table +in the Palacio tallies pretty closely with the +young man as I saw him in my office earlier in +the day. But here’s the funny thing: the +rurales let Hawkins go even though he laid out +two of ’em with a chair. Let that fightin’ wildcat +go and trotted this fellah Hickman off to +the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">carcel</i>. That’s what gets me.” Doc Stooder<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span> +gave his decision with a wave of the hand. He +jack-knifed his bony knees up to his chin and +waited the younger man’s comment.</p> + +<p>“But what did Hawkins say started the big +row?” Bim’s long face, all criss-crossed with +the wind wrinkles that make desert men look +older than their years, gave a vivid picture of +his distress, of his eagerness to seize upon any +detail that might point a solution of the mystery. +Doc Stooder recited with picturesque detail +Jed Hawkins’ story of the battle in the +gambling palace as the redoubtable Jed himself +had narrated it in the Border Delight pool +hall before returning to his ranch at Dos +Cabezas.</p> + +<p>“That give me a clue,” he concluded, “so I +laid my pipe lines an’ I’m looking for to tap +a well any time now.”</p> + +<p>Doc Stooder’s pipe lines—of information, if +not of wealth—were the most productive of any +along the Border. He was one of those rare +white men in the Southwestern country who +enjoyed the unreserved respect if not the love +of the Mexican population, among whom nine-tenths +of his practice extended. Though he +bawled at his patients, stricken dumb with +terror of their ailments, though he cursed the +women and manhandled the men, no poor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span> +Mexican’s hovel of ’dobe was too far out in +the desert to discourage Doc Stooder’s night +prowling gas-wagon. Through dust storm and +withering heat this blasted jack-pine of a man +flitted on wings of gasoline, with his nostrums +for dysentery and asthma, his splints for +broken bones and needles for knife thrusts.</p> + +<p>Drunk he might be half the time, an indifferent +physician all the time—for the Doc had +not been away from the Border for twenty-five +years and never read a medical magazine. But +under his hard rind of brutalities and cynicisms +the Mexicans and Indians had come to discover +a deep sympathy with their homely tragedies, +their patient sufferings. Sometimes they paid +him in coin; more often they paid him in slavish +fealty the coin of which was information. Of +gold strikes in the far hills; of shrewd business +deals to be wrought through connivance of +knavish officials across the Line; even of stolen +jewels to be picked up from a pawnbroker:—these +the flow of Doc Stooder’s pipe lines. No +man on the Border for a hundred miles each +way knew so much of the scrapple of life as +A. Stooder, M.D.</p> + +<p>“I’m lookin’ to hear of a woman,” the Doc +drawlingly resumed, a wry smile greeting +Bim’s gesture of negation. “Yep, son, when<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> +any likely lookin’ young fellah along the +Border drops outa sight—and this Hickman +fellah’s got an eye with him for all his Noo +Yawk bridle trimmin’s—they’s a swish of +skirts comes to my ears. Or”—he sat up suddenly +and threw a bony finger at Bim—“or he +knows somethin’ about why he’s come out here +an’ went an’ babbled.”</p> + +<p>“Rot!” Bim’s grey eyes were clouded with +anger. “I told you he doesn’t know why we +got him out here—and he’s not the babbling +kind if he did.”</p> + +<p>“Well, it sizes up thisaway,” the Doc continued, +ignoring the other’s flash of temper. +“They’s one man down in Sonora who knows +all we know about the Lost Mission and like’s +not a dam’ sight more. That’s this proud old +don who lives down in the Garden of Solitude +with his red-headed daughter—name’s Padraic +O’Donoju, if I haven’t told you that before. +If he ever got a line on the fact we’ve asked a +Noo Yawk engineer to come out here to Arizora +he’d put two an’ two together an’ figure we’re +after that Four Evangelists church his ancestors +built. You know he’s sorta king of all the +Papagoes in Altar and—”</p> + +<p>“How about your Papago who’s going to +lead us to the Mission?” Bim interrupted. “If<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> +there’s any leak likely as not it’s through him.”</p> + +<p>Stooder’s great head wagged slowly; a grin +tilted the rabbit’s tail tuft under his lip until +it stood out a quizzical interrogation point.</p> + +<p>“No, son; no. I got that Papago brother +where he thinks all I got to do is crook my little +finger an’ his wife passes away with asthma +overnight. We can rely—”</p> + +<p>A timid knock on the office door giving onto +the hall. The Doc bellowed a command to +enter. A wizened Mexican peon whose left arm +was a stump sidled quickly through the doorway +and stood bowing, shaggy head uncovered. +He cast a quick glance at Bagley, then to the +doctor for reassurance.</p> + +<p>“Go ahead, Angel—shoot!” commanded +Stooder.</p> + +<p>“Señor, I hear from Jesus Ruiz, ’e’s cousin +to me an’ rurale at the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">carcel</i>; Jesus Ruiz ’e +says the gringo arrest’ at Palacio goes last +night in chain gang for Hermosillo—”</p> + +<p>Bim leaped to his feet with an oath. The +peon’s eyes were on Doc Stooder in an hypnotic +stare.</p> + +<p>“The gringo goes in chain gang for Hermosillo, +but my cousin Jesus Ruiz ’e says that +gringo mos’ like never arrive.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span></p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>That hour when Doc Stooder’s pipe line began +spouting information Grant Hickman was +discovering deep down within him an unguessed +hardiness of spirit. A trial was on him, a test +of his moral fibre no less than of his physical +powers. At the end of twelve hours’ steady +plodding across the desert he was coming into +his second wind. Every effort a devilish ingenuity +could contrive had been tried out by +the four rurales, his guards, in their common +endeavour to break down this gringo’s fighting +morale. The single result was a fixed grin on +features smeared with dried blood and sweat—a +challenge provoking the Mexicans to fresh +barbarities.</p> + +<p>During the first dark hours of the march +Grant had nursed the hope that at some point +outside of town he and his fellow prisoners +would be brought to a railroad station to await +the coming of a train. He could not conceive a +reason for transferring prisoners afoot when a +railroad would serve. But with the coming of +the dawn and the lifting of the dark from an +empty land not even a telegraph pole raised +above the scrub to point fulfilment of his hope. +Just the dry ribbon of road stretching ahead +and empty speculation as to the number of +days or hours which must intervene between<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span> +present misery and journey’s end. Grant never +had heard the name Hermosillo until it was +spoken by the examining judge the night before; +he did not know whether the town was +just over the horizon or half way to Panama.</p> + +<p>Morning brought him the chance to study the +men chained with him who, during the night +hours, had been just so many disembodied +shadows marching in a nightmare. The one +ahead of him was a shrivelled little Chinaman, +whose legs were so short he was forced to a +skipping step to keep slack on his segment of +the chain; his breath came in asthmatic pipings +and wheezes like the noise of a leaky valve in +some midget engine. Behind him was a giant +of an Indian, almost the colour of teak. With +a timed regularity this Indian spat noisily all +through the dark hours and until the sun rose +to dry up his throat. The rest were in character +with Grant’s nearer companions—just +flotsam.</p> + +<p>The guards were typical of their class; +Mexican peons brutalized even beyond the inheritance +of their mixed bloods by their small +taste of power. The quarter-blood Indian +south of the Line, whose ancestry is devious +as his own starved dog’s, knows but a single +law of life and that the law of fear. Lift him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span> +by ever so little from the station of the one +who fears to that of the one to be feared and +he has no counterpart for studied cruelty anywhere +on earth.</p> + +<p>The one who rode to the right of the line in +which Grant’s position was fourth from the +front, had commenced with the dawn a calculated +campaign of nasty tortures. He would +suddenly swerve his horse against Grant, +threatening his feet with trampling hoofs. He +held his lighted cigarette low at his side with +elaborate air of carelessness, then pressed in +close for the burning tip to eat through the +white man’s shirt. Once he aimed a vicious +backward kick at his victim; his heavy spur +left a line of red through the torn sleeve from +elbow to shoulder.</p> + +<p>At each of these refinements of humour the +rurale’s snickering laughter was met by the +American’s wordless grin. Just a tense spreading +of lips and baring of teeth, which carried +to the guard’s savage perception a taunt and +a threat. Always in Grant’s twisted grin lay +the unspoken promise of retribution once the +odds against him were lightened.</p> + +<p>The desert under sun at the meridian flexed +its harsh hand to pinch the crawling caterpillar +of chained men. Heat waves made all the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span> +ragged summits of the Sierras pulsate. A dust +tasting of desert salts spread a low cloud about +the marching column. Thirst that was a poignant +agony was made all the more unendurable +by the tactics of the guards. From time to +time one of them would unhitch a canteen from +the pack mule’s burden and in the sight of the +eight helpless sufferers tilt his head and guzzle +noisily. Even he would allow some of the +water to slop from his mouth and be wasted +in the sand.</p> + +<p>When the little Chinaman marching before +Grant sighed and dropped, the line was halted +for half an hour. First the yellow man was +revived, then the canteen at which he had +sucked so noisily was passed down the line to +the rest of the prisoners. It was their first +taste of water since the prison gate was passed. +After the canteen circulated, black strips of +jerked beef, sharp with salt, were distributed. +Grant never had seen the “jerky” of the Southwest; +the leathery stuff would have revolted +him did his body not cry out for food. He tore +at the tough substance after the manner of his +fellows while the guards brewed themselves +some more complicated mess over a fire of +greasewood sticks.</p> + +<p>Then the march again. Dragging hour after<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> +dragging hour. Clink-clank of the swinging +chain. Pad-pad of feet in time. Snuffle and +wheeze—snuffle and wheeze of the asthmatic +Chinaman’s breathing. All in an unvarying +synchronism which tore at the nerves. All the +world—Grant’s world of a great city—was reduced +to this dreadful monotony of movement +and sound.</p> + +<p>He tried to think. Came to his mind a picture +of his office in the Manhattan skyscraper—his +desk with the mounted bit of shrapnel +for a paperweight, its clear greeny-white glass +top, the two wire baskets which held his correspondence. +He saw the squash court at the +club—men in sleeveless shirts straining after +a white ball. Henry’s bar in the little side +street off the Rue D’Anou in Paris; Henry +selling stolen American cigarettes for five +times their value at the commissary. St. +Mihiel and the old woman who knitted lace. +Then the girl—Benicia O’Donoju. Grant called +to his mind the vivid glory of her hair, the +trick of her short upper lip in curling outward +like the petal of a tea rose, a something roguish +always lurking deep down in the warm pools +of her eyes.</p> + +<p>“Not Mexican. We are Spanish folk.” That +was her sharp reproof when he, blundering, had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span> +asked her if she was of Mexican blood. That +night on the train—it seemed a year back. +“Not Mexican.” Now he understood why the +girl had corrected him so pointedly. Thank +God she was not of that breed!</p> + +<p>Near dusk the line was halted and one of +the guards dismounted. Grant saw him fumble +in his shirt and bring out a bright bit of metal, +saw him approach the head of the line and +tinker with the first fellow’s wrist shackle. +He heard a sharp intake of breath behind him +and, turning, caught the stamp of terror on the +giant Indian’s face. Something was going forward +which he could not comprehend, something +to shake the stoicism of this Indian. Within +five minutes the steel band about his wrist was +unlocked and he stood free of the chain with +the rest of the prisoners. He saw on the faces +of all of them that same terror mask the Indian +wore.</p> + +<p>The freed men cast covert glances at the +guards, followed their every move with cat-like +slyness. The little Chinaman began a falsetto +sing-song under his breath, which might have +been a prayer to his protecting joss. One of +the guards turned in his saddle and called some +jocular order to the prisoners. They moved on +in the wine-light of the sunset, falling precisely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span> +into the line they had held when chained, their +eyes vigilant for every move of a hand on the +part of the mounted men.</p> + +<p>The rurales now carried their rifles swung +free across the saddles.</p> + +<p>Though he could understand no word of the +muttered scraps of speech passed between man +and man behind him, the magnetic fear waves +possessing all the rest began to prompt Grant +to some comprehension. The coming night—dropping +of the chain—those rifles unslung +from shoulders and carried free across the saddles:—did +these things presage the near end +of this farce of a pilgrimage across the desert +to a court?</p> + +<p>Light now was nearly gone from the western +sky and the guards were riding farther away +from the trudging line, deliberately inviting +some one to offer himself for fair target practice +while gunsights still could be seen. Grant +faced the hazard squarely. Certain he was that +none of the eight would see another sunrise, +that butcher’s work would commence the minute +sporting chances were definitively ignored by +the victims. He was of no mind to be the passive +party to a hog killing. Better a quick +dash—a bullet from behind—</p> + +<p>The line of men had just emerged from an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span> +arroyo with almost perpendicular sides; the +bed of the dry stream was thick with shadow. +Grant leaped from line and ran straight for +the guard who rode between himself and the +course of the stream. Almost at his stirrup +he swerved and cut under the horse’s rump.</p> + +<p>Shouts. A shot gone wild. Grant, zigzagging, +was at the brink of the arroyo. Two shots +almost as one. A lance of fire through his +shoulder. Up went his arms and he plunged +headlong into the gulf of blackness.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII</a><br /> +<small>THE HEART OF BENICIA</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">The Desert of Altar is transcendence of +silence. From the savage Growler range +in Arizona south to the obsidian bastions of +Pinacate, by the dead Gulf, is space to crowd +five million people with their tumult of cities, +their crash of machines, hoot of locomotives +and shriek of steel under stress. Yet in all this +blank waste not a sound.</p> + +<p>The chirp of the wren from her hole in the +<i lang="es" xml:lang="es">sahuaro</i> carries not even so far as the watching +hawk on nearby skeleton <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">ocatilla</i> stalk. +The meat cry of the prowling cat in the mountains +where the wild sheep range is swallowed +in the muffling depths of the canyon under her +feet. Thin air seems too tenuous to conduct +sound waves. Creatures of the wild lands move +mute under the oppression of unbounded space.</p> + +<p>Yet nowhere does rumour fly swifter than +here in this vacant land. Comes a strange +prowler to the waterholes of Tinajas Altas, +and the antelope fifty miles away know the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span> +news and seek the hidden springs at Bates’ +Wells. A Papago three days’ journey from +the nearest rancheria stumbles onto hoofprints +of six horses away over where tidewater +climbs into the delta of the Colorado, and he +turns back to carry report of revolution in +Baja California. Strange signs tell their tales +from the sands; the arrangement of little sticks +conveys whole chapters of information to the +wayfarer. When man meets man, be he white, +brown or copper coloured, news is a torch to +be passed on to a new hand. Nothing can be +long a secret. The latent must out.</p> + +<p>Even as the worthy Doc Stooder in his +shabby office at Arizora had a never-ending +messenger service from all the Border and the +lands beyond, carrying scraps of oblique news, +another far distant in the Garden of Solitude +enjoyed the same intelligence. This was Don +Padraic O’Donoju, last of the line of masters +over the once-great principality of El Rancho +del Refugio. Though a hundred years of revolution, +of uproar and the teetering of political +balances in the more populous Mexico to south +and east of him had left to the last don of the +O’Donojus little more territory than that comprised +in the oasis of the Garden, still he had +cattle enough to be counted a rich man and six<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span> +generations of custom gave him unbroken sway +over the Papagoes. From the Sand People of +the Gulf away up to the San Xavier rancheria +at Tucson extended the secret kingdom of Don +Padraic’s influence. His only tithes were those +of loyalty and the bringing of report. What +the Papagoes thought Don Padraic should +know, that he knew as speedily as word could +be passed.</p> + +<p>So, a week after Benicia had returned to the +Casa O’Donoju, came a runner from the eastward—one +sent by El Doctor Coyote Belly, +whose winter house was at Babinioqui near the +railroad. The runner had big news. El Doctor, +known all over the Desert of Altar because of +his reputed skill at curing hydrophobia and the +bite of the sidewinder, had a sick white man—a +seriously wounded white man who might be +an American—in his house at Babinioqui and +he asked Don Padraic what he should do with +this man.</p> + +<p>El Doctor was returning from the Medicine +Cave of Pinacate—this was the runner’s tale—when +on the road that runs from Sonizona to +Hermosillo he found seven dead men; dead +men with the marks of fetters on their left +wrists. A little beyond he found still another; +this one, lying in an arroyo, had been shot<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span> +through the shoulder from behind and he still +lived. El Doctor had tied the living man to his +burro and taken him to his winter house at +Babinioqui, where he had treated him with the +most powerful herbs and had massaged the +wound with the lizard image. The wounded +white man would live. Coyote Belly did not +wish to turn him over to the Mexicans, for he +was a victim of <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">ley de fuga</i> and the Mexicans +undoubtedly would shoot him again.</p> + +<p>Don Padraic, whose charity was wider than +his acres, made his decision instantly. He +ordered Quelele to go, with the runner to guide +him to El Doctor’s house, in the little desert +car and to fetch the white man to the Garden +of Solitude as soon as he was able to be +moved. It was best, the master instructed, +that Quelele travel in the night, returning with +the wounded man, and tell no one of the object +of his mission.</p> + +<p>The big Indian stocked the car with gasoline +from the tank behind the master’s house—a +reservoir filled monthly from drums brought +by ox cart from the distant railroad point—strapped +canteens and oil containers on his +running boards and was off. Don Padraic said +nothing of the incident to his daughter.</p> + +<p>That night Don Padraic and Benicia sat in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> +the candlelight of the big salon or living room +which filled the space of one quadrangle off the +patio. In all Sonora there was no counterpart +of this chamber of mellowed antiquities, the +collection of generations of the O’Donoju. Low +ceiled and with crossing beams of oak, whereon +the marks of the hewer’s adze showed like +waves; walls hung with tapestries between the +heavy frames of portraits of grandees and +their ladies of forgotten days; a great fireplace +wherein a man could stand upright, with its +hand-wrought andirons and heavy crane shank; +floor almost black from a hundred years of +polishing and with the skins of animals floating +there like so many islands:—here was a magic +bit of old Spain lifted overseas to find root in +the heart of the desert.</p> + +<p>Benicia, in a gown of rippling lines which left +her strong young arms bare to the shoulder, +was seated behind the great golden span of her +harp. Candlelight falling across her shoulders +made ivory the flesh of her bare arms as they +moved rhythmically back and forth over the +wilderness of strings. She was playing the +Volga Boatsong, a peasant melody whose +minors rose and fell to the sweep of oars. As +the girl gave her heart to the music, the thrumming +strings wove a picture of some barbaric<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span> +steppe coming down to a sluggish river; boatmen +chanting at the sweeps. The ancient room +was a-thrill with resonance.</p> + +<p>She finished with just a breath of melody, the +song of the boatmen dying in the distance. Her +eyes fell on the face of her father; it was deeply +etched by the play of flames from the mesquite +logs in the fireplace. Always he sat this way, +moveless before the fire, when she played on +the great harp o’ nights, freeing his soul to +drink in the melodies; but to Benicia’s understanding +eyes appeared now the semblance of +a deeper shadow not of the firelight. She +softly left the instrument and stole over to +nestle herself on the broad chair wing, with her +coppery head laid against the snow white one.</p> + +<p>“<i lang="es" xml:lang="es">Pobrecito</i>”—this was her pet word carried +through the years from childhood—“<i lang="es" xml:lang="es">Pobrecito</i>, +thy face is as grave as the owl’s. Some secret? +Remember, there are no secrets between us two—no +worry which the other does not share.”</p> + +<p>Her coaxing hand played through the heavy +mane of hair; her cheek was against his. Don +Padraic slowly turned his head with denial in +his eyes; but that denial could not sustain the +accusation in the steady blue eyes of the daughter. +During the week Benicia had been home a +secret doubt had steadily pressed upon the father;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> +he had been waiting some word from her +which did not come. Now one of his hands +stole up to tweak her ear—signal of surrender.</p> + +<p>“’Nicia, great-heart, you have told me all +about your two years in the cities—your two +years of life in the great world outside? There +is something you have withheld?”</p> + +<p>“Nothing, little father.” She gave him a +peck on the forehead. Don Padraic appeared +to be groping for his words.</p> + +<p>“You met—many American men—young men +who—ah—might have been attracted by the +beauty of my desert flower?”</p> + +<p>A ripple of soft laughter and the girl pressed +closer to him.</p> + +<p>“Ah, <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">Pobrecito</i>, you forget that your desert +flower carries thorns. Ask that ridiculous +Hamilcar Urgo; he has felt the thorns.”</p> + +<p>“But”—Don Padraic was not to be put off +by evasions—“was there not one whose heart +was conquered by a girl of such fire, such +beauty? Come—come! These Americans are +not men of ice.”</p> + +<p>For a minute Benicia was silent. She was +weighing in all sincerity the only shred of a +secret she had in her heart; testing it for genuineness +as fairly as she might.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span></p> + +<p>“Yes, daddy, there were many with bold +eyes and ready tongues; but hardly had they +begun to speak as friends or companions when +their talk was all of money—how much they +were planning to make that year; the ‘big deal’ +they were going to put through. All were like +this—but one.”</p> + +<p>“Ah,” breathed Don Padraic.</p> + +<p>“That one I have told you of,” she continued. +“The man on the train who was so masterful +with little Hamilcar. He was not like the +others. A man of wit—of sympathies; one who +seemed to have understanding of life—”</p> + +<p>“And he—?” the father prompted.</p> + +<p>“We said ‘<i lang="es" xml:lang="es">adios</i>’ the night before we came +to Arizora. I did not see him in the morning, +though he said that was his destination.”</p> + +<p>They were silent once more. Finally from +Benicia a wraith of laughter on fluttering wings +of a sigh:</p> + +<p>“But, my grave old owl, why these questions? +Never before have I seen my daddy +play the prying duenna.”</p> + +<p>“Heart of mine, thou canst not be blind”—the +father’s voice trembled over the intimate +pronoun. “I have been thy father, mother, +elder brother, all in one. And selfish—selfish<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span> +beyond measure! Keeping thee chained here +to an old man in the wilderness when all the +world of love and life lies beyond—”</p> + +<p>“No—no, daddy mine!” Tears dewed blue +eyes as yearning arm strained him to her.</p> + +<p>“—My ’Nicia has her years ahead of her. +Her love life must be awakened and given freedom +to unfold like a flower in a garden. Yet I +have permitted her to come back to me here +in the Garden of Solitude because I was lonely. +Better far that I sell what we have here and +take you back to the world. In these evil days +there is no fit mate to be found for you in all +Sonora. Hamilcar Urgo has threatened me if +I do not give you to him; he is of our blood, +but he is abominable. I—”</p> + +<p>A soft hand clapped over his lips. He heard +passionate words:</p> + +<p>“Father mine, stop! Never—never whisper +again that you will sell our Garden. For I love +it, next to you, above all the world. We are +desert people, little father. We live in God’s +hand and are happy. The cities crush me with +their noise, their confusion.”</p> + +<p>“But, ’Nicia—”</p> + +<p>“And, dearest of daddies”—her lips against +his ear were giving kisses light as thistledown—“I +want no lover but you—no happiness but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span> +what I have returned to here in the Garden. +Now, not a word more!”</p> + +<p>She was on her feet and with the skirts of +her gown caught in her fingers was making him +an old-fashioned curtsy. Then she slipped +into the shadows where the great golden harp +stood, and in an instant the ancient room began +to hum with spirited arpeggios—rush of many +waters over a fall.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX</a><br /> +<small>GOLD AND PEARLS</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">Bim Bagley, on the trail of the information +brought by Doc Stooder’s pipe line, +found himself against a blank wall the instant +he passed through the barrier of the Line into +Sonizona. He was too conversant with the +ways of Mexican officialdom to make any inquiry +in high places, knowing that to do so +would be but to jeopardize Grant Hickman, +however he might be placed, and win for himself +naught but suave denials. Nor did he even +go to the American consul, who, in the usual +course of things, would be the last man in +Sonizona to hear of the disappearance of an +American citizen there.</p> + +<p>Rather, with Doc Stooder’s counsel, Bim circulated +warily among the gambling halls and +in the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">cantinas</i> where the rurales were wont +to go for their salt and mescal. Here ten pesos +slipped into a complacent palm; there twenty. +Then weary waiting for results.</p> + +<p>Bit by bit the story came to him, and behind<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span> +the fragments was always the dim figure of +Colonel Hamilcar Urgo. Bagley knew Urgo +for the tyrant politician that he was: how he +used his position in the garrison as a cloak to +cover his manipulations of government all +along the Sonora border. No man was stronger, +not even the governor of Sonora himself; and +the central regime in Mexico City was forced +to wink at Colonel Urgo’s obliquities else run +the risk of his firing the train to revolution.</p> + +<p>But why this little sand viper in uniform +should have conceived a desire to be rid of +Grant Hickman, a total stranger to the country, +not even the most astute of Bagley’s informers +could guess. “’E’s not like theese +gringo” appeared to cover the whole case.</p> + +<p>The saturnine doctor, repenting him of his +brusque reception of the New York man—prompted, +after all, by his superlative caution +in the presence of a possible impostor—sent +the tip to the farthermost ganglions of his news +system: “Fifty gold dollars to the man bringing +information of the missing American’s +whereabouts.”</p> + +<p>Doc Stooder’s proffer of that amount of +money was not all humanitarian. Below his +surface show of concern, designed for the +benefit of Bim Bagley, good Dr. Stooder did<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span> +not care a plugged nickel what might be the +fate of the Eastern man. He was not one to +lose sleep over the misfortunes of others if +those misfortunes were not attributable to +strictly physical causes and under materia +medica. Then only they interested him.</p> + +<p>No, Doc Stooder’s real concern was the delay +caused by the disappearance of this third party +to his scheme for a “great killing.” The killing +in question was one he could not make +single-handed. Circumstances which have no +place in this tale had forced him to share the +secret of it with Bagley, and the latter had +refused to move a step in the enterprise until +he had his pal from overseas in on the game. +The Doc fretted aloud one day, which was the +tenth after Grant had dropped from sight.</p> + +<p>“Son, I’m tellin’ you ’less we make tracks +for that Four Evangelists mission purty pronto +this here O’Donoju Spaniard down in the Garden’s +goin’ to get what’s in the wind and shove +in on us. He’s got every Papago from here to +the Gulf runnin’ to him with every whisper a +little bird lets spill. He gets wind you an’ me +are raising sand to lay hands on an engineer +out from Noo Yawk an’ he smells a mice.”</p> + +<p>“You go dig alone for your dam’d mission.” +Bim Bagley’s temper had been ground fine by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span> +days of restless anxiety. “Me, I roost right +here till I get the lay where my buddy is.”</p> + +<p>Next day all the silver of subsidy Bim had +distributed bore fruit an hundred-fold. There +came to the office of Doc Stooder unquestioned +report that the missing American was alive, +though shot through the body, and under the +care of El Doctor Coyote Belly at a speck in +the desert called Babinioqui away down beyond +the Line.</p> + +<p>Bagley was off in his car that night. Doc +Stooder, alone in his office and with a graduating +glass and bottle of fiery tequila at his elbow, +dreamed of gold plate brought to light from +caverns of sand, of altar jewels and hoards of +nuggets—riches of crafty priests—salvaged +from the crypt of a holy place lost to sight of +man a century and a quarter.</p> + +<p>“Gold all hammered into crosses an’ such!” +The Doc tipped his brimming graduating glass +against the electric bulb and studied with fond +eye the liquor made golden by the light.</p> + +<p>“—Pearls, my Papago says. Pearls big as +<i lang="es" xml:lang="es">bisnaga</i> fruit an’ greeny-white like a high +moon. Gold an’ pearls! Pearls an’ gold! +Stooder, you’re goin’ be a prancin’, r’arin’ +aristocrat!”</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X</a><br /> +<small>AT THE CASA O’DONOJU</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">Six days after Quelele the Papago set out +on his mission of mercy from the Casa +O’Donoju he returned to the oasis. It was in +the first flush of dawn that the <i>shuf-shuf</i> of the +little car roused master and servants; Quelele +had travelled all night and at a pace to conserve +the strength of the wounded man, who +lay on thick straw in the box body. All night +without lights save the thickly strewn lamps in +the firmament, wending hither and thither +through the scrub where half-guessed lines in +the sand marked the Road of the Dead Men—a +journey weird enough.</p> + +<p>For Grant Hickman it was but part of the +moving drama of a dream. That instant of +flight from the chain gang, when a bullet tore +through his shoulder and sent him toppling +into the arroyo, was the visitation of death; +in his flickering perceptions all else following +was but adventuring in the country beyond +death—incidents to paint impressions on a consciousness +otherwise wiped clean of otherworld<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span> +recollections. First of these exposures +on the cloudy plate of his mind came many +days after the rurales had left him for dead in +the desert: a face deep-dyed as mahogany and +with white bristles of a beard about chin and +lips, a face kindly withal, which bent near his +as a hand lifted his head to bring his lips to a +vessel of pungent brew. Then another age of +drifting and swimming through soft clouds.</p> + +<p>Grant had just come to accept the grey-thatched +face of El Doctor Coyote Belly as +part of a permanent picture when another +Indian appeared between himself and the +bundles of sticks making a roof over his head. +This second personage in the world of the unreal, +a giant with the features of a boy, had +spelled El Doctor in ministering herb brews +and keeping the wet cloths under the burning +wound in his back for what seemed many +years. Then Grant had felt himself lifted, +carried from the hut with the bundles of sticks +for a roof and laid on sweet smelling straw. +In the starshine he felt the hand of El Doctor +close over his own with a heartening squeeze.</p> + +<p>Then—wonder of wonders!—the racking +cough of a gas engine, and Grant was soaring +back to that familiar earth which had been +lost to him so long.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span></p> + +<p>Upon the arrival of the car bringing Grant +to the Casa O’Donoju Don Padraic, hastily +dressed, superintended the moving of his guest +to a small, clean room, candle lit. The wounded +man felt the gracious softness of feathers +under him, the suave clinging of sheets. An +aged Indian woman, working under the white +man’s direction, divested him of his tattered +clothes and patted everything comfortable. +Drowsy luxury stole across his consciousness +to cloud it and bring sleep.</p> + +<p>Sunlight flooded the room when Grant awoke. +He was alone. His mind was clearer than it +had been since he was shot. Only the steady +burning in his vitals linked this moment of comfort +with the tortured past. His eyes roved +about the room to take in its appointments. +White walls devoid of ornamentation; by the +heavy door with its curiously wrought iron +latch a single chest of drawers of some antique +pattern; the bed he lay upon massive as a +galleon of old days and with a canopy of carved +wood and tapestry for a sail: here was a room +from the period department of the Metropolitan +Museum.</p> + +<p>Grant was patiently trying to fit together the +jig-saw scraps of his memory when the door<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span> +opened and the white man he had seen the +night before entered. Seeing the light of reason +in the patient’s eyes, Don Padraic smiled +and bowed. Something mighty heartening lay +in that welcome and the warm cordiality of +Don Padraic’s features.</p> + +<p>“I am rejoiced to find you better to-day,” he +said as he drew a chair to the side of the bed. +“Yours was a hard journey last night.”</p> + +<p>“I am still a little uncertain up here”—Grant +tapped his forehead with an attempt at +a laugh. “For instance, I was just thinking +I had been lifted straight into a room of the +Metropolitan in New York.”</p> + +<p>The host’s brows were knitted an instant, +then he caught the allusion and smiled.</p> + +<p>“Ah, yes; we have rather ancient furnishings +here. But you are quite a distance from +New York, señor. This is the Casa O’Donoju +in the Garden of Solitude, and I am Don Padraic +O’Donoju.”</p> + +<p>The name crashed into Grant’s consciousness +like the clang of iron. His heart gave a great +leap. Could it be possible—? No, this must +be but part of the aurora dreams of the vague +eternity still just behind his back. Grant +wished to make no blunder which might belie<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span> +the present soundness of his mind, so he held +his tongue over the question burning to be +asked. Instead:</p> + +<p>“My name is Grant Hickman, sir. I am +deeply obliged to you for your charity in bringing +me here. Of course, I do not know quite +how it all happened—my coming here from +some place else, where an Indian, or two of +them—seemed to be caring for me. And I +fear I am hardly a presentable guest.” The +sick man’s hand passed ruefully over his +stubby chin.</p> + +<p>Don Padraic made a gesture dismissing +Grant’s fastidiousness. “Señor, a gentleman +should not consider the state of his beard and +the state of his health with equal seriousness. +The one may be repaired at once even if our +wishes cannot immediately effect a cure of the +other. Permit me to retire, señor, and not +tax you with questions until you are stronger.”</p> + +<p>Shortly after the gentle host had bowed himself +out an Indian servant entered with basin +and razor and effected an agreeable change in +the patient’s appearance. Then Grant was +left alone with the tab to a wonderful possibility +to turn over and over in his mind.</p> + +<p>He was in the house of the O’Donoju. Could<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> +there be more than one family of that unusual +name in the desert country; or had fate thrown +him a recompense for all he’d suffered by lifting +him from a line of chained convicts to carry +him through a nightmare straight to the one +spot in all the world he most desired to be in? +Perhaps under the same roof, near enough to +him to permit the carrying of her laughter, +was Benicia, the vivid creature who had won +his heart into captivity.</p> + +<p>He was not kept long in suspense. The door +opened and Don Padraic’s white clad figure +appeared, behind it Benicia. She was in khaki, +as Grant had last seen her at the Arizora +station, wide-brimmed hat noosed under her +chin just as she had come in from a ride +through the oasis. All the wild, free spaces of +the wilderness seemed compacted in the girl’s +trim figure, in the flush of her browned cheeks +touched by the sun.</p> + +<p>“Señor Hickman—” Don Padraic began introduction, +but Benicia was at the bedside; her +cool hand was given to Grant’s clasp with a +gesture of boyish comradeship.</p> + +<p>“We need not be introduced, father,” Benicia +laughed, and there was a queer catch in her +throat. “Señor Hickman did me a service on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span> +the train which served as the best introduction +in the world.” Turning back to Grant—“I did +not know, señor, you were the wounded man +Quelele brought into our home so early this +morning—did not even know we had a guest +until my father told me when I returned from +my ride a few minutes ago.”</p> + +<p>Grant strove to put all his heart prompted in +words that were mete: “And I did not dare +hope that this house to which a miracle has +brought me was the desert home you described +on the train.”</p> + +<p>Benicia’s eyes read surely what his lips +would not frame. She saw in the white face +of the wounded man a touch of that old hardihood +and forthright spirit of address which +had commended this American to her at first +meeting—commended him even against her +own impulse to resent his self-assurance. But +she saw, too, how suffering battled to dim the +valiant spirit, and something deeper than abstract +sympathy stirred in her heart.</p> + +<p>“But, señor, to meet you again this way! +Father has told me the message brought from +El Doctor: how you were found among dead +men on the Hermosillo road and brought back +to life by that old Papago. You, a stranger<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span> +and unknown here in the desert country—how +could this happen to you, señor?”</p> + +<p>Don Padraic interposed:</p> + +<p>“Perhaps, ’Nicia, when Señor Hickman is +stronger he will answer questions. Would it +not be better—?”</p> + +<p>The girl was quick to appreciate her father’s +considerate thought. Again she laid her hand +in Grant’s.</p> + +<p>“If you will permit me to play the doctor—at +least to see to it that lazy old ’Cepcion, +your nurse, does not neglect you?” The smile +that went with this promise was tonic for the +sick man. It remained like an afterglow when +the door was closed behind the girl. And +when the wrinkled Indian woman came an hour +later with broth on a silver tray that smile +reappeared, translated into the fragrant beauty +of rose petals laid by the side of the bowl.</p> + +<p>Five luxurious days passed—days each with +a wonderful spot of sunshine in them—that +when Benicia accompanied the aged ’Cepcion +to his chamber. On these daily visits she would +draw her chair to the side of the great bed—she +looked very small below the high buttress of the +mattress—and while he quaffed his chicken +broth and nibbled his flaky tortillas Benicia<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span> +would talk. ’Cepcion, like some mahogany coloured +manikin in her flaring skirts and winged +bodice, always stood, arms akimbo and features +passive as a graven image, behind her mistress’ +chair.</p> + +<p>The girl’s talk was directed away from the +personal; with an art concealing art she evaded +Grant’s frequent endeavours to swing conversation +into more intimate channels. She brought +the world of the desert into the sick room, unconsciously +revealing herself as a flashing, restless +creature of the wastes: now on horseback +and threading dim trails over the Line to carry +quinine to a family of Papagoes down with the +fever; now beside Quelele in the little gas-beetle +and skimming to Caborca, the southern town, +to buy a wedding dress for an Indian belle.</p> + +<p>Not once did she touch again upon the subject +of Grant’s misadventures and how he came +to be found on the road to Hermosillo. A delicate +sense of the fitness of things prompted her +to await the moment when he himself should +volunteer explanations. Grant, on his part, +felt an impelling reluctance to give details, for +to do so would necessitate his revealing his conviction +that little Colonel Urgo’s was the hand +that had pushed him so near death. A delicate—perhaps<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span> +quixotic—sense of personal honour +prompted that he keep his enemy’s name out +of any explanations. He could not know how +close might be the little Spaniard’s relations +with Benicia and her father—even discounting +Urgo’s boast that he expected to make the girl +his wife—and, besides, he felt the score between +himself and Urgo must be evened before he +linked the Colonel’s name with his experiences.</p> + +<p>With Benicia’s father Grant modified his +resolution to a certain degree. It was no more +than proper, he argued with himself, that the +master of the Casa O’Donoju have some explanation +for the presence in his house of a man +from a Mexican chain gang.</p> + +<p>“Señor O’Donoju,” Grant addressed his +host when the latter was come on one of his +daily visits, “you have been more than kind +to me, but I fear I may be an embarrassment +to you—a fugitive, you know, if that is my +status before the law.”</p> + +<p>“My dear sir”—the courtly Spaniard waved +away Grant’s scruples with a smile—“you +forget that the evidence El Doctor Coyote +Belly found on the Hermosillo Road—you the +only survivor among eight men who had been +murdered, eight men with marks of fetters on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span> +their wrists; that this evidence, I say, clearly +indicates you now have no status whatever before +what the Mexicans call their law.”</p> + +<p>Grant looked his surprise. Don Padraic continued +easily:</p> + +<p>“You are officially dead, Señor Hickman. It +is the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">ley de fuga</i>—the law of flight. You were +shot trying to escape while being transferred +from one prison to another. Monstrous barbarism! +So the president, Francisco Madero, +met his end; so, perhaps, Carranza. When +you were chained to other convicts and sent +afoot out into the desert you were doomed; the +men responsible for that act counted you as +dead the minute they ordered you overland to +Hermosillo.”</p> + +<p>Grant recalled the mask of fear he’d seen +settle over the features of the big Indian, his +chain mate, when the rurales began to loose +the fetters in the sunset hour of that fateful +night on the desert; how the asthmatic little +Chinaman had commenced his chant to the joss—men +who had known every weary hour of that +march brought them nearer to the stroke of +doom.</p> + +<p>“I have no direct evidence to explain why I +was in that chain gang,” Grant began, honestly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span> +enough; then he told the story of the fight in +the gambling palace after the discovery of the +counterfeit dollars in his pocket, reserving only +all reference to Colonel Urgo. His host heard +him through with a grave face.</p> + +<p>“Perhaps,” he ventured, “you were on some +mission to the Border which ran counter to +the interests of a scheming official on the Mexican +side.”</p> + +<p>“To be honest, I do not know yet on what +mission I came to Arizora,” Grant conceded +with a laugh. “A friend of mine wrote me in +New York he wanted me to join him in ’a +whale of a proposition’ out here along the +Border. I was fool enough to come just on +that, and when I had an interview with a +Dr. Stooder—”</p> + +<p>“Ah!” The interjection escaped Don Padraic +against instant reflex of judgment, as +his hand part way raised to his lips betrayed. +Grant caught the other’s quickly covered confusion +and suddenly was sensible of his careless +garrulity. Here he was bandying names +in a matter his friend Bagley had surrounded +with unexplained secrecy. He finished lamely:</p> + +<p>“And so on my first night in Arizora I fell +into a trap.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span></p> + +<p>When Don Padraic left the chamber Grant +still was dwelling upon his host’s involuntary +exclamation at the name of Doc Stooder. +What was there about the saturnine physician, +what notorious reputation which could lead a +hermit such as Don Padraic away off in this +desert oasis to evince surprise that one under +his roof had had dealings with him? More and +more an undefined regret for his mention of the +name of Stooder plagued him.</p> + +<p>In truth, the whole reason for his coming to +Arizora and whatever fantastic project might +be at the bottom of it appeared now strangely +linked with this latest turn of fate, his coming +to the Casa O’Donoju. Grant became aware +of a duty long overlooked and wrote a brief +and non-committal note to Bim Bagley, in Arizora, +saying only he had suffered an accident +and would return to the Border town as soon +as he was able. This Benicia took from him +to give to Quelele when he should go to the +nearest railroad town.</p> + +<p>Two days thereafter befell a boon the +wounded man had dreamed of during many +yearning hours. Two male servants of the +household came to dress him in one of Don +Padraic’s white suits—his own clothes were +rags—and assisted him down a long hall which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span> +turned into the green paradise of the patio. +There under the royal date palm they sat him, +with the fountain pool and its magic purple +sails of the hyacinth at his feet, behind and on +either hand the green and crimson glory of +the geraniums.</p> + +<p>Benicia was awaiting him there alone. The +girl, in a simple green frock which revealed +bare arms and the warm round of her shoulders, +was the embodiment of the garden’s fairy +essence. She was a sprite of this green and +glowing place. Hot sunlight falling upon her +head made it a great exotic flower.</p> + +<p>“Now both of us can revel in being lawbreakers,” +she exclaimed when the Indians had +bowed themselves out. She was hovering +about Grant, patting into place the gay serape +which covered his knees.</p> + +<p>“Lawbreakers!” Grant’s glowing eyes bespoke +the intoxication of pleasure. “I feel, +rather, like a prisoner whose sentence is commuted.”</p> + +<p>The girl’s rippling laughter ended with, “Oh, +but my father said you should not be moved +for three days yet. Now he has gone into +town with Quelele and you and I are breaking +the law—with you equally guilty.”</p> + +<p>“What man would not rush into crime with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span> +you to lead?” he rallied, and the little game +of give and take in joke and repartee which +had been of their devising these last few days +of Grant’s convalescence, when Benicia made +her daily visits at his bedside, was resumed. +It was in this course their friendship had +grown: on a basis of comradeship and with +healthy minds in apposition, giving and finding +something of humour, of rollicking fun. No +angling for sickly sentimentalism on the part +of this unspoiled girl of the waste places—so +Grant during hours of staring at the ceiling +had appraised the heart of Benicia O’Donoju; +no place in their communion for any of the +trite nothings a man burbles into concealed ear +of a flapper over tea or whatever else comes +from the sophisticated city teapot.</p> + +<p>During these delicious hours in the shadow-dappled +patio, as heretofore, Benicia continued +a tantalizing enigma to the man of cities. +While seeming to give so freely of herself in +laughing quip and quick answer to his sallies, +never was there that least suspicion of some +overtone to her buoyancy the man yearned to +catch; not the quick revealing of secret depths +in the eyes which would betray a heart responsive +to the waves of the man’s love enveloping +her. Yet the lips of the girl, full, soft,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span> +trembling with unconcealed promise of richness +to the one conquering them: these were not +the lips of one devoid of love’s alluring tyrannies. +Nor was the rounded body of her, fully +ripened to share in the law of life giving, one +to wither outside love’s garden.</p> + +<p>Grant could not speculate, with tremors of +eagerness, on the flood of passion that was +dammed behind the girl’s sure mastery of herself. +Dare he believe that he might be the one +to loose that flood? As he sat there in the odorous +garden the nimble, superficial part of his +brain was playing with bubbles while the deeper +fibre of him resolved that nothing in the world +mattered beyond possessing Benicia’s love.</p> + +<p>When luncheon was cleared away—it had +been a veritable feast of laughter—Benicia +clapped her hands and gave some direction to +the servant answering. The Indian woman disappeared +in the body of the house, soon to +come waddling out under the weight of the +great harp. Grant gasped his surprise; he +never had associated harps with any surroundings +other than the orchestra pit.</p> + +<p>“My Irish ancestors, who were kings in +Donegal, always called for their harp after a +feast,” Benicia declared with laughter in her +eyes. “That is the reason we Irish are such<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span> +dreamers. The harp is the stairs to dreams. +Listen, señor, and hear if I tell the truth.”</p> + +<p>Grant watched her, fascinated. Her slender +body was in the shade of a great palm frond, +but when she leaned her head forward against +the carved sounding board a narrow lance of +sunshine shot down to kindle her hair to flame +there against the gold. As her bare arms +passed in swift flight of swallows across the +field of strings shadows and sunlight played +upon them in gules and chevrons of black and +ivory.</p> + +<p>First she gave the solo, <i>Depuis le Jour</i>, +from some opera Grant vaguely recalled; it +was a mad thing, wherein the great instrument +thundered to the far recesses of the patio garden. +Then the girl’s mood changed and was +interpreted in the sighing motif of <i>In the Garden</i>. +It was all bird song and lisping fountains. +Grant allowed his eyes to close so his soul could +take flight with the music.</p> + +<p>Slowly, reluctantly, Benicia’s fingers swept +the final chords. The great harp was still.</p> + +<p>Out from the shadow of a flanking archway +stepped a dapper little figure in a cloak. Heels +clicked sharply and the marionette bowed low. +It was Colonel Hamilcar Urgo.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI</a><br /> +<small>THE MARK OF EL ROJO</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">Colonel Urgo straightened himself, +and the smile that had twisted his little +waxed moustache awry suddenly was smudged +out. For his eyes encountered what they were +hardly prepared to see—a living dead man. +His face went sickly white; one hand arrested +itself in the motion of making the sign of the +cross. He stared at Grant, fascinated.</p> + +<p>Grant himself was little less shaken at the +appearance of his enemy. It was as if a cobra +suddenly had lifted its head from the patio’s +flowering jungle. In a moment of dreamy +ecstasy, when he had felt his heart yearning +toward the girl’s over a bridge of music, came +this sinister apparition of evil. It was not +fear of the man that caused Grant’s heart to +pound—the waspish little Spaniard possessed +no essence of malignity sufficient to terrify +one of the American’s fibre; rather a loathing +and instinctive reflex of anger gorged his combative +nerves with blood. Grant read surely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span> +enough the shock of surprise in his enemy’s +eyes and cannily laid this revelation away as +a weapon to hand should necessity demand its +use.</p> + +<p>As for Benicia, she made no pretence of concealing +her annoyance. Quick perception +seized upon the coincidence of her father’s +absence and Colonel Urgo’s coming; she knew +the wily little suitor had somehow managed to +time his visit to that circumstance. In the +first flush of her surprise Benicia caught herself +feeling a great thankfulness that Grant +Hickman was in the house.</p> + +<p>“If you have come to see my father”—Benicia +did not rise to greet Urgo when he +took a tentative step toward her—“he is +absent at the moment. I am sorry you have +not found him at home.”</p> + +<p>Urgo’s lynx eyes darted from the girl’s face +to Grant’s and back again. Plainly he was in +a quandary, not knowing how much—if anything—this +American had told his hosts of +the circumstances of a night in Sonizona and +its consequences. Benicia, misreading his perturbation, +was quick to interpose with a smile +all irony:</p> + +<p>“This is Señor Hickman, whom you may<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span> +remember having seen on the train. Señor +Hickman, this is a distant cousin of mine, Colonel +Hamilcar Urgo, of the garrison at Sonizona. +He is the gentleman who believed you occupied +his berth out of El Paso, if you recall. There +was some slight misunderstanding—”</p> + +<p>Grant flashed a glance at the girl, read the +mockery in her eyes and took his cue from her:</p> + +<p>“I believe I have seen the Colonel subsequently,” +this in heavy seriousness. “Was it +not somewhere in Sonizona?”</p> + +<p>“I do not recall having had that honour.” +Teeth flashed in a nervous smile and the man’s +eyes veiled themselves furtively. He caught the +challenge to battle of wits with the American +and entrenched himself accordingly. Colonel +Urgo found himself at a momentary disadvantage, +however; he did not know what ammunition +his rival would choose. Essaying a diversion, +he addressed the girl in rapid Spanish.</p> + +<p>“Our guest, Señor Hickman, does not understand +Spanish,” Benicia insinuated reproof. +“Yes, it is quite true, as you have judged, that +he is recovering from a wound—a slight misadventure +on the road to Hermosillo. But +pray be seated, my cousin, and let me order +wine and a light luncheon. You are visibly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span> +fatigued.” With a slight bow to Urgo Benicia +arose and crossed the patio to disappear in the +shadows of the arcade.</p> + +<p>Urgo, surprised into an unpleasant situation +by being left alone with the man he had sent +to death, fidgeted with the hasp of his cigarette +case. He made great difficulty of scratching +a match. Grant, watching his every move, +decided to play some of the cards fate had +dealt him.</p> + +<p>“I guessed you were inquiring of Señorita +O’Donoju about my condition, Colonel. You +are charmingly solicitous. I was shot in the +back—bullet through my shoulder. Left for +dead with the other convicts.”</p> + +<p>The little Spaniard let smoke seep through +his nostrils and spread out his hands to say, +“So much for that!” Grant was not to be +denied his advantage:</p> + +<p>“Of course, Colonel Urgo, I remember you +were good enough to be present when I was +arraigned at the jail on a false charge of counterfeiting; +I shall not soon forget the promise +you made then to do what you could for me. +You did—all you possibly could!” Grant’s +smile had become set and one hand resting on +his blanketed knees flexed into a fist, white +across the knuckles.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span></p> + +<p>Urgo expelled a cloud of smoke from his +lungs and showed his teeth in a wolf’s smile.</p> + +<p>“You remember much, señor. Do not fail +to remember, too, you are a criminal under the +laws of Mexico, to be tried on charge of counterfeiting +at the court of Hermosillo.”</p> + +<p>“Yes?” Grant was cool under the other’s +counter. “And will you move to take me to +Hermosillo after what happened—out yonder +on that road through the desert?”</p> + +<p>“I?” Urgo’s shoulders lifted. “I am a +soldier, señor. I have nothing to do with +justice and the courts. But assuredly you will +be taken to Hermosillo and put on trial.”</p> + +<p>The little Spaniard had fully recovered his +poise by now. The uneasy light in his eyes +had yielded to a dangerous flicker of craft. +Suavity of a tiger’s purr lurked in his voice. +Grant mastered the rage which ridged all his +fighting muscles despite the weakness of his +body; this was no moment to be betrayed into +throwing away a trick.</p> + +<p>“But before I go to Hermosillo, Colonel, of +course I shall take precautions to insure that +I get there—that there will be no more <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">ley de +fuga</i> in my case. Don Padraic O’Donoju, who +is an honest man; I shall take him more fully +into my confidence and—”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span></p> + +<p>“Then you have told—?” Urgo bit his lip +in mortification over having fallen into a trap. +Grant’s answering smile was innocent as a +babe’s.</p> + +<p>“I might prefer, Colonel Urgo, to confine +our affair—call it a misunderstanding between +two gentlemen—strictly to yourself and myself, +trusting to take care of myself when I have +recovered my strength. But should I be driven +to seek the assistance of an honest man—”</p> + +<p>Benicia appeared that instant; behind her +was ’Cepcion with a silver tray. Before Colonel +Urgo bobbed to his feet Grant caught a +shaft of cold fury from his eyes which said +that if the girl’s presence forced an armistice +no promise of peace lay at its termination.</p> + +<p>Followed an interlude of quiet comedy. +Grant, content to leave the first move in the +hands of his enemy, eased his shoulder lazily +against the chair back and let his eyes play +over the Spaniard’s face and diminutive figure. +There was an indolent suggestion of probing, +of detached appraisal in the steady scrutiny +which bit into Urgo’s pride. That and dull +rage over the unexplained presence of his rival +here in Benicia’s home kept the little whippet +fidgeting.</p> + +<p>He essayed addressing the girl in her own<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span> +tongue, but again and more pointedly Benicia +reminded him of this breach of courtesy. She +made no effort to conceal the imp of humour +that tugged at the corners of her mouth; this +flickering of a smile and the dancing of her eyes +made farcical the sober decorum of her speech. +Urgo, no fool, was not long realizing he was +being made the butt of his cousin’s sport. +Thin lines of strain began to appear about the +mouth that smiled so smugly; just below his +temples irritated nerves commenced setting +the muscles a-twitching. Grant, who did not +fail to note these reflexes, saw in the figure +opposite a preying animal setting himself for +a spring.</p> + +<p>Urgo and Benicia had been exchanging commonplaces. +Suddenly the man leaned forward +tensely and returned to the forbidden Spanish +in a hurried burst: “For your own good, my +cousin, I must have a few minutes with you +alone. Arrange it, I command you.”</p> + +<p>“You are hardly the one, sweetest cousin, +to be the judge of my good. Nor the one to +command me.” Benicia retorted in the same +tongue. Then, turning with a smile of mock +apology to Grant: “You will excuse Colonel +Urgo his occasional lapse from a tongue that +is difficult for him.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span></p> + +<p>The Spaniard took a final draught of wine +and pushed back from the table where his +luncheon had been spread. As he idly tapped +the corn husk of one of his cigarettes Grant +thought he saw resolution shape itself in the +narrowed eyes. There was a moment’s silence, +then Urgo addressed himself graciously to +Grant:</p> + +<p>“Señor Hickman, perhaps my adorable cousin +here has not found opportunity to tell you +anything of the history of this remarkable +house in the desert where you have found such +agreeable convalescence.”</p> + +<p>“I believe not.” Grant spoke warily, his +senses alert for some pitfall. He shot a warning +glance at Benicia; but the girl, ignorant of +the grim feud between the two, could not read +it understandingly. Colonel Urgo surrounded +his head with a blue cloud and continued:</p> + +<p>“An engaging history, señor. Not a house in +all Sonora with such romance behind it, such—how +do you say it?—such legend, eh? +Though I am distantly of the same family, our +branch cannot claim the distinction that falls +to my cousin, who is the last of the veritable +O’Donoju.</p> + +<p>“Behold her glorious head, Señor Hickman!” +Urgo waved his cigarette to point the burning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span> +of sunlight above Benicia’s brow; his own head +inclined as if in reverence. “There in my fairest +cousin’s so-marvellous hair lies all the legend +and the history of the great family +O’Donoju.”</p> + +<p>The girl, frankly amused at what appeared +a turgid compliment, tossed back her head in +a gust of laughter. But Grant could not join +with her. As from some iceberg veiled in fog +came to him the cold feel of malignity moving +to some unguessed purpose. Was Urgo planning +to strike at him through the girl he +adored? Yet what possible obloquy could he +call up against Benicia, whose soul was unsullied +as the winds of the wastes? Urgo +spoke on:</p> + +<p>“Undoubtedly, my cousin, Señor Hickman +has felt his heart snared by those burning +meshes of yours or he is not a judge of beauty”—gesture +of impatience from Benicia. “So it +is for the benefit of the señor as well as for +your own, fairest cousin, that I recite this legend +of the red hair of the O’Donoju. Strange, +is it not, that all Sonora knows it and has told +the story to its children for a hundred years, +yet you, <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">chiquita</i>”—a wave of the cigarette +toward the girl—“who should be most interested +are the only ignorant one.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span></p> + +<p>“There was in the long ago, señor, a Michael +O’Donohue—what you call of the wild Irish, +who had flaming hair and an untamed spirit. +A king in Spain gave him the whole district of +Altar for his estate, and he came here to the +Garden of Solitude with his Spanish lady and +built him this house where we sit. He was a +man who considered the safety of his soul, so he +built a mission to the glory of the four evangelists +out yonder by the Gulf where the Sand +People needed the comfort of the Mother +Church and—”</p> + +<p>“He lived a life any one of his descendants +might pattern after,” Benicia put in with a +smile carrying a sting. Urgo touched his +breast with delicate fingers and bowed. Then +turning again to Grant:</p> + +<p>“When the Apaches burned that mission, +señor, a pious O’Donoju restored it and the +family, then numerous, endowed that mission +altar with much gold and silver. There was, +too, a great string of pearls—pearls with a +green light, legend says, which the Sand People +brought from the shell beds of the Gulf to show +their piety. You are following me, Señor +Hickman, eh?”</p> + +<p>Grant made no sign. His eyes were upon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span> +Benicia’s face, reading there a slow change. +Now she, too, had begun to feel a nameless +portent stealing over her like the chill from +hidden ice. The wells of her eyes were deeper; +faint colour came and went in her cheeks and +throat. Grant, certain that Urgo was preparing +torture for her under the innocent mask of +narrative, was helpless to intervene; no diversion +short of the work of fists was possible, +and that his weakness denied him.</p> + +<p>“There was of that generation which restored +the mission, señor, a wild youth, true +descendant of the original O’Donoju. He was +known from Mexico City to Tucson as El Rojo—the +Red One—for his hair was the veritable +colour of that which our cousin possesses. And +the devil rode his heart with spurs of fire. +You have never been told of El Rojo, Benicia?”</p> + +<p>The girl made no answer. Her level gaze +was a mute challenge. The little colonel rerolled +one of his eternal cigarettes, lighted it +and drank smoke with a sensuous inhalation.</p> + +<p>“At the feast of the re-dedication El Rojo, +banished from the family, appeared out of +nowhere. Conceive the consternation, señor! +The red head of the devil’s own come to sanctified +ground. This fiery head, so like our Benicia’s,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span> +swooping as a comet into the feasting +place of the family; well might the pious +O’Donojus be fearful.</p> + +<p>“And their fears were not without grounds. +Before El Rojo quit the Mission of the Four +Evangelists he had murdered the priest, his +own uncle, and stolen the rope of pearls from +the sacred image of the Virgin. He rode away +with one of his cousins, a foolish girl of the +Mayortorenas, who was wife to him in the +desert without priest or book.”</p> + +<p>Urgo let his voice trail away as with a tale +finished. His teasing glance lingered on the +faces of his two auditors. Benicia drew a +tremulous breath and forced a smile, as though +she were relaxing from strain. On this cue the +story teller unexpectedly continued:</p> + +<p>“But I hear Señor Hickman ask, ‘What part +has all this ancient legend with Señorita Benicia’s +red hair?’ Patience, señor. We approach +that.</p> + +<p>“Legend says that though El Rojo’s wife +worked upon his heart and brought repentance, +it was too late. He returned to the mission +a year after his double crime to restore the +Virgin’s pearls to the sanctuary. The Apaches +had been there just before him. The priests +were slain and the mission burned. El Rojo<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span> +buried the pearls within the stark walls, hoping +the good God would accept this his acknowledgment +of sin. There the pearls lie to-day +beyond sight of man, for the desert has blotted +out the last remnants of ruins.</p> + +<p>“But the sin of El Rojo was not so easily to +be forgotten in sight of the good God, sweetest +cousin.” Urgo suddenly turned away from +Grant, to whom he had been addressing his +story, and fixed his eyes on Benicia; almost +there was the click of snapping fetters in his +glance. “You bear the mark of it above your +brow like the mark of Cain—his fire-red hair!”</p> + +<p>“Stop!” The girl leaped from her chair, +blazing wrath in every line of her face. “I +shall not listen—”</p> + +<p>“The grandson of El Rojo and his grandson,” +Urgo purred on with his smile of a hunting +cat, “every second generation of the +O’Donoju has one born with the curse of the +red hair to tell all Sonora God does not forget. +And now you, the last of an accursed family, +its great estates gone—its power gone—your +own grandfather with his red hair shot with +Maximilian!—You with the red head—daughter +of a murderer—”</p> + +<p>A hand closed over the collar of the colonel’s +military jacket, gave it a twist, throttling his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span> +speech. Grant had leaped from his seat—a +pain like a bayonet point shot through his +shoulder at the sudden movement—and come +upon the spiteful little slanderer from behind.</p> + +<p>“Gringo assassin!” whistled the little Spaniard, +and his right hand groped backward to a +concealed holster. It fell into a grip too strong +to be broken. Grant was bearing all his weight +on the other’s back, for the instant he was on +his feet he discovered a weakness of his knees +which would not support him. The impulse to +shut off Urgo’s venomous tongue had been +acted upon without calculation; now that he +had committed himself to action the American +realized how heavy was the hazard against +him. One arm useless, all the other muscles +once ready to respond instantly to call for +action now seeming to be palsied. A paralytic +boldly attempting to bell a wildcat; this was +the situation.</p> + +<p>Benicia saw the American’s face over the +squirming Urgo’s shoulder; it wore a strained +grin which hardly served to mask the toll +taken of weakened muscles. She whirled and +ran out of the patio to call aid in the servants’ +quarters.</p> + +<p>Now the hot fire from his wound was spreading +across Grant’s back and down his fighting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span> +arm as he swayed across the patio half supported +on the Spaniard’s back. The frantic +jerkings of Urgo’s pistol arm in Grant’s grip +threatened momentarily to loosen the restraining +fingers; that done, the American’s end +would be speedy.</p> + +<p>Grant found himself near a wall, braced one +foot against it and lunged outward. Down +went both men. Urgo twisted out from under +the heavier body, pinning him, and raised himself +to one knee. Grant saw a tigerish gleam +of triumph in the other’s eyes as his right +hand whipped back to the holster on his hip.</p> + +<p>Some power more rapid than thought moved +the American’s sound arm outward in a wild +sweep which encompassed a giant fuchsia bush +growing in a Chinese tea tub. Over went the +bush just as Urgo fired from the hip, its +branches swishing down over the latter’s head.</p> + +<p>The bullet went wild. Grant, near swooning +from the consuming pain of his wound, scrambled +for his enemy—went up with him when +he found his feet. The revolver had been +knocked from Urgo’s hand by the avalanche +of greenery; a sideways kick of Grant’s foot +sent it spinning into the fountain.</p> + +<p>Now the wounded man sent a final summons +to his last reservoir of strength. Slowly—slowly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span> +he forced the little Spaniard out of +the patio and down the long corridor toward +the front door of the house. When Benicia +came running with two husky Indians they +found Grant with his man waiting before +the heavy oaken portal. One of the Indians +swung back the door. Grant gave a supreme +heave and the colonel went sprawling like a +straddle bug out onto the gravel.</p> + +<p>The great door slammed behind him.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII</a><br /> +<small>DESERT SECRETS</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">Consider now the interesting activities +of Doc Stooder, fallen angel of Æsculapius:</p> + +<p>On a March evening of sunset splendour the +worthy doctor descended from the single combination +coach and baggage car which a suffering +locomotive drags once daily from a junction +point on the transcontinental line south +through naked battalions of mountains to the +ghost town of Cuprico. Once Cuprico was +famous; once when primitive steam shovels +nibbled at solid mountains of copper up back +of Main Street Cuprico roared with a life that +was dizzy and vaunted itself the rip-roarin’est +copper camp in all the Southwest. But the +glory that was Cuprico passed, even as that +of Rome; to-day they tell of the town that +when its mayor fell dead on the post office steps +his body remained undiscovered for three days.</p> + +<p>No romantic craving for revisiting scenes of +his youth had prompted the Doc to his journey +Cupricoward—he had been its premier stud<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span> +player in a day of glory fifteen years before. +No, a far more material urge had ended a period +of fretting in Arizora by shunting him on +a westward-wending train. For a week Bim +Bagley, his partner in a secret enterprise, had +been absent on his quest of El Doctor Coyote +Belly and the New York engineer, Bim’s +friend, who was reported to be wounded and +under the care of the Papago medicine man. +Ten days prior to Bagley’s excursion into +Sonora had been frittered away in groping for +information concerning this vanished engineer. +All precious time wasted!</p> + +<p>It has, perhaps, become apparent that Doc +Stooder was not enthusiastic over the inclusion +of Grant Hickman, the Easterner, in his golden +scheme of treasure trove in desert sands. The +stubborn refusal of Bim Bagley to move without +this fellow Hickman’s being party to the +enterprise had prevented a start on the expedition +for the Mission of the Four Evangelists +six weeks before. The canny physician—whose +share in the joint endeavour was to be his exclusive +information concerning the whereabouts +of the Lost Mission—possessed in large degree +that sense of divination bestowed upon folk of +the desert which gives their imagination wings +over the horizon of time. Each day of delay<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span> +he read a day to the advantage of Don Padraic +O’Donoju, certain sure as he was that the +master of the desert oasis had come by knowledge +of his own treasure hunt intent through +mysterious desert channels.</p> + +<p>The vision of gold and pearls Doc Stooder +had seen in the depths of raw alcohol on a +night of dreaming in his office had become a +goad. So he came to Cuprico, the ghost town +not seventy miles away from the supposed site +of the buried mission; his intent was to pick +up his Papago informant, who lived midway +between Cuprico and the Border, and, as +Stooder happily phrased his purpose, “give +things a look-see.” If his luck was with him +and he should stumble onto the mission during +this solo game so much the better. Conscience +nor maxims of fair play were any part of the +doctor’s moral anatomy.</p> + +<p>The Doc upon his arrival did not pervade +Cuprico’s centres of evening society—the +Golden Star pool hall and soft drinks emporium +and the back room of Garcia’s drug store—for +reasons sufficiently potent to merit a paragraph +of explanation.</p> + +<p>Years before, when he was a resident of the +mining camp and had money, Doc Stooder took +unto himself a Mexican wife who had a passion<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span> +for diamonds. Mrs. Apolinaria Stooder had +a way with her which seemed to win deep into +the atrophied heart of her spouse, and he +showered her with the stones of her choice. +No woman from Yuma to Tucson—so legend +still recites—“packed so much ice” as Doc +Stooder’s. Then in an epidemic of typhoid, +which the Doc combated with the heroism of +a saint, Apolinaria died.</p> + +<p>Alone and with his own hands her sorrowing +widower gave her sepulchre somewhere +amid the gaunt hills surrounding the town. +He let it become known after the interment +that since Apolinaria loved her diamonds so +he had buried them with her, adding for good +measure of gossip that he figured their total +value at round $5000. Immediately and for +several years thereafter all the prospectors +for fifty miles about gave up their search for +dip and strike and prospected for Mrs. Apolinaria +Stooder. Failing to find so much as a +“colour” of her diamonds, the profession drew +the conclusion that Doc Stooder was a monumental +liar. His popularity waned accordingly.</p> + +<p>Shadows were lengthening when Stooder +tooled a rented desert skimmer out of Cuprico’s +single garage and brought it to a stop +before the general store. Into the wagon box<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span> +behind the seat went his bed roll, brought from +Arizora and containing certain glassware +whose contents were more precious to their +owner than life itself; boxes of grocery staples; +extra cans of oil and gasoline. Two big canteens +on the running board were filled. Plugs +of chewing tobacco heavy and broad as slate +shingles were stowed in the tool box. In all +this preparation the doctor’s long legs calipered +themselves from counter to car with +remarkable efficiency.</p> + +<p>“Goin’ on a little prospecting trip?” the +storekeeper had volunteered when the Doc first +commenced his stowing. No answer.</p> + +<p>“Figgerin’ on a little <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">pasear</i> down ’crost the +Line?” hopefully from that worthy as he +helped noose the tarpaulin over the dunnage. +The Doc’s head was buried above the ears +among the engine’s naked cylinders and he professed +not to hear. When Stooder was seated +at the wheel and the storekeeper had the edge +of the final pail of water over the radiator vent +he feebly flung out his last grappling hook:</p> + +<p>“Reckon you might be selling Bibles to the +Papagoes.”</p> + +<p>“Come here, friend,” sternly from the +doctor. “Now I give you the way inside if +you’ll promise to keep it mum.” The storekeeper<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span> +hopped around to lean his ear over the +wheel in gleeful anticipation.</p> + +<p>“I’m a-goin’ south from here to give a Chinese +lady a lesson on the ocarina. So long!”</p> + +<p>When the Doc skittered down the brief +Main Street and out onto the thread of grey +caliche that was the road to the mysterious +south all of the west was a-roil with the final +palette scrapings of the sunset—umber, pale +lemon and, high above the mountains standing +black as obsidian, cirrus clouds dyed a fugitive +cherry. Ahead showed the ragged gate into +the valley of El Infiernillo—the Little Hell—place +of bleak distances between mountain +ranges bare as sheet iron; place of unimaginable +thirst when summer sun hurls reflected +heat back from burning walls. Beyond El +Infiernillo just a hint of peaks like fretwork +spires marked destination for the doctor; there +at the foot of the Growler range and where +the Desert of Altar washes across the imaginary +line between two nations, lay the land of +his desire. Somewhere on the Road of the +Dead Men passing through that savage waste +perchance a nubbin of weathered ’dobe wall +lifted a few inches above the sand to mark +treasure of gold and pearls below; maybe +naught but a charred timber end concealed by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span> +a patch of greasewood and crying a secret to +the ears of the searcher.</p> + +<p>Gold and pearls—pearls and gold! The +Doc’s rapt eye caught the colours of sacred +treasure in the dyes of the sunset and read +them for a portent of success.</p> + +<p>“Me, I’m a-goin’ just slosh around in +wealth! Doc Stooder, the man with the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">dinero</i>—that’s +me!” The gaunt head behind the +wheel of the desert skimmer was tilted back +and A. Stooder, M.D., carolled his expectations +at the new stars. Then he reined in his gas +snorter long enough to fumble with his bed +roll in the wagon box. Out came a square +bottle of fluid fire, such as passes currency with +the international bootleggers in the Southwest. +The Doc drank heartily to the promise spread +across the western heavens. The bottle was +tucked in a handy coat pocket for future +reference.</p> + +<p>Nights in the desert along the Line are +psychic. They are not of the world of arc +lights, elevated trains and the winking jewels of +white ways. In that world man has so completely +surrounded himself with the tinsels of +his own making, the noise of his own multiplied +squeakings and chatterings, that he comes to accept +the vault above him as under the care of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span> +the city parks department. His little tent of +night is no higher than the towers of his skyscrapers. +But in the desert it is different.</p> + +<p>Emptiness of day is increased an hundred +fold at dark because it leaps up to lose its +frontiers behind the stars. Silence of the day +is intensified to such a degree that the inner +ear catches a humming of supernal machinery +in the heavens. The eye measures perspectives +between the near and far planets. And the +soul of man hearkens to strange voices; sighings +from the pale mouths of the desert scrubs, +born to a servitude of thirst; whisperings +passed from mountain top to mountain top; +faint stirrings of the earth relaxed from the +torsion of the sun.</p> + +<p>Doc Stooder, desert familiar as he was, +never could blunt his senses to this emptiness of +night in the wastes. It awed him, left him +itching under half-perceived conceptions of the +infinite. Hence the bottle carried handily in +his pocket. From time to time as he careered +over the road faintly marked by the feeble +sparks of his headlights he braked down to +have a swig. The more he felt lifted above +sombre unrealities about him the greater his +impulse to break into song. The iron gate of +El Infiernillo heard his roundelay.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span></p> + +<p>Miles unreeled behind him. Dim shapes of +mountains dissolved to new contours and were +left behind. The Doc came to a sharp eastward +turning of the road but kept straight +ahead out over the untracked flats to southward. +He knew his way; the packed sand gave +him as good traction as the road. Down and +down into the unpeopled wilderness of sandhills +and buttes bored the twin sparks of the +little car.</p> + +<p>Another shift of direction and the Doc was +teetering up a narrow cañon between high +mountain walls. His course was a dry wash, +boulder strewn. Only instinct of a desert driver +saved him from piling up on some rough block +of detritus. Sand traps forced him to shove +the engine into low, and the snarling of the +exhaust was multiplied from the cañon walls.</p> + +<p>A light flickered far ahead. A dog barked. +The car wallowed and snuffled out of the wash +to come to a halt before several silhouettes of +huts. People, roused from sleep by the car’s +clamour, stood ringed about in curiosity; one +held a torch of reeds.</p> + +<p>“Ho, Guadalupe!” Doc Stooder bellowed. +A solid looking Indian with a mat of tousled +iron-grey hair stood out under the torch light, +grinning a welcome to “El Doctor.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span></p> + +<p>“Show me a place to sleep,” commanded the +visitor, and the one called Guadalupe carried +the doctor’s bed-roll to his own hut, of which +squaw and children were speedily dispossessed. +So the good doctor from Arizora slept the rest +of the night in the rancheria of the Sand +People, last remnant of that Papago family +for which the Mission of the Four Evangelists +was reared to save souls. In five hours the +Doc had covered by gasoline what it would +have cost Guadalupe of the Sand People as +many days in painful plodding.</p> + +<p>Morning saw the rancheria in a ferment of +excitement and Doc Stooder viciously tyrannical +in reaction from his accustomed alcoholic +night. Guadalupe found himself in a difficult +position. Once in a moment of gratitude when +the white doctor had snatched his squaw from +the tortures of asthma—the miracle had +occurred in Guadalupe’s summer camp near +Arizora—the Indian had babbled his knowledge +of the buried mission, its treasure. But he +had not counted upon this unexpected appearance +of the white doctor, demanding to be led +to the place of wealth. It is common with all +the Southwestern Indians to believe naught +but ill luck can follow any revelation to a white +man of the desert’s hidden gold; some say the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span> +early padres, themselves consistent hoarders, +inculcated this lesson. With the eyes of his +fellow villagers disapprovingly upon him, +Guadalupe first attempted evasion.</p> + +<p>Stooder in an ominous quiet heard him +through. Then without a word he opened a +small medicine chest he carried in his bed-roll +and took therefrom two tightly folded pieces +of paper—blue and white. While Guadalupe +and the rest watched, round-eyed, the doctor +made quick passes with each bit of paper over +the mouth of a small water <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">olla</i>. The surface +of the water sizzed and boiled.</p> + +<p>Guadalupe, two shades whiter, babbled his +willingness to go at once to the place where the +mission lay hidden.</p> + +<p>“Prime cathartic for the mind,” grunted +the Doc, and he tuned his engine for the trip.</p> + +<p>They were off down the cañon and into the +yellow basin of El Infiernillo. Guadalupe, riding +for the first time in the white man’s smell-wagon, +gripped his seat with the delicious fear +of a child on a merry-go-round. He watched +the movements of the doctor’s foot on the +gear-shift, marvelling that the beast concealed +in pipes and rods answered each downward +thrust with a roar. Earth spun under him as +if Elder Brother himself, master of all created<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span> +things, had a hold on it and were pulling it all +one way.</p> + +<p>Down and down into the untracked miles of +Altar. A single iron post on a hill marking +the Line. The sierra of Pinacate cinder-red +in the south for a beacon. Right and left sheet +iron ranges with stipples of rust where the +<i lang="es" xml:lang="es">camisa</i> grew. Mirage quivering into nothingness +just as its false waters were ready to be +parted by the car’s wheels.</p> + +<p>They came upon an east-and-west track in +the sand—the Road of the Dead Men—and +turned westward upon it. Away off to the +north and east a spiral dust cloud walked +across the wastes along the skirts of the mountains. +Guadalupe pointed to it with an ejaculation +in his own tongue. A sign—a sign! +There was the place of the mission!</p> + +<p>The Doc felt his internals quiver in expectation. +Prickles of excitement played in fingers +that gripped the wheel. Automatically +he began to hum an ancient bar-room ditty.</p> + +<p>The Papago indicated where he should turn +off the road in the direction of a great gap +in the mountains, into which the desert flowed +as a sea. Here the mesquite lifted from its +crouch and flourished in a five-foot growth—true +index of hidden waters. The car made<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span> +hard going, what with brittle twigs that caught +at its tires and the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">cholla</i> creeping like a spined +snake to threaten punctures. At his guide’s +word Doc Stooder stopped. Both scrambled +out.</p> + +<p>Before moving a step the Doc must have a +ceremonial drink, a preliminary he did not deem +necessary to share with Guadalupe. The man’s +big hands trembled as he raised the bottle to +his lips; his eyes were shining with gold lust.</p> + +<p>Guadalupe stood for several minutes slowly +swinging his head from landmark to landmark, +his eyes following calculated lines through the +scrub. Then he commenced a slow pacing +through the close-set aisles of the greasewood +and cactus, bearing in a wide circle. He peered +into the core of each shrub, kicked at every +naked stub of root and branch appearing above +the surface. The Doc, cursing and humming +alternately, was right at his shoulder.</p> + +<p>An hour passed—two. The sun, now high, +burned mercilessly. Still Guadalupe pursued +a narrowing circle through the scrub. Of a +sudden the Indian gurgled and dropped to his +knees beside a salt-bush. He whipped out his +knife and began hacking at the tough stubs of +branches near the soil. The Doc, slavering in +his excitement, dropped beside him and looked<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span> +into the heart of the salt-bush. He saw nothing +but a rounded slab of rock.</p> + +<p>Guadalupe finished his knife work and started +to dig with his hands. Terrier-like he pawed a +hole away from what Stooder had taken for a +rock. The smooth black surface began to curve +outward in a form too symmetrical for nature’s +work; it was rounded and gradually flaring.</p> + +<p>Guadalupe dug on. Blood pounded in the +Doc’s ears. Snatches of song trickled from +his lips.</p> + +<p>Suddenly patience exploded. Stooder pushed +the Papago to his haunches and threw his own +body full length into the hole dug. His arms +embraced a flaring shape of metal. His eyes +fell upon faint ridges and lines, like lettering. +He spat upon the spot and rubbed it clean of +clinging soil.</p> + +<p class="noic"><span class="smcap">Gloria Dei et Mund——<br /> +Phillipus Rex<br /> +Anno Dom.——XXIV</span></p> + +<p>“The bell! The mission bell!” screamed +the Doc.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII</a><br /> +<small>CROSSCURRENTS</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">An hour after the sun had set on the day of +Colonel Urgo’s humiliation at the Casa +O’Donoju, Quelele tooled his car into the avenue +of palms at the end of the long return journey +from Magdalena, on the railroad. With him +were his master, Don Padraic, and an American +stranger, Bim Bagley of Arizora.</p> + +<p>Fate had played capriciously with Bim. +When he set out from Arizora on the quest of +his pal Grant Hickman it was only on the bare +report that the man was seriously wounded and +under the care of El Doctor Coyote Belly at +Babinioqui, south of the Line. Near the end +of his journey his car had wrecked itself beyond +repair hard by Magdalena; a mule had been +requisitioned to carry him over the mountains +to the home of the medicine man; once there he +was as far from the end of his quest as ever.</p> + +<p>For grey old Coyote Belly lied unblinkingly. +He knew nothing of a wounded man. Persuasion +of words nor the chink of silver dollars<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span> +availed to budge him from a trust he conceived +to be joined between himself and the +master of the Casa O’Donoju.</p> + +<p>The hours following the scene in the patio +and the sudden gust of action concluding the +visit of Hamilcar Urgo had been trying ones +for Grant. Spent as he was by the struggle with +the Spaniard, he had suffered himself to be +half-carried to his room by the Indian servants. +Benicia, accompanying him to the door, had +permitted her hand to rest in his at farewell; +a clasp tried to tell what the storm in her soul +denied speech. The girl’s face was etched by +suffering; sacrificed pride and a shadow of +some deep fear lay heavy in her eyes and the +drawn lines about her mouth. The wound made +by her spiteful suitor was deeper than Grant +could conceive.</p> + +<p>Alone on his bed he conned over the tale +Urgo had told. Unfamiliar as he was with the +Latin temperament, the belief of the romance +peoples in the very reality of inherited curse +and whips of Nemesis pursuing innocent generations, +yet the raw tragedy of the story fired +his imagination. He tried to put himself in +the place of the girl he loved with all her pride +of race and family; to feel with her the stripes +of scorn the despicable Urgo had laid on. El<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span> +Rojo’s desecration of the mission sanctuary by +an act of blood; his flight into the desert with +the pearls of the Virgin and a girl, “who was +wife to him without priest or book”; the blotting +of the mission from sight of man; all this +cycle of tragedy of the dim past linked to a +gloriously vital creature of the present by the +chance colour of her hair. The thing was monstrously +absurd! And yet—</p> + +<p>A knock at the door and Don Padraic entered. +He turned to beckon some one behind him. In +the candlelight Grant saw the head of a giant +stoop to avoid the lintel.</p> + +<p>“Bim Bagley!”</p> + +<p>The desert man crossed to the bed by a single +wide step and threw both arms about Grant +in a bear hug.</p> + +<p>“You dam’d old snoozer. You dam’d old +snoozer!” was all Bim could give in greeting. +Don Padraic stepped outside and closed the +door on the reunion. Bim let his friend’s body +lightly down on the pillows and sat back to +grin into Grant’s eyes.</p> + +<p>“I sure been burnin’ the ground all over +North Sonora on your trail,” he rumbled. +“You’re the original little Mexican jumping +bean.”</p> + +<p>“Jumped right into a flock of trouble, old<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span> +side partner, with more right beyond the front +line waiting for me. The reserves seem to have +come up just the right time.” Grant gave his +pal’s great paw a squeeze. Bim roared assurance:</p> + +<p>“Reserves got all bogged down through failure +in liaison—just like the days of the Big +Show. But they’re with you now from hell to +breakfast, young fellah; an’ I think I know the +name of the outfit we got to trim. Name’s +Hamilcar Urgo, huh?” His buoyant spirit was +wine to Grant; the very animal force of him +seemed to fill the old room.</p> + +<p>“Ran acrost that li’l sidewinder this afternoon +when the old Don was bringing me up here +from Magdalena. Just our two cars on the +road. He pulls up when we’re makin’ to pass +him—face on him just as pleasant as a polecat’s. +Your friend the Don passes the time of +day courteous as you please.</p> + +<p>“‘I had the honour to visit your daughter +this day,’ whinnies this Urgo gazabo; of course +he speaks in Spanish, which is nuts for me. +‘And I discover she is entertaining a convict +who escaped from a chain gang.’” Bim +grinned. “I take it that convict is my li’l +friend from Noo Yawk.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span></p> + +<p>Grant nodded. The other wagged his head +in a grotesque mockery of grief.</p> + +<p>“‘My daughter and I are entertaining an +American gentleman who was wounded on the +Hermosillo road,’ your Don answers, civil +enough. ‘While he is a guest in our house we +naturally ask no questions.’</p> + +<p>“‘Then,’ snaps this Urgo boy, ‘I must inform +you that for harbouring an escaped criminal +you are responsible before the law. The +rurales will visit your house and it is for me +to say whether they take you as well as the +gringo convict.’”</p> + +<p>Grant started. Here was a phase of the situation +he had not guessed: that his courteous +host might be made to suffer for Urgo’s rage +and jealousy.</p> + +<p>Eagerly, “What did Don Padraic say to +that?”</p> + +<p>“He says something to the effect that the +laws of hospitality were above any this-here +Urgo might care to dig up, the same I call +being mighty white of your Don Whosis with +the Irish twist to his name.” Bim broke off +to shoot a quizzical look into his friend’s eyes. +“Say, brother, what you been doin’ to this +little black-an’-tan stingin’ lizard to make him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span> +ride your trail so hard? You a tenderfoot an’ +riding your herd across the fence line of the +biggest little man in the whole Sonora government!”</p> + +<p>Grant grinned childishly. “Well, I threw +him out of the front door here this afternoon +for one thing and—”</p> + +<p>Admiration beamed from every wind wrinkle +about the Arizonan’s eyes. “Sho! You did +that? Now I call that steppin’ some for a man +with a bullet through him. I thought from the +gen’ral slant to Señor Urgo’s manner when he +met up with us some one’d been working on his +frame somewhere. He just sweat T.N.T. But +why did you crawl him?”</p> + +<p>“He insulted Señorita O’Donoju,” was +Grant’s answer. Bim lowered the lid of one +eye owlishly and his gaunt face was pulled +down to a comic aspect of concern.</p> + +<p>“Uh-huh; now I begin to get the drift. Old +Doc Stooder was right when he says there’s +the shoo-shoo of a skirt somewheres in your +big disappearing act. Boy—boy! I had you +figgered for the orig’nal old hermit coyote who +travels the meat trail alone. No wonder li’l +Urgo’s all coiled up for the strike, you aimin’ +to run him out on his girl.”</p> + +<p>Before Grant could head off his friend on a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span> +topic that brought sudden embarrassment to +him ’Cepcion and a second servant entered with +a spread table. Bim tucked pillows under his +friend’s shoulders with clumsy tenderness, +then in mellow candlelight they ate and talked. +Both were bursting with questions to be +asked, but Bim claimed the right of priority +by virtue of his ten days’ blind search through +the country south of the Line. At his demand +Grant gave him the whole story of his feud +with Colonel Urgo, from the meeting at El +Paso down to the afternoon’s events in the +patio. Lively play of sympathies about the +Arizonan’s features followed the narrative of +the dreadful march in the chain gang and +Grant’s burst for freedom under the rifles of +the rurales. The little his friend left unsaid +Bim was shrewd enough to supply; he guessed +the story of Grant’s thraldom under the witchery +of the desert girl and found it good.</p> + +<p>When the man on the pillows began recital +of what had occurred just a few hours before—Urgo’s +savage assault on a girl’s pride through +the story of El Rojo’s impiety—the big man +by the bed stiffened in intensified interest. He +heard Grant through with scarce concealed impatience.</p> + +<p>“But, man, that was the Mission of the Four<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span> +Evangelists Urgo was telling of!” explosively +from Bim. Grant nodded confirmation.</p> + +<p>“Why, that’s the Doc’s big proposition—our +proposition!”</p> + +<p>Grant looked his puzzlement. The other’s +excitement swirled him on:</p> + +<p>“That proves what the Doc’s Papago told +him. Pearls buried there. An’ gold—lots of +gold, the Papago says. I had a sneaking hunch +all the time it might be one of Stooder’s wild +dreams, but this story proves we’re on the +right track.”</p> + +<p>“Do you mean—?”</p> + +<p>“Sure! That’s what I brought you out from +the East for—to help us uncover this Lost +Mission, as folks in Arizona call it. Doc Stooder’s +such a cagey old monkey he wouldn’t let +me put on paper just what I wanted you to +whack in on. Now you got it all—the pure +quill. Isn’t it a whale of a proposition!”</p> + +<p>Though Grant’s surface perception had +grasped the full import of his friend’s words +some sub-strata of mind, or of heart, stubbornly +refused to be convinced that he had +heard aright. He groped for words:</p> + +<p>“You say you brought me out here to help +you uncover pearls and gold that belong to the +Church?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span></p> + +<p>“Why not?” A subtle note of pugnacity in +the other’s speech. “The stuff’s been lyin’ +buried for a hundred an’ fifty years more or +less. The priests’ve never lifted a finger to +find it, though slews of prospectors have rooted +round trying to uncover this cache.”</p> + +<p>“But the old O’Donojus built this church and +endowed it with that very treasure you want +to dig for,” Grant persisted. “What about +their rights?”</p> + +<p>He did not hear Bim’s arguments. Instead +he was conning over the story of the bane of +the house of O’Donoju. Before his eyes was +the face of the girl he loved, as he had last +seen it, deeply graven with tragedy.</p> + +<p>Grant’s hand went out in a comrade’s clasp. +“Bim, old man, count me out on this thing. I +couldn’t consider it for a minute.”</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV</a><br /> +<small>REVELATION</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">“Don Padraic’s compliments, and he +awaits the pleasure of his guests’ company +in the music room if the sick señor feels +able.” It was ’Cepcion’s soft patois that interrupted +Bim Bagley’s explosion of pained surprise +in mid-flight. Grant gave him a smile +which interpreted the diversion as something to +his friend’s advantage and, leaning on Bim’s +shoulder, followed the servant to the great +room in the centre of the house.</p> + +<p>A fire burned in the cavernous fireplace, for +spring nights in Altar have a chill; candles in +dull silver wall sconces tempered the red light. +The vast room was so peopled with dancing +shadows from the antique furnishings that the +tall man in white and the girl who advanced +to greet the guests appeared to be moving in +a company of hooded monks.</p> + +<p>“’Nicia, Señor Bagley, the friend of our +friend.” Don Padraic bowed to Bim, who +crooked his lank body with surprising grace.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span></p> + +<p>“And I am a friend of you two,” came Bim’s +forthright answer, “since you have treated +Grant Hickman so kindly. He is the salt of the +earth.”</p> + +<p>Don Padraic indicated seats before the andirons. +Benicia chose a low settle by the side +of the great winged chair where her father +seated himself. Grant saw shadows beneath +her eyes where the firelight played upon her +features, almost waxen in uncertain light. The +glint of copper in the piled-up mass of her hair +was like summer lightning in clouds. Their +eyes met, and Grant was disappointed in the +hope he might still find the soul of the girl revealed +there as it had been that afternoon in the +unguarded moment when Benicia gave him +wordless thanks. He guessed she had told +Don Padraic of the incident in the patio and +that what had passed between father and daughter +thereafter had been a drain on the emotions +of both.</p> + +<p>Don Padraic turned to Grant with more than +perfunctory concern in speech and glance. +“Your health, señor? I fear that certain events +of the day, of which my daughter has told me—”</p> + +<p>“Please!” Grant was quick to interrupt. “I +am feeling fit as I could be, thanks to the careful +nursing I have had in your house.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span></p> + +<p>The thing that had been left unspoken by +both weighed like an unlaid spirit on the silence +that followed. Each of the four before the fire +had little thought save for the chapter of circumstance +left unconcluded by one who had +departed the Garden a few hours before, swollen +with the venom of outraged pride. It was +Don Padraic who brushed aside reserve:</p> + +<p>“Señor Hickman, I may speak before your +friend, who must share your confidence. He +will pardon my bringing personal affairs before +him. I can not postpone my thanks—my +very sincere thanks—for what you did this afternoon. +My daughter was defenceless.”</p> + +<p>“And I—” Benicia began, but Grant quickly +put in:</p> + +<p>“Will you not consider that I was really +serving my own private ends—a score to be +evened between Colonel Urgo and myself?”</p> + +<p>Bim covered a reminiscent grin with a broad +palm as Grant hurried on, eager to withhold +from the girl opportunity to speak her thanks.</p> + +<p>“When I was brought here I thought it best +to keep silent on the matter of my own private +grudge against this man. But now that it appears +we all have common cause against him +I think I may speak. Urgo himself was responsible +for my being shot.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span></p> + +<p>He saw Benicia’s eyes grow wide, read the +surprise that parted her lips in a breathed exclamation. +He thought he saw, too, just the +flash of something no eyes but his own could +understand, and he was glad. Briefly he +sketched the incident of the gambling palace +in Sonizona, his encounter with Urgo in the +office of the jail, the march with the chain +gang.</p> + +<p>“And so,” Grant concluded, “Colonel Urgo +found a dead man come to life when he saw +me in the patio to-day. When Señorita O’Donoju +was out of hearing for a moment I could +not resist a shot which left our friend guessing +whether or not I had told you, señor, how I +came by my wound.”</p> + +<p>“Ah, yes,” from Benicia in a hushed voice. +“I knew the minute I returned there had been +something between you. Urgo was like a cornered +animal.”</p> + +<p>“And so he turned on you,” Grant could +not help saying. “If only I could have guessed +beforehand his attack—”</p> + +<p>Again silence fell. Grant was alive to the +play of unspoken thought between father and +daughter; these two alone in the immensity of +the desert and facing unsupported the craft +of an implacable enemy. He sensed the battle<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span> +between their pride and their desperate need +for an ally: the one impulse dictating that what +was the secret affair of the House of O’Donoju +must remain strictly its own secret, the other +moving them to confide in him, who unwittingly +had been drawn into the struggle. Gladly +would he have offered himself as a champion; +but he must await their initiative. Suddenly +Grant recalled what Bim had told him of Urgo’s +threat at the meeting with Don Padraic on the +desert road: how the head of the Casa O’Donoju +would be held responsible for harbouring +an escaped convict. There was no blinking his +duty in this direction.</p> + +<p>“My friend tells me, Don Padraic, that Colonel +Urgo threatens your arrest as well as my +own; that you will be held responsible for concealing +a fugitive from justice. That cannot +be, of course. To-morrow, if Quelele can take +Bagley and myself in the car—”</p> + +<p>“No!” Benicia’s denial came peremptorily +and with a hint of passion which gave Grant a +sting of surprise. “No, señor, we do not turn +wounded men into the desert—particularly a +friend who has served us as you have done.”</p> + +<p>Again Grant saw in the firelit pools of her +eyes just an instant’s revelation of depths he +yearned to plumb—the aspect of a beginning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span> +love hardly knowing itself as such. He scarcely +heard the voice of Don Padraic seconding his +daughter’s protest.</p> + +<p>“The hospitality of the Casa O’Donoju,” he +was saying, “can hardly recognize such silly +threats. Colonel Urgo’s hope was that we +would send you back over the Road of the Dead +Men to Caborca or Magdalena where, naturally, +you would be made a prisoner. Please dismiss +from your mind any idea of our permitting ourselves +to play into this man’s hands.”</p> + +<p>Bim Bagley ventured to break his silence: +“Grant here and I have important business together +up over the Line. We ought to be moving +soon’s we can.” The white-haired don +turned to Bim with a gracious spreading of the +hands.</p> + +<p>“When Señor Hickman feels able to make +the journey Quelele will take him and yourself, +Señor Bagley, to westward. There is a way +through El Infiernillo up to the Arizona town +of Cuprico. By so going you will avoid any +trap Urgo might lay. But you will not hurry +Señor Hickman’s going”—Don Padraic interjected +reservation—“and you, Señor Bagley, +surely can remain with us until then.”</p> + +<p>The direct Bagley, finding himself thwarted +by the don’s suavity, sent a sheepish grin<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span> +Grant’s way in token of his defeat and maintained +silence. Don Padraic, to dismiss the subject +his reticence had reluctantly introduced, +struck a gong to summon a servant. Soon a +decanter of sherry was glowing golden in the +firelight and cigarettes were burning. The +master of the Casa O’Donoju artfully led Bim +into talk of cattle, always currency of conversation +in the Southwest. Grant drew his chair +closer to Benicia’s.</p> + +<p>“You startled me with that ‘No’ of yours to +my proposal to leave the Garden of Solitude at +once,” he said with a boldness he did not wholly +feel. “Being a little deaf, I am not sure I +heard all the reasons you gave why I should +not go.”</p> + +<p>“What you failed to hear me say my father +supplied,” the girl quickly parried, giving him +her steady gaze. He was not to be so easily +side-tracked. What had begun in boldness +swept him on in passionate sincerity:</p> + +<p>“There are many excellent reasons why I +should be somewhere else than here this time +to-morrow night; but there is one very compelling +reason why I welcome every added hour +here in the Garden. May I tell you that reason?”</p> + +<p>“If you think I should know.” The words<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span> +came simply. He, looking down into the hint +of features the firelight grudgingly gave him, +saw there the frank camaraderie of a candid +spirit: the soul that was Benicia O’Donoju, unsullied +of artifice or the vain trickeries of the +woman desired. “If you think I should know”—call +of comrade to comrade. The desert girl +scorning subtleties and inventions; knowing +what her words would prompt yet wishing them +to be said.</p> + +<p>“It is that I love you, Benicia, and that I +cannot leave you, loving you so, when I know +you are in danger.” Grant gave her his heart’s +pledge in simple directness. Though the girl +was not unprepared for his avowal, the call in +his words, elemental as the sweep of precious +rain over the thirsting desert, set quivering +chords of her being never before stirred. He +saw the trembling of her lips; her curving +lashes trembled and were jewelled with little +drops. She turned her gaze into the fire for a +long minute. Grant heard vaguely the voice of +Bim Bagley expounding some theme of cattle +ticks. His heart was on the rack.</p> + +<p>“Grant—good friend—” Her voice broke, +then valiantly found itself. “You heard from +Urgo the story of our house—of the Red One +and his crime against God—”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span></p> + +<p>“The hound!” he muttered. Benicia groped +on:</p> + +<p>“My father—no one ever told me that story +because—because—” Grant saw one hand +steal up to touch with a gesture almost abhorrent +the low wave of red over her brow—“I bear +the sign, you see.”</p> + +<p>He put out his hand to stay her, for the +dregs of suffering were working a slow torture +upon her; the face of the girl he loved had become +like some sculptor’s study of the spirit of +fatalism. He could not check her.</p> + +<p>“My father when he returned to-day and I +told him—my father said the story was true +as Urgo told it. Once in every second generation—this +sign of El Rojo, murderer and violator +of the sanctuary—”</p> + +<p>“But, Benicia, surely you don’t believe this +fairy story!” Grant packed into his low words +all the willing of a spirit fighting for precious +possession. He felt that every word the girl +spoke was pushing her farther from him.</p> + +<p>“Ah, Grant, we desert people believe easily +because the truth is not hidden. It <em>is</em> true; my +good grey father knew that I knew it to be true +and did not seek to deceive me when I asked +him. The O’Donoju with this”—again the +shrinking touch of fingers to the dull-burning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span> +stripe on her forehead—“cannot give love, for +with love goes unhappiness—and death.”</p> + +<p>She broke off suddenly, rose and hurried into +the shadows beyond the range of firelight. +Grant heard a door latch at the far end of the +room click to.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV</a><br /> +<small>WHAT HAPPENED IN THE NIGHT</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">Somewhere in the darkness of the ancient +house a deep-toned bell tolled the hour +of two. The sound came to Grant, broad awake +in his room, as if from a great distance—tocsin +strokes against the bowl of the desert sky. +Four times in his sleepless vigil he had heard +that bell measuring night watches, and each +successive hour struck seemed the period to a +century.</p> + +<p>He had gone to bed with a heavy ache following +his words with Benicia and her abrupt termination +of his pleading. On his first review +of the girl’s abnegation of the love she could +not conceal the whole thing had seemed fantastic, +almost childish in its essence of witch-bane +and belief in blighting curse. How could this +virile creature of a fine and cultured mind conceive +herself the heritor of a weight of guilt +carried down from some ancestor in the dim +past? There was the superstition of the evil +eye among ignorant peasants of the Latin countries, +to be sure; but for a girl of Benicia’s intelligence<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span> +to be enslaved by such mumbo-jumbo +as Urgo had voiced—ridiculous!</p> + +<p>Such was Grant’s first review. Weighed +from every angle and conceding the girl he +loved every mitigation of jangled nerves, nevertheless +the man of the cities could find naught +but lamentable folly in it all. The first striking +of the distant bell found him rebellious.</p> + +<p>From where he lay he could look through a +grated window up to the heavens: a square of +dappled infinity. Insensibly his eyes began +singling out the stars, measuring the gulf between +this and that steady-burning point of +light. Somewhere outside a desert owl timed +the pulse of the night with an insistent call, +unvarying, unwearying. The man on the bed +found himself tallying the blood beats to his +brain by this ghostly metronome. Beat—beat!—passing +seconds of mortality for the man +Grant Hickman. Beat—beat!—How puny a +thing, how inconsequential the life of a man +when calipered by the time measure of those +burning suns up yonder!</p> + +<p>He rallied himself, for such drifting into the +subjective was a new and puzzling experience +for a practical man. But minute by minute the +spirit of the desert, which is the spirit of chaos +become ponderable, stole over him, chaining his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span> +imagination to things felt but not seen of men. +A chill of the untoward and the unreal swept +over him. He seemed to be braced nervously +for some blow out of the void. His imagination +played with a dim figure, the shape of El Rojo +of the red hair riding—riding through the dark +on his eternal mission of damnation.</p> + +<p>The clock struck three and at the instant of +the third stroke a shadow like a bat’s wing flitted +across the bars of the window through +which the eyes of the wakeful man had been +roaming. A sharp tinkle of steel on stone split +the silence of the chamber. Grant was galvanized +into a leap from the bed. He stood +shaking. Silence. Silence absolute as the +grave after that single sharp ring of steel on +stone.</p> + +<p>He looked up at the window where the flitting +passage of the bat’s wing had showed. Just +the clear-burning stars there. The dim recesses +of the room revealed no bulk of an intruder. +Was this but the trick of overwrought nerves?</p> + +<p>Grant fumbled for his matches and brought +a light to the candle wick. By the waxing yellow +glow he peered round the chamber. A +flicker of white reflection caught his eye and +he almost leaped to a spot on the floor directly +beneath the window.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span></p> + +<p>A dagger lay there. It was that curiously +wrought affair of dulled silver haft and double-edged +blade which he had noted before as part +of the rosette of ancient knives and short +swords clamped against the high wainscoting +above the window for a wall decoration—the +weapons Don Padraic had pointed to with the +pride of a collector that first day the wounded +guest was brought in from the desert.</p> + +<p>But how could this dagger have slipped from +its sheath with no hand to disturb it? Grant +stooped to pick it up.</p> + +<p>He had the haft in his grip for a quarter-second, +then dropped the thing and leaped back +as if from an asp. Something gummed the +palm of his hand. Something showed dull +black against the dim flicker of the blade. With +a gasp he knelt and brought the candle closer.</p> + +<p>Blood there on the blade! Blood on his +hand!</p> + +<p>He stood frozen while the pumping of his +heart volleyed thunder against his ear drums. +Murder cried aloud from that stained thing of +silver and steel on the floor. Somewhere in this +rambling old pile—somewhere in the silence a +swift stroke that had snuffed out a life, and then +the murderer, fleeing, had flung this weapon +through the window. He had flung it almost<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span> +at the feet of the only one in the whole house +who was not sleeping.</p> + +<p>Alarm! He must give the alarm while yet +the murderer was near the scene! Spur to action +followed swiftly upon Grant’s momentary +numbness. He threw a dressing robe over him +and ran through the door of his chamber giving +onto the arcade about the patio. Just over the +low balustrade lay the little jungle of flowering +things, and on the opposite side, he remembered, +hung the great Javanese gong Benicia used to +summon the servants to the patio. Grant +leaped the low balustrade and stumbled crashing +through the geraniums and giant fuchsias +toward the dim moon of metal he saw in the +shadows of an arch.</p> + +<p>He came to the gong, groped for the padded +mace hanging over it. The patio roared with +its released thunders.</p> + +<p>Muffled shouts. Banging of doors. Lights. +A white figure came blundering through the arcade; +it was Bim Bagley.</p> + +<p>“Some one’s been murdered!” Grant greeted +him. “A dagger—through my window!”</p> + +<p>Came others—servants with blankets clutched +around them. Bim directed them to run to the +great door in the outer wall and catch any +skulker they might find in the gardens beyond<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span> +the house. Only dimly aware himself of something +untoward, the big man could give no more +specific directions.</p> + +<p>Then Benicia, bare-footed, her hair fallen +down over a blue robe she drew together across +her breast. Grant started towards her.</p> + +<p>“Where is father?” she cried in a woman’s +divination, and Grant noted Don Padraic’s absence. +He saw the girl make a quick step for +a closed door behind her. Unreasoned instinct +prompted him to put himself before the door, +denying her.</p> + +<p>“No; let me,” he commanded. She made a +swaying step towards Grant but was met by +the door swiftly closing in her face. Inside the +chamber, he turned the key in the lock and +struck a match to grope for a candle wick.</p> + +<p>In the pallid flicker he saw the figure of Don +Padraic on his high bed. A dagger wound was +in his breast.</p> + +<p>And the girl outside the locked door stood +very still. Her eyes, wide with horror, were +fixed upon the spot where she had seen Grant +put his hand in pushing open the door.</p> + +<p>Three small smears of blood there.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI</a><br /> +<small>ACCUSATION</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">Grant was stunned. The vision of the figure +with the fine patrician face there on +the bed—in the breast the savage mark of violence—seemed +but a part with the disordered +fancies of recent hours. Beating of Benicia’s +hands on the locked door and the faint sound +of her calls aroused him. He stepped to the +bedside and felt for a pulse, listened for a +breath. There was none.</p> + +<p>Murder had been done swiftly and surely—and +done with the ancient dagger from the +weapon cluster on the wall of his own room. In +the stunning discovery he had just made Grant +did not find any grim correlation between these +two circumstances. He pulled up a coverlet to +conceal ugly stains, then stepped to the door +and unlocked it.</p> + +<p>Benicia was waiting there. The eyes meeting +his were blazing horror. Almost Grant read in +them unthinkable accusation. He put out his +hands to support her, for she was swaying in +her effort over the doorstep.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span></p> + +<p>“No—no!” Benicia shuddered and drew +away from him as though he were a man +unclean. Mystified, Grant stepped aside to +let her pass. He saw her run to the side of the +high bed and kneel there. Her hands went out +blindly to grope for the still features on the +pillow. They played uncertainly over them, +then rested on the heavy mane of hair. Her +fingers repeated little smoothing gestures. A +breathless faltering of love phrases in the Spanish +came from her lips. Grant, seeing that the +girl retained mastery over herself, tiptoed from +the chamber; it was not meet that he should +be witness to a soul’s acceptance of the bitter +fact of death.</p> + +<p>He blundered into Bim coming back to the +patio from his excursion at the head of servants +beyond the great front door and told him what +had happened; of the dagger dropped through +the window and the murder. The big Arizonan +reared back as if roweled.</p> + +<p>“My God, man, that leaves the girl alone +here in this jumping-off place!—With that +snake Urgo in the offing. Boy, it’s up to us to +help her out!”</p> + +<p>Grant gripped his pal’s hand with a low, “I +knew I could count on you, old scout.”</p> + +<p>The dry patter of sandals came down the arcade<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span> +from a knot of lights where some of the +servants had gathered in indecision waiting to +be given orders. Grant recognized ’Cepcion in +the mountainous figure approaching and was recalled +to the necessities of the moment.</p> + +<p>“Tell her, Bim, what has happened and send +her to her mistress. Then we must get out men +to circle the Garden and prevent any person’s +getting away.”</p> + +<p>Bagley strode to meet the major domo and +rattled swift Spanish at her. The waddling Indian +woman quivered and lifted her fat arms +above her head. A dreadful wavering cry +came from her lips. Instantly the cry was +taken up by the servants at the far end of the +patio—a bone-chilling, animal noise which +climbed slowly to the highest register and ended +in a yelp. At the sound Grant’s blood went +cold. This Indian death howl was the cry of +the desert kind, calling the despair of creatures +chained to a land of drought and ever-present +death.</p> + +<p>To escape it he went with Bim out of the +great door to the unwalled spaces where the +avenue of palms stood sentinels against the +night. Beyond the bridge over the oasis stream +lay the clutter of huts that was the Papago village, +a fief under the overlordship of the manor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span> +house. Not a light showed among the thirty +or forty beehive shapes when the two men +started to walk under the palms; but suddenly +a cry arose from the midst of the village answering +that coming down the night wind from +the mourners in the great house. Rumour of +death had outstripped the two who walked.</p> + +<p>The single cry from the village instantly +grew in volume. Treble voices of squaws lifted +the abomination of noise to the saw edge of a +screech; men’s harsher notes rumbled and +boomed intolerably. All the night was made +bedlam.</p> + +<p>Lights were winking through the chinks of +the jacals when Grant and Bim came to the +outskirts of the village. There was confusion +of forms skittering about from hut to hut. Bim +seized upon one man and demanded to know the +whereabouts of Quelele, head man of the village. +The big Indian soon stood before them +with a gesture of hand to breast indicating they +were to command him.</p> + +<p>“Somebody has killed your master,” Bim +told him. “Get out men on horses to circle the +Garden and go out along the road both ways. +Cover every foot and bring in anybody you +may find.”</p> + +<p>Quelele sped with hoarse shouts down the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span> +village’s single street; a dozen men joined him +in a race for the corrals.</p> + +<p>“There’s no way for the murderer to get +out and live except along the road,” was Bim’s +comment as they turned to retrace their steps +to the house. “If he took to the mountains +even with a horse he couldn’t last a day; they’re +straight up and down.”</p> + +<p>They had not gone fifty yards from the Papago +village when a new sound punctuated the +death cry, now settled to a monotonous chant +promising hours’ duration. It was the <i>bum-bum-bum</i> +of the water-drum—gigantic gourds +floated, cut side down, in a tub of water and +drubbed with sticks. That noise was accompanied +by the locust-like slither and rattle of +the rasping sticks, another primitive tempo-setting +instrument of the Southwestern natives.</p> + +<p>The death howl began to catch its measure by +the boom and screak of these two instruments. +A noise to beat against the inside of men’s +skulls and set the bone of them in rhythm. +Savage as the peaks of Altar, unremitting as +the drive of wind-blown sand against granite.</p> + +<p><em>Bum-chut-chut-chut!</em> Sob of a land in chains.</p> + +<p>“Oh, tell them to cut it!” Grant’s frayed +nerves cried out protest. The other merely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span> +gave a wave of his hand comprehending resignation.</p> + +<p>“Might as well tell the wind to stop. This’ll +keep up for three days—this ding-dong business. +It’s custom, old son.”</p> + +<p>As they drew near to the house of death +again Grant caught his mind harking back to +that moment when he had come from Don Padraic’s +chamber to confront the girl’s wild eyes—eyes +with almost the unthinkable look of accusation +in them. That aspect of her eyes +dumbfounded him, left him groping for an explanation.</p> + +<p>Once at the house, Grant took his friend to +his chamber and showed him the knife where +it lay on the floor as he had dropped it. The +big Arizonan stooped over with the candle near +the grisly thing—his hawk’s nose and salient +cheekbones were outlined against the candle +flame like the raised head of some emperor on +a Roman coin—and very gingerly he turned the +dagger over.</p> + +<p>“Finger prints here on the haft,” he +grunted.</p> + +<p>“Yes, mine,” Grant put in. “I picked it up +at first without knowing—without reckoning +there might be—” He broke off to pour water<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span> +into the quaint old willow-ware bowl which +stood with its ewer on a stand in a corner, then +he scrubbed his hands vigorously. A great +relief came to him with this act of purification.</p> + +<p>“Yours—yes, and probably somebody +else’s,” Bim was mumbling his thoughts aloud. +He stood erect once more and measured the +height of the barred window over the lintel of +which was fixed the rosette of arms. “Hum. I +simply don’t figger why the man who wanted +to kill the old don came to the outside of this +room, clum up the wall an’ reached in through +those bars there to take one of these old knives. +Can’t see why all that fuss—more particular, +why he snuck back here an’ tossed the knife +through the bars after his bloody work.”</p> + +<p>“Perhaps he wanted it to appear I am the +murderer,” Grant hazarded doubtfully.</p> + +<p>“You!” Bim looked up with a wry smile. +“Why should you want to kill off that fine old +man?—What motive?”</p> + +<p>“What motive for anybody here in the house +or in the Papago village outside for that matter?” +Grant voiced his perplexity. “Don Padraic +was the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">padrone</i> of every Indian from the +Gulf to Arizora. From what his daughter tells +me there’s not a Papago on the place here who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span> +wouldn’t gladly have died in his place. The +whole thing’s too deep for me.”</p> + +<p>They left the dim chamber with its relic of +violence still lying on the floor and walked out +into the perfumed patio. It was the hour when +first heralds of dawn were coursing across the +sky. Grant looked up to the dimming stars and +read there the same message that had come to +him the hours before swift stroke of tragedy: +the fragility of that spider web man spins into +the gulf of infinite time. And the oneness of +this unlimned stretch of vacancy called the +Desert of Altar with that ethereal desert of +stars. How infinitesimal in the face of either +the soul of man, its hopes!</p> + +<p>A great sense of impotence weighed down on +Grant. His thoughts dwelt with the girl he +loved, sore stricken by this cowardly blow in the +dark, bereft of one who had been soul of her +soul. Now, the last of her name, alone in this +bleak wilderness with none to fend for her +against the wiles of Urgo except the child-like +Indians: what a situation for Benicia to face! +The man yearned to go to where she knelt alone +with her dead, to take her in his arms and give +her pledge of his love and protection. Yet +that was not meet. The gulf of Benicia’s grief +denied him.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span></p> + +<p>Bim brought Grant out of his reverie with, +“It’s my hunch we won’t have to look far to +find the man behind this bad business.”</p> + +<p>“You mean—?”</p> + +<p>“That same—Hamilcar Urgo,” was Bim’s +positive assertion. Grant objected:</p> + +<p>“But you passed him well on the way to Magdalena +this afternoon. It’s not likely he’d risk +coming back in his car to attempt porch-climbing +and murder. That’s not in his line.”</p> + +<p>“Sure not! But one of these Indians around +here who knows the lay of the house—somebody +who savvyed, for instance, about those old +knives on your wall—a hundred silver pesos +from Urgo’s pocket—”</p> + +<p>Grant’s mind was in no state to analyze subtleties +of villainy. “I can’t see what Urgo +could possibly gain by killing Don Padraic unless +there’s a great deal behind his relations +with Benicia’s father you and I don’t know.”</p> + +<p>The fat shape of ’Cepcion waddled down the +nearby arcade in the direction of the room +wherein Benicia had locked herself. Bim’s +eyes idly followed her as he pressed his argument:</p> + +<p>“Maybe so—maybe not. But figger the thing +thisaway: Urgo’s dead set on marryin’ this +high-spirited señorita—if you’ll excuse me<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span> +trompin’ on a tender subject, old hoss—an’ he +reckons they’s two folks who don’t encourage +those ideas to the limit—her father and yourself. +Yourself he tries to get on suspicion and +because you riled him on the train like you say. +Now he does for the father an’ counts he has +the girl for the taking, she having no kith or +kin to come up in support, as you might say.”</p> + +<p>The dawn reddened and still the two men in +the patio fruitlessly pursued speculation. A +sudden step crunched the gravel behind them. +Both leaped at the sound, so taut were their +nerves. They turned to see Benicia standing +in the half light with the misty banks of geraniums +for a background. With her were the +giant Papago Quelele and two other Indians. +They carried loops of hair ropes.</p> + +<p>“Señor Hickman”—the girl’s voice was +deadly cold—“Señor Hickman, my servant +’Cepcion has just brought to me the dagger she +found in your room. The dagger is stained +with my father’s blood, señor. There are prints +of fingers on the haft of that dagger, Señor +Hickman.”</p> + +<p>Grant caught the poisonous edge of hatred +in the voice, read the bitter accusation in her +eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, but Benicia +checked him.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span></p> + +<p>“I saw you leave those prints of my father’s +blood on the door of his chamber, señor. Before +my very eyes, señor! Just now when +’Cepcion brings me the dagger she finds in +your room I compare the print of fingers on +its haft with the print on the door. They are +the same. What have you to say, Señor Hickman?”</p> + +<p>“Say!” Bim Bagley’s voice snapped like a +whip lash. “Are you accusing Grant Hickman +here of murder?” Benicia never even cast a +glance at him. She repeated:</p> + +<p>“What have you to say to this, Señor Hickman?” +Grant answered levelly, “Enough already +has been said, Señorita O’Donoju.” Benicia +signalled to Quelele and he advanced with +the ropes.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII</a><br /> +<small>THE ORDEAL</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">With the lithe spring of a cat Bim put himself +between Grant and the advancing Indian. +His face had gone dead white and his +eyes were coals blown upon by the wind of +anger.</p> + +<p>“None of that! Get back there—you!” +Bim’s voice was scarcely audible but his pose +of furious battling on the hair-trigger of +release was sufficiently vocal to awe the Papago +giant into a backward stumble. Then to +Benicia:</p> + +<p>“Young woman, you’re making the mistake +of your life. I’m a’mighty sorry for you, an’ +you are going to be right regretful yourself +when you have time to think.” Grant made a +step forward to lay a checking hand on his +friend’s arm. He would have spoken but the +girl interrupted.</p> + +<p>“My father’s blood on this man’s hands!—the +dagger from the wall of his chamber—” +Of a sudden the last shred of restraint she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span> +had battled to impose upon herself gave way +and a flood came under propulsion of hysteria. +Out fluttered her hands to point the object of +her execration.</p> + +<p>“You—I do not know you! Just a chance +meeting between us and we part. Then fate +brings you to this house wounded—snatched +from death. An escaped convict from a chain +gang—you yourself admitted as much just last +night. With good reason my cousin, Colonel +Urgo, must have caused your arrest. Why +should I not believe you capable of killing my +father? Why not when the signs of his very +blood cry out against you!”</p> + +<p>“Señorita O’Donoju—” Grant’s effort to +check her was fruitless, for she had whirled +upon Bagley: “And you! Unknown to my +father—unknown to me. He brought you here +on your own representation. You said you +were hunting for your friend to whom we had +offered our hospitality. Can you deny that +both of you discovered opportunity here to +kill—and then to rob?”</p> + +<p>The storm that had swept the girl through +this welter of imaginings, illogical, frenetic, +took heavy toll of her physical reserves. Now +she stood trembling, white-faced in the spreading +dawn, pitiful. Her small hands were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span> +clenched into fists across her breast. Flutterings +of uncontrolled nerves made the flesh of +her temples pulsate. Grant, for all the crushing +horror of these moments, felt pity pushing +through the numbness Benicia’s accusation had +wrought. Never had he seen a woman so tortured +by the devils of hysteria; he was appalled. +He spoke to her gently:</p> + +<p>“If you will permit me to go to my room +while you make further investigations I will +answer any questions they may suggest. It +must be plain to you, Señorita O’Donoju, that +I cannot escape from this place.”</p> + +<p>The girl gave him a dazed look as if she +hardly comprehended what he said, then she +slowly nodded and, beckoning the Indians to +follow, she turned and disappeared beyond the +patio’s green. Bim threw an arm over his pal’s +shoulder and accompanied him to his room. At +the door he whirled Grant about with a strong +grip of both his hands and gave him a grin more +eloquent than any sermon on fortitude.</p> + +<p>“When the she-ones get to stampedin’, old +pal, they sure have us helpless men winging. +Now go in there and get a sleep while I take a +look round below your window and elsewheres.”</p> + +<p>Bim’s easy injunction to sleep was not so +easily followed by the man who was a self-appointed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span> +prisoner. On his bed Grant tossed in +a fever of mingled blind speculation and outraged +pride. Strive though he might to palliate +Benicia’s charge against him on the score of +the girl’s complete prostration through the +night’s tragedy, the quick and fiery blood in her +that was inheritance from Spanish forebears, +yet always he came against the same ugly fact: +one whom he loved with all the passion in him +and whose return of love he had dared hope to +win had accused him of murder out of hand.</p> + +<p>Yet how could he prove his innocence? Of a +sudden that thought plumped down on him with +the burst of a high explosive shell.</p> + +<p>Benicia’s accusation had appeared monstrous, +yes. But, look upon the facts through +her eyes—so a curiously impersonal phase of +mind prompted; what were those facts as they +appeared to the girl? A man who was first +a chance acquaintance in a train and then, by +a trick of fate, a guest in the house, rouses the +household at three o’clock in the morning by +sounding an alarm in the patio. He calls +“Murder!” though he does not say who has +been murdered, he has not apparently discovered +the body of Don Padraic in his chamber.</p> + +<p>This man—this waif brought in from the desert—prevents +the daughter’s going in to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span> +room of death until first he has entered that +room and locked the door behind him. He +leaves the marks of his fingers in blood upon +the outside of that door. Then he and his +friend—“call him confederate” was Grant’s +cynical amendment—organize a hue and cry +outside of the house. While this is in progress +a servant finds in the guest’s room a dagger; +instead of being in its usual place amid the +rack of weapons on the wall this dagger lies +on the floor as if hastily thrown there by one +who had no proper time for its concealment. +The dagger is blood stained and on its haft +are the same finger prints as those on the door +of the dead don’s chamber.</p> + +<p>There was the record. How refute it?</p> + +<p>Say that while lying awake he saw a hand +appear at the bars of his window and heard +the tinkle of a knife dropped within? Why, if +he was so vigilant at three o’clock in the morning, +had he not seen that hand of a murderer +steal in to abstract the weapon before the deed? +And whose hand was it? Did not the burden +of proof that it was not his own which took +the dagger from the wall rest solely upon Grant +Hickman?</p> + +<p>Another’s finger prints on that bloodied haft +besides his own? Perhaps. But it needed the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span> +instruments of precision of a detective central +office to juggle with such minutiæ as the whorls +and spirals in a finger print, and they most certainly +were lacking at the Casa O’Donoju. +Graver difficulty still, there were a hundred and +more Indians in the oasis; how gather them all +together and take the prints of their fingers?</p> + +<p>The more his mind roved amid hypotheses +the closer about him seemed drawn the meshes +of circumstance. As the sun of a new day +painted a glory beyond the bars of his window +Grant Hickman felt himself as helpless as that +Tomlinson of the Kipling story who plunged +headlong through the space between all the +suns of infinity.</p> + +<p>He must have slipped into the sleep of exhaustion, +for it was near noon when a knock on +his door roused him. At his bidding ’Cepcion +opened to illustrate a command in Spanish +with a backward jerk of her head. Grant arose +and followed her through a corridor to the patio. +Benicia was standing there in an attitude +of awaiting him, a little beyond her was Bim, +his face wreathed with a heartening smile.</p> + +<p>The girl received him with bleak eyes. “You +will please follow me, señor,” was all she said. +Then she led the way, the two men a step behind +her, out of the still house and down the avenue<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span> +of palms towards the Papago village. From +time to time a turn in the path gave Grant a +glimpse of Benicia’s face. It was a changed +woman he saw.</p> + +<p>Gone was the vital spirit of joy of living +which always gave the girl her character of +Eurydice in khaki; gone, too, that softness of +grain born of happiness undisturbed, of life +amid the elemental things of nature. This +Benicia was a cold fury moving to judgment. +The call of her Spanish blood from centuries +past—call for vengeance and blood-sacrifice—had +possessed her. It was as if some mocking +cartoonist had run a brush over the features +of Innocence in portraiture, giving an upward +twist of cruelty to lips, the glint of blood lust +in eyes.</p> + +<p>They came to the Indian village, all hushed +in anticipation of some prodigy. Only the +frog-croaking of the water drums and the dry +clicking of the rasping sticks betokened a continuance +of the mourning ritual. All the retainers +of the Casa O’Donoju, farmers, cattle +handlers, house servants, men, squaws and +half-naked children, were assembled in the +rudely-defined street that led between rows of +reed and mud-capped huts. Two only were +seated apart: the man who bobbled the drumming<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span> +sticks over the turtle-back halves of the +gourds and an ancient who manipulated the +rasping sticks. On every bronze-black face +showed the strain of awaiting an untoward +event.</p> + +<p>When Benicia appeared some elderly squaws +started afresh the lugubrious death howl, but a +gesture from the girl silenced them. She beckoned +Quelele to her and spoke some rapid words +in the Papago tongue. He in turn passed the +orders to two men, who ran into one of the +nearby huts to reappear staggering under the +weight of a great metal kettle, such as might +be used for soap boiling, carried between them. +Quelele laid two heavy flat stones in the middle +of the street; the kettle carriers deposited their +burden, rim down on the rocks. A space of +two inches or more showed between the kettle +rim and the hard adobe.</p> + +<p>Still the hollow <i>bum-bum-bum</i> of the water-drum, +whisper and cluck of the notched sticks. +A very old man, the skin of whose naked legs +was grey and tough as elephant hide, had attached +ceremonial circlets of dried yucca pods +about his ankles in a cuff extending almost to +the knees. He took his stand by the instrumentalists +and his feet moved in a shuffle in +time to the drum beats. The pods emitted dry<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span> +whispers. The rapt look of a seer was on his +leathern features.</p> + +<p>The kettle in place, Quelele himself went to +a small pen of <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">ocatilla</i> sticks on the outskirts of +the village and brought therefrom a young +rooster. The fowl’s head bobbed nervously and +his small eyes glinted as he was carried on the +big Indian’s arm through the throng. Two +helpers lifted the edge of the soap kettle while +Quelele thrust the cock underneath. A faint +clucking came muffled from the iron prison. +The bird thrust his head out here and there +from beneath the rim, seeking egress.</p> + +<p>Now Benicia took from ’Cepcion something +she had carried wrapped about in a handkerchief +and carried it to the kettle top. She let +fall the handkerchief and with a slight gesture +focused the eyes of all upon the stained dagger. +A sigh like the swish of a scythe in long grass +swept through the crowd as the girl balanced +the knife on the exact top of the dome of fire-smudged +metal. The ancient with the yucca +rattles did a sacrificial step which caused a +sharp alarm like that of the desert sidewinder’s +warning.</p> + +<p>Grant and Bim, still unaware of the significance +of all this preparation, sensed the growing +tensity of emotions all about them. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span> +Papagoes, like all their kind, more than ready +to invest with ritual any untoward incident of +life, saw in the white girl’s preparations—particularly +in the offering of the knife upon this +rude altar—formulæ of an appeal to decision +of powers beyond human comprehension. Perhaps +the elders, remembering tales of ancient +custom, recognized the preliminaries and welcomed +a revival among the unregenerate +younger men of a direct appeal to Elder +Brother. If big Quelele knew better he had kept +his tongue still.</p> + +<p>Benicia’s features had never relaxed their +cold intentness during the preparations. There +was even, to Grant’s troubled scrutiny, some +element of the barbaric there. A look like that +on the stone visage of an Aztec goddess, implacable, +without mortal instincts. She took +her stand by the kettle and spoke rapidly to +the Papagoes, pointing to the knife, then lifting +her finger to mark the place of the sun in the +white sky.</p> + +<p>Abruptly she finished, stooped and touched +one finger to the bottom of the kettle. It came +away blackened by soot. Then she turned to +Grant. “It is the test of God,” she said in a +dulled voice. “My people have used it in times +past when they were perplexed as I am. All<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span> +here including you, Señor Hickman, and you, +Señor Bagley, will endure this test even as I +just have done. Put your fingers to the kettle +and show them to all, blackened. God will speak +through the mouth of the imprisoned cock when +the guilty man touches the iron.”</p> + +<p>Grant gave the girl a steady look, then without +a word he stepped to the blackened dome, +swept the fingers of his right hand across it +and held them aloft. Benicia was looking away +when Grant stepped back beside her; he saw a +convulsive movement of her throat—no other +sign. Then big Bim dared the oracle with an +easy grace. A shuddering intake of breath +from the Indians as each man underwent trial.</p> + +<p>Quelele now gave an order which brought all +the men of the village and great-house into line +of which he was the head. Even the musicians +were replaced by squaws who did not permit +the drubbing and squeaking to diminish. The +faces of all wore the set look of hypnosis—eyes +white and staring, muscles twittering in cheeks, +tongues licking out over dried lips.</p> + +<p><em>Thrut-t-t-t-t!</em> An extra flourish of the rasping +sticks and a thunder of the water drums +as Quelele started the line forward toward the +kettle. The big Indian moved with a mincing +sidewise step reminiscent of some deer-dance of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span> +his people at the festival of <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">sahuaro</i>. His arms +were held rigidly crooked at elbows and fingers +splayed. The great moon face was contorted +into a lolling mask. He sweat with fear.</p> + +<p>Twice the lightning-like bobbing out and back +of the imprisoned cock’s head as Quelele approached. +“Ai-ie!” a squaw screamed in a +frenzy.</p> + +<p>The leader touched the kettle, held up his +blackened finger for those in line behind him to +see, then broke from line and stood at a little +distance from Benicia and the two white men.</p> + +<p>Second in line was the ancient with the yucca +rattles on his legs. Coming to the kettle, he +stood rigid, tilted his old eyes to the blinding +sun. A shiver ran down his body which caused +every dry pod of his anklets to emit a whisper. +He whirled once, dipped and swept a finger +through the soot. “<i lang="es" xml:lang="es">Njo oovik</i> (Bird speaking),” +he cried, and there was foam on his lips.</p> + +<p>But the bird did not speak, and the line came +slowly on. The spell of the weird had Grant +bound. The rational in him tried to prompt +that all this was but a shrewd application of +the new psychological method of crime detection +as utilized by primitive peoples before +ever the science of the mind was thought of;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span> +but his imagination strained to hear the crowing +of the cock when the finger of guilt was +laid upon the iron shell. Mutter of the drums, +shuffle of dancing feet, guttural calls and imprecations: +these things had swept away all +prim gauds and dressings of a mind counting +itself superior and he was swept back to kinship +with the wild, its children. Again the desert +moved to bring him under its subjection.</p> + +<p>“Lookit that fellah!” It was Bim who +gripped Grant’s arm and pointed to the advancing +line. One of the younger bucks had +dodged out of his place and fallen back three +numbers.</p> + +<p>On came the men facing trial by ordeal. +Now and again the imprisoned cock thrust his +head out with snake-like darting, and the individual +who was poised over the kettle hiccoughed +fear. The young man who had dodged +back tried the trick again when he was near +the kettle; but the one behind him held him by +the shoulders and forced him on.</p> + +<p>The dodger came to the place of test, hesitated, +made a downward sweep of his hand +and stumbled past. Big Quelele suddenly +leaped at him and gripped his right hand. No +smudge of soot on the fingers.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span></p> + +<p>“Hai—ee!” Quelele called, and the line stood +still. He wrenched the young man’s hand high +above his head and showed the fingers clean. +“Hai—ee!” chorused fifty voices. Quelele +started to drag the wretch back to the kettle.</p> + +<p>Then his victim went to his knees—to his +face in the dust. He rolled and kicked, screaming. +Still Quelele dragged him nearer the +kettle, his right hand firmly gripped in the vise +of his own two, forefinger extended to take the +print of soot and draw the cock’s crow.</p> + +<p>“I did it! I did it!” the wretched creature +blubbered. Quelele dropped him as if he were +a poisonous lizard. The crowd pushed forward +menacingly. The murderer fumbled in his +trousers pocket and brought out a shining silver +peso, which he threw from him with a gesture +of horror. Quelele picked it up and turned +it over in his palm, his brow heavily knotted. +He passed it to Benicia.</p> + +<p>The girl turned the coin over to the reverse, +whereon the spread eagle grips a snake and a +cactus branch in his talons. A deep knife cut +was scored through the neck of the eagle.</p> + +<p>The wretch in the dust saw she had noted the +mutilation and cried out to her in pleading, +“The sign, mistress! The sign! The soldier-señor +Urgo tells me many months ago when I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span> +receive the sign I shall kill or my brother, who +is in his prison, will be shot!”</p> + +<p>“And he gave you this—” the girl began.</p> + +<p>“Yesterday, mistress. He passes me in his +thunder-wagon and tosses me this peso. ‘Find +the knife in the room of the wounded gringo +señor,’ he commands. ‘Use no other.’”</p> + +<p>Benicia nodded to Quelele, who made a sign +to others. They brought a hair rope and +trussed the murderer hands to feet. His lips +were mute. Stamp of fate was on his grey +features. He knew his punishment: to be taken +to the burning lava fields of Pinacate, where +the dead volcanoes are, there to be left without +gun or canteen; no man would see him again. +Such was the Papago custom decreed for murderers +from beforetime.</p> + +<p>She who had ordained this trial by ordeal +had turned away, once the wretch’s confession +had been heard. The soul of the girl now +stood its own trial in turn; faced by the guilt +of false suspicion, by the wounds wrought of +bitter accusation, it must needs purge itself. +Yes, even though the spirit of Benicia O’Donoju +was not one easily to humble itself. A long +minute she fought with herself and finally +turned gropingly to make her hard penance before +Grant.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span></p> + +<p>Then she saw the figure of the man whose +debtor in honour she was striding with his companion +towards the avenue of palms leading +to the house. The distance between them +seemed suddenly the breadth of the world.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII</a><br /> +<small>THE DESERT INTERVENES</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">That day omniscient will of the desert +moved to point a murderer’s guilt the +same inscrutable power flexed a finger to mould +events some seventy miles away from the Garden +of Solitude where the worthy doctor from +Arizora and his Papago had been nibbling at +a mystery. Though Doc Stooder moved in a +haze of strong waters, though he looked upon +the face of the desert through a golden veil +of his own weaving, yet was he not the least +immune from the law of the waste places. The +Doc walked with God, even as did the pioneer +fathers of the Church; the fact that he did not +admit the companionship had no influence on +the operations of destiny.</p> + +<p>We left Stooder on his knees before the uncovered +bell with its inscription carrying identification. +His excitements, his hysterical grubbings, +soundings and prospectings of the ensuing +twenty-four hours were heroic. After the +uncovering of the bell he had paced off a square<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span> +through the scrub thirty or forty feet each way +and with the corroded cone of metal for a centre; +then the Indian and he had gone on their +hands and knees over every inch of this square. +Result, a single stick of hewn timber whose +fire-blackened end had projected but an inch +above the sand; digging revealed a twenty-foot +beam, dry as a puff-ball and almost ready to +disintegrate.</p> + +<p>That was all: the bell and the uncovered +beam. But that was enough. Doc Stooder +knew that beneath him lay the mission site; +how deeply the blown sands of more than a +century had buried it he could not guess. But +it was here! Here lay the rich core of a legend +that had sent many a man out into the desert +to chase rainbow ends. His—Stooder’s! +A’mighty God! how he’d riffle those pearls +through his fingers—lay ’em all out on a piece +of velvet under some secret lamp and match +’em, pearl with pearl.</p> + +<p>But twenty-four hours in the desert exact +their price; and that price is in measure of +water. The Doc did not drink water so long +as his store of contraband liquor held out; but +the Papago did. Great was the Doc’s rage +and disgust when his companion called him +away from sinking a prospect shaft to point<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span> +the single remaining water container, now much +lighter than it should be. He tested the little +car’s radiator to find that evaporation had left +almost none of the necessary fluid therein. No +use buckin’ fate; if he wanted to get back to +the village of the Sand People on four wheels +he’d have to give the radiator a drink and that +would leave none for himself and the Papago.</p> + +<p>It was near noon of their second day at the +treasure site when the Doc whipped his reluctance +into acceptance of the inevitable. He +made certain preparations. First he copied +into a prescription book the inscription on the +bell; that would do to convince somebody +whose financing of the excavation operations +might have to be invoked. Then he sketched a +map of the vicinity with meticulous care, marking +in the jagged spurs of the nearby mountains +for bearing points and indicating the position +of the bell in reference to a dry wash +which was traced down from a gash in the +mountain wall.</p> + +<p>“Guadalupe, old son, your old friend +Stooder’s goin’ rustle back here with an outfit +right soon an’ dig himself right down to them +pearls. So he’s just a mite p’ticular about this +map.”</p> + +<p>Access of caution prompted the Doc to dismount<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span> +from the car after he’d set the engine +to humming. He ran back with a shovel and +covered the bell with sand; the haggled bush +above it would be a sufficient guide for him and +no significant landmark for the possible prying +stranger. The beam he hid in the wash. +Then they trundled down their own track and +back to the Road of the Dead Men. Doc +Stooder cursed the necessity of automobiles +leaving tracks. Some snoozer amblin’ along +the main road would just’s like as not turn out +to follow these two lines out into nowhere to +see what he could see. Then perhaps—</p> + +<p>Summer had come miraculously to the desert +overnight, as the seasons in Altar have a way +of doing. Yesterday the pink convolvulus of +spring lay in scattered coral patches amid the +scrub and the greasewood was showing its midget +spots of yellow. Now every glistening +clump of <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">cholla</i> was aglow with the blood-red +flowers of its kind; the occasional pillars of +the giant cactus were wreathed each at its top +by fillets of creamy blossoms—grotesque masquerading +of these withered old men of the +wastes. First hint of summer’s heat was +abroad. It came from the west on puffy little +winds like the back-draught from an oil-burning +boiler.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span></p> + +<p>The Doc found himself in a frolicsome mood, +for his night’s potations, predicated on a +dwindling supply, had recklessly drained that +supply but availed to carry him over to another +day with the stars of his dream world still burning. +Hunched low in his seat so that the tip of +his goatee waggled against the rim of the wheel, +with his flopping black hat all grease streaked +pulled low against the sun glare, the tramp physician +chewed tobacco with all the unction of a +care-free conscience and indulged himself in +wandering monologue. Guadalupe’s meagre +stock of Spanish made him anything but a lively +conversationalist, so the Doc was constrained +to carry on a vivid conversation with himself.</p> + +<p>Into what penetralia of reminiscence this +auto-dialogue carried him! Back through the +years—through countless dim valleys of a +Never-Never Land of alcoholic fantasies where +his spirit had been wont to pitch its tent. +Scraps of jest and shreds of song stirred the +ghosts along the Road of the Dead Men.</p> + +<p>No such exuberance from Guadalupe, slave +of the desert. They had not been an hour on +the road when the Papago began to feel a crawling +of the nerves along the spine and the pressure +of invisible fingers across the brow—evil +signs! No less than the mountain sheep or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span> +the road-runner in the scrub could the Papago +interpret the desert’s forerunners of portent. +A feel in the air—hue of the mountain rims—colour +of sunlight against a rock: these things +had their meaning.</p> + +<p>Away off to the northward where a patch of +gypsum showed white as film ice the Indian’s +eye caught the first tangible evidence of trouble +ahead. A dust whirlwind like a gigantic leg in +baggy trousers was wavering across the flats; +the thing possessed volition of its own so surely +did it map its course across a five-mile span in +less than five minutes. Guadalupe nudged his +companion timidly and pointed to it.</p> + +<p>“Uh-huh, old Peg-legged Grandpap,” +chuckled the Doc. “Seen him lots times. Gotta +hole in his peg-leg you can drive a car through +slick’s a whistle—allowin’ you can find the +hole.”</p> + +<p>A half hour later the sun changed colour. +Like the passing of a shutter across a calcium +light: now blinding white, now blood-orange. +Instantaneous.</p> + +<p>Three gusts of sand-laden wind came sweeping +toward them from the west. A long lull, +then the storm.</p> + +<p>It pounced upon them with a sibilant whistle +growing momentarily to a roar which was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span> +engulfing. The little desert skimmer bucked +like a wild colt against the onslaught of the +wind; but when the Doc dropped the engine into +low the car wallowed on in the face of the gale. +The air was thick as flour. Wind-driven sand +had the bite of an emery wheel at high revolution; +it rasped the skin and drove eyelids tight +shut. The two in the car buttoned jackets above +their noses to breathe.</p> + +<p>All the space of the desert was a poisonous +yellow glare. Minute by minute density thickened +until the car’s radiator was hardly visible.</p> + +<p>Then the sturdy engine quit. First a tortured +grinding of clogged cylinders, puny explosions +from the exhaust, a bucking and quivering. +After that sudden stoppage of movement as if +the car had plumped into a stone wall.</p> + +<p>The Doc and Guadalupe tumbled out of the +seat and crawled beneath the car for protection. +A stab of fear shot down through Stooder’s disordered +thoughts—the water! None in the canteens, +for they had drained the last into the +radiator before starting from the treasure +ground. Was there—could the sand have—?</p> + +<p>He inched himself through a new sand drift +below the front axle to where the drain cock +projected below the radiator base. Like a suckling +kid he lifted his lips to the steel teat and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span> +turned the cock. A trickle of heavy mud filled +his mouth with grit, then stopped.</p> + +<p>Radiator a mess of mud—cylinders clogged—feed +pipes all choked and water—gone!</p> + +<p>Doc Stooder pulled his floppy hat over his +face and whimpered the name of God.</p> + +<p>And on the back trail where the bell of the +Lost Mission had been found; over that site +which the Doc had so carefully mapped and +measured the wind scoured and builded—scoured +and builded. Obliterating, changing, +re-creating.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX</a><br /> +<small>THIRST</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">The sun went down before the sand storm +abated. Two men, the one called civilized, +the other a savage, crouched like rabbits in a +covert beneath the body of the little car with a +high sand drift piled up to windward even over +the radiator top. Two mites in the wind-scourged +wilderness of Altar with love o’ life +the leveller that made them kin.</p> + +<p>When the last vagrant wind fury had passed +fell silence almost terrific by contrast with the +uproar of the storm. In place of the slithering +and whistling of driven sand an oppressive stillness, +which seemed dropped from the void of +the stars, now showing. Occasionally the dry +rustle of sand dropping in rivulets from some +desert bush lifting its head after the scourging; +that was all.</p> + +<p>When the two crawled out from beneath their +shelter Guadalupe was for an immediate start +afoot in the direction of the faint pencilings of +red marking the west. But Doc Stooder possessed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span> +an abiding glimmer of faith in the soundness +of the car and insisted on taking stock of +its motive possibilities. A cursory examination +convinced him of the hopelessness of his trust, +for the sand was heaped entirely over the unprotected +engine—desert cars dispense with a +hood because it blankets the engine’s heat—and +he knew that even with water in the radiator +he couldn’t get a kick out of the thing before a +thorough overhauling. This was out of the +question. They must achieve their escape from +the desert’s trap afoot.</p> + +<p>The Papago started on a swinging walk a +little north of west, the Doc following. They +had not gone far when the white man discovered +they were not following the road; each step was +through loose sand which received the foot with +a viscous hold and reluctantly released it. The +Doc snarled a query at his companion: why in +the name of deletion had he quit the Road of the +Dead Men?</p> + +<p>“Not quit—finding him,” came Guadalupe’s +grudging answer. Then Stooder admitted to +himself the possibility that during the time the +little car had pushed on into the storm he had +tooled it off the road. How far he had driven +away from the single track which spans Altar +he could not hazard a guess. Anyway, he knew<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span> +one thing: he was dog tired, and if this mangy +black coyote thought A. Stooder, M.D., was going +to wallow through sand all night without a +sleep he had another think coming.</p> + +<p>Reaction from the excitements of the past two +days added extra weight to the Doc’s already +none-too-light handicap of alcoholic repercussions. +The storm had torn his nerves to tatters; +his mouth was as dry as an old church pew +cushion; each of his legs felt as if they were +dragging an Oregon boot. Stooder’s mind was +too dulled to probe down below these afflictions +and read the real seriousness of his situation; +it dealt only with cogent aches and reluctances.</p> + +<p>“Hey, Guadalupe! We take a sleep right +here.” The Doc halted. Great was his surprise +when he saw the Papago striding on. Hot rage +bubbled to his lips in an explosive Mexican oath.</p> + +<p>“Hey, you lizard-eatin’ mozo, hear me? We +stop here for the big shut-eye!” The Doc +spurred his long legs into a gangling run to +overtake the Indian, who had plodded on unheeding. +All the arrogance of the white man +in his fancied superiority fell with the doctor’s +hand on the Indian’s shoulder. Guadalupe +wrenched free and turned to face him sulkily.</p> + +<p>“Sleep here—to-morrow much sun—no +water. Maybe to-morrow we die here. Walk!”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span> +Guadalupe’s sparse vocabulary of Spanish +words was drained; but the manner of his resuming +the forward hike was sufficiently eloquent. +Guadalupe, born to the desert code and +grown to manhood under the inexorable desert +law, had in mind but a single impulse—to survive. +His mind plumped through the bog of discomforts +wherein Stooder’s was mired to read +clearly the tablets of the desert’s decalogue: ten +commandments in one—live! In extremity +throw over loyalty, discard obligations of oath +or of blood, strip the soul to its elemental selfishness; +but live!</p> + +<p>Guadalupe strode on, still bearing to the north +and the west, and still no road. Stooder, growing +more weary each step, spent his strength +in blind rage at the stubbornness of the Papago. +He conned over various capital operations he +would like to perform with Guadalupe for a +subject. His brain tired of that and began to +nurture the germ of a new thought. Why strain +himself keeping up with that ring-tailed kangaroo +rat who skipped on and on without rest? +Guadalupe left the print of his foot every step +he took; those footprints would point to wherever +Guadalupe might go—and the Papago, of +course, knew the shortest way out of this hellhole—so +why break his own neck? The old Doc<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span> +would take a little snooze and then just follow +the footprints when he felt good and ready to +do so.</p> + +<p>The gangling form crumpled up as if cut off +at the knees. Guadalupe heard a thud, turned +for a half-glance over his shoulder and pushed +steadily on under the stars. It was not in the +Papago’s code to add one ounce to the weight +of circumstance obtruding between himself and +water. In a dozen steps his figure was swallowed +up in the dark.</p> + +<p>Stooder may have allotted to himself only +that minimum of sleep designated as a snooze. +But a high sun pried open his reluctant eyelids. +He sat up and sent a dazed glance around an +unfamiliar world. Mountains tawny and black +with knife-edge water scores down their flanks; +a sea of scrub stretching interminably from +their bases; patches of gypsum and <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">salitre</i> showing +dull white as scars of leprosy here and there +amid the grey-green of the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">camisa</i>. The sky +already was taking on the yellow-white glaze indicative +of imminent heat.</p> + +<p>The Doc arose and shook the sand out of the +creases of his clothing. First definite impression +coming to him was the need of a drink: +his favourite tequila if might be, water in a +pinch. All the nerves in his body twittered<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span> +“Hear—hear!” to the first of the alternatives. +Then, his mind beginning to function along the +line of the night’s impressions, Doc Stooder +read the story of the footprints leading off to +the north and west. There they were: good li’l +signposts; they’d take him to a drink just as +easy!</p> + +<p>Stooder’s renewed strength carried him easily +along the trail the Papago had left. For +an hour, that is; then trouble. For the sand +disappeared under a broad apron of <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">caliche</i>—a +hardpan of baked mineral salts and earth almost +impervious even to the shod hoof of a +horse. It was like a door swung shut on the +trailer—the locked door to some labyrinth beyond. +Here the last firm print of a boot in +the sand, there nothingness. The Doc paused, +looked back over the cup-like shadows marking +the footprint trail he had been following to +take its line of direction, then he pushed ahead +along that line.</p> + +<p>Another hour, and he still was on the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">caliche</i> +outcrop. He stopped to consider. Where in +the name of all the angels was that road—the +Road of the Dead Men? If he’d driven the car +a little south of it during the sand storm, surely +Guadalupe must have cut tangent to it by this +time. And if the road passed over the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">caliche</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span> +flat there’d be wheel marks; that was sure. +Miss that road and miss the Papago’s trail both—why +then old Doc Stooder’d be a goner!</p> + +<p>He tried to follow his own back trail by such +small signs as the scratch of a hobnail against +an embedded rock and a thin print of a sole in +a pocket of dust. A while and he had lost even +that. He stopped and swabbed his streaming +face with a shirtsleeve—he now was carrying +his coat.</p> + +<p>“By the eternal, Stooder, you gotta do something—and +do it dam’d pronto!”</p> + +<p>Once more he turned on his own tracks. Better +go back and find that putrid Papago’s trail +and let the road go to the devil. Whole half +hour wasted a’ready—good half hour, by criminy! +with a drink just that much farther off.</p> + +<p>It was not so easy finding the scored rocks +and the stamp of a heel in pools of dust; not so +easy as the first essay. For the sun was at +meridian now and foreshortened little shadows +to nothingness. Plump! he came to the edge of +the hardpan and into the sandy soil. No tracks +there. Should he bear to right or left in circling +the edge of the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">caliche</i> on his hunt for the +footprints? If he guessed wrong where’d he +be? “Oh, dear God!”</p> + +<p>He turned to the left and resumed his tramp.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span> +Furnace light refracted from the sand seared +into his eyes, which must be always kept downward +peering—spying. His mouth now was dry +as rotted wood. Something alien there kept +bothering him by pressing against the roof of +it. He explored with his fingers and discovered +the alien object to be his tongue, which was +swelling.</p> + +<p>“But my mind’s clear—clear as a bell. Got +a steady mind anyway. Gotta hold onto that +or I’m a gone coon.”</p> + +<p>A slight breeze struck his right arm more +penetratingly than it should. Stooder shifted +his glance to his arm, held crooked.</p> + +<p>“Good God! Coat’s gone!” Dropped somewhere—that +coat in whose pocket was a prescription +book; among its pages the map of the +treasure site. The precious map showing where +lay the bell and the beam! The man whirled +and started on a staggering run along the rim +of the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">caliche</i> he had been travelling.</p> + +<p>“Must find that coat! Don’t find the coat an’ +I lose the pearls an’ the gold—the pearls an’ the +gold!”</p> + +<p>He halted as if shot. Down the wind came to +him the faint tolling of a bell. <i>Dong—dong.</i> +Silvery throb of a swinging bell. Measured, +unhurried; like the sounding of a bell for mass<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span> +of a Sunday morning. The Doc had heard the +bell of San Xavier sending its call across the +alfalfa fields of a Sunday morning, just like +that.</p> + +<p>Even as he strained his ears to drink in the +full miracle of it the sound faded, ceased.</p> + +<p>“I heard it! A bell! No illusion. Mind’s +still clear—still clear!” On he went, his gaunt +legs weaving in wide circles. He came to a +dark patch on the hardpan and strided over it, +unheeding. It was his missing coat, in the +pocket the precious map of the treasure site. +The Doc did not see the coat because again his +ears were drinking in the maddening tolling of +the bell; this time a little clearer down the +wind in his face. An animal cry, half articulate, +burst from his swollen lips:</p> + +<p>“The mission bell! Bell of the Four Evangelists +which I found t’other day! Callin’ me +back!”</p> + +<p>Right over yonder where the mountains +cracked apart to let that arroyo down onto +the plain: that’s where the bell sounded. Yes, +sir, no mistake about it. ’Bout four-five mile, +judgin’ from the sound. Hear what that bell’s +a-callin’? “Gol-l-ld! Gol-l-ld!”</p> + +<p>Doc Stooder, coatless, hatless, the high roach +of his streaked hair fanning in the hot winds,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span> +was stumbling and falling—stumbling and falling +ever forward toward the crack in the mountains. +Light of madness flamed in his eyes; his +great arms clawed forward as if to catch invisible +supports to pull him the faster. Gol-l-ld—Gol-l-ld!</p> + +<p>“Old mind’s still clear, else couldn’t hear that +mission bell so plain— Gotta keep old mind +clear—”</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>The way of the desert god, always beyond +man’s comprehending, nevertheless sometimes +approaches so close to the human scheme of +thought and motive as to permit of analogy with +it. When the director of destinies in the dry +wastes seems to make a travesty of such a sacrosanct +quality as human justice we may be moved +to call the impulse satiric for want of a better +name. Satiric, then, that reversal of the decree +of death passed upon the Papago youth who +confessed to murder before the overturned +kettle at the Casa O’Donoju; more than satiric +the moving finger now directing his path +through the dead lands up to a union with the +crazed doctor’s.</p> + +<p>According to ancient custom the Indian retainers +of the O’Donoju had taken the youth—his +baptismal name was Ygnacio—down to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span> +crater land of the Pinacate and there turned +him loose without water to wander for a while +and finally to die miserably. Other murderers +had been so treated and never had been seen +of men again. But the desert god who slays +so peremptorily knew that Ygnacio had done the +bidding to murder to save his brother from +death—had killed without malice and only as +the price of redemption for one of his blood. +Wherefore the arbiter of life and death flung +life at Ygnacio.</p> + +<p>When he was athirst almost to the point of +exhaustion he found a knob-like growth a scant +two inches above the surface of the ground, recognized +it for a promise of succour and with the +last ounce of his strength dug the deep sand all +about it. The end of his effort gave to him a +strange and rare vegetable reservoir like an +elongated radish, which miraculously holds +scant moisture of summer rains the year round. +“Root-of-the-sands” the Sonorans have named +it. In the desolation between the Pinacate and +the Gulf even the coyotes have the wisdom to +dig for this precious sustainer of life.</p> + +<p>Ygnacio devoured the whole of the root and +was revived. He found others, which he tied +into a bundle to carry over his shoulders. Food +and drink had come to him from the hand of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span> +Elder Brother himself when it was decreed by +man he should have neither. Wherefore love +o’ life once more burned strong in the man. He +set his course northward, travelling only by +night when the heat had given place to the +biting desert chill, keeping his precious roots +buried in the sand while he slept by day so that +evaporation would not rob him of the promise +of escape from inferno. Straight as an arrow +northward where, beyond the Line, lay tribes +of Papagoes who never had heard of Don +Padraic O’Donoju nor of a murderer named +Ygnacio.</p> + +<p>So it happened that on the third night of his +march, when Ygnacio had paused to munch a +segment of the sustaining root, came to his ears +the sound of a voice, faintly and from a great +distance. It might be a human voice, though +there was a burred and thickened quality to it +almost like a burro’s bray.</p> + +<p>The Indian boldly followed where his ears +gave direction. “Gol’—gol’—gol’” was the +monotonous iteration, sounding almost like the +muffled tapping of a clapper against metal. He +walked a mile—so clearly do sounds carry in +the desert night—and suddenly came upon the +figure of a white man. Naked above the waist,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span> +wisp of a goatee tilted at the stars, arms rigid +at sides and with fingers widespread, the spectre +of a white man chanted the single word, +“Gold.”</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX</a><br /> +<small>THE COMING OF EL DOCTOR</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">The sandstorm that overwhelmed Stooder +and his guide on the Road of the Dead +Men brought the mighty voice of the desert to +the Garden of Solitude in requiem for the soul +of Don Padraic O’Donoju. Savage elegy of a +life lived in communion with the spirit of the +wild.</p> + +<p>There was no priest to order the funeral rites +of the Church. Though a day’s journey in +Quelele’s car to Caborca and back would have +fetched a minister of religion, Benicia was determined +word of her father’s death should not +reach the man who provoked it sooner than the +courses of rumour allowed. The Caborca priest +posting out to the Casa O’Donoju would set +tongues wagging instantly and the seal of silence +imposed by miles of unpeopled space between +the casa and the nearest community +would be broken. “The service of the heart will +be just as acceptable to my father’s spirit,” was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span> +Benicia’s simple justification to herself of +breach of custom.</p> + +<p>So in the heat haze preceding the storm six +Indians bore the body of their master through +fields of alfalfa behind the white house down to +a grove of shimmering alamo trees which +fringed a reservoir of the oasis’ precious water. +Here beneath the white and silver-green tent of +the trees was sanctified ground. Here lay the +dust of lords and ladies of a desert principality +who, for their spans of years, had been inheritors +of the desert’s cruelties and benefices.</p> + +<p>Grant fell in with the file of dark-skinned +mourners that followed behind the body of Don +Padraic, with him Bagley. They did this unbidden +of Benicia. Neither had seen her since +the dramatic climax of the ordeal of the kettle +the day before; no word had come from her. +Yet each had felt the need to succour the bereaved +girl in her great loneliness, forgetting +unhappy events of the dawn in the patio.</p> + +<p>For Grant there had been a brief struggle +with pride and outraged sensibilities—blessedly +brief because a broader tolerance and finer manhood +had rallied to overthrow the narrower +view of selfishness. In the light of the terrific +blow that had been dealt the girl he loved—all +the more crushing because of its suddenness—the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span> +savage reaction of a high spirit +seemed to him not so to be wondered at. Nor +Benicia’s silence since. In these dark hours +there was no place in her heart for aught but +unassuaged grief.</p> + +<p>Arrived at the alamo grove, all the Indians +of the village and household massed themselves +a little way apart from freshly turned sod, their +glistening black heads dappled by the silhouettes +of the leaves, their eyes restless and awestruck. +Benicia, garbed in dull black which +made the whiteness of her face and uncovered +glory of her hair the more striking, stood at +the head of the rude housing fashioned by the +Papagoes for her beloved clay; her calm was +absolute as that of the iron peaks beyond the +oasis green. In her hand was a wreath the +Indian women had woven—scarlet flowers of +the cactus with feathery acacia intertwined.</p> + +<p>In a steady voice the girl read a Latin prayer +while the Indians knelt. Then with a lingering +touch she laid the scarlet and olive-green wreath +upon the pall and watched the glowing spot of +colour slowly sink from sight.</p> + +<p>Suddenly the recessional: the sand storm with +its clamour of incoherent desert tongues crying +hidden tragedies, its blinding sheets of sand. +When the first blast struck the group turning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span> +away from the grave Grant stepped quickly to +Benicia’s side, drew her arm protectingly +through his and bent his body to shield her +from the myriad chisels of the driven sand. +He fought for footing for them both.</p> + +<p>At his touch Benicia turned dry eyes to his. +Swiftly she read the love there—love triumphing +over the hurt she had so lately given him. +On the instant tears filmed the hard brightness +of the orbs Grant looked down upon. Her lips +moved in some halting speech of contrition, but +the savage blast snatched away the sound of +her words. In the softening of those eyes and +the weight of her body clinging nervelessly to +him the man was told the whole story of a +girl’s amends for hasty and unconsidered action. +All her iron will which had carried her +head high through hours of grief suddenly had +sped from her, leaving her groping and dependent.</p> + +<p>An exalted sense of guardianship came to +Grant—swept over him like a cool breeze to a +fever patient. Almost it was a feeling of holy +trust bestowed. At last—at last the woman he +loved had battled against bitter fate beyond the +limit of her endurance and was turning to him +to fend for her. Unheeding the twinges his +wound gave him, he bent to the blast with his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span> +precious burden. Oh, if only he could be given +liberty to sweep her into his arms, to call her +name in the piety of supreme love, snatch her +away from the incubus of dread which had settled +upon her so relentlessly.</p> + +<p>He would not wait for such opportunity—so +the thought came lancing at him in a lightning +flash of resolution; he would create it! No +longer stand idly by with footless compassion +while the girl of his heart remained in chains +of a fixed idea too strong for her to break. He +himself would free her of those shackles even +if he had to fight her fiery will to do it!</p> + +<p>While the storm furiously grappled with the +palms outside, Bim and Grant sat in the dark +music room of the great-house. With hushed +voices the two friends conned over the situation +facing them and the girl now left alone +in the immensity of Altar. Not a simple exigency. +On the one hand promptings of delicacy +and the dictates of custom ruled against their +remaining longer in the Casa O’Donoju. Opposed +to this was the alternative of leaving +Benicia to become a prey to the schemes of +Colonel Urgo—a girl fighting single-handed the +craft of an implacable enemy. Without a protector +other than the Indians of the oasis—and +they had the minds of children—the girl<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span> +could not combat this unscrupulous wooer for +long. What then?</p> + +<p>Bim finally summed the situation: “It comes +down to this, old side-pardner; either you’ve +got to persuade her to come back to Arizona +with us mighty pronto or to marry you, putting +it bald-headed like.”</p> + +<p>Grant’s mind leaped to grapple with the flash +of an idea—the one that had come to him when +he and the girl breasted the sandstorm. Resolution +crystallized on the instant. He silently +quizzed his friend with an appraising eye.</p> + +<p>“And if I can’t persuade her?” he queried +softly.</p> + +<p>“Then you simply trundle yourself away +from here and up across the Line, knowing that, +sure as shootin’, this wolf Urgo’ll be down on +her just as soon as he makes up his mind to +move.” The big fellow in the firelight stressed +inevitability in his dictum. Grant gave him a +cryptic smile.</p> + +<p>“Suppose I take her anyway if she will not +be persuaded?” Bim jerked back his head and +surveyed his friend with startlement which +speedily softened to a wide grin. Out went his +hand to clap Grant’s knee.</p> + +<p>“Now you’re tootin’!”</p> + +<p>Once he had put his resolution into words, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span> +idea back-fired to scorch Grant with sudden comprehension +of what would be involved in such a +cavalierly course of action. Actually to steal +Benicia O’Donoju! Take her by force from the +home which now was hers to rule. Play the +very part which he feared Colonel Urgo would +pursue if left alone. He scarcely heard Bim +rumbling his enthusiasms.</p> + +<p>“That’s the pure quill!” the desert man was +saying. “That’s the Grant Hickman who +brought me in on his back from a section of +Heinie’s first line trench with H.E.’s droppin’ +round like gumdrops from a baby’s torn candy +bag.” He checked himself to launch the question, +“Have you got a line on the girl yet? I +mean, do you think she fancies you enough to +be glad—after you’ve run away with her?”</p> + +<p>“I think so,” was Grant’s simple answer.</p> + +<p>“Fine business! The sooner the quicker, +young fellah. You an’ her an’ me in the li’l old +desert skimmer. ’Cause I gotta get back to +Arizora. The old Doc’ll think I’ve thrown him +down an’, besides, my own business—”</p> + +<p>“You mean you’ll go ahead with Stooder on +his scheme for finding the Lost Mission?” Grant +cut in impetuously. The big love he bore Bagley +jealously demanded an answer. The other +reached over to lay a hand on Grant’s shoulder.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span></p> + +<p>“No. That’s all off, old son. I couldn’t go +prying around after lost treasure that belongs +to the girl’s family—more particular not after +what you’ve told me I couldn’t. I promise you +I’ll head off the Doc if I have to get him thrown +in the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">carcel</i> for boot-legging.”</p> + +<p>The storm wore itself to a final sibilant whisper +among the tortured palms and the two continued +to sit in the room of shadows with the +complexities of the daring plan of kidnapping +still bulking large. ’Cepcion tip-toed in to announce +to Bim in an awed whisper, “El Doctor +Coyote Belly from Babinioqui has come through +the storm. Shall I disturb the mistress?”</p> + +<p>Bim translated to Grant with a questioning +tilt of the eyebrows. Grant started at the name +of the medicine man who had been his rescuer +and to whom he owed his life. What could have +brought this old Indian away across the expanse +of Altar to drop out of the storm upon the house +of mourning?</p> + +<p>“Tell her we will see him first,” Grant directed, +moved as he was by some half-sensed instinct +of protection for Benicia; evil tidings—if +such the Indian bore—must be kept from her. +The two rose and followed the waddling Indian +woman through the halls to the servants’ quarters +in the rear. Under a pepper tree in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span> +fading dusk they found the squat figure of Coyote +Belly. The Indian doffed his hat at the +approach of the white men and stood smiling; +there was in his pose something of quiet dignity +which bent little before the centuries-old +convention of the white man’s superiority. His +beady eyes, well larded in creasy folds, possessed +intelligence beyond the ordinary.</p> + +<p>Grant impulsively took El Doctor’s hand in +a strong grip carrying the thanks he could not +speak. El Doctor’s eyes mirrored recognition +and he bobbed his head with a broadening smile.</p> + +<p>“Tell him, Bim, I could not thank him for +all he did for me. He is the chap that found +me on the Hermosillo road, you know, and pulled +me through.” Bim put the words in Spanish +and El Doctor bobbed his head again. Then the +Indian began haltingly in the same tongue. +Bim’s eyes narrowed to a quizzical pucker as he +progressed. Grant could read a spreading wonder +in his friend’s features.</p> + +<p>“The old bird says he came here because he +knew Don Padraic had been killed,” Bim repeated. +“Says he knew it the night of the +murder because a star fell in the west and he +saw the picture of the old Don with a knife in +his heart—saw it in the water of his medicine +<i lang="es" xml:lang="es">olla</i>. So he’s been on the trail ever since because<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span> +he’s got to tell Señorita Benicia something.”</p> + +<p>“But,” Grant began incredulously. Bim +caught him up with, “Sure, I know it sounds +phoney. But I know, too, the old boy’s telling +the truth. These desert people have a way of +seeing across space—reading signs and such—which +leaves us white folks gasping— How’s +that?” He turned an ear to El Doctor, who +had begun to speak again.</p> + +<p>“Standing-White-in-the-Sun was my father +and my brother,” the medicine man gravely intoned. +“He gave me <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">pinole</i> when I was starving. +He came to my house at the festival of the +<i lang="es" xml:lang="es">sahuaro</i> wine and drank with me as a brother. +His child, Lightning Hair, is as my own child.”</p> + +<p>Depth of feeling was sweeping El Doctor like +a storm. His grey head trembled and drops of +moisture stood in his eyes. Bim gently checked +him with, “The señorita is oppressed with grief. +If we could take your message to her—” But +El Doctor shook his head.</p> + +<p>“She will see me. She will hear what El +Doctor Coyote Belly has come through the +storm to tell.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, she will hear,” came an unexpected +voice from the direction of the doorway, and +Benicia walked up to the Indian. El Doctor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span> +made a step forward to meet her; with a gesture +of reverence he took the hand stretched +out to him and placed it first on his brow then +over his heart. His old eyes shone. The two +white men turned and walked beyond earshot. +From a distance Grant saw the girl lead the +medicine man to a rustic seat beneath the +pepper tree; snatches of barbarous Papago +speech came to his ears.</p> + +<p>The glory of sunset, more glorious because of +the dust held in suspension in the air, came and +passed and still Benicia and the medicine man +talked beneath the pepper tree. The evening +meal was a mournful affair, with only Grant +and Bim at the candle-lit table. Grant, unable +to contain his restlessness, quit the house alone +when supper was finished; he walked down the +avenue of palms in the direction of the red fires +marking the Indian village. The night was +luminous with that sheen which covers the desert +heavens like a bloom. Thin rind of a moon +hung low in the west, a cold glow of nacre.</p> + +<p>He had crossed the bridge and was about to +turn off into an adjacent field when he heard a +footstep in the shadowed aisle below palm tops +ahead of him. A figure scarce discernible in its +black garb came upon him.</p> + +<p>“Benicia!”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span></p> + +<p>She stopped, startled. “Ah, it is you,” was +her murmured greeting as Grant stepped to her +side.</p> + +<p>“Alone and in the dark,” he chided, but the +girl tossed off his fears with a gesture of the +hands. “I have been with El Doctor down to +the village to find a place for him to lodge.” +Grant imprisoned her arm and gently persuaded +her steps back down the aisle of darkness +toward the village. For a minute they walked +in silence. Each knew there were things to be +spoken, yet each was reluctant to break the silent +communion their nearness wrought.</p> + +<p>“And El Doctor gave you the message he +came to bring?” finally from Grant. Her head +nodded assent.</p> + +<p>“Not bad news, I hope,” he hazarded. A +tightening of fingers on his arm as she answered, +“The best—and the worst.” Grant +drew a long breath.</p> + +<p>“And may I share with you—the worst?” he +managed to murmur. Now once more that dragging +weight on his arm as when he guided +Benicia through the storm—mute signal of surrender +from one spent in the fight.</p> + +<p>“El Doctor says—oh, my friend, you must not +stay here in the Garden longer. The rurales +are gathering at Babinioqui, El Doctor tells me—with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span> +Urgo. That means but one thing: Urgo +is bringing them here, and you—”</p> + +<p>“But you!” Grant interrupted almost +fiercely. “What of you? Must I run away and +leave you unprotected from that man?” The +girl drew away from him as if in very defiance +of some mastering impulse which would push +her into his arms.</p> + +<p>“I—my people will fight for me if need be. +Urgo comes for you this time, and I cannot be +sure these children”—a vague sweep of her +hand toward the winking village fires—“that +these children would fight for you, whom they +scarcely know.” There was that brave yet pitiful +resolution in her tone when she spoke of the +hazard of Urgo’s probable sally upon her own +person which crashed through all a lover’s carefully +built barriers of restraint. Unmindful of +the events of recent hours, of the girl’s fresh +bereavement, Grant crushed her to him hotly.</p> + +<p>“Oh, ’Nicia—’Nicia, can’t you understand! +I must go—yes, to-morrow! Not because Urgo +is coming to get me but because your being here +alone forces me away from you. Yet I cannot +think of leaving you to fight that man single-handed. +’Nicia—precious!—you will come—you +must come with me up over the Line +where—”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span></p> + +<p>“Oh, please—please stop!” Hands were +feebly pressing him away. Glint of starlight +revealed tears a-tremble on her lashes. +“Grant—great heart—I understand. I cry for +you. See! My eyes tell you what is in my +heart. But I cannot give myself to you when +that—that terrible thing of misfortune and +death goes with me. I—the mark I bear brought +death to my dear father!”</p> + +<p>He looked down into her eyes, appalled at this +last speech. Before he could hush her she faltered +on:</p> + +<p>“But El Doctor brought me also good news—wonderful +news! It is that I can lift this evil +from me if—if”—she seemed to falter before a +possibility scarce credible—“if the finding of +the gold and jewels El Rojo stained with his +sacrilege and their restoration to a sanctuary +of the Church will be acceptable in God’s +sight.”</p> + +<p>The hint of purpose in Benicia’s voice revealed +the edge of the truth. “Do you mean +El Doctor knows where the Lost Mission lies +and that you intend to find it?” Grant pressed +her. The girl gave answer:</p> + +<p>“He knows where the gold and pearls of the +Lost Mission are. He knows, too, the story of +El Rojo and how I bear the weight of his guilt.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span> +Because he loved my father he says he loves me +too much to have me go on and on under an evil +spell. Father’s death opens his lips and—”</p> + +<p>“You are going with El Doctor to find those +things?” breathlessly from Grant. She nodded. +“Then I will go with you. At once! To-morrow!”</p> + +<p>Decision came on the wings of inspiration. +Better this flight into the desert on treasure +quest, with its promise of exorcism of all the +devils that plagued the girl—better this venture +than that other he had determined: to play the +strong hand willy-nilly.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI">CHAPTER XXI</a><br /> +<small>TREASURE QUEST</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">Colonel Hamilcar Urgo was not +addicted to introspection. He took himself +as he found himself and as a rule was +well pleased with the find. Had any non-partisan +voice of conscience told him cruelty +played a large part in his make-up undoubtedly +the little Colonel would have denied the +charge with hot indignation. Cruelty, to his +way of thinking, was exclusively a feminine +defect; a woman was guilty of cruelty, for +example, when she spurned the honourable advances +of so honourable a suitor as Hamilcar +Urgo. Benicia O’Donoju was the cruelest +creature he knew; wherefore like a fractious +horse she must be broken.</p> + +<p>No, Señor Urgo found nothing reprehensible +in his orders to Ygnacio, the Papago, that Don +Padraic must be put out of the way. The same +impulse had prompted him to strip the bandage +of ignorance from Benicia’s eyes during that +interview in the patio without the least compunction.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span> +These headstrong women! There +was a way to handle them just as there was +a way to break the heart of a high-spirited +mount: curb bits that tear and spurs that +gouge. Let him have possession of a spirit-broken +woman for a little while, to play with +and then discard; possession was not nearly +so diverting as the game of spirit breaking. +At that Urgo considered himself rather a master +hand.</p> + +<p>He had not hated the master of the Casa +O’Donoju. Aside from the necessity of clearing +the field of a possible objector to his suit +and bringing pain to the haughty desert girl, +Urgo’s murder impulse was prompted by no +personal bias. But with all the deadly spleen +compacted into his wispy body the little man +hated the gringo Grant Hickman. Hated him +because the American was in the lists against +him; hated him, especially, because twice Hickman +had humiliated him before the eyes of Benicia: +once in the Pullman out of El Paso and +a second time—searing scar in memory—when +the man, though weakened by a bullet wound, +had hustled him out the door of the desert +manor.</p> + +<p>If whole-heartedness gives any palliation to +hatred then was Hamilcar Urgo’s passion<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span> +almost to be forgiven him. For very dynamic +force no impulse in his twisted career matched +it. The vision of this gringo’s impudently +smiling face went to bed with him at night +and abided with him all day—a veritable ache. +Come what might, he would destroy Grant +Hickman and in a manner such as to entail +the most refined tortures.</p> + +<p>So this was his single purpose—possession +of the girl would be a mere by-product—when +he used his power with the police arm of the +Sonora state government to assemble ten ruffians +of the rurales force at a point on the railroad +within striking distance of the Road of +the Dead Men. Desert cars were at his disposal +but he preferred to head a mounted +force because his plans looked to an excursion +into country where autos could not go, once +Hickman was his prisoner. A complaisant +spirit of justice at Hermosillo would accept +in lieu of the escaped convict’s person some +token symbolical of a justice already wrought +through the instrument of the state’s worthy +servant, Urgo.</p> + +<p>The day after the sand storm Urgo and his +rurales set out from the railroad for the west +and the Garden of Solitude at the end of a +long road. They were superbly mounted; two<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span> +pack animals trotted behind the file of horsemen. +Revolutions had been squelched by a +less imposing force.</p> + +<p>After the cleansing storm the desert was +bland and tolerant. Air clear as quartz, sun +tempered by fresh winds from the west, on +every club and spike of cactus fresh flowers +born overnight to replace those destroyed by +the driving sands. One of the rurales unslung +a guitar from a mule’s pack and strummed +minor chords to the accompaniment of a song +in which the rest joined. The ballad was gentle +as a butterfly’s wing, telling of roses over a +lady-love’s window.</p> + +<p>Urgo, lulled by the immensity of the desert +peace, perhaps even by the tenderness of the +song his murderers sang, pleasured himself +by building pictures in prospect. He saw +himself riding alone up to the door of the +Casa O’Donoju—the rurales would be disposed +beyond sight of the door but within call; saw +the courteous bow he would make to Señorita +Benicia; heard himself inquiring in polite +phrase concerning her health and that of her +respected father. Ah, Don Padraic dead—murdered! +Grace of God, but that was sad +news. But the American gentleman who was +a guest at the Casa O’Donoju; did his unfortunate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span> +wound still keep him under the beneficence +of the casa’s hospitality—?</p> + +<p>Five hours of the second day out on the +Road of the Dead Men the rurale who was +riding at the head of the file reined in with +a shout. His arm stretched to point a tiny +black beetle away off to the westward: a +beetle skittering down the long slope of a +divide and in their direction. In ten minutes +the beetle showed again, but it had grown to +the dimensions of an auto. It was upon them +almost before the horsemen had spread themselves +in a fan across the road. Quelele, whom +Urgo instantly recognized, accepted the implied +hint to halt; in the seat beside him was +a strange white man—a gringo by his looks. +This man let a bland, incurious eye range over +the band of horsemen until it settled upon +Urgo; there it rested with a dispassionate +stare somehow affronting to the Spaniard’s +dignity.</p> + +<p>Urgo stiffly bowed and waited for the gringo +to speak. Instead of returning his salutation +the white man searched the pockets of his vest +for tobacco bag and papers and bent all his +attention upon rolling a cigarette.</p> + +<p>“You have come from the Casa O’Donoju, +señor?” Urgo asked in English. Bim Bagley<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span> +gave the clipped Spanish “Si” of assent and +drew his rolled cigarette across his lips with a +languid air. Urgo in a growing rage wondered +if this boorishness were the stranger’s typically +American manner or assumed to provoke +hostility. His voice was silken as he put his +next question in Spanish:</p> + +<p>“The Señorita O’Donoju and Don Padraic, +her father, they enjoy the best health, I hope.”</p> + +<p>“I hope so, too,” was Bim’s short reply as +he put a match to his smoke. Urgo’s brows +knitted. Here was no boor but a wise gringo +with a chuckle behind every word.</p> + +<p>“I am doing myself the honour to call upon +Don Padraic and his charming daughter,” his +temper pushed him to volunteer. Bim swept +the company of horsemen with a lack-lustre +eye and then let his glance return to the +dapper figure of the Colonel.</p> + +<p>“Do tell,” he drawled in broadest Border +dialect. “See you brought all the boys with +you. Well, so long!” He nudged the Indian +a signal to go ahead. Urgo would have liked +to detain this impudent gringo for a lesson in +manners did not more pressing pleasure lie +ahead. He gave an imperceptible nod and the +horsemen who blocked the road moved aside. +The little car shot back a pungent cloud of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span> +smoke for a parting insult as it took the road +in high. Urgo watched it rise to the low crest +of a divide and disappear. Insufferable +gringo! What had he been doing at Casa +O’Donoju? What did he know of recent events +there?</p> + +<p>A shrug dismissed Bagley, and the file of +horsemen resumed leisurely progress along the +desert road. A night’s dry camp, and early +morning would see them in the oasis green at +journey’s end.</p> + +<p>Colonel Urgo miscalculated when he dismissed +Bim Bagley with a shrug. Did the +little Spaniard but know it, this meeting in +the wastes was the objective point in the +gringo’s strategy. Even under certain heavy +handicaps ten gallons of gasoline in the desert +can achieve more than ten horses with rurales +on their backs. It all depends upon the hand +that nurses precious jets of this gasoline across +the path of the spark. And Quelele’s was a +master hand. Wherefore the second phase in +Bim’s strategy was entered upon.</p> + +<p>Bim and the Indian had made perhaps five +miles along the eastward-bearing road beyond +the point of the meeting with Urgo’s ruffians +when the Papago turned off the single wheel +track and into the sparse scrub. A low range<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span> +separated them from the rurales; the crumbling +of that range into desert flatness lay a good +ten miles to southward. Once around that, +the little car could be tooled behind a screen +of hillocks back onto the Road of the Dead +Men and ahead of the rurales, but only by +exercise of the most delicate driving judgment. +“Smack through the country—without roads?” +whiffles the incredulous driver of limousines +along sedate highways in Pennsylvania and +New York. Exactly that. It is done in Arizona +and Sonora—thirty or fifty miles of unfenced +desert; compass to pick up direction and shovel +to dig out of arroyos. Johnny Cameron, of Ajo, +even herds wild horses on a motorcycle.</p> + +<p>Quelele stopped to let air out of his tires +that they might better grip the sand and pad +through soft places. Then began a jackrabbit +skittering and twisting ’cross country, with +every hundred yards offering the hazard of a +broken axle and the little desert skimmer +standing on its nose at the brink of a dry +wash while its passengers flattened the descent +by hasty shovel work. Like a rowboat in mid-Atlantic +the puny contraption of tin and steel +took the long waves, snarling and grumbling +over sand-traps, boggling through thickets of +<i lang="es" xml:lang="es">cholla</i> which rigged its tires with festoons of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span> +prickly stubs. Quelele’s hands possessed +magic. They knew just when to give a twist +to the wheel, when to shoot the spark ahead. +Every hummock and pitfall was read by them +surely and swiftly.</p> + +<p>The little car rounded the end of the mountain +range and shot back on a tangent for +the road where Urgo and his rurales were +travelling. With a grunt Quelele suddenly let +the car trundle to a halt; he clambered out +and knelt by the radiator. Drip-drip of precious +water from some stab of brush through +the honeycomb of cells there. Bim sacrificed +his tobacco in the emergency. The flaky mass +was poured into the radiator with fresh water +from a canteen; the stuff found the leak and, +swelling, stopped it.</p> + +<p>Then on and on, around the flanks of the +little hills and across wide flats where the +brush was scattered. Always Quelele was sure +to keep a height of land between the car and +the Road of the Dead Men until finally he +brought his gas mustang to a stop on the crest +of a lava ridge and pointed back. Against the +eastern horizon showed a crawling inch-worm +in the desert’s immensity—Urgo and the +rurales. Below the lava crest and near at +hand was the objective of their detour, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span> +road that led to the Casa O’Donoju and those +who must be warned.</p> + +<p>It was after sunset when the little car hiccoughed +up under the avenue of palms. An +hour later in the first dark of night a file of +horsemen quit the perfumed precincts of +alfalfa fields behind the Casa O’Donoju. At +the head, driving a pack-mule, was El Doctor +Coyote Belly, big Quelele riding beside him. +Behind were Benicia and Grant. Bim Bagley +was file closer. In scabbards at the saddle of +each hung carbines.</p> + +<p>El Doctor, the guide, set the course away +from the Road of the Dead Men which, passing +through the Garden of Solitude, buries itself +in the Yuma Desert. His direction was +south and west toward the Gulf and the labyrinth +of volcano craters on its hither shore +called Pinacate.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII</a><br /> +<small>ALTAR TAKES ITS TOLL</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">Dawn marched over the mountains like a +phalanx of Alexander: spear points of +light on long hafts, which drove at the zenith in +solid bundles. Then the mercenaries of the +sun trooped across the vacant desert floor wave +on wave and strength following strength. All +the dead world of Altar stirred and set itself +for the ordeal of a new day.</p> + +<p>The figure of a man that had been Doc +Stooder, cynical tinker of life’s rusts and corrodings, +stirred under the trampling of the +light—stirred and stretched its members in +dull protest of unconsciousness. Finally when +the arrows of the new day drove at his eyelids +the man opened them and lay staring up into +the sky’s opalescence. For a long minute they +probed the marbled colour depths uncomprehendingly, +then turned to find the rim of the +iron mountains to the east. Comprehension +came at last; with it a distorted memory image +of hours of madness and wandering, agony of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span> +thirst, despair pressing upon footsteps that +carried nowhere. Sleep which had put a +period to all this nightmare had also mercifully +rallied the man’s nervous forces to a new +effort of self-saving. Men die hard because +the instinct locked up in their sub-conscious +minds always prevails over surrender of the +conscious will.</p> + +<p>The Doc lifted an arm to shield his eyes and +felt something sinuous slide off his body. An +instant his heart was chilled, for the feeling +was of a desert serpent trailing over his form. +He dared lift his head ever so little and let +his eyes rove down his body. A queer something, +not snake, lay in a curve by his side; a +pallid, root-like thing the size of a man’s wrist +at one end and tapering to a stringy point. +He raised himself on his elbow and drew the +vegetable serpent to him. Just as he did so +his eyes discovered the prints of a man’s feet +in the sand by where he lay.</p> + +<p>“Glory be!” came the croak from stiffened +lips, and the Doc concentrated all his scattered +wits on an examination of the prodigy. Yes, +footprints. They came from behind him; +they were printed in a semi-circle about him +to mark where one had stood hesitantly looking +down at him while he slept; they marched<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span> +off in line with their approach straight toward +the tawny mountains ringing the northern +horizon.</p> + +<p>Guadalupe’s footprints—the trail he had +followed and lost the day before! So Stooder +thought.</p> + +<p>A great sense of security pushed through +the daze in his brain. Here, at last, lay the +way to salvation. That thought having been +duly relished, he turned his attention once +more to the mysterious vegetable whip by his +side. He never had seen its like. How it +came to be there he had no notion. The thing +was unlike any desert growth in his experienced +observation, wherefore it seemed to represent +some prodigy of the desert god dropped +by him for a purpose.</p> + +<p>He gripped the heavier end of the root between +his hands and gave it a twist. The +thing broke like an over-ripe radish and a thin +spurt of water shot from the severed ends. +Greedily he thrust one stump into his mouth +and clamped his jaws upon it. Gracious fluid, +mildly acrid, drenched the parchment-like membranes +of his throat. The Doc sighed once, +then wolfed the whole stub of the root he had +broken off. As the pulp was swallowed he +felt immediate access of strength and sanity.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span></p> + +<p>From somewhere deep in the corroded heart +of him welled an emotion whose like he had +not known during all the years of his warped +and weathered manhood. As if a child +prompted him the gaunt, half-naked creature +on the sands lifted his eyes to the glowing +blue.</p> + +<p>“Thanks, dear God!”</p> + +<p>So the sardonic genius of the waste places +permitted the cloak of divinity to fall upon +Ygnacio, fugitive and murderer, for that a surprising +charity had prompted him to pause in +the night by a raving man, divide with him his +slender store of insurance against death, then +pass on.</p> + +<p>The root-of-the-sands which Stooder half +devoured quickly restored him to something +like the normal. Gone were the deliriums +that had dogged him those hours of horror. +He heard no longer the ghost bells of the Lost +Mission summoning him to treasure buried in +the bleak mountains yonder. Rational thought +was his after all the wanderings in Bedlam. +He mapped his strategy against the ever-present +menace of the desert.</p> + +<p>Here were Guadalupe’s tracks—the Papago +hound; wait till he could get hands on the +devil! Of course they would lead to the village<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span> +of the Sand People on the edge of El Infiernillo. +Well and good; but that might still +be a long way ahead. Could he make it just on +what was left of this mysterious root? About +one chance in ten; and the old Doc wasn’t +taking any more chances. What then?</p> + +<p>Why, follow the tracks back to the stalled +auto. Water might be there. Surely were +cans of tomatoes—about a dozen of ’em. A +dozen tomato cans would carry him a hundred +miles on foot; he knew because he’d drunk uncooked +canned tomatoes many a time—food and +drink in small compass. All right; follow the +tracks back to the auto, rest up a bit and then +get a fresh start back over those same tracks +and straight into the Sand People’s rancheria.</p> + +<p>Stooder wrapped the precious remains of his +giant radish in a strip of his shirt and started +back over the line of blue shadow cups in the +sand. As he laboured through the heavy going +he reviewed all he could remember of yesterday’s +terrors, and a great fear began to build +in the back of his mind. Fear of the leagues +upon leagues of blank space about him—land +unchanged by time since the waters of a great +sea were withdrawn into a shallow cup now +called the Gulf. Fear of latent forces which +lurked in the naked mountains all about, in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span> +the ghostly mirage which stretched vain beauties +before his eyes. Over-mastering all was +a corroding fear of his own body.</p> + +<p>The Doc’s trained intelligence was functioning +with deadly precision. It separated his +mind from the rest of his being, counting the +mind as a rider and the body the beast it rode. +The rider willed that the beast carry it to a +certain destination; did that beast stumble and +fall the rider could cry out never so furiously +but it would be lost. And that burden-bearer +of the mind was capable of just so much. Its +tissues and sinews were kept functioning by +water and food. So much water and so much +food gave so many foot-pounds of energy; no +more. Inexorable mathematics!</p> + +<p>When sweat began to trickle down into his +eyes Stooder could not repress a shudder. +Lost! Water lost from his body. The desert +greasewood is wise enough to coat all its +leaves and little stems with creosote to trick +evaporation; the big <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">sahuaro</i> shows only the +edges of its accordion flutings to the sun and +greases them with paraffin; man yields water +like a stranded jellyfish.</p> + +<p>Better take another chew on that water-root +dingus to make up for sweat lost. Better give +the old pulse a feel to see how it’s runnin’.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span></p> + +<p>The sun swam dizzily at meridian so that +the footprints the Doc followed were hard to +see—mere shallow spoon marks. On and on +towards the south!</p> + +<p>What was that thing moving over yonder in +that bunch of saltbush? Yes, sir, moving!—A +coyote, by th’ eternal!—Naw, coyotes weren’t +white like this animal; coyotes were a mangy +yellow.—But, by criminy! this thing had the +looks of a coyote—sharp nose and baggy tail +half way ’tween its hind legs, skulkin’ like.—An +albino coyote! Lookit! Eyes pinky like +a white rabbit.—Whoever heard of an albino +coyote?</p> + +<p>No phantom of the imagination that slinking, +dirty-white creature which matched its pace +to the Doc’s on parallel course through the low +lying scrub. The desert Ishmael trotted along +with a foolish air of being strictly about its +own business, as if no other creature were in +sight. When Stooder stopped to bawl curses +at it the albino thing halted and made a great +pretence of snouting at a flea bite, utterly +oblivious to his presence. A fragment of dead +bush-stock was hurled at it; the coyote lifted +a corner of his lip in a deprecatory smile but +did not abate his casual trot.</p> + +<p>“Huh, you mangy bag o’ bones! Think<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span> +you’re goin’ have a feed off’n me, do you? +Well, I’m tellin’ you, you got a mighty long +tromp ahead!”</p> + +<p>On through the desert slogged the man and +on trotted the freaky animal whose colour made +him outcast even from his own kind. These +twain alone under the hot sky: two mites of +life in a land of death, each blindly following +the call of every life cell in him to live—live!</p> + +<p>What had been a piled-up cloud of blue and +faint rose to the south when the Doc started +his hike had unfolded hour by hour into definite +form. Little by little pinnacles sharp as ice +splinters lifted from a mountain mass and +detached mountains with their tops blown off +stood against the horizon like truncated columns +of an acropolis. Here were the mazes +of the Pinacate, raw shards of volcanoes and +wilderness of lava flows down by the Gulf +sandhills; country so fire-scarred and forbidding +that even the Indian nomads give it wide +berth. Only the big-horn sheep possess it, +living no man knows how.</p> + +<p>The undeviating trend of the trail southward +towards this ragged mass had perplexed +Stooder when first he became conscious of it. +The auto should be lying somewhere off to +eastward if he didn’t miss his guess; those<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span> +mountains ahead were strange to him. But +he could not know how far nor where he had +wandered the day before; even though he +thought long since he should have come upon +a second line of footprints—his own—running +along with those of the Papago, yet there was +no denying he was following the right trail +back to the auto and the cached tomatoes. +There sure could not be two lines of footprints +here in this least-travelled part of Altar.</p> + +<p>So ran the mind of him whom the mocking +Gog and Magog of the desert’s diarchy had +put on a false trail to desolation. Deeper and +deeper into a waterless scrap-heap of forgotten +ages his steps took him. And the albino coyote +was his aloof companion.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII">CHAPTER XXIII</a><br /> +<small>INTO THE FURNACE</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">Meanwhile from another direction adventurers +were moving through the night +upon the slag mountains of Pinacate. Empty +space of Altar’s ultimate sweep was become almost +populous. A strange company this, which +passed ghostily under the great lights of the +near stars with only the clink of bridle metal +and pack mule’s canteens to give tempo to +the march; Benicia O’Donoju, the desert girl, +moved to this risky hazard by compulsion of +an incubus of fate visited upon her through +inheritance down the generations of her +people; Grant Hickman, man of cities and +crowds, whom destiny had whirled out into a +country of the world’s dawn; Bagley the Arizonan, +taker of chances, seeker after rainbow +ends; and the two Papagoes, Quelele and El +Doctor Coyote Belly, on whom was spread thin +the veneer of so-called civilization.</p> + +<p>It had been Benicia’s mastering purpose<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span> +that had moved the cavalcade away from the +Casa O’Donoju and out onto the desert immediately +upon the return of Bim and Quelele +reporting the leisurely approach of Colonel +Urgo and his rurales. This was not flight, she +told Bim; they would go in search of the +treasure of the Lost Mission whose hiding +place the old medicine man was willing to reveal, +and if Urgo followed—well, eventualities +could be met as they arose. In this resolve +Grant had strongly seconded her. The girl’s +slavery under the obsession of the bane of El +Rojo, especially following the slaying of her +father, had laid an impenetrable barrier between +her and him; he had seized upon this +possibility promising her emancipation from +this horror. This chance failing, he had but +the last desperate recourse.</p> + +<p>The first hour of their pilgrimage away +from the desert oasis Grant rode by Benicia’s +side. He essayed to distract her thoughts +from the tragedy that lay behind by questioning +her on the revelations El Doctor had made: +how had the old Indian come by knowledge of +the buried gold and pearls; what impulse had +led him to promise their restoration? But the +girl was not to be drawn. She answered his +queries by evasions or meaningless monosyllables.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span> +It was as if Grant were a stranger, impudently +prying.</p> + +<p>At first the man was stung by this treatment. +His self-pride rebelled against so arbitrary +a closing of the door of confidence +against him. Why should he be treated thus +cavalierly when the girl had surely read the +great love he bore her and his single desire +to place himself between her and the menace +of one who had prompted murder? But these +hurts did not continue long. Riding by Benicia’s +side in the starshine, the man began to +feel the emanations of a mastering will which +poured from her as the pungent prickles of +ozone surround a high-power dynamo. Her +consciousness was frozen into a mould of purpose, +locked against any distractions. Benicia +was alive only to the single resolve to free herself +from the curse of the Red One. Man nor +spirit could invade that preoccupation.</p> + +<p>There under the steady-burning desert lamps +the man of the cities began to feel again that +spell of the infinite which had chained him the +night of Don Padraic’s passing. Here was he, +lately denizen of a hive of stone and steel, tiny +integer in that man-made machine called a +metropolis, moving through the darkness over +a land unsullied by hand of man since the floods<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span> +of melting glaciers drove a shadowy race of +stone-axe people back to the highlands. The +loves and hates, the battles and deaths of these +stone-axe folk occurred but yesterday in the +time-sheet of the waste places. The to-morrow +of ten thousand years would find the desert still +untouched, supine under the stars. What then +of hidden baubles of gold; what then of the +love of a Grant Hickman for a Benicia +O’Donoju? A fossil snail shell by the shore +of the gulf left a more enduring record.</p> + +<p>“The thing that’s sorta got me fussed is +how I’m goin’ explain all this to the old Doc.” +Bim’s voice broke through Grant’s contemplation +of shadowy frontiers; he noted with a +start that his horse had dropped behind Benicia’s +and was ambling head-and-head with +his friend’s. Bim drawled on:</p> + +<p>“It sure will look like a double-cross to +Stooder—my sailin’ off down into Sonora on +the search for you an’ then hooking up with +an outfit to go get all the plunder the old Doc +thinks he’s as good as got his hands on. Me, +I guess I’m queered all right,” was the man’s +whimsical finish to his lament. Grant, who +had been too preoccupied with the sweep of +affairs to give any thought to his pal’s perplexities, +could not now offer much consolation.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span> +A point of honour involving the grotesque +creature who had elected to receive him as a +book agent did not greatly move Grant.</p> + +<p>“A’ course,” Bim continued his monologue, +“the way things lie with the girl, her bein’ +hipped on gettin’ back this swag somebody in +her family lifted from the mission, I’m more’n +willing to see her get it. But the old Doc +hasn’t got a large store of what you might +call sentiment, an’ I sure got my work cut out +for me when I try to show him the light.”</p> + +<p>“Too bad I got you into a tangle, old man,” +Grant heartily commiserated; then with a +hopeless little laugh, “My own affairs aren’t +set on any straight and beautiful road to happiness +either.”</p> + +<p>Bim chuckled deep in his throat. “Me, I +was all for your first idea to rope the señorita +right outa the home corral an’ put your brand +on her, fighting. But like’s not we’ll get <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">mucho</i> +plenty excitement along this trail before we’re +through.” He gave a short laugh. “Say, +Cap’n Hickman, I brought you out from the +East on a whale of a proposition. You’re sure +getting it. A girl who assays higher’n any +pearls an’ old gold junk you could find in a +church cellar—the feel and savvy of a man’s +country—a larrupin’ fight with old Urgo and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span> +his rurales bunch. That last you can back right +down to your last white chip.”</p> + +<p>“But how can Urgo follow us from the +O’Donoju house?” incredulously from Grant. +“Not one of the servants or other Indians +there knows what our destination is—we don’t +ourselves except in a general way.”</p> + +<p>The man of the big country chuckled at +metropolitan innocence. “Horses don’t leave +tracks on your Fifth Avenoo because they’s no +horses left there for one thing, I reckon. But +in this country they do. Five horses make a +trail a blind man could follow. I or anybody +else could track this outfit of ours in the dark. +I look to see our li’l friend Urgo drop in on +us some time to-morrow. He’ll travel fast +with fresh horses his men round up at the +O’Donoju corrals.”</p> + +<p>They rode some time in silence, Grant turning +over in his mind this unthought-of possibility. +Tenderfoot that he was—so he accused +himself—he had noted the carbines slung in +scabbards at each saddlehorn; noted with an +unreading eye. So Benicia and all the others +had provided against a contingency he had not +even suspected.</p> + +<p>“Only thing I’m figgerin’ in this proposition,” +he heard Bim saying, “is, will the Papagoes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span> +stick under fire? Papagoes are not +strong for the knock-down-an’-drag-out stuff. +An’, besides, you’re not a whole man yet.”</p> + +<p>“Whole enough to keep my end up,” Grant +said shortly, knowing not why he resented any +imputation of disability against him.</p> + +<p>“Oh, sure—sure!” the other hurriedly +amended, and the subject died.</p> + +<p>Dawn spread a ghostly panorama before +them. In the greeny-white light that heralds +the sun’s first ruddiness the whole western +horizon bulked with black masses of slag +heaped in fantastic shapes. High above the +lesser masses towered the two peaks of Pinacate, +their summits yawning in wide craters. +The horses’ hoofs struck sparks from lava +aprons; the beasts had to pick their way carefully +over traps and crevices. Ever and again +grey arms of cactus struck out to rake the +riders’ legs with claws of thorns.</p> + +<p>Waxing light filled in details of a phantom +land, terrific in stark brutalities of scarp and +battlement—a world just set aside from the +baking-oven of the Potter and unadorned by +a single brush stroke. The little company of +horsemen threaded single file up a narrow +gorge between the main peaks of the range. +Walls of porphyry and slag the colour of furnace<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span> +clinkers leaped to heights on either side +which dwarfed the riders to the stature of +weevils. The trail they followed was the path +cut by the rushing waters of summer cloudbursts, +which pack into the downpour of +minutes’ duration all the water denied during +months of drought; great blocks of fused glass +and conglomerate wrenched from the canyon’s +eaves by the fingers of these storms choked +the way. Where capfuls of soil had been +caught and held in some pocket the gaunt +sticks of the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">ocatilla</i> splayed out against raw +rock like cat’s whiskers. Low-lying <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">cholla</i>, +that spined and vicious vegetable tarantula +of the desert, seemed to grow from the very +rock; all its nodules were frosty with close-set +thorns. Over all dropped the veil of mystical +morning radiance.</p> + +<p>The horses groaned as they had to choose, +minute by minute, between barking their hocks +on the knife-like corners of obsidian or taking +the barbs of the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">cholla</i>. The higher the ascent +the savager grew the way. Grant, awed by +this penetration into the very laboratory of +earth, almost leaped from his saddle when a +sharp clatter of small pebbles to his right broke +the silence. His eyes jumped up the canyon +wall to follow three dots of bounding dun-white<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span> +against its sheer side—bighorn sheep skipping +surely along no visible foothold.</p> + +<p>When the sun was well in the sky—though +naught but its reflected radiance penetrated +the gorge—El Doctor, in the lead, signalled a +halt. The place was a constricted apron or +shelf in the cleft between rock walls whereon +sparse galetta grass was growing. Reason for +this tiny oasis of vegetation lay just beyond +in the fact of a water-worn cistern in the lava—such +a natural reservoir as the desert folk +called a “tank,” a godsend when it still contains +the wash from a last cloudburst. This +one was bone-dry.</p> + +<p>The party breakfasted meagrely, wood for +their coffee fire being grubbed by the Indians +painfully and after long search. There was +little speech between them for they were tired; +the night’s ride had been wearing. Moreover, +even the Indians appeared to feel a malign +presence bearing down upon them and forbidding +desecration of the silence. For them, in +especial for Coyote Belly, there was a very +real and fear-compelling presence abroad. +These mountains of Tjuktoak housed Iitoi, +Elder Brother himself; the god of all things +who, with a coyote and a black beetle, drifted +four times round the earth in the time of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span> +Flood and came to anchorage in this place. +El Doctor Coyote Belly, driven by a great love +to commit sacrilege, might well have heard the +voice of Iitoi in the wind and felt his heart +turn to water.</p> + +<p>In truth, the aged Papago was having a +battle with himself. Before he had gulped his +coffee and tortillas the medicine man’s eyes +were roaming fearsomely and he whimpered +snatches of sacerdotal songs as he rummaged +in the pack for a wicker basket. From it he +took a wand stained red and with an eagle’s +feather bound to one end, an arrow very handsomely +feathered from the same bird, a string +of glass beads and a bundle of cigarettes—presents +for Elder Brother, who must be beguiled +before being robbed.</p> + +<p>The old man’s hands wavered to return the +presents to the basket when Benicia hurried +to him, sat down by his side and earnestly +pleaded with him in his own tongue. Finally +his resolution seemed to be brought to the +sticking point. He started up the gorge alone +and with his basket of trifles.</p> + +<p>“Coyote Belly says he must go and sing to +the god Iitoi before we are permitted to visit +his house,” Benicia gravely explained to her +white companions. “The poor man is desperately<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span> +scared because we have come to rob Elder +Brother.”</p> + +<p>Seeing the look of puzzlement on the men’s +faces she continued with that same grave +respect as if speaking of a real presence. +“This old man through the love he bore my +father has consented to betray a secret the +medicine men of his people have handed down +for more than a hundred years. The treasure +of the Lost Mission, he tells me, was dug up +by Papago medicine men not long after the +Mission was destroyed by the Apaches and +brought to these mountains—to the cave of +Elder Brother—”</p> + +<p>“And it’s all here now?” Bim put in excitedly. +The girl nodded.</p> + +<p>“It has been as well hidden from those who +sought it as if it were under the buried ruins +of the mission,” she said; then simply: “While +El Doctor is gone it is best that we get some +sleep.”</p> + +<p>Benicia stretched herself under the shade of +a rock with a saddle blanket for pillow and +slept. But neither of the white men could follow +her precept; both were too sensible of the +prickling of some unnameable essence of the +strange and the unworldly—perhaps that very +savagery of atmosphere which had prompted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span> +primitive Indians to designate Pinacate as the +residence of their god. They were alone; big +Quelele had quietly slipped away shortly after +El Doctor without saying where he was going.</p> + +<p>The men sat smoking while their eyes roved +the prospect of burnt cliff and ragged parapet. +The heat had whips; it drove them to burrow +for lessening shade wherever angles of the +rocks offered. A curious cast to the slice of +sky visible above the cañon walls first caught +Bagley’s attention. He squinted up at it for +a long moment of speculation.</p> + +<p>“If it wasn’t so early in the summer I’d +say a thunderhead was fixin’ up to give us a +big razoo,” he ventured. Grant looked up and +noted that the blue had turned to a heavy +saffron tint as if the sun were shining through +a stratum of light sand; such a tint he’d seen +before the great windstorm on the day of Don +Padraic’s burial.</p> + +<p>“If I could only look over the top of the +wall yonder to west’ard,” Bim grumbled uneasily. +“These cloudbursts always come from +direction of the Gulf. We’re not very well put +right here in the channel of all the wash down +from up top-side. Those horses now—”</p> + +<p>He walked uneasily about the narrow confines +of the shelf, scanning the upshoots of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span> +rock for possible ways out. Then he seemed +to dismiss possibility of trouble from his mind +and returned to where Grant was sitting.</p> + +<p>An hour passed. Perhaps they were dozing +when the rattle of a shower of rock down the +cañon side galvanized both. Up there they +saw the figure of big Quelele. Like a wild goat +he was leaping from foothold to foothold +downward; he was in mad haste.</p> + +<p>The big Indian risked his neck a dozen times +before he came panting up to the watchers. +He waved to the brink of the cliff.</p> + +<p>“I been on top—watching—I see long way +off—Urgo—rurales. They come—fast!”</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV">CHAPTER XXIV</a><br /> +<small>STORM</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">Bim translated Quelele’s intelligence for +Grant. “Our li’l friend Urgo’s been +burnin’ the wind,” was his dry comment. +Grant sent a quick glance around the cul-de-sac +of rock which encompassed them.</p> + +<p>“Not the best place in the world to stand +off ten men,” he gave his opinion. “We ought +to get our backs up against something that +can’t be surrounded.”</p> + +<p>Quelele read the white man’s thoughts, for +he pointed farther up the cañon beyond the +lava cistern. There the gorge narrowed to a +veritable doorway and the steps thereto were +so precipitous that one ascending would have +to scramble and claw a way on hands and +knees; no possible chance for a rush en masse. +Bim surveyed the natural citadel with the eye +of a trained Border man who occasionally has +to reckon with such elementals as the killing +power of a rifle bullet and the protective +quality of a ’dobe wall. Finally he screwed one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span> +eye at the crack of sky showing between the +escarpments and shook his head dubiously at +what he saw there. Quelele, who had had the +superior advantage of a wider view from his +aerie on the cliff top, bowed his arms in the +shape of a ball and waved a hand to the west.</p> + +<p>“Papago says it’s a big storm brewing over +yonder,” Bim explained. “When these thunderheads +finally get all boiled into one and +come a-runnin’ it’s a case of take to cover. +If this thing is the regulation rim-fire sock-dollager +they’s goin’ be a sight of water pass +over where we’re standin’ before long. Me, +I’d rather be somewhere else than in this dry +channel.”</p> + +<p>Grant did not linger to discuss strategy +longer. He went to where Benicia was sleeping +in the shade of a boulder and gently touched +her on the shoulder. The girl sat up, startled.</p> + +<p>“We have to be moving,” Grant told her. +“Quelele has just reported Urgo and his +rurales out on the desert and coming our way.”</p> + +<p>“And El Doctor?” she quickly interposed. +“He has returned from the cave?”</p> + +<p>Grant shook his head. Bitter disappointment +flashed into her eyes at the realization of +how fate had played to interpose the grim business<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span> +of a fight just on the minute of realization +of her great hopes. Grant, stooping beside +her and watching the play of emotions on her +features, saw quick remorse chase away the +frown. Impulsively a brown hand reached out +to play upon the back of his.</p> + +<p>“Grant, beloved”—how like the overtones +from her own golden harp the contralto richness +of her voice!—“I am desperately selfish +and you will not understand.—Thinking only +of my own purpose—bringing you with your +wound still unhealed out to this place to face—death +perhaps.—And you do this for me—”</p> + +<p>“’Nicia, little girl—” He could go no +farther than those words, for the song in his +heart was overwhelming. At last—at last the +trammels of the girl’s heart were shaken off +and the call he’d waited for so long had come! +Call of the heart of her to his.</p> + +<p>She was on her feet, vibrant with energy, +alive to the exigencies of impending action. +Bim was saddling the horses and Quelele had +the pack on the mule when they joined them. +Bim briefly explained to the girl his survey of +the gorge for strategical strength; at any cost +they must move up until they could find some +sheep trail or other practicable ledge giving<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span> +escape from the flood water channel. “If that +doddering old medicine man would only quit +his sing-song business and come back for a +rifle we’d be that much better off,” the big +fellow grumbled.</p> + +<p>When all was in readiness Quelele led the +way up the tortuous watercourse and through +the mighty gates of porphyry nearly blocking +the farther reaches. They were forced to lead +the animals, whose sure-footedness was put to +the test every yard of the advance. Beyond +the great pillars the gorge opened to a rough +amphitheatre with less steeply sloping sides. +A narrow upward-springing ledge of rock led +away from the dry watercourse to a rock pulpit +some seventy-five or a hundred feet above. +This they followed, to discover there was +space for their horses to stand behind the horn +of malapais and still be screened from observation +from below. Quelele made some mysterious +passes with a tether rope which yoked +all the animals to a single line that was +anchored at both ends.</p> + +<p>“Look,” Benicia cried as Bim was taking +the carbines from the saddle scabbards. They +followed her pointing hand and saw a dark +spot against the opposite wall of the gorge and +higher than their level. A midget figure was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span> +outlined against the opening of a cave. It +was El Doctor at his business of propitiating +Elder Brother—El Doctor, much needed behind +the stock of a carbine. The men hallooed to +him but he did not turn.</p> + +<p>“Go over and get that crazy fool,” Bim +commanded Quelele. But the big Indian, instead +of obeying immediately, turned up the +ledge and made for a high point on the shoulder +of the rock bastion constituting one of the +portals of the upper gorge. They watched him +as he scaled the almost perpendicular face of +black lava. From the top Quelele had a view +of the cañon’s far-away exit onto the desert +floor several miles from the niche where the +treasure seekers had refuge. The watchers +saw him lift himself cautiously over the top +of his lookout and peer to westward. Then he +came scrambling and sliding down.</p> + +<p>“They come into the valley,” the Papago +reported. “Too late to get El Doctor.”</p> + +<p>It was Bim with his desert craft who made +disposition of the little force of defence. +Quelele he sent back to the aerie with orders +not to shoot until he heard shots from the +whites; the Indian’s fire from the rear, once +Urgo and his men had passed the rocky +portals, would throw the rurales into confusion.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span> +Grant and Benicia he disposed behind +an outcrop of porphyry a little behind and +above the protected animals.</p> + +<p>“Pick ’em off as they come through the +Gate,” he suggested. “An’ don’t try any +fancy shooting; we haven’t got any too many +cartridges.”</p> + +<p>“But you—?” Benicia began. The Arizonan +grinned broadly.</p> + +<p>“Me, I always fancy a little solo game in +this sort of rukus. I’m going on t’other side +of the gulch. Cross-fire, you sabe?” He left +them with a smile on his lips, and they watched +him jumping lightly down from rock to rock. +Almost before he had begun to clamber up the +opposite wall he was lost to view amid the maze +of fissure and castellated boulder. Grant and +the girl were stretched out behind their primitive +breastwork alone in this unfinished world +of fire. They could see neither Quelele nor Bagley. +Came to their ears the faint drone of barbaric +song: El Doctor Coyote Belly at his traitorous +devotions.</p> + +<p>The whole gorge was filled with a saffron +glare like the reflection from oil fires under +a boiler, unworldly, portentous.</p> + +<p>They waited, these two, in the immensity of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span> +earth’s disgorged bowels. Side by side, elbows +touching, they counted the slow drag of minutes +as naught in the balance against the deep joy +of love militant.</p> + +<p>A stir in the bed of the dry wash below +them. Up went their carbines with cheeks laid +against wood and eyes sighting along the +lances of light. Again the stir down there. A +gaunt figure rose from hand and knees to its +feet, stood swaying for an instant, then pitched +forward against the support of a slab of rock.</p> + +<p>A very leprechaun of the rocks was it: ribs +creasing burned skin about the naked torso; +whity-grey hair streaming down to mingle +with a beard; bare arms like a spider’s legs +and all cracked by the sun. The husk of Doc +Stooder, plaything of the desert god, was come +here, following the still living spark of instinct +prompting a water search in a canyon. Come, +too, to the secret hiding place of the treasure +whose glitter had so mercilessly befooled him.</p> + +<p>Grant, stupefied by the apparition of death +and failing in any recognition of the skeleton +thing as the bibulous doctor of Arizora, suspected +a trick of Urgo. Again he laid his eye +along his rifle sight, vigilant for what might +ensue. The creature spread-eagled against the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span> +rock slowly pushed itself upright with its +hands; its shaggy head turned wearily as +thirsting eyes scanned the dry chasm.</p> + +<p>Then a shout from across the gorge. Bagley +had leaped from his hiding place and was rushing +precariously down to succour the ghost. +Just as he reached Stooder and had thrown +an arm about him to heave his wasted form +onto a shoulder the crack of a rifle shivered the +gorge’s silence. Rock dust spurted within a +foot of the rescuer.</p> + +<p>The sun went out that second—instantly, +like a powerful incandescent switched off. A +yellow penumbra tinged the darkness.</p> + +<p>Almost as one the rifles of Grant and Benicia +jetted lead. Two more shots from the dry +wash. The giant figure of Bagley with +Stooder limp over one shoulder never faltered +in its leaping and scrambling up the declivity +to the shelter he had quitted. The two who +had been following his flight with stilled hearts +saw him disappear behind a great rock; an +instant and a jet of fire lanced down thence +at the attackers by the Gate.</p> + +<p>A blob of rain large as a Mexican dollar +smacked on Benicia’s hand as she pumped the +ejector—another and a third. Then the gorge<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span> +was blasted by a thunder shock amid the peaks, +and a stab of lightning painted the whole pit +sulphurous blue. By its flash the defenders +saw scurrying figures leaping from rock to +rock in the stream bed. Quelele, the quick of +eye, fired his first shot by the light of storm +fire; one of the rurales went down like a wet +sack.</p> + +<p>A second stunning burst of thunder which +knocked out the underpinning of the sky. Then +deluge.</p> + +<p>It was not rain that fell; it was solid water +in sheets and cones which hissed with the speed +of its descent. Water so compacted that it +was like a river on edge, engulfing. With it +the almost continuous quiver and jerk of electrical +flame. The gorge was become a watery +hell. More than that, for Urgo and his men +in the wash it threatened momentarily to be +their tomb. Already a white streak of foam +in the lightning flashes marked where the once +bone-dry watercourse was changing character.</p> + +<p>The rurales and their leader found the odds +all of a sudden snatched from their hands by +this frenzied ally of the hunted girl and her +supporters. They had come eleven against +five, with their quarry caught in a hole in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span> +Pinacate sierra; before the cloudburst had +endured three minutes Urgo realized he had +let himself and his men into a fatal trap. +Their horses, confidently left behind them in +the lower reaches of the gorge, must already +have stampeded under the lash of the storm. +Spiteful rifle flashes from both sides came with +each baleful flicker of fire from the sky to deny +escape from the rising waters up either wall +of the chasm.</p> + +<p>Now a dull roaring above the waterfall of +the rain began to fill the gash in the sierra. +Away back at the head of the gorge and where +the slope from the twin volcano peaks shed +water as from steep roofs into this common +trough, a solid wall, capped dull white, came +with the speed of a meteor down and down +through the channel in the living rock. It rolled +boulders the size of box-cars in its flood; a +chevaux-de-frise of barbed cactus and scrub +trees tumbled at its crest.</p> + +<p>Even above the tumult of the deluge sounded +the shrill alarm of the rurales as they broke +position and turned to flee through the Gate. +But already the flood was there, choking egress. +They must scramble up the sides of the gorge +like rats from a flooded hold; they must grope +and cling by every illuminating flash of blue<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span> +fire, waiting to see where the next handhold +lay, how near the hungry yellow waters rushed.</p> + +<p>With Grant and the girl was nothing but +security. Unprotected, they had bent their +heads to the pounding mallets of water. When +the firing abruptly ceased at the rush of their +attackers for safety Grant heard the scream +of a horse near at hand and remembered their +tethered animals. Should they break away in +their fright the plight of all five would be a +desperate one.</p> + +<p>“Stay here!” he shouted in Benicia’s ear. +“Going to the horses!”</p> + +<p>Grant crawled and groped his way over the +slippery rocks, each seeming to be alive with +the film of rushing water across it. He clambered +down and to the right until he came to +the pulpit rock behind which the beasts had +been tethered by Quelele. The mule he found +down, hopelessly noosed in his hobble rope and +slowly strangling; the horses were huddled, +tails to the storm, dripping and dejected.</p> + +<p>It took several minutes’ precarious work to +get the pack-animal to his feet and freshly +tethered. Then Grant began the retreat to the +breastwork where he had left the girl. It was +largely a matter of guesswork. Once he found +himself against an unscalable wall and had to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span> +retrace his steps. Another time one foot +slipped and he caught himself with his body +halfway over the brink.</p> + +<p>A flash of lightning showed him two rifles +lying side by side on a ledge below him—his +rifle and Benicia’s; but the girl was gone. The +fist of fear smote him terrifically.</p> + +<p>He screamed her name above the bellowing +of the flood in the wash. No answer. He ran +along the ledge that had been theirs until he +came to a downward terrace; to that he leaped +and along its blind way he fumbled. Came the +ghost of a scream, thin above the diapason all +about. His name—“Grant!”</p> + +<p>Then merciful lightning blazed blue and he +saw. Below him on a broad shelf which overhung +the whiteness of the torrent two figures, +glistening like seals, were locked—they swayed.</p> + +<p>The man launched himself blindly out and +down. He rolled; he slipped and wallowed +against and under great boulders. At the end +of seconds seeming æons he came to the rock +apron where he had seen the struggling shapes. +Sound of stertorous breathing guided him. He +rose from his knees before Benicia and another, +who was trying to drag her along the +ledge. A revealing flash of fire gave him just +a glimpse of a weasel face—Colonel Urgo.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span></p> + +<p>Not so much rage as loathly horror of an +unclean thing sped furious summons to every +muscle spring in his body. With his shoulder +planted against the Spaniard’s chest for a +leverage Grant tore loose the man’s grip from +Benicia. Before he could whirl to shift his +attack Urgo had screamed an oath and was on +the American’s back, legs twining to cumber +Grant’s thighs, both hands clamped about his +throat. It was the catamount’s attack.</p> + +<p>The first impact of his antagonist’s weight +nearly over-balanced Grant and precipitated +both into the maelstrom of waters not six feet +below their ledge. But, steadying himself, the +American suddenly launched backward, pinning +the lighter body on his back against a wall of +rock. It was a terrific smash. Urgo’s breath +came in a whistle from it. His hands sank +deeper into the muscles about Grant’s throat, +closing his windpipe. Deliberately the standing +man took a few forward steps, then swiftly +back against the wall again. An elbow of rock +found the Spaniard’s ribs and cracked two. He +shrieked.</p> + +<p>Now Grant’s hands went up to lock behind +the head that sagged over his right shoulder. +Strength of desperation flooded into his arms, +for the weaker man had him throttled. Urgo<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span> +must release his hold on Grant’s throat or suffer +a broken neck. The constricting hands +slackened their grip ever so little. Grant bowed +his shoulders, gave a mighty heave and swept +the Colonel’s body over his shoulder in a wide +arc. The man sprawled, arms wide, through the +air, struck the edge of the rocky apron. He +clawed—slipped—clawed again, and disappeared.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV">CHAPTER XXV</a><br /> +<small>TREASURE TROVE</small></h2> + + +<p class="cap">The storm ceased with the same suddenness +as it began. Hardly an hour had torrential +waters lashed the cinder wastes of Pinacate +when the black pall over the heavens broke +away and the sun came out to suck hungrily +at pools in the rocks. There was a headiness +of wine in the air, a smell of wet soil mingled +with spicy emanations from greasewood and +<i lang="es" xml:lang="es">palo verde</i>. The desert’s sparse growing +things exulted in the breaking of long drought.</p> + +<p>For a long time Grant and Benicia on their +side of the gorge and Bim in his retreat opposite +lay hidden, awaiting possible renewal of +the attack which the storm had scattered. But +the torrent that still raged down the bottom +of the gorge had washed clean every vestige +of an enemy. Quelele on his high post saw +four scattered horsemen rushing pell-mell for +the gateway onto the desert—last vestige of +Urgo’s rurales force, each man of which gave +thanks to his patron saint that he had come<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span> +out of the hell in the mountain cul-de-sac with +a whole skin.</p> + +<p>Quelele also saw several specks dropping +earthward from the clear blue; specks which +rapidly grew from the size of gnats to the +spread of small aeroplanes. King condors +they, who had smelled a feast from afar—loathsome +birds with a wing spread covering +the span of thirteen feet. The coming of one +of these foul creatures to his particular banquet +even the sharp eye of a Papago watcher +could not discern, for the scene was hidden +from him by a shoulder of the cañon wall.</p> + +<p>A stunted <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">palo verde</i> tree nearly stripped of +its verdure by the whips of the rain hung half-uprooted +over the rapidly diminishing stream +in the wash. One branch had caught and held +some flotsam from the high flood, now clear +of the water. Just a shapeless bundle of +clothes, lolling head, arms askew where broken +bones had let inert flesh sag to the current. +Just a grim caricature of something which so +recently had walked in the pride of his imaginings.</p> + +<p>The condor flopped clumsily to a branch +stub six feet distant from the bundle of +clothes, folded his great wings with a dry +rustling of feathers, blinked the red lids of his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span> +eyes to focus his vision for expert inspection +and studied the hank of cloth and flesh suspended +in the tree crotch. The thing which +flood waters had brought stirred slightly; eyes +opened with a flutter. They met the critical +gaze of the feathered pariah on the stub. +The condor acknowledged this unexpected show +of life on his banquet table by disturbed bobbings +of the naked yellow head—the skin on +his poll was wrinkled as an old man’s—and a +bringing of his off eye to bear around his sabre +beak with the skew-like movement of a hen +sighting a worm.</p> + +<p>The wreck in the bundle of clothes opened +his lips to scream but the ghost of a groan +came instead. It tried to lift a fending arm +against the abomination so near; the muscles +tugged at broken bones.</p> + +<p>The condor appraised these manifestations +of life carefully, weighed them by contrast +with his experiences with crippled sheep and +helpless calves. His talons stirred restlessly +on the branch. First one, then the other lifted +from the bark, stretched and flexed. The king +of the higher airs was impatient. He spread +his wings to balance him and clumsily hopped a +few feet nearer, craning his wattled neck +anxiously.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span></p> + +<p>A shadow passed swiftly over the <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">palo verde</i> +tree. A quick upward twist of the head gave the +condor view of a putative and too-anxious fellow +guest at the bounty spread there. Greediness +pushed him. He spread his wings and +hopped again—</p> + +<p>Then the desert exacted with cruelty recompense +for the cruelties of Colonel Hamilcar +Urgo. Abomination of his passing was meted +him according to the abominations of his own +devising.</p> + +<p>An hour after the last rain drop the flood +waters in the gorge had dropped to permit +of reunion between the erstwhile defenders +of the pass. Grant waded waist deep with +Benicia in his arms; Bim, all smiles, was +stretching out a hand from the off-side rocks.</p> + +<p>“Well, folks all, looks like a pleasant time +was enjoyed by all and one!” The big Arizonan’s +spirits would permit of no more concrete +thanksgiving for a crisis passed. It was +his way to find laughter the only vehicle for +suppressed emotions and whimsicalities the +best conveyance for thoughts which might +sound “high-falutin’.” The three stood mute, +their eyes telling one another things which +might have come flattened and blunted in +speech.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span></p> + +<p>“See me welcome an old visitor just before +the curtain went up on the first act?” Bim +turned to Grant, his eyes shining excitement. +“Who d’you think? Ole Doc Stooder!” +Grant gasped in surprise. His pal’s grin +faded as he added seriously:</p> + +<p>“Just about the end of his string, too. The +rain sure saved him—couldn’t have lasted another +hour—one chance in a thousand brought +him here where they’s folks to look out for him—a +friend, even, to coddle him back to health.”</p> + +<p>“No, not one chance in a thousand,” Benicia +caught him up with deep seriousness in her +voice. “It is the desert way—to play with +destiny, I mean, and seem to cause miracles.—But +let me go to him if he needs attention.” +She started forward, but Bim put out a staying +hand.</p> + +<p>“I wouldn’t, ma’am. The Doc’s not a purty +sight right now. His body’s just drinkin’ in +all the water that landed on him an’ he’s sorta +in a daze—doesn’t say much of anything that +makes sense. A little food which I’m goin’ to +brew if I can find some dry sticks of wood anywhere’s +round—” Simple charity dictated +that Bim say no word of conjecture as to what +brought Stooder to the desert. He guessed +full well.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span></p> + +<p>El Doctor Coyote Belly seemed to be materialized +from the rocks so noiselessly had he +approached the group. The old man’s face +was ashen; unguessable terrors he had fought +with and hardly conquered since last the three +had seen him standing in the yellow storm glare +before the cave of Elder Brother.</p> + +<p>“If my daughter will come now to the house +of Iitoi,” he said to the girl in his native +tongue, “she may take what Iitoi gives. The +god has expressed his displeasure by the storm—but +he will give.”</p> + +<p>Benicia turned and put a wordless question +to Grant. They started together to climb the +precipitous rock ladder up the side of the +gorge wall, El Doctor leading. Thirty minutes’ +exhaustive effort brought them to the approach +of a high-roofed cavern into which the westering +sun laid a broad carpet of light. There in +the shale before the cave mouth were El Doctor’s +pitiful presents to the god—the arrow +and prayer stick wedged upright, the beads +and tobacco in a small basket. The whole +ground about was littered with the shards of +sacrificial pottery and scraps of basketry.</p> + +<p>Benicia motioned to El Doctor to lead the +way into the cave, but he shook his head in +emphatic negative. Then she gave Grant a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span> +strange smile, almost that of a child who awaits +revelation of a mystery. He saw in deep pools +of her eyes a transcendent joy made almost +pain by this moment of hope achieved. She +held out her hand for him to take and they +entered the cave.</p> + +<p>When their eyes had become accustomed to +the sudden transition from glaring sunlight +into gloom a faint glimmering at the far end +of the sunlight path guided them. Ankle-deep +in the dust of ages they groped. The glimmer +waxed stronger. Suddenly Benicia stopped +with a catching of the breath. Grant stooped +and lifted a heavy object from a niche of rock, +bringing it into the filtered stream of radiance.</p> + +<p>It was a golden monstrance, dust coated. +Faint twinkles of light glowed like firefly lamps +from jewels set in the radii of a glory. A great +diamond above the crystal box caught fire from +the sun.</p> + +<p>As Grant hastily bent to replace the sacred +vessel his hand tipped the edge of a shallow +basket. From it rolled a stream of moonbeam +fire out into the zone of sunshine. Liquid +globules of moon-glow, round and pellucid as +ice crystals, seductive as the shadowed whiteness +of a woman’s throat: the green pearls of +the Virgin stripped by the impiety of El Rojo<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span> +from the shrine of the Four Evangelists!</p> + +<p>Benicia slowly sank to her knees, words of +prayer whispered from her lips. Prayer of +thankfulness and dedication of the lost treasure +to the sanctity of the Church.</p> + +<p>Grant felt his presence in this solemn +moment was an intrusion. He tip-toed back +to the mouth of the cave and stood looking +out. All the wildness and the savagery of +Altar’s secret fane of the desert god lay burning +and glistening with wetness in the westering +sun. The waning torrent, sardonic gesture +of plenty in this ultimate citadel of thirst, +splashed jewels against the lancing light. Here +was a world of the primordial—Creation arrested +in its first hour.</p> + +<p>A hand touched his arm lightly. He turned +to find Benicia standing beside him. The sun +wove an aura of vivid fire about her head. +Her eyes raised to his were swimming.</p> + +<p>“Now, heart of my heart,” she whispered. +And all the love fire in her flamed from her +lips.</p> + + +<p class="p2 noic">THE END</p> + + + + +<hr class="chap" /> +<div class="tnote"> +<p class="noi tntitle"><a name="TNOTE" id="TNOTE">Transcriber’s Notes:</a></p> + +<p>Title page verso: printer’s information was not supplied in the + source text.</p> + +<p>A Table of Contents has been provided for the convenience of the + reader.</p> + +<p>Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.</p> + +<p>Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.</p> + +<p>Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.</p> + +<p>The author’s em-dash and punctuation/endquote styles have been + retained.</p> +</div> + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Dust of the Desert, by Robert Welles Ritchie + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DUST OF THE DESERT *** + +***** This file should be named 44691-h.htm or 44691-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/4/4/6/9/44691/ + +Produced by Donald Cummings and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Dust of the Desert + +Author: Robert Welles Ritchie + +Release Date: January 17, 2014 [EBook #44691] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DUST OF THE DESERT *** + + + + +Produced by Donald Cummings and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + +DUST OF THE DESERT + + + + +Dust of the Desert + +BY ROBERT WELLES RITCHIE + + +[Illustration] + + + A. L. BURT COMPANY + Publishers New York + + +Published by arrangement with Dodd, Mead & Company + +Printed in U. S. A. + + + + + COPYRIGHT, 1922, + BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC. + + PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY + [Transcriber's Note: printer's information was not supplied in the + source text.] + + + + +CONTENTS + + + CHAPTER PAGE + PROLOGUE 1 + I WHAT HAPPENED ON THE LIMITED 17 + II A GIRL NAMED BENICIA 25 + III DOC STOODER 36 + IV COLONEL URGO REPAYS 51 + V THE GARDEN OF SOLITUDE 65 + VI JUSTICE 76 + VII THE CHAIN GANG 85 + VIII THE HEART OF BENICIA 98 + IX GOLD AND PEARLS 108 + X AT THE CASA O'DONOJU 112 + XI THE MARK OF EL ROJO 129 + XII DESERT SECRETS 145 + XIII CROSSCURRENTS 159 + XIV REVELATION 168 + XV WHAT HAPPENED IN THE NIGHT 178 + XVI ACCUSATION 184 + XVII THE ORDEAL 195 + XVIII THE DESERT INTERVENES 211 + XIX THIRST 219 + XX THE COMING OF EL DOCTOR 232 + XXI TREASURE QUEST 247 + XXII ALTAR TAKES ITS TOLL 257 + XXIII INTO THE FURNACE 266 + XXIV STORM 279 + XXV TREASURE TROVE 293 + + + + +DUST OF THE DESERT + + + + +PROLOGUE + + +Roads of men thread the world. They thunder with a life flood. They +are vibrant with a pulse of affairs. By land and water and air they +link to-day to to-morrow. But El Camino de los Muertos (the Road of +the Dead Men) is a dim highway leading nowhere but back and back to +forgotten yesterdays. Its faint sign-posts once were vivid in lettering +of tears and blood. Its stages were measured by the sum of all human +hardihood. Faith, valour, reckless adventuring, thirst for gold, love +o' women--these the links in the measuring chain that marked its course +through a dead land. And black crosses formed of lava stones laid down +in the sand; these abide over all the length of the Road of the Dead +Men from Caborca to Yuma to cry to the white-hot sky of slain hopes and +faith betrayed in those buried years gone. + +The priest-adventurers of New Spain first blazed this trail through +an unknown wilderness. Restless pioneers of the Society of Jesus and +the Order of St. Francis, men with the zeal to dare, pushed out from +the northernmost limits of the Spanish settlements in a new world with +their soldier guards and their Indian guides. They fought death in +a land of thirst northward, ever northward. The cross fell from the +hands of spent zealots at some waterhole where water was not, and other +hands followed to snatch up the sacred emblem and push it deeper into +Papagueria. North and west through El Infiernillo to the red waters of +the Colorado where the Yumas had their reed huts. Thence on to the west +through a land that stank of death until at last the end of the trail +was smothered in the soft green of Californian valleys--good ground for +the seed of Faith. + +The overland trail of the padres became the single trail from Mexico +to gold when the madness of '49 called to all peoples. Then the Road +of the Dead Men took its toll by the score and doublescore. Then men +fought for precious water at Tinajas Altas; many crosses of malapais +mark the sands there. Bandits lurked at Tule Wells, ninety miles over +blistering desert from the nearest water, to shoot men for the gold +they were bringing back from California. The Pock-Marked Woman, mad +with thirst--so runs the legend--walked at nights with the Virgin in +the flats beyond Pitiquito and found water with celestial candles +burning all about the pool. + +So passed the wraiths of the gold madness. A railroad was laid down +from the Pacific eastward across the desert. What once was called +Papagueria had come to be known as Sonora, in Mexico, and Arizona in +the Republic of the North. The Road of the Dead Men at its California +end became a way through green and watered valleys where bungalows +mushroom overnight; along its course in southwestern Arizona and +northern Sonora it lapsed to a faint trail from waterhole to waterhole +of a heat scourged desert. To-day this forgotten remnant of a high +road of adventure and hot romance exists a streak in an incandescent +inferno of sand and lava slag, wherein death is the omnipresent fact. +Occasionally a prospector putters along its dreary stretches, chipping +at ledge and rimrock. A Papago or a Cocopa creeps over caliche-stained +flats with baskets of salt from the Pinacate marshes near the Gulf. + +That is all. The Dead Men hold their road inviolable. It is dust of the +desert. + +That is all, did I say? No, the spirit of romance and the shape of +illusion have not completely passed from El Camino de los Muertos. +Remains that tale which carries itself over a span of a century and +a half, linking lives of the present to lives of men and women whose +very graves long since have passed from sight of folk. A tale strangely +like the desert trail along whose course its episodes of hot passion +and swift action befell; for its beginnings are laid in a mirage of an +elder day which we of the present can see but dimly, and its ending +is beyond the horizon of to-day. Would you know the full story of the +Lost Mission de los Cuatros Evangelistas: how the baleful spell of its +green pearls of the Virgin worked upon the fortunes of the House of +O'Donoju and how the last of that house wrought expiation for the sin +of a forbear through heroism and the fire of a great love--would you +know the full story, I say, you must see with me the substance of a +beginning. + +No more can one plump into the middle of this the last of the romance +tales of the Road of the Dead Men than could one drop onto the Road +itself midway of its length. + + * * * * * + +A King in Spain once followed a practice of careless munificence. +Whenever one of his generals in the great wars appeared worthy of +reward His Majesty used to ink the ball of his thumb and with a grand +and free gesture he would make a print somewhere on the map of Mexico, +then called New Spain. Then the lucky general, taking this patent of +royal favor across the seas with him, would hire surveyors to translate +the print of Philip's thumb into terms of square miles of domain. These +square miles were his and his heirs' to govern like little kings, with +justice in their hands, the Church to give them countenance and Indians +by the hundreds to serve them under a modified code of slavery. No +man has lived since as did those magnificent possessors of Philip's +thumbprints. + +The Rancho del Refugio in the little known reaches of Papagueria was +one of these fiefs of the king. Michael O'Donohue, a wild man of the +red Irish who had fought English kings and queens under the banner of +Spain, had come by the grant originally and had taken a lady of Granada +to the new world to bear him heirs worthy of their inheritance. Michael +O'Donohue became Don Miguel O'Donoju, lord of a desert principality and +a power at the Viceroy's court in the City of Mexico. He established +two rigid precedents to be followed by the house of O'Donoju: pride of +race and jealous conservation of the family principality. It became +a rule of the O'Donoju that none of the clan marry outside the pure +Castilian blood--Irish excepted if Irish could be found; and a rule +that, come what might, no O'Donoju pass title to so much as a foot of +the Rancho del Refugio. + +It was a day in April, the year 1780, that the clan O'Donoju came +to the Mission of the Four Evangelists to lend the dignity of their +presence to the solemn service of re-dedication. More than that, Don +Padraic O'Donoju, venerable head of the house and master of the Casa +O'Donoju in the oasis named the Garden of Solitude, was come to witness +a personal triumph. For it had been his money that had gone to the +Franciscan College to be used in the rebuilding of the frontier post of +God after the Apaches had raided and burned it fifty years before. And +one of his own sons, Padre Felice, had been the architect and builder +of the restored mission and was to continue the priest in charge. Padre +Felice was fourth in a line of O'Donojus to take orders, one from each +generation since the establishment of the grant. + +The O'Donojus--grandchildren, cousins and kin by marriage--had ridden +five days and upwards from various sections of the Rancho del Refugio, +up and out through the Altar desert to this remote sanctuary of God in +the country of the Sand People. They came by the way called the Road of +the Dead Men. Its asperities were softened by the quick desert spring +which tipped each thorny cactus cone with candelabra tufts of golden +and carmine flowers. The desert's usual heat was tempered by the snows +that lay in unnamed mountains to the north. + +They came in a lengthy caravan of horses and burros, with half naked +Indians to herd the goats and the yearling steers that were to be +barbecued for the secular feast to follow the religious rites; with a +half-company of foot soldiers from the Presidio del Refugio to guard +the company against roving Apaches; Indian maids on mule back to serve +the needs of their mistresses, regally mounted on ponies of the Cortez +strain; baggage porters, cooks, roustabouts. Fully a hundred of the +clan O'Donoju and satellites on pilgrimage over the Road of the Dead +Men. + +All of the O'Donoju were there but one, El Rojo--the Red One. The "Red +One" was he because of the throw-back to the red Irish strain of his +fighting ancestor Don Miguel. Red with the pugnacious red of Donegal +was his hair; his cheeks had none of the sallow tan of the Spanish +but were dyed with the stain of Irish bog winds; his eyes were blue +lamps of the devil. A fatherless grandson of old Don Padraic, El Rojo +had played the wild youth in the City of Mexico with only occasional +visits of penance to the Casa O'Donoju in the desert country of the +north until, when the tang of youth still was his, he had tainted his +name with scandal. Followed his formal expulsion from the clan at the +hands of the old aristocrat, his grandfather, and the closing of all +doors of his kindred in Papagueria against him. El Rojo had ridden out +to the wide world of sand and mountains an outcast but with a laugh on +his lips; this a full year before the gathering of the family at the +Mission of the Four Evangelists. + +When El Rojo had turned lone wolf, a sadness that was not the sadness +of shame settled upon the heart of one of the O'Donoju. Frecia +Mayortorena, a cousin, one of the flowers of girlhood that caused old +Hermosillo to be named the Little Garden, sat behind her barred windows +on many a night with heart wild to hear once more the love song only +El Rojo knew how to sing. Frecia Mayortorena, all fire under the cold +ice of her schooled and decorous features, knew that the reckless devil +with the flame-blue eyes had but to come and strum a love call on his +guitar; she would go with him into banishment and worse. So on this +pilgrimage to the shrine of the four holy men the girl, who rode with +her father and brothers, allowed her imagination to frame the figure +of a phantom horseman on every ragged mountain top. At each camp fire +along the Road of the Dead Men, when the vast sea of desert round about +was stilled under the stars, Frecia Mayortorena sat with tiny pointed +chin cupped in a propping palm and seemed to hear in the clink of a +mule's hobble chain the opening chord of that song of songs, + + Red as the pomegranate flower, my love, + The heart of him who sings. + +The cavalcade came to the mission with the firing of guns and with +shouts. The reed-and-mud huts of the Sand People beyond the cloisters +disgorged their shouting savages to welcome the travellers. Padre +Felice, a gaunt man with the face of an ascetic above the folds of his +rough brown cowl, hurried out from the doors of the new sanctuary to +meet and give embrace to his father, Don Padraic, and then in turn to +all his next of kin; behind him followed his two novitiate priests +who were, with Padre Felice, the only white men in all the stretch of +Papagueria from the Rancho del Refugio westward to the Sea of Cortez. +Five days' travel were they from the nearest of their kind, and to west +and north stretched unguessed leagues of the desert. Only the Road of +the Dead Men linked them with the first of the Californian missions +thirty days over the western horizon. + +Missionary to the Sand People was Padre Felice--to that branch of the +Papago tribe of tractable Indians who lived about the east shore of +the Sea of Cortez and on eastward throughout the desert of Altar. The +rebuilt mission stood in the middle of a small oasis which was fed by a +stream down out of the burnt mountains not a mile behind; one of those +rare and furtive desert trickles of water which hides in the sand most +months of the year. The diminutive mission building, with its rounded +dome of sun-burned brick, lifted in sharp outlines above the vivid and +water-fed greenery of the oasis mesquite and _palo verde_; but the +whole--oasis and house of God--was dwarfed by the bleak immensity +of the flanking mountains leaping sheer from the plain to push their +fire-scarred summits against the sky. + +Before the choir of Indian voices intoned the opening prayer of the +dedication service the packs of the O'Donoju caravan yielded precious +things. There was a monstrance of heavy gold studded at its tips with +precious gems; this was the personal offering of old Don Padraic to +the shrine of the Four Evangelists. A chalice of gold, a great altar +crucifix of gold inlaid with mother-of-pearl, a pair of candelabra +wrought of chased silver and a communion service of the same metal +represented the pious contributions of the rest of the clan O'Donoju. + +But most precious of all the altar treasures was that double string +of the pearls of the Virgin which by a miracle had been saved from +plunder of the Apaches when the savages from the north had come burning +and murdering fifty years before. For a half-century the lucent rope +of moonbeam green had lain in the treasure vaults of the Franciscan +College in the City of Mexico awaiting this hour of restoration. Green +pearls fetched from the shell beads of the Sea of Cortez by Indian +converts. Pearls hinting of caves of ocean by their shimmering, +changeful lustre. Pearls to fire the lust of covetousness even from +their hallowed place about the throat of the Virgin. + +Padre Felice held the glinting rope of lights high in dedication, and +as reverently he draped them upon the bosom of the sacred effigy the +clan O'Donoju and all the dark-skinned children of the mission sang a +gloria. + +An untoward incident jarred the merriment of the feasting that followed +the re-dedication of the mission. When whole beeves were being lifted +from the roasting pits and the skins of wine and tequila were passing +from table to table beneath the flowering mesquite trees a column of +dust strode across the desert from the east and spawned two horsemen +upon the oasis. One, a naked Indian of the stature of a giant, reined +in his horse at the far fringe of the mesquite as befitting a servant. +The second rode boldly into the circle of the tables. Silver clinked +from bridle and stirrup leathers of his magnificent white thoroughbred. +The rider's silver-trimmed hat came off with a sweeping bow to include +all there, and the red of his hair was like molten copper in the sun. + +"El Rojo!" was the startled cry on every lip. Men scrambled to their +feet as if to combat some overt move of an enemy. + +"God be with you all," came the Red One's speech of polite greeting, +made all the more ironical by the reckless upturn of his lips in a grin +and the steely lights that flashed from his blue eyes. + +"--And God, or his gentle vicar, Padre Felice, give me place at table +with my noble kin," El Rojo added lightly. "I have travelled far to +have my cup here on this day of celebration." + +The laughing horseman let his eyes dance over the circle of faces until +they came to rest for just an instant upon one. He saw cheeks flaming, +eyes filled with wonder and full lips parted to give a heart its song. +Frecia Mayortorena was seeing a vision in the life. Quickly El Rojo's +glance leaped on as if to shield the girl from contamination. The +venerable Don Padraic, head of the clan O'Donoju, was on his feet now +and trembling. + +"We know you not, sir! We must ask you to begone!" + +El Rojo caused his horse to rear perilously. Before hoofs touched the +ground hardly two paces from the old man the rider again had made his +full-armed bow. He spoke with mock respect. + +"Sanctuary, my grandsire! I and my servant claim sanctuary of Holy +Church. We have ridden far, and good Uncle Felice can not deny us the +charity of his order." + +Don Padraic was being swiftly mastered by his rage when the friar to +whom the unwelcome horseman had appealed pushed his way to the side of +the older man. + +"He speaks the truth, sire," urged the man in the brown habit. "Here on +God's ground we can not be guilty of uncharity." Then, looking up into +the laughing blue eyes of his nephew, "I ask you to descend, sir, and +refresh yourself and your servant until such time as you take the road." + +So all merriment in the oasis of the Four Evangelists was stilled. +There in the single green spot on all the leagues of the Road of the +Dead Men was wrought a comedy; a prelude it was to swift tragedy. The +clan O'Donoju, its satellites and retainers ate and drank in silence, +and apart from this company sat El Rojo and his naked copper giant +alone. From time to time El Rojo lifted his cup as if in ceremonious +health to his kin. Only Frecia Mayortorena read the glint in the blue +eyes which told that the toast was to her--and to what would eventuate. + +Near sundown El Rojo and his Indian rode off to the west, but not +until the outlaw had spent a few minutes alone in the mission. Padre +Felice saw him at prayer before the altar of the Virgin and was deeply +touched that the spirit of religion had not altogether departed from +the family's scapegrace. + +In the dark of midnight Frecia Mayortorena, who had cried herself to +sleep, was awakened by the touch of a hand stretched under the side +of the tent where she slept with the women of the party. A silver +embroidered hat was slipped under the tent to rest on her arm. The +girl dressed herself in a folly of love and terror and stole outside. +The waiting figure of El Rojo's giant Indian detached itself from +the shadow of the mesquite, motioning her to a tethered horse. Blind +infatuation for a hero lover brooked no questioning on the girl's part. +She mounted and followed her guide through the alleys of heavy shade. + +A single dreadful cry sounded from out the opened door of the mission. +A minute later a vague horseman spurred to her side and stopped the +beating of her heart with flaming kisses. The silent desert swallowed +three phantom shapes on horseback. + +Dawn brought revelation and the beginning of that cycle of tragedy and +dreadful pursuit of Nemesis which was to overwhelm the clan O'Donoju. +Padre Felice murdered at the altar of the Virgin, where he had tried +to stay the hand of impiety. The green pearls of the Virgin gone. A +daughter of the house of O'Donoju flown with a thief and a murderer. + +One word more and this mirage of years long dead fades. The curse that +all Papagueria saw descend on the clan O'Donoju spared not even the +sanctuary of the Four Evangelists. A year to the night of the Virgin's +despoliation the Apaches came again to this frontier post of the +Church, and after a spiteful siege they slew the white priests, burned +the mission and carried the Indian converts over the mountains into +slavery. The Franciscans dared not rebuild on such accursed ground. +Winds of the desert, which move sand mountains in their eternal sweep, +played upon the ruined mission year on year to blot even a vestige +of it from the eyes of man. God's hand--so the Indians had it--shook +the mountains behind the little oasis so that the source of the tiny +life-giving stream was blocked. The green vanished like a mist, and +scabrous desert cacti crept in on prickly feet. + +The Mission de los Cuatros Evangelistas became legend. + + + + +CHAPTER I + +WHAT HAPPENED ON THE LIMITED + + +The Golden Sunset Limited, Pacific Coast bound, snaked its way through +a cleft in mountains and came sighing to a stop at the man's town, +El Paso. A patchwork crowd spilled out from the station platform to +push around the ladders of the car icers to the train steps. Swarthy +Mexicans under sombreros, with their black-shawled women and their +little tin trunks, scrambled and clogged at the approaches to the +oven-like day coaches forward. Pullman passengers sauntered over frogs +and switches to plush and rosewood at the train's end. + +Among these was Grant Hickman, civil engineer, New York, lately captain +in the First Division overseas. Arizona bound and west of the Ohio +River for the first time in his thirty years, Hickman had broken his +journey by a day's stopover in El Paso. He had given Juarez a whirl, +decided the kind of life he saw across the International Bridge was +spurious and of little worth, and now was entraining again for his +destination some four hundred miles to the westward. He gave the porter +his bags to stow for him according to the directions scribbled on his +Pullman ticket and began a lazy pacing of the platform, his eye alert +for the colour and the bustle of it all. The blending of two races, of +widely differing civilizations, here in this sturdy city gave Hickman's +restless imagination a smart fillip. He saw men with gaily coloured +blankets worn as cloaks over their shoulders like prayer shawls in a +synagogue; Indians with ornaments of beaten silver and raw turquoise +hasps on their belts had their shoulders planted against solid +brick walls with a grace born only of perfect indolence. All great +stuff--regular musical show background. + +On his first lap down the platform the New York man's eyes rested +momentarily on two figures standing in the drip of one of the car +icers' laden pushcarts. A girl and a man; she hatless as she had left +the car for a stroll, the man all gesticulating hands and eloquently +moving shoulders. Hickman caught a scrap of the man's fervid speech +as he strolled past; it was in a foreign tongue, liquid--almost +lisping--with its softly rolled r's and a peculiar singing intonation +at the upward lift of each period. Spanish undoubtedly. Just an +over-shoulder glimpse of a thin, dark face in sharp profile confirmed +Grant in his guess at the speaker's nationality. The girl's bared head +attracted his appreciative eye; it bore a glory of wondrously burning +red hair, coiled in great masses, vividly alive. + +Grant turned his corner at the platform's end and began to retrace his +steps, consciously bearing in the direction of the beacon hair. When he +was still twenty paces off he saw that the swarthy man had gripped one +of the girl's wrists and that his hawk face was pushed close to hers in +what might have been an access of fury or of pleading. Grant quickened +his pace instinctively; he did not like the looks of that man's talon +grip on a girl's wrist. He paused a decent distance from the twain and +made a pretence of lighting a cigarette while his eyes glanced steadily +over his cupped palms. + +Then a surprising thing. The girl launched some verbal javelin at the +man who gripped her wrist, at the same instant looking down at the +clamping fingers as if to emphasize what must have been a command +to release her. No answer but a flash of white teeth beneath a toy +moustache. The girl's free hand shot to a great coil of hair over the +nape of her neck, came away with twin prongs of thin steel--anchorage +of some hair ornament--showing below her clenched fingers. A lightning +jab downward, and the Spanish-speaking man dropped the imprisoned hand +to whip his own to his mouth. He snarled something in sharp falsetto. +The girl with the red hair tilted her chin at him, and the laugh that +slipped between her grudging little teeth was thin and sharp as the +double dagger points she had used. + +She turned, took three steps to a stool below the Pullman's steps, +mounted with a quick swirl of skirts and was gone. Grant thought he saw +a half-formed determination to follow flash into the Spaniard's eyes. +Without knowing why he did it, the New Yorker hastily put one foot upon +the lower Pullman step and bent his body so as to block access to it. +Very painstakingly he unloosed the knot on his low shoe, straightened +the tongue in place and began taking in slack on every loop of the +strings. + +A grunt of exasperation from behind Grant. When at last he straightened +himself and looked around the Spanish gentleman was gone. He chuckled. + +"Now that, senor, should teach you not to play rough with a red-head." + +He walked down to the Pullman his ticket called for and climbed aboard. +Just as the conductor's bellow, "Bo-oa-rd," sounded, Grant, looking +through the glass of the vestibule, saw the Spanish gentleman with a +grip flying for the train out of the baggage room of the station. + +Passing into the body of the car he found his bags piled upon a seat +midway of its length. As he seated himself he was the least bit +startled to see flaming coils of hair above the top of the seat across +the aisle and one beyond his. Grant was not displeased. Girls with +spirit always walked straight into his somewhat susceptible affections; +and a girl who carried a home-made fish spear in her coiffure-- + +"'Scuse me, Cap'n; ef I could jes' have a look at youah berth ticket. +This gentmum says he reckons you-all's settin' in his seat." Grant +looked up to see the porter shifting uneasily before him and with +a deprecatory grin on his face. By him stood the waspish Spanish +gentleman; the latter inclined himself in a stiff bow as Grant's gaze +met his. Out of the tail of his eye Grant thought he saw a slow turning +of the sunset cloud against the high seat-back ahead. + +"This is my section," Grant drawled with no show of inclination to +arbitrate the matter. "I always buy a section when I travel." + +"But, pardon, sir--" The Spanish gentleman extended a pink slip. "The +agent at the station has but now sold me this lower berth." + +"Indeed?" A slow ache of perversity began to travel along Grant's +spine. He had no love for a man who will manhandle women. "Indeed. The +agent at El Paso sold me mine yesterday." + +"Ef I could see youah ticket," the porter began feebly. + +"You couldn't," Grant snapped. "Perhaps the Pullman conductor may." + +A cloud began gathering over the finely chiselled features of the +Spaniard. His toy moustache went up. He spoke to the porter: + +"The senor is not what we call _sympatico_. Have the kindness to fetch +the conductor." + +The darkey disappeared. Grant turned to look out of the window, +ignoring completely the standing figure in the aisle. But he did not +ignore the reflection a trick of the sun cast on the double glass of +the window. He saw there just the faint aura of a fiery head which +refused to turn, though the compelling gaze of the standing man strove +mightily to command it. Faintly in the magic of the dusty glass was +carried to this bystander, whose neutrality already was considerably +strained, the silent battle of wills. + +The Pullman conductor bustled up to Grant's seat. To him the Spaniard +appealed, offering the evidence of the berth check. Grant vouchsafed +no comment when he passed his own up for inspection. The man in blue +compared them. + +"Some ball-up somewhere," he grunted. Then to Grant: "When was this +ticket sold to you?" + +"Yesterday morning at ten-fifteen o'clock," came the prompt answer. +The waspish Spanish person admitted he had purchased his only a minute +before the train started. The conductor waved at Grant. + +"Then I guess the seat belongs to this gentleman. I'll have to find you +one in another car." + +"But, senor, I have special reason for remaining in this car." The +Spaniard's carefully restrained wrath began to bubble over. Grant +looked up at him and smiled frankly. + +"So have I," he declared levelly. The other's eyes snapped and his lips +lifted over small white teeth in what was meant to be a smile. + +"Senor," he began with a shaking voice, "your courtesy deserves +remembrance. I hope some day it may be my pleasure to show you equal +consideration." + +"Until then--_au revoir_," Grant caught him up. With the porter +preceding him, the loser walked down the aisle to the far door of the +car. As he passed the seat where the girl was he half turned with a +sulky smile. But it was lost. She was looking out at the procession of +the telegraph poles. Grant, catching this final passage in the little +comedy, grinned. + +"There's going to be lots of paprika in this Western hike," joyfully he +assured himself--"or do we call it chili?" + + + + +CHAPTER II + +A GIRL NAMED BENICIA + + +Grant Hickman was not one of that tribe dignified by the name of +he-flirts. He abominated the whole slimy clan with the loathing of a +clean man. When he had seized upon the part of studied rudeness toward +the Spaniard it was not with the ulterior purpose of winning a smile +or paving the way for acquaintance with a pretty woman; Grant's vivid +recollection of the sidewalk cafes of Paris in war time and their +hunting women left him cold toward the type that is careless of men's +approaches. In flouting the foreigner and preventing his scheme to gain +a place in the car with the girl he had bullied on the station platform +the New York man had acted merely on instinct; he had protected a +girl from annoyance. Yet now that he had won through by dint of crass +boorishness--and the young man's conscience gave him a twinge over the +substance of his discourtesy--he suffered a not unreasonable curiosity +regarding the possessor of that glorious beacon in the seat across the +aisle. + +Who was she? What circumstances had led to that scene on the platform +which had ended with the unexpected dagger thrust of the steel hair +ornament? Was this little black-and-tan whipper-snapper a lover--a +brother--blackmailer? Grant's galloping imagination built up flimsy +hypotheses only to rip them apart. And his eyes dwelt upon the soft +involutions of flame coloured hair, which were the only physical +indices of personality granted him thus far. + +Once the object of his conjectures shifted her seat so that a profile +peeped out from behind the wide seat arm. Grant's eyes hungrily conned +delectable details: one broad wing of hair sweeping down in a line of +studied carelessness over a forehead somewhat low and rounded; fine +line of nose with the hint of a passionate spirit in the modelling; +mouth that was all girlish, mobile, ready to reflect whims or laughter. +The sort of mouth, Grant reflected, that could load a laugh with +poison--even as he had seen it done that tense instant on the platform +at El Paso--or freight it with sweetness for a favoured one. A world +of fire and seduction untried lay in the full round lips, yet a chin +with the thrust of will in it warned that the promise of those lips was +jealously guarded. + +A broad sheaf of sunlight lay across her cheek. Grant saw that hers +was not the usual apple tint of the red-haired, the characteristic +skin so delicate as to suggest translucence. Rather a touch of the sun +had spread an impalpable film of tan, warm as the colour of old ivory, +over cheek and throat. Duskiness of a southland dyed cheek and throat +despite the anomaly of the burning hair, quite Celtic. + +The afternoon waned with no favouring fortune throwing Grant's way +opportunity to study the girl closer. When the sunset was in the sky he +walked through the train to the observation platform. As he drew near +the glassed-in end of the observation car he noted with a little leap +of elation that the girl was sitting under the awning beyond the screen +door. He saw, too, the objectionable Spanish gentleman. His midget body +was packed into a chair, one neatly booted foot under him; like some +hunting cat he sat in watchful patience inside the body of the car, his +eyes never leaving the figure of the girl beyond the screen door. + +Grant passed through to the platform, not giving the Spaniard so much +as a glance. As the door slammed behind him the girl looked up quickly. +Grant saw her eyes were blue, saw, too, a fighting gleam quickly pass +from them. Evidently he was not the one they expected to fall upon. +A pretty confusion which tried to deny recognition swiftly replaced +the strained look. Grant allowed himself to be bold to the extent of +tip-tilting his cap. The girl evidently decided that to overlook a +service done would be pushing decorum too far; she gave Grant a quick, +shy smile which might have carried a hint of gratitude mingled with +naive humour. + +"You were very kind," she said as Grant took the camp-stool next to +her, "and very amusing. The high hand--you possess the art of using it, +sir." + +"I should be ashamed of my rudeness," he answered with a quick smile. +"But somehow I am not. Your way of repelling attack has its advantages, +too--" His eyes strayed to the silver comb, whose concealed steel had +been so efficacious on the El Paso platform. The girl reddened prettily. + +"Always one must be--prepared against--persuasion," was the answer +that put a period to all reference which might be distasteful. Grant +would have liked to know more of circumstances that had pushed this +radiant young person into the grip of a bullying little civet cat of a +Spaniard, but he dared not risk rudeness by further questioning. Reward +enough was his already; he had it in the swift play of laughter across +delicate features, in the sweetly resonant quality of her voice, all of +a part with the engaging exotic character of the girl. For American she +assuredly was not, though her trim tailoring was impeccably the mode of +the moment. Her speech had a rippling musical lilt to it suggestive of +a mother tongue less harsh than Anglo-Saxon; her enunciation was too +perfect to be American. There was a trick of the eyes, something almost +vocal, which was an inheritance from mothers whose speech is sternly +hedged about by conventions but who find subtler ways of expression. + +What could her nationality be? Assuredly not Irish, though eyes and +hair were exactly what Grant had seen in the green island during a +furlough spent in jaunting cars and peaty inns. Mexican? The flame hair +denied that. Here was another mystery to be set aside with that of the +encounter at the station. With two avenues of conversation closed Grant +plunged blindly along one strictly innocuous. + +"We seem to be getting rather deep into the desert." He waved out at a +hundred mile vista of sunset painted waste, all purple and hot gold in +the glory from the west--a new picture for the eastern man. The girl +made an unconscious movement of half-stretched arms as if to free her +soul for wandering in limitless spaces. + +"Yes, the desert," she breathed. "How wonderful! And for me, returning +to it after two years in cities--in cities where one chokes from walls +all about--you see how the desert welcomes with all its glory." Grant +looked at her curiously; he saw a vision in her eyes. + +"Then you like this--this dry and barren land? Why, I thought +nobody lived out here unless he had to. No trees, no water--" The +girl's wondering eyes upon him checked his summary of the desert's +shortcomings. + +"You do not know the desert then," she reproved. "You have never seen +the _palo verde_ tree when every branch is heavy with gold. You do not +know how the _sahuaro_ wreathes itself a crown of blossoms--the tough +old _sahuaro_, a giant with flowers on his head ready to play with +spring fairies. Water!"--a crescendo gust of laughter--"You think water +only comes from a faucet. If you dug for it with your bare hands--dug +and dug in hot sands while death moved closer to you each hour, then +you would come to see a real beauty in water." + +"You know something of the desert," Grant conceded. + +"Something! Senor"--the alien word slipped from her in her flurry of +devotion--"senor, my home is there and my father's home has been there +more than a hundred and fifty years. I have been away from it in the +slavery of the cities--two years at music in New Orleans and Baltimore. +Now I return. To-morrow morning at Arizora big Quelele, my father's +Indian servant, meets me to take me a hundred miles--a hundred miles +off the railroad and away from the nearest city to my home." + +"But Arizora is where I am bound," Grant eagerly caught her up. "That's +on the Line, isn't it? A hundred miles--why, then you must live in +Mexico." She nodded. His curiosity would not down: + +"Then you are Mexican?" + +An instant her blue eyes sparkled resentment. Grant sensed he had made +some blunder, though he could not for the life of him guess how his +innocent question could have offended. The girl, on her part, quickly +regretted her show of displeasure; one new to the Southwest naturally +could not know much about its social distinctions. + +"Not Mexican," she amended gently. "We are Spanish folk living in +Mexico. We have always been Spanish since the time one of my ancestors +got his grant from the king of Spain. Never Mexican. That sounds like +silly boasting to you. When you have lived in this country for a little +while you will understand why we have pride in our blood. Just as you +have pride, senor, in your American blood when all the cities of your +country are choked with mongrels." + +Hoping to hear her name, Grant gave her his own. She repeated it as +if to fix it in memory; then she told him hers. Benicia O'Donoju it +is written, but in her mouth the two words had a quality like a muted +violin note, too fugitive to be imprisoned in letters. She spoke the +surname without accent on any syllable--"Odonohoo." The man grasped at +something evanescent in the sound: + +"Why, I'd pronounce that 'O'Donohue.'" + +"My great-great-grandfather did." Once more Grant's ears drank in that +velvety contralto laughter which bubbled to her lips so easily. "You +would pronounce his first name 'Mike,' and so did he." + +"Then your first name should be Peg or Molly-o," Grant rallied. She +shook her head in gay denial. + +"Senorita Peg--impossible! Benicia is much better. It means 'Blessed' +in our tongue. 'Blessed are the pure in heart,' Senor Hickman; or +'Blessed are the meek.' I might be either if I could forget I am an +O'Donoju." + +"Benicia." Grant tried to copy the slurring softness she gave to the +word.--"B'nishia: that sounds like little bells. I like it." + +"You are gracious, senor. I thought Americans were too busy with +skyscrapers and wheat markets to learn the art of paying compliments +gracefully." + +"Compliments are born, not paid," he joked. Conversation limped no +longer. Youth has a way of opening little windows in the souls of two +brought together under its wizardry and giving each elusive peeps +into secret chambers. It was Benicia who first became conscious of +the lateness of the hour and the strain on strict canons of propriety +her presence alone with a stranger on the observation platform had +entailed. She arose with a little laugh. + +"My guardian"--a roguish glance toward the tiny figure of the Spaniard +still on the watch beyond the platform's glass--"I fear he does not +approve. And so--_adios_." She gave Grant the tips of her fingers and +was gone. + +He watched her pass where the sentinel was sitting. The little man +uncurled himself from his hump-shouldered crouch and scrambled to his +feet as if he would speak to her. But Benicia, bowing sweetly, passed +on up the aisle and into the alley of rosewood and glass beyond. After +a moment's hesitation the Spaniard came to the screen door giving onto +the platform, where Grant now stood alone, and opened it. He scratched +a match and put it to his cigarette. Grant saw the flare illumine +a cruel hawk's nose and thin, saturnine lips. The Spaniard inhaled +deeply, then let thin streams of smoke seep from his nostrils. + +"Senor"--his voice was cold as a lizard's foot--"perhaps you do not +know that Senorita O'Donoju is travelling under my protection." + +Grant took time to tap a cigarette on the heel of his palm and light it +before he answered. His eyes were brimming with laughter. + +"Perhaps not," he said. "I congratulate the lady on her protector." +Again blue smoke played over the toy moustache; little eyes were +snapping like a badger's. + +"I have the honour to inform you, senor, that your attentions to the +lady do her no credit and that they must cease." + +"Really!" Grant's settled good humour received a jar. He felt a +tingling of fighting nerves down his back. "Really? And who constituted +you judge of the value of my attentions?" + +"Very naturally I have appointed that position to myself, senor, since +Senorita O'Donoju is to become my wife." + +"Ah!" Grant's interjection did not carry all the irony he would have +wished. His assurance was a trifle shaken. + +"And so," the little man continued, "it is understood. You will not +address the lady further." Grant laughed. + +"My understanding is very weak and not at all reliable. I promise you +that unless the lady objects I shall continue to address her whenever +opportunity presents." + +The little figure in the doorway straightened itself in an access of +dignity. He snapped his cigarette over the car rail. + +"Senor, let us have no misunderstanding. We approach the Border, +where every man works justice according to the dictates of his own +conscience. To-morrow we touch Mexico, where it is known that Colonel +Hamilcar Urgo is a law unto himself. I am that Colonel Hamilcar Urgo. +Need I go farther?" + +"And I am Captain Grant Hickman, formerly of the First Division, +Expeditionary Forces. Go as far as you like!" + + + + +CHAPTER III + +DOC STOODER + + +With evenly divided cause and equal cheerfulness Grant could have +kicked the porter and himself when he awoke tardily next morning +and found his car at a standstill. He raised the berth curtain and +looked out. On the eaves of a station he saw a white board with the +name "Arizora" painted upon it and certain irrelevant advice as to +the distance to New Orleans and to Culiacan. Out through the curtains +popped his head and he whistled the porter. + +"Why didn't you give me a call?" was his angry demand. + +"Yassuh, yassuh, ev'body in this kyar gets out here. Mos' have gone an' +done it a'ready. You see, Cap'n, this kyar's been switched off here at +the Line two hours ago; train's kep' right on goin' into Sonora." + +Grant, cursing his luck, boiled into his clothes and made a race for +the washroom. He was hoping against luck that Benicia O'Donoju had not +been an earlier riser than himself. With his face puffy with lather, +he stopped from minute to minute to peep through the window giving onto +the station platform. A decrepit autobus was backed up against the curb +with a few passengers sitting patiently on its frayed seats; loungers +were dangling their legs from baggage trucks; under wooden awnings of a +business block across from the station a Mexican was languidly sweeping +out a store. Arizora had not yet come to life. + +Just as Grant was towelling the last remnants of shaving lather from +his cheeks he made another quick survey of the platform and his +heart dropped into his shoes. Benicia walked into the field of the +washroom window; with her the unspeakable Spaniard, who carried her +neat travelling satchel as well as his own bag. The girl was fresh +as the dawn in a suit of khaki, short-skirted over high laced boots +of russet leather. Rebellious hair strayed from beneath the brim of +a soft-crowned Stetson, saucily noosed to her head by a fillet of +leather under her chin. Soft green of a scarf lightly drew together at +her throat the wings of her khaki collar. Nothing of the theatrical +or self-consciousness of tailoring in the picture the desert girl +made; she was the spirit of the Southwest, unsophisticated and without +pretence. By her side the little Spaniard with his knife-edged +trousers and thin-waisted coat appeared comic. + +As Grant, towel in hand, lingered by the window feeding his soul with +vain regrets, a crazy thing on wheels swung around the station and came +to a stop by the girl's side. It might have been called an automobile +by courtesy, though there was little to identify it as a member of +the gas family save that it went of its own traction. Engine naked, +dash gone, two high-backed seats of unpainted tin like the wing of +an old-fashioned sitz-bath and unprotected by a top; behind these a +home-built box body wherein a trunk and a suitcase were lashed. Grant +was seeing his first desert speeder, rebuilt for service of a highly +specialized kind. The man at the wheel was no less in character--an +Indian in overalls and high peaked sombrero; a giant of a man with +shoulders of a wrestler and dull bronze features of a Roman bust. + +What ensued upon the arrival of the auto nearly drove the watcher, +shirtless as he was, out to two-fisted intervention. Urgo, the +salamander, evidently was of a mind to make a third in the car. Grant +saw his humped shoulders and expostulating hands, saw Benicia tilt +her chin as she gave him some cold refusal. But the colonel calmly +stowed his suitcase by the side of the trunk in the box body, evidently +planning to use it as a seat. Again Benicia, now in her place by the +side of the Indian giant, turned to give him peremptory refusal. The +Indian at the wheel had his engine going and was sitting statue-like, +utterly detached from the quarrel. + +Urgo stepped on the rear wheel's hub and had one hand on the floor of +the box body when one of the Indian's hands flashed up the spark even +as his foot went down on the gear pedal. The crazy little car leaped +like a singed cat. Colonel Urgo cut a neat arc, hit the road on his +back and rolled over just in time to escape receiving amidships his +suitcase, which the Indian driver had dropped from the car without +turning his head. + +In the Pullman washroom Grant collapsed to the seat and smeared soap +into his eyes while he tried to check tears of laughter. The fall of +the peppery little Spaniard had been colossal, and he guessed it had +been wrought at the quick prompting of the spirited girl in khaki. What +a wonder she was! All laughter and bubbling spirits one minute; quick +as a leopard to strike the next. + +"Man"--Grant addressed a beaming face in the glass--"man, always lay +your bets on a red-headed girl!" + +That minute of communion with a smiling confidant was an important +one in the life of Grant Hickman, cautious bachelor. For it came to +him with the force of a hammer blow that he wanted and must have this +vivid creature of the desert named Benicia O'Donoju. Girl of fire and +sparkle--of a spirit free and piquant as the winds that blow across the +wastes--unspoiled of cities and the stale conventions of drawing rooms. +Oh, he would have her! Gone she might be, out into a land beyond his +ken. Unguessed barriers of circumstance, of others' intervention, might +have to be scaled; but somehow, somewhere, Grant Hickman was going to +find and win Benicia O'Donoju. + +Love at first sight--old-fashioned, mid-Victorian stuff, says the +cynical debutante over her cigarette and outlaw cocktail. In New York +tearooms and Washington ballrooms, quite so. Where girls of twenty must +know the sum that stands in bank to Clarence's credit, before Clarence +is marked down as eligible, love at first sight is, in truth, dead as +the dodo bird. Even so, spirit still calls to spirit and like leaps to +like most all the world over. It is only where fungus spots stain the +garden that love will not bloom. + +When Grant quit the Pullman Colonel Urgo was nowhere to be seen. Grant +idly wondered as he walked to the hotel, directly across a plaza +from the station, how long it would be before he encountered this +half-portion rival of his and what would be the Spaniard's first move +in his frank threat of reprisals of the night before. But when he was +shown to his room--and the New York man whimsically reflected he had +seen better ones at the Admiral on Madison Avenue--events of recent +hours were pushed back from his attention by the more immediate demands +of his presence in Arizora. He took from his suitcase the letter that +had brought him sky-hooting across the continent to this back-water of +life on the Mexican Line and skimmed it through: + + "... I know just how hard it is for you to settle down to + office routine after the Big Show. All of us are in the same + fix, Old-timer, but I have the edge on you because out here in + this man's country there's something breaking every minute. + That's the reason I'm writing you this mysterious letter.... + Old Doc Stooder is counted the prime nut of Southern Arizona, + but I believe he's got a whale of a proposition and that's why + I'm counting myself--and you--in on the deal. + + "I've sewed myself up with him--promised not to peep a word of + the real dope to you in this letter. The old Doc says, 'We'll + need a good engineer and if your buddy in France has a head on + him and knows how to keep his mouth shut tell him to come out + here.' ... So if you still have that old take-a-chance spirit + that hopped you through the Big Mill from Cantigny to Sedan + I'll see you in Arizora. If I'm not in town when you arrive dig + up Doc Stooder--everybody knows him. + + "Yours for the big chance, + + "BIM." + +Grant folded the letter with a smile. Good old Bim with his "whale of +a proposition." Running true to form was Bim in this characteristic +letter. Just as Grant had come to know and love him in training area +and dugout: Bim Bagley, six-feet-one of tough Arizona bone and muscle +and brimful of wild optimism. Always ready to take a chance, whether +at the enemy on all fours through midnight mud or at fortune in the +wild lands of the Border: that was Bim Bagley of Arizona, "the finest +country in the Southwest." + +And Bim had shot truer than he could know when he sent this hint of big +things in the offing back to a man two years out of uniform and moping +for excitement on the sixteenth floor of a skyscraper in Manhattan. +Two years of civilian's life had been just that span of slow moral +suffocation for Grant. For all his thirty years, for all his better +than moderate success in a profession of sharp competition, Grant +Hickman still could hear the call to the swimmin' hole of adventure. +How he had yearned to hear it these past two years when the springs of +his soul still tingled with the high tension of battle lines! Then this +letter from a pal, promising all the substance of his dreams. It had +not been a week in the engineer's pocket before he was on the train for +Arizora. + +Grant went out to find Bagley. He located his office--"Insurance, +Bonds, Investments" was the sign on the glass of the door; but the lock +was turned and no one opened at his knock. His eye caught a corner of +white paper projecting through the letter slot. + +"Grant:--Called out of town--back Friday. B. B." was the scrawl across +the face of it. A stab of disappointment was his; he had builded +heavily on that moment of meeting when Bim's big hand would have his +own in a vise. Nothing to do now but see the town and amuse himself as +he might, or call on that mysterious Doc Stooder and discover why Grant +Hickman had come racing out to this Arizora. He decided to do both. + +The Arizora Grant saw in an hour's swinging round the circle was +something different from the "hick town" his New York smugness had +pictured in anticipation. It was a condensed El Paso, jammed in the +narrow compass of a mountain gorge, with railroad yards monopolizing +the whole of the flat space between crowding hills. A man could go from +his home to business by the simple trick of leaping off the front porch +of his bungalow with an opened umbrella. Arizora's streets were jammed +with cars--fantastic desert coursers stripped to the nines and with +canteens strapped to the running board. Sidewalks swarmed with men--big +men with steady eyes looking out from beneath sombreros the size of a +woman's garden hat; men with high-heeled boots and the pins of many +lodges stuck on their unbuttoned vests; lantern-jawed, hollow-templed +men of the sun, whose bodies were indurated by the desert law of +struggle and whose souls were simple as a fairy book. + +Across Main Street stretched a fence of rabbit-proof wire with three +strands of barbed wire topping that; a fence with something like a +pasture gate swung back for traffic. This was the Line. On the hither +side of that rabbit-proof wire web the authority of a President and his +Congress stopped; on the far side the authority of quite a different +president and his peculiar congress began. Over yonder, where stood a +man under a straw sombrero and with a rifle hung on one shoulder, lay +Sonora and the beginning of a thousand mile stretch of fantastic land +called Mexico. A cart with solid wooden wheels and drawn by oxen under +a ponderous yoke blocked the way of a twelve-cylinder auto seeking +clearance at the international gate. + +When he had tired of sight seeing Grant inquired at a cigar counter +where Dr. Stooder could be found. The breezy man in shirtsleeves +grinned and glanced at the clock on the wall behind him. + +"Well, sir, usually mornings he's over across the Line getting +organized for the day on tequila. Mostly he comes back to his office +round noon time, steppin' wide and handsome. Office's over yonder, +top-side of the Bon Ton barber shop. You might give it a look." + +Grant acted on the cigar clerk's advice. He located a dingy door +at the end of a dark upper hallway with the lettering, "A. Stooder, +M.D.," on a tin sign over the transom. Entering, he found himself in a +sad company. Three Mexican women and a man of the same race sat like +mourners on chairs about the wall; a big-eyed child squatted in the +middle of the floor and listlessly pulled a magazine to bits. The stamp +of woe and of infinite patience was set on all the dark faces. Mephitic +smell of iodoform was in the air. Grant hastily withdrew. After an +hour's walking and when the whistles were blowing noon he returned. A +different collection of patient waiters occupied the chairs; evidently +the doctor was in and at work. + +He took a chair by the window where he could look down into the street +and so keep the set masks of misery out of his eyes. After fifteen +minutes the door to the inner office was violently opened and a Mexican +woman shot out of it as if propelled by a kick. Thundering Spanish +pursued her. Grant saw a scarecrow figure framed in the doorway. + +Tall beyond the average and gaunt almost to the point of emaciation; +frock coated like a senator of the Eighties; thin shoulders seeming +bowed by the weight of the garments hung thereon; enormous, heavily +veined hands carried as if hooked onto invisible hinges behind the +stained white cuffs:--this the superficial aspect of Dr. Stooder. Vital +character of the man was all summed up in his face: skin like wrinkled +vellum stretched on a rack; eyes glinting from deep caves on either +side of a veritable crag of a nose which had been broken and skewed off +the true. A great mane of grey hair reared up and back from his high +forehead; tufts of the same colour on lip and chin in the ancient mode +of the "Imperial" added the last daguerreotype touch to his features. + +Black eyes roved the room and fell on Grant, who had risen. The doctor +crooked a bony finger at him and he passed through into the private +office, taking the seat indicated. Without paying his visitor the least +heed, Dr. Stooder went to a closet, poured two fingers of some white +liquid into a graduating glass and drank it. His lips smacked like a +pistol shot. Then he returned and took a swivel chair before a very +shabby and littered desk. + +"I never seen you before, sah"--the man's accent reeked of Texas, the +old Texas before the oil invasions. "So I'll answer the question every +stranger's just mortal dying to ask and don't dare. How'd I come to +get this scar?" The surprising doctor tilted his great head back and +traced with his fore-finger an angry weal which encircled his throat +like a collar gall. "Well, sah, I was informally hanged once--and cut +down. Now we can get down to business. What's your symptoms?" + +Grant, caught off balance by so unconventional a reception, stammered +that he had no symptoms. + +"My friend, Bim Bagley, who is out of town for a few days, told me to +look you up. My name is Grant Hickman. I'm from New York." The black +eyes, never deviating from their disconcerting stare, showed no flicker +of recognition at the name. + +"What you want of me if you have no symptoms?" abruptly in the doctor's +nasal bray. "I'm not in the market for the World's Library of Wit and +Humour. I'll cut you for a tumour or dose you for dyspepsia; but I +won't buy a book." + +"I have no books to sell." Grant found his temperature rising. "I have +come out from New York because you told my friend Bagley to send for +me." + +Doc Stooder suddenly snapped out of his chair like a yard rule +unfolding and strode to the closet. With bottle and graduating glass +poised he bent a severe eye upon his visitor. + +"You say you don't drink. Highly commendable. I do." Again the pistol +shot from satisfied lips. He replaced the bottle and tucked his hands +under the tails of his coat where they flapped the sleazy garment +restlessly. + +"You call yourself an engineer. How do I know you are?" + +Grant had said nothing about being an engineer. Doc Stooder had +identified him right enough. What reason for his bluff, then? + +"My dear sir, graduates of Boston Tech. do not carry their diplomas +round with them on their key rings. You'll have to take Bagley's word +for it that I'm an engineer if my own is not convincing." + +The gangling doctor took two turns of the office with enormous strides; +one hand tugged at his straggling goatee. Abruptly he stopped by +Grant's chair. + +"Young man, what need do you figure a doctor in Arizora would have of +an engineer--more especial an engineer from New York? Why should I tell +this Bagley, who's as crazy as a June-bug, to fetch a graduate engineer +out to Arizora? Engineers are a drug on the market here--and every one +of 'em a crook." + +Grant's patience snapped. He rose and strode to the door. + +"Dr. Stooder, I didn't come away out here to your town to have +somebody play horse with me. When you are sober you can find me at the +International Hotel." + +A grin started under Doc Stooder's moustache and travelled swiftly to +his ears. + +"God bless my soul, boy! When I'm sober, you say. I'm never sober and I +hope I never will be--" + +Grant slammed the door behind him. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +COLONEL URGO REPAYS + + +Before he had descended to the street Grant began to regret his flash +of anger which had launched him out of Doc Stooder's office. To be +sure, the unconventional doctor had been insulting; his was hardly the +orthodox reception to be expected by one who had crossed the continent +to become his partner in some hidden enterprise. Equally certain it was +that, to apply the cigar clerk's pat phrase, Stooder was "organized +for the day"; the finishing touches to that organization had been made +in two trips to the closet in Grant's presence. Need one have been so +touchy under these alcoholic circumstances? + +Strive as he would to put the best face on the matter, the man from +New York could not escape a lowering of the spiritual barometer. Here +he was, a stranger in an outlandish desert town with none to give him +so much as a friendly glance. Glances enough came his way, but they +were inspired by his clothes, the cut of which seemed to put them +beyond the pale. Grant pleasured himself by reviewing his case in the +most pessimistic light. He had been but a fortnight ago a sober and +industrious citizen. Came to him a wild letter hinting darkly of some +shadowy enterprise in a bleak land. Instantly he had quit his work and +galloped across two thousand miles to encounter a scarecrow cynic who +greeted him as a book agent. + +He wandered aimlessly beyond the town and out onto a road which +wound up to the edge of one of the mesas which were the eaves of +Arizora. Well might drivers of passing cars stare at the figure of a +broad-shouldered young man in a black derby and double-breasted coat, +who was afoot in a country where no man walks unless he carries a +blanket on his shoulders--unless he is a "stiff," in the phrase of the +Southwest. Even though February was but on the wane, already the sun +was guarantor of a promise to pay with heat interest in sixty days. + +He came to the top of the rise and halted under the psychic compulsion +of boundless space. For space, crystalline and ethereal as the gulf +between stars, flowed from him as an ocean. The air that filled this +space was so thin, so impalpable as to seem no air at all, and it was +tinted faint gold by reflection from the desert below. Mountains near +and far were so many detached reefs taking the silent surf of the ocean +of space; they were tawny where shadows did not smear purple-black +down their sides. Near at hand showed the grim desert growths: prickly +clumps of _cholla_, whose new daggers sparkled like frosted glass; +fluted columns of _sahuaro_, or giant cactus, lifting their fat arms +twenty and thirty feet above the ground; vivid green of cottonwoods +laid in a streak to mark a secret watercourse. + +To the man just come from the softness and languor of Eastern +landscapes, where lakes lie in the laps of green hillocks, this first +intimate view of the desert carried some subtle terror prick. The iron +savagery of it! What right had man or beast to venture here? + +Then flashed to his mind the picture of Benicia O'Donoju, the girl who +loved the desert, who felt she was prisoner only when hedged about by +the walls of cities in the East. Somewhere to the south where a higher +raft of peaks marked Sonora's mystery land--somewhere in country like +this she was speeding to her home. What kind of a home might that be? +How could a girl with the bounding vitality that was hers find life +worth living in a land enslaved by thirst? A hundred miles from town +or railroad, she had said:--a hundred miles deep in such a wilderness +her home! Heavens, how he pitied her! + +Grant turned back to the town, revolving over and over in his mind +the first steps he would have to take to learn where Benicia O'Donoju +lived; and, haply discovering the place of her abode, how to get there. + +By the time night fell the restless visitor to Arizora had exhausted +the town's opportunities for amusement. He crossed the Line into the +companion Mexican community, Sonizona. Here was beguilement enough. +The rabbit-proof fence which converted Main Street into a Calle +Benito Juarez also marked a frontier no less obvious. North of the +fence was aridity to rejoice the conscience of the most enthusiastic +prohibitionist; south of it the frail goddess Virtue tottered in her +step. In Arizona a man sought traps and deadfalls consciously and +with a secret thrill of bravado; in Sonora he avoided them only by +the most circumspect watching of his step. Dark streets winding along +the contours of the crowding mountains were raucous with the bray of +phonographs and the tin-panning of pianos. Lattices over darkened +windows trembled as one passed and the ghosts of whispers fluttered +through them. Where an occasional arc lamp threw a spot of radiance +across the 'dobe road lurked shadowy creatures who whined in an +American dialect for money to buy drugs. + +Grant did not realize that when he passed through the rabbit-proof +fence he left behind him everything for which he paid income tax and +other doles--protection, due processes of law, all the checks and +balances on society and the individual painstakingly built up under +the Anglo-Saxon scheme of things. He did not conceive himself in the +light of an alien--of a not-too-popular nation--gratuitously placing +himself under the protection of laws quite the opposite in terms of +interpretation. Nor did he appreciate that, save for his suitcase and +a signature on a hotel register, he had left behind him nothing to +bear testimony to the fact that a man named Grant Hickman had come +to Arizora and had left the United States to enter Mexico. All these +inattentions he recalled later when opportunity for correction had +passed. + +Grant was circling the plaza, where the municipal band was giving a +concert, when amid the strollers he thought he saw a familiar face. He +looked again and was sure. Little Colonel Urgo, in a snappy uniform of +dark blue with back-turned cape, was walking with a woman whose beauty +was that of the blown peony. Chance brought Urgo's eyes Grant's way. +They lighted with sudden surprise, then the colonel brought up his hand +in a salute. A flash of teeth was cut by the travelling hand; it was +like a too quick shutter on the villain's smile in Way Down East. + +Grant doffed his hat and passed on. Half an hour later a particularly +glittering sheaf of lights he had noted in earlier saunterings pricked +his curiosity and he turned into a low building just off the plaza. A +bare front room easily visible from the street was a too obvious blind +for complacent police inspection; through an open arch in its rear wall +a crowded gambling room was given false length by wall mirrors in dingy +frames. Fifty or more men and women were clustered about roulette, +faro and crap tables. A fat Chinaman with a face expressionless as a +bowl of jelly sat on a dais behind a little desk stacked high with +silver and with deft movement of his fingers achieved nice problems in +international exchange. Pursuit of the goddess Luck was being engaged +in with a frankness and business-like absorption quite different from +furtive evasions of hidden attic and camouflaged club across the Line. + +Grant exchanged a ten-dollar note for a heavy stack of Mexican silver +and moved over to a table where two ivory cubes were dancing to the +droning incantations of a big negro game keeper. He was curious to see +whether Big Dick and Lady Natural were as temperamental a couple in +Mexico as he had discovered them to be in many a front-line dugout in +France. + +"Come to papa!" A raw-boned Arizonan across the table was singing to +the dice held in his cupped palms, huge as waffle irons; a humorous imp +of strong liquor danced in his eyes. "Cap'n come down the gangplank and +says, 'Good mawnin', Seven!'" + +The ring of dark faces about the green cloth stirred and white teeth +flashed unlovely smiles when a six and a one winked up from the dice. A +chinking of silver dollars as a red paw gathered them in. + +"Baby! Now meet you' grandpaw, Ole Man E-oleven. Wham! Lookit! Five an' +a six makes e'oleven! How's that for nussin' 'em along, white man?" +The crap wizard looked across to Grant and grinned in amity. Mexican +scowls accompanied the covering of the winner's pile left temptingly +untouched. Grant felt an undefined tugging of race bonds here in this +ring of alien faces, and he backed the Arizonan against the field. On +his third throw the big fellow made his point. + +"That's harvestin'! That's bringin' in the sheaves! Now here's my stack +of 'dobe dollars for any Mex to cop if he thinks the copping's good." + +When it came Grant's turn to throw his new-found friend played him +vociferously against the Mexican field, calling upon all present to +witness that a white man sure could skin anything under a sombrero, +from craps to parchesi. For the first time since he had left the train +that morning the New Yorker felt the warming tingle of fellowship; the +gaunt, sunburned face of the desert man with the dancing imps of humour +in the eyes was a jovial hailing sign of fraternity. + +"Shoot 'em, Mister Man! You're rigged for Broadway, Noo Yawk, but I can +see from here that you has the lovin' touch." + +Grant rolled and won, rolled and won again. Carelessly he dropped the +heavy fistfuls of dollars into the side pocket of his coat. Even when +he lost his point, he had a bulging weight of silver there. Grant was +enjoying the game itself not nearly so keenly as he did the Arizonan +across the table, his Homeric humour and the bewildering wonder of his +vocabulary. So intent was he that he did not see Colonel Urgo enter, +nor did he catch the almost imperceptible nod toward him that the +little officer passed to a furtive-eyed tatterdemalion who accompanied +him. The latter by a devious course of idling finally came to a stand +behind Grant and appeared to be a keen spectator of the game. + +"Ole Man Jed Hawkins' son is a-goin' splatter out a natch'ral. Ole Man +Hawkins' son is a-goin' turn loose the hay cutter an' mow him a mess of +greens. Comes Little Joe! Dip in, Mexes, an' takes yo' fodder! Now the +man from Dos Cabezas starts a-runnin'--" + +A hand was busy at Grant's pocket--a slick, suave hand which replaced +weight for weight what it subtracted. Just three quick passes and +the tatterdemalion who had been so intent on the prancing dice lost +interest and moved away. + +It came Grant's turn to roll the dice. He dipped into his pocket and +carelessly dropped a stack of eight silver dollars on the table. One +of them rolled a little way and flopped in front of a Mexican player. +The latter started to pass the dollar back to Grant when he hesitated, +gave the coin a sharp scrutiny, then balanced it on a finger tip and +struck its edge with one from his own pile. + +"Senor!" An ugly droop to his smiling lips. "Ah, no, senor!" + +He passed the dollar over to Grant with exaggerated courtesy. Eyes all +about the table, which had followed the pantomime with avid interest, +now centred on the American's face. As if on a signal the fat Chinaman +at the exchange desk waddled over to shoulder his way officiously to +Grant's side. He growled something in Spanish and held out his hand. +Dazedly Grant laid the suspected dollar in a creasy palm. The Chinaman +flung it on the green felt with a contemptuous "Faugh!" and he pointed +imperiously at Grant's bulging pocket. + +"It's a frame, pardner," called the Arizonan. "If your money's bogus +it's what the Chink himself handed you." + +"I came in here with American money and changed it at your desk," +Grant quietly addressed the Chinaman. "See here; this is the money I +either got from you or won at this table." He brought from his pocket a +brimming handful of Mexican dollars and dumped them on the cloth. Two +or three of the heavy discs shone true silver; the others were clumsy +counterfeits, dull and leaden. + +A cry, half snarling laughter, from the crowd about the table, now +grown to a score: "Aha--gr-ringo!" + +A movement of the crowd forward to rush Grant against the wall. Then +with a cougar's spring the big Arizonan was on the solid table, feet +spread wide apart, head towering above the tin light shade. He balanced +a chair in one hand as the conductor of an orchestra might lift his +baton. His gaunt features were split in a wide grin. Before Grant could +gather his senses a big paw had him by the shoulder and was dragging +him up onto the green island of refuge. + +"They don't saw no whizzer off on a white man wiles ole Jed Hawkins' +boy got his health," Grant's companion bellowed a welcome. "I got these +greasers' number, brother!" + +Grant's gaze as he rose to his feet over the heads all about +encountered two interesting objects. One was Colonel Urgo, who stood +alone in a far corner of the room; the colonel was smiling with rare +good humour. A second was a man wrapped about with a blanket, over +whose shoulder appeared the tip of a rifle; he was just coming through +from the front room on a run and there were three like him following. +Rurales, the somewhat informal bandit-policemen of Mexico. + +Just what ensued Grant never could quite piece together. He remembered +seeing Hawkins wrench off a leg from his chair and send it whizzing at +a central cluster of light globes in mid-ceiling. They snuffed out with +a thin tinkling of glass. Then the rush. + +Out of the dark swirl of figures about the table's edge a vivid spit +of flame--roar of a pistol shot. Hands grappling for braced legs on +the table top. "Huh" of breath expelled as Hawkins swung his chair in +a wide sweep downward. A cry, "Hesus!" Oaths chirped in the voice of +songbirds. A knife missing its objective and trembling rigid in the +midst of the baize. + +The table collapsed with dull creakings, and then the affair of mauling +and writhing became a bear pit. Grant fought with steady, measured +short-arm jabs delivered at whatever object lay nearest. When one arm +was pinioned he swung the other against the restraining body until it +was freed. Some one sank teeth in his shoulder. + +"Ride 'em, Noo Yawker!" came the shrill cry of battle from somewhere in +the mill. Then a blow at the base of the brain which meant lights out +for Grant. + +When consciousness came halting back he found himself standing +half-supported by two of the rurales in a dark street and before a +high gate in unbroken masonry. The gate swung inward. He was propelled +violently through the dark arch and into a small room, where sat a man +in uniform under a dusty electric globe. He did not look up from the +scratching of his pen on the desk before him. + +A door behind the writing man opened and Colonel Urgo entered. His +start at seeing the bloodied and half-clothed figure which the rurales +supported was well acted. A hand came to the vizor of his cap in +mocking salute. Then he turned to the man at the desk and exchanged low +words with him. + +"Ah, Senor 'Ickman"--Colonel Urgo's voice was tender as the dove's--"I +regret to learn you are here in the _carcel_ on serious charges. The +one, counterfeiting the coin of Mexico; the other, resisting officers +of the law. Very regrettable, Senor 'Ickman. But, remembering your +courtesies toward me on the train yesterday, let me assure you of my +willingness to serve you in any way. You will command me, senor." + +A sudden lightning flash of comprehension shot through the clouds that +pressed down on the prisoner's mind. He saw the whole trick of the +counterfeit dollars in his pocket and remembered the little Spaniard's +threat on the observation platform of the train the night before: +"To-morrow we touch Mexico, where it is known that Colonel Hamilcar +Urgo is a law unto himself." Grant strained forward and his mouth +opened to incoherent speech. + +"And now, senor," Colonel Urgo continued blandly, "unfortunately you +will be locked up incommunicado." + +Five minutes later Grant Hickman, behind a steel-studded door in a +Mexican jail, was as wholly out of the world as a man in a sunken +submarine. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE GARDEN OF SOLITUDE + + +Benicia O'Donoju by the side of the big Papago Quelele and with the +twin towns on the Line behind her--ahead the unlimned immensity of +the wilderness--gave herself to the exhilaration of flight. For the +skimming and dipping of the little car over the wave crests of the +desert was like the flight of the desert quail, who rarely lifts +himself above the height of the mesquite in his unerring dartings from +bush to bush. On its partially deflated tires, provision against sand +traps and the expansion of imprisoned air under heat, the skeleton +thing reeled off its twenty miles an hour with snortings. + +The final incident at the Arizora station--little Colonel Urgo and +his unceremonious jettisoning--left no abiding impression with the +spirited desert girl. His struttings and posings, his humorously +impetuous wooing, resumed at the El Paso station after the two years' +interruption of her stay in the States, were for her no more than +the high stepping of some barnyard Lothario. Benicia, little given to +the morbid business of self-analysis, was not sensible of how exactly +the dual strain of blood in her had reacted to Urgo's advances; how +it had been the swift thrust of Spanish temper which had prompted her +to resort to the pronged weapon from her hair at El Paso even as the +persistent Irish humour tang inherent in the O'Donoju name had flashed +out in the dumping of the suitor at Arizora. + +No, Hamilcar Urgo's dapper figure was as evanescent as the mirage, but +there was another which appeared to replace it. A man with the figure +of an athlete and a forthright way of looking at one--perhaps the least +bit too self-assured, perhaps inviting rebuke did one but feel in the +humour of rebuking. One of those quick-witted Americans, ever ready +on a hair trigger of resourcefulness yet seeming to carry a situation +as if no situation existed. Nice eyes, yes. A pleasant laugh, rich in +humour. But so New Yorkish! He thought the desert a place where no +one lived willingly. Amusing conceit! And his name was--? Ah, yes, +Hickman--Grant Hickman. One would try to remember that name. + +Retrospect could not long hold Benicia's mind against the joy of the +homing journey. For the desert she loved spoke to her a welcome long +dreamed in the stifling precincts of cities. There was the sky she +had yearned for, something of infinite depths which did not shut down +over the earth like an inverted cup; rather an impalpable sea wherein +the earth swam free. Morning gold still tinted it. And the mountains +that rose sheer from the desert floor with no lesser foothill heights: +under the sun they were blue in the east and where slant rays fell upon +western barriers a tawny strength of naked rock clothed them. Between +the feet of the mountain stretched the level desert plain far and far +beyond the power of eye to compass; grey with the grey of saltbush and +greasewood, overtones of green where the first leaves of the mesquite +and ironwood answered the call of the spring sun. + +Quelele had turned the machine onto a westward wending road once the +Line was crossed at Sonizona. A few straggling ranches near the border +town, then the unsullied desert. Westward and southward sped the +machine, deep into the greatest stretch of unpeopled wilderness between +the Barren Grounds of the Dominion and Panama. + +The Desert of Altar lies there. From the Line south to the Yaqui +River and from the Gulf of California, once called the Sea of Cortez, +eastward to the Sierra Madre:--here is the terra incognita of Sonora; +here is the dominion of thirst. A territory large as New England and +with a population smaller than the average New England mill town. A +vast graveyard of vanished peoples, who left behind them mountains +terraced with fortifications laid in unbroken breastworks of porphyry +and rocks pictured with their annals of life and death. Rain comes only +with occasional summer thunder storms up from the Gulf, storms which +wake dead rivers into furious flood. So precious is this water from the +sky that the primitive peoples weave mystic rain symbols into their +basketry for a fetish, and their songs are all of thunderheads and +croaking frogs. + +Here in the Desert of Altar the impossible becomes commonplace. A man +caught in a river bed by the spearhead of a freshet drowns in sand made +mud and irresistibly rushing. Cattle drink no water for months on end +but are sustained by munching cactus whose spines can penetrate sole +leather. In the furnace heat of summer furious rain storms occur in the +higher air but the moisture is sucked up by the sun before it touches +earth. Gold lies scattered on the surface of the desert and water must +be mined. The desert kind slay after the manner of the ages but declare +a truce at the waterhole. Death of all life is ever-present, yet grant +so much as a permanent trickle of the life-giving fluid and the dust is +covered with a glory of green. + +For its devotees the desert holds mysteries potent beyond comprehension +of folk in a softer land. The venturing padres of an elder day called +it the Hand of God; they walked in the hand of God and were not afraid. +Divinity, force, original cause--whatever may be your term for that +power which jewels the grass with dew and swings the suns in their +courses--this is very close in the desert. In great cities man has +driven the Presence far from him by his silly rackets of steam and +electricity, by his farcical reproductions of cliffs and pinnacles. In +the Desert of Altar he walks in silence and with God. The very air is +kinetic with the energy that brought forth life on a cooled planet. + +The desert had been Benicia's teacher; had moulded her spirit to its +own pattern of elemental strength. Born the last of the O'Donojus in +the desert oasis that was the ultimate remnant of the once kingly +Rancho del Refugio--grant of a Spanish Philip to her ancestor--she +had been reared in the asperities of the land, had absorbed into her +bone and tissue the rigours and simple verities of a wilderness. +Because there was no son in the Casa O'Donoju and because, too, this +only daughter came into the world with the inheritance of a spirit +impetuous and errant as a desert bird, Don Padraic, her father, gave +over all attempts at imposing on her the straight decorum that shackles +the Spanish maiden of gentle blood. With the death of her mother when +Benicia was still in short skirts came this loosening of the bonds. +Instead of growing to maturity a shy creature who must never quit the +sight of a duenna and whose eyes shall tell no secrets, the girl warmed +to a wonderful companionship with her father, lived the life of a boy. + +Her flaming red hair bobbed about the fringe of milling cores of wild +cattle at the round-up. At _Sahuaro_ feasts of the Papagoes, Mo Vopoki +(Lightning Hair) added her shrill soprano to the chorus of the Frog +Doctor Song. She learned where gold lay in shallow pockets and winnowed +it from the sands in the Indian fashion. She brought home a mewing, +spitting kitten she had taken from a bobcat's litter. Her doll was +discarded for a rifle before her strength could shoulder it. + +Schooling came in her father's library, filled with books in three +languages. English and music, the music of the great harp, became her +passions. The harp had been her great-grandmother's; Don Padraic could +make the mesh of strings sing with the sound of rain on flowers. He was +her first teacher. Then, when twenty years were hers and Don Padraic +realized something besides the wild desert life was needed to round out +the full beauty of his daughter's soul, he had urged further studies +on the harp as the excuse for Benicia's two years in the cities of the +States. Those two years had served well to overlay upon the rugged +handiwork of the wild the softness and subtleties of culture. + +Benicia believed she possessed all her father's confidences. So she +did--all but one. She did not know that when she came into the world +with tiny head furry in burning red Donna Francisca, her mother, had +cried herself into hysteria and Don Padraic's heart had gone cold. Nor +was she ever told that her flaming hair marked her with the finger of +Nemesis. + +This day of the return from exile no premonition of the inheritance +of fate arose to disturb the singing heart of the girl. She rattled +on to the stoical Papago at the wheel unending questions concerning +her father and the most humble of the Indian retainers living on the +rancherias about the oasis, Don Padraic's fief in the waste lands. +She told the credulous Quelele stories of the cities she had seen; of +white men's wickiups climbing as high as the hill of La Nariz; of water +so plentiful that it was launched at a burning house out of a long +serpent's mouth; how men lifted themselves above the earth in machines +like the king condor and flew hundreds of miles between sun and sun. +To all of which big Quelele, never lifting his eyes from the thin rut +lines in the sand, answered with a single monosyllable "Hi," wherein +was compounded all his capacity for wonder. + +South and west about the skirts of the Pajarito they went, and then +into the old road up from Caborca, the ancient highway called the Road +of the Dead Men which swings north parallel with the Line, cutting the +tails of numerous ranges that are great in Arizona. And so, when the +day was hardly more than half spent, the little car crawled to the +height called the Nose of the Devil, and Benicia saw below her land of +desire. + +Fists of the mountains grudgingly opened out to permit a broad basin +running from east to west, and there against the savage baldness of +sentinel ranges showed a ribbon of green. Green of precious gems it +was. So vivid in the setting of the drought land. So cyclonic its +assault of colour against the eye inured to the duns and greys of a +hundred miles of parched terrain. And in the midst of the oasis the +shining white dot, which was the house of the O'Donoju; of Benicia's +father and his fathers before him back to the day of a royal favourite +baptized Michael O'Donohue. The Casa O'Donoju in El Jardin de +Soledad--the Garden of Solitude. + +Indian women, in skirts of orange and cerise and with gay mantles over +their sleek hair, lined the way to the avenue of royal date palms +which led from the bridge over the Rio Dulce straight to the white +single-story house of 'dobe, heavy walled and loopholed like a fort. +They waved and sent shouts of welcome to the mistress of the casa as +she passed. + +Benicia knew her father would not be outside the house to greet her; +their love was not for the servants to see. Rather he would be waiting +in their own trysting place, the place where he had given her farewell +two years before. The girl leaped from the car before the heavy +studded oak door breaking the solid white front of the house at its +centre. It was opened to her by old 'Cepcion, feminine major domo of +the household servants. Benicia paused to give the parchment cheeks a +kiss, then she danced down a flagged hall to the flare of green marking +the patio garden in the centre of the house. + +Here was a place of beauty and a fragrant cave of coolness--the very +secret heart of the Garden of Solitude. Open to the sky and with +cloistered dimness of the four sides of the house all about, the patio +was a tiny jungle of climbing things, all green and riotous blossoms. +A stately date palm reigned in the centre behind the little basin of +the fountain; curtains of purple bougainvillea draped themselves down +its shaggy ribs; lavender water-hyacinths sailed their little barques +in the pool; geraniums flamed in living fire against the pillars of the +arcades. + +There in the garden waited a man all in white. Snow white his heavy +hair and beard, though the life in his deep-set eyes and the vigorous +set of his shoulders belied age; white were his thin garments of silk +and flannel. + +He caught the flash of a red head through the greenery, saw an eager, +breathless face turned questioningly. + +"'Nicia, heart of my heart--!" + +Then she ran to him, paused just an instant to lift swift fingers +under his chin and tilt his head. Their eyes measured each the love +that welled brimming in the soul's windows. Then the father drew his +daughter close to his heart and his lips brushed her forehead. + +"'Nicia, my strong one, your father has great need of you." + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +JUSTICE + + +The Mexican theory of the treatment of prisoners, their status before +the law and the responsibilities of government toward them has few +complexities and knows no interference on the part of prisoners' +welfare leagues or humanitarian congresses. When a man is arrested +south of the Line he straightway ceases to be enumerated among the +living; if, haply, he reappears in the course of weeks or years his +family looks upon the prodigy in the light of a resurrection. Such +resurrections do not occur often enough to dull the edge of the popular +interest attending them. There are several dim roads, peculiarly +Mexican, down which a prisoner may march to oblivion, with no record of +his expunction left behind. Officials with easy consciences find these +extralegal methods of clearing the docket handy and expeditious. + +Grant Hickman, new to the Border and utterly ignorant of customs and +manners in the republic of _poco tiempo_, necessarily could not +possess a background of sinister knowledge against which to build +doubts of his immediate future when he found himself locked in a cell. +He was in darkness deep as Jonah's. He ached from his scalp to his +toes. A gingerly groping hand applied to various parts of his body +took stock of the exterior costs of that healthy fight in the gambling +palace. The heat of battle was still on him. He recalled how nobly the +big Arizonan swung his chair from the vantage of the crap table; what a +virile call to battle was the stranger's "Ride 'em, Noo Yawker!" + +As for Colonel Urgo's clumsy frame-up--the handful of lead dollars in +his pocket to prompt arrest for counterfeiting--Grant dismissed the +trick as childish spite. When he appeared before a judge in the morning +he could easily prove that the only Mexican money he possessed was +that given him in change by the fat Chinaman and what he had taken in +across the baize. Some tool of the vengeful little wooer of Benicia had +"salted" him during the progress of the game. + +But when morning light through a four-inch slit in the wall roused +him from a restless sleep long hours of doubt were ushered in. Came +a jailer with dry tortillas and water but no summons to appear +before a magistrate. Three tortillas--clammy rolled cakes of meal +tasting strongly of a cook's carelessness in matters of excluding the +unessential--were the sum of his receipts from the outside world that +day. The jailer, who had the features of a bandit, merely grunted a "no +sabe" at the volley of questions the prisoner launched at him during +the minute he was in the cell. + +Those hours of solitude in the six-by-ten box of stone gave opportunity +for much thinking. Little by little it was borne in on Grant how +completely he was a victim of whatever spite Colonel Urgo might care +to devise; and recollection of his smiling face seen in the prison +office the night before--thin lips parted over teeth in a ferret's +grin--confirmed the assumption that at devising mischief Colonel Urgo +would be hampered by no lack of ingenuity. + +Grant weighed the hope of aid from the other end of the town across the +Border fence. Bim Bagley, the only friend he had in all the Southwest, +was still out of town and would not be back until the morrow. Doc +Stooder--small chance! The worthy doctor was velvet drunk when he +received Grant in his office; for reasons which only his satiric humour +could explain he had elected to consider his visitor an impostor. +Little chance that Doc Stooder would pay him a thought until Bagley +returned and inquired of his whereabouts. Remained just the cobweb +contingency that the Arizonan who had fought beside him had escaped +the clutches of the rurales; Grant was certain the big fellow's simple +loyalty to a fellow countryman would prompt him to set going some kind +of inquiry from across the Line. + +Night came, with it three more tortillas and a bowl of _carne_ seasoned +with chili sufficient to burn the gullet of a bronze image. Then, +several hours after the scant meal had been shoved in to him, the +bandit jailer opened his cell door and motioned him to step into the +corridor. Two men with rifles were waiting there; they stepped to his +side and marched him off between them. + +Down a flight of steps, through a courtyard heavy with shadows, then +up tortuous stairs to a door beneath a dim electric globe. The door +opened from within, and Grant found himself in a chamber which might +have passed as a courtroom. At its far end on a raised dais was a long +desk lighted from above, three men sitting behind it. A sort of wooden +cage stood apart on a platform by itself. Six men with serapes over +their shoulders and rifles hanging by straps across the blanket stripes +were slouching before the judges' dais. A black headed peon crouched +timorously on a seat to the left and behind the guards. + +Grant's escort halted him before the judges. He kept silence, studying +the faces of the three. Not pleasant faces. A hardness of eye and +cat-like bristle of moustachios over thin line of lips was common to +the trio. + +"Grant 'Ickman?" challenged the man in the middle. + +Grant nodded. His interrogator gave a sign to one of the rurales. The +latter turned to the peon on the bench, dragged him to his feet and +hustled him to the cage-like affair to the left of the dais, evidently +a witness box. The little fellow's head hardly showed above the top +rail that fenced him in; his eyes were all whites. + +The examining judge jerked a thumb toward Grant as he shaped a question +in Spanish for the witness. The peon bobbed his head emphatically. +Another question and, "_Si_," chirped the witness. Then a lengthy flow +of interrogation prompted by reference to some dossier in hand. + +"_Si! Si!_" The witness hurried to oblige. Cat whiskers lifted in a +smile as the judge turned back to Grant. + +"You unnerstan'?" + +"I don't," bluntly. More twitching of the spiked moustachios. + +"Zeese man, 'oo's make confession of counterfeiting and 'oo ees +to be shot to-day, says 'e sells you thirty pesos made with bad +metal--counterfeit. An'--" + +"He lies!" Grant interrupted. + +"_Quieto!_" The judge banged his fist on the desk and fixed the +prisoner with a savage glare. "'E says, zeese man, 'e meets with you +las' night on Calle San Lazar outside Crystal Palacio gambling 'ouse +an' for ten veritable pesos 'e gives to you thirty pesos of bad metal. +Then zeese man 'e says 'e sees you enter Crystal Palacio. What remark +you make for zeese?" + +The monstrous farce of this accusation numbed Grant. Judicial +subornation fabricated to give colour to what was already determined in +the minds of these three puppets. As clearly as if they were bearing +on him he could see the cold, mocking eyes of Colonel Urgo behind the +shoulders of his pawns on the bench. Perception of his peril steadied +him. + +"I demand a lawyer if I am to be tried on this outrageous charge. And I +demand that the American consul in this town be told of the accusation +against me." + +The interrogating judge turned to his confreres with a bland +outspreading of the palms. Then to Grant: + +"American consul 'as no business with crime against state of Mehico. +You will 'ave lawyer when you are tried before court at Hermosillo. +Zeese court ees not court of condemnation. Court of condemnation ees at +Hermosillo. W'en you arrive there, w'ere you make for a start to-night, +Senor 'Ickman, you ask for American consul if you desire." + +"But you cannot send me to this Hermosillo place without trial." Grant +took a step toward the bench in his vehemence. He was roughly jerked +back by his guards. The interrogating judge beamed on him. + +"In Mehico, Senor 'Ickman, it ees folly to say 'you cannot.' Much ees +possible in Mehico. To-night prisoners make start for Hermosillo. You +go weeth them." + +He nodded to Grant's guards and they closed in on him. He heard a +farewell, "Adios, Senor 'Ickman," from the bench as he was rudely +hustled out of the courtroom. + +An hour later he stood with seven other shadows in the _carcel_ +courtyard. About them were the rurales with their rifles; four were +mounted on horseback and a pack mule, lightly laden, slept on three +legs behind the horsemen. Men came with lanterns and heavy loops of +something which chinked metallically when it was dropped. They fixed a +broad steel shackle on the left wrist of each prisoner and linked them +all to a bull chain. Then the door of a courtyard swung inward, the +mounted rurales closed in and the eight chained men went clinking out +to the dark street. + +A few midnight dawdlers paused to watch the shadowy procession +stumbling over the cobbles. No word was spoken. The clink of the +horses' hoofs, the patter-patter of the short-legged pack mule and +the metallic whisperings of the chain fitted into a measured cadence. +Despite the presence of the pack mule, Grant first had thought the +journey would be a short one, ending at the railroad station. But +after fifteen minutes' marching no railroad line was in sight and the +houses began to be scattered. Suddenly houses ceased; nothing but the +hump-shouldered shapes of mountains about; clear burning stars and +ahead a dim ribbon of road leading out into the desert. + +To Hermosillo, a town unheard of and at a distance unknown--across the +desert to Hermosillo afoot and chained in line with seven men. In the +slim rifle barrels so carelessly slung under shadows of sombreros was +the sullen emblem of that unwritten law of Mexico which stills so many +accusing mouths: _ley de fuga_--law of flight. + +Out into the desert of Altar marched the American, whose name appeared +only upon a secret cachet in the hands of the puppet judges--a man +gone, as a German once put it, "without trace." + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE CHAIN GANG + + +"But, Doc, I tell you you're crazy! How could a tenderfoot like Hickman +just in town from the East breeze across the Line and get into a jam +the first night he's in town--drop out of sight completely?" + +Bim Bagley, back in Arizora and distracted by the unexplained mystery +of his pal's name on the hotel register, his pal's suitcase in a hotel +room but no more material trace of Grant Hickman, was knee to knee with +Dr. Stooder in the latter's office. The Doc made judicious answer: + +"Well, son, Jed Hawkins' specifications of the gringo he fought with +atop the crap table in the Palacio tallies pretty closely with the +young man as I saw him in my office earlier in the day. But here's the +funny thing: the rurales let Hawkins go even though he laid out two of +'em with a chair. Let that fightin' wildcat go and trotted this fellah +Hickman off to the _carcel_. That's what gets me." Doc Stooder gave +his decision with a wave of the hand. He jack-knifed his bony knees up +to his chin and waited the younger man's comment. + +"But what did Hawkins say started the big row?" Bim's long face, +all criss-crossed with the wind wrinkles that make desert men look +older than their years, gave a vivid picture of his distress, of his +eagerness to seize upon any detail that might point a solution of the +mystery. Doc Stooder recited with picturesque detail Jed Hawkins' story +of the battle in the gambling palace as the redoubtable Jed himself had +narrated it in the Border Delight pool hall before returning to his +ranch at Dos Cabezas. + +"That give me a clue," he concluded, "so I laid my pipe lines an' I'm +looking for to tap a well any time now." + +Doc Stooder's pipe lines--of information, if not of wealth--were the +most productive of any along the Border. He was one of those rare white +men in the Southwestern country who enjoyed the unreserved respect if +not the love of the Mexican population, among whom nine-tenths of his +practice extended. Though he bawled at his patients, stricken dumb with +terror of their ailments, though he cursed the women and manhandled the +men, no poor Mexican's hovel of 'dobe was too far out in the desert to +discourage Doc Stooder's night prowling gas-wagon. Through dust storm +and withering heat this blasted jack-pine of a man flitted on wings of +gasoline, with his nostrums for dysentery and asthma, his splints for +broken bones and needles for knife thrusts. + +Drunk he might be half the time, an indifferent physician all the +time--for the Doc had not been away from the Border for twenty-five +years and never read a medical magazine. But under his hard rind of +brutalities and cynicisms the Mexicans and Indians had come to discover +a deep sympathy with their homely tragedies, their patient sufferings. +Sometimes they paid him in coin; more often they paid him in slavish +fealty the coin of which was information. Of gold strikes in the far +hills; of shrewd business deals to be wrought through connivance of +knavish officials across the Line; even of stolen jewels to be picked +up from a pawnbroker:--these the flow of Doc Stooder's pipe lines. No +man on the Border for a hundred miles each way knew so much of the +scrapple of life as A. Stooder, M.D. + +"I'm lookin' to hear of a woman," the Doc drawlingly resumed, a wry +smile greeting Bim's gesture of negation. "Yep, son, when any likely +lookin' young fellah along the Border drops outa sight--and this +Hickman fellah's got an eye with him for all his Noo Yawk bridle +trimmin's--they's a swish of skirts comes to my ears. Or"--he sat up +suddenly and threw a bony finger at Bim--"or he knows somethin' about +why he's come out here an' went an' babbled." + +"Rot!" Bim's grey eyes were clouded with anger. "I told you he doesn't +know why we got him out here--and he's not the babbling kind if he did." + +"Well, it sizes up thisaway," the Doc continued, ignoring the other's +flash of temper. "They's one man down in Sonora who knows all we +know about the Lost Mission and like's not a dam' sight more. That's +this proud old don who lives down in the Garden of Solitude with his +red-headed daughter--name's Padraic O'Donoju, if I haven't told you +that before. If he ever got a line on the fact we've asked a Noo Yawk +engineer to come out here to Arizora he'd put two an' two together an' +figure we're after that Four Evangelists church his ancestors built. +You know he's sorta king of all the Papagoes in Altar and--" + +"How about your Papago who's going to lead us to the Mission?" Bim +interrupted. "If there's any leak likely as not it's through him." + +Stooder's great head wagged slowly; a grin tilted the rabbit's tail +tuft under his lip until it stood out a quizzical interrogation point. + +"No, son; no. I got that Papago brother where he thinks all I got to +do is crook my little finger an' his wife passes away with asthma +overnight. We can rely--" + +A timid knock on the office door giving onto the hall. The Doc bellowed +a command to enter. A wizened Mexican peon whose left arm was a stump +sidled quickly through the doorway and stood bowing, shaggy head +uncovered. He cast a quick glance at Bagley, then to the doctor for +reassurance. + +"Go ahead, Angel--shoot!" commanded Stooder. + +"Senor, I hear from Jesus Ruiz, 'e's cousin to me an' rurale at the +_carcel_; Jesus Ruiz 'e says the gringo arrest' at Palacio goes last +night in chain gang for Hermosillo--" + +Bim leaped to his feet with an oath. The peon's eyes were on Doc +Stooder in an hypnotic stare. + +"The gringo goes in chain gang for Hermosillo, but my cousin Jesus Ruiz +'e says that gringo mos' like never arrive." + + * * * * * + +That hour when Doc Stooder's pipe line began spouting information Grant +Hickman was discovering deep down within him an unguessed hardiness of +spirit. A trial was on him, a test of his moral fibre no less than of +his physical powers. At the end of twelve hours' steady plodding across +the desert he was coming into his second wind. Every effort a devilish +ingenuity could contrive had been tried out by the four rurales, his +guards, in their common endeavour to break down this gringo's fighting +morale. The single result was a fixed grin on features smeared with +dried blood and sweat--a challenge provoking the Mexicans to fresh +barbarities. + +During the first dark hours of the march Grant had nursed the hope +that at some point outside of town he and his fellow prisoners would +be brought to a railroad station to await the coming of a train. He +could not conceive a reason for transferring prisoners afoot when a +railroad would serve. But with the coming of the dawn and the lifting +of the dark from an empty land not even a telegraph pole raised above +the scrub to point fulfilment of his hope. Just the dry ribbon of road +stretching ahead and empty speculation as to the number of days or +hours which must intervene between present misery and journey's end. +Grant never had heard the name Hermosillo until it was spoken by the +examining judge the night before; he did not know whether the town was +just over the horizon or half way to Panama. + +Morning brought him the chance to study the men chained with him who, +during the night hours, had been just so many disembodied shadows +marching in a nightmare. The one ahead of him was a shrivelled little +Chinaman, whose legs were so short he was forced to a skipping step to +keep slack on his segment of the chain; his breath came in asthmatic +pipings and wheezes like the noise of a leaky valve in some midget +engine. Behind him was a giant of an Indian, almost the colour of teak. +With a timed regularity this Indian spat noisily all through the dark +hours and until the sun rose to dry up his throat. The rest were in +character with Grant's nearer companions--just flotsam. + +The guards were typical of their class; Mexican peons brutalized even +beyond the inheritance of their mixed bloods by their small taste of +power. The quarter-blood Indian south of the Line, whose ancestry is +devious as his own starved dog's, knows but a single law of life and +that the law of fear. Lift him by ever so little from the station +of the one who fears to that of the one to be feared and he has no +counterpart for studied cruelty anywhere on earth. + +The one who rode to the right of the line in which Grant's position +was fourth from the front, had commenced with the dawn a calculated +campaign of nasty tortures. He would suddenly swerve his horse against +Grant, threatening his feet with trampling hoofs. He held his lighted +cigarette low at his side with elaborate air of carelessness, then +pressed in close for the burning tip to eat through the white man's +shirt. Once he aimed a vicious backward kick at his victim; his heavy +spur left a line of red through the torn sleeve from elbow to shoulder. + +At each of these refinements of humour the rurale's snickering laughter +was met by the American's wordless grin. Just a tense spreading of lips +and baring of teeth, which carried to the guard's savage perception a +taunt and a threat. Always in Grant's twisted grin lay the unspoken +promise of retribution once the odds against him were lightened. + +The desert under sun at the meridian flexed its harsh hand to pinch the +crawling caterpillar of chained men. Heat waves made all the ragged +summits of the Sierras pulsate. A dust tasting of desert salts spread a +low cloud about the marching column. Thirst that was a poignant agony +was made all the more unendurable by the tactics of the guards. From +time to time one of them would unhitch a canteen from the pack mule's +burden and in the sight of the eight helpless sufferers tilt his head +and guzzle noisily. Even he would allow some of the water to slop from +his mouth and be wasted in the sand. + +When the little Chinaman marching before Grant sighed and dropped, the +line was halted for half an hour. First the yellow man was revived, +then the canteen at which he had sucked so noisily was passed down the +line to the rest of the prisoners. It was their first taste of water +since the prison gate was passed. After the canteen circulated, black +strips of jerked beef, sharp with salt, were distributed. Grant never +had seen the "jerky" of the Southwest; the leathery stuff would have +revolted him did his body not cry out for food. He tore at the tough +substance after the manner of his fellows while the guards brewed +themselves some more complicated mess over a fire of greasewood sticks. + +Then the march again. Dragging hour after dragging hour. Clink-clank +of the swinging chain. Pad-pad of feet in time. Snuffle and +wheeze--snuffle and wheeze of the asthmatic Chinaman's breathing. +All in an unvarying synchronism which tore at the nerves. All the +world--Grant's world of a great city--was reduced to this dreadful +monotony of movement and sound. + +He tried to think. Came to his mind a picture of his office in the +Manhattan skyscraper--his desk with the mounted bit of shrapnel for a +paperweight, its clear greeny-white glass top, the two wire baskets +which held his correspondence. He saw the squash court at the club--men +in sleeveless shirts straining after a white ball. Henry's bar in the +little side street off the Rue D'Anou in Paris; Henry selling stolen +American cigarettes for five times their value at the commissary. St. +Mihiel and the old woman who knitted lace. Then the girl--Benicia +O'Donoju. Grant called to his mind the vivid glory of her hair, the +trick of her short upper lip in curling outward like the petal of a tea +rose, a something roguish always lurking deep down in the warm pools of +her eyes. + +"Not Mexican. We are Spanish folk." That was her sharp reproof when he, +blundering, had asked her if she was of Mexican blood. That night on +the train--it seemed a year back. "Not Mexican." Now he understood why +the girl had corrected him so pointedly. Thank God she was not of that +breed! + +Near dusk the line was halted and one of the guards dismounted. Grant +saw him fumble in his shirt and bring out a bright bit of metal, saw +him approach the head of the line and tinker with the first fellow's +wrist shackle. He heard a sharp intake of breath behind him and, +turning, caught the stamp of terror on the giant Indian's face. +Something was going forward which he could not comprehend, something to +shake the stoicism of this Indian. Within five minutes the steel band +about his wrist was unlocked and he stood free of the chain with the +rest of the prisoners. He saw on the faces of all of them that same +terror mask the Indian wore. + +The freed men cast covert glances at the guards, followed their every +move with cat-like slyness. The little Chinaman began a falsetto +sing-song under his breath, which might have been a prayer to his +protecting joss. One of the guards turned in his saddle and called some +jocular order to the prisoners. They moved on in the wine-light of the +sunset, falling precisely into the line they had held when chained, +their eyes vigilant for every move of a hand on the part of the mounted +men. + +The rurales now carried their rifles swung free across the saddles. + +Though he could understand no word of the muttered scraps of speech +passed between man and man behind him, the magnetic fear waves +possessing all the rest began to prompt Grant to some comprehension. +The coming night--dropping of the chain--those rifles unslung from +shoulders and carried free across the saddles:--did these things +presage the near end of this farce of a pilgrimage across the desert to +a court? + +Light now was nearly gone from the western sky and the guards were +riding farther away from the trudging line, deliberately inviting some +one to offer himself for fair target practice while gunsights still +could be seen. Grant faced the hazard squarely. Certain he was that +none of the eight would see another sunrise, that butcher's work would +commence the minute sporting chances were definitively ignored by the +victims. He was of no mind to be the passive party to a hog killing. +Better a quick dash--a bullet from behind-- + +The line of men had just emerged from an arroyo with almost perpendicular +sides; the bed of the dry stream was thick with shadow. Grant leaped from +line and ran straight for the guard who rode between himself and the +course of the stream. Almost at his stirrup he swerved and cut under the +horse's rump. + +Shouts. A shot gone wild. Grant, zigzagging, was at the brink of the +arroyo. Two shots almost as one. A lance of fire through his shoulder. +Up went his arms and he plunged headlong into the gulf of blackness. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE HEART OF BENICIA + + +The Desert of Altar is transcendence of silence. From the savage +Growler range in Arizona south to the obsidian bastions of Pinacate, by +the dead Gulf, is space to crowd five million people with their tumult +of cities, their crash of machines, hoot of locomotives and shriek of +steel under stress. Yet in all this blank waste not a sound. + +The chirp of the wren from her hole in the _sahuaro_ carries not even +so far as the watching hawk on nearby skeleton _ocatilla_ stalk. The +meat cry of the prowling cat in the mountains where the wild sheep +range is swallowed in the muffling depths of the canyon under her feet. +Thin air seems too tenuous to conduct sound waves. Creatures of the +wild lands move mute under the oppression of unbounded space. + +Yet nowhere does rumour fly swifter than here in this vacant land. +Comes a strange prowler to the waterholes of Tinajas Altas, and the +antelope fifty miles away know the news and seek the hidden springs at +Bates' Wells. A Papago three days' journey from the nearest rancheria +stumbles onto hoofprints of six horses away over where tidewater climbs +into the delta of the Colorado, and he turns back to carry report of +revolution in Baja California. Strange signs tell their tales from +the sands; the arrangement of little sticks conveys whole chapters of +information to the wayfarer. When man meets man, be he white, brown or +copper coloured, news is a torch to be passed on to a new hand. Nothing +can be long a secret. The latent must out. + +Even as the worthy Doc Stooder in his shabby office at Arizora had +a never-ending messenger service from all the Border and the lands +beyond, carrying scraps of oblique news, another far distant in the +Garden of Solitude enjoyed the same intelligence. This was Don Padraic +O'Donoju, last of the line of masters over the once-great principality +of El Rancho del Refugio. Though a hundred years of revolution, of +uproar and the teetering of political balances in the more populous +Mexico to south and east of him had left to the last don of the +O'Donojus little more territory than that comprised in the oasis of +the Garden, still he had cattle enough to be counted a rich man and +six generations of custom gave him unbroken sway over the Papagoes. +From the Sand People of the Gulf away up to the San Xavier rancheria +at Tucson extended the secret kingdom of Don Padraic's influence. His +only tithes were those of loyalty and the bringing of report. What the +Papagoes thought Don Padraic should know, that he knew as speedily as +word could be passed. + +So, a week after Benicia had returned to the Casa O'Donoju, came a +runner from the eastward--one sent by El Doctor Coyote Belly, whose +winter house was at Babinioqui near the railroad. The runner had big +news. El Doctor, known all over the Desert of Altar because of his +reputed skill at curing hydrophobia and the bite of the sidewinder, +had a sick white man--a seriously wounded white man who might be an +American--in his house at Babinioqui and he asked Don Padraic what he +should do with this man. + +El Doctor was returning from the Medicine Cave of Pinacate--this +was the runner's tale--when on the road that runs from Sonizona to +Hermosillo he found seven dead men; dead men with the marks of fetters +on their left wrists. A little beyond he found still another; this one, +lying in an arroyo, had been shot through the shoulder from behind +and he still lived. El Doctor had tied the living man to his burro and +taken him to his winter house at Babinioqui, where he had treated him +with the most powerful herbs and had massaged the wound with the lizard +image. The wounded white man would live. Coyote Belly did not wish to +turn him over to the Mexicans, for he was a victim of _ley de fuga_ and +the Mexicans undoubtedly would shoot him again. + +Don Padraic, whose charity was wider than his acres, made his decision +instantly. He ordered Quelele to go, with the runner to guide him to El +Doctor's house, in the little desert car and to fetch the white man to +the Garden of Solitude as soon as he was able to be moved. It was best, +the master instructed, that Quelele travel in the night, returning with +the wounded man, and tell no one of the object of his mission. + +The big Indian stocked the car with gasoline from the tank behind +the master's house--a reservoir filled monthly from drums brought by +ox cart from the distant railroad point--strapped canteens and oil +containers on his running boards and was off. Don Padraic said nothing +of the incident to his daughter. + +That night Don Padraic and Benicia sat in the candlelight of the big +salon or living room which filled the space of one quadrangle off +the patio. In all Sonora there was no counterpart of this chamber of +mellowed antiquities, the collection of generations of the O'Donoju. +Low ceiled and with crossing beams of oak, whereon the marks of the +hewer's adze showed like waves; walls hung with tapestries between the +heavy frames of portraits of grandees and their ladies of forgotten +days; a great fireplace wherein a man could stand upright, with its +hand-wrought andirons and heavy crane shank; floor almost black from +a hundred years of polishing and with the skins of animals floating +there like so many islands:--here was a magic bit of old Spain lifted +overseas to find root in the heart of the desert. + +Benicia, in a gown of rippling lines which left her strong young arms +bare to the shoulder, was seated behind the great golden span of her +harp. Candlelight falling across her shoulders made ivory the flesh +of her bare arms as they moved rhythmically back and forth over the +wilderness of strings. She was playing the Volga Boatsong, a peasant +melody whose minors rose and fell to the sweep of oars. As the girl +gave her heart to the music, the thrumming strings wove a picture of +some barbaric steppe coming down to a sluggish river; boatmen chanting +at the sweeps. The ancient room was a-thrill with resonance. + +She finished with just a breath of melody, the song of the boatmen +dying in the distance. Her eyes fell on the face of her father; it +was deeply etched by the play of flames from the mesquite logs in the +fireplace. Always he sat this way, moveless before the fire, when +she played on the great harp o' nights, freeing his soul to drink in +the melodies; but to Benicia's understanding eyes appeared now the +semblance of a deeper shadow not of the firelight. She softly left the +instrument and stole over to nestle herself on the broad chair wing, +with her coppery head laid against the snow white one. + +"_Pobrecito_"--this was her pet word carried through the years from +childhood--"_Pobrecito_, thy face is as grave as the owl's. Some +secret? Remember, there are no secrets between us two--no worry which +the other does not share." + +Her coaxing hand played through the heavy mane of hair; her cheek was +against his. Don Padraic slowly turned his head with denial in his +eyes; but that denial could not sustain the accusation in the steady +blue eyes of the daughter. During the week Benicia had been home a +secret doubt had steadily pressed upon the father; he had been waiting +some word from her which did not come. Now one of his hands stole up to +tweak her ear--signal of surrender. + +"'Nicia, great-heart, you have told me all about your two years in the +cities--your two years of life in the great world outside? There is +something you have withheld?" + +"Nothing, little father." She gave him a peck on the forehead. Don +Padraic appeared to be groping for his words. + +"You met--many American men--young men who--ah--might have been +attracted by the beauty of my desert flower?" + +A ripple of soft laughter and the girl pressed closer to him. + +"Ah, _Pobrecito_, you forget that your desert flower carries thorns. +Ask that ridiculous Hamilcar Urgo; he has felt the thorns." + +"But"--Don Padraic was not to be put off by evasions--"was there not +one whose heart was conquered by a girl of such fire, such beauty? +Come--come! These Americans are not men of ice." + +For a minute Benicia was silent. She was weighing in all sincerity the +only shred of a secret she had in her heart; testing it for genuineness +as fairly as she might. + +"Yes, daddy, there were many with bold eyes and ready tongues; but +hardly had they begun to speak as friends or companions when their talk +was all of money--how much they were planning to make that year; the +'big deal' they were going to put through. All were like this--but one." + +"Ah," breathed Don Padraic. + +"That one I have told you of," she continued. "The man on the train +who was so masterful with little Hamilcar. He was not like the others. +A man of wit--of sympathies; one who seemed to have understanding of +life--" + +"And he--?" the father prompted. + +"We said '_adios_' the night before we came to Arizora. I did not see +him in the morning, though he said that was his destination." + +They were silent once more. Finally from Benicia a wraith of laughter +on fluttering wings of a sigh: + +"But, my grave old owl, why these questions? Never before have I seen +my daddy play the prying duenna." + +"Heart of mine, thou canst not be blind"--the father's voice trembled +over the intimate pronoun. "I have been thy father, mother, elder +brother, all in one. And selfish--selfish beyond measure! Keeping thee +chained here to an old man in the wilderness when all the world of love +and life lies beyond--" + +"No--no, daddy mine!" Tears dewed blue eyes as yearning arm strained +him to her. + +"--My 'Nicia has her years ahead of her. Her love life must be awakened +and given freedom to unfold like a flower in a garden. Yet I have +permitted her to come back to me here in the Garden of Solitude because +I was lonely. Better far that I sell what we have here and take you +back to the world. In these evil days there is no fit mate to be found +for you in all Sonora. Hamilcar Urgo has threatened me if I do not give +you to him; he is of our blood, but he is abominable. I--" + +A soft hand clapped over his lips. He heard passionate words: + +"Father mine, stop! Never--never whisper again that you will sell our +Garden. For I love it, next to you, above all the world. We are desert +people, little father. We live in God's hand and are happy. The cities +crush me with their noise, their confusion." + +"But, 'Nicia--" + +"And, dearest of daddies"--her lips against his ear were giving kisses +light as thistledown--"I want no lover but you--no happiness but what +I have returned to here in the Garden. Now, not a word more!" + +She was on her feet and with the skirts of her gown caught in her +fingers was making him an old-fashioned curtsy. Then she slipped into +the shadows where the great golden harp stood, and in an instant the +ancient room began to hum with spirited arpeggios--rush of many waters +over a fall. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +GOLD AND PEARLS + + +Bim Bagley, on the trail of the information brought by Doc Stooder's +pipe line, found himself against a blank wall the instant he passed +through the barrier of the Line into Sonizona. He was too conversant +with the ways of Mexican officialdom to make any inquiry in high +places, knowing that to do so would be but to jeopardize Grant Hickman, +however he might be placed, and win for himself naught but suave +denials. Nor did he even go to the American consul, who, in the usual +course of things, would be the last man in Sonizona to hear of the +disappearance of an American citizen there. + +Rather, with Doc Stooder's counsel, Bim circulated warily among the +gambling halls and in the _cantinas_ where the rurales were wont to go +for their salt and mescal. Here ten pesos slipped into a complacent +palm; there twenty. Then weary waiting for results. + +Bit by bit the story came to him, and behind the fragments was always +the dim figure of Colonel Hamilcar Urgo. Bagley knew Urgo for the +tyrant politician that he was: how he used his position in the garrison +as a cloak to cover his manipulations of government all along the +Sonora border. No man was stronger, not even the governor of Sonora +himself; and the central regime in Mexico City was forced to wink at +Colonel Urgo's obliquities else run the risk of his firing the train to +revolution. + +But why this little sand viper in uniform should have conceived a +desire to be rid of Grant Hickman, a total stranger to the country, not +even the most astute of Bagley's informers could guess. "'E's not like +theese gringo" appeared to cover the whole case. + +The saturnine doctor, repenting him of his brusque reception of the +New York man--prompted, after all, by his superlative caution in the +presence of a possible impostor--sent the tip to the farthermost +ganglions of his news system: "Fifty gold dollars to the man bringing +information of the missing American's whereabouts." + +Doc Stooder's proffer of that amount of money was not all humanitarian. +Below his surface show of concern, designed for the benefit of Bim +Bagley, good Dr. Stooder did not care a plugged nickel what might +be the fate of the Eastern man. He was not one to lose sleep over +the misfortunes of others if those misfortunes were not attributable +to strictly physical causes and under materia medica. Then only they +interested him. + +No, Doc Stooder's real concern was the delay caused by the disappearance +of this third party to his scheme for a "great killing." The killing in +question was one he could not make single-handed. Circumstances which +have no place in this tale had forced him to share the secret of it with +Bagley, and the latter had refused to move a step in the enterprise until +he had his pal from overseas in on the game. The Doc fretted aloud one +day, which was the tenth after Grant had dropped from sight. + +"Son, I'm tellin' you 'less we make tracks for that Four Evangelists +mission purty pronto this here O'Donoju Spaniard down in the Garden's +goin' to get what's in the wind and shove in on us. He's got every +Papago from here to the Gulf runnin' to him with every whisper a little +bird lets spill. He gets wind you an' me are raising sand to lay hands +on an engineer out from Noo Yawk an' he smells a mice." + +"You go dig alone for your dam'd mission." Bim Bagley's temper had been +ground fine by days of restless anxiety. "Me, I roost right here till +I get the lay where my buddy is." + +Next day all the silver of subsidy Bim had distributed bore fruit an +hundred-fold. There came to the office of Doc Stooder unquestioned +report that the missing American was alive, though shot through the +body, and under the care of El Doctor Coyote Belly at a speck in the +desert called Babinioqui away down beyond the Line. + +Bagley was off in his car that night. Doc Stooder, alone in his office +and with a graduating glass and bottle of fiery tequila at his elbow, +dreamed of gold plate brought to light from caverns of sand, of altar +jewels and hoards of nuggets--riches of crafty priests--salvaged from +the crypt of a holy place lost to sight of man a century and a quarter. + +"Gold all hammered into crosses an' such!" The Doc tipped his brimming +graduating glass against the electric bulb and studied with fond eye +the liquor made golden by the light. + +"--Pearls, my Papago says. Pearls big as _bisnaga_ fruit an' +greeny-white like a high moon. Gold an' pearls! Pearls an' gold! +Stooder, you're goin' be a prancin', r'arin' aristocrat!" + + + + +CHAPTER X + +AT THE CASA O'DONOJU + + +Six days after Quelele the Papago set out on his mission of mercy +from the Casa O'Donoju he returned to the oasis. It was in the first +flush of dawn that the _shuf-shuf_ of the little car roused master +and servants; Quelele had travelled all night and at a pace to +conserve the strength of the wounded man, who lay on thick straw in +the box body. All night without lights save the thickly strewn lamps +in the firmament, wending hither and thither through the scrub where +half-guessed lines in the sand marked the Road of the Dead Men--a +journey weird enough. + +For Grant Hickman it was but part of the moving drama of a dream. That +instant of flight from the chain gang, when a bullet tore through his +shoulder and sent him toppling into the arroyo, was the visitation +of death; in his flickering perceptions all else following was but +adventuring in the country beyond death--incidents to paint impressions +on a consciousness otherwise wiped clean of otherworld recollections. +First of these exposures on the cloudy plate of his mind came many days +after the rurales had left him for dead in the desert: a face deep-dyed +as mahogany and with white bristles of a beard about chin and lips, +a face kindly withal, which bent near his as a hand lifted his head +to bring his lips to a vessel of pungent brew. Then another age of +drifting and swimming through soft clouds. + +Grant had just come to accept the grey-thatched face of El Doctor +Coyote Belly as part of a permanent picture when another Indian +appeared between himself and the bundles of sticks making a roof over +his head. This second personage in the world of the unreal, a giant +with the features of a boy, had spelled El Doctor in ministering herb +brews and keeping the wet cloths under the burning wound in his back +for what seemed many years. Then Grant had felt himself lifted, carried +from the hut with the bundles of sticks for a roof and laid on sweet +smelling straw. In the starshine he felt the hand of El Doctor close +over his own with a heartening squeeze. + +Then--wonder of wonders!--the racking cough of a gas engine, and Grant +was soaring back to that familiar earth which had been lost to him so +long. + +Upon the arrival of the car bringing Grant to the Casa O'Donoju Don +Padraic, hastily dressed, superintended the moving of his guest to +a small, clean room, candle lit. The wounded man felt the gracious +softness of feathers under him, the suave clinging of sheets. An aged +Indian woman, working under the white man's direction, divested him of +his tattered clothes and patted everything comfortable. Drowsy luxury +stole across his consciousness to cloud it and bring sleep. + +Sunlight flooded the room when Grant awoke. He was alone. His mind was +clearer than it had been since he was shot. Only the steady burning +in his vitals linked this moment of comfort with the tortured past. +His eyes roved about the room to take in its appointments. White walls +devoid of ornamentation; by the heavy door with its curiously wrought +iron latch a single chest of drawers of some antique pattern; the bed +he lay upon massive as a galleon of old days and with a canopy of +carved wood and tapestry for a sail: here was a room from the period +department of the Metropolitan Museum. + +Grant was patiently trying to fit together the jig-saw scraps of his +memory when the door opened and the white man he had seen the night +before entered. Seeing the light of reason in the patient's eyes, Don +Padraic smiled and bowed. Something mighty heartening lay in that +welcome and the warm cordiality of Don Padraic's features. + +"I am rejoiced to find you better to-day," he said as he drew a chair +to the side of the bed. "Yours was a hard journey last night." + +"I am still a little uncertain up here"--Grant tapped his forehead with +an attempt at a laugh. "For instance, I was just thinking I had been +lifted straight into a room of the Metropolitan in New York." + +The host's brows were knitted an instant, then he caught the allusion +and smiled. + +"Ah, yes; we have rather ancient furnishings here. But you are quite a +distance from New York, senor. This is the Casa O'Donoju in the Garden +of Solitude, and I am Don Padraic O'Donoju." + +The name crashed into Grant's consciousness like the clang of iron. His +heart gave a great leap. Could it be possible--? No, this must be but +part of the aurora dreams of the vague eternity still just behind his +back. Grant wished to make no blunder which might belie the present +soundness of his mind, so he held his tongue over the question burning +to be asked. Instead: + +"My name is Grant Hickman, sir. I am deeply obliged to you for your +charity in bringing me here. Of course, I do not know quite how it +all happened--my coming here from some place else, where an Indian, +or two of them--seemed to be caring for me. And I fear I am hardly a +presentable guest." The sick man's hand passed ruefully over his stubby +chin. + +Don Padraic made a gesture dismissing Grant's fastidiousness. "Senor, a +gentleman should not consider the state of his beard and the state of +his health with equal seriousness. The one may be repaired at once even +if our wishes cannot immediately effect a cure of the other. Permit +me to retire, senor, and not tax you with questions until you are +stronger." + +Shortly after the gentle host had bowed himself out an Indian servant +entered with basin and razor and effected an agreeable change in the +patient's appearance. Then Grant was left alone with the tab to a +wonderful possibility to turn over and over in his mind. + +He was in the house of the O'Donoju. Could there be more than one +family of that unusual name in the desert country; or had fate thrown +him a recompense for all he'd suffered by lifting him from a line of +chained convicts to carry him through a nightmare straight to the one +spot in all the world he most desired to be in? Perhaps under the same +roof, near enough to him to permit the carrying of her laughter, was +Benicia, the vivid creature who had won his heart into captivity. + +He was not kept long in suspense. The door opened and Don Padraic's +white clad figure appeared, behind it Benicia. She was in khaki, as +Grant had last seen her at the Arizora station, wide-brimmed hat noosed +under her chin just as she had come in from a ride through the oasis. +All the wild, free spaces of the wilderness seemed compacted in the +girl's trim figure, in the flush of her browned cheeks touched by the +sun. + +"Senor Hickman--" Don Padraic began introduction, but Benicia was at +the bedside; her cool hand was given to Grant's clasp with a gesture of +boyish comradeship. + +"We need not be introduced, father," Benicia laughed, and there was +a queer catch in her throat. "Senor Hickman did me a service on the +train which served as the best introduction in the world." Turning back +to Grant--"I did not know, senor, you were the wounded man Quelele +brought into our home so early this morning--did not even know we had +a guest until my father told me when I returned from my ride a few +minutes ago." + +Grant strove to put all his heart prompted in words that were mete: +"And I did not dare hope that this house to which a miracle has brought +me was the desert home you described on the train." + +Benicia's eyes read surely what his lips would not frame. She saw in +the white face of the wounded man a touch of that old hardihood and +forthright spirit of address which had commended this American to her +at first meeting--commended him even against her own impulse to resent +his self-assurance. But she saw, too, how suffering battled to dim the +valiant spirit, and something deeper than abstract sympathy stirred in +her heart. + +"But, senor, to meet you again this way! Father has told me the message +brought from El Doctor: how you were found among dead men on the +Hermosillo road and brought back to life by that old Papago. You, a +stranger and unknown here in the desert country--how could this happen +to you, senor?" + +Don Padraic interposed: + +"Perhaps, 'Nicia, when Senor Hickman is stronger he will answer +questions. Would it not be better--?" + +The girl was quick to appreciate her father's considerate thought. +Again she laid her hand in Grant's. + +"If you will permit me to play the doctor--at least to see to it that +lazy old 'Cepcion, your nurse, does not neglect you?" The smile that +went with this promise was tonic for the sick man. It remained like +an afterglow when the door was closed behind the girl. And when the +wrinkled Indian woman came an hour later with broth on a silver tray +that smile reappeared, translated into the fragrant beauty of rose +petals laid by the side of the bowl. + +Five luxurious days passed--days each with a wonderful spot of sunshine +in them--that when Benicia accompanied the aged 'Cepcion to his +chamber. On these daily visits she would draw her chair to the side of +the great bed--she looked very small below the high buttress of the +mattress--and while he quaffed his chicken broth and nibbled his flaky +tortillas Benicia would talk. 'Cepcion, like some mahogany coloured +manikin in her flaring skirts and winged bodice, always stood, arms +akimbo and features passive as a graven image, behind her mistress' +chair. + +The girl's talk was directed away from the personal; with an art +concealing art she evaded Grant's frequent endeavours to swing +conversation into more intimate channels. She brought the world of +the desert into the sick room, unconsciously revealing herself as +a flashing, restless creature of the wastes: now on horseback and +threading dim trails over the Line to carry quinine to a family +of Papagoes down with the fever; now beside Quelele in the little +gas-beetle and skimming to Caborca, the southern town, to buy a wedding +dress for an Indian belle. + +Not once did she touch again upon the subject of Grant's misadventures +and how he came to be found on the road to Hermosillo. A delicate +sense of the fitness of things prompted her to await the moment when +he himself should volunteer explanations. Grant, on his part, felt an +impelling reluctance to give details, for to do so would necessitate +his revealing his conviction that little Colonel Urgo's was the hand +that had pushed him so near death. A delicate--perhaps quixotic--sense +of personal honour prompted that he keep his enemy's name out of +any explanations. He could not know how close might be the little +Spaniard's relations with Benicia and her father--even discounting +Urgo's boast that he expected to make the girl his wife--and, besides, +he felt the score between himself and Urgo must be evened before he +linked the Colonel's name with his experiences. + +With Benicia's father Grant modified his resolution to a certain +degree. It was no more than proper, he argued with himself, that the +master of the Casa O'Donoju have some explanation for the presence in +his house of a man from a Mexican chain gang. + +"Senor O'Donoju," Grant addressed his host when the latter was come on +one of his daily visits, "you have been more than kind to me, but I +fear I may be an embarrassment to you--a fugitive, you know, if that is +my status before the law." + +"My dear sir"--the courtly Spaniard waved away Grant's scruples with +a smile--"you forget that the evidence El Doctor Coyote Belly found +on the Hermosillo Road--you the only survivor among eight men who had +been murdered, eight men with marks of fetters on their wrists; that +this evidence, I say, clearly indicates you now have no status whatever +before what the Mexicans call their law." + +Grant looked his surprise. Don Padraic continued easily: + +"You are officially dead, Senor Hickman. It is the _ley de fuga_--the +law of flight. You were shot trying to escape while being transferred +from one prison to another. Monstrous barbarism! So the president, +Francisco Madero, met his end; so, perhaps, Carranza. When you were +chained to other convicts and sent afoot out into the desert you were +doomed; the men responsible for that act counted you as dead the minute +they ordered you overland to Hermosillo." + +Grant recalled the mask of fear he'd seen settle over the features of +the big Indian, his chain mate, when the rurales began to loose the +fetters in the sunset hour of that fateful night on the desert; how the +asthmatic little Chinaman had commenced his chant to the joss--men who +had known every weary hour of that march brought them nearer to the +stroke of doom. + +"I have no direct evidence to explain why I was in that chain gang," +Grant began, honestly enough; then he told the story of the fight in +the gambling palace after the discovery of the counterfeit dollars in +his pocket, reserving only all reference to Colonel Urgo. His host +heard him through with a grave face. + +"Perhaps," he ventured, "you were on some mission to the Border which +ran counter to the interests of a scheming official on the Mexican +side." + +"To be honest, I do not know yet on what mission I came to Arizora," +Grant conceded with a laugh. "A friend of mine wrote me in New York +he wanted me to join him in 'a whale of a proposition' out here along +the Border. I was fool enough to come just on that, and when I had an +interview with a Dr. Stooder--" + +"Ah!" The interjection escaped Don Padraic against instant reflex of +judgment, as his hand part way raised to his lips betrayed. Grant +caught the other's quickly covered confusion and suddenly was sensible +of his careless garrulity. Here he was bandying names in a matter his +friend Bagley had surrounded with unexplained secrecy. He finished +lamely: + +"And so on my first night in Arizora I fell into a trap." + +When Don Padraic left the chamber Grant still was dwelling upon his +host's involuntary exclamation at the name of Doc Stooder. What was +there about the saturnine physician, what notorious reputation which +could lead a hermit such as Don Padraic away off in this desert oasis +to evince surprise that one under his roof had had dealings with him? +More and more an undefined regret for his mention of the name of +Stooder plagued him. + +In truth, the whole reason for his coming to Arizora and whatever +fantastic project might be at the bottom of it appeared now strangely +linked with this latest turn of fate, his coming to the Casa O'Donoju. +Grant became aware of a duty long overlooked and wrote a brief and +non-committal note to Bim Bagley, in Arizora, saying only he had +suffered an accident and would return to the Border town as soon as he +was able. This Benicia took from him to give to Quelele when he should +go to the nearest railroad town. + +Two days thereafter befell a boon the wounded man had dreamed of during +many yearning hours. Two male servants of the household came to dress +him in one of Don Padraic's white suits--his own clothes were rags--and +assisted him down a long hall which turned into the green paradise +of the patio. There under the royal date palm they sat him, with the +fountain pool and its magic purple sails of the hyacinth at his feet, +behind and on either hand the green and crimson glory of the geraniums. + +Benicia was awaiting him there alone. The girl, in a simple green frock +which revealed bare arms and the warm round of her shoulders, was the +embodiment of the garden's fairy essence. She was a sprite of this +green and glowing place. Hot sunlight falling upon her head made it a +great exotic flower. + +"Now both of us can revel in being lawbreakers," she exclaimed when the +Indians had bowed themselves out. She was hovering about Grant, patting +into place the gay serape which covered his knees. + +"Lawbreakers!" Grant's glowing eyes bespoke the intoxication of +pleasure. "I feel, rather, like a prisoner whose sentence is commuted." + +The girl's rippling laughter ended with, "Oh, but my father said you +should not be moved for three days yet. Now he has gone into town with +Quelele and you and I are breaking the law--with you equally guilty." + +"What man would not rush into crime with you to lead?" he rallied, +and the little game of give and take in joke and repartee which had +been of their devising these last few days of Grant's convalescence, +when Benicia made her daily visits at his bedside, was resumed. It was +in this course their friendship had grown: on a basis of comradeship +and with healthy minds in apposition, giving and finding something of +humour, of rollicking fun. No angling for sickly sentimentalism on the +part of this unspoiled girl of the waste places--so Grant during hours +of staring at the ceiling had appraised the heart of Benicia O'Donoju; +no place in their communion for any of the trite nothings a man burbles +into concealed ear of a flapper over tea or whatever else comes from +the sophisticated city teapot. + +During these delicious hours in the shadow-dappled patio, as +heretofore, Benicia continued a tantalizing enigma to the man of +cities. While seeming to give so freely of herself in laughing quip +and quick answer to his sallies, never was there that least suspicion +of some overtone to her buoyancy the man yearned to catch; not the +quick revealing of secret depths in the eyes which would betray a +heart responsive to the waves of the man's love enveloping her. Yet +the lips of the girl, full, soft, trembling with unconcealed promise +of richness to the one conquering them: these were not the lips of one +devoid of love's alluring tyrannies. Nor was the rounded body of her, +fully ripened to share in the law of life giving, one to wither outside +love's garden. + +Grant could not speculate, with tremors of eagerness, on the flood of +passion that was dammed behind the girl's sure mastery of herself. Dare +he believe that he might be the one to loose that flood? As he sat +there in the odorous garden the nimble, superficial part of his brain +was playing with bubbles while the deeper fibre of him resolved that +nothing in the world mattered beyond possessing Benicia's love. + +When luncheon was cleared away--it had been a veritable feast of +laughter--Benicia clapped her hands and gave some direction to the +servant answering. The Indian woman disappeared in the body of the +house, soon to come waddling out under the weight of the great harp. +Grant gasped his surprise; he never had associated harps with any +surroundings other than the orchestra pit. + +"My Irish ancestors, who were kings in Donegal, always called for their +harp after a feast," Benicia declared with laughter in her eyes. "That +is the reason we Irish are such dreamers. The harp is the stairs to +dreams. Listen, senor, and hear if I tell the truth." + +Grant watched her, fascinated. Her slender body was in the shade of +a great palm frond, but when she leaned her head forward against the +carved sounding board a narrow lance of sunshine shot down to kindle +her hair to flame there against the gold. As her bare arms passed +in swift flight of swallows across the field of strings shadows and +sunlight played upon them in gules and chevrons of black and ivory. + +First she gave the solo, _Depuis le Jour_, from some opera Grant +vaguely recalled; it was a mad thing, wherein the great instrument +thundered to the far recesses of the patio garden. Then the girl's mood +changed and was interpreted in the sighing motif of _In the Garden_. +It was all bird song and lisping fountains. Grant allowed his eyes to +close so his soul could take flight with the music. + +Slowly, reluctantly, Benicia's fingers swept the final chords. The +great harp was still. + +Out from the shadow of a flanking archway stepped a dapper little +figure in a cloak. Heels clicked sharply and the marionette bowed low. +It was Colonel Hamilcar Urgo. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE MARK OF EL ROJO + + +Colonel Urgo straightened himself, and the smile that had twisted his +little waxed moustache awry suddenly was smudged out. For his eyes +encountered what they were hardly prepared to see--a living dead man. +His face went sickly white; one hand arrested itself in the motion of +making the sign of the cross. He stared at Grant, fascinated. + +Grant himself was little less shaken at the appearance of his enemy. +It was as if a cobra suddenly had lifted its head from the patio's +flowering jungle. In a moment of dreamy ecstasy, when he had felt his +heart yearning toward the girl's over a bridge of music, came this +sinister apparition of evil. It was not fear of the man that caused +Grant's heart to pound--the waspish little Spaniard possessed no +essence of malignity sufficient to terrify one of the American's fibre; +rather a loathing and instinctive reflex of anger gorged his combative +nerves with blood. Grant read surely enough the shock of surprise in +his enemy's eyes and cannily laid this revelation away as a weapon to +hand should necessity demand its use. + +As for Benicia, she made no pretence of concealing her annoyance. +Quick perception seized upon the coincidence of her father's absence +and Colonel Urgo's coming; she knew the wily little suitor had somehow +managed to time his visit to that circumstance. In the first flush of +her surprise Benicia caught herself feeling a great thankfulness that +Grant Hickman was in the house. + +"If you have come to see my father"--Benicia did not rise to greet Urgo +when he took a tentative step toward her--"he is absent at the moment. +I am sorry you have not found him at home." + +Urgo's lynx eyes darted from the girl's face to Grant's and back again. +Plainly he was in a quandary, not knowing how much--if anything--this +American had told his hosts of the circumstances of a night in Sonizona +and its consequences. Benicia, misreading his perturbation, was quick +to interpose with a smile all irony: + +"This is Senor Hickman, whom you may remember having seen on the +train. Senor Hickman, this is a distant cousin of mine, Colonel +Hamilcar Urgo, of the garrison at Sonizona. He is the gentleman who +believed you occupied his berth out of El Paso, if you recall. There +was some slight misunderstanding--" + +Grant flashed a glance at the girl, read the mockery in her eyes and +took his cue from her: + +"I believe I have seen the Colonel subsequently," this in heavy +seriousness. "Was it not somewhere in Sonizona?" + +"I do not recall having had that honour." Teeth flashed in a nervous +smile and the man's eyes veiled themselves furtively. He caught the +challenge to battle of wits with the American and entrenched himself +accordingly. Colonel Urgo found himself at a momentary disadvantage, +however; he did not know what ammunition his rival would choose. +Essaying a diversion, he addressed the girl in rapid Spanish. + +"Our guest, Senor Hickman, does not understand Spanish," Benicia +insinuated reproof. "Yes, it is quite true, as you have judged, that +he is recovering from a wound--a slight misadventure on the road to +Hermosillo. But pray be seated, my cousin, and let me order wine and a +light luncheon. You are visibly fatigued." With a slight bow to Urgo +Benicia arose and crossed the patio to disappear in the shadows of the +arcade. + +Urgo, surprised into an unpleasant situation by being left alone with +the man he had sent to death, fidgeted with the hasp of his cigarette +case. He made great difficulty of scratching a match. Grant, watching +his every move, decided to play some of the cards fate had dealt him. + +"I guessed you were inquiring of Senorita O'Donoju about my condition, +Colonel. You are charmingly solicitous. I was shot in the back--bullet +through my shoulder. Left for dead with the other convicts." + +The little Spaniard let smoke seep through his nostrils and spread out +his hands to say, "So much for that!" Grant was not to be denied his +advantage: + +"Of course, Colonel Urgo, I remember you were good enough to be present +when I was arraigned at the jail on a false charge of counterfeiting; +I shall not soon forget the promise you made then to do what you could +for me. You did--all you possibly could!" Grant's smile had become set +and one hand resting on his blanketed knees flexed into a fist, white +across the knuckles. + +Urgo expelled a cloud of smoke from his lungs and showed his teeth in a +wolf's smile. + +"You remember much, senor. Do not fail to remember, too, you are +a criminal under the laws of Mexico, to be tried on charge of +counterfeiting at the court of Hermosillo." + +"Yes?" Grant was cool under the other's counter. "And will you move +to take me to Hermosillo after what happened--out yonder on that road +through the desert?" + +"I?" Urgo's shoulders lifted. "I am a soldier, senor. I have nothing +to do with justice and the courts. But assuredly you will be taken to +Hermosillo and put on trial." + +The little Spaniard had fully recovered his poise by now. The uneasy +light in his eyes had yielded to a dangerous flicker of craft. Suavity +of a tiger's purr lurked in his voice. Grant mastered the rage which +ridged all his fighting muscles despite the weakness of his body; this +was no moment to be betrayed into throwing away a trick. + +"But before I go to Hermosillo, Colonel, of course I shall take +precautions to insure that I get there--that there will be no more _ley +de fuga_ in my case. Don Padraic O'Donoju, who is an honest man; I +shall take him more fully into my confidence and--" + +"Then you have told--?" Urgo bit his lip in mortification over having +fallen into a trap. Grant's answering smile was innocent as a babe's. + +"I might prefer, Colonel Urgo, to confine our affair--call it a +misunderstanding between two gentlemen--strictly to yourself and +myself, trusting to take care of myself when I have recovered my +strength. But should I be driven to seek the assistance of an honest +man--" + +Benicia appeared that instant; behind her was 'Cepcion with a silver +tray. Before Colonel Urgo bobbed to his feet Grant caught a shaft of +cold fury from his eyes which said that if the girl's presence forced +an armistice no promise of peace lay at its termination. + +Followed an interlude of quiet comedy. Grant, content to leave the +first move in the hands of his enemy, eased his shoulder lazily against +the chair back and let his eyes play over the Spaniard's face and +diminutive figure. There was an indolent suggestion of probing, of +detached appraisal in the steady scrutiny which bit into Urgo's pride. +That and dull rage over the unexplained presence of his rival here in +Benicia's home kept the little whippet fidgeting. + +He essayed addressing the girl in her own tongue, but again and more +pointedly Benicia reminded him of this breach of courtesy. She made +no effort to conceal the imp of humour that tugged at the corners of +her mouth; this flickering of a smile and the dancing of her eyes +made farcical the sober decorum of her speech. Urgo, no fool, was not +long realizing he was being made the butt of his cousin's sport. Thin +lines of strain began to appear about the mouth that smiled so smugly; +just below his temples irritated nerves commenced setting the muscles +a-twitching. Grant, who did not fail to note these reflexes, saw in the +figure opposite a preying animal setting himself for a spring. + +Urgo and Benicia had been exchanging commonplaces. Suddenly the man +leaned forward tensely and returned to the forbidden Spanish in a +hurried burst: "For your own good, my cousin, I must have a few minutes +with you alone. Arrange it, I command you." + +"You are hardly the one, sweetest cousin, to be the judge of my good. +Nor the one to command me." Benicia retorted in the same tongue. Then, +turning with a smile of mock apology to Grant: "You will excuse Colonel +Urgo his occasional lapse from a tongue that is difficult for him." + +The Spaniard took a final draught of wine and pushed back from the +table where his luncheon had been spread. As he idly tapped the corn +husk of one of his cigarettes Grant thought he saw resolution shape +itself in the narrowed eyes. There was a moment's silence, then Urgo +addressed himself graciously to Grant: + +"Senor Hickman, perhaps my adorable cousin here has not found +opportunity to tell you anything of the history of this remarkable +house in the desert where you have found such agreeable convalescence." + +"I believe not." Grant spoke warily, his senses alert for some pitfall. +He shot a warning glance at Benicia; but the girl, ignorant of the grim +feud between the two, could not read it understandingly. Colonel Urgo +surrounded his head with a blue cloud and continued: + +"An engaging history, senor. Not a house in all Sonora with such +romance behind it, such--how do you say it?--such legend, eh? Though +I am distantly of the same family, our branch cannot claim the +distinction that falls to my cousin, who is the last of the veritable +O'Donoju. + +"Behold her glorious head, Senor Hickman!" Urgo waved his cigarette +to point the burning of sunlight above Benicia's brow; his own +head inclined as if in reverence. "There in my fairest cousin's +so-marvellous hair lies all the legend and the history of the great +family O'Donoju." + +The girl, frankly amused at what appeared a turgid compliment, tossed +back her head in a gust of laughter. But Grant could not join with +her. As from some iceberg veiled in fog came to him the cold feel of +malignity moving to some unguessed purpose. Was Urgo planning to strike +at him through the girl he adored? Yet what possible obloquy could he +call up against Benicia, whose soul was unsullied as the winds of the +wastes? Urgo spoke on: + +"Undoubtedly, my cousin, Senor Hickman has felt his heart snared by +those burning meshes of yours or he is not a judge of beauty"--gesture +of impatience from Benicia. "So it is for the benefit of the senor as +well as for your own, fairest cousin, that I recite this legend of the +red hair of the O'Donoju. Strange, is it not, that all Sonora knows it +and has told the story to its children for a hundred years, yet you, +_chiquita_"--a wave of the cigarette toward the girl--"who should be +most interested are the only ignorant one. + +"There was in the long ago, senor, a Michael O'Donohue--what you call +of the wild Irish, who had flaming hair and an untamed spirit. A king +in Spain gave him the whole district of Altar for his estate, and he +came here to the Garden of Solitude with his Spanish lady and built +him this house where we sit. He was a man who considered the safety of +his soul, so he built a mission to the glory of the four evangelists +out yonder by the Gulf where the Sand People needed the comfort of the +Mother Church and--" + +"He lived a life any one of his descendants might pattern after," +Benicia put in with a smile carrying a sting. Urgo touched his breast +with delicate fingers and bowed. Then turning again to Grant: + +"When the Apaches burned that mission, senor, a pious O'Donoju restored +it and the family, then numerous, endowed that mission altar with much +gold and silver. There was, too, a great string of pearls--pearls with +a green light, legend says, which the Sand People brought from the +shell beds of the Gulf to show their piety. You are following me, Senor +Hickman, eh?" + +Grant made no sign. His eyes were upon Benicia's face, reading there +a slow change. Now she, too, had begun to feel a nameless portent +stealing over her like the chill from hidden ice. The wells of her +eyes were deeper; faint colour came and went in her cheeks and throat. +Grant, certain that Urgo was preparing torture for her under the +innocent mask of narrative, was helpless to intervene; no diversion +short of the work of fists was possible, and that his weakness denied +him. + +"There was of that generation which restored the mission, senor, a +wild youth, true descendant of the original O'Donoju. He was known +from Mexico City to Tucson as El Rojo--the Red One--for his hair was +the veritable colour of that which our cousin possesses. And the devil +rode his heart with spurs of fire. You have never been told of El Rojo, +Benicia?" + +The girl made no answer. Her level gaze was a mute challenge. The +little colonel rerolled one of his eternal cigarettes, lighted it and +drank smoke with a sensuous inhalation. + +"At the feast of the re-dedication El Rojo, banished from the family, +appeared out of nowhere. Conceive the consternation, senor! The red +head of the devil's own come to sanctified ground. This fiery head, so +like our Benicia's, swooping as a comet into the feasting place of the +family; well might the pious O'Donojus be fearful. + +"And their fears were not without grounds. Before El Rojo quit the +Mission of the Four Evangelists he had murdered the priest, his own +uncle, and stolen the rope of pearls from the sacred image of the +Virgin. He rode away with one of his cousins, a foolish girl of the +Mayortorenas, who was wife to him in the desert without priest or book." + +Urgo let his voice trail away as with a tale finished. His teasing +glance lingered on the faces of his two auditors. Benicia drew a +tremulous breath and forced a smile, as though she were relaxing from +strain. On this cue the story teller unexpectedly continued: + +"But I hear Senor Hickman ask, 'What part has all this ancient legend +with Senorita Benicia's red hair?' Patience, senor. We approach that. + +"Legend says that though El Rojo's wife worked upon his heart and +brought repentance, it was too late. He returned to the mission a year +after his double crime to restore the Virgin's pearls to the sanctuary. +The Apaches had been there just before him. The priests were slain and +the mission burned. El Rojo buried the pearls within the stark walls, +hoping the good God would accept this his acknowledgment of sin. There +the pearls lie to-day beyond sight of man, for the desert has blotted +out the last remnants of ruins. + +"But the sin of El Rojo was not so easily to be forgotten in sight +of the good God, sweetest cousin." Urgo suddenly turned away from +Grant, to whom he had been addressing his story, and fixed his eyes on +Benicia; almost there was the click of snapping fetters in his glance. +"You bear the mark of it above your brow like the mark of Cain--his +fire-red hair!" + +"Stop!" The girl leaped from her chair, blazing wrath in every line of +her face. "I shall not listen--" + +"The grandson of El Rojo and his grandson," Urgo purred on with his +smile of a hunting cat, "every second generation of the O'Donoju has +one born with the curse of the red hair to tell all Sonora God does not +forget. And now you, the last of an accursed family, its great estates +gone--its power gone--your own grandfather with his red hair shot with +Maximilian!--You with the red head--daughter of a murderer--" + +A hand closed over the collar of the colonel's military jacket, gave +it a twist, throttling his speech. Grant had leaped from his seat--a +pain like a bayonet point shot through his shoulder at the sudden +movement--and come upon the spiteful little slanderer from behind. + +"Gringo assassin!" whistled the little Spaniard, and his right hand +groped backward to a concealed holster. It fell into a grip too strong +to be broken. Grant was bearing all his weight on the other's back, +for the instant he was on his feet he discovered a weakness of his +knees which would not support him. The impulse to shut off Urgo's +venomous tongue had been acted upon without calculation; now that he +had committed himself to action the American realized how heavy was the +hazard against him. One arm useless, all the other muscles once ready +to respond instantly to call for action now seeming to be palsied. A +paralytic boldly attempting to bell a wildcat; this was the situation. + +Benicia saw the American's face over the squirming Urgo's shoulder; +it wore a strained grin which hardly served to mask the toll taken of +weakened muscles. She whirled and ran out of the patio to call aid in +the servants' quarters. + +Now the hot fire from his wound was spreading across Grant's back and +down his fighting arm as he swayed across the patio half supported +on the Spaniard's back. The frantic jerkings of Urgo's pistol arm in +Grant's grip threatened momentarily to loosen the restraining fingers; +that done, the American's end would be speedy. + +Grant found himself near a wall, braced one foot against it and lunged +outward. Down went both men. Urgo twisted out from under the heavier +body, pinning him, and raised himself to one knee. Grant saw a tigerish +gleam of triumph in the other's eyes as his right hand whipped back to +the holster on his hip. + +Some power more rapid than thought moved the American's sound arm +outward in a wild sweep which encompassed a giant fuchsia bush growing +in a Chinese tea tub. Over went the bush just as Urgo fired from the +hip, its branches swishing down over the latter's head. + +The bullet went wild. Grant, near swooning from the consuming pain of +his wound, scrambled for his enemy--went up with him when he found his +feet. The revolver had been knocked from Urgo's hand by the avalanche +of greenery; a sideways kick of Grant's foot sent it spinning into the +fountain. + +Now the wounded man sent a final summons to his last reservoir of +strength. Slowly--slowly he forced the little Spaniard out of the +patio and down the long corridor toward the front door of the house. +When Benicia came running with two husky Indians they found Grant with +his man waiting before the heavy oaken portal. One of the Indians +swung back the door. Grant gave a supreme heave and the colonel went +sprawling like a straddle bug out onto the gravel. + +The great door slammed behind him. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +DESERT SECRETS + + +Consider now the interesting activities of Doc Stooder, fallen angel of +AEsculapius: + +On a March evening of sunset splendour the worthy doctor descended +from the single combination coach and baggage car which a +suffering locomotive drags once daily from a junction point on the +transcontinental line south through naked battalions of mountains to +the ghost town of Cuprico. Once Cuprico was famous; once when primitive +steam shovels nibbled at solid mountains of copper up back of Main +Street Cuprico roared with a life that was dizzy and vaunted itself the +rip-roarin'est copper camp in all the Southwest. But the glory that was +Cuprico passed, even as that of Rome; to-day they tell of the town that +when its mayor fell dead on the post office steps his body remained +undiscovered for three days. + +No romantic craving for revisiting scenes of his youth had prompted +the Doc to his journey Cupricoward--he had been its premier stud +player in a day of glory fifteen years before. No, a far more material +urge had ended a period of fretting in Arizora by shunting him on a +westward-wending train. For a week Bim Bagley, his partner in a secret +enterprise, had been absent on his quest of El Doctor Coyote Belly and +the New York engineer, Bim's friend, who was reported to be wounded +and under the care of the Papago medicine man. Ten days prior to +Bagley's excursion into Sonora had been frittered away in groping for +information concerning this vanished engineer. All precious time wasted! + +It has, perhaps, become apparent that Doc Stooder was not enthusiastic +over the inclusion of Grant Hickman, the Easterner, in his golden +scheme of treasure trove in desert sands. The stubborn refusal of +Bim Bagley to move without this fellow Hickman's being party to the +enterprise had prevented a start on the expedition for the Mission of +the Four Evangelists six weeks before. The canny physician--whose share +in the joint endeavour was to be his exclusive information concerning +the whereabouts of the Lost Mission--possessed in large degree that +sense of divination bestowed upon folk of the desert which gives their +imagination wings over the horizon of time. Each day of delay he read +a day to the advantage of Don Padraic O'Donoju, certain sure as he was +that the master of the desert oasis had come by knowledge of his own +treasure hunt intent through mysterious desert channels. + +The vision of gold and pearls Doc Stooder had seen in the depths of +raw alcohol on a night of dreaming in his office had become a goad. +So he came to Cuprico, the ghost town not seventy miles away from the +supposed site of the buried mission; his intent was to pick up his +Papago informant, who lived midway between Cuprico and the Border, and, +as Stooder happily phrased his purpose, "give things a look-see." If +his luck was with him and he should stumble onto the mission during +this solo game so much the better. Conscience nor maxims of fair play +were any part of the doctor's moral anatomy. + +The Doc upon his arrival did not pervade Cuprico's centres of evening +society--the Golden Star pool hall and soft drinks emporium and the +back room of Garcia's drug store--for reasons sufficiently potent to +merit a paragraph of explanation. + +Years before, when he was a resident of the mining camp and had money, +Doc Stooder took unto himself a Mexican wife who had a passion for +diamonds. Mrs. Apolinaria Stooder had a way with her which seemed +to win deep into the atrophied heart of her spouse, and he showered +her with the stones of her choice. No woman from Yuma to Tucson--so +legend still recites--"packed so much ice" as Doc Stooder's. Then in +an epidemic of typhoid, which the Doc combated with the heroism of a +saint, Apolinaria died. + +Alone and with his own hands her sorrowing widower gave her sepulchre +somewhere amid the gaunt hills surrounding the town. He let it become +known after the interment that since Apolinaria loved her diamonds so +he had buried them with her, adding for good measure of gossip that he +figured their total value at round $5000. Immediately and for several +years thereafter all the prospectors for fifty miles about gave up +their search for dip and strike and prospected for Mrs. Apolinaria +Stooder. Failing to find so much as a "colour" of her diamonds, the +profession drew the conclusion that Doc Stooder was a monumental liar. +His popularity waned accordingly. + +Shadows were lengthening when Stooder tooled a rented desert skimmer +out of Cuprico's single garage and brought it to a stop before the +general store. Into the wagon box behind the seat went his bed roll, +brought from Arizora and containing certain glassware whose contents +were more precious to their owner than life itself; boxes of grocery +staples; extra cans of oil and gasoline. Two big canteens on the +running board were filled. Plugs of chewing tobacco heavy and broad as +slate shingles were stowed in the tool box. In all this preparation +the doctor's long legs calipered themselves from counter to car with +remarkable efficiency. + +"Goin' on a little prospecting trip?" the storekeeper had volunteered +when the Doc first commenced his stowing. No answer. + +"Figgerin' on a little _pasear_ down 'crost the Line?" hopefully from +that worthy as he helped noose the tarpaulin over the dunnage. The +Doc's head was buried above the ears among the engine's naked cylinders +and he professed not to hear. When Stooder was seated at the wheel +and the storekeeper had the edge of the final pail of water over the +radiator vent he feebly flung out his last grappling hook: + +"Reckon you might be selling Bibles to the Papagoes." + +"Come here, friend," sternly from the doctor. "Now I give you the way +inside if you'll promise to keep it mum." The storekeeper hopped +around to lean his ear over the wheel in gleeful anticipation. + +"I'm a-goin' south from here to give a Chinese lady a lesson on the +ocarina. So long!" + +When the Doc skittered down the brief Main Street and out onto the +thread of grey caliche that was the road to the mysterious south +all of the west was a-roil with the final palette scrapings of the +sunset--umber, pale lemon and, high above the mountains standing black +as obsidian, cirrus clouds dyed a fugitive cherry. Ahead showed the +ragged gate into the valley of El Infiernillo--the Little Hell--place +of bleak distances between mountain ranges bare as sheet iron; place +of unimaginable thirst when summer sun hurls reflected heat back from +burning walls. Beyond El Infiernillo just a hint of peaks like fretwork +spires marked destination for the doctor; there at the foot of the +Growler range and where the Desert of Altar washes across the imaginary +line between two nations, lay the land of his desire. Somewhere on +the Road of the Dead Men passing through that savage waste perchance +a nubbin of weathered 'dobe wall lifted a few inches above the sand +to mark treasure of gold and pearls below; maybe naught but a charred +timber end concealed by a patch of greasewood and crying a secret to +the ears of the searcher. + +Gold and pearls--pearls and gold! The Doc's rapt eye caught the colours +of sacred treasure in the dyes of the sunset and read them for a +portent of success. + +"Me, I'm a-goin' just slosh around in wealth! Doc Stooder, the man with +the _dinero_--that's me!" The gaunt head behind the wheel of the desert +skimmer was tilted back and A. Stooder, M.D., carolled his expectations +at the new stars. Then he reined in his gas snorter long enough to +fumble with his bed roll in the wagon box. Out came a square bottle of +fluid fire, such as passes currency with the international bootleggers +in the Southwest. The Doc drank heartily to the promise spread across +the western heavens. The bottle was tucked in a handy coat pocket for +future reference. + +Nights in the desert along the Line are psychic. They are not of the +world of arc lights, elevated trains and the winking jewels of white +ways. In that world man has so completely surrounded himself with the +tinsels of his own making, the noise of his own multiplied squeakings +and chatterings, that he comes to accept the vault above him as under +the care of the city parks department. His little tent of night is +no higher than the towers of his skyscrapers. But in the desert it is +different. + +Emptiness of day is increased an hundred fold at dark because it +leaps up to lose its frontiers behind the stars. Silence of the day +is intensified to such a degree that the inner ear catches a humming +of supernal machinery in the heavens. The eye measures perspectives +between the near and far planets. And the soul of man hearkens to +strange voices; sighings from the pale mouths of the desert scrubs, +born to a servitude of thirst; whisperings passed from mountain top to +mountain top; faint stirrings of the earth relaxed from the torsion of +the sun. + +Doc Stooder, desert familiar as he was, never could blunt his senses +to this emptiness of night in the wastes. It awed him, left him +itching under half-perceived conceptions of the infinite. Hence the +bottle carried handily in his pocket. From time to time as he careered +over the road faintly marked by the feeble sparks of his headlights +he braked down to have a swig. The more he felt lifted above sombre +unrealities about him the greater his impulse to break into song. The +iron gate of El Infiernillo heard his roundelay. + +Miles unreeled behind him. Dim shapes of mountains dissolved to new +contours and were left behind. The Doc came to a sharp eastward turning +of the road but kept straight ahead out over the untracked flats to +southward. He knew his way; the packed sand gave him as good traction +as the road. Down and down into the unpeopled wilderness of sandhills +and buttes bored the twin sparks of the little car. + +Another shift of direction and the Doc was teetering up a narrow canyon +between high mountain walls. His course was a dry wash, boulder strewn. +Only instinct of a desert driver saved him from piling up on some rough +block of detritus. Sand traps forced him to shove the engine into low, +and the snarling of the exhaust was multiplied from the canyon walls. + +A light flickered far ahead. A dog barked. The car wallowed and +snuffled out of the wash to come to a halt before several silhouettes +of huts. People, roused from sleep by the car's clamour, stood ringed +about in curiosity; one held a torch of reeds. + +"Ho, Guadalupe!" Doc Stooder bellowed. A solid looking Indian with a +mat of tousled iron-grey hair stood out under the torch light, grinning +a welcome to "El Doctor." + +"Show me a place to sleep," commanded the visitor, and the one called +Guadalupe carried the doctor's bed-roll to his own hut, of which +squaw and children were speedily dispossessed. So the good doctor +from Arizora slept the rest of the night in the rancheria of the Sand +People, last remnant of that Papago family for which the Mission of +the Four Evangelists was reared to save souls. In five hours the Doc +had covered by gasoline what it would have cost Guadalupe of the Sand +People as many days in painful plodding. + +Morning saw the rancheria in a ferment of excitement and Doc Stooder +viciously tyrannical in reaction from his accustomed alcoholic night. +Guadalupe found himself in a difficult position. Once in a moment +of gratitude when the white doctor had snatched his squaw from the +tortures of asthma--the miracle had occurred in Guadalupe's summer +camp near Arizora--the Indian had babbled his knowledge of the buried +mission, its treasure. But he had not counted upon this unexpected +appearance of the white doctor, demanding to be led to the place of +wealth. It is common with all the Southwestern Indians to believe +naught but ill luck can follow any revelation to a white man of the +desert's hidden gold; some say the early padres, themselves consistent +hoarders, inculcated this lesson. With the eyes of his fellow villagers +disapprovingly upon him, Guadalupe first attempted evasion. + +Stooder in an ominous quiet heard him through. Then without a word +he opened a small medicine chest he carried in his bed-roll and took +therefrom two tightly folded pieces of paper--blue and white. While +Guadalupe and the rest watched, round-eyed, the doctor made quick +passes with each bit of paper over the mouth of a small water _olla_. +The surface of the water sizzed and boiled. + +Guadalupe, two shades whiter, babbled his willingness to go at once to +the place where the mission lay hidden. + +"Prime cathartic for the mind," grunted the Doc, and he tuned his +engine for the trip. + +They were off down the canyon and into the yellow basin of El +Infiernillo. Guadalupe, riding for the first time in the white man's +smell-wagon, gripped his seat with the delicious fear of a child on +a merry-go-round. He watched the movements of the doctor's foot on +the gear-shift, marvelling that the beast concealed in pipes and rods +answered each downward thrust with a roar. Earth spun under him as if +Elder Brother himself, master of all created things, had a hold on it +and were pulling it all one way. + +Down and down into the untracked miles of Altar. A single iron post on +a hill marking the Line. The sierra of Pinacate cinder-red in the south +for a beacon. Right and left sheet iron ranges with stipples of rust +where the _camisa_ grew. Mirage quivering into nothingness just as its +false waters were ready to be parted by the car's wheels. + +They came upon an east-and-west track in the sand--the Road of the +Dead Men--and turned westward upon it. Away off to the north and east +a spiral dust cloud walked across the wastes along the skirts of the +mountains. Guadalupe pointed to it with an ejaculation in his own +tongue. A sign--a sign! There was the place of the mission! + +The Doc felt his internals quiver in expectation. Prickles of +excitement played in fingers that gripped the wheel. Automatically he +began to hum an ancient bar-room ditty. + +The Papago indicated where he should turn off the road in the direction +of a great gap in the mountains, into which the desert flowed as a sea. +Here the mesquite lifted from its crouch and flourished in a five-foot +growth--true index of hidden waters. The car made hard going, what +with brittle twigs that caught at its tires and the _cholla_ creeping +like a spined snake to threaten punctures. At his guide's word Doc +Stooder stopped. Both scrambled out. + +Before moving a step the Doc must have a ceremonial drink, a +preliminary he did not deem necessary to share with Guadalupe. The +man's big hands trembled as he raised the bottle to his lips; his eyes +were shining with gold lust. + +Guadalupe stood for several minutes slowly swinging his head from +landmark to landmark, his eyes following calculated lines through the +scrub. Then he commenced a slow pacing through the close-set aisles of +the greasewood and cactus, bearing in a wide circle. He peered into +the core of each shrub, kicked at every naked stub of root and branch +appearing above the surface. The Doc, cursing and humming alternately, +was right at his shoulder. + +An hour passed--two. The sun, now high, burned mercilessly. Still +Guadalupe pursued a narrowing circle through the scrub. Of a sudden the +Indian gurgled and dropped to his knees beside a salt-bush. He whipped +out his knife and began hacking at the tough stubs of branches near +the soil. The Doc, slavering in his excitement, dropped beside him and +looked into the heart of the salt-bush. He saw nothing but a rounded +slab of rock. + +Guadalupe finished his knife work and started to dig with his hands. +Terrier-like he pawed a hole away from what Stooder had taken for a +rock. The smooth black surface began to curve outward in a form too +symmetrical for nature's work; it was rounded and gradually flaring. + +Guadalupe dug on. Blood pounded in the Doc's ears. Snatches of song +trickled from his lips. + +Suddenly patience exploded. Stooder pushed the Papago to his haunches +and threw his own body full length into the hole dug. His arms embraced +a flaring shape of metal. His eyes fell upon faint ridges and lines, +like lettering. He spat upon the spot and rubbed it clean of clinging +soil. + + GLORIA DEI ET MUND---- + PHILLIPUS REX + ANNO DOM.----XXIV + +"The bell! The mission bell!" screamed the Doc. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +CROSSCURRENTS + + +An hour after the sun had set on the day of Colonel Urgo's humiliation +at the Casa O'Donoju, Quelele tooled his car into the avenue of palms +at the end of the long return journey from Magdalena, on the railroad. +With him were his master, Don Padraic, and an American stranger, Bim +Bagley of Arizora. + +Fate had played capriciously with Bim. When he set out from Arizora on +the quest of his pal Grant Hickman it was only on the bare report that +the man was seriously wounded and under the care of El Doctor Coyote +Belly at Babinioqui, south of the Line. Near the end of his journey +his car had wrecked itself beyond repair hard by Magdalena; a mule had +been requisitioned to carry him over the mountains to the home of the +medicine man; once there he was as far from the end of his quest as +ever. + +For grey old Coyote Belly lied unblinkingly. He knew nothing of a +wounded man. Persuasion of words nor the chink of silver dollars +availed to budge him from a trust he conceived to be joined between +himself and the master of the Casa O'Donoju. + +The hours following the scene in the patio and the sudden gust of +action concluding the visit of Hamilcar Urgo had been trying ones +for Grant. Spent as he was by the struggle with the Spaniard, he had +suffered himself to be half-carried to his room by the Indian servants. +Benicia, accompanying him to the door, had permitted her hand to rest +in his at farewell; a clasp tried to tell what the storm in her soul +denied speech. The girl's face was etched by suffering; sacrificed +pride and a shadow of some deep fear lay heavy in her eyes and the +drawn lines about her mouth. The wound made by her spiteful suitor was +deeper than Grant could conceive. + +Alone on his bed he conned over the tale Urgo had told. Unfamiliar as +he was with the Latin temperament, the belief of the romance peoples +in the very reality of inherited curse and whips of Nemesis pursuing +innocent generations, yet the raw tragedy of the story fired his +imagination. He tried to put himself in the place of the girl he loved +with all her pride of race and family; to feel with her the stripes +of scorn the despicable Urgo had laid on. El Rojo's desecration of +the mission sanctuary by an act of blood; his flight into the desert +with the pearls of the Virgin and a girl, "who was wife to him without +priest or book"; the blotting of the mission from sight of man; all +this cycle of tragedy of the dim past linked to a gloriously vital +creature of the present by the chance colour of her hair. The thing was +monstrously absurd! And yet-- + +A knock at the door and Don Padraic entered. He turned to beckon some +one behind him. In the candlelight Grant saw the head of a giant stoop +to avoid the lintel. + +"Bim Bagley!" + +The desert man crossed to the bed by a single wide step and threw both +arms about Grant in a bear hug. + +"You dam'd old snoozer. You dam'd old snoozer!" was all Bim could give +in greeting. Don Padraic stepped outside and closed the door on the +reunion. Bim let his friend's body lightly down on the pillows and sat +back to grin into Grant's eyes. + +"I sure been burnin' the ground all over North Sonora on your trail," +he rumbled. "You're the original little Mexican jumping bean." + +"Jumped right into a flock of trouble, old side partner, with more +right beyond the front line waiting for me. The reserves seem to have +come up just the right time." Grant gave his pal's great paw a squeeze. +Bim roared assurance: + +"Reserves got all bogged down through failure in liaison--just like the +days of the Big Show. But they're with you now from hell to breakfast, +young fellah; an' I think I know the name of the outfit we got to trim. +Name's Hamilcar Urgo, huh?" His buoyant spirit was wine to Grant; the +very animal force of him seemed to fill the old room. + +"Ran acrost that li'l sidewinder this afternoon when the old Don was +bringing me up here from Magdalena. Just our two cars on the road. He +pulls up when we're makin' to pass him--face on him just as pleasant as +a polecat's. Your friend the Don passes the time of day courteous as +you please. + +"'I had the honour to visit your daughter this day,' whinnies this Urgo +gazabo; of course he speaks in Spanish, which is nuts for me. 'And I +discover she is entertaining a convict who escaped from a chain gang.'" +Bim grinned. "I take it that convict is my li'l friend from Noo Yawk." + +Grant nodded. The other wagged his head in a grotesque mockery of grief. + +"'My daughter and I are entertaining an American gentleman who was +wounded on the Hermosillo road,' your Don answers, civil enough. 'While +he is a guest in our house we naturally ask no questions.' + +"'Then,' snaps this Urgo boy, 'I must inform you that for harbouring an +escaped criminal you are responsible before the law. The rurales will +visit your house and it is for me to say whether they take you as well +as the gringo convict.'" + +Grant started. Here was a phase of the situation he had not guessed: +that his courteous host might be made to suffer for Urgo's rage and +jealousy. + +Eagerly, "What did Don Padraic say to that?" + +"He says something to the effect that the laws of hospitality were +above any this-here Urgo might care to dig up, the same I call being +mighty white of your Don Whosis with the Irish twist to his name." +Bim broke off to shoot a quizzical look into his friend's eyes. "Say, +brother, what you been doin' to this little black-an'-tan stingin' +lizard to make him ride your trail so hard? You a tenderfoot an' +riding your herd across the fence line of the biggest little man in the +whole Sonora government!" + +Grant grinned childishly. "Well, I threw him out of the front door here +this afternoon for one thing and--" + +Admiration beamed from every wind wrinkle about the Arizonan's eyes. +"Sho! You did that? Now I call that steppin' some for a man with a +bullet through him. I thought from the gen'ral slant to Senor Urgo's +manner when he met up with us some one'd been working on his frame +somewhere. He just sweat T.N.T. But why did you crawl him?" + +"He insulted Senorita O'Donoju," was Grant's answer. Bim lowered the +lid of one eye owlishly and his gaunt face was pulled down to a comic +aspect of concern. + +"Uh-huh; now I begin to get the drift. Old Doc Stooder was right +when he says there's the shoo-shoo of a skirt somewheres in your big +disappearing act. Boy--boy! I had you figgered for the orig'nal old +hermit coyote who travels the meat trail alone. No wonder li'l Urgo's +all coiled up for the strike, you aimin' to run him out on his girl." + +Before Grant could head off his friend on a topic that brought sudden +embarrassment to him 'Cepcion and a second servant entered with a +spread table. Bim tucked pillows under his friend's shoulders with +clumsy tenderness, then in mellow candlelight they ate and talked. Both +were bursting with questions to be asked, but Bim claimed the right of +priority by virtue of his ten days' blind search through the country +south of the Line. At his demand Grant gave him the whole story of +his feud with Colonel Urgo, from the meeting at El Paso down to the +afternoon's events in the patio. Lively play of sympathies about the +Arizonan's features followed the narrative of the dreadful march in +the chain gang and Grant's burst for freedom under the rifles of the +rurales. The little his friend left unsaid Bim was shrewd enough to +supply; he guessed the story of Grant's thraldom under the witchery of +the desert girl and found it good. + +When the man on the pillows began recital of what had occurred just +a few hours before--Urgo's savage assault on a girl's pride through +the story of El Rojo's impiety--the big man by the bed stiffened in +intensified interest. He heard Grant through with scarce concealed +impatience. + +"But, man, that was the Mission of the Four Evangelists Urgo was +telling of!" explosively from Bim. Grant nodded confirmation. + +"Why, that's the Doc's big proposition--our proposition!" + +Grant looked his puzzlement. The other's excitement swirled him on: + +"That proves what the Doc's Papago told him. Pearls buried there. An' +gold--lots of gold, the Papago says. I had a sneaking hunch all the +time it might be one of Stooder's wild dreams, but this story proves +we're on the right track." + +"Do you mean--?" + +"Sure! That's what I brought you out from the East for--to help us +uncover this Lost Mission, as folks in Arizona call it. Doc Stooder's +such a cagey old monkey he wouldn't let me put on paper just what I +wanted you to whack in on. Now you got it all--the pure quill. Isn't it +a whale of a proposition!" + +Though Grant's surface perception had grasped the full import of his +friend's words some sub-strata of mind, or of heart, stubbornly refused +to be convinced that he had heard aright. He groped for words: + +"You say you brought me out here to help you uncover pearls and gold +that belong to the Church?" + +"Why not?" A subtle note of pugnacity in the other's speech. "The +stuff's been lyin' buried for a hundred an' fifty years more or less. +The priests've never lifted a finger to find it, though slews of +prospectors have rooted round trying to uncover this cache." + +"But the old O'Donojus built this church and endowed it with that very +treasure you want to dig for," Grant persisted. "What about their +rights?" + +He did not hear Bim's arguments. Instead he was conning over the story +of the bane of the house of O'Donoju. Before his eyes was the face of +the girl he loved, as he had last seen it, deeply graven with tragedy. + +Grant's hand went out in a comrade's clasp. "Bim, old man, count me out +on this thing. I couldn't consider it for a minute." + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +REVELATION + + +"Don Padraic's compliments, and he awaits the pleasure of his guests' +company in the music room if the sick senor feels able." It was +'Cepcion's soft patois that interrupted Bim Bagley's explosion of +pained surprise in mid-flight. Grant gave him a smile which interpreted +the diversion as something to his friend's advantage and, leaning on +Bim's shoulder, followed the servant to the great room in the centre of +the house. + +A fire burned in the cavernous fireplace, for spring nights in Altar +have a chill; candles in dull silver wall sconces tempered the red +light. The vast room was so peopled with dancing shadows from the +antique furnishings that the tall man in white and the girl who +advanced to greet the guests appeared to be moving in a company of +hooded monks. + +"'Nicia, Senor Bagley, the friend of our friend." Don Padraic bowed to +Bim, who crooked his lank body with surprising grace. + +"And I am a friend of you two," came Bim's forthright answer, "since +you have treated Grant Hickman so kindly. He is the salt of the earth." + +Don Padraic indicated seats before the andirons. Benicia chose a low +settle by the side of the great winged chair where her father seated +himself. Grant saw shadows beneath her eyes where the firelight played +upon her features, almost waxen in uncertain light. The glint of copper +in the piled-up mass of her hair was like summer lightning in clouds. +Their eyes met, and Grant was disappointed in the hope he might still +find the soul of the girl revealed there as it had been that afternoon +in the unguarded moment when Benicia gave him wordless thanks. He +guessed she had told Don Padraic of the incident in the patio and that +what had passed between father and daughter thereafter had been a drain +on the emotions of both. + +Don Padraic turned to Grant with more than perfunctory concern in +speech and glance. "Your health, senor? I fear that certain events of +the day, of which my daughter has told me--" + +"Please!" Grant was quick to interrupt. "I am feeling fit as I could +be, thanks to the careful nursing I have had in your house." + +The thing that had been left unspoken by both weighed like an unlaid +spirit on the silence that followed. Each of the four before the +fire had little thought save for the chapter of circumstance left +unconcluded by one who had departed the Garden a few hours before, +swollen with the venom of outraged pride. It was Don Padraic who +brushed aside reserve: + +"Senor Hickman, I may speak before your friend, who must share your +confidence. He will pardon my bringing personal affairs before him. I +can not postpone my thanks--my very sincere thanks--for what you did +this afternoon. My daughter was defenceless." + +"And I--" Benicia began, but Grant quickly put in: + +"Will you not consider that I was really serving my own private ends--a +score to be evened between Colonel Urgo and myself?" + +Bim covered a reminiscent grin with a broad palm as Grant hurried on, +eager to withhold from the girl opportunity to speak her thanks. + +"When I was brought here I thought it best to keep silent on the matter +of my own private grudge against this man. But now that it appears we +all have common cause against him I think I may speak. Urgo himself was +responsible for my being shot." + +He saw Benicia's eyes grow wide, read the surprise that parted her +lips in a breathed exclamation. He thought he saw, too, just the flash +of something no eyes but his own could understand, and he was glad. +Briefly he sketched the incident of the gambling palace in Sonizona, +his encounter with Urgo in the office of the jail, the march with the +chain gang. + +"And so," Grant concluded, "Colonel Urgo found a dead man come to life +when he saw me in the patio to-day. When Senorita O'Donoju was out of +hearing for a moment I could not resist a shot which left our friend +guessing whether or not I had told you, senor, how I came by my wound." + +"Ah, yes," from Benicia in a hushed voice. "I knew the minute I +returned there had been something between you. Urgo was like a cornered +animal." + +"And so he turned on you," Grant could not help saying. "If only I +could have guessed beforehand his attack--" + +Again silence fell. Grant was alive to the play of unspoken thought +between father and daughter; these two alone in the immensity of the +desert and facing unsupported the craft of an implacable enemy. He +sensed the battle between their pride and their desperate need for +an ally: the one impulse dictating that what was the secret affair of +the House of O'Donoju must remain strictly its own secret, the other +moving them to confide in him, who unwittingly had been drawn into the +struggle. Gladly would he have offered himself as a champion; but he +must await their initiative. Suddenly Grant recalled what Bim had told +him of Urgo's threat at the meeting with Don Padraic on the desert +road: how the head of the Casa O'Donoju would be held responsible for +harbouring an escaped convict. There was no blinking his duty in this +direction. + +"My friend tells me, Don Padraic, that Colonel Urgo threatens your +arrest as well as my own; that you will be held responsible for +concealing a fugitive from justice. That cannot be, of course. +To-morrow, if Quelele can take Bagley and myself in the car--" + +"No!" Benicia's denial came peremptorily and with a hint of passion +which gave Grant a sting of surprise. "No, senor, we do not turn +wounded men into the desert--particularly a friend who has served us as +you have done." + +Again Grant saw in the firelit pools of her eyes just an instant's +revelation of depths he yearned to plumb--the aspect of a beginning +love hardly knowing itself as such. He scarcely heard the voice of Don +Padraic seconding his daughter's protest. + +"The hospitality of the Casa O'Donoju," he was saying, "can hardly +recognize such silly threats. Colonel Urgo's hope was that we would +send you back over the Road of the Dead Men to Caborca or Magdalena +where, naturally, you would be made a prisoner. Please dismiss from +your mind any idea of our permitting ourselves to play into this man's +hands." + +Bim Bagley ventured to break his silence: "Grant here and I have +important business together up over the Line. We ought to be moving +soon's we can." The white-haired don turned to Bim with a gracious +spreading of the hands. + +"When Senor Hickman feels able to make the journey Quelele will take +him and yourself, Senor Bagley, to westward. There is a way through El +Infiernillo up to the Arizona town of Cuprico. By so going you will +avoid any trap Urgo might lay. But you will not hurry Senor Hickman's +going"--Don Padraic interjected reservation--"and you, Senor Bagley, +surely can remain with us until then." + +The direct Bagley, finding himself thwarted by the don's suavity, sent +a sheepish grin Grant's way in token of his defeat and maintained +silence. Don Padraic, to dismiss the subject his reticence had +reluctantly introduced, struck a gong to summon a servant. Soon a +decanter of sherry was glowing golden in the firelight and cigarettes +were burning. The master of the Casa O'Donoju artfully led Bim into +talk of cattle, always currency of conversation in the Southwest. Grant +drew his chair closer to Benicia's. + +"You startled me with that 'No' of yours to my proposal to leave the +Garden of Solitude at once," he said with a boldness he did not wholly +feel. "Being a little deaf, I am not sure I heard all the reasons you +gave why I should not go." + +"What you failed to hear me say my father supplied," the girl quickly +parried, giving him her steady gaze. He was not to be so easily +side-tracked. What had begun in boldness swept him on in passionate +sincerity: + +"There are many excellent reasons why I should be somewhere else than +here this time to-morrow night; but there is one very compelling reason +why I welcome every added hour here in the Garden. May I tell you that +reason?" + +"If you think I should know." The words came simply. He, looking down +into the hint of features the firelight grudgingly gave him, saw there +the frank camaraderie of a candid spirit: the soul that was Benicia +O'Donoju, unsullied of artifice or the vain trickeries of the woman +desired. "If you think I should know"--call of comrade to comrade. The +desert girl scorning subtleties and inventions; knowing what her words +would prompt yet wishing them to be said. + +"It is that I love you, Benicia, and that I cannot leave you, loving +you so, when I know you are in danger." Grant gave her his heart's +pledge in simple directness. Though the girl was not unprepared for +his avowal, the call in his words, elemental as the sweep of precious +rain over the thirsting desert, set quivering chords of her being never +before stirred. He saw the trembling of her lips; her curving lashes +trembled and were jewelled with little drops. She turned her gaze into +the fire for a long minute. Grant heard vaguely the voice of Bim Bagley +expounding some theme of cattle ticks. His heart was on the rack. + +"Grant--good friend--" Her voice broke, then valiantly found itself. +"You heard from Urgo the story of our house--of the Red One and his +crime against God--" + +"The hound!" he muttered. Benicia groped on: + +"My father--no one ever told me that story because--because--" Grant +saw one hand steal up to touch with a gesture almost abhorrent the low +wave of red over her brow--"I bear the sign, you see." + +He put out his hand to stay her, for the dregs of suffering were +working a slow torture upon her; the face of the girl he loved had +become like some sculptor's study of the spirit of fatalism. He could +not check her. + +"My father when he returned to-day and I told him--my father said the +story was true as Urgo told it. Once in every second generation--this +sign of El Rojo, murderer and violator of the sanctuary--" + +"But, Benicia, surely you don't believe this fairy story!" Grant packed +into his low words all the willing of a spirit fighting for precious +possession. He felt that every word the girl spoke was pushing her +farther from him. + +"Ah, Grant, we desert people believe easily because the truth is not +hidden. It _is_ true; my good grey father knew that I knew it to be +true and did not seek to deceive me when I asked him. The O'Donoju with +this"--again the shrinking touch of fingers to the dull-burning stripe +on her forehead--"cannot give love, for with love goes unhappiness--and +death." + +She broke off suddenly, rose and hurried into the shadows beyond the +range of firelight. Grant heard a door latch at the far end of the room +click to. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +WHAT HAPPENED IN THE NIGHT + + +Somewhere in the darkness of the ancient house a deep-toned bell tolled +the hour of two. The sound came to Grant, broad awake in his room, as +if from a great distance--tocsin strokes against the bowl of the desert +sky. Four times in his sleepless vigil he had heard that bell measuring +night watches, and each successive hour struck seemed the period to a +century. + +He had gone to bed with a heavy ache following his words with Benicia +and her abrupt termination of his pleading. On his first review of the +girl's abnegation of the love she could not conceal the whole thing +had seemed fantastic, almost childish in its essence of witch-bane and +belief in blighting curse. How could this virile creature of a fine and +cultured mind conceive herself the heritor of a weight of guilt carried +down from some ancestor in the dim past? There was the superstition +of the evil eye among ignorant peasants of the Latin countries, to be +sure; but for a girl of Benicia's intelligence to be enslaved by such +mumbo-jumbo as Urgo had voiced--ridiculous! + +Such was Grant's first review. Weighed from every angle and conceding +the girl he loved every mitigation of jangled nerves, nevertheless the +man of the cities could find naught but lamentable folly in it all. The +first striking of the distant bell found him rebellious. + +From where he lay he could look through a grated window up to the +heavens: a square of dappled infinity. Insensibly his eyes began +singling out the stars, measuring the gulf between this and that +steady-burning point of light. Somewhere outside a desert owl timed +the pulse of the night with an insistent call, unvarying, unwearying. +The man on the bed found himself tallying the blood beats to his +brain by this ghostly metronome. Beat--beat!--passing seconds of +mortality for the man Grant Hickman. Beat--beat!--How puny a thing, how +inconsequential the life of a man when calipered by the time measure of +those burning suns up yonder! + +He rallied himself, for such drifting into the subjective was a new +and puzzling experience for a practical man. But minute by minute the +spirit of the desert, which is the spirit of chaos become ponderable, +stole over him, chaining his imagination to things felt but not +seen of men. A chill of the untoward and the unreal swept over him. +He seemed to be braced nervously for some blow out of the void. His +imagination played with a dim figure, the shape of El Rojo of the +red hair riding--riding through the dark on his eternal mission of +damnation. + +The clock struck three and at the instant of the third stroke a shadow +like a bat's wing flitted across the bars of the window through which +the eyes of the wakeful man had been roaming. A sharp tinkle of steel +on stone split the silence of the chamber. Grant was galvanized into a +leap from the bed. He stood shaking. Silence. Silence absolute as the +grave after that single sharp ring of steel on stone. + +He looked up at the window where the flitting passage of the bat's +wing had showed. Just the clear-burning stars there. The dim recesses +of the room revealed no bulk of an intruder. Was this but the trick of +overwrought nerves? + +Grant fumbled for his matches and brought a light to the candle wick. +By the waxing yellow glow he peered round the chamber. A flicker of +white reflection caught his eye and he almost leaped to a spot on the +floor directly beneath the window. + +A dagger lay there. It was that curiously wrought affair of dulled +silver haft and double-edged blade which he had noted before as part of +the rosette of ancient knives and short swords clamped against the high +wainscoting above the window for a wall decoration--the weapons Don +Padraic had pointed to with the pride of a collector that first day the +wounded guest was brought in from the desert. + +But how could this dagger have slipped from its sheath with no hand to +disturb it? Grant stooped to pick it up. + +He had the haft in his grip for a quarter-second, then dropped the +thing and leaped back as if from an asp. Something gummed the palm of +his hand. Something showed dull black against the dim flicker of the +blade. With a gasp he knelt and brought the candle closer. + +Blood there on the blade! Blood on his hand! + +He stood frozen while the pumping of his heart volleyed thunder against +his ear drums. Murder cried aloud from that stained thing of silver and +steel on the floor. Somewhere in this rambling old pile--somewhere in +the silence a swift stroke that had snuffed out a life, and then the +murderer, fleeing, had flung this weapon through the window. He had +flung it almost at the feet of the only one in the whole house who was +not sleeping. + +Alarm! He must give the alarm while yet the murderer was near the +scene! Spur to action followed swiftly upon Grant's momentary numbness. +He threw a dressing robe over him and ran through the door of his +chamber giving onto the arcade about the patio. Just over the low +balustrade lay the little jungle of flowering things, and on the +opposite side, he remembered, hung the great Javanese gong Benicia used +to summon the servants to the patio. Grant leaped the low balustrade +and stumbled crashing through the geraniums and giant fuchsias toward +the dim moon of metal he saw in the shadows of an arch. + +He came to the gong, groped for the padded mace hanging over it. The +patio roared with its released thunders. + +Muffled shouts. Banging of doors. Lights. A white figure came +blundering through the arcade; it was Bim Bagley. + +"Some one's been murdered!" Grant greeted him. "A dagger--through my +window!" + +Came others--servants with blankets clutched around them. Bim directed +them to run to the great door in the outer wall and catch any skulker +they might find in the gardens beyond the house. Only dimly aware +himself of something untoward, the big man could give no more specific +directions. + +Then Benicia, bare-footed, her hair fallen down over a blue robe she +drew together across her breast. Grant started towards her. + +"Where is father?" she cried in a woman's divination, and Grant noted +Don Padraic's absence. He saw the girl make a quick step for a closed +door behind her. Unreasoned instinct prompted him to put himself before +the door, denying her. + +"No; let me," he commanded. She made a swaying step towards Grant but +was met by the door swiftly closing in her face. Inside the chamber, +he turned the key in the lock and struck a match to grope for a candle +wick. + +In the pallid flicker he saw the figure of Don Padraic on his high bed. +A dagger wound was in his breast. + +And the girl outside the locked door stood very still. Her eyes, wide +with horror, were fixed upon the spot where she had seen Grant put his +hand in pushing open the door. + +Three small smears of blood there. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +ACCUSATION + + +Grant was stunned. The vision of the figure with the fine patrician face +there on the bed--in the breast the savage mark of violence--seemed but +a part with the disordered fancies of recent hours. Beating of Benicia's +hands on the locked door and the faint sound of her calls aroused him. +He stepped to the bedside and felt for a pulse, listened for a breath. +There was none. + +Murder had been done swiftly and surely--and done with the ancient +dagger from the weapon cluster on the wall of his own room. In the +stunning discovery he had just made Grant did not find any grim +correlation between these two circumstances. He pulled up a coverlet to +conceal ugly stains, then stepped to the door and unlocked it. + +Benicia was waiting there. The eyes meeting his were blazing horror. +Almost Grant read in them unthinkable accusation. He put out his hands +to support her, for she was swaying in her effort over the doorstep. + +"No--no!" Benicia shuddered and drew away from him as though he were +a man unclean. Mystified, Grant stepped aside to let her pass. He saw +her run to the side of the high bed and kneel there. Her hands went +out blindly to grope for the still features on the pillow. They played +uncertainly over them, then rested on the heavy mane of hair. Her +fingers repeated little smoothing gestures. A breathless faltering of +love phrases in the Spanish came from her lips. Grant, seeing that the +girl retained mastery over herself, tiptoed from the chamber; it was +not meet that he should be witness to a soul's acceptance of the bitter +fact of death. + +He blundered into Bim coming back to the patio from his excursion at +the head of servants beyond the great front door and told him what had +happened; of the dagger dropped through the window and the murder. The +big Arizonan reared back as if roweled. + +"My God, man, that leaves the girl alone here in this jumping-off +place!--With that snake Urgo in the offing. Boy, it's up to us to help +her out!" + +Grant gripped his pal's hand with a low, "I knew I could count on you, +old scout." + +The dry patter of sandals came down the arcade from a knot of lights +where some of the servants had gathered in indecision waiting to be +given orders. Grant recognized 'Cepcion in the mountainous figure +approaching and was recalled to the necessities of the moment. + +"Tell her, Bim, what has happened and send her to her mistress. Then we +must get out men to circle the Garden and prevent any person's getting +away." + +Bagley strode to meet the major domo and rattled swift Spanish at her. +The waddling Indian woman quivered and lifted her fat arms above her +head. A dreadful wavering cry came from her lips. Instantly the cry was +taken up by the servants at the far end of the patio--a bone-chilling, +animal noise which climbed slowly to the highest register and ended +in a yelp. At the sound Grant's blood went cold. This Indian death +howl was the cry of the desert kind, calling the despair of creatures +chained to a land of drought and ever-present death. + +To escape it he went with Bim out of the great door to the unwalled +spaces where the avenue of palms stood sentinels against the night. +Beyond the bridge over the oasis stream lay the clutter of huts that +was the Papago village, a fief under the overlordship of the manor +house. Not a light showed among the thirty or forty beehive shapes when +the two men started to walk under the palms; but suddenly a cry arose +from the midst of the village answering that coming down the night wind +from the mourners in the great house. Rumour of death had outstripped +the two who walked. + +The single cry from the village instantly grew in volume. Treble voices +of squaws lifted the abomination of noise to the saw edge of a screech; +men's harsher notes rumbled and boomed intolerably. All the night was +made bedlam. + +Lights were winking through the chinks of the jacals when Grant and +Bim came to the outskirts of the village. There was confusion of +forms skittering about from hut to hut. Bim seized upon one man and +demanded to know the whereabouts of Quelele, head man of the village. +The big Indian soon stood before them with a gesture of hand to breast +indicating they were to command him. + +"Somebody has killed your master," Bim told him. "Get out men on horses +to circle the Garden and go out along the road both ways. Cover every +foot and bring in anybody you may find." + +Quelele sped with hoarse shouts down the village's single street; a +dozen men joined him in a race for the corrals. + +"There's no way for the murderer to get out and live except along the +road," was Bim's comment as they turned to retrace their steps to the +house. "If he took to the mountains even with a horse he couldn't last +a day; they're straight up and down." + +They had not gone fifty yards from the Papago village when a new sound +punctuated the death cry, now settled to a monotonous chant promising +hours' duration. It was the _bum-bum-bum_ of the water-drum--gigantic +gourds floated, cut side down, in a tub of water and drubbed with +sticks. That noise was accompanied by the locust-like slither and +rattle of the rasping sticks, another primitive tempo-setting +instrument of the Southwestern natives. + +The death howl began to catch its measure by the boom and screak of +these two instruments. A noise to beat against the inside of men's +skulls and set the bone of them in rhythm. Savage as the peaks of +Altar, unremitting as the drive of wind-blown sand against granite. + +_Bum-chut-chut-chut!_ Sob of a land in chains. + +"Oh, tell them to cut it!" Grant's frayed nerves cried out protest. The +other merely gave a wave of his hand comprehending resignation. + +"Might as well tell the wind to stop. This'll keep up for three +days--this ding-dong business. It's custom, old son." + +As they drew near to the house of death again Grant caught his mind +harking back to that moment when he had come from Don Padraic's chamber +to confront the girl's wild eyes--eyes with almost the unthinkable look +of accusation in them. That aspect of her eyes dumbfounded him, left +him groping for an explanation. + +Once at the house, Grant took his friend to his chamber and showed +him the knife where it lay on the floor as he had dropped it. The big +Arizonan stooped over with the candle near the grisly thing--his hawk's +nose and salient cheekbones were outlined against the candle flame like +the raised head of some emperor on a Roman coin--and very gingerly he +turned the dagger over. + +"Finger prints here on the haft," he grunted. + +"Yes, mine," Grant put in. "I picked it up at first without +knowing--without reckoning there might be--" He broke off to pour +water into the quaint old willow-ware bowl which stood with its ewer +on a stand in a corner, then he scrubbed his hands vigorously. A great +relief came to him with this act of purification. + +"Yours--yes, and probably somebody else's," Bim was mumbling his +thoughts aloud. He stood erect once more and measured the height of the +barred window over the lintel of which was fixed the rosette of arms. +"Hum. I simply don't figger why the man who wanted to kill the old +don came to the outside of this room, clum up the wall an' reached in +through those bars there to take one of these old knives. Can't see why +all that fuss--more particular, why he snuck back here an' tossed the +knife through the bars after his bloody work." + +"Perhaps he wanted it to appear I am the murderer," Grant hazarded +doubtfully. + +"You!" Bim looked up with a wry smile. "Why should you want to kill off +that fine old man?--What motive?" + +"What motive for anybody here in the house or in the Papago village +outside for that matter?" Grant voiced his perplexity. "Don Padraic was +the _padrone_ of every Indian from the Gulf to Arizora. From what his +daughter tells me there's not a Papago on the place here who wouldn't +gladly have died in his place. The whole thing's too deep for me." + +They left the dim chamber with its relic of violence still lying on +the floor and walked out into the perfumed patio. It was the hour when +first heralds of dawn were coursing across the sky. Grant looked up +to the dimming stars and read there the same message that had come to +him the hours before swift stroke of tragedy: the fragility of that +spider web man spins into the gulf of infinite time. And the oneness of +this unlimned stretch of vacancy called the Desert of Altar with that +ethereal desert of stars. How infinitesimal in the face of either the +soul of man, its hopes! + +A great sense of impotence weighed down on Grant. His thoughts dwelt +with the girl he loved, sore stricken by this cowardly blow in the +dark, bereft of one who had been soul of her soul. Now, the last of her +name, alone in this bleak wilderness with none to fend for her against +the wiles of Urgo except the child-like Indians: what a situation for +Benicia to face! The man yearned to go to where she knelt alone with +her dead, to take her in his arms and give her pledge of his love and +protection. Yet that was not meet. The gulf of Benicia's grief denied +him. + +Bim brought Grant out of his reverie with, "It's my hunch we won't have +to look far to find the man behind this bad business." + +"You mean--?" + +"That same--Hamilcar Urgo," was Bim's positive assertion. Grant +objected: + +"But you passed him well on the way to Magdalena this afternoon. It's +not likely he'd risk coming back in his car to attempt porch-climbing +and murder. That's not in his line." + +"Sure not! But one of these Indians around here who knows the lay of +the house--somebody who savvyed, for instance, about those old knives +on your wall--a hundred silver pesos from Urgo's pocket--" + +Grant's mind was in no state to analyze subtleties of villainy. "I +can't see what Urgo could possibly gain by killing Don Padraic unless +there's a great deal behind his relations with Benicia's father you and +I don't know." + +The fat shape of 'Cepcion waddled down the nearby arcade in the +direction of the room wherein Benicia had locked herself. Bim's eyes +idly followed her as he pressed his argument: + +"Maybe so--maybe not. But figger the thing thisaway: Urgo's dead set on +marryin' this high-spirited senorita--if you'll excuse me trompin' on +a tender subject, old hoss--an' he reckons they's two folks who don't +encourage those ideas to the limit--her father and yourself. Yourself +he tries to get on suspicion and because you riled him on the train +like you say. Now he does for the father an' counts he has the girl for +the taking, she having no kith or kin to come up in support, as you +might say." + +The dawn reddened and still the two men in the patio fruitlessly +pursued speculation. A sudden step crunched the gravel behind them. +Both leaped at the sound, so taut were their nerves. They turned to see +Benicia standing in the half light with the misty banks of geraniums +for a background. With her were the giant Papago Quelele and two other +Indians. They carried loops of hair ropes. + +"Senor Hickman"--the girl's voice was deadly cold--"Senor Hickman, my +servant 'Cepcion has just brought to me the dagger she found in your +room. The dagger is stained with my father's blood, senor. There are +prints of fingers on the haft of that dagger, Senor Hickman." + +Grant caught the poisonous edge of hatred in the voice, read the bitter +accusation in her eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, but Benicia +checked him. + +"I saw you leave those prints of my father's blood on the door of his +chamber, senor. Before my very eyes, senor! Just now when 'Cepcion +brings me the dagger she finds in your room I compare the print of +fingers on its haft with the print on the door. They are the same. What +have you to say, Senor Hickman?" + +"Say!" Bim Bagley's voice snapped like a whip lash. "Are you accusing +Grant Hickman here of murder?" Benicia never even cast a glance at him. +She repeated: + +"What have you to say to this, Senor Hickman?" Grant answered levelly, +"Enough already has been said, Senorita O'Donoju." Benicia signalled to +Quelele and he advanced with the ropes. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +THE ORDEAL + + +With the lithe spring of a cat Bim put himself between Grant and the +advancing Indian. His face had gone dead white and his eyes were coals +blown upon by the wind of anger. + +"None of that! Get back there--you!" Bim's voice was scarcely audible +but his pose of furious battling on the hair-trigger of release was +sufficiently vocal to awe the Papago giant into a backward stumble. +Then to Benicia: + +"Young woman, you're making the mistake of your life. I'm a'mighty +sorry for you, an' you are going to be right regretful yourself when +you have time to think." Grant made a step forward to lay a checking +hand on his friend's arm. He would have spoken but the girl interrupted. + +"My father's blood on this man's hands!--the dagger from the wall of +his chamber--" Of a sudden the last shred of restraint she had battled +to impose upon herself gave way and a flood came under propulsion of +hysteria. Out fluttered her hands to point the object of her execration. + +"You--I do not know you! Just a chance meeting between us and we part. +Then fate brings you to this house wounded--snatched from death. An +escaped convict from a chain gang--you yourself admitted as much just +last night. With good reason my cousin, Colonel Urgo, must have caused +your arrest. Why should I not believe you capable of killing my father? +Why not when the signs of his very blood cry out against you!" + +"Senorita O'Donoju--" Grant's effort to check her was fruitless, for +she had whirled upon Bagley: "And you! Unknown to my father--unknown to +me. He brought you here on your own representation. You said you were +hunting for your friend to whom we had offered our hospitality. Can you +deny that both of you discovered opportunity here to kill--and then to +rob?" + +The storm that had swept the girl through this welter of imaginings, +illogical, frenetic, took heavy toll of her physical reserves. Now +she stood trembling, white-faced in the spreading dawn, pitiful. Her +small hands were clenched into fists across her breast. Flutterings of +uncontrolled nerves made the flesh of her temples pulsate. Grant, for +all the crushing horror of these moments, felt pity pushing through the +numbness Benicia's accusation had wrought. Never had he seen a woman so +tortured by the devils of hysteria; he was appalled. He spoke to her +gently: + +"If you will permit me to go to my room while you make further +investigations I will answer any questions they may suggest. It must be +plain to you, Senorita O'Donoju, that I cannot escape from this place." + +The girl gave him a dazed look as if she hardly comprehended what he +said, then she slowly nodded and, beckoning the Indians to follow, she +turned and disappeared beyond the patio's green. Bim threw an arm over +his pal's shoulder and accompanied him to his room. At the door he +whirled Grant about with a strong grip of both his hands and gave him a +grin more eloquent than any sermon on fortitude. + +"When the she-ones get to stampedin', old pal, they sure have us +helpless men winging. Now go in there and get a sleep while I take a +look round below your window and elsewheres." + +Bim's easy injunction to sleep was not so easily followed by the man +who was a self-appointed prisoner. On his bed Grant tossed in a fever +of mingled blind speculation and outraged pride. Strive though he might +to palliate Benicia's charge against him on the score of the girl's +complete prostration through the night's tragedy, the quick and fiery +blood in her that was inheritance from Spanish forebears, yet always he +came against the same ugly fact: one whom he loved with all the passion +in him and whose return of love he had dared hope to win had accused +him of murder out of hand. + +Yet how could he prove his innocence? Of a sudden that thought plumped +down on him with the burst of a high explosive shell. + +Benicia's accusation had appeared monstrous, yes. But, look upon +the facts through her eyes--so a curiously impersonal phase of mind +prompted; what were those facts as they appeared to the girl? A man +who was first a chance acquaintance in a train and then, by a trick +of fate, a guest in the house, rouses the household at three o'clock +in the morning by sounding an alarm in the patio. He calls "Murder!" +though he does not say who has been murdered, he has not apparently +discovered the body of Don Padraic in his chamber. + +This man--this waif brought in from the desert--prevents the daughter's +going in to the room of death until first he has entered that room +and locked the door behind him. He leaves the marks of his fingers in +blood upon the outside of that door. Then he and his friend--"call him +confederate" was Grant's cynical amendment--organize a hue and cry +outside of the house. While this is in progress a servant finds in the +guest's room a dagger; instead of being in its usual place amid the +rack of weapons on the wall this dagger lies on the floor as if hastily +thrown there by one who had no proper time for its concealment. The +dagger is blood stained and on its haft are the same finger prints as +those on the door of the dead don's chamber. + +There was the record. How refute it? + +Say that while lying awake he saw a hand appear at the bars of his +window and heard the tinkle of a knife dropped within? Why, if he was +so vigilant at three o'clock in the morning, had he not seen that hand +of a murderer steal in to abstract the weapon before the deed? And +whose hand was it? Did not the burden of proof that it was not his own +which took the dagger from the wall rest solely upon Grant Hickman? + +Another's finger prints on that bloodied haft besides his own? +Perhaps. But it needed the instruments of precision of a detective +central office to juggle with such minutiae as the whorls and spirals +in a finger print, and they most certainly were lacking at the Casa +O'Donoju. Graver difficulty still, there were a hundred and more +Indians in the oasis; how gather them all together and take the prints +of their fingers? + +The more his mind roved amid hypotheses the closer about him seemed +drawn the meshes of circumstance. As the sun of a new day painted a +glory beyond the bars of his window Grant Hickman felt himself as +helpless as that Tomlinson of the Kipling story who plunged headlong +through the space between all the suns of infinity. + +He must have slipped into the sleep of exhaustion, for it was near noon +when a knock on his door roused him. At his bidding 'Cepcion opened to +illustrate a command in Spanish with a backward jerk of her head. Grant +arose and followed her through a corridor to the patio. Benicia was +standing there in an attitude of awaiting him, a little beyond her was +Bim, his face wreathed with a heartening smile. + +The girl received him with bleak eyes. "You will please follow me, +senor," was all she said. Then she led the way, the two men a step +behind her, out of the still house and down the avenue of palms +towards the Papago village. From time to time a turn in the path gave +Grant a glimpse of Benicia's face. It was a changed woman he saw. + +Gone was the vital spirit of joy of living which always gave the +girl her character of Eurydice in khaki; gone, too, that softness +of grain born of happiness undisturbed, of life amid the elemental +things of nature. This Benicia was a cold fury moving to judgment. +The call of her Spanish blood from centuries past--call for vengeance +and blood-sacrifice--had possessed her. It was as if some mocking +cartoonist had run a brush over the features of Innocence in +portraiture, giving an upward twist of cruelty to lips, the glint of +blood lust in eyes. + +They came to the Indian village, all hushed in anticipation of some +prodigy. Only the frog-croaking of the water drums and the dry clicking +of the rasping sticks betokened a continuance of the mourning ritual. +All the retainers of the Casa O'Donoju, farmers, cattle handlers, house +servants, men, squaws and half-naked children, were assembled in the +rudely-defined street that led between rows of reed and mud-capped +huts. Two only were seated apart: the man who bobbled the drumming +sticks over the turtle-back halves of the gourds and an ancient who +manipulated the rasping sticks. On every bronze-black face showed the +strain of awaiting an untoward event. + +When Benicia appeared some elderly squaws started afresh the lugubrious +death howl, but a gesture from the girl silenced them. She beckoned +Quelele to her and spoke some rapid words in the Papago tongue. He in +turn passed the orders to two men, who ran into one of the nearby huts +to reappear staggering under the weight of a great metal kettle, such +as might be used for soap boiling, carried between them. Quelele laid +two heavy flat stones in the middle of the street; the kettle carriers +deposited their burden, rim down on the rocks. A space of two inches or +more showed between the kettle rim and the hard adobe. + +Still the hollow _bum-bum-bum_ of the water-drum, whisper and cluck of +the notched sticks. A very old man, the skin of whose naked legs was +grey and tough as elephant hide, had attached ceremonial circlets of +dried yucca pods about his ankles in a cuff extending almost to the +knees. He took his stand by the instrumentalists and his feet moved in +a shuffle in time to the drum beats. The pods emitted dry whispers. +The rapt look of a seer was on his leathern features. + +The kettle in place, Quelele himself went to a small pen of _ocatilla_ +sticks on the outskirts of the village and brought therefrom a young +rooster. The fowl's head bobbed nervously and his small eyes glinted as +he was carried on the big Indian's arm through the throng. Two helpers +lifted the edge of the soap kettle while Quelele thrust the cock +underneath. A faint clucking came muffled from the iron prison. The +bird thrust his head out here and there from beneath the rim, seeking +egress. + +Now Benicia took from 'Cepcion something she had carried wrapped about +in a handkerchief and carried it to the kettle top. She let fall the +handkerchief and with a slight gesture focused the eyes of all upon the +stained dagger. A sigh like the swish of a scythe in long grass swept +through the crowd as the girl balanced the knife on the exact top of +the dome of fire-smudged metal. The ancient with the yucca rattles did +a sacrificial step which caused a sharp alarm like that of the desert +sidewinder's warning. + +Grant and Bim, still unaware of the significance of all this +preparation, sensed the growing tensity of emotions all about them. +The Papagoes, like all their kind, more than ready to invest with +ritual any untoward incident of life, saw in the white girl's +preparations--particularly in the offering of the knife upon this +rude altar--formulae of an appeal to decision of powers beyond human +comprehension. Perhaps the elders, remembering tales of ancient +custom, recognized the preliminaries and welcomed a revival among the +unregenerate younger men of a direct appeal to Elder Brother. If big +Quelele knew better he had kept his tongue still. + +Benicia's features had never relaxed their cold intentness during +the preparations. There was even, to Grant's troubled scrutiny, some +element of the barbaric there. A look like that on the stone visage +of an Aztec goddess, implacable, without mortal instincts. She took +her stand by the kettle and spoke rapidly to the Papagoes, pointing to +the knife, then lifting her finger to mark the place of the sun in the +white sky. + +Abruptly she finished, stooped and touched one finger to the bottom of +the kettle. It came away blackened by soot. Then she turned to Grant. +"It is the test of God," she said in a dulled voice. "My people have +used it in times past when they were perplexed as I am. All here +including you, Senor Hickman, and you, Senor Bagley, will endure this +test even as I just have done. Put your fingers to the kettle and +show them to all, blackened. God will speak through the mouth of the +imprisoned cock when the guilty man touches the iron." + +Grant gave the girl a steady look, then without a word he stepped to +the blackened dome, swept the fingers of his right hand across it and +held them aloft. Benicia was looking away when Grant stepped back +beside her; he saw a convulsive movement of her throat--no other sign. +Then big Bim dared the oracle with an easy grace. A shuddering intake +of breath from the Indians as each man underwent trial. + +Quelele now gave an order which brought all the men of the village and +great-house into line of which he was the head. Even the musicians were +replaced by squaws who did not permit the drubbing and squeaking to +diminish. The faces of all wore the set look of hypnosis--eyes white +and staring, muscles twittering in cheeks, tongues licking out over +dried lips. + +_Thrut-t-t-t-t!_ An extra flourish of the rasping sticks and a thunder +of the water drums as Quelele started the line forward toward the +kettle. The big Indian moved with a mincing sidewise step reminiscent +of some deer-dance of his people at the festival of _sahuaro_. His +arms were held rigidly crooked at elbows and fingers splayed. The great +moon face was contorted into a lolling mask. He sweat with fear. + +Twice the lightning-like bobbing out and back of the imprisoned cock's +head as Quelele approached. "Ai-ie!" a squaw screamed in a frenzy. + +The leader touched the kettle, held up his blackened finger for those +in line behind him to see, then broke from line and stood at a little +distance from Benicia and the two white men. + +Second in line was the ancient with the yucca rattles on his legs. +Coming to the kettle, he stood rigid, tilted his old eyes to the +blinding sun. A shiver ran down his body which caused every dry pod +of his anklets to emit a whisper. He whirled once, dipped and swept a +finger through the soot. "_Njo oovik_ (Bird speaking)," he cried, and +there was foam on his lips. + +But the bird did not speak, and the line came slowly on. The spell of +the weird had Grant bound. The rational in him tried to prompt that +all this was but a shrewd application of the new psychological method +of crime detection as utilized by primitive peoples before ever the +science of the mind was thought of; but his imagination strained to +hear the crowing of the cock when the finger of guilt was laid upon +the iron shell. Mutter of the drums, shuffle of dancing feet, guttural +calls and imprecations: these things had swept away all prim gauds and +dressings of a mind counting itself superior and he was swept back to +kinship with the wild, its children. Again the desert moved to bring +him under its subjection. + +"Lookit that fellah!" It was Bim who gripped Grant's arm and pointed +to the advancing line. One of the younger bucks had dodged out of his +place and fallen back three numbers. + +On came the men facing trial by ordeal. Now and again the imprisoned +cock thrust his head out with snake-like darting, and the individual +who was poised over the kettle hiccoughed fear. The young man who had +dodged back tried the trick again when he was near the kettle; but the +one behind him held him by the shoulders and forced him on. + +The dodger came to the place of test, hesitated, made a downward sweep +of his hand and stumbled past. Big Quelele suddenly leaped at him and +gripped his right hand. No smudge of soot on the fingers. + +"Hai--ee!" Quelele called, and the line stood still. He wrenched the +young man's hand high above his head and showed the fingers clean. +"Hai--ee!" chorused fifty voices. Quelele started to drag the wretch +back to the kettle. + +Then his victim went to his knees--to his face in the dust. He rolled +and kicked, screaming. Still Quelele dragged him nearer the kettle, +his right hand firmly gripped in the vise of his own two, forefinger +extended to take the print of soot and draw the cock's crow. + +"I did it! I did it!" the wretched creature blubbered. Quelele dropped +him as if he were a poisonous lizard. The crowd pushed forward +menacingly. The murderer fumbled in his trousers pocket and brought +out a shining silver peso, which he threw from him with a gesture of +horror. Quelele picked it up and turned it over in his palm, his brow +heavily knotted. He passed it to Benicia. + +The girl turned the coin over to the reverse, whereon the spread eagle +grips a snake and a cactus branch in his talons. A deep knife cut was +scored through the neck of the eagle. + +The wretch in the dust saw she had noted the mutilation and cried out +to her in pleading, "The sign, mistress! The sign! The soldier-senor +Urgo tells me many months ago when I receive the sign I shall kill or +my brother, who is in his prison, will be shot!" + +"And he gave you this--" the girl began. + +"Yesterday, mistress. He passes me in his thunder-wagon and tosses me +this peso. 'Find the knife in the room of the wounded gringo senor,' he +commands. 'Use no other.'" + +Benicia nodded to Quelele, who made a sign to others. They brought a +hair rope and trussed the murderer hands to feet. His lips were mute. +Stamp of fate was on his grey features. He knew his punishment: to be +taken to the burning lava fields of Pinacate, where the dead volcanoes +are, there to be left without gun or canteen; no man would see him +again. Such was the Papago custom decreed for murderers from beforetime. + +She who had ordained this trial by ordeal had turned away, once the +wretch's confession had been heard. The soul of the girl now stood +its own trial in turn; faced by the guilt of false suspicion, by the +wounds wrought of bitter accusation, it must needs purge itself. Yes, +even though the spirit of Benicia O'Donoju was not one easily to humble +itself. A long minute she fought with herself and finally turned +gropingly to make her hard penance before Grant. + +Then she saw the figure of the man whose debtor in honour she was +striding with his companion towards the avenue of palms leading to the +house. The distance between them seemed suddenly the breadth of the +world. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +THE DESERT INTERVENES + + +That day omniscient will of the desert moved to point a murderer's +guilt the same inscrutable power flexed a finger to mould events some +seventy miles away from the Garden of Solitude where the worthy doctor +from Arizora and his Papago had been nibbling at a mystery. Though Doc +Stooder moved in a haze of strong waters, though he looked upon the +face of the desert through a golden veil of his own weaving, yet was he +not the least immune from the law of the waste places. The Doc walked +with God, even as did the pioneer fathers of the Church; the fact that +he did not admit the companionship had no influence on the operations +of destiny. + +We left Stooder on his knees before the uncovered bell with its +inscription carrying identification. His excitements, his hysterical +grubbings, soundings and prospectings of the ensuing twenty-four hours +were heroic. After the uncovering of the bell he had paced off a +square through the scrub thirty or forty feet each way and with the +corroded cone of metal for a centre; then the Indian and he had gone on +their hands and knees over every inch of this square. Result, a single +stick of hewn timber whose fire-blackened end had projected but an inch +above the sand; digging revealed a twenty-foot beam, dry as a puff-ball +and almost ready to disintegrate. + +That was all: the bell and the uncovered beam. But that was enough. +Doc Stooder knew that beneath him lay the mission site; how deeply the +blown sands of more than a century had buried it he could not guess. +But it was here! Here lay the rich core of a legend that had sent +many a man out into the desert to chase rainbow ends. His--Stooder's! +A'mighty God! how he'd riffle those pearls through his fingers--lay +'em all out on a piece of velvet under some secret lamp and match 'em, +pearl with pearl. + +But twenty-four hours in the desert exact their price; and that price +is in measure of water. The Doc did not drink water so long as his +store of contraband liquor held out; but the Papago did. Great was the +Doc's rage and disgust when his companion called him away from sinking +a prospect shaft to point the single remaining water container, now +much lighter than it should be. He tested the little car's radiator +to find that evaporation had left almost none of the necessary fluid +therein. No use buckin' fate; if he wanted to get back to the village +of the Sand People on four wheels he'd have to give the radiator a +drink and that would leave none for himself and the Papago. + +It was near noon of their second day at the treasure site when the +Doc whipped his reluctance into acceptance of the inevitable. He made +certain preparations. First he copied into a prescription book the +inscription on the bell; that would do to convince somebody whose +financing of the excavation operations might have to be invoked. Then +he sketched a map of the vicinity with meticulous care, marking in the +jagged spurs of the nearby mountains for bearing points and indicating +the position of the bell in reference to a dry wash which was traced +down from a gash in the mountain wall. + +"Guadalupe, old son, your old friend Stooder's goin' rustle back here +with an outfit right soon an' dig himself right down to them pearls. So +he's just a mite p'ticular about this map." + +Access of caution prompted the Doc to dismount from the car after he'd +set the engine to humming. He ran back with a shovel and covered the +bell with sand; the haggled bush above it would be a sufficient guide +for him and no significant landmark for the possible prying stranger. +The beam he hid in the wash. Then they trundled down their own track +and back to the Road of the Dead Men. Doc Stooder cursed the necessity +of automobiles leaving tracks. Some snoozer amblin' along the main road +would just's like as not turn out to follow these two lines out into +nowhere to see what he could see. Then perhaps-- + +Summer had come miraculously to the desert overnight, as the seasons +in Altar have a way of doing. Yesterday the pink convolvulus of spring +lay in scattered coral patches amid the scrub and the greasewood +was showing its midget spots of yellow. Now every glistening clump +of _cholla_ was aglow with the blood-red flowers of its kind; the +occasional pillars of the giant cactus were wreathed each at its top by +fillets of creamy blossoms--grotesque masquerading of these withered +old men of the wastes. First hint of summer's heat was abroad. It came +from the west on puffy little winds like the back-draught from an +oil-burning boiler. + +The Doc found himself in a frolicsome mood, for his night's potations, +predicated on a dwindling supply, had recklessly drained that supply +but availed to carry him over to another day with the stars of his +dream world still burning. Hunched low in his seat so that the +tip of his goatee waggled against the rim of the wheel, with his +flopping black hat all grease streaked pulled low against the sun +glare, the tramp physician chewed tobacco with all the unction of a +care-free conscience and indulged himself in wandering monologue. +Guadalupe's meagre stock of Spanish made him anything but a lively +conversationalist, so the Doc was constrained to carry on a vivid +conversation with himself. + +Into what penetralia of reminiscence this auto-dialogue carried him! +Back through the years--through countless dim valleys of a Never-Never +Land of alcoholic fantasies where his spirit had been wont to pitch its +tent. Scraps of jest and shreds of song stirred the ghosts along the +Road of the Dead Men. + +No such exuberance from Guadalupe, slave of the desert. They had not +been an hour on the road when the Papago began to feel a crawling +of the nerves along the spine and the pressure of invisible fingers +across the brow--evil signs! No less than the mountain sheep or the +road-runner in the scrub could the Papago interpret the desert's +forerunners of portent. A feel in the air--hue of the mountain +rims--colour of sunlight against a rock: these things had their meaning. + +Away off to the northward where a patch of gypsum showed white as film +ice the Indian's eye caught the first tangible evidence of trouble +ahead. A dust whirlwind like a gigantic leg in baggy trousers was +wavering across the flats; the thing possessed volition of its own so +surely did it map its course across a five-mile span in less than five +minutes. Guadalupe nudged his companion timidly and pointed to it. + +"Uh-huh, old Peg-legged Grandpap," chuckled the Doc. "Seen him lots +times. Gotta hole in his peg-leg you can drive a car through slick's a +whistle--allowin' you can find the hole." + +A half hour later the sun changed colour. Like the passing of a +shutter across a calcium light: now blinding white, now blood-orange. +Instantaneous. + +Three gusts of sand-laden wind came sweeping toward them from the west. +A long lull, then the storm. + +It pounced upon them with a sibilant whistle growing momentarily to a +roar which was engulfing. The little desert skimmer bucked like a wild +colt against the onslaught of the wind; but when the Doc dropped the +engine into low the car wallowed on in the face of the gale. The air +was thick as flour. Wind-driven sand had the bite of an emery wheel at +high revolution; it rasped the skin and drove eyelids tight shut. The +two in the car buttoned jackets above their noses to breathe. + +All the space of the desert was a poisonous yellow glare. Minute by +minute density thickened until the car's radiator was hardly visible. + +Then the sturdy engine quit. First a tortured grinding of clogged +cylinders, puny explosions from the exhaust, a bucking and quivering. +After that sudden stoppage of movement as if the car had plumped into a +stone wall. + +The Doc and Guadalupe tumbled out of the seat and crawled beneath +the car for protection. A stab of fear shot down through Stooder's +disordered thoughts--the water! None in the canteens, for they had +drained the last into the radiator before starting from the treasure +ground. Was there--could the sand have--? + +He inched himself through a new sand drift below the front axle to +where the drain cock projected below the radiator base. Like a suckling +kid he lifted his lips to the steel teat and turned the cock. A +trickle of heavy mud filled his mouth with grit, then stopped. + +Radiator a mess of mud--cylinders clogged--feed pipes all choked and +water--gone! + +Doc Stooder pulled his floppy hat over his face and whimpered the name +of God. + +And on the back trail where the bell of the Lost Mission had +been found; over that site which the Doc had so carefully mapped +and measured the wind scoured and builded--scoured and builded. +Obliterating, changing, re-creating. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +THIRST + + +The sun went down before the sand storm abated. Two men, the one called +civilized, the other a savage, crouched like rabbits in a covert +beneath the body of the little car with a high sand drift piled up to +windward even over the radiator top. Two mites in the wind-scourged +wilderness of Altar with love o' life the leveller that made them kin. + +When the last vagrant wind fury had passed fell silence almost terrific +by contrast with the uproar of the storm. In place of the slithering +and whistling of driven sand an oppressive stillness, which seemed +dropped from the void of the stars, now showing. Occasionally the dry +rustle of sand dropping in rivulets from some desert bush lifting its +head after the scourging; that was all. + +When the two crawled out from beneath their shelter Guadalupe was for +an immediate start afoot in the direction of the faint pencilings of +red marking the west. But Doc Stooder possessed an abiding glimmer +of faith in the soundness of the car and insisted on taking stock +of its motive possibilities. A cursory examination convinced him of +the hopelessness of his trust, for the sand was heaped entirely over +the unprotected engine--desert cars dispense with a hood because it +blankets the engine's heat--and he knew that even with water in the +radiator he couldn't get a kick out of the thing before a thorough +overhauling. This was out of the question. They must achieve their +escape from the desert's trap afoot. + +The Papago started on a swinging walk a little north of west, the Doc +following. They had not gone far when the white man discovered they +were not following the road; each step was through loose sand which +received the foot with a viscous hold and reluctantly released it. The +Doc snarled a query at his companion: why in the name of deletion had +he quit the Road of the Dead Men? + +"Not quit--finding him," came Guadalupe's grudging answer. Then Stooder +admitted to himself the possibility that during the time the little car +had pushed on into the storm he had tooled it off the road. How far he +had driven away from the single track which spans Altar he could not +hazard a guess. Anyway, he knew one thing: he was dog tired, and if +this mangy black coyote thought A. Stooder, M.D., was going to wallow +through sand all night without a sleep he had another think coming. + +Reaction from the excitements of the past two days added extra +weight to the Doc's already none-too-light handicap of alcoholic +repercussions. The storm had torn his nerves to tatters; his mouth was +as dry as an old church pew cushion; each of his legs felt as if they +were dragging an Oregon boot. Stooder's mind was too dulled to probe +down below these afflictions and read the real seriousness of his +situation; it dealt only with cogent aches and reluctances. + +"Hey, Guadalupe! We take a sleep right here." The Doc halted. Great was +his surprise when he saw the Papago striding on. Hot rage bubbled to +his lips in an explosive Mexican oath. + +"Hey, you lizard-eatin' mozo, hear me? We stop here for the big +shut-eye!" The Doc spurred his long legs into a gangling run to +overtake the Indian, who had plodded on unheeding. All the arrogance of +the white man in his fancied superiority fell with the doctor's hand on +the Indian's shoulder. Guadalupe wrenched free and turned to face him +sulkily. + +"Sleep here--to-morrow much sun--no water. Maybe to-morrow we die here. +Walk!" Guadalupe's sparse vocabulary of Spanish words was drained; but +the manner of his resuming the forward hike was sufficiently eloquent. +Guadalupe, born to the desert code and grown to manhood under the +inexorable desert law, had in mind but a single impulse--to survive. +His mind plumped through the bog of discomforts wherein Stooder's +was mired to read clearly the tablets of the desert's decalogue: ten +commandments in one--live! In extremity throw over loyalty, discard +obligations of oath or of blood, strip the soul to its elemental +selfishness; but live! + +Guadalupe strode on, still bearing to the north and the west, and still +no road. Stooder, growing more weary each step, spent his strength in +blind rage at the stubbornness of the Papago. He conned over various +capital operations he would like to perform with Guadalupe for a +subject. His brain tired of that and began to nurture the germ of a new +thought. Why strain himself keeping up with that ring-tailed kangaroo +rat who skipped on and on without rest? Guadalupe left the print of +his foot every step he took; those footprints would point to wherever +Guadalupe might go--and the Papago, of course, knew the shortest way +out of this hellhole--so why break his own neck? The old Doc would +take a little snooze and then just follow the footprints when he felt +good and ready to do so. + +The gangling form crumpled up as if cut off at the knees. Guadalupe +heard a thud, turned for a half-glance over his shoulder and pushed +steadily on under the stars. It was not in the Papago's code to add +one ounce to the weight of circumstance obtruding between himself and +water. In a dozen steps his figure was swallowed up in the dark. + +Stooder may have allotted to himself only that minimum of sleep +designated as a snooze. But a high sun pried open his reluctant +eyelids. He sat up and sent a dazed glance around an unfamiliar world. +Mountains tawny and black with knife-edge water scores down their +flanks; a sea of scrub stretching interminably from their bases; +patches of gypsum and _salitre_ showing dull white as scars of leprosy +here and there amid the grey-green of the _camisa_. The sky already was +taking on the yellow-white glaze indicative of imminent heat. + +The Doc arose and shook the sand out of the creases of his clothing. +First definite impression coming to him was the need of a drink: his +favourite tequila if might be, water in a pinch. All the nerves in +his body twittered "Hear--hear!" to the first of the alternatives. +Then, his mind beginning to function along the line of the night's +impressions, Doc Stooder read the story of the footprints leading off +to the north and west. There they were: good li'l signposts; they'd +take him to a drink just as easy! + +Stooder's renewed strength carried him easily along the trail the +Papago had left. For an hour, that is; then trouble. For the sand +disappeared under a broad apron of _caliche_--a hardpan of baked +mineral salts and earth almost impervious even to the shod hoof of a +horse. It was like a door swung shut on the trailer--the locked door +to some labyrinth beyond. Here the last firm print of a boot in the +sand, there nothingness. The Doc paused, looked back over the cup-like +shadows marking the footprint trail he had been following to take its +line of direction, then he pushed ahead along that line. + +Another hour, and he still was on the _caliche_ outcrop. He stopped to +consider. Where in the name of all the angels was that road--the Road +of the Dead Men? If he'd driven the car a little south of it during the +sand storm, surely Guadalupe must have cut tangent to it by this time. +And if the road passed over the _caliche_ flat there'd be wheel marks; +that was sure. Miss that road and miss the Papago's trail both--why +then old Doc Stooder'd be a goner! + +He tried to follow his own back trail by such small signs as the +scratch of a hobnail against an embedded rock and a thin print of a +sole in a pocket of dust. A while and he had lost even that. He stopped +and swabbed his streaming face with a shirtsleeve--he now was carrying +his coat. + +"By the eternal, Stooder, you gotta do something--and do it dam'd +pronto!" + +Once more he turned on his own tracks. Better go back and find that +putrid Papago's trail and let the road go to the devil. Whole half hour +wasted a'ready--good half hour, by criminy! with a drink just that much +farther off. + +It was not so easy finding the scored rocks and the stamp of a heel +in pools of dust; not so easy as the first essay. For the sun was at +meridian now and foreshortened little shadows to nothingness. Plump! +he came to the edge of the hardpan and into the sandy soil. No tracks +there. Should he bear to right or left in circling the edge of the +_caliche_ on his hunt for the footprints? If he guessed wrong where'd +he be? "Oh, dear God!" + +He turned to the left and resumed his tramp. Furnace light refracted +from the sand seared into his eyes, which must be always kept downward +peering--spying. His mouth now was dry as rotted wood. Something +alien there kept bothering him by pressing against the roof of it. He +explored with his fingers and discovered the alien object to be his +tongue, which was swelling. + +"But my mind's clear--clear as a bell. Got a steady mind anyway. Gotta +hold onto that or I'm a gone coon." + +A slight breeze struck his right arm more penetratingly than it should. +Stooder shifted his glance to his arm, held crooked. + +"Good God! Coat's gone!" Dropped somewhere--that coat in whose pocket +was a prescription book; among its pages the map of the treasure site. +The precious map showing where lay the bell and the beam! The man +whirled and started on a staggering run along the rim of the _caliche_ +he had been travelling. + +"Must find that coat! Don't find the coat an' I lose the pearls an' the +gold--the pearls an' the gold!" + +He halted as if shot. Down the wind came to him the faint tolling of +a bell. _Dong--dong._ Silvery throb of a swinging bell. Measured, +unhurried; like the sounding of a bell for mass of a Sunday morning. +The Doc had heard the bell of San Xavier sending its call across the +alfalfa fields of a Sunday morning, just like that. + +Even as he strained his ears to drink in the full miracle of it the +sound faded, ceased. + +"I heard it! A bell! No illusion. Mind's still clear--still clear!" +On he went, his gaunt legs weaving in wide circles. He came to a dark +patch on the hardpan and strided over it, unheeding. It was his missing +coat, in the pocket the precious map of the treasure site. The Doc did +not see the coat because again his ears were drinking in the maddening +tolling of the bell; this time a little clearer down the wind in his +face. An animal cry, half articulate, burst from his swollen lips: + +"The mission bell! Bell of the Four Evangelists which I found t'other +day! Callin' me back!" + +Right over yonder where the mountains cracked apart to let that arroyo +down onto the plain: that's where the bell sounded. Yes, sir, no +mistake about it. 'Bout four-five mile, judgin' from the sound. Hear +what that bell's a-callin'? "Gol-l-ld! Gol-l-ld!" + +Doc Stooder, coatless, hatless, the high roach of his streaked hair +fanning in the hot winds, was stumbling and falling--stumbling and +falling ever forward toward the crack in the mountains. Light of +madness flamed in his eyes; his great arms clawed forward as if to +catch invisible supports to pull him the faster. Gol-l-ld--Gol-l-ld! + +"Old mind's still clear, else couldn't hear that mission bell so +plain-- Gotta keep old mind clear--" + + * * * * * + +The way of the desert god, always beyond man's comprehending, +nevertheless sometimes approaches so close to the human scheme of +thought and motive as to permit of analogy with it. When the director +of destinies in the dry wastes seems to make a travesty of such a +sacrosanct quality as human justice we may be moved to call the impulse +satiric for want of a better name. Satiric, then, that reversal of the +decree of death passed upon the Papago youth who confessed to murder +before the overturned kettle at the Casa O'Donoju; more than satiric +the moving finger now directing his path through the dead lands up to a +union with the crazed doctor's. + +According to ancient custom the Indian retainers of the O'Donoju had +taken the youth--his baptismal name was Ygnacio--down to the crater +land of the Pinacate and there turned him loose without water to wander +for a while and finally to die miserably. Other murderers had been so +treated and never had been seen of men again. But the desert god who +slays so peremptorily knew that Ygnacio had done the bidding to murder +to save his brother from death--had killed without malice and only as +the price of redemption for one of his blood. Wherefore the arbiter of +life and death flung life at Ygnacio. + +When he was athirst almost to the point of exhaustion he found a +knob-like growth a scant two inches above the surface of the ground, +recognized it for a promise of succour and with the last ounce of his +strength dug the deep sand all about it. The end of his effort gave to +him a strange and rare vegetable reservoir like an elongated radish, +which miraculously holds scant moisture of summer rains the year round. +"Root-of-the-sands" the Sonorans have named it. In the desolation +between the Pinacate and the Gulf even the coyotes have the wisdom to +dig for this precious sustainer of life. + +Ygnacio devoured the whole of the root and was revived. He found +others, which he tied into a bundle to carry over his shoulders. Food +and drink had come to him from the hand of Elder Brother himself +when it was decreed by man he should have neither. Wherefore love o' +life once more burned strong in the man. He set his course northward, +travelling only by night when the heat had given place to the biting +desert chill, keeping his precious roots buried in the sand while he +slept by day so that evaporation would not rob him of the promise of +escape from inferno. Straight as an arrow northward where, beyond +the Line, lay tribes of Papagoes who never had heard of Don Padraic +O'Donoju nor of a murderer named Ygnacio. + +So it happened that on the third night of his march, when Ygnacio had +paused to munch a segment of the sustaining root, came to his ears +the sound of a voice, faintly and from a great distance. It might be +a human voice, though there was a burred and thickened quality to it +almost like a burro's bray. + +The Indian boldly followed where his ears gave direction. +"Gol'--gol'--gol'" was the monotonous iteration, sounding almost like +the muffled tapping of a clapper against metal. He walked a mile--so +clearly do sounds carry in the desert night--and suddenly came upon the +figure of a white man. Naked above the waist, wisp of a goatee tilted +at the stars, arms rigid at sides and with fingers widespread, the +spectre of a white man chanted the single word, "Gold." + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +THE COMING OF EL DOCTOR + + +The sandstorm that overwhelmed Stooder and his guide on the Road of +the Dead Men brought the mighty voice of the desert to the Garden of +Solitude in requiem for the soul of Don Padraic O'Donoju. Savage elegy +of a life lived in communion with the spirit of the wild. + +There was no priest to order the funeral rites of the Church. Though a +day's journey in Quelele's car to Caborca and back would have fetched +a minister of religion, Benicia was determined word of her father's +death should not reach the man who provoked it sooner than the courses +of rumour allowed. The Caborca priest posting out to the Casa O'Donoju +would set tongues wagging instantly and the seal of silence imposed by +miles of unpeopled space between the casa and the nearest community +would be broken. "The service of the heart will be just as acceptable +to my father's spirit," was Benicia's simple justification to herself +of breach of custom. + +So in the heat haze preceding the storm six Indians bore the body of +their master through fields of alfalfa behind the white house down to a +grove of shimmering alamo trees which fringed a reservoir of the oasis' +precious water. Here beneath the white and silver-green tent of the +trees was sanctified ground. Here lay the dust of lords and ladies of a +desert principality who, for their spans of years, had been inheritors +of the desert's cruelties and benefices. + +Grant fell in with the file of dark-skinned mourners that followed +behind the body of Don Padraic, with him Bagley. They did this unbidden +of Benicia. Neither had seen her since the dramatic climax of the +ordeal of the kettle the day before; no word had come from her. Yet +each had felt the need to succour the bereaved girl in her great +loneliness, forgetting unhappy events of the dawn in the patio. + +For Grant there had been a brief struggle with pride and outraged +sensibilities--blessedly brief because a broader tolerance and finer +manhood had rallied to overthrow the narrower view of selfishness. +In the light of the terrific blow that had been dealt the girl he +loved--all the more crushing because of its suddenness--the savage +reaction of a high spirit seemed to him not so to be wondered at. Nor +Benicia's silence since. In these dark hours there was no place in her +heart for aught but unassuaged grief. + +Arrived at the alamo grove, all the Indians of the village and +household massed themselves a little way apart from freshly turned sod, +their glistening black heads dappled by the silhouettes of the leaves, +their eyes restless and awestruck. Benicia, garbed in dull black which +made the whiteness of her face and uncovered glory of her hair the +more striking, stood at the head of the rude housing fashioned by the +Papagoes for her beloved clay; her calm was absolute as that of the +iron peaks beyond the oasis green. In her hand was a wreath the Indian +women had woven--scarlet flowers of the cactus with feathery acacia +intertwined. + +In a steady voice the girl read a Latin prayer while the Indians knelt. +Then with a lingering touch she laid the scarlet and olive-green wreath +upon the pall and watched the glowing spot of colour slowly sink from +sight. + +Suddenly the recessional: the sand storm with its clamour of incoherent +desert tongues crying hidden tragedies, its blinding sheets of sand. +When the first blast struck the group turning away from the grave +Grant stepped quickly to Benicia's side, drew her arm protectingly +through his and bent his body to shield her from the myriad chisels of +the driven sand. He fought for footing for them both. + +At his touch Benicia turned dry eyes to his. Swiftly she read the love +there--love triumphing over the hurt she had so lately given him. On +the instant tears filmed the hard brightness of the orbs Grant looked +down upon. Her lips moved in some halting speech of contrition, but the +savage blast snatched away the sound of her words. In the softening +of those eyes and the weight of her body clinging nervelessly to him +the man was told the whole story of a girl's amends for hasty and +unconsidered action. All her iron will which had carried her head high +through hours of grief suddenly had sped from her, leaving her groping +and dependent. + +An exalted sense of guardianship came to Grant--swept over him like a +cool breeze to a fever patient. Almost it was a feeling of holy trust +bestowed. At last--at last the woman he loved had battled against +bitter fate beyond the limit of her endurance and was turning to him to +fend for her. Unheeding the twinges his wound gave him, he bent to the +blast with his precious burden. Oh, if only he could be given liberty +to sweep her into his arms, to call her name in the piety of supreme +love, snatch her away from the incubus of dread which had settled upon +her so relentlessly. + +He would not wait for such opportunity--so the thought came lancing at +him in a lightning flash of resolution; he would create it! No longer +stand idly by with footless compassion while the girl of his heart +remained in chains of a fixed idea too strong for her to break. He +himself would free her of those shackles even if he had to fight her +fiery will to do it! + +While the storm furiously grappled with the palms outside, Bim and +Grant sat in the dark music room of the great-house. With hushed voices +the two friends conned over the situation facing them and the girl now +left alone in the immensity of Altar. Not a simple exigency. On the one +hand promptings of delicacy and the dictates of custom ruled against +their remaining longer in the Casa O'Donoju. Opposed to this was the +alternative of leaving Benicia to become a prey to the schemes of +Colonel Urgo--a girl fighting single-handed the craft of an implacable +enemy. Without a protector other than the Indians of the oasis--and +they had the minds of children--the girl could not combat this +unscrupulous wooer for long. What then? + +Bim finally summed the situation: "It comes down to this, old +side-pardner; either you've got to persuade her to come back to Arizona +with us mighty pronto or to marry you, putting it bald-headed like." + +Grant's mind leaped to grapple with the flash of an idea--the one that +had come to him when he and the girl breasted the sandstorm. Resolution +crystallized on the instant. He silently quizzed his friend with an +appraising eye. + +"And if I can't persuade her?" he queried softly. + +"Then you simply trundle yourself away from here and up across the +Line, knowing that, sure as shootin', this wolf Urgo'll be down on +her just as soon as he makes up his mind to move." The big fellow in +the firelight stressed inevitability in his dictum. Grant gave him a +cryptic smile. + +"Suppose I take her anyway if she will not be persuaded?" Bim jerked +back his head and surveyed his friend with startlement which speedily +softened to a wide grin. Out went his hand to clap Grant's knee. + +"Now you're tootin'!" + +Once he had put his resolution into words, the idea back-fired to +scorch Grant with sudden comprehension of what would be involved in +such a cavalierly course of action. Actually to steal Benicia O'Donoju! +Take her by force from the home which now was hers to rule. Play the +very part which he feared Colonel Urgo would pursue if left alone. He +scarcely heard Bim rumbling his enthusiasms. + +"That's the pure quill!" the desert man was saying. "That's the Grant +Hickman who brought me in on his back from a section of Heinie's first +line trench with H.E.'s droppin' round like gumdrops from a baby's torn +candy bag." He checked himself to launch the question, "Have you got a +line on the girl yet? I mean, do you think she fancies you enough to be +glad--after you've run away with her?" + +"I think so," was Grant's simple answer. + +"Fine business! The sooner the quicker, young fellah. You an' her +an' me in the li'l old desert skimmer. 'Cause I gotta get back to +Arizora. The old Doc'll think I've thrown him down an', besides, my own +business--" + +"You mean you'll go ahead with Stooder on his scheme for finding the +Lost Mission?" Grant cut in impetuously. The big love he bore Bagley +jealously demanded an answer. The other reached over to lay a hand on +Grant's shoulder. + +"No. That's all off, old son. I couldn't go prying around after lost +treasure that belongs to the girl's family--more particular not after +what you've told me I couldn't. I promise you I'll head off the Doc if +I have to get him thrown in the _carcel_ for boot-legging." + +The storm wore itself to a final sibilant whisper among the tortured +palms and the two continued to sit in the room of shadows with the +complexities of the daring plan of kidnapping still bulking large. +'Cepcion tip-toed in to announce to Bim in an awed whisper, "El Doctor +Coyote Belly from Babinioqui has come through the storm. Shall I +disturb the mistress?" + +Bim translated to Grant with a questioning tilt of the eyebrows. Grant +started at the name of the medicine man who had been his rescuer and +to whom he owed his life. What could have brought this old Indian away +across the expanse of Altar to drop out of the storm upon the house of +mourning? + +"Tell her we will see him first," Grant directed, moved as he was by +some half-sensed instinct of protection for Benicia; evil tidings--if +such the Indian bore--must be kept from her. The two rose and followed +the waddling Indian woman through the halls to the servants' quarters +in the rear. Under a pepper tree in the fading dusk they found the +squat figure of Coyote Belly. The Indian doffed his hat at the approach +of the white men and stood smiling; there was in his pose something of +quiet dignity which bent little before the centuries-old convention +of the white man's superiority. His beady eyes, well larded in creasy +folds, possessed intelligence beyond the ordinary. + +Grant impulsively took El Doctor's hand in a strong grip carrying the +thanks he could not speak. El Doctor's eyes mirrored recognition and he +bobbed his head with a broadening smile. + +"Tell him, Bim, I could not thank him for all he did for me. He is the +chap that found me on the Hermosillo road, you know, and pulled me +through." Bim put the words in Spanish and El Doctor bobbed his head +again. Then the Indian began haltingly in the same tongue. Bim's eyes +narrowed to a quizzical pucker as he progressed. Grant could read a +spreading wonder in his friend's features. + +"The old bird says he came here because he knew Don Padraic had been +killed," Bim repeated. "Says he knew it the night of the murder because +a star fell in the west and he saw the picture of the old Don with a +knife in his heart--saw it in the water of his medicine _olla_. So he's +been on the trail ever since because he's got to tell Senorita Benicia +something." + +"But," Grant began incredulously. Bim caught him up with, "Sure, I know +it sounds phoney. But I know, too, the old boy's telling the truth. +These desert people have a way of seeing across space--reading signs +and such--which leaves us white folks gasping-- How's that?" He turned +an ear to El Doctor, who had begun to speak again. + +"Standing-White-in-the-Sun was my father and my brother," the medicine +man gravely intoned. "He gave me _pinole_ when I was starving. He came +to my house at the festival of the _sahuaro_ wine and drank with me as +a brother. His child, Lightning Hair, is as my own child." + +Depth of feeling was sweeping El Doctor like a storm. His grey head +trembled and drops of moisture stood in his eyes. Bim gently checked +him with, "The senorita is oppressed with grief. If we could take your +message to her--" But El Doctor shook his head. + +"She will see me. She will hear what El Doctor Coyote Belly has come +through the storm to tell." + +"Yes, she will hear," came an unexpected voice from the direction of +the doorway, and Benicia walked up to the Indian. El Doctor made a +step forward to meet her; with a gesture of reverence he took the hand +stretched out to him and placed it first on his brow then over his +heart. His old eyes shone. The two white men turned and walked beyond +earshot. From a distance Grant saw the girl lead the medicine man to +a rustic seat beneath the pepper tree; snatches of barbarous Papago +speech came to his ears. + +The glory of sunset, more glorious because of the dust held in +suspension in the air, came and passed and still Benicia and the +medicine man talked beneath the pepper tree. The evening meal was a +mournful affair, with only Grant and Bim at the candle-lit table. +Grant, unable to contain his restlessness, quit the house alone +when supper was finished; he walked down the avenue of palms in the +direction of the red fires marking the Indian village. The night was +luminous with that sheen which covers the desert heavens like a bloom. +Thin rind of a moon hung low in the west, a cold glow of nacre. + +He had crossed the bridge and was about to turn off into an adjacent +field when he heard a footstep in the shadowed aisle below palm tops +ahead of him. A figure scarce discernible in its black garb came upon +him. + +"Benicia!" + +She stopped, startled. "Ah, it is you," was her murmured greeting as +Grant stepped to her side. + +"Alone and in the dark," he chided, but the girl tossed off his fears +with a gesture of the hands. "I have been with El Doctor down to the +village to find a place for him to lodge." Grant imprisoned her arm +and gently persuaded her steps back down the aisle of darkness toward +the village. For a minute they walked in silence. Each knew there +were things to be spoken, yet each was reluctant to break the silent +communion their nearness wrought. + +"And El Doctor gave you the message he came to bring?" finally from +Grant. Her head nodded assent. + +"Not bad news, I hope," he hazarded. A tightening of fingers on his arm +as she answered, "The best--and the worst." Grant drew a long breath. + +"And may I share with you--the worst?" he managed to murmur. Now once +more that dragging weight on his arm as when he guided Benicia through +the storm--mute signal of surrender from one spent in the fight. + +"El Doctor says--oh, my friend, you must not stay here in the Garden +longer. The rurales are gathering at Babinioqui, El Doctor tells +me--with Urgo. That means but one thing: Urgo is bringing them here, +and you--" + +"But you!" Grant interrupted almost fiercely. "What of you? Must I run +away and leave you unprotected from that man?" The girl drew away from +him as if in very defiance of some mastering impulse which would push +her into his arms. + +"I--my people will fight for me if need be. Urgo comes for you this +time, and I cannot be sure these children"--a vague sweep of her hand +toward the winking village fires--"that these children would fight +for you, whom they scarcely know." There was that brave yet pitiful +resolution in her tone when she spoke of the hazard of Urgo's probable +sally upon her own person which crashed through all a lover's carefully +built barriers of restraint. Unmindful of the events of recent hours, +of the girl's fresh bereavement, Grant crushed her to him hotly. + +"Oh, 'Nicia--'Nicia, can't you understand! I must go--yes, to-morrow! +Not because Urgo is coming to get me but because your being here alone +forces me away from you. Yet I cannot think of leaving you to fight +that man single-handed. 'Nicia--precious!--you will come--you must come +with me up over the Line where--" + +"Oh, please--please stop!" Hands were feebly pressing him away. Glint +of starlight revealed tears a-tremble on her lashes. "Grant--great +heart--I understand. I cry for you. See! My eyes tell you what is in my +heart. But I cannot give myself to you when that--that terrible thing +of misfortune and death goes with me. I--the mark I bear brought death +to my dear father!" + +He looked down into her eyes, appalled at this last speech. Before he +could hush her she faltered on: + +"But El Doctor brought me also good news--wonderful news! It is that +I can lift this evil from me if--if"--she seemed to falter before a +possibility scarce credible--"if the finding of the gold and jewels El +Rojo stained with his sacrilege and their restoration to a sanctuary of +the Church will be acceptable in God's sight." + +The hint of purpose in Benicia's voice revealed the edge of the truth. +"Do you mean El Doctor knows where the Lost Mission lies and that you +intend to find it?" Grant pressed her. The girl gave answer: + +"He knows where the gold and pearls of the Lost Mission are. He knows, +too, the story of El Rojo and how I bear the weight of his guilt. +Because he loved my father he says he loves me too much to have me go +on and on under an evil spell. Father's death opens his lips and--" + +"You are going with El Doctor to find those things?" breathlessly from +Grant. She nodded. "Then I will go with you. At once! To-morrow!" + +Decision came on the wings of inspiration. Better this flight into +the desert on treasure quest, with its promise of exorcism of all the +devils that plagued the girl--better this venture than that other he +had determined: to play the strong hand willy-nilly. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +TREASURE QUEST + + +Colonel Hamilcar Urgo was not addicted to introspection. He took +himself as he found himself and as a rule was well pleased with the +find. Had any non-partisan voice of conscience told him cruelty played +a large part in his make-up undoubtedly the little Colonel would +have denied the charge with hot indignation. Cruelty, to his way of +thinking, was exclusively a feminine defect; a woman was guilty of +cruelty, for example, when she spurned the honourable advances of so +honourable a suitor as Hamilcar Urgo. Benicia O'Donoju was the cruelest +creature he knew; wherefore like a fractious horse she must be broken. + +No, Senor Urgo found nothing reprehensible in his orders to Ygnacio, +the Papago, that Don Padraic must be put out of the way. The same +impulse had prompted him to strip the bandage of ignorance from +Benicia's eyes during that interview in the patio without the least +compunction. These headstrong women! There was a way to handle them +just as there was a way to break the heart of a high-spirited mount: +curb bits that tear and spurs that gouge. Let him have possession of a +spirit-broken woman for a little while, to play with and then discard; +possession was not nearly so diverting as the game of spirit breaking. +At that Urgo considered himself rather a master hand. + +He had not hated the master of the Casa O'Donoju. Aside from the +necessity of clearing the field of a possible objector to his suit and +bringing pain to the haughty desert girl, Urgo's murder impulse was +prompted by no personal bias. But with all the deadly spleen compacted +into his wispy body the little man hated the gringo Grant Hickman. +Hated him because the American was in the lists against him; hated him, +especially, because twice Hickman had humiliated him before the eyes of +Benicia: once in the Pullman out of El Paso and a second time--searing +scar in memory--when the man, though weakened by a bullet wound, had +hustled him out the door of the desert manor. + +If whole-heartedness gives any palliation to hatred then was Hamilcar +Urgo's passion almost to be forgiven him. For very dynamic force no +impulse in his twisted career matched it. The vision of this gringo's +impudently smiling face went to bed with him at night and abided with +him all day--a veritable ache. Come what might, he would destroy Grant +Hickman and in a manner such as to entail the most refined tortures. + +So this was his single purpose--possession of the girl would be a mere +by-product--when he used his power with the police arm of the Sonora +state government to assemble ten ruffians of the rurales force at a +point on the railroad within striking distance of the Road of the +Dead Men. Desert cars were at his disposal but he preferred to head a +mounted force because his plans looked to an excursion into country +where autos could not go, once Hickman was his prisoner. A complaisant +spirit of justice at Hermosillo would accept in lieu of the escaped +convict's person some token symbolical of a justice already wrought +through the instrument of the state's worthy servant, Urgo. + +The day after the sand storm Urgo and his rurales set out from the +railroad for the west and the Garden of Solitude at the end of a long +road. They were superbly mounted; two pack animals trotted behind the +file of horsemen. Revolutions had been squelched by a less imposing +force. + +After the cleansing storm the desert was bland and tolerant. Air clear +as quartz, sun tempered by fresh winds from the west, on every club and +spike of cactus fresh flowers born overnight to replace those destroyed +by the driving sands. One of the rurales unslung a guitar from a mule's +pack and strummed minor chords to the accompaniment of a song in which +the rest joined. The ballad was gentle as a butterfly's wing, telling +of roses over a lady-love's window. + +Urgo, lulled by the immensity of the desert peace, perhaps even by +the tenderness of the song his murderers sang, pleasured himself by +building pictures in prospect. He saw himself riding alone up to +the door of the Casa O'Donoju--the rurales would be disposed beyond +sight of the door but within call; saw the courteous bow he would +make to Senorita Benicia; heard himself inquiring in polite phrase +concerning her health and that of her respected father. Ah, Don Padraic +dead--murdered! Grace of God, but that was sad news. But the American +gentleman who was a guest at the Casa O'Donoju; did his unfortunate +wound still keep him under the beneficence of the casa's hospitality--? + +Five hours of the second day out on the Road of the Dead Men the rurale +who was riding at the head of the file reined in with a shout. His +arm stretched to point a tiny black beetle away off to the westward: +a beetle skittering down the long slope of a divide and in their +direction. In ten minutes the beetle showed again, but it had grown to +the dimensions of an auto. It was upon them almost before the horsemen +had spread themselves in a fan across the road. Quelele, whom Urgo +instantly recognized, accepted the implied hint to halt; in the seat +beside him was a strange white man--a gringo by his looks. This man +let a bland, incurious eye range over the band of horsemen until it +settled upon Urgo; there it rested with a dispassionate stare somehow +affronting to the Spaniard's dignity. + +Urgo stiffly bowed and waited for the gringo to speak. Instead of +returning his salutation the white man searched the pockets of his vest +for tobacco bag and papers and bent all his attention upon rolling a +cigarette. + +"You have come from the Casa O'Donoju, senor?" Urgo asked in English. +Bim Bagley gave the clipped Spanish "Si" of assent and drew his rolled +cigarette across his lips with a languid air. Urgo in a growing rage +wondered if this boorishness were the stranger's typically American +manner or assumed to provoke hostility. His voice was silken as he put +his next question in Spanish: + +"The Senorita O'Donoju and Don Padraic, her father, they enjoy the best +health, I hope." + +"I hope so, too," was Bim's short reply as he put a match to his smoke. +Urgo's brows knitted. Here was no boor but a wise gringo with a chuckle +behind every word. + +"I am doing myself the honour to call upon Don Padraic and his charming +daughter," his temper pushed him to volunteer. Bim swept the company of +horsemen with a lack-lustre eye and then let his glance return to the +dapper figure of the Colonel. + +"Do tell," he drawled in broadest Border dialect. "See you brought all +the boys with you. Well, so long!" He nudged the Indian a signal to +go ahead. Urgo would have liked to detain this impudent gringo for a +lesson in manners did not more pressing pleasure lie ahead. He gave an +imperceptible nod and the horsemen who blocked the road moved aside. +The little car shot back a pungent cloud of smoke for a parting insult +as it took the road in high. Urgo watched it rise to the low crest of +a divide and disappear. Insufferable gringo! What had he been doing at +Casa O'Donoju? What did he know of recent events there? + +A shrug dismissed Bagley, and the file of horsemen resumed leisurely +progress along the desert road. A night's dry camp, and early morning +would see them in the oasis green at journey's end. + +Colonel Urgo miscalculated when he dismissed Bim Bagley with a shrug. +Did the little Spaniard but know it, this meeting in the wastes was +the objective point in the gringo's strategy. Even under certain heavy +handicaps ten gallons of gasoline in the desert can achieve more than +ten horses with rurales on their backs. It all depends upon the hand +that nurses precious jets of this gasoline across the path of the +spark. And Quelele's was a master hand. Wherefore the second phase in +Bim's strategy was entered upon. + +Bim and the Indian had made perhaps five miles along the +eastward-bearing road beyond the point of the meeting with Urgo's +ruffians when the Papago turned off the single wheel track and into +the sparse scrub. A low range separated them from the rurales; the +crumbling of that range into desert flatness lay a good ten miles to +southward. Once around that, the little car could be tooled behind a +screen of hillocks back onto the Road of the Dead Men and ahead of the +rurales, but only by exercise of the most delicate driving judgment. +"Smack through the country--without roads?" whiffles the incredulous +driver of limousines along sedate highways in Pennsylvania and New +York. Exactly that. It is done in Arizona and Sonora--thirty or fifty +miles of unfenced desert; compass to pick up direction and shovel to +dig out of arroyos. Johnny Cameron, of Ajo, even herds wild horses on a +motorcycle. + +Quelele stopped to let air out of his tires that they might better +grip the sand and pad through soft places. Then began a jackrabbit +skittering and twisting 'cross country, with every hundred yards +offering the hazard of a broken axle and the little desert skimmer +standing on its nose at the brink of a dry wash while its passengers +flattened the descent by hasty shovel work. Like a rowboat in +mid-Atlantic the puny contraption of tin and steel took the long waves, +snarling and grumbling over sand-traps, boggling through thickets +of _cholla_ which rigged its tires with festoons of prickly stubs. +Quelele's hands possessed magic. They knew just when to give a twist to +the wheel, when to shoot the spark ahead. Every hummock and pitfall was +read by them surely and swiftly. + +The little car rounded the end of the mountain range and shot back on a +tangent for the road where Urgo and his rurales were travelling. With +a grunt Quelele suddenly let the car trundle to a halt; he clambered +out and knelt by the radiator. Drip-drip of precious water from some +stab of brush through the honeycomb of cells there. Bim sacrificed +his tobacco in the emergency. The flaky mass was poured into the +radiator with fresh water from a canteen; the stuff found the leak and, +swelling, stopped it. + +Then on and on, around the flanks of the little hills and across wide +flats where the brush was scattered. Always Quelele was sure to keep +a height of land between the car and the Road of the Dead Men until +finally he brought his gas mustang to a stop on the crest of a lava +ridge and pointed back. Against the eastern horizon showed a crawling +inch-worm in the desert's immensity--Urgo and the rurales. Below the +lava crest and near at hand was the objective of their detour, the +road that led to the Casa O'Donoju and those who must be warned. + +It was after sunset when the little car hiccoughed up under the avenue +of palms. An hour later in the first dark of night a file of horsemen +quit the perfumed precincts of alfalfa fields behind the Casa O'Donoju. +At the head, driving a pack-mule, was El Doctor Coyote Belly, big +Quelele riding beside him. Behind were Benicia and Grant. Bim Bagley +was file closer. In scabbards at the saddle of each hung carbines. + +El Doctor, the guide, set the course away from the Road of the Dead Men +which, passing through the Garden of Solitude, buries itself in the +Yuma Desert. His direction was south and west toward the Gulf and the +labyrinth of volcano craters on its hither shore called Pinacate. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +ALTAR TAKES ITS TOLL + + +Dawn marched over the mountains like a phalanx of Alexander: spear +points of light on long hafts, which drove at the zenith in solid +bundles. Then the mercenaries of the sun trooped across the vacant +desert floor wave on wave and strength following strength. All the dead +world of Altar stirred and set itself for the ordeal of a new day. + +The figure of a man that had been Doc Stooder, cynical tinker of life's +rusts and corrodings, stirred under the trampling of the light--stirred +and stretched its members in dull protest of unconsciousness. Finally +when the arrows of the new day drove at his eyelids the man opened them +and lay staring up into the sky's opalescence. For a long minute they +probed the marbled colour depths uncomprehendingly, then turned to find +the rim of the iron mountains to the east. Comprehension came at last; +with it a distorted memory image of hours of madness and wandering, +agony of thirst, despair pressing upon footsteps that carried nowhere. +Sleep which had put a period to all this nightmare had also mercifully +rallied the man's nervous forces to a new effort of self-saving. Men +die hard because the instinct locked up in their sub-conscious minds +always prevails over surrender of the conscious will. + +The Doc lifted an arm to shield his eyes and felt something sinuous +slide off his body. An instant his heart was chilled, for the feeling +was of a desert serpent trailing over his form. He dared lift his head +ever so little and let his eyes rove down his body. A queer something, +not snake, lay in a curve by his side; a pallid, root-like thing the +size of a man's wrist at one end and tapering to a stringy point. He +raised himself on his elbow and drew the vegetable serpent to him. Just +as he did so his eyes discovered the prints of a man's feet in the sand +by where he lay. + +"Glory be!" came the croak from stiffened lips, and the Doc +concentrated all his scattered wits on an examination of the prodigy. +Yes, footprints. They came from behind him; they were printed in a +semi-circle about him to mark where one had stood hesitantly looking +down at him while he slept; they marched off in line with their +approach straight toward the tawny mountains ringing the northern +horizon. + +Guadalupe's footprints--the trail he had followed and lost the day +before! So Stooder thought. + +A great sense of security pushed through the daze in his brain. Here, +at last, lay the way to salvation. That thought having been duly +relished, he turned his attention once more to the mysterious vegetable +whip by his side. He never had seen its like. How it came to be there +he had no notion. The thing was unlike any desert growth in his +experienced observation, wherefore it seemed to represent some prodigy +of the desert god dropped by him for a purpose. + +He gripped the heavier end of the root between his hands and gave it +a twist. The thing broke like an over-ripe radish and a thin spurt of +water shot from the severed ends. Greedily he thrust one stump into +his mouth and clamped his jaws upon it. Gracious fluid, mildly acrid, +drenched the parchment-like membranes of his throat. The Doc sighed +once, then wolfed the whole stub of the root he had broken off. As the +pulp was swallowed he felt immediate access of strength and sanity. + +From somewhere deep in the corroded heart of him welled an emotion +whose like he had not known during all the years of his warped and +weathered manhood. As if a child prompted him the gaunt, half-naked +creature on the sands lifted his eyes to the glowing blue. + +"Thanks, dear God!" + +So the sardonic genius of the waste places permitted the cloak of +divinity to fall upon Ygnacio, fugitive and murderer, for that a +surprising charity had prompted him to pause in the night by a raving +man, divide with him his slender store of insurance against death, then +pass on. + +The root-of-the-sands which Stooder half devoured quickly restored him +to something like the normal. Gone were the deliriums that had dogged +him those hours of horror. He heard no longer the ghost bells of the +Lost Mission summoning him to treasure buried in the bleak mountains +yonder. Rational thought was his after all the wanderings in Bedlam. He +mapped his strategy against the ever-present menace of the desert. + +Here were Guadalupe's tracks--the Papago hound; wait till he could get +hands on the devil! Of course they would lead to the village of the +Sand People on the edge of El Infiernillo. Well and good; but that +might still be a long way ahead. Could he make it just on what was +left of this mysterious root? About one chance in ten; and the old Doc +wasn't taking any more chances. What then? + +Why, follow the tracks back to the stalled auto. Water might be there. +Surely were cans of tomatoes--about a dozen of 'em. A dozen tomato cans +would carry him a hundred miles on foot; he knew because he'd drunk +uncooked canned tomatoes many a time--food and drink in small compass. +All right; follow the tracks back to the auto, rest up a bit and then +get a fresh start back over those same tracks and straight into the +Sand People's rancheria. + +Stooder wrapped the precious remains of his giant radish in a strip of +his shirt and started back over the line of blue shadow cups in the +sand. As he laboured through the heavy going he reviewed all he could +remember of yesterday's terrors, and a great fear began to build in +the back of his mind. Fear of the leagues upon leagues of blank space +about him--land unchanged by time since the waters of a great sea were +withdrawn into a shallow cup now called the Gulf. Fear of latent forces +which lurked in the naked mountains all about, in the ghostly mirage +which stretched vain beauties before his eyes. Over-mastering all was a +corroding fear of his own body. + +The Doc's trained intelligence was functioning with deadly precision. +It separated his mind from the rest of his being, counting the mind as +a rider and the body the beast it rode. The rider willed that the beast +carry it to a certain destination; did that beast stumble and fall the +rider could cry out never so furiously but it would be lost. And that +burden-bearer of the mind was capable of just so much. Its tissues +and sinews were kept functioning by water and food. So much water and +so much food gave so many foot-pounds of energy; no more. Inexorable +mathematics! + +When sweat began to trickle down into his eyes Stooder could not +repress a shudder. Lost! Water lost from his body. The desert +greasewood is wise enough to coat all its leaves and little stems with +creosote to trick evaporation; the big _sahuaro_ shows only the edges +of its accordion flutings to the sun and greases them with paraffin; +man yields water like a stranded jellyfish. + +Better take another chew on that water-root dingus to make up for sweat +lost. Better give the old pulse a feel to see how it's runnin'. + +The sun swam dizzily at meridian so that the footprints the Doc +followed were hard to see--mere shallow spoon marks. On and on towards +the south! + +What was that thing moving over yonder in that bunch of saltbush? Yes, +sir, moving!--A coyote, by th' eternal!--Naw, coyotes weren't white +like this animal; coyotes were a mangy yellow.--But, by criminy! this +thing had the looks of a coyote--sharp nose and baggy tail half way +'tween its hind legs, skulkin' like.--An albino coyote! Lookit! Eyes +pinky like a white rabbit.--Whoever heard of an albino coyote? + +No phantom of the imagination that slinking, dirty-white creature which +matched its pace to the Doc's on parallel course through the low lying +scrub. The desert Ishmael trotted along with a foolish air of being +strictly about its own business, as if no other creature were in sight. +When Stooder stopped to bawl curses at it the albino thing halted and +made a great pretence of snouting at a flea bite, utterly oblivious +to his presence. A fragment of dead bush-stock was hurled at it; the +coyote lifted a corner of his lip in a deprecatory smile but did not +abate his casual trot. + +"Huh, you mangy bag o' bones! Think you're goin' have a feed off'n me, +do you? Well, I'm tellin' you, you got a mighty long tromp ahead!" + +On through the desert slogged the man and on trotted the freaky animal +whose colour made him outcast even from his own kind. These twain alone +under the hot sky: two mites of life in a land of death, each blindly +following the call of every life cell in him to live--live! + +What had been a piled-up cloud of blue and faint rose to the south +when the Doc started his hike had unfolded hour by hour into definite +form. Little by little pinnacles sharp as ice splinters lifted from a +mountain mass and detached mountains with their tops blown off stood +against the horizon like truncated columns of an acropolis. Here were +the mazes of the Pinacate, raw shards of volcanoes and wilderness of +lava flows down by the Gulf sandhills; country so fire-scarred and +forbidding that even the Indian nomads give it wide berth. Only the +big-horn sheep possess it, living no man knows how. + +The undeviating trend of the trail southward towards this ragged mass +had perplexed Stooder when first he became conscious of it. The auto +should be lying somewhere off to eastward if he didn't miss his guess; +those mountains ahead were strange to him. But he could not know how +far nor where he had wandered the day before; even though he thought +long since he should have come upon a second line of footprints--his +own--running along with those of the Papago, yet there was no denying +he was following the right trail back to the auto and the cached +tomatoes. There sure could not be two lines of footprints here in this +least-travelled part of Altar. + +So ran the mind of him whom the mocking Gog and Magog of the desert's +diarchy had put on a false trail to desolation. Deeper and deeper into +a waterless scrap-heap of forgotten ages his steps took him. And the +albino coyote was his aloof companion. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +INTO THE FURNACE + + +Meanwhile from another direction adventurers were moving through the +night upon the slag mountains of Pinacate. Empty space of Altar's +ultimate sweep was become almost populous. A strange company this, +which passed ghostily under the great lights of the near stars with +only the clink of bridle metal and pack mule's canteens to give tempo +to the march; Benicia O'Donoju, the desert girl, moved to this risky +hazard by compulsion of an incubus of fate visited upon her through +inheritance down the generations of her people; Grant Hickman, man +of cities and crowds, whom destiny had whirled out into a country of +the world's dawn; Bagley the Arizonan, taker of chances, seeker after +rainbow ends; and the two Papagoes, Quelele and El Doctor Coyote Belly, +on whom was spread thin the veneer of so-called civilization. + +It had been Benicia's mastering purpose that had moved the cavalcade +away from the Casa O'Donoju and out onto the desert immediately upon +the return of Bim and Quelele reporting the leisurely approach of +Colonel Urgo and his rurales. This was not flight, she told Bim; +they would go in search of the treasure of the Lost Mission whose +hiding place the old medicine man was willing to reveal, and if Urgo +followed--well, eventualities could be met as they arose. In this +resolve Grant had strongly seconded her. The girl's slavery under the +obsession of the bane of El Rojo, especially following the slaying of +her father, had laid an impenetrable barrier between her and him; he +had seized upon this possibility promising her emancipation from this +horror. This chance failing, he had but the last desperate recourse. + +The first hour of their pilgrimage away from the desert oasis Grant +rode by Benicia's side. He essayed to distract her thoughts from the +tragedy that lay behind by questioning her on the revelations El Doctor +had made: how had the old Indian come by knowledge of the buried gold +and pearls; what impulse had led him to promise their restoration? But +the girl was not to be drawn. She answered his queries by evasions +or meaningless monosyllables. It was as if Grant were a stranger, +impudently prying. + +At first the man was stung by this treatment. His self-pride rebelled +against so arbitrary a closing of the door of confidence against him. +Why should he be treated thus cavalierly when the girl had surely read +the great love he bore her and his single desire to place himself +between her and the menace of one who had prompted murder? But these +hurts did not continue long. Riding by Benicia's side in the starshine, +the man began to feel the emanations of a mastering will which poured +from her as the pungent prickles of ozone surround a high-power dynamo. +Her consciousness was frozen into a mould of purpose, locked against +any distractions. Benicia was alive only to the single resolve to free +herself from the curse of the Red One. Man nor spirit could invade that +preoccupation. + +There under the steady-burning desert lamps the man of the cities +began to feel again that spell of the infinite which had chained him +the night of Don Padraic's passing. Here was he, lately denizen of a +hive of stone and steel, tiny integer in that man-made machine called +a metropolis, moving through the darkness over a land unsullied by +hand of man since the floods of melting glaciers drove a shadowy +race of stone-axe people back to the highlands. The loves and hates, +the battles and deaths of these stone-axe folk occurred but yesterday +in the time-sheet of the waste places. The to-morrow of ten thousand +years would find the desert still untouched, supine under the stars. +What then of hidden baubles of gold; what then of the love of a Grant +Hickman for a Benicia O'Donoju? A fossil snail shell by the shore of +the gulf left a more enduring record. + +"The thing that's sorta got me fussed is how I'm goin' explain all +this to the old Doc." Bim's voice broke through Grant's contemplation +of shadowy frontiers; he noted with a start that his horse had dropped +behind Benicia's and was ambling head-and-head with his friend's. Bim +drawled on: + +"It sure will look like a double-cross to Stooder--my sailin' off down +into Sonora on the search for you an' then hooking up with an outfit to +go get all the plunder the old Doc thinks he's as good as got his hands +on. Me, I guess I'm queered all right," was the man's whimsical finish +to his lament. Grant, who had been too preoccupied with the sweep of +affairs to give any thought to his pal's perplexities, could not now +offer much consolation. A point of honour involving the grotesque +creature who had elected to receive him as a book agent did not greatly +move Grant. + +"A' course," Bim continued his monologue, "the way things lie with the +girl, her bein' hipped on gettin' back this swag somebody in her family +lifted from the mission, I'm more'n willing to see her get it. But the +old Doc hasn't got a large store of what you might call sentiment, an' +I sure got my work cut out for me when I try to show him the light." + +"Too bad I got you into a tangle, old man," Grant heartily commiserated; +then with a hopeless little laugh, "My own affairs aren't set on any +straight and beautiful road to happiness either." + +Bim chuckled deep in his throat. "Me, I was all for your first idea +to rope the senorita right outa the home corral an' put your brand on +her, fighting. But like's not we'll get _mucho_ plenty excitement along +this trail before we're through." He gave a short laugh. "Say, Cap'n +Hickman, I brought you out from the East on a whale of a proposition. +You're sure getting it. A girl who assays higher'n any pearls an' old +gold junk you could find in a church cellar--the feel and savvy of a +man's country--a larrupin' fight with old Urgo and his rurales bunch. +That last you can back right down to your last white chip." + +"But how can Urgo follow us from the O'Donoju house?" incredulously +from Grant. "Not one of the servants or other Indians there knows what +our destination is--we don't ourselves except in a general way." + +The man of the big country chuckled at metropolitan innocence. "Horses +don't leave tracks on your Fifth Avenoo because they's no horses left +there for one thing, I reckon. But in this country they do. Five horses +make a trail a blind man could follow. I or anybody else could track +this outfit of ours in the dark. I look to see our li'l friend Urgo +drop in on us some time to-morrow. He'll travel fast with fresh horses +his men round up at the O'Donoju corrals." + +They rode some time in silence, Grant turning over in his mind this +unthought-of possibility. Tenderfoot that he was--so he accused +himself--he had noted the carbines slung in scabbards at each +saddlehorn; noted with an unreading eye. So Benicia and all the others +had provided against a contingency he had not even suspected. + +"Only thing I'm figgerin' in this proposition," he heard Bim saying, +"is, will the Papagoes stick under fire? Papagoes are not strong for +the knock-down-an'-drag-out stuff. An', besides, you're not a whole man +yet." + +"Whole enough to keep my end up," Grant said shortly, knowing not why +he resented any imputation of disability against him. + +"Oh, sure--sure!" the other hurriedly amended, and the subject died. + +Dawn spread a ghostly panorama before them. In the greeny-white light +that heralds the sun's first ruddiness the whole western horizon bulked +with black masses of slag heaped in fantastic shapes. High above the +lesser masses towered the two peaks of Pinacate, their summits yawning +in wide craters. The horses' hoofs struck sparks from lava aprons; the +beasts had to pick their way carefully over traps and crevices. Ever +and again grey arms of cactus struck out to rake the riders' legs with +claws of thorns. + +Waxing light filled in details of a phantom land, terrific in stark +brutalities of scarp and battlement--a world just set aside from the +baking-oven of the Potter and unadorned by a single brush stroke. The +little company of horsemen threaded single file up a narrow gorge +between the main peaks of the range. Walls of porphyry and slag the +colour of furnace clinkers leaped to heights on either side which +dwarfed the riders to the stature of weevils. The trail they followed +was the path cut by the rushing waters of summer cloudbursts, which +pack into the downpour of minutes' duration all the water denied +during months of drought; great blocks of fused glass and conglomerate +wrenched from the canyon's eaves by the fingers of these storms choked +the way. Where capfuls of soil had been caught and held in some pocket +the gaunt sticks of the _ocatilla_ splayed out against raw rock like +cat's whiskers. Low-lying _cholla_, that spined and vicious vegetable +tarantula of the desert, seemed to grow from the very rock; all its +nodules were frosty with close-set thorns. Over all dropped the veil of +mystical morning radiance. + +The horses groaned as they had to choose, minute by minute, between +barking their hocks on the knife-like corners of obsidian or taking +the barbs of the _cholla_. The higher the ascent the savager grew +the way. Grant, awed by this penetration into the very laboratory of +earth, almost leaped from his saddle when a sharp clatter of small +pebbles to his right broke the silence. His eyes jumped up the canyon +wall to follow three dots of bounding dun-white against its sheer +side--bighorn sheep skipping surely along no visible foothold. + +When the sun was well in the sky--though naught but its reflected +radiance penetrated the gorge--El Doctor, in the lead, signalled a +halt. The place was a constricted apron or shelf in the cleft between +rock walls whereon sparse galetta grass was growing. Reason for this +tiny oasis of vegetation lay just beyond in the fact of a water-worn +cistern in the lava--such a natural reservoir as the desert folk +called a "tank," a godsend when it still contains the wash from a last +cloudburst. This one was bone-dry. + +The party breakfasted meagrely, wood for their coffee fire being +grubbed by the Indians painfully and after long search. There was +little speech between them for they were tired; the night's ride had +been wearing. Moreover, even the Indians appeared to feel a malign +presence bearing down upon them and forbidding desecration of the +silence. For them, in especial for Coyote Belly, there was a very real +and fear-compelling presence abroad. These mountains of Tjuktoak housed +Iitoi, Elder Brother himself; the god of all things who, with a coyote +and a black beetle, drifted four times round the earth in the time of +the Flood and came to anchorage in this place. El Doctor Coyote Belly, +driven by a great love to commit sacrilege, might well have heard the +voice of Iitoi in the wind and felt his heart turn to water. + +In truth, the aged Papago was having a battle with himself. Before +he had gulped his coffee and tortillas the medicine man's eyes were +roaming fearsomely and he whimpered snatches of sacerdotal songs as +he rummaged in the pack for a wicker basket. From it he took a wand +stained red and with an eagle's feather bound to one end, an arrow very +handsomely feathered from the same bird, a string of glass beads and a +bundle of cigarettes--presents for Elder Brother, who must be beguiled +before being robbed. + +The old man's hands wavered to return the presents to the basket when +Benicia hurried to him, sat down by his side and earnestly pleaded with +him in his own tongue. Finally his resolution seemed to be brought to +the sticking point. He started up the gorge alone and with his basket +of trifles. + +"Coyote Belly says he must go and sing to the god Iitoi before we are +permitted to visit his house," Benicia gravely explained to her white +companions. "The poor man is desperately scared because we have come +to rob Elder Brother." + +Seeing the look of puzzlement on the men's faces she continued with +that same grave respect as if speaking of a real presence. "This old +man through the love he bore my father has consented to betray a secret +the medicine men of his people have handed down for more than a hundred +years. The treasure of the Lost Mission, he tells me, was dug up by +Papago medicine men not long after the Mission was destroyed by the +Apaches and brought to these mountains--to the cave of Elder Brother--" + +"And it's all here now?" Bim put in excitedly. The girl nodded. + +"It has been as well hidden from those who sought it as if it were +under the buried ruins of the mission," she said; then simply: "While +El Doctor is gone it is best that we get some sleep." + +Benicia stretched herself under the shade of a rock with a saddle +blanket for pillow and slept. But neither of the white men could follow +her precept; both were too sensible of the prickling of some unnameable +essence of the strange and the unworldly--perhaps that very savagery of +atmosphere which had prompted primitive Indians to designate Pinacate +as the residence of their god. They were alone; big Quelele had quietly +slipped away shortly after El Doctor without saying where he was going. + +The men sat smoking while their eyes roved the prospect of burnt cliff +and ragged parapet. The heat had whips; it drove them to burrow for +lessening shade wherever angles of the rocks offered. A curious cast to +the slice of sky visible above the canyon walls first caught Bagley's +attention. He squinted up at it for a long moment of speculation. + +"If it wasn't so early in the summer I'd say a thunderhead was fixin' +up to give us a big razoo," he ventured. Grant looked up and noted that +the blue had turned to a heavy saffron tint as if the sun were shining +through a stratum of light sand; such a tint he'd seen before the great +windstorm on the day of Don Padraic's burial. + +"If I could only look over the top of the wall yonder to west'ard," Bim +grumbled uneasily. "These cloudbursts always come from direction of the +Gulf. We're not very well put right here in the channel of all the wash +down from up top-side. Those horses now--" + +He walked uneasily about the narrow confines of the shelf, scanning +the upshoots of rock for possible ways out. Then he seemed to dismiss +possibility of trouble from his mind and returned to where Grant was +sitting. + +An hour passed. Perhaps they were dozing when the rattle of a shower +of rock down the canyon side galvanized both. Up there they saw the +figure of big Quelele. Like a wild goat he was leaping from foothold to +foothold downward; he was in mad haste. + +The big Indian risked his neck a dozen times before he came panting up +to the watchers. He waved to the brink of the cliff. + +"I been on top--watching--I see long way off--Urgo--rurales. They +come--fast!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +STORM + + +Bim translated Quelele's intelligence for Grant. "Our li'l friend +Urgo's been burnin' the wind," was his dry comment. Grant sent a quick +glance around the cul-de-sac of rock which encompassed them. + +"Not the best place in the world to stand off ten men," he gave his +opinion. "We ought to get our backs up against something that can't be +surrounded." + +Quelele read the white man's thoughts, for he pointed farther up the +canyon beyond the lava cistern. There the gorge narrowed to a veritable +doorway and the steps thereto were so precipitous that one ascending +would have to scramble and claw a way on hands and knees; no possible +chance for a rush en masse. Bim surveyed the natural citadel with the +eye of a trained Border man who occasionally has to reckon with such +elementals as the killing power of a rifle bullet and the protective +quality of a 'dobe wall. Finally he screwed one eye at the crack of +sky showing between the escarpments and shook his head dubiously at +what he saw there. Quelele, who had had the superior advantage of a +wider view from his aerie on the cliff top, bowed his arms in the shape +of a ball and waved a hand to the west. + +"Papago says it's a big storm brewing over yonder," Bim explained. +"When these thunderheads finally get all boiled into one and come +a-runnin' it's a case of take to cover. If this thing is the regulation +rim-fire sock-dollager they's goin' be a sight of water pass over where +we're standin' before long. Me, I'd rather be somewhere else than in +this dry channel." + +Grant did not linger to discuss strategy longer. He went to where +Benicia was sleeping in the shade of a boulder and gently touched her +on the shoulder. The girl sat up, startled. + +"We have to be moving," Grant told her. "Quelele has just reported Urgo +and his rurales out on the desert and coming our way." + +"And El Doctor?" she quickly interposed. "He has returned from the +cave?" + +Grant shook his head. Bitter disappointment flashed into her eyes at +the realization of how fate had played to interpose the grim business +of a fight just on the minute of realization of her great hopes. Grant, +stooping beside her and watching the play of emotions on her features, +saw quick remorse chase away the frown. Impulsively a brown hand +reached out to play upon the back of his. + +"Grant, beloved"--how like the overtones from her own golden harp +the contralto richness of her voice!--"I am desperately selfish and +you will not understand.--Thinking only of my own purpose--bringing +you with your wound still unhealed out to this place to face--death +perhaps.--And you do this for me--" + +"'Nicia, little girl--" He could go no farther than those words, for +the song in his heart was overwhelming. At last--at last the trammels +of the girl's heart were shaken off and the call he'd waited for so +long had come! Call of the heart of her to his. + +She was on her feet, vibrant with energy, alive to the exigencies of +impending action. Bim was saddling the horses and Quelele had the pack +on the mule when they joined them. Bim briefly explained to the girl +his survey of the gorge for strategical strength; at any cost they must +move up until they could find some sheep trail or other practicable +ledge giving escape from the flood water channel. "If that doddering +old medicine man would only quit his sing-song business and come back +for a rifle we'd be that much better off," the big fellow grumbled. + +When all was in readiness Quelele led the way up the tortuous +watercourse and through the mighty gates of porphyry nearly blocking +the farther reaches. They were forced to lead the animals, whose +sure-footedness was put to the test every yard of the advance. Beyond +the great pillars the gorge opened to a rough amphitheatre with less +steeply sloping sides. A narrow upward-springing ledge of rock led +away from the dry watercourse to a rock pulpit some seventy-five or a +hundred feet above. This they followed, to discover there was space for +their horses to stand behind the horn of malapais and still be screened +from observation from below. Quelele made some mysterious passes with +a tether rope which yoked all the animals to a single line that was +anchored at both ends. + +"Look," Benicia cried as Bim was taking the carbines from the saddle +scabbards. They followed her pointing hand and saw a dark spot against +the opposite wall of the gorge and higher than their level. A midget +figure was outlined against the opening of a cave. It was El Doctor +at his business of propitiating Elder Brother--El Doctor, much needed +behind the stock of a carbine. The men hallooed to him but he did not +turn. + +"Go over and get that crazy fool," Bim commanded Quelele. But the big +Indian, instead of obeying immediately, turned up the ledge and made +for a high point on the shoulder of the rock bastion constituting one +of the portals of the upper gorge. They watched him as he scaled the +almost perpendicular face of black lava. From the top Quelele had a +view of the canyon's far-away exit onto the desert floor several miles +from the niche where the treasure seekers had refuge. The watchers saw +him lift himself cautiously over the top of his lookout and peer to +westward. Then he came scrambling and sliding down. + +"They come into the valley," the Papago reported. "Too late to get El +Doctor." + +It was Bim with his desert craft who made disposition of the little +force of defence. Quelele he sent back to the aerie with orders not to +shoot until he heard shots from the whites; the Indian's fire from the +rear, once Urgo and his men had passed the rocky portals, would throw +the rurales into confusion. Grant and Benicia he disposed behind an +outcrop of porphyry a little behind and above the protected animals. + +"Pick 'em off as they come through the Gate," he suggested. "An' don't +try any fancy shooting; we haven't got any too many cartridges." + +"But you--?" Benicia began. The Arizonan grinned broadly. + +"Me, I always fancy a little solo game in this sort of rukus. I'm going +on t'other side of the gulch. Cross-fire, you sabe?" He left them with +a smile on his lips, and they watched him jumping lightly down from +rock to rock. Almost before he had begun to clamber up the opposite +wall he was lost to view amid the maze of fissure and castellated +boulder. Grant and the girl were stretched out behind their primitive +breastwork alone in this unfinished world of fire. They could see +neither Quelele nor Bagley. Came to their ears the faint drone of +barbaric song: El Doctor Coyote Belly at his traitorous devotions. + +The whole gorge was filled with a saffron glare like the reflection +from oil fires under a boiler, unworldly, portentous. + +They waited, these two, in the immensity of earth's disgorged bowels. +Side by side, elbows touching, they counted the slow drag of minutes as +naught in the balance against the deep joy of love militant. + +A stir in the bed of the dry wash below them. Up went their carbines +with cheeks laid against wood and eyes sighting along the lances of +light. Again the stir down there. A gaunt figure rose from hand and +knees to its feet, stood swaying for an instant, then pitched forward +against the support of a slab of rock. + +A very leprechaun of the rocks was it: ribs creasing burned skin about +the naked torso; whity-grey hair streaming down to mingle with a beard; +bare arms like a spider's legs and all cracked by the sun. The husk of +Doc Stooder, plaything of the desert god, was come here, following the +still living spark of instinct prompting a water search in a canyon. +Come, too, to the secret hiding place of the treasure whose glitter had +so mercilessly befooled him. + +Grant, stupefied by the apparition of death and failing in any +recognition of the skeleton thing as the bibulous doctor of Arizora, +suspected a trick of Urgo. Again he laid his eye along his rifle sight, +vigilant for what might ensue. The creature spread-eagled against the +rock slowly pushed itself upright with its hands; its shaggy head +turned wearily as thirsting eyes scanned the dry chasm. + +Then a shout from across the gorge. Bagley had leaped from his hiding +place and was rushing precariously down to succour the ghost. Just as +he reached Stooder and had thrown an arm about him to heave his wasted +form onto a shoulder the crack of a rifle shivered the gorge's silence. +Rock dust spurted within a foot of the rescuer. + +The sun went out that second--instantly, like a powerful incandescent +switched off. A yellow penumbra tinged the darkness. + +Almost as one the rifles of Grant and Benicia jetted lead. Two more +shots from the dry wash. The giant figure of Bagley with Stooder limp +over one shoulder never faltered in its leaping and scrambling up the +declivity to the shelter he had quitted. The two who had been following +his flight with stilled hearts saw him disappear behind a great rock; +an instant and a jet of fire lanced down thence at the attackers by the +Gate. + +A blob of rain large as a Mexican dollar smacked on Benicia's hand +as she pumped the ejector--another and a third. Then the gorge was +blasted by a thunder shock amid the peaks, and a stab of lightning +painted the whole pit sulphurous blue. By its flash the defenders saw +scurrying figures leaping from rock to rock in the stream bed. Quelele, +the quick of eye, fired his first shot by the light of storm fire; one +of the rurales went down like a wet sack. + +A second stunning burst of thunder which knocked out the underpinning +of the sky. Then deluge. + +It was not rain that fell; it was solid water in sheets and cones which +hissed with the speed of its descent. Water so compacted that it was +like a river on edge, engulfing. With it the almost continuous quiver +and jerk of electrical flame. The gorge was become a watery hell. More +than that, for Urgo and his men in the wash it threatened momentarily +to be their tomb. Already a white streak of foam in the lightning +flashes marked where the once bone-dry watercourse was changing +character. + +The rurales and their leader found the odds all of a sudden snatched +from their hands by this frenzied ally of the hunted girl and her +supporters. They had come eleven against five, with their quarry caught +in a hole in the Pinacate sierra; before the cloudburst had endured +three minutes Urgo realized he had let himself and his men into a fatal +trap. Their horses, confidently left behind them in the lower reaches +of the gorge, must already have stampeded under the lash of the storm. +Spiteful rifle flashes from both sides came with each baleful flicker +of fire from the sky to deny escape from the rising waters up either +wall of the chasm. + +Now a dull roaring above the waterfall of the rain began to fill the +gash in the sierra. Away back at the head of the gorge and where the +slope from the twin volcano peaks shed water as from steep roofs +into this common trough, a solid wall, capped dull white, came with +the speed of a meteor down and down through the channel in the +living rock. It rolled boulders the size of box-cars in its flood; a +chevaux-de-frise of barbed cactus and scrub trees tumbled at its crest. + +Even above the tumult of the deluge sounded the shrill alarm of the +rurales as they broke position and turned to flee through the Gate. But +already the flood was there, choking egress. They must scramble up the +sides of the gorge like rats from a flooded hold; they must grope and +cling by every illuminating flash of blue fire, waiting to see where +the next handhold lay, how near the hungry yellow waters rushed. + +With Grant and the girl was nothing but security. Unprotected, they +had bent their heads to the pounding mallets of water. When the firing +abruptly ceased at the rush of their attackers for safety Grant heard +the scream of a horse near at hand and remembered their tethered +animals. Should they break away in their fright the plight of all five +would be a desperate one. + +"Stay here!" he shouted in Benicia's ear. "Going to the horses!" + +Grant crawled and groped his way over the slippery rocks, each seeming +to be alive with the film of rushing water across it. He clambered down +and to the right until he came to the pulpit rock behind which the +beasts had been tethered by Quelele. The mule he found down, hopelessly +noosed in his hobble rope and slowly strangling; the horses were +huddled, tails to the storm, dripping and dejected. + +It took several minutes' precarious work to get the pack-animal to +his feet and freshly tethered. Then Grant began the retreat to the +breastwork where he had left the girl. It was largely a matter of +guesswork. Once he found himself against an unscalable wall and had to +retrace his steps. Another time one foot slipped and he caught himself +with his body halfway over the brink. + +A flash of lightning showed him two rifles lying side by side on a +ledge below him--his rifle and Benicia's; but the girl was gone. The +fist of fear smote him terrifically. + +He screamed her name above the bellowing of the flood in the wash. No +answer. He ran along the ledge that had been theirs until he came to a +downward terrace; to that he leaped and along its blind way he fumbled. +Came the ghost of a scream, thin above the diapason all about. His +name--"Grant!" + +Then merciful lightning blazed blue and he saw. Below him on a broad +shelf which overhung the whiteness of the torrent two figures, +glistening like seals, were locked--they swayed. + +The man launched himself blindly out and down. He rolled; he slipped +and wallowed against and under great boulders. At the end of seconds +seeming aeons he came to the rock apron where he had seen the struggling +shapes. Sound of stertorous breathing guided him. He rose from his +knees before Benicia and another, who was trying to drag her along the +ledge. A revealing flash of fire gave him just a glimpse of a weasel +face--Colonel Urgo. + +Not so much rage as loathly horror of an unclean thing sped furious +summons to every muscle spring in his body. With his shoulder planted +against the Spaniard's chest for a leverage Grant tore loose the man's +grip from Benicia. Before he could whirl to shift his attack Urgo +had screamed an oath and was on the American's back, legs twining to +cumber Grant's thighs, both hands clamped about his throat. It was the +catamount's attack. + +The first impact of his antagonist's weight nearly over-balanced Grant +and precipitated both into the maelstrom of waters not six feet below +their ledge. But, steadying himself, the American suddenly launched +backward, pinning the lighter body on his back against a wall of rock. +It was a terrific smash. Urgo's breath came in a whistle from it. His +hands sank deeper into the muscles about Grant's throat, closing his +windpipe. Deliberately the standing man took a few forward steps, +then swiftly back against the wall again. An elbow of rock found the +Spaniard's ribs and cracked two. He shrieked. + +Now Grant's hands went up to lock behind the head that sagged over his +right shoulder. Strength of desperation flooded into his arms, for the +weaker man had him throttled. Urgo must release his hold on Grant's +throat or suffer a broken neck. The constricting hands slackened their +grip ever so little. Grant bowed his shoulders, gave a mighty heave +and swept the Colonel's body over his shoulder in a wide arc. The man +sprawled, arms wide, through the air, struck the edge of the rocky +apron. He clawed--slipped--clawed again, and disappeared. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + +TREASURE TROVE + + +The storm ceased with the same suddenness as it began. Hardly an hour +had torrential waters lashed the cinder wastes of Pinacate when the +black pall over the heavens broke away and the sun came out to suck +hungrily at pools in the rocks. There was a headiness of wine in the +air, a smell of wet soil mingled with spicy emanations from greasewood +and _palo verde_. The desert's sparse growing things exulted in the +breaking of long drought. + +For a long time Grant and Benicia on their side of the gorge and Bim +in his retreat opposite lay hidden, awaiting possible renewal of the +attack which the storm had scattered. But the torrent that still raged +down the bottom of the gorge had washed clean every vestige of an +enemy. Quelele on his high post saw four scattered horsemen rushing +pell-mell for the gateway onto the desert--last vestige of Urgo's +rurales force, each man of which gave thanks to his patron saint that +he had come out of the hell in the mountain cul-de-sac with a whole +skin. + +Quelele also saw several specks dropping earthward from the clear +blue; specks which rapidly grew from the size of gnats to the spread +of small aeroplanes. King condors they, who had smelled a feast from +afar--loathsome birds with a wing spread covering the span of thirteen +feet. The coming of one of these foul creatures to his particular +banquet even the sharp eye of a Papago watcher could not discern, for +the scene was hidden from him by a shoulder of the canyon wall. + +A stunted _palo verde_ tree nearly stripped of its verdure by the whips +of the rain hung half-uprooted over the rapidly diminishing stream in +the wash. One branch had caught and held some flotsam from the high +flood, now clear of the water. Just a shapeless bundle of clothes, +lolling head, arms askew where broken bones had let inert flesh sag to +the current. Just a grim caricature of something which so recently had +walked in the pride of his imaginings. + +The condor flopped clumsily to a branch stub six feet distant from +the bundle of clothes, folded his great wings with a dry rustling of +feathers, blinked the red lids of his eyes to focus his vision for +expert inspection and studied the hank of cloth and flesh suspended +in the tree crotch. The thing which flood waters had brought stirred +slightly; eyes opened with a flutter. They met the critical gaze of the +feathered pariah on the stub. The condor acknowledged this unexpected +show of life on his banquet table by disturbed bobbings of the naked +yellow head--the skin on his poll was wrinkled as an old man's--and +a bringing of his off eye to bear around his sabre beak with the +skew-like movement of a hen sighting a worm. + +The wreck in the bundle of clothes opened his lips to scream but the +ghost of a groan came instead. It tried to lift a fending arm against +the abomination so near; the muscles tugged at broken bones. + +The condor appraised these manifestations of life carefully, weighed +them by contrast with his experiences with crippled sheep and helpless +calves. His talons stirred restlessly on the branch. First one, then +the other lifted from the bark, stretched and flexed. The king of the +higher airs was impatient. He spread his wings to balance him and +clumsily hopped a few feet nearer, craning his wattled neck anxiously. + +A shadow passed swiftly over the _palo verde_ tree. A quick upward +twist of the head gave the condor view of a putative and too-anxious +fellow guest at the bounty spread there. Greediness pushed him. He +spread his wings and hopped again-- + +Then the desert exacted with cruelty recompense for the cruelties +of Colonel Hamilcar Urgo. Abomination of his passing was meted him +according to the abominations of his own devising. + +An hour after the last rain drop the flood waters in the gorge had +dropped to permit of reunion between the erstwhile defenders of the +pass. Grant waded waist deep with Benicia in his arms; Bim, all smiles, +was stretching out a hand from the off-side rocks. + +"Well, folks all, looks like a pleasant time was enjoyed by all and +one!" The big Arizonan's spirits would permit of no more concrete +thanksgiving for a crisis passed. It was his way to find laughter +the only vehicle for suppressed emotions and whimsicalities the best +conveyance for thoughts which might sound "high-falutin'." The three +stood mute, their eyes telling one another things which might have come +flattened and blunted in speech. + +"See me welcome an old visitor just before the curtain went up on the +first act?" Bim turned to Grant, his eyes shining excitement. "Who +d'you think? Ole Doc Stooder!" Grant gasped in surprise. His pal's grin +faded as he added seriously: + +"Just about the end of his string, too. The rain sure saved +him--couldn't have lasted another hour--one chance in a thousand +brought him here where they's folks to look out for him--a friend, +even, to coddle him back to health." + +"No, not one chance in a thousand," Benicia caught him up with deep +seriousness in her voice. "It is the desert way--to play with destiny, +I mean, and seem to cause miracles.--But let me go to him if he needs +attention." She started forward, but Bim put out a staying hand. + +"I wouldn't, ma'am. The Doc's not a purty sight right now. His body's +just drinkin' in all the water that landed on him an' he's sorta +in a daze--doesn't say much of anything that makes sense. A little +food which I'm goin' to brew if I can find some dry sticks of wood +anywhere's round--" Simple charity dictated that Bim say no word of +conjecture as to what brought Stooder to the desert. He guessed full +well. + +El Doctor Coyote Belly seemed to be materialized from the rocks so +noiselessly had he approached the group. The old man's face was ashen; +unguessable terrors he had fought with and hardly conquered since last +the three had seen him standing in the yellow storm glare before the +cave of Elder Brother. + +"If my daughter will come now to the house of Iitoi," he said to the +girl in his native tongue, "she may take what Iitoi gives. The god has +expressed his displeasure by the storm--but he will give." + +Benicia turned and put a wordless question to Grant. They started +together to climb the precipitous rock ladder up the side of the gorge +wall, El Doctor leading. Thirty minutes' exhaustive effort brought them +to the approach of a high-roofed cavern into which the westering sun +laid a broad carpet of light. There in the shale before the cave mouth +were El Doctor's pitiful presents to the god--the arrow and prayer +stick wedged upright, the beads and tobacco in a small basket. The +whole ground about was littered with the shards of sacrificial pottery +and scraps of basketry. + +Benicia motioned to El Doctor to lead the way into the cave, but he +shook his head in emphatic negative. Then she gave Grant a strange +smile, almost that of a child who awaits revelation of a mystery. He +saw in deep pools of her eyes a transcendent joy made almost pain by +this moment of hope achieved. She held out her hand for him to take and +they entered the cave. + +When their eyes had become accustomed to the sudden transition from +glaring sunlight into gloom a faint glimmering at the far end of the +sunlight path guided them. Ankle-deep in the dust of ages they groped. +The glimmer waxed stronger. Suddenly Benicia stopped with a catching +of the breath. Grant stooped and lifted a heavy object from a niche of +rock, bringing it into the filtered stream of radiance. + +It was a golden monstrance, dust coated. Faint twinkles of light glowed +like firefly lamps from jewels set in the radii of a glory. A great +diamond above the crystal box caught fire from the sun. + +As Grant hastily bent to replace the sacred vessel his hand tipped the +edge of a shallow basket. From it rolled a stream of moonbeam fire out +into the zone of sunshine. Liquid globules of moon-glow, round and +pellucid as ice crystals, seductive as the shadowed whiteness of a +woman's throat: the green pearls of the Virgin stripped by the impiety +of El Rojo from the shrine of the Four Evangelists! + +Benicia slowly sank to her knees, words of prayer whispered from her +lips. Prayer of thankfulness and dedication of the lost treasure to the +sanctity of the Church. + +Grant felt his presence in this solemn moment was an intrusion. He +tip-toed back to the mouth of the cave and stood looking out. All the +wildness and the savagery of Altar's secret fane of the desert god lay +burning and glistening with wetness in the westering sun. The waning +torrent, sardonic gesture of plenty in this ultimate citadel of thirst, +splashed jewels against the lancing light. Here was a world of the +primordial--Creation arrested in its first hour. + +A hand touched his arm lightly. He turned to find Benicia standing +beside him. The sun wove an aura of vivid fire about her head. Her eyes +raised to his were swimming. + +"Now, heart of my heart," she whispered. And all the love fire in her +flamed from her lips. + + +THE END + + + + + Transcriber's Notes: + + --Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). + + --A Table of Contents has been provided for the convenience of the + reader. + + --Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected. + + --Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved. + + --Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved. + + --The author's em-dash and punctuation/endquote styles have been + retained. + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Dust of the Desert, by Robert Welles Ritchie + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DUST OF THE DESERT *** + +***** This file should be named 44691.txt or 44691.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/4/4/6/9/44691/ + +Produced by Donald Cummings and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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