Читать книгу The Treasure Trail: A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine - Ryan Marah Ellis - Страница 5

Two days later in the blue clear air of the Arizona morning a sage hen slipped with her young through the coarse grass by the irrigation ditch, and a flock of quail raised and fluttered before the quick rhythmic beat of a loping horse along the trail in the mesquite thicket.

The slender gallant figure of his rider leaned forward looking, listening at every turn, and at the forks of the trail where a clump of squat mesquite and giant sahuarro made a screen, she checked the horse, and held her breath.

“Good Pat, good horse!” she whispered. “They’ve got nothing that can run away from us. We’ll show them!”

Then a man’s quavering old voice came to her through the winding trail of the arroya. It was lifted tunefully insistent in an old-time song of the mining camps:

“We made it, Pat!” confided the girl grimly. “We made it. Quiet now–quiet!”

She peered out through the green mesquite as Captain Pike emerged from the west arroya on a gray burro, herding two other pack animals ahead of him into the south trail.

He rode jauntily, his old sombrero at a rakish angle, his eyes bright with enthusiasm supplied by that which he designated as a morning “bracer,” and his long gray locks bobbed in the breeze as he swayed in the saddle and droned his cheerful epic of the trail:

“Hi there! you Balaam–get into the road and keep a-going, you ornery little rat-tailed son-of-a-gun! Pick up your feet and travel, or I’ll yank out your back bone and make a quirt out of it! For–”

The confessor of superlative wickedness droned his avowal in diminishing volume as the burros pattered along the white dust of the valley road, then the curve to the west hid them, and all was silence but for the rustle of the wind in the mesquite and the far bay of Singleton’s hounds circling a coyote.

But Pat pricked up his ears, and lifted his head as if feeling rather than hearing the growing thud of coming hoofs. The girl waited until they were within fifty feet, when she pursed up her lips and whistled the call of the meadow lark. It sounded like a fairy bugle call across the morning, and the roan was halted quickly at the forks of the road.

“Howdy, señorita?” he called softly. “I can’t see you, but your song beats the birds. Got a flag of truce? Willing to parley with the enemy?”

Then she emerged, eyeing him sulkily.

“You were going without seeing me!” she stated with directness, and without notice of the quizzical smile of comradeship.

“Certainly was,” he agreed. “When I got through the scrap with your disciple of kultur, my mug didn’t strike me as the right decoration for a maiden’s bower. I rode out of the scrap with my scratches, taking joy and comfort in the fact that he had to be carried.”

“There was no reason for your being so–so brutal!” she decided austerely.

“Lord love you, child, I didn’t need a reason–I only wanted an excuse. Give me credit! I got away for fear I’d go loco and smash Singleton for interfering.”

“Papa Phil only did his duty, standing for peace.”

“Huh, let the Neutral League do it! The trouble with Singleton is he hasn’t brains enough to lubricate a balance wheel,–he can’t savvy a situation unless he has it printed in a large-type tract. Conrad was scared for fear I’d stumbled on a crooked trail of his and would tell the boss, so he beat me to it with the lurid report that I made an assault on him! This looks like it–not!” and he showed the slashes in his sombrero to make room for the blue banda around his head. “Suppose you tell that Hun of yours to carry a gun like a real hombre instead of the tools of a second-story man. The neighbors could hear a gun, and run to my rescue.”

The girl regarded his flippancy with disapproval.

“He isn’t my Hun,” she retorted. “I could worry along without him on our map,–but after all, I don’t know a single definite thing against him. Anyway, it’s decided I’ve got to go away somewhere to school and be out of the ranch squabbles. Papa Phil thinks I get in bad company out here.”

“Meaning me?”

“Well, he said Captain Pike was demoralizing to the youthful mind. He didn’t mention you. And Cap certainly did go the limit yesterday!”

“How so?”

“Well, he went to the Junction for his outfit stuff–”

“Yes, and never showed up at the adobe until the morning star was in the sky!”

“I know,” she confessed. “I went with him. We stayed to see a Hart picture at the theater, and had the time of our young lives. At supper I announced that I was going to adopt Cap as a grandfather,–and then of course he had to go and queer me by filling up on some rank whiskey he had smuggled in with the other food! My stars!–he was put to bed singing that he’d ‘Hang his harp on a willow tree, and be off to the wars again’–You needn’t laugh!”

But he did laugh, his blue eyes twinkling at her recital.

“You poor kid! You have a hard time with the disreputables you pick up. Sure they didn’t warn you against speaking to this reprobate?”

“Sure nothing!” was the boyish reply. “I was to be docked a month’s spending money if I dared go near Pedro Vijil’s adobe again while you were there, which was very foolish of Papa Phil!” she added judicially. “I reckon he forgot they tried that before.”

“And what happened?”

“I went down and borrowed double the amount from old Estevan, the trader at the Junction, and gave him an order against the ranch. Then Cap and I sneaked out a couple of three-year-olds and raced them down in the cottonwood flats against some colts brought down by an old Sierra Blanca Apache. We backed our nags with every peso, and that old brown murderer won! But Cap and I had a wonderful day while our coin lasted, and–and you were going away without saying good-bye!”

Kit Rhodes, who had blankly stated that he owned his horse and saddle and little beyond, looked at the spoiled plucky heiress of Granados ranches, and the laughter went out of his eyes.

She was beyond reason loveable even in her boyish disdain of restriction, and some day she would come back from the schools a very finished product, and thank the powers that be for having sent her out of knowledge of happy-go-lucky chums of the ranges.

Granados ranches had been originally an old Spanish grant reaching from a branch of the intermittent Rio Altar north into what is now Arizona, and originally was about double the size of Rhode Island. It was roughly divided into the home or hacienda ranch in Arizona, and La Partida, the cattle range portion, reaching far south into Sonora. Even the remnant of the grant, if intelligently managed, would earn an income satisfactory for a most extravagant princess royal such as its present chatelaine seemed to Rhodes.

But he had noted dubiously that the management was neither intelligent nor, he feared, square. The little rancherias scattered over it in the fertile valleys, were worked on the scratch gravel, ineffective Mexic method by the Juans and Pedros whose family could always count on mesquite beans, and camotes if the fields failed. There was seed to buy each year instead of raising it. There was money invested in farming machinery, and a bolt taken at will from a thresher to mend a plow or a buggy as temporarily required. The flocks of sheep on the Arizona hills were low grade. The cattle and horse outfits were south in La Partida, and the leakage was beyond reason, even in a danger zone of the border land.

All this Kit had milled around and around many times in the brief while he had ranged La Partida. A new deal was needed and needed badly, else Wilfreda Bernard would have debts instead of revenue if Singleton let things drift much longer. Her impish jest that she was a damsel in distress in need of a valiant knight was nearer to truth than she suspected. He had an idiotic hungry desire to be that knight, but his equipment of one horse, one saddle, and one sore head appeared inadequate for the office.

Thus Kit Rhodes sat his horse and looked at her, and saw things other than the red lips of the girl, and the chiding gray eyes, and the frank regret at his going.

It was more profitable not to see that regret, or let it thrill a man in that sweet warm way, especially not if the man chanced to be a drifting ranger. She was only a gallant little girl with a genius for friendships, and her loyalty to Pike extended to Pike’s chum–that was what Rhodes told himself!

“Yes,” he agreed, “I was going without any tooting of horns. No use in Cap Pike and me hanging around, and getting you in bad with your outfit.”

“As if I care!” she retorted.

“You might some day,” he said quietly. “School may make a lot of difference; that, and changed surroundings for a year or two. But some day you will be your own manager, and if I’m still on the footstool and can be of service–just whistle, señorita.”

“Sure!” she agreed cheerfully. “I’ll whistle the lark call, and you’ll know I need you, so that’s settled, and we’ll always be–be friends, Trail-hunter.”

“We’ll always be friends, Lark-child.”

“I wanted Cap Pike to let me in on this prospecting trip, wanted to put in money,” she said rather hesitant, “and he turned me down cold, except for a measly ten dollars, ‘smoke money’ he called it. I reckon he only took that to get rid of me, which I don’t call friendly, do you? And if things should go crooked with him, and he–well–sort of needs help to get out, you’ll let me know, won’t you?”

“Yes, if it seems best,” he agreed, “but you won’t be here; you’ll be shipped to a school, pronto!”

“I won’t be so far off the map that a letter can’t reach me. Cap Pike won’t ever write, but I thought maybe you–”

“Sure,” agreed Rhodes easily. “We’ll send out a long yell for help whenever we get stuck.”

She eyed him darkly and without faith.

“Wish I knew how to make that certain,” she confessed. “You’re only dodging me with any kind of a promise to keep me quiet, just as Cap did. I know! I’m jealous, too, because you’re taking a trail I’ve always wanted to take with Cap, and they won’t let me because I’m a girl.”

“Cheer up! When you are boss of the range you can outfit any little pasear you want to take, but you and I won’t be in the same class then, Lark-child.”

“Are you really going it blind, trailing with Cap into the Painted Hills after that fascinating gold legend?” she demanded. “Or have you some inside trail blazed for yourself? Daddy Pike is the best ever, but he always goes broke, and if he isn’t broke, he has a jug at his saddle horn, so–”

“Oh it’s only a little jug this time, and he’s had a fare-you-well drink out of it with everyone in sight, so there’s only one hilarious evening left in the jug now. Just enough for a gladsome memory of civilization.”

“Are you in deep on this prospect plan?” she persisted.

“Well, not that you could notice. That is, I’ve got a three months’ job offered me down at Whitely’s; that will serve the captain as headquarters to range from until we add to our stake. Whitely is rounding up stock for the Allies down Mesa Blanca way, and Pike will feel at home there. Don’t you worry, I’ll keep an eye on Pike. He is hilariously happy to get into that region with a partner.”

“I don’t like it,” she grumbled at him with sulky gray eyes. “Pedro Vijil just came back from the south, and brought his sister’s family from San Rafael. They’re refugees from the Federals because their men joined Ramon Rotil, the rebel leader, and Merced is crying herself crazy over the tales of war they tell. One of their girls was stolen, and the mother and Tia Luz are both crying over that. So Papa Phil says he’s going to send me away where I won’t hear such horrors. I wish I was a man, and I’d join the army and get a chance to go over and fight.”

“Huh!” grunted Rhodes skeptically, “some more of us had hopes! Our army officers are both praying and cursing to get a chance to do the same thing, but they are not getting it! So you and I, little girl, will wait till some one pitches a bomb into that dovery on the Potomac. Then we’ll join the volunteers and swarm over after our people.”

“Oh, yes, you can! Men can do anything they like. I told you I was jealous.”

“Never mind, Lark-child,” he returned soothingly. “If I get over with a gun, you can come along and toot a horn. There now, that’s a bargain, and you can practice tooting the lark’s call until the time comes.”

“I reckon I’ll have plenty of time to toot myself black in the face before you show up again at Granados,” she prophesied ruefully, and he laughed.

“Whistle an’ I’ll come to you, Lassie,” he said with sudden recklessness, “and that’s for adios, Billie.”

He held out his hand.

“That’s enough, Rhodes,” said a voice back of them, and Singleton walked forward. “When you got your time, you were supposed to leave Granados. Is this what you’ve been hanging around for during the past week?”

Rhodes flamed red to his hair as he stared down at the elder man.

“I reckon I’ll not answer that now, Mr. Singleton,” he said quietly. “You may live to see you made a mistake. I hope you do, but you’re traveling with a rotten bunch, and they are likely to use a knife or a rope on you any time you’ve played the goat long enough for them to get their innings. I’m going without any grudge, but if I was an insurance agent, trying to save money for my company, I’d sure pass you by as an unsafe bet! Keep on this side of the line, Singleton, while the revolution is whirling, and whatever you forget, don’t forget I said it! Adios, señorita, and–good luck!”

“Good luck, Kit,” she half whispered, “and adios!”

She watched him as he rode away, watched him as he halted at the turn of the trail and waved his hand, and Singleton was quietly observing her the while. She frowned as she turned and caught him at it.

“You thought he waited here, or planned to–to meet me,” she flared. “He was too square to tell you the truth, but it was I rode out here to say good-bye, rode out and held him up! But I did not reckon anyone would try to insult him for it!”

Her stepfather regarded her grimly. She was angry, and very near to tears.

“Time you had your breakfast,” he observed, “and all signs indicate I should have sent you East last year, and kept you out of the promiscuous mixups along the border. It’s the dumping ground for all sorts of stray adventurers, and no place for a girl to ride alone.”

“He seemed to think I am as able to look after myself as you,” she retorted. “You aren’t fair to him because you take the word of Conrad, but Conrad lies, and I’m glad he got thrashed good and plenty! Now I’ve got that off my mind, I’ll go eat a cheerful breakfast.”

Singleton walked silent beside her back to where his horse was grazing by the roadside.

“Huh!” grunted the girl with frank scorn. “So you got out of the saddle to spy? Haven’t you some black-and-tan around the ranch to do your dirty work?”

“It’s just as well to be civil till you know what you are talking about,” he reminded her with a sort of trained patience. “I came out without my breakfast just to keep the ranchmen from thinking what Tia Luz thinks. She told me I’d find that fellow waiting for you. I didn’t believe it, but I see she is not so far wrong.”

He spoke without heat or feeling, and his tone was that of quiet discussion with a man or boy, not at all that of a guardian to a girl. His charge was evidently akin to the horse ranch of Granados as described by the old ranger: Singleton had acquired them, but never understood them.

“Look here,” said his protégée with boyish roughness, “that Dutchman sees everything crooked, especially if there’s an American in range, and he prejudices you. Why don’t you wake up long enough to notice that he’s framing some excuse to run off every decent chap who comes on the place? I knew Rhodes was too white to be let stay. I saw that as soon as he landed, and I told him so! What I can’t understand is that you won’t see it.”

“A manager has to have a free hand, Billie, or else be let go,” explained Singleton. “Conrad knows horses, he knows the market, and is at home with the Mexicans. Also he costs less than we used to pay, and that is an item in a bad year.”

“I’ll bet we lose enough cattle to his friends to make up the difference,” she persisted. “Rhodes was right when he called them a rotten bunch.”

“Let us hope that when you return from school you will have lost the major portion of your unsavory vocabulary,” he suggested. “That will be worth a herd of cattle.”

“It would be worth another herd to see you wake up and show you had one good fight in you!” she retorted. “Conrad has all of the ranch outfit locoed but me; that’s why he passes on this school notion to you. He wants me out of sight.”

“I should have been more decided, and insisted that you go last year. Heaven knows you need it badly enough,” sighed Singleton, ignoring her disparaging comment on his own shortcomings. And then as they rode under the swaying fronds of the palm drive leading to the ranch house he added, “Those words of your bronco busting friend concerning the life insurance risk sounded like a threat. I wonder what he meant by it?”

The telephone bell on the Granados Junction line was ringing when they entered the patio. Singleton glanced at the clock.

“A night letter probably,” he remarked. “Go get your coffee, child, it’s a late hour for breakfast.”

Billie obeyed, sulkily seating herself opposite Tia Luz–who was bolt upright behind the coffee urn, with a mien expressing dignified disapproval. She inhaled a deep breath for forceful speech, but Billie was ahead of her.

“So it was you! You were the spy, and sent him after me!”

“Madre de Dios! and why not?” demanded the competent Luz. “You stealing your own horse at the dawn to go with the old Captain Pike. I ask of you what kind of a girl is that? Also Mercedes was here last night tearing her hair because of the girls, her sister’s daughters, stolen away over there in Sonora. Well! is that not enough? That Señor Kit is also too handsome. I was a fool to send the medicine with you to Pedro’s house. He looked a fine caballero but even a fine caballero will take a girl when she follows after. I know! And once in Sonora all trails of a girl are lost. I know that too!”

“You are all crazy, and I never saw him at Pedro’s house, never!” said the girl reaching for her coffee, and then suddenly she began to laugh. “Did you think, did you make Papa Philip think, that I was eloping like this?” and she glanced down at her denim riding dress.

“And why not? Did I myself not steal out in a shift and petticoat the first time I tried to run away with my Andreas? And beyond that not a thing under God had I on but my coral beads, and the red satin slippers of my sister Dorotea! She pulled my hair wickedly for those slippers, and I got a reata on my back from my grandmother for that running away. I was thirteen years old then! But when I was nearly sixteen we did get away, Andreas and I, and after that it was as well for the grandmother to pay a priest for us, and let us alone. Ai-ji! señorita, I am not forgetting what I know! And while I am here in Granados there must be nothing less than a grand marriage, and may the saints send the right man, for a wrong one makes hell in any house!”

Billie forgot her sulkiness in her joy at the elopements of Tia Luz. No wonder she distrusted an American girl who was allowed to ride alone!

But in the midst of her laughter she was reminded that Singleton was still detained at the telephone in the adjoining room, and that his rather high-pitched tones betrayed irritation.

“Well, why can’t you give the telegram to me? Addressed to Conrad? Of course if it’s a personal message I don’t want it, but you say it is a ranch matter–and important. Horses? What about them?”

Billie, listening, sped from the table to his side, and putting her hand over the telephone, whispered:

“If Brehman, the secretary, was here, they’d give it to him. They always do.”

Singleton nodded to her, and grew decided.

“See here, Webster, one of our men was hurt, and Brehman took his place and went East with that horse shipment. Mr. Conrad had to go down in Sonora on business, and I am the only one here to take his place. Just give me the message as you would give it to the secretary. But you’d better type a copy and send by mail that I can put it on file. All right? Yes, go ahead.”

Billie had quickly secured paper and pencil, but instead of taking them, Singleton motioned for her to write the message.

Adolf Conrad, Granados Ranch, Granados Junction, Arizona. Regret to report September shipment horses developed ailment aboard vessel, fifty per cent dead, balance probably of no military use,

Ogden, Burns & Co.

Word by word Singleton took the message and word by word Billie wrote it down, while they stared at each other.

“Developed ailment aboard vessel!” repeated Singleton. “Then there was something wrong on shipboard, for there certainly is not here. We have no sick horses on the ranch, never do have!”

“But these people?” and Billie pointed to the signature.

“Oh, they are the men who buy stock for the Allies, agents for the French. They paid for the horses on delivery. They are safe, substantial people. I can’t understand–”

But Billie caught his arm with a gasp of horror and enlightenment.

“Papa Phil! Think–think what Kit Rhodes said! ‘Ground glass in the feed at the other end of the road! Conrad’s game–Herrara knows!’ Papa Phil,–Miguel Herrara was killed–killed! And Conrad tried to kill Kit! Oh he did, he did! None of the Mexicans thought he would get well, but Tia Luz cured him. And Cap Pike never went out of sight of that adobe until Conrad had left the ranch, and I know Kit was right. I know it, I know it! Oh, my horses, my beautiful horses!”

“There, there! Why, child you’re hysterical over this, which is–is too preposterous for belief!”

“Nothing is too preposterous for belief. You know that. Everybody knows it in these days! Is Belgium too preposterous? Is that record of poison and powdered glass in hospital supplies too preposterous? In hospital supplies! If they do that to wounded men, why not to cavalry horses? Why Papa Phil–”

“Hush–hush–hush!” he said pacing the floor, clasping his head in both hands. “It is too terrible! What can we do? What? Who dare we trust to even help investigate?”

“Well, you might wire those agents for particulars, this is rather skimpy,” suggested Billie. “Come and get some breakfast and think it over.”

“I might wire the office of the Peace Society in New York to–”

“Don’t you do it!” protested Billie. “They may have furnished the poison for all you know! Cap Pike says they are a lot of traitors, and Cap is wise in lots of things. You telegraph, and you tell them that if the sickness is proven to have started in Granados, that we will pay for every dead horse, tell them we have no sick horses here, and ask them to answer, pronto!”

“That seems rather reckless, child, to pay for all–”

“I am reckless! I am crazy mad over those horses, and over Conrad, and over Kit whom he tried to kill!”

“Tut–tut! The language and behavior of Rhodes was too wicked for anyone to believe him innocent. He was a beastly looking object, and I still believe him entirely in the wrong. This loss of the horses is deplorable, but you will find that no one at Granados is to blame.”

“Maybe so, but you just send that telegram and see what we see!”