Читать книгу Rancho Del Muerto and Other Stories of Adventure from «Outing» by Various Authors - Various - Страница 2

THAT off mule of the paymaster’s ambulance been a quadruped of wonderful recuperative powers. She had gone nearly dead lame all the previous day, and now at 5 o’clock on this breezy morning was trotting along as though she had never known a twinge in her life. Mr. Staines was apparently nonplussed. Acting on his advice, the paymaster had decided to break camp soon after 2 o’clock, make coffee, and then start for Rawlins’ camp at once. He confidently expected to have to drag along at a slow walk, and his idea was to get well through the Canyon del Muerto before the heat of the day. The unexpected recovery of Jenny, however, enabled them to go bowling ahead over the level flat, and at sunrise they were already in sight of the northern entrance to the gorge. It was odd how early Mr. Staines began to develop lively interest in the condition of that mule. First he suggested to the driver that he was going too fast, and would bring on that lameness again; but the driver replied that it was Jenny herself who was doing most of the pulling. Then Staines became fearful lest the cavalry escort should get exhausted by such steady trotting, and ventured to say to Major Sherrick that they ought to rein up on their account. Sherrick was eager to push ahead, and, like most other men not to the manner born, never for a moment thought of such a thing as a horse’s getting used up by simply carrying a man-at-arms six hours at ceaseless trot or lope. However, he knew that Staines was far more experienced in such matters than he, and so could not disregard his advice.

“How is it, sergeant, are we going too fast for you?” he asked.

“Not a bit of it, sir,” was the cheery answer.

“We’re glad enough to go lively now and rest all day in the shade.”

“You see how it is, Staines; they don’t want to slack up speed. We’ll get to Rawlins’ in time for breakfast at this rate,” and again Staines was silent. Presently the team began the ascent of a rolling wave of foothill, around which the roadway twisted as only Arizona roadways can, and at the crest the driver reined in to give his mules a “breather.” Staines leaped from the ambulance for a stretch. The troopers promptly dismounted and loosened saddle girths.

“Yonder is the mouth of the Canyon, sir,” said the sergeant, pointing to a rift in the range to the south, now gorgeously lighted up by the morning sunshine.

“How long is the defile, sergeant?”

“Not more than four miles, sir – that is, the Canyon itself – but it is crooked as a ram’s horn, and the approach on the other side is a long, winding valley.”

“When were you there last?” asked Staines.

“About six months ago, just after Dins-more was murdered.”

Staines turned quickly away and strolled back a few yards along the road.

“You knew Dinsmore, then?” asked the paymaster.

“I knew him well, sir. We had served together during the war. They said he fell in love with a pretty Mexican girl at Tucson, and she would not listen to him. Some of the men heard that she was a daughter of old Pedro who keeps that ranch, and that it was hoping to see her that he went there.”

“I know. I remember hearing about it all then,” said the paymaster. “Did you ever see anything of the man who was said to have killed him?”

“Sonora Bill? No, sir; and I don’t know anyone who ever did. He was always spoken of as the chief of a gang of cutthroats and stage robbers down around Tucson. They used to masquerade as Apaches sometimes – that’s the way they were never caught. The time they robbed Colonel Wood and killed his clerk ‘I’ troop was scouting not ten miles away, and blessed if some of the very gang didn’t gallop to Lieutenant Breese and swear the Apaches had attacked their camp here in Canyon del Muerto, so that when the lieutenant was wanted to chase the thieves his troop couldn’t be found anywhere – he was ‘way up here hunting for Apaches in the Maricopa range. The queer thing about that gang was that they always knew just when a paymaster’s outfit or a Government officer with funds would be along. It was those fellows that robbed Major Rounds, the quartermaster, and jumped the stage when Lieutenant Spaulding and his wife were aboard. She had beautiful diamonds that they were after, but the lieutenant fooled them – he had them sent by express two days afterward.”

Mr. Staines came back toward the ambulance at this moment, took a field glass from its case, and retraced his steps along the road some twenty yards. Here he adjusted the glass and looked long toward the northeast.

“All ready to start, sir,” said the driver.

The major swung himself up to his seat; the troopers quietly “sinched” their saddles and mounted, and still the clerk stood there absorbed.

“Come, Staines!” shouted the paymaster, impatiently, “we’re waiting for you.” And still he did not move. The sergeant whirled his horse about and clattered back to where he stood.

“Come, sir, the major’s waiting.” Staines turned abruptly and, silent as ever, hurried to the wagon.

“What were you staring at so long?” said the paymaster, pettishly, as his assistant clambered in. “I shouted two or three times.”

Staines’ face was pale, yet there were drops of sweat upon his brow.

“I thought I saw a party of horsemen out there on the flats.”

“The devil!” said the paymaster, with sudden interest. “Where? Let me look.”

“You can’t see now, sir. Even the dust cloud is gone. They are behind that low ridge some eight or ten miles out there in the valley.”

“Go on, driver, it’s only cattle from the ranch or something of that kind. I didn’t know, by the way you looked and spoke, but that it might be some of Sonora Bill’s gang.”

“Hardly, sir; they haven’t been heard of for a year, and once away from Pedro’s we are safe enough anyhow.”

Half an hour later the four-mule team was winding slowly up a rocky path. On both sides the heights were steep, covered with a thick undergrowth of scrub oak and juniper. Here and there rocky cliffs jutted out from the hillside and stood like sentinels along the way. The sergeant, with one trooper, rode some distance ahead, their carbines “advanced” and ready for use, for Edwards was an old campaigner, and, though he thought it far from probable that any outlaws would be fools enough to attempt to “get away with” a paymaster’s bank when he and his five men were the guardians and Captain Rawlins with his whole troop was but a short distance away, he had learned the lesson of precaution. Major Sherrick, with his iron safe under his own seat, grasped a rifle in both hands. The driver was whistling softly to himself and glancing attentively ahead, for there was a continuous outcrop of boulders all along the road. The remaining troopers, four in number, rode close behind or alongside the wagon.

Presently they reached a point where, after turning a precipitous ledge of rock, glistening in the morning sunshine, they saw before them a somewhat steep incline. Here, without a word, Staines swung lightly from the vehicle and trudged for a moment alongside; then he stooped to adjust his boot lace, and when Sherrick looked back the clerk was coming jauntily after them, only a dozen paces in rear. In this order they pushed ahead perhaps a hundred yards farther, moving slowly up the defile, and Staines could easily have regained his distance, but for some reason failed to do so. Suddenly, and for no apparent cause, Jenny and her mate shied violently, swerved completely around and were tangled up with the wheel team before the driver could use the lash. Even his ready blasphemy failed to straighten things out.

“Look out for those rocks up there on the right!” he shouted. “Grab their heads, Billy!”

Even as he spoke the rocky walls of the Canyon resounded with the crash of a score of firearms. The driver, with a convulsive gasp, toppled forward out of his seat, his hand still clinching the reins. One of the troopers clapped his hand to his forehead, his reins falling useless upon his horse’s neck, and reeled in the saddle as his charger whirled about and rushed, snorting with fright, down the narrow road. At the instant of the firing the sound of a dozen “spats” told where the leaden missiles had torn through the stiff canvas cover of the ambulance; and Sherrick, with blanched face, leaped from the riddled vehicle and plunged heavily forward upon his hands and knees. Two of the troopers sprang from their saddles, and, crouching behind a boulder across the road, opened fire up the opposite hillside. The sergeant and his comrade, bending low over their horses’ necks, came thundering back down the Canyon, just in time to see the mules whirl about so suddenly as to throw the ambulance on its side. The iron safe was hurled into the shallow ditch; the wagon bed dragged across the prostrate form of the paymaster, rolling him over and over half a dozen times, and then, with a wreck of canvas, splinters, chains and traces clattering at their heels, the four mules went rattling away down the gorge.

“Jump for shelter, men!” shouted Sergeant Edwards, as he dragged the senseless form of the major under the great ledge to the right. “Stand them off as long as you can! Come out of your holes, you cowardly hounds!” he roared, shaking his fist at the smoke-wreathed rocks up the heights. “Come out and fight fair! There’s only five of us left!”

Here in the road lay the major, bleeding from cuts and bruises, with every breath knocked out of his battered body; yonder, his hands ‘clinched in the death agony, the stiffening form of the driver – plucky to the last. Twenty yards away down the road, all in a heap, lay one poor soldier shot through the head, and now past praying for. One of the others was bleeding from a gash along the cheek where a bullet had zipped its way, and Edwards shouted in vain for Staines to join them; the clerk had disappeared. For full five minutes the desperate combat was maintained; the sergeant and his little squad crouching behind the nearest rocks and firing whenever head or sombrero showed itself along the heights. Then came shots from the rear, and another poor fellow was laid low, and Edwards realized, to his despair, that the bandits were on every side, and the result only a question of time.

And then – then, there came a thunder of hoof beats, a storm of ringing cheers, a rush and whirl of panting, foaming steeds and a score of sunburnt, stalwart troopers racing in the lead of a tall young soldier, whose voice rang clear above the tumult: “Dismount! Up the rocks, men! Lively now!” And, springing from his own steed, leaping catlike from rock to rock, Phil Adriance went tearing up the heights, his soldiers at his heels. Edwards and his unwounded men seized and held the trembling horses; Sherrick feebly crawled to his precious safe and fell across it, his arms clasping about his iron charge. For five minutes more there was a clamor of shots and shouts, once in a while a wild Mexican shriek for mercy, all the tumult gradually receding in the distance, and at last – silence. Then two men came down the bluffs, half bearing between them the limp form of their young leader. The lieutenant was shot through both thighs and was faint from loss of blood.

“Has no one a little whiskey?” asked Corporal Watts.

“Here you are” was the answer. And Mr. Staines, with very white face, stepped down from behind the ledge and held out his flask.

A week later the lieutenant lay convalescing at Rawlins’ camp. A vigorous constitution and the healthful, bracing, open-air life he had led for several years, either in the saddle or tramping over the mountains, had enabled him to triumph speedily over such minor ills as flesh wounds, even though the loss of blood had been very great. The young soldier was soon able to give full particulars of his chase, and to one man alone, Rawlins, the secret of its inspiration.

Most important had been the results. It was evident to everyone who examined the ground – and Rawlins had scoured the range with one platoon of his troop that very afternoon after the fight, while his lieutenant, Mr. Lane, was chasing the fugitives with another – that a band of at least twenty outlaws had been concealed among the rocks of Canyon del Muerto for two or three days, evidently for the purpose of waylaying the escort of the paymaster when he came along. Their horses had been concealed half a mile away in a deep ravine, and it was in trying to escape to them that they had sustained their losses. Five of their number were shot down in full flight by Adri-ance’s men, and, could they have caught the others, no quarter would have been given, for the men were infuriated by the sight of the havoc the robbers had wrought, and by the shooting of their favorite officer.

No papers had been found on the bodies; nothing, in fact, to identify them with any band. All, with one exception, were Mexicans; he was a white man whom none of the troopers could identify, though Corporal Watts, of Troop B, declared he had seen him at “Cutthroat Crossing” the last time he went through there on escort duty. The others, whoever they were, rode in a body until they got around the range to the southward, then seemed to scatter over the face of the earth. Some odd things had transpired, over which Rawlins pondered not a little. It was Corporal Watts who brought to his camp at 11 o’clock the news of the desperate attempt to murder and rob the paymaster, and as they rode back together the corporal gave the captain such information as lay in his power. Lieutenant Adriance had “routed out” the detachment just at daybreak, when it was still dark, and saddling with the utmost haste had led away across country for the canyon, leaving the pack mules and a small guard at camp. “We rode like the wind,” said Watts, “after the first few miles, and every man seemed to know just what to expect when at last we struck the road and saw the trail of the ambulance and escort. We got there just in the nick of time.”

When Sherrick – who though severely battered and bruised had no bones broken – was able to talk at all, he never could say enough in praise of Adriance and his men; but what he wanted to know was how they came to learn of the threatened danger. Captain Rawlins protested that it was “past finding out.” The major questioned the men, but without success, and as for Staines, it was remarked that his pertinacity in cross-examination was simply wonderful. For some reason, however, the men of B troop did not like the fellow and would have little to do with him. But up to the time that Major Sherrick was able to push ahead for Tucson it is certain that he had discovered nothing as to the source of the lieutenant’s information; neither had they heard of Leon Ruiz, the night messenger. Staines opined that he must have been intercepted by the bandits, perhaps killed by them, when it was found that he was the bearer of a message to Captain Rawlins. After a brief chat with the lieutenant himself, one which the doctor did not interdict, the old troop commander sent a trusty sergeant with six men to scout the neighborhood of the rancho.

Lieutenant Lane was detached to take command of Adriance’s troop, which was sent on its way forthwith, leaving the gloomy rancho alone to sentinel the Gila crossing. But the moment Sherrick and his silent clerk drove on toward Tucson the old captain said a few words of farewell to the invalid, left him in the doctor’s charge and rode away northward on the trail of his sergeant. That night he rapped for admission and ordered supper at Rancho Ruiz, while his men, strolling about the premises, took careful note of the three or four scowling “greasers” who infested the corral.

Adriance was sitting up and beginning to hobble around when Rawlins returned to camp during the week that followed, and was all eagerness to hear what tidings the captain had to tell. But Rawlins had little to say; he had seen Pedro and had had one glimpse of Senora Dolores, but not so much as a word with the senorita; she was kept carefully concealed. Within the month Adriance was quite well enough to travel to his station, but refused. He would remain here, he said, until able to relieve Lane of the command of his troop and continue the scouting work. He did not wish to go to the fort. Sherrick and his clerk had come back in the course of a fortnight, and Mr. Staines asked to see Lieutenant Adriance, but that gentleman refused – a matter which caused the clerk to “bite his lips and look queer,” reported the soldier who took the message, but he said nothing at all.

Ten days afterward a Prescott paper mentioned the fact that Mr. Albert G. Staines, so long and favorably known in this Territory, had dropped in to look over valuable mining properties in the Big Bug and Hassayampa districts; and this Rawlins silently showed to Adriance.

“Then you may be sure he’ll come down to the rancho, and in less than no time,” said Adriance, “and I must go.” Rawlins made no reply at first, then he rose and nervously paced the floor a moment and turned upon his junior.

“Philip, I say no!”

The color mounted to the lieutenant’s

“Why not?”

“Ask yourself; ask your conscience, Adriance. You have told her that he, Staines, was a liar. You have virtually told her that you were engaged to no woman. You have inspired a sentiment, perhaps a passion, in that young girl’s heart, and you’re going there to defend her – a thing that I can do much better than you, now that you are a cripple. Then, think, my boy, I have known you six years; I have never known you to say or do a mean or unmanly thing. I’m an old fogy – an old fool perhaps – but I like to think most women pure and some men honest. You are one of them, Phil.” There was a moment’s silence.

“And yet you think I mean her harm.”

“Not yet, Philip, but would you marry that old scoundrel’s daughter?”

Adriance had no answer.

“Philip, if you look into that girl’s eyes again, unless it be to ask her to be your wife, I shall lose my faith in manly honor.”

Two days afterward Rawlins rode away on duty. A strange unrest had possessed the lieutenant since that brief talk with this old Puritan of a captain. Not another word had been said upon the subject, but every syllable that Rawlins spoke had struck home. Adriance respected and honored the grim, duty-loving troop commander whom some of the youngsters openly laughed at and referred to as “Praise the Lord Barebones” and “Captain Roundhead,” but the lieutenant well knew that no braver soldier, no “squar-er” captain drew sabre in the whole regiment than this faithful friend, who had long since singled him out for many an unusual kindness. He knew more – that in his high standard of honor and rectitude old Rawlins had said nothing which was not just and true.

Adriance knew well that he ought not to again seek that young girl’s presence, and the blood rushed hotly to his cheek as he recalled the kiss his eager lips had stolen. Marry that old scoundrel’s daughter? No, he could not; and yet how his pulses bounded at the thought of her – the sweet, shy gladness in her eyes, the soft, thrilling tones in her voice when she spoke his name, the heroism of her conduct in daring to seek his camp in the darkness of night and bring him warning of that diabolical scheme of robbery and murder; the refinement of her manner, and then, too, her knowledge of the English tongue. Where had she acquired these? What would she not be justified in thinking of him if he never came to seek and thank her?

“Hello! what’s that?” was the sudden cry among the men. Two or three soldiers sat up in the shade and curiously inspected the coming object; others shouted laughing challenge. Riding solemnly forward, a little Mexican boy came straight to where Adriance was lying and handed him a note which he eagerly opened and read:

They suspect me, and they send me away tomorrow. To-night I go for the last time to the summer house alone. Isabel.

Gone was every resolution at the instant; gone all hesitancy. Adriance had not even time to wonder at the fact that she had written to him in English. Leaving the note for Rawlins to read when he returned, in one hour Phil was rolling from the camp in the ambulance. Soon after dark, leaving Private Regan and another man half a mile back from the walls of the corral, Mr. Adriance, all alone, slowly made his way afoot toward the dim lights at the rancho. Making wide circuit so as not to alarm the dogs, he never sought to draw near the little summer house until, from the east, he could see the brighter lights that gleamed in the bar and card room. Then he cautiously approached, his heart beating quickly and his knees trembling a little, perhaps from weakness. Hark! Faint, soft and clear, there rose upon the evening air the liquid notes of a guitar. It was she then – it was Isabel awaiting his coming, aye, signaling softly to call him to her. What could it mean but that she loved and longed to see him? A moment more and he was at the doorway, the very spot where he had surprised her that well-remembered night. The plaintive tinkle of the guitar continued, and there in the dark corner was the dim, white-robed form. He could almost distinguish the folds of the graceful rebosa.

“Isabel!” he whispered. Three more steps and he would be at her side. Suddenly two stalwart arms were thrown about him, a broad hand was on his mouth, stifling the utterance of a sound; the white-robed form in front leaped toward him, the rebosa falling to the ground. It was a man’s voice – a Mexican’s – that hissed the word’s: “Quick! the pistol.” Another hand was at his holster. He realized instantly that he was lured, trapped; that his life was threatened. He was struggling violently, but, weakened by his wound, even his superb physique was well nigh powerless in the grasp of two or three men. Suddenly there came a whisper: “The sponge, the sponge!” and then the subtle odor of chloroform on the night air. And now he nerved himself for one supreme effort. A quick twist of his head and the hand was dislodged, a finger slipping between his teeth. With all his strength he crushed it to the very bone, and there was a yell of pain and terror. Then his own brave young voice rang out in one startling, rallying cry.

“Help! Regan, help!” Then crash and blows, the gleam of a knife, a rolling, rough-and-tumble struggle on the ground; then a woman’s scream, a light, and Isabel had bounded into their midst, her mother at her back.

“Leon, my brother! In God’s name, what do you mean?”

Even as she spoke her startled eyes fell on Adriance, staggering to his feet, pale, bleeding, faint. Another instant and he went crashing back against the guitar that, like siren’s song, had lured him. One brave leap and she was at his side, her arms about his neck, his pallid face pillowed on her bosom.

Senora Dolores flew to her aid; then turning, holding her lantern on high, her shrill voice rang out in fury:

“Look at the monstrous work your son has wrought, Pedro Ruiz! Look! Tear off that mantle, senor!” she said, whirling upon another form now slowly rising from the earth. “Coward! murderer that you are! It is you who have ruined this boy and made him what he is!”

“Hush! You fool! there lies your daughter’s betrayer. Leon would have been coward indeed if he had not punished him.”

“Oh, you lie! She never saw him alone in her life!”

“Ask your son,” was the sneering answer. “Ask José, too.”

“She was with him – in his tent – the last night he was here; I swear it!” cried José.

“Mother,” cried the girl, “listen, it was but to warn him – I heard the plot – I heard all. I rushed to him only to tell him of the danger. Mother, believe me. And I dare not tell it even to you, for fear – for fear of him.” And she pointed to the fierce, scowling face of the old Mexican, now striding forward, knife in hand.

“No, Pedro – back! You shall not harm her! No!” and the mother hurled herself before her husband.

“Out of the way!” was the hissing answer, “or you, too, feel my knife. Ah, traitress!”

“O my God! help! There will be murder here! Pedro, husband! O, villain, she is not your child! You shall not kill!” And then a piercing shriek rang out upon the night. But at the same instant there came the rush of hoofs without – a rush of panting men; a brawny trooper sprang into the summer house and with one blow of his revolver butt sent Pedro staggering into a corner, his knife falling from his nerveless hand. A dark, agile figure leaped for the doorway, with muttered curse. And then in came old Rawlins, somewhat “blown,” but preternaturally cool, and the doctor close behind.

“Bring another light here, one of you men!” And a trooper ran to the card room. “Lie still there, Pedro! Blow his brains out if he moves! Doctor, you look to the women and Adriance. Now, where’s that man Staines?”

“Some fellow ran in through here, captain,” said a trooper. “Corporal Watts is after him with Royce.”

“Who was it, you greaser? Speak, damn you! You were here with him!”

“Sonora Bill,” said José, shaking from head to foot.

Then there came the sound of pistol shots out toward the corral, and then the louder bang of a cavalry carbine.

“What is it?” asked Rawlins of a soldier who came running back.

“Can we have the doctor, sir? It was Mr. Staines. He shot the corporal, who was chasing him, but he got a carbine bullet through the heart.”

Four days afterward, lying in a little white room, Mr. Adriance listened to the story of Leon’s confession. It was brief enough. Staines had acquired an ascendency over him in Tucson, and it was not difficult to induce him to become a confederate in every plot. It was Staines who sent him to Manuel and Garcia to warn them that the paymaster’s ambulance would not reach Canyon del Muerto until morning. It was Staines who murdered Sergeant Dinsmore after a quarrel and then had had his throat cut and the body thrown into the Gila near the ranch. Staines had fallen in love with Isabel when she first came from Sonora, but the girl shrank from him; neither would she listen to Sergeant Dinsmore.

After it was safe for Leon to return to the ranch, he found that his mother and Isabel were practically prisoners. His father was furious at the failure of the plan, and daily accused his wife of having, in some way, given warning to Adriance, and swore that he would have the blood of the man or woman who had betrayed the scheme; and then Staines himself came back and wrung from José that he had seen Isabel scurrying from Adri-ance’s tent at daybreak, and so denounced her to Leon as the mistress of an accursed Gringo. Staines wrote the note that was to lure Adriance to the bower, where Leon was to take the guitar and rebosa and the two, with José’s help, were to overpower him. It was his life or theirs said Staines. Pedro was not in the project, for he had prohibited bloodshed about the place – “It would ruin his business” he said. But both Pedro and Leon were now in irons, and Rawlins’ troop was in camp around gloomy old Rancho Ruiz.

A day or two later he heard another story, this time from the lips of Senora Dolores herself: Isabel was not the daughter of Pedro Ruiz.

With sobs and tears the poor, broken woman told her tale. She had been married when quite a young girl to Senor Moreno, an officer of distinction in the Mexican army. Her brave husband made her life a happy one, and the birth of the little daughter strengthened the ties that bound them. Alas! Moreno, colonel of lancers, was killed before Queretaro; and in two years more the widow, with her winsome little girl, had not where to lay her head. It was in the city of Mexico that Senora Dolores then met Ruiz, a widower with an only son, prosperous and apparently respected. He promised to educate Isabel and provide for her as his own, and sought the widow as his wife. For a time all went well; then she learned his true character. He was compelled to leave the city and flee up the coast to Mazatlan, while she remained with little Isabel, who was being educated at the convent. At last they had to join him at Hermosillo, whence he was soon after driven to Tucson. Their lives were wrecked by his scoundrelism. Her papers clearly established the truth of her story.

One soft, still evening, not a week after the tragic events of that rueful night, Captain Rawlins sat by the lieutenant’s side, reading aloud some letters just received from department headquarters. Major Sherrick had been in a state of dismay ever since the news of the death of Staines had reached him, but his dismay changed to wonderment, even gratitude, as he learned the true character of the man. It was Sonora Bill himself, beyond doubt.

“What a blessing you left that note for me to see!” said Rawlins. “How came it you never saw it was a forgery, Phil? Had she never written to you before?”

“Never a line, nor have I seen her to thank her. By Heaven, Rawlins! why am I forbidden?”

“You are not – now, Phil,” was the smiling answer.

Perhaps an hour later, Adriance limped slowly out of the room and down the narrow passageway to the side door. Yonder stood the little summer house “in the gloaming,” and he was right – he had heard women’s voices there – Dolores and her daughter. There were tears in the maiden’s words, and he could not withstand the longing of his heart. He would have hobbled thither, but suddenly there came the sound of rustling skirt and a tiny footfall. It was she – his dark-eyed, dark-haired sweetheart, hastening toward him, her face hidden in her hands. One instant more and he had torn the hands away and had clasped her to his breast.

“Isabel! darling! I have found you at last! No, you shall not go – you shall not until you promise – promise to be my wife!

“O, senor, you cannot – you do not mean it,” she sobbed, Struggling to be free.

“Do not mean it! Why, sweet one, you do not dream how I love you – how I long for you! Not mean it? Isabel, look in my eyes. Look for yourself.” He laughed low and happily. He was brimming over with hope and gladness, for now at last without a struggle she nestled on his heart.

Despite his grizzled beard old Rawlins was best man when that strange, very quiet, yet very happy wedding came off in the Old Mission Church at Tucson early in the spring. Pedro was not there to give the bride away. With considerable escort and much reluctance he had traversed “Cutthroat Crossing” some months before. He went to Yavapai, and Yavapai – we have his own words for it – was “too damn close to ‘ell.” The rancho passed within the year to other hands. It, too, had taken on another name – a grewsome one —Rancho del Muerto.