Chapter 9. A Meeting At Yaqui Well

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_ CHAPTER IX. A MEETING AT YAQUI WELL

Good luck was with them, for the water hole in Yaqui canon had not been either muddied or exhausted, evidence that the raiders had not ranged that way. The sorry looking quartette fairly staggered into the little canon, and the animals were frantic with desire to drink their fill.

"I was so near fried that the first gallon fairly sizzled down my gullet," confessed Cap Pike after a long glorious hour of rest under the alamos with saturated handkerchief over his burning eyes. "That last three mile stretch was hell's back yard for me. How you reckon the little trick over there ever stood it?"

The Indian girl was resting near her father, and every little while putting water on his face and hands. When she heard the voice of Pike she sat up, and then started quietly to pick up dry yucca stalks and bits of brushwood for a fire.

"Look at that, would you, Bub," commented Pike, "the minute she sees you commence to open the cook kit she is rustling for firewood. That little devil is made of whalebone for toughness. Why, even the burros are played out, but she is fresh as a daisy after a half hour's rest!"

Rhodes noted that the excitement by which she had been swayed to confidence in the morning had apparently burned out on the trail, for she spoke no more, only served silently as generations of her mothers of the desert had done, and waited, crouched back of her father, while the men ate the slender meal of carne seco, atole, and coffee.

Cap Pike suggested that she join them, but it was her adopted guardian who protested.

"We won't change their ways of women," he decided. "I notice that when white folks try to they are seldom understood. How do we know whether that attitude is an humble effacement, or whether the rank of that martyred ancester exalts her too greatly to allow equality with white stragglers of the range?"

Cap Pike snorted disdain.

"You'll be making a Pocahontas of her if you keep on that 'noble Injun' strain," he remarked.

"Far be it from me! Pocahontas was a gay little hanger-on of the camps,--not like this silent owl! Her mind seems older than her years, and just notice her care of him, will you? I reckon he'd have wandered away and died but for her grip on him through the night."

Miguel sank into sleep almost at once after eating, and the girl waved over him an alamo branch as a fan with one hand, and ate with the other, while Rhodes looked over the scant commissary outfit, reckoning mouths to feed and distance to supplies. The moon was at full, and night travel would save the stock considerably. By the following noon they could reach ranches either west or north. He was conscious of the eyes of the girl ever on his face in mute question, and while Pike bathed the backs of the animals, and led each to stand in the oozy drainage of the meager well, she came close to Kit and spoke.

"You say it is a dream, senor, and you laugh, but the red gold of El Alisal is no dream. He, my father has said it, and after that, I, Tula, may show it to you. Even my mother does not know, but I know. I am of the blood to know. You will take him there, for it is a medicine place, much medicine! He has said it to you, senor, and that gift is great. You will come, alone,--with us, senor?"

Kit smiled at her entreaty, patted her hair, and dug out a worn deck of cards and shuffled them, slowly regarding the sleeping Indian the while.

"What's on your mind?" demanded Cap Pike, returning with his white locks dripping from a skimpy bath. "Our grub stake is about gone, and you've doubled the outfit. What's the next move?"

"I'm playing a game in futures with Miguel," stated Kit, shuffling the cards industriously.

"Sounds loco to me, Bub," observed the veteran. "Present indications are not encouraging as to futures there. Can't you see that he's got a jar from which his mind isn't likely to recover? Not crazy, you know, not a lunatic or dangerous, but just jarred from Pima man back to Yaqui child. That's about the way I reckon it."

"You reckon right, and it's the Yaqui child mind I'm throwing the cards for. Best two out of three wins."

"What the----"

"Highest cards for K. Rhodes, and I hike across the border with our outfit; highest cards for Miguel and my trail is blazed for the red gold of Alisal. This is Miguel's hand--ace high for Miguel!"

Again he shuffled and cut.

"A saucy queen, and red at that! Oh, you charmer!"

"You got to hustle to beat that, Bub. Go on, don't be stingy."

Rhodes cut the third time, then stared and whistled.

"The cards are stacked by the Indian! All three covered with war paint. What's the use in a poor stray white bucking against that?"

He picked out the cards and placed them side by side, ace, king and queen of hearts.

"Three aces could beat them," suggested Pike. "Go on Bub, shuffle them up, don't be a piker."

Rhodes did, and cut ten of clubs.

"Not even the right color," he lamented. "Nothing less than two aces for salvation, and I--don't--get--them!"

A lonely deuce fell on the sand, and Rhodes eyed it sulkily as he rolled a cigarette.

"You poor little runt," he apostrophized the harmless two-spot. "You've kicked me out of the frying pan into the fire, and a good likely blaze at that!"

"Don't reckon I care to go any deeper into trouble than what we've found," decided Pike. "Ordinary Indian scraps are all in the day's work--same with a Mexican outfit--but, Bub, this slave-hunting graft game with the state soldiery doing the raiding is too strong a combine for two lone rangers to buck against. Me for the old U. S. border, and get some of this devilish word to the peace advocates at home."

"They wouldn't believe you, and only about two papers along the border would dare print it," observed Rhodes. "Every time a band of sunny Mexicans loot a ranch or steal women, the word goes north that again the bloodthirsty Yaquis are on the warpath! Those poor devils never leave their fields of their own will, and don't know why the Americans have a holy dread of them. Yet the Yaqui is the best worker south of the line."

"If he wasn't the price wouldn't be worth the slave trader's valuable time," commented Pike.

The Indian girl made a quick gesture of warning, just a sweep outward of her hand along the ground. She didn't even look at them, but down the arroya, the trail they had come.

"Caballos, hombres!" she muttered in her throat.

"The kid's right,--hear them!" said Rhodes, and then he looked at him, and made a strange movement of eyes and head to direct the attention back of her in the thicket of cactus and squat greasewood. He did not look at once, but finally with a circular sweep of the locality, he saw the light glint on a gun barrel along the edge of a little mesa above them.

"Nice friendly attention," he observed. "Someone sizing us up. Time to hit the trail anyway, Cap;--to get through on the grub we have to travel tonight."

He rose and handed the water bottles to the girl to fill, while he tightened cinches.

"It's a long day's trip, Cap," he stated thoughtfully, "a long day out to Carrizal, and a long one back to Mesa Blanca. I'll divide the dust and the grub fifty-fifty, and you get out to some base of supplies. I'd rather you'd take Pardner, and keep on going across the line. The trail is clear from here for you, and enough water holes and settlements for you to get through. I don't think Pardner would last for the back trip, but you can save him by riding at night; the burro and mule are best for us. Here's the dust."

While Pike had been talking of crossing the border, Kit had been rapidly readjusting the provision so that the old chap had enough to carry him to the first settlement, and the gold dust would more than pay for provision the rest of the way.

"Why--say, Bub!" remonstrated Pike. "You're so sudden! I don't allow to leave you by your lonesomes like this. Why, I had planned----"

"There's nothing else to do," decided Rhodes crisply. "If you don't beat it with Pardner, we'll lose him, sure! I'm going to take these Indians back, and you can help most by waiting north of the line till you hear from me. I'll get word to you at Granados. So, if there should be any trouble with these visitors of ours, your trail is clear;--savvy?"

Two men rode into view in the bend of the arroya. A cartridge belt across each shoulder, and one around each waist, was the most important part of their equipment.

"Buenos dias, senors," said one politely, while his little black eyes roved quickly over the group. "Is there still water to be found in the well here? Dios! it is the heat of hell down there in the valley."

"At your service, senor, is water fresh drawn," said Rhodes, and turned to the girl, "Oija, Tulita!--water for the gentlemen. You ride far, senor?"

"From Soledad wells."

"Yes, I know the brand," remarked Rhodes.

"This is a good season in which to avoid too much knowledge, or too good a memory, senor," observed the man who had not spoken. "Many herds will change hands without markets before tranquility is over in Mexico."

"I believe you, senor, and we who have nothing will be the lucky ones," agreed Rhodes, regarding the man with a new interest. He was not handsome, but there was a something quick and untamed in his keen, black eyes, and though the mouth had cruel hard lines, his tone was certainly friendly, yet dominating.

"What have you here?" he asked with a gesture toward Miguel.

"My Indian who tried to save his women from slavers, and was left for dead," stated Rhodes frankly.

"And this?"

He pointed to the girl filling again the water bottles.

"She is mine, senor. We go to our own homes."

"Hum! you should be enlisted in the fights and become capitan, but these would drop by the trail if you left them. Well, another time perhaps, senor! For the water many thanks. Adios!" and with wave of the hand they clattered down the arroya.

"Queer," muttered Rhodes, "did you catch that second chap signal to the gun man in the cactus? He craw-fished back over the mesa and faded away."

"They didn't come for water alone--some scouten' party trailin' every sign found," decided Pike. "I'll bet they had us circled before the two showed themselves. Wonder who they are after?"

"Anyway they didn't think us worth while gathering in, which is a comfort. That second fellow looks like someone I've crossed trails with, but I can't place him."

"They'll place you all right, all right!" prophesied Pike darkly, "you and your interesting family won't need a brand."

Rhodes stared at him a moment and then grinned.

"Right you are, Cap. Wouldn't it be pie for the gossips to slice up for home consumption?"

He kept on grinning as he looked at the poor bit of human flotsam whom he had dubbed "the owl" because of her silence and her eyes. She aroused Miguel without words, watching him keenly for faintest sign of recovery. The food and sleep had refreshed him in body, but the mind was far away. To the girl he gave no notice, and after a long bewildered stare at Rhodes he smiled in a deprecating way.

"Your pardon, Don Jose, that I outsleep the camp," he muttered haltingly. "It is a much sickness of the head to me."

"For that reason must you ride slowly today," stated Rhodes with quick comprehension of the groping mind, though the "Don Jose" puzzled him, and at first chance he loitered behind with the girl and questioned her.

"How makes itself that I must know all the people in the world before I was here on earth?" she asked morosely? "Me he does not know, Don Jose is of Soledad and is of your tallness, so----"

"Know you the man who came for water at the canon well?" he asked, and she looked at him quickly and away.

"The name of the man was not spoke by him, also he said a true word of brands on herds--these days."

"In these days?" reflected Rhodes, amazed at the ungirlish logic. "You know what he meant when he said that?"

"We try that we know--all we, for the Deliverer is he named, and by that name only he is spoke in the prayers we make."

Rhodes stared at her, incredulous, yet wondering if the dusty vaquero looking rider of brief words could be the man who was called outlaw, heathen, and bandit by Calendria, and "Deliverer" by these people of bondage.

"You think that is true;--he will be the deliverer?"

"I not so much think, I am only remembering what the fathers say and the mothers. Their word is that he will be the man, if--if----"

"Well, if what?" he asked as she crossed herself, and dropped her head.

"I am not wanting to say that thing. It is a scare on the heart when it is said."

"I'd rather be prepared for the scare if it strikes me," he announced, and after a thoughtful silence while she padded along beside him, she lowered her voice as though to hide her words from the evil fates.

"Then will I tell it you:--a knife in the back is what they fear for him, or poison in his cup. He is hated by strong haters, also he makes them know fear. I hearing all that in the patio at Palomitas, and old Tio Polonio is often saying all saviors are crucified. How you think?"

Rhodes replied vaguely as to the wisdom of Tio Polonio, for the girl was giving him the point of view of the peon, longing for freedom, yet fatalistic as the desert born ever are. And she had known the rebel leader, Ramon Rotil, all the time!

He had no doubt but that she was right. Her statement explained the familiar appearance of the man he had not met before, though he had seen pictures in newspapers or magazines. Then he fell to wondering what Ramon Rotil was doing in a territory so far from the troops, and----

"Don Jose is one of the strong men who are hating him much," confided the child. "Also Don Jose comes not north alone ever anymore, always the soldiers are his guard. Tio Polonio tells things of these soldiers."

"What kind of things?"

"They are killing boys like rabbits in Canannea,--pacifico boys who could grow to Calendrista soldiers. Such is done by the guard of Don Jose and all the friends of the Deliverer are killed with a quickness. That is how the men of Don Jose Perez please him most, and in the south there are great generals who work also with him, and his hand is made strong, also heavy, and that is what Tio Polonio is telling us often."

When they reached the mouth of the little canon of the Yaqui well where the trails divide, Pike shook hands and climbed into the saddle of Pardner.

"It's the first time I ever took the easy way out, and left the fight alone to a chum,--but I'll do it, Bub, because you could not make a quick get-away with me tagging along. Things look murkier in this territory every minute. You'll either have the time of your life, or a headstone early in the game. Billie and I will put it up though we won't know where you're planted. I don't like it, but the minutes and water for the trail are both precious. Come out quick as you can. So long!"

Pardner, refreshed by cooling drink and an hour's standing in wet mud of the well drainage, stepped off briskly toward the north, while Rhodes lifted Tula to the back of the pack mule, and Miguel unheeding all plans or changes, drooped with closed eyes on the back of the little burro. The manager of the reorganized gold-search syndicate strode along in the blinding glare of the high sun, herding them ahead of him, and as Pike turned for a last look backward at a bend of the trail, the words of the old darkey chant came to him on the desert air:

Oh, there was a frog lived in the spring! _

Read next: Chapter 10. A Mexican Eaglet

Read previous: Chapter 8. The Slave Trail

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