Home > Authors Index > Marah Ellis Ryan > Treasure Trail; A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine > This page
The Treasure Trail; A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine, a novel by Marah Ellis Ryan |
||
Chapter 11. Gloom Of Billie |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
Next > |
|
________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER XI. GLOOM OF BILLIE The return of Captain Pike on Kit's horse was a matter of considerable conjecture at Granados, but the old prospector was so fagged that at first he said little, and after listening to the things Billie had to tell him--he said less. "That explains the curious ways of the Mexicans as I reached the border," he decided. "They'd look first at the horse, then at me, but asked no questions, and told me nothing. Queer that no word reached us about Singleton! No, it isn't either. We never crossed trails with any from up here. There's so much devilment of various sorts going on down there that a harmless chap like Singleton wouldn't be remembered." "Conrad's down at Magdalena now, but we seldom know how far he ranges. Sometimes he stays at the lower ranch a week at a time, and he might go on to Sinaloa for all we know. He seems always busy and is extremely polite, but I gave him the adobe house across the arroya after Papa Phil--went. I know he has the Mexicans thinking Kit Rhodes came back for that murder; half of them believe it!" "Well, I reckon I can prove him an alibi if it's needed. I'll go see the old judge." "He'll tell you not to travel at night, or alone, if you know anything," she prophesied. "That's what he tells me. To think of old Rancho Granados coming to that pass! We never did have trouble here except a little when Apaches went on the warpath before my time, and now the whole border is simmering and ready to boil over if anyone struck a match to it. The judge hints that Conrad is probably only one cog in the big border wheel, and they are after the engineer who turns that wheel, and do you know you haven't told me one word of Kit Rhodes, or whether he's alive or dead!" "Nothing to tell! We didn't find it, and he took the back trail with an Indian girl and her daddy, and----" "An--Indian girl?" "Yes, a queer little kid who was in a lot of trouble. Her father was wounded in one of the fracases they have down there every little while. Nary one of us could give an address when we took different trails, for we didn't know how far we'd be allowed to travel--the warring factions are swarming and troublesome over the line." "Well, if a girl could stand the trail, it doesn't look dangerous." "Looks are deceptive, child,--and this isn't just any old girl! It's a rare bird, it's tougher than whalebone and possessed of a wise little devil. She froze to Kit as a compadre at first chance. He headed back to Mesa Blanca. I reckon they'd make it,--barring accidents." "Mesa Blanca? That's the Whitely outfit?" "Um!" assented Pike, "but I reckon Whitely's hit the trail by now. There's no real profit in raising stock for the warriors down there; each band confiscates what he needs, and gives a promissory note on an empty treasury." "Well, the attraction must be pretty strong to hold him down there in spite of conditions," said Billie gloomily. "Attraction? Sure. Kit's gone loco on that attraction," agreed the old prospector, and then with a reminiscent light in his tired old eyes he added, "I reckon there's no other thing so likely to snare a man on a desert trail. You see, Billie-child, it's just as if the great God had hid a treasure in the beginning of the world to stay hid till the right lad ambled along the trail, and lifted the cover, and when a fellow has youth, and health and not a care in the world, the search alone is a great game--And when he finds it!--why, Billie, the dictionary hasn't words enough to tell the story!" "No--I--I reckon not," said his listener in a small voice, and when he looked around to speak to her again she had disappeared, and across the patio Dona Luz was coming towards him in no good humor. "How is it that poor little one weeps now when you are returned, and not at other times?" she demanded. "Me, I have my troubles since that day they find the Don Filipe shot dead,--Jesusita give him rest! That child is watching the Sonora trail and waiting since that day, but no tears until you are come. I ask you how is the way of that?" Captain Pike stared at her reflectively. "You are a bringer of news, likewise a faithful warden," he observed. "I'm peaceably disposed, and not wise to your lingo. Billie and me were talking as man to man, free and confidential, and no argument. There were no weeps that I noticed. What's the reason why?" "The saints alone know, and not me!" she returned miserably. "I think she is scared that it was the Senor Rhodes who shooting Don Filipe, the vaqueros thinking that! But she tells no one, and she is unhappy. Also there is reason. That poor little one has the ranchos, but have you hear how the debts are so high all the herds can never pay? That is how they are saying now about Granados and La Partida, and at the last our senorita will have no herds, and no ranchos, and no people but me. Madre de Dios! I try to think of her in a little adobe by the river with only frijoles in the dinner pot, and I no see it that way. And I not seeing it other way. How you think?" "I don't, it's too new," confessed Pike. "Who says this?" "The Senor Henderson. I hear him talk with Senor Conrad, who has much sorrow because the Don Filipe made bad contracts and losing the money little and little, and then the counting comes, and it is big, very big!" "Ah! the Senor Conrad has much sorrow, has he?" queried Pike, "and Billie is getting her face to the wall and crying? That's queer. Billie always unloaded her troubles on me, and you say there was none of this weeping till I came back?" "That is so, senor." "Cause why?" "Quien sabe? She was making a long letter to Senor Rhodes in Sonora,--that I know. He sends no word, so--I leave it to you, senor, it takes faith and more faith when a man is silent, and the word of a killing is against him." "Great Godfrey, woman! He never got a letter, he knows nothing of a killing. How in hell--" Then the captain checked himself as he saw the uselessness of protesting to Dona Luz. "Where's Billie?" Billie was perched on a window seat in the sala, her eyes were more than a trifle red, and she appeared deeply engrossed in the pages of a week-old country paper. "I see here that Don Jose Perez of Hermosillo is to marry Dona Dolores Terain, the daughter of the general," she observed impersonally. "He owns Rancho Soledad, and promises the Sonora people he will drive the rebel Rotil into the sea, and it was but yesterday Tia Luz was telling me of his beautiful wife, Jocasta, who was only a little mountain girl when he rode through her village and saw her first. She is still alive, and it looks to me as if all men are alike!" "More or less," agreed Pike amicably, "some of us more, some of us less. Dona Dolores probably spells politics, but Dona Jocasta is a wildcat of the sierras, and I can't figure out any harmonious days for a man who picks two like that." "He doesn't deserve harmony; no man does who isn't true--isn't true," finished Billie rather lamely. "Look here, honey child," observed Pike, "you'll turn man hater if you keep on working your imagination. Luz tells me you are cranky against Kit, and that the ranches are tied up in business knots tighter than I had any notion of, so you had better unload the worst you can think of on me; that's what I'm here for. What difference do the Perez favorites make to our young lives? Neither Dolores nor Jocasta will help play the cards in our fortunes." Wherein Captain Pike was not of the prophets. The wells of Sonora are not so many but that he who pitches his tent near one has a view and greetings of all drifting things of the desert, and the shadowed star of Dona Jocasta of the south was leading her into the Soledad wilderness forsaken of all white men but one. _ |
||