Chapter 20. Eagle And Serpent

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_ CHAPTER XX. EAGLE AND SERPENT

Marto Cavayso gave to Kit Rhodes the burro-skin belt and a letter from Dona Dolores Terain to the wife of Jose Perez.

"My work is ended at the hacienda until the mules come back for more guns, and I will take myself to the adobe beyond the corrals for what rest there may be. You are capitan under my general, so this goes to you for the people of the girl he had a heart for. Myself,--I like little their coyote whines and yells. It may be a giving of thanks, or it may be a mourning for dead,--but it sounds to me like an anthem made in hell."

He referred to the greeting songs of the returned exiles, and the wails for the dead left behind on the trail. The women newly come from Palomitas sat circled on the plaza, and as food or drink was offered each, a portion was poured on the sand as a libation to the ghosts of the lately dead, and the name of each departed was included in the wailing chant sung over and over.

It was a weird, hypnotic thing, made more so by the curious light, yellow and green in the sky, preceding that dark cloud coming slowly with sound of cannonading from the north. Though the sun had not set, half the sky was dark over the eastern sierras.

"The combination is enough to give even a sober man the jim-jams," agreed Kit. "Dona Jocasta is sick with fear of them, and has gone in to pray as far from the sound as possible. The letter will go to her, and the belt will go to Tula who may thank you another day. This day of the coming back she is not herself."

"Mother of God! that is a true word. No girl or woman is like that!"

The priest, who had talked with the sick and weary, and listened to their sobs of the degradation of the slave trail, had striven to speak with Tula, who with head slightly drooped looked at him under her straight brows as though listening to childish things.

"See you!" muttered Marto. "That manta must have been garb of some king's daughter, and no common maid. It makes her a different thing. Would you not think the padre some underling, and she a ruler giving laws?"

For, seated as she was, in a chair with arms, her robe of honor reached straight from her chin to her feet, giving her appearance of greater height than she was possessed of, and the slender banda holding her hair was of the same scarlet of the broideries. Kit remembered calling her a young Cleopatra even in her rags, and now he knew she looked it!

He was not near enough to hear the words of the priest, but with all his energy he was striving to win her to some view of his. She listened in long silence until he ceased.

Then her hand went under her manta and drew out the curved knife.

She spoke one brief sentence, and lifted the blade over her head. It caught the light of the hovering sun, and the Indians near enough to hear her words set up a scream of such unearthly emotion that the priest turned ashen, and made the sign to ward off evil.

It was merely coincidence that a near flash of lightning flamed from the heavens as she lifted the knife,--but it inspired every Indian to a crashing cry of exultation.

And it did not end there, for a Palomitas woman had carried across the desert a small drum of dried skin stretched over a hollow log, and at the words of Tula she began a soft tum-tum-tum-tum on the hidden instrument. The sound was at first as a far echo of the thunder back of the dark cloud, and the voices of the women shrilled their emphasis as the drum beat louder, or the thunder came nearer.

Kit Rhodes decided Marto was entirely correct as to the inspiration back of that anthem.

"Sangre de Christo! look at that!" muttered Marto, who meant to turn his back on the entire group, yet was held by the fascination of the unexpected.

Four Indian youths with a huge and furious bull came charging down the mesa towards the corral. A reata fastened to each horn and hind foot of the animal was about the saddle horn of a boy, and the raging bellowing creature was held thus at safe distance from all. The boys, shouting with their joy of victory, galloped past the plaza to where four great stakes had already been driven deep in the hard ground. To those stakes the bull would be tied until the burden was ready for his back--and his burden would be what was left of "Judas" when the women of the slave trail got through with him!

"God the father knows I am a man of no white virtues," muttered Marto eyeing the red-eyed maddened brute, "but here is my vow to covet no comradeship of aught in the shape of woman in the district of Altar--bred of the devil are they!"

He followed after to the corral to watch the tying of the creature, around which the Indian men were gathered at a respectful distance.

But Rhodes, after one glance at the bellowing assistant of Indian vengeance, found himself turning again to Tula and the padre. That wild wail and the undertone of the drum was getting horribly on his nerves,--yet he could not desert, as had Marto.

Tula sat as before, but with the knife held in her open hand on the arm of the chair. She followed with a grim smile the careering of the bull, then nodded her head curtly to the priest and turned her gaze slowly round the corridor until she saw Rhodes, and tilted back her head in a little gesture of summons.

"Well, little sister," he said, "what's on your mind?"

"The padre asks to pray with El Aleman. I say yes, for the padre has good thoughts in his heart,--maybe so! You have the key?"

"Sure I have the key, but I fetch it back to you when visitors start going in, and--oh yes--there's your belt for your people."

"No; you be the one to give," she said with a glance of sorrow towards a girl who was youngest of the slaves brought back. "You, amigo, keep all but the key."

"As you say," he agreed. "Come along, padre, you are to get the privilege you've been begging for, and I don't envy you the task."

Padre Andreas made no reply. In his heart he blamed Rhodes that the prisoner had not been let escape during the absence of the girl, and also resented the offhand manner of the young American concerning the duty of a priest.

The sun was at the very edge of the world, and all shadows spreading for the night when they went to the door of Conrad's quarters. Kit unlocked the door and looked in before opening wide. The one window faced the corral, and Conrad turned from it in shaking horror.

"What is it they say out there?" he shouted in fury. "They call words of blasphemy, that the bull is Germany, and 'Judas' will ride it to the death! They are wild barbarians, they are----"

"Never mind what they are," suggested Kit, "here is a priest who thinks you may have a soul worth praying for, and the Indians have let him come--once!"

Then he let the priest in and locked the door, going back to Tula with the key. She sat where he had left her, and was crooning again the weird tuneless dirge at which Marto had been appalled.

But she handed him a letter.

"Marto forgot. It was with the Chinaman trader at the railroad," she said and went placidly on fondling the key as she had fondled the knife, and pitching her voice in that curious falsetto dear to Indian ceremonial.

He could scarce credit the letter as intended for himself, as it was addressed in a straggling hand filling all the envelope, to Capitan Christofero Rhodes, Manager of Rancho Soledad, District of Altar, Sonora, Mexico, and in one corner was written, "By courtesy of Senor Fidelio Lopez," and the date within a week. He opened it, and walked out to the western end of the corridor where the light was yet good, though through the barred windows he could see candles already lit in the shadowy sala.

The letter was from Cap Pike, and in the midst of all the accumulated horror about him, Kit was conscious of a great homesick leap of the heart as he skimmed the page and found her name--"Billie is all right!"

How are you, Capitan? (began the letter). That fellow Fidelio rode into the cantina here at La Partida today. He asked a hell's slew of questions about you, and Billie and me nearly had fits, for we thought you were sure dead or held for ransom, and I give it to you straight, Kit, there isn't a peso left on the two ranches to ransom even Baby Buntin' if the little rat is still alive, and that ain't all Kit: it don't seem possible that Conrad and Singleton mortgaged both ranches clear up to the hilt, but it sure has happened, every acre is plastered with ten per cent paper and the compound interest strips it from Billie just as sure as if it was droppin' through to China. When Conrad was on the job he had it all blanketed, but now saltpeter can't save it without cash. Billie is all right, but some peaked with worry. So am I. But you cheer up, for I got plans for a hike up into Pinal County for us three on a search for the Lost Dutchman Mine, lost fifty years and I have a hunch we can find it, got the dope from an old half breed who knew the Dutchman. So don't you worry about trailing home broke. The Fidelio hombre said to look for you in six days after Easter, and meet you with water at the Rio Seco, so we'll do that. He called you capitan and said the Deliverer had made you an officer; how about it? He let loose a line of talk about your two women in the outfit, but I sort of stalled him on that, so Billie wouldn't get it, for I reckon that's a greaser lie, Kit, and you ain't hitched up to no gay Juanita down there. I had a monkey and parrot time to explain even that Tula squaw to Billie, for she didn't savvy--not a copper cent's worth! She is right here now instructin' me, but I won't let her read this, so don't you worry. She says to tell you it looks at last like our old eagle bird will have a chance to flop its wings in France. The pair of us is near about cross-eyed from watchin' the south trail into Altar, and the east trail where the troops will go! She says even if we are broke there is an adobe for you at Vijil's, and a range for Buntin' and Pardner. Billie rides Pardner now instead of Pat.

I reckon that's all Kit, and I've worked up a cramp on this anyway. I figured that maybe you laid low down there till the Singleton murder was cleared up, but I can alibi you on that O. K., when Johnny comes marchin' home! So don't you worry.

Yours truly,
Pike.

He read it over twice, seeking out the lines with her name and dwelling on them. So Billie was riding Pardner,--and Billie had a camp ready for him,--and Billie couldn't savvy even a little Indian girl in his outfit--say!

He was smiling at that with a very warm glow in his heart for the resentment of Billie. He could just imagine Pike's monkey and parrot time trying to make Billie understand accidents of the trail in Sonora. He would make that all clear when he got back to God's country! And the little heiress of Granados ranches was only an owner of debt-laden acres,--couldn't raise a peso to ransom even the little burro! Well, he was glad she rode Pardner instead of another horse; that showed----

Then he smiled again, and drifted into dreams. He would let Bunting travel light to the Rio Seco, and then load him for her as no burro ever was loaded to cross the border! He wondered if she'd tell him again he couldn't hold a foreman's job? He wondered----

And then he felt a light touch on his arm, and turned to see the starlike beauty of Dona Jocasta beside him. Truly the companionship of Dona Jocasta might be a more difficult thing to explain than that of the Indian girl of a slave raid!

Her face was blanched with fear, and her touch brought him back from his vision of God's country to the tom-tom, and the weird chant, and the thunder of storm coming nearer and nearer in the twilight.

"Senor!" she breathed in terror, "even on my knees in prayer it is not for anyone to shut out this music of demons. Look! Yesterday she was a child of courage and right, but what is she today?"

She pointed to Tula and clung to him, for in all the wild chorus Tula was the leader,--she who had the words of ancient days from the dead Miguel. She sat there as one enthroned draped in that gorgeous thing, fit, as Marto said, for a king's daughter, while the others sat in the plaza or rested on straw and blankets in the corridor looking up at her and shrilling savage echoes to the words she chanted.

"And that animal,--I saw it!" moaned Dona Jocasta. "Mother of God! that I should deny a priest who would only offer prayers for that wicked one who is to be tortured on it! Senor, for the love of God give me a horse and let me go into the desert to that storm, any place,--any place out of sight and sound of this most desolate house! The merciful God himself has forsaken Soledad!"

As she spoke he realized that time had passed while he read and re-read and dreamed a dream because of the letter. The sun was far out of sight, only low hues of yellow and blue melting into green to show the illumined path it had taken. By refraction rays of copper light reached the zenith and gave momentarily an unearthly glow to the mesa and far desert, but it was only as a belated flash, for the dusk of night touched the edge of it.

And the priest locked in with Conrad had been forgotten by him! At any moment that girl with the key might give some signal for the ceremony, whatever it was, of the death of the German beast!

"Sure, senora, I promise you," he said soothingly, patting her hand clinging to him. "There is my horse in the plaza, and there is Marto's. We will get the padre, and both of you can ride to the little adobe down the valley where Elena's old father lives. He is Mexican, not Indian. It is better even to kneel in prayer there all the night than to try to rest in Soledad while this lasts. At the dawn I will surely go for you. Come,--we will ask for the key."

Together they approached Tula, whose eyes stared straight out seeing none of the dark faces lifted to hers, she seemed not to see Kit who stopped beside her.

"Little sister," he said, touching her shoulder, "the padre waits to be let out of the room of El Aleman, and the key is needed."

She nodded her head, and held up the key.

"Let me be the one," begged Dona Jocasta,--"I should do penance! I was not gentle in my words to the padre, yet he is a man of God, and devoted. Let me be the one!"

The Indian girl looked up at that, and drew back the key. Then some memory, perhaps that kneeling of Dona Jocasta with the women of Palomitas, influenced her to trust, and after a glance at Kit she nodded her head and put the key in her hand.

"You, senor, have the horses," implored Dona Jocasta, "and I will at once come with Padre Andreas."

"Pronto!" agreed Kit, "but I must get you a serape. Rain may fall from that cloud."

She seemed scarcely to hear him as she sped along the patio towards the locked door. Kit entered his own room for a blanket just as she fitted the key in the lock, and spoke the padre's name.

The next instant he heard her screams, and a door slam shut, and as he came out with the blanket, he saw the priest dash toward the portal leading from the patio to the plaza.

He ran to her, lifting her from the tiles where she had been thrown.

"Conrad!" she cried pointing after the flying figure. "There! Quickly, senor, quickly!"

He jerked open the door and looked within, a still figure with the face hidden, crouched by a bench against the wall. In two strides Kit crossed from the door and grasped the shoulder, and the figure propped there fell back on the tiles. It was the dead priest dressed in the clothes of Conrad, and the horror of that which had been a face showed he had died by strangulation under the hands of the man for whom he had gone to pray.

Dona Jocasta ran wildly screaming through the patio, but the Indian voices and the drum prevented her from being heard until she burst among them just as Conrad leaped to the back of the nearest horse.

"El Aleman! El Aleman!" she screamed pointing to him in horror. "He has murdered the padre and taken his robe. It is El Aleman! Your Judas has killed your priest!"

Kit ran for his own horse, but with the quickness of a cat Tula was before him in the saddle, and whirling the animal, leaning low, and her gorgeous manta streaming behind like a banner she sped after the German screaming, "Judas! Judas! Judas of Palomitas!"

And, as in the other chants led by her, the Indian women took up this one in frenzied yells of rage.

The men of the corral heard and leaped to saddles to follow the flying figures, but Kit was ahead,--not much, but enough to be nearest the girl.

Straight as an arrow the fugitive headed for Mesa Blanca, the nearest ranch where a fresh horse could be found, and Dona Jocasta and some of the women without horses stood in the plaza peering after that wild race in the gray of the coming night.

[Illustration: The Indian girl was steadily gaining on the German.]

A flash of lightning outlined the three ahead, and a wail of utter terror went up from them all.

"Mother of God, the canon of the quicksand!" cried Dona Jocasta.

"Tula! Tula! Tula!" shrilled the Indian women.

Tula was steadily gaining on the German, and Kit was only a few rods behind as they dashed down the slight incline to that too green belt in the floor of the brown desert.

He heard someone, Marto he thought, shouting his name and calling "Sumidero! Sumidero!" He did not understand, and kept right on. Others were shouting at Tula with as little result, the clatter of the horses and the rumble of the breaking storm made all a formless chaos of sound.

The frenzied scream of a horse came to him, and another lightning flash showed Conrad, ghastly and staring, leap from the saddle--in the middle of the little valley--and Tula ride down on top of him!

Then a rope fell around Kit's shoulders, pinioning his arms and he was jerked from the horse with a thud that for a space stunned him into semi-unconsciousness, but through it he heard again the pitiful scream of a dumb animal, and shouts of Marto to the frenzied Indians.

"Ha! Clodomiro, the reata! Wait for the lightning, then over her shoulders! Only the horse is caught;--steady and a true hand, boy! Ai-yi! You are master, and the Mother of God is your help! Run your horse back,--run, curse you! or she will sink as he sinks! Sangre de Christo! she cuts the reata!"

Kit struggled out of the rope, and got to his feet in time to see the flash of her knife as she whirled to her victim. Again and again it descended as the man, now submerged to the waist, caught her. His screams of fear were curdling to the blood, but high above the German voice of fear sounded the Indian voice of triumph, and from the vengeful cry of "Judas! Judas! Judas of the world!" her voice turned sharply to the high clear chant Kit had heard in the hidden canon of the red gold. It was as she said--there would be none of her caste and clan to sing her death song to the waiting ghosts, and she was singing it.

As those weird triumphant calls went out from the place of death every Indian answered them with shouts as of fealty, and in the darkness Kit felt as if among a circle of wolves giving tongue in some signal not to be understood by men.

He could hear the sobs of men and boys about him, but not a measure of that wild wail failed to bring the ever recurring response from the brown throats.

Marto, wet and trembling, cursed and prayed at the horror of it, and moved close to Kit in the darkness.

"Jesus, Maria, and Jose!" he muttered in a choked whisper, "one would think the fathers of these devils had never been christened! Sangre de Christo! look at that!"

For in a vivid sheet of lightning they saw a terrible thing.

Tula, on the shoulders of the man, stood up for one wavering instant and with both hands raised high, she flung something far out from her where the sands were firm for all but things of weight. Then her high triumphant call ended sharply in the darkness as she cast herself forward. She died as her sister had died, and on the same knife.

Dona Jocasta stumbled from a horse, and clung to Kit in terror. "Mother of God!" she sobbed. "It is as I said! She is the Eagle of Mexico, and she died clean--with the Serpent under her feet!"

* * * * *

In a dawn all silver and gold and rose after the storm, there was only a trace at the edge of the sand where two horses had carried riders to the treacherous smiling arroya over which a coyote would not cross.

And one of the Indian women of Palomitas tied a reata around the body of her baby son, and sent him to creep out as a turtle creeps to that thing cast by Tula to the women cheated of their Judas.

The slender naked boy went gleefully to the task as to a new game, and spit in the dead face as he dragged it with him to his mother who had pride in him.

It was kicked before the women back over the desert to Soledad, and the boys used it for football that day, and tied what was left of it between the horns of the roped wild bull at the corral. The bellowing of the bull when cut loose came as music to the again placid Indian women of Palomitas. They were ready for the home trail with their exiles. It had been a good ending, and their great holiday at Soledad was over. _

Read next: Chapter 21. Each To His Own

Read previous: Chapter 19. The Return Of Tula

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