Chapter 21. Each To His Own

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_ CHAPTER XXI. EACH TO HIS OWN

A straggling train of pack mules followed by a six-mule wagon, trailed past Yaqui Springs ten days later, and was met there by the faithful Chappo and two villainous looking comrades, who had cleaned out the water holes and stood guard over them until arrival of the ammunition train.

"For beyond is a dry hell for us, and on the other side the Deliverer is circled by enemy fighters who would trap him in his own land. He lies hid like a fox in the hills waiting for this you bring. Water must not fail, and mules must not fail; for that am I here to give the word for haste."

"But even forty mule loads will not serve him long," said Kit doubtfully.

"Like a fox in the hills I tell you, Senor Capitan,--and only one way into the den! Beyond the enemy he has other supplies safe--this is to fight his way to it. After that he will go like a blaze through dry meadows of zacatan."

Kit would have made camp there for the night, but Chappo protested.

"No, senor! Every drop in the sand here is for the mules of the army. It is not my word, it is the word of my general. Four hours north you will find Little Coyote well. One day more and at the crossing of Rio Seco, water will be waiting from the cold wells of La Partida. It is so arrange, senor, and the safe trail is made for you and for excellencia, the senora. In God's name, take all your own, and go in peace!"

"But the senora is weary to death, and----"

"That is true, Capitan," spoke Dona Jocasta, who drooped in the saddle like a wilted flower. "But the senora will not die, and if she does it is not so much loss as the smallest of the soldiers of El Gavilan. We will go on, and go quickly, see!--there is yet water in the cantin, and four hours of trail is soon over."

Ugly Chappo came shyly forward and, uncovered, touched the hem of her skirt to his lips.

"The high heart of the excellencia gives life to the men who fight," he said and thrust his hand in a pocket fastened to his belt. "This is to you from the Deliverer, senora. His message is that it brought to him the lucky trail, and he would wish the same to the Dona Jocasta Perez."

It was the little cross, once sent back to her by a peon in bitterness of soul, and now sent by a general of Mexico with the blessing of a soldier.

"Tell him Jocasta takes it as a gift of God, and his name is in her prayers," she said and turned away.

Clodomiro pushed forward,--a very different Clodomiro, for the fluttering bands of color were gone from his arms and his hair--the heart of the would-be bridegroom was no longer his. He was stripped as for the trail or for war, and fastened to his saddle was the gun and ammunition he had won from Cavayso who had gone quickly onward with his detachment of the pack.

But Clodomiro halted beside Chappo, regardless of need for haste on the trail, and asked him things in that subdued Indian tone without light, shade, or accent, in which the brown brothers of the desert veil their intimate discourse.

"There, beyond!" said Chappo, "two looks on the trail," and he pointed west. "Two looks and one water hole, and if wind moves the sand no one can find the way where we go. It is not a trail for boys."

"I am not now a boy," said Clodomiro, "and when the safety trail of the senora is over----"

But Chappo waved him onward, for the wagon and the pack mules, and even little gray Bunting had turned reluctant feet north.

Clodomiro had come from Soledad because Elena,--who never had been out of sight of the old adobe walls,--sat on the ground wailing at thought of leaving her old sick father and going to war, for despite all the persuasions of Dona Jocasta, Elena knew what she knew, and did not at all believe that any of them would see the lands of the Americano,--not with pack mules of Ramon Rotil laden with guns!

"If Tula had lived, no other would have been asked," Rhodes had stated. "But one is needed to make camp for the senora on the trail,--and to me the work of the packs and the animals."

"That I can do," Clodomiro offered. "My thought was to go where Tula said lovers of hers must go, and that was to El Gavilan. But this different thing can also be my work to the safe wells of the American. That far I go."

Thus the three turned north from the war trail, and Clodomiro followed, after making a prayer that the desert wind would hear, and be very still, and fill no track made by the mules with the ammunition.

This slight discussion at the parting of the ways concerning two definite things,--need of haste, and conserving of water,--left no moment for thought or query of the packs of furnishings deemed of use to Senora Perez in her removal to the north.

Dona Jocasta herself had asked no question and taken no interest in them. Stripped of all sign of wealth and in chains, she had ridden into Soledad, and in comfort and much courtesy she was being conducted elsewhere. How long it might endure she did not know, and no power of hers could change the fact that she had been made wife of Jose Perez;--and at any turn of any road luck might again be with his wishes, and her estate fall to any level he choose to enforce.

At dusk they reached the Little Coyote well, and had joy to find water for night and morning, and greasewood and dead mesquite wood for a fire. The night had turned chill and Clodomiro spread the serape of Dona Jocasta over a heap of flowering greasewood branches. It was very quiet compared with the other camps on the trail, and had a restful air of comfort, and of that Jocasta spoke.

"Always the fear is here, senor," she said touching her breast. "All the men and guns of Ramon Rotil did not make that fear go quiet. Every canon we crossed I was holding my breath for fear of hidden men of Jose Perez! You did not see him in the land where he is strong; but men of power are bound to him there in the south, and--against one woman----"

"Senora, I do not think you have read the papers given to you by Padre Andreas to put with the others given by General Rotil," was Kit's quiet comment. He glanced toward the well where the boy was dipping water into a wicker bottle. "Have you?"

"No, senor, it is my permit to be passed safely by all the men of Ramon Rotil," she said. "That I have not had need of. Also there is the record that the American murder at Granados was the crime of Conrad."

"But, senora, there is one other paper among them.--I would have told you yesterday if I had known your fear. I meant to wait until the trail was ended, but----"

"Senor!" she breathed leaning toward him, her great eyes glowing with dreadful question, "Senor!"

"I know the paper, for I signed it," said Kit staring in the leaping blaze. "So did the padre. It is the certificate of the burial of Jose Perez."

"Senor! Madre de Dios!" she whispered.

"Death reached him on his own land, senora. We passed the grave the first day of the trail."

Her face went very white as she made the sign of the cross.

"Then he--Ramon----?"

"No,--the general did not see Perez on the trail. He tried to escape from Cavayso and the man sent a bullet to stop him. It was the end."

She shuddered and covered her eyes.

Kit got up and walked away. He looked back from where he tethered the mules for the night, but she had not moved. The little crucifix was in her hand, he thought she was praying. There were no more words to be said, and he did not go near her again that night. He sent Clodomiro with her serape and pillow, and when the fire died down to glowing ash, she arose and went to the couch prepared. She went without glance to right or left--the great fear had taken itself away!

Clodomiro rolled himself in a serape not far from her place of rest, but Kit Rhodes slept with the packs and with two guns beside him. From the start on the trail no man had touched his outfit but himself. He grinned sometimes at thought of the favorable report the men of Rotil would deliver to their chief,--for the Americano had taken all personal care of the packs and chests of Dona Jocasta! He was as an owl and had no human need of sleep, and let no man help him.

The trail to the canon of the Rio Seco was a hard trail, and a long day, and night caught them ere they reached the rim of the dry wash where, at long intervals, rain from the hills swept down its age-old channel for a brief hour.

Dona Jocasta, for the first time, had left the saddle and crept to the rude couch afforded by the piled-up blankets in the wagon; Clodomiro drove; and Kit, with the mules, led the way.

A little water still swished about in their water bottles, but not enough for the mules. He was more anxious than he dared betray, for it was twenty miles to the lower well of La Partida, and if by any stroke of fortune Cap Pike had failed to make good--Cap was old, and liable to----

Then through the dusk of night he heard, quite near in the trail ahead, a curious thing, the call of a bird--and not a night bird!

It was a tremulous little call, and sent a thrill of such wild joy through his heart that he drew back the mule with a sharp cruel jerk, and held his breath to listen. Was he going loco from lack of sleep,--lack of water,--and dreams of----

It came again, and he answered it as he plunged forward down a barranca and up the other side where a girl sat on a roan horse under the stars:--his horse! also his girl!

If he had entertained any doubts concerning the last--but he knew now he never had; a rather surprising fact considering that no word had ever been spoken of such ownership!--they would have been dispelled by the way she slipped from the saddle into his arms.

"Oh, and you didn't forget! you didn't forget!" she whimpered with her head hidden against his breast. "I--I'm mighty glad of that. Neither did I!"

"Why, Lark-child, you've been right alongside wherever I heard that call ever since I rode away," he said patting her head and holding her close. He had a horrible suspicion that she was crying,--girls were mysterious! "Now, now, now," he went on with a comforting pat to each word, "don't worry about anything. I'm back safe, though in big need of a drink,--and luck will come your way, and----"

She tilted her cantin to him, and began to laugh.

"But it has come my way!" she exulted. "O Kit, I can't keep it a minute, Kit--we did find that sheepskin!"

"What? A sheepskin?" He had no recollection of a lost sheepskin.

"Yes, Cap Pike and I! In the bottom of an old chest of daddy's! We're all but crazy because it came just when we were planning to give up the ranch if we had to, and now that you are here--!" her sentence ended in a happy sigh of utter content.

"Sure, now that I'm here," he assented amicably, "we'll stop all that moving business--pronto. That is if we live to get to water. What do you know about any?"

"Two barrels waiting for you, and Cap rustling firewood, but I heard the wagon, and----"

"Sure," he assented again. "Into the saddle with you and we'll get there. The folks are all right, but the cayuses----"

A light began to blaze on the level above, and the mules, smelling water, broke into a momentary trot and were herded ahead of the two who followed more slowly, and very close together.

Cap Pike left the fire to stand guard over the water barrels and shoo the mules away.

"Look who's here?" he called waving his hat in salute. "The patriots of Sonora have nothing on you when it comes to making collections on their native heath! I left you a poor devil with a runt of a burro, a cripple, and an Indian kid, and you've bloomed out into a bloated aristocrat with a batch of high-class army mules. And say, you're just in time, and you don't know it! We're in at last, by Je-rusalem, we're in!"

Kit grinned at him appreciatively, but was too busy getting water to ask questions. The wagon was rattling through the dry river bed and would arrive in a few minutes, and the first mules had to be got out of the way.

"You don't get it," said Billie alongside of him. "He means war. We're in!"

"With Mexico? Again? " smiled Kit skeptically.

"No--something real--helping France!"

"No!" he protested with radiant eyes. "Me for it! Say, children, this is some homecoming!"

The three shook hands, all talking at once, and Kit and Billie forgot to let go.

"Of course you know Cap swore an alibi for you against that suspicion Conrad tried to head your way," she stated a bit anxiously. "You stayed away so long!"

"Yes, yes, Lark-child," he said reassuringly, "I know all that, and a lot more. I've brought letters of introduction for the government to some of Conrad's useful pacifist friends along the border. Don't you fret, Billie boy; the spoke we put in their wheel will overturn their applecart! The only thing worrying me just now,--beautifullest!--is whether you'll wait for me till I enlist, get to France, do my stunt to help clean out the brown rats of the world, and come back home to marry you."

"Yip-pee!" shrilled Pike who was slicing bacon into a skillet. "I'm getting a line now on how you made your other collections!"

Billie laughed and looked up at him a bit shyly.

"I waited for you before without asking, and I reckon I can do it again! I'm--I'm wonderfully happy--for I didn't want you to worry over coming home broke--and----"

"Whisper, Lark-child. I'm not!"

"What?"

"Whisper, I said," and he put one hand over her mouth and led her over to the little gray burro. "Now, not even to Pike until we get home, Billie,--but I've come out alive with the goods, while every other soul who knew went 'over the range'! Buntin' carries your share. I knew you were sure to find the sheepskin map sooner or later," he lied glibly, "but luck didn't favor me hanging around for it. I had to get it while the getting was good, but we three are partners for keeps, Buntin' is yours, and I'll divide with Pike out of the rest."

Billie touched the pack, tried to lift it, and stared.

"You're crazy, Kit Rhodes!"

"Too bad you've picked a crazy man to marry!" he laughed, and took off the pack. "Seventy-five pounds in that. I've over three hundred. Lark-child, if you remember the worth of gold per ounce, I reckon you'll see that there won't need to be any delay in clearing off the ranch debts,--not such as you would notice! and maybe I might qualify as a ranch hand when I come back,--even if I couldn't hold the job the first time."

"O Kit! O Cap! O me!" she whispered chantingly. "Don't you dare wake me up, for I'm having the dream of my life!"

But he caught her, drew her close and kissed her hair rumpled in the desert wind.

And as the wagon drew into the circle of light, that was the picture Dona Jocasta saw from the shadows of the covered wagon:--young love, radiant and unashamed!

She stared at them a moment strangely in a sudden mist of tears, as Clodomiro jumped down and arranged for her to alight. Cap Pike looking up, all but dropped the coffeepot.

"Some little collector--that boy!" he muttered, and then aloud, "You Kit!"

Kit turned and came forward leading Billie, who suddenly developed panic at vision of the most beautiful, tragic face she had ever seen.

"Some collector!" murmured Cap Pike forgetting culinary operations to stare. "Shades of Sheba's queen!"

But Kit, whose days and nights of Mesa Blanca and Soledad had rather unfitted him for hasty adjustments to conventions, or standardized suspicion regarding the predatory male, held the little hand of Billie very tightly, and did not notice her gasp of amazement. He went forward to assist Dona Jocasta, whose hesitating half glance about her only enhanced the wonder of jewel-green eyes whose beauty had been theme of many a Mexic ballad.

For these were the first Americanos she had ever met, and it was said in the south that Americanos might be wild barbaros,--though the senor of the songs----

The senor of the songs reached his hand and made his best bow as he noted her sudden shrinking.

"Here, Dona Jocasta, are friends of good heart. We are now on the edge of the lands of La Partida, and this little lady is its padrona waiting to give you welcome at the border. Folks, this is Senora Perez who has escaped from hell by help of the guns of El Gavilan."

"Dona Jocasta!" repeated Cap Pike standing in amazed incredulity with the forgotten skillet at an awkward angle dripping grease into the camp fire, but his amazement regarding personality did not at all change his mental attitude as to the probable social situation. "Some collector, Brother, but hell in Sonora isn't the only hell you can blaze the trail to with the wrong combination!"

Kit turned a silencing frown on the philosopher of the skillet, but Billie went toward the guest with outstretching hands.

"Dona Jocasta, oh!" she breathed as if one of her fairy tales of beauty had come true, and then in Spanish she added the sweet gracious old Castillian welcome, "Be at home with us on your own estate, Senora Perez."

Jocasta laid her hands on the shoulder of the girl, and looked in the clear gray eyes.

"You are Spanish, Senorita?"

"My grandmother was."

"Thanks to the Mother of God that you are not a strange Americana!" sighed Jocasta in sudden relief. Then she turned to her American courier and guard and salvation over the desert trails.

"I saw," she said briefly. "She is as the young sister of me who--who is gone to God! Make yourself her guard forever, Don Pajarito. May you sing many songs together, and have no sorrows."

After the substantial supper, Kit heard at first hand all the veiled suspicion against himself as voiced in the fragment of old newspaper wrapped around Fidelio's tobacco, and he and Dona Jocasta spread out the records written by the padre, and signed by Jocasta and the others, as witness of how Philip Singleton met death in the arroya of the cottonwoods.

"It is all here in this paper," said Jocasta, "and that is best. I can tell the alcalde, yes, but if an--an accident had come to me on the trail, the words on the paper would be the safer thing."

"But fear on the trail is gone for you now," said Kit smiling at her across the camp fire. Neither of them had said any word of life at Mesa Blanca or Soledad, or of the work of Tula at the death.

The German had strangled a priest, and escaped, and in ignorance of trails had ridden into a quicksand, and that was all the outer world need know of his end!

The fascinated eyes of Billie dwelt on Jocasta with endless wonder.

"And you came north with the guns and soldiers of Ramon Rotil,--how wonderful!" she breathed. "And if the newspapers tell the truth I reckon he needs the guns all right! Cap dear, where is that one Jose Ortego rode in with from the railroad as we were leaving La Partida?"

"In my coat, Honey. You go get it--you are younger than this old-timer."

Jocasta followed Billie with her eyes, though she had not understood the English words between them. It was not until the paper was unfolded with an old and very bad photograph of Ramon Rotil staring from the front page that she whispered a prayer and reached out her hand. The headline to the article was only three words in heavy type across the page: "Trapped at last!"

But the words escaped her, and that picture of him in the old days with the sombrero of a peon on his head and his audacious eyes smiling at the world held her. No picture of him had ever before come her way; strange that it should be waiting for her there at the border!

The Indian boy at sight of it, stepped nearer, and stood a few paces from her, looking down.

"It calls," he said.

It was the first time he had spoken except to make reply since entering the American camp. Dona Jocasta frowned at him and he moved a little apart, leaning,--a slender dark, semi-nude figure, against the green and yellow mist of a palo verde tree,--listening with downcast eyes.

Dona Jocasta looked from the pictured face to the big black letters above.

"Is it a victorious battle, for him?" she asked and Kit hesitated to make reply, but Billie, not knowing reason for silence, blurted out the truth even while her eyes were occupied by another column.

"Not exactly, senora. But here is something of real interest to you, something of Soledad--oh, I am sorry!"

"What does it say,--Soledad?"

"See!--I forgot you don't know the English!"

* * * * *

Troops from the south to rescue Don Jose Perez from El Gavilan at Soledad turn guns on that survival of old mission days, and level it to the ground. Soledad was suspected as an ammunition magazine for the bandit chief, and it is feared Senor Perez is held in the mountains for ransom, as no trace of him has been found.

* * * * *

"Now you've done it," remarked Kit, and Billie turned beseeching eyes on the owner of Soledad, and repeated miserably--"I am so sorry!"

But Dona Jocasta only lifted her head with a certain disdain, and veiled the emerald eyes slightly.

"So!" she murmured with a shrug of the shoulder. "It is then a bandit he is called in the words of the American newspaper?"

Cap Pike not comprehending the rapid musical Spanish, leaned forward fishing for a coal to light his pipe, noting her voice and watching her eyes.

"There you have it already!" he muttered to Kit. "All velvet, and mad as hell!"

Billie, much bewildered, turned to Kit as for help, but the slender hand of Dona Jocasta reached out pointing to the headlines.

"And--this?" she said coldly. "It is, you say, not victorious for Ramon Rotil, that--bandit?"

"It says, senora," hesitated Billie, "that he is hid in the hills, and----"

"That we know," stated Dona Jocasta, "what other thing?"

"'He has a wound and was carried by his men to one of his retreats, a hidden place,'" read Billie slowly, translating into Spanish as she went on. "That is all except that the Federals had to retreat temporarily because a storm caused trouble and washed out a bridge over which their ammunition train has to go. The place of the accident is very bad. Timber and construction engineers are being rushed to service there, but for a few days luck is with the Hawk."

"So!--For a few days!" repeated Dona Jocasta in the cool sweet voice. "In a few days Ramon Rotil could cross Mexico. He is El Gavilan!"

Things were coming too fast for Billie. She regarded the serenity of Dona Jocasta with amazement, and tried to imagine how she would feel if enemy guns battered down the old walls of Granados, or--thought of terror--if Kit should be held in the hills and tortured for ransom!

"Speaking of floods," remarked Pike in amiable desire to bridge over an awkward pause, "we've used half the water we brought, and need to make a bright and early start tomorrow. Rio Seco is no garden spot to get caught in short of water. Our La Partida mules are fresh as daisies right off a month of range, but yours sure look as if they had made the trip."

"What does he say,--the old senor?" asked Dona Jocasta.

Billie translated for her, whereupon she arose and summoned Clodomiro by a gesture.

"My bed," she said briefly, "over there," and she indicated a thicket of greasewood the wagon had passed on their arrival. "Also this first night of safety you will be the sentinel to keep guard that Senor Rhodes may at last have sleep. All the danger trail he had none."

Cap Pike protested that he do guard duty, but the smile of Dona Jocasta won her way.

"He is younger and not weary, senor. It is good for him, and it pleases me," she said.

"The camp is yours," he agreed weakly, and against his better judgment. He did not like Indians who were like "sulky slim brown dumb snakes"; that was what he muttered when he looked at Clodomiro. In his irritation at the Indian's silence it didn't even occur to him that he never had known any snakes but dumb ones.

But if the voice of Clodomiro was uncannily silent, his eyes spoke for him as they followed Dona Jocasta. Kit could only think of a lost, homesick dog begging for the scent of the trail to his own kennel. He said so to Billie as he made her bed in the camp wagon.

"Cap and I will be right here at the hind wheels," he promised. "Yes,--sure, I'll let the Indian ride herd for the night. Dona Jocasta is right, it's his turn, and we seem to have passed the danger line."

"Knock wood!" cautioned Billie.

So he rapped his head with his knuckles, and they laughed together as young happy things do at trifles. Then he stretched himself for sleep under the stars and almost within arm's reach of the girl--the girl who had ridden to meet him in the night, the wonderful girl who had promised to wait until he came back from France ... of course he could get into the army now! They would need men too badly to turn him down again. If there was a trifle of discrepancy in sight of his eyes--which he didn't at all believe--he had the dust now, also the nuggets, to buy any and all treatment to adjust that little matter. He had nearly four hundred pounds, aside from giving all he dared give at once as Tula's gift to those women of the slave raid. After the war was over he would find ways of again crossing over to the great treasure chest in the hidden canon. The little information Pike had managed to convey to him about that sheepskin map told him that the most important indications had been destroyed during those years it had been buried for safe-keeping. The only true map in existence was the one in his own memory,--no use to tell Pike and Billie that! He could leave them in comfort and content, and when he got back from France--He wondered how long it would last--the war. Hadn't the greatest of Americans tried three years ago to hammer the fact into the alleged brain pans of the practical politicians that the sooner the little old United States made guns, and ships, and flying machines for herself, the sooner she could help end that upheaval of hell in Europe?... and they wouldn't listen! Listen?--They brought every ounce of influence they could round up to silence those facts,--the eternally condemned ostriches sticking their own heads in the sand to blind the world to the situation! Now they were in, and he wondered if they had even ten rounds of ammunition for the cartridge belts of the few trained soldiers in service? They had not had even three rounds for the showy grand review attempted in Texas not long since; also the transportation had been a joke, some of the National Guards started, but never did arrive--and France was a longer trail than Texas. God! they should be ready to fight as the French were ready, in twelve hours--and it would have to be months--a long unequal hell for a time over there, but only one finish, and the brown rats driven back to their den! After that the most wonderful girl would--would--would----

Then all the sleep due him on the sleepless trail settled over him like a net weighted, yet very caressing, and the world war and the wonderful girl drifted far away!

Beyond, on the other side of the fire, and out of the circle of light, Clodomiro bore the serape of Dona Jocasta, and made clear the place for her couch. She had returned to the light of the fire and was scanning again the annoying paper of the Americanos. Especially that remembered face of the audacious eyes. They were different eyes in these latter days, level and cynical, and sometimes cruel.

"He calls," said Clodomiro again beside her. She had not heard him, and turned in anger that he dare startle her.

"Who does he call?" she asked irritably tossing aside the paper.

"All Mexico, I think. All Mexico's heart," and he touched his breast. "Me, I do not sleep. I do your work and when the end of the trail is yours, I ask, Excellencia, that you send me back that I find him again,--the Deliverer!"

"What did Ramon Rotil ever do for you that you fret like a chained coyote because his enemies are strong?"

"Not anything, Excellencia. Me, he would not know if I told him my name, but--he is the Deliverer who will help the clans. Also, she would go,--Tula. Sangre de Christo! there would be no chain strong enough to hold her back if his wounds cried for help."

"If--his wounds cried for help!" repeated Dona Jocasta mechanically.

"It is true, Excellencia, El Gavilan was giving help to many people in the lands he crossed. Now the many will forget, and like a hawk with the weight of an arrow in his breast he will fly alone to a high nest of the hills. Death will nest with him there some night or some day, Excellencia. And the many will forget."

"Quiet you!" ordered Dona Jocasta angrily.

Abashed, Clodomiro went silent, and with a murmured apology took himself into the shadows.

She lifted the pictured face barely discernible now in the diminished light.

"And--the many will forget!" she repeated irritably. "The boy has the truth of it, but if she had lived, so terribly wicked,--so lost of God, I wonder if----"

She lifted her face looking up at the still stars as if for light on a thought, then flung her hands out despairingly and turned away to the couch by the green bush of fragrant yellow bloom.

But not to sleep. Long after the Americanos were wrapped in slumber a little blaze sent glimmer of light through the undergrowth, and she saw Clodomiro stretched beside the fire. He had tossed a bit of greasewood on the coals that he might again study the face of El Gavilan.

She had heard him say that if no desert wind lifted the sand he could follow to that hidden nest of the Hawk. It was very dark now except for glimmer of stars through lacy, slow-drifting clouds,--there was no wind. Later there would be a waning moon! Much of every waking life is a dream, and her dreams were of the No Man's Land of the desert,--the waterless trail from which she had been rescued for peace!

Twice during the night Kit roused from the depths sufficiently to realize that sleep is one of the greatest gifts to man. Once Clodomiro was stretched by the little fire inspecting the paper he could not read, the second time he thought Baby Bunting was nosing around trying to get close to human things. Both times he reached out his hands to the precious packs beside which he slept on the trail. All were safe, and he drifted again into a great ocean of slumber.

He was wakened at dawn by the voice of Cap Pike, keyed high for an ultra display of profanity.

"By the jumping Je-hosophat, I knew it!" he shrilled. "That's your latest collection, begod! I hoped he wouldn't, and knew he would! The all-firedest finest pair of mules on Granados, and every water bag in the outfit! Can you beat it?"

At the first shout Kit jumped to his feet, his eyes running rapidly over his pack saddle outfit. All was safe there, and as Billie lifted her head and looked at him drowsily over the edge of the wagon bed he realized that in the vital things of life all was well with his world.

"Let Sheba run your camp, and run it to hell, will you?" went on Cap Pike accusingly. He was thrashing around among the growth back of the Soledad outfit wagon where the mules had been tethered. "Two--four--six, and Baby Buntin'--yes sir! Lit out by the dark of the moon, and left neither hide nor hair,--"

"Oh, be reasonable, Cap!" protested Kit. "Buntin' isn't gone--she's right alongside here, waiting for breakfast."

"You're shoutin' she's here; so is every dragged-to-death skate you hit camp with! It's Billie's crackerjack mules, the pick of the ranch, that the bare-legged greasy heathen hit the trail with! And every water bag!"

"Well," decided Kit, verifying the water statement by a glance at the barrels, "no one is to blame. The boy didn't want to come this trail. He stuck until we were over the rough of it, and then he cut loose. A pair of mules isn't so bad."

"Now, of course not!" agreed Cap sarcastically. "A mere A-number-one pair of mules belonging to another fellow is only a flea bite to offer a visitor for supper! Well, all I got to say----"

"Don't say it, Cap dear," suggested Billie. "The Indian was here because of Dona Jocasta, and she can't help it! As she doesn't understand English, she'll probably think you're murdering some of us over here. Whist now, and put your muzzle on! We'll get home without the two mules. I'll go and tell her that the hysterics is your way of offering morning prayers!"

She slipped away, laughing at his protests, but when a little past the fire place she halted, standing very still, peering beyond at something on the ground under the greasewood where the serape of Dona Jocasta had been spread. No serape or sleeper was there!

Kit noted her startled pause, and in a few strides was beside her; then, without a word, the two went forward together and he picked up the package of papers laid carefully under the greasewood. He knew without opening them what they were,--the records made for her safety, and for his, in Soledad, place of tragedies.

"They are the papers I was to put on record for her in case--Well, I'll do it, and you'll take care of the copies for her, Billie, and--and do your best for the girl if a chance ever comes. We owe her a lot more than she will ever guess,--our gold come out of Mexico under the guard arranged for her, and when I come back----"

"But Kit," protested Billie, "to think of her alone with that thieving Indian! He took flour and bacon too! And if she hopes to find her husband----"

"She doesn't," concluded Kit thoughtfully turning over the certificate signed by the padre and him, of the husband's safe burial in the sands of Soledad. He glanced at Billie in doubt. One never knew how safe it was to tell things,--some things,--to a woman; also Billie was so enchanted by Jocasta's sad beauty, and----

"No, I reckon she doesn't hope much along that line. She has probably gone back to the wilderness for another reason,--one I never suspected until last night. And Lark-child, we won't talk about that, not at least till I return from the 'back of beyond' over there," and he pointed eastward where shafts of copper light touched the gray veil of the morning.

After his first explosion of amazement Cap Pike regarded the elopement, as he called it, very philosophically, considering his disgust over lost mules and flour and bacon.

"What did I tell you right here last night?" he demanded of Kit. "Soft as velvet and hard as hell,--that's what I said! She looks to me like a cross between a saint in a picture frame and a love bird in a tree, and her eyes! Yet after all no man can reckon on that blood,--she is only a girl of the hills down there, and the next we hear of her she'll likely be leaden' a little revolution of her own."

The young chap made no reply, but busied himself hastening a scant breakfast in order that the worn mules be got to water before the worst heat of a dry day. Also the losses to the culinary outfit did make problems for the trip.

Cap eyed him askance for a space, and then with a chuckle wilfully misconstrued his silence and lowered his tone.

"I don't blame you for feeling downhearted on your luck, Bub, for she sure was a looker! But it's all in a lifetime, and as you ramble along in years, you'll find that most any hombre can steal them, and take them home, but when it comes to getting a permanent clinch on the female affections----"

Billie, who was giving a short ration of water to the burro, called across to ask what Kit was laughing at in that hilarious way. She also stated that she did not think it a morning for hilarity, not at all! That wonderful, beautiful, mystery woman might be going to her death!

After the packs were all on, Cap Pike swung the mules of the first wagon into the home trail and passed over the mesa singing rakishly.

Oh-h! Biddy McGee has been after me,
Since I've been in the army!

And Billie turned in the saddle to take a last look over the trail where the woman of the emerald eyes had passed in the night.

"All my life I have looked, and looked into the beautiful mirages of the south desert wondering what would come out of it--and she was the answer," she said, smiling at Kit. "Tomorrow I'll feel as if it was all a dream, all but the wonderful red gold, and you! Some fine day we'll take a little pasear down there, I'll follow that dream trail, and----"

"You will not!" decided the chosen of her heart with rude certainty. "The dreams of that land of mirages are likely to breed nightmares. You are on the right side of the border for women to stay. Our old American eagle is a pretty safe bird to roost with."

"Well," debated the only girl, "if it comes to that, Mexico also has the eagle, and had it first!"

"Yes, contrary child," he conceded, herding the mules into line, "so it has,--but the eagle of Mexico is still philandering with a helmeted serpent. Wise gamblers reserve their bets on that game, we can only hope that the eagle fights its way free!"

[THE END]
Marah Ellis Ryan's Novel: Treasure Trail; A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine

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