Chapter 10. The Discovery

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_ CHAPTER X. THE DISCOVERY

Marc Scott was slow in falling asleep on the night of Pachuca's escape. He was in the habit of rolling over a few times and losing himself; but on this particular night he was tormented by half a dozen ugly little worries. He was worried about Adams, whose leg had a nasty look to the unprofessional eye; he was worried about Pachuca, whose case was going to require a good deal of finesse; and he was worried about Polly Street, who had to be conveyed to the border, revolution or no revolution.

The most pressing danger on his horizon, Scott did not worry about because he did not recognize it. He was like one of those patients in whose system a deadly disease has started, but who remains in perfect health to all outward appearances. He was in happy ignorance of his feelings for Polly Street. He had been in love times enough, he would have told you, to know the symptoms; all of which was quite true, but the fact remained that this time he did not know them.

Polly Street was so exactly the sort of girl that Marc Scott had not the faintest idea of falling in love with, much less marrying, that he would have dismissed the possibility with a shrug. He, who valued his freedom above everything, to throw it away for exactly the kind of woman who would take the greatest pleasure in trampling on it? As for his jealousy of Juan Pachuca, which should have opened his eyes, he put it aside easily. He didn't like the fellow--never had--and it annoyed him to see a decent girl allowing herself to be humbugged by his good looks and oily tongue.

It was a pity, for she was a plucky young thing. She had done well to bring back the prisoner and his car; mighty few girls would have had the courage to try it. It was foolish, of course, a regular kid trick--wouldn't have succeeded once in a dozen times, but nevertheless, she had shown pluck. It was at this stage in his reflections that he had been disturbed by Yellow's barking and had gone out to investigate. The air and the action had changed his circulation and his thought and when he went to bed the second time he dropped off easily.

This time he was aroused by the noise of the engine started by Pachuca on his escape. At first he hardly realized what it was that had wakened him, but as it dawned on his consciousness, he jumped to his feet and rushed to the window in time to see the car tear down the road. With a muttered exclamation, Scott seized his gun and sent a bullet wildly in the direction of the escaping prisoner. Then he drew on his trousers, calling to Hard at the same time.

"What's wrong? Another raid?" growled the sleepy Bostonian, who had dozed peacefully through Pachuca's first attempt.

"No. The guy's got away," snapped Scott, angrily.

"Well, we didn't particularly need him, did we?" observed Hard, sitting up reluctantly.

"We needed his car and needed it bad," said Scott, viciously. He tramped out of the room, while Hard reached drowsily for his clothes.

"By George, he must have made it through the window!" he muttered as he crossed the street, then as he came upon the body of the dog, thrown aside behind the open door, "The dirty butcher!" he growled, furiously. "And I didn't have sense enough to search him for a knife!"

Outside, he met O'Grady and Johnson, sketchily dressed and wrathful.

"You heard him, too, did you?" he growled. "He got out by the window. This is some of his work," he continued, pointing to Yellow.

"He did not," said O'Grady, promptly. "Did you ever hear of a guy jumping out of a second-story winder and shutting it after him?"

"What?"

"Sure--it's shut," grinned Johnson. "He come out of the door all right. It's wide open, and not hurt, either."

"Who let him out? Where's the key? You had it, O'Grady."

"I did not--you handed it to the girl, yourself. She locked him in all right; I heard her do it," replied O'Grady quickly.

"That explains it," said Scott, shortly. "She came over here and let him out. Might have expected it, I suppose, with a flighty youngster and a smooth talker like Pachuca." He turned away in the direction of the house.

"He's mad!" murmured Johnson, admiringly. He liked a little excitement himself.

"Mad? He's jealous, the fool!" Matt offered, disgustedly.

"Jealous? Who of? The greaser?"

"Sure. Good-looking, Juan is, and a winner with the dames."

"Scott's one of them woman haters. What d'ye mean--jealous?"

"Woman haters?" Matt spat disdainfully. "There ain't no such thing as a woman hater, Tommy, in the whole animal kingdom. Don't you fall for none of that stuff. But, believe me, that girl never opened that door. She's a straight, honest, smart girl, if she is flighty."

"Well, if she didn't, who did?"

"I don't know. I ain't sleuthed around enough yet to find out. Hullo, here's Boston--half asleep, too."

Scott was angry clear through. He did not stop to analyze his emotions--he was not of an analytical mind--and he did not care why he was angry. He felt that Polly Street, a girl of whom he was beginning to think rather highly, had done an unsportsmanlike thing; a thing that Bob's sister ought to have been ashamed to do; had disgraced the family, so to speak, and had seriously inconvenienced him into the bargain.

Scott had depended on that automobile for various things. He wanted it to fetch a doctor for Jimmy, and to take Polly, herself, to the border in comfort. Both these important things she had jeopardized because she had been coaxed into it by a soft-spoken young man with dark eyes. The treasure story he put aside. Even a girl from the East would hardly have taken that stuff seriously, he thought.

He would have felt just the same, he reasoned, had the culprit been Bob instead of Bob's sister. There was, thank Heaven, nothing soft about him! He could see and hear and even enjoy a good-looking girl without making a fool of himself. That was the beauty of being on the way to forty--one saw things in their right light--and did not make a fool of one's self over girls.

"Marc Scott, are we being raided again or what? Did I hear a shot and a machine going by or was I dreaming?" demanded Mrs. Van, who, clad in a blanket kimono, her feet thrust into moccasins, and a gay-looking pink boudoir cap on her head, came to the door before Scott reached it. In her rear could be dimly seen another figure, wrapped in a gray blanket.

"You ought to know," said Scott, rudely; focussing his attention on the pink cap and ignoring the blanketed figure in the rear.

"What do you mean--I ought to know?" indignantly.

"Somebody has unlocked the office door and let that half-breed get away and he's taken his car with him," said Scott. "The key's in your house--that's all."

"Of course it's in this house. It's in the pocket of my sweater," answered Polly, indignantly. "If you think I let him out----" She was too angry to continue.

"Well, he didn't get out by the window because it's shut, and there's no chimney for him to melt out of."

"Look here, Marc Scott, ain't you ashamed of yourself? Coming here and talking to ladies like that--and in the middle of the night, too." Mrs. Van Zandt was as angry as the other two. "That key couldn't get out of this house to-night without my knowing it. He's brainy enough to get out without help, that fellow."

"He may be brainy, but he's hardly brilliant enough to go through a locked door," said Scott, obstinately. "Somebody let him out, that's all. If you'll be kind enough to look for the key, Miss Street, and see if it's been taken away----"

"How could it be? From my room?" demanded Polly, angrily.

"Are you going to hold an inquest over it?" asked Mrs. Van, cuttingly. "I see the jury coming along."

Johnson, O'Grady and Hard were coming across the street. Polly drew her blanket closely around her and tucked one bare foot behind the other. Her reddish colored braids gave her a squaw-like appearance in the darkness.

"It's all right, Scotty, don't stir up the community," called Hard, cheerfully. "I'm the guilty party."

"You!"

"It never dawned on me till I saw the unlocked door," confessed Hard, with a chuckle. "The chap must have found that old bunch of keys that's been knocking around in the pocket of my old office coat. I'm afraid that's where he got the knife that did for poor Yellow, too."

"Do you mean there was a duplicate key?" demanded Scott.

"There must have been. Clever chap to ferret it out," replied Hard, breezily.

"Mighty clever. I could open a door myself with a key in my hand," muttered Scott, as he turned away. "Well, he's gone and the car's gone and we might as well go back to bed."

"Just one moment." Polly's voice was clear and firm. "I think you owe me an apology, Mr. Scott."

There was a suppressed chuckle from the rear where the train gang still lingered. Scott stiffened and cleared his throat consciously.

"I apologize," he said; then, as he saw the others disappear down the street, "Will you shake hands?"

"Not right now; I'm going to think it over," said the girl, coolly. "I think you should have known that I wouldn't do a thing like that."

"Well, I did know it, of course," confessed Scott, helplessly. "But----"

"But you didn't believe it." Polly's voice was cutting. "Well, next time have a little more faith in your friends, Mr. Scott," and the blanketed figure disappeared into the house.

"She had you there," observed Mrs. Van. "Well, go home to bed before you wake up Jimmy--it's a wonder he's slept through this all right."

She went into the house and knocked softly at the girl's door--after listening a moment and assuring herself that Adams had not wakened. Polly's room was dark and she was standing, still wrapped in the blanket, by the window in the moonlight.

"Well?" she said, rather curtly.

"Nothing--only----" Mrs. Van's usually glib tongue faltered. "I was just going to say that you mustn't take Marc Scott too--too--I mean, you mustn't be too hard on him."

"Hard!"

"Yes. It's just his way; he don't mean to be ugly. He's queer, Scotty is, kind of--oh, I don't know how to put it, but he didn't mean to be rude to you."

"He was, though, very rude."

"Yes, that's what I mean. It sort of shocked him to think you'd do a thing like that and he didn't stop to think."

"Maybe he'll stop to think next time."

"Maybe, but I don't reckon so. Folks like that you can't change much; you have to take 'em or leave 'em as they are. He's awful square, though. I'd trust him with anything; money, liquor, or women. When you've been around as much as I have, you'll know that means something."

In the meantime, Scott, Hard, and the train gang, going down to the corral to investigate, found Miller lying as Pachuca had left him, in the middle of the road. He was regaining consciousness as they came along, and did not seem to be badly hurt, the knife having entered the fleshy part of the arm near the shoulder.

"Serves me damn right, bein' so slow with my gun," he said. "I suppose the guy got away?"

"Oh, yes, he got away!" muttered Scott, as they helped Miller to bed. "That's the kind of luck we're playing in just now around here."

Breakfast next morning was not a particularly cheerful meal. Adams was still in bed, and Williams was feverish and cross. Miller seemed little the worse for his accident, but he was blue; he had been particularly attached to the dog and felt its death more than his own misadventure.

"Blankets, canned goods, saddles--everything they could grab," muttered Williams, resentfully. "Nice condition to be in with a revolution looming."

"Not looming, loomed," said O'Grady, cheerfully.

"Wish I could get hold of an Omaha Bee," murmured Johnson. "I never somehow feel like I had a grip on a situation till I've seen my home paper."

"I think I'll ride over to Casa Grande this morning and get the doctor," said Hard. "That leg of Jimmy's needs advice."

"I'll go with you." Scott looked at Polly. "Want to go?" he said; then as she hesitated, he looked at her penitently, smiling as Scott did not often smile, and whispered: "Please do!"

"How mean of him! He knows I'm dying to. How's anybody going to stay mad when they want to do things?" said the girl to herself.

"It's too far for her," objected Mrs. Van.

"We'll send the Chink back," said Scott, persuasively, "and we'll stay all night with Herrick. We'll make him play for you," he added, as Polly smiled in spite of herself. "Will you go?"

"She must," said Hard. "It's her last chance to see the country." And so the matter was settled.

"That Chink'll ride the whole twenty miles on a dead run--he'll be here to dinner," said Matt. "Ever see a Chinaman ride?"

"He'll ride his own horse, then," replied Scott, as he left the room. "Perhaps we'll bring Herrick back with us, Mrs. Van."

"He won't leave that piano of his," prophesied Mrs. Van Zandt. "No more than a mother'd leave her baby when there was danger around."

It was ten o'clock when the three riders started on their trip, Scott preserving a reasonably cheerful face, in spite of the fact that he hated late starts. It was a beautiful morning; the sky, blue and cloudless, the air fresh and invigorating with the crispness of early spring, the radiant clearness of the atmosphere making neighbors of the mountains, all combined to make a tonic which showed signs of going to Polly's head. After all, there are few sensations like the starting out upon a horseback trip; the mare's springy trot, the freshness of her own healthy body, even the feel of the bridle reins brought her joy.

"You look mighty happy," commented Hard. "It must be pleasant to be twenty-three."

Polly laughed. "It is," she admitted. "But I'm going to be just as happy at forty-three. I've found the recipe."

"Will you sell it to me? My next one happens to be my forty-second. I'll be needing it soon."

"I'll make you a present of it. Stay out-of-doors and keep on doing things. Of course, I haven't tried it for forty-three years, but I feel in my bones that it will work."

"I never could see, myself, how people could spend twenty-two out of their twenty-four hours under a roof, the way most of them do," said Scott, thoughtfully. "Here, we turn now into the trail."

"That's where Pachuca's men went yesterday," said Polly. "I hope we don't meet them."

"No danger of that. Those fly-by-nights are a long way from here by this time."

"They told me yesterday in Conejo that Obregon had been put under arrest in Mexico City. If that's true it may put a cog in the revolutionary machinery," said Hard.

"I wish we'd managed to keep our hands on that automobile," remarked Scott, wistfully. "I don't half fancy trying to make the border in a wagon, and no one knows how the railroads will be."

The trail debouched from the road, running over ground very slightly elevated. There was for some distance no particular reason as far as Polly could see for its being a trail at all except that it hadn't been sufficiently traveled to make it a road. It was merely a narrow little path leading over some very barren-looking country, but leading ever upward, gradually but surely, toward the hills.

"You see, the regular road runs fairly straight along toward Conejo for maybe twenty miles, and then meets a crossroad which runs past Casa Grande," explained Scott. "Now, with this trail, we cut directly across those foothills, over a couple of ranges of mountains, across a big mesa and down. Casa Grande is almost in a straight line from here and we cut off a lot."

"Casa Grande is an awfully fancy sort of name. Is it a wonderful place?"

"Just a good little ranch. These Latins like big sounding names," replied Scott. "Casa Grande is very common down here."

A dip in the trail took them into an arroyo and out the other side, where they lost sight entirely of Athens. A few moments later, they wound their way through some brush into a narrow canyon, walled on one side by hills and with a drop of some fifteen feet on the other side into a ravine. Out of the ravine grew more brush so densely that it almost crowded the little trail out of existence.

Here it was necessary to go single file and Polly noticed how naturally Scott took the lead, leaving her to follow and Hard to bring up the rear. She noted with some amusement that it seemed characteristic of him to take the lead everywhere, just as it seemed quite in keeping with Hard's easy-going nature to fall into the rear.

"And yet of the two Mr. Hard has the education and the brains," thought the girl. "No, that's not fair. I believe you can have just as good a brain without education--only you're hampered in the use of it. Marc Scott has what the psychologists call 'initiative.' Oh, look!"

High up in the air a bird had flown out from among the tree-tops on the other side of the canyon--a big bird with wide spreading wings.

"It's an eagle."

"An eagle!" Polly was awed.

"There's a nest up there somewhere," said Scott, shading his eyes with his hand and peering upward. "Last year I was riding over this trail with Gomez, an Indian we had working for us. We were just about here when an eagle, a young one, flew out from the trees. Before I could speak, Gomez up with his gun and shot it."

"Oh!"

"I wanted to kill the geezer--but Lord, what can you expect of an Indian?"

As they proceeded, Polly found herself riding closer to Scott, while Hard lagged behind. She was not displeased. Scott on horseback and in the woods was Scott at his best as she was beginning to know.

"I'm wondering," she said, as the mare pushed her nose along the big bay's flank, "how you know so much about the country. You aren't a Westerner, are you?"

"Me? No, indeed. Born in New York State and raised in Michigan. Never laid eyes on anything west of the Mississippi until I came out to Colorado to work in the mines. Then I drifted into New Mexico and down here." Scott was riding with his knee around the pommel and talking meditatively over his shoulder.

"You see, I've got mining in my blood. My grandfather was a Forty-Niner."

"Did he get rich?" asked Polly, interestedly.

"Not so's you'd notice it. Spent all he had and died trying to get home."

"Oh!"

"Hard luck, wasn't it? My folks went to Detroit when I was a little codger and they both died there. I was adopted by an uncle--an uncle who was the whitest man God ever made," declared Scott, solemnly.

"Why was he--I mean, how was he?" Polly had by nature that healthy capacity for asking questions, which is one of the most flattering characteristics that a woman can have or assume.

"He was always doing decent things. Didn't have much money, either, but somehow he always made it do for a lot of folks who didn't have any. He adopted a girl that wasn't any kin to him, had her educated and then married her. She made him a fine wife, too, thought the world of him. Well, he adopted me and sent me to school and when he saw I had the roving instinct and couldn't stick to the books, he gave me a lift to go West to the mines. He knew that there was no use arguing.

"He was queer, too. Didn't like city folks nor their ways. He owned one of those big farms out near what's now Grosse Pointe--ran down to the river--and when the town began to grow out toward them, instead of holding on to his land as it began to get valuable, he'd sell out and go further away. Died, leaving Aunt Mary just enough to live comfortably on--might have been a millionaire. But Uncle Silas was a wise man.

"Sometimes when I look at these tight-fisted old guys who make their millions and tie 'em up into estates to hand down, and then remember Uncle Silas--not giving a hoot for money and always pulling along a dozen or two poor relations and setting 'em on their feet, living comfortable and happy, leaving a wife that's as fond of him to-day as she was the day he died--well, I sort of wonder if money and success mean as much as folks think they do."

Scott's autobiography was halted by the view which met their eyes as they rounded the turn at the top of the canyon. Turning, the narrow trail wound its way around the mountainside until one looked down upon the tops of foothills, green with scrubby vegetation. Then it stretched in an irregular line down the mountainside, to disappear in their midst. Beyond lay another range of mountains.

"Back of that range and across the mesa is where Herrick's place is," said Scott, as they drew rein and waited for Hard to come along. Polly gazed in silence. It was the first view she had had of the wilder part of the country and it thrilled her.

Hard came up with them. "Don't you think we'd better make a little speed when we hit the level?" he said.

"We've only crossed one stream since we started," observed Polly.

"We cross another just before we get to Herrick's," said Hard, "but it never has much water in it except in the rainy season."

"I've seen plenty in it then," said Scott, laughing. "I was caught on the wrong side once when they'd had a cloudburst in the mountains. Oh boy, you should have seen her come down! Swept away a wagon with two horses and the Mexican who was driving it in just two minutes."

"Oh, how could it--in two minutes?"

"Well, it could and did. Before that there wasn't a foot of water in the river bed. When the water came thundering down there was eight or ten. Picked up trees, bushes, chicken coops, greasers--anything in its way, and whirled 'em down the canyon."

It was the middle of the afternoon when they crossed the second range, which they did by means of a trail which went through a gap, thus cutting off the worst of the ascent. Once through the gap, they came out upon a huge mesa from which they looked down upon the valley in which Casa Grande was located. On the mesa, the tired horses broke into the little easy-going jog which mountain ponies love.

Scott watched Polly's sparkling eyes with real gratification. He had chosen to go by trail rather than by road very largely that she might have this experience. He wanted her to see more of the country before she went back to the city and its ways.

"She's a natural out-of-doors woman, and she's never had the chance to find it out," he mused. "Better than a golf course?" he asked, as they trotted across the broad mesa.

"Oh!" she cried, reproachfully. "It's like the happy hunting grounds! I never understood before why the Indians called their Heaven that. It was because they were thinking of space and openness and freedom. I think it beats our kind of Heaven all hollow," finished the cheerful product of 1920.

Finally they came out on the other side of the little river bed, which lay below the mesa and was entered by means of a rocky staircase, crossed a round-topped hill, and there, in a flat little valley surrounded by hills, the rear view of the Casa Grande ranch-house became visible. Two or three smaller buildings stood near it and a fence marked the corral. _

Read next: Chapter 11. Casa Grande

Read previous: Chapter 9. At Liberty

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