The Desert Trail

In the door of the store stood Aragon, pale with fury, but Bud appeared not to see him. His eyes were turned rather toward the house where, on the edge of the veranda, Gracia Aragon and her mother stood staring at his antics.

"Good morning to you, ladies!" he saluted, taking off his sombrero with a flourish. "Lovely weather, ain't it?" And with his tongue in his cheek and a roguish glance at Aragon, who was stricken dumb by this last effrontery, he went rollicking after his pardner, sending back a series of joyous yips.

"Now that sure does me good," he confided to Phil, as they rode down between cottonwoods and struck into the muddy creek. "No sense in it, but it gets something out of my system that has kept me from feeling glad. Did you see me bowing to the ladies? Some class to that bow – no? You want to look out – I got my eye on that gal, and I'm sure a hard one to head. Only thing is, I wouldn't like the old man for a father-in-law the way matters stand between us now."

He laughed boisterously at this witticism, and the little Mexican children, playing among the willows, crouched and lay quiet like rabbits. Along the sides of the rocky hills, where the peons had their mud-and-rock houses, mothers came anxiously to open doors; and as they jogged along up the river the Chinese gardeners, working in each separate nook and eddy of the storm-washed creek-bed, stopped grubbing to gaze at them inquiringly.

"Wonder what's the matter with them chinks?" observed Bud, when his happiness had ceased to effervesce. "They sit up like a village of prairie-dogs! Whole country seems to be on the rubber-neck. Must be something doing."

"That's right," agreed Phil. "Did you notice how those peons scattered when I rode down the street? Maybe there's been some insurrectos through. But say – listen!"

He stopped his horse, and in the silence a bugle-call came down the wind from the direction of Fortuna.

"Soldiers!" he said. "Now where did they come from? I was in Fortuna day before yesterday, and – well, look at that!"

From the point of the hill just ahead of them a line of soldiers came into view, marching two abreast, with a mounted officer in the lead.

"Aha!" exclaimed Bud with conviction; "they've started something down below. This is that bunch of Federals that we saw drilling up at Agua Negra."

"Yep," admitted De Lancey regretfully; "I guess you're right for once – the open season for rebels has begun."

They drew out of the road and let them pass – a long, double line of shabby infantrymen, still wearing their last-year's straw hats and summer uniforms and trudging along in flapping sandals.

In front were two men bearing lanterns, to search out the way by night; slatternly women, the inevitable camp-followers, trotted along at the sides with their bundles and babies; and as the little brown men from Zacatecas, each burdened with his heavy gun and a job lot of belts and packs, shuffled patiently past the Americans, they flashed the whites of their eyes and rumbled a chorus of "Adios!"

"Adios, Americanos!" they called, gazing enviously at their fine horses, and Phil in his turn touched his hat and wished them all God-speed.

"Poor devils!" he murmured, as the last tottering camp-followers, laden with their burdens, brought up the rear and a white-skinned Spanish officer saluted from his horse. "What do those little pelónes know about liberty and justice, or the game that is being played? Wearing the same uniforms that they had when they fought for Diaz, and now they are fighting for Madero. Next year they may be working for Orozco or Huerta or Salazar."

"Sure," muttered Bud; "but that ain't the question. If the's rebels in the hills, where do we get off?"

XI

The plaza at Fortuna, ordinarily so peaceful and sleepy, was alive with hurrying men when Bud and Phil reached town. Over at the station a special engine was wheezing and blowing after its heavy run and, from the train of commandeered ore-cars behind, a swarm of soldiers were leaping to the ground. On the porch of the hotel Don Juan de Dios Brachamonte was making violent signals with his hands, and as they rode up he hurried out to meet them.

"My gracious, boys," he cried, "it's a good thing you came into town! Bernardo Bravo has come over the mountains and he's marching to take Moctezuma!"

"Why, that doesn't make any difference to us!" answered Phil. "Moctezuma is eighty miles from here – and look at all the soldiers. How many men has Bernardo got?"

"Well, that I do not know," responded Don Juan; "some say more and some less, but if you boys hadn't come in I would have sent a man to fetch you. Just as soon as a revolution begins the back country becomes unsafe for Americans. Some of these low characters are likely to murder you if they think you have any money."

"Well, we haven't," put in Bud; "but we've got a mine – and we're going to keep it, too."

"Aw, Bernardo Bravo hasn't got any men!" scoffed Phil. "I bet this is a false alarm. He got whipped out of his boots over in Chihauhua last fall, and he's been up in the Sierra Madres ever since. Probably come down to steal a little beef.

"Why, Don Juan, Bud and I lived right next to a trail all last year and if we'd listened to one-tenth of the revoltoso stories we heard we wouldn't have taken out an ounce of gold. I'm going to get my denouncement papers to-morrow, and I'll bet you we work that mine all summer and never know the difference. These rebels won't hurt you any, anyhow!"

"No! Only beg a little grub!" added Bud scornfully. "Come on, Phil; let's go over and look at the soldiers – it's that bunch of Yaquis we saw up at Agua Negra."

They tied their horses to the rack and, leaving the solicitous Don Juan to sputter, hurried over to the yard. From the heavy metal ore-cars, each a rolling fortress in itself, the last of the active Yaquis were helping out their women and pet dogs, while the rest, talking and laughing in high spirits, were strung out along the track in a perfunctory line.

If the few officers in command had ever attempted to teach them military discipline, the result was not apparent in the line they formed; but any man who looked at their swarthy faces, the hawklike profiles, and deep-set, steady eyes, would know that they were fighters.

After all, a straight line on parade has very little to do with actual warfare, and these men had proved their worth under fire.

To be sure, it was the fire of Mexican guns, and perhaps that was why the officers were so quiet and unassertive; for every one of these big, upstanding Indians had been captured in the Yaqui wars and deported to the henequen fields of Yucatan to die in the miasma and heat.

But they had come from a hardy breed and the whirligig of fortune was flying fast – Madero defeated Porfirio Diaz; fresh revolutions broke out against the victor, and, looking about in desperation for soldiers to fill his ranks, Madero fell upon the Yaquis.

Trained warriors for generations, of a race so fierce that the ancient Aztecs had been turned aside by them in their empire-founding migration, they were the very men to whip back the rebels, if he could but win them to his side.

So Madero had approached Chief Bule, whom Diaz had taken under a flag of truce, and soon the agreement was made. In return for faithful service, Mexico would give back to the Indians the one thing they had been fighting a hundred and sixty years to attain, their land along the Rio Yaqui; and there they should be permitted to live in peace as their ancestors had done before them.

And so, with a thousand or more of his men, the crafty old war-chief had taken service in the Federal army, though his mind, poisoned perhaps by the treachery he had suffered, was not entirely free from guile.

"It is the desire of the Yaquis," he had said, when rebuked for serving under the hated flag of Mexico, "to kill Mexicans, And," he added grimly, "the Federals at this time seem best able to give us guns for that purpose."

But it had been a year now since Bule had passed his word and, though they had battled valiantly, their land had not been given back to them. The wild Yaquis, the irreconcilables who never came down from the hills, had gone on the war-path again, but Bule and his men still served.

Only in two things did they disobey their officers – they would not stack their arms, and they would not retreat while there were still more Mexicans to be killed. Otherwise they were very good soldiers.

But now, after the long campaign in Chihuahua and a winter of idleness at Agua Negra, they were marching south toward their native land and, in spite of the stern glances of their leaders, they burst forth in weird Yaqui songs which, if their words had been known, might easily have caused their Mexican officers some slight uneasiness.

It was, in fact, only a question of days, months, or years until the entire Yaqui contingent would desert, taking their arms and ammunition with them.

"Gee! what a bunch of men!" exclaimed Bud, as he stood off and admired their stark forms.

"There's some genuine fighters for you," he observed to Phil; and a giant Yaqui, standing near, returned his praise with a smile.

"W'y, hello there, Amigo!" hailed Bud, jerking his head in a friendly salute. "That's a feller I was making signs to up in Agua Negra," he explained. "Dogged if I ain't stuck on these Yaquis – they're all men, believe me!"

"Good workers, all right," conceded De Lancey, "but I'd hate to have 'em get after me with those guns. They say they've killed a lot of Americans, one time and another."

"Well, if they did it was for being caught in bad company," said Hooker. "I'd take a chance with 'em any time – but if you go into their country with a Mexican escort they'll kill you on general principles. Say," he cried impulsively, "I'm going over to talk with Amigo!"

With a broad grin on his honest face he advanced toward the giant Yaqui and shook hands ceremoniously.

"Where you go?" he inquired in Spanish, at the same time rolling a cigarette and asking by a sign for a match.

"Moctezuma," answered the Indian gravely. Then, as Bud offered him the makings, he, too, rolled a cigarette and they smoked for a minute in silence.

"You live here?" inquired the Yaqui at last.

"Come here," corrected Bud. "I have a mine – ten miles – over there."

He pointed with the flat of his hand, Indian fashion, and Amigo nodded understandingly.

He was a fine figure of a man, standing six feet or better in his well-cut sandals and handling his heavy Mauser as a child would swing a stick. Across his broad chest he wore a full cartridge-belt, and around his waist he had two more, filled to the last hole with cartridges and loaded clips. At his feet lay his blanket, bound into a tight roll, and a canteen and coffee-cup completed his outfit, which, so far as impedimenta were concerned, was simplicity itself.