The Desert Trail

Then, with a saddle-gun under his knee and his six-shooter hung at his hip, he rode rapidly down the road, turning out from time to time to let long cavalcades of mules string by. The dead-eyed arrieros, each with his combined mule-blind and whip-lash swinging free, seemed to have very little on their minds but their pack-lashings, and yet they must be three days out from Moctezuma.

Their mules, too, were well loaded with the products of the hot country —fanegas of corn in red leather sacks, oranges and fruits in hand-made crates, panoches of sugar in balanced frames, long joints of sugar-cane for the dulce pedlers, and nothing to indicate either haste or flight.

Three times he let long pack-trains go by without a word, and then at last, overcome by curiosity, he inquired about the revoltosos.

"What revoltosos?" queried the old man to whom he spoke.

"Why, the men of Bernardo Bravo," answered Bud; "the men who are marching to take Moctezuma."

"When I left Moctezuma," returned the old man politely, "all was quiet – there were no revoltosos. Since then, I cannot say."

"But the soldiers!" cried Bud. "Surely you saw them! They were marching to fight the rebels."

"Perhaps so," shrugged the arriero, laying the lash of his topojo across the rump of a mule; "but I know nothing about it."

"No," muttered Bud, as he continued on his way; "and I'll bet nobody else does."

Inquiry showed that in this, too, he was correct. From those who traveled fast and from those who traveled slow he received the same wondering answer – the country might be filled with revoltosos; but as for them, they knew nothing about it.

Not until he got back to Fortuna and the busy Federals' telegraph-wire did he hear any more news of rapine and bloodshed, and the light which dawned upon him then was gradually dawning upon the whole town.

It was a false alarm, given out for purposes of state and the "higher politics" with which Mexico is cursed, and the most that was ever seen of Bernardo Bravo and his lawless men was twenty miserable creatures, half-starved, but with guns in their hand, who had come down out of the mountains east of Moctezuma and killed a few cows for beef.

Thoroughly disgusted, and yet vaguely alarmed at this bit of opera-bouffe warfare, Bud set himself resolutely to work to hunt up men for their mine, and, as many poor people were out of employment because of the general stagnation of business, he soon had ten Mexicans at his call.

Then, as Phil had dropped out of sight, he ordered supplies at the store and engaged Cruz Mendez – who had spent his fortune in three days – to pack the goods out on his mules.

They were ready to start the next morning if De Lancey could be found to order the powder and tools, and as the afternoon wore on and no Phil appeared, Bud went on a long hunt which finally discovered him in the balcony of their window, making signs in the language of the bear.[2 - In Mexico a man who flirts with a woman, or courts her surreptitiously through the bars of her window, is called a "bear."]

"Say, Phil," he hailed, disregarding his pardner's obvious preoccupation; "break away for a minute and tell me what kind of powder to get to break that schist – the store closes at five o'clock, and – "

He thrust his head out the door as he spoke and paused, abashed. Through the half-closed portal of the next balcony but one he beheld the golden hair of Gracia Aragon, and she fixed her brown eyes upon him with a dazzling, mischievous smile.

"O-ho!" murmured Bud, laying a compelling hand on De Lancey and backing swiftly out of range; "so this is what you're up to – talking signs! But say, Phil," he continued, beckoning him peremptorily with a jerk of his head, "I got ten men hired and a lot of grub bought, and if you don't pick out that mining stuff we're going to lose a day. So get the lady to excuse you and come on now."

"In a minute," pleaded Phil, and he went at the end of his allotted time, and perhaps it was the imp of jealousy that put strength into Hooker's arm.

"Well, that's all right," said Bud, as Phil began his laughing excuses; "but you want to remember the Maine, pardner – we didn't come down here to play the bear. When there's any love-making to be done I want to be in on it. And you want to remember that promise you made me – you said you wouldn't have a thing to do with the Aragon outfit unless I was with you!"

"Why, you aren't – you aren't jealous, are you, Bud?"

"Yes, I'm jealous," answered Hooker harshly; "jealous as the devil! And I want you to keep that promise, see?"

"Aw, Bud – " began De Lancey incredulously; but Hooker silenced him with a look. Perhaps he was really jealous, or perhaps he only said so to have his way, but Phil saw that he was in earnest, and he went quietly by his side.

But love had set his brain in a whirl, and he thought no more of his promise – only of some subtler way of meeting his inamorata, some way which Bud would fail to see.

XIII

For sixty days and more, while the weather had been turning from cold to warm and they had been laboring feebly to clear way the great slide of loose rock that covered up the ledge, the Eagle Tail mine had remained a mystery.

Whether, like the old Eagle Tail of frontier fable, it was so rich that only the eagle's head was needed to turn the chunks into twenty-dollar gold pieces; or whether, like many other frontier mines, it was nothing but a hole in the ground, was a matter still to be settled. And Bud, for one, was determined to settle it quickly.

"Come on," he said, as Phil hesitated to open up the way to the lead; "we got a month, maybe less, to get to the bottom of this; and then the hills will be lousy with rebels. If the's nothing here, we want to find out about it quick and skip – and if we strike it, by grab! the' ain't enough red-flaggers in Sonora to pry me loose from it. So show these hombres where to work and we'll be up against rock by the end of the week."

The original Eagle Tail tunnel had been driven into the side of a steep hill; so steep, in fact, that the loose shale stretched in long shoots from the base of the frowning porphyry dikes that crowned the tops of the hills to the bottom of the cañon. On each side of the discovery gulch sharp ridges, perforated by the gopher-holes of the Mexicans, and the ancient workings of the Spaniards, ran directly up the hill to meet the contact. But it was against the face of the big ridge itself that Kruger had driven his drift and exploded his giant blast of dynamite, and the whole slope had been altered and covered with a slide of rock.

Against this slide, in the days when they were marking time, Bud and his pardner had directed their energies, throwing the loose stones aside, building up walls against the slip, and clearing the way to the solid schist. There, somewhere beneath the jumble of powder-riven rock, lay the ledge which, if they found it, would make them rich; and now, with single-jack and drill, they attacked the last huge fragments, blasting them into pieces and groveling deeper until they could strike the contact, where the schist and porphyry met and the gold spray had spewed up between.

It was slow work; slower than they had thought, and the gang of Mexicans that they had hired for muckers were marvels of ineptitude. Left to themselves, they accomplished nothing, since each problem they encountered seemed to present to them some element of insuperable difficulty, to solve which they either went into caucus or waited for the boss. Meanwhile they kept themselves awake by smoking cigarettes and telling stories about Bernardo Bravo.

To the Mexicans of Sonora Bernardo Bravo was the personification of all the malevolent qualities – he being a bandit chief who had turned first general and then rebel under Madero – and the fact that he had at last been driven out of Chihuahua and therefore over into Sonora, made his malevolence all the more imminent.

Undoubtedly, somewhere over to the east, where the Sierras towered like a blue wall, Bernardo and his outlaw followers were gathering for a raid, and the raid would bring death to Sonora.

He was a bad man, this Bernardo Bravo, and if half of the current stories were true, he killed men whenever they failed to give him money, and was never too hurried to take a fair daughter of the country up behind him, provided she took his fancy.

Yes, surely he was a bad man – but that did not clear away the rock.

For the first week Phil took charge of the gang, urging, directing, and cajoling them, and the work went merrily on, though rather slowly. The Mexicans liked to work for Don Felipe, he was so polite and spoke such good Spanish; but at the end of the week it developed that Bud could get more results out of them.

Every time Phil started to explain anything to one Mexican all the others stopped to listen to him, and that took time. But Bud's favorite way of directing a man was by grunts and signs and bending his own back to the task. Also, he refused to understand Spanish, and cut off all long-winded explanations and suggestions by an impatient motion to go to work, which the trabajadores obeyed with shrugs and grins.

So Don Felipe turned powder-man and blacksmith, sharpening up the drills at the little forge they had fashioned and loading the holes with dynamite when it became necessary to break a rock, while Bud bossed the unwilling Mexicans.

In an old tunnel behind their tent they set a heavy gate, and behind it they stored their precious powder. Then came the portable forge and the blacksmith-shop, just inside the mouth of the cave, and the tent backed up against it for protection. For if there is any one thing, next to horses, that the rebels are wont to steal, it is giant powder to blow up culverts with, or to lay on the counters of timorous country merchants and frighten them into making contributions.

As for their horses, Bud kept them belled and hobbled, close to the house, and no one ever saw him without his gun. In the morning, when he got up, he took it from under his pillow and hung it on his belt, and there it stayed until bedtime.

He also kept a sharp watch on the trail, above and below, and what few men did pass through were conscious of his eye. Therefore it was all the more surprising when, one day, looking up suddenly from heaving at a great rock, he saw the big Yaqui soldier, Amigo, gazing down at him from the cut bank.

Yes, it was the same man, yet with a difference – his rifle and cartridge-belts were absent and his clothes were torn by the brush. But the same good-natured, competent smile was there, and after a few words with Bud he leaped nimbly down the bank and laid hold upon the rock. They pulled together, and the boulder that had balked Bud's gang of Mexicans moved easily for the two of them.

Then Amigo seized a crowbar and slipped it into a cranny and showed them a few things about moving rocks. For half an hour or more he worked along, seemingly bent on displaying his skill, then he sat down on the bank and watched the Mexicans with tolerant, half-amused eyes.

If he was hungry he showed it only by the cigarettes he smoked, and Hooker, studying upon the chances he would take by hiring a deserter, let him wait until he came to a decision.

"Oyez, Amigo," he hailed at last and, rubbing his hand around on his stomach he smiled questioningly, whereat the Yaqui nodded his head avidly.

"Stowano!" said Hooker. "Ven." And he left his Mexicans to dawdle as they would while he led the Indian to camp. There he showed him the coffeepot and the kettle of beans by the fire, set out a slab of Dutch-oven bread and a sack of jerked beef, some stewed fruit and a can of sirup, and left him to do his worst.

In the course of half an hour or so he came back and found the Yaqui sopping up sirup with the last of the bread and humming a little tune. So they sat down and smoked a cigarette and came to the business at hand.

"Where you go?" inquired Bud; but Amigo only shrugged enigmatically.

"You like to work?" continued Bud, and the Indian broke into a smile of assent.

"Muy bien," said Hooker with finality; "I give Mexicans two dollars a day – I give you four. Is that enough?"