The Desert Trail

"You said," explained the captain politely, "that your friend had promised you he would not trouble the lady further. Does that mean that you are interested in her yourself, or merely that you perceive the hopelessness of his suit and wish to protect him from a greater evil that may well befall him? For look you, señor, the girl is mine, and no man can come between us!"

"Huh!" snorted Bud, who caught the last all right. Then he laughed shortly and shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said gruffly, "but he will stay away, all right."

"Muy bien," responded Del Rey carelessly and, dismounting at the jail, he threw open the door and stood aside for his rival to come out.

"Muchas gracias, Señor Capitan," saluted Bud, as the door clanged to behind his pardner. But Phil still bristled with anger and defiance, and the captain perceived that there would be no thanks from him.

"It is nothing," he replied, bowing politely, and something in the way he said it made De Lancey choke with rage. But there by the cárcel door was not the place for picking quarrels. They went to the hotel, where Don Juan, all apologies for his apparent neglect – which he excused on the ground that De Lancey had been held incomunicado– placated them as best he could and hurried on to the news.

"My gracious, Don Felipe," he cried, "you don't know how sorry I was to see you in jail, but the captain's orders were that no one should go near you – and in Mexico we obey the rurales, you know. Otherwise we are placed against a wall and shot.

"But have you heard the news from down below? Ah, what terrible times they are having there – ranches raided, women stolen, rich men held for ransom! Yes, it is worse than ever! Already I am receiving telegrams to prepare rooms for the refugees, and the people are coming in crowds.

"Our friend, the Señor Luna, and his son Feliz have been taken by Bernardo Bravo! Only by an enormous ransom was he able to save his wife and daughters, and his friends must now pay for him.

"At the ranch of the rich Spaniard, Alvarez, there has been a great battle in which the red-flaggers were defeated with losses. Now Bernardo Bravo swears he will avenge his men, and Alvarez has armed his Yaqui workmen.

"He is a brave man, this Colonel Alvarez, and his Yaquis are all warriors from the hills; but Bernardo has gathered all the insurrectos in the country together – Campos, Rojas, the brothers Escaboza – and they may crush him with their numbers. But now there is other news – that they are marching upon Fortuna and El Tigre, to seize the mines and mills and hold the rich American companies up for ransom.

"No, señores, you must not return to your camp. Remain here, and you shall still have your room, though Spanish gentlemen sleep on the floors. No, allow me, Don Felipe! I wish to show you how highly I value your friendship! Only because we cannot disobey the rurales did I suffer you to lie in jail; but now you shall be my guest, you shall – "

"Nope," answered Bud; "we're safer out at the mine."

He glanced at De Lancey, in whose mind rosy visions were beginning to gather, and he, too, declined – with a sigh.

"Make it a bed for the night," he said. "I've got to get out of this town before I tangle with Del Rey again and find myself back in jail. And now lead me to it – I'm perishing for a bath and a sleep!"

They retired early and got up early – for Bud was haunted by fears. But as they passed through Old Fortuna the worst happened to him – they met Gracia, mounted on a prancing horse and followed by a rural guard, and she smote him to the heart with a smile.

It was not a smile for Phil, gone astray and wounding by chance; it was a dazzling, admiring smile for Bud alone, and he sat straighter in his saddle. But Phil uttered a groan and struck his horse with the quirt.

"She cut me!" he moaned.

"Aw, forget it!" growled Bud, and they rode on their way in silence.

XVI

At their camp by the Eagle Tail mine, even though they held it still and were heirs to half its gold, the two pardners were glum and sorrowful. The treacheries which Bud had forgiven in a moment of exaltation came back to him now as he brooded; and he eyed his friend askance, as if wondering what he would do next.

He recalled all the circumstances of their quest – the meeting with Kruger, Phil's insistence on the adventure, the oath of loyalty which they had sworn; and then the gradual breaking down of their brotherly devotion until now they were strangers at heart. Phil sat by himself, keeping his thoughts to himself, and he stood aloof while he waited for the worst to happen.

From the first day of their undertaking Hooker had felt that it was unlucky, and now he knew that the end was coming. His friend was lost to him, lost alike to a sense of loyalty and honor; he gloomed by himself and thought only of Gracia Aragon.

The oath which Phil himself had forced upon Bud was broken and forgotten; but Bud, by a sterner standard, felt bound to keep his part. One thing alone could make him break it – his word to Henry Kruger. The Eagle Tail mine he held in trust, and half of it was Kruger's.

"Phil," he said at last, when his mind was weary of the ceaseless grind of thoughts, "I believe that mineral agent is holding back our papers. I believe old Aragon has passed him a hundred or so and they're in cahoots to rob us. But I'll tell you what I'll do – you give me a power of attorney to receive those papers for you, and I'll go in and talk Dutch to the whole outfit."

"What do you want to do that for?" demanded De Lancey querulously. "Why can't you wait a while? Those papers have to go to Moctezuma and Hermosillo and all over the City of Mexico and back, and it takes time. What do you want to make trouble for?"

"Well, I'll tell you, Phil," answered Bud honestly. "I've got a hunch if we don't grab them papers soon we won't get 'em at all. Here these rebels are working closer all the time, and Aragon is crowding us. I want to get title and turn it over to Kruger, before we lose out somewhere."

"What's the matter with me going in and talking to the agent?" suggested Phil. Then, as he saw his pardner's face, he paused and laughed bitterly.

"You don't trust me any more, do you, Bud?" he said.

"Well, it ain't that so much," evaded Hooker; "but I sure don't trust that Manuel del Rey. The first time you go into town he's going to pinch you, and I know it."

"I'm going to go in all the same," declared De Lancey, "and if the little squirt tries to stop me – "

"Aw, Phil," entreated Bud, "be reasonable, can't ye? You got no call to go up against that little feller. He's a bad actor, I can see that, and I believe he'd kill you if he got the chance. But wait a little while – maybe he'll get took off in the fights this summer!"

"No, he's too cursed mean for that!" muttered De Lancey, but he seemed to take some comfort in the thought.

As for Bud, he loafed around for a while, cleaning up camp, making smoke for the absent Yaqui, and looking over the deserted mine, but something in the changed atmosphere made him restless and uneasy.

"I wonder where that dogged Indian went to?" he said for the hundredth time, as the deep shadows gathered in the valley. "By Joe, Phil, if Amigo comes back I'm going to go ahead on that mine! I want to keep him around here, and we might as well get out some ore, if it's only for a grub-stake. Come on – what do you say? We'll open her up – there's nothing to hide now. Well, I'll do it myself, then – this setting around is getting on my nerves."

His far-seeing eyes, trained from his boyhood to search the hills for cattle, scanned the tops of the ridges as he spoke; and while he sat and pondered they noted every rock.

Then at last he rose up slowly and gazed at a certain spot. He waved his arm, beckoning the distant point of blackness to come in, and soon from around a point in the cañon the Yaqui appeared, bearing a heavy Mauser rifle on his arm.

Across his broad breast hung the same familiar cartridge-belt, two more encircled his hips, and he walked with his head held high, like the warrior that he was.

Evidently his flight had led to the place where his arms had been hid, for he wore the regulation knife bayonet at his hip and around his hat was the red ribbon of his people, but Bud was too polite to ask him about his journey. Since his coming the Yaqui had always maintained a certain mystery, and now, though his eyes were big with portent and he smiled at the jests about his gun, he simply waved his hand to the south and east and murmured:

"Muchos revoltosos!"

"Seguro!" answered Bud jokingly. "But have you killed any?"

"Not yet!" returned the Indian, and he did not smile at that.

"I wonder what that Indian is waiting around here for?" remarked Phil in English. "He must have his eye on somebody."

"Yeah, I bet," agreed Bud, regarding his savage friend with a speculative interest. "Most of them Yaqui soldiers was farm-hands in this country before they rounded them up. I reckon he's looking for the man that had him deported.

"Tired, Amigo?" he inquired in Spanish, and Ignacio gravely acknowledged that he was, a little.

"Then drink plenty coffee," went on Hooker. "Eat lots – to-morrow we go to work in the mine."

"Tomorrow?" repeated the Indian, as if considering his other engagements. "Good!" He nodded a smiling assent.

After a month and more of idleness Bud and Amigo performed prodigies of labor in the cut, rolling down boulders, lifting them up on the tram, and clearing away the face of the cliff. Their tram was ramshackle, their track the abandoned rails from older workings, and their tools little more than their hands, but by noon the last broken fragments were heaved aside and the shattered ledge revealed.

A low cry of wonder escaped the Yaqui as he gazed at the rich vein of ore, and as he saw the grim smile on Bud's rugged countenance he showed his white teeth in sympathy.

"Que bueno!" he murmured. "How good!" gathering the precious fragments in his handkerchief.

At the camp they crushed the picked ore in a mortar and panned it in the creek, and for the moment De Lancey dropped his air of preoccupancy as he stared at the streak of pure gold. Like a yellow film it lay along the edge of the last fine tailings, and when skilful washing had left it bare, it gleamed like a jewel in the pan.