The Mystery of The Barranca

“ – Very young? Yes, I was only fifteen, so my first godchild is now seven. That reminds me – she is waiting below to repeat her catechism. There is just time – if you would like it.”

“I would be delighted. So the position is not without its duties?”

“I should think not.” Her eyes lit with a touch of indignation. “I hold the baby at the christening after helping to make the robe. When they are big enough I teach them their catechism. You could not imagine the weight of my responsibilities, and I believe that I am much more concerned for their behavior than their mothers. If any of them were to do anything really wicked” – her little shudder was genuine – “I should feel dreadfully ashamed. But they are really very good – as you shall judge for yourself. Francesca!” As, with a soft patter of chubby feet, a small girl emerged from a far corner, she added with archness that was chastened by real concern, “Now you must not dare to say that she isn’t perfect.”

In one sense the caution was needed. After a brave answer to the question “Who is thy Creator, Francesca?” the child displayed a slight uncertainty as to the origin of light, added a week or two to the “days of creation,” and became hopelessly mixed as to the specific quantities of the “Trinity” – wherein, after all, she was no worse than the theologians who have burned each other up, in both senses, in furious disputes over the same question. But better, far better than letter perfection, was the simple awe of the small brown face and the devotion of the lisping voice which followed the tutor’s gentle prompting.

“Fine! fine!” Seyd applauded a last valorous attack on the Ten Commandments, and the small scholar ran off clutching a silver coin, just so much the richer for his heretical presence. As he rose to follow his hostess inside he added, “If all the Francescas are equal to sample, the next generation of San Nicolas husbands will undoubtedly rise up and call you blessed.”

“Now you are laughing at me,” she protested. “Though that might be truly said of my mother. She is a saint for good works. But come, or I shall yet earn my scolding. And let me warn you to take care of your heart. All of the caballeros fall in love with mother.”

It was quite believable. While seated in the dining-room, a vaulted chamber cool as a crypt in spite of the sunblaze outside, a room which would have seated an army of retainers, he observed the señora with the satisfaction that even a stranger may feel in the promise a handsome mother holds out to her girls. In addition to the sweetness of her eyes and her tenderly tranquil expression she had retained her youthful contour. She exhibited the miracle of middle age achieved without fat or stiffness. In her scarf and black lace she was maturely beautiful. Waving away his apologies for the intrusion, she was anxiously solicitous for his wants through the meal. Yet he noticed that in taking his leave an hour later she did not ask him to call again.

Up to that moment there had been no further mention of his business. But as he stood hesitating, loath to introduce it, Don Luis relieved his embarrassment. “Now you would see the administrador? I am sorry, señor, but it seems that he is away at Chilpancin about the sale of cattle. But if you will intrust your moneys to Francesca she will see to the business and have the papers sent out to the mine.”

Neither did Francesca, when saying good-by, ask him to return. But, conscious that with all their kind hospitality they still regarded him as an intruder, Seyd was neither offended nor surprised. He was even a little astonished when Don Luis stated his intention of riding with him as far as the cane.

Until they came to the ford they rode in silence. Though only a few inches deep at this season, the river’s wide bed proclaimed it one of those torrential streams which rise from a trickle to a flood in very few hours, and when he remarked upon it Don Luis assented with his heavy nod.

“Si, it is very treacherous. One night during the last rains it rose fifty feet and swept down the valley miles wide, bearing on its yellow bosom cattle, houses, sheep, and pigs, and it drowned not a few of our people. And each year the floods go higher. Why? Because of the cursed lust that would mint the whole world into dollars. Year by year your Yankee companies are stripping the pine from the upper valley, and, though I have spoken with Porfirio Diaz about it, he is mad for commerce. He would see the whole state of Guerrero submerged before he revoked one charter. And they even try to make me a party to it. ‘General, if you will grant us a concession to do this, that, the other? If you will only allow us to run a branch line into your pine we can make big money – guarantee you half a million pesos.’ When I am in Mexico your Yankee promoters swarm round me like hungry dogs. But never have I listened, nor ever will!”

He struck the pommel of his saddle a heavy blow, then looked his surprise as Seyd spoke. “I should not think that you would. I understand your feelings.”

“You do? Caramba! Then you are the first Yankee that ever did. In return for your sympathy let me offer you advice. You are not the first man to denounce on my land, nor is Santa Gertrudis the only location. Yankees, English, French, Germans, they have come, denounced claims here and there, but no man has ever held one. No man ever will. Already you have tasted the bitter hostility of my people, and were I to nod not even the American Ambassador could save you alive. And this is only the beginning. Let me return your money? Mexico is one great mine. Anywhere you can kick the soil and uncover a fortune.”

“But none like the Santa Gertrudis.” Seyd smiled. “Of course, I feel it’s pretty raw for me to force in on your land; but, knowing that if I don’t some other will, I shall have to refuse. As for the opposition – that is all in the day’s work.” He finished, offering his hand. “But I hope this won’t prevent us from being good neighbors?”

Shaking his massive head, Don Luis reined in his horse. “No, señor, we can never be that. But next to a good friend I count a hearty enemy, and you may depend upon me for that.”

With a courteous wave of the hand he rode off; and, watching him go at a stately canter, Seyd muttered, “Enemy or friend, you are a fine old chap.”

“You are surely a fine old chap.”

Retracing his path through the long succession of farm, jungle, and fields, Seyd repeated it, and as he rode along he saw things in a new light. As he passed through one village at sundown the entire population was filing into church, the peons in clean blankets, their women in decent black. The next hamlet was in the throes of a fiesta. Girls in white, garlanded with flaming flowers, were dancing the eternal jig of the country with their brown swains. And these two functions, church and baile, marked the bounds of their simple life. A plenty of rice and frijoles, a peso or two for clothing, were all that they asked or needed.

While prospecting in the Sierra Madres Seyd had drawn many a comparison between the happy indolence of the peon and the worry, strain, strife to live up to a standard just beyond income that obtains in American life. Because the peon had time to think his simple thoughts, listen to bird song and the music of babbling streams, to watch the splendors of sunrise and sunset over purple valleys, Seyd’s suffrage had often gone to him. Observing this pastoral life in its tropical setting of palms and jungle, the opinion grew into a strong conviction.

“The old fellow’s right!” he ejaculated, riding out of the last village into the jungle proper. “We have nothing to give his people, and we’d surely kill all they have.”

Though the profusion of foliage which made of the trail one long green tunnel prevented him from seeing it, he was now riding along at the foot of the Barranca wall. Its deep shadow already filled the jungle with a twilight that thickened into night as he rode. But, knowing that whatever her faults of temperament Peace could be trusted to fetch her own stable, he left her to take her own way while he pursued his thoughts. While the siren whistle of beetles, chatter of chickicuillotes– wild hens of the jungle – deafened his ears, he tried to bring the crowding impressions of the day into some kind of order – no easy task when a fire-eating old general and a typical Mexican mother had to be reconciled in thought with a young girl who possessed the face of a Celt, eyes of a Spaniard, vivacity of a Frenchwoman, and American intelligence.

Next he fell to speculating upon the causes which had kept her single at an age that, according to Mexican standards, placed her hopelessly upon the shelf, and he found the answer in the gossip of the American station agent on his last trip out to the railroad. “She could have had her cousin Sebastien any time, and there were others around these parts. But once let a high-strung girl like her get a glimpse of the outside world and no common hacendado can ever hope to tie her shoestring. They say she has had other chances – attachés of foreign legations in Mexico City. But she turned ’em down – I don’t know why, unless it’s ideals.” With a humorous twinkle the agent had added: “Bad things, ideals – always in the way. If you happen to have any in stock give ’em to the first beggar you meet along the road. Hers are keeping San Nicolas and El Quiss from reuniting, but she don’t seem to care.”

“A fine girl – the man will be lucky that gets her.” Seyd now re-expressed the agent’s homely verdict. “If it wasn’t – ” He stopped short, with a savage laugh. “You darned fool! mooning over a girl who would turn up her pretty nose at any gringo, much more one that has forced himself in on her uncle’s land. Your business is to get a fortune out of the mine, and do it quick. And even if it wasn’t – ”

The thought was never finished, for the last few minutes had brought him out into the starlight at the foot of the Barranca wall, and as Peace gathered herself for the scramble upward the jungle lit up with a sudden flash. Before Seyd’s ears caught the report he felt his left shoulder clutched, as it were, by a red-hot hand. The next second he was almost thrown by the mule’s sudden plunge – fortunately, for otherwise the bullet that came out of a second flash would have smashed through his brain.

“Muzzle-loaders!” In the moment he lay on the mule’s neck he divined it from the thick explosion. Then the thought, “It will take them a minute to reload,” followed a quick calculation, “They’ll catch me again on the first turn.”

With him action always sprang of subconscious processes which were quicker than thought, and while he crouched on her neck and Peace took the turn on a scrambling gallop he turned loose with both of his Colts, aiming at the spot from which the flashes had come. And the sequel proved his judgment. This time a single flash announced the bullet which grazed the mule’s rump just as she shot into a patch of woodland.

“Reckon I made one of you sick,” he interpreted the single shot.

The burning smart of his wound and the treachery of the attack had loosed within him a fury of anger. Reining in, he felt his shoulder. The bullet had plowed a furrow in the flesh of the upper arm, but, muttering “I guess it’s bled about all it’s going to,” he first tied the mule to a tree, then slid the “reloads” into his guns.

It would have been foolish to expose himself in the open trail under the clear starlight. Resisting the savage impulse which urged him to close quarters, he crawled back to the edge of the timber and again turned loose his guns, searching the jungle below with a swinging muzzle. Time and again he did it, thanking his stars whenever he reloaded for the forethought which had caused Billy to slip an extra box of cartridges into the holsters, and not until only one charge was left did he pause to listen.

Whether or no it was the firing that had frightened even the night birds into temporary quiet, not even a twig stirred in the darkness below. He caught only the distant whooping which told that Billy had heard, and as this drew nearer with astonishing quickness Seyd rose and went back to his mule.

“Coming downhill hell for leather!” he muttered. “If I don’t hurry he’ll break his neck.”

CHAPTER VII

One afternoon about a week later Mr. William Thornton was to be seen mixing mortar for the bricks he was laying on the smelter foundation. Rising almost sheer from the edge of the bench behind him, the Barranca wall shut off the western breeze, and from its face the fierce sunblaze was reflected in quivering waves of heat. Coming out from an early lunch he had noted that the thermometer registered ninety in the shade, and he was now ready to swear that with one more degree he himself would be able to supply all the moisture required for the operation.

While working he cast occasional glances toward the house; and when, the mortar being mixed, he began to lay brick he used the trowel with care lest its clink should awaken Seyd. For though the blood loss from a severed artery had left him quite weak, he had obstinately refused to stop work. To-day he had even balked at the suggestion of a siesta until Billy had lain down himself. As soon as Seyd fell asleep Billy had slipped out, and when he now paused to listen the concern in his look passed into sudden attention as the clink of a shod hoof rose up from the trail below.

Five minutes passed before he heard it again, and in the mean time his actions bespoke an intelligent appreciation of the needs of the case. Picking up a Winchester which leaned against a tree, he crouched behind his bricks, and while training it on the point where the trail emerged on the bench a ferocious scowl overshadowed his sunburn.

“If we played it your way I’d brown you the second your nose shows,” he muttered as the hoofbeats grew louder. “Thank your musty old saints that we don’t. Ah! Eh? Well!”

The interjections respectively fitted the wolf hound, her young mistress, and the mozo, as they appeared in the order named. As only Billy’s head showed over the bricks, and both were on the same color scheme, he was practically invisible; and, reining up her beast, the girl allowed her curious gaze to wander around the bench from the gaping hole where the drift ran into the vein over the adobe hut and foundation – just missing Billy’s head – to the blue-green piles of copper ore.

“So this is the mina!” Her tone denoted disappointment. “Good heavens! Tomas, is this the wealth the gringos seek? What an ado over a pile of stones! I should think Don Luis would be thankful to have them carted away.”

She had spoken in Spanish, but when, having shed his arsenal under cover of the bricks, Billy rose and came forward, she addressed him in English. “Mr. Thornton, is it not? We have brought the papers from the administrador – at least, Tomas has. I am playing truant. Though it is only fifteen miles from here to San Nicolas, this is the first time that I have seen the place. Where is Mr. Seyd?”

Now than Billy, was there never a young man more naturally chivalrous. Usually a locomotive could not have dragged from him a single word calculated to shock or offend a girl. But in his confusion at finding an expected enemy changed into a charming friend he let slip the naked truth. “He was shot – returning from your place.”

“Señor! He – he is not – dead?”

There was no mistaking her concern. Sorry for his abruptness, Billy plunged to reassure her. “No! no! Only wounded.”

“Is he – much hurt?”

It occurred to Billy that a flesh wound was, after all, rather a small price for such solicitude. But where a touch of jealousy might have caused another to make light of Seyd’s wound, his natural unselfishness made him paint it in darker colors. “The bullet cut an artery, and he’s pretty weak from loss of blood. Yet he won’t lay off. I had to trick him into a siesta to-day. I’ll go call him.”

But she raised a protesting hand. “No! no! Let him sleep. You can give him the papers. Tell him when he awakes that he will hear from us again.”

With a smile which caused Billy additional regret for his lack of wounds she rode off at a pace which filled him with anxiety for her neck. Until he caught a glimpse of her, foreshortened to a dot on the trail far below, he stood watching. Then, muttering “I’ll bet Seyd will raise Cain when he awakes,” he went back to his work.

Nor was he mistaken, for when Seyd came out, yawning and stretching, an hour or so later, the last vestige of sleep was burned up by the sudden flash of his eyes. “You darned chump! Do we have visitors so often that you let me sleep on like a rotten log?”

Neither was he appeased by Billy’s answer, delivered with an irritating grin: “Why should she wish to see you when I was around? A pallid wretch who has to make three tries to cast a shadow!”

“He has, has he?” Seyd growled. “Well, I’m solid enough to punch your fat head.”

The atmosphere having thus been cleared, he commented: “Went off to tell the General, eh? I wonder how he’ll take it?”