"It iss the same—er—young man!" she hissed. "I tell you he iss always at our heels—yes. Now will you belief me? Feel! is your money safe?"

Janice clapped her hand to her bosom; the packet she had thought so securely pinned there was gone.

"Oh!" she gasped. "I have lost it! It is——"

"It has been stolen! You have been robbed! This boy has it!" the black-eyed woman declared with conviction. "What have I told you right along? But I have the thief. No, sir! you may not wr-r-riggle out of my so-strong grasp!"



CHAPTER XVII

TWO EXPLOSIONS

Marty had no desire to have his identity revealed to his cousin in any such belittling manner as this. He had dreamed of Janice getting into some difficulty, and his stepping forward to defend and protect her. But this situation covered him with confusion.

The large woman with the black eyes and the foreign speech possessed muscle, too, as he quickly discovered. He could not twist himself out of her grasp on the dark platform.

"I have the thief," repeated Madam. "Soh!"

"Oh! are you sure?" gasped Janice.

"You haf lost your money, eh?" demanded her companion. "Well, then, I haf secured the thief—soh!"

A trainman came along with a lantern. Its light, suddenly cast upon the little group, revealed Marty's face more clearly.

"What's the matter here?" asked the trainman, his curiosity aroused. But Janice moved closer to the boy twisting in Madam's grasp. She peered into his face and her own countenance paled.

"It—it can't be!" she gasped. "You—you—Marty Day!"

She made a dive for the silly-looking mustache. Marty squealed energetically:

"You behave! Stop it, Janice! Ouch! that hurts! Don't you know the blamed thing's stuck on with shoemaker's wax?"

"Marty Day!" repeated the girl, "how did you come here?"

"You know heem—yes?" gasped the black-eyed woman.

"Why, he's my cousin! He's followed me all the way from home! How ever he did it——"

Then she stopped suddenly, putting her hand to her bosom again.

"But I have lost it—the packet," she cried.

"Your money——Ach!" ejaculated Madam.

"What's that?" asked the trainman. "You lost something?"

"I bet you have," exclaimed Marty. "No girl can take care of money right. Where'd you have it?"

Janice motioned to her bosom. The trainman lowered his lantern and cast its radiance in a wider circle on the platform.

"What's this here?" demanded the boy, and sprang immediately to secure what his sharp eyes had observed lying at the feet of the black-eyed woman.



"Oh! that must be it," Janice said, trying to seize it from her cousin's hand.

"Aw, let's make sure," growled Marty, at once taking the lead in affairs. "Nice way to carry money, I must say—wrapped in a handkerchief! Hi tunket! what d'you know about this?"

He had unfolded the handkerchief and revealed—newspaper. That was all. The black-eyed woman stepped back with a sudden intake of breath. She glared at Janice.

"Huh! Somebody flimflammed you?" demanded Marty, staring, too, at his cousin.

"No-o," the girl admitted faintly. "I—I did it myself."

"You did what?" asked the interested trainman.

"I wrapped that paper up and hid it in my blouse. My money is safe."

"It is!" cried Marty. "Sure? Where you got it hid?"

"Never mind; it's safe," said Janice tartly.

The trainman chuckled as he went his way.

"Marty!" began the girl when Madam broke in:

"You are well engaged, I see," she said sharply. "I will bid you goot evening," and she moved majestically toward the car.

"Who is she?" demanded Marty, following Madam with suspicious eye.

"I don't know," confessed his cousin.

"Say! are you sure you got your money safe?"

"Yes."

"Where?" he questioned insistently.

"It's none of your business, Marty Day," snapped Janice, "but if you must know, it's pinned inside my stocking—so now!"

"Sure," chuckled Marty. "I might have guessed. Most popular national bank there is. Say! we'd better get aboard. Train's goin' to start again."

"You come with me, Marty; I want to know what this means," Janice said, seizing his hand as they hurried to board the train. "How did you get down here? Who told you you might come? Mercy! I can't understand it at all. And that silly mustache——"

"Cricky! I wish I could get the blame thing off," said the boy, touching his lip tenderly. "You mighty near tore my face apart when you grabbed at it."

"It's the most ridiculous thing. Oh! I wonder where Madam went to?" For the black-eyed woman was not in her usual seat. Indeed, her hand-baggage was no longer there, nor could Janice see her anywhere in the car. "I believe she is offended," said the girl.

"Huh? What about?" Marty queried.

"Why, because of that foolish trick of mine—the packet of newspapers. She thought I had my money pinned to my underwaist all the time."

The boy's eyes twinkled shrewdly. "Huh! maybe," he said. "But you don't know a thing about her. 'Tisn't very smart to make acquaintances on the cars, I calculate."

"Goodness! hear the boy!" gasped Janice. "Sit down here. I want to know all about it—— Why, Marty!"

"Huh? What's sprung a leak now?"

"It must have been you who gave me that lunch!"

"Oh! on the train coming down from the Landing? Sure," Marty answered. "I knew you'd never think of getting anything decent to eat yourself."

"You blessed angel boy!"

"Oh! I'm a Sarah Finn, I am—as Walky Dexter calls 'em."

"Calls what?"

"Angels," said the boy, grinning. "There's one breed called something that sounds like Sarah Finn."

"Seraphim!"

"That's the ticket. Well?" for his cousin suddenly seized his arm and shook him.

"Tell me all about it—at once!"

"Why—er—that lunch I got off'n the cook aboard the Constance Colfax."

"Marty! don't tease. I don't care about the lunch now—it was eaten so long ago."

"Hi tunket! and you haven't eat nothing like it since," declared the boy warmly. "You been fair wallowin' in luxury."

"Marty!"

"Yes, you have," he pursued. "I don't see how you come to have any money left at all—eatin' your three squares a day in the dining car. Not me! I get lunches at the stop-over places, I do."

"But I saw you in the dining car," Janice said, with sudden conviction.

"Yep. Once. And you can bet that I didn't pay for my supper that time. I was treated."

"But you're not telling me a thing I want to know," cried the girl. "Did Uncle Jason send you? Never!"

"I'll break it to you easy," grinned Marty. "I did just what you did."

"What do you mean?"

"I ran away; that's what I did."

"Didn't you leave word for your father and mother? I did."

"I telegraphed," said Marty proudly, taking full credit for that act. "Told 'em you were all right and that I had my eye on you."

"Well! Of all things!"

"Yep. 'Tis kinder strange, isn't it?" said Marty, blowing a sigh. "Don't scarcely seem real to me."

"But your mother—and Uncle Jason! They will be worried to death about you, Marty."

"Huh! How about you?" demanded her cousin.

"But you are only a boy."

"And you're only a girl," he retorted.

"Marty, I had to come," she told him gravely.

"Of course you did. I know it. Frank and Nelse, and the rest of 'em, couldn't see it; but I saw it. I was wise to you right away, so I watched."

He went on to relate his experiences in getting away from Polktown, chuckling over his own wit.

"But your mother and father will never forgive me," she sighed.

"What they got to forgive you for?" demanded Marty.

"If it hadn't been for me you never would have run away. And I don't really see what good it has done, your having done so, anyway. You can't help me find daddy."

"Why not?" snapped the boy. "What d'you think I came 'way off here for? Just to sit around and suck my thumb? Huh! I guess I can do as much toward finding Uncle Brocky as ever you will, Janice Day."

"I am afraid," the girl sighed, "that you don't realize what a task there is before me."

"Before us," growled Marty.

Janice smiled faintly without otherwise acknowledging the correction.

"Say! what have you done toward learning how to get across that river and up there to San Cristoval?" the boy suddenly asked.

"Why—that is too far ahead. I shall have to be guided by circumstances."

"Ye-as! That's what the feller said when they were goin' to hang him. But I've been lookin' ahead and I've been askin' questions."

"Of whom, Marty?" his cousin cried.

"Folks. I got acquainted with a good many back there in the smoker."

"I thought you intimated it was dangerous to make such acquaintances?" suggested Janice.

"'Tis—for girls," announced her cousin stoutly.

"And why not for boys, I'd like to know?"

"'Cause nothin' can hurt boys. They're tough," grinned Marty. "Now, this big woman you been hobnobbing with——"

"Oh! I wonder what can have become of Madam?"

"Maybe she had reason for cutting her tow-rope," said the slangy boy, "just as soon's she saw you had somebody to take care of you. Oh, yes! Did you notice just where I picked up that package of newspapers that you lost?"

"Oh, Marty!"

"Almost under the feet of Miz' Madam, as you call her," went on the boy. "She was right. You were robbed. Somebody took that packet out of your blouse all right, all right!"

"Why, Marty! how very terribly you talk!"

"Ye-as. Maybe I do. But she certainly was kind o' crusty when she left us there on the platform."

"Oh! I wouldn't have offended her," grieved Janice. "I don't believe she was a bad woman at all, Marty Day."

"I don't know anything about her," declared Marty. "But you'd better be mighty careful with folks you meet. Now, the men I've been talkin' with are regular fellers, they are. And they've told me a lot about what we'll haf to do when we get to that Rio Grande River."

"Marty, dear! It may be dangerous. I can't let you run into peril for me."

"No. But I will for Uncle Brocky—if I have to. And you won't stop me," he declared. "'Sides, it isn't goin' to be so dangerous as you think if we go about it right."

"How do you know?"

"Why, up North there we thought that the Border was like a barbed-wire fence that you had to climb through ev'ry time you went from the United States into Mexico an' back again, and it was lucky if you didn't ketch your pants on the barbed wire an' get 'em tore, too!" and the boy was grinning broadly again.

"But 'tisn't nothing like that. You'd think from what you read in the newspapers that the towns on the northern side of the Border was spang full of Americans—white folks that talk English, you know—while every town over the Border and in shootin' distance of it, as you might say, was all populated with nothin' but greasers."

"Well?" Janice asked faintly.

"Why, 'tisn't nothing like that. Lots of Texas towns along the Border ain't got anybody in 'em but Mexican folks, and Mexican-Spanish is the official language. Yes, sir!" said Marty, proud of his acquired acknowledge.

"The officers of the town are Mexs like everybody else. They're peaceable enough and law-abiding enough and they go back and forth over the river and into Mexico just as they please.

"Now, what we want to do is to pick out one of these little squash-towns along the bank of the Rio Grande, drive over to it in an automobile from the railroad, and make a dicker with some greaser to ferry us across the river to some town on the other side."

"And then what, Marty?" asked Janice, made all but breathless by the manner in which her cousin seemed to have grasped the situation.

"Why, then we'll get another automobile, or a carriage, or something, and steer a course for this San Cristoval place. It's on a branch railroad, but the railroad ain't running, so they tell me. We can't hoof it there, for it's too far from the Border; but there must be roads of some kind and we'll find something to ride in—or——"

"Why, Marty!" gasped Janice, stopping him. "Your being here—on this very train with me—certainly was an explosion. But this is a greater one. Don't say any more. I can't stand any more excitement to-night," and she was more than a little in earnest although she smiled.

"Here comes the porter to make up the berths. You'll have to go. And we'll talk it over in the morning, early. And do get rid of that mustache, for we'll be at Fort Hancock to-morrow and that is where I have about decided to leave the train."

"Sure," said the very confident Marty. "That's just the place I'd picked out myself to drop off at. All right, Janice. See you in the morning. Er——"

"Well, what?" asked his cousin.

"Hadn't you better let me take that money of yours for safe keeping?"

"No, Marty," she said demurely. "We won't put all our eggs in one basket. You know, even you might be robbed. Good-night, dear boy!"



CHAPTER XVIII

SOMETHING VERY EXCITING

Janice did not see the black-eyed woman who had been so much in her company across the continent again that night; and in the morning she found that the berth under her own had remained empty. Upon asking the porter she learned that Madam had left the train at Sweetwater.

"And never said good-bye to me!" Janice thought with some compunctions of conscience. "Is it possible that she was offended because of those pieces of newspaper I carried in my bosom? It did look as though I doubted her honesty."

For the girl could not believe, as Marty had suggested, that the odd, foreign-talking woman had had designs upon her money.

"You never can tell about those foreigners," Marty said gruffly at breakfast time. He had managed to remove the mustache and his lip was sore.

Marty had all the narrow-minded prejudices against foreigners of the inexperienced.

"You're going to have a fine time down here among these Mexicans," his cousin told him.

"Watch 'em. That's my motto," cried Marty. "And, say! ain't some o' the greasers funny-lookin' creatures?"

At every little, hot station they passed (for there was a startling difference in the temperature compared with the frosty nights and mornings they had left behind in Vermont) there were several of the broad-brimmed, high-crowned hats typically Méjico, as well as the shawl-draped figures of hatless women, and dozens of dirty, little-clothed children.

"Why! it looks like a foreign country already," Janice sighed.

But Marty was only eager. His eyes fairly snapped and he almost forgot to eat the very nice breakfast that Janice had ordered, he was so deeply interested in all that was outside the car windows.

Yet the outlook for the most part was rather dreary between stations, while the stations themselves were "as ugly as a mud fence" to quote Marty.

"But everything is new," said the boy. "I ain't missin' anything."

The conductor viséd their tickets for a stop-over at Fort Hancock and agreed to "pull her down" for that station although it was not a stopping point for through trains.

"You'll have to go on up to El Paso on a local," he drawled; "and you'll have to mix up with greasers an' such."

"How do you know we shall want to go on to El Paso at all?" asked Janice, smiling.

"Why, ma'am, nobody ever stays in these river towns any longer'n they kin he'p. And outside of the soldiers stationed hereabout there's only seventy-five folks or so, in the place—only two of them white."

"Oh!" Janice involuntarily gasped.

"Ol José Pez keeps the store and hotel. He's not such a robber as some; he's too lazy—and too proud, I reckon. You got folks at the post?"

"We expect to meet Lieutenant Cowan," Janice said.

The cousins were the only passengers to leave the train, and they were quite unexpected. The natives, who en masse always met the trains scheduled to stop at the station, refused to believe that the "limited" had stopped. They preferred to believe that the appearance of the two young strangers was an hallucination; better such a mystery in their placid lives than the unexpected reality.

Several little children came to stare at Janice and Marty standing on the platform before the corrugated iron station, in which there was not even an agent. One of these infants was dressed. He wore a torn hat evidently having belonged originally to someone with a much larger head than he possessed. He had to lift up its brim with both hands to peer at the strangers.

"They are so dirty," murmured Janice.

"Gee!" sighed Marty, his freckled face brightening. "Ain't it immense?"

His cousin stared at him in an amazement that gradually changed to something like admiration. She suddenly realized that, if she could have chosen her escort, nobody would have so well suited as Marty Day under these distressing circumstances. He might not be very wise, but he was immensely enthusiastic.

He was staring now beyond the line of haphazard shacks and adobe buildings that bordered the one street, into the jungle of mesquite and cactus growing in the dry waste of sand that almost surrounded the settlement—and he could smile!

While on the train they had passed many irrigated grapefruit orchards bordered by lordly date palms; but the tangle of mesquite and cactus was always just over the ocatilla fences. They had likewise seen a sprawling, low-roofed ranchhouse here and there from the train windows, but there was nothing like that comfort suggested here.

Most of the buildings in sight were one-room dwellings of adobe, with an open shed at the back built of four corner posts supporting a thatch roof, on which peppers were still sunning, late as was the season. Here and there between these forlorn huts grew an oleander or an umbrella chinaberry; and there were vines on some of the walls, masking their ugliness. But for the most part the village was a dreary and distressing looking collection of habitations.

Janice and Marty moved along the street of the town. There was no walk, and the roadway was deep in dust. Marty carried Janice's bag and strode along as though "monarch of all he surveyed." To tell the truth, the girl was closer to tears than she had been since leaving Polktown.

Their objective point was a large frame building, roofed with corrugated iron and with a veranda in front, at the end of the street. The sides of this more important looking building were trellised with vines. There was, too, the promise of cleanliness and coolness about the place. Across the front they read the sign:

JOSÉ PEZ, MERCHANDISE

A solemn old man, burned almost black by the sun and with the skin of his face as wrinkled as an alligator's hide, rose from a comfortable chair on the porch to greet them. He wore a long white goatee and military mustache. He had an air of immense dignity.

"Buenos días, señorita! Buenos días, señor!" and he bowed politely.

"Are—are you Mr. Pez?" asked Janice timidly.

The old man bowed low again. "Don José Almoreda Tonias Sauceda Pez—at your service, señorita."

"We wish to find Lieutenant Cowan. He is stationed here."

"No longer, señorita," said the old fellow, shaking his head in vigorous denial. "He is gone with his troop a month now. I do not know his present station. At the telegraph office the operator may be able to tell you. To my sorrow I cannot. Lieutenant Cowan is my friend."

"And my father's friend. My father is Mr. Broxton Day," Janice hastened to tell him.

"Señor Broxton Day?" repeated the don. "I am sorrowful, señorita. I do not know heem. But we have a—how do you call it in Eenglish?—Ah! a mutual friend in Lieutenant Cowan. Come in. My poor house and all that I possess is at your service."

"You—do you conduct a hotel here, Señor Pez?" suggested Janice.

"Surely! Surely!" declared the old man with another sweeping gesture.

"We must get rooms here then, Marty," she said to her cousin; "and perhaps the gentleman can tell us how we may get across the river and to San Cristoval."

"You let me do the talking," Marty said rather gruffly. "I'll make the bargain. I've found out that a dollar Mex ain't worth but fifty cents."

He said this in a low voice; but the don was already summoning somebody whom he called "Rosita" from the interior of the house. The house was divided in the middle, one half of the lower floor being given up to the exigencies of trade. On the other side of the hall that ran through to the rear were the hotel rooms.

Rosita appeared. She was a woman shaped like a pyramid. Even her head, on which the black coarse hair was bobbed high, finished in a peak—the unmistakable mark of the ancient Aztec blood in her veins. Her shoulders sloped away from her three chins and it seemed as though the greatest circumference of her body must be at her ankles, for her skirt flared. Rosita had guessed at her waist-line and had tied a string there, for her dress was a one-piece garment and she had no actual knowledge of where her waistband should be placed.

But in spite of her strange shape and dark complexion, Rosita was still very pretty of countenance and had wonderfully white teeth and great, violet eyes. She was still in her early thirties. A toddling little one clung to her skirt.

"Take the niñito hence, Rosita, and show the señorita to the best room above. Her caballero——?" Señor Pez looked at Marty doubtfully and the boy struck in:

"That's all right, old feller. It don't matter where I camp. We'll talk about that pretty soon. You go ahead and see the room, Janice, and wash up. Maybe they can give you dinner."

"Surely! Surely!" said the don, shooing the niñito out of the way as though it were a chicken.

Rosita mounted to the upper floor in the lead. Janice followed with a queer feeling of emptiness at her heart—the first symptom of homesickness.

But the mountainous Rosita seemed as kindly intentioned as the old don. She opened the door with a flourish on a broad, almost bare room, with an iron bed, a washstand and bureau of maple, a rocking chair, and with curtains at the two windows.

On the floor was a straw matting and over its dry surface Janice heard a certain rustling—a continual rhythmic movement. As she stared about the floor, hesitating to enter, Rosita said:

"It is be-a-u-tiful room—yes, huh?"

"But—but what is that noise?" asked the girl from the North, her mind filled with thoughts of tarantulas and centipedes.

"Huh? Nottin'. That? Jes' fleas—sand fleas. They hop, hop, hop. No mind them. You hongree—yes, huh? I go get you nice dinner—yes, huh?"

She departed, quite filling the stairway as she descended to the lower floor.

"My goodness!" thought Janice, with a sudden hysterical desire to laugh. "I should hate to have the house catch fire and wait my turn to go downstairs after Rosita!"

It took no conflagration to hasten her preparations for descent on this occasion. She met Marty at the foot of the staircase. The boy's face was actually pallid, and against this background his freckles seemed twice their usual size.

"What is it? What has happened?" demanded Janice, seizing his arm.

Marty drew her farther from the foot of the staircase to where she could see through a narrow doorway into the store.

"See there!" the boy hissed.

"See what? Oh, Marty! you frighten me."

"'Tain't nothin' to be frightened of," he assured her. "See that feller with the red vest?"

"I see the red waistcoat—yes," admitted Janice, peering into the gloomy store.

"Hi tunket! D'you know who's inside that red vest?" sputtered Marty.

"No-o."

"Tom Hotchkiss!" said her cousin. "What d'you know about that?"



CHAPTER XIX

THE CROSSING

It is not the magnitude of an incident that most shocks the human mind. A happening stuns us in ratio to its unexpectedness.

Now, if there was anything in the whole range of possibilities more unexpected than the appearance of Tom Hotchkiss, the absconding Polktown storekeeper, down in this unlovely Border town, Janice Day could not imagine what that more unexpected occurrence could be.

It took fully a minute for Marty's announcement to really percolate to his cousin's understanding. She stared dumbly at the red vest, which was about all she could see of the man in Don José Almoreda Tomas Sauceda Pez's store, and then turned to Marty, saying:

"Yes?"

"Cricky!" sputtered the boy. "You gone dumb, Janice? Don't you understand?"

"I—I—no, Marty. I do not believe I do understand. Is—is it surely that Hotchkiss man?"

"Surest thing you know!" declared the boy.

"What shall we do?" and for once Janice felt herself to be quite helpless.

That Marty's wits were bright and shining was proved by his immediate reply:

"You leave it to me. I got a scheme. I'm going to skip over to the telegraph office. We want to find that Lieutenant Cowan if we can, anyway. And I'm going to send what they call a night letter to dad. A night letter to a Day, see?" and he giggled.

"You get back upstairs into your room and don't let Hotchkiss see you. Get 'em to give you your dinner up there. 'Twon't be nothin' but beans, anyway, I have an idea. That's what they live on down here, they tell me, and comin' from Vermont as I do, beans ain't a luxury to me. I won't mind missing a mess of 'em for once."

"But, Marty——"

"I got a scheme, I tell you," the boy whispered. "Can't stop to tell you what it is. I got to hike."

He dashed out of the door, the only rapidly moving figure in all that town, for even the dogs in the street seemed too lazy to move.

Janice, feeling that she was allowing her cousin to take the lead in a most disgraceful way, yet really not knowing what better to do, mounted the stairs again and went into the room where the sand fleas were "fox-trotting," as she afterwards told Marty, over the straw matting.

The appearance of Tom Hotchkiss in this place was such a shock to the girl that it was some time before she could think connectedly about it. Her cousin had made the discovery and had had time to collect his wits before Janice had descended the stairs. After a time the girl realized what should be done, and she wondered if Marty would really be wise enough to do it.

Her uncle should be informed at once of the presence of Tom Hotchkiss here on the Border. In addition the local authorities should be communicated with and a complaint lodged against the runaway storekeeper and his arrest demanded.

She was not quite sure what would be the correct course to pursue; but when the smiling and ponderous Rosita with the niñito still tagging at her skirt brought up her dinner, she asked the woman how one went about having a criminal arrested in that town.

"You want the sheriff—yes, huh?" said Rosita.

"I suppose so."

"The sheriff, heem my hoosban'," said Rosita proudly. "Señor Tomas Morales. But he off now to ar-r-est one weeked man—very weeked. He stole Uncle Tio's pants. Poor Uncle Tio! My hoosban' go far after this weeked man—two days' horse journey."

"And just because the man stole a pair of pants?"

"Yes, huh! You see," explained Rosita, "they were all the pants poor Uncle Tio own, and he now have to wear serape only. Only poor Indians appear without pants—yes, huh!"

Janice gazed at the niñito and tried to imagine the dignity attached in the peon's mind to a pair of trousers. However, the meal was before her and although the main dish was beans, as Marty had foretold, they were savory and the girl found them good.

These frijoles were soft and well seasoned and the cakes, tortillas, were tender, too. The coffee was delicious and there was a sweet cake which Janice thought was made of ground bean-flour, but was not sure.

She began to worry about Marty's absence. After Rosita had descended the stairs everything was silent about the store and hotel. It was the hour of siesta—though why one hour should be considered more somnolent than another in this place the girl from Vermont could not imagine.

Through the open, unscreened window she could see down the street. At its far end, across the railroad, was a pole from which a faded American flag drooped. This she knew indicated the post telegraph office. The army post was a little more than a mile away.

Where could Marty be all this time? It was two hours since he had darted out of the hotel to send the night letter to Uncle Jason. Surely he was not still at that telegraph office?

Here and there along the dusty, sunny street figures in broad hats, striped cotton, suits, with colored sashes, many of them barefoot or shod only in home-made sandals, leaned against the adobe walls, or lay on their backs in the shade. Groups of shawl-headed, gossipy women with innumerable babies playing about them likewise spotted the gray street with color.

Those males who were awake were smoking the everlasting cigarette or rolling a fresh one. Not a few of the women were smoking, too. Just one of these male figures, lolling against the wall directly opposite her window, did not expel the incense of nicotine through his nostrils. This lad did not smoke.

Janice, for some reason, looked at him more attentively. His high-crowned, gayly banded hat was quite like the headgear of the others; so, too, was the glaringly striped suit he wore of "awning cloth" such as the girls were having sport skirts made of in the North—"too loud for an awning, but just right for a skirt!"

He wore a flowing necktie and shoes and socks—an extravagance that few of the Mexicans in sight displayed. Or was he a Mexican? He was tanned, but not to the saddle color of the native.

Yes! he waved his hand to her. Now that he knew he had caught her eye he raised his hatbrim and revealed—Marty's face, all a-grin, beneath it!

"Goodness! what is that boy doing? He has attempted to disguise himself again," murmured Janice Day.

Then she suddenly apprehended her cousin's reason for thus assuming the dress and air of the town. At least she thought she did. He was watching the store to see that Tom Hotchkiss did not get away. He did not wish to be recognized by the dishonest Polktown storekeeper. And knowing, as she did, that the only local officer of the law, Señor Tomas Morales, was absent she realized that she and Marty must be careful if they wished to have Hotchkiss finally seized.

Here the absconder was, right near the Mexican Border. Once over the Rio Grande, in the present unsettled state of Mexican affairs Hotchkiss could not be arrested and turned over to the American authorities.

Instead of entering Canada as Polktown people thought probable, and from which he could be more or less easily extradited if found, Tom Hotchkiss had traveled across the continent to be near battle-troubled Mexico where many transgressors against laws of the United States have taken refuge.

Janice Day's heart throbbed with eager thoughts. What a really great thing it would be if she and Marty could succeed in having this man, whose dishonest acts threatened Uncle Jason's ruin, apprehended by the law before he could get across the Border!

"Oh! if daddy's friend, Lieutenant Cowan, were only here," thought the girl, "we might accomplish it without awaiting the return of Rosita's trousers-chasing 'hoosban'.' I wonder who is in command of the soldiers out there at the post? Would I dare go to see?"

This plan savored of delaying her determination to get into Mexico and find her wounded father. But to cause the arrest of Tom Hotchkiss might mean Uncle Jason's financial salvation. Of course, if the runaway storekeeper had not lost the money he had stolen, his apprehension would insure the recovery of the large sum for which Mr. Jason Day had made himself liable.

Janice waved her hand in return to Marty and nodded understandingly; but she wished to communicate with him at close quarters. She desired to know how much he had learned—if he, too, knew that the local sheriff was out of town. She however saw the danger of going down boldly to hold converse with her cousin. Tom Hotchkiss knew her, of course, as he did Marty, though not very well. Just then Janice hoped the man had forgotten them both.

When Rosita, smiling but puffing after the stair-climb like the exhaust of a "mountain climber" locomotive, appeared for her tray Janice took the willing and kindly Mexican woman into her confidence, to an end she had in view.

It was true that Janice's traveling bag held a very small wardrobe for such a long journey as she had made. She had nothing fit to wear now that she had reached the Border. Could ready-made garments that would fit her be bought in Don José's store?

But, by goodness!—yes, huh? There were garments for the young señorita—yes, of a delectable assortment. Ah! if Rosita herself could but wear them. But, she was past all that—yes, huh? Would the señorita believe it? She had lost her figure!

Janice turned quickly to point from the window so that the unfortunate Rosita should not see her expression. It was a task to keep from bursting into laughter in the simple woman's face.

"Clothes like that girl over there is wearing?" Janice asked.

"Ah, señorita! not like those old clothes of Manuel Dario's daughter. But real tailaire-made gowns from the East."

"But I wish to dress like one of you Mexican girls," Janice said with subtile flattery. "My cousin and I have to go over into your country and I shall be less conspicuous if I dress like—like other girls there, shall I not?"

"Oh! but not like the common girl!" begged Rosita. "One must dress richly, señorita."

"No," Janice said. "I am on a serious mission, Rosita; perhaps a dangerous mission. My father has been wounded in a fight up beyond San Cristoval, and I must go after him and bring him over here."

Rosita made a clucking noise in her throat significant of her sympathy, making likewise the sign of the cross. "May his recovery be sure and speedy, señorita," she said. "Yes, huh?"

But now for the new clothes. Once having got it fixed in her slow brain that Janice was not in the market for the shop-made garments copied after the latest fashions, Rosita was very helpful. She made no objection to waddling downstairs and panting up again with her arms full of the ordinary cheap finery of the Mexican women. The colors were gay and the goods coarse; but Janice was not critical. She merely hoped to escape any special attention while passing through these Border towns. Likewise she hoped to disguise herself from the eyes of Mr. Tom Hotchkiss.

"If the señorita desires to travel far within Chihuahua, it would be better to advise with my father, Don José," Rosita said, revealing a relationship Janice had not before suspected. "Although he has been exiled now for many years, and is—what you say?—naturalized—yes, huh. Yet, señorita, he has many friends among all factions. Some of the lesser chiefs are personally known to him, those both of the bandits and the army of deliverance. Speak to him, señorita."

"I shall, Rosita," said Janice. "And as soon as your husband, the Señor Sheriff Morales, comes I wish to speak with him too."

"Sí, sí, señorita. I hope that will be soon," Rosita said, blowing a sigh. "And I hope he brings back Uncle Tio's pants."

Janice ventured downstairs dressed in her fresh garments. They were not unbecoming, and she tossed her head and walked with her hand on her hip as she had seen several of the Mexican girls do who had passed Marty leaning against the wall. Marty was not thinking much of girls, however, and he had given the señoritas very little notice for their trouble.

But he saw Janice when she came down the veranda steps and recognized her, grinning broadly at her.

"Hi tunket! you got a head on you, Janice, you have!" he said admiringly. "I wasn't sure you'd see what I was up to."

"I return the compliment," said his cousin, smiling on him. "You thought of it first."

"Well, I was afraid Tom Hotchkiss might see and spot me."

"He is still in the store. I heard and recognized his voice as I came down. I think he is bargaining for something with Señor José Almoreda Tomas Sauceda Pez. Perhaps Hotchkiss is going to adopt Mexican garments," she went on after she and Marty had giggled over their host's name.

"Good-bye to that red vest, then," grunted Marty. "Now, we've just got to catch that feller and shut him up somewhere till dad can send for him. There ain't any police here. I asked the feller I swapped my clothes with."

"Oh, Marty! did you get rid of all your good clothes—your Sunday suit?"

"Why," said Marty slowly, "I got something to boot. I didn't make such a bad bargain. Anyway, the feller I swapped with said he needed the pants awful bad."

"What for?" gasped Janice.

"Why, for somebody he called Uncle Tio. Uncle Tio's lost his—had 'em stole. I judge nobody down here ever owns more than one pair of pants at a time, and they would have hung this feller that stole Uncle Tio's if they'd caught him. 'Tisn't horse thieves they lynch down here in the Southwest; it's pants thieves!" and Marty chuckled.

"Oh, Marty!" giggled Janice. "The whole police force has gone chasing the robber who got Uncle Tio's trousers."

"Thought there weren't any police?" gasped Marty.

Janice told him about Rosita's husband.

"A sheriff, eh?" said Marty. "We'll get him to grab and hold on to Tom Hotchkiss—sure. Wonder if there's a calaboose here?"

"There must be some way of holding the man. Did you communicate with Lieutenant Cowan, Marty?"

The boy wagged his head regretfully. "Nobody knows where he is. They tell me at the telegraph office that the army is on a war basis and information about the movements of troops is not locally given out. We got to go on our own taps, I guess, Janice."

"But, Marty, I don't know what to do. About this Tom Hotchkiss, I mean."

"I know. You're mighty anxious to make the crossing and go up to Uncle Brocky's mine. So am I. But we got to grab Tom Hotchkiss first."

"If we can."

"I told dad we would," Marty said confidently. "Oh! we'll fix it. But I wish there was a constable here right now. I don't know about these sheriffs. Still, it's against the law down here to carry a gun, I s'pose, same as it is up North, unless you're a soldier or a law officer. That's why that feller that swapped clothes with me said there were no cops to bother about it."

"Why! what do you mean, Marty?" his cousin cried.

The boy drew from its hiding place in his sash a shiny "snub-nose" service revolver—a much more deadly weapon than the army automatic, for it will shoot farther and straighter.

"This is what I got to boot in the trade," said the boy with immense pride.

"Marty!" almost shrieked Janice. "You'll shoot yourself!"

"I won't till it's loaded," returned her cousin coolly. "I got the cartridges, all right all right; but I haven't put any of 'em into the cylinder. Oh, I know about guns, Janice."

"Goodness me!" groaned the girl. "What are we coming to?"

"We've come," announced Marty grimly. "And it ain't any Sunday-school picnic at that. This isn't Polktown, Janice. We're at the Border. 'Tisn't no place for scare-cats, either."

"I'm no 'scare-cat,' as you call them, I should hope," said the girl indignantly.

Nevertheless she was very much disturbed by this incident. It seemed so peaceful here; they had seen scarcely a soldier in crossing Texas—none at all since leaving the train. The fact that they were so near the border-line of war-ridden Mexico was now suddenly impressed upon her mind.

"Suppose Marty should be shot?" she thought. "Oh! what would Uncle Jason and Aunt 'Mira do to me?"

"Say!" the boy suddenly interrupted the train of these thoughts and with cheerfulness. "Say! it's up to us to do something. Let's get that old don out of the store and put it to him—straight. They tell me he's the whole cheese here."

"He seems kindly disposed," Janice agreed.

"He was a high muck-a-muck in Chihuahua once upon a time. But he favored the poor people—peons, they call 'em—and old Diaz who used to boss the whole o' Mexico run him out. I guess he's one good greaser that ain't dead," and the boy grinned.

"Oh, Marty!"

"Well, maybe he can help. And if his son-in-law is sheriff——"

At that moment Don José walked out upon the porch and seated himself in his broad armchair.

"Come on," said Marty, seizing his cousin's hand.

They approached the hotel veranda. This time the proprietor did not rise to greet them. He scarcely looked at them, in truth.

But when Marty spoke Don José started upright in his chair and stared—then arose.

"By goodness! it is so!" he exclaimed. "Pardon! I did not recognize. It is, then, that you have assumed the dress of my countrymen?"

"We have to go over into Mexico and we thought it would be better if we dressed in this way," Janice explained.

"It is so," agreed the old gentleman, nodding vigorously. "And when would you go?"

"As soon as possible. But there is something——"

"Manuel is going this evening with an empty wagon," the don said. "He will take you to La Guarda for five dollars each."

"Five dollars Mex?" put in Marty shrewdly.

"But, yes."

"Oh! but how about Tom Hotchkiss——" broke in Janice.

"That feller in the red vest—the American talking with you in the store, Don José?" questioned Marty. "We want to talk to you about him."

"You know heem?" cried the old man amazedly. "Why did you not speak to heem, then? He is gone."

"Gone!" chorused the cousins.

"I sorrow to tell you—yes. He is gone this half hour. He was bargaining for my best horse, and he went out through my stables in the rear. He is already at the crossing by now. Sí, señorita. I am sure your friend—Señor Hoo-kiss, is he called?—did not see you."

Janice and Marty glanced at each other. The boy, first to find his voice, muttered:

"Of all the gooneys that ever got away from the backwoods, we take the bun!"

"The señorita is greatly disappoint?" queried the kind old man. "Señor Hoo-kiss has gone to La Guarda. If the señorita and her compadre," and he smiled at Marty, "go there she may overtake los Americanos, eh? The boy, Manuel, is to be trusted."

"We might's well go, Janice," groaned Marty. "No use even waitin' for dad to answer my telegram. It's all off about Tom Hotchkiss."

"Oh! poor Uncle Jason!" murmured Janice.

"We'll take a ride with Manuel, Don José," said Marty briskly. "And can you get us a good supper before we start?"

"I will have a chicken killed, señor," said the old man, going indoors to give the order.

"Cricky! Chicken right off the hoof," groaned Marty. "Unless they pound it like they say they do the boarding-house beefsteak, that pullet will sure be tough."

"Rosita is a good cook," Janice assured him wearily.

"She's bound to be," grinned Marty. "'Twasn't wind-pudding that made her as fat as she is, I bet."

They tried not to show each other how disappointed they were over the escape of Tom Hotchkiss. They had found him and lost him so easily! It was positive that the absconding storekeeper did not know of the presence of the cousins here; yet chance had sent him on his way before they could have the man apprehended for the swindle he had worked in Polktown. However, this misadventure made Janice's principal object in coming to the Border loom more significantly in her thoughts. She must reach San Cristoval and the Alderdice Mine as quickly as possible.

While supper was being prepared and the two cousins waited for the teamster, Manuel, Janice talked with Don José, who was a very intelligent person indeed. He assured her that, if the journey to San Cristoval was possible at all, it could be made from La Guarda on the other side of the river as directly as from any place.

He went so far as to write a letter in Spanish, which he carefully translated for Janice's benefit, to the cacique, or mayor, really the "feudal lord" of La Guarda, asking his good offices for "my very good friends," as he politely called Janice and Marty.

"He will advise you regarding route, conveyance, and payment for services," Don José said. "Sí, sí! you have the money to pay? Poderoso Caballero es Don Dinero—a powerful gentleman is Mr. Money, señorita."

The two hurried their departure. At least, Janice and Marty hurried their preparations for leaving Don José's establishment; but nobody else hurried.

Manuel hitched in his four mules after a while. Then he ate his supper. Half an hour was consumed in picking his teeth and gossiping with Rosita.

"Hi! señor and señorita!" he finally shouted. "Los Americanos! We go—alla right?"

The wagon was merely a platform of split poles laid over the axletrees of the two pair of wheels, connected by a reach. But Marty, mindful of his cousin's comfort, had bought a bundle of thatch for a seat.

She climbed on and Marty followed. Manuel sat sidewise on the tongue just behind the mules' heels. He shouted to the animals in Spanish, and the mules were off.

It was a dusty drive to the river, but comparatively cool at this time of day. The cousins did not see the red vest of Tom Hotchkiss on the way. He had doubtless got over the river before them.

It was nine o'clock when the mules splashed down into the ford. Manuel drew up his feet carefully, so as not to get them wet, although he was barefooted.

"If they got washed he'd die of the shock," whispered Marty to Janice.

In one place the mules were body deep in the yellow, sluggish flood. Janice and Marty stood up; but the water did not rise over the platform of the wagon. In a few minutes Manuel shouted again to the mules and they fought their way up the Mexican bank.

"Viva Méjico!" ejaculated Manuel.

"What's that for?" asked Marty suspiciously.

"We haf arrived," said the teamster. "And whoever hears us," he added, squinting about in the dusk, "will know we love la patria."



CHAPTER XX

ROWELED BY CIRCUMSTANCES

For the first time since, long before, Janice had accused Nelson Haley of taking his duties non-seriously, the Polktown School Committee was not getting full measure of the young master's attention.

The school work slipped along in its usual groove; but Nelson's mind was not fixed upon it. Indeed, his waking thoughts—even his dream fancies—were flying across the continent with Janice Day toward the Mexican Border.

The shock of learning of Janice's departure on her mission thoroughly awoke Nelson. He blamed himself for not accompanying the girl. What must she think of him? And he had not even believed her courageous enough to start alone when she had warned him of her intention!

"I was a dunce," he repeated over and over again. "I should know that Janice always says just what she means, means what she says, and, as Walky Dexter puts it, has more fighting pluck than a barrel of bobcats!"

Walky's tongue was the busiest of any in Polktown during the first few days following the departure of Janice and Marty Day. He was not above saying "I told you so!" to any and all who would listen to him.

He claimed to have foreseen all along Janice's intention of going to her wounded father; but he admitted that Marty had fooled him.

"Jefers-pelters! who'd ha' thought that freckled-faced kid would have sneaked out after his cousin and got the reach on all us older fellers that 'ud ha' been only too glad ter go in his stead? Sure, you'd ha' gone with Janice. I'd ha' gone myself—if my wife would ha' let me. Haw! haw! haw! But there warn't no wife ter stop you from goin', Frank."

This was addressed to Frank Bowman, who had been out of town for some days and had returned to find all the neighbors vastly excited over the runaways.

"No; I have no wife. But I suppose objections might be filed if I had undertaken to go with Janice," the civil engineer said grimly. "But Marty's with her."

"Jefers-pelters! ain't he jest the greatest kid? But he's only a kid," added Mr. Dexter.

"Who has gone after them?" demanded Frank.

"Huh? What ye talkin' 'beout? You expect anybody could bring 'em back once they got free and foot-loose?"

"But isn't Mr. Day going on to be with them at the Border?"

"Jase? Great jumpin' bobcats! how you talk!"

"Why not?"

"I calculate Jase has got about all he can 'tend to financially lookin' out for them notes he indorsed for Tom Hotchkiss. Tom left him holdin' the bag, ye know—er—haw! haw! haw!"

"I see. No money to go with, eh?"

"That's it—if nothin' more," agreed Walky.

Frank said nothing to the town expressman about having lent Marty Day the money that the boy had evidently needed to pay his traveling expenses. Marty certainly could not be blamed. He had shown himself wiser regarding Janice and her intentions than the older folk. Marty may have handled the matter in a boyish way; but Frank Bowman did not feel like blaming his young friend.

He went up Hillside Avenue to the Day house that evening and found Nelson Haley there before him. The schoolmaster showed a surface placidity which was really no criterion of his inner feelings.

"Well, what's going to be done about it?" demanded Frank, as soon as he had pulled off his coat.

Uncle Jason passed him a yellow sheet of paper—a telegram. It had been brought over on the Constance Colfax that afternoon from the Landing. It was the night letter Marty had sent soon after leaving Chicago—a short night letter at that:

"I got my eye on Janice. She is all right so far."

"Why, he isn't really with her, after all!" said Frank.

"Oh, but they air together, Mr. Bowman," cried Aunt 'Mira. "My min's much relieved. I didn't know but Marty had run away to kill Indians, or be a pirate, or sich, like they do in books."

"Boys don't do that even in books, nowadays, Mrs. Day," Nelson told her. "They run away from home to become jitney bus drivers, or movie actors. Indians and pirates are out of date."

"You can poke fun," smiled the woman; "but if he's with Janice he's all right."

Frank Bowman had read the telegram a second time.

"It's not altogether sure in my mind," he said in a voice too low for Mrs. Day to hear as she bustled about the kitchen, "that Marty is really with Janice. He wasn't when he sent this message at least."

"Ain't that a fac'?" exclaimed Mr. Day. "Seems like he is jest a-watchin' of her."

"For fear she'd try to send him home if he revealed his presence," was Nelson's shrewd observation.

"You're mighty right, Haley," the civil engineer agreed. "That's what he's doing."

"Wal," Mr. Day sighed, "he's near her if anything should happen so's he could be useful. But I ain't easy in my mind. A gal like her dependin' on a boy like him——"

"I don't suppose you could find it possible to go down there yourself, Mr. Day?" suggested Frank. "Even if we could find out just where they were heading for?"

"I snum! I dunno how I could," groaned Mr. Day. "It'd seem fair impossible. I tell you frankly, boys, Tom Hotchkiss has left me flat. The elder—bless his hide, for he was never knowed to do sech a thing afore—has offered to take up the fust note I indorsed for Tom, and which is now due. Otherwise I should be holdin' a auction, I guess. I'm in bad shape."

"It's too bad, Mr. Day," sighed Nelson. "Is the bank going to press you for every cent?"

"They ain't feeling so friendly as they did at fust," Uncle Jason admitted. "At fust it was hoped that something might be recovered from the stock in the store and the fixtures. But Tom Hotchkiss was thorough; ye gotter give him credit for that. He'd what they call hypothecated every stitch, and we couldn't even tetch the money in the till—no, sir!"

"Too bad," mused Nelson.

"He was a rascal!" exclaimed Frank.

"He was shrewd," admitted Uncle Jason. "An' as nice spoken an' palaverin' a cuss as ever I see."

"Sh! Jason! don't swear that-a-way—an' you a perfessin' member."

"Wal, no use cryin' over the cream the cat licked off'n the top of the pan—it's gone," groaned Uncle Jason. "And he's gone. They tell me the detecatifs the Bankers' Association put on his track can't find hide nor hair of him up toward Canady.

"An' then," Uncle Jason went on to say, "the bank people hev l'arned a thing or two that didn't please 'em. Of course, 'tain't none o' their business, but they'd seen Janice scurryin' around Middletown in that little car o' hern and they got it fixed in their heads we Days must be mighty well off."

"Reflected glory, eh?" suggested Nelson.

"Dunno about the glory part," sniffed Uncle Jason. "But I have an idee they thought I had so much money I could put my hand right in my pocket and pay these notes of Tom's in a bunch. They are all call notes, of course. And the bank is tryin' to make the court order me to take 'em up at once."

"That is not a very neighborly thing to do," said Frank.

"They seem to be afraid if I'm given time I'll try to cover up some o' my assets. I snum! when a man's in difficulties with one o' these banks his past repertation for honesty don't amount to shucks—no, sir!"

But the main topic of conversation on this evening was the journey of Janice and Marty. What were they doing at this very moment? Where were they on the railroad train? For what point on the Border were they aiming?

Frank figured out, from the date and sending point of the telegram, the probable route of the absent ones to the Mexican line. Yet they could not be sure of even this. Not knowing on what train Janice and Marty traveled, it was impossible to send an answer to Marty's telegram.

"In all probability, however," Frank explained, "El Paso is their ultimate destination, or some town of that string along the Rio Grande touched by the Texas-Pacific. San Cristoval is to be reached more directly from that locality than in any other way, now that the Mexican International is out of commission."

"Oh! don't say they'll really get into Mexico, Mr. Bowman!" cried Aunt 'Mira, who had come into the sitting room now. "They won't be let, will they?"

"Almiry's got the idee," said Mr. Day, "that there's a file of sojers with fixed bayonets standin' all along the aidge of that Rio Grande River, keepin' folks from crossin' over."

"You'd find such a guard at El Paso bridge, all right," Frank said. "But there are plenty of places where the river can be forded, unless raised by infrequent floods. Those who wish to, go back and forth into Mexican territory as they please—no doubt of that."

"But Janice and Marty won't know nothing about that!" cried Mrs. Day.

"Trust Marty for finding out anything he needs to know," put in Nelson, yet with a gloomy air.

"You're right there," Frank added. "He isn't tongue-tied."

"Oh, dear!" sighed Aunt 'Mira. "I don't know as shooting Indians or turning pirate would be much worse. They say them Mexicaners do shoot people."

"I snum, yes!" ejaculated Mr. Day. "They shot Broxton, didn't they?"

"Oh! you don't s'pose they've got a grudge against the Days, do ye?" cried the anxious woman. "Maybe they'll act jest as mean as they kin toward any of our fambly."

"No, I do not believe that, Mrs. Day," Nelson hastened to assure her. "Janice and Marty will be in no more danger down there than any other Americans. Only——"

"Only what, Mr. Haley?" asked Aunt 'Mira.

"They shouldn't be there alone. Somebody should be with them," said the schoolmaster desperately.

"Ain't that the trewth?" cried Aunt 'Mira. "I wish I was with 'em myself. I read in the Fireside Fav'rite that 'tain't considered a proper caper, anyway, for a young gal to go anywhere much alone without a chaperon."

At this moment there came a rap upon the side porch door. Aunt 'Mira rose to respond, and as she went into the little boxlike hall she failed to quite close the sitting room door. Therefore the trio left behind heard plainly the following dialogue:

"Miz' Scattergood! I declare, how flustered you look. Come in—do."

"No wonder I'm flustered. I—I—— No, I won't come no farther than the hall, Miz' Day. I'll tell ye here."

"Oh! what is it?" gasped Aunt 'Mira. "Nothin's happened to 'Rill?"

"That's jest what it is. Oh, Miz' Day, I'm an ol' fool!"

The fact that Mrs. Scattergood was frankly weeping was what held the trio of men in the sitting room silent.

"What you done now?" demanded Aunt 'Mira with a grimness that seemed to point to her special knowledge of her visitor's foolishness on previous occasions. "I told her the trewth——"

"My soul an' body, Miz' Scattergood, the trewth in your hands is jest as dangerous as a loaded gun. What did you tell her?"

"'Bout Janice. Hopewell had been keeping it from her—that Janice had gone away, ye know. Gone away to Mexico, I mean. And when I told her it scart her so—— I come right over for you, Miz' Day. You're sech a master-hand when a body's sick."

"Dr. Poole been there?"

"Yes. An' he's afeard——"

"You wait jest a minute," said Mrs. Day. "I'll put on somethin' an' go with ye. But 'tis my opinion, Sarah Scattergood, that you oughter wear a muzzle!"

The heavy woman bustled about for her things without saying a word to her husband and the young men until she was ready for departure.

"I'm going over to Hopewell Drugg's, Jase. You'll hafter git along as best you kin till I come back. There's bread in the breadbox an' a whole jar of doughnuts. Be sure an' keep the butt'ry door shut and put out the cat. There's suet tryin' out in the oven—don't fergit it when ye make the fire in the mornin'. Maybe I'll be back by mornin'; but Rill's took a bad turn an' I shell stay if I'm needed. Goo' night, Mr. Haley. Goo' night, Mr. Bowman."

She went out, following the birdlike Mrs. Scattergood. Soon after Nelson and Frank strolled down Hillside Avenue together. Frank had been as silent as the schoolmaster for some time. At last he said:

"When will you start?"

Nelson jumped. His face flushed and then paled and he stared with darkening eyes into his companion's countenance.

"You—you're a mind reader," he said at last, trying to laugh.

"I only know what I'd do if I were in your shoes," the civil engineer said. "I know how you feel. I couldn't bear it as well as you have if my—— Well, if anybody belonging to me as Janice does to you, Haley, were taking such a trip."

Nelson groaned. "I don't know what to do. The School Committee will raise a row——"

"Let 'em," Frank said briskly. "You're making it harder for yourself to go by thinking of your duties here. Cut loose! If you went to the hospital with a broken leg they'd have to get along without you. This is a whole lot more important than a broken leg."

"You're right!" groaned Nelson, who felt himself roweled by circumstances. "I must go."

"When?"

"It will have to be after the bank opens to-morrow."

"You'll go from Middletown, then? I'll see if I can get you transportation for part of the way to Chicago at least. You're a member of my family," and Frank grinned.

"That's awfully good of you," responded Nelson.

"And say!"

"What is it?" asked the schoolmaster.

"How are you fixed financially? I can put my hands on a little more money. You see, I expect it is on some of my money that Marty got away."

"What do you mean?"

"I lent him most of the money I had about me," confessed Frank. "I didn't know what he wanted it for—the young rascal! But if you need more than you have handy——"

"Thanks ever so much, Bowman; but I've quite a little saved up now. I sha'n't need such help as that."

They parted on the corner and Nelson went home to Mrs. Beaseley's to write his resignation from the situation of principal of the Polktown school. He was very sure that to leave the school board in the lurch in this way, with less than twenty-four hours' notice, would terminate his engagement in this school for all time.

"But I must go after Janice—I must!" he thought, tossing wakefully in his bed. "I can wait no longer."



CHAPTER XXI

AT LA GUARDA

Janice and Marty, clinging together on the rough platform of Manuel's wagon for fear of falling off, saw very little of the country through which they traveled that evening. That the way was rough they knew, and that sparse trees bordered it on either hand was likewise apparent even in the dusk. But they saw no habitations and no light save the distant stars.

The mules rattled on at a jog-trot, while Manuel beguiled the way with untranslatable songs in the vernacular. If Marty asked him a question about the way or the distance or the time, all Manuel said was:

"We reech there preety soon, hombre—alla right!"

By and by they did espy lights ahead. It was then almost midnight. A group of horsemen arose suddenly like shadows out of the mesquite and hailed the driver.

"Viva Méjico!" squalled Manuel before he could pull his mules to a standstill.

A sharp demand in Spanish made Janice cower in her place on the reach and cling more tightly to Marty's hand. They listened to Manuel chattering a reply in which was included Don José's name. In a moment they were driving on, undisturbed.

"That chief, huh! he know the good Don José," Manuel said to his passengers.

"Suppose he had not known him?" drawled Marty in the semi-gloom.

They could see that Manuel shrugged his shoulders; but he made no other reply.

The twinkling lights of La Guarda were now near at hand. They were not halted but rattled into the sprawling little town and on to a large, square, low building, the entrance to which was a wide and dimly lighted archway.

"Hi tunket!" breathed Marty. "It looks like a police station. D'you s'pose we're going to be pinched, Janice?"

But he grinned as he asked the question and got down nonchalantly enough, to help his cousin alight.

"Not much like the calaboose at Middletown," he observed.

"You horrid boy!" Janice said. "Are you trying to scare me?"

"Couldn't do it," declared Marty with admiration. "You're a reg'lar feller, Janice."

"Thank you, dear. I know you mean to compliment me. Now, what is Manuel doing?"

The teamster had called some question into the empty archway of the building, repeating it several times. There now appeared a little, shrewd-looking Spaniard without a spear of hair on either head or face, and wearing a flapping gown over what was plainly his pajamas.

Manuel and this apparition gabbled in their own tongue for several minutes; then the teamster gestured toward the bald man, saying to Marty:

"Señor Don Abreguardo. He will tak' you in—alla right. Mi dinero, señor."

This was a request for payment, as Marty very well knew, so the boy handed over a five-dollar gold piece. Manuel looked at the coin suspiciously, bit it, rang it on one of the flagstones, weighed it thoughtfully in his palm, and finally pocketed it and drove off without further word.

"What do you know about that?" murmured Marty.

Janice had already turned to the old man in the flapping gown. He bowed very low to her.

"Within," he said clearly, in good English if a little stilted in diction—"within lies my poor house. We Mexicans have no word for 'home,' señorita; but la patria means more than country. All I possess save la patria lies herein. It is yours."

"Why, he is even more polite than Don José," whispered the girl as they followed the Mexican who had evidently got out of bed to attend them.

"Ye-as," Marty said slowly. "But it seems to me they offer too much."

"They are not as cautious as us Yankees," his cousin said, smiling.

"Now you've said a mouthful," announced the boy with emphasis.

The passage through the wall led to a roomy court around which the house was built. There was the tinkle of water falling into a basin, the fresh smell of vegetation, and by the light of the stars Janice saw that trees were growing here.

"It is late, señorita and señor. My family have retired. I will assign you both rooms and in the morning we will become acquainted—eh?" said the don. "This way, please. You are brother and sister?"

"Cousins," Janice explained.

"Ah—yes. You would not be separate far—eh? This room for you, then, señorita. The next on the right for our young señor—eh?"

Lamps burned in both rooms. They were comfortably furnished and the stone floor had rugs upon it.

"You will be undisturbed here, I assure you. In the morning, señorita, a woman will wait upon you."

He bowed and clattered away in his hard, heel-less slippers.

"Seems like a good sort of a creature, after all," Marty said. "Don Abreguardo, eh?"

Janice made no reply save to bid him good-night and entered her room. She had lost that feeling of uncertainty and actual fear that had oppressed her. The future promised more cheer than she had believed possible.

Those back in Polktown had been entirely wrong. Her own judgment seemed to have been the sounder. Here she was, over the Border, miles on the way to her wounded father!

"And everybody so kind!" she thought as she sank to sleep on the comfortable couch under the canopy. "Only I wish we might have caused the arrest of that Tom Hotchkiss."

It seemed to the weary girl as though she closed her eyes and opened them immediately upon the broad sunshine and the tinkling fountain in the court of Don Abreguardo's dwelling. She heard Marty's voice and that of their host outside.

Janice arose and found herself well rested after her repose. She drew the lattices at the window and their clatter aroused something else.

Just inside her closed door, leaning against the wall, was something she had not before noticed. It looked like a bag of old clothes covered by a purple serape. This began to move, quite startling the girl for an instant.

The serape was put aside languidly and a bare brown arm appeared. Janice retreated to the other side of the canopied bed and watched. A girl's head was revealed—lank, black hair, a very dark face with high cheek bones, bead-black eyes, and huge silver rings hanging in the lobes of her ears, fairly touching her bared shoulders.

"What do you want here?" gasped Janice.

"I am the one sent, señorita!" ejaculated the girl in English. "I help you, señorita. It is an honor." And, having risen quickly and as gracefully as a panther, she bowed.

"Oh! you are the maid?"

"Sí, señorita!"

Janice decided she must be an Indian—one of pure blood. There was a look about her different from that of the Mexican girls she had seen.

"What is your name?" asked the girl from the North, giving herself up to the ministrations of the maid, who seemed quite skillful.

"Luz, señorita, is what I am called. It is the little name for Lucita, señorita."

"You have worked long for Don Abreguardo?"

"I was born in the house, señorita," said the girl, with a flash of her white teeth.

"Is there a large family?" Janice asked doubtfully. "I am a stranger, you know."

"His mother lives—the ancient Donna Abreguardo. He now has his second wife, has the good don. By his first he has two daughters and a son. Young Don Ricardo is married and is at the Hacienda del Norte. The two señoritas are of the marriageable age—oh, yes! But in these troubled times who has thought for marriage?"

"And this is all his family?"

"There are the children. Three. Of the good don's second marriage. He has his quiver full, as my people say," and the Indian maid chuckled.

She seemed so intelligent that Janice would have continued the conversation had she not heard Marty moving so impatiently about the courtyard.

"Come on, Janice!" he said as she appeared. "There's breakfast waiting—and it ain't all beans. I'm as hungry as a shark."

A table was laid, with covered dishes on it, near the fountain. The courtyard was a clean, comfortable place. The style of living familiar to the Abreguardos was of course entirely new to Janice and her cousin. "Luz" waited upon the guests.

Don Abreguardo came bustling into the court before they had finished the repast. Now that he was dressed, he proved to be a very dapper figure of an old gentleman, his bald poll hidden by a cap.

"This is a fine day—by goodness, yes!" he announced. "Have you attended the señorita with diligence, Luz?"

"As I would the Donna Isabella herself," declared the Indian handmaid.

"You may bring my coffee here. We will talk."

It seemed it was a coffee-making machine he desired. He was very particular about his coffee, was Don Abreguardo—liked it black and thick and drank it without sugar or cream.

While the coffee dripped he said, bowing to Janice:

"I have read the letter from my very good friend, Don José Pez, which you so kindly gave me last night, señorita. He tells me you have need of haste in making your way to Los Companos District?"

"It is true, sir," Janice said eagerly. "My father was wounded quite three weeks ago. So we heard. Since then we have not learned a thing about him."

"He is at one mine beyond San Cristoval?"

"The Alderdice. He has been chief man there for more than three years."

"Sí, sí! I understand," said Señor Abreguardo. "There has been trouble in that vicinity, it is true. But it seems things always quiet down—even the worst."

After this more or less comforting assurance the old man sat thinking for a minute or two with lips pursed. Now and then he took sips of his first cup of coffee.

"Were your haste not what it is, señorita," he said at length, "I would urge you to remain—you and your young compadre—until I might send for certain news of your father. But you are anxious in your mind—by goodness, yes!"

"Oh! indeed I am," cried Janice.

"Then we must forego the pleasure of your presence here at my poor dwelling," the señor said politely. "There is a way of going soon, I believe, to San Cristoval. Carlitos Ortez goes in his gas-car—his tin Leezie, he call it. You know?" and their host grinned suddenly.

"Cricky! an automobile?" gasped Marty. "Just the caper!"

"Sí, sí!" said Señor Abreguardo. "Carlitos, he swear by the tin Leezie. He will take you to San Cristoval if his car, it do not br-r-eak down—by goodness, yes!

"I hear," the man went on, nodding and still sipping coffee, "last evening before you arrive, señorita, Carlitos have engage to transport another traveler up country. He may take three passengers in his car as easily as one—and you will pay him twenty American dollars apiece."

"Whew!" murmured the frugal Marty. "Couldn't we buy his flivver for that and run it ourselves?"

The señor's eyes twinkled. "He would charge you double—I assure you," he said. "Carlitos is no lover of los Americanos. But he will do as I say. Besides," added the man very sensibly, "you would not know the road, and no American unattended could easily pass the bands of rovers now infesting this district."

"Sounds nice, don't it?" whispered Marty to Janice. "What say?"

"Oh, Marty! I must go on," said the girl.

"Sure! All right, we take you," said Marty to Señor Abreguardo.

"You will pay Carlitos Ortez half of the money before you start—pay it into my hands," explained the don. "And the end of your journey—San Cristoval, for he cannot go beyond that point—you will pay him the remainder and give him a paper assuring me that he has performed his part of the contract. You are thus safeguarded, and I shall have done my duty by Don José's friends," concluded Señor Abreguardo, bowing over his coffee cup.



CHAPTER XXII

THE RED VEST AGAIN

Carlitos Ortez was one of those snaky-looking, black-haired peons, with a wisp of jetty mustache, who serve as the type of Mexican villains in lurid melodrama—and he had the heart of a child!

Janice might have been afraid of the quick-motioned, nervous little man had she been of a less observant nature. But she saw his eyes—deep brown, placid like a forest pool. The eyes served to make Carlitos almost handsome.

The automobile came to the archway of Señor Abreguardo's house in an hour. Janice and Marty did not meet any of the man's family. The Indian maiden, Lucita, told Janice that the ladies of the household seldom stirred from their apartments until after siesta.

But the don himself stood bareheaded in the sun to see them start. Carlitos had put Janice and Marty into the back of the car.

"That other hombre—I peek him up later. He sit weeth me," he explained.

When they got under way with a good deal of rattle and banging, Marty, jouncing against his cousin as the car went over a stone in the road, sniffed.

"'Tin Lizzie!' He said it!" the boy growled. "This jitney's about one-candle power, isn't it? D'you s'pose there're any springs—ugh—on the contraption at all?"

"Let's not fuss," said Janice. "Think how much worse it would be if we had to ride horses—or mules. All of those I have seen have been half wild."

"Hi tunket! this flivver's wild enough, I should think," Marty declared, as the car skidded around a corner.

La Guarda was not a large town, and they were not long in getting to the edge of it. Under the shade of a low-roofed tavern a man was standing—quite a bulky man.

"There ees my other passenger," said Carlitos over his shoulder. "He of los Americanos, too. I theenk he go up country to buy horses. He horse trader. Sell beeg horse last night to Don Abreguardo."

Janice had seized Marty's hand and squeezed it hard. She was not listening to Carlitos, but staring at the man on the veranda of the tavern.

He wore one of the high-crowned, wide-brimmed hats of the country; but he was not otherwise dressed like the Mexicans. His waistcoat made a vivid splotch of color as he stood in the shade.

"Cricky!" gasped Marty. "Tom Hotchkiss! red vest, an' all!"

"Oh, it is, Marty!" agreed his cousin.

"And we can't do a thing to him!" groaned the boy. "He's gettin' farther away from the Border; afraid of being nabbed, I s'pose."

"I hope he will not recognize us."

"We'll be dummies. Keep that veil thing over your face, Janice, then he won't know you from one of these greaser girls. An' he'll take me for a Mexican, too."

"Thank you!" murmured Janice tartly, and Marty grinned teasingly.

There was no time for further planning. The automobile halted, panting, at the tavern and the man wearing the red vest came out with his bag.

Close to, he was not to be mistaken for anybody but Tom Hotchkiss, the absconding Polktown storekeeper. He was a man of girth, with short legs. His head was set low upon a pair of heavy shoulders. Indeed, he possessed little visible neck—scarcely enough on which to put a collar.

Tom Hotchkiss was of the apoplectic build to suffer in a warm climate; and the sun, even at this time of year, seemed almost tropical to these New Englanders. He had discarded none of his ordinary dress save his hat, and that looked incongruous enough with his brown cutaway coat, the red vest, gray trousers, and spats.

"He certainly is a hot member to look at," muttered Marty Day, as the man approached the car.

Hotchkiss stared curiously at the other passengers; but Janice hid her face with her veil and the broad brim of Marty's hat quite sheltered his freckled countenance from casual observation.

"Friends of Don Abreguardo, señor," explained Carlitos. "They go weeth us."

He cranked up again, and the automobile began to shake and quiver "like an elephant with the palsy," to quote the disgusted Marty.

"Say!" he whispered, "this isn't much like your Kremlin—believe me!"

They started. A dog got up from his bed in the dust of the road, yapped at them languidly, and lay down again in his form. The car skidded around another corner and they were immediately in the open country. Climbing a long hill the automobile seemed a dozen times on the point of being stalled; but no—she kept pluckily on to the summit.

On the down-grade beyond this rise the car went so fast—thumping and crashing over outcropping roots and other obstructions—that Janice cried out in alarm.

"If we don't meet nothin' we're all right—eh?" shouted Carlitos above the roar of the car. "The brake, she done bust."

"Huh!" muttered Marty. "One thing sure, we can go as fast as this old 'tin Lizzie' can."

This did not sound altogether reassuring to Janice. She unlatched the door on her side of the tonneau, ready to jump out if it looked as though the reckless driver was about to bring them to disaster.

The man in the red vest hung on to the side, and, short as his neck was, the two passengers in the tonneau could see that roll of fat above the collar of his shirt turning pale!

"Tom's getting white around the gills," whispered Marty to his cousin, chuckling. "He frightens easy. I wonder if we could scare him into giving up that cash and helping dad?"

"But—but he surely ha-hasn't all that mo-money with him," was jounced out of Janice's lips in a staccato whisper.

"He ain't forgot where he put it nor how to get hold of it again, you bet!" growled Marty. "Hi tunket! this sun ought to sweat it out of him. Ain't it hot?"

"And dusty," sighed Janice. "Oh, thank goodness! here's the bottom of the hill."

Carlitos grinned back at them—the smile of a wolf, but with his kind eyes twinkling.

"How you do, eh? The señorita not like such traveling—by goodness, no?" he said. "But if we travel not fast on the—what you call?—down-grade, we not travel far, perhaps, yes?"

Janice covered her countenance and made no reply, for the startled face of Hotchkiss was likewise turned back.

"You don't have to go so fast on my account," he snarled. "I got all the time there is."

"Cricky!" whispered Marty. "I'd like to hear him say that after the judge and jury get through with him. He ought to get life for what he's done."

"Sh!" begged Janice. "It will do no good to quarrel with him here."

They rattled on through a pleasant valley, with here and there a bunch of cattle or horses grazing. Occasionally a vaquero dashed past and waved his hand in greeting to Carlitos Ortez. The latter seemed to fall into a gloomy mood and for two hours did not speak.

Then he stopped the car beside a well at the edge of the chaparral and there in the shade the passengers alighted, while Carlitos filled his radiator and tinkered with parts of the machine that seemed to need attention.

Janice and Marty managed to keep away from Tom Hotchkiss and spoke only in low tones. Perhaps the man with the red vest believed his fellow-passengers to be Mexicans, like Carlitos.

"Who owns all this land?" Hotchkiss asked.

Carlitos jerked his head out from under the car where he had been fumbling, and scowled.

"By the right of God, señor, I own part of it. All of Méjico is ours—the people's. We own. But the reech and the strong have taken away our lands—by goodness, yes!"

"Well, you haven't got anything on folks everywhere," declared Hotchkiss. "The strong and the shrewd get it all—you bet!"

"This," and Carlitos swept a gesture including all the valley, "is the ranchero of Señor Baldasso Nunez. He is a buzzard."

"Yes?"

"His father was a buzzard before him—the old señor. Look you!" cried Carlitos with growing excitement. "My grandfather was a boy in the old señor's time. He is past eighty now and still working for the present Señor Baldasso."

"A long while to keep one job," said Hotchkiss.

"Listen, señor! At sixteen my grandfather was a big, fine, strong man—like me. He wish to marry a certain girl—she is my grandmother. Well! It is so that the old señor hear about my grandfather's wish—by goodness, yes! He send to my grandfather and offer a hundred pesos so he may pay the priest for to marry him and my grandfather accept, señor."

"That was mighty neighborly of the señor," observed the Yankee storekeeper.

"Yes-s?" hissed Carlitos. "One hundred pesos, mind—and the Church take all of that. Between the church and the landowners we are ground to powder!

"Mind you, señor, it was for becoming man and wife, and for the raising of seven sons and daughters and, now, of over thirty of my generation. My grandfather and all the men and boys living of his race, save me and a brother who is with the raiders, are still working for Señor Baldasso to pay off that hundred pesos!

"What you think of that, señor, huh?"

"Aw—that don't seem sensible," said Hotchkiss. "Haven't you paid the original debt?"

"Sí, señor! that is the truth. Always are we kep' in debt to Señor Baldasso. Me, I get out—turn outlaw you say—buy this 'tin Leezie'—mak' money plenty. But none of it go to that Señor Baldasso—by goodness, no!"

"So you aren't helping pay off the family debt?" drawled Hotchkiss.

"No, señor. Sometime I hope to," said Carlitos grimly.

"Yes?"

"At once. All of a piece. You understand?"

"You mean you're going to make money enough to close the account with the old man?"

"Not money," and Carlitos smiled his wolf-like smile again. "I hope to help hang Señor Baldasso at the door of his own hacienda—by goodness, yes!"

Marty exploded a mighty "Cricky!" Then he asked: "Is that why you Mexicans are fighting all the time?"

"To get back our land—our own. To govern ourselves. Sí, señor," Carlitos declared eagerly. "We long for a deliverer—a devoted leader who will free us from taskmasters both native and foreign. But we desire no foreign intervention—by goodness, no! Hands off, gringos. I weesh that Rio Grande," he concluded, pointing into the northeastern distance, "were ten thousand miles wide."

"Heh!" ejaculated Tom Hotchkiss, peering in the direction Carlitos pointed. "Is that the river—just over there?"

"It is five miles away, señor."

"But I thought you were taking me away from the river all this time?" sputtered the other. "Why! that's the Border, isn't it?"

"But yes, señor. We have to follow the road. I cannot drive the tin Leezie through the chaparral."

"I don't like it," muttered the man. "I thought we were already a long way from the States."

Marty nudged his cousin. "Scart as he can be, Janice," he whispered. "'By goodness, yes!' I believe if we had the time, we could march old Red Vest back over the Border and clap him into jail!"



CHAPTER XXIII

THE BANDITS

The party got under way once more, Carlitos again silent and, Janice thought, Tom Hotchkiss eyeing her and Marty from time to time suspiciously. The fugitive had discovered that the couple in the back of the car were not Mexicans, and Hotchkiss was suspicious of all Americans. Indeed, he was living a very uneasy existence. Being naturally of a cowardly nature, even the distance he had put between himself and Polktown did not seem to his mind great enough to insure safety. The fact that, although they had been four hours on the road from La Guarda to San Cristoval, they were only five miles from the Rio Grande, greatly excited him.

Had their errand to San Cristoval and beyond not been so pressing, Janice and Marty might have conspired with Carlitos to get the swindling storekeeper back over the Border at some point where an American law officer could be found.

Janice believed she could do this. She was feeling much more certain of herself than she had on the train. Two days at the Border had made a great change in Janice Day. Marty was not the only independent one. The girl felt that, after all, the world outside her heretofore sheltered life was not so very difficult.

Thus far she had met nothing but kindness from people whom she had not expected to be kind. The way to her father seemed to be wide open before her. She was going to accomplish her mission without an iota of the trouble she had feared.

However, as this was not the time to make the attempt to bring Hotchkiss to justice she pulled the veil closer over her face and avoided the man's eyes when he chanced to look back. She hoped the fellow was just worried. Of course, being a thief and a swindler, he was suspicious of everybody. He showed very plainly that he distrusted even Carlitos. The Mexican, however, seemed in a cheerful mood again. His outbreak against the "buzzard," Señor Baldasso Nunez, must have relieved his mind.

They rattled up hill and down dale. Don Abreguardo's handmaid had put a basket of lunch into the car. At another well they stopped and ate this, Janice offering some to Carlitos and to his fat and perspiring seat mate.

"But yes, señorita," Carlitos said politely. "We do not reach La Gloria till sunset. Then we eat at Tomas Lopez's hotel. Fine hotel—by goodness, yes!"

"Why didn't you tell me it was so far?" grumbled Tom Hotchkiss. "I would have brought something along to eat."

Carlitos shrugged his shoulders. "I forget," he said. "Me, I have plent' tobac' for roll cigareet; what more any hombre need, I see not!"

They went on, passing through a village now and then. Having turned now directly from the river, Tom Hotchkiss seemed in a better mood. He commented frankly upon the miserable habitations and the miserable people he saw.

"I don't see what they get out of it," he observed. "Filthy rags to clothe them, nothing to eat but beans, and most of the houses no better than pig-stys. Why! even the chickens—look at 'em, will you? They ain't fit to eat, they're so scrawny."

"They are not for eat, señor," said Carlitos softly. "They are for fight."

"For fighting, you mean?"

"Sí, señor. The Mexican may be poor, but never too poor to fight good game cock on Sunday after mass—by goodness, yes!"

In one of the villages Carlitos slowed down—then stopped. There was a group of old women squatting in the street before the door of an adobe dwelling. They swayed from side to side, moaning in unison, while now and then one would lift up her head and wail aloud.

"What is the matter with them?" demanded Janice.

Carlitos had removed his hat and crossed himself, muttering a prayer. "It is a funeral, señorita," he explained. "See! they carry heem to his grave."

Four men came forth from the house, carrying a packing case on their shoulders. This makeshift casket had stenciled on its end: "Glass. Use No Hooks." The intimation that the corpse was so fragile amused Marty.

"Hi tunket!" he murmured. "Don't these folks down here beat ev'rything you ever saw Janice?"

The old women mourners scuttled out of the way. A band of three musicians, whose instruments consisted of a cornet, a piccolo, and a drum, appeared and headed the procession. All the village fell in behind the band and the pall-bearers, two and two, and when they turned out of the main street to mount the hill toward the cemetery, Carlitos cranked up again and the car went on, leaving the funeral cortège marching blithely to the strains of a well-known Mexican air.

The wail of the cornet, the squealing of the piccolo, and the rattle of the drum accompanied the automobile out of town and a long way into the country. They began to mount into higher ground the farther they got from the river. It was almost sunset as Carlitos had prophesied when they saw La Gloria lying above them on a cheerful mesa.

The town was nearly ringed around by green trees. The main streets were paved. The plaza, or central square, was gay with shops and there was a bandstand. Señor Tomas Lopez's hotel was about on a par with the Pez hostelry at Fort Hancock.

But after the dusty and nerve-racking ride in the automobile a chance for quiet, a bath, and relaxation between the clean coarse sheets of a bed, seemed heavenly to Janice Day. She really did not want to get up for supper.

Marty, however, kept calling to her and would not be denied. He had found out that there was beefsteak—of a sort—for supper.

"I never did realize before," he sadly admitted, "how tired a feller could get of just beans. I never want ma, when I get home again, to have 'em on Saturday nights and Sunday mornings—never! Shucks! I feel like I was turning into a bean myself. I bet if you planted me I'd sprout into a beanstalk."

They sat in the window till late in the evening and watched the people in the square. There was a band and it played some of the popular airs they were familiar with in the North. But when it essayed the native music Janice liked it better.

Old and young promenaded, the girls in bright costumes, the young caballeros in garments quite as gay—sashes, short velvet jackets, sombreros with cords of silver bullion, and some of them with clattering silver spurs on their heels. Here and there scuffled an Indian through the throng in a brightly dyed serape. The older women sat on benches or in the arched doorways, many of them smoking big, black cigars. And the children were everywhere, but more nearly dressed than they had been at the Border. Up here on the mesa the nights were chilly.

They got out of La Gloria very early in the morning, for Carlitos assured them it would be a long day's journey to San Cristoval even if nothing happened to the automobile.

"An' me, I never know when she goin' to break down," he said with one of his disarming smiles.

Hotchkiss quarreled with the Mexican before the party got off. "How do I know where you're takin' me? I can't buy a map of the country—don't believe they ever made one down here. And who are these folks I'm a-travelin' with? I thought they were Mex; but I see they are white folks."

"What am I—nigger, huh?" demanded Carlitos, "You not lik-a travel weeth me, you pay me an' stop here. I no care."

"We won't bite you, Mister," drawled Marty, keeping well in the background, however. "What are you scared of?"

"What's your name?" growled Hotchkiss suspiciously.

"Down here it's George Washington. What's yours?" returned Marty, chuckling and backing still further away.

"Just as near Abraham Lincoln as yours is George Washington," snarled Hotchkiss.

Marty and Janice got into the car, having gone around back of it to enter from the opposite side. Hotchkiss climbed in beside the Mexican driver, still muttering about "not knowing where he was bound for."

The road was rougher than it had been the day before and much of the way it was ascending. So the automobile went slowly. The engine sputtered—and so did Tom Hotchkiss. Carlitos was sunk in sullen mood and his comments—usually addressed to the car—were in Spanish, and scarcely translatable.

Janice became exceedingly weary before the morning was half over. Riding over plowed ground in a springless cart would have been little worse than being jounced about in this automobile.

They did not rest even during siesta, only stopping long enough for Carlitos to mend his car with a piece of wire and what Janice supposed must be much Spanish profanity. The journey was getting on the Mexican's nerves as it was upon that of his passengers.

At certain places they were stopped by rough-looking men—some of them armed. Carlitos made his explanations in his own tongue. Tom Hotchkiss was growing visibly panic-stricken. He had doubtless been afraid of arrest on the United States side of the Border; but the appearance of these bands of seemingly masterless vagabonds frightened the runaway storekeeper from Polktown still more.

It was mid-afternoon and the automobile was limping along through a wild valley, when above the coughing of the engine Janice heard the rat-a-plan of hoofbeats. She looked around earnestly, and finally spied a company of horsemen charging cross-country toward the trail the automobile was following.

"Oh! who are those?" she cried, leaning forward to place her hand on Carlitos' shoulder.

He looked up, saw the cavalcade, and jerked the steering wheel a little. They bumped into a bowlder, the car shot back, and then the engine died with an awful rattle.

"Carramba!" sputtered Carlitos. "We have the accident now—yes, huh?"

"But who are those men?" repeated Janice. "They see us. They are coming this way."

Carlitos stood up to look. He shrugged his shoulders.

"That is Dario Gomez riding in their lead. He is a great bandit chief, señorita. Now we are—what you call?—in for it—by goodness, yes!"



CHAPTER XXIV

THE SITUATION BECOMES DIFFICULT

They had halted beside a dense patch of chaparral. Carlitos had scarcely thrown his verbal bomb when Tom Hotchkiss slid out of his seat and dived into the thicket beside the narrow road like a wood-chuck into its hole. No fat man ever disappeared more quickly.

Janice and Marty were too disturbed by the announcement of the automobile driver, and too startled withal, to note Hotchkiss' departure. The bandits, headed by Dario Gomez, swung into the trail and charged immediately down upon the stalled automobile.

The band consisted of nearly forty—an unusually large and important commando, as the Mexican banditti rove the country mostly in small parties, preying on whomever may have anything worth taking, and keeping up a desultory warfare against the troops of whatever de facto government may at the time be in power in Mexico City.

"Hi tunket!" exploded Marty. "What are we going to do now?"

Carlitos shrugged his shoulders, sat down, and began to roll the ever present cigarette. "As the young señor says, ''I tunkeet!'" quoted the Mexican. "What can we do but submeet?"

"Submit to what, Carlitos?" whispered Janice. "What is the danger from these men?"

"Quién sabe?" drawled the driver of the car. "We are in the hands of God, señorita."

The leader of the fierce-looking band was a man with long, waving mustachios, a regular piratical-looking hirsute adornment. He carried a white, ugly scar across his right cheek—evidently the memento of a more or less recent saber wound. He spoke first of all in Spanish to Carlitos while his wildly riding followers—plainly vaqueros all—dragged their mounts back to a dramatic halt about the stalled car, surrounding the party with a cloud of dust.

Carlitos drawled a reply and gestured toward his remaining passengers. Dario Gomez exclaimed:

"Americanos—and in the habit of friends? What means this?"

He spoke very good English. His eyes flashed, but his mustache lifted at the corners as though he laughed.

Marty was tongue-tied for the moment. The threatening aspect of the cavalcade and especially of Dario Gomez himself was too much for the nonchalance of the boy. Even the hidden weapon in his sash gave him no comfort, for these "forty thieves" were all armed to the teeth.

It was a difficult situation. Carlitos evidently had no help to offer. Indeed he seemed to feel no particular responsibility, though he was not closely associated with these lusty vagabonds.

"What means this masquerade, señor and señorita?" Dario Gomez repeated.

It was Janice who stepped into the breach—and stepped from the car as well. She approached the charger ridden by the bandit chief, putting aside the veil that had half hidden her face.

"Señor," she said earnestly, "will you not help me get to my father? The car has broken down and we are still a long way from San Cristoval—are we not, Carlitos?"

"Huh? By goodness, yes!" replied the amazed driver.

"My cousin and I," pursued Janice Day, "have come across the States to find my father—from far beyond Chicago—from beyond New York. I must find him quickly, sir. He is wounded—perhaps dying! Will you help me?"

"Who is your padre, señorita?" Dario Gomez asked. "How was he wounded?"

"Mr. Broxton Day is my father. He is chief at the Alderdice Mine, beyond San Cristoval."

"Ah! beyond the town, you say? We have no power there, señorita. Not now. Old Whiskers rules up there once again—and with a strong arm."

Janice did not know to whom he referred as "Old Whiskers"; possibly to some petty chief like himself. She remembered the name of a rebel leader who had been her father's friend in the past and she urged:

"I am sure my father would not have been attacked at all had Señor Juan Dicampa been still alive. He was my father's friend."