"Ha! the Dicampa? He was my friend, too," returned Gomez. "But he joined forces with the conqueror—and was shot for his treachery."

"Oh!"

"Juan Dicampa ended as so many deliverers end—as an apostle of 'the loaves and fishes.' Ha!" ejaculated Dario Gomez. "I and my followers, we are as yet poor enough to be honest. God keep us so!"

"But my father has surely done nobody harm," cried Janice. "I am sure his name must be known for justice and kindness in the Companos District."

"It is true, mi general," said one of Gomez's men softly. "I am acquaint' weeth the Señor B-Day. He is a gran hombre."

Dario Gomez pushed back his sombrero and ran a hand through his thick, graying hair, laughing with twinkling eyes and uplifted mustache into Janice's face.

"Shall we, then, play modern Robin Hoods to this so-beautiful señorita in distress?" he demanded.

"Who ees thees Rob'n 'Ood, mi general?" asked another of his followers. "A brave compadre?"

"You've said it," ejaculated Gomez, in good American slang. "Very famous."

"What more than we can he do?" asked the lesser bandit.

"True. Your wisdom is of the ancients, Pietro. What say, hombrecitos? shall we lend assistance to the so-beautiful señorita—the daughter of Señor B-Day?"

There seemed to be a growl of approval. "To San Cristoval, mi general," said one. "There may yet be pickings."

The leader turned immediately and with businesslike directness to Carlitos. "What has happened to the automobile?" he asked.

"Oh, Señor Gomez!" stuttered the driver. "She done bust."

"And you can't make on with her?"

"No, señor."

"She's more than cast a shoe, then?" laughed Dario Gomez. "So we must tackle horses to her, eh? 'Get a horse!' Horse power is surer than gasoline I have always believed."

"By goodness, yes!" groaned Carlitos Ortez.

Janice hastily climbed back beside the astounded Marty. He stared at her.

"Cricky!" he whispered. "Aren't you just the greatest girl that ever was, Janice? Wait till I tell the folks at home about this!"

Carlitos had a rope. He passed it around the entire body of the car, and straps and singletrees appeared for three horses. Evidently some of the bandits' mounts had been seized while at work.

Just as the three excited horses, their riders plying the quirt, sprang forward to drag the stalled car, Carlitos uttered a startling yell.

"There is a third, mi general!" he shouted to Gomez. "The thief and a son-of-a-thief! he haf not paid me mi dinero!"

"What's that?" demanded Dario Gomez.

"Anothair passenger—by goodness, yes! He have escaped!" and he pointed to the chaparral.

"What's this?"

"I forget heem till this moment," stammered Carlitos. "He is likewise of los Americanos; but he is not a friend to these two," and he gestured to Janice and Marty. "He afraid when you appear, mi general. He run."

"Ha!" ejaculated Gomez. "Perhaps he has cause for fear. We will find him."

He gave an order and ten of his men separated from the rest and began to encircle the patch of chaparral. The car was started again and, being but a light load for three horses, they went forward along the road at a gallop.

The bumping and jouncing Janice and Marty endured now was much worse than that which had gone before. The car under its own power was bad enough; but with the half-wild horses dragging it, the occupants of the tonneau thought surely it would be shaken to pieces.

Carlitos clung to the steering wheel, yelling instructions that were not heeded. These reckless vaqueros of the pampas (they were not Chihuahua men; they did not pronounce the s, and were therefore from the south) thought it rather good fun. But the rattle and banging of the automobile, like nothing so much as a tin-shop with a full crew working at high speed, urged the horses on and on.

"Believe me!" Marty managed to shout into his cousin's ear, "if I ever get out of this alive I never want even to see an automobile again. I'm glad you sold yours, Janice."

They struck into a better and smoother road after a while, and the journey was not so difficult. Janice wondered what had become of Tom Hotchkiss, and spoke of him to Marty.

"I hope they catch him and make him work for them. They tell me that these people have slaves down here just as though Abraham Lincoln had never lived," Marty declared. "You heard what Carlitos said about his grandfather.

"As long as we can't turn the fat chump over to the proper police, I hope he just gets his!" added the boy, with venom in his tone of voice. "I hope the money he stole will never do him any good. But, poor dad! he's comin' out of the little end of the horn, I'm afraid."

Janice, too, was troubled about Uncle Jason's affairs. They had seemed on the point of helping him by Hotchkiss' capture—and then had missed it.

However, hope was growing momentarily in the girl's heart that she was going to reach and rescue her own father. She had won over these wild men so easily to help her that it seemed there could really be nothing now to obstruct the way to the Alderdice Mine. They were already in the Companos District, they told her.

Dario Gomez sometimes rode beside the car and shouted bits of information to them. It was apparent that the chief was well versed in English—had probably lived and been educated in the United States. He was, after all, an anomaly in the company he was with. Janice wondered in what spirit he had become chief with such wild companions for his followers.

The haze-capped mountains seemed much nearer now and the road was almost continually on a grade—either ascending or descending. At dusk they came in sight of several groups of houses.

"San Cristoval," announced Dario Gomez. "Until we learn how matters stand, yonder we may not drag your tin Leezie," and he laughed. "You have had a ride, eh?"

"I never want another like it," growled Marty.

"But if I do not take them into the town, I get no pay," wailed Carlitos, suddenly realizing his situation. "That fat hombre—he escape. And these must ride into San Cristoval in the tin Lizzie or I get no dinero. Don Abreguardo say it."

"Ha! Don Abreguardo is a shrewd hombre," said Gomez.

"Don't worry!" Marty exclaimed. "We'll pay you, and we'll walk the rest of the way. Won't we, Janice?"

"Of course," she agreed. "I—I shall be glad to walk—if I can," and she got stiffly out of the car.

"Bueno! Now we depart," said Gomez, laughing. "We go seek my compadres and the fat hombre Carlitos tell me about. Adios!"

He wheeled his horse, waved his hand, and, with his troop clattering at his heels, rode swiftly away.



CHAPTER XXV

AN AMAZING MEETING

"Well," Marty observed, just as though he were awakening from a dream—and an unbelievable one at that—"I s'pose we might's well toddle along into town. You're a wonder, Janice. You certainly pulled us out of one big mess—didn't she, Carlitos?"

The Mexican grinned, pocketing the money and the paper they had signed. "The señorita a fine la-dee, eh?" he said. "She make even the Señor Gomez dance when she whistle—by goodness, yes!"

Janice could not call up much of a smile. She was anxious to get into San Cristoval, and she was so wearied by the long ride in the automobile that she could scarcely hobble along, clinging to Marty's arm.

"Where shall we look for lodgings in the town, Carlitos?" she asked. "You must know some hotel."

"The Golden Fan," the man said promptly. "It is as good as any. I leev you here to find horse. Adios, señorita; adios, señor."

The cousins went on wearily together. Even the volatile Marty seemed lost in thought. Finally he said:

"Well! if they catch him——"

"Who?" Janice demanded.

"Tom Hotchkiss. If the outlaws catch him I hope they'll put him somewhere where he'll get nothing to eat but beans. Cricky, Janice! ain't I hungry for real grub!"

"I want to rest—just rest," moaned the girl.

They reached the town after a while. It was then fully dark, but they easily found The Golden Fan. There was a flaring gasoline lamp before the door, over which was painted a huge yellow fan.

A man in sombrero and high boots with spurs lounged in the doorway. He first spoke to them in the vernacular; then:

"Madre di Dios! What do you here? Los Americanos—eh, yes?"

"We're not lost Americans," replied Marty, misunderstanding. "Just travelers."

"Sí, señor. Come to what you call 'see the sights,' yes?" and the man's grin was like that of a cat. He had yellow eyes, too, and a stiff, sparse mustache like a cat's.

"We want a place to sleep and, first of all, some supper," Marty said. "Do you run this hotel?"

The man turned his head and shouted over his shoulder:

"Maria!"

He added something in Spanish that the Americans did not catch, although they were now learning a bit of the vernacular. Almost immediately a wretched-looking half-breed woman, very dirty and unintelligent of feature, shuffled into view.

"She the keeper of this hotel," said the yellow-eyed man, grinning again at Janice and Marty.

The girl held back. These people were not like the Mexicans they had before met. She was intuitively afraid of them.

"You want bed? You want eat?" demanded the woman gruffly.

"Yes," said Marty.

"You got money?"

"Of course," the boy said loftily.

But Janice was tugging at his sleeve, whispering:

"Perhaps we can go somewhere else. Some better place."

The man seemed to have preternaturally sharp ears. "The Golden Fan ver' good hotel, señorita," he said. "Maria, she do for you."

"Ugh! she looks it," muttered Marty. "But I guess we'd better risk it, Janice."

"Be careful," breathed the girl when they were inside. "Don't show much money, dear."

"I'm on!" whispered the boy in reply. He had some silver and produced an American dollar. "You see we have money," he said aloud.

The woman led them into a poorly lighted, almost empty room. There was a table and some chairs but not much other furniture and no ornaments save an old-fashioned wax flower piece under a glass shell on a shelf. Where that, once a cherished parlor ornament of the mid-Victorian era, could have come from down here in Mexico was a mystery.

"Not enough," said the half-breed woman, referring to the dollar, her greedy eyes snapping.

"It's two dollars Mex," announced Marty with decision.

"'Nuff for supper. 'Nother dol' for bed," declared Maria.

Janice touched Marty's hand. "Do not argue," she whispered.

The man had followed them and lolled in the doorway of the room, listening and watching. It was not until then that Janice saw he wore boldly a pistol in a holster dangling from his belt.

"All right," Marty was saying rather ungraciously. "We'll give you two dollars, American, for supper and a night's lodging. Two rooms, mind. If you ask more we'll go out and hunt up some other place to stop."

"There ees no othair hotel but Maria's, young señor," said the man in the doorway, laughing.

"We'll go to see the mayor, then," said Janice hastily. "Don Abreguardo, of La Guarda, is our friend."

"Huh?" grunted the woman, looking at the man questioningly. He still laughed. "The mayor of La Guarda is not known here, señorita; and San Cristoval have no cacique."

"What's that?" demanded Marty suspiciously.

"He iss shot in the battle—sí, sí! San Cristoval iss of late a battlefield."

"Oh!" Janice murmured and sat down. Not alone was she very weary, but all strength seemed suddenly to leave her limbs.

"Been having hot times here, have you?" asked Marty briskly. "Who's ahead?"

"Oh, Marty!" gasped his cousin.

"Who has won, señor?" said the catlike man.

"Yes."

"Eet ees hard to say. First one then the other army enter San Cristoval. It iss said the Army of Deliverance is being driven back now into the hills. The government troops are between us and the mountains. But eet ees well to cry Viva Méjico to whomever the señor meets."

"Huh!" said Marty. "I've heard that ever since we crossed the Rio Grande."

This was an entirely different hostelry from any they had entered since arriving at the Border. Indeed, Janice was very doubtful of their safety. The woman was greedy and ugly; the man seemed ripe for almost any crime.

The latter's presence in the doorway did not disturb Marty much; but when the woman brought the tortillas and frijoles and some kind of fish stewed in oil with the hottest of hot peppers, Janice merely played with the food. Because of the baleful glance of the man's yellow eyes her appetite was gone. Maria too watched the guests in a silence that seemed to bode evil.

This town of San Cristoval, although much larger than La Guarda or La Gloria, was very different from either, it seemed. Not a sound came from the street. There was no music or dancing or the chattering of voices outside. It was as though San Cristoval had been smitten with a plague.

"Cricky! I bet these beans have got on your nerves, too, Janice," said Marty, seeing her fork idle.

She giggled faintly at that. "I never heard that beans troubled one's nerves," she said. "It's these people—staring at us so!"

"Yep. Eat-'em-up-Jack there in the doorway would almost turn your stomach," agreed Marty cheerfully. "And a bath would sure kill Maria."

The boy was good-naturedly oblivious of the sinister manner of the two Mexicans—or appeared to be; but Janice grew more and more troubled as time passed, and started at every movement Maria or the man made.

"Say, you," Marty asked while he was still eating, addressing the man, "is the railroad running to the mines yet?"

"Which mine, señor?" returned the yellow-eyed man.

"A mine called the Alderdice is the one we want to go to."

Maria uttered a shrill exclamation and the man dropped his cigarette and put his foot upon it involuntarily.

"What ees thees about the Alderdice Mine?" he said softly. "Why do you weesh to go there?"

"Just for instance," returned Marty coolly. "You are not answering my question—and I asked first."

"No. The rails are torn up just outside the city," said the man with insistence. "Now answer me, young señor."

"That's what we've come down here into Mexico for," Marty told him calmly. "To visit the Alderdice Mine. Do you know the man who runs it?"

"Señor B-Day!" gasped Maria, who seemed to be much moved. She had come closer to the table and was staring at Janice earnestly. The girl shrank from her, but Marty was still looking at the man lounging in the doorway.

"Yes. Broxton Day. He's the man," the boy said with admirable carelessness of manner. "Is he all right?"

"Who are you, señor?" asked the man abruptly.

"I'm a feller that wants to see this Mr. Day," said Marty, grinning.

"And the señorita! the señorita!" shrilled Maria. "I tell you, Juan, thees ees a strange t'ing!" She went on in Spanish speaking eagerly to the man.

"Do you not know Señor B-Day was shot?" demanded the man, Juan, still addressing Marty.

"Yes! Yes!" cried Janice, clasping and unclasping her hands. "Is he seriously hurt? Oh! tell me."

Maria came closer to her. After all the ragged creature had not such a sinister face. It was her Yaqui blood that made her look so forbidding.

"Señorita! señorita!" she murmured, "you lofe that Señor B-Day, do you not?"

"He is my father!" burst out Janice desperately. "Tell me about him. Is he badly hurt? How can we get to him? Oh! I wish we might go to-night!"

"Madre di Dios!" ejaculated the woman, looking at the man again. "I knew eet, Juan."

"Well! tell it to us," growled Marty.

"She say you look like Señor B-Day," said the man, grinning. "We know heem alla right. I work' for him and so did Maria. He good-a man. One gran hombre—sí, sí!"

"But how badly is he hurt?" cried the girl. "Tell me."

"He been shot in the shoulder and in the right arm," said Juan, pointing. "He alla right—come through safe—sure!"

"But we have not heard a word from him——"

"He no can write. And at first, and alla time now, the bandits keep him shut up there at the mine. It ees so. Now the Señor General De Soto Palo come. He attack the bandits. They soon be driven into the mountains away from the mines and we—we go back to work again for Señor B-Day. Sure."

The relief Janice felt was all but overpowering. She could not speak again for a minute; but Marty demanded:

"Do you mean to say we can go up there to the Alderdice Mine to-morrow morning?"

"If Señor General De Soto Palo permits—sí, sí!" said Juan, grinning again. "But no ride on railroad I tell you, señor."

"Will you go with us?" the boy asked.

"As far as may be," said the man with a shrug of his shoulders.

"For how much?" demanded Marty bluntly.

"For notting," declared Juan. "Your bed notting. Your food notting. Friends of the good Señor B-Day shall be treat' as friends by us—yes, huh?"

Maria was patting Janice's hand softly and she nodded acquiescence. Janice's eyes had overflowed. Marty choked up, and said gruffly:

"Hi tunket! don't that beat all? It pays to make people like you same as Uncle Brocky does. And you do it, too, Janice. Dad says: 'Soft words butter no parsnips'; but I dunno. I have an idea it pays pretty good interest to make friends wherever and whenever you can."

Whatever might have been the natural character of Juan and Maria, their attitude towards the cousins changed magically. The half-breed woman could not do enough for the twain, and Juan of the yellow eyes became suddenly respectful if not subservient.

The fact remained that these Mexicans did not love los Americanos, but they distinguished friends.

The tavern was a poor place; but the best in it was at the disposal of Janice and Marty. And the girl, at least, went to bed with confidence in the future.

Her father might be detained—hived up as it were—at the mine; but he was not seriously hurt and she might reach him soon.

Juan was evidently the poorest of peons. All he could obtain in the morning was a burro for the girl to ride. He said Marty must walk the fourteen miles to the mine as he did.

"Don't worry about me. I'm glad to walk after riding two days in that tin Lizzie," declared the boy.

They set forth early. Only a few curious and silent people watched them go. The town seemed more than half deserted.

"Those men who did not join the rebels," explained Juan, "haf run from the troops of the Señor General De Soto Palo. Oh, yes! They will come back—and go to work again later."

They set forth along the branch railroad, on which the ore was brought down from the mines to the stamp mills. In the yards box cars and gondolas were overturned and half burned; rails were torn up; switch shanties demolished.

"We Mexicans," said Juan, grinning, "we do not lofe the railroad, no! Before the railroad come our country was happier. Viva Méjico!"

"Hi tunket!" muttered Marty. "That 'Viva Méjico!' business covers a multitude of sins—like this here charity they tell about. If you sing out that battle cry down here you can do 'most anything you want—and get away with it!"

They went on slowly, for no amount of prodding would make the burro go faster than a funeral march. On all sides they saw marks of the fighting which had followed the occupation of San Cristoval by the government troops.

Juan explained that General Palo had waited for reinforcements at first; but finally a part of the rebel army come over to him and fought against their former friends under the standard of the government; so he was now pushing on steadily, driving the other rebels before him.

"Why did they come over to the government side if they believe in la patria?" asked Marty curiously.

"For twenty centavos a day more, señor," said Juan placidly.

"What's that?" ejaculated the boy. "D'you mean they got their wages raised?"

"Why, señor, a man must leev," declared Juan mildly. "We get from thirty to feefty cents a day working in the mines, on the roads, in the forest—oh, yes! Señor B-Day pay the highest wages of anybody—sure. But to fight—ah! that is different, eh? One general give us seventy-fi' cents a day—good! But another offer us one dollair—'Merican. By goodness, yes! We fight for heem. Any boy that beeg enough to carry gun, he can get twice as much for fighting as he can for othair work. Sí, sí, señor."

"Oh, cricky! 'Viva Méjico!" murmured Marty.

It was just then that they turned a curve in the right of way and beheld a train standing on the track. At least, there were a locomotive and two cars.

They had not seen a human being since leaving the outskirts of the town; but here were both men and horses.

The men were armed; some of them were gayly uniformed. A young fellow in tattered khaki spurred his mount immediately toward Janice Day and her companions.

"What want you here, hombres?" he demanded in Spanish, staring at Janice. "This is the headquarters of General De Soto Palo."

Juan was dumb, and before Marty could speak Janice put the question:

"Is it possible for us to get through to the Alderdice Mine, señor?"

"Certainly not!" was the reply in good English. "Our troops have not driven out the dregs of the rebel army as yet."

"May we speak with the general?" the girl pursued faintly.

"Certainly not!" the fellow repeated. "He has no time to spend with vagabond Americanos."

"She's Señor B-Day's daughter," broke in Marty, thinking the statement might do some good.

"Ha!" ejaculated the young officer much to their surprise. "She we have expected. Consider yourself under ar-r-rest. March on!"

He waved his hand grandly toward the nearest car. Already Janice had seen that it was a much battered Pullman coach. But now the officer's declaration left Janice unable to appreciate much else but the fact that she had been expected and was a prisoner of the government forces!

Juan, immobile of countenance, prodded on the burro. Marty, too, was speechless. They came near to the observation platform of the Pullman coach.

Suddenly the door opened and there stepped into the sunshine the magnificent figure of a woman in Mexican dress—short skirt, low cut bodice, with a veil over her wonderfully dressed hair. She looked down upon the approaching cavalcade with parted lips.

"Madam!" ejaculated Janice Day, and then could say no more.



CHAPTER XXVI

AT LAST

Marty Day was quite as amazed as his cousin at this meeting, for he, too, recognized the handsome black-eyed woman on the observation platform of the Pullman coach. He found his tongue first.

"What do you know about that?" he murmured. "Just like a movie, ain't it? She is that woman you were traveling with, Janice—the one I thought tried to swipe your money. And maybe she did try to at that!"

"Hush!" begged his cousin.

"Eet ees the Señora General De Soto Palo," hissed Juan. "She a gre't la-dee—huh?"

For a full minute the black-eyed woman stared at Janice and the latter wondered if the Señora General Palo would admit their acquaintanceship. They had been so "goot friends" on the train; would the señora acknowledge it now?

"Ach!" exclaimed the woman, her rather stern countenance blossoming into a smile. "You are a wonderful girl, my dear—soh! You have made your way here—through this so-strange country and with all against you. Have you saved your money from robbery, too?" and her black eyes began to twinkle.

"Oh, Madam!" murmured Janice.

"Our money's safe all right all right," put in Marty.

Madam ignored him. "Come up here, my dear," she commanded in her full contralto voice, still smiling at the American girl.

Janice tumbled off the burro and hastily mounted the steps to the platform. The young officer who had led them here, and others of his ilk, stared from a distance and twirled their mustachios. Marty grinned at Juan.

"I guess we got a friend at court, eh, Juan?" he said in a whisper. "It takes our Janice to get us out of scrapes—believe me!"

"Of a verity, yes!" agreed Juan.

The black-eyed woman seized Janice Day in a warm embrace the moment the girl came near.

"Oh, Madam!" cried the latter. "I hope I did not offend you. You left so abruptly back there at Sweetwater——"

"Ach! it ees nothing," said the woman. "I was hurt—for the moment. You did not trust me."

"And you were continually warning me to trust nobody," interposed Janice, flushing.

"It is true!" cried the woman, patting her cheek. "I made you so fear for r-robbers that you fear poor me, eh? But that is past. I was sorry, later, when I learn' just where my hoosban' is that I did not confide more in you and you in me, my dear."

"Oh! And you are really the wife of this general who commands here?" Janice exclaimed. "How wonderful!"

"Yes. General Palo has long been exile from his land. Soh! But now he is in favor with the government at Mexico City," explained Madam. "Yes! it was at his request I cut short my season in New York an' join him. He hope to be made governor of this deestrict when the campaign is over. He hope soon to settle all controversies and whip these rebel dogs back into the hills and keep them there."

"But, Madam, you are not Mexican!" cried Janice.

"Not by birth—no, my dear. Yet I am intensely patriotic for my hoosban's country—Viva Méjico!"

Janice sighed. She, like Marty, began to wonder at the universal cry for la patria from those of such conflicting opinions.

"No," said Madam. They were now sitting in a compartment of the Pullman that was evidently Madam's boudoir. "I am of blood Bohemian—with a strain of the greatest nation of all time," and she smiled.

"The Hebrew?"

"But yes. I have lived everywhere—on both continents," with a sweeping gesture. "Under my own name—first made known to the world in Vienna—I sing. I am of the opera."

"Oh, Madam! I guessed that," Janice declared with clasped hands.

"Yes? Well, it iss soh," said the lady sibilantly. "I hear in New York where I am singing at the Metropolitan that my hoosban' is advance. I pack and start for Mexico immediate. Contr-r-racts are nothing at such time, yes? I hasten across the continent to greet and applaud him. After I join him at San Cristoval I hear of things, and remember things that you say, my dear, that make me to understand you must be bound for this same place, too. It is sad you should not have come wit' me."

"My father!" gasped Janice. "Do you know if he is better?"

"I know that he is as yet holding out against the rebels," Madam said. "He, with a few desperate compadres, are guarding his mine buildings, yes-s!"

"Then he is not seriously wounded?" cried the girl gladly.

"I believe not. We get some information to and from the mine. Señor General De Soto Palo declare he will shell the rebels into the hills to-day, my dear. You have come in season."

Marty, meanwhile, sat comfortably on the car steps in the shade and said to Juan:

"I guess you can beat it back to town, old man, if you want to. I have a hunch that, in spite of that gun you swing, and your look like a picture of a Spanish pirate I saw once, you ain't no fighting man; are you?"

"As the señor says," admitted Juan with a toothful grin and his yellow eyes squinting, "I am a man of peace—by goodness, yes!"

"All right. Here's a dollar—you're welcome to it. You're the only Mexican I've seen that didn't claim to be a fire-eater," and Marty chuckled. "You see, Janice knows the commander's lady and I fancy it's a cinch for us to reach Uncle Brocky now. Da, da, Juan."

"Adios, señor," responded the man and kicked the burro to start that peacefully grazing animal back along the railroad bed.

Suddenly the distant sound of firing disturbed the placidity of the scene about the "headquarters." The little group of officers began to show excitement.

"Sounds like a lot o' ginger-beer corks popping," thought Marty. "Must be something doing." He immediately grew eager himself.

When a little pudgy man in a red and green uniform, a plume in his hat, and yellow gauntlets, came from the forward car and mounted a horse held for him obsequiously, the boy knew he was viewing General De Soto Palo in all his dignity and glory. Truly it was the magnificent Madam's fate to be admired by the "so-leetle" men—her husband not excepted.

"Hi tunket! I'd like to go with 'em," muttered Marty, as the cavalcade of officers rode swiftly away. "But I s'pose I got to stay on the job and guard Janice. Sometimes girls are certainly a nuisance."

There was a jar throughout the short train. The couplings tightened. With a squeal of escaping steam the locomotive forged ahead, dragging the general's headquarters car and Madam's living car with it.

Janice ran to the door. "Oh, Marty!" she cried. "Are you all right?"

"Right as rain," he assured her.

"We are going up nearer the battle-line. Oh, Marty! think of it! I may see daddy to-day!"

"Great!" he responded. "I hope the fight ain't all over when we get there."

They were yet ten miles from the Alderdice Mine and the train was more than an hour pulling that distance. They stopped often; and when the train did move it was at a snail's pace.

All the time the machine guns rattled like shaking pebbles in a cannister, the rifles popped and the shells exploded resonantly. Now and then they descried smoke above the tree tops. Occasionally they passed burning buildings.

And then appeared—more hateful sight than all else—the dead body of a man lying beside the railroad track, face down, the back of his head all gory.

He was a little man. His hand still grasped a brown rifle almost as tall as himself.

The laboring train halted directly beside the dead man. Marty dropped down from the rear step and went to the corpse. He turned it over with curiosity.

And then suddenly there shot through the boy from the North a feeling of such nausea and horror that he was destined ever to remember it.

This was not a man that lay here. It was a boy—a little, yellow-faced, barefooted fellow not as old as Marty himself, with staring eyes which already the ants had found—and a queer, twisted little smile upon the lips behind which the white teeth gleamed.

Marty stumbled blindly back to the car, sobbing. "He's—he's laughing," he stammered to Janice. "I—I wonder if that's 'cause he's found out now how foolish it all is?"

They saw the end of the battle; by then it was mid-afternoon. A stream of wounded had been carried past the train on stretchers—back to a little temporary hospital somewhere in the woods out of sight of the belligerents. For the half-wild Indians from the hills respect no Red Cross.

They saw the last scattering, ragged horde limp away from the mesa on which were the buildings of the Alderdice Mining Company, driven to cover by the cheering troops of Señor General De Soto Palo.

Here for some time the rebels had besieged the corrugated iron huts of the mining company, in which a handful of men held out tenaciously.

The lack of machine guns on the part of the Mexican rebels had made this defense of the mining property possible. The bursting shells from the heavier guns of the government forces had quite thrown them into panic.

The men guarding the mining property had finally retreated into a cellar under one of the store-sheds. The ore-raising machinery had been dismantled and hidden in the mine, and little of real value belonging to the mining company had been destroyed.

Now these guards appeared—not more than two dozen of them; powder-stained and unwashed, but a grim group prepared to keep up the fight if necessary.

The same young aide-de-camp who had "captured" Janice and Marty when they approached the headquarters of the general in command, now came to the Madam and her guests.

"If the señor and señorita wish to go forward, all is now quiet," he announced, bowing low before Janice and the Madam. "I will do myself the honor to conduct them to Señor B-Day. He is in the cellar."

"The cellar!" gasped the girl.

"With other wounded. Quite safe, I assure the señorita," added the aide-de-camp hastily.

"Oh! let us hurry!" cried the eager girl.

Her hasty feet took her in advance of the others. She reached the group of shacks where the window-lights were blown out and much wreckage strewed the ground. Before an open cellarway stood a ragged and barefooted soldier. He presented arms most grotesquely as the party came near.

"My father—Señor B-Day?" Janice asked.

At the sound of her voice a cry answered from within and a gaunt figure staggered up the stone steps into the sunlight.

"Janice! My Janice! Can it be possible?" cried the man, gazing in wonder at the girl. "Janice!"

"Daddy! Oh, Daddy!" she screamed, and ran toward him, her arms outstretched, her face all aglow.

"Hey, Janice!" called Marty right behind her. "Don't forget his arm's in a sling."



CHAPTER XXVII

MUCH TO TALK ABOUT

More than three years and a half! Can you imagine what such separation means to two people who love each other?

We read much, and hear much, about the strength of "mother-love." It is the most holy expression of the Creative Instinct—none doubt it.

Yet there is an emotion even deeper and wider than the affection of the mother for the child she has borne. Because through all these eras of advancing civilization man, the father, has shouldered the responsibility of caring for and protecting both the mother and the child.

Not enough thought is given to this. Father-love is often greater, more self-sacrificing, more noble than that given the offspring by the maternal parent. In this the mother follows instinct; she shares it with the female of all species.

When the child must depend upon the father for all—deprived of maternal parentage as was this girl, Janice Day—there is a bond between father and child that no other mortal tie can equal.

Never had this man gone to his couch at night without a thought of the daughter he had left in the North—growing from a child to womanhood out of his sight. Nor had Janice Day with all her manifold interests forgotten for one single day her father and his lonely existence in Mexico.

Janice went into her father's arms and clung to him without speech—not intelligible speech at least. Yet there were words wrenched from both of them—little intimate words of passionate endearment like nothing Marty Day had ever heard before. Marty, steeled by the New England belief that the giving away to emotion, especially that of affection, was almost indecent, actually blushed for his relatives. Finally he drawled:

"Hi tunket! Give a feller a chance, will you, Janice? What d'you think, that I came clear down into Mexico here to play a dummy hand?"

"You're Marty!" cried Mr. Day, putting out his hand to his nephew.

"Surest thing you know," agreed Marty. "Dad and ma send their best regards."

At that Janice went off into a gale of laughter that was almost hysterical. Her cousin gazed upon her in mild surprise.

"Why, Janice!" he said. "You know they are always hounding me about my manners. What's wrong with that?"

Both father and daughter laughed at this and Marty grinned slowly. Anyway, matters had got altogether too serious for the boy and he wanted somebody to laugh so that he could successfully gulp down his own deeper emotion.

The Madam came forward. She had to be introduced, and the tall, haggard man with his arm in a sling and his shoulder swathed in bandages very plainly impressed favorably the wife of Señor General De Soto Palo.

"Ach, my dear!" she confided to Janice later, "he is such a romantic-looking man! Now, to tell you the truth, as much as I adore the general, me, I could wish him the more distingué looking—ees eet not?"

Of course daddy was a splendid-looking man! Thin and haggard as he was, Janice thought nobody as interesting in appearance as daddy—not even Nelson!

She left it to Marty to relate in particular what had happened to them since they had left Polktown. And it lost nothing in the telling—trust Marty!

"It looks to me as though you two have had quite an adventurous career," Mr. Broxton Day said with twinkling eyes.

He had sat down in the sun, for he was still very weak. His own brief tale, Marty thought, savored of "the real thing."

Mr. Day had been treacherously attacked and shot, and had lain unattended for twenty-four hours at the mouth of the main shaft of the mine. He had lost much blood at this time and was now scarcely able to travel. Yet during all the time the rebels had hemmed them in he had planned the defense of the mine buildings and held his handful of guards to their task.

"I can't put you up decently, Janice," he said. "You see, they've wrecked my quarters," and he gestured toward the building that had served him as office and living rooms before the battle.

"Oh, but, Daddy, we're not going to stay!" she cried. "I want to take you away from here just as soon as you can go. Do you suppose you could travel in Madam's car?"

Her father looked ruefully about at the havoc wrought by the enemy.

"Well," he sighed. "It will take months, I suppose, to put things to rights again. And this will be the third time we have had to do it. I suppose my head foreman could do most of it alone——"

"Why!" cried Janice, "he'll just have to! Daddy, you're going home with me to Polktown to stay till you are well and strong again. I wish we could start now."

Had Mr. Day suspected what the next few hours would bring forth they would have started immediately for San Cristoval—even had they walked. General Palo's victory, however, seemed so complete that the Americans did not suspect any menace of peril from a new quarter.

They took dinner with the general and "Madam," as Janice continued to call the woman, in the Pullman car that had been made over into a more or less luxurious "home" for the commander and his wife. There was a kitchen and a cook in it; and to Marty's unfeigned delight there were no beans on the bill-of-fare.

"Hi tunket!" he exploded when they came away from the Pullman coach to take possession of one of the sheds that Mr. Day's men had made habitable for the time being. "I don't know but these greasers would be more'n half human if they'd live on something besides frijoles. That little general is a nice little feller."

"Easy, nephew," advised his uncle, much amused after all by the boy's nonchalance and assumption of maturity. "Say nothing or do nothing to belittle a Mexican's dignity. They have a saying in their own tongue that means, 'If thou lose thy dignity thou hast lost that which thou wilt never find again.'

"The secret of half the trouble we Americans have in Mexico is in our failure to acknowledge this national trait. The poorest and most miserable peon often has in his heart a pride equal to that of a newly-made millionaire," and Mr. Broxton Day laughed.

"If you treat them cavalierly and as though they were beneath you, they may laugh. They are humble enough to their masters; ages of oppression have taught them sycophancy. But in their hearts is bitter hate—and it flames out in these uprisings. Then they revenge themselves and, being profoundly ignorant, they seek that revenge from innocent and guilty alike."

This could not be said to interest Marty greatly. As soon as they were in the house he sought the couch prepared for him. But Janice and her father sat talking for half the night.

There was much for them to talk about. Until recently, of course, their letters to each other had fully and freely related personal happenings; but there were many intimate affairs to be discussed by Broxton Day and his grown-up daughter. For so she seemed to him. His little Janice had blossomed into womanhood. Yet she had not grown away from him; she was nearer and dearer.

"You can understand things now that you might not have appreciated three years or so ago," said her father. "Oh! I admit it was somewhat of a shock to me when I first saw you to-day—you are so tall and so much the woman, my dear. Your photographs haven't done you justice. I see you are quite the grown woman. Yet you had to run away to escape Jason's opposition to your plans? Good soul!" and he chuckled.

She laughed, then sighed. "Yes. I could not bear actually to defy him."

"Ah! And this young man you've told me so much about in your letters? What about Nelson?" her father asked, scrutinizing her countenance keenly.

Janice could not altogether hide her feeling that, somehow, Nelson had failed her. The loyal girl found herself in the position of an apologist. She could not really explain why he had not come with her to Mexico.

"He—he did not believe I meant to come," she confessed.

"You told him?" asked her father.

"Yes. I told him I should."

"My dear," said Mr. Day thoughtfully, "the young man cannot know you very well, after all."

Janice sighed. "I thought he did," she observed. "I've been so busy—so anxious—about you and all, Daddy—that I have not thought much about Nelson until now. I realize it would have been very difficult—indeed impossible—for him to have left his school in the middle of the term to come with me. But he did not believe I meant what I said. That—that is where it hurts, Daddy."

"Well! well!" murmured Broxton Day. "You're not like other girls, Janice. I can see that. And I imagine, for that very reason, you have picked out a young man for yourself that is quite your opposite. I have an idea Nelson Haley is a very common type of youth," and his eyes twinkled.

"Oh, but he isn't, Daddy! Not at all!" she cried, quick to defend. "He is quite remarkable. Why—listen——"

And then there poured out of the girl's heart all the story of her acquaintanceship with Nelson from the first time she had met him with his motorcycle on the old lower Middletown road.

Did Mr. Broxton Day listen patiently? Imagine it! He was hearing from the lips of this lovely girl-woman, whom he had seen last as a child, all the tale of her romance; the sweetest, most endearing tale a daughter can possibly narrate to a sympathetic and understanding father. He saw, too, with her eyes those better qualities of the young schoolmaster that did not, perhaps, appear on the surface—the deeper moods and passions of his being that responded to the spur of the girl's own character. Broxton Day realized that Janice's influence must mean much to Nelson Haley; yet that the young man had in him that which made it quite worth while for Janice to hold him in the strong regard she did.

They talked of other matters that night, too—these two long separated comrades. Uncle Jason's difficulties came in for their share of attention. Mr. Day now for the first time learned of Jason Day's trouble, for Janice's letter telling about it had failed to reach the Alderdice Mine.

In his present crippled state Broxton Day was quite willing to go back to Polktown with his daughter for the winter. And for his brother's sake he would have gone in any case.

During his working of the mine since coming to Mexico, Broxton Day had accumulated considerable money which he had immediately re-invested in securities in the North.

"No more carrying of all the eggs in one basket, my dear," he said to Janice. "I have enough elsewhere to help Jase out. So don't worry about that any more."

They might have talked all night; only Janice knew her father, in his present weakened state, should have rest. She insisted that he roll up in his blanket, as Marty had done hours before. When his regular breathing assured her Mr. Day was asleep, the girl stole to his side and tucked the blanket about his shoulders with maternal care.

"Dear Daddy!" she whispered, stooping to press her soft lips to his wind-beaten cheek.

As she did so a sound outside startled her. Then came a cry and several rifle shots, followed by the clatter of arms and the quick, staccato orders of the officers calling the men to "fall in."



CHAPTER XXVIII

TOM HOTCHKISS REAPPEARS

Janice went quickly to the door, opened it, and stepped out. Already the night was old. The footsteps of Dawn were on the eastern hills. On the mesa, however, the encroaching forest made the shadows black. She could barely see the "headquarters" train of General Palo.

A man stumbled by and Janice caught at his arm. It was one of her father's men who had remained to guard the mine.

"What is it? What has happened?" she asked, without betraying all the fear she felt.

She knew that more than half of the government troops had followed the retreating rebels into the hills and had not returned to the military base. The present confusion of the soldiers that remained portended something desperate she knew.

"A night attack?" she asked.

"It may be, señorita," whispered the man. "A person has just been brought in—captured by our pickets."

"Oh!"

"An Americano, señorita. He say Dario Gomez, that bandit unhung, señorita, is about to attack. He has gathered a gre't force and will attack General De Soto Palo. Sí! sí!"

"Dario Gomez?" repeated Janice. "Why, I——Who is this American who has been captured?"

"A deserter. A prisoner. I know not. Quién sabe?"

"But what does he look like?" insisted Janice.

"Oh, señorita! He is a fat man and wears a red vest across his stomach—so," and the man gestured.

"Tom Hotchkiss!" murmured Janice.

"I come back to warn Señor B-Day if there be need," promised the guard and was gone.

Janice heard a horse charging past her from the direction of the general's car. In the dim light she thought she recognized the young aide-de-camp who had been so much in evidence the day before. He rode off into the north, away from the mine, and Janice believed he had gone to recall that part of the government troops now absent.

Did General Palo consider the promised attack of the banditti serious? When Janice had been in Dario Gomez's company he had had but forty followers!

She re-entered the shed and closed the door. Her father and Marty were sleeping quietly. Should she arouse them?

The girl was already becoming used to war's alarms. She determined to watch alone. By no possibility could she have closed her eyes now in slumber.

While her father and Marty slept peacefully, Janice Day sat by a dim and rather smoky lantern and watched. Confused sounds of marching and countermarching soldiery reached her ears; but from a distance.

Suddenly the uproar increased—then more rifle shots in the distance. Her father roused up, half asleep yet.

"What's that?" he demanded.

A sharp rap came upon the door. Janice arose hastily.

"Lie down, father," she said reassuringly. "I will go."

"The Señor General De Soto Palo order you all to the train. We make stand there, señorita," said the man who had knocked. "The bandits are at hand."

"What's that?" demanded Mr. Day again, wide awake.

Marty rolled off his couch and appeared in the light of the smoky lantern, the snub-nosed revolver in his hand. "Hey! I'm in this!" he croaked, but half awake. "What's doing?"

Swiftly Janice told them what little she had learned while she crammed things into her bag. The man at the door urged haste.

"That Gomez—he is near," sputtered the messenger.

"Why, we know that feller," Marty drawled. "I don't think he'd do anything to us, would he, Janice?"

"Never trust appearances with these Mexican banditti," said Mr. Day gravely. "I've shared the contents of his tobacco pouch with one and then had him try to cut my throat the next day. They are light-hearted, light-fingered and—lightest of all in their morals. I wonder that you two got away from Gomez as you did."

"And Tom Hotchkiss got away from him, too, did he?" growled Marty. "Well, that's too bad."

"Come, señor!" urged the messenger in the doorway.

They hurried to the headquarters car. It was growing lighter in the east. The rifle fire on the southern edge of the mesa was becoming sharper. General De Soto Palo had not led his troops in person against the attack of the banditti. Indeed, it was evident that he had been aroused from his peaceful slumbers at the beginning of the excitement; even now he had not removed his nightcap. He was not half so fierce-appearing in this headgear as he had been in his plumed hat.

But Tom Hotchkiss, cowering in a corner, seemed to think that the general was quite fierce enough.

"You want to remember I'm an American," he was saying whiningly. "Something's got to be done for me. I can't be treated this way, you know."

"Señor B-Day!" exploded the little general. "Do you know this man?"

"Day!"

Tom Hotchkiss almost shrieked it and would have sprung forward to peer into Mr. Broxton Day's face had not two of the barefooted soldiers held him back by the ungentle means of their bayonets.

"Yes. It is Thomas Hotchkiss," Mr. Day said, eyeing the fat man without favor.

"You're Brocky Day!" exclaimed the prisoner with sudden relief. "Well, you tell these fellers——"

The general raised his hand for silence. The soldiers suddenly pinned Mr. Hotchkiss into his corner with points that evidently hurt.

"Ouch!"

"You know this man, Señor Day?"

"Yes, General."

"Is he to be trusted to speak the truth?"

"Never," said Mr. Day firmly, "unless the truth serves him better than lying."

"Ah!"

"I understand he claims to have escaped from Gomez?"

"Sí, señor."

"It may be so," said Mr. Day. "My daughter and nephew say they were in Gomez's power day before yesterday and they have reason to believe that this Hotchkiss was captured by the bandit."

"And how strong was Gomez's party when the señorita saw eet?"

"Forty!"

"Ah! But this man say he have thousands of troops—that an attack in force is intended on the mesa."

"It sounds as though there was some fighting going on out there," admitted Mr. Day. "But it may just be my own troops wasting ammunition. They have plenty—and are like children."

Mr. Day gave Tom Hotchkiss a long and penetrating stare.

"I'm free to confess, mi general," he said finally, "I don't know whether to believe this fellow or not. He's a criminal, wanted by the American officers. That is sure. It has always been my opinion that if a man is crooked in one environment he is very apt to be so in another."

Before the doughty little commander could make reply the rattle of rifle shots increased. It grew nearer. Janice clung to her father's arm.

The door of the office-car was flung open and the Madam suddenly appeared. She wore a wonderfully figured satin boudoir gown and a cap to match; and she was plainly very much frightened.

"General! General!" she cried. "The cook has left! Is there really danger?"

General De Soto Palo muttered something in Spanish that was probably not polite. His wife saw and recognized Janice.

"Oh, my dear!" she cried. "We are the only two females here! Return with me. I see the general is disturbed. Come, my dear. We are such goot friends—yes?"

Before Janice could reply there sounded the sharp plop of a bullet and a hole appeared in the window-pane directly above the general's desk. The bits of shattered glass showered over the little man in the nightcap; but he did not move or show any alarm.

Tom Hotchkiss squealed and tried to lie down in his corner. The two barefoot soldiers prodded him to a standing posture again.

This had been a baggage car in its day, and the windows were few and high. The impact of other bullets in the wooden walls was plainly heard. The rifle fire was advancing and it was not all ammunition wasted by the government troops.

"My angel," said the general softly, "take the señorita into the other car. Lie down below the level of the window sills—both. That will be safer."

Madam seized Janice's hand and drew her out through the vestibule. Mr. Day made a motion to Marty.

"Just go along and see that nothing happens to them, my boy," he said.

The Pullman car was fitted with thin steel shutters over the plate-glass windows and they had been closed the night before; but evidently General De Soto Palo did not altogether trust these shutters to keep out stray bullets.

The sharp ping of the lead as it sunk in the woodwork or the more resonant ring of those bullets glancing from the shutters became more and more frequent. The explosion of the guns sounded nearer. It was plain that the government troops were retreating from the southern edge of the mesa where the attack had opened. Dario Gomez and his followers seemed to be pressing on.

"Well, Marty, you wanted to see a battle," his cousin said to the boy. "Are you satisfied now?"

"Huh! I'm not seein' this one, am I?" he challenged. "Hi! what's that?" he added briskly.

The distant shriek of a steam whistle came faintly to her ears. Janice and the general's wife looked at each other. Marty drawled:

"Sounds like the old Constance Colfax comin' into the dock, don't it, Janice? But I reckon they don't have steamboats up in these hills, do they?"



CHAPTER XXIX

"JUDGE B-DAY"

The long call of the whistle through the hills was smothered in another and nearer burst of firearms. The rattle of bullets against the half-armored side of the Pullman told their own story and told it unmistakably. The bandits were coming in force; the troops under General Palo's subordinates were not standing up to the enemy at all!

The three in the Pullman heard the doughty little general charging out of the other car to take personal leadership of the defending forces, and Janice believed her father, wounded though he was, had gone with him.

Marty had shot through the corridor of the car and the open compartments to the rear. There he clawed open the door and stepped out upon the observation platform.

Again he had heard that cheerful, raucous whistle.

"Hi tunket!" he said to Janice who followed. "If that don't sound like a steamboat——"

"Or a steam train?"

"But those rails were torn up outside San Cristoval."

"They could be spiked to the sleepers again," the girl said quickly.

"Cricky! who's coming, then?" the excited boy demanded. "Friends or foes?"

"Oh, dear me!" sighed Janice. "Everybody seems to be fighting everybody else down here. Suppose we are in the middle of a great battle, Marty Day?"

"Hi tunket! It'll be something to tell about when we get back to Polktown."

"If we get back," she shuddered.

"Shucks! of course we will. Though I'd like to stay here and get that mine to working again. I wonder if Uncle Brocky would let me?"

"Marty Day! You're the most awful-talking boy I ever heard. Oh!"

Another volley of rifle shots drowned her voice. They crouched together by the open door of the car and heard the bullets sing past.

"What shall we do if there are really more of the enemy coming?" murmured Janice, after the immediate shower of lead was over.

"Holler 'Viva Méjico!' and let it go at that," grinned Marty. "That goes big with all of 'em."

It was no laughing matter nevertheless, and Marty did not feel half so cheerful as he appeared. But the boy felt it incumbent upon him to keep up the spirits of his cousin.

The sun was coming up, yet the shadows still lay deep upon the mesa. Peering out of the doorway of the car Janice and Marty could see the shifting ranks of the government troops. They retired after each volley. How near, or how many the bandits numbered, the anxious spectators had no means of judging.

That most of the rifle balls went high was, however, a fact. They pattered on the sides of the cars, some of them above the windows; and there seemed to be few casualties.

"It gets me!" murmured Marty.

Then the whistle sounded again—unmistakably that of a locomotive. It was approaching steadily. There was a steep grade up the front of the mesa and they could distinguish the panting of the locomotive exhaust as it essayed this rise.

"It's coming!" Janice gasped.

Nobody seemed to notice the approach of the strange locomotive but themselves. The desultory firing about them went on. The officers commanding the government troops seemed to know but one order—that to "fire by platoons and fall back." It was true that the woods covered the position of the enemy and hid their number as well.

On this side of the plateau there was no place for the maneuvering of horses. The ground was too rough. But why the general did not sweep the wood with his machine guns, or shell it with his howitzers, seemed a mystery. It was not until afterward that the Americans learned there had been other treachery besides that of Tom Hotchkiss. Every big gun had been put out of commission before Dario Gomez's attack.

In the growing light there was now to be distinguished the flash of rifles at the edge of the wood. Word was passed that the bandits were about to charge.

At this flank of the line the officer in command thought more of his own safety and that of his men than aught else. At his order the troops suddenly shifted to the other side of the car!

"Hi tunket!" yelled Marty. "This is where we get off! Lie down, Janice, for we are going to be between two fires."

The sun's jolly red face appeared over the hills and suddenly revealed the battle picture clearly. The morning mists and rifle smoke were dissipated, and at almost the same moment the forefront of the whistling locomotive poked out of the forest. There were several slat cars attached to the great engine. Marty stood up again in the doorway of the Pullman and yelled. He saw that the cattle cars bristled with rifles and were gay with red and green uniforms.

"Oh! who are they?" cried Janice, directly behind her cousin.

"They're government troops, all right all right! Reinforcements for Miz' Madam, I declare. No other soldiers in Mexico could afford real uniforms," Marty shouted.

They beheld the uniformed soldiery pile out of the cars and heard them cheer. One figure in civilian dress was running ahead and came to the observation platform of the Pullman first.

"Viva Méjico!" yelled Marty, glaring at this individual as though he saw an apparition.

"You young whipper-snapper!" exclaimed the apparition. "Where's Janice?"

"Nelson!"

"Oh, then," grumbled Marty, "you see the same thing I do, do you?"

Janice darted past her cousin and stretched her arms out to the schoolmaster. As he leaped up the steps to meet her the troops reinforcing General De Soto Palo began to deploy across the mesa and the firing of the bandits from the wood suddenly ceased.

"Do tell!" murmured Marty, staring at the schoolmaster and his cousin. "Gone to a clinch, have they? Huh! I guess it's time to go home."

It was some moments before Janice realized that her father was standing by, a smoking revolver in his left hand and a rather grim smile upon his lips.

"You might introduce me, my dear," he said mildly. "This, I presume, is Nelson?"

"Mr. Day!" cried the schoolmaster, who seemed much brisker and more assertive than had been his wont at home, "I am delighted to see you looking so well. I feared——"

"Evidently," Mr. Day said dryly. "Was it fear that brought you down here into Mexico, Mr. Haley?"

"Yes, sir. Fear for Janice's safety," the young man replied with a direct look. "It was for her I came."

"Ah? Well, we'll talk of that later," Broxton Day returned.

There was no time then for further personalities. Madam appeared, still in dishabille, to meet the schoolmaster, and the general, too, strutted forward.

The bandits had made off; these reinforcements had been sent to obey his, General De Soto Palo's, orders; his campaign must now be successful against all the rebels in this part of Chihuahua. But he would beg his good friend, Señor B-Day, and the young Señor Haley, to add to their party in retreat to the Border the so-br-r-rave wife of his bosom, Señora Palo! There was, too, a certain locked chest——

It was decided before breakfast, the frightened cook having returned, that the Pullman car should be coupled to the second locomotive and be pulled back to San Cristoval. There it might be attached to some train going to El Paso, for the railroad was open again to the Border, the government troops patrolling all that part of Chihuahua.

It was at breakfast that Nelson related in sequence his own adventures, after hearing of all that had happened to Janice and Marty. And Nelson boldly held Janice's hand—under the table—neglecting to eat while he told his moving tale.

He had had no means of learning when and where Janice and Marty crossed the Rio Grande, if at all, until he reached El Paso. Then a long telegram reached him from Frank Bowman, repeating Marty's message sent to Jason Day from Fort Hancock, and including the information of the presence of Tom Hotchkiss at the Border.

At El Paso Nelson had learned the railroad was open once more and that a government force was assigned to join General Palo's division at the mines beyond San Cristoval. Therefore, believing to get to Mr. Broxton Day and rescue him from further peril was the more important, Nelson had postponed looking for Janice and Marty, but had used such influence as he could muster to obtain permission to join the reinforcements going up into the hills.

"I did not know where this dear girl was—in the body," said Nelson, with a proud look at Janice; "but I knew where her heart was. It would be with her father up here in the hills and I knew I could do nothing to win her gratitude more surely than by coming immediately to the Alderdice Mine."

"Nelson! how well you know me, after all!" Janice murmured.

There was much haste in getting ready for the departure. The general declared over and over again that the front was no place for his dear wife, after all. He had made a mistake in allowing her to come on from New York. It would be a long time yet before the district would be a settled place. But in time—— And there was the chest of valuable—er—papers, and the like!

"Most of them do it," Mr. Broxton Day said reflectively to his little party. "Just as soon as these 'liberators' acquire a little power they acquire treasure of a lasting quality. And this treasure they cache outside of Mexico. It is a sign of thrift; the laying up of something against the proverbial rainy day. And these rainy days in Mexico sometimes suggest the deluge."

There was another small matter that puzzled the general.

"He is Americano, señor," he said to Mr. Day. "He of the red vest. I know not for sure whether he was sent to rouse panic among my troops or no. He succeeded in doing so and Dario Gomez might have plundered the camp with his handful of men.

"If he were one of my own people I would have him shot without compunction. If you would decide, señor——"

"Let me talk to him, General," said Broxton Day quietly.

His talk with the man who had swindled his brother resulted in Tom Hotchkiss gladly joining the party bound for the Border. What they might do to him in the United States would be nothing so bad as an adobe wall and a file of riflemen!

"Now, Judge B-Day!" whispered Janice in her father's ear, "pass judgment likewise on another culprit."

"Who, Daughter?"

"What do you think of Nelson now that you have seen him and know what he has done?"

"My dear," said "Judge B-Day," smiling at her tenderly, "caution was never yet a fault to my mind—and Nelson possesses it. It may go well with your impulsiveness. After all, I think your Nelson is a good deal of a man."

This dialogue was between Janice and her father. Marty was still eyeing the cringing Tom Hotchkiss.

"The water's all squeezed out o' that sponge," sniffed Marty. "He'll never fill out that red vest of his again—not proper. And won't dad take on a new lease of life when he hears about it—hi tunket!"



CHAPTER XXX

AT HOME

The rear room of Massey's drugstore, behind the prescription counter, was the usual meeting place of the Polktown schoolboard. There was, it is true, a well furnished board-room in the new school building; but habit was strong in the community and as long as the bespectacled druggist held a vote in school matters the important business of the board would be done here.

The day Nelson Haley had left them in the lurch and they had to scurry about to obtain the services of a substitute principal for the Polktown school, the board gathered after supper at Massey's in a very serious mood. There was considerable indignation expressed at the young schoolmaster's course. Even Mr. Middler looked gravely admonitory when he spoke of Nelson. Massey sputtered a good deal over it.

"That jest about fixes him with me," he said. "Leavin' us in a hole this way to go traipsin' off to the Mexican Border after that gal and Marty Day. He'd better hunt a new job when he comes back."

"Let us not be hasty," Mr. Middler said, but half agreeing.

It was Cross Moore who took up the matter from an entirely different point of view. He was usually a man of few words and he was not voluble now; but what he said drew the surprised and instant attention of everyone.

"Did it ever occur to you," he drawled, "that mebbe we owe Nelson Haley something?"

"Owe him? No, we don't," snapped Massey, the treasurer. "I gave him his check up to the fifteenth day of December only two days ago."

"Something money can't pay for," pursued the unruffled selectman. "You know, we were pretty hard on him all last summer. About them lost gold coins, I mean."

"Well! we gave him his job back, didn't we?" asked Crawford.

"True, true," the minister joined in.

"Well, what ye goin' to do about his runnin' off an' leavin us in this fix?" bristled Massey, glaring about at his fellow committeemen.

"I move you, Mr. Chairman," said Cross Moore quietly, "that we give Mr. Haley a vacation—with pay."

"Oh, by ginger!" gasped the excited druggist. "For how long, I sh'd admire to know?"

"Till he returns with Janice Day," said Cross Moore.

"I—I second the motion," stammered the minister.

And this decision—finally passed without a dissenting voice—made no more stir in the community than did several occurrences during the days that immediately followed.

Polktown was indeed stirred to its depths. Nelson's hasty departure to "bring back Janice and that Day boy," as it was said, was but one of these surprising happenings.

Something happened at Hopewell Drugg's that excited all the women in the neighborhood.

"Jefers-pelters!" was Walky Dexter's comment. "They run together like a flock o' hens when the rooster finds the wheat-stack. Sich a catouse ye never did hear! Ye'd think, ter listen to 'em, there'd never been a baby born in this town since Adam was a small child—er-haw! haw! haw! I dunno what they would ha' done, I'm sure, if it had been twins."

Uncle Jason came very near to being a deserted husband for a week. Aunt 'Mira seemed determined to live at Hopewell Drugg's. He finally plodded across town and entered the store on the side street with determination in his soul and fire in his eye. The store chanced to be empty, but from the rear room came the wailing notes of Hopewell's violin. Yet there was a sweetness to the tones of the instrument, too, even to Jason Day. Uncle Jason halted and his weather-beaten face lost its hardness and the light of battle died out of his eyes.

"'Rock-a-bye, baby! on the tree-top,'"

wailed the old tune. Uncle Jason tiptoed to the doorway. Hopewell, with the instrument cuddled under his chin, was picking out the old song, but falteringly.

"And there's jest glory in his face," muttered Uncle Jason.

"Oh, Mr. Day!" exclaimed the storekeeper, awakening suddenly and laying down his violin with tenderness. "Did—did you want something?"

"Wal, I was bent on gittin' my wife. But I reckon I might's well lend her to ye a leetle longer, an' be neighborly. How's the boy?"

"They tell me, Mr. Day, that he's a wonderful child," Hopewell said seriously.

"I bet ye!" chuckled Uncle Jason. "They all be. Wal, as I can't have Almiry, ye might's well give me a loaf of bread. Gosh! boughten bread's dry stuff!—an' some o' that there quick-made puddin' ye jest hafter add water to.

"Somehow," continued Mr. Day, "I can't get along very well without some dessert. Been useter it so many years, ye know. And them doughnuts Almiry left me seemed jest to melt away like an Aperl snowstorm."

"You better wait a little, Mr. Day," said the storekeeper, smiling. "I heard your wife tell mine that she thought everything would be all right now, and she was fixin' to go home."

"Thanks be!" exclaimed Mr. Day devoutly.

"You been in deep trouble yourself, Mr. Day," said Hopewell.

"Yep. But I see the clouds liftin'," Uncle Jason said, licking his lips and leaning both hands on the counter. "Them bank folks sartainly was right arter me. Houndin' the court to order me sold up—they did so!

"But when that telegram come from my son down there on the Border about Tom Hotchkiss"—Jason Day said "my son," oh, so proudly!—"I showed it to the judge an' he granted stay of per-ceedin's.

"'Course, we ain't heard nothin' more from Marty and Janice. But I reckon they air busy a-rescuin' of Broxton Day. When that's done we'll l'arn all about Tom Hotchkiss.

"Did you say my wife would be ready to go hum soon?"

"Yes. You see," said Hopewell cheerfully, "Grandma Scattergood is going to stay with us now."

Uncle Jason was no more startled by this announcement than he would have been had he looked into the sitting room behind the store just then and seen the birdlike little old woman sitting close beside the cradle which she was rocking with an industrious foot.

Mrs. Day was putting on her bonnet before the looking-glass and trying the strings in a neat bow-knot between two of her chins. In a cushioned chair, well wrapped from any possible draught, sat 'Rill, the roses gone from her cheeks but with a wonderful light in her eyes.

Mrs. Scattergood was leaning forward to scrutinize the baby in the cradle. His eyes were wide open and he was staring quite as earnestly at Mrs. Scattergood. Suddenly he screwed up his tiny face into what might have been a smile.

"For the Good Land o' Goshen!" gasped Mrs. Scattergood.

She turned suddenly and beckoned to little Lottie, who stood beside Mrs. Drugg's chair.

"Lottie, come here," she commanded.

The little girl went to her and stood looking down into the cradle, too. Mrs. Scattergood put an arm about her and drew her down closer, looking first into the baby's face and then into the luminous violet eyes of Lottie.

"For the Good Land o' Goshen!" she repeated. "Do you know, 'Rill, the blessed baby's got eyes jest like Lottie? An' I believe his nose is goin' to be like hers, too.

"Fancy! He favors Hopewell's side of the fam'bly a whole lot more than he does ourn. Wal! I allus have said that the Druggses was well-favored."

"There could be nothing more to add to my happiness if my boy should look like his father," her daughter said softly.

"I never hope to live to see the Millennium," remarked Aunt 'Mira as she went back across town with Mr. Day. "I had a great-aunt that was a Millerite and give away all her things an' climbed up on to the house roof expectin' the end of the world an' to be caught up into Glory—only she fell off the roof an' broke her hip an' the world didn't come to an end anyway.

"Howsomever, I consider I've seen what 'most matches the Millennium."

"What's that?" demanded her puzzled spouse.

"Miz' Scattergood a-huggin' little Lottie on the one hand an' cooin' to that baby in the cradle on t'other. Does beat all what fools babies make of us women," and she laughed, though she wiped the tears away.

"Don't you mean angels, 'stead o' fools?" asked Uncle Jason.

* * * * *

It was true that Frank Bowman was very busy about this time. The last spike was driven to affix the rails of the V. C. branch road to Polktown and he was working like a Trojan to make all ready for the regular running of trains to and from the main line. But there were people in Polktown who never would forgive him for suppressing certain telegrams that reached him from the Southwest about this time.



"There ain't no excuse for a man bein' a hawg," Walky Dexter afterward declared. "Frank might ha' intermated what was comin' off when the fust train was due ter pull into Polktown; I sha'n't never feel jest the same towards him again."

Half the town had turned out to welcome the initial train. The stores were trimmed with bunting and many of the residences displayed flags, as though it were the Fourth of July or Memorial Day.

Mr. Middler was scheduled for a speech. He made it, too; but not quite the speech the good minister had intended. For it was his eyes that first identified one of the passengers on the incoming train. Before the locomotive halted Mr. Middler uttered a very robust shout and rushed to the steps of the first passenger car, his hands outstretched.

"Janice! Janice Day!"

A rising murmur went through the crowd; then they cheered. The girl stood smiling on the platform looking out over the crowd, and when they cheered such a fire of pride and delight flashed up in her countenance and sparkled from her hazel eyes as nobody had ever seen before.

"Oh—folks!" she murmured, stretching her hands out to them.

Frank Bowman stood at one side, smiling broadly. "We're not celebrating the opening of the railroad branch," he said to Elder Concannon, "half as much as we are celebrating the home-coming of Janice Day."

Janice went down the steps into Mr. Middler's arms. Directly behind her was a man with his arm in a sling who looked enough like Jason Day—though younger and sprucer—to be identified as Janice's father.

Then came Marty grinning so broadly that, as Walky Dexter declared, it almost engulfed his ears! Lastly came Nelson Haley, walking with his head up and a smile of great confidence on his face.

"Jefers-pelters!" said Walky. "I guess schoolmaster's quite some punkins again in his own estimation. It ain't done him no harm to go down there to Mexico."

There was a great deal of public congratulation and welcome for the party from the Border; but it was that evening, in the broad sitting room of the old Day house on Hillside Avenue, when the excitement of the home-coming had worn off, that the family party began to realize the adventurous weeks that had elapsed were finally all behind them.

The wind soughed eerily in the trees about the house—"working up a storm for Christmas," Uncle Jason prophesied. Marty brought in an armful of knotty chunks and fed the great, air-tight stove.

They gathered around the fire, for supper was over and Aunt 'Mira and Janice had come in from the kitchen. Nelson had managed to secure the chair next to Janice. Mr. Jason Day and his half-brother sat side by side.

"Well," said Marty, blowing a huge sigh, "this ain't much like Mexico."

"I sh'd hope not!" exclaimed his mother, seeking her knitting in the basket on the shelf under the table. "That's a reg'lar heathenish land, I expect."

"It sure is!" agreed her son with fervor. "Why, d'you know what they live on, Ma?"

"I guess you didn't git home fodder down there, Marty," said Mrs. Day, chuckling comfortably. "What do they live on?"

"Beans," said the boy in a sepulchral tone. "An' say! I've busted your bean-pot. Don't you dast give me pork an' beans for a year come next Christmas."

They laughed. It was easy to laugh now—for all the party. Humor did not have to be of a high order to bring the smiles to their lips, for a deep and abiding happiness dwelt in all their hearts.

Mr. Broxton Day looked around the old and well-remembered sitting room. "It looks about the same as it did when I was a boy, Jase," he said.

"Yep. Almiry's kep' things about as when ma was with us."

"Almira is a wonderful woman," said Broxton Day, smiling across at his sister-in-law.

"You be still, Brocky Day," said Aunt 'Mira, bridling.

"Yes," he told her gravely. "For you've kept the spirit of the old home alive here, too."

"She and Janice," said Marty.

"Dunno what we would do without Janice," Aunt 'Mira said, quick to turn the compliment.

"Ain't it so?" echoed Uncle Jason. "And you comin' hum—right back from the grave as ye might say, Broxton—is more'n a delight to us. It's a blessin'. What you tell me about that—that derned Tom Hotchkiss——"

"Don't cuss, Jason—an' you a perfessin' member," urged his wife.

"How you goin' to speak of sech a reptile like him without cussin', I wanter know?" grumbled Uncle Jason.

"Well, he's got his," said Marty briskly. "He had all that money hid away in banks, and was just goin' to lay low till things blew over and then he'd set up housekeepin' in that red vest of his somewhere else, an' live easy. But that vest o' his has sort o' faded, ain't it?"

"Hopewell Drugg's got in some real pretty knitted ones," murmured Aunt 'Mira, picking up a dropped stitch.

Marty gaped in surprise.

"Real pretty what?" demanded her husband sharply.

"Vests. D'ye want one for your Christmas, Jason?"

"Oh, cricky!" ejaculated Marty. "I seen 'em hanging there in his window when I went over this afternoon before supper. Dad, they are fully as gay as Tom Hotchkiss' was."

"I bet you was over there to see Lottie Drugg," said his mother quickly.

"What if I was?" demanded the bold, yet blushing Marty. "I dunno nobody in Polktown I was gladder to see than Lottie, 'nless 'twas you, Ma."

"Ahem!" said Mr. Jason Day. "An' he proberbly won't say that many more times, Almiry. So make the most of it."

"Yes," Janice said softly. "Marty's growing up."

At this the youth grew red in the face and bit his lip. But then he straightened up boldly, as if he were a soldier.

"Huh! speak for yourself, Janice Day. You've grown up, you have! You ought to have seen all those greaser army officers dancin' around after her," and he cast a teasing glance at Nelson.

"You can't bother me, young man," replied the schoolmaster, smiling broadly.

"I guess I'm the only one to be bothered at all by our Janice's growing up," her father said a little seriously. "Just as I have her again I seem next door to losing her."

Janice got up, crossed the room, and kissed him; but her glance was warm for Nelson as she did so.

The muffled tones of the old grandfather's clock in the hall clashed the hour of ten. Uncle Jason reached down The Book from the corner of the mantelpiece and opened it, reading that night the story of the happiness of another family whose brother came back from the grave.

THE END

Transcriber's notes:

Text in smallcaps was surrounded with =

The following typos were corrected:

- pg 45: Alderice Mine -> Alderdice Mine - pg 77: Deacon Bloodgett -> Deacon Blodgett

The following inconsistencies were *not* harmonized:

- fam'bly / fambly - rawboned / raw-boned - tight-wad / tightwad

In this ASCII-encoded text version, accented characters were rendered as é, É, è, í, and ñ