"Which means," grinned Kit, "that I'm to be put off my guard, and done for nicely and quietly some moonless night when I take the trail! And he reports me either drunk or temporarily insane, does he? Well, when the next time comes I'll change that gentleman's mind."

"Shucks, Bub! Thank a fool's luck that your skull was only scratched, and don't go planning future wars. I tell you we are peace doves around here, and you are a stray broncho kicking up an undesirable dust in our front yard. Here is your coin. Singleton turned it over to me and I receipted for it, and we have enough between us to hit the Sonora trail, and there's not a bit of use in your hanging around here. You have no evidence. You are a stranger who ambled in, heard a sensational newspaper report of anti-ally criminal intent, and on the spot accused the highly respectable Granados rancho of indulging in that same variety of hellishness! Now there is your case in a nutshell, Bub, and you wouldn't get the authorities to believe you in a thousand years!"

"What about you?"

"Oh, I have just little enough sense to believe your hunch is right, but that won't get you anywhere. They think I'm loco too! I've an idea there is a lot more and rottener activities down south of the line with which our Teutonic peace arbitrator is mixed up. But he's been on this job five years, all the trails are his, and an outsider can't get a look-in! Now Miguel Herrara has been doing gun-running across the border for someone, and Miguel was not only arrested by the customs officer, but Miguel was killed two nights ago—shot with his own gun so that it looks like suicide. Suicide nothing! His chief, whoever he is, was afraid Miguel would blunder or weaken under government persuasion, so Miguel was let out of the game. That case is closed, and no evidence against anyone. I reckon everyone knows that the guns and ammunition sneaked over is headed for Rancho Soledad. The owner of Soledad, Jose Perez, is the valued friend of our nice little Conrad, and it happens that Conrad left Granados this morning for that direction, ostensibly to negotiate with the political powers of Sonora concerning a military guard for La Partida in case revolutionary stragglers should ride north for fresh saddle-horses. All appeals to the neutral chair warmers at Washington wins us no protection from that source;—they only have guns and men enough to guard some cherished spots in Texas."

"Well, if the Teuton is able for a trail I reckon he got nothing worse in the scrap than I, even if he did look like a job for the undertaker. That fellow travels on the strength of his belly and not the strength of his heart."

"So you say," observed Pike, grinning, "but then again there are others of us who travel on nerve and gall and never get any further! Just put this in your pipe, Bub, and don't forget it: Conrad is organised for whatever deviltry he is up to! There is no 'happen so' in his schemes. He is a cog in some political wheel, and it's a fifty-fifty gamble as to whether the wheel is German or Mexican, but it is no little thing, and is not to be despised."

"But I can't see how Singleton, if Singleton is square even——"

"Singleton is a narrow gauge disciple of Universal Peace by decree—which, translated, means plain damn fool. Lord, boy, if a pack of prairie wolves had a man surrounded, would he fold his hands with the hope that his peaceful attitude would appeal to their better instincts or would he reach for a gun and give them protective pills? The man of sense never goes without his gun in wolf land, but Singleton—well, in peace times he could have lived a long lifetime, and no one ever guessed what a weak sister he was, but he's sure out of place on the border."

"I'm tired wearing this halo," observed Rhodes, referring to the white handkerchief around his head. "Also some of the dope you gave me seems to be evaporating from my system, and I feel like hitting the Piman breeze. Can we strike trail tomorrow?"

"We cannot. Dona Luz has been dosing out the dope for you—Mexican women are natural doctors with their own sort of herbs—and she says three days before you go in the sun. I've a notion she sort of let the Mexicans think that you were likely to cash in, and you bled so like a stuck pig that it was easy enough to believe the worst."

"Perhaps that's why Conrad felt safe in leaving me outside of jail. With Dona Luz as doctor, and a non-professional like you as assistant, I reckon he thought my chance of surviving that monkey wrench assault was slim, mighty slim!"

"Y—yes," agreed Pike, "under ordinary conditions he might have been justified in such surmise, but that would be figuring on the normal thickness of the normal civilized skull, but yours—why, Bub, all I'm puzzling over now is how it happens that the monkey wrench was only twisted a mite, not broke at all!"

"You scandalous old varmint!" grinned Kit. "Go on with your weak-minded amusements, taking advantage of a poor lone cripple,—refused by the army, and a victim of the latest German atrocity! I suppose—I suppose,"—he continued darkly, "everyone on and around Granados agrees that I was the villain in the assault?"

"I couldn't say as to that," returned Pike judicially. "Dona Luz would dose you, and plaster you, just the same if you had killed a half dozen instead of knocking the wind out of one. She's pretty fine and all woman, but naturally since they regard you as my companero they are shy about expressing themselves when I'm around—all except Singleton—and you heard him."

"Good and plenty," agreed Kit. "Say, I'm going to catch up on sleep while I've a chance, and you rustle along and get any tag ends of things needed for the trail. I'm going to strike for Mesa Blanca, as that will take us up into the country of that Alisal mine. If we go broke there is Mesa Blanca ranch work to fall back on for a grub stake, but from what I hear we can dry wash enough to buy corn and flour, and the hills are full of burro meat. We'll browse around until we either strike it rich, or get fed up with trying. Anyway, Companero, we will be in a quiet, peaceful pastoral land, close to nature, and out of reach of Teuton guile and monkey wrenches. Buenas noches, senor. I'm asleep!"

Pike closed the door, and went from the semi-dark of the adobe out into the brilliant sunshine where Billie, with a basket, was waiting under the ramada with Merced, and Merced looked gloomy lest Pedro should be blamed by Senor Singleton for practically turning his family out of the adobe that it might be given over to the loco Americano.

"Tomorrow, can he go?" she asked hopefully. "Me, I have a fear. Not before is the adobe here watched by hidden men at night, and that is very bad! Because that he is friend to you I say to everybody that I think the Americano is dying in our house, but today he talks, also he is laughing. No more sick?"

"No more sick, sure not, but it will be one more day. A man does not bleed like a gored bull and ride the next day under a sky hot enough to fry eggs. The tea of Dona Luz drove off the fever, and he only sleeps and talks, and sleeps again, but sick? Not a bit!"

"Nor—nor sorry, I reckon?" ventured Billie.

"Why, no child, not that I could notice. That scalawag doesn't seem to have much conscience concerning his behavior."

"Or his language!" she added.

"Sure, that was some invocation he offered up! But just between pals, Billie, you ought to have been in hearing."

"I—I don't suppose he even remembers that I was," she remarked, and then after a silence, "or—or even mentioned—us?"

"Why, no, Billie. You made the right guess when you sized him up and thought he couldn't hold the job. He certainly doesn't belong, Billie, for this ranch is the homing nest of the peace doves, and he's just an ungainly young game rooster starting out with a dare against the world, and only himself for a backer. Honest,—if that misguided youth had been landed in jail, I don't reckon there's anyone in Arizona with little enough sense to bail him out."

"Likely not," said Billie. "Well, there's the basket from Tia Luz, and I might as well go home."



CHAPTER V

AN "ADIOS"—AND AFTER

Two days later in the blue clear air of the Arizona morning a sage hen slipped with her young through the coarse grass by the irrigation ditch, and a flock of quail raised and fluttered before the quick rhythmic beat of a loping horse along the trail in the mesquite thicket.

The slender gallant figure of his rider leaned forward looking, listening at every turn, and at the forks of the trail where a clump of squat mesquite and giant sahuarro made a screen, she checked the horse, and held her breath.

"Good Pat, good horse!" she whispered. "They've got nothing that can run away from us. We'll show them!"

Then a man's quavering old voice came to her through the winding trail of the arroya. It was lifted tunefully insistent in an old-time song of the mining camps:

Oh, Mexico! we're coming, Mexico! Our six mule team, Will soon be seen, On the trail to Mexico!

"We made it, Pat!" confided the girl grimly. "We made it. Quiet now—quiet!"

She peered out through the green mesquite as Captain Pike emerged from the west arroya on a gray burro, herding two other pack animals ahead of him into the south trail.

He rode jauntily, his old sombrero at a rakish angle, his eyes bright with enthusiasm supplied by that which he designated as a morning "bracer," and his long gray locks bobbed in the breeze as he swayed in the saddle and droned his cheerful epic of the trail:

A—and when we've been there long enough, And back we wish to go, We'll fill our pockets with the shining dust And then leave Mexico! Oh—Mexico! Good-bye my Mexico! Our six mule team will then be seen On the trail from Mexico.

"Hi there! you Balaam—get into the road and keep a-going, you ornery little rat-tailed son-of-a-gun! Pick up your feet and travel, or I'll yank out your back bone and make a quirt out of it! For——"

My name was Captain Kidd as I sailed As I sailed, My name was Captain Kidd, As I sailed! My name was Captain Kidd And most wickedly I di-i-id All holy laws forbid As I sailed!

The confessor of superlative wickedness droned his avowal in diminishing volume as the burros pattered along the white dust of the valley road, then the curve to the west hid them, and all was silence but for the rustle of the wind in the mesquite and the far bay of Singleton's hounds circling a coyote.

But Pat pricked up his ears, and lifted his head as if feeling rather than hearing the growing thud of coming hoofs. The girl waited until they were within fifty feet, when she pursed up her lips and whistled the call of the meadow lark. It sounded like a fairy bugle call across the morning, and the roan was halted quickly at the forks of the road.

"Howdy, senorita?" he called softly. "I can't see you, but your song beats the birds. Got a flag of truce? Willing to parley with the enemy?"

Then she emerged, eyeing him sulkily.

"You were going without seeing me!" she stated with directness, and without notice of the quizzical smile of comradeship.

"Certainly was," he agreed. "When I got through the scrap with your disciple of kultur, my mug didn't strike me as the right decoration for a maiden's bower. I rode out of the scrap with my scratches, taking joy and comfort in the fact that he had to be carried."

"There was no reason for your being so—so brutal!" she decided austerely.

"Lord love you, child, I didn't need a reason—I only wanted an excuse. Give me credit! I got away for fear I'd go loco and smash Singleton for interfering."

"Papa Phil only did his duty, standing for peace."

"Huh, let the Neutral League do it! The trouble with Singleton is he hasn't brains enough to lubricate a balance wheel,—he can't savvy a situation unless he has it printed in a large-type tract. Conrad was scared for fear I'd stumbled on a crooked trail of his and would tell the boss, so he beat me to it with the lurid report that I made an assault on him! This looks like it—not!" and he showed the slashes in his sombrero to make room for the blue banda around his head. "Suppose you tell that Hun of yours to carry a gun like a real hombre instead of the tools of a second-story man. The neighbors could hear a gun, and run to my rescue."

The girl regarded his flippancy with disapproval.

"He isn't my Hun," she retorted. "I could worry along without him on our map,—but after all, I don't know a single definite thing against him. Anyway, it's decided I've got to go away somewhere to school and be out of the ranch squabbles. Papa Phil thinks I get in bad company out here."

"Meaning me?"

"Well, he said Captain Pike was demoralizing to the youthful mind. He didn't mention you. And Cap certainly did go the limit yesterday!"

"How so?"

"Well, he went to the Junction for his outfit stuff——"

"Yes, and never showed up at the adobe until the morning star was in the sky!"



"I know," she confessed. "I went with him. We stayed to see a Hart picture at the theater, and had the time of our young lives. At supper I announced that I was going to adopt Cap as a grandfather,—and then of course he had to go and queer me by filling up on some rank whiskey he had smuggled in with the other food! My stars!—he was put to bed singing that he'd 'Hang his harp on a willow tree, and be off to the wars again'—You needn't laugh!"

But he did laugh, his blue eyes twinkling at her recital.

"You poor kid! You have a hard time with the disreputables you pick up. Sure they didn't warn you against speaking to this reprobate?"

"Sure nothing!" was the boyish reply. "I was to be docked a month's spending money if I dared go near Pedro Vijil's adobe again while you were there, which was very foolish of Papa Phil!" she added judicially. "I reckon he forgot they tried that before."

"And what happened?"

"I went down and borrowed double the amount from old Estevan, the trader at the Junction, and gave him an order against the ranch. Then Cap and I sneaked out a couple of three-year-olds and raced them down in the cottonwood flats against some colts brought down by an old Sierra Blanca Apache. We backed our nags with every peso, and that old brown murderer won! But Cap and I had a wonderful day while our coin lasted, and—and you were going away without saying good-bye!"

Kit Rhodes, who had blankly stated that he owned his horse and saddle and little beyond, looked at the spoiled plucky heiress of Granados ranches, and the laughter went out of his eyes.

She was beyond reason loveable even in her boyish disdain of restriction, and some day she would come back from the schools a very finished product, and thank the powers that be for having sent her out of knowledge of happy-go-lucky chums of the ranges.

Granados ranches had been originally an old Spanish grant reaching from a branch of the intermittent Rio Altar north into what is now Arizona, and originally was about double the size of Rhode Island. It was roughly divided into the home or hacienda ranch in Arizona, and La Partida, the cattle range portion, reaching far south into Sonora. Even the remnant of the grant, if intelligently managed, would earn an income satisfactory for a most extravagant princess royal such as its present chatelaine seemed to Rhodes.

But he had noted dubiously that the management was neither intelligent nor, he feared, square. The little rancherias scattered over it in the fertile valleys, were worked on the scratch gravel, ineffective Mexic method by the Juans and Pedros whose family could always count on mesquite beans, and camotes if the fields failed. There was seed to buy each year instead of raising it. There was money invested in farming machinery, and a bolt taken at will from a thresher to mend a plow or a buggy as temporarily required. The flocks of sheep on the Arizona hills were low grade. The cattle and horse outfits were south in La Partida, and the leakage was beyond reason, even in a danger zone of the border land.

All this Kit had milled around and around many times in the brief while he had ranged La Partida. A new deal was needed and needed badly, else Wilfreda Bernard would have debts instead of revenue if Singleton let things drift much longer. Her impish jest that she was a damsel in distress in need of a valiant knight was nearer to truth than she suspected. He had an idiotic hungry desire to be that knight, but his equipment of one horse, one saddle, and one sore head appeared inadequate for the office.

Thus Kit Rhodes sat his horse and looked at her, and saw things other than the red lips of the girl, and the chiding gray eyes, and the frank regret at his going.

It was more profitable not to see that regret, or let it thrill a man in that sweet warm way, especially not if the man chanced to be a drifting ranger. She was only a gallant little girl with a genius for friendships, and her loyalty to Pike extended to Pike's chum—that was what Rhodes told himself!

"Yes," he agreed, "I was going without any tooting of horns. No use in Cap Pike and me hanging around, and getting you in bad with your outfit."

"As if I care!" she retorted.

"You might some day," he said quietly. "School may make a lot of difference; that, and changed surroundings for a year or two. But some day you will be your own manager, and if I'm still on the footstool and can be of service—just whistle, senorita."

"Sure!" she agreed cheerfully. "I'll whistle the lark call, and you'll know I need you, so that's settled, and we'll always be—be friends, Trail-hunter."

"We'll always be friends, Lark-child."

"I wanted Cap Pike to let me in on this prospecting trip, wanted to put in money," she said rather hesitant, "and he turned me down cold, except for a measly ten dollars, 'smoke money' he called it. I reckon he only took that to get rid of me, which I don't call friendly, do you? And if things should go crooked with him, and he—well—sort of needs help to get out, you'll let me know, won't you?"

"Yes, if it seems best," he agreed, "but you won't be here; you'll be shipped to a school, pronto!"

"I won't be so far off the map that a letter can't reach me. Cap Pike won't ever write, but I thought maybe you——"

"Sure," agreed Rhodes easily. "We'll send out a long yell for help whenever we get stuck."

She eyed him darkly and without faith.

"Wish I knew how to make that certain," she confessed. "You're only dodging me with any kind of a promise to keep me quiet, just as Cap did. I know! I'm jealous, too, because you're taking a trail I've always wanted to take with Cap, and they won't let me because I'm a girl."

"Cheer up! When you are boss of the range you can outfit any little pasear you want to take, but you and I won't be in the same class then, Lark-child."

"Are you really going it blind, trailing with Cap into the Painted Hills after that fascinating gold legend?" she demanded. "Or have you some inside trail blazed for yourself? Daddy Pike is the best ever, but he always goes broke, and if he isn't broke, he has a jug at his saddle horn, so——"

"Oh it's only a little jug this time, and he's had a fare-you-well drink out of it with everyone in sight, so there's only one hilarious evening left in the jug now. Just enough for a gladsome memory of civilization."

"Are you in deep on this prospect plan?" she persisted.

"Well, not that you could notice. That is, I've got a three months' job offered me down at Whitely's; that will serve the captain as headquarters to range from until we add to our stake. Whitely is rounding up stock for the Allies down Mesa Blanca way, and Pike will feel at home there. Don't you worry, I'll keep an eye on Pike. He is hilariously happy to get into that region with a partner."

"I don't like it," she grumbled at him with sulky gray eyes. "Pedro Vijil just came back from the south, and brought his sister's family from San Rafael. They're refugees from the Federals because their men joined Ramon Rotil, the rebel leader, and Merced is crying herself crazy over the tales of war they tell. One of their girls was stolen, and the mother and Tia Luz are both crying over that. So Papa Phil says he's going to send me away where I won't hear such horrors. I wish I was a man, and I'd join the army and get a chance to go over and fight."

"Huh!" grunted Rhodes skeptically, "some more of us had hopes! Our army officers are both praying and cursing to get a chance to do the same thing, but they are not getting it! So you and I, little girl, will wait till some one pitches a bomb into that dovery on the Potomac. Then we'll join the volunteers and swarm over after our people."

"Oh, yes, you can! Men can do anything they like. I told you I was jealous."

"Never mind, Lark-child," he returned soothingly. "If I get over with a gun, you can come along and toot a horn. There now, that's a bargain, and you can practice tooting the lark's call until the time comes."

"I reckon I'll have plenty of time to toot myself black in the face before you show up again at Granados," she prophesied ruefully, and he laughed.

"Whistle an' I'll come to you, Lassie," he said with sudden recklessness, "and that's for adios, Billie."

He held out his hand.

"That's enough, Rhodes," said a voice back of them, and Singleton walked forward. "When you got your time, you were supposed to leave Granados. Is this what you've been hanging around for during the past week?"

Rhodes flamed red to his hair as he stared down at the elder man.

"I reckon I'll not answer that now, Mr. Singleton," he said quietly. "You may live to see you made a mistake. I hope you do, but you're traveling with a rotten bunch, and they are likely to use a knife or a rope on you any time you've played the goat long enough for them to get their innings. I'm going without any grudge, but if I was an insurance agent, trying to save money for my company, I'd sure pass you by as an unsafe bet! Keep on this side of the line, Singleton, while the revolution is whirling, and whatever you forget, don't forget I said it! Adios, senorita, and—good luck!"

"Good luck, Kit," she half whispered, "and adios!"

She watched him as he rode away, watched him as he halted at the turn of the trail and waved his hand, and Singleton was quietly observing her the while. She frowned as she turned and caught him at it.

"You thought he waited here, or planned to—to meet me," she flared. "He was too square to tell you the truth, but it was I rode out here to say good-bye, rode out and held him up! But I did not reckon anyone would try to insult him for it!"

Her stepfather regarded her grimly. She was angry, and very near to tears.

"Time you had your breakfast," he observed, "and all signs indicate I should have sent you East last year, and kept you out of the promiscuous mixups along the border. It's the dumping ground for all sorts of stray adventurers, and no place for a girl to ride alone."

"He seemed to think I am as able to look after myself as you," she retorted. "You aren't fair to him because you take the word of Conrad, but Conrad lies, and I'm glad he got thrashed good and plenty! Now I've got that off my mind, I'll go eat a cheerful breakfast."

Singleton walked silent beside her back to where his horse was grazing by the roadside.

"Huh!" grunted the girl with frank scorn. "So you got out of the saddle to spy? Haven't you some black-and-tan around the ranch to do your dirty work?"

"It's just as well to be civil till you know what you are talking about," he reminded her with a sort of trained patience. "I came out without my breakfast just to keep the ranchmen from thinking what Tia Luz thinks. She told me I'd find that fellow waiting for you. I didn't believe it, but I see she is not so far wrong."

He spoke without heat or feeling, and his tone was that of quiet discussion with a man or boy, not at all that of a guardian to a girl. His charge was evidently akin to the horse ranch of Granados as described by the old ranger: Singleton had acquired them, but never understood them.

"Look here," said his protegee with boyish roughness, "that Dutchman sees everything crooked, especially if there's an American in range, and he prejudices you. Why don't you wake up long enough to notice that he's framing some excuse to run off every decent chap who comes on the place? I knew Rhodes was too white to be let stay. I saw that as soon as he landed, and I told him so! What I can't understand is that you won't see it."

"A manager has to have a free hand, Billie, or else be let go," explained Singleton. "Conrad knows horses, he knows the market, and is at home with the Mexicans. Also he costs less than we used to pay, and that is an item in a bad year."

"I'll bet we lose enough cattle to his friends to make up the difference," she persisted. "Rhodes was right when he called them a rotten bunch."

"Let us hope that when you return from school you will have lost the major portion of your unsavory vocabulary," he suggested. "That will be worth a herd of cattle."

"It would be worth another herd to see you wake up and show you had one good fight in you!" she retorted. "Conrad has all of the ranch outfit locoed but me; that's why he passes on this school notion to you. He wants me out of sight."

"I should have been more decided, and insisted that you go last year. Heaven knows you need it badly enough," sighed Singleton, ignoring her disparaging comment on his own shortcomings. And then as they rode under the swaying fronds of the palm drive leading to the ranch house he added, "Those words of your bronco busting friend concerning the life insurance risk sounded like a threat. I wonder what he meant by it?"

The telephone bell on the Granados Junction line was ringing when they entered the patio. Singleton glanced at the clock.

"A night letter probably," he remarked. "Go get your coffee, child, it's a late hour for breakfast."

Billie obeyed, sulkily seating herself opposite Tia Luz—who was bolt upright behind the coffee urn, with a mien expressing dignified disapproval. She inhaled a deep breath for forceful speech, but Billie was ahead of her.

"So it was you! You were the spy, and sent him after me!"

"Madre de Dios! and why not?" demanded the competent Luz. "You stealing your own horse at the dawn to go with the old Captain Pike. I ask of you what kind of a girl is that? Also Mercedes was here last night tearing her hair because of the girls, her sister's daughters, stolen away over there in Sonora. Well! is that not enough? That Senor Kit is also too handsome. I was a fool to send the medicine with you to Pedro's house. He looked a fine caballero but even a fine caballero will take a girl when she follows after. I know! And once in Sonora all trails of a girl are lost. I know that too!"

"You are all crazy, and I never saw him at Pedro's house, never!" said the girl reaching for her coffee, and then suddenly she began to laugh. "Did you think, did you make Papa Philip think, that I was eloping like this?" and she glanced down at her denim riding dress.

"And why not? Did I myself not steal out in a shift and petticoat the first time I tried to run away with my Andreas? And beyond that not a thing under God had I on but my coral beads, and the red satin slippers of my sister Dorotea! She pulled my hair wickedly for those slippers, and I got a reata on my back from my grandmother for that running away. I was thirteen years old then! But when I was nearly sixteen we did get away, Andreas and I, and after that it was as well for the grandmother to pay a priest for us, and let us alone. Ai-ji! senorita, I am not forgetting what I know! And while I am here in Granados there must be nothing less than a grand marriage, and may the saints send the right man, for a wrong one makes hell in any house!"

Billie forgot her sulkiness in her joy at the elopements of Tia Luz. No wonder she distrusted an American girl who was allowed to ride alone!

But in the midst of her laughter she was reminded that Singleton was still detained at the telephone in the adjoining room, and that his rather high-pitched tones betrayed irritation.

"Well, why can't you give the telegram to me? Addressed to Conrad? Of course if it's a personal message I don't want it, but you say it is a ranch matter—and important. Horses? What about them?"

Billie, listening, sped from the table to his side, and putting her hand over the telephone, whispered:

"If Brehman, the secretary, was here, they'd give it to him. They always do."

Singleton nodded to her, and grew decided.

"See here, Webster, one of our men was hurt, and Brehman took his place and went East with that horse shipment. Mr. Conrad had to go down in Sonora on business, and I am the only one here to take his place. Just give me the message as you would give it to the secretary. But you'd better type a copy and send by mail that I can put it on file. All right? Yes, go ahead."

Billie had quickly secured paper and pencil, but instead of taking them, Singleton motioned for her to write the message.

Adolf Conrad, Granados Ranch, Granados Junction, Arizona. Regret to report September shipment horses developed ailment aboard vessel, fifty per cent dead, balance probably of no military use,

OGDEN, BURNS & CO.

Word by word Singleton took the message and word by word Billie wrote it down, while they stared at each other.

"Developed ailment aboard vessel!" repeated Singleton. "Then there was something wrong on shipboard, for there certainly is not here. We have no sick horses on the ranch, never do have!"

"But these people?" and Billie pointed to the signature.

"Oh, they are the men who buy stock for the Allies, agents for the French. They paid for the horses on delivery. They are safe, substantial people. I can't understand——"

But Billie caught his arm with a gasp of horror and enlightenment.

"Papa Phil! Think—think what Kit Rhodes said! 'Ground glass in the feed at the other end of the road! Conrad's game—Herrara knows!' Papa Phil,—Miguel Herrara was killed—killed! And Conrad tried to kill Kit! Oh he did, he did! None of the Mexicans thought he would get well, but Tia Luz cured him. And Cap Pike never went out of sight of that adobe until Conrad had left the ranch, and I know Kit was right. I know it, I know it! Oh, my horses, my beautiful horses!"

"There, there! Why, child you're hysterical over this, which is—is too preposterous for belief!"

"Nothing is too preposterous for belief. You know that. Everybody knows it in these days! Is Belgium too preposterous? Is that record of poison and powdered glass in hospital supplies too preposterous? In hospital supplies! If they do that to wounded men, why not to cavalry horses? Why Papa Phil——"

"Hush—hush—hush!" he said pacing the floor, clasping his head in both hands. "It is too terrible! What can we do? What? Who dare we trust to even help investigate?"

"Well, you might wire those agents for particulars, this is rather skimpy," suggested Billie. "Come and get some breakfast and think it over."

"I might wire the office of the Peace Society in New York to——"

"Don't you do it!" protested Billie. "They may have furnished the poison for all you know! Cap Pike says they are a lot of traitors, and Cap is wise in lots of things. You telegraph, and you tell them that if the sickness is proven to have started in Granados, that we will pay for every dead horse, tell them we have no sick horses here, and ask them to answer, pronto!"

"That seems rather reckless, child, to pay for all——"

"I am reckless! I am crazy mad over those horses, and over Conrad, and over Kit whom he tried to kill!"

"Tut—tut! The language and behavior of Rhodes was too wicked for anyone to believe him innocent. He was a beastly looking object, and I still believe him entirely in the wrong. This loss of the horses is deplorable, but you will find that no one at Granados is to blame."

"Maybe so, but you just send that telegram and see what we see!"



CHAPTER VI

A DEAD MAN UNDER THE COTTONWOODS

Billie was never out of hearing of the telephone all day, and at two o'clock the reply came.

PHILIP SINGLETON, Rancho Granados, Arizona.

Kindly wire in detail the source of your information. No message went to Granados from this office. No publicity has been given to the dead horse situation. Your inquiry very important to the Department of Justice.

OGDEN, BURNS & CO.

"Very strange, very!" murmured Singleton. "No matter how hard I think, or from what angle, I can't account for it. Billie, this is too intricate for me. The best thing I can do is to go over to Nogales and talk to an attorney."

"Go ahead and talk," agreed Billie, "but I'd answer that telegram first. This is no township matter, Papa Phil, can't you see that?"

"Certainly, certainly, but simply because of that fact I feel I should have local advice. I have a legal friend in Nogales. If I could get him on the wire——"

An hour later when Billie returned from a ride, she realized Singleton had gotten his friend on the wire, for she heard him talking.

"Yes, this is Granados. Is that you, James? Yes, I asked them to have you call me. I need to consult with you concerning a rather serious matter. Yes, so serious I may say it is mysterious, and appalling. It concerns a shipment of horses. Conrad is in Sonora, and this subject can't wait—no, I can't get in touch with Conrad. He is out of communication when over there—No, I can't wait his return. I've had a wire from Ogden and Burns, New York—said Ogden and Burns—All right, get a pencil; I'll hold the wire."

There was a moment of silence, and if a telephonic camera had been installed at Granados, Mr. Singleton might have caught a very interesting picture at the other end of the wire.

A middle-aged man in rusty black of semi-clerical cut held the receiver, and the effect of the names as given over the wire was, to put it mildly, electrical. His jaw dropped and he stared across the table at a man who was seated there. At the repetition of the name, the other arose, and with the stealthily secretive movement of a coyote near its prey he circled the table, and drew a chair close to the telephone. The pencil and paper was in his hand, not in that of "James." That other was Conrad.

Then the telephone conversation was resumed after Mr. Singleton had been requested to speak a little louder—there seemed some flaw in the connection.

In the end Singleton appeared much comforted to get the subject off his own shoulders by discussing it with another. But he had been convinced that the right thing to do was to motor over to the Junction and take the telegrams with him for consultation. He would start about eight in the morning, and would reach the railroad by noon. Yes, by taking the light car which he drove himself it would be an easy matter.

Billie heard part of this discourse in an absent-minded way, for she was not at all interested as to what some strange lawyer in Nogales might think of the curious telegrams.

She would have dropped some of that indifference if she had been able to hear the lurid language of Conrad after the receiver was hung up. James listened to him in silence for a bit, and then said:

"It's your move, brother! There are not supposed to be any mistakes in the game, and you have permitted our people to wire you a victory when you were not there to get the wire, and that was a mistake."

"But Brehman always——"

"You sent Brehman East and for once forgot what might happen with your office empty. No,—it is not Singleton's fault; he did the natural thing. It is not the operator's fault; why should he not give a message concerning horses to the proprietor of the horse ranch?"

"But Singleton never before made a move in anything of management, letters never opened, telegrams filed but never answers sent until I am there! And this time! It is that most cursed Rhodes, I know it is that one! They told me he was high in fever and growing worse, and luck with me! So you yourself know the necessity that I go over for the Sonora conference—there was no other way. It is that Rhodes! Yes, I know it, and they told me he was as good as dead—God! if again I get him in these hands!"

He paced the floor nervously, and flung out his clenched hands in fury, and the quiet man watched him.

"That is personal, and is for the future," he said, "but Singleton is not a personal matter. If he lives he will be influenced to investigation, and that must not be. It would remove you from Granados, and you are too valuable at that place. You must hold that point as you would hold a fort against the enemy. When Mexico joins with Germany against the damned English and French, this fool mushroom republic will protest, and that is the time our friends will sweep over from Mexico and gather in all these border states—which were once hers—and will again be hers through the strong mailed hand of Germany! This is written and will be! When that day comes, we need such points of vantage as Granados and La Partida; we must have them! You have endangered that position, and the mistake won't be wiped out. The next move is yours, Conrad."

The quiet man in the habiliments of shabby gentility in that bare little room with the American flag over the door and portraits of two or three notable advocates of World Peace and the American League of Neutrality on the wall, had all the outward suggestion of the small town disciple of Socialism from the orthodox viewpoint. His manner was carefully restrained, and his low voice was very even, but at his last words Conrad who had dropped into a seat, his head in his hands, suddenly looked up, questioning.

"Singleton can probably do no more harm today," went on the quiet voice. "I warned him it would be a mistake to discuss it until after he had seen me. He starts at eight in the morning, alone, for the railroad but probably will not reach there." He looked at his watch thoughtfully. "The Tucson train leaves in fifty minutes. You can get that. Stop off at the station where Brehman's sister is waitress. She will have his car ready, that will avoid the Junction. It will be rough work, Conrad, but it is your move. It is an order."

And then before that carefully quiet man who had the appearance of a modest country person, Adolf Conrad suddenly came to his feet in military salute.

"Come, we will talk it over," suggested his superior. "It will be rough, yet necessary, and if it could appear suicide, eh? Well, we will see. We—will—see!"

* * * * *

At seven in the morning the Granados telephone bell brought Singleton into the patio in his dressing gown and slippers. And Dona Luz who was seeing that his breakfast was served, heard him express surprise and then say:

"Why, certainly. If you are coming this way as far on the road as the Jefferson ranch of course we can meet there, and I only need to go half way. That will be excellent. Yes, and if Judge Jefferson is at home he may be able to help with his advice. Fine! Good-bye."

When Dona Luz was questioned about it later she was quite sure Mr. Singleton mentioned no name, his words were as words to a friend.

But all that day the telephone was out of order on the Granados line, and Singleton did not return that night. There was nothing to cause question in that, as he had probably gone on to Nogales, but when the second day came and the telephone not working, Billie started Pedro Vijil to ride the line to Granados Junction, get the mail, and have a line man sent out for repairs wherever they were needed.

It was puzzling because there had been no storm, nothing of which they knew to account for the silent wire. The line was an independent one from the Junction, and there were only two stations on it, the Jefferson ranch and Granados.

But Vijil forgot about the wire, for he met some sheep men from the hills carrying the body of Singleton. They had found him in the cottonwoods below the road not five miles from the hacienda. His car he had driven off the road back of a clump of thick mesquite. The revolver was still in his hand, and the right temple covered with black blood and flies.

There was nothing better to do than what the herders were doing. The man had been dead a day and must be buried, also it was necessary to send a man to Jefferson's, where there was a telephone, to get in touch with someone in authority and arrange for the funeral.

So the herders walked along with their burden carried in a serape, and covered by the carriage robe. Pedro had warned them to halt at his own house, for telephone calls would certainly gather men, who would help to arrange all decently before the body was taken into the sala of Granados.

There is not much room for conjecture as to the means of a man's taking off when he is found with a bullet in his right temple, a revolver in his right hand, and only one empty cartridge shell in the revolver. There seemed no mystery about the death, except the cause of suicide.

It was the same evening that Conrad riding in from the south, attempted to speak over the wire with Granados and got from Central information that the Granados wire was broken, and Singleton, the proprietor, a suicide.

The coroner's inquest so pronounced it, after careful investigation of the few visible facts. Conrad was of no value as a witness because he had been absent in Magdalena. He could surmise no reason for such an act, but confessed he knew practically nothing of Singleton's personal affairs. He was guardian of his stepdaughter and her estate, and so far as Conrad knew all his relations with the personnel of the estate were most amicable. Conrad acknowledged when questioned that Singleton did usually carry a revolver when out in the car, he had a horror of snakes, and he had never known him to use a gun for anything else.

Dona Luz Moreno confused matters considerably by her statement that Mr. Singleton was going to meet some man at the Jefferson ranch because the man had called him up before breakfast to arrange it. Later it was learned that no call was made from any station over the wire that morning to Granados. There was in fact several records of failure to get Granados. No one but Dona Luz had heard the call and heard Singleton reply, yet it was not possible that this communication could be a fact over a broken wire, and the wire was found broken between the Jefferson ranch and Granados.

Whereupon word promptly went abroad among the Mexicans that Senor Singleton had been lured to his death by a spirit voice calling over a broken wire as a friend to a friend. For the rest of her life Dona Luz will have that tale to tell as the evidence of her own ears that warnings of death do come from the fearsome spirits of the shadowed unknown land,—and this in denial of all the padres' godly discourse to the contrary!

A Mr. Frederick James of Nogales, connected with a group of charitable gentlemen working for the alleviating of distress among the many border exiles from Mexico, was the only person who came forward voluntarily to offer help to the coroner regarding the object of the dead man's journey to Nogales. Mr. James had been called on the telephone by Mr. Singleton, who was apparently in great distress of mind concerning mysterious illness and deaths of horses shipped from Granados to France. A telegram had come from New York warning him that the Department of Justice was investigating the matter, and the excitement and nervousness of Mr. Singleton was such that Mr. James readily consented to a meeting in Nogales, with the hope that he might be of service in any investigation they would decide upon after consultation. When Mr. Singleton did not keep the engagement, Mr. James attempted to make inquiries by telephone. He tried again the following morning, but it was only after hearing of the suicide—he begged pardon—the death of Mr. Singleton, that he recalled the fact that all of Singleton's discourse over the telephone had been unusual, excitable to a degree, while all acquaintances of the dead man knew him as a quiet, reserved man, really unusually reserved, almost to the point of the secretive. Mr. James was struck by the unusual note of panic in his tones, but as a carload of horses was of considerable financial value, he ascribed the excitement in part to that, feeling confident of course that Mr. Singleton was in no ways accountable for the loss, but——

Mr. James was asked if the nervousness indicated by Mr. Singleton was a fear of personal consequences following the telegram, but Mr. James preferred not to say. He had regarded Mr. Singleton as a model of most of the virtues, and while Singleton's voice and manner had certainly been unusual, he could not presume to suspect the inner meaning of it.

The telegraph and telephone records bore out the testimony of Mr. James.

The fact that the first telegram was addressed to the manager, Mr. Conrad, had apparently nothing to do with the case, since the telegraph files showed that messages were about evenly divided in the matter of address concerning ranch matters. They were often addressed simply to "Granados Rancho" or "Manager Granados Ranch." This one simply happened to be addressed to the name of the manager.

The coroner decided that the mode of address had no direct bearing on the fact that the man was found dead under the cottonwoods with copies of both telegrams in his pocket, both written in a different hand from his carefully clear script as shown in his address book. Safe in his pocket also was money, a gold watch with a small gold compass, and a handsome seal ring. Nothing was missing, which of course precluded the thought of murder for robbery, and Philip Singleton was too mildly negative to make personal enemies, a constitutional neutral.

Billie, looking very small and very quiet, was brought in by Dona Luz and Mr. Jefferson of the neighboring ranch, fifty miles to the east. She had not been weeping. She was too stunned for tears, and there was a strangely ungirlish tension about her, an alert questioning in her eyes as she looked from face to face, and then returned to the face of the one man who was a stranger, the kindly sympathetic face of Mr. Frederick James.

She told of the telegrams she had copied, and of the distress of Singleton, but that his distress was no more than her own, that she had been crying about the horses, and he had tried to comfort her. She did not believe he had a trouble in the world of his own, and he had never killed himself—never!

When asked if she had any reason to suspect a murderer, she said if they ever found who killed the horses they would find who killed her Papa Phil, but this opinion was evidently not shared by any of the others. The report of horses dead on a transport in the Atlantic ocean, and a man dead under the cottonwoods in Arizona, did not appear to have any definite physical relation to each other, unless of course the loss of the horses had proven too much of a shock to Mr. Singleton and upset his nerves to the extent that moody depression had developed into temporary dementia. His own gun had been the evident agent of death.

One of the Mexicans recalled that Singleton had discharged an American foreman in anger, and that the man had been in a rage about it, and assaulted Mr. Conrad, whereupon Conrad was recalled, and acknowledged the assault with evident intent to kill. Yes, he heard the man Rhodes had threatened Singleton with a nastier accident than his attempt on Conrad. No, he had not heard it personally, as he was unconscious when the threat was made.

"It wasn't a threat!" interrupted Billie, "it was something different, a warning."

"A warning of what?"

Billie was about to quote Kit's opinion concerning Singleton's ranch force, when she was halted by a strange thing—for Billie; it was merely the mild steady gaze of the quiet gentleman of the peaceful league of the neutrals. There was a slight lifting of his brows as she spoke of a warning; and then a slight suggestion of a smile—it might have been a perfectly natural incredulous smile, but Billie felt that it was not. The yellowish brown eyes narrowed until only the pupils were visible, and warm though the day was, Billie felt a swift chill over her, and her words were cautious.

"I can't say, I don't know, but Kit Rhodes had no grudge against Papa Phil. He seemed in some way to be sorry for him."

She noted that Conrad's gaze was on the face of Mr. James instead of on her.

"Sorry for him?"

"Y-yes, sort of. He tried to explain why, but Papa would not listen, and would not make any engagement with him. Sent his money by Captain Pike and wouldn't see him. But Kit Rhodes did not make a threat, he did not!"

Her last denial was directly at Conrad, who merely shrugged his shoulders as if to dispose of that awkward phase of the matter.

"It was told me so, but the Mexican men might not have understood the words of Rhodes—he was in a rage—and it may be he did not mean so much as he said."

"But he didn't say it!" insisted Billie.

"Very good, he did not, and it is a mistake of mine," agreed Conrad politely. "For quite awhile I was unconscious after his assault, naturally I know nothing of what was said."

"And where is this man Rhodes to be found?" asked the coroner, and Conrad smiled meaningly.

"Nowhere,—or so I am told! He and a companion are said to have crossed the line into Sonora twenty-four hours before the death of Mr. Singleton."

"Well, unless there is some evidence that he was seen later on this side, any threat he might or might not have made, has no relation whatever to this case. Is there any evidence that he was seen at, or near, Granados after starting for Sonora?"

No evidence was forthcoming, and the coroner, in summoning up, confessed he was not satisfied to leave certain details of the case a mystery.

That Singleton had discharged Rhodes in anger, and Rhodes had, even by intimation, voiced a threat against Singleton could not be considered as having any bearing on the death of the latter; while the voice of the unknown calling him to a meeting at Jefferson's ranch was equally a matter of mystery, since no one at Jefferson's knew anything of the message, or the speaker, and investigation developed the fact that the telephone wire was broken between the two ranches, and there was no word at Granados Junction Central of any message to Granados after five o'clock the afternoon of the previous day.

And, since Philip Singleton never reached the Jefferson ranch, but turned his car off the road at the cottonwood canon, and was found with one bullet in his head, and the gun in his own hand, it was not for a coroner's jury to conjecture the impulse leading up to the act, or the business complications by which the act might, or might not, have been hastened. But incomprehensible though it might seem to all concerned there was only one finding on the evidence submitted, and that was suicide.

"Papa Phil never killed himself, never!" declared Billie. "That would be two suicides in a month for Granados, and two is one too many. We never had suicides here before."

"Who was the other?"

"Why, Miguel Herrara who had been arrested for smuggling, was searched and his gun taken, and yet that night found a gun to kill himself with in the adobe where he was locked up! Miguel would not have cared for a year or two in jail; he had lived there before, and hadn't tried any killing. I tell you Granados is getting more than its share."

"It sure looks like it, little lady," agreed the coroner, "but Herrara's death gives us no light or evidence on Singleton's death, and our jurisdiction is limited strictly to the hand that held the gun. The evidence shows it was in the hand of Mr. Singleton when found."

The Jeffersons insisted that Billie go home with them, as the girl appeared absolutely and pathetically alone in the world. She knew of no relatives, and Tia Luz and Captain Pike were the only two whom she had known from babyhood as friends of her father's.

The grandmother of Billie Bernard had been the daughter of a Spanish haciendado who was also an officer in the army of Mexico. He met death in battle before he ever learned that his daughter, in the pious work of nursing friend and enemy alike, had nursed one enemy of the hated North until each was captive to the other, and she rode beside him to her father's farthest northern rancho beyond the Mexican deserts, and never went again to the gay circles of Mexico's capital. Late in her life one daughter, Dorotea was born, and when Alfred Bernard came out of the East and looked on her, a blonde Spanish girl as her ancestresses of Valencia had been, the game of love was played again in the old border rancho which was world enough for the lovers. There had been one eastern summer for them the first year of their marriage, and Philip Singleton had seen her there, and never forgot her. After her widowhood he crossed the continent to be near her, and after awhile his devotion, and her need of help in many ways, won the place he coveted, and life at Granados went on serenely until her death. Though he had at times been bored a bit by the changelessness of ranch life, yet he had given his word to guard the child's inheritance until she came of age, and had kept it loyally as he knew how until death met him in the canon of the cottonwoods.

But the contented isolation of her immediate family left Billie only such guardian as the court might appoint for her property and person, and Andrew Jefferson, Judge Jefferson by courtesy, in the county, would no doubt be choice of the court as well as the girl. Beyond that she could only think of Pike, and—well Pike was out of reach on some enchanted gold trail of which she must not speak, and she supposed she would have to go to school instead of going in search of him!

Conrad spoke to her kindly as she was led to the Jefferson car, and there was a subtle deference in his manner, indicating his realization that he was speaking—not to the wilful little maid who could be annoying—but to the owner of Granados and, despite his five year contract as manager, an owner who could change entirely the activities of the two ranches in another year—and it was an important year.

He also spoke briefly to Mr. James offering him the hospitality of the ranch for a day of rest before returning to Nogales, but the offer was politely declined. Mr. James intimated that he was at Conrad's service if he could be of any practical use in the mysterious situation. He carefully gave his address and telephone number, and bade the others good day. But as he was entering his little roadster he spoke again to Conrad.

"By the way, it was a mistake to let that man Rhodes get over into Sonora. It should be the task of someone to see that he does not come back. He seems a very dangerous man. See to it!"

The words were those of a kindly person interested in the welfare of the community, and evidently impressed by the evidence referring to the discharged range boss. Two of the men hearing him exchanged glances, for they also thought that rumor of the threats should have been looked into. But the last three words were spoken too softly for any but Conrad to hear.

The following week Billie went to Tucson with the Jeffersons and at her request Judge Jefferson was appointed guardian of her person and estate, after which she and the judge went into a confidential session concerning that broken wire on the Granados line.

"I'm not loco, Judge," she insisted, "but I want you to learn whether that wire was cut on purpose, or just broke itself. Also I want you to take up that horse affair with the secret service people. I don't want Conrad to be sent away—yet. I'd rather watch him on Granados. I won't go away to school; I'd rather have a teacher at home. We can find one."

"But, do you realize that with two mysterious deaths on Granados lately, you might run some personal risk of living there with only yourself and two women in the house? I'm not sure we can sanction that, my child."

Billie smiled at him a bit wanly, but decided.

"Now Judge, you know I picked you because you would let me do whatever I pleased, and I don't mean to be disappointed with you. Half the men at the inquest think that Kit Rhodes did come back to do that shooting, and you know Conrad and the very smooth rat of the Charities Society are accountable for that opinion. The Mexican who dragged in Kit's name is one of Conrad's men; it all means something! It's a bad muddle, but Kit Rhodes and Cap Pike will wander back here some of these days, and I mean to have every bit of evidence for Kit to start in with. He suspected a lot, and all Granados combined to silence him—fool Granados!"

"But, just between ourselves, child, are you convinced Rhodes did not make the statement liable to be construed into a threat against Mr. Singleton?"

"Convinced nothing," was the inelegant reply of his new ward. "I heard him say enough to hang him if evidence could be found that he was north of the line that morning, and that's why it's my job to take note of all the evidence on the other side. The horses did not kill themselves. That telegram concerning it did not send itself. Papa Phil did not shoot himself, and that telephone wire did not cut itself! My hunch is that those four things go together, and that's a combination they can't clear up by dragging in the name of a man who never saw the horses, and who was miles south in Sonora with Cap Pike when the other three things happened. Now can they?"



CHAPTER VII

IN THE PROVINCE OF ALTAR

There was a frog who lived in the spring: Sing-song Kitty, can't yo' carry me, oh? And it was so cold that he could not sing, Sing-song Kitty, can't yo' carry me, oh? Ke-mo! Ki-mo! Dear—oh my! To my hi'—to my ho—to my——

"Oh! For the love of Mike! Bub, can't you give a man a rest instead of piling up the agony? These old joints of mine are creakin' with every move from desert rust and dry camps, and you with no more heart in you than to sing of springs,—cold springs!"

"They do exist, Cap."

"Uh—huh, they are as real to us this minute as the red gold that we've trailed until we're at the tag end of our grub stake. I tell you, Bub, they stacked the cards on us with that door of the old Soledad Mission, and the view of the gold canon from there! Why, Whitely showed us that the mission door never did face the hills, but looked right down the valley towards the Rio del Altar just as the Soledad plaza does today; all the old Mexicans and Indians tell us that."

"Well, we've combed over most of the arroyas leading into the Altar from Rancho Soledad, and all we've found is placer gravel; yet the placers are facts, and the mother lode is somewhere, Cap."

"Worn down to pan dirt, that's what!" grunted Pike. "I tell you these heathen sit around and dream lost mission tales and lost mine lies; dream them by the dozen to delude just such innocent yaps as you and me. They've nothing else to do between crops. We should have stuck to a white man's land, north into Arizona where the Three Hills of Gold are waiting, to say nothing of the Lost Stone Cabin mine, lost not twenty miles from Quartzite, and in plain sight of Castle Dome. Now there is nothing visionary about that, Kit! Why, I knew an old-timer who freighted rich ore out of that mine thirty years ago, and even the road to it has been lost for years! We know things once did exist up in that country, Kit, and down here we are all tangled up with Mexican-Indian stories of ghosts and enchantments, and such vagaries. I'm fed up with them to the limit, for everyone of them we listen to is different from the last. We'll head up into the Castle Dome country next time, hear me?"

"Sure, I hear," agreed Kit cheerfully. "Perhaps we do lose, but it's not so bad. Since Whitely sent his family north, he has intimated that Mesa Blanca is a single man's job, and I reckon I can have it when he goes—as he will. Then in the month we have scouted free of Whitelys, we have dry washed enough dust to put you on velvet till things come our way. Say, what will you bet that a month of comfort around Nogales won't make you hungry for the trail again?"

"A gold trail?" queried the weary and dejected Pike.

"Any old trail to any old place just so we keep ambling on. You can't live contented under cover, and you know it."

"Well," decided Pike after a rod or two of tramping along the shaly, hot bed of a dry arroya. "I won't bet, for you may be among the prophets. But while you are about it, I'd be thankful if you'd prophesy me a wet trail next time instead of skimpy mud holes where springs ought to be. I'm sick of dry camps, and so is Baby Buntin'."

"'Oh, there was a frog lived in the spring!'" chanted Kit derisively. "Cheer up, Cap, the worst is yet to come, for I've an idea that the gang of Mexican vaqueros we glimpsed from the butte at noon will just about muss up the water hole in Yaqui canon until it will be us for a sleep there before the fluid is fit for a water bottle. 'Oh, there was a frog lived in the spring!' Buntin' Baby, we'll fish the frog out, and let you wallow in it instead, you game little dusty rat! Say, Pike, when we load up with grub again we'll keep further west to the Cerrado Pintado. I'll follow a hunch of my own next trip."

The older man grunted disdain for the hunches of Kit, even while his eyes smiled response to the ever-living call of youth. To Rhodes there was ever a "next time." He was young enough to deal in futures, and had a way with him by which friends were to be found for even unstable venturings with no backing more substantial than a "hunch."

Not that Kit was gifted with any great degree of fatal beauty—men are not often pretty on the trail, unwashed, unshaven, and unshorn—added to which their equipment had reached the point where his most pretentious garment was a square of an Indian serape with a hole in the middle worn as a poncho, and adopted to save his coat and other shirt on the hard trail.

Cap Pike growled that he looked like a Mexican peon in that raiment, which troubled Kit not at all. He was red bronze from the desert days, and his blue eyes, with the long black lashes of some Celtic ancestor, looked out on the world with direct mild approval. They matched the boyish voice much given to trolling old-time ditties and sentimental foolishness.

He led the dappled roan over the wild dry "wash" where the sand was deep and slippery, and the white crust of alkali over all. Before him swayed the pack mules, and back of him Captain Pike sagged on the little gray burro, named in derision and affection, the Baby Bunting of the outfit.

The jauntiness was temporarily eliminated from the old prospector. Two months of fruitless scratching gravel when he had expected to walk without special delay to the great legendary deposit, had taken the sparkle of hope from the blue eyes, and he glanced perfunctorily at the walls of that which had once been a river bed.

"What in time do you reckon became of all the water that used to fill these dry gullies?" he asked querulously. "Why, it took a thousand years of floods to wash these boulders round, and then leave them high and dry when nicely polished. That's a waste in nature I can't figure out, and this godforsaken territory is full of them."

"Well, you grouch, if we didn't have this dry bed to skip along, we would be bucking the greasewood and cactus on the mesa above. So we get some favors coming our way."

"Skip along,—me eye!" grunted Pike, as the burro toiled laboriously through the sand, and Kit shifted and stumbled over treacherous, half-buried boulders. "Say, Kit, don't you reckon it's time for Billie to answer my letter? It's over eight weeks now, and mail ought to get in once a month."

Rhodes grunted something about "mail in normal times, but these times were not normal," and did not seem much interested in word from Granados.

He had not the heart, or else had too much, to tell the old man that the letter to Billie never reached her. When Whitely went north he put it in his coat pocket, and then changed his coat! Kit found it a month later and held it, waiting to find someone going out. He had not even mentioned it to Whitely on his return, for Whitely was having his own troubles, and could not spare a man for a four day trip to mail.

Whitely's folks lived north of Naco, and he had gone there direct and returned without touching at Nogales, or hearing of the tragedy at Granados. The latest news of the Mexican revolutions, and the all-absorbing question as to whether the United States would or would not intervene, seemed all the news the worried Whitely had brought back. Even the slaughter of a dozen nations of Europe had no new features to a ranchman of Sonora,—it remained just slaughter. And one did not need to cross boundaries to learn of killings, for all the world seemed aflame, and every state in Mexico had its own wars,—little or big.

Then, in the records of the tumultuous days, there was scarce space for the press or people to give thought after the first day or two, to the colorless life going out in mystery under the cottonwoods of Granados, and no word came to tell Rhodes of the suspicion, only half veiled, against himself.

The ranch house of Mesa Blanca was twenty miles from the hacienda of Soledad, and a sharp spur of the Carrizal range divided their grazing lands. Soledad reached a hundred miles south and Mesa Blanca claimed fifty miles to the west, so that the herds seldom mingled, but word filtered to and from between the vaqueros, and Rhodes heard that Perez had come north from Hermosillo and that El Aleman, (the German) had made the two day trip in from the railroad, and had gone on a little pasear to the small rancherias with Juan Gonsalvo, the half-breed overseer. The vaqueros talked with each other about that, for there were no more young men among them for soldiers, only boys and old men to tend the cattle, and what did it mean?

The name of Rhodes was not easy for the Mexican tongue, and at Mesa Blanca his identity was promptly lost in the gift of a name with a meaning to them, El Pajarito, (the singer). Capitan Viajo, (the old captain), was accepted by Pike with equal serenity, as both men were only too well pleased to humor the Indian ranch people in any friendly concessions, for back of some of those alert black eyes there were surely inherited records of old pagan days, and old legends of golden veins in the hills.

The fact that they were left practically nameless in a strange territory did not occur to either of them, and would not have disturbed them if it had. They had met no American but Whitely since they first struck Mesa Blanca. One month Kit had conscientiously stuck to the ranch cares while Whitely took his family out, and Pike had made little sallies into the hills alone.

On Whitely's return he had made an errand to Soledad and taken Rhodes and Pike along that they might view the crumbled walls of old Soledad Mission, back of the ranch house. The ancient rooms of the mission padres were now used principally as corrals, harness shop, and storage rooms.

The situation in itself was one of rare beauty;—those old padres knew!

It was set on a high plain or mesa, facing a wide valley spreading miles away to the south where mother-of-pearl mountains were ranged like strung jewels far against the Mexican sky. At the north, slate-blue foothills lifted their sharp-edged shoulders three miles away, but only blank walls of Soledad faced the hills, all portals of the old mission appeared to have faced south, as did Soledad. The door facing the hills was a myth. And as Rhodes stood north of the old wall, and searched its thirty-mile circle, he could understand how four generations of gold seekers had failed to find even a clue to the wealth those unknown padres had looked on, and sent joyous evidence of to the viceroy of the south. It would take years of systematic search to cover even half the visible range. A man could devote a long lifetime to a fruitless search there, and then some straying burro might uncover it for an Indian herder who would fill his poncho, and make a sensation for a week or two, and never find the trail again!

"It's just luck!" said Kit thinking it all over as he tramped along the arroya bed, "it either belongs to you, or it doesn't. No man on earth can buy it and make it stay, but if it is yours, no man can keep you from it entirely."

"What the devil are you yammering about?" asked Pike grumpily.

"Oh, I was just thinking of how Whitely exploded our little balloon of hopes when he took us over to size up the prospects at Soledad. I wonder if Perez has no white help at all around that place. We did not even see the foreman."

"He's a half-breed, that Juan Gonsalvo. The Indians don't like him. He's from down Hermosillo way, and not like these Piman children of nature. He and Conrad are up to some devilment, but Whitely thinks Juan took the job, deluded as we are, with the notion that a gold mine was sticking up out of the ground at the Soledad corrals, and it was to be his find. You see, Bub, that story has gone the length of Mexico, and even over to Spain. Oh, we are not the only trailers of ghost gold; there are others!"

The slanting sun was sending shadows long on the levels, and the hills were looming to the east in softest tones of gray and amethyst; the whitish green of desert growths lay between, and much of brown desert yet to cross.

"We can't make the foothills tonight even though there is an early moon," decided Kit. "But we can break camp at dawn and make it before the sun is high, and the water will hold out that long."

"It will hold for Buntin' and the mules, but what of Pardner?" asked the older man. "He's not used to this hard pan gravel scratching."

"But he's thoroughbred, and he can stand it twelve hours more if I can, can't you, old pal?" The tall roan with the dot of black between the eyes returned his owner's caress by nosing his bare neck, and the hand held up to smooth the black mane.

"I'll be glad enough to see him safe across the border in old Arizona," observed Pike. "I can't see how the herders saved him for you at Mesa Blanca when their own stock was picked of its best for the various patriots charging through the settlements."

"Some way, Miguel, the Indian vaquero, managed it, or got his girl to hide it out. Whitely confessed that his Indian cattlemen are the most loyal he can find down here."

"But it's not a white man's land—yet, and I'm downright glad he's shipped his family north. There's always hell enough in Sonora, but it's a dovecote to what it's bound to be before the end comes, and so, it's no place for white men's wives."

"Right you are! Say, what was it Whitely heard down in Sinaloa concerning the Enchanted Canon mine?"

"Oh, some old priest's tale—the same dope we got with a different slant to it. The gold nuggets from some shrine place where the water gushed muy fuerte, by a sycamore tree. Same old nuggets sent out with the message, and after that the insurrection of the Indians, and the priests who found it never lived to get out. Why, Bub, that is nearly two hundred years ago! Stop and think of the noble Castilians going over Sonora with a fine tooth comb for that trail ever since and then think of the nerve of us!"

"Well, I'm nearer to it anyway than the Dutchman who trekked in from the south last year with copies of the old mission reports as guide, for the Yaquis killed him, and took his records, while they hide my horse for me."

"Huh! yes, and warn you to ride him north!"

"Correct;—but Pike, it was a warning, not a threat! Oh, I'm coming back all right, all right! That gold by the hidden stream sure has got me roped and hog tied for keeps."

Pike growled good-natured disdain of his confidence, and suggested that the stream, which was probably only a measly mud hole, could have dropped to purgatory in an earthquake tremor since those first old mission days, or filled up with quicksand.

"Right you are, Cap. That's a first-rate idea," agreed Kit the irrepressible. "Next trip we'll start looking for streams that were and are not; we're in the bed of one now for that matter!"

"Somewhere ahead we should come into the trail south from Carracita," observed Pike, "but I reckon you'd just as soon camp with Pard out of sight of the trail."

There was silence for a bit as they plodded on up the wide dry bed of the river, and then Kit turned, glancing at the old man keenly.

"I didn't fool you much when I called that gang 'vaqueros,' did I?" he observed. "Well, they didn't look good to me, and I decided I'd have to fight for my horse if we crossed trails, and—it wastes a lot of time, fighting does."

"No, you didn't fool me. You'd be seven kinds of an idiot to walk in this gully of purgatory when you could ride safely on the mesa above, so I guessed you had a hunch it was the friendly and acquisitive patriots."

"Pike, they were between us and the Palomitas rancherias of Mesa Blanca or I'd have made a try to get through and warn the Indians there. Those men had no camp women with them, so they were not a detachment of the irregular cavalry,—that's what puzzles me. And their horses were fresh. It's some new devilment."

"There's nothing new in Sonora, son. Things happen over and over the same."

The shadows lengthened, and the blue range to the east had sharp, black edges against the saffron sky, and the men plodding along over sand and between boulders, fell silent after the little exchange of confidence as to choice of trail. Once Kit left the gully and climbed the steep grade to the mesa alone to view the landscape over, but slid and scrambled down,—hot, dusty, and vituperative.

"Not a sign of life but some carrion crows moving around in the blue without flop of a wing," he grumbled. "Who started the dope that mankind is the chosen of the Lord? Huh! we have to scratch gravel for all we rake in but the birds of the air have us beat for desert travel all right, all right!"

"Well, Bub, if you saw no one's dust it must be that gang were not headed for Palomitas or Whitely's."

"They could strike Palomitas, and circle over to the east road without striking Whitely's home corrals," said Kit thoughtfully.

"Sure they could, but what's the object? If it's cattle or horses they're after the bigger ranch is the bigger haul?"

"Yes,—if it's stock they're after," agreed Kit somberly.

"Why, lad, what—what's got you now?"

"I reckon it's the damned buzzards," acknowledged the younger man. "I don't know what struck me as I sat up there watching them. Maybe it's their blackness, maybe it's their provender, maybe it was just the loco of their endless drifting shadows, but for a minute up there I had an infernal sick feeling. It's a new one on me, and there was nothing I could blame it on but disgust of the buzzards."

"You're goin' too shy on the water, and never knew before that you had nerves," stated Pike sagely. "I've been there; fought with a pardner once,—Jimmy Dean, till he had to rope me. You take a pull at the water bottle, and take it now."

Kit did so, but shook his head.

"It touches the right spot, but it was not a thirst fancy. It was another thought and—O Bells of Pluto! Pike, let's talk of something else! What was that you said about the Sinaloa priest story of the red gold? You said something about a new slant on the old dope."

"Uh-huh!" grunted Pike. "At least it was a new slant to me. I've heard over and over about uprising of Indians, and death of the two priests who found their mine, but this Sinaloa legend has it that the Indians did not kill the priests, but that their gods did!"

"Their gods?"

"Yeh, the special gods of that region rose up and smote them. That's why the Indians barred out other mission priests for so long a spell that no white man remembered just where the lost shrine of the red gold was. Of course it's all punk, Bub, just some story of the heathen sheep to hide the barbecuing of their shepherds."

"Maybe so, but I've as much curiosity as a pet coon. What special process did their gods use to put the friars out of commission?"

"Oh, lightning. The original priests' report had it that the red gold was at some holy place of the tribes, a shrine of some sort. Well, you know the usual mission rule—if they can't wean the Indian from his shrine, they promptly dig foundations and build a church there under heavenly instructions. That's the story of this shrine of El Alisal where the priests started to build a little branch chapel or visita, for pious political reasons—and built it at the gold shrine. It went down in the priests' letter or record as gold of rose, a deep red gold. Well, under protest, the Indians helped build a shack for a church altar under a great aliso tree there, but when lightning struck the priests, killed both and burned the shack, you can see what that manifestation would do to the Indian mind."

Kit halted, panting from the heart-wearying trail, and looked Pike over disgustedly.

"Holy mackerel! Pike, haven't you any imagination? You've had this new side to the story for over a month and never even cheeped about it! I heard you and Whitely talking out on the porch, but I didn't hear this!"

"Why, Bub, it's just the same old story, everyone of them have half a dozen different sides to it."

"But this one explains things, this one has logic, this one blazes a trail!" declared the enthusiast. "This one explains good and plenty why no Indian has ever cheeped about it, no money could bribe him to it. Can't you see? Of course that lightning was sent by their wrathy gods, of course it was! But do you note that place of the gold, and place of the shrine where the water rises, is also some point where there is a dyke of iron ore near, a magnet for the lightning? And that is not here in those sandy mesas and rocky barrancas—it's to the west in the hills, Pike. Can't you see that?"

"Too far from the old north and south trail, Bub. There was nothing to take padres so far west to the hills. The Indians didn't even live there; only strayed up for nuts and hunting in the season."

"Save your breath!" jeered Kit. "It's me to hike back to Mesa Blanca and offer service at fifty dollars per, and live like a miser until we can hit the trail again. I may find a tenderfoot to buy that valley tract of mine up in Yuma, and get cash out of that. Oh, we will get the finances somehow! I'll write a lawyer soon as we get back to Whitely's—God! what's that?"

They halted, holding breath to listen.

"A coyote," said Pike.

"No, only one animal screams like that—a wildcat in the timber. But it's no wildcat."

Again the sound came. It was either from a distance or else muffled by the barrier of the hill, a blood-curdling scream of sickening terror.

A cold chill struck the men as they looked at each other.

"The carrion crows knew!" said Kit. "You hold the stock, Pike."

He quickly slipped his rifle from its case, and started up the knoll.

"The stock will stand," said Pike. "I'm with you."

As the two men ran upward to the summit and away from the crunching of their own little outfit in the bed of the dry river, they were struck by the sound of clatter of hoofs and voices.

"Bub, do you know where we are?" asked Pike—"this draw slants south and has brought us fair into the Palomitas trail where it comes into the old Yaqui trail, and on south to hell."

"To hell it is, if it's the slavers again after women," said Kit. "Come quiet."

They reached the summit where cacti and greasewood served as shield, and slightly below them they saw, against the low purple hills, clouds of dust making the picture like a vision and not a real thing, a line of armed horsemen as outpost guards, and men with roped arms stumbling along on foot slashed at occasionally with a reata to hasten their pace. Women and girls were there, cowed and drooping, with torn garments and bare feet. Forty prisoners in all Kit counted of those within range, ere the trail curved around the bend of a hill.

"But that scream?" muttered Kit. "All those women are silent as death, but that scream?" Then he saw.

One girl was in the rear, apart from the rest of the group. A blond-bearded man spurred his horse against her, and a guard lashed at her to keep her behind. Her scream of terror was lest she be separated from that most woeful group of miserables. The horse was across the road, blocking it, as the man with the light beard slid from the saddle and caught her.

Kit's gun was thrown into position as Pike caught his hand.

"No!" he said. "Look at her!"

For the Indian girl was quicker far. From the belt of her assailant she grasped a knife and lunged at his face as he held her. His one hand went to his cheek where the blood streamed, and his other to his revolver.

But even there she was before him, for she held the knife in both hands against her breast, and threw herself forward in the haze of dust.

The other guard dismounted and stared at the still figure on the trail, then kicked her over until he could see her face. One look was enough. He jerked the knife from the dead body, wiped it on her manta, and turned to tie a handkerchief over the cheek of the wounded horseman.

Kit muttered an oath of horror, and hastily drew the field glass from its case to stare at the man whose beard, a false one, had been torn off in the struggle. It was not easy to re-adjust it so that it would not interfere with the bandage, and thus he had a very fair view of the man's features, and his thoughts were of Billie's words to Conrad concerning slave raids in Sonora. Had Billie really suspected, or had she merely connected his Mexican friends with reports of raids for girls in the little Indian pueblos?

Pike reached for the glass, but by the time he could focus it to fit his eyes, the man had re-mounted, riding south, and there was only the dead girl left there where she fell, an Indian girl they both knew, Anita, daughter of Miguel, the major-domo of Mesa Blanca, whose own little rancheria was with the Pimans at Palomitas.

"Look above, Cap," said Kit.

Above two pair of black wings swept in graceful curves against the saffron sky—waiting!

Rhodes went back to the outfit for pick and shovel, and when twilight fell they made a grave there in the dusky canon of the desert.



CHAPTER VIII

THE SLAVE TRAIL

They camped that night in the barranca, and next morning a thin blue smoke a mile away drew Kit out on the roan even in the face of the heat to be, and the water yet to find. He hoped to discover someone who had been more fortunate in escape.

He found instead an Indian he knew, one whose gray hair was matted with blood and who stood as if dazed by terror at sound of hoofs. It was Miguel, the Pima head man of Mesa Blanca.

"Why, Miguel, don't you know me?" asked Kit.

The eyes of the man had a strange look, and he did not answer. But he did move hesitatingly to the horse and stroked it.

"Caballo," he said. "Muy bueno, caballo."

"Yes," agreed Pardner's rider, "very good always."

"Si senor, always."

Kit swung from the saddle, and patted the old man's shoulder. He was plainly dazed from either a hurt, or shock, and would without doubt die if left alone.

"Come, you ride, and we'll go to camp, then find water," suggested Kit. "Camp here no good. Come help me find water."

That appeal penetrated the man's mind more clearly. Miguel had been the well-trusted one of the Indian vaqueros, used to a certain dependence put upon him, and he straightened his shoulders for a task.

"Si senor, a good padrone are you, and water it will be found for you." He was about to mount when he halted, bewildered, and looked about him as if in search.

"All—my people—" he said brokenly. "My children of me—my child!"

Kit knew that his most winning child lay newly covered under the sand and stones he had gathered by moonlight to protect the grave from coyotes.

But there was a rustle back of him and a black-eyed elf, little more than a child, was standing close, shaking the sand from her hair.

"I am hearing you speak. I know it is you, and I come," she said.

It was Tula, the younger daughter of Miguel,—one who had carried them water from the well on her steady head, and played with the babies on the earthen floors at the pueblo of Palomitas.

But the childish humors were gone, and her face wore the Indian mask of any age.

"Tell me," said Kit.

"It is at Palomitas. I was in the willows by the well when they came, Juan Gonsalvo and El Aleman, and strange soldiers. All the women scream and make battle, also the men, and that is when my father is hurt in the head, that is when they are taking my mother, and Anita, my sister. Some are hiding. And El Aleman and Juan Gonsalvo make the count, and sent the men for search. That is how it was."

"Why do you say El Aleman?" asked Rhodes.

"I seeing him other time with Don Jose, and hearing how he talk. Also Anita knowing him, and scream his name—'Don Adolf!'—when he catch her. Juan Gonsalvo has a scarf tied over the face—all but the eyes, but the Don Adolf has the face now covered with hairs and I seeing him. They take all the people. My father is hurt, but lives. He tries to follow and is much sick. My mother is there, and Anita, my sister, is there. He thinks it better to find them—it is his head is sick. He walks far beside me, and does not know me."

"You are hungry?"

She showed him a few grains of parched corn tied up in the corner of her manta. "Water I have, and roots of the sand."

"Water," repeated Miguel mechanically. "Yes, I am the one who knows where it comes. I am the one to show you."

The eyes of the girl met Kit's gaze of understanding.

"The hurt is of his head," she stated again. "In the night he made speech of strange old-time things, secret things, and of fear."

"So? Well, it was a bad night for old men and Indian girls in the desert. Let's be moving."

Tula picked up her hidden wicker water bottle and trudged on sandaled feet beside Kit. Miguel went into a heap in the saddle, dazed, muttering disjointed Indian words, only one was repeated often enough to make an impression,—it was Cajame.

"What is Cajame?" he asked the girl, and she gave him a look of tolerance.

"He was of chiefs the most great. He was killed for his people. He was the father of my father."

Kit tried to recall where he had heard the name, but failed. No one had chanced to mention that Miguel, the peaceful Piman, had any claims on famous antecedents. He had always seemed a grave, silent man, intent only on herding the stock and caring for the family, at the little cluster of adobes by the well of Palomitas. It was about two miles from the ranch house, but out of sight. An ancient river hill terminated in a tall white butte at the junction of two arroyas, and the springs feeding them were the deciding influence regarding location of dwellings. Rhodes could quickly perceive how a raid could be made on Palomitas and, if no shots were fired, not be suspected at the ranch house of Mesa Blanca.

The vague sentences of Miguel were becoming more connected, and Kit, holding him in the saddle, was much puzzled by some of them.

"It is so, and we are yet dying," he muttered as he swayed in the saddle. "We, the Yaqui, are yet dumb as our fathers bade. But it is the end, senor, and the red gold of Alisal is our own, and——"

Then his voice dwindled away in mutterings and Rhodes saw that the Indian girl was very alert, but watching him rather than her father as she padded along beside him.

"Where is it—Alisal?" he asked carelessly, and her velvet-black eyes narrowed.

"I think not anyone is knowing. It is also evil to speak of that place," she said.

"What makes the evil?"

"Maybe so the padres. I no knowing, what you think?"

But they had reached the place of camp where Cap Pike had the packs on the animals, waiting and restless.

"Well, you're a great little collector, Bub," he observed. "You start out on the bare sand and gravel and raise a right pert family. Who's your friend?"

Despite his cynical comment, he was brisk enough with help when Miguel slid to the ground, ashen gray, and senseless.

"Now we are up against trouble, with an old cripple and a petticoat to tote, and water the other side of the range."

But he poured a little of the precious fluid down the throat of the Indian, who recovered, but stared about vacantly.

"Yes, senor," he said nodding his head when his eyes rested on Rhodes, "as you say—it is for the water—as you say—it is the end—for the Yaqui. Dead is Cajame—die all we by the Mexican! To you, senor, my child, and El Alisal of the gold of the rose. So it will be, senor. It is the end—the water is there, senor. It is to you."

"That's funny," remarked Pike, "he's gone loony and talking of old chief Cajame of the Yaquis. He was hanged by the Mexican government for protesting against loot by the officials. A big man he was, nothing trifling about Cajame! That old Indian had eighty thousand in gold in a government bank. Naturally the Christian rulers couldn't stand for that sort of shiftlessness in a heathen! Years ago it was they burned him out, destroyed his house and family;—the whole thing was hellish."

The girl squatting in the sand, never took her eyes off Pike's face. It was not so much the words, but the tone and expression she gave note to, and then she arose and moved over beside her father.

"No," she said stolidly, "it is his families here, Yaqui me—no Pima! Hiding he was when young, hiding with Pima men all safe. The padre of me is son to Cajame,—only to you it is told, you Americano!"

Her eyes were pitiful in their strained eagerness, striving with all her shocked troubled soul to read the faces of the two men, and staking all her hopes of safety in her trust.