The Treasure Trail: A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine

He took the slanting cattle trail up over the mesa, avoiding the wagon road below, and at the far edge of it halted to look down over the wide spreading leagues of the Mesa Blanca ranch.

It looked very sleepy, drowsing in the silence of the noon sun. An old Indian limped slowly from the corral over to the ranch house, and a child tumbled in the dust with a puppy, but there was no other sign of ranch activity. As he descended the mesa and drew nearer the corrals they had a deserted look, not merely empty but deserted.

The puppy barked him a welcome, but the child gave one frightened look at Kit, and with a howl of fear, raced to the shelter of the portal where he disappeared in the shadows.

“I had a hunch, Babe, that we needed smoothing down with a currycomb before we made social calls,” confessed Kit to the burro, “but I didn’t reckon on scaring the natives in any such fashion as this.”

He was conscious of peering eyes at a barred window, and then the old Indian appeared.

“Hello, Isidro!”

“At your service, señor,” mumbled the old man, and then he stared at the burro, and at the bearded and rather desert-worn stranger, and uttered a cry of glad recognition.

“Ai-ji! It is El Pajarito coming again to Mesa Blanca, but coming with dust in your mouth and no song! Enter, señor, and take your rest in your own house. None are left to do you honor but me,–all gone like that!” and his skinny black hands made a gesture as if wafting the personnel of Mesa Blanca on its way. “The General Rotil has need the cattle, and makes a divide with Señor Whitely and all go,–all the herds,” and he pointed east.

Kit bathed his face in the cool water brought out by Valencia, Isidro’s wife, then unloaded the burro of the outfit, and stretched himself in the shade while the women busied themselves preparing food.

“So General Rotil makes a divide of the cattle,–of Whitely’s cattle? How is that?” he asked.

And the old Indian proceeded to tell him that it was true. The Deliverer must feed his army. He needed half, and promised Whitely to furnish a guard for the rest of the herd and help Whitely save them by driving them to Imuris, where the railroad is.

“He said enemy troops would come from the south and take them all in one week or one month. He, Rotil, would pay a price. Thus it was, and Señor Whitely, and enough vaqueros, rode with the herds, and General Rotil took the rest of the ranchmen to be his soldiers. Of course it might be Señor Whitely would some day return, who knows? And he left a letter for the señor of the songs.”

The letter corroborated Isidro’s statements–it was the only way to save any of the stock. Whitely thought there was a hundred or two still ranging in the far corners, but time was short, and he was saving what he could. The men were joining the revolutionists and he would be left without help anyway. If Rhodes came back he was to use the place as his own. If he could round up any more horses or cattle on the range and get them to safety Isidro would find some Indians to help him, and Whitely would divide the profits with him.

“Fine!–divides first with the Deliverer, and next with me! Can’t see where that hombre gets off when it comes to staking his own family to a living. But it’s a bargain, and this is my headquarters until I can get out. How long has Whitely and his new friends been gone?”

“Four days, señor.”

“Seen any stragglers of cattle left behind?”

Isidro’s grandson, Clodomiro, had found both horses and cattle and herded them into far cañons; a man might ride in a circle for five miles around the ranch house and see never a fresh track. Clodomiro was a good boy, and of much craft.

Dinner was announced for the señor, and the women showed him welcome by placing before him the most beautiful repast they could arrange quickly, chile con carne, frijoles, tortillas, and a decanter of Sonora wine–a feast for a king!

After he had eaten, tobacco was brought him from some little hidden store, and Isidro gave him the details of the slave raid of Palomitas, and Sonora affairs in general. Kit was careful to state that he has been prospecting in the mountains and out of touch with ranch people, and it must be understood that all Isidro could tell would be news to a miner from the desert mountains. And he asked if General Rotil also collected stock from the ranch of Soledad.

Whereupon Isidro told him many things, and among them the wonder that Soledad had been left alone–the saints only knew why! And Juan Gonsalvo, the foreman at Soledad, had helped with the slave raid, and was known in Palomitas where they took girls and women and men as well, even men not young! Miguel, the major-domo, was taken with his wife and two daughters, the other men were young. The curse of God seemed striking Sonora. A new foreman was now at Soledad, Marto Cavayso, a hard man and,–it was said, a soldier, but he evidently got tired of fighting and was taking his rest by managing the horse herds of Soledad.

“Doesn’t look like rest to me,” observed Kit. “The Soledad trail looks pretty well kicked into holes, with wagons, mules, and horsemen.”

Isidro volunteered his opinion that work of the devil was going forward over there.

“Juan Gonsalvo and El Aleman were stealing women in Sonora, and driving them the south trail for a price,” he stated. “But what think you would be the price for a woman of emerald eyes and white skin carried up from the south under chains, and a lock to the chain?”

“I reckon you are dreaming the lock and chain part of it, Isidro,” returned Kit. “Only murderers travel like that.”

“Si, it is so. There at Soledad it is heard. A killing was done in the south and Soledad is her prison. But she is beautiful, and the men are casting lots as to whose she shall be when the guard is gone south again to Don José Perez.”

“Ah! they are Don José’s men, are they? Then the prisoner is guarded by his orders?”

“Who knows? They tell that she is a lost soul, and fought for a knife to kill herself, and the padre makes prayers and says hell will be hers if she does. Elena, who is cook, heard him say that word, and Elena was once wife to my brother, and she is telling that to Clodomiro who makes an errand to take her deer meat, and hear of the strangers. He saw the woman, her bracelets are gold, and her eyes are green. The padre calls her Doña Jocasta. I go now and give drink to that burro and make him happy.”

“Jocasta, eh? Doña Jocasta!” repeated Kit in wondering meditation. “Doesn’t seem possible–but reckon it is, and there are no real surprises in Sonora. Anything could, and does happen here.”

He remembered Pike telling the story of Jocasta one morning by their camp fire in the desert. She was called by courtesy Señora Perez. He had not heard her father’s name, but he was a Spanish priest and her mother an Indian half-breed girl–some little village in the sierras. There were two daughters, and the younger was blond as a child of Old Spain, Jocasta was the elder and raven dark of hair, a skin of deep cream, and jewel-green eyes. Kit had heard three men, including Isidro, speak of Doña Jocasta, and each had mentioned the wonderful green eyes–no one ever seemed to forget them!

Their magnetism had caught the attention of Don José,–a distinguished and illustrious person in the eyes of the barefoot mountaineers. No one knew what Jocasta thought of the exalted padrone of the wide lands, whose very spurs were of gold, but she knew there was scarce wealth enough in all the village to keep a candle burning on the Virgin’s shrine, and her feet had never known a shoe. The padre died suddenly just as Don José was making a bargain with him for the girl, so he swept Jocasta to his saddle with no bargain whatever except that she might send back for Lucita, her little sister, and other men envied Perez his good luck when they looked at Jocasta. For three years she had been mistress of his house in Hermosillo, but never had he taken her into the wilderness of Soledad,–it was a crude casket for so rich a treasure.

Kit steeped in the luxury of a square meal, fell asleep, thinking of the green-eyed Doña Jocasta whom no man forgot. He would not connect a brilliant bird of the mountain with that drooping figure he and Tula had seen stumbling towards the portal of Soledad. And the statement of Isidro that there had been a killing, and Doña Jocasta was a lost soul, was most puzzling of all. In a queer confused dream the killing was done by Tula, and Billie wore the belt of gold, and had green eyes. And he wakened himself with the apparently hopeless effort of convincing Billie he had never forgotten her despite the feminine witcheries of Sonora.

The shadows were growing long, and some Indian boys were jogging across the far flats. He reached for his field glass and saw that one of them had a deer across his saddle. Isidro explained that the boys were planting corn in a far field, and often brought a deer when they came in for more seed or provisions. They had a hut and ramada at the edge of the planted land six miles away. They were good boys, Benito and Mariano Bravo, and seldom both left the fields at the same time. He called to Valencia that there would be deer for supper, then watched the two riders as they approached, and smiled as they perceptibly slowed up their broncos at sight of the bearded stranger on the rawhide cot against the wall.

“See you!” he pointed out to Kit. “These are the days of changes. Each day we looking for another enemy, maybe that army of the south, and the boys they think that way too.”

The boys, on being hailed, came to the house with their offering, and bunkered down in the shadow with a certain shy stolidity, until Kit spoke, when they at once beamed recognition, and made jokes of his beard as a blanket.

But they had news to tell, great news, for a child of Miguel had broken away from the slavers and had hidden in the mountains, and at last had found her way back to Palomitas. She was very tired and very poor in raiment, and the people were weeping over her. Miguel, her father, was dead from a wound, and was under the ground, and of the others who went on she could tell nothing, only that Conrad, the German friend of Don José, was the man who covered his face and helped take the women. Her sister Anita had recognized him, calling out his name, and he had struck her with a quirt.

The women left their work to listen to this, and to add the memories of some of their friends who had hidden and luckily escaped.

“That white man should be crucified and left for the vultures,” said the boy Benito.

“No,” said the soft voice of Valencia, “God was sacrificed, but this man is a white Judas; the death of God is too good for that man. It has been talked about. He will be found some place,–and the Judas death will be his. The women are making prayers.”

“It will soon be Easter,” said Isidro.

Kit did not know what was meant by a “Judas” death, though he did know many of the church legends had been turned by the Indians into strange and lurid caricatures. He thought it would be interesting to see how they could enlarge on the drama of Judas, but he made no comment, as a direct question would turn the Indians thoughtful, and silence them.

They all appeared alert for the return of Rotil. No one believed he had retired utterly from the region without demanding tribute from Soledad. It was generally suspected that Perez received and held munitions for use against the revolutionists though no one knew where they were hidden. There were Indian tales of underground tunnels of Soledad Mission for retreat in the old days in case of hostile attacks, and the Soledad ranch house was built over part of that foundation. No one at Soledad knew the entrance except Perez himself, though it was surmised that Juan Gonsalvo had known, and had been the one to store the mule loads and wagon loads of freight shipped over the border before Miguel Herrara was caught at the work from the American side. Perez was a careful man, and not more than one man was trusted at one time. That man seemed marked by the angels for accident, for something had always ended him, and it was no good fortune to be a favorite of Don José–Doña Jocasta was learning that!

Thus the gossip and surmise went on around Rhodes for his brief hour of rest and readjustment. He encouraged the expression of opinion from every source, for he had the job ahead of him to get three hundred pounds of gold across the border and through a region where every burro was liable to examination by some of the warring factions. It behooved him to consider every tendency of the genus homo with which he came in contact. Also the bonds between them,–especially the bonds, since the various groups were much of a sameness, and only “good” or “bad” according to their affiliations. Simple Benito and his brother, and soft-voiced motherly Valencia who could conceive a worse death for the German Judas than crucifixion, were typical of the primitive people of desert and sierra.

“How many head of stock think you still ranges Mesa Blanca?” he asked Isidro, who confessed that he no longer rode abroad or kept tally, but Clodomiro would know, and would be in to supper. Benito and Mariano told of one stallion and a dozen mares beyond the hills, and a spring near their fields had been muddied the day before by a bunch of cows and calves, they thought perhaps twenty, and they had seen three mules with the Mesa Blanca brand when they were getting wood.

“Three mules, eh? Well, I may need those mules and the favor will be to me if you keep them in sight,” he said addressing the boys. “I am to round up what I can and remove them after Señor Whitely, together with other belongings.”

“Others, señor?” asked Isidro.

Rhodes took the letter from his pocket, and perused it as if to refresh his memory.

“The old Spanish chest is to go if possible, and other things of Mrs. Whitely’s,” he said. “I will speak of these to your wife if the plan can carry, but there is chance of troops from the south and–who knows?–we may be caught between the two armies and ground as meal on a metate.”

He thus avoided all detail as to the loads the pack animals were to carry, and the written word was a safe mystery to the Indian. He was making no definite plans, but was learning all possibilities with a mind prepared to take advantage of the most promising.

Thus the late afternoon wore on in apparent restful idleness after the hard trail. The boys secured their little allowance of beans and salt, and corn for planting, but lingered after the good supper of Valencia, a holiday feast compared with their own sketchy culinary performance in the jacal of the far fields. They scanned the trail towards Palomitas, and then the way down the far western valley, evidently loath to leave until their friend Clodomiro should arrive, and Isidro expected him before sunset.

But he came later from towards Soledad, a tall lad with fluttering ribbands of pink and green from his banda and his elbows, and a girdle of yellow fluttering fringed ends to the breeze,–all the frank insignia of a youth in the market for marriage. He suggested a gay graceful bird as he rode rapidly in the long lope of the range. His boy friends of the planted fields went out to meet him at the corral, and look after his horse while he went in to supper. He halted to greet them, and then walked soberly across the plaza where pepper trees and great white alisos trailed dusk shadows in the early starlight.

“What reata held you?” asked Isidro. “Has Soledad grown a place for comradeship?”

“No, señor,” said the lad passing into the dining room where two candles gave him light in the old adobe room, “it is comradeship we do not need, but it is coming to us.”

He seated himself on the wooden bench and his grandmother helped him from a smoking plate of venison. He looked tired and troubled, and he had not even taken note that a stranger was beside Isidro in the shadows.

“What nettle stings you, boy?” asked his grandfather sarcastically, and at that he looked up and rose to his feet at sight of Rhodes.

“Your pardon, señor, I stumbled past like a bat blind in the light,” he muttered, and as he met Kit’s eyes and recognized him his face lit up and his white teeth gleamed in a smile.

“The saints are in it that you are here again, señor!” he exclaimed, “and you came on this day when most needed.”

“Eat and then tell your meaning,” said Isidro, but Clodomiro glanced toward the kitchen, and then listened for the other boys. They were laughing down at the corral. Clodomiro’s horse had thrown one of them.

“With your permission, grandfather, talk first,” he said and the two men moved to the bench opposite, leaning over towards him as his voice was lowered.

“Today Marto Cavayso sent for me, he is foreman over there, and strange things are going forward. He has heard that General Rotil stripped Mesa Blanca and that all white people are gone from it. He wants this house and will pay us well to open the door. It is for the woman. They have played a game for her, and he has won, but she is a wild woman when he goes near her, and his plan is to steal her out at night and hide her from the others. So he wants this house. He offered me a good gun. He offers us the protection of Don José Perez.”

“But–why–that is not credible,” protested Kit. “He could not count on protection from Perez if he stole the woman whom many call Señora Perez, for that is what they did call Doña Jocasta in Hermosillo.”

“Maybe so,” assented Clodomiro stolidly, “but now he is to be the esposo of a Doña Dolores who is the child of General Terain, so Marto says. Well, this Doña Jocasta has done some killing, and Don José does not give her to prison. He sends her to the desert that she brings him no disgrace; and if another man takes her or sinks her in the quicksands then that man will be helping Don José. That is how it is. Marto says the woman has bewitched him, and he is crazy about her. Some of the other men, will take her, if not him.”

Kit exchanged a long look with the old Indian.

“The house is yours, señor,” said Isidro. “By the word of Señor Whitely, you are manager of Mesa Blanca.”

“Many thanks,” replied Kit, and sat with his elbows on the table and his hands over his eyes, thinking–thinking of the task he had set himself in Sonora, and the new turn of the wheel of fortune.

“You say the lady is a prisoner?” he asked.

“Sure,” returned Clodomiro promptly. “She broke loose coming through a little pueblo and ran to the church. She found the priest and told him things, so they also take that priest! If they let him go he will talk, and Don José wanting no talk now of this woman. That priest is well cared for, but not let go away. After awhile, maybe so.”

“She is bright, and her father was a priest,” mused Kit. “So there is three chances out of four that she can read and write,–a little anyway. Could you get a letter to her?”

“Elena could.”

Kit got up, took one of the candles from the table and walked through the rooms surrounding the patio. Some of them had wooden bars in the windows, but others had iron grating, and he examined these carefully.

“There are two rooms fit for perfectly good jails,” he decided, “so I vote we give this bewitched Don Marto the open door. How many guns can we muster?”

“He promised to give me one, and ammunition.”

“Well, you get it! Get two if you can, but at least get plenty of ammunition. Isidro, will your wife be brave and willing to help?”

The old Indian nodded his head vigorously and smiled. Evidently only a stranger would ask if his Valencia could be brave!

The two brothers came in, and conversation was more guarded until Clodomiro had finished his supper, and gone a little ways home with them to repay them the long wait for comradeship.

When he came back Kit had his plans fairly settled, and had a brief note written to Señora Jocasta Perez, as follows:

Honored Señora:

One chance of safety is yours. Let yourself be persuaded to leave Soledad with Marto. You will be rescued from him by

An American.

“I reckon that will do the trick,” decided Kit. “I feel like a blooming Robin Hood without the merry men,–but the Indians will play safe, even if they are not merry. When can you get this to Elena?”

“In time of breakfast,” said Clodomiro promptly. “I go tonight, and tomorrow night he steals that woman. Maybe Elena helps.”

“You take Elena a present from me to encourage that help,” suggested Kit, and he poured a little of the gold from his belt on the paper. “Also there is the same for you when the lady comes safe. It is best that you make willing offer of your service in all ways so that he calls on none of his own men for help.”

“As you say, señor,” assented Clodomiro, “and that will march well with his desires, for to keep the others from knowing is the principal thing. She has beauty like a lily in the shade.”

“He tells you that?” asked Kit quizzically, but the boy shook his head.

“My own eyes looked on her. She is truly of the beauty of the holy pictures of the saints in the chapel, but Marto says she is a witch, and has him enchanted;–also that evil is very strong in her. I do not know.”

“Well, cross your fingers and tackle the job,” suggested Kit. “Get what sleep you can, for you may not get much tomorrow night. It is the work of a brave man you are going to do, and your pay will be a man’s pay.”

The eyes of the Indian boy glowed with pleasure.

“At your service, señor. I will do this thing or I will not see Mesa Blanca again.”

Kit looked after Clodomiro and rolled another cigarette before turning in to sleep.

“When all’s said and done, I may be the chief goat of this dame adventure,” he told himself in derision. “Maybe my own fingers need crossing.”

CHAPTER XIII

A WOMAN OF EMERALD EYES

At the first break of dawn, Rhodes was up, and without waiting for breakfast walked over to the rancherias of Palomitas to see Tula.

She was with some little girls and old women carrying water from the well as stolidly as though adventure had never stalked across her path. A whole garment had been given her instead of the tatter of rags in which she had returned to the little Indian pueblo. She replied briefly to his queries regarding her welfare, and when he asked where she was living, she accompanied him to an old adobe where there were two other motherless children–victims of the raiders.

An old, half-blind woman stirred meal into a kettle of porridge, and to her Kit addressed himself.

“A blessing will be on your house, but you have too many to feed here,” he said “and the child of Miguel should go to the ranch house of Mesa Blanca. The wife of Isidro is a good woman and will give her care.”

“Yes, señor, she is a good woman,” agreed the old Indian. “Also it may be a safe house for a maiden, who knows? Here it is not safe; other raiders may come.”

“That is true. Send her after she has eaten.”

He then sought out one of the older men to learn who could be counted on to round up the stray cattle of the ranges. After that he went at once back to the ranch house, and did not even speak to Tula again. There was nothing to indicate that she was the principal object of his visit, or that she had acquired a guardian who was taking his job seriously.

Later in the day she was brought to Mesa Blanca by an elderly Indian woman of her mother’s clan, and settled in the quiet Indian manner in the new dwelling place. Valencia was full of pity for the girl of few years who had yet known the hard trail, and had mourned alone for her dead.

There was a sort of suppressed bustle about la casa de Mesa Blanca that day, dainties of cookery prepared with difficulty from the diminished stores, and the rooms of the iron bars sprinkled and swept, and pillows of wondrous drawnwork decorated the more pretentious bed. To Tula it was more of magnificence than she had ever seen in her brief life, and the many rooms in one dwelling was a wonder. She would stand staring across the patio and into the various doorways through which she hesitated to pass. She for whom the wide silences of the desert held few terrors, hesitated to linger alone in the shadows of the circling walls. Kit noted that when each little task was finished for Valencia, she would go outside in the sunlight where she had the familiar ranges and far blue mountains in sight.