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

Her face was blanched with fear, and her touch brought him back from his vision of God’s country to the tom-tom, and the weird chant, and the thunder of storm coming nearer and nearer in the twilight.

“Señor!” she breathed in terror, “even on my knees in prayer it is not for anyone to shut out this music of demons. Look! Yesterday she was a child of courage and right, but what is she today?”

She pointed to Tula and clung to him, for in all the wild chorus Tula was the leader,–she who had the words of ancient days from the dead Miguel. She sat there as one enthroned draped in that gorgeous thing, fit, as Marto said, for a king’s daughter, while the others sat in the plaza or rested on straw and blankets in the corridor looking up at her and shrilling savage echoes to the words she chanted.

“And that animal,–I saw it!” moaned Doña Jocasta. “Mother of God! that I should deny a priest who would only offer prayers for that wicked one who is to be tortured on it! Señor, for the love of God give me a horse and let me go into the desert to that storm, any place,–any place out of sight and sound of this most desolate house! The merciful God himself has forsaken Soledad!”

As she spoke he realized that time had passed while he read and re-read and dreamed a dream because of the letter. The sun was far out of sight, only low hues of yellow and blue melting into green to show the illumined path it had taken. By refraction rays of copper light reached the zenith and gave momentarily an unearthly glow to the mesa and far desert, but it was only as a belated flash, for the dusk of night touched the edge of it.

And the priest locked in with Conrad had been forgotten by him! At any moment that girl with the key might give some signal for the ceremony, whatever it was, of the death of the German beast!

“Sure, señora, I promise you,” he said soothingly, patting her hand clinging to him. “There is my horse in the plaza, and there is Marto’s. We will get the padre, and both of you can ride to the little adobe down the valley where Elena’s old father lives. He is Mexican, not Indian. It is better even to kneel in prayer there all the night than to try to rest in Soledad while this lasts. At the dawn I will surely go for you. Come,–we will ask for the key.”

Together they approached Tula, whose eyes stared straight out seeing none of the dark faces lifted to hers, she seemed not to see Kit who stopped beside her.

“Little sister,” he said, touching her shoulder, “the padre waits to be let out of the room of El Aleman, and the key is needed.”

She nodded her head, and held up the key.

“Let me be the one,” begged Doña Jocasta,–“I should do penance! I was not gentle in my words to the padre, yet he is a man of God, and devoted. Let me be the one!”

The Indian girl looked up at that, and drew back the key. Then some memory, perhaps that kneeling of Doña Jocasta with the women of Palomitas, influenced her to trust, and after a glance at Kit she nodded her head and put the key in her hand.

“You, señor, have the horses,” implored Doña Jocasta, “and I will at once come with Padre Andreas.”

“Pronto!” agreed Kit, “but I must get you a serape. Rain may fall from that cloud.”

She seemed scarcely to hear him as she sped along the patio towards the locked door. Kit entered his own room for a blanket just as she fitted the key in the lock, and spoke the padre’s name.

The next instant he heard her screams, and a door slam shut, and as he came out with the blanket, he saw the priest dash toward the portal leading from the patio to the plaza.

He ran to her, lifting her from the tiles where she had been thrown.

“Conrad!” she cried pointing after the flying figure. “There! Quickly, señor, quickly!”

He jerked open the door and looked within, a still figure with the face hidden, crouched by a bench against the wall. In two strides Kit crossed from the door and grasped the shoulder, and the figure propped there fell back on the tiles. It was the dead priest dressed in the clothes of Conrad, and the horror of that which had been a face showed he had died by strangulation under the hands of the man for whom he had gone to pray.

Doña Jocasta ran wildly screaming through the patio, but the Indian voices and the drum prevented her from being heard until she burst among them just as Conrad leaped to the back of the nearest horse.

“El Aleman! El Aleman!” she screamed pointing to him in horror. “He has murdered the padre and taken his robe. It is El Aleman! Your Judas has killed your priest!”

Kit ran for his own horse, but with the quickness of a cat Tula was before him in the saddle, and whirling the animal, leaning low, and her gorgeous manta streaming behind like a banner she sped after the German screaming, “Judas! Judas! Judas of Palomitas!”

And, as in the other chants led by her, the Indian women took up this one in frenzied yells of rage.

The men of the corral heard and leaped to saddles to follow the flying figures, but Kit was ahead,–not much, but enough to be nearest the girl.

Straight as an arrow the fugitive headed for Mesa Blanca, the nearest ranch where a fresh horse could be found, and Doña Jocasta and some of the women without horses stood in the plaza peering after that wild race in the gray of the coming night.

A flash of lightning outlined the three ahead, and a wail of utter terror went up from them all.

“Mother of God, the cañon of the quicksand!” cried Doña Jocasta.

“Tula! Tula! Tula!” shrilled the Indian women.

Tula was steadily gaining on the German, and Kit was only a few rods behind as they dashed down the slight incline to that too green belt in the floor of the brown desert.

He heard someone, Marto he thought, shouting his name and calling “Sumidero! Sumidero!” He did not understand, and kept right on. Others were shouting at Tula with as little result, the clatter of the horses and the rumble of the breaking storm made all a formless chaos of sound.

The frenzied scream of a horse came to him, and another lightning flash showed Conrad, ghastly and staring, leap from the saddle–in the middle of the little valley–and Tula ride down on top of him!

Then a rope fell around Kit’s shoulders, pinioning his arms and he was jerked from the horse with a thud that for a space stunned him into semi-unconsciousness, but through it he heard again the pitiful scream of a dumb animal, and shouts of Marto to the frenzied Indians.

“Ha! Clodomiro, the reata! Wait for the lightning, then over her shoulders! Only the horse is caught;–steady and a true hand, boy! Ai-yi! You are master, and the Mother of God is your help! Run your horse back,–run, curse you! or she will sink as he sinks! Sangre de Christo! she cuts the reata!”

Kit struggled out of the rope, and got to his feet in time to see the flash of her knife as she whirled to her victim. Again and again it descended as the man, now submerged to the waist, caught her. His screams of fear were curdling to the blood, but high above the German voice of fear sounded the Indian voice of triumph, and from the vengeful cry of “Judas! Judas! Judas of the world!” her voice turned sharply to the high clear chant Kit had heard in the hidden cañon of the red gold. It was as she said–there would be none of her caste and clan to sing her death song to the waiting ghosts, and she was singing it.

As those weird triumphant calls went out from the place of death every Indian answered them with shouts as of fealty, and in the darkness Kit felt as if among a circle of wolves giving tongue in some signal not to be understood by men.

He could hear the sobs of men and boys about him, but not a measure of that wild wail failed to bring the ever recurring response from the brown throats.

Marto, wet and trembling, cursed and prayed at the horror of it, and moved close to Kit in the darkness.

“Jesus, Maria, and José!” he muttered in a choked whisper, “one would think the fathers of these devils had never been christened! Sangre de Christo! look at that!”

For in a vivid sheet of lightning they saw a terrible thing.

Tula, on the shoulders of the man, stood up for one wavering instant and with both hands raised high, she flung something far out from her where the sands were firm for all but things of weight. Then her high triumphant call ended sharply in the darkness as she cast herself forward. She died as her sister had died, and on the same knife.

Doña Jocasta stumbled from a horse, and clung to Kit in terror. “Mother of God!” she sobbed. “It is as I said! She is the Eagle of Mexico, and she died clean–with the Serpent under her feet!”

In a dawn all silver and gold and rose after the storm, there was only a trace at the edge of the sand where two horses had carried riders to the treacherous smiling arroya over which a coyote would not cross.

And one of the Indian women of Palomitas tied a reata around the body of her baby son, and sent him to creep out as a turtle creeps to that thing cast by Tula to the women cheated of their Judas.

The slender naked boy went gleefully to the task as to a new game, and spit in the dead face as he dragged it with him to his mother who had pride in him.

It was kicked before the women back over the desert to Soledad, and the boys used it for football that day, and tied what was left of it between the horns of the roped wild bull at the corral. The bellowing of the bull when cut loose came as music to the again placid Indian women of Palomitas. They were ready for the home trail with their exiles. It had been a good ending, and their great holiday at Soledad was over.

CHAPTER XXI

EACH TO HIS OWN

A straggling train of pack mules followed by a six-mule wagon, trailed past Yaqui Springs ten days later, and was met there by the faithful Chappo and two villainous looking comrades, who had cleaned out the water holes and stood guard over them until arrival of the ammunition train.

“For beyond is a dry hell for us, and on the other side the Deliverer is circled by enemy fighters who would trap him in his own land. He lies hid like a fox in the hills waiting for this you bring. Water must not fail, and mules must not fail; for that am I here to give the word for haste.”

“But even forty mule loads will not serve him long,” said Kit doubtfully.

“Like a fox in the hills I tell you, Señor Capitan,–and only one way into the den! Beyond the enemy he has other supplies safe–this is to fight his way to it. After that he will go like a blaze through dry meadows of zacatan.”

Kit would have made camp there for the night, but Chappo protested.

“No, señor! Every drop in the sand here is for the mules of the army. It is not my word, it is the word of my general. Four hours north you will find Little Coyote well. One day more and at the crossing of Rio Seco, water will be waiting from the cold wells of La Partida. It is so arrange, señor, and the safe trail is made for you and for excellencia, the señora. In God’s name, take all your own, and go in peace!”

“But the señora is weary to death, and–”

“That is true, Capitan,” spoke Doña Jocasta, who drooped in the saddle like a wilted flower. “But the señora will not die, and if she does it is not so much loss as the smallest of the soldiers of El Gavilan. We will go on, and go quickly, see!–there is yet water in the cantin, and four hours of trail is soon over.”

Ugly Chappo came shyly forward and, uncovered, touched the hem of her skirt to his lips.

“The high heart of the excellencia gives life to the men who fight,” he said and thrust his hand in a pocket fastened to his belt. “This is to you from the Deliverer, señora. His message is that it brought to him the lucky trail, and he would wish the same to the Doña Jocasta Perez.”

It was the little cross, once sent back to her by a peon in bitterness of soul, and now sent by a general of Mexico with the blessing of a soldier.

“Tell him Jocasta takes it as a gift of God, and his name is in her prayers,” she said and turned away.

Clodomiro pushed forward,–a very different Clodomiro, for the fluttering bands of color were gone from his arms and his hair–the heart of the would-be bridegroom was no longer his. He was stripped as for the trail or for war, and fastened to his saddle was the gun and ammunition he had won from Cavayso who had gone quickly onward with his detachment of the pack.

But Clodomiro halted beside Chappo, regardless of need for haste on the trail, and asked him things in that subdued Indian tone without light, shade, or accent, in which the brown brothers of the desert veil their intimate discourse.

“There, beyond!” said Chappo, “two looks on the trail,” and he pointed west. “Two looks and one water hole, and if wind moves the sand no one can find the way where we go. It is not a trail for boys.”

“I am not now a boy,” said Clodomiro, “and when the safety trail of the señora is over–”

But Chappo waved him onward, for the wagon and the pack mules, and even little gray Bunting had turned reluctant feet north.

Clodomiro had come from Soledad because Elena,–who never had been out of sight of the old adobe walls,–sat on the ground wailing at thought of leaving her old sick father and going to war, for despite all the persuasions of Doña Jocasta, Elena knew what she knew, and did not at all believe that any of them would see the lands of the Americano,–not with pack mules of Ramon Rotil laden with guns!

“If Tula had lived, no other would have been asked,” Rhodes had stated. “But one is needed to make camp for the señora on the trail,–and to me the work of the packs and the animals.”

“That I can do,” Clodomiro offered. “My thought was to go where Tula said lovers of hers must go, and that was to El Gavilan. But this different thing can also be my work to the safe wells of the American. That far I go.”

Thus the three turned north from the war trail, and Clodomiro followed, after making a prayer that the desert wind would hear, and be very still, and fill no track made by the mules with the ammunition.

This slight discussion at the parting of the ways concerning two definite things,–need of haste, and conserving of water,–left no moment for thought or query of the packs of furnishings deemed of use to Señora Perez in her removal to the north.

Doña Jocasta herself had asked no question and taken no interest in them. Stripped of all sign of wealth and in chains, she had ridden into Soledad, and in comfort and much courtesy she was being conducted elsewhere. How long it might endure she did not know, and no power of hers could change the fact that she had been made wife of José Perez;–and at any turn of any road luck might again be with his wishes, and her estate fall to any level he choose to enforce.

At dusk they reached the Little Coyote well, and had joy to find water for night and morning, and greasewood and dead mesquite wood for a fire. The night had turned chill and Clodomiro spread the serape of Doña Jocasta over a heap of flowering greasewood branches. It was very quiet compared with the other camps on the trail, and had a restful air of comfort, and of that Jocasta spoke.

“Always the fear is here, señor,” she said touching her breast. “All the men and guns of Ramon Rotil did not make that fear go quiet. Every cañon we crossed I was holding my breath for fear of hidden men of José Perez! You did not see him in the land where he is strong; but men of power are bound to him there in the south, and–against one woman–”

“Señora, I do not think you have read the papers given to you by Padre Andreas to put with the others given by General Rotil,” was Kit’s quiet comment. He glanced toward the well where the boy was dipping water into a wicker bottle. “Have you?”

“No, señor, it is my permit to be passed safely by all the men of Ramon Rotil,” she said. “That I have not had need of. Also there is the record that the American murder at Granados was the crime of Conrad.”

“But, señora, there is one other paper among them.–I would have told you yesterday if I had known your fear. I meant to wait until the trail was ended, but–”

“Señor!” she breathed leaning toward him, her great eyes glowing with dreadful question, “Señor!”

“I know the paper, for I signed it,” said Kit staring in the leaping blaze. “So did the padre. It is the certificate of the burial of José Perez.”

“Señor! Madre de Dios!” she whispered.

“Death reached him on his own land, señora. We passed the grave the first day of the trail.”

Her face went very white as she made the sign of the cross.

“Then he–Ramon–?”

“No,–the general did not see Perez on the trail. He tried to escape from Cavayso and the man sent a bullet to stop him. It was the end.”

She shuddered and covered her eyes.

Kit got up and walked away. He looked back from where he tethered the mules for the night, but she had not moved. The little crucifix was in her hand, he thought she was praying. There were no more words to be said, and he did not go near her again that night. He sent Clodomiro with her serape and pillow, and when the fire died down to glowing ash, she arose and went to the couch prepared. She went without glance to right or left–the great fear had taken itself away!

Clodomiro rolled himself in a serape not far from her place of rest, but Kit Rhodes slept with the packs and with two guns beside him. From the start on the trail no man had touched his outfit but himself. He grinned sometimes at thought of the favorable report the men of Rotil would deliver to their chief,–for the Americano had taken all personal care of the packs and chests of Doña Jocasta! He was as an owl and had no human need of sleep, and let no man help him.

The trail to the cañon of the Rio Seco was a hard trail, and a long day, and night caught them ere they reached the rim of the dry wash where, at long intervals, rain from the hills swept down its age-old channel for a brief hour.

Doña Jocasta, for the first time, had left the saddle and crept to the rude couch afforded by the piled-up blankets in the wagon; Clodomiro drove; and Kit, with the mules, led the way.

A little water still swished about in their water bottles, but not enough for the mules. He was more anxious than he dared betray, for it was twenty miles to the lower well of La Partida, and if by any stroke of fortune Cap Pike had failed to make good–Cap was old, and liable to–

Then through the dusk of night he heard, quite near in the trail ahead, a curious thing, the call of a bird–and not a night bird!

It was a tremulous little call, and sent a thrill of such wild joy through his heart that he drew back the mule with a sharp cruel jerk, and held his breath to listen. Was he going loco from lack of sleep,–lack of water,–and dreams of–

It came again, and he answered it as he plunged forward down a barranca and up the other side where a girl sat on a roan horse under the stars:–his horse! also his girl!

If he had entertained any doubts concerning the last–but he knew now he never had; a rather surprising fact considering that no word had ever been spoken of such ownership!–they would have been dispelled by the way she slipped from the saddle into his arms.

“Oh, and you didn’t forget! you didn’t forget!” she whimpered with her head hidden against his breast. “I–I’m mighty glad of that. Neither did I!”

“Why, Lark-child, you’ve been right alongside wherever I heard that call ever since I rode away,” he said patting her head and holding her close. He had a horrible suspicion that she was crying,–girls were mysterious! “Now, now, now,” he went on with a comforting pat to each word, “don’t worry about anything. I’m back safe, though in big need of a drink,–and luck will come your way, and–”

She tilted her cantin to him, and began to laugh.

“But it has come my way!” she exulted. “O Kit, I can’t keep it a minute, Kit–we did find that sheepskin!”

“What? A sheepskin?” He had no recollection of a lost sheepskin.

“Yes, Cap Pike and I! In the bottom of an old chest of daddy’s! We’re all but crazy because it came just when we were planning to give up the ranch if we had to, and now that you are here–!” her sentence ended in a happy sigh of utter content.

“Sure, now that I’m here,” he assented amicably, “we’ll stop all that moving business–pronto. That is if we live to get to water. What do you know about any?”

“Two barrels waiting for you, and Cap rustling firewood, but I heard the wagon, and–”

“Sure,” he assented again. “Into the saddle with you and we’ll get there. The folks are all right, but the cayuses–”

A light began to blaze on the level above, and the mules, smelling water, broke into a momentary trot and were herded ahead of the two who followed more slowly, and very close together.

Cap Pike left the fire to stand guard over the water barrels and shoo the mules away.

“Look who’s here?” he called waving his hat in salute. “The patriots of Sonora have nothing on you when it comes to making collections on their native heath! I left you a poor devil with a runt of a burro, a cripple, and an Indian kid, and you’ve bloomed out into a bloated aristocrat with a batch of high-class army mules. And say, you’re just in time, and you don’t know it! We’re in at last, by Je-rusalem, we’re in!”

Kit grinned at him appreciatively, but was too busy getting water to ask questions. The wagon was rattling through the dry river bed and would arrive in a few minutes, and the first mules had to be got out of the way.

“You don’t get it,” said Billie alongside of him. “He means war. We’re in!”

“With Mexico? Again?” smiled Kit skeptically.

“No–something real–helping France!”

“No!” he protested with radiant eyes. “Me for it! Say, children, this is some homecoming!”

The three shook hands, all talking at once, and Kit and Billie forgot to let go.

“Of course you know Cap swore an alibi for you against that suspicion Conrad tried to head your way,” she stated a bit anxiously. “You stayed away so long!”

“Yes, yes, Lark-child,” he said reassuringly, “I know all that, and a lot more. I’ve brought letters of introduction for the government to some of Conrad’s useful pacifist friends along the border. Don’t you fret, Billie boy; the spoke we put in their wheel will overturn their applecart! The only thing worrying me just now,–beautifullest!–is whether you’ll wait for me till I enlist, get to France, do my stunt to help clean out the brown rats of the world, and come back home to marry you.”

“Yip-pee!” shrilled Pike who was slicing bacon into a skillet. “I’m getting a line now on how you made your other collections!”

Billie laughed and looked up at him a bit shyly.

“I waited for you before without asking, and I reckon I can do it again! I’m–I’m wonderfully happy–for I didn’t want you to worry over coming home broke–and–”

“Whisper, Lark-child. I’m not!”

“What?”

“Whisper, I said,” and he put one hand over her mouth and led her over to the little gray burro. “Now, not even to Pike until we get home, Billie,–but I’ve come out alive with the goods, while every other soul who knew went ‘over the range’! Buntin’ carries your share. I knew you were sure to find the sheepskin map sooner or later,” he lied glibly, “but luck didn’t favor me hanging around for it. I had to get it while the getting was good, but we three are partners for keeps, Buntin’ is yours, and I’ll divide with Pike out of the rest.”

Billie touched the pack, tried to lift it, and stared.

“You’re crazy, Kit Rhodes!”

“Too bad you’ve picked a crazy man to marry!” he laughed, and took off the pack. “Seventy-five pounds in that. I’ve over three hundred. Lark-child, if you remember the worth of gold per ounce, I reckon you’ll see that there won’t need to be any delay in clearing off the ranch debts,–not such as you would notice! and maybe I might qualify as a ranch hand when I come back,–even if I couldn’t hold the job the first time.”

“O Kit! O Cap! O me!” she whispered chantingly. “Don’t you dare wake me up, for I’m having the dream of my life!”

But he caught her, drew her close and kissed her hair rumpled in the desert wind.

And as the wagon drew into the circle of light, that was the picture Doña Jocasta saw from the shadows of the covered wagon:–young love, radiant and unashamed!