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

“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 cañon 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 señor, 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 señor, 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 José, 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, señor, 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, señor,” 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, señor, my child, and El Alisal of the gold of the rose. So it will be, señor. It is the end–the water is there, señor. 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.

“You bet we’re Americano, Tula, and so will you be when we get you over the border,” stated Rhodes recklessly. “I don’t know how we are going to do it, Cap, but I swear I’m not going to let a plucky little girl like that go adrift to be lifted by the next gang of raiders. We need a mascot anyway, and she is going to be it.”

“You’re a nice sort of seasoned veteran, Bub,” admitted Pike dryly, “but in adopting a family it might be as well to begin with a he mascot instead of what you’ve picked. A young filly like that might turn hoodoo.”

“I reckon I’d have halted for a sober second thought if it hadn’t been for that other girl under the stones down there,” agreed Rhodes. “But shucks!–with all the refugees we’re feeding across the line where’s the obstacle to this one?”

The old prospector was busy with the wounded head for the Indian and had no reply ready, but shook his head ominously. Rhodes scowled and began uncoiling a reata in case it would be needed to tie Miguel in the saddle.

“We’ve got to get some hustle to this outfit,” he observed glancing at the sun. “It’s too far to take them back to Whitely’s, and water has to be had. We are really nearer to Soledad!”

The Indian girl came closer to him, speaking in a low, level manner, strange and secretive, yet not a whisper.

“He does know–and water is there at that place,” she said. “In the night I am hearing him speak all what the ancients hide. He no can walk to that place, maybe I no can walk, but go you for the gold in the hidden cañon. You are Americano,–strong,–is it not? A brave heart and much of gold of rose would bring safe again the mother of me and my sister! All this I listen to in the night. For them the gold of rose by the hidden water is to be uncovered again. But see, his hands are weak, his head is like the niño in the reed basket. A stronger heart must find the way–it is you.”

Lowly, haltingly, she kept on that level-voiced decision. It was evident that the ravings of her father through the long hours of the dreadful night had filled her mind with his one desire: to dare the very gods that the red gold might be uncovered again, and purchase freedom for the Indians on the exile road to the coast.

So low were her words that even Cap Pike, a rod away, only heard the voice, but not the subject. It was further evident that she meant but the one man to hear. Pike had white hair and to her mind was, like her father, to be protected from responsibilities, but Rhodes loomed strong and kind, and braced by youth for any task.

Rhodes looked at her pityingly, and patted her head.

“I reckon we’re all a little loco, kid,” he observed. “You’re so paralyzed with the hell you saw, and his ravings that you think his dope of the gold is all gospel, but it’s only a dream, sister,–a sick man’s fancy, though you sure had me going for a minute, plum hypnotized by the picture.”

“It is to hide always,” she said. “No man must know. No other eyes must see, only you!”

“Sure,” he agreed.

“You promising all?”

“Sure again! Just to comfort you I promise that when I find the gold of El Alisal I will use it to help get your people.”

“Half,” she decided. “Half to you.”

“Half it is! You’re a great little planner for your size, kid. Too bad it’s only a dream.”

Cap Pike rose to his feet, and gave a hand to Miguel, who reeled, and then steadied himself gradually.

“Most thanks, señor,” he whispered, “and when we reach the water–”

They helped him into the saddle, and Rhodes walked beside, holding him as he swayed.

They passed the new-made grave in the sand, and Rhodes turned to the girl. “Sister,” he said, “lift two stones and add to that pile there, one for you and one for your father. Also look around and remember this place.”

“I am no forgetting it,” she said as she lifted a stone and placed it as he told her. “It is here the exile trail. I mark the place where you take for me the Americano road, and not the south road of the lost. So it is,–these stone make witness.”

“I’ll be shot if I don’t believe you are old Cajames stock,” said Cap Pike staring at her, and then meeting the gaze of Rhodes in wonder at her clear-cut summing up of the situation. “But he was a handful for the government in his day, Bub, and I’m hornswaggled if I’d pick out his breed for a kindergarten.”

The girl heard and understood at least the jocular tenor of his meaning, but no glance in his direction indicated it. She placed the second stone, and then in obedience to Rhodes she looked back the way she had come where the desert growth crisped in the waves of heat. On one side lay the low, cactus-dotted hillocks, and on the other the sage green and dull yellow faded into the blue mists of the eastern range.

“I am no forgetting it, this place ever,” she said and then lifted her water bottle and trudged on beside Rhodes. “It is where my trail begins, with you.”

Cape Pike grinned at the joke on the boy, for it looked as if the Yaqui girl were adopting him!

CHAPTER IX

A MEETING AT YAQUI WELL

Good luck was with them, for the water hole in Yaqui cañon had not been either muddied or exhausted, evidence that the raiders had not ranged that way. The sorry looking quartette fairly staggered into the little cañon, and the animals were frantic with desire to drink their fill.

“I was so near fried that the first gallon fairly sizzled down my gullet,” confessed Cap Pike after a long glorious hour of rest under the alamos with saturated handkerchief over his burning eyes. “That last three mile stretch was hell’s back yard for me. How you reckon the little trick over there ever stood it?”

The Indian girl was resting near her father, and every little while putting water on his face and hands. When she heard the voice of Pike she sat up, and then started quietly to pick up dry yucca stalks and bits of brushwood for a fire.

“Look at that, would you, Bub,” commented Pike, “the minute she sees you commence to open the cook kit she is rustling for firewood. That little devil is made of whalebone for toughness. Why, even the burros are played out, but she is fresh as a daisy after a half hour’s rest!”

Rhodes noted that the excitement by which she had been swayed to confidence in the morning had apparently burned out on the trail, for she spoke no more, only served silently as generations of her mothers of the desert had done, and waited, crouched back of her father, while the men ate the slender meal of carne seco, atole, and coffee.

Cap Pike suggested that she join them, but it was her adopted guardian who protested.

“We won’t change their ways of women,” he decided. “I notice that when white folks try to they are seldom understood. How do we know whether that attitude is an humble effacement, or whether the rank of that martyred ancester exalts her too greatly to allow equality with white stragglers of the range?”

Cap Pike snorted disdain.

“You’ll be making a Pocahontas of her if you keep on that ‘noble Injun’ strain,” he remarked.

“Far be it from me! Pocahontas was a gay little hanger-on of the camps,–not like this silent owl! Her mind seems older than her years, and just notice her care of him, will you? I reckon he’d have wandered away and died but for her grip on him through the night.”

Miguel sank into sleep almost at once after eating, and the girl waved over him an alamo branch as a fan with one hand, and ate with the other, while Rhodes looked over the scant commissary outfit, reckoning mouths to feed and distance to supplies. The moon was at full, and night travel would save the stock considerably. By the following noon they could reach ranches either west or north. He was conscious of the eyes of the girl ever on his face in mute question, and while Pike bathed the backs of the animals, and led each to stand in the oozy drainage of the meager well, she came close to Kit and spoke.

“You say it is a dream, señor, and you laugh, but the red gold of El Alisal is no dream. He, my father has said it, and after that, I, Tula, may show it to you. Even my mother does not know, but I know. I am of the blood to know. You will take him there, for it is a medicine place, much medicine! He has said it to you, señor, and that gift is great. You will come, alone,–with us, señor?”

Kit smiled at her entreaty, patted her hair, and dug out a worn deck of cards and shuffled them, slowly regarding the sleeping Indian the while.

“What’s on your mind?” demanded Cap Pike, returning with his white locks dripping from a skimpy bath. “Our grub stake is about gone, and you’ve doubled the outfit. What’s the next move?”

“I’m playing a game in futures with Miguel,” stated Kit, shuffling the cards industriously.

“Sounds loco to me, Bub,” observed the veteran. “Present indications are not encouraging as to futures there. Can’t you see that he’s got a jar from which his mind isn’t likely to recover? Not crazy, you know, not a lunatic or dangerous, but just jarred from Pima man back to Yaqui child. That’s about the way I reckon it.”

“You reckon right, and it’s the Yaqui child mind I’m throwing the cards for. Best two out of three wins.”

“What the–”

“Highest cards for K. Rhodes, and I hike across the border with our outfit; highest cards for Miguel and my trail is blazed for the red gold of Alisal. This is Miguel’s hand–ace high for Miguel!”

Again he shuffled and cut.

“A saucy queen, and red at that! Oh, you charmer!”

“You got to hustle to beat that, Bub. Go on, don’t be stingy.”

Rhodes cut the third time, then stared and whistled.

“The cards are stacked by the Indian! All three covered with war paint. What’s the use in a poor stray white bucking against that?”

He picked out the cards and placed them side by side, ace, king and queen of hearts.

“Three aces could beat them,” suggested Pike. “Go on Bub, shuffle them up, don’t be a piker.”

Rhodes did, and cut ten of clubs.

“Not even the right color,” he lamented. “Nothing less than two aces for salvation, and I–don’t–get–them!”

A lonely deuce fell on the sand, and Rhodes eyed it sulkily as he rolled a cigarette.

“You poor little runt,” he apostrophized the harmless two-spot. “You’ve kicked me out of the frying pan into the fire, and a good likely blaze at that!”

“Don’t reckon I care to go any deeper into trouble than what we’ve found,” decided Pike. “Ordinary Indian scraps are all in the day’s work–same with a Mexican outfit–but, Bub, this slave-hunting graft game with the state soldiery doing the raiding is too strong a combine for two lone rangers to buck against. Me for the old U. S. border, and get some of this devilish word to the peace advocates at home.”