Starr, of the Desert Part 21

Starr circled warily to the rear of the yard to see what chance there might be of getting over the wall unseen. He did not know what good it would do him to get into the yard, but he hoped that he might be lucky enough to see any one who entered the back door, which would be the logical means of ingress.

He was standing back of the garage where he had found the cord tires, when the quiet of the night was split with the shrill, nerve-racking shriek of the fire whistle, four or five blocks away. In spite of himself, he was startled with its suddenness, and he stood tensed and waiting for the dismal hoots that would tell what ward the fire was in. One--two--three, croaked the siren like a giant hoot-owl calling in the night.

"Third ward--down around the depot, probably," he heard a voice say guardedly on the other side of the fence. Another voice, more guarded even than the first, muttered a reply which Starr could not catch.

Neither voice was recognizable, and the sentence he heard was so obvious a remark as to be practically meaningless; probably a hundred persons in town had said "Third ward," when the siren had tooted the number.

At any rate some one was there in the yard of _Las Nuevas_, and it would not be wise for Starr to attempt getting over the wall. He waited therefore until he heard careful footsteps moving away; whereupon he himself stole quietly to the corner, thence down the side wall to the front of the building, so that he could look across the street to where the Mexican had revealed himself for a moment in the light of a distant street lamp.

If the Mexican had been on watch there, he had left his post. In a minute Starr saw him hurrying down the unused side street, toward the angry glow that told where the fire had started. Too much temptation, Starr interpreted the fellow's desertion of his post; or else no more men were expected at _Las Nuevas_, and the outpost was no longer needed. Taking it for granted that a meeting had been called here, Starr reasoned from that a.s.sumption.

He waited another minute or two, watching and listening. There was nothing at the front to break the quiet or spoil the air of desertion that surrounds an empty office building at midnight. He went cautiously to the rear corner and turned there to look back at the building, watchful for any stray beam of light or any movement.

The upper story was dark as the rest of the yard and building, and Starr could almost believe that he was on the wrong track entirely, and that nothing was going on here. But he continued to stand there, loath to give up and go home with nothing accomplished.

Close beside the building and back perhaps twenty feet from the front corner, a telephone and electric light pole stood with outstretched arms, holding aloft its faintly humming wires. Starr stood looking that way for some time before it occurred to him that there was no street light near enough to send that warm, yellow glow across the second bar from the bottom. The rest of the pole was vague and shadowy, like everything else in the immediate neighborhood. The bottom of the pole he could not see at all from where he stood, it was so dark alongside the building. But that second cross-arm was lighted as from a near-by window. Yet there was no lighted window anywhere in the place.

Starr was puzzled. Being puzzled, he went slowly toward the pole, his face turned upward. The nearest street lamp was a full block away, and it would have lighted up the whole top of the pole evenly, if at all. At the foot of the pole Starr stood for a minute, still staring upward. Then he reached up, gripped the metal steps and began carefully to climb.

Before he had reached the lighted cross-arm he knew that the glow must come from a skylight; and that the skylight must be the one that had saved that hidden little office room from being dark. He was no lineman, but he knew enough to be careful about the wires, so it took him several minutes to work his way to where he could straddle a crosstree that had few wires.

Just below him and no more than twelve or fifteen feet distant was the skylight he had suspected, but before he gave that much attention, he looked across to where the fire was sending up a column of crimson smoke and bright, eddying sparks, four blocks or so away. The man left on guard would find it difficult to tear himself away from all that excitement, Starr thought satisfiedly; though if he came back he could scarcely help seeing Starr on that lighted perch, and he would undoubtedly take a shot at him if he were any man at all and had a spark of loyalty to his fellows. For Starr's business up there could not be mistaken by the stupidest greaser in the town.

With the fire to help his cause, Starr craned toward the building and looked down through the skylight. It had been partly raised for ventilation, which was needed in that little, inside room, especially since twelve men were foregathered there, and since every man in the lot was burning tobacco in some form.

Sommers was there, seated at the end of a table that had been moved into the center of the room, which brought it directly under the skylight. He sat facing Starr, and he was reading something to himself while the others waited in silence until he had finished. His strong, dark face was grave, his high forehead creased with the wrinkles of deep thinking. He had a cigar in one corner of his mouth, and he was absentmindedly chewing it rather than smoking. He looked the leader, though his clothes were inclined to shabbiness and he sat slouched forward in his chair. He looked the leader, and their leader those others proclaimed him by their very silence, and by the way their faces turned toward him while they waited.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THROUGH THE OPEN SKYLIGHT

Sommers took his cigar from his mouth and laid it carefully down upon the edge of the table, although he was plainly unconscious of the movement.

He lifted his head with a little toss that threw back a heavy lock of his jet-black hair. He glanced around the table, and his eyes dominated those others hypnotically.

"I have here," he began in the sonorous voice and the measured enunciation of the trained orator, "a letter from our esteemed--and unfortunate--comrade and fellow worker, Elfigo Apodaca. Without taking your valuable time by reading the letter through from salutation to signature, I may say briefly that its context is devoted to our cause and to the inconvenience which may be entailed because of our comrade's present incarceration, the duration of which is as yet undetermined.

"Comrade Apodaca expresses great confidence in his ultimate release. He maintains that young Medina is essentially a traitor, and that his evidence at the preliminary hearing was given purely in the spirit of revenge. That Comrade Apodaca will be exonerated fully of the charge of murder, I myself can entertain no scintilla of doubt. We may therefore dismiss from our minds any uneasiness we may, some of us, have entertained on that score.

"The question we are foregathered here to decide to-night is whether the date set for our public demonstration shall remain as it stands; whether we shall seek permission to postpone that date, or whether it shall be deemed expedient to set it forward to the earliest possible moment. As you all are doubtless aware, our esteemed compatriots in Mexico are ready and waiting our pleasure, like hounds straining at the leash. The work of organization on this side of the line has of necessity been slow, because of various adverse influences and a slothful desire for present ease and safety, which we have been constrained to combat. Also the acc.u.mulation of arms and ammunition in a sufficient quant.i.ty for our purpose without exciting suspicion has required much tactful manipulation.

"But we have here a.s.sembled the trusted representatives from our twelve districts in the State, and I trust that each one of you has come prepared to furnish this Junta with the data necessary for an intelligent action upon the question we have to decide to-night. Am I right, gentlemen, in that a.s.sumption?"

Eleven men nodded a.s.sent and looked down at the slips of paper they had produced from inner pockets and held ready in their hands.

"Then I shall ask you, compadres, to listen carefully to the report from each district, so that you may judge the wisdom of foreshortening the interval between to-night and the date set for the uprising.

"Each representative will give the number, in his district, of armed members of the Alliance; the amount of ammunition at hand; the number of agents secretly occupying positions of trust where they can give the most aid to the movement; the number of Spanish-Americans who, like our unfortunate neighbor, Estancio Medina, have refused thus far to come into the Alliance; the number, in his district, who may be counted upon to come in, once they see that the cause is not hopeless; who may be expected to take the purely American side, and who may be safely depended upon to remain neutral. I shall ask each of you to tell us also the extent and nature of such opposition as your district must be prepared to meet. There has been a rumor of some preparation for resistance to our movement, and we shall want to know all that you can tell us of that phase of the situation as observed in your district.

"These seemingly unimportant details are absolutely essential, gentlemen of the Junta. For in this revolutionary movement you must bear in mind that brother will rise up against brother, as it were. You will be called upon, perchance, to slay the dearest friend of your school days; your neighbor, if so be he is allied against you when the great day comes. We must not weaken; we must keep our eyes fixed upon the ultimate good that will come out of the turmoil. But we must know! We must not make the irretrievable error of taking anything for granted. Keeping that in mind, gentlemen, we will hear first the report from Bernalillo district."

A man at the right of Sommers unfolded his little slip of paper, cleared his throat and began, in strongly accented English, to read. The eleven who listened leaned forward, elbows on the table, and drank in the terrible figures avidly. Sommers set down the figures in columns and made notes on the pad before him, his lips pressed together in a straight line that twisted now and then with a sinister kind of satisfaction.

"That, gentlemen, is how the Cause stands in the county that has the largest population and approximately the smallest area of any county in the State. While this report is not altogether new to me, yet I am struck anew with the great showing that has been made in that county.

With the extensive yards and shops of the Santa Fe at Albuquerque seized and held by our forces, together with the junction points and--"

Starr did not wait to hear any more, but edged hastily back to the pole and began to climb down as though a disturbed hornets' nest hung above him. The report that had so elated Sommers sent a chill down Starr's back. If one county could show so appalling an insurrectory force, what of the whole State? Yes, and the other States involved! And the thing might be turned loose at any time!

He dropped to the ground, sending a scared glance for the watchman who had gone to the fire. He was nowhere to be seen, and Starr, running to the rear of the lot, skirted the high wall at a trot; crossed a narrow, black alley, hurried down behind the next lots to the cross street, walked as fast as he dared to the next corner, turned into the main street, and made for the nearest public telephone booth.

He sweated there in the gla.s.s cage for a long ten minutes before he had managed to get in touch with Sheriff O'Malley and the chief of police, and to tell each in turn what he wanted and where they must meet him, and how many minutes they might have to do it in. He came out feeling as though he had been in there an hour, and went straight to the rendezvous he had named, which was a shed near the building of _Las Nuevas_, only on another street.

They came, puffing a little and a good deal mystified. Starr, not daring to state his real business with them, had asked for men to surround and take a holdup gang. All told, there were six of them when all had arrived, and they must have been astounded at what Starr told them in a prudent undertone and speaking swiftly. They did not say anything much, but slipped away after him and came to the high wall that hid so much menace.

"There was a hombre on guard across the street," Starr told the sheriff.

"He went off to the fire, but he's liable to come back. Put a man over there in the shade of that junk shop to watch out for him and nab him before he can give the alarm. This is ticklish work, remember. Any Mexican in town would knife you if he knew what you're up to.

"Johnson, you can climb the pole and pull down on 'em through the skylight, but wait till you see by their actions that they've got the tip something's wrong, and don't shoot if you can help it. Remember this is Secret Service work, and the quieter it's done, the better pleased they'll be in Washington. There can't be any hullabaloo at all. You two fellows watch the front and back gates, and the no-shooting rule goes with you, too. If there's anything else you can do, don't shoot. But it's better to fire a cannon than let a man get away. Sabe? Now, Chief, you and the sheriff can come with me, and we'll bust up the meetin' for 'em."

He went up on the shoulder of the man who was to watch outside the rear wall, and straddled the wall for a brief reconnoiter. Evidently the Junta felt safe in their hidden little room, for no guard had been left in the yard. The back door was locked, and Starr opened it as silently as he could with his pa.s.s key. Close behind him came Sheriff O'Malley and the chief of police, whose name was Whittier. They had left their shoes beside the doorstep and walked in their socks, making no noise at all.

Starr did not dare use his searchlight, but felt his way down past the press and the forms, to where the stairs went up to the second floor. On the third step from the bottom, Starr, feeling his way with his hands, touched a dozing watchman and choked him into submission before the fellow had emitted more than a sleepy grunt of surprise. They left him gagged and tied to the iron leg of some heavy piece of machinery, and went on up the stairs, treading as stealthily as a prowling cat.

Starr turned to the right, found the door locked, and patiently turned his key a hair's breadth at a time in the lock, until he slid the bolt back. Behind him the repressed breathing of O'Malley fanned warmly the back of his neck. He pushed the door open a half inch at a time, found the outer office dark and silent, and crossed it stealthily to the closet behind the stove. O'Malley and Whittier were so close behind that he could feel them as they entered the closet and crept along its length.

Starr was reaching out before him with his hands, feeling for the door into the secret office, when Sheriff O'Malley struck his foot against the old tin spittoon, tried to cover the sound, and ran afoul of the brooms, which tripped him and sent him lurching against Starr. There in that small s.p.a.ce where everything had been so deathly still the racket was appalling. O'Malley was not much given to secret work; he forgot himself now and swore just as full-toned and just as fluently as though be had tripped in the dark over his own wheelbarrow in his own back yard.

Starr threw himself against the end of the closet where he knew the door was hidden in the wall, felt the yielding of a board, and heaved against it with his shoulder. He landed almost on top of a fat-jowled representative from Santa Fe, but he landed muzzle foremost, as it were, and he was telling the twelve to put up their hands even before he had his feet solidly planted on the floor.

Holman Sommers sat facing him. He had been writing, and he still held his pencil in his hand. He slowly crumpled the sheet of paper, his vivid eyes lifted to Starr's face. Tragic eyes they were then, for beyond Starr they looked into the stern face of the government he would have defied. They looked upon the wreck of his dearest dream; upon the tightening chains of the wage slaves he would have freed--or so he dreamed.

Starr stared back, his own mind visioning swiftly the havoc he had wrought in the dream of this leader of men. He saw, not a political outlaw caught before he could do harm to his country, but a man fated to bear in his great brain an idea born generations too soon into a brawling world of ideas that warred always with sordid circ.u.mstance. A hundred years hence this man might be called great. Now he was nothing more than a political outlaw chief, trapped with his band of lesser outlaws.

Sommers' eyes lightened impishly. His thin lips twisted in a smile at the d.a.m.nable joke which Life was playing there in that room.

"Gentlemen of the Junta," he said in his sonorous, public-platform voice, "I find it expedient, because of untoward circ.u.mstances, to advise that you make no resistance. From the unceremonious and unheralded entry of our esteemed opponents, these political prost.i.tutes who have had the effrontery to come here in the employ of a d.a.m.nable system of political tyranny and frustrate our plans for the liberation of our comrades in slavery, I apprehend the fact that we have been basely betrayed by some foul Judas among us. I am left with no alternative but to advise that you surrender your bodies to these minions of what they please to call the law.

"Whether we part now, to spend the remaining years of our life in some foul dungeon; whether to die a martyr's death on the scaffold, or whether the workers of the land awake to their power and, under some wiser, stronger leadership, liberate us to enjoy the fruits of the harvest we have but sown, I cannot attempt to prophesy. We have done what we could for our fellowmen. We have not failed, for though we perish, yet our blood shall fructify what we have sown, that our sons and our sons' sons may reap the garnered grain. Gentlemen, of the Junta, I declare our meeting adjourned!"

Starr's eyes were troubled, but his gun did not waver. It pointed straight at the breast of Holman Sommers, who looked at him measuringly when he had finished speaking.

"I can't argue about the idea back of this business," Starr said gravely.

"All I can do is my duty. Put on these handcuffs, Mr. Sommers. They stand for something you ain't big enough to lick--yet."

"Certainly," said Holman Sommers composedly. "You put the case like a philosopher. Like a philosopher I yield to the power which, I grant you, we are not big enough to lick--yet. In behalf of our Cause, however, permit me to call your attention to the fact that we might have come nearer to victory, had you not discovered and interrupted this meeting to-night." Though his face was paler than was natural, he slipped on the manacles as matter-of-factly as he would have put on clean cuffs, and rose from his chair prepared to go where Starr directed.

"No, sit down again," said Starr brusquely. "Sheriff, gather up all those pieces of paper for evidence against these men, and give them to me. Give me a receipt for the men--I'll wait for it. I want you and Chief Whittier to hold them here in this room till I come back. I won't be long--half an hour, maybe." He took the slips of paper which the sheriff folded and handed to him, and slipped them into his pocket.