The Forbidden Trail Part 38

Roger spent the remainder of the day in the engine house, going over his engine, shaking his head, muttering to himself like an old man, finally straightening his shoulders stubbornly and whistling through his teeth.

After an early supper, the three went up to the ranch. Felicia, who was wiping the dishes for Charley, hurled herself at Roger, dishcloth and all.

"Oh!" she shrieked. "You must never leave me like this again, Roger. I worried so about you that my stomach ached all the time you were gone."

Charley laughed with the rest, but quickly sobered. "I'm so glad you were able to take care of poor Uncle Otto," she said. "I shall miss him so. None of you knew him as I did." There was a pause, then Charley went on, "Just think of Ernest's sister coming! I remember her vaguely. She's like you, isn't she, Ernest?"

"Not a bit," said Roger. "She's full of pep and very good looking."

"Well, what do you know about that?" asked Ernest, looking at Roger wonderingly.

"She's going to stay with us, isn't she? Please say yes," cried Charley.

"Oh, no, don't have her here. She wouldn't like to be here all the time," begged Felicia. Then she blushed and retreated behind Roger's chair. She refused half tearfully to explain her statement when d.i.c.k urged her, at first jokingly, then in a commanding manner.

"Tell me, Felicia, don't you like it here?" drawing her to his side.

"Oh, let her alone, d.i.c.ky," begged Charley. "Why insist on a child's reason for anything?"

"But I want to know! Tell me, Felicia, don't you like it here?"

"Yes," said Felicia, with trembling lips, "I like it here, 'cept when you get sick and are so awful cross with me and Charley and make Charley cry. I wouldn't want Elsa to see you that way."

d.i.c.k turned purple. "Oh, well," cut in Roger, quickly, "Elsa'll have three men's crossness to put up with down at our camp, Felicia. Just think of that! And if it should happen that we'd all get cross at once, probably we'd blow the roof of the engine house off again."

"That's why we want Elsa to stay with us," said Ernest. "You see when men are cross, the only thing that cures them is having a nice girl around to make them ashamed of themselves."

"Sometimes already, if it gets too much vhen I make myself mad," added Gustav, "maybe ve get a squaw to come by our camp to vip us bad boys for Fraulein Elsa, eh?"

"If all the men in the world get cross, like you, d.i.c.ky," asked Felicia, wonderingly, "why do ladies marry them?"

"They don't, chicken! No one's married me."

"Maybe Elsa will. Unless Gustav gets her," suggested Felicia.

"Maybe Roger, he gets her, eh?" asked Gustav.

"Oh, no!" in sudden alarm, crossing over to Roger's knee to look up into his face with a depth of love in her brown eyes that tightened his throat as he lifted her into his lap. "Roger's going to marry me. Only Roger, if ever you're as cross to me as you were to Gustav, I shall just walk out of the house and never, never come back."

It was Roger's turn to blush and he did so thoroughly, while d.i.c.k burst into a roar of laughter in which the other men joined. Under its cover, Charley hustled Felicia off to bed.

At dawn the next day Roger and d.i.c.k started on their melancholy errand.

The climbing was in many instances too precipitous for the horses and they made many detours. It was late in the afternoon, on a detour across a wide canyon that they came upon the end of the Von Minden drama. The canyon was really a part of the desert floor and was deep with sand.

Roger it was, who first noted footprints.

"Look, d.i.c.k!" he called. "An Indian must have been here! Look at the naked footprints!"

d.i.c.k rode up beside him. "I wonder!" he said.

Both men glanced about them. "Yonder are some clothes, let's pick up this trail," suggested d.i.c.k.

"By Jove, it's Mrs. von Minden's pink wrapper!" cried Roger, "and over there are her shoes."

"Rog, we've got to brace ourselves," d.i.c.k pulled up his horse. "When folks thirst to death in the desert, they often strip off their clothes and run around in a big circle."

Roger bit his dry lips. "All right, d.i.c.k, come on," he muttered.

The foot marks swung in a wide circle. It was a mile farther on that they found the madam, stark naked, her gaunt face turned to the sky. She too had been dead for many days.

"I don't see why the buzzards didn't get her. Her burro wasn't Peter, he deserted her," murmured d.i.c.k. "Look, Rog, under her head."

It was the dispatch box, lightly sifted over with sand as was the body.

"What do you suppose happened?" asked Roger.

"She obviously thirsted to death. But she got the box first. Do you suppose she killed him, to get it?"

"Perhaps she found him dead and took it," suggested Roger.

"Well, we'll never know. Let's gather up what we can of her clothes and bury her. Poor old devil. Her story's ended," said d.i.c.k.

They dug Clarissa von Minden's grave and put her in it, then d.i.c.k pulled a prayer book from his pocket.

"Charley made me bring it," he explained. "I'm glad of it, now. Somehow it seems worse to chuck a woman away without a minister to help, than it does a man. I guess she did some tall suffering, from first to last, eh Rog?"

Roger nodded. d.i.c.k read the burial service reverently and they finished this gruesome job. Roger tied the little black metal box to his saddle and they started on their way. They made camp in the mountains that evening, not far from the peak that sheltered Von Minden. They had ample firewood for they camped near a clump of cedars and they went hastily through the contents of the dispatch box, by the light of the flames.

There was no marriage certificate. The entire box was filled with notes in German in a microscopic hand. Roger read excerpts of it. Von Minden seemed to have made an exhaustive study of the resources of this section of the desert and of the north of Mexico.

"He had some sort of a huge irrigation scheme in his head," Roger said.

"He's got some letters copied in here and a lot of stuff. We ought to turn this over to a German consul, somewhere and let him notify the proper relations."

"That a good idea," agreed d.i.c.k. "He used to tell Charley and me strange things when he was off his head. Once he said he was charting this region for the Kaiser. The poor old lunatic."

"His ideas were not so crazy as they might be," protested Roger. "I've some dreams myself for this country, you know."

"What are they, Rog?" asked d.i.c.k. "I know in only the vaguest way."

"If I can irrigate your twenty-five acres with my little plant, don't you see that I have proven that I am able to tap unlimited cheap power.

The possibilities of this country with cheap power are staggering. I don't blame Von Minden for calling it a kingdom. That's just what it might be, with the mountains of the west range and the Rockies to the east forming natural boundaries. It seems as if a kingdom really could be self-supporting in here. If only I can harness the sun to a cheap apparatus that any one can buy and operate! Why all these ranges would be studded with going mines. Every valley would be green with growing crops. I hardly dare let my imagination go on it. Our little old U. S.

has got a wonderful unborn commonwealth down here."

"Well, your dreaming is a lot more practical than his, anyhow," said d.i.c.k. "More power to your elbow, old man, I say."

"I won't forget what you people have done for me!" Roger returned the papers to the dispatch box.

They found the crude grave intact, the next morning. They were able with the aid of the pick to make a shallow trough in the rock. They built this up with stone and the last chapter of the Von Minden story was ended. They reached home at dusk.

Ernest and Roger sat before the tent alone that night while Gustav wrote a letter in the cook house. The heat did not seem to have lessened much with the going down of the sun. The stars low-hung over the engine house seemed to glow with fire and the darkness was like a hot blanket over the sand. Ernest was unusually silent. He sat with his pipe unlighted, staring at the stars so long that Roger said, at last: