The Forbidden Trail Part 49

They set off forthwith, the Lemon starting on its uneasy way, just as they reached the pumping shed.

"Something's wrong, certainly," exclaimed Roger, watching the stream of water that came from the pump. "There isn't half the usual stream there.

Do you think the pump is all right, Gustav?"

"The pump is new and goot. The vater is low. Sometime, no vater it come at all. Then I vait for it to fill again."

"I don't understand it at all," said Charley. "There is plenty of water in this range. You see that old silver mine, up there?" pointing to an ancient dump on the mountainside back of the house. "Well, the lower level of that has a foot of water in it."

"How does it seem, stagnant?" asked Roger.

"I've never seen it," replied Charley. "d.i.c.k told me."

Roger lighted his pipe and took a few meditative puffs. "Charley, are you and d.i.c.k entirely broke?" he asked.

"We've got enough left of the turquoise money to grub stake us to the end of the year. Why, Roger?"

"Well, I think you've got to have a decent gasoline engine here, at once, if you're going to save that first crop."

"But I thought your plant--" Charley spoke carefully as if fearful of hurting Roger.

"So did I," he returned, a little bitterly. "But I've thought a good many things in my life that haven't come true."

"I'm very certain that this new engine of yours will do everything you expect of it." She smiled a little. "You remember poor old Mrs. von Minden said you were to found an empire."

Roger grinned. "She didn't know engineers!"

Charley's smile faded as she stood staring at the Lemon. "No, a new engine is out of the question. We--we have some bad debts that keep Hackett from giving us credit. We're counting on this first crop to clear part of that up."

"Then," said Roger decidedly, "there's just one thing to be done. We'll move the Sun Plant up here, now, while I'm waiting to complete the engine."

"The absorber and condenser! Oh, Roger man, the whole crop would be burned to a crisp while you did that! And only you and Gustav to do it, and the team is at Archer's."

Roger bit his pipe stem. "There must be a way," he insisted, doggedly.

"There's got to be."

"Vy not make the vell, first," suggested Gustav who had been a silent auditor to the entire conversation. "If you don't get vater, a gut engine is no gut."

"Who's going to dig it?" asked Roger. "If it takes as long to get to water up here as it did at the Plant, you and I would be at it till October. No! I'm going to get help. I don't know how I'm going to get it, but it's going to be done. I could keep twenty men busy here for a month."

Charley sighed and Gustav shrugged his shoulders.

Roger relighted his pipe and went into a brown study. Gustav waited patiently for several moments, then left to do the evening ch.o.r.es.

Charley sat on an empty box beside the pump watching now the stream that flowed over the field and now Roger's half closed eyes. Finally he emptied his pipe and rose.

"Didn't Elsa call supper?" he asked.

"Some time ago." Charley rose too. "But I didn't want to interrupt. Have you solved your troubles?"

"I don't know. But I've thought of something I'm going to try out.

Wasn't that camp Felicia went to a permanent one?"

"Yes, in a way. The Indians come there again and again. But they won't work, Roger."

"Old Rabbit Tail works. Charley, take a little trip with me to-morrow.

Let's see if my idea works."

"I'd like to, Roger. I haven't been away from sight of this adobe hut but twice in a year. Once, the night we found you, and once, the night you and I--"

"I know, poor old girl! Well, let's have a little picnic trip of our own to-morrow. We'll take Peter and some grub--get a dawn start and be back by sundown."

"Oh, I'd love it!" cried Charley, looking like Felicia with the sudden flash of joy in her eyes. "I'll put up the best lunch ever. Come along, Roger, do! Elsa will take our heads off."

Roger invited Elsa to accompany them on the mysterious trip, but Elsa refused to go.

"d.i.c.k will be back any day now," she said, "and I'm going to be here when he comes."

Charley made no reply to this but Roger frankly shrugged his shoulders.

"I feel as if I never wanted to see him again. I'll be here at dawn, Charley. You can meet me at the corral, can't you, so's not to rout the others out too early?"

Charley agreed and dawn was just unfolding over the desert when she tied the grub pack to Peter's saddle. She waited for some time, sitting on the rock, her back against the corral, before Roger came. He appeared at last, just as the first rays of the sun shot over the mountains.

"Sorry to be late," he said, "but my gasoline's given out and I had to cook breakfast by hand, as it were, over some chips. Whew, it's going to be one hot day."

"I don't care how hot it is," replied Charley, recklessly. "I feel as I were being taken to the county fair, and I was almost too excited to sleep. Come along! I know the trail well."

It was a well beaten trail. The Indians had used it for countless generations in their search for pottery clay. It lifted zig-zag over the Coyote Range, giving at the crest this morning a superb view of distant peaks and of gold melting into blue infinities. It dropped zig-zag into canyons that were parched and cracked with late summer heat and lifted again to cross a peak whose top and sides had been blasted and left purple and gashed by an ancient volcano. Then once more it dropped gradually and gracefully into the canyon where the little spring mirrored the blue of the Arizona sky.

There were half a dozen Indian sun shelters near the spring, each a mere cat's claw and yucca thatch, supported on cedar posts. To Roger's surprise and gratification the Indians were at home. It was still early and they were at breakfast. With Peter trailing like a dog, Charley and Roger stopped a short distance from the camp.

Old Rabbit Tail, in his breech clout, squatted near a pot of simmering stew, now dipping in a long handled spoon and eating from it meditatively, now puffing at a yellow cigarette. Several squaws in dirty calico dresses, squatted near by awaiting their turn. Each shelter held a similar group, every one of which paused in breathless interest as the two whites approached.

Roger strode directly up to the old chief. "Good morning, Rabbit Tail!"

he said.

Rabbit Tail grunted.

"I came up to have a talk with you," Roger went on, pulling out his pipe. "Sit down, Charley, this is going to be a regular pow-wow."

A tall Indian in the next shelter rose slowly and started quietly toward the back trail. "Hey! Qui-tha!" called Roger, sternly, "Come back here!

I've something to say to you. The sheriff ought to have you. Call him, Rabbit Tail."

Rabbit Tail spoke in Hualapai and Qui-tha came slowly up to the old chief's shelter and dropping down beside him, lighted a cigarette.

Charley, sitting on a rock at a little distance, chin in hand, arm on knee, shivered slightly in the broiling sun. Roger, who had learned much about Indians from Qui-tha, jerked his thumb at Charley.

"You know that white woman, Rabbit Tail?"

"Four years!" replied the chief.