The Treasure Trail Part 21

Curious odors came to him from the shadowy bowl, not exactly a pleasing fragrance, yet he knew it--But his mind refused to work. As the trail grew wider, and earth was under his feet instead of rock slivers and round boulders, he discovered that he was leading the burro, the grub sack over his shoulder, and with the other arm was supporting the girl, who was evidently walking with closed eyes, able to progress but not to guide herself.

Then there was the swish-swish of gra.s.ses about their feet and poor Bunting s.n.a.t.c.hed mouthfuls as all three staggered downward. The light began to grow, and somewhere in the shadowy bowl there was the most blest sound known in the desert, the gurgle of running water!

"We hear it--but we can't believe it--old Buntin'," muttered Kit holding the burro from steady and stubborn attempts to break away, "and you are just loco enough to think you smell it."

Then suddenly their feet struck rock again, not jagged or slippery fragments, but solid paving, and a whiff of faint mist drifted across his face in the gray of the first dawn, and the burro craned his neck forward at the very edge of a black rock basin where warm vapor struck the nostrils like a soporific.

The girl roused herself at a wordless exclamation from Rhodes, and began automatically helping Miguel from the saddle, and stripping him to the breechcloth.

Kit's amazement startled him out of his lethargy of exhaustion. It was light enough now to see that her eyes were bloodshot, and her movements quick with a final desperation.

"There!" she said and motioned towards a shelving place in the rock, "there--medicine--all quick!"

She half lifted the staggering, unconscious Indian, and Kit, perceiving her intention, helped her with Miguel to the shallow edge of the basin where she rolled him over until he was submerged to the shoulder in the shallow bath, cupping her hands she scooped water and drenched his face.

"Why,--it's warm!" muttered Kit.

"Medicine," said Tula, and staggered away.

How Rhodes shed his own garments and slipped into the basin beside Miguel he never knew, only he knew he had found an early subst.i.tute for heaven. It was warm sulphur water,--tonic, refreshing and infinitely soothing to every sore muscle and every frazzled nerve. He ducked his head in it, tossed some more over the head and shoulders of the sleeping Indian, and then, submerged to his arms, he promptly drifted into slumber himself.

He wakened to the sound of Baby Bunting pawing around the grub pack.

Hunger was his next conviction, for the heavenly rest in the medicine bath had taken every vestige of weariness away. He felt lethargic from the sulphur fumes, and more sleep was an enticing thought, yet he put it from him and got into his clothes after the use of a handkerchief as a bath towel. Miguel still slept and Kit bent over him in some concern, for the sleep appeared curiously deep and still, the breath coming lightly, yet he did not waken when lifted out of the water and covered with a poncho in the shade of a great yucca.

"I reckon it's some dope in these hot springs," decided Kit. "I feel top heavy myself, and won't trouble him till I've rustled some grub and have something to offer. Well, Buntin', we are all here but the daughter of the Glen," he said, rescuing the grub sack, "and if she was a dream and you inveigled me here by your own diabolical powers, I've a hunch this is our graveyard; we'll never see the world and its vanities again!"

A bit of the blue and scarlet on a bush above caught his eye. It was the belt of Tula, and he went upwards vaguely disturbed that he had drifted into ease without question of her welfare.

He found her emerging from a smaller rock basin, her one garment dripping a wet trail as she came towards him. There was no smile in her greeting, but a look of content, of achievement.

"My father," she said, "he is----"

"Sleeping beyond belief! good medicine sleep, I hope."

She nodded her head comprehendingly, for she had done the impossible and had triumphed. She looked at the sack of food he held.

"There is one place for fire, and other water is there. Come, it is to you."

She struck off across the sun-bathed little gra.s.s plot to a jumble of rock where a cool spring emerged, ran only a few rods, and sank again out of sight. The shattered rock was as a sponge, so completely was the water sucked downward again. Marks of burro's hoofs were there.

"Baby Buntin' been prospecting while we wallowed in the dope bath,"

said Kit.

"Maybe so, maybe not," uttered the Indian child, if such she could be called after the super-woman initiative of that forbidding trail. She was down on her knees peering at the tracks in the one little wet spot below the spring.

"Two," she said enigmatically. "That is good, much good. It will be meat."

Then she saw him pulling dry gra.s.ses and breaking branches of scrub growth for a fire, and she stood up and motioned him to follow. They were in a narrow, deep ravine separated from the main one by the miniature plain of lush gra.s.s, a green cradle of rest in the heart of the gray hills. She went as directly upward as the broken rock would permit, and suddenly he followed her into a blackened cave formed by a great granite slab thrusting itself upwards and enduring through the ages when the broken rock had shattered down to form an opposite wall.

And the cloud bursts of the desert had swept through, and washed the sands clear, leaving a high black roof slanting upwards to the summit.

Tula moved ahead into the far shadows. He could see that beyond her somewhere a ray of light filtered blue, but he halted at the entrance, puzzled at the black roof where all the rock of the mountain was gray and white except where mineral streaks were of reds and russets and moldy greens. Then he put his hand up and touched the roof and understood. Soot from ancient fires was discernible on his hand, flakes of it fell to the floor, dry and black, scaling off under pressure. The scales were thick and very old, like blackened moss. He had seen blackened rock like that in other volcanic regions, but this was different.

"It is here," said Tula, and he followed the voice through a darker shadowed bit of the way, then through the ray of light, and then----

The first thing he saw was the raised hearth of a rather pretentious fireplace, or place of fire, for it resembled not at all the tiny little cooking hearth of desert Indians. A stone hatchet lay beside it, and, what was much more surprising, two iron instruments of white man's manufacturing, a wedge and a long chisel.

He picked up the chisel, weighed it in his hand, and looked at the girl. He was now becoming accustomed to the dim light and could see her eyes following his every movement with curious questioning. There was a tiny frowning wrinkle between her brows as if serious matters were being decided there.

"It is here," she said again. "Maybe someone dies when a white friend is shown the way--maybe I die, who knows?--but it is here--El Alisal of the gold of the rose!"

She made a little gesture and moved aside, and the chisel fell to the stone floor with a clang as Kit shouted and dropped on his knees before an incredible thing in the gray wall.

That upthrust of the rock wall had strange variety of color, and between the granite and the gray limestone there was a ragged rusty band of iron as a note of contrast to the sprinkling of glittering quartz catching the ray of light, but the quartz was sprinkled on a six inch band of yellow--not the usual quartz formation with dots of color, but a deep definite yellow held together by white crystals.

"The red gold! it's the red gold!" he said feeling the yellow surface instinctively.

"Yes, senor, it is the red gold of El Alisal, and it is to you," but her eyes were watching him hungrily as she spoke. And something of that pathetic fear penetrated his amazed mind, and he remembered.

"No, Tula, only my share to me. I do the work, but the great share is to you, that it may buy back your mother from the slavers of the south."

"Also my sister," said the girl, and for the first time she wept.

"Come, come! This is the time for joy. The danger is gone, and we are at rest beside this--why, it's a dream come true, the golden dream!

Come, help me cook that we may be strong for the work."

She helped silently, fetching water and more sticks for the fire.

There were many things to ask, but he asked no questions, only gazed between bites and sups at the amazing facts facing him.

"I've seen ores and ores in my time, but nothing like this!" he exulted. "Why, I can 'high grade' mule loads of this and take it out without smelting," and then he grinned at his little partner. "We just struck it in time,--meat is mighty near done."

"Plenty meat!" she said nodding her head wisely. "Burro, big burro, wild burro! I see track."

"Wild burro? Sure, that makes it simple till we rest up. You are one great little commissary sergeant."

He noted that the pitch of the roof towards the face of the mountain carried the smoke in a sort of funnel to be sifted through high unseen crannies of shattered rock above. All was dark in the end of the gallery, but a perceptible draught from the portal bore the smoke upward.

"It's too good to be true," he decided, looking it over. "I'm chewing bacon and it tastes natural, but I'm betting with myself that this is a dream, and I'll wake up in the dope pond with my mouth full of sulphur water."

The girl watched him gravely, and ate sparingly, though parched corn had been her only sustenance through the trail of the dreadful night.

Her poor sandals were almost cut from her feet, and even while jesting at the unreality of it all, Kit was making mental note of her needs--the wild burro would at least provide green hide sandals for her until better could be found, and she had earned the best.

He was amazed at her keenness. She did not seem to think, but instinctively to feel her way to required knowledge, caring for herself in the desert as a fledgling bird tossed by some storm from the home nest. He remembered there were wild burros in the Sonora hills, but that she should have already located one on this most barren of mountains was but another unbelievable touch to the trail of enchantment, and after a century of lost lives and treasure in the search for the Indian mine, to think that this Indian stray, picked up on a desolate trail, should have been the one to know that secret and lead him to it!

"Other times you have been here?" he asked as he poured coffee in a tin for Miguel, and dug out the last box of crackers from the grub pack.

"Once I come, one time, and it was to make prayer here. It is mine to know, but not my mother, not other peoples, only the father of me and me. If I die then he show the trail to other one, not if I live. That is how."

"He surely picked the right member of his honorable family," decided Kit. "Only once over the trail, once?"