The Treasure Trail Part 22

"I knowing it long before I see it," she explained gravely. "The father of me make that trail in the sand for my eyes when I am only little. I make the same for him in a game to play. When I make every turn right, and name the place, and never forget--then he bring me, for it is mine to know."

"Sufferin' cats!" muttered Rhodes, eyeing her in wonder. "The next time I see an Indian kid playing in the sand, I'll linger on the trail and absorb wisdom!"

"Come," she said, "you not seeing the one enchant look, the--how you say?--the not believe look."

"Well, take it from me, Cinderella, I'm seeing not believe things this very now," announced Kit, giving a fond look towards that comforting gleam of yellow metal bedding flecks of quartz. "I see it, but will have to sleep, and wake up to find it in the same place before I can believe what I think I see."

With the food and drink for Miguel in his hands he had followed the girl through the shadowed gallery of the slanting smoke-stained roof.

His eyes were mainly directed to the rock floor lest he stumble and spill the precious coffee; thus he gave slight thought to the little ravine up which she had led him to the cave which was also a mine.

But as he stepped out into the sunlight she stood looking up into his face with almost a smile, the first he had seen in her wistful tragic eyes. Then she lifted her hand and pointed straight out, and the "enchant look," the "not believe" look was there! He stared as at a mirage for an incredulous moment, and then whispered, "Great G.o.d of the Desert!"

For a little s.p.a.ce, a few rods only, the mountain dipped steeply, and trickling water from above fell in little cascades to lower levels, where a great jagged wall of impregnable granite arose as a barrier along the foot of the mountain.

But he was above the sharp outline of the huge saw with the jagged granite teeth, and between the serrated edges he could look far across the yellow-gray reaches of sand and desert growths. Far and wide was the "not believe" look, to the blue phantom-like peaks on the horizon, but between the two ranges was a white line with curious dots drifting and whirling like flies along it, and smoke curling up, and----

Then it was he uttered the incredulous cry, for he was indeed viewing the thing scarce to be believed.

He was looking across the great Rancho Soledad, and the white line against the sand was the wall of the old mission where the vaqueros were herding a band of horses into the great quadrangle of the one-time patio turned into a corral since the buildings on three sides had melted down again into mother earth.

He remembered riding around these lines of the old arches seeking trace of that door of the legend,--the door from which the aliso tree of the mine could be seen,--and there was nowhere a trace of a door.

"Queer that every other part of the prospect developed according to specifications and not the door," he grumbled whimsically.

"Cinderella, why have you hid the door in the wall from me?"

She looked around uncertainly, not understanding.

"No portal but it," she said with a movement of her head towards the great slab forming a pointed arch against the mountain and shielding the unbelievable richness there, "also El Alisal, the great tree, is gone. This was the place of it; the old ones tell my father it was as chief of the trees and stand high to be seen. The sky fire took it, and took the padres that time they make an altar in this place."

"Um," a.s.sented Kit, noting traces of ancient charcoal where the aliso tree had grown great in the moisture of the spring before lightning had decided its tragic finish, "a great storm it must have been to send sky fire enough to kill them all."

"Yes," said Tula quietly,--"also there was already another shrine at this place, and the G.o.ds near."

He glanced at her quickly and away.

"Sure," he agreed, "sure, that's how it must have been. They destroyed the aliso and there was no other landmark to steer by. White men might find a thousand other dimples in the range but never this one, the saw-tooth range below us has the best of them buffaloed. Come along, Senorita Aladdin, and help me with the guardian of the treasure. We've got to look after Miguel, and then start in where the padres left off.

And you might do a prayer stunt or two at the shrine you mentioned. We need all the good medicine help you can evoke."

As they approached the pool where the faintest mist drifted above the water warm from hidden fires of the mountain, Kit halted before he quite reached the still form beside the yucca, and, handing the food and drink to the girl, he went forward alone.

He was puzzled afterward as to why he had done that, for no fold of the garment was disturbed, nothing visible to occasion doubt, yet he bent over and lifted the cover very gently. The face of Miguel was strangely gray and there was no longer sign of breath. The medicine of the sacred pool had given him rest, but not life.

He replaced the blanket and turned to the girl;--the last of the guardians of the shrine of the red gold.

"Little sister," he said, "Miguel grew tired of the trails of a hard land. He has made his choice to go asleep here in the place where you tell me the G.o.ds are near. He does not want us to have sad hearts, for he was very sad and very tired, and he will not need food, Tula."

Her eyes filled with tears, but she made no reply, only unbound her hair as she had seen mourning women do, and seated herself apart, her face hidden in her arms.

"No one is left to mourn but me, and I mourn!" she half chanted. "I say it for the mother of me, and for my sister, that the ghosts may listen. Happily he is going now from hard trails! He has chosen at this place! Happily he has chosen, and only we are sad. No debt is ours to pay at this place; he has chosen--and a life is paid at El Alisal! Happily he will find the trail of the birds from this place, and the trail of the clouds over the high mountain. No one is left to mourn but me; and I mourn!"

Rhodes understood no word of her lamentations, chanted now loudly, now lowly, at intervals hour after hour that day. He set grimly to work digging a grave in the lower part of the ravine, gathering dry gra.s.s for lining as best he could to make clear to the girl that no lack of care or honor was shown the last man of Cajame's stock.

The work took most of the day, for he carried stone and built a wall around the grave and covered it with slatelike slabs gathered from a shattered upheaval of long ago.

Tula watched all this gravely, and with approval, for she drew with her finger the mark of the sun symbol on one of the slabs.

"It is well to make that mark," she said, "for the sons of Cajame were priests of the sun. The sign is on the great rock of the trail, and it is theirs."

With the chisel he carved the symbol as she suggested, glad to do anything for the one mourner for the dead man who had offered the treasure of the desert to him.

"That is how he made choice," she said when it was marked plainly.

"Me, I think he was leading us on the night trail to this place--I think so. He is here to guard the gold of El Alisal for you. That is how it will be. He has made choice."

Kit got away by himself to think over the unexpected situation. The girl climbed to a higher point, seated herself, and continued her chant of mourning. He knew she was following, as best she knew, the traditional formalities of a woman for the death of a chief. He found himself more affected by that brave fatalistic recital, now loud and brave, now weirdly slow and tender, than if she had given way to tempests of tears. A man could comfort and console a weeping stray of the desert, but not a girl who sat with unbound hair under the yucca and called messages to the ghosts until the sun,--a flaming ball of fire,--sank beyond the far purple hills.

And that was the first day of many days at the hidden treasure place of the red gold.

CHAPTER XI

GLOOM OF BILLIE

The return of Captain Pike on Kit's horse was a matter of considerable conjecture at Granados, but the old prospector was so f.a.gged that at first he said little, and after listening to the things Billie had to tell him--he said less.

"That explains the curious ways of the Mexicans as I reached the border," he decided. "They'd look first at the horse, then at me, but asked no questions, and told me nothing. Queer that no word reached us about Singleton! No, it isn't either. We never crossed trails with any from up here. There's so much devilment of various sorts going on down there that a harmless chap like Singleton wouldn't be remembered."

"Conrad's down at Magdalena now, but we seldom know how far he ranges.

Sometimes he stays at the lower ranch a week at a time, and he might go on to Sinaloa for all we know. He seems always busy and is extremely polite, but I gave him the adobe house across the arroya after Papa Phil--went. I know he has the Mexicans thinking Kit Rhodes came back for that murder; half of them believe it!"

"Well, I reckon I can prove him an alibi if it's needed. I'll go see the old judge."

"He'll tell you not to travel at night, or alone, if you know anything," she prophesied. "That's what he tells me. To think of old Rancho Granados coming to that pa.s.s! We never did have trouble here except a little when Apaches went on the warpath before my time, and now the whole border is simmering and ready to boil over if anyone struck a match to it. The judge hints that Conrad is probably only one cog in the big border wheel, and they are after the engineer who turns that wheel, and do you know you haven't told me one word of Kit Rhodes, or whether he's alive or dead!"

"Nothing to tell! We didn't find it, and he took the back trail with an Indian girl and her daddy, and----"

"An--Indian girl?"

"Yes, a queer little kid who was in a lot of trouble. Her father was wounded in one of the fracases they have down there every little while. Nary one of us could give an address when we took different trails, for we didn't know how far we'd be allowed to travel--the warring factions are swarming and troublesome over the line."

"Well, if a girl could stand the trail, it doesn't look dangerous."

"Looks are deceptive, child,--and this isn't just any old girl! It's a rare bird, it's tougher than whalebone and possessed of a wise little devil. She froze to Kit as a _compadre_ at first chance. He headed back to Mesa Blanca. I reckon they'd make it,--barring accidents."

"Mesa Blanca? That's the Whitely outfit?"