The Treasure Trail Part 54

sighed Jocasta in sudden relief. Then she turned to her American courier and guard and salvation over the desert trails.

"I saw," she said briefly. "She is as the young sister of me who--who is gone to G.o.d! Make yourself her guard forever, Don Pajarito. May you sing many songs together, and have no sorrows."

After the substantial supper, Kit heard at first hand all the veiled suspicion against himself as voiced in the fragment of old newspaper wrapped around Fidelio's tobacco, and he and Dona Jocasta spread out the records written by the padre, and signed by Jocasta and the others, as witness of how Philip Singleton met death in the arroya of the cottonwoods.

"It is all here in this paper," said Jocasta, "and that is best. I can tell the alcalde, yes, but if an--an accident had come to me on the trail, the words on the paper would be the safer thing."

"But fear on the trail is gone for you now," said Kit smiling at her across the camp fire. Neither of them had said any word of life at Mesa Blanca or Soledad, or of the work of Tula at the death.

The German had strangled a priest, and escaped, and in ignorance of trails had ridden into a quicksand, and that was all the outer world need know of his end!

The fascinated eyes of Billie dwelt on Jocasta with endless wonder.

"And you came north with the guns and soldiers of Ramon Rotil,--how wonderful!" she breathed. "And if the newspapers tell the truth I reckon he needs the guns all right! Cap dear, where is that one Jose Ortego rode in with from the railroad as we were leaving La Partida?"

"In my coat, Honey. You go get it--you are younger than this old-timer."

Jocasta followed Billie with her eyes, though she had not understood the English words between them. It was not until the paper was unfolded with an old and very bad photograph of Ramon Rotil staring from the front page that she whispered a prayer and reached out her hand. The headline to the article was only three words in heavy type across the page: "Trapped at last!"

But the words escaped her, and that picture of him in the old days with the sombrero of a peon on his head and his audacious eyes smiling at the world held her. No picture of him had ever before come her way; strange that it should be waiting for her there at the border!

The Indian boy at sight of it, stepped nearer, and stood a few paces from her, looking down.

"It calls," he said.

It was the first time he had spoken except to make reply since entering the American camp. Dona Jocasta frowned at him and he moved a little apart, leaning,--a slender dark, semi-nude figure, against the green and yellow mist of a palo verde tree,--listening with downcast eyes.

Dona Jocasta looked from the pictured face to the big black letters above.

"Is it a victorious battle, for him?" she asked and Kit hesitated to make reply, but Billie, not knowing reason for silence, blurted out the truth even while her eyes were occupied by another column.

"Not exactly, senora. But here is something of real interest to you, something of Soledad--oh, I _am_ sorry!"

"What does it say,--Soledad?"

"See!--I forgot you don't know the English!"

Troops from the south to rescue Don Jose Perez from El Gavilan at Soledad turn guns on that survival of old mission days, and level it to the ground. Soledad was suspected as an ammunition magazine for the bandit chief, and it is feared Senor Perez is held in the mountains for ransom, as no trace of him has been found.

"Now you've done it," remarked Kit, and Billie turned beseeching eyes on the owner of Soledad, and repeated miserably--"I _am_ so sorry!"

But Dona Jocasta only lifted her head with a certain disdain, and veiled the emerald eyes slightly.

"So!" she murmured with a shrug of the shoulder. "It is then a bandit he is called in the words of the American newspaper?"

Cap Pike not comprehending the rapid musical Spanish, leaned forward fishing for a coal to light his pipe, noting her voice and watching her eyes.

"There you have it already!" he muttered to Kit. "All velvet, and mad as h.e.l.l!"

Billie, much bewildered, turned to Kit as for help, but the slender hand of Dona Jocasta reached out pointing to the headlines.

"And--this?" she said coldly. "It is, you say, not victorious for Ramon Rotil, that--bandit?"

"It says, senora," hesitated Billie, "that he is hid in the hills, and----"

"That we know," stated Dona Jocasta, "what other thing?"

"'He has a wound and was carried by his men to one of his retreats, a hidden place,'" read Billie slowly, translating into Spanish as she went on. "That is all except that the Federals had to retreat temporarily because a storm caused trouble and washed out a bridge over which their ammunition train has to go. The place of the accident is very bad. Timber and construction engineers are being rushed to service there, but for a few days luck is with the Hawk."

"So!--For a few days!" repeated Dona Jocasta in the cool sweet voice.

"In a few days Ramon Rotil could cross Mexico. He is El Gavilan!"

Things were coming too fast for Billie. She regarded the serenity of Dona Jocasta with amazement, and tried to imagine how she would feel if enemy guns battered down the old walls of Granados, or--thought of terror--if Kit should be held in the hills and tortured for ransom!

"Speaking of floods," remarked Pike in amiable desire to bridge over an awkward pause, "we've used half the water we brought, and need to make a bright and early start tomorrow. Rio Seco is no garden spot to get caught in short of water. Our La Partida mules are fresh as daisies right off a month of range, but yours sure look as if they had made the trip."

"What does he say,--the old senor?" asked Dona Jocasta.

Billie translated for her, whereupon she arose and summoned Clodomiro by a gesture.

"My bed," she said briefly, "over there," and she indicated a thicket of greasewood the wagon had pa.s.sed on their arrival. "Also this first night of safety you will be the sentinel to keep guard that Senor Rhodes may at last have sleep. All the danger trail he had none."

Cap Pike protested that he do guard duty, but the smile of Dona Jocasta won her way.

"He is younger and not weary, senor. It is good for him, and it pleases me," she said.

"The camp is yours," he agreed weakly, and against his better judgment. He did not like Indians who were like "sulky slim brown dumb snakes"; that was what he muttered when he looked at Clodomiro. In his irritation at the Indian's silence it didn't even occur to him that he never had known any snakes but dumb ones.

But if the voice of Clodomiro was uncannily silent, his eyes spoke for him as they followed Dona Jocasta. Kit could only think of a lost, homesick dog begging for the scent of the trail to his own kennel. He said so to Billie as he made her bed in the camp wagon.

"Cap and I will be right here at the hind wheels," he promised.

"Yes,--sure, I'll let the Indian ride herd for the night. Dona Jocasta is right, it's his turn, and we seem to have pa.s.sed the danger line."

"Knock wood!" cautioned Billie.

So he rapped his head with his knuckles, and they laughed together as young happy things do at trifles. Then he stretched himself for sleep under the stars and almost within arm's reach of the girl--the girl who had ridden to meet him in the night, the wonderful girl who had promised to wait until he came back from France ... of course he could get into the army _now_! They would need men too badly to turn him down again. If there was a trifle of discrepancy in sight of his eyes--which he didn't at all believe--he had the dust now, also the nuggets, to buy any and all treatment to adjust _that_ little matter.

He had nearly four hundred pounds, aside from giving all he dared give at once as Tula's gift to those women of the slave raid. After the war was over he would find ways of again crossing over to the great treasure chest in the hidden canon. The little information Pike had managed to convey to him about that sheepskin map told him that the most important indications had been destroyed during those years it had been buried for safe-keeping. The only true map in existence was the one in his own memory,--no use to tell Pike and Billie that! He could leave them in comfort and content, and when he got back from France--He wondered how long it would last--the war. Hadn't the greatest of Americans tried three years ago to hammer the fact into the alleged brain pans of the practical politicians that the sooner the little old United States made guns, and ships, and flying machines for _herself_, the sooner she could help end that upheaval of h.e.l.l in Europe?... and they wouldn't listen! Listen?--They brought every ounce of influence they could round up to silence those facts,--the eternally condemned ostriches sticking their own heads in the sand to blind the world to the situation! Now they were in, and he wondered if they had even ten rounds of ammunition for the cartridge belts of the few trained soldiers in service? They had not had even three rounds for the showy grand review attempted in Texas not long since; also the transportation had been a joke, some of the National Guards started, but never did arrive--and France was a longer trail than Texas. G.o.d!

they should be ready to fight as the French were ready, in twelve hours--and it would have to be months--a long unequal h.e.l.l for a time over there, but only one finish, and the brown rats driven back to their den! After that the most wonderful girl would--would--would----

Then all the sleep due him on the sleepless trail settled over him like a net weighted, yet very caressing, and the world war and the wonderful girl drifted far away!

Beyond, on the other side of the fire, and out of the circle of light, Clodomiro bore the _serape_ of Dona Jocasta, and made clear the place for her couch. She had returned to the light of the fire and was scanning again the annoying paper of the Americanos. Especially that remembered face of the audacious eyes. They were different eyes in these latter days, level and cynical, and sometimes cruel.

"He calls," said Clodomiro again beside her. She had not heard him, and turned in anger that he dare startle her.