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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Starr, of the Desert, by B. M Bower
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Starr, of the Desert
+
+Author: B. M Bower
+
+Release Date: June 9, 2004 [EBook #12570]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STARR, OF THE DESERT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+                         STARR, OF THE DESERT
+
+                            BY B.M. BOWER
+
+                 AUTHOR OF CHIP OF THE FLYING U, ETC.
+
+                                1917
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER
+
+
+       I A COMMONPLACE MAN WAS PETER
+
+      II IN WHICH PETER DISCOVERS A WAY OUT
+
+     III VIC SHOULD WORRY
+
+      IV STARR WOULD LIKE TO KNOW
+
+       V A GREASE SPOT IN THE SAND
+
+      VI "DARN SUCH A COUNTRY!"
+
+     VII MOONLIGHT, A MAN AND A SONG
+
+    VIII HOLMAN SOMMERS, SCIENTIST
+
+      IX PAT, A NICE DOGGUMS
+
+       X THE TRAIL OF SILVERTOWN CORDS
+
+      XI THE WIND BLOWS MANY STRAWS
+
+     XII STARR FINDS SOMETHING IN A SECRET ROOM
+
+    XIII HELEN MAY SIGHS FOR ROMANCE
+
+     XIV A SHOT FROM THE PINNACLE
+
+      XV HELEN MAY UNDERSTANDS
+
+     XVI STARR SEES TOO LITTLE OR TOO MUCH
+
+    XVII "IS HE THEN DEAD--MY SON?"
+
+   XVIII A PAGE OF WRITING
+
+     XIX HOLMAN SOMMERS TURNS PROPHET
+
+      XX STARR DISCOVERS THINGS
+
+     XXI THROUGH THE OPEN SKYLIGHT
+
+    XXII STARR TAKES ANOTHER PRISONER
+
+
+
+
+STARR, OF THE DESERT
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE
+
+A COMMONPLACE MAN WAS PETER
+
+
+Daffodils were selling at two bits a dozen in the flower stand beside the
+New Era Drug Store. Therefore Peter Stevenson knew that winter was over,
+and that the weather would probably "settle." There would be the spring
+fogs, of course--and fog did not agree with Helen May since that last
+spell of grippe. Peter decided that he would stop and see the doctor
+again, and ask him what he thought of a bungalow out against the hills
+behind Hollywood; something cheap, of course--and within the five-cent
+limit on the street cars; something with a sleeping porch that opened
+upon a pleasanter outlook than your neighbor's back yard. If Helen May
+would then form the habit of riding to and from town on the open end of
+the cars, that would help considerably; in fact, the longer the ride the
+better it would be for Helen May. The air was sweet and clean out there
+toward the hills. It would be better for Vic, too. It would break up
+that daily habit of going out to see "the boys" as soon as he had
+swallowed his dinner.
+
+Peter finished refilling the prescription on which he was working, and
+went out to see if he were needed in front. He sold a lip-stick to a
+pert miss who from sheer instinct made eyes at him, and he wished that
+Helen May had such plump cheeks--though he thanked God she had not the
+girl's sophisticated eyes. (Yes, a bungalow out there against the hills
+ought to do a lot for Helen May.) He glanced up at the great clock and
+unconsciously compared his cheap watch with it, saw that in ten minutes
+he would be free for the day, and bethought him to telephone the doctor
+and make sure of the appointment. He knew that Helen May had seen the
+doctor at noon, since she had given Peter her word that she would go,
+and since she never broke a promise. He would find out just what the
+doctor thought.
+
+When he returned from the 'phone, a fat woman wanted peroxide, and she
+was quite sure the bottle he offered was smaller than the last two-bit
+bottle she had bought. Peter very kindly and patiently discussed the
+matter with her, and smiled and bowed politely when she finally decided
+to try another place. His kidneys were hurting him again. He wondered if
+Helen May would remember that he must not eat heavy meats, and would get
+something else for their dinner.
+
+He glanced again at the clock. He had four minutes yet to serve. He
+wondered why the doctor had seemed so eager to see him. He had a vague
+feeling of uneasiness, though the doctor had not spoken more than a dozen
+words. At six he went behind the mirrored partition and got his topcoat
+and hat; said good night to such clerks as came in his way, and went out
+and bought a dozen daffodils from the Greek flower-vendor. All day he had
+been arguing with himself because of this small extravagance which
+tempted him, but now that it was settled and the flowers were in his
+hand, he was glad that he had bought them. Helen May loved all growing
+things. He set off briskly in spite of his aching back, thinking how
+Helen May would hover over the flowers rapturously even while she scolded
+him for his extravagance.
+
+Half an hour later, when he turned to leave the doctor's office, he left
+the daffodils lying forgotten on a chair until the doctor called him
+back and gave them to him with a keen glance that had in it a good deal
+of sympathy.
+
+"You're almost as bad off yourself, old man," he said bluntly. "I want
+to watch those kidneys of yours. Come in to-morrow or next day and let
+me look you over. Or Sunday will do, if you aren't working then. I
+don't like your color. Here, wait a minute. I'll give you a
+prescription. You'd better stop and fill it before you go home. Take the
+first dose before you eat--and come in Sunday. Man, you don't want to
+neglect yourself. You--"
+
+"Then you don't think Hollywood--?" Peter took the daffodils and began
+absently crumpling the waxed paper around them. His eyes, when he looked
+into the doctor's face, were very wistful and very, very tired.
+
+"Hollywood!" The doctor snorted. "One lung's already badly affected, I
+tell you. What she's got to have is high, dry air--like Arizona or New
+Mexico or Colorado. And right out in the open--live like an Injun for
+a year or two. Radical change of climate--change of living. Another
+year of office work will kill her." He stopped and eyed Peter
+pityingly. "Predisposition--and then the grippe--her mother went that
+way, didn't she?"
+
+"Yes," Peter replied, flat-toned and patient. "Yes, she went--that way."
+
+"Well, you know what it means. Get her out of here just as quick as
+possible, and you'll probably save her. Helen May's a girl worth saving."
+
+"Yes," Peter replied flatly, as before. "Yes--she's worth saving."
+
+"You bet! Well, you do that. And don't put off coming here Sunday. And
+don't forget to fill that prescription and take it till I see you again."
+
+Peter smiled politely, and went down the hall to the elevator, and laid
+his finger on the bell, and waited until the steel cage paused to let
+him in. He walked out and up Third Street and waited on the corner of
+Hill until the car he wanted stopped on the corner to let a few more
+passengers squeeze on. Peter found a foothold on the back platform and
+something to hang to, and adapted himself to the press of people around
+him, protecting as best he could the daffodils with the fine, green
+stuff that went with them and that straggled out and away from the
+paper. Whenever human eyes met his with a light of recognition, Peter
+would smile and bow, and the eyes would smile back. But he never knew
+who owned the eyes, or even that he was performing one of the little
+courtesies of life.
+
+All he knew was that Helen May was going the way her mother had gone, and
+that the only way to prevent her going that way was to take her to New
+Mexico or Colorado or Arizona; and she was worth saving--even the doctor
+had been struck with her worth; and a bungalow out against the hills
+wouldn't do at all, not even with a sleeping porch and the open-air ride
+back and forth every day. Radical change she must have. Arizona or New
+Mexico or--the moon, which seemed not much more remote or inaccessible.
+
+When his street was called he edged out to the steps and climbed down,
+wondering how the doctor expected a man with Peter's salary to act upon
+his advice. "You do that!" said the doctor, and left Peter to discover,
+if he could, how it was to be done without money; in other words, had
+blandly required Peter to perform a modern miracle.
+
+Helen May was listlessly setting the table when he arrived. He went up to
+her for the customary little peck on the cheek which passes for a kiss
+among relatives, and Helen May waved him off with a half smile that was
+unlike her customary cheerfulness.
+
+"I've quit kissing," she said. "It's unsanitary."
+
+"What did the doctor tell you, Babe? You went to see him, didn't you?"
+Peter managed a smile--business policy had made smiling a habit--while he
+unwound the paper from around the daffodils.
+
+"Dad, I've told you and _told_ you not to buy flowers! Oh, golly, aren't
+they beautiful! But you mustn't. I'm going to get my salary cut, on the
+first. They say business doesn't warrant my present plutocratic income.
+Five a week less, Bob said it would be. That'll pull the company back to
+a profit-sharing basis, of course!"
+
+"Lots of folks are losing their jobs altogether," Peter reminded her
+apathetically. "What did the doctor say about your cough, Babe?"
+
+"Oh, he told me to quit working. Why is it doctors never have any brains
+about such things? Charge a person two dollars or so for telling him to
+do what's impossible. What does he think I am--a movie queen?"
+
+She turned away from his faded, anxious eyes that hurt her with their
+realization of his helplessness. There was a red spot on either
+cheek--the rose of dread which her father had watched heart-sinkingly. "I
+know what he _thinks_ is the matter," she added defiantly. "But that
+doesn't make it so. It's just the grippe hanging on. I've felt a lot
+better since the weather cleared up. It's those raw winds--and half the
+time they haven't had the steam on at all in the mornings, and the office
+is like an ice-box till the sun warms it."
+
+"Vic home yet?" Peter abandoned the subject for one not much more
+cheerful. Vic, fifteen and fully absorbed in his own activities, was more
+and more becoming a sore subject between the two.
+
+"No. I called up Ed's mother just before you came, but he hadn't
+been there. She thought Ed was over here with Vic. I don't know
+where else to ask."
+
+"Did you try the gym?"
+
+"No. He won't go there any more. They got after him for something he
+did--broke a window somehow. There's no use fussing, dad. He'll come when
+he's hungry enough. He's broke, so he can't eat down town."
+
+Peter sighed and went away to brush his thin, graying hair carefully over
+his bald spot, while Helen May brewed the tea and made final preparations
+for dinner. The daffodils she arranged with little caressing pulls and
+pats in a tall, slim vase of plain glass, and placed the vase in the
+center of the table, just as Peter knew she would do.
+
+"Oh, but you're sweet!" she said, and stooped with her face close above
+them. "I wish I could lie down in a whole big patch of you and just look
+at the sky and at you nodding and perking all around me--and not do a
+living thing all day but just lie there and soak in blue and gold and
+sweet smells and silence."
+
+Peter, coming to the open doorway, turned and tiptoed back as though he
+had intruded upon some secret, and stood irresolutely smoothing his hair
+down with the flat of his hand until she called him to come and eat. She
+was cheerful as ever while she served him scrupulously. She smiled at him
+now and then, tilting her head because the daffodils stood between them.
+She said no more about the doctor's advice, or the problem of poverty.
+She did not cough, and the movements of her thin, well-shaped hands were
+sure and swift. More than once she made a pause while she pulled a
+daffodil toward her and gazed adoringly into its yellow cup.
+
+Peter might have been reassured, were it not for the telltale flush on
+her cheeks and the unnatural shine in her eyes. As it was, every
+fascinating little whimsy of hers stabbed him afresh with the pain of her
+need and of his helplessness. Arizona or New Mexico or Colorado, the
+doctor had said; and Peter knew that it must be so. And he with his
+druggist's salary and his pitiful two hundred dollars in the savings
+bank! And with the druggist's salary stopping automatically the moment he
+stopped reporting for duty! Peter was neither an atheist nor a socialist,
+yet he was close to cursing his God and his country whenever Helen May
+smiled at him around the dozen daffodils.
+
+"Your insurance is due the tenth, dad," she remarked irrelevantly when
+they had reached the dessert stage of cream puffs from the delicatessen
+nearest Helen May's work. "Why don't you cut it down? It's sinful, the
+amount of money we've paid out for insurance. You need a new suit this
+spring. And the difference--"
+
+"I don't see what's wrong with this suit," Peter objected, throwing out
+his scrawny chest and glancing down his front with a prejudiced eye,
+refusing to see any shabbiness. "A little cleaning and pressing, maybe--"
+
+"A little suit of that new gray everybody's wearing these days, you
+mean," she amended relentlessly. "Don't argue, dad. You've _got_ to have
+a suit. And that old insurance--"
+
+"Jitneys are getting thicker every day," Peter contended in feeble jest.
+"A man needs to be well insured in this town. There's Vic--if anything
+happened, he's got to be educated just the same. And by the endowment
+plan, in twelve years more I'll have a nice little lump. It's--on account
+of the endowment, Babe. I don't want to sell drugs all my life."
+
+"Just the same, you're going to have a new suit." Helen May retrenched
+herself behind the declaration. "And it's going to be gray. And a gray
+hat with a dove-colored band and the bow in the back. And tan shoes," she
+added implacably, daintily lifting the roof off her cream puff to see how
+generous had been the filling.
+
+"Who? Me?" Vic launched himself in among them and slid spinelessly into
+his chair as only a lanky boy can slide. "Happy thought! Only I'll have
+bottle green for mine. A fellow stepped on my roof this afternoon, so--"
+
+"You'll wear a cap then--or go bareheaded and claim it's to make your
+hair grow." Helen May regarded him coldly. "Lots of fellows do. You don't
+get a single new dud before the fourth, Vic Stevenson."
+
+"Oh, don't I?" Vic drawled with much sarcasm, and pulled two dollars from
+his trousers pocket, displaying them with lofty triumph. "I get a new hat
+to-morrow, Miss Stingy."
+
+"Vic, where did you get that money?" Helen May's eyes flamed to the
+battle. "Have you been staying out of school and hanging around those
+picture studios?"
+
+"Yup--at two dollars per hang," Vic mouthed, spearing a stuffed green
+pepper dexterously. "Fifty rehearsals for two one-minute scenes of
+honorable college gangs honorably hailing the hee-ro. Waugh! Where'd you
+get these things--or did the cat bring it in? Stuffed with laundry soap,
+if you ask me. Why don't you try that new place on Spring?"
+
+"Vic Stevenson!" Helen May began in true sisterly disapprobation. "Is
+that getting you anywhere in your studies? A few more days out of
+school, and--"
+
+Peter's thoughts turned inward. He did not even hear the half playful,
+half angry dispute between these two. Vic was a heady youth, much given
+to rebelling against the authority of Helen May who bullied or wheedled
+as her mood and the emergency might impel, as sisters do the world over.
+Peter was thinking of his two hundred dollars saved against disaster; and
+a third of that to go for life insurance on the tenth, which was just one
+row down on the calendar; and Helen May going the way her mother had
+gone--unless she lived out of doors "like an Indian" in Arizona
+or--Peter's mind refused to name again the remote, inaccessible places
+where Helen May might evade the penalty of being the child of her mother
+and of poverty.
+
+Gray hat for Peter or bottle-green hat for Vic--what did it matter if
+neither of them ever again owned a hat, if Helen May must stay here in
+the city and face the doom that had been pronounced upon her? What did
+anything matter, if Babe died and left him plodding along alone? Vic did
+not occur to him consolingly. Vic was a responsibility; a comfort he was
+not. Like many men, Peter could not seem to understand his son half as
+well as he understood his daughter. He could not see why Vic should
+frivol away his time; why he should have all those funny little conceits
+and airs of youth; why he should lord it over Helen May who was every day
+proving her efficiency and her strength of character anew. If Helen May
+went the way her mother had gone, Peter felt that he would be alone, and
+that life would be quite bare and bleak and empty of every incentive
+toward bearing the little daily burdens of existence.
+
+He got up with his hand going instinctively to his back to ease the ache
+there, and went out upon the porch and stood looking drearily down upon
+the asphalted street, where the white paths of speeding automobiles
+slashed the dusk like runaway sunbeams on a frolic. Then the street
+lights winked and sputtered and began to glow with white brilliance.
+
+Arizona or New Mexico or Colorado! Peter knew what the doctor had in
+mind. Vast plains, unpeopled, pure, immutable in their calm; stars that
+came down at night and hung just over your head, making the darkness
+alive with their bright presence; a little cottage hunched against a
+hill, a candle winking cheerily through the window at the stars; the
+cries of night birds, the drone of insects, the distant howling of a
+coyote; far away on the boundary of your possessions, a fence of barbed
+wire stretching through a hollow and up over a hill; distance and quiet
+and calm, be it day or night. And Helen May coming through the sunlight,
+riding a gentle-eyed pony; Helen May with her deep-gold hair tousled in
+the wind, and with health dancing in her eyes that were the color of a
+ripe chestnut, odd contrast to her hair; Helen May with the little red
+spots gone from her cheek bones, and with tanned skin and freckles on her
+nose and a laugh on her lips, coming up at a gallop with the sun behind
+her, and something more; with sickness behind her and the drudgery of
+eight hours in an office, and poverty and unhappiness. And Vic--yes, Vic
+in overalls and a straw hat, growing up to be the strong man he never
+would be in the city.
+
+Like many another commonplace man of the towns, for all his colorless
+ways and his thinning hair and his struggle against poverty, Peter was
+something of a dreamer. And like all the rest of us who build our dreams
+out of wishes and hopes and maybes, Peter had not a single fact to use in
+his foundation. Arizona, New Mexico or Colorado--to Peter they were but
+symbols of all those dear unattainable things he longed for. And that he
+longed for them, not for himself but for another who was very dear to
+him, only made the longing keener and more tragic.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO
+
+IN WHICH PETER DISCOVERS A WAY OUT
+
+
+We are always exclaiming over the strange way in which events link
+themselves together in chains; and when the chains bind us to a certain
+condition or environment, we are in the habit of blandly declaring
+ourselves victims of the force of circumstances. By that rule, Peter
+found himself being swept into a certain channel of thought about which
+events began at once to link themselves into a chain which drew him
+perforce into a certain path that he must follow. Or it may have been his
+peculiar single-mindedness that forced him to follow the path; however
+that may be, circumstances made it easy.
+
+If Helen May worried about her cough and her failing energy, she did not
+mention the fact again; but that was Helen May's way, and Peter was not
+comforted by her apparent dismissal of the subject. So far as he could
+see she was a great deal more inclined to worry over Vic, who refused to
+stay in school when he could now and then earn a dollar or two acting in
+"mob scenes" for some photoplay company out in Hollywood. He did not
+spend the money wisely; Helen May declared that he was better off with
+empty pockets.
+
+Ordinarily Peter would have taken Vic's rebellion seriously enough to put
+a stop to it. He did half promise Helen May that he would notify all the
+directors he could get hold of not to employ Vic in any capacity; even to
+"chase him off the studio grounds", as Helen May put it. But he did not,
+because chance threw him a bit of solid material on which to rebuild his
+air castle for Helen May.
+
+He was edging his way down the long food counter, collecting his lunch of
+rice pudding, milk and whole-wheat bread in a cafeteria on Hill Street.
+He was late, and there was no unoccupied table to be had, so he finally
+set his tray down where a haggard-featured woman clerk had just eaten
+hastily her salad and pie. A brown-skinned young fellow with country
+manners and a range-fostered disposition to talk with any one who tarried
+within talking distance, was just unloading his tray load of provender on
+the opposite side of the table. He looked across at Peter's tray, grinned
+at the meager luncheon, and then looked up into Peter's face with
+friendliness chasing the amusement from his eyes.
+
+"Golly gee! There's a heap of difference in our appetites, from the looks
+of our layouts," he began amiably. "I'm hungry as a she-wolf, myself.
+Hope they don't make me wash the dishes when I'm through; I'm always
+kinda scared of these grab-it-and-go joints. I always feel like making a
+sneak when nobody's looking, for fear I'll be called back to clean up."
+
+Peter smiled and handed his tray to a waiter. "I wish I could eat a meal
+like that," he confessed politely.
+
+"Well, you could if you lived out more in the open. Town kinda gits a
+person's appetite. Why, first time I come in here and went down the chute
+past the feed troughs, why it took two trays to pack away the grub I seen
+and wanted. Lookout lady on the high stool, she give me two
+tickets--thought there was two of, me, I reckon. But I ain't eatin' the
+way I was then. Town's kinda gittin' me like it's got the rest of you.
+Last night I come pretty near makin' up my mind to go back. Little old
+shack back there in the greasewood didn't look so bad, after all. Only I
+do hate like sin to bach, and a fellow couldn't take a woman out there in
+the desert to live, unless he had money to make her comfortable. So I'm
+going to give up my homestead--if I can find some easy mark to buy out my
+relinquishment. Don't want to let it slide, yuh see, 'cause the
+improvements is worth a little something, and the money'd come handy
+right now, helpin' me into something here. There's a chance to buy into
+a nice little service station, fellow calls it--where automobiles stop to
+git pumped up with air and gasoline and stuff. If I can sell my
+improvements, I'll buy in there. Looks foolish to go back, once I made up
+my mind to quit."
+
+He ate while he talked, and he talked because he had the simple mind of
+a child and must think out loud in order to be perfectly at ease. He
+had that hunger for speech which comes sometimes to men who have lived
+far from their kind. Peter listened to him vaguely at first; then
+avidly, with an inner excitement which his mild, expressionless face
+hid like a mask.
+
+"I was getting kinda discouraged when my horse up 'n died," the eater
+went on. "And then when some durn greaser went 'n stole my burro, I jest
+up 'n sold my saddle and a few head uh sheep I had, and pulled out. New
+Mexico ranching is all right for them that likes it, but excuse me! I
+want to live where I can see a movie once in a while, anyhow." He stopped
+for the simple, primitive reason that he had filled his mouth to
+overflowing with food, so that speech was for the moment a physical
+impossibility.
+
+Peter sipped his glass of milk, and his thoughts raced back and forth
+between the door of opportunity that stood ajar, and the mountain of
+difficulty which he must somehow move by his mental strength alone
+before he and his might pass through that door.
+
+"Ah--how much do you value your improvements at?" he asked. His emotion
+was so great that his voice refused to carry it, and so was flat and as
+expressionless as his commonplace face.
+
+"Well," gurgled the young man, sluicing down his food with coffee, "it's
+pretty hard to figure exactly. I've got a good little shack, you see, and
+there's a spring right close handy by. Springs is sure worth money in
+that country, water being scurse as it is. There's a plenty for the house
+and a few head of stock; well, in a good wet year a person could raise a
+little garden, maybe; few radishes and beans, and things like that. But
+uh course, that can't hardly be called an improvement, 'cause it was
+there when I took the place. A greaser, he had the land fenced and was
+usin' the spring 'n' range like it was his own, and most folks, they was
+scared to file on it. But she's sure filed on now, and I've got six weeks
+yet before it can be jumped.
+
+"Well, there's a shed for stock, and a pretty fair brush corral, and I
+built me a pretty fair road in to the place--about a mile off the main
+road, it is. I done that odd times the year I was on the place. The
+sheep I sold; sheep's a good price now. I only had seventeen--coyotes
+and greasers, they kep' stealin' 'em on me, or I'd 'n' had more. I'd
+'a' lost 'em all, I guess, if it hadn't been for Loma--dog I got with
+me. Them--"
+
+Peter looked at his watch in that furtive way which polite persons employ
+when time presses and a companion is garrulous. He had finished his rice
+pudding and his milk, and in five minutes he would be expected to hang up
+his hat behind the mirrored partition of the New Era Drug Store and walk
+out smilingly to serve the New Era customers, patrons, the New Era called
+them. In five minutes he must be on duty, yet Peter felt that his very
+life depended upon bringing this wordy young man to a point in his
+monologue.
+
+"If you will come to the New Era Drug Store, at six o'clock," said Peter,
+"I shall be glad to talk with you further about this homestead of yours.
+I--ah--have a friend who has an idea of--ah--locating somewhere in
+Arizona or New Mexico or Colorado--" Peter could name them now without
+that sick feeling of despair "--and he might be interested. But," he
+added hastily, "he could not afford to pay very much for a place. Still,
+if your price is low enough--"
+
+"Oh, I reckon we can git together on the price," the young man said
+cheerfully, as Peter rose and picked up his check. "I'll be there at six,
+sure as shootin' cats in a bag. I know where the New Era's at. I went in
+there last night and got something to stop my tooth achin'. Ached like
+the very devil for a while, but that stuff sure fixed her."
+
+Peter smiled and bowed and went his way hurriedly, his pale lips working
+nervously with the excitement that filled him. The mountain of difficulty
+was there, implacably blocking the way. But beyond was the door of
+opportunity, and the door was ajar. There must, thought Peter, be some
+way to pass the mountain and reach the door.
+
+Helen May telephoned that she meant to pick out that gray suit for him
+that evening. Since it was Saturday, the stores would be open, and there
+was a sale on at Hecheimer's. She had seen some stunning grays in the
+window, one-third off. And would he....
+
+Peter's voice was almost irritable when he told her that he had a
+business engagement and could not meet her. And he added the information
+that he would probably eat down town, as he did not know how long he
+would be detained. Helen May was positively forbidden to do anything at
+all about the suit until he had a chance to talk with her. After which
+unprecedented firmness Peter left the 'phone hurriedly, lest Helen May
+should laugh at his authority and lay down a law of her own, which she
+was perfectly capable of doing.
+
+At five minutes to six the young man presented himself at the New Era,
+and waited for Peter at the soda fountain, with a lemon soda and a pretty
+girl to smile at his naive remarks. Peter's heart had given a jump and a
+flutter when the young man walked in, fearing some one else might snap at
+the chance to buy a relinquishment of a homestead in New Mexico. And yet,
+how did Peter expect to buy anything of the sort? If Peter knew, he kept
+the knowledge in the back of his mind, telling himself that there would
+be some way out.
+
+He went with the young man, whose name he learned was Johnny Calvert, and
+had dinner with him at the cafeteria where they had met at noon. Johnny
+talked a great deal, ate a great deal, and unconsciously convinced Peter
+that he was an honest young man who was exactly what he represented
+himself to be. He had papers which proved his claim upon three hundred
+and twenty acres of land in Dona Ana County, New Mexico. He also had a
+map upon which the location of his claim was marked with a pencil.
+Malpais, he said, was the nearest railroad point; not much of a point,
+but you could ride there and back in a day, if you got up early enough in
+the morning.
+
+Peter asked about the climate and the altitude. Johnny was a bit hazy
+about the latter, but it was close to mountains, he said, and it was as
+high as El Paso, anyway, maybe higher. The climate was like all the
+rest of the country, coming in streaks of good and bad. Peter, gaining
+confidence as Johnny talked, spoke of his daughter and her impending
+doom, and Johnny, instantly grasping the situation, waxed eloquent. Why,
+that would be just the place, he declared. Dry as a bone, the weather
+was most of the year; hot--the lungers liked it hot and dry, he knew.
+And when it was cold, it was sure bracing, too. Why, the country was
+alive with health-seekers. At that, most of 'em got well--them that
+didn't come too late.
+
+That last sentence threw Peter into a panic. What if he dawdled along and
+kept Helen May waiting until it was too late? By that time I think Peter
+had pretty clearly decided how he was to remove the mountain of
+difficulty. He must have, or he would not have had the courage to drive
+the bargain to a conclusion in so short a time.
+
+Drive it he did, for at nine o'clock he let himself into the place he
+called home and startled Helen May with the announcement that he had
+bought her a claim in New Mexico, where she was to live out of doors like
+an Indian and get over that cough, and grow strong as any peasant woman;
+and where Vic was going to keep out of mischief and learn to amount to
+something. He did not say what the effect would be upon himself; Peter
+was not accustomed to considering himself except as a provider of
+comfort for others.
+
+Helen May did not notice the omission. "_Bought_ a claim?" she repeated
+and added grimly: "What with?"
+
+"With two hundred dollars cash," Peter replied, smiling queerly. "It's
+all settled, Babe, and the claim is to stand in your name. Everything is
+attended to but the legal signatures before a notary. I was glad my money
+was in the all-night bank, because I was not compelled to wait until
+Monday to get it for young Calvert. You will have the relinquishment of
+his right to the claim, Babe, and a small adobe house with sheds and
+yards and a good spring of living water. In building up the place into a
+profitable investment you will be building up your health, which is the
+first and greatest consideration. I--you must not go the way your mother
+went. You will not, because you will live in the open and throw off
+the--ah--incipient--"
+
+"Dad--_Stevenson_!" Helen May was sitting with her arms lying loose in
+her lap, palms upward. Her lips had been loose and parted a little with
+the slackness of blank amazement. In those first awful minutes she really
+believed that her father had suddenly lost his mind; that he was joking
+never occurred to her. Peter was not gifted with any sense of humor
+whatsoever, and Helen May knew it as she knew the color of his hair.
+
+"You will no longer be a wage slave, doomed to spend eight hours of every
+day before a typewriter in that insurance office. You will be
+independent--a property owner who can see that property grow under your
+thought and labor. You will see Vic growing up among clean, healthful
+surroundings. He will be able to bear much of the burden--the brunt of
+the work. The boy is in a fair way to be ruined if he stays here any
+longer. There will be six weeks of grace before the claim can be
+seized--ah--jumped, the young man called it. In that time you must be
+located upon the place. But you should make all possible haste in any
+case, on account of your health. Monday morning we will go together with
+young Calvert and attend to the legal papers, and then I should advise
+you to devote your time to making preparations--"
+
+"Dad--_Stevenson_!" Helen May's voice ended in an exasperated, frightened
+kind of wail. "I and Vic! Are you crazy?"
+
+"Not at all. It is sudden, of course. But you will find, when you stop to
+think it over, that many of the wisest things we ever do are done without
+dawdling,--suddenly, one may say. No, Babe, I--"
+
+"But two hundred dollars just for the rights to the claim! Dad, look at
+it calmly! To build up a ranch takes money. I don't know a thing about
+ranching, and neither do you; but we both know that much. One has to eat,
+even on a ranch. I wouldn't have my ten a week, remember, and you
+wouldn't have your salary, unless you mean to stay here and keep on at
+the New Era. And that wouldn't work, dad. You know it wouldn't work. Your
+salary would barely keep you, let alone sending money to us. You can't
+expect to keep yourself and furnish us money; and you've paid out all you
+had in the bank. The thing's impossible on the face of it!"
+
+"Yes, planning from that basis, it would be impossible." Peter's eyes
+were wistful. "I tried to plan that way at first; but I saw it wouldn't
+do. The expense of getting there, even, would be quite an item in itself.
+No, it couldn't be done that way, Babe."
+
+"Then will you tell me how else it is to be done?" Helen May's voice was
+tired and exasperated. "You say you have paid the two hundred. That
+leaves us just the furniture in this flat; and it wouldn't bring enough
+to take us to the place, let alone having anything to live on when we got
+there. And my wages would stop, and so would yours. Dad, do you realize
+what you've done?" She tilted her head forward and stared at him intently
+through her lashes, which was a trick she had.
+
+"Yes, Babe, I realize perfectly. I'm--not counting on just the
+furniture. I--think it would pay to ship the stuff on to the claim."
+
+"For heaven's sake, dad! What are you counting on?" Helen May gave a
+hysterical laugh that set her coughing in a way to make the veins stand
+out on forehead and throat. (Peter's hands blenched into fighting fists
+while he waited for the spasm to wear itself out. She should not go the
+way her mother had gone, he was thinking fiercely.) "What--are--you
+counting on?" she repeated, when she could speak again.
+
+"Well, I'm counting on--a source that is sure," Peter replied vaguely.
+"The way will be provided, when the time comes. I--I have thought it all
+out calmly, Babe. The money will be ready when you need it."
+
+"Dad, don't borrow money! It would be a load that would keep us
+staggering for years. We are going along all right, better than hundreds
+of people all around us. I'm feeling better than I was; now the weather
+is settled, I feel lots better. You can sell whatever you bought; maybe
+you can make a profit on the sale. Try and do that, dad. Get enough
+profit to pay for that gray suit I saw in the window!" She was smiling at
+him now, the whimsical smile that was perhaps her greatest charm.
+
+"Never mind about the gray suit." Peter spoke sharply. "I won't need
+it." He got up irritably and began pacing back and forth across the
+little sitting room. "You're not better," he declared petulantly. "That's
+the way your mother used to talk--even up to the very last. A year in
+that office would kill you. I know. The doctor said so. Your only chance
+is to get into a high, dry place where you can live out of doors. He told
+me so. This young man with the homestead claim was a godsend--a godsend,
+I tell you! It would be a crime--it would be murder to let the chance
+slip by for lack of money. I'd steal the money, if I knew of any way to
+get by with it, and if there was no other way open. But there is a way.
+I'm taking it.
+
+"I don't want to hear any more argument," he exclaimed, facing her quite
+suddenly. His eyes had a light she had never seen in them before. "Monday
+you will go with me and attend to the necessary legal papers. After that,
+I'll attend to the means of getting there."
+
+He stood looking down at her where she sat with her hands clasped in her
+lap, staring up at him steadfastly from under her eyebrows. His face
+softened, quivered until she thought he was going to cry like a woman.
+But he only came and laid a shaking hand on her head and smoothed her
+hair as one caresses a child.
+
+"Don't oppose me in this, Babe," he said wearily. "I've thought it all
+out, and it's best for all of us. I can't see you dying here by
+inches--in the harness. And think of Vic, if that happened. He's just at
+the age where he needs you. I couldn't do anything much with him alone.
+It's the best thing to do, the only thing to do. Don't say anything more
+against it, don't argue. When the time comes, you'll do your part
+bravely, as I shall do mine. And if you feel that it isn't worth while
+for yourself, think of Vic."
+
+Peter turned abruptly and went into his room, and Helen May dropped her
+head down upon her arms and cried awhile, though she did not clearly
+understand why, except that life seemed very cruel, like some formless
+monster that caught and squeezed the very soul out of one. Soon she heard
+Vic coming, and pulled herself together for the lecture he had earned by
+going out without permission and staying later than he should. On one
+point dad was right, she told herself wearily, while she was locking up
+for the night. Town certainly was no place for Vic.
+
+The next day, urged by her father, Helen May met Johnny Calvert, and
+cooked him a nice dinner, and heard a great deal about her new claim. And
+Monday, furthermore, the three attended to certain legal details. She had
+many moments of panic when she believed her father was out of his mind,
+and when she feared that he would do some desperate thing like stealing
+money to carry out this strange plan. But she did as he wished. There was
+a certain inflexible quality in Peter's mild voice, a certain
+determination in his insignificant face that required obedience to his
+wishes. Even Vic noticed it, and eyed Peter curiously, and asked Helen
+May what ailed the old man.
+
+An old man Peter was when he went to his room that night, leaving Helen
+May dazed and exhausted after another evening spent in absorbing queer
+bits of information from the garrulous Johnny Calvert. She would be able
+to manage all right, now, Peter told her relievedly when Johnny left. She
+knew as much about the place as she could possibly know without having
+been there.
+
+He said good night and left her wondering bewilderedly what strange thing
+her dad would do next. In the morning she knew.
+
+Peter did not answer when Helen May rapped on his door and said that
+breakfast would be ready in five minutes. Never before had he failed to
+call out: "All right, Babe!" more or less cheerfully. She waited a
+minute, listening, and then rapped again and repeated her customary
+announcement. Another wait, and she turned the knob and looked in.
+
+She did not scream at what she found there. Vic, sleeping on the couch
+behind a screen in the living room, yawned himself awake and proceeded
+reluctantly to set his feet upon the floor and grope, sleepy-eyed, for
+his clothes, absolutely unconscious that in the night sometime Peter had
+passed a certain mountain of difficulty and had reached out unafraid and
+pulled wide open the door of opportunity for his children.
+
+Beyond the door, Helen May was standing rigidly beside the bed where
+Peter lay, and was reading for the second time the letter which Peter had
+held in his hand. At first her mind had refused to grasp its meaning.
+Now, reading slowly, she knew ...
+
+Dear Babe, (said the letter).
+
+Don't be horrified at what I have done. I have thought the whole matter
+over calmly, and I am satisfied that this is the best way. My life could
+not go on very long, anyway. The doctor made that plain enough to me
+Sunday. I saw him. I was in a bad way with kidney trouble, he said. I
+knew it before he told me. I knew I was only good for a few months more
+at the most, and I would soon be a helpless burden. Besides, I have heart
+trouble that will account for this sudden taking off, so you can escape
+any unpleasant gossip.
+
+Take the life insurance and use it on that claim, for you and Vic. Live
+out in the open and get well, and make a man of Vic. Three thousand
+dollars ought to be ample to put the ranch on a paying basis. And don't
+blame your dad for collecting it now, when it will do the most good. I
+could see no benefit in waiting and suffering, and letting you get
+farther downhill all the while, making it that much harder to climb back.
+Go at once to your claim, and do your best--that is what will make your
+dad happiest. You will get well, and you will make a home for you and
+Vic, and be independent and happy. In doing this you will fulfill the
+last, loving wish of your father.
+
+PETER STEVENSON.
+
+P.S. Better stock the place with goats. Johnny Calvert thinks they would
+be better than sheep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+
+VIC SHOULD WORRY
+
+
+Wise man or fool, Peter had taken the one way to impress obedience upon
+Helen May. Had he urged and argued and kept on living, Helen May could
+have brought forth reasons and arguments, eloquence even, to combat him.
+But Peter had taken the simple, unanswerable way of stating his wishes,
+opening the way to their accomplishment, and then quietly lying back upon
+his pillow and letting death take him beyond reach of protest.
+
+For days Helen May was numb with the sudden dropping of Life's big
+responsibilities upon her shoulders. She could not even summon energy
+enough to call Vic to an accounting of his absences from the house. Until
+after the funeral Vic had been subdued, going around on his toes and
+looking at Helen May with wide, solemn eyes and lips prone to trembling.
+But fifteen years is the resilient age, and two days after Peter was
+buried, Vic asked her embarrassedly if she thought it would look right
+for him to go to the ball game. He had to do _something_, he added
+defensively.
+
+"Oh, I guess so; run along," Helen May had told him absently, without in
+the least realizing what it was he had wanted to do. After that Vic went
+his way without going through the ceremony of asking her consent, secure
+in the knowledge of her indifference.
+
+The insurance company for which she had worked set in motion the wheels
+that would eventually place in her hands the three thousand dollars for
+which Peter had calmly given his life. She hated the money. She wanted to
+tell her dad how impossible it was for her to use a cent of it. Yet she
+must use it. She must use it as he had directed, because he had died to
+open the way for her obedience. She must take Vic, against his violent
+young will, she suspected, and she must go to that claim away off there
+somewhere in the desert, and she must live in the open--and raise goats!
+For there was a certain strain of Peter's simplicity in the nature of his
+daughter. His last scrawled advice was to her a command which she must
+obey as soon as she could muster the physical energy for obedience.
+
+"What do I know about goats!" she impatiently asked her empty room one
+morning after a night of fantastic dreams. "They eat tin cans and paper,
+and Masonic candidates ride them, and they stand on high banks and look
+silly, and have long chin whiskers and horns worn back from their
+foreheads. But as to _raising_ them--what are they good for, for
+heaven's sake?"
+
+"Huh? Say, what are you mumbling about?" Vic, it happened, was awake, and
+Helen May's door was ajar.
+
+"Oh, nothing." Then the impulse of speech being strong in her, Helen May
+pulled on a kimono and went out to where Vic lay curled up in the
+blankets on the couch. "We've got to go to New Mexico, Vic, and, live on
+that land dad bought the rights to, and raise goats!"
+
+"Yes, we have--not!"
+
+"We have. Dad said so. We've got to do it, Vic. I expect we'd better
+start as soon as the insurance is paid, and that ought to be next week.
+Malpais is the name of the darned place. Inez Garcia says Malpais means
+bad country. I asked her when she was here yesterday. I expect it does,
+though you can't tell about Inez. She's tricky about translating stuff;
+she thinks it's funny to fake the meaning of things. But I expect it's
+true; it sounds like that."
+
+"I should worry," Vic yawned, with the bland triteness of a boy who
+speaks mostly in current catch phrases. "I've got a good chance for a
+juvenile part in that big five-reeler Walt's going to put on. Fat chance
+anybody's got putting _me_ to herding goats! That New Mexico dope got my
+number the first time dad sprung it. Not for mine!"
+
+Helen May sat down on the arm of a Mission chair, wrapped her kimono
+around her thin figure, and looked at Vic from under her lashes. Besides
+raising goats and living out in the open, she was to make a man of Vic.
+She did not know which duty appalled her most, or which animal seemed to
+her the more intractable.
+
+"We've got to do it," she said simply. "I don't like it either, but that
+doesn't matter. Dad planned that way for us."
+
+Vic sat up crossly, groping for the top button of his pajama coat. His
+long hair was tousled in front and stood straight up at the back, and his
+lids were heavy yet with sleep. He looked very young and very unruly, and
+as though several years of grace were still left to Helen May before she
+need trouble herself about his manhood.
+
+"Not for mine," he repeated stubbornly. "You can go if you want to, but
+I'm going to stay in pictures." No film star in the city could have
+surpassed Vic's tone of careless assurance. "Listen! Dad was queer along
+towards the last. You know that yourself. And just because he had a nutty
+idea of a ranch somewhere, is no reason why we should drop everything--"
+
+"We've got to do it, and you needn't fuss, because you've got to go
+along. I expect we can study up--on goats." Her voice shook a little, for
+she was close to tears.
+
+"Well, I'm darned if you ain't as nutty as dad was! Of course, he was
+old and sick, and there was plenty of excuse for him to slop down along
+towards the last. Now, listen! My idea is to get a nifty bungalow out
+there handy to the studios, and both of us to go into pictures. We can
+get a car; what I want is a speedy, sassy little boat that can _travel_.
+Well, and listen. We'll have plenty to live on till we both land in
+stock. I've got a good chance right now to work into a comedy company;
+they say my grin screens like a million dollars, and when it comes to
+making a comedy getaway I'm just geared right, somehow, to pull a laugh.
+That college picture we made got me a lot of notice in the projection
+room, and I was only doing mob stuff, at that. But I stood out. And
+Walt's promised me a fat little bit in this five-reeler. I'll land in
+stock before the summer's half over!
+
+"And you can land with some good company if you just make a stab at it.
+Your eyes and that trick of looking up under your eyebrows are just the
+type for these sob leads, and you've got a good photographic face: a
+_good_ face for it," he emphasized generously. "And your figure couldn't
+be beat. Believe me, I know. You ought to see some of them Janes--and at
+that, they manage to get by with their stuff. A little camera experience,
+under a good director that would bring out your good points--I was going
+to spring the idea before, but I knew dad wouldn't stand for it."
+
+"But we've got to go and live on that claim. We've _got_ to."
+
+Vic's face purpled. "Say, are you plumb _bugs_? Why--" Vic gulped and
+stuttered. "Say, where do you get that stuff? You better tie a can to it,
+sis; it don't get over with me. I'm for screen fame, and I'm going to get
+it too. Why, by the time I'm twenty, I'll betcha I can pull down a salary
+that'll make Charlie Chaplin look like an extra! Why, my grin--"
+
+"Your grin you can use on the goats," Helen May quelled unfeelingly. "I
+only hope it won't scare the poor things to death. You needn't argue
+about it--as if I was crazy to go! Do you think I want to leave Los
+Angeles, and everybody I know, and everything I care about, and go to New
+Mexico and live like a savage, and raise goats? I'd rather go to jail, if
+you ask me. I hate the very thought of a ranch, Vic Stevenson, and you
+know I do. But that doesn't matter a particle. Dad--"
+
+"I told you dad was crazy!" Vic's tone was too violent for grief. His
+young ambitions were in jeopardy, and even his dad's death must look
+unimportant alongside the greater catastrophe that threatened. "Do you
+think, for gosh sake, the whole family's got to be nutty just because he
+was sick and got a queer streak?"
+
+"You've no right to say that. Dad--knew what he was doing."
+
+"Aw, where do you get that dope?" Vic eyed her disgustedly, and with a
+good deal of condescension. "If you had any sense, you'd knew he was
+queer for days before it happened. _I_ noticed it, all right, and if
+you didn't--"
+
+Helen May did not say anything at all. She got up and went to her room
+and came back with Peter's last, pitiful letter. She gave it to Vic and
+sat down again on the arm of the Mission chair and waited, looking at him
+from, under her lashes, her head tilted forward.
+
+Vic was impressed, impressed to a round-eyed silence. He knew his dad's
+handwriting, and he unfolded the sheet and read what Peter had written.
+
+"I found that letter in--his hand--that morning." Helen May tried to
+keep her voice steady. "You mustn't tell any one about it, Vic. They
+mustn't know. But you see, he--after doing that to get the money for me,
+why--you see, Vic, we've _got_ to go there. And we've got to make good.
+We've got to."
+
+There must have been a little of Peter's disposition in Vic, too. He
+lay for several minutes staring hard at a patch of sunlight on the
+farther wall. I suppose when one is fifteen the ambition to be a movie
+star dies just as hard as does later the ambition to be president of
+the United States.
+
+"You see, don't you, Vic?" Helen May watched him nervously.
+
+"Well, what do you think I am?" Vic turned upon her with a scowl. "You
+might have said it was for your health. You wasn't playing fair. You--you
+kept saying it was to raise goats!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR
+
+STARR WOULD LIKE TO KNOW
+
+
+Properly speaking Starr did not belong to New Mexico. He was a Texas man,
+and, until a certain high official asked him to perform a certain mission
+for the Secret Service, he had been a ranger. Puns were made upon his
+name when he was Ranger Starr, but he was a ranger no longer, and the
+puns had ceased to trouble him. His given name was Chauncy DeWitt;
+perhaps that is why even his closest friends called him Starr, it was so
+much easier to say, and it seemed to fit him so much better.
+
+Ostensibly, and for a buffer to public curiosity, Starr was acting in the
+modest capacity of cattle buyer for a big El Paso meat company.
+Incidentally he bought young sheep in season, and chickens from the
+Mexican ranchers, and even a bear that had been shot up in the mountains
+very early in the spring, before the fat had given place to leanness.
+Whatever else Starr did he kept carefully to himself, but his meat buying
+was perfectly authentic and satisfactory. And if those who knew his past
+record wondered at his occupation, Starr had plenty of reasons for the
+change, and plenty of time in which to explain those reasons.
+
+As to his personal appearance, there is not a great deal to say. I'm
+afraid Starr would not have attracted any notice in a crowd. He was a
+trifle above average height, perhaps, and he had nice eyes whose color
+might be a matter of dispute; because they were a bit too dark for gray,
+a bit too light for real hazel, with tiny flecks of green in certain
+lights. His lashes were almost heavy enough to be called a mark of
+beauty, and when he took off his hat, which was not often except at
+mealtime and when he slept in a real bed, there was something very
+attractive about his forehead and the way his hair grew on his temples.
+His mouth was pleasant when his mood was pleasant, but that was not
+always. One front tooth had been gold-crowned, which made his smile a
+trifle conspicuous, but could not be called a disfigurement. For the
+rest, he was tanned to a real desert copper, and riding kept him
+healthily lean. But as I said before, you would never pick him out of a
+crowd as the hero of this story or of any other.
+
+Like most of us, Starr did not dazzle at the first sight. One must come
+into close contact with him to find him different from any other passably
+attractive, intelligent man of the open. Oh, if you must have his age, I
+think he gave it at thirty-one, the last time he was asked, but he might
+have said twenty-five and been believed. He was bashful, and he got on
+better with men than he did with women; but if you will stop to think,
+most decent men do if they have lived under their hats since they grew to
+the long-trouser age. And if they have spent their working days astride a
+stock saddle, you may be sure they are bashful unless they are overbold
+and impossible. Well, Starr was of the bashful, easily stampeded type. As
+to his morals, he smoked and he swore a good deal upon occasion, and he
+drank, and he played pool, and now and then a little poker, and he would
+lie for a friend any time it was necessary and think nothing of it. Also,
+he would fight whenever the occasion seemed to warrant it. He had not
+been to church since he wore square collars starched and spread across
+his shoulders, and the shine of soap on his cheeks. And a pretty girl
+would better not make eyes too boldly if she objected to being kissed,
+although Starr had never in his life asked a girl to marry him.
+
+It doesn't sound very promising for a hero. He really was just a human
+being and no saint. Saint? You wouldn't think so if you had heard what
+he said to his horse, Rabbit, just about an hour before you were
+introduced to him.
+
+Rabbit, it seems had been pacing along, half asleep in the blistering
+heat of midday, among the cactus and the greasewood and those
+depressing, yellowish weeds that pretend to be clothing the desert with
+verdure, when they are merely emphasizing its barrenness. Starr had
+been half asleep too, riding with one leg over the saddle horn to rest
+his muscles, and with his hat brim pulled down over his eyebrows to
+shade his eyes from the pitiless glare of New Mexico sunlight. Rabbit
+might be depended upon to dodge the prairie dog holes and rocks and
+dirt hummocks, day or night, waking or sleeping; and since they were
+riding cross-country anyway, miles from a trail, and since they were
+headed for water, and Rabbit knew as well as Starr just where it was to
+be found, Starr held the reins slack in his thumb and finger and let
+the horse alone.
+
+That was all right, up to a certain point. Rabbit was a perfectly
+dependable little range horse, and sensible beyond most horses. He was
+ambling along at his easy little fox-trot that would carry Starr many a
+mile in a day, and he had his eyes half shut against the sun glare, and
+his nose almost at a level with his knees. I suppose he was dreaming of
+cool pastures or something like that, when a rattlesnake, coiled in the
+scant shade of a weed, lifted his tail and buzzed as stridently, as
+abruptly as thirteen rattles and a button can buzz.
+
+Rabbit had been bitten once when he was a colt and had gone around with
+his head swollen up like a barrel for days. He gave a great, horrified
+snort, heaved himself straight up in the air, whirled on his hind feet
+and went bucking across the scenery like a rodeo outlaw.
+
+Starr did not accompany him any part of the distance. Starr had gone off
+backward and lit on his neck, which I assure you is painful and
+disturbing to one's whole physical and moral framework. I'll say this
+much for Starr: The first thing he did when he got up was to shoot the
+head off the snake, whose tail continued to buzz in a dreary, aimless way
+when there was absolutely nothing to buzz about. Snakes are like that.
+
+Starr was a little like that, also. He continued to cuss in a fretful,
+objectless way, even after Rabbit had stopped and waited for him with
+apology written in the very droop of his ears. When he had remounted, and
+the horse had settled again to his straight-backed, shuffling fox-trot,
+Starr would frequently think of something else to say upon the subject of
+fool horses and snakes and long, dry miles and the interminable desert;
+but since none of the things would bear repeating, we will let it go at
+that. The point is that Starr was no saint.
+
+He knew of a spring where the water was sweet and cold, and where a
+lonesome young fellow lived by himself and was always glad to see some
+one ride up to his door. The young fellow was what is called a good
+feeder, and might be depended upon to have a pot of frijoles cooked, and
+sourdough bread, and stewed fruit of some kind even in his leanest times,
+and call himself next door to starvation. And if he happened to be in
+funds, there was no telling; Starr, for instance, had eaten canned plum
+pudding and potted chicken and maraschino cherries and ginger snaps, all
+at one sitting, when he happened to strike the fellow just after selling
+a few sheep. Thinking of these things, Starr clucked to Rabbit and told
+him for gosh sake to pick his feet off the ground and not to take root
+and grow there in the desert like a several-kinds of a so-and-so cactus.
+
+Rabbit twitched back his ears to catch the drift of Starr's remarks,
+rattled his teeth in a bored yawn, and shuffled on. Starr laughed.
+
+"Durn it, why is it you never take me serious?" he complained. "I can
+name over all the mean things you are, and you just waggle one ear, much
+as to say, 'Aw, hell! Same ole tune, and nothing to it but noise.' Some
+of these days you're going to get your pedigree read to you--and read
+right!" He leaned forward and lovingly lifted Rabbit's mane, holding it
+for a minute or two away from the sweaty neck. "Sure's hot out here
+to-day, ain't it, pardner?" he murmured, and let the mane fall again into
+place. "Kinda fries out the grease, don't it? If young Calvert's got any
+hoss-feed in camp, I'm going to beg some off him. Get along, the faster
+you go, the quicker you'll get there."
+
+The desert gave place to scattered, brown cobblestones of granite. Rabbit
+picked his way carefully among these, setting his feet down daintily in
+the interstices of the rocks. He climbed a long slope that proved itself
+to be a considerable hill when one looked back at the desert below. The
+farther side was more abrupt, and he took it in patient zigzags where the
+footing promised some measure of security. At the bottom he turned short
+off to the right and made his way briskly along a rough wagon trail that
+hugged the hillside.
+
+"Fresh tracks going in--and then out again," Starr announced musingly
+to Rabbit. "Maybe young Calvert hired a load of grub brought out; that,
+or he's had a visitor in the last day or two--maybe a week back,
+though; this dry ground holds tracks a long while. Go on, it's only a
+mile or so now."
+
+The trail took a sudden turn toward the bottom of the wide depression as
+though it wearied of dodging rocks and preferred the loose sand below. Of
+his own accord Rabbit broke into a steady lope, flinging his head
+sidewise now and then to discourage the pestiferous gnats that swarmed
+about his ears. Starr, also driven to action of some kind, began to fling
+his hands in long sweeping gestures past his face. He hoped that the
+cabin, being on a higher bit of ground, would be free from the pests.
+
+Bounding a sharp turn, Starr glimpsed the cabin and frowned as something
+unfamiliar in its appearance caught his attention. For just a minute he
+could not name the change, and then "Curtains at the windows!" he
+snorted. "Now, has the dub gone and got married, wonder?" He hoped not,
+and his hope was born not so much from sympathy with any woman who must
+live in such a place, but from a very humanly, selfish regard for his own
+passing comfort. With a woman in the cabin, Starr would not feel so free
+to break his journey there with a rest and a meal or two.
+
+He went on, however, sitting passively in the saddle while Rabbit headed
+straight for the spring. The bit of white curtain at the one small,
+square window facing that way troubled Starr, though it could not turn
+him back thirsty into the desert.
+
+It was Rabbit who, ignorant of the significance of that flapping bit of
+white, was taken unawares and ducked sidewise when Helen May, standing
+precariously on a rock beside the spring, cupped her hands around her
+sun-cracked lips and shouted "Vic!" at the top of her voice. She nearly
+fell off the rock when she saw the horse and rider so close. They had
+come on her from behind, round another sharp nose of the rock-strewn
+hillside, so that she did not see them until they had discovered her.
+
+"Oh!" said Helen May quite flatly, dropping her hands from her sunburned
+face and looking Starr over with the self-possessed, inquiring eyes of
+one who is accustomed to gazing upon strange faces by the thousands.
+
+"How do you do?" said Starr, lifting his hat and foregoing instinctively
+the easy "Howdy" of the plains. "Is--Mr. Calvert at home?"
+
+"That depends," said Helen May, "on where he calls home. He isn't
+here, however."
+
+Rabbit, not in the least confused by the presence of a girl in this
+out-of-the-way place, pushed forward and thrust his nose deep into the
+lower pool of the spring where the water was warmed a little by the sun
+on the rocks. Starr could not think of anything much to say, so he sat
+leaning forward with a hand on Rabbit's mane, and watched the muscles
+working along the neck, when the horse swallowed.
+
+"Oh--would you mind killing that beast down there in that little hollow?"
+Helen May had decided that it would be silly to keep on shouting for Vic
+when this man was here. "It's what they call a young Gila Monster, I
+think. And the bite is said to be fatal. I don't like the way he keeps
+looking at me. I believe he's getting ready to jump at me."
+
+Starr glanced quickly at her face, which was perfectly serious and even a
+trifle anxious, and then down in the direction indicated by a
+broken-nailed, pointing finger. He did not smile, though he felt like it.
+He looked again at Helen May.
+
+"It's a horned toad," he informed her gravely. "The one Johnny Calvert
+kept around for a pet, I reckon. He won't bite--but I'll kill it if you
+say so." He dismounted and picked up a stone, and then looked at her
+again inquiringly.
+
+Helen May eyed the toad askance. "Of course, if it's accustomed to being
+a pet--but it looks perfectly diabolical. It--came after me."
+
+"It thought you would feed it, maybe."
+
+"Well, I won't. It can think again," said Helen May positively. "You
+needn't kill it, but if you'd chase it off somewhere out of sight--it
+gives me shivers. I don't like the way it stares at a person and blinks."
+
+Starr went over and picked up the toad, holding it cupped between his
+palms. He carried it a hundred feet away, set it down gently on the
+farther side of a rock, and came back. "Lots of folks keep them for
+pets," he said. "They're harmless, innocent things."
+
+He washed his hands in the pool where Rabbit had drunk, took the tin
+can that had stood on a ledge in the shade when Starr first came to the
+spring a year ago, and dipped it full from the inner pool that was
+always cool under the rocks. He turned his back to Helen May and drank
+satisfyingly. The can was rusted and it leaked a swift succession of
+drops that was almost a stream. Helen May decided that she would bring a
+white granite cup to the spring and throw the can away. It was
+unsanitary, and it leaked frightfully, and it was a disgrace to
+civilized thirst.
+
+"Pretty hot, to-day," Starr observed, when he had emptied the can and put
+it back. He turned and pulled the reins up along Rabbit's neck and took
+the stirrup in his hand.
+
+"Oh, won't you stop--for lunch? It's a long way to town." Helen May
+flushed behind her sunburn, but she felt that the law of the desert
+demanded some show of hospitality.
+
+"Thanks, I must be getting on," said Starr, touched his hat brim and
+rode away. He had a couple of fried-ham sandwiches in his pocket, and
+he ought to make the Medina ranch by two o'clock, he reminded himself
+philosophically. A woman on Johnny Calvert's claim was disconcerting.
+What was she there for, anyway? From the way she spoke about Johnny,
+she couldn't be his wife, or if she were, she had a grudge against
+him. She didn't look like the kind of a girl that would marry the
+Johnny Calvert kind of a man. Maybe she was just stopping there for a
+day or so, with her folks. Still, that white curtain at the window
+looked permanent, somehow.
+
+Starr studied the puzzle from all angles. He might have stayed and had
+his curiosity satisfied, but it was second nature with Starr to hide any
+curiosity he might feel; his riding matter-of-factly away, as though the
+girl were a logical part of the place, was not all bashfulness. Partly it
+was habit. He wondered who Vic was--man, woman or child? Man, he guessed,
+since she was probably calling for help with the horned toad, Starr
+grinned when he thought of her naming it a Gila Monster. If she had ever
+seen one of those babies! She must certainly be new to the country, if
+she didn't even know a horned toad when she saw one! What was she doing
+there, anyway? Starr meant to find out. It was his business to find out,
+and besides, he wanted to know.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE
+
+A GREASE SPOT IN THE SAND
+
+
+Starr, took his cigarette from his lips, sent an oblique glance of mental
+measurement towards his host, and shifted his saddle-weary person to a
+more comfortable position on the rawhide covered couch. He had eaten his
+fill of frijoles and tortillas and a chili stew hot enough to crisp the
+tongue. He had discussed the price of sheep and had with much dickering
+bought fifty dry ewes at so much on foot delivered at the nearest
+shipping point. He had given what news was public talk, of the great war
+and the supposedly present whereabouts of Villa, and what was guessed
+would happen if Mexican money went any lower.
+
+On his own part, Estancio Medina, called Estan for short, had talked very
+freely of these things. Villa, he was a bad one, sure. He would yet make
+trouble if some_body_ didn't catch him, yes. For himself, Estan Medina,
+he was glad to be on this side the border, yes. The American government
+would let a poor man alone, yes. He could have his little home and his
+few sheep, and no_body_ would take them away. Villa, he was a bad one!
+All Mexicans must sure hate Villa--even the men who did his fighting for
+him, yes. Burros, that's what they are. Burros, that have no mind for
+thinking, only to do what is tol'. And if troubles come, all Mexicans in
+these country should fight for their homes, you bet. All these Mexicans
+ought to know what's good for them. They got no business to fight gainst
+these American gov'ment, not much, they don't. They come here because
+they don't like it no more in Mexico where no poor man can have a home
+like here. You bet.
+
+Estan Medina was willing to talk a long while on that subject. His
+mother, sitting just inside the doorway, nodded her head now and then and
+smiled just as though she knew what her son was saying; proud of his high
+learning, she was. He could talk with the Americanos, and they listened
+with respect. Their language he could speak, better than they could speak
+it themselves. Did she not know? She herself could now and then
+understand what he was talking about, he spoke so plainly.
+
+"You've got new neighbors, I see," Starr observed irrelevantly, when
+Estan paused to relight his cigarette. "Over at Johnny Calvert's," he
+added, when Estan looked at him inquiringly.
+
+"Oh-h, yes! That poor boy and girl! You seen them?"
+
+"I just came from there," Starr informed him easily. "What brought them
+away out here?"
+
+"They not tell, then? That man Calvert, he's a bad one, sure! He don'
+stay no more--too lazy, I think, to watch his sheeps from the coyotes,
+and says they're stole. He comes here telling me I got his sheeps--yes.
+We quarrel a little bit, maybe. I don' like to be called thief, you bet.
+He's big mouth, that feller--no brains, aitre. Then he goes some_where_,
+and he tells what fine rancho he's got in Sunlight Basin. These boy and
+girl, they buy. That's too bad. They don' belong on these desert, sure.
+W'at they know about hard life? Pretty soon they get tired, I think, and
+go back where comes from. That boy--what for help he be to that girl?
+Jus' boy--not so old my brother Luis. Can't ride horse; goes up and down,
+up an' down like he's back goes through he's hat. What that girl do? Jus'
+slim, big-eye girl with soft hand and sickness of lungs. Babes, them boy
+and girl. Whan Calvert he should be shot dead for let such inocentes be
+fool like that."
+
+"Where is Johnny Calvert?"
+
+"Him? He's gone, sure! Not come back, I bet you! He's got money--them
+babes got rancho--" Estan lifted his shoulders eloquently.
+
+"What are they going to do, now they're here?" Starr abstractedly wiped
+off the ash collar of his cigarette against the edge of the couch.
+
+"_Quien sabe_?" countered Estan, and lifted his shoulders again. "I think
+pretty quick they go."
+
+Starr looked at his watch, yawned, and rose with much evident reluctance.
+"Same here," he said. "I've got to make San Bonito in time for that
+Eastbound. You have the sheep in the stockyards by Saturday, will you? If
+I'm not there myself, I'll leave the money with Johnson at the express
+office. Soon as the sheep's inspected, you can go there and get it.
+_Addios. Mucho gracias, Senora_."
+
+"She likes you fine--my mother," Estan observed, as the two sauntered to
+the corral where Rabbit was stowing away as much _secate_ as he could
+against future hunger. "Sometimes you come and stay longer. We not see so
+many peoples here. Nobody likes to cross desert when she's hot like this.
+Too bad you must go now."
+
+Starr agreed with him and talked the usual small talk of the desert
+Places while he placed the saddle on Rabbit's still sweaty back. He went
+away down the rocky trail with the sun shining full on his right cheek,
+and was presently swallowed up by the blank immensity of the land that
+looked level as a floor from a distance, but which was a network of small
+ridges and shallow draws and "dry washes" when one came to ride over it.
+
+The trail was narrow and had many inconsequential twists and turns in it,
+as though the first man to travel that way had gone blind or dizzy and
+could not hold a straight line across the level. When an automobile, for
+instance, traveled that road, it was with many skiddings in the sand on
+the turns, which it must take circumspectly if the driver did not care
+for the rocky, uneven floor of the desert itself.
+
+Just lately some one had actually preferred to make his own trail, if
+tracks told anything. Within half a mile of the Medina rancho Starr saw
+where an automobile had swerved sharply off the trail and had taken to
+the hard-packed sand of a dry arroyo that meandered barrenly off to the
+southeast. He turned and examined the trail over which he had traveled,
+saw that it offered no more discouragement to an automobile than any
+other bit of trail in that part of the country, and with another glance
+at the yellow ribbon of road before him, he also swerved to the
+southeast.
+
+For a mile the machine had labored, twisting this way and that to avoid
+rocky patches or deep cuts where the spring freshets had dug out the
+looser soil. So far as Starr could discover there was nothing to bring a
+machine up here. The arroyo was as thousands of other arroyos in that
+country. The sides sloped up steeply, or were worn into perpendicular
+banks. It led nowhere in particular; it was not a short cut to any place
+that he knew of. The trail to Medina's ranch was shorter and smoother,
+supposing Medina's ranch were the objective point of the trip.
+
+Starr could not see any sense in it, and that is why he followed the
+tortuous track to where the machine had stopped. That it had stood there
+for some time he knew by the amount of oil that had leaked down into the
+sand. He did not know for certain, since he did not know the oil-leaking
+habits of that particular car, but he guessed that it had stood there for
+a couple of hours at least before the driver had backed and turned around
+to retrace his way to the trail.
+
+In these days of gasoline travel one need not be greatly surprised to
+meet a car, or see the traces of one, in almost any out-of-the-way spot
+where four wheels can possibly be made to travel. On the other hand, the
+man at the wheel is not likely to send his machine over rocks and through
+sand where the traction is poor, and across dry ditches and among
+greasewood, just for the fun of driving. There is sport with rod or gun
+to lure, or there is necessity to impel, or the driver is lost and wants
+to reach some point that looks familiar, or he is trying to dodge
+something or somebody.
+
+Starr sat beside that grease spot in the sand and smoked a cigarette
+and studied the surrounding hills and tried to decide what had brought
+the car up here. Not sport, unless it was hunting of jack rabbits; and
+there were more jack rabbits out on the flat than here. There was no
+trout stream near, at least, none that was not more accessible from
+another point. To be sure, some tenderfoot tourist might have been told
+some yarn that brought him up here on a wild-goose chase. You can,
+thought Starr, expect any fool thing of a tourist. He remembered running
+across one that was trying between trains to walk across the mesa from
+Albuquerque to the Sandia mountains. It had been hard to convince that
+particular specimen that he was not within a mile or so of his goal, and
+that he would do well to reach the mountains in another three hours or
+so of steady walking. Compared with that, driving a car up this arroyo
+did not look so foolish.
+
+But tourists did not invade this particular locality with their
+overconfident inexperience, and Starr did not give that explanation much
+serious thought. Instead he followed on up the narrowed gulch to higher
+ground, to see where men would be most likely to go from there. At the
+top he looked out upon further knobs and hollows and aimless
+depressions, just as he had expected. Half a mile or so away there
+drifted a thin spiral of smoke, from the kitchen stove of the Senora
+Medina, he guessed. But there was no other sign of human life anywhere
+within the radius of many miles, or, to be explicit, within the field of
+Starr's vision.
+
+He looked for footprints, but in a few minutes he gave up in disgust.
+The ridge he stood on stretched for miles, up beyond Medina's home
+ranch and down past the Sommers' ranch, five or six miles nearer town,
+and on to the railroad. And it was a rocky ridge if ever there was one;
+granite outcroppings, cobblestones, boulders, anything but good loose
+soil where tracks might be followed. A dog might have followed a trail
+there before the scent was baked out by blistering heat; but Starr
+certainly could not.
+
+He stood looking across to where the smoke curled up into the intense
+Blue of the sky. If a man wanted to reach the Medina ranch by the most
+obscure route, he thought, this would be one way to get there. He went
+back to where the automobile had stood and searched there for some sign
+of those who had ridden this far. But if any man left that machine, he
+had stepped from the running board upon rock, and so had left no telltale
+print of his foot.
+
+"And that looks mighty darn queer," said Starr, "if it was just
+accidental. But if a fellow _wanted_ to take to the rocks to cover his
+trail, why, he couldn't pick a better place than this. She's a dandy
+ridge and a dandy way to get up on her, if that's what's wanted." Starr
+looked at his watch and gave up all hope of catching the next eastbound
+train, if that had really been his purpose. He lifted his hat and drew
+his fingers across his forehead where the perspiration stood in beads,
+resettled the hat at an angle to shade his face from the glare of the
+sun, ran two fingers cursorily between the cinch and Rabbit's sweaty
+body, picked up the stirrup, thrust in his toe and eased himself up into
+the saddle; and his mind had not consciously directed a single movement.
+
+"Well, they've left one mark behind 'em that fair hollers," he stated, in
+so satisfied a tone that Rabbit turned his head and looked back at him
+inquiringly. Starr, you must know, was not given to satisfied tones when
+he and Rabbit were enduring the burden of heat and long miles. "And you
+needn't give me that kinda look, neither. Take a look at them tire
+tracks, you ole knot-head. Them's Silvertown cords, and they ain't
+equipping jitneys with cord tires--not yet. Why, yo're whole carcass
+ain't worth the price uh one tire, let alone four, you old sheep. You
+show me the car in this country that's sportin' Silvertowns all around,
+and I'll show you--"
+
+Just what he would show, Starr did not say, because he did not know. But
+there was something there which might be called a mystery, and where
+there was mystery there was Starr, working tirelessly on the solution.
+This might be a trivial thing; but until he knew beyond all doubt that it
+was trivial, Starr pushed other matters, such as a young woman afraid of
+a horned toad, out of his mind that he might study the puzzle from all
+possible angles.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX
+
+"DARN SUCH A COUNTRY!"
+
+
+Helen May stood on the knobby, brown rock pinnacle that formed the head
+of Sunlight Basin and stared resentfully out over the baked desert and
+the forbidding hills and the occasional grassy hollows that stretched
+away and away to the skyline. So clear was the air that every slope,
+every hollow, every acarpous hilltop lay pitilessly revealed to her
+unfriendly eyes, until the sheer immensity of distance veiled its
+barrenness in a haze of tender violet. The sky was blue; deeply,
+intensely blue, with little clouds like flakes of bleached cotton
+floating aimlessly here and there. In a big, wild, unearthly way it was
+beautiful beyond any words which human beings have coined.
+
+Helen May felt its bigness, its wildness, perhaps also its beauty, though
+the beauties of the desert land do not always appeal to alien eyes. She
+felt its bigness and its wildness; and she who had lived the cramped life
+of the town resented both, because she had no previous experience by
+which to measure any part of it. Also, she summed up all her resentment
+and her complete sense of bafflement at its bigness in one vehement
+sentence that lacked only one word of being a curse.
+
+"Darn such a country!" is what she said, gritting the words between
+her teeth.
+
+"See anything of 'em?" bellowed Vic from the spring below, where he was
+engaged in dipping up water with a tomato can and pouring it over his
+head, shivering ecstatically as the cold trickles ran down his neck.
+
+Helen May glanced down at him with no softening of her eyes. Vic had lost
+nine goats out of the flock he had been set to herd, and he failed to
+manifest any great concern over the loss. On the contrary, he had told
+Helen May that he wished he could lose the whole bunch, and that he hoped
+coyotes had eaten them up, if they didn't have sense enough to stay with
+the rest. There had been a heated argument, and Helen May had not felt
+sure of coming out of it a victor.
+
+"No, I didn't, and you'd better get back to work or the rest will be
+gone, too," she called down to him petulantly. "It's bad enough to lose
+nine, without letting the rest go."
+
+"Aw, 's matter with yuh, anyway?" Vic retorted in a tone he thought would
+not reach her ears. "By gosh, you don't want a feller to cool off, even!
+By gosh, you'd make a feller _sleep_ with them darned goats if you could
+get away with it! Bu-lieve _me_, anybody can have my job that wants it.
+'S hot enough to fry eggs in the shade, and she thinks, by hen, that I
+oughta stay out there--"
+
+"Yes, I do. And if you want anything to eat to-night, Vic Stevenson, you
+get right back there with those goats! They're going over the hill this
+minute. Hurry, Vic! For heaven's sake, are you trying to take a _bath_ in
+that can? Climb up that ridge and cut across and head them off! That old
+Billy's headed for town again--hurry!"
+
+"Aw for gosh sake!" grumbled Vic, stooping reluctantly to pick up the old
+hoe-handle he used for a staff. "What ridge?" He paused to thunder up at
+her, his voice unexpectedly changing to a shrill falsetto on the last
+word, as frequently happens to rob a mancub of his dignity just when he
+needs it most.
+
+"That ridge before your face, chump," Helen May informed him crossly. "If
+it comes to choosing between goats and a boy, I'll take the goats! And if
+there's any spot on the face of the earth worse than this, I'd like to
+know where it is. The idea of expecting people to live in such a country!
+It looks for all the world like magnified pictures of the moon's surface.
+And," she added with a dreary kind of vindictiveness, "it's here, and I'm
+here. I can't get away from it--that's the dickens of it." Then, because
+Helen May had a certain impish sense of humor, she sat down and laughed
+at the incongruity of it all. "Me--me, here in the desert trying to
+raise goats! Can you beat that?"
+
+She watched Vic toiling up the ridge, using the hoe-handle with a slavish
+dependence upon its support that tickled Helen May again. "You'd think,"
+she told the scenery for want of other companionship, "you'd think Vic
+was seventy-nine years old at the very least. Makes a difference whether
+he's after a bunch of tame goats or hiking with a bunch of boy scouts to
+the top of Mount Wilson! I don't believe that kid ever did wear his legs
+out having fun, and it's a sure thing he'll never wear them out working!
+Say goats to him and he actually gets round-shouldered and limps."
+
+Vic disappeared over the ridge beyond the spring. Lower down, where the
+ridge merged into the Basin itself, the big curly-horned Billy that had
+cost Helen May more than any half dozen of his followers stepped out
+briskly at the head of the band. Helen May wondered what new depravity
+was in his mind, and whether Vic would cross the gully he was in and
+confront Billy in time to change the one idea that seemed always to
+possess that animal.
+
+Helen May did not know how vitally important it is to have a good dog at
+such work. She did not know that Billy and his band felt exactly like
+boys who have successfully eluded a too lax teacher, and that they would
+have yielded without argument to the bark of a trained sheep dog. She had
+set Vic a harder task than she realized; a task from which any
+experienced herder would have shrunk. In her ignorance she blamed Vic,
+and called him lazy and careless and a few other sisterly epithets which
+he did not altogether deserve.
+
+She watched now, impatient because he was so long in crossing the gully;
+telling herself that he was trying to see how slow he could be, and that
+he did it just to be disagreeable and to irritate her--as if she were
+there of her own desire, and had bought those two hundred miserable
+goats to spite him. Harmony, as you must see, did not always dwell in
+Sunlight Basin.
+
+Eventually Vic toiled up the far side of the gully, which was deep and as
+hot as an oven, and followed it down within rock-throwing distance of the
+goats. A well-aimed pebble struck Billy on the curve of one horn and
+halted him, the band huddling vacant-eyed behind him. Vic aimed and threw
+another, and Billy, turning his whiskered face upward, stared with
+resentful head-tossings and a defiant blat or two before he swerved back
+into the Basin, his band and Vic plodding after.
+
+"Well, for a wonder!" Helen May ejaculated ungraciously, grudging Vic
+the small tribute of praise that was due him. But she was immediately
+ashamed of that, and told herself that it was pretty hard on the poor
+kid, and that after all he must hate the country worse than she did,
+even, which would certainly mean a good deal; and that she supposed he
+missed his boy chums just as much as she missed her friends, and found it
+just as hard to fit himself comfortably into a life for which he had no
+liking. Besides, it wasn't his health that had shunted them both out here
+into the desert, and she ought to be ashamed of herself for treating him
+the way she did.
+
+After that she decided that it was her business to find the nine goats
+that were lost. Vic certainly could not do both at once; and deep down in
+her heart Helen May knew that she was terribly afraid of Billy and would
+rather trudge the desert for hours under the hot sun than stay in the
+Basin watching the main flock. She wished that she could afford to hire a
+herder, but she shrunk from the expense. It seemed to her that she and
+Vic should be able to herd that one band, especially since there was
+nothing else for them to do out there except cook food and eat it.
+
+Speaking of food, it seemed to take an enormous quantity to satisfy the
+hunger of two persons. Helen May was appalled at the insatiable appetite
+of Vic, who seemed never to have enough in his stomach. As for
+herself--well, she recalled the meal she had just eaten, and wondered how
+it could be possible for hunger to seize upon her so soon again. But even
+so, food could not occupy all of their time, and a two-room cabin does
+not take much keeping in order. They would simply be throwing away money
+if they hired a herder, and yet, how they both did loathe those goats!
+
+She climbed back down the pinnacle, watching nervously for snakes and
+lizards and horned toads and such denizens of the desert. With a
+certain instinct for preparing against the worst, she took a two-quart
+canteen, such as soldiers carry, to the spring, and filled it and slung
+it over her shoulder. She went to the cabin and made a couple of
+sandwiches, and because she was not altogether inhuman she cut two
+thick slices of bread, spread them lavishly with jam, and carried them
+to Vic as a peace offering.
+
+"I'm going to hunt those nasty brutes, Vic," she cried from a safe
+distance. "Come here and get this jam sandwich, and lend me that stick
+you've got. And if I don't get back by five, you start a fire."
+
+"Where you going to look? If you couldn't see 'em from up there, I don't
+see the use of hunting." Vic was taking long steps towards the sandwich,
+and he stretched his sunburned face in that grin which might have made
+him famous in comedy had fate not set him down before his present ignoble
+task. "Yuh don't want to go far," he advised her perfunctorily. "We ought
+to have a couple of saddle horses. Why don't yuh--"
+
+"What would we feed them on? Besides we've got to save what money we've
+got, Vic. We can walk till these insects grow wool enough to pay for
+something to ride on."
+
+"Hair, you mean. I can get a gentle horse from that Mexican kid, Luis. He
+good as offered us the one--that I borrowed--" Vic was giving too much
+attention to the jam sandwich to argue very coherently.
+
+"There's that old Billy starting off again; you watch him, Vic. Don't let
+him get a start, or goodness knows where he'll head for next. We can't
+keep a horse, I tell you. We need all this grass for the goats."
+
+"Oh, darn the goats!"
+
+In her heart Helen May quite agreed with the sentiment, but she could not
+consistently betray that fact to Vic. She therefore turned her back upon
+him, walking down the trail that led out of the Basin to the main trail a
+mile away, the trail which was the link connecting them with civilization
+of a sort.
+
+Here passed the depressed, dust-covered stage three times a week. Here,
+in a macaroni box mounted on a post, they received and posted their
+mail. Helen May had indulged herself in a subscription to the Los
+Angeles daily paper that had always been left at their door every
+morning, the paper which Peter had read hastily over his morning mush.
+Every paper brought a pang of homesickness for the flower-decked city of
+her birth, but she felt as though she could not have kept her sanity
+without it. The full-page bargain ads she read hungrily. The weekly
+announcements of the movie shows, the news, the want columns--these were
+at once her solace and her torment; and if you have ever been exiled,
+you know what that means.
+
+Here, too, she left her shopping list and money for the stage driver, who
+bought what she needed and left the goods at the foot of the post, and
+what money remained in a buckskin bag in the macaroni box.
+
+An obliging stage driver was he, a tobacco chewing, red-faced,
+red-whiskered stage driver who nagged at his four horses incessantly and
+never was known to beat one of them; a garrulous, soft-hearted stage
+driver who understood very well how lonely these two young folks must be,
+and who therefore had some moth-eaten joke ready for whoever might be
+waiting for him at the macaroni box. Whenever Helen May apologized for
+the favor she must ask of him--which was every time she handed him a
+list--the stage driver invariably a nasal kind of snort, spat far out
+over the wheel, and declared pettishly:
+
+"It ain't a mite uh trouble in the world. That's what I'm _fur_--to help
+folks out along my rowt. Don't you worry a mite about that." Often as he
+said it, he yet gave it the tone of sincerity and of convincing
+freshness, as though he had never before given the matter a thought.
+Helen May did not know what she would have done without that stage driver
+to bridge the gulf between Sunlight Basin and the world.
+
+But this was not stage day. That is to say, the stage had passed to the
+far side of its orbit, and would not return until to-morrow. From San
+Bonito it swung in a day-long journey across the desert to Malpais,
+thence by a different route to San Bonito again, so that Helen May never
+saw it returning whence it had come.
+
+A cloud of desert dust always heralded its approach from the east.
+Sometimes after the first dust signal, it took him nearly an hour to top
+the low ridge which was really one rim of the Basin. Then Helen May would
+know that he carried passengers or freight that straightened the backs of
+the straining four horses in the long stretch of sand beyond the ridge
+and made their progress slow.
+
+But to-day there was no dust signal, and the macaroni box was but a
+dismal reminder of her exile. The world was very far away, behind the
+violet rim of mountains, and she was just a speck in the desert. Her high
+laced boots were heavy, and the dust settled in the creases around her
+slim ankles, that could be perfectly fascinating in silken hose and
+dainty slippers. Her khaki skirt, of the divided kind much affected by
+tourists, had lost two big, pearl buttons, and she had no others to
+replace them. Her shirt-waist had its collar turned inside for coolness,
+and the hollow of her neck was sun-blistered and beginning to peel. Also
+her nose and her neck at the sides were showing a disposition to grow new
+skin for old. So much had the desert sun done for her.
+
+But there was something else which the desert had done, something which
+Helen May did not fully realize. It had put a clear, steady look into her
+eyes in place of the glassy shine of fever. It was beginning to fill out
+that hollow in her neck, so that it no longer showed the angular ends of
+her collar bones. It had put a resilient quality into her walk, firmness
+into the poise of her head. It had made it physically possible, for
+instance, for Helen May to trudge out into the wild to hunt nine goats
+that had strayed from the main band.
+
+Though she did not know it, a certain dream of Peter's had very nearly
+come true. For here were the vast plains, unpeopled, pure, immutable in
+their magnificent calm. At night the stars seemed to come down and hang
+just over Helen May's head. There was the little cottage of which Peter
+had dreamed--only Helen May called it a miserable little shack--hunched
+against a hill; sometimes a light winked through the window at the stars;
+sometimes Helen May was startled at the nearness and the shrill
+insistence of the coyotes. Here as Peter had dreamed so longingly and so
+hopelessly, were distance and quiet and calm. And here was Helen May
+coming through the sunlight--Peter never dreamed how hot it would
+be!--with her deep-gold hair tousled in the wind and with the little red
+spots gone from her cheeks and with health in her eyes that were the
+color of ripe chestnuts. When her skin had adjusted itself to the rigors
+of the climate, she would no doubt have freckles on her nose, just as
+Peter had dreamed she might have. And if she were walking, instead of
+riding the gentle-eyed pony which Peter had pictured, that was not
+Peter's fault, nor the fault of the dream. There was no laugh on her
+lips, however. Dreams are always pulling a veil of idealism over the face
+of reality, and so Helen May's face was not happy, as Peter had dreamed
+it might be, but petulant and grimly determined; her ripe-red lips were
+moving in anathemas directed at nine detested goats.
+
+Peter could never have dreamed just that, but all the same it is a pity
+that, in order to make the dream a reality, Peter had been forced to deny
+himself the joy of seeing Helen May growing strong in "Arizona, New
+Mexico, or Colorado." It would have made the price he paid seem less
+terrible, less tragic.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN
+
+MOONLIGHT, A MAN AND A SONG
+
+
+Just out from the entrance to a deep, broad-bottomed arroyo where an
+automobile had been, Starr came upon something that surprised him very
+much, and it was not at all easy to surprise Starr. Here, in the first
+glory of a flaming sunset that turned the desert to a sea of unearthly,
+opal-tinted beauty, he came upon Helen May, trudging painfully along with
+an old hoe-handle for a staff, and driving nine reluctant nanny goats
+that alternately trotted and stood still to stare at the girl with
+foolish, amber-colored eyes.
+
+Starr was trained to long desert distances, but his training had made it
+second nature to consider a horse the logical means of covering those
+distances. To find Helen May away out here, eight miles and more from
+Sunlight Basin, and to find her walking, shocked Starr unspeakably;
+shocked him out of his shyness and into free speech with her, as though
+he had known her a long while.
+
+"Y' _lost_?" was his first greeting, while he instinctively swung Rabbit
+to head off a goat that suddenly "broke back" from the others.
+
+Helen May looked up at him with relief struggling through the apathy of
+utter weariness. "No, but I might as well be. I'll never be able to get
+home alive, anyhow." She shook the hoe-handle menacingly at a hesitating
+goat and quite suddenly collapsed upon the nearest rock, and began to
+cry; not sentimentally or weakly or in any other feminine manner known to
+Starr, but with an angry recklessness that was like opening a safety
+valve. Helen May herself did not understand why she should go along for
+half a day calmly enough, and then, the minute this man rode up and spoke
+to her sympathetically, she should want to sit down and cry.
+
+"I just--I've been walking since one o'clock! If I had a gun, I'd shoot
+every one of them. I just--I think goats are simply _damnable_ things!"
+
+Starr turned and looked at the animals disapprovingly. "They sure are,"
+he assented comfortingly. "Where you trying to take 'em--or ain't you?"
+he asked, with the confidence-inviting tone that made him so valuable to
+those who paid for his services.
+
+"Home, if you can call it that!" Helen May found her handkerchief and
+proceeded to wipe the tears and the dust off her cheeks. She looked at
+Starr more attentively than at first when he had been just a human being
+who seemed friendly. "Oh, you're the man that stopped at the spring.
+Well, you know where I live, then. I was hunting these; they wandered off
+and Vic couldn't find them yesterday, so I--it was just accident that I
+came across them. I followed some tracks, and it looked to me as if
+they'd been driven off. There were horse tracks. That's what made me keep
+going--I was so mad. And now they won't go home or anywhere else. They
+just want to run around every which way."
+
+Starr looked up the arroyo, hesitating. On the edge of San Bonito he had
+picked up the track of Silvertown cord tires, and he had followed it to
+the mouth of this arroyo. From certain signs easy for an experienced man
+to read, he had known the track was fairly fresh, fresh enough to make it
+worth his while to follow. And now here was a girl all tired out and a
+long way from home.
+
+"Here, you climb onto Rabbit. He's gentle when he knows it's all right,
+and I won't stand for him acting up." Starr swung off beside her. "I'll
+help get the goats home. Where's your dog?"
+
+"I haven't any dog. The man we bought the goats from wanted to sell me
+one, to help herd them, he said. But he asked twenty-five dollars for
+it--I suppose he thought because I looked green I'd stand for that!--and
+I wouldn't be held up that way. Vic and I have nothing to do but watch
+them. You--you mustn't bother," she added half-heartedly. "I can get them
+home all right. I'm rested now, and there's a moon, you know. Really, I
+can't let you bother about it. I know the way."
+
+"Put your foot in the stirrup and climb on. You, Rabbit, you stand still,
+or I'll beat the--"
+
+"Really, you mustn't think, because I cried a little bit--"
+
+"Pile on to him now, while I hold him still. Or shall I pick you up and
+_put_ you on?" Starr smiled while he said it, but there was a look in his
+eyes and around his mouth that made Helen May yield suddenly.
+
+By her awkwardness Starr and Rabbit both knew that she had probably never
+before attempted to mount a horse. By the set of her lips Starr knew that
+she was afraid, but that she would break her neck before she would
+confess her fear. He liked her for that, and he was glad to see that
+Rabbit understood the case and drew upon his reserve of patience and good
+nature, standing like a rock until Helen May was settled in the saddle
+and Starr had turned the stirrups on their sides in the leather so that
+they would come nearer being the right length for her. Starr's hand
+sliding affectionately up Rabbit's neck and resting a moment on his jaw
+was all the assurance Rabbit needed that everything was all right.
+
+"Now, just leave the reins loose, and let Rabbit come along to please
+himself," Starr instructed her quietly. "He'll follow me, and he'll pick
+his own trail. You don't have to do a thing but sit there and take it
+easy. He'll do the rest."
+
+Helen May looked at him doubtfully, but she did not say anything. She
+braced herself in the stirrups, took a firm grip of the saddlehorn with
+one hand, and waited for what might befall. She had no fear of Starr, no
+further uneasiness over the coming night, the loneliness, the goats, or
+anything else. She felt as irresponsible, as safe, as any sheltered woman
+in her own home. I did not say she felt serene; she did not know yet how
+the horse would perform; but she seemed to lay that responsibility also
+on Starr's capable shoulders.
+
+They moved off quietly enough, Starr afoot and driving the goats, Rabbit
+picking his way after him in leisurely fashion. So they crossed the
+arroyo mouth and climbed the ragged lip of its western side and traveled
+straight toward the flaming eye of the sun that seemed now to have winked
+itself nearly shut. The goats for some inexplicable reason showed no
+further disposition to go in nine different directions at once. Helen
+May relaxed from her stiff-muscled posture and began to experiment a
+little with the reins.
+
+"Why, he steers easier than an automobile!" she exclaimed suddenly. "You
+just think which way you want to go, almost, and he does it. And you
+don't have to pull the lines the least bit, do you?"
+
+Starr delayed his answer until he had made sure that she was not
+irritating Rabbit with a too-officious guidance. When he saw that she
+was holding the reins loosely as he had told her to do, and was merely
+laying the weight of a rein on one side of the neck and then on the
+other, he smiled.
+
+"I guess you've rode before," he hazarded. "The way you neck-rein--"
+
+"No, honest. But my chum's brother had a big six, and Sundays he used to
+let me fuss with it, away out where the road was clear. It steered just
+like this horse; just as easy, I mean. I--why, see! I just _wondered_ if
+he'd go to the right of that bush, and he turned that way just as if I'd
+told him to. Can you beat that?"
+
+Starr did not say. Naturally, since she was a girl, and pretty, and since
+he was human, he was busy wondering what her chum's brother was like. He
+picked up a small rock and shied it at a goat that was not doing a thing
+that it shouldn't do, and felt better. He remembered then that at any
+rate her chum's brother was a long way off, and that he himself had
+nothing much to complain of right now. Then Helen May spoke again and
+shifted his thoughts to another subject.
+
+"I believe I'd rather have a horse like this," she said, "than own that
+big, lovely take-me-to-glory car that was pathfinding around like a
+million dollars, a little while ago. I'll own up now that I was weeping
+partly because four great big porky men could ride around on cushions a
+foot thick, while a perfectly nice girl had to plough through the sand
+afoot. The way they skidded past me and buried me in a cloud of dust made
+me mad enough to throw rocks after them. Pigs! They never even stopped to
+ask if I wanted a ride or anything. They all glared at me through their
+goggles as if I hadn't any business walking on their desert."
+
+"Did you know them?" Starr came and walked beside her, glancing
+frequently at her face.
+
+"No, of course I didn't. I don't know anybody but the stage driver. I
+wouldn't have ridden with them, anyway. From what I saw of them they
+looked like Mexicans. But you'd think they might have shown some
+interest, wouldn't you?"
+
+"I sure would," Starr stated with emphasis. "What kinda car was it, did
+you notice? Maybe I know who they are."
+
+"Oh, it was a great big black car. They went by so fast and I was so
+tired and hot and--and pretty near swearing mad, I didn't notice the
+number at all. And they were glaring at me, and I was glaring at them,
+and then the driver stepped on the accelerator just at a little crook in
+the road, and the hind wheels skidded about a ton of sand into my face
+and they were gone, like they were running from a speed cop. I'd much
+rather have a nice little automatic pony like this one," she added
+feelingly. "You don't have to bundle yourself up in dusters and goggles
+and things when you take a ride, do you? It--it makes the bigness of the
+country, and the barrenness of it, somehow fit together and take you into
+the pattern, when you ride a horse over it, don't you think?"
+
+"I guess so," Starr assented, with an odd little slurring accent on the
+last word which gave the trite sentence an individual touch that
+appealed to Helen May. "It don't seem natural, somehow, to walk in a
+country like this."
+
+"Oh, and you've got to, while I ride your horse! Or, have you got to? Is
+it just movie stuff, where a man rides behind on a horse, and lets the
+girl ride in front? I mean, is it feasible, or just a stunt for
+pictures?"
+
+"Depends on the horse," Starr evaded. "It's got the say-so, mostly,
+whether it'll pack one person or two. Rabbit will, and when I get tired
+walking, I'll ride."
+
+"Oh, that makes it better. I wasn't feeling comfortable riding, but men
+are so queer about thinking they must give a woman all the choice bits of
+comfort, and a woman has to give in or row about it. If you'll climb up
+and ride when you feel like it, I'll just settle down and enjoy myself."
+
+Settling down and enjoying herself seemed to consist of gazing out over
+the desert and the hills and up at the sky that was showing the deep
+purple of dusk. It was what Starr wanted most of all, just then, for it
+left him free to study what she had told him of the big black automobile
+with four coated and goggled men who had looked like Mexicans; four men
+who had glared at her and then had speeded up to get away from her
+possible scrutiny.
+
+For the first time since she had seen it from the spring seat of a
+jolting wagon from the one livery stable in Malpais, Helen May discovered
+that this wild, strange land was beautiful. For the first time she
+gloried in its bigness and its wildness, and did not resent its
+barrenness. The little brown birds that fluttered close to the ground and
+cheeped wistfully to one another in the dusk gave her an odd, sweet
+thrill of companionship. Jack rabbits sitting up on their hind legs for
+a brief scrutiny before they scurried away made her laugh to herself. The
+reddened clouds that rimmed the purple were the radiant shores of a
+wonderful, bottomless sea, where the stars were the mast lights on ships
+hull down in the distance. She lifted her chest and drew in long breaths
+of clean, sweet air that is like no other air, and she remembered all at
+once that she had not coughed since daylight. She breathed again, deep
+and long, and felt that she was drawing some wonderful, healing ether
+into her lungs.
+
+She looked at Starr, walking steadily along before her, swinging the
+hoe-handle lightly in his right hand, setting his feet down in the
+smoothest spots always and leaving nearly always a clear imprint of his
+foot in the sandy soil. There was a certain fascination in watching the
+lines of footprints he left behind him. She would know those footprints
+anywhere, she told herself. Small for a man, they were, and well-shaped,
+with the toes pointing out the least little bit, and with no blurring
+drag when he lifted his feet. She did not know that Starr wore riding
+boots made to his measure and costing close to twenty dollars a pair; if
+she had she would not have wondered at the fine shape of them, or at the
+individuality of the imprint they made. She conceived the belief that
+Rabbit knew those footprints also. She amused herself by watching how
+carefully the horse followed wherever they led. If Starr stepped to the
+right to avoid a rock, Rabbit stepped to the right to avoid that rock;
+never to the left, though the way might be as smooth and open. If Starr
+crossed a gully at a certain place, Rabbit followed scrupulously the
+tracks he made. Helen May considered that this little gray horse showed
+really human intelligence.
+
+She realized the deepening dusk only when Starr's form grew vague and
+she could no longer see the prints his boots made. They were nearing the
+brown, lumpy ridge which hid Sunlight Basin from the plain, but Helen
+May was not particularly eager to reach it. For the first time she
+forgot the gnawing heart-hunger of homesickness, and was content with
+her present surroundings; content even with the goats that trotted
+submisively ahead of Starr.
+
+When a soft radiance drifted into the darkness and made it a luminous,
+thin veil, Helen May gave a little cry and looked back. Since her hands
+moved with the swing of her shoulders, Rabbit turned sharply and faced
+the way she was looking, startled, displeased, but obedient. Starr
+stopped abruptly and turned back, coming close up beside her.
+
+"What's wrong?" he asked in an undertone. "See anything?"
+
+"The moon," Helen May gave a hushed little laugh. "I'd
+forgotten--forgotten I was alive, almost. I was just soaking in the
+beauty of it through every pore. And then it got dark so I couldn't see
+your footprints any more, and then such a queer, beautiful look came on
+everything. I turned to look, and this little automatic pony turned to
+look, too. But--isn't it wonderful? Everything, I mean. Just
+everything--the whole world and the stars and the sky--"
+
+Starr lifted an arm and laid it over Rabbit's neck, fingering the
+silver-white mane absently. It brought him quite close to Helen May, so
+that she could have put her hand on his shoulder.
+
+"Yes. It's wonderful--when it ain't terrible," he said, his voice low.
+
+After a silent minute she answered him, in the hushed tone that seemed
+most in harmony with the tremendous sweep of sky and that great stretch
+of plain and bare mountain. "I see what you mean. It is terrible even
+when it's most wonderful. But one little human alone with it would be--"
+
+"Sh-sh." he whispered. "Listen a minute. Did you ever _hear_ a big
+silence like this?"
+
+"No," she breathed eagerly. "Sh-sh--"
+
+At first there was nothing save the whisper of a breeze that stirred the
+greasewood and then was still. Full in their faces the moon swung clear
+of the mountains behind San Bonito and hung there, a luminous yellow ball
+in the deep, star-sprinkled purple. Across the desert it flung a faint,
+straight pathway in the sand. Rabbit gave a long sigh, turned his head to
+look back at his master, and then stood motionless again. Far on a
+hilltop a coyote pointed his nose to the moon and yap-yap-yapped, with a
+shrill, long-drawn tremolo wail that made the girl catch her breath.
+Behind them the nine goats moved closer together and huddled afraid
+beside a clump of bushes. The little breeze whispered again. A night bird
+called in a hurried, frightened way, and upon the last notes came the
+eerie cry of a little night owl.
+
+The girl's face was uplifted, delicately lighted by the moon. Her eyes
+shone dark with those fluttering, sweet wraiths of thoughts which we may
+not prison in speech, which words only deaden and crush into vapid
+sentimentalism. Life, held in a great unutterable calm, seemed to lie out
+there in the radiant, vague distance, asleep and smiling cryptically
+while it slept.
+
+Her eyes turned to Starr, whose name she did not know; who had twice come
+riding out of the distance to do her some slight service before he rode
+on into the distance that seemed so vast. Who was he? What petty round of
+duties and pleasures made up his daily, intimate life? She did not know.
+She did not feel the need of knowing.
+
+Standing there with his thin face turned to the moon so that she saw,
+clean-cut against the night, his strong profile; with one arm thrown
+across the neck of his horse and his big hat tilted back so that she
+could see the heavy, brown hair that framed his fine forehead; with the
+look of a dreamer in his eyes and the wistfulness of the lonely on his
+lips, all at once he seemed to be a part of the desert and its mysteries.
+
+She could picture him living alone somewhere in its wild fastness, aloof
+from the little things of life. He seemed to epitomize vividly the
+meaning of a song she had often sung unmeaningly:
+
+"From the desert I come to thee,
+On my Arab shod with fire;
+And the winds are left behind
+In the speed of my desire."
+
+While she looked--while the words of that old _Bedouin Love Song_
+thrummed through her memory, quite suddenly Starr began to sing, taking
+up the song where her memory had brought her:
+
+"Till the sun grows cold,
+And the stars are old,
+And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold!"
+
+Softly he sang, as though he had forgotten that she was there. Softly,
+but with a resonant, vibrating quality that made the words alive and
+quivering with meaning.
+
+Helen May caught her breath. How did he know she was thinking that song?
+How did he chance to take it up just at the point where her memory had
+carried it? Had he read her mind? She stared at him, her lips parted;
+wondering, a little awed, but listening and thrilling to the human
+sweetness of his tones. And when he had sung the last yearning note of
+primitive desire, Starr turned his head and looked into her eyes.
+
+Helen May felt as though he had taken her in his arms and kissed her
+lingeringly. Yet he had not moved except to turn his face toward her. She
+could not look away, could not even try to pull her eyes from his. It was
+as though she yielded. She felt suffocated, though her breath came
+quickly, a little unevenly.
+
+Starr looked away, across the desert where the moon lighted it whitely.
+It was as though he had released her. She felt flustered, disconcerted.
+She could not understand herself or him, or the primary forces that had
+moved them both. And why had he sung that _Bedouin Love Song_ just as she
+was thinking it as something that explained him and identified him? It
+was mysterious as the desert itself lying there so quiet under the moon.
+It was weird as the cry of the coyote. It was uncanny as spirit rappings.
+But she could not feel any resentment; only a thrill that was part
+pleasure and part pain. She wondered if he had felt the same; if he knew.
+But she could not bring herself to face even the thought of asking him.
+It was like the night silence around them: speech would dwarf and cheapen
+and distort.
+
+Rabbit lifted his head again, perking his ears forward toward a new sound
+that had nothing weird or mysterious about it; a sound that was
+essentially earthly, material, modern, the distant purr of a high-powered
+automobile on the trail away to their right. Starr turned his face that
+way, listening as the horse listened. It seemed to Helen May as though he
+had become again earthy and material and modern, with the desert love
+song but the fading memory of a dream. He listened, and she received the
+impression that something more than idle curiosity held him intent upon
+the sound.
+
+The purring persisted, lessened, grew louder again. Starr still looked
+that way, listening intently. The machine swept nearer, so that the clear
+night air carried the sounds distinctly to where they stood. Starr even
+caught the humming of the rear gears and knew that only now and then does
+a machine have that peculiar, droning hum; Starr studied it, tried to
+impress the sound upon his memory.
+
+The trail looped around the head of a sandy draw and wound over the crest
+of a low ridge before it straightened out for a three-mile level run in
+the direction of San Bonito, miles away. In walking, Starr had cut
+straight across that gully and the loop, so that they had crossed the
+trail twice in their journey thus far, and were still within half a mile
+of the head of the loop. They should have been able to see the lights, or
+at least the reflection of them on the ridge when they came to the draw.
+But there was no bright path on sky or earth.
+
+They heard the car ease down the hill, heard the grind of the gears as
+the driver shifted to the intermediate for the climb that came after.
+They heard the chug of the engine taking the steep grade. Then they
+should have caught the white glare of the headlights as the car topped
+the ridge. Starr knew that nothing obstructed the view, that in daylight
+they could have seen the yellow-brown ribbon of trail where it curved
+over the ridge. The machine was coming directly toward them for a short
+distance, but there was no light whatever. Starr knew then that whoever
+they were, they were running without lights.
+
+"Well, I guess we'd better be ambling along," he said casually, when the
+automobile had purred its way beyond hearing. "It's three or four miles
+yet, and you're tired."
+
+"Not so much." Helen May's voice was a little lower than usual, but that
+was the only sign she gave of any recent deep emotion. "I'd as soon walk
+awhile and let you ride." She shrank now from the thought of both riding.
+
+"When you've ridden as far as I have," said Starr, "you'll know it's a
+rest to get down and travel afoot for a few miles." He might have added
+that it would have been a rest had he not been hampered by those
+high-heeled riding boots, but consideration for her mental ease did not
+permit him to mention it. He said no more, but started the goats ahead of
+him and kept them moving in a straight line for Sunlight Basin. As
+before, Rabbit followed slavishly in his footsteps, nose dropped to the
+angle of placid acceptance, ears twitching forward and back so that he
+would lose no slightest sound.
+
+Helen May fell again under the spell of the desert and the moon. Starr,
+walking steadily through the white-lighted barrenness with his shadow
+always moving like a ghost before him, fitted once more into the desert.
+Again she repeated mentally the words of the song:
+
+Let the night-winds touch thy brow
+With the breath of my burning sigh,
+And melt thee to hear the vow
+Of a love that shall not die!
+
+Till the sun grows cold,
+And the stars are old,
+And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold!
+
+And now the lines sung themselves through her brain with the memory of
+Starr's voice. But Starr did not sing again, though Helen May, curious to
+know if her thoughts held any power over him, gazed intently at his back
+and willed him to sing. He did not look back at her, even when she
+finally descended weakly to the more direct influence of humming the air
+softly--but not too softly for him to hear.
+
+Starr paid no attention whatever. He seemed to be thinking deeply--but he
+did not seem to be thinking of Helen May, nor of desert love songs. Helen
+May continued to watch him, but she was piqued at his calm indifference.
+Why, she told herself petulantly, he paid more attention to those goats
+than he did to her--and one would think, after that song and that
+look.... But there she stopped, precipitately retreating from the thought
+of that look.
+
+He was a queer fellow, she told herself with careful tolerance and a
+little condescension. A true product of the desert; as changeable and as
+sphynxlike and as impossible from any personal, human standpoint. Look
+how beautiful the desert could be, how terribly uplifting and calm
+and--and big. Yet to-morrow it might be either a burning waste of heat
+and sand and bare rock, or it might be a howling waste of wind and sand
+(if one of those sand storms came up). To herself she called him the Man
+of the Desert, and she added the word mysterious, and she also added two
+lines of the song because they fitted exactly her conception of him as
+she knew him. The lines were these:
+
+From the desert I come to thee,
+On my Arab shod with fire.
+
+This, in spite of the fact that Rabbit had none of the fiery traits of an
+Arabian steed; nor could he by any stretch of the imagination be accused
+of being shod with fire, he who planted his hoofs so sedately! Shod with
+velvet would have come nearer describing him.
+
+So Helen May, who was something of a dreamer when Life let her alone long
+enough, rode home through the moonlight and wove cloth-of-gold from the
+magic of the night, and with the fairy fabric she clothed Starr--who was,
+as we know, just an ordinary human being--so that he walked before her,
+not as a plain, ungrammatical, sometimes profane young man who was
+helping her home with her goats, but a mysterious, romantic figure
+evolved somehow out of the vastness in which she lived; who would
+presently recede again into the mysterious wild whence he had come.
+
+It was foolish. She knew that it was foolish. But she had been living
+rather harshly and rather materially for some time, and she hungered for
+the romance of youth. Starr was the only person who had come to her
+untagged by the sordid, everyday petty details of life. It did not hurt
+him to be idealized, but it might have hurt Helen May a little to know
+that he was pondering so earthly a subject as a big, black automobile
+careering without lights across the desert and carrying four men who
+looked like Mexicans.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT
+
+HOLMAN SOMMEKS, SCIENTIST
+
+
+Helen May, under a last year's parasol of pink silk from which the sun
+had drawn much of its pinkness and the wind and dust its freshness, sat
+beside the road with her back against the post that held the macaroni
+box, and waited for the stage. Her face did not need the pink light of
+the parasol, for it was red enough after that broiling walk of yesterday.
+The desert did not look so romantic by the garish light of midday, but
+she stared out over it and saw, as with eyes newly opened to
+appreciation, that there was a certain charm even in its garishness. She
+had lost a good deal of moodiness and a good deal of discontent,
+somewhere along the moonlight trail of last night, and she hummed a tune
+while she waited. No need to tell you that it was: "_Till the sun grows
+cold, till the stars are old_--" No need to tell you, either, of whom she
+was thinking while she sang.
+
+But part of the time she was wondering what mail she would get. Her chum
+would write, of course; being a good, faithful chum, she would probably
+continue to write two or three letters a week for the next three months.
+After that she would drop to one long letter a month for awhile; and
+after that--well, she was a faithful chum, but life persists in bearing
+one past the eddy that holds friendship circling round and round in a
+pool of memories. The chum's brother had written twice, however;
+exuberant letters full of current comedy and full-blooded cheerfulness
+and safely vague sentiment which he had partly felt at the time he wrote.
+He had "joshed" Helen May a good deal about the goats, even to the extent
+of addressing her as "Dear Goat-Lady" in the last letter, with the word
+"Lady" underscored and scrawled the whole width of the page. Helen May
+had puzzled over the obscure meaning of that, and had decided that it
+would have sounded funny, perhaps, if he had said it that way, but that
+it "didn't get over" on paper.
+
+She wondered if he would write again, or if his correspondence would
+prove as spasmodic, as easily interrupted as his attentions had been when
+they were both in the same town. Chum's brother was a nice, big, comfy
+kind of young man; the trouble was that he was too popular to give all
+his interest to one girl. You know how it is when a man stands six feet
+tall and has wavy hair and a misleading smile and a great, big,
+deep-cushioned roadster built for two. Helen May appreciated his writing
+two letters to her, he who hated so to write letters, but her faith in
+the future was small. Still, he might write. It seemed worth while to
+wait for the stage.
+
+Just when she was telling herself that the stage was late, far over the
+ridge rose the dust signal. Her pulse quickened expectantly; so much had
+loneliness done for her. She watched it, and she tried not to admit to
+herself that it did not look like the cloud kicked up by the four
+trotting stage horses. She tried not to believe that the cloud was much
+too small to have been made by their clattering progress. It must be the
+stage. It was past time for it to arrive at the post. And it had not gone
+by, for she had sent for a can of baking powder and a dozen lemons and
+fifty cents worth of canned milk (the delicatessen habit of buying in
+small quantities still hampered her) and, even if the stage had passed
+earlier than usual, the stuff would have been left at the post for her,
+even though there was no mail. But it could not have passed. She would
+have seen the dust, that always hung low over the trail like the drooping
+tail of a comet, and when the day was still took half an hour at least to
+settle again for the next passer-by. And besides, she had come to know
+the tracks the stage left in the trail. It _could not_ have passed. And
+it had to come; it carried the government mail. And yet, that dust did
+not look like the stage dust. (Trivial worries, you say? Then try living
+forty miles from a post office, ten from the nearest neighbor, and
+fifteen hundred from your dearly beloved Home Town. Try living there, not
+because you want to but because you must; hating it, hungering for human
+companionship. Try it with heat and wind and sand and great, arid
+stretches of a land that is strange to you. Honestly, I think you would
+have been out there just after sunrise to wait for that stage, and if it
+were late you would have walked down the trail to meet it!)
+
+Helen May remained by the post, but she got up and stood on a rock that
+protruded six inches or so above the sand. Of course she could not see
+over the ridge--she could not have done that if she had climbed a
+telegraph pole; only there was no pole to climb--but she felt a little
+closer to seeing. That dust did not look like stage dust!
+
+You would be surprised to know how much Helen May had learned about dust
+clouds. She could tell an automobile ten miles away, just by the swift
+gathering of the gray cloud. She could tell where bands of sheep or herds
+of cattle were being driven across the plain. She even knew when a saddle
+horse was coming, or a freight team or--the stage.
+
+She suddenly owned to herself that she was disappointed and rather
+worried. For behind this cloud that troubled her there was no second one
+building up over the skyline and growing more dense as the disturber
+approached. She could not imagine what had happened to that
+red-whiskered, tobacco-chewing stage driver. She looked at her wrist
+watch and saw that he was exactly twenty minutes later than his very
+latest arrival, and she felt personally slighted and aggrieved.
+
+For that reason she sat under her pink silk parasol and stared crossly
+under her eyebrows at the horse and man and the dust-grimed
+rattle-wheeled buggy that eventually emerged from the gray cloud. The
+horse was a pudgy bay that set his feet stolidly down in the trail, and
+dragged his toes through it as though he delighted in kicking up all the
+dust he could. By that trick he had puzzled Helen May a little, just at
+first, though he had not been able to simulate the passing of four
+horses. The buggy was such as improvident farmers used to drive (before
+they bought Fords) near harvest time; scaly as to paint, warped and
+loose-spoked as to wheels, making more noise than progress along the
+country roads.
+
+The man held the lines so loosely that they sagged under the wire-mended
+traces of sunburned leather. He leaned a little forward, as though it was
+not worth while sitting straight on so hot a day. He wore an old Panama
+hat that had cost him a good deal when it was new and had saved him a
+good deal since in straw hats which he had not been compelled to buy so
+long as this one held together. It was pulled down in front so that it
+shaded his face--a face lean and lined and dark, with thin lips that
+could be tender and humorous in certain moods. His eyes were hazel, like
+the eyes of Starr, yet one never thought of them as being at all like
+Starr's eyes. They burned always with some inner fire of life; they
+laughed at life, and yet they did not seem to express mirth. They seemed
+to say that life was a joke, a damnable joke on mankind; that they saw
+the joke and resented it even while they laughed at it. For the rest, the
+man was more than fifty years old, but his hair was thick and black as a
+crow, and his eyebrows were inclined to bushiness, inclined also to slant
+upward. A strong face; an unusual face, but a likeable one, it was. And
+that is a fair description of Holman Sommers as Helen May first saw him.
+
+He drove up to where she sat, and she tilted her pink silk parasol
+between them as though to keep the dust from settling thick upon her
+stained khaki skirt and her desert-dingy high-laced boots. She was not
+interested in him, and her manner of expressing indifference could not
+have misled a horned toad. She was too fresh from city life to have
+fallen into the habit of speaking to strangers easily and as a matter of
+country courtesy. Even when the buggy stopped beside her, she did not
+show any eagerness to move the pink screen so that they might look at
+each other.
+
+"How do you do?" said he, quite as though he were greeting her in her own
+home. "You are Miss Stevenson, I feel sure. I am Holman Sommers, at your
+service. I am under the impression that I have with me a few articles
+which may be of some interest to you, Miss Stevenson. I chanced to come
+upon the stage several miles farther down the road. A wheel had given
+away, and there was every indication that the delay would prove serious,
+so when the driver mentioned the fact that he had mail and merchandise
+for you, I volunteered to act as his substitute and deliver them safely
+into your hands. I hope therefore that the service will in some slight
+measure atone for my presumption in forcing my acquaintance upon you."
+
+At the second sentence the pink parasol became violently agitated. At the
+third Helen May was staring at him, mentally if not actually
+open-mouthed. At the last she was standing up and reaching for her mail,
+and she had not yet decided in her mind whether he was joking or whether
+he expected to be taken seriously. Even when he laughed, with that odd,
+dancing light in his eyes, she could not be sure. But because his voice
+was warm with human sympathy and the cordiality of a man who is very
+sure of himself and can afford to be cordial, she smiled back at him.
+
+"That's awfully good of you, Mr. Sommers," she said, shuffling her
+handful of letters eagerly to see who had written them; more particularly
+to see if Chum's brother had written one of them. "I hope you didn't
+drive out of your way to bring them" (there _was_ one; a big, fat one
+that had taken two stamps! And one from Chum herself, and--but she went
+back gloatingly to the thick, heavy envelope with the bold, black
+handwriting that needed the whole face of the envelope for her name and
+address), "because I know that miles are awfully long in this country."
+
+"Yes? You have discovered that incontrovertible fact, have you? Then I
+hope you will permit me to drive you home, especially since these
+packages are much too numerous and too weighty for you to carry in your
+arms. As a matter of fact, I have been hoping for an opportunity to meet
+our new neighbors. Neighbors are precious in our sight, I assure you,
+Miss Stevenson, and only the misfortune of illness in the household has
+prevented my sister from looking you up long ago. How long have you been
+here? Three weeks, or four?" His tone added: "You poor child," or
+something equally sympathetic, and he smiled while he cramped the old
+buggy so that she could get into it without rubbing her skirt against the
+dustladen wheel.
+
+Helen May certainly had never seen any one just like Holman Sommers,
+though she had met hundreds of men in a business way. She had met men who
+ran to polysyllables and pompousness, but she had never known the
+polysyllables to accompany so simple a manner. She had seen men slouching
+around in old straw hats-and shoddy gray trousers and negligee shirts
+with the tie askew, and the clothes had spelled poverty or shiftlessness.
+Whereas they made Holman Sommers look like a great man indulging himself
+in the luxury of old clothes on a holiday.
+
+He seemed absolutely unconscious that he and his rattly buggy and the
+harness on the horse were all very shabby, and that the horse was fat and
+pudgy and scrawny of mane; and for that she admired him.
+
+Before they reached the low adobe cabin, she felt that she was much
+better acquainted with Holman Sommers than with Starr, whose name she
+still did not know, although he had stayed an hour talking to Vic and
+praising her cooking the night before. She did not, for all the time
+she had spent with him, know anything definite about Starr, whereas
+she presently knew a great deal about Holman Sommers, and approved of
+all she knew.
+
+He had a past which, she sensed vaguely, had been rather brilliant. He
+must have been a war correspondent, because he compared the present great
+war with the Japanese-Russian War and with the South African War, and he
+seemed to have been right in the middle of both, or he could not have
+spoken so intimately of them. He seemed to know all about the real,
+underlying causes of them and knew just where it would all end, and what
+nations would be drawn into it before they were through. He did not say
+that he knew all about the war, but after he had spoken a few casual
+sentences upon the subject Helen May felt that he knew a great deal more
+than he said.
+
+He also knew all about raising goats. He slid very easily, too, from the
+war to goat-raising. He had about four hundred, and he gave her a lot of
+valuable advice about the most profitable way in which to handle them.
+
+When he saw Vic legging it along the slope behind the Basin to head off
+Billy and his slavish nannies, he shook his head commiseratingly. "There
+is not a scintilla of doubt in my mind," he told her gently, "that a
+trained dog would be of immeasurable benefit to you. I fear you made a
+grave mistake, Miss Stevenson, when you failed to possess yourself of a
+good dog. I might go so far as to say that a dog is absolutely
+indispensable to the successful handling of goats, or, for that matter,
+of sheep, either." (He pronounced the last word eyether.)
+
+"That's what my desert man told me," said Helen May demurely, "only he
+didn't tell me that way, exactly."
+
+"Yes? Then I have no hesitation whatever in assuring you that your desert
+man was unqualifiedly accurate in his statement of your need."
+
+Helen May bit her lip. "Then I'll tell him," she said, still more
+demurely.
+
+Secretly she hoped that he would rise to the bait, but he apparently
+accepted her words in good faith and went on telling her just how to
+range goats far afield in good weather so that the grazing in the Basin
+itself would be held in reserve for storms. It was a very grave error,
+said Holman Sommers, to exhaust the pasturage immediately contiguous to
+the home corral. It might almost be defined as downright improvidence.
+Then he forestalled any resentment she might feel by apologizing for his
+seeming presumption. But he apprehended the fact that she and her brother
+were both inexperienced, and he would be sorry indeed to see them suffer
+any loss because of that inexperience. His practical knowledge of the
+business was at her service, he said, and he should feel that he was
+culpably negligent of his duty as a neighbor if he failed to point out to
+her any glaring fault in their method.
+
+Helen May had felt just a little resentful of the words downright
+improvidence. Had she not walked rather than spend money and grass on a
+horse? Had she not daily denied herself things which she considered
+necessities, that she might husband the precious balance of Peter's
+insurance money? But she swallowed her resentment and thanked him quite
+humbly for his kindness in telling her how to manage. She owned to her
+inexperience, and she said that she would greatly appreciate any advice
+which he might care to give.
+
+Her Man of the Desert, she remembered, had not given her advice, though
+he must have seen how badly she needed it. He had asked her where her dog
+was, taking it for granted, apparently, that she would have one. But when
+she had told him about not buying the dog, he had not said another word
+about it. And he had not said anything about their letting the goats eat
+up all the grass in the Basin, first thing, instead of saving it for bad
+weather. This Holman Sommers, she decided, was awfully kind, even if he
+did talk like a professor or something; kinder than her desert man. No,
+not kinder, but perhaps more truly helpful.
+
+At the house he told her just how to fix a "coolereupboard" under the
+lone mesquite tree which stood at one end of the adobe cabin. It was
+really very simple, as he explained it, and he assured her, in his
+scientific terminology, that it would be cool. He went to the spring and
+showed her where she could have Vic dig out the bank and fit in a rock
+shelf for butter. He assured her that she was fortunate in having a
+living spring so near the house. It was, he said, of incalculable
+importance in that country to have cold, pure water always at hand.
+
+When he discovered that she was a stenographer, and that she had her
+typewriter with her, he was immensely pleased, so pleased that his eyes
+shone with delight.
+
+"Ah! now I see why the fates drove me forth upon the highway this
+morning," said he. "Do you know that I have a large volume of work for an
+expert typist, and that I have thus far felt that my present isolation in
+the desert wastes was an almost unsurmountable obstacle to having the
+work done in a satisfactory manner? I have been engaged upon a certain
+work on sociological problems and how they have developed with the growth
+of civilization. You will readily apprehend that great care must be
+exercised in making the copy practically letter perfect. Furthermore, I
+find myself constantly revising the manuscript. I should want to
+supervise the work rather closely, and for that reason I have not as yet
+arranged for the final typing.
+
+"Now if you care to assume the task, I can assure you that I shall feel
+tremendously grateful, besides making adequate remuneration for the labor
+involved."
+
+That is the way he put it, and that is how it happened that Helen May let
+herself in for the hardest piece of work she had ever attempted since she
+sold gloves at Bullocks' all day and attended night school all the
+evening, learning shorthand and typewriting and bookkeeping, and
+permitting the white plague to fasten itself upon her while she bent to
+her studies.
+
+She let herself in for it because she believed she had plenty of time,
+and because Holman Sommers was in no hurry for the manuscript, which he
+did not expect to see completed for a year or so, since a work so erudite
+required much time and thought, being altogether different from current
+fiction, which requires none at all.
+
+Helen May was secretly aghast at the pile of scrawled writing interlined
+and crossed out, with marginal notes and footnotes and references and
+what not; but she let herself in for the job of typing his book for
+him--which is enough for the present.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINE
+
+PAT, A NICE DOGGUMS
+
+
+"'The human polyp incessantly builds upon a coral reef. They become
+lithified as it were and constitute the strata of the psychozoic
+stage'--I told you the butter's at the spring. Will you leave me alone?
+That's the third page I've spoiled over psycho-what-you-call-it. Go on
+back and herd your goats, and for gracious sake, can that tulip-and-rose
+song! I hate it." Helen May ripped a page with two carbon copies out of
+the machine, pulled out the carbons and crumpled three sheets of paper
+into a ball which she threw into a far corner.
+
+"Gee, but you're pecky to-day! You act like an extra slammed into a sob
+lead and gettin' up stage about it. I wish that long-worded hide had
+never showed up with his soiled package of nut science. A feller can't
+_live_ with you, by gosh, since you--"
+
+"Well, listen to this, Vic! 'There is a radical difference between
+organic and social evolution, the formula most easily expressing this
+distinction being that environment transforms the animal, while man
+transforms the environment. This transformation--'"
+
+"Hel-up! Hel-up!" Vic went staggering out of the door with his palm
+pressed against his forehead in the gesture meant to register great
+mental agony, while his face was split with that nearly famous comedy
+grin of his. "Serves you right," he flung hack at her in his normal tone
+of brotherly condescension. "The way you fell for that nut, like you was
+a starved squirrel shut up in a peanut wagon, by gosh! Hope you're bogged
+down in jawbreakers the rest of the summer. Serves yuh right, but you
+needn't think you can take it out on me. And," he draped himself around
+the door jamb to add pointedly, "you should worry about the tulip song.
+If I'm willing to stand for you yawping day and night about the sun
+growin' co-old, and all that bunk--"
+
+"Oh, beat it, and shut up!" Helen May looked up from evening the edges of
+fresh paper and carbon to say sharply: "You better take a look and see
+where Billy is. And I'll tell you one thing: If you go and lose any more
+goats, you needn't think for a minute that I'll walk my head off getting
+them for you."
+
+"Aw, where do you get that line--walk your head off? I seem to remember a
+close-up of you riding home on horseback with moonlight atmosphere and a
+fellow to drive your goats. And you giving him the baby-eyed stare like
+he was a screen idol and you was an extra that was strong for him.
+Bu-lieve me, Helen Blazes, I'm wise. You're wishing a goat would get
+lost--now, while the moon's workin' steady!"
+
+"Oh, beat it, Vic! I've got work to do, if you haven't." And to prove it,
+Helen May began to type at her best speed.
+
+Vic languidly removed himself from the door jamb and with a parting "I
+should bibble," started back to his goats, which he had refused to graze
+outside the Basin as Holman Sommers advised. Helen May began valiantly to
+struggle with the fine, symmetrical, but almost unreadable chirography of
+the man of many words. She succeeded in transcribing the human polyp
+properly lithified and correctly constituting the strata of the
+psychozoic age, when Vic stuck his head in at the door again.
+
+"From the des-urt he comes to thee-ee-ee,
+And he's got a dog for thee to see-ee."
+
+He paraphrased mockingly, going down to that terrifically deep-sea bass
+note of a boy whose voice is changing.
+
+Helen May threw her eraser at him and missed. It went hurtling out into
+the yard and struck Starr on the point of the jaw, as he was riding up to
+the cabin.
+
+Whereat Vic gave a brazenly exultant whoop and rushed off to his goats,
+bellowing raucously:
+
+"When you wore a too-lup, a sweet yellow too-lup
+'N I wore a big red ro-o-ose--"
+
+and looking back frequently in a half curious, half wistful way. Vic, if
+you will stop to think of it, had been transplanted rather suddenly from
+the midst of many happy-go-lucky companions to an isolation lightened
+only by a mere sister's vicarious comradeship. If he yearned secretly for
+a share of Starr's interest, surely no one can blame him; but that he
+should voluntarily remove himself from Starr's presence in the belief
+that he had come to see Helen May exclusively, proves that Vic had the
+makings of a hero.
+
+Starr dismounted and picked up the eraser from under the investigative
+nose of a coarse-haired, ugly, brown and black dog that had been
+following Rabbit's heels. He took the eraser to Helen May, standing
+embarrassed in the doorway, and the dog followed and sniffed first her
+slipper toes and then her hands, which she held out to it ingratiatingly;
+after which appraisement the dog waggled its stub of a tail in token of
+his friendliness.
+
+"If you was a Mexican he'd a showed you his teeth," Starr observed
+pridefully. "How are you, after your jaunt the other night?"
+
+"Just fine," Helen May testified graciously. It just happened (or had it
+just happened?) that she was dressed that day in a white crepe de chine
+blouse and a white corduroy skirt, and had on white slippers and white
+stockings. At the top button of her blouse (she could not have touched
+that button with her chin if she had tried) was a brown velvet bow the
+exact shade of her eyes. Her hair was done low and loose with a negligent
+wave where it turned back from her left eyebrow. Peter had worshipped
+dumbly his Babe in that particular dress, and had considered her
+beautiful. One cannot wonder then that Starr's eyes paid tribute with a
+second long glance.
+
+Starr had ridden a good many miles out of his way and had argued for a
+good while, and had finally paid a good many dollars to get the dog that
+sniffed and wagged at Helen May. The dog was a thoroughbred Airedale and
+had been taught from its puppyhood to herd goats and fight all intruders
+upon his flock and to hate Mexicans wherever he met them. He had learned
+to do both very thoroughly, hence the argument and the dollars necessary
+before Starr could gain possession of him.
+
+Starr did not need a dog; certainly not that dog. He had no goats to
+herd, and he could hate Mexicana without any help or encouragement when
+they needed hating. But he had not grudged the trouble and expense,
+because Helen May needed it. He might have earned more gratitude had he
+told her the truth instead of hiding it like guilt. This was his way of
+going at the subject, and he waited, mind you, until he had announced
+nonchalantly that he must be getting along, and that he had just stopped
+to get a drink and to see how they were making out!
+
+"Blame dog's taken a notion to you. Followed me out from town. I throwed
+rocks at him till my arm ached--"
+
+"Why, you mean thing! You might have hit him and hurt him, and he's a
+nice dog. Poor old purp! Did he throw rocks, honest? He _did_? Well, just
+for that, I've got a nice ham bone that you can have to gnaw on, and he
+can't have a snippy bit of it. All he can do is eat a piece of lemon pie
+that will probably make him sick. We hope so, don't we? Throwing rocks at
+a nice, ugly, stubby dog that wanted to follow!"
+
+Starr accepted the pie gratefully and looked properly ashamed of himself.
+The dog accepted the ham bone and immediately stretched himself out with
+his nose and front paws hugging it close, and growling threats at
+imaginary vandals. Now and then he glanced up gratefully at Helen May,
+who continued to speak of him in a commiserating tone.
+
+"He sure has taken a notion to you," Starr persisted between mouthfuls.
+"You can have him, for all of me. I don't want the blame cur tagging me
+around. I'm liable to take a shot at him if I get peeved over
+something--"
+
+"You dare!" Helen May regarded him sternly from under her lashes, her
+chin tilted downward. "Do you always take a shot at something when you
+get peeved?"
+
+"Well, I'm liable to," Starr admitted darkly. "A dog especially. You
+better keep him if you don't want him hurt or anything." He took a bite
+of pie. (It was not very good pie. The crust was soggy because Johnny
+Calvert's cook stove was not a good baker, and the frosting had gone
+watery, because the eggs were stale, and Helen May had made a mistake and
+used too much sugar in the filling; but Starr liked it, anyway, just
+because she had made it.) "Maybe you can learn him to herd goats," he
+suggested, as though the idea had just occurred to him.
+
+"Oh, I wonder if he would! Would you, doggums?"
+
+"We'll try him a whirl and see," Starr offered cheerfully. He finished
+the pie in one more swallow, handed back the plate, and wiped his
+fingers, man-fashion, on his trousers.
+
+"Come on, Pat. He likes Pat for a name," he explained carefully to Helen
+May. "I called him about every name I could think of, and that's the one
+he seems to sabe most."
+
+"I should say he does! Why, he left his bone when you called Pat. Now
+that's a shame, doggums!"
+
+"Oh, well, we'll let him polish off his bone first." Starr made the offer
+with praiseworthy cheerfulness, and sat down on his heels with his back
+against the adobe wall to wait the dog's pleasure.
+
+"Well, that makes up for some of the rocks," Helen May approved
+generously, "and for some of the names you say you called him. And that
+reminds me, Man of the Desert, I suppose you have a name of some sort. I
+never heard what it was. Is it--Smith, perhaps?"
+
+"My name's Starr," he told her, with a little glow under the tan of his
+cheeks. "S, t, a, double r, Starr. I forgot I never told you. I've got a
+couple of given names, but I'd want to shoot a man that called me by
+'em. Folks always call me just Starr, and maybe a few other things
+behind my back."
+
+Helen May dropped her chin and looked at him steadily from under her
+eyebrows. "If there's anything that drives me perfectly wild," she said
+finally, "it's a mystery. I've just simply got to know what those names
+are. I'll never mention them, honest. But--"
+
+"Chauncy DeWitt," Starr confessed. "Forget 'em. They was wished onto me
+when I wasn't able to defend myself."
+
+"Given names are horrid things, aren't they?" Helen May sympathized.
+"I think mine is perfectly imbecile. Fathers and mothers shouldn't be
+allowed to choose names for their children. They ought to wait till
+the kids are big enough to choose for themselves. If I ever have any,
+I'll call them It. When they grow up they can name themselves anything
+they like."
+
+"You've got no right to kick," Starr declared bluntly. "Your name suits
+you fine."
+
+His eyes said more than that, so that Helen May gave her attention to the
+dog. "There, now, you've licked it and polished it and left teeth marks
+all over it," she said, meaning the bone. "Come on, Pat, and let's see if
+you're a trained doggums." She looked up at Starr and smiled. "Suppose he
+starts running after them; he might chase them clear off the ranch, and
+then what?"
+
+"I guess the supply of rocks'll hold out," Starr hinted, and snapped his
+fingers at the dog, which went to heel as a matter of course.
+
+"If you throw rocks at that dog, I'll throw rocks at you," Helen May
+threatened viciously.
+
+"And I'll hit, and you'll miss," Starr added placidly. "Come on, let's
+get busy and see if you deserved that bone."
+
+Helen May had learned from uncomfortable experience that high-heeled
+slippers are not made for tramping over rocks and sand. She said that she
+would come as soon as she put on some shoes; but Starr chose to wait for
+her, though he pretended, to himself as much as to her, that he must take
+the bridle off Rabbit and let him pick a few mouthfuls of grass while he
+had the chance. Also he loosened the cinch and killed a fly or two on
+Rabbit's neck, and so managed to put in the time until Helen May appeared
+in her khaki skirt and her high boots.
+
+"That's the sensible outfit for this work," Starr plucked up courage to
+comment as they started off. "That kid brother of yours must get pretty
+lonesome too, out here," he added. "If you had some one to stay with you,
+I'd take him out on a trip with me once in a while and show him the
+country and let him learn to handle himself with a horse and gun. A
+fellow's got to learn, in this country. So have you. How about it? Ever
+shoot a gun, either of you?"
+
+"Vic used to keep me broke, begging money for the shooting gallery down
+near our place," said Helen May. "I used to shoot there a little."
+
+"Popgun stuff, but good practice," said Starr succinctly. "Got a gun on
+the ranch?"
+
+"No, only Vic's little single-shot twenty-two. That's good enough for
+jack rabbits. What would we want a gun for?"
+
+Starr laughed. "Season's always open for coyotes, and you could pick up a
+little money in bounties now and then, if you had a gun," he said. "That
+would keep you out in the open, too. I dunno but what I've got a rifle I
+could let you have. I did have one, a little too light a calibre for me,
+but it would be just about right for you. It's a 25-35 carbine. I'm right
+sure I've got that gun on hand yet. I'll bring it over to you. You sure
+ought to have a gun."
+
+They were nearing the goats scattered over the slope that was shadiest,
+chosen for Vic's comfort and not because of any thought for his charges.
+Vic himself was sprawled in the shade of a huge rock, and for pastime he
+was throwing rocks at every ground squirrel that poked its nose out of a
+hole. The two hundred goats were scattered far and wide, but as long as
+Billy was nibbling a bush within sight, Vic did not worry about the rest.
+He lifted himself to a sitting posture and grinned when the two came up.
+
+"Didn't think to bring any pie, I s'pose?" he hinted broadly, and grinned
+companionably at Starr.
+
+"You've had two handouts since lunch. I guess you'll last another hour,"
+Helen May retorted unfeelingly. "See the dog that followed Mr. Starr out
+from town, Vic! We're going to see if he can herd goats."
+
+"Well, if he can, he's got my permission, that's a cinch."
+
+"I do believe he can; see him look at them! His name's Pat, and he likes
+me awfully well."
+
+"Now, where does he get that idea?" taunted Vic, and winked openly at
+Starr, who was good enough to smile over what he considered a very
+poor joke.
+
+"Well, let's see you bunch 'em, Pat." Starr made a wide, sweeping gesture
+with his left arm, his eyes darting a quick look at the girl.
+
+Pat looked up at him, waggled his stub of a tail, and darted down the
+slope to the left, now and then uttering a yelp. Scattered goats lifted
+heads to look, their jaws working comically sidewise as though they felt
+they must dispose of that particular mouthful before something happened
+to prevent. As Pat neared them, they scrambled away from him, running to
+the right, which was toward the bulk of the band.
+
+Down into the Basin itself the dog ran, after a couple of goats that had
+strayed out into the level. These he drove back in a panic of haste,
+dodging this way and that, nipping, yelping now and then, until they had
+joined the others. Then he went on to the further fringes of the hand,
+which evened like the edge of a pie crust under the practised fingers of
+a good cook.
+
+"Well, would you look at that!" Helen May never having watched a good
+sheep-dog at work, spoke in an awed tone. "Vic, please write!"
+
+Vic, watching open-mouthed, actually forgot to resent the implication
+that Pat had left him hopelessly behind in the art of handling goats.
+
+"Seems to have the savvy, all right," Starr observed, just as though he
+had not paid all those dollars for the "savvy" that made Pat one of the
+best goat dogs in the State.
+
+"Savvy? Why, that dog's human. Now, I suppose he's stopping over there to
+see what he must do next, is he?"
+
+"Wants to know whether I want 'em all rounded up, or just edged up outa
+the Basin. G' round 'em, Pat," he called, and made a wide, circular sweep
+with his right arm.
+
+Pat gave a yelp, dropped his head, and scurried up the ridge, driving all
+stragglers back toward the center of the flock. He went to every crest
+and sniffed into the wind to satisfy himself that none had strayed beyond
+his sight; returned and evened up the ragged edges of the hand, and then
+came trotting back to Starr with six inches of pink tongue draped over
+his lower jaw and a smile in his eyes and a waggle of satisfaction at
+loved work well done. The goats, with a meek Billy in the foreground,
+huddled in a compact mass on the slope and eyed the dog as they had never
+eyed Vic, for all his hoe-handle and his accuracy with rocks.
+
+Helen May dropped her hand on Pat's head and looked soberly into his
+upturned eyes. "You're a perfect miracle of a dog, so you can't be my
+dog, after all," she said. "Your owner will be riding day and night to
+find you. I know I should, if you got lost from me." Then she looked at
+Starr. "Don't you think you really ought to take him back with you?
+It--somehow it doesn't seem quite right to keep a dog that knows so
+much. Why, the man I bought the goats from had a dog that could herd
+them, and he wanted twenty-five dollars for it, and at that, he claimed
+he was putting the price awfully low for me, just because I was a lady,
+you know."
+
+Starr, was (as he put it) kicking himself for having lied himself
+into this dilemma. Also he was wondering how best he might lie
+himself out of it.
+
+"You want to look out for these marks that say they're giving you the big
+end of a bargain just because you're a lady," he said. "Chances are
+they're figuring right then on doing you. If that fellow had got
+twenty-five dollars for his dog, take it from me, he wouldn't have lost
+anything."
+
+"Well, but do you think it would he right to keep this dog?"
+
+Since she put it that way, Starr felt better. "I sure do. Keep him anyway
+till he's called for. When I go back, I'll find out where he comes from;
+and when I've located the owner, maybe I'll be able to fix it up with him
+somehow. You sure ought to have a dog. So let it stand that way. I'll
+tell yuh when to give him up."
+
+Helen May opened her lips, and Starr, to forestall argument and to save
+his soul from further sin, turned toward the dog. "Bring 'em home, Pat,"
+he said, and then started toward the corral, which was down below the
+spring. "Watch him drive," he said to Helen May and so managed to
+distract her attention from the ethics of the case.
+
+Without any assistance, Pat drove the goats to the corral. More than
+that, at Starr's command, he split the band and held half of them aloof
+while the rest went in. He sent these straight down the Basin until Starr
+recalled him, when he swung back and corralled them with the others. He
+came then toward the three for further orders, whereupon Vic, who had
+been silent from sheer amazement, gave a sudden whoop.
+
+"Hey, Pat! You forgot something. Go back and put up the bars!" he
+yelled. Then he heaved his hoe-handle far from him and stretched his arms
+high over his head like one released from an onerous task. "I'll walk out
+and let Pat have my job," he said. "Herding goats is dog's work anyhow,
+and I told you so the first day, Helen Blazes. Hadn't herded 'em five
+minutes before I knew I wasn't cut out for a farmer."
+
+"Go on, Pat; you stay with your goats," Starr commanded gently. And Pat,
+because he had suckled a nanny goat when he was a pup, and had grown up
+with her kid, and had lived with goats all his life, trotted into the
+corral, found himself a likeable spot near the gate, snuffed it all over,
+turned around twice, and curled himself down upon it in perfect content.
+
+"He'll stay there all night," Starr told them, laying the bars in their
+sockets. "It's a little early to corral 'em, sundown is about the regular
+time, but it's a good scheme to give him plenty of time to get acquainted
+with the layout. You get up early, Vic, and let 'em out on the far side
+of the ridge. Pat'll do the rest. I'll have to jog along now."
+
+"Well, say," Vic objected, rubbing his tousled blond hair into a
+distracted, upstanding condition, "I wish you'd show me just how
+you shift his gears. How the dickens do you do it? He don't know
+what you say."
+
+Before he left, Starr showed him the gestures, and Vic that evening
+practised them so enthusiastically that he nearly drove Helen May wild.
+Perhaps that is why, when she was copying a sentence where Holman Sommers
+had mentioned the stars of the universe, Helen May spelled stars,
+"Starr's" and did not notice the mistake at all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TEN
+
+THE TRAIL OF SILVERTOWN CORDS
+
+
+Having wasted a couple of hours more than he intended to spend in
+delivering the dog, Starr called upon Rabbit to make up those two hours
+for him. And, being an extremely misleading little gray horse, with a
+surprising amount of speed and endurance stored away under his hide,
+Rabbit did not fall far short of doing so.
+
+Starr had planned an unexpected visit to the Medina ranch. In the guise
+of stock-buyer his unexpectedness would be perfectly plausible, and he
+would be well pleased to arrive there late, so long as he did not arrive
+after dark. Just before sundown would do very well, he decided. He would
+catch Estan Medina off his guard, and he would have the evening before
+him, in case he wanted to scout amongst the arroyos on the way home.
+
+Starr very much wanted to know who drove an automobile without lights
+into isolated arroyos and over the desert trails at night. He had not,
+strange to say, seen any machine with Silvertown cord tires in San Bonito
+or in Malpais, though he had given every car he saw the second glance to
+make sure. He knew that such tires were something new and expensive, so
+much so that they were not in general use in that locality. Even in El
+Paso they were rarely seen at that time, and only the fact that the great
+man who gave him his orders had happened to be using them on his machine,
+and had mentioned the fact to Starr, who was honored with his friendship,
+had caused Starr to be familiar with them and to recognize instantly the
+impress they left in soft soil. It was a clue, and that was the best he
+could say for it. It was just a little better than nothing, he decided.
+What he wanted most was to see the machine itself at close range, and to
+see the men who rode in it--and I am going to tell you why.
+
+There was a secret political movement afoot in the Southwest; a movement
+hidden so far underground as to be practically unnoticed on the surface;
+but a movement, nevertheless, that had been felt and recorded by that
+political seismograph, the Secret Service of our Government. It had been
+learned, no mere citizen may know just how, that the movement was called
+the Mexican Alliance. It was suspected that the object was the
+restoration of three of our States to Mexico, their original owner.
+Suspected, mind you; and when even the Secret Service can do no more than
+suspect, you will see how well hidden was the plot. Its extent and its
+ramifications they could only guess at. Its leaders no man could name,
+nor even those who might be suspected more than others.
+
+But a general uprising in three States, in conjunction with, and under
+the control of, a concerted, far-sweeping revolution across the border,
+would not be a thing to laugh over. Uncle Sam smiled tolerantly when some
+would have had him chastise. Uncle Sam smiled, and watched, and waited
+and drummed his fingers while he read secret reports from men away out
+somewhere in Arizona, and New Mexico, and Texas, and urged them to burrow
+deeper and deeper underground, and to follow at any cost the molelike
+twistings and blind turnings of this plot to steal away three whole
+States in a lump.
+
+Now you see, perhaps, why Starr was so curious about that automobile, and
+why he was interested in Estancio Medina, Mexican-American rancher who
+owned much land and many herds, and who was counted a power among his
+countrymen; who spoke English with what passed for fluency, and who had
+very decided and intelligent opinions upon political matters, and who
+boldly proclaimed his enthusiasm for the advancement of his own race.
+
+But he did not go to the Medina ranch that evening, for the very good
+reason that he met his man fair in the trail as it looped around the head
+of the draw where he had heard the automobile running without lights. As
+on that other evening, Starr had cut straight across the loop, going east
+instead of west. And where the trail forked on the farther side he met
+Estan Medina driving a big, lathery bay horse hitched to a shiny, new
+covered buggy. He seemed in a hurry, but he pulled up nevertheless to
+have a word with Starr. And Starr, always observant of details, saw that
+he had three or four packages in the bottom of the buggy, which seemed to
+bear out Estan's statement that he had been to town, meaning San Bonito.
+
+Starr rolled a cigarette, and smoked it while he gossiped with Estan of
+politics, pretty girls, and the price of mutton. He had been eyeing the
+new buggy speculatively, and at last he spoke of it in that admiring tone
+which warms the heart of the listener.
+
+"Some turnout, Estan," he summed up. "But you ought to be driving an
+automobile. All your friends are getting them."
+
+Estan lifted his shoulders in true Spanish fashion and smiled. "No,
+amigo. Me, I can take pleasure yet from horses. And the madre, she's so
+'fraid of them automobiles. She cries yet when she knows I ride in one a
+little bit. Now she's so proud, when I drive the new buggy home! She
+folds so pretty her best mantilla over her head and rides with me to
+church, and she bows so polite--to all the senoras from the new buggy!
+And her face shines with the happiness in her heart. Oh, no, not me for
+the big automobile!" He smiled and shrugged and threw out his hands. "I
+like best to see my money walking around with wool on the back! Excuse,
+senor. I go now to bring the new buggy home and to see the smile of my
+mother." Then he bethought him of the tradition of his house. "You come
+and have a soft bed and the comfort of my house," he urged. "It is far to
+San Bonito, and it is not so far to my house."
+
+Starr explained plausibly his haste, sent a friendly message to the
+mother and Luis, and rode on thoughtfully. Now and then he turned to
+glance behind him at the dust cloud rolling rapidly around the head
+of the draw.
+
+Since Estan had been to town himself that day, Starr reasoned that
+there would not be much gained by scouting through the arroyos that led
+near the Medina ranch. Estan would have seen in town the men he wanted
+to see. He could do so easily enough and without exciting the least
+suspicion; for San Bonito had plenty of saloons that were popular, and
+yet unobtrusive, meeting places. No need for the mysterious automobile
+to make the long journey through the sand to-day, if Estan Medina were
+the object of the visit, and Starr knew of no other Mexican out that
+way who would be important enough to have a hand in the mixing of
+political intrigue.
+
+He rode on, letting Rabbit drop into his poco-poco trail trot. He carried
+his head bent forward a little, and his eyebrows were pulled into a scowl
+of concentrated thought. It was all very well to suspect Estan Medina and
+to keep an eye upon him, but there were others who came nearer to the
+heart of the plot. He wanted to know who these were, and he believed that
+if he could once identify the four Mexicans whom Helen May had seen, he
+would be a long step ahead. He considered the simple expedient of asking
+her to describe them as closely as she could. But since secrecy was the
+keynote of his quest, he did not want to rouse her curiosity, and for
+purely personal reasons he did want to shield her as far as possible from
+any uneasiness or any entanglement in the affair.
+
+Thinking of Helen May in that light forced him to consider what would be
+her plight if he and his co-workers failed, if the plan went on to actual
+fulfillment, and the Mexican element actually did revolt. Babes, they
+were, those two alone there in Sunlight Basin, with a single-shot
+"twenty-two" for defense, when every American rancher in three States
+considered high-power rifles and plenty of ammunition as necessary in his
+home as flour and bacon!
+
+Starr shivered a little and tried to pull his mind away from Helen May
+and her helplessness. At any rate, he comforted himself, they had the dog
+for protection, the dog who had been trained to jump the corral fence at
+any hour of the night if a stranger, and especially a Mexican came
+prowling near.
+
+But he and his co-workers must not fail. If intrigue burrowed deep, then
+they must burrow deeper.
+
+So thinking, he came just after sundown to where the trail branched in
+three directions. One was the direct road to San Bonito, another took a
+roundabout way through a Mexican settlement on the river and so came to
+the town from another angle, and the third branch wound over the granite
+ridge to Malpais. Studying the problem as a whole, picturing the havoc
+which an uprising would wreak upon those vast grazing grounds of the
+southwest, and how two nations would be embroiled in spite of themselves,
+he was hoping that his collaborators, scattered here and there through
+the country, men whose names even he did not know, were making more
+headway than he seemed to be making here.
+
+He would not know, of course, unless he were needed to assist or to
+supplement their work in some way. But he hoped they had found out
+something definite, something which the War Department could take hold
+of; a lever, as it were, to pry up the whole scheme. He was thinking of
+these things, but his mind was nevertheless alert to the little trail
+signs which it had become second nature to read. So he saw, there in the
+dust of the trail, where a buggy had turned around and gone back whence
+it had come. He saw that it had been traveling toward town but had turned
+and come back. And looking more closely, he saw that one horse had pulled
+the buggy.
+
+He stopped to make sure of that and to search for footprints. But those
+he found were indistinct, blurred partly by the looseness of the sand and
+partly by the sparse grass that grew along the trail there, because the
+buggy had turned in a hollow. He went on a couple of rods, and he saw
+where an automobile had also come to this point and had turned and gone
+back toward town, or rather, it had swung sharply around and taken the
+trail which led through the Mexican settlement; but he guessed that it
+had gone back to town, for all that. And the tire marks were made by
+Silvertown cords.
+
+Starr stopped and looked back to where the buggy tracks were faintly
+outlined in the dust of the hollow, and he spoke aloud his thought:
+"You'd think, just to see him and talk to him, that Estan Medina
+assays one hundred per cent, satisfied farmer. He's sure some
+fox--that same greaser!" After that he shook Rabbit into a long,
+distance-eating lope for town.
+
+Night came with its flaring forerunners of purple and crimson and all the
+gorgeous blendings of the two. By the time he reached San Bonito, the
+stars were out, and the electric lights were sputtering on certain street
+corners. Starr had rented a small adobe cabin and a corral with a shed on
+the outskirts of town where his movements might be unobserved. He did not
+always use these, but stopped frequently at a hotel with a garrulous
+landlord, and stabled his horse at a certain livery which he knew to be a
+hotbed of the town's gossip. In both places he was a privileged patron
+and was the recipient of many choice bits of scandal whispered behind a
+prudent palm, with a wink now and then to supply the finer shades of
+meaning. But to-night he chose the cabin and the corral sandwiched
+between
+a transfer company's warehouse and a steam laundry that had been closed
+by the sheriff. The cabin fronted on a street that was seldom used, and
+the corral ran back to a dry arroyo that was used mainly as a dump for
+the town's tin cans and dead cats and such; not a particularly attractive
+place but secluded.
+
+He turned Rabbit into the corral and fed him, went in and cooked himself
+some supper, and afterwards, in a different suit and shoes and a hat that
+spoke loudly of the latest El Paso fad in men's headgear, he strolled
+down to the corner and up the next street to the nearest garage.
+Ostensibly he was looking for one Pedro Miera, who had a large sheep
+ranch out east of San Bonito, and who always had fat sheep for sale.
+Starr considered it safe to look for Miera, whom he had seen two or three
+days before in El Paso just nicely started on a ten-day spree that never
+stopped short of the city jail.
+
+Since it was the dull hour between the day's business and the evening's
+pleasure, Starr strolled the full length of the garage and back again
+before any man spoke to him. He made sure that no car there had the kind
+of tires he sought, so he asked if Miera and his machine had showed up
+there that day, and left as soon as the man said no.
+
+San Bonito was no city and it did not take long to make the round of the
+garages. No one had seen Miera that day, and Starr's disappointment was
+quite noticeable, though misunderstood. Not a car in any of the four
+garages sported Silvertown cords.
+
+At the last garage an arc light flared over the wide doorway. Starr,
+feeling pretty well disgusted, was leaving when he saw a tire track
+alongside the red, gasoline filling-pump. He stopped and, under cover of
+lighting his cigarette, he studied the tread. Beyond all doubt the car he
+wanted had stopped there for gas. But the garage man was a Mexican, so
+Starr dared not risk a question or show any interest whatever in the car
+whose tires left those long-lined imprints to tell of its passing. He
+puffed at his cigarette until he had studied the angle of the front-wheel
+track and decided that the car must have been headed south, and that it
+had made a rather short turn away from the pump.
+
+This was puzzling for a while. The driver might have been turning around
+to go back the way he had come. But it was more likely that he had driven
+into the cross street to the west. He strolled over that way, but the
+light was too dim to trace automobile tracks in the dust of the street so
+he went back to the adobe cabin and put in the next hour oiling and
+cleaning and polishing a 25-35 carbine which he meant to give Helen May,
+and in filling a cartridge belt with shells.
+
+He sat for some time turning two six-shooters over in his hands, trying
+to decide which would please her most. One was lighter than the other,
+with an easier trigger action; almost too easy for a novice, he told
+himself. But it had a pearl handle with a bulldog carved on the side that
+would show when the gun was in its holster. She'd like that fancy stuff,
+he supposed. Also he could teach her to shoot straighter with that light
+"pull." But the other was what Starr called a sure-enough go-getter.
+
+He finally decided, of course, to give her the fancy one. For Vic he
+would have to buy a gun; an automatic, maybe. He'd have to talk coyotes
+pretty strong, in order to impress it upon them that they must never go
+away anywhere without a gun. Good thing there was a bounty on coyotes;
+the money would look big to the kid, anyway. It occurred to him further
+that he could tell them there was danger of running into a rabid coyote.
+Rabies had caused a good deal of trouble in the State, so he could make
+the danger plausible enough.
+
+He did not worry much over frightening the girl. She had nerve enough.
+Think of her tackling that ranch proposition, with just that cub brother
+to help! When Starr thought of that slim, big-eyed, smiling girl in white
+fighting poverty and the white plague together out there on the rim of
+the desert, a lump came up in his throat. She had nerve enough--that
+plucky little lady with the dull-gold hair, and the brown velvet
+eyes!--more nerve than he had where she was concerned.
+
+He went to bed and lay for a long time thinking of Helen May out there
+in that two-roomed adobe cabin, with a fifteen-year-old boy for
+protection and miles of wilderness between her and any other human
+habitation. It was small comfort then to Starr that she had the dog. One
+bullet can settle a dog, and then--Starr could not look calmly at the
+possibility of what might happen then.
+
+"They've no business out there like that, alone!" he muttered, rising to
+an elbow and thumping his hard pillow viciously. "Good Lord! Haven't they
+got any folks?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ELEVEN
+
+THE WIND BLOWS MANY STRAWS
+
+
+Soon after daylight, Rabbit snorted and ran a little way down the corral
+toward the cabin. Starr, trained to light sleeping and instant waking,
+was up and standing back from the little window with his six-shooter in
+his hand before Rabbit had stopped to whirl and look for what had scared
+him. So Starr was in time to see a "big four" Stetson hat with a
+horsehair hatband sink from sight behind the high board fence at the rear
+of the corral.
+
+Starr waited. Rabbit shook his head as though he were disgusted with
+himself, and began nosing the ground for the wisps of hay which a high
+wind had blown there. Starr retreated to a point in the room where he
+could see without risk of being seen, and watched. In a few minutes, when
+the horse had forgotten all about the incident and was feeding again, the
+Stetson hat very cautiously rose once more. Under its gray brim Starr saw
+a pair of black eyes peer over the fence. He watched them glancing here
+and there, coming finally to rest upon the cabin itself. They watched
+Rabbit, and Starr knew that they watched for some sign of alarm rather
+than from any great interest in the horse: Rabbit lifted his head and
+looked that way boredly for a moment before he went back to his feeding,
+and the eyes lifted a little, so that the upper part of the owner's face
+came into view. A young Mexican, Starr judged him, because of his smooth
+skin around the eyes. He waited. The fellow rose now so that the fence
+came just below his lips, which were full and curved in the pleasant
+lines of youth. His eyes kept moving this way and that, so that the
+whites showed with each turn of the eyeball. Starr studied what he could
+see of the face. Thick eyebrows well formed except that the left one took
+a whimsical turn upward; heavy lashes, the high, thin nose of the Mexican
+who is part Indian--as are practically all of the lower, or peon
+class--that much he had plenty of time to note. Then there was the mouth,
+which Starr knew might be utterly changed in appearance when one saw the
+chin that went with it.
+
+A hundred young fellows in San Bonito might answer equally well a
+description of those features. And the full-crowned gray Stetson may be
+seen by the thousand in at least four States; and horsehair hatbands may
+be bought in any saddlery for two or three dollars--perhaps for less, if
+one does not demand too long a pair of tassels--and are loved by Indians
+and those who think they are thus living up to the picturesque Old West.
+So far as he could see, there was nothing much to identify the fellow,
+unless he could get a better look at him.
+
+The Mexican gave another long look at the cabin, studying every point,
+even to the roof. Then he tried to see into the shed where Starr kept his
+saddle and where Rabbit could shelter himself from the cold winds. There
+was no door, no front, even, on the side toward the house. But the end of
+the shed was built out into the corral so that the fellow could not see
+around its corner.
+
+He moved along the fence, which gave Starr a very good idea of his
+height, and down to the very corner of the vacant laundry building. There
+he stopped and looked again. He was eyeing Starr's saddle, apparently
+taking in every detail of its workmanship. He looked again at Rabbit, who
+was turned then so that his brand, the double Turkey-track, stood out
+plainly on both thighs. Then, with another slant-eyed inspection of the
+cabin, he ducked down behind the fence and disappeared, his going
+betrayed by his hat crown which was taller than he imagined and showed a
+good four inches above the fence.
+
+Starr had edged along the dark wall of the room so that he had kept the
+man in sight. Now, when the hat crown moved away down the trail that
+skirted the garbage-filled arroyo, he snorted, threw his gun down on the
+bed, and began to dress himself, rummaging in his "warbag" for a gray
+checked cap and taking down from the wall a gray suit that he had never
+liked and had never worn since the day it came from the mail, looking
+altogether different from the four-inch square he had chosen from a
+tailor agent's sample book. He snorted again when he had the suit on, and
+surveyed it with a dissatisfied, downward glance. In his opinion he
+looked like a preacher trying to disguise himself as a sport, but to
+complete the combination he unearthed a pair of tan shoes and put them
+on. After that he stood for a minute staring down the fresh-creased gray
+trousers to his toes.
+
+"Looks like the very devil!" he snorted again. "But anyway, it's
+different." He dusted the cap by the simple expedient of slapping it
+several times against his leg. When he had hung it on the back of his
+head and pulled it well down in front--as nine out of ten men always put
+on a cap--he did indeed look different, though he did not look at all
+like the demon he named. Helen May, for instance, would have needed a
+second close glance before she recognized him, but that glance would
+probably have carried with it a smile for his improved appearance.
+
+He surveyed as much of the neighborhood as he could see through the
+windows, looked at his watch, and saw that it was late enough for him to
+appear down town without exciting comment from the early birds, and went
+out into the corral and fed Rabbit. He looked over the fence where the
+Mexican had stood, but the faint imprints of the man's boots were not
+definite enough to tell him anything. He surveyed the neighborhood from
+different angles and could see no trace of any one watching the place, so
+he felt fairly satisfied that the fellow had gone for the present, though
+he believed it very likely that he might return later.
+
+As he saw the incident, he was not yet considered worth shadowing, but
+had in some way excited a certain degree of curiosity about himself.
+Starr did not like that at all. He had hoped to impress every one with
+his perfect harmlessness, and to pass for a stock buyer and nothing else.
+
+He could not imagine how he had possibly excited suspicion, and he wanted
+to lull it immediately and permanently. The obvious way to do that would
+be to rise late, saddle Rabbit and ride around town a little--to the post
+office and a saloon, for instance--get his breakfast at the
+best-patronized place in town, and then go about his legitimate
+business. On the other hand, he wanted to try and trace those cord tires
+down the cross street, if he could, and he could not well do that on
+horseback without betraying himself.
+
+The shed was built out flush with the arroyo edge, so that at the rear of
+the corral one could only go as far as the gate, which closed against the
+end of the shed. It occurred to Starr that if the young Mexican had been
+looking for something to steal, he would probably have come in at the
+gate, which was fastened only with a stout hook on the inside. The arroyo
+bank had caved under the farther corner of the shed, so that a hole the
+size of a large barrel showed at that end of the manger. Cats and dogs,
+and perhaps boys, had gone in and out there until a crude kind of trail
+was worn down the bank to the arroyo bottom. At some risk to his tan
+shoes and his new gray suit, Starr climbed into the manger and let
+himself down that hole. The trail was firm and dry and so steep he had to
+dig his heels in to keep from tobogganing to the bottom, but once down he
+had only to follow the arroyo bottom to a place where he could climb out.
+Before he found such a place he came to a deep, dry gully that angled
+back toward the business part of town. A footpath in the bottom of it
+encouraged him to follow it, and a couple of hundred yards farther along
+he emerged upon the level end of a street given over to secondhand
+stores, junk shops and a plumber's establishment. From there to the main
+street was easy enough.
+
+As he had expected, only a few citizens were abroad and Starr strolled
+over to the cross street he wanted to inspect. He found the long-lined
+tread of the tires he sought plainly marked where they had turned into
+this street. After that he lost them where they had been blotted out by
+the broad tires of a truck. When he was sure that he could trace them no
+farther, he turned back, meaning to have breakfast at his favorite
+restaurant. And as he turned, he met face to face a tall young Mexican in
+a full-crowned Stetson banded with horsehair.
+
+Now, as I have said before, San Bonito was full of young Mexicans who
+wore Stetson hats and favored horsehair bands around them. Starr
+glanced at the fellow sharply, got the uninterested, impersonal look
+of the perfect stranger who neither knows nor cares who you are, and
+who has troubles of his own to occupy his mind; the look which
+nineteen persons out of twenty give to a stranger on the street. Starr
+went on unconcernedly whistling under his breath, but at the corner he
+turned sharply to the left, and in turning he flicked a glance back at
+the fellow. The Mexican was not giving him any attention whatever, as
+far as he could see; on the contrary, he was staring down at the
+ground as though he, too, were looking for something. Starr gave him
+another stealthy look, gained nothing from it, and shrugged his
+shoulders and went on.
+
+He ate his breakfast while he turned the matter over in his mind. What
+had he done to rouse suspicion against himself? He could not remember
+anything, for he had not yet found anything much to work on; nothing, in
+fact, except that slight clue of the automobile, and he did not even know
+who had been in it. He suspected that they had gone to meet Estan Medina,
+but as long as that suspicion was tucked away in the back of his mind,
+how was any one going to know that he suspected Estan? He had not been
+near the chief of police or the sheriff or any other officer. He had not
+talked with any man about the Mexican Alliance, nor had he asked any man
+about it. Instead, he had bought sheep and cattle and goats and hogs from
+the ranchers, and he had paid a fair price for them and had shipped them
+openly, under the eye of the stock inspector, to the El Paso Meat
+Company. So far he had kept his eyes open and his mouth shut, and had
+waited until some ripple on the surface betrayed the disturbance
+underneath.
+
+He was not sure that the young man he met on the street was the one who
+had been spying over the fence, but he did not mean to take it for
+granted that he was not the same, and perhaps be sorry afterwards for his
+carelessness. He strolled around town, bought an automatic gun and a lot
+of cartridges for Vic, went into a barber shop on a corner and had a
+shave and a haircut, and kept his eyes open for a tall young Mexican who
+might be unduly interested in his movements.
+
+He met various acquaintances who expressed surprise at not having seen
+him around the hotel. To these he explained that he had rented a corral
+for his horse, where he could be sure of the feed Rabbit was getting, and
+to save the expense of a livery stable. Rabbit had been kinda off his
+feed, he said, and he wanted to look after him himself. So he had been
+sleeping in the cabin that went with the corral.
+
+His friends thought that was a sensible move, and praised his judgment,
+and Starr felt better. He did not, however, tell them just where the
+corral was located. He had some notion of moving to another place, so he
+considered that it would be just as well not to go into details.
+
+So thinking, he took his packages and started across to the gully which
+led into the arroyo that let him into his place by the back way. He meant
+to return as he had come; and if any one happened to be spying, he would
+think Starr had chosen that route as a short cut to town, which it was.
+
+A block away from the little side street that opened to the gully, Starr
+stopped short, shocked into a keener attention to his surroundings. He
+had just stepped over an automobile track on the walk, where a machine
+had crossed it to enter a gateway which was now closed. And the track had
+been made by a cord tire. He looked up at the gate of unpainted planks,
+heavy-hinged and set into a high adobe wall such as one sees so often in
+New Mexico. The gate was locked, as he speedily discovered; locked on the
+inside, he guessed, with bars or great hooks or something.
+
+He went on to the building that seemed to belong to the place; a long
+two-story adobe building with the conventional two-story gallery running
+along the entire front, and with the deep-set, barred windows that are
+also typically Mexican. Every town in the adobe section of the southwest
+has a dozen or so buildings almost exactly like this one. The door was
+blue-painted, with the paint scaling off. Over it was a plain lettered
+sign: LAS NUEVAS.
+
+Starr had seen copies of that paper at the Mexican ranches he visited,
+and as far as he knew, it was an ordinary newspaper of the country-town
+style, printed in Mexican for the benefit of a large percentage of
+Mexican-Americans whose knowledge of English print is extremely hazy.
+
+He walked on slowly to the corner, puzzling over this new twist in the
+faint clue he followed. It had not occurred to him that so innocuous a
+sheet as _Las Nuevas_ should be implicated, and yet, why not? He turned
+at the corner and went back to the nearest newstand, where he bought an
+El Paso paper for a blind and laid it down on a pile of _Las Nuevas_
+while he lighted his cigarette. He talked with the little, pock-marked
+Mexican who kept the shop, and when the fellow's back was turned toward
+him for a minute, he stole a copy of _Las Nuevas_ off the pile and
+strolled out of the shop with it wrapped in his El Paso paper.
+
+He stole it because he knew that not many Americans ever bought the
+paper, and he feared that the hombre in charge might wonder why an
+American should pay a nickel for a copy of _Las Nuevas_. As it happened,
+the hombre in charge was looking into a mirror cunningly placed for the
+guarding of stock from pilferers, and he saw Starr steal the paper. Also
+he saw Starr slip a dime under a stack of magazines where it would be
+found later on. So he wondered a great deal more than he would have done
+if Starr had bought the paper, but Starr did not know that.
+
+Starr went back to his cabin by way of the arroyo and the hole in the
+manger. When he unlocked the door and went in, he had an odd feeling that
+some one had been there in his absence. He stood still just inside the
+door and inspected everything, trying to remember just where his clothes
+had been scattered, where he had left his hat, just how his blankets had
+been flung back on the bed when he jumped up to see what had startled
+Rabbit; every detail, in fact, that helps to make up the general look of
+a room left in disorder.
+
+He did remember, for his memory had been well trained for details. He
+knew that his hat had been on the table with the front toward the wall.
+It was there now, just as he had flung it down. He knew that his pillow
+had been dented with the shape of his head, and that it had lain askew on
+the bed; it was just as it had been. Everything--his boots, his dark coat
+spread over the back of the chair, his trousers across the foot of the
+bed--everything was the same, yet the feeling persisted.
+
+Starr was no more imaginative than he needed to be for the work he had
+to do. He was not in the least degree nervous over that work. Yet he was
+sure some one had been in the room during his absence, and he could not
+tell why he was sure. At least, for ten minutes and more he could not
+tell why. Then his eyes lighted upon a cigarette stub lying on the
+hearth of the little cookstove in one corner of the room. Starr always
+used "wheat straw" papers, which were brown. This cigarette had been
+rolled in white paper. He picked it up and discovered that one end was
+still moist from the lips of the smoker, and the other end was still
+warm from the fire that had half consumed it. Starr gave an enlightened
+sniff and knew it was his olfactory nerves that had warned him of an
+alien presence there; for the tobacco in this cigarette was not the
+brand he smoked.
+
+He stood thinking it over; puzzling again over the mystery of their
+suspicion of him. He tried to recall some careless act, some imprudent
+question, an ill-considered remark. He was giving up the riddle again
+when that trained memory of his flashed before him a picture that,
+trivial as it was in itself, yet was as enlightening as the white paper
+of the cigarette on the stove hearth.
+
+Two days before, just after his last arrival in San Bonito, he had sent a
+wire to a certain man in El Paso. The message itself had not been of very
+great importance, but the man to whom he had sent it had no connection
+whatever with the Meat Company. He was, in fact, the go-between in the
+investigation of the Secret Service. Through him the War Department
+issued commands to Starr and his fellows, and through him it kept in
+touch with the situation. Starr had used two code words and a number in
+that message.
+
+And, he now distinctly remembered, the girl who had waited upon him was
+dark, with a Spanish cast of features. When she had counted the words and
+checked the charge and pushed his change across to him, she had given him
+a keen, appraising look from under her lashes, though the smile she sent
+with it had given the glance a feminine and wholly flattering
+interpretation. Starr remembered that look now and saw in it something
+more than coquetry. He remembered, too, that he had glanced back from the
+doorway and caught her still looking after him; and that he had smiled,
+and she had smiled swiftly in return and had then turned away abruptly to
+her work. To her work? Starr remembered now that she had turned and
+spoken to a sulky-faced messenger boy who was sitting slumped down on the
+curve of his back with his tightly buttoned tunic folded up to his
+armpits so that his hands could burrow to the very bottom of his pockets.
+He had looked up, muttered something, reluctantly removed himself from
+the chair, and started away. The boy, too, had the Mexican look.
+
+Well, at any rate, he knew now how the thing had started. He heaved a
+sigh of relief and threw himself down on the bed, wadding the pillow
+into a hard ball under the nape of his neck and unfolding the Mexican
+newspaper. He had intended to move camp; but now that they had begun to
+trail him, he decided to stay where he was and give them a run for their
+money, as he put it.
+
+Starr could read Spanish well enough for ordinary purposes. He went
+carefully through _Las Nuevas_, from war news to the local
+advertisements. There was nothing that could even be twisted into a
+message of hidden meaning to the initiated. _Las Nuevas_ was what it
+called itself: _The News_. It was exactly as innocuous as he had believed
+it to be. Its editorial page, even, was absolutely banal in its servility
+to the city, county, state and national policy.
+
+"That's a hell of a thing to steal!" grumbled Starr, and threw the paper
+disgustedly from him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWELVE
+
+STARR FINDS SOMETHING IN A SECRET ROOM
+
+That day Starr rode out into the country and looked at a few head of cows
+and steers that a sickly American wanted to sell so he could go East for
+his health (there being in most of us some peculiar psychological leaning
+toward seeking health afar). Starr went back to town afterwards and made
+Rabbit comfortable in the corral, reasoning that if he were going to be
+watched, he would be watched no matter where he went; but he ate his
+supper in the dining room of the Plaza Hotel, and sat in the lobby
+talking with a couple of facetious drummers until the mechanical piano in
+the movie show across the street began to play.
+
+He went to the show, sat through it patiently, strolled out when it was
+over, and visited a saloon or two. Then, when he thought his evening
+might be considered well rounded out with harmless diversions, he went
+out to his cabin, following the main street but keeping well in the
+shadow as though he wished to avoid observation.
+
+He had reason to believe that some one followed him out there, which did
+not displease him much. He lighted his lamp and fussed around for half an
+hour or so before he blew out the light and went to bed.
+
+At three o'clock in the morning, with a wind howling in from the
+mountains, Starr got up and dressed in the dark, fumbling for a pair of
+"sneakers" he had placed beside his bed. He let himself out into the
+corral, being careful to keep close to the wall of the house until he
+reached the high board fence. Here, too, he had to feel his way because
+of the pitchy blackness of the night; and if the rattling wind prevented
+him from hearing any footsteps that might be behind him, it also covered
+the slight sound of his own progress down the fence to the shed. But he
+did not think he would be seen or followed, for he had been careful to
+oil the latch and hinges of his door before he went to bed; and he would
+be a faithful spy indeed who shivered through the whole night, watching a
+man who apparently slept unsuspectingly and at peace.
+
+Down the hole from the manger Starr slid, and into the arroyo bottom. He
+stumbled over a can of some sort, but the wind was rattling everything
+movable, so he merely swore under his breath and went on. He was not a
+range man for nothing, and he found his way easily to the adobe house
+with LAS NUEVAS over the door, and the adobe wall with the plank gate
+that had been closed.
+
+It was closed now, and the house itself was black and silent. Starr
+stooped and gave a jump, caught the top of the wall with his hooked
+fingers, went up and straddled the top where it was pitch black against
+the building. For that matter, it was nearly pitch black whichever way
+one looked, that night. He sat there for five minutes, listening and
+straining his eyes into the enclosure. Somewhere a piece of corrugated
+iron banged against a board. Once he heard a cat meow, away back at the
+rear of the lot. He waited through a comparative lull, and when the wind
+whooped again and struck the building with a fresh blast, Starr jumped to
+the ground within the yard.
+
+He crouched for a minute, a shot-loaded quirt held butt forward in his
+hand. He did not want to use a gun unless he had to, and the loaded end
+of a good quirt makes a very efficient substitute for a blackjack. But
+there was no movement save the wind, so presently he followed the wall of
+the house down to the corner, stood there listening for awhile and went
+on, feeling his way rapidly around the entire yard as a blind man feels
+out a room that is strange to him.
+
+He found the garage, with a door that kept swinging to and fro in the
+wind, banging shut with a slam and then squealing the hinges as it
+opened again with the suction. He drew a breath of relief when he came to
+that door, for he knew that any man who happened to be on guard would
+have fastened it for the sake of his nerves if for nothing else.
+
+When he was sure that the place was deserted for the night, Starr went
+back to the garage and went inside. He fastened the door shut behind him
+and switched on his pocket searchlight to examine the place. If he had
+expected to see the mysterious black car there he was disappointed, for
+the garage was empty--which perhaps explained the swinging door, that had
+been left open in the evening when there was no wind. Small comfort in
+that for Starr, for it immediately occurred to him that the car would
+probably return before daylight if it had gone after dark.
+
+He turned his hand slowly, painting the walls with a brush of brilliant
+light. "Huh!" he grunted under his breath. For there in a far corner were
+four Silvertown cord tires with the dust of the desert still clinging to
+the creases of the lined tread. Near-by, where they had been torn off in
+haste and flung aside, were the paper wrappings of four other tires,
+supposedly new.
+
+So they--he had no more definite term by which to call them--they had
+sensed the risk of those unusual tires, and had changed for others of a
+more commonly-used brand! Starr wondered if some one had seen him looking
+at tire-tracks, the young Mexican he had met on the side street, perhaps.
+Or the Mexican garage man may have caught him studying that track by the
+filling-pump.
+
+"Well," Starr summed up the significance of the discovery, "the game's
+open; now we'll get action."
+
+He glanced down to make sure that he had not left any tracks on the floor
+and was glad he had not worn his boots. Then he snapped off the light,
+went out, and left the door swinging and banging as it had been before.
+If he learned no more, at least he was paid for the trip.
+
+He went straight to the rear door of the building, taking no pains to
+conceal his footsteps. The wind, he knew, would brush them out completely
+with the sand and dust it sent swirling around the yard with every gust.
+As he had hoped, the door was not bolted but locked with a key, so he let
+himself in with one of the pass keys he carried for just such work as
+this. He felt at the windows and saw that the blinds were down, and
+turned on his light.
+
+The place had all the greasy dinginess of the ordinary print shop. The
+presses were here, and the motor that operated them. Being a bi-weekly
+and not having much job printing to do, it was evident that _Las Nuevas_
+did not work overtime. Things were cleaned up for the night and ready for
+the next day's work. It all looked very commonplace and as innocent as
+the paper it produced.
+
+Starr went on slowly, examining the forms, the imperfect first proofs of
+circulars and placards that had been placed on hook files. AVISO! stared
+up at him in big, black type from the top of many small sheets, with the
+following notices of sales, penalties attached for violations of certain
+ordinances, and what not. But there was nothing that should not be there,
+nothing that could be construed as seditionary in any sense of the word.
+
+Still, some person or persons connected with this place had found it
+expedient to change four perfectly good and quite expensive tires for
+four new and perfectly commonplace ones, and the only explanation
+possible was that the distinctive tread of the expensive ones had been
+observed. There must, Starr reasoned, be something else in this place
+which it would be worth his while to discover. He therefore went
+carefully up the grimy stairway to the rooms above.
+
+These were offices of the comfortless type to be found in small towns.
+Bare floors, stained with tobacco juice and the dust of the street.
+Bare desks and tables, some of them unpainted, homemade affairs, all
+of them cheap and old. A stove in the larger office, a few
+wooden-seated armchairs. Starr took in the details with a flick here
+and there of his flashlight that he kept carefully turned away from the
+green-shaded windows.
+
+News items, used and unused, he found impaled on desk files. Bills paid
+and unpaid he found also. But in the first search he found nothing
+else, nothing that might not be found in any third-rate newspaper
+establishment. He stood in the middle room--there were three in a row,
+with an empty, loft-like room behind--and considered where else he
+could search.
+
+He went again to a closet that had been built in with boards behind the
+chimney. At first glance this held nothing but decrepit brooms, a
+battered spittoon, and a small pile of greasewood cut to fit the heater
+in the larger room; but Starr went in and flashed his light around the
+wall. He found a door at the farther end, and he knew it for a door
+only when he passed his hands over the wall and felt it yield. He
+pushed it open and went into another room evidently built across one
+end of the loft, a room cunningly concealed and therefore a room likely
+to hold secrets.
+
+He hitched his gun forward a little, pushed the door shut behind him, and
+began to search that room. Here, as in the outer offices, the first
+superficial examination revealed nothing out of the way. But Starr did
+not go at things superficially. First the desk came under close scrutiny.
+There were no letters; they were too cautious for that, evidently. He
+looked in the little stove that stood near the wall where the chimney
+went up in the closet, and saw that the ashes consisted mostly of charred
+paper. But the last ones deposited therein had not yet been lighted, or,
+more exactly, they had been lighted hastily and had not burned except
+around the edges. He lifted out the one on top and the one beneath it.
+They were two sheets of copy paper scribbled closely in pencil. The first
+was entitled, with heavy underscoring that signified capitals, "Souls in
+Bondage." This sounded interesting, and Starr put the papers in his
+pocket. The others were envelopes addressed to _Las Nuevas_; there was no
+more than a handful of papers in all.
+
+In a drawer of the desk, which he opened with a skeleton key, he found
+many small leaflets printed in Mexican. Since they were headed ALMAS DE
+CAUTIVERO, he took one and hoped that it would not be missed. There were
+other piles of leaflets in other drawers, and he helped himself to a
+sample of each, and relocked the drawers carefully. But search as he
+might, he could find nothing that identified any individual, or even
+pointed to any individual as being concerned in this propaganda work; nor
+could he find any mention of the Mexican Alliance.
+
+He went out finally, let the door swing behind him as it seemed
+accustomed to do, climbed through a window to the veranda that bordered
+all these rooms like a jutting eyebrow, and slid down a corner post to
+the street. It was close to dawn, and Starr had no wish to be found near
+the place; indeed, he had no wish to be found away from his cabin if any
+one came there with the breaking of day to watch him.
+
+As he had left the cabin, so he returned to it. He went back to bed and
+lay there until sunrise, piecing together the scraps of information he
+had gleaned. So far, he felt that he was ahead of the game; that he had
+learned more about the Alliance than the Alliance had learned about him.
+
+As soon as the light was strong enough for him to read without a lamp, he
+took from his pocket the papers he had gleaned from the stove, spread out
+the first and began to decipher the handwriting. And this is what he
+finally made out:
+
+"Souls in Bondage:
+
+"The plundering plutocrats who suck the very life blood of your mother
+country under the guise of the development of her resources, are working
+in harmony with the rich brigands north of the border to plunder you
+further, and to despoil the fair land you have helped to win from the
+wilderness.
+
+"Shall strong men be content in their slavery to the greed of others?
+Rise up and help us show the plunderers that we are men, not slaves. Let
+this shameless persecution of your mother country cease!
+
+"American bandits would subjugate and annex the richest portion of
+Mexico. Why should not Mexico therefore reclaim her own? Why not turn the
+tables and annex a part of the vast territory stolen from her by the
+octopus arms of our capitalist class?
+
+"We are a proud people and we never forget. Are we a cowardly people who
+would cringe and yield when submission means infamy?
+
+"Awake! Strike one swift, successful blow for freedom and your bleeding
+mother land.
+
+"Texas, New Mexico, California and Arizona were stolen from Mexico, just
+as the riches of her mines are being stolen from her to-day. Sons of
+Mexico, you can help her reclaim her own. Will you stand by and see her
+further despoiled? Let your voices rise in a mighty cry for justice! Let
+your arms be strong to strike a blow for the right!
+
+"Souls in bondage, wake up and strike off your shackles! Be not slaves
+but free men!
+
+"Texas, New Mexico and Arizona for Mexico, to whom they rightfully
+belong!"
+
+"They sure do make it strong enough," Starr commented, feeling for a
+match with which to relight his cigarette that had gone out. He laid down
+the written pages and took up the leaflet entitled, "ALMAS DE CAUTIVERO."
+The text that followed was like the heading, simply a translation into
+Spanish of the exhortation he had just read in English. But he read it
+through and noted the places where the Spanish version was even more
+inflammatory than the English--which, in Starr's opinion, was going some.
+The other pamphlets were much the same, citing well-known instances of
+the revolution across the border which seemed to prove conclusively that
+justice was no more than a jest, and that the proletariat of Mexico was
+getting the worst of the bargain, no matter who happened to be in power.
+
+Starr frowned thoughtfully over the reading. To him the thing was
+treason, and it was his business to help stamp it out. For the powers
+that be cannot afford to tolerate the planting of such seeds of
+dissatisfaction amongst the untrained minds of the masses.
+
+But, and Starr admitted it to himself with his mouth pulled down at the
+corners, the worst of it was that under the bombast, under the
+vituperative utterances, the catch phrases of radicalism, there remained
+the grains of truth. Starr knew that the masses of Mexico _were_
+suffering, broken under the tramplings of revolution and
+counter-revolution that swept back and forth from gulf to gulf. Still, it
+was not his business to sift out the plump grains of truth and justice,
+but to keep the chaff from lighting and spreading a wildfire of sedition
+through three States.
+
+"'Souls in bondage' is right," he said, setting his feet to the floor
+and reaching for his boots. "In bondage to their own helplessness, and
+helpless because they're so damned ignorant. But," he added grimly while
+he stamped his right foot into its boot, "they ain't going at it the
+right way. They're tryin' to tear down, when they ain't ready to build
+anything on the wreck. They're right about the wrong; but they're wrong
+as the devil about the way to mend it. Them pamphlets will sure raise
+hell amongst the Mexicans, if the thing ain't stopped pronto."
+
+He dressed for riding, and went out and fed Rabbit before he went
+thoughtfully up to the hotel for his breakfast.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTEEN
+
+HELEN MAY SIGHS FOR ROMANCE
+
+
+Helen May was toiling over the ridgy upland which in New Mexico is called
+a mesa, when it is not a desert--and sometimes when it is one--taking her
+turn with the goats while Vic nursed a strained ankle and a grouch under
+the mesquite tree by the house. With Pat to help, the herding resolved
+itself into the exercise of human intelligence over the dog's skill. Pat,
+for instance, would not of his own accord choose the best grazing for his
+band, but he could drive them to good grazing once it was chosen for him.
+So, theoretically, Helen May was exercising her human intelligence;
+actually she was exercising her muscles mostly. And having an abundance
+of brain energy that refused to lie dormant, she had plenty of time to
+think her own thoughts while Pat carried out her occasional orders.
+
+For one thing, Helen May was undergoing the transition from a mild
+satisfaction with her education and mentality, to a shamed consciousness
+of an appalling ignorance and mental crudity. Holman Sommers was
+unwittingly the cause of that. There was nothing patronizing or
+condescending in the attitude of Holman Sommers, even if he did run to
+long words and scientifically accurate descriptions of the smallest
+subjects. It was the work he placed before her that held Helen May
+abashed before his vast knowledge. She could not understand half of what
+she deciphered and typed for him, and because she could not understand
+she realized the depth of her benightedness.
+
+She was awed by the breadth and the scope which she sensed more or less
+vaguely in _The Evolution of Sociology_. Holman Sommers quoted freely,
+and discussed boldly and frankly, such abstruse authors as Descartes,
+Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Comte, Gumplowicz, some of them names she had
+never heard of and could not even spell without following her copy
+letter by letter. Holman Sommers seemed to have read all of them and to
+have weighed all of them and to be able to quote all of them offhand;
+whereas Schopenhauer was the only name in the lot that sounded in the
+least familiar to Helen May, and she had a guilty feeling that she had
+always connected the name with music instead of the sort of things
+Holman Sommers quoted him as having said or written, she could not make
+out which.
+
+Helen May, therefore, was suffering from mental growing pains. She
+struggled with new ideas which she had swallowed whole, without any
+previous elementary knowledge of the subject. Her brain was hungry, her
+life was stagnant, and she seized upon these sociological problems which
+Holman Sommers had placed before her, and worried over them, and wondered
+where Holman Sommers had learned so much about things she had never heard
+of. Save his vocabulary, which wearied her, he was the simplest, the
+kindest of men, though not kind as her Man of the Desert was kind.
+
+Just here in her thoughts Holman Sommers faded, and Starr's lean,
+whimsical face came out sharply defined before her mental vision. Starr
+certainly was different! Ordinary, and not educated much beyond the three
+Rs, she suspected. Just a desert man with a nice voice and a gift for
+provocative little silences. Two men could not well be farther apart in
+personality, she thought, and she amused herself by comparing them.
+
+For instance, take the case of Pat. Sommers had told her just why and
+just how desperately she needed a dog for the goats, and had urged her by
+all means to get one at the first opportunity. Starr had not said
+anything about it; he had simply brought the dog. Helen May appreciated
+the different quality of the kindness that does things.
+
+Privately, she suspected that Starr had stolen that dog, he had seemed so
+embarrassed while he explained how he came by Pat; especially, she
+remembered, when she had urged him to take the dog back. She would not,
+of course, dare hint it even to Vic; and theoretically she was of course
+shocked at the possibility. But, oh, she was human! That a nice man
+should swipe a dog for her secretly touched a little, responsive
+tenderness in Helen May. (She used the word "swipe," which somehow made
+the suspected deed sound less a crime and more an amusing peccadillo than
+the word "steal" would have done. Have you ever noticed how adroitly we
+tone down or magnify certain misdeeds simply by using slang or dictionary
+words as the case may be?)
+
+Oh, she saw it quite plainly, as she trudged over to the shady side of a
+rock ridge and sat down where she could keep an eye on Pat and the goats.
+She told herself that she would ask her Man of the Desert, the next time
+he happened along, whether he had found out who the dog belonged to. If
+he acted confused and dodged the issue, then she would know for sure.
+Just what she would do when she knew for sure, Helen May had not decided.
+
+The goats were browsing docilely upon the slope, eating stuff which only
+a goat would attempt to eat. Helen May was not afraid of Billy since Pat
+had taken charge. Pat had a way of keeping Billy cowed and as harmless
+as the nannies themselves. Just now Pat was standing at a little distance
+with his tongue slavering down over his white teeth, gazing over the band
+as a general looks at his army drawn up in review.
+
+He turned his head and glanced at Helen May inquiringly, then trotted
+over to where she sat in the shade. His tongue still drooped quiveringly
+over his lower jaw; and now and then he drew it back and licked his lips
+as though they were dry. Helen May found a rock that was hollowed like a
+crude saucer, and poured water into the hollow from her canteen. Pat
+lapped it up thirstily, gave his stubby tail a wag of gratitude, lay down
+with his front paws on the edge of her skirt with his head dropped down
+upon them, and took a nap--with one eye opening now and then to see that
+the goats were all right, and with his ears lifting to catch the meaning
+of every stray bleat from a garrulous nanny.
+
+Helen May had changed a good deal in the past two or three weeks. Now
+when she stared away and away over the desert and barren slope and ridges
+and mountain, she did not feel that she hated them. Instead, she saw that
+the yellow of the desert, the brown of the slopes, and the black of the
+distant granite ledges basseting from bleak hills were more beautiful
+than the tidy little plots of tilled ground she used to think so lovely.
+There was something hypnotic in these bald distances. She could not read,
+when she was out like this; she could only look and think and dream.
+
+She wished that she might ride out over it sometime, away over to the
+mountains, perhaps, as far as she could see. She fell to dreaming of the
+old days when this was Spanish territory, and the king gave royal grants
+of land to his favorites: for instance, all the country lying between two
+mountain ranges, to where a river cut across and formed a natural
+boundary. Holman Sommers had told her about the old Spanish grants, and
+how many of the vast estates of Mexican "cattle kings" and "sheep kings"
+were still preserved almost intact, just as they had been when this was a
+part of Mexico.
+
+She wished that she might have lived here then, when the dons held sway
+and when senoritas were all beautiful and when senoras were every one of
+them imposing in many jewels and in rich mantillas, and when vaqueros
+wore red sashes and beautiful serapes and big, gold-laced sombreros, and
+rode prancing steeds that curveted away from jingling, silver-rowelled
+spurs. Helen May, you must remember, knew her moving-picture romance. She
+could easily vision these things exactly as they had been presented to
+her on the screen. That is why she peopled this empty land so gorgeously.
+
+It was different now, of course. All the Mexicans she had seen were
+like the Mexicans around the old Plaza in Los Angeles. All the senoritas
+she had met--they had not been many--powdered and painted abominably to
+the point of their jaws and left their necks dirty. And their petticoats
+were draggled and their hats looked as though they had been trimmed from
+the ten-cent counter of a cheap store. All the senoras were smoky
+looking with snakish eyes, and the dresses under their heavy-fringed
+black mantillas were more frowsy than those of their daughters. They
+certainly were not imposing; and if they wore jewelry at all it looked
+brassy and cheap.
+
+There was no romance, nothing like adventure here nowadays, said Helen
+May to herself, while she watched the little geysers of dust go dancing
+like whirling dervishes across the sand. A person lived on canned stuff
+and kept goats and was abjectly pleased to see any kind of human being.
+There certainly was no romance left in the country, though it had seemed
+almost as though there might be, when her Man of the Desert sang and all
+the little night-sounds hushed to listen, and the moon-trail across the
+sand of the desert lay like a ribbon of silver. It had seemed then as
+though there might be romance yet alive in the wide spaces.
+
+So she had swung back again to Starr, just as she was always doing
+lately. She began to wonder when he would come again, and what he would
+have to say next time, and whether he had really annexed some poor sheep
+man's perfectly good dog, just because he knew she needed one. It would
+never do to let on that she guessed; but all the same, it was mighty nice
+of him to think of her, even if he did go about it in a queer way. And
+when Pat, who had seemed to be asleep, lifted his head and looked up into
+her eyes adoringly, Helen May laid her hand upon his smooth skull and
+smiled oddly.
+
+No more romance, said Helen May--and here was Starr, a man of mystery, a
+man feared and distrusted by the sons of those passionate dons of whom
+she dreamed! Here was Starr, Secret Service man (there is ever a glamor
+in the very name of it), the very essence and forefront of such romance
+and such adventure as she had gasped over, when she had seen it pictured
+on the screen! She was living right in the middle of intrigue that was
+stirring the rulers of two nations; she was coming close to real
+adventure, and there she sat, with Pat lying on the hem of her skirt, and
+mourned that she was fifty or a hundred years too late for even a glimpse
+at romance! And fretted because she was helping Pat herd goats, and
+because life was dull and commonplace.
+
+"Honestly," she told Pat, "I've got to the point where I catch myself,
+looking forward to the chance visits of a wandering cowboy who is
+perfectly commonplace. Why, he'd be absolutely lost on the screen; you
+wouldn't know he was in the picture unless his horse bucked or fell down
+or something! And I don't suppose he ever has a thought beyond his work
+and his little five-cent celebrations in San Bonito, maybe. Most likely
+he flirts with those grimy-necked Mexican girls, too. You can't tell--
+
+"And think of me being so hard up for excitement that I've got to play
+he's some mysterious creature of the desert! Honest to goodness, Pat,
+it's got so bad that the mere sight of a real, live man is thrilling.
+When Holman Sommers comes and lifts that old Panama like a crown prince,
+and smiles at me and talks about all the different periods of the human
+race, and gems and tribal laws and all that highbrow dope, I just sit and
+drink it in and wish he'd keep on for hours! Can you beat that? And if by
+any chance a common, ordinary specimen of desert man should ride by, I
+might be desperate enough--"
+
+Her gaze, wandering always out over the tremendous sweep of plateau which
+from that point looked illimitable as the ocean, settled upon a whirlwind
+that displayed method and a slow sedateness not at all in keeping with
+the erratic gyrations of those gone before. Watching it wistfully with a
+half-formed hope that it might not be just a dry-weather whirlwind, her
+droning voice trailed off into silence. A faint beating in her throat
+betrayed what it was she half hoped. She was so desperately lonesome!
+
+Pat tilted his head and looked up at her and licked her hand until she
+drew it away impatiently.
+
+"Good gracious, Pat! Do you want to plaster me with germs?" she reproved.
+And Pat dropped his head down upon his paws and eyed her furtively from
+under his brown lids, waiting for her to repent her harshness and smooth
+his head caressingly, as was her wont.
+
+But Helen May was watching that slow-moving column of dust, just as
+she had watched the cloud which had heralded the coming into her life
+of Holman Sommers. It might be--but it couldn't, for this was away
+off the road. No one would be cutting straight across that hummocky
+flat, unless--
+
+From the desert I come to thee,
+On my Arab shod with fire--
+
+"Oh, I'm getting absolutely mushy!" she muttered angrily. "If I've
+reached the point where I can't see a spot of dust without getting
+heart-failure over it, why it's time I was shut up somewhere. What are
+you lolling around me for, Pat? Go on and tend to your goats, why don't
+you? And do get off my skirt!"
+
+Pat sprang up as though she had struck him; gave her an injured glance
+that was perfectly maddening to Helen May, whose conscience was
+sufficient punishment, and went slinking off down the slope. Half-way to
+the band he stopped and sat down on his haunches in the hot sun, as
+dejected a dog as ever was made to suffer because his mistress was
+displeased with herself.
+
+Helen May sat there scowling out across the wide spaces, while romance
+and adventure, and something more, rode steadily nearer, heralded by the
+small gray cloud. When she was sure that a horseman was coming, she
+perversely removed herself to another spot where she would not be seen.
+And there she sat, out of sight from below and thus fancying herself
+undiscovered, refusing so much as a sly glance around her granite shield.
+
+For if there was anything which Helen May hated more than another it was
+the possibility of being thought cheaply sentimental, mushy, as the
+present generation vividly puts it. Also she was trying to break herself
+of humming that old desert love-song all the while. Vic was beginning to
+"kid" her unmercifully about it, for one thing. To think that she should
+sing it without thinking a word about it, just because she happened to
+see a little dust! She would not look. She would not!
+
+Starr might have passed her by and gone on to the cabin if he had not,
+through a pair of powerful binoculars, been observing her when she sent
+Pat off, and when she got up and went over to the other ledge and sat
+down. Through the glasses he had seen her feet crossed, toes up, just
+past the nose of the rock, and he could see the spread of her skirt.
+Luckily, he could not read her mind. He therefore gave a yank at the
+lead-rope in his hand and addressed a few biting remarks to a
+white-lashed, blue-eyed pinto trailing reluctantly behind Rabbit; and
+rode forward with some eagerness toward the ridge.
+
+"'Sleep?" he greeted cheerfully, when he had forced the two horses to
+scramble up to the shade of the ledge, and had received no attention
+whatever from the person just beyond. The tan boots were still crossed,
+and not so much as a toe of them moved to show that the owner heard him.
+Starr knew that he had made noise enough, so far as that went.
+
+"Why, no, I'm not asleep. What is it?" came crisply, after a
+perceptible pause.
+
+"It ain't anything at all," Starr retorted, and swung Rabbit into the
+shade which Helen May had left. He dismounted, sat himself down with his
+back against a rock, and proceeded to roll a cigarette. By no means
+would he intrude upon the privacy of a lady, though the quiet, crossed
+feet and the placid folds of the khaki skirt told him that she was
+sitting there quietly--pouting about something, most likely, he diagnosed
+her silence shrewdly. Well, it was early, and so long as he reached a
+certain point by full dark, he was not neglecting anything. As a matter
+of fact, he told himself philosophically, he really wanted to kill half a
+day in a perfectly plausible manner. There was no hurry, no hurry at all.
+
+Pat looked back at him ingratiatingly, and Starr called. Pat came running
+in long leaps, nearly wagging himself in two because someone he liked was
+going to be nice to him. Starr petted him and talked to him and pulled
+his ears and slapped him on the ribs, and Pat in his joy persisted in
+trying to lick Starr's cheek.
+
+"Quit it! Lay down and be a doormat, then. You've got welcome wrote all
+over you. And much as I like welcome, I hate to be licked."
+
+Pat lay down, and Starr eyed the tan boot toes. They moved impatiently,
+but they did not uncross. Starr smiled to himself and proceeded to carry
+on a one-sided conversation with Pat, and to smoke his cigarette.
+
+"Sick, over there?" he inquired casually after perhaps five minutes;
+either of them would have sworn it ten or fifteen.
+
+"Why, no," chirped the crisp voice. "Why?"
+
+"Seemed polite to ask, is all," Starr confessed. "I didn't think you
+was." He finished his smoke in the silence that followed. Then, because
+he himself owned a perverse streak, he took his binoculars from their
+case and began to study the low-lying ridge in the distance, in a pocket
+of which nestled the Medina ranch buildings. He was glad this ridge
+commanded all but the "draws" and hollows lying transversely between here
+and Medina's place. It was Medina whom he had been advised by his chief
+to watch particularly, when Starr had found a means of laying his clues
+before that astute gentleman. If he could sit within ten feet of Helen
+May while he kept an eye on that country over there, all the better.
+
+He saw a horseman ride up out of a hollow and disappear almost
+immediately into another. The man seemed to be coming over in this
+direction, though Starr could not be sure. He watched for a reappearance
+of the rider on high ground, but he saw no more of the fellow. So after a
+little he took down the glasses to scan the country as a whole.
+
+It was then that he glanced toward the other rock and saw that the tan
+boots had moved out of sight. He believed that he would have heard her if
+she moved away, and so he kept his eyes turned upon the corner of the
+rock where her feet had shown a few minutes before.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOURTEEN
+
+A SHOT FROM THE PINNACLE
+
+
+"Why--did some one come with you, Mr. Starr? I thought you were alone."
+
+Starr turned his head and saw Helen May standing quite close, on the
+other side of him. She was glancing inquiringly from him to the pinto
+pony, and she was smiling the least little bit, though her eyes had a
+shamed, self-conscious look. Starr eyed her keenly, a bit reproachfully,
+and she blushed.
+
+"I thought maybe you'd come around where I was," she defended herself
+lamely. "It--seemed cooler there--"
+
+"Yes, I noticed it was pretty cool, from the tone of your voice."
+
+"Well--oh, I was just nursing a grouch, and I couldn't stop all at once,"
+Helen May surrendered suddenly, sitting down beside him and crossing her
+feet. "I've read in stories how sheepherders go crazy, and I know now
+just why that is. They see so few people that they don't know how to act
+when some one does come along. They get so they hate themselves and
+everybody else. I had just finished abusing poor old Pat till he went
+off and sulked too."
+
+"I thought probably you and Pat had just had a run-in, the way he acted."
+Starr went back to scanning that part of the mesa where he had glimpsed
+the rider. He could not afford to forget business in the pleasure of
+talking aimless, trivial things with Helen May.
+
+"What are you looking for?"
+
+"Stock," said Starr, falling back on the standard excuse of the
+range man.
+
+"And _what's_ the idea of two saddle-horses and two saddles and two
+bridles?" Helen May's voice was as simply curious as a child's.
+
+"The idea is that you're going to ride instead of walk from now on. It's
+an outfit I got from a fellow that was leaving. He borrowed money from me
+and left his horse and saddle, for a kind of security. I didn't want it,
+but he had to leave 'em somewhere. So I thought you might as well keep
+the horse and use it till he comes back, or something." Starr did very
+well with this explanation; much better than he had done in explaining
+Pat. The truth was that he had bought the horse for the express purpose
+of giving it to Helen May; just as he had bought the dog.
+
+Helen May studied his face while he studied the distant plain. She
+thought he acted as though he didn't care much whether she kept the
+horse or not, and for that reason, and because his explanation had
+sounded like truth, she hesitated over refusing the offer, though she
+felt that she ought to refuse.
+
+"It ain't right for you to be out here afoot," said Starr, as though he
+had read her thoughts. "It's bad enough for you to be here at all. What
+ever possessed you to do such a crazy thing, anyhow?"
+
+"Well, sometimes people can't choose. Dad got the notion first. And
+then--when he died--Vic and I just went ahead with it."
+
+"Did he know anything about this country? Did he know--what chances you'd
+be taking?" Starr was trying to choose his words so that they would
+impress her without alarming her. It angered him to have to worry over
+the girl's welfare and to keep that worry to himself.
+
+"What chances, for gracious sake? I never saw such a mild, perfectly
+monotonous life. Why, there are more chances in Los Angeles every time a
+person goes down town. It's deadly dull here, and it's too lonesome for
+words, and I hate it. But as for taking chances--" Her voice was frankly
+contemptuous of the idea.
+
+"Chances of going broke. It takes experience--"
+
+"Oh, as to that, it's partly a matter of health," said Helen May
+lightly. "I have to live where the climate--"
+
+"You could live in Albuquerque, or some other live town; close to it,
+anyway. You don't have to stick away down here, where--"
+
+"I don't see as it matters. So long as it isn't Los Angeles, no place
+appeals to me. And dad had bought the improvements here, so--"
+
+"I'll pay you for the improvements, if that's all," Starr said shortly.
+
+Helen May laughed. "That sounds exactly as though you want to get me out
+of the country," she challenged.
+
+Starr did not rise to the bait. He took another long look for the
+horseman, saw not so much as a flurry of dust, and slid the glasses into
+their case.
+
+"I brought out that carbine I was speaking about. And the shells that go
+with it. I'm kind of a gun fiend, I guess. I'm always accumulating a lot
+of shooting irons I never use. I run across a six-shooter and belt, too.
+Come here, Rabbit!"
+
+Rabbit came, and Starr untied the weapons, smiling boyishly. "You may as
+well be using 'em; they'll only rust, kicking around in the shack. Buckle
+this around you. I punched another hole or two, so the belt would come
+within a mile or so of fitting. You want to wear that every time you go
+out on the range. The time you leave it home is the very time when you'll
+see a coyote or something.
+
+"And if you expect to get rich in the goat business, you never want to
+pass up a coyote. There's a bounty on 'em, for one thing, because they do
+lots of damage among sheep and goats. And for another," he added
+impressively, "the rabies that's been epidemic on the Coast is spreading.
+You've maybe read about it. A rabid coyote would come right at you, and
+you know the consequences. Or it would bite Pat, and then Pat would
+tackle you."
+
+"Oh!" Helen May had turned a sickly shade. Her eyes went anxiously over
+the slope as though she half expected something of the sort to happen
+then and there.
+
+"That's why," said Starr solemnly, looking down into her face, "I'm kinda
+worried about you ranging around afoot and without a gun--"
+
+"But nobody else has even mentioned--"
+
+"Everybody else goes prepared, and they're inclined to take chances as a
+matter of course. I reckon they think you know all about rabies being in
+the country. This has always been a scrappy kinda place, remember, and
+folks are used to packing guns and using 'em when the case demands it.
+You wear this six-gun, lady, and keep your eyes open from now on. I've
+got another one for Vic; an automatic. Now we'll go down here in the
+shade and practice shooting. I brought plenty of shells, and I want to
+learn you how to handle a gun."
+
+Silently she followed him down the slope on the side toward the Basin. He
+stopped beside the pinto, took it by the bridle-reins and, whipping out
+his gun, fired it once to test the horse. The pinto twitched its ears at
+the sound and looked at Starr. Starr laughed.
+
+"I'll learn you to shoot from horseback," he called back to Helen May.
+"He's broke to it, I can see now."
+
+"Oh, I wonder if I could! Don't tell Vic, will you? I'd like to take
+him by surprise. Boys are so conceited and self-sufficient! You'd
+think Vic was my grandfather, the way he lords it over me. First of
+all, what is the right way to get on a horse? I wish you'd teach me
+about riding, too."
+
+This sort of instruction grew absorbing to both. Before either guessed
+how the time had flown, the sun stood straight overhead; and Pat,
+standing in front of her with an expectant look in his eyes and an
+occasional wag of his stubby tail, reminded Helen May that it was time
+for lunch. They had used almost a full box of shells, and Helen May had
+succeeded in shooting from the back of the pinto and in hitting a certain
+small hummock of pure sand twice in six shots. She was tremendously
+proud of the feat, and she took no pains to conceal her pride. She wanted
+to start in on another box of shells, but Pat's eyes were so reproachful,
+and her sense of hospitality was so urgent that she decided to wait until
+they had eaten the lunch she had brought with her.
+
+The rocks which had cast a shadow were now baking in the glare, and the
+sand where Helen May and Starr had sat was radiating heat waves. Starr
+took another long look down toward Medina's ranch through his field
+glasses, while Helen May went to find a comfortable bit of shade.
+
+"If you'll come over this way, Mr. Starr," she called abruptly, "I'll
+give you a sandwich. It's hot everywhere to-day, but this is a little
+better than out in the sun."
+
+Starr took the glasses down from his eyes and let them dangle by their
+cord while he walked over the nose of the ridge to where she was
+waiting for him.
+
+Half-way there, a streak of fire seemed to sear his arm near his
+shoulder. Starr knew the feeling well enough. He staggered and went
+down headlong in a clump of greasewood, and at the same instant the
+report of a rifle came clearly from the high pinnacle at the head of
+Sunlight Basin.
+
+Helen May came running, her face white with horror, for she had seen
+Starr fall just as the sound of the shot came to tell her why. She did
+not cry out, but she rushed to where he lay half concealed in the bushes.
+When she came near him, she stopped short. For Starr was lying on his
+stomach with his head up and elbows in the sand, steadying the glasses to
+his eyes that he might search that pinnacle.
+
+"W-what made you fall down like that?" Helen May cried exasperatedly.
+"I--I thought you were shot!"
+
+"I am, to a certain extent," Starr told her unconcernedly. "Kneel down
+here beside me and act scared, will you? And in a minute I want you to
+climb on the pinto and ride around behind them rocks and wait for me.
+Take Rabbit with you. Act like you was going for help, or was scared
+and running away from a corpse. You get me? I'll crawl over there after
+a little."
+
+"W-why? Are you hurt so you can't walk?"
+
+Helen May did not have to act; she was scared quite enough for
+Starr's purpose.
+
+"Oh, I could walk, but walking ain't healthy right now. Jump up now and
+climb your horse like you was expecting to ride him down to a whisper. Go
+on--beat it. And when you get outa sight of the pinnacle, stay outa
+sight. Run!"
+
+There were several questions which Helen May wanted to ask, but she only
+gave him a hasty, imploring glance which Starr did not see at all, since
+his eyes were focussed on the pinnacle. She ran to the pinto and scared
+him so that he jumped away from her. Starr heard and glanced impatiently
+back at her. He saw that she had managed to get the reins and was
+mounting with all the haste and all the awkwardness he could possibly
+expect of her, and he grinned and returned to his scrutiny of the peak.
+
+Whatever he saw he kept to himself; but presently he began to wriggle
+backward, keeping the greasewood clump, and afterwards certain rocks and
+little ridges, between himself and a view of the point he had fixed upon
+as the spot where the shooter had stood.
+
+When he had rounded the first rock ledge he got up and looked for Helen
+May, and found her standing a couple of rods off, watching him anxiously.
+He smiled reassuringly at her while he dusted his trousers with the flat
+of his hands.
+
+"Fine and dandy," he said. "Whoever took a pot-shot at me thinks he got
+me first crack. See? Now listen, lady. That maybe was some herder out
+gunning for coyotes, and maybe he was gunning for me. I licked a herder
+that ranges over that way, and he maybe thought he'd play even. But
+anyway, don't say anything about it to anybody, will you. I kinda--"
+
+"Why not? If he shot at you, he wanted to kill you. And that's murder; he
+ought to be--"
+
+"Now, you know you said yourself that herders go crazy. I don't want to
+get the poor boob into trouble. Let's not say anything about it. I've got
+to go now; I've stayed longer than I meant to, as it is. Have Vic put
+that halter that's on the saddle on the pinto, and tie the rope to it and
+let it drag. He won't go away, and you can catch him without any bother.
+If Vic don't know how to set the saddle, you take notice just how it's
+fixed when you take it off. I meant to show you how, but I can't stop
+now. And don't go anywhere, not even to the mail box, without Pat or your
+six-gun, or both. Come here, Rabbit, you old scoundrel!
+
+"I wish I could stay," he added, swinging up to the saddle and looking
+down at her anxiously. "Don't let Vic monkey with that automatic till I
+come and show him how to use it. I--"
+
+"You said you were shot," said Helen May, staring at him enigmatically
+from under her lashes. "Are you?"
+
+"Not much; burnt a streak on my arm, nothing to bother about. Now
+remember and don't leave your gun--"
+
+"I don't believe it was because you licked a herder. What made somebody
+shoot at you? Was it--on account of Pat?"
+
+"Pat? No, I don't see what the dog would have to do with it. It was some
+half-baked herder, shooting maybe because he heard us shoot and thought
+we was using him for a target. You can't," Starr declared firmly, "tell
+what fool idea they'll get into their heads. It was our shooting, most
+likely. Now I must go. Adios, I'll see yuh before long."
+
+"Well, but what--"
+
+Helen May found herself speaking to the scenery. Starr was gone with
+Rabbit at a sliding trot down the slope that kept the ridge between him
+and the pinnacle. She stood staring after him blankly, her hat askew on
+the back of her head, and her lips parted in futile astonishment. She did
+not in the least realize just what Starr's extreme caution had meant. She
+had no inkling of the real gravity of the situation, for her ignorance of
+the lawless possibilities of that big, bare country insulated her against
+understanding.
+
+What struck her most forcibly was the cool manner in which he had ordered
+her to act a part, and the unhesitating manner in which she had obeyed
+him. He ordered her about, she thought, as though he had a right; and she
+obeyed as though she recognized that right.
+
+She watched him as long as he was in sight, and tried to guess where he
+was going and what he meant to do, and what was his business--what he did
+for a living. He must be a rancher, since he had said he was looking for
+stock; but it was queer he had never told her where his ranch lay, or how
+far off it was, or anything about it.
+
+After a little it occurred to her that Starr would want the man who had
+shot at him to think she had left that neighborhood, so she called to
+Pat and had him drive the goats around where they could not be seen from
+the pinnacle.
+
+Then she sat down and ate her sandwiches thoughtfully, with long,
+meditative intervals between bites. She regarded the pinto curiously,
+wondering if Starr had really taken him as security for a debt, and
+wishing that she had asked him what its name was. It was queer, the way
+he rode up unexpectedly every few days, always bringing something he
+thought she needed, and seeming to take it for granted that she would
+accept everything he offered. It was much queerer that she did accept
+everything without argument or hesitation. For that matter, everything
+that concerned Starr was queer, from Helen May's point of view.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIFTEEN
+
+HELEN MAY UNDERSTANDS
+
+
+Pat, lying at her feet and licking his lips contentedly after his bone
+and the crusts of her sandwich, raised his head suddenly and rumbled a
+growl somewhere deep in his chest. His upper lip lifted and showed his
+teeth wickedly, and the hair on the back of his neck stood out in a ruff
+that made him look a different dog.
+
+Helen May felt a cold shiver all up and down her spine. She had never
+seen Pat, nor any other dog for that matter, look like that. It was much
+more terrifying than that mysterious shot which had effected Starr so
+strangely. Pat was staring directly behind her, and his eyes had a
+greenish tinge in the iris, and the white part was all pink and
+bloodshot. Helen May thought he must have rabies or something; or else a
+rabid coyote was up on the ridge behind her. She wanted to scream, but
+she was afraid; she was afraid to look behind her, even.
+
+Pat got up and stood digging his toe nails into the earth in the most
+horribly suggestive way imaginable. The green light in his eyes
+terrified her. His ruff bristled bigger on his neck. He looked ready to
+spring at something. Helen May was too scared to move so much as a
+finger. She waited, and her heart began beating so hard in her throat
+that it nearly suffocated her. She never once thought of the six-shooter
+which Starr had given her. She did not think of anything, except that a
+rabid coyote was right behind her, and in a minute Pat would jump at it,
+if it did not first jump at her! And then Pat would be bitten, and would
+go mad and bite her and Vic, and they'd all die horribly of hydrophobia.
+
+"Ah--is this a modern, dramatic version of Beauty and the Beast? If so,
+it is a masterpiece in depicting perfect repose on the part of Beauty,
+while the Beast vivifies the protective instinct of the stronger toward
+the weaker. Speaking in the common parlance, if you will call off your
+dog, Miss Stevenson, I might be persuaded to venture within hand-shaking
+distance." A little laugh, that was much more humorous than the words,
+followed the speech.
+
+Helen May felt as though she were going to faint. "Pat!" she tried to say
+admonishingly; but her voice was a weak whisper that did not carry ten
+feet. She pulled herself together and tried again. "Pat, lie down!"
+
+Pat turned his bead a trifle and sent her a tolerant glance, but the
+hair did not lie down on his neck, and the growl did not cease to rumble
+in his throat.
+
+"Pat!" Helen May began to recover a little from the reaction. "Come here
+to me! I--don't think he'll bite you, Mr. Sommers. It's--it's only
+Mexicans that he's supposed to hate. I--I didn't know it was you."
+
+Holman Sommers, being careful to keep a safe distance between himself and
+Pat, came around to where he could see her face. "As a matter of fact,"
+he began, "it's really my sister who came to visit you. Your brother
+informed us that you were out here, and I came to tell you. Why, did I
+frighten you so badly, Miss Stevenson? Your face is absolutely colorless.
+What did I do to so terrify you? I surely never intended--" His eyes were
+remorseful as he stood and looked at her.
+
+"It was just the way Pat acted. I--I'd been hearing about rabid coyotes,
+and I thought one was behind me, Pat acted so queer. Lie down, Pat!"
+
+Holman Sommers spoke to the dog ingratiatingly, but Pat did not exhibit
+any tail-wagging desire for friendly acquaintance. He slunk over to
+Helen May and flattened himself on his belly with his nose on his paws,
+and his eyes, that still showed greenish lights and bloodshot whites,
+fixed on the man.
+
+"It may be," said Sommers judgmatically, "that he has been taught to
+resent strangers coming in close proximity to the animals he has in
+charge. A great many dogs are so trained, and are therefore in no wise to
+blame for exhibiting a certain degree of ferocity. The canine mind is
+wholly lacking in the power of deduction, its intelligence consisting
+rather of a highly developed instinctive faculty for retaining
+impressions which invariably express themselves in some concrete form
+such as hate, fear, joy, affection and like primitive emotions. Pat, for
+instance, has been taught to regard strangers as interlopers. He
+therefore resents the presence of all strangers, and has no mental
+faculty for distinguishing between strangers, as such, and actual
+intruders whose presence is essentially undesirable."
+
+Helen May gave a little, half-hysterical laugh, and Holman Sommers looked
+at her keenly, as a doctor sometimes looks at a patient.
+
+"I am intensely sorry that my coming frightened you," he said gently.
+Then he laughed. "I am also deeply humiliated at the idea of being
+mistaken, in the broad light of midday, for a rabid coyote. May I ask
+just wherein lies the resemblance?"
+
+Helen May looked at him, saw the dancing light in his eyes and a mirthful
+quirk of his lips, and blushed while she smiled.
+
+"It's just that I happened to be thinking about them," she said,
+instinctively belittling her fear. "And then I never saw Pat act the way
+he's acting now."
+
+Holman Sommers regarded the dog with the same keen, studying look he had
+given Helen May. Pat did not take it as calmly, however, as Helen May had
+done. Pat lifted his upper lip again and snarled with an extremely
+concrete depiction of the primitive emotion, hate.
+
+"There _are_ such things as rabid coyotes, aren't there? Just--do you
+know how they act, and how a person could tell when something has caught
+the disease from them?"
+
+"I think I may safely assert that there undoubtedly are rabid coyotes in
+the country. As a matter of fact, and speaking relatively, they have
+been, and probably still are, somewhat of a menace to stock running
+abroad without a herder amply provided with the means of protecting his
+charge. At the same time I may point with pardonable pride to the
+concerted action of both State and Stock Association to rid the country
+of these pests. So far we feel highly gratified at the success which has
+attended our efforts. I gravely doubt whether you would now find, in this
+whole county, a single case of infection. But on the other hand, I could
+not, of course, venture to state unqualifiedly that there may not be
+certain isolated cases--"
+
+"Pat! Do stop that growling! What ails you, anyway? I never saw him act
+that way before. I wonder if he could possibly be--" She looked at
+Sommers questioningly.
+
+"Infected?" he finished for her understandingly. "As a matter of fact,
+that may be possible, though I should not consider it altogether
+probable. Since the period of incubation varies from three weeks to six
+months, as in man, the dog may possibly have been infected before coming
+into your possession. If that were true, you would have no means of
+discovering the fact until he exhibits certain premonitory symptoms,
+which may or may not form in themselves conclusive evidence of the
+presence of the disease."
+
+Helen May got up from the rock and moved away, eyeing Pat suspiciously.
+Pat got up and followed her, keeping a watchful eye on Sommers.
+
+"What are the symptoms, for gracious sake?" she demanded fretfully,
+worried beyond caring how she chose her words for Holman Sommers. "His
+eyes look queer, don't you think?"
+
+"Since you ask me, and since the subject is not one to be dismissed
+lightly, I will say that I have been studying the dog's attitude with
+some slight measure of concern," Holman Sommers admitted guardedly. "The
+suffused eyeball is sometimes found in the premonitory stage of the
+disease, after incubation has progressed to a certain degree. Also
+irritability, nervousness, and depression are apt to be present. Has the
+dog exhibited any tendency toward sluggishness, Miss Stevenson?"
+
+"Well, he's been lying around most of the time to-day," Helen May
+confessed, staring at Pat apprehensively. "Of course, there hasn't been
+anything much for him to do. But he certainly does act queer, just since
+you came."
+
+Holman Sommers spoke with the prim decision of a teacher instructing a
+class, but that seemed to be only his way, and Helen May was growing used
+to it. "His evidencing a tendency toward sluggishness to-day, and his
+subsequent irritability, may or may not be significant of an abnormality.
+If, however, the dog progresses to the stage of hyperaesthesia, and the
+muscles of deglutition become extremely rigid, so that he cannot swallow,
+convulsions will certainly follow. There will also appear in the mouth
+and throat a secretion of thick, viscid mucus, with thickened saliva,
+which will be an undubitable proof of rabies."
+
+Having thus innocently damned poor Pat with the suspicion of a dreadful
+malady, Sommers made a scientific attempt to soothe Helen May's fears.
+He advised, with many words and much kind intent, that Pat be muzzled
+until the "hyperaesthesia" did or did not develop. Helen May thought that
+the terribly-termed symptoms might develop before they could get a muzzle
+from town, but she did not like to say so.
+
+Partly to be hospitable, and partly to get away from Pat, she mounted the
+pinto, told Pat to watch the goats, and rode down to the house to see
+Martha Sommers. She did not anticipate any pleasure in the visit, much as
+she had longed for the sound of a woman's voice. She was really worried
+half to death over Starr, and the rabies, and Pat, and the nagging
+consciousness that she had not accomplished as much copying of manuscript
+as Holman Sommers probably expected.
+
+She did not hear half of what Sommers was saying on the way to the cabin.
+His very amiability jarred upon her nervous depression. She had always
+liked him, and respected his vast learning, but to-day she certainly did
+not get much comfort out of his converse. She wondered why she had been
+so light-hearted while Starr was with her showing her how to shoot, and
+lecturing her about the danger of going gunless abroad; and why she was
+so perfectly dejected when Holman Sommers talked to her about the very
+same thing. Starr had certainly painted things blacker than Holman had
+done, but it did not seem to have the same effect.
+
+"I don't see what we're going to do for a muzzle," she launched suddenly
+into the middle of Holman Sommers' scientific explanation of mirages.
+
+"Vic can undoubtedly construct one out of an old strap," Holman Sommers
+retorted impatiently, and went on discoursing about refraction and
+reflection and the like.
+
+Helen May tried to follow him, and gave it up. When they were
+almost to the spring she again unwittingly jarred Holman Sommers
+out of his subject.
+
+"Did all those words you used mean that Pat will foam at the mouth like
+mad dogs you read about?" she asked abruptly.
+
+Holman Sommers, tramping along beside the pinto, looked at her queerly.
+"If Pat does not, I strongly suspect that I shall," he told her
+weightily, but with a twinkle in his eyes. "I have been endeavoring, Miss
+Stevenson, to wean your thoughts away from so unhappy a subject. Why
+permit yourself to be worried? The thing will happen, or it will not
+happen. If it does happen, you will be powerless to prevent. If it does
+not, you will have been anxious over a chimera of the imagination."
+
+"Chimera of the imagination is a good line," laughed Helen May
+flippantly. "All the same, if Pat is going to gallop all over the
+scenery, foaming at the mouth and throwing fits at the sight of water--"
+
+"As a matter of fact," Holman Sommers was beginning again in his most
+instructive tone, when a whoop from the spring interrupted him.
+
+Vic had hobbled obligingly down there to get cool water for the plump
+lady who was Holman Sommers' sister, and he had nearly stepped on a
+sleepy rattler stretched out in the sun. Vic was making a collection of
+rattles. He had one set, so far, of five rattles and a "button." He
+wanted to get these which were buzzing stridently enough for three
+snakes, it seemed to Vic. He was hopping around on his good foot and
+throwing rocks; and the snake, having retreated to a small heap of loose
+cobblestones, was thrusting his head out in vicious little striking
+gestures, and keeping the scaly length of him bidden.
+
+"Wait a minute, I'll get him, Vic," called Helen May, suddenly anxious to
+show off her newly acquired skill with firearms. Starr had told her that
+lots of people killed rattlesnakes by shooting their heads off. She
+wanted to try it, anyway, and show Vic a thing or two. So she rode up as
+close as she dared, though the pinto shied away from the ominous sound;
+pulled her pearl-handled six-shooter from its holster, aimed, and fired
+at the snake's head.
+
+You have heard, no doubt, of "fool's luck." Helen May actually tore the
+whole top off that rattlesnake's head (though I may as well say right
+here that she never succeeded in shooting another snake) and rode
+nonchalantly on to the cabin as though she had done nothing at all
+unusual, but smiling to herself at Vic's slack-jawed amazement at seeing
+her on horseback, with a gun and such uncanny skill in the use of it.
+
+She felt better after that, and she rather enjoyed the plump sister of
+Holman Sommers. The plump sister called him Holly, and seemed to be
+inordinately proud of his learning and inordinately fond of nagging at
+him over little things. She was what Helen May called a vegetable type of
+woman. She did not seem to have any great emotions in her make-up. She
+sat in the one rocking-chair under the mesquite tree and crocheted lace
+and talked comfortably about Holly and her chickens in the same breath,
+and frankly admired Helen May's "spunk" in living out alone like that.
+
+"Don't overlook Vic, though," Helen May put in generously. "I honestly
+don't believe I could stand it without Vic."
+
+The plump sister seemed unimpressed. "In this country," she said with a
+certain snug positiveness that was the keynote of her personality, "it's
+the women that have the courage. They wouldn't be here if they didn't
+have. Think how close we are to the Mexican border, for instance.
+Anything that is horrible to woman can come out of Mexico. Not that I
+look down on them over there," she added, with a complacent tolerance in
+her tone. "They are victims of the System that has kept them degraded and
+ignorant. But until they are lifted up and educated and raised to our
+standards they are bad.
+
+"You can't get around it, Holly, those ignorant Mexicans are _bad_!" She
+had lifted her eyes accusingly to where Holman Sommers sat on the ground
+with his knees drawn up and his old Panama hat hung upon them. He was
+smoking a pipe, and he did not remove it from his mouth; but Helen May
+saw that amused quirk of the lips just the same.
+
+"You can't get around it. You know it as well as I do," she reiterated.
+"Cannibals are worth saving, but before they are saved they are liable to
+eat the missionary. And it's the same thing with your Mexicans. You want
+to educate them and raise them to your standards, and that's all right as
+far as it goes. But in the meantime they're bad. And if Miss Stevenson
+wasn't such a good shot, I wouldn't be able to sleep nights, thinking of
+her living up here alone, with just a boy for protection."
+
+"Why, I never heard of such a thing as any danger from Mexicans!" Helen
+May looked inquiringly from plump sister to cynical brother.
+
+"Well, you needn't wonder at Holly not telling you," said the plump
+sister,--her name was Maggie. "Holly's a fool about some things. Holly
+is trying the Uplift, and he shuts his eyes to things that don't fit in
+with his theories. If you've copied much of that stuff he's been
+writing, you ought to know how impractical he is. Holly's got his head
+in the clouds, and he won't look at what's right under his feet." Again
+she looked reproof at Holly, and again Holly's lips quirked around the
+stem end of his pipe.
+
+"You just keep your eyes open, Miss Stevenson," she admonished, in a
+purring, comfortable voice. "I ain't afraid, myself, because I've got
+Holly and my cousin Todd, when he's at home. And besides, Holly's always
+doing missionary stunts, and the Mexicans like him because he'll let them
+rob him right and left and come back and take what they forgot the first
+time, and Holly won't do a thing to them. But you don't want to take any
+chances, away off here like you are. You lock your door good at night,
+and you sleep with a gun under your pillow. And don't go off anywhere
+alone. My, even with a gun you ain't any too safe!"
+
+Helen May gave a gasp. But Holman Sommers laughed outright--an easy,
+chuckling laugh that partly reassured her. "Danger is Maggie's favorite
+joke," he said tolerantly. "As a matter of fact, and speaking from a
+close, personal knowledge of the people hereabouts, I can assure you,
+Miss Stevenson, that you are in no danger whatever from the source my
+sister indicates."
+
+"Well, but Holly, I've said it, and I'll say it again; you can't tell
+_what_ may come up out of Mexico." Plump Maggie rolled up her lace and
+jabbed the ball decisively with the crochet hook, "We'll have to go now,
+or the chickens will be wondering where their supper is coming from. You
+do what I say, and lock your doors at night, and have your gun handy,
+Miss Stevenson. Things may look calm enough on the surface, but they
+ain't, I can tell you that!"
+
+"Woman, cease!" cried Holly banteringly, while he dusted his baggy
+trousers with his palms. "Miss Stevenson will be haunted by nightmares if
+you keep on."
+
+Once they were gone, Helen May surrendered weakly to one fear, to the
+extent that she let Vic take the carbine and the pinto and ride over to
+where she had left Pat and the goats, for the simple reason that she
+dreaded to face alone that much maligned dog. Vic, to be sure, would have
+quarreled with her if necessary, to get a ride on the pinto, and he was a
+good deal astonished at Helen May's sweet consideration of a boy's
+hunger for a horse. But she tempered his joy a bit by urging him to keep
+an eye on Pat, who had been acting very queer.
+
+"He kept ruining up his back and showing his teeth at Mr. Sommers," she
+explained nervously. "If he does it when you go, Vic, and if he foams at
+the mouth, you'd better shoot him before he bites something. If a mad dog
+bites you, you'll get hydrophobia, and bark and growl like a dog, and
+have fits and die."
+
+"G-oo-d _night_!" Vic ejaculated fervently, and went loping awkwardly
+down the trail past the spring.
+
+That left Helen May alone and free to think about the horrors that might
+come up out of Mexico, and about the ignorant Mexicans who, until they
+are uplifted, are bad. It seemed strange that, if this were true, Starr
+had never mentioned the danger. And yet--
+
+"I'll bet anything that's just what Starr-of-the-Desert did mean!" she
+exclaimed aloud, her eyes fixed intently on the toes of her scuffed
+boots. "He just didn't want to scare me too much and make me suspicious
+of everybody that came along, and so he talked mad coyotes at me. But it
+was Mexicans he meant; I'll bet anything it was!"
+
+If that was what Starr meant, then the shot from the pinnacle, and
+Starr's crafty, Indian-like method of getting away unseen, took on a
+new and sinister meaning. Helen May shivered at the thought of Starr
+riding away in search of the man who had tried to kill him, and of the
+risk he must be taking. And what if the fellow came back, sneaking back
+in the dark, and tried to get in the house, or something? It surely was
+lucky that Starr-of-the-Desert had just happened to bring those guns.
+
+But had he just _happened_ to bring them? Helen May was not stupid, even
+if she were ignorant of certain things she ought to know, living out
+alone in the wild. She began to see very clearly just what Starr had
+meant; just how far he had _happened_ to have extra guns in his shack,
+and had just _happened_ to get hold of a horse that she and Vic could
+use; and the dog, too, that hated Mexicans!
+
+"That's why he hates to have me stay on the claim!" she deduced at last.
+"Only he just wouldn't tell me right out that it isn't safe. That's what
+he meant by asking if dad knew the chances I'd have to take. Well, dad
+didn't know, but after the price dad paid, why--I've got to stay, and
+make good. There's no sense in being a coward about it. Starr wouldn't
+want me to be a coward. He's just scheming around to make it as safe as
+he can, without making me cowardly."
+
+A slow, half-tender smile lit her chestnut-tinted eyes, and tilted her
+lips at the corners. "Oh, you desert man o' mine, I see through you
+now!" she said under her breath, and kept on smiling afterwards, since
+there was not a soul near to guess her thoughts. "Desert man o' mine"
+was going pretty strong, if you stop to think of it; but Helen May would
+have died--would have lied--would have gone to any lengths to keep Starr
+from guessing she had ever thought such a thing about him. That was the
+woman of her.
+
+The woman of her it was too that kept her dwelling pleasedly on Starr's
+shy, protective regard for her, instead of watching the peaks in fear and
+trembling lest another bad, un-uplifted Mexican should be watching a
+chance to send another bullet zipping down into the Basin on its mission
+of wanton wickedness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIXTEEN
+
+STARR SEES TOO LITTLE OR TOO MUCH
+
+
+Carefully skirting the ridge where Helen May had her goats; keeping
+always in the gulches and never once showing himself on high ground,
+Starr came after a while to a point where he could look up to the
+pinnacle behind Sunlight Basin, from the side opposite the point where
+he had wriggled away behind a bush. He left Rabbit hidden in a
+brush-choked arroyo that meandered away to the southwest, and began
+cautiously to climb.
+
+Starr did not expect to come upon his man on the peak; indeed he would
+have been surprised to find the fellow still there. But that peak was as
+good as any for reconnoitering the surrounding country, was higher than
+any other within several miles, in fact. What he did hope was to pick up
+with his glasses the man's line of retreat after a deed he must believe
+successfully accomplished. And there might be some betraying sign there
+that would give him a clue.
+
+There was always the possibility, however, that the fellow had lingered
+to see what took place after the supposed killing. He must believe that
+the girl who had been with Starr would take some action, and he might
+want to know to a certainty what that action was. So Starr went
+carefully, keeping behind boulders and rugged outcroppings and in the
+bottom of deep, water-worn washes when nothing else served. He did not
+think the fellow, even if he stayed on the peak, would be watching behind
+him, but Starr did not take any chances, and climbed rather slowly.
+
+He reached the summit at the left of where the man had stood when he
+shot; very close to the spot where Helen May had stood and looked upon
+Vic and the goats and the country she abhorred. Starr saw her tracks
+there in a sheltered place beside a rock and knew that she had been up
+there, though in that dry soil he could not, of course, tell when. When
+that baked soil takes an imprint, it is apt to hold it for a long while
+unless rain or a real sand-storm blots it out.
+
+He hid there for a few minutes, craning as much as he dared to see if
+there were any sign of the man he wanted. In a little he left that spot
+and crept, foot by foot, over to the cairn, the "sheepherder's monument,"
+behind which the fellow had stood. There again he found the prints of
+Helen May's small, mountain boots, prints which he had come to know very
+well. And close to them, looking as though the two had stood together,
+were the larger, deeper tracks of a man.
+
+Starr dared not rise and stand upright. He must keep always under cover
+from any chance spying from below. He could not, therefore, trace the
+footprints down the peak. But he got some idea of the man's direction
+when he left, and he knew, of course, where to find Helen May. He did not
+connect the two in his mind, beyond registering clearly in his memory the
+two sets of tracks.
+
+He crept closer to the Basin side of the peak and looked down, following
+an impulse he did not try to analyze. Certainly he did not expect to see
+any one, unless it were Vic, so he had a little shock of surprise when he
+saw Helen May riding the pinto up past the spring, with a man walking
+beside her and glancing up frequently into her face. Starr was human; I
+have reminded you several times how perfectly human he was. He
+immediately disliked that man. When he heard faintly the tones of Helen
+May's laugh, he disliked the man more.
+
+He got down, with his head and his arms--the left one was lame in
+the biceps--above a rock. He made sure that the sun had swung around
+so it would not shine on the lenses and betray him by any
+heliographic reflection, and focussed his glasses upon the two. He
+saw as well as heard Helen May laugh, and he scowled over it. But
+mostly he studied the man.
+
+"All right for you, old boy," he muttered. "I don't know who the devil
+you are, but I don't like your looks." Which shows how human jealousy
+will prejudice a man.
+
+He saw Vic throwing rocks at something which he judged was a snake, and
+he saw Helen May rein the pinto awkwardly around, "square herself for
+action," as Starr would have styled it, and fire. By her elation;
+artfully suppressed, by the very carelessness with which she shoved the
+gun in its holster, he knew that she had hit whatever she shot at. He
+caught the tones of Holman Sommers' voice praising her, and he hated the
+tones. He watched them come on up to the little house, where they
+disappeared at the end where the mesquite tree grew. Sitting in the shade
+there, talking, he guessed they were doing, and for some reason he
+resented it. He saw Vic lift a rattlesnake up by its tail, and heard him
+yell that it had six rattles, and the button was missing.
+
+After that Starr turned his hack on the Basin and began to search
+scowlingly the plain. He tried to pull his mind away from Helen May and
+her visitor and to fix it upon the would-be assassin. He believed that
+the horseman he had seen earlier in the day might be the one, and he
+looked for him painstakingly, picking out all the draws, all the dry
+washes and arroyos of that vicinity. The man would keep under cover, of
+course, in making his getaway. He would not ride across a ridge if he
+could help it, any more than would Starr.
+
+Even so, from that height Starr could look down into many of the deep
+places. In one of them he caught sight of a horseman picking his way
+carefully along the boulder-strewn bottom. The man's back was toward him,
+but the general look of him was Mexican. The horse was bay with a rusty
+black tail, but there were in New Mexico thousands of bay horses with
+black tails, so there was nothing gained there. The rider seemed to be
+making toward Medina's ranch, though that was only a guess, since the
+arroyo he was following led in that direction at that particular place.
+Later it took a sharp turn to the south, and the rider went out of sight
+before Starr got so much as a glimpse at his features.
+
+He watched for a few minutes longer, sweeping his glasses slowly to
+right and left. He took another look down into the Basin and saw no one
+stirring, that being about the time when the plump sister was rolling
+up her fancy work and tapering off her conversation to the point of
+making her adieu. Starr did not watch long enough for his own peace of
+mind. Five more minutes would have brought the plump one into plain
+view with her brother and Helen May, and would have identified Holman
+Sommers as the escort of a lady caller. But those five minutes Starr
+spent in crawling back down the peak on the side farthest from the
+Basin, leaving Holman Sommers sticking in his mind with the unpleasant
+flavor of mystery.
+
+He mounted Rabbit again and made a detour of several miles so that he
+might come up on the ridge behind Medina's without running any risk of
+crossing the trail of the men he wanted to watch. About two o'clock he
+stopped at a shallow, brackish stream and let Rabbit rest and feed for an
+hour while Starr himself climbed another rocky pinnacle and scanned the
+country between there and Medina's.
+
+The gate that let one off the main road and into the winding trail which
+led to the house stood out in plain view at the mouth of a shallow draw.
+This was not the trail which led out from the home ranch toward San
+Bonito, where Starr had been going when he saw the track of the
+mysterious automobile, but the trail one would take in going from
+Medina's to Malpais. The ranch house itself stood back where the draw
+narrowed, but the yellow-brown trail ribboned back from the gate in
+plain view.
+
+Here again Starr was fated to get a glimpse and no more. He focussed his
+glasses on the main road first; picked up the Medina branch to the gate,
+followed the trail on up the draw, and again he picked up a man riding a
+bay horse. And just as he was adjusting his lenses for a sharper clarity
+of vision, the horse trotted around a bend and disappeared from sight.
+
+Starr swore, but that did not bring the man back down the trail. Starr
+was not at all sure that this was the same man he had seen in the draw,
+and he was not sure that either was the man who had shot at him. But
+roosting on that heat-blistered pinnacle swearing about the things he
+didn't know struck him as a profitless performance, so he climbed down,
+got into the saddle again, and rode on.
+
+He reached the granite ridge back of Medina's about four o'clock in the
+afternoon. He was tired, for he had been going since daylight, and for a
+part of the time at least he had been going on foot, climbing the steep,
+rocky sides of peaks for the sake of what he might see from the top, and
+then climbing down again for sake of what some one else might see if he
+stayed too long. His high-heeled riding boots that Helen May so greatly
+admired were very good-looking and very comfortable when he had them
+stuck into stirrups to the heel. But they had never been built for
+walking. Therefore his feet ached abominably. And there was the heat, the
+searing, dry heat of midsummer in the desert country. He was dog tired,
+and he was depressed because he had not seemed able to accomplish
+anything with all his riding and all his scanning of the country.
+
+He climbed slowly the last, brown granite ridge, the ridge behind Estan
+Medina's house. He would watch the place and see what was going on there.
+Then, he supposed he should go back and watch _Las Nuevas_, though his
+chief seemed to think that he had discovered enough there for their
+purposes. He had sent on the pamphlets, and he knew that when the time
+was right, _Las Nuevas_ would be muzzled with a postal law and, he
+hazarded, a seizure of their mail.
+
+What he had to do now was to find the men who were working in conjunction
+with _Las Nuevas_; who were taking the active part in organizing and in
+controlling the Mexican Alliance. So far he had not hit upon the real
+leaders, and he knew it, and in his weariness was oppressed with a sense
+of failure. They might better have left him in Texas, he told himself
+glumly. They sure had drawn a blank when they drew him into the Secret
+Service, because he had accomplished about as much as a pup trying to run
+down a coyote.
+
+A lizard scuttled out of his way, when he crawled between two boulders
+that would shield him from sight unless a man walked right up on him
+where he lay--and Starr did not fear that, because there were too many
+loose cobbles to roll and rattle; he knew, because he had been twice as
+long as he liked in getting to this point quietly. He took off his hat,
+telling himself morosely that you couldn't tell his head from a lump of
+granite anyway, when he had his hat off, and lifted his glasses to his
+aching eyes.
+
+The Medina ranch was just showing signs of awakening after a siesta.
+Estan himself was pottering about the corral, and Luis, a boy about
+eighteen years old, was fooling with a colt in a small enclosure that had
+evidently been intended for a garden and had been permitted to grow up in
+weeds and grass instead.
+
+After a while a peona came out and fed the chickens, and hunted through
+the sheds for eggs, which she carried in her apron. She stopped to watch
+Luis and the colt, and Luis coaxed her to give him an egg, which he was
+feeding to the colt when his mother saw and called to him shrilly from
+the house. The peona ducked guiltily and ran, stooping, beside a stone
+wall that hid her from sight until she had slipped into the kitchen. The
+senora searched for her, scolding volubly in high-keyed Mexican, so that
+Estan came lounging up to see what was the matter.
+
+Afterwards they all went to the house, and Starr knew that there would be
+real, Mexican tortillas crisp and hot from the baking, and chili con
+carne and beans, and perhaps another savory dish or two which the senora
+herself had prepared for her sons.
+
+Starr was hungry. He imagined that he could smell those tortillas from
+where he lay. He could have gone down, and the Medinas would have greeted
+him with lavish welcome and would have urged him to eat his fill. They
+would not question him, he knew. If they suspected his mission, they
+would cover their suspicion with much amiable talk, and their
+protestations of welcome would be the greater because of their
+insincerity. But he did not go down. He made himself more comfortable
+between the boulders and settled himself to wait and see what the night
+would bring.
+
+First it brought the gorgeous sunset, that made him think of Helen May
+just because it was beautiful and because she would probably be gazing up
+at the crimson and gold and all the other elusive, swift-changing shades
+that go to make a barbaric sunset. Sure, she would be looking at it,
+unless she was still talking to that man, he thought jealously. It
+fretted him that he did not know who the fellow was. So he turned his
+thoughts away from the two of them.
+
+Next came the dusk, and after that the stars. There was no moon to taunt
+him with memories, or more practically, to light for him the near
+country. With the stars came voices from the porch of the adobe house
+below him. Estan's voice he made out easily, calling out to Luis inside,
+to ask if he had shut the colt in the corral. The senora's high voice
+spoke swiftly, admonishing Luis. And presently Luis could be seen dimly
+as he moved down toward the corrals.
+
+Starr hated this spying upon a home, but he held himself doggedly to the
+task. Too many homes were involved, too many sons were in danger, too
+many mothers would mourn if he did not play the spy to some purpose now.
+This very home he was watching would be the happier when he and his
+fellows had completed their work and the snake of intrigue was beheaded
+just as Helen May had beheaded the rattler that afternoon. This home was
+happy now, under the very conditions that were being deplored so
+bombastically in the circulars he had read. Why, then, should its peace
+be despoiled because of political agitators?
+
+Luis put the colt up for the night and returned, whistling, to the house.
+The tune he whistled was one he had learned at some movie show, and in a
+minute he broke into singing, "Hearts seem light, and life seems bright
+in dreamy Chinatown." Starr, brooding up there above the boy, wished that
+Luis might never be heavier of heart than now, when he went singing up
+the path to the thick-walled adobe. He liked Luis.
+
+The murmur of voices continued, and after awhile there came plaintively
+up to Starr the sound of a guitar, and mingling with it the voice of Luis
+singing a Spanish song. _La Golondrina_, it was, that melancholy song of
+exile which Mexicans so love. Starr listened gloomily, following the
+words easily enough in that still night air.
+
+Away to the northwest there gleamed a brighter, more intimate star than
+the constellation above. While Luis sang, the watcher in the rocks fixed
+his eyes wistfully on that gleaming pin point of light, and wondered what
+Helen May was doing. Her lighted window it was; her window that looked
+down through the mouth of the Basin and out over the broken mesa land
+that was half desert. Until then he had not known that her window saw so
+far; though it was not strange that he could see her light, since he was
+on the crest of a ridge higher than any other until one reached the bluff
+that held Sunlight Basin like a pocket within its folds.
+
+Luis finished the song, strummed a while, sang a popular rag-time,
+strummed again and, so Starr explained his silence, went to bed. Estan
+began again to talk, now and then lifting his voice, speaking earnestly,
+as though he was arguing or protesting, or perhaps expounding a theory of
+some sort. Starr could not catch the words, though he knew in a general
+way the meaning of the tones Estan was using.
+
+A new sound brought him to his knees, listening: the sound of a
+high-powered engine being thrown into low gear and buzzing like angry
+hornets because the wheels did not at once grip and thrust the car
+forward. Sand would do that. While Starr listened, he heard the chuckle
+of the car getting under way, and a subdued purring so faint that, had
+there not been a slow, quiet breeze from that direction, the sound would
+never have reached his ears at all. Even so, he had no more than
+identified it when the silence flowed in and covered it as a lazy tide
+covers a pebble in the moist sand.
+
+Starr glanced down at the house, heard Estan still talking, and got
+carefully to his feet. He thought he knew where the car had slipped in
+the sand, and he made toward the place as quickly as he could go in the
+dark and still keep his movements quiet. It was back in that arroyo where
+he had first discovered traces of the car he now felt sure had come from
+the yard of _Las Nuevas_.
+
+He remembered that on the side next him the arroyo had deep-cut banks
+that might get him a nasty fall if he attempted them in the dark, so he
+took a little more time for the trip and kept to the rougher, yet safer,
+granite-covered ridge. Once, just once, he caught the glow of dimmed
+headlights falling on the slope farthest from him. He hurried faster,
+after that, and so he climbed down into the arroyo at last, near the
+point where he had climbed out of it that other day.
+
+He went, as straight as he could go in the dark, to the place where he
+had first seen the tracks of the Silvertown cords. He listened, straining
+his ears to catch the smallest sound. A cricket fiddled stridently, but
+there was nothing else.
+
+Starr took a chance and searched the ground with a pocket flashlight. He
+did not find any fresh tracks, however. And while he was standing in the
+dark considering how the hills might have carried the sound deceptively
+to his ear, and how he may have been mistaken, from somewhere on the
+other side of the ridge came the abrupt report of a gun. The sound was
+muffled by the distance, yet it was unmistakable. Starr listened, heard
+no second shot, and ran back up the rocky gulch that led to the ridge he
+had just left, behind Medina's house.
+
+He was puffing when he reached the place where he had lain between the
+two boulders, and he stopped there to listen again. It came,--the sound
+he instinctively expected, yet dreaded to hear; the sound of a woman's
+high-keyed wailing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
+
+"IS HE THEN DEAD--MY SON?"
+
+
+Starr hurried down the bluff, slipping, sliding, running where the way
+was clear of rocks. So presently he came to the stone wall, vaulted over
+it, and stopped beside the tragic little group dimly outlined in the
+house yard just off the porch.
+
+"My son--my son!" the old woman was wailing, on her knees beside a long,
+inert figure lying on its back on the hard-packed earth. Back of her the
+peona hovered, hysterical, useless. Luis, half dressed and a good deal
+dazed yet from sleep and the suddenness of his waking, knelt beside his
+mother, patting her shoulder in futile affection, staring down
+bewilderedly at Estan.
+
+So Starr found them. Scenes like this were not so unusual in his life,
+which had been lived largely among unruly passions. He spoke quietly to
+Luis and knelt to see if the man lived. The senora took comfort from his
+calm presence and with dumb misery watched his deft movements while he
+felt for heartbeats and for the wound.
+
+"But is he then dead, my son?" she wailed in Spanish, when Starr gently
+laid down upon Estan's breast the hand he had been holding. "But so
+little while ago he lived and to me he talked. Ah, my son!"
+
+Starr looked at her quietingly. "How, then, did it happen? Tell me,
+senora, that I may assist," he said, speaking easily the Spanish which
+she spoke.
+
+"Ah, the good friend that thou art! Ah, my son that I loved! How can I
+tell what is mystery? Who would harm my son--my little Estan that was so
+good? Yet a voice called softly from the dark--and me, I heard, though to
+my bed I had but gone. 'Estan!' called the voice, so low. And my son--ah,
+my son!--to the door he went swiftly, the _lampara_ in his hand, holding
+it high--so--that the light may shine into the dark.
+
+"'Who calls?' Me, I heard my son ask--ah, never again will I hear his
+voice! Out of the door he went--to see the man who called. To the
+porch-end he came--I heard his steps. Ah, my son! Never again thy dear
+footsteps will I hear!" And she fell to weeping over him.
+
+"And then? Tell me, senora. What happened next?"
+
+"Ah--the shot that took from me my son! Then feet running away--then I
+came out--Ah, _querido mio_, that thou shouldst be torn from thy
+mother thus!"
+
+"And you don't know--?"
+
+"No, no--no--ah, that my heart should break with sorrow--"
+
+"Hush, mother! 'Twas Apodaca! He is powerful--and Estan would not come
+into the Alliance. I told him it would be--" Luis, kneeling there,
+beating his hands together in the dark, spoke with the heedless
+passion of youth.
+
+"Which Apodaca? Juan?" Starr's voice was low, with the sympathetic tone
+that pulls open the floodgates of speech when one is stricken hard.
+
+"Not Juan; Juan is a fool. Elfigo Apodaca it was--or some one obeying his
+order. Estan they feared--Estan would not come in, and the time was
+coming so close--and Estan held out and talked against it. I told him his
+life would pay for his holding out. I _told_ him! And now I shall kill
+Apodaca--and my life also will pay--"
+
+"What is this thou sayest?" The mother, roused from her lamentations by
+the boy's vehemence, plucked at his sleeve. "But thou must not kill, my
+little son. Thou art--"
+
+"Why not? They'll all be killing in a month!" flashed Luis unguardedly.
+
+Starr, kneeling on one knee, looked at the boy across Estan's chilling
+body. A guarded glance it was, but a searching glance that questioned and
+weighed and sat in judgment upon the truth of the startling assertion.
+Yet younger boys than Luis are commanding troops in Mexico, for the
+warlike spirit develops early in a land where war is the chief business
+of the populace. It was not strange then that eighteen-year-old Luis
+should be actively interested in the building of a revolution on this
+side the border. It was less strange because of his youth; for Luis would
+have all the fiery attributes of the warrior, unhindered by the cool
+judgment of maturity. He would see the excitement, the glory of it. Estan
+would see the terrible cost of it, in lives and in patrimony. Luis loved
+action. Estan loved his big flocks and his acres upon acres of land, and
+his quiet home; had loved too his foster country, if he had spoken his
+true sentiments. So Starr took his cue and thanked his good fortune that
+he had come upon this tragedy while it was fresh, and while the shock of
+it was loosening the tongue of Luis.
+
+"A month from now is another time, Luis," he said quietly. "This is
+murder, and the man who did it can be punished."
+
+"You can't puneesh Apodaca," Luis retorted, speaking English, since Starr
+had used the language, which put their talk beyond the mother's
+understanding. "He is too--too high up--But I can kill," he added
+vindictively.
+
+"The law can get him better than you can," Starr pointed out cannily.
+"Can you think of anybody else that might be in on the deal?"
+
+"N-o--" Luis was plainly getting a hold on himself, and would not tell
+all he knew. "I don't know notheeng about it."
+
+"Well, what you'd better do now is saddle a horse and ride in to town and
+tell the coroner--and the sheriff. If you don't," he added, when he
+caught a stiffening of opposition in the attitude of Luis, "if you don't,
+you will find yourself in all kinds of trouble. It will look bad. You
+have to notify the coroner, anyway, you know. That's the law. And the
+coroner will see right away that Estan was shot. So the sheriff will be
+bound to get on the job, and it will be a heap better for you, Luis, if
+you tell him yourself. And if you try to kill Apodaca, that will rob your
+mother of both her sons. You must think of her. Estan would never bring
+trouble to her that way. You stand in his place now. So you ride in and
+tell the sheriff and tell the coroner. Say that you suspect Elfigo
+Apodaca. The sheriff will do the rest."
+
+"What does the senor advise, my son?" murmured the mother, plucking at
+the sleeve of Luis. "The good friend he was to my poor Estan--my son! Do
+thou what he tells thee, for he is wise and good, and he would not guide
+thee wrong."
+
+Luis hesitated, staring down at the dead body of Estan. "I will go," he
+said, breaking in upon the sound of the peona's reasonless weeping. "I
+will do that. The sheriff is not Mexican, or--" He checked himself
+abruptly and peered across at Starr. "I go," he repeated hastily.
+
+He stood up, and Starr rose also and assisted the old lady to her feet.
+She seemed inclined to cling to him. Her Estan had liked Starr, and for
+that her faith in him never faltered now. He laid his arm protectively
+around her shaking shoulders.
+
+"Senora, go you in and rest," he commanded gently, in Spanish. "Have the
+girl bring a blanket to cover Estan--for here he must remain until he is
+viewed by the coroner--you understand? Your son would be grieved if you
+do not rest. You still have Luis, your little son. You must be brave and
+help Luis to be a man. Then will Estan be proud of you both." So he
+suited his speech to the gentle ways of the old senora, and led her back
+to the shelter of the porch as tenderly as Estan could have done.
+
+He sent the peona for a lamp to replace the one that had broken when
+Estan fell with it in his hand. He settled the senora upon the
+cowhide-covered couch where her frail body could be comfortable and she
+still could feel that she was watching beside her son. He placed a pillow
+under her head, and spread a gay-striped serape over her, and tucked it
+carefully around her slippered feet. The senora wept more quietly, and
+called him the son of her heart, and brokenly thanked God for the
+tenderness of all good men.
+
+He explained to her briefly that he had been riding to town by a
+short-cut over the ridge when he heard the shot and hurried down; and
+that, having left his horse up there, he must go up after it and bring it
+around to the corral. He would not be gone longer than was absolutely
+necessary, he told her, and he promised to come back and stay with her
+while the officers were there. Then he hurried away, the senora's broken
+thanks lingering painfully in his memory.
+
+At the top of the bluff, where he had climbed as fast as he could, he
+stood for a minute to get his breath back. He heard the muffled
+pluckety-pluck of a horse galloping down the sandy trail, and he knew
+that there went Luis on his bitter mission to San Bonito. His eyes turned
+involuntarily toward Sunlight Basin. There twinkled still the light from
+Helen May's window, though it was well past midnight. Starr wondered at
+that, and hoped she was not sick. Then immediately his face grew
+lowering. For between him and the clear, twinkling light of her window he
+saw a faint glow that moved swiftly across the darkness; an automobile
+running that way with dimmed headlights.
+
+"Now what in thunder does that mean?" he asked himself uneasily. He had
+not in the least expected that move. He had believed that the automobile
+he had heard, which very likely had carried the murderer, would hurry
+straight to town, or at least in that direction. But those dimmed lights,
+and in that the machine surely betrayed a furtiveness in its flight,
+seemed to be heading for Sunlight Basin, though it might merely be making
+the big loop on its way to Malpais or beyond. He stared again at the
+twinkling light of Helen May's lamp. What in the world was she doing up
+at that hour of the night? "Oh, well, maybe she sleeps with a light
+burning." He dismissed the unusual incident, and went on about his more
+urgent business.
+
+Rabbit greeted him with a subdued nicker of relief, telling plainly as a
+horse can speak that he had been seriously considering foraging for his
+supper and not waiting any longer for Starr. There he had stood for six
+or seven hours, just where Starr had dismounted and dropped the reins. He
+was a patient little horse, and he knew his business, but there is a
+limit to patience, and Rabbit had almost reached it.
+
+Starr led him up over the rocky ridge into the arroyo where the
+automobile had been, and from there he rode down to the trail and back to
+the Medina ranch. He watered Rabbit at the ditch, pulled off the saddle,
+and turned him into the corral, throwing him an armful of secate from a
+half-used stack. Then he went up to the house and sat on the edge of the
+porch beside the senora, who was still weeping and murmuring yearning
+endearments to the ears that could not hear.
+
+He did not know how long he would have to wait, but he knew that Luis
+would not spare his horse. He smoked, and studied the things which Luis
+had let drop; every word of immense value to him now. Elfigo Apodaca he
+knew slightly, and he wondered a little that he would be the Alliance
+leader in this section of the State.
+
+Elfigo Apodaca seemed so thoroughly Americanized that only his swarthy
+skin and black hair and eyes reminded one that he was after all a son of
+the south. He did a desultory business in real estate, and owned an
+immense tract of land, the remnant of an old Spanish grant, and went in
+for fancy cattle and horses. He seemed more a sportsman than a
+politician--a broadminded, easy-going man of much money. Starr had still
+a surprised sensation that the trail should lead to Elfigo. Juan, the
+brother of Elfigo, he could find it much easier to see in the role of
+conspirator. But horror does not stop to weigh words, and Starr knew that
+Luis had spoken the truth in that unguarded moment.
+
+He pondered that other bit of information that had slipped out: "In a
+month they'll all be killing." That was a point which he and his
+colleagues had not been able to settle in their own minds, the proposed
+date of the uprising. In a month! The time was indeed short, but now that
+they had something definite to work on, a good deal might be done in a
+month; so on the whole Starr felt surprisingly cheerful. And if Elfigo
+found himself involved in a murder trial, it would help to hamper his
+activities with the Alliance. Starr regretted the death of Estan, but he
+kept thinking of the good that would come of it. He kept telling himself
+that the shooting of Estan Medina would surely put a crimp in the
+revolution. Also it would mark Luis for a mate to the bullet that reached
+Estan, if that hotheaded youth did not hold his tongue.
+
+He was considering the feasibility of sending Luis and his mother out of
+the country for awhile, when the sheriff and coroner and Luis came
+rocking down the narrow trail in a roadster built for speed where speed
+was no pleasure but a necessity.
+
+The sheriff was an ex-cattleman, with a desert-baked face and hard eyes
+and a disconcerting habit of chewing gum and listening and saying nothing
+himself. For the sake of secrecy, Starr had avoided any acquaintance with
+him and his brother officers, so the sheriff gave him several sharp
+glances while he was viewing the body and the immediate surroundings.
+Luis had told him, coming out, the meager details of the murder, and he
+had again accused Elfigo Apodaca, though he had done some real thinking
+on the way to town, and had cooled to the point where he chose his words
+more carefully. The sheriff's name was O'Malley, which is reason enough
+why Luis was chary of confiding Mexican secrets to his keeping.
+
+Elfigo Apodaca had quarreled with Estan, said Luis. He had come to the
+ranch, and Luis had heard them quarreling over water rights. Elfigo had
+threatened to "get" Estan, and to "fix" him, and Luis had been afraid
+that Estan would be shot before the quarrel was over. He had heard the
+voice that called Estan out of the house that night, and he told the
+sheriff that he had recognized Elfigo's voice. Luis surely did all he
+could to settle any doubt in the mind of the sheriff, and he felt that he
+had been very smart to say they quarreled over water rights; a lawsuit
+two years ago over that very water-right business lent convincingness to
+the statement.
+
+The sheriff had not said anything at all after Luis had finished his
+story of the shooting. He had chewed gum with the slow, deliberate jaw of
+a cow meditating over her cud, and he had juggled the wheel of his
+machine and shifted his gears on hills and in sandy stretches with the
+same matter-of-fact deliberation. Sheriff O'Malley might be called one of
+the old school of rail-roosting, stick-whittling thinkers. He took his
+time, and he did not commit himself too impulsively to any cause. But he
+could act with surprising suddenness, and that made him always an
+uncertain factor, so that lawbreakers feared him as they feared
+nightmares.
+
+The sheriff, then, stood around with his hands in his pockets and his
+feet planted squarely under him, squeezing a generous quid of gum
+between his teeth and very slightly teetering on heels and toes, while
+the coroner made a cursory examination and observed, since it was coming
+gray daylight, how the lamp lay shattered just where it had fallen with
+Estan. He asked, in bad Spanish, a few questions of the grief-worn
+senora, who answered him dully as she had answered Starr. She had heard
+the call, yes.
+
+"You know Elfigo Apodaca?" the sheriff asked suddenly, and watched how
+the eyes of the senora went questioningly, uneasily, to Luis; watched how
+she hesitated before she admitted that she knew him.
+
+"You know his voice?"
+
+But the senora closed her thin lips and shook her head, and in a minute
+she laid her head back on the pillow and closed her eyes also, and would
+talk no more.
+
+The sheriff chewed and teetered meditatively, his eyes on the ground.
+From the tail of his eye Starr watched him, secretly willing to bet that
+he knew what the sheriff was thinking. When O'Malley turned and strolled
+back to the porch, his hands still in his pockets and his eyes still on
+the ground as though he were weighing the matter carefully, Starr stood
+where he was, apparently unaware that the sheriff had moved. Starr seemed
+to be watching the coroner curiously, but he knew just when the sheriff
+passed cat-footedly behind him, and he grinned to himself.
+
+The sheriff made one of his sudden moves, and jerked the six-shooter from
+its holster at Starr's hip, pulled out the cylinder pin and released the
+cylinder with its customary five loaded chambers and an empty one under
+the hammer. He tilted the gun, muzzle to him, toward the rising sun and
+squinted into its barrel that shone with the care it got, save where
+particles of dust had lodged in the bore. He held the gun close under his
+red nose and sniffed for the smell of oil that would betray a fresh
+cleaning. And Starr watched him interestedly, smiling approval.
+
+"All right, far as you've gone," he said casually, when the sheriff was
+replacing the cylinder in the gun. "If you want to go a step farther, I
+reckon maybe I can show you where I come down off the bluff when I
+heard the shot, and where I went back again after my horse. And you'll
+see, maybe, that I couldn't shoot from the bluff and get a man around
+on the far side of the house. Won't take but a minute to show yuh." He
+gave the slight head tilt and the slight wink of one eye which, the
+world over, asks for a secret conference, and started off around the
+corner of the house.
+
+The sheriff followed noncommittally but he kept close at Starr's heels as
+though he suspected that Starr meant to disappear somehow. So they
+reached the bluff, which Starr knew would be out of hearing from the
+house so long as they did not speak loudly. He pointed down at the prints
+of his boots where he had left the rocks of the steep hillside for the
+sand of the level; and he even made a print beside the clearest track to
+show the sheriff that he had really come down there as he climbed. But it
+was plain that Starr's mind was not on the matter of footprints.
+
+"Keep on looking around here, like you was tracing up my trail," he said
+in a low voice, pointing downward. "I've got something I want to tell
+yuh, and I want you to listen close and get what I say, because I ain't
+apt to repeat it. And I don't want that coroner to get the notion we're
+talking anything over. That little play you made with my gun showed that
+you've got hoss sense and ain't overlooking any bets, and it may be that
+I'll have use for yuh before long. Now listen."
+
+The sheriff listened, chewing industriously and wandering about while
+Starr talked. His hard eyes changed a little, and twice he nodded his
+head in assent.
+
+"Now you do that," said Starr at last, with an air of one giving orders.
+"And see to it that you get a hearing as soon as possible. I can't appear
+except as a witness, of course, but I want a chance to size up the
+fellows that take the biggest interest in the trial. And keep it all on
+the basis of a straight quarrel, if you can. You'll have to fix that up
+with the prosecuting attorney, if you can trust him that far."
+
+"I can, Mr. Starr. He's my brother-in-law, and he's the best man we could
+pick in the county for what you want. I get you, all right. There won't
+be anything drop about what you just told me."
+
+"There better hadn't be anything drop!" Starr told him dryly. "You're
+into something deeper than county work now, ole-timer. This is Federal
+business, remember. Come on back and stall around some more, and let me
+go on about my own business. You can get word to me at the Palacia if you
+want me at the inquest, but don't get friendly. I'm just a stock-buyer
+that happened along. Keep it that way."
+
+"I sure will, Mr. Starr. I'll do my part." The sheriff relapsed into his
+ruminative manner as he led the way back to the house. One may guess that
+Starr had given him something worth ruminating about.
+
+In a few minutes, he told Starr curtly that he could go if he wanted to;
+and he bettered that by muttering to the coroner that he had a notion to
+hold the fellow, but that he seemed to have a pretty clear alibi, and
+they could get him later if they wanted him. To which the coroner agreed
+in neighborly fashion.
+
+Starr was saddling Rabbit for another long ride, and he was scowling
+thoughtfully while he did it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
+
+A PAGE OF WRITING
+
+
+Wind came with the sun and went shrieking across the high levels, taking
+with it clouds of sand and bouncing tumbleweeds that rolled and lodged
+for a minute against some rock or bush and then went whirling on again in
+a fresh gust. Starr had not ridden two miles before his face began to
+feel the sting of gravel in the sand clouds. His eyes, already aching
+with a day's hard usage and a night of no sleep, smarted with the impact
+of the wind. He fumbled at the band of his big, Texas hat and pulled down
+a pair of motor goggles and put them on distastefully. Like blinders on a
+horse they were, but he could not afford to face that wind with
+unprotected eyes--not when so very much depended upon his eyes and his
+ears and the keenest, coolest faculties of his mind.
+
+Still worry nagged at him. He wanted to know who was the man that had
+visited Helen May so soon after he had left, and he wanted to know why a
+light had shone from her window at one o'clock last night; and whether
+the automobile had been going to Sunlight Basin, or merely in that
+direction.
+
+He hurried, for he had no patience with worries that concerned Helen May.
+Besides, he meant to beg a breakfast from her, and he was afraid that if
+he waited too late she might be out with Pat and the goats, and he would
+have to waste time on the kid (Vic would have resented that term as
+applied to himself) who might be still laid up with his sprained ankle.
+
+He was not thinking so much this morning about the knowledge he had
+gained in the night. He had given several quiet hours to thought upon
+that subject, and he had his course pretty clearly defined in his mind.
+He also had Sheriff O'Malley thoroughly coached and prepared to do his
+part. The matter of Elfigo Apodaca, then, he laid aside for the present,
+and concerned himself chiefly with what on the surface were trifles, but
+which, taken together, formed a chain of disquieting incidents. Rabbit
+felt his master's desire for haste, and loped steadily along the trail,
+dropping now and then into his smooth fox-trot, that was almost as fast a
+gait; so it was still early morning when he dropped reins outside and
+rapped on the closed door.
+
+Helen May opened the door cautiously, it seemed to him; a scant six
+inches until she saw who he was, when she cried "Oh!" in a surprised,
+slightly confused tone, and let him in. Starr noticed two things at the
+first glance he gave her. The first was the blue crocheted cap which she
+wore; he did not know that it was called a breakfast-cap and that it was
+very stylish, for Starr, you must remember, lived apart from any intimate
+home life that would familiarize him with such fripperies. The cap
+surprised him, but he liked the look of it even though he kept that
+liking to himself.
+
+The second thing he noticed was that Helen May was hiding something in
+her right hand which was dropped to her side. When she had let him in and
+turned away to offer him a chair, he saw that she had the pearl-handled
+six-shooter.
+
+She disappeared behind a screen, and came out with her right hand empty,
+evidently believing he had not seen how she had prepared herself for an
+emergency. She had only yesterday told him emphatically how harmless she
+considered the country; and he had been careful to warn her only about
+rabid coyotes, so that without being alarmed, she would not go unarmed
+away from home. It seemed queer to Starr that she should act as though
+she expected rabid coyotes to come a-knocking at her door in broad
+daylight. Had she, he thought swiftly, been only pretending that she
+considered the country perfectly safe?
+
+He could not help it; that six-shooter hidden in the folds of her skirt
+stuck in his mind. It was just a trifle, like her lighted window at one
+o'clock in the morning; like that strange man who had called on her just
+after Starr had left her, and with whom she had seemed to be on such
+friendly terms. He had warned her of coyotes. She was not supposed to
+know that it was wise to arm herself before she opened her door to a
+daylight caller. At night, yes. But at seven o'clock in the morning?
+Starr did not suspect Helen May of anything, but he had been trained to
+suspect mysterious trifles. In spite of himself, this trifle nagged at
+him unpleasantly.
+
+He fancied that Helen May was just a shade flustered in her welcome; just
+a shade nervous in her movements, in her laughter, in the very tones of
+her voice.
+
+"You're out early," she said. "Vic isn't up yet; I suppose the goats
+ought to be let out, too. You couldn't have had your breakfast--or have
+you? One can expect almost anything of a man who just rides out of
+nowhere at all hours, and disappears into nowhere."
+
+"I shore wish that was so," Starr retorted banteringly. "I wish I had to
+ride nowhere to-day."
+
+"Oh, I meant the mystery of the unknown," she hurried to correct herself.
+"You come out of the desert just any old time. And you go off into the
+desert just as unexpectedly; by the way, did you--"
+
+"Nope. I did not." She might forget that Vic was in the house, but Starr
+never forgot things of that sort, and he wilfully forestalled her
+intention to ask about the shooting. "I didn't have any supper, either,
+beyond a sandwich or two that was mostly sand after I'd packed 'em around
+all day. I just naturally had to turn tramp and come ask for a handout,
+when I found out at daylight how close I was to breakfast."
+
+"Why, of course. You know you won't have to beg very hard. I was just
+going to put on the coffee. So you make yourself at home, and I'll have
+breakfast in a few minutes. Vic, for gracious sake, get up! Here's
+company already. And you'll have to let out the goats. Pat can keep them
+together awhile, but he can't open the gate, and I'm busy."
+
+Starr heard the prodigious yawn of the awakening Vic, who slept
+behind a screen in the kitchen, bedrooms being a superfluous luxury
+in which Johnny Calvert had not indulged himself. Starr followed her
+to the doorway.
+
+"I'll go let out the goats," he offered. "I want to take off the bridle
+anyway, so Rabbit can feed around a little." He let himself out into the
+whooping wind, feeling, for some inexplicable reason, depressed when he
+had expected to feel only relief.
+
+"Lord! I'm getting to the point where anything that ain't accompanied by
+a chart and diagrams looks suspicious to me. She's got more hawse sense
+than I gave her credit for, that's all. She musta seen through my yarnin'
+about them mad coyotes. She's pretty cute, coming to the door with her
+six-gun just like a real one! And never letting on to me that she had it
+right handy. I must be getting off my feed or something, the way I take
+things wrong. Now her being up late--I'm just going to mention how far
+off I saw her light burning--and how late it was. I'll see what she says
+about it."
+
+But he did nothing of the kind, and for what he considered a very good
+reason. The wind was blowing in eddying gusts, of the kind that seizes
+and whirls things; such a gust swooped into the room when he opened the
+door, seized upon some papers which lay on her writing desk, and sent
+them clear across the room.
+
+Starr hastily closed the door and rescued the papers where they had
+flattened against the wall; and he wished he had gone blind before he saw
+what they were. A glance was all he gave, at first--the involuntary
+glance which one gives to a bit of writing picked up in an odd place--but
+that was enough to chill his blood with the shock of damning
+enlightenment. A page of writing, it was, fine, symmetrical, hard to
+decipher--a page of Holly Sommers' manuscript; you know that, of course.
+
+But Starr did not know. He only knew the writing matched the pages of
+revolutionary stuff he had found in the office of _Las Nuevas._ There was
+no need of comparing the two; the writing was unmistakable. And he
+believed that Helen May was the writer. He believed it when he glanced up
+and saw her coming in from the kitchen, and saw her eyes go to what he
+had in his hand, and saw the start she gave before she hurried to take
+the paper away.
+
+"My gracious! My work--" she said agitatedly, when she had the papers in
+her hand. She went to her desk, looking perturbed, and gave a quick,
+seeking glance at the scattered papers there; then at Starr.
+
+"Did any more--?"
+
+"That's all," Starr said gravely. "It was the wind when I opened the
+door, caught them."
+
+"My own carelessness. I don't know why I left my desk open," she said.
+And while he stood looking at her, she pulled down the roll-top with a
+slam, still visibly perturbed.
+
+It was strange, he thought, that she should have a roll-top desk out
+here, anyway. He had seen it the other time he was at the house, and it
+had struck him then as queer, though he had not given it more than a
+passing thought.
+
+As a matter of fact, it was not queer. Johnny Calvert had dilated on the
+destructiveness of rats, "pack rats" he called them. They would chew
+paper all to bits, he said. So Helen May, being finicky about having her
+papers chewed, had brought along this mouse-proof desk with her other
+furniture from Los Angeles.
+
+Her perturbed manner, too, was the result of a finicky distaste for
+having any disorder in her papers, especially when it was work intrusted
+to her professionally. She never talked about the work she did for
+people, and she always kept it away from the eyes of those not concerned
+in it. That, she considered, was professional etiquette. She had strained
+a point when she had read a little of the manuscript to Vic. Vic was just
+a kid, and he was her brother, and he wouldn't understand what she read
+any more than would the horned toad down by the spring. But Starr was
+different, and she felt that she had been terribly careless and
+unprofessional, leaving the manuscript where pages could blow around the
+room. What if a page had blown outside and got lost!
+
+Starr had turned his back and was staring out of the window. He might
+have been staring at a blank wall, for all he saw through the glass. He
+was as pale as though he had just received some great physical shock, and
+he had his hands doubled up into fists, so that his knuckles were white.
+His eyes were almost gray instead of hazel, and they were hard and
+hurt-looking.
+
+Something in the set of his head and in the way his shoulders had
+stiffened told Helen May that things had gone wrong just in the last
+few minutes. She gave him a second questioning glance, felt her
+heart go heavy while her brain seemed suddenly blank, and retreated
+to the kitchen.
+
+Helen May, influenced it may be by Starr's anxious thoughts of her, had
+dreamed of him; one of those vivid, intimate dreams that color our moods
+and our thoughts long after we awaken. She had dreamed of being with him
+in the moonlight again; and Starr had sung again the love song of the
+desert, and had afterwards taken her in his arms and held her close, and
+kissed her twice lingeringly, looking deep into her eyes afterwards.
+
+She had awakened with the thrill of those kisses still tingling her lips,
+so that she had covered her face with both hands in a sort of shamed joy
+that dreams could be so terribly real--so terribly sweet, too. And then,
+not fifteen minutes after she awoke, and while the dream yet clogged her
+reason, Starr himself had confronted her when she opened the door. She
+would have been a remarkable young woman if she had not been flustered
+and nervous and inclined toward incoherent speech.
+
+And now, it was perfectly idiotic to judge a man's temper by the back of
+his neck, she told herself fiercely in the kitchen; perfectly idiotic,
+yet she did it. She was impressed with his displeasure, his bitterness,
+with some change in him which she could not define to herself. She wanted
+to cry, and she did not in the least know what there could possibly be to
+cry about.
+
+Vic appeared, tousled and yawning and stupid as an owl in the sun. He
+growled because the water bucket was empty and he must go to the spring,
+and he irritated Helen May to the point of wanting to shake him, when he
+went limping down the path. She even called out sharply that he was
+limping with the wrong foot, and that he ought to tie a string around his
+lame ankle so he could remember which one it was. Which made her feel
+more disagreeable than ever, because Vic really did have a bad ankle, as
+the swelling had proven when he went to bed last night.
+
+Nothing seemed to go right, after that. She scorched the bacon, and she
+caught her sleeve on the handle of the coffee pot and spilled about half
+the coffee, besides burning her wrist to a blister. She broke a cup, but
+that had been cracked when she came, and at any other time she would not
+have been surprised at all, or jarred out of her calm. She took out the
+muffins she had hurried to make for Starr, and they stuck to the tins and
+came out in ragged pieces, which is enough to drive any woman desperate,
+I suppose. Vic slopped water on the floor when he came back with the
+bucket full, and the wind swooped a lot of sand into the kitchen, and
+she was certain the bacon would be gritty as well as burned.
+
+Of Starr she had not heard a sound, and she went to the door nervously to
+call him when breakfast was at last on the table. He was standing exactly
+as he had stood when she left the room. So far as she could see, he had
+not moved a muscle or turned his head or winked an eyelid. His stoniness
+chilled her so that it was an effort to form words to tell him that
+breakfast was ready.
+
+There was an instant's pause before he turned, and Helen May felt that he
+had almost decided not to eat. But he followed her to the kitchen and
+spoke to Vic quite humanly, as he took the chair she offered, and
+unfolded the napkin that struck an odd note of refinement among its
+makeshift surroundings; for the stove had only two real legs, the other
+two corners being propped up on rocks; the dish cupboard was of boxes,
+and everything in the way of food supplies stood scantily hidden behind
+thin curtains of white dotted swiss that Helen May had brought with her.
+
+An hour ago Starr would have dwelt gloatingly upon these graceful
+evidences of Helen May's brave fight against the crudities of her
+surroundings. Now they gave him a keener thrust of pain. So did the
+tremble of her hand when Helen May poured his coffee; it betrayed to
+Starr her guilty fear that he had seen what was on those two papers. He
+glanced up at her face, and caught her own troubled glance just flicking
+away from him. She was scared, then! he told himself. She was watching to
+see if he had read anything that seemed suspicious. Well, he'd have to
+calm her down a little, just as a matter of policy. He couldn't let her
+tip him off to the bunch, whatever happened.
+
+Starr smiled. "I sure feel like I'm imposing on good nature," he said,
+looking at her again with careful friendliness. "Coming here begging for
+breakfast, and now when you've gone to the trouble of cooking it, I've
+got one of my pet headaches that won't let me enjoy anything. Hits me
+that way sometimes when I've had an extra long ride. But I sure wish it
+had waited awhile."
+
+Helen May gave him a quick, hopeful smile. "I have some awfully good
+tablets," she said. "Wait till I give you one, before you eat. My doctor
+gave me a supply before I left home, because I have headache so much--or
+did have. I'm getting much better, out here! I've hardly felt like the
+same person, the last two or three weeks."
+
+"You have got to show me where you're any better _acting_," Vic pointed
+out, with the merciless candor of beauty's young brother. "It sure ain't
+your disposition that's improved, I can tell you those."
+
+"And with those few remarks you can close," Helen May retorted gleefully,
+hurrying off to get the headache tablet. It was just a headache, poor
+fellow! He wasn't peeved at all, and nothing was wrong!
+
+It was astonishing how her mood had lightened in the past two minutes.
+She got him a glass of water to help the tablet down his throat, and
+stood close beside him while he swallowed it and thanked her, and began
+to make some show of eating his breakfast. She was, in fact, the same
+whimsically charming Helen May he had come to care a great deal for.
+
+That made things harder than ever for Starr. If the tablet had been
+prescribed for heartache rather than headache, Starr would have swallowed
+thankfully the dose. The murder, over against the other line of hills,
+had not seemed to him so terrible as those sheets of scribbled paper
+locked away inside Helen May's desk. The grief of Estan's mother over her
+dead son was no more bitter than was Starr's grief at what he believed
+was true of Helen May. Indeed, Starr's trouble was greater, because he
+must mask it with a smile.
+
+All through breakfast he talked with her, looked into her eyes, smiled at
+her across the table. But he was white under his tan. She thought that
+was from his headache, and was kinder than she meant to be because of
+it; perhaps because of her dream too, though she was not conscious of any
+change in her manner.
+
+Starr could have cursed her for that change, which he believed was a sly
+attempt to win him over and make him forget anything he may have read on
+those pages. He would not think of it then; time enough when he was away
+and need not pretend or set a guard over his features and his tongue. The
+hurt was there, the great, incredible, soul-searing hurt; but he would
+not dwell upon what had caused that hurt. He forced himself to talk and
+to laugh now and then, but afterwards he could not remember what they had
+talked about.
+
+As soon as he decently could, he went away again into the howling wind
+that had done him so ill a turn. He did not know what he should do; this
+discovery that Helen May was implicated had set him all at sea, but he
+felt that he must get away somewhere and think the whole thing out before
+he went crazy.
+
+He left the Basin, rode around behind it and, leaving Rabbit in the
+thicket where he had left him the day before, he toiled up the pinnacle
+and sat down in the shelter of a boulder pile where he would be out of
+the wind as well as out of sight, and where he could still stare somberly
+down at the cabin.
+
+And there he faced his trouble bravely, and at the same time he
+fulfilled his duty toward his government by keeping a watch over the
+place that seemed to him then the most suspicious place in the country.
+The office of _Las Nuevas_, even, was not more so, as Starr saw things
+then. For if _Las Nuevas_ were the distributing point for the propaganda
+literature, this cabin of Helen May's seemed to be the fountain head.
+
+First of all, and going back to the beginning, how did he really _know_
+that her story was true? How, for instance, did he know that her father
+had not been one of the heads of the conspiracy? How did he know that her
+father--it might even be her husband!--was dead? He had simply accepted
+her word, as a matter of course, because she was a young woman, and more
+attractive than the average young woman. Starr was terribly bitter, at
+that point in his reasoning, and even felt certain that he hated all
+women. Well, then, her reason for being in the neighborhood would bear a
+lot of looking into.
+
+Then there was that automobile that had passed where he had found her and
+her goats, that evening. Was it plausible, he asked himself, that she had
+actually walked over there? The machine had returned along the same
+trail, running by moonlight with its lights out. Might it not have been
+coming to pick her up? Only he had happened along, and she had let him
+walk home with her, probably to keep him where she could watch him!
+
+There was that shot at him from the pinnacle behind her cabin. There was
+her evident familiarity with firearms, though she professed not to own a
+gun. There was the man who had been down there with her, not more than an
+hour after he had left her with a bullet burn across his arm. Starr saw
+now how that close conversation might easily have been a conference
+between her and the man who had shot at him.
+
+There was the light in her window at one o'clock in the morning, and the
+machine with dimmed headlights making toward her place. There was her
+evident caution against undesirable callers, her coming to the door with
+a six-shooter hidden against her skirt. There was that handwriting, to
+which Starr would unhesitatingly have sworn as being the same as on the
+pages he had found in the office of _Las Nuevas_. The writing was
+unmistakable: fine, even, symmetrical as print, yet hard to decipher;
+slanting a little to the left instead of the right. He had studied too
+often the pages in his pocket not to recognize it at a glance.
+
+Most damning evidence of all the evidence against her were two or three
+words which his eyes had picked from the context on the page uppermost in
+his hand. He had become familiar with those words, written in that
+peculiar chirography. "Justice... submission ... ruling ..." He had
+caught them at a glance, though he did not know how they were connected,
+or what relation they bore to the general theme. Political bunk, his mind
+tagged it therefore, and had no doubt whatever that he was right.
+
+"She's got brown eyes and blond hair, and that looks like mixed blood,"
+he reminded himself suddenly, after he had sat for a long while staring
+down at the house. "How do I know her folks aren't Spanish or something?
+How do I know anything about her? I just swallowed what she handed
+out--like a damn' fool!"
+
+Just after noon, when the wind had shown some sign of dying down to a
+more reasonable blow, Helen May came forth in her riding skirt and a
+Tam o' Shanter cap and a sweater, with a package under her arm--a
+package of manuscript which she had worked late to finish and was now
+going to deliver.
+
+She got the pinto pony which Vic had just ridden sulkily down to the
+corral and left for her, and she rode away down the trail, jolting a good
+deal in the saddle when the pinto trotted a few steps, but apparently
+well pleased with herself.
+
+Starr watched until she turned into the main trail that led toward San
+Bonito. Then, when he was reasonably sure of the direction she meant to
+take, he hurried down to where Rabbit waited, mounted that long-suffering
+animal and followed, using short cuts and deep washes that would hide him
+from sight, but keeping Helen May in view most of the time for all that.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINETEEN
+
+HOLMAN SOMMERS TURNS PROPHET
+
+
+Holman Sommers, clad outwardly in old wool trousers of a dingy gray, a
+faded brown smoking jacket that had shrunk in many washings until it was
+three inches too short in the sleeves, and old brown slippers, sat tilted
+back in a kitchen chair against the wall of his house and smoked a
+beautifully colored meerschaum with solid gold bands and a fine amber
+mouthpiece, while he conferred comfortably with one Elfigo Apodaca.
+
+There was no quizzical twinkle in the eyes of Holman Sommers, vividly
+alive though they were always. With his low slipper heels hooked over
+the rung of his chair and his right hand nursing the bowl of his pipe
+and his black hair rumpled in the wind, he was staring at the granite
+ridge somberly.
+
+"I am indeed sorry to hear that Estan Medina was shot," he said after a
+pause. "Even in the interests of the Cause it was absolutely
+unjustifiable. The man could do no harm; indeed, he served to divert
+suspicion from others. Only crass stupidity would resort to brute
+violence in the effort to further propaganda. Laying aside the human--"
+
+"Of course," Elfigo interrupted sarcastically, "there's nothing violent
+in a revolution! Where do you get your argument for gentleness, Holly?
+That's what bothers me. You can stir up a bunch of Mexicans quicker than
+a barrel of mezcal with your revolution talks."
+
+"Ah, but you do not take into account the great, fundamental truth that
+cooperative effort, on the part of the proletariat, is wholly
+justifiable, in that it furthers the good of all humanity. Whereas
+violence on the part of the individual merely retards the final result
+for which we are striving. The murder of Estan Medina, for instance, may
+be the one display of individual violence which will nullify all our
+efforts toward a common good.
+
+"For myself, I am bending every energy toward the formation of a
+cooperative colony which will demonstrate the feasibility of a
+cooperative form of government for the whole nation--the whole world, in
+fact. Your Junta has pledged itself to the assistance of this colony, the
+incalculable benefits of which will, I verily believe, be the very
+salvation of Mexico as a nation. Mexico, now in the throes of national
+parturition, is logically the pioneer in the true socialistic form of
+government. From Mexico the seed will be carried overseas to drop upon
+soil made fertile by the bones of those sacrificed to the blood-lust of
+the war mad lords of Europe.
+
+"Here, in this little corner of the world, is where the first tiny plant
+must be grown. Can you not grasp, then, the tremendous significance of
+what, on the face of it, is the pitifully small attempt of a pitifully
+weak people to strike a feeble blow for the freedom of labor? To
+frustrate that feeble blow now, by the irresponsible, lawless murder
+of a good citizen, merely because he failed at first to grasp the meaning
+of the lesson placed before him to learn, is, to my way of thinking, not
+only unjustifiable but damnably weak and reprehensible."
+
+Elfigo Apodaca, in another kitchen chair tilted back against an angle of
+the wall so that he half faced Holman Sommers, stretched out his legs and
+smiled tolerantly. A big, good-looking, thoroughly Americanized Mexican
+was Elfigo; the type of man who may be found at sunrise whipping the best
+stream in the State, the first morning of the trout season; the type of
+man whose machine noses in the closest to the judge's stand when a big
+race is on; the type of man who dances most, collects the most picture
+postals of pretty girls, laughs most at after-dinner speeches; the type
+of man who either does not marry at all, or attains much notoriety when
+the question of alimony is being fought out to the last cipher; the last
+man you would point out as a possible conspirator against anything save
+the peace and dignity of some other man's home. But it takes money to be
+all of these things, and Elfigo could see a million or two ahead of him
+along the revolution trail. That is why he smiled tolerantly upon his
+colleague who talked of humanity instead of dollars.
+
+Then Elfigo harked back frowningly to what Holman Sommers had said about
+feebleness. He rolled his cigar from the right corner of his mouth to the
+left corner and spoke his thought.
+
+"Speaking of feeble blow, and all that bunk," he said irreverently, "how
+do we stand, Holly? Just between you and me as men--cut out any interest
+we may have in the game--what's your honest opinion? Do we win?"
+
+Holman Sommers raised one hand and hid the amused twitching of his lips.
+He could have put that question far more clearly, he believed, and he
+could have expressed much better the thought that was in Elfigo's mind.
+He had deliberately baited Elfigo, and it amused him to see how blindly
+the bait had been taken. He regarded Elfigo through half closed lids.
+
+"As a matter of fact, and speaking relatively, every concerted revolt on
+the part of the proletariat is a victory. Though every leader in the
+movement be placed with his back against a stone wall, there to stand
+until he falls to the earth riddled with bullets, yet have the people
+won; a step nearer the goal, one more page writ in the glowing history of
+the advancement of the human race toward a true brotherhood of man. There
+can be no end save ultimate victory. That the victory may not be apparent
+for fifty years, or a hundred, cannot in any sense alter the immutable
+law of evolution. Posterity will point back to this present uprising as
+the first real blow struck for the freedom of the laboring classes of
+Mexico, and, indirectly, of the whole world."
+
+Elfigo, his thumbs hooked in the armholes of his vest, mark of the
+dominant note in the human male since clothes were invented to furnish
+armholes for egotistic thumbs, contemplated his polished tan shoes
+dissatisfiedly.
+
+"Oh, to hell with posterity!" he blurted impatiently. "What about us poor
+devils that's furnishing the time and money and brains to put it over? Do
+we get lined up against a wall?"
+
+Holly Sommers chuckled. "Not if your car can put you across the line soon
+enough. Then, even though Mexico might be called upon to execute one
+Elfigo Apodaca as an example to the souls in bondage, some other
+bullet-riddled cadaver with your name and physical likeness would do as
+well as your own carcass." He chuckled again.
+
+"Cheerful prospect," grinned Elfigo ruefully. "But I like a sporting
+chance, myself. The real point I'm trying to get at is, what chance do
+you think the Alliance has got of winning? Come down outa the clouds,
+Holly, and never mind about humanity for a minute. You've helped organize
+the Alliance, you've talked to the hombres, you've been the god in the
+machine in this part of the country, and all that. Now be a prophet in
+words of one syllable and tell me what you think of the outlook."
+
+With his fingers Holly Sommers packed the tobacco down into the bowl of
+his pipe. His whole expression changed from the philosopher to the
+cunning leader of what might well be called a forlorn hope.
+
+"Speaking in words of one syllable, we have a damn better chance than you
+may think," he said, in a tone as changed as his looks. "This country
+lies wide open to any attack that is sudden and unexpected. Labor is in a
+state of ferment. I predict that within a year we shall find ourselves
+upon the brink of a civil war, with labor and capital lined up against
+each other. Unless the government takes some definite step toward
+placating organized labor, the whole standing army will not be
+sufficient to keep the peace. That is the present internal condition,
+and that condition will grow worse until we face the real crisis of
+a national strike of some sort--I believe of the railroad employees,
+since that is the most far-reaching and would prove the most
+disastrous--therefore the most terrifying to the ruling class.
+
+"On the other hand, and turning our faces outward, we are not much better
+prepared for an emergency. We are a conceited nation, but insufferable
+national conceit never yet won a battle. We are given to shouting rather
+than shooting. Americanism to-day consists chiefly of standing up while
+the Star Spangled Banner is being played by a brass band, and of shooting
+off rockets on our national holiday. Were I of the capitalist class, I
+should consider the situation desperate. But being allied with the
+workers, I can laugh.
+
+"Speaking still in words of one syllable, Elfigo, I can safely prophesy
+what will happen first when the Alliance begins its active campaign.
+Scarehead news in extra editions will be printed. The uprising will be
+greatly exaggerated, I have no doubt. Women and children will be reported
+massacred, whereas the Alliance has no intention of being more barbarous
+than any warfare necessitates. Then there will be a buzzing of leagues
+and clubs; and the citizens will march up and down the business section
+of every town, bearing banners and shouting for the 'dear old flag.'
+Women will rise up and sell sofa pillows and doilies to raise money to
+buy chewing gum for our soldier boys. That, Elfigo, will sufficiently
+occupy the masses for a week or two.
+
+"Going higher, red tape will begin to unroll and entwine the heads of
+departments, and every man who has any authority whatever will wait for
+orders from some one higher up. Therefore, while the whole nation cheers
+the street parades and the flags and the soldier boys and everything else
+in sight, the Alliance will be getting under way--"
+
+"We'll throw her into high and step on her!" Elfigo contributed, being a
+motor enthusiast.
+
+"Something like that, yes. When you consider that the transportation of
+troops to quell the uprising will require anywhere from three days to
+three weeks, I am counting red tape and all, you will readily apprehend
+how much may be accomplished before they are in a position to handle the
+situation.
+
+"On the other hand, Mexico is filled with fighters. So much has
+oppression done for the peon; it has taught him the business of fighting.
+Now, I grant you, she is a nation composed of warring factions topped by
+a lamentably weak provisional government. _But_ with practically every
+Spanish-American over here actually participating in a movement for
+Mexico, all those various factions will coalesce, as tiny brooklets flow
+together to form the mighty torrent."
+
+"Still, she's a big country to lick," Elfigo pointed out, chiefly to see
+what Holly would say.
+
+"Ah, but Mexico does not comprehend that fact! And, in the same
+breath, neither does this country, as a whole, comprehend how big a
+country is Mexico to lick! Give a Mexican soldado a handful of beans a
+day and something to shout _Viva_ for, and he can and will fight
+indefinitely. If I mistake not, it will shortly behoove this country
+to temporize, to make certain concessions. Whether those concessions
+extend so far as to cede these three States back to Mexico, I cannot
+hazard a prediction. I can see, however, where it is not at all
+improbable that New Mexico and Arizona may be considered too costly to
+hold. Texas," he smiled, "Texas remembers too vividly her Alamo.
+Mexico, if she is wise, does not want Texas."
+
+"I heard yesterday there's some talk amongst the Americans about
+organizing home guards. We can't stand another postponement, Holly; it
+might give them time to pull off something like that. Little Luis Medina
+told me he heard a target marker for the San Bonito rifle club say
+something about it. He heard the members talking. You know they're using
+government rifles and ammunition. It would be a hell of a note to put
+things off till every town had a home guard organized."
+
+"I can see no necessity for putting things off," said Holly calmly. "So
+far as I can learn, we are practically ready, over here. Ah! Here comes
+our charming neighbor from Sunlight Basin. Perhaps, Elfigo, it would be
+as well for you to disappear from the premises."
+
+"Oh, I want to meet her," Elfigo smiled easily. "It'll be all right;
+I just came after water for my radiator, anyway. She's dry as a bone.
+I opened the drain cock and let her drain off and stood a fine chance
+of freezing my engine too, before I got on past the puddle far enough
+to be safe!"
+
+"It was, as a matter of fact, a very grave mistake to come here at all,"
+Holly told him with a courteous kind of severity. "I fear you greatly
+underestimate the absolute necessity for extreme caution. The mere fact
+that we have thus far elicited nothing more than a vague curiosity on the
+part of the government, does not excuse any imprudence now. Rather, it
+intensifies the need for caution. For myself--"
+
+"Oh, anybody is liable to run dry, out here on the desert, Holly. If all
+the Secret Service men in the country, and I know of one or two that's
+been nosing around, were to come and find me here, they couldn't say I
+hadn't a good, legitimate reason for coming. I had to come. I didn't want
+to run on to any one from that inquest, and I had to see you. I wanted to
+put you wise to the stand we're taking on the Estan Medina affair. We
+can't help if that somebody bumped him off, but--"
+
+"You can fill your water bag at the well, since that is what you came
+for; and I should strongly advise you to terminate your visit as soon as
+it is consistent with your errand to do so."
+
+"Oh, don't crab my meeting a pretty girl, Holly! Introduce me, and I'll
+take the water and go. Be a sport!" Elfigo had picked up his
+five-gallon desert bag, but he was obviously waiting for Helen May to
+ride up to the house.
+
+To Starr, crouched behind on a rock on the ridge that divided the
+Sommers place from the hidden arroyo where he had first seen trace of
+the automobile, Elfigo's attitude of waiting for Helen May was too
+obvious to question. A little, weakling offspring of Hope died then in
+his heart. He had tried so hard to find some excuse for Helen May, and
+he had almost succeeded. But his glasses were too strong; they
+identified Elfigo Apodaca too clearly for any doubt. They were too
+merciless in showing Starr that beside Elfigo stood the man who had
+visited Helen May the day before.
+
+Recognition of the man came with something of a shock to Starr. He had
+heard of Holman Sommers often enough, though he had never seen him. He
+had heard him described as a "highbrow" who wrote scientific articles,
+sometimes published in obscure magazines, read by few and understood by
+none. A recluse student, he had been described to Starr, who knew Todd
+Sommers by sight, and who had tagged the family as being too American for
+any suspicion to point their way.
+
+As often happens, Starr had formed a mental picture of Holman Sommers
+which was really the picture of a type made familiar to us mostly by our
+humorists. He had imagined that Holman Sommers, being a "highbrow," was a
+little, dried-up man with a bald head and weak eyes that made spectacles
+a part of his face; an insignificant little man well past middle life,
+with a gray beard, Starr saw him mentally. He should have known better
+than to let his imagination paint him a portrait of any man, in those
+ticklish times. But they were Americans, which was disarming in itself.
+And the plump sister, who had talked for ten minutes with Starr when he
+called at the ranch one day to see if they had any stock they wanted to
+sell, had further helped to ward off any suspicion.
+
+Now that he knew, by the smoking jacket and the slippers and the
+uncovered thatch of jet-black hair, that this man must be Holman Sommers;
+when he saw Elfigo Apodaca there, seated and talking earnestly with him,
+as he could tell by the gestures with which they elaborated their speech;
+when he saw Helen May riding in to the ranch, he had before him all the
+outward, visible evidence of a conference. The only false note, to
+Starr's way of thinking, was the brazenness of it. They must, he told
+himself, be so sure of themselves that they could snap their fingers at
+risk, or else they were so desperately in need of conferring together
+that they overlooked the risk. And that second explanation might easily
+be the true one, in view of Estan Medina's death and the possible
+consequence to the Alliance.
+
+Starr was hampered by not hearing anything that was being said down there
+at that homey-looking ranch house, where everything was clearly visible
+to him through his field glasses. But even so it did not require speech
+to tell him that Elfigo Apodaca had never before met Helen May Stevenson,
+and that Holman Sommers was not overeager to introduce him to her. Starr,
+watching every movement of the three when they came together, frowned
+with puzzlement. Why had they been strangers until just now?
+
+He saw the three stand and talk for perhaps two minutes; commonplace,
+early-acquaintance nothings, he judged from their faces and actions. He
+saw Helen May offer Holman Sommers the package she carried; saw Holman
+take it negligently and tuck it under his arm while he went on talking.
+He saw Helen May turn then and go around to the door, which was opened
+effusively by the plump sister whom he knew. He saw the two men go to the
+well, and watched Elfigo fill the water bag and go away down the uneven
+trail to where his automobile stood, perhaps a quarter of a mile nearer
+the main road. When he turned his glasses from Elfigo to the house,
+Holman had gone inside, and the two women were out beyond the house
+admiring a flock of chickens which Maggie called to her with a few
+handfuls of grain.
+
+There seemed no further profit in watching the Sommers house, and Starr
+was about to leave his post when he saw the dingy, high-powered roadster
+of the sheriff come careening up the trail. He came near upsetting his
+machine in getting around Apodaca's big car, but he negotiated the
+passing with some skill and came on to where he met Elfigo himself
+sweating down the trail with his full five-gallon water bag.
+
+Here again Starr wished that he could hear as well as he could see. That
+the sheriff had seized the opportunity to place Elfigo under arrest, he
+knew well enough, by faces and gestures, just as he had known of Elfigo's
+introduction to Helen May. But here were no polite nothings being
+mouthed. Elfigo was talking angrily, and Starr would have given a great
+deal to hear what he was saying; calling it an outrage, he supposed, and
+heaping maledictions on the stupidity of the law.
+
+The sheriff did not seem to pay much attention to what Elfigo was saying
+beyond pulling a pair of handcuffs from his coat pocket, and tossing
+them to his prisoner--with the invitation to put them on, Starr knew
+very well, having himself done the same thing more than once. Still
+talking furiously, Elfigo obeyed, and then was invited to climb in
+beside the sheriff, who stooped and did something with one of Elfigo's
+stylishly trousered legs; manacled him to something in the machine,
+Starr guessed. From which he also gathered that Elfigo's remarks must
+have been pretty strong.
+
+The sheriff started on, ran to where he could turn without upsetting, and
+backed the car around as though his errand were done. Quick work it had
+been. Evidently Sheriff O'Malley had attended the inquest with a blank
+warrant in his pocket, for fear Elfigo might take alarm and give them
+the slip. He must have been on the way back when he had either seen
+Elfigo's car on the Sommers trail, or else had noted where it had turned
+off and had come up the trail in a purely investigative spirit. However
+that might be, he had not let the chance slip. Which was characteristic
+of Sheriff O'Malley, essentially a man of action.
+
+Starr should have been glad. Perhaps he was, though he did not look it as
+he went back to where Rabbit was browsing on whatever he could get while
+he waited for his master. Elfigo in jail even for a few days would be an
+advantage, Starr believed. It would set the rest to buzzing, so that he
+could locate them with less delay. But at the same time--
+
+"If it came to a showdown right now, I'd have to take her along with the
+rest," he came up squarely against his real problem. "She's got it
+coming; but it's hell, all the same!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY
+
+STARR DISCOVERS THINGS
+
+
+Starr was sitting on the side of his bed with one boot off and dangling
+in his hand, and with his thoughts gone journeying out over the mesa and
+the desert and the granite ridge beyond, to a squatty, two-room adobe
+shack at the head of Sunlight Basin. During the days he had been too
+fully occupied with the work he had to do to dwell much on the miserable
+fact of Helen May's duplicity, her guilt of the crime of treason against
+her native country. But at night the thought of her haunted him like the
+fevered ache of a wound too deep to heal quickly.
+
+He swore an abrupt oath as a concrete expression of his mood, and dropped
+the boot with a thump to the floor. The word and the action served to
+swing his thoughts into another channel not much more pleasant, but a
+great deal more impersonal.
+
+"He's shore foxy--that hombre!" he said, thinking of Elfigo Apodaca.
+
+As matters stood that evening, Starr felt that Elfigo had the right to
+laugh at him and the whole Secret Service. Elfigo was in jail, yes.
+Only that day he had been given his preliminary hearing on the charge
+of murdering Estan Medina, and he had been remanded without bail to
+await trial.
+
+On the face of it, that looked as though Starr had gained a point. In
+reality he felt that he had in some manner played into Elfigo's hands.
+Certainly he had not gained anything in the way of producing any buzzing
+of the Alliance leaders. Not a Mexican had shown his face at the hearing,
+save Luis Medina and his mother, who had been called as witnesses.
+
+Luis had been badly scared but stubborn, insisting that he had heard
+Elfigo call Estan from the house just before the shot was fired. The
+mother also had been badly frightened, but not at all stubborn. Indeed,
+she was not even certain of anything beyond the drear fact that her son
+was dead, and that he had fallen with the lamp in his hand, unarmed and
+unsuspecting. She was frightened at the unknown, terrible Law that had
+brought her there before the judge, and not at anything tangible.
+
+But Luis knew exactly what it was he feared. Starr read that in his eyes
+whenever they turned toward the calm, inscrutably smiling Elfigo. Hate
+was in the eyes of Luis, but the hate was almost submerged by the terror
+that filled him. He shook when he stood up to take the oath. His voice
+trembled in spite of him when he spoke; but he spoke boldly for all
+that--falsely, too. He had lied when he told of the quarrel over the old
+water right. It was not a water right which the two had discussed, and
+Starr knew it.
+
+But it was Elfigo that puzzled Starr most. Elfigo had smiled, as though
+the whole thing amused him even though it annoyed him to be under arrest.
+He denied, of course, that he had known anything at all about the murder
+until it was common news about town. He had been somewhere else at the
+time Estan was shot, and he could and would prove, when the time came,
+that it would have been physically impossible for him to have shot Estan
+Medina. He preferred not to produce any witnesses now, however. Let it go
+to a jury trial, and then he would clear himself of the charge. All
+through his lawyer, of course, while Elfigo sat back with his hands in
+his pockets and his feet thrust out before him, whimsically contemplating
+his tan shoes.
+
+He had seemed confident that bail would be accepted, and he was
+unmistakably crestfallen when the judge, who acted under certain
+instructions from those above him, refused to accept bail. But Elfigo had
+scored, nevertheless; he had not permitted any of his friends to become
+identified in any manner whatsoever with his movements, and he had
+withheld his side of the case altogether.
+
+So Starr was left in the dark where he had expected to find the light he
+needed to direct him. He had also permitted Luis to mark himself for
+another murder in the Medina family. Well, Luis was a conspirator, for
+that matter; but he was a boy, and his judgment had not ripened. It
+seemed a shame that a youngster like that should be drawn into such a
+mess. Starr, determined to do what he could to protect Luis, had seen to
+it that Luis was locked up, for the purely technical reason that he was
+an important witness and they wanted to be sure of him; but really to
+protect him from the wrath of Elfigo.
+
+"And now," Starr's thoughts ran on, "I stand just where I stood before,
+except that I know a whole heap more than I wish I knew. And if the thing
+breaks loose before the trial, Elfigo will be in jail where he's got a
+cast-iron alibi. The rest of the bunch must be strong enough to go on
+without him, but I shore did hope they'd be stirred up some over this
+shooting. They'll likely get together right away, hold a meeting and make
+arrangements to do without Elfigo. If I knew where..."
+
+He lifted the other foot to remove its boot, hesitated, and set it down
+again. Surely the Alliance would have to adjust itself to the loss of
+Elfigo. They would get together, and what buzzing they did would be
+behind barred doors, since they had been too cunning to show themselves
+at the hearing; that night, probably, since they knew now that Elfigo had
+been bound over to the grand jury, and that he was held without bail.
+Where would they meet? That was what Starr wished he knew.
+
+He sat there rumpling his hair and studying the question. He could not
+fix upon any particular place, unless it was the Sommers ranch; and that
+was too far from town for any urgent business, and travelers to and from
+the place would be taking too great a risk. For he was sure there would
+be a dozen or more who would make up the Junta, and for so many men to be
+traveling in one direction would excite curiosity from any one who saw
+them leave town or return.
+
+There was another possible meeting place--the office of _Las Nuevas_.
+Starr thought of that rather hopelessly. Just as a common precaution,
+they would guard the doors if the Junta met there, or they would have men
+stationed on the stairs; that he would not be able to get up without
+giving the alarm he knew as well as though he had tried and failed.
+
+His thoughts went to that hidden, inner office where he had found the
+pamphlets and the writing that pointed to Helen May as one of the band.
+There, where there were no outside windows to betray a midnight
+conference by any showing of light within; where eavesdropping was
+absolutely impossible; where the men who met there might gain the yard by
+various means, since it faced on three streets, and be practically safe
+from observation, he became convinced would be the logical meeting place.
+
+To be sure, he was only guessing. He had no evidence whatever save his
+own reason that there would be a meeting, much less that it would be held
+in the secret office room of _Las Nuevas_. But he put on the boot he had
+taken off and reached for his coat. A half hour or so ought to prove him
+right or wrong in his deductions, and Starr would not have grudged a full
+night to satisfy himself on that point.
+
+It was late, nearly midnight, to be exact, when he slipped out to the
+shed, and watched from its shadow until he was sure that no one had seen
+him, before he let himself down through the hole in the manger to the
+arroyo bottom. He went hurriedly, but he was very careful not to show
+himself without first making sure that the way was clear.
+
+For that reason he escaped being seen by a tall young Mexican whom he
+caught sight of lounging at the corner opposite the building that held
+_Las Nuevas_. Ostensibly the fellow had merely stopped to light a
+cigarette, but while Starr watched him he struck three matches in
+succession, and immediately afterwards a shadow glided from the shelter
+of a plumber's shop opposite, slipped down to the gate that was always
+barred, and disappeared.
+
+Starr circled warily to the rear of the yard to see what chance there
+might be of getting over the wall unseen. He did not know what good it
+would do him to get into the yard, but he hoped that he might be lucky
+enough to see any one who entered the back door, which would be the
+logical means of ingress.
+
+He was standing back of the garage where he had found the cord tires,
+when the quiet of the night was split with the shrill, nerve-racking
+shriek of the fire whistle, four or five blocks away. In spite of
+himself, he was startled with its suddenness, and he stood tensed and
+waiting for the dismal hoots that would tell what ward the fire was
+in. One--two--three, croaked the siren like a giant hoot-owl calling
+in the night.
+
+"Third ward--down around the depot, probably," he heard a voice say
+guardedly on the other side of the fence. Another voice, more guarded
+even than the first, muttered a reply which Starr could not catch.
+Neither voice was recognizable, and the sentence he heard was so obvious
+a remark as to be practically meaningless; probably a hundred persons in
+town had said "Third ward," when the siren had tooted the number.
+
+At any rate some one was there in the yard of _Las Nuevas_, and it would
+not be wise for Starr to attempt getting over the wall. He waited
+therefore until he heard careful footsteps moving away; whereupon he
+himself stole quietly to the corner, thence down the side wall to the
+front of the building, so that he could look across the street to where
+the Mexican had revealed himself for a moment in the light of a distant
+street lamp.
+
+If the Mexican had been on watch there, he had left his post. In a minute
+Starr saw him hurrying down the unused side street, toward the angry glow
+that told where the fire had started. Too much temptation, Starr
+interpreted the fellow's desertion of his post; or else no more men were
+expected at _Las Nuevas_, and the outpost was no longer needed. Taking it
+for granted that a meeting had been called here, Starr reasoned from that
+assumption.
+
+He waited another minute or two, watching and listening. There was
+nothing at the front to break the quiet or spoil the air of desertion
+that surrounds an empty office building at midnight. He went cautiously
+to the rear corner and turned there to look back at the building,
+watchful for any stray beam of light or any movement.
+
+The upper story was dark as the rest of the yard and building, and Starr
+could almost believe that he was on the wrong track entirely, and that
+nothing was going on here. But he continued to stand there, loath to give
+up and go home with nothing accomplished.
+
+Close beside the building and back perhaps twenty feet from the front
+corner, a telephone and electric light pole stood with outstretched arms,
+holding aloft its faintly humming wires. Starr stood looking that way for
+some time before it occurred to him that there was no street light near
+enough to send that warm, yellow glow across the second bar from the
+bottom. The rest of the pole was vague and shadowy, like everything else
+in the immediate neighborhood. The bottom of the pole he could not see at
+all from where he stood, it was so dark alongside the building. But that
+second cross-arm was lighted as from a near-by window. Yet there was no
+lighted window anywhere in the place.
+
+Starr was puzzled. Being puzzled, he went slowly toward the pole, his
+face turned upward. The nearest street lamp was a full block away, and it
+would have lighted up the whole top of the pole evenly, if at all. At the
+foot of the pole Starr stood for a minute, still staring upward. Then he
+reached up, gripped the metal steps and began carefully to climb.
+
+Before he had reached the lighted cross-arm he knew that the glow must
+come from a skylight; and that the skylight must be the one that had
+saved that hidden little office room from being dark. He was no lineman,
+but he knew enough to be careful about the wires, so it took him several
+minutes to work his way to where he could straddle a crosstree that had
+few wires.
+
+Just below him and no more than twelve or fifteen feet distant was the
+skylight he had suspected, but before he gave that much attention, he
+looked across to where the fire was sending up a column of crimson smoke
+and bright, eddying sparks, four blocks or so away. The man left on guard
+would find it difficult to tear himself away from all that excitement,
+Starr thought satisfiedly; though if he came back he could scarcely help
+seeing Starr on that lighted perch, and he would undoubtedly take a shot
+at him if he were any man at all and had a spark of loyalty to his
+fellows. For Starr's business up there could not be mistaken by the
+stupidest greaser in the town.
+
+With the fire to help his cause, Starr craned toward the building and
+looked down through the skylight. It had been partly raised for
+ventilation, which was needed in that little, inside room, especially
+since twelve men were foregathered there, and since every man in the lot
+was burning tobacco in some form.
+
+Sommers was there, seated at the end of a table that had been moved
+into the center of the room, which brought it directly under the
+skylight. He sat facing Starr, and he was reading something to himself
+while the others waited in silence until he had finished. His strong,
+dark face was grave, his high forehead creased with the wrinkles of
+deep thinking. He had a cigar in one corner of his mouth, and he was
+absentmindedly chewing it rather than smoking. He looked the leader,
+though his clothes were inclined to shabbiness and he sat slouched
+forward in his chair. He looked the leader, and their leader those
+others proclaimed him by their very silence, and by the way their faces
+turned toward him while they waited.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
+
+THROUGH THE OPEN SKYLIGHT
+
+
+Sommers took his cigar from his mouth and laid it carefully down upon the
+edge of the table, although he was plainly unconscious of the movement.
+He lifted his head with a little toss that threw back a heavy lock of his
+jet-black hair. He glanced around the table, and his eyes dominated those
+others hypnotically.
+
+"I have here," he began in the sonorous voice and the measured
+enunciation of the trained orator, "a letter from our esteemed--and
+unfortunate--comrade and fellow worker, Elfigo Apodaca. Without taking
+your valuable time by reading the letter through from salutation to
+signature, I may say briefly that its context is devoted to our cause and
+to the inconvenience which may be entailed because of our comrade's
+present incarceration, the duration of which is as yet undetermined.
+
+"Comrade Apodaca expresses great confidence in his ultimate release. He
+maintains that young Medina is essentially a traitor, and that his
+evidence at the preliminary hearing was given purely in the spirit of
+revenge. That Comrade Apodaca will be exonerated fully of the charge of
+murder, I myself can entertain no scintilla of doubt. We may therefore
+dismiss from our minds any uneasiness we may, some of us, have
+entertained on that score.
+
+"The question we are foregathered here to decide to-night is whether the
+date set for our public demonstration shall remain as it stands; whether
+we shall seek permission to postpone that date, or whether it shall be
+deemed expedient to set it forward to the earliest possible moment. As
+you all are doubtless aware, our esteemed compatriots in Mexico are ready
+and waiting our pleasure, like hounds straining at the leash. The work of
+organization on this side of the line has of necessity been slow, because
+of various adverse influences and a slothful desire for present ease and
+safety, which we have been constrained to combat. Also the accumulation
+of arms and ammunition in a sufficient quantity for our purpose without
+exciting suspicion has required much tactful manipulation.
+
+"But we have here assembled the trusted representatives from our twelve
+districts in the State, and I trust that each one of you has come
+prepared to furnish this Junta with the data necessary for an
+intelligent action upon the question we have to decide to-night. Am I
+right, gentlemen, in that assumption?"
+
+Eleven men nodded assent and looked down at the slips of paper they had
+produced from inner pockets and held ready in their hands.
+
+"Then I shall ask you, compadres, to listen carefully to the report from
+each district, so that you may judge the wisdom of foreshortening the
+interval between to-night and the date set for the uprising.
+
+"Each representative will give the number, in his district, of armed
+members of the Alliance; the amount of ammunition at hand; the number of
+agents secretly occupying positions of trust where they can give the most
+aid to the movement; the number of Spanish-Americans who, like our
+unfortunate neighbor, Estancio Medina, have refused thus far to come into
+the Alliance; the number, in his district, who may be counted upon to
+come in, once they see that the cause is not hopeless; who may be
+expected to take the purely American side, and who may be safely depended
+upon to remain neutral. I shall ask each of you to tell us also the
+extent and nature of such opposition as your district must be prepared to
+meet. There has been a rumor of some preparation for resistance to our
+movement, and we shall want to know all that you can tell us of that
+phase of the situation as observed in your district.
+
+"These seemingly unimportant details are absolutely essential, gentlemen
+of the Junta. For in this revolutionary movement you must bear in mind
+that brother will rise up against brother, as it were. You will be called
+upon, perchance, to slay the dearest friend of your school days; your
+neighbor, if so be he is allied against you when the great day comes. We
+must not weaken; we must keep our eyes fixed upon the ultimate good that
+will come out of the turmoil. But we must know! We must not make the
+irretrievable error of taking anything for granted. Keeping that in mind,
+gentlemen, we will hear first the report from Bernalillo district."
+
+A man at the right of Sommers unfolded his little slip of paper, cleared
+his throat and began, in strongly accented English, to read. The eleven
+who listened leaned forward, elbows on the table, and drank in the
+terrible figures avidly. Sommers set down the figures in columns and made
+notes on the pad before him, his lips pressed together in a straight line
+that twisted now and then with a sinister kind of satisfaction.
+
+"That, gentlemen, is how the Cause stands in the county that has the
+largest population and approximately the smallest area of any county in
+the State. While this report is not altogether new to me, yet I am
+struck anew with the great showing that has been made in that county.
+With the extensive yards and shops of the Santa Fe at Albuquerque seized
+and held by our forces, together with the junction points and--"
+
+Starr did not wait to hear any more, but edged hastily back to the pole
+and began to climb down as though a disturbed hornets' nest hung above
+him. The report that had so elated Sommers sent a chill down Starr's
+back. If one county could show so appalling an insurrectory force, what
+of the whole State? Yes, and the other States involved! And the thing
+might be turned loose at any time!
+
+He dropped to the ground, sending a scared glance for the watchman who
+had gone to the fire. He was nowhere to be seen, and Starr, running to
+the rear of the lot, skirted the high wall at a trot; crossed a narrow,
+black alley, hurried down behind the next lots to the cross street,
+walked as fast as he dared to the next corner, turned into the main
+street, and made for the nearest public telephone booth.
+
+He sweated there in the glass cage for a long ten minutes before he had
+managed to get in touch with Sheriff O'Malley and the chief of police,
+and to tell each in turn what he wanted and where they must meet him, and
+how many minutes they might have to do it in. He came out feeling as
+though he had been in there an hour, and went straight to the rendezvous
+he had named, which was a shed near the building of _Las Nuevas_, only on
+another street.
+
+They came, puffing a little and a good deal mystified. Starr, not
+daring to state his real business with them, had asked for men to
+surround and take a holdup gang. All told, there were six of them when
+all had arrived, and they must have been astounded at what Starr told
+them in a prudent undertone and speaking swiftly. They did not say
+anything much, but slipped away after him and came to the high wall
+that hid so much menace.
+
+"There was a hombre on guard across the street," Starr told the sheriff.
+"He went off to the fire, but he's liable to come back. Put a man over
+there in the shade of that junk shop to watch out for him and nab him
+before he can give the alarm. This is ticklish work, remember. Any
+Mexican in town would knife you if he knew what you're up to.
+
+"Johnson, you can climb the pole and pull down on 'em through the
+skylight, but wait till you see by their actions that they've got the tip
+something's wrong, and don't shoot if you can help it. Remember this is
+Secret Service work, and the quieter it's done, the better pleased
+they'll be in Washington. There can't be any hullabaloo at all. You two
+fellows watch the front and back gates, and the no-shooting rule goes
+with you, too. If there's anything else you can do, don't shoot. But it's
+better to fire a cannon than let a man get away. Sabe? Now, Chief, you
+and the sheriff can come with me, and we'll bust up the meetin' for 'em."
+
+He went up on the shoulder of the man who was to watch outside the rear
+wall, and straddled the wall for a brief reconnoiter. Evidently the Junta
+felt safe in their hidden little room, for no guard had been left in the
+yard. The back door was locked, and Starr opened it as silently as he
+could with his pass key. Close behind him came Sheriff O'Malley and the
+chief of police, whose name was Whittier. They had left their shoes
+beside the doorstep and walked in their socks, making no noise at all.
+
+Starr did not dare use his searchlight, but felt his way down past the
+press and the forms, to where the stairs went up to the second floor. On
+the third step from the bottom, Starr, feeling his way with his hands,
+touched a dozing watchman and choked him into submission before the
+fellow had emitted more than a sleepy grunt of surprise. They left him
+gagged and tied to the iron leg of some heavy piece of machinery, and
+went on up the stairs, treading as stealthily as a prowling cat.
+
+Starr turned to the right, found the door locked, and patiently turned
+his key a hair's breadth at a time in the lock, until he slid the bolt
+back. Behind him the repressed breathing of O'Malley fanned warmly the
+back of his neck. He pushed the door open a half inch at a time, found
+the outer office dark and silent, and crossed it stealthily to the closet
+behind the stove. O'Malley and Whittier were so close behind that he
+could feel them as they entered the closet and crept along its length.
+
+Starr was reaching out before him with his hands, feeling for the door
+into the secret office, when Sheriff O'Malley struck his foot against the
+old tin spittoon, tried to cover the sound, and ran afoul of the brooms,
+which tripped him and sent him lurching against Starr. There in that
+small space where everything had been so deathly still the racket was
+appalling. O'Malley was not much given to secret work; he forgot himself
+now and swore just as full-toned and just as fluently as though be had
+tripped in the dark over his own wheelbarrow in his own back yard.
+
+Starr threw himself against the end of the closet where he knew the door
+was hidden in the wall, felt the yielding of a board, and heaved against
+it with his shoulder. He landed almost on top of a fat-jowled
+representative from Santa Fe, but he landed muzzle foremost, as it were,
+and he was telling the twelve to put up their hands even before he had
+his feet solidly planted on the floor.
+
+Holman Sommers sat facing him. He had been writing, and he still held his
+pencil in his hand. He slowly crumpled the sheet of paper, his vivid eyes
+lifted to Starr's face. Tragic eyes they were then, for beyond Starr they
+looked into the stern face of the government he would have defied. They
+looked upon the wreck of his dearest dream; upon the tightening chains of
+the wage slaves he would have freed--or so he dreamed.
+
+Starr stared back, his own mind visioning swiftly the havoc he had
+wrought in the dream of this leader of men. He saw, not a political
+outlaw caught before he could do harm to his country, but a man fated to
+bear in his great brain an idea born generations too soon into a brawling
+world of ideas that warred always with sordid circumstance. A hundred
+years hence this man might be called great. Now he was nothing more than
+a political outlaw chief, trapped with his band of lesser outlaws.
+
+Sommers' eyes lightened impishly. His thin lips twisted in a smile at the
+damnable joke which Life was playing there in that room.
+
+"Gentlemen of the Junta," he said in his sonorous, public-platform
+voice, "I find it expedient, because of untoward circumstances, to
+advise that you make no resistance. From the unceremonious and
+unheralded entry of our esteemed opponents, these political prostitutes
+who have had the effrontery to come here in the employ of a damnable
+system of political tyranny and frustrate our plans for the liberation
+of our comrades in slavery, I apprehend the fact that we have been
+basely betrayed by some foul Judas among us. I am left with no
+alternative but to advise that you surrender your bodies to these
+minions of what they please to call the law.
+
+"Whether we part now, to spend the remaining years of our life in some
+foul dungeon; whether to die a martyr's death on the scaffold, or whether
+the workers of the land awake to their power and, under some wiser,
+stronger leadership, liberate us to enjoy the fruits of the harvest we
+have but sown, I cannot attempt to prophesy. We have done what we could
+for our fellowmen. We have not failed, for though we perish, yet our
+blood shall fructify what we have sown, that our sons and our sons' sons
+may reap the garnered grain. Gentlemen, of the Junta, I declare our
+meeting adjourned!"
+
+Starr's eyes were troubled, but his gun did not waver. It pointed
+straight at the breast of Holman Sommers, who looked at him measuringly
+when he had finished speaking.
+
+"I can't argue about the idea back of this business," Starr said gravely.
+"All I can do is my duty. Put on these handcuffs, Mr. Sommers. They stand
+for something you ain't big enough to lick--yet."
+
+"Certainly," said Holman Sommers composedly. "You put the case like a
+philosopher. Like a philosopher I yield to the power which, I grant you,
+we are not big enough to lick--yet. In behalf of our Cause, however,
+permit me to call your attention to the fact that we might have come
+nearer to victory, had you not discovered and interrupted this meeting
+to-night." Though his face was paler than was natural, he slipped on the
+manacles as matter-of-factly as he would have put on clean cuffs, and
+rose from his chair prepared to go where Starr directed.
+
+"No, sit down again," said Starr brusquely. "Sheriff, gather up all those
+pieces of paper for evidence against these men, and give them to me. Give
+me a receipt for the men--I'll wait for it. I want you and Chief Whittier
+to hold them here in this room till I come back. I won't be long--half an
+hour, maybe." He took the slips of paper which the sheriff folded and
+handed to him, and slipped them into his pocket.
+
+He was gone a little longer than he said, for he had some trouble in
+locating the railroad official he wanted, and in convincing that sleepy
+official that he was speaking for the government when he demanded an
+engine and day coach to be placed on a certain dark siding he mentioned,
+ready for a swift night run to El Paso and a little beyond--to Fort
+Bliss, in fact.
+
+He got it, trust Starr for that! And he was only twenty minutes behind
+the time he had named, though the sheriff and the chief of police
+betrayed a nervous relief when he walked in upon them and announced that
+he was ready now to move the prisoners.
+
+They untied the terrified watchman and added him to the group. In the
+dark, and by way of vacant lots and unlighted streets, he took them to a
+certain point where an engine had just backed a single, unlighted day
+coach on to a siding and stood there with air-pump wheezing and the
+engineer crawling around beneath with his oil can. By the rear steps of
+the coach a mystified conductor stood waiting with his lantern hidden
+under his coat. A big man was the conductor; once a policeman and
+therefore with a keen nose--don't laugh!--for mysteries.
+
+He wore a satisfied look when he saw the men that were being hustled into
+the car. His uniform tightened as he swelled with the importance of his
+mission. He nodded to Sheriff O'Malley and the chief of police, cast an
+obliquely curious glance at Starr, who stayed on the ground, and when
+Starr gave the word he swung his lantern to the watching fireman, and
+caught the handrail beside the steps.
+
+"Fort Bliss it is; and there won't nothing stop us, buh-lieve me!" he
+muttered confidentially to Starr, whom he recognized only as the man who
+stood behind the mystery. The engine began to creep forward, and he swung
+up to the lower step. "We may go in the ditch or something; but we'll get
+there, you listen to me!"
+
+"Go to it, and good luck," said Starr, but there was no heartiness in his
+voice. He stood with his thumbs hooked inside his gun-belt and watched
+the coach that held the peace of the country within its varnished walls
+go sliding out of the yard, its green tail lights the only illumination
+anywhere behind the engine. When it had clicked over the switch and was
+picking up speed for its careening flight south through the cool hours of
+early morning, he gave a sigh that had no triumph in it, and turned away
+toward his cabin.
+
+"Well, there goes the revolution," he said somberly to himself. "And here
+I go to do the rest of the job; and alongside what I've got to do, hell
+would be a picnic!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
+
+STARR TAKES ANOTHER PRISONER
+
+
+With a slip of paper in his pocket that would have gone a long way toward
+clearing Helen May, had he only taken the trouble to look at it, Starr
+rode out in the cool early morning to Sunlight Basin. He looked white and
+worn, and his eyes were sunken and circled with the purple of too little
+sleep and too much worry, for in the three days since he had seen her,
+Starr had not been able to forget his misery once in merciful sleep. Only
+when he was busy with capturing the Junta had he lost for a time the keen
+pain of his hurt.
+
+Now it was back like an aching tooth set going again with cold water or
+sweets. He tried to make himself think that he hated Helen May, and that
+a girl of that type--a girl who could lend herself to such
+treachery--could not possibly win from him anything but a pitying
+contempt. He told himself over and over again that he was merely sore
+because a girl had "put something over on him"; that a man hated to have
+a woman make a fool of him.
+
+He tried to gloat over the fact that he had found her out before she had
+any inkling of how he felt toward her; he actually believed that! He
+tried not to wince at the thought of her at Fort Bliss, a Federal
+prisoner, charged with conspiring against the government. She must have
+known the risk she took, he kept telling himself. The girl was no fool,
+was way above the average in intelligence. That was why she had appealed
+to him; he had felt the force of her personality, the underlying strength
+of her character that had not harshened her outward charm, as strength so
+often does for a woman.
+
+That was the worst of it. Had she been weak she would never have mixed
+with any political conspiracy; they would not have wanted her, for
+intrigue has no place for weaklings. But had she been weak she would
+never have attracted Starr so deeply, however innocent she might have
+been. So his reasoning went round and round in a circle, until he was
+utterly heartsick with no hope of finding peace.
+
+There was one thing he could do: it would be tightening the screws of his
+torture, but he meant to do it for her sake. He would take her to Fort
+Bliss himself, shielding her from publicity and humiliation; and he would
+take charge of Vic, and see that the kid did not suffer too much on
+account of his sister.
+
+He would make a man of Vic; he never guessed that he was taking up
+mentally the burden which Peter had laid upon Helen May. He believed
+there was good stuff in that kid, and with the right handling he would
+come out all right. He would put in a plea to his chief for leniency
+toward the girl too. He would say that she was young and inexperienced
+and that Holman Sommers had probably drawn her into his scheme--Starr
+could see how that might easily be--and that her health was absolutely
+dependent upon open air. They couldn't keep her shut up long; a girl
+could not do much harm, if the rest of the bunch was convicted. Maybe
+the lesson and the scare would be all she needed to pull her back into
+lawful living. She was not a hardened adventuress; why, she couldn't be
+much over twenty-one or two! After a while, when she had straightened
+up, maybe ...
+
+So Starr thought and thought, fighting to keep a little hope alive, to
+see a little gleam of light in the blackness of his soul. His head bent,
+his eyes staring unseeingly at the yellow-brown dust of the trail, he
+rode along unconscious of everything save the battle raging fiercely
+within. He did not know what pace Rabbit was taking; he even forgot that
+he was on Rabbit's back. He did not know that his duty as a man and his
+man's love were fighting the fiercest battle of his life, or if he did,
+he never thought to call it a battle.
+
+There had been one black night in the cabin--the night before this last
+one, it was--when he had considered for a while how he might smuggle
+Helen May out of the country, suppressing the fact of her complicity. He
+planned just how he could put her on a train and "shoot her to Los
+Angeles," as he worded it to himself. How she could take a boat there for
+Vancouver, and how he could hold back developments here until he knew she
+was safe. He figured the approximate cost and the hole it would make in
+his little savings account. He thought of everything, even to marrying
+her before she left, so that he could not be compelled to testify against
+her, in case she was caught.
+
+He had dozed afterwards, and had dreamed that he put his plan to the test
+of reality. He had married Helen May and taken her himself to Los
+Angeles. But there had not been money enough for him to go any farther,
+and his chief had wired him peremptorily to return and arrest the leaders
+of the Alliance and all connected with it. So he had bought a steerage
+ticket for Helen May and put her aboard the boat, where she must herd
+with a lot of leering Chinamen. He had stood on the pier and watched the
+boat swing out and nose its way to the open sea, and a submarine had
+torpedoed it when it had sailed beyond the three-mile limit off the
+coast, so he could not go after her. He was just taking off his coat to
+try it, anyway, when he awoke.
+
+That was all the good his sleep had done him: set him upright in bed with
+a cold sweat on his face and his hands shaking. But the reaction from
+that nightmare had been complete, and Starr had not again planned how he
+might dodge his plain duty. But he kept thinking around and around the
+subject for all that, as though he could not give up entirely the hope of
+being able to save her somehow.
+
+He did not know, until he passed the corral, that he was already in
+Sunlight Basin, and that the house stood just up the slope before him.
+Rabbit must have taken it for granted that Starr was bound for this place
+and so had kept the trail of his own accord, for Starr could not remember
+turning from the main road. He did not even know that he had passed not
+more than a hundred yards from Vic and the goats, and that Vic had
+shouted "hello" to him.
+
+He took a long breath when he glanced up and saw the house so close, but
+he did not attempt to dodge or even delay the final tragedy of his
+mission. He let Rabbit keep straight on. And when the horse stopped
+before the closed front door, Starr slid off and walked, like a tired old
+man, to the door and knocked.
+
+Helen May had been washing the breakfast dishes, and Starr heard the
+muffled sound of her high-heeled slippers clicking over the bare floor
+for a minute before she came into the front room and opened the door. She
+had a dish towel over her right arm, opening the door with her left.
+Starr knew that the dish towel was merely a covering for her six-shooter,
+and his heart hardened a little at that fresh reminder of her
+preparedness and her guile.
+
+"Why, good morning, desert man," she said brightly, after the first
+little start of surprise. "Come on in. The coffee's fine this morning;
+and I just had a hunch I'd better not throw it out for a while yet.
+There's a little waffle batter left, too."
+
+Starr had choked down a cup of coffee and a sandwich at the station lunch
+counter before he left San Bonito, and he was glad now that he was not
+hungry. He stepped inside, but he did not smile back at Helen May; nor
+could he have accepted her hospitality to save himself from starvation.
+He felt enough like Judas as it was.
+
+"Don't put down your gun yet," he said abruptly, standing beside the door
+with his hat in his hand, as though his visit would be very short. "You
+can shoot me if you want to, but that's about all the leeway I can give
+you. I rounded up the revolution leaders last night. They're likely at
+Fort Bliss by now, so you can take your choice between handing me a
+bullet, or going along with me to Fort Bliss. Because if I live, that's
+where I'll have to take you. And," he added as an afterthought, "I don't
+care much which it is."
+
+Helen May stood with her chin tilted down, and stared at him from under
+her eyebrows. She did not speak for a minute, and Starr leaned back
+against the closed door with his arms folded negligently and his hat
+dangling from one hand, waiting her decision. He stared back at her,
+somberly apathetic. He had spoken the simple truth when he said he did
+not care which she decided to do. He had come to the limit of suffering,
+it seemed to him. He could look into her tawny brown eyes now without any
+emotion whatever.
+
+"You don't smell drunk," said Helen May suddenly and very bluntly, "and
+you don't look crazy. What is the matter with you, Starr of the desert?
+Is this a joke, or what?"
+
+"It didn't strike me as any joke," Starr told her passionlessly.
+"Thirteen of them I rounded up. Holman Sommers was the head of the whole
+thing. Elfigo Apodaca is in jail, held for the shooting of Estan Medina.
+Luis Medina is in jail too, held as a witness and to keep Apodaca's men
+from killing him before he can testify in court. I hated to see the kid
+tangled up with it--and I hate to see you in it. But that don't give me
+any license to let you off. You're under arrest. I'm a Secret Service
+man, sent here to prevent the revolution that's been brewing all spring
+and summer. I guess I've done it, all right." He stared at her with
+growing bitterness in his eyes. His hurt began dully to ache again.
+"Helen May, what in God's name did you tangle up with 'em for?" he
+flashed in a sudden passion of grief and reproach.
+
+Helen May's chin squared a little; but she who had not screamed when she
+found her father dead in his bed; she who had read his letter without
+whimpering held her voice quiet now, though womanlike she answered
+Starr's question with another.
+
+"What makes you think I am tangled up with it? What reason have you got
+for connecting me with such a thing?"
+
+A stain of anger reddened Starr's cheek bones, that had been pale. "What
+reason? Well, I'll tell you. In the office of _Las Nuevas_, in that
+little, inside room with the door opening out of a closet to hide it,
+where I got my first real clue, I found two sheets of paper with some
+strong revolutionary stuff written in English. Also I found a pamphlet
+where the same stuff had been printed in Spanish. I kept that writing,
+and I kept the pamphlet. I've got it now. I'd know the writing anywhere
+I saw it, and I saw a sample of it here in this very room, when the wind
+blew those papers off your desk."
+
+"You--in this room!" Helen May caught her breath. "Why--why, you couldn't
+have! I never wrote any revolution stuff in my life! Why--I don't know
+the first thing about _Las Nuevas_, as you call it. How could my
+writing--?" She caught her breath again, for she remembered.
+
+"Why, Starr of the desert, that was Holman Sommers' writing you saw! I
+remember now. Some pages of his manuscript blew off the desk when you
+were here. See, I can show you a whole pile of it!" She ran to the desk,
+Starr following her mechanically. "See? All kinds of scientific junk that
+he wanted typed. Isn't that the writing you meant? Isn't it?" Her hands
+trembled so that the papers she held close to Starr's face shook, but
+Starr recognized the same symmetrical, hard-to-read chirography.
+
+"Yes, that's it." His voice was so husky that she could hardly hear him.
+He moistened his lips, that had gone dry. Was it possible? His mind kept
+asking over and over.
+
+"And here! I don't ask you to take my word for it--I know that just those
+pages don't prove anything, because I might have written that stuff
+myself--if I knew enough! But here's a lot that he sent over by the
+stage driver yesterday. I haven't even opened it yet. You can see the
+same handwriting in the address, can't you? And if he has written a
+note--he does sometimes--and signed it--he always signs his name in
+full--why, that will be proof, won't it?" Her eyes burned into his and
+steadied a little his whirling thoughts.
+
+"Open it, desert man! Open it, and see if there's a note! And you can ask
+the stage driver, if you don't believe me; here, break the string!"
+
+She was now more eager than he to see what was inside the wrapping of
+newspaper. "See? That's an El Paso paper--and I don't take anything but
+the _Times_ from Los Angeles! Oh, goody! There is a note! You read it,
+Starr. Read it out loud. If that doesn't convince you, why--why I can
+prove by Vic--"
+
+Starr had unfolded the sheet of tablet paper, and Helen May interrupted
+herself to listen. Starr's voice was uneven, husky when he tried to
+control the quiver in it. And this he read, in the handwriting of which
+he had such bitter knowledge:
+
+"My Dear Miss Stevenson:
+
+"I am enclosing herewith a part of Chapter Two, which I have revised
+considerably and beg you to retype for me. If you have no asterisk sign
+upon your machine, will you be so kind as to make use of the period sign
+to indicate a break in the context of the quotations from the various
+authors whom I have cited?
+
+"I wish to inform you that I am deeply sorry to place this extra burden
+of work upon you, and also assure you that I am more than delighted with
+the care you have exercised in deciphering correctly my most abominable
+chirography.
+
+"May I also suggest, with all due respect to your intelligence and with a
+keen appreciation of the potent influences of youth and romance upon even
+the drudgery of an amanuensis, that in writing "stars of the universe" in
+a scientific document, the connotation is marred somewhat when stars is
+spelled "Starr's."
+
+"Very apologetically your friend,
+
+"HOLMAN SOMMERS."
+
+It took several seconds for the full significance of that last
+paragraph to sink into minds so absorbed with another matter. But when
+it did sink in--
+
+"Oh-h!" gasped Helen May, and backed a step, her face the color of a red
+hollyhock.
+
+Starr looked up from reading those pregnant words a second time to
+himself. He reached out and caught Helen May by her two shoulders.
+
+"Did you do that?" he whispered impellingly. "Did you spell my name into
+that man's manuscript?"
+
+"No, I didn't! I don't believe I did--I never noticed--well, even if I
+did, that doesn't mean--anything." I hope the printers will set that
+_anything_ in their very smallest type, just to show you how weak and
+futile and scarcely audible and absolutely unconvincing the word sounded.
+For one reason, Helen May did not have much breath to say it with; and
+for another reason, she knew there was not much use in saying it.
+
+       *        *       *       *       *
+
+Helen May, sitting unabashed on Starr's lap, with an arm around his
+neck and her head on his shoulder, with her dish towel and gun lying
+just where she had dropped them on the floor some time before, took
+Peter's last letter from Starr's fingers and drew it tenderly down
+along her cheek.
+
+"I only wish you could have known dad," she said with a gentle melancholy
+that was a great deal lightened by her present happiness. "He wasn't at
+all striking on the surface; he was so quiet and so unassuming. But he
+was just the dearest and the bravest man--and when I think what he did
+for me..."
+
+"I know he was dear and brave; I can judge by his daughter." Starr
+reached up and prisoned hand and letter together and held them against
+his lips. "Seems like a nightmare now that I ever thought--And to think I
+headed out here to..."
+
+"Well, I _am_ your prisoner." Helen May answered that part of the
+sentence which Starr had left unspoken. "Listen, desert man o' mine.
+I--I want to be your prisoner forever and ever and ever!"
+
+"You won't get anything less than a life sentence, lady! And--"
+
+"Hully gosh!" Vic, bursting open the door just in the middle of a kiss,
+skidded precipitately through to the kitchen. "Fade out!" he advised
+himself as he went. "But say! When you get around to it, I'd like
+something to eat, Helen Blazes!"
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Starr, of the Desert, by B. M Bower
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