The Quest of the Four Part 23

"Don't you worry yourself, Sir Philip of the Wagon and the Great Sleep,"

replied Bill Breakstone grinning. "A good wilderness rover rests when he can, and doesn't rest when he can't. Now you could rest, and it was the right thing for you to do. I haven't been up myself more than half an hour, while Captain Middleton and Arenberg are still asleep. Now, my merry young sir, I hope that will satisfy you."

"It does," replied Phil, his conscience satisfied, "and between you and me, Bill, it seems to me that we have come out of our troubles so far mighty well."

"We have," replied Bill Breakstone emphatically. "The curtain has gone down on act one, with honest and deserving fellows like you and myself on top. Act two hasn't begun yet, but meanwhile the winds blow softly, the air is pure, and we'll enjoy ourselves."

"Have you seen anything of our Comanche and Mexican friends?"

"Not a peep. We're marching in looser order now, because if they came we'd have ample time to form in battle array after we saw them."

But no enemy appeared that day nor the next day, and they rode south for many days in peace. Although eager to reach the Rio Grande as soon as possible, they were too wise to hurry the animals. The steady, measured pace was never broken, and they took full rest at night. They stopped sometimes to kill game and replenish their supplies of food. They found plenty of buffalo, and the most skillful of the hunters also secured all the antelope that they wished. Now and then they crossed a river that contained fish, and they added to their stores from these, also.

They were now far into the summer, but the gra.s.s was still green, although the heat at times was great, and rain fell but seldom. The character of the vegetation changed as they went south. Bill Breakstone defined it as an increase of thorns. The cactus stood up in strange shapes on the plain, but along the banks of the creeks they found many berries that were good to the taste. Four weeks after the turn to the south they met two messengers coming from the direction of Santa Fe and bound for the mouth of the Rio Grande. They were American soldiers in civilian dress whom Middleton knew, and with whom it had evidently been a part of his plan to communicate. He received from them important news, over which he pondered long, but, some time after the two men had disappeared under the horizon to the eastward, he spoke of it to Phil, Breakstone, and Arenberg.

"They have heard much," he said, "but it comes largely through Mexican channels. It is said that an American force from one of the Western States is moving on Santa Fe, and that it is likely to fall into our hands. It is said, also, that Taylor's advance into Mexico has been stopped, and that another army under Scott is to go by sea to Vera Cruz, and thence attempt to capture the City of Mexico. I don't know! I don't know what it all means! Can it be possible that Taylor has been beaten and driven back? But we shall see!"

"I know Taylor can't have been beaten," said Phil; "but I'll be mighty glad when we reach the Rio Grande and find out for sure everything that is going on."

"That's so," said Bill Breakstone.

"News is contrary, But we'll go; Our views vary, But we'll know.

Although we'll have to wait a long time about it, as Texas runs on forever."

The tenor of the messages soon spread through the train, and increased the desire to push on; yet neither Middleton nor Woodfall deemed it wise to give the animals too great a task for fear of breaking them down.

Instead, they resolutely maintained their even pace, and bearing now to the eastward, still sought that Great River of the North which is greater in history and political importance than it is in water.

The time, despite the anxieties that they all shared, was not unpleasant to Phil. He enjoyed the free life of the wilderness and the vast plains. He saw how men were knitted together by common hards.h.i.+p and common danger. He knew every man and liked them all; hence, all liked him. He could never meet one of them in after life without a throb of emotion, a sense of great fellows.h.i.+p, and a sudden vivid picture of those days rising before him. He also learned many things that were of value. He knew how to mend any part of a wagon, he understood the troubles of horses, and he could handle a mule with a tact and skill that were almost uncanny.

"I suppose that mules, being by nature contrary animals, _like_ Phil,"

said Bill Breakstone. "I've always behaved decently toward them, but I never knew one yet to like me."

"You want to treat a mule not like an animal but like a human being,"

said Arenberg. "They know more than most men, anyhow. It iss all in the way you approach them. I know how it ought to be done, although I can't always do it."

Many such talks beguiled the way. Meanwhile Phil could fairly feel himself growing in size and strength, and he longed like the others for the sight of Taylor and his army. The idea of taking part in a great war thrilled him, and it might also help him in his search. Meanwhile, the summer waned, and they were still in Texas. It seemed that they might ride on forever and yet not reach that famous Rio Grande. The gra.s.s turned brown on the plains, the nights grew cooler, and two northers chilled them to the bone. Several times they saw Comanches hovering like tiny black figures against the horizon, but they never came near enough for a rifle shot. Twice they met hunters and scouts who confirmed the earlier news obtained from the two messengers from the westward. Taylor, beyond a doubt, had halted a hundred and fifty or two hundred miles beyond the Rio Grande. There was even a rumor that he had been captured. This might or might not be true, but there was no doubt of the fact that an advance on the City of Mexico, due southward by land, was no longer intended. The report that Scott was to lead the army by way of Vera Cruz was confirmed. Middleton was troubled greatly, as Phil could see.

"I don't like the looks of this," he confided to his three most intimate a.s.sociates, who, of course, were Phil, Bill Breakstone, and Arenberg.

"I can't believe that Taylor has been taken--he isn't that kind of a man--but this stripping him of his forces to strengthen Scott will leave him almost unarmed before a powerful enemy."

Phil saw the cogency of his reasoning. Deeply patriotic, his private motives could not rule him wholly in the face of such an emergency. He longed with a most intense longing now for a sight of the Rio Grande. A great battle often hung in such an even balance that a few men might turn the scale. The brave and resolute two hundred with the train were a force not to be despised, even where thousands were gathered. The leaders, also felt the impulse. Despite caution and calculation, the speed of the train was increased. They started a little earlier every morning, and they stopped a little later every evening. Yet there were delays. Once they had a smart skirmish with Mexican guerillas, and once a Comanche force, which did little but distant firing, held them three days. Then a large number of their animals, spent by the long march, fell sick, and they were compelled to delay again.

The summer waned and pa.s.sed. The gra.s.s was quite dead above ground, although the roots flourished below. The cactus increased in quant.i.ty.

Often it pointed long melancholy arms southward as if to indicate that misfortune lay that way. The great silence settled about them again.

There were no Indians, no Mexicans, no scouts, no hunters. Phil's thoughts reverted to his original quest. One day as he sat in the wagon he took the worn paper from the inside pocket of his waistcoat and read it for the thousandth time. He was about to hold it up and put it back in its resting place, when Bill Breakstone, seeking an hour or so of rest, sprang into the wagon, also. It was Phil's first impulse to thrust the paper quickly out of sight, and Bill Breakstone, with innate delicacy, pretended not to see, merely settling himself, with a cheerful word or two, into a comfortable seat. But Phil's second thought was the exact opposite. He withheld his hand and opened the worn and soiled paper.

"This is a letter, Bill," he said, "and you've seen it."

"At a distance," replied Bill Breakstone with a.s.sumed carelessness.

"Too far for me to read a word of it. Love letter of yours, Phil?

You're rather young for that sort of thing. Still, I suppose I'll have to call you Sir Philip of the Lost Lady and the Broken Heart."

"It's not that," said Phil. "This letter tells why I came into the Southwest. Somehow, I've wanted to keep it to myself, but I don't now.

Will you read it, Bill? It's hard to make out some of the words, but if you look close you can tell."

He reached out the worn piece of paper.

"Not unless you feel that you really want me to read it," said Breakstone.

"I really want you to do so," said Phil.

Breakstone took the paper in his hands and smoothed it out. Then he held it up to the light, because the writing was faded and indistinct, and deciphered:

"I'm here, Phil, in this stone prison--it must be some sort of an old Spanish castle, I think, in the Mexican mountains. We were blindfolded and we traveled for days, so I can't tell you where I am. But I do know that we went upward and upward, and, when my shoes wore out, rocks sharp like steel cut into my feet. We also crossed many deep gulleys and ravines. I think we went through a pa.s.s. Then we came down into ground more nearly level. My feet were bleeding. We pa.s.sed through a town and we stopped by a well. Then a woman gave me a cup of water. My throat was parched with dust. I knew it was a woman by her voice and her words of pity, spoken in Mexican. Then we came here. I have been shut up in a cell. I don't know how long, because I've lost count of time. But I'm here, Phil, between four narrow walls, with a narrow window that looks out on a mountainside, where I can see scrub pines and the th.o.r.n.y cactus. You're growing up now, Phil, and you may be able to come with friends for me. There's one here that's kind to me, the old woman who brings me my food, and she's loaned me a pencil and paper to write this.

I've written the letter, and she's going to smuggle it away somehow northward into Texas, and then it may be pa.s.sed on to you. I'm hoping, Phil, that it will reach you, wherever you are. If it does I know that you will try to come. JOHN BEDFORD."

"Look on the other side," said Phil.

Bill Breakstone turned it over and read the inscription:

"_To Philip Bedford, Esquire,_ "_Paris,_ "_Kentucky._"

Tears stood in the boy's eyes, and his hands were trembling. Breakstone waited quietly.

"As you see," said Phil, when he felt that his voice was steady, "the letter came. It's my brother, John, who wrote it. A man riding across the country from Frankfort gave it to me in Paris last year. A flatboatman had brought it up the Kentucky River from its mouth at the Ohio, and when he came to Frankfort he asked if anybody would take it to Paris. A dozen were ready to do it. The flatboatman--his name was Simmons, a mountaineer--knew nothing about the letter. He said it had been given to him at the mouth of the Ohio by a man on a steamer from New Orleans. The other man said it had been dropped in front of him on his table at an inn in New Orleans by a fellow who looked like a Mexican. He thought at first it was just a sc.r.a.p of paper, but when he read it and looked around for the man, he was gone. He resolved to send the letter on to me if he could, but he doesn't know how many hands it had pa.s.sed through before it reached him. But it's John's handwriting.

I could never mistake it."

The boy's voice trembled now, and the tears rose in his eyes again.

Breakstone looked at the paper, turning it over and over.

"The old woman that your brother writes about was faithful," he said at last. "Likely a dozen men or women had it before it was dropped on that table in New Orleans. What was your brother doing in Texas, Phil?"

"He was older than I, and he went to Texas to help in the fighting against Mexico. You know there were raids on both sides long after San Jacinto. You remember the Mier expedition of the Texans, and there were others like it. John and his comrades were taken in one of these, but I don't know exactly which. I have written letters to all the Texas officials, but none of them know anything."

"And of course you started at once," said Bill Breakstone.

"Of course. There was nothing to keep me. We were only two, and I sold what we had, came down the Kentucky into the Ohio, and then down the Mississippi to New Orleans, where I met you and the others. I had an idea that John had been carried westward, and that I might learn something about him at Santa Fe, or at least that Santa Fe might be a good point from which to undertake a search. It's all guesswork anyway, that is, mostly, but when de Armijo told us that war had come I wasn't altogether sorry, because I knew that would take us down into Mexico, where I would have a better chance to look for John. What do you think of it, Bill?"

"Let me look at the letter again," said Breakstone.

Phil handed it back to him, and he read and reread it, turned it over and over again, looked at the inscription, "To Philip Bedford, Paris, Kentucky," and then tried to see writing where none was.

"It's the old business of a needle in a haystack, Phil," he said.

"We're bound to confess that. We don't know where this letter was written nor when. Your brother, as he says, had lost count of time, but he might have made a stagger at a date."