The Treasure Trail Part 48

She smiled at that without turning her head.

"If a mountain of gold should be uncovered at Soledad, of what difference to me? Would he let a woman make traffic with it? Surely not."

"He?"

"Jose Perez,--who else?"

Padre Andreas closed his eyes a moment and arose, but did not answer.

He paced the length of the corridor and back before he spoke.

"It is for you to ask the Americano that the prisoner be given a priest if he wants prayer," he said returning to their original subject of communication. "It is a duty that I tell you this; it is your own house."

"Senor Rhodes is capitan," she returned indifferently. "It is his task to give me rest here to prepare for that long north journey. I do not rest in my mind or my soul when you talk to me of the German snake, so I will ask that you speak with Capitan Rhodes. He has the knowing of Spanish."

"Too much for safety of us," commented the priest darkly. "Who is to say how he uses it with the Indians? It is well known that the American government would win all this land, and work with the Indians that they help win it."

"So everyone is saying in Hermosillo," agreed Dona Jocasta, "but the American capitan has not told me lies of any other thing, and he is saying that is a lie made by foreign people. Also--" and she looked at him doubtfully, "the man Conrad cursed your name yesterday as a d.a.m.ned Austrian whose country had cost his country much."

"My mother was not Austrian!" retorted Padre Andreas, "and all my childhood was in Mexico. But how did Conrad know?"

"He told Elena it was his business to know such things. The Germans help send many Mexican priests north over the border. He had the thought that you are to go with me for some reason political of which I knew nothing!"

"I? Did _I_ come in willingness to this wilderness? From the beginning to the end I am as a prisoner here;--as much a prisoner as is El Aleman behind the bars! No horse is mine;--if I walk abroad for my own health a vaquero ever is after me that I ride back with no fatigue to myself! It is the work of the heretic Americano who will have his own curse for it!"

He fumed nervously over the unexpected thrust of Austrian ancestry, and the beautiful eyes of Dona Jocasta regarded him with awakened interest. She had never thought of his politics, or possible affiliations, but after all it was true that he had been stationed at a pueblo where everything on wheels must pa.s.s coming north towards the border, also that was a very small pueblo to support a padre, and perhaps----

"Padre," she said after a moment, "but for the Americano you would be a dead man. Think you what Ramon would have done to a priest who let a vaquero carry me to the ranges! Also I came back to Soledad because the Americano told me it was only duty and justice that I come for your sake as Ramon has no liking for priests. You see, senor, our American capitan of Soledad is not so bad;--he had a care of you."

"Too much a care of me!" retorted the priest. "Know you not that the door of my sleeping room is bolted each night, and unbolted at dawn?

He laughs with a light heart, and sings foolishly,--your new Americano; but under that cloak of the simple his plotting is not idle!"

"As to that, I think his light heart is not so light these days," said Dona Jocasta. "Two days now the Indian girl and Marto Cavayso could have been back in Soledad, and he is looking, looking ever over that empty trail. Before the sun was above the sierra today he was far there coming across the mesa."

"A man does not go in the dark to look for a trail," said Padre Andreas meaningly. "He unbolted my door on his return, and to me he looked as a man who has done work that was heavy. What work is there for him to do alone in the hills?"

"Who knows? A horse herd is somewhere in a canon beyond. There are colts, and the storm of yesterday might make trouble. The old father of Elena says that storm has not gone far and will come back! And while the Americano rides to learn of colts, and strays, he also picks the best mules for our journey to the border."

"Does he find the best mules with packs already on their backs in the canons?" demanded the padre skeptically. "From my window I saw them return."

"I also," confessed Dona Jocasta amused at the persistence of suspicion, "and the load was the water bags and _serape_! Does any but a fool go into the wilderness without water?"

"You cover him well, senora, but I think it was not horses he went in the night to count," said the priest sarcastically. "Gold in the land is to him who finds it,--and I tell you the church will hear of that red gold belt from me! Also there will be a new search for it! If it is here the church will see that it does not go with American renegades across the border!"

"Padre, all the land speaks peace today, yet you are as a threatening cloud over Soledad!"

"I speak in warning, not threat,--and I am not the only cloud in the sky. The women of vengeance are coming beyond there where the willows are green."

Dona Jocasta looked the way he pointed, and stood up with an exclamation of alarm.

"Clodomiro! Call Clodomiro!" she said hurriedly, and as the priest only stared at her, she sped past him to the portal and called the boy who came running from the patio.

She pointed as the priest had pointed.

"They are strangers, they do not know," she said. "Kill a horse, but meet them!"

His horse was in the plaza, and he was in the saddle before she finished speaking, digging in his heels and yelling as though leading a charge while the frightened animal ran like a wild thing.

Dona Jocasta stood gazing after him intently, shading her eyes with her hand. Women came running out of the patio and Padre Andreas stared at her.

"What new thing has given you fear?" he asked in wonder.

"No new thing,--a very old thing of which Elena told me! That green strip of willow is the edge of a quicksand where no one knows the depth. The women are thinking to make a short path across, and the one who leads will surely go down."

The priest stared incredulous.

"How a quicksand and no water?" he asked doubtfully.

"There _is_ water,--hidden water! It comes under the ground from the hills. In the old, old days it was a wide well boiling like a kettle over a fire, also it was warm! Then sand storms filled that valley and filled the well. It is crusted over, but the boiling goes on far below. Elena said not even a coyote will touch that canoncita though the dogs are on his trail. The Indians say an evil spirit lives under there, but the women of Mesa Blanca and Palomitas do not know the place."

"It should have a fence,--a place like that."

"It had, but the wind took it, and, as you see, Soledad is a forgotten place."

They watched Clodomiro circle over the mesa trail and follow the women down the slope of the little valley. It was fully three miles away, yet the women could be seen running in fear to the top of the mesa where they cast themselves on the ground resting from fright and exertion.

Quite enjoying his spectacular dash of rescue, Clodomiro cantered back along the trail, and when he reached the highest point, turned looking to the southeast where, beyond the range, the old Yaqui trail led to the land of despair.

He halted there, throwing up his hand as if in answer to some signal, and then darted away, straight across the mesa instead of toward the buildings.

"Tula has come!" said Dona Jocasta in a hushed voice of dread. "She has come, and Senor Rhodes is needed here. That coming of Tula may bring an end to quiet days,--like this!"

She sighed as she spoke, for the week had been as a s.p.a.ce of restful paradise after the mental and physical horrors she had lived through.

In a half hour Clodomiro came in sight again just as Kit rode in from the west.

"Get horses out of the corrals," he called, "all of them. That trail has been long even from the railroad."

It was done quickly, and the vaqueros rode out as Clodomiro reached the plaza.

"_Tula?_" asked Kit.

"Tula is as the living whose mind is with the dead," said the boy.

"Many are sick, some are dead,--the mother of Tula died on the trail last night."

"Good G.o.d!" whispered Kit. "After all that h.e.l.l of a trail, to save no one for herself! Where is Marto?"

"Marto walks, and sick ones are on his horse. I go back now that Tula has this horse."