The Treasure Trail Part 52

The slender naked boy went gleefully to the task as to a new game, and spit in the dead face as he dragged it with him to his mother who had pride in him.

It was kicked before the women back over the desert to Soledad, and the boys used it for football that day, and tied what was left of it between the horns of the roped wild bull at the corral. The bellowing of the bull when cut loose came as music to the again placid Indian women of Palomitas. They were ready for the home trail with their exiles. It had been a good ending, and their great holiday at Soledad was over.

CHAPTER XXI

EACH TO HIS OWN

A straggling train of pack mules followed by a six-mule wagon, trailed past Yaqui Springs ten days later, and was met there by the faithful Chappo and two villainous looking comrades, who had cleaned out the water holes and stood guard over them until arrival of the ammunition train.

"For beyond is a dry h.e.l.l for us, and on the other side the Deliverer is circled by enemy fighters who would trap him in his own land. He lies hid like a fox in the hills waiting for this you bring. Water must not fail, and mules must not fail; for that am I here to give the word for haste."

"But even forty mule loads will not serve him long," said Kit doubtfully.

"Like a fox in the hills I tell you, Senor Capitan,--and only one way into the den! Beyond the enemy he has other supplies safe--this is to fight his way to it. After that he will go like a blaze through dry meadows of zacatan."

Kit would have made camp there for the night, but Chappo protested.

"No, senor! Every drop in the sand here is for the mules of the army.

It is not my word, it is the word of my general. Four hours north you will find Little Coyote well. One day more and at the crossing of Rio Seco, water will be waiting from the cold wells of La Partida. It is so arrange, senor, and the safe trail is made for you and for excellencia, the senora. In G.o.d's name, take all your own, and go in peace!"

"But the senora is weary to death, and----"

"That is true, Capitan," spoke Dona Jocasta, who drooped in the saddle like a wilted flower. "But the senora will not die, and if she does it is not so much loss as the smallest of the soldiers of El Gavilan. We will go on, and go quickly, see!--there is yet water in the cantin, and four hours of trail is soon over."

Ugly Chappo came shyly forward and, uncovered, touched the hem of her skirt to his lips.

"The high heart of the excellencia gives life to the men who fight,"

he said and thrust his hand in a pocket fastened to his belt. "This is to you from the Deliverer, senora. His message is that it brought to him the lucky trail, and he would wish the same to the Dona Jocasta Perez."

It was the little cross, once sent back to her by a peon in bitterness of soul, and now sent by a general of Mexico with the blessing of a soldier.

"Tell him Jocasta takes it as a gift of G.o.d, and his name is in her prayers," she said and turned away.

Clodomiro pushed forward,--a very different Clodomiro, for the fluttering bands of color were gone from his arms and his hair--the heart of the would-be bridegroom was no longer his. He was stripped as for the trail or for war, and fastened to his saddle was the gun and ammunition he had won from Cavayso who had gone quickly onward with his detachment of the pack.

But Clodomiro halted beside Chappo, regardless of need for haste on the trail, and asked him things in that subdued Indian tone without light, shade, or accent, in which the brown brothers of the desert veil their intimate discourse.

"There, beyond!" said Chappo, "two looks on the trail," and he pointed west. "Two looks and one water hole, and if wind moves the sand no one can find the way where we go. It is not a trail for boys."

"I am not now a boy," said Clodomiro, "and when the safety trail of the senora is over----"

But Chappo waved him onward, for the wagon and the pack mules, and even little gray Bunting had turned reluctant feet north.

Clodomiro had come from Soledad because Elena,--who never had been out of sight of the old adobe walls,--sat on the ground wailing at thought of leaving her old sick father and going to war, for despite all the persuasions of Dona Jocasta, Elena knew what she knew, and did not at all believe that any of them would see the lands of the Americano,--not with pack mules of Ramon Rotil laden with guns!

"If Tula had lived, no other would have been asked," Rhodes had stated. "But one is needed to make camp for the senora on the trail,--and to me the work of the packs and the animals."

"That I can do," Clodomiro offered. "My thought was to go where Tula said lovers of hers must go, and that was to El Gavilan. But this different thing can also be my work to the safe wells of the American.

That far I go."

Thus the three turned north from the war trail, and Clodomiro followed, after making a prayer that the desert wind would hear, and be very still, and fill no track made by the mules with the ammunition.

This slight discussion at the parting of the ways concerning two definite things,--need of haste, and conserving of water,--left no moment for thought or query of the packs of furnis.h.i.+ngs deemed of use to Senora Perez in her removal to the north.

Dona Jocasta herself had asked no question and taken no interest in them. Stripped of all sign of wealth and in chains, she had ridden into Soledad, and in comfort and much courtesy she was being conducted elsewhere. How long it might endure she did not know, and no power of hers could change the fact that she had been made wife of Jose Perez;--and at any turn of any road luck might again be with his wishes, and her estate fall to any level he choose to enforce.

At dusk they reached the Little Coyote well, and had joy to find water for night and morning, and greasewood and dead mesquite wood for a fire. The night had turned chill and Clodomiro spread the _serape_ of Dona Jocasta over a heap of flowering greasewood branches. It was very quiet compared with the other camps on the trail, and had a restful air of comfort, and of that Jocasta spoke.

"Always the fear is here, senor," she said touching her breast. "All the men and guns of Ramon Rotil did not make that fear go quiet.

Every canon we crossed I was holding my breath for fear of hidden men of Jose Perez! You did not see him in the land where he is strong; but men of power are bound to him there in the south, and--against one woman----"

"Senora, I do not think you have read the papers given to you by Padre Andreas to put with the others given by General Rotil," was Kit's quiet comment. He glanced toward the well where the boy was dipping water into a wicker bottle. "Have you?"

"No, senor, it is my permit to be pa.s.sed safely by all the men of Ramon Rotil," she said. "That I have not had need of. Also there is the record that the American murder at Granados was the crime of Conrad."

"But, senora, there is one other paper among them.--I would have told you yesterday if I had known your fear. I meant to wait until the trail was ended, but----"

"Senor!" she breathed leaning toward him, her great eyes glowing with dreadful question, "_Senor!_"

"I know the paper, for I signed it," said Kit staring in the leaping blaze. "So did the padre. It is the certificate of the burial of Jose Perez."

"Senor! _Madre de Dios!_" she whispered.

"Death reached him on his own land, senora. We pa.s.sed the grave the first day of the trail."

Her face went very white as she made the sign of the cross.

"Then he--Ramon----?"

"No,--the general did not see Perez on the trail. He tried to escape from Cavayso and the man sent a bullet to stop him. It was the end."

She shuddered and covered her eyes.

Kit got up and walked away. He looked back from where he tethered the mules for the night, but she had not moved. The little crucifix was in her hand, he thought she was praying. There were no more words to be said, and he did not go near her again that night. He sent Clodomiro with her _serape_ and pillow, and when the fire died down to glowing ash, she arose and went to the couch prepared. She went without glance to right or left--the great fear had taken itself away!

Clodomiro rolled himself in a _serape_ not far from her place of rest, but Kit Rhodes slept with the packs and with two guns beside him. From the start on the trail no man had touched his outfit but himself. He grinned sometimes at thought of the favorable report the men of Rotil would deliver to their chief,--for the Americano had taken all personal care of the packs and chests of Dona Jocasta! He was as an owl and had no human need of sleep, and let no man help him.

The trail to the canon of the Rio Seco was a hard trail, and a long day, and night caught them ere they reached the rim of the dry wash where, at long intervals, rain from the hills swept down its age-old channel for a brief hour.

Dona Jocasta, for the first time, had left the saddle and crept to the rude couch afforded by the piled-up blankets in the wagon; Clodomiro drove; and Kit, with the mules, led the way.

A little water still swished about in their water bottles, but not enough for the mules. He was more anxious than he dared betray, for it was twenty miles to the lower well of La Partida, and if by any stroke of fortune Cap Pike had failed to make good--Cap was old, and liable to----

Then through the dusk of night he heard, quite near in the trail ahead, a curious thing, the call of a bird--and not a night bird!