With Hoops of Steel Part 24

"Oh, my darling! My little Bye-Bye mustn't say such things!

Everything G.o.d does is right. Poor mamma was so ill she could not stay with us any longer, and G.o.d took her to Heaven to make her well."

"Is she ill in Heaven?"

"No, dearie. She is well and happy in Heaven, and so is every one who goes there."

"When I go to Heaven shall I see my mamma?"

"Yes, dear."

The child was silent for a few moments and Marguerite turned again to her own thoughts. She scarcely heard him when he spoke again:

"Heaven is up in the sky, ain't it, Daisy?"

His eyes were caught by the sunset glow on the Hermosa mountains and he did not press her for confirmation of his idea. The swelling flanks and the towers and pinnacles and castellated crags of the rugged Hermosa range were glowing and flaming with the tenderest, deepest pink, as though the living granite had been dyed in the blood of crimson roses. The eastern sky, vivid with seash.e.l.l tints, hovered so low that the topmost crags seemed to support its glowing colors. It was no wonder that the child's mind, already awed and made receptive by his thoughts of Heaven, was at once filled with the idea that its gates had been opened before him. He dropped his sister's finger and went forward a few steps, his eager eyes fixed on the glory that flamed in the east, and his heart beating wildly with the thought that if he ran on a little way he could go in and see his mother. Of course, she would see him coming and she would run out to meet him and take him in her arms, just as Marguerite did when he came home from Janey's. Filled with the sudden, imperious impulse, he ran down the hill on which they were standing, across the dry, sandy bed of a watercourse, and up the hill on the other side. The miracle of beauty which dazzled him was of almost daily occurrence, but, baby that he was, he had never noticed it before.

Marguerite took Wellesly's letter from her pocket when Paul dropped her hand, and, turning to get the sunset light on the page, read it over and over. She knew Paul had run on ahead, but thought he was playing in the arroyo. She folded the letter slowly and put it in her pocket again and watched for a few moments the glowing banks of color that filled the western sky. Then she looked down the little hill and along the arroyo, calling, "Come, Paul! We must go home." But the st.u.r.dy little figure was nowhere in sight. At that moment he was crossing the second hill beyond. She ran up and down the arroyo calling, "Paul! Paul!" at the top of her voice. Gathering her white skirts in one hand, she rushed to the top of the hill and called again and again. But there was no reply. As she listened, straining forward, all the earth seemed strangely still. The silence struck back upon her heart suffocatingly. Over the crest of the next hill Paul heard her voice and hid behind a big, close clump of feathery mesquite, fearful lest she should find him and take him home again. Across the arroyo she ran, and up to the hill-top, where she stood and called and looked eagerly about. But he, intent on carrying out his plan of reaching the rosy, glowing gates of Heaven over there such a little way, crouched close behind the spreading bush and made no answer.

"He would not have gone so far," she thought, anxiously. "He must be back there in one of those arroyos."

She ran back and hurried farther up and down, first one and then the other gulch, calling the little one's name and straining her eyes through the dusk that had begun to gather for a glimpse of his flaxen curls and red cap. Paul, meanwhile, was scurrying across the hills as fast as his two fat, determined legs could carry him, straight toward the deepening, darkening glory upon the mountains.

At last Marguerite decided that he must have turned about, after he had run a few steps away from her, and gone home. Comforting herself with this hope, she hurried back, looking about her as she ran, to be sure that she did not pa.s.s him. Flushed and panting, she rushed through the house and asked the servant if little Bye-Bye had come home. The maid had not seen him, and the two women looked through the house and searched the yard and garden, stopping every moment to call the child. Then they ran out again upon the mesa, where Marguerite had walked with him, calling and circling about through the gathering dusk.

When it became quite dark Marguerite, thoroughly frightened, ran back to the town and hurried down Main street looking for her father. She met a clerk from his store on the way to tell her that he had just started to his alfalfa ranch, ten miles down the river, to bring in the men who were there at work, and would not return until early the next morning. The clerk quickly got together a half dozen young men and they set out for the mesa. The mother of one and the sister of another stayed with Marguerite, and by dint of constant persuasion kept her at home.

At daybreak the party returned, worn out by their long tramp. The moon had risen about ten o'clock, and by its brilliant light they had searched carefully the hills and arroyos within two or three miles of the town, but had not found a trace of the lost child. Main street had slept on its arms that night. Men of both parties, wrapped in their blankets, with revolvers and shot-guns and rifles under their hands, had dotted the court-house yard, had lain on the sidewalks near the jail, and had slept on the floors of shops and offices along both sides of Main street. Feeling had risen so high that a hasty word, or the unguarded movement of a hand toward a pistol b.u.t.t, was likely to cause the beginning of the battle. The Democrats had telegraphed to Santa Fe and learned that the order of the court making Joe Davis sheriff, having left there by mail on Sat.u.r.day, should have reached Las Plumas on Sunday. So they announced that they would wait until the arrival of the mail from the north on Monday at noon, and that if the Republicans did not then vacate the office they would march upon the court-house, seize the clerk of the court, take forcible possession of the jail, and install Joe Davis in the office of sheriff. They swore they would do all this before sunset Monday night if they had to soak the sand of the streets a foot deep in blood. The Republicans grimly said that they would not give up the office without the official order of the court if they had to kill every Democrat in the town to hold it.

When the party searching for little Paul walked down Main street in the dim, early light, their footsteps breaking loudly upon the morning silence, men jumped to their feet with revolvers at ready, and set faces, crowned with disheveled hair, looked out from doorways whence came the click of c.o.c.king triggers. As the party was divided in its political affiliations, the young men knew that it would be safer for them to separate and for each to walk down Main street on that side to which his elders belonged. And so it happened that armed men, jumping from their blankets with revolvers drawn and c.o.c.ked, and sternly commanding "halt," heard on both sides of the street at the same time how Pierre Delarue's little boy was lost on the mesa. Over and over again the young men told their story as they walked down the street, and group after group of armed and expectant men asked anxiously, "What's the matter?" "What's up?" "What's happened?" As they listened, the angry resolve in their faces softened into sympathy and concern, and everywhere there were low exclamations of "We must hunt him up!"

"We must all turn out!"

When Pierre Delarue returned he found the feud forgotten. Men were running hither and thither getting horses and carriages ready, a long line of men and boys straggled out across the mesa, the Main street barrier, which had risen sky high when he left the town, had sunk to the middle of the earth, and men who, a few hours before, would have shot to kill, had either opened mouth to the other, rode or walked side by side, talking together of the lost child, as they hurried out to the hills to join in the search.

Mrs. John Daniels, as soon as she rose from the breakfast table, hastened to Mrs. Judge Harlin's house, and together they went to offer sympathy and neighborly kindness to Marguerite. Other women came, and their tear-dyed lids told how the mother-sympathy in their hearts had already opened the flood-gates of feeling. None of them thought it possible that the child could be found alive, though they talked encouragingly with Marguerite. But among themselves they said, "Poor girl! It will kill her!"

Marguerite wished to join the searchers on the mesa, but the women would not let her go. She had not slept during the night, and her usually blooming face was pale and drawn and her eyes were wide and brilliant. When her father came she appealed to him.

"No, my dear, you can do no good out there. Stay here and be ready to take care of him when we bring him home. We shall find him, my dear, we shall find him. Keep up your courage and save all your strength for the time when it will be needed."

So Marguerite stood on her veranda and watched the people stringing out to the hills, men and boys and even a few women, on foot, on horseback, in carts and carriages and wagons. She could not shut from her eyes the vision of her little Bye-Bye alone, far out on the hills in the darkness and cold--the little baby Bye-Bye, who, if he wakened in the night, had always to be taken into her own bed and cuddled in her arms before he could sleep again.

Judge Truman, of the district court, reached Las Plumas on Sunday and prepared to open the court and call the case of Emerson Mead on Monday morning. The sheriff and his deputy brought Mead out of the jail and started to conduct him to the court-house. Suddenly the bell of the Methodist church began to ring violently; a moment later that of the Catholic convent added its sharp tones, and the fire bell, over by the plaza, joined their clamor.

"What are those bells ringing for, John," said Mead to Daniels.

"Haven't you heard about Frenchy Delarue's kid? He was lost on the mesa last night and the whole town is turning out to hunt him. They are ringing the bells to call out everybody that hasn't gone already."

Mead stopped short at the words "Frenchy Delarue's kid."

"Little Paul Delarue?" he asked in quick, sharp tones.

"Yes, the little fellow with the yellow curls."

Without a word Mead turned sharply on his heel and ran with long strides down Main street toward Delarue's house. The hands of the two men went instinctively to their revolvers, then their eyes met, and Daniels said:

"I guess we'd better not touch him, Jim."

At that moment Judge Truman turned the corner, just from the court-house, and saw the escaping prisoner.

"Let him go, Mr. Sheriff," he said. "His help will be valuable in the search. Better go yourself, and take as many with you as you can. I have adjourned court and told everybody to hurry out to the mesa, and I'm going myself as soon as I can get a horse."

Emerson Mead ran at the top of his speed to the Delarue house, going there without thought of why he did it, feeling only that Marguerite was in deepest trouble, and all his mind filled with the idea that it would kill her if anything happened to the child. As he entered the gate Marguerite saw him and rushed down from the veranda.

"How did it happen?" he asked hastily.

"I took him out to walk with me on the mesa yesterday afternoon, and he slipped away from me and I could not find him."

"Can you tell me where you saw him last?"

"Let me go with you! I can show you the very place!"

"Are you strong enough? Can you stand it? You are very pale!"

"Yes, yes! It will not be so hard as to stay here and wait! Let me go with you and help you!"

"Come, then, quick!"

She s.n.a.t.c.hed her little white sunbonnet from a chair on the porch and they hurried off. Walking swiftly and silently they pa.s.sed through the back streets of the town and across vacant lots and hurried over the rising plain until they came to the place in the rolling hills where the child had disappeared.

"It was here," said Marguerite. "I am very sure of the place. He stood beside me and while I was thinking about--something that troubled me, and reading a letter, he slipped away. I was sure he had only run down the hill into the arroyo, but when I looked for him, and it seemed hardly more than a minute, I could not find him."

Mead looked about for footprints, but the ground had been trampled by scores of feet since the night before, and tracks of shoes in many sizes covered the sandy earth. A few scattered searchers were near them, but the great ma.s.s of people could be seen in groups and bunches trailing off over the hills, most of them headed to the northeast. A shout came along the line and one of the men near by ran across the hills to learn its cause.

"What had he been talking about?" Mead asked.

"About Heaven and our mother, and if he could see her if he should go there."

Mead looked about him, thinking there was no clue in that, when his glance rested upon the towering peaks of the Hermosa range, their western slopes soft in the violet shadows of the forenoon, their upreared crags seeming to lean against the very blue of the sky. A sudden memory from his own childish years flashed into his mind.

"I remember when I was a kid I used to think that if I could only get to the top of a mountain I could jump from it into the sky and see G.o.d. Children always think Heaven is in the sky, don't they? Maybe he had some such idea. Let's go straight toward the mountain and see if we can't find his tracks."

They walked down the hill, and in the sand in the bottom of the arroyo Mead's quick eye caught a faint depression. He stopped Marguerite as she was about to step on it, and they knelt together to examine it.

There were other footprints all about, but this one little track had escaped obliteration, and none had noticed it. Marguerite thought it was the size and shape of his shoe, and they went on over the hill, watching the ground closely, but seeing nothing more. A man came running back to tell them that a child's footprints had been found near the mountain road, two miles or more to the northward. Marguerite wished to go there at once.

"Yes, certainly, go if you wish," said Mead, "but I think I will stay here. If they have found his tracks there are plenty of people there to follow them, but I am anxious to follow this lead."

Marguerite said she would stay with him, and the others hurried over the mesa to the mountain road, leaving the two alone. They walked slowly up and down the hills toward the mountains, finding in one place a little curved depression, as if from the toe of the child's shoe. And presently, close behind a clump of bushes, they saw two little shoe-prints clearly defined in the sand. They were so close to the bush that they had escaped detection.

"Why, he must have hid here while I was looking for him!" Marguerite exclaimed, "for I came to the top of the hill, not more than twenty feet away! He must have hid behind this big bush and kept very still when he heard me calling, and that was how he got away from me!"