Kitabı oku: «The Treasure Trail: A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine», sayfa 17

Tula laid her hand over the nuggets and faced him.

“That secret was the secret of Miguel who is dead.”

“But–some old Indian must know–”

Tula shook her head with absolute finality.

“No old Indian in all the world knows that!” she said. “This was a secret of the youth of Miguel, and only when old and dying did he give it for his people. This I,–Tula, child of Miguel tell you.”

Padre Andreas looked from the girl to Kit and back again, knowing that the death of Miguel was a recent thing since it had occurred after the stealing of the women.

“Where did your father die?” he asked.

“In the hills of the desert.”

“And–who had absolving and burial of him?”

“Absolving I do not know, but this man, his friend, had the making of the grave,” she said, indicating Kit, and the eyes of the priest rested again on Kit with a most curious searching regard. Evidently even this little Indian stray of the desert arrived at good fortune under the friendship of the American stranger,–and it was another added to the list of enchantings!

“Ah,” he murmured meaningly, “then this strange señor also has the knowing of this Indian gold? Is it truly gold of the earth, or witches’ gold of red clay?” and he went nearer, reaching his hand to touch it.

“Why all this question when the child offers it for a good Christian use?” demanded Doña Jocasta. “See, here is a piece of it heavy enough to weigh down many lumps of clay, and north or south it will prove welcome ransom. It is a miracle sent by the saints at this time.”

“Would the saints send the red gold of El Alisal to a heretic instead of a son of the church?” he asked. “And this is that gold for which the padres of Soledad paid with their lives long ago. There was never such red gold found in Sonora as that, and the church had its own claim on it;–it is mission gold!”

“No, not now,” said Tula, addressing Doña Jocasta,–“truly not now! They claimed it long ago, but the holding of it was a thing not for them. Fire came out of the clouds to kill them there, and no one saw them alive anymore, and no other priest ever found the gold. This much is found by Miguel, for a dead man’s promise!”

“The girl speaks straight, señora,” ventured Kit. “I have already told General Rotil of the promise, but no good will come of much talk over the quality of gold for that ransom. To carry that message south and bring back the women is a task for council, but outside these walls, no tongue must speak of the gold, else there would be no safety for this maid.”

“Yet a priest may ask how an Americano comes far from his home to guard gold and a maid in Sonora?” retorted Padre Andreas. “Strange affairs move these days in Altar–guns, ammunition, and the gold of dead men! In all these things you have a say, señor, yet you are but young in years, and–”

“Padre,” interrupted Doña Jocasta with a note of command, “he was old enough to save this child from starvation in the desert, and he was old enough to save me when even you could no longer save me, so why object because he has guarded wealth, and means to use it in a way of mercy? Heretic he may be, but he has the trust of Ramon Rotil, and of me. Also it is forbidden to mention this belt or what it covers. I have given my word, and this is no time to halt the task we have set. It would better serve those lost people if you help us find a messenger who is safe.”

It was the first time the new Señora Perez assumed a tone of authority at Soledad, and Kit Rhodes thanked his lucky stars that she was arrayed with him instead of against him, for her eyes glowed green lightning on the priest whose curiosity had gotten him into trouble. Kit could not really blame him, for there was neither priest nor peon of the land who had not had visions of conquest if only the red gold of the Alisal should be conveniently stumbled upon!

And Tula listened to the words of Doña Jocasta as she would have listened to a god.

“I go,” she said eagerly. “The trail it is strange to me, but I will find that way. I think I find in the dark that trail on which the mother of me was going!”

Doña Jocasta patted the hand of the girl, but looked at Kit. “That trail is not for a maid,” she said meaningly. “I came over it, and know.”

“I think it is for me,” he answered. “The promise was mine. I know none of the people, but the names are written. It is eighty miles.”

“Three days.”

“More, double that,” he said thoughtfully, and the eyes of Tula met his in disapproval. It was the merest hint of a frown, but it served. She could do the errand better than she could guard the rest of the gold. If her little belt was lost it was little, but if his store should be found it would be enough to start a new revolution in Sonora;–the men of Rotil and the suspicious padre would unite on the treasure trail. It was the padre who gave him most uneasiness, because the padre was guessing correctly! The dream of a mighty church of the desert to commemorate all the ruined missions of the wilderness, was a great dream for the priest of a little pueblo, and the eyes of the Padre Andreas were alight with keen,–too keen, anticipation.

“I go,” stated Tula again. “No other one is knowing my people.”

“That is a true word,” decided Padre Andreas, “a major-domo of evil mind at Linda Vista could take the gold and send north whatever unruly vagabonds he had wished to be free from. Let the maid go, and I can arrange to see her there safe.”

This kind offer did not receive the approval deserved. Kit wished no man on the trail with Tula who knew of the gold, and Tula herself was not eager to journey into unknown regions with a man of religion, who had already learned from Valencia of the elaborate ceremony planned for a “Judas day!” Little though Tula knew of churchly observances, she had an instinctive fear that she would be detained in the south too long to officiate in this special ceremony on which she had set her heart.

“Not with a priest will I go,” she announced. “He would shut me in a school, and in that place I would die. Clodomiro can go, or Isidro, who is so good and knowing all our people.”

“That is a good thought,” agreed Doña Jocasta, who had no desire that Padre Andreas meet the family of Terain and recount details of the Perez marriage,–not at least until she had worn her official title a little longer and tested the authority it gave her. “That is a good thought, for I have no wish that my house be left without a priest. Señor Rhodes, which man is best?”

But before Kit could answer Ramon Rotil stood in the door, and his eyes went to the papers on the table. Tula had recovered her belt, and fastened it under the manta she wore.

“So! you are working in council, eh?” he asked. “And have arrived at plans? First your own safety, señora?”

“No, señor,–first the bringing back of the people driven off by the slavers. The letter is written; this child is to take it because the people are her people, but a safe man is wanted, and these two I cannot let go. You know José Perez, and his wife must not be without a man of religion as guard, yet he alone would not save me from others, hence the American señor–”

“Sure, that is a safe thought,” and he took the seat offered by Kit. But he shook his head after listening to their suggestions.

“No. Isidro is too old, and Clodomiro with his flying ribbands of a would-be lover, is too young for that trail. You want–you want–”

He paused as his mind evidently went searching among his men for one dependable. Then he smiled at Kit.

“You saved me the right man, señor! Who would be better than the foreman of Soledad? Would it not be expected that Señora Perez would send the most important of the ranchmen? Very well then. Marto is safe, he will go.”

“But Marto–” began Padre Andreas, when Rotil faced about, staring him into silence.

“Marto will return here to Soledad today,” he said, and the face of the priest went pale. It was as if he had said that the task of Marto on the east trail would be ended.

“Yes, Marto Cavayso has been at Hermosillo,” assented Doña Jocasta. “He will know all the ways to arrive quickly.”

“That will be attended to. Will you, señor, see to it that horse and provision are made ready for the trail? And you, señora? Soledad in the wilderness is no good place for a lady. When this matter of the slaves is arranged, will it please you to ride south, or north? Troops of the south will be coming this way;–it will be a land of soldiers and foraging.”

“How shall I answer that?” murmured Doña Jocasta miserably. “In the south José Perez may make life a not possible thing for me,–and in the north I would be a stranger.”

“José Perez will not make trouble; yet trouble might be made,–at first,” said Rotil avoiding her eyes, and turning again to Kit. “Señor, by the time Marto gets back from the south, the pack mules will be here again. Until they are gone from Soledad I trust you in charge of Señora Perez. She must have a manager, and there is none so near as you.”

“At her service,” said Kit promptly, “but this place–”

“Ai, that is it,” agreed Rotil. “North is the safer place for women alone, and you–did you not say that on Granados there were friends?”

“Why, yes, General,” replied Kit. “My friend, Captain Pike, is somewhere near, and the owner of Granados is a lady, and among us we’ll do our best. But it’s a hard trip, and I’ve only one gun.”

“You will take your choice of guns, horses, or men,” decided Rotil. “That is your work. Also you will take with you the evidence of Señora Perez on that matter of the murder. The padre can also come in on that,–so it will be service all around.”

Chappo came to the door to report that all was ready for the trail, and Rotil stood up, and handed to Doña Jocasta the marriage contract.

“Consider the best way of protecting this until you reach an alcalde and have a copy made and witnessed,” he said warningly. “It protects your future. The fortunes of war may take all the rest of us, but the wife of Perez needs the record of our names; see to it!”

She looked up at him as if to speak, but no words came. He gazed curiously at her bent head, and the slender hands over the papers. In his life of turmoil and bloodshed he had halted to secure for her the right to a principality. In setting his face to the east, and the battle line, he knew the chance was faint that he would ever see her again, and his smile had in it a touch of self-derision at the thought,–for after all he was nothing to her!

“So–that is all,” he said, turning away. “You come with me a little ways, señor, and to you, señora, adios!”

“Go with God, Ramon Rotil,” she murmured, “and if ever a friend is of need to you, remember the woman to whom you gave justice and a name!”

“Adios,” he repeated, and his spurs tinkled as he strode through the patio to the portal where the saddle horses were waiting. The pack mules were already below the mesa, and reached in a long line over the range towards the cañon of the eastern trail.

“You have your work cut out,” he said to Kit. “For one thing, Marto Cavayso will carry out orders, but you must not have him enter a room where Doña Jocasta may be. It would be to offend her and frighten him. He swears to the saints that he was bewitched. That is as may be, but it is an easy way out! When the pack mules come back, and Marto is here, it is for you two to do again the thing we did last night. I may need Soledad on another day, and would keep all its secrets. After you have loaded the last of the guns it is best for you to go quickly. Here is a permit in case you cross any land held by our men;–it is for you, your family, and all your baggage without molestation. Señora Perez has the same. This means you can take over the border any of the furnishings of Soledad required by the lady for a home elsewhere. The wagons sent north by Perez will serve well for that, and they are hers.”

“But if he should send men of his own to interfere–”

“He won’t,” stated Rotil. “You are capitan, and Soledad is under military rule. There is only one soul here over which your word is not law. I have given the German Judas to your girl, and the women can have their way with him. He is as a dead man; call her.”

There was no need, for Tula had followed at a discreet distance, and from beside a pillar gazed regretfully after her hero, the Deliverer, whom she felt every man should follow.

“Oija, muchacha!” he said as Kit beckoned her forward, “go to Fidelio. He is over there filling the cantins at the well. Tell him to give you the key to the quarters of El Aleman, and hearken you!–I wash my hands of him from this day. If you keep him, well, but if he escapes, the loss is to you. I go, and not again will Ramon Rotil trap a Judas for your hellishness.”

Tula sped to Fidelio, secured the key and was back to hold the stirrup of Rotil as he was helped to the saddle.

“If God had made me a man instead of a maid, I would ride the world as your soldier, my General,” she said, holding the key to her breast as an amulet.

“Send your lovers instead,” he said, and laughed, “for you will have them when you get more beef on your bones. Adios, soldier girl!”

She peered up at him under her mane of black hair.

“Myself,–I think that is true,” she stated gravely, “also my lovers, when they come, must follow you! When I see my own people safe in Palomitas it may be that I, Tula, will also follow you,–and the help of the child of Miguel may not be a little help, my General.”

Kit Rhodes alone knew what she meant. Her intense admiration for the rebel leader of the wilderness had brought the glimmer of a dream to her;–the need of gold was great as the need of guns, and for the deliverer of the tribes what gift too great?

But the others of the guard laughed at the crazy saying of the brown wisp of a girl. They had seen women of beauty give him smiles, and more than one girl follow his trail for his lightest word, but to none of them did it occur that this one called by him the young crane, or the possessor of many devils, could bring more power to his hand than a regiment of the women who were comrades of a light hour.

But her solemnity amused Rotil, and he swept off his hat with exaggerated courtesy.

“I await the day, Tulita. Sure, bring your lovers,–and later your sons to the fight! While you wait for them tell Marto Cavayso he is to have a care of you as if you were the only child of Ramon Rotil! I too will have a word with him of that. See to it, Capitan of the roads, and adios!”

He grinned at the play upon the name of Rhodes, and whirled his horse, joining his men, who sat their mounts and watched at a little distance.

Within the portal was gathered all those left of the household of Soledad to whom the coming and the going of the revolutionary leader was the great event of their lives, and all took note of the title of “Capitan” and the fact that the Americano and the Indian girl had his last spoken words.

They had gone scarce a mile when Fidelio spurred his horse back and with Mexican dash drew him back on his haunches as Kit emerged from the corridor.

“General Rotil’s compliments,” he said with a grin, “and Marto will report to you any event requiring written record,–and silence!”

“Say that again and say it slow,” suggested Kit.

“That is the word as he said it, Capitan, ‘requiring the writing of records, and–silence!’”

“I get you,” said Kit, and with a flourish and a clatter, Fidelio was soon lost in the dust.

Kit was by no means certain that he did “get” him. He felt that he had quite enough trouble without addition of records and secrecy for acts of the Deliverer.

CHAPTER XIX
THE RETURN OF TULA

The sentinel palms of Soledad were sending long lines of shadows toward the blue range of the Sierras, and gnarled old orange trees in the ancient mission garden drenched the air with fragrance from many petals.

There had been a sand storm the day before, followed by rain, and all the land was refreshed and sparkling. The pepper trees swung tassels of bloom and the flaming coral of the occotilla glowed like tropic birds poised on wide-reaching wands of green. Meadow larks echoed each other in the tender calls of nesting time, and from the jagged peaks on the east, to far low hills rising out of a golden haze in the west, there was a great quiet and peace brooding over the old mission grounds of the wilderness.

Doña Jocasta paced the outer corridor, watched somberly by Padre Andreas on whom the beauty of the hour was lost.

“Is your heart turned stone that you lift no hand, or speak no word for the soul of a mortal?” he demanded. “Already the terrible women of Palomitas are coming to wait for their Judas, and this is the morning of the day!”

“It is no work of mine, Padre,” she answered wearily. “I am sick,–here!–that the beast has been all these days and nights under a roof near me. I know how the women feel, though I think I would not wait, as they have waited,–for Good Friday.”

“It is murder in your heart to harbor such wickedness of thought,” he insisted. “Your soul is in jeopardy that you do not contemplate forgiveness. Even though a man be a heretic, a priest must do his office when it comes to a sentence of death. After all–he is a human.”

“I do not know that,” replied Doña Jocasta thoughtfully, and she sank into a rawhide chair in the shade of a pillar. “Listen, Padre. I am not learned in books, but I have had new thoughts with me these days. Don Pajarito is telling me of los Alemanos all over the world;–souls they have not, and serpents and toads are their mothers! Here in Mexico we have our flag from old Indian days with the eagle and the snake. Once I heard scholars in Hermosillo talk about that; they said it was from ancient times of sky worship, and the bird was a bird of stars,–also the serpent.”

Padre Andreas lifted his brows in derision at the childishness of Indian astrology.

“Myself, I think the Indian sky knowers had the prophet sight,” went on Doña Jocasta. “They make their eagle on the standard and they put the serpent there of the reason that some day a thing of poison would crawl to the nest of the eagle of Mexico to comrade there. It has crawled over the seas for that, Padre, and the beak and claws and wing of the eagle must all do battle to kill the head and the heart of it;–for the heart of a serpent dies hard, and they breed and hatch their eggs everywhere in the soil of Mexico. Señor Padre, the Indian women of Palomitas are right!–the girl Tula is a child of the eagle, and her stroke at the heart of the German snake will be a true stroke. I will not be one to give the weak word for mercy.”

Her gaze, through half-closed lids, was directed towards the far trail of the cañon where moving dots of dark marked the coming of the Palomitas women. A ray of reflected light touched the jewel green of her eyes like shadowed emeralds in their dusky casket, and the priest, constantly proclaiming the probable loss of her soul, could not but bring his glance again and again to the wondrous beauty of her. She had bloomed like a royal rose in the days of serene rest at Soledad.

“If the heretic Americano gives you these thoughts which are not Christian, it will be a day of good luck when you see the last of him,” was his cold statement as he watched her. “My mind is not well satisfied as to his knowledge of secret things here in Sonora. The Indians say he is an enchanter or Ramon Rotil would never have left him here as capitan with you,–and that belt of gold–”

“But it was not the belt of the Americano!”

“No, but he knows! I tell you that gold is of the gold lost before we were born,–the red gold of the padres’ mine!”

“But the old women are telling me that the gold was Indian gold long before Spanish priests saw the land! Does the Indian girl then not have first right?”

“None has right ahead of the church, since all those pagans are under the rule of church! They are benighted heathen who must come under instruction and authority, else are they as beasts of the field.”

“Still,–if the girl makes use of her little heritage for a pious purpose–”

“Her intent has nothing to do with that secret knowledge of the Americano!” he insisted. “Has he bewitched you also that you have so little interest in a mine of gold in anyone of the arroyas of your land?”

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?”

“José 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.”

“Señor 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 Doña 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 damned 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 Doña 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 pass 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, señor, 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 Doña 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 cañon 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 cañons?” demanded the padre skeptically. “From my window I saw them return.”

“I also,” confessed Doña 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, señora, 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.”

Doña 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.

Doña 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 cañoncita 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 Doña Jocasta in a hushed voice of dread. “She has come, and Señor 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 space 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 God!” whispered Kit. “After all that hell 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.”

“No, I will go. Stay you here to give help to the women. Bring out beds in every corridor. Bring straw and blankets when the beds are done.”

Doña Jocasta put out her hand as he was about to mount.

“And I? What task is mine to help?” she asked, and Kit looked down at her gravely.

“Señora, you have only to be yourself, gracious and kind of heart. Also remember this is the first chance in the lands of Soledad to show the natives they have not alone a padrona, but a protecting friend. In days to come it may be a memory of comfort to you.”

Then he mounted, and led the string of horses out to meet the exiles. While she looked after him murmuring, “In days to come?”

And to the padre she said, “I had ceased to think of days to come, for the days of my life had reached the end of all I could see or think. He gives hope even in the midst of sadness,–does the Americano.”

Kit met the band where the trail forked to Palomitas and Mesa Blanca. Some wanted to go direct to their own homes and people, while Marto argued that food and rest and a priest awaited them at Soledad, and because of their dead, they should have prayers.

Tula said nothing. She sat on the sand, and caressed a knife with a slightly curved blade,–a knife not Mexican, yet familiar to Kit, and like a flash he recalled seeing one like it in the hand of Conrad at Granados.

She did not even look up when he halted beside her though the others welcomed with joy the sight of the horses for the rest of the trail.

“Tula!” he said bending over her, “Tula, we come to welcome you,–my horse is for your riding.”