XV
When the solid earth quakes, though it move but a thousandth of an inch beneath our feet, the human brain reels and we become dizzy, sick, and afraid. So, too, at the thought that some trusted friend has played us false, the mind turns back upon itself and we doubt the stability of everything – for a moment. Then, as we find all the trees straight up, the world intact, and the hills in their proper places, we cast the treacherous doubts aside and listen to the voice of reason.
For one awful moment Hooker saw himself betrayed by his friend, either through weakness or through guile; and then his mind straightened itself and he remembered that Phil was in jail.
What more natural, then, than that the rurales should search his pockets and give the ore to Aragon? He stooped and picked up the chunk of rock – that precious, pocket-worn specimen that had brought them the first sure promise of success – and wiped it on his sleeve.
Mechanically he placed it beside the other piece which Aragon had gouged from the ledge, and while he gazed at them he wondered what to do – to leave their mine and go to his friend, or to let his friend wait and stand guard by their treasure – and his heart told him to go to his friend.
So he swung up on his horse and followed slowly, and as soon as it was dark he rode secretly through Old Fortuna and on till he came to the jail. It was a square stone structure, built across the street from the cantina in order to be convenient for the drunks, and as Bud rode up close and stared at it, some one hailed him through the bars.
"Hello there, pardner," called Hooker, swinging down and striding over to the black window, "how long have they had you in here?"
"Two days," answered Phil from the inner darkness; "but it seems like a lifetime to me. Say, Bud, there's a Mexican in here that's got the jim-jams – regular tequila jag – can't you get me out?"
"Well, I sure will!" answered Bud. "What have they got you in for? Where's our friend, Don Juan? Why didn't he let me know?"
"You can search me!" railed De Lancey. "Seems like everybody quits you down here the minute you get into trouble. I got arrested night before last by those damned rurales– Manuel Del Rey was behind it, you can bet your life on that – and I've been here ever since!"
"Well, what are you pinched for? Who do I go and see?"
"Pinched for nothing!" cried De Lancey bitterly. "Pinched because I'm a Mexican citizen and can't protect myself! I'm incomunicado for three days!"
"Well, I'll get you out, all right," said Hooker, leaning closer against the bars. "Here, have a smoke – did they frisk you of your makings?"
"No," snapped De Lancey crossly, "but I'm out of everything by this time. Bud, I tell you I've had a time of it! They threw me in here with this crazy, murdering Mexican and I haven't had a wink of sleep for two days. He's quiet now, but I don't want any more."
"Well, say," began Bud again, "what are you charged with? Maybe I can grease somebody's paw and get you out tonight!"
There was an awkward pause at this, and finally De Lancey dropped his white face against the bars and his voice became low and beseeching.
"I'll tell you, Bud," he said, "I haven't been quite on the square with you – I've been holding out a little. But you know how it is – when a fellow's in love. I've been going to see Gracia!"
"Oh!" commented Hooker, and stood very quiet while he waited.
"Yes, I've been going to see her," hurried on Phil. "I know I promised; but honest, Bud, I couldn't help it. It just seemed as if my whole being was wrapped up in her, and I had to do it. She'd be looking for me when I came and went – and then I fixed it with her maid to take her a letter. And then I met her secretly, back by the garden gate. You know they've got some holes punched in the wall – loopholed during the fight last summer – and we'd – "
"Sure, I'll take your word for that," broke in Hooker harshly. "But get to the point! What are you pinched for?"
"Well," went on De Lancey, his voice quavering at the reproof, "I was going to tell you, if you'll listen to me. Somebody saw us there and told Aragon – he shut her up for a punishment and she slipped me out a note. She was lonely, she said. And that night – well, I couldn't stand it – I hired the string band and we went down there in a hack to give her a serenade. But this cad, Manuel del Rey, who has been acting like a jealous ass all along, swooped down on us with a detachment of his rurales and took us all to jail. He let the musicians out the next morning, but I've been here ever since."
"Yes, and what are you charged with?" demanded Bud bruskly.
"Drunk," confessed Phil, and Bud grunted.
"Huh!" he said, "and me out watching that mine night and day!"
"Oh, I know I've done you dirt, Bud," wailed De Lancey; "but I didn't mean to, and I'll never do it again."
"Never do what?" inquired Bud roughly.
"I won't touch another drop of booze as long as I'm in Mexico!" cried Phil. "Not a drop!"
"And how about the girl?" continued Bud inexorably. "Her old man was out and tried to jump our mine to-day – how about her?"
"Well," faltered De Lancey, "I'll – she – "
"You know your promise!" reminded Bud.
"Yes; I know. But – oh, Bud, if you knew how loyal I've been to you – if you knew what offers I've resisted – the mine stands in my name, you know."
"Well?"
"Well, Aragon came around to me last week and said if I'd give him a half interest in it he'd – well, never mind – it was a great temptation. But did I fall for it? Not on your life! I know you, Bud, and I know you're honest – you'd stay by me to the last ditch, and I'll do the same by you. But I'm in love, Bud, and that would make a man forget his promise if he wasn't true as steel."
"Yes," commented Hooker dryly. "I don't reckon I can count on you much from now on. Here, take a look at this and see what you make of it." He drew the piece of ore that he had taken from Aragon from his pocket and held it up in the moonlight. "Well, feel of it, then," he said. "Shucks, you ought to know that piece of rock, Phil – it's the first one we found in our mine!"
"No!" exclaimed De Lancey, starting back. "Why – where'd you get it?"
"Never mind where I got it!" answered Hooker. "The question is: What did you do with it?"
"Well, I might as well come through with it," confessed Phil, the last of his assurance gone. "I gave it to Gracia!"
"And I took it away from Aragon," continued Bud, "while he was digging some more chunks out of our mine. So that is your idea of being true as steel, is it? You've done noble by me and Kruger, haven't you? Yes, you've been a good pardner, I don't think!"
"Well, don't throw me down, Bud!" pleaded Phil. "There's some mistake somewhere. Her father must have found it and taken it away! I'd stake my life on it that Gracia would never betray me!"
"Well, think it over for a while," suggested Bud, edging his words with sarcasm. "I'm going up to the hotel!"
"No; come back!" cried De Lancey, clamoring at the bars. "Come on back, Bud! Here!" he said, thrusting his hand out through the heavy irons. "I'll give you my word for it – I won't see her again until we get our title! Will that satisfy you? Then give me your hand, pardner – I'm sorry I did you wrong!"
"It ain't me," replied Hooker soberly, as he took the trembling hand; "it's Kruger. But if you'll keep your word, Phil, maybe we can win out yet. I'm going up to find the comisario."
A brief interview with that smiling individual and the case of Phil De Lancey was laid bare. He had been engaged in a desperate rivalry with Manuel del Rey for the hand of Gracia Aragon, and his present incarceration was not only for singing rag-time beneath the Aragon windows, but for trying to whip the captain of the rurales when the latter tried to place him under arrest.
And De Lancey was the prisoner not of the comisario, but of the captain of the rurales. Sore at heart, Bud rode up through the Mexican quarters to the cuartel of the rurales, but the captain was inexorable.
"No, señor," he said, waving an eloquent finger before his nose, "I cannot release your friend. No, señor."
"But what is he charged with," persisted Bud, "and when is his trial? You can't keep him shut up without a trial."
At this the captain of the rurales lifted his eyebrows and one closely waxed mustachio and smiled mysteriously.
"Y como no?" he inquired. "And why not? Is he not a Mexican citizen?"
"Well, perhaps he is," thundered Bud, suddenly rising to his full height, "but I am not! I am an American, Señor Capitan, and there are other Americans! If you hold my friend without a trial I will come and tear your jail down – and the comisario will not stop me, either!"
"Ah!" observed the dandy little captain shrugging his mustachio once more and blinking, and while Hooker raged back and forth he looked him over appraisingly.
"One moment!" he said at last, raising a quieting hand. "These are perilous times, señor, in which all the defenders of Fortuna should stand together. I do not wish to have a difference with the Americans when Bernardo Bravo and his men are marching to take our town. No, I value the friendship of the valiant Americans very highly – so I will let your friend go. But first he must promise me one thing – not to trouble the Señor Aragon by making further love to his daughter!"
"Very well!" replied Bud. "He has already promised that to me; so come on and let him out."
"To you?" repeated Manuel del Rey with a faint smile. "Then, perhaps – "
"Perhaps nothing!" broke in Hooker shortly. "Come on!"
He led the way impatiently while the captain, his saber clanking, strode out and rode beside him. He was not a big man, this swashing captain of the rural police, but he was master, nevertheless, of a great district, from Fortuna to the line, with a reputation for quick work in the pursuance of his duty as well as in the primrose ways of love.
In the insurrections and raidings of the previous summer he had given the coup de grâce with his revolver to more than one embryo bandit, and in his love-affairs he had shown that he could be equally summary.
The elegant Feliz Luna, who for a time had lingered near the charming Gracia, had finally found himself up against a pair of pistols with the option of either fighting Captain del Rey or returning to his parents. The young man concluded to beat a retreat. For a like offense Philip De Lancey had been unceremoniously thrown into jail; and now the capitan turned his attention to Bud Hooker, whose mind he had not yet fathomed.
"Excuse me, señor," he said, after a brief silence, "but your words left me in doubt – whether to regard you as a friend or a rival."
"What?" demanded Bud, whose knowledge of Spanish did not extend to the elegancies.
"You said," explained the captain politely, "that your friend had promised you he would not trouble the lady further. Does that mean that you are interested in her yourself, or merely that you perceive the hopelessness of his suit and wish to protect him from a greater evil that may well befall him? For look you, señor, the girl is mine, and no man can come between us!"
"Huh!" snorted Bud, who caught the last all right. Then he laughed shortly and shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said gruffly, "but he will stay away, all right."
"Muy bien," responded Del Rey carelessly and, dismounting at the jail, he threw open the door and stood aside for his rival to come out.
"Muchas gracias, Señor Capitan," saluted Bud, as the door clanged to behind his pardner. But Phil still bristled with anger and defiance, and the captain perceived that there would be no thanks from him.
"It is nothing," he replied, bowing politely, and something in the way he said it made De Lancey choke with rage. But there by the cárcel door was not the place for picking quarrels. They went to the hotel, where Don Juan, all apologies for his apparent neglect – which he excused on the ground that De Lancey had been held incomunicado– placated them as best he could and hurried on to the news.
"My gracious, Don Felipe," he cried, "you don't know how sorry I was to see you in jail, but the captain's orders were that no one should go near you – and in Mexico we obey the rurales, you know. Otherwise we are placed against a wall and shot.
"But have you heard the news from down below? Ah, what terrible times they are having there – ranches raided, women stolen, rich men held for ransom! Yes, it is worse than ever! Already I am receiving telegrams to prepare rooms for the refugees, and the people are coming in crowds.
"Our friend, the Señor Luna, and his son Feliz have been taken by Bernardo Bravo! Only by an enormous ransom was he able to save his wife and daughters, and his friends must now pay for him.
"At the ranch of the rich Spaniard, Alvarez, there has been a great battle in which the red-flaggers were defeated with losses. Now Bernardo Bravo swears he will avenge his men, and Alvarez has armed his Yaqui workmen.
"He is a brave man, this Colonel Alvarez, and his Yaquis are all warriors from the hills; but Bernardo has gathered all the insurrectos in the country together – Campos, Rojas, the brothers Escaboza – and they may crush him with their numbers. But now there is other news – that they are marching upon Fortuna and El Tigre, to seize the mines and mills and hold the rich American companies up for ransom.
"No, señores, you must not return to your camp. Remain here, and you shall still have your room, though Spanish gentlemen sleep on the floors. No, allow me, Don Felipe! I wish to show you how highly I value your friendship! Only because we cannot disobey the rurales did I suffer you to lie in jail; but now you shall be my guest, you shall – "
"Nope," answered Bud; "we're safer out at the mine."
He glanced at De Lancey, in whose mind rosy visions were beginning to gather, and he, too, declined – with a sigh.
"Make it a bed for the night," he said. "I've got to get out of this town before I tangle with Del Rey again and find myself back in jail. And now lead me to it – I'm perishing for a bath and a sleep!"
They retired early and got up early – for Bud was haunted by fears. But as they passed through Old Fortuna the worst happened to him – they met Gracia, mounted on a prancing horse and followed by a rural guard, and she smote him to the heart with a smile.
It was not a smile for Phil, gone astray and wounding by chance; it was a dazzling, admiring smile for Bud alone, and he sat straighter in his saddle. But Phil uttered a groan and struck his horse with the quirt.
"She cut me!" he moaned.
"Aw, forget it!" growled Bud, and they rode on their way in silence.
XVI
At their camp by the Eagle Tail mine, even though they held it still and were heirs to half its gold, the two pardners were glum and sorrowful. The treacheries which Bud had forgiven in a moment of exaltation came back to him now as he brooded; and he eyed his friend askance, as if wondering what he would do next.
He recalled all the circumstances of their quest – the meeting with Kruger, Phil's insistence on the adventure, the oath of loyalty which they had sworn; and then the gradual breaking down of their brotherly devotion until now they were strangers at heart. Phil sat by himself, keeping his thoughts to himself, and he stood aloof while he waited for the worst to happen.
From the first day of their undertaking Hooker had felt that it was unlucky, and now he knew that the end was coming. His friend was lost to him, lost alike to a sense of loyalty and honor; he gloomed by himself and thought only of Gracia Aragon.
The oath which Phil himself had forced upon Bud was broken and forgotten; but Bud, by a sterner standard, felt bound to keep his part. One thing alone could make him break it – his word to Henry Kruger. The Eagle Tail mine he held in trust, and half of it was Kruger's.
"Phil," he said at last, when his mind was weary of the ceaseless grind of thoughts, "I believe that mineral agent is holding back our papers. I believe old Aragon has passed him a hundred or so and they're in cahoots to rob us. But I'll tell you what I'll do – you give me a power of attorney to receive those papers for you, and I'll go in and talk Dutch to the whole outfit."
"What do you want to do that for?" demanded De Lancey querulously. "Why can't you wait a while? Those papers have to go to Moctezuma and Hermosillo and all over the City of Mexico and back, and it takes time. What do you want to make trouble for?"
"Well, I'll tell you, Phil," answered Bud honestly. "I've got a hunch if we don't grab them papers soon we won't get 'em at all. Here these rebels are working closer all the time, and Aragon is crowding us. I want to get title and turn it over to Kruger, before we lose out somewhere."
"What's the matter with me going in and talking to the agent?" suggested Phil. Then, as he saw his pardner's face, he paused and laughed bitterly.
"You don't trust me any more, do you, Bud?" he said.
"Well, it ain't that so much," evaded Hooker; "but I sure don't trust that Manuel del Rey. The first time you go into town he's going to pinch you, and I know it."
"I'm going to go in all the same," declared De Lancey, "and if the little squirt tries to stop me – "
"Aw, Phil," entreated Bud, "be reasonable, can't ye? You got no call to go up against that little feller. He's a bad actor, I can see that, and I believe he'd kill you if he got the chance. But wait a little while – maybe he'll get took off in the fights this summer!"
"No, he's too cursed mean for that!" muttered De Lancey, but he seemed to take some comfort in the thought.
As for Bud, he loafed around for a while, cleaning up camp, making smoke for the absent Yaqui, and looking over the deserted mine, but something in the changed atmosphere made him restless and uneasy.
"I wonder where that dogged Indian went to?" he said for the hundredth time, as the deep shadows gathered in the valley. "By Joe, Phil, if Amigo comes back I'm going to go ahead on that mine! I want to keep him around here, and we might as well get out some ore, if it's only for a grub-stake. Come on – what do you say? We'll open her up – there's nothing to hide now. Well, I'll do it myself, then – this setting around is getting on my nerves."
His far-seeing eyes, trained from his boyhood to search the hills for cattle, scanned the tops of the ridges as he spoke; and while he sat and pondered they noted every rock.
Then at last he rose up slowly and gazed at a certain spot. He waved his arm, beckoning the distant point of blackness to come in, and soon from around a point in the cañon the Yaqui appeared, bearing a heavy Mauser rifle on his arm.
Across his broad breast hung the same familiar cartridge-belt, two more encircled his hips, and he walked with his head held high, like the warrior that he was.
Evidently his flight had led to the place where his arms had been hid, for he wore the regulation knife bayonet at his hip and around his hat was the red ribbon of his people, but Bud was too polite to ask him about his journey. Since his coming the Yaqui had always maintained a certain mystery, and now, though his eyes were big with portent and he smiled at the jests about his gun, he simply waved his hand to the south and east and murmured:
"Muchos revoltosos!"
"Seguro!" answered Bud jokingly. "But have you killed any?"
"Not yet!" returned the Indian, and he did not smile at that.
"I wonder what that Indian is waiting around here for?" remarked Phil in English. "He must have his eye on somebody."
"Yeah, I bet," agreed Bud, regarding his savage friend with a speculative interest. "Most of them Yaqui soldiers was farm-hands in this country before they rounded them up. I reckon he's looking for the man that had him deported.
"Tired, Amigo?" he inquired in Spanish, and Ignacio gravely acknowledged that he was, a little.
"Then drink plenty coffee," went on Hooker. "Eat lots – to-morrow we go to work in the mine."
"Tomorrow?" repeated the Indian, as if considering his other engagements. "Good!" He nodded a smiling assent.
After a month and more of idleness Bud and Amigo performed prodigies of labor in the cut, rolling down boulders, lifting them up on the tram, and clearing away the face of the cliff. Their tram was ramshackle, their track the abandoned rails from older workings, and their tools little more than their hands, but by noon the last broken fragments were heaved aside and the shattered ledge revealed.
A low cry of wonder escaped the Yaqui as he gazed at the rich vein of ore, and as he saw the grim smile on Bud's rugged countenance he showed his white teeth in sympathy.
"Que bueno!" he murmured. "How good!" gathering the precious fragments in his handkerchief.
At the camp they crushed the picked ore in a mortar and panned it in the creek, and for the moment De Lancey dropped his air of preoccupancy as he stared at the streak of pure gold. Like a yellow film it lay along the edge of the last fine tailings, and when skilful washing had left it bare, it gleamed like a jewel in the pan.
"By Jove, Bud!" he cried, "that's the real stuff – and it goes a dollar to the pan easy!"
"Sure thing!" assented Bud. "Let's pound a lot of it and wash it as we go – then we'll have some getaway money when things break loose here!"
"I'll go you!" answered Phil, and Bud's heart warmed toward him as he watched him pound up a piece of ore and go to swirling the dirt in the pan.
But alas for the fond hopes he cherished! Even as he washed out the gold Phil's mind wandered far away, back to the hotel where Gracia Aragon sat watching by the window.
Her hair was the color of gold, spun fine and refined again; yes, it was worth more than this golden dross that he caught in the bottom of his pan. And what was gold if he could not have her?
He paused in his labor and a dreamy smile parted his lips – then he broke into a song:
"Sweet honey-bee, be sweet to me,
My heart is free, but here's the key;
Lock up the garden gate; honey, you know I'll wait,
Under the rambler rose tree-ee."
Once more he returned to his work, humming now the dulcet strains of "The Merry Widow," and when Bud came back from the cut it was to hear a coon song:
"'Cos I want yer, ma honey, yes, I want yer, want yer, want yer;
'Cos I want yer, ma honey, yes, I do!"
So he labored and sang, until finally the labor ceased, and then the song. He went about other things, and other thoughts, not so cheerful, filled his mind.
Bud returned sadly to the company of the Yaqui and gave it up. Perhaps his pardner had been right when, riding out of Agua Negra, he had enlarged upon the dangers of Old Mexico, "the land of mañana and broken promises." Certainly his speech had been prophetic in regard to dark-eyed women; for, even as he had said, nothing seemed to please them better than to come between man and man.
It was a madness, he felt sure – the spell of the hot country, where the women look out from behind barred windows and men sing beneath their balconies at midnight. Already it had cost him his pardner – would it conquer his will as well and make him forget his trust?
In his impotence the idea of some perverse fate – some malign influence over which he had no control – was strong with Hooker; yet when the blow fell he was not prepared for it. It was the third day of their mining and, with Amigo, he had been driving into the face of the cliff.
Already their round of holes was drilled, the fuses cut, the charges set, and as he retreated before the blast he noticed absently that Cruz Mendez was in camp. The shots followed one after another, and he counted them to make sure there was no miss-fire – then he looked around and discovered that Phil was gone.
"Where is Don Felipe?" he inquired of Mendez, and that low-browed brother of the burro bowed fawningly before he replied.
"He has gone to Fortuna," he said, wiping his face with the bath-towel which he wore about his neck.
"And what for?" demanded Bud imperatively.
"I don't know, señor," writhed Mendez. "I brought him a letter."
"From whom?"
"I don't know – it was given to me by Juana, the servant of the Señorita Aragon."
"Ah!" breathed Bud, and pretended not to be surprised.
"Well, let 'im go!" he said to himself, and went back into the mine. It was what he had expected in a way, and his code bade him keep his hands off. But the next morning, when the evil was either avoided or done, he thrust his rifle into its sling and started for the town. At the jail he halted and gazed in through the windows – then he rode up to the hotel and asked for Phil.
"What? Have you not heard?" clamored Don Juan. "Ah, it is most unfortunate – I would not have had it happen for the world!"
"What?" inquired Bud succinctly.
"Why, the quarrel – the encounter with Capitan del Rey! I did my best, I assure you, to prevent it, for the town has been put under martial law and the captain is in full charge. They quarreled over the favor of a lady, and now your friend is in jail."
"I didn't see him when I come by," observed Hooker.
"Ah, no – not in the cárcel– in the cuartel, the guard-house of the rurales!"
"Much obliged!" nodded Bud, and rode on through the town. The street of the Mexican quarter was filled with strange people hurrying to and fro; long pack-trains loaded with trunks and curious bundles came swinging up from below; and a pair of rurales, looking fierce under their huge sombreros stood guard by the cuartel door.
"Where is the capitan?" demanded Hooker. After requesting him to hang his pistol-belt on his saddle-horn, a sergeant showed him in to the chief.
Manuel del Rey was very busy with papers and orders, but as the American appeared in the doorway he rose and greeted him with a bow.
"Ah, good morning, señor," he said, with one swift glance to read his mood. "You are in search of your friend – no?"
"Sí, señor," answered Hooker, but with none of the animosity which the captain had expected. "Where is he?"
"I regret very much," began the officer, speaking with military formality, "but it is my duty to inform you that the Señor De Lancey has left Fortuna. Last night he did me the honor to enlist in my company of rurales– he is now on his way to the north to assist in guarding the railroad."
"What?" shouted Bud, hardly able to believe his ears. But when the captain repeated it he no longer doubted his Spanish.
"But why?" he cried. "Why did he join the rurales?"
"Ah, señor," shrugged Del Rey, "was he not a Mexican citizen? Very well, then; he could be summoned for military service. But the circumstances were these: Your friend came yesterday to this town, where I am at present military commander, and made an unprovoked assault upon my person. For this, according to law, he should have been shot at sunrise. But, not wishing to occasion unpleasantness with the Americans now residing here, I offered him the alternative of military service. He is now enlisted as a rural for a term of five years."
"Five years!" exclaimed Hooker; and then, instead of starting the expected rough-house – upon which the rural guards were prepared to jump on his back – he simply threw down his hat and cursed – not anyone in particular, but everything in general; and at the end of it he turned once more upon the watchful captain.
"Dispenseme, señor," he said, "this is the truth, is it?"
"Sí, señor," returned Captain Del Rey. "But before leaving with his detachment your friend wrote this letter, which he requested me to deliver to you."
He offered with a flourish a sealed envelope, from which Bud extracted a short note.
Dear Bud:
When you get this I shall be far away. I must have been mad, but it is too late now. Rather than be executed I have enlisted as a rural. But I shall try to be brave for her sake. Take care of her, Bud – for me!
Phil.
Bud read it through again and meditated ponderously. Then he folded it up and thrust it into his pocket.
"Muchas gracias, Señor Capitan," he said, saluting and turning upon his heel; and while all the Mexicans marveled at the inscrutable ways of Americanos, he mounted and rode away.