Starr, of the Desert, B. M. Bower [historical books to read txt] 📗

ran back up the rocky gulch that led to the ridge he had just left, behind Medina's house.

He was puffing when he reached the place where he had lain between the two boulders, and he stopped there to listen again. It came,—the sound he instinctively expected, yet dreaded to hear; the sound of a woman's high-keyed wailing.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN "IS HE THEN DEAD—MY SON?"

Starr hurried down the bluff, slipping, sliding, running where the way was clear of rocks. So presently he came to the stone wall, vaulted over it, and stopped beside the tragic little group dimly outlined in the house yard just off the porch.

"My son—my son!" the old woman was wailing, on her knees beside a long, inert figure lying on its back on the hard-packed earth. Back of her the peona hovered, hysterical, useless. Luis, half dressed and a good deal dazed yet from sleep and the suddenness of his waking, knelt beside his mother, patting her shoulder in futile affection, staring down bewilderedly at Estan.

So Starr found them. Scenes like this were not so unusual in his life, which had been lived largely among unruly passions. He spoke quietly to Luis and knelt to see if the man lived. The señora took comfort from his calm presence and with dumb misery watched his deft movements while he felt for heartbeats and for the wound.

"But is he then dead, my son?" she wailed in Spanish, when Starr gently laid down upon Estan's breast the hand he had been holding. "But so little while ago he lived and to me he talked. Ah, my son!"

Starr looked at her quietingly. "How, then, did it happen? Tell me, señora, that I may assist," he said, speaking easily the Spanish which she spoke.

"Ah, the good friend that thou art! Ah, my son that I loved! How can I tell what is mystery? Who would harm my son—my little Estan that was so good? Yet a voice called softly from the dark—and me, I heard, though to my bed I had but gone. 'Estan!' called the voice, so low. And my son—ah, my son!—to the door he went swiftly, the lampara in his hand, holding it high—so—that the light may shine into the dark.

"'Who calls?' Me, I heard my son ask—ah, never again will I hear his voice! Out of the door he went—to see the man who called. To the porch-end he came—I heard his steps. Ah, my son! Never again thy dear footsteps will I hear!" And she fell to weeping over him.

"And then? Tell me, señora. What happened next?"

"Ah—the shot that took from me my son! Then feet running away—then I came out—Ah, querido mio, that thou shouldst be torn from thy mother thus!"

"And you don't know—?"

"No, no—no—ah, that my heart should break with sorrow—"

"Hush, mother! 'Twas Apodaca! He is powerful—and Estan would not come into the Alliance. I told him it would be—" Luis, kneeling there, beating his hands together in the dark, spoke with the heedless passion of youth.

"Which Apodaca? Juan?" Starr's voice was low, with the sympathetic tone that pulls open the floodgates of speech when one is stricken hard.

"Not Juan; Juan is a fool. Elfigo Apodaca it was—or some one obeying his order. Estan they feared—Estan would not come in, and the time was coming so close—and Estan held out and talked against it. I told him his life would pay for his holding out. I told him! And now I shall kill Apodaca—and my life also will pay—"

"What is this thou sayest?" The mother, roused from her lamentations by the boy's vehemence, plucked at his sleeve. "But thou must not kill, my little son. Thou art—"

"Why not? They'll all be killing in a month!" flashed Luis unguardedly.

Starr, kneeling on one knee, looked at the boy across Estan's chilling body. A guarded glance it was, but a searching glance that questioned and weighed and sat in judgment upon the truth of the startling assertion. Yet younger boys than Luis are commanding troops in Mexico, for the warlike spirit develops early in a land where war is the chief business of the populace. It was not strange then that eighteen-year-old Luis should be actively interested in the building of a revolution on this side the border. It was less strange because of his youth; for Luis would have all the fiery attributes of the warrior, unhindered by the cool judgment of maturity. He would see the excitement, the glory of it. Estan would see the terrible cost of it, in lives and in patrimony. Luis loved action. Estan loved his big flocks and his acres upon acres of land, and his quiet home; had loved too his foster country, if he had spoken his true sentiments. So Starr took his cue and thanked his good fortune that he had come upon this tragedy while it was fresh, and while the shock of it was loosening the tongue of Luis.

"A month from now is another time, Luis," he said quietly. "This is murder, and the man who did it can be punished."

"You can't puneesh Apodaca," Luis retorted, speaking English, since Starr had used the language, which put their talk beyond the mother's understanding. "He is too—too high up—But I can kill," he added vindictively.

"The law can get him better than you can," Starr pointed out cannily.
"Can you think of anybody else that might be in on the deal?"

"N-o—" Luis was plainly getting a hold on himself, and would not tell all he knew. "I don't know notheeng about it."

"Well, what you'd better do now is saddle a horse and ride in to town and tell the coroner—and the sheriff. If you don't," he added, when he caught a stiffening of opposition in the attitude of Luis, "if you don't, you will find yourself in all kinds of trouble. It will look bad. You have to notify the coroner, anyway, you know. That's the law. And the coroner will see right away that Estan was shot. So the sheriff will be bound to get on the job, and it will be a heap better for you, Luis, if you tell him yourself. And if you try to kill Apodaca, that will rob your mother of both her sons. You must think of her. Estan would never bring trouble to her that way. You stand in his place now. So you ride in and tell the sheriff and tell the coroner. Say that you suspect Elfigo Apodaca. The sheriff will do the rest."

"What does the señor advise, my son?" murmured the mother, plucking at the sleeve of Luis. "The good friend he was to my poor Estan—my son! Do thou what he tells thee, for he is wise and good, and he would not guide thee wrong."

Luis hesitated, staring down at the dead body of Estan. "I will go," he said, breaking in upon the sound of the peona's reasonless weeping. "I will do that. The sheriff is not Mexican, or—" He checked himself abruptly and peered across at Starr. "I go," he repeated hastily.

He stood up, and Starr rose also and assisted the old lady to her feet. She seemed inclined to cling to him. Her Estan had liked Starr, and for that her faith in him never faltered now. He laid his arm protectively around her shaking shoulders.

"Señora, go you in and rest," he commanded gently, in Spanish. "Have the girl bring a blanket to cover Estan—for here he must remain until he is viewed by the coroner—you understand? Your son would be grieved if you do not rest. You still have Luis, your little son. You must be brave and help Luis to be a man. Then will Estan be proud of you both." So he suited his speech to the gentle ways of the old señora, and led her back to the shelter of the porch as tenderly as Estan could have done.

He sent the peona for a lamp to replace the one that had broken when Estan fell with it in his hand. He settled the señora upon the cowhide-covered couch where her frail body could be comfortable and she still could feel that she was watching beside her son. He placed a pillow under her head, and spread a gay-striped serape over her, and tucked it carefully around her slippered feet. The señora wept more quietly, and called him the son of her heart, and brokenly thanked God for the tenderness of all good men.

He explained to her briefly that he had been riding to town by a short-cut over the ridge when he heard the shot and hurried down; and that, having left his horse up there, he must go up after it and bring it around to the corral. He would not be gone longer than was absolutely necessary, he told her, and he promised to come back and stay with her while the officers were there. Then he hurried away, the señora's broken thanks lingering painfully in his memory.

At the top of the bluff, where he had climbed as fast as he could, he stood for a minute to get his breath back. He heard the muffled pluckety-pluck of a horse galloping down the sandy trail, and he knew that there went Luis on his bitter mission to San Bonito. His eyes turned involuntarily toward Sunlight Basin. There twinkled still the light from Helen May's window, though it was well past midnight. Starr wondered at that, and hoped she was not sick. Then immediately his face grew lowering. For between him and the clear, twinkling light of her window he saw a faint glow that moved swiftly across the darkness; an automobile running that way with dimmed headlights.

"Now what in thunder does that mean?" he asked himself uneasily. He had not in the least expected that move. He had believed that the automobile he had heard, which very likely had carried the murderer, would hurry straight to town, or at least in that direction. But those dimmed lights, and in that the machine surely betrayed a furtiveness in its flight, seemed to be heading for Sunlight Basin, though it might merely be making the big loop on its way to Malpais or beyond. He stared again at the twinkling light of Helen May's lamp. What in the world was she doing up at that hour of the night? "Oh, well, maybe she sleeps with a light burning." He dismissed the unusual incident, and went on about his more urgent business.

Rabbit greeted him with a subdued nicker of relief, telling plainly as a horse can speak that he had been seriously considering foraging for his supper and not waiting any longer for Starr. There he had stood for six or seven hours, just where Starr had dismounted and dropped the reins. He was a patient little horse, and he knew his business, but there is a limit to patience, and Rabbit had almost reached it.

Starr led him up over the rocky ridge into the arroyo where the automobile had been, and from there he rode down to the trail and back to the Medina ranch. He watered Rabbit at the ditch, pulled off the saddle, and turned him into the corral, throwing him an armful of secate from a half-used stack. Then he went up to the house and sat on the edge of the porch beside the señora, who was still weeping and murmuring yearning endearments to the ears that could not hear.

He did not know how long he would have to wait, but he knew that Luis would not spare his horse. He smoked, and studied the things which Luis had let drop; every word of immense value to him now. Elfigo Apodaca he knew slightly, and he wondered a little that he would be the Alliance leader in this section of the State.

Elfigo Apodaca seemed so thoroughly Americanized that only his swarthy skin and black hair and eyes reminded one that he was after all a son of the south. He did a desultory business in real estate, and owned an immense tract of land, the remnant of an old Spanish grant, and went in for fancy cattle and horses. He seemed more a sportsman than a politician—a broadminded, easy-going man of much money. Starr had still a surprised sensation that the trail should lead to Elfigo. Juan, the brother of Elfigo, he could find it much easier to see in the role of conspirator. But horror does not stop to weigh words, and Starr knew that Luis had spoken the truth in that unguarded moment.

He pondered that other bit