The Forbidden Trail, Honoré Willsie [digital e reader TXT] 📗

him. Dick had said that they must start on the hunt for him at dawn. Ernest had lighted the fire with the hope that it might help him.

Gustav took Roger's pack and Ernest threw a helping arm about him. They led him straight to the cook tent where they had kept the coffee pot warm, and seated him at the table where a place was set for him. Their joy and relief almost unmanned Roger.

"My dear chaps," he insisted, "I was in no such great danger!"

"In no danger! You should have heard what Dick and Charley said," cried Ernest.

"Well, it's all right now," said Roger. "I've wasted a lot of time but I've located some rich loot, believe me."

"Where'd you pick up the burro?" asked Ernest. "He looks just like Peter."

"It is Peter," replied Roger. "Gustav, give him those oats in my coffee pot and let me eat, then I'll tell you all about it."

It was scarcely dawn and Roger was still fast asleep, when Ernest met Dick at the corral with the news of Roger's safe return and of the tragedy of poor Crazy Dutch. Dick was much upset at hearing of Von Minden's death.

"He was a poor old loon, but mighty good-hearted," he said, "and I swear I don't know what we'd have done sometimes without him—especially Charley. She's going to be all broken up over this. I'll tell her, then I'll come down and talk to Roger."

"Roger thought we ought to notify the folks at Archer's Springs right away," said Ernest.

"Shucks! That's not necessary. When some of us go in we can notify the sheriff. Dutch had a bum heart and had run out of food and water. Not a bad death, poor old chap."

When Dick came down to the camp, and they all had talked a little sadly of Von Minden's lonely death, Ernest asked suddenly:

"Did you find any window glass, Rog?"

Roger gave him a blank look. "By Jove, no! I was so excited over Von Minden and that new type engine and a hunch I got, that I forgot all about it. Well, I'll just have to start out again."

"By the way," Ernest went on, "I went into town while you were gone to get the mail. There was just one letter. It was from Elsa. She's on her way down here. She's due on Sunday."

Roger looked from Dick to Ernest. "What the devil shall we do with her?"

"Well, she'll have to outfit and grubstake herself. She knows that, and she knows we're broke. I think this is a cooked up job of hers and mother's just to help us out. And gee!—but I'll be glad to see old Elschen!"

"So'll I, old man. But Ernest, this is no place nor circumstances for an Old Home week. I'm sweating to finish this plant against almost impossible odds."

"Don't I know it? Have I failed you any?"

"You have been absolutely O. K. and we'll try to give Elsa a good time."

"It will be a perfect godsend to Charley," said Dick. "She almost cried when Gustav told us."

"Then that's settled," said Ernest with a sigh.

"Just as soon as it can be managed, we'll have to give Von Minden a decent burial, Roger," said Dick. "I won't be using the horses to-morrow and you'll be in good trim by then, won't you, Rog?"

"Yes," replied Roger, and if he smothered a sigh for another day lost from his work, no one noticed it.

Roger spent the remainder of the day in the engine house, going over his engine, shaking his head, muttering to himself like an old man, finally straightening his shoulders stubbornly and whistling through his teeth.

After an early supper, the three went up to the ranch. Felicia, who was wiping the dishes for Charley, hurled herself at Roger, dishcloth and all.

"Oh!" she shrieked. "You must never leave me like this again, Roger. I worried so about you that my stomach ached all the time you were gone."

Charley laughed with the rest, but quickly sobered. "I'm so glad you were able to take care of poor Uncle Otto," she said. "I shall miss him so. None of you knew him as I did." There was a pause, then Charley went on, "Just think of Ernest's sister coming! I remember her vaguely. She's like you, isn't she, Ernest?"

"Not a bit," said Roger. "She's full of pep and very good looking."

"Well, what do you know about that?" asked Ernest, looking at Roger wonderingly.

"She's going to stay with us, isn't she? Please say yes," cried Charley.

"Oh, no, don't have her here. She wouldn't like to be here all the time," begged Felicia. Then she blushed and retreated behind Roger's chair. She refused half tearfully to explain her statement when Dick urged her, at first jokingly, then in a commanding manner.

"Tell me, Felicia, don't you like it here?" drawing her to his side.

"Oh, let her alone, Dicky," begged Charley. "Why insist on a child's reason for anything?"

"But I want to know! Tell me, Felicia, don't you like it here?"

"Yes," said Felicia, with trembling lips, "I like it here, 'cept when you get sick and are so awful cross with me and Charley and make Charley cry. I wouldn't want Elsa to see you that way."

Dick turned purple. "Oh, well," cut in Roger, quickly, "Elsa'll have three men's crossness to put up with down at our camp, Felicia. Just think of that! And if it should happen that we'd all get cross at once, probably we'd blow the roof of the engine house off again."

"That's why we want Elsa to stay with us," said Ernest. "You see when men are cross, the only thing that cures them is having a nice girl around to make them ashamed of themselves."

"Sometimes already, if it gets too much vhen I make myself mad," added Gustav, "maybe ve get a squaw to come by our camp to vip us bad boys for Fräulein Elsa, eh?"

"If all the men in the world get cross, like you, Dicky," asked Felicia, wonderingly, "why do ladies marry them?"

"They don't, chicken! No one's married me."

"Maybe Elsa will. Unless Gustav gets her," suggested Felicia.

"Maybe Roger, he gets her, eh?" asked Gustav.

"Oh, no!" in sudden alarm, crossing over to Roger's knee to look up into his face with a depth of love in her brown eyes that tightened his throat as he lifted her into his lap. "Roger's going to marry me. Only Roger, if ever you're as cross to me as you were to Gustav, I shall just walk out of the house and never, never come back."

It was Roger's turn to blush and he did so thoroughly, while Dick burst into a roar of laughter in which the other men joined. Under its cover, Charley hustled Felicia off to bed.

At dawn the next day Roger and Dick started on their melancholy errand. The climbing was in many instances too precipitous for the horses and they made many detours. It was late in the afternoon, on a detour across a wide canyon that they came upon the end of the Von Minden drama. The canyon was really a part of the desert floor and was deep with sand. Roger it was, who first noted footprints.

"Look, Dick!" he called. "An Indian must have been here! Look at the naked footprints!"

Dick rode up beside him. "I wonder!" he said.

Both men glanced about them. "Yonder are some clothes, let's pick up this trail," suggested Dick.

"By Jove, it's Mrs. von Minden's pink wrapper!" cried Roger, "and over there are her shoes."

"Rog, we've got to brace ourselves," Dick pulled up his horse. "When folks thirst to death in the desert, they often strip off their clothes and run around in a big circle."

Roger bit his dry lips. "All right, Dick, come on," he muttered.

The foot marks swung in a wide circle. It was a mile farther on that they found the madam, stark naked, her gaunt face turned to the sky. She too had been dead for many days.

"I don't see why the buzzards didn't get her. Her burro wasn't Peter, he deserted her," murmured Dick. "Look, Rog, under her head."

It was the dispatch box, lightly sifted over with sand as was the body.

"What do you suppose happened?" asked Roger.

"She obviously thirsted to death. But she got the box first. Do you suppose she killed him, to get it?"

"Perhaps she found him dead and took it," suggested Roger.

"Well, we'll never know. Let's gather up what we can of her clothes and bury her. Poor old devil. Her story's ended," said Dick.

They dug Clarissa von Minden's grave and put her in it, then Dick pulled a prayer book from his pocket.

"Charley made me bring it," he explained. "I'm glad of it, now. Somehow it seems worse to chuck a woman away without a minister to help, than it does a man. I guess she did some tall suffering, from first to last, eh Rog?"

Roger nodded. Dick read the burial service reverently and they finished this gruesome job. Roger tied the little black metal box to his saddle and they started on their way. They made camp in the mountains that evening, not far from the peak that sheltered Von Minden. They had ample firewood for they camped near a clump of cedars and they went hastily through the contents of the dispatch box, by the light of the flames.

There was no marriage certificate. The entire box was filled with notes in German in a microscopic hand. Roger read excerpts of it. Von Minden seemed to have made an exhaustive study of the resources of this section of the desert and of the north of Mexico.

"He had some sort of a huge irrigation scheme in his head," Roger said. "He's got some letters copied in here and a lot of stuff. We ought to turn this over to a German consul, somewhere and let him notify the proper relations."

"That a good idea," agreed Dick. "He used to tell Charley and me strange things when he was off his head. Once he said he was charting this region for the Kaiser. The poor old lunatic."

"His ideas were not so crazy as they might be," protested Roger. "I've some dreams myself for this country, you know."

"What are they, Rog?" asked Dick. "I know in only the vaguest way."

"If I can irrigate your twenty-five acres with my little plant, don't you see that I have proven that I am able to tap unlimited cheap power. The possibilities of this country with cheap power are staggering. I don't blame Von Minden for calling it a kingdom. That's just what it might be, with the mountains of the west range and the Rockies to the east forming natural boundaries. It seems as if a kingdom really could be self-supporting in here. If only I can harness the sun to a cheap apparatus that any one can buy and operate! Why all these ranges would be studded with going mines. Every valley would be green with growing crops. I hardly dare let my imagination go on it. Our little old U. S. has got a wonderful unborn commonwealth down here."

"Well, your dreaming is a lot more practical than his, anyhow," said Dick. "More power to your elbow, old man, I say."

"I won't forget what you people have done for me!" Roger returned the papers to the dispatch box.

They found the crude grave intact, the next morning. They were able with the aid of the pick to make a shallow trough in the rock. They built this up with stone and the last chapter of the Von Minden story was ended. They reached home at dusk.

Ernest and Roger sat before the tent alone that night while Gustav wrote a letter in the cook house. The heat did not seem to have lessened much with the going down of the sun. The stars low-hung over the engine